Sunday
July 7th, 2148
Resistance Hospital
The day after she woke up the first time, Jennifer was awake again and listening to the team as they explained the current situation to her. All the details, all the speculations, all the wonderment behind the fact that the impossible had happened.
As explanations went, the team had done a remarkably good job explaining their current situation to Jennifer. It took over an hour and everyone was almost apologizing for their lack of exact data as they stumbled over certain facts, but they managed to get the general gist of events conveyed in a somewhat stumbling, coherent form.
Jon had raised the head of her bed raised slightly so she could get a better view of them while they spoke. One by one, she listened to each of her friends and patiently waited until they finished speaking.
Then, they waited for her to speak.
"Okay, let me get something straight... it's July?" Jennifer asked. "2148? And I wasn't digitized and reintegrated?"
"We don't understand it either," Scout explained. "You were at the base when you blew it up. We thought you were dead. You have no idea how happy we are you aren't."
"And you think I was time traveled to... here and now?" she asked.
"I know, it's an absolutely insane thought, but it's where the clues are leading us." Scout told her.
She just shook her head. "Okay, run me through the actual data," she told them. "Show me the numbers."
Scout pulled out a reader and handed it to her, but she was still a little too weak to hold it. Jon held it for her. Scout keyed up the storm data he'd been working on. "It starts here. These storms started a week before we found you, and they came and went on a schedule."
"Storms don't do that," Jennifer said, her voice sounding somewhat fragile.
"Nope, but these did," Scout continued. "And they got stronger until they all become one massive storm, and there were tachyon particles in that one."
That got Jennifer's attention. "That's when you found me?"
"Exactly."
The others remained quiet. When Scout and Jennifer started to work out a technological problem, everyone knew to keep quiet and let them talk. Experience had taught them that the two of them had a rapport that allowed them to work out any problem as long as they weren't interrupted or knocked off their trains of thought. So everyone else just stayed out of the way until they came to a conclusion.
Scout pointed out a particular file on the reader. "Then the tachyons were gone once the big storm split up into individual storms. Still, the storms aren't moving."
"But they're decreasing in strength," Jennifer noticed.
"Week building up, maybe a week breaking up."
"And you found me... where?"
"Here, at the far end of the storms." Scout showed her the location at the San Gabriel Valley. "What used to be the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. The other end is at the -"
"Where the Los Alamos Labs used to be," Jennifer said. "That doesn't make sense," she began to look through files on the reader, her hands betraying her still weakened condition.
Hawk and Tank moved so they could see the reader as well. "What doesn't make sense?" Tank asked.
"That tachyons were in a storm, that the storms reached between two laboratories that were mentioned in a documentary talking about a scientist doing tachyon research, that I showed up during the middle of the tachyon storm system but you found me at the far end of them geographically at one of these labs," she muttered. "So if I was at one end, what might be at the other?"
Tank smiled. "She just asked in less than a few minutes what took us hours to wonder about."
Scout pointed his finger at her jokingly. "She's into tactics. She's usually thinking rings around us."
Jon cleared his voice. "Do you remember what you told us earlier about what you heard?"
Jennifer had to think for a moment. "A scream. Mentor's voice, only it didn't sound right."
Hawk took the reader and glanced at the readout of the other end of the storm. "You also said that you heard Mentor mention the name Taggart. Mentor doesn't do that, but Stuart used to."
So Stuart Power used to call him Taggart... Jennifer suddenly realized what they were saying. "You think I heard Stuart Power? You think that Stuart Power could be at the other end of the storm, and maybe he showed up there a few days ago like I did?" She smiled at them and then settled back into the bed. "So what are you still doing here?"
The four men glanced at each other, but before they could stumble over some over-protective explanation, Jennifer said, "I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere. And if there's someone to be found in Los Alamos, then you guys are wasting time sitting here watching me sleep."
Scout gave her a big hug. "Oh, she's all right. She's fine. She's back." He had a big grin on his face when he looked at Jon. "Captain, I've got a general area we can start looking in. I took the area we found Jennifer at and sort of flipped it. Maybe if we go about the same distance from the other end of the storm system, we might find something. Or someone."
Decision time. Jennifer saw the others watch Jon as he decided what to do.
