Replay - The Secret of the Pyramids - 1. Chapter 1

The guard greeted me briefly but friendly, as I entered the security lock.

“Good luck!”, he added after the biometrical scanner confirmed that I was indeed Phillip Marten and had the required access level.

“I hope I don't need to depend on luck,” I said, smiling, and continuing my way through the maze of subterranean hallways. However, the calm and worry free tone I tried to give my voice did not reflect my true feelings. I was actually quite nervous and looked forward to what was about to come with a mixture of anxiousness and anticipation.

“Good morning, Phil! You’re early.”

Lisa, Dr. Lisa Bolzano to be exact, head of the ATR project and my best friend, approached with a smile on her face.

“And a good morning to you!”, I replied promptly and gave her a hug. “Yeah, you know, I didn’t sleep too well, to be honest.”

She eyeballed me thoughtfully and asked “Nervous?”

“A little, yes. It’s not every day that I’m lab rat number one for a bunch of crazy scientists”, I retorted, jokingly.

She laughed but continued in a serious tone. “It will all work seamlessly, you’ll see. After all, we've done nothing but calibrate, test, and calibrate again for the last six months.”

I shrugged. “Which doesn’t exclude the possibility that an error has crept into some equation, or that our theories are simply wrong.”

Lisa stopped walking and gave me a slightly concerned look. “You don’t want to change your mind, Phil, do you?”

I raised my hands appeasingly and put on an impish grin. “No, absolutely not! I would never skip the opportunity for this journey, no matter how dangerous!”

“That’s my Phil, how I know and love him.”

She used the word love purely platonicly, of course. Being forty-three, she could have been my mother, with me only being twenty-four years old. On top of that, my interest in the female gender did not spike during puberty in the way it does for most boys. And by that, I mean jerking off to lightly-dressed women in a magazine and downloading porn from the internet. Well, I did all that, but the pages that drew me in were those showing fit lads.

Unfortunately, I was still single. Maybe this had to do with the fact that I hadn’t exactly spent the last four years like you would imagine a boy my age would. I graduated from university at twenty with a master’s degree in quantum physics. Two years later I completed my doctorate at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This was all a little dubious for my poor grandma. I always had to explain to her that knowledge transfer simply worked faster in the year 2086 than it did in her youth.

As a postdoc, I stayed with CERN and joined the ATR project, Advanced Time Research. Two years ago, I started working more closely with Lisa, and over time we became good friends.

She quickly realized I fit the profile for subject zero, the first human to undergo time travel. I was ordinary, neither very attractive nor terribly ugly – at least I hoped the latter was true. My hair was brown and cut relatively short, I stood six feet tall, slim build, but not without muscles.

I did look differently a few years ago. I used to neglect fitness during my time at university. The word ‘workout’ did not appear in my everyday vocabulary. This however changed with my selection as subject zero, which entailed a thorough training program, including physical exercise.

To cut a long story short – correct clothing provided, I would fit easily into any place and especially any time.

A glance at my watch led me to interrupt my train of thought. It was 9:55 AM or in other words, T minus thirty-five minutes.

“Okay, Lisa. I need to go change. See you later.”

The locker room, as we jokingly called it, was way more than that. It was the equipment laboratory, which provided not only essential tools for my journey but also featured remade clothing from many centuries. The room was big, almost square. It was laid out in different sections separated by shoulder-high dividers.

I glanced at the glass cabinets in the first section of the lab. They contained robes, coats, t-shirts, suits, and even underwear, all ordered by year of use. Suddenly I noticed that the space reserved for underwear was empty from the 17th century down. That was odd. Did the history books not contain any information about these essential garments? Or did people back then just not wear any?

Before I could elaborate on this idea, I was interrupted by Dr. Carrol, head of the lab. He approached, examining me from head to toes.

“Good morning! I hope you’re well rested and ready to go, Phillip?”

Although I didn’t sleep much, I actually felt well rested. It may just have been the adrenaline though.

“I think I'll get by,” I replied with a disarming smile.

“Then let’s not waste any time,” he responded in his flawless Oxford English. “I’ve already prepared everything.”

The dressing process was planned down to every last detail. It was supervised by Dr. Carrol and his assistant. I appreciated that because I was convinced I had forgotten something with my nervosity rising minute-by-minute.

