Ethan tried to concentrate. He struggled to come up with a half-decent question or objection. But as they approached the truck’s open rear doors, his mind and heart were swamped by how much he wanted this to be real.
Yet there was more at work here.
The most vital part of his existence had been surfing big waves. A crucial element to killer surf was that the risk of injury or death was always present. Always. The tiniest error in judgment, the slightest shift in wind or current, and the finest wave could instantly become the final ride. Surfers who hunted the globe’s biggest waves did so for one simple reason.
They lived for this.
The risk was simply part of the ride.
For Ethan, nothing in his entire life had ever compared to the thrill of standing on the shoreline and looking out, seeing those liquid mountains march invitingly toward him, knowing the best was yet to come.
That was exactly how he felt now. For the first time in years.
As he studied Delia’s excited, intelligent face, Ethan became filled with the single element of his past that he missed almost as much as his brother. The thrill of facing the impossible.
Delia broke into his thoughts. “We know at least some key components of the subject’s current mental awareness and thought processes travel back. If we train the animals to do some highly complex task, they maintain this knowledge even when they have never seen the trial before.”
Ethan stopped by the rear doors and forced himself to pay attention. “How is that even possible?”
“We know they’re test subjects because they run the maze or perform the task the first time they see it. At first we couldn’t believe it. Test animals with no training whatsoever suddenly just danced their way through the most complex maze we could design.” Delia seemed delighted by the memory. “We had no idea what was happening. I mean, these were not actually registered as test subjects! So we would train them weeks or months later, then transit their consciousness back to the period before they ran the maze.” She gestured to the collapsible metal steps. “Climb in.”
Ethan remained planted on the asphalt. “Why don’t you two go?”
Sonya cackled. “Who calibrates the machines then? You?”
“Mom, please.” Delia said to Ethan, “The simple reason is, forcing your consciousness to transit kills your physical body. What’s more, you’ll most likely expire in the past as well.”
“Wait, what?”
“All our test subjects perish twice. As far as the current physical body goes, the energy required to make the transit stops the subject’s heart. Plus our subjects have had a very short life span once the transition takes place. At first we thought it was due to how the trained subject couldn’t meet their untrained future self. But we separated them, and the pattern continued.” Delia might as well have been discussing the current heat wave. “Think of it as a rejection of a transplanted organ. Only in our case, it’s the individual’s future consciousness that is rejected.”
“How can a past subject die and a future one still be taught?”
“Good question. The answer is quantum logistics, which are totally wild. But they clearly govern the conscious mind and its temporal location. A longer answer would put you to sleep.”
Her matter-of-fact tone helped Ethan mightily. “How long will I have?”
“My best calculations suggest about a month. Six weeks tops.”
“Long enough to save Adrian and rechart all our courses,” Sonya added.
Ethan stared out over the dusty parking lot. A flock of pelicans drifted by, painting the sky with their graceful script. He had loved parts of his life, sure. The travel, dawns on the water, great waves, good friends. But how did that song go? Regrets, he had a few. That was the understatement of the century. The time since learning of his upcoming departure had been filled with the bitter longing to correct wrong moves, starting with his brother’s death. And a lot more besides.
Sonya tapped the electronic timer set in the truck’s right-hand wall. “Will you please get in here so we can start? We have four minutes.”
Delia remained unfazed. “Correction. We can’t do anything for another four minutes. And Ethan needs to understand.”
Sonya went back to working the machinery. “Understand—him? Humph.”
Delia told him, “We would have come sooner. But we only learned about your condition the night before last.”
Sonya bristled. “Three minutes!”
Her mother might as well have been in another room. “Plus the calculations require hours at a supercomputer, and we only accessed one last night. But the biggest reason is that you are here, we know you’re here, and Mom remembers you were precisely in this same spot eighteen days before Dad died. She and Adrian talked about it in their last conversation . . .” Delia waved that aside. “Positioning at the corresponding quantum point is crucial for this to work.”
“Positioning is not nearly as crucial as timing!” Sonya pointed at the gurney occupying the center of the truck. “Which is why you need to get in here and lie down!”
This time, when Delia offered her hand, Ethan started up the steps.
She went on, “Establishing a precise physical location between present and past is utterly crucial. We know you were working here before Dad was murdered. And we know you come here every anniversary. So . . .”
Ethan remained standing as Delia pulled the doors shut and locked them in place. The truck was wall-to-wall electronic equipment. A spiderweb of wiring was suspended from the roof directly above the gurney. It looked like something straight out of a B-grade horror flick.
Ethan figured he probably should be afraid. Running away, or at least limping, was the logical next step. But the simple fact was, these two women were offering the first chance he’d had to make a decision about his own destiny since receiving the fatal diagnosis. He knew he should be terrified. Instead, though, Ethan felt as awake and hyper as a clown on a unicycle. He knew all this probably led to a spectacular failure. But just then, his only response was to silently shout, So what?
“You really do need to step on it,” Delia said. “Else we’ll all miss the dance.”
CHAPTER
THREE
Delia kept talking as she strapped him to the gurney. “There will be two separate processes. They happen almost simultaneously, but not quite. First, a precise vibrational jolt will be applied to your frontal cortex, harmonizing your mental processes at the quantum level and preparing you for the transition.”
Ethan’s attention gradually shifted away from her, the truck, Sonya, even the straps Delia fastened around his body. He had noticed this happening more often as the pain increased. As though part of him was already gone. As though there was some unseen door, and he had accepted that the only way to rid himself of the growing burden was to walk through.
Only now, for the first time in what felt like years, the sense of disconnect was not driven by pain. Ethan was filled with the electric buzz of anticipation. The thrill of danger, the high of attempting the impossible—he had lived for this. The incredible moment when he was drenched in adrenaline and his heart grew wings and every second became split and parsed . . .
He was back.
The transition, Delia called it. The logical side of his brain kept repeating the word. Like how doctors kept telling him to prepare himself for the inevitable, that his only choice was to get ready, because in a matter of days he was checking out. All options stripped away.