"Oh, Mairie, I'll get it," Marc announced coming up to her and pushing her lightly toward the sofa. "Go sit with Bryan. But don't you dare start the story until I return," he added as he walked in the direction of the kitchen. "We've been anticipating this for days and I do not intend to be left out, just because I've volunteered to play Hilda the maid… though you must admit my Aryan features do fit the bill." His words trailed off as he rounded the corner.
Mairie and Jack both grinned and Bryan shook his head. "You'll have to forgive Marc, Jack. He takes some getting used to, I'm afraid."
"I heard that!" Marc yelled from the kitchen.
"You were supposed to," Mairie yelled back and sat on the rug between Bryan on the sofa and Jack in the chair. She patted her brother's foot. "Thank God, I found you."
Bryan's hand rested on the top of her head for a moment. "I know, Mar. Seeing your face a few minutes ago wiped out the hell of the last seven months. I don't understand what happened to you yet, but I knew you'd come back. I never gave up hope."
Sniffling the tears that threatened again, Mairie turned her face and smiled into her brother's eyes.
"She never did either, Bryan," Jack said in a low, respectful voice. "There is a great bond between you."
Mairie turned to look at him and swore she saw a twinge of sadness in his eyes. Suddenly she realized that he had lost not only his birth family but also his adopted family as well. He was all alone now. She reached out her hand for his and gently kissed his knuckles. "You're family now, Jack. As long as you want, we're here for you. All of us."
"Absolutely," Bryan joined. "Though you may want to reconsider Marc. He can be bossy and—"
"Bite your tongue, big brother," Mairie interrupted with a grin. "Here he comes."
"Talking about me, are you?" Marc asked, as though not really interested. From a tray, he served the drinks and set a plate of chocolate chip cookies onto the coffee table. "The Malloys are up to their old tricks again. See if I care."
"Oh, you know we love you," Mairie chided, and winked at Jack. "We waited for you. Didn't even mention that I traveled back in time."
Marc, about to sit down next to Bryan, froze in mid-act. "I beg your pardon?"
Mairie laughed at her brother's and especially Marc's expression of disbelief as he continued to sit, very slowly. "You heard correctly. I traveled back in time." She leaned forward and took Jack's hand again. "And this incredible man risked his life and left the year 1877 to bring me home. We're… we're time-travelers."
Marc looked at Bryan. Bryan looked at Jack and then at her and then at Marc. "You heard that, didn't you? It wasn't the pain pills working overtime? I'm not hallucinating? She said, time-travelers?"
Marc held Bryan's hand tightly and answered, "Screw the pain pills, if I heard correctly, we're all hallucinating!" He turned to her. "Mairie, you can't be serious!"
She and Jack laughed.
"He is quite humorous. You were right, Mairie."
"I told you, but then you know how I love to be right."
Leaning over, Jack kissed her forehead. "And I secretly love you being right. You take such pleasure in it."
"Excuse me…?" Marc raised his voice over their conversation. "I hate to interrupt this oh-so-precious Kodak moment, but what the hell are you saying here? You can't travel through time!"
Mairie became serious. "Tell that to the government. I jumped after you, Bryan, and before I pulled the chute, I experienced this blinding white light. I thought I was dying, or had died, when I felt this … I don't know how to describe it, this weird sensation in every nerve of my body. I was so scared because I was tumbling, 'cause I forgot to arch my back. Remember how we were supposed to arch our backs right away, Bryan?"
"Oh, who cares about your back, Mairie?" Marc interrupted, as Bryan nodded with his jaw dropped in disbelief. "Get on with it before I call for strait jackets." He grabbed a Coke and muttered, "I wonder where Sydney hides the liquor in this place. I could use a bottle."
Mairie shook her head and giggled. "I found it when we arrived this afternoon. It's in the kitchen. Top cabinet over the refrigerator."
Marc waved his hand. "To hell with it. I don't want to miss a syllable of this. You were tumbling and forgot to arch your back; now, get on with it, woman, while I'm still conscious. I swear I'm close to … to the vapors, or something." Waving his hand in a fanning motion under his chin, he looked at Jack and muttered, "How's that for time-traveling?"
