Chapter 17 Growing Pains

You know you have progressed when you realize you are no longer working alone. An discover that you have a well-working team and family supporting you.

This understanding was brought clear to me soon after I had recovered enough to go home.

On the short trip there, I saw unmistakable signs of sizeable new construction underway. When I asked about it, I was answered with, “Yes, we had finally reached bedrock, and the foundation laid. We will be able to start construction of base structures soon now.” one of my wives spoke knowledgeably.

Frowning, “Shouldn’t I have been informed and approved such a project?” I asked. From the size of what I could see of the construction was quite formidable.

“Oh, but you did. Dear.”

I must have looked quite perplexed.

“Oh, sorry, Dear. But after your break down, sorry, illness, we were desperate to find the cause. We searched everywhere and found your notes on your desk strewn about. Really, Dear, you should be more organize and have secured them. Fortunately, we did discover them. While we don’t know if they were a part of your collapse ah illness, they did hint that they may have been, at least in part.”

“At first, we thought they had nothing to do with what had caused you to go into shock the way you did. However, with what we learned from Colonel Blood and the interview you gave the media, we surmised they might well have been. You have been long busy on this task, Your workload must have been staggering.”

“We didn’t understand at first with the connection, but you must have been planning this for some time.,” Angela said. “the other girl still didn’t understand, but then she hadn’t been one of those that had traveled back in time. Then we girls tried to explain it to her. Then they got around to telling her of the second transition to 1836. How the air had seemed, no that is not right, the sky was cleaner, and that well before 1937 was the start of the industrial pollution that we face now today.”

“Your notes seem to indicate that even with the research your people were doing that it wouldn’t be enough to stop it, let alone reverse it.”

“We then brought together all of your senior Staff and got them to spill the beans. While none of them knew of your plans to go back in time, after thinking and a bit of head-scratching, they said, why not?” It wasn’t as if time-travel was anything new to them.the problem was staring everyone in the face. Still, the government, for all their lips service, was doing nothing.”

“After browbeating Adam, we got him the reveal all of your notes and plans.” The girls looked quite smug about that.

“Well, from conclusions we arrived at from your notes, there was no time to lose. We all decided that any research had to be accelerated, and construction on the Compound’s Governmental and housing structures needed to begin ASAP.”

“Your selection of building plans while adequate, we felt needed a woman’s touch. Also that after the transition, we wouldn’t have the resources to do anything like it. We saw right away that you were thinking of a Recreational Resort in combination with luxury housing and a Governmental tower complex.

Ripping off the Volcano Krakatau of Universal’s Volcano Bay Water Theme Park seemed a bit much, but why not go for broke. It looks like you’re just a big kid at heart. Your Recreation Theme Park should be a big hit as part of our future. And it is not like we don’t have the room to build it. We can scale it back a bit, so we don’t run into legal problems, and of course, it looks like you’ll have roller coasters and other rides as well.”

It may have seemed over the top. Then Adam played back a tape of your grandfather, ‘If I’m going to live in a hole, it is going to be the best damn hole in the world.’ Or words to that effect.

“We don’t believe your grandfather ever envision anything quite like this,” Angela said. “It is going to put his hole to shame.”

No more was said about it as we pulled up in front of the Manor.

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When I got home, They wanted to wheel me into the great hall to meet and greet with the rest of the family and Staff. I was having none of that, yes I would take it easy, but I was walking in on my own two feet. I was home now, and I had paid the price to be able to do so, and I wasn’t going to let them see me in a wheelchair if I could help it.

As per custom, the Staff was standing before the manor entrance. Mr. Tristan, lead the way as I inspected them. And of course, Mr. Tristan brought me up to date on each of them. I was most happy to hear that there would be some new additions in the form of new babies among the Staff. Pleased as well to hear of the promotions, and a bit sad about the retirements, But happy they had been loyal staff members these many years. A generous Bonus would be a part of their retirement package. Then there were the new additions to the Staff to replace those retiring and to manage the new Manor home within the ‘Tower’ when it was completed. It would be comprised of the top fifteen floors of that tower.

