Landfall

by John McWilliams

  “It wasn’t. But only because everyone just assumed it was a rich space tourist’s play toy—something to keep me busy while I was up there. But now—”

  “Don’t tell me it works.” Nate glances at Jan. “Holy shit! You’re kidding me. Seriously?” Nate jostles his friend’s shoulder. “That’s awesome. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because it actually gets more complicated than that.” Jan takes out his cell phone and removes the battery. “I need yours, too. It’s got to be how the FBI tracked me.”

  Nate digs his phone out of his pocket. Jan removes the battery and tosses it, along with his phone, into one of the duffel bags at his feet.

  “It’s not like Oren didn’t warn me,” Jan says, referring to Oren Fields, JLA’s Director of Launch Operations and another of Jan’s closest friends. “He told me the instant the Feds caught wind of any success they’d be all over me.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Yeah, here I am.”

  “So, who else knows?”

  “Just you, me, Oren, and Dimitry.”

  Dimitry Antonov, cosmonaut and friend, had been Jan’s assistant during the testing phase of the Advanced Wave Experiment.

  “Well, someone must have said something, right?” Nate keeps his eyes on the road. “Oren wouldn’t say a word, and I just found out about it. And, assuming you didn’t say anything, that leaves just Dimitry. And if he was going to tell anyone, it sure as hell wouldn’t be the FBI. Maybe they bugged you.”

  “I think it might be this trip. I mean, I’m sure they were on to me anyway. But by requesting a shortened stay on the space station, and then bypassing normal protocols to fly across the country, I think I sent them into panic mode.”

  “So, what about this trip? How does that fit in?”

  “That’s the complicated part,” Jan tells him. “While we were testing, we discovered information already embedded in one of our crystals. And I mean terabytes of information.”

  “In one of the crystals you made?”

  “That’s right. And once we figured out how to extract and decode it, we learned it was sent from the future. Thirty years in the future.”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  “I wish I were.” Jan stares out the windshield. “The Message was addressed specifically to me.”

  Jan tells Nate about the Message’s offers of proof and the reason for their cross-country excursion, but he stops short of elaborating on the actual purpose of the Message—stating only that it requests that he perform a rather large task. Although Jan trusts Nate beyond question, the more people who know the specifics of the Message’s request, the more hazardous things could become. That’s why presently, Jan is the only one who knows. Dimitry and Oren only know that the Message exists and that its senders have requested something. “It’s just safer this way—at least for the moment,” Jan tells him. “The Senders chose me because they believe I might be able to accomplish the task they’re requesting, and because of the papers I’ve written about the inherent dangers of time-messaging.”

  “You mean paradoxes?” Nate says.

  “I mean because paradoxes don’t exist, and if I were to do something foolish like, say, let the fact that I received their Message get out… well, they might just be motivated to not send the Message in the first place. Especially if they believe I’ve accomplished their goal.”

  “But that makes no sense. If they don’t send the Message, isn’t that a paradox?”

  “All that would mean is that on the distribution curve of all the possible reasons why I received the Message, the most obvious one would now be gone. I’ve just clipped it right off the curve. Now I’m left with freak accidents, malicious interlopers, and… who knows what else? Somehow, someway, I received the Message. But remove Occam’s razor, and you slit your own throat.”

  “So… what can you tell me?” Nate asks.

  “As far as the task proposed by the Message goes, all I can say is that it’ll take a long time to accomplish—decades, perhaps—a lot of money, and it’s huge. But until we get control over the situation—and that means getting my experiment and the Message back from space—I really shouldn’t say anything more.”

  They drive for a few minutes, staring into the rain, neither saying a word.

  Nate had thought this was going to be a fun trip, Jan muses: fly JLA’s Bell 214 out to Captain Hook, pick up Jan and fly him to Eureka, then across country in JLA’s Cessna Citation.

  Jan glances at Nate, who’s strategically navigating them through traffic.

