Timelines

by Bob Blink

  Tina appeared late, bringing into the meeting a stack of printer output which she placed before Martin before taking a chair against the wall behind him. While we had started the meeting, she had been continuing to search for something Martin had remembered. It appeared she had finally found it. While the discussions continued, Martin paged through the first couple of pages, then looked satisfied. Looking around the room, it was clear he was waiting for an opportunity to break into the conversation.

  I did it for him. “I think Martin has something else,” I said, loud enough to break into the two or three independent conversations that had been continuing around the room.

  “This is the one I was telling you about earlier,” he said down the table where I sat. “Tina finally found where I had put it,” he added giving her credit. I had noticed that for all his faults, taking the credit was not one of them. He was always quick to acknowledge the efforts of others, often taking all the blame for failure on himself. “I asked her to look through it before the meeting, and come in when she felt she had a better feel for the gist of the material. We hadn’t really reviewed this document as yet.” He motioned for her to take the floor.

  Clearly nervous to be the center of so much attention, Tina stood and made her way to the front. “The date appears to be in the 1750’s she began. We have a tunnel that is some twenty-five years uptime of that.” Carol looked at me. The significance of the twenty-five year number was not lost on me. Another instance where her multiple of eight years seemed to apply. “We will need to reread this more carefully,” she said, defending in advance the limited familiarity she had with the document. “Paraphrasing, and reading a bit between the lines, it seems a Colonel Pierre Tanguay, later General Tanguay, had a strong feeling about the future altercations between the French and the English. He made a strong push early on to confront the British, and take whatever steps necessary to push them out of the North American continent. As a result, the French built up a strong military presence early, eventually chasing the British out, resulting in the formation of New France consisting of what we know as Canada and the United States.”

  Here again was another clash of material in the documents, and what we knew as our history. But Tina was fending off questions with her hand up. “Just a minute,” she insisted. “I know you don’t recognize the name. I did some checking before coming down here. There is nothing about a General Tanguay in any of the historical references. Thanks to the internet I was able to access the French Historical Center in Paris. There are records of a Colonel Tanguay, who was sent to the Americas around the time of interest. The information was brief. Little is known about him, and he died shortly after arriving in Quebec.”

  This was a lead we might be able to follow up on. We had a tunnel that led to the approximate time. After twenty odd years, most of the evidence would be lost, but there might be people who remembered. It was worth following up on. It was a clearer trail than we had ever had. It was clearer than the trail being pursued by Dave back in Rome.

  Who would go became the next problem. Usually Dave took the lead in investigations, or at least in assigning who would go. He also had Dix with him who I thought would be useful on a trip like this. Others didn’t want to wait. It would take a week to get Dave back, and Martin was insistent it was his discovery. In the end, it was decided that Martin, Tina, who wouldn’t be left behind, along with two of our experienced explorers, would make the trip. It would probably take a couple weeks before we could expect even preliminary information back, but they were eager to start. It was almost 7:30 in the evening, so it was decided they could head to the downtime base in the morning for outfitting.

  I left with Naiya. On the way home we talked about the possibilities. In the past I’d read stories about people who had played with the timeline. It was interesting to speculate. Those stories had always been someone changing things for personal benefit; money, power. This situation, if true, meant we were being manipulated by something else. Something not human. I didn’t like the idea of being part of something’s big experiment, whatever they were up to.

  Chapter 27

  Thursday, 31 August 2006

  Seattle, Washington

  “They’re back!” proclaimed an agitated Carol as she made her way nearly running into my office. For a split second I thought she meant Martin and his team. But that was impossible. The messages from the previous night’s scheduled communication check indicated they were almost a week’s travel from the tunnel entrance, and heading toward their destination, not returning. My brain struggled to put her announcement into context. Naiya was still downtime with Dave. We had also talked just the other day. I couldn’t see anything that would have prompted such a reaction from Carol. She had a look in her eyes I had never seen before, a combination of determination, anger, and perhaps a touch of fear. Fear wasn’t something I had ever associated with her. “Aliens just visited the control center,” she informed me before I could say anything.

  Shit! We had talked about, thought about, and made plans against the possibility of their return. After so long without any sign of them it no longer seemed real. Now I could only think that Naiya was downtime. Was she cut off? How would we warn her and the others? Were the aliens going to make any changes in the center? The questions rolled through my mind. Almost paralyzed not knowing where to start, Carol finished sharing her information before I was able to say anything.

  “They’re gone now,” she said. “But it looks like they will be returning soon.”

  How did she know that? And why had they stayed such a short time?

