"Let's say the boss has confidence in you."
"What if I can't convince them to do it? To send someone back?"
"Don't you worry about that." He waved a hand dismissively. "That'll all be set up when you get there. You just need to ride herd an be sure they don't screw it up."
He, they, weren't even asking. In a world with a different history Agnes might've told them to go to hell, but the sinking feeling in her stomach told her it wouldn't be happening in this one. She'd have to find her way through the labyrinth and hope that wasn't the screaming from an abattoir she heard on the other side.
"An especially watch that Pruitt fella," he added. "From what I hear he's bad news."
You don't know the half of it.
"Justin here," he added as an after-thought. "He'll help you. Keep the lines of communications with me open."
And watch my every step. That much was so obvious it wouldn't be worth doing if it weren't for the spy already there. This kid walking on her heels was there to keep her from wondering who the one really watching is. Nothing like trust among colleagues.
"Well I think that's..."
"I'll need them to release the terrorist to me."
"Release him to you? Why do you need that?"
"Think about it for a second Rick. You want proof. He's the only one who can tell you exactly where to go to get it."
"You go to the door when she let'em in."
"And what time was that? Exactly? Should they wait inside or outside? No." She shook her head. "Too many variables. If you're serious, and as crazy as this is you seem to be, then he needs to be part of it." The door. The alley. The face in the window. She saw it like it was yesterday. Saw it in her dreams. Saw it in waking moments when she dared to let her guard down. She shuddered. And the one in jail. Which one was it? They'd only ever been a collection of glimpsed faces to her. But she'd need to talk to this one.
"That might be tricky."
"Sorry." She smiled. "I thought you said this was important." A waiter rushed over as she pushed her chair back.
"OK OK," he conceded. "I'll take care'uv it." He waved a hand up and down and glared the waiter back into a corner. She sat back down and consolidated victory by changing the subject.
"Isn't MITCo in an Hispanic state?"
"We still operate in the Hispanic states," Rick said, puffing up as if his manhood'd been challenged. "They're still in the US of A. Well." He pushed his chair back and stood towering over them. "I spect you two'll want to be gettin acquainted'n all, seein'z you'll be workin together." He gave them a nod and strode off to whatever occupied the afternoons of movers and shakers in the Washington bureaucracy.
"I'm looking forward..."
"Just don't forget," Agnes said as she pushed back her own chair and stood over the young man, "...that you're the flunky. Remember that and we'll get along fine."
Justin watched the two of them striding away across the restaurant.
"How could I ever forget that?" he asked the waiter, but he didn't seem to know.
4
"I don't get it."
The caravan idled in the in the dark prison yard. From where he stood Mike could just make out a corridor of armed guards lining a path from the door of the cell block where he'd visited the prisoner, his prisoner, he couldn't help thinking of him as his prisoner even after all these years, to the waiting cars.
"You don't need to get it. It's a matter of national security."
"National security," Mike spat. "He sits in that cage twenty-four years without saying anything and he's suddenly a threat to national security? Even your tame judges wouldn't believe that."
"You let me worry about the judges," Honeycutt snapped. Fatigue and something else, worry? fear? lined his face. "All you need to worry about is whether or not you're coming."
Mike took a deep breath, watched the silent, shuffling parade in front of him. Only an occasional cough and foot scratching against the dirt broke the quiet.
"Look," Honeycutt said over the roof of his car. He forced an attempt at a friendly smile onto his face. "Whatever he told you they want him to say more and figure the accommodations here aren't helping matters. So they're sending him somewhere else. You," he pointed a finger across the top of the car, "...are invited because up to now you're the only person he'll talk to. What's so hard to understand about that?"
What's so hard to understand? It's impossible to understand. How many years'd Mike reached out to little Griff. Little Griff? So many years that little Griff was a grown man. Then what happens? A case comes out of his past and sends him right to where Griff works. Some force pushing them together. So that small pain in his stomach, that tingling across his skin. That's excitement right? But what's excitement? Just fear with a veneer of hope. Hope for what? Reconciliation? As long as Griff's just ignoring his calls maybe one day...maybe... But what if he looks Griff in the eye and sees nothing there but hate? The next time he walks into that miserable, lonely apartment he lives in and looks around he'll know that's it. The rest of his miserable, lonely life laid out in front of him like a long, straight conveyor belt to the undertaker's incinerator. The final nail in the coffin to bury his hope in. What's hard to understand about being afraid of that?
"There's something they're not telling me," he finally said because he had to say something.
"Not telling you?" Honeycutt rolled his eyes in exasperation. "What planet do you live on? They only tell any of us what they want us to know and sometimes they don't even tell us that much. Your problem isn't that they aren't telling you. Your problem is that for some reason you think you've got some right to know. I," he jabbed a thumb into his chest. "...on the other hand lost any illusions about that a long time ago."
They turned at the almost imperceptible murmur that rose from the armed men assembled around them. A light flashed through an opened door framing a thin, manacled figure peering tentatively into the dark. He disappeared as the shaft of light from the door narrowed and was gone, then gradually reemerged as a shadow shuffling toward the dark cars.
