Same Self

by Brad Raylend

  Todd rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at the suit. “That’s incredible.” He frowned. “Wait, you say the colliding protons generate massive amounts of energy, right? So, what about the explosion?”

  “Similar to an aircraft breaking the sound barrier, there is an audible boom when the wearer initiates the sequence. But the process itself is practically seamless to our perception … and painless, of course.”

  Todd nodded at his semi grasp of the science behind it. He was immediately beginning to regret asking about the science of the technology, as he was finding himself daydreaming through the briefing.

  “I’m sure you are familiar with micro imaging cloaking tech? Being in a Tier One unit and all, am I right?” Amber said.

  Todd nodded, staring at the suit. “Huh … oh yeah, I’m familiar with it, I’ve used it before but I’ve always thought the tech was a little too ahead of its time. Seemed like every time we used it, it wasn’t as handy as one would think because our missions are usually conducted at night and I’m hiding behind something anyway. Being somewhat invisible just made it harder to keep track of my team.”

  Amber appeared slightly insulted by this. “Well I can assure you that the tech in this suit is top of the line. When activated, and the user is completely still, there is less than five percent image displacement. So you don’t see that effect that looks similar to looking through an odd-shaped vase of water, and with the armor plating,” she said, pointing at the many black plates, “you are nearly bullet proof as well.”

  Todd nodded, fascinated. “So what controls it all?”

  Amber walked over to a small cell-phone-looking device and picked it up off a table. She walked back to Todd and handed it to him.

  “This device controls the amount of energy put out by the cables. The more power put out, the farther back in time you go … to put it bluntly,” she said. “Specifying exactly what year you intend to travel to is just a conversion of the calculations for the wormhole. Selecting the year is really just determining how long the wormhole is open. Because the calculations are so expansive, and the time frame in which it is open is so fast, we cannot specify the exact month or day you travel to. You merely arrive in the past at the same time and day … if that makes sense.”

  Amber made a sphere shape with her hands. “Whatever is within the radius of the explosion is sent into the wormhole. This makes the whole traveling process a much-planned event. With the possibility of sending pieces of the environment along with you back in time, not to mention the displacement theory … going back in time can be extremely dangerous.”

  Todd shrugged. “Displacement theory?”

  Albrecht stepped into the conversation once more. “Well it’s not a theory anymore, but basically it is the idea that going back in time to a random location could prove to be catastrophic, considering that the place where you might initiate it may have undergone major geological transformations between the time span from where you are and where you’re going.”

  Todd raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Can you dumb that down for me?”

  Albrecht grinned. “Okay, let’s say you are standing in a desert in present time, and you initiate the sequence. Whatever year you travel to, there could have been a damn tree where you are standing.”

  Todd swallowed. “Shit.”

  Amber laughed. “Don’t worry though, we have found the best method for initiating the sequence.”

  “Which is?” Todd asked.

  Albrecht looked at him. “Well I believe you Delta Force guys use it quite a bit to get into places you’re not supposed to be.”

  Todd smiled. “You mean HALO?”

  Albrecht nodded, “At thirty thousand feet you have more than enough time to initiate the sequence, which mind you is only a split second, then land at a safe location. This also allows you to get into places unseen. Which is sort of important when you are wearing millions of dollars of high tech equipment and you come flying into some ancient civilization.” He shook his head and laughed. “I don’t even want to think about the headache of resetting a mistake like that again.”

  “You mean that’s happened?” Todd asked.

  Albrecht let out a sigh. “Let’s just say there is a reason why we chose to send elite military operators into the past, and not clumsy scientists.”

  A smile broke over Todd’s face.

  Albrecht walked over to an empty desk and sat down. He tapped the screen of the monitor and it began powering up. Todd pulled up a chair opposite the desk.

  “So, I get how you go back in time but … how do you get back to the present?”

  Albrecht nodded. “Good question. We were wondering the same thing for a long time, and it ended up being about as stupid of an answer as you could get.”

  Humor spread across Todd’s face. “Which was?”

  Albrecht chuckled. “Jump off a bridge.”

  Todd leaned back in his chair. “You talking about base jumping … or committing suicide?”

  Albrecht grinned. “At first we thought base jumping would be the best bet. With modern parachute technology, it’s not hard to carry around the retractable one-hundred-square-foot chute during an operation and deploy it for extraction; keeping in mind that base jumping in itself is quite a gamble with a lot of unpredictable variables. So, on one operation in Vietnam, York lost his chute in an explosion in Huế City. He radioed us, informing us of what happened. We were worried that he wouldn’t be able to make it back, but the clever bastard did the simplest thing that totally made us rethink our methods.”

  “Which was …?” Todd asked.

