Winston Chase and the Theta Factor

by Bodhi St John

  31

  Flight to a Better Night

  Winston was too far gone in his sorrow and shock to notice when the paved road blurring by beneath him gave way to gravel and mud. The rocks did a fair job of holding the roadway together, but more than once Winston’s feet slipped in the muck and uneven ruts left by trucks and tractor wheels. He ran past long fields, dark and sprawling in the black night. The only sounds he could hear were the rapid slapping of his shoes in the mud and the rhythmic shifting of his pack. The night swallowed everything else.

  The first time Winston slowed to glance over his shoulder, he found the two agents still in pursuit several dozen yards back. By the time he reached a hinged aluminum gate and cattle guard across the road, though, he couldn’t see them at all. They might still be back there in the darkness, running as fast as their slacks and age would allow, or they might have returned to the hangar for more instructions and reinforcements. Either way, Winston guessed he didn’t have much time.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t dispel the image of his father’s lifeless form staring at the ground, part of his skull still resting askew in his lap. Winston’s heart, however, only knew that his father had been young and alive moments ago — holding him, consoling him, trying to give him advice — and then, in the next instant, he was an old man, trembling and afraid as a body wracked by age and torture finally failed him.

  Winston rested his forearms across the top of the gate and set his forehead against its cold, dripping metal. The chill against his skin felt soothing. His chest heaved from the strain of running, and his sweat mingled with the night’s gentle rainfall made the corners of his eyes sting.

  Gradually, he became aware of the scent of gasoline. He glanced around and discovered a white, two-gallon plastic bucket laying near the fence’s right post. He tucked Little e under one arm and lifted the mud-crusted bucket by its cracked handle to examine it. Winston recoiled from the container’s strong smell. He realized this must have been what Shade had used to collect gasoline and pour out those letters he had left for the agents.

  Examining the ground more closely, Winston found a single bike track leading to the gate where he now stood. Beyond the gate, he could see where two wheels had landed in the mud as the bike had struck the dirt and fallen over. Shade must have brought the bucket along as he furiously rode to stay ahead of pursuit, then threw the bike over the gate and kept going. Winston looked beyond the fence line and up into the hills. Shade would be there, somewhere, either waiting for him or trying to evade capture.

  Or not, Winston thought. Evasion was not really Shade’s style.

  Part of Winston wanted to scale the gate and keep running until he reached the forest line and see if he could come to Shade’s defense. Another part of him wanted to escape all of this. He had failed so completely, caused so much pain and trouble to everyone he cared about, that he didn’t feel he could or should go on at all. That part of him wanted to give up, but perhaps it was only his exhaustion talking. He had just witnessed his father’s death and lost a critical piece of the Alpha Machine to his enemy. He needed to stop, to think, to question what he had done so far and what he should do next.

  Most of all, he felt a terrible weariness that drove through his grief and penetrated deep into his bones. There was no telling how much of that weariness spawned from his emotions or from using the Alpha Machine. He didn’t care. All he knew was that he was in no shape to confront more agents. He would be of no help to his mom or Shade, and now his dad was beyond any help at all.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” he whispered to the night. “I’m sorry.”

  Back in the direction from which he’d come, Winston noticed a yellow light flare up into the black evening. Flames, he realized. Really big ones — a tall pillar of fire reaching far above the few vehicles in the parking lot before it.

  It had to be the hangar, Winston realized. Shade had upheld his promise not to damage the place, but Bledsoe obviously had different ideas. Was it some diversion to draw attention while he made a different move? Was he erasing evidence?

  The thought that Bledsoe might indiscriminately destroy such a wealth of history and knowledge drove another knife under Winston’s ribs. His father admired that history and understood the sacrifices that had gone into it. He had died as part of a mission to instill that appreciation in Winston. Bledsoe merely wanted to destroy it. Now, all those glorious planes would be ruined because Winston had failed to stop the man — one more way he had let his father down.