"So," Honeycutt went on after he'd turned back to look at Mike. "You coming or what?" He smiled to hide what he knew that Mike didn't. The retired cop was coming. That much'd been made clear from on high.
The prisoner's shadow reached the third car in the caravan and was guided in by the timeless hand on top of the head. Two guards disappeared behind him into the car and the others started to disperse into the other vehicles or fanned out into a widening circle.
"I'll think about it."
Honeycutt gave a final rap on the roof and strode off to the car behind the prisoner. He threw a last glimpse at Mike, half lit by the light from the towers, then ducked into the car. "Close." The door swished closed behind him.
Honeycutt fell into the seat with a grunt. The young man on the other end of the seat looked up over the screen projected on a small, white sheet of plastic balanced on his knees. No gratitude in his eyes for the reduced sentence he'd received for doing the government this little favor. He'd known they'd come for him sometime before his sentence was served. As he'd told Honeycutt when he'd shown up, "government hackers can't hack it."
"Well?"
"No problem. He's coming."
"But you're not taking control until we're sure he's not telling the car to follow. Right?"
"We talked about this," the kid sighed as he eyed his screen. "I don't take over unless he decides not to follow. I got it covered."
Honeycutt nodded. He turned and glanced out the window as the guards who weren't coming backed away from the vehicles. The headlights flipped on, bathing the prisoner's car in light as it glided away. Honeycutt felt the movement of his vehicle and turned around to look out the rear window.
The line of cars each waited the regulation distance then followed the one in front of it. Honeycutt kept his eyes on the last vehicle. It sat dark as the others moved away. "Not yet," he said with a wave of his hand.
The kid didn't bother to answer. Just sighed again. Honeycutt's stomach sank as he watched Mike's car start to disappear into the dark they were leaving behind. He was just about to give the order when its lights flipped on and the two beams began rolling forward.
"Did you do that?" he snapped.
"Oh no man," the kid answered, grinning. "He's a volunteer. Like me."
5
Time Travel Protocol 4-7-2015-b* (Interventions):
Interventions are categorized according to their recorded effects on the present and on the immediate and distant future. (Cross reference Protocol 4-7-2015-a). Intervention categories are calculated as a distance function between statistics recorded before the mission and carried with the chrononaut and statistics recorded afterward. (Cross reference Mathematical Appendix: Intervention Calculation).
Category 0: No impact. (0% deviation)
Category 1: No measurable change in the present. Small change in the future. (< 0.5 % deviation)
Category 2: Small change in the present and future. (< 1.0 % deviation)
Category 3: Small to significant change in the present. Significant change in the future. (< 4 % deviation)
Category 4: Significant change in the present and future. (< 10 % deviation)
Category 5: Catastrophic change. (> 10 % deviation). Begin End Game sequence. (Cross reference Protocol 12-22-2021)
Mission deviations comprise the majority of chrononaut evaluations. Chrononauts judged by the Logic Committee as being responsible for significant deviations will be classified as logic risks and removed from time travel.
*(Highly Confidential: Paper Copies Only)
What was that? Monica glanced up from her screen as the car pulled off the exit ramp and slowed for the last mile to the university. Just a bird. Just a bird? Like everyone else she'd been horrified when they'd started dropping from the sky. Jumped out of the car to be sure they were dead. Scoured the screens to read explanations by scientists and environmentalists using highly specialized vocabulary to explain that they didn't know what was happening either. Now? Car computers had caught up and they didn't stop anymore. By the time the extra volume of spray that was the auto industry response had cleaned up the mess on the windshield Monica'd turned back to the screen projected on the dashboard.
"Coffee Monica?"
"Why not?" Anything to put off going in today.
She projected a screen and tapped an order. The car slowed and turned into the drive-thru lane and circled the brightly lit building. No one inside, but it wasn't a great area and they didn't get many people going through the metal detectors to sip ten dollar lattes while watching the deathscape through bulletproof glass. Once the delivery window had adjusted and nestled against her car the window next to her slid down and she took the cup off the shelf.
"Hold on." The delivery window started moving away before her car window had gotten all the way up and she got a sliver of hot air. The car air conditioner went up a notch to account for it but still. She sighed. Nothing works the way it's supposed to.
Monica sipped her coffee and watched the last few miles to the seat of higher learning where MITCo had its offices slide by, a crocodile infested moat around the ivory tower. Fast food, liquor stores and tattoo parlors fronted tenements full of people who used to work at those places before technology pushed them onto a lifetime of inadequate unemployment benefits that left them with nothing more to do than choose their form of slow suicide, fast food or liquor. Trash rolled along in the hot wind, trailing dirt that was all nature'd left behind when the drought'd killed the trees and grass. The few people in sight sat on low walls and plastic chairs outside the barred windows where the government welcomed its citizens to the services it provided. The societal equivalent of cough drops to someone dying of lung cancer.
"Why are you... why are we turning?"
"The Scott Bridge isn't considered safe Monica," the car answered with that smug tone that made Monica's teeth clench. "We're being directed to the South Street Bridge."
"South Street? That'll take forever."
"The new route is estimated to take an additional seventeen minutes over the average of the past six months. Forever..."
