Terra

by Robert Turnbull

  “I sure hope he makes it,” Izzy muttered “or we’re fuc…uhhhh, screwed.” That brought uneasy chuckles as they all stared at the glowing purple portal.

  Minutes passed and the worried friends began thinking of what could have happened to him. Just as Megan was about to ask Dr. Rand how long it should take, the huge swirling mass over their heads grew…and then shrunk. There was a flash and just as Joe appeared, the overhead mass winked into oblivion. Joe looked up to see it was gone and smiled.

  “That’s what I call close.”

  Gil frowned “Jesus, we thought you were dead. You said it’d be moments.”

  Joe sat on a nearby table and grinned “Those Orians were smarter than I gave them credit for, they encased the Earth portal in some sort of unknown metal or alloy.” he grinned slightly “If the portals didn’t have a null field twenty to twenty four inches in front of the opening, I would have been pinned…or crushed. As it was, I was pressed up against it, but managed to wiggle the device from in front of me to my side and drop it, pulling the pin as it stuck to the wall. The device changed the portal’s direction, I popped back through and its direction changed back…” he looked at the ceiling and smiled.

  Gil nodded “But the mass overhead vanished, you said that meant the device was destroyed, the Orian planet was destroyed.” he looked totally confused “If everything was encased, how did they even know the device was there to destroy it…or even to decide to just end the war?”

  “Mom hoped that the Orians would figure out what the device was for and shut the portals down.” Joe looked at the floor sadly “My mother could not end a life, let alone genocide of an entire world. So you see, I took the liberty of stealing one of Sarge’s grenades. I kept the rear of it to you…” he sighed softly “so you couldn’t see it…lest you might have had objections to my plan.”

  Sue looked at Joe with a strange unsure smile “Why would you think that? Joe, I’ve know you since we met back east, I know you’d only do what was best for our world.”

  It was what Joe hadn’t said that quickly made everyone pause until Gil plopped down in a chair across from Joe as he slapped his forehead.

  “Holy Mother of God, I should have picked up on this before.”

  “What?” Sue asked as she sat next to her new love.

  Gil gazed among his friends and then looked at Sue, unsure exactly how he should react to the crap he had just realized.

  “Don’t you see? That black hole the reversing of the portal and re-bending it…Jesus, Joe you sent it to the Orian home world. That portal was connected to the portal in your time. You shot through both with the new programming, coming and going, but then they were as…”

  Dr. Rand’s face was overcome with shock “Good God…Joe…in order to destroy the Orian home world, you’d also have to destroy the future Earth…our future time line, the black hole would consume both!” Doc didn’t know if he should be mad or cry “There is no future.”

  “But we changed the past!” Izzy shouted “It’s gonna be different now.”

  Doc looked at the lass and nodded sadly “No honey, events have changed, but the fact that the portals were created and the future was physically destroyed, I fear…a paradox.”

  Gil stood and glared at Joe. After a few seconds he squinted “Joe…you knew you’d destroy your time. I think it’s about time you tell us about those second set of numbers your mom drilled into your head.”

  Joe nodded solemnly “Fair enough, I guess if anyone is entitled to know it would be all of you. You see Mom knew what would happen. About ten years before her team came up with them ‘all the numbers’ as you called them.” he sighed “She…they…they all knew they’d cease to exist.”

  Gil stood and barely could believe what he was about to say “unless they could change the past where no portals would ever be created.”

  Joe nodded “Correct my friend. The second set of numbers are to be entered into your portal Doc and those will allow me to use your portal to go back one last time to kill Doctor Parrel.”

  “Kill Tom?” Doc nearly shouted “For God’s sake why!”

  “He created the original formula and the first drawings of the portal that…”

  “BULLSHIT!” Doc screamed. This was the first time Gil had ever known Doc to say anything close to cussing and started to ask why, but Joe indignantly interjected himself back into the conversation first.

  “Because all of this is his fault, killing him ends it all!”

