The Didymus Contingency Read Online Free PDF

countertops covered in small devices. Several large chunks of electronic equipment also appeared. An ozone-like odor filled the room and grew stronger with each explosion of light and materials.
    The raw power unleashed by the event was both fascinating and horrifying. Everyone in the room, except Tom and David, took a step back. Computers began to malfunction. Sparks exploded into the air. No one noticed. All eyes were transfixed on the tears in time-space opening up in the next room.
    The show concluded with a loud boom , causing everyone in the control center to jump. As the final streak of light blinked out of existence, the control center was plunged into darkness. The receiving area still shimmered with light, like a luminous snowstorm, as thousands of blue, glowing particles fluttered down to the floor. No one moved. As the last particles extinguished, the emergency lights suddenly burst on. David yelped like a Chihuahua. The room full of normally composed professionals exploded with clapping and uproarious laughter.
    Tom’s hands squeaked down the glass wall. He looked at David. “We did it… We did it!” Tom yelled, as he picked David up off the ground and administered a crushing hug.
    “What did I tell you!” David shouted, “What did I tell you!”
    Tom bounced David in the air and danced around like a child on Christmas morning. Sally stood still, staring into the receiving area. “I don’t… I can’t…”
    Tom put David back on his feet, strode up to Sally’s face and yelled at the top of his lungs, “HA!”
    After Tom had expressed his victory to Sally and moved on to shake the hands of several excited colleagues, David approached Sally with a smile. “Thank you for letting this happen. We owe you everything.”
    “I… You’re welcome.” Sally replied.
    David extended his hand and Sally took it. Rather then shaking her hand, David let their hands linger together, while he looked kindly into her eyes. And then she did it again: Sally smiled.

 
    —THREE—

    Teetering

    2005
    7:00 P.M.
    Arizona

    Tom and David gleefully spent the next eleven hours sorting through piles of documentation, equipment and tools that had been sent back in time from their future selves. The idea that this could work originated from David’s brilliant mind, but was quickly supported by Tom when they first met. David grew skeptical of Tom’s motivation after learning about Megan’s untimely and violent death. But Tom had assured David endlessly that if success came within their lifetimes, he would not try to alter his tragic past. Tom knew that doing so would mean he and David would never meet. Having never met, any success they would experience in the realm of time travel would cease to exist, meaning Tom couldn’t go back in time in the first place. This was only one of the many theoretical paradoxes of time travel, which they now faced in the futuristic items laid out around the room.
    David rubbed his weary eyes and continued on, driving his thoughts into a particular schematic that diagramed how one might navigate through the time stream without creating a cosmic wake. David’s mind wrapped itself within the blanket of the schematic’s quantum calculations. His eyes twitched back and forth, as he sucked up the information like a computerized leech. Then, an epiphany, “Look! Look!” he yelled, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
    Tom looked up from fiddling with a silver watch. “How do you know you thought of it at all?” Tom asked and went back to exploring the contours of the watch.
    David crinkled his forehead. He began, “Well, I started working on—”
    But Tom cut him off with a question of his own “Why did we send back watches?” Ten watches were lined up on the table next to Tom, but before the issue could be further addressed, Tom asked another question, “Whose handwriting?”
    David grew confused, “What?”
    Tom answered, not looking up from the watch, “Whose