The 9/11 Machine

by Greg Enslen

  The president stood by the TV and watched the ticker of stock prices run along the bottom of the screen for a moment—all the numbers were in red.

  “I, for one, think it’s a noble plan,” Ellis said. “Reducing our dependence on foreign oil is a great idea. I just don’t want you taking your focus off the goal here, which is catching Atta and the others. I need you to remember—they’re out there right now, plotting and planning. They don’t care about your future plans for diplomacy in the Middle East.”

  Gore nodded and walked back over to the twin couches that flanked the seal on the carpet between them. “You said there were two reasons you didn’t like the plan,” Gore asked, sitting.

  Ellis nodded. “Yes, there are. The second reason is a little…intangible, but serious, nonetheless. You’ve made a big change, sir, taking the country in a new direction with the cap-and-trade system. And, as you know, any big changes can reduce the reliability of my foreknowledge of what’s coming.”

  “You think this new legislation could affect Atta and the others, somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellis said, sitting back. “Probably not. But any major changes to the timeline make it harder for us to predict what’s going to happen. Just look at the market—your actions are affecting Americans in very basic ways today, with lost money. Businesses will close, people will lose their jobs. Other businesses will thrive, ones that can take advantage of the new regulatory environment. When things change, it introduces additional unpredictability. And the system can only handle so much of that. What if events skew off into a new direction, one that we can’t foresee?”

  3.14

  Black Friday

  “Can anyone say ‘anti-climactic’?”

  The elder Ellis looked at his younger self and smiled.

  “Excitement is overrated, believe me. I can only cross my fingers and hope that 9/11 or 11/24, or whatever it might be called in this timeline, doesn’t happen.”

  The Ellises and Stevens and Cassie were sitting at the conference room table off the main computer lab in the warehouse in Red Hook. It was the evening of 11/24/2001 and the day had come and gone with no attack.

  Cassie pushed today’s front page of The Washington Post across the table—her article was running, front and center. It predicted a large attack on Black Friday. “Well, let’s just say that my editor’s opinion of me has declined significantly in the last 24 hours. I’m suddenly glad that’s not my only means of employment,” she said, looking at the others.

  The elder Ellis looked at her. “If you have trouble imagining what the event will look like, why don’t you go back through my photos again?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Cassie said. “I’m just saying that I can’t keep running predictions about an event without something happening. And every day we get farther from 9/11, your information gets less and less accurate, right?”

  The younger Ellis nodded. “That’s right. The economy’s in a different place than it was in the prior timeline, and there have been layoffs and plant closings that we couldn’t predict. That, in turn, has affected people’s lives. That shooting at the Ford plant last week, that didn’t happen in the last version of events, right?”

  Cassie nodded. “No, that was new. Labor relations are being strained in all the Rust Belt industries.”

  After a while, the elder Ellis spoke. “As time passes, things will move farther and farther away from what I know,” he said quietly. “Gore is making changes in the economy, and with the terrorists gone to ground, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next. They could still attack.”

  The younger Ellis leaned forward.

  “Is that why we’re using the Faraday every night now?”

  A new protocol, established over the last few months, was to wheel all the sensitive, portable electronics related to the machine into a large metal cage. Known as a Faraday cage, the metal-screened enclosure protected items inside it from external electrical fields and electromagnetic radiation. The military used them to protect sensitive equipment from EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, which sometimes accompanied nuclear detonations.

  “Yes,” the elder Ellis said. “The computer lab walls were converted over in 1998, so the entire room serves as a cage. The electronics on the machine are built to be far sturdier, but the computer and some of the more sensitive equipment need to be protected.” Ellis looked around, but no one challenged him on it, so he continued. “Stevens, do you have anything?”

  Ellis’ loyal employee in at least two different timelines shook his head. “No sign of Atta or his people. None of the PIs or security firms we engaged was able to find any of them.”

  Cassie shook her head as well. “None of my people have heard anything either. I’ve checked in with several FBI offices nationwide—they’re still looking, of course, but there are no leads.”

  Stevens looked at the elder Ellis. “It’s possible they’ve called the whole thing off and returned to Saudi Arabia.”

  The elder Ellis shook his head. “They haven’t called it off.”

  “It’s possible,” Cassie said. “Bin Laden may have called them back to Afghanistan to work up new options, or maybe they’ve been arrested or killed. Accidents happen.”

  “Not all of them. And not Mohammed Atta—he’s committed,” the elder Ellis said.

  Stevens spoke. “I know we tabled the idea of moving the machine, but I think we should still be discussing it.”

  The elder Ellis shook his head. “No, I don’t want to risk it. The machine would be out of commission for at least two weeks. Anything could happen.”

  “I think it needs to be moved,” the younger Ellis spoke up. “I know in the last timeline there were two machines, but here, we only have one. It’s our insurance policy—if anything happened to it, we could theoretically build another one, but it would take time. And if anything happened to you”—he looked at the elder Ellis—“it would significantly hamper our efforts, even with everything written down and recorded and saved in four different locations. I think the machine is too important to be left here, within sight of the 9/11 and 11/24 attacks. We need to dismantle the machine and move it to a more secure location.”