  It appeared that she had been right again. Her theory that alien visits were linked to some kind of eight-year cycle seems to have been on the money. This year was right in the middle of her predicted ‘hot zones’ and here they were. I guess we were about to find out how prepared we were. For now, we needed to get out to the center and learn what had happened.

  Belatedly I thought to ask. “Anyone hurt? Any encounters with them?” I assumed there must have been else how would she know of their visit. Of course, we had hidden monitor cameras around the facility.

  “No one. John was in the center the whole time. He was able to hide and observe. Fortunately, it was a brief visit and they didn’t find him.”

  She didn’t know any more. We made a quick detour to inform Al and then headed out to the site, taking the usual precautions in case someone had started taking an interest in us again. I had little patience for it today, but we needed to be sure. We talked with Kevin and had him pass the word to all of the remaining people, telling him we would know more on our return. I know I broke every speed limit posted. It wasn’t smart. We didn’t need any attention now, but I couldn’t help it. We were lucky, and made it to the site without incident. We made an exception this time, and drove up to the cave entrance with the BMW. We potentially had far bigger problems than someone spotting the car.

  Many of the people from the base were inside the control center. I had never seen it so full of people at any one time. Equipment was stacked everywhere. I wondered what they were doing. It would be a dead giveaway if the aliens returned about now. I saw John wave us over, and I shouldered my way through the crowd. He looked a bit nervous, but excited at the same time.

  “Oh have we got a lot of stuff,” he said, the enthusiasm obvious. He pointed to the control area. I realized that two of the four computer monitors were lit, currently displaying a complex graphic. The keyboards were also illuminated, symbols on the keys glowing a light green color. Other units around the room were glowing as well, displaying text and graphics on a variety of monitors. The large screen on the wall was also illuminated, showing the tunnel area and the four glowing circles of twisting light that we had seen coming into the complex. It was too much to take in at once. “We have been capturing everything on film. We don’t know when it will blank out again.” Then he grinned. “I was right about the function keys. I’ll show you later.”

  Carol was mak
ing her way back to me from the airlock tunnel. She indicated that it appeared normal. There wasn’t anything to indicate a sudden reappearance of the aliens. Then again, that had been true earlier. At least it was closed securely for now. “Let’s get most of these people back downtime. John, who needs to stay here? I want to know exactly what happened,” she demanded.

  Carol and I were the last two into the meeting room, having met briefly with Ed before joining the others. We had sent Mike and a couple of his people to provide basic security for those people still working in the complex. Carol expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the M14’s they were carrying against the aliens, but it was better than nothing. I also saw Jeff and waived for him to join us as we proceeded to the meeting. There was no reason for this to be a secret from anyone, and this might put things into perspective for him.

  After we all regrouped in the main meeting room, it was all John’s show. Every seat was taken, and many people were standing. The overflow continued out into the hallway, where people could hear, but had to stand on their toes to try and see. We were recording the meeting, so it would be available to everyone else on the team. Dave had insisted a few years earlier on the need to record everything for historical purposes. John had been in the complex for the full duration of the alien visit, unable to leave undetected. No one else had come through the complex while the aliens were present. We had been fortunate in that regard. It appeared the aliens had come and gone without becoming aware of our presence or the fact we were using their system. This time anyway.

  John tried to walk through the events methodically. That turned out to be next to impossible. Everyone wanted to ask questions. Given the differing states of awareness on what had transpired today, questions tended to jump randomly between events. Carol and I finally had to take control of the meeting. We needed to hear the story from the start, having been out of the loop the entire event. After quieting things down, Carol instructed John to walk through events in order.

  “I was on my way downtime,” he began, “when I stopped in the control center to look at the computers in the lab. Mostly just looking for inspiration. Sometimes you hope to trigger a thought that has eluded you before.” He looked around his audience to see if everyone was following his narrative. Even those that knew this part of the story wanted to hear it again, and would simply have to wait to see if their specific questions were answered.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I had been here about half an hour when I heard a loud thump down the hallway leading to the ‘airlock door’. At first I wondered if someone else had come into the center, but then it started to bother me. The ‘airlock’ is an area that everyone pretty much ignores. No one else had come through, and I hadn’t heard any other sounds, which struck me as odd as well. It was about five minutes after the initial sound when I decided to have a look. We have the video recording various areas in the complex, but you all know they aren’t really set up for viewing. So I grabbed my gear and headed back into the control area where I could glance down the hallway and have a look.” He paused for a minute, and looked at Carol. The two now were members of a unique club. They were the only two that had actually seen the aliens in the flesh.

  “When I was about half-way across the control room, I was able to see down the hallway towards the door. At first it appeared the same as always, but suddenly the center section began to turn. A moment later the door began to swing open.”

