Chapter 26
Six Days, Seven Hours, Twenty Minutes
A chill had come over him, but there wasn't a thing Frank Parker could do about adjusting the thermostat. As a matter of fact, his containment cell didn't have one. If it did, he would've cranked up the heat a notch or two at the mention of one of the darkest days in recent memory.
"September 11th?" he asked. "Isaac, you're talking about ... you're talking about 'the' September 11th, right?"
Calmly, the man nodded. "Yes, Frank. I'd like you to tell me what happened on that day ... in your continuum." Squinting at the chrononaut, he tried, "Might I guess by your reluctance to discuss it that this day holds some special meaning in the annals of catastrophe?"
"No," Parker replied honestly. "That's not it. I'll discuss it. I'll tell you everything you want to know." Concentrating, he drew in a quick breath, trying to figure out where to possibly begin. "Terrorists," he started, siphoning through the pool of thoughts, "Islamic extremists, really, took control of several airliners." He frowned. Had it really been ... had it really been that long ago? The images flickered in his mind like an old reel of sixteen millimeter film played on a blank wall.
"Frank?" Talmadge said softly. "Please. Isaac needs to know everything."
The man grimaced. "These terrorists ... they crashed these planes into buildings."
"Which buildings, Frank?" Mentnor prodded.
"Two of them were used to bring down the World Trade Center," he replied flatly, swallowing hard at the memory of collapsing steel and glass. "One hit the first tower, and, about twenty or thirty minutes later, a second plane hit the other one. Both of the towers collapsed under the stress of intense heat." He realized his expression – his eyes, mostly – had glazed over. "Thousands of people died, Isaac. They ... there was nothing that any of us could do." He shook off the chills and continued. "A third plane ... that went down in Pennsylvania. The theory was ... well, nothing has ever been proven, but the theory was that several of the passengers managed to ... to storm the cockpit, overpower the terrorists, and they downed the plane. In a field. In the middle of nowhere ... one of the passengers was on the phone, and he was in touch with his wife, and she told him about the Twin Towers, and he ... he and some of the others rushed the cockpit. From there, who knows?" He fought the urge to walk away from the glass and seek refuge in the plastic chair. He needed to stand. He needed to finish the story. Something – some event yet to unfold in this timeline – depended on it.
"There was a fourth plane," he told them. "Not long after the Trade Center was hit, this plane crashed into the Pentagon." Slowly, he shook his head. He knew some of the people in the building that had died in the attack. Granted, he didn't know them very well, but, in his years of service as a Navy Seal, he met some people, and those people moved up the chain of command to take positions at the Pentagon – what was long thought to be the nation's safest, most secure building. "Luckily, the plane came in at a low altitude, so it didn't destroy the entire facility. It ... basically, it struck the building very close to its foundation." Again, he swallowed, forcing the bile rising in his throat back down into his stomach. "Everything happened so quickly. No one ... not any of us ... no one ever imagined it was possible."
Talmadge shook his head. "How many died?"
"Thousands," Parker answered. He brushed his hand along his left temple – was he sweating? "Too many, Bradley, any way you look at it. New York. Washington. And Pennsylvania. Too many people."
Despite the disgust he felt over hearing of such atrocity, Mentnor stayed perfectly still, focused on obtaining as much information as possible. "And what did you do about it?"
"Me?"
"Yes," the old man replied. "I would assume – with a tragedy of that magnitude – that the NSA authorized an immediate BackStep in order to keep this event from ever happening?"
There was the chill again, followed by the sensation of sweat. Parker turned, took a few steps, and found the chair. He moved it near the glass and sat down, his entire body sagging into its cup.
Finally, he stated, "I didn't do anything."
Talmadge cleared his throat. "How is that possible, Frank?"
"Bradley, look," the chrononaut began, "you have to understand. As soon as it became clear that what had happened wasn't any random accident, the President was placed aboard Air Force One and flown to a secure location where he eventually released a statement to the American people. I mean ... think of it ... our country was not the streets of Beirut. We don't live like people do in the back alleys of Iraq or Afghanistan. We're the United States! These kinds of things ... they just didn't happen here! The government was starting from scratch! Sure, there were contingencies for certain attacks, but ... but what we experienced was entirely unprecedented."
"What did the NSA eventually do?"
Parker sunk deeper into the chair.
"Frank?"
"They told us ... no," he said.
"What?"
