Art sighed. “You’re right, Professor. That meeting did not take place this evening. Everything you saw was real, but what we showed you was a recording. The meeting we observed took place on Day 15, just as Vice President Nielsen mentioned during the discussion. But… well… we’re past Day 15 now.”
Art paused and gave Kilmer an opportunity to react. The professor said nothing, so Art continued.
“Now, you might have a hard time believing this, but apart from implying that the meeting was a live event, everything else I’ve said to you today has been true. Every bit of it. There is an alien threat. We do need your help. And your advice will make a difference.”
“I’d like to believe you, Art. But if what you’re saying is true—that you’ve tried to be honest with me—then why include that one lie? Why not just tell me we were watching a meeting that took place earlier? What possible good could come from making me think it was happening live? It makes no sense.”
Kilmer was racking his brain to make sense of it even as he argued that it was inexplicable. If Art was being truthful, why deceive him about the timing of the meeting? Why ask for advice that would already be outdated because it failed to account for everything that had transpired since Day 15?
Either Art is full of shit—or I’m totally missing something.
Or both.
“I know it makes no sense,” Art said. “But I will be able to explain it. I’m asking you to trust me. I just can’t—”
“You just can’t explain it to me… yet.”
“That’s right. Before I can tell you why we hid this information from you, I need to know how you figured out that the meeting was a recording. It’s important, Professor. Will you please explain it to me?”
“How did I figure it out? Ah, well that’s a great question, Art. And I’m happy to answer it.” Kilmer looked at Lane. “You’ll want to write this part down, Agent Lane. It might be the most important thing I tell you today.”
Lane grabbed his pencil and responded with a nod. Ready when you are.
Kilmer leaned forward—the way one does before revealing a closely held secret.
“The answer to your question, Art—as to how I figured out the meeting didn’t take place tonight—is this: Screw you guys.” He looked at Lane. “Agent Lane, did you get all that? Let me know if you need me to repeat any of it. I’d be happy to do so.”
Art sighed. Silla looked like she might be suppressing a laugh. Lane looked slightly horrified.
“Okay. Fair enough,” said Art. “You feel like you deserve to get answers before we do. I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes. And I’d be just as convinced as you are that there’s no way to explain things—or to win back my trust.”
“That’s a pretty good read of the situation, Art. I don’t see how you’re going to pull this off.”
Art rose from his chair. “Well, here goes, Professor. You know how I said earlier that something was really going to blow your mind—and that it wasn’t the part about the aliens?”
“Yes. And you were right. What really blew my mind was that this meeting wasn’t even taking place tonight.”
“No.”
“Excuse me? No, what?”
“No—as in, that’s not it.”
“That’s not what?”
Art looked at Kilmer with a mix of confusion and sympathy. “I mean to say, Professor, that the part that’s really going to blow your mind… we haven’t even gotten to that yet.”
Kilmer felt a shiver, as if Art’s words had been carried by a winter breeze. But he said nothing. He waited for Art to continue.
“I have to ask you something,” said Art.
“Go ahead.”
“Professor, do you… uh… believe in… the possibility of time travel?”
Kilmer stared. He would have been shocked by the question, if not for two things. First, he had just learned that aliens not only existed, but were hovering somewhere close to Earth—so it was getting harder to surprise him. Second, he noticed that Lane and Silla seemed caught off-guard by the question as well, which was a good sign.
“Do you mean, in the way it’s portrayed in sci-fi movies? Like going back in time and seeing dinosaurs or killing your great-grandparents?”
“Yes, in that sense,” said Art.
“No, Art, I don’t believe that’s possible. Science and logic both dictate that time travel of the typical sci-fi variety is pure fiction. Are you really going to try to convince me otherwise?”
“No, not at all!” Art exclaimed. “I completely agree with you. Time travel is absurd. It is not possible.”
“Then why the hell are you bringing it up?”
“Because I need for us to start distinguishing between what is impossible and what is merely improbable. May I presume you have read, at some point, the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Sherlock Holmes?”
“Yes. You’re referring to The Sign of the Four,” Kilmer answered. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“Precisely. That’s it.”
“And what does this have to do with time travel? Why did you need me to confirm that I think it’s impossible?”
“Because I will need you to keep that in mind. When you hear what I’m about to tell you, Professor, you’re going to struggle to explain it. And you will want to believe in all sorts of stuff. When that happens, I’m going to need for you to remember that some things cannot explain it, because some things are truly impossible. At which point, you will have to acknowledge that the explanation I give you—while highly improbable and extremely disconcerting—is in fact true. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Kilmer. “I understand. Now tell me whatever it is you’ve been hiding. I’m ready for it.”
Art took the keyboard and the touchscreen. He worked the controls half-heartedly, like someone doing the part of their job that they hate most. His facial expression wasn’t hard to read either. It was pity. Plain and simple.
