“If things have gotten to that point, then I don’t know that there’s much that anyone can do about it. Let’s love each other and make the most of the little time we have left, then.”
“Sorry, Armin, no. I’m not the type of person to give up without a fight. I grew up in a shantytown wondering each day if I’d survive til nightfall, and I struggled and clawed myself up from poverty and somehow got an education and a decent profession and a secure place in society. And, you know, if I could manage that, I’m not about to surrender to fate now. And, damn it, I won’t let *you* give up and die either!”
“So, what do you have in mind?”
“You’ll think this is crazy, but … ”
It turned out that SM had its own in-house R & D department, complete with resident “mad scientist,” a certain Dr. Bezumna Morozov. Her brainchild, Project Blueskies, was investigating what happened to matter compressed to superdensity, beyond the theoretical limits allowed by the laws of physics. She had tried embedding a small capsule of isotope iron, Fe-57, inside a sphere of powerful shaped-charge explosive. The implosive force had been calculated to be sufficient to create a miniature black hole, a tear in the fabric of space. The iron capsule had disappeared in a violent burst of gamma rays. Vaporized? Or pushed into an entirely different physical dimension?
Some intriguing evidence indicated that the object might have traveled backwards in time. The equations hinted at this possibility, and Dr. Morozov had, in fact, found something that looked like it could have been a small iron object, embedded in a nearby table top. Tests confirmed that it was the rare atomic weight 57 isotope of iron and it had about a month’s accumulation of rust on it. Had it traveled a month into the past?
Then there was the experiment by Dr. Morozov’s colleague, Professor Flatus. He had placed a pair of specially bred albino roaches within a hollow iron-57 sphere, then inserted that into the detonation chamber.
