There was a small silence. "Well, not exactly. The rest of the article was offscreen,
and instead of touching the pagedown button --I could clearly see such a
button on the side of the reading device --I went on to select another article." She
paused. "I'm sorry, Dr. Procopides. I --the 2009 me --was interested in what the
rest of the story said, but the 2030 version didn't seem to care. I did try to will her -to
will me --to touch the page-down control, but it didn't work."
"So you don't know who killed me, or why?"
"I am sorry."
"And the paper you were reading --you're sure that it was the then-current one?
You know, the October 23, 2030, one."
"Actually, no. There was a --what would you call it? A status line? There was a
status line at the top of the reader that said the date and the name of the paper
quite prominently: The Johannesburg Star, Tuesday, October 22, 2030. So I guess it
was yesterday's paper, so to speak." She paused. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad
news."
Theo was quiet for a time, trying to digest all this. It was hard enough dealing
with the fact that he might be dead in a mere twenty years, but the idea that
someone might kill him was almost too much to bear.
"Ms. DeVries, thank you," he said. "If you recall any other details --anything at all
--please, please let me know. And please do fax me the transcript you mentioned."
He gave her his fax number.
"I will," she said. "I --I'm sorry; you sound like a nice young man. I hope you can
figure out who did it --who's going to do it --and find a way to prevent it."
It was now almost midnight. Lloyd and Michiko were walking down the corridor
toward his office when they heard Jake Horowitz's voice calling out from an open
door. "Hey, Lloyd, have a look at this."
They entered the room. Young Jake was standing next to a TV set. Its screen was
filled with snow.
"Snow," said Lloyd, helpfully, as he crossed over to stand beside Jake.
"Indeed."
"What channel are you trying to get?"
"No channel. I'm playing back a tape."
"Of what?"
"This happens to be the security camera at the main gatehouse to the CERN
campus." He hit the eject button; the VHS tape popped out. He replaced it with
another cassette. "And this is the security camera at the Microcosm." He hit play; the
screen again filled with snow.
"Are you sure this is the right kind of VCR?" Switzerland used the PAL recording
format, and, although multistandard machines were common, there were a few
NTSC-only VCRs at CERN.
Jake nodded. "I'm sure. Took me a while to find one that would show what was
actually on the tape, too --most VCRs just go to solid blue if there's no picture
signal."
"Well, if it's the right kind of VCR, then there must be something wrong with the
tapes." Lloyd frowned. "Maybe there was an electromagnetic pulse associated with
the --the whatever it was; it could have wiped the tapes."
"That was my first thought, too," said Jake. "But watch this." He hit the remote's
reverse button. The snow speeded up its dancing on screen, and the letters REV -the
abbreviation was the same in many European languages --appeared in the
upper right corner. After about half a minute, a picture suddenly appeared, showing
the Microcosm Exhibit, CERN's gallery devoted to explaining particle physics to
tourists. Jake rewound the tape some more then took his finger off the button.
"See?" he said. "That's earlier on the tape --look at the time stamp." In the
center of the screen near the bottom, a digital readout was superimposed on the
image, with the time incrementing: "16h58m22s," "16h58m23s," "16h58m24s" ...
"About a minute and a half before the phenomenon began," said Jake. "If there'd
been something like an EMP, it would have wiped what was already on the tape,
too."
"So what are you saying?" asked Lloyd. "The tape goes all snowy right at the
beginning of the phenomenon?" He liked Jake's word for what had happened.
"Yes --and it picks up again exactly one minute and forty-three seconds later. It's
the same on all the tapes I've checked: one minute and forty-three seconds of
static."
"Lloyd, Jake --come quick!" It was Michiko's voice; the two men turned around to
see her beckoning to them from the doorway. They ran after her into the room next
door --the lounge, which had its own TV set, still showing CNN.
" --and of course there were hundreds of thousands of videos made during the
period when people's minds were elsewhere," said anchor Petra Davies. "Securitycamera
footage, home-video cameras left running, tapes from TV studios --including
our own archival tapes made right here at CNN, which the FCC requires us to
produce --and more. We'd assumed they would clearly show everyone in them
blacking out, and bodies collapsing to the ground --"
Lloyd and Jake exchanged a glance. "But," continued Davies, "none of them show
anything. Or, more precisely, they show nothing but snow --black and white flecks,
roiling on the screen. As far as we can tell, every video made anywhere in the world
during the Flashforward shows snow for precisely one minute and forty-three
seconds. Likewise, our other recording devices, such as those hooked up to the
weather instruments we use in making forecasts, recorded no data during the period
in which everyone blacked out. If anyone watching this does have a tape or
recording made during that time that shows a picture, we'd like to hear about it. You
can phone us toll-free at ... "
"Incredible," said Lloyd. "It does make you wonder just exactly what was going on
during all that time."
Jake nodded. "That it does."
" 'Flashforward,' eh?" said Lloyd, savoring the term the newscaster had used.
"That's not a bad name for it."
Jake nodded. "It certainly beats 'the CERN disaster,' or anything like that."
Lloyd frowned. "That it does."
Theo leaned back in his office chair, hands behind his head, staring at the
constellations of holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles, thinking about what that DeVries
woman had said.
It wasn't like knowing you were going to die in an accident. If you were
forewarned that you'd be hit by a car on such-and-such a street at such-and-such a
time, well, then you simply had to avoid being at that place at that moment, and -voilà!
--crisis averted. But if someone was hell-bent on murdering you, it would
happen sooner or later. Just not being here --or wherever the murder was going to
take place; the story from the Johannesburg Star didn't actually mention the precise
location --on October 21, 2030, wouldn't necessarily be enough to save Theo.