  Nate had been NASA’s best pilot and one of their most experienced astronauts before he got himself wrapped up in a messy love triangle. One of the women, also an astronaut, had threatened to press sexual harassment charges, and NASA, having just come off an unrelated PR disaster, had wanted a way out.

  That’s when Jan had stepped in. Jan knew Nate. He knew it wasn’t his intentions that had gotten him into trouble as much as it was his movie star looks and irrepressible smile. So Jan had proposed that Nate join JLA as their Chief Astronaut, and that in return, JLA would settle the case themselves. It’s amazing how flexible the rules can be when you have the money.

  From Nate’s perspective, Jan had saved his career; from NASA’s perspective, Jan had saved them from an embarrassment. But from Jan’s perspective, he had just stolen away NASA’s best pilot—and NASA’s top brass now owed him big time. As they say, it was a win-win-win—all for Jan.

  “Okay,” Nate says. “Somehow we have to get your experiment back from space, avoid getting nabbed by the FBI, prevent the FBI from getting your experiment, and then accomplish some earth-shattering task. And we have to keep all of this a secret for the next thirty years?”

  “Basically, yes. Nate, if I’d had any idea how this was going to snowball out of control—”

  “I know, I know—I’m sure you wouldn’t have left your experiment up there if you’d had any idea. But, do you really think you can trust Dimitry? I mean, if the FBI knows, how long will it be before the Russian SVR knows? You think he’d betray his country?”

  “Dimitry understands the probability curve problem as well as the greedy government problem. I’m sure I can trust him.”

  “So, what next? Back to Essex?” Nate asks, referring to Essex County Airport in New Jersey, where they left JLA’s Cessna Citation.

  “No, that’s got to be compromised by now. Pull off at the next decent exit. We need to find someplace where we can get a Wi-Fi connection. Oren and I have an anonymous Gmail account that we’ve been sharing so I can keep him up to date on the experiment.”

  “A shared account?”

  “We never send emails. We use proxy servers, log in, and just save drafts for the other to read. So we can’t be traced.”

  “I thought you said this experiment wasn’t a secret.”

  “To me it wasn’t. Oren insisted on these email measures. I also set up an account with Dimitry before I left.”

  “So, what’s keeping Dimitry—all on his lonesome up there—from reading the Message’s content?”

  “First, he understands how important it is that he not read it. Second, I’m using a hardware solution that encrypts the data before it’s fed into the computer.”

  “Dimitry’s a pretty smart fellow, Jan.”

  “I know, but he won’t read it. He’s disciplined. He’ll monitor the extraction and make the backups. But he understands how curiosity could actually kill the cat in this situation.”

  “If you say so.” Nate pulls onto an exit ramp. “At least it’s raining.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Otherwise the FBI would have helicopters all over us. Lucky break.”

  At a Best Buy, Jan gives Nate $2,000 of the $50,000 in traveling cash he has stashed in one of his duffel bags. Nate, donning a baseball cap and sunglasses, purchases a laptop. They then proceed to the parking lot of Jane’s Free Wi-Fi Deli, where they connect to the internet from the car.


  “What do you plan to tell Dimitry?” Nate asks.

  “I need to check on the extraction and see if we’re still on for shipping the experiment back on the next supply run. Assuming that’s the case, then you and I need to figure out how to keep the FBI from intercepting that delivery.”

  Jan logs into the Gmail account he shares with Dimitry. Three messages. He opens the first:

  Jan, Relayed your message to Lisa. I hope all is going according to plan. 76% extracted!

  Good luck. D.

  Jan’s wife, Lisa, and their young son, Stephen, are presently in China. Before Jan left the space station, he dictated a simple message for Dimitry to forward to her. He simply told her that he missed her and that he would be coming back early—but not to worry. There was no need for her to change her plans.