  Cassie chimed in. “And if we move it, it will make it harder for the government to find. The reactor gives off a lot of signature energy—one low pass by one of those NEST helicopters, and they’ll know we’re here.”

  “And co-locating it with a source of nuclear power will allow us to mask our reactor’s power signature,” Stevens continued. “And, in the case of an emergency, serve as a backup generator for the machine.” Stevens had his own mini police force to protect the space around and above the machine, but if the U.S. military showed up, it would be a mismatched fight. But the guard force could probably take control of a co-located power source like a nuclear reactor, if needed, to temporarily power the machine.

  The group had talked about this before, on many occasions, and it seemed all the kinks had been worked out of the system. Now, they were just waiting for the go-ahead from the de facto leader of their little band.

  The elder Ellis was staring at the back of the loading doors, out on the main floor. He couldn’t see the twin towers, but they were in that direction. The others at the table knew what he was staring at, what he was reliving, and they remained silent.

  After a long moment of quiet, he nodded his head.

  3.15

  A Sliver of Darkness

  It was the afternoon of Christmas 2001, and President Gore was sitting in the Oval Office. He had the Baltimore NFL game on and was preparing his speech for tonight’s live holiday broadcast, when his chief of staff and a group of Secret Service agents burst into the room.

  “It’s a terrorist attack—someone crashed a passenger jet into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York,” the man said, his eyes wide with the knowledge that Gore and he had discussed only days before.

  “Mr. President, come with us,” the lead agent said b
rusquely. “There may be an attack imminent.”

  Another agent gathered the items on Gore’s desk and stuffed them into a bag. Outside the door, he heard other members of his staff hurriedly gathering their items as they were escorted from the area.

  Gore grabbed the man’s arm. “Are we under attack?”

  The agent shook his head. “Not sure, sir. We just got a scramble order—we’re taking you to Andrews. The vice president is in the building, so he’ll be heading down to the bunker.” In another part of the White House, President Gore heard a siren begin to keen.

  Gore nodded. “OK, get the staff to safety.”

  His chief of staff nodded as the agents took Gore out the doors and into the Rose Garden. Just across the expansive lawn, a helicopter adorned with the presidential seal was setting down onto the green grass.

  Gore’s press secretary ran up to him as he crossed the lawn, handing him a folder.

  “That’s all we have so far, sir. We’ll confer after we’re in the air.”

  Gore nodded and climbed into the chopper. He saw three F-16 fighter jets streak over the city, racing westward. He glanced up and saw that the U.S. Capitol dome was fine—at least that hadn’t happened yet.

  “Get me onto the frequency with those fighters,” Gore said as he sat in the chopper and pulled on the headset handed to him by the pilot.

  The pilot gave him a thumbs-up as the door was slammed shut from the outside. He saw the other Secret Service agents scramble across the lawn and back into the building—he hoped they were able to get everyone else out. His wife, Tipper, and the girls were on vacation in Arizona, so they were safe. He’d been sending Tipper and the girls on a lot of vacations lately—and none of them to New York. Tipper had finally started asking about the frequency of the trips, but Al had dodged her questions.

  Two other choppers with identical markings lifted up from the lawn and hovered at treetop level—there would soon be three helicopters heading to Andrews, reducing the chances of his being shot down.

  The president adjusted his headset and heard clicking as the frequencies changed.

  “Delta Foxtrot,” a voice said, “the scrambled fighters are forming a perimeter defense around the city. Over.”

  “Roger that, base,” the pilot said over the radio. “Any intel yet?”

  “Negative, nothing,” the first voice said—it was D.C. airspace control. Located at Washington National Airport, the air traffic controllers for the airport liaised with the ATC operators at Andrews Air Force Base to keep the airspace over the Capitol region clear of all unauthorized air traffic.

  Gore flipped through the reports in the folder—one plane into the Trade Center, several other planes unaccounted for. The situation was unfolding quickly. Nothing so far about the Pentagon. He glanced westward and saw the massive building and imagined it on fire, smoke pouring out of a gaping hole in the western side of the structure. The smoke would rise and blanket the river, and then the Capitol—

  The president tapped at the microphone connected to the headset.

  “D.C. control, this is POTUS.”

  “POTUS, this is D.C. control. We read you loud and clear sir.”

  “Listen carefully—all efforts are to be made to intercept any planes headed for the Capitol building or the White House. Are there any unaccounted for aircraft on such a course, airman?”

  There was a long silence. Gore saw the other helicopters keeping formation with his.

  “No, nothing sir.”

  “Good,” the president said, relieved. “Where were those three jets going?”

  “Heading west to check out a plane—it’s not responding to radio hails. It’s traveling southeasterly. Just crossing into Maryland from Pennsylvania.”

  “OK,” the president said. “Keep me in the loop on that plane. Anything else unaccounted for?”

  “Several more civilian planes.”

  “I’m almost to Andrews, and I’ll meet with the FAA soon. We’ll be shutting down nationwide air traffic soon, but go ahead and land all the D.C.-area planes right away.”

