The ELI Event B007R5LTNS by Dave Gash Read Free Book Online

they had lived for was far too important to be abandoned.
    Now on the side of the transmission chamber opposite the control room, Denes slowly turned to face it. He raised his other hand to the surface and rested his forehead on the chamber wall. His eyes began to well; his face twisted as he tried to fight the pain, but he could not. Finally, the tears came, and with them great, racking sobs. Thankful that Pan-Li could not hear him from the control room, he slowly banged his fists on the chamber wall.
    With everything powered up, Pan-Li began to run diagnostics. He glanced up once and noticed he couldn’t see Denes, but thought nothing of it.
    Although they had not been to the laboratory in several weeks, Pan-Li noted with satisfaction that the environmental filters were doing their job. There was not a speck of dust anywhere on a panel, screen, or instrument. The coordinate processor diagnostic came back clean, and he started it again just to be safe. Nothing happened in a temporal displacement without precise space-time coordinates. At least, nothing good.
    Pan-Li sat and adjusted the angle of the diagnostic program’s monitor. In a half dozen separate frames, it presented volumes of information—columns of numbers, charts and graphs, three-dimensional models—at incredible speed, most of which he absorbed in real-time.
    As the diagnostic ran and settled into a normal, error-free pattern, Pan-Li became almost mesmerized by the colorful, active display. Watching the screen, he relaxed a bit and found himself reflecting on the path that had brought them to this point.
    It was only a few years ago that Borok and Aurora had brought Pan-Li, Denes, and a few other respected researchers into the small, nameless, more-or-less secret society of government dissenters. They were not, as many characterized them, categorically opposed to everything the government stood for, only to the unjust practices carried out by a few local tyrants such as their own Vice Governor Lokus.
    Neither were they always united in every cause. Some, especially the younger ones like Kyr, were often sympathetic to the Federals. This was due in large part, Pan-Li believed, to their having been born into a civilization already controlled by that institution. While this caused dissention among the dissenters, it was allowed, even encouraged. The society had always recognized the scientific value of honest debate.
    The development of practical time travel brought with it the particularly critical choice of whether to use the technology for the betterment of the world or to ban its use altogether. There seemed to be no middle ground; scientific thought was polarized on the issue as though it were the only one that mattered. Perhaps it was.
    Borok’s group had been at the forefront of development, conducting highly successful experiments in their own laboratory, when the government issued the ban on upstream research. The edict shook the scientific community to its core and forced every researcher to side either with the government or against it, to choose between the government’s version of “patriotism” or actual independent thought. Sadly, only a few chose the latter.
    Those few had all but divorced themselves from mainstream science. Before the Federals could do it, they dismantled their own laboratory, collected their records, and moved everything into this private underground site far outside the city’s shielded perimeter. Against the government’s edict, against the advice of their peers, against everything but their own sense of morality, they defied the ban and covertly continued their research, and their debate over its efficacy and ethics.
    Of course, the government had its own laboratories and its own research teams, but that was “legitimate.” Not because it was any different from the society’s, but simply because it was officially sanctioned. Oh, there were certain restrictions on the use of the technology even within the