“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Reilly said.
Barney laughed obnoxiously. “Yeah, you wouldn’t have said it yourself,” to which Reilly gave an evil grin.
“The point of the matter,” Reilly continued, “is that this mission sets us apart. The understanding of a world that was described only in religious books, and requires a certain level of belief that it even existed, is something the great scientists of the past only dreamed of. I’m not trying to give you a rah-rah speech here. I’m being a realist. What we come back with will blow people’s minds. They will be far more interested in hearing what we have to say than some political agenda.” He reached down and picked up a previously-unseen stack of papers, throwing them on the desk the same way he’d thrown Landon’s paper earlier in the evening. “This is a poll that we ran eight months ago. We organized focus groups who signed NDAs and threw at them possible destinations for time travel to gauge their interest in the results. Eden was included as a test case – it was explained to each group that we included it as an outlandish example to shape the metrics. But, even so, it rated as the highest-ranked destination, with more than 98 percent of participants saying they would be ‘avidly’ interested in the findings from such a trip.” He paused and looked around the table. “We will win this fight.”
“And… What if we get there and there’s nothing but a big, empty desert?” Claire said. Amy looked around the room and realized that Claire was the only one still advocating that side of the debate.
Reilly smiled at her. “Is that what you believe will happen?”
“General, we’ve discussed this,” Claire said. “You know exactly what I believe.”
“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.”
“No,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter what I believe or what anyone believes. All that matters is what’s real. Your scenario you just laid out is a good one for if we go back 10,000 years and find a mythical garden with two naked people and a snake running around. I like that plan. I’m behind that plan. But if we don’t? What’s the plan then?”
“Don’t discount the notion that finding nothing also answers a question,” Landon said quietly, pulling everyone’s attention. “If we go back and don’t find Eden, I would maintain there will be more research needed than if we do.”
“How so?” Robert asked.
“The key is to determine how billions of years of the Earth’s history can be encapsulated into a depiction of a God-created paradise that happened, according to Biblical scholars, approximately 6,000 years ago. I believe there is truth to both sides of the argument, which may make me a minority at this table. But I believe it. No matter what we find when we arrive, the balance of that truth will shift to one side or the other. The question at that point will be why. And I believe the world will want to know.”
“Well-spoken,” Reilly said, which seemed to Amy an obvious response given that Reilly was cheerleading for the project.
She realized she hadn’t said a word the entire meeting, and worried about coming across as irrelevant, especially with the new guy’s eloquent entry into the conversation. She pored through her possible comments to come up with something of specific substance, but everything was so up-in-the-air. The mission, the politics, Robert’s legal troubles. Anything she brought up would be speculative or trite, so she made the decision to avoid the debate altogether.
“I’m in, General,” she said, making herself the first to pledge her unyielding support. “This mission is going to save the program. Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER 35
Normally, Landon wasn’t squeamish about having a needle in his arm, but this time his stomach was turning.
It could’ve been the size of the needle, which was significantly bigger than any he’d ever endured for a blood test or shot. Or it could’ve been the location of the prick, which was in his wrist, just below his thumb.
But most likely it was the purpose of the needle being inserted into his arm, as it had been explained to him. Landon had learned, from his brief introduction while sitting in the secure medical offices dedicated specifically to caring for SATP’s actual time travelers, that one of SATP’s secrets was the innovation that took place in the complex that never saw the outside world. As time travel itself was dangerous enough that it had to be completely contained within the walls of SATP, he hadn’t been surprised to hear that there were literally hundreds of potentially world-changing pieces of technology that the U.S. Patent Office (and the public) knew nothing about. And while that wasn’t surprising, it didn’t change how uncomfortable he was that one of those technologies was being implanted into his arm.
“Explain to me again,” he asked “Dr. Stone,” a pretty but serious young woman whom Landon had learned was the chief physician for whatever department he was currently visiting, “how if there’s no satellites in the past is this technology relevant?” He’d been given directions to the medical office by Keegan as he left the last rendezvous in Reilly’s conference room and had come right here, where he was now squirming in a padded, leather chair as the doctor readied the needle. Stone had been awakened to make sure Landon and Davies could be seen immediately.
“There will be a satellite there, because you are the satellite,” she said as she stabbed the needle into an electronic device about the size of standard red brick and began entering data into it on a digital keypad. “This device that I’m implanting in your arm has the same communications capabilities as any of the satellites orbiting the Earth. Though, of course, it’s designed to communicate with the time portal, and not do all of the other things that satellites do.”
“Is there something I need to do to call the time portal?”
She shook her head, while still focused on the device in her hand. “No. That aspect of the technology will be all programmed for you. It will work in unison with your cloak. But, since it’s possible that you’ll come upon situations that could be helped by access to modern technology, the device acts as a computer for you, tapping into the satellite that you’re carrying around with you for information.”
“What kind of information?”