Jack threw back his head and laughed, causing Mairie and even Bryan to join in. "Very good," Jack said in between lingering chuckles. He rose to his feet and said, "I'll get the liquor, Marc. You sit and collect yourself. How does a bit of wine sound?"
"Not strong enough," Marc answered, sitting back and holding his forehead. "See if Sydney has a bottle of rum, or something equally potent. It's the least I deserve for watering his plants for the last three months and now listening to… to this!"
"Mairie… what you're saying is too incredible," Bryan said, ignoring Marc who was now shaking his head. "I never even saw you jump. I thought the skydiving school was lying and trying to cover up some foul play. I even thought you might have suffered a mental breakdown and they landed with you and you wandered away. But this… this is—"
Bryan struggled for the right word and before he could find it, Jack returned to the room and said in a serious voice, "I will tell you what it is. This is the truth."
He placed the bottle of rum in front of Marc and took his seat. Looking directly into Bryan's eyes, he continued, "I saw your sister fall from the sky. I was on a vision quest and sitting on top of the tallest mountain I had ever seen. I asked the Great Spirit of the Paiute to send me a sign of hope and Mairie came, floating, it appeared, from heaven. My angel—"
"This is too bizarre," Marc muttered, pouring a shot of rum into his cola.
Jack continued. "She is telling the truth, Bryan. Please listen to your sister. She risked her life over and over just to be sitting here right now. I have never seen anyone with more determination, more love, than this woman. And she did it all to get back here to tell you this very story. Trust her."
He smiled down at her and Mairie had to swallow the thick lump in her throat.
Jack looked back to her brother. "I did. With my life. And that trust wasn't misplaced."
Mairie took a deep steadying breath and turned back to Bryan and Marc. "It happened," she said simply. "I met this man in 1877."
Marc picked up the bottle and poured still more rum into his glass. "This is like living an episode of The Twilight Zone. Any moment I expect to hear Rod Serling's voice telling me not to adjust the channels." He gulped the drink. "Except he wouldn't be telling me if I'm not watching it, if I'm bloody well in the damn episode, would he?"
Mairie was half laughing, half crying, and she wanted to reach out and hug her brother and sweet, funny Marc. "I know how this sounds. I fought it myself for days, but it's true. I swear. Everything I'm about to tell you happened."
"I feel like I am in an alternate reality," Marc muttered to himself.
Patting Marc's leg, Bryan said, "Calm down. This is Mairie. She wouldn't put either of us through this unless it was true." Addressing Mairie, he smiled shakily and said, "Go on. You forgot to arch your back…"
Mairie smiled her thanks to Bryan and felt Jack's hand on her shoulder in a display of strength and support. As she observed her brother and Marc, she realized they were all connected to one another and smiled through her tears. "I am a fortunate woman to be surrounded by such wonderful people. Anyway, Jack is right. I had to get back here to you, Bryan. I would have done anything to tell you what I learned."
Marc sipped his drink and muttered into it. "Well, it's obvious you learned to arch your back."
Everyone laughed, even Marc, and his words broke the serious mood.
"Yes, I arched my back after I felt that white light enter my body, and I straightened out immediately, and after I pulled the chord I looked for you,
Bryan. But you were gone. Everything familiar was gone. You. Las Vegas. There was nothing but desert. Everything I knew as my reality had disappeared…"
There were no more interruptions, and Mairie and Jack told their incredible story.
The recounting took hours and they stopped while Mairie prepared dinner. Marc called it a very long commercial, and couldn't wait to get back to what he called the twilight zone. During that time, she heard Jack and Bryan and Marc talking. Her brother and his companion were asking questions about what life was like in the last century. Mairie felt like the night was almost magical when they all sat down to dinner and, after praising her for the stuffed salmon, Bryan and Marc begged them to continue. Jack became the perfect dinner host intuitively assisting, serving, and entertaining their guests, and Mairie felt their partnership grow to an even more expansive level. They worked so well together, their movements gracefully paired with unspoken synchronicity.
