Epilogue

San Jose, California
March 3, 2008

School had let out for the day nearly an hour before and all of the children had long since departed the campus, picked up by their parents, or by the school bus, or by one of the day care vans. The administration office was still open, however, and about half of the teachers assigned to Ronald Reagan Elementary were inside, filing paperwork or preparing their next day's lesson plans. Annie Frazier-who taught third grade-was one such teacher. She sat at the end of the table in the conference room, her papers stacked neatly before her.

"I'm blowing this scene," declared Jenny O'Riley, who sat next to her. "I have a date tonight. I've been teaching this crap to those little shits long enough now that I should be able to wing it, shouldn't I?"

"You could probably do it in your sleep," Annie agreed, the barest hint of a smile on her face. "Who you going out with this time?"

She looked around furtively and lowered her voice. "Doug's taking me to the Chez Bolo," she whispered. "Keep that to yourself, huh?"

Doug Masterson was the school principal-a man, it was said, who was going places in the San Jose Unified School District. Annie shook her head resignedly as she heard this. "Haven't you learned your lesson about married men?" she asked her friend.

"It's not like that at all," Jenny assured her. "He and his wife don't get along with each other. They sleep in separate rooms. They haven't... you know... had sex for almost two years now."

"Then why doesn't he leave her?"

"He wants to wait until the kids are older," she said. "You know, so it won't be so hard on them."

Annie looked at her pointedly. "Do you really believe all that crap he's handing you?" she asked. "Or do you just pretend to believe it to assuage your own guilt?"

Jenny looked shocked for a moment and then softened. She grinned. "I just try not to dwell too much on it," she admitted. "If I think too much about my own motivations, my whole house of cards might come crashing down on me."

"And we can't have that nasty morality getting in our way now, can we?" Annie asked her.

"Exactly," Jenny said. "The plain and simple fact of the matter is that married men are better in bed. Single guys have no idea what the hell they're doing. They just want to get you drunk so they can shove it in and blast off in two minutes. I never had an orgasm with a lover until I got it on with one of my married professors at San Jose State. After that, I was hooked. Who am I to go questioning their rationale? They're the ones cheating, not me."

"An interesting way of looking at it," Annie told her.

"I look at it whatever way assures me of good sex," she said. "And what about you?"

"What about me?" Annie asked.

"When are you going to go out and get your chassis lubed? You must be rusty as hell after all this time."

"Put in your usual delicate way," Annie said sourly. "Like I told you before when you tried to fix me up with your brother-your married brother-I'm not quite ready to start that whole dating thing again. All I'll do is end up comparing whoever it is to Ken."

"Annie," she said, "It's been almost five years now. Five years. It's time to move on with your life, isn't it?"

Her expression turned whimsical. "I don't think it is," she said softly. "It should be... but something is telling me to wait a little longer."

"That sounds like a bunch of spiritual mumbo-jumbo," Jenny told her.

"It does, doesn't it?" Annie said. "Sometimes I think that myself. Especially when I get really... you know..."

"Horny?" Jenny suggested.

Annie giggled. "Right... horny," she said. "And I'm telling you, that's been happening a lot lately."

"If you don't mind my asking," Jenny said, "Have you been laid at all since Ken... since he..."

"Died," she said. "Since Ken died. It's okay to say it."

"Sorry," Jenny said, knowing that her friend had spent a considerable amount of money to actually freeze the body of her dead husband and that she was continuing to pay a large monthly rent so he would remain frozen in the whacked out hope that someday he would be revived. "Died. But have you? Been laid, that is?"

"I haven't been with a man since Ken," she said, actually telling a little white lie of omission. True, she had not been with a man in any way, but she had developed a relationship with Janet, Ken's partner, the lesbian woman he had been flying with on the day he was shot. It had started as a comfort friendship in the months after Ken's shooting. Janet had been Ken's best friend, as strange of a concept as that was, and she had taken to checking up on his widow from time to time. And then one night, about a year after the funeral, it had turned into something else. They had had a few glasses of wine together during a lunch date and had hugged and, before either really knew what was happening, they had ended up in bed together. Since then, they had made love six or seven times a year, usually when Annie's sexual frustration reached the point of near-madness. It was a booty call relationship at its very finest, but it kept her from going insane while she was... while she was waiting for something. She no longer believed that Ken was going to be awakened-at least not in her lifetime. But something, some force, some compulsion, was telling her to wait nonetheless, that her patience would be rewarded.

