Sunday

March 24th, 2357

Temporal Administrative Council

Delphi Aderholdt was a scientist, not a politician. The idea that their research was being used for an 'easy' political solution to a dire situation sickened her. All the reports she, Elias and Jillian had been able to generate, all the data they had collected, all the ideas they'd been bouncing off each other for hours had not given them a Plan B to offer the Council. All they had was a Plan B for Pitcairn to initiate, whatever it was, and more than likely, it was one the Council would frown on. Good thing the Council didn't know about it.

And, scite it all, she'd left her coffee cup on the table in the lobby of the Council Chambers. She really needed a caffeine fix at the moment.

Appearing before the Council never intimidated her. Pencil-pushing politicians who used others to do their dirty work instead of getting their fingerprints all over it - no, that wasn't a good thing to be thinking. The Council was a powerful group, and she had to be respectful no matter what else was happening or what thoughts were going through her head. Jillian Barrett sat beside her, her demeanor calm as if she we were waiting for a transport to travel cross-country.

How in the world could Jillian be so calm? Delphi felt jittery. She was jerking her leg up and down in response to her internal agitation. Maybe she could sneak out to the lobby and get her coffee?

"Stop that," Jillian whispered as she pointed to Delphi's leg. "I'll get you a triple-caff coffee after we get out of here. Just take a deep breath so we can get through this."

Administrator Collier banged the gavel on the desk and called the group to order. "Doctor Aderholdt, Doctor Barrett, thank you for coming here to brief us on such short notice. Let's skip the niceties and get right to the heart of the matter. Do we have the exact temporal coordinates of Corporal Chase?" Collier asked Aderholdt and Barrett.

Delphi sighed. "A resistance base with a hospital in Montana. We have some conflicting information because the hospital records didn't record exactly where she was, but we're fairly certain she was there on July 8th, 2148."

"Fairly certain?"

"Time doesn't sit still for scans," Delphi tried to joke.

"Ma'am," Barrett began to object.

"I am not happy about this decision myself," Collier explained. "Do we have the coordinates to send Corporal Chase to?"

Jillian and Delphi looked at each other. Elias had said to pick a place, any place to tell the Council. They found a few feasible locations and chose the first one that showed up on their monitors. "Yes, ma'am," Jillian answered. "We checked the historical records, economical reports, ecological and geographical surveys available to us. We have several viable locations according to the reports. The most logical and merciful choice is a small town in the middle of England in the year 2208, sixty years after her reappearance."

"Why send her to another country only sixty years later?" Collier asked, her tone perplexed. "Is that far enough into the future?"

Jillian cleared her throat. "That area was undergoing some geological, oceanographical, and atmospheric changes during that time. It created a situation in both the water and the air that made getting to or from England, Scotland and Wales almost impossible for several years. Even communications were down until 2221. The population was re-establishing itself in that area but was living a fairly primitive life while rebuilding their technologies. That gives Corporal Chase a chance to re-establish herself in a new life in a country and a time where her fields of expertise will prove to be a valuable commodity."

"What effect will she have on the timeline? If she marries, produces an offspring -"

"Nothing major," Jillian answered quickly. "At least, according to our research, she goes there and lives out her life there in some general obscurity. There, she would establish herself as something of an engineer, having some professional success and earning a comfortable living. There's not much yet that we can deduce about her personal life if moved to that time. All we can say at this moment is that there's nothing that registers on the timelines as being anything out of the ordinary."

"What of the Power Team during that time?"

Delphi looked at another printout. "Those that are alive will have retired from public life. Finding them is difficult for anyone, even those in the government. Even when communications are re-established between England and the rest of the world, the question may be moot." Did she have to go into detail? Being vague worked better, right?

The rest of the Council muttered among themselves, then Collier asked, "Do you foresee any problems this time, Doctors?"

Jillian sighed. It was time to divert the Council's attention. "If we can perform this correction in secret, then no faux Brophy Theorems will get proven this time," she said.

That got the Council's attention.

"What do you mean by that, Doctor?" Collier asked.

Jillian and Delphi looked at each other nervously and then Delphi handed the Council the information they had on William Custer.

"There are indications that the splittering of the rescue wave fractal sent back to obtain and move Stuart Power in 2132 was produced by an engineer named William Custer at the Cyclotron labs. We have no absolute proof -"

Collier held up her hand to silence the scientists. She looked through the file, page after page, sentence after sentence... "Regardless of this information which we will investigate ourselves, we still have a problem in 2148 that must be resolved. Doctor?"

