Chapter 9: The Institute
Madeleine realized she hadn't been out at the Institute since she graduated. She was looking forward to the visit and seeing her old Professor again.
Nothing had changed, at least not from the outside. Everything looked quite unspectacular as always. With its spread-out, rural landscape, The Institute had none of the feel of a traditional university campus. Of course, for obvious reasons it had to be that way. Still, it did have everything the Underground movement needed. Great teachers, top-notch facilities, the best technicians, scientists, and, of course, elite students. Getting the right people was no small task given the fact that the Underground was directly competing with the deep-pocketed Ministry for top talent. Sometimes they had to overpay but mostly they used the moral high-ground recruitment tool or the intellectual superiority route to get the people they wanted.
It hadn't always been that way, Maddy thought as she pulled into the parking spot outside of the lecture hall. Her father, Dr. Ronald Wilheim, worked for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) for 22 years before it was absorbed into the fledgling Ministry some 27 years ago. Back then, working for DARPA meant you were doing some cool shit. Her dad's work was no exception. He had top-secret clearance but it was no secret that he was working on advanced time travel applications. More specifically, he was working on technologies that would enable multi-year Jumps into the future.
The only problem was the newly-minted Ministry wanted nothing to do with innovations of that kind. They didn't care about anything other than perfecting short-term Jump techniques that would allow them to efficiently maintain full social and economic control. The only research worth funding were efforts directly associated with the recently established Sweeper program. Her father had little use for such a short-sighted, draconian operation. And as a result, the Ministry had little use for him.
What stuck with Maddy all these years, however, was not the philosophical differences that her father had with the Ministry. It was the brutal, dishonest, and heartless way in which the organization quickly chewed up and spat out one of its own. He tried for years to get the Ministry to strive for more and to look more broadly at the vast possibilities associated with the science of time travel. In the end, his efforts proved fruitless. Ministry leadership simply wasn't interested.
Instead, they decided to transform her father into a public pariah, which proved to be a quick and effective way to get rid of him once and for all. After planting false evidence of espionage, stripping him of his clearance, job, pension, and ultimately his dignity, Maddy's father had become a shell of the man he once was. He died soon after he was convicted of crimes he didn't commit. He never made it to sentencing.
To this day, Maddy's mother and younger brother hadn't recovered emotionally. Maddy hadn't either. She knew that her drive and deep devotion to the Underground kept her mind otherwise occupied most of the time. To her, everything that the Underground had become was what the Ministry should have always been...but never was. Still, Maddy tried to live her life without regret. It wasn't in her nature to pontificate and wonder "what if". She was a doer, and she was doing her best in an organization she deeply believed in.
The same could be said for Dr. Edward Karak, the Director of the Underground's Institute for Higher Learning, whom she was here to see. Her memories of him were as a talented physics professor, but there was no doubt that he'd now really hit his stride as the school's top signal-caller. While she hadn't kept in close contact with her old Professor, she was nevertheless fully aware of the many successes and discoveries that had come from the Institute. Over the years, he'd managed to find the necessary resources, staff, and students to keep things running smoothly.
Maddy had arrived a bit earlier than expected and decided to sit at the back of the lecture hall and listen in. She hadn't seen Professor Karak in nearly two decades but he looked as if he hadn't aged a day. She instinctively touched her face and looked down at her hands. Her self-conscious thought quickly faded, however, as she began to immerse herself in the Professor's discussion on the basics of Time Travel Law that everyfirst-year freshman, regardless of specialty, had to take. The possibility of time travel was something everyone had heard of but confirming its reality was entirely another story. The thought made Maddy look around the room. Every one of these kids was just as clueless as she was some twenty years ago.
She loved this particular class and still found it fascinating all these years later. Professor Karak was a brilliant teacher but his handwriting skills were truly atrocious. These poor students didn't stand a chance if they were relying solely on visual note-taking, which thankfully, was not the case for most of them. Karak could have used any number of modern delivery methods to teach his class but, ever being the romantic, he decided to use antiquated chalk to bring home his message. Somehow she was able to decipher what he scribbled on the left side of the lecture room blackboard...
Basic Laws of Time Travel (There's a lot more to discuss but this will suffice for now.)
(1) You cannot (initially) travel into the past.
(2) 'Changes' made in the future do not erase or modify events in the past.
(3) Conservation of mass always applies (no matter what time you are in).
(4) Inter-dimensional (a.k.a. alternate timeline) travel is possible (albeit tricky).
(5) (Simultaneous) time/space travel is possible (but not likely in my lifetime).
(6) You can minimize uncertainty but you can never eliminate it.
This was vintage Karak. Complex science boiled down to bottom-line facts. Those six lines pretty much could get anyone through the class. Of course, not knowing the details associated with each tenet wouldn't do them much good. She chuckled. Those were the good ole days.
