you'd never been before, or at least of something you'd never seen before?"
The woman nodded. "I guess that's right."
Michiko was four places away around the circle. Lloyd couldn't tell if she was
absorbing any of this or not.
"What about you, Franco?" asked Lloyd.
Franco della Robbia shrugged. "It was Rome, at night. But --I don't know --it
must have been some video game, really. Some VR thing."
Lloyd leaned forward. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, it was Rome, all right. Right by the Coliseum. And I was driving a car -except
I wasn't driving, not exactly. The car seemed to be working of its own
volition. And I couldn't tell for sure about the one I was in, but a lot of the cars were
hovering maybe twenty centimeters off the ground." He shrugged. "Like I said, a
simulation of some sort."
Sven and Antonia, who had both spoken of flying cars earlier in the day, were
nodding vigorously. "I saw the same thing," said Sven. "Well, not Rome --but I did
see floating cars."
"Me, too," said Antonia.
"Fascinating," said Lloyd. He turned to his young grad student, Jacob Horowitz.
"Jake, what did you see?"
Jake's voice was thin, reedy. He ran freckled fingers nervously through his red
hair. "The room was pretty nondescript. A lab somewhere. Yellow walls. There was a
periodic table on one of the walls, though, and it was labeled in English. And Carly
Tompkins was there."
"Who?" said Lloyd.
"Carly Tompkins. At least, I think it was her. She looked a lot older than the last
time I'd seen her."
"Who is Carly Tompkins?"
The answer came not from Jake but from Theo Procopides, sitting farther around
the circle. "You should know her, Lloyd --she's a fellow Canuck. Carly's a meson
researcher; last I heard, she was with TRIUMF."
Jake nodded. "That's right. I've only met her a couple of times, but I'm pretty
sure it was her."
Antonia, whose turn would have been next, raised her eyebrows. "If Jake's vision
was of Carly, I wonder whether Carly's vision was of Jake?"
Everyone looked at the Italian woman, intrigued. Lloyd shrugged a little. "There's
one way to find out. We could phone her." He looked at Jake. "Do you have her
number?"
Jake shook his head. "Like I said, I hardly know her. We went to some of the
same seminars at the last APS meeting, and I sat in on her paper on
chromodynamics."
"If she's in APS," said Antonia, "she'll be in the directory." She waddled across the
room and rummaged on a shelf until she found a slim volume with a plain cardboard
cover. She riffled through it. "Here she is," said Antonia. "Home and work numbers."
"I --ah, I don't want to call her," said Jake.
Lloyd was surprised by his reluctance, but didn't pursue the matter. "That's all
right. You shouldn't speak to her anyway. I want to see if she spontaneously comes
up with your name."
"You may not be able to get through," said Sven. "The phones have been jammed
with people trying to check on family and friends --not to mention all the lines
knocked down by motorists."
"It's worth a try," said Theo. He got up, walked across the room, and took the
directory from Antonia. But then he looked at the phone, and looked back at the
numbers in the directory. "How do you dial Canada from here?"
"It's the same as dialing the U.S.," said Lloyd. "The country code's the same:
zero-one."
Theo's finger danced on the keypad, entering a long string of digits. Then, for the
benefit of his audience, he held up fingers to indicate how many rings had occurred.
One. Two. Three. Four -
"Oh, hello. Carly Tompkins, please. Hi, Dr. Tompkins. I'm calling from Geneva,
from CERN. Look, there's a bunch of us here. Is it okay if I put you on the
speakerphone?"
A sleepy voice: " --if you like. What's going on?"
"We want to know what your hallucination was when you blacked out."
"What? Is this some kind of prank?"
Theo looked at Lloyd. "She doesn't know."
Lloyd cleared his voice, then spoke up. "Dr. Tompkins, this is Lloyd Simcoe. I'm
also a Canadian, although I was with the D-Zero Group at Fermilab until 2007, and
for the last two years I've been here at CERN." He paused, not sure what to say
next. Then: "What time is it there?"
