The 9/11 Machine

by Greg Enslen

  “It’s a skinputer—neat, huh?” Teague said, holding it up for them to read. It was like a skin-based monitor, but the words and numbers were crystal clear. Teague smiled and jabbed at the glowing green button on the skinputer that read Activate.

  The world began to shimmer and vibrate again.

  “Here we go,” Teague said, smiling.

  The world wavered again, and Don saw that Teague was looking back up the walkway, making sure no one saw them.

  “So,” Don began to say, “this is your secret, your company’s ability to teleport objects. Is it based—”

  4.7

  Cliffside

  “—on my research?” Don finished the sentence 1,900 miles away.

  They were standing on a cliff-side platform with a railing all around it, looking out at the ocean.

  Don turned and saw the big house in Montauk behind them.

  “I don’t know if I’m getting used to this or not,” Sarah said, and Teague took her hand to steady her.

  “It gets better. I’ve been doing it for a while now,” he said, and then turned and started for the house. “We need to hurry.”

  The three walked up a crushed stone path and saw the house and a fenced area to the west. Tina was there, riding on a small horse, and Jane was right next to her, running, with one hand on Tina’s back. Before she could see them, Don and Sarah and Teague passed through a door, back inside the house.

  Mr. Stevens was waiting for them.

  “Has it started yet?” Teague asked.

  Mr. Stevens shook his head.

  “Good, good.” Teague turned to Don and Sarah. “We’re going to teleport again—hang on.”

  He jabbed at his arm, and the world swam again. Don closed his eyes this time, and it was better—he didn’t have to see the bleeding together of two worlds. After the keening sound passed, he opened his eyes.

  They were in a conference room.

  “Where are we now?” Sarah asked, exasperated.

  Teague indicated the chairs and sat.

  “We’re still in Montauk, about one hundred and fifty feet beneath the mansion. It was a natural cave, but we hollowed it out and made offices and other larger rooms. It’s bomb-proof and inaccessible from above.”

  “Unless you have a teleporter,” Don added.

  Teague looked at him, and Don thought there was something very familiar about the man.

  “Correct. Well, there are a couple of emergency exits, but yes, it’s essentially sealed away from the world above.”

  “OK, so is the machine based on my research?”

  Teague smiled. “Yes and no. Both at the same time, actually, if you can get your mind around it. But we’re not here to talk about the machine. I needed you to understand that I possess that level of technology—it will make understanding what comes next easier.”

  Sarah and Don looked at him.

  “What are we here to talk about? Why am I here?” Sarah asked.

  “Look, some very bad things are going to happen today,” Teague said, looking at his arm. Don saw that he was checking the time again. “In a few minutes, the United States will be attacked by terrorists, who will succeed in many of the things they are attempting to do—and fail in others.”

  “How do you know this?” Don asked.

  Teague looked at him. “Don’t worry, Tiger. You’ll know in a moment.”

  Don was taken aback.

  “Tiger. That’s what my mom used to call me when I was young.”

  Teague reached up and took off his glasses and then tugged at his hairline, pulling off a grey wig. For a moment, Don didn’t know what he was doing, but then the old man set the wig and glasses down and reached up, pulling off the fake mustache and beard.

  “My mom used to call me Tiger, as well,” the man said.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said, standing, her hand at her mouth.

  “Don… Don! He’s you!”

  Don looked across the table at his double—it was remarkable. With the beard and wig gone, the man across the table could be his twin, just a decade older.

  “Yes, it’s true,” Teague MacMillan said. “I’m Dr. Donald Ellis.”

  Don was speechless. “How?”

  Teague smiled. “Well, I came back in time. It’s the easiest way to explain it, really. I’m you, just an older, different version of you.” Teague looked down at the mask and glasses. “I know it’s crazy, but it’s the truth.”

  The older man turned to Sarah. “That is your Don,” he said, pointing at the younger man. “I’m from another timeline.”

  She looked back and forth between them and, after a minute, seemed to calm.

  “And you… you’ve been teleporting us around the world?” she asked.

  The older man nodded. “It was faster than explaining—it should have immediately removed any doubts about my ability to move objects and people through time and space.”

  Don nodded at the older man. “It was… an affective introduction.”

  “Good,” the older man said. “I have traveled to several different timelines, and today you’ll learn why I have used it. I’ll tell you the whole story soon, but suffice it to say that something horrible is going to happen today, and I came back to stop it. It happened in my timeline, as well,” Teague said, looking at Sarah. He was quiet for a moment. “Things went horribly, horribly wrong,” he said, then looked back at Don. “So I spent ten years finishing our machine and went back to stop it.”

  Sarah looked confused. “But it’s still happening?”

  “I’ve tried to stop it, over and over, and it never worked. This time, I’m trying to—well, mitigate it, I guess. It will still be a terrible tragedy, I believe, but not as bad as it could have been. I’ll answer all of your questions—all I ask is that you save your judgments until the end, okay?”

  Don looked at Sarah and then back to Teague, nodding.

