Parallelogram : Day Two : Chapter 08
Five Days, Twenty-One Hours, Seventeen Minutes
The sun streaming down on his unshaven face, Frank Parker closed his eyes, felt the intoxicating warmth on his skin, inhaled a breath of fresh air – smelling the hint of lilac on the wind – and he knew he was dreaming. Still, he kept his eyes closed, and he enjoyed the dream. Birds chirped, bees hummed, and the breeze whispered in his ears, but he stayed focused on relaxation, a technique he had learned long ago, in therapy, while undergoing psychiatric observation from battle fatigue. For the first time in a few days, he was at peace, allowing nature to control his heartbeat, his existence, and he couldn't imagine a greater feeling of serenity, a stronger sensation of ecstasy, or a more rewarding fascination than that of self-meditation.
'Well, there was beer ...'
He ignored the thought, smiling at the childish inner remark.
'Yeah, but a beer would be pretty good right now.'
In his dream, he reached up and slapped himself.
'Ouch! Boy, I could sure use a cold one ...'
The birds faded as they flew into the distance, the hum of the wind increasing. It tugged at his hair, his shirt, and he decided that he would continue to ignore it for as long as the dream allowed. He had no control over where the vision of his subconscious was taking him, but, despite his blurbs about alcohol, he guessed it wasn't going to take him out for a night to paint the town red. He leaned back, the force of the wind increasing evermore, and, to his surprise, he realized that the sound had grown from a whisper to a groan to a rumbling howl ... in the distance ... but moving steadily and stealthily closer to him.
Was it his imagination, or was the wind – the storm – drawn to him?
'I'd rather have Olga drawn to me,' he thought. 'And ... I still wouldn't mind that beer.'
Mixed inside the wind, he heard ... noise. Not one noise, but many noises. With his eyes still closed, he concentrated hard on what he heard, hoping that he could decipher everything. There were ... faint ... clearly miles and miles away ... perhaps in another city in this entirely fictitious environment ... but he couldn't suppress the feeling that there was something decidedly 'real' about how they sounded.
He heard a car alarm.
No.
He heard many car alarms. They honked and chirped and whistled and whined together in a cacophony of manufactured warnings.
He heard glass shattering and the subsequent tinkling of shards thrown in a senseless pattern across a concrete surface.
He heard ... was that grinding?
A blanket of snow flashed under his closed eyelids, and the growl of an explosion shook his meditating body. The white quickly slipped back into the darkness, and then he heard ...
What was it?
What was that sound?
It was ... mechanical, he thought. It was a grinding, churning, hissing roar of machinery, coupled by the gibberish of turning an old style radio dial, blending together nearly incomprehensible snippets of announcers, of music, of tones, of frantic voices, of even more and more and more automated alarms ... but, through it all, he could hear a song.
"It's two a.m.," someone – a man – sang. "The fear is gone."
'What's the name of that one?' Parker thought.
He hummed the tune, despite the lyrics escaping him, lying on the edge of his brain the way a mountain climber hangs precariously from the side of a peak.
"I'm sitting here waiting," the man continued, "the gun's still warm."
'What's the name of that one?'
It had a definite bass undercurrent, and the main singer's voice told him that it was a rock song. He thought – he believed – the song was from the 1970's, but he couldn't be certain.
"Yeah, there's a storm on the loose," the prophet warned him, "sirens in my head. Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead. Cannot decode – my whole life spins into a frenzy."
Frank heard the refrain, but, still, the song's title escaped him. He pursed his lips as he tried to force that inkling closer into his consciousness – this was a dream, after all – but the fact wouldn't listen. It was clearly being tossed like a scrap of paper helplessly caught in the wind and the noise and the cacophony and the bitterness and the voices and the alarms and none of it – regardless of how hard he tried to tune it all out – would ever go away.
"Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
With a start, Parker awoke in his bed ... only to find himself still trapped in the Boeing's isolation chamber. He shook his head, trying to clear the remnants of the dream from his mind, and, as quickly as they had overwhelmed him, they were gone ... except for the last line of the song that defied the crashing noise of the mental storm. To himself, he whispered, "Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
"Hmm?" he heard.
