Fossils and Fools

If I had known I'd wreck the human race I'd have split a fifth of vodka with Weigel and gotten truly hammered. Instead, we played chess as usual at the Dragon City Chinese restaurant, sneaking white wine into water glasses.

"You did what?" Weigel asked in response to my mid-game attempt at conversation.

"Linked CTCs in the zero point flux," I repeated, then leaned closer. "Closed Timelike Curves." He frowned. "Wormholes," I said. "You know, time travel."

Weigel shook his head. "Billy Boy, you need black holes for that. Got one up your sleeve?"

Tipsy, I pulled back a cuff and peeked in, nodding. "Quarks do ten-to-the-minus-forty-two seconds into the past all the time. Known fact."

Weigel shoved a sauced-up hunk of broccoli in his mouth and blocked my rook with a knight. "Three quarks for Muster Mark," he said, quoting Finnegan's Wake. "There are paradoxes you can't wish away." Then he made the traditional argument: "I off my mom before I was born and then where the hell am I?"

"Multiverses! That's the crazy part. The theory's there. Look in the journals." In my stewed state I hated to have to explain everything. I slid a bishop across the board.

"What theory?"

"Once time travel happens on a scale above quarks, it's easier after that."

"Easy, as in drop your quarter in the slot and shake hands with Genghis Khan?"

"Easy, as in super-cooled laser-faceted plutonium crystals."

Weigel swigged from his glass. "Jesus! What's your source? The terrorist shopping network?" He grabbed my bishop--I'd made a total blunder.

"Takes less than a microgram for what I'm doing. Friend of a friend up at Livermore." My funding and love life had dried up at the same time, so I'd sold my car, borrowed equipment, and set up in my apartment.

I refilled Weigel's glass from the bag. "Sounds like a moneymaker," he said. "But if it's so easy, why aren't time tourists here like fleas on a dog? Laser-flaked plutonium-whatever can't be that tough to score in the future."

"Since Carolina left, I've been working on that twenty-four seven."

Weigel cracked a knowing smile. "Ah, it's all about the chick! Impress Cari and she'll come crawling back. You haven't answered my question. Who cares who invents it--big money in the future will grab it and sell it. So where are they?"

"Maybe I'll keep it to myself." I was too oiled to find a good move, so I pushed a pawn.

"Don't make me puke. You'd sell your mother for fame."

"My mother's dead."

"Sorry, forgot."

"Theory says when I make that anchor point, they can only come back to that moment. Hasn't been done, so no tourists."

"You said quarks do it all the time."

"Fluctuations. Gotta get a wormhole past a nanosecond. That's what Rosemary's gonna do."

"Rosemary?"

"Quark pump."

"Oh, right. Sounds like a moneymaker."

Weigel's two loves were James Joyce and dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes. Call me stupid, but I should have seen it coming. Love is blind whether it's physics or women.

His next move would be mate in two. A wok sizzled and the smell of hot oil came from the kitchen. By the light of a flickering dragon I tipped over my king. I hoped to God I was better at physics than chess.