Well, that was certainly a surprise.
“But how would you do that? The timeline will change and you have no way of knowing if she’ll even be born, much less that she’ll get a message from twenty-three hundred years in the past.”
Conner sighed, and all the blood, all the life, drained from his face, leaving him looking empty and desolate. Paulson had no idea he’d carried around such feelings for his long dead wife for all these years. Yet he did know that when a man truly loved, his beloved became part of his soul. He felt the same way about Gretchen.
“I have to at least try. I brought a device with me that will preserve my message for thousands of years, one only able to be opened with her DNA signature. I’d planned to place the device in Egypt, in a chamber in one of the pyramids, a chamber that won’t be found until close to the time of her birth.”
Paulson knew Victoria getting such a message was the longest of long shots, but he was willing to acquiesce. He had nothing to lose to such a request.
“I agree, provided we inspect the device and message before they are sealed away.”
The last thing they needed was Conner placing some kind of bomb in the pyramids.
“Agreed.”
“Okay then, Conner, tell us what you did,” Paulson said.
“Can I sit, please?”
Mattie dragged Conner off the floor and sat him on one of the nearby stools, his chains hanging behind him.
“Four days ago, in our timeline, I received a message telling me to get out. To get out fast.”
He blinked up at Paulson.
“And that’s just what I did.”
Chapter 47
Afternoon, Early Spring, 331 BC
Babylon
“What?” Paulson asked. “Who told you to leave?”
Conner closed his eyes and dropped his head. “Let me do this in order . . .” He sighed a couple of times, then straightened his spine, lifting his head.
“Four days ago I was sitting in the cafeteria at Chronos One, having a late night snack with Holly Scarborough,” he said, looking up at them with red, tired eyes. “There I received a coded message. It came from a com-link data drive that had recently come through the vortex from the future. The message simply said, ‘Go to the surface. Something is waiting for you there. Tell no one. More instructions to follow. You have five minutes, thirty-eight seconds.’ “
Conner shifted his weight and pushed up even straighter.
“So I did what the message said. I left the base.”
“You routinely obey any message that comes in over your com-line?” Paulson asked. “Come on, you can do better than that, Doctor.”
“I know how that sounds, but it’s the truth. Normally I would’ve been skeptical, tried to investigate, but the clock kept ticking off the seconds, and quite frankly, I was scared. It was E-Day after all, not your typical boring day at the office.”
“So you left all those people to die!” Mattie yelled out, kicking over an empty stool.
Paulson thrust out his arm, commanding Mattie to control his temper.
“I had no idea a nuclear bomb was going to come through,” Conner said, eyes wide. “You have to believe me. I thought maybe a package or something was waiting for me on the surface.”
Claire nodded as she stared intently at Conner. Her lie detection algorithms were incredible accurate.
Conner continued his story, seemingly distraught over the people he’d left to die.
“Just before I left the base, I received a large amount of data on my portable. Then another message came through telling me to go Holloman Air Force Base and await instructions. I didn’t even find out about the attack on Chronos until after I was already at the base.”
Claire nodded again, indicating he was telling the truth.
“It was there that I was able to start reviewing the information I received at Chronos. It turns out that the drive had been sent back in time from several months in the future. And it was sent by another version of me.”
Paulson and Mattie both raised their eyebrows. Claire showed no reaction.
“You’re telling us a future you sent the nuclear bomb back in time, destroyed Chronos, and killed thousands?” Paulson felt like taking his knife to the scientist’s throat again.
“Yes, that’s the truth.”
"And how the hell was future you able to get a nuclear bomb smuggled into one of the most secure bases in the world?" Paulson asked.
"He didn't provide me with a blueprint of how he did it, but he had help of course, just like I did here. In his future remnants of the US and Russian militaries were hiding at Chronos One. They'd planned to use the old nuclear warhead in a last ditch attack against the alien invaders. The other Conner and his military friends were able to take that weapon and send it back in time to prevent a long jump team from going back into the past."
It seemed far-fetched, but in the chaos at the end of the world crazy things can happen as Paulson had seen for himself.
Claire nodded again and asked, “And what about the second message, the one sent to Dr. Howard Nichols?”
Conner frowned. “Howard was a decoy. Future me knew you’d be investigating the attack and wanted to throw you off the trail.”
Paulson shifted his weight to the other leg. What he was saying certainly made sense. Conner was not only a brilliant scientist, but apparently a strategic genius as well.
“So what happened in this other timeline to turn you into a homicidal maniac?” Mattie asked.
Conner simply shrugged, rattling his chains.
“The same thing that happened to me in my own timeline. Only the other me had full knowledge of your plans. He knew that a highly advanced alien invasion force was behind the E-Day attack. He knew mankind would be annihilated. And he told me about your plan to change the timeline and accelerate the technological progress of humanity. The future me knew this went against God’s will and that we were playing with forces we should never have accessed. I agreed with him.”
Paulson knew of Conner’s devout religious beliefs, so his revelation came as no surprise. But all of the twisted timelines were confusing.
