wE'RE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK

Of all things, why did my schedule have to get the chapters posted on the days after The End Part one and two, and Edd Day itself (my time)?

Oh dear.

No song for this chapter this time. But I'm willing for suggestions - tell me in a review on what song it should have!

I only own Cora, Emily, Edward, Laurie, Lauren (the latter two are mentioned) and the story. Everything else belongs to the respective owners.

RECORDING STARTED.

Date: CLASSIFIED, Month: CLASSIFIED, 2104.

27, Durdum Lane's basement, London, UK.

Voice1: Hello? Is this thing working? Testing, one two three…

RECORDING STOPPED.

RECORDING STARTED.

Voice1: Perfect. It's working. Okay, (deep breath) I got this. My name is Coraline Gould. I'm 19 years old, and I'm talking to myself on an old tape recorder that I found in Matt's junk. (she laughs a little) Okay, that was lame. How do I…

RECORDING STOPPED.

RECORDING DELETED.

RECORDING STARTED.

Cora: Okay, last time failed miserably, (deep breath) but I can do this. My name is Coraline Gould, but I'm called Cora by my peers and family and I'm 19 years old. Ever since the year 2030, my family line has been one of the main suppliers of cola-smuggling to the world. I would go on, but this isn't what the case of this recording is about. It's about the secrets that my father, Edward Gould IV, has kept from us for about…one and a half decades, approximately.

(Silence except for Cora's breathing is heard. There are shuffling sounds for five seconds before she speaks again)

Cora: What Edward has hidden from all of us is that he, and my Uncles Thomas Ridgwell IV, Matthew Hargraves IV, Thorfrid Larsson IV and my good friend's Emily's dad Johannes Brock had once banded together to change the timeline so that Cola wouldn't be banned. The plan involved faking my ancestors' and Emily's ancestors' deaths and hiding them away in a cryogenic-virtual-reality hybrid machines that are called-I mean were called Cryo-Virts. Now, just about ten minutes ago or something, I confronted two of my uncles and my dad over Eagle's Cross, but they wouldn't, ah…co-operate peacefully. So Em and I have tied up my dad and uncles and we're going to inject them with truth serum so that when they wake up, they'll have to confess why and how Eagle's Cross came to be.

(More shuffling noises)

Cora: Em, you ready?

Emily: Syringe loaded and ready to go. Who's first?

Cora: Edward. He's probably got the most information.

Emily: Okay, his sleeves are up and I'm jabbing it in in three, two, one...there! It's all in, now to see if I can pull-

(There is a loud masculine yell that fritzes up the recording a bit, echoing through the room that they are in)

Emily: …oops. That was horribly done. At least he's awake and the whole thing got in though.

Edward: (Woozily, as if about to throw up) No…ugh…kidding. Where are we?

Cora: (Sternly) Basement, Edward.

Edward: Cora? Don't talk to me like that, I'm your father.

Cora: A father who didn't give a single shi-

Edward: (Guiltily) I know. I know. (Suddenly suspicious) Wait, why did I say it like that? What did you two do to me?!

Emily: Mr G, I don't like saying or doing any of this and I'm pretty sure Cora doesn't either, but you have to give us answers on Eagle's Cross. Our research has gone so far, but you have the final pieces of the puzzle.

Edward: (tauntingly) Or what?

Cora: Nothing. You just tell us. Tell us everything you can on Eagle's Cross. Starting with the Grandfather Paradox attempted suicide.

Edward: I thought you didn't know anything about that…okay…I'll spill, even though I don't know why I'm doing it and I don't want to… Well, since you know about Eagle's Cross…

Cora: Get on with it.

Edward: Okay, okay! Jeez. There were two Eagles, alright? The first one was the grandfather paradox suicide.

Emily: Of course the ultimate Eagle's Cross operation as a whole was split in two. We should've made that in the research, Cor.

Edward: I codenamed the operation as Eagle's Cross after the Tintin comic because it was something that I wanted to hide for decades, centuries even, just like Sir Francis did. I told nobody about it. The guilt gnawed away at me till I thought I would die. I bought the laser gun that disguised itself as a regular pistol and the time watch three days before I went off.

Cora: That explains the receipt… any other evidence?

Edward: That and the one entry in that diary is the proof of that time! When I was captured, I had the incriminating evidence in my jacket, so I made a run for it while I could.

Cora: Explain how your jacket got tattered, though. I still remember the argument you had with mum before Ell pulled me away.

Edward: (sheepishly) I…made a few miscalculations on the jumps, I think. Or it was the changing of the timeline with the original Matt messing around with it. There were deserts, jungles, arctic tundra, accidental meetups with more ancestors in the Wild West…dystopian cities millennia after our time… Matthew and Thomas were right on my trail till the last jump, where I landed 9 days after I left for the failed mission. They came back in three days after.

Cora: You mentioned a second Eagle, did you?

Edward: Yes.

Cora: Where did that one all start?

Edward: 23rd October 2094. It was at an after-party for Emily's tenth and Laurie's seventh birthdays, and you kids were already in bed. Thomas offered me some of his aged family Smirnoff. Lauren had a few sips but quickly left as we started to get rowdy. (chuckles softly) Really rowdy. So much so that we just couldn't help it but drink and drink and drink…cola, Smirnoff and the diet stuff of both everywhere on the carpet…

Cora: (at the same time as Emily) Ew.

Emily: (at the same time as Cora) Ew.

Edward: Then Johannes, I think, made a bet that it was possible to go back in time and stop cola from being banned as a drug…

Emily: (Disbelief) My dad, of all people?

