Chapter #1 – Death in the Lab

Posted on 22 February 2023 by Michael Regan

An hour ago Jane was with Dr. Clarke, the closest thing to a father figure she had ever known, in his lecture hall. Although estranged, he had invited her to Berkeley to witness his demonstration of time travel. Now, instead of celebrating his breakthrough, she was outside his lab, looking at Clarke’s dead body. Where was the time probe?

***

“Hello Charles.”

Dr. Charles Clarke, a short, balding man, the type of man you forget minutes after being introduced, adjusted a piece of equipment that looked like an oversized microwave oven. With his back to the door, he hadn’t seen Jane come into the lab.

Turning around, Clarke stood in front of the equipment, blocking her from seeing what he was doing. “Jane. How nice to see you. I wasn’t sure if you’d come. … How long has it been?”

“You know how long.” She snapped. “Five years since you stole credit for my work.” She bore Clarke little ill will. Women in science rarely received the credit they deserved. 

“Now Jane …”

Cutting him off, “You said you were sending an object back in time. Something I thought was impossible. I had to see it for myself. … Is that the time chamber?”

Clarke smiled but said nothing.

 She said, “I’ll go to the lecture hall and let you finish what you are doing.”

Jane joined the other scientists and media gathered to see Clarke’s demonstration of time travel. There were more reporters than usual. Most are hoping for something to replace the doomsday asteroid, Apophis, on the front page.

Ten minutes later, Clarke went from his lab to the lecture hall lectern. “Good morning, thank you for coming. For those who don’t know me, I am Dr. Charles Clarke. Today I will make history.” 

Clarke held up a small metal box. “At noon, I will place this probe into the time chamber in my lab, where it will be sent back one hour in time — to appear in the chamber at eleven o’clock.” Clarke looks at the clock on the wall. “About ten minutes from now.”

He gestured towards Jane, “I would like Dr Jane Seymour from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge, England, to join me at the lectern. Dr Seymour assisted me in developing the theory on the nature of time. That theory led to this demonstration of time travel.”

Jane rankled at ‘assisted’ but said nothing. It was my postdoc work that led to the theory. Reluctantly, she joined Dr. Clarke at the lectern. 

“Jane, so people don’t think this is a magic trick, would you put a mark on the front of the probe with this marking pen I just happen to have here?”

A smattering of laughter. Jane drew Δt, the symbols for change and time.

“Thank you.”

Jane and Dr. Clarke, along with everybody else in the room, turned to watch the time chamber on a large monitor at the front of the hall. At eleven o’clock, the probe failed to appear. Jane looked at Clarke. The arrogant fool. He hasn’t done the experiment before.

Some of the scientists in the room snickered, others were more polite. All had reached the same conclusion as Jane. Members of the media were confused and started yelling questions. Dr. Clarke stood there slack-jawed, shoulders slouched, unwilling to accept what he was seeing.

Jane went to the mic. “Please, please, could we have a little calm?”

Someone in the audience yelled, “Dr. Seymour, does this  mean that time travel is impossible?”

“No!” Used to explaining time travel to her undergrad class, she went on. “In this case we know the effect, the probe failed to appear, before we know the cause, what went wrong with Dr Clarke’s experiment.  — We have to wait until noon when Dr. Clarke starts the experiment before we know the cause.”

Dr. Clarke regained his composure. Surprised that Jane had come to his defence, he went to the lectern. “Dr. Seymour is correct. I still need to conduct the experiment before I can determine why the probe failed to appear.”

As noon approached, Clarke felt the eyes of the media watching him on the monitor. Eager to determine what had gone wrong, he waited in the lab instead of going back to the lecture hall. With him were his assistant, John Wilson, and Richard Thompson, the electrical engineer.

Two minutes before noon, a high-speed video camera started. Designed to capture the moment the probe from the past ‘merged’ with the present version, the video might now show what went wrong. The file would be saved on the lecture hall workstation and in Dr. Clarke’s university account.

At noon, as everyone in the lecture hall watched the monitor, an explosion rocked the lab. The video went dead, lights in the lecture hall flickered, then went out; emergency lights came on; the scream of the backup power supply for the workstation filled the room.

After a moment of shock. Everyone rushed to the door. Most ran to the building exit. A few, including Jane, rushed to the lab.

Thompson stumbled into the hall with severe burns to the front of his body. The emergency lighting showed the bodies of Dr. Clarke and John Wilson trapped under a fallen cabinet. They appeared to be dead. Acrid smoke, from burning electrical equipment, was filling the hallway. Two men helped Thompson towards the exit. Everyone, except Jane, hurried out.

The scene inside the lab was confusing. The chamber walls buckled inwards and debris covered the chamber floor as if drawn into the chamber by an implosion. However, the doors on the two large cabinets appeared blown open by an explosion. The probe was gone.

Taking a few shots with her phone, she glanced at the high-speed camera. It still had power. I need to get the video file.

