by David Hunter
~ ~ ~
Packing his office was a time of bittersweet memories for Moshe. His work here was the crowning achievement of a very long and satisfying career. An achievement never to be published in any scientific journal, kept from the knowledge of global colleagues. He wondered how many other scientists achieved great heights only to be locked away for the sake of national or industrial security. Governments had their spies and corporations theirs. What was accomplished here would be the corporate coup of a lifetime, worth more money than all countries' currencies combined.
A soft rapping at the door announced Jeff's arrival.
"Ah, so good to see you. Please, close the door and come in." Moshe motioned Jeff in with an empty hand.
"Thank you." Settling down in a chair of a previously Spartan office, Jeff was unsettled at how bare it now looked, pictures removed from walls and desk. The desk was uncluttered for the first time since he knew Moshe. "I see your packing is progressing well. Anything I can do to help?"
"Thanks but no. Besides, you'd be unable to read most of the papers and book titles rendering you - I'm sorry to say - useless for packing them in the correct cartons." Moshe shrugged a little, then continued packing.
"I'm going to miss you, Moshe. You and Rachael are the best friends I have here. I understand you and Rivka will be traveling, seeing the world?"
"Yes, we are. She's much more excited about it than I. We'll be starting with a trip to Brazil though I'd much rather go back to doing what I love best; research. Oh well, given the little health scare I had, and the fact that Rivka and I haven't traveled much since our honeymoon, it's time I put research behind me and Rivka in an airplane beside me!"
"An important gain for Rivka, but a loss to the scientific community."
"Thanks. Say, Jeff, I wanted to ask you something."
"Anything."
"The first landing you executed took longer for you to return than was expected due to the fact that you were shot in the leg and captured. I wonder, why did the second landing take so long?"
This was the question Jeff dreaded. So much happened and then unhappened; he had yet to be debriefed formally.
"Moshe, I have to come clean sometime - it seems appropriate that I do so first with you."
Stauffenberg spoke regarding his need to find a way to manipulate both grandparents without risking ruining their future happiness. He didn't expect the events of the current time line to accelerate so rapidly.
Moshe thought for a while about Jeff's response, how he required much more time than he had been given.
"Even if you stuck to the schedule exactly as it was given to you the nuclear and bio weapons would have eliminated humans in our time frame anyway. There was no way around that. But that's something you couldn't have known. That you risked all of humanity by altering the time you spent in the past, that's something I find unacceptable. What if The Project had been destroyed in our time? You would have been unable to return, and humanity would have been extinguished. We know the schedule you were given should have worked. You spent too much time just seeing where events led you rather than taking the quickest, most expedient route."
"I know that, Moshe. Don't you think I considered all of these things carefully?"
"You're completely missing the point. You changed the mission schedule based on what, your feelings? Your concern for two children while the entire planet rested in the balance? Did Rachael know about this?"
"No, she didn't have any idea. For that matter I didn't know. I had to adjust and reevaluate as events unfolded."
"Do you have any idea the impact those extra days had here in this timeline? For the world at large, what happened during the time you were gone versus the reality of now makes it a non sequitur. For those of us in the facilities, where the reality remains the same, there will be long-term psychological and even physical damage."
Jeff realized that Moshe wasn't just referring to his heart attack; there were others throughout the facilities who also suffered lingering physical damages. He also heard of cases of suicide by some in the facilities who had lost loved ones on the outside. Taking his time to avert the potential negative impact his manipulations might have had on the futures of two innocent children had, ultimately, caused even more harm in his own time, tragedies and deaths inside the facilities that he didn't anticipate.
"Moshe, I don't know what to say."
"Nothing can be said. Understand Jeff, I'm not doing this to you just to make you feel badly about yourself, or me, or the others you affected in the here-and-now. I need you to learn from it. You really must understand that if you are asked to remain with The Project, you are to follow orders, and that includes the time constraints you are given. The only exception will be if your own life is endangered. It's okay to question those orders with your leaders during the planning stage, but never okay to make unilateral changes on your own unless your life is endangered."
"Once a decision is reached, you either follow the will of the consensus or you remove yourself completely. You are exceptionally intelligent, there's no denying that. Many minds superior to yours go into the decision-making process for these missions. It is your place to question something you feel is outside your own personal boundaries. Your thoughts and feelings are taken into consideration. Once you agree to a plan and a mission the thinking is done."
