Jayson sat in his office staring at his laptop screen, trying to focus on an article he’d already restarted twice. His mind wandered, and the words failed to register no matter how many times he read them.

  The report listed the best places in the world to avoid water shortages as the earth’s temperature continued rising. Ironically, he discovered his home in Southwestern Ontario made the top five—a great place to live if you didn’t mind sharing space with a billion climate refugees.

  “It’s time,” said Aiden, leaning through the open door.

  Jayson glanced up.

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  He didn’t even have the energy to hate his foreman. Whatever Samaira had going with Aiden hardly mattered anymore. Jayson shut his laptop and followed him to the amphitheater entrance in the lobby to wait for Samaira. They stood in silence until she arrived a minute later, giving Aiden a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hey,” she said, offering little enthusiasm.

  Though they were no earlier than last time, empty spaces dotted the front row. Jayson snorted to himself. It seemed few people were excited to learn more about just how screwed they were. As he passed the new guy—Creepy Andrew’s replacement—Jayson did a double-take. He and his gangly predecessor could pass for brothers. He offered a nod as he took his place next to Samaira.

  As the start time approached, and more of their colleagues filtered into the amphitheater, Jayson glanced over his shoulder to a growing chorus of whispers to see a dozen serious-looking young men and women in military uniforms filing into the back row.

  He nudged Samaira.

  “What’s that about?”

  She and Aiden turned to look.

  “No idea,” she said with a shrug.

  Then Richard swept into the room. He hurried down the center aisle and leaped onto the dais, passing two empty chairs as he stepped to the podium. Jayson wrinkled his brow. The Managing Director’s energy seemed at odds with the mood in the room.

  “Good afternoon everyone,” he started. “I know it’s been a tough week, and I want to start by thanking all of you for carrying on so diligently. I assure you, we’ve been working just as hard to determine how we will secure a future for humanity.”

  He paused as he looked around the room.

  “We now know the only way to move forward is to take a few steps back.”

  Murmurs rose from the audience.

  “Before I continue,” he added, “I must insist on absolute secrecy. Our success depends on it. Although, I suspect if you told anyone what you’re about to learn, you’d be locked up for a psychiatric evaluation.”

  He chuckled at his own joke.

  Jayson leaned over to Samaira, cupping a hand over his mouth.

  “Is he losing it?”

  Samaira shrugged and shook her head as a chorus of whispers filled the room.

  “My first co-presenter is Dr. Olujimi Akindele, the leader of the Fusion team.”

  Richard swept a hand toward Akindele as he stepped onto the dais. The aloof physicist waved his acknowledgment without looking at the audience, taking his place at one of the empty chairs. A smattering of hesitant applause rose as Richard clapped his hands with awkward enthusiasm.

  Jayson raised an eyebrow. It felt rehearsed.

  “Our second guest,” continued Richard, “is Admiral Spencer Daniels of the United States Navy, Commander of the Pacific Fleet.”

  There was more buy-in on the applause for the Admiral—especially from the uniformed newcomers at the back of the room. Richard smiled and gave him a salute. Jayson felt the bank of fixed seating sway underneath him as Aiden sat up straight and applauded along with the others.

  After a wave to the crowd, the Admiral sat down next to Dr. Akindele.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Jayson.

  Before anyone could answer, Richard spoke again.

  “When I left the Navy to work for Mr. Kamaras, I had the privilege of collaborating with one of the greatest minds in modern physics. Dr. Akindele and I were part of the team that developed the quantum computing capabilities that propelled Hitz-It.com to the forefront of social media, making it the most valuable company in the world. In the pursuit, Dr. Akindele went down a rabbit hole.”

  Richard turned to the physicist before continuing.

  “And just like Alice, down that rabbit hole, he found a new world.”

  Jayson thought he saw Dr. Akindele roll his eyes as he stood to approach the podium. If he had, the audience didn’t seem to care. They clapped along, buoyed by the enthusiasm with which Richard welcomed his colleague.

  “Thank you, Dr. Vandergroot,” started Akindele. “Today, I want to explore with you the implications of our recent experiments as they relate to climate change. Those of you familiar with quantum mechanics will appreciate this discussion on multiple additional levels.”

  Jayson glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone found that encouraging. Parth met his gaze and shrugged, shaking his head. Great. If Parth couldn’t follow, nobody else stood a chance.

