Fate (Wilton's Gold #3)

by Craig W. Turner

  “Did I have anything to do with this?” he asked.

  Dexter laughed. “I think you’ll find you had a lot to do with this, but the Museum was not your idea, no.”

  They headed in, moving slowly through the exhibits. The first several were schematics created by some of the greatest scientific minds in history as they imagined time travel, including Einstein, Nimtz, Kipler and Hawking. There was a scaled down version of the time machine from H.G. Wells’ book of the same name, followed by a plasma screen showing clips from movies featuring time travel, with voice-over narration about humans’ fascination with the subject. The exhibit was very well put together. Dexter must have seen his interest – from behind him he said, “While the sign outside doesn’t mention it, this exhibit was actually built by the Smithsonian. That’s why it’s so good.”

  “Yeah, it’s very nice. People would love to see this.”

  “I’m sure they would. Maybe someday.”

  Not if I can help it, Jeff thought.

  Jeff slid down the aisle until he started to notice some things that were familiar to him. A glass case housed his time device – the one he’d invented at his lab in New Jersey, and identical to the one that Fisher had delivered to him and which now sat in his trunk out in the parking lot. He immediately tried in his mind to trace the path of this particular device, reasoning it must have been the one that the other Jeff brought with him back from Russia. With all of the back-and-forth time travel, there were not only multiple versions of the people involved, but of the device itself. This one was not rusted, so it wasn’t the one that Fisher had given him three years before – the one that the woman, Erica, had left in the Sierra Nevadas. This was the real, working one. Which could end up being important.

  “That’s incredible,” he said.

  “You’re immortalized.”

  He bent down to see the placard underneath the glass casing. It read, “The first working device to allow human time travel, invented by Dr. Jeff Jacobs in 2014.”

  “Outstanding.” He stood and looked at Dexter. “Not that anything I’ve done is about fame and fortune… But this is pretty cool.”

  “I still can’t believe the earlier model depended on entering coordinates,” Dexter said. “It’s so much easier now.”

  “Yeah, and safer,” Jeff said, still looking at the exhibit. “Punching in the wrong number could have sent us decades – maybe even a century – away from our target.”

  “So, conceivably, every possible combination of numbers was a destination?”

  Jeff looked up at him. “Yeah,” he said, laughing. “Pretty scary, huh?”

  “So you could actually play a sort of Russian roulette with the device.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Dexter shrugged. “Just enter in a bunch of numbers and see what happens.”

  He stood and faced him, wondering where that idea had come from. “That sounds like a pretty dangerous game, but in theory, yes. You could do that.”

  “Well, thank goodness we moved onto the next phase. Who knows what these people are capable of?”

  Jeff turned and continued walking along the prescribed route. The next few exhibits were iterations of the time device that must’ve been created after Jeff had returned from Russia. Each device in the sequence added new features and appeared more aesthetically “cool” than the metal stick with which he’d started. One added easier-to-use buttons, the next featured a larger screen, and finally the model they were currently using. Jeff read that placard, which said the chip that determined location coordinates was built right into the device. The new unit was a sleek white and blue, and made, according to the sign, from a composite of advanced plastic material interlaced with metal to maintain its conductivity, but decrease the weight of the device substantially. He was instantaneously jealous. He would’ve wanted to be the one to work on those enhancements.

  Following the devices was a section on power. They were close enough to the museum exit that the natural light from the atrium was infiltrating the darkness of the corridor. It took away some of the effect. Jeff stopped at a large poster detailing in cartoon form the type and amount of power that would be needed to successfully scramble the subject’s atoms sufficiently for time travel. It showed the need for controlled use of synthetic neptunium, which Jeff had used when he began his experiments, and the transition the USTP had made toward the more stable (and more poetic) Americium. Jeff had actually considered going in that direction from the outset, but the company that manufactured the batteries for him advised that Americium was far more expensive. With an ability to print money that he hadn’t enjoyed, the U.S. government had obviously splurged.

  After the poster were three display cases housing the time device batteries. The first was his, the original unit built custom for him, containing enough charge for four trips through time. He’d had a dozen constructed, and they’d been held at the time in a specially-designed case that the FBI must have taken after he was discovered. Not all of them were accounted for – one was in the device Fisher had brought him the night before and one was in the device that had been lying in the Sierra Nevadas. He’d used one battery to try the device on himself, going back in time to see the famous Bobby Thompson “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” home run in 1951, and to take Abby to Woodstock in an effort to recruit her to the team – with return trips for both missions. That empty battery had been placed back into the case for a fully-charged version that he’d used to sneak to 1849 before leaving for Russia.

  Suddenly, he saw the possibilities differently, and realized he actually might not need Fisher to put himself in danger. He walked back a few steps to the original device and bent down to inspect it. Yes, it had a battery in it.

  “What are you looking for?” Dexter asked.

  “Just seeing if this one had a battery in it.”

  “Why’s that?” Then he realized, whispering, “Oh. Is that what you’re thinking of using to get back to Kane?”

