Duncan looked at Ted Keen.  “Thanks Ted.”  Then he looked back at Olivia.  “This is my private lab or you’d have gotten nowhere.  The rest of the place is Top Secret and guarded by private security - mostly ex-marines.  Ted’s an ex marine too.  But this is my private lab.  Still a lot of classified stuff in here.  So anything you see is not to be discussed outside the door we are about to enter.  If you do is it treason.  Not my rules.  Mom and Dad have no influence here.  Really they never had any legal influence on me.  I was emancipated before I met them.  Long story for another time.”

“Dr Moran?  You know how long we haven’t heard from you?”  Ted’s tone was inquisitive and a little worried.  “Who’s Dr Miller?”

Duncan laughed.  “Probably my mom.  Regular force of nature with whom you can never win an argument.  Dad always says never to try.  And sorry about the time.  Uhm ... yeah.  Didn’t mean to take so long.”  He turned back to Olivia handing her the badge and explaining its purpose.  “Let’s discuss this inside.”

++++++++

[color=00a99d][i]“So, I guess you have questions.  The short answer.  Time.  I am working with time.  You ever read HG Wells?”  His face looked strained, like he knew things no man should know.

“You’re talking about the Time Machine story? I might have read it in high school, scientists invites friends and colleges to see an invention and they all think he’s crazy…” Her eyes wandered again despite herself, he couldn’t be building a time machine, looking for anything that would help explain what the entire operation actually did.
[/i][/color]

Duncan almost stared at Olivia.  “Yeah … book by HG Wells published in 1895.  They made a few movie adaptations.

Duncan almost tried to hug her, to reassure her.  But he feared she just might be angry enough to think he was coddling her.  Mrs Miller had been wrong - or rather half right - on one matter concerning Duncan.  She had described him as not being the hugging sort.  He never hugged people with both arms except his shrinks - which he hated doing - and his parents.  But he had, in fact embraced Olivia on more than one occasion.  He had even realized why the move had surprised Olivia and discussed it, almost conspiratorial in his explanation that his mother didn’t know everything.  Girls, especially cute ones, were a definite exception to the rule.  Though he politically asked if he could just limit his attentions to one dark haired girl named Olivia.  He had thought he was being cute.

Now, however, was not the time.  Olivia had every reason to be upset under ordinary circumstances.  But these weren’t those.  Instead he just looked at her,h is eyes a little haunted.  “I couldn’t call, but the explanation as to why …”  He shook his head.  “I’m not even sure where to begin.  Until several hours ago I wasn’t ready to tell anyone.  I’ve been sleeping for several hours.  I am still pretty exhausted.  But where I was there were no cell towers operating.  I debated long and hard whether to tell you before …”  He stopped.

Then he started up again.  “I need to go back to the beginning.  I am sure Mom told you I wasn’t always this intense.  Now I need to explain why.  To be honest I had been trying to avoid people … just because it would have been easier not to care.  Then you came along.  I almost chased you away.  For a time I wished I had - not because I didn’t like you, but because I did.”

He shook his head again.  “The beginning.  That will make things clearer.  What I am going to tell you - show you - you can’t tell anyone.  It would cause a panic, probably get us both killed.  The government would be all over this building.  It started when I was researching a quantum scanning system as a guidance system for an Alcubierre Drive.  I actually produced the negative energy collector they need for the star drive a few years ago.  During my experiments I realized I could scan across time.  Naturally I decided to look forward.

“Now the hard part was locking the scanner to a specific location on Earth.  The movement of any one geographical point on Earth through space and time is extremely complex.  The Earth spins, wobbles as the moon orbits, revolves in a helical fashion around the Sun as the Sun moves around the Milky Way as the galaxy moves towards Andromeda.  The trick was simply locking the scanner to a local center of gravity.  Simplified the process considerably.  Once I did that I had a chance to look into the future.”

Duncan’s face contorted.  “What I am going to show you, you can’t tell a soul.”  He led her over to a flat screen monitor and opened up a file.  It was a scene of nuclear devastation.  There was smoke and fires here and there.  The date and time were visible at the bottom of the screen along with geographical coordinates.

[color=f7941d]Jan 4, 2021 0845 AM
35.096, -106.616[/color]

“That is Albuquerque in just over 3 months.  Most of the northern hemisphere is - will be - like that.  Near as I have pinned it down the War hit us a couple hours after midnight.  The time I travelled to was well into the future after this.  The world is - was - will be - still in ruins.  One problem with transferring the mass of a human being.  They can’t just jump right back to the same instant they left.

“I’ll see if I can make that clearer.  Imaging time is like clear spring water over a bed of silt.  You can look at two different locations with clarity, so long as you don’t touch anything.  But to move a mass, imagine taking a bamboo pole and slamming into the silt at one location and then dropping the pole into the water at another point elsewhere.  The silt is disturbed on both ends and until it is allowed to settle you can’t see clearly.

He turned the display off.  “And now you know why I been so … “  He shrugged.  “I couldn’t tell my parents.  It wasn’t as though I could have done anything to prevent the war, not in 3 years.  And I couldn’t escape it - at least not back then.  Then … well I had a breakthrough 4 days ago.  I managed to send a drone through and retrieved it.  More to the point, IT sent the signal to reopen the portal.  That meant I could go through and return. So for the past few days … I have been in the future - where there are no working cell towers.  Satellites have fallen from the sky.  There was no electricity, food, water …”

He looked embarrassed.  “No excuse though.  I should have called and said I was going to be out of town and out of cell range or something.  It’s been killing me.  I have had no idea how to tell you all of this.  And I didn’t realize the full effects of sending mass through.

“And … it’s been killing me how to tell you any of this.  I can’t save the world.  My portal isn’t very large and if I fill it up I’ll be lucky to manage one jump, maybe two.  I have been hoping to reserve time for a second jump in case the first one goes bad.”