"Now, what's done is done. We can't risk going back a second time to carry out the mission within the time limits that it should have been executed. Each incursion in time carries risks that can't be foreseen. Already ripples of the changes you effected are being discovered by a records comparison in and outside the shielded archives. Nothing that's raising any red flags, but that could change."
"From what we can ascertain the ripples are small though there are many more of them than what resulted from your first landing. This second time incursion's reach will be much more widespread. Should something alarming turn up we would still not risk an additional incursion as the ultimate goal, preventing the birth of the terrorists, proved successful."
"You will be spending time with Rachael for a psych evaluation. Be completely honest with her. She won't divulge what you confide in her with anybody else unless it impacts your work with The Project. You will, naturally, be debriefed by the military, science and intelligence branches related to your mission."
"A final word of advice. Find a way to get Lynn and your children to move here temporarily. You are the only person to have successfully gone back in time - not just once, but twice now - without any apparent lasting damage to mind or body. We don't know if this is a possibility for all people, or if it may be limited to a certain type of person, but I do know you'll be around for a while longer. For your own sake, as well as that of The Project, Lynn and your children really should be here. This second time around should go more smoothly."
Chastised, corrected, then given fatherly advice, Jeff spent most of the day visiting amiably with Moshe as he finished his packing. Personal items piled in one area, old memos and documents in another, everything needed by his successor in yet a third, then the two men went to the cafeteria. After finishing a late lunch Jeff walked Moshe to his car, waving what he thought was to be a final good-bye to a remarkable man and loyal friend.
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Epilogue
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." - Henry Ford
Office of the Prime Minister, State of Israel
Remembering distinctly the previous timeline while living in this altered version required some adjusting. When Lt. General Dan Ashkelon entered the Prime Minister's office for a staff meeting the PM nearly choked on his sandwich as he stared at the man. The PM knew that Ashkelon was alive and well in this timeline. Reconciling the memory of attending his funeral with his grieving wife to the man standing in his office remained a feet of mental acrobatics. He found shifting gears between the two timelines to be mentally and emotionally exhausting.
/> "You look as if you've seen a ghost! Swallow and breathe deeply." The General knew exactly what was going through the PM's mind. He enjoyed kidding him.
"No, no, not at all. It's just been a long week." A few other incidents like this happened.
In the weeks and months that ensued, he and the others with memories of both timelines were finally in step with the current stream of time as it flowed unhurriedly and unconcerned around them.
After months of vetting new candidates and shuffling people around; the PM, Mossad, Shin Bet, military leaders, and facility heads were finally ready to go forward.
"To say that together we have been to hell and back would almost be amusing, were it not true. The terrible memories we share, the nightmares I'm sure we all continue to have, will probably never leave." The Prime Minster, dark head of hair turned a distinguished silver over the course of the months leading to, and since the annihilation and salvation of his country and planet, underscored the thoughts and feelings of all present.
"There's a great deal of work ahead of us. What we have so recently been through, what The Project so narrowly averted, has taught us many things not least of which, we are never as prepared as we believe ourselves to be."
"All in this room, and nearly all working in the three facilities of The Project collectively have our hands on the trigger of the greatest, most frightening, weapon of defense, as well as a more alarming potential for offense. The responsibility is at once awesome in every understanding of the word, and chilling to the bone."
"The Project saved our people, our nation, and planet. If the people of the world knew what we did they'd be grateful to us and absolutely terrified of us. In a very real way, we are to the rest of the world what a modern industrialized nation would be to a group of people still living in the Stone Age."
"Make no mistake, if any other government knew what we have accomplished here they would attempt to get it - or at least to shut it down - by any means necessary. That two of our own had been compromised in the previous timeline, one taking his own life and the other convicted of treason, we know that the human element is our greatest vulnerability, as well as our greatest asset."
"It is absolutely critical that we do everything in our power to close any security crack, including people and processes with the potential to become leaks. To this end I have appointed a special intelligence division to be a joint venture between the Mossad and Shin Bet. Udi Ra'am, the Mossad agent watching the safe house in Iran, will head this division - reporting directly to Meir and Isser who will work with him and his team in an equal, joint capacity."
