The Violent Sea

by Russell Moran

  “I’m sorry, pal,” I said as I held his shoulder.

  “Roger,” Meg said, “what event are you referring to?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Didn’t you hear about it? Is it possible that you weren’t affected? Rhode Island isn’t far from here.”

  “Roger, we have a lot to talk about.” He looked upset enough and I didn’t want to hit him with our time travel experience just yet.

  “Please let me serve lunch to you folks. I was lucky enough to bag a raccoon this morning. He’s a big guy so there’s plenty to go around.”

  “A raccoon?” Meg said, laughing. “A fucking raccoon?”

  “I really need to bring you guys up to date. I still can’t figure out how you don’t know about The Event.”

  “Why don’t you join us on our boat,” Meg said. “We have a lot of delicious food aboard—but no raccoons.”

  “Let me just take care of this,” Roger said. We watched as he put the huge partially cooked raccoon into a canvas bag, tied a rope to it which he flung over a light post, and hauled it up.

  “Gotta protect my catch.”

  “Of course,” Meg said.

  When we got to the boat, Meg went below and came up with a few cold cut sandwiches and salads. Roger ate a sandwich so fast he seemed to be starving. The thought occurred to me that maybe he was. I held out the tray so he could grab another sandwich. He did.

  “Roger, are you familiar with the phenomenon of time travel?” I asked.

  “Yeah, of course. Doesn’t happen a lot but it’s been proven to be a scientific fact, not a theory. Oh shit, let me guess. You two came here from the past and that’s why you don’t know about The Event.”

  “We’re dying to talk to you about this event you refer to, but first I have a question. We saw a newspaper that carried a date of May 5, 2021. Is that the year we’re in? Meg and I began our trip in May of 2020.”

  “No, it isn’t May, 2021. It’s May of 2023. The newspaper you saw was the last ever published. The Event happened the next day, May 6, two years ago.”

  “Roger,” Meg said. “Please tell us what you mean by The Event.”

  “Ever hear of an EMP?”

  “Oh, dear God,” I said. “An Electromagnetic Pulse. I once took a course on that subject. How many weapons were involved?”

  “Nobody knew. We didn’t hear the one that blew up over us, of course, because it exploded in the upper atmosphere.”

  “Are you sure it was an EMP?” I asked

  “Yes, it was. When not hunting raccoons I used to be a professor of physics at Brown University. My regular house is, or was, in Providence, not far from you folks. I had written extensively about EMP and even testified before Congress, not that any of those assholes paid attention. They were busy taking care of constituents’ pet projects and couldn’t be bothered to think about a looming threat to the world. They even defunded the EMP Commission in 2017, even though the commission’s findings up to that point raised the alarm. The commission estimated that 90 percent of the American population would die within a year of an EMP, from lack of medicine to starvation. But those congressional shitheads didn’t want to spend money on projects that wouldn’t help them get elected.”

  “What was it like, Roger?” Meg asked.

  “The world stopped. That’s the best way I can put it. You seem to know about an EMP, so you know that anything electronic got fried. Cars simply stopped in their tracks, at least late model ones. A few older cars kept running because they had no electronic parts. I was driving down that road behind us when my car just turned off, along with those other piles of metal you see on the street. I immediately suspected an EMP, and so did a lot of other people except for political assholes. Cars don’t just stop. I may be an expert on the subject, but the phenomenon was widely known by anybody who read newspapers. I got out of my car, when a guy next to me pointed to the air and yelled, ‘holy shit.’ Holy shit indeed. We watched as four planes, including a couple of large commercial airliners, fell out of the sky. I mentioned that I stayed put because I was waiting for my wife to join me. She was in Chicago visiting her parents and took a flight to T.F. Green Airport in Providence, and was to take a connecting flight to Martha’s Vineyard.”

  He started to cry again.

