Saturday
July 6th, 2148
Resistance Hospital
Late Afternoon
Her numbers were better.
Her breathing was even.
Her heart rate was normal.
Everything was pointing to the fact that she was alive and well and back.
Jon sat in the chair next to the bed and just watched Jennifer as she slept.
The very fact she was lying there sleeping was diametrically opposed to logical argument. She was gone. Dead. She was someplace beyond his reach and he'd never see her again. He'd accepted that fact months earlier, but he refused to let her death go unavenged. He was angry that the war had ripped her away from him, and he took that anger out on everything that Dread owned. Jon destroyed manufacturing facilities, biomech repair labs, food processing plants, Dread Youth training areas, geothermal power plants, communications hubs, absolutely anything related to Dread in any way. He had no mercy for Dread, not anymore. Whatever had been left of Lyman Taggart had died, probably years earlier. For whatever reason, Jon had always felt he had an obligation to try to reach his dad's old friend, that maybe something of Lyman Taggart still survived, but when Jennifer died, all obligations to salvage Taggart died. Jon's obligation changed. Now, Jonathan Power destroyed everything, and he reveled silently in his victories.
He knew he worried Hawk. How many times over the last seven months had he tried to talk to Jon? Try to help him talk out his anger and his grief? But if he had, then yes, Jon would have been the better for it, but the war wouldn't have been. Losing Jennifer had opened Jon's eyes to a lot he'd tried to push away. No more. No more would he push away the anger, the despair, and the utter destruction of everything around him. Without her, he'd lost his hope. When he lost his hope, he lost his idealism. Without idealism, there was no reason to pull his punches. He wrecked everything Dreadish in sight.
But now, Jennifer was back, lying in the hospital bed, sleeping.
What had he become?
What would she think of him?
He leaned over and propped his elbows on the thin mattress. Over folded arms, he watched her sleep. In a very low voice, he asked, "I wonder what you would think about everything I've done since you've been gone. You might be disappointed in me. You said I taught you that all life was precious and valuable, then I go on a rampage to get even with Dread for taking you away from me. I don't know if I can explain what I've done. It's nothing to be proud of."
No response.
He reached out and carefully touched her cheek. It was warm, alive. She was alive. "I haven't been the same, Jennifer. I don't know what you'd call what I've done. I've just destroyed. I turned my back on everything I believed in, everything you said I taught you. I haven't been saving lives the way I used to. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's what I've done."
There was a small pained moan from her. Jon stopped talking and concentrated. Again, another small moan. "Jennifer?" He noticed the rapid eye movement and pressed the alert button to call for the doctor. Within moments, Kirkland rushed into the room with the three other members of the Power Team close behind.
Minutes passed as she performed a cursory examination, rechecking every monitor and vital sign. "Pulse, normal. Respiration, normal. Oxygen intake, normal. BP, normal... "She's coming around. Jennifer? Can you hear me?"
In moments, Jennifer's eyes opened slightly, and she blinked.
She blinked! Then her eyes closed again.
Doctor Kirkland pulled out a small penlight to check her pupils.
The team waited. If the hours they waited to hear about her condition two days earlier were interminable, the moments waiting for her to keep her eyes open between blinks were agonizingly long.
"How are you feeling, Jennifer?" she asked.
Jennifer nodded slightly as she closed her eyes again.
"You're going to be fine," Kirkland told her as Jennifer forced her eyes open again. "Everything's going to be all right. Do you remember what happened?"
Again, Jennifer nodded. "Attack," she whispered, her voice sounding almost raw. Again, she closed her eyes.
Kirkland looked up at the team and gave them a rather enigmatic smile. "I don't want to give her water just yet. I need to run some test to make sure she can ingest anything. Don't keep her awake too long. She's barely staying awake as it is. I'll be back in a few minutes to run those tests," she said in a low voice as she left the room.
Four very worried, confused men moved toward the hospital bed as quietly as they could.
"Jennifer?" Jon's voice was shaky.
She opened her eyes and blinked again, as if trying to clear her vision.
She looked at the team, then she looked around the room. She frowned, then glanced back at Jon. "What..." she coughed, "happened?" her voice was weak. "The power... source..."
"You got to the power source," Jon said quickly. "You stopped Blastarr."