The first step is disinfection. After taking off all clothes, I was showered with an ill smelling fluid. It was designed to kill off any bacteria and other germs I might carry on my skin. I had also been taking special antibiotics for a couple of days. All these precautions were to ensure I wasn’t introducing any foreign micro-organisms from the present into the time I was traveling to.

The fact that I obviously was naked during this cleaning procedure didn't phase me much. All bystanders were either female or over forty. Or both, like Dr. Carrol's assistant.

The boys my age often worked as engineers or research assistants. They had either no access to the high-security area, or they worked in the more technical departments, which I seldom had the chance to visit. That’s understandable, given that the complex had a footprint of over one square mile and spanned multiple levels above and below ground. At the moment, we were located at level U5, which is five stories below ground or approximately 160 feet.

The second step is dressing. Or dressing up, I should say. Luckily they already featured underwear in 1886, the time I was traveling to. It didn’t matter though. After all, I did not intend to drop my pants during my short trip! So I got simple, ordinary boxers. Next up were my new clothes, starting with a white undershirt.

That was not part of the usual costume back then, as Dr. Carrol clarified, but it wouldn’t be visible underneath the other garments. Besides, the shirt had an essential additional function. Special nano-fibers were weaved into the fabric. Upon a strong and sudden physical force, they temporarily contracted to an ultra-hard, crystalline structure. In other words, the protective vest of the late 21st century, that should guard me against a potential attack by knife or gun. Though that would hardly be necessary.

After all, my mission was simple. Arrive in one piece, validate time and place against the target coordinates, take a walk around, and return in one piece. Sounds simple enough – except for the thousands of things that could go wrong.

Now fully dressed I took a look at the mirror. On top of the underwear, I had received a dark grey suit along with a shirt and black tie. Black shoes finished things off. Overall, a man’s typical attire of the 19th century. Even though I felt like I was on the way to an important business meeting – but in the dreams of my great grandfather, or a few greats more.

“You look good!”, Dr. Carrol commented and proceeded to the next, much larger section of the lab. It was quite busy here. Scientists were chatting, having lively discussions, and focused on their computer terminals.

The center of the room featured a large table, in which all kinds of calibration and measurement devices were integrated. On top of it was the unarguably most crucial piece of my equipment. My return ticket.

It was the Time Traveler’s Essentials Kit, in short TTEK. The kit, jokingly also called the time traveler’s dressing-case, consisted of three components.

The device’s full name somehow reminded me of one of those assemble-it-yourself items from a furniture store. With the slight difference that it was custom made and worth more than the whole furniture store, real estate included.

I remembered that when I rented my first flat, I was trying to put together a closet from all its single parts to the finished product, deciphering the included ‘instruction manual’. The result did, in fact, resemble the glossy pictures. Unfortunately, it fell apart a few days later.

Probably the most notable component of the device were a pair of metal bracelets, each a third of an inch thick and four inches long. That in itself was a little unconventional, and neither fitted the current fashion, nor the 19th-century one. It was, however, the best available compromise between inconspicuousness and functionality. The latter being essential for my return.

At the beginning of our experiments, the electronics required for jumping back home were as big as a small car. Over the last few years, the team succeeded in miniaturizing the equipment, profiting from major advances in nanotechnology.

In spite of my understandable nervousness, statistically speaking the chances of me reuniting with friends and family were high. Since the project had entered its crucial phase, twenty-three space-time tunnelings had been conducted. Whereas the first ten experiments ended up with the test subject lost – non-human of course, the last six were all successful.

The TTEK’s second component was far less flashy. The visor lenses were electronic contact lenses. They were able to project environmental information, warnings, and other useful data directly into my field of view. So I didn’t need an external screen, which would make looking inconspicuous much easier. And that was important if I wanted to observe people and their 1886 life without attracting attention.

The bracelets were last serviced this morning, as the control screen of the instrument desk indicated. But first, I put on the visor lenses. This didn’t go without some tears. My good eyesight did not require me to wear contacts.

In the meantime, Carrol removed the bracelets from their tray. The desk’s electronics acknowledged it with a beep. I took them, strapping them onto my arms. The interlocks snapped closed. Beneath the sleeves of my shirt they would be hidden from curious eyes.

