Chuck Vs. The Omni
Chapter 10: Visitors to VHQ
Chuck sprawled out on the shiny floor and his face contorted in shock. Sarah somersaulted alongside him and rose to her feet with the agility and grace of a feline. Her fingers curled over her holster. Phineas and Bobby rolled up to a sitting position.
Phineas rubbed his head and held his stomach. "A very bad idea to use the omni right after breakfast…"
His gaze followed Sarah as she circled the pale, blue-lit room with fear and distrust. She seemed unaffected by the voyage and promptly went about peering at the two-way mirror that covered the back wall, and examining the panels and buttons alongside it. Phineas knew she'd spent years of practice hiding her emotions. He wanted badly to get the gun out of her possession. From his brief dalliance in 2008, it seemed that many people relied heavily on them. Still, he was thankful it wasn't the Old West. Nearly getting his head and tuba blown off by Billy the Kid was something he didn't want to experience again.
Phineas leaned over and gave Chuck a poke in the ribs. "Hey, Chuck, we made it, you can move now."
Chuck tilted eyed him warily then scurried up when he saw everyone else had brushed off the effects of the cosmic trip. He shook out his clothes and patted himself down to make sure he was bodily intact.
"That was the most fantastic thing I've ever done! I can't believe it! This tops everything the CIA and NSA ever asked me to do!"
"You mean like stay in the car? I don't recall us asking you to do anything else. The rest was all you…disobeying our orders." Sarah scolded with a hand on her hip.
"Sarah, be fair. I've been asked to do a lot lately, remember the poison incident…" Chuck didn't finish. Sarah didn't realize that he'd saved her life from his ex-girlfriend Jill. He'd managed to lure Jill away and trap her in the Nerd Herd.
"Yeah…that's true, we can mention it because Casey's not here. I'm just teasing you, Chuck." She smiled.
Chuck stared at every surface of the room. "This looks like the blue room in Quantum Leap, so, do you guys carry around a Ziggy and wear flashy silver jackets…maybe a gold one with a big V on the back? Black silk, gold V? Like a members only jacket?" He asked Bobby. "I'm just waiting for Al to come through that door right now!"
Bobby laughed. "This is our own version of the waiting room so to speak. We do have devices…but they're in a controlled environment, which is where we're headed now. And, sorry mate, but the campus 'V' jackets are strictly for citizens of Planet Voyager."
"Dang! I wanted a welcome basket or something…a 'V' pencil would be cool, omni key-chain, V totes,T-shirts, boxers! Clocks and notebooks! You guys could make a fortune with this stuff. I can open you a Café Press account and run it from Earth. Do you do Ebay? Etsy's cool, but maybe a little to artsy-fartsy for you guys. Then again, with the omni and pirate here you have this Sci-fi Steampunk edge we can work with."
Chuck babbled on making silly plans. They all laughed at him and Bobby punched in a code on the wall panel. The hidden door slid open to reveal a wide corridor bathed in natural light.
"Sorry, Chuck, but just like you fellas in the Secret Service, our work is clandestine. There's no time for tours until we get a solid reading on Major Casey and Jeffrey. Everyone follow me, we'll be at the OCC in a jiffy." Bobby said.
"Don't feel so bad, Chuck. It's just a boring bunch of Academy classes." Phineas consoled him.
"It was only boring because you barely passed, Phin." Bobby replied.
Phineas rolled his eyes. "Well, you expect a rapscallion pirate like me to suddenly sit still in a classroom and listen to boring professors drone on about Quantum physics and time mechanics?"
Chuck nodded. "He's got a good point."
"I guess all you need to know is how to work that omni and solve the historical problems." Sarah mused.
"Exactly, I don't need to know the science behind it, or the mathematical equations, it's a job. It's fun, adventurous, heroic…great stuff!"
The building was enclosed in dome shaped windows and as they strode down, Chuck plastered himself against the glass and looked out. He wasn't sure what to expect, but he didn't imagine that parts of Voyager Headquarters could resemble the Stanford campus.
Students of varying ages strolled around the huge complex lugging books, knapsacks, and even bagged lunches. Bobby led them to an exit so they could actually stand outdoors. Chuck laughed and pointed out students who wore authentic period clothing. The sky differed greatly from earth. It exploded with brilliant hues and blended deep reds, pinks, and purple tones. The atmosphere was completely unpolluted. Chuck and Sarah never smelled or breathed fresher air. Chuck pointed up ecstatic as the sun set into the horizon beyond distant mountains.
