The Wrong Place at the Right Time

“In space, no one can hear you scream, or so they say.”

That ridiculous line from some Alien rip-off movie resonates in my head. Of course, no one can hear you scream in a vacuum. No air, no sound. So, I will not waste any of my last breaths screaming. I will restrict the screams to my mind as I try to understand why I have found myself floating in space.

Less than a second ago I was in a lab at a government research facility in Nevada. I was one of the leaders of the project and had volunteered to be the test subject. Drones we had sent through had been unsuccessful. Their cameras and data recording systems had failed, and we had found no explanation. Our only clue had been that when the devices were retrieved, they were extremely cold.

“Why would a time-jump cause something to get cold?” my colleague, Dr. Lee asked us. There were seven of us seated around the conference table, all dejected by our most recent failure. Dr. Lee’s question was rhetorical. This was our third attempt to send a drone back in time, and it was our third failure. Each time the devices had come back frozen and with no useful data. The last two droids even had protection against cold but had returned with nothing but five minutes of black recorded on video.

“Eileen, have you spotted anything at all on the recent video?” Dr. Lee asked me.

“We’ve watched the entire thing at least 20 times, Jon,” I said. “You, yourself, probably watched it five times. It’s exactly like the last run. Five minutes of black with occasional points of light visible. The light could be almost anything, but most likely its just faults in the video. As far as we can tell, the video is worthless.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Sinclair. This may be a naïve question, but what should the drones have recorded?” The question came from Helen Mendez. She was the government liaison to our project. She was nice enough, but we knew she had the power to shut us down if she wanted to.

“We purposely built this lab on ground level,” I said. “Twenty years ago, there was nothing here but open space. We sent the drones twenty years back in time. If everything had gone as it was supposed to, the video would show the empty field that used to be here. The air sampler would have provided air from two decades ago that would have shown changes in the atmosphere. But neither of those things happened. The air sampler was empty, and as I said before, the video was black.”

“So, can you be certain that you haven’t built a multi-billion-dollar failure? Do you have any evidence that you are achieving time travel?” Mendez question made me queasy. She was calling the project a failure. Everyone at the table probably felt the same panic that I did. Was she about to kill our funding? Would she throw away six years of our lives that easily. Fortunately, Dr. Lee was not intimidated.

“Helen, we haven’t succeeded yet, but we’ve only tried three times,” he said. “If the space program had given up after three failures, we never would have made it off the planet. We know our science is sound. We’re confident that our machine will work. I’m even confident it already has worked; we just haven’t found a way to prove that yet. This will just take time.”

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Mendez. She remained silent for a few moments then smiled. It was not an especially friendly smile. “Jon, I understand that things take time, but not everyone else does. There are those who would have already terminated this project. There is a belief that the current administration was very naïve to give the go-ahead to a project that is more science fiction than science. Now I’m not one of those people, but I can only do so much.”

My heart sank. I knew her next words would not be good news. “You have six months,” she said. “That’s what I’m here to tell you. Unless you can provide some real proof that your machine can actually create time travel, the project will be suspended and re-evaluated. I can’t tell you what will happen after that, but I can say that none of you will be involved anymore.” Mendez collected her things and started to leave. She paused long enough to say, “I’m sorry.”

After that meeting, we became desperate to beat the six-month deadline. We all worked tirelessly, and the next few months were a blur. Part of the team focused on improving the drone. We realized that we needed a “smarter” device that could respond to what it experienced when it went back in time. The rest of the team, including me, reviewed everything that had gone into the building of our time machine, both theoretical and mechanical.

My specialty was artificial temporal portals. Until our project began, everything I had ever studied or wrote about was theoretical. The same was true for many of my colleagues on the project, except for Dr. Lee. He was the genius who figured out how to make the theoretical possible. Together we all created a machine that could make a displacement in time, so that in theory, we could move to any moment past or present. The math was all there and the tiny fusion generator that created this miracle was an amazing achievement on its own.