"They told us 'absolutely not,' 'under no circumstances,' 'stay put,'" the man spat through his teeth. "Those ... those bastards wouldn't let me even go back seven days to put the airports on high alert."
"How is that possible?" Talmadge asked.
"It's like I said, Bradley," Parker tried, hoping he could make sense of the events today more than he could when they had happened. "We didn't know what we were dealing with. We didn't know with whom. By the time ... by the time the intelligence came through, our options were extraordinarily limited." Slowly, he shook his head. "I think ... I think, to a certain degree, the NSA was afraid that sending me back in any attempt to stop what went wrong might've caused something far worse, if that's even a possibility." He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders when he said, "I think, for the first time, the NSA was terrified at the prospect of how a BackStep could go so incredibly wrong that they tied our hands. They shut us down."
Mentnor tilted his head. "And what happened next?"
Parker sighed. "There was ... there was an awful lot of intelligence gathering. The focus shifted from an immediate military response – we didn't know precisely who was behind it for a short while – to gathering intel. Every agent from every agency who had ever dealt in the world of spies was called up. Every favor was called in. We gathered data for weeks, and, eventually, we learned who was responsible ... and we went after the bastards."
The three of them remained perfectly silent for a very long time.
"I guess it's safe to say," Parker finally broke up the respectful quiet, "that 9/11 didn't happen in this timeline?"
Mentnor and Talmadge looked at one another.
"What?" the chrononaut tried. "What happened?"
Still, no one spoke.
"Come on, Bradley!" he protested. "You two are staring at one another like you're looking at ghosts! What the hell is it? What happened here?"
Talmadge lowered his eyes, staring at the floor. He couldn't look the intrepid chrononaut in the face, and Parker wondered what that meant.
"No, Frank," the director eventually succumbed. "We're not looking at ghosts. We're ... we're thinking about them. Of course, 9/11 happened here, just as it did in your timeline. I think – as Isaac has theorized – that 9/11 is one of the two events of temporal significance that are somehow tying our different realities into this parallelism." He shuffled, still not glancing up from the floor. "Those planes were hijacked, and all of those people died. Yes, the President went into hiding for a brief period – that's a staple of almost all tactical responses in the event of similar catastrophes. I've read many scenarios that have come down from FEMA and even some from the NSA. I think even the CIA has several outlines for what they term 'temporary government procedures' in the event of a terrorist strike, but I can't be certain on that one." Slowly, the man stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. "Much like what happened in your world, we were placed into a lockdown situation, but I might be able to shed some light on the NSA's logic. I don't think it was so much that they were afraid what consequences would result from a BackStep so much as they were concerned that ... well, to put it bluntly, I think they were concerned that Never Never Land was a possible terrorist target."
Parker gasped. "You're kidding me!"
"No, Frank, I'm not," he continued. "At least, that's the directive as it came down through the proper channels to me. The world was in chaos. Thousands of our civilians had just died on global television, Frank. Any bureaucracy's natural response is to close their borders ... to circle the wagons ... to make sure the Homeland is safe ... and that's what the Committee ordered. We locked up our doors tighter than I ever thought would ever happen ... for seven days."
"What?" Parker rose from his chair. "What happened on the seventh day?"
Finally, Talmadge met the young man face-to-face.
"You did."
"What does that mean?"
"You, Frank," the director continued. "You did what you do. You broke past the barricade. Ballard powered up all systems. Olga and Donovan prepped you for the BackStep, and I?" He smiled, and, for a moment, Parker thought he saw a hint of mischievous youth in the man's grizzled expression. "I disobeyed a direct order."
Parker again placed his hands against the cold glass. "Oh, something tells me I'm not going to like to hear this."
"You went back there, Frank," Mentnor continued telling the story – one far too difficult for Talmadge to finish alone. "We did as the NSA wanted, but, on that seventh day, you called us to the conference room, and you did what you've done so many times before. You convinced us that not doing anything – sitting by while we had the technology to try something – was a far greater crime than those committed by those men who flew those planes." He shifted in his chair, growing uncomfortable with the memories of the fateful day. "Unfortunately, we were all stubborn, and you ended up having only moments to get back seven days in order to change anything. But ... change things you did."
"See, Frank," Talmadge took over once more, "as you well know, the Sphere is as much about traveling through matter as it is through time. After all, the Sphere itself is a solid mass, and the energy it takes to accomplish such a feat ... oh, I don't need to remind you what it takes." He pulled one hand from his pocket and scratched as his beard. "We had only seconds to spare, Frank, so you did the only thing possible: you teleported the Sphere directly into the path of that first plane."
