Quantum Times

by Bill Diffenderffer

  From behind them a man who had just entered the conference room interrupted Maeda’s account. David turned back to look at him. The man spoke in a strong confident voice. “We were very surprised and disheartened to learn how the victory here by Ieyasu would lead to such a weakened Japan. As shoguns he and his successors pacified the country to such an extent that they never expanded their territory over the next two centuries and then were too weak to withstand the growing power of the West in the early twentieth century. It is always enlightening to me to see how delicately balanced the flows of history are. A world is far more interdependent and susceptible to a change in the prevailing winds of chance than one would think possible.

  “My home Earth is dominated by two great historical sets of foes: the Germans oppose the Russians and we Japanese oppose the Chinese. We and the Germans are allies as are the Russians and the Chinese. But we are the greatest among them. Our world speaks Japanese not German or Russian. And what a surprise it was to find your country, the United States is the most powerful here. In our world your continent has eight separate countries and none of them significant. They are like your Europe here.”

  “This is Captain Ukita Terumoto,” Lieutenant Maeda said to David. As he had come to expect of all other Earthers, the Captain was tall and fit looking, but nonetheless broad shouldered and heavy framed. He was clean shaven with dark bushy eyebrows over dark eyes and his facial features were so dominant they could have been chiseled out of stone. Something about him suggested he could easily wield the katana in battle and few would stand up against him in individual combat.

  David went to shake his hand and introduced himself, then said, “It must be quite a shock to see how different your country’s history can be.”

  “On other Earths, Japan has been powerful, not always dominant but still worthy to join our empire. This Japan is different. Wars can be won or lost. Honor can be maintained in both circumstances. The situation here is unforgivable. Its loss in what you call World War II has led the Japanese leaders to bring ridicule to the Emperor and to accept demilitarization. Their very constitution prohibiting war is an embarrassment. They can barely defend themselves. They are dependent on your country to defend them against the rising power of China. There is no honor in that. This cannot be tolerated.”

  David saw in the Captain no attempt to be politically correct or to speak guardedly. Looking at the man, he was not surprised. The Captain stood ramrod straight and his uniform was starched and glaringly white. His eyes were deep set and intense and his mouth had yet to smile.

  “Well, Captain let me start by thanking you for letting me come aboard and interview you. I have interviewed – “

  “Yes I know. That is why I agreed to this. You have a reputation of not filtering or altering information. I do not wish my statements to be reduced or reconstructed. My words are my own. A Samurai does not dissemble or chatter like children on a playground.”

  “So let’s start with that,” David said. “You view yourself as a Samurai? Are your crew Samurai as well?”

  The look on the captain’s face bordered on contemptuous, but then softened. “Forgive me. You could not know. Yes, of course we are all Samurai. What else could we be?” he paused then and considered. “The Japan here is the exception. It has surrendered its heritage. On my world and the other worlds I know of, Japan is still an Empire led by shoguns. The Code of the Samurai is to us what your Constitution is to you.”

  David was puzzled, “Our Constitution is a political document not a moral code.”

  “All political organizations are but the shadows cast by moral codes. The stronger the moral code the less the political organization is required. The Samurai Code is self-enforcing and societally rigorous. A big and powerful government is an indication of a people with a weak moral structure.”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” said David. “But back to the point. Why are you here? What brings you to come from your Earth to ours?”

  Captain Terumoto paused a moment before speaking. Then he spoke slowly so that his words would be reported correctly. “We are here because my government wishes to ally with all of the Japans throughout the universe. As you can see just by looking at us, we are a people apart. Our islands are precious to us. Our language and culture and writing are all original to us. What other country can say that? Perhaps only Egypt – and Egypt has been meaningless for millennia.”

  “There’s China,” David proposed.

  “Here there is China, yes. But on other Earths, China is but our reflection, China is ours. Throughout its history, China was always invaded by others, led by others. China endures, it is true. It has its own beating heart. But it has no head of its own.”

  David felt he was close to something important about The Lucky Dragon and its Captain, “China is more dominant here. Some think China will soon surpass the United States in power and influence. Will that affect your mission here?”

  Captain Terumoto didn’t hesitate. “My mission is to restore pride and honor to this Japan. Then and only then can we invite it to join the Empire that exists throughout this universe and its many dimensions.”

  “Is that what you want me to write?”

  “That was the purpose for inviting you here.”

  “I have heard that you have already met with Japan’s Prime Minister. How are those discussions going?”

  The Captain paused for a moment to frame his response. “We have much to learn about each other. These things cannot be rushed. Clearly there is dissension among the Japanese people and their leaders as to the proper path to take for their return to prominence. But I have confidence in the will of the people; they will not tolerate for much longer to remain a weakling in world affairs.”

  “So how will things change?” David asked.

  “A country can only be as strong as the Code that it lives by. Where there is no code, there is no honor. Where there is no honor, there is no strength. A country without strength dissipates until it is just dust under the feet of future civilizations.”

