Chapter 16: Third time’s the charm

Third time’s the charm.

Abraham watched as the countdown progressed. This time he was not alone as his wife Anna stood beside him. They stood before a wall-size Ultra-High definition television screen. It was so lifelike as if they were all in the same room. There, on one side, was their daughter, her husband James, and her extended family. With all the children present to say their farewells. Afterward, they would then be shepherded to their own heavily shielded area.

James had indicated that he didn’t think it was that hazardous, but he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

They watched as Jim was handed his helmet to wear in a rather insistent manner. Abraham had heard about the falls and head injuries of Jim’s previous transitions. You could see how uncomfortable Jim was about using it. Then his bewilderment when everybody else pulled out the ones they had been hiding from him and put theirs on. With the High definition television, you could even see the beads of sweat on his forehead.

They all had a good laugh—a Gotcha moment.

The Goodbyes were repeated, though, without the hugs. The children rushed forward arms extended wide, and Anna, arms outstretched, had rushed forward as well to hug them one last time, bumping into the wall screen, to the children’s gleeful laughter. The children immediately were chided for playing a joke on their grandmama. The effect was lost as all were grinning, including grandmama. She said, “I don’t think I will ever get used to these new-fangled things.”

After that, the children were sent away to be with the other children of the Compound.

Then it was time. Jim and his family sat down on the long couch. Abraham and Anna couldn’t be faulted for not knowing it was a replica of a Star Trek movie set.

Abraham was not sure what to expect next. Jim hadn’t been sure of what might happen either. Test readings from the last event had not revealed much. Everyone, including the children, had been involved in creating more and different tests, in the hopes that even one of them might divulge something new.

Then all on the couch lowered their visors as the final moments came. Abraham and his wife Anna stood close together as they watched Jim lean forward, and with his hand motioning forward, he said, “Engage!“

The image on the wall screen almost immediately turned to static. It remained that way momentarily before a test pattern replaced it. Then a view of the terrain that must have been there before the transition.

Abraham couldn’t be sure if that were the case, but it wasn’t the same as the midwestern landscape he had seen the first time.

Slowly Anna turned to her husband and burying her head against his shoulder, began to weep.

Abraham felt his wife trembling against him, and he couldn’t be sure that the sound of weeping was hers alone.

It started with Blackness.

It seemed I was fading in and out of it.

“ ... ear us?”

“ ... ou hear us?”

“ ... enstein, can you hear us?”

“ ... ou hear us? Mr. Wolfenstein, can you hear us?”

I was waking from a dream in fits and starts. It all seemed so far away. Now there was a lack of light, muted sounds, a bizarre feeling about what had happened in that dream. I felt I needed to learn more, and I didn’t want to awaken, but the sounds were growing more and more insistent.

It hadn’t been what might have been the usual transition, this time I had dreamed. I was trying to put the pieces together, but they were so fleeting that it was hard even to recall they had been a dream or even parts of dreams.

“Mr. Wolfenstein, can you hear us?” muffled the voice repeated. With my mind still in a daze, a strange thought came to me, had I actually said engage? That hadn’t been part of the dream, had it?!

I think I said a few words, but it felt like Nana hadn’t understood me.

The next time I heard the voice. “Mr. Wolfenstein, can you hear us?” the repeated query, kept pulling me to wakefulness. I didn’t want to awaken from the dream. I replied, “Just another few minutes Nana.”

“Wake up, Mr. Wolfenstein, can you understand us? You have things to do.”

I was just about to repeat, ‘Just another few minutes Nana please.’ When I realized I wasn’t in bed nor a child and the dream was gone.

Returning to consciousness and awareness, I found there was none of the confusion of the other transitions: no blaring claxons, no spinning emergency lighting, and no pounding in my head from an injury. It was more like waking from an intense, realistic dream, one that I hadn’t wanted to awaken. Had it all been a dream?

My vision was impaired, then I realized I was wearing the helmet, and I raised the visor to see more clearly. I had to smile to myself. I hadn’t fallen, at least I think I hadn’t, and I didn’t have a painful head injury as I had before, it was all coming back to me. That was all a plus that it wasn’t painful.

I did see that Nicky and Wind Song, were hovering over me as always. Their hands were passing over me oddly, as well as my three wives standing just behind them. Why did it always seem to be I was the last to regain consciousness? My wives appeared to be letting Nicky and Wind Song, examine me as they stood back, but still close by. I would have to ask Adam about that.

