1. Jumpers need something to do (but not for money, we don’t really need money). People in the community without a job are suspicious.
2. Jumpers need to limit their exposure to the Locals. Having one place that most of us work at would cut down on unnecessary interaction.
3. We need a central place of training and schooling for new Jumpers. Meeting in people’s homes too regularly can look suspicious.
4. A business would allow us to order and receive equipment that we need (for research) without raising any eyebrows or any appearance of impropriety (Too many big shipments to a house can be a red flag).
5. We need a cover story for our time displacement research.
With all of this in mind, I proposed to the group that I think we need to build some type of business, like a small factory somewhere just outside of town. This would fulfill all of these requirements. I can imagine a manufacturing facility upstairs (ground level), and a research lab downstairs (underground). It was very well received. We just need to pick a type of product that we can make which will allow us to order the raw materials and machines we need for downstairs, but make it look like it is for the upstairs.
A few weeks ago NATO was officially formed. The Cold War cometh quickly. On a different note, it has now been two years since Jumper Number 4, Grant Forrester, disappeared. Not a word. In a way, no news is good news.
He knows where we are. I hope that is a comfort for him, even though it is a source of great concern and liability to me.
Journal entry number 412
Wednesday, August 3, 1949
We broke ground today for the factory. Mayor Vorhees was there, as well as a few of the city aldermen. We are continuing to keep all of our actions as low-key as possible in this town of several thousand people. In terms of 1949 cities, it is above-average size here in the Midwest, but it is still small enough for most people to know just about everything that goes on. That is the problem.
Hopefully the factory will allow most of the Jumpers to work together, which has the side benefit of limiting their exposure to the outside world. Once the building is done (contractor estimated March 1950), we plan to build our new research lab underground. The Cold War hysteria surrounding nuclear annihilation (most people say atomic warfare) will cause bomb shelters to become popular among the well-off. It will be an easy sell to get the dirt excavated and the concrete poured. No one will think a thing about it.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, all of us Jumpers went to Steak ‘n Shake at the corner of Main and West Virginia. I’m pretty sure this is where the chain started. This may be the first time that all of the Jumper community was in one place at one time (in public).
I gladly paid…ticket came in under $5.
CHAPTER 39
“The upstairs is pretty much the same,” Ellen called out over her shoulder, as she led newspaper editor Betty Larson around her freshly vandalized home. “Not as bad as the downstairs, but the same kind of mess.”
Betty knelt and snapped a few low-angle photographs. Drawers were jerked out and flipped over, personal items strewn all over the floor, a real residential disaster.
It was picture perfect.
She slid a thin pencil out of her mouth and jotted a few observations. “The Chief said that they broke in your back door?”
“That's right,” Ellen lamented as she hopped over a dumped drawer and nodded towards the kitchen. “Just about knocked it off its hinges.”
More photos. A few more notes. Betty looked up from the pad. “What do you think is the value of the stolen items?”
Ellen halted and rubbed her forehead. “Oh, I don't know...it's just now sinking in. Uh, maybe a hundred dollars?”
Betty began writing feverishly as Ellen continued, “It was some jewelry, silverware from my grandmother. A little cash. It's not the monetary value; it's the sentimental value.”
“Oh, I know…absolutely.” Betty did her best to balance the need for the story, and the need to be sensitive. One of her journalism professors observed that a reporter had the curious dilemma of both exploiting and consoling people at nearly the same time.
She put her notes away. “And thank the Lord you weren't home. No tellin' what that bastard might’ve done to you!”
Ellen put her hands on the side of her face, and a tear leaked through. She brushed it off her cheek and into her red hair. “I don't like to even think about it. You hear about stuff like this on the radio, up in Chicago, but—”
Betty couldn’t resist capturing a quick emotional photo. She always felt that such frozen moments in time represented the pinnacle of her profession, the blending of hard facts and broken humans.
“Unfortunately, it's the same story as the breakin at Martha Tomlin's place three days ago,” she said. “Back door kicked in, a few expensive items, some cash.” Betty took another long look around. “Well, I'm sure the Chief is doing everything he can.”
As Betty carefully navigated her way back to her car, Ellen smiled and mumbled, “Who, the Chief?” She paused.
“Oh, he's involved alright...very involved.”
Journal entry number 452
Thursday, Feb. 9, 1950
Ahead of schedule and better than expected! The contractor “turned over the keys” to the factory today. The “Nelson Manufacturing” sign should arrive early next week to finish it off and make it official. Shep has ordered several pallets of parts, supplies, and raw materials in conjunction with Ritenour’s guidance, and nearly all of the machinery has been ordered, some of it has already arrived and has remained crated.
We should be building residential windows within the next few weeks. Leah and Martha are busy setting up the office and accounting and a little decor. Stonecroft and X continue to draw up the plans for the underground research lab. I have been toying around with a pet name for it. I was thinking about calling it: The Basement (I don’t have a future in Marketing or Advertising).
