Chapter 3

Ari Ramke and Ben Shepherd leaned over the Voice Print Recorders as the technician replayed the tape.

"Ok," the technician said, "here is Houston ATC calling 1070. As you can hear, the controller's calling in the aircraft. Now, here's 1070 replying. As you can see, they don't match up. Houston's telling 1070 to divert, yet 1070 seems to be asking for approach instructions. Neither is replying to the other... strange. Then, sir, you get this funny noise... now."

"What is it?" asked Ben.

"I don't know. I tried to clean it up. I thought it must have been damaged, but... well, sir? On the CVR, it's the same thing. It's not magnetic interference, it's nothing I've ever heard before, listen?"

They all listened for a few seconds as the speaker growled and snapped. It was a sound almost super-natural, like someone was tearing up newspaper, but way louder.

"The crew don't appear to react," Ari commented, "like it was normal, or... perhaps they can't hear it? It must be damage on the tape."

"No, sir, the tape's fine. I thought of recorder malfunction, but we haven't been able to duplicate it. In any case, Radio log and CVR both have the same thing. How likely is it that they should both have the same malfunction?"

"You haven't found an answer," Ari declared, "you must keep trying till you do!"

Ben looked at the young tech as he flashed an offended expression. He knew how he felt, Ari was overbearing and rubbed everyone up the wrong way. At first Ben thought the man was just arrogant, but he'd concluded that a lot of cultural difference was coming into play. He'd heard, apparently, that that was the way the German investigators operated. They had a strict hierarchy over there, and young techs had better find answers, or else! He did, though, know his craft well.

"It's alternate was Austin," Ben told Ari, "yet clearly they never made it. The last reported position was 70 miles South of Houston Tower, over land, yet the aircraft went down over water in the Gulf. What happened from the time of their last transmission to when they crashed? If they diverted to Austin they were way off course. Why did they turn back, Ari, and why didn't they try and make Austin?"

"That storm was very localised," Ari replied, "apart from the Houston area, visibility was fine. The instrument recorder suggests everything was normal for a period of 25 minutes after their last transmission, so we can rule out power failure. No violent fluctuation in cabin pressure either. It could, perhaps, indicate a problem with the O2? The crew may have passed out from lack of Oxygen. In that case, the plane would fly itself until it ran out of fuel?"

"It would follow its last heading in that case, on auto-pilot. Not turn itself around and fly the other way?"

"Yes... a mystery," Ari conceded.

"The only way that could happen is if the nav computer instructed the aircraft to change direction?"

"Aha, yes!" Ari snapped his fingers in triumph, "this needs proving, but, what if there was an O2 failure? The crew hear Houston instructing them to divert, but the pilots, perhaps disoriented from lack of oxygen, punch in the wrong code?"

"So why would 1070 go down? They still had plenty of fuel."

"Hmm, perhaps there were a number of factors... all combining to bring that craft down?"

"And you're forgetting about the radar plots, clearly showing 1070 over land, 70 miles South of the tower, when it disappears. Where does that factor come in?"

Ari threw his hands up in frustration and sat down once more. He stared out the window for an uncomfortably long time, just thinking. "There are always answers," he muttered to himself, "always answers."

The Hernandez girls were at school and Connie, Raul's wife, had gone off to her job as a legal secretary. Arnim, Kurzbach and Fuller sat around the pool. Raul, himself, had gone to work early after a phonecall. He didn't explain why, but Arnim thought he looked as white as a sheet. 'Perhaps the stress was getting to him?' he mused. He felt sorry that they'd visited this problem upon these good people.

"So, you see?" Fuller was telling them. He was something of a science fiction addict and their situation had stimulated every theory he'd ever read about. "We have parallel universes of infinite number. Every moment in time creates a crossroad, see, and..."

"So you're implying that merely our presence here has already altered history as we knew it in 2006?" Arnim said.

"It has to," Fuller replied, "in our time, Raul had never met us, the 747 would not be on the tarmac at Austin and Bob would not be hiding it away in a shed he'd altered. That shed, for instance, was probably left unaltered and unused. Time has already changed for us."