Glancing to his left, he found Dr. Welles and Ebdon Finkle had fallen asleep over a hand of cards. Welles, no longer concealed within her CDC suit as Parker had agreed to sleep in his (with the self-controlled air conditioning turned way off the scale), lifted her head slowly from where she had rested it on her forearm. "Did you say something, Frank?"
"Nina?"
"Yes?"
"Are you any good at trivia?"
Yawning and stretching, she sat up in the chair. "I don't know," she admitted. "Are we talking science?"
"No, no."
"Then what?"
"Music," Parker told her. "Lyrics."
Craning her neck, Nina made the vertebrae pop loudly. She grimaced, saying, "I don't know. I was never really good at socializing, Frank, to be perfectly honest. I didn't get out much during college and while I studied for my masters. You know the type. I was pretty much a bookworm. I wouldn't have caught your eye."
"Don't say that," Parker laughed. "You have no idea what would've caught my eyes. I didn't have enough eyes for everything that caught my eye, so you probably would've fallen on my radar anyway."
She frowned at him. "That wasn't exactly reassuring."
"I'm sorry," he admitted, "it's just that I have this song lyric stuck in my head for some reason. You know how they say to pay attention to your dreams? I don't know if it means anything, but I can't remember the song."
She studied his expression. "Give me what you remember."
"It's two a.m.," he recited, "the fear is gone." Grimacing, he added, "Something something something. Then, it goes 'I'm sitting here waiting, the gun's still warm.'"
Smiling, she said, "That's easy. That's 'Twilight Zone.' It's by Golden Earring. I know that one. I love that song."
"Twilight Zone?" He shrugged. "God, if that isn't appropriate."
"What do I win?"
Still somewhat mesmerized by the lyrics, he whispered, "Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
"What's that?"
"The refrain," he confessed. "The song asks 'where am I to go now that I've gone too far?'" He wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "What do you suppose that means?"
"Other than the fact that you're creeping me out?"
"Yeah."
She shrugged, craning her neck for another bout. "I don't know. I suppose your subconscious could be expressing your feelings of guilt."
"Guilt? What feelings of guilt?"
"You know," she tried. "You're here. In another timeline. Your presence here is a threat to life. I don't know about you, but that fact alone would weight pretty heavy on my mind."
That wasn't it. He knew that wasn't it. But he couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean, what his subconscious was trying to tell his conscious self. "Yeah," he finally agreed. "I guess so." He pulled his lips tight across his teeth. "I guess I'm feeling kind of useless."
Again, her neck cracked, and she released a quick sigh. "How do you mean?"
"Well, everyone's busy trying to figure out what's going on thirty thousand feet below us," he explained. "Here I sit ... and I can't do a thing ... thanks to this happy little get-up."
"Happy little get-up?" she asked, and her tone warned him that she was insulted.
"What?" he tried. "Did you make this suit?"
"Well, the CDC is behind it, yes," she told him. Pointing at him, she added, "I was on one of the first-draft committees. We needed an entirely self-contained system, and a lot of the gadgets on that thing were some of the brightest ideas in my career." Holding up her hand, she ticked off with her fingers, "The rebreathing filtration system. The food intake system. The waste removal system. The external comm. system." She shrugged. "Granted, what you're outfitted in is very similar to the suits worn by NASA astronauts, but the comm system was my real brainchild."
"What comm system?" he asked. "Olga never said anything about a comm system."
Rising, Nina walked over to where he sat in his bunk. "She probably didn't know, Frank. Here." Pointing down to his left arm, she took hold of his forearm and turned it slightly upright. There, he saw a faceplate with a series of digital interfaces. "This key gives you localized communications interlinks with tactical teams. You know? Closed circuit. Short-wave. If you're in the field, you can stay in touch with other members of your team with it." She tapped another key. "This gives you what I called communications overlap, but I'm sure the guys up at MIT came up with some wonderful acronym for it. Basically, it's like a radio receiver. You can use it to monitor into communications being broadcast locally. Radio. Television. Even remote walkie-talkie and short wave on variable frequencies. Also, you can use this ..." She pointed at a flat green button bearing the crest of a very small microphone. "... to tap into that communication. The software allows you to isolate a particular frequency or channel, and you can join into the conversation ... well, not with the radio or television broadcasts, but the walkie-talkie and short wave." She tapped another button. "This one gives you access to the nation's complete wireless network."
