Paradigm Rift: Book One of the Back to Normal Series (17 page)

“He should be able to keep his first name,” Ellen observed. “It's too difficult to learn a new one and react naturally. Changing the last should be sufficient.” Several people nodded.

“Changing names and facial hair is all well and good, but what about Betty Larson's evidence?” Shep demanded. “His wallet may or may not turn up, but her collection definitely will!”

The Chief glanced at Shep. “Well, I bought us some time. She promised not to do anything til I got back with her.”

Frazier couldn’t resist mocking him. “Well, that settles it, then! All our lives are hanging by one sweet little promise.”

“I don't think I like your tone, Mr. Frazier!” McCloud snapped.

Garrett grinned even wider. “Finally! I’ve been here six months, and now I’ve found someone who truly understands me.”

McCloud stormed across the room as Garrett jumped up. “You need to watch your attitude, Mr. Frazier!”

“I’m not afraid of the badge, McCloud, never have been!”

Stonecroft and Papineau grabbed their coats and exited the conference room. Martha followed them in short order.

Frazier and McCloud stood chest to chest, and seconds from fist to fist.

Denver interrupted the alpha male contest. “There is another
option,” he said and the postures relaxed. He cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. “I know it, you know it, we all know it. But no one wants to say it.” He paused.

“So the new guy will
say it: we have to steal it. We have to steal Betty Larson's evidence. Period.”

Monday, July 7, 1947

This may be the lowest point in my life, and I have lived through some dark days, including watching my father waste away with the slow cruelty of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Maryanne had a miscarriage before we were blessed with Kurtis. That was rough. I know that she still suffers to this very day.

But neither of those horrifically tragic events crushed me with the level of guilt like what I have just gone through.

Ken Miller and Larry Etherington are dead.

My two closest friends are gone, and I am effectively alone once more. Intellectually, I KNOW that I need to write about what happened, but emotionally…everything within me refuses to do so. I can’t keep food down again, and I shake terribly. The drive home from Roswell was like a surreal nightmare. With the language barrier, I might as well have been as alone as I felt. I don’t know, but I think that X is blaming himself for everything. He hasn’t said a word or even made an attempt to gesture at me in over 48 hours. I am afraid he may abandon me. And who could blame him?

I will do my level best to explain what happened.

We had been on the road for over three weeks, chasing storms, setting up, tearing down, repeat. It was exhausting. On July 3
rd
we heard that some bad storms were coming up out of Mexico into the desert Southwest. We got ahead of a big supercell in New Mexico and intercepted it in Roswell the afternoon of July 4
th
. We set up on a remote ranch outside of town on a hillside.

As the night wore on, it looked promising: lots of lightning, and close. We had just set up the long rods and transfer lines to the temporal device. X had made some last minute adjustments, and activated the Tesla design. I was back by the truck, a good 50 yards away.

And then…it happened.

You swear you hear it before you see it even though you know it is just the opposite. There was a simultaneous flash and blast that will haunt my memories. Instantly, the blast flung me to the ground. After I peeled my face out of the dirt and looked up, I saw an eerie blue glow like St. Elmo’s Fire all over the temporal device. There was a strange distortion several feet wide in the center of the machine. X was also getting up and started shouting something unintelligible. The hum from the device muffled everything.

Ken, only a few feet away, started walking toward the device. He reached his hand out and inched up to it. After what seemed like minutes, it was probably only a few seconds, his fingers intersected the temporal anomaly. You could tell he was trying to pull his hand back, but it was like his arm was locked in time and space. Larry ran up, yelling, and grabbed him, trying to yank him away. They were both pulled in towards the anomaly and then they began emitting blue light. I could tell they were screaming, but it was like the distortion was trapping their sounds inside an invisible barrier.

The blue fire around the device began to flash and grow increasingly erratic. It appeared that Larry and Ken were sort of stretching out, but you couldn’t tell if maybe it was just an illusion, like the way a glass of water distorts an object behind it. I started to move towards them but X ran to block me, protesting with his hands. The hum felt deafening.

