by Walker, Rysa
Lewis L. Strauss, a partner in the firm, stated that “the charges and the inferences he makes as to support of Communism by my firm are absolutely untrue.” In his defense of his statements, the priest repeated a claim that nearly all members of the USSR’s Communist Central Committee are Jews.
In his remarks Father Coughlin also said: “There is no Jewish question in America. Please God, may there never be one. However, there is a question of Communism in America. Please God, we will solve it. If Jews persist in supporting Communism, directly or indirectly, that will be regrettable. By their failure to use the press, the radio and the banking house, where they stand so prominently, to fight Communism as vigorously as they fight Nazism, the Jews invite the charges of being supporters of Communism. As Christ said, ‘You are either with me or against me.’”
Statements such as these have attracted the attention and support of the Fascist press in Europe. The editor of the Italian newspaper, Regime Fascista, praised Father Coughlin for his efforts to show “the peril to humanity and especially to Christianity of the demagogic and provocative words of President Roosevelt.”
While Father Coughlin stands by his assertion that Nazism is a reaction against communist influence, Father Coughlin denied that the speech was anti-Semitic or un-American and said he would let the public be the judge.
∞4∞
MADI
PEABODY HOTEL
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
AUGUST 21, 1966
Five ducks waddle out of the elevator, moving quickly down the center of the red carpet, as they do every morning at the Peabody Hotel. A small crowd gathered on either side of the procession applauds as the quintet scurries up the steps to the fountain in the center of the lobby. It’s mostly little kids, but there are also quite a few teens and tweens in the bunch.
Most of the postconcert crowd cleared out yesterday, but there seem to be several stragglers, including two sisters on the other side of the fountain from where Jack and I are standing. They’re in their early teens, wearing Beatles T-shirts they no doubt purchased at the Mid-South Coliseum Friday night—a drum with the band’s logo and a banner beneath proclaiming 1966 World Tour. They were wearing those same shirts when I saw them in the elevator with their mom yesterday, looking happy but also a bit spent after a night of excruciatingly loud music that was still somehow barely audible over the screams of the crowd.
For a brief moment, I’m hit with the thought of how different things would be for them, for the other twelve thousand or so attendees, and for millions of people around the globe if we hadn’t managed to stop the assassination. And Lennon’s assassination was just one of the tipping points. The real changes wouldn’t have begun to accrue for several years, and none of the hundreds of people in this hotel would have even known that their lives had been altered, that they’d been shoved into a different reality simply for the sake of a stupid game.
Thinking about that is beginning to rattle my nerves again, so I drag my mind forcefully back to the present. One of the ducks sails through the stream of water cascading down from the top basin, shaking its wings in the spray. I need to be more like the ducks. They are fully in this moment, seemingly oblivious to their audience, to the oddity of the fact that they are ducks who live in a hotel. They pay almost no attention to anything around them unless it’s duck or water.
I lace my fingers through Jack’s. He squeezes my hand, and his hazel eyes remain on the ducks in the fountain, but I have the distinct feeling he’s merely humoring me.
After I arrived, we spent several hours working with the medallion. I set a stable point in the hotel room, and Jack tried to jump forward a few hours. Then we set our sights a bit lower—a few minutes. And then a minute. On the second try, he managed to blink forward a single minute. I was ecstatic. He’d actually used the key again.
Jack, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed. He tossed the key onto the bed in disgust, noting that it would take an entire lifetime for him to get back to 2136 at that rate.
He’s right, and I completely get why he’s discouraged. Normally, Jack isn’t a glass-half-empty kind of guy, and I hate seeing him like this. So, when I realized that it was nearly eleven o’clock, I suggested that we come down here to the lobby. I hadn’t mentioned the ducks, and I hoped the silliness of the whole procession might cheer him up a bit. But it doesn’t seem to be working.
I dig a gentle elbow into his ribs. “Come on! If ducks getting the literal red-carpet treatment doesn’t cheer you up, I’m not sure what will.”
He puts one arm around me, but my bag is between us, and his kiss lands more on my cheek than my mouth.
I move the backpack to my other arm. “Maybe we could have another go?”
It’s an in-joke, given our rather disastrous first kiss. He smiles, as I’d hoped he would, and hits the target this time.
“Much better. Practice makes perfect.”
“I hope so,” he says, clearly thinking about the CHRONOS key again. “Maybe we should get some food while we’re down here. Richard said the pancakes are good. We can grab a table while the crowd is still watching the duckies.”
As it turns out, we’re a bit too late to be seated immediately. It’s Sunday morning, right at checkout time, and when we get to the restaurant on the other side of the lobby, there’s already a line at the hostess station. We put our names on the list and wander around the lobby for a while until a table opens up. Jack selects a few tourist brochures from the stand, and the two of us sit on a love seat near the front desk while he thumbs through them. I’m not sure whether he’s doing it for cover or simply scouting out the entertainment options in case he’s stuck here.
