by Greg Enslen
Ellis smiled and indicated the chair in front of his desk.
“Please, have a seat. Where are you from?”
He could tell she didn’t want to turn her back on the massive, mysterious machine in the center of the warehouse. After a moment, she sat down.
“I’m Cassie O’Neil. But you know that.”
Ellis nodded. “Tell me something about yourself, something only a few people know.”
She was taken aback, both by the question and by his impertinence.
“Well, I don’t know you that well, Dr. Ellis.”
Ellis smiled and sat back. “But you want to know what’s going on here, right?”
She nodded, biting her lip. “OK, I’ll play along. Umm, oh, I know—my editor’s a little bit crazy. I think it’s because his cousin was killed in 1997.”
Ellis had not expected that. He’d had Stevens look into her background, and combined with the information he’d gotten from the younger Ellis, her FBI report, he’d thought he knew Cassie O’Neal pretty well.
“Really?” Ellis asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, his cousin Abe lived in a little town in Virginia, a place called Liberty. A serial killer came through town and killed several people, including Abe and the woman he was seeing.”
Ellis leaned forward.
Cassie nodded. “Sounds like a movie, right? My editor doesn’t like to talk about it. It was all over the news at the time—do you remember the murderer with the white van? He was a collector, so he took trophies—”
Ellis nodded, glancing out at the sounds of shouting—several men ran through the warehouse, heading towards the doors. He stood and grabbed a few more things from one of the side tables and put it in the bag.
“I’m sorry to hear about your editor’s cousin—though I don’t remember the details. But your articles have caused quite a bit of trouble for me and others, more trouble than you know,” Ellis said to her. “I was trying to make things better here, not worse.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“What would you say if I told you that the ‘evidence’ you saw of the attacks on 9/11 was not fabricated?” Ellis asked.
She didn’t say anything.
“One of your early articles,” Ellis continued, “said that the materials you had seen were ‘remarkably realistic.’ That wording gave me a laugh, I can tell you. But there was nothing remarkable about them. They were just real.”
Cassie shook her head. “The government needed to justify increased security, so those photos and the video were fabricated.”
“Which production company created the videos?” Ellis interrupted. “You’re a great reporter—surely you tried to track down the special effects facility in Hollywood where they made the videos.”
She looked at him, frowning.
Ellis continued. “You never found it, right? Never found who made the ‘shockingly realistic’ videos of the towers falling. And now they’ve fallen for real, thanks to you.”
“That’s not true. I was reporting on a secret committee—”
“That was me,” Ellis said quietly. “The committee was me and several others folks from high up in the White House. But I started it with this.”
He turned, reached up, and turned the monitor of his PC so that she could see it. On the screen, he was running the video of the Twin Towers falling. He watched her, watching the video. “That’s the one you saw, right?”
Cassie nodded, glancing at him.
“Well,” he continued, “I have dozens more, some of which I’m sure you haven’t seen.”
He clicked on the PC mouse. A string of videos came up on the monitor, and he flipped through them for her: the towers falling, the plane crashing into the South Tower, the Pentagon on fire. But there were differences: on one, the Capitol Dome collapsing on itself, something that hadn’t happened in this timeline. On another, the acting Mayor of New York was speaking while a crawl ran at the bottom of the screen, saying Mayor Giuliani and most of the cities’ leaders had been killed in a building collapse at 7 World Trade Center.
She looked at him.
“Those must be from 11/24. But why did you change the dates?” she asked. “And the Capitol collapse, and that bit about Giuliani, those things didn’t happen.”
Ellis shook his head.
“They did happen. Once.”
He stood and picked up the bag.
“I didn’t alter any of those—they came straight from CNN. See, in my world, these events took place on 9/11. That is the date that was burned into our brains. I came here, to this place, to try and stop it. Thanks to you, word got out.”
She looked up at him.
“No, don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “I don’t blame you—you’re just the messenger. A tenacious one, at that, but just the messenger. Maybe one of these times I’ll have to hire you away from the paper.”
She looked confused.
Ellis sighed and leaned forward, handing her a small USB drive.
“It’s all true—it happened like those videos, and on September 11, 2001. I saw it, recorded all the videos and pictures to create a mass of ‘evidence’ to prove it happened. You’ve seen a small portion of it. The rest is on there. I have to go.”
Ellis walked out of the office.
2.39
Unforeseen Variables
Cassie followed Ellis as he walked out to the machine.
“What do you mean, it’s all real?” Cassie asked again. “How could it have happened before?”
Ellis set his bag down next to the machine.
“What do you mean you ‘came to this place’ to stop it from happening?”
He turned and looked at her.
“I am from another time. After our 9/11, I came here, to this world. Your world. I gave all the information about 9/11 and the attacks to the government and prevented the attack, I thought. Turns out, I only delayed it.”
Stevens ran into the room.
“Dr. Ellis! Something else is happening!”
Ellis looked at Cassie and followed Stevens into the computer room, where several members of the staff were again huddled around the TV.
