by Brad Raylend
Todd jotted down notes as Bohden spoke. He was having a tough time believing this mission brief. He restrained himself from asking questions, knowing that there would be time for that at the end. He wondered if they were going to have him try and kill his same-self. The idea of killing what was basically his clone was absolutely surreal.
“Your mission,” Bohden said. He tapped the bottom corner of the screen. A large face shot of York enlarged and took up half of the screen, along with a detailed physical description and Bio. “Is to find Todd York, and or his MTX, and ensure that he cannot use time travel at his own accord. I don’t think Todd would try and do anything that could have negative effects on the future, but having that technology floating around in the past is extremely dangerous. So again, your mission is to simply retrieve the technology.”
Bohden swiped his hand across the screen, removing the image of York. He then pressed the top left-hand corner of the screen which had a small minimized image. The image enlarged and overlaid the map with grid lines and flight patterns for Odin. There were also wind calculations for the present time.
“Execution: Tomorrow at 2300, you will insert via HALO into the outskirts of the city of Durango. From there you will make your way into town and attempt to find York. If he has already left … which he most likely has, you will need to speak with the people in the town and try to find out where he has gone.”
Kara chimed in, “The population of Durango in 1887 was approximately three hundred. If he has passed through, chances are people in the town will know of him, or would have at least seen him. Plus, you shouldn’t have a difficult time describing what he looks like.”
Todd smiled at her sarcasm and looked back at Bohden, who stood off to the side of the large screen with his arms crossed.
“As far as logistics and command and signal go …” he said as he pulled up a chair and sat down, “that will be handled from here at the facility. We will monitor your status by EUHF texts and voice memos from your MTX. You will also use this to contact us for extraction, or in the case of an emergency.”
Todd glanced around the room at the others with a look of confusion. “So … how is it possible that I can send messages to you when you’re almost a hundred and thirty years in the future?”
Albrecht stood up and called on the lights. He walked over to the large screen and cleared it out and selected an option on the desktop that opened a clear white screen with a toolbar on the bottom. He then drew a large circle.
“Have you ever heard of ghost frequencies?” he asked as he drew several more layers of circles around the original.
Todd shook his head and shrugged.
“Believe it or not, our grand method for communicating with the past was actually a big hobby for many years. People would come up here to the North Pole and use basic frequency transmission equipment to listen to lost frequencies transmitted from the past. Individuals had claimed to have heard voice transmissions from the Vietnam War. All we did was take it to the next step.”
“How does that work?” asked Todd.
Albrecht then drew continents on the middle circle, and a little antenna on the top of what was his illustration of the Earth. “Among the five layers of the Earth’s atmosphere is the Ionosphere. It’s called the Ionosphere because solar radiation from the sun is ionized in this layer. Think of it as a giant invisible ocean of electrons floating around and crashing into each other about a kilometer above the Earth’s surface.” He drew squiggly lines originating from South America; they went up and rode in between one of the layers of his atmosphere. “So, when a radio transmission is sent from … let’s say South America, 1970. The invisible wavelengths travel up to this ‘ocean’ and get caught amongst the other infinite amounts of radio waves floating around. Like a large body of water, these frequencies get caught in a current that ends up at the North axis of the planet where they are intercepted by us many years later.”
Todd chuckled. “How do you catch only my transmissions and not the millions of others headed here?”
“We use a special frequency range known as Enhanced Ultra High Frequencies, or EUHF. It has a much greater range than UHF, which is about three hundred megahertz. EUHF has nearly a thousand, which makes it a much stronger signal and makes it easy to pick out from the rest.”
Bohden gave Todd a look which made it clear that he was concerned whether Todd was grasping the information. “Regardless of how the tech works, it is important that you fully understand the mission first,” said Bohden.
Todd nodded in agreement.
Albrecht cleared out the screen and the monitor displayed the satellite image once more. Bohden stood up and placed his right hand in his pocket, and with his left, he scratched his dark facial hair. “Do you have any questions?” he asked.
Todd thought for a moment, then asked, “If I don’t find him, how long do I keep up with this search?”
Bohden let out a shallow breath. “If you can’t find him within a week, and you have not a single lead as to where he might be, radio us for extraction.”
“What equipment will I be taking with me?” Todd asked. “A futuristic combat suit and a suppressed assault rifle won’t be exactly incognito in this time period.”
Bohden chuckled. “You will be going in unarmed on this one. Any weaponry needed must be procured on site. The suit, however will need to stay on you, or at least in a safe place where you can retrieve it at any time.” He put his other hand in his pocket and rocked on his heels. “If it were me, I would go cloaked for the entire mission. We are just coming into the spring months so it shouldn’t be too hot there. The suit’s built-in temperature control will come in handy on the cold nights and warm days, and your helmet’s HUD is very useful for night vision, thermal, and land navigation. There is a good chance that York has not moved very far since his arrival because of the lack of transportation in that era. There aren’t exactly city buses cruising around back then.”
