by Alex Myers
“Did this happen in the Caribbean somewhere?”
“It did, but how did you know that?” This was the first time Brent looked uncomfortable. It was easy to be calm and collected in a poker game as long as you knew everyone else’s cards.
“Would a Karl Borg or a Professor Brooke Finney have anything to do with it?”
“I don’t know about Finney, but Borg was involved, we’re just not sure how.”
Jack looked at him closely. If Brent was lying, he was giving an award-winning performance.
There were two more locked doorways, at the second Brent asked, “Would you like to see our Jack Riggs Collection?” A light came on in the room and Brent entered and waited for Jack. “We got most of the stuff back when the Riggs Company starting splitting us up into smaller companies: medical, agricultural, industrial, and bought the SAC and made it its weapons and research branch back in 1864.”
The room was thirty feet long and twenty feet wide. Brent led Jack through shelves of items from Jack’s stay in the late 1850s. They reached the back of the room and stood in front of a vault.
“Hey, this is the vault that I had installed back on my complex.”
“The SAC bought it from the Riggs Corporation and had it installed here. We keep our most sensitive items in there. How ironic is it that the vault you had your phone originally stolen from is the same one that’s been housing it all these years?”
With a hand gesture, Brent presented the vault and asked, “Still remember the combination?”
Without hesitation, Jack stepped forward, spun the dial, put in the combination, opened the levers, and then swung open the giant door. “Three, fifteen, thirty-two, it was Frances’ birth date.”
Brent switched on the light and they entered the vault. “This is where we keep the most sensitive items. We keep some things the way they were because it seems to help with the timestream continuum.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t know. But it seems to help separate the different timelines. I always thought this room had a sense of rightness to it. The phone is right over here on the original shelf.” Brent said.
Brent’s nonchalance turned into a near panic. Jack could have guessed what was going to happen. “It’s gone isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, but how did you know?”
“That phone and I are aren’t meant to be together.”
“I’m sure your father took it,” Brent said.
“What possible use could he have for it?” Jack asked.
“An anchor to a place or time. That’s another reason for this vault. Your father would have needed something like that to help him get back to the right place. Your iPhone is makes the perfect looping device, it started here, went back, then came back. Natural momentum could nearly carry that phone back on its own.”
Jack put his hands up in mock surrender. “Let me think about it.”
“You could leave right now,” Brent said.
“Why don’t you go? You know about everything and apparently drink their Kool-Aid.”
“I can’t. I’ve gone too many times. That’s how we how found out about the comet. After February 14 of next year, there’s nothing. No one knows it’s going to hit until February 1. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s pure chaos, worldwide.” His eyes were cast down. “One more jump for me and it will, in all probability, kill me. As it is, I probably only have a few months left anyway.”
“Then what do you have to lose?”
“It won’t work, Jack. I would never be able to make the jump. You’d be the only one able to pull this off.”
“So I would be going back to the past to save the future from a comet?”
“The world has always accepted the possibility of a near-Earth- object collision. Asteroids six point two miles in diameter or larger are called ‘extinction class’. If one of these NEOs were to collide with the planet, the effects would be catastrophic. We’ve always felt safe in playing the odds and it’s been fine until now. The problem is even now is too late. A year ago was too late. This has to be known. You need to travel back and get the word out. The comet is called the ‘Silver Surfer’ and its orbit takes it by Earth every one hundred and thirty-three years.”
“I just need to get the word out?”
“You and some of your friends. You are on a first name basis with the two most famous writers of the time.”
“Sam Clemens and Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Jack said thinking of the two men.
“We would give you everything you need. We could teach you everything you need to know.”
“What about the other problem? The genocide?” Jack asked.
“Your father seems to be at the center of that. You find him and I suspect you’ll find the problem,” Brent said.
“Did I cause it or did my dad?”
“We can’t tell. This is playing out in real time; we are seeing new variations in the timeline every day.”
“I’ll do it on one condition,” Jack offered.
“Does it have something to do with the comet or your father?”
“Neither, it’s about going back and seeing my wife.”
“Of course, she’ll be quite a bit older.”
“I’ll do it, but I want to stay there, I don’t want to come back.”
“That means you will have to die in this time.”
“I know. I’m giving you permission to kill me.”
Jack had three days to prepare for the journey. He worked with Brent and two of his team members. He drilled and reviewed nonstop. They immersed Jack in the time frame of late fall, early winter 1881. He learned politics, technology, slang, and pop culture. Since Jack said he planned to stay, they covered the 1880s, 90s, and the early 1900s. They gave him a handheld VITU computing device that had a million times more data than the original iPhone that he took back on his first trip, but they warned him not to expect it to make the hop. It held the information on unit and didn’t have to be connected to the Net.
He got a crash course in astronomy and the movement of asteroids. He was to carry a paper about the asteroid that he needed to get into the hands of the scientific community. The typewritten document was composed in the vernacular of 1881 and used the accepted empirical knowledge of the time. It detailed the flight and future collision course of a near-Earth-object called the Silver Surfer.
