In the absence of certainty, a mind tends to imagine the worst. That’s what Absolom became to the world. The phrase “A fate worse than Absolom” quickly supplanted its predecessor: “A fate worse than death.”
Before the first departure, the Absolom machine had been an idea. In those small moments as it hummed to life, the world saw something else: a person who was pure evil, with hate in his heart, instantly hollowed out, gutted, cowering with fear, and then, gone. In an instant, they saw evil wiped from existence.
As Hiro predicted, Absolom was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, where the plaintiffs argued that it was cruel and unusual. It was certainly unusual. Perhaps cruel. Most importantly, it was a machine that removed evil from the universe. That was something the world needed, and the Supreme Court found in favor of the United States government.
The following week, after the lower court’s injunction was lifted, the lights in Absolom City dimmed again, and an African dictator guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity left the universe forever.
*
In the desert, Elliott and Hiro dug holes and filled them back in. Adeline knew what they were looking for, knew they weren’t finding it, and knew that one day they would. And Nora would die soon after.
That thought haunted her. In a way, it dug her deeper into a hole of her own, and like the ones Hiro and Elliott were digging in Death Valley, she wasn’t finding what she needed. And like them, she kept digging.
*
In a fateful twist, it was Nora who gave Elliott and Hiro the insight they needed to make progress on Absolom Two.
That revelation was given casually at a lunch Elliott had requested. His email to the Absolom Six had simply asked that they all meet up for a meal, in private, to catch up.
Adeline had arranged for food to be delivered to the conference room in her office suite. About halfway through lunch, Elliott had cleared his throat and said, “Do any of you ever think about why Absolom failed?”
It was clear to Adeline what he was after—a clue as to why he and Hiro weren’t finding the tuning bars they kept departing with Absolom Two.
Nora didn’t seem to follow. “Well, I guess that’s a matter of opinion. Some would say it’s a raging success. A force for peace and crime reduction.”
“No, not that,” Elliott said. “I mean, as a shipping technology. Why didn’t it work?”
Nora finished chewing a bite of her salad. “Isn’t it obvious? Causality. Absolom always transmits to the past. It’s the nature of transmission. Sure, with enough power, maybe you could get it down to a month or two or maybe even a week, but that would require a massive amount of energy. And obviously, you could only send something to the past that you knew was already there.”
Elliott leaned back in the rolling chair, considering that. “So… wait, tell me what you mean by that.”
“Well, it’s fairly obvious. If you ask me, the one thing we learned from Absolom is that you can’t move matter in space without moving it in time. Displacing an object in the present—with no effect on time—is not possible based on the laws of physics in this universe. You can send something to the past, but only if it already happened. In fact, if it happened, then it will happen. It has to happen for us to continue to exist. That’s why you can’t just decide to ship something and do it. You’d be sending it to a past that has already happened. If you really could ship anything you wanted to the past then what happened—the series of events that got us here—would no longer have occurred in the way it did before. You’d be changing the past, which isn’t possible. Obviously we don’t know what would happen, but my guess is that our universe would probably just wink out of existence in some causality collapse.”
“But,” Elliott said slowly, “if you knew something had been sent to the past… then you could send it.”
“Yes. In fact, you—or someone—would have to send it to ensure the universe continued.” Nora studied his serious expression and laughed. “Why, Elliott, do you know of something that was sent to the past?”
“Not exactly.”
SIXTY-ONE
The world wasn’t the only thing Absolom had changed. As the months and years slipped by and the machine in the Nevada desert hummed with departures, the Absolom Six changed. Adeline didn’t know if it was simply growing older or the death of Charlie and her mother, but the six scientists who had aided world peace seemed to find only war within.
Adeline felt it inside of her too. She saw it on the video feeds inside the homes of the other six.
She had this unrelenting sense of time slipping away, and she still had no idea who Nora’s killer was.
But she began preparing for the event.
She ordered furniture for the guest bedroom and arranged it just like her room had been at the home she shared with her father and brother. She stood in the room, studying the placement. Yes, it was just as it had been when she had come here.
She was sitting at the kitchen island, pouring a glass of wine, when a text message arrived from Nora:
Busy?
Adeline activated the video feed of the inside of Nora’s home. She felt a twinge of guilt for invading her privacy, but she rationalized it as a simple safety precaution. Nora was going to be murdered, and she needed to know who did it. For her father’s sake. She couldn’t prevent him from going to Absolom, but she could clear his name before she got him back.
On the video feed, Nora was sitting at her kitchen island, a glass of wine towering by the phone.
Now they were ships in the night.
No. Everything ok?
Yes and no. Can I come over?
Sure.
Adeline watched on the video feed as Nora downed the glass of wine, grabbed a sweater she draped over her shoulders, and walked out. Ten minutes later, they were sitting in Adeline’s living room with full wine glasses.
“You ever wish,” Nora began, “that we could go back to Palo Alto? Before it all started?”
“I do.”
“I mean, Absolom has been good for the world, but everything has changed. I miss us.”
“Me too.”
“Life was so much more simple then.”
Adeline said nothing, only took a sip of wine, thinking about how much more complicated it was about to become.
Nora downed half her glass. “I have a secret.”
Adeline’s heart beat faster. “You do?”
“Sam and I have been seeing each other.”
Adeline swallowed, relieved that the secret was one she was well aware of.
Nora squinted at her. “You knew.”
“I knew.”
“I guess I should’ve figured that. You don’t miss anything. And I should have informed you. As my employer, you should know about workplace relationships.”
Adeline held up a hand. “First of all, I’m not your employer—”
“You are, Dani. It was different in Palo Alto. Before. When the company was small. Now, with…”—Nora motioned with her hands, all around—“with all this, the city, the machine, what it’s become…”
“It’s different,” Adeline said. “I’ll give you that. But within these walls, at home, what do you say we go back to Palo Alto, to the way things were?”
Nora drank the rest of the wine. “That sounds good to me.”
Adeline refilled the glass, and Nora seemed to relax a bit.
“We’ve been going slow, Sam and me. Like, middle school speed.” Nora laughed and shook her head. “We’re both scared. We’re both still hurt. And lonely. We’re like two porcupines trying to mate.”
Adeline laughed then, but she was crying inside because she knew how it ended. At least, she thought she did.
SIXTY-TWO