"Never mind," she snapped. Why in God's name had she picked that voice? She should have her head examined.
Monica shook her head. Today of all days. OK, she wanted to stall, but she knew she better not be late. And why is that Monica? What possible difference can it make? Why hadn't she just pulled the blankets over her head and pretended the world didn't exist? "Sarah," she sighed.
"I'm sorry Monica. I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it?"
"Nothing."
Sarah. How could you want to kill someone you admire? How could half of you be horrified and half wish you'd been the one with the baseball bat? She hadn't figured out any answers by the time the car'd slowed for the line at the bridge and waited for the red light staggering the crossing traffic.
The car finally inched across the bridge, thumping over metal plates while idle teams of some of the few manual laborers left watched her pass without any interest. They speeded up as they rolled off the bridge and she breathed a sigh of relief. She wouldn't make the news as the last person on a collapsed bridge today. The car passed the electronic billboards she could recite by heart. Report Suspicious Activity. Shoot Up Responsibly. The UN Year of the Victim, Celebrate the Victim.
"Come on," she sighed. Ten years since she'd actually driven a car and she still found her right foot jammed against the floor as it accelerated smoothly and rolled along at twenty-five miles an hour. She'd once emailed a letter to the editor pointing out that speed limits changed at a point in time and self-driving cars slowed gradually so by definition every car broke the law around every change in speed. They hadn't published it.
"Radio," she sighed.
"...love is forever..."
"Aaagh. Scan."
"...love comes and goes but diamonds hold their value. We pay..."
"...at Alcatraz gated communities you can play water polo in the morning and dance..."
"Off."
She took a sip and drummed her fingers on the arm of her seat.
"Can't we go any faster?"
"I'm sorry Monica. We're travelling at the maximum safe speed for current conditions."
That's the problem with machines. They couldn't understand being in a hurry. Of course most people wouldn't understand it either. Not today. What would she've said to the cop in the old days when there were traffic cops? Can't we hurry this up? I'm late for the firing squad. Standbys in case someone doesn't show? No. You don't understand. I'm the one being shot. She sighed. Oh come on. No the mission hadn't been a success, but how bad could the debrief be? Now there's a question that didn't need answering.
She watched as academic buildings and dorms rose over the compressed plastic shaped like a stone wall separating the campus from the road that ringed it. They'd finally gotten rid of the last stretch of chain link. The electronic monitoring that covered the top of the wall was a lot more effective and made the place look more like a school and less like a prison. It'd taken years to get rid of the barbed wire, which was nothing compared to how long it'd taken to replace the electrified chain link fencing with the wall. Why did everything at a university take so long? Too many educated people.
Monica squinted as the car turned into the July sun, slowed and swung right onto the access road leading to the gap in the wall. A sign on the wall read,
Northwest Polytechnic University (NPU)
A Joint Venture with Magellan Interspatial Technology Corporation (MITCo)
An incomprehensible design that was supposed to represent a spinning globe wound its way between the names. The university and firm'd evidently spent more than five million dollars on it. If you had a few beers and squinted, it could be a bouncing ball. Sober it just looked like a circle and a bunch of curved lines. Why'd she studied engineering whe
n your can make money that way?
The decorative iron gates that carried ten thousand volts at night were open during the day. Monica projected a screen onto her wrist and opened an eye wide. The overhead light flashed green and the car idled silently while the bollards sank into the ground in front of her. She waved at the guard behind his tinted, bullet proof glass as the car started to pull itself onto campus. What did he do in there all day? Stay ready to help any visitors who couldn't figure out how to project a retinal scanner? How many of those could there possibly be? Well, not her problem. No. Her problem was the debriefing and her report. Well her report was fine. Then why did she feel something creeping up the walls of her stomach every time she thought about it? Why was she so anxious to get to the debriefing and start explaining herself before anyone'd asked any questions?
The car started off through the gates and stopped with a jolt.
"What..." but the red blur in the gap between Monica's car and the gate could only be one thing. The guard threw open his door, yanking his sun goggles down over his eyes. He stared after the disappearing streak.
"Window," Monica sighed, pulling on her own sunglasses. Hot air filled the car.
"I'm going to have to report her," the guard said, still staring after the car. "They'll know if I don't. Why does she do that?" He turned toward Monica, one hand on the butt of the gun in his holster. Unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. "How does she do that?"
"Not today Joe." What the hell was she doing? Protecting Sarah? From who? The only person Sarah needed protection from was Sarah. Let security report her for hacking into her car and running the gate and see what Ted would do about it. "Please," she went on. "We're in enough trouble already." The guard shook his head without answering, shot one last look at the rise where Sarah's car'd disappeared, and stomped back into his bunker.
"Well? What are we waiting for? Go," Monica said after they'd sat for several seconds idling silently in front of the fence. They rolled up and over the rise past healthy trees and lush lawns watered every day at two pm, thoughtfully after everyone had returned from lunch, by automatic sprinklers embedded in the grass. The grounds had that deserted feel of campuses on a summer morning, as if a neutron bomb'd gone off, killing the people but leaving behind a pristine landscape.
Soul Source: Back and There Again Page 9