The energy comparable to a micro-star was focused into a small booth, and the temporal coordinates would then move an object to a time of our choosing. The machine would keep the portal open so that the object could be retrieved. We were fairly certain it was working, but we still didn’t know why the drones were freezing and failing. Cold comes from a loss of energy, but nothing in our calculations could explain what would cause such a dramatic loss of energy.

With only two weeks before our deadline, the smart drone was ready. The team started putting it through its paces to make sure it would work. Initially it seemed perfect, but our optimism was short-lived.

The drone was doing a simple hover and scan. There was no sign of a problem until a bit of black smoke began wafting from the device. “Shut it down!” someone screamed, but it was too late. The heating element the team had installed to counter the cold the drones experienced was faulty. Flames engulfed the drone as it crashed to the lab floor. Someone doused it with a fire extinguisher, but it was a total loss.

We all stared at the wreckage in disbelief. I heard crying coming from one of the scientists. I knew how he felt. “Is there any chance of rebuilding it?” Dr. Lee asked. The leader of the drone team just shook his head. “Then it’s done,” Dr. Lee said. “We won’t be able to test again before the deadline.”

The lab seemed so silent and still at that moment. The noises from any equipment didn’t register in my brain. I just felt empty, like I was at a funeral. I think everyone must have felt that way. But then, someone said something that caught everyone by surprise. “Send me,” the voice said quietly. I was more surprised when I realized that I was the one who had said it.

“Don’t be crazy, Eileen,” Dr. Lee said, “We can’t send a person through. It’s too dangerous.”

“We don’t know that, Jon,” I replied. “I can deal with the unknown better than a drone, even a smart one. We find some way to keep me warm, mount a good camera on me and I’ll get the proof we need.”

The room erupted in arguments as my colleagues, my friends, insisted that it was not safe while I insisted that I was willing to take the risk. Only one person remained silent. Dr. Gina Damiano was the most soft-spoken person on our team. She was also our most gifted mathematician and highly respected. She finally spoke, and said quietly, but firmly, “I agree with Eileen. We should let her try. I don’t think anyone would disagree that she is the best of us when it comes to observation. She notices things that others would miss. She is the best chance to make our project successful and I believe that what we are doing is important enough that this risk is necessary.”

I looked over at Gina and silently mouthed, “Thank you,” She smiled in return.

Dr. Damiano’s vote of confidence was enough to begin swaying others, Dr. Lee was the last holdout, but he eventually gave in. He knew that it was our only hope of achieving our goal, but he was also a kind man and didn’t like the idea of risking anyone. I assured him repeatedly that it was what I wanted to do.

Once the decision was made, our focus became how to protect me when I time-jumped. It was difficult to know what was needed since we still had no idea what was causing the problems. We decided that I should wear something like a spacesuit, but we couldn’t convince NASA to provide one without telling them what it was for. Being a top-secret project has its disadvantages. We ended up cobbling together our own suit. We started with a wet suit; the kind surfers wear to stay warm. Then someone found a high-altitude flight suit for sale on eBay. It wasn’t new, but it was the best thing we could get. It included a helmet and we were able to seal the whole thing up to retain as much heat as possible. I looked kind of ridiculous in the ensemble, but I felt pretty secure. We considered adding some oxygen tanks, but that proved impractical. We were having a hard enough time balancing the machine to handle something as massive as a human. The drones had been much smaller by comparison.

The night before the time-jump I didn’t do much. I sent some messages to the few family and friends I had. My career had left me rather alone in the world, other than the few people I worked with on the project. They were my closest family. I did call my father. We were never on the best of terms, but I wanted to make an effort in case something happened to me. I couldn’t tell him what I was doing the next day, and, as usual, he didn’t have much to say. He hung up after five minutes.

