The Gatespace Trilogy, Omnibus Edition

by Alan Seeger

  “How can I help?” said Sarah.

  “Well,” said Nigel, “if you will run a chronon report, we should be able to detect a spike in spin change that will lead us to the precise date that the change took place, much like ripples flowing out from where a stone was thrown into a lake.”

  Sarah immediately sat at one of the terminals and went to work.

  “If I run one as well we should be able to triangulate the change and determine the origin more quickly,” said Terry, who sat at another of the computers and began running his own report.

  “Is there anything I can do?” said Calliope.

  Nigel looked at her and thought for a moment. “Let me show you very quickly how to do what they are doing. It’s not difficult; the equipment does virtually all of the work.” He directed her to sit at one of the vacant positions and pulled up a chair next to her.

  “Here,” he said. “See how this works? You poll the equipment for the chronon level… and then this entry indicates the time. You can go back in increments of minutes, hours, days, or years.”

  Calliope caught on rather quickly, and soon had a report running.

  A little more than an hour later, all three reports had finished compiling, and Nigel was looking over the results.

  “Good Lord,” he said in a low whisper.

  “Is it bad?” said Terry.

  Nigel looked up at him. “What this is indicating is that the source of the disturbance goes all the way back to late October 2020. I have accessed the history database from the current timeline, and what I am finding there is frightening.”

  “What is it?” Sarah said.

  “According to the now-altered histories,” Nigel said, “the Chinese launched an attack using satellite-based nuclear arms, and basically destroyed the entire Western world.”

  There was a stunned silence for several seconds. Then a different voice spoke up, bold and strong.

  “What do we have to do to fix it?” said Calliope.

  “We need more help,” said Nigel. “Someone else who has experience dealing with changes in the timeline such as this.”

  Callie looked up at him. “I know someone.”

  Nigel gazed back at her. “I believe I know just who you’re thinking of.”

  CHAPTER 22

  2019

  The newly expanded SheetMetal cancelled its scheduled dates for the next two weeks and rehearsed daily during that time. It didn’t take long to work the roughness out of their performances, especially with the original material they were working on. There were several good tunes that the original band had written which they adapted to feature Brad’s voice, and in that initial two-week period they managed to write and arrange two more. There was a current of excitement among all five band members that provided a new spark of energy.

  Another thing they decided was that a name change was in order. One day in April Brad mentioned that his birthday was coming up the following month. He wanted to know when the other guys were having his new Maserati delivered. Among the laughter and backslapping that ensued came a mention from Wade that his birthday was also in May. A little more discussion helped them come to the realization that both of them had been born under the sign of Gemini, although none of the guys put any stock in the pseudoscience — or “bullshit,” as Ben preferred to term it — of astrology.

  Brad mentioned, however, that he’d had a friend back home in Montana (his old best friend Samuel Denver, in fact) who used to refer to him as the “Gemini Genius,” and he’d always thought that sounded like a cool name for a band. They realized that with Wade and Brad sharing the bulk of the lead vocal duties, it made perfect sense. It only took a few minutes for the guys to agree that they had found their new band name.

  That night, Brad fired up the graphics program on his laptop and came up with a logo design that seemed to fit their quirky, heavy pop/rock style:

  They played their first gig as Gemini Genius the following weekend, and to say that the audience response was much improved from what it had been when they were SheetMetal was a great understatement indeed. There were a few reviews in the local industry papers that said things like “A great new rock and roll quintet has arrived,” comparing GG’s music to that of bands like Cheap Trick, Bad Company, The Who and U2. One even went so far as to say that their music resembled Revolver-era Beatles.

  The guys enjoyed their Sunday afternoon, and kept rereading the various reviews to one another. A substantial quantity of beer was consumed, and several pizzas met their doom, filling the stomachs of five very pleased rock musicians.

  CHAPTER 23

  2802

  Calliope had accepted her first assignment for the Time Team without hesitation. Nigel had looked up the most recent histories to determine where to find the person they were looking for, only to discover that it appeared that he had been missing and presumed dead since the nuclear attack in 2020.

  “No,” Callie said, a note of panic in her voice. “He can’t be dead. We need him!”