"Udi, it's a pleasure to have you join our team." Ehud "Udi" Ra'am nodded appreciatively to the Prime Minister. "Having been outside the shielded area when everything went down, he's been completely updated on the events of both timelines, as he remembers nothing of The Project before. The fact that he died during what we now refer to as the Forgotten War has motivated Udi to great diligence." Another smile and nod from him, this time mixed with a serious gravity. Were he alone, he would have allowed himself to shudder, recalling the video feeds he watched in the Negev facility's military wing."
"Dr. Aharon Shmu'el will continue to head the facility for biological research. Now that his team's excellent work on the Ebola and Anthrax strains is completed - and never happened at the same time - his facility will focus more on what effects, if any, are associated with living tissues, such as the citrus tree and Dr. Stauffenberg, as they relate to Quantum Entanglements with Einstein-Rosen bridges, and etc. With the citrus tree from the previous timeline now no longer in existence, we have only Jeff as a baseline. We need to test as many living species, from single cell animals to humans, cataloging the results. We also need to learn if there is a difference in readings having landed in an earlier time versus the same readings when returned to current time."
"Because the other timeline never happened, Dr. No'am Schalit was actually never recruited. Knowing what we now know of his manipulation by Mona, we aren't risking inviting him back into The Project. Same with Avi, he won't be allowed to work with the General Staff. We wish him a satisfactory career in the military following a different route. Dr. Mendlesøn will continue as that facility's director. His facility will shift their focus from the technologies that were needed for the initial experiments into space-time manipulation to fine tuning the same, branching out from there into developing technology for sending two or more people with the same energy requirements or less. Considering what happened to Jeff in Virginia we can no longer risk sending a lone person into such a position without backup. There must always be at least a second person as a failsafe. We also are interested in knowing if there is a way to keep the Einstein-Rosen bridge open, so that we could transmit audio-visual signals between the two ends of a stable micro wormhole."
"Dr. Moshe Levin is known personally to everybody here except for Agent Ra'am, but Udi has read his dossier and everything associated with The Project. In consideration of his age and health, Moshe retired."
"I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Dr. Tamara Barkat, who will be assuming the Directorate of the Negev facility. I have every confidence that Dr. Barkat will continue, and advance, the fine work of Dr. Levin and his team. She was one of the departmental heads of the facility, so she was already aware of much of the work conducted therein. Since her advancement she has been read into every detail of her facility."
Handshakes across the small table, Dr. Barkat already knew everybody but Udi. What she knew of him she knew she liked him and would work well with him and all others in the leadership.
"Let's break for lunch, meeting back here in 90 minutes to iron out the details."
The day after the leadership meeting the Prime Minister dismissed his personal guards and chauffeur, preferring to drive himself in an unmarked car to a secret fourth facility, knowledge of which was kept from the personnel of the other three. Only General Ashkelon and Agent Ra'am knew of its purpose and location. Israel could never let itself be caught in such a nightmare again. Proactive was the watchword, reactive no longer being acceptable. With altering events of the past no longer in the realm of the theoretical, the final door needing to be unlocked is that which would allow one to step into the future. This fourth facility held that key.
MI6 Headquarters, London, England
"The Home Secretary and GCHQ read your report after I passed it on to them. The Home Secretary still finds it impossible to believe that the entire incident you described could have transpired. His personal disbelief aside, he remains open to the possibility. 'Six' has been tracking the players you identified. We confirmed the DNA sample you retrieved from No'am Shalit's room before it was sealed off in the other timeline. Your credentials in the facility run by . . . "
"Dr. Aharon Shmu'el, ma'am."
"Yes, quite right. Your credentials with his facility remain solid?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Fine, go back to work. We need you to find the locations of the other facilities. Petroleum and natural gas are a finite resource. Great Britain is facing other critical problems too. We can't allow the Israelis to have that kind of power over oil producing nations, let alone the entire planet. We either stop them, or we replicate what they are doing, get ourselves in the game."
"I understand ma'am."
"One of the men in your report, the head of one of the other facilities of this Project, is being tracked by members of Six as we speak. His itinerary shows he and his wife traveling for an extended vacation. We will take him and his wife while they are in Brazil."
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The End