  “Good,” Teague said, standing. “Follow me—things are about to start, and I need to be ready to react, in case my plans don’t work out.”

  4.8

  Control Room

  They walked along a white hallway. There were many rooms in the underground space, and although it was constructed in what formerly was a cave, Don had seen no exposed walls or creepy stalactites. He could be in any office building in the country.

  “I came to this timeline in 1991,” Teague was saying. “I’ve been to other timelines, as well, trying to stop this event, but it always happens, in some form. I don’t know why. I came back to 1991 with the machine plans and information about the future, and set about rebuilding my empire again.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

  “I’ve been through four timelines, including my original. In each, I’ve had to raise funds and build the machine, over and over. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, I think. In the last version, we figured out how to incorporate a teleporter function. We were getting ready to go public with the information, but there were more terrorist attacks.”

  “More?” Don asked. “I thought you stopped them?”

  “No,” Teague shook his head. “I never have. I’ve delayed them, twice, by giving critical information to the government. They used it to influence events, reduce the chances of the terrorist attacks happening, but they ended up only delaying the attacks. In both cases, the final outcome was much worse than in my original timeline.”

  They rounded a corner and entered a very large room that immediately reminded Don of mission control at a NASA launch. The front wall of the large room was lined with large screens. A group of men and women sat at a variety of computer terminals.

  “OK, here we go,” Teague said loudly, taking up a spot right in the middle of the room.

  On one screen, Don saw the World Trade Center in downtown New York City. It looked like one of the towers was on fire.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said, her hand to her mouth.

  Teague nodded. “Yes, it’s begun. Cassie, when did that happen?”

&
nbsp; A woman seated at a computer terminal turned. “Right on time, Teague. It came in low, and from the north, and struck at 8:46. Floors 93-99 are involved in the fire.”

  “You knew this plane was going to crash into the building?” Don asked sharply.

  Teague turned to him.

  “I tried, okay? I got one of the attackers arrested—well, I didn’t, but I knew where he was taking flight training lessons and arranged for several tips to be called in on him and some of the other hijackers. They were already looking at him, Zacarias Moussaoui. He was arrested in August, but the rest are carrying out their plan, now.”

  “But if you could catch one—” Sarah began, but Teague cut her off.

  “I can’t catch any of them. I know where they are, and where they’re going, but I’m not the cops. I decided to let it happen—what happens today is part of American history, or will be. It will change many lives—who am I to say that it shouldn’t happen? There will be four planes hijacked by terrorists—”

  “So why get involved at all?” Don said.

  Teague looked at Sarah again. “I… I had to.”

  Don looked at Teague. “Did something... happen to Sarah? In your original timeline, something happened, right?” he asked, feeling the skin on the back of his neck stand up. If anything ever happened to her, he wasn’t sure what lengths he would go to—

  Teague nodded. “She and Tina. They died in the World Trade Center,” he said and turned away.

  No one said anything for a long moment—they all looked at the monitors.

  “That was the first plane, at 8:46,” Teague finally said, pointing at the screen. “Another plane will hit the South Tower at around 9:03,” he said, glancing at Sarah. “You and Tina were there, visiting a friend. You… died there. And many more were killed—both towers will burn and collapse within the hour.”

  Don shook his head. “It can’t be…”

  “A third plane will hit the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.,” the old man said, looking at Don. “The nation will reel from the coordinated attack. The fourth plane will target the Capitol building, causing the most damage of all. The government, for all intents and purposes, will cease to operate for several weeks. Half of Congress will be killed, along with much of the Senate. And the president’s wife.”

  Sarah sat down at a table, shaking her head. Don didn’t know what to do, so he walked around Teague and put his hands on her shoulders. She was sobbing quietly.

  “It changes the world,” Teague said, looking at the monitor—on the screen, smoke poured from a jagged wound near the top of the North Tower. “The attacks today will change everything. President Bush and, later, President Cheney, will move aggressively against al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind today’s attacks. Without Congress to stop them, they take the nation to war and wipe out al Qaeda and their supporters.”

  “Good,” Don said. “We should bomb them off the map.”

  Teague shook his head. “There are supposed to be checks and balances—the president answers to us and to Congress. He can’t run off, willy-nilly, starting wars. I’ve seen where that leads.”

  The young woman spoke up again. “Mr. MacMillan? The networks are starting to cover the event. It’s on all the major channels now, and the morning news shows have all been interrupted. They are broadcasting the video.”

  Teague nodded. “Does anyone have Flight 175 yet?”

  One of the other technicians spoke up. “No, but I’m monitoring FAA and Air Traffic Control channels. They’re discussing a possible hijacking of another plane,” the man said.

  Teague looked up at the clock and turned to the screens. “Here comes the second plane—that’s United 175.”

  Don and Sarah turned to watch—on the screens, CNN and NBC anchors were talking as a second plane appeared at the edge of the screen, low and fast, like a missile. Don heard one of the announcers say, “What is that plane?” and then the plane impacted the South Tower with a massive explosion, a fireball roiling out the opposite side. Impact debris and what looked like part of the plane showered down onto the streets of New York below.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said, her eyes wet.