Todd pondered for a moment, then licked his lips. “So … if, and when I find him, if he is hostile towards me and I have to …” He looked over at Kara, who was staring at him intensely. “ … take him out. Will anything happen to me?”
Albrecht shook his head. “No, you and him are two separate beings. The moment you step out of the timeline, you in essence create another you.”
“But what if I were to kill my seventeen-year-old self who is in Colorado right now?” Todd asked.
Albrecht rubbed the back of his neck. “Then theoretically, yes … you would cease to exist the moment his heart stopped. As far as we know, and assume … the seventeen-year-old Todd York living in Colorado is living an identical life as you, meaning he will make every decision that leads him to the same conclusion. However, that will most likely change after a few operations here.”
Todd shook his head in disbelief, having a hard time grasping the complexity of time travel. He looked at the others, who were staring at him, waiting for him to speak. D’s mouth clicked as he obnoxiously chewed on a large wad of gum. Kara sat with her legs crossed, holding a clear tablet. Next to her was Kevin wearing black rimmed reading glasses, tapping his heel on the floor, his hands crossed in his lap. Todd looked at the three and couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable for even bringing up the possibility of killing a friend of theirs. After reading through the rest of the York’s journal, Todd had concluded that York was most definitely a threat, possibly even unstable. He could see in her eyes that Kara was deeply troubled.
Bohden headed to the back of the room towards the room entrance. “Wheels up at 1300 tomorrow. Let me know if you have any more questions.”
Kevin stood up and patted Todd on the shoulder as he turned and left the room with D right behind him.
Kara stared at the smoky linoleum flooring lit up by the giant monitor. Todd stood up and cracked his neck and stretched out his legs. The clock on the left wall was about to hit 11 a.m. He looked over at Kara, trying to figure out the right words to possibly help ease he
r nerves. He was about to ask her if she was okay, but she stood and walked out. Todd stood in the dark room with Albrecht sitting in the chair next to him. Todd exhaled and scratched the back of his head.
“You doing alright, Todd?” asked Albrecht.
Todd paced around the front of the room for a moment with his hands on his hips, his dark figure moving slowly in front of the bright monitor. He noticed the eyes of multiple students manning the workstations in the room, watching him.
Todd looked over at Albrecht who sat with his left leg perched across his right. He had in his hands a large cup of coffee that rested atop his tablet. Overall, Todd felt that the mission prep and the brief itself had been uncomfortably rushed. He had only been at the facility for a little over two weeks, and he still felt much like a stranger among the students. The combination of his uncertainty, the lack of solid intel on the target’s location, and the fact that this was without a doubt the most complex mission he had ever conducted gave him an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Todd’s restlessness made Albrecht uneasy. He knew him far better than Todd realized, and he was all too familiar with his silent disapproval of such matters.
“I don’t know, it just sounds dicey to me. This guy could be anywhere in the world, and at any time in history,” Todd said, shaking his head.
Albrecht took a sip of his coffee, then leaned back in his chair. “This is the reason why we found you, Todd, and not some other elite soldier. Put yourself in his shoes. If you were going to run away, to any place or time in history … where would you go?”
Todd rotated his jaw as he stared at the dark floor, trying his best to answer the question as honestly as possible. He thought back to his childhood and recalled his days as a young boy venturing out into the vast Colorado landscape. Growing up, he had developed quite the sense of adventure. He had fallen in love with the sheer size and beauty of yet a dangerous world around him. His mother had gotten used to having a large stock of Band-Aids ready for him upon his return from his adventures. Although his untamable spirit deeply worried her, it brought her happiness to see him so enthralled with life.
It was common knowledge amongst the residences of Bayfield that Durango was established in the late 1800s, just south of Animas City. Many of the old buildings had been replaced by modern structures, and it seemed as if the entire history of the town had been swept under the rug to make way for a technology-driven era. However, a few buildings from the nineteenth century remained to remind the population of a history long lost. Todd and his friends from school would spend hours playing cowboys and Indians out in the many acres surrounding their homes, shooting at each other with cap guns and chewing bubble gum and pretending it was tobacco. Something about the Wild West had fascinated him his entire life.
To Todd, the remains of the buildings were not just that of an old town, but a symbol of something long forgotten. Something very few still held onto in the United States in the year 2030. He could not put it into words, but if he had to, he would call it the human spirit. People of that time weren’t given anything. They had to work to survive, constantly struggling through the hardships of living out west. Whole families could die if the man of the house was not able to provide for them, and in order to do that, it called for back-breaking manual labor.
The one thing he fantasized the most about was the freedom of the old world. Even though life was hard in those days, people were truly free. The world and all its beauty were open to them to explore without limitation. In today’s world it seemed like there were limitations and regulations put in place to keep people in check. Laws, boundaries, and forms of accountability that were intrusions of people’s privacy were implemented due to the rising threat of terrorism, communism, and the overall growing reliance of technology. The way Todd saw it, the modern world had become too easy for everyone, and far less interesting, as everybody channeled down the same linear path towards mediocracy. Perhaps this explained his career choice, as he most likely viewed combating evil around the world as the only true adventure left. There was no shortage of evil.