  The second message was sent ten hours after the first:

  Jan, something is going on. I have just been interrogated by the FBI on a secure NASA channel. A lot of questions about the AWX, the current status of the equipment, and about you! I told them that the equipment is here, but I knew nothing of the test results. And now some Russian official wants a conference call with me. Is scheduled to happen in one hour! I will say nothing, of course. But they know something is up. Let me know what is happening on your side, please. D.

  The third message was sent six hours after that:

  Jan, apparently government officials on both sides are getting anxious. And I am getting squeezed in middle! I think my ignorance though may save me. :) Unfortunately, I am not sure who to trust up here. Someone must have figured it out and told. But not sure.

  NASA is asking that the AWX apparatus be sent back on the next supply run. And they won’t be using JLA! They plan to use GalactiTrek. The JLA supply run for the 24th is scrubbed.

  And it gets worse! There is a rumor that Roscosmos is pushing for a manned flight for next week.

  Jan, the Message is 82% extracted. Is there anything I can do? The probability curve is not looking good, my friend! D.

  Jan stares into the rain while Nate finishes reading.

  “A NASA/GalactiTrek mission and an unscheduled Russian flight?” Nate says. “It looks like you’ve started another space race.” Nate rests his hands on the steering wheel. “All right, what exactly do you think’ll happen if either of these two sides get this technology?”

  “World War Three,” Jan says without inflection. “Could you imagine what would happen if either side could evolve technology by sending information back in time? The balance of power would tilt so quickly in one direction the other side would be forced to attack before it’s too late.”

  “Okay, but wait,” Nate says. “Doesn’t your probability curve work both ways? I mean, what’s the likelihood that you would have received the Message if your technology had been used to start World War Three?”

  Jan rubs his chin. “Since I received the Message, World War Three does seem unlikely. But it’s still a possibility.”

  “Also, I don’t think you can die,” Nate says. “At least not any time soon. If the task they want you to complete might take decades, why would they bother to send a message back to you if they know you’re going to die?”

  “Now that’s a really dangerous assumption—”

  “On the other hand,” Nate continues, “what makes us think they’re ever going to leave you alone? I mean the FBI and the Russians. Even if we get your experiment back and destroy it, why wouldn’t they just rendition you and force you to duplicate it? Of course, how could that happen and the people in the future not know about it? The billionaire president of JL Aerospace disappears off the face of the earth and still they send the Message to you?”

  “Maybe that’s just it. Maybe I do get renditioned, and the people in the future think I went off to work on their project.”

  “Or…” Nate holds up his finger. “Maybe we use this to figure out a way to make the United States and Russia both think you’ve been renditioned by the other side, and that allows you to carry out the Sender’s task.”

  “But if both sides think the other has me, I think we’re back to World War Three.”

  Nate folds his fingers under his chin and nods.

  “The problem,” Jan says, “is that there are too many possibilities. But I do think you’ve touched on one fairly reasonable assumption we can derive from this: I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll get killed in any kind of spectacular way. They’d certainly know about that.”

  “Agreed.”

  Jan turns back to the computer and types a message to Dimitry:

  Dimitry, Sorry to put you in this situation. But when the message is fully extracted, please make the additional backups we discussed and secure them along with the crystal in a safe place—away from the AWX apparatus. We’re working on a plan. I’ll get back to you soon.

  Also, please send a message to Lisa via our Australian connection. Tell her I asked that she stay in China until she hears back from me and to ignore all requests from the U.S. Embassy, the FBI, and NASA.

  Thanks for everything. And keep your eyes open!

  Jan.

  “Which capsule were we sending up on the twenty-fourth?” Jan asks Nate, referring to the scrubbed JLA supply run.

  “Chronos, with Helios as backup.”

  “We’re going to need Oren to retrofit both vehicles.”

  “For what?”

  “For a manned mission.”

  “Whoa…” Nate says. “Now we’re joining the space race?”

  “What choice do we have? Both countries seem hell-bent on getting their hands on the AWX. And that can’t happen. Message or no Message, we have to recover the apparatus—or, at the very least, the crystal.”