"You're kidding me!" he exclaimed. "You mean ... I have my own phone?"
"Well, we never knew what ultimate purpose the suit would serve," she continued. "We trusted all along that, if a chrononaut came through from another timeline, he or she would have a mission to complete, and we tried to prepare for every possible contingency ... especially if we were faced with the unimaginable challenge of sending you into the field."
The thought of various time-travelers popping in and out of parallel dimensions suddenly overtook him, and Parker asked, "How many others have there been?"
Nina closed her eyes as she mentally did the math. "There have been, at least, a dozen that I know of."
"A dozen versions of me?"
"Oh, no," she said, opening her eyes. "You're the first version of Frank Parker that's come through."
"The others ... who were they?"
"Men, mostly," she admitted, "much like yourself." Smiling, she added, "There were a few women, though, and that makes me proud. That's also why I designed the suit unisex."
"Do you mean ... I'm wearing women's clothing?"
"You're wearing unisex protective gear, Frank."
"But a woman could wear this?"
"As could any man."
He grimaced. "Do me a favor?"
"What's that?"
"When we get to Washington, don't tell Donovan that I'm wearing women's clothing."
"It's unisex, Frank."
"You don't know Donovan."
"No, but I do know unisex."
He shook his head. "I can't believe I'm wearing women's clothing."
She held up her hands. "Let it go, Frank."
Casually, she reached back toward the table and pulled her chair closer, sitting down in front of him.
"How many people died as a result of those other chrononauts coming through?" Parker wondered aloud.
Nina grimaced. Clearly, he had disturbed some unhappy memories. He had stirred up a series of recollections that she didn't want to relive, but she replied, "I don't know if I could give you a headcount. I know that some incidents were far worse than others." Frowning, her eyes lost focus as she honed in on a single memory. "Nothing was as bad as Alamogordo, though. That was ... without question, that was the worst."
He leaned forward a bit. "What happened?"
She raised an eyebrow, releasing a heavy sigh. "I don't know all of the details, Frank. I don't have the necessary clearance for sealed chronological events, but, seeing as how I was part of the first response team, I know a little." She tilted her head. "That one ... that mission was a man named William Kelley. I believe he had been a deep cover CIA operative for several years before being recruited to BackStep. He was brought in as a secondary pilot, but the primary died when some of the Earth circuitry incorporated into the Sphere took a power surge from the technology of alien components. He ... from what I recall from Kelley ... the original chrononaut fried in the chair."
"Holy hell," Parker said.
"Yes," she agreed. "I would imagine that would be quite ugly." Sniffing a bit, she continued: "Anyway, Kelley was sent back seven days to stop the launching of a new intercontinental missile being tested at White Sands, New Mexico. Apparently, the missile's guidance systems contained a back door that operating engineers were unaware of. The system's designer – a man named Tildon – had been kidnapped, unbeknownst to our government, by some radical North Korean general. In the original timeframe, the missile launched, but instead of detonating harmlessly over international waters, it destroyed the entire metropolitan area of Chicago." She shuddered in her chair. "Kelley was able to alert White Sands in plenty of time, but, like you, he wasn't aware that his appearance in our timeline was dangerous to anyone." She shook her head. "He didn't check in with Director Talmadge when he arrived in our world because, as luck would have it, he knew a high ranking official at the White Sands testing facility. He simply made a telephone call, explained what was going to happen with the missile, and the test was aborted. Then ... then he wandered into Alamogordo."
She grew silent, but Parker had to know.
"How bad was it?"