Jon looked up at Hawk. "Matt, prep the ship. Scout, get all the data you've been working on loaded in the onboard computer. Let's see what else we can learn about the storms. Tank, just in case, check the archives for pass codes we used sixteen years ago. Frequencies too."
Scout took the reader, opened up all the files concerning the recent anomalies, and then handed it back to Jennifer. "Here. You get caught up on everything I've got so far. I'm sure we missed some things in our explanations. I'll get all the info I can at Los Alamos. If we put our heads together and tack it on to all this data I've been collecting, maybe we can figure out what's going on when we get back."
"Scout," Hawk scolded him, "this is her first day awake!"
"Yeah. She's been sleeping too long," Scout joked. "We don't have any time to waste."
Hawk tapped Scout on the shoulder. "You want to prove time travel, don't ya?"
Scout smirked. "Well, I didn't have anything better to do. Besides, we could get famous if we figure out how Jennifer got here." He looked directly at her. "What about you? Want to get written up in scientific journals some day when they're actually being written again?" he joked. "We'll share the byline."
Jennifer laughed. "Sure. Go. Doctor Kirkland said she had to run some more tests on me, so other than that, I won't be too busy for the next few days," she smiled back. "I'll see what else I can find in the files."
Scout gave her a wink and a nod and pushed the other two out of the room, muttering something about needing to increase sensor strength on the jumpship's computer. The three left Jennifer and Jon alone for the first time since she woke up.
Jennifer got a good look at Jon. His hair was longer than she'd ever seen him wear it. There was gray in his hair, new wrinkles - he looked a little older than did the last time she saw him, and for the first time in all the years she'd known him, Jennifer saw Jonathan Power nervous. He was almost twiddling his fingers, he was so nervous!
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Jon shrugged, shook his head -
"Jon?" she asked.
Finally, he reached out and took her hand. "You're here. You're alive. And I can't explain it."
"Jon -"
"It's been months since you were killed... or we thought you were killed," he said. "Now you're here and..."
Jon was almost stumbling over his words. Jennifer had never seen him behave like that before. She looked down at his hand and laced her fingers with his. "And?" she prompted him.
Jon's eyes looked haunted to Jennifer. There was a shadow there that almost scared her.
"I'm having a little trouble believing it," he told her.
Jennifer smiled slightly. "I'm having trouble believing any of it. To me, it seems like yesterday I was facing down Blastarr, and then I woke up here."
"And months for us while we thought you were dead," Jon repeated.
Months? But... oh. Jennifer suddenly saw the difference in perspective. To her, there was no difference. She had been in a fight, been hurt, knocked unconscious and woke up in a hospital. Nothing unusual in that for any of them. But for the guys, they had thought her dead, considered her gone and had continued on with their lives and the war without her. They'd worked around whatever hole her absence had made on the team and had created a new dynamic for themselves.
She had been dead.
They'd gone on without her, doing the job they chose to do without her.
She suddenly felt like an unneeded fifth wheel.
For her, nothing had changed. For them - "I guess things are a lot different now?" she whispered.
"Some," he said. "We've got a new base, Dread transferred into a biodread body, we've found some new allies. Things like that."
They were silent for a moment, then Jennifer asked a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. "Did you look for a new pilot?"
Jon tightened his grip on her hand and shook his head. "No. Didn't want a new person on the team, and," he gave her an amused grin, "the old jumpship barely tolerates it when Hawk flies her. I don't think she'd let anyone else at her controls. We would have had to use the brand new ship for a new pilot, and even if we did, we liked the ship we had. It had all the setups we preferred. Then there was no time to train anyone new even if we had wanted to bring in someone. It's been pretty busy out there."
That was a bit of fast-talking double-talk. He was nervous! He really didn't know what to say to her or how to say it. Jennifer overlooked it all at that moment. It would take time for him to get back to the comfortable status of their relationship. Yet, he hadn't looked for a new pilot? "But you thought I was dead," she reminded him.
Jon shrugged. "We did. I did. And you were gone. Every day, we missed you." He seemed to search for the right words. Then he looked her directly in the eyes and said, "I missed you."
She squeezed his hand in response.
A single ding sounded over the communicator. "Jon, we're ready to go," Hawk's voice told him.
"On my way," he answered. Then he looked back at Jennifer. "You know, we've got a talk to finish," he reminded her.
