CHAPTER THREE
Jeff sat on a picnic bench overlooking a long park with a number of baseball fields, the psychiatric center in view across the street. To pass time, Dexter had asked permission to take one of the old woman’s Russian books to the coffee shop in the hospital basement, which the agents allowed. Jeff thought it was odd, but he did know that being one of the prominent historians on the East Coast gave Dexter access to a lot of things that no one else could get. Regardless, it left Jeff alone to engage with this mysterious mental patient.
It was the first moment since he’d walked into the Congresswoman’s office to give his report that he had a moment to sit and think without anyone close by to distract him. He leaned on his elbows on the wooden table, his face mashed into his hands. There didn’t seem to be any way out of whatever it was that was happening. While he’d known all along that he was playing with fire by not being up front with his government financiers, he’d assumed jail was the risk he was facing. He never could’ve imagined that he’d be enlisted by the FBI for assistance of any kind. Especially for psych counseling for some mental patient who meant nothing to him.
But the reality was that he was no longer in charge. Which was unfortunate, since he hadn’t had the chance yet to delve into the possibilities of time travel. Someone else apparently had, using his device, but in no way was he at a point where he was ready to hand over his technology to the government. His experiments had only just begun. He wouldn’t even be able to list the device’s capabilities for them. Getting them to believe that, though, was an uphill climb, since they were in possession of his device, somehow left in the Sierra Nevadas at some point in history.
He didn’t trust the government folks and what they might do with his time travel device. While he and his team had laid out plans that they would not be sharing, at this point they themselves had done nothing wrong, beyond his misusing federal money. A wave of anxiety had been creeping up on him, and it was starting to feel smothering. Unfortunately, there were a host of ways he could fantasize that the U.S. government could use his device to change history. With the device in his possession, he could control the outcomes. With the device in their possession, there was great danger. For the first time since he’d gotten on this ride, he was forced to wonder if experimenting with time travel had been a bad idea.
In his field of vision, something caught his eye, and he looked up to see the woman, Evelyn Peters, and Dr. Koren making their way across the street and toward him. She looked like someone’s grandmother would look – gray hair that had been cut short, a little overweight, and a bit of a hunch when she took her short steps. She’d changed her clothes from the house dress she’d had on in the interview room into a bright orange blouse and khaki-colored pants covered by a long brown sweater. It took some time for her to make it across the grass and Jeff more than once started as though he was going to get up to help her, but each time he realized there was little he could do.
Finally, they reached him, and Dr. Koren helped Evelyn sit on the picnic bench facing Jeff. Still standing, the doctor leaned forward onto the table and asked her if she’d like him to stay. She waved him off. He instructed Jeff to bring her back to the facility once they were done talking, then he made a slow walk back across the street.
The woman looked at Jeff for some time before speaking. He tried to read what was going on in her mind from her facial expressions, but had no context for their conversation, other than what Agent Fisher had given him. Which he was finding hard to get his brain around, though.
Finally, after a few moments, she spoke. “Dr. Jacobs, right?” she asked.
He nodded.
She looked at him with a deep stare. Her bright blue eyes were kind, but weary. Not simply from old age, but from trials of life. She was focused, as if contemplating what the right thing was to say. But she wasn’t thinking. He got the sense that this conversation was a game to her.
“How’d you do it?” she finally asked.
“How’d I do what?”
“Time travel. Dr. Koren says that you’ve created a device that can transport a human through time.”
He laughed nervously. “So much for the small talk,” he said. And so much for a crazy old woman, who suddenly seemed pretty lucid. “Look, I don’t know you. A couple hours ago I was ambushed by federal agents for something I didn’t do, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. If you want me to tell you stuff about me, we’re going to need to do your backstory first.”
“You don’t trust a sweet old lady?”
“Frankly, no.”
“Good,” she said. “With what you’ve gotten yourself into, trust is very overrated.”
“That’s comforting,” he said, looking past her to see that Dr. Koren was now out of sight.
“I’m not here to comfort you, Jeffrey,” she said. It wasn’t often that someone called him by his formal name, so it threw him off in a respect-your-elders sense. She looked around. “Do you mind if we walk?” she asked. “I’ve been inside for seven years and could use some exercise.”
“No, that’s not a problem,” he said, helping her get up from the bench. They started slowly across the grass in a parallel line with the street.
He heard her breathe in the air deeply. “It really is nice to be outside.”
“You literally haven’t been outside in seven years?”
“No, I haven’t,” she said. Walking side-by-side with her and no longer under the influence of her stare, he sensed a softness about her that was actually comforting. If what Fisher had told him was somehow true, then they were kindred spirits. At least as related to science.
“But they said you’re in there voluntarily. Why would you do that?” Now that he’d seen her not acting like a mental patient, he saw little reason for her to be in the hospital at all.
“It’s been my only option, unless I wanted to end up in there anyway by someone else’s order. I couldn’t take what was going on around me.”