Her eyes watered a bit, but she didn't cry. "In the first hour, twelve thousand people died," she explained. "There was ... there was some kind of festival going on, and Kelley just wandered right into the middle of it ... completely unaware of the damage he was doing."
"How ..." Parker tried to find the words. "How did that happen so fast?"
"He touched someone," she said. "Or ... someone saw him ... saw how he was dressed in that orange suit of yours ... and they grabbed him. A couple of men. Kelley fought them off." Glancing at him, he noticed that her eyes had grown red. "When you make contact, Frank, the contamination accelerates. I couldn't tell you how fast, but ... it's fast. People were, literally, dropping dead within minutes. Those who tried to help those who were infected were doing far worse by cross-contaminating themselves and anyone else they touched. Of course, the panic spread ... and thirty thousand people were dead by nightfall."
Parker didn't utter a word.
"It isn't your fault, Frank," she whispered. "It was no one's fault. Everything happened so fast that, even Kelley, no one had any idea of what happened. The government covered it up with a story about the release of an airborne toxin that was smuggled into our country through Mexico. Hell, we're fighting the War on Terror as it is ... no one gave the validity of the story a second thought."
The two sat in silence for a long time. Every few minutes, she would suck in a heavy, wet breath, and Parker knew that she fought back her sobs. She was a beautiful woman with an understated chemistry. She didn't dress up her hair in a charming bundled. She let it face gracefully about her face, bangs ending just above her eyes. She had a small but firm-looking chin, and her cheekbones gave off the impression of royalty. He wanted to reach out and hold her, to cradle her in his arms for a moment of peace and solitude, but, out of respect for what fears must've been bubbling within her heart, he refrained.
"What can I do, Nina?" he asked.
She looked at him, studying the grim expression on his face. She trusted that he had taken a lesson away from what she had told him, and Frank Parker didn't need any lectures. He had traveled through time – on hundreds of occasions – and had spared countless lives from tragedies that could have – and would have – been far worse than the Alamogordo incident.
"Just do me one favor?" she asked.
"You name it."
She nodded. "Don't take off that suit."
END of Chapter 08
Five Days, Twenty-One Hours, Seventeen Minutes
The sun streaming down on his unshaven face, Frank Parker closed his eyes, felt the intoxicating warmth on his skin, inhaled a breath of fresh air – smelling the hint of lilac on the wind – and he knew he was dreaming. Still, he kept his eyes closed, and he enjoyed the dream. Birds chirped, bees hummed, and the breeze whispered in his ears, but he stayed focused on relaxation, a technique he had learned long ago, in therapy, while undergoing psychiatric observation from battle fatigue. For the first time in a few days, he was at peace, allowing nature to control his heartbeat, his existence, and he couldn't imagine a greater feeling of serenity, a stronger sensation of ecstasy, or a more rewarding fascination than that of self-meditation.
'Well, there was beer ...'
He ignored the thought, smiling at the childish inner remark.
'Yeah, but a beer would be pretty good right now.'
In his dream, he reached up and slapped himself.
'Ouch! Boy, I could sure use a cold one ...'
The birds faded as they flew into the distance, the hum of the wind increasing. It tugged at his hair, his shirt, and he decided that he would continue to ignore it for as long as the dream allowed. He had no control over where the vision of his subconscious was taking him, but, despite his blurbs about alcohol, he guessed it wasn't going to take him out for a night to paint the town red. He leaned back, the force of the wind increasing evermore, and, to his surprise, he realized that the sound had grown from a whisper to a groan to a rumbling howl ... in the distance ... but moving steadily and stealthily closer to him.
Was it his imagination, or was the wind – the storm – drawn to him?
'I'd rather have Olga drawn to me,' he thought. 'And ... I still wouldn't mind that beer.'
Mixed inside the wind, he heard ... noise. Not one noise, but many noises. With his eyes still closed, he concentrated hard on what he heard, hoping that he could decipher everything. There were ... faint ... clearly miles and miles away ... perhaps in another city in this entirely fictitious environment ... but he couldn't suppress the feeling that there was something decidedly 'real' about how they sounded.
