Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) (17 page)

Jeff nodded. “Thanks for your help with this.”

“No, thank you,” Fisher said. “Now give me a big bro-hug like this was all a social visit.”

“Really?” He laughed.

“Yes. Your story is that since they in effect took your life away from you, you have very few people who you count as friends right now. Tell them you and I had built a friendship before you left.”

“But you said-”

“They don’t know that. Nobody knows anything about your reality.”

Jeff nodded and smiled. “Good point.” He reached out and they gave a big manly hug – old pals who hadn’t seen each other in years. Then Jeff drove to the National Mall, parked his car, and walked to see the Memorial of his favorite president, Lincoln.

December 14, 2018

Jeff pulled his rental car into the same parking spot he’d had the day before, reasonably close to the main doors of the USTP. He imagined that, when he was somebody important at the program, he’d had an assigned spot. That would have been the least they could give him in return for inventing time travel and turning it over to them. Still, this was starting to become a job to him, a feeling he’d tried to avoid since he’d gotten out of college and begun his research. Punching a clock was not something that a scientist with a $40 million grant did, and while there was always some comfort to be found in establishing a routine, showing up at this office wasn’t doing it for him. Even after just two days.

As he got out of the car and pulled out the Starbucks he’d grabbed on the way in, he tried to put himself in his other self’s shoes. While they may have had a lot of differences, he was pretty sure they’d be in lockstep on not wanting to be controlled by the government. They’d been similarly forced to report to the USTP, but the other Jeff had been coerced into integrating all of his individual work into their program. That must have been heartbreaking for him, having come so far and knowing the problems inherent with losing control of the technology. He himself was only reacting, making up his strategy as he went along. So it wasn’t the same dynamic. For the first time, he felt for the other version of himself.

He closed the car door with his backside and began the trek across the parking lot to the front doors. There was a spark in his step today that he hadn’t had, and he knew why – the package left for him by Agent Fisher at his hotel the night before. As promised, when Jeff had returned to his room, there’d been a fully-wrapped present sitting on the business desk. Fisher had collected the items in a box and then covered it in colorful wrapping paper, completing the ensemble with balloons and ribbon, and a fancy card that said, “Welcome home!” To top it off, it was a musical card – when he opened it, it started playing
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
Classic.

The box contained the items that had been taken from him when he returned from Russia – most importantly, his time travel device, which he understood was now a much older version of what the USTP was using, and the tablet he’d borrowed from Abby to take with him on his mission. His cell phone and wallet were also included as Fisher had indicated – which was good. He hadn’t been sure about getting those back. Abby’s tablet at the time he’d left contained the only version of the software that had apparently been upgraded to be significantly more user-friendly. The original device had not been ideal, requiring its user to transpose coordinates from the tablet to the device, but it had still been in the early stages of time travel, and Jeff’s skills were not in engineering – for what it was, he was proud of it. He’d done enough to make the process work. Had he been left alone to continue, those kinds of modifications would have been next on the to-do list. The USTP had taken care of it for him, though, and despite his misgivings he actually found himself looking forward to seeing what they’d done.

He’d held the device in his hand for a long time the night before, thinking about what his next step was. As he’d told Fisher, the device was useless without a battery, and he had no way of knowing if the new batteries would fit his device. He did know that they’d reduced the power in the battery packs to two trips, rather than the four the one in his device had originally held. That wouldn’t be enough, but he knew he could improvise if necessary. Lots of “ifs” to deal with.

Unable to sleep and still clutching the device in his hand, Jeff had spent his night, well into the early morning hours, considering his options. He needed to get his hands on one of the batteries that had been confiscated from his lab three years earlier, and thought his best bet for doing so was Fisher, now that he appeared to be an ally. Jeff felt for him, though – the comment he’d made about considering himself a target. It must have been a terrifying feeling if, indeed, he was right about what Bremner was up to. Asking him to hunt down a battery for him would be having him stick his neck out even more.

Jeff walked through the front doors and approached security. They still hadn’t given him a badge, which he hoped to get today because it would make things easier, so he answered a series of questions and was admitted into the building. Today’s agenda was two-fold – go over the results of his analysis and then run through the physical exam and training that all participants must endure. He knew that they were speeding him through the process, but didn’t know if they would try to cram in a look at the devices today. It worked for him if they did, but the next day was good, as well.

Not knowing where to report, he took a seat in the middle of the atrium, assuming someone would see him there waiting. He enjoyed a moment to himself, looking around what was a gorgeous taxpayer-funded facility and wondering how, with all the debt problems the government had been dealing with when he’d left, they were able to justify this project and find the cash for it. High above him was a skylight with windowed offices lining the walls on all four sides. He counted seven stories up, cognizant of at least three floors beneath him, as well. It was astonishing. Especially from the perspective that the government had only tracked him down three years ago. In three years, they’d gotten this magnificent facility not only up, but running. It was a testament to there being a will and them finding a way.

It made him wonder, though, if U.S. leaders had any inkling that another country might be up to similar research. He likened it to the space race, where the U.S. and the Soviet Union had pumped resources into advancing the technologies that would make them the first in space, the first to the moon. Was someone else working on time travel? The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He’d already seen first-hand what such a competition would look like.

As he continued scanning the area, he noticed a handful of people sitting at the cafe area and decided to check out what they served. He stood and walked across the open floor to a cordoned-off section littered with bistro-style tables and chairs. There was no line, so he walked to the front and peered at the menu board behind the counter. A clerk asked if he needed anything and he shook his head. The menu was handy for stopping and grabbing something to nosh on without having to leave the campus. They served some gourmet coffees and panini sandwiches. Nothing crazy.

“There’s a full cafeteria on the second floor,” a voice behind him said. He turned to see Dexter.

