“Are you as smart as they say you are?”
Evelyn grinned at him. “Can you take me back to my room?” she asked.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jeff approached Dexter, who was sitting at the cafeteria table reading and didn’t notice him approaching. He patted him on the shoulder and sat down across from him. “Some day, huh?”
“Could be worse,” Dexter said. Open in front of him on the table was one of Evelyn’s handwritten volumes on the Soviet Union. He pointed at the page he was on. “Either this woman is the most imaginative author of revisionist history on the planet, or we should really think about taking her seriously. The stuff in here is incredible.”
“What is it? More stuff on Russia?”
“Not Russia, Jeff. The Soviet Union. She has chronicled the last three decades of a completely different reality, where the Soviet Union is alive and well and a world superpower. Perhaps even the world superpower. There’s so much detail in here. It’s inconceivable that someone could make it all up.”
“What’s it say?” Evelyn had given him the scoop on her own life, but they hadn’t delved much into the world of the reality she said she’d left behind.
Dexter flipped the book to the inside front cover. “This volume covers the late ‘90s, but there are at least twenty others up there. No fall of the Soviet Union. No tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Just advancement after advancement in Soviet science and innovation. The world on the brink of nuclear war. Check out this,” he said, sliding the open book across the table to Jeff, turning it so he could see. “The two tallest buildings in the world erected in St. Petersburg in 1999, part of a worldwide competition for structural dominance. They’re not even twin towers – they’re two separate projects. This is really amazing stuff.” He paused and looked up. “How’d your conversation go with the old woman?”
“Very interesting.” The walk back to the hospital and down to the cafeteria hadn’t been sufficient time for him to determine how open he was going to behave with his friend. Partially because of plausible deniability; partially because he just didn’t know yet what would be helpful and what would be hurtful to his own life, or to Dexter’s for that matter.
“Interesting, how? Like, she’s a kook? Or, like we’d better start paying attention?”
Looking for another moment to think, he noticed that Dexter’s cup was empty and motioned to it. “I’m thirsty. Do you want another?” His friend nodded yes.
Knowing Dexter would be content reading Evelyn’s book at the table, Jeff didn’t rush while walking across the room to the soda fountain. He filled up two glasses with orange soda, contemplating the best way to tell Dexter about Evelyn’s story. And her request of him. If at all.
As much as he was still reeling from the day’s events, he tried to put himself into Dexter’s shoes. While it was Jeff’s technology that was under FBI scrutiny, Dexter hadn’t even had the opportunity to engage in time travel himself yet. Jeff had been through it twice, so the notion that this woman could be telling the truth had to be that much more real to him. He knew it was possible. For him, it was only a matter of believing her story. For Dexter, he would have to buy in to the general idea – which he had, in principle – that time travel was real before even getting to the woman’s story. That was a long road to travel.
Then there were the agents, who were probably outside the hospital waiting for them to leave. Evelyn had said that they were there at her request, but they didn’t know yet that she was claiming to have made contact with her other self. It appeared there were layers of information. He knew the most out of anyone, and the agents knew some. The scope of Dexter’s knowledge of the situation was entirely up to him, and he worked quickly to sort out how much he wanted to involve his friend. It was not about secrecy, he was in the process of convincing himself, but protection.
There was also the issue of the old, rusted time device found in the Sierra Nevadas, which he knew he wanted to investigate as soon as the feds were off his back. There was plenty of mystery surrounding the device that needed to be explored. He wondered if he could get the device from them. Which brought to mind the “good” device, sitting safely back at his lab. At least he hoped it was still there. In any case, he was certain they weren’t going to allow him free access to it.
He paid for the sodas and returned to the table, taking much longer than he should have to get them. Dexter didn’t care. He was engrossed in alternative reality. “Look,” he said without taking his eyes off of the page. “In 1999, in preparation for Y2K, which seems to have happened no matter what reality you were in, the Soviets sent out a worldwide message that their missile systems were linked inextricably to the nation’s mainframe defense system, and that they weren’t exactly sure what would happen when the clock struck midnight of January 1, 2000.”
“They weren’t sure?” Jeff asked, sipping from his drink. He was too far along in his thoughts to process a history that wasn’t real.
“It says here there was widespread panic of unintentional nuclear war. Nice, huh? Unintentional.” He closed the book. “So, what happened?”
Jeff took a moment before answering. “I was thinking, we haven’t had a free minute to chat since we were ambushed by FBI agents this morning. What are your thoughts about all of this?”
He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, taking a drink. “The world is upside down right now. All I can think is that maybe I should’ve just let you go ahead and do the Wilton job. At least we’d have some understanding of what’s going on.
“Yes, well, someone apparently did do the Wilton job.”
“Maybe you still do.”
“What do you mean? Oh, maybe we just haven’t done it yet? But if that’s the case, why would we leave the time device there?”
“Not sure.” He sat back, slouching in his chair. “This is going to take some serious thinking on a day where there isn’t as much shock and awe. What’d the old woman say?”
