Quantum Poppers (21 page)

For a global
hi-tech secret government establishment that monitored space-time disruptions
and discrepancies, this four story concrete slab in the middle of Bressingham
was ideally inconspicuous.

Tony didn’t
know the area well. Whilst only ten miles east of his hometown of Hambleton, it
was mostly the six miles west to Muckle Hill that he and his mates headed when
in need of a night on the town. They had pulled into a harshly lit car park
through barriers which had risen automatically, sensing something within
Bartley’s car. They parked in shadows as passing traffic continued to swell
outside. There had been a lone door to the back of the car park and Tony could
see a rickety metal stairway that rose to an overhead walkway. It was to this
that Tony thought they were headed but Bartley continued past it, taking the first
right. As they flanked the buildings under which they were parked, the road
rose steeply. By the time they were standing out the front of one of the
buildings in particular, they were two stories higher than where they had left
the car. Buried levels, hidden somewhere out the back, cut into the ground like
bunkers.

He had not
looked twice at the building as they approached. There must have been thousands
of buildings like this throughout the country: grey, unblemished by signs, a
buildup of litter dusting it at night like snow. It would have appeared
uninhabited were it not for the random lights that lit offices within.

‘This is it?’
The disappointment in his voice was more severe than he intended yet he
couldn’t deny its honesty.

‘This is it,’
said Bartley. They paused outside. It was sandwiched between two similar
looking buildings - others drifted away, each as non-descript as the next until
they merged into the standard array of betting shops and supermarkets. ‘We only
occupy the first floor; the rest is storage and a front to blend in with the
community. The government had to house us somewhere. We’ve been here almost
forty years.’

They entered
into what appeared to be a standard reception area. A suited woman sat behind a
desk. She busied herself at the sight of Bartley but it was Tony that her gaze
followed as they crossed the lobby towards a set of lift doors.

‘So the
government house and fund all this?’

‘They have no
choice but to continue. If they stop, knowing what they know, and something
were to happen...as with all of this, it’s about chances that must be taken.’

Bartley pressed
a button to call the lift. A bell rang, but Bartley then pulled a keycard out
of his pocket and swiped a reader to the left of the door. He opened a panel
under which lay a keypad. He entered a code as another bell chimed an accepting
note. The doors slid open but not to reveal the interior of a lift. Behind the
door lay a corridor. Again, corporate beige, with a brown carpet. At least the
reception they were in maintained a pretence of modernity and business. The
corridor Tony now looked down appeared aged and decrepit in contrast, in need
of one major overhaul at least.

‘After you,’
said Bartley and pointed forwards.

Tony stepped
through, allowing Bartley to pass and lead the way.

‘As I said,
most of this building is storage. Our mass of servers has grown over the years;
it takes a lot of energy to power the mechanics behind quantum time alignment.
Brian can answer your technical questions.’ They continued to walk, the corridor
seemed almost endless. Bartley stopped outside a door which looked no different
from any other. ‘This though, is where the magic happens. Well, the science.
This is where I, where we, now work.’

He opened the
door to reveal the main hub of activity within the Quantum Popper offices. Tony
stepped in; after all the things that had happened, it was the thrill of
finally finding a job he may be interested in that pushed him over the
threshold.

The decoration
of beige and uninspired decor was maintained throughout. The office was about
twenty square metres and looked to Tony like any other mundane work area. There
were desks with scattered papers, each with a monitor. Filing cabinets circled
the room with the exception of the door they had just entered through and
another on the opposite side. Paper was piled precariously atop each of them
whilst boxes scattered the floor, each virtually bursting in explosions of
paper. There were no windows. Florescent lights lit the scene which hummed
alongside the sound of computer hard drives and a fan which blew a warm breeze
across his vision. A bank of monitors, directly ahead peered down at them all
like huge cubic eyes. There was only one other person in the office. He sat
with his back to them, headphones on, nodding in time to a beat that no one
else could hear.

‘What’s this?’

‘What did you
expect?’ said Bartley. He looked as though this reaction was more than
expected.

‘I don’t know.
A few more flashing lights perhaps. Time travelers setting off on missions.’

‘I don’t see
how more flashing lights would help us and as for getting ready to go off on
missions...the first thing you need to remember is that a quantum popper is
always on a mission. He never switches off. This is where we meet, where data
is analysed, trends foreseen. Actual employees being here is quite rare. Except
for Brian.’

Bartley
approached him and tapped him on the shoulder. At first he shrugged off the
contact but after a repeated nudge shot to his feet, ripping the headphones
from the socket of his computer. His hair stood up at awkward angles from where
his head had been rested in his hands and his eyes were red, as if he hadn’t
slept in days.

‘Oh hi, you
must be Tony,’ said Brian as he wiped dry his hand of sweat and held it out.
Tony accepted it.

‘Brian, Tony;
Tony, Brian,’ said Bartley.

‘Pleased to
meet you,’ said Tony.

‘No, pleased to
meet you.’ He attempted to flatten down his hair but it wasn’t working. It
stuck straight back up as if he were under constant exposure to a stream of
electricity. ‘I need all this to help me see,’ he said gesturing at the
monitors and stacks of papers around them. ‘We have some of the most powerful
servers and processors running around the clock, converting wormhole readings
to digital, anticipating future patterns, locking onto signals; all giving as a
glimpse of a fraction of the jumps throughout the world. If what Bartley says
is true, then thank you. You’ve made our job a hell of a lot easier.’ He then
looked to Bartley as if for confirmation that what he was saying was true.

