“Can we expect these new laws to stabilize at some point? Perhaps change back?”
“I think not, General. Once the door has been opened I very much doubt it can be closed. It’s like opening a bottle filled with a million flies, and then after three days expecting to catch every one of those million set free and place them back into the bottle. We have no tool or way to do that, not with our current technology, and that would be the same with what’s happened with our universe.”
“What if you had the tools?”
“The only way I would even come close to having the tools, is by gaining full access to EMB, and obviously that’s not possible, not without blowing our covers, and even then, General, there are no guarantees I could do it.”
“Well we can’t just sit here and wait for the world to end. What would you suggest I do? Should we at least shut down EMB?”
“General, I would say that that is the very worst thing you could do right now. The breach in the strings will not magically disappear because you’ve turned off the machine that has caused it. To use another analogy, say you have a rat running around in the house that came through a hole in the wall. By sealing the hole in the wall now, you’re magically hoping the rat will no longer be present in the house. That’s ludicrous conjecture. There are only two ways to get rid of that rat now. The first is to kill it or expel it from the house. As you know rats are very difficult to find and kill … and it’ll be similarly as difficult to find exactly where and what the breach is somewhere in our early universe and fix it. We’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“And what’s the other way?”
“The other way sounds even more ludicrous, but given the incredible machine we have, it’s the more plausible possibility. What if the rat never actually came into the house, or what if we could take everything back in time to a point before we launched EMB? The breach then would simply never have happened.”
“That sounds like pure science fiction. You serious?”
“Dead serious, and that’s why you’ve got to do everything you can to keep EMB up and running, so that your scientists might just try to figure out a way to do that.”
Janine paused the hologram at that point.
“That’s the reason why I was so emphatic about not shutting it down,” she said.
Sheri nodded and sighed. “Thank god for that. I can’t begin to imagine how we’d be feeling right now had we shut it down. I guess that would explain why the general was so keen on keeping EMB running. Now we know the truth.”
“That fucking bastard!” yelled Steve. “It was all because of him. He planned the whole damn thing from the start. He knew there was a bug in the system, and thought he could use EMB for his own warped plan. The man makes Adolf Hitler look like a fucking saint.”
“I’m intrigued by the voice on the phone,” said the professor. “We don’t know the identity of this perpetrator he is in cahoots with.”
“No, we don’t,” said Steve. “Is there any more, Janine? Is a name mentioned? The voice is highly distorted.”
Janine glanced over to Jack, who was sitting next to her. He had finished eating his sandwich but looked exhausted. “You okay?” she asked.
He nodded and smiled.
“Actually, there was a name, but only a first name, and I can’t recall it off hand, because it wasn’t familiar to me. In fact, I’ve never heard of this guy before, but I can play you the rest. Perhaps one of you might recognize it.”
Janine reactivated the holographic image.
“So you want me to just hope that my scientists work out a way to reverse time? Do you know how crazy that sounds, Simon?”
Sheri dropped her whiskey glass. Her face turned a ghostly shade of gray right before she collapsed onto the floor, hitting her head in the fall.
Steve jumped to his feet and rushed over to her, lifting her head and cradling it gently in his arms. “Sheri, honey. Talk to me, baby,” he cried. She didn’t answer at first, but then slowly opened her eyes.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong with her?” asked Janine. “Does she know this Simon guy?”
Jack grabbed the glass of water on the desk near him and handed it to Steve. “Here, take this.”
Steve took the water. “Simon’s her estranged husband. He’s Chloe’s father.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Wesley Miles returned his cell phone to his jacket pocket. “That was security,” he said. “He’s on his way.” The sergeant shot him a deathly look. It was obvious to Wesley that the snotty-nosed brat was going to feed him to the sharks.
The young sergeant was about thirty feet away, pouring himself a coffee.
The glass sliding doors retracted, and in stormed the general, looking like a rattlesnake high on crack. “What in hell’s name happened here? I go home for three hours, and EMB is moments away from being shut down. Someone has got to be held responsible for this!”
“Someone turned off the alarm, sir,” said the sergeant, his eyes focusing in on Wesley. “We don’t know who, and the first I knew of the problem was when I returned from my break at 23.55. The moment I saw the message, I immediately informed the lieutenant, sir.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, and what did you do?” asked the general.
Wesley swallowed hard. Acting had never been his forte in high school. In fact, he’d avoided it and sports, like one would avoid Alaska in the dead of winter. It didn’t help that the headaches were back again. “I told the sergeant to get hold of the troubleshoot protocol manual, as I was concerned there was some sort of computer glitch.”
“You mean to say that you knew about this and decided it wasn’t important enough to call me?”
“Yes, sir,” snapped the sergeant, his eyes still fixed on Wesley. “I kept telling the lieutenant to call you, but he wouldn’t listen. I said that the general would know what to do.”
