Sunday

July 7th, 2148

Resistance Hospital

"Intel's looking better than we thought," Scout announced as they regrouped at the jumpship. "We may not be needed for a while yet. Everyone's taking advantage of the weather to cover their tracks while they move to new camps or settle in at bases. Rain's filling up water sources too."

Tank handed Jon a reader with new information. "The biomechs are staying clear of the storm path. One report states that the clickers aren't able to communicate or move easily in the storms. That's allowing more people to move to safer places faster."

"Alternating temperatures as well," Jon added. "They can't operate too well in it. All this bad weather is causing other difficulties with the terrain. They just want us on stand-by, so that might mean we've got a few days off if they don't need us. How's the jumpship holding up?"

Matt patted the hull. "She's doing fine. Scout's ordered restock from the quartermaster so we'll back up to full strength after that. Also, Jennifer and I had improved the insulation on the ship late last year before... well, before. These storms have been a great test run for it."

"So the ship handles better than she did in such storms, you just don't like flying through them," Jon concluded.

"Yep. I'll be in trouble when Jennifer gets to take a good luck at the jumpship and see all the repairs we've had to do, so I'm not adding a single dent to it now that we've got her back."

"Dents?" Scout smiled and shook his head. "Hawk, I'd hate to be in your shoes when she sees that dent in the underhull you haven't repaired yet."

"I thought you repaired that," Tank interrupted quickly.

"Not yet. And that wasn't my fault. That was a cannon shot from that attack we made on the biomech repair facility. It didn't breach containment, and it didn't jar the plating loose. And just to make sure she's got other things on her mind than inspecting the jumpship any time soon, I think it's a good idea if Jon tells her that she's going to meet the guy who created Mentor," Matt suggested.

"Was that an accomplishment?" Stuart asked.

"She and Mentor talk a lot," Tank explained. "And even if he doesn't admit it, I think Jennifer's his favorite human."

"But Mentor's just a computer interface," Stuart protested.

"Oh, no," Scout disagreed. "Mentor is much more than that. He's been the sixth member of our team for years. He's a great sounding board."

Matt put his hand on Jon's shoulder. "Go. Tell our girl we're back. We'll follow you in a few minutes."

Jon gave him a smile and walked quickly toward the hospital.

Matt glanced over at Stuart. "I think it's a good idea to give them a few minutes alone."

~0~0~0~0~

Evening had quickly given way to nighttime. As they walked toward the hospital area, Stuart looked up at the sky and didn't see a single star. Even the moon was hiding behind the polluted clouds. "Matt, how long has it been like this?"

Matt looked up. "Years. There's an entire generation that has no idea what a night sky is supposed to look like."

Stuart looked at his friend and raised an eyebrow.

"Jennifer had never seen a star outside of pictures. Dread kept a lot of truth from the Youth."

Stuart and Matt lagged behind as Tank and Scout hurried through the corridor and disappeared through a set of double doors. Stuart was amused at the sudden change in Jon's demeanor when Matt suggested that Jon go first and tell Jennifer about Stuart and that she was about to be introduced to Mentor's originator. His eyes lit up and the dark, worried behavior suddenly went away. Stuart wouldn't call it 'giddy,' but it could definitely be dropped into the 'happy' category.

"I can't wait to hear this long story about them," Stuart joked. "He has obvious feelings for her. What's she like?"

Matt slowed down. "Smart, inquisitive, wants to know everything Dread kept from her. She's selfless and brave. She's not like anyone I've ever met before. All those years I was in the military, all those people I met over the years, and this young lady is the one who made me see the world for what it was and what it needed to be. We saw her struggle just to understand something as simple as humor, and she did until she understood it. She showed us everything Dread destroyed in a very personal way."

Matt paused, and then said, "No, I have met one other person who's selfless and brave and has an idealism that won't quit. Maybe that's why Jennifer and Jon are perfect for each other. They're a lot alike. Oh, and one other thing - you're probably going to witness a scientific brainstorming session. Jennifer's been looking over data about the weather and the tachyons and everything going on. Scout's been collecting more data. They'll start comparing notes and supposing answers. Sometimes, all you can do is sit back and hang on while they do the talking."

"A brainstorming session?" Stuart asked.

Matt laughed. "Trust me. It's something you have to experience."

They kept walking until they reached the hospital room. Matt walked in, and Stuart heard a happy, "Hiya, kiddo. How ya feeling?" With a great deal of curiosity, he followed his friend inside.

