Extermination Day (11 page)

“Why was the base built in a cavern like this anyway?” Jeff asked, jumping into the discussion.

Chen met Jeff’s gaze.

“Mr. Madison, I decided to locate the base here for several reasons. One, it’s a secure, protected underground location away from major population centers, in case of accident.” He held up two fingers. “Secondly, this cavern is hundreds of thousands of years old and has been stable and untouched during that expanse of time. If we were ever to get to the point of doing
long-range time jumps, then this is a perfect spot geologically. In other words, if you jumped back one hundred thousand years, you wouldn’t land in the middle of a glacier. As far as getting out of the cavern, we planned on sending drilling equipment with any team going back in time so that they could easily make their way out of the cavern.”

Jeff nodded. “That makes sense. Now, for the important question: what about sending a person back? I know you’ve never sent a human through the vortex before, but if you just send a data drive back, then you’re leaving too much to chance. Suppose you send the drive back to when the facility is under construction? Heavy machinery could damage it, or it could be buried, never to be found. If you send it back just a few years, then you still run the risk of someone here overlooking it or thinking it’s just another spare storage device and putting it in a filing cabinet somewhere.”

He drummed his fingers on the table and glanced around the room, picturing the cavern’s setup, before again meeting Chen’s gaze. “Then there’s the real possibility that someone finds it, looks at it, and figures it’s a hoax and ignores it. You have to admit that a deadly techno-virus that kills off most of the human race would be a bit hard to believe if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.” He pointed at the scientists around the table and then painted a circle in the air, including all the others in the base when he said, “And I bet some of the folks here, in this base and maybe even in this room, are still wondering if this is some kind of hoax.” He leaned against the conference table. “By sending someone back with the data, you’re assured that the information will be looked at
and
you greatly increase your chances that it will be believed.”

Several nodded or voiced their agreement. They all turned to Chen, but Howard waved his hand.

“This is assuming the person will live,” he said. “Our primate testing showed that time travel is extremely hard on the organic body at a biochemical and cellular level. And those tests were for very short time jumps of less than an hour forward and backward. We just don’t know what will happen to a human body going back farther in time.”

“What are the alternatives?” Jeff asked. “Starve to death underground or wait for the virus to eventually seep down here to infect us so we can die a painful death?”

Again the group looked to Chen and then at one another.

Holly said, “We recycle our air through the hydroponics lab, so it’s not likely that the virus will get down here, and we have food stores for months and we grow our own vegetables. And this base is top secret, so any enemy out there plotting against us probably doesn’t even know we exist.”

“Oh, I bet they do,” Jeff told her. He was getting frustrated at this measured discussion among the plodding scientists. It felt like he was back in a congressional committee meeting discussing budget proposals. As they sat talking, more people were dying on the surface. Of course they
did
have a time machine, so the whole issue of not having enough time or having to rush was kind of a baseless argument, right? Jeff still couldn’t quite get his head around the whole thing.

They had created a time machine.

Chen jumped back in, “I agree with Congressman Madison. It’s highly likely that whoever engineered this virus knows we’re here and they will find us at some point and try to kill us and destroy the base. There’s too much at stake not to take the risk and send someone back. Do you all agree?”

Everyone eventually nodded. That—full agreement—was certainly different than in Congress.

Max cleared his throat and said, “Statistically speaking, sending one person and the data back is still risky. I’ve always encouraged having backups in case of an initial failure. In this case, if one person were to succumb to the rigors of time travel, then the second would be there to tell the story.”

Holly
nodded her head. “We should send a team of two, and we should send them back to the start of the project. This would give the world nearly twenty years to prepare for the virus.”

Rohit
was tapping away on his portable. “We should have enough fuel collected over the next six and a half hours to power the vortex for a jump with two people carrying minimal equipment and going back in time twenty years. I’ll have the exact calculations within the hour.”

“Now,” Chen said, “we come to the question of who to send back. We have to exclude anyone with a preexisting medical condition. That would be me due to my recent bout with heart disease. The team members need to be young and strong, certainly not overweight, and in very good physical condition overall. I also want scientists knowledgeable about Project
Chronos, volunteers who can jumpstart the project.”

“You’ll also want someone who can convince the government that the viral threat is imminent and that they need to act for the defense of America,” Jeff said. “In the eyes of government and politics, something that
may
happen twenty years in the future is a distant target and not even on the radar screen.”

Jeff knew it would take special effort to move the bureaucratic machine into taking the extreme defensive efforts needed to combat the viral attack. He’d been a teenager twenty years ago, but he remembered his father talking about budget cuts and a shrinking U.S. defense budget.
They would also have to convince allied governments to work on the project; the United States could not go it alone.

“
I have to agree,” Chen said reluctantly. “To succeed we need not just technological expertise but political acumen as well. This will be no easy task, and it will take two very special individuals. First things first: I need to search the medical database and narrow the candidates down based on health conditions. Before we go, does anyone have questions or anything to add?”

There was a moment of silence until Jeff asked the question that had been dogging him. “If these two people
are
able to go back and change the timeline, what happens to us?”

There was a moment of silence as everyone focused on him, unblinking, and then each looked down at the table. They were scientists, all rational, logical people. But the thought of dying a painful death or being left behind in some apocalyptic nightmare world would expose raw emotion in even the most stoic of
individuals.

