Chapter 4: The OWS

Travis Shockley picked up the desk phone when it rang. The display showed it was his boss, so he answered, “Yes, sir.”

“Come see me, Travis. Something has come up.”

“Yes, sir.” Travis hung up the phone and silently groaned. He knew that his weekend plans had just been trashed. He stood and left his office and went down the hall. The offices simply had numbers on the doors, without names or titles. When he went into his boss’ office the admin sitting at the desk, Marianne Jennings, just nodded her head towards the inner door. Travis knocked on the door and went in without waiting for a response.

“We got us a weird one, Travis,” said Walt Brickhouse.

“That’s sort of the job description, Walt.”

“Humor. Ha! Ha!” was the non-laughing reply.

Travis simply shrugged. He had joined the Central Intelligence Agency six years ago, after graduating from West Point and doing six years in the Army, first in the Rangers and then in Intelligence. That wasn’t a terribly unusual progression for an intelligence agent, but what followed was. Rather than being assigned to field operations or analysis, Travis found himself assigned to a very small group, the Office of World Science.

It was also known as the Office of Weird Shit.

“What’s up?”

Brickhouse tossed a thin file folder on the desk, but Travis didn’t pick it up immediately. “We’ve got a case of time travel. Congratulations. It’s your problem.”

Travis stared for a moment. “For real?”

Brickhouse just gave an exasperated sigh and nodded. “So far, anyway. That’s one of the things you’ll need to verify. Just a few days ago, what looks like a Viking longship rowed ashore at a joint British-US training base in the North Sea. Nobody speaks any language anybody has ever heard. They were wearing homespun wool and furs and carrying swords and spears. One attacked a sergeant by throwing a spear at him and got killed for his troubles. Now they have these guys bottled up and the island quarantined.”

“Vikings?”

Travis received a nod in return. “It’s official, too. They got some blood samples from this group and tested them.”

“You can test for old time DNA?”

“No, but you can test for isotopes. None of the blood samples had any strontium-90 or cesium-137 or any of the other isotopes you get from nuclear bombs. Everybody has some level of nuclear fallout in them since the 1950s, when we started building and testing atomic bombs. The same thing happened with leakage from power plant accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. These guys? Zip!”

“Huh.”

“It’s in the file. Review it and figure it out,” said Walt.

Travis stood up and picked up the folder. “If these guys really are Vikings, we need to find somebody who can speak Viking.”

“This is your top priority.”

Travis headed for the door, but then stopped and turned back. “Who knows about this so far?”

“You, me, and the Army. Do you really want any politicians learning about time travel? It’s the same over there. Nobody is telling Number Ten Downing Street about it.”

Travis rolled his eyes, said goodbye, and went back to his office. As expected, the file folder had nothing in it other than the file locations in the computer system. Travis sat down and logged into the system and then began pulling up files. After reviewing everything, he knew he would have to visit the site, and he would need an expert or two. First on his list was finding somebody who spoke Viking. Too bad the Agency’s databases didn’t list anybody who spoke Viking.

It was time to get serious. He cranked up Wikipedia and typed ‘Viking language’ into the search bar. That redirected him to a language called Old Norse, which basically stated that Old Norse wasn’t spoken any longer but had evolved into most of the Northern Germanic languages. The most intriguing possibilities were Icelandic and Norwegian. Those were languages he could search for in the databases.

The CIA had a huge analysis department; they boasted that they had an expert on tap for just about anything. If, for whatever impossible reason, the CIA needed to know something about medieval French plumbing, they had somebody they could ask. That didn’t mean he was an actual CIA employee, but was somebody listed as being knowledgeable and willing to answer questions. Travis pulled up the search system and typed in Norwegian and Icelandic expertise, as well as Old Norse, which he considered a long shot at best. He also specified that he wanted a male under the age of thirty-five; they would be working in somewhat primitive conditions with a somewhat primitive society.

Much to Travis’ amazement, a name came up on his screen, Lars Knut Ropstad, a nineteen-year-old student at Manchester Community College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Travis wasn’t at all sure how the Agency came up with their lists of experts. How in the world did a New Hampshire teenager end up on their list of linguistics experts?

Travis hit a few keys and called up the details on Lars Ropstad. Despite the Scandinavian name, Lars was born and bred in the United States. He was born in Boston to a Norwegian father and an Icelandic mother, who had emigrated to the United States twenty years ago. A couple of years after he was born, the family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where they still lived. That must have been how Lars learned his foreign languages, thought Travis, but it didn’t explain the other languages listed. Lars was noted as being completely fluent in Norwegian, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Faroese, Old Saxon, and Old Norse. Travis had never even heard of Faroese!

