Timelines

by Bob Blink

  I wandered to my desk and took the printed pages from decoded files out of the locked drawer. I had scanned them before, but sat down and thumbed through them once again. The entire package was almost an inch thick, but a tabbed section at the front contained material that was relevant to our efforts. Kurt had found an incredible number of oddities, but most were entirely unrelated to the aliens or their technology. He had made two finds, however, that clearly had come from one or more of the aliens. We had his first find, the translator. The second find included almost a dozen total pieces of the alien technology. Several of the pieces were small scraps, having come from some larger object, no longer present. The remaining pieces were intact, and according to the notes that documented the find, had all been located together. Something appeared to have happened to one of the alien interlopers, resulting in the loss of all these pieces. No other explanation seemed to fit.

  Al and John wandered in while I was holding the larger of the objects, the flattened rectangle while trying to read what Kurt had written.

  “Communications device,” Al offered conversationally.

  I looked up at him, surprised. “What? You’ve figured it out? How?”

  “Guessing,” he admitted. “Well, more than that. I ran some scans. As usual we can’t see much inside, but there is a fine structure, just below the surface. Reminds me of some of the phased array antennas we have been working on for advanced projects. Not the same, and very, very small. But started me thinking. Do you think they had a means to communicate from outside into the control area?”

  The importance was not lost on me. “That would be invaluable.” Knowing the answer I asked anyway. “Any luck getting it powered?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Like everything else. We haven’t figured out how to do that.”

  Only one more of the other items looked familiar. It was an exact copy of the key, which we used to access the complex, except for several of the symbols written on it. But it didn’t work. We had tried it several times. Nothing. I pointed at the picture. “Any ideas on this one?

  Al shook his head. John started to say something, then changed his mind and shook his head as well.

  I caught the hesitation. “Tell me John. You had something in mind just then.”

  “Just a momentary hunch,” he responded. “Maybe it’s to another complex.” He looked a little surprised as he voiced the thought.

  Oh shit! Such an idea had never occurred to me.

  “You think they might have had another complex operating separately from the one we have found. Why? What could be the purpose of two?”

  Al jumped in. “We don’t actually know the purpose of the one we have. Except we think they are mucking around with history for some reason. So there could be a lot of reasons we wouldn’t understand for more than one.” He hesitated. “But how about this. I haven’t thought it through, but maybe it’s not for here. Maybe this one is meant for another complex somewhere else.”

  “Another planet?” I whispered. Why not? The aliens weren’t from here. At least that is what we all believed. From Carol’s description it didn’t seem they could have evolved from humans. Perhaps the biggest reason was the danger they would face mucking around in their own past. For now, the working theory would claim they were from another world. So if they could visit us, they could visit somewhere else. It made sense in a way. The symbols were different. Perhaps they identified where a key was to be used. Maybe that explained why the keys were normally left in the bin inside the complex. Maybe they were left there so as not to confuse someone moving between systems.

  “It’s just a thought,” Al added a bit defensively. “There’s no evidence. . .”

  “I think you might have hit on something,” John added excited. “We have been so focused on what their interest in us might be that we haven’t considered anything else. If we could only get access to their computers.”

  Once again, there was no place to take the idea for the moment. But it offered an interesting direction to think about. I would have to run this by Naiya and Carol when I saw them. I remembered Al and John had wandered into the office for something else.

  “Were you after something?” I asked, bringing all of our thoughts back to the present.

  “We were thinking of joining you when you go out to the complex this afternoon,” John indicated. “Carol is bringing the software and some additional hardware I need to pick up. I want to see if there are any specific instructions she needs to pass on, and I heard she is staying for a day or so.”

  I agreed to meet them later in the afternoon so we could all drive out together. As they left, I noted it was time for lunch. Then I had to get to work on the consulting issues I had promised to work through.

  The questions for Aero went much quicker than I had anticipated, and I got them completed and sent off by courier cleaning up the last of my obligations on that project. I reached across the desk to the pile of brown folders representing new projects the government had released for preliminary study prior to the formal RFP [Request For Proposal] process began. Mark had asked me to look through them and see if there was any Carol or I wanted the company to get involved in at this point. There was the usual mix of real hardware and wishful thinking. As usual, various weapons systems dominated the pile. It seemed the majority of the projects we saw represented either new weapons system, or significant upgrades to systems already fielded.

  A new laser system looked intriguing. We have a couple of the country’s experts on retainer. I made a note indicating we should have them take a look and see if it was something that fit our competency. There was also the standard project to research a controlled fusion power system. That project reappeared every cycle. I set it aside. Sadly, we knew the solution to that one, but it was one of those things we just couldn’t release. It would be another twenty some years before the major breakthrough that would yield a controlled fusion plant would come to pass.

