The Collapse: Time Bomb

by Penelope Wright

  Chapter Fourteen

  April 13, 2074

  The helicopter’s blades beat the air as the runners kiss the roof of Safeco Tower. Two men with rifles jump out and scout the area. Deeming it safe, one soldier turns and nods back at the helicopter. A figure emerges draped in opaque plastic sheeting. The soldiers advance, leading the way. By the time the figure moves across the roof and reaches shelter, the sheeting is beaded with fine droplets of moisture.

  General Safeco opens the door to the roof’s stairwell. The soldiers ID him by sight, and they snap salutes. The figure in plastic disappears into the stairwell, and the soldiers return to the helicopter. The blades slow to a stop, and they spend precious minutes draping the chopper with sheeting similar to that which had shrouded their passenger. They’ll wait inside the helicopter until this meeting is over. Hopefully, it won’t take long.

  Safeco leads the arrival to a corner of the stairwell and helps David lift the plastic gently over his head, carefully folding it back and over itself, keeping the droplets of moisture away from David’s skin. Neither man inhales nor exhales until the sheeting has been stuffed into a spinner. When the lid slams shut and Safeco presses the button to activate the decontamination cycle, David exhales the rest of his stored breath and takes a gulp of air.

  “How long had you been holding your breath?” Safeco asks.

  David bends at the waist and places his hands on his knees. “Twelve minutes.”

  Safeco cracks a rare smile. “You’re getting old.”

  “You’re one to talk,” David says to his ancient friend.

  “I’m not the one gasping like a fish out of water.”

  David laughs. “I’m not the one who remembers fish.”

  The two men shake hands and walk downstairs to Safeco’s office, their feet squeaking on the linoleum floor. Light filters through the Gila screens, casting a grayish-green shadow, but Safeco ignores the floor lamp just inside the door.

  David settles into one of two wing chairs next to a small round table. Safeco sinks into the other. “I was surprised by your visit,” Safeco says. “I would have diverted power from the main electrical generator to my quarters if I’d had more time to prepare.” He gestures to the floor lamp. “I’ve been running a skeleton system, just enough to run the coms and decon units on all floors. Main power’s being funneled to hydroponics until the cabbage is ready to harvest.”

  David waves his hand in the air. “Don’t ever risk a crop on my account.”

  Safeco seems pleased with the answer. “We tried growing several tomato plants with heirloom seeds. None bore fruit, but one did flower. Very promising.”

  “What were your takeaways from the experiment?”

  Safeco taps his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Tomatoes prefer soil.”

  David nods absentmindedly and lapses into a long silence, which Safeco finally breaks. “I don’t think you came here to talk about crops, and this isn’t a social visit.”

  “Is it ever?”

  A wry smile twists Safeco’s lined face. “I thought on a Burn Level 2 day that you might bring your new wife over to meet me in person.”

  David’s face settles into a hard mask. “She’s currently bedridden.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  David shrugs. “Actually, she’s part of the reason I’m here. This visit concerns my family.”

  Safeco drums his fingers on the arm of the chair. “The elephant in the room has made his appearance, and it didn’t take long.”

  David bristles. “I tried, Enrique. But I couldn’t run The Towers effectively and also disappear into the past for days at a time securing the things we need. You were lost. I hadn’t seen you in years. I resigned myself to the belief that you’d never return. So I recruited my daughter, the one other person in this godforsaken world that I trust implicitly, to do those things in the past that I could no longer take care of myself.”

  “When I shared the formula with you, you swore a blood oath that you would never reveal it to another person.”

  “And I haven’t. Rosie doesn’t know the chemical formula or how to prepare it.”

  Safeco’s eyes grow large and seem to protrude even further from his face. “And yet you send her into the past?”

  “She goes with a pre-calibrated return dose that I prepare myself.”

  “What if she loses it, David?”

  David stands up, his voice rising sharply, and directs his words at the seated General Safeco. “Don’t you think I lie awake at night worrying about that?” He throws his hands in the air. “What was I supposed to do, Enrique? Let all of humanity die out because I can’t risk the one person I love? What kind of a leader would I be then?”

  Safeco stares at him, his eyes steady, his craggy face tightly controlled.

  David rakes his hands through his hair, sits back down, and smooths his pant legs.

  Safeco speaks quietly. “Faced with the same options, I may have done something similar. We’ve all sacrificed for this world.”

  David nods briskly. “Enrique, she’s good at it. Rosie’s already brought back enough multivitamins to cover our entire population for three years. Her only loss was a bag of water purification tablets.”

  “How many trips has she made?”

  “She’s on her seventh.”

  “Impressive.” Safeco strokes the white stubble on his chin. “And she’s traveling now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t miss her. Not that I would. I don’t live in your tower.”

  “The same rules that we discovered hold true for Rosie when she’s traveling. Nobody misses her. Events continue to occur and everyday life goes on, but Rosie’s not mentioned…as if she has ceased to exist for everyone but myself and the prep team. But in this instance, there’s one other person who remembers Rosie. My wife, Sarah.”