Again, Parker grew cold.
"You mean ...?"
"Yes," the director answered the question before it could be asked. "You sacrificed yourself ... and the Sphere ... in order to keep this country safe."
"What happened?"
"That pilot didn't know what hit him," Talmadge let slip his reply with a restless laugh. "The first plane exploded out over the Atlantic. Of course, our national defenses were immediately alerted. The NTSB issued an alert, and those other planes eventually were brought down – gunned down, actually – and the casualties were kept to a minimum."
"But people still died?"
"Frank, when you're dealing with terrorists," Talmadge offered, "you can't avert death. It's their principal weapon. When all is said and done, it's really all they have to use against us."
"Six hundred lives, Frank," Mentnor explained, "in exchange for what would have been thousands. There are very few times in my life that I've ever agreed in trading a life for a life, but, given the circumstances, there was nothing more that you – that any of us – could have done."
"But," Parker persisted, "people still died."
"And they're still dying, Frank," Talmadge reasoned. "They're dying every day from terrorist attacks around the world. You can't BackStep every time some lunatic straps some C4 to his chest and walks into a café during the lunch hour in Israel. You can't hop back in time and keep every bullet in every gun, every gun in every holster. BackStep was never intended to cease all catastrophes. We fought the battles we knew we statistically had a chance of winning, and there's no reason to think that any of us made the wrong choices. Ever."
"Statistically?" Parker spit the word out of his mouth as though it were spoiled meat. "Bradley, since when did any of us ever give a damn about the statistical chance of righting a wrong?"
"As far as I'm concerned," the man countered, "every time we took that chance and allowed you to BackStep."
"And what good was it?" the chrononaut demanded. "Look what it cost us! Six hundred lives! Probably hundreds more in the military action that followed! And the Sphere! How could I have been so stupid as to destroy the only ability we had to ever make a difference?"
To his surprise, Parker looked over at the director and found him with a customary wry smile.
"That," Talmadge said, "is where this story really gets interesting."
END of Chapter 26
End of Chapter 26
Six Days, Seven Hours, Twenty Minutes
A chill had come over him, but there wasn't a thing Frank Parker could do about adjusting the thermostat. As a matter of fact, his containment cell didn't have one. If it did, he would've cranked up the heat a notch or two at the mention of one of the darkest days in recent memory.
"September 11th?" he asked. "Isaac, you're talking about ... you're talking about 'the' September 11th, right?"
Calmly, the man nodded. "Yes, Frank. I'd like you to tell me what happened on that day ... in your continuum." Squinting at the chrononaut, he tried, "Might I guess by your reluctance to discuss it that this day holds some special meaning in the annals of catastrophe?"
"No," Parker replied honestly. "That's not it. I'll discuss it. I'll tell you everything you want to know." Concentrating, he drew in a quick breath, trying to figure out where to possibly begin. "Terrorists," he started, siphoning through the pool of thoughts, "Islamic extremists, really, took control of several airliners." He frowned. Had it really been ... had it really been that long ago? The images flickered in his mind like an old reel of sixteen millimeter film played on a blank wall.
"Frank?" Talmadge said softly. "Please. Isaac needs to know everything."
The man grimaced. "These terrorists ... they crashed these planes into buildings."
"Which buildings, Frank?" Mentnor prodded.
"Two of them were used to bring down the World Trade Center," he replied flatly, swallowing hard at the memory of collapsing steel and glass. "One hit the first tower, and, about twenty or thirty minutes later, a second plane hit the other one. Both of the towers collapsed under the stress of intense heat." He realized his expression – his eyes, mostly – had glazed over. "Thousands of people died, Isaac. They ... there was nothing that any of us could do." He shook off the chills and continued. "A third plane ... that went down in Pennsylvania. The theory was ... well, nothing has ever been proven, but the theory was that several of the passengers managed to ... to storm the cockpit, overpower the terrorists, and they downed the plane. In a field. In the middle of nowhere ... one of the passengers was on the phone, and he was in touch with his wife, and she told him about the Twin Towers, and he ... he and some of the others rushed the cockpit. From there, who knows?" He fought the urge to walk away from the glass and seek refuge in the plastic chair. He needed to stand. He needed to finish the story. Something – some event yet to unfold in this timeline – depended on it.
