Chapter 26
Buck heard the buzzer, but decided to ignore it. However, the door opened anyway and Wilma walked in. She looked around the dark apartment until she noticed Buck lying on his couch. The door closed as she walked across the apartment. She picked up a chair from the kitchenette and carried it the several feet to the couch, and then sat down.
"How long are you going to lay here in the dark?"
He shrugged. "Until the pain goes away."
"But we don't even know if what we experienced was real," she argued. "It could have just been a causal effect from the experiment."
"Did you come here to cheer me up? Because it's not working."
"You did wreck the starfighter on purpose, didn't you?"
Buck remained silent for a long moment. "If what we went through was real, no one else should go through that."
"What if it wasn't real?"
"They still shouldn't go through that. Is that why you're here?"
She shook her head. "No, actually I came here with some information. You may or may not be interested, though."
"I'm not. No offense, Wilma, but please go away."
"Hey, I went through the same thing you did."
Buck sighed deeply. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Wilma. What's your information?"
She opened the envelope she had carried with her. "It's about the Gaussians."
"I thought you said they were very secretive."
"They are, but you know me, Buck! I can be very persuasive when I need to be. Anyway, I got an account of some of their history. Approximately five hundred years ago, the planet of Gauss underwent some political upheaval."
Buck sat up slowly. "Political upheaval?"
She nodded. "A massive civil war. There were two factions involved."
"There usually are with civil wars," Buck said dryly.
"On the one side was a group of military leaders. Guess who their leader was?"
"Minister Turon," he replied sarcastically.
"Exactly!"
Buck's eyes widened. "Are you serious?"
"Minister Turon, by all accounts, was a military genius who used the Gaussian resources to expand their territories eight hundred percent. He conquered at least five worlds, which they still rule over to this day."
"Conquered," he said sarcastically.
She paused. "Yeah, I know. But as the story goes, he would be present at all their crucial and deciding battles. He was feared and respected by all. But on his last flight of conquest, he died in battle."
"He died in battle?"
"I know, it gets better. That's just the official record. I dug a little deeper. In reality, he was supposedly poisoned by a slave girl from another planet. On the same day, his deputy minister Kentara was found murdered and hanging from his bathroom ceiling. And according to this, Turon's main ally was a captain named Arnogg. He was also found murdered the next day, stabbed in the heart. When the ship returned to Gauss, a massive civil war broke out. They fought for eight years. When the fighting ended, all the military leaders who had served under Minister Turon were executed. Guess who became President."
Buck shook his head. "Vaahn?"
"You're good at this. And his vice-president was a war hero named Aaris."
Buck smiled, the first time in days. "Aaris, huh? Good for him. So he did get a chance to become a warrior."
"You knew him?"
"He was the one who helped me disable the sensors. That's assuming, of course, that what we experienced was real and not just fantasy."
Wilma closed her file. "There is one way to find out."
"And how's that? Take another ride in the ol' time machine?" he asked sarcastically.
She shook her head. "Nope. If we were really there in 1987, there is one piece of evidence that would still be in existence, and it would be very well preserved."
"If it was on Earth, it wouldn't be very well preserved," Buck stated.
"It wasn't on the Earth."
Buck suddenly figured out what she was talking about. "The scout ship," he whispered.
She smiled broadly. "Do you know what this means?"
He stood rapidly. "We're going to the moon."
Slowly the starfighter approached the moon, much slower than it normally would. Wilma didn't question the speed of the fighter, however. Deep down inside she wasn't sure if she wanted to know what lay in the crater. Time seemed to stop as the starfighter inched over the lip of the crater. Neither pilot nor copilot realized they were holding their breath until they both gasped at the same time. Buck didn't have to point. He knew Wilma could see it too. Directly in the center of the crater lay a battle-worn Gaussian Scout Ship.
Buck turned to Wilma. "It looks like Vaahn was wrong about one thing."
"How so?"
Buck sighed. "He said we would change the future of one world. We ended up changing the future of two."
The cockpit fell into silence.
THE END