  The pilot in the seat in front of him waved and pointed down—they were already almost to Andrews. The pilot was going to land as close to the massive Air Force One as possible.

  Gore nodded and looked back at the files. “D.C. control, this is POTUS. There might be a second plane vectoring from the west into the South Tower of the Trade Center. Do you have any reports of a second plane—”

  A flash of light bloomed from below the helicopter. A sliver of darkness raced up into the air.

  “Missile! Surface to air missile!” the pilot shouted. He jerked the helicopter sharply to the side, throwing the president against the window. For a moment, Gore was staring straight down through the glass at the tarmac and trees below him.

  The helicopter next to the president’s exploded in a fiery flower, spraying pieces of the helicopter out in all directions. Burning shrapnel banged against the airframe next to the president’s head, and one of the cockpit windows shattered. Smoke poured from the underside of the president’s helicopter as it began to spin lazily from the sky. Gore saw pieces of the other helicopter raining down onto the concrete expanse of the tarmac below—the runway was lined by a high barbed wire fence on all sides that separated the base from the dense forest beyond.

  The pilot struggled to keep the helicopter airborne, but the best he could manage was a wide, flat spin. The shrapnel from the other chopper had punctured hydraulic control lines on the underside of the helicopter, and it was coming in hard. As the helicopter smashed to the ground, the landing struts underneath collapsed, splaying outward.

  Gore was dazed—it felt like everything was moving in slow motion.

  He slowly reached up and pulled the headphones free as smoke filled the cockpit. His left leg was hurting, and his head was throbbing. He waved at the smoke, but it wouldn’t clear.

  The pilot was pushing at the cockpit door, trying to get it open. Gore saw that the copilot wasn’t moving at all. The president leaned forward to shake the copilot’s arm—the man’s head turned to one side, and Gore saw a long piece of helicopter blade sticking out of the man’s face. His dead eyes were wide open.

  Suddenly, the door next to the president was wrenched open, and hands reached through the smoke to the president. Someone managed to undo his seat belt. A Secret Service agent he did not recognize pulled him from the helicopter and picked him up, throwing him over his shoulder.

  Gore’s leg sang out in pain as the agent raced away from the wreck. In a moment of clarity, Gore saw that fire was running up the man’s legs, but the man ignored it.

  Fifty feet away from the downed helicopter, the agent stopped running. He put Gore down and slapped at his pant legs, putting out the fire. Trying to stand and putting weight on his leg, Gore cringed and bit his lip.

  In a moment, the agent was carrying him again, running for the bulky 747 marked Air Force One that sat on the tarmac a hundred yards away. Gore saw two large black SUVs racing toward them from the plane, with armed Secret Service personnel hanging on the sides.

  From the trees near the base fence line, Gore heard automatic weapon fire, and he felt the agent pull him down to the ground, putting himself between the president and the trees. He glanced over his shoulder and saw American soldiers moving toward the fenced area south of the runway.

  The terrorists must have fired a surface-to-air missile at his helicopter as they were coming in to land. That meant the terrorists had more teams than they had in the previous timelines, or that in this timeline they were targeting him directly. They’d never done that before, he thought, and that could mean they had more teams in the country. Gore could see American soldiers firing into the woods, and then return weapon fire from somewhere in the trees—

  “Sir, get down!” the agent said. Behind him, near the tree line, Gore heard a loud hissing sound, like a snake.

  Another missile shot up into the air, chasing after the third chopper that had b
een marked with the presidential seal. As Gore watched, the missile spun in the air like a cat and targeted the helicopter, which tried to spin out of the way at the last moment. The missile found its mark, and the helicopter exploded in a massive fireball, raining debris down onto the runway.

  “Jesus!” the man shouted as the helicopter exploded behind them. Gore realized that the man wasn’t a Secret Service agent—he was the pilot from his helicopter. Gore also saw for the first time that the pilot had his sidearm out and was ready to defend them, if needed.

  “Thank you,” Gore said weakly, tasting blood in his mouth. He reached up with one hand and felt at his forehead. It was slick, and his hair was wet.

  “Don’t do that, sir,” the pilot said. “They’ll get you all patched up on the plane,” he said, indicating the massive plane still a good distance away.

  As Gore turned to look, he saw the SUVs arrive, parking between the fallen president and the firefight taking place at the edge of the tarmac. Hands roughly grabbed Gore up and bundled him inside the other SUV, and within twenty seconds, the car had reached the bottom steps of the stairway that led up to the plane. Four Secret Service agents helped him from the vehicle, and several more agents formed a circle around the base of the staircase, weapons out.

  “OK, here we go,” the lead agent shouted, and the four of them dragged the president up the stairs.

  “My leg, I’m not sure…” Gore said, his eyes feeling heavy, and then the world swam into darkness.

  3.16

  Air Force One

  Gore woke to the sounds of a heart monitor.

  He sat up slowly and realized that he was in the small infirmary on Air Force One. His head felt strange—solid and heavy.

  “Doctor?”

  The woman turned and smiled.