Birth of the Alliance (36 page)

The view panned to the concrete gate, to the still-reeling police officer, and back to the gate. They watched from Will’s point of view as he’d tried to scramble up and over the gate, and failed. Will heard himself shout to the police officer, asking the man for help, and heard the officer refuse to help or hinder Will’s efforts. Will looked at the shorter building, to a drainage pipe on the side. They watched as Will used the pipe to scramble up to the roof of that building, and then he dropped to the ground with a brief exclamation of pain. Will winced inside the cocoon, remembering the shooting agony in his ankle and his efforts to stand. He looked toward a fleet of golf carts nearby, but all of them were in flames, and….

The screen in front of him lifted, and Graham’s ebullient face was there. Will blinked at the greater amount of light, felt the fresher air from the outside flood into the cocoon. Graham pulled the leads off Will’s head, and Will felt the moisture in his hair trickle down his face. He could hear the exterior latches being undone, and the sides of the cocoon were pulled away. Cool air bathed his body, and Will realized that he’d been sweating profusely, muscles tensing. Was it because of nerves from being in the cocoon, or from reliving those memories in such a vivid fashion? He was aware of his limbs once more, and bent his arms and legs to restore feeling and help regain his bearings. Graham offered him a hand, and Will accepted the assistance as Graham hauled Will back to his feet.

The others sat around the table, their faces ashen. Hope’s eyes were wide in shock. Adam leaned forward, scribbling furiously on a pad of paper, as if afraid that he'd forget some critical detail. Eva’s fingers were steepled in front of her face, her eyes closed as if in deep thought.

“That. Was. Amazing!” Graham exclaimed. “It worked
so
much better than I could ever have hoped. It was as if we were all there, living through that experience! What a thrill!”

Will turned a weary gaze toward the younger man. “Two good men were lying dead after dying in gruesome fashion in the lower building, and the Assassin was probably already in my house, preparing to set the building on fire, and readying himself to kill Hope. Thrill isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe the situation.”

Graham’s brow furrowed. “Sorry. I hadn’t realized… wait a minute. When did the Assassin try to kill Hope? Who’s Hope?”

Will opened his mouth to reply, and then stopped. They'd kept the secret of Will's origins to just the four of them thus far.

Eva opened her eyes and her hands moved to the table. “First of all, the recordings were successful. We will be able to watch the footage at our leisure time and hear your commentary as we do, Will. Secondly, Graham needs to know what he just saw. Or didn’t you notice?”

Will looked at her, confused. “Notice what?”

“The man we saw near the car, caring for the older woman. He looked to be an older man, but there is no mistaking the face, the eyes, or mannerisms. I heard the voice as well. That man is an older-looking Graham. Graham will be there, Will. He is part of the team that executes this entire plan.”

Adam and Hope looked at each other, startled. Will gaped at Eva. He’d never made the connection… until now.

“Wait.” Graham looked around the table. “What do you mean, the older man we saw was me? How can an old man in a replay of a memory of Will’s be… me?”

Hope sighed, glanced around the table, and saw the looks of agreement. “The answer to that question is the same as the explanation for why you’ve never heard of an attack on me by the Assassin. You’ve just witnessed Will's memory of an event that won’t happen for another half century. January 7, 2030, to be exact.” She smiled. “With the proper technique, you can visibly age quite a bit in that amount of time. Trust me, I know.”

“How can Will have a memory of a future event, though?” Graham asked. “Wouldn't that be a vision, a precognition, or something like that?”

Eva shook her head. “No, it is no prediction, Graham, but a memory. To Will, that event happened centuries ago, on his thirty-fifth birthday. If we’d continued, you would have seen Adam and two others rescue Will from an attack by the Hunters.”

Graham snorted. “Will wouldn’t need rescuing by the Hunters.” Then he frowned. “How could an event in the year 2030 happen on Will's thirty-fifth birthday? He was centuries old when I met him… and that happened a few centuries ago.”

