Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for the usual statements.
AN: Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed this story. This chapter deals with the past only.



Time to Consider
Chapter 6
By Callisto



Wyman Cabins
Lake Catherine, VT


The day had dawned with slow deliberation. At first his suggestion was met with puzzlement. His father had informed him that the last time he had taken his sons fishing they hated it. Jarod smiled hopefully, stating plainly that he recently had changed his mind.

Major Abernathy looked at his son curiously. It seemed a lot had changed in the past few weeks. With a small shrug and a stern warning that they would leave and never return if he heard just one ridiculous complaint, the major conceded. The last time he had to force his sons to join him on a fishing trip, this time around Jarod practically begged him to go. Maybe this was Jarod's method of finding a way to tell his father of his ultimate decision regarding his future.

It was the crack of dawn as they all sat around on an old wooden pier in the middle of nowhere. The river meandered slowly by, a main tributary that fed water into the lake. A quick glance at his father and Jarod smiled again. The man was sprawled out in a comfortable slouch in a strange looking chair. Meanwhile Jarod and Kyle sat near the edge of the pier with their poles securely anchored and their lines disappearing in the gentle current. Kyle yawned again for what seemed the hundredth time. What Jarod interpreted from his father's face when Kyle said he would go with them was that his little brother liked tagging along with him whenever possible. His father confirmed this by telling Jarod the whining rule went for hangers-on as well. Looking out at the gentle water, Jarod considered his present circumstances. For the first time in his life, he was spending quality time with his family as a whole and loving every minute of it. Their odd quirks and squabbles he soon realized required more tolerance than he had previously thought—simulations only went so far. The families he put back together prepared him in part for familial compromise. It honestly didn't bother him that Kyle hung around so much. He realized that it wasn't solely his friends' age and immaturity that got to him but that particular set of people. Kyle was a year younger at 19, great company, a bit of a womanizer, had a wicked sense of humor and a knack for getting into trouble. Having him as a best friend was Jarod's life-long dream. Things were getting to the point where eventually he would have to return to his own time and his own life. What would happen to the him of now concerned him because he knew it would affect his family directly.

"I have a hypothetical question I want to run past you," Jarod began. He cast an eye in his father's direction, but apparently he had fallen fast asleep. Slightly lowering his voice he continued, "It's about time travel. What if somehow you found yourself propelled down a time portal, where or rather when would you find yourself?"

"That's easy. It would never happen cause there's no such thing. Time travel is nothing more than a Star Wars-like fantasy. By the way, did you know they were making a sequel?" Kyle asked confidently.

"Yes, two of them. Never mind that, but say for the sake of argument it could happen. Where would you wind up?"

"That would depend on which direction you were headed, future or past. Probably not the past, so you would have to go forward into the future."

"Why not the past?" Jarod asked with genuine curiosity.

"Because of the paradox you would cause. There's a well-known theory that says a person going backwards in time can't meet himself because two versions of the same person can't occupy the same space at the same time," the major replied languidly. His fishing hat remained pulled down over his eyes and he was still slouched in his chair.

Now there were getting into the meat of it. This is what Jarod wanted to test. "Yes, but what if time was nothing more than a place and each place represented a reality, you would then be able to go backwards without meeting yourself."

"You would still meet yourself, Jarod. That is unless your talking about going back to a time before you were born," Kyle mused seriously, then broke into a wide smile. "You know that old saw, if you could go back to 1932 would you kill Hitler, knowing the pain and horror he would inflict on millions?"

Jarod looked at his brother intently. That had been a notion he hadn't considered before. Could he execute someone for crimes they hadn't yet committed? Pushing that thought aside for the moment he replied to his brother. "Going back to a time before you existed is sci-fi. The second you showed up, you would have an immediate effect on the time line, simply because you don't belong there."

"And traveling back in your own time wouldn't?" Kyle inquired disbelievingly.

"What if time is like a color spectrum? Each shade blends into the next but has its own identity, its own name even. A light brush of blue, slowly turns darker and darker until eventually, it becomes purple. For time it would mean that each shade or reality is a slightly different place than the one next to it. The reality you were born into and originally existed within is one shade but then you were sucked into a time portal and propelled backwards. As Dad said, since you can't meet your original self, you instead find yourself in a slightly different reality."

"So what you're saying is that you can never go back in time and correct old mistakes or relive a past trauma and do it again only better? You're a bigger pessimist than I gave you credit for, Bro'."

"I understand your theory, Jarod but who's to say which reality is the original and which is the variation? And if you wind up in the variation, what happened to the you that was there? Was that version forced to switch places?"