She turned to him now, pulling the fully-programmed needle from the device. “Well, you won’t have access to the internet, obviously, because the web is housed in the future. But… GPS, simple and complex computations, local time for your destination… Weather – barometric pressure. Your own vitals. Any of the coordinates related to your mission as back-up. We’ve packed quite a bit of information into the device that you’ll be able to access.” She held up the needle and smiled. “Have I talked you into it?” she asked.
“Did you say something in there that was supposed to be encouraging?” he said. “The others all have this implant?”
She nodded. “Anyone who goes on a time travel mission. For the past five years, at least.”
Landon took a deep breath and exhaled. Given the circumstances, where he didn’t feel able to trust anyone, he knew the last thing he should be doing was allowing someone to inject something into his body. But for the same reasons that he found himself going along with the Eden mission in general, he was unable to put up any resistance to this, either. It had been too long a road for him to get to SATP.
After a moment’s pause, he looked up at Dr. Stone and nodded.
Given the location of the shot and the size of the needle, the injection wasn’t as painful as he’d anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise – his first since arriving at SATP. He was told to relax for twenty minutes, and Dr. Stone left him alone in the room after explaining that the shot had to “take” before the programming could be calibrated. Landon tried to clear his thoughts, and maybe steal an extra few minutes of sleep since his opportunity earlier in the night had been stolen from him, but it was not possible. It seemed as though he’d just closed his eyes when Stone returned.
She ran the device she’d used to program the needle up and down the length of his forearm several times, then turned
his arm over so his palm was facing upward. She touched the base of his palm firmly, which gave him a quick burst of pain, though it immediately subsided. “This is your on/off switch,” she said. “When you press the button, the device” – she turned his arm over for him to see an LED display covering his arm from wrist to elbow – “will go on and will stay on until either you press your palm again, or it is inactive for fifteen seconds.”
Landon rubbed his arm. The system had not changed the way his forearm skin felt. It was simply translucent. “How does this go through the time portal? There’s no metal allowed.”
“It’s completely organic,” she said, “and it uses your own energy to operate. No one – and I mean no one – outside of your team and SATP leadership know about this. You are never to illuminate it in front of anyone outside that circle. Past or present. Got it?”
Landon was still mesmerized by the change in his own body, but he looked up and nodded at her. “How do I know how to use it?”
Stone pulled a laminated card out of her pocket and handed it to him. “I know, it’s archaic, but you’re going to have to memorize the functions and then destroy the card.”
“Memorize the functions?” He examined the card, which listed out a few dozen different capabilities of the device in his arm, each represented by a number. He noticed the functions she’d been listing off before, and a host of others.
“On the left, near your wrist, is the display that shows what function is active,” she continued. “At some point, we hope to be able to have the VitaCom function like an actual computer, but given the limitations of creating a system with organic material, we’re not there yet.”
“VitaCom?” he asked, continuing to inspect his arm. “I wouldn’t beat yourself up too badly. This is pretty incredible.”
She shrugged. It was all commonplace for her. “Hopefully, you’ll actually get to use it,” she said. “My understanding is we could be shut down in a few hours. You must be pretty important if they rushed you down here to do this.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sorry they woke you up. If I could have-”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I learned a long time ago that my own schedule comes second. It’s not a big deal.”
Landon found that he liked Dr. Stone. He considered her the first authentic person he’d dealt with since arriving. Or, at least, the first who wasn’t manipulating him.
“Well, good luck to you with whatever you’re doing,” she said. “Remember, destroy that card after you’ve got the numbers memorized.”
“I will,” he said, getting up to leave.
“And good luck, wherever you’re going,” she said. “No pressure. Just save our jobs.” Landon looked back at her and she was smiling. “Send in the historian on your way out.”
Landon left the office, hoping that he’d find some time to play with his new exciting but wildly disturbing, toy.
CHAPTER 36
Keegan grabbed the heavy brown cloaks two at a time and threw them on a large table at the center of the room. While there were a few dozen of the cloaks available at any given time, they needed to prepare seven for this particular mission.
Which wasn't an insignificant number. Seven would be the biggest corps of time travelers that SATP had ever sent on a single mission. The previous high was four, one of the few times that Robert had returned on a mission with them for research – to 1918 Vienna, in the days leading up to the assassination of Archbishop Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I. Keegan didn't think that, from a technical perspective, the number of time travelers was a problem, but as Amy joined him in unfolding the cloaks to access the built-in hard drive, he was thinking a great deal about team dynamic.
As was she, apparently. "Does traveling with two people who have never time traveled before make you nervous?" she asked, finishing up the first cloak and exposing the hardware necessary for programming.