  “Sometimes we human beings try to hold onto a straw even when there’s no straw to hold. I didn’t want to think about a fact that I knew,” He said after blowing his nose. “Her plane was in the air when The Event hit. I played games with my head, thinking that maybe she missed the flight. As Ayn Rand said, ‘You can avoid reality, but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.’ Then I gradually accepted the fact that my Janey was dead. But by avoiding that reality for so long, I became stranded here. Everybody left Martha’s Vineyard to go to big cities, hoping they’d find food and medicine. The shelves here were picked clean in a couple of weeks. By the time I decided to leave and go to Providence I realized there was no way to get there. You may have noticed that there are no sailboats here, only inert powerboats with their fried electronics. People piled on to any sailboat available, no matter who it belonged to. So, this lovely little prosperous island became a crime-ridden fucking jungle in a few weeks. A lot of good people inhabit this world, but in May of 2021, they were hard to find. Looting from other looters became a sport. When the final supplies of medicine ran out, anyone who needed medication to live was soon dead. My neighbors’ little daughter had diabetes. It broke my heart to watch them bury her in the back yard.”

  “Are you all alone on Martha’s Vineyard?” Meg asked.

  “I may be, but I don’t know. I’ve witnessed enough violence, including murders, to make me want to hole up in my little world, fishing and hunting raccoons.”

  “Roger,” I said, “do you have any idea who or what country detonated the weapon?”

  “In the days after The Event I spent a lot of time listening to my portable radio. Oh, yeah, batteries, not being solid state electronics, survived. A few, very few, broadcast facilities had apparently been hardened against an EMP. The reports I heard focused on North Korea as the prime suspect, although it hasn’t been proven. Speculation was strong that North Korea kept testing ICBMs as a way to throw us off the scent. An EMP warhead can be launched from a freighter off shore using a conventional missile. Shit, even a powerful Scud could be fired directly overhead into the upper atmosphere. Complex reentry technology, necessary for an ICBM, isn’t needed for an EMP rocket. But I haven’t heard any news reports recently. Who knows, maybe the broadcast facilities were attacked by armed gangs. Oh, yeah, violent gang membership is the new form of Rotary Club. We live in a different world, my friends. So here I am, living alone and scrounging for food. So, tell me a bit about you folks. You look awfully familiar.”

  “Meg and I own a resort in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. We’re both career Navy people, and retired on the same day two years ago, that is two years before the time we came from.”

  “Wait, hold on, I know you two. You’re America’s favorite couple, Admiral Harry Fenton and Commander Meg Fenton. I’ve seen you on television and read all about you and your time travel experiences. Admiral, you were Chief of Naval Operations as I recall. Didn’t the government name a foreign policy doctrine after you—yes, the Fenton Doctrine—deprive the enemy of options. I remember that wild story about you going back in time to the Pacific and ending the war with Japan at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Oh my God, you’re my honored guests and all I had to offer you was raccoon meat.”

  “Roger, how about another sandwich?” Meg said.

  “Yes, oh dear lord, yes. I’ve been watching my weight for years—watching it disappear.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ve got to talk about planning.”

  “Admiral Harry loves to plan,” Meg said.

  “I know what we have to do, and I hope we can convince Roger here to join us. Meg, any thoughts on what I’m thinking?”

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here and go b
ack to 2020 and sound the alarm.”

  “Roger, please be our guest as we travel through time.”

  “What? And leave all this?”

  “Go get your stuff, wiseguy.”

  “Let me just run back to my house to gather some meager belongings.”

  “Leave the raccoon,” Meg said.

  Chapter 59

  Roger arrived back at the boat with only a small sack over his shoulder. Made sense to travel light, I explained to him, because his house will be there when we return to 2020. Meg and I explained to Roger the science (or art?) of finding a wormhole that you’ve been through before. We told him to expect the darkness and rumbling for two minutes, followed by a return to light. Roger was an experienced sailor. He told us that he was on the sailing team as an undergraduate at Harvard.