The main hall was decorated as might be expected for the Holidays, and I could smell the mouth-watering aromas coming from the kitchen. I was damn grateful that I had been cleared to eat regular food, even if I had to eat smaller portions.

After seeing the Staff, I was about to walk forward to greet my family when I stopped frozen in place, I saw the woman no longer a girl. I did a double-take; it was the woman from the end of the bed when I had first awoken my mind had been hazy about the details, but I knew this woman. It had been nearly fifteen years my time since I last saw her, she hadn’t changed at all. But there she stood, my lost love. I stood there, still frozen in place. What could I say or do? It was a good thing Nicky and Wind Song were both there to support me, as I wasn’t sure my legs would support me any longer. Then I bucked up, took a deep breath, and straightened.

Whatever I had been thinking. Somehow that all became unimportant to me when my first love reappeared seemingly out of nowhere. I questioned it at first if it might be an inconsistency of the timeline. Grandfather had said she was nowhere to be found. Later, I was to learn that he had run interference, not telling me the truth, so I would not be out looking to find her. I felt I could have killed him right then if he hadn’t already been dead. As I could kill him, I had thoughts of unpleasant things I would be doing to his grave. Increasingly so, dancing was out, been done, urinating? Ditto. Ya, I would have an elephant defecate over his grave; it wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a start.

Now she stood before me, and I was stunned disbelieving of ever honestly finding her again. When she saw me, she was a little more than startled herself. “You’ve aged,” she stated with some shock. “Your grandfather said you would be different, but I thought it would be something else.” As she stared at me, incomprehensibly, “How?”

I blinked, having completely forgotten that in our travel back in time I had aged real-time, Hell, I may have forgotten Everything. There was only Julia, the rest of the world ... had vanished, there was only her. At that moment, nothing else mattered.

Angela and Betty must have understood, for they didn’t break into the moment. Silly me, they had almost a year to get to know each other. While I lay in a coma and had been confined in a hospital bed. They had had more time with her than I had had.

I had aged, while when the compound had reappeared, it was at nearly to the same second it had left, so I had aged almost ten years to her none. From my perspective, the rest of the world had only progressed a few seconds. Now I was ten years her senior.

I froze like a deer in headlights. Not only had I aged, but I was married not just once but twice, without the benefit of divorce and had children by both. From a legal standpoint, I could and should be thrown in jail with the key tossed away. In the United States, bigamy was illegal; you were only allowed one wife at a time.

I would have to puzzle it all out later.

OK, I had been in a coma and months in rehab, without ‘Family’ matters to distract me. I hadn’t at the time fully recognize her. There had been that pull of recognition I had contributed it to the dream state I kept falling back into. I hadn’t really recognized anybody. I wasn’t even sure that I had ever been awake those few times I thought I was, but her shadow at the end of the bed had stirred recognition within me. There were those dream-like memories, that seemed more real than my actual moments of wakefulness.

My mind seemed to be on automatic, actually more like a total blank, I could have driven off a cliff and not have noticed. I could have used that chair just then. Just how was I going to explain another wife, let alone two, and my children by them. Even if I didn’t fully understand how it had happened, other than it had. My two wives had accepted each other with love and understanding that I had thought impossible before. Could there be room for one more?

I again recalled that they had known about each other for the past nearly a year. If I was smart, I would remain quiet and say nothing. So, of course, I started to try to explain about Angela, Betty, and the children I had fathered with them...

But no? No, they seemed to already know each other. No wonder I had spent all that time in rehab. They had been preparing me for this. Nicky and Wind Song thankfully were there to prop me up. Then I bucked up and stood on my own.

Julia waved me to silence, “We can talk about that later.”

Little did I know of other surprises for me.

She was still staring as she stepped forward, she held out an envelope, “Your grandfather gave me this to give to you. I would have given it to you sooner but... “ handing it to me. It was in my grandfather’s handwriting, addressed to me. It even had today’s date on it. Today’s date? What the hell? No one could have had foretold I would enter a coma. Or when I would be discharged to go home. With a note as to where and when. The letter within it was simple. I was to go back to my office alone. There an old computer there, with a key card unlocking the keyboard sitting at the desk and enter a password.

I didn’t want to go, I had too many questions to ask Julia, where had she been, why had she left?

