A Question of Will

by Alex Albrinck

  And so he’d gone along with the subterfuge, treating his own father as an unwelcome stranger, planting the idea in his mind repeatedly that Will would destroy his new family, that he’d lead to their destruction as well, for he knew Will Stark would do anything to avoid being a risk to anyone he even remotely cared for. In reality, all he truly wanted was to spend time with the man, before his father and his hero began his incredible journey. For he knew he might never see the man again.

  Fil glanced at the backpack sitting on the ground next to him, the same bag he’d used to retrieve items from his childhood home on the trip back in time to rescue his father from death at the hands of the Hunters. He chuckled, noting the irony that Fil, the son, had rescued his father from punishment for the crime of enabling Fil to exist.

  Inside the bag, he found a baseball. It was the ball he’d used to play catch with Smokey that morning all of those years ago, when his Energy stores had grown so immense that his mother had no longer been able to Shield them — or him. She was already too weakened from her early term pregnancy with Angel, who brought another set of Energy abilities for Hope to deal with.

  Angel. His wonderful little sister. Her joy at seeing their father had been quite touching, and made it so much more difficult for him to maintain his negative attitude. Angel had never met her father before, had never even seen him. She was so fearful of slipping up, of calling him Dad, that she’d insisted on the formal “Mr. Stark” for address, rather than “Will.” She’d further changed her natural platinum-blond hair to red, trying and succeeding in fooling Will from seeing his wife’s near-twin in his own daughter. Angel had learned of their father solely through the stories that their mother, along with Adam and others within the Alliance, shared, and though at times Fil thought they were embellishing a bit, he now wondered if perhaps they hadn’t been restrained in their praise. Will Stark was a man who knew what he stood for, a man who knew the price he was willing to pay to support those principles and those he loved. The hero he’d worshiped as a six-year-old boy was even more mythic now, after he himself had grown, married, had a child and watched those loved ones die. When Will stated he was willing to stake his own life for even a chance to help Josh and Hope live, it was too much for him to take. He wished he had been given such a choice, for he knew that, like his father, he would have accepted any offer that would have altered the horrific outcome.

  Adam sat down next to him. “We’ve done our duty, Fil. Now Will must do his.”

  “I know,” Fil said. “The question is, when do we find out if he succeeded?”

  “You’re still here. So is Angel. That’s the proof we need, and Will would say it’s the only outcome that matters.”

  Fil rested his chin on his knees. “I know that that’s his definition of success. But I’d still like to see him again, when he knows the entire history of what we’ve all been through. That’s my definition of the success of this mission. Seeing my father again. No acting, no drama...and no crazy sunglasses.” He tapped the accessory.

  “You do know that you don’t have to wear those any more, right?”

  Fil pulled the glasses off of his head, glanced at them, and put them back on. “Of course. I’ve grown rather fond of them, however. It’s how my father knows me now. So, they stay. For him.”

  Adam said nothing.

  “They’ll still come after us, you know,” Fil said.

  “Who? The Hunters?”

  Fil nodded. “They’ll eventually stop waiting for Dad to do something stupid so that they can track us. They tried that the last time, gave it about twenty years, and then officially decided that he was dead. Now that they know he’s not...it can’t be good for your credibility for a man you’ve declared dead to show up, be hauled in for questioning, and then break his way out and possibly kill a Hunter in the process. No, they’ll come after all of us as accomplices. And truth be told, we’re just that.”

  Adam glanced at him. “You know, you could simply go to the island and eradicate them.” It wasn’t a question.

  Fil nodded. “I know I could. Yet that would make me no better than them. Sometimes, the easy thing to do, the emotional response, is exactly the wrong thing to do. I know that if I did what you suggest, I’d not only get the Hunters and Abaddon and the Leader. I’d end up wiping out all of the Aliomenti there who are simply enjoying their lives, who don’t truly wish us to be destroyed, but who simply lack the will to stand up and tell the Leadership to stop. Worse, I’d kill the humans working there. It would make me no better than The Assassin, who thought it fine to kill two good men that night to come after my mother.” He sighed. “There are many easy solutions, simply none that I like.” He glanced at Adam. “And it’s not without precedent that my emotional responses, outside the faked ones the last few months, tend to turn out very poorly for a lot of innocent people. No, I’ll make sure anything I do is targeted at those who come after me and my family directly.”

  The Mechanic, clad in his orange bodysuit, came over to them. “I take it the machine got away without fail?”

  Fil and Adam nodded. “Everything went as planned,” Adam said. “I wonder how long it took Will to forgive us?”

  “Immediately...and yet never, I’d imagine,” the Mechanic said. “No doubt he’d understand the reasoning behind it and appreciate it. Yet I imagine he’d take a very long time to wonder why it was he was never given the chance to make an informed choice, to prepare himself for his journey.” He glanced at Fil. “Or to say a very long goodbye to his son and daughter.”

  Fil nodded. “I know. Trust me, I’ve often wondered that as well. Yet when I got the chance these past two months to see my father as he truly is, I couldn’t help but fear the long goodbye might be one he’d never finish. That decision would have been rather complicated for my actual existence.” He smiled. “Now, though? I’m pretty sure he would have left no later than he did, and I do wish we’d altered the plan. With the time machine gone, there’s no chance to go back and change that decision, though.”

