36: A Novel

by Dirk Patton

  Johnson gave me an odd look before stepping forward and removing the pistol from the assistant’s hand. He slipped it into a suit coat pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs, slapping them onto her wrists after pulling her arms behind her back.

  “Everything else OK here?” He asked Patterson, but kept his eyes on me.

  “Quite,” the director smiled. “I’m explaining some things to Mr. Whitman.”

  I lowered my weapon as Johnson led the assistant away. Patterson turned back to me and continued where he’d left off.

  “They knew that once I was killed, Johnson wouldn’t rest until he’d found the truth. And he can be a formidable enemy. One they wouldn’t want on their trail. So they decided to remove both of us from the board. Kill me and pin it on Johnson. And it worked. At least in one iteration of the timeline.

  “Apparently the people involved underestimated the import of trying to use time. They got too clever for their own good. Carpenter is too well versed to fall into the trap of thinking he could control events. I imagine he was given orders without any latitude, and has attempted to carry them out.”

  “He’s the one that kept telling me to shoot Agent Johnson the instant I saw him,” I said. “He was insistent on it. I thought he was just trying to help me.”

  “Hardly,” Patterson snorted. “He was trying to salvage the plan before it completely unraveled. If you had listened and done as he said, which you nearly did, Agent Johnson would be dead. And so would you. There would be no one to save the President.”

  “But why?” I asked, not understanding. “I’ve already stopped the assassination.”

  “No,” Patterson said. “You will stop the assassination. If that had already happened, I wouldn’t be aware of it. And I’ll take you at your word that you were, or will be, successful. But coming back here in an attempt to kill Johnson? That would prevent actions you are yet to take. At least in this timeline.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I did stop the assassination. I remember doing it!”

  “There’s an area of theoretical physics that explains this. Dr. Anholts and I have had many late night discussions on the topic and I must confess they were quite stimulating. Intellectually, that is. To explain, time is multi-dimensional. Sometimes. At any given point, we each have to make decisions that will affect our path forward.

  “When a point that is significant to an individual’s timeline is reached, multiple branches of time are created. Like a tree. No one can explain why or how it is triggered, but we’ve been able to prove it and start studying the phenomenon. When this happens, it creates an instability in time. This, in effect, is lateral time. Multiple scenarios occurring in tandem, with only one of them eventually winning out.”

  “This is really beyond me.”

  I was struggling to remain patient. Patterson recognized this and gave me a small smile.

  “I’ll try to simplify. While you are standing here, there is another timeline unfolding in which you are endeavoring to stop the assassination. Normally, you wouldn’t exist at the same time as past events. But when you are sent back, a new, artificial timeline is created. Now, spacetime is trying to resolve which branch of your time will become reality.

  “Because you have not yet stopped the assassination in the parallel dimension, there is the possibility that what you do in this one will result in the other ceasing to exist, allowing the events to go unchanged. You will be completely unaware of this. At least consciously. Unconsciously, there’s a part of your mind that we are yet to identify that is aware. This is where the feeling of déjà vu comes from. Or so we believe.”

  My head was reeling. Trying to follow what he was telling me was so far beyond my ability to comprehend that I was quickly growing frustrated.

  “You’re telling me that what happens here can erase what I’ve already done?”

  “You haven’t done it. Yet. That’s part of the greater risk of sending a person back in time that we’re still trying to understand. But to answer your question, if you were to die in this timeline, all others would collapse and vanish. No matter what you did in them. Death is the one constant that can’t be changed.

  “So perhaps I underestimated Mr. Carpenter. As I consider the possible outcomes, his ploy was actually rather brilliant. If you had walked in here and been unreasonable, unwilling to listen to me and follow my instructions, or if you had tried to harm Agent Johnson, I would have shot you. If you had succeeded in killing Agent Johnson, I would have shot you. Either outcome, the result is the same. You’re dead, the alternate timeline is dissolved and the assassination cannot be stopped.”

  He held up the pistol in his hand to demonstrate his point. I looked down and watched as he returned it to a holster hidden beneath his suit coat.

  “Hold on,” I said, reaching in my pocket. “What about the video of Johnson ordering my death? How do you explain that?”

  “Easily faked by an expert like Mr. Carpenter,” Patterson said, taking the flash drive out of my hand. “And with the sophisticated equipment available to him here, he could produce a product that would put Hollywood to shame. Nevertheless, I’ll have it checked.”

  I nodded, feeling foolish for having been sucked in.

  53

  Touching my arm to get my attention, Patterson pointed at an armchair next to the sofa as he sat down. I returned the pistol to my waistband and sat where he indicated.

  “Now, how do we contact you and Ms. Broussard?”

  “We can contact them? I thought they were in another timeline.”

  “Another timeline, yes. Not another planet. Yes, we can contact them. The timelines can momentarily merge. Communicating across them is not dangerous, other than the possibility of setting events into motion that would be better left alone.”

  I nodded. Checked my watch and tried to figure out where Julie and I were at this particular point.

  “We should have just arrived at a hotel in DC,” I said, relatively sure I was correct.

