Omega Jump: A Time Travel Story, Part 2

October 22, 2032

8:15 AM

Cray Dennison watched the teenage boy through his closed-circuit video feed. As had often been the case, the boy was in a complete meltdown. He had spent the past fifteen minutes in the Omega Jump holding cell alternating between swearing and screaming, then taking a complete 180 and silently sobbing as he rocked in the corner of the nearly empty black-walled room. Everybody had their own way of reacting to time travel, but it was never a positive thing.

“How much longer?” He asked nobody in particular.

“We estimate two hours,” came the response from Jennay, the artificial intelligence that did the heavy lifting for the Omega Jump Project. Unlike other voice-activated systems released in the early decades of the 21st century, Jennay was not just a female voice slapped on top of a complex computer system. She was the system. She had thoughts, a personality, a mind of her own. Even nightmares, from time to time.

She was Cray’s omnipresent co-worker and it annoyed him that she loved to use the royal “we.” Jennay had an attitude, and she loved to put on the pretense that she was overworked and underpaid, even though she rarely used more than one of her multiple central processing units and had no use for money.

The brilliant scientist that had created her had insisted that this personality, quirks and attitude and all, was necessary for her groundbreaking project to work. Cray was skeptical. The retired Air Force captain would have preferred — considering the sensitivity of the work they were undertaking — a boring, monotone system that sounded dead inside rather than the pain in the ass that Jennay was.

But Dr. Doyle had insisted, so Dr. Doyle got what she wanted. Cray trusted her, and so did many others. Her track record gave her the benefit of the doubt when others would have been laughed out of the room. The gigantic facility miles away from any other sign of human life deep in the Florida Everglades was a monument to her influence. The project had been given a budget nearly as grandiose as the plans it was funding. The entire facility was state of the art.

They knew that, because Jennay liked to remind everybody that everything in the building was “state of the art.” As far as Jennay was concerned, the entire building was her. She controlled everything, from the climate system to the security cameras to the microwave ovens that the other scientists used to cook their meals.

Cray had once argued that this was not the case, that Jennay was not the facility but rather the interface to the building’s other systems, and she had responded by locking him out for a week.

He conceded so that he could do his job.

“How much time do I have?”

“Five minutes until the temporal bridge is locked.”

Cray grunted before he walked into the staging area. This was not how he had planned to spend this phase of his life. After years in the service, this was supposed to be his fun time. In his mid-sixties, Cray had planned to become something of a bum, hanging out at the beach, going on cruises, and bedding women far younger than he had any business being with.

Instead, here he was, in the middle of nowhere, about to get thrown into yet another bizarre and stressful situation. All because of an unlikely friendship.

He and Dr. Alex Doyle had little in common. They were from different races, different backgrounds, but they both had an addictive interest in the unknown. When Doyle approached him about Omega Jump, and had shown him how it was truly feasible and doable, he couldn’t have ever passed up the opportunity and lived with himself.

Cray had secured the funding for his friend’s vision, calling in favors with politicians who were dazzled by his rank and his chest full of medals. While she built prototype after prototype, excitedly jabbering about science Cray knew he could never understand, he had listened to self-important bores go on and on about themselves as he suffered through their egos to get the money and clearance needed to make Omega Jump happen.

Even then, when successful, Cray had gone the extra mile. He had allowed Doyle to attach his brain to the system, putting his life in her hands because Cray Dennison could not have possibly lived with himself if he allowed anybody else to do it. And Doyle did not trust anybody else to take things this far.

Then things had gone haywire. It was a success. But with caveats.

He checked his hand-held computer. It looked something like a phone but it was wider, with a large, intense screen that gave him a constant stream of information as Jennay crunched data, facts, historical information, and the real-time stream of events feeding into her system.

No other computer in the world could have handled it. That was true, but it was also something Jennay bragged about all the time. She was insufferable.

The room turned a bright, blinding white and the entire world disappeared.

Just as quickly, reality came back to life and Cray could see that he was in a teenager’s bedroom.

There, standing staring at a full-length mirror was a young black woman with shoulder-length hair. She was waving at the mirror and glancing back down at herself, a look of complete confusion on her face.

She had not even recognized the six-foot-two man who emerged seemingly out of the air in the room with her.

Cray rolled his eyes.

This. Again.

“Yes, it’s you.”

Dr. Alex Doyle nearly jumped out of her skin as she suddenly became aware of the other presence in the room.

“What the hell! Who are you, what’s going on, what do you mean that’s me? I’m a woman, that’s a — boy.”