Jeff sighed. “She basically backed up the story that was reiterated to us by Agent Fisher. She says that she was a Soviet scientist who invented time travel. But, like I think we’re quickly figuring out, she realized the dangers of time travel and sabotaged her own technology. She says she sent herself back thirty-some years into the past to assassinate the man who – in her reality – would ultimately become the Soviet Premier, and who had made the time travel project a priority.”
“That’s this Belochkin guy,” Dexter said, flipping though some pages to find a specific one. “Yes, here – Alexandr Belochkin. She said in here they call him the ‘Trigger Finger’ because he was always threatening nuclear war.”
“Makes sense from what Evelyn told me,” Jeff said. “What she didn’t realize, though, was that her actions would lead to the fall of the Soviet Union.”
“So she went back in time, but she didn’t have a way to get back to the present? That’s why she’s an old woman now, even though Fisher says she was born in 1975?”
Jeff shrugged. “I guess,” he said, taking another sip from his drink. Dexter did the same. “I’m not sure what to think about all of this. It’s crazy.”
“It is,” he said, nodding. “But the big question is, why’d they come to get you? Just because you invented time travel?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. They need-”
He looked up to see Agent Fisher approaching them. The other agent, Figueroa, was nowhere in sight, which made Jeff uneasy. He was sure he was around somewhere.
Fisher took a seat at the table with them. “What do you think?” he asked.
Jeff laughed and sat back in his chair. “What am I supposed to think?”
Fisher relaxed, crossing his left leg over his right. He let out a deep sigh – letting them know it had been a long day for him, as well. “Dr. Jacobs, we’ve been looking for you for a while. About two years. Actually, we haven’t been looking for you, but we’ve been looking for the person who perfected time travel.”
&
nbsp; “Well, I can’t say that I’ve perfected-”
“Don’t be humble. You did it. Two years ago, Dr. Koren places a call to the FBI to tell us that this woman, Evelyn Peters, has information that we should hear. He says he’s been monitoring her for several years and that she has a scientific theory that could change everything we know about the world. The request came to our department in DC and we sit on it for six months. Finally, we send a rookie agent out to talk to the doctor. He brings this story back to us, telling us about these crazy books this old woman had written. You know what we did? We laughed our asses off. Told him he was being hazed. But then Dr. Koren keeps calling, saying that Ms. Peters had some information. What got our attention this time was that she delivered this next piece of the puzzle in fluent Russian, which he’d never heard her speak before. The hospital had to get a translator. It was about the deadline.”
None of this meant much to Jeff, but he’d determined the best path to getting permission to continue his experiments was to respectfully hear Fisher out. The word ‘deadline’ caught his attention, though. Evelyn hadn’t mentioned it. “What deadline?”
“Ahhh, she didn’t say anything about it, did she?” He looked conspicuously around the room and then back to Jeff. “She’s a conniver. She definitely has an agenda. Ms. Peters believes that in order for us to maintain our current course of history, we need to ensure that everything that has transpired up until now actually transpires.”
“Fulfillment,” Jeff said under his breath.
“What’s that?”
“In my studies, that’s the term that I’ve come up with relative to time travel. If there’s a change to history as a result of time travel, the moment that change happens becomes pivotal to the reality that follows it. Since time travel is involved, the change must be fulfilled, or else...”
“Or else what?”
“Well, there’s no real way of knowing. In theory, there would be some sort of paradox and the reality that was created as a result of that change would cease to exist.” It hit him. “Evelyn mentioned this. She believes that since she traveled back in time to assassinate that Russian officer, she needs to make sure that it happens. But she didn’t mention anything about a deadline.”
Fisher was nodding. “I’m glad to see you’re on a first-name basis with her. Building a relationship between the two of you is half the battle.”
“What do you need him to do? Take the old woman back to 1983?” Dexter asked. Jeff looked at him, surprised. He’d come to the same conclusion even before being told about the other Evelyn out there.
“Let me finish the story,” Fisher said, holding up his hands. “Ms. Peters’ books that you saw – what you didn’t see was at the bottom of the closet. She has the exact same volumes, only written in Russian. Absolutely incredible. So we decided we were going to listen to what she’s saying, and started looking around to see if any of our scientists seemed to be on the verge of discovering time travel. No one was, at least on record. As you probably know, most scientists consider it to be an impossibility. After we tapped into the top minds in the country, we went back to Ms. Peters and Dr. Koren with the assessment that we were going to have to trust that things would turn out alright.
“In April, however, five months ago, as a result of a terrorist threat that said a dirty bomb could be showing up in San Diego, NASA launched four satellites that have the ability to pick up even the tiniest trace amounts of radioactive material. We found nothing in the way of terrorism, but what the satellite did pick up was your device in the mountains in California. We researched the raw materials in the device, which led us to you. And, according to Ms. Peters, not a moment too soon.”
“Why not a moment too soon?” Jeff asked. “When’s this deadline?”
Fisher sighed. “Three days from now.”
“Why three days? Where’d that date come from?”