“Apparently, these are suicides,” the announcer was saying. They were showing a different bridge this time, a green one, but there were more men in white vans, shooting at anything that moved. “The drivers of some of these vehicles are jumping off of the bridge rather than being shot by the gunmen. Again, this is live from Los Angeles—the bridge runs from Los Angeles to Long Beach, a major route. These rioters are shooting the drivers of cars stopped there, just as in New York and a bridge in London.” The announcer went quiet for a moment. “OK, I got it. Thanks. We’re going to the U.N. building now in New York City.”
The screen changed abruptly.
A female reporter was on the street next to the massive U.N. building. “Thanks, Mike. The police are telling us that a group of Muslim extremists has stormed the U.N. and is executing people. We’re getting conflicting reports that representatives from Islamic nations were allowed to leave—in fact, we’ve seen a few speeding away in vehicles. There have been no further details from the police or from the terrorists holed up inside the building. Earlier, we did see several helicopters full of soldiers rappel onto the roof.”
Ellis knew that he should go, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the TV. Stevens and the reporter were watching the news report, as well. Ellis wondered if anyone was working on the machine or guarding the building.
The woman reporter tapped at her ear. “OK, OK, I’m hearing something now. It sounds like a list of demands. Charlie, can we cut over to that? It’s on the police broadcast band—”
Ellis heard the audio click over, and a different voice came over the speaker. On the screen, he could still see the reporter and the U.N. building looming above her.
“…without Allah. There can be no peace without Allah. And without Mecca and the most sacred of relics, Allah shall abandon his chosen people. I am t
he prophet, and I shall bathe all the lands in fire. There can be no world without Allah. There can be no peace without Allah…”
The woman reporter cut back in. “It’s not a list of demands. In fact, it sounds more like a—”
The tall building behind her exploded.
An incredibly bright pulse of white light shot out from the middle floors of the U.N. building, followed by a massive blast of fire as the building was severed in half. The top portion of the building actually moved visibly upward as an orgy of fire washed toward the ground.
And then the screen went blank. A moment later, Ellis felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.
He turned and walked back into his office, retrieving the drum-like bomb. When he returned, Terry and Trish were back at the control panel.
“We’re ready, Dr. Ellis,” Trish said. Ellis went to the screen and tapped at the controls, double-checking the settings. One thing he would have to do, if he ever got the chance, was to improve the controls for the machine—it was hacked together and prone to unexpected failure.
Terry was looking like he would start panicking at any moment. “That was a nuclear bomb—terrorists just blew up the U.N.”
They looked at each other and the other techs, who were gathered around the machine.
Ellis nodded.
“Look, we have to protect this machine,” he told them. “I need each of you to run to the front of the building, grab a weapon, and hold off the mob. They’ll try to burn down the warehouse, and if they do, we’ll lose everything. Terry, Trish, I need you to stay.”
The other technicians and interns nodded and then ran off.
Ellis turned to Terry and Trish.
“I have to go, now—I have to use the machine and go back and try to fix things again.”
Terry looked confused, but Trish understood.
“Again?” Terry asked. “You’ve done this before.”
Cassie looked up. “This… this is a time machine? You weren’t kidding about coming here to fix things?”
Ellis pointed at the construct above them. “That’s not the first one I built—the last one was bigger, if you can believe that. I did come back here to fix things. What a great job, huh?”
Trish came around the control panel and put her hand on his shoulder.
“You did good.”
Ellis looked at her.
Trish looked at Terry and smiled. “There were actually three machines—the one Dr. Ellis used to get here, this machine, and a third one, under construction right now at Lawrence Livermore.”
Ellis stared at her—how could she know that? He’d known she was a talented technician—she had come up with many improvements to the systems, including an innovative power regulation component that made sure none of the extra stored energy was wasted. But this?
“Trish,” Ellis said. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, smiling. “And my name isn’t Trish. It’s Tina.”
Tina? His Tina?
“I don’t understand.”
She smiled. “Actually, this already happened for me—this warehouse and everything inside it were destroyed by the 1/25 riots. This is another day that will be infamous. I remember—we were out in California. They didn’t tell us anything at school—I was only seven at the time, but my parents showed me the news when I got home. These riots—they took place all over the world. This portion of Brooklyn was essentially leveled, and all of these warehouses were destroyed. We learned later that, before you and Terry could make it operational, this machine was destroyed and you were all killed.”
They were all looking at her.
“But my father continued your work,” Tina continued, nodding at Ellis. “He never gave up. He was convinced that he could fix things. He said that you had given him the means to complete the machine, but it took a lot longer without you. After years, he finally got the machine at Lawrence Livermore working.”
Don looked at her, smiling. “The other me got it working. I’ll be damned. And you came back to change things. You helped your father with the Livermore machine, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “He always said I had a knack for numbers. Now, we need to get you out of here—you need to escape this timeline and try again. My father always said it had been your greatest desire, to find and save your family. So let’s get you going. What are the coordinates?” she asked, reaching for the controls.
But before she could, Ellis grabbed her up, hugging her tightly.