If there was one thing Wesley despised more than anything, it was a sycophant. That little ass licker had just lowered himself to the level of a filter feeder. It was going to be a struggle to climb back out of this hole.
“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t want to concern you with a minor computer glitch. I really thought at that stage it was just the monitors playing up, as we had some issues with them last week.”
“Permission to speak, sir!” asked the young sergeant.
“Yes of course, Sergeant,” said the general with an edge to his voice. He seemed determined to get to the bottom of it, and the sergeant was keen to play along.
“I said to the lieutenant that you’d want to know about this, but he refused and I had the feeling that he was trying to stall for time, sir.”
The general strode over to Wesley until he was no more than a foot away. He was so close that the lieutenant could smell his stale breath. The man towered over him, and he felt like he was a private again in barracks, about to endure yet another one of those terrifying inspections. The general began a circling routine, stalking him out, ready to tear off a piece of flesh when the moment was right.
“Is this true, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant’s phone rang. He glanced down at the number. “It’s Canberra,” he said.
“Answer it!” commanded the general. “Could be important.”
Wesley accepted the call, and a small hologram of Sheri materialized above the phone. “Sheri, this probably isn’t the best time,” he said.
“This is important, Wes. It can’t wait.”
“Well it has to, I have the general in my office. As you’re probably aware, EMB was almost shut down last night.”
“Even better,” she said. “I want the general to see this.”
Wesley frowned. “Are you sure?”
“More sure than you’ll ever know.”
Wesley put his phone down and activated a virtual screen. The small hologram of Sheri enlarged rapidly, and instantly, the professor, Steve and Janine Fuller materialized in Wesley’s office. The general’s face colored and his eyes wi
dened the moment he spotted the reporter.
“What’s that bitch doing there?” he snapped, pointing at Janine.
“She, the bitch as you called her, has a name,” said Sheri. “It’s Janine, and she has some interesting information she’d like to share with you, General.”
“Get her out of there immediately. She’s a national security risk, and more likely than not, a terrorist,” he yelled, bits of spit flying off in all directions, some hitting Wesley in the face.
“No, General, it’s you that’s the terrorist,” said Janine brazenly. “Your little game is over. We know all about the scheme you had going with Simon and the plan to take control of the country by way of a diversion.”
“You damn cow! When I get my hands on you …You should’ve taken the chance and left when you had it. Clearly you don’t give a shit about your sister!”
Janine’s face paled, and Wesley could see that the general had struck a nerve.
Sheri said, “Did you actually just say that? Did you just threaten her sister?”
The general didn’t answer. Instead he sat down at Wesley’s desk, shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
“Do you deny the allegations?” said Sheri. “I’d be happy to show you proof if you’d like, General.”
Denny couldn’t believe he had come so far, only to have everything unravel before his eyes. He decided there was no point in refuting it. He had to give it to her. That bitch was good, and they had him by the balls.
“Excuse me, Sheri,” interrupted Wesley, “but what’s going on?” He had sat down, too, and was staring at the general, the fear in his eyes replaced with intrigue.
Sheri recounted the details from the video clip to Wesley and by the time she had finished, his face had colored and the small ridge on his forehead had morphed into a deep canyon. Nevertheless, he maintained his composure, listening until the very end, at which time he reached out both hands and grabbed the general by the throat. “You fucking bastard!” Wesley yelled.
Caught off guard, Denny was on the back foot, trying to extricate himself. The scientist’s grip intensified around his neck. He could feel his face engorging with blood, the pressure in his head becoming unbearable. He fought to claw Wesley’s hands from his throat, but the man had harnessed some inner strength from somewhere. Denny’s lungs were burning from a lack of oxygen and the room was spinning, when he heard Sheri scream out.
“Stop, Wesley! Stop!”
“Why should I? The man doesn’t deserve to live. There are no words to describe what he’s done to us, to our friends, our families, our planet.”
“Killing him won’t change any of that,” she said. “I know I’d probably be doing the same thing if I were there, but as despicable is it sounds, we need him, if we have any chance whatsoever of making this right.”
The voices were growing more distant, the room darker. With waning strength, Denny desperately fought for air.
“Wesley! Stop!” screamed Sheri. “Only he knows how to get in touch with Simon, and Simon is the key to fixing this whole mess.”
Wesley’s grip relaxed and Denny took in a gargantuan breath, filling his starving lungs. He coughed and choked for a couple of minutes, struggling to replenish the oxygen deficit before he was able to talk, albeit in a hoarse voice. “Now you know why we couldn’t shut it down,” he said, massaging his aching neck.
Wesley stormed out of the room. The general stood up, about to follow, when Sheri’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “Not so fast, General. Don’t think you’re off the hook just yet.”
