by Phil Wheeler
Dylan didn't know what to say, he understood the science, but was it possible? Most of the scientific world had told him that cold fusion was impossible, but he had proved them all wrong. Now, he was being told something equally impossible. “Suppose you're right, and you could go back in time, what could you do to change things? You can't run this spaceship on your own, can you? Even if you could you would need enough people to repopulate. I don't see how any of this is possible.”
“We have been building a new race for thousands of years. There are a hundred thousand of us in sites all over the globe. When the time is right, a signal will be sent to each location and the gathering will begin.”
“You plan on leaving earth in your spaceship, then?”
“We will, and we will use the power of the Torsion Field to go back. We will make it right.”
Wait. I've always heard that you can't change time, any change to the past will affect the future so even if you go back to your planet and you do change things you would no longer exist in the future and that would cancel out any changes that you made. Kind of a catch-22.”
“That is only speculation. How can anybody know for sure when nobody's ever accomplished time travel. To me it is worth the risk.”
“Alright, I can see helping you, but I don't wish to be any kind of prince. I want to stay right where I am. Would you force me to go with you?”
Mason took a while to answer. He finally spoke, saying, “And if I agree, will you help me?”
“Let me think about it”, Dylan said, “I need to know more about all this and make sure that I know what I'm truly getting involved in.”
“Fair enough. What would you like to know?”
“For starters, I would like to see the rest of the message from Robert, that and I would like to read the manuscript.”
“That can be arranged. Now, are there any other questions for me?”
“Dylan was apprehensive about it, but he needed to know. He looked first to Tomiko, then to Mason. “Why is Ms. Samuelson being held, and what do you plan to do with her? If you hurt her in any way I won't help you.”
“She is going to help you, Dylan, by providing us with all the equipment and assistance that you need. I can't tell you how fortunate it was that you became, shall I say, involved with her? I can certainly see why, but it makes this much easier.”
“Then what? What happens to her after I am done?” He would not do anything without the assurance of Tomiko being safe. He didn't know how he could believe Mason, but he had to have some kind of guarantee or he would do nothing.
“Dylan, I promise you that Ms. Samuelson will not come to any harm. We will be gone, and there will be no reason that anyone needs to be silenced.”
Mason sounded convincing, but before this went much farther Dylan would need more. “Let her go, now. She will promise to get you what you want. After you're gone she will still have the technology. It won't make a difference to you by then, right?”
Tomiko had not said anything during this meeting. Now she spoke, “I believe you, Mr. Mason. I can see no reason for you to lie about it but, if I agree to help I would want my own team to assist Dylan.”
Mason smiled at her, “I believe that would be acceptable. Let us move forward and see where the day takes us.”
Chapter 40
They were returned to the room, the door closed, and Dylan turned to Tomiko in anger. “I won't have you risking your life on the promises of a lunatic. You will leave or I will not help him.”
She smiled at him, but there was no humor in it. “If I chose to work with Mason then I will work with Mason. I make my own decisions, and I will say what is best for me. Besides, what makes you think that you can protect me if he does decide to cause us harm? ”
He was stung by her words, but he also saw truth in them. He knew that he was acting like a knight in shining armor trying to protect a helpless princess. “You're right, I don't control you. It's just that I'm concerned.”
Her face softened, “I know you are, but I'm a big girl, besides, I can see this as a business deal and that is something that I know. You don't have to worry.” She kissed him, then smiled, saying, “When it comes to handling business there is no one better.”
He tried to smile, but succeeded in only a half grimace. The PC had been returned, so he sat down and called up the video file from Robert. Fast forwarding to where Mason had interrupted, he hit play and Robert's voice once again filled the small room.
“....control. I don't know for certain...” Dylan hit the reverse button, and backed up the video a little bit, then hit play. “....is going to sound crazy, but I believe that these aliens have some kind of mind control. I don't know for certain and I don't know if they can actually read minds, but I found evidence that they can at least influence people, maybe give them a push in the right direction. You know, that got me to thinking about Donald Mason. I have never seen a person so persuasive or so intuitive. I sometimes felt like he was reading my mind yet if I ever had doubts they would stop after speaking with him. I don't have any concrete evidence, it is just a feeling. I also found...”
He hit the pause key, and looked at Tomiko. “You know, I can see what Robert is saying. It's strange, but whenever I talk with Mason I find myself thinking along lines that I feel I would normally reject, he seems to have a way of getting me to see things his way.”
He sat for a moment longer, then pressed the start button. “...a map to the location of a ship in the manuscript, and in that ship is the complete records of this race. Everything; its history, and all its accomplishments and technology.”
They listened to the end of the video. Dylan hit the stop, and looked at Tomiko. “I think that I'm going to read through the manuscript for a while.”