Dinner was cleared and the conversation continued over two pots of coffee, three-quarters of a chocolate cake, and brandy before she and Jack ended the story with Mairie calling Marc from the hotel lobby of the Luxor.
Marc looked exhausted. His usually impeccable hair was disheveled. His sleeves were rolled up and his shirt unbuttoned. Bryan, surprisingly, looked better than when he had walked in the door. He seemed energized.
"You are saying, Mairie, that you hid a jar in a cave over a hundred and twenty years ago and you expect to find it now?"
She was tired and her jaw hurt from speaking so long, but she nodded and said, "It has to be there, Bryan. You heard Jack. He buried it. We would have rented a car and driven there before we left Vegas, but Marc scared me when he told me about the government looking for me. I could only think of getting back here to you and didn't want to take the chance that anything, or anyone, might stop me."
"So what do we do?" Marc asked, wiping his forehead with his dinner napkin. "Send you back there? I told you they're tapping our phone. I know this because I have a friend who gave me this detection device and it registers. Bryan and I decided to leave it on, rather than alert them that we know about it. I wouldn't trust my cell phone, either."
"Area 51," Jack said, looking at Mairie. "You didn't mention that when you told me about Harmon. I didn't want to interrupt while you were telling Bryan and Marc, but what does it mean?"
Marc shook his head and almost whined the Twilight Zone theme song. "Do-do-do-do…"
"Gimme a break, Marc," Mairie said with a tired chuckle. She looked at Jack and sighed.
"I don't think that anyone knows how to explain it. Only those who have been stationed there or work there could answer that truthfully. It's a highly secret government installation. Something is going on there that they don't want the average citizen to know about—"
"I saw a documentary where this reporter sneaked onto the property and was immediately met by armed guards. They were really threatening and—"
"And aliens are supposed to be there," Marc interrupted.
"You've had too much to drink," Bryan said with a grin.
Mairie leaned closer to them. "What if they're doing secret testing there? On time? Look, I lost seven months. Seven months! I was only back there four days."
No one said anything for a prolonged moment.
"Sydney has a computer," Marc said. "I'm going on the Net to see what I can find." He pushed his chair away from the table and walked toward the back of the apartment.
"What's the net?" Jack asked.
"Computers," Mairie answered, as Marc stopped and walked back to the dining room table.
"Care to come with me, Sundance? If you can jump off a mountain, you can surf the Net. It ain't that scary."
"Certainly," Jack said, and stood up. Stretching, he looked to Mairie. "Would you excuse me?"
She smiled. "Don't be too overwhelmed by what you'll see. It's only a machine."
"A machine that's changed the world," Marc retorted, defending his passion.
"Granted," Mairie conceded. "Just go easy, Marc. Jack's already been hit with a lot of changes."
She watched Jack and Marc walk away and turned to her brother. "Isn't he wonderful?"
Bryan smiled tenderly. "He's wonderful, and you deserve him. He's your reward, Mairie. Happiness. What a novel idea, huh?"
She grinned. "Right. All those years, Bryan… I was so angry. And I feel now as if a boulder has been lifted off my heart."
"So you had to go back a hundred years to heal?" Laughing, he added, "You are one stubborn woman sometimes."
'"Moi?" Her eyes were wide with innocence.
Bryan became serious in their moment of privacy. "Thank you, Mairie. I don't know if this herb, this plant, will help, but I'm willing to give it a try if it's still there. What you did for me…" He shook his head in disbelief.
"I love you," she whispered through her tears. "You're my big brother."
"I am sorry to interrupt," Jack announced as he walked into the dining room. "But Marc said you both should come and see this." He looked shaken.
Mairie helped Bryan rise and whispered, "Sweetie, do you want to lie down now? It's been a long night."
"I'm fine. Haven't had this much excitement since … since I jumped out of that plane."
