BRAINSTORM

by Gordon Kessler

  With two twenty-kiloton nuclear bombs set to go off in under fifty minutes, we quickly considered possible solutions—ways of getting more than four thousand people five miles to the other side of the ridgeline in time. Suddenly, what I hoped was a viable answer struck me.

  I could solve our dilemma if only I could transpose my being, transcend time, and in some manner influence the past. If only I were able to bridge the temporal gap and not only see the past but find a way to segue from my psyche in present time into the past. If that were possible, perhaps I could influence a change to key elements of that past and this present horror we now took part in would not happen, the lives that had already been horrifically altered, and those that had been lost would not have been affected by this madman I knew as Dr. Xiang.

  I had influenced others, gotten into other people’s heads in present time—even to the extent of killing them, without conscious knowledge of it. I had seen the future. Couldn’t I also, then, be able to see the past, find a psyche for temporary residence and influence even the conception of Xiang’s life?

  I must try.

  * * *

  Physically, emotionally and mentally drained, I collapse. I feel my body jar as it hits the hard ground, and I enter the swirling portal into the Ether. This time I am nauseated by the spin, and I’m anxious to leave it. This journey seems truncated as I exit the vortex quickly and float into the eternal home of the universal Matrix. I search for the ethereal angel, but again she isn’t present. I wonder if I call out, if the suggestion of calling to the lovely entity comes to my mind, that she might appear once more. Perhaps she holds the answer to our mortal dilemma.

  Then too, I consider whether or not there are other angel-like beings within this surreal place that I might summons, perhaps by mistake and not so angelic, but demonic. Could I beckon by error the opposite entity, the demon yin of the angel’s yang? And what effect will that cause? I consider another option while peering through the never-ending plasma that is my unconscious’ interpretation of Ether: if I examine this place closely, will I see God, will I find His presence, or in the least, can I find evidence of His existence—that this is His domain? Could I then ask Him why? Why the suffering, the pain, what is the gist of this thing we call life? What is the real scheme of living in this universe He has made—what is His plan for the human spirit after life? The thought of it makes me shiver—who am I to even toy with the idea of personally approaching God—of confronting the supreme being and asking Him why? In the misty distance I see no one, no thing. There is no sound of voice or noise of approach—and I am glad.

  I remember my immediate quest and think of the coordinates necessary to locate the place in the Matrix that will facilitate my passage to that time, many years ago. Suddenly, the Matrix becomes a blur of brilliant lights of every color, and I know that I’m traveling at a speed faster than light, yet I feel no motion, and I enter a dark, soundless void. As quickly as I’ve entered the lightless abyss, I find myself pulled miles and years away from the American town of Gold Rush, and I now hover over a large Chinese city, circa late 1930s.

  I know it to be Shanghai, the knowledge of it coming to mind like a whisper. There are tall buildings and streets jammed with people, carts and automobiles. It is a frightening place that I’m sure is full of many dangers. But I remind myself that this fear is unfounded, because I’m not physically here, and no harm can come to me.

  It is a clear night, and there is much disturbance in the streets—sailors of many nationalities drunken and loud, some staggering, some fighting, some singing merrily. And merchants, pimps and prostitutes sell their wares and services like newspaper butchers on the street.

  In the harbor are Japanese, American and French navy ships, gunboats and other warships docked alongside the freighters, sampans and junks. And to the east, an eerie scarlet glow lights the horizon in a pulsing wave. I know that none of those on the city streets, the warships or the merchants’ boats can see this red luminance, but they all are aware of it. It is a premonition, a knowing of their future I witness. I know it to be the war with Japan looming in this Chinese city’s near future that illuminates the horizon so. Many atrocities are to come—the second Sino-Japanese War, the invasion and subsequent massacres of hundreds of thousands in the nearby city of Nanjing, known to those in the West as Nanking.