"Oh man, you have two moons!"
Sarah was equally impressed, and adored Chuck's enthusiasm.
"That's really amazing. I've heard of this, but never imagined I'd see it."
"Sure, it makes for quite a bright evening." Bobby replied.
"I remember being freaked out by that." Phineas said. "I thought for sure they had two suns and we'd burn up."
"The universe is much more calculated and intricately designed than that, all the suns are in their proper orbit. We're perfectly safe." Bobby assured everyone.
"I guess so, my eyes weren't popping out of my head like Schwarzenegger in Total recall. You remember, when he got caught outside the dome on Mars…and…"
Everyone stared at him and Chuck stopped rambling. "Anyway, onward and forward to this Omni Control Center."
~Oo~
The massive OCC sector was filled with all sorts of cubicles, computers, and flashing trackers that reminded Chuck of the technology in the Castle base. The Omnibus exploded with data and red and green lights flickered around electronic maps on a twenty-foot wide screen. The OCC bustled with activity and Sarah noticed the employees seemed unusually harried. Chuck noticed the red lights on the screen far outnumbered the greens.
"This can't be good, right? How does Headquarters know which Voyager to send and where?"
"Depending on the year and date of the interference, we assign Voyagers who graduated from a particular class. And everyone's omni has different time parameters."
"Right, my omni is a model 313, my range is 1450BC to 1970." Phineas said.
"But you found Jeffrey in 1982." Sarah remembered.
Bogg smiled. "Yeah, that was a happy accident. Jeffrey was meant to be a Voyager and they sent me to retrieve him."
"Our database is very thorough and complex. We've spent countless years streamlining and developing it, but it's a never-ending process for improvement." Bobby finished.
"I would think so, you have the fate of the entire universe on your hands." Chuck said.
"Wow, Phineas, that's a few thousand years worth of history under your belt. I can't blame you for being exhausted and just happy to have a decent bed to sleep in." Sarah said.
"Yeah, it gets rough, especially now that I have Jeffrey to worry about. But I wouldn't have it any other way."
Sarah smiled gently at him. Phineas called her the enigma, but she felt the same about him. She made a quick mental comparison of him and Chuck. Chuck surely would've towed the boy on his adventures if he were in Phineas' shoes. He towed his best friend Morgan Grimes, a Buy More clerk with the maturity of a 12 year-old, practically everywhere.
Phineas' eyes reminded her of Bryce Larkin. Even though their relationship was over and done with, she still felt a twinge of regret whenever she saw Bryce and left with a nagging, 'what if?' She'd started to feel regrets about Chuck and was stressed that she couldn't admit her growing feelings for him. She wondered if Phineas had any advice on the subject.
Bobby stood before the Omnibus with his arms crossed and shook his head. A pretty brunette with a clipboard in her arms and colorful pens in her upswept hair approached him and dropped vital statistics. She smiled at the group and rifled her papers at Bobby.
"Sorry to interrupt, but these are vital."
"Excuse me a moment, mates, this is my assistant, Tina Bradley."
Chuck turned to Phineas. "So, what do we do about this?"
"We have to wait and see what he says. I need to get a replacement omni before we leave anyway."
Chuck's attention returned to the screen. "Uh, Phineas, what happens when an omni light shuts off?"
Phineas hurried to the screen, he couldn't make heads or tails of it, but he knew what to expect.
"Chuck, it could mean that we lost a Voyager."
Chuck gripped the chair in front of him. "That can't be. How do you know the person is actually dead? It's only monitoring the activity of the omnis, not their…life…their vitals, right? Or, can you do that." He looked to Sarah for support and she put an arm over his shoulder.
Phineas sighed. "You could be right, Chuck, it's just that an omni off the grid is an extreme cause for alarm."
"That's what happened to Phineas' omni. We can't get the location fix and it's subsequently creating more red lights. I just received more disturbing news." Bobby announced.
Phineas gulped and pressed his lips tight, he would not let them see him cry. The red lights proved that something went drastically wrong with Jeffrey and Casey in the time zone.
"This tidal wave of alternate history is about to reach 2008…Tina, bring up the 3-D simulation."
"What simulation? What are you talking about, Bobby? Just tell us!" Sarah demanded.