Her frown deepened. She tried to take a deep breath, but she was having some difficulty. "I did? ... But... no, told you to... stay back. The explosion - "
"We're working on that," Jon told her. "We stayed back, but something happened. We're not really sure how it all worked out yet."
She was quiet for a minute before whispering, "I heard Mentor yelling." Her voice was raspy and tired.
"Yelling?" Jon prompted her. Whatever it was she thought she heard, whether it was just a misinterpretation of sounds or a dream, it didn't matter. He wanted to keep her talking for just a few moments longer. It felt unbelievable that he was hearing her voice again. He thought he would only have the memory of her telling him she loved him that fateful moment. To hear her voice again...
"He was yelling your name... and saying something... about Taggart. Only something was... wrong."
Scout leaned closer. "What was wrong?"
Her words became more breathy, as if she were having trouble forming them. "Voice sounded real. Not a computer voice." That was all she could say before falling asleep again.
They all stood there silently for a moment just watching her sleep. "It is her," Scout finally said, any disbelief that could have been in his voice gone completely. "It's her. How?"
Tank placed his hand on Scout's shoulder. "We'll figure out how later. How do you know for certain that it's her from what she said?"
Scout looked at them, looking worried as he seemed to debate telling them. Finally, he answered. "She's the only one who can tell the difference between Mentor's voice and a recording of Stuart Power's voice. She just said the voice sounded real, and she's the only one who could say something like that and it mean something."
"There's a difference?" Jon asked him. "Mentor's voice is a recording of Dad's voice."
Scout nodded. "She made the distinction not too long after she joined up with us. She listened to some of Stuart Power's recordings and talked to Mentor. When she asked me about it, I told her I couldn't hear a difference. She asked me not to say anything. I never knew why. Maybe she thought we might find it odd she could hear a distinction with a machine's voice, probably because she was raised by machines. She's the only one who would have ever made a comment like that."
Jon had never heard a real distinction other than Mentor's voice was heard over speakers and his dad's voice was real. Yet Jennifer heard something wrong in 'Mentor's' voice?
"Wait, she thinks it was a real voice?" Hawk paced a few steps in the small space. "Not Mentor's? Oh, my God -"
"Hawk?" Jon looked up at his friend. "What is it?"
Hawk leaned against the wall. "It's just the thought - it's impossible, but that storm, when it was a single storm, it stretched from what used to be the Jet Propulsion Laboratories all the way to what used to be the Los Alamos Labs, right?"
"Right," Tank answered.
"We found Jennifer alive at the old JPL site. There were no other indications that there was anyone else there. We didn't pick up any other life signs in the area, but there weren't any signals from communicators in that area."
"Okay, yeah, following you so far," Scout's voice sounded curious.
"And Jennifer said she heard Mentor yelling, calling Jon's name and saying something about Taggart, and we know that Mentor doesn't call Dread Taggart. He calls him Dread."
Jon, Tank and Scout glanced at each other, all completely unsure of where Hawk's thought processes were going.
"What if it wasn't her imagination or a dream? What if she did hear Mentor's voice, only it wasn't Mentor?"
Jon stood up straight. "Wait, are you thinking it was Dad?"
Scout took a deep breath, realizing what Hawk was saying. "If it was time travel, and whoever it was brought Jennifer forward in time, then why not Stuart?"
Jon shook his head. "That's impossible. Dad's dead."
"So was Jennifer," Hawk corrected him. "We saw her die. There was no doubt, but there she is. I'm not saying Stuart is alive. I'm just saying that we don't know what we're dealing with, and if Jennifer can be here, then why not Stuart if she heard his voice? What if she really did hear him?"
Tank couldn't agree. Yet. "But sensors showed that there were no other life signs other than ours where we found Jennifer."
"At the JPL site," Hawk reminded him. "That's at one end of the storm. What if there was something going on at the Los Alamos site? At the other end?"
A chance? Could it be? No one knew what to think or what to believe.
Hawk tried again. "Maybe we should check it out."
Leave? So soon? "Not now," Jon said. "She just woke up, but she needs us here until she's awake for good."
"Not arguing that point," Hawk quickly agreed. "I don't want to leave her alone here either."
"Tomorrow," Scout said definitively. "We'll check out Los Alamos tomorrow. She should be more awake by then, we can tell her what's happened, we can find out more about what she remembers and I can research the area before we go. Maybe pinpoint a smaller locale at the other end of the storm system."