She gestured toward the mirror to emphasize her point as her reflection, the white boy, gestured back to her.

“It is. That’s you. Oh, also, you’re a time traveler.”

“What?”

“Yeah. We — you don’t remember? We just had this conversation. Two weeks ago.”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“You have. We’ve been friends for years.”

“But — ”

“We make it work. Plutonic, whatever. I’m vanilla. You’re chocolate. We get along great.”

“I — ”

“Look, trust me. You’re still you, you just don’t look like you. You look like… well, him.”

“Him? Who’s him?”

“Ah, good question. You’re still you if you’re asking questions like that. Most normal people, they’d be freaking out.”

“I am freaking out.”

“Yes, okay sure, you are. But you’re good at it. This process, the Omega Jump, it would kill most normal people. It would kill me, for sure. But you’re… you’re really smart.”

“Thanks. I think. But I’m still a teenage boy. And I’m white.”

“Yes. Right. It happens.”

“Sometimes I’m white?”

“Sometimes. It depends. Look. This is — ”

Cray checked his computer and a stream of text from Jennay popped up. She had originally tried to communicate with her voice across the time stream but the tachyons interfered with the process and distorted her.

So they used text. Cray was happy for the break.

“1994,” he continued. “And you’re — ”

“Wait. Wait. It’s 1994? But I’m from, where am I from?”

“2032.”

“Yes, that’s it. Why do I feel like I’ve known that all along? But I didn’t a second ago.”

“That’s how it works. Somehow the Omega Jump — ”

“Omega Jump?”

“Yes, Omega Jump. That’s the name of the process you invented…”

“To time travel?”

“Yes. Omega Jumping is time travel. You invented it. To travel through time.”

“And that’s where I am now? In 1994?”

“Yes. You can travel within a 60-year window.”

“Okay. That sounds nuts and also feels, in my head, like it makes perfect sense.”

“That’s the brain mush. We found — you found — that sometimes when you travel through time, the brain compensates for the displacement in the time stream by turning parts of your brain mushy. You forget important things, files, information, dance moves…”

“Dance moves?”

“Yeah. Like the electric slide. You forgot it once.”

“Once.”

“Maybe twice. Anyhow, it makes you forget things. Like me. I’m Cray. We’re friends. You think I’m a hunk.”

“I do not think you’re a hunk.”

“It was worth a try. But yes, we’re friends.”

“And you’re a time traveler too?”

“No, I’m still in 2032. You’ve physically traveled in time. You’ve displaced this kid who is back in 2032 with me. And I’m in a room that’s showing me everything you see. It’s like virtual reality. But real.”

“Real.”

“Yep. You look like a hologram to me, and I look like one to you. Look.”

Cray stepped toward Alex, and then he stepped right through her. She expected to feel something as he got closer, but widened her eyes as he eerily stepped past her.

“You can’t just jump in time and add to the mass of the world so — you don’t remember any of this? You taught all of it to me. It just seems weird to be teaching you.”

“None of it.”

“Okay, so we have to shift someone out of the timeline and back to 2032. While you’re in their place you have a projection to make you look like them. Which is why when you look in the mirror you are seeing an angsty teenager from 1994.”

As Cray spoke, the pieces clicked in Alex’s head. It was as if his recitation of the facts unlocked the memories that had been suppressed in the brain mush process. Of course. She remembered it. She had built it. This was all her brainchild and Cray had tirelessly worked to make it happen.

“I remember you Cray. I really do. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t go sappy on me now. Jennay is trying to figure — ”

The bedroom door swung open and a heavyset woman in her her 40s came charging into the room.

“Young man! What are you doing hiding in here? You’ve missed your bus! Are you skipping school? Were you trying to skip school? Are you doing drugs? Just say no, Terry. I raised you to say no.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, Mom. Oh my God, are you high right now?”

“No, no, I was just talking to — ”

Alex gestured toward Cray and Avery’s Mom looked at her like she had lost her mind.

“She can’t see me. I’m directly connected to your brain. Sorry,” Cray quickly informed her.

“Myself,” Alex awkwardly ended her sentence, “I was just talking to myself and I — lost track of time? Yes. I lost track of time. Sorry I missed the bus… Mom?”

Avery’s Mom clucked and shook her head ruefully. Then she chuckled.

“I don’t know what to do about you sweetie. You always have your heads in the clouds.”

She beckoned to Alex, indicating that she should follow her.

I guess I’m going to high school.

To be continued…