The Garden

by Craig W. Turner

  “Yes, but before that. You talked about SATP leadership, but that could mean any number of people, or groups of people,” Robert said. “What’s going on?”

  Landon was wondering where Robert was going with the conversation, when Dipin suddenly turned to him. “You’ve been an outsider looking in up until yesterday,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “Honestly, I think I’d rather be up in my room, sleeping,” Landon said, to which Dipin laughed heartily, then trained on him for a real answer. “I think that’s a question I’m not prepared to answer right now.”

  “Well, surely you’ve thought about it. You’ve barely been here for 48 hours after working so hard to get here and the program’s about to shut down on you.”

  “I think that there are things that have happened, and are happening, that are out of our control,” Landon said.

  “And you’d be okay if the program simply shut down…”

  “No,” Landon said, shaking his head slowly. “I wouldn’t. I think there is a great deal of work to be done.”

  “That’s good,” Dipin said, still looking at him. “That’s good. There is still work to be done. I agree with you. But we’re two people sitting here in the basement of the SATP facility. There are 11 billion people out there who are a part of this. Some of them would agree with us. Some of them would not. And some of them would agree that there’s a great deal of work to be done, but not necessarily the work that you and I, sitting here, think is the work that needs to be done. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “I think you’re being melodramatic,” Robert said before Landon could answer. “The program is inclus-”

  “The program is not inclusive,” he said, correcting him, and leaning forward himself for the first time. “The program was created by politicians and the leadership of the program was appointed by politicians. Then those leaders, serving at the pleasure of those politicians, created the agenda that we’ve followed for 20 years. It may be inclusive geographically or even governmentally, but by no means is it inclusive sociologically. You, Robert, should be aware of that as well as anyone.”

  “So, what’s the solution?” Robert asked. “You’re so down on the program… What would you do with it?”

  “I already told you what I’d do with it,” Dipin said. “I’d shut it down.”

  “But all your work,” Landon said, his voice trailing off. Which wasn’t like him. He didn’t let his voice trail off.

  “Having some time away from this building, I’ve had the opportunity to think,” he said. “In here, you are playing a god, with the ability to create change with the push of a button. We claim to be in ‘control’ of the situation, safe and secure, but we are only in control until someone takes control away from us. Which was bound to happen.”

  “Was? You’re saying it’s already happened?” Robert said.

  Landon noticed how comfortable Dipin was having this conversation. He’d felt as though Robert was perhaps throwing easy questions to him early in the discussion, but now seemed to be moving more toward a real interrogation, as if he, himself, was curious what was going to come out of his former colleague’s mouth. Dipin, though, was easing through it as though he was untouchable. It didn’t seem to matter to him one way or the other what he said, or the repercussions.

  “Yes, it’s already happened,” Dipin said indignantly. “Think about it. The Attorney General comes here in the morning, arrests you, and then shuts down the program. What happens to it? Do you honestly believe that the time travel technology is going to simply get shipped off to the Smithsonian, for tourists to see on their vacations? Aren’t you concerned about-”

  The door to Landon’s left opened abruptly, and the two SATP guards entered the room, stealing everyone’s attention. They approached Dipin and pulled him out of the chair to a standing position. He looked over his shoulder at the bigger of the two men. “The General send you?” he asked, defiantly.

  Without a word, the two men led Dipin out of the room, leaving Robert and Landon sitting there, dumbfounded. Landon looked over at Robert, who was shaking his head back and forth. “What?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure what that was all about,” he said.

  They heard footsteps and Landon looked back toward the door. A second later, Reilly entered the room.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That was helpful. Go get some sleep.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Keegan opened his eyes to find Claire sitting on the opposite side of his bed, leaning on her arm. “Lots to talk about,” she said.

  He turned and pulled his timeband from his nightstand and checked it. Their time allotment for sleep was over, and they’d have to return to Reilly’s office. He looked up at her, though his eyes were still foggy. She looked good sitting there. He’d felt her sneak into the bed, but intentionally hadn’t responded to her at all. He didn’t mind that she was there – in fact, he found it comforting. But he was not about to make as though it was a big deal. “What happened?” he asked.

  “First of all,” she said, “What’s this?” She was showing him a copy of the book he was currently reading, pulled from his nightstand while he slept. “He’s trying to put us out of our jobs, and you’re reading his autobiography?”

  Keegan rubbed his eyes, waking himself up. “Isn’t it smart to know your enemy?” he asked. In truth, President Fitcher’s book was very enjoyable, and he’d been flying through it before the current interruption in their lives.

  “I guess so,” she said, flipping through it. “I was just surprised to see it there.”

  That’s not the only thing sitting here that’s surprising. “Actually, it’s pretty interesting,” he said. “You see all kinds of little connections to what’s happening right now. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Fitcher says one of the catalysts for him deciding to get into politics was a speech that he attended while he was at Yale by Javesh Chopra.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  He raised his head and looked at her. “Why would I make that up?” She didn’t respond, so he held his hand out. She gave the book to him, and he flipped through it, finding a photo the president had included of his actual ticket to the event from 2067. “See?” he said, but she didn’t make any great effort to look, so he closed the book and threw it on the bed. “You should read it. It’s not bad.”