Talk? What was he... oh. That talk. "It's not -"
"It's important," Jon told her quietly. "I think we have a lot to talk about, and I think we both get to say the same things." He smiled.
Jennifer returned his smile. "We've got time," she said. "When you get back, I'll still be here."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
~0~0~0~0~
Power Jumpship
Scout hummed an old rock tune to himself as he continued to download all the data he'd researched about the storms into the onboard computer. The information created various computer recreations and statistical models. He typed the final bit of information in and waited for it to run through the programs.
The sound of happy humming was something no one had heard in months. It was a pleasant change.
"What are you humming?" Tank asked him.
"Crocodile Rock," he answered quickly. "Great beat, easy lyrics, and I'm feeling good enough to sing again. You know, of all the completely crazy things we've seen in our time and all the insane and suicidal stunts we've pulled off, this has to be the most unbelievable thing to happen to us."
"Definitely one for the record books," Tank agreed.
Hawk almost laughed, his soft chuckle echoing back from the pilot's seat. "I think we've opened up an entirely new record book. Jon, you talked to her alone. Is she really all right?"
Scout glanced over at Jon. For someone who normally took the most scattered information and could catalog it mentally and create battle tactics that worked in mere moments, Jonathan Power looked utterly confused.
"For her, it's only been a couple of days. She destroyed the biomechs, fought Blastarr and set off the power source. The next thing she's aware of, she's waking up at the hospital after major surgery. It's no more than if she had been injured and knocked unconscious, waking up a few hours later." He shrugged and shook his head. "She's fine."
"But we're not," Scout declared.
The other three stared at him for a moment. "Look, face it, we thought she was dead and went on with our lives because we had to. We had a war to fight. We've changed tactics, changed jobs, re-created old strategies for just the four of us again because it was just the four of us again. I mean, we couldn't go back to exactly the way we were before she joined the team because we're not the same four people anymore. We've changed."
"She hasn't," Hawk agreed. "She's still where we were in December but we're all months away from that place in our lives."
Jon cleared his voice. "So we reset everything to being the five of us again," he stated quietly. "All of us will have to. It's a new reality for us now."
Hawk turned slightly toward Jon. "Just out of curiosity, is resetting our idea of real life going to be possible if Stuart is alive?"
Jon didn't say anything. Hawk turned back toward the view port, Tank resumed monitoring for any signal that could be identified as sixteen-year-old technology, and Scout checked the data the computer was sorting through. The idea that Stuart Power was alive didn't seem as farfetched as it did when they first considered it. After all, Jennifer was alive and well and in the hospital. Why couldn't Stuart be brought to their time as well?
And if he was alive and well, then what?
Time travel. The idea wasn't as totally impossible as it seemed on the Fourth when they found Jennifer. Scout had to smile at the thought of it all. The idea that time travel existed had gone from the fictional to the impossible to the ludicrous to the possible, but when had it become probable? When had Scout actually believed it? Easy. When all other explanations could be disproven, of course.
To be honest, it was when Jennifer had awakened that first time and said something that only Scout knew. Jennifer had told them she had heard Mentor's voice, only it didn't sound right. The way she formed her words, the words she chose to use, how she said it - the two of them were responsible for Mentor's programming and his maintenance. They knew Mentor better than anyone else. They had listened to recordings that Stuart Power had made, and Scout could never tell the difference between Stuart and Mentor's voices. Jennifer could. She picked up on the nuances of a mechanized voice better than he could. She could always tell the difference. When she said that Mentor's voice sounded wrong...
She recognized the voice as Stuart's.
Until that moment, only Scout knew that Jennifer could tell the difference between the two voices, and he knew the moment she said what she did that she was really their Jennifer.
That also meant that for Stuart to be alive, for him to have escaped the explosion in Volcania, he would have had to have been physically removed - just like Jennifer must have been for her to be there with them.
Time travel wasn't possible, not for them, but Scout was having a hard time putting the various clues like lack of cellular growth, tachyons and strange storms together with any other conclusion. Take matter transference, for example. As far as they knew, the digitization system didn't allow Overmind, Soaron and Blastarr's digitizers to access each other's storage units. The hard drives and storage systems were independent of each other. They had to consciously upload data patterns to another's database. Blastarr couldn't have digitized Jennifer and sent her pattern to another hard drive so Soaron or Overmind could reintegrate her. Then there was the problem of the tachyons being in the storms when they were united and finding Jennifer at the height of the storm but physically at one end of it.