I heard someone call out. “Stations report!” I was a bit peeved, wasn’t that my job to order that? I don’t think I was fully aware yet, but I should have counted myself lucky I hadn’t hurt my head, for even if I had things were moving smoothly with or without me. It was no longer all on just me. I now had a well-organized team.

Adam, as always, must have been monitoring my emotional well being and may have noticed my annoyance.

Adam then started giving me a running commentary of what was happening. With Adam reporting directly to me with that voice in my head, Adam stated that it was confident, within several thousand decimal points, that we were home. Confidentially I asked just how far it could check, and he said just under a terabyte past the decimal point. Hence, there was still the possibility that this was not home. There was that three-second gap that made it difficult.

Handed something to drink, it went down smoothly. Informed it was a stimulant, and I couldn’t argue that I didn’t need one. Looking around, it was all making more sense, though it still felt like I was awaking from a strange lingering dream.

With my head clearing from the transition, I realized I was now the Command officer. I didn’t need to micro-manage my subordinates’. They all knew their jobs and were doing them well.

Recalling Adam’s numbers, When dealing with the infinite, a terabyte past the decimal point could still be a wide margin. A mere hundred thousand almost seemed like a crapshoot on an uneven table, with the dots falling off the dice.

A world possibly the same yet still different in ways that might be incomprehensible, or worse, might be!

“Okay,” I asked Adam, “where are we most vulnerable if this is not our timeline?”

Adam responded, “Any abnormality ascribed to faulty memory between individuals. Certain things should not have changed; differences might be in some people having been born and some not. Any real differences would be in memories of the past, making it hard to quantify. I am running a deeper comparison check to see if there are any recordable incidences of real change as well. That will take time, as there are myriad of points/paths that need verifying. A three-second gap might not have incurred that many changes, to use a human term; nothing is certain.”

‘The real problem might be,’ I thought to myself, ‘just what could we do about it if it wasn’t?’ We are here now. Another transitional jump would be no guarantee we would be any better off.

I spoke, “Adam, continue to look for differences and inform me of any deviations that I need to be made aware of.” For all, I knew world war three might have started in that three-second gap.

There had been television shows and movies in the past about time travel and parallel universes. None of that was in any way helpful to me now. How many other people would recall those same programs and come pestering me about them? They had made for exciting entertainment, but we had lived it.

While thinking of what differences the outside world might cause us, I had entirely overlooked what differences the Compound might or would be making on the outside world. We were not the same. As if to hammer that point home, the utility company noticing our lines were down were sending an emergency team right over to fix the problem.

My people had been going over the possibilities and had informed me that some things needed to be covered up. The most difficult would be the basin and the small fleet within it. Well, really, just how does one hide an Aircraft carrier, let alone two of them?

Before we had transitioned back, I remembered that when we dug the basin out, it was quite deep with a massive dry dock, and pads for the ships already in place. At the time, I hadn’t given it much thought. It had been merely one of many oddities we had discovered after the transition.

There had been pumps and the water removed. The ships settled down low. Then with the ship masks removed, we were able to build a warehouse over them, hiding them from a clear view. Of course, the building itself might be hard to explain away, but it would be far and away easier than what was within them.

The armored division had been mothballed and covered back up.

Some people who had visited the Compound previous to the transition recently would notice. We would just have to make sure they didn’t return for maybe a year, to give us a cover story, it was newly constructed. We would just have to have their access restricted for a while.

Chuckling to myself, it had indeed been so, just that it was one-hundred years ago.

Being on our own power for so long, I had forgotten the transition had cut the utility lines.

My next call was about the media reporters, clamoring to be released so they could go to their outlets with their stories. Now that was a problem. I had more or less stopped them the last time by pointing out they didn’t have any organizations to file their reports. Now they did, and now I was faced with the problem of how to deal with it.

Ahh, fuck me! I hadn’t given this a thought before now. There had been just too much on my mind lately. Shit, all the while worrying about getting home to an unchanged timeline. And all the while, the Compound itself was anything but the same.

“Adam, Have Col. Blood meet me in the main conference room and have him bring a squad of marines. Then inform the media people I will meet with them there.”