He learned of the people that could help his efforts and those who would most strongly oppose. He heard bios, beliefs, habits, and motivations.
He also got an update on his friends and acquaintances.
“Assuming you travel back to this time of the year in 1881, then Ralph Waldo Emerson is about a month away from dying,” Brent said, consulting a computer-projected screen. “I’m afraid he’s not going to be much use to you. It’s a shame because he could be a big help.”
Jack was distraught. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He suffers from aphasia and will have a final stroke that will end his life on December 23.”
“Can we stop it from happening and cure him?” Jack asked.
“Nanos could,” Brent said thinking out loud. Without answering, Brent turned to his assistant who gave a quick affirmative nod. He approached and had a brief discussion. “Yes, you can,” Brent said, “we will inject the nanos into your bloodstream here and you will carry them back. Once there, you’ll need to inject some of your blood into Emerson. We are trying to come up with a way to activate them once you’re ready. Since we can’t send drugs back with you, these nanobots will fend off nearly anything you encounter.”
When Jack was finally ready to go, they didn’t load him in an elaborate apparatus with rotating arms and spinning orbs. Instead, Jack was on a padded table lying flat on his back. With the exception of the straps to hold him down, he looked like a prisoner ready to receive a lethal injection. A saline bag hung on a stand next to him.
“We have been over everything, there’s nothing more we can think of that will prep
are you for your jump,” Brent said.
They were in a Sacco owned building in Virginia Beach that looked like a plain storage facility from the outside, yet on the inside it looked like a level-four bio containment lab. Brent had explained that it wasn’t necessary to launch from this location, it was just easier. It was located in the area Jack first arrived on his last time travel journey when it was just a field. His time travel field, the same one when he had rode Miss Nancy’s ole horse in the driving rain, looking for answers. Brent said the location had a highly abnormal natural and manmade magnetic field.
“Don’t forget, from what we can tell it looks like your father is trying to assassinate President Arthur.”
“If it’s in the past, I still don’t comprehend why you don’t know everything he did.” Jack said lying flat on the table and trying to relax. He felt edgy. This is more than just the anticipation of the time travel. “Isn’t it written on a page of history somewhere?”
“This is playing out in real time—sort of—the past is malleable. You should know that better than anyone. Is there anything else you need before we commence?”
Jack got back up on his elbows. Sticky sweat stuck his arms to the leather tabletop and separated with a sucking noise. His heart raced, everything he saw and was experiencing was opposed to what he thought should be happening. His hands opened and closed as he lifted up against the wrist restraints. He was feeling claustrophobic, he wanted to get up and run.
“Relax Jack, we doing multiple scans and these are just here as we do the imaging. They will be removed as we start the procedure.” Brent laid a hand on his arm as a reassuring move.
“The last time I was restrained on a table like this an psychopathic doctor tried to give me a lobotomy.”
“Please, lay back. Nothing that dramatic is scheduled for today. You’re probably reacting to the nanobot injection, they take a while to settle into your system.”
An almost electric pulse coursed through his veins. “I know this sounds ridiculous, but I don’t have any idea what my father looks like.”
Brent just stared at him and Jack had no idea what was going through the man’s head as he seemed to hesitate. “Ah, okay, let me pull up a copy.” Brent held up a screened device for Jack to see.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Jack said smiling, “that’s not my dad, that’s a picture of Abner Adkins.”
Brent turned the screen back toward him and examined it. “No, that’s your father.” He turned it back around so Jack could see.
Jack looked at the picture again, it was Abner Adkins—the same nose, mouth, hair, everything. He was already keyed up, but now his stomach was doing flip-flops.
Brent stepped closer to him and stared straight down into his eyes. “Jack, we are starting the process. We’ll start with a sedative.”
In his peripheral vision, Jack saw Brent’s assistant injecting a plunger full of something into his IV line. He looked back to Brent. “Abner Adkins! That means Frances’ baby wasn’t mine. How else could my father look like him?”
“Jack, you’ve got the pre-travel, nanobot jitters. Emily is your daughter, I know. I knew her. Relax, you’ll be feeling the sedative any second.”
His heart was pounding and yet he felt something was rolling over him, covering him. “Riggs? How is my name Riggs if we only had a girl?” Jack was starting to get delirious. “I got you…no answer for that Mr. Answer Man?”
“Your granddaughter Valier married a man named Riggs; everyone thought it was strange when they first met, but in reality it was the name that brought them both together—Jack are you listening to me?”
“The baby’s not mine… it was all a lie. The baby’s not mine…” A buzzing started in both ears and pressure grew in his sinus cavity. The buzzing became louder and Jack realized it was external instead of internal.
First, all the hair follicles on his body contracted to the point of the painful goose-flesh. The buzz was a high midrange sound and then a subsonic hum joined and comingled and made his fillings vibrate.