Jillian continued. "Due to our inexperience and the temporal instability created by the original time wave that splittered into two fractals, we agree that we won't be able to send a person back in time to July 8th, 2148. We can, however, send a hologram back as per the Council's suggestion."

"Won't that alert Custer at the Cyclotron Laboratories?" Collier asked.

Delphi shook her head. "No ma'am. For this assignment, we won't have to fire up the Cyclotron at all. The Cyclotron has been used as a power source for the temporal beams, not only for us to establish a beam but also when we move mass from our point in time to another point in time."

Councilor Reutiman leaned forward. "Excuse me, if you need the Cyclotron to move mass from one point to another, then won't you need to fire it up to move Jennifer Chase to 2208?"

Jillian leaned forward, placed her elbows on the table and wove her fingers together. "No, sir. The mechanics of the operation have changed. Before, we needed the Cyclotron for a constant power source to fuel the time wave, to give it substance. Moving an object from our time to the past required a tangible beam. That's not necessarily the case now." She glanced at Delphi who nodded at her. "We haven't had time to write up a report on this yet. The experiment we were working on when all this happened was trying to send a time beam back to a specified temporal coordinate and move an object from one day to another without the Cyclotron by harnessing the resulting energy created by the time wave through electromagnetic induction. Basically, the beam fuels itself. We chose the year 2217. We needed to take readings from simultaneous experiments - one using the Cyclotron and the same experiment independent of it and using electromagnetic induction. It was during that experiment that a third beam was sent back to kill Stuart Power."

Every member of the Council sat there in utter shock, not moving, mouths agape in surprise.

"Ex... excuse me," Administrator Collier cleared her throat. "Are you telling this Council that you performed an unsanctioned and unapproved experiment and was able to send a time wave back in time successfully, move an object one day into the future - without the Cyclotron?"

Delphi nodded. "Yes, ma'am, we think we did."

"You think? Did you or did you not move an object in time?"

Both scientists shrugged. "We don't know yet, ma'am," Jillian explained. "We haven't had a chance to find out the results for that experiment. We do know that the beam hit the target of 2217, but that's all. However, given that we had no negative results come back on the monitors, we're speculating that the experiment worked. And there's no record of it, so it's quite likely Custer doesn't know about it."

"What about moving Chase?" Reutiman asked.

Jillian answered quickly. "It can be done under the sensors using electromagnetic induction and not the Cyclotron."

Again, the Council spoke amongst itself. Collier asked, "When can you begin this experiment?"

Delphi glanced over at Jillian. Both already knew the answer. "As soon as we can coordinate the temporal shifts at our respective labs, pinpoint the exact moment to take her, preprogram a timewave to move her... maybe by tomorrow morning at the earliest."

Collier steepled her fingers together and stared down at the two scientists. "See to it. And Doctors, please, no more unsanctioned experiments without our knowledge."

~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~

Monday

July 8th, 2148

Resistance Base Hospital

5:00 a.m.

Jon dozed off sometime around midnight. All the excitement and concern of the last few days finally caught up with him.

Jennifer woke up around midnight; the low hum of the regenerator kept disturbing her sleep. She watched silently as Jon lost the fight with his eyelids. In the dim light, he looked tired, older. There were worry lines around his eyes even in sleep. The touch of gray at his temples caught the light. What kind of stress had he been under? She wondered what she had missed out on all those months. What had the boys been through? What had happened? And Stuart Power was back. That was going to change everything.

She let her thoughts meander around until she fell asleep again. She couldn't fall into a deep sleep; she kept waking up every half hour or so. If she moved a certain way, she pulled sore muscles that woke her up. Then the regenerator's hum kept her from falling completely asleep.

At 5:00, she woke up again and saw Jon sitting there beside the bed watching her. He didn't look as tired after the short catnap. In fact, he was almost grinning.

"Sleep well?" she asked.

He nodded. "Maybe for the first time in a long time," he told her, his eyes not leaving hers. "How about you? How are you feeling?"

She moved slightly. "Not as sore as I was, and I was able to get a little sleep. I wish I was back in my own bunk though." She paused for a moment before remembering, "Well, if I had a bunk."

Jon smiled. "You've got something better than that. Our new base is a lot more comfortable than the old one, and the quarters have actual beds in them, not just bunks in cubby holes."

Real beds? "Those wouldn't have been easy to get. How did you establish a new base so quickly?" she wanted to know.