He needed to talk to this kid. He called up a telephone app on his computer and found the Ropstad’s home number, but it simply rang three times and then went to voicemail. Everybody was at work, he figured. Time for Plan B. From IRS records, he learned where the Ropstads worked. He first tried calling Ropstad Construction, the contracting business the father had built, but only got an answering machine. Time to call Mom.

“Manchester Independent Insurance, how can we help you?”

“Can I speak to Marta Ropstad?” asked Travis.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have a Marta Ropstad. We do have a Marta Ellensdottir.”

Travis remembered that in Iceland, most women had a last name based on their mother’s name, and that they often didn’t take their husband’s last name. “That’s probably who I’m looking for.”

“Let me get her for you. Please hold.”

Travis waited a bit longer until the line was picked up. “Manchester Independent, Marta Ellensdottir, how can I help you?” The voice was a soprano, with a light but definite accent.

“Mrs. Ellensdottir, my name is Travis Shockley, and I am trying to get in touch with Lars Ropstad. Are you his mother?”

“Yes, Lars is our son. Is there a problem?”

“No, ma’am, no problem. I just need to talk to him, but I don’t have a phone number for him. I thought maybe his mother might,” he said smoothly.

“Well, he’s at work right now, and they don’t like it when people call the employees there. He can’t take calls at work.”

“And where is that? Maybe I can swing by and talk to him.”

Marta responded, “Well, maybe he can take a break. He works at Burger Express.”

Travis was typing as fast as Marta was telling him where Lars worked. He pulled up a map of Manchester and determined which Burger Express the teen was working at. “When is he working till? Maybe I can swing by when he gets out of work,” he said.

“He gets off at six.”

“Thank you.” Travis hung up and then immediately picked up the phone and dialed an internal extension. “I’m going to need a plane for an immediate flight to Manchester, New Hampshire.”

“Yes, sir, we’ll have a plane prepped at Dulles.”

“I’ll be there in an hour. Also, I’ll need a car in Manchester.”

“It will need to be a rental. We can’t get anything special to Manchester in that time frame.”

“That will be fine. Thank you.” Travis went to his office closet and pulled out his ‘go bag’, a small backpack he had preloaded with items he might need in a hurry, ‘on the go.’ He had also heard it called a BOB or bug-out bag. His was packed with some spare clothing, a small first aid kit, a couple of MRE rations, some bottled water, and other odds and ends. He opened it and checked the contents, and then pulled out the pistol and spare magazines he normally packed. He wasn’t traveling to a war zone.

From his office Travis drove to Dulles Airport. Dulles was a large and modern airport, and he drove in through one of the back gates and headed towards a hangar away from any others. He parked and went inside, where he was stopped by a guard. Travis had to show not just a driver’s license but also his CIA identity badge before he was allowed in.

Once inside the hangar, he found a white Gulfstream 650 with the doorway open, and the steps folded down. A man in a pilot’s uniform was standing near the doorway talking to somebody inside the airplane. Travis walked to the plane. “Are you waiting for Travis Shockley?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. You Mister Shockley?”

Travis showed his identification and said, “That’s me.”

“Jack Trencher. I’m the pilot and Harry Reed is the copilot. We were told you would give us our destinations when you got here, but otherwise we are ready to go. I was told our first stop was Manchester, New Hampshire, but nothing beyond that.”

Travis nodded. “The plan is that I will pick up a passenger there, and then we will be heading to Scotland.”

Trencher nodded. “Manchester is a feeder and divert airport for Logan in Boston. We can land and gas up before we fly to Scotland. Where in Scotland?”

Travis shrugged and shook his head. “No idea. My ultimate destination is in the Shetlands. Beyond that, I don’t know anything.”

“We’ll figure it out. Any idea when?”

Travis smiled at that. “Let’s just say that I’m going fishing, and as soon as I land the fish, we are going!”

“Mister Shockley, pick your seat. The nice thing is that we have priority status and this baby hauls ass. We can be there in a couple of hours, easy.”

Travis smiled. “I like how you think, Captain, Let’s go.”

Travis spent the entire flight reviewing the scant details he was able to access on the... phenomenon. He was tied into the CIA’s databases, but not the Army’s, and had to run his queries to the Army through the CIA. One thing he learned was that the training base was now on total lockdown. Nobody was entering or leaving except for freight trips. At that point he went to the cockpit. “I need to ask about where we’re going to. What’s the shortest landing and takeoff distance for this plane?”

“Where are you trying to get to? That’s the real question,” replied the pilot.

Travis nodded. “The Shetland Islands. They’re north of Scotland, but outside of what I can find on Wikipedia, I know nothing about them.”

“The Shetlands? Christ, Harry, dial up the Jepps!”