“Probably best to keep everyone close by, right?”

“You got it.” Jeff followed him past the sitting area. “How’d you sleep?” Dexter asked.

He nodded. “Good. Good enough, at least.”

“Ready for today?”

“As ready as I-” Jeff cut himself off as he noticed the sign for the Time Travel Museum. He remembered seeing it on the first day they’d brought him here, but there had been so much going on at that moment that it had passed right by him. “That museum is on this side of the secure areas. Who gets to go in there?”

“Just participants, mainly,” Dexter said, looking back at the museum. “And only after they’re screened. As you can imagine, it’s not the type of history we want just anyone having access to.”

“Can I go in there?”

Dexter took his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen, presumably for the time. “I don’t see why not.”

“Am I on a deadline today?”

“No, Bremner just wants me to get you through all of this quickly. He wants to get the program back up and running.”

“Not a problem. I won’t linger.”

Dexter led him toward the area designated as the Museum. It was simply laid out – more a walkway of about the length of a football field connecting two tunnels in the wall. Inside was dark, with blacklights offering a cool, space age feel that greeted them upon entering. A number of exhibits were lined up in a row with the intent that viewers would enjoy them in a specific order.

“Did I have anything to do with this?” he asked.

Dexter laughed. “I think you’ll find you had a lot to do with this, but the Museum was not your idea, no.”

They headed in, moving slowly through the exhibits. The first several were schematics created by some of the greatest scientific minds in history as they imagined time travel, including Einstein, Nimtz, Kipler and Hawking. There was a scaled down version of the time machine from H.G. Wells’ book of the same name, followed by a plasma screen showing clips from movies featuring time travel, with voice-over narration about humans’ fascination with the subject. The exhibit was very well put together. Dexter must have seen his interest – from behind him he said, “While the sign outside doesn’t mention it, this exhibit was actually built by the Smithsonian. That’s why it’s so good.”

“Yeah, it’s very nice. People would love to see this.”

“I’m sure they would. Maybe someday.”

Not if I can help it
, Jeff thought.

Jeff slid down the aisle until he started to notice some things that were familiar to him. A glass case housed his time device – the one he’d invented at his lab in New Jersey, and identical to the one that Fisher had delivered to him and which now sat in his trunk out in the parking lot. He immediately tried in his mind to trace the path of this particular device, reasoning it must have been the one that the other Jeff brought with him back from Russia. With all of the back-and-forth time travel, there were not only multiple versions of the people involved, but of the device itself. This one was not rusted, so it wasn’t the one that Fisher had given him three years before – the one that the woman, Erica, had left in the Sierra Nevadas. This was the real, working one. Which could end up being important.

“That’s incredible,” he said.

“You’re immortalized.”

He bent down to see the placard underneath the glass casing. It read, “The first working device to allow human time travel, invented by Dr. Jeff Jacobs in 2014.”

“Outstanding.” He stood and looked at Dexter. “Not that anything I’ve done is about fame and fortune… But this is pretty cool.”

“I still can’t believe the earlier model depended on entering coordinates,” Dexter said. “It’s so much easier now.”

“Yeah, and safer,” Jeff said, still looking at the exhibit. “Punching in the wrong number could have sent us decades – maybe even a century – away from our target.”

“So, conceivably, every possible combination of numbers was a destination?”

Jeff looked up at him. “Yeah,” he said, laughing. “Pretty scary, huh?”

“So you could actually play a sort of Russian roulette with the device.”

“How do you mean?”

Dexter shrugged. “Just enter in a bunch of numbers and see what happens.”

He stood and faced him, wondering where that idea had come from. “That sounds like a pretty dangerous game, but in theory, yes. You could do that.”

“Well, thank goodness we moved onto the next phase. Who knows what these people are capable of?”

Jeff turned and continued walking along the prescribed route. The next few exhibits were iterations of the time device that must’ve been created after Jeff had returned from Russia. Each device in the sequence added new features and appeared more aesthetically “cool” than the metal stick with which he’d started. One added easier-to-use buttons, the next featured a larger screen, and finally the model they were currently using. Jeff read that placard, which said the chip that determined location coordinates was built right into the device. The new unit was a sleek white and blue, and made, according to the sign, from a composite of advanced plastic material interlaced with metal to maintain its conductivity, but decrease the weight of the device substantially. He was instantaneously jealous. He would’ve wanted to be the one to work on those enhancements.

Following the devices was a section on power. They were close enough to the museum exit that the natural light from the atrium was infiltrating the darkness of the corridor. It took away some of the effect. Jeff stopped at a large poster detailing in cartoon form the type and amount of power that would be needed to successfully scramble the subject’s atoms sufficiently for time travel. It showed the need for controlled use of synthetic neptunium, which Jeff had used when he began his experiments, and the transition the USTP had made toward the more stable (and more poetic) Americium. Jeff had actually considered going in that direction from the outset, but the company that manufactured the batteries for him advised that Americium was far more expensive. With an ability to print money that he hadn’t enjoyed, the U.S. government had obviously splurged.

After the poster were three display cases housing the time device batteries. The first was his, the original unit built custom for him, containing enough charge for four trips through time. He’d had a dozen constructed, and they’d been held at the time in a specially-designed case that the FBI must have taken after he was discovered. Not all of them were accounted for – one was in the device Fisher had brought him the night before and one was in the device that had been lying in the Sierra Nevadas. He’d used one battery to try the device on himself, going back in time to see the famous Bobby Thompson “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” home run in 1951, and to take Abby to Woodstock in an effort to recruit her to the team – with return trips for both missions. That empty battery had been placed back into the case for a fully-charged version that he’d used to sneak to 1849 before leaving for Russia.