EMIT (THE EMIT SAGA)

by Barbara Cross

  Brother? He never mentioned a brother. Maybe that’s the guy in the photo from Florence. “You never told me you had a brother.”

  “Paige, James isn’t my uncle. He’s my older brother.” He watched my face with trepidation.

  Uncomprehending, I sat there trying to understand what he was talking about, but confusion was winning out on any logical explanation as to what he was saying.

  “Were you or James adopted?”

  “No, he’s my full brother,” Daniel said.

  I started to realize that this was impossible. Did his mother freeze fertilized eggs? I wondered. “What are you talking about?” I asked totally confused. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Daniel succinctly said, “I was born on November 11, 1949…” He stared at me.

  I realized that he’d said 1949. 1949? “What are you saying? Is this a joke?”

  “No its not. I was born in 1949.” Daniel watched as the confusion swirled in my eyes.

  How old was he? I felt like hyperventilating. This wasn’t happening. He was older than my father! Stunned and incredulous, I gaped at him not grasping how this could be true.

  “How is that possible? Your license said that you were nineteen,” I stammered and tears welled up in my eyes.

  “I am. Let me explain.”

  How could he look so young? Plastic surgery? I was inching away from him on the sand, sliding backwards, trying to get away. How could I have been this wrong about him? Please wake up, Paige. Why did my fairy tale have to turn into a nightmare?

  “Please, let me finish,” Daniel sounded frantic.

  “What else is there?” I screeched. Why was I starting to cry? Getting angry with myself, I brushed the tears aside and stood up. I didn’t want to know anything more. My world was shattered and I felt pure and unadulterated fear. Was he a pedophile? He hadn’t even kissed me, so none of this made any sense.

  Daniel reached for me, but lowered his hands when I said threateningly, “Don’t touch me!”

  “Please, let me tell you the rest,” he pleaded.

  “Are you crazy?” I hissed through clenched teeth. Every emotion went through me: disbelief, confusion, sorrow and rage. “Why have you done this to me?” I screamed.

  People on the beach were looking at us, noticing our raised voices, but I didn’t care. At least there were witnesses because I was terrified of this man. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was making any sense. My first instinct was to run, but my feet weren’t moving. In a recent nightmare, there was a man pursuing me but even though I was running as fast as I could, I was stuck in place. This had to be a dream! All of this was impossible! Everything began spinning, and momentarily my mind blacked out. I stood there gawking at this stranger, trying to will myself to wake up. Opening and closing my eyes repeatedly wasn’t working.

  “Please, calm down. I can explain everything.”

  I had trusted him. How could he explain any of this? Daniel waited for me to compose myself and appeared taken aback by my anger. Reasoning was slowly coming back to me and I looked at him warily. Taking deep breaths to calm myself, I settled back onto the sand to the apparent relief of Daniel. I needed to know what he had to say. Whether it was morbid curiosity or plain hope that maybe he had a feasible story to explain this, I prepared myself to hear what he had to say.

  “Okay, go ahead,” I said trying desperately to control my emotions. Holding my hand up, I instructed him to stay away from me. Daniel moved away and left enough space between us in the sand, so that I felt comfortable.

  Daniel began, “I was born in 1949, but physically, I’m nineteen and will continue to be that age because of my job.”

  “What are you talking about? You were born in 1949?”

  “That’s the classified part that I need to tell you about.”

  I stared at him trying to figure out how he could be so old. Nothing in his appearance fit the age that he was saying he was. I tried guessing. “Is this some science experiment?” His uncle worked for the government, it was plausible. “Or did you guys discover the fountain of youth?”

  “None of those things. You’re jumping to crazy conclusions and I have so much to tell you.”

  “Okay, go on.” I sat there staring at his face and realized that somehow deep down I knew there was something extraordinary and unique about him. From the time I saw the photo of him in Florence, I had consciously avoided asking questions because I didn’t want to know the answers if it meant losing him. Crazy photos of him and fear for my life hadn’t deterred my wanting to know him. Neither had the disclosure of the surveillance equipment. I chose to close my eyes whenever Daniel said the word ‘classified.’ I could’ve walked away a long time ago and only did before because Daniel had pushed me away. Daniel was right. I needed to know what was going on. He was telling me, whether I was ready or not.

  “I’m here from the past,” he said, in such a low tone that at first I thought I heard wrong.

  “Did you say the past?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re actually serious?”

  “Yes. The invention was a time machine.” He watched me as my eyes widened. “While working on nuclear power and Einstein’s theories of relativities, the secret of time travel was unearthed.” Daniel talked while I sat there spellbound. Scientific terms were being bandied about and I had no idea what he was saying. Time travel was foremost on my mind and thoughts of that took precedence over the theories involved in creating it. Who cared about the specifics? A time machine! Suddenly, all those crazy comments alluding to the future that Daniel and James had made in the past made sense.

  “You can go to the past and the future?” I asked incredulously.