There was no disagreement. The thought that someone who could be as important to the Resistance movement as Stuart Power was still alive was one nobody was going to dismiss.
And the fact that someone who was definitely important to them was alive and back - no, that was definite. Any if's, and's and maybe's would have to wait.
~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~
Friday
March 22nd, 2357
Jet Propulsion Laboratories in San Gabriel Valley, California
Ah, coffee.
That wonderfully caffeinated dark brew that brought calmness to chaos and alertness to the sleepy mind - it was Delphi Aderholdt's lifeblood. Some of her friends joked that she should hook an I.V. into her arm and let the coffee get into her that way, but she enjoyed the taste far too well.
So what if she had a bit of a coffee habit?
Besides, after being awake for over... how long? 38 hours? Longer than that? Even the most ardent of her detractors would vote that a cup of coffee was a good idea.
She lifted her cup to take another sip when a hand gently forced the cup back to the desk. She looked up and saw Elias Pitcairn standing there with an amused grin on his face. "What?"
"I'm cutting you off, Delphi. You've had way too many pots of coffee, no food and absolutely no sleep. I'm pulling rank on you."
Delphi laughed. "You can't pull rank on me. I run the lab."
"Then I'm committing mutiny and doing it as a personal favor to everyone who works here. No one wants to deal with you when you're completely decaffeinated, but absolutely no one wants to deal with you when you're exhausted and over-caffeinated. Go grab something to eat and then take a nap. Believe me, we'll all be the better for it."
Delphi released her cup and stood up. "Elias, are you saying I'm a difficult person?"
"Absolutely! Especially when your exhaustion-to-caffeine-level ratio is unbalanced," Elias joked. "Look, I've got every computer and every lab tech here and at Los Alamos working on putting every bit of information together. As soon as we have it, I'll get it to you, but you're not going to see one sentence if you don't get a few hours sleep. That's an order."
Dephi sighed in defeat and gave Elias a mock salute. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Will do, sir." She stood and relinquished her favorite coffee mug to her friend. "Few things -"
"Just one," Elias warned. "I'm not Aladdin's genie. I don't grant three wishes. You're only getting one."
Delphi was almost too tired to laugh, but she did smile. "Okay, one thing. Just tell me the status of where we are right now."
Pitcairn nodded. "Okay. Then you're going to bunk out for a few hours. Interference and turbulence on the timeline have settled down enough to let us find the general date in 2148 that Chase was sent to, sometime in July, and we've narrowed down the JPL test sites that Chase could have been sent to. The problem is that we can't find a way to pinpoint her exact location yet."
"She may have been moved not too long after she was transferred," Delphi concluded.
"Possibly. We're still looking into that. Right now, we're using other clues to try to find her. Those geology reports talk about some rainstorm over the southwest in early July of 2148 that filled up the waterways and washed out some areas. Big coincidence, huh? We're focusing on that time. We may have to expand the temporal search parameters somewhat, but that also decreases the degree of accuracy in our findings. We're having to check out each particular test site on each particular day, and it's taking a while to do. If she's been moved, then the odds are finding her are worse. Even Old Vegas wouldn't take bets on it."
Delphi sighed. "Any news on Stuart Power?"
"No news," Pitcairn said, his manner suddenly nonchalant. "Still looking for him too, and that's two things, not just one. Remember, I'm not a genie."
Delphi just shook her head and started to walk toward the door. "Okay, I get the picture. I'm heading for my bunk. See?" She turned slightly and pointed toward the door. "This is me, walking toward the door, heading for my bunk to sleep for a couple of hours and you'll be waking me up to tell me something else..."
"Hint taken," Elias chided her. "Sleep well. Tight, no bedbugs, whatever the old saying is."
Delphi hadn't even walked ten steps down the corridor when she heard one of the assistants yell, "Doctor Pitcairn! We found Stuart Power!"
~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~
Sunday
July 7th, 2148
Old Los Alamos Laboratories Location
2148.
The year was 2148.
How was that possible?
The last year he remembered was 2132. June 14th, 2132, to be exact.
He had been a prisoner in Volcania. Jon was there. Matt was coming. Taggart was utterly insane, he was fighting for his life…
Stuart Power had no idea how the year could be 2148. Where had he been? Why didn't he have any memories of sixteen years passing by? Where were Jon and Matt? What had Taggart done to the world and why couldn't he remember any of it happening?
