36: A Novel (15 page)

“This was a problem we anticipated early on, and we came up with a solution.  We had to.  Had to be able to demonstrate our successes.  We are, after all, a government funded project.  That means Congressional oversight.  If we didn’t have a way to show what would have happened without us, our funding would have dried up a long time ago. 

“In fact, after the successful redaction of the nuclear attack on Manhattan, our funding was quadrupled and now we get anything we ask for.  You see, that bomb not only killed millions of New Yorkers, it also completely destroyed Wall Street.  The Federal Reserve.  The list goes on and on.  Can you imagine the entire financial foundation of the country wiped out in an instant?

“But, I’m not answering your question.  Each asset has a data chip implanted in their body.  We put yours in while you were unconscious, healing from your plastic surgeries.  From the moment an event is identified, every single bit of information that is gathered is automatically streamed wirelessly to that chip, where it is stored in non-volatile memory.

“Up to the point where the asset is sent back.  That’s when the record stops because we haven’t figured out how to transmit a wireless signal back in time.  Perhaps if we do, it will no longer be necessary to send an asset.  But that’s probably a long way off.

“So, an asset is sent back with a data chip implanted in their body with all the details of the event they’re assigned to redact.  If they are successful, you are correct in thinking that as far as real time is concerned, the event never occurred.  At the precise moment the asset changes events, all of us who are here in real time are blissfully unaware that anything has happened, or that we’ve even sent an asset back in time.

“Until the clock runs out and the asset suddenly returns.  With a chip full of horrific images that, to us, never happened.  It’s actually quite disconcerting to sit down and review the data from an asset’s chip after they’ve had a successful redaction.  After the New York event, several of our staff had to be sedated.  It was just too much for them to think that except for our project, millions of people would be dead.”

“OK, that makes sense.  I guess.  Why isn’t the data on the chip changed?  It came from a future that no longer happens, or exists, or however you phrase it.”

“It took us some time to answer that very question, and the proof of why it works is impossible to explain to someone who does not understand theoretical physics.  Suffice it to say that the data chip can’t be affected by whatever actions the asset takes, successful or not.

“We’ve tested this thoroughly, and the results are the same every time.  Arrive before something that is recorded happens, and it stays exactly as it was written to the chip.”

I nodded, understanding the words despite my head spinning.

“Fine.  I suppose I have to take you at your word.  But why are you using people?  Assets?  You told me that you can send an object to any point on Earth with high precision.  The analysts identify a when and a where and that’s the location where the asset is sent. 

“Why not just send a bomb or something else that would kill the terrorists before they can pull off their attack?  If you can be so accurate, why do you need people?”

Agent Johnson cleared his throat and sat forward.  Dr. Anholts and I turned to look at him.

“You were in the Army,” he said.  “How do you make absolutely sure someone is dead?  Permanently out of action without collateral damage?  Do you send a bomber overhead, or does it take boots on the ground?  I’m not talking about a result that’s classified as a “high probability kill”.  I’m talking about absolute certainty.  The bad guy is down and dead.  He’s not going to recover from wounds sustained in the bombing and continue his attack on a future date.  And do that without killing a bunch of innocent bystanders?”

He looked at me expectantly and I realized just how foolish my question had been.  He was exactly right.  Bombs are messy things.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re invaluable tools, but they can’t replace a pair of human eyes verifying the target is down.  And making sure it stays that way.  Permanently.

“Point taken,” I said, another thought popping into my head.  “How many of us are there?  You keep saying assets, not asset.”

Dr. Anholts and Johnson exchanged a glance, then he sat forward.

“You’re it,” he said.

“What?  I’m it?  What happened to the others?  What about all the other people you’ve identified with the genetic marker?  What was it, 83 of us?”

“This is a very dangerous occupation, Mr. Whitman.  Assets deal with some very bad people.  They don’t always come back alive.  To answer your second question, some are children, tagged for possible future recruitment.  Some are infirm or elderly, or otherwise unsuited for the job.  Still others are of an ethnic origin or political/religious belief that would preclude us from approaching them.”

