Yes, it’s the return of the blog’s serial. I know it’s been a while so let me give you a quick recap of the story so far:
Dr. Danial Bradigan is a reclusive anthropologist living in Chicago. One day he received a mysterious letter stating a car would arrive at his apartment at a specific time that day with an unknown offer. When the car arrives, he gets in with the intention of questioning the driver but finds himself being taken against his will to an underground facility where he meets Valeria Davis, president and CEO of Heliarc Enterprises. With her influence, she coerces Bradigan into joining her team of experts conducting experiments in time travel, and their first jump is already planned. Together, with the help of genius theoretical physicist Dr. August Zachariah, they successfully travel back to Friday, September 15, 1939 on a test mission of Valeria’s design to watch Frank Sinatra’s first performance in Chicago. After a successful return to the present, Valeria suddenly disappears from the laboratory, with Bradigan following after her, taken by a highly advanced, anti-time travel task force called the Altered Space-Time Response. The leader of the A.S.R., Commander Hoban, informs them they’ve been under surveillance, but surprisingly asks for their help in preventing a cataclysm the A.S.R. has seen happen sixteen times already from their space station outside the normal flow of time. Valeria and Bradigan agree and are given limited access to the station archives where they meet Major Thorne and his prisoner, Locke, a mole who attempted to destroy the station shortly after launch and who’s currently being rehabilitated from the influences of his terrorist indoctrination…
“What are you looking at now?” Valeria asked, leaning in and reading over Bradigan’s shoulder.
Commander Hoban had decided to place them both in a shared room for the night to better keep an eye on them, his apparent tendency toward suspicion coming through regardless of his weighty request of them. While Bradigan was trying to continue his research from earlier, after having been put out of the Archives in the late hours, Valeria had been experimenting with the amenities. She lifted a mug of hot chocolate to her lips, one which she’d engineered with some difficulty from the room’s food synthesizer, and slurped the steaming beverage near Bradigan’s ear.
His hand came up and shooed her away in annoyance. “Could you please?”
“Sorry,” she said, backing away and taking a seat at the other end of the table.
After a few more sips, Bradigan, feeling her gaze on him, gave up and answered her lingering question, “I was just thinking about what Commander Hoban said about them having become humanity’s gods.”
“What’s so strange about that?” Valeria asked.
Bradigan turned in his chair to look at her. “You don’t find that unusual?”
“Not really,” she said, getting up to pace the floor. “I mean, think about it. You’ve got a group of beings here on this station who’ve taken it upon themselves to preserve the human race, possess the ability to see everything on earth, the ability to move about it invisibly, the ability to take people from it on a whim and live outside the flow of time as we know it.” She stopped and took another sip from her mug. “Sounds like a pantheon of gods to me.”
“Fair point,” Bradigan said, rubbing his eyes. “So you think he was just referring to the unique relationship they have with humanity?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t dwell on it,” she answered, sitting down sideways in a comfortable chair on the other side of the room.
Bradigan sat with his arms crossed on the back of the chair, chin resting on them, and stared at this woman who had the uncanny ability to make herself at home anywhere, as he mulled everything over in his mind.
Returning his gaze she said, “You don’t seem convinced.”
“Sorry. There’s just something that feels… familiar… about something… I just can’t think,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Alright. Well that’s enough of that,” Valeria said, putting her mug down on a side table. She kicked her legs out, stood back up and approached Bradigan, slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, to bed with you. First our trip to 1939 and then staring at computer screens for six hours straight.” She led him to the foot of his bed and toppled him over into it. “I can’t have my anthropological advisor asleep on his feet. Besides, It’s my turn to use the terminal.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, crawling his way to his pillow. He was oddly obliging in his current state. “What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, I can go for days.”
As Valeria sat down in front of the monitor, Bradigan finally made it to his pillow and immediately passed out, descending into bizarre dreams of ancient worlds, disappearing people and unavoidable catastrophe. He was awakened several hours later by a ring at the doorbell, his cloudy vision seeing Valeria rise from her bed to answer. The door slid open to reveal Captain Vidal.
“Good morning,” he said, looking Valeria over. “Trouble sleeping?”
Valeria ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. “We were up late.”
Vidal raised an eyebrow and cast a glance at Bradigan. “I see. Well, Commander Hoban wants to see you as soon as possible.”
“Alright. Thank you for the message, Captain,” Valeria said, closing the door. As soon as it was sealed she turned to Bradigan. “What is his deal?”
Bradigan sat on the edge of the bed and chuckled at her annoyance. “He probably doesn’t even realize it.”
After quickly getting ready they made their way to the bridge where they found Commander Hoban going over yesterday’s internal reports with his chief of security, Captain Heidler. The commander made hasty introductions before sending Heidler away.