  Doc sat down on the edge of one of the many consoles “Oh my…you are so wrong Joe, it’s all my fault. Tom didn’t come up with anything.” He slowly arose and walked over to Joe and looked into his eyes “Tom was the first project leader to find some way to get to the new world they had found by the latest spectrum-telescope. He was my dear friend and he was about to lose his position because his team couldn’t come up with a new kind of spaceship drive to get us there. One fateful night, I brought him all my work to his house. We spent another six months making it feasible.” Doc sat next to Joe and sighed deeply “Tom was project manager until he died and I was put in charge, you must go back and kill me.”

  There was enough silence in the room to make everyone uneasy when Gil jumped up and startled everyone.

  “How can Joe go back? Shouldn’t he already be dead? I mean his timeline is…”

  Doc gave him a weak smile “Joe’s already here, but you are right Gil about one thing, Joe cannot go back again.”

  “Why?” Joe replied knowing that Doc wasn’t just trying to save his own life.

  “Possible critical paradox guys.” Gil muttered aloud “Joe would be traveling back to a time he has no knowledge of, back to a time before this project was even started.”

  “I’m not sure you’d survive back then Joe.” Doc muttered as he nodded to the console “Enter the figures into the portal and allow me the evening to go over the figures.” and to that they all agreed would be best.

  It was nearly nine at night when Doc called them all back into the lab.

  “Joe can’t go back my friends. You see there is no portal back there, there are no other portals existing and once used, it will blink out of existence and we’ll have to regenerate more power to create another if he fails and I still exist here. I’ve computed that going back without a portal to hook to, would take this power plant we have nearly ten years to regenerate.” Doc sat down and sighed deeply.

  “Who knows what could happen by then, what changes Joe might mistakenly make. No I must be the one to go back to stop myself…somehow.”

  “Not gonna happen Doc.” Gil spoke up now sounding more like the officer that he was in the past. He walked over to the portal platform. “Jesus, you talk about creating horrible paradoxes? I hate to think of…” he reached over and pressed the portal activate switch “I know what you looked like from pictures, I can…”

  Doc walked over and smiled as he gently grasped Gil’s shoulders “Thanks for trying Gil, but you know as well as I…” he stepped toward the portal knowing he had but seconds to pass through “I know everywhere I was back then, none of you do…have a good life if I fail.”

  “And if you succeed?” Sarge muttered.

  “Then you’ll never know as all this will have changed, none of you will ever have met.”

  “But…” Sue tried to say as she reached for Gil’s hand and Doc passed into the portal…and her hand became transparent. She looked up to Gil with tears in her eyes and gasped as she could see straight through him. She reached to put her arms around Izzy, but her arm passed through her and quickly her arm vanished…and then…

  Chapter 22.

  Ex-Captain Gilbert Wells looked nervously at his watch, almost as nervously as he looked at the two large wooden doors near where he was seated. He had worked all his life to become an astronaut and had failed for some unknown reason. After repeated pleadings of his case he was discharged from the military for almost as mysterious reasons as so many other things in his life had h
appened. Since leaving college strange things had happened to him, changed his life, and seemed to redirect him, including this latest strange message which led him here.

  Now this was his last chance to shine. He was probably the best test pilot the Air Force had, and now he hoped that this civilian aircraft company would look at his abilities now that he had been asked to resign from the military. The message led him to believe flying was to be involved, but yet, here he was sitting in the outer office of the world’s richest man.

  Gil had been led into a small private room and now stood as the door opened and a slightly gray haired gentleman walked into the room and motioned for him to follow him. Gil smiled politely and followed into the next room that was an amazingly elaborate office. The man closed the door and motioned for Gil to sit in a plush chair directly in front of his overly large desk. Instead of sitting he sat on one corner and smiled at Gil.

  “Impressed?” Gil nodded he was.

  “Do you know who I am?” again Gil nodded that he did.

  “You are Doctor Rand, the richest man in the United States, fifth in the world. Ahhh, you own ‘Rand Corp’ the largest corporation in the world and pretty much have your industrial fingers into every field from what I’ve read.” Gil tried to smile, but it came off looking more like that of a frightened child trying to be brave.