  Rather than scale the gate, Winston walked away from the road and into the adjacent field. Dead, fallen grass tugged at his shoes and crept up his pant legs with spidery touches. Once he had walked fifty or so yards, Winston sat in the grass. The dampness quickly soaked through his pants, but he didn’t care. Even as the heat of his running faded and the cold night brought shivers along his body, he paid them little mind. He set Little e in his lap and suspended the Alpha Machine between his hands. Again, he confirmed that the chronoviewer would not allow him to jump only a few hours. Everything within a week seemed to be blocked.

  Winston took a deep breath and bowed his head. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted nothing to do with this anymore. He tried to think of the last good time he’d had in his life, and his mind turned to Shade. He’d always enjoyed hanging out in Shade’s shack. Or watching Shade play football. Nothing compared, though, to visiting the Tagaloa cabin. Located above the shores of a long, winding lake on the south side of Mount St. Helens, the rustic vacation spot meant creaky bunk beds, hours of card games, and lounging on the wake-jostled dock. The place smelled of lamp oil, dusty blankets, and smoke. The connected outhouse was only a recent addition and was always nearly as frigid as the outdoors beyond its walls.

  How many summers had Shade’s family dragged Winston along on their trips? How many nights had he and Shade spent laying on that dock, staring up at the sky and into the infinitude of stars that stretched beyond them forever as they talked about life and girls and growing up? Stars like that were invisible anywhere around Portland. The coast was too hazy, and anything along the Interstate 5 corridor lay under too much pollution. But the Cascade Mountain air surrounding the cabin was clear and fresh, an invisible window through which all of the nocturnal universe was exposed in its rare, impossibly perfect beauty.

  Their last cabin trip had been right after school ended. June 14. Winston nudged the chronoviewer controls back to that date and made sure to keep the timestamp unchanged at 12:16 AM. It would be the middle of the night, dark and safe.

  That had been a good day, a great time. The last great time he could remember.

  Somehow, even though it broke the Alpha Machine’s rules as he understood them, the chronograph did not object.

  A small, white light flashed in the distance. Winston had to wait for it to reappear before he was sure that it was a real happening in the present and not some trick of interplay between the reality layers. A second light joined it. At least two people out there near the dirt road had flashlights, and they were coming this way.

  “Look at this!” called one. “Look at this grass! Someone went this way!”

  That was all the urging Winston needed. The chronoviewer controls remained green, and, with the last of his energy, Winston mentally bore down on the Alpha Machine to make the jump. His world blossomed into a field of white, as if one of those stars visible from the cabin had suddenly rushed to earth and engulfed him. Then it let him go, and Winston found himself still seated in the field, sparks dying all around. The grass stood tall and lush all about him. The rain and clouds were gone, and stars hung high above. They weren’t Mount St. Helens stars. They lacked the number, depth, and clarity of that magnificent sky, but it was better than what he had left behind. The air was warm and rich with smells of life, and even the scent of cow dung, stronger now in the warm season, seemed welcoming.

  On June 14, Winston was far removed from the events in the air museum. He had never heard of the Al
pha Machine. He had just finished the seventh grade. His biggest worries were embarrassing himself in front of Alyssa Bauman and evading Brian Steinhoff. Life had been simple, fun, and predictable. How had he ever thought that those days had been anything but ideal?

  Slowly, Winston slumped to his side. The Alpha Machine fell still in his hands. He raised one arm and rested his head on it as he ran his fingertips forward and back, forward and back, across the chronoviewer’s frigid surface.

  June 14 had been everything he had wanted, a day filled with class parties, a long drive surrounded by Shade’s hysterically bickering family, and a night spent listening to water lapping at the dock under him as Shade droned on about all of his grand plans for science experiments in the coming weeks.

  Nestled amid the tall grass, Winston smiled and wept until sleep overcame him.