  Jeff stood and looked at him, trying to figure out where his friend’s mind was. Dexter was serious about going back to change the Kane situation. He rubbed his chin, thinking. But not about how to save George Mellen from his murderer. “It might be a possibility,” he said. “I don’t know how we can get one of the new devices out from behind security.”

  “I think I do,” Dexter said.

  “Really?”

  He looked down. “Well, I’m not sure I can, but I think so. It’d have to be on the run. If I do it, there won’t be much time to get the job done.”

  Jeff held up his hands, playing along. “Dexter, I don’t know if that’s a fight I’m willing to engage in,” he said. “It’s nothing personal against you, but there’s a lot of harm that can come from attempting this – and all to stop someone that has little or nothing to do with either of us personally.”

  “It has a lot to do with me personally.”

  Jeff sighed. Even though he was giving Dexter a hard time, this was a good distraction for him. Having Dexter focused so intently on his mission immediately defined itself to him as a means to an end. He looked back at his device sitting on display. “Well, maybe we can think about this one as a back-up plan.”

  “You think there’s juice left in there?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But, I’m tracing the path of this device. It has to be the one the other Jeff brought back with him from Russia. Because that’s the only version of the device besides the one I had and Fisher took from me.”

  “Plus the one in California.”

  “Yes, the one in California, right. But that one would be all rusted.” He wanted Dexter to come to these realizations on his own. “There’s a battery in this one, which suggests to me that it’s the same battery that was in there originally. Unless someone used the device – which I doubt, because my guess is they immediately started innovating new technologies – Jeff took two trips with this device. Which would leave two trips there.”

  “What if n
ot?”

  Jeff walked past him to the power section. “When they downgraded the batteries from four trips to two, did they keep the same casing for the battery?”

  “That was a long time ago...” Dexter said, following him. “I believe so, though.”

  Sure enough, the modern batteries on display looked identical to his original model. “No need to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “This is it. We have the device and we have batteries. We just need to get them out of here.”

  “How do you know those batteries are charged?”

  “We don’t,” he said, looking intently at the glass case. Truth was, though, he did know they were charged. There was a trigger on the side of the battery that indicated its life. All three were actually full – his version, the upgrade and the current version. There was a vulnerability that they didn’t see. “Who’s the curator of this museum?”

  He sighed. “Who do you think?”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know how to get these out of here?”

  “Jeff, this is ridiculous,” he said. “They’re relics. You don’t even know if they could still possibly be operational.”

  “But you can get them out,” he said, mumbling. “Are they secure?”

  “They are, but that’s not a problem. Look, Jeff, I think I might want to just take my chances trying to get one of the real ones. We know they’re charged. They have the screen display on them so there won’t be mistakes with the coordinates. You could get these out, get in the middle of a situation, and find out they don’t work. Using the real ones is the smarter way to go.”

  He agreed, but he wasn’t about to tell Dexter that. He looked up at him. “Alright, this isn’t the place to talk about this. But when did you plan on doing this?”

  “When you do your training on the device.”

  He laughed. “What, just grab-and-go? Dexter, it’s not worth it.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Well, that could be today, though. Are you ready to do this? Risk everything?”

  Dexter shook his head. “No, we’ll make sure that part of the training isn’t done until tomorrow. Give us time to get our ducks in a row.”

  He returned his line of sight to the glass display in front of him, though he wasn’t focused on it. One more day would probably be smart, but he knew the longer they gave the USTP leadership to watch them, the more danger they all were in. He could work on getting his hands on one of these batteries, and clue Fisher in to what was going to take place – still enlist his help, even. He’d be a valuable asset. Dexter appeared resolved and ready to go, even if his plans were unknowingly parallel to Jeff’s own intentions, so the timing was good. He would just have to keep him off-balance. The museum was a great misdirection.

  “That’s fine, but I need this battery by the time I’m done with my stuff today. Do you think could get me access-”

  A shadow crossed over them, cutting him off. They both looked up with overwhelmingly guilty consciences to find Abby standing in the doorway.

  “Are you guys ready?” she asked. “We don’t have all morning.”

  Both men followed her obediently into the atrium. Jeff snuck a glance at Dexter, who nodded subtly at him. He was on-board, destination 1930.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Is that too much light?” Abby asked, fiddling with the blinds covering the window.

  “It’s fine,” Dexter said, looking at the screen at the front of the room. “Probably as good as you’re going to get.”

  The conference room seven floors up in the USTP headquarters was one that Dexter had never used, amazingly enough. If he’d been asked, he would’ve claimed that he’d been in every part of the facility, but clearly that wasn’t the case. One side of the room featured floor-to-ceiling glass facing the atrium, though from their angle they couldn’t see much except the opposite side of the seventh floor. The other side of the room overlooked the USTP campus, but it faced east, which enabled the morning sun to illuminate the room, hindering their view of the presentation screen.