Then, eerily, the device flashed with no sound. Zero sound. And then… I woke up. I probably had been unconscious for over half an hour. I was bloodied a bit, the front of my shirt and pants were burnt, and I had a raging headache. The continued flashes of lightning from the passing storm revealed a tragic scene. The device had been nearly obliterated. Twisted smoking metal scattered over the hillside for a hundred yards, random fires burning the scrub and grass.

I found X laying face first in the mud, the back of his clothes fried. I couldn’t wake him up, but he was breathing. I dragged him up to the truck, laid him across the front seat, and poured some water on his face. His forehead had a gash.

I stumbled up the hill, and that’s when I saw their bodies. I couldn’t help but imagine that Larry and Ken had been instantly and mercifully blown to bits as I examined the wreckage. But there they were in almost exactly the same spot where the device had been, but they were…different. Altered.

They still appeared roughly human, but they were smaller and thinner. They could not have been much over 4 feet tall and their arms and legs made them look like bloated children who died of severe malnutrition—except for their heads, which appeared to be almost double in size. I can only imagine that the incomplete time displacement had somehow left them mutated. Their clothing was nowhere to be seen.

I wanted to move their remains, but I saw some headlights in the distance, moving quickly toward our location. I hated to, but I had to leave their bodies. If the vehicle was law enforcement, then we could kiss our futures goodbye. I had a little trouble finding my keys and more trouble getting X up and out of my way. By the time the motor started, the car was pretty close. I shoved my truck into gear and drove back toward town.

I didn’t just leave the remains of my friends on that hillside, I’m pretty sure I left a lot of my conscience and humanity there as well.

FOR: Captain Sheridan Cavitt, Senior CIC

Major Jesse A. Marcel, 509
th
Bomb Group

FROM: Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Director, Central Intelligence

SUBJECT: Command Transfer

Howard D. Ross will be arriving at the Roswell Army Air Field, and under my authorization, Mr. Ross will be taking the lead in the current debris field investigation.

Ensure that the area is secure, detain and isolate witnesses, and move all recovered debris into guarded storage at the base. Access to stored debris is expressly forbidden until Ross assumes oversight.

END

DCI

Is this what passes for coffee in Chicago these days? Weak. Just like the FBI
.

Howard Ross set the rejected cup on the far edge of the desk as he poured over a series of large photographs. He snatched a pen and continued to fill several pages in a thick legal pad.

Neal Schaeffer hurried in. “Hey Chief, the last delegation from Norfolk is about ten minutes out.”

The CIA boss appeared disinterested in the important update as he raised another photo. Project SATURN staff made it a point to
not be
offended at such times. With Ross it was often par for the course. You just had to learn his game, his style.

Neal hesitated and rocked on his heels. The Chief offered no response, and Schaeffer headed for the door.

Ross seemed to wait until his subordinate was almost in the hallway. “Ten years,” he bemoaned.

Schaeffer froze and eased back in. “Chief?”

Ross squinted and leaned forward onto his elbows. “It's been almost ten years.” He was in the mood for another CIA history lesson. “You probably didn't know that Magruder had recommended me to Truman during the phase out of the OSS.”

Neal smiled. “I was still getting beat up by the upperclassmen at the academy during that transition.” He dropped the smile. “I heard it was, uh...
messy
.”

Ross set all the photographs down. “Messy? No…cafeterias
are messy. Divorces
are messy. No, the formation of the agency was a political and logistical nightmare,” he rehearsed. “Everyone was grabbing for something, and no one knew for sure if they had anything. Political chaos.”

“Well, change is hard, Chief.”

Ross didn’t even hear him.

“Salvage and liquidation: that was the motto, along with the War Department's lawyers and the State Department's political maneuvering, and the rest is history,” Ross mourned. “Souers barely lasted six months, then Vandenberg...a lot of people, many talented people, were overlooked.”

