The Garden

by Craig W. Turner

  “You don’t even know what he intends to do,” Chopra said, motioning to Reilly.

  Keegan nodded. “I can’t expect of you to make an informed decision without knowing the details of the situation,” he said. “But I have an idea of what he plans to do. And I believe it will not only get me back to my present time in one piece, but make sure the rest of my team is safe, too. As well as the time program.”

  Chopra sighed. Keegan could tell he was considering acting against his better judgment, and was conflicted. “I will keep the speech the way it’s written,” he said, nodding. “Best to stay consistent in my own theories about the dangers of time travel.”

  Keegan felt a wave of relief flow over him. It had been incredibly dangerous for him to come here, and he’d done it emotionally and without considering the repercussions. In doing so, he’d taken the lives of his colleagues into his hands, along with his own, and who could know what other countless changes might have resulted? He trusted Chopra, that his own reverence for time travel would keep him on his current path, and that this glimpse into the future wouldn’t alter his own ambitions. He found that he also trusted Reilly, though his assertion to Chopra had been fabricated, because he actually had no idea what the General intended to do. “Thank you, Dr. Chopra,” he said.

  “Don’t let me down.”

  Reilly was shaking his head. “I won’t. And I look forward to catching up with you.”

  Chopra motioned with his head toward the door. “I’d better get out there, or this whole conversation is moot,” he said.

  “Doctor,” Keegan said, stopping him before he left, “there is one change I’d like to make to the past that I don’t see causing any harm at all.”

  “What’s that?” Chopra said, tension in his voice again.

  “I’d love to stay for this presentation.”

  Chopra looked up at him. “I am going to walk out that door and I expect to never see you again,” he said. “You may do what you’d like.”

  Keegan took it as a punch to the stomach as Chopra left the locker room. While they seemed to be back on the right track, he’d clearly displeased the man he called his idol. It was stupid of him to attempt this, and he knew the feeling would last.

  “Let’s go,” Reilly said. “We’ll watch the speech and then get you home.”

  They left the locker room and went to search for somewhere to watch the presentation in the standing-room only stadium.

  CHAPTER 79

  Keegan and Reilly walked away from the crowd exiting the stadium, randomly in search of a secluded area where Keegan could make the jump back to his present time. There was no specific rush, but he felt as though every minute he stayed, given what he’d already experienced, there was the risk he could make some kind of difference that would or could impact his own past and his team’s. Best to be on his way as soon as possible.

  As for Reilly, Keegan was still uneasy about him staying, but understood that he wasn’t going to get him to change his mind. At least three times during Chopra’s presentation, which they watched from the aisle behind the top row of the ballpark, he’d leaned over to Reilly and suggested leaving the second cloak behind for him as an “out.” Reilly was adamant that he wanted no such back-up plan, and that his mission was clear. That it would take commitment and focus to pull off. Keegan hated the idea, but also knew that the General was most likely the team’s only hope – if they had any at all.

  As they walked, they discussed the mind-blowing presentation they’d just had the opportunity to experience. It had thrown both of them, having been so entrenched in their own experiences and philosophies that they were unable to have any recollection of human time travel when it was nothing but a dream. Even Reilly, who had been a part of the actual creation of SATP, said he could not force his mind to remember what it was like in the time before the technology was created and became an accepted part of society. But Chopra’s presentation was ambitious and hopeful and naïve and dangerous, all at the same time. Reilly had told him when they’d first left the stadium that the only association he could make was from when he was a child and the way it made him feel when he saw his first time travel movie. He’d said he was a little sad he couldn’t get that feeling back.

  “I still think you should take the cloak,” Keegan said as they walked. “You have to give yourself a failsafe.”

  Reilly sighed, annoyed. “I’m not answering that question again,” he said. “I’m not taking it. Not only would it be a temptation during moments of weakness, but we cannot afford to leave that technology here in the past. The cloaks aren’t going to be created for another twenty years. If someone were to discover it before that time, it could destroy everything.”

  “But don’t you trust yourself to keep watch over it?”

  “No,” he said, then laughed. “I don’t, actually. But it’s not all about me. I’m 63 years old, Keegan. I’m not going to be around forever. What happens if I kick and someone is going through my stuff and finds it? What happens if-” He stopped himself for a moment. “Look, put it out of your head. It’s not going to happen.”

  They were walking past the football stadium now, looking intently for somewhere that would work. He thought about going back inside, but figured they were fortunate they hadn’t been seen the first time. As they reached the turn around the stadium, they saw the edge of a large park. Keegan pointed toward it, and Reilly silently agreed it would serve well for privacy.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to fill me in on your plan,” Keegan said as they continued. Traffic on the street to their right was thick, with people leaving the ballpark after the event, a convoy of driverless cars steering effortlessly through the campus roads.