  Most of the rest were standard fare. I checked three or four for our people to review. All but one of the rest went into the reject pile. The last one caught my interest. It wasn’t something I thought we should get involved in, but it made me think. The government wanted some way to tag certain types of weapons. They wanted something that could be activated if the weapon was lost or stolen. It would have to be designed in a way it wouldn’t be easily detected, or easily defeated if found. That meant integrated into the system so removal would deactivate the weapon itself. I knew they were thinking nuclear or perhaps some of the biological weapons. Our weapons of mass destruction. I wondered how many went missing that they had been encouraged to make his request. It made me think of a movie in which one character noted: It’s not the fact you lost a weapon that scares me, it’s that it happens often enough that you have a term for it. Broken Arrow, I remembered suddenly. That was the movie. In the end, that RFP went on the reject pile as well.

  I thought I was done, then spotted an administrative folder I was supposed to look at. Reluctantly I pulled it my way, and opened it. I was surprised to see it was for Ken Marshall. Carol had said she would see to him, and she had followed through. Rather than simply fire him, which would leave him free to create mischief in other ways, as well as alerting him that we knew about his activities, Carol had taken a page from the spymaster’s textbook. In the future if a need arose, we would be able to funnel information we wanted him to see his way. In the meantime, I saw he was already reassigned to a special project we had just started in Dubai. He would be out of the loop for at least two years. The papers in front of me required both our signatures to confirm the long term out of country assignment with the special packages for such employees. Carol had already signed it. I added my signature, and handed it to the secretary as I made my way down the hall to grab Al and John for the trip out of town. We would go through the usual hoops Mike had set up to make sure we weren’t being followed, but for now I was pretty certain that it was a waste of time.

  Chapter 25
r />   Northern Africa

  52,000 BC

  Downtime base was a beehive of activity today. I’d talked briefly with Carol, who had arrived looking very tired with a load of new computers and other items on the ‘want’ list. The crew was busy off loading them from her vehicle and bringing them into the facility. She was off somewhere at the moment with John and Al, bringing them up to speed on the new software, which would hopefully help us with the effort to break the alien language. The effort had started to stall of late, and we badly needed the improved tools that were being unloaded today.

  “He’s settled in pretty well now,” Ed was saying in response to my question about his ward, agent Cohen. “The first week he was a bit restless and difficult, but that has changed of late. Now he seems eager to participate, and is actually well liked by many of the crew here.”

  “I want to meet with him a little later. After I have a chance to see Naiya and talk a bit more with Carol.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Naiya and Dave are a little late,” he noted. “They went to the Roman facility yesterday for some kind of coordination with the staff there. I expected them back a bit earlier. Maybe I should ask communications to check with them?”

  I asked if he would, and after he headed off purposefully towards the forward equipment area, I looked around at the activities taking place all around me. Carol must have brought quite a load I thought. I wondered what all she had brought this time. The computers were quite compact. Remarkably so given their capability. That was true of most of the gear from uptime. The desire for smaller size and portability had been a characteristic that had continued through the centuries. It was also helpful for us. Carol had long had to deal by herself with the task of getting everything to the tunnel on the uptime end.

  Once again I realized we needed to get someone else comfortable with the uptime era that she alone was able to operate in effectively. We had been fortunate with the location of the tunnel entrance there. A volcanic eruption had destroyed a large area surrounding the entrance more than one hundred years earlier, leaving the area barren and rocky, and essentially deserted. It was very convenient for us, as large quantities of goods had been moved from uptime to the base here. Carol used the special vertical lift vehicle she had purchased for her business to move the goods out to the wilderness area. Fairly new technology even in that era, it was expensive to operate, making them a special use vehicle only. Most of the vehicles in her time used a no contact driving interface, but those relied mostly on electromagnetic field interactions to maintain them suspended a few inches above the ‘roadway’. The vertical lift vehicle was able to reach over a thousand feet in altitude, and wasn’t restricted to pre-established roads or pathways. She was free to take the vehicle almost anywhere. Just outside the entrance we had cleaned up a nearby level section of the rocky ground for a set-down point, and now had ATV paths that could make the run between the tunnel entrance and where she would leave the vehicle. I knew Carol would be taking the vehicle back into the city as soon as it was off-loaded. We didn’t like to leave it out here any longer than needed, even if there were hardly ever any people out this way.

  Since neither Carol nor Naiya was currently available, I decided I might as well seek out Agent Cohen, and see for myself how he was making out. From the details I had gotten from Ed, it seemed he was adapting to the situation better than I had hoped. Well, Mike had thought that he was a potential candidate for our group. I just wished there were some way to be sure he wasn’t just biding his time. I found him in the back lab, helping to put the new computer unit in place prior to it being linked into the system. He saw me as he straightened after finishing helping one of the techs slide a unit into place. He turned and said something to the man, then started in my direction.