  “Quite right my friend…quite right. And no doubt you’re wondering why I would have use for someone like you.”

  “Well, to be honest…yes sir, I do.”

  Dr. Rand smiled and walked over to a long leather sofa and patted it as he sat.

  “Come on over here Major…”

  “Major?”

  “Uh, sorry, Captain. I have a strange story to tell you.”

  Puzzled, yet intrigued, Gil walked over and sat as the richest man in the world sat beside him and began telling him a tale that was about to make his head spin.

  For over two hours the professor sat and spun his tale of time travel, portals, and of timelines past…and future. Never stating more than the facts, nor the names of others involved, Gil’s head spun…his mind whirled, there was no reason on Earth why this person would have to lie to him unless he was completely nuts.

  “So let me get this straight, I called you Doc and you…”

  Doc smiled “I really avoided naming names Gil for fear that if you met any of those people in this timeline, it could affect decisions that I’ll need you to make for our future.”

  “Assuming you tell me why those decisions might be made…agreed, I can see your point. How many others did you tell? What about this…” Doc waved his hands and grinned.

  “In time Gil, in time. Of course I never told any of those involved in this timeline for their own good and the reasons you just stated so well. Everything must happen naturally, I wouldn’t have even told you…” he sighed with a burdened mind weighted down by memories of something that only existed for him.

  “A few years ago, I began to think…someone needed to know other than myself in case something happens to me.”

  “So we tried to save the world and apparently did.” he cocked his head and gave Doc a strange look “But those Aoria…”

  “Orians?”

  “Yeah, them, I mean we know about their world, isn’t there a good chance they know about us? I mean surely if they had space travel, they must have telescopes. Yeah, and if you came back, that means their world was never destroyed and they could find us and…”

  Doc nodded “No doubt, but you have to remember that black hole I mentioned. I had my people study their star. It appears that their solar system is slipping behind that black hole, so it would be centuries before they would come out from the other side.” he frowned “That’s why I miscalculated the first time and all that happened, indeed did happened. Thus brings me to you and why I want you to be my lead astronaut…and partner in business. I need you to sign that document on my desk before you leave. It gives you all I have should something happen to me so this project can be finished.” he grinned “Technically you’ll be the sixth richest man in the world, but no one will ever know unless I die.”

  “Wait, did you say partner?” Gil’s face went slack “Good God, Doc…you didn’t create another portal?” noticing that his friend never flinched at the thought of wealth, he was worried about the future.

  “Oh Lord no Gil, no portals.” he smiled and reached over and patted Gil on the knee reassuringly.

  “Joe’s mom had made a little error in her calculations, took me nearly a year to figure them out…from what I could remember about my old timeline. It would seem that either Joe or his mom reversed one digit and I wound up back just after I had graduated with my last degree. Knowing where I used to hang out I quickly found myself.” he sighed deeply.

  “Something went wrong I assume.”

  Doc chuckled under his breath “Wrong…yeah, sort of. You see I forgot how damned stubborn I was in my youth, even more so in my late twenties. At first I tried sending myself a letter, and then eventually held conversations on-line when the internet became available; by then I had already amassed quite a fortune.” he chuckled “I did remember enough history to make some rather good investments, bought when the markets crashed, sold high, bought low…made a killing.”

  “About you Doc?”

  “Oh, yes…me.” he snorted as he grinned “It was just about the time I met Tom and I feared that he might openly tell someone about his engine and the timeline that we ended, would restart…I had to do something…so I decided to introduce me…to me.”

  “Wouldn’t that create this paradox thing you and Joe kept mentioning?” Gil looked a bit worried and Doc noticed but continued anyway.

  “It did.” Doc sighed loudly “I had been in deep scientific conversations with…” he chuckled “me. So when I mentioned that I was in town, I…uh, he invited me over. He opened the door and the first thing he said, was I looked like his dad…uh, our dad…and I guess I do. I was stunned at seeing me…as well as he was stunned by my appearance and without thinking he reached his hand out and I shook it.”