  Albrecht smiled big. “He hopped up in the air and pressed the button. When he came back down he was in present day Vietnam standing in the middle of a street.”

  Todd laughed and shook his head. “I could see me trying something like that.”

  “Once we get the Operator back to the present, we then just simply pick him up,” Albrecht said as he typed away.

  Todd leaned back in his chair and watched the workers around the room as they tampered with devices and took notes. He studied the various individuals; most of them besides Kevin appeared to be in their mid-twenties, most likely right out of college.

  “How did you get all these people out here?” he asked.

  Albrecht glanced around at the studious individuals, and a slight smile broke over his face. “Most of them were my students at the University I taught at when I wasn’t being the government’s favorite lab rat. They all showed such great potential; they were all promising minds for the future.” His face turned stern. “A future that had no place for great minds, or good people.”

  Todd could see the sadness in his eyes. He ignored the fact that the professor had danced around the question. “You were there, weren’t you? You were in the original timeline.”

  Albrecht nodded. “Yes, in the original timeline the war began in December of 2019. We were safe from it for about four years. I was fortunate enough to have a way out, however, when things got really bad. The key to salvation. Others … were not so fortunate,” he said, shaking his head.

  Todd leaned forward and motioned to the students around the room. “So you saved all these people?”

  Albrecht rubbed his eyes then placed his glasses back on his face. “You can’t save everyone, Todd … but yeah, I promised I would take care of them.”

  Todd pondered on this for a moment. It was obvious there was something Albrecht wasn’t willing to share. Perhaps he had lost someone dear to him. Todd found it somewhat depressing that even with the power of time travel, someone would still be saddened by the past.

  Kara walked into the R&D lab holding a large folder and clipboard. She looked at Todd, then at Albrecht. Albrecht turned to her and nodded.

  “Alright Todd, time for you and Kara to get reacquainted,” he said as he turned to his monitor and began typing away on the keyboard displayed on the touch screen table.

  Kara was wearing a white turtleneck sweater, a
nd her long bangs were brushed back and clipped above her ear. As Todd approached her, he realized his bandaged chest was showing. He zipped up his flight suit to collar bone level.

  “Follow me, Mr. York,” she said softly as she turned and walked out into the main hallway.

  He followed her past the large windows, past the break room and restrooms, to the very end of the main corridor where a staircase turned left at the landing and led to another large hallway. They walked past several doors; most of them appeared to be single offices. At the very end of the hall, Kara entered a code into a key pad and the metal door slid open. Inside was a large, carpeted room, dimly lit by a few LED lamps. The floor dropped down a foot near the far wall and presented enormous windows that stretched from the base of the floor up, curving towards the middle of the ceiling. In the center of the room was a large pillar which seemed to separate the room into what was both her office and her bedroom. She walked over to her desk and set down the folder.

  Todd paced around the room for a moment. Her bed was against the far wall, neatly made. Next to it was a nightstand with a picture on it, but he couldn’t make out the individual in the photo because of the glare from the lamp above it. He restrained himself from nosing around any further.

  “You have quite the view here,” he said, looking out the massive windows into the white landscape outside. It appeared as though he were on another planet as the setting looked so surreal.

  She turned in her chair. “Professor Albrecht insisted that I have this room. I feel selfish to have the best room in the facility, but I must say it is well worth it when the Northern Lights are out.”

  “I bet,” he said as he turned and made his way over to the desk, where he pulled up a chair. “So, what exactly are we going to talk about?”

  “You,” she said as she powered on her monitor and opened the folder. “Shall we start from the beginning? Most of the information I have from the previous York should be accurate; however, considering you two took different career paths in the military, there is no telling how much is different.” She scanned through the documents which appeared to be everything from his medical records and financial records, all of which were side by side with York’s personal information. Todd noticed the military service records beside each other, York’s being labeled “Department of the Navy.” Todd nodded and she began reading out loud the information on each page.

  “You were born Todd Michael York, October 3rd, year 2000, in Seattle, Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your parents were Michael and Ann York?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused for a moment, then straightened in her chair. “Your father … you had a difficult relationship with him during your childhood?”

  Todd answered slowly, “Uh … yeah, what little time I did see him; he wasn’t exactly the fatherly type.”

  “Can you clarify?” she asked, scribbling notes.

  “Honestly, I don’t really remember him that well. When he wasn’t slapping me and my mother around he was sleeping at some bar. I found out later that he had been in deep with drug dealers when he was a kid living in Miami. This information was brought to my attention during the extensive background checks conducted on me when I was trying out for CAG. I don’t think he was into drugs anymore when I was around, but I guess you never really can escape your past. From what I could tell, my mother had been his way out; she opened his eyes and helped him out of that life. Unfortunately, I never saw the ‘good side’ that my mother often spoke of. Finally, she gave him the slip and took me to Colorado. I never saw him again.”