The young lady lying in the bed looked like she'd gone a few rounds with biomechs and had come out the victor. What intrigued him was the expression on Jon's face as he looked at her and held her hand, speaking to her in a low voice. That long story Matt promised to tell him later about those two should be interesting.

"Jennifer, this is my father, Stuart Power," Jon nodded his head toward Stuart. "Dad, this is Jennifer Chase."

Matt nudged Stuart further into the room, and then Stuart approached the bed with his hand outstretched. He was surprised at the strength in Jennifer's hand when she took his. She was recovering from her ordeal rather well.

"You look just like Mentor," she said in astonishment. "Only you're shorter than I thought you'd be."

Stuart chuckled. "I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"But you don't sound like him," she added. "Your voice isn't quite as calm as his."

Stuart had to smile. "Calm? Ah, yes. You're right. The computer interface program I used had a calmer intonation when speaking. I never could quite get a full range of emotions programmed in." They were all so used to Mentor to speak to that having him there talking to them must be like a novelty. "So I understand you and I are fellow time travelers."

"So I've just been told," she said with a smile. "You jumped from 2132 to 2148?"

Stuart nodded. "Apparently. It must seem as strange to me as moving from December of one year to July of the next does to you. I find I'm still at a loss of words for everything that has happened. Yet, here we are and I have no other logical explanation at this moment to explain it."

Stuart released her hand and then sat down next to the bed. He felt completely out of sorts and out of place. What did he say to people who had fought and survived Lyman's warped view of the world when he'd been out of the loop for years? Maybe Jennifer felt the same way?

"It all sounds like it came out of a storybook," Jennifer agreed. She was studying him intently. Stuart suddenly felt like he was under a looking glass. "Your voice really is different from Mentor's."

"It is?" Strange... but he had patterned Mentor after him.

"She's the only one who can tell the difference," Scout explained as he sat down in a chair next to her. "How are you feeling?"

"Everything hurts, but I'll live. Did you find out anything new?"

"You have no idea," Scout became suddenly serious. "Did you know that Hawk and Stuart used to argue over who could make the best s'mores?"

Hawk chortled. "My way was right."

"No, it wasn't," Stuart argued while trying to suppress a smile. "You always burned the marshmallows."

"Toasted the marshmallows," Hawk pointed out. "Not burned."

"Matt, they caught fire because you held them too close to the flames," Stuart reminded him.

Stuart saw Jennifer glance over at Jon and both tried not to laugh. Then the rest of the team suppressed smiles. Stuart realized this was something that they did that was familiar to them - they made a little joke. Perhaps to lessen the tension before dealing with a serious matter?

Then the mood changed subtly and suddenly. Stuart recognized it. Jokes were being put aside.

As Scout pulled a reader out of his pocket, Tank said, "Scout got a lot more information at Los Alamos. He's been looking at it the entire way back trying to make sense of some of it."

"I looked over some of the files you left me," she told him. "It's all strange."

"It's absolutely like nothing recorded in the database. I've been checking historical and scientific archives all day. We're in totally new territory," Scout told her. "Everything I got at Los Alamos is checking out the way we talked about. A series of storms grew in strength for a week, raining for an hour then stopping for an hour, then the storms united and the tachyon particles were there, now the storms have split up again, it's raining for an hour, stopping for an hour, and get this - they're decreasing in strength. If it continues to track like this -"

"The storms will be over in just three more days," Jennifer finished for him.

Jon joined in the conversation. "The weather has driven the biomechs back temporarily and refugees are able to move to some of the safer areas. Water cisterns are filling up due to the rains. Lakes are filling up again. Ponds, streams, even the rivers are running. The administrator told me that whatever's causing this isn't just affecting the weather. It's affecting the geology and the ecology of the area the storms cover. Mudslides are one problem. Washed out areas are another. Underground water sources are moving more quickly and burrowing out sinkholes that are collapsing. Then there's all the damage the high winds and tornadoes have caused."

Tank pulled Scout's reader toward him slightly so he could see the screen better. "But how can storms be stable like that and not move?"

Scout shook his head and shrugged. "No idea, big guy. Maybe it's because it's not a natural storm?"

Stuart felt like the fifth wheel in the conversation. Watching them, he guessed that this group knew how to talk to each other, each giving their own opinion and when. They worked together well. That was a benefit for a team. He could only sit there, but something about an unnatural storm started him thinking. "Maybe because it's not?" he suggested.

