by Bob Mayer
“You remembered your lessons from Fort Bragg,” Eagle noted approvingly. “Roland would gladly point out the differences between the original M1911 and the A1 variation.”
“The instructor was kinda persistent,” Scout said. “I thought the important part was aiming and pulling the trigger, but no—“ she didn’t get to finish the history of her Special Ops training as the door from the prep area opened and Roland entered. They’d packed the big man into tight fitting white trousers which ended mid-calf, a calico shirt unbuttoned halfway to his waist, with a heavy cutlass stuck on one side in a leather belt at his side and a wicked looking axe in his hand.
Roland was excited. “I get to be a pirate!”
“Don’t let Neeley see you in that,” Scout said. “And where’s the eye patch and parrot?” She looked him over. “Then again, maybe you should let Neeley see you in that. She’s odd enough, she might like it.”
Roland didn’t let her puncture his enthusiasm. “It’s got to be some place warm or else they have given me something more to wear right? On the water. Warm weather. Weapons!”
“Axe and sword,” Ivar noted.
Roland smiled. “Yeah!”
“That’s a boarding axe,” Eagle said. “It served an array of functions on a sailing ship. Damage control in case of fire. Also to cut through enemy boarding nets and lines. And to cut away fouled rigging. Technically not as effective a weapon as a musket or pistol but—“ he’d already lost Roland’s attention because the big man had noted something more interesting.
“Is that a forty-five under your coat?” Roland asked Ivar.
“Oh no,” Scout muttered, but they were all saved as Moms entered.
“Pretty spiffy,” Scout said.
Moms was dressed in a grey business suit, end of World War II era and the years after. The waist was cinched in tight, her heels were raised but not technically high and her short hair was done up in some way that was actually quite striking.
“You look good,” Roland said, in only the way Roland could say such a thing. Honest and blunt without subtext.
“Thank you, Roland,” Moms said. She noted Scout. “No hot water, eh?”
There wasn’t any time to discuss weapons or clothing or hot water further as the door to the interior of the Possibility Palace opened and Dane came in, followed by Lara and Edith Frobish.
“Let’s get to it,” Dane said, picking up a piece of chalk, going to the blackboard.
“We don’t get a kiss first?” Scout said. “Small talk?”
Dane wrote in bold letters at the top:
14 FEBRUARY
He turned to her. “No. But you get the man the day is named after. Saint Valentine.”
He wrote:
278 AD
“What did he do?” Scout asked. “Give out a lot of chocolate? Roses?”
“He got his head cut off,” Dane said.
“Oh,” Scout said. “That’s not good.”
“That’s why he’s known as a martyr,” Edith explained, “and was anointed a saint in the Catholic Church.”
Dane nodded at Edith to continue with the briefing.
“Not much is known about Saint Valentine of Terni, as he is officially recorded. In fact, the name might represent three different real men: a priest from Rome, or perhaps the Bishop of Terni. Or, even, although doubtful, a man who was killed in northern Africa along with several other Catholic missionaries.”
“Vague much,” Scout said.
Edith was used to Scout’s ways. “The bubble is in Italy. Along the Via Flaminia, also known as the Ravenna Road. Near the Milvian Bridge, which is where Saint Valentine was reported to have been killed. There are various stories as to why he was killed, the most popular being that he continued to secretly marry Christians in defiance of the Roman Emperor’s decree forbidding it. But no one truly knows and the reality is, like many myths, some of what actually happened was co-opted later by others and rewritten.”
Eagle spoke up. “Chaucer said Valentines Day was when ‘every fowl comes forth to cho0se his mate’.”
“How romantic,” Scout said, causing Edith and Eagle to exchange an embarrassed look. Scout turned serious. “So? What am I supposed to do? Make sure he dies?”
“No idea,” Dane said.
“We’ve done vague before,” Scout said, “but this is really vague. You’re not even sure it’s one guy. Could be two? Could be three?”
“The Shadow is opening a bubble in a specific place and time,” Dane said. “It’s something. Also--” he hesitated, which was unusual.
Moms and Eagle exchanged glances.
“What’s going on?” Moms asked.
“Nothing,” Dane said.
“Right,” Scout said, but didn’t ask any more questions and Dane didn’t give anyone else a chance to chime in as he wrote:
1945
He pointed the chalk at Eagle, then at Doc. “You’re both going to the same year. Different places, of course. We’ve had that before, when Roland and Ivar both went to 1863. Doc, you’re going to be a POW. In Germany.”
Eagle’s prodigious memory had already solved that. “Dresden.”
Dane nodded. “Indeed.”
“I do not like the sound of that,” Doc said, glancing between Eagle and Dane.
“The Dresden firebombing,” Edith said. “A horrible event, one that some say was a war crime. However, the reality is that in the scope of all the bombing missions in World War II, it wasn’t even close to being the deadliest although the justification for targeting Dresden was called into question.”
“Let’s not forget a couple of nukes dropped later that year,” Doc said.
“We’re not here to debate the morality of—“ Dane began, but everyone was surprised when Lara cut in.
“Why not?”
“Because it happened,” Dane said. “It’s history.”