“Thank you, Captain. Keep me updated,” he said.
The Captain gave a perfect salute and turned on his heel, his clean movements showing his dedication to his work.
“Is everything alright?” Valeria asked.
“Well enough. Nothing of your concern at the very least,” Hoban answered.
Bradigan wasn’t paying attention. On one of the monitors the timeline that he and Valeria had come from, the 23rd Cycle, was under surveillance. What he was looking at was actually, as he’d learned in his research, officially designated as Cycle 23β, an offshoot timeline created due to He and Valeria’s departure from the original 23rd. As long as they were onboard, this deviant timeline, and the development of humanity within it, would be open for study. There was a limit however. As human technology neared the level necessary to facilitate time travel, known to the A.S.R. simply as “Break Point,” the timeline would become too dangerous to maintain. At that time, if humanity began again to experiment with time travel, they could break “Temporal Containment” hence the term “Break Point.” It had been thirteen hours since they arrived so, given the hyper accelerated flow of time outside the ship, the current calendar year would be roughly…
“Daniel!” Valeria said sharply. She’d been trying to get his attention.
He blinked. “Oh. Sorry, Miss Davis.”
Valeria pouted and crossed her arms. “Come on, the Commander wants to show us something.”
Bradigan followed them around the circular command room to a door on the opposite side.
“My office,” Hoban said as the door opened. They stepped inside and found Major Thorne and Captain Vidal already inside. They stood up as their Commander entered.
“Good morning,” Thorne said.
“Good morning, Major,” Valeria answered. “I see you’ve gotten off guard duty.”
Thorne laughed. “Yes, Locke is currently in one of his sessions with the station psychiatrist.”
Commander Hoban loudly cleared his throat, stopping any talk of Locke. “Please take a seat,” he said before turning to Vidal. “Captain?”
The Captain took a stack of tablets from Hoban’s desk and passed them out. “I don’t know exactly where your own research took you last night but I took the liberty of compiling some useful data.”
Bradigan swiped through the pages, recognizing different things from the night before but quickly discovering how incomplete his research had been.
Vidal began his explanation, “We were fortunate your Doctor Zachariah caused a massive temporal destabilization shortly after we picked you up. It means we have more time before cycle 23β reaches its Break Point.”
At Vidal’s mention of Dr. Zachariah, Bradigan glanced at Valeria and could clearly see her anger at his casual mention of their world’s destruction. Her fingernails were digging into the arm rest of her chair but, surprisingly, she otherwise maintained her composure.
Vidal continued, “As previously mentioned, we’ve been in service here for seven subject years and witnessed 16 cycles come to pass; that means an average of 160 subject days per cycle. Given that, I’m allowing us ninety subject days time to comfortably avoid the Break Point.” He turned to Commander Hoban. “I’ve already made the necessary arrangements to house Ms. Davis and Dr. Bradigan during that time.”
Hoban simply nodded his approval but Valeria spoke up, “You want us to remain on the station for three months?”
“It will take time for us to strategize our approach to the mission and determine how to best use each other’s resources.”
“That’s true,” Valeria agreed. “But still, three months is a long time to be away.”
“With all due respect, Ms. Davis,” Vidal said. “You don’t have anything to get back to. Your life on earth is currently in limbo.”
Bradigan could see the spark in Valeria’s eyes that lit the fire. “In limbo?” she said. “You pull me up here, show me the destruction of my world and then tell me to just ignore it?”
Thorne spoke up, “I’m sure that’s not what the Captain meant…”
“Look here, Captain,” Valeria said, standing up and cutting Thorne off. “Those people back at Heliarc are my family and they’re dead right now. Not ‘in limbo.’ Dead. They died a horrible death being torn apart by some sort of cataclysm and every second we stay here means a second longer they have to spend in that reality. That’s the reality that matters to them and that’s the reality that matters to me.”
Vidal opened his mouth to rebut but Thorne quickly grabbed him before he said anything more. Valeria turned for the door and Hoban, not wanting to make things worse, opened the door remotely from his desk and let her leave.
Thorne sighed and looked at Vidal. “Celio,” he said. “You really need to work on your people skills.”
Bradigan followed after her but discovered she’d already left the bridge. The staff looked at him in confusion and he simply blurted out, “excuse us” as he made his way to the exit. With a little difficulty he made it back to their quarters but opening the door he discovered she wasn’t there. Where did she go? He thought for a while before stopping an officer in the hallway and asking, “Is there a room here with a view?” After taking way too long to memorize the directions, he found himself in front of the door to the canteen. It slid open and he stepped through. The first person that saw him was one of the kitchen staff who pointed over to a large window where Valeria sat staring out