All he really knew was that he had found himself three days ago lying on the edge of a dead forest near a small settlement somewhere in New Mexico while a vicious snow/sleet/rain storm raged around him. Once the storm passed, he had cautiously walked into the settlement, cold, shivering, soaking wet, and asked a perfect stranger a question that made him sound like an insane man. "Where am I?"
More conversations with other people, and he had found out that the year was 2148. July 4th, 2148. Had he been hit on the head and knocked unconscious? Did he have some type of amnesia? Was he stunned and left for dead? Was he drugged? He had no idea how he ended up where he did. Everyone was so concerned with the odd weather pattern that had pounded their settlement for the last week with storms coming every hour then stopping for an hour that a stranger in their midst didn't even raise an eyebrow.
So for three days, he stayed at the settlement, doing odd jobs for room and board, finding out what was going on in the world by listening and not asking too many questions that would seem strange to the settlers. There was a lot said about Dread and the biomechs, but he didn't involve himself in those conversations. He had the impression that that was something that would raise an eyebrow if he said he didn't know what they were talking about. On the morning of the 7th, he sat at the entrance of a tavern, pretending to be repairing his boots during a break in the rain. In actuality, his wrist communicator had been damaged in his fight with Taggart, and he spent a great deal of his time for the last three days scrounging the parts he needed to repair it. A wire here, a piece of metal there – and if he could get it to work, he could send out the emergency signal. Quietly, secretly, no one around him the wiser.
Jon would be a grown man now, 31 years old. Was Jon looking for him? That was one reason Stuart had remained in the settlement. If he was supposed to have been in the area whenever what happened to him happened, then wouldn't Jon look for him in the area when Stuart didn't show up to meet him or return to… wherever it was he was supposed to return to?
He never once considered that Jon wasn't alive. Rumors around the settlement of "Captain Power" and something about the Power pilot being alive told Stuart that his son was alive and well and still fighting. And a captain? Stuart was amused by that. When Jon was a boy, he loved to read nautical stories about sea captains. Maybe he took the title because of that? Matt, if he was alive, must be running a resistance team of his own. After all, he was a major, but why hadn't Stuart heard of "Major Masterson's soldiers?" If he could just get his memory back…
2148.
July 7th, 2148.
Stuart was very confused.
With his proverbial fingers crossed, he pressed the button on his communicator to send a signal out to Jon and Matt.
~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~
Friday
March 22nd, 2357
Cyclotron Laboratories
The report from JPL had ripped through the temporal community. Memos to each lab were sent out simultaneously - they'd found Stuart Power.
But July 4th, 2148?
That was when Stuart Power was sent to?
News from JPL had come fast as soon as one of their lab techs had located the exact location of Stuart Power's landing date. The personnel at the Cyclotron Laboratories had been obviously relieved at that news - the man who helped lead the Resistance and was pivotal to the destruction of the Taggarts during the Badderdays was alive and well. The timeline might still be on track.
William Custer sat down at his desk and stared at his monitor. How had they found Power? He'd been tracking every single moment in the new timeline to try to locate his exact temporal location, but there'd been no indication of his whereabouts. What did the scientists at JPL do differently? There were only a few ways to track someone temporally. Did one of the computer techs get lucky or did they have a new technique Custer wasn't aware of? He had to think. Stuart Power was alive, he was sent forward sixteen years from the moment he was supposed to have been killed, and he had been found. He couldn't initiate another time wave to go back to that moment and finish Power off because all experiments had been halted. That meant he couldn't power up the Cyclotron.
This was not good for his plan.
If only he had been able to locate Power and not one of the scientists at the temporal labs, he could have hidden Power in the paperwork and no one would be the wiser.
He wrote a quick note in his journal.
It's confirmed. Stuart Power is in 2148. I researched the state of the world during that year. The Machine Empire is decidedly in power at that time. My family's fortune may still be possible to claim even with Power's reappearance. Further study will be necessary. If Power is with the Resistance so many years later, it might be too late for his presence to change the path the timeline is on. More research is needed.
He slammed his journal shut, and said it in a disgusted voice, "Scite it all!"
He turned his attention toward his monitor and enhanced the clarity of the timeline observation. Something, somewhere, somewhen had to hide the key clue of getting his plan back on track.