"There was a fourth plane," he told them. "Not long after the Trade Center was hit, this plane crashed into the Pentagon." Slowly, he shook his head. He knew some of the people in the building that had died in the attack. Granted, he didn't know them very well, but, in his years of service as a Navy Seal, he met some people, and those people moved up the chain of command to take positions at the Pentagon – what was long thought to be the nation's safest, most secure building. "Luckily, the plane came in at a low altitude, so it didn't destroy the entire facility. It ... basically, it struck the building very close to its foundation." Again, he swallowed, forcing the bile rising in his throat back down into his stomach. "Everything happened so quickly. No one ... not any of us ... no one ever imagined it was possible."
Talmadge shook his head. "How many died?"
"Thousands," Parker answered. He brushed his hand along his left temple – was he sweating? "Too many, Bradley, any way you look at it. New York. Washington. And Pennsylvania. Too many people."
Despite the disgust he felt over hearing of such atrocity, Mentnor stayed perfectly still, focused on obtaining as much information as possible. "And what did you do about it?"
"Me?"
"Yes," the old man replied. "I would assume – with a tragedy of that magnitude – that the NSA authorized an immediate BackStep in order to keep this event from ever happening?"
There was the chill again, followed by the sensation of sweat. Parker turned, took a few steps, and found the chair. He moved it near the glass and sat down, his entire body sagging into its cup.
Finally, he stated, "I didn't do anything."
Talmadge cleared his throat. "How is that possible, Frank?"
"Bradley, look," the chrononaut began, "you have to understand. As soon as it became clear that what had happened wasn't any random accident, the President was placed aboard Air Force One and flown to a secure location where he eventually released a statement to the American people. I mean ... think of it ... our country was not the streets of Beirut. We don't live like people do in the back alleys of Iraq or Afghanistan. We're the United States! These kinds of things ... they just didn't happen here! The government was starting from scratch! Sure, there were contingencies for certain attacks, but ... but what we experienced was entirely unprecedented."
"What did the NSA eventually do?"
Parker sunk deeper into the chair.
"Frank?"
"They told us ... no," he said.
"What?"
"They told us 'absolutely not,' 'under no circumstances,' 'stay put,'" the man spat through his teeth. "Those ... those bastards wouldn't let me even go back seven days to put the airports on high alert."
"How is that possible?" Talmadge asked.
"It's like I said, Bradley," Parker tried, hoping he could make sense of the events today more than he could when they had happened. "We didn't know what we were dealing with. We didn't know with whom. By the time ... by the time the intelligence came through, our options were extraordinarily limited." Slowly, he shook his head. "I think ... I think, to a certain degree, the NSA was afraid that sending me back in any attempt to stop what went wrong might've caused something far worse, if that's even a possibility." He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders when he said, "I think, for the first time, the NSA was terrified at the prospect of how a BackStep could go so incredibly wrong that they tied our hands. They shut us down."
Mentnor tilted his head. "And what happened next?"
Parker sighed. "There was ... there was an awful lot of intelligence gathering. The focus shifted from an immediate military response – we didn't know precisely who was behind it for a short while – to gathering intel. Every agent from every agency who had ever dealt in the world of spies was called up. Every favor was called in. We gathered data for weeks, and, eventually, we learned who was responsible ... and we went after the bastards."
The three of them remained perfectly silent for a very long time.
"I guess it's safe to say," Parker finally broke up the respectful quiet, "that 9/11 didn't happen in this timeline?"
Mentnor and Talmadge looked at one another.
"What?" the chrononaut tried. "What happened?"
Still, no one spoke.
"Come on, Bradley!" he protested. "You two are staring at one another like you're looking at ghosts! What the hell is it? What happened here?"
Talmadge lowered his eyes, staring at the floor. He couldn't look the intrepid chrononaut in the face, and Parker wondered what that meant.
"No, Frank," the director eventually succumbed. "We're not looking at ghosts. We're ... we're thinking about them. Of course, 9/11 happened here, just as it did in your timeline. I think – as Isaac has theorized – that 9/11 is one of the two events of temporal significance that are somehow tying our different realities into this parallelism." He shuffled, still not glancing up from the floor. "Those planes were hijacked, and all of those people died. Yes, the President went into hiding for a brief period – that's a staple of almost all tactical responses in the event of similar catastrophes. I've read many scenarios that have come down from FEMA and even some from the NSA. I think even the CIA has several outlines for what they term 'temporary government procedures' in the event of a terrorist strike, but I can't be certain on that one." Slowly, the man stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. "Much like what happened in your world, we were placed into a lockdown situation, but I might be able to shed some light on the NSA's logic. I don't think it was so much that they were afraid what consequences would result from a BackStep so much as they were concerned that ... well, to put it bluntly, I think they were concerned that Never Never Land was a possible terrorist target."