  “Excellent. Name of the hotel and room number?”

  “Wait. If I warn myself, that self, I’ll be trying to protect her and not stopping the attack.”

  “There is that distinct possibility, Mr. Whitman. That is why it is vital that you impress on that version of yourself the importance of stopping the conspirators.”

  I nodded and told him the name of the hotel and where it was located. Picking up a handset from the table next to the sofa, he instructed whoever answered it to connect him to the Hilton. Moments later his call was answered and he asked for the room number I’d given him, then handed the phone to me.

  I listened to the phone in 1223 ring a dozen times, but it wasn’t answered. Just kept on ringing.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “We should be in the room. We arrived, did some research on her laptop for close to an hour. I know the phone works because I used it to check on a vacant office in the building I believed the assassins were in. Then we took a walk to recon the street. But we shouldn’t have left yet.”

  “Did you receive any calls on the room phone? Perhaps its ringer had been turned off.”

  “No. Just the one outgoing call I made,” I said. “Try it again. Maybe I’m on the phone right now and it doesn’t have call waiting.”

  Patterson placed the call, confirming with the person that answered at the hotel that 1223 was in fact registered to a Mr. Trip Cummins. Satisfied he was trying to reach the correct room, he asked to be connected. This time he didn’t bother to hand the phone over, just listened for nearly a minute. I could faintly hear the repeated, unanswered rings.

  “Are you sure of the timing, Mr. Whitman?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Truthfully, I’m a little turned around at the moment.”

  “We need to speak with Dr. Anholts.”

  Patterson dialed an extension and told the person on the other end to locate the Doctor and have her immediately meet him in the conference room. Hanging up, he jumped to his feet and headed
for the door.

  “Follow me!”

  We moved quickly through the corridors, and I was surprised when I had to concentrate to keep up with Patterson. He didn’t appear to be someone who could cover a lot of ground quickly, but I guess once a Marine, always a Marine.

  Dr. Anholts was waiting at the door to the conference room when we arrived. The director ushered her inside and closed the door behind us. Sitting, he explained what the situation was. She listened attentively, frequently looking over at me as he talked.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Whitman,” she asked when Patterson finished.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The expression on your face indicates anger, and based on the intensity with which you are looking at me, I can only assume it is focused in my direction.”

  Patterson turned to look at me, both of them waiting for an answer.

  “You lied to me,” I said, figuring it was best to just get it out in the open.

  “Excuse me?” She looked offended.

  “You were supposed to send me back to DC to save Julie. Told me that’s what you were doing. But you sent me here.”

  “You cannot blame Dr. Anholts for something she hasn’t done,” Patterson defended her.

  “Yes, I can,” I grumbled. “Because to me, she’s already done it.”

  “I’m sure there must have been compelling circumstances,” she said. “I cannot speak to those as I have yet to experience the events that would have prompted me to be less than honest with you.”

  “Like lying to me about the data chip? How it really records what I’m doing in the past?”

  There was silence for a moment as they both stared at me. Finally, Patterson spoke up.

  “Mr. Whitman, you are justified in your anger. We have deceived you. Either directly, or by omission of certain facts. That was my decision, and one I’m coming to regret. If Dr. Anholts made a decision and it was necessary for her to lie to you to ensure your cooperation, perhaps you should consider the ramifications if she hadn’t.

  “But for now, if you want to save Ms. Broussard, we need to move on from this and work together. Time is fleeting, and our efforts could be better spent in preventing her death.”

  Sometimes the man was infuriating. Especially when he was right. Shelving the topic for another day, I nodded my head. Dr. Anholts gave me a small smile, then set to work on her iPad. Once again, the screen in the room flared to life and I was looking at an image that had been captured from my own eyes.

  “What point am I looking for?” She asked.

  “Go backwards until I tell you,” I said.

  She started a high speed rewind and I found it surprisingly easy to identify the events that were happening despite how rapidly images were changing. I saw the inside of the building where I’d fired the M4. A second later Julie’s face flashed past, the moment I’d kissed her as I was leaving to stop the assassination.

  Several more images as the video continued in reverse. There was half a second that her naked body appeared on the screen, then I was looking at street scenes from our recon of the target. It unwound quickly and I glimpsed the interior of the hotel’s elevator doors.

  “Stop,” I said, Dr. Anholts freezing the image. “Go back slow from here.”

  She did as I asked, the video unwinding until we had a view of the interior of the hotel room’s living area. Julie’s laptop was in front of me, her hands visible on the keyboard and a photo from Google Earth displayed on the monitor.

  “Right there,” I said. “If I’m remembering right, that point should correspond to right now.”

  Dr. Anholts opened a new window and after checking a complicated time stamp on the video from my chip, input the data into a form and clicked a button marked calculate.

  It took the tablet a few moments to complete the request. When it displayed the results, they meant nothing to me. Appeared to be a jumble of numbers with no apparent purpose. But they meant something to Dr. Anholts.

  “Close, Mr. Whitman. You’re only off by eleven minutes.”

