Soul Source: Back and There Again

by Charles Vella

"It actually wasn't accurate to say," Dutch raised his fingers in air quotes, " 'I must say that.' Not in any physical sense. It's an idiom meaning that Monica is so unlike Dr. Ted that I felt compelled to acknowledge it."

  "You don't think around the eyes...hey."

  "Tammy," Dutch raised a hand. "Could you bring some napkins. We seem to have had an accident."

  "That was no accident," Griff laughed. He grabbed napkins and tried to dam the wine sliding toward the edge of the table over his lap. "Thanks Tammy." He took the handful of napkins she was holding over Dutch and mopped up the puddle. Tammy looked at Monica.

  "I'm not sure she should have any more."

  "Yes. Thanks," Monica said. "In fact better bring two."

  "I should note," Dutch went on when Tammy sashayed away, his brow furrowed in concentration, "...that I don't know with certainty that Dr. Ted doesn't look like Monica right now, but he didn't when I last saw him and the probability that he looks like her now seems extremely low."

  "I think that's safe," Griff agreed.

  Dutch shifted close to the table and leaned on his hands.

  "You know Monica," he said in a lowered voice. His eyes took on a yellowish tint. Concern. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you. You see, Dr. Ted recently installed a sexual function in me."

  "Did he?" Griff said. Monica shot him a nasty look and gave him a kick under the table.

  "It works with hydraulics."

  "Dutch I really don't need..."

  "No. I want to hear..."

  "But now I'm not entirely sure..."

  Dutch's face suddenly went blank. His head tilted like a dog who'd heard the distant sound of his master's voice. He stood up. "I'm sorry. It seems that I'm needed back at the ranch. It's not actually a ranch..." he began.

  "I think we know what you mean Dutch." Dutch nodded, grinned, pointed a finger at them and walked to the door. Tammy steered clear of him on her way to their table where she slid a new glass in front of Monica.

  "He gives me the creeps."

  "Oh Dutch is harmless."

  "Thanks Tammy." Monica turned to Griff after she'd left them. "What was all that about?"

  "Dutch? He's got the hots for you." Griff leaned over the table. "I heard that there's only one way to turn Dutch off..."

  "What's going on Griff?" she cut him off. "Something is. And don't try telling me you don't know. It's written all over your face."

  Griff's smile faded. He nodded absently and slumped back in the booth. Stared over her shoulder. Took a deep breath. "It's 'just call me Dr. Ted.' "

  "Ted? What about Ted?"

  "He's gone."

  "Gone? What do you mean gone? Gone where? What happened?"

  "The board had a special meeting. Tossed him on his ass from the sound of it. They've already named a new Director. It can't be Pruitt," he argued unconvincingly with himself. "Evidently it was a surprise to all of them. Even Artie. The board just sprung it on them. No," he shook his head. "Can't be Pruitt. Not with his part in the drama."

  "Drama?" Monica's eyes scanned the room as the door opened and a trickle of Thursday regulars came in. The hum of conversation rose a notch. She turned back to Griff. "I like drama." At least when it's not mine.

  "Well then you'll love this." He smiled weakly and licked his lips. "Ted took an unauthorized trip back."

  "To the past? Ted? When? Why?"

  "Right before that last fiasco of a mission of yours. Seems he got the idea that the little woman was engaging in extracurricular activities while he was out of town. Decided to go back and find out for himself."

  "I don't believe it."

  "Oh it gets better. They caught him trying to go back a second time. With a gun."

  She fell back in the booth. "You're kidding. He was going to shoot Veronica?"

  "Try not to look so disappointed. Maybe, but I think it was Pruitt he was interested in. Lucky for both of them he wanted to catch them in the act. Didn't just decide to start shooting in the present."

  "Pruitt? You mean he and Veronica?" She turned toward the bar. Veronica's hair lay on her back like a shimmering, blonde waterfall dancing in the weak light whenever she moved. "He must be crazy."

  "Crazy? I've seen pictures of her on line." He turned his wrist up to project a screen.

  "I don't want to hear about Veronica's pictures on line," she snapped, then smiled weakly at Griff's grin.

  "Suit yourself." He dropped his hand. "Anyway Ted's the crazy one. She drove the poor bastard crazy. Pruitt can't've been the first. Ted wasn't just in the wrong league with her. He was in the wrong sport."