“No, Professor Kilmer,” Art replied. “You couldn’t possibly be ready for this. You only think you are.”
~ 12 ~
How had Kilmer figured out that the meeting had taken place earlier? The clues had trickled in.
It was the laptop that had bothered him at first. One of the attendees had been fiddling with his computer screen before the meeting began. He looks like he’s trying to eliminate a glare, Kilmer had conjectured. The man left his seat and disappeared briefly in the direction of the wall behind him. When he returned, the problem with his laptop seemed to have been resolved. He must have closed the blinds on a window. This was speculation, of course, but it was mildly troubling. If the meeting was taking place after 8:00 p.m.—near Washington, DC—why would there be light coming in from a window? Then again, Kilmer might have misinterpreted the episode.
The second clue had been the clock on the wall. Kilmer had thought it was broken—stuck at 7:50—when his own watch read 8:09 p.m. Ten minutes later, VP Nielsen looked at that clock and compared it to his own watch, and then thanked everyone for starting “on time”. Who schedules a meeting for 8:19? On the other hand, if the clock on the wall was not broken, it would now say 8:00—a perfectly logical time for a meeting to begin. An hour later, Nielsen ended the meeting by looking at the clock on the wall—not his watch—as if he had earlier found the wall clock to be functional. That had caught Kilmer’s eye, and he had taken another look at the clock on the wall. It read 9:00 when the meeting ended, a much more reasonable wrap-up time than 9:19.
Nielsen had provided the third and fourth clues. The night before, according to the VP, President Whitman had asked her chief of staff to set up phone calls with the international alliance for the following afternoon—which meant those calls would have already taken place earlier today. But in the meeting, Nielsen told the group that Whitman wanted their input “before she raises the idea with the alliance.” How could a meeting that st
arts after 8:00 p.m. provide input into phone calls that were scheduled for earlier in the day? The sequence of events made much more sense if this meeting was taking place first thing in the morning. Moreover, why wouldn’t this group have met as soon as possible—early the next morning, instead of late in the evening—if matters were so urgent?
Nielsen had confirmed Kilmer’s suspicions before ending the meeting. At the start, Nielsen had said that the group would meet again “tomorrow morning.” But at the end, he reminded everyone that they would reconvene “at the same time tomorrow.” The only way both statements could be true was if this had been a morning meeting.
The glare from the window. The clock on the wall. The phone calls scheduled for after the meeting. The plan to meet again the following morning. They could all be explained if the meeting had taken place at 8:00 a.m.
Kilmer had pieced it together, a little at a time, but he still couldn’t figure out why they had tried to deceive him. How could they possibly benefit from lying about when the meeting took place?
Art said he had a good reason for it.
It’s possible that he does, decided Kilmer, but not very likely.
~ 13 ~
Art was still working the keyboard. “What I’m about to show you, Professor, is a part of the meeting we just observed—the meeting that took place on Day 15. Don’t worry, you won’t have to sit through the whole thing again. Just a small portion of it.”
“I observed pretty carefully the first time, Art. I don’t expect I missed anything too important,” Kilmer said. Then something occurred to him. “Unless… am I about to see what took place before or after the segment you showed me earlier?”
“Good guess, Professor, but not quite. This will be a portion of the meeting that you already saw. In fact, it doesn’t really matter which snippet I show you.”
Kilmer considered that for a moment. Why did he need to see what he had already—
Of course.
“You’re going to show me a different angle. You’re queueing up a recording from one of the other cameras.”
“Very good, Professor. Just give me a minute and I’ll have it on the screen.”
What could a different camera angle show that was so important? Despite knowing that he would find out soon enough, Kilmer couldn’t help but try to figure it out for himself. Turning the source of his unease into just one more puzzle to solve had the immediate effect of calming his nerves.
His mind drifted to an evening some years ago. Someone had organized a dinner party for an eclectic group of people who might enjoy meeting one another. Dinner, drinks, and potentially interesting conversation. The person with the most fascinating stories that night was a deputy chief of police who had worked for many years as a homicide detective in Chicago. What was his name? Gerard? Gerald? His last name might never have been mentioned. Kilmer couldn’t remember any of the stories he told—much less the gory details—but he remembered what Gerald-something had said when someone at the table suggested that solving crimes seemed to require a lot of guesswork.
You can’t solve mysteries through guesswork. You start with what you know, and continue adding in more of what you know, until there is nothing left of what you know. Only then do you even begin to add logic, reason, and speculation. Guessing is truly a last resort. In my line of work, it’s an admission of failure.
So, Kilmer asked himself, what do I know?
There were at least three other cameras in the room, and the one with the best chance of capturing something he had missed would be the one mounted on the opposite wall, above the two notetakers. What would that angle reveal? Two things, at the very least. First, it would show him what was on the wall where the original camera was mounted. He had already deduced that there was a window on that wall. What else might there be? Another door? Had someone else entered the room during the meeting?