“Connection established,” a computer modulated female voice purred in my ear. This was Elisa, the core and heart of the TTEK. Elisa was a VI, which stands for Virtual Intelligence. She resided within the silicon chips of the bracelets, coordinating all the TTEK’s functions. Her synthesized voice reached me through the micro-speaker in my right ear, the TTEK’s third and final component.

Elisa was basically a pimped computer, able to adapt its programming to external parameters within certain boundaries. That was especially important for calculating the extremely complex four-dimensional equations that vary with the space-time continuum around me… but I digress. Anyways, she would make sure that I was able to return back home, all limbs attached.

“Look, Dr. Bolzano is giving the final press conference.” One of the employees had broadcast the TV program on a big screen, and everyone stopped to listen to Lisa’s speech.

Apparently, it was question time.

“… however the return journey will be distinctly more difficult. Getting there, it’s enough to lock in the space-coordinate as precisely as possible. That’s essential. We really don’t want Dr. Marten to materialize hundreds of feet above the ground, let alone somewhere in deep space. In contrast, it is totally fine to have a coarse interval for the time-coordinate. A deviation up to multiple weeks or even months is acceptable.

Now, for the return journey, this looks a little different. We have to know not only his exact location in space but also in time, with a precision of a few milliseconds. Picture it this way. It’s as if we had to search the whole globe for him, armed with just a flashlight. It would be impossible. So Dr. Marten has to light a kind of temporal bonfire for us to find him.

Any other questions?”

Of course the journalists had further questions.

“Why do you need to know Dr. Marten’s location? Can’t he carry the devices for jumping back with him.”

“No, it’s not quite that easy. First, each space-time tunneling, or time jump for the layman, needs large electronics and vast amounts of power. The further and the more precise the jump is the more power is needed. Multiple floors of this building are reserved solely for the required electronics.

Second, it’s impossible to travel to the future in the first place. And that’s exactly what our present time is from the perspective of 1886. Which means we really have to pick him up, so to speak.”

“Why is your test person so young?” was the next question.

I stopped listening to the broadcast. I was quite familiar with all the questions and answers, having worked towards this day for two years.

The last question was the one I asked Lisa first when she proposed that I should become subject zero. The reason is that nobody knows for sure what effects time travel would have on the human nervous system. Experiments with mice had however shown that young animals did recover quicker.

“T minus ten minutes,” Elisa informed me. High time to make my way to the transfer chamber. I bade farewell to Dr. Carrol and left the equipment lab.

Last night I had already said goodbye to my family. Although I would have rather skipped this step of my departure prep, it was expected of me. Naturally, there had been tears, my mother cried. My father saw the whole thing a little more relaxed and joked that I should take care not to accidentally kill one of my ancestors.

Of course, there was no reason to be concerned about a time paradox like that. Changes to the past wouldn’t have any effect on our present time. Technically speaking, it wasn’t our past, but a parallel universe differing from ours only in the time-coordinate. Granted, that was a scientific subtlety, but reassuring to know nonetheless.

Lisa seemed to have finished the press conference. I met her in the corridor on my way to the central lab.

“Oh, Phil! Already dressed to the nines. Looks good on you.”

Why did everyone find I looked good in this pseudo-business-like retro outfit? I didn’t see it.

By now we were standing in the center of a half-spherical chamber about twenty feet in diameter. This was the transfer chamber, located in the middle of the central lab. On a successful transfer, everything in this sphere would be transported to the destination of the induced space-time rift. Likewise, an equal volume from the destination would be transported back into the chamber. That’s how I would return later.

After having received numerous encouraging comments and handshakes in the central lab, it was now time for Lisa and me to part ways as well.

“Best of luck to you, Phil! And remember that…” She broke off. There was just too much she wanted to say. Yet, everything had been said. I was prepared for all possibilities. At least those our team were able to imagine.

“Just… take care,” she said and gave me one last firm hug.

“Sure, don’t worry too much about me. I can take care of myself. And in a few hours tops, I’ll be back. See you then!”

“T minus five minutes.” The announcement came simultaneously from my in-ear speaker and the lab’s speaker system. The latter added, “please clear the transfer area.”