While the wrist straps and a chest restraint kept Jack from moving around the table, his neck was free and he could turn his head. He saw Brent raise a hand over his head and made a circular “rap it up” movement and he and four white coated men exited the room through a single door and reappeared backlit behind a safety glass observation window. The buzz and the hum’s intensity continued to amplify and he could feel the sedative slowing down his ability to move and think.
A locking mechanism released with a clunk on the far side of the warehouse and Jack flipped his attention away from Brent and the men behind the window to the opposite side of the massive open room. A square the size of a parking space slid back revealing slightly glowing terra-cotta colored mud.
The glow in the mud began to magnify changing in color to a bright amber. Giant bubbles appeared and burst one after another growing in size and frequency.
A pole the diameter of a cyclone fence post rose up out of the middle and ascended to around twenty feet into the air. Six metal armatures about ten feet long released from the top and spread out giving the thing a diameter of about twenty feet. It looked like a giant umbrella that had taken a direct hit from lightning.
It began to spin, slowly at first and then so fast that the individual arms all blurred into one. The mud underneath glowed with the scarlet light of hot lava. The whirling of the arms, the buzzing and the humming made Jack want to close his eyes. Pulses of plasma-like electricity exploded from the pole jumping to the steel support struts of the room’s high roof. It looked like one of those glass-encased Tesla lamps that you saw at Spencer’s Gifts in the mall.
Jack could feel the moisture in the room quickly being drawn away, his skin felt dry and tight. Even the moisture in his eyes was drawn away and it hurt to keep them open. A clap of white-hot lightning filled the room with a blinding brightness so profound that Jack had to finally shut his eyes—that’s when the sedative finally kicked in.
CHAPTER 10
It was ironic that Martin Riggs had President Arthur meet him at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, in the same place President James Garfield had been assassinated.
Martin watched the president and two large men obviously secret service agents in dark suits approach the depot in a horse-drawn coach. They pulled to a stop at the corner of Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue. The secret service agent riding in the back checked and double-checked ahead, back and on all sides. The agent quickly stood, got out, and opened the half door for President Arthur and then closed it behind him. The men in the carriage pulled ahead to the exact corner of the two streets. The driver put on the brake, and removed a short handle, big bore shotgun from a holster mounted under his seat. He stood watch over the main entrance. The other agent walked President Arthur to the main entrance and tried to hand him a gun. The president made a hand gesture and waved it off. It looked like the man gave some last-minute advice to the president and then patted him on the shoulder and went into the train station alone as requested.
Martin made his way from his vantage point to Seventh Street and entered using a service entrance. He went up to the second floor below the giant clock. President Arthur leaned heavily on the rail, searching the crowd below. He looked winded from his climb up the stairs.
Having Arthur meet him at the train station and making him climb up to the second story were calculated moves to leave Arthur slightly off kilter.
Having snuck up from behind, Martin calmly asked, “So, were you surprised?”
Displaying coolness, the man they called ‘Charming Chester’ didn’t jump or seemed surprised. Instead, he answered calmly, “Yes. I was surprised—surprised about your forecasting the natural disasters. If you wouldn’t have, I would’ve thought you were part of the assassination. I’m also a bit surprised by your unbelievable rise to prominence in the political arena and social world.”
“When you know the future, it’s not hard to get the attention of a JP Mor
gan and Andrew Carnegie. I have to congratulate you on the handling Billy Blackfeather’s assassination of President Garfield. That thing could have easily spiraled out of control. You kept it to an individual while keeping it from turning to genocide.”
“That is where momentum wanted to take it.”
“That’s the way the people behind it wanted it to go. In the past, this turned into a full-scale war on the Indian.”
The compliment seemed to put Arthur at ease. “Quite an ingenious story, Mr. Riggs, a world traveler and no one that can verify or deny your story. I know because I’ve had Allan Pinkerton look into just who or what you are to no avail.”
“Is there any problem? Have I broken any laws?”
“Not any that I can tell.”
“And is Mrs. Arthur feeling well?”
“Better than she ever has in her entire life. It may be just my imagination, but other people have commented as well that she looks and acts like the twenty-two-year-old woman I married.”
“You are correct. That’s just a side effect of the treatment—a good one though.”
“Sometimes I feel more like her father than her husband.”
“Getting down to business, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller are all going to dump a ton of money into the economy in the form of infrastructure and lots and lots of new hiring.”
“Really? That’s awfully nice of them. What do they want in return?”
“They want you to name a vice president. They will give you 100 percent of their support.”
“Is that all?”
“They would also like you to back off on antitrust legislation.”
“It still doesn’t sound like we’ve come to the hard part yet. Who do they want me to name as vice president?”
“Frederick Douglass.”
“A Negro? But why? There will be incredible opposition.”
“What do you care? You don’t plan to run for a second term, and you have your seemingly young wife, Ellen, to distract you.” Martin shook his head in surprise at the president. “The average person doesn’t give a crap what goes on in Washington as long as the economy is going well. Just think of the legacy you can create. You could save an entire race of people and the American Indians while you’re at it.” He told President Arthur of the plague and ethnic cleansing.