  “Will has his own difficult decisions to make in what will become his future, our past,” the Mechanic noted. “He will understand that sometimes, just as the easy choice isn’t the correct choice, sometimes the most difficult one is.”

  “I wish I knew what happened to him,” Fil said. “Before he was, well, born.” He chuckled. “That statement would get me institutionalized in many societies.”

  Adam laughed. “We’d be right there with you, since we’d nod right along. But yes, the disappearance of the historical Will Stark, shortly before the birth of the man we just sent back in time, is quite the mystery.”

  The Mechanic glanced at him. “I don’t know if I’ve heard this one.”

  Adam nodded. “As you know, Will Stark was well known among our kind for centuries. He eventually clashed with the leadership over the establishment of roles for Hunters and Assassins, and that led him to leave the society he’d helped build to establish the Alliance, which believed that controlled assistance in human development of technology was not only acceptable, it was a moral imperative.”

  The Mechanic nodded. “This part I know.”

  “He became a hunted man, of course, and as such he’d disappear from any contact with Aliomenti — Alliance or otherwise — for years or even a decade or longer. But he always did come back, except the last time. He vanished in roughly the year 1994, a year or two before the man we went back in time to rescue was born. The newborn Will Stark lived and grew following his birth in the year 1995, and that Will Stark was lost to history in the year 2030, the year we pulled him forward in time to send him back in time. The mystery is this: why has that historical, pre-1995 Will Stark never reappeared, after the year 2030?”

  “We can be fairly certain that if the Hunters or Assassin had gotten him, it would have been loudly trumpeted,” Fil added. “His continual escapes were the source of great embarrassment, and probably encourage a third of our membership to follow their convictions and mo
ve to the Alliance. Capturing or even killing him would be an emotional blow they’d want to celebrate. He’s not vanished by their doing, that’s for certain.”

  “Perhaps,” the Mechanic mused, “he became so proficient at hiding that he simply stayed hidden.”

  “Perhaps,” Adam agreed. “And if that is the case, then we must simply remain in waiting for him to choose to show himself again.”

  “I think he knows that the Elites are going to mount a large scale attack on the Alliance at some point,” Fil said. “And so he remains in hiding, letting them grow overconfident, and then he’ll appear at a time that tilts the battle in our favor.”

  “Indeed,” Adam replied, as the Mechanic nodded, thoughtful. “Yet they must know that you are still out there as well, Fil. And they can’t underestimate your abilities. And Angel, though not quite as powerful as you...she’s a total mystery to them.”

  “I’m what?” Angel asked, walking up to join the group.

  Fil gave her a quick recap of the conversations, and Angel smiled. “He’s out there, hiding in the shadows, protecting me, protecting Fil, and mostly protecting Mom, wherever she is. He’ll reveal himself only if he feels it necessary to make sure that all of us are safe.”

  “Have you seen him?” the Mechanic asked.

  “No, but I’ve sensed him, before, during, and after the time he was here with us from the past.” She looked into the forest. “He’s probably out there now, listening in, but making sure that the Hunters are heading in the wrong direction.”

  “And so,” Fil said, “we will wait until he decides to show himself to us, and we will wait for the Elites to find us and attack. Until then?”

  He smiled. “We live, freely.”

  XXX

  Steps

  Will was completely oblivious to his surroundings in the time machine for several minutes, lost in the shock of the events of the last few moments at camp.

  He’d found his son. Josh had survived the attack and the fire. He’d grown into a man, had managed to meet up with and join the Aliomenti Alliance, and was a major force in their organization.

  And Angel. He had a daughter? He’d had no idea. The only explanation that made any sense was that Hope had been pregnant at the time of the attack, and only recently so, if she hadn’t told him yet. It wasn’t something she’d keep to herself.

  He’d found his children. They’d survived the fire. The Assassin who’d been sent after them had not killed them; he had, as he put it, failed in his mission. He’d only managed to burn the house down, but houses could be rebuilt. In the camp where he’d been living, buildings assembled and disassembled themselves on a regular basis.

  Josh — no, Fil now — had survived. He was there. Almost two hundred years old, but he was there. And since Angel hadn’t been born at the time of the fire — then Hope had survived as well, long enough, at least, to give birth to their daughter.

  That meant his mission had succeeded. Or at least, it had succeeded in the last iteration of whatever time loop he was on. Time travel would certainly make your head spin.

  He wished he’d gotten the chance to shake his son’s hand, to tell him he was proud of him. Sure, Fil had been rather aggressive towards him, but he’d explained why. Left unsaid was the obvious: for a man like Will, knowing his children had survived — and had actually been with him the entire time he’d been in the future — might have been enough to dissuade him from getting in the time machine. He’d want to spend time with his children, to be sure. How long would it have taken for him to decide to leave, though? He could talk of duty and claim he’d do what needed done, but that was a lot easier said when the desired result — healthy children, children who had survived an assault on their home — wasn’t looking you in the eye.

