Escaping from the clutches of a Parallel security force with her duplicate in tow, Mariah flees to relative safety, trying desperately to get back to her world before everything comes crashing down around her slim shoulders.
...
"She took the first test, as she told us she would, and returned from it. The second test she took, she did not survive. Mariah died experimenting with the portal. Her body is in a state of constant flux now, she is trapped in what is known as a Causal loop and the only way to break free, is for her to make a change in her own timeline to interrupt the Moment where she caused the initial break. Nobody else can effect her timeline, so there is no way for her to break free."
"The portal developed is now in use in labs around the world as it allows us to experiment with temporal energy and wavicles in a way never before imagined. As a Time Travel device, it is a bust. You can only use it to effect your own timeline, and only effect your timeline in such a way that does not change anything that has become fixed in your timestream. Otherwise, you get stuck in the same Causal loop as Mariah did."
"So Mariah Douglas is not actually dead then?" Came the question from one of the students.
Doctor Scott sighed. "No, her body is frozen in a kind of stasis – radiating Cerenkov radiation and at a stable temperature of -198 centigrade. She has been this way for more than ten years now, and we have no way of effecting her timeline to break the loop."
...
Kitty was laid on a small bed to sleep off the medicine as Mariah, Trisha and Ian took delivery of the three truckloads of parts that JJ had arranged for them. The warehouse was full of large boxes and a few pallets of equipment that would soon become a replacement cannon to get Mariah home, with a passenger.
Mariah helped as much as possible, with Trisha keeping an eye on their sleeping patient while Ian began to assemble the components. The Cyclotrons he had gotten were not anywhere near as strong as the ones back home, but with the added enhancements Mariah knew how to do, they could still generate the cascade to make this work.
She was busy filling up the plastic torus with deionized water as he unpacked and rolled each cyclotron into position, hooking each one up to power and running it through some self-tests to ensure it was ready. They had fourteen cyclotrons, but only needed twelve to make this work. The other two were spares.
By the time she had filled the torus with water and had carefully hauled it into position, held in place by steel struts to hold it in the air at the required height, all twelve cyclotrons were active and in standby.
The final part was to wrap the silver conductive mesh around the torus, which would take hours of carefully weaving the thin silver wire around the entire mesh, and then setting up the computer to process the Cyclotron pulses into the correct pattern to make the Cerenkov flash a reality and generate the portal.
Ian brought them all some dinner once the sun set, and then he and Trisha vanished for about a half-hour as Mariah began to slowly bring up the ancient computer and begin programming it with the required sequence. She knew that he was off fucking Trisha, possibly being quite rough with her, and Mariah felt the same need to be taken and used. Now was not the time though, she had to finish this so she could get home. From what Ian had said, it would take less than a day for FedSec to figure out what had happened and then track the shipments down.
She looked up as Trisha came back into her field of vision, walking slightly wobbly, with a satisfied smile on her face, then began to work on the final calibrations of the computer alongside Mariah. Ian came in a few minutes later, carrying the wetsuit and a length of silver piping that would have to be sewn onto it so that Kitty could survive transit without adverse effects.
She sat down with the wetsuit, bolt of nylon thread, and the silver piping, then began to work, carefully sewing the matrix onto the suit as she watched her duplicate sleep.
...
Kitty woke up with a start, and sat up. She was on a small cot, in a large dark area, lit only by some dim lights. There was some sort of big machine close to her,but this was not FedSec. She was naked, bandaged up where FedSec had cut her, and she was not hurting anywhere nearly as much as she remembered.
She got to her feet, mindful of the other her sitting on a chair not too far away, fast asleep. Nearby were two other people, a naked dark woman and a clothed white man, sleeping in each others' arms. She didn't know them. Kitty had to get home.
She looked around and then grabbed a trench coat which she slipped over her shoulders and tied closed, to hide her nudity. She made her way quietly to the door, but was stopped by her own voice.
"Where are you going, Kitty?"
She turned to see her duplicate standing a few feet away, as quiet towards her as she had been to them.
"I have to get back to JJ, and my children." She said.
Her duplicate shook her head. "JJ is gone, Kitty. He helped us to get you out of the FedSec building, but to do so he had to make a big distraction. He made sure your children are safe, they will grow up with Miss Lorena. You remember her?"
Kitty nodded, feeling the weight of the world settling on her shoulders, which began to slump.
"They will be safe, nothing directly links Lorena to JJ. So FedSec will not find them. JJ is gone, Kitty. He is dead. He gave his life so I could save you. You need to be here so we can get out of here and keep you safe." Mariah explained as she walked forward and took Kitty into her arms as her duplicate began to cry.
...
Kitty stood with Trisha as both Mariah and Ian finished calibrations on a power train that was cobbled together in an effort to supply enough voltage to fuel everything. He pulled a switch down and the twelve big machines began to pulse and glow as they began to howl with the sound of massive fans blowing air. After she had recovered from the shock of the news, she had taken over the task of sewing the silver piping onto the bodysuit, doing a much better job than Mariah had done. Years of living with JJ had taught her sewing as a means of putting torn clothing back together, and Kitty was a good seamstress.
She was now dressed in that bodysuit, just like Mariah was. Kitty's was more sky blue where Mariah's was purple, but as she had been explained to, this suit would allow her to survive the trip. Whatever the trip was. She had no real idea what was going on, but she slipped back into basic obedience training from years of being chattel. She did as she was told, submissiveness was part of the natural thought process whipped into her by years of subjugation, and she had little in the way of free will.
