Chapter 7:

  — March 13, 2116, 15:22:22—

  Five years had passed since the first test for Project Chronos had been successfully completed.

  Neil could still see the original trusses if he tried hard enough—raw titanium, exposed coils, wires dressed by hand because there had been no other way. But the machine standing in front of them now bore no resemblance to that early skeleton.

  The Loom was finished.

  Its cowling swept outward in smooth fiberglass epoxy curves, uninterrupted, seamless. No right angles. No visible seams. It hadn’t been designed by an algorithm or optimized for manufacture. It had been sculpted. Every contour was intentional, debated, revised, sanded down, rebuilt. A machine made the slow way—by people who cared too much to let it be anything but perfect.

  Judith stepped closer.

  Neil watched her lift her hand and rest her palm against the cowling, fingers splayed, as if feeling for a pulse. Beneath that smooth shell lay the true heart of the system: thousands of miles of copper filament, wound tighter than anything had a right to be, layered and nested in geometries that made his head ache if he thought about them too long. The temporal capacitor. Quiet now. Patient.

  “We actually did it,” she said.

  Neil nodded. “We did.”

  Off to the side, a graduate student stood at the control station, eyes locked on the display. The speed at which Silas’ fingers navigated across the device were a stark contrast to the rest of his stoic features. The glowing text reflected off of his dark complexion. His short black hair with a tight curl reminded Neil faintly of wool. When he spoke, there was a steadiness to it—measured, precise—the kind of voice that didn’t rush to prove itself.

  “Silas,” Neil said, raising his voice just enough, “are we all set up to receive the first incoming specimen?”

  “Almost, Doctor Tyson,” Silas replied without looking up. “I just need to verify a few final parameters.”

  Beside him stood Maxine, tablet tucked against her chest. Straight jet-black hair fell down her back in a clean sheet, nearly to her waist. Small round glasses perched low on her nose. Her porcelain skin made the lab lighting seem harsher by comparison.

  She passed Silas the data slate. He took it—and paused, his eyes catching hers for just a fraction of a second too long. Long enough for Neil to notice. Long enough for Maxine to notice, too.

  Silas cleared his throat, smiled briefly, and got back to work, transcribing the revisions into the Loom’s interface.

  Neil turned back to Judith. “Once we power it on,” he said quietly, “that’s it.”

  She nodded. “The first anchor point.”

  “The moment the Loom becomes addressable,” he continued. “From that instant forward, it can receive incoming transmissions.

  "The real beginning.” she said.

  They both knew the plan by heart.

  Objects first. Metals. Textiles. Liquids. Organic samples. Then living systems—bacteria, plants, insects, mice. Larger mammals only after the data stabilized. Humans were a distant thought. A line they hadn’t even drawn yet.

  “The first specimen,” Neil said, “if all goes according to plan, should arrive precisely three minutes after initial activation.”

  Behind them, Maxine spoke up. “I’m sorry—can I ask something, Doctor Tyson?”

  Neil turned. “Go ahead.”

  She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “How can anything arrive before you’ve even sent it? How can the timeline accommodate a disruption that hasn’t happened yet?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Neil didn’t hesitate. “Because the universe already knows it will.”

  Maxine frowned. “How can that be?”

  “It can be because it must be,” Neil said calmly. “If the Loom allows the parameters, then the event is encoded into the timeline. It happens because it will happen. There’s no provisional state.”

  “But you could decide later not to send it back,” Maxine said. “After it arrives.”

  Neil shook her head. “Then the Loom would never allow the jump. You’d get an error before execution. You don’t get to surprise causality.”

  “Theoretically.” Judith interjected.

  Judith looked over at Neil. They had argued about this constantly over the years. They both had their own opinions on how it would work in real practice. He knew it wasn’t worth debating with Judith about it right now.

  “Or what if…” Maxine pressed the issue. “...what if the thing you sent back in time made some sort of change that kept getting altered every time it went back?”

  Neil reached down and picked up the aluminum bar resting on the desk beside him—their first test article. Smooth. Untouched.

  “Any object sent backward, like this chunk of aluminum” he said, “can’t cause any change that would cause progressive alterations throughout the iterations of the timeline. For example, it can’t interact with its earlier self without catastrophic implications.”

  Maxine nodded slowly. “Because of causality violations.”

  “Exactly,” Neil said. “Say I received this bar from the Loom and then accidentally dropped it onto its past version. And the original bar, which was previously perfect, gets dented or scratched.”

  “Then the future version is different,” Maxine said, following along.

  “And each successive time it went through the Loom,” Judith added. “It would keep getting more and more damaged until eventually, enough changes in its composition might lead to completely different outcomes, altogether.

  Judith continued. “And that’s the problem. You’ve violated causality. The universe won’t allow an object to become something other than what it already was when it made the jump.” She paused and looked at Neil. "At least, not without extreme repercussions."

  “If it did, for some reason. Let's say it's possible. What would happen?” Maxine asked.

  “Best case?” Neil said. “Assuming we’re correct with our theory. And I think we are.” He looked at Judith, who rolled her eyes. “The jump fails.”

  “Worst case?” she pressed.

  Judith’s expression darkened. “Matter annihilation. Or a temporal rift.”

  Neil exhaled. “Again, all theoretical.”

  “I don’t think so,” Judith said quietly.

  "What do you mean by a 'temporal rift'? Maxine went still. “Are you talking about split timelines?”

  “Stream A continues,” Judith said. “Stream B branches. Independent. Irrecoverable.”

  Neil shook his head. “There’s no evidence that can actually happen.”

  “There will be,” Judith said.

  Before Maxine could respond, Silas straightened. “All parameters verified,” he announced. “Power-up sequence revised and triple-checked. We’re ready.”

  The room shifted. The kind of silence that only happens when everyone realizes there’s no rehearsal left.

  Neil took a breath. “On my mark.”

  He watched Silas’s hand hover over the control.

  “Three.”

  Judith stood beside him, arms folded, eyes on the Loom.

  “Two.”

  The machine seemed to hold its breath.

  “One.”

  Silas tapped the keypad on his display.

  The Loom stirred. A familiar hum rolled through the chamber, deeper than Neil remembered--more controlled. Light traced along the seams of the cowling, faint at first.

  “In just a couple of minutes we should—” Silas began.

  The universe tore open, interrupting Silas' thought.

  A violent crack split the air, loud enough to rattle Neil’s teeth. Light exploded outward, white and blue and wrong, and space itself buckled in front of the Loom. Something fell through—someone—and hit the floor. Hard.

  Judith’s datapad slipped from her fingers, the screen shattering against the ferrocrete.

  She ran.

  “Judith—wait—”

  She was already kneeling, reaching out to turn over the body--

  The moment she touched it, energy surged through her. She cried out once, then collapsed, convulsing, before going still.

  Neil didn’t move.

  Two bodies lay on the floor.

  In horror, looking down on the chaos he noticed it. They had the same face. The same bone structure. The same piercing brown eyes.

  They were both Judith Hawking.

  And the Loom, returning to its normal state, hummed behind them, perfectly calm.