"We didn't. Dad had it built years ago at the same time he built the original base," he explained, his voice sounding a little happier. "Its existence and location were in a coded file in Mentor's databanks, and it couldn't be accessed until something happened to the Colorado base. You won't believe what we found there."

Jennifer waited for him to explain, but he didn't say anything else. He just had a knowing smile on his face. "What'd you find?"

Jon's smile became a very big grin. "That's a surprise for you. I think you'll like it."

"I wouldn't mind having a surprise I'll like," she mused. She noticed that he was gazing at her with a strange look in his eyes. "What is it?"

"It just doesn't seem real," he told her.

"Your dad?" she said as she sat up slightly, trying to ignore the muscle aches.

"Dad. And you. It's like we woke up one morning and someone gave us this huge gift."

And you. Right. She'd been gone months. She needed to remember that. Sometimes, it was just hard to view that in any logical way. "Did you get a chance to talk to him?"

Jon sat forward and propped his elbows on the mattress. "Little bit on the way back here from Los Alamos. We talked about the team mostly. Who was who and who did what. I honestly didn't know what to say to him. He was dead to us for sixteen years. What do you say to someone in a situation like that?"

Jennifer would have shrugged if it wouldn't have hurt. "He must want to know what the world's like now, what Dread's doing, all about you, everything."

"Hawk's telling him," Jon explained. "They went back to the jumpship last night to talk. I guess it's easier to talk about some classified things when the only person that can hear you is a portable version of Mentor in the computer."

That got Jennifer's attention. "You've modified the computers to hold Mentor's personality matrix?"

That made Jon smile. "Sort of. It was your idea, your design for a link to the main database. We were able to get the personality pattern on the jumpship. Scout worked out the rest of it some months ago. All we had to do was load the primary program and then add in a portable power unit to patch into the system to handle the power draws between the onboard systems and the main matrix. It acts more like a small version of the program and not the actual personality matrix itself."

They had put Mentor on the jumpship? That was a project she had considered for a while but couldn't get the power distribution balanced well enough. She had started to work on a redesign on the computer configuration and the power cells to handle the load and the overflow, but she hadn't had a chance to work on implementing it before Christmas. "How did he do it?"

"Uh," Jon seemed to get flustered over the words, "something about adding additional power cables, redirecting the flow of the portable power cell's energy to the on-board matrix specifically, and then having any power overflow go to the emergency booster cells for the shields. I think. I didn't quite follow the finer details on the plan. I can just tell you your idea worked great."

Her idea. Jennifer considered the fact that another 'something major' had changed in just the few months she had been gone. She had a sudden revelation. Although some major things had changed for her, the world had changed for Stuart Power. If she felt out of sorts, he must feel completely out of place. What were their places in the world they had woken up in?

Jon took her hand. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"What?"

"That look in your eyes. What's wrong?"

What was wrong, well, maybe it was time to talk about several things that were wrong.

"Your father must feel completely out of the loop."

Jon sighed. "He does. I don't know what to say or how to say it. When we landed at Los Alamos, Hawk met him first to make sure it was him. It's like he said, he's known him longer and he knows him better. I think Hawk will be the best one to help get him up to speed."

Jennifer chose her next words carefully. "He seems... not as uncomfortable as I'd imagine him to be."

Jon chuckled. "He's got a scientific mystery to work on. As long as he keeps his mind busy, he's usually fine."

Jennifer noticed something in his voice. It wasn't really the sound of someone trying to convince themselves of something. It was more like a hopeful statement. That meant it was a good time to change the subject. "You said you hadn't found a new pilot."

"Not quite. I said we didn't want a new pilot," he smiled. "Slight difference."

"But you thought I was dead. You would have needed another pilot. Hawk would have been pulling double duty otherwise."

Jon moved so he was sitting on the edge of the mattress. "It wouldn't have been right. The jumpship's yours. No one else could sit in that seat and have the ship do all those maneuvers the way she does them for you."

That brought a genuine smile to her face. "So I guess I still have a job?"

"Absolutely. No question about that."

Seven months, she still had a job, but what about Stuart after sixteen years? "It doesn't feel like seven months to me, but all of you have gone on fighting the war. If I feel this out of sorts, your father must feel even worse. I've got something to do, I know everybody, but he may not know what he's supposed to do now or how he fits in. He may not know how he's supposed to act around you."

~0~0~0~0~

Jon suddenly realized his mistake. Time had not passed for Jennifer or his dad. He knew that fact, but now he realized the fact. They hadn't been there, and the world had changed. Jon could kick himself.