  32

  Officer Onboard

  Alyssa awoke to the smells of salsa-laden scrambled eggs and sizzling chorizo sausage patties. She hadn’t known she was smiling until she opened her eyes and remembered that she was in “her” bedroom. The small space was Grandpa Clayton’s spare bedroom, but since he never had guests, the walls still bore several examples of her art contributions from years past. That ancient stick-figure sketch she’d drawn of the two of them in the park with his dog at the time, a spaniel named Eisenhower. A blue, red, and yellow scarf she’d knitted for him in the second grade. A selfie she’d captured of herself, Grandpa Clayton, and Grammy Rose with the digital camera they’d given to her in the fourth grade. For the last three years, of course, there had been no additions.

  The fresh reminder made her bitter and sad, like a dark stream pouring into the clear happiness of being here and waking to those heavenly breakfast smells, exactly like in the summers of her younger years. Everything had changed so suddenly that autumn. Grammy Rose’s death, followed seven weeks later by her mom and dad’s temporary separation. Grandpa Clayton had never liked her dad, and, without Grammy there to keep him in check, Grandpa had been amply vocal in urging their divorce.

  Mom had tried to understand that her father was speaking from grief and anger, but nothing had helped. Grandpa Clayton had only dug in his heels, and not a word had been exchanged since. Forced to pick sides, Alyssa had naturally sympathized with parents. With the eyes of a middle schooler, though, Alyssa could now see that her dad drank too much and shared too little.

  Alyssa sat on the edge of her bed and shook her head. All that was in the past. It needed to disappear into the shadows of family history where it belonged. Not only her family, but the world might depend on them all moving on, starting now.

  She quickly changed back into her day clothes, dragged a brush through her long hair, and opened the door. In the kitchen, Theo saw her approach first and smiled.

  “Good morning, sleepy!” he called. “I heard you normally wake up by six. Apparently, I was misinformed.”

  Alyssa yawned and said from behind her hand, “Things change.” Grandpa Clayton didn’t look up at her as he worked over his chorizo patties, but Alyssa saw his nostrils flare. Replaying the words in her mind, she knew she’d been unintentionally harsh.

  “Last time I was here,” she added, “getting up at six for my one allowed hour of cartoon time was a big deal. These days, I like sleep better than Phineas and Ferb. Barely.”

  “That was a funny show,” Grandpa Clayton muttered.

  “I’ve been trying to learn more about your grandfather’s time at Edwards,” said Theo as he poured out three tall glasses of pulpy orange juice from a glass pitcher. “In reply, he put me to work making fresh-squeezed juice. With my joints, this is a lot harder than I remember.”

  Grandpa Clayton added a few drops of sweetener to each glass, the same as always, then set the juices by each plate on the table.

  Alyssa took a sip from her glass and closed her eyes in momentary rapture. Her mom always bought frozen concentrate, which tasted weak and artificial in comparison. “Worth it,” she said.

  Theo gave her a frowning harrumph and replied, “When you’re pushing the big one-double-zero, we’ll see if you still think so.”

  “So, Grandpa Clayton,” Alyssa began hesitantly as he spooned out the eggs and sausage onto three plates. “What do you think of all this?”

  He didn’t reply immediately, and they all took their plates to the table. Grandpa took his first bite of sausage and chewed pensively. Alyssa knew not to rush him.

  “It’s a relief,” he said at last. “To know that I was right. That I was on to something.”

  “That you weren’t crazy?” Alyssa ventured.

  His expression darkened as he glanced up from his plate, but he soon nodded with a tight-lipped smile. “Yes.”

  “I told him about Roswell and Area X,” said Theo. “And Bernie and QVs. I left out Winston. That seemed more appropriate to come from you, given how we came to be here.”

  Silence fell over the table, save for the tinkle of their utensils and the faint rhythms of chewing. Part of Alyssa worried that they were needlessly endangering Grandpa Clayton by being here. And yet, Winston had said that they needed fast transportation. He hadn’t mentioned flying, but the more Alyssa thought it over, the more obvious the solution became.

