On Wednesday morning, Heather knew that Alpha Team would be more comfortable discussing the Time Traveler’s Paradox without her present, so she loaded her breakfast tray and went to find Susan.
“Good morning, therapist mine,” she said, taking the comfy seat across from Doctor Bo-kamla in the safe-house corridor.
“How are you this pretty spring morning?”
“Still unwinding from the dance competition. I felt guilty, you know.”
Susan cocked her head slightly.
“It’s a zero-sum game. For me to win, others have to lose.”
“And your prize money . . .”
Heather scrunched her face. “Was from their entry fees.”
“What are you going to do about that guilt?”
“Give each of them a nice gift certificate to the club. They’re just kids, at best with some little part-time, minimum-wage job. I make five grand a month.”
“So you wanted the ribbons, but not the prize money?”
“Yeah. And I only wanted the ribbons once, just to prove to myself that I could do it.”
“What else do you need to prove to yourself that you can do?”
“Nothing much. Just . . . you know . . . save the world.”
On Wednesday, since everyone had read the bio-diversity article, the final
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discussion took less than half an hour, and the vote was unanimous. A top-secret research team of the Department of Defense would endorse the article’s publication. They could clearly imagine the grin on the author’s face.
Heather was just about to announce a new topic, a low-priority look at a less-important corner of the future, when she noticed Doctor Ko-silma the chemist standing at her chair holding a think stack of papers.
“Betty, do you have something to share?”
The chemist nodded.
“You have the floor.”
“Don’t sit down, Heather.”
“Um . . . okay.”
“Corporal?” the chemist prompted.
Heather watched as the security corporal picked up one of the small tables no one was using, carried it into the circle, and placed it in the exact center of the space. Doctor Ko-silma then reverently placed the thick stack of type-written papers onto the little table.
Heather looked down. It appeared to be a manuscript. But not an article manuscript. Rather, a book manuscript.
“Although I’ve been very careful about security,” the chemist began as she ambled back to her seat, “word does get around when a scientist takes an interest in a certain topic. This manuscript comes from an international group of four scientists who collaborated on a computer model that runs from 3600 to 3800. I do not know if this is the book — you will have to make that determination, Heather — but it appears to fit the description you gave us, and has surfaced about when you predicted.”
Heather dropped to her knees in front of the little table, and for a moment seemed afraid to touch the manuscript. She spoke, almost to herself, not looking up from the sacred object before her. “There are so many things —
books . . . music . . . movies — that I can easily see or hear in my mind, but don’t even bother to try to find, because they haven’t been written yet. This, of all those things, if it’s what I think it is, is the most important. The title doesn’t match, but titles are often changed during publication.”
She didn’t start at the beginning, as most of the team expected, but went directly to a point deep in the manuscript, and began to search forward from
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there. Only a few pages later, she stopped and stared with wide eyes.
As if in a dream, she stood and clipped that page to the top of the blackboard. During the next ten minutes, the room remained completely silent, save for the scraping of the chalk, as Heather copied the illustration for all to see. As the drawing took shape, it reminded them of her own graphs of the future, but not completely.
Eventually she turned back to the team, replacing the page she had borrowed from the manuscript. “I think this is the book. I’ll read it this afternoon and know for sure. Anyone who can stay is welcome to read with me.”
She pointed at the blackboard. “I know this graph, like I know the streets in that neighborhood where I . . . died. Everyone, after about 3715, will know this graph because it will tell them the truth, far more than their political, social, or religious leaders ever do, with rare exceptions.
“As you can see, this is not the same as the graph I drew for you about this point in the future. The authors modeled resources, food, industry, and pollution, but not simple temperature. Climate change was not on their radar.
They thought the population would crash much later in the next century than I experienced. Considering they weren’t even attempting to model what actually got us, they did a very, very good job. It will match reality quite well for almost fifty years, until . . . reality goes into high gear.
“Although it will not ultimately be accurate — and no model can be — it gives a very clear message. The next century will not be pretty. That’s the message that needs to come out now.”
The experience of finding the book made Heather ravenous and talkative.
After feasting and chatting for the entire lunch hour, she and Lisa, last of all, stepped out of the dining room.
Heather was surprised to find most of the team back in their seats. The manuscript still waited on the little table, but the surrounding chairs and couches had been rearranged slightly so that pages could be handed from person to person, snaking around the room and eventually ending at Doctor Ko-silma’s seat.
Tears threatened to come to the fourteen-year-old. “You guys are so sweet
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for waiting!”
General Bo-seklin smiled. “We know how important this moment is.”
Sarah nodded agreement. “Chris had to jump in a transport and go teach a class, but promised to read it in Betty’s office tomorrow.”
Heather blinked like an owl to keep her feelings under control as she rolled her chair up to the little table and its precious manuscript. She picked up the title page, gazed at it for a moment, and handed it to Colonel Ma-soran.
Just as it took half an hour for the first page to get to the last reader, Heather found herself with half an hour to kill while the rest of the team read the last few pages. She thought of chatting with Maria, putting on some music, or visiting the garage-level security guard, but instead just stayed in her seat, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift away into the future.