“Because I was born in the year 1995,” Will replied. “I won’t be born for another twenty years. When Adam and the others rescued me, they saved a man who had never heard of the Aliomenti, who didn’t know what Energy was, and who was very much at the mercy of the Hunters that day. The rescue was performed using a time machine that eventually deposited me in the past, outside the old Aliomenti North Village. Before I was sent back in time, Adam and two others taught me Energy and gave me other bits of guidance. I’ve been living my way back to my own birthday ever since, with complete knowledge of the advances, innovations, and key historical events that would unfold before me.”

Graham looked at all of them, looked for any tell-tale signs that he was the victim of an elaborate hoax, tested the Energy of the room for the revelation of an emotion of humor at his expense. He found none. “Clearly, all of you believe this, but…”

Will shrugged. “If your machine can only project memories, and not current ideas, then it’s easy enough to check. Look at the police car and the limousine in those images. Look at the dashboard of the car I’m driving and climb out of right at the start, how much more advanced it is than anything else you could find in the human world today. I’m living in the open in the human world in that memory, decades from now. Why? Because I had no idea there was anything else.”

Graham looked at all of them again. Then he looked at the ground and started pacing. “We’ve long been told that Will Stark, even when he was with the original Aliomenti, always had ideas that were far more advanced than anything others at the time had seen or imagined. That submarine you used to bring the first of us here so long ago… that’s something I’ll bet the Aliomenti
still
don’t have. And more to the point…” He paused, and looked up at Will. “You’ve never lied to me about anything. That’s got to count for something. So… as difficult as it may be to wrap my mind around it just yet, I'm just going to have to accept that what you’ve told me is true.” He shrugged. “It will take some getting used to, though.”

Eva gave Will a gentle punch in the shoulder. “See? Why can you not be more like Graham? He
never
used the word impossible.”

“But he
thought
it.”

“How would you know?”

“I'm fairly decent at telepathy.”

Adam laughed, and Hope rolled her eyes.

Graham looked thoughtful again. “If the memory we were just watching is from the future, it must be fairly important. We’ll need to keep going, but let’s give your mind a few days to rest first while I make a few of the minor adjustments you suggested earlier. Also… did you mention a time machine? Do you still have it somewhere, stowed away?”

Will shook his head. “I don’t. It… disintegrated when it took me to the past. But we won’t need it to be finished for another few centuries. Why do you ask?”

Graham stared at him. “Why do I ask? It’s a
time machine
! I’d love to see it. I’d love to help build it. We know time travel’s possible, because that machine put you back in the past. That means that you probably have some clues from the operation as to the design, and—”

Will chuckled, and put a hand on the man’s arm. “Slow down a bit.”

Hope nodded. “Graham, we need to put that aside for the time being, no pun intended. I’m not exaggerating when I say that ensuring that what we saw in Will’s memories happens
exactly
like it did on that screen earlier is of critical importance. If those events don’t happen, then none of us would be here right now, including you. Including
everyone
else in the Alliance. And yes, everyone in the Aliomenti as well.”

Graham looked at Will. “If you came from the future, you were probably rescued by members of the Alliance, right? And they gave you the Purge and taught you how to use Energy?”

Will shuddered. That memory of the Purge, unfortunately, wouldn’t bury itself deep in his mind. “That’s correct.”

“Why not just take out Arthur right away? We don’t need him for this all to be successful. And it would save a huge amount of grief.”

Will sighed. “Among other reasons: I promised I wouldn’t. Before I left, the Alliance members who rescued me asked me seemingly innocuous questions designed to ensure I wouldn’t do anything to disrupt the time stream. If I’d killed Arthur right away—and I could have done so—history would have unfolded far differently. I can say with near certainty that we would never have found ambrosia if that had happened. We would have died of old age, and I would have wondered what went wrong. Yes, I would have ended the life of an evil man but, in the process, ended the lives of so many innocents.”