He heard a car alarm.
No.
He heard many car alarms. They honked and chirped and whistled and whined together in a cacophony of manufactured warnings.
He heard glass shattering and the subsequent tinkling of shards thrown in a senseless pattern across a concrete surface.
He heard ... was that grinding?
A blanket of snow flashed under his closed eyelids, and the growl of an explosion shook his meditating body. The white quickly slipped back into the darkness, and then he heard ...
What was it?
What was that sound?
It was ... mechanical, he thought. It was a grinding, churning, hissing roar of machinery, coupled by the gibberish of turning an old style radio dial, blending together nearly incomprehensible snippets of announcers, of music, of tones, of frantic voices, of even more and more and more automated alarms ... but, through it all, he could hear a song.
"It's two a.m.," someone – a man – sang. "The fear is gone."
'What's the name of that one?' Parker thought.
He hummed the tune, despite the lyrics escaping him, lying on the edge of his brain the way a mountain climber hangs precariously from the side of a peak.
"I'm sitting here waiting," the man continued, "the gun's still warm."
'What's the name of that one?'
It had a definite bass undercurrent, and the main singer's voice told him that it was a rock song. He thought – he believed – the song was from the 1970's, but he couldn't be certain.
"Yeah, there's a storm on the loose," the prophet warned him, "sirens in my head. Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead. Cannot decode – my whole life spins into a frenzy."
Frank heard the refrain, but, still, the song's title escaped him. He pursed his lips as he tried to force that inkling closer into his consciousness – this was a dream, after all – but the fact wouldn't listen. It was clearly being tossed like a scrap of paper helplessly caught in the wind and the noise and the cacophony and the bitterness and the voices and the alarms and none of it – regardless of how hard he tried to tune it all out – would ever go away.
"Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
With a start, Parker awoke in his bed ... only to find himself still trapped in the Boeing's isolation chamber. He shook his head, trying to clear the remnants of the dream from his mind, and, as quickly as they had overwhelmed him, they were gone ... except for the last line of the song that defied the crashing noise of the mental storm. To himself, he whispered, "Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
"Hmm?" he heard.
Glancing to his left, he found Dr. Welles and Ebdon Finkle had fallen asleep over a hand of cards. Welles, no longer concealed within her CDC suit as Parker had agreed to sleep in his (with the self-controlled air conditioning turned way off the scale), lifted her head slowly from where she had rested it on her forearm. "Did you say something, Frank?"
"Nina?"
"Yes?"
"Are you any good at trivia?"
Yawning and stretching, she sat up in the chair. "I don't know," she admitted. "Are we talking science?"
"No, no."
"Then what?"
"Music," Parker told her. "Lyrics."
Craning her neck, Nina made the vertebrae pop loudly. She grimaced, saying, "I don't know. I was never really good at socializing, Frank, to be perfectly honest. I didn't get out much during college and while I studied for my masters. You know the type. I was pretty much a bookworm. I wouldn't have caught your eye."
"Don't say that," Parker laughed. "You have no idea what would've caught my eyes. I didn't have enough eyes for everything that caught my eye, so you probably would've fallen on my radar anyway."
She frowned at him. "That wasn't exactly reassuring."
"I'm sorry," he admitted, "it's just that I have this song lyric stuck in my head for some reason. You know how they say to pay attention to your dreams? I don't know if it means anything, but I can't remember the song."
She studied his expression. "Give me what you remember."
"It's two a.m.," he recited, "the fear is gone." Grimacing, he added, "Something something something. Then, it goes 'I'm sitting here waiting, the gun's still warm.'"
Smiling, she said, "That's easy. That's 'Twilight Zone.' It's by Golden Earring. I know that one. I love that song."
"Twilight Zone?" He shrugged. "God, if that isn't appropriate."
"What do I win?"
Still somewhat mesmerized by the lyrics, he whispered, "Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
"What's that?"
"The refrain," he confessed. "The song asks 'where am I to go now that I've gone too far?'" He wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "What do you suppose that means?"
"Other than the fact that you're creeping me out?"