"We need to get you laid, girlfriend," Jenny told her, appalled at the thought of a relatively young, rich widow going for five years without sex. "Why don't you let me fix you up with one of my friends? A no-strings-attached kind of thing. I know guys who will hose you down until you pass out. We can double date some night."

"Not just yet," Annie told her politely. "But thanks for the offer."

Jenny picked up her papers and her purse and stood up. "Well, think it over," she said. "The offer is always good."

She left a moment later, pausing for a few seconds in the main office to make googly-eyes at Doug. Annie went back to her next day's lesson plan and finished up ten minutes later. She packed up her own papers, grabbed her own purse, and made her way out into the staff parking lot. She sighed as she fired up the engine on her Volvo and started heading for the day care center where Little Ken spent his days while she was working.

Ken Jr. looked so much like his father it was painful at times. On this day, as she snapped him into his car seat in the parking lot, the resemblance seemed particularly strong. He was dressed in a pair of blue overalls with a Sponge Bob sweater underneath. His brown eyes were happy and excited and his brown hair, recently cut short as was the current fashion, looked exactly like her dead husband's. She felt a small shiver running up her spine as she saw him smile at her. The smile was the same one Ken had given when he was excited about something.

"What's got you all happy, little boy?" she heard herself ask him.

"Daddy's park!" he said enthusiastically. "You said we'd go to Daddy's park today!"

She suppressed a sigh. Yes, she had told him she'd take him to Daddy's park on the way home today but she'd been hoping he might have forgotten about it. Apparently not. "Any chance we could do that tomorrow instead?" she asked him.

His pouting at this suggestion quickly got the better of her, especially when he yelled, "But you promised!"

"Okay, okay," she assured him, planting herself behind the wheel. "We'll go to Daddy's park. But just for a little while."

"Yay!" he yelled delighted. "We're going to Daddy's park!"

Daddy's park, known to the rest of San Jose as the Kenneth Frazier Memorial Park, was only two miles away from her school, on the border between a middle class neighborhood and a semi-ghetto. It was not much as far as parks went. Composed of only three acres, it contained a playground, a small grove of Oak trees, a few cement paths, and a couple of basketball courts. She parked her Volvo in the small parking lot adjacent to it and unbuckled her son from his car seat so he could run free. As was always the case, the first place he went was the plaque that dedicated the park to her husband.

The plaque was just adjacent to the playground, a granite block with her husband's name and dates of birth and death on it. Little Ken ran his fingers over the dates and then traced the letters in the inscription, letters he could not yet read but that he'd long since memorized. IN MEMORY OF OFFICER KENNETH FRAZIER, SAN JOSE POLICE DEPARTMENT, it said, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE IN SERVICE OF THE CITIZENS OF THIS CITY.

"Daddy," Ken Jr. whispered, almost in awe as he stared at the plaque. "They named this park for Daddy."

"That's right, sweetie," she told him. "This is Daddy's park. His name will be there forever."

"Forever," Ken Jr. said. And with that, the spell was seemingly broken. He turned from the plaque and headed for the playground. Within a minute he was climbing on the monkey bars like the monkey he was, terrifying his mother by ascending all the way to the top.

She buried her motherly concerns for his safety and walked over to one of the benches that bracketed the play area. On the other benches a few other mothers were sitting, watching the smattering of kids who were playing alongside Ken Jr. None of them paid her any attention as she sat down alone. Beyond the monkey bars a few other kids were playing in the oak grove, including one who was nearly fifty feet up in the branches of a tree. In the basketball courts some older kids-teenagers mostly-were heavily involved in a game of three on three. Their immature curses came drifting over from time to time, occasionally drawing a disapproving look from one of the younger kids' mothers.