"For example," Karak drew a timeline to illustrate a point, "in number one, while it's true you cannot travel into the past from the get-go, you can travel back to the initial time you Jumped from—plus the clock time you remained in the future. So in a relative sense," he marked another arrow on the line, "the traveler was going back in time but never any earlier than the initial time of the Jump itself. This is why I inserted the word 'initially'."
Tenet #2 was one of Maddy's favorites since, unlike most time travel laws, it read logically and made sense.
"Here at number two, we're not talking about changing the past and creating the quintessential and stereotypical 'science fiction paradox' where you go back and kill your grandfather. As noted in Law 1, this is simply not possible. The point of Law number 2 is to drive home the idea that once an event has occurred, it cannot be undone. It is over. It can be thought of as a play consisting of a series of short acts. Act 1 ends and Act 2 begins. An event in Act 2 cannot impact what has already happened in Act 1 unless one is discussing the world of quantum physics. Here, in this bizarre subatomic realm, Law 2 may not always hold true. However, as humans, our conscious existence occupies the non-subatomic world governed by Newtonian physical principles whereby the veracity of Law 2 is unquestioned. Law 2 simply confirms the concept of cause and effect. Your actions cannot erase or modify prior events. Of course, it's still possible to modify the present such that future events are affected.
"Which brings us to Law 3."
The way Maddy had taught herself to understand this tenet was to think of every snapshot in time as a separate event, complete with separate individuals occupying each discrete time step.
Karak continued, "So a person at t=0 was not, in fact, the exact same individual occupying t=1. In essence, this means there are an infinite number of you's running about. Perhaps this may be difficult for some of you to fathom in a theoretical sense and even harder to accept practically, but the tenet remains true nevertheless. This would allow for two—or more 'nearly identical' individuals to occupy the same time. However, doing so would also require that the you that left t=0 was no longer there. Employing conservation principle number '3', this can be mathematically thought of as 1 + 1 = 2 under normal, (i.e.no-time-travel) circumstances and 0 + 2 = 2 when active time travel was in play."
To help her wrap her brain around this one, even though it wasn't technically correct, Maddy liked to think of the alternate and infinite number of Madeleines as her time travel clones. This way it made it much easier for her to understand how she could not possibly go into the future and jeopardize 'killing herself' or erase her past.
Pretty disturbing concepts, but also pretty powerful, conceptually. As she pulled herself out of deep thought, she noticed that the Professor was wrapping things up.
"So that's it for today, ladies and gentlemen," said Karak. "However, before I let you go, I want to congratulate and welcome you to the Institute. If you value freedom, if you value choice, if you value the future of humanity being able to chart its natural course, you have come to the right place. Here, you will learn things that will challenge your current perception of reality. In time—no pun intended—you're also likely to add to our ever-growing body of knowledge. In a word, welcome!"
There was a brief, polite pause to make sure the Professor was indeed finished, followed by a boisterous round of applause from the new student cohort. As the lecture hall began to empty, Professor Karak spotted Maddy in the back of the classroom and smiled as he approached her.
"Madeleine, it's so nice to see you! It's been far too long!"
He reached out and she met his embrace. "I know, Professor. Far too long indeed," she responded with a smile.
"Professor? Please, Maddy, you must be kidding!"
She laughed. "I know, but sitting here, seeing you at the front of the class, brought me back twenty years. It seems like forever ago, but I haven't forgotten a thing you taught us. In fact, since that time I've managed to apply much of it."
Karak tilted his head, regarding her, still smiling. Finally, he said, "So to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Well, we've had some very promising fieldwork recently, but we've also had some complications."
"Ah yes, the unavoidable trade-offs. I'm very familiar with that reality, unfortunately. What seems to be the problem—or should I say, in a more positive light—how can I be of assistance?" He beamed again as he squeezed her elbows.
"Professor, do you have some time to sit down, perhaps over dinner tonight? I will get you up to speed but it will take some time to sort through it all."
"Actually, the Professor is swamped but Edward, on the other hand," he winked, "does have some free time this evening."
She chuckled. "I'm sorry...Edward. That's going to take some getting used to."
"Good, something to work on. Let's meet at the Rathskeller at 8 p.m. You remember how to get there, I assume?"
"Of course," she said, "that's a great choice. I'll see you there at eight."
As Madeleine made her way off-campus, a flood of memories and emotions came back to her. She was happy to be back where it all began so long ago. Still, she realized she'd underestimated the emotional aspects a trip like this could potentially trigger. There was no denying that the Professor had made an indelible impact on her life, but it was also now clear to her that her impact on him was a bit more complicated. From personal first-hand experience, she'd already concluded that romance in the workplace wasn't a good idea. With the stakes as high as they were, there was absolutely no room for any distractions, especially ones that involved emotional entanglements.