Even he hadn't taken into account that he was different from the man both Jennifer and Stuart remembered. He was a teenager the last time he spoke to his dad, and that was sixteen years earlier. They used to talk all the time, and now, Stuart must have expected Jon to behave the same way, and he hadn't. In fact, he wasn't 'talking' to Stuart at all. He had grown accustomed to his father not being in his life, and all that had changed. Stuart might like to see some affirmation of the fact that his son was glad he was back, right?

Then there was Jennifer. He had always kept himself bottled up and stand-offish toward her for a long time even when his feelings had begun to grow stronger. She might have expected him to continue behaving like that, not sitting with her in her hospital room all hours of the day and night.

There are times when a good kick in the rear was warranted, Jon thought to himself.

"I guess I need to talk to my dad," he said. "Really talk to him."

"It might be a good idea," she agreed.

"I'll do that later. Right now, I would like to talk to you though," he said with a smile. "We never got to finish that last conversation Blastarr interrupted."

He saw her mouth gently lift into an almost-smile. "You said we'd both get to say the same things."

"Yeah, I did." He didn't really know what to say next. He could say 'I love you' just as she had, but he wanted to say it in a more unique way. He leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. He leaned back slightly so he could see her, see the smile reach her eyes. "Would that be a good starting point for that conversation?"

~0~0~0~0~

Monday

July 8th, 2148

Resistance Base Landing Pad

Before Dawn

Stuart and Matt talked for hours in the privacy of the jumpship. Stuart had listened to his friend tell the story of Jon, the team, how Lyman became Dread, what Dread had done, the systematic destruction of civilization, that fateful day at the Colorado base, all of it. He watched the recording of the last conversation between Jon and Jennifer, saw how losing her ripped his son's heart out. Then the story of how Jon had changed after losing Jennifer, how he became almost brutal in his tactics was unexpected. The fact that kind of unrestrained anger existed in his son surprised him.

"I didn't recognize him, Stuart," Matt explained from the co-pilot's seat. "I did everything I could to help him get through losing her, but he was so angry all the time. He took it out on Dread. He was relentless, but it's changed how this war's going. We're finally starting to win, but I've been afraid that we were going to lose Jon along the way. I'm hoping we'll see the old Jonathan Power now that we've got Jennifer back. To be honest, having you back should help too, but he'd dealt with your death."

From what he'd seen and heard, Stuart knew that Jennifer was the important one for the team to have back. They hadn't dealt with her loss and were still mourning her. She was still very much a part of their lives even though she'd been 'dead' for all those months. He had been 'dead' for sixteen years and was now the fifth wheel, brought back to a strange world he knew little about and where he didn't feel like he belonged.

"Are you all right, Doctor Power?" Mentor asked.

"I'm not sure," Stuart answered. Stuart sat in the pilot's seat, remembering how it was only a few days earlier Matt had been working on this ship, trying to get it in top form while Stuart explained about the newly built jump gates. "Everything's so different. Sixteen years have passed. My son's grown. Civilization has crumbled. The world has become a wasteland with the survivors scavenging for food and necessities. I saw signs of malnutrition and exposure at Los Alamos. Situations ripe for disease and widespread deprivation. It feels like I'm dreaming and woke up in a nightmare."

"If I may," Mentor continued, "although there are vast areas of devastation and destruction, there are what Captain Power calls small pockets of hope and home. People still survive in the wastelands. Many are still fighting."

"We're not finished yet, Stuart," Matt agreed. "Not by a long shot." Then Matt glanced up at Mentor, then back at Stuart. "Ya know, I just don't hear a difference in your voices. You two even look the same except Mentor seems taller."

Stuart laughed. "It seems to me that I only put Mentor online a few days ago. Neither one of us has aged very much, have we?"

"Clean living," Matt suggested humorously. "Can't do anything about your height though."

No matter what else had happened to the world, Matt's sense of humor was still there. There wasn't much to laugh or smile about though, not with the world in the state it was in, yet this team was able to joke and make each other happy. If they were a small island of hope and optimism in a sea of destruction, then, Stuart wondered, how bad would the nightmare have been if the Power Team hadn't existed? How hopeless would the world seem without these five individuals who had kept fighting for humanity?

"You've done some incredible work here," Stuart said. "You fought a war, kept Lyman from destroying everything, and you raised Jon."

Matt shook his head. "No, no, I didn't. He was almost grown -"

"He was fifteen," Stuart reminded. "You did a good job raising him."