Jepps were aeronautical charts made by the Jeppesen Company of Colorado, world renowned as the gold standard for navigational charts for pilots. At one time the charts were printed on paper, but most pilots now used digital versions and most modern airplanes were able to display the digital versions. It only took a few minutes for the copilot to answer, “The only real airport in the Shetlands is a place called Sumburgh, and it’s too short. We might be able to land but we’ll never take off again,” said Harry.

Jack looked over his shoulder at Travis and said, “I don’t think the boss wants to leave us there forever.” To Harry he asked, “What’s nearby? What’s in Scotland?”

“We can fly into Inverness, and then fly commercial to Sumburgh. There’re probably some turboprop operators serving the Shetlands. Or...” The copilot fiddled with his display and then said, “The RAF has a base at Lossiemouth, which is a bit closer to the Shetlands, but that’s military only. Maybe you can catch a flight north. Nothing commercial, though.”

“Let me work on that.” Travis went back to his seat and was able to determine that supply operations to Joint Training Base Cudlow were supported through Lossiemouth and Sumburgh, but before he could tell the pilots, they were on final approach to Manchester, and he needed to stay in his seat. Once down, though, he informed the two pilots that they should figure out flying to the RAF base.

“Yes, sir. We’ll fill the gas tank and check the oil. We’ll need to contact the Agency to get permission to land at a military base. When do you think we’ll be leaving here?”

“Yesterday.”

“Roger that, sir. We’ll get to work on it.”

Travis left the private hangar and found a generic sedan waiting for him. Ten minutes later he was in the parking lot of Burger Express. He parked and went inside, to find the fast-food version of hell. A grossly obese woman in her early forties was trying to corral half a dozen kids of various ages and failing monumentally. An equally obese girl who looked to be about eleven or twelve was mouthing off to her mother, telling her to ‘Go fuck yourself!’ Mom was just as disgusting in her response. A pair of babies were screaming loud enough to be heard outside the restaurant. A five-year old had thrown dozens of foil packets for ketchup on the floor and was amusing himself by jumping on them, bursting them and spraying ketchup all around. Another boy, a couple of years older was playing with the drink machine, pushing the buttons and causing ice cubes to bounce around and soda to spray out. The final child was retaliating by throwing food at his brothers.

Management wasn’t handling the situation well. The store manager was arguing with the woman, trying to get her to leave, but her response was the same as her daughter. ‘Go fuck yourself!’ Then she would demand her order be bagged up, and no, she wasn’t paying for all the stuff her kids were doing. Meanwhile one of the store clerks, wearing a red tunic and a white cap with ‘Super Burger’ embroidered on it, was vainly trying to clean the floor, hampered by the two brats who were spraying him with soda.

“LADY, GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE COPS!” roared the manager.

“GO FUCK YOURSELF!” was the least objectionable response from the fat woman.

The two continued screaming at each other until she gave him the finger and dragged the kids out of the burger joint. The manager then told the kid in the tunic and cap to clean up everything and quit wasting time.

Travis simply shook his head in disbelief. “Rough day?” he asked.

The young man, who looked to be in his late teens, replied, “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“ROPSTAD! QUIT THE JAWING AND DO IT RIGHT!”

The young man cringed and said, “Yes, Mister Burns.” He turned back to Travis and said, “Welcome to Burger Express! How can we make this a Super Burger day for you?”

Travis bit his lip to keep from laughing, and asked, “Are you Lars Ropstad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent! I came here to talk to you. My name is Travis Shockley.”

Before Lars could respond, Mister Burns called from the back of the store. “ROPSTAD! GET BACK TO WORK!”

Lars cursed under his breath, and Travis asked, “Do you really like working here?”

“What do you think?”

“Interested in talking to me about a different job?”

“Something better than selling Super Burgers?”

“Lots better!”

“ROPSTAD!”

“I’m taking a break, Mister Burns,” replied Lars. He walked outside before Burns could yell anything else. Travis followed. Lars led the way to a picnic table and sat down. “You want to hire me for a job? McDonalds is going to make a better offer than Burger Express?”

Travis smiled. “I’m not with McDonalds.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card holder. “Mister Ropstad, my name is Travis Shockley, and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.” He handed over a card with his name and information and a CIA logo. “We want you to help us.”

“You’re in the CIA?” asked Lars, his voice low and full of awe. “You’re, like, a spy or something?” Travis Shockley didn’t look at all like James Bond. He was a bit taller than Lars, maybe ten or twenty pounds heavier, and was in good shape, but had average looks and wore wire-rim glasses and had a trim mustache and goatee.

“Yes, I’m in the CIA. No, I’m not a spy. It doesn’t work that way.”

“So...” Lars topped in confusion.

“I don’t have a license to kill. I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“So, what do you do? What do you want with me?”

“How many languages do you speak, Mister Ropstad?”