“I know,” Dexter said, surprising Jeff.
“You do?”
Dexter nodded solemnly, then looked at Fisher. “It’s the exact age that Ms. Peters was when she went back in time in the first place.”
“Bingo,” Fisher said, looking at the clock on the wall behind Jeff. “Three days, four hours and about thirty-three minutes from now, actually. Again, according to Ms. Peters.”
Jeff instinctively turned to see the clock, though he didn’t focus on it. He shook his head. “I don’t understand why that would matter.”
“You’re the physicist,” Fisher said. “I figured if anyone would understand it, it’d be you.”
He processed. It made sense from a logical standpoint, though he might not have considered the idea of a deadline like this without prodding. When he’d been experimenting with his new technology by sending diamonds one minute into the past, the diamonds were showing up before he’d actually committed to sending them. But he knew that he ultimately had to, or the diamond wouldn’t have shown up. He’d never thought about there being a time constraint to the concept of fulfillment – probably because he was using something inanimate at the time and didn’t translate it into a human, for which age was a more specific factor. Age when combined with reasoning and intent, at least.
Relative to this discussion, however, he also made a note for later that this theory would also suggest that, somehow, someone would need to be taking his time device to the Sierra Nevadas. Perhaps the Wilton job wasn’t as off-the-table as Dexter had suggested.
“Three days,” he said, fiddling with the straw in his now-empty glass. “And you want to use my time device to go back and assassinate this guy.”
“Well, the way I see it, Dr. Jacobs,” Fisher said, “you have two choices. On one hand, you’ve lied to the U.S. government and misrepresented your use of 40 million dollars of the taxpayers’ money, which would by itself carry with it about 25 years in prison. However, as I’m sure you were wagering, your breakthrough is so dynamic in itself, that sentence would probably be shortened or eliminated, but you’d likely find yourself in the servitude of the federal government. So not as bad, but I’m imagining not what you were expecting when you got into all of this. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to possibly – provided all of this is true – help your country, for which, when the mission is complete, you will be able to go back to your experiments, supervised this time, and make the most out of your world-changing technology.”
“I suppose if I didn’t like either option, there’s the end-of-this-reality paradox to spur me into a decision,” Jeff said with as much sarcasm as he thought the agent would allow, and confident that the only way he was getting his hands back on his device was by taking this path. “I’m in. Of course I’m in. But I don’t have the wherewithal or the skills to assassinate anyone, much less a decorated Soviet officer. Are you coming with me to do the dirty work?”
“Well, we’re hoping Ms. Peters will be going with you.”
“She could hardly walk,” Dexter said. “How’s she going to kill somebody?”
Fisher shook his head. “Not that Ms. Peters.”
“Well, then who?” Dexter asked. Jeff didn’t want to give anything away, so he kept his mouth shut.
Fisher cocked his head to one side as if he didn’t really buy in to what he was about to say. “There are two Ms. Peters on the planet now. The one you just met and a younger version. She’ll have the knowledge we need to get close to the General. We believe we’re very near to finding the younger Ms. Peters.”
“Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” Jeff asked. Fisher didn’t like the comment, so he left it alone. “So, what do we do?”
“We’re going to take you back to your car in Queens. Under supervision, you’ll spend the next couple days prepping for time travel to 1983 while we work on tracking down Ms. Peters.”
“What happens if you don’t find her?” Dexter asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge in 48 hours. We have other options just in case. But we’ll find her.” He pointed at Jeff. “You be ready no matter what.
”
“If you have the destination, it’s just a matter of programming the device,” he said. “Won’t take long at all. Any chance I can get the old time device from the Sierra Nevadas? I’d love to run some tests on it.”
Fisher looked Jeff in the eyes for a long moment before answering. “Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem,” he said slowly. “We’re going to monitor your lab until the mission is complete. Just to make sure there are no deviations.”
That confirmed his suspicions. They’d be watching him like a hawk. Hopefully, they’d only assume he was in the game when he was at his lab. He didn’t need them trailing him while he followed Evelyn’s instructions.
“Well, I don’t want to waste your time sitting here,” Jeff said, standing. A few moments later they were in Fisher’s car, headed back to Congressman Rivera’s office and Jeff’s waiting car.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jeff stopped himself. He was tapping his foot nervously again. It was the fourth or fifth time he had to make a mental note of it. Though, had he stopped to think about it, he would have had to offer himself some leeway, because he had absolutely no idea what he had gotten himself into.
He sat in a row of four seats against the wall in the Air France section of Terminal 1 at JFK Airport, having arrived there a half-hour before the flight written on Evelyn’s tissue was supposed to arrive. After being dropped off by the agents, he’d taken Dexter back to his home before turning around and heading back to Queens. The trip took him about three hours – by car to Newark and then train the rest of the way. The conversation with Dexter had been stunted on the ride home, mainly because they were exhausted. He’d never considered how taxing detainment by the FBI could be. Mostly, Jeff just felt bad for dragging Dexter into it.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 4