"Just before noon." The sound of a stifled yawn. "Today is my day off; I was
sleeping in. What's this all about?"
"So you haven't been up yet today?"
"No."
"Do you have a TV in the room you're in?" asked Lloyd.
"Yes."
"Turn it on. Look at the news."
She sounded irritated. "I can hardly get the Swiss news here in British Columbia."
"It doesn't have to be the Swiss news. Put on any news channel."
The whole room heard Tompkins sighing into the mouthpiece of her phone. "All
right. Just a second."
They could hear what was presumably CBC Newsworld muffled in the background.
After what seemed an eternity, Tompkins returned to the handset.
"Oh, my God," she said into the phone. "Oh, my God."
"But you slept through it all?" said Theo.
"I did, I'm afraid," said the voice from half a world away. She paused for a
second. "Why did you call me?"
"Has the news program you've been watching mentioned the visions yet?"
"Joel Gotlib is going on about that now," she said, presumably referring to a
Canadian newscaster. "It sounds crazy. Anyway, nothing like that happened to me."
"All right," said Lloyd. "We're sorry to have disturbed your sleep, Dr. Tompkins.
We'll be --"
"Wait," said Theo.
Lloyd looked at the younger man.
"Dr. Tompkins, my name is Theo Procopides. We've met, I think, once or twice at
conferences."
"If you say so," said Tompkins's voice.
"Dr. Tompkins," continued Theo. "I'm like you --I didn't see anything either. No
vision, no dream, no nothing."
"Dream?" said Tompkins's voice. "Well, now that you mention it, I guess I did
have a dream. Funny thing was it was in color --I never dream in color. But I
remember the guy in it had red hair."
Theo looked disappointed --he'd clearly been pleased to find he wasn't alone. But
everyone else's eyebrows flew up, and they turned to look at Jake.
"Not only that," said Carly, "he had red underwear, too."
Young Jake now turned the aforementioned color. "Red underwear?" repeated
Lloyd.
"That's right."
"Did you know this man?" asked Lloyd.
"No, I don't think so."
"He didn't look like anyone you'd ever met before?"
"I don't think so."
Lloyd leaned closer to the speakerphone. "What about --what about the father of
someone you'd met before? Did he look like somebody's father?"
"What are you getting at?" asked Tompkins.
Lloyd sighed then looked around the room, seeing if anyone was going to object
to him going on. No one did. "Does the name Jacob Horowitz mean anything to you?"
"I don't --oh, wait. Oh, right. Sure, sure. That's who he reminded me of. Yeah, it
was Jacob Horowitz, but, geez, he should take better care of himself. He looked like
he'd aged decades since I last saw him."
Antonia made a small gasp. Lloyd felt his heart pounding. "Look," said Carly. "I
want to make sure my family members are okay. My parents are in Winnipeg --I've
got to get going."
"Can we call you back in a bit?" asked Lloyd. "You see, we've got Jacob Horowitz
here, and his vision seems to match yours --sort of, anyway. He said he was in a
lab, but ... "
"Yes, that's right. It was a lab."
Incredulity crept into Lloyd's voice. "And he was in his underwear?"
"Well, not by the end of the vision ... Look, I've got to go."
"Thanks," said Lloyd. "Bye."
"Bye."
Swiss dial tone issued from the speaker. Theo reached over and shut it off.
Jacob Horowitz still looked decidedly embarrassed. Lloyd thought about telling him
that probably half of all the physicists he knew had done it at one time or another in
a lab, but the young man looked like he'd have a nervous breakdown if anyone said
anything to him just now. Lloyd started to shift his gaze around the circle again. "All
right," he said. "All right. I'm going to say it, because I know you're all thinking it.
Whatever happened here caused some sort of time effect. The visions weren't
hallucinations; they were actual insights into the future. The fact that Jacob Horowitz
and Carly Tompkins both apparently saw the same thing strongly suggests that."