Before just after our first jump, they had demanded the same thing, but I confronted them with just where would they be doing so and how? There was only print, radio, and movie reels. There was no internet, and television was experimental. They wouldn’t even be able to phone in their stories. On top of that, some hadn’t an outlet to file a report.

Well, they did now and in spades. Could I head them off, or should I? Could I stop them from telling the world that inside a newly built warehouse sat two aircraft carriers and a fleet of support ships?

To buy myself as much time as I could, I walked. It hadn’t boughten me much time to think as I wanted, even slow-walking as I reached the conference room.

Even before reaching the room could hear loud, unruly sounds of intense questioning coming from within it.

If it was bad before, as soon as I made an appearance, pandemonium broke out with everyone vying for my attention and asking questions.

I made an about-face to the shouts from the media that I hadn’t said anything.

I called Col. Blood over. “Call them to order and make it stick.” Col Blood almost seemed happy with those orders.

While I didn’t hear any gunshots, the room did get quiet. Col Blood came out and said I believe they have come to order and shouldn’t give you any problems.

I thought about the last man I had shot in the Philippines and wondered if maybe I should ask for his sidearm.

“You didn’t shoot anyone, did you?”

He looked a bit disappointed, “No, I was about to, but for some reason, the man decided to sit down and close his mouth.” Col Blood followed me into the room, which was now much quieter.

“I appreciate you all coming here on such short notice. I understand you have some concerns.”

There started a general uptick in noise as questions were about to again be shouted out when I heard Col. Blood, and I think everyone else did as well as he cleared his throat and casually placed a hand on his sidearm, the room for some reason quickly came back to order.

Now they raised their hands.

I picked one correspondent at randomly, your question first. With one eye on Col. Blood, he rose identified himself and his organizations then politely asked when they would be released so they could contact their news bureaus so that they could file their stories.

Good question. Turning to Col. Blood, “Is your firing squad ready?” He beamed as he replied, “Yes, Sir! Mr. Wolfenstein.” There may have been some looks of concern about the room. Maybe some were looking for an exit. Col. Blood added, “Some of the men have even polished their bullets.”

“Well. we will not need it.” Col. Blood’s face took on a dejected look, but there seemed to be relieved faces of the other people in the room.

Looking out onto the group, “Okay, I hope I have your attention now.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we,” and I looked about the room as I then continued, “WE! have a problem. Can any of you make a few guesses as to what that might be?”

There was silence for a while in the room. It seemed no one wanted to be first to speak out.

Then from the back of the room, it was heard, “Ahh Shit, DAMNIT ALL TO HELL!”

I looked back, trying to pick out the speaker. “Care to elaborate?”

The man stood up clearly incensed, “No one going to believe us, and what we have, pointing out the obvious are things that simply can’t be. There is the basin filled with warships, they are there, and very real we can see them, we can touch them, feel the cold hard steel of them. But they were not there yesterday, and just how did World War Two Battleships end up in the middle of Kansas let along a small fleet of others? Anyone see a river or some other way they could have floated there. A full division of armor might be believed. Still, again they were not there yesterday on this timeline when the ATF was here and made a full inspection of everything on the Compound? We were there we saw it, we even followed them around, any of you see any of it then?”

The war we saw, the one we witnessed and reported on, WW2 never happened that way here. It hadn’t ended in forty-three nearly two years sooner than it did here. I’m also reasonably sure no one is going to believe we’re at the Alamo and witnessed that all the defenders survived. That Santa Anna ceded all of all the lands between Texas and California.

For us they happened, I mean they are there, what we witness did happen, at least I think it did. I’m not so sure now. But these memories were real, but just how?

We could show people we are ten years older, and say we are time travelers. Who would believe us? Yes, everything we know is real, we lived it. But if I were reading about this without having lived it, I would say the person writing it was ready for the loony bin. And that any pictures of any of it were fake or photoshopped.

Maybe the hardest part would be explaining how we had aged overnight. Anyone care to spend the next ten years locked up in a spook lab while they try to figure it out? We are screwed anyway we look at it. We can bring people out here to see it, but we can’t explain any of it without looking crazy.”

It took a few minutes for that to sink in. There were a few that wanted to anyways. “Hey, you’re on your own with that one buddy, don’t look to me to support you. I have no desire to be locked up and have needles jabbed into me for the rest of my life, which there would be no guarantee that it would be a long one.”

“Anyone here thinks that there were never any real aliens at area 51, dead or alive and if there were what happened to them?”