Lisa turned around for a second and waved before leaving the chamber. Then the doors closed.

The room was now completely empty, except for a small white capsule made of foamed material. Its upper half could swing open providing space for one person. I took my seat.

The capsule's main purpose was to absorb a fall. Because the space-coordinate was only accurate to a few dozen feet, we would target a couple of feet above the ground. This reduced the chances of me materializing underground. Just in case, the capsule came with a small breathing mask and a digging tool.

Time passed tenaciously slow while I was waiting with a pounding heart, listening to the noises outside. In the meantime, I had closed the capsule and given green light to the central lab.

“T minus thirty seconds. Target coordinates 53° 52' 37" northern latitude, 10° 42' 00" eastern longitude fixed,” Elisa reported.

This cryptical geographical data also had a name: The German city of Lübeck. Or rather an adjacent forest. The city was chosen not only because detailed descriptions and maps from the target time were available, but also because it was my birthplace. I was really looking forward to seeing what life there was like, two centuries ago.

“T minus ten seconds.

Engaging countdown.

Nine… Eight…”

It was getting serious. My heart was in my mouth. Condemned to idleness and hoping, I sat tight.

“Five… Four…”

It was getting loud around me.

“Two… One…”

Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. A fraction of a second later, it felt as if my whole body was torn apart in every which direction at the same time. And blasted into a thousand pieces.

---

Slowly I regained consciousness.

My first sensation was one of heat. It felt as if I was baking in a furnace.

Then the feeling in my arms and legs started to come back. Mainly in the form of what seemed like a thousand needles poking my skin.

I panted for air and tried to move my limbs. That barely worked because I was still in the capsule.

I couldn’t yet see anything. Or maybe there was no light.

Yes, of course, the power must have gone out.

I ignored the burning in my arms and tried to pat the wall for the main switch. I finally found its recess. With much effort, I was able to pull the switch. Earlier, in the lab, I did that with two fingers. Now I needed to use the strength of my entire arm.

Let there be light! As a dim bulb sprang to life, I was able to make out the interior of the sphere again. The small diagnostic display to my left turned on. It flickered for a while before the picture stabilized. However, it wasn’t very sharp.

No, I corrected myself, I just didn't see clearly.

Okay, you’ve got time. Take it slow.

I closed my eyes again and tried to relax as much as possible given my uncomfortable posture.

A few minutes must have passed when I was startled. I almost fell asleep.

The pain had decreased to static in my nerve cells. It was much more bearable now. Opening my eyes my vision was reasonably clear again. Only that feeling of heat was still getting to me.

My gaze jumped to the display again.

The first line was an error message. TTEK energy drained. Self-recharge finished in about two hours.

Okay, that wasn’t too bad. The energy in the TTEK’s high-performance battery had volatilized, but it would be up and running again in a while. So no reason to worry here.

The display also indicated the time jump took place about fifty minutes ago. So I had been unconscious for quite a while.

Finally, there was a warning indicating that the emergency parachute had deployed due to the drop height being 525 feet above ground level.

Wow! That was way too much. I shouldn’t have materialized more than fifty feet above the ground, but apparently calibration had been a little inaccurate. Well, not everything could go according to plan, right? Maybe it was the high ratio of living tissue?

Anyway, now wasn’t the time for smart speculations. Rather it was time to get out!

Just how come it was so damn hot in here? I was sweating copiously in my retro suit. Perhaps I should have packed some deodorant, I joked to myself.

I quickly took a look at the environmental data on the diagnostic display.

>> Air breathable, standard composition.

>> Outside temperature 115° Fahrenheit.

How the hell was that possible?! We did target midsummer, though it surely couldn’t have been that hot back then. The sensor must have been damaged when the capsule hit the ground, right? Then again, there was this scorching heat in here.

Well, there was only one way to find out. I pulled the locking latch and the air-tight seal parted with a plop.

The capsule’s upper half swang open, clearing the view of a deep blue sky. So far so good.

What irritated me much more, however, was what I found at my feet – and what expanded as far as I could see.

Sand!

Everywhere and all around me, sand. My stomach dropped.

It couldn’t be true. It was simply impossible. Where the heck was I?