"We must exist as both our younger selves and us here today? Am I 33 somewhere and flying Transalls out of Berlin-Tegel?" Kurzbach asked. "My daughter would have been 11. Does she exist, now? Or maybe disappeared in a puff of smoke?"

"There's no reason to think that. Your past life would be the same, that's history, but what happens to you in November 1986? Perhaps you disappeared suddenly while out walking?" Fuller suggested.

"My son was born next year," Kurzbach said, "the tenses defy common grammar. If what you say is true, then he wasn't born at all. He doesn't exist now."

"He exists," Fuller replied, "but not in this timeline. We have crossed over, see?"

"It would be easy to test the theory," Arnim told the others, "call Berlin, now, and talk to yourself? Do you remember ever having a conversation like that? With your older self?"

"Of course not," Kurzbach replied, "you'd think I'd remember? You'd think I'd keep it to myself if I had?"

"I would," thought Arnim, "they'd have me grounded if I came up with a story like that."

"But you were... are, only 8? Children have these fantasies. Your Mother might have patted you on the head and told you how imaginative you are?" Fuller told him.

"If I call myself, and I answer, then I have deliberately altered time," Kurzbach considered, "something we agreed we mustn't do?"

"And it's clear you haven't done so, otherwise you would have remembered? Obviously, you never made that call, now, or in the future?"

"Arnim, this is too much for us to understand," Kurzbach said.

"Captain?" Fuller said, "I think I made the call. Not to myself, but to my future wife, Anna. At least corresponded... I think I've been writing to her all along... in three years time when she was 7. Captain, I think her mysterious Uncle in the United States was me all along. Sir, if I'm right, she is waiting for me to appear 20 years older in July 2006. I will be there for our child, I know I will!"

"How do you know? How come she never told you?" Kurzbach asked.

"Because I told her not to. It's suddenly becoming clearer. If I'd known then, the timeline would've been altered."

"Your saying you've been writing to Anna throughout her childhood? So, she knew when she met you that you were to marry?"

"She always told me that she'd been waiting for me her whole life," Fuller chuckled, "now I know what she meant. We'd fallen in love before we ever met. Captain, this was all meant to happen... it has happened, we are where we've always been... in two parallel lives that reintegrate on July the 13th, 2006."

"I... I... are you sure?" Kurzbach asked, his face ashen. "Everything that is happening, has happened and we are where we're supposed to be?"

"Then we cannot change anything," Arnim said, "how can we... it's happened already, like predestination?"

"Are you religious, Arnim?" asked Fuller, smiling.

"My other self would say no," he smiled back, "but this self is a little nearer to belief, I think."

"Then, perhaps, we may see you in Church?" Kurzbach asked.

"Maybe... in twenty years time, perhaps."

"Ok, Bob, run through it one more time," Raul asked Garland. The engineer was pale, his eyes unfocussed from lack of sleep and shock. A cigarette trembled between his fingers, a thin trail of smoke shimmered in the still air. A worker had offered him one, even though he didn't smoke.

"I thought it was beginning to rain," Bob said, gulping, "last night... about 11 when we were moving the plane... that fucking plane! I never want to see that hoodoo as long as I live!"

"Ok, go on, Bob," Raul said, kindly. "You want a belt? I have some bourbon..."

"No... the rain was falling from the 747. It was dripping from the wings, fusilage... it was seawater, Raul, fucking seawater. It was running out of the undercarriage wells. It just got heavier and heavier until it was even flowing out the fucking door. That ship was filled to the brim with the sea! And seaweed! My truck was covered in fucking seaweed!"

"Then what happened?"

"Ok, Raul," Garland said, taking a drag on the forgotten cigarette, "then things started to get weird!" He looked at Raul and managed to grin. "Really weird!"

Bobby McClone had known Ben Shepherd for a long time. They'd been rookies together in the Air National Guard before Ben had gone off to college to train as an aviation engineer. They'd kept in touch while Ben worked for MacDonnell-Douglas. Ben had a cabin up in Colorado and he, and their wives, would holiday together in the mountains.

Then Ben got offered a job in Washington he couldn't refuse. It was an engineer's dream, that job; to find out what happened when things go wrong.

They shook each other's hands warmly, like old friends, and Ben offered to show Bobby around; at what they had so far.