I added, “Look if you did manage to get someone in the government to believe you. They would just hand you over to the so-called intelligence agencies. If the spooks have their way, no one will ever leave here, it will be an area 51 or 52 or whatever and after a while, when they can’t get the answers they want, they will bury the whole Compound and everyone in it.”

Lastly, I said, “Okay, people, you’re on your own with this. You can go or stay. I’m not stopping you, and you can bet the farm I will not be confirming your stories.”

I cleared my throat. Then I sort of dropped a bombshell, I sort of coughed, then in a small voice, “I’m thinking of going back in time again, some Ten Thousand years in time. If you care to join me, I will not object.” If you had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like an explosion as it hit the floor; it was that silent.

Even Col. Blood was looking at me funny, and not in a happy sort of way.

“Now you’re all reporters, is that not the same as being a historian?”

“Have I ever really mistreated any of you? Told you could not see and report what you saw?”

“Think about and then let me know. In the meanwhile, I don’t plan on stopping any of you.” I left the room somewhat unsteadily. ‘Crap did I have to add that last part. I hadn’t even worked out any of the details for my self.

___________________________

Had I dodged a bullet? Col. Blood was right there asking me privately if I was crazy, before he got a strange look on his face, turned and walked away.

___________________________

I walked for a bit aimlessly for a while. Pasting by an open office, I walked in and requested the room. The office supervisor must have recognized me. “Mr. Wolfenstein has requested the room, Please leave the room in an orderly fashion.” and had everyone leave. He drew near me and asked if there was anything I needed. I looked at him almost unseeingly, “Give everyone the rest of the day off.” He beamed as he replied, “Yes, Sir Mr. Wolfenstein.”

As soon as he had left, I said, “Secure the room.”

“The room is secure.” Reported Adam.

I sat at one of the desks, placing my elbows on the table, resting my forehead within my hands.

I started to shiver, shake. My mind was narrowing its focus, blanking out everything but the thought, ‘I must have dodged a bullet.’ A bullet?

There was a virtual hail storm of bullets heading my way. My vision narrowed and darken. The room became an expansive dark endless void, and I was falling into it.

‘I must have dodged a bullet.’ A bullet? There was a hail storm of bullets heading my way. ‘I must have dodged a bullet.’ My mind kept repeating. A bullet? There was a hail storm of bullets heading my way. My mind was repeating over and over again. ‘I must have dodged a bullet.’ A bullet? There was a hail storm of bullets heading my way. The room was getting colder. I no longer noticed how hard my body was shaking. My vision had narrowed, the world a meaningless void I had fallen into spinning round and round, falling endlessly ‘I must have dodged a bullet.’ A bullet? There was a hail storm of bullets heading my way ... there was a void an endless vastness of nothingness around me...

Part of my dream? The door exploded open, and Nicky and Wind Song charged into the room, closely followed by my wives and emergency attendants and Doctors. The last thing I dreamt I think was a pain in my arm, dodged a bullet, dodged a bullet, a hail of bullets were heading my way, a void then darkness. There was nothing after that. Ahh, fuck me.

___________________________

Memories... ?

It was quiet-peaceful. Whatever worries I had had were a distant, nearly forgotten memory.

There was a vast vista of rolling hills. In the distance, a darkness over the land before I recognized it as an enormous herd That didn’t sound right of unidentified animals. Scattered about were odd-looking objects; my mind identified them as escape pods and cargo containers, many of them broken up. I had never seen them before, so how did I know what they were?

The air had a strangeness to it. It wasn’t unpleasant. It seemed raw somehow. The absence of unfiltered air. Why would the air be filtered? Grass? There was a jumble of memories, another’s, and my own. The wind shifted and was now from the herd beasts, and there was ... just what was it? ... it wasn’t just a sense of countless animals. Like the smell of the grass, it seemed unmistakable. Had it been dark, you would have known they were there—the pungent smell of life.

Dark? No, I looked up at the sky. The whitest clouds I had ever seen floated above, I watched as the shadows of them rushed across the vast openness. Like the wind blowing across the grasslands, a sea of waves. I had never seen such blueness, such clarity. I could see across the broad valley before me as never before. The only haze was from the milling beasts calmly feeding what must have been units away. miles... ? I could see individual animals, young, old, large males? I could almost count them but for their vast numbers.