“Which the Shadow is trying to change,” Lara said.
“We don’t know what exactly the Shadow is trying to change,” Dane said. “It’s doubtful there’s anything it could do to stop the firebombing. Even if it did, what difference would that make in the long run?”
“A lot of people live?” Lara suggested.
“That day,” Dane said. “But what about the day after? And the day after?” He shook his head. “I think it’s going after something else.”
“Vonnegut?” Eagle said.
Edith nodded. “Possible.”
“What?” Doc was with most of the team members: confused.
“Kurt Vonnegut,” Edith said. “A writer. He wrote Slaughterhouse Five largely based on his experience in Dresden as a POW. And since we know from the intel we have that you need to go as a POW there’s a good chance you’ll be the same place as him.”
Eagle chimed in. “He survived the firebombing because he and his fellow POWs were being held in a slaughterhouse and they took refuge in an underground meat locker.”
“This is not sounding very good at all,” Doc said.
“When does it ever?” Scout said.
“Why would this Vonnegut guy be important?” Moms asked, deflecting attention from Scout.
Edith replied. “He’s considered one of literature’s more important 20th century American writers, but overall—“ she shrugged.
“As always,” Dane said, “we don’t quite know why you’re going there other than to preserve history.”
“The Dresden Firebombing was quite controversial,” Edith said. “There are many who believe it wasn’t justified. It was the first time the public in the Allied countries questioned some of what they were doing to win the war. Many thought the bombing wasn’t essential to the war effort.”
“You have to remember,” Moms argued, “that the Allies were still reeling from the Battle of the Bulge. To that point, they’d considered the war almost over. The German offensive surprised everyone.”
Eagle added: “In fact, Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge.”
Dane he
ld up a hand. “Second-guessing military actions is easy from the cheap seats. We’re talking Nazi Germany. So let’s leave that aside and—“
“Why?” Lara asked. “So we can just follow orders? That sounds a bit, what’s the word? Nazi?”
Dane slapped his hand on the table. “This is an operational briefing. Not a debate. If the Shadow succeeds, there won’t be any more debating. Ever. Keep that in mind. Always. I know that for a fact.”
Lara appeared ready to say something, but Moms shook her head and the young girl slumped back in her chair.
Dane waited, one second, two, then turned back to the blackboard. He underlined:
1945
“Eagle. You’re going to the USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake for—“
Eagle finished for him. “The meeting between President Roosevelt and King Abdul Ibn Saud.”
Dane nodded. “Exactly.”
Eagle indicated his attire. “Mess steward?”
“Yes,” Dane said. “But you were picked because—“
This time Moms interrupted Dane. “Eagle can speak Arabic.”
“Exactly,” Dane said. “On the surface it might have made more sense to have you go to Dresden, but the natural language ability over-rides that. Even though we can put languages in your download, there’s also your innate understanding of the context of history. This meeting is largely overlooked, occurring as Roosevelt was on the way back from the much more famous Yalta Conference with Stalin and Churchill, but it was extremely significant in shaping events in the Middle East, and thus the world, to the present day.”
“It was the beginning of the rise of the Middle East oil states,” Eagle said. “Prior to World War II, the United States had been one of the leading oil producers in the world; in fact, a large reason the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbor was because we’d sanctioned them on oil.”
“There is also,” Edith said, “the issue of a homeland for the Jewish people after the War. Roosevelt and Saud covered many topics.”
“A lot happened in those brief meetings on that ship between Roosevelt and King Saud,” Dane said. “Given that Roosevelt would be dead in less than two months, it was one of the last important meetings he had, but it set the groundwork for a lot of future history.”
“Whoa,” Scout said. “Run that by me again?”
“Future history,” Dane said. “Future from the date of the mission; history from the perspective of the present.”
“Okay,” Scout said. “Sort of makes senses.”
“Do we have any idea what the Shadow is trying to change?” Eagle asked.
“No,” Dane said. “But we believe an Agent-In-Time is on the ship. So you’ll get some help.”
“How do I know who the agent is?” Eagle asked.
“He’ll know who you are,” Dane said.
“How do you know it’s a he?” Lara asked.
“It’s a U.S. warship in World War II,” Dane said. “There were no women on the Quincy or with Roosevelt’s entourage.”
“If he isn’t an agent of the Shadow,” Scout pointed out. “Never know who you’re going to run into. Might try to kill you. Or a guy saving you from the first guy trying to kill you, might also try to kill you. It’s complicated.”
“He might,” Dane said, surprising everyone. “Who knows? I don’t. Do you think I like sending you on these missions with obviously inadequate intelligence? But it’s all we have.” He took a step away from the board toward the team. “I went on ops in Vietnam with even less intelligence than you’re getting here. Where ‘vague much’ was an understatement,” he added, looking at Scout.
Moms spoke up. “We know you’re doing all you can.” She paused. “But are you telling us everything?”
“I’m telling you what I can,” Dane said. “What you need to know for your missions. I give you my word on that.”
“So what aint you telling us?” Lara asked. “What don’t we need to know? More importantly, how do you know we don’t need to know it?”
Dane turned on her. “Why don’t you tell us about you? Where did you come from? How did you get on that Russian plane?”