In that moment, I realize Lorena is right, at least in one respect. Every minute I spend here with Jack, while she’s waiting for a chance to work on a serum or Alex is trying to figure out some other solution, is really just prolonging his agony.
“I’m going to head back after breakfast,” I tell him. “Once they have something concrete that we can test, I’ll come right back.”
“But you said it could be a week or more before she has anything.”
“A week for me, yeah. But not for you. Even if it’s months, from your perspective, I’ll only be gone a second. Every minute I hang out with you here is a minute where you’re on edge and worried. I’m being selfish, just because I’ll miss you while I’m stuck in 2136 without you.”
“Then that’s no good. I don’t want you to be lonely, either.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and then I shake my head. “Oh my God, we’re that couple. The one who stays up half the night because they can’t decide who ends the call first.”
He puts the brochures on the bench next to us and slides his arm around my shoulders. “Compromise. You come back for a few minutes each day. Even at the outside limit, that’s just an hour or so for me here. And you can spend the rest of the time working on your thesis.” I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs. “So that’s your real reason for being here. You’re procrastinating. Fine, then. Go visit Nora. Or track Thea down—”
“Oh, wow. I forgot to tell you.” I fill him in on my call with Thea.
“Can she use the CHRONOS key?” he asks when I finish. “Because if she can, maybe she actually is Prudence.”
“I don’t know. That’s one of the questions I was going to ask, but she said she had to go. She’s apparently going to be in DC soon. I suppose I can ask her then. Or see if my mom will actually give me some straight answers now that Thea has confirmed the main thing I was wondering. Both of them knew about the enhancements, and neither of them told me. I’m pretty sure they never told my dad, either. So I’m more than a little miffed at both of them.”
The suggested ten minutes is up, so we head back over to the restaurant. The hostess tilts her bouffant-blond head to one side as she examines the chart on her clipboard. “Table or booth?” she asks in a high, chirpy voice. “One of each just opened up, so y’all can take your pick.”
FROM A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHRONOS, 4TH ED (2302)
Strong pressure from advocates of government transparency and accountability, both within the United States and abroad, resulted in the creation of an international society known as the Chrono-Historical Research Organization (CHRO) in 2231. CHRO was initially tasked with the challenge of creating a code of ethics for historical researchers, including strict prohibitions against any sort of timeline manipulation. In an effort to ensure that the timeline was not altered, the first academic research did not involve human interaction of any sort but relied instead on input from small transmitters that recorded activity at various locations and historical junctures.
While CHRO recordings provided historians with a great deal of raw data, they left many questions unanswered. The Natural Observation Society (NOS) lobbied for greater freedom of research, stating that it was very difficult to put historical events into their proper context when forced to rely solely on recorded information. Analysts often misinterpreted events because they were viewing them through the lens of their own time and culture. The only way to fully understand history, they argued, was to become immersed in the language, customs, and technology of that era. In 2242, NOS devised a series of protocols that aimed to minimize, if not entirely negate, corruption of the timeline by genetically encoding historical researchers. Time travel would thus be restricted to a very small number of carefully trained historians who would travel to a set destination and return directly to their point of origin.
The two organizations merged in 2247 to form the Chrono-Historical Research Organization and Natural Observation Society (CHRONOS), and they moved quickly to develop a system that would ensure optimal safety for both the timeline and the historians involved.
As with any scientific endeavor, those who participated in the earliest efforts were a rare breed, willing to risk their lives in search of greater knowledge. Seven researchers were killed within the first five years, and three others were institutionalized due to complications with the genetic encoding. These pioneers paved the way for future generations of researchers, however, whose historical trips were safe and hazard-free.
∞5∞
TYSON
CHRONOS HQ
WASHINGTON, EC
NOVEMBER 12, 2304
I smooth the last wrinkle from the custom label and hand the bottle of sambuca to Rich. “What do you think?”
He squints slightly and reads the words printed on the gladiator’s shield. “‘Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant.’ Hmph. A little morbid, don’t you think?”
“Gallows humor. I’m trying to lighten the mood a little. The man studied ancient Rome, and he’s about to go into battle for the future of CHRONOS.”
“Yeah, but . . . ‘We who are about to die salute you’?”
“If he fails to convince them, we’re all literally history. We can print a different label, though, if you have a better idea.”
“No. You’re right. He’ll laugh. I’m just . . .” Richard shakes his head. “It’s like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And we don’t know whether the stomp will be courtesy of our opponents from the other dimension or handed down by our own government. Angelo might be able to sway the president and her cabinet, but the Solons . . . they won’t hesitate to wipe out CHRONOS if they think it’s in the public interest. They’re going to analyze the situation strictly from the perspective of the common good, without any sort of emotion.”