"All I can think of is that there isn't any real variation but if you happened to travel back into a variation of your original, than that person would no longer exist," Jarod replied as his theory of what happened to him took on a more solid shape.

"But what about the so-called original? What happens there?" Kyle inquired slowly.

Major Abernathy was now sitting up in his chair, staring at his sons. Their conversation had become interesting. It was the sort of discourse he always liked on a lazy morning. Jarod glanced at his father, then turning to his brother he answered, "It would seem like you vanished into thin air. Two lives would be affected. The traveler and the variation you happened to oust."

"Then it would also be fair to say that if the traveler somehow managed to return to his own time, then the circumstances would switch. In the variation, it would seem as though he had vanished into thin air," the major commented quietly. As each man sat and thought about their theories and tried to punch mental holes in it, the major's line began to twitch. The day would end up fruitful for each of them as the brothers watched their excited father reel in his fish.

Lakeside Lobster Shack
Lake Catherine, VT

Ben chose a lonely bench behind the closed restaurant. What he wanted to say, he didn't want Catherine to overhear. From her mother's stories and the girl's behavior, she was a difficult mixture of brilliance and volatility. He wanted to give her room to yell without disturbing his other guests and encouraging her mother to join in on the festivities.

"I realize your mother has allowed you a certain freedom. Though I haven't been a part of your life, I do want to get one thing clear: I won't tolerate you raising your voice to her. She deserves your respect regardless of what you might think," Ben said gravely. He looked at Maritza who remained calmly silent through his short speech. However a glance at her eyes told him a completely different story. "You have questions, I can see that. To answer your question: Yes, Leith and I are brothers. What I want to know is how you found out."

Parker was shocked. Not by his words but by the quiet certainty with which he delivered his truth—it was in everything about him, his eyes, posture and tone of voice. She believed him and couldn't reconcile what she had believed all her life with what she was now being told. It seemed that Broots' research had been proven accurate once again. Her father's DNA revealed that he was only a close relative of hers, meaning a relation of his was actually her father.

After a short pause during which they assessed each other, Ben offered a small smile of relief. "It's nice to see that I not only got your attention but that you believe me as well."

"To reveal how I found out about my er—uncle, would betray a confidence. In the short time since we've arrived in the U.S., I've found out that just about everything I've held true is nothing more than an elaborate lie. I don't give a damn that all this was done to spare my feelings, I value respect myself and I deserve the truth, not emotional pabulum. My mother knows this and we'll work out our differences at another time. No offense but the way we treat each other is between us and that's not going to change."

Quiet enveloped the table as Ben took in what she had to say. He wanted to address her behavior but there was something about her that discouraged continuing his objections. As a latecomer, he realized he would have to earn some standing with his own daughter. He also was forced to acknowledge that in an effort to spare her any unnecessary pain, they only added insult to injury.

"All right. I'll tell you about my brother and I. Early on it was evident that Leith was malleable. He was more willing to take a short cut than to meet a thing head on and tackle it honestly. On the flip side, he never knew when to cut his losses. As a result, he became our grandfather's favorite. My grandfather inherited the Centre from his father and looked forward to bequeathing it to Leith. For reasons he never explained, our father hated the Centre and minimized his involvement. What Leith did in his youth is a mystery to me; we spent our boyhoods at different boarding schools at our father's insistence. After our grandfather died and we were of an age to receive it, I was shocked to find that the old geezer included me in the inheritance. He could be cruel, our grandfather but Leith took the shared ownership in stride. I told him that he could run it on his own and took my college degrees elsewhere. Years went by before I heard from Leith again. This time it was to tell me that he was in trouble and needed my help. To make a very long story short, Leith had run the company into the ground financially. I took over as chairman, completely restructured management, turned the company, corporate and brought in investors. I approached a tiny international consortium of wealthy investment bankers based primarily out of Africa. With my help, I got them to bind closer together to improve their profits, so they owed me. The Triumvirate began bankrolling the Centre and both parties began to reap large profits.

"Originally the Centre was used as a conciliator between arguing parties, be it corporate competitors or governments, to come up with solutions to otherwise unsolvable problems. I was in charge of that branch and we did well and were paid handsomely for our successes. Leith was in charge of the much smaller research and development branch—the think tank. They would come up with ingenious ways to solve problems brought to the Centre by other companies. When I found out the extent Leith and that crony of his, Dr. Raines, were willing to go to expand their venture, it was too late to stop them. I tried to curb their exploits but they had already grabbed enough influence within the corporation that there was little I could do.