She came up close and whispered in my ear. “Your grandfather was quite insistent; you do this first before I would be allowed to answer your questions. Please, the sooner you do, the sooner we can do so.”

I asked Adam about it. Unsurprisingly he was silent about it. It had done this before.

The note, as well as the contents of the envelope, told me that something much more had been going on all along and that I had been deliberately left in the dark about it. The question was, WHAT, HOW, and WHY?

In the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’ OK, ok, so I ripped off a ‘Star Wars ‘ line. So sue me. It was still valid.

I was also hesitant to do so, maybe even fearful. The unknown is - well - the unknown. As we grow older, it becomes more a part of us. The trick is, ‘Not to let it rule your life.’ Grandfather had been my rock, the one person I thought I could always trust. Had that all been a lie? Now it seemed instead of a rock, I had been standing on sand. No! I had to hold onto that it wasn’t all a lie. This was no time to let go of my trust in that rock, or in myself, for that matter. I was sure I would learn the details of my love’s disappearance, but then there would be more, just how much more I would find out. Would I learn all the answers? If past history had taught me anything, I highly doubted it.

Going down to his office, now my own, I had Adam secure the room, I recalled the last time I had asked Adam that,

“Adam, if anything untoward should happen to me in here, open that door.”

“Affirmative, Mr. Wolfenstein!” Then sitting behind the desk, pulling out the keyboard, inserted the key card into it, then entered the code...

___________________________

Hours? Later...

What I learned, stunned me. Answers, yes, the rest too unbelievable to give credence to. Had I not lived some of it, I wouldn’t have believed any of it. After it was all said, I just sat there, too shocked to do anything. I wasn’t so stunned as to have a relapse, but it was a struggle to try to comprehend it all. That seemed different somehow, not really thoughts of avoiding a bullet, but something far more profound.

First off, let me state, none of this had been an accident. My early upbringing, everything! The timeline jumps, none of it. About the only thing that had not been planned out in advance was my being born.

Grandfather had supplanted my parents in my upbringing shortly after I was born. Oh, it hadn’t been right away. It had all started very early, though. It was easy as my mother never had the maternal instincts of one that might become attached to the baby she had carried for nine months. Her whole pregnancy had been an inconvenience for her. She very nearly aborted when she found she was pregnant. Would have, too, had she not made the mistake of informing her husband, who then told my grandfather. My father inadvertently saved my life.

But much like his wife, once the child was born, he lost interest. After all what can you do with an infant, that was as likely to pee on you as not as you held it.

So after showing off his firstborn, proving he had the stones to produce an heir. I had been resigned to a nursery and a nanny to take care of me in my parent’s absence. Enter my grandfather, who was perhaps the first face I recognized after that of my nanny. Just how often he came to see me ... well, did that really matter to an infant? Suffice to say it was often enough that I learned gurgle and smile whenever I saw him.

He seemed to have been there for every milestone of my life from when I first learned to turn over. I started to crawl, and my first step. He even had my first baby shoes bronzed and placed on his desk.

That was the beginning. Mother and father would trot me out once a year or so just to prove they had a child, but for little more. Did I miss having a mother and father? How can you miss something you never knew?

While I hadn’t felt like I had been manipulated, I had been, or had I been? I had made my own choices, abet with grandfather’s influence. How much had I decided for myself, and how much had been determined for me? Could I trust any of it?

Grandfather was there to make sure I learned on my own. Yes, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, so to speak. But I never knew it. Well yes, I was s child of the super-rich. But I didn’t have somebody fawning over my every fall, nobody to solve my problems. If I wanted something, while I might ask for it, it was seldom given, I had to figure out how to get it on my own. You have any idea how much freedom that provides a child with?

Well enough about my childhood. Other than to say, my grandfather was the central fixture in my life, and he guided me through most of it.

I wasn’t spoon-fed my way through life, but to tell the truth, I was relatively sheltered from the harsh realities of life. Which is why it had been so easy for my classmates to have sandbagged in that business exercise. I hadn’t realized that up to then that, people might seem friendly, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn on you if they thought it would give them an advantage. One of my first lessons in dealing with the outside world.