by Jay Falconer
“Sorry, Skipper. Only twenty-four of our ninety-nine made it.”
Kleezebee looked back at the ocean, through the fourteen empty pods pushed up on shore, hoping to see additional capsules bobbing their way across the whitecaps. There were none. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then said, “Any sign of the bugs?”
Bruno shook his head. “I don’t see how they could have survived the swim from that deep in the ocean.”
“Have you determined our location?” Kleezebee asked, looking at the crescent moon low on the horizon. He wiped off the sweat dripping across his brow.
“It looks like we made it home,” Bruno said, handing him an empty, rusty tin can of Maxwell House coffee, though the label was in Spanish. “There’s more trash like this along the beach.”
Kleezebee was surrounded by Lt. Nellis, Chuck Blake, and Dr. McKnight, plus seven security team members, two astrobiologists, one geneticist, two ensigns, two nurses, one chef, the barber, two machinists, and one engineer: Lt. Roddenberry, whose nickname was E-Rod. He’d known E-Rod since his first year in the Science Academy. In all, six females and eighteen males had made it out alive.
“Are we picking up any radio chatter?” Kleezebee asked Bruno.
“Nothing on standard Fleet frequencies. But we’re receiving several broadcasts on the lower AM band. Most are in Spanish, but we did find a faint signal in English.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Bruno played the broadcast on the portable comm. unit.
“. . . more following today’s top stories. Casino Royale’s premiere makes a splash with Sean Connery at the helm. Surveyor 3 successfully lands on the moon after historic three-day trek. Violent war protests break out in San Francisco over recent U.S. bombings in Haiphong. The Beatles sign a contract to stay together for ten more years. Two thousand Red Sox fans burned alive when gas main erupts and levels Fenway Park.”
“That’s enough, turn it off.”
“What do you think, Skipper? You’re the history buff.”
“You’re right, sounds like we’re on Earth. April, ’sixty-seven by the sounds of it. I would say we’re probably in Mexico, given the excessive heat and the Spanish broadcasts.”
“Nineteen sixty-seven?”
“Perhaps when the Krellians fired on the rift’s event horizon, their weapons somehow ruptured the fabric of subspace, sending us back in time,” Nellis answered.
“I thought time travel was not possible,” Bruno said.
“It’s not. It’s simply a myth started by a few over-imaginative science fiction authors of the twentieth century. Einstein was proven wrong in twenty-one eighty-seven when E-121 was first discovered and we used it to power our engines to close to light speeds. Time does not slow down when you approach light speed, it simply shudders, like a three-legged table in an earthquake. What has already transpired cannot be undone.”
“But the radio broadcast?” Nellis asked.
“It may be a fake,” Bruno said.
“Or we’re not even on Earth,” Nellis added. “It could be that we’re picking up an ancient radio signal that has traveled from Earth, arriving here four hundred years later. However, that would also mean someone went to all the trouble to fake the rubbish along the beach, too. That seems unlikely.”
“What do you think, Skipper?” Bruno asked.
Kleezebee bent down and picked up a crumpled sheet of heavy-bond paper buried in the loose sand. He wiped off the paper and read its contents aloud, “Playboy . . . February, nineteen sixty-seven . . . Kim Farber . . . Playmate of the Month.” He tossed the paper aside. “I don’t know how, but I’m pretty damn sure we’re on Earth. But a couple things concern me . . . David Niven was the star of Casino Royale, not Sean Connery, and I don’t remember reading about a deadly gas explosion at Fenway Park in nineteen sixty-seven.”
“Orders, sir?” Nellis asked.
Kleezebee was preoccupied with the 3D holo-cell of his wife and son at the Grand Canyon, now buried deep at the bottom of the ocean under a mile and a half of water. He didn’t respond.
“Captain?” Nellis asked again.
Kleezebee snapped out of his trance. “Let’s set up camp for the night and see if any more survivors make their way here. We’ve got about an hour or so before sunset, so let’s get to it. In the morning, we’ll head inland for the nearest city.”