He turned to Claire.
"So if Conner is here in the past with us now, then he never would've placed a bomb in Chronos One, right? And none of us should be here?"
"Not necessarily," she replied. "It all goes back to timeline negation theory, first proposed by Holly Scarborough. It's extremely complex, dealing with time travel paradoxes. Basically what happened is that when the other Conner sent the bomb back to destroy the base, he also destroyed his timeline. The Conner we have here went on a different path, in the timeline we lived in the future. And now that we are in the past, everything in the previous timeline will change once again."
"Yes, hopefully for the better," Paulson added still not completely grasping the complexities of time travel theory.
He turned back to Conner. "And what else did you and the other future you do?"
“To stop you from succeeding, this other me had already secretly sent information back in time to various religious groups, like the Coptic Christians, who were the ones that tried to kill the survivors coming out of Chronos One.”
Paulson frowned and nodded, watching the pieces come together.
“They also tried to assassinate you in Iraq before you could even build Chronos Two.”
Paulson raised his eyebrows. So that explained the assassination attempt on him all those years ago.
“But none of it worked, so the other me chose to destroy the Chronos One base. He knew once that was done, the timeline would be changed to such an extent that he would no longer exist, according to timeline negation theory, as Claire just explained to you. But the future me also knew there was another secret base, Chronos Two, somewhere in Iraq. He couldn't do anything about that base though.”
“So it was up to you to find and sabotage Chronos Two?” Paulson asked.
“Yes, which turned out to be much mo
re difficult than I imagined. It was too well fortified, and I had no time to plan before you undertook your long jump into the past.”
“But then Senator Gordon and his crew came along?” Mattie asked.
“Yes, the timing was perfect. The senator approached me with his plan and after that, everything fell into place.”
“So there are no other saboteurs or plots working against us?” Paulson asked.
“None that I know of,” Conner said dejectedly. “It seems you’ve won.”
“Good,” Paulson said, relieved to finally hear Conner say those words. “We’re here and we’re going to do our best to succeed. Where it all takes us is anyone’s guess.”
Paulson looked toward the side of the tent, picturing the world beyond the canvas, a new world unlike their own, one still filled with hope and possibilities. Maybe it was an absurd whim, but he felt the need to share that hope with Conner.
“Dr. Conner, I want you to know that I’m a religious man myself. I believe that God would want us to do everything we can to save ourselves. He gave us you and Holly and all the others who made time travel possible, just as he always provided knowledge and answers when we needed them throughout our history.”
Conner’s head dropped to his chest, but he didn’t speak.
Paulson sighed. “As for Jesus, I believe he will be born no matter what we do. God certainly wouldn’t be thwarted by the might of the Vorsh or the proclivities of humans, would he?”
“I pray that you’re right,” Conner said. Tears streaked down his face when he added, “But what if you’re not?”
Paulson turned away. He had a lot of work to do, and they had a long road ahead of them.
“Only time will tell.”
Paulson pushed his way out of the tent.
Time would tell—fixed yet flexible time, so long the whip driving them—might well prove their salvation. He could already feel the river of time bending, turning toward new lands, new events, new heroes and villains as the course of history changed with their arrival in 331 B.C. He was at the tiller of a sailboat riding this river, pulled by the currents ever forward, yet able to control his destiny and the destiny of all humanity.
The vast and endless future spread out before him. Paulson took a deep breath of fresh air, filling his lungs as his heart filled with hope once again.
The slate was finally clear.
They could write their own future.
Chapter 48
11:00 a.m. Local Time, January 17, 2038
Hillah, Iraq
Jeff held his arm up to defend himself as the alien beast towered over him, its long bear-like snout and fangs dripping saliva as it anticipated eating his head. But instead of lunging and taking a bite out of his flesh, the creature spoke.
“Greetings, citizens. I’m Joe Smith with Earth Domestic Security. I was signaled by the AI that you are unregistered. I also see that your neural nets are not functioning. Can you please provide an explanation?”
The creature spoke in a deep voice, spit flying from its snout.
Jeff couldn’t answer, had no idea what to say, and wasn’t sure he could even move. He was only slightly relieved when the creature backed away and said, “I’m still not great at reading human emotions, but my AI is telling me you are terrified, as if you’ve never seen a Vorsh before. Is that true?”
No one said a word.
Joe Smith looked away for a second, but then turned immediately back. Jeff shifted to his left to keep a curious Holly firmly behind him.
“I’ve signaled for someone to assist you. They will arrive momentarily.”
Seconds later another craft burst out of the sky and settled beside the first. This time when the door opened, a human emerged.
At least she was mostly human.
The woman who stepped out had to be over seven feet tall, with a long, lean, and muscular physique. She wore a bodysuit that moved and shimmered as she walked. Her face was large, in keeping with her size, and flatter than any Jeff had seen before, and her eyes were larger as well. Her forehead was long and her cranium slightly elongated. She gracefully walked up to Joe Smith. They looked at each other, then the alien creature climbed back into his craft and flew off.