  “Now people will know that it’s a terrorist attack,” Teague said. “Military planes will be scrambled, and the FAA will begin to ground national and international flights.” Teague looked up at a large display board, and Don noticed, for the first time, an outline of the events that would occur today and their exact time.

  It said the Pentagon plane would be hitting in thirty minutes.

  “Why can’t we warn them?” Don asked. “Why can’t we just call in a bomb threat to the building, or the portion of the building that will be hit—you must know where it will hit, right?”

  Teague shook his head. “It would be too suspicious—it would prove later that someone had foreknowledge of the event.”

  “But you do!”

  “No, I don’t,” Teague said. “I know what happened in the other timelines, and I think I know what will happen. But I’m not sure. And I’ve made a lot of changes, changes that, hopefully, will save as many lives as possible.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Sarah said. She’d found some tissues somewhere and was dabbing at her eyes. “Who said you could pick who lives and who dies? You’re not God.”

  “No, I’m not,” Teague said. “But I have information that no one else has. I’m going to try and mitigate this event, fix it so that as few people as possible die. For example, your friend Elaine Clausen received an excellent job offer several months ago, right? I arranged for that, or she would be working in the south tower right now.”

  Sarah shook her head but said nothing.

  “Look,” Teague said. “What would you do?”

  “I’d stop it!” Sarah shouted, pointing at the monitors. “People are dying, innocent people.”

  Teague nodded. “Yes, and I’ve tried to stop it, over and over. It never works.”

  “Then you have to keep trying,” she said quietly.

  The room was quiet for several minutes. Teague and the technicians monitored the FAA communications frequencies and listened in on local air traffic control. Other technicians were monitoring the networks, occasionally shouting something to Teague.

  “Were we able to delay Flight 93?” he asked at one point, and a technician nodded before answering.

  “Delays on the ground, congested runways. They were 40 minutes late getting away,” the man said.

  “Good,” Teague said. “We can work with that.”

  Don was watching the monitor and counting down the seconds. “The Pentagon. Your timeline says that a plane will hit there soon.”

  Teague turned, and they all saw nothing—there was no live coverage of the plane hitting the Pentagon. Moments later, the screen switched to a live feed, showing smoke rising up from the headquarters of the U.S. military.

  “The plane struck the Wedge One, on the western side of the building,” Teague said, smiling and sitting down. He seemed very relieved. “Good, good.”

  “Good?” Sarah asked, incredulous. She stood and walked over to Teague, standing over him. “How can that possibly be good news? People will die—thousands of people!”

  Don noticed the Cassie woman and several other MacMillan employees look up at the screaming woman. Stevens peeled himself away from a computer monitor and started walking over, but Teague waved him away.

  “That is why,” Teague said to Sarah, pointing at a huge schematic of the Pentagon on the wall. He stood and walked over to the plans, which were emblazoned with the logo for MacMillan Architecture, a subsidiary of his corporation.

  “See this area?” Teague said, pointing at the plans. “This is Wedge One, and it’s been reinforced against just this kind of attack. Strengthened materials, retrofitted and upgraded fireproofing, and new, high-pressure sprinkler systems. The original windows were replaced with two-inch thick, blast-resistant glass. Those new systems were installed just over the last six months and fi
nished two weeks ago. If the plane had to strike anywhere in the building, that’s the best possible place. And it hit right in the middle, where I’d hoped.”

  “How do you know that?” Don asked.

  Teague smiled. “We won the contract. I’ve been petitioning the military for years, scaring them with tales of missile attacks and how the outdated, 1940s-style construction would crumble under a real terrorist attack. After the attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the Pentagon got serious. We won the contract in 1998 and have been strengthening portions of the Pentagon ever since. They call the individual pieces of the Pentagon wedges, and we started with Wedge One.”

  “Which you knew would be attacked.”

  Teague nodded. “Of course, that’s where they’ve hit before. Not before, but in other timelines. I could only hope that the plane’s trajectory would be close.”

  Sarah looked up. “I can’t believe you, hoping that it hits—”

  “I’m not hoping, Sarah,” he said, and in his frustration Teague’s voice sounded almost exactly like Don’s. “But it’s going to happen—face it. There is no way to prevent it. Believe me, I’ve tried. And 20,000 people work in the Pentagon every day. In my timeline, nearly 3,000 people died as the fires swept through the building. But I’ve done what I can to help, to reduce the number of casualties—”

  “You talk about them like they’re just numbers,” Don said quietly. He was looking at the television coverage of the Pentagon, a wide plume of smoke coming off the building and drifting over Washington, D.C. “Statistics to be weighed and measured.”

  Teague turned to him. “No, each number is another family torn apart by today’s events. We need to minimize those numbers. They’re not empty statistics. Each is a father that won’t see his kids graduate or a mother whose loss will destroy a family.”

  It was quiet for a few minutes. Teague walked around and talked with Stevens and the other technicians in the room.