Buying Time

Where *are* we going? As best as Dr. Morozov can determine, we’re aiming for the early Eisenhower era, traveling backwards about eighty years in time. If everything goes as planned, Galen and I will end up at these exact spatial coordinates, where the sub-basement of the SM Tower exists in the here-and-now, but what used to be a residential town dotted with what were called “tract houses.” Levittown, New York, circa 1953.

So here we are. In just a few moments, multiple shaped charges of mini-thermonukes will implode this iron sphere, with us in it, down to the diameter of a neutron. We’ll collapse into a black hole and hopefully pop out into another era. I would never have let Galen talk me into it, but… for that ring.

Galen’s great-great-grandfather had passed down a golden ring as a family heirloom. The ring was sculpted in the shape of a snake biting its own tail — actually swallowing itself. It was the worm Ouroboros, the World Serpent, the leviathan with no beginning and no end. Engraved on the inside of the ring was: “The future lies in the past.”

Galen’s great-great-grandfather happened to be named Galen, too. Hence Galatea’s choice of of a male name and identity to assume. I can’t help wondering, though, whether Galen is thinking of becoming his own ancestor and starting the whole cycle that led to us being here in this iron ball.

Any minute now. I’m scared –