Tank was right. This was definitely one for the record books.
The idea that time travel had occurred was one thing. Understanding how it could have happened was another. And why? And who? Was there an ulterior reason behind everything or was it a mere fluke? Maybe an experiment? Good guys? Bad guys? Could even Dread himself been behind it all for some arcane purpose? But if he was behind it, there's no reason for him to bring back Jennifer or Stuart Power.
His train of thought was interrupted.
"I'm picking up an emergency signal," Tank told Jon. "Database confirms that it is Stuart Power's personal communicator code."
No one said anything. What could they say?
"Hawk?" Jon sounded unsure.
"Got the coordinates. I'm heading there," Hawk told him as he adjusted the ship's heading. "Maybe ten minutes out."
A thought occurred to Scout. "What's the range of that type of communicator?"
Hawk and Jon glanced at each other. "Not even one quarter of the distance our communicators can cover today," Jon told him. "Why?"
Scout began to rethink distances. "Los Alamos is hundreds of miles away from JPL," he muttered. "If Stuart is there and he's been trying to use his communicator to reach you since the 4th, we wouldn't have picked up the signal. We were too far away."
Jon moved over to Tank's console to look at the readout for the communicator pass code. "Scout, it almost sounds like you're believing the unbelievable."
"Clues are pointing to it, Captain. Sherlock Holmes said once you eliminate the impossible, whatever's left, however improbable, must be the truth. To be honest with you, I still feel like we just landed in a science fiction movie."
Tank focused the sensors on the pass code. "Science fiction may be right. Reconfirming pass code as Stuart Power's. I'm beginning to believe that time travel is more real than we thought."
"We'll find out soon. Los Alamos, New Mexico, dead ahead," Hawk announced as he flew the jump ship in for a landing. Smoothly, slowly, the ship touched down without so much as a bump.
Scout cleared his throat. "Has anyone else noticed that this ship just flew a lot better than usual?"
Hawk turned and glared at Scout. "Hey, I can fly. It's not my fault this ship wants Jennifer sitting in the pilot's seat. Now that the ship knows she's back, she's on her best behavior."
"I dunno," Scout continued. "Hawk's not our usual pilot; new ship may like him better if -"
"Don't go there," Jon suggested. "This is our primary ship. Let's just leave it at that for now."
Scout turned in his seat toward Jon. "Captain, do you really think that this is a bit of information we should keep from Jennifer -"
"For now, Scout," Jon repeated. "Just for now. We'll tell her about it all later. Right now, she has enough to deal with. But I did sort of hint at the news."
"Hint?"
Jon gave a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. "I'm not telling her about the new ship directly just yet. You know she'd love to see exactly what it can do, how fast it can fly, what she can do to it to make it fly better since it's still stuck in the maintenance garage and she's stuck in a hospital bed for a few more days. It'll wait until she's better. Besides, I'm not sure how she'd take the news of us even thinking of using the new ship. You know she loves this one. This is her jumpship."
Right. Even their fearless leader didn't broach the subject of not using the jumpship without some fear and trepidation, not to their pilot. Scout forced himself not to smile at that idea.
Hawk unstrapped the buckles and walked back to Tank's console. "Jon, I think I need to go first. See if it is Stuart."
"Matt -"
"I know he was your dad, but he was my friend. To be honest, I knew him better than you did. And longer. If he's not the real thing, I might be able to see that first."
Jon nodded. "All right. But everybody power on your suits. We just don't know ... well, we don't know. I'd rather be prepared."
"Take these," Scout said as he pulled two devices out of a storage bin and handed them to Hawk.
"What are these?" the older man asked.
"One's the DNA verifier. We've got the captain's DNA on file, so you can compare it to Stuart's if he's out there. The other checks out the communicator to see if it's the real thing. I used the on-board database to download any information we have on the communicators you used then. It should let you know if it's real or something recently built."
Hawk nodded. "Right. Proof."