“Aye, sir,” several members of the crew said in unison, before walking away.
Kleezebee grabbed one of the security team members by the elbow. “Lieutenant, establish a secure perimeter at fifty meters, and rotate your guards in three-hour shifts. Pull in some of the other men if you need to fill shifts.”
“Roger that,” the lieutenant replied.
“E-Rod, do you have a moment?” Kleezebee asked, looking to the rear of the crowd.
The engineer stepped forward.
Kleezebee put his right arm across the back of Roddenberry’s shoulders. “Eugene, I need you to scuttle the pods before we leave tomorrow, so make sure you’ve cannibalized whatever you can from them tonight. We’ll also need the emergency beacons deactivated. We don’t want any unfriendlies salvaging our equipment.”
“You got it, DL.”
* * *
Just after sunrise the following morning, Kleezebee woke up to the sound of a donkey braying. He rolled over in the sand, sat up, and looked inland. A short Hispanic man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, a dirty, long-sleeved shirt, and gray slacks, was leading a pack mule down the dirt path that led directly to their base camp. His dark-brown face was almost as weathered as his prehistoric leather sandals, looking as though he had spent every moment of his life under a heat lamp.
“Hola muchachos,” the man said, grinning from ear to ear.
Kleezebee sprang to his feet and rushed over to the visitor. His security detail was only a few steps behind him. “Do you speak English?”
“Sí, señor. I speak very much Englesh.”
“Can you tell me where we are?”
“You are on a beach, mi amigo.”
Kleezebee tried not to laugh, but couldn’t stop himself. “Not what I meant. Is there a city nearby?”
“Sí. Very much close,” The man held out his hand palm up. “For five dollars American, I will take you.”
One of Kleezebee’s soldiers pressed the barrel of his stunner pistol to the Mexican’s temple. “How about you just tell us where it’s at.”
The man pointed inland to the north. “Chicxulub. Two kilometers.”
“Thank you.” Kleezebee pulled the guard’s hand down and away from the visitor’s head. “What’s your name?”
“Jose Cesar Enrique Humberto Ramirez,” the man answered, pulling out a colorful Mexican blanket and a necklace from one of his donkey’s packs. “You need blanket? Only two dollars.”
“No, thanks.”
“I like you, Gringo, how about one dollar?” The peddler pressed the blanket close to Kleezebee’s face. It smelled of donkey and sweat. Kleezebee rolled his eyes, pushing it away.
“What about this necklace. It was mi esposa’s. Real turquoise. Good deal. Only one dollar.”
“No, but I’d be interested in your donkey and packs. We’ll need them for our long trip home. How much?”
“For you, mi amigo, one hundred dollars,” Jose said. “I give you blanket and necklace.”
Again, the soldier put the stunner to Jose’s head.
“How about ten dollars,” Jose said without hesitation.
“We don’t have any money. How about a trade?”
Jose pointed at the soldier’s weapon. “Sí, señor. The pistola?”
“Pick something else. We have food, water, and supplies.”
“I very much like the watch,” he said, staring at Bruno’s wrist.
“Deal.” Kleezebee motioned for Bruno to give up his watch. Bruno handed it to Jose.
“Gracias, señor.” Jose slipped his hand through the twist wristband. “Muy Bueno.” He stood silent for at leas
t a minute, playing with the orange buttons around its perimeter.
“You should probably be on your way now,” Kleezebee said, ushering the man gently with his hand.
Jose smiled, took off his straw hat, bowed quickly, then turned around and walked back down the path, leaving his mule, trinkets, and packs behind.
Kleezebee sat next to Bruno and E-Rod near the campfire, rubbing his hands above the flames. “We’re going to need cash, if we plan on surviving in this time period.”
E-Rod flicked a coal over with a stick. He pushed it to the middle of the crackling fire. “I suppose a rescue is impossible.”