  "She only married him to travel up the ranks faster." And now she's going to be heading Team One. Monica felt the blood rush to her face as she watched Veronica's back. "How can she show herself in public?"

  "Veronica's only concern is how to show more of herself in public. Anyway, I can understand what Pruitt sees in her, but what's she see in him?"

  "Oh I can understand that. He's cute in a Nordic, Fascist, egotistical, megalomaniacal sort of way. And I'm not sure, but I think that if you look directly into his eyes you turn to stone."

  "That must be it. I hear women like that. Anyway, I wouldn't be too sure that Ted's as pure as the driven snow. He spends an awful lot of time with Sarah. Giggling like kids. Maybe you can't blame Veronica."

  "Say that again and you'll get another glass of wine on your lap. Anyway Ted and Sarah are like two kids who are so much smarter than the rest of the class they can only relate to each other."

  "Sarah's a menace Monica. To you. To herself. Ted couldn't see it past her brains and those tight pants she wears. But I've never understood why someone like you takes the risk with her. I mean you wear a seatbelt to sit in a car wash."

  "I do not. Besides it's easier than taking it off. And I work with Sarah because she's got so much potential."

  "Not anymore. Not here anyway. Pruitt's got it in for her. Always has. No way he'll ever let her back again now that Ted's gone."

  "I don't believe it," Monica sighed, her eyes drawn to Veronica again. "Any of it. They're like a couple of teenage boys."

  "They're worse. They're a couple of middle-aged men. I wonder how Pruitt would've felt about being shot in the past. On the one hand it'd be a fascinating logic experiment. On the other hand he wouldn't've been around to see it."

  The door opened and closed regularly now as a surge of MITCo people filled the bar.

  They sat in silence for a while. "So you heard? About our demotion?"

  "Like I said. No one's talking about anything else. Not until they find out about Ted anyway. That should shove you off the front page."

  "Go ahead. Say it."

  "Say what?"

  "I told you so."

  "I told you so."

  "How can you say that?"

  He laughed. Shook his head. Took a long drink. "I am sorry Monica, but maybe it's for the best." His eyes shifted around the room. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but since I'm not supposed to know myself I suppose I can't really be giving it away. Maybe I'll ask Pruitt about the logic of that."

  She started to ask 'what?' but stopped herself. He was going to tell her.

  "There's been some planning going on," he said, lowering his voice. "I don't even think Ted, maybe not even Pruitt, knows about it. But someone's got some of the folks in operations planning a trip back. Far back. The deep past."

  "Who could do that? How far?" Her voice trembled. Don't tell me I got booted from Team One just as they're deciding to make a big trip. I don't want to know.

  "Don't know for sure. But back to before time travel was possible. Maybe more than twenty years."

  "That's never been done," she watched him closely as he stared across the room. "Has it?"

  His eyes darted over to her and he smiled ruefully. "You're relentless."

  "Admit it. Come on. Tell me about Sole Source. It was you, wasn't it? Maybe I'll be
impressed," she said in what she hoped was a suggestive whisper but sounded to her as if she had asthma.

  He stared past her for a long time, tilting his glass back and forth. "I'm thinking about quitting." She fell back as if she'd been slapped. It didn't come out like something that'd popped into his mind. It tumbled out like something he'd thought long and hard about and hadn't been able to figure out how to say out loud, with a shift of his eyes in the opposite direction, as if he'd shot a small animal but couldn't bear to watch it die.

  "When you change the subject you don't kid around do you? Anyway you can't quit. You're up for a promotion."

  "Where'd you get ahold of that rumor?"

  "It's all over the building. They're going to make you Head of Operations."

  "Well," he sighed. "You can tell the building they're wrong. I told them they can give it to Eileen. She'd be great at it. That's what I told them anyway."

  "You told them? You mean they offered it to you?"

  "Why so surprised? You just said it was all over the building."

  "Because I can't believe they actually offered it to you and you didn't talk about it with me. Didn't even tell me. And you really turned it down? Without telling me?" His eyes clouded and scanned the room and she realized her voice'd been rising.

  He shrugged. Stared at his glass.

  "Why didn't you at least tell me?"

  "Travelling to the future's bad enough," he said without answering. "Like taking a drone to New York except none of the other passengers're armed. They're waiting for you. You tell them what you want. Get a cup of coffee. They hand you a chip and you're on your way back. I take a promotion and it's even worse. All day shuffling paper because everything's too secret to put on screens." He shook his head. "Not me. Anyway there seems to be more excitement in the past these days." He grinned over his glass.