Annie twirled her hair in her fingers a few times and watched her son climb and jump and slide. She looked at her watch, knowing that for every minute she stayed in San Jose, the traffic would be that much worse when she headed back up the freeway towards her home in Pleasanton. Experience told her that if she allowed Ken Jr. to play for fifteen minutes he wouldn't protest too hard when she forced him out of there. That meant she had about nine minutes left. She settled in to wait, her mind not thinking of much, just enjoying the pre-spring warmth the ocean currents had brought the South Bay on this day.

A man came walking up the cement path from the direction of the far parking lot-the one opposite where she had left her Volvo. He looked, at first glance, to be nothing more than a lower class city dweller, the kind of person who was no stranger to living on the streets or spending the occasional night in jail. He was tall, with long, obviously dyed blonde hair that was tied back in a ponytail. A pair of cheap sunglasses covered his eyes. A battered San Jose State sweater covered his torso and a pair of faded jeans covered his legs. He was someone she should have dismissed from her mind immediately, perhaps with a slight sense of caution and distaste, but instead, she found her eyes instantly riveted to him for some reason.

"What the hell?" she whispered to herself, wondering why this man had attracted her attention so much. She felt no sense of danger from him-not that she was the most streetwise woman in the world-but her heart began to race in her chest all the same. After a moment she realized that he looked a little bit like Ken, her dead husband, or at least he looked like Ken would look ten years or so younger and with long, blonde hair. The facial features were what were doing it. The nose and the lips looked almost exactly the same, as did the manner of walking. It was weird, she thought, trying to turn her eyes away. This man could be Ken's younger brother, the resemblance was that strong.

He continued to stroll toward her, seemingly in no particular hurry. She had the impression he was looking at her but she couldn't tell for sure since the dark glasses hid his eyes. With each step that brought him closer to her, the resemblance to Ken grew stronger. By the time he was twenty feet away, the chills were running freely up and down her spine. If she hadn't known better, if she hadn't seen her husband's body in a cryogenic storage tank in Los Angeles with her own eyes, she would have sworn this was Ken wearing a disguise.

Her breath almost froze in her lungs when the man passed directly in front of her and then stopped. He turned toward her, his face expressionless, but his hands trembling just the slightest bit. She should have been alarmed by him stopping before her but somehow she wasn't.

"Hello," the man said, with a voice that even sounded like Ken's, not just superficially, but exactly. "A nice day, isn't it?"

"Uh..." she stammered, her heart hammering in her chest now, "Uh... yeah... I mean... uh sure, it is."

"You wouldn't believe how good it feels to have wind blowing in your face," he said. "Or how the smell of wet grass is almost intoxicating at times. Or even the moon." He pointed upward, where a pale, quarter moon was thirty degrees above the horizon. "Sometimes I think that's the most beautiful thing in the solar system. You ever thought of the moon that way?"

Again, his statement should have alarmed her, should have put her hackles up. This man was spouting some pretty weird shit. But her body felt nothing like fear at his words. Instead, she felt wonder. His voice sounded so much like Ken's. So much. "No," she finally managed to say. "I've never really thought about the moon that way."

He nodded as if he had expected her to say that. "I suppose you haven't," he said. "It's one of those things you don't appreciate unless you don't have it anymore. Kind of like going outside whenever you want. A luxury reserved for Earth dwellers."

He had totally lost her with that one. She could almost hear his words whooshing over her head. She licked her lips a little and took a breath. "Is there uh... uh... something I can help you with?" she asked him.

A slight smile touched the man's face. "I noticed you looking at me as I walked up," he said.

"I'm uh... uh... sorry," she replied. "No offense. You uh... kind of look like someone I used to know."

The smile widened. "Maybe I am that someone," he said. "You never know when old friends are going to turn up. You look like someone I used to know, too."

She shook her head almost violently, feeling the first tinges of nervousness now. Not at the man himself, but at the realization that something very strange was going on here. "No," she told him. "I don't think so. My friend is... is... no longer with us."