  “Plus, you’re a Democrat.”

  Keegan smiled. “Can’t please everyone.” These were the conversations that were always tough for him, where it seemed she was trying to get at something, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what. “You said lots to talk about,” he said, stopping it before it progressed any further. “That can’t be what you meant.”

  “Well, apparently, while we were napping, Dipin Chopra showed up and commandeered the press room,” she said.

  Keegan sat up quickly. “Now, this is interesting,” he said.

  “Yep,” she said. “He proclaimed Robert’s innocence, of course. But then he threw everyone for a loop by calling for SATP to be shut down.”

  “Really?” Keegan had always known Dipin as kind of an unpredictable guy, but this seemed extraordinary. “What else did he say?”

  “Well, I’ve only seen the news snippets, but it looked like just as he was about to get to the good stuff, SATP security tackled him and dragged him away.”

  “Really?” he said again, smiling almost to a laugh. “I can’t wait to see this.”

  “We’re supposed to be in Reilly’s office in five minutes.”

  Keegan nodded and slid his feet off the bed. “I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see it,” he said, before turning to watch Claire walk out of his bedroom. He considered making a joke about her being there, but decided against it.

  After taking a moment to clean up, he joined her at his front door and they began the trek back toward the action.

  CHAPTER 34

  Amy slid open the door to the conference room, five minutes early for their deadline to return. She’d lai
d down on her couch for about 90 minutes, but had no success in getting any sleep. As if the mission to Eden wasn’t exhilarating enough, Dipin’s return had set her mind in motion. Now, a big part of her believed that, given everything that was happening, they wouldn’t even get the mission off the ground. However, she knew that all she could really do was prepare as though that wasn’t the case.

  She walked into the room to find that only General Reilly and Robert had arrived. Reilly was standing in front of the monitor with Robert sitting behind him at the table to his left. On screen was Commissioner Alexandra Gray, head of SATP security, standing in one of the complex’s many security rooms, with columns of monitors behind her, displaying seemingly every possible location on the campus.

  Reilly turned his head for a moment to acknowledge that someone had entered, but then immediately back to the screen. “There’s no reason for anyone to get in trouble or danger,” he said. “We’re all here to support the cause, but we’ll get a better resolution to this issue through the court.”

  Gray put her hands in the air. “I’ll communicate the message,” she said, “but I have a lot of people here who are hearing that they’re out of work in the morning. And they don’t work for the United States government. They work for SATP. So, the jurisdiction the Attorney General is claiming to have here is questionable.”

  “I agree,” Reilly said as Amy quietly took a seat across from Robert. “I agree. That’s why we’re having this conversation. This isn’t about challenging what he’s trying to do. It’s about engaging in this battle in an intelligent way, that’s ultimately going to win us the war. It’s about the program, and it’s about Robert.”

  “That’s fine,” Gray said, shaking her head. “That’s not my concern. But if you have any line of communication to the President, you need to tell him that if his people come in here and start pushing my team – or your team – around, it’s not going to be well-received. Got it?”

  “We’re not looking for a-”

  “Got it?” Not too many people were of sufficient rank to talk to Reilly in that way, but Amy was well-familiar with SATP hierarchy and knew that Gray, as head of security, was at a parallel level with Reilly, and similarly reported directly to the Board of Nations.

  Reilly paused for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll pass along the message through Senator O’Neill.”

  “Good,” Gray said. “Let me know if anything else comes up.”

  “Will do,” Reilly said, before touching a button on the table and the screen went dark.

  “That could be ugly,” Robert said.

  Reilly nodded. “It probably will be. But that’s not our concern.” He turned to Amy. “We’ve learned that the Attorney General’s not taking any chances. He’s showing up with a full FBI contingent, and the word is they’re going to come in hot. Their assumption is that we’re going to hide Robert and they’re going to need to use force to get to him.”

  “If we were going to hide him, why would we hide him in the complex?”

  “Oh, everything we’re doing is already being watched,” Reilly said. “Robert was able to sneak off campus once. It won’t happen again.”

  “No, probably not,” Robert said.

  For Amy, a heavy-handed U.S. action played well into her thinking. People would be so disgusted with America’s handling of the situation, they would look for a new sponsor. There was no other nation in the mix, with the exception, maybe, of India, that had the wealth to get a facility like SATP up-and-running in a reasonable amount of time, so they would be forced to turn to China as a financier. She hoped for the opportunity to communicate with her team in Beijing, but since they were being monitored closely, it would be difficult. She was certain, though, that by now her leadership was following the situation.

  “What’s going on with Dipin?” she asked.

  Reilly nodded and held up a finger to her. “Let’s wait until everyone gets here,” he said. She looked at Robert, who nodded in agreement.