  Safeco’s eyebrows zoom to the top of his forehead. “You let Sarah in on our secret? Isn’t that rash? You barely know her.”

  David purses his lips and blows out a breath of air. “That’s the thing. No, I haven’t told Sarah anything about time travel, or the chronography program. Sarah isn’t someone I would ever trust with a secret like that. I wouldn’t trust her to tie my shoes. To be honest, I have no idea what attracted me to the woman, or why I married her in the first place.”

  Enrique wrinkles his brow. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Rosie left on March 21st in the early afternoon. She’s been gone three weeks. This is the longest she’s ever been gone on a mission. I have no evidence that she’s making any headway. I’ve received no Achtungs. Nothing. Then, this morning, Sarah approaches me and long story short, she says it’s time I admit that Rosie’s lost and that I need to move on and start ‘living my life’ again.”

  “And you’re sure she knows nothing of time travel? She couldn’t be involved in any way with Rosie’s current trip?”

  “No, there’s no possibility. I received an Achtung just as we finalized the details for Rosie’s trip. She left for the prep room and I took a copter to Smith Tower to open the lockbox and retrieve the Achtung.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps what we thought were immutable rules of time travel are really more like guidelines.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Safeco shakes his head. “No.” He takes a deep breath. “But I don’t have another explanation for it right now. I’ll think on it. There must be something slightly different about this trip. When it comes to me, which I’m sure it will, I’ll comm you on the secure line.”

  “And in the meantime, my daughter’s missing, and the only people who know about it are myself and the prep team, now you, and for some unknown reason, Sarah. And I have to live with the fact that she may be dead or lost forever in 2007.”

  Enrique raises his eyebrows, a faint smile lighting up his face. “2007, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is her seventh trip?”

  David nods.

  “
What other time periods have you sent her to on her previous six trips?”

  David answers readily. “1994, 1999, 2001 twice, 2003, and 2006.”

  “Then I believe I have some good news for you.” Safeco stands and crosses the office to his desk. He slides open a drawer and pulls out a small stack of flat, quarter-inch thick sheaves of bound papers with glossy covers, only slightly faded by time. “I’ve wondered about this since I discovered it.” He walks back to where David sits and places the objects on the small round table between them.

  The words “Sports Illustrated Kids” are emblazoned across the top. Underneath is a focused young man in a blue jersey holding a football. A headline reads, “2007 NFL Preview.” The date in the lower right corner is September 2007.

  David’s mouth drops open. “Magazines? Someone could purchase a small tower with these, they’re worth a fortune, so few of them survived. Where did you find these? And in such good condition?”

  “I noticed a spot in the corner of my office, over there.” Safeco points to his left, where a corner of the wall is covered in strips of duct tape. “Just this morning, I walked into my office, and that area caught my eye. I thought to myself, that wall looks patched, when it never had before. So I took the claw end of a hammer and I checked it out. I pulled these out of the wall. And here’s the most interesting part.” Safeco rifles to about midway through the magazine, then spreads it open on the table and points to the top of the page. In the white top margin, written in blue ink, is a message. “Please give these to David.”

  David gasps.

  “Is that Rosie’s handwriting?” Safeco asks.

  “It might be. Can I take this with me and compare it to a sample at home?”

  “Of course.”

  David smiles, and lines seem to melt away from his face. “This is really encouraging. But why would she leave these in your office? And I sent her to April of 2007. How did she get ahold of a magazine from September of that year? Does that mean her mission is going to take more than four months? It must.” David leafs through the other magazines. “And this one, Ranger Rick. It’s from 2004. What does that mean? Is there a pattern? And how does Sarah factor into any of this?”

  “She may, in fact, be trying to send you a coded message. As I recall, sometimes issues of magazines would come out one month ahead of time. So she may not be in September 2007. But she might. This is the order the magazines were stacked in. I haven’t shuffled them. Take them back to your tower, analyze them. Perhaps she’s communicating both time and location. You know her best. See what you can make of it.”

  David nods slowly. “I still don’t understand why she’d hide them in your tower if they’re for me.”

  Safeco holds his hands palms up. “Columbia Tower was always far more secure, back then, than Safeco. Perhaps she couldn’t get to a place inside Columbia that she knew you’d discover. She’s obviously a smart girl to come up with the idea to use this office to send a message if Columbia wasn’t an option.”

  “Why is it so vague, though? Why didn’t she send an Achtung?”

  Safeco shrugs. “We don’t know what she’s experiencing in 2007, or what difficulties she may have run up against. But it’s a good sign. As far as the April versus September issue, it could be a coded message. It could also mean she’s in September of that year. Have you ever miscalculated a dose?”

  David shakes his head. “Never.”

  Safeco furrows his eyebrows together. “There’s a first time for everything, and perhaps this is it. Maybe you were a drop or two off on the dosage and she didn’t travel as far back into the past as you expected. Have you spoken with the prep team?”

  “No. For security reasons that you well know, I have as little contact with them as possible.”