"You mean dead?" the man asked.

She nodded. "Yes. He died a long time ago."

"Shot in a helicopter, was he?" he asked.

Adrenaline went pouring into her veins at these words. "Get away from me," she said. "Get away or I'll call the police."

The man didn't move. Instead, he took off his sunglasses, revealing a startlingly familiar set of brown eyes. "I don't think you really want to do that," he said.

Annie's hands were now shaking like a paint mixer, her heart hammering at nearly 160 beats per minute. She felt a sheen of nervous sweat break out on her forehead. "No," she whispered. "This can't be. You're dead. You can't be standing in front of me."

"I'm not a ghost, Annie," Ken told her. "There's nothing supernatural about this. It's really me."

"It can't be," she insisted. "It can't!"

"I told you I'd see you again someday, didn't I? Well here I am."

"Oh my God," she said, her eyes wide in terror, but also with hope. How could this be happening? How could Ken be standing right her in front of her?

"God had nothing to do with it," Ken said. "Our descendents did... or they will anyway. It is me though. Ken Frazier, the man you married, the man who gave you that child over there. I'm back, Annie. I'm back if you'll take me back."

What she was being told was impossible, but her eyes could not deny it. This was Ken. Somehow, someway, Ken was actually standing before her. And something inside of her was not the least bit surprised by it. Something inside had been expecting this all along. "Ken," she whispered. "This is... I mean... I mean... oh wow."

He chuckled. "Oh wow is right," he said. "It's been quite a journey, Annie, but I found my way back to you."

"How?" she said.

"It's kind of a long story," he said. "You wouldn't believe what I've done, what I've seen, since the last time I talked to you. I've been in space, Annie. I've flown on aircraft on Mars. I've gone hydro-diving on Saturn. I've gone through an artificial wormhole out beyond Pluto."

"That's crazy... Ken," she said, the name coming from her mouth much more easily than she would've expected.

"As crazy as me standing before you right now while there's another version of me in a warehouse in Los Angeles?"

Another shudder worked its way through her. "Oh Jesus," she whispered, her voice cracked.

"He had nothing to do with it either," Ken said. "As I said, it's quite the tale I have to tell. Would you like to hear it?"

She nodded, now almost incapable of speech.

"May I sit down with you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Please. Sit down... Ken."

The smile grew broader. "Can I have a hug first?" he asked. "It's been so long since I've put my arms around you. I'm not sure I can take another minute without it."

She didn't answer verbally, but a second later she flew off the bench and took him in her arms, squeezing him almost painfully, her mouth kissing his cheek, his nose, his lips. Any lingering doubts as to the authenticity of this encounter disappeared at that moment. Nothing had ever seemed more right.

Washington, District of Columbia
June 1, 2008

Dr. Stephen Lindley emerged from the Metro station and began walking briskly toward the towering Washington Monument before him. The mall was crowded this morning, as it was every morning in the summer months, with hundreds, if not thousands of tourists walking to and fro, snapping pictures, clumping together in crowds at the various attractions. Lindley wiped sweat from his brow as his feet carried him toward his destination. It was only 9:45 in the morning but already the heat was oppressive, with humidity nearly thick enough to cut with a knife.

What a miserable place for a nation's capital, he thought bitterly as a fat mosquito buzzed near his ear. He could see why they would move it to Denver after the upcoming war. Denver had miserable winters, that was true, but at least it was reasonably pleasant in the summer months. Oh well, he would only be in this shithole of a city for another six hours. He would check for Stanhope at the appointed place just on the off chance he had escaped the greenies. It was more than likely a fool's mission, but if Stanhope did show up and he did have extra batteries or a charging system for the PC he'd brought with him, his rise to the seat of power would be ever so much easier.