"Jack, would you bring one of the armchairs into the back office for Bryan?"
Bryan protested, but Mairie insisted.
When they entered the small office, Marc turned from the computer. "Wait till you guys read this. I'm going to print it out. You know how much stuff there is on this subject? I mean some of it is wacko, but some of it is real science. Like this one site… any of you ever hear of the Montauk Project, or the Philadelphia Experiment?"
They all shook their heads. Bryan sat in the overstuffed chair and thanked Jack, while Mairie took a seat on the rug. Jack joined her and smiled as he stroked her hair. Mairie had to admit she was tired. It had been a full day, and she appreciated his gentle attention. They all listened as Marc continued to read off the computer screen.
"Well, this is long but I'll try to shorten it. Listen to this… the origin of the Montauk Project dates back to 1943, when radar invisibility was being researched aboard the USS Eldridge. When the Eldridge was stationed in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, it was involved in this test called the Philadelphia Experiment. The object was to make the ship undetectable to radar, and while that was achieved, it had some pretty nasty results for the crew members. It was a catastrophe, as far as people were concerned. Death. Burning. Mental disorientation. Those who survived were discharged as mentally unfit or otherwise discredited and the whole affair was covered up."
Bryan was skeptical. "Oh, Marc. Not another conspiracy theory."
"No, listen… now they talk about someone I know of, John Von Neumann, he was the inventor of the modern computer and a mathematical genius. It says after World War II he was able to draw on the enormous resources of the military industrial complex."
"This sounds weird, Marc," Mairie conceded.
"Wait a minute. The Germans had this incredible technical knowledge, and after the war some of the scientists came to the States and some went to Russia, and even more defected when east Berlin came under Russian control. That was the beginning of the cold war, and the arms race. This claims the scientists here in the States started a project in Long Island that dealt with time travel. We're talking back in the forties and the fifties and continuing up till today. All this is now under something called the Black Card clearance level, and—"
"Harmon mentioned that," Mairie interrupted in an excited voice. "I didn't know what he meant, and I was too scared at the time to question him about it."
"Well, this explains it," Marc said. "It's just about the highest level of clearance there is, and most people don't even know it exists. And this means, in essence, that it is such a deep black hole project that all the records, everything connected to it, is buried in a black vault and nobody has access to it, not even members of government, without a need-
to-know clearance. Listen to this. Here's an account from one of the crew of a battleship the Navy reportedly made disappear in Philly and reappear minutes later in Norfolk. This guy survived and told his story when he was an old man. Name's Carlos Allende…" and he read right from the screen for the next ten minutes.
Mairie was horrified to hear about secret government projects and installations on the East Coast, the West Coast, and in between. How much of it was truth, she would never know, but she did know about Harmon and how determined he was to stop her and Jack. The fact that she was ah innocent caught up in a military test meant nothing to him.
Marc took a deep breath and said, "Okay, here's the end. 'The Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project were key parts of American history because they demonstrate what a government is willing to do to have an advantage in war. Whatever the truth really is about these experiments into time travel, Carlos Allende says it perfectly. 'The ultimate truth will be a truth too huge, too fantastic, not to be told. Perhaps one day we the people will be told the truth.’“
"Sounds pretty far-fetched," Bryan said.
"Yeah? Well so does Mairie and Jack's story. Oh, this is cool," Marc added, as he clicked on another site. "This one goes from time travel and the Pythagorean theorem into Einstein. They jump straight to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which states that neither time, nor length, nor even mass remain constant additive quantities when approaching the speed of light—"
Mairie sat listening and all she could think of was that Marc's rambling of physics was sounding like the Peanuts cartoons when the adults were talking to the children: wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha. None of it made sense. It was like he was speaking a different language.
Science.
"Look," she interrupted. "I don't have to understand how it happened. I know it happened. I want to know why it happened."
"Well, I think it's interesting. Who would have thought that so many people were involved or even interested in time-travel experiments. It ain't science fiction anymore," Marc stated, typing in something else in his search. "Okay, let's look up Area 51."
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