“Thank you. Thank you for coming back and making this possible,” Ellis said, tears in his eyes. “Without you—” he started to say.
Terry interrupted. “I don’t care how many machines there are. This one’s not ready. It’s not been properly tested.”
Trish and Ellis both gave him a look at the same moment.
Ellis nodded. “I’ve tested it when no one was here. It works. Besides, it’s now or never.” He pointed at the black drum. “You guys need to get out of here—that’s a bomb. I need to destroy the machine.”
Cassie stopped taking pictures. “You’re leaving, again? Where will you go?”
Ellis smiled. “Farther back in the timeline. Each time I reenter the timeline, it creates a branch, like streams off a river. To get back to an unfettered timeline, I have to jump farther and farther back.”
Cassie was scribbling it all down. “What will you do when you get there?”
“I’ll try again,” he said.
“Go, Dr. Ellis,” Terry said. “We’ll get you out of here, and then we’ll leave the warehouse.” Ellis saw him look at Tina and smile. “Oh, I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” Terry said, taking Tina’s hand. Terry looked at her for a moment, then smiled at Ellis. “Don’t worry.”
Ellis looked at the two of them and suddenly understood. In the last timeline he had killed Terry, shooting him in cold blood to eliminate any other knowledge of the machine. In this one, Terry was marrying a grown-up version of his daughter who had used a third machine—one still under construction in California—to come back and save him. His brain had trouble keeping up.
Shaking his head, Don walked to the center of the circle. He set down the leather duffel bag and the bomb.
“Do I need to set the timer?” Ellis asked Tina, indicating the bomb.
Tina shook her head.
“No, I’ll do it. The fire will take care of the warehouse and machine, but they were able to retrieve some parts from the wreckage. We don’t want that, so just to be sure this machine is completely destroyed, I’ll set up the bomb when we leave.”
Ellis nodded.
“OK, set it for 1994. August 31st. And thank you.”
Terry watched as Tina typed the coordinates into the machine. After a second, she looked up.
“Don’t worry about it. Dad,” Tina said, a sad smile on her face.
Ellis looked up at her sharply. They looked at each other for a long moment—
People burst into the room, guns firing. Cassie jumped away from the machine, crawling behind one of the large batteries. Terry and Tina ducked down behind the table.
Ellis ducked down as the automatic weapon fire seemed to fill the warehouse. Near the doors that lead out to the front of the building, several Italians and guards had fallen back, using the doorway as cover and firing out into the reception area. That meant rioters were inside the warehouse.
Bullets bounced off the concrete around Ellis, and one struck in him the leg.
Terry stood to run to Ellis’ aid, but he caught a bullet in the thick part of his shoulder and spun to the ground. Ellis could see his shirt turning red.
Tina shrieked—she had ducked behind the control panel but was up now. She pulled something from a pocket and fired a weapon, a strange bluish gun that Ellis didn’t recognize. The gun made an odd coughing sound as she pulled the trigger. Ellis saw that, instead of bullets, the gun fired what looked like a small cloud of individual miniature projectiles. Like a shotgun blas
t of rock salt, but much more powerful, the cloud of mini-bullets knocked four of the attackers down.
Ellis lay on the ground, blood running down his leg. He ignored it and crawled to the center of the circle, pulling the duffel bag with him. Dragging the bag created a moist smear of blood on the concrete.
“Terry!” Tina yelled, aiming her gun at the doorway. “Terry, activate the machine.”
He nodded, slowly pulling himself up from the ground. He struggled over to the controls. Ellis could see that he was bleeding freely.
“Ready?” Terry asked Ellis.
Ellis grimaced, nodding. “Yes!” he said, ignoring the pain in his bleeding leg. He looked at them both. “And thanks.”
A window at the far end of the warehouse shattered and what looked like a glass bottle crashed to the floor of the warehouse, exploding. Gasoline and fire engulfed the far wall of the warehouse. Flames raced up the walls and licked at the batteries and junctions that powered the machine.
Tina ran around the control table and leaned down, hugging Ellis. “Here,” she said, shoving a white box into his hands. “Take care of yourself.”
Another group of people broke into the room, and for a moment, Ellis thought all was lost. Then he saw it was more of his own people, the technicians and interns and what was left of the guards and Italians. It looked like they were falling back again, and in greater numbers. This would be their final stand.
More machine gun fire echoed through the room. He looked at Terry.
“Now!” Ellis shouted.
Tina backed away from the painted circle on the ground as Terry slammed his bloody hand down on the big green button, leaving a scarlet handprint. He and Tina looked at the machine as it powered up, energy coursing through the apparatus. Ellis saw Cassie O’Neil snapping pictures of the machine in action, the firefight, and him, bleeding on the floor. She smiled weakly at him and continued taking pictures.
The lights in the room flickered as massive amounts of energy poured from storage batteries into the bulky machine.
Ellis sat in the middle of the circle of blue. He clutched the duffel bag and the white box to his chest.
Suddenly, there were the huge booming cracks, the sounds of ice twisting, shattering.