  She adjusted the playback of my data chip, coming to a stop on a scene nearly identical to the one we’d just looked at. She let it play at normal speed this time, Julie working the laptop as I occasionally reached forward and tapped a spot on the display.

  “I’ve synchronized the playback with our real time,” she said. “This is what you were doing, coordinated with now.”

  “So we’re in the room,” I said. “We should hear the phone if it rings.”

  Patterson had already stood and retrieved a phone from a small table against the far wall. Once the call was placed, he set it to speaker mode and placed it on the conference table. It began ringing. And continued to ring. On the screen, Julie and I continued to look at the laptop.

  “Damn it!” I said, slamming my hand on the table’s surface and causing Dr. Anholts to jump. “What do we do?”

  The director reached out and disconnected the call.

  “Did Ms. Broussard have a cell phone with her?” He asked.

  “Its battery was dead,” I said, looking up at the screen. “That’s it in pieces. There in the background next to the TV.”

  We all stared at the screen for a moment.

  “Call the hotel back and tell them it’s an emergency,” I said to Patterson. “Get them to send someone up to the room to check the phone. Or have them take me a phone number so I can call you.”

  “Possibly,” the director said. “Were you in a frame of mind to allow anyone into the room? To call a number that someone unknown brings to you?”

  “No,” I said, then had an idea. “Have them bring a number to me and tell me it’s an emergency and that I need to call Monica. That will get my attention.”

  Patterson looked at me for a short pause before picking up the phone and calling the Hilton again. This time he asked to speak to the manager, telling the operator it was an emergency. He was quickly speaking again, explaining he was the father of the man in room 1223 and there was a family emergency. He asked that a phone number and message be delivered right away, then asked if he could hold until there was confirmation that the guest had been contacted.

  We sat in silence, waiting. The director had the phone held to his ear and I could hear faint strains of hold music. While we sat there, the door opened and Agent Johnson walked in.

  “I’m on hold,” Patterson said to him.

  “Ms. Silas and Mr. Carpenter are in holding, sir. Dr. Willhoit has administered the specified dosages for interrogation, we’re just waiting for it to reach full effectiveness. I should have some initial answers for you within the hour.”

  “Thank you,” Patterson said, and Johnson disappeared without another word.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” he said into the phone.

  It was only a few seconds after Johnson left the room. The director listened briefly before speaking again.

  “You’re certain?” There was another pause as he listened. “Thank you for your cooperation. If you would please leave a message for that guest to call Monica the instant he returns, I would be most grateful.”

  Patterson broke the connection and placed the phone on the table in front of him.

  “There was no answer at the door,” he said. “The manager opened it and looked inside, but there was no one in the main room. He did not enter or check the bedrooms, but said he shouted loudly to announce his presence.”

  Dr. Anholts leaned over her iPad and worked furiously for nearly a minute, sitting back when the results of her calculations appeared.

  “The only explanation is something has happened to alter that timeline,” she said. “The calculations, as well as Mr. Whitman’s memory, are correct. He should be in the hotel room.”

  “Send me,” I said. “There’s still time.”

  “You’re already back, Mr. Whitman,” Patterson said.

  “So what? Why can’t you send me back another couple of hours, to DC?”

  The director turned and looked
at Dr. Anholts for support. She looked bemused for a moment as she thought.

  “That might be possible,” she said after a bit more reflection. “But it could also be incredibly dangerous. This wouldn’t be a simple straight line back, it would also be a lateral shift across timelines. We’ve never considered the possibilities. Or impacts.”

  “But it’s possible?” I asked, trying to contain my hope.

  “That’s not what I said. I said it might be” she answered.

  “Then let’s find out!”

  “There isn’t even a theory to support this! If there was, I’d probably be the one to develop it. And theories aren’t created sitting around a table, hoping a wild idea will work. It takes calculations. Observations of behaviors. So many things we do not have time for. What you have is an idea. A wish, born of desperation.”

  “Look, Doc. If we don’t do something, two innocent people are going to die. There’s a man I basically kidnapped and used to get into DC, then there’s Julie Broussard. They are both there because of me. I’m not willing to sit back and do nothing while someone puts a bullet in each of their heads. Unless you have a better idea, I need you to figure out how to make this work in the next couple of hours.”

  I held her eyes with mine until she looked away. Shifting my gaze to Patterson, I saw surprise in his eyes.

  “What?” I challenged.

  “You are not who your past mistakes would seem to indicate,” he said.

  “Surprise,” I said, sarcastically. “Now, can we make this work, or not?”

  “Dr. Anholts?” He asked, turning to look at her.

  “There are so many things that could go wrong,” she said, evading providing an answer.

  “Is there a risk of an explosion like I was told would happen if I came into contact with my past self?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” she said after thinking for a minute. “Not as long as you’re aware of that danger and take steps to prevent it from happening.”

  “Then what’s the risk?”

  “The risk would most likely be to you, Mr. Whitman. I can’t predict the forces that will act on your body and mind from a lateral transport. You could be torn apart. You could die a slow, painful death like the early test animals. You could cause a rift and slingshot to an unknown time or location. And these are just the possibilities that spring to mind.”