Parker gasped. "You're kidding me!"
"No, Frank, I'm not," he continued. "At least, that's the directive as it came down through the proper channels to me. The world was in chaos. Thousands of our civilians had just died on global television, Frank. Any bureaucracy's natural response is to close their borders ... to circle the wagons ... to make sure the Homeland is safe ... and that's what the Committee ordered. We locked up our doors tighter than I ever thought would ever happen ... for seven days."
"What?" Parker rose from his chair. "What happened on the seventh day?"
Finally, Talmadge met the young man face-to-face.
"You did."
"What does that mean?"
"You, Frank," the director continued. "You did what you do. You broke past the barricade. Ballard powered up all systems. Olga and Donovan prepped you for the BackStep, and I?" He smiled, and, for a moment, Parker thought he saw a hint of mischievous youth in the man's grizzled expression. "I disobeyed a direct order."
Parker again placed his hands against the cold glass. "Oh, something tells me I'm not going to like to hear this."
"You went back there, Frank," Mentnor continued telling the story – one far too difficult for Talmadge to finish alone. "We did as the NSA wanted, but, on that seventh day, you called us to the conference room, and you did what you've done so many times before. You convinced us that not doing anything – sitting by while we had the technology to try something – was a far greater crime than those committed by those men who flew those planes." He shifted in his chair, growing uncomfortable with the memories of the fateful day. "Unfortunately, we were all stubborn, and you ended up having only moments to get back seven days in order to change anything. But ... change things you did."
"See, Frank," Talmadge took over once more, "as you well know, the Sphere is as much about traveling through matter as it is through time. After all, the Sphere itself is a solid mass, and the energy it takes to accomplish such a feat ... oh, I don't need to remind you what it takes." He pulled one hand from his pocket and scratched as his beard. "We had only seconds to spare, Frank, so you did the only thing possible: you teleported the Sphere directly into the path of that first plane."
Again, Parker grew cold.
"You mean ...?"
"Yes," the director answered the question before it could be asked. "You sacrificed yourself ... and the Sphere ... in order to keep this country safe."
"What happened?"
"That pilot didn't know what hit him," Talmadge let slip his reply with a restless laugh. "The first plane exploded out over the Atlantic. Of course, our national defenses were immediately alerted. The NTSB issued an alert, and those other planes eventually were brought down – gunned down, actually – and the casualties were kept to a minimum."
"But people still died?"
"Frank, when you're dealing with terrorists," Talmadge offered, "you can't avert death. It's their principal weapon. When all is said and done, it's really all they have to use against us."
"Six hundred lives, Frank," Mentnor explained, "in exchange for what would have been thousands. There are very few times in my life that I've ever agreed in trading a life for a life, but, given the circumstances, there was nothing more that you – that any of us – could have done."
"But," Parker persisted, "people still died."
"And they're still dying, Frank," Talmadge reasoned. "They're dying every day from terrorist attacks around the world. You can't BackStep every time some lunatic straps some C4 to his chest and walks into a café during the lunch hour in Israel. You can't hop back in time and keep every bullet in every gun, every gun in every holster. BackStep was never intended to cease all catastrophes. We fought the battles we knew we statistically had a chance of winning, and there's no reason to think that any of us made the wrong choices. Ever."
"Statistically?" Parker spit the word out of his mouth as though it were spoiled meat. "Bradley, since when did any of us ever give a damn about the statistical chance of righting a wrong?"
"As far as I'm concerned," the man countered, "every time we took that chance and allowed you to BackStep."
"And what good was it?" the chrononaut demanded. "Look what it cost us! Six hundred lives! Probably hundreds more in the military action that followed! And the Sphere! How could I have been so stupid as to destroy the only ability we had to ever make a difference?"
To his surprise, Parker looked over at the director and found him with a customary wry smile.
"That," Talmadge said, "is where this story really gets interesting."
END of Chapter 26
End of Chapter 26