“No offense, Boss, but there were a lot of mistakes made by the administration after 1945. Everyone was tired of the war. They just wanted to put it all behind them. It didn’t play well politically, either.”

Ross droned on. “When the Special Operations division was created, it went to Galloway. I had better experience, he had better connections.”

“Don’t forget, Chief, you were selected to oversee Project SATURN. That's—”

“
Selected
?” Ross blurted out. “Hillenkoetter tried to
pacify
me with SATURN. Listen—SATURN wasn't an appointment, it was…an
apology
.”

Neal stepped back. “You, uh, you can characterize it any way you want, but—”

“Characterizations
are not the problem, Neal,
results
are. Next July will be exactly ten years since Roswell.” Ross stood and walked around to the front of the desk. “I have precisely eleven months to deliver on SATURN, or the opportunity to rectify the oversights of the past is over. Forever.”

There was a long pause, then Neal pointed at Denver’s photo. “Once we apprehend Collins, then forget Roswell, forget Nelson,” he said. “Project SATURN will potentially become the single most valuable asset in the agency. It's impossible to overestimate the national strategic advantage.”

Howard Ross hesitated for a moment, then started nodding. He spoke slow and deliberately. “You mean, it is impossible to overestimate my
personal
strategic advantage.”

Ross looked up. “Let's go get this son of a bitch.”

SECURITY LEVEL: TOP SECRET

FOR: Howard D. Ross

FROM: Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Director, Central Intelligence

SUBJECT: Project SATURN

Metallurgical and materials studies confirm the initial assessment of your field crew. Autopsies involving both specimens recovered from New Mexico conclusively indicate time displacement. Displaced Persons remains have been designated DP-1, DP-2.

President Truman has authorized the immediate creation of a new temporal studies division within the agency, codenamed: Project SATURN. Locating, isolating, and interrogating potential living time travelers is now a national security priority. Your former responsibilities with the Temporal Sciences Office of Project Phoenix have been terminated. Dr. Neumann has been notified.

You have four weeks, commencing 9 July, 1947, to assemble your team. No information regarding your activities or investigation is to be shared internally with Project Phoenix or externally with any other agency or department. Project SATURN will report directly to the office of the DCI only.

Regarding Roswell: contain, control, confuse. You are authorized to disseminate an alternate narrative implicating flying discs and alien involvement, through proper channels. Secondarily, release official statements implicating weather balloon experimentation to account for all phenomena.

END

DCI/PS

Saturday, August 16, 1947

The crippling pain of the loss of Ken and Larry has only just now begun to subside, but my guilt on the other hand…it is as raw as ever. I had taken these strangers in and they trusted me to help them. But in the end, I hurt them in ways unimaginable. I may have given them temporary hope, but it quickly transformed into permanent failure. In my quest to make the best of times, am I creating the worst of times?

There are so many tired old questions and so many difficult new ones. The Ken Miller and Lawrence Etherington that will be yet born in the future: will it be their same consciousness, the same persons, the same “souls”? How does that work?

Does any of this work?

And then, how can I ever expect anyone else to trust me in the future?

Should they trust me? Am I trying to take on too much?

Should I tell anyone about Ken and Larry? Should I hide it?

If Grant ever returns, he will remember them, so what then?

If I do hide it, would it be to protect the fragile confidence of future Jumpers or merely to protect my own fragile ego and reputation?

I know that in a few decades the Roswell incident will become a hotbed of controversy. Many people will believe that it was about aliens and a government cover up. Actually, it wasn’t about
aliens
: it was about
friends
. Not from another world, just from another time.

And now, within our group, if we ever have a group again, ultimately it is my decision if there is to be a cover up. The problem with making complex decisions is that regardless of your own rationalizations of why you are willing to do something, the real reasons may be far deeper, far more personal, and far more selfish. In fact, they can be so deep, personal, and selfish that they are completely hidden from even YOU.

I have no illusions about the clever liar that lives within me.