  "Don't try to change the subject. What would you do?" She tried to hold it back. Not sound as if she were begging for God's sake. I'm thinking about quitting. You're supposed to talk me out of it. I'm the one who had the bad day. Why are you doing this? Why does it always end up this way? Well the hell with it. He wanted to quit then let him. "Where would you go?" It came out trembling, almost a whisper. Bulls eye. She'd hit pathetic dead on the nose. She felt the blood rush to her face at Griff's shrug. As indifferent as she was pathetic. She took a deep breath.

  "Well I for one would be glad to see you stop going to the future but you can't be serious about it being routine. Have you been to the media center lately and seen the plaques? It scares me to death every time you go. All it takes is being off on the spatial and time coordinates by a couple of hundred feet or a few seconds and it's like being dropped off of a sky scraper. There are people who think you need to be crazy to do it." I just wish you'd told me, but she bit off the words before they came out.

  "The world according to Pruitt," he chuckled. "Men aren't smart enough for travel to the past and women aren't stupid enough to go to the future. Well maybe you'll get lucky and you'll get a Director with enough sense to give him the shove."

  "Why do you do this? Never mind," she said as it suddenly dawned on her. "I know why."

  "You know why? What are you..."

  "You've heard from your father."

  He took a long drink. Stared stonily at the table. Finally nodded. Managed another weak smile tinged with bitterness. "That transparent huh?"

  "All men are that transparent. Even Dutch. He wants to see you?"

  "Dutch?"

  "Don't evade. You know who I mean."

  Griff may've nodded. Hard to tell. "He's actually going to be here for some reason. Something to do with some investigation he was on years ago."

  "Investigation?"

  "He was a cop," Griff said grudgingly. "I have to say one thing for him. He's persistent. A lying bastard, but persistent."

  "Maybe he thinks you're softening in your old age."

  "Not to him." No smile now. Not even a weak one. "Not ever."

  She reached across the table and laid one hand on Griff's while he lifted his glass with the other.

  "Not ever's a long time."

  His face hardened into a warning. "Not long enough for some things. I don't deal with people I don't trust, and how can you trust someone who walks out on his family and never gives them another thought? How can you trust someone who names you Griffin for Chrissake?"

  Didn't your mother name you that? But she didn't say it out loud. Mothers were a taboo subject since his had died last year.

  "He could've named you Sue. Besides, Griffin's a great name. And you don't know he never gave you a thought. He may've thought about you constantly."

  "I know everything I need to know." He pulled his hand back and drummed his fingers on the table.

  "You know," she said, time to change the subject, "...what I still don't understand?"

  "What's that?"

  "Why we did that last mission at all. I mean," she leaned forward. "I've been thinking about it all day. The profile was just wrong."

  "You won't like it," he warned.

  "You mean you know?" The slight shake of his head gave her the answer. "Well go ahead. I haven't liked much so far. I might as well hear it."

  "OK. That kid. What's his name? The one Sarah tried to rearrange his private parts?"

  "Tommy Phelps."

  "Right." Griff drained his glass and held it up. "You know who his father is?"

  "His father?"

  "Some big shot. Chums with someone on the board. Not the project board, the MITCo board. I don't know who."

  "You mean he...they..." It wasn't possible.

  Griff nodded. "Needed to get the kid off. Lawyer said he was screwed. Whispered in the right ear." He drained his glass. "Old as the hills."

  "Sarah was set up."

  "They figured she'd intervene and stop the whole thing. She was evidently a sexual assault victim herself, although from what I hear she didn't handle it in a very victim-like way."

  "I heard. She'd never told me."

  "She never told anyone. That's the problem with Sarah. She doesn't ask for help. She just..." he waved his hands around in front of him. "Anyway, from what I hear dad isn't too happy about Sarah putting junior in the hospital. Never occurred to them that she might intervene by trying to hit his balls over the fence."

  "Then they don't know Sarah."

  "No," he chuckled. Nodded at Tammy as she dropped off another beer and picked up the empty. She looked down at Monica's half full wine glass and walked away. He took a drink. "That's for sure."

  "So Sarah was expendable," Monica had to force the words out of her mouth. She didn't want to know. Had to know. Already knew. She could feel the muscles in her forehead tense. "So we were sent back there..." She looked up. "What about me? Was I expendable too?"