  “Meg, you take the helm. Roger, help with the sails. We want to go slow so I can observe the relative bearing positions I took yesterday. Meg, line up that flagpole so it’s dead astern. Roger, keep looking behind Meg to make sure we’re on course. Okay, guys, let’s go wormhole hunting.”

  Meg had the sheet of paper with my bearings in front of her.

  “Coming up on the Church steeple—one point abaft the port beam,” Meg said.

  “Roger.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t mean you, I mean roger.”

  “But I am Roger.”

  This is going to be a long day, I thought.

  “Okay, let’s come about and try again,” I said. “Meg, for the balance of this exercise, I will replace the word ‘roger’ with the word ‘understood.’ Got that, Roger?”

  “Roger.”

  “Wiseass.” This guy does have a sense of humor, I thought.

  We sailed in a big circle and started at the same position.

  “Coming up on the church steeple, Harry—one point abaft the port beam, water tower—3 points abaft the port beam; cell tower—3 points on the port quarter.”

  “Understood.”

  All of a sudden it was pitch black. The hull rumbled as if we were sailing over logs. In two minutes the rumbling stopped and was replaced by a beautiful sunny day.

  “Yesss,” Meg screamed. “Gimme a kiss, admiral.”

  Roger was crying, sobbing actually. He sat on the transom and bawled his eyes out.

  “Roger, honey, you should be happy. We just made it through the wormhole,” Meg said.

  “I am happy. I can’t believe that I didn’t realize what just dawned on me. We’re in 2020. My Janey’s alive. She wasn’t on that plane that crashed when The Event hit in 2021, because it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Harry, please take the helm. I want to go below to get something.”

  Meg returned to the cockpit with a bottle of Dom Perignon and three champagne glasses.

  “I know you’re strict about not drinking when sailing, Harry, but I think a little celebration is in order.”

  “I agree, honey. Let’s pop the cork and make a toast. To Janey and Roger Cramer, long may they live—together.”

  “Hey, Roger, you look great,” I said. “When we left Martha’s Vineyard you looked like the wild man of Borneo. Now you’re no longer skinny, you’ve lost the beard, and your hair is short. Time travel does have its benefits.”

  Roger started crying again. This is one physicist in touch with his emotions, I thought.

  “Hey, the compass works,” I said. Then I looked at our GPS plotter. It was working as well.

  “Should I set course for Portsmouth, Harry?”

  “Yes, then well drive to Providence. I want to personally deliver Roger to his wife.”

  Roger, of course, began to cry.

  Chapter 60

  Soon after we crossed the wormhole, we listened to a local radio station for the latest news. The biggest news was a report of the time and date—2:30 p.m., May 5, 2020.

  “Dear God,” Roger said. “I’ve only been gone for eight hours.”

  Then he checked his cell phone, which was now working.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “I have over a dozen calls from Janey and a ton of text messages.”

  “Well go ahead and call her, Roger,” Meg said. “She must be frantic.”

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” he kept repeating. “All I can tell you right now is that it’s a long story. I’m with a couple of new friends. We’ll be tying the boat up in Portsmouth and then driving to Providence.”

  Meg tugged at his arm.

  “Roger, why don’t you ask Janey to meet us at Leyte Hall. Harry and I will put you two up in a luxury suite. You need a few days off.”

  I thought Meg’s idea was great. She then called Tim Clancy to arrange for the Cramers’ stay.

  When we got to Leyte Hall, Janey Cramer was waiting for us on the dock. Janey was a stunning woman, about 5’9” with long auburn hair. She wore a yellow summer dress and sandals. Meg tossed over a line to Janey and she tied it to a chock. She climbed aboard, wrapped her arms around Roger and cried.

  “You said it was a long story, honey. I’m waiting.”

  We had lunch in our private dining room overlooking Narragansett Bay. Roger recounted his years in the future, going into more detail than he had with us. When he got to the part about The Event, and that he realized Janey was in a plane, I thought he would start crying again. He did, and so did Janey. And Meg. It was such an emotional scene I started to fill up myself. Meg offered to give them a tour of Leyte Hall, while I went to my office to work the telephone.

