"Flashforward" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sawyer Robert J.)

4

By the time Lloyd and Michiko returned, Jake and Theo had gathered a group of LHC workers together in a conference room on the second floor of the control center.

Most of CERN's staff lived either in the Swiss town of Meyrin (which bordered the east end of the CERN campus), a dozen kilometers farther along in Geneva, or in the French towns of St. Genis or Thoiry, northwest of CERN. But they had come from all over Europe, as well as the rest of the world. The dozen faces now staring at Lloyd were widely varied. Michiko had joined the circle, too, but was detached, her eyes glazed. She simply sat in a chair, rocking slowly back and forth.

Lloyd, as project leader, led the debriefing. He looked from person to person. "Theo told me what CNN's been saying. I guess it's pretty clear that there were a variety of hallucinations worldwide." He took a deep breath. Focus, purpose — that's what he needed now. "Let's see if we can get a handle on exactly what happened. Can we go around the circle? Don't go into any detail; just give us a single sentence about what you saw. If you don't mind, I'll take notes, okay? Olaf, can we start with you?"

"Sure, I guess," said a muscular blond man. "I was at my parents' vacation home. They've got a chalet near Sundsvall."

"In other words," said Lloyd, "it was a place you're familiar with?"

"Oh, yes."

"And how accurate was the vision?"

"Very accurate. It was exactly as I remembered it."

"Was there anyone else beside yourself in the vision?"

"No — which was kind of strange. The only reason I go there is to visit my parents, and they weren't there."

Lloyd thought of the wizened version of himself he'd seen in the mirror. "Did you — did you see yourself?"

"In a mirror or something, you mean? No."

"Okay," said Lloyd. "Thanks."

The woman next to Olaf was middle-aged and black. Lloyd felt awkward; he knew he should know her name, but he didn't. Finally, he simply smiled and said, "Next."

"It was downtown Nairobi, I think," said the woman. "At night. It was a warm evening. I thought it was Dinesen Street, but it looked too built-up for that. And there was a McDonald's there."

"Don't they have McDonald's in Kenya?" asked Lloyd.

"Sure, but — I mean, the sign said it was McDonald's, but the logo was wrong. You know, instead of the golden arches they had this big M that was all straight lines — very modern looking."

"So Olaf's vision was of a place he'd often been to, but yours was of somewhere 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 sle epy 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, twenty-seven-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."