  I descend to a busy street where I pass through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd—Orientals with coolie hats, English, French and American sailors and Marines, hookers in bright silk kimonos. I move past rickshaws and luxurious Bugattis, bars, flophouses, food and jewelry vendors, and makeshift casinos. The pedestrians speak of cockfights and dogfights, horse races and rat races, and all manners of gambling. They tell of whores and jewelry, bets, and the world back home.

  I finally arrive at a hotel—more likely a flophouse brothel. There are many small rooms, the grunts and groans of uninhibited lust coming from them. I am drawn to a particular tenement and, as I enter through its ceiling, I see a young Chinese woman, pretty and innocent. I know she is just that—an innocent twelve or thirteen-year-old, forced into prostitution by a father attempting to support a large family, trying to keep them alive on a miniscule amount of rice and beans. Wearing a worn, padded kimono she whimpers anxiously, sitting in the corner opposite a flattened and soiled feather mattress that lays on the floor.

  I quickly become one with her thoughts, understand that the sacrifice she makes for her family weighs heavy on her mind: her life for theirs, her younger sister and three brothers, her father and mother. It is a valiant thing she does for them, yet she wishes she could live an ordinary life, grow to become a woman with a husband and have children, a family of her own. She only wants to live.

  The door opens and a tall Caucasian man is ushered in by a squat, aging mammason. He is well dressed, wearing a straw-colored suit, his hat in his hand. He pulls from his lapel a small white flower, perhaps a daisy, and hands it to the trembling young girl.

  “I have bought you,” he says in Mandarin—but I hear it in English. “Not just for the night, but for as long as I am stationed here.” She looks up at him and slowly she takes the daisy.

  At that moment, I feel what she feels—that this is a better alternative to death, to what she had anticipated. To be this man’s mistress will banish her fear of being passed on from one filthy sailor to the next for countless times through each and every night—of contracting an ugly venereal disease that will kill her at a young age, as is the fate of so many other young girls she’s heard stories about.

  “I am Russian, the Soviet Consul General to Shanghai, and I plan to be here for a very long time. I will be kind to you, visit you often, bring you flowers and furniture. This will be our tenement.” He reaches toward her and gently pulls down her tattered robe from each shoulder, and I experience the fright she feels—the shiver, the icy fingers touching and fondling her.

  I am pulled away and find myself looking at this young girl through the Russian’s eyes. I admire her beauty as the most perfect of paintings, just the right light, the exact hues and softness of the curves of her young body. She is as beautiful to me as he finds her, but I am embarrassed at seeing her this way—yet I cannot turn away. Deeper in his psyche lurks a darkness, a lust for taking over this child’s body, controlling it, and being the first to defile her. His lust digresses from humane sensibility to animalistic desire, and it sickens me.

  As he loosens his belt and unbuttons his trousers, I go deeper into his psyche and search for what I need to stop this and to stop the horror happening in the time from which I’ve come. Through his thoughts I rummage, until I find he has a daughter, slightly older than this young girl, at his permanent home in Moscow. With the daughter is his wife who waits for him faithfully and patiently.

  If I were to bring this remembrance from the darkness of the back of his mind to the light of his thoughts, he will surely stop his present course. He will become disgusted with himself, turn away from this poor child and le
t her be—and the Russian-Chinese madman known as Dr. Gao Xiang will not be conceived.

  Just as I begin to energize the notion and carry it to where the man can see what he is doing in the light of reason, I am yanked from his conscious to a place unfamiliar to me, an unworldly place of heat and dry swirling winds. I discover a dark and barren landscape before me, rocky and glowing red like the horizon I’d seen earlier, and I know that I will soon be viewing what is to come.

  The ground shakes violently, and the heavens explode with brilliant lightning and terrific thunder. A crack in the dark red ground suddenly appears in front of me, and it grows across the terrain. As it widens, I see it is deep, not only feet or meters, but miles, and at the bottom a stream of red lava glows, the liquid rock flowing rapidly, popping and exploding as it surges. The chasm’s growth stops and, to most souls, this would seem a formidable barrier, but not for me. I know, should I choose, I can cross this fearsome canyon easily, for it is only in my mind.