  “You don’t suppose correctly,” Reilly said. “It’s not in your best interest to know.”

  He shook his head. “Please tell me you’re not letting me do the stupidest thing I could possibly do here.” As if had Reilly been setting him up, he would have told him directly.

  “You really have no choice but to trust me, Keegan.”

  “No, I know you’re right,” he said. “Doesn’t make it any easier. I feel like there should be some way I can help.”

  “Well, hopefully, by the time you arrive back in 2109, I’ll have fixed everything, and you’ll arrive to meet up with the rest of the team as though nothing had ever threatened that happening.”

  They pressed a button on the light pole, which halted traffic and gave them an opening to cross. Once at the park entrance, they walked onto the dry grass, headed for seclusion.

  “Speaking of the rest of the team,” Keegan said, “what’s their story going to be when I see them? We haven’t talked about what you found 10,000 years in the past.” He looked over at Reilly, who was smiling.

  “I think I’ll let them tell you.”

  “No, wait a second,” he said, holding up his hand. “If I get back to the present time, and you haven’t been able to make the necessary changes, ending up in a situation where they never took the trip – forget the multiple versions of myself and utter confusion I’ll have to deal with – I will never have the chance to know what happened? You’re telling me.”

  “You-”

  “No,” Keegan said, shaking his head. “You telling me doesn’t give me any information about the future or anything. There is zero harm in you filling me in on what you found.”

  “How about right there?” Reilly said, pointing at a spot behind an unused picnic area near a line of trees.

  “Yeah, that’ll work,” Keegan agreed. They headed toward the spot.

  When they reached it, they stood facing each other.

  “Keegan, it was magical,” Reilly said, continuing their conversation without further prompting. “I didn’t know what I believed, and I didn’t know what to expect-”

  “So, it was there?”

  “It was there,” he said. “We followed coordinates that should’ve left us in the middle of a barren desert, and instead it was a lus
h forest. Surrounding an incredible structure. An enormous building, Keegan, reaching as high up as we could see. Higher. Those few chapters in Genesis did not do God’s creation justice by any stretch of the imagination.”

  “And Adam and Eve?”

  “They were all there,” Reilly said, then he laughed. “All of them. Adam, Eve, the devil. The serpent. It was like we were following a script.”

  “The devil? Honestly?”

  “Yes, we had some interactions with him. That, however, is a story for Claire to tell you. I’m not spoiling that one.”

  Keegan looked at him like he was crazy. He was leaving out details to build suspense? “You’re seriously not going to tell me? The devil?! You talked to the devil?!”

  Reilly held up his hands. “Trust me on this one,” he said. “The risk of something happening that you don’t get to hear the story from Claire is worth waiting for it.”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea what that means.”

  Reilly laughed and nodded. “Just trust me.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Well, thanks to our new friend Landon, we realized that part of the reason Eden existed, and we were able to arrive there despite our estimated timing, was because there technically was no time. At the time.”

  “No time,” Keegan repeated. “Yes, I guess that would be one theory. That was in his paper.” He was thinking. “But if there was no time-”

  “Right. Then how could we get back?”

  Two joggers, a man and a woman, ran by along the nearby paved path, catching their attention for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “again, theoretically, you should have ended up in a loop. And since your cloaks only had one trip in them, that would’ve been the death knell for you.”

  “Yep.”

  “Then, what did you do?”

  “Well, since none of us thought of that before we left – which tells me that none of us were really expecting to find what we found – we were forced to accept the theory you just described, which Landon laid out for us. To get back, we had to find a way to set time, as we know it, in motion. You see, in a way, there already was time – ‘the evening and the morning were the first day’ – and otherwise we never would have been able to land via our geosynchronous coordinates if the Earth hadn’t already been following its rotation around the-”

  Keegan’s mind was racing, and he was missing what Reilly was saying anyway, so he waved his finger at him to get him to stop. “You had to find a way to set time in motion?”

  “Yes,” Reilly said, nodding.

  “According to the Bible, there’s only one way for that to happen.”

  Reilly continued nodding.

  “You… Tempted? Eve?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words in a coherent way.

  “Yes,” Reilly said. “Well, no, not exactly. But we helped. Kind of unintentionally, at first, but then when we figured it was our only hope, and it was going to happen anyway… Was it really the worst thing?”

  Keegan turned and walked in a confused circle. As if the day could have taken a turn any stranger than what he’d already witnessed. “I don’t even know what follow up question to ask,” Keegan said.

  “Well, that’s a first,” Reilly said.

  “You were responsible for the first sin. That’s incredible.”

  Reilly shook his head. “No, I’m sure one of us sinned before that happened. Things were pretty tense. We just didn’t get caught. Remember, the assignment was to go there and murder everyone. Last I checked, that’s one of the big ones.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No,” Reilly said. “I didn’t.”