There is such optimism in the air. It has been a long time coming. With a more secure temporal studies lab hidden from prying eyes fifteen feet underground, we can put our efforts into high gear. I really feel like we are on the edge of a major breakthrough.
Once again we all celebrated at the corner of Main and
West Virginia.
CHAPTER 40
His first public test as a man from 1956 was over.
Denver was privately relieved.
As he headed out the diner door, there was little doubt in his mind that he had failed miserably. He hurried out onto the sidewalk, and politely held the door wide for an elderly lady with a young, blond-haired boy in tow. The well-behaved youngster, not quite half Denver’s height, looked up into his eyes.
Right then—something snapped.
A swirling array of sounds, sights, and emotions shredded Denver’s mind like so much shrapnel. It was pain, and screaming, a child, voices, confusion. His hand slipped off the metal frame of the door, and he stumbled towards Leah’s car, grasping the bridge of his nose. He blinked repeatedly, leaning off-balance like a doomed ship and growing nauseous.
Several irregular steps later, the bizarre episode subsided, at least the overwhelming intensity of it all. He halted, took a slow breath, and looked back at the diner.
What is going on?
Leah intercepted him. “Hey, why didn't you tell us?” she demanded.
He still hadn’t cleared his mind to the level of a meaningful conversation. “Uh, tell, you...what?”
“Why didn’t you tell us, about the fact you had contact with that waitress back there last week! And lemme guess. You paid with your money. Future money?”
He spun about, a bit lost, but recovering. “I'm, I'm sorry...it was before I, uh, I knew, about all of this.” He lurched over. The vomit was rising much quicker than good responses. He swallowed hard.
Leah bent towards his face, which had lost all of its color. “Hey, whoa, sorry. Listen...you okay?”
“Well...yeah, I think so.” Anothe
r swallow. “I, uh, just had a little episode back there. I'm fine. It's nothing. Really.”
“Episode? What do you mean?”
He raised back up, squinting into the sun, and rubbed his face. This was going to be hard to explain. “I, um, have these—flashes,” he said.
“Flashes?”
“Or…quick thoughts, like overpowering images will shoot through my mind. Usually violent. Seem to involve children. Sometimes night terrors, too.”
Leah guided him towards some shade. “Are they random, or do they have triggers?”
“Dunno. I’ve had it for a long time. Unpredictable.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m not a doctor, but you told me that you saw fighting overseas. A lot of violence. These flashbacks, you know, lots of guys that came home from Vietnam had them—especially soldiers that witnessed children being harmed. The stories I’ve heard are enough to give me nightmares.” She locked empathetic eyes with him. “Maybe the painful memories you’ve tried to repress are kinda leaking through.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. That must be it.”
It wasn't it.
He lied.
He didn’t really intend to. It just jumped out of his mouth like a verbal reflex. It wasn’t true, but at worst, it was probably a third degree falsehood.
He didn’t tell her that he had been crippled by these disturbing experiences long before the war in Afghanistan, long before the attacks of September eleventh, and long before he even got his driver’s permit.
But Leah got it half right.
Denver knew that this wasn’t leftover trauma from the war somehow percolating up into his consciousness. No, this was something far earlier, and something far more personal. He suspected that these paralyzing incursions were the echoes of experiences that were refusing to be shackled any longer.
And they were getting worse.
_____________________________________
As they strolled back to the car, Katie’s eyes may have escaped their notice through the dusty window, but the entire fiasco did not escape hers. Katie watched the two patrons interact at the car then she popped open a small pad and scribbled down notes. Her pulse quickened and a fascinating new excitement rose within her.
She strained to read the woman’s license plate. For an instant Katie imagined herself as an investigative journalist: lurking, listening, learning.
She had already worked out a rudimentary headline—MYSTERY MONEY MAN INVADES NORMAL.
She leaned against the cool glass, reveling in her new fantasy job. But fantasies are impossible to sustain.
A customer called out. She pursed her lips and flipped the pad shut. Katie hollered over her shoulder, “Coming.”
Back to reality, girl.
MEMO August 11, 1950
SECURITY LEVEL: TOP SECRET
FOR: Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Director, Central Intelligence
Dr. Willard Machle, Asst. Director, OSI
FROM: Chief Howard D. Ross, Project SATURN
SUBJECT: Project BLUEBIRD
Dr. Edwards reports that Subproject 1 studies by the Medical Intelligence Unit at Edgewood Arsenal regarding chemical psychological enhancers has been completed. Initial results are attached.
I would offer that the value of this technique for information extraction from time displaced subjects cannot be overestimated.
Requesting permission to expand BLUEBIRD significantly per Subproject 2 & 3 objectives. Subproject 2, which primarily focuses on memory annulment/ replacement, is essential for final debriefing of staff involved with interrogation of time displaced subjects.
Please advise.