Edward: Trust me, I was stunned too. But we all agreed on it. Thomas, Matthew, Thorfrid, Johannes and I. We worked out a few rough details on napkins and paper while we were all still drunk, who'd take the time machines, what we could do… They were so detailed, that when we were sober again, we decided to go with it.

Cora: What did the plan involve?

Edward: The way we went with involved finishing what I tried to start.

Cora: (slightly shaky, as if she's starting to become angry) Go on…

Edward: I still wanted to kill him to spare us all…then I wanted to kill all four of them to spare every family line...But Matthew and Thomas made me compromise: no deaths, but they let me off with getting them out the way in a semi-permanent form.

Cora: Yikes, your selfishness really did get in the way.

Edward: (guiltily) I know, I know… (he takes in a breath before speaking again with a grudging tone) We were all stuck on what to do with that last part. During that time, I found my diary that I started on the first Eagle with the intent of finishing it again, but I was assigned to recording everything we did and I mean everything, leaving me no time to do any new entries. Even the times when we were stuck on what to do. Which was most of the time apart from a few suggestions that didn't work in theory until the Cryo-Virt was released from McCoy Industries.

Cora: You know, I haven't been thinking about it with all that's happened, but...just to double-check. Is the leader of McCoy Industries the same Judge McCoy who led the Dr. Pepper case to dooming the company?

Edward: (midly surprised) I thought you knew that by now.

Cora: We had to be sure. Why did he come up with those in the first place?

Edward: I knew the bastard since he was a young lad, 20 or something. He wanted to be an inventor, real genius, that kid. He had a couple good runs in his inventing company before he followed his old man's advice and took up politics. He'd always wanted to do the cryogenic freezing-virtual reality hybrid. A lot of the sales from the fellows in the Dr. Pepper area were mainly from the workers from that place who were just looking for a way to blow their salaries and the company money. When the lad found out that this underground ring of fizzed drink sales were draining his dosh…He took what he had left, wormed his way into politics and ended up tossing the poor souls into prison.

Cora: Yikes.

Edward: But he's been after us too, Cor. When he went into politics and succeeded with the Dr. Pepper case, he swore a family oath to gain revenge and wipe out not only the Goulds, but the Ridgewells, Hargraves and Larssons. Thorfrid was witness to it and told nobody else but me, Thomas and Matthew. Anyway, one of Thorfrid's brothers was working in McCoy industries at the time, which gave us the chance to REALLY make a start on the timeline change. That damned family line is the one who's started all this...

Cora: Started what?

(There is a series of inaudible cursing from Edward. The words and phrases 'banning', '70 years' and 'filthy war machine of a man' are heard through his language.)

Emily: When did you install the Cryo-Virts?

Edward: We went back in time to around 2014 and installed them there. We would've done a little more work on the details, but we had to dash off when we first heard footsteps coming our way. I realised later that I had left my diary back there, I came back to the exact time, except a few minutes later so I could pick it up. Good news, nobody was there. Bad news, someone had taken the diary.

Cora: Was it a day when the original Tord was visiting the place?

Edward: I think so…

Cora: Well, that makes sense then…

Edward: But we spent weeks creating the code, testing and retesting it on our laptops, desktops and simulators to see if there were any kinks to fix, anything to add, anything that we had to delete, going back and forth through time to keep a balance between that and our regular lives. Can't believe we actually got away with that. Nobody suspected anything. When we finished up the details and went back to install it, the time machine malfunctioned and had us stuck in 2030 for two weeks. I had also been the one managing them since I still had my watch.

Emily: A full 26 years too late.

Edward: I still hoped that there was a chance. I didn't tell the others that we landed in that year. But as we worked hard in that basement, I found out that the original Edd, Tom, Matt, and Tord as well Eduardo and his friends already had kids and spouses of their own. But we managed to load in every single piece of code, steal the boys and seal them away. Tord was the last one thrown in. It looked like he had dropped something in a cranny or whatnot and he wouldn't tell me what it was when we tried to bribe him with not being thrown in there. Should've known that it was my diary.

Cora: He was smart enough to resist you. But the info we have tells us that Paul ter Voorde found the diary soon after you vanished. Why didn't you think of going back for it?

Edward: I did, but my reaction was, ah…delayed. Once the seven were sealed away and we headed back home…everyone figured that we had landed in the wrong year and it was too late to change anything for a second time. Johannes forgave me, but the others…I don't think they ever did. My time watch, the calculator and the vortex-creator time machines were confiscated to the police base-

Cora: Hold on. Vortex-creator time machine?

Edward: You never knew about the third time machine in the police base?

Cora: I have to genuinely thank Laurie for that one. But how does that one work?

Edward: That one does a one-way trip to any point in time you choose. The month and date can't change, only the year can. But I remember we all had to jump in at once when we used it, otherwise it would close up before the rest of us could head in…Can I stop answering now?

Cora: There's still a few more questions, Edward.

Edward: (sternly) Well, I'm not answering them. I've already spilled out more than I wanted to, that's enough.

(Silence falls. 3 minutes pass until Cora speaks again)

Cora: One last question, then. Throughout your life, what did you believe was worth your while the most? Your family, or your business? One or the other, you must choose.

Emily: Ten seconds to respond. We're counting.

(Heavy, panicked breathing is heard from Edward as Emily counts from 10 down to 1. A loud thunk is heard before silence falls again.)

Cora: Emily? I think I know what this feeling of…oh what is it? Displacement, that's it. I know what this feeling of displacement is now. Edward, I can't thank you enough for your info.

Emily: I think I know what you mean by that…but what should we do now?

Cora: Emergency meeting with the family and crew on what's gonna be next? You might also have to start getting back into gymnastics.

Emily: Sounds good to me, just as soon as we get your Uncl-

BATTERY LOW

END TAPE