Chuck glared at the monitor. A map of California shook and quivered. The colors of the Earthquake's seismic intensity changed from a pale blue to blood red, right in the heart of the state and across the San Andreas fault line. Tina zoomed in closer to what would soon be left of Burbank – debris, rubble and dust.
"What the hell is this? That says there's a 10.5 magnitude! They've only prepared us for 7.8! We're not just talking about California! Mexico will be flat as a tortilla! This can disrupt the entire planet! Tsunamis! Volcanoes! You knew this was gonna happen and you brought us here! My sister is out there! My friends…our friends…our families! Ellie's a doctor and so is her fiancée Devon, they'll be caught right in the middle if they go to the hospital to help! They could be dead now!"
Chuck fumed and kicked the chair across the room. Phineas felt sorry for him and rushed to retrieve it. There was no need to explain to a Californian native the severity of a major earthquake.
Bobby drew a hand across his neck. "Tina, cut it now."
"Chuck, listen to me." Phineas grabbed his shoulders. "It will happen because something has gone wrong in the past, when we find that error, I'm going back to fix it."
Chuck shrugged him off. "Correction, Voyager. We are going back to fix it. There was no point in bringing us here if we can't help you!"
"We had every reason in the world, Chuck. You're…you're the Intersect; even we know the ramifications of what could happen if that's lost." Bobby said.
"I don't care about crappy Government secrets in my brain. My family and friends are gone. If I didn't get involved with this, I'd fall through the fault line too!"
"This is only a potential future, the past will be resolved and it doesn't have to happen this way at all. Trust us, mate! Time modification is our bizzo, but we need you safe regardless."
"You know, I think I trust this Voyager planet more than the U.S Government. They don't care about me as a person!"
"Chuck, that's not true!" Sarah scolded him.
"Yes it is! Maybe you care more, but not General Beckman, not the White House or whomever this Intersect belongs to. I'm just a commodity, aren't I? I bet they knew this earthquake was gonna happen too!"
Sarah didn't know how to answer him. Lately she'd sensed a deeper mystery surrounding the new Intersect project and General Beckman. She also suspected Casey was in on it too.
Phineas approached him again. "Chuck, it's true you're an asset, but I know for sure that…you're loved. We're going to fix this together. Bobby, did we get any readings on Jeff and Casey?"
Bobby shook his head. "We're trying, by God, we're trying hard. We can't even begin to correctly alter these red lights if we don't find the original source."
"Then keep working on it." Phineas snapped his fingers. "Hey! You said that the blips started sometime in the late 19th century and it involved Casey's ancestor, isn't there a way to trace major historical foul ups from that point on?"
"Crikey! Good idea, Phin! This is why I'm the techie and not the librarian. I'll have Tina pull the records from the database and get some blokes to check off the history books in the Voyager Archives Library. I have a bad feeling there's some shonky bizzo going down and I think I know who's responsible!"
Chuck looked at Bobby oddly. "Shonky…bizzo?"
"He means underhanded business." Sarah explained. "It's Aussie slang."
"Oh…well…then who's responsible for all this shonkyness?"
"I know exactly who, besides Wilhelm Julian." Phineas said. "It's Voyager Drake. He wants nothing better than to make the world over according to his own design. Jeff and I stopped him a few times. In fact, he's the reason I lost the omni in the first place."
"So is Drake the uh…resident villain in Voyager world? It's all about catching him?" Chuck pondered.
"Sorta…he gets in the way from time to time."
"Sarah, do we have resident villains?"
"Right now it's Fulcrum, but there's too many of them to count." She replied.
"I guess that's why we've been at this over a year already. Sometimes I feel like everyone I meet for the first time or from my past either turns out to be a good spy, Fulcrum spy…or just a really big narc that works at the Buy More." Chuck said.
"Voyagers do a whole lot, it's not so much about the bad guys as it is fixing red lights and helping others. That's what drives us."
"That's true, Phin but…" Bobby placed a brand new black leather Guidebook in Phineas' hands. "You won't last much more than a year if you keep relying on Jeffrey's 7th grade exposure to history. That can only go so far, ya know?"
Phineas tossed the book from hand to hand. He'd forgotten how heavy it was. "I know, but me and the kid do okay."
"There's always syndication and fan fiction…" Chuck said quietly. and the others glanced at him strange. He shrugged. "Ahh, nothing, I was just thinking of something stupid…so, what can we do now?"
Bobby tapped on the Omnibus screen and traced an invisible line between the red lights. "Now, we do some research into Major Casey's past… and pray the omni gets located."