  “Quantum computing exploits the phenomenon of superposition,” he continued. “In traditional computing, we deal with bits that are one or zero. In quantum computing, superposition allows us to use qubits to exploit a third state—simultaneous values of both one and zero. Adding this third state—this third dimension—exponentially increases the computational power at our disposal.”

  Jayson had read about bits and qubits on Wikipedia after the conversation with Richard on his first day of work. So far, it made sense.

  “How do we resolve a single answer from this third state of superposition? It’s simple. We resolve both states simultaneously in separate realities—one where the value is zero, and the other where the value is one. Though some view these other realities as theoretical abstractions. We have deduced mathematically, and proven through experimentation, they are not. They are as real as our own—and we have learned to interact with them.”

  Dr. Akindele paused as if waiting for some reaction or acknowledgment from the team. Jayson wrinkled his brow. The statement, composed entirely of English words that made sense individually, sounded like gibberish. Nobody said a word.

  “We have been able to interact with a minimally divergent reality that intersects our own at several temporally mismatched convergences,” continued Akindele. “Furthermore, we have been successful in our attempts to induce a superposition in that reality to create a new offshoot.”

  He looked up from his prepared remarks and offered a grotesquely unnatural smile. Scattered whispers greeted him, but nothing approaching the epiphany the physicist clearly expected. He sighed and shook his head.

  “Most importantly, we have successfully disentangled matter from our own reality and re-entangled it with another.”

  Apparently convinced he’d made his point, Dr. Akindele folded his arms across his chest as if determined not to speak until someone provided a sign they were following his cryptic lecture.

  Jayson glanced over as Luping rose to her feet.

  “When you say temporally mismatched, are you—,” she hesitated a moment. “Are you talking about some kind of interdimensional time travel?”

  The physicist snorted, shaking his head as he looked at the floor.

  “How did you get something so ridiculous from what I described? Do you imagine yourself in some sort of children’s comic book? Superposition implies the continual decomposition of an overarching space-time field into a nearly infinite number of subfields that allow all possibilities to exist. I said nothing about alternate dimensions.”

  “Obviously, when you put it that way, it makes perfect sense,” whispered Jayson.

  Samaira snorted.

  “Do you have an observation you’d like to share?” asked Dr. Akindele, glaring at him.

  Jayson gulped. In the corner of his eye, he could see Luping taking advantage of his distraction to sit down. Great.

  “Uh, sure. This all seems pretty clear—from a theoretical sense, I mean. Maybe you can talk us through the practical applications?”

  Akindele raised an eyebrow. Jayson felt himself turning red as he imagined everyone in the room looking at him. He held his breath until the physicist finally replied.

  “We have an upcoming window of convergence with our minimally divergent reality during which we can transfer significant mass to a point in the timeline before large-scale population growth and industrialization impact the environment.”

  “So I was right about time travel?” said Luping.

  Akindele threw his hands in the air.

  “I can’t do this, Richard. You are uniquely skilled to bring this to a level they can understand.”

  He returned to his place next to the Admiral and slumped down in the chair. Richard returned to the podium.

  “Very close, Dr. Zhang, but not exactly correct. Time travel, as you understand it, remains an impossibility according to the laws of physics.”

  “Then how do we get to another time?”

  “Let’s start with the basics. We know everything in the universe travels through space-time at the same speed—the speed of light.”

  “I’m traveling at the speed of light?” she asked.

  “Through space? No,” said Richard, lofting his index finger. “Through space-time? Yes. That’s why time travels more slowly for objects as they move faster—so their speed in space-time remains constant.”

  “I didn’t realize time travels slower for things that move faster.”

  “It’s at the core of relativity, Dr. Zhang. And something we’ve known for more than a hundred years.”

  Luping turned red, and Jayson was thankful she was the one asking supposedly stupid questions. He didn’t know any of that stuff either.

  “It’s understandable you’re not aware, Dr. Zhang,” said Richard, softening his tone. “It has no impact on day-to-day life because nothing around us moves fast enough to make a noticeable difference. I’ve prepared a simplified visual to explain how this concept makes our mission possible.”

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  “Mission?”

  “We’ll get to that,” he assured, waving a hand.

  The lights dimmed as Richard pushed a button on the lectern, bringing the interactive wall to life. A pale blue torus filled the display.