"But Raoul's vision was psychedelic, didn't someone say that?" said Theo.
"Yeah," said Raoul. "Like a dream, or something."
"Like a dream," repeated Michiko. Her eyes were still red, but she was reacting to
the outside world.
That was all she said, though, but, after a moment Antonia caught her meaning
and elaborated. "Michiko's right," said the Italian physicist. "No mystery there --at
whatever point in the future the visions are of, Raoul will be asleep, and having an
actual dream."
"But this is crazy," said Theo. "Look, I didn't have any vision."
"What did you experience?" asked Sven, who hadn't heard Theo describe it
before.
"It was --I don't know, like a discontinuity, I guess. Suddenly, it was two minutes
later; I had no sensation of passing time, and nothing at all like a vision." Theo
folded his arms defiantly across his broad chest. "How do you explain that?"
There was quiet around the room. The pained expressions on a lot of faces made
clear to Lloyd that they'd gotten it, too, but no one wanted to voice it aloud. Finally,
Lloyd shrugged a little. "Simple," he said, looking at his brilliant, arrogant, twentyseven-
year old associate, "in twenty years --or whatever time the visions are of ... "
He paused, then spread his hands. "I'm sorry, Theo, but in twenty years, you're
dead."
The vision Lloyd most wanted to hear about was Michiko's. But she was still --as
she doubtless would be for a very long time --completely out of it. When it came to
her turn in the circle, Lloyd skipped over her. He wished he could just take her
home, but it was doubtless best for her to not be alone right now, and there was no
way that Lloyd, or anyone else, could get away to be with her.
None of the other visions relayed by the little sampling of people in the conference
room overlapped --there was no indication that they were of the same time or the
same reality, although it did seem that almost everyone was enjoying a day off or a
holiday. But there was the question of Jake Horowitz and Carly Tompkins -separated
by almost half the planet and yet apparently seeing each other. Of course,
it could be coincidence. Still, if the visions did match, not just in their broad strokes,
but in precise details, that would be significant.
Lloyd and Michiko had retired to Lloyd's office. Michiko was curled up tightly in
one of the chairs, and she had Lloyd's windbreaker pulled over her like a blanket.
Lloyd picked up the handset on his desk phone and dialed. "Bonjour," he said. "La
police de Genève? Je m'appelle Lloyd Simcoe; je suis avec CERN."
"Oui, Monsieur Simcoe," said a male voice. He switched to English; Swiss often
did that in response to Lloyd's accent. "What can we do for you?"
"I know you're terribly busy --"
"An understatement, monsieur. We are, as you say, bogged."
Swamped, thought Lloyd. "But I'm hoping one of your witness examiners is free.
We have a theory about the visions, and we need the help of someone proficient at
taking testimony."
"I'll put you through to the right department," said the voice.
While he was on hold, Theo poked his head through the office door. "The BBC
World Service is reporting that many people had matching visions," he said. "For
instance, many married couples, even if they weren't in the same room at the time
of the phenomenon, reported similar experiences."
Lloyd nodded at this bit of information. "Still, there's always a possibility, I guess,
for whatever reason, of collusion, or, Carly and Jake notwithstanding, that
synchronization of visions was a localized phenomenon. But ... "
He left it unsaid --after all, it was Theo the visionless he was speaking to. But if
Carly Tompkins and Jacob Horowitz --she in Vancouver, he near Geneva --really did
see the exact same thing, then there would be little doubt that all the visions were of
the same one future, mosaic pieces of tomorrow ... a tomorrow that did not include
Theo Procopides.
"Tell me about the room you were in," said the witness examiner, a middle aged
Swiss woman. She had a datapad in front of her, and was wearing a loose polo shirt;
last in fashion in the late 1980s, they were cycling back into popularity.
Jacob Horowitz closed his eyes, shutting out distractions, trying to recall every