  ***

  I paused before my first call. What the hell was I going to say? “Hi, Harry Fenton here just calling to let you know that the world will end in less than a year.” My first thought was to call the Secretary of Defense, but then I realized that I should go right to the top. I decided to call Jake Arnold, President Blake’s chief of staff. Jake and I know each other well and know that we can be straight with one another.

  “Mr. Arnold, it’s Harry Fenton on the phone. He says it’s important that he speak to you.”

  “How’s my favorite admiral, or is it innkeeper now? My sister and brother-in-law stayed at Leyte Hall a few weeks ago and can’t stop talking about it. You and Meg, not surprisingly, have pulled off another class act. My secretary said you have something important to talk to me about.”

  “You know how insane I am about security, Jake, even though I’m now a civilian. I know your phone is secure, but I can’t guarantee my end. I need to see you, and I think you’ll want me to talk with President Blake as well. Can you see us tomorrow?”

  “How about 11 a.m. tomorrow. When Harry Fenton says something’s important—it’s important. I’ll have a government jet waiting for you at the VIP area of Green Airport in Providence. Will Meg be with you?”

  “Yes, Meg and a physics professor you don’t know, but will get to know real fast. His wife may be with us, but she won’t attend the meeting.”

  “Harry, I share your concerns about security, but just give me a barebones hint as to what our meeting will be about.”

  “The end of the world.”

  Chapter 61

  When we got to the airport in Providence we went to the VIP area where two armed Marines greeted us. They escorted us onto the tarmac where a Gulfstream G650 awaited.

  “Wow, the Harry Fenton name still rings bells in Washington,” Meg said. “Our own Gulfstream.”

  During our flight to Washington, Meg and I gave the Cramers a crash course in the fine art of keeping your mouth shut.

  “We’re all civilians here, but let me talk as if it were a military operation. Roger, you’ve seen the future and it’s horrifying. If not the end of the world, it was the beginning of the end. Our mission, if you want to call it that, is simple. We want to sound the alarm loud and clear. But sometimes the alarm is best sounded by whispering. We want to prevent The Event as Roger calls it. The only way to do that is to maintain absolute secrecy. Meg and I, because of our former positions, still have top secret security clearances. I suspect
that you will shortly have that clearance as well. I have no authority to order you, but I ask you, as fellow Americans—actually, I beg you—do not say a word about Roger’s experience to anybody. Our objective is clear—we want to avoid The Event. Roger’s story is fascinating, as well as scary. And because it’s fascinating, you’re one cocktail party away from blowing it. Unless you’re in an official meeting, forget you ever heard the acronym EMP. Roger, you’re an expert in the phenomenon, and when our mission is done, you will no-doubt write a best-selling book. But our mission of preventing the attack of May 6, 2021, takes absolute precedence. Are you guys okay with what I just said?”

  “Admiral Harry, it seems to me that you’re our leader and we’ve just been signed to your team,” Roger said. “You have my solemn promise that I won’t leak a word to anyone.”

  “That goes for me too, admiral,” Janey said. “I want to do anything in my power to prevent the hell that Roger went through.”

  “Thank you, and your country thanks you. Hey, you guys can call me Harry. I’m not an admiral, just a humble innkeeper.”

  “Something tells me that you’re going to be an admiral again soon,” Roger said. “Our country needs a solid dose of the Fenton Doctrine.”

  ***

  Roger, Meg, and I were escorted into the White House by two Marines. Janey was not expected to be at the meeting, and she was fine with that. We met with Jake Arnold in his office. After a few preliminaries we got right down to the purpose of our meeting. I first spoke about the time travel journey that Meg and I took to the year 2021.

  “Can’t you two stay put in the present time?” Jake said with a chuckle.

  “After what Roger Cramer tells you, Jake, you’ll be damn glad we time tripped. Roger, go ahead and tell Jake the story, the whole story.”