"Entering surface area," a mechanical voice intoned as the small, square-shape lift came to a stop at the top of the turbo shaft. "Please put on enviromasks and take all other necessary precautions to guard against ash contamination." "Where's our masks?" Quentin looked around nervously, seeing Thorndyke's hand about to tap the sensor pad to open the exterior door. "We don't need any. The air's clean enough to breath now. They're opening the dome up to unrestricted use in three days." "Yeah, but ... that's Sunday." "Quentin, if it's clean enough for Sunday, it's clean enough for now." "Well, I guess," he muttered, looking as if he wanted to hold his breath while Thorndyke broke the airtight seal. There was a slight pop as the dome air rushed inside. "You smell that, Quentin? Thorndyke paused before stepping outside. "Oh God! I knew it was a mistake--" "No, breathe deeply. That fresh, wonderful smell." Wincing, Quentin allowed the sweet smell of grass and trees to filter through his nose. He looked in wonder at Thorndyke, who stared back equally in awe. "What is that? I've never smelled anything like that before." "Whatever it is, it's wonderful. I'm going to be spending a lot of time up here." Along asphalt-surfaced roadways connecting the deserted buildings of the strange surface world, Thorndyke and Cottle strolled through the old city of Washington, D.C. Most of its buildings had been damaged during the Big War, but the city--no longer the capital of a united nation--was spared the full brunt of attack. Atlanta, the new capital of the U.S. East, was almost completely destroyed, as were strategic industrial and transportation centers throughout both countries. Washington, which had been transformed into a cultural and historical center, suffered less destruction than it might otherwise have. Many of its damaged buildings were meticulously restored while the two nations struggled through the Great Recovery, the period of rebirth and re-development following the war. But any further work was abandoned early in the twenty second century when the ash became more virulent and more pervasive, eventually forcing the population underground. Only in the last ten years, since the great dome was completed and the decontamination process begun, had any further work been done to restore the damage that remained to the city. Washington--now The District--would never again be the city it once was, but in a world increasingly devoted to images of the past, a relic, even one as damaged as this, was still regarded as a national treasure. "I think that's the White House," Quentin pointed to a boxy white building surrounded by an iron fence. "Yeah. Come on. Let's go have a look." "You know, Paul," Quentin said as they pushed their way through a creaking gate and headed across the circular driveway leading to its entrance. "As cool as this is, I still need to talk to you about what I found." "I want to hear it, Quentin. But we couldn't talk below. They'll never think of searching this time strata to find us, if they're looking." "If who's looking?" "The ones who killed Mitchell. It wasn't Robenalt, he was set up." "I know," Quentin said. "And I think I know how." "You cracked the code?" "Well, I found the hidden file--and some of it was encrypted like you thought," Quentin recounted blandly while they moved through the building's vacant interior, occasionally letting their eyes drift to some unique feature or important historical room. "My guess is Robenalt stumbled onto something while he was fooling around with another problem, and downloaded part of it into his personal data files until a security program kicked in and shut the dataflow down. He didn't fully understand what he had, but knew it was something big." "How big?" "Jim's a fine mathematician ... was a fine mathematician," Quentin's voice trailed. "But this is something that's beyond even me. Best I can figure, it's an active logic system--new, completely revolutionary, really high concept stuff. It's like making the jump from an abacus to a mainframe supercomputer in one single step. And here's the best part. It's internal symmetry is so simple, so clear when you first understand it, that it's really revolutionary only in the way it takes already existing theorems and stands them on their heads to get an entirely new logic system. I'm still not convinced it really works, but if it holds up you can find algorithmic shortcuts to do things with it you'd never even dream of before!" "Like playing with Beta Light images to put a new face on someone else's body?" "Yes, that would be possible. A system like this could handle the multi-quadrillions of variables a second necessary to insert a 3-D image into a holographic scene." "And invent something that didn't happen." "Sure. It's just a matter of cutting and pasting snippets of images from different events into the target image. The more you have to work with, the more convincing the blend. With enough data it could appear seamless. Of course, the real trick will be to computer generate an entirely fictitious event, you know, create some kind of interactive hologram taking the essence and personality of some real figure from the past, then combine it with a formula that interpolates the missing action. That's probably not going to happen until the next new revolutionary system comes along, but for the time being, yeah. If it really works, you could pass off a pretty good fake, as long as you had the data." "And if there aren't enough images to recombine?" "It'd look pretty fake, if you knew what to look for. That's the key. I imagine the first time it's done no one would really suspect unless the flaw was so obvious it looked suspicious. But something that's less than perfect, yeah, you could still get away with it until everyone caught on that there was a new logic system and knew what to look for." "Where did this new theory come from? Who's work is this?" "I don't know. I don't know anyone at the Institute--faculty or staff--who's capable of something like this. It's beyond even Ed Kolby, and that's saying something. He's the best mathematician I know. Whoever thought this up was a real genus." "Well then, if not someone at the Institute, who could it be?" "Don't be an elitist, Paul." Quentin chided playfully. "Remember, Einstein was a patent clerk." "I want you to go back to the archives Quentin, dig deeper. There's got to be a trail buried in there somewhere." "Lo siento, amigo. No can do. I've maxed out everything I've had access to." "Try this," Thorndyke said, handing him a small disk. "What's this?" "It'll take you any place you want." "Just how does a GS3, two weeks on the job, come into possession of a magic key?" Quentin pondered, turning the dime-sized disk between his thumb and fingers. "I've been at B.E.T.A. over a year and my security level's a 5. This thing had to come from someone at Hollock's level." "Not 'someone'." "Hollock gave you this? Just handed it over, like that?" "I've left a partial code-strand with Ruth, the missing piece to the key. You'll need that to activate it. She doesn't know what it is--no need to tell her. She thinks it's an access marker for a file I control that you want to skim through for your work. I left a voice-call with her apartment so she'll get it when she comes back tonight, or you can call the apartment and retrieve it yourself. I'm sure you share protocols." "You left the code on a home security unit information channel?" "Sometimes it's best to hide things in plain sight. It's the last place anyone looks." "You are just a bundle of surprises today, my friend," Quentin chuckled, glancing around. "Say, know where we are?" "Judging by the shape of the room, the Oval Office. Imagine what it must have looked like back then." The room, like most surface building interiors, was a hollow shell stripped of its furnishings. In many buildings all that remained were bare walls, often with large gaping holes, stripped-down floors and crumbling ceilings. Piles of debris were often scattered about with twisted shards of glass or metal poking through the dilapidated walls to tear at flesh and clothing. The White House had been restored better than most, but it was still little more than an empty caricature of its glory days. All that was missing were the light fixtures, carpets, wall hangings and furniture destroyed in the war or looted in the chaos that followed--and the people who inhabited it. The ghosts of every president of the old United States from John Adams, its first occupant, to Gregory Dauchot, its last, still walked the halls, brought out from time-to-time and put on display by the Beta Light images that recorded their every movements. But like everything else in the restored city, they were not real, only shadows of the past. Wordlessly, the two intruders took one long, last look around the room, and left the shadows to themselves. Order TimeShift on Amazon.com Read and Excerpt from the novel here on AFM Visit the TimeShift website

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