Strike

by D. J. MacHale

  I wanted normal. This was normal.

  What wasn’t normal was the series of events that led us to that moment.

  It was a strange chain that began on January 24, 1952, in the Mojave desert.

  We were interrogated by the Army, separately of course. Being questioned had become old hat. We each gave our account of what happened and I didn’t doubt for a second that we would all give the exact same story.

  Except for Feit. There was no telling what he said. I made sure to explain to my interrogators exactly what his role was in the genocide that preceded the invasion of the past.

  The interrogation process lasted for days, no big surprise. We were kept apart the whole time, probably so we wouldn’t compare notes to keep our wacky stories straight. I didn’t blame our U.S. Army hosts one single bit. Our story was impossible to believe. Different interrogators cycled through, trying to poke holes in our accounts and find the fatal flaw that proved we were making the whole thing up.

  They didn’t find any because none existed.

  They brought in psychiatric experts to determine if we were out of our minds.

  Of course, we weren’t.

  After the first week, we were allowed to see each other. All of us but Feit, that is. That was the first clue that they had accepted our story, including Feit’s role in the death of millions of people. The four of us were brought to a building they called a Quonset hut, which was basically a long steel structure with a rounded roof, like an upside-down half-pipe. It was a comfortable place, complete with a few couches and stuffed chairs. It would have been nice if there had been modern air conditioning. The few table fans blowing around hot desert air didn’t count.

  I arrived first, followed shortly after by Tori. When I saw her we immediately ran to each other and hugged. We stayed that way for a good few minutes. It was like holding on to a lifeline in the midst of a swirling sea.

  “You okay?” I finally asked.

  She nodded and pulled away.

  “I’m okay too,” Kent said as he stepped in. “In case you were wondering.”

  We gave each other quick but genuine hugs.

  “Hey I want some of that too,” Olivia chirped as she bounced in.

  It became a four-way hug-fest. I had said many times in the past (or the future, actually) that the four of us were all we had. It never felt truer than in that moment.

  “Where’s Feit?” Tori asked.

  “Swinging from a noose,” Kent said quickly. “I hope.”

  “That won’t happen,” I said.

  “Why not?” Kent asked. “He was part of the biggest mass murder in history.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “History that hasn’t happened yet. There’s no evidence to prove he did any of that.”

  “No,” Tori said. “That he’s going to do any it. You can’t prosecute somebody for a crime they’re going to commit fifty some odd years from now.”

  “Or three hundred years from now,” Olivia said.

  “Jeez, that makes my head hurt,” Kent said. “Does anybody know how this happened? I mean, I could explain everything to those Army dudes except for why we’re sitting here in nineteen freakin’ fifty-two.”

  “I can only guess,” I said. “When the bomb went off it somehow reversed the Bridge and blew us back to when it was first opened.”

  “Yeah, but how?” Kent asked.

  “How?” I replied, laughing. “How did any of this happen? Physicists are going to be trying to figure that out for years. Don’t expect an answer from me.”

  “So why didn’t they set off the bomb?” Olivia asked.

  “Because we sealed that pod,” Tori said. “It closed a circuit that sent an alarm to the firing room. When they realized somebody was in there, they stopped the countdown.”

  “So the bomb blast shot us back to the exact moment in 1952 before the original bomb was detonated,” I said. “And by being here, we prevented it from going off.”

  “That means none of it happened!” Kent exclaimed. “The Bridge wasn’t created so the Retros won’t be able to go back to the past and vaporize all those people.”

  “No,” Olivia said with authority. “It all happened.”

  “But I thought we stopped the Bridge from opening up!” Kent said, frustrated.

  “I told you,” Olivia said. “You can’t change the past. Once something happens it can’t un-happen. Our existence in the twenty-fourth century and yours in the twenty-first century were two different timelines that were connected by the Bridge.”

  “You mean like different dimensions running parallel to each other?” Tori asked.

  “I guess,” Olivia said. “I never really understood it all. I’m not sure anybody else did either. There were some geniuses who said they did but I think they were just blowing smoke.”

  “So that crappy future still exists?” Kent asked. “It’s still out there . . . somewhere?”

  “I think so,” Olivia replied. “The only difference is they can no longer invade the twenty-first century because we closed the Bridge.”

  “That means all those people are still dead,” Tori said.

  “No!” Kent exclaimed. “Without the Bridge the Retros couldn’t send those killer planes back.”

  “But that’s not how it works,” Olivia said, patiently. “I’m sorry Kent, but the people of the twenty-first century you lived in have to deal with what the Retros did and rebuild from what’s left. But SYLO did exactly what they set out to do. They stopped the invasion and preserved society.”

  “With a lot of help from the Sounders,” Tori pointed out.

  “Yeah, and us,” Kent added. “And speaking of us, where exactly do we fit into this fantasy?”