END
DCI/PS
Journal entry number 466
Tuesday, March 21, 1950
Spring is here and the dirt work is underway for The Basement (our “bomb shelter”). The plans are for 3 underground rooms: a conference room, a power room, and a time-displacement chamber (largest room). Oh, and a bathroom, so really four rooms. We are letting the contractor do almost all of the concrete work, but Doc Stonecroft said that we will need to finish the “time” chamber ourselves. Something about the walls need to be curved for wave reflection/refraction or something.
I’ll just be glad to get all that equipment out of my garage and barn. An empty garage will be a sign of progress. A few weeks ago the Soviets finally publicly admitted that they have successfully detonated an atomic bomb. Now the Cold War will really begin to heat up.
I remember watching those black and white atomic safety videos and reading about the nuclear-paranoia of the early 1950s. But reading about it and living it are two completely different things. There are times you just want to grab people by the shoulders and tell them it’s gonna be okay, especially the children. They are so afraid.
But you can’t. Fear shaped an entire generation, and that generation shaped our future.
CHAPTER 41
Struggling with a loose socket on a stubborn nut was not exactly Ellen Finegan’s first choice this morning, but Doc and Papineau rarely asked her to do much physical work. So either out of respect for them, or pride for herself, she pushed forward with minimal success.
She stretched back and wiped her damp forehead. It was during times like these that she really missed her dad. Not that she had ever really spent much time with Lieutenant Commander George Wyatt Finegan, though.
The double burden of being a Navy brat and an officer’s kid forced a childhood and lifestyle upon Ellen Marie (that’s what he called her) that no normal kid would have ever chosen. In the military, success is nearly always linked to sacrifice, and the family is typically the first thing offered on the proverbial altar.
The Finegan’s certainly fared no better.
In any respect, Ellen and her mother Marie, were the real Finegan family. George Wyatt (as her mother called him) was more miss than hit, a familiar face at all things Navy, but typically a stranger in his own home.
When she was small, Ellen just imagined that all daddies were like hers. As they moved throughout the world, from promotion to promotion and base to base, she never really had time to get to know very many other kids, let alone time to gauge the patterns of normal fatherhood.
The uncharacteristic nature of her experience didn’t really strike close to home until her freshman year in high school. George Wyatt had been reassigned to the U.S. Naval Air Station in Kodiak, Alaska, in early 1950. Tensions in the Pacific theater rose on a hair-trigger as the Korean Peninsula became the center of global political and military maneuvering.
Alaska, still nearly ten years from being a U.S. State, was certainly no paradise on Earth in 1950, but his latest assignment brought something new to the Finegan household: off-base housing. Ellen Marie had always existed within the rigid confines of a military residence, perpetually surrounded by other transient brats.
But Alaska had more to offer her than merely a long winter and weeks without normal daylight. The disconnected Alaskan territory allowed Ellen to connect with real kids: regular kids with real and regular dads.
High school was a strangely bittersweet period for Ellen. It was the first time in her life she ever had a best friend who was really there for her, yet also the dawn of the realization that her own father wasn’t.
She still loved him though.
Deeply.
In Ellen’s mind she fancied herself as a daddy’s girl, though she inwardly took the blame for his sporadic influence. There was certainly no way to avoid the hidden suspicion that a big, important Navy man like Lieutenant Commander George Wyatt Finegan would have naturally wanted a son.
Maybe Ellen was supposed to be an Allen? She had always wondered that, and the fact that her grandpa’s name was Allen, only fueled that painful fear.
In the irregular times that her father was home for more than three hours, she smothered him, showcasing her accomplishments, begging for validation. It was a trend she would never break free of, throwing herself at powerful men
(or any man), seeking affection at any cost. It made for relationships that took off like a rocket, and went down like the Titanic. Two failed marriages in less than seven years proved it all too well. With George Wyatt’s ignoble example, she didn’t expect much from a man, and she usually got it.
But today, regardless if she was supposed to be an Allen or an Ellen—regardless if he wasn’t there in the past—today, Ellen Marie wanted Daddy to help her with this jammed little bolt! She gave it another shot, and it mocked her once again.
Of course, not that he even could be there.
It had been just over three years since Ellen Marie had lost her part-time father. A failed take-off in a Fairchild R4Q-2 Packet on July 17, 1953, had violently extinguished the lives of over twenty brave men, including George Wyatt Finegan.
The father who was rarely there would now never be there again.
Being a time Jumper meant a lot of different things to different people, but for Ellen it meant losing her father twice. When she first jumped in 1951, she begged Phil Nelson for just one more chance to go and spend even five minutes with her father before the fatal plane crash.
Just five minutes.
Intellectually she assented that he was absolutely right in denying her request, but there were moments she secretly hated him for it. Over time, though, she grew to respect his tougher decisions. As he did for others, the larger than life Phil Nelson became a second father to her. Little did she know that she would tragically lose both her surrogate and biological father in the same year, in the same month, and only a few short weeks apart.
Paradigm Rift: Book One of the Back to Normal Series Page 20