  After only a few minutes, the rest of the team had trickled in through the door – first Keegan and Claire, together for the first time in a while, then Barney, Bauer, Davies and finally Landon, who she was relieved to see. She wasn’t sure he’d be coming back. Ever. She watched as each of them regarded Robert’s return in a variety of ways, none of them having had the opportunity to bump into him along the way, as she had.

  Once everyone was seated, Reilly looked at his timeband, then stood at the end of the table. “Thank you, everyone, for your promptness,” he said. “What I want to do is a quick sit-rep here – no more than ten minutes – and then get back to work. Zero hour for our mission is in about three hours, so we have no time to waste. This will be our last team meeting before we connect in the time lab at 0600. We should be gone and back in plenty of time before the Attorney General arrives. Hopefully, we’ll come back with what we went for.”

  “And what is that?” Landon asked to Amy’s left.

  It gave Reilly a pause for a moment, but he recovered right away. “We’ll get to that in a moment. Two items. One, you’ve probably heard by now that in the past few hours Dipin Chopra not only appeared in the SATP complex, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to announce that Robert is innocent of all charges, but also that he believes SATP should be shut down. We have Dipin downstairs, and we’ve interviewed him. He has some wild conspiracy theories about the program that we’ll deal with later, but for now Caitlyn has been working on SATP’s response. Caitlyn?”

  Across from Amy, Caitlyn cleared her throat before speaking. She could tell from the young woman’s eyes that Reilly’s orders to rest hadn’t applied to her. “Dipin’s comments unfortunately play right into the hands of the AG,” she said. “In the past few hours, the press has focused on the long-standing friendship between Dipin and Robert to discredit his opinion on Robert’s alleged wrong-doing, and social media at this point, given the information that’s being put out there, is to the tune of, ‘Of course he’s defending him.’ The AG, predictably, has latched onto Dipin’s assertion that SATP should be shut down, saying…” She looked down at the tablet in front of her and read, “‘The only one in the program who had any sense, they forced out several months ago.’ As of right now, the SATP response, which has been delivered through my department, is that our legal team is analyzing the situation and developing a response to the accusations against Robert.”

  “Through your team?” Keegan asked. “Who? You? Or someone else?”

  “I think you know Nadia Pestrudinov in Public Affairs,” Caitlyn said. “She’s a great speaker, and a good reminder that SATP is not just a U.S. program.” Everyone around the table nodded their approval of the choice. Amy didn’t know who she was, but didn’t want to let on that was the case, so she similarly assented. “We’re purposefully not offering any access to SATP leadership until the AG makes his move,” she continued. “Primarily, because we don’t know what that move is going to be. Everyone in this room is a potential target, including General Reilly, so it would be premature to craft a message based solely on what’s expected to happen with Robert.”

  “Denton?” Reilly pitched the conversation it to the attorney.

  “This is going to be a long process,” Barney said. “It’s important that we don’t get overly excited. Caitlyn’s approach is right on.”

  “Well, that’s the rub, though, isn’t it?” Chester Davies asked. “SATP loses – whether they come in and shut us down, or if they delay us to the point of exhaustion. How long is this going to take?”

  “Years,” Barney said.

  “Years,” Davies repeated. “I can’t go years waiting for things to get straightened out. I doubt that anyone else here can either. This is either moving forward in the morning, or we’re all going home.”

  “That’s where this mission comes in,” Reilly said, recapturing the dialogue. “But quickly, before we get into that – the second piece I wanted to make known to you is that the AG is coming in the mor
ning, and he’s coming in full force. We expect FBI, CIA, everything they’ve got. I don’t know why they’re going to such lengths, but we’ve instructed SATP security to stand down, and I want to ask the same of you.”

  “Don’t put up a fight?” Keegan said. It was fitting he’d raise the question, as the only one on the team who could put up a legitimate fight.

  “No,” Reilly said, shaking his head. “They’re the ones who are behaving badly. Not us. We will win the day by capturing public sentiment. That comes through our actions, and it comes through this mission. Any questions on that topic?” There were none, so he continued. “The Eden mission is the pinnacle of scientific research. It’s an achievement that can only be reached by the technology and the vision that we’ve built here at SATP. The story we will tell when we return will overwhelm the President’s politics, and the American public will demand continuation of the program.”

  “That sounds kind of Pollyanna,” Robert said. “I don’t know that I’m as optimistic as you are.”

  “Robert, let’s face it,” Reilly said. “Time travel is here to stay. If the U.S. ceases to be the caretaker of the program, another country will take up the call. You all know that,” he said, pointing at the group surrounding the table. Amy, caught off guard, could swear that Reilly fixated on her for a moment before continuing. “Dipin knows it, too. The Americans will never let that happen.”

  Reilly’s comments stung Amy for a moment. As if, in the end, it was the Americans’ right to demand such oversight. She started to speak, but didn’t want to appear as though she had an agenda, so she kept her comment to herself.

  “So why the rigmarole?” Keegan asked. “If they know what the outcome is, why bother with such an aggressive move?”

  “Because it demonstrates leadership,” Barney said, jumping in. “The president is weak in many areas, especially foreign policy. Here’s an opportunity to flex his muscles at an organization with questionable support to date.”