  The three of them — Adam and his two grown children — had manipulated him. They’d preyed upon his sense of duty, and Fil had ensured that at least one person in that camp made him feel unwelcome, that someone who wanted him gone, that someone would make him feel as if his mere presence would be the death of all of them. It was certainly easier to leave that type of environment, real or imagined, than one that mirrored the future he’d always wanted. They knew him well enough to play their parts and ensure he made the decision he needed to make. It didn’t make him happy, but he understood their logic.

  Yet in the end, they’d misjudged him. If he’d known that Fil was his adult son, and Angel the daughter he’d never known he had, he would eventually have left anyway. For there was one person he’d never seen in that camp while he’d been there.

  Hope.

  He would go back for her, even if everything else was as it should be. How long had she survived after the fire? Had she been hurt at all? Fil had said to focus on Hope, not him. That was disconcerting. Had she been gravely injured in Fil’s memory of the day, living just enough to deliver Angel, and then...? He didn’t want to think of it, but he must.

  The larger issue is that he didn’t know if Hope had been invited into the Alliance culture, gone through the Purge, developed her Energy, and gotten the other treatments that enabled extreme longevity. She could have survived the fire, lived her life out, and died of old age. Perhaps Fil had been delivering that message: that Will needed to bring his mother home, or enable her to live. He didn’t know the ingredients of the Purge, but he had a large batch of nanos. She could certainly live long enough to meet him in the future if needed.

  Something nagged at him, though. Something he was missing in the emotions of the moment, whether a sense of duty or a sense of shock.

  His mission, as they’d discussed it, involved him going back to the night of the fire. He was to rescue Hope and Josh from The Assassin, from burning to death in the inferno he’d seen before the Hunters had jumped him and beaten him. Josh was saved. He’d grown into a man, becoming known as Fil, and had managed to live nearly two centuries before coming back to rescue his neophyte father. Likewise, his daughter Angel had been born, grown to adulthood, and like her brother had lived an impossibly long lifetime. She had joined her brother to risk her life traveling through time to save her father, a man she’d never met.

  But they’d lived. More to the point: they’d aged. They’d existed throughout all of those two centuries between his disappearance in 2030 and his reappearance in 2219.

  It meant the time machine had failed. He’d not, in this cycle of history, saved his children by returning them to the future. They’d reached the future by living their way to it. And now that he knew that, he certainly couldn’t take young Josh and unborn Angel back with him.

  Was he to wait until Angel was born and then return to the future with only Hope?

  He would not do that to his children. He’d vowed that he would not. His birth parents had abandoned him emotionally when his older brother died suddenly at the age of five. Nothing Will did was satisfactory, compared against the idealized image of the older son they’d adored in life and idolized in death. He’d later heard the expression that the opposite of love wasn’t hate, it was apathy, and he knew it to be so from living that truth growing up. It wasn’t that his parents hated him; they simply didn’t care about him at all. When they’d died in a car crash when he was sixteen years old, people had remarked how well he’d handled it, how mature he’d seemed. The reality was that his parents had been dead for years. He’d lived in poverty; his parents had directed their meager estate to anyone and everyone but him. And in that poverty he’d vowed that he’d be rich and that when he had children, he’d never leave them emotionally abandoned, or devoid of a loving household, as he had been.

  No, he would not leave his children behind. Not without their mother.

  Perhaps that was Josh’s message to him as the adult Fil, though. He needed to rescue Hope, even if it meant leaving Josh in the past alone. How would Angel come to exist in the past then? Had he waited the months it would take her to be born before leaving for the future with just Hope?

  If that was the plan fo
r him, he’d prefer the machine get stuck in whatever time loop he was in and never emerge on the other side. They wouldn’t send him back expecting him to make that type of decision, would they?

  He became aware of a sudden hush inside the machine. The top became clear and vanished, and Will scrambled out of the craft and walked several yards away before he stopped and looked around.

  He was not in a forest at all, but rather a field, cleared for miles around, with no sign of his neighborhood or the rest of the town, including the massive dome over the main city of Pleasanton, in sight. He supposed that when traveling back in time that the physical location on the planet might be only a secondary concern, so perhaps he was simply a few miles from his destination. The concern there was that he doubted he’d been given any excess time to travel to the neighborhood upon arriving in the past.

  He had the ability to travel instantly, however, though he didn’t want to do so. No sense alerting the Hunters of his location. But if he had to do it, he would.

  He chose to teleport to his watching post in the forest behind his neighbor’s house. He’d walked among those trees many times, and knew the area well. Perhaps that was why he’d been so drawn to the majestic trees near the Alliance camps; they truly reminded him of home. He concentrated on the image of that spot, and pictured himself traveling there.

  Nothing happened.

  Will frowned. He’d not had that happen before in his teleportation efforts. Perhaps he was much farther from the location than he thought he was.

  He needed to go back to see the people in the Alliance about this. And while he was there, he would take the opportunity to truly see and speak to his children. To find out what, exactly, he was supposed to do in the past, knowing they needed to stay there and age their way to their present. Or perhaps there was a GPS device in the craft that could give him directions.