He took no particular security precautions as he strolled to the base of the monument. The thought that someone might be tailing him had never even crossed his mind. Though he had no idea what had become of the greenies who had followed the Rumsfeld back to this primitive time-they might have gone back through a return wormhole or they might have settled on the planetary surface or, most likely, they might have been given some time-release poison such as the WestHem government had tried to push off on him-the thought that they could have found out about this rendezvous through interrogating Stanhope or through monitored communications had never appeared in his rather dim imagination.

He reached the base of the monument and looked around at the crowd, his eyes searching for the familiar profile of Stanhope. No such profile was in evidence. He checked his watch-a gold, top of the line Rolex-and then found a bench to sit down on. It was only 9:50. He settled in to wait.

He stayed until eleven just to be sure. By that time, after walking around the base of the monument three times and looking over every face in the crowd, he felt safe in assuming that Stanhope would not show. He had probably been shot down in his escape pod shortly after abandoning the Rumsfeld and was now nothing but a scum of ashes floating in the South Pacific somewhere. That idea in and of itself was not a particularly unpleasant one. He had never really liked Stanhope, nor had he really ever trusted him. He had only conspired with him out of necessity. True, the acquisition of a new PC or a means to charge his dead one would have been nice, but he was doing just fine without it. The identity he had set himself up with prior to his PC dying was a wealthy one, with more than two million dollars in assets. He had used this capital to purchase a house in the one portion of the United States that would be completely untouched by Chinese bombers in the coming war. From there, he would begin to build his empire, focusing mostly on stocks he knew were going to rise with the war. Yes, by the time the armistice was signed in Tiannamen Square he would be in a position to start influencing politicians in the great WestHem tradition. From there, he and his yet to be produced descendents would be the most powerful people in the world by the beginning of the Space Colonization Age.

He walked slowly back to the Metro station adjacent to the mall and waited patiently for the next train to arrive. He boarded it, pushing in among the throngs of passengers, and found a seat near the front of the last car. The train only took him three stops down the line-an easy walking distance had he chosen to do so-before he disembarked and walked half a block to the entrance of the Washington DC Hilton Hotel, where he had stayed in one of the suites the previous night. He entered the lobby and went to the elevators, riding up to the top floor. It was time for him to leave this depressing, muggy, miserable city and head back to the tropical paradise in which he lived.

His suite was nearly fifteen hundred square feet of luxurious living space. It included a hot tub-which he had put to good use the night before with a couple of two thousand dollar a night whores-an oversized bed, a sitting room, and a fully stocked bar. He soaked in the blessed air conditioning for a few moments and then made himself a scotch on the rocks. As he sipped it he picked up the phone and called the chartered jet company he did business with. He told them he wished to leave for home as soon as possible. They promised to have a limousine in front of his hotel in thirty-five minutes and to have him at the airport twenty minutes after that. He thanked the faceless receptionist brusquely, as a rich man should thank a mere servant, and then drained the rest of his scotch. He was just about to get up and start packing his belongings when there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" he yelled, careful to inject the right amount of annoyance into his tone. He wasn't really annoyed but he was playing the part of a rich and powerful man and had an image to uphold.

"Hotel maintenance department," a male voice responded. "Can I come in for a moment, sir?"

He sighed and walked over to the door, opening it up. On the other side was a tall, brown-haired man dressed in a khaki uniform shirt and slacks. A tool belt was strapped around his waist and an identification tag hung from his shirt pocket.

"Is there a problem?" Lindley asked sourly.

"Just a little one, sir," the man told him. "There have been some problems with the toilets up on this level and they told me to come check all of them out."

"I haven't had any problems with the toilet."

"Good to hear, sir," the man said. "Hopefully you won't develop one either. Do you mind if I just take a quick look though?"

Lindley shrugged and stepped aside. "Do what you need to do," he told him, dismissing the man from his view.

The man thanked him graciously and headed for the bathroom. Lindley watched him for a moment until he started pulling the tank off the toilet. At that point he decided he'd seen enough. One thing he had not gotten used to in this culture was the primitive plumbing fixtures they used. They were noisy and smelly and cold to the touch, nothing like the modern toilets he'd been accustomed to on modern Earth. While the maintenance man tinkered and banged on the toilet, he went to the sleeping room and began to pack his clothing into his suitcase. Before he even got halfway done, the maintenance man reappeared.