  “I think we created another timeline,” I said.

  “We what?” Kent asked, incredulous.

  “We were shot back to the past and stopped the bomb test from happening,” I said. “But the past can’t be changed. That means we’ve started the clock ticking on yet another timeline.”

  “Seriously?” Tori asked. “We’re stuck here in . . . in . . . what? Another dimension?”

  “That’s exactly it,” Olivia said. “As far as we know, there are three realities now. The twenty-fourth century when I was born. The early twenty-first century that you guys came from, and—”

  “And a new timeline that began on January 24, 1952, with no Bridge to the future,” I said, finishing her point. “Where we are right now. At least that means this reality won’t be invaded by the Retros.”

  Kent rubbed his face anxiously. “Okay, let’s pretend that’s all true,” he said, his voice cracking with nervous energy. “How do we get back to our own time? Our own reality?”

  We all exchanged anxious looks. Nobody wanted to say the obvious so I took the step myself.

  “We don’t,” I said with finality.

  “That other life will go on without us,” Tori said quietly. “And we have to make a new life here.”

  “But . . .” Kent was all set to jump in with a reason why that couldn’t be true, but he didn’t have one.

  It was a sober moment as we let the undeniable reality sink in. We would never see our families again. We would never get back to Pemberwick Island. At least not to the Pemberwick Island we knew.

  “I don’t want to live in the past,” Kent said, glum.

  “Tell me about it,” Olivia shot back quickly.

  “There has to be a way,” Kent added with a touch of desperation.

  “Not unless they create another Bridge,” I said. “But even if they did, there are no guarantees it would open up in the exact right time of our original lives. What we’ve got here, right now . . . this is it.”

  “Like it or not,” Olivia said. “This reality, this time, is our home now.”

  “The people from home will think we w
ere killed in the bomb blast,” Tori said, soberly.

  “At least we’ll be remembered,” Kent said. “They’ll probably erect statues of us. We’ll be the brave heroes who gave their lives to save the world.” He sighed and added, “Nobody will know we’re still alive in another freakin’ dimension. Jeez.”

  “Remember that,” I said.

  “Remember what?” Kent asked.

  “We’re still alive.”

  With that understanding, our new lives began.

  We spent the next year living at the military base sixty miles from where the dome was built. Area 51. Our existence was kept secret from all but a few top military types, scientists, and government officials. Oddly, most people who knew who we really were didn’t want any contact with us. They didn’t want to be influenced by knowing what would happen in the future. Or maybe they were just scared.

  I think information leaked out that something odd was going on at Area 51 and it caused a slew of headlines. I’m not saying we were the aliens that everyone suspected were being kept hidden at the base, but we were undeniably alien to this world and we were most definitely kept hidden.

  For the record, I never bumped into any other aliens at Area 51.

  The government wasn’t sure what to do with us. I’m happy to say that they didn’t do any strange testing on us like you see in movies. They treated us like normal kids . . . who happened to be from the future.

  On one hand they tried to learn as much as they could about the phenomenon that had ripped open a hole through time. We spoke with physicists from all over the country. They were the guys who had the least trouble believing us, because they always thought time travel was possible. Our existence justified their theories. But they were cautious about not asking us anything about specific events that had happened in our past, or their future. They saw it as an ethical dilemma. Why should a few people know about what the future held while most others didn’t have that advantage? I got that. I didn’t want to go messing with the world any more than we already had. How would things have changed if we told them that President Kennedy would be assassinated? Or that we would land on the moon? How much would that knowledge have changed the natural course of events? Probably a lot and maybe not for the better. There was no way to know for sure, so it was best left unsaid.

  We did tell them as much as we could about what a mess the world would become due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels, pollution, and overpopulation. They took note, but didn’t seem too worried about it. We got a little taste of what some of the people from our time experienced when trying to warn the world about the coming disaster.

  The Army had a real dilemma. What should they do with us? We had no families. We didn’t dare contact our grandparents. What would we tell them? We had no history. No birth certificates. We truly didn’t exist. In the back of my head I was worried that they would keep us hidden away in the middle of the desert for the rest of our lives, but that wasn’t the case.

  New identities were created for each of us. Records were fabricated, complete with histories that said we were abandoned at birth and brought up in foster homes. The Army found wonderful families who were more than willing to take us in. Better still, they were all in the same area of the country. Los Angeles. It meant that even though we were being sent to different homes, we would still be close enough to see our true family: each other.

  I once asked what had happened to Colonel Feit. Nobody gave me a straight answer. They would say things like, “He’s been taken care of” or “It’s best you forget about him.” I didn’t know if he was imprisoned, set free . . . or executed.

  When the day came for us to leave the base, the commander of the unit gave us a final bit of advice. He asked us to do our best to forget the past, and the future, and to live our lives as normally as possible. He said that our records would be sealed and nobody would learn of our true identities. He also said that the Army would check up on us from time to time.

