Dr. Teodor Koskinen stood alone in the command room at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. The supercomputer whirred and hummed, processing data he’d prepared in secret. For four years, he’d been calculating this moment. A display of green code opened on the screen. The computer quieted. Four bloody years.
He glanced at the security monitors. No one was guarding the corridors toward the linear accelerator. He didn’t expect them to be. Security had grown used to his presence at night. They thought he was a strange old scientist, obsessed with his math and machinery. Koskinen downloaded the code onto his hard-drive and wiped the computer.
At the door, he paused, one hand on the light switch, the other pocketing the precious data. His fingers hovered over the ceramic pistol at his hip. He’d built the gun from a schematic in his mind. Instead of bullets, it fired a class 5 laser. This covert invention had been the first test to see if he, a man of nearly eighty, could complete the mission he’d devised the very day this terrible war began.
The physicist closed the lights. A smile crossed his lips and he raced to the LINAC. His next test would be to run 2870 feet in 3 minutes and 38 seconds. He’d been conditioning. He cleared the distance from command to LINAC as a warm up.
The elegant accelerator greeted him with a soft purr. He connected the hard-drive and waited a nervous minute for its computer to calibrate. The purr rumbled into a growl and Koskinen feared he’d miscalculated the necessary ladder operators. If he did not perform the correct annihilation and creation sequences, then he’d be torn apart. The screen lit up with code and Koskinen breathed out anxiety. He breathed in determination.
The particle accelerator seemed to breathe too. Electrodes around it heaved with energy. Koskinen couldn’t see the other end, a half-mile from where he stood, but he readied his old legs for the sprint. If he wanted this portal to be stable, he needed quantum harmonic oscillation. A bead of sweat rolled off Koskinen’s eyebrow. He watched the Hilbert space portrayed on the screen.
A rainbow of vectors aligned in wild parabolas as the computer configured 83 years of time frames. Koskinen’s eyes reflected the brilliant array. The accelerator slowly accepted his parameters until the matrix was temporally perfect. The growl rolled into a low-pitched pulsation. Electron commutation depended on exact ladder operators, and Koskinen was nothing short of exact. Position sensing required precise motor phases. Koskinen perspired precision. He bent his knees and flexed his fingers, preparing for the final sequence. An object opened on the screen with large letters requesting him to INITIATE SYNCHRONIZATION?
Koskinen opened another file from the hard-drive. He input the password he’d harbored for this code. The new object appeared, ELIMINATE BOUNDARY {T}?
Koskinen let out a breath and closed his eyes. He thought of how the EU had been so sure they could control the threat from the east. Then his homeland had been vaporized. The very power he wielded with physics was a razor at his throat. If he did not act, then all the evils of the last 80 years would go unabated. All because his scientific forefathers were as idiotic as they were ideological. Koskinen smashed the enter key.
In the same motion, he took off, out the open door to the parallel hallway. He heard the low-pulse tuning to a higher frequency. The lights above him dimmed and brightened. Static pulled his hair on end. Koskinen fought to keep his breath steady. His thoughts destabilized. He pictured all the moments this war might have ended. How NATO might have bombed the Kremlin when Russia first invaded Ukraine. How the president could have eliminated Putin in Alaska. How The UN should have known he would nuke Kyiv, then Warsaw, then precious Helsinki—
Koskinen’s foot caught on a metal grate. He stumbled, but used this momentum to crash forward with a cry. The timer in his head told him he’d been running 2 minutes. The marker on the floor told him he had 1000 feet to go. Koskinen screamed with rage as the screech of the accelerator tore through his eardrums.
Ahead he saw the radiant results of his life’s research. The door to the LINAC was blown apart and there swirled a mass of condensed energy. All his hours hating how science had been used to murder when it should have advanced Man into the future, all the weary tests would be worth it.
Well, thought Koskinen as he reached the warbling wormhole, I may never see the future, but I will correct the past. His mental timer reached 3:35 as he launched himself through. The radiation quavered and imploded behind him, but Koskinen dove face-first into the New Mexico dirt. He rolled onto his back, breathing heavy, considering which factors he must have misgauged to be 3 whole seconds off.
The sky above was dusty blue, freckled with faint stars. Dawn was at the horizon. Koskinen stood shakily, but when he patted his hip for his gun, it was gone. Panic struck and the esteemed scientist turned to run back down that hallway and find his fallen weapon.
That hallway was gone. Or rather, it hadn’t yet been built. In the distance, Koskinen saw instead, his targets, the dorm houses of scientists for the Manhattan Project. He stepped forward and his toe struck ceramic. At his feet, the laser pistol glistened. He retrieved it and moved towards the dorms. These geniuses would soon stir from their slumber, but before they did, four in their ranks would be dead. Dr. Teodor Koskinen didn’t need to look at the photographs in his breast pocket. He pressed his hand over them, sealing his promise with those names he’d damned a thousand times.
Fuchs, Hall, Greenglass, Seborer. Koskinen reached the first traitor’s home. You will never steal Stalin this power. You will never sully science with your sick sense of equality. Aika on oikeutta.