I’m tempted to correct his very narrow and all-too-common view of how the Solons operate. I’d probably think the same thing if my father didn’t teach political science. The Solons have been the primary decision makers in the United States for nearly a century. Some variant has been adopted by most advanced democracies. In the US version, one hundred men and women are chosen at random. During their two-year term of service, the Solons operate under a sort of chemically induced stasis, with partial amnesia. Having no knowledge of their own race, gender, economic status, or any other information that might incline them to produce biased legislation helps to ensure that laws are created for the common good.
Solons members aren’t robots, though. They’re still people, even if they have—temporarily—given up all specific memories of their private lives in order to govern more equitably. And they have specific, complex rules that balance individual rights against the common welfare.
But I doubt Rich is in the mood for an esoteric discussion about our legislature, and we’re already running a few minutes late, so I focus on the concrete. “Like Angelo said, they’ll probably increase our funding. Assuming this isn’t a practical joke by our friendly assholes from the dimension next door, we’re the only line of defense. That fact is emphasized in pretty much every page of the report Angelo sent over. There’s no way any rational person could look at that report and not realize that the continued existence of CHRONOS is in the public interest now more than ever.”
“Well, any rational person connected to our government would agree,” Rich says. “But you know we can’t be the only ones with the technology. The Southern Alliance might say they decided not to pursue time travel, but our sensors have picked up chronotron signals from numerous locations that aren’t connected to CHRONOS.”
“Hey, you know what they say about a common enemy bringing people together. We need all the help we can get, so maybe the president should send the report to their leaders, too.”
Rich rolls his eyes, because we know that’s not likely to happen. The Northern Alliance, which isn’t strictly within the northern hemisphere but also includes Australia and a few other far-flung states, hasn’t been at war with the Southern Alliance in nearly seventy years, although there’s occasional violence in some areas where our allies share borders or resources with theirs. Conflict between the two sides is more economic than anything else, but there are still two distinct sides. No way in hell would either side ask for help in a matter like this, and they’d each bend over backward to point the finger at the other one, so it’s safe to assume that the incident report we prepared won’t be traveling south anytime soon.
That report also includes a summary of twenty scenarios of three moves each that we’ve determined are most likely to prevent the US from entering World War II and how we might be able to combat them. Rich, Katherine, and I made a jump back to the last week of October, the most recent time either of the isolation tanks was empty, and fed the scenarios into the SimMaster to generate that section of the report. For a while, we all stayed in the tank together, watching the thing work, until we realized that didn’t make much sense. After that, we took turns jumping back to see if it was still coming up with options that seemed remotely plausible, although it was mostly me and Katherine, since Rich was scheduled for Q&A duty last night with a group of music students who might have questions he actually could answer, so he was reluctant to cancel it. Most historians dread public Q&A sessions, which are a relatively new requirement, intended to emphasize our value to the community. It wouldn’t be so bad if the tour groups would actually stick to your area of expertise. Any historian will talk your ear off if it’s a topic they know in depth. But in these sessions you always get at least one person who is determined to ask questions on something you know nothing about. And even with questions that are in your wheelhouse, most are the basic sort that could just as easily be answered by a digital assistant.
I was the last one to jump back to October 30th and check the computer, just before I printed out the label for Angelo’s gift of liquid courage. It was, and in fact still is, churning away, but the probabilities attached to the scenarios are steadily approaching zero, and I’m not sure how much extra value we’re getting at thi
s point. There are so many potential combinations, and there’s not much else we can do until the other side makes the “opening gambit,” as they called it, even though that phrase seems kind of redundant to me.
So far, the machine has run nearly a hundred scenarios, but we picked the top twenty because Angelo didn’t want to overwhelm the officials with too much data. The goal is to show the value of CHRONOS in combating a threat that is currently beyond control using any means aside from time travel. The three of us are planning to go back this afternoon and shift the simulation to a second task that will take far longer—figuring out how much is likely to be altered if the US never enters the war.
“I do hope you’re right that they’ll actually listen to reason, though.” Rich drops the bottle of sambuca into his backpack. “And maybe once everything is out in the open, this won’t be resting entirely on our shoulders. You and Katherine both have some relevant experience, but we have at least a dozen historians who are better suited to handle this than I am. Seriously, can you imagine a single scenario where changing some bit of music history is what kept us out of the war? And that reminds me. Katherine asked yesterday whether I know Max’s research specialty. I told her I thought it was early twenty-second century.”
I snort. “That’s pretty accurate. She’s been studying that era since birth.”