Alright, now that did seem a little crazy. “What’s going on around you?”
“History.”
“Well, yes, but that’s not unique to you.” Jeff noticed that as he talked the black FBI vehicle pulled into in a small lot adjacent to the park. The agents were watching them. He wondered if they were listening in on the conversation, as well. “The rest of us deal with it. Why not you?” he finished his thought.
“Jeff, you’re a scientist,” she said, “so I’m going to assume that you have at least something of an open mind. Since you’ve invented a way to time travel, I’m also going to assume that you aren’t of the belief that you’re the only person who ever could’ve done that. Am I right in those two assumptions?”
He nodded. Sure.
“Jeff, I am a scientist, as well. Not too many people know that, however. Or, at least not too many people remember. Unfortunately, I haven’t practiced any real science in a long time. Other than maintaining a record of the consequences of my work, of course, because I still consider that body of work part of my research.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, something clicking. “I remember that name. Evelyn Peters. I’ve read something of yours. Long time ago.”
She was nodding. “Given your field and your area of expertise, it was likely ‘Bynum’s Theory and its Relativity among Sub-atomic Particles.”
He smiled. “That’s it. Not only did I read it, but I believe I quoted you in my application for stimulus funding. Why did you stop researching? Your work was revolutionary.”
“Well, not really,” she said. “I’d actually published that paper before. Only in Russian.”
“Russian?” He flashed back to her room, the museum of made-up Soviet history. “When was that?”
“Oh, I published that in 2008.”
“But you said-”
“Jeffrey, do you know why you’re here?”
He stopped. “Agent Fisher mentioned to me inside that you believe you traveled through time. Apparently that gives
you some kind of connection to me.”
“Not believe, Jeff. I did travel through time. I traveled back thirty-five years and have lived those years twice. If you’d had the chance to see what I’ve seen, you’d lock yourself in a mental institution too.”
“Is that even possible?” he asked without thinking, now not only confused, but feeling very sympathetic for this woman.
“Well, I think you know the answer to that, Dr. Jacobs.” This time, the formal name, but he got her point. His mind flashed to the time device landing in California. Had he, or whoever had used it to travel, experienced something similar to what she was describing? No way to get home, so being forced to live a different life, in a different time? It was incomprehensible.
“I have told very few people what I’ve been able to accomplish,” Jeff said. “And they’ve all thought I was crazy. Your story? It sounds crazy. Soviet Union and assassinations and what-not. Why is the FBI jumping through hoops for a mental patient?”
As they reached one of the baseball diamonds, she laughed for the first time. She motioned to one of the benches, where they sat for a moment. “I’ve wondered that myself,” she said, “and have come up with two scenarios. One, I did build some credibility in American science by introducing two papers I’d written in Russia previously. I knew that ultimately time travel would have to be discovered again, so I pushed it. Believe me, people perk up when you publish research that was originally from 2008 in 1990. It’s a big leap.”
“I guess so.” It was uncomfortable for him because he’d often thought in his work that, if he was successful in creating time travel, he’d never do anything like what she was describing.
“You disapprove,” she said, scanning his face. “It was the only way I could cope.”
Wasn’t a good justification to him, but what was done was done. He moved on. “The other reason?”
“Well, of course, if there’s the possibility of time travel, the U.S. government is going to want to control it.” He’d learned that himself just that morning. “Dr. Koren tells me that your time travel device allows people to go both ways.”
“Well, yes it does. Though there’s some mystery as to why-”
She sighed. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have that time back.”
As interesting as swapping time travel stories was, he was getting increasingly frustrated because there was no point to her conversation. He appreciated that she’d been devoid of fresh air and wanted a little stroll, but his life had been turned upside down that day, and the last thing he wanted was the responsibility of this old woman, whatever her background. So, he prompted her. “What’s with the books on Russia?” he asked.
She motioned for them to stand and continue walking. “That’s my documentation,” she said, grabbing his arm for support. He let her. “Don’t you document your experiments?”
“Of course I-”
“Jeff, you’re not getting the big picture here,” she said, cutting him off. He wasn’t because she wasn’t giving it to him. “Those books – where I come from, that’s the reality. I have gone through painstaking effort to empty out my memories onto those pages, documenting the history that was history before I changed it.”
“You changed it?” Now he was intrigued a little, at least.
“Yes, Jeff. I changed history. Like you, I figured out how to send a human through time. I asked you when we started our conversation how you did it. Your process is at least similar to mine? Intensifying the subatomic structure to speed the entire body up to the speed of light? I thought so. Only you took the next important step – a device that can actually go with the subject. We’d constructed a chamber in which anything you put inside would time travel. Only there wasn’t a chamber on the other end, so anyone that traveled was then stranded wherever they ended up. As it turned out, I was the only one to ever make a jump.” He noticed she was talking more quickly and excitedly. She probably hadn’t had the chance to go over this with anyone in the last decade, or three.
“So you’re Russian?” Given the state of her room, it was a reasonable leap.