Five people looked at him.

"What are you thinking, Stuart?" Matt asked him.

"I'm thinking Einstein."

Matt crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "E=MC2 Einstein?"

"Same one," Stuart agreed. "If you consider the theory that the closer you get to the speed of light, the more time appears to slow down -"

"Perception is relative," Jon interrupted.

Stuart smiled and nodded. That was a scientific process he had taught Jon years ago when he was a boy. Sometimes, what you see isn't exactly what it is. "Exactly. For instance, light bends as it passes by an astronomical body that exerts a gravitational force on it. We're not seeing light from a star coming to us in a straight line even though we perceive light to always travel in a straight line."

Scout nodded his head. "You're thinking we're looking at these storms in a straightforward way and that might not be right."

"It's a possibility," Stuart explained. "To us, storms are random, natural events. These are a series of storms we perceive raging on a schedule, but what if these storms are not just the result of time travel - if, indeed, we were moved through time?"

"Time travel needs water?" Scout joked.

"Not quite," Stuart surmised. "I haven't had a chance to look over the data, but perhaps we should assume that it takes a great deal of power to move someone through time. Did that energy come from one source or was it generated from multiple sources? Is it used in other ways during the process? Could storms be the result of using so much energy? Could it be -"

"Do you think the storms could be a type of power source?" Tank suggested.

Stuart shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have enough data. I do know that storms occurring on a set schedule is not natural. Then again, moving through time isn't natural either. I think we could presumably link the two events in some way for the sake of speculation."

Scout began researching the data on his reader. "Energy, power... these were electrical storms in places. Wind, thunder, lightning... we need to make some kind of sense out of this."

Jennifer placed the reader in her lap. "There were tachyons in the main storm, none in the others... so let's assume that whatever energy that was used to move us through time peaked during that storm. What kind of energy could we be talking about?"

"It'd have to be stable," Jon suggested. "Nothing that could be interrupted or you could have been lost while you were being moved through time. So maybe a direct power source? A generator? Geothermals?"

Scout shook his head. "I don't know, Captain. With these storms involved - wait, storms. What if electromagnetic induction was involved?"

Matt stood straight. "What's that exactly?"

"Turning kinetic energy, the energy of motion, into electricity," Scout answered. "In this case, the electricity, the end results, could be lightning; lightning could be used as power... something else is moving and making the lightning?"

Scout grew silent as he did some more research. Stuart noticed that Jennifer was also typing into the reader but Jon was holding the reader still for her. She was moving slowly, hinting that she was growing tired.

Jennifer tried to sit up slightly to get a better view of the reader. "Maybe it's not just a single power source that moves something through time," she muttered. "I discovered that the molecules in the storm moved in the same direction. I was thinking that maybe we could relate the movement of tachyons to a magnet. The molecules move in the same direction. Assuming that tachyons are moving in that same direction, it gives us a path to follow. What if one end of the power source, wherever and whenever the place was that moved us, had a positive charge and the other end, basically July 4th, 2148, had a negative charge?"

Scout started typing in his reader. He saw exactly where Jennifer was going with the theory. "Following the path. Gotcha. What's the rule of thumb? Lightning going from the ground to the sky is negatively charged; lighting going from the sky to the ground is positively charged? And tachyons are excited subatomic particles! Faster-than-light subatomic particles! We can only track a tachyon's path by looking at what's missing the way Dillard did... excited particles could increase the vibration of molecules, theoretically, that could be harnessed as kinetic energy to create electricity."

"Electricity which shows up in the form of lightning in a storm," Jennifer added.

Scout stood up, both he and Jennifer had smiles on their faces. "Lightning storms can put electricity in the atmosphere. If the tachyons need an electrical ... uh... current ... to travel through, it might need a lot of electricity in the air. It might have to build up over time."

"Get strong enough to support the amount of tachyons necessary? Maybe?" Jennifer suggested.

Stuart was beginning to like these young scientific minds more and more. Theorizing random ideas, trying to pose various scenarios to little information and scattered data were all well-grounded scientific exercises to bring up new questions and possibly toss out bad ideas. "An alternating power supply rather than a direct power supply," he suggested.

"Alternating current would be stable," Jon added into the conversation. "But building it up to support a massive amount of subatomic particles -"

"The tempo," Jennifer suddenly said.

