August 10, 2007:

A distinguished older gentleman in a blue pullover sweater and beige slacks walks into the department where Lily Rush and Scotty Valens work. The room he finds himself in, is mostly a large space filled with cluttered desks and file cabinets. People rush about it doing various tasks. Off to one side is an area partitioned off in alluminum and glass with venetian blinds for privacy. For the briefest second you see a brown haired man who is just entering middle age and wearing a sombre suit standing where the old man stood. It is the same man, Jack, who had angrily watched his step-father walk out of his life before his mother was even cold in the ground. The old man passed by the cluttered desk of Nick Vera who had his nose in the popular alternate history book about Kahn Noonian Singh that had recently taken the world by storm. The sandwich on the desk in front of him sat completely ignored save the bite taken out of one of the corners. The old man walked over to the desk where Scotty Valens was busily working on a file in front of him. The man stood there and waited for him to finish.

Scotty looked up at the man who had been seemingly reluctant to interrupt him and nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise. Standing before him was one of his childhood heroes from the days when he had wanted to be an astronaut, one of NASA's top scientists, and the inventor of the first-generation of sleeper ships, Jack Nix.

"Is there something I can help you with?" Scotty asked trying to hide his shock at being next to someone as famous and important as the man in front of him.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not sure." The man said as he took the seat that was hastily offered to him. "You see, my step-father Mestral left right after my mother's funeral on July 7, 1974. Later that evening, he called me from Philadelphia and I hung up on him before he could say what he was calling about. That was the last time I ever heard from him. Later I sent out several private investigators to try and find him, and they all came up with nothing. This has led me to believe that he may have never left Philadelphia as he had planned to, and that something may have happened to him. I have a picture of him from shortly before he left."

"I'll do what I can." Scotty said as he took the picture and the man's contact information. "If I find something, I'll call you."

"Thank you." Jack said as he got up to leave.

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"Tell me again, why we're looking at John Does from the Seventies?" Vera asked as he pulled yet another crime scene photograph from a box. He was still somewhat irritated about his break being interrupted. He rarely got a chance to read something that wasn't work related, and the book had been fascinating. Who knew that that crackpot terrorist Singh could've actually taken over the world if he had followed his original plans for domination. Hijakaing that experimental sleeper ship and taking off for parts unknown was the best thing that lunatic could've done for mankind even though it had set the space program back more than a decade.

"Do you have any idea who the man walked in here earlier was?" Scotty asked as he grabbed another box from the shelf. He was still a little awestruck by the fact that one of his childhood heroes had actually talked to him. He fondly recalled the days when he wanted to be an astronaut. When he was a child, he had eagerly read everything he could get his hands on about NASA and the space program. Like most childhood dreams though, his had eventually faded and he had found a job he wouldn't trade for the world.

"Some old guy, I don't know." Vera replied opening the fourth box from '75. He was supposed to be on break. Sorting through old case files for something that might not be there was not how he wanted to spend it.

"That guy has been one of NASA's top scientists since the early 70s. He won a Nobel Prize for his work on the first generation of sleeper ships. He'd been a hero of mine when I was a kid. His step-dad's been missing for thirty years, and I want to go through all of these boxes and be able to tell him that he isn't in one of them." Scotty Valens said as he opened a box from the July of 1974 and began sifting through its contents looking for a picture.

Scotty's face fell as he looked at the photo in the file. It was Mestral.