  “I guess I don’t understand. So what is it you are going to do here?”

  “We are going to help this Japan recover its soul. We will restore the Code of the Samurai.”

  As he left on the shuttle provided by Captain Terumoto to return him to where he left his car, David leaned forward in his seat and held his forehead in the palms of his hands. He had come to The Lucky Dragon directly after his meeting in the White House and he was feeling mentally drained. He still wasn’t sure how he had come to be where he was. He found himself in the front row center seat of a world in crisis and somehow he was supposed to explain things to the rest of the audience sitting in distant seats who weren’t close enough to see and hear for themselves. Worse yet, increasingly he found himself crossing the boundary between audience and actors. He was starting to fear that he had a role to play.

  Then he remembered all the nights he had dreams about being in a play and not knowing his lines. They weren’t quite nightmares, yet he was always anxious to awake from them. He explained away those dreams as his subconscious getting even with him for all the years in school where he didn’t study or do his homework. Years later his psyche still hadn’t forgiven him.

  He had other recurring dreams like being chased and having to run or being naked in a crowd of people; why he had those recurring dreams he still had no idea, though a psychologist friend of his said that everyone had them. But the dreams about not being prepared for a big test or being in a play or movie and not having learned the lines, those dreams he still had and they were really annoying. The other dreams he could wake up out of, but the dreams of being unprepared lasted long. Now he was awake, he was sure of it, but he was living that dream. He was not prepared for this role he was now playing. And it scared him.

  Hank Scarpetti looked over his glass of scotch at his friend General Carl Greene sitting across his kitchen table sipping his own drink. These late evening sessions were happening more oft
en than ever before. They were on their second round and Hank still had not raised the real subject that he wanted to discuss with Greene. He had known he needed to talk to Greene ever since he had heard the intelligence briefing earlier that day. Greene was the only person in Washington who Hank could both trust with his real un-politicized thoughts and whose opinion would be worth listening to. Greene’s security clearance was high enough and his information sources broad and deep enough that Hank didn’t have to do much explaining or revealing. Greene already understood the mess the world was in.

  Scarpetti decided to get to the point. It was too easy to just keep sitting there drinking great scotch while ignoring the crisis around them. “In today’s briefing the CIA reported that there is a lot of chatter among the extreme Islamists that a high profile target in the U.S. is going to get hit soon. I know we have heard that kind of thing before. But the chatter we’re hearing now has an additional continuing refrain – that one of the other Earths is part of the plot. That the weapon itself may come from off this world. We have even heard the name Hasan associated to it.”

  The general nodded, “I’m hearing that too. But we don’t know the target or the details.”

  Scarpetti continued, “But a consistent theme in what we are picking up is that the flames are being fanned by stories of the glorious success of Islam on the other Earths. The result is that the drumbeat of jihad is pounding louder and faster. Iran keeps screaming about the destruction of Israel. When countries with nuclear weapons start screaming, you better take it seriously. Market bombings in Cairo, Baghdad and Kabul are happening so often now CNN doesn’t bother mentioning them. Christian churches throughout the Middle East are starting to take security measures once reserved for foreign embassies. And the government of the United States is not doing anything. We have no plan, no foreign policy worth a damn.”

  General Greene looked over at his friend. One of the most powerful people on the planet was dispiritedly sipping at his drink and feeling like he couldn’t do anything. Greene remembered talking once to a CEO friend of his whose Fortune 500 company was losing billions of dollars. The CEO said that when he sat at his desk he had phones and computers, secretaries and assistants and vice presidents, all there to put his every decision and order into effect. And he wondered why nothing good ever seemed to happen. Then the CEO said that one day he tried to leave the office for a minute and he discovered that he was actually in a giant bubble and nothing he said or did ever reached outside of the bubble. The phones and computers weren’t connected to anything. The secretaries and assistants were actors on a staged set. The CEO realized he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  It had taken Greene a little while through the CEO’s comments to realize his friend was sort of joking. But he also realized that the CEO was serious too. It was easier to believe that it all was an episode from the Twilight Zone then that the company he had built and loved could be doing so badly. And now Scarpetti probably wished he was in a Twilight Zone episode too. The world couldn’t really be in the huge mess it seemed to be in, could it?

  “I presume the President is not yet ready to change his position on doing something about Captain Ragnar and The Freya?” the general asked.

  “No, he’s not. He thinks Plato is the problem.”

  “That’s nonsense. Plato is our best hope….I think the problem is that Plato doesn’t have much confidence in the ability of our government, or any government for that matter, to actually deal with the situation. One way or another, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Plato. One thing I’ve learned from him is that he always tries to simplify things. He doesn’t believe you can untangle complicated webs. You just have to cut through them.”

  The general paused to remember what Plato had said. “He likes the story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. Supposedly there was a prophesy that whoever could untie this hugely complicated knotted rope would become the ruler of Asia. Alexander took out his sword and cut the knot off. That solved the problem. That’s the way Plato thinks things need to be done.”