  “Something tells me this one wouldn’t have died so easily,” said Nigel.

  ~~~~~

  In the end, the truth was as simple as could be. Somehow, Nigel’s equipment was able to trace the person they sought to the place where he had sought refuge from the war.

  The Time Team opened a Gate and Calliope passed through to a dusty, treed landscape on a world where the sky was the blushing pink of a tea rose. The trees had bluish-green foliage, with an almost plastic sheen to them.

  Wandering into the town, she found a work crew overseeing the construction of a beautiful home. It was being built of wood which had the same blue-green coloration as the leaves of the trees.

  Near the home, she found a neatly manicured garden, in the center of which was a simple headstone reading

  STEVEN CLARK DENVER

  1969 – 2020

  There was a young man in his early 20s sitting on a bench near the grave. He looked up as Calliope approached.

  “I thought I might find you here, Sam,” said Calliope. “We need you.”

  He didn’t yet know who this young blonde woman was, although her face seemed familiar, somehow, but Samuel Denver followed her to the Gate just the same.

  CHAPTER 24

  2019

  To say that Brad and Gerry were anxious was the most serious of understatements. They had played a club on the Strip the night before, a relatively popular joint called the Cobra Club that did showcases on the weekends. They featured bands that had already developed a following at other clubs to play during weeknight features when the bands were rotated in and out like baseball teams rotated pitchers. Some of the members of other bands they were friends with had told them that to be asked to play one of these showcases was a high compliment, and that several local bands had snagged album deals after playing one of these.

  They had been given ninety minutes to play; it was a bit of a challenge because it was a long enough set that they couldn’t just play the originals they had worked up; that was basically made up of their incipient album, which, of necessity, was only about 45 minutes worth of music. So, they had discussed, should we add cover tunes to our set and make them the hottest anyone has ever heard, or should we do extended jam versions of our original tracks?

  In the end, they did a little bit of both. They decided to extend the solos on several of the songs, plus they threw in excellent versions of two of the songs they had originally jammed on when Brad first auditioned for the band: Alice Cooper’s “Be My Lover,” which they sandwiched in between two of their original tunes, and the Beatles’ “Revolution,” which featured Brad and Wade harmonizing, and which they saved for the end of the set.

  The crowd ate it up.

  Afterward, they were sitting in the club’s green room, preparing to load out their equipment, when a guy in his early 40s walked in and handed Brad a business card.

  “I liked what I heard tonight, guys. Give me a call tomorrow,” he said, and walked out.

  B
rad looked at the card and his mouth dropped open.

  LEE CARRUTHERS

  A&R

  CDE RECORDS

  He looked around at the others. “Hey, guys,” he said. “I think our time may have come at last.”

  CHAPTER 25

  2802

  It was late in the evening when Terry walked into the Time Teams’ control center. He had been out in the city, attempting to make sure their small kitchen with its limited storage was stocked with the foodstuffs they needed to make it through the long periods that were occurring more and more often – and lasting longer and longer – when the electrical power in large parts of the city would be out.

  Nigel had suggested that these outages might be specifically directed at the Time Team. He speculated that since the local arm of the oppressive governmental system that now held sway over the planet still had not been successful in pinpointing the location of their facility, they could be using the power outages as a means of disrupting the work of the Time Teams.

  They could get around that by installing a generator, of course, but it was a terribly conspicuous item to attempt to obtain under the present, hostile regime, and a little unwieldy to attempt to bring from the past.

  It was Samuel who conceived of the idea of attempting to travel forward a significant distance to see what resources were available.

  Nigel was cautious about the plan; what if they opened a Gate to a time period far in the future, only to discover that the abuses that had been heaped upon the planet had left the world uninhabitable? Climate change had continued to be an increasing problem for centuries, and many other issues were affecting the world as well.

  In the end, they decided that they would cautiously open a Gate to the location they were considering and attempt to check the conditions there before they plunged into the breach, so to speak.

  Estimating that a five hundred year leap into the future would likely be enough to more or less guarantee some major breakthroughs, they managed to open a Gate in the year 3302 and, after some judicious investigation, found that the weather and atmospheric conditions seemed normal.

  Samuel and Terry went through the gate, hoping they were prepared for whatever they found on the other side.

  CHAPTER 26

  3302

  Samuel and Terry stepped out of the swirling green Gate into a city unlike any that either one had ever seen.

  There had been the familiar brief burst of green, the sense of being nowhere just as both of them had experienced many times before. Then they found themselves on a pristine street that bisected a city filled with sleek glass and chrome buildings.

  They stood gaping at the sight for a minute or two, then realized that there was a man approaching, walking toward them, a smile upon his face.

  After his experience at the faraway village of Centra with his father so many years ago, Samuel had learned to exercise the utmost caution. The smiling face his father had encountered in Centra on his first visit turned into a spitting viper upon his return.

  The man raised his hand in greeting and called to them cheerfully. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome back to North Central Positronics! How are you this beautiful day?”

  “We’re just fine, thank you,” Samuel replied. “We are interested in seeing what sort of portable power generators you might have available.”

  The man, whose name was Leonardo, led them into a nearby building and into a glass-walled corner suite with a view of the surrounding countryside. In the distance, jutting up from the horizon, was the grayish form of the St. Louis Gateway Arch.