For most of the night I found myself thinking about how momentous our project really was. I had spent so much time trying to figure out how to make time-travel possible that I hadn’t stopped to think about how significant it was to humanity. Would we eventually be able to observe great moments from the past? Would we be able to interact with people who came before us? Would we be able to change past events and should we even try? Up until now, everything was theoretical, but if things went to plan, time-travel would be real. All those thoughts flooded my head that night and it was just as well because otherwise I would have spent that whole time terrified. I would never have admitted it, but I was quite scared.

By 8 am the next morning I was suited up and ready to go. Dr. Damiano gave me a hug before I entered the booth. Everyone wished me luck. Dr. Lee smiled, but I could tell he was as nervous as I was. The booth was sealed behind me. I tried to ready myself but wasn’t sure how since I really had no clue what to expect. I reminded myself that this would only be a two-and-a-half-minute trip. It had been decided that maybe trying for five minutes as we had with the drones was unwise. I agreed with that decision. I believed that I could cope with anything for 150 seconds.

The machine around me started to hum. Over the speaker Dr. Lee said, “Godspeed, Eileen.” Then he counted down from ten. When he reached one, there was a flash of light and then nothing, literally nothing.

I experienced so many things at once, and none of them were good. I felt like I was falling, but then I realized I was weightless, not falling. I was in outer space. My makeshift spacesuit was no match for the vacuum I was in. A seal on my leg opened, causing air to leak out. I could feel the extreme cold as heat escaped. The loss of pressure was also making me sick. I was in pain and scared, but most of all, I was confused. Where was I? How did I end up in space?

So here I am, floating somewhere in space with no idea how long I can survive. I am fortunate that there is some air in my helmet maintaining a bit of pressure, keeping the fluids in my head from boiling. I don’t know if I will last the 150 seconds until I am retrieved. However long I have, I am determined to figure out why I am here. What went wrong?

I am slowly spinning and as I come around, I see a beautiful and unexpected sight. Although my visor is partly iced up, I see the Earth in the far distance. I can see sunlight and clouds over the Americas and I have to fight the urge to gasp at the beauty. Unnecessary use of breaths is a luxury I can’t afford right now.

I’m in terrible pain throughout my body. I don’t know exactly what is happening to me, but I assume the vacuum of space is killing me. My suit and helmet are providing some protection, but not enough. I feel scared, but also joyous because now I understand what has happened to me. I know why our drones have failed. I know that our time machine works. We just made one mistake.

We expected that when we sent something back in time, it would be to the same place on Earth. We had sent the drones and me twenty years into the past assuming we would arrive in an empty field where our lab would one day be built. The time machine did send me back twenty years into the past, but twenty years ago the Earth was not in the same place in space. Unfortunately for me, twenty years ago the location where our lab will one day exist is an empty point in space. Time and space are linked.

I wonder how much longer until they retrieve me. I must let them know what I have discovered. I pray that the camera mounted on my helmet captured images of Earth and that it will be enough for the others to figure out what it means. I know there is an audio recording device that I am supposed to use to make observations. I have not used it because I am conserving my air, but I am trying to think of a simple message that might help the others understand, even if I don’t survive.

My lungs are burning. I’m afraid I will lose consciousness soon. I have to risk recording a message now. I decide I should tell them the simple thought that had come to me. I say as clearly as I can, “Time and space are linked” I hope that is enough. They are smart people and I hope they will put it all together. They should realize that the blackness the drones recorded was empty space, and the small white distortions were stars. They should figure out no air was sampled because there was no air where the drones had gone. They should then figure out if time travel is ever to work, they will have to calculate the absolute coordinates of both space and time before making a time-jump.

I hope my message is understood because I doubt I will live long enough to be retrieved. My vision is gone. There is nothing to breathe. I am terribly cold. I will die now, but as I am fading the parts of my body that aren’t frozen sense that something has changed. It’s gravity! They have brought me back. Maybe I will survive. I don’t know, but I am happy. At least I will die at home on Earth and not alone in space. I take strange comfort knowing that if I scream now, someone will hear it.