Seeing the look on Hawk's face, Scout realized he hadn't truly considered the effect a possible meeting with Stuart Power could have. This wasn't just anyone. This was the scientist who helped create Overmind, who invented the power suits and the jumpgates. This was the man who was able to get two bases built right under Dread's nose, who designed Mentor. In a way, he was the architect of the Resistance. He was remembered as this larger-than-life individual, but beneath all the public relations spin, he was just a man with a vision to try to save the world. He was a husband and a father. There on the jumpship was his son and his friend - and if this wasn't Stuart, how would that affect Hawk and Jon? More than that, if it wasn't Stuart, then did that mean that the woman back at the med lab wasn't Jennifer?
And if she wasn't Jennifer, what would that do to Jon?
The team might not survive another round of grief with him.
~0~0~0~0~
Whittling.
Pick up a stick or piece of wood, take knife, place blade against wood and shave. Lift blade, repeat process. There was no real point to the activity, but it passed the time.
Stuart had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He'd never whittled before. During a break in the rainstorms that morning, he saw one of the men at the settlement pick up a piece of wood and begin carving a serving spoon. That seemed simple enough. Stuart picked up a large stick, pulled out his knife and began carving as he rested outside of the settlement.
He loved that knife. It was a Swiss Army knife he'd inherited from his father. It had so many uses, so many blades and gadgets that Stuart had learned long ago to never go anywhere without it. He'd forgotten he had it in his pocket for two days after he woke up near the settlement. He could have used it to help repair his communicator and maybe even repaired it faster. Oh, well, that's what they called hindsight.
After a while, he decided that he'd never have the skill to carve a spoon. Maybe he could make it look more like a tiny bowl? Or maybe he'd just admit defeat? He tossed the wood away from him and put his knife back in his pocket. Maybe he could find something else to pass the time until Matt or Jon made contact with him. Or until the next storm hit and forced him indoors again.
He considered his circumstances and not for the first time since he had woke up at the edge of the dead forest. The people of the settlement were nice enough. They weren't too trusting of strangers, but they didn't turn one away. They were willing to trade food and shelter for work. They were slow to smile or laugh, but they were quick with a helping hand. They worked hard in the nearby fields, but food was scarce, that was obvious. Deprivation, starvation - were they common afflictions everywhere? Stuart could see how hard life was for them and wondered if the rest of the country was in the same situation since he couldn't remember.
Yet the people he had met had this zest for life that their circumstances hadn't stamped out. Just the night before, they'd held a sweetheart's dance at the main hall. Stuart didn't feel like he should go since he was still a stranger, but he enjoyed the music from several buildings away where he had asked the local shopkeeper for a night's lodging in exchange for sweeping up and stacking boxes and barrels. He didn't recognize the music, but it was fast and lively. Then, that's when he saw true smiles and happy faces. So they could smile and laugh at times and not be slow about it. He was beginning to wonder if the phrase 'a time and place for everything' had taken on a more pertinent meaning than being just a cliché. They found moments of enjoyment in the life of hardship.
Was the rest of the country like that or was it just this settlement? Were some places experiencing more abundance or was everyone scrounging to survive like these settlers? Was life this hard everywhere? Was it harder?
A sound echoed down from the sky, interrupting his thoughts, and Stuart tried to track the source. He noticed a small silvery speck coming toward the settlement. As it drew closer, Stuart recognized it as a TF jumpship. It didn't look like the one he and Matt had worked on at the base. This one had been damaged and repaired more than once. Nothing looked like it was original equipment. Still, he couldn't take the chance that it wasn't another jumpship that Matt had got somehow. Maybe they were finally responding to his signal?
Effortlessly, the ship landed outside the settlement without so much as a bump or a whine. The engines were quieter than Stuart thought they should be. It must be a different ship or someone else's ship. It couldn't have been the one Matt was working on. From what he remembered, the engines were anything but quiet.
He sat where he was as others from the settlement began to approach the ship. There was no sign of fear from anyone, so Stuart assumed that the settlers knew the visitors. He couldn't see through the crowds who disembarked, so he waited to see what happened next.
At least it was a better way to pass the time than whittling.
The settlers crowded around a helmeted individual. Stuart couldn't see who it was, but whoever it was must have been a friend. Finally, the helmet turned toward him and the visor was pushed up -
"Oh, my God… Stuart?"