  "I don't think anyone figured that you'd play it down so bad in your report. That's not your reputation. Try to think of yourself as collateral damage."

  "They can't do this," she whispered. Her face felt numb. As if she were in shock. All the lectures about not fooling with the past. The policies. How dangerous it is. She laughed bitterly. "It's bullshit. All of it."

  Griff looked at her in confusion, then smiled crookedly. "Of course it's all bullshit. You're just coming late to the party."

  "How can you sit there and smile about it?" she said, her voice rising. Griff's eyes darted around the room but she didn't care who heard. Everyone should hear.

  "Calm down or you'll have Verma over here protecting your honor."

  "It's just a joke to you isn't it? All of it. Including me."

  Griff's smile disappeared. He reached out and took her hand. "Grow up Monica. Life's a joke. You just don't want to be the punch line."

  She yanked her hand back. He reached for it but she'd slid out of the booth and was looking down at him.

  "Come on Monica, sit..."

  "You just can't think of anyone bu
t yourself can you? Too bad your father can't see you. He'd be proud." Where'd that come from? Like a crocodile it'd lain under a placid surface, waiting for the poodle to get within range.

  She spun around, too angry for the second thoughts fighting their way into her consciousness. A glance at his face told her she'd scored a direct hit. She strode to the door. Had to concentrate on not staggering. Like being drunk. Or in a dream. A nightmare. Blurry forms flitted past. She jolted on legs that somehow didn't seem connected to the rest of her. Thoughts of having gone too far to ever go back swirled among the lights and sounds. Strange, familiar faces loomed up then disappeared. Veronica's disembodied smile chased her across the room.

  What were they thinking, the brains behind those faces, as she teetered toward the door? She didn't know. The only thing she knew for sure was that no one was running after her.

  8

  Time Travel Protocol 10-20-2019* (Management Vacancies)

  The Steering Committee must consider at least two candidates before making a staffing decision on any leadership position.

  *(Highly Confidential: Paper Copies Only)

  "Thank you Madam Director. Now..."

  "Please," Agnes interrupted without looking up, and without adding 'for the last time.' "Agnes. Call me Agnes." And not Dr. Agnes for God's sake. "Everyone," she raised her voice slightly so no one could miss the order underneath the friendly request. "Just call me Agnes." Formality is for people who're afraid they can't keep control.

  Agnes looked around the room, watching them studiously avoid watching her, matching faces to the files she'd read on the flight. Poole, first name Ronald, her new deputy director, sat across from her with the look of a dog under the dinner table, hoping for scraps but tensed to dodge a kick. Next to him Alex Castro-Ledbetter, Finance. Slightly effeminate man, woman with strong features, or laminated board in a carefully tailored suit? Sex change? From what to what? Have to wait outside the restrooms to find out for sure. He, she, hadn't said a word. Not even when they were introduced. Probably spoke in binary code. Next to her the beanpole with the funny name. A professor had once advised Agnes that when she wanted to remember facts to which she'd need ready access to imagine writing them on three-by-five cards and filing them in her brain. Of course that was back when there were three-by-five cards. She flipped through the cards in her brain and came up with Sturgell Bob, head of research. Next to him was Artie Wyatt III, every head of human resources she'd ever met rolled up into a simpering fat ball. Next to Wyatt, Karen Abraham, Abe, chief of the medical staff. And of course the one no company would be without, the chief counsel, boss of the anxious dweeb sitting next to her and guiding her through the legal rigmarole of taking over this place. Picture a kid from an aristocratic family in the south. Private schools, cotillions, gets sent up north to Yale, Harvard law, edits the law review, clerks with a Supreme Court justice, bow ties and seersucker suits. Seersucker suits? More likely to say 'astounding' than 'no shit'. Picture that guy, and oh yeah, make him black, and you had Warren Chambers, smiling cautiously at her as if smiling might be an admission. Then of course the two standing. Pruitt Root, Chief Logician, standing, staring over their heads in her peripheral vision like a raptor waiting to pull the carrion away from the battlefield. In the opposite corner, twisting his upper body like a fighter or maybe a short weightlifter teaching a woman's exercise class, Brad Verma, Head of Security. Indian-American. Black pompadour on a head at least a foot lower than Agnes's, flexing his muscles and glaring at Pruitt in evident anger that Pruitt didn't consider him worth glaring back at. If she can't control this group then Rick Hartron's confidence is misplaced, she's past it.