Jake Duncan-2

On the show, roll calls rarely took more than a minute or two; I knew that, in real life, they could last as long as several hours, depending on what bone the commandant had to pick with his prisoners. Things having come to a standstill, I expected that the dream was going to shift to something else entirely, only it didn't. The dampness in the tunnel was starting to set my arthritic hip to aching, which I was sure was going to wake me up, but that didn't do the job, either.

I had once discovered that if, in the course of a dream, I came to realize that it was a dream, I could change its direction at will, or even wake myself up. I tried it now. It didn't work. That could only mean one thing.

No. Impossible.

I considered what I had done immediately before finding myself in the tunnel. I had been looking at several faded photographs and, my eyes still on the photos, had reached into the box for a folder. I'd missed and ended up feeling around the bottom of the box, and then I'd been here.

Wait. Hadn't I touched something? Yes; my fingers had brushed against something cold and metallic. I hadn't even had a chance to feel its shape or size. A thought occurred to me that made me half-grin, half-wince: new dimensions to the phrase, "touch and go."

My feet were getting tired, and I tried to sit on the ground, but my cuffed arm ended up kind of hanging in the handcuff, which very shortly started to hurt like the dickens as the metal dug into the skin at my wrist, so I got up again and settled for leaning against the wall instead

I don't own a watch or a cellphone, so I had no idea how long I had been standing there when I heard the distant rattling sound of the tunnel opening, followed by voices. They were talking quietly, and I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I could identify the voices: Newkirk, and Hogan himself.

My heart nearly stopped. I wasn't dreaming, and I had no idea how I had gotten here, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was, GS Jessica had been right! It was all real!

At 53, I'd thought my "squee-ing" days were long over. I was wrong. A familiar giddiness the likes of which I hadn't felt in years washed over me, which I somehow managed to keep hidden, but I had to dig into my long-unused military bearing to do it.

When Colonel Hogan came into view, it was like being hit between the eyes with a two-by-four. There was a certain presence about him, the sort of thing that let you know, even if there had been no uniforms or rank insignia involved, that he was in charge. It set off every military reflex I still owned; I stood away from the wall, though it was only with some effort that I managed not to snap to attention. He looked me up and down in a manner which suggested he had noticed, but he didn't say anything about it, only asking my name.

"Jake Duncan," I told him, and immediately both his and Newkirk's eyebrows went up, a reaction I'm quite used to; I get it all the time. "My father wanted a boy," I added with a shrug.

"Suppose you tell me how you got down here," Colonel Hogan asked.

"I wish I knew. I reached into a box, touched something metallic at the bottom, and here I am."

"Where were you before you touched this metal item?"

"In the National Archives in Washington."

"And what brought you there in the first place?" The questions were coming rapid-fire, as if he was half-expecting what my answers were going to be and was seeking to confirm.

"Something I read on the…" Oh, shoot. The 'Net wasn't going to make any sense to him; there were only two computers in the whole world in his time, and they were the size of buildings, for crying out loud.

"Internet?" he finished for me, and my jaw dropped. Then I remembered what Newkirk had said: another one.

"Uh, yeah," I stammered, and felt myself redden. I don't look my age; I'm often taken for 30, and sometimes even younger; a couple of times, high-school kids have tried to chat me up. What was he seeing? A ditzy dame? ogodogodogodogodogod… Somehow I stopped my brain from yammering. "How many others have dropped in on you?" I asked, because it was the only way he would have known that word.

"Too bloody many," Newkirk mumbled; Hogan shot him a look that would have frozen steam, and turned back to me.

"Exactly what was it you touched?" he asked.

"I don't know; I never saw it. I had a folder out of the box and reached in for the next one without looking."

"Tell me, how was this box designated in the Archives?"

"By a number." Carefully, moving slowly, I reached into a pocket and pulled out the slip of paper I had written it on. "0876707."

Looking resigned, he gave a sigh. "Tell me, just how widespread is this 'Internet' of yours?"

I knew what he was really asking: How many others were likely to drop in on them? Hesitantly, I told him, "It's worldwide. How many actually go to the particular site where I heard about this box, I don't know, but I think that probably only a handful are going to be able to make the trip to DC to see it for themselves."

Hogan sighed and turned to Newkirk. "Put her in with the rest," he said tiredly, then turned and left.

Only then, with that overwhelming presence gone, did it occur to me that they had found near doubles for Hogan and Newkirk in Bob Crane and Richard Dawson, but the actors hadn't played them right. They couldn't, not in a comedy. The real people were a lot…grimmer, reflecting the serious nature of what they did.

And we…however many of us there were…were a huge Security Risk, something only a GI or a military kid could even begin to truly understand. And if the security classification was high enough, and the risk determined to be great enough, there was only one way to neutralize that risk. So the big question right now wasn't, how was I going to get home, but rather, was I going to survive.

The dream had just become a nightmare.