She returned to the lecture hall. It was empty. Not wanting to be disturbed, she locked the door, then retrieved her laptop.

If my account is still active, I might be able to get the file.

Clarke was computer illiterate, relying on his assistants to write computer programs and set up services on the network. When Jane was doing her postdoc with him, she set up a shared folder to store their videos.

She tries to log into her Berkeley account. It’s still working. If he is still sharing that folder. … Here’s the file I want.

The fire department arrived. She heard the muffled sound of their sirens. No time to download the rest of the files. I’ll try to get them later. Logging off the network, she started towards the door. A quick glance through the safety window in the fire door showed the hall filled with smoke. 

Trapped. Not one to panic and with rescue imminent, Jane unlocked the door and sat down, waiting to be rescued.

She used the time to text Lauren Holland, her best friend and Head of Science Information Services, at the Betty & Gordon Moore Library in Cambridge. Jane and Lauren were part of the same study group in a postgrad computer science course at Durham University. Although they had little in common: Lauren, bubbly, gregarious, and the life of the party; Jane, reserved, introverted, and uncomfortable in large groups, they had become best friends. On vastly different career paths, they have both wound up at Cambridge University.

‘Accident at Berkley experiment. Save any images and videos posted before everything gets locked down.’

She copied the pictures on her phone to her laptop. I need to get the files to my private server. Using her phone to create a hotspot, she uploaded the files to her server. With the files safe, she deleted them from her laptop. Expecting to be interviewed about the accident, she left the pictures on her phone. No one would believe that I didn’t take any pictures. 

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened. A firefighter, the mask of his Scott pack hanging loose, came in.

Jane smiled, putting on her ‘I’m just a dumb girl’ look. “I came back to get my laptop.”

The firefighter shook his head. “You are lucky to be alive. The hallway is safe now. You can leave.”

As she left the building, a medic and a rather large man in a dark suit greeted her.

While the medic gave her oxygen and checked her blood pressure, she eyed the other man. About 5’11”, he had a husky build and black hair combed straight back. His poorly tailored suit showed the slight bulge of his gun and holster. Jane couldn’t help thinking  MI5 agents have better tailors.

After the medic finished, the other man came over.

“Dr. Jane Seymour?”

“Yes.”

He showed her his badge. “Agent Devon Walsh, Department of Homeland Security. You need to come with me.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

Walsh led her to his car. They drove in silence.

***

Since the cyber attacks of 2026, the United States had sunk further down the road to isolationism. Paranoia and conspiracies were the prevalent political fodder, giving credence to the most absurd threats. Two years earlier, when Dr. Clarke announced he was working on time travel, theories of time travellers taking over the government started appearing on Twitter. The President gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the dubious task of tracking ‘time travellers’.

Homeland Security received special funding for the project. DHS appointed Donald Roberts, Director of Special Operations on Time Travel. After two years with no evidence that there were time travellers, his funding was about to be cut. He decided sabotaging Clarke’s experiments would be the evidence he needed. He had his own online influencers ready to blame time travellers for the sabotage. There was no limit to how much funding he could request.

At noon, Roberts was watching the live stream of Dr. Clarke’s experiment. He knew the experiment had failed; he was watching to see what his team had done to cause the failure. The feed went dead. Having the feed fail was more than he expected.

Agent Walsh’s call, five minutes later on his direct line, was unexpected. Walsh was there to report on Dr. Seymour. Clarke’s invitation to have her view the experiment had come as a surprise. She was a potential loose end. 

“Walsh. What’s happening?”

“There was an explosion in the lab. Clarke is dead.”

“Shit. … Seymour?”

“I don’t know sir, she hasn’t come out yet. People said she went to the lab.”

“Are the locals there yet?”

“Just starting to arrive.”

“OK. Nobody leaves. I’ll get a containment team there right away. Find out what happened to Seymour. An inquiry into Clarke’s death will be bad enough, if she is dead the shit will really hit the fan. … If she is alive, don’t let her talk to anyone and bring her straight here.”

A half-hour later, Roberts’ containment team phoned to say they had arrived. Shortly after that, Walsh texted him:

‘Seymour is unharmed. We are on our way.’

***

An hour after Walsh had detained her, Jane was in a large room in the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. A window to her left looked out over the bay. To her right, a bookcase filled with books meant for show, not to be read; along the far wall, an American flag in one corner,  the California state flag in the other, the Seal of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the centre. A large oak desk with a single chair in front dominates the room. A room designed to impress and intimidate.

Sitting at the desk staring at his computer monitor was a short man, lean to the point of being gaunt, clean-shaven, with close-cropped hair and blue, piercing eyes. In her dealings with MI5, Jane found there were two types of government agents. Men like Walsh, honest, brave, loyal, and completely without guile. You always knew where you stood with them. Then, there were those like the one at the desk shrewd, manipulative, and ruthless. Heads up, this man is dangerous.

