Chapter 18
Lionel steps from the lounge, headphones slung around his neck, a delighted expression playing on his face as he says, “The Carrington Event.”
“Lionel, we were just—” I blurt, unsure how I am going to complete the rest of this sentence, just as Sumner goes, “The what?”
It seems counterproductive to deny assistance at this point. Sumner’s already on his phone typing in the date, and two seconds later the internet confirms what Lionel’s already stated. I’ve never heard of this before, though admittedly I am not the biggest history buff.
“Could we trouble you to tell us more?” William asks, taking a gracious step forward.
A smile claims Lionel’s mouth, like William instead asked him to explain his video game collection in great detail.
“So this guy, Richard Carrington, observes this blinding flash of light, which ended up being a pretty extreme solar flare. This caused a coronal mass ejection—or CME—to fire off toward Earth, leading to the biggest geomagnetic storm in history,” Lionel says.
“This is months before the 1860s solar maximum is supposed to begin. Crazy bright auroras—northern lights—appeared worldwide. Some people thought it was morning during the dead of night.”
William’s eyes widen. “Yes. I believe that’s what I witnessed.”
My anxiety spikes. The impulsive need to cover for him is wearing thin. “He means—”
“Don’t bother. I mean, you and Winchel talk really loudly, even with my headphones,” Lionel says, reopening the door to the Forgotten Lounge. “If you’re going to discuss the quantum mechanics of time travel, you might as well stay.”
There is no way I heard that correctly, but when my eyes snap to Sumner’s, I find him frozen in place. William’s mouth is agape. Either we weren’t exactly as covert as we’d hoped, or Lionel is more observant than any of us expected.
“Or is that not the reason you keep gathering together in secret?” Lionel continues, pasting on that overeager metal grin.
“Listen.” I try to keep a measured tone. “Have you told anyone else about—?” I glance at William.
“Why would I? No one would believe me if I did.”
Relief floods through me. “Do you?”
“Believe you?” He nods to William. “I’ve never seen someone have a more difficult time fitting in, and that’s coming from a complete wallflower.”
I can only hope he’s alone in sharing this observation, but a twinge of pity grows in my stomach. I’d always thought Lionel was a wallflower by choice. Almost as if he didn’t mind not fitting in. Maybe that’s not the case.
“I can help,” he urges, and my heart softens like a marshmallow over an open fire.
My pleading look must work on Sumner, because he sighs and says, “Inside.”
No one else is in the Forgotten Lounge this close to curfew.
Lionel and Sumner claim the couch while William drags a rickety wood chair over for himself, offering me the frayed armchair.
There’s a faint musky scent I’ve come to associate with this room, probably from dust and lack of consistent cleaning. At least it’s warmer in here.
Sumner watches as I tug off William’s jacket and hand it back to him, then refocuses his attention on Lionel. “What else happened?” he asks. “Just the unusually bright auroras?”
“No, the whole phenomenon caused power outages,” Lionel continues. “But what’s weird? Telegraph messages could still send over the geomagnetically induced current despite the lack of power. That’s what was reported, anyway. The world hasn’t witnessed a storm like that since it first happened.”
Sumner leans back against the threadbare couch cushions. “How do you know all this?”
Lionel shrugs. “I took astronomy last year.”
This reminds me. Mr. Kovacs’s email. And in the astronomy lab last Friday—what was it he said?
We’d entered our solar maximum. The time when there’s an increase in activity from the sun and charged particles hurl toward Earth’s atmosphere, almost like when boiling water bubbles, burping over the edge and hiccupping splashes onto the stove where they sizzle out.
This directly causes more prominent aurora displays—like the one I’d seen on Friday.
And it happened on an even larger scale during the Carrington Event.
If two geomagnetic storms occurred on the same day, more than a century apart, could the amount of energy produced create some type of overlap in space-time?
The Carrington Event must have linked with the one happening here to create an unusual type of magnetic vortex between our two separate places in time.
It’s not possible for a person to travel across a current through time and space, and yet…
William did.
All my breath collects in the center of my chest.
It’s connected. All of it.
“Do you think,” I begin slowly, “concurrent geomagnetic storms connected our timelines together? Accidentally transporting him here the way those telegraph messages were able to travel over the geomagnetically induced current?”
“Yeah, I think it’s like—” Lionel digs through his backpack and yanks out a scrap of paper, letting it rest flat against his palm.
“We view time as linear, but what if the Carrington Event caused his past—which is actually his present—to bend into our present?” He removes the paper from the surface of his hand and folds it into a C-shape; then he jabs a pen down into the top, poking through both flaps.
“The pen is a tunnel connecting his timeline to ours, and he somehow traveled through it.”
Alarm bells go off in my head. This isn’t déjà vu—Lionel’s visual model is nearly identical to the sketch I’d seen in my dad’s journal yesterday. My hand sinks into my pocket as I extract it, riffling through the pages until I come across his sketches and the word I hadn’t recognized. Isoborometer.
“That looks like something my dad was working on.” I pass the journal to Lionel. “But I don’t know what any of it means. It’s just a bunch of equations.”
Sumner brightens. “Let me see.”
You’d think I’d just exclaimed, Look! A book full of naked girls!
As they study the pages, I do a quick search on the Space Weather Prediction Center, which confirms increased solar activity is expected in the coming months.
My knowledge of astronomy is vast enough to understand astrophysicists can’t exactly predict when a major solar flare will occur, but they can predict when we can expect a dynamic aurora display based on the sun’s activity.
Lionel glances between me and William. “If the geomagnetic storm in both timelines created a tunnel, in theory, you’d need to engineer something that could harness the energy from the geomagnetic storm to reverse the direction of the vortex in order to send him back.”
“So the magnetic vortex and tunnel are one and the same,” William says thoughtfully.
“Theoretically,” Lionel reminds him. “It’s your connecting point.”
Sumner had said something similar, hadn’t he? A cosmic anchoring point. My gut twists. If Ivernia is expected to close at the end of the year and the limitations of the magnetic vortex exist on the property, it means we only have a few months to correct the timeline and send William back.
Sumner’s teeth graze his bottom lip, glasses skating down his nose as he bends over my dad’s journal. “There’s something here.” He takes a few photos of the isoborometer illustration with his phone, then hands it back to me. “I need time to work through it. I’ve never heard of an isoborometer.”
“Do you think it’s possible?” I ask. “What Lionel’s saying?”
Because what happens if we fail? At the very worst, William would have to live out his existence here, away from his family and friends and the life he’s left in London.
He can’t graduate pretending to be someone else, and without any discernible identification, what would he do?
What would we do if the faculty found out we were keeping this enormous secret?
Sumner must sense the desperation in my voice because he says, “I’m sure hoping so, Carmichael.”
William clasps his hands together, elated. “I daresay you are the most intriguing group of people I’ve ever met.” Then, to Lionel, he says, “I do love the decorations on your teeth.”
Lionel grins wider. “Can I help? I swear I won’t tell anyone, Delaney. I’ve never been part of anything like this before.”
And the remainder of my heart melts. Lionel is loyal. He’s also one of the most intelligent people in our year. If we’re going to actually try to do this, we’re going to need him.
So I say, “Of course.”
Before I know what’s happening, he leaps to his feet and flings his arms around me, hugging me tight as I bark out a surprised laugh. “This is the coolest thing ever ever ever. We’re like a cosmic superhero team.”
From the corner, William snaps a picture.