More Sci-Fi

There was a loud whirring sound and my surroundings began to fade and fizzle away – the stark contrast of bright colors on the stage against the dark, drab colors of Victorian attire and top hats of the audience below; the look of astonishment on the would-be assassin’s face as he crumpled to the floor, only feet away from his target: it all melted into nothingness. The tall, bearded man seated in the state box would never know; the world would never know. But we knew. This is why I was here.

Old Ford’s theater melted away into nothingness. A moment later, the hatch of the pod hissed and then opened. I lifted my headgear and emerged from the pod to the thunderous applause of the entire bunker: dispatch, coordinators, officers, fellow pilots, cadets, janitors, everybody. I could feel a smile creeping across my face. The ovation grew louder as I began to bow and wave in all directions. As I finally began to make my way down the platform, the crowd began to chant my name – “Jen-kins! Jen-kins! Jen-kins!”  I hurried through the throng of bodies, tucked the warm, glowing crystal away in my pocket and ducked into the debriefing office at the far end of the flight deck.

Major Reynolds didn’t even look up as I burst through the door. I dropped my gear on the floor and flung myself into the chair across from the Major’s desk.

“Told you I could do it.” No response from Reynolds. His eyes remained fixed on his paperwork. I grinned. Game on.

“’That’s technologically impossible!’” I began, in a mocking tone. “‘Altering history? Would the time-space continuum withstand such a drastic change? Will we still be here when he gets back? If he succeeds at all?’” I paused for dramatic effect.

“All that discussion, all those secret meetings, back and forth, wasted time and effort; and all you had to do was say the word, throw the bone and watch me fetch it.” Reynolds was silent. I pressed on.

“You see, Major, I’m just a really big dog. Like you, Napoleon.” The Major’s fluffy white pooch growled at me from within its cage. “I am perfectly content to just lie around, take up space and beg for treats,” I winked at the dog. “But you can choose to feed me, train me, nurture me, and even take me out for the occasional walk. A dog’s gotta get out and stretch his legs or he’ll start to make trouble and poop on the floor, putting dirty stains all over your years of hard work.”

For the first time, Reynolds looked up. It was more of sharp glance, but that was all I needed. I leaned forward.

“Just throw me a bone, Major. And I’ll go get it, no questions asked.”

I sat back in my chair and clasped my hands behind my head. I was about to put my feet up on the desk as well but thought better of it.

“Are you finished?”

“I can keep going if you like.”

“I’d rather you not, Captain.” As rebuking as Reynolds sounded, there was a hint of mischief in his eyes as he said it. “How long did it take you to memorize that one?”

“Believe it or not, I actually came up with that myself.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Reynolds paused a moment, then returned to business. “Have you run your after-action TDP yet?”

“Um, no I haven’t had my trans-chronicle particle decontamination shower yet… sir."

“Then what in the hell are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you, of course.”

“Jenkins—!”

“Relax Pops, I’ll get to it. You know it’s me; c’mon, why would anybody as brilliant as myself wanna alter their genetic make-up? Does that even make any sense? It’s not like I’m gonna die if I don’t take a shower right away. You just gotta learn to trust me; let me do my thing. I’m a big kid now remember? I can handle big boy underwear. You’ll see, at the end of the day, the brass will be happy, you’ll look good, I’ll look even better and everybody goes home a winner. You, my friend, just need to have a little faith.”

I waited for Reynolds to respond or react, to lash out at me or strike back. Shoot, I was due a promotion after my performance today; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he busted out the lieutenants stripes right now. But he was silent. The smile slowly melted off my face as he stared into me; the anger and displeasure I expected to see was strangely absent. There was something else in his eyes that I had not seen before; it stopped me in my tracks and made my blood run cold.

“I have another assignment for you, Captain.”

“Uhh, Major?” I was confused. “No debrief?”

“This is… straight from the top.”

I frowned. “Aren’t they all?”

He slid a manila folder across the desk. ‘Top Secret’ of course. The cover didn’t scare me. But the contents of the folder did. A line at the bottom of the first page jumped out at me. ‘This operation will implement a new and untested form of time navigation – a reversal of particle distribution that will allow the pilot to navigate his/her flight through events that have yet to be established in the time-space continuum…’

My eyes grew wide. “That’s impossible,” I breathed. “You said it was scientifically impossible!”

“It is.”

My mouth hung open. I was at a loss; I didn’t know what to say.

“Ever since the discovery of this method of travel and the creation of this unit, our primary objective has been repairing the past to create a better future.” Reynolds spoke in reverent tones. “Little by little, we worked to tweak minor details of the past, small things, cleaning up this mess that the world calls ‘history.’ Today we took the first major step in rebuilding history in a way that has never been done before; in a way that betters all of mankind. But now we have found a way to skip the first step entirely. We will decide the future; we will create our own destiny—one mission at a time.”

The future. The words were stuck in my throat.

“This is strictly off the books,” Reynolds said. “This meeting and this assignment never happened. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir.”

I had several hours to sleep and prepare myself for this undertaking. Sleep was scarce that night; my nightly routine of nausea and vomiting from skipping my TDP was the main culprit. It didn’t bother me as much as it used to; it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

I read the through the information Reynolds had given me for the fifth time; it still didn’t make any sense. As I knelt next to the toilet for what seemed like hours, I tried to wrap my mind around the task before me; so many unanswered questions to tackle. Fixing “minor things” in the past was trippy enough but altering the future? That was like cheating. There was no need to travel to the future if a person could alter the past, right? Neither my conscience nor my stomach felt right that night. I filed this away in a special place, with all the other discrepancies that I had noted and returned the service log back in its place, next to the collection of stolen power crystals.

I cleaned myself up the best I could before I made my way back to the flight deck at 0200 hours. The large room that had been full of people cheering me on the day before was now fairly empty, except for flight personnel and Major Reynolds waiting for me at my pod. I went through the pre-flight procedures and the added precautions that the complications this new flight would present. As I was about to secure my helmet, I suddenly remember something important.

“Major, wait… What am I supposed to be doing? The mission report didn’t specify a target or a real objective. Who am I supposed to kill?”

“You’ll know,” was his reply. I felt a pang of fear in my stomach and cold shiver shoot down my spine as everything faded away.

If going to the past was like flying an airplane high in the sky and using streets on the ground to reach the destination, going forward to the future was like trying to find a road that doesn’t exist from 40,000 feet and predicting where that nonexistent road will end. More like trying to jam a human being through one specific opening in a cheese grater. Picking one possibility in the millions that exist in the future and then trying to reach a specific one is not only physically impossible, it’s extremely painful. Being stretched and warped, dematerialized and then put back together again was too much to handle. I puked in my helmet and then blacked out.

I woke up a pool of blood. Pain racked my side and my head throbbed. Everything seemed very far away and unreal, like a bad dream. I rolled over to see a man standing over me. I could have sworn I had seen him before but I didn’t know where.

“I knew you would come,” he said. “I knew they would send you. You knew that as well, that’s why you played the part flawlessly; you knew it would come to this. You also know that both of us cannot exist, therefore I cannot allow you to return. I’m sorry, Jenkins.”

For the first time, I noticed the weapon he clutched in his hand and the glowing crystal he held in the other.

Then I knew who he was. He was right.