“There has to be a first time for everyone,” he said, without looking up. In truth, it was more Reilly volunteering himself to come on the trip that had him confused. As far as he could remember, Reilly had been on two or three missions ever, and they were usually because there was a military application, such as to observe a military strategy in action. Gettysburg came to mind. Keegan was chalking it up to curiosity for the biggest mission to date, but because of how everything had come together, it was difficult to push suspicion aside. Though, he wouldn’t admit that to Amy. Not right now. “They'll be fine. There are enough of us going with them to guide them through it.”
“Going to be difficult to make that the priority,” she said.
“I agree.”
Once the cloaks were unfolded, Keegan motioned to a security cabinet along the far wall. Amy approached it and pressed her hand against the biometrics panel. The door slid open, and she reached inside, grabbing a rectangular device with prongs protruding from one end. She handed it across the table to Keegan, who set it down and illuminated the VitaCom display in his right arm. He brought up the coordinates for the trip home that would be programmed into the cloaks, setting their return destination and time.
After connecting the device to the closest cloak’s hardware, he began to punch in a series of numbers, talking to Amy as he worked. “I’ll be honest,” he said, “and you know this… I’m not a big fan of Davies being with us. That guy has an axe to grind, and his ego won’t be helpful to us as we’re trying to make decisions on the fly.”
“But Chester’s-”
“I know, I know,” he said. “He has all the research. But he’s got more information than we can possibly digest, and I don’t even know how relevant most of it will be.” He finished the first cloak, and handed the device, still connected, across the table to Amy, who began checking his work. He held out the display on his arm for her to use as a guide.
“But you think Landon’s work is relevant?” she asked, her eyes matching the digital readout on the device to the display on Keegan’s arm.
He laughed. “Honestly, I don’t know where Reilly’s going with that. It was an interesting paper. Wasn’t anything to get excited about, though.”
“Good,” Amy said, handing the device back across the table. Keegan disconnected it, and then hooked it up to the next cloak. The numbers already entered, he pushed a button on the device, and it began to upload them to the cloak. “I didn’t read it. Just being honest.”
“I don’t think Reilly’s even read it,” he said. “He’s just using it as a prop to get Landon out of his comfort zone, and have him come with us.”
“Have you read it?”
“Of course,” he said. “I read everything.”
“Will it actually help us?”
He sighed as he pulled the device off the cloak and moved down the line. It wasn’t a simple question that she was asking, because in answering it he’d be forced to choose a side as to what he believed they’d find 10,000 years in the past. If there was, indeed, a Garden of Eden, then he thought Landon’s paper would be helpful. If not, then not at all. At that point, they’d probably benefit more from having a geologist with them than their current roster of social scientists. But Amy wasn’t asking an “if-then” question. She knew exactly what she was asking. “I don’t know,” he said, admitting his true stance not only to her, but to himself.
He could tell she could read the internal battle he was having. She smiled and shook her head. “Isn’t it funny that out of all of us on the team, including the two Catholics, you and Robert, I am the only one who is still hopeful that we’re going to find what we’re looking for?”
“Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t hopeful,” he said, defensively. While he appreciated having the freedom to waver in his own thoughts, no one liked having their faith challenged. “It is exactly what I want to find. Is it what I expect to find? I have some doubts.”
“It’s okay, Keegan,” she said. “I’m not judging you.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“It’d be nice to hav
e time for a philosophical conversation about all of this,” she said.
“Ping-pong isn’t enough for you?” He continued down the row of cloaks.
She laughed. “There’s a big difference between a philosophical discussion and a debate.”
“Yeah?” he asked as he finished up the last cloak. He began to fold them, and then hand them one-by-one to Amy, who pulled a small digital labeling device from her pocket and marked each of them with the name of the time traveler they were assigned to. Security protocols dictated that, once prepared, the cloaks would stay in this secure room until just before the mission, to minimize any opportunity for tampering, or worse. These cloaks were the team’s only way home.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s called gray area.”
Now, Keegan laughed as he placed the last cloak on top of the pile in the middle of the table. “I think we’re living in gray area for now,” he said. “We’d better get used to it.”
CHAPTER 37
Dipin Chopra surveyed the room he was in – its bland, grey walls, and the single table sitting in the center. This room was identical to the one right next door, where he’d had his stunted conversation with Robert and Landon. The security guards had walked him out of one room and then immediately into the next, to apparently sit and wait for whatever they had planned for him.
The uncomfortable rooms were familiar to him, as he’d visited them before. In a high-security area of the facility that few were aware existed, the array of interrogation rooms was used for keeping time travelers honest. Much the same way that a husband seeking citizenship for his immigrant wife would be separated and asked similar questions, for time travel initiatives where multiple team members were involved, during their post-mission briefing they would be isolated and asked details about their trip. It was a failsafe that was developed early in SATP’s history to ensure that there were no rogue agents coming back from a mission. It was critical to pit the time travelers against one another, as they were only ones who could have knowledge of any changes to history, since change would happen around the rest of the SATP team, and the world, back in the present time.
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