“I’d go where he went,” Todd said.
Albrecht nodded. “Every time the MTX is utilized, we receive the data on the time initiated. The last time he activated it was when he went to ‘87. It hasn’t been used since then. So, we know he is still there.”
Todd cocked his head “What if he lost it?”
Albrecht looked at him and chuckled. “That would be extremely dangerous. As you know, the device is locked with an entry code, but still … if some prospector came across it lying in the desert … God knows what could be altered. York is no idiot. I don’t think he would allow such a thing to happen.”
Todd breathed out heavily and scratched the back of his head again. The crucial need for success on the op was beginning to set in. The tingling sensation in his stomach picked up as it did before he conducted any mission. It was never necessarily the danger that worried him, but rather the overall scope, and the always present uncertainty. He dropped his arm and slapped the side of his leg,
“I’m going to go prep my gear,” he said as he headed for the door. The eyes of the students in the room dropped to their monitors as he passed them.
* * *
July 20, 2012
I sat on the closed ramp of Odin with my head in my hands. I watched my tears drip onto the cold steel of the cargo area floor and disappear into the dark spacings. It was another six hours before we would reach the North Pole. The flight felt like an eternity as the memory of Suong’s corpse was burned into my mind. I had failed her. Why hadn’t I stayed close enough to the village to protect her?
My original mission had to been to kill Soviet operatives who were supplying and training the Vietcong. I could give two shits about the Vietnam War. I had conducted several ops there and it was obvious there was no winning that conflict. The country’s leadership was spineless, the civilians were divided, and the conventional troops were out of their element. I had a hard enough time keeping a low profile in the jungle just by myself with modern technology. I couldn’t imagine walking around with a bunch of dumb ass grunts who didn’t want to be there in the first place.
I heard soft footsteps. I looked up and saw Kara standing in the doorway leading to the pressurized cabin. She looked saddened at the sight of me breaking down. She walked over and sat next to me. Hugging her knees, I looked up at her, tears pooling in my reddened eyes and streaking down my cheeks. Her eyes became glossy at the sight. She placed her hand on my forearm and I leaned into her, resting my head in her lap. Her other arm cradled my head, and she stroked her fingers through my hair. We sat there for the next hour. She was warm, and comforting. I never told her about what happened with Suong or the soldiers.
I didn’t want her to think less of me, nor did I want to expose her to the evil that I had seen … and done.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE OP
Todd stood in his room, viewing himself in the mirror. He was wearing the armored suit and felt like he was looking at a poster for some futuristic action movie. His gear was laid out on his bed behind him. He wasn’t bringing much for the op. His helmet and web gear/parachute were stretched out with each pouch open so he could check the contents inside.
He carried in his kit a small number of rations, med gear, hundred-foot cable lanyard, some anesthetic agents, and York’s journal. He practically felt naked taking such little equipment. He was especially uncomfortable with going in unarmed. He wasn’t expecting it to be the O.K. Corral everywhere he went, but it was the Wild West, after all.
A knock on the door startled him and shook him out of his daydreaming. He opened it to find Amber standing with her hands folded to her front. She rocked slightly up and down on her toes.
“What’s up?” Todd asked.
“Todd, I know you’re extremely busy right now, but could you come give me and Kevin a hand in the warehouse?” she said with a slight grin.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, “just let me change really q
uick.”
He squeezed out of the tight suit and quickly put on some of York’s old clothes. He then followed Amber out of the hallway and through the mess room. They walked down the main corridor past the large windows. The rooms were empty and not a single student was at a monitor or work station.
“Where is everyone?” Todd asked, looking around the building and into doorways as they passed.
Amber continued walking towards the main entrance and answered without looking back. “It’s an early day tomorrow for everyone, so they called it around five.”
He shivered as they made their way over to the warehouse. “For the love of God! You guys really need to connect the two buildings!” he yelled over the howling winds.
Amber laughed and opened the warehouse door. The winds were quickly drowned out by loud thumping music from inside. Todd walked in and was immediately greeted by a large group of students standing in the main area of the warehouse. The rec room’s bar was lined with the older males of the bunch while the tables and open areas were occupied by the remainder of them. Some were dancing with each other to the loud electronic music that made the steel walls vibrate.
Amber smiled and yelled over the music, “I lied!”
Todd grinned, shaking his head. He walked into the rec room and was greeted once more, this time by several raised glasses. He waved and made his way to the bar where Kevin was serving drinks. Kevin smiled at the sight of him and began pouring him something that resembled lemonade.
“So, this is what you guys do for fun, huh?” Todd said, looking around the room.
Kevin chuckled and handed him the large drink. “Told you I’d get you back for the bathroom thing. They may be a bunch of science nerds living in the North Pole, but they are still college students at heart.”
Todd sipped the drink and licked his lips. He rotated the glass in his hand and looked at it in surprise. “Damn, this is good!” he said, taking another drink.