"Tempo?" Scout asked.

"I compared the path the tachyons took to a magnet, but the storms have a precise tempo to them. Sort of like a schedule or a heartbeat or a pulse. I even thought about a metronome but dismissed the idea." Her voice trailed off and Stuart could easily see that she was processing information faster than he was.

Scout sat back down and leaned his elbows on his knees. "Come on, Jennifer. Let's play a game of 'what if.' You've got something in mind. What is it?"

"What if the storms are an unexpected result of time travel?" She thought for a moment. "What if we were trying to move something through time? We find a moment in time we want to change and then send some kind of beam or energy pulse or whatever to that particular moment. We do nothing else other than send that beam to that point. As the beam moves through time, somehow, there is a weather disturbance at the destination. Maybe storms occurring on an hourly schedule only happened with this one. Maybe another experiment would have storms happening every twelve hours instead. It could be connected to the geology and ecology of the area."

"Part of the natural processes of some kind of time travel method?" Scout questioned.

Jennifer shrugged. "Why not? We're just speculating anyway. Let's assume that storms are part of the end process but they're necessary for any of it to work. Or maybe when enough electricity is in the atmosphere, the beam can actually connect with the point in time it's heading for. The tachyons travel along the electrical current -"

"Moving the molecules out of their way just like in Dillard's experiments," Scout said out loud. "The molecules reform as rain maybe? Sometimes?"

"Why not?"

"But there's some big flaws in that theory," Jennifer said in the middle of a yawn. "It wasn't storming when I blew up the base."

Stuart said, "Or at Volcania when I was there."

"Those weren't destinations," Jon theorized. "You were removed from those points and sent to 2148. That was the destination; this was where the storms were."

"And that's where the tachyons traveled to," Scout added.

"This goes way beyond basic science," Matt muttered. "Never my strong suit. Are you getting any of this, Stuart?"

Stuart nodded, sort of. "This is all new science to me too, Matt. I have no idea. We're just theorizing, but it does match with some of the facts."

Scout blew out a tired breath. "As theories go, it doesn't stink. It could hold water, figuratively speaking, but we really have no idea what we're talking about."

Matt stretched. Stuart could hear his joints popping. It was another reminder that his friend had gotten older and he hadn't. "And we don't know why it happened," Matt tossed into the mix.

"Or when or how or who," Jon added. "Or what else they have in mind."

Matt, the practical member of the group, asked, "So if we were to track a storm that comes and goes on a particular schedule, at some point, there'd be a united storm with tachyons streaming through it. Then the schedule starts up again with storms coming and going. We could find someone being moved through time if they show up in the middle of the storm."

"But only if they're being moved to your time and not from it," Jon muttered.

"We weren't in the middle," Jennifer said in the middle of a yawn. "I was at one end, Stuart at the other. How does that fit into the discussion?"

"Maybe it doesn't," Tank suggested. "Maybe it was just a coincidence?"

Stuart listened as the conversation wound down. He honestly didn't know why this conversation had taken place, but then it dawned on him. They weren't just interested in the fact 'something' had happened, they weren't just interested in how it happened. They were convincing themselves that it had happened. They needed to make what happened scientifically real for them. They had to make it tangible. There was a scientific explanation of some sort out there. Even with the two time travelers there in front of them, they were having a hard time believing that they wouldn't wake up the next morning and find it had all been a dream.

Speaking of that - "Gentlemen, I don't know about you, but that young lady is calling it a night." Stuart pointed out the fact that Jennifer was sound asleep.

"We will too," Matt agreed. "Stuart, you and I can bunk in the jumpship. I can catch you up on a few things. Guys?"

Scout shut off his reader and tucked it back in its pouch on his belt. "Tank and I will take watch tonight."

"Watch?" Stuart asked them.

Matt leaned over and said in a low voice, "We don't want a lot of people rushing in here to see Jennifer. Some rumors say she was captured by Dread and we rescued her but she did destroy Blastarr. That has made her a lot of fans lately. So it might be a good idea if we all take turns on watch."

Scout and Tank walked out of the hospital room, Matt and Stuart following. Stuart turned at the last moment and saw Jon sit back in the chair beside the bed and start to study the information on the reader.

"He'll stay on watch in here," Matt whispered. "He needs to be here. If she wakes up, they have a lot to talk about, and we don't need to be in earshot. Come on. I've got a couple of long stories to tell you."