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Pribadium and Sora retreat into the auxiliary control room because that’s
the most interior sector of the base. It’s deep in the asteroid. The rest of
it is slowly being torn apart by the tidal forces of the dimensional barrier
collapse. They won’t be able to stay here forever, though. They need to come
up with a plan. Or rather, she will have to come up with it, because as
intelligent as Sora is, he doesn’t know much about this stuff.
“Can you freeze time?” he suggests.
“Freeze time?” she echoes.
“Yeah. Just to give you more time to think of a permanent solution. I
saw that in a TV show once. The ship was about to be destroyed by a big
laser so they created a time bubble. I think they spent something like fifty
years in there, which for people like me, is a long time, but that’s barely
a blip for someone like you. Is that possible?”
Pribadium thinks about it. Yes, of course it’s possible. She is a
time scientist. The problem is, what she needs is not in this room. This
controls the lab itself. It doesn’t have any time tech in it. The main time
lab is presently under siege. “It will be dangerous. It may already be
destroyed. We’ll be jumping blind.” She offers her hand.
He takes it without hesitating, letting her teleport them both to the lab.
The walls are buckling. Particulates are falling from the ceiling. The
tremors make it impossible for Sora to stay on his feet. She only can
because of her advanced substrate. While he lies down on the floor and
braces himself, she teeters over to the workstation and starts running
through the process. It’s too long, it’s taking too long. She should have
imagined this could happen, and been better prepared.
Just as the airlock buckles and bursts open, the bubble engages, preventing
the air from escaping, and saving their lives. She dives down to make sure
Sora’s okay.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he assures her. He stands and looks at the hole. “It
worked.”
“Sort of,” Pribadium says. “In my rush, I didn’t set the differential to be
wide enough. For every minute that passes, a second passes out there. We
probably only have about half an hour before this sector collapses too. I
can’t raise the differential now. I would have to cancel it and start again.
And if you were thinking about transporting the bubble back to the aux room,
that’s not possible either. I only delayed the inevitable.”
“I wasn’t seriously suggesting we spend fifty years in here,” he explains.
“You’re a genius, and if this is the main time lab, I’m sure you have
everything you need to figure it out. Thirty minutes should be more than
enough. I believe in you.”
Pribadium takes a deep breath, appreciating what he’s saying. It’s at least
not so dire, but as she looks around, she’s seeing all the damage. All of
her tech is lined up against the walls for feng shui reasons. The time
machine, the time reverser, even the dimensional generators; they were all
decimated prior to their arrival. There’s just nothing that will—the
timechairs. They’re in the middle of the floor, intact. She looks over at
him with sad eyes. “Our only hope is to send our consciousnesses back to
their younger bodies. The only safe place is in the past. This timeline is
defunct.”
“That will undo all of this,” he determines. “Runaway and Sugar will never
exist.”
“No, they will,” Pribadium contends. “They left the universe entirely, which
permanently protects them from timeline collapses. They’ll still be out
there, and if they ever return, they will find the new timeline, but...what
will that timeline look like?”
He offers her his hand like she did before. “Let’s go find out...together.”
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