“рад встречать Вас,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”
He shook his head. “Ms. Peters, I’m still lost. What does any of this have to do with me?”
She stopped and let go of his arm, then turned to face him. “Jeffrey, I don’t want to live those thirty years twice. You have a technology that can save me from that. But I’m going to need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I need you to take me back to 1983.”
He organized the time travel in his mind. “What good would that do? You’ve already lived those thirty years.”
She was shaking her head. “Not me. Not Evelyn Peters. The other me.”
“There’s another you?” As much as a moment ago he’d wanted to flee the conversation, this was a captivating assertion she was making. Two versions of herself? As he thought about how it could be, it came to him. “Ahh, I get it. The you that would’ve gone back to 1983 in the first place. But if you came from a different reality, how do you know where she is? How do you know if she’s even alive?”
“I know,” she said, looking him squarely in the eyes. Then she put her head down, looking at her feet as she talked. “It took me a very long time, but I found her and I’ve reached out to her.”
Now, he took a step back. “You’ve made contact with another version of yourself?” He’d said it with more of a scolding tone that he’d intended. But that was time travel taboo. Everyone knew it.
“I have, and she’s on her way here.”
Everything was coming at him way too fast. “She’s coming here? From where?”
“From Moscow,” Evelyn said, calming down the conversation. “Keep walking. I don’t want them to feel like I told you something that would cause such a reaction.” Realizing she was also aware of the agents watching them, he resumed his pace. She continued, “I need you to use your time travel device to take her to 1983 so she can complete the assassination of General Belochkin and then return.”
The air went out of him. She, and as a result, the FBI, was asking him to help murder a Soviet general thirty years in the past? “Why?” he asked, his voice quivering. He resumed his position next to her, softly extending his arm to her again.
“You’re a physicist, Jeffrey. You tell me why.”
He knew the reason. One possible theory – that if the past is changed as a result of time travel, in order for the new reality to remain, the change must be ensured. Someone had to go back and kill the Russian. In his hypotheses, he’d called the phenomenon “fulfillment.” But it was a theory. Apparently, he’d been recruited to put fulfillment into action. He immediately reasoned that there was no way of knowing what would happen if the assassination wasn’t fulfilled, and would ponder it later, but from the conversation and the way she was staring through him, he could tell that the two physicists standing in the middle of this park in the Bronx were in agreement on the topic.
“How much of this does the FBI know?” he asked. Now, in his mind he was starting to juggle the stakeholders. Whom did he owe what?
“All of it except that I reached out to myself last week. But you can’t tell them that. If the U.S. government tries to intercept her, she’ll flee and she’ll disappear. She’s very talented, from what I understand. You have to convince her that all of this is real, and that she needs to do her part. You are the person she will trust.” She took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose gently with it, then dropped it as she went to put it back into her pocket. “Oh, honey, can you get that for me?”
Jeff cringed at the idea of touching this old woman’s used tissue, and hesitated.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t really wipe my nose on it,” she said. “I’ve written the flight information you need to find me. The other me, that is. The younger me.” She laughed thoughtfully and then turned back to him. “The flight lands this evening at JFK. You need to be there
.”
He picked up the tissue and conspicuously stuffed it into his pocket. Her cunning was probably appropriate. They were being closely watched. He flashed back to his original suspicion that they could be using audio surveillance on them because he wanted to dig into this situation a little bit more without having to divulge to the agents what Evelyn had told him. While his own research hadn’t yielded results, this woman was living proof of the potential repercussions of time travel. Studying her life was suddenly an imperative.
“So, supposing I am convincing enough to make the other you come with me... What do I do with her? Bring her here?”
Evelyn stopped and held up her hands. “No,” she said firmly. “Now that everything’s in motion, I don’t want her to come face-to-face with me. It would serve no purpose, and it will only confuse things.”
“How so?”
“Jeffrey, again,” she said, actually reaching up and tapping him on the head with her finger. “Use your head. How would it affect you if you ran into yourself from thirty years into the future?”
“I guess it would have an impact.” He couldn’t wrap his brain around it. Not today.
“Exactly. You must convince her, using your technology and the information I’ve already given her, that she needs to travel with you to make this happen.”
“Well, that should be easy,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Did you tell her anything else?”
“Yes. She doesn’t know she’s me. I told her I was her mother.”
“Her mother?”
“We were taken from our home at a very young age,” Evelyn said. “It was far more believable to say that I was her mother than that I was her time-traveling self.”
He nodded. “I guess so. Is that a ruse I need to maintain?”
“No. You can tell her. You should tell her, or she’ll be even more likely to want to see me.”
They walked several paces. Jeff, who was normally quite adept at asking meaningful questions, was lost. He had nothing to say. Too much had happened in just the past several hours. He needed to get away from Evelyn and Agent Fisher to collect his thoughts, and then possibly make another visit to the hospital. Before he left, though, he had one more question he did want to make sure he asked.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 3