  Kara looked up at him, then back down at her notes. She continued writing down something. “Can you tell me about your mother?”

  “She was kind and caring. She was no saint, but she was a good mother, and I seemed to be the only thing she cared about.” He paused and thought hard, trying to recall as much as he could about her, but he seemed to be at a loss for words. “She passed away when I was a year into my military career. She was killed in a car accident one night on her way back from work.”

  Kara looked saddened by this. She shook her head and kept writing. “Tell me about your military career.”

  Todd leaned back in his chair. “Jeez, uh, well, I joined the Army in 2018. After basic training, I went to Ranger assessment, then went to the 75th Ranger Regiment. I spent nearly six years in the ‘Bat usually pulling security for Delta Force. We fought the early communist movements in Eastern Europe. Before all that, we did a lot of work in Africa.” He rocked in his chair, looking up at the ceiling as he recalled his history.

  “When did you become a member of Combat Applications Group?” she asked.

  He exhaled “20 … 2023, I passed selection and began OTC. I became fully active the next year. After that, I deployed … everywhere.”

  “How do you like being a soldier?” she asked in a way that seemed as if she were asking out of her own curiosity rather than to evaluate him.

  Todd took in a deep breath through his nose, then let it out quickly. “It’s not a very rewarding life.”

  “Why?” she asked gingerly.

  “The biggest payoff at the end of each day is usually self-gratitude. You spend your whole career itching towards an end state, whether that be some high-speed unit, a qualification, or some higher billet. And when you finally get there, you are reminded that nothing is ever what it seems and that you are never satisfied.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “I ask myself the same question every day, and honestly … I can’t answer it. I guess it’s just what I was meant to be. The only thing I was ever good at.”

  Kara looked troubled by his explanation. “Friends?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Sooner or later you part ways with them.”

  “How so?” she asked.

  “They either move on, get out, or die right next to you. In the end the job leaves you the exact way you started out …”

  Todd and Kara both simultaneously said the last word, “Alone.”

  He looked up to find her eyes locked on his. He looked back down at the table. She continued with her questions.

  “So, when did World War III begin?”

  He scratched the stubble below his jaw. “Officially, it began in the summer of 2030. Unofficially … it started several years earlier.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked

  “For the regular military and the U.S. citizens, 2030 is when we started fighting them, but I was killing Chinese and Russian soldiers as early as 2025.”

  Her sharp eyes moved from the desk to his and cut through him; whatever arrogance he felt from relaying his extensive military past was immediately obliterated by her potent gaze. It felt like she was looking into his soul, through all the boasting and temerity. She was the type of person it would be impossible to lie to; if her eyes didn’t get you, her pure kindness and almost childlike sensibility would. Her confidence was a result of her intelligence; what she lacked in sociability she made up for with her crisp, educated demeanor.

  “How are you feeling since the event in D.C.?” she asked

  He didn’t want to talk about it, truthfully, but he didn’t want to insult her by not letting her do her job. “It’s not exactly easy seeing your friends dead around you, and feeling somewhat responsible.”

  She stopped writing, set down her pen, and looked at him. “It’s not your fault … you can’t control who lives or dies,” she said.

  Todd didn’t look up from the table. He didn’t want to be comforted, he just wanted to fix what had happened. “Hmm, coming from the people who can travel back in time. You want to know something funny?” He quickly breathed out through his nose and shook his head. “I woke up last night … and for a moment truly believed I was dead … that this was the afterlife and that my mind had created this entire situation. You know what finally convinced me that this was actually all real? If I were dead, why would I be doing the same exact shit I have been doin
g my whole life? Answering these types of questions, receiving briefings, training … I may not be dead, but I think I am destined to do this type of thing forever.”

  Kara looked at him intensely. She felt something gnawing at her within; there was so much she wanted to tell him, but she feared what it could do. The man in front of her was not the man she had known for the past five years. He didn’t bear the same level of mental and physical scars, but she feared that soon, he would. That was the last thing she wanted for him.

  “Does this mean you do not want to help us?”

  Todd sighed. “I don’t even know what you want me to do exactly, but I don’t really see any other option.”

  THE COMPANY MAN

  Todd walked into the break room and grabbed a soda out of the fridge. He turned to see a man sitting at one of the tables who was obviously different from everyone else.

  He was grizzled-looking and tall with a muscular frame. He lounged in his chair, legs straight in front of him, one resting atop the other, wearing a familiar brand of hiking shoes that were popular among Special Operators. He was drinking a cup of coffee and reading something on a touch screen tablet.

  “How you hold’n up, man?” he said. His eyes didn’t leave the transparent screen which displayed several paragraphs of text.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Todd replied.