"Yeah."
She shrugged, craning her neck for another bout. "I don't know. I suppose your subconscious could be expressing your feelings of guilt."
"Guilt? What feelings of guilt?"
"You know," she tried. "You're here. In another timeline. Your presence here is a threat to life. I don't know about you, but that fact alone would weight pretty heavy on my mind."
That wasn't it. He knew that wasn't it. But he couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean, what his subconscious was trying to tell his conscious self. "Yeah," he finally agreed. "I guess so." He pulled his lips tight across his teeth. "I guess I'm feeling kind of useless."
Again, her neck cracked, and she released a quick sigh. "How do you mean?"
"Well, everyone's busy trying to figure out what's going on thirty thousand feet below us," he explained. "Here I sit ... and I can't do a thing ... thanks to this happy little get-up."
"Happy little get-up?" she asked, and her tone warned him that she was insulted.
"What?" he tried. "Did you make this suit?"
"Well, the CDC is behind it, yes," she told him. Pointing at him, she added, "I was on one of the first-draft committees. We needed an entirely self-contained system, and a lot of the gadgets on that thing were some of the brightest ideas in my career." Holding up her hand, she ticked off with her fingers, "The rebreathing filtration system. The food intake system. The waste removal system. The external comm. system." She shrugged. "Granted, what you're outfitted in is very similar to the suits worn by NASA astronauts, but the comm system was my real brainchild."
"What comm system?" he asked. "Olga never said anything about a comm system."
Rising, Nina walked over to where he sat in his bunk. "She probably didn't know, Frank. Here." Pointing down to his left arm, she took hold of his forearm and turned it slightly upright. There, he saw a faceplate with a series of digital interfaces. "This key gives you localized communications interlinks with tactical teams. You know? Closed circuit. Short-wave. If you're in the field, you can stay in touch with other members of your team with it." She tapped another key. "This gives you what I called communications overlap, but I'm sure the guys up at MIT came up with some wonderful acronym for it. Basically, it's like a radio receiver. You can use it to monitor into communications being broadcast locally. Radio. Television. Even remote walkie-talkie and short wave on variable frequencies. Also, you can use this ..." She pointed at a flat green button bearing the crest of a very small microphone. "... to tap into that communication. The software allows you to isolate a particular frequency or channel, and you can join into the conversation ... well, not with the radio or television broadcasts, but the walkie-talkie and short wave." She tapped another button. "This one gives you access to the nation's complete wireless network."
"You're kidding me!" he exclaimed. "You mean ... I have my own phone?"
"Well, we never knew what ultimate purpose the suit would serve," she continued. "We trusted all along that, if a chrononaut came through from another timeline, he or she would have a mission to complete, and we tried to prepare for every possible contingency ... especially if we were faced with the unimaginable challenge of sending you into the field."
The thought of various time-travelers popping in and out of parallel dimensions suddenly overtook him, and Parker asked, "How many others have there been?"
Nina closed her eyes as she mentally did the math. "There have been, at least, a dozen that I know of."
"A dozen versions of me?"
"Oh, no," she said, opening her eyes. "You're the first version of Frank Parker that's come through."
"The others ... who were they?"
"Men, mostly," she admitted, "much like yourself." Smiling, she added, "There were a few women, though, and that makes me proud. That's also why I designed the suit unisex."
"Do you mean ... I'm wearing women's clothing?"
"You're wearing unisex protective gear, Frank."
"But a woman could wear this?"
"As could any man."
He grimaced. "Do me a favor?"
"What's that?"
"When we get to Washington, don't tell Donovan that I'm wearing women's clothing."
"It's unisex, Frank."
"You don't know Donovan."
"No, but I do know unisex."
He shook his head. "I can't believe I'm wearing women's clothing."
She held up her hands. "Let it go, Frank."
Casually, she reached back toward the table and pulled her chair closer, sitting down in front of him.
"How many people died as a result of those other chrononauts coming through?" Parker wondered aloud.