Matt shook his head. "I was more like a favorite uncle who helped out a lot. I gave him advice, tried to get him to have some fun and not be so serious all the time, things like that."

"You did more than that," Stuart praised him. "The man he is today is due a great deal to your influence, not mine. I wasn't there for him." Stuart didn't want to think of his long absence at the moment. He wanted to know more about the team. "So how is it Jon is in charge when he's a captain and you're a major?"

Matt had to laugh, but Stuart didn't know what the joke was. "Jon had full access to the base. He's the one who figured out the suits. He had the name. Dread was after him but Jon just kept beating him. Jon could become a focal point for the Resistance that would far outweigh anything I could do. Besides, he needed someone with the same base authorizations to be his second-in-command and run the base. If something were to happen to him, I'm the only other person who knew enough about your work to carry it on. Basically, it made sense for Jon to be in charge of the team and me to be in charge of the base."

"But you're not at the Colorado base anymore."

"No, we've taken a much more frigid post," Matt joked.

"Frigid, right. Northstar," Stuart sighed. "That means it was empty for at least fifteen years?"

Matt nodded. "Yep. We got there and had to chisel some of the equipment out of the ice."

"Did the computers still work?"

"Pretty much," Matt explained. "Had to update some systems to work with the ones we're using now, but that was pretty easy. Changed out some of the hardware because some circuits had busted. We're having a little trouble with the ship. It doesn't like the cold. The lines freeze up and it has trouble staying in the air."

That sounded odd. "But I thought the sprintship was designed for all weather situations."

Matt laughed. "That's what the ZF company said it could do. I don't think there was much truth in that advertising. We're having to retrofit some of the systems to work in that kind of cold. It'll take some more time, but once Jennifer is up and around and can start working on it as well, repairs will go faster. That young lady knows more about ships instinctively than any of us could have ever learned, and she can redesign one to make it do things you never dreamed about. Just wait until you see what she did to this jumpship. And having two working ships with different capabilities is going to be a big ace up our sleeves eventually."

Something in the way Matt said 'two working ships' caught Stuart's attention. "Don't a lot of the Resistance groups have more than one ship?"

Matt frowned slightly, then seemed to remember that Stuart was still in catch-up mode. "Stuart, we're the only Resistance team that has a ship. The UTO has a small fleet of all kinds of ships, but they don't do a lot of fighting. A lot of the groups have ground transports, but we're the only ones who can get airborne."

No ships? Dread controlled the skies? No wonder he had such a big advantage in the wars. Air power was power. "I can't believe it," he sighed. "Four days ago, I was at Volcania fighting Lyman. Now... all these changes, everything's different. Jon's grown and is taking the lead against Lyman. Lyman's now Dread. The world as I knew it is gone. I don't know quite how to deal with it all, Matt."

Matt placed a hand on Stuart's shoulder. "One day at a time. I don't know why you're here and not dead. I don't know why someone brought you forward. Maybe there's some ultimate purpose in all this, who knows. But we've got both of you back, and I've got to tell you, that has to be a good thing when fighting Dread. It's got to give us more of an edge."

"I'm just a scientist, Matt."

Matt shook his head. "No. You're more than that. You're Stuart Power. You understand Overmind better than anyone else. You know Lyman Taggart better than anyone else, and even if Jon's convinced that Taggart's completely gone, there might be some small kernel of him buried in that machine somewhere. And when Dread finds out you're alive, he'll focus on you. But that's all small potatoes. No matter how much the Resistance can use your scientific skills or what you know personally, you've got a son in there that needs you."

Jon needed him? He didn't quite believe that. Jon was grown, but Matt knew Jon better than he did. He'd raised him. Stuart knew he could ask Matt anything. Matt, his friend, the person he trusted more than anyone. "Tell me how to talk to Jon. I've only spoken with him on the flight back, and the subjects were pretty general. I just don't know what to say."

Matt shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you two need to try to be friends first, then a father and son later. I do know that having you back is a good thing for him."

"He's a grown man now. He doesn't need his father," Stuart reasoned.

Matt looked at his chronometer. "He needs you more than you know. He needs your wisdom and your advice. There's still a fifteen year old kid inside him that blames himself for getting caught and being bait in a trap for you."

"It's not Jon's fault what happened that day. That's all on Taggart."

Matt shrugged. "He knows it's not his fault, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel a little guilty. Look, it's morning and you've got a long time to get to know Jon again. How about we head back in, check on Jennifer and scare up some breakfast?"