“Alright. I need a shower, and maybe I'll try to sleep some.” With that, she got up and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Dylan opened the manuscript, and started reading through the pages and he had to admit that it was a fascinating read. If true, much of the history of the earth was linked to this ancient culture. Kings and Conquerors, statesman and generals, the famous and the unknown were all there through the centuries, leading and controlling mankind. He didn't know how he felt about that, it was like finding out that every game you had ever played was fixed. He flipped over a few more pages, and found that he was in the section that was more outline than biographical. There were now references to other books, and he surmised that they were the various books on the ship. Finally, he came to the section that detailed the location of the ship, and how to find the entrance and enter it.
Tomiko finished in the bathroom and entered the main room. Dylan was sitting quite still and staring into space. “Are you OK?” she said. She had to repeat herself before he would look at her. “What's wrong with you?”
“I found the location of the ship.”
“And, is there cause for concern?”, she queried him. He looked flushed.
“No, it just that, well, the location. It's at Yonaguna, and it appears to be underwater.”
Chapter 41
Dylan was setting with Donald Mason. He'd asked for a private meeting, just Mason and him. He looked around the room, there was not much of Mason in it and he guessed that it was not his office. It seemed most likely that he was only using it for their meetings and that meant that this wasn't Mason's facility. He wondered who it belonged to. That wasn't his main concern right now, for over the last two days he'd done a lot of thinking about what his role would be and how much he would help Mason. To him the biggest problem was the speculation about mind control and whether or not he had any say in this at all. Was he being controlled? It would certainly explain some of the decisions that he'd made recently, but how would he know if he was? “I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to convince me your answer is the truth.”, he asked.
Mason looked acr
oss at the young man setting with him. It would take time, but he was confident that Dylan would understand his place, and join with him willingly. For now, patience was the key. “Go ahead and ask your question.”
“Can you read minds? Can you control my thoughts?”
Mason smiled at Dylan, then said, “That's two questions.”
“I'm serious, can you read my mind and control me?”
“No, I cannot read your thoughts. As to controlling your mind, I can only suggest or reinforce an emotion that is already there. I can't make you do something that you don't want to do. At least not with my mind.”, he said, smiling.
Dylan was not in the mood for any humor. “Explain. What do you mean that you can suggest or reinforce?”
“I can sense your mood and if I want I can reinforce that mood – for instance...”
He looked at Dylan, and Dylan suddenly was filled with a terrible depression. It seemed as if the walls were closing in on him. He jumped in his seat. “What was that, was that you? I can't – suddenly, I felt - horrible.”
“You are naturally feeling a little depressed and vulnerable and I reinforced those feelings somewhat heavy-handed to prove a point, and I believe that I was successful.”
“OK, so you can influence moods. How do I know that you can't read my mind, or change what I want to do to what you want me to do?”
Mason looked at him for a moment before he continued. “If I could read minds, why didn't I know if Robert had given you anything, or why don't I just extract the knowledge that I need from you?”
“Yes, there is that. I guess I can see your reasoning. But that doesn't prove that you can't read my mind. Maybe you have another motive that I just can't see.”
“True, but if I could read your mind, or could control your thoughts completely, why wouldn’t I just tell you what to do, why am I trying to convince you to join me?”
Dylan thought for a moment. There certainly was some logic there. If Mason wanted his cooperation and could control his thoughts than all he would need to do is control them. It made sense, but maybe that was just Mason telling him that. He shook his head. Circles within circles, and that way lead to madness. “I will accept your statement for now. So, if I know that you can alter my feelings can I reject that control?”
“Yes, to a large degree my ability to direct your emotions has lost effectiveness because you are aware of it. I caught you off guard just now, but if you want to you can stop me from affecting you. It is a measure of my honesty that I have shared this with you. Dylan, I want you to be a willing partner in this.”
Dylan sat quietly in his chair. It was some minutes before he spoke. “You know, I believe you. That day in your office, when we had lunch, if you could have read my mind then you wouldn't have asked some of the questions that I thought were so odd at the time. And afterward, I felt really good for no apparent reason. What you're saying explains it. You couldn't read my mind, you had to ask me those questions, but you could alter my mood, make me feel good.”
“So you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Maybe now we can move on to what comes next. Will you help me fix my ship?”
“We can talk – what is it that you want?”
“I need a power supply that is big enough to run a Torsion Field Drive.”
Dylan looked at Mason. “You keep bringing up Torsion Field Drive as if it was a reality. Do you have such a drive, and can it do what you say?”
“I have had the drive for some time, now; as early as 1945, actually. I used my position as head of Hitler's special weapons unit to create it. Have you ever heard of die Glocke?”
“No, but it sounds German. What does it mean?”