  “This donut shape represents an extreme simplification of the overarching space-time field that Dr. Akindele mentioned earlier.”

  Akindele, sitting next to Admiral Daniels, cleared his throat.

  “We’re calling the model Akindele Space-Time—AST,” he added, rolling his eyes.

  A single white dot trailing a fading tail, like a comet, traced a path around the torus.

  “This dot represents the space-time field of our own reality traveling through AST. It has branched off into new realities countless times.”

  Other dots emerged from the first, diverging further until hundreds of white comets raced around the donut’s surface. Some maintained a more-or-less circular path, while others corkscrewed their way around.

  “Just like everything in our reality travels through space-time at the speed of light, you’ll notice these parallel realities progress around the torus at the same rate.”

  The dots were dense enough to create the clear impression of a circular band going around the torus at a constant speed. Richard walked over to the display and pointed at a dot tracing a roughly circular path.

  “Some of these paths are straightforward, while others are not. The more the pathway corkscrews around the torus, the faster it has to move in the space dimensions of AST to keep up with the others.”

  Jayson stared at the model, picking out individual dots. The ones following the longer paths moved noticeably faster to maintain their place in the glowing ring circling the donut.

  “And since these realities are moving faster in space,” continued Richard, breaking into a smile, “what does that mean, Dr. Zhang?”

  “They travel more slowly through time to maintain a constant speed through Akindele Space-Time?”

  “Correct!” he said, pointing a finger at her. “See? This isn’t so hard.”

  Richard tapped the wall to pause the simulation, pointing at two nearly superimposed dots.

  “When a reality crosses over our own, we can transfer the entanglement of matter.”

  “Not all of us have a STEM background,” said a woman near the far end of the third row.

  Jayson pushed up in his seat and looked over. Melinda Littleton, an expert in early childhood learning and development.

  “What is entanglement?”

  “There are a practically infinite number of realities occupying AST,” replied Richard. “Think of entanglement as a kind of signature that binds us to ours—like the unique signal that makes sure you don’t open all the garage doors on your street with your opener when you pull into your driveway. We’ve learned to modify that signature at the moment of convergence to bind matter and energy to a different reality.”

  “How does the transfer of entanglement work?” asked Herman

  The German engineer stroked his beard.

  “Imagine the realities as separate highways,” started Richard.

  Akindele snorted and threw his hands in the air. He rose from his seat next to the Admiral and walked from the dais, shaking his head as he left the room.

  “Jimi gets carsick just thinking about highways,” said Richard, as the door clicked closed. “That’s why his mother has to drive him everywhere.”

  Jayson couldn’t help but laugh at the weak joke. In fact, almost everyone was laughing—except Samaira. She elbowed his ribcage.

  “Are you listening to this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean really listening? Do you get what he’s saying?”

  “Uh. Not really.”

  It felt like a dream—or some piece of theater. Samaira’s question brought the implication into sudden focus. Holy shit. He thrust his hand in the air.

  “Are you really talking about sending us to another world?”

  “Essentially, yes,” said Richard. “We have determined through countless simulations it is the most likely way to secure the future of humanity.”

  Jayson’s jaw dropped. Richard, Anton Kamaras, and everyone else running the Center, had lost their fucking minds. He stuck his hand in the air.

  “Who’s coming? And how far back are we talking?”

  “Every one of you has earned this rare opportunity.”

  “How far?” he asked again.

  Richard took a deep breath.

  “A thousand years, give or take.”

  The room erupted in chatter so loud that Richard had to plead with his audience for silence. As the clamor fell, Kailani shot to her feet.

  “I only count forty or fifty people here,” she said, looking around. “How are we supposed to change anything?”

  “You won’t be in a position to impact the development of the planet directly,” replied Richard. “You’ll be confined to O’ahu—and maybe some of the surrounding islands—with the limited amount of technology we can give you. You’ll have some power generation, computing capability, and the capacity to grow wonderful food and produce essential medicines. All the while, you’ll be breathing the freshest air you’ve ever experienced, and drinking water free of microplastics for the first time in your lives.”

  “So what’s the point if we’re not going to have an impact?”

  “I didn’t say you wouldn’t have an impact. I said no direct impact. Your descendants will do the heavy work of saving the world as their society flourishes, and their influence spreads.”

  “How are our descendants even going to know what to do?” asked Parth.

