Age of Aether

Five: The Day of the Red Sun

Bantam nodded and then proceeded more slowly.  “Doctor Volzstrang.  Is there somewhere we can have a talk?”

MOMENTS later, they were seated around Volzstrang’s ‘screen’. 

Bantam was given a stylus that attached to gears and levers to another, much, much larger stylus that moved across a series of pins on springs and depressed them as it passed.

Bantam saw to his amazement that each pixel of Volzstrang's screen was made of a very tiny crystal with a highly reflective light side and a dark side.  It was like the mechanics of a watch.  Whenever something was entered on the keyboard, there was the sound of a small rush of water, and the ‘pixels’ turned and formed characters, reflecting the naphtha light to cause it to ‘glow’ like an electric screen might.

Feeling very odd about it, Bantam wrote the Volzstrang equations down in front of the the very man who had invented them.

When the math was on screen, Volzstrang — a very quiet man, Bantam realized — stared with rapt appreciation, his mouth muttering a prayer of logic and numbers.

“It is ingenious, of course,” Volzstrang said finally.  “Only a few minds in the world could have produced this.  Is this your work, young man?”

“No,” Bantam said.  “It’s yours.  Even where I come from, you're one of the world's best Pencils."  Hey look at me, catching onto the lingo.

At that, Volzstrang looked up like he'd just been slapped.  Cleveland cringed and shook his head; apparently this was a term like nerd.

Bantam quickly proceeded to tell Volzstrang they story of his trip back through time, with Cleveland chiming in now and again to tell the story from the Army’s point of view. 

When they’d finished, Volzstrang said: “Well.  This is all academic.  The production of the Timewave is impossible without the existence of electricity.  Many of those numbers up there represent electrical qualities.” 

“Doctor Volzstrang.  Just — just assume for a second that there is electricity.  Pretend it’s real.  If we produced a Timewave — and if say, someone rode it back through time … could it theoretically push them into an alternate universe where history was different?”

“No,” Volzstrang snapped.

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re going to just totally rule that out?”

“Yes,” Volzstrang said.  “That would take a different kind of wave altogether.  The plasma vectors would form a differential plane that — “

Bantam waved him silent.  “Okay.  So not that.”

“Just how were you planning on accumulating tomorrows — thus effecting a return to your proper time?”

They all turned.  Doctor Rachelle Archenstone stood behind them. 

Bantam rose, trying not to look her up and down.  He realized that Cleveland and even Volzstrang were fighting the same urge. 

“The Timewave bounces forward in time once it unloads the capsule,” Bantam explained.  “Therefore, it’s still here, all around us, right now, traveling forward in time.  Even though you can’t see it or detect it.  Unless you happen have a Volzstrang radiation detector.”  Bantam glanced self-consciously at Hoermann Volzstrang. 

“Anyway, I just have to get my capsule working again.  Then I can surf it forward in time, the same way I surfed it back.”

Surf? Rachelle mouthed.  Bantam thought about kissing that mouth.