  Grandpa was the only person she knew with even a faint connection to flying. As a retired Air Force instructor, he had virtually unlimited access to pilots. If nothing else, he would know where to go to rent a helicopter and pilot for a day or two, and he could recommend one who would be discreet and not ask questions.

  Alyssa remembered sitting beside Grandpa Clayton in his Cessna 162 Skycatcher. He would take her over the mountains and fly around Mt. Hood, sometimes even going as far south as Mt. Jefferson. He taught her the basics of flight and even let her steer a bit with the second yoke, although he always kept a finger or two on his own. Grandpa Clayton was a stickler for rules, and if the law said that he had to remain in control of the plane at all times as the only certified pilot aboard, then that’s what he did. Of course, that hadn’t kept Alyssa from feeling the thrill of flying, even if she’d never taken off or landed.

  She gulped down another mouthful of juice as her throat threatened to tighten.

  Just say it.

  “You know how unbelievable it was when you once saw a piece of a UFO, right? And how even more unbelievable it is that Theo used to work on projects involving those pieces?”

  Alyssa waited for her grandfather to respond. As usual, he didn’t. He merely sat there, eating with slow, even movements as his eyes carefully studied her, as if it didn’t matter what she said, only how she said it.

  “Right,” she continued. “Well, two of the other people Theo worked with—”

  “Claude and Amanda,” interjected Theo.

  “Yes,” said Alyssa. “They injected themselves with the QVs while she was pregnant. I don’t think they knew she was pregnant. I’m not sure about that part, actually. I suppose it—”

  “Continue,” said Grandpa Clayton.

  Alyssa tried to wash down her increasing uneasiness with more juice, only to find that her glass was empty. No one moved to refill it.

  “So,” she said. “While she was pregnant, they used the Alpha Machine…” She paused and glanced at Theo. “Did you cover the Alpha Machine?”

  He shook his head.

  Oof.

  “They used the alien’s time travel machine, the Alpha Machine, to jump from 1947 to 1990-something. I’m also not sure of the exact dates. They had a son named Winston, who was born with the QVs in him. I think being born with them gave him different abilities and stuff. Not like superhero abilities, although, come to think of it, I don’t really know what he can or can’t do. But he’s been on this quest or whatever to recover the Alpha Machine pieces that his dad hid a long time ago. Winston is being pursued by another guy from that Area X group, Bledsoe, who also got QVs. Bledsoe wants the Alpha Machine to rewrite history and start World War III so that America can go back to being like how
he remembers it from the ‘40s. That would be terrible, because it would erase all of us — everything, actually — from existing. Winston used the Alpha Machine pieces he has to appear in my bedroom yesterday. He’s in bad shape and really needs help. He’s going to meet Bledsoe and try to rescue his mom, who Bledsoe wants to either marry or kill. I’m not entirely sure about that, either. But Winston wanted us to find a way to get them out of the meeting place quick enough to not get captured. And from there, he has to get to Hanford, because he saw a memory of his dad’s that showed the last Alpha Machine piece being there.”

  Alyssa realized that she was rambling, trying to fill the quiet in the hope that her grandfather would give some kind of response other than chewing. She forced herself to stop talking. Grandpa Clayton took another bite of eggs. Alyssa knew this was a common tactic he’d picked up in the military: Just keep quiet until your opponent cracks and gives away unintentionally useful information. Only Alyssa wasn’t trying to be evasive. She simply didn’t know if he’d think this was all some ridiculous gimmick, throw them out, and then she’d have no way to help Winston. He had to believe her.

  Grandpa Clayton finally swallowed and gave a non-committal hmm. “Does your mother know,” he began slowly, “that a boy is magically appearing in your bedroom?”

  Alyssa’s jaw dropped open. “Seriously? That’s what you got from everything I just said?”

  “Look, young lady. I’m not going to lie to your mother. If I talk to her again and she asks for details—”

  “No,” Alyssa interrupted. “You can’t talk to her. Or anybody. I saw with my own eyes that federal agents, or someone a lot like them, are parked in a van outside of Shade’s house.”