The human female turned back to Jeff, Holly, and Melinda.
“I’m sorry if his appearance startled you. My name is Miora.”
She spoke in a magically melodic voice in an unfamiliar accent, yet her English was perfectly clear.
“You’ll have to forgive the tone of my old English. It’s been a while since I’ve needed to speak, and I’ve never spoken this ancient dialect before.”
She didn’t normally speak? Did she use only com-links? “That’s okay, Miora,” Jeff told her. “We can understand you perfectly.” Even if he couldn’t understand her being so comfortable around the Vorsh.
She smiled. “Excellent. We detected the flash of a temporal bubble popping in this sector four hours sixteen minutes ago, but it was so short we decided not to investigate. Apparently that decision was wrong. I assume that you three emerged from the bubble?”
She turned her head at odd angles and blinked her gigantic eyes as she spoke.
“Yes,” Jeff said. “Our . . . our tank, what we used to transport ourselves, fell from the sky, and the temporal bubble generator was destroyed.”
“A surveillance bot just found the tank. Downloading data from its mainframe now. Interesting. Very interesting.”
Miora’s eyes widened.
“To date we’ve retrieved six temporal bubbles and thirty survivors total, but none have come from a timeline as . . . as radical as yours.”
She looked away again, and her eyes darted back and forth.
“It seems that your timeline is the closest we’ve found to the original unaltered alpha timeline. It’s amazing you survived and are actually standing here before me.”
He certainly agreed with her there.
"We weren't just close to it, we lived it," Jeff said remembering the horror and tragedy that they'd just been through.
"That you did," Miora replied. "And you have my deepest sympathies."
Jeff immediately started wondering about other timelines and temporal bubbles. He turned to Holly, but she and Melinda had already stepped forward. And Holly, as always, was ready with her own questions.
“Can you tell us what happened?” she asked. “Was Joe Smith one of the aliens that slaughtered us? Did we defeat them?”
Miora smiled again.
“I don’t need to tell you my dear—I can show you. Have a seat.”
They all sat, Jeff holding Holly’s hand, and Miora stood over them, hands stretched out like one of the giant statues surrounding them in the ruins.
Jeff felt the warm marble under him as he sat at the base of the Mattie statue, then the physical world around him faded.
Miora’s disembodied voice echoed in his head as a new scene came into focus.
“Let’s start at the beginning: two thousand three hundred and sixty-seven years ago, a team of time travelers landed in the past. We now designate this as year zero on our calendars.”
The scene changed, showing Paulson, Mattie, Claire, and others walking up to an ancient walled city with a giant tower rising from the center of it.
Jeff heard Melinda gasp before covering the sound with embarrassed laughter, the kind with shaky tears behind it. He felt Holly lean away and guessed she was grabbing Melinda’s hand.
“They entered Babylon and met with Alexander the Great after he took over the city.”
Jeff watched Paulson shake hands with a young, muscular, blond Alexander and present him with an array of gifts including gold jewelry and ancient weapons.
“Posing as foreigners from a far-off land, these time travelers were able to forge a strong partnership with Alexander. As their ties grew, General Paulson was able to use advanced weapons from the future to help Alexander conquer all of India and the Arabian Peninsula, creating the largest empire in history.
Through the help of new telegraph communication lines and a strong central government, Alexander was able to manage this vast empire from his seat of power in Babylon. Trade followed and peace and prosperity flourished everywhere.”
Jeff saw citizens of the new empire walking along well-paved roads as telegraph lines were raised. New cities sprang up along trade routes, and people looked healthy, happy, and prosperous.
“New forms of medicine were introduced, greatly reducing the infant mortality rate. The population exploded in the empire. Efficient means of food production and crops were introduced as well, and famine quickly became a worry of the past. Currency and banking systems were developed to provide order for the abundant and growing commerce.”
Jeff watched in awe as great cities grew and prospered, filled with markets selling a wide variety of goods. Sounds of the hustle and bustle of commerce centers and construction filled the air.
“Engineers from the future helped build the cities to operate with efficiency. Sewer and trash removal systems were established to ensure diseases were kept in check. Each city and territory had a regional governor appointed by Alexander, and order was maintained by a strong army loyal to him.”
A mature Alexander, much older than he’d been in their timeline, stood over a map of his territory, giving orders to distinguished men who must’ve been governors. Paulson, Mattie, Claire, and several others Jeff recognized stood beside him, providing their input as well.
“All citizens were given free education. Literacy rates reached higher than seventy percent. A common language, English, was taught across the land.”
Schoolchildren held up their hands, actively engaged in learning.
Shivers tingled through Jeff. To see what they’d achieved . . . It was incredible.
“When Alexander passed away at ninety-seven, he’d expanded his empire into China and integrated the early Roman republic and Carthage into the fold. Charles Paulson was designated his successor. King Paulson ruled for two decades, until his death, further expanding upon Alexander’s principles.”
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 39