  Even knowing what was coming, everyone held their breath. We had expected, and feared, this happening for more than a decade. Now that it was coming to pass it all seemed unreal.

  “The door seemed to swing open automatically, and I could see a humanoid shape, but fully covered with hair exactly as Carol had described the aliens she saw. Fortunately, it was looking back the other way or I would have been spotted. I wanted to run down the ramp to the tunnel room, but that would have left me in the open for too long, so I ducked behind the consoles in the command center and tried to figure out what to do.”

  John had indeed been fortunate. From the airlock door, the top of the ramp that leads down to the tunnels is in plain view. The rest of the complex led back into the other rooms, but there is no exit from that area. Had they elected to stay put, or even pass through the other areas, there was little he could have done to hide.

  “From behind the consoles I could hear two of them coming down the hall, talking to each other based on the whistling and grunting sounds we have become used to from the translator. I didn’t think I could make it back into the lab area without being seen, but if they went anywhere but down the ramp I was sure to be spotted. I got lucky. They proceeded directly down the ramp to the tunnels. I could hear them in the storage room down below, and took advantage of the opportunity to slip back into the lab area. At least there are a few places to hide in there. It was a good thing I did, because a moment later a third one of the creatures came down the hallway and into the command center. He sat down at the left-most console and started working.”

  John knew the question that several wanted to ask at this point. “No, I couldn’t see how he activated the computer. From where I was I could just barely see his shoulder and the edge of the screen. I could see the screen become active, and realized he had just done what we have been trying to do for years. There wasn’t a position where I could get a good view without exposing myself to detection. I could only hope the monitors we had running in the area were getting a good enough picture.”

  John stopped for a drink of water, and nodded towards Arnie, one of the technicians, who had raised a hand with a question. “Has anyone looked at the tapes yet?”

  “Just briefly,” answered John preparing to launch back into his narrative. “I haven’t seen them myself yet. I’m told you can see him working, but whether we will be able to get enough resolution to see precisely what he is doing remains to be seen. We’ve only had about three hours, and everyone has been busy.” John had told Carol and I that he had put a couple of the techs to work running through the tapes to get an idea what had been captured. He also had them copy a couple of sections he wanted to show everyone later in his presentation. No careful examinations had been attempted. In the short time since the aliens had departed, focus had been on capturing as much information as possible. Analysis would come later.

  “A key point,” John was saying over the discussion that had started up again around the room. The sound of his voice brought everyone’s attention back to him. “While the alien was working at the computer, he was ‘talking’ the entire time. That correlates what Carol indicated from her experiences, and supports the theory that at least part of the interface with their computers is via their speech.”

  “Too bad you don’t speak Alien,” someone shouted from the back.

  John grinned. “Perhaps, but I did the next best thing,” and he held up one of the recorders that we used to capture the extended range audio output from the alien translator. “I left this running in the control room when I escaped back to the lab area.” John explained that hearing the aliens coming down the hallway talking had triggered an automatic response; capture the sounds. He had turned on the recorder and looked for a place to hide it. Sitting on the floor, he could see the storage shelves under the keyboard area, and had slipped the unit into the available space. As it turned out, he had hidden the recorder adjacent to the computer where the alien did most of its work.

  For the next hour, John could only watch and worry. So far he hadn’t been detected, but he had no idea how long the aliens would be staying. He also started worrying that someone would come looking for him. Ed knew he was scheduled to come that morning, as did a couple of his team that worked full time at the base. Any one of them might start wondering why he was late and come to check on him. That would have led to discovery by the aliens and disaster. Although evidence was still minimal, the picture that was starting to come together indicated the aliens were a definite threat.

  Then, a little over an hour and
ten minutes later, the other two aliens returned. John could hear them as they made their way up the inclined ramp into the control area. He slipped deeper into the back areas of the lab against the chance they might come his way. It didn’t happen. After a brief interchange with the alien working the computers, they proceeded down the hallway and disappeared. Several minutes later, the third alien followed after them. John heard a solid clunk as the door closed and locked, followed by silence.

  After waiting five long minutes, John wasn’t able to delay any longer. He decided he had a chance to make a break. Gathering his equipment bag, he slipped into the control area, recovered the recorder, and started to make his way to the ramp and escape. Then he noticed the computers with their glowing keyboards and monitors. The center had never been so alive. A few pictures, he had decided. Quickly moving from console to console, snapping pictures of the displays and controls, all the while listening for a return of the interlopers, John had made a studied pass through the control room. The large monitor showed four swirling circles of color that he didn’t understand at the time. Then he decided he needed to leave. Hopefully he could bring back a crew and record all of this properly, but at least he had something.