The man looked away from the monitor. “Sit down, Dr. Seymour.”

Summoning all the bravado she could muster, “Please, call me Jane.”

“Jane, I am Director Donald Roberts, Homeland Security.”

Jane studied him as he finished reading her dossier. If it impressed him, he didn’t show it.

Reading from the screen, “Mother Chinese, father British, he abandoned you when you were three, didn’t he?” He looked up. If he expected a reaction — he didn’t get one. Walsh, standing by the door, shuffled his feet, embarrassed by Roberts’ boorishness.

Bastard. Jane hid her rage. Speaking softly, “British.”

Roberts looked up, “What?”

 “My mother was born in Britain. — She is British.”

Roberts scowled. “Grew up in Stanley, went to Durham University, PhD in Applied Mathematics, Master’s in Advanced Computer Science, postdoc with Dr. Clarke at Berkeley,  Fellow of the Royal Society, speak Russian, French and Chinese.“

Jane interrupted again, more forcefully, “Mandarin. … I speak Mandarin and Foo Chow. I can read standard Chinese.” Walsh suppressed a snicker.

Roberts hesitated, not used to being corrected. “… consultant for MI5, part of the Go team that shut down the cyber attacks in 2026, close connections to the British Home Office — Did I miss anything?”

Jane shakes her head. Bugger. You are wrong about my connection to the Home Office. … If you want to believe that — fill your boots.

Roberts looked away from the monitor. “I have been told you are the leading expert on time travel. What can you tell me about Dr. Clarke’s experiment?”

Trying to sound cheerful,  “Some might disagree with my being the leading expert. As for the experiment, not much. Dr Clarke was very secretive about his work. — Except for areas around a Black Hole, it is my opinion that time travel is impossible. Dr Clarke said it was possible. I may have been wrong.”

“You think it’s possible to travel back in time?”

Codswallop, time travel to the past is impossible — timelines are fixed. “Without seeing Dr Clarke’s work, I’m only guessing. But, yes, it seems to be possible.” 

“Do you have a theory about the explosion?”

Let’s see if I can lead him down a rabbit hole. “If your techs are doing their job, you will know it wasn’t only an explosion. Inside the time chamber, the walls buckled inward. There was an implosion. Whatever caused the probe to disappear probably sucked out all the air as well, creating a vacuum.”

Something she said surprised him. Shit — He didn’t know the probe was missing.

“And you think that was because the probe travelled back in time?”

“Like I said, just guessing. … But, yes. Assuming Dr Clarke created the conditions to form a field capable of sending an object back in time, that could also create a paradox. … At some point, the probe from the past and the probe in the present would be in the same place at the same time. … If that happened, the probe from the past would be destroyed. Which means the probe from the past wouldn’t exist.”

Roberts could see where this was going. “With no probe from the past, the probe in the present would still exist and be sent back in time. Everything would repeat.”

Jane nodded. He’s buying this.

“Again, only guessing, but it seems right.” Her nerves settled, she enjoyed manipulating the conversation. Smiling, “I don’t suppose you will give me access to Dr. Clarke’s work.”

Roberts just grinned. “All Dr. Clarke’s work is now classified Top Secret.”

Of course, it is. Working for MI5, she saw anything they didn’t understand they classified as Top Secret. It didn’t surprise her that Homeland Security would do the same.

“May I see your phone?” 

Jane handed him her mobile. “It’s not locked.”

“And your laptop.”

Jane entered her password and handed it over. Let’s see if he knows his way around Linux.

Roberts scrolled through the phone. “Not much here?”

With Homeland Security tracking all foreign nationals in real-time through their social media accounts and the 5G network, Jane only took a pay-as-you-go phone with her. “Only what I need for my trip.”

“Do you always delete your call logs?”

“Always.”

“I assume you uploaded everything to a server somewhere.” Jane shrugs. He deletes the files anyway, then hands it back. 

There wasn’t much on her laptop. He doesn’t waste any time searching the files. He opened a terminal window and typed in the Linux command to delete all her files.

“OOPS—I accidentally deleted all your files.” Smirking, he handed the laptop back. 

Jane looked at him with feigned concern. Asshole.

He asks “How long were you planning to stay in Berkeley?”

“I had planned on staying a week. … But now I’ll stay until Dr. Clarke’s funeral.”

Roberts looked perplexed. “And maybe give some interviews about Clarke’s work?”

Jane shrugged but said nothing.

Roberts signalled Walsh. “Agent Walsh will drive you back to your hotel to collect your things, then to the airport. I am booking you on the next flight back to the UK. Agent Walsh will stay with you until the flight leaves. … Don’t talk to the press and don’t publish those pictures.”

Roberts underestimated the power of the conspiracy theorists. He didn’t need his influencers. There were already posts that time travellers caused the explosion that killed Dr. Clarke.

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