  Safeco nods. “Once you’re back in Columbia Tower, get them on the comm. Double check the dosage she received, and re-run your math. That may very well solve the mystery.” He laces his fingers together and holds his hands lightly in his lap. “I know this is rough, David, but it’s very encouraging. It tells you she’s alive and that she has her mental faculties intact.” He taps the side of his head. “I know all about that aspect of time travel.”

  David takes a deep breath and stands up. Safeco rises to join him. They clasp hands. “Thank you, Enrique. Thank you for your service, your unwavering commitment to the survival of The Towers, and on a personal level, for your friendship.”

  Safeco squeezes his hand hard. “You’ll see your daughter again. I know it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  July 1, 2018

  The quiet is broken by a soothing robotic voice overhead. “The Seattle Public Library will be closing in fifteen minutes.” I raise my head from my book and look around, blinking. Across from me, Carlos closes the book he’s been reading. I do the same, sighing. “Can I take it with me?”

  Carlos shakes his head. “No, I don’t have a library card. You need one of those to check books out. But we can come back tomorrow and spend all day here if you want.”

  My eyes scan the shelves upon shelves of books. “There’s not enough time in the world to read all of them. But I want to.”

  “How about we come back tomorrow, you finish that one, and then we’ll see where we go from there?”

  “Okay.”

  Carlos and I rise and wander through the rows of shelves, following the number system on the spines until we find the right locations for our books, which we slip back onto the shelf. “Did you like yours?” I ask.

  “It was pretty good.”

  “What was it about?”

  “A clown who lives in a sewer and the group of kids who fight him.”

  “What’s a clown?”

  Carlos grins. “Clowns are creatures made of pure evil.”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking with me or not. “My book was about a car that comes to life.”

  “Yeah, I’ve read that one. I liked it.”

  “I like it too. Can we really come back tomorrow so I can finish it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I feel like I learned as much from that book as I did walking around the waterfront earlier.”

  “Maybe you don’t need me after all? Gonna replace me with a bookbag?”

  Now I’m sure he’s joking with me. I elbow him in the side. “I’m not ready to do that just yet.” We walk outside.

  The colors are dazzling against the night sky. The traffic lights blaze against the city’s dark backdrop, and glowing words shine out from nearly every shop window. “The art in the windows is so beautiful,” I remark.

  “Most people call them signs.” Carlos points. “The ‘open’ and ‘closed’ ones are pretty common.”

  “Well they’re wonderful. How do they get them to shine like that?”

  “Neon gas.”

  “Never heard of it. Shocker.”

  Carlos smiles at me. “You’re cute.”

  “That sounds like a compliment. Thank you.”

  He looks over his shoulder and digs his toe into the sidewalk. “It’s getting late. We should find a little food and a safe place to spend the night.”

  “Do you want me to undo one of those locks, and we can just go inside?” I wave my hand at one of the shops with the ‘closed’ art in the window and a chain with a padlock securing two metal gates together that have been pulled across the business’s main doors to block access.

  “Nah, that’s a gun shop. I think we’re gonna want to stay away from that place.”

  “Guns! I know what those are.” I step back a pace and eye the lock on the chain. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get us in? That lock would be super easy.”

  “Yeah, hellraiser. I’m not looking for trouble and neither should you.”

  I shrug. “Okay. Maybe we should go back to your tent? Or is it too close to the hospital?”

  A pained expression crosses Carlos’s face. “My tent is gone.”

  I feel my eyes go round. “Oh no…I forgot about that. That�
�s what you and Dez were arguing about at the hospital, right before everything went crazy. The cops tore down your tent while you were waiting for me to wake up. I’m so sorry. You lost everything because of me.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll rebuild.” Carlos takes my hand, squeezes it, and doesn’t let it go. “I’m a believer in ‘everything happens for a reason.’ If I’d been there at the tent, I’d probably have been dismantled along with it. They might’ve even arrested me on some trumped-up charge. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be because I’m always where I’m supposed to be at every moment in time.”

  “That’s really freaking optimistic.”

  Carlos smiles. “I have to be an optimist.”

  “Why?”

  Carlos shrugs. “What’s the alternative?”

  “I suppose you could be consumed by bitterness and despair.”

  “I could. I’ve got enough reason to, that’s for sure. But I decide how I react to things, and my choice is to laugh in life’s face and tell it if it wants to crush me, it’s gonna have to try harder than that.”

  “That sounds like a dangerous challenge.”

  Carlos cocks his head. “Nah. I don’t believe in fate or anything. I don’t think there’s some unavoidable destiny that I can’t do anything about. I’m just saying I roll with the punches.”

  I nod, but a thread of uneasiness twists through my body. I do believe in fate. I do believe in destiny. And I don’t know why, but I am absolutely not an optimist.

  Chapter Sixteen

  April 13, 2074

  David packs his lungs with air and dons his protective sheeting to prepare for the trip back to Columbia Tower. As soon as he thrusts the roof door open, the two soldiers emerge from his helicopter, push their way through the sheeting that protects the helicopter, and yank it down. They fold it expertly and stow it in the tail of the craft. They stand sentinel on either side of the door while David climbs in, then they follow him inside. David remains under the sheeting for the ride to Columbia, which takes just a few minutes.