“You know everything, there’s nothing more to say,” he stated.
“Oh but there is. You need to get Simon to EMB immediately. He’s the only one who knows what he did, and he’s the only one that may actually have a clue as to how to fix it.”
Loosening his top button and tie in order to give himself more air Denny said, “I don’t know where he is. Last I spoke to him he said he was going to some tropical island to relax before it all ends. I don’t even know if he still has his phone with him, let alone whether or not the island still exists.”
“He still has a GY6 micro-restrainer, unless you took it off him. You should be able to track him using that technology.”
Denny thought for a second before responding. “No, it hasn’t been removed. He wanted it taken off, but I said I’d only do it once I …” He paused.
“Yes, General? Once you what?”
“Once I was President,” he said bluntly, shutting his eyes.
“Well, General,” Janine said. “You sure are full of surprises. What’s next? World leader? You make me sick.”
“I don’t care how you do it, but you get him to NASA HQ within the next four hours,” Sheri said. “I don’t care if he’s sunbathing in the Comoros. This is your one and only priority right now. And it has to be soon. God knows when the Russians will decide to strike.”
“You know I never meant to—”
This time it was the professor who spoke up. “What, General? Ruin our lives, ruin our world and everything we cherish in it?”
Sheri said, “Incidentally, I’d be interested to know one thing before you go.”
“What’s that?”
“What was his price tag? I don’t mean just the bracelet. Simon is a greedy man. What did you offer him?”
Denny swallowed and cleared his aching throat. “I told him that if I became President, I’d create a position for him as my chief scientific officer. He would be in charge of all scientific projects funded by the United States government, and would receive twenty percent of all profits, were a project to become financially rewarding. I also told him …” He stopped in mid-sentence, thought about what he was about to disclose and then decided against it. Telling Sheri that he was going to arrange for Simon to get full custody of their daughter was probably not the best idea at this particular moment in time.
“Yes, and …?” asked Sheri.
“That’s all. I need to make some calls if you want him here ASAP.”
* * * *
Sheri disconnected. She didn’t trust the general for a minute. She wondered what he had almost told her, but let it go. She had more pressing matters to deal with.
She looked over at the others. Janine and Jack were locked in conversation. Steve was at his terminal working, and the professor was sitting at the table staring into his empty glass. When he looked up, his eyes told her that he was a million miles away. “Everything okay, Prof?” she asked.
“I have some troubling things on my mind. Say, would you mind too much if I ask you a small favor?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Would it be possible to have a private chat with the general? I really would like to clear a few things up.”
“Fine with me,” Sheri said, then looked at the others. “Guys, can we all please give the professor a few minutes?”
The small party got up and left the room. Jack had found some wooden broomsticks in the janitor’s closet and had tied them together with some rope to form a pair of crutches. He, too, hobbled out of the room, leaving the professor to himself.
* * * *
Alastair called Wesley on the vidlink.
“Lieutenant, would you mind terribly putting the general on? I was hoping to have a private word with him.”
“Sure,” said Wesley, transferring the call to the general, now seated alone in Wesley’s office.
“I thought you weren’t interested in talking to me, Alastair?”
“Let’s just say things have changed since we last spoke. More information has come to light since then.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that I did more research and couldn’t find a single interview with any of your team after they returned from Afghanistan, not one, but lots of obituaries, including seven suicides. Only three people are still alive. You’re one of them, and the other two are in mental institutions.” He paused and shut his eyes tig
htly. “Denny, I need to know what happened there. I need closure once and for all.”
“And you think the truth will set you free, Professor?”
“Perhaps.”
“I told you a dozen times what happened, now for fuck’s sake, let it go.”
“You’ve been lying to me, you son of a bitch. I wasn’t sure before, but I’m damn sure now. You’re a coward Denny, that’s all you are, despite all your fancy medals and awards.”
“Shut the fuck up, Alastair. You don’t know—”
“What, that you’re a coward?”
“I said shut your filthy mouth.”
“You abandoned Tom, you abandoned the person that went in to save your—”
The general screamed into the speaker, “You don’t know shit! You want to know what really happened to your damn son?”
Alastair grabbed a pen from his desk and began twirling it around in his fingers. “Yes, tell me!”
“I’ll fucking tell you what happened to your son.”
“Go on, I’m waiting.” The pen flew out of his hand, hitting the monitor next to him. He grabbed another. “Go on then!”
The general took in a deep breath. “I’m warning you Alastair, you might not like what you hear.”
“Try me.”
A few seconds of silence followed, and Alastair wondered whether this was a good idea after all. Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free. Sometimes it can suck the air right out of your lungs and suffocate you.
“Okay. Listen carefully and don’t interrupt.”
The Waterhole Page 32