"Everything is perfect in there, sir," he said. "I apologize for the intrusion."

Lindley gave him a shallow look and a non-verbal dismissal and a moment later, the man left.

Lindley finished packing his clothing and then went into the bathroom to get his toiletry articles. He packed his shaver, his toothbrush, his toothpaste, his combs and hair gel, his deodorant and after-shave. He then called for a bellboy to come get his luggage.

Twenty minutes later he was down in the lobby. Ten minutes after that, he was in the back of the limo heading for the airport. An hour after that, he was in a private Lear forty-two thousand feet above Virginia, heading for a refueling stop in San Francisco. Barring any head winds or landing delays, he would be back in his own home by nine that night.

The man the world knew as David Brown but whom his new wife called Ken sat in a Washington DC hotel room, a laptop computer open on the desk before him. As was his usual habit when alone, he was naked, his fit body soaking up the atmosphere of the room. He sipped from a glass that contained two ounces of Jack Daniels, a few ice cubes, and four ounces of Pepsi-cola. In the ashtray beside him were several cigarette butts and the remains of a joint he'd smoked earlier in the day while staring at a red dot as it moved across a map of the United States on the laptop. It was now two in the morning and the red dot had finally come to what seemed like a halt.

The red dot in question was produced by a tiny transmitter Ken had planted inside Lindley's deodorant container when he'd entered his hotel room earlier that day. The transmitter, receiver, and supporting software had cost him nearly ten thousand dollars but they were top of the line, satellite-linked, GPS-based technology, about the best thing available for private use in this day and age. He could now get a position fix on that particular deodorant container no matter where on the planet it went-a fix accurate to less than a meter. What his software was now telling him was that Lindley's deodorant-and more than likely Lindley himself-were now stationary at 23 Lihue Lane, which was a small street on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean just outside Lahaina, on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. He had found what was, presumably, Lindley's home.

Of course he could have taken out Lindley in Washington, either on the mall itself or in his hotel room. But the death of Lindley might not have been enough to protect the time stream. Lindley was still in possession of a WestHem PC in addition to whatever other futuristic devices or articles he might have been carrying with him when he originally came down. It was vital that those things be collected and destroyed as well to insure that no twenty-first century investigator happened across them and discovered technology that did not yet exist. For that reason he had planted the transmitter and followed its course back to Hawaii.

Now that he had an address, he put the tracking software into the background of the computer and called up his search software. David Brown was not nearly as well off as the man he was tracking, but he was certainly wealthy enough to afford a subscription to the best commercially available private investigation search engine. Though it was not nearly as intrusive as what the San Jose PD, or any other police department had access to, it was more than enough for his purposes here. It took him less than five minutes to learn that Lindley's address was registered to a man named Walter Lincoln, who had an alleged date of birth of January 1, 1960.

"Mr. Lincoln," Ken said to himself as he saved this information, "You're not the most potent bud on the pot plant, are you?"

It certainly didn't seem so. Walter Lincoln was the name Lindley had registered under at the Washington Hilton-a fact that a fifty-dollar bill and a few flirtatious looks had weaseled out of the registration clerk that morning. The moron had actually used his real name when he'd registered.

Armed with a name, address, and date of birth, Ken soon had a wealth of information about his prey. Calling on Hawaiian DMV files, he learned that Mr. Lincoln had a BMW, a Mercedes, and a Harley-Davidson Fatboy registered to him. Calling on credit reporting files, he found that Lincoln did his banking at the First Bank of Hawaii and the Nagamoro Savings and Loan. He had an excellent credit rating with his only outstanding debt being the 1.3 million dollar mortgage on his home. And, most important, he was unmarried and there was no other person using his address as a mailing location.

Ken saved all the information and then called up an airline-ticketing site. As he smoked another cigarette and took a hit off the roach, he booked a 7:30 PM flight from Washington to Honolulu and a transfer flight from Honolulu to Lahaina.