Temporal Exploring 101 - First Transit

I.6 Transit

I had resigned myself to the prospect of arriving hungry in the 20th century when Sara finally, in the aftermath of our meeting with the technicians, took pity on me and invited Mira and me to the cafeteria for an extended late breakfast. The place was pretty much deserted, which was no surprise for 10 a.m on a Sunday. We got a big table near the window all by ourselves, with a great view of the park and the lake. My stomach had been growling for the last two hours already, so I made the most of it and dug in heartily. We loaded our trays with cereal and yogurt and fresh fruit and ham and cheese and bacon and marmalade and large cups of steaming hot coffee and bowls of fresh orange juice.

"Ah Cathy, you have no idea how much I envy you," Mira remarked a bit wistfully. "I mean, you are going to meet Natty Fogg, for crying out loud."

I nearly choked on a piece of croissant. Sara had forbidden me explicitly to mention details about my assignment to anybody but her, and now here was Mira talking like she knew everything about it.

"First of all, we do not know for certain yet if the girl enrolled at St. Albert's is the same person as the author of the Red Notebook," Sara reminded her grad student. She turned toward me. "And there is no reason to look so stunned, Catherine. Mira will substitute for me as your contact and advisor in the course of your mission at times when I will not be available to act in that capacity. That is the reason why she has been informed about the specifics of your assignment, including all classified information."

"Right. I see." Actually, I felt relieved. This way, I would be able to talk about problems I might encounter during my assignment with Mira, a girl whom I considered a friend.

"It will be a useful experience for Mira too, to take on this kind of responsibility," Sara continued. "She will keep in contact with you on the ansible line and provide you with advice and additional information when necessary."

I looked at Mira. "That's awesome."

I was talking about the prospect of getting my very own personal ansible to work with, as much as about the chance to talk to Mira in case I should encounter any problem.

The ansible is more than just a device that allows a temporal explorer to communicate with their Temporal Instructor back home. While you are on a temporal assignment, it is also your lifeline, the beacon needed to bring you home, at the end of your assignment or in case of an emergency. It works by keeping a tiny pair of connected gateways open, constituted by a sequence of just a few strands of Fogg-Williams filaments. Not anywhere near enough to form a pair of portals, but enough to keep in contact and, if necessary, to communicate. Interestingly, the ansible was named after a fictional device first introduced in the novels of a 20th century author by the name of Ursula LeGuin.

"Yes, isn't that great?" Mira agreed. "You must tell me all about Natty Fogg on the ansible. I mean, if it's really her." She was bubbling with excitement. "Have you seen the so-called derivation of the Fogg solutions in the textbooks? They basically take the solutions as an ansatz and show that they satisfy Einstein's equations and the Dursnip equations. Not what I call a derivation." She laughed. "It must have taken an awesome intuition to come up with these solutions, just like that. I mean, nobody else did, even after they knew all about Dursnip theory. They had to consult Natty Fogg's Red Notebook from the ancient 1960s to come up with the Fogg-Williams bridge!"

Sara smiled at her graduate student's enthusiasm."It is true, Fogg must have possessed an astonishing intuition. But it is still possible that she had arrived at those solutions by actually solving the equations. There are hints of that in her notes. Also, it appears that at least ten pages had been torn from the Red Notebook before it was put into a box and buried in that park. Who knows, perhaps those missing pages included a proper derivation of the Fogg solutions."

We talked about that some more. Eventually, Sara paid for our breakfast and we got up to leave.

It was a warm day, and we enjoyed the brief hike through the park that stretched between the Temporal Physics Department and the Transit Facilities.

"I have been wondering," I mused. "How is it possible that the girl Natalie Fogg at that boarding school in the 1960s is about the same age as I am but does not attend university yet?"

"That's an excellent question, Catherine." Sara appeared to be in an exceptionally good mood. "You need to understand that the education system in the 20th century was quite different from what it is today. There existed an elaborate system of various types of secondary and tertiary schools you were required to attend before you were permitted to enroll at a university. At that time, you yourself would have been considered much too young to attend college or university. And Mira would have been in the process of applying at various universities, rather than working for her Ph.D. already" She shrugged. "I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that's what it was like, back then."

"Then why can't we track what happened with Natty Fogg after she graduated from that boarding school?" Mira asked. "All we would have to do is look up the school records."

"Sadly, this is not possible," Sara explained. She sighed. "During the Cataclysm and afterwards, so much data has been irretrievably lost. It is estimated that we lost at least 70% of all data, stored digitally or otherwise, worldwide. Anyhow, there are no surviving school records of St. Albert's to speak of."

At the Transit Facilities, Jacqueline and Lucian, the two young technicians we had met earlier that day, were already waiting for us. They led us into area T4a, a large room containing a transit control center, a transit pad and a small shower cubicle. I undressed and stepped under the shower.

When I was done showering, I put on the clothes that I was to wear in the remote time period. There were a blouse, a short skirt, a blazer and some unfamiliar-looking underwear. According to our historians, those were garments appropriate for a girl in the 1960s. I had been told that I would even have to wear a school uniform at St. Albert's.

The enormous, heavy suitcase that I was to take with me had already been placed on the transit pad. Lucian asked me to stand close to it on the pad. Slowly, the transit control monitors came alive. Faint beeps could be heard. What looked like a million of tiny LED lit up, their colors shifting from red to yellow to green.

The technicians were doing all the standard checks as the system went through the steps of starting up for my first temporal transit.

"Accelerator on 30% ... 70% now ... 100%."

"Laser systems online ... power injection starting .... complete."

"Loading transit parameter configuration Hart58374a .... done."

"Setting up the fields ... done."

"Fogg-Williams bridge initiated."

A faint blue light was illuminating the transit pad.

"Close your eyes, Catherine Hart," Sara Jenkins softly told me. "Close your eyes now, or don't."

This was a kind of ritual. Somebody, preferably your Temporal Instructor, was supposed to utter those words immediately before your first temporal transit. For good luck, or something. I had heard that some people preferred to keep their eyes open during transit, others preferred to close their eyes. It did not make any difference, or so I had been told.

I did not close my eyes.

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A / N : Thanks again for taking the time to read this new chapter. If you like it, consider voting and adding your comments and thoughts  below.

So, the adventure is about to begin. The next chapter will see Cathy arrive at St. Albert's Boarding School for Girls. Is it going to be a huge culture shock for Cathy, or just a minor one?