CHAPTER 6

< September 8^th, 2064 A.D. >

Professor Barnabas Kavraenhoff took one last hopeful but confident breath before turning on the master power line to his newest creation.  Circuit boards came to life, LED lights lit up, and multiple visual monitors came on-line, portraying a twisting rope-like image made up of an endless number of individually colored strands.  This Null Room, as the professor had dubbed it, was going to revolutionize how TIMECorp monitored the integrity of the time-line. 

Over the previous decade, the prevalence of Chronological Narcotics had steadily increased, and this had made artificial time-line discrepancies harder and harder to detect from a singular perspective.  Because of this, Barnabas had designed and created this new independently powered chamber which would allow him, and other TIMECorp higher-ups, to see all time-lines that branched from or interacted with what they had termed Real Time.

Utilizing state-of-the-art shielding, and vibration technology similar to that of a timesuit, the Null Room was suspended outside of normal time, though the computers inside were linked to the array of experimental satellites that monitored for temporal anomalies.  The theory was sound, and preliminary research and testing had been positive, but now was the moment of truth, this test would prove with finality if Null Room technology could work.

On a separate, smaller monitor, Barnabas could see an overview of three adjoining chambers.  These stark white rooms had no ceilings, giving them the look of a lab maze, which was basically what it was.  Sitting in the eastern room was a young girl of about 12 years of age, blond hair and a giant red 06 on her white jumpsuit were her only identifying features in the distorted image.

Barnabas paused for a heart-warming smile before opening a communication line to speakers in the white rooms.

“All right Katey Six.  Leave your helmet off, but bring it with you as you pass through the adjoining chamber and into the next room beyond.  Now, if you see an apple in the next room; pick it up and bring it with you as well.  I will have more instructions once you are there.”

The young girl nodded, only slightly confused.  She held her helmet in her left arm as she opened the door to the chamber and moved into the next.  There was a small stool in the center of this room, but there was nothing on the stool, or anywhere else in the chamber, so she moved on into the third room, which had only a small white box in it.

As she did this, Barnabas watched the monitors all around him, seeing the time-line play out naturally.  He noted the readings and how they corresponded to the image before him.

“You saw no apple, correct?” he asked the girl through the communication system.

She shook her head and mouthed the word no.

“Open the box.”

She did.  Inside the box was a shining red apple.

“Now put your helmet on,” Barnabas ordered her.  “And pick up the apple.”

She complied.

“Now I’m sending you and the apple backwards in time.  I need you to place the apple on the stool in the second room.  Do you understand?”

She nodded.

Barnabas turned the remote Loop Dial for her suit to -0.1223, the girl winked out of visible sight on the Real-Time monitor, though Barnabas saw a faded image of her in another monitor.  This was a good sign.  The professor then turned the girl’s Reverse Dial to 1 minute and locked it in place. 

Katey-06 was winked back through time, standing in room 3 with the apple in her hand.  She looked into the box questioningly as she saw inside of it another apple identical to the one she was holding.  She had brought the apple back in time with her, and she was looking at the Real-Time apple in the past before she took it out.

Barnabas looked intently a the monitors, watching as the large braided time-line image split into two separate threads, the monitor switching to split-screen so as to display both real and alternate time-lines simultaneously.

“Can you hear me?”  The professor’s voice spoke through Katey-06’s helmet.

“Yes.”  She replied. 

Technicians in the control room erupted into congratulations and praise as the newly updated inter-temporal communication system worked flawlessly.

“Okay, now go place the apple on the stool in Room 2.”

She went into Room 2 and placed the apple on the stool.

“Excellent.” Barnabas said, noting how the placing of the apple further separated the two differing time-lines.  He re-watched the camera footage from when Katey-06 first walked through the three rooms, thirty seconds ago from his perspective.  Along the new Altered Time-line, Barnabas monitored Katey-06 picking up the apple in Room 2 and bringing it into room 3, though Real Time remained unaffected.

He flipped the comm-switch again, “Now move back into Room 3.  And tell me, do you remember an apple being in the second room?”

“No.” the girl cocked her head to the side in confusion. 

On the professor’s instruction, she moved into Room 3 again, still moving through a frozen point in the past.  Barnabas manipulated her time-dials and brought her into local alignment with the Altered Time-line she had just created.

“Now go behind that divider there and look through the peephole,” he ordered.

She obeyed, and then he waited to see her reaction.  The girl was taken aback as she witnessed herself come into room 3, holding the red apple.  Upon instruction, her other self placed the apple the empty white box.

It worked, Barnabas thought with glee, verifying that Katey-06 could see her alternate self. 

Satellite data confirmed the Reverse Temporal Energy, which denoted someone moving backwards and altering time.  Previously, only a Flashback Agent would be able to detect the exact nature of shift, but from this Null Room Barnabas was consciously aware of both time-lines.  He witnessed both the apple being there, and it not being there, watched Katey put it there, and watched her take it from there; a perfectly closed Causality Loop.  What this also meant is that from this control room Barnabas would be able to manipulate Katey-06 back into whichever time-line he wished.  Further experiments showed that the apple, and other objects and people, could emerge from absolutely nowhere, by design.  Things created in Alternate time-lines that could be brought into existence in what we know as Real Time; phenomenon known as Existent Non-Existents.

This breakthrough would soon become the core of TIMECorp’s power.  From the Null Room it was possible to dictate which of hundreds, thousands, of Alternate Time-lines would be maintained and treated as Real Time.  In many ways, this was the end of Real Time as a fixed meaning, since TIMECorp could from then on pick and choose which events it wanted to maintain, and which events it wanted to change.  Only someone with access to a Null Room would be able to verify or contradict what TIMECorp servers deemed to be the actual events as they would have occurred in Real Time.

Fearing the CEO would shut down this project, Barnabas decided to keep the existence of the Null Room a top-security issue, only those directly involved with the project would have any inking of the chamber for decades.  And even 25 years later, information on the Null Room was spotty at best.