  Keegan shook his head again. “I have so many questions,” he said. “I’d need hours. Days.”

  “You don’t have them,” Reilly said. “It’s time to go.”

  He sighed, his shoulders relaxing, knowing – or, at least, believing – he’d have the chance to learn more about their Eden mission when he returned. “Where will you go?” he asked. “How will you blend into society?”

  “I have some ideas,” he said. “I have some experience in espionage from my military days. I’ll probably try to get out of the country until the right time. It’ll be easier to hide.” He paused. “I’ll make it work.”

  “I wish I could help,” Keegan said. “I don’t even have anything to give you to make things easier.”

  Reilly laughed. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Just get back and be ready to react to what I set up for you.”

  “That doesn’t really help me.”

  “Just be ready.”

  They stood for a moment, then Keegan leaned in and used his big frame to give Reilly a bear hug. “It’s been my pleasure working with you all these years,” he said. “Please be careful.”

  “Keegan, the pleasure has been mine.”

  He pulled his pack around from his back to the front and opened it, pulling out one of the cloaks. He motioned to the open bag. “Last chance.”

  Reilly simply nodded and smiled.

  Taking another peek around their surroundings, Keegan saw no one, so he knelt on the ground and donned the cloak until he was covered completely. He took hold of the sensor to engage the device, and gave one last look to Reilly, who took several steps back. With his body covered in thick canvas, he couldn’t wave or salute or give some other gesture of respect, so he simply nodded, not knowing if Reilly could see it.

  He thought he saw him return the nod and wave. General Andrew Reilly was a good man, and within minutes Keegan would know if he would ultimately be successful in his endeavor.

  He pressed the sensor between his thumb and forefinger. Then he blacked out.

  CHAPTER 80

  President of the United States Roland Fitcher sat at his desk in the Oval Office scribbling an answer in the New York Times’ crossword puzzle from three Sundays ago, a rare moment of solitude between the chaos of the last 72 hours, and what he knew was about to come. Plans long ago set in motion were coming to fruition, and while he had a moment, he decided to enjoy his chosen mechanism for escape.

  Given the schedule of such an office, it generally took him close to a month to get through a puzzle, which was one of his foremost passions back when he was permitted time to have passions. Only seven months on the job, a small part of him already did yearn, he would admit to his wife, Doreen, and no one else, for the day when he could take more than a moment to himself and relax. He realized that day might never come – there was a reason that presidents who were no longer in office were still greeted as “Mr. President” – but in these few moments that he was allowed the luxury of his own thoughts, he figured he could afford himself the guilty pleasure of a daydream.

  Fitcher dragged his eraser across one of the boxes. He’d written “ADVISOR” for the clue “Teacher,” but noticed that the answer across it required an “e” instead of an “o,” the alternate spelling. Which irritated him, because he’d been wrestling with it for a week. He was about to pencil the correct letter in when his mobile phone rang.

  It distracted him because his mobile phone rarely rang. Very few people had the number, which meant the call likely had something to do with what was taking place at that moment in North Carolina. His solitude had ended.

  He glanced at the display and saw the name. Not exactly who he’d expected. He answered, then grunted his way through a particularly disconcerting conversation. At one point, he pulled the phone from his ear and set it on his lap to think for a moment before listening in again. When it ended, he set the phone on the crossword puzzle.

  The President turned his chair to stare out the window and think before making his next move. After several minutes, he returned to the front and pressed a button on his desk. A moment later, his executive assistant, Grace, poked her head through the door at the far end of the room.

  “Yes, Mr. President?” she asked.

  “I need to be in Greensboro within one hour,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” sh
e said, and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

  Fitcher sat back in his chair and sighed. Things were about to change.

  He picked up the phone again and dialed.

  CHAPTER 81

  Robert could feel the cold of the concrete floor on his bare legs. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been in this very position – huddled underneath the time travel cloak after returning from a mission. Usually it was months between each mission. This time, she had just been in this exact spot, doing this exact same thing.

  As usual, he couldn’t see what was outside of his cloak, as the small viewing window positioned near his eyes had not only shifted so it wasn’t in the right place, but had fogged over. Unlike any previous experience, however, Robert had no desire to get out from underneath the cloak. He had no comprehension of what was waiting for him.

  As far as he could tell, he and the team had not accomplished anything that would lead him to believe they’d fixed the situation. It was unlikely that they’d have the chance to tell their story before the agents and the Attorney General hopped on them and took him into custody. And it was too bad. It was a story worth telling, and one that might even have won the day. The Garden of Eden. Settling the debate over its existence. Making contact directly with the key players in the Creation story. He still couldn’t believe that it had happened, and he hadn’t had time to think about what words they could use to possibly explain it to people who hadn’t been there.