Stuart looked around as soon as he heard his name. Matt Masterson. Stuart stood as soon as he saw his friend push his way through the small crowd of people surrounding the ship, removing his helmet as he approached. He was dressed in a power suit! They'd found them. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. He would have started using the power suits long ago, but he just didn't remember, right? That brought up a question - should he be wearing one as well? He'd consider that later, but dressed in the power suit, Matt looked older, far older than Stuart had considered. "Matt, thank goodness. I was beginning to get worried. I woke up here three days ago, and I had no idea how I got here. I guessed that if you were to meet me, it'd be in this vicinity so I stayed here. The communicator wasn't working and I had to find a way to repair it… Matt?" The look of utter shock and surprise in Matt's eyes worried him. "What's wrong?"
Matt stared at him, shaking his head. "Wrong? Believe me, you wouldn't believe me." Matt's voice was shaky and unsure. "Uh, I need to see your communicator."
Without hesitation, Stuart removed the repaired communicator from his wrist and handed it to his friend. He watched as Matt withdrew some type of instrument from a pouch on his belt and analyze the communicator. It was some type of device that Stuart didn't recall seeing before. Then he pulled another device from his belt and handed it to Stuart. "Here. Just hold this for a second, okay?"
Stuart took what looked like a type of genetic verifier and watched the monitor as it indicated a result in a pattern he'd never seen before. Matt took the device back, read the results and then called out, "It's him! Jon!"
Jon? Finally! Stuart looked around… a man in a different style of power suit walked through the small crowd. He removed his helmet – it was Jon. A grown man, not the boy he remembered. Taller, frown lines from stress, a confident yet wary posture - "Jon?"
"Matt, are you sure it's him?" Jon asked.
Hawk nodded, the smile on his face practically beaming. "It's Stuart. There's no doubt. DNA proves it. Compared it to yours. It's him."
Jon approached, unable to believe his own eyes. "Dad?"
"Yes," Stuart answered, relieved, but why were they surprised? And why were they proving he was who he said he was? "Look, can someone tell me what happened? I don't know if I was injured or drugged or knocked out or what, but I don't remember how I got here –"
"What's the last thing you do remember?" Matt interrupted quickly.
"I was at Volcania fighting Taggart. There was an explosion, then it felt like I was being pulled out of there, there was a scream and a metallic voice and then I woke up here. I didn't know where here was. Then I spoke to some of the people here at the settlement and found out it's 2148. I don't remember the last sixteen years, and I don't know why I don't remember it." Stuart looked at his friend and his son; saw the shocked look they shared. What was wrong?
"A scream?" Jon asked. "What kind of scream?"
After all he'd told them, they were only curious about a scream? Stuart tried to remember the exact sound. "A painful scream. A woman's voice. She was yelling at someone to go to hell, I think."
Stuart saw both Jon and Matt share a surprised look.
"Jon," Matt whispered, "Jennifer said she heard what didn't quite sound like Mentor's voice calling the name Taggart. In that moment, they must have been connected somehow and heard each other?"
"Maybe they were moved together?" Jon suggested. "Whatever moved them grabbed them at the same time and they heard each other? Scout's gong to have a lot more information to add."
Stuart saw the two men share another odd look. "What's going on?"
Matt walked up to him and placed his hand on Stuart's shoulder. "Stuart, there's no easy way to tell you this. Just bear with us for a few moments and we'll try to explain what we know which isn't much. First, when you showed up here, what was the weather like?" Matt asked him.
"It was storming," Stuart answered. "It was cold, snowing, sleeting, lots of lightning, but then it stopped. Temperatures warmed up a bit between storms. The rains have continued off and on every hour for the last three days. They've been decreasing in intensity. The people here in the settlement said they've never seen rain behave like that. You can almost set a watch by them. The next storm will start in about ten minutes."
"Punctual storms," Matt seemed to be indicating the obvious. "Just like at JPL."
Jon tucked his helmet under his arm and approached his father. "Dad, we don't have a real explanation yet. Just a working theory. You probably won't believe it and we're still struggling to believe it." Jon took a deep breath. "Basically, we think you're not going to remember the last sixteen years because they didn't happen to you."