  Scarpetti nodded, “If you see a snake, you cut its head off. Plato says that Captain Ragnar is the snake. So we have to cut its head off. I suspect he also thinks if you can’t tell the difference between your friend and a snake, then that’s a whole other problem.”

  General Greene sat there in the quiet of Scarpetti’s kitchen with a bone deep hunger to take action. As a soldier he wanted to fight something. With every terrorist event where Americans died, he felt more and more a need to strike back. “So, Hank, what are we going to do? We can’t just do nothing! If The Freya really is helping some terrorists to blow up something here, then we are in really big trouble. We saw what happened to our embassy in Tel Aviv. And we had no clue that was going to happen. Imagine shooting a missile like that one at The White House or the Empire State building – or worse, one of the new towers standing on the site of the World Trade Center. If The Freya is helping, I don’t know that we could stop it.”

  Scarpetti’s glum expression told the story, “I know. I know. I’ll keep working on the President. But I don’t know what advice he’ll listen to.”

  “Tell him to listen to Plato.”

  “He doesn’t like that Plato acts like he knows more than he does.”

  “Plato does know more than he does.”

  “Yea, that’s the problem.”

  In his small office on The Freya Captain Ragnar looked over at the man even he was starting to call Hasan. Hasan/Erickson had just confirmed that Khalil wanted to strike at the Americans soon. Now Ragnar had to make a big decision. Should he give all the help this man Khalil would need to strike hard. In truth for what was required, Khalil could at best just be the man who aimed and pulled the trigger on the weapon. The weapon itself and overcoming the transportation obstacles would all require the assistance of The Freya. That assistance would be very active and direct.

  If the role of The Freya was discovered, the United States would have no choice but to attack his ship. He might be able to evade the attack initially but he would be forced to leave this Earth immediately. Still if that was all that was lost, the reward would be worth that risk. There were other Earths that he could target. Still this one was so ripe for his plans.

  He knew he would only get one opportunity to strike the cataclysmic blow that would ignite the disintegration process. The old adage, “when you strike at a king, make sure you kill him” was to be remembered. His target was not a paper tiger; just a divided and weakly led and confused one. But a tiger nonetheless.

  His instincts told him he needed to be more cautious. He was getting ahead of himself. He needed to be more patient. Much as he wanted Khalil to go forward with the attack on American soil, he wasn’t certain the blow Khalil planned would be enough. There still needed to be more de-stabilizing events. For what he wanted, a nuclear bomb exploding over Washington or New York City would probably be required. That would take longer to arrange.

  But he would find a way to help Khalil. It would be an important link in the chain of events he foresaw. Then it occurred to him how it should be done. He could take advantage of the uncertainty that existed as to which of the Other Earths could be trusted. He needed to help Khalil destroy his target but make it look like Plato and the crew of The Bucephalus were behind it. Ragnar smiled; that plan would accomplish several goals at once!

  He turned his attention back to Erickson who had been sitting still while his Captain thought through the plan. “So here is what I want you to do,” Ragnar said and proceeded to tell him.

  Plato listened to David as he described his meeting with President Morningstar. It did not surprise him that the American President was not going to take any action against The Freya – or anyone else. Plato was not even surprised that the President continued to distrust him. Plato’s version of the unfolding of the future did not match with what the President wanted it to be. Plato knew too well that the challenge of leadership was in dealing with unplea
sant realities. Leadership would be so much easier if the future would only behave.

  Plato was not unsympathetic to this President. His successors had squandered the resources and the warrior spirit of the United States on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that could not be won given the political and cultural environments there. The goal of punishing terrorism and eliminating destabilizing despots had morphed into nation building – an impossibility where no underlying nation existed, just disparate religious sexts banded together by accidents of geography.

  Yet past geopolitical mistakes could not excuse geopolitical weakness in the present. The costs to be paid in the future would be too great. The engulfing fires of terrorism unchecked would keep burning until the planet itself was consumed. Plato had seen that happen before.

  David looked around the room where they were meeting. Out the sliding glass doors of the ground level room he could see the beach and then the Caribbean Sea. A steady rain cast a gloom over the island and kept everyone indoors or back on The Bucephalus. “So what do we do next?” he asked Plato.

  “I’m not sure that I know,” Plato replied. “If you wait and do nothing, the acts of terror will increase – and there will be a strike at a major target inside the U.S. As devastating as that will be, maybe it will be what is required to channel the energies and resources of your country to attack the central problems.”

  “But even if that is the case, I don’t know that we would know who to attack.” David interrupted. “The Freya may be the enabler and we could go after it, but the underlying problems would remain. And if we suffer another tragedy like losing the World Trade Center towers, I don’t know that our people will feel sufficiently revenged just by destroying The Freya – even assuming we can.”

  “I understand that.”

  “So I think we have to do something.” David looked down at his fist pounding the table in surprise. He wasn’t one who normally pounded tables.