Kleezebee shook his head. “Nobody knows where we are—or when we are, for that matter. No, I’m afraid we’re stuck here for a while until we can figure out a way home.”
“Orders, Skipper?” Bruno asked.
“First thing tomorrow, you, E-Rod, and I will walk into town to see if we can barter for transportation or additional mules. It’s a long way home to the US.”
“Where we headed?”
“Tucson should work. Might as well see what home was like a few hundred years ago.”
The donkey let out several snot-filled brays just behind Kleezebee. The animal nudged him in the back of the neck, twice, with its soggy nose. “Anybody know what we’re supposed to feed this thing?”
Bruno laughed for almost a minute before answering. “I don’t think the ration bars are going to cut it, Boss.”
Chapter 26
Continuity
“Wow, it must have been hard, not seeing your family for such a long time,” Drew said.
“Are you kidding me?” Lucas said to Drew.
“What?” Drew replied with a surprised look on his face.
“You believe all that shit?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I know you’re skeptical, but what I just told you is the truth,” Kleezebee said.
“Sorry, Professor, but it’s a little hard to swallow.”
“Trust me, it’s all true. Every word of it. Why would I make up something like that?”
Lucas shook his head and shrugged. “So, now what? Are we supposed to call you Captain Kleezebee?”
“No, I’m still the same old professor you’ve always known. Nothing’s changed except now you know where I’m from.”
Lucas didn’t respond. How could he? Everything he thought he knew about his mentor—his trusted friend—was complete fiction. His perception of reality had been shaken to its very core and he needed a few minutes to reassess the situation. It was nearly incomprehensible that his bearded, low-key, flannel-wearing advisor was really a starship captain from another time. But in the end, he decided that the revelation was so preposterous, it had to be true.
“So what happened after the trip into Chicxulub?” Drew asked.
“We made our way across the Mexican desert and entered the United States. Fortunately, for us, crossing the U.S. border in Nogales was much easier back then, and we were able to get our people and supplies into the country without too much hassle. We entered southern Arizona, found jobs in Tucson, and settled into our new lives. It took a while, but eventually everyone accepted the fact that we weren’t going home anytime soon. Some of them paired off and started new families while others married women from your planet. I still held out hope that we would someday return home, so I never remarried. Instead, I enrolled in the University of Arizona, and earned my doctorates in short order, before being hired by the physics department. I worked my way up from there. We’ve been trying to find a way home ever since.”
“Since you’re obviously on Earth, I take it you eventually decided that time travel was possible?” Drew asked.
“Actually, just the opposite. It took us awhile to prove it scientifically, but we’re definitely not from your future, or ours.”
“What?”
“When we were hurled through the rift, we were sent to a parallel universe, to an alternate version of Earth.”
Lucas was pissed. “Inter-dimensional travel—just like what’s in my thesis that everyone blasted to hell.”
“Yes. That’s why you needed to run it by me first.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know that?”
“What paper?” Drew asked.
Lucas hesitated for a moment, then decided to come clean with Drew. “A couple of weeks ago, I emailed my equations for opening a rift in space to your favorite online magazine. I was hoping to get published and generate some cash for mom’s medical bills. But it totally backfired. That editor asshole, Dr. Green, ripped me a new one on his blog. That’s the real reason Larson shut us down, isn’t it Professor?”
Kleezebee nodded.
Lucas thought about the facts, lining them up in his head. “So basically, if I hadn’t sent that paper in to Green, Larson wouldn’t have shut us down, forcing us to run the experiment a second time. And we all know what happened after that. So it boils down to this . . . If I hadn’t clicked that fucking send button, the end of the world never would’ve happened. It’s all my fault.”
Drew stared a Lucas for a good two minutes, but never responded to the news.
“What’s done is done. So let it go,” Kleezebee said.
Lucas agreed, though he was still upset—mostly with himself.
