Read Lifespan of Starlight for Free Online Page B

narrow at that. Interesting.
Some of the messages must have been swiped from both hard drives.
    It takes me a while to hack into the mainframe backups and then it takes me a day
to work out how to bring up Mason and Boc’s messages out of all the billions stored
in there. Not easy when a mega brain like Mason was trying to hide them.
    After some clever workarounds and by targeting specific dates, I manage to find the
exchange that Mason was trying to hide.
    Once I start reading, it all makes sense. It seems that Mason was the one who hacked
into school security and wanted to own up for what he did. It took Boc two days to
talk Mason out of it. It was Boc’s idea, so he thought he should be the one to take
the hit. I guess they’d stopped talking face to face because the arguing all happens
via messaging, even during school hours.
    It makes me a bit less wary about these guys, somehow; they just get up to a bit
of hacking and stuff. At the same time, I can’t help being disappointed. None of
it had anything to do with people disappearing after all.
----
    By the end of the day I’m still no closer to working out what’s going on, so I move
on to a different search tactic. How do you find something when you’re not sure what
you’re searching for?
    Just go looking for the stuff that people are trying to hide.
    I’ve already worked out how to access emails that were deleted, so the next day I
write a bot that filters through all the deleted files that still exist on the mainframe
backup, searching for anything that originated from Mason’s or Boc’s computers.
    The comscreen starts churning through. For a while I sit and watch, then I leave
it chugging and cook some oats for breakfast.
    When I come back it’s still searching, but already some files have begun to appear:
a whole new series of emails between Mason and Boc and months of browsing history.
All stuff they tried to delete.
    No-one’s watching, but I make a show of breathing on my fingernails and polishing
them on my pyjama top. One of the best things about hacking is the buzz you get when
you find your way into some place you’re not meant to be.
    I can tell that I’m onto something as soon as I start reading.
    It’s possible, I promise it is, Mason writes in the earliest message on the list. Not in some future reality, once a time machine’s been invented. Time travel is possible
and always has been. It all makes sense once you understand the true nature of time.
    I read that email through three times, mouthing the words to make sure that I’m reading
right. This is crazy. I can’t keep reading fast enough.
    Most of the deleted browsing history is linked to sites about something called Relative
Time Theory and a lot of the emails are from Mason explaining it to Boc.
    I get the feeling that they were talking during the day and then messaging at night.
Some emails seem to pick up in the middle of a conversation and then drop out before
it’s finished, I guess when they met up again at school. But even with the gaps,
I find myself reading through the strangest, most amazing of ideas …
    All our lives, we’ve been moving with the flow of time because that’s all we know,
that’s what we expect, says Mason in one email. But in truth, time isn’t flowing.
Reality only exists as separate moments, like frames in a movie.
    Or dots in the grid? from Boc.
    Mason again: Yes, that’s it exactly. We think we move with the flow of time, allowing
it to carry us along because that’s what we believe is happening. Our mistake is
that we believe time is outside ourselves. Steady. It’s not. The way we connect with
time is changeable. That’s the clue.
    That’s the clue …
    Except, I can’t find the rest of that message sequence. I search around for a while,
and read through one of the sites on Relative Time Theory until my brain is about
to explode.
    After that, I give up on the site and pick up another conversation:
    We already experience changes in time