  The room was state-of-the-art, with an experimental holographic teleconferencing system that they unfortunately weren’t going to get to see as well as normal, “old school” teleconferencing. The conference table was situated with display tablets built into fixtures at every seat that swiveled to always face the users (in case they were turned to watch the presentation), and Abby had told them that the room was equipped with next-gen wireless with speeds 1500 times faster than those that even the most tech-savvy companies might have in their offices. It was impressive, if not a little excessive.

  Despite the brightness of the sun, Dexter had spent the first several minutes while Abby was getting the presentation set up staring out the window. He hoped that anyone watching him would envision that he was simply taking in what was a beautiful view, but in reality he was going over his morning conversation with Jeff. The plan was for Jeff to do his training on the time devices the next morning, but if they were able to complete the analysis and his physical early enough today, they might not have a good enough reason to postpone. Bremner was pushing them to get Jeff through the program as quickly as possible, and if they could rush him through the process and be back in business in the morning, he’d want it to be that way.

  Of course, Dexter knew that it wasn’t just about getting back to the business of sending rich people back in time for their jollies. Because of what he knew, Jeff was a dangerous person – the USTP had made him that way by altering and then controlling his circumstances. He figured that, the way Bremner perceived things, the faster they were able to get Jeff ingrained into the program and, as a result, into his new life, the less unpredictable he’d be. They didn’t know him like Dexter did.

  “I thought you could just transfer the data from the server directly to this room,” Dexter said, choosing one of the leather-back chairs and sitting.

  Abby was working on a laptop with the screen facing away from them so they couldn’t see. She hadn’t transferred the image to the projector yet. “I’m just skipping through all of the intro stuff that we would show to a participant who knows nothing about time travel. Jeff’s been there, done that, so we don’t need to go through all of it.”

  Dexter looked at Jeff, contemplating every way possible to slow down the day. “Jeff, you wanted to go through everything just as any participant would, right? Should we go right from the beginning?”

  Jeff shook his head. “No, let’s do this,” he said, motioning with his hand for Abby to speed things up.

  What was he doing? He made a “slow down” sign with his hands, but Jeff waved him off. He wanted to get through this. Not having any other choice but to accept it without being obvious, Dexter began to plot excuses why they wouldn’t be able to do the device training that afternoon. He’d have no problem securing the battery for Jeff, who must have thought the old battery would fit in the new device. But since they had the evening to regroup and plan, he’d ask that question then.

  Abby looked up at Jeff, who repeated his let’s go gesture. “Alright,” she said, standing with a black remote in her hand. She walked away from the laptop and pushed a button. The screen lit up, showing a screen similar to the ones in the control room. “Jeff you’re getting some inside baseball here. We don’t usually go into this much detail with the participants, but since you want to know how the program works, we want to show you the back end. For your mission, we analyzed about 350 million possible relationships. Your risk factor was low – only nine percent. Which isn’t surprising given that you’re looking at a destination on the other side of the country, over 150 years back.”

  “Nine percent out of a hundred seems like pretty high risk,” Jeff said.

  “Well, it’s not all risk,” Dexter said. “It’s possible risk. The system doesn’t suggest that nine out of every hundred relationships will spark an incident. It looks for combinations of those that are related. A person could come out of the first round o
f analysis with a very low risk factor, but end up with a high PCS.”

  “You told me what PCS is, but refresh my memory.”

  “That’s potential conflict score. Every participant is given one relative to the mission they plan to take.”

  Jeff was nodding. “I see. So I could not have a large number of potentially conflicting relationships, but some of those might be direct concerns. Let me ask you this... Say I go through this analysis and my PCS ends up being high. What happens then? Am I stricken from the program, or can I look at another destination?”

  “Good question,” Dexter said, glancing at Abby, who was waiting, remote in hand. She didn’t appear to be getting impatient even though her presentation had been interrupted. “It hasn’t happened yet – nobody’s come up on the wrong side of the PCS scale. But if they did, that’s where the analysis put forth by the computer would be matched up against Dr. Graham’s psychological evaluation. The big question would be why you came up with a high PCS. The dual evaluation would help to determine if it was simply poor planning, or if there was something amiss that told us you shouldn’t go on the mission at all.”

  “And Kane?”

  Dexter shook his head. “Kane was a different story. His connection was hearsay, which the computer couldn’t predict. But, as Abby will show you, since that happened – well, since I returned and reported what happened – the system has been adjusted to add what are called proximity alerts.” He’d told Jeff about the proximity alerts the day before, but he was putting on a bit of a show for Abby – and everyone else that was listening in to the conversation. “While there’s no data that relates to word-of-mouth accounts that have been passed down, proximity is another tool to help eliminate that gap. Of course, there’s no way to go back and test it against the Kane numbers, because those disappeared when he changed history. I’m assuming that if Mellen, the guy who was murdered, got his paper from the same newsstand every morning, he lived or worked somewhere close by. The system probably picked that up and flagged it as a caution because he was a business competitor of Kane’s, but with proximity alerts, it would’ve shown up red and we would’ve at least had the chance to deal with it.”