  “You’ll take with you the totality of humanity’s current knowledge, and establish a social system to maintain and grow that knowledge across generations.”

  “If I know anything about kids, it’s that we don’t care what our parents want. I give it two generations before our kids discover weed and start spending their days at the beach trying to get laid.”

  That got him a few laughs and even more nods of agreement.

  “Not if we do it right,” said Samaira, rising to her feet.

  Jayson stared up at her. What was she doing?

  “We establish a culture that values the environment above all else. We instill an indelible connection to the planet, and a sense of stewardship that is core to who we are as a people. We make it the mission of an entire civilization to secure a healthy environment in which it can thrive indefinitely.”

  “And this, ladies and gentlemen,” said Richard, extending a hand, “is why we’re so happy to have Dr. Adams with us.”

  “How can we be sure it’ll work?” asked Herman.

  “We’re doing the simulations,” said Richard, “and they’re converging.”

  “So you’ve spent the last two weeks playing ‘The Sims’ using us as characters?” asked Parth.

  “If you want to be cynical, I suppose you could say it that way.”

  At that moment, Aiden stood up beside Samaira and surveyed his colleagues.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  Jayson’s jaw dropped.

  “What?”

  “What choice do I have? If I stay here, this is the end of my family line. I’m sure as hell not bringing kids into this mess.”

  “We don’t even know how this works.”

  “I don’t care. There’s no future for me here. If this works, it means our descendants have a chance to reach the stars. That’s the closest we can get to immortality.”

  It made sense, even if it sounded oddly poetic coming from Aiden. There was no future if they stayed. Kamaras’s announcement the week before had made that clear. Jayson sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling as side conversations rose all around. Kailani quieted them with the next obvious question.

  “Why is the Admiral here?”

  “Good question,” said Richard. “I’m going to let Admiral Daniels address that himself.”

  The Admiral stood and approached the podium, taking a few moments to look around the room as if assessing one of his crews.

  “I’ve known Richard for a long time,” he said finally. “If anyone else had approached me with the details of this operation, I would have dismissed them as a lunatic. But I trust him—and the more we spoke, the more I realized it made sense. He and Mr. Kamaras convinced me I had a duty to humanity to ensure your success in any way I could.”

  “How?” demanded Kailani.

  “When you arrive, there could be a handful of local inhabitants confused and upset by your sudden appearance among them. I’m providing a small team of brave volunteers to keep you safe.”

  “Inhabitants? Exactly what year are we arriving?”

  Admiral Daniels glanced at Richard.

  “We’ve calculated 1174 CE.”

  “There will be thousands of local inhabitants,” said Kailani. “I’ve studied my history.”

  Jayson couldn’t help but think of his own ancestors and their disastrous encounters with European settlers.

  “No way,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to be part of some genocide.”

  “Absolutely not,” replied the Admiral. “The role of our volunteers is to provide initial security until you can reach some sort of détente—an agreement of peaceful coexistence.”

  Richard joined him at the podium.

  “We’ve done extensive archeological studies, and believe the conventionally accepted timeline for the inhabitation of O’ahu is inaccurate. We’re confident if it’s inhabited at all, it will only be a few small coastal fishing communities.”

  “I’m still not comfortable collaborating with the military,” said Kailani, crossing her arms.

  “Government corruption is one of the reasons we’re in this climate mess,” added Parth. “This whole thing is suspect if they’re running the show.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Admiral Daniels. “What’s your name, young man?”

  “Parth.”

  “Let me assure you, Parth,” he continued. “Despite assumptions you might make, I am a man of science. I first worked with Richard in his capacity as a naval researcher, not a soldier. The anti-science movement infecting our country and infiltrating our government is one reason we’re in this mess, and I’m just as sickened by it as you are. These men and women assembled behind you are not just brawn. They are engineers, microbiologists, medics, and other scientists, who enlisted to take advantage of the GI Bill. We have hand-picked them for their trust in science, not for their bloodlust.”

  “That may be,” replied Parth, “but involving the government taints this whole thing. How can we trust it?”

  Admiral Daniels pounded a fist on the podium, and the room went silent.

  “You want to talk about trust?” he asked. “Then let me demonstrate my trust in you by exposing my own vulnerability. Neither the United States government nor the Navy know the details of what I’m supporting here. As far as they know, I’m using their resources to help Mr. Kamaras develop fusion reactors we can use in our fleet. Were the truth exposed, I would be court-martialed and imprisoned for the rest of my life. I take this risk because I see no other option.”