  “Mr. Crampton,” he said with a smile as he walked my way. He had his hand out in greeting. The formality was becoming irksome, and I replied. “Jim. Call me Jim.” I took his hand and further directed him away from the group where we could talk in relative quiet.

  He was first with the questions. “I hear you found what you wanted in the files I gave you?” he asked, as much a question as a statement. “I guess these new computers are somehow related to whatever you are doing with what you found?”

  “Guessing?” I asked. While instructions had been to keep him unaware of anything related to entering and leaving via the tunnels, both of which required access to a key, other information wasn’t being so closely guarded. I had wanted to see how he reacted as he learned more about what was really going on. It would help decide how to deal with him longer term. Ed had told me people were still being a bit closed about everything, erring on the side of caution. I guess they wanted me to take the lead.

  He grinned at me. “A little,” he admitted. “But I get bits and pieces from people, and my job is to piece things together.” He hesitated a minute. “These are some incredible computers. I know a bit about computers, and these are like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  My turn to smile. “I hear you have been looking around outside.”

  Jeff nodded. “I thought you were playing games with me when I first got here. When we went through the control room I was amazed, but after we got here I started to wonder. You said this was another time, but here we are, still in a cave. So when they said I was free to go outside, I decided to look around. I explored quite a distance. We are nowhere near where we entered.”

  “So you’re convinced I told you the truth?”

  “Not from looking around outside. Somehow you got us to another place, but there’s nothing out there that could help me verify what the date is.” He paused for a minute. “But you weren’t kidding, were you?” The way he said this I knew it wasn’t really meant to be a question. He had already convinced himself.

  “You already know that, don’t you?” I responded. “What convinced you?”

  “This is supposed to be the past,” he said, not answering my question. “You can go to the future as well, right? I mean the future of where we are from?”

  I nodded. “We generally refer to it as uptime, but yes, we can. Carol just came from there.”

  “Had to be,” he said. “The computers are one clue. They aren’t just something under development; the next generation machines. These computers have to represent many generations of advancement. And the power supplies you have here.” He waved his arm to indicate the rooms full of equipment. “It would take a bank of diesel generators to power all of this stuff. I looked. You have a couple of boxes about the size of a footlocker in the back room. They provide the power for everything.”

  He looked at me for confirmation. Instead I asked, “Anything else?”

  He hesitated a minute. “One of the guys here,” he began, then hesitated a minute then started again. “There was an accident. One of the guys got caught underneath when some equipment broke free when they were moving it making room for this new equipment. He and I had become friendly. I got to him before anyone else. Man, his arm was virtually torn off. Even if he didn’t bleed to death, I know he had lost the arm.”

  I’d heard about the accident. We didn’t have many, but occasionally it happened. At least we had better than normal medical options available to us.

  Jeff could see I knew what came next. “They hauled him off. I wanted to see him, but they told me he was out on medications. Then, two days later, he sits down next to me at dinner. Good as new. You wouldn’t know he had his arm damn near torn off. How did they do that?”

  “Uptime medicine,” I told him. “With the advanced techniques available to us from Carol’s era we can repair almost anything, if we can get the person under treatment in time.”

  “And you keep it for yourself?” he said a touch of annoyance in his voice. “Don’t you know how many lives you could save if you made it available?”

  “And screw up the timeline,” I retorted. “You must see that if we start introducing things to the world before they were meant to be, it will chan
ge the whole time history, perhaps destroying it completely. We simply can’t risk anything like that.”

  “You are already doing it,” was his response. He pointed to the equipment and people around us. “What about all this?”

  “We are somewhat outside of the normal timeline. We are trying to keep our impact as low as possible so as not to disturb the normal sequence. In fact, we are trying to preserve it.” I decided to let him in on his own exposure to the medicines. “As a matter of fact, you have been inoculated with some of these medicines yourself.”

  “Me?” he said surprised. “What did you give me?” He was suddenly uncomfortable.

  “Anti-virals,” I told him. “Anyone moving around between eras has to have them. For what it’s worth, you can never get a virus cold again, ever. You can’t infect anyone else. What we gave you is totally effective against all mutations.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “With the knock-out drops you gave me. You knew then that you would be bringing me here.”

  “If you cooperated,” I added reminding him it could have gone another way.

  Changing directions, he asked what had been bothering him for some time. He was full of questions. “What’s the purpose of all this? What are you trying to do? Clearly you are trying to do something. It’s obvious you are stretched on manpower and resources. Why the secrets? Couldn’t you share this with the government? Maybe you could get additional help?”

  “Simply put, it’s too dangerous,” I told him. “The potential power of time travel access is too dangerous to be in the hands of politicians.” He wanted to interrupt, but I continued. “Unfortunately, governments are mostly interested in one thing. And it’s not what is best for their people or for mankind in general. Governments, politicians in particular, want their power and control to continue. Given the ability to manipulate history, would you entrust the power of time travel to a Bill Clinton?”