Graham’s eyes widened as he realized the implications. “Wow. I can’t imagine the self-control it would take to let that man live. Wait… you met him in the future, didn’t you? When the Hunters came to your house? So you knew he was still alive then and you had to let him live in the past?"

Will nodded. “Over time, I watched the Hunters join the Aliomenti, and watched a man undergo a horrible ordeal that turned him into the Assassin. I knew that I could influence them, change their destinies… but my memories of them in the future told me I wouldn’t. I don’t know everything that happened or will happen, so my rule is that I won’t kill anyone. I can try to save as many people from death as possible, though. That’s why I’m so excited about Eva’s Defense Squad and the work they’re doing. We’ve saved a lot of people from certain death at the hands of the Assassin, and even if that means we’ve altered the time stream, I’m okay with it happening because we erred on the side of saving a life rather than taking one. And that’s just my nature. I have to believe that in every cycle of the time stream, I’ve tried to do that and encouraged other people. I suspect the lives we’ve saved
aren’t
altering the time stream at all.”

“One more question, for now at least,” Graham said. “How can
I
help with all of this?”

Will smiled. “Help me record my memories of that day in the future, of the days in the far distant future. Adam has taken it upon himself to plan in detail everything we need to do now and over the next half century to try to limit the damage, and to make sure that those who need to act a certain way will know to do so and be in position to do so. Help him carry out that plan as best you can. We’re keeping the whole time travel thing quiet for a bit longer, simply because we don’t have answers to all of the questions people will have. And we don’t want a lot of people going Outside with that knowledge; there’s too much risk that any of them could be captured by the Hunters, questioned, and unintentionally reveal that secret.”

Graham nodded. “I can do that. I think we’ll need to run through the sequence several times, because each time you watch your own memory on the screen, your mind should be able to remember just a bit more.”

“And I’d like to see those memories,” Hope said quietly. “Especially those from the more distant future.”

Will nodded. She wanted to see her children, grown to adulthood. She had no way of knowing how much time she’d have with them.

“And then I’ll need to prepare for my next trip to the Outside," Graham said, his voice resolute. “It appears that I’m going to need to learn how to drive a limousine.”

Will cocked his head. “Why do you say that?”

Graham pointed at the screen. “That's what your memories say I should be doing. And that's what I choose to do.”

XXII

Copy

1978 A.D.

Members of the Alliance had, following Will’s guidance and example, eschewed the frequent use of their most noticeable abilities. The Aliomenti had long flaunted their abilities when inside designated outposts and, they suspected, were rather blatant about everything when on the string of islands in the Bermuda Triangle where they’d built their Headquarters. Over the centuries, Will had found that those who most frequently used those skills for daily tasks tended to see themselves as something other than human, something
better
than human. It led to the easy adoption of an attitude that saw the elimination of human life to preserve the Aliomenti’s privacy as no cause for moral concern. To the long-term Aliomenti, so enamored of their own skill and wealth, killing a few humans for the crime of
possibly
knowing of the existence of the Aliomenti was the equivalent of swatting a fly for creating an annoying buzzing sound.

Attitudes and thought processes would be altered. Will noted that there was an adage that said if you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you are accustomed to traveling everywhere through teleportation, you don’t see the travel challenges to a human unable to move about in that fashion. If you are able to fetch anything you need through telekinesis, you don’t recognize the challenges that humans might face in fetching objects in difficult or far-off locations. If you routinely scanned people’s thoughts and emotions to understand them as friend or foe, you didn’t understand that a human being didn’t have those tools to make a decision about who might help them and who might hurt them. Given that the purpose of those in the Alliance was to “be the change you want in the world” through the subtle improvement in the lives of the general population, it was critical that they not lose sight of their own humanity to such a degree that they forgot what it meant to be human. Losing their own humanity would prevent them from seeing and finding those incremental changes and adjustments their work required. Losing their humanity, too, could have the impact of turning them toward the Aliomenti Elites and away from the Alliance.