  “Okay, okay,” Nate says, “let’s assume we somehow beat GalactiTrek and the Russians to launch. Then what? The second we clear the tower, the world will know what we’re up to—and it’ll take at least a day after that to get there. And what do we do then? They don’t have to let us dock, you know. Do we raise the Jolly Roger and threaten cannon fire? Look, I’m on board for whatever it takes—I’d probably be crop-dusting in Iowa if it wasn’t for you—but there’s got to be a better way.”

  Jan stares beyond the rhythmic swings of the wiper blades and the steamed windows of Jane’s Free Wi-Fi Deli. “First, I seriously doubt you’d be crop dusting in Iowa,” he says. “Second—you got a better idea? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in business, it’s that you’ve got to keep moving. Even a bad idea is better than no idea. It’s a matter of inertia.”

  While Nate thinks this over, Jan logs into his Oren account and leaves a message requesting that Oren go ahead and roll out Chronos and Helios in their “manned” configuration. He instructs them to promote the action within the company as “backup for GalactiTrek.” After all, why wouldn’t they want to be positioned to save the day for NASA?

  Jan doesn’t feel the need to explain the true purpose behind his request. Oren would figure it out. Oren was privy to the U.S. and Russian flights, and it’s been Oren all along who’s been warning Jan about the possibility of the Feds getting involved.

  Logging back into his Dimitry account once more, Jan finds a new message. It’s brief: Dimitry confirms that he’ll forward Jan’s message to Lisa, and that he’s just gotten word that the NASA/GalactiTrek launch is scheduled for the twenty-eighth—three days from now.

  “They’ll never pull that off,” Nate says dismissively. “But we should assume they can. So we need to get back to the spaceport. And as fast as this thing is, I don’t think we have time for a three-thousand-mile drive.”

  Jan considers this. JLA’s launch facility is in Mojave, California. But the FBI has to be staking out his private jet at Essex. And commercial flights, or renting a plane, are out—either one would certainly alert the FBI—

  “We steal a plane,” Nate says.

  “We do?”

  “C’mon, a noble reason to steal a plane—how often does that happen?”

&
nbsp; Nate takes the laptop from Jan and brings up a map of Connecticut. “Westchester and Danbury are midsize airports—reasonably close. I think Westchester’s our best bet.” He puts the car in gear.

  “Have you done this before?” Jan asks.

  “Ah… I think it might be ‘safer’ if you don’t know.” Nate narrows his eyes at the neon sign on the front of Jane’s Free Wi-Fi Deli—it’s a pink cup of coffee with neon white steam. “Hey, how about I get us some—”

  “Good idea. And get us some sandwiches, too.”

  Chapter 5

  The JetHawk helicopter made a high-speed landing at Edmonton International Airport, taxied to the private passenger terminal, and—the instant Lauren and Ellis closed the cargo area door—took off again, blasting them with wind and snow.

  Lauren warmed her nose as she and Ellis watched the JetHawk depart to the east. As the racket of its air-slapping blades faded, Lauren glanced at the silver case in Ellis’s hand. They walked without a word toward the terminal building and the Edmonton Airport’s coffee shop.

  At a booth near a window, overlooking the snow-covered tarmac, Lauren ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream, Ellis coffee, black.

  Lauren set up her satellite tablet and sent a conference request to Deputy Director Arthur Johnson. She made certain the tablet’s 360-degree lens was on so the deputy director would be able to see Ellis on the other side of the table.

  A waitress brought over Lauren’s hot chocolate and Ellis’s coffee just as Arthur Johnson accepted the call. When their boss’s head appeared, a ghostly apparition within a cylinder of static, he immediately spun himself toward the window.

  “Special Agent Madison?”

  “Yes, sir?” Lauren quickly sipped her hot chocolate and set it down.

  “Lift me up so I can see my plane.”

  “Sir?”

  “That’s the airport out there, isn’t it? I want to see my plane.”

  “You want me to—”