“How many?”  I asked.

“How many, what?”

“How many assets have come and died before me?”

“Four,” he said after a long pause.

“How?  How did they die?”

“All of them died stopping, or trying to stop, attacks before they could happen.”

“I want the details,” I said, worrying they weren’t being completely truthful with me about the effects of being sent backwards in time.

“I’ll put in a request with Director Patterson,” he said, his tone clearly indicating he was through discussing this topic.

I didn’t have any further questions.  Well, I had lots of questions, but nothing I was ready to ask.  The biggest one was what would it take to go back more than thirty-six hours?  Like, say, eleven years. 

Go back and stop Tim from going to Mexico.  What would my life be like when I snapped back to real time if I could pull that off?  A house in the suburbs?  Monica and I raising a whole parcel of noisy, obnoxious kids?  Then a thought occurred to me as I was getting up to be escorted to my shrink appointment.

“Dr. Anholts.  One more question.  If an asset changed something in the past that caused this place to not exist, what would happen when they came back to real time?”

“That can’t happen,” she said, pausing in gathering her personal items.  “An asset can only go back thirty-six hours.  This facility has been in place much longer than that.  It’s already in operation, in the past, when the asset arrives.”

19

The next six months went by more quickly than I would have believed.  But when you’re busy for sixteen hours a day, there’s not much time to think about anything other than what you’re doing.  Daily counseling sessions with the shrink.  Time with instructors who taught me practical uses for math and science.  Philosophical discussions on religion with a retired professor from Harvard.  What was called social engineering with a former con-man who’d been sprung from a federal prison for this gig.  Etiquette with a female instructor I dubbed Miss Manners.

Then there was the physical and combat training.  Mile upon mile on the fucking treadmill.  Then the weight room before hand to hand fighting.  Edged weapons.  Firearms.  Everything from Close Quarters Battle (CQB) to making thousand yard shots with a sniper rifle.  I enjoyed the sniper training the most as it had to be conducted outdoors on the helipad.

I would lay prone, near the edge, with the rifle tight to my shoulder.  The trainer would then send a remote controlled toy boat out into the ocean and I’d have to hit a bobbing target the size of a cantaloupe.  It didn’t fail to register with me that this was also roughly the size of a human head.  The instructor was a former Marine sniper and was relentless.  And I learned.

And healed.  My hands felt normal again, as did my face.  Even if I still didn’t recognize myself when I looked in the mirror to shave.  I’ve never been a fan of shaving, usually wearing a thick stubble for several days at a time rather than scrape a razor across my chin.  At least since I got out of the Army.

Now, however, that wasn’t an option.  The plastic surgery had messed with my facial hair follicles.  If I skipped shaving, soon it was obvious something wasn’t quite right.  No hair grew on half of my upper lip and only in a few thick patches on my cheeks and under my chin.  Should I try to grow a beard, I’d look like a poodle trimmed for a dog show.  So I carefully shaved every morning.

As I progressed and grew more confident with the new skills I was learning, I found myself thinking more and more about the harebrained idea I’d had to go back and stop Tim.  Hell, he was dead anyway.  If I had to, I’d kill him to stop him.  I felt horrible every time I had that thought, but I’d had a lot of time to think about what he had cost me.

Everything.  My life hadn’t been my own since the afternoon those two cops had showed up in my apartment.  I didn’t buy into Johnson’s feelings about my choice.  I knew in my heart there hadn’t been another option.  Besides, those guys were playing a dangerous game that didn’t exactly have the best record when it came to living a long and healthy life.  If I hadn’t killed them, someone else almost certainly would have at some point.

Part of me worried I was a bad person for having these thoughts.  That same part considered discussing it with the shrink.  But I knew the doctor wasn’t here for my benefit.  His primary role was to evaluate my mental health and report to Patterson.  Was I fit for duty, or was I going to go off the deep end the moment I was free in the past and out from under their constant attention?

