“Are you asking about the temporal logic of it?”
“If you want to look at it that way,” he replies dismissively. ”I’m just asking you to think rationally and tell me what you have concluded given your recent experiences, Dr. Bevan.” This is a level of mortification I’m unused to. “There were people in the park,” he says, consulting the notes. I nod. “And did they seem shocked, astounded, seized by wonderment?” My neck warms by twenty degrees.
“No, they didn’t,” I reply. “But I was shocked and astounded.”
“Ah,” says Prasad to his imbecilic student who at last seems to have inched forward his side of the conversation.
“And why would that be?” I ask on his behalf. “Why would they just take the existence of the park in their stride, while to me, it’s a park that came out of nowhere?” Prasad’s expression is one of thank god for that. “What’s different about them? About me?” I feel a cynical grin from Zhivov yet when I turn to him, there’s only rapt attention.
“And the answer?” Prasad asks. I shake my head. I don’t know the answer. “I was at the tachyon detection array when it was blown up. Is that what–”
“Why would that make a difference?” Prasad asks. I have no answer. “I don’t know why that would make a difference.”
“Think about your timeline–” Galois says.
“No Gallie,” Prasad interrupts. “Let Dr. Bevan from the future figure this out. Someone thought he was TMA material. Unless recruitment standards plummet by 2021, he can think this through for himself.” At this Prasad shifts his notes aside. “But no rush. Let’s move on.” I lean forward into whatever discussion is coming next, but it seems Prasad’s announcement was a sign to get rid of me while serious conversation could begin. Zhivov escorts me from the meeting room and closes the door behind me. And there I stand: a man who has disgraced himself in front of the greatest scientific mind of the late twentieth century.
THIRTEEN
I relive that meeting a dozen times. I entered as the Messiah (for reasons I’ve not been told) and exit the simpleton. My mother had a way with words, and there was a word that, as far as I know, only she used for the type of off-the-scale embarrassment I had just experienced. It was shitten. I feel truly shitten. For several days there’s no relief. I’m so used to treating temporal logic with scorn, as does my whole tribe of tackychemists, I hadn’t been thinking clearly about the questions Prasad had posed. What should have occurred to my befuddled mind is that everything has changed. His question wasn’t about theoretical temporal logic, the sort that TLs spend a career jerking off to. He wanted an opinion on what was now actual experimental temporal logic. I had lived it, yet all I could do was drool, slack-jawed, and admire the mystery. But the fact of the matter is that I still can’t answer his question. Why would I be the only one who knows that that Risley park wasn’t meant to be there while the kids playing in it and the families walking through it gave no hint of bewilderment. What’s special about me? And then, what’s it like for one of those oblivious people in the park? Does having a history that’s suddenly altered cause no sensation? I can’t think this through. Maybe it takes a Ram Prasad. Not being the smartest one in the room is a new sensation for me, and I don’t like it.
For the following days the meeting room door stays shut. Prasad, Galois and Zhivov are sequestered in there with the occasional TMA staffer visiting. I spend my time milling around the cubicle area or pressing my nose to the control room window. I’m of no use to anyone. You’d think a guy from the future would have some value, but beyond trying to wheedle out of me information about their future lives, there was no interest in me. I even considered garnering a little attention by stirring up interest in the plot lines of future Friends.
I watch the shift directors rotate through the big chair. There’s the lean, ex-military-looking grayhair. He’s a hypercritical, sarcastic bastard who takes pleasure in making his team feel stupid. He’d fit right in in 2021 TMA, but here, he’s the exception to the rule. Another shift director is an amiable older guy whose belt is lost beneath an overhanging belly and whose thin wisps of sandy hair bounce with every stride. Galois is the third shift director but she’s hidden away with Prasad and Zhivov, so her deputy sits in the chair. The deputy is a waif of a woman lost in her baggy shirts and jeans who wears thick-rimmed, black eyeglasses that conceal her features but for a long, slender nose and a thin-lipped, unsmiling mouth. She seems sharp as a tack, and not a spare word exits her.
By the standards of the TMA I know, there’s little action in the control room. Maybe one green light per day. Some days none at all. I start to spend more time in my quarters, just sitting on my bed and listening to the radio. In an act of compassion, someone had brought a TV into my room. It’s unsettling to think that another copy of me may be watching exactly the same TV shows a few miles away. I am truly useless, it seems, unworthy even of being told why I’m being kept waiting, and for what.
FOURTEEN
Galois stands outside the open door to my room. This hasn’t happened before. Her hair is let down, framing her