  I realize it’s purpose is not to gobble me up in its fire, but to warn me—cause me to consider my next action, and my choices in this time that is not my own. For if I step out over midair and cross this threshold, I will make a choice that I cannot call back, and the malleable future will solidify and be changed forever.

  On the other side of the fiery crevasse are numerous tunnels of light, and I peer through them from one end, the beginning, into what will be if I interfere with the past. Another whisper from the dark instructs me that these channels are the variances a mere fraction of a second will make. If I push the reminder of the man’s daughter to his thoughts quickly and with force, the first scenario will take place and be permanent. A split second later, and if I include the man’s wife, a second version will happen—slower a third—at a different time and with the thought of the man’s wife brought to his mind first, a fourth scenario, and so on.

  I see in the first tunnel, the man comparing his own daughter to the virgin sex slave he’s purchased before him and, repulsed by the thought of what he is about to do, he turns and runs from the doorway and away from the hotel, never to look upon it again. But as I watch through this portal, a different man, drunken and foul, comes through the virgin girl’s door. He stands over her, the lust clear in his eyes, then takes the poor child and brutalizes her. The drunk is followed by another and another, and I watch as the hours turn to days. Finally, several weeks pass when I see half a dozen inebriated sailors at her door, and I know that in the next few minutes, she will be gang raped and killed.

  In the next tunnel the Russian diplomat flees from the room as before, but slips on a rug at the head of the stairs. As he tumbles down the steps, he breaks his arm. He becomes so angry, when he pulls himself up by a drape nearby, he yanks it from its curtain rod. Frustrated and ashamed, he throws the fabric into a blazing fireplace that heats the bricks used to warm rooms and the foot of beds. The curtain catches fire, as does the oil from a lamp that he’s knocked over in the process, and flames suddenly engulf the entranceway to the hotel. In a matter of scant seconds, the blaze spreads through the entire wooden building and dozens of lives, including the young girl’s, are lost.

  In the third tunnel, the man feels the shame and pain so deeply, so darkly, that he becomes enraged. He reaches to the girl, and with strong large hands wrapped around her throat, he chokes the young prostituted woman, who is no more than a child, until she collapses to the floor. I know he will then be found out, and the proprietors of the whorehouse, embittered by the girl’s death by a foreigner’s hand, will run him through with their long knives.

  These are terrible things I see, but I wonder if this last scenario would be the kindest for the girl—to get her suffering over with quickly—and if it wouldn’t be the most just scenario for the man, justice for his brutality.

  But I am given a vision now about my query, and I understand that this man, who would be her murderer, and be killed for it, then would not go back to his wife and child in Moscow when the second Sino-Japanese War starts and the Japanese soldiers invade. He would not become an important commander under Stalin in the Soviet Army, and he would not help defeat the Nazis’ Blitzkrieg. Without his leadership, the unit he would have led will fall to the invading forces and allow them to advance only three miles farther to a small village near Kursk. Many more Russian civilians will be slaughtered there. Eight-hundred kilometers away, a traveling merchant, hearing his village has been sacked and fearing for the lives of his family, will speed recklessly from the town of Privolnoye, his truck striking a peasant boy on the side of the road. Young Mikhail Gorbachev will be killed—and the Berlin Wall will not topple so easily, nor as early as November of 1989.

  Also linked to this, a young Irishman, a fighter pilot in the British Royal Air Force named Lieutenant James O’Donnell, will be shot down and killed by a German who should have died in the botched advance of the Nazis. The granddaughter named Sunny, who Lieutenant O’Donnell should have had, will never be born.

  All of it is baffling.

  I decide a different course, to travel forward from this time, to see if there might be a better opportunity to change the future, find what influenced Xiang to become so uncaring of human life and perhaps sway him from his course of darkness and death.

  But then, I feel a presence beside me and turn to see the beautiful apparition who welcomed me the first time.