  “No, I can only go back to my time, which is in October 1969,” Daniel explained.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t go back before my own time, only into the future of my time. Travel to the past was abandoned because there were casualties and aging problems when the agents returned.”

  “But how come you don’t age?”

  “It’s called time dilation. The time machine is propelled at such great speed that aging doesn’t occur. This was discovered in the early 1940’s and it’s been improved so many times since then. When I joined the agency, it was 1967 and most of the kinks had been worked out. Now years later, the machines are even better. The scientists from the past and the future are constantly updating them and discovering new things about them.”

  “How much time passes in your time while you’re here in the future?”

  “Eight months in the future is about one day in the past. Paige, I didn’t graduate high school last December. I graduated in June of 1967 and began working at the EMIT offices in July. They wouldn’t let me into the actual program until I turned eighteen, which was in November.”

  “This is so unbelievable. Can you stay in this year forever?”

  “I can only stay for eight months in any year that’s not my own.”

  “What do you do the other four months?”

  “We work for two months at the EMIT offices and then we have a two month vacation. During those four months, we’re not allowed to time travel or there can be serious health issues. Time travel is very draining on the body and since there’s very little down time when we work, we need to fully rest before we can travel again. When we’re active, we can work six days a week and need to time travel if we have to. There’ve been times where I’ve conflated the past and present from pure exhaustion.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve mixed the years up and thought I was in the past when in actuality I was in the future or I’ve combined data from multiple years. That’s the job. I can’t complain since I knew what it entailed before I signed up and knew that I had to fully immerse in each case.”

  As he talked and explained everything, I got totally absorbed in the story and forgot all my previous emotions. We sat on the sand chatting like this was a regular conversation.

&
nbsp; “You’re so young. Why did you sign up for this?” This was such a bizarre existence.

  He smiled weakly and said, “To make a difference and save lives, but it took a lot of persuading on my part to get hired at my age. My knowledge of the program gave me an advantage, as did my parents and brother. They eventually allowed it, only after certain requirements were met.”

  “What do you mean knowledge? Isn’t this all classified?” I said sarcastically.

  Daniel grinned and added, “It was difficult for my parents not to bring their work home. James and I put two and two together after some eavesdropping. Whenever our parents had co-workers over for dinner, we were always sent out of the room as soon as the meal was done. Most of the time we were thrilled to be excused, but one time James overheard something about the time machine and told me. When James started working with Dad during school breaks in high school, it was impossible to keep it from us. James wasn’t in the top-secret area, but he wanted to work in that area. I had every intention of being a scientist also, but my plans changed after my parents’ crash,” he said.

  “But why?” I asked. There seemed to be something he wasn’t saying.

  Daniel confided, “To try to save my parents. I hoped for a long time that they’d figure out how to travel back in time safely.” Daniel started throwing rocks into the water.

  We sat there for a while in silence and I kept looking at his profile not believing his real age. “I don’t understand. How come you haven’t aged if you go back for four months every year?”

  “I haven’t been going back to my time. I’ve been travelling to other years for my four-month rest and in doing that I don’t age. All the other agents that go back to their time do age for those four months.”

  “Are there other travelers that are your age?”

  “No, just me. They decided that it was a great cover and have allowed me not to age, but the choice has been totally mine. The hiring age at EMIT is twenty-five.”

  “When agents stop traveling, do they age normally?” I envisioned a horrible sight.

  “Yes, we age exactly like everyone else does.”

  “Why can’t you stay longer than eight months?” I wondered.

  “Because when we return to our own time, we’re ten years older.”

  “Why?”

  Daniel shrugged, “We don’t know. It’s one of the side effects of time travel. Most of us don’t stay past eight months because the change is permanent.”

  “What do you mean most of you?”

  “Some agents do stay longer and go back ten years older.” Before I could ask why, Daniel added, “Their spouses age so it starts getting really obvious. Others though refuse to age and just do cosmetic changes.”

  “Like making their hair gray?” I asked and Daniel nodded. “Eight months? Some months have thirty days, others thirty-one, and what about February?”

  “It’s exactly two hundred forty days but we just say eight months. There’s a department at EMIT that’s responsible for tracking the agents times and notifies us one week before so we can get ready to leave and wrap things up. We overlap agents so everyone knows what’s going on.”

  My head was throbbing trying to wrap my brain around all of this. Daniel sat there with both hands rubbing his eyes, looking drained.

  “What is it that you’re trying to stop?”

  Daniel looked at me awkwardly and said, “I’ve told you before, we’re trying to stop an attack on the United States.”

  “I know, I know,” I smirked. “You’ve told me that repeatedly. I want to know what kind of attack.”

  “A nuclear disaster aimed at multiple nuclear plants simultaneously.”

  I remembered the nuclear conversation with Grammy. “Who’s trying to do this?” I asked. I had an idea and waited for him to confirm my suspicions.

  “Groups of radical Muslims.”