  “Are we in Greater Granite?” Terry asked.

  “It was once called that, but we have returned to calling it by its original name, Granite City,” Leonardo responded. He entered some information on his computer’s touchscreen and consulted the data that appeared on his screen. “Yes, we can supply you with our latest model generator, the PCR01, for Personal Cobalt Reactor. It is powered by a sealed plutonium battery the size of your thumbnail, surrounded by a cobalt jacket, and puts out more than 1,000 kilowatts of electricity. The battery has a five-year lifespan.”

  “How large is this unit?” Terry asked, “Because we’re going to have to cart it back to 2802.”

  Leonardo smiled and gestured toward a piece of equipment the size of a shoe box that sat on a table behind him. “Here it is.”

  Terry knew that he must look like a fool with his mouth hanging open. The last time he had looked into generators, well before he joined the Time Team in 2016, a 20 to 60 kilowatt generator was the size of a dinner table and ran on a gasoline engine.

  “Damn,” he said, smiling.

  Samuel glanced over at him and smiled. “What he said.”

  “So how will this work as far as payment?” Terry asked.

  Leonardo shook his head, raising his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “No payment necessary,” he said. “We’ve been monitoring your progress. We know about the rift in time that you have been battling. We know that, unimpeded, it will eventually reach our time and destroy our world. Therefore, we need to do what we can to help you. If that means providing you a PCR01 to help the cause, well, that’s a small price to pay.”

  Samuel and Terry took their leave of him and returned to the location outside where they had arrived. The Gate was still glinting, revolving in the sun. Samuel was interested to see that four security men in white uniforms were standing around it, cautioning the curious not to get too close.

  They thanked everyone for their hospitality and passed through, back to 2802.

  CHAPTER 27

  2019

  The morning after their showcase, Brad called the number on Lee Carruthers’ business card. A woman answered.

  “CDE.”

  “Uh, yes, hello. Mr. Carruthers gave us his business card last night at a music showcase and told us to call this number this morning?”

  “All right. On the back of the business card, is there a four digit number written down?”

  Brad hadn’t even thought to look at the back. He’d been too engaged with staring at the front of the card. He quickly flipped it over.

  “Uh… yes. It says 0559.”

  “Thank you. One moment, please.”

  Brad heard the sound of a computer keyboard clicking.

  “He would like to see you at one o’clock this afternoon. There are five members in your band?” she said.

  “Yes, there’s five of us.”

  “All five of you will need to be here.”

  Brad grinned, but tried not to let the excitement show in his voice. “We’ll be there. Thank you very much.”

  He hung up the phone and could hardly keep from crowing like a rooster.

  CHAPTER 28

  2020

  Antonio Velasquez was browsing through the open air farmer’s market in Chicago’s Daley Plaza, searching out the crispest, freshest vegetables he could find for his new restaurant. It was called Tony V’s, and had been open for just a bit less than two weeks. It was already becoming quite a success.

  He had located some excellent sweet yellow Vidalia onions, some large, wonderfully pungent garlic, several bunches of brilliant green scallions, and several fine looking orange pumpkins for today’s planned soup of the day. He also picked up six dozen fresh eggs.

  He decided that he needed to find something for a special dessert, and started to walk up and down the rows of tents, looking for inspiration.

  He had been at the market since about 10:15 AM, and had spent about half an hour gathering the items he had so far. He decided to put them in the bed of his pickup truck before he continued. He fastened the bed cover back down over them and returned to the market.

  As he began to browse again, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was 10:55 AM. He’d allow himself another twenty minutes; after that he knew he had to get to the restaurant and start preparing for his 4 PM opening.

  He found some insanely large, juicy strawberries and knew he’d found the centerp
iece for tonight’s dessert. Pie? Shortcake? He wasn’t quite sure just yet. Perhaps a cheesecake?

  As he was almost ready to head out, he remembered that he’d seen some beautiful butternut squash down at the other end of the market, which he thought would make an excellent addition to the pumpkin soup he’d planned. He started down that way to get some.

  It was 11:02.

  Suddenly and without warning, Daley Plaza erupted in a brilliant white light as the center of Chicago erupted in fire which seemed to fall from the sky.

  The last thing Antonio thought before he died was that those strawberries had been some of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

  CHAPTER 29

  2019

  Brad, Wade, Gerry, Stefan and Ben were twenty minutes early to their meeting. They didn’t want to be late but neither did they want to seem overly eager. The receptionist, whose name was Yolanda, had them sign in on a visitors’ clipboard; Brad recognized her voice as being that of the woman he’d spoken to on the phone. He was surprised to find that she appeared to be about his mother’s age.

  After a brief wait, Lee Carruthers came out of his office and greeted them, personally escorting them back into his “inner sanctum.” He wasn’t the oily record biz guy Brad imagined that they would have to deal with, the kind you saw in the movies. He was more like… well, like Paul Rudd’s record company guy character in This Is 40, except that it didn’t appear that CDE was having any financial troubles.

  Carruthers complimented them on their performance the night before, saying that a friend of his who was with another label had seen them play, but didn’t feel like his own company was a good fit for them, as it specialized more in what he called “comeback kings,” artists that had had popular hits in the 1950s and 60s and were still playing the circuit today. However, he did think enough of them to call and give Carruthers a heads-up, and based on that reference, Lee had decided to stop by the Cobra to check them out. He’d liked what he’d heard and seen, and that was why they were in his office now.