  She directs her lovely gaze at me, and I hear her voice inside my head, her lips unmoving. “You have many choices—they are infinite. Few mortals are privileged with such ability—only the wise. For without wisdom, knowing that to alter the past will change destiny itself, the resultant future might be worse than destiny’s true course. To make even a small adjustment can create great changes to the future—to destiny. A smile not given to an angry man might lead to the death of an entire race. Kindness given a starving dog could result in a world of complete peace and harmony a century later. You must choose wisely. A hasty act could create a paradox—change the future to where you will never be born. Without your birth, you would not be able to change the past, and your existence and the memory of you will be erased from the universal Matrix—you will never have been.”

  This notion Moonfeather imparts is unthinkable, confusing, frightening. A simple change in the past, the throwing of a stone, can be devastating to the world two hundred years later.

  Chapter 37

  I felt someone shaking me, my body being jostled, and when I looked up I saw Jax frowning down on me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I was lying on the ground near the tunnel. “Yeah,” I said, my thoughts still swirling.

  Rajiv suddenly was hovering over me. He checked my eyes and my pulse. “This man leaves consciousness more often than anyone I have ever met or studied. We must have him treated for narcolepsy.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “Help me up.”

  “You’re hurt,” Jax said as he, Rajiv and Chief Dailey helped me stand.

  I followed his gaze and remembered my wound—had not felt pain from it until now as I looked at the dark, blood-soaked spot on my side. I peeled back the body armor and Rajiv stuck his face close to my injury.

  After a careful inspection, he said, “It has clotted very nicely. It seems only to be a flesh wound, and I am greatly relieved.”

  “Me, too,” I said as I looked down at the jumbo jets on the airfield.

  “You should not twist your body for some time and we must dress this injury soon.”

  Jax said, “I’ll get the Med Kit.”

  “No time for that, now,” I said as the first passenger jet began taxiing behind Xiang’s smaller plane. “The 747s. They’re our only hope.” I broke for the helicopter and the others jogged behind me.

  Jax and I reached the open cargo bay at the same time. He said, “Even if we can stop them from taking off now, pack some of these people in, they’ll carry maybe four hundred and fifty, five hundred people each, max.”

  “And leave th
ree thousand behind,” I said absently. I met his eyes. “We’ve got to do that much.”

  Dailey arrived panting and spoke into his radio, “Prater, turn everybody around. Get ‘em headed back to Biotronics. We got us some free airfare and first class seats.”

  “And what about my troupe?” I asked, motioning to the three-hundred-plus thoughtless followers.

  Jax turned to one of his men next to the chopper. “Clark, lead them to the runway.”

  The young man nodded to the major and ran back to the large group.

  I cupped my hands and called out, “Follow him,” and I pointed to their new leader.

  In a few seconds the entire group began their three-quarter-mile trek down the narrow paved road to the airstrip. I couldn’t help but compare them to a cult group of some kind, dressed in white hospital garb following a man in black body armor.

  Jax vaulted into the side door of the helicopter and Sarge followed him. “But we still have to get those people to the plane, and the Biotronics side of this tunnel is blocked. Our acoustic cannon made quite a mess of the entire building.”

  Dailey said, “The tunnel’s the only way from town down to that airstrip.” He gazed downhill and seemed to have an epiphany. “There’s a bulldozer parked beside the main hanger down there. If I can get to it, maybe I’ll be able to clear the tunnel.”

  “Then, if that works,” Jax said, “we’ll have the solemn task of turning away over three-fourths of them.” He held out his hand to assist Dailey, Rajiv and me into the chopper.

  “We’ll find a way, Jax,” I said, not convinced myself.

  Dailey asked, “But what about Xiang? Since he’s seen your chopper, he’ll be skidaddling pronto.”

  Jax glanced down at the airstrip. “Looks like they’re taxiing to two different, parallel runways. If we try to stop the first jumbo, he’ll be gone before we can get to him. We can’t knock him down—the acoustic weapon’s power supply is depleted, and so’s the EMP—wouldn’t cook a transistor at two feet.” He glanced at the machine gun. “We’re even out of live rounds for our fifty caliber.”