  “What’s in it for you?” asked Kailani. “Why take that risk at all?”

  “There is something in it for the Admiral, myself, and Mr. Kamaras,” said Richard. “And there’s something more in it for you as well.”

  Whispers flitted through the audience. He waited until they died down before continuing.

  “Relative to us, time in the parallel reality we are tracking is now moving much more quickly than it is here. Additional convergences will offer an opportunity to transfer significantly more mass as the time delta decreases. As it approaches zero, a select group of like-minded individuals—including the Admiral, Mr. Kamaras, and the rest of the Center staff—will arrive in the alternate equivalent of the modern world you have created.”

  “I get how that works out for you,” said Parth, “but what do we get out of it?”

  “The parents and siblings of everyone here, along with their immediate families, will be invited to accompany us. Once there, they will meet your descendants in a family reunion hundreds of years in the making. You’d be making this brave sacrifice not only for your children, but for the families you leave behind.”

  Olena Voloshyn, Jayson’s lab manager, shot to her feet, raising her voice above the growing chatter.

  “Even with the risks, I’m doing this. What choice do we have?”

  “I admit,” added Samaira, “I find the opportunity for an environmental and societal reset hard to resist. We can do more lasting good than we could ever achieve against the noise of misinformation and propaganda we face here.”

  Jayson looked at her in disbelief.

  “Seriously?”

  She ignored him, leveling a finger at Richard.

  “But there is still one question you have to answer.”

  “Of course, Dr. Adams.”

  “The fake fusion research, Kailani’s work on proto-Polynesian, Jayson figuring out how to feed us—this isn’t ‘Plan B.’ This was the plan all along. Why lie to us?”

  Richard laughed.

  “It’s a pretty extreme plan, even for someone as eccentric as Mr. Kamaras.”

  She stared at him, crossing her arms.

  “You have to understand his mind does not work like yours,” he continued. “For him, there is no ‘Plan A’ or ‘Plan B’—only a single, well-orchestrated effort to account for innumerable contingencies. You’ll recall in his brief announcement, Mr. Kamaras mentioned several extreme alternatives could still yield hope.”

  “Like what?”

  “Your initial understanding of our goal—fixing the planet—was always the primary one. The extreme alternatives being investigated in parallel included putting you all in a sealed bio-dome or an orbital space station to await Earth’s natural recovery. We considered starting a generations-long inter-planetary mission to find new, habitable worlds. We even studied cryogenically freezing all of you—and Mr. Kamaras—to be woken in the future when the environment recovers.”

  “I find it hard to believe traveling to a parallel universe is the least crazy idea,” said Parth.

  “Mr. Kamaras doesn’t think in subjective terms like that. He compared the alternatives by only a single, objective measure.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Probability of success. Even after millions of simulations, most alternatives showed a near-zero chance of working. Once the experimental results proved Dr. Akindele’s theories correct, the simulations showed a greater than eighty percent chance you’ll be able to re-direct the world’s development—if you follow the plan.”

  “I like those odds,” said Aiden.

  “And remember, all of us, including Mr. Kamaras, are taking the same leap of faith into the unknown. Admittedly, you have the harder task, but you also have the most to gain.”

  “How’s that?” asked Jayson.

  “Mr. Kamaras is obscenely wealthy, and will live in comfort the rest of his life, no matter what happens to the planet. The Admiral and I are considerably older than all of you, and we’re unlikely to live long enough to face the direst consequences of climate change. You would be dealing with constant war and unrest as nations battle for control of whatever clean water and arable land is left.”

  The final thought from Richard left his audience in silence. Jayson had to admit he was probably right.

  “I’m sorry,” he added. “I meant for this to be an exciting announcement, and I shouldn’t be bringing you down. Let’s focus instead on the possibilities that lay before us. I’ve planned for the Admiral’s team to join us in a celebration this evening. After 7:00 PM, the cafeteria is restricted to those with direct knowledge of our new mission. You’ll be able to speak freely and get to know one another. We’ll reassemble here in a couple of days for another briefing.”

  “One last thing before we adjourn,” said Admiral Daniels over the growing chatter. “One hundred percent operational security from this point forward is essential. Leaks of any kind will jeopardize the mission—not to mention my status as a free man.”