Holly said, “You’ve all seen the results of my experiments on the paradoxes of time travel. They show that this present will change instantly. We’ll never know the difference.” Her voice was calm but not flat—she believed what she was saying.

“So we’ll have no memory of these horrible events? And our families will be alive again?” Jeff asked.

“If we can defend ourselves against this virus, then yes, everyone will be alive again,” Chen said. “There are no guarantees though. But at least by doing this we’re giving America a fighting chance. I’ve always said that this project was one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of mankind. And now it could very well be our salvation.”

The room was silent.

Chen pushed back his chair and stood. “Give me an hour or so to get back to you with my two
chrononaut choices. In the meantime, it’s very, very late; if anyone needs to get some shut-eye, please do so now. The hours to come will be eventful, to say the least.”

#

A short time later, Jeff received a text from Chen saying that the meeting of senior staff was reconvening. He’d managed a quick nap on one of the couches in the lounge, but his sleep was troubled with nightmarish images of people dying. Plus he was having flashbacks of Tom, the Secret Service agent who’d been guarding him, getting cut down by that powerful plasma cannon. It was one of the newer and more devastating weapons of the day. Jeff had never actually seen anyone die in real life, with his own eyes. It was a horrible, horrible sight, one that he’d never forget.

Jeff checked his portable to see if there was any more news and found
the same bloody scenes on the streams. Much of it the same footage from earlier on an automated loop since no human was left living to update it.

He turned his portable off in disgust.

It was rare to be without a constant stream of data and instant access even for mere minutes anywhere in the world. Jeff felt cut off and quite alone deep underground with no access to anyone or anything familiar. Worse yet was not knowing what was
really
going on outside.

Back in the conference room, the same group was sitting down to learn Chen’s recommendations. He was pacing in front of the table and said, “I’ve identified two candidates. Ms. Scarborough is one. She’s one of the brightest here and even though she’s a graduate
assistant, she knows just about everything there is to know about the project. She also meets the physical criteria—twenty-five years old, no health problems, and she’s a triathlete. Her muscularity and overall fitness and endurance levels are in the ninety-ninth percentile.”

Holly’s breath caught, but she nodded. “Thank you, Patrick. I’ll do my best.”

Jeff was sitting right beside her and could see her moving her fingers under the table, tapping them in quick, successive, repetitive movements. One tap of the thumb, two taps of the index finger, three of the middle finger, four of the ring finger, and five of the pinky. Then again and again. Jeff thought back to the counting in Chen’s office after Dr. Conner and Agent Tom had been shot. He knew a traumatic situation would rattle just about anyone, but this was the type of behavior that he’d only seen before in his son. Could Holly have a mild form of autism? Or maybe obsessive compulsive disorder?

Chen continued. “Now, as for the recommendation of having someone to influence and successfully persuade those in the past to believe the data we’re sending is indeed factual, I have the perfect candidate—Marcus
Welston. He meets the physical criteria. He’s been a senior project manager here for several years and knows all the ins and outs of the project. More importantly though, his father is a retired U.S. Senator. At the time we plan to send this team back to, twenty years ago, his father was already a two-term senator and on the Armed Services Committee. Marcus can meet with his father, they can prove who he is using DNA testing, and his father can use his power to move defensive forces into place. It’s perfect!”

Chen was obviously very pleased with himself and his two candidates. He got up and opened the conference room door to a young man with a dark crew cut. Chen explained the situation to Marcus and as he was talking, the man looked more and more shocked, his face turning shades of red and then white. Jeff thought he was going to faint.

Marcus turned to Chen and said, “Sir, can I have time to think about this?”

“Well, certainly, Marcus,” Chen said, eyes wide with surprise. “This isn’t the military; we can’t force you to do anything. It has to be your choice. I know the risk and I know the fear you must be feeling.”

Marcus furrowed his brow in apparent anger. “I’m not scared, sir. The risk is there, but I can live with it. It’s just that . . . ” He pressed his lips tight together for a moment. “Zoey is here with me. We were working late together.”

“I see,” Chen said. He looked over to the rest of the group. “Marcus and
Zoey are engaged, planning to be married next weekend.”

“I don’t want to lose
Zoey. If I go back in time twenty years, she’ll just be a little eight-year-old girl and have no idea who I am, while my Zoey here is left alone. I love her so much, I don’t think I can do that. I know all the theories on time travel, but none of us truly knows what will happen to this timeline. But whether there is a change or nothing at all happens, I want to be here with Zoey when it takes place.”

Jeff had to admire Marcus. He wasn’t scared, he just wanted to be with the woman he loved. He couldn’t fault anyone for that. With all the death and chaos around them and a truly uncertain future ahead, maybe that was the smartest approach any of them could take.

Chen patted Marcus on the shoulder. “I’ll find someone else, Marcus. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you, sir,” Marcus said as he left the room.

Chen looked back at his portable. “The trouble is, we don’t have that many other candidates. We have a lot of good, strong, smart, and healthy young people, but none of them have any type of political or military connections that would help move the decision-makers of twenty years ago.”

Jeff thought about what Chen was saying. Jeff was certainly no daredevil test-pilot type, willing to risk his neck and getting a rush out of it. Hell, when he went kayaking with some friends a few years ago, he was terrified of the class four rapids they had to go through. But he had to look at the bigger picture here. He had to look at what he could contribute, and that was what allowed him to put his fear behind him, at least for now.