That was definitely not what Stuart was expecting to hear, and he did not like being confused. "What do you mean they didn't happen?" He looked at each man in front of him, his confusion apparent. "Was I digitized?"
"No," another man in an activated powersuit approached. "It's nowhere near that simple."
Matt motioned for Stuart to follow them back towards the ship as the crowd dispersed after the initial excitement of visitors had worn off, and they went back into the settlement. "Stuart, it's going to be a very long story. We'll tell you all of it soon. Right now, just meet the rest of the team."
Team? This was their team?
"This is Sergeant Robert Baker. We call him Scout. He's demolitions and computer systems."
Stuart shook Scout's hand, surprised by the look on his face. "What is it?" he asked.
"You look exactly like Mentor," Scout told him.
Okay, strange thing to say...
A very large man encased in a metal power suit approached from another direction.
"This is Lieutenant Michael Ellis, codename Tank. He was from Babylon 5. He's our infantry."
Stuart could definitely see the sense in having an individual such as Ellis as infantry. He shook the man's massive hand, sensing the calm strength within.
"You do look exactly like Mentor," Tank said to him. "Only I thought you'd be taller."
"Mentor makes you think that he'd be taller," Scout agreed. "We always have to look up at him."
"And when we get back to the Resistance hospital, you'll get to meet Corporal Jennifer Chase," Matt pointed out. "She's our pilot."
"Pilot?" Stuart asked. "You're not the pilot?"
Matt laughed. "Believe me, the jumpship wouldn't have it any other way."
Whatever was going on, Stuart had a lot to catch up on. "Okay, I'm pleased to meet everyone, I guess I'm glad there's a team, but shouldn't I already know you and I wasn't digitized?"
Matt placed a wary hand on Stuart's shoulder. "Prepare to believe the unbelievable. This is going to be confusing," he muttered more to himself than anyone else.
Scout showed Stuart the data readouts on the handheld monitor. "No, you weren't digitized. We've got a working theory that makes absolutely no sense, but we haven't figured out anything else yet. Sensors picked up a high rate of tachyon particles generated in the storm when you must have shown up here –"
"Tachyon particles?" Stuart asked in astonishment as he quickly assimilated the data. "I only know a few theories regarding tachyon particles. Are you suggesting I was moved through time? Time travel isn't possible."
Scout nodded. "That's what we thought but then we got Jennifer back the same way a few days ago."
Stuart glanced at Matt and raised an eyebrow.
Matt answered. "Seven months ago, Dread discovered the Colorado base. Our pilot, Jennifer Chase, was there alone when Dread's robots attacked. She was fatally wounded, we thought, when she manually triggered the power source to blow up the base and a biodread. There's no way she could have made it out. We watched her die over the vid-link. A few days ago, we found her unconscious at the old JPL site, right in the middle of a storm with the exact same wounds she had at the moment she blew up the base. Medical tests show that she hasn't aged or healed in all that time."
Stuart had no problem interpreting that explanation. "You're saying that it appears she was moved from that moment to the moment you found her." He thought through the data and tried to make sense of it. "And there were tachyons recorded when you found her."
"Not just there," Scout added. "We picked up tachyons throughout the entire storm. It started at JPL, ended here at where Los Alamos used to be."
Los Alamos? Stuart looked around. The area looked nothing like he remembered Los Alamos looked. "This is Los Alamos?"
"After Dread got through with it," Tank added. "He leveled all the buildings here when he attacked years ago. Destroyed everything."
Dread again. He'd been hearing so much about Dread in the three days he'd been at the settlement, how much he'd destroyed, how bleak things had gotten until recently when the Resistance was starting to gain ground in the war. Who was this Dread?
Stuart looked back at Jon. His teenage son was gone. Before him stood a grown man, one not much younger than himself. Some gray in his hair, a few wrinkles around the eyes, no, the teenager was gone. Matt, he looked older too. The world... even the devastation he'd seen was nothing compared to what lay before his eyes now. "Sixteen years?" he asked his son.
Jon nodded. "It's been a long time, Dad. It's been a long war."
Stuart took a deep breath. "I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do, don't I?"
"Catch up on the way back," Matt said. "I don't want to have to fly that ship through another storm so I'm going around it. I also want to get us all together again before we start putting our ducks in a row and figuring out if we really are in a science fiction story or if this is all real."