  “I do not like where this is going.” Gil bemoaned.

  “Yep! Instant paradox!” Doc smiled “Oh my, it was so fast…first there was a shock, like something you’d get from rubbing your feet on the floor in winter and touching a metal railing or door knob. Of course two objects from different realities cannot exist in the same space…I was so stupid and caught up in the moment.”

  “So you absorbed some of my Doc’s knowledge?”

  “No Gil, nature found a way for us to both exist.” he looked sadly at Gil “My entire being…mind wise that is, became the younger me in this timeline. I exist, but sadly there has never been another trace of any of the other me’s thoughts. We sort of merged, melted together if you will.”

  “That makes sense to me.” It was Doc’s turn to be puzzled and this time Gil saw the strange look on Doc’s face as he continued “Look Doc, you said you came back through this portal so when you met yourself, you were as you were in both timelines, just a tad older. It would be that this Doc, the one I’m talking to now had more knowledge than the young Doc. So when you two merged you just gained future knowledge that you held in your mind; sort of the strongest survived.”

  “Jesus!” he grinned broadly at Gil as a sheepish look crossed his face.

  “All these years I felt so guilty for ending the young me that was in this body, I never realized that both of us had identical memories to that point in time, so we just became one.”

  “Sure, guess nature figured it was easier to merge minds into a young body as it always seems that nature tried to find the best survival path; young beats old survival wise.”

  “Gil my friend, you are smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

  Gil chuckled and accepted a cup of coffee Doc poured him.

  “Smart maybe, but still at sea about why you need me.” he waved his hand around the lavish office suite and with a grin added “Yo
u obviously have everything you need.”

  Doc sat back down and smiled “Not everything Gil, not everything.” he scooted over next to Gil and smiled briefly and then as the smile faded he spoke softly.

  “I want you to head up a mission into space for me Gil. It’s going to be a huge undertaking and I know you can think on your feet.”

  “Ok Doc, hell, you know I always wanted to be an astronaut. Where we goin’ and for how long? Seems the gal I was dating up and left a few months ago when I was discharged.”

  “No ties now?”

  Gil looked at Doc and Doc’s face said it all. The sly warm smile told Gil that it had been Doc that had steered his life toward this very moment, it had been Doc that controlled his destiny.

  “No Doc, my old friend, no ties now. Now where are we going?”

  Doc’s smile faded as he became deadly serious “To a planet we found on the other side of the Milky Way. Just about as far from the Orian home world as one could get.”

  “Well that’s good.”

  Doc sighed “But if you accept this job…there is no coming back to Earth Gil…ever.”

  Chapter 23.

  “So when do I start and how much can you tell me?” Gil smiled back at Doc “I mean I have nothing here, no family, no friends I can’t live without, no attachments.”

  Doc smiled “I was so hoping that you’d say that Gil. You see I…uh, we have been at this for quite a while. As I knew where we didn’t want to go, I sent the astronomers looking where we should go.”

  “Away from those Orians” Gil chuckled.

  Doc nodded and grinned “Yep! What I didn’t tell you was Joe and I talked that night back in the lab communal room. He told me about the engines they had been working on and from that chat and using my knowledge of the portals, came our first working engine. Quite smaller than what it up in space now of course, and I feel I must mention, allowed us to send a probe to study the area where we thought Earth-like worlds existed; we found two. The first was still a primordial world, far too dangerous for colonies to land…” he grinned “tell you about those in a few minutes. The second world the probe took readings on was far better stabilized. Now barring the idea that some civilization might live underground, the probe took photos of eighty percent of the planet as it orbited and found no signs of any kind of electronic signals. The photos showed no signs of towns, cities, roads, or infrastructure…my God Gil we found a world of untouched jungles, rivers and oceans. The probe dropped small sensors and found near Earth atmosphere and the water is just like ours.” Doc chuckled “Only cleaner. We found no harmful bacteria and what viruses we did find we are inoculating out colonists for.”