Dr. Procopides is survived by his ...
Survived by his what? His parents? Poppa would be eighty-two then, and Momma
would be seventy-nine. Theo's father had suffered a heart attack a few years ago,
but had been scrupulous ever since about his cholesterol, giving up his saganaki and
the feta-cheese salads that he so loved. Sure, they could still be alive then.
How would Poppa take it? A father isn't supposed to outlive his son. Would Poppa
think he'd already lived a good, long time? Would he give up on life, passing on
within a few more months, leaving Momma to go on all alone? Theo certainly hoped
his parents would be alive in twenty-one years, but ...
Dr. Procopides is survived by his ...
... by his wife and children?
That's what they usually say in obituaries. By his wife --his wife Anthoula,
perhaps, a nice Greek girl. That would make Poppa happy.
Except ...
Except Theo didn't know any nice Greek girls --or any nice girls of any
nationality. At least --a thought came up, but he fought it down --at least, not any
who were free.
He had devoted himself to his work. First to getting grades good enough to go to
Oxford. Next to getting his doctorate. Then to getting assigned here. Oh, there'd
been women, of course --American schoolgirls back in Athens, one-night stands with
other students, and even once, when in Denmark, a hooker. But he'd always thought
there would be time later for love, a wife, children.
But when would that time come?
He had indeed wondered if the article would start "Nobel laureate." It didn't, but
he had wondered --and, if he were honest with himself, it was a serious bit of
wondering. A Nobel meant immortality; it meant being remembered forever.
The LHC experiment that he and Lloyd had spent years crafting should have
produced the Higgs; if they had produced that, the Nobel surely would have
followed. But they hadn't made the breakthrough.
The breakthrough --as if he'd have been content with only one.
Dead in twenty-one years. Who would remember him?
It was all so crazy. So unbelievable.
He was Theodosios Procopides, for God's sake. He was immortal.
Of course he was. Of course he was. What twenty-seven-year-old was not?
A wife. Children. Surely the obituary had mentioned those. Surely if Ms. DeVries
had only paged down, she would have seen their names, and maybe their ages.
But wait --wait!
How many pages in a typical big-city newspaper? Two hundred, say. How many
readers? Typical circulation of a big daily might be half-a-million copies. Of course,
DeVries had said she was reading yesterday's newspaper. Still, she couldn't have
been the only one looking at that article during the two-minute glimpse of the future.
And besides, Theo would apparently be killed here in Switzerland --the article had
listed a Geneva dateline --and yet the story had made a South African newspaper.
Which meant it must have made other newspapers and newsgroups all over the
world, possibly with different accounts of the events. Certainly the Tribune de
Genève would have a more-detailed article. There had to be hundreds --maybe
thousands --of people who had read reports of his death.
He could advertise for them, on the Internet and in major newspapers. Find out
more --and find out, for sure, whether there was any truth to what this DeVries
woman had said.
"Look at this," said Jake Horowitz. He plunked his datapad down on Lloyd's desk;
it was showing a web page.
"What is it?"
"Stuff from the United States Geological Survey. Seismograph readings."
"Yeah?"
"Look at the readings for earlier today," said Jake.
"Oh, my."
"Exactly. For almost two minutes, starting at seventeen hundred hours our time,
the recorders detected nothing at all. Either they registered zero disturbances -which
is impossible, the Earth is always trembling slightly, even if just from tidal
interactions with the moon --or they registered no data at all. It's just like the video
cameras: no record of what was actually happening during those two minutes. And
I've checked with various national weather services. Their weather instruments -wind
speed, temperature, air pressure, and so on --recorded nothing during the
Flashforward. And NASA and the ESA report dead periods in their satellite telemetry
during that two-minute period, too."
"How could that be?" asked Lloyd.
"I don't know," said Jake, running a hand through his red hair. "But somehow
every camera, every sensor, every recording instrument anywhere in the world
simply stopped registering while the Flashforward was occurring."
Theo sat at his desk in his office, a plastic Donald Duck peering down at him from
atop the monitor, thinking of how to phrase what he wanted to say. He decided to be
simple and direct. After all, he'd need to place the information in the form of a
classified ad in hundreds of newspapers worldwide; it would cost a fortune if he
wasn't concise. He had three keyboards --a French AZERTY, an English QWERTY,
and a Greek one. He was using the English one:
Theodosios Procopides, a native of Athens, working at CERN, will be murdered
Monday, October 21, 2030. If your vision related to this crime, please contact
procopides@cern.ch.
He thought about leaving it at that, but then added a final line: "I am hoping to
prevent my own death."
Theo could translate it into Greek and French himself; in theory, his computer
could translate it into other languages for him, but if there was one thing that his
time at CERN had taught him it was that computer translations were often inaccurate
--he still remembered the horrible Christmas-banquet incident. No, he would enlist
the aid of various people at CERN to help him --and also to advise him which
newspapers were significant in which countries.
But one thing he could do immediately: post his note to various newsgroups. He
did that before going home to bed.
Finally, at one in the morning, Lloyd and Michiko left CERN. Again, they
abandoned her Toyota in the parking lot --it was hardly unusual for people at CERN
to pull all-nighters.
Michiko worked for Sumitomo Electric; she was an engineer specializing in
superconducting-accelerator technology, on long-term assignment to CERN, which
had bought several components for the LHC from Sumitomo. Her employer had
provided her, and Tamiko, with a wonderful apartment on Geneva's Right Bank.
Lloyd was less well paid, and didn't have a housing allowance; his apartment was in
the town of St. Genis. He liked living in France while working mostly in Switzerland;
CERN had its own special border crossing that allowed its staff to pass between the