“It is German, and it means the bell, and it was a replica of the Torsion Field Drive on the original ship. Before I could resolve the power supply issue the allied forces caused me to evacuate my lab.”
“What was the issue with it?”, said Dylan.
“I was working with a form of nuclear power from my home world, but it was not successful. I could not prevent side effects from occurring.”
“In 1945 the science of nuclear power was known, and fairly safe. What side effects?”
“I was trying to generate large amounts of energy from an unusual source, radioactive material from Dracon. I could not find a solution to the dangerous side effects. An earlier attempt failed as well. I lost a son in that attempt.”
Dylan looked at Mason, and saw that he was saddened by the retelling. “I'm sorry. Would you mind telling me – what happened?”
Mason paused a moment, and then began. “It was 1908, and I was working on the power supply in a secret lab in Russia. We thought that we had been successful. Deciding to test it, we installed a small working model in one of our ships.”- Mason smiled at Dylan - “what people on this planet call UFO's. My son was the pilot. He took it out, and climbed into the stratosphere. Everything was going fine, but something happened during reentry. The radiation readings started to climb, then went off the charts. My son was able to direct the craft to an uninhabited area of Siberia before the power supply blew up. He was killed.”
“Wait a minute, I've read about that; a comet exploding in the air over Siberia in 1908. Are you telling me that it was a ship, a flying saucer?”
“Yes. It was a time of great unrest in Russia, and that made it easy to cover up. No one visited the site until more than twenty years later, and all they found were a lot of trees knocked over.”
It was all so incredible that Dylan just had to shake his head. Nonetheless, he was becoming a believer. “Tell me, what size of a power supply do you need?”
“According to my calculations, I will need one that is approximately five Gigawatt.”
“5 Gig?, said Dylan, somewhat taken aback. “That's about two and a half times the entire output of the Hoover dam, and a lot of power.” He thought for a moment, quickly doing the math in his head. “It would probably take on the order of 1.5 Quintillion of my nano-batteries to generate that kind of power, but it would be fairly small in size, about .4 meters on a side. That's about 16 inches. The problem I can see is getting that many circuits, it would take a whole manufacturing plant dedicated to making them.”
“That is where Ms. Samuelson comes in. She has a subsidiary which manufactures precisely that, all they need is a blueprint for the particular ones you need.”
Tomiko. He had become so involved with the possibility of actually creating the device that he had forgotten about her. What would she say? “I need to talk with her about this, I don't know if she will go along with this.“
“I have reason to believe that she will cooperate. Please, ask her.”
They had left it at that, and Dylan was returned to the room. Tomiko met him, and immediately asked what had been talked about. He went over the details, and waited for her response.
“I think that we should work with him”, she finally said.
“That's it, just like that? This guy has had people murdered. He kidnapped us, and is holding us against our wills, and you're ready to work with him? Aren't you at all upset?” He was incredulous. He thought that she would at least be angry over the abduction, but she didn't seem to care. “Maybe your emotions have been adjusted.”
She bent forward slightly, and looked him in the eyes, “Dylan, I'm a business woman, I don't need to be controlled to see the value in working with Mason. I don't have a problem with it.”
Something about her manner disturbed him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He said no more, and a short time later lunch was served. They talked no more than what was necessary, and it was as if a curtain had fallen between them. She asked if he would like to go to the atrium, and they spent the rest of the afternoon there; it had become a welcome get-away, they knew they were still being watched, but somehow felt freer when they talked. They walked to one of their favorite spot
s in the atrium. It was a small glen with exotic trees and flowers all around it. A small stream ran along the edge of the glen and there was an open grassy area where they had made love. Tomiko led him to that spot, and sat down, beckoning him to join her. Instead, he walked over to the stream and stood gazing at it. “How do you suppose that all this was accomplished, I mean it doesn't look phony at all. I imagine that it was very expensive. Why go through all this trouble? That, and where did all these unusual plants come from? I've been using the internet, and I can't find any of them in any botanical index.”
Many thoughts were racing around in his head. He could see how he'd been manipulated by Mason. From the first time that they had met, the chain of events had led him to this point. There had been times when he wanted to give up on his research, times he felt failure gnawing at him. Those were the times that he had turned to Mason, talking it out and coming away ready to tackle the world again. He now knew why, but he wasn't really upset by that knowledge because he'd accomplished something truly unbelievable – cold fusion. That, he decided, was worth the manipulation done to him. Robert, though, was a whole other matter. How could he get by that? In the past few weeks Robert had not been far from his thoughts but looking back his reaction to Robert's death surprised him, now he knew why – any thought along those lines had been channeled away. Things were different now that he understood and Mason couldn't influence him as easily, now he was feeling the pain of the loss of his friend and anger at his murder.