Lara didn’t blink. “I wish I could. I don’t know exactly. I have no idea. Good enough?”
“No,” Dane said, “I think you’re lying.”
“If I am,” Lara said, with a slight smile, “it’s because you don’t have a need to know.”
“All right,” Moms interjected. “Let’s calm down.”
“You’re not even going on a mission,” Dane said to Lara.
“Then why I am here?” Lara asked.
Everyone was surprised when Edith spoke. “Because you have a need to know.”
Lara was surprised. “What?”
Edith continued in her low, calm voice. “You don’t know who you are or where you came from. We don’t know either. But you’re here. We think that’s for a reason. We have no idea what that reason is, but we’re trusting it’s a good one.”
Lara glanced at Scout, who shrugged.
“All right,” Lara said. “That makes as much sense as anything.”
“Something else,” Dane said. “Since we have had a loop between missions before, I’ve directed Edith to add a basic briefing on each other’s missions in your download. Just in case that might turn out to be another loop where one mission could affect the other.”
“That makes sense,” Eagle said.
Dane shifted to Moms. “You’re going to the year after Doc and Eagle.” He wrote on the board.
1946
“Edith,” Dane said, giving her the floor.
“E.N.I.A.C.,” Edith said, pronouncing each letter was such reverence one knew each was capitalized.
Moms raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“A computer,” Ivar supplied.
“One of the first,” Doc added. “A Turing-complete, digital computer. In essence a huge calculator capable of computing complex math problems faster than humans could. It was a big step forward in the early days of computing.”
“Okay,” Moms said. “And I’m going there why?”
Edith continued. “While Turing’s computer during World War II was kept under wraps because of Enigma, ENIAC was formally introduced to the public on the Fifteenth of February, 1946. The press called it the ‘Great Brain’. The project was initiated by the military in 1943 to design a machine capable of rapidly calculating artillery trajectories under a secret project code-named Project PX.”
“ENIAC could branch,” Doc said, pronouncing it as one word. “Trigger different operations depending on the result of the previous operation. That was a new development.”
“Right,” Moms said again. She looked at Dane. “I have no idea what that means. Why am I going on this mission and not one of them?” She indicated Doc and Ivar.
Edith answered. “Because of the ENIAC Six. They’ve been mostly forgotten by history, but the six people who designed the programming for the computer were women.”
“Like those women who programmed the early computers at NASA?” Moms said.
“Well before them,” Edith said. “The ENIAC Six were computing pioneers. The ENIAC, while it took up an entire room, didn’t have any memory. It was essentially a bunch of adding machines connected by cables. It had to be programmed by hand to set various tables of numbers. This came down to setting twelve hundred ten-way switches. Something, apparently, no man had the patience to figure out. So they gave the work to six women. In fact, prior to this, because of the shortage of manpower due to the war, and the requirements of the war—“ Edith was rushing her words in her excitement at telling this story of history—“the Army had recruited women for positions, and they really called the people this: ‘computers’. Who could calculate artillery trajectories by hand. These six women were given the blueprints of ENIAC and the wiring diagrams and told to figure out how to make the machine work.”
“Wait a second,” Moms said. “You’re saying they built a machine but didn’t know how to
make it work?”
“The engineers who built it,” Edith said, “knew how it worked in theory. They just didn’t know how to physically program it for use. That required the women to analyze equations, then patch together the correct cables and then set all those ten-way switches. And deal with all the bugs and shorts. The ENIAC used around eighteen thousand vacuum tubes so they were constantly burning out. It was incredible what they managed to achieve, yet when it was announced, people assumed the women in the press photos were models; not the people who’d figured it out.”
“So I’m going the day before that press conference,” Moms said. “Like Scout went to UCLA in ’69 for the first Internet message. To make sure the thing works?”
“We assume that,” Dane said, “but you know how I feel about assumptions.”
Doc held up a hand. “Is this tied to our research trying to make a Turing Time Calculator? That’s how Ivar and I know about ENIAC. We went back to the basics stemming from Turing’s early work. Does the Shadow know we’re trying to figure out where they’re going to attack next? What the pattern is?”
“How are you doing on that?” Lara asked. “Trying to predict the future?”
Doc frowned. “We haven’t been able to discern a pattern to the attacks yet.”
“Given there have only been five days,” Ivar said, “with six attacks each, that’s not much data.”
“Do you want more data?” Lara asked, her tone indicating what she thought of that.
“All right,” Dane said. “Let’s keep on target here. Right now, it’s good enough that we can track the disturbances in the timeline in the Pit and via our agents in the various times. We know where the Shadow is opening bubbles for Valentines Day. Let’s keep our focus on the immediate problem which is the mission.”
He ended the discussion by writing the next year on the board.
1779
“Roland,” Dane said. “This is yours. Kealakekua Bay, the Big Island of Hawaii.”
“Cool,” Roland said. “I’ve only passed through Hawaii on deployments.”
“It’s not a vacation,” Dane said.
Roland held up the boarding axe. “I figured that. And this will be another passing through.”
“On the fourteenth of February, 1779, Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy, was killed by natives,” Dane said.