"Finally, I decided it was time to leave; Leith's corrosive personality and habits began to effect my life. I looked around and found I was in my thirties, unmarried, childless and a millionaire several times over. Things got ugly. Leith wouldn't let go. He was thoroughly corrupt and morally jaded, something I initially failed to see in my zeal to make the Centre a thumping success. It turned out that the Triumvirate were the ones to assist me in my escape. I drew up chairmanship papers for Leith in which I watered down his power base and bifurcated control of the Centre between him and my investment banker friends. Leith couldn't be trusted to run things on his own without oversight.

"I came up here, brought this Inn and dropped out of sight. Leith signed the papers to become the Centre's newest chairman. There were a few other details involved. Some of which I was only vaguely aware of but the Triumvirate knew and used to their advantage—something to do with grandfather's legacy. You see none of that mattered because all I wanted was out. A couple years later, your mother began coming up to the Inn. When she married, I never wanted to pry and never asked her about her new husband. A few years after that, the marriage started to fall apart and we eventually became intimate. That's how we were blessed with you and then eventually your brother."

Parker listened intently to what Ben had to say. She didn't interrupt him for fear of breaking his train of thought. What he said made a kind of twisted sense—even down to the scrolls. Her mother's message when she had been trapped in the bombed out rubble of Tommy Thompson's office turned out to be true. Her father did know all the secrets and lies, or at least the truth behind them. A sublime depression slowly creeped over her as she stood up and walked away from the bench. Still facing away from him, she said in a small voice, "Please, give me some time to absorb all this. It's a lot to take in all at once. I have so many questions, I don't know where to start."

Ben stared at his daughter's back. In an eerie echo of her other 'father', Ben said quietly, "You're my legacy." She was exactly what he had wanted in a child and he was deeply proud of her maturity and poise. He had expected interruptions, exclamations of disbelief or at least challenges to test the truth of what he was saying but instead was met with a resigned silence. Pushing himself up from the bench, he walked up to her and stood beside her without speaking.

"What does that mean? For you?"

"Part of the deal I had made with the Triumvirate was that my first born would automatically take over the Centre when I died. All it took was one look at your infant face to know I had made the right decision. Well, that was all Leith had to do as well to know you would be the future for the Centre. Seeing what a great job Catherine's done with you, makes me all the more certain." Several minutes later, father and daughter walked slowly home.

Jarod and Kyle piled slowly out of the rented truck which their father parked behind a large commercial bus. They were relaxed and extremely hungry. The lunch their mother had made for the three of them proved to be inadequate on purpose. She wanted her men to return home with an appetite for dinner. The major spotted a general store on the way back to their cabin and stopped to pick up a few snacks. Jarod had walked out of the store and looked around at the small collection of buildings curiously. A bus was lazily pulling away as Jarod stared at it. For once he didn't have to wonder about its schedule, no one was looking for him any longer. Out of habit, he dashed back into the store and grabbed a schedule anyway, for old times sake. Stepping back into the street, he looked around again—Nothing much had changed since the first time he visited years ago after reading Catherine Parker's diary. These thoughts were in his head as he turned towards a closed restaurant and caught sight of a familiar figure. It was Ben, with dark hair. Jarod smiled glad to see another recognizable face. It was the person walking with Ben who caused Jarod to pause and stare. She looked no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, small in stature, with light brown hair. The way she carried herself was the thing that caught him.

Since she arrived, Parker kept having the feeling of being watched. Each day it grew stronger and the voices, though mostly quiet, began to chant caution softly. Today, it was different and in response, Parker looked around and found a young man staring intently at her. At first she dismissed it and turned away. If she had never seen pictures of him at that age, she wouldn't have turned around again. Jarod stood staring at her as a jubilant grin took hold of his features. She stopped abruptly and continued staring until he jogged over to her.

"Parker? Is that you?" he whispered happily, estatic that his gamble had paid off.

Dumbfounded, she nodded slightly staring at this younger version of Jarod. She wasn't sure if him showing up was a blessing or curse and as she silently tried to make up her mind, he started talking.

"Look, I don't have much time but I need to talk to you. Can you meet me here tomorrow around noon?"

Recalling herself, she looked up at him and nodded again. Then distractedly she said, "We're in a big mess, I hope you have some ideas on how to correct this. You look different," she replied disjointedly. Her thoughts were still in a muddle as she slowly backed away and returned to Ben who took in the admiring look on the boy's face and the stunned expression that seemed permanently etched on his daughter's face. Ben tried to draw out of her who the boy was but she begged off, ran into the Inn and closed herself in her room to think in peace.