"As far as we've been able to tell so far, 1070 just stopped flying. It literally fell out of the air! It plunged straight down, engines at cruise, and the crew apparently did nothing about it. They were in a vertical dive, unaware!"

"The CVR?"

"Normal crew chatter until they hit the water."

"Radio transmissions?"

"Now it gets strange. This is confidential, Bobby, I don't want this in the media."

"Sure."

"The radio log records 1070 asking Houston for approach instructions to Houston tower. But Houston was trying to tell them about the storm and advise them to divert to the alternate, Austin. They are having two different conversations! Houston records prove they didn't respond, yet 1070's log have them apparently receiving instructions. It doesn't square."

"No," Bobby conceded.

"But, get this. 1070 went down 25 minutes before that conversation. If the CVR time is correct, 1070 was transmitting under the water in the Gulf of Mexico!"

"Huh?"

"And Houston ATC was tracking it by radar 25 minutes after it went down!"

"Oh, clearly the CVR timer was off?"

"Now, how can that be? All clocks are integrated into the navigation computer. No, it should self-adjust or switch to back up."

"The GPS would keep them on course."

"Sure, but they failed to confirm the TACOS waypoint off the Florida keys..."

"TACOS?"

"Yeah, you probably don't remember that one. It was established last year. 1070 failed to confirm, and that's not like ACIS. They're sticklers for international flight rules."

"So you're saying all computers, including back up, had the clocks running fast by 25 minutes? Then they didn't follow IFR by failing to confirm reaching a waypoint? It all would have to be deliberate!"

"Or human error. Don't seem likely, does it, yet..."

"It doesn't explain why it went down."

"No, but it would explain some of the time discrepencies between 1070's recorders and Houston Control."

"But not why Houston was tracking it after it went down. Maybe it was another aircraft with a similar transponder signature?"

"Nope, it checked out, no mistake. It was 1070 they were tracking."

"Ben?" Bobby said. His voice was quiet and nervous. He didn't really want to suggest his theory. He was sure Ben would advise him to seek psychiatric counselling. "I have a possible explanation, well, really it's an impossible one. Would you hear me out without comment?"

Ben nodded uncertainly at his old friend. With a preamble like that it had to be good!

"Well," Bobby began, "I met this old man down at search headquarters..."

Raul had a reputation as an honest and upright citizen and employee. His job at the freight depot had many opportunities for someone with a penchant for corruption. Raul prided himself on never giving away to temptation, even if it could have made him a lot of money on the side.

BFF understood that, and is why they'd given the second generation Mexican the responsibility. He'd never let them down in all his time with the company.

As in business, so in his family life. He was open and honest with both his daughters and his wife. That's why it gnawed at him that he couldn't be completely truthful about the situation of his guests. He'd explained to his family that the crew of an airliner visiting Austin had undergone some instrument failure. The crew had needed somewhere to stay till the aircraft could be fixed or a replacement arrived. Raul knew that was never going to happen. He knew that at some time, as his guests continued to remain marooned, he'd need to come up with another story or find somewhere else for 1070's crew to stay.

On the other hand, he couldn't leave them without support or at the mercy of the authorities. His parents had taken the hard decision to come to America to start a new life. Their success had depended on the support of the Mexican community here and without their nurture of the young family, they'd never have made it. Raul understood, but it didn't make his situation any easier.

As a Father, however, he knew he was too soft. Connie had presented him with four girls and, true, he'd have preferred even one boy to carry the family name. But it didn't rankle much, his girls were jewels and he was intensely proud of them. But having a household full of females often overwhelmed him. It was easier, sometimes, to give way, or run and hide when they argued and fought.

Connie, therefore, provided the backbone he felt he lacked when dealing with his children. The girls all had spirit and coupled that to an above average intelligence. Even Connie had trouble keeping them on track, especially now with puberty and all the problems that brings.

At 21, Ariana could date whom she wanted, providing it didn't interfere with College. She was a beauty and never short of admirers. But, fortunately, she took College seriously and always managed to balance her romantic and educational life. Her Father had passed that down to her, self discipline, and she was never going to be a 'dumb Mexican' holding down a job at a supermarket checkout with three kids and a string of unemployed bums as partners.