Drew turned to Kleezebee and asked, “How did you prove it, Professor? The alternate universe part.”
“Matter in each universe vibrates with its own specific subatomic frequency, meaning your universe and ours vibrate differently. Eventually, we were able to use that fact to rule out time travel and determine what actually happened to us.”
Neither Drew nor Lucas said anything.
“Do you remember what I taught you in my Quantum Mechanics course? That the laws of physics can vary from one universe to the next.”
Drew and Lucas both nodded.
“The same is true for the flow of time. It can vary as well. Your version of Earth is four hundred years behind ours, meaning we’re re-living your version of history.”
“Wow, this story just keeps getting better and better. What’s next? Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Lucas replied.
Kleezebee put his hands on Lucas shoulders, squeezed gently, and then said in a soft, gentle tone, “Look, Lucas. I know you’re upset, but you need to listen to me carefully. Right now it doesn’t matter where I’m from, or how I got here, or that you sent that thesis to Green. We can’t change the past. All you need to be concerned with is what do we do next to stop the Krellians before they destroy your planet.”
Lucas nodded. He didn’t want to admit it, but Kleezebee was right. Billions of lives were at stake, including his mother’s, and they still had a job to do.
“So, that’s how you knew what real estate to buy and when. You used your knowledge of Earth’s history for profit,” Drew said.
“To some extent, yes. We also earned substantial royalties from several technology patents we own. We pooled our money and purchased old missile silos from the U.S. government to serve as our network of underground bases.”
“How many do you have, Professor?”
“Thirty-seven. All but two of them have working jump pads, which is how we move our staff and supplies around the world.”
“Can you tell us who will win the next five Stanley Cups? I could place some bets and be a billionaire before I’m thirty,” Lucas replied.
Kleezebee quickly shook his head. “Sorry. There’s no guarantee that history will unfold the same on your version or Earth. The very nature of the multiverse stipulates that there must be differences, some subtle, some not. For example, in our universe, Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, and Ronald Reagan became President. Also, our Michael Jackson never went through gender reassignment surgery to become Belle Mae Watson, the country music singer.”
“What happened to the real Bruno?” Drew asked.
Kleezebee choked up for a moment. “He died of prostate cancer in two thousand one. We used o
ur BioTex to keep his memory and his spirit alive.”
“Why is all this happening now?” Lucas asked.
“Two reasons. First, the U.S. Navy was finally able to recover the E-121 for us from our ship. We had to wait for Earth’s technology to catch up before our ship’s power core could be salvaged from the deep-sea trench. Once they had it, our replicas inside the Navy had it redirected into our hands.”
“What’s the second reason?”
“You brought the Krellians here by changing the specs on your E-121 experiment.”
“The Krellians are behind the energy fields?”
Kleezebee nodded. “We think so. When you changed the experiment, NASA’s energy spike sent the E-121 canister to our home universe, which the bugs must have intercepted and traced back to your dimension and time. We assume they’ve been looking for us ever since we disappeared through that rift.”
“Why would the bugs give a shit where you went?”
“They want our BioTex, assuming they were able to decipher the data they downloaded from Trinity’s data core. It would give them a huge tactical advantage in the war.”
“That’s assuming the war’s still going on after all these years,” Drew said.
“Trust me, it is. As long as there’s advance technology to be had, they’ll never stop.”
“Unbelievable,” Lucas said, looking at the ground, shaking his head. “We’re in the middle of an intergalactic war.”
“Actually, it’s more like a trans-dimensional war,” Drew replied. “I take it that gooey stuff from the nebula was the BioTex.”
“An early version of it. We studied that sample and eventually learned how to synthesize it. If the Krellians get their hands on it, it would make them unstoppable. They’d be able to increase their numbers geometrically through endless cloning. They might even capture and replicate some of our own high-ranking officials, to infiltrate our leadership and uncover the location of our colonies. Multiple worlds and trillions of lives are at stake.”