Nina grimaced. Clearly, he had disturbed some unhappy memories. He had stirred up a series of recollections that she didn't want to relive, but she replied, "I don't know if I could give you a headcount. I know that some incidents were far worse than others." Frowning, her eyes lost focus as she honed in on a single memory. "Nothing was as bad as Alamogordo, though. That was ... without question, that was the worst."
He leaned forward a bit. "What happened?"
She raised an eyebrow, releasing a heavy sigh. "I don't know all of the details, Frank. I don't have the necessary clearance for sealed chronological events, but, seeing as how I was part of the first response team, I know a little." She tilted her head. "That one ... that mission was a man named William Kelley. I believe he had been a deep cover CIA operative for several years before being recruited to BackStep. He was brought in as a secondary pilot, but the primary died when some of the Earth circuitry incorporated into the Sphere took a power surge from the technology of alien components. He ... from what I recall from Kelley ... the original chrononaut fried in the chair."
"Holy hell," Parker said.
"Yes," she agreed. "I would imagine that would be quite ugly." Sniffing a bit, she continued: "Anyway, Kelley was sent back seven days to stop the launching of a new intercontinental missile being tested at White Sands, New Mexico. Apparently, the missile's guidance systems contained a back door that operating engineers were unaware of. The system's designer – a man named Tildon – had been kidnapped, unbeknownst to our government, by some radical North Korean general. In the original timeframe, the missile launched, but instead of detonating harmlessly over international waters, it destroyed the entire metropolitan area of Chicago." She shuddered in her chair. "Kelley was able to alert White Sands in plenty of time, but, like you, he wasn't aware that his appearance in our timeline was dangerous to anyone." She shook her head. "He didn't check in with Director Talmadge when he arrived in our world because, as luck would have it, he knew a high ranking official at the White Sands testing facility. He simply made a telephone call, explained what was going to happen with the missile, and the test was aborted. Then ... then he wandered into Alamogordo."
She grew silent, but Parker had to know.
"How bad was it?"
Her eyes watered a bit, but she didn't cry. "In the first hour, twelve thousand people died," she explained. "There was ... there was some kind of festival going on, and Kelley just wandered right into the middle of it ... completely unaware of the damage he was doing."
"How ..." Parker tried to find the words. "How did that happen so fast?"
"He touched someone," she said. "Or ... someone saw him ... saw how he was dressed in that orange suit of yours ... and they grabbed him. A couple of men. Kelley fought them off." Glancing at him, he noticed that her eyes had grown red. "When you make contact, Frank, the contamination accelerates. I couldn't tell you how fast, but ... it's fast. People were, literally, dropping dead within minutes. Those who tried to help those who were infected were doing far worse by cross-contaminating themselves and anyone else they touched. Of course, the panic spread ... and thirty thousand people were dead by nightfall."
Parker didn't utter a word.
"It isn't your fault, Frank," she whispered. "It was no one's fault. Everything happened so fast that, even Kelley, no one had any idea of what happened. The government covered it up with a story about the release of an airborne toxin that was smuggled into our country through Mexico. Hell, we're fighting the War on Terror as it is ... no one gave the validity of the story a second thought."
The two sat in silence for a long time. Every few minutes, she would suck in a heavy, wet breath, and Parker knew that she fought back her sobs. She was a beautiful woman with an understated chemistry. She didn't dress up her hair in a charming bundled. She let it face gracefully about her face, bangs ending just above her eyes. She had a small but firm-looking chin, and her cheekbones gave off the impression of royalty. He wanted to reach out and hold her, to cradle her in his arms for a moment of peace and solitude, but, out of respect for what fears must've been bubbling within her heart, he refrained.
"What can I do, Nina?" he asked.
She looked at him, studying the grim expression on his face. She trusted that he had taken a lesson away from what she had told him, and Frank Parker didn't need any lectures. He had traveled through time – on hundreds of occasions – and had spared countless lives from tragedies that could have – and would have – been far worse than the Alamogordo incident.
"Just do me one favor?" she asked.
"You name it."
She nodded. "Don't take off that suit."
END of Chapter 08