  For the record, they never did.

  When we left that base for the final time, it was the last contact we had with anybody who knew we had come from the future. I guess they felt it was better to pretend that we didn’t exist rather than to risk the truth getting out. I think they feared that every country who developed atomic weapons would try to duplicate the Bridge, or that we’d be constantly hounded by people asking us about the future. It would have ruined any chance we had at living normal lives.

  My guess is they didn’t seal our records, they destroyed them.

  As we were driven off through the desert in the vintage jeep, I looked back on the base for the last time and saw the final proof that the Army and the government wanted nothing to do with time travel.

  The dome was being dismantled. There would be no above-ground atomic test. Project Alcatraz was scrapped, never to be resurrected. The secret of what had happened in another dimension and another time would die with those who we met there.

  And eventually, with us.

  Though we wanted nothing more than to live normal lives, making that happen wasn’t easy. Forget all the time travel and the near destruction of our world; we had lost our home and our families. Somewhere in another dimension my parents were mourning the loss of their son. When I was younger they had joined SYLO and moved to Pemberwick Island to protect me. Though they couldn’t know it, that was exactly what happened. If we had stayed living in Greenwich we would probably have been victims of the first Retro attack. I hoped my parents weren’t feeling any guilt over the fact that they had lost me. I knew they would be proud of what I had done. The solid B-minus student who didn’t apply himself at school had helped save the world. I hoped that would give them some consolation.

  I missed them, and always would.

  Tori, Kent, and Olivia were set adrift much the same way. Though we were all fostered by wonderful people, none of us felt truly complete unless we were with each other.

  Living in the 1950s was a challenge. It was an age before digital technology. There were no computers or smart phones. Theaters only showed one movie at a time. The black-and-white television only received four channels. Without my iPod, I had to listen to music using plastic discs that spun on turntables.

  For the record, they’re called records.

  Regressing technologically was annoying, but expected. There were plenty of other things I didn’t expect, like not being able to wear jeans to school. I also had to keep my hair cut short because if your hair fell over your ears, they called you a girl. And most everybody smoked cigarettes. That took some getting used to.

  It was also tough making new friends because I had to be careful about everything I said. I couldn’t tell them that Neil Armstrong would be the first man to walk on the moon or that the Beatles were about to rock the planet or that the World Trade Center would be attacked by terrorists. I couldn’t even tell them that there would be a World Trade Center. It was a huge pain, not only because it kept us from fully connecting with the people of that time, but because there were so many horrific events that we had the power to prevent, but couldn’t. We had to let history play out naturally.

  I lived for the weekends. That’s when the four of us got together, usually at the beach, where nobody could hear us and we could be ourselves. We’d talk about our true pasts and the people we cared about. It relieved the pressure and helped keep me sane. But as time went on and all of our stories had been told more than once, we found ourselves talking less about the past and more about the future. Not the future we knew, the future that had yet to be written.

  It was on a beautiful, warm day in Manhattan Beach, sitting on a blanket by the edge of the surf, that our lives were changed once again.

  “We can’t ignore it anymore,” Tori said. “History is repeating itself.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” Kent asked.

  “But that means this world is on a path to the same disaster
scenario that led to Olivia’s world in the twenty-fourth century. Only a handful of people know what’s coming and they’re pretending like they don’t. I’m not even convinced they truly believed we were from the future.”

  “So the only people who understand what’s going to happen are us,” Olivia said.

  “Who cares?” Kent exclaimed. “Those people from the twenty-fourth century are killers. They deserve whatever they get.”

  “But they became killers because of what they got,” Tori said. “I’m not saying what they did was justified, but they were desperate. The same thing is going to happen again.”

  “So what do you want to do about it?” Kent asked. “Go public? The Army will say they never heard of us and they’ll put us in a zoo. Or a loony bin. There’s no point. Nothing we say will make any difference because people are going to do what they’re going to do.”

  “So we don’t tell them,” I said. “We change them.”

  I had everyone’s attention.

  “Uh . . . what?” Kent said.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Quinn,” I said. “Maybe I spend too much brain time on Pemberwick Island but I can’t help it. Quinn had plans. He wanted to leave that island and make a difference. I didn’t understand that. For me, living quietly on a beautiful island was all I needed. Neither of us got what we wanted and now we’re in the exact same spot, living on our own little island, hiding from the world. The difference is we have the knowledge that could change the future. We can make a difference.”

  “We can’t tell people what we know, Rook,” Kent said. “They’ll treat us like freaks. Hell, we are freaks.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Olivia said. “If we start monkeying with things there’s no guarantee it won’t lead to something even worse.”

  “You might be right,” I said. “But I can’t imagine anything worse than what we saw in 2324. We risked our lives to save the world once. Do you really want to sit around and watch it fall apart again?”