The new angle would also reveal the faces of people who had their backs to the original camera. Kilmer knew who they were—everyone had spoken at least once during the meeting—but the new angle would reveal expressions and capture some behaviors he would have missed.
No, it’s none of those things. Art had said it didn’t matter which segment they watched, so it had to be something that was visible the entire time. Like the window, but more important. The list of things the room might contain was endless, but the subset of things that might surprise him was much more limited.
He couldn’t come up with even one.
“Here we go. All set,” said Art.
With the recording about to start, Kilmer looked at the three agents. He expected them to be staring at him, with Lane ready to take notes on his reactions. They weren’t. Art seemed unwilling to make eye contact. Lane was looking at the screen, his pencil on the table and his hands in his lap. Silla was watching Kilmer, but she turned away when he glanced at her.
As the screen came to life, Kilmer’s anxiety began to reassert itself. He could feel the adrenaline and its impact on his breathing. Almost instinctively, he reached for the cup of coffee. Something to hold on to, as if he were on a roller coaster, slowly approaching the first big drop, grasping for the handlebars.
The recording began, and he was again observing the meeting that had taken place on Day 15. Nielsen’s back was to the camera now, and he was describing the events of Day 5, when Presidents Zhao and Sokolov had agreed to let the Americans take the lead. The clock was now to the right, the cell-phone receptacle to the left. The faces he had seen before were all facing away from him now. The people with their backs toward him earlier were now looking in his direction. There was no second door to the room. The opposite wall had a camera, of course, as well as a window. Its blinds were closed, but some light was still coming through.
There were also two chairs against the far wall, directly across from the two notetakers he had seen in the previous video. There had been four notetakers during the meeting, not two.
That’s when Kilmer saw what Art had wanted him to see.
The cup fell from his hands, exploding on the carpet below. His mouth fell open, and he stopped breathing. He could feel every beat of his heart as it pounded in his chest.
Everything around him disappeared, as if he were suddenly wrapped in a whiteness that enveloped him completely. Images from the evening started to project themselves onto that blank canvas, each new memory delivering an even harder blow than the last.
Trina Morgan waving at the man across the table.
Vice President Nielsen thanking him through the camera.
Art’s greeting when they first shook hands.
All the participants know you’re watching.
The look in Silla’s eyes.
We… have… time.
He was trembling.
He turned away from the TV screen in a desperate effort to clear his mind—to purge from it what he had just seen. Then he forced himself to take another look at the screen, hoping it would change everything.
It changed absolutely nothing.
There hadn’t been four notetakers. There had been only two. The two people sitting against the far wall were not notetakers at all. Kilmer recognized them both.
One of them was a beautiful young woman who had introduced herself, earlier today, as Agent Silla.
Sitting next to her, against the far wall, was an acclaimed historian and renowned strategist—a man whose expertise would be invaluable in such a meeting.
His name was Professor Kilmer.
This is impossible.
A cacophony of images, ideas, theories, and emotions detonated in Kilmer’s mind. His prized abilities—to organize, to filter, to focus—were all failing him. He put his elbows on the table and brought the tips of his fingers to his temples.
Trina Morgan hadn’t been waving at some stranger.
Vice President Nielsen hadn’t been talking to the camera.
Art hadn’t lied…all the participants know you’re watching.
Kilmer dug his fingers
harder into the sides of his skull.
Think, he demanded. Think!
It didn’t work.
Just grab on to something. Anything. Just start somewhere.
Time travel.
Art was right. It could help explain everything. No, wait…that’s not what he said. Art had said the opposite. He had warned against the temptation to blame it on time travel. I’m going to need for you to remember that some things cannot explain it, because some things are truly impossible.
No, not time travel. Something else. It had to be something highly improbable, but not impossible.
Kilmer closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath. He filled his lungs to capacity and exhaled slowly. He was still shaking.
You can’t solve mysteries through guesswork. Start with what you know.
Okay. What do I know?
Nothing. Nothing at all came to mind.
Thanks a lot, Gerald-something.
He wanted to give up.
No. Keep trying. Try again. Remember… every problem wants to be solved…
And then… one thing. He suddenly knew one thing.
It wasn’t a fact or an idea or a theory. It wasn’t something he had seen or heard. It wasn’t even a memory. It was only a feeling. It made as little sense as everything else at that moment, but he knew that it was real.
You start with what you know.
That was it. It was the totality of what he knew at that moment. He would build from there. He would solve this mystery. He would do it the way Gerald-something had taught him to solve it. He would do it for everyone in that room—and for everyone else who might be counting on him. Because a war was still coming—and he had to help stop it. Because Plan B was shit.
Kilmer slowed his breathing and leaned back, focusing only on that feeling now—on the one thing he knew, but which he still did not understand.
We… have… time.
He repeated the words to himself until the trembling stopped.
And then, slowly, he opened his eyes… and looked over at Silla.
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