"See?" he said. "That's earlier on the tape — look at the time stamp." In the center of the screen near the bottom, a digital readout was superimposed on the image, with the time incrementing: "16h58m22s," "16h58m23s," "16h58m24s"…"About a minute and a half before the phenomenon began," said Jake. "If there'd been something like an EMP, it would have wiped what was already on the tape, too."

"So what are you saying?" asked Lloyd. "The tape goes all snowy right at the beginning of the phenomenon?" He liked Jake's word for what had happened.

"Yes — and it picks up again exactly one minute and forty-three seconds later. It's the same on all the tapes I've checked: one minute and forty-three seconds of static."

"Lloyd, Jake — come quick!" It was Michiko's voice; the two men turned around to see her beckoning to them from the doorway. They ran after her into the room next door — the lounge, which had its own TV set, still showing CNN.

" — and of course there were hundreds of thousands of videos made during the period when people's minds were elsewhere," said anchor Petra Davies. "Security-camera footage, home-video cameras left running, tapes from TV studios — including our own archival tapes made right here at CNN, which the FCC requires us to produce — and more. We'd assumed they would clearly show everyone in them blacking out, and bodies collapsing to the ground — "

Lloyd and Jake exchanged a glance. "But," continued Davies, "none of them show anything. Or, more precisely, they show nothing but snow — black and white flecks, roiling on the screen. As far as we can tell, every video made anywhere in the world during the Flashforward shows snow for precisely one minute and forty-three seconds. Likewise, our other recording devices, such as those hooked up to the weather instruments we use in making forecasts, recorded no data during the period in which everyone blacked out. If anyone watching this does have a tape or recording made during that time that shows a picture, we'd like to hear about it. You can phone us toll-free at… "

"Incredible," said Lloyd. "It does make you wonder just exactly what was going on during all that time."

Jake nodded. "That it does."

" 'Flashforward,' eh?" said Lloyd, savoring the term the newscaster had used. "That's not a bad name for it."

Jake nodded. "It certainly beats 'the CERN disaster,' or anything like that."

Lloyd frowned. "That it does."

Theo leaned back in his office chair, hands behind his head, staring at the constellations of holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles, thinking about what that DeVries woman had said.

It wasn't like knowing you were going to die in an accident. If you were forewarned that you'd be hit by a car on such-and-such a street at such-and-such a time, well, then you simply had to avoid being at that place at that moment, and — voila! — crisis averted. But if someone was hell-bent on murdering you, it would happen sooner or later. Just not being here — or wherever the murder was going to take place; the story from the Johannesburg Star didn't actually mention the precise location — on October 21, 2030, wouldn't necessarily be enough to save Theo.

Dr. Procopides is survived by his…

Survived by his what? His parents? Poppa would be eighty-two then, and Momma would be seventy-nine. Theo's father had suffered a heart attack a few years ago, but had been scrupulous ever since about his cholesterol, giving up his saganaki and the feta-cheese salads that he so loved. Sure, they could still be alive then.

How would Poppa take it? A father isn't supposed to outlive his son. Would Poppa think he'd already lived a good, long time? Would he give up on life, passing on within a few more months, leaving Momma to go on all alone? Theo certainly hoped his parents would be alive in twenty-one years, but…

Dr. Procopides is survived by his…

… by his wife and children?

That's what they usually say in obituaries. By his wife — his wife Anthoula, perhaps, a nice Greek girl. That would make Poppa happy.

Except…

Except Theo didn't know any nice Greek girls — or any nice girls of any nationality. At least — a thought came up, but he fought it down — at least, not any who were free.

He had devoted himself to his work. First to getting grades good enough to go to Oxford. Next to getting his doctorate. Then to getting assigned here. Oh, there'd been women, of course — American schoolgirls back in Athens, one-night stands with other students, and even once, when in Denmark, a hooker. But he'd always thought there would be time later for love, a wife, children.

But when would that time come?

He had indeed wondered if the article would start "Nobel laureate." It didn't, but he had wondered — and, if he were honest with himself, it was a serious bit of wondering. A Nobel meant immortality; it meant being remembered forever.

The LHC experiment that he and Lloyd had spent years crafting should have produced the Higgs; if they had produced that, the Nobel surely would have followed. But they hadn't made the breakthrough.

The breakthrough — as if he'd have been content with only one.

Dead in twenty-one years. Who would remember him?

It was all so crazy. So unbelievable.

He was Theodosios Procopides, for God's sake. He was immortal.

Of course he was. Of course he was. What twenty-seven-year-old was not?

A wife. Children. Surely the obituary had mentioned those. Surely if Ms. DeVries had only paged down, she would have seen their names, and maybe their ages.

But wait — wait!

How many pages in a typical big-city newspaper? Two hundred, say. How many readers? Typical circulation of a big daily might be half-a-million copies. Of course, DeVries had said she was reading yesterday's newspaper. Still, she couldn't have been the only one looking at that article during the two-minute glimpse of the future.

And besides, Theo would apparently be killed here in Switzerland — the article had listed a Geneva dateline — and yet the story had made a South African newspaper. Which meant it must have made other newspapers and newsgroups all over the world, possibly with different accounts of the events. Certainly the Tribune de Geneve would have a more-detailed article. There had to be hundreds — maybe thousands — of people who had read reports of his death.

He could advertise for them, on the Internet and in major newspapers. Find out more — and find out, for sure, whether there was any truth to what this DeVries woman had said.

"Look at this," said Jake Horowitz. He plunked his datapad down on Lloyd's desk; it was showing a web page.

"What is it?"

"Stuff from the United States Geological Survey. Seismograph readings."

"Yeah?"

"Look at the readings for earlier today," said Jake.

"Oh, my."

"Exactly. For almost two minutes, starting at seventeen hundred hours our time, the recorders detected nothing at all. Either they registered zero disturbances — which is impossible, the Earth is always trembling slightly, even if just from tidal interactions with the moon — or they registered no data at all. It's just like the video cameras: no record of what was actually happening during those two minutes. And I've checked with various national weather services. Their weather instruments — wind speed, temperature, air pressure, and so on — recorded nothing during the Flashforward. And NASA and the ESA report dead periods in their satellite telemetry during that two-minute period, too."

"How could that be?" asked Lloyd.

"I don't know," said Jake, running a hand through his red hair. "But somehow every camera, every sensor, every recording instrument anywhere in the world simply stopped registering while the Flashforward was occurring."