‘He’s right,’
Bartley said. ‘From these systems we are able to pick out fluctuations
throughout the quantum plain. We can pinpoint where and when someone has jumped
and then send someone to pop them back.’

‘Is this really
global?’ asked Tony.

‘It is
spreading. We don’t know why but it appears the majority of jumps initiated in
this geographic area, over time they have spread. It seems they have always
been global, but it’s as if we’re the epicentre. People are jumping back at a
higher frequency the closer in proximity they are to us, and it’s extending
more and more throughout the world. There are plenty of international
departments, you’d be surprised how many. Our staff now number the thousands.’

‘Why has it
started here?’

‘One of the many
unanswerable questions. Dixon, the first of us to ever travel in time, would
have told you that he started it all, but that’s not possible. Did he make
matters worse? I doubt it. The largest coincidence is you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. The
epicentre is here; your ability is also here. Could one have been triggered by
the other? Or are we headed to an event that’s sending ripples back through
time at an alarming rate that’s triggered all the subsequent events backwards.
You, Emma, quantum poppers, and another coincidence I may tell you about in a
second.’

‘And you
monitor everything from here?’

‘In this
country yes,’ said Brian. ‘As Bartley says, jumps are growing. I’m not sure how
much longer this can remain a secret. But yes, from here we interpret the data
and do what we can in giving time a little help against potential paradoxes.’

‘In this very
building,’ said Bartley, ‘is data of everyone we have ever known to have jumped
and popped back. Of course there are plenty that we haven’t recalled, some are
back in the past now that we will never know about, tailing the plain on a
strand for weeks. They’ll hopefully jump back automatically. We provide a
helping hand to as many as physically possible.’

Tony glanced
around the room, trying to get a look at some of the monitors. Bartley let him
roam free but he couldn’t make out what was shown on most of the screens. The
ones that were on either showed standard Windows interfaces or text documents
with a continual line of text. Names, various numbers, and dates flashed past in
quick succession. The room still looked like a standard office but the
knowledge of all that was taking place here, and in similar offices around the
world, sent a shiver down his spine. The filing cabinets on closer inspection
were each labeled by date, but nothing he could see later than twelve months
ago.

‘Are these
records of jumps throughout the last year?’

‘Yes,’ said
Brian. ‘It’s been a relatively quite twenty-four hours though, Jane is popping
back someone as we speak,’ and he pressed a key on his keyboard to acknowledge
a note that had flashed upon the screen. ‘Had only a couple last night. In this
area, about ten a week. Spread that out across the country, and spread that out
over the world, although in diminishing returns, that’s a lot of paper work.
You should see the third floor. It’s been specially reinforced to keep the tons
of documentation from crashing on our heads.’

‘You mentioned
another coincidence?’ said Tony.

‘Yes. We
believe it could hold the key to everything. We have been picking up readings
of a major event sometime soon in the future. Disruptions are off the charts.
We even began registering people jumping forward. Not many, but it is
happening. The disruption through time to instigate that must be immense. We
believe it is to do with a man who recently jumped and the events that could
have transpired had we not intervened. We think we have sated the issue for
now, but it could have been the cause of your quantum realignment and the
instigation of all known jumps. But it’s like the chicken and the egg - which
came first? The jumps which have allowed this guy to be put into a position to
cause a future paradox that rippled through time? Or this future paradox which
has instigated jumps?’

‘Who is this
guy? What happened?’

‘I don’t think
I need to stress how complex this time business is. When we pop someone back to
the present day they immediately take the place of their shadow which remained
on the quantum plain. When popped they instantaneously return to the exact time
and location that the shadow now occupies in the present.’

‘But this
doesn’t always work?’

‘Only once. As
I’ve said, major emotional events can disrupt the space-time continuum. You
have had your quantum alignment realigned, most people just get knocked back to
a past strand. When we popped this particular person he missed his quantum
shadow. His name is John Johnson. It looks as though when he jumped back to the
past, unknown to us, he jumped again leaving a shadow on the quantum plain and
a shadow on the strand he initially jumped to. We popped him back from the
final strand but his own quantum alignment must have been altered in
replicating twice as he failed to lock on and replace his shadow on the quantum
plain. He reached the right time but his alignment had been altered as such
that he failed to match up with the shadow. We assume the shadow on the strand
he left in the past vanished, as did that strand once we finally brought him
back, but in the present they both co-existed. Fortunately, his temporal
readings were registering spikes we had never encountered before so we were
ready and waiting for any potential outcomes to his return jump. His shadow,
which like the Emma you saw, was to all intents and purposes the same,
except...’

‘A ghost.
Anti-matter.’

‘That’s right,
if they touch: annihilation. And the exponential outcome of having a true self
and shadow come into contact on the quantum plain may well have resulted in the
paradox that could be the cause for all of this. That is a fine example of
contamination - a combination time will not be expecting.’

‘So it’s fixed
and all is well?’

Bartley paused
just long enough to it make clear that no, all was not well. His eyes fell to
Brian. They were drowned in guilt and he visibly sagged at the recollection of
what had happened.

‘Tell him what
you did,’ said Brian.

‘You know that
wasn’t my suggestion. We have committees. Fast decisions had to be made; I
hated it, but still believe it was for the best.’

‘What did you
do?’

‘Nothing like
this had ever happened before so we weren’t sure how to deal with it. No one’s
ever co-existed on the quantum plain with their shadow. There’s no way we could
risk the two of them coming into contact.’