Keeping my personal thoughts personal, I focused on my training and how to go about finding a way to change my situation.  I’d run across Dr. Anholts a couple of times in the large cantina that fed all of the staff assigned to the project.  Each time, I’d acted very happy to see her, chattering brightly and smiling at whatever she had to say.

Maybe I was barking up the wrong tree, but to me she seemed to be the key to achieve what I wanted.  I saw her again at breakfast this morning, sitting by herself, hunched over a laptop.  Grabbing a bowl of oatmeal from the serving line, I walked over and stood next to her chair.

“Solving more unsolvable problems?  Saving the world?”  I asked in a teasing voice.

She looked up at me and smiled, quickly removing her reading glasses.

“Mr. Whitman!  Good morning.  No, I’m just reviewing one of my staff’s calculations.  Nothing so dramatic as saving the world.”

She smiled brightly, seemingly happy to see me.  I was about to ask if I could join her when a strident klaxon began blaring.  She jumped to her feet and snatched the laptop off the table.

“What the hell’s that?”  I asked, worrying we were about to sink or topple over into the ocean.

“There’s been an event,” she said as she turned to dash away.  “Find Agent Johnson.  He’ll tell you what to do.”

Then she was gone, disappearing in the crowd of people who were all running for their assigned work stations.  I let them clear out, not seeing the need to push into the mayhem.  But Agent Johnson had different ideas.

I spotted him, towering over all of the people squeezing their way through the exit doors.  He bulled his way in, gently but firmly moving bodies out of his path.  He saw me immediately and waved for me to join him.  I trotted over, the area clear of people by the time I reached him.

“What’s up?”  I asked when I was close enough to not have to shout to be heard.

“Event.  That’s what the alarm is all about.  Don’t know details.  Come on, we’re going to the operations center.”

I fell in behind him and followed his broad back through several twists and turns, then up a set of metal stairs to a door I’d never been through.  I’d been allowed more and more freedom of movement, but still wasn’t trusted with a key card to get me through locked doors.  That was OK.  I wouldn’t have gone exploring anyway.  No reason to draw unnecessary attention.

Johnson held his card to the pad and the door slid open automatically.  Keeping the card in place, he waved me through ahead of him.  The door slid shut seconds after he stepped in.  I stood where I’d stopped, looking around.

The room was small, only a handful of people staffing a limited number of workstations.  Patterson stood on the highest level, watching his people work in between looking at several screens.  He glanced at us when we entered, but didn’t acknowledge our presence in any other way.

Flat panel monitors were in abundance, displaying everything from an image of the rig’s helipad to a live feed from CNN.  But what caught my attention was the room on the other side of a large bank of windows.  And the machine that sat in full view of everyone in the operations room.

Maybe calling it a machine wasn’t accurate.  It actually seemed to be nothing more than a slightly raised dais enclosed with curved glass panels.  I had a pretty good idea what it was, just had been expecting something much more Sci Fi movie looking.

“Is that it?”  I asked Johnson in a low voice.

“Yes.  Impressive, isn’t it?”  He said with a sarcastic grin.

Every now and then his façade slipped and I got a glimpse of the real Bill Johnson.  I was pretty sure he was actually an easy going guy with a quick wit that tended towards sarcasm.  But like the other times I’d gotten a peek, the exterior shell slammed back into place.

“Pay attention,” he said quietly, pointing at the TV playing CNN.

It was a terrorist attack on an elementary school in suburban Los Angeles.  A local news station already had a helicopter over the scene and we watched as a SWAT unit rushed towards the entrance.  There were small puffs of smoke appearing around the body armor clad officers and it took me a moment to realize it was because they were firing their assault rifles as they advanced.

Two of them fell, but the rest continued their charge.  It dawned on me that these guys were running into the face of gunfire because there was a building full of children in danger.  I found myself growing angry as another cop dropped to the asphalt, then the rest of them moved under an awning and out of view of the news camera.

“Audio feed from the local police, sir,” a woman working a complicated array of equipment said to Patterson.