  “I thought so. Why is it so hard to stop this? My goodness, you have a time machine!” I said. It sounded so surreal.

  “We can only work and stop what is going on where we have time machines. One big problem is that Hezbollah has been working with the Mexican drug cartels and they have been smuggling the extremists into the US. They even have tunnels on the border that have been difficult to locate. Every time we think we’ve averted something, it still happens because there are people involved that we don’t know exist. We can’t have agents patrolling the entire border, there isn’t enough manpower in EMIT. We have to allow regular law enforcement and the military to assist us. The agency supplies them with data, but it only helps if they follow through on the information.”

  “But why wouldn’t the law listen to you?”

  “They do, but there have been times that things weren’t dealt with in a timely manner. We can’t tell them that we know a terrorist will be somewhere at a specific time. If he’s going to a meeting, we can say we heard through a phone interception. But there are some cases where there is no way we could explain the things we know and we find out later on that they didn’t take care of it or went before or after the terrorist showed up. Since EMIT can’t divulge the time machine, some things slip through the cracks. We can’t be everywhere.”

  “There are so many people watching me. That’s such a waste of manpower,” I said, while pulling my hair back into a ponytail in frustration. “Why am I still involved in this?”

  “I don’t know. None of this makes sense. At the moment, you’re the best lead, so we’re not letting you out of our sight.” Stunned by everything, I scooped sand in my hand than let it run through my fingers. This little concrete act was allowing me to stay sane.

  My sand diversion was interrupted, when Daniel said, “There’s something else.”

  “Okay?” I answered hesitantly. What more could there be?

  “For years we’ve watched your father because we narrowed down the lead to the company your dad was representing. It’s been difficult to ascertain who’s involved because we first were focusing on the French firm. Then the leads moved to London and then to New York. So many people work at all three firms that it’s been difficult. But when the information moved to NY and your dad’s office, he was the only connection. Your dad started working with the French company when you were five so we traveled to that time and traveled forward trying to find out who these people were, but we found nothing. That’s how you have a picture of me in Florence and the Eiffel Tower.”

  “You’ve been watching me since I was five?” I interrupted him. Is that why he’s looked familiar? He’s always been around in the background of my life. Or was it that I’d seen his photo on my wall for years? I’m sure I didn’t put that David photo on my wall though, so Mom probably did to torment me.

  “Different agents, including myself, have been investigating your father. We never thought of you, and never checked your father’s personal life, even though I’ve watched you grow over the years. Things abruptly changed in June of this year, so we went back to see what happened.” Daniel stopped.

  “And?” I insisted. “Go on.”

  “We still don’t understand how or why things changed though,” Daniel said.

  “What do you mean? What changed?”

  “Things in your father’s life that had never happened before and at that’s when we started watching, and then guarding you and your mom,” Daniel confided. “It started with your father being mugged. That never happened before.”

  “What are you talking about my dad was never mugged.”

  “We went in and changed the outcome.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Beginning of June. Then everything took a crazy turn, but we were watching you.” Daniel looked out over the water momentarily and then his gaze reverted to me. His look scared me.

  “What?” I asked shuddering, as I suddenly felt cold all over.

  Daniel leaned in closer and said, “You were killed.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked. “What are you talking about? I’m no
t dead.”

  “We fixed it.” Seeing my confusion, Daniel added, “Let me explain.” He ran his hands through his hair as if trying to find the words to do that.

  “You had never died before, so there was a change somewhere,” Daniel said. “When you got killed, we changed the outcome and knew that you had to be involved somehow.

  This was all too much. “When did I die?” I demanded, panic setting in.

  “The day in Central Park when I got you away from those men.”

  “Do you mean if you didn’t come from the past to me here in the present, I’d be dead?” So I shouldn’t be here. Death was my destiny and science was the only reason I was alive.

  “Yes,” Daniel answered concisely. “But, it shouldn’t have happened.”

  Shocked, I got up and started walking towards the Point. How was any of this possible? Daniel was giving me space to comprehend everything, but my death trumped the time machine now.

  As I approached the osprey nest, the birds began to make such a racket squawking that I sat on the sand far away from them. Daniel had been following me and sat down next to me. I played with the shells not believing that all this turmoil was happening in such a beautiful setting. Looking up, I saw diaphanous clouds float by and boats sailing in the bay.

  “What happened to me?” I finally was able to blurt out.

  “You were shot.”

  “But why?” All those dreams of being shot popped into my mind.

  “We weren’t sure.”

  “Why didn’t you follow them?”

  “We’ve tried that twice with different outcomes. We never let you get killed again, but they were in different places as if they were warned where we’d be. It makes no sense and that’s why James thinks it’s an inside job. He’s talking conspiracy theories, but I can’t believe that. Either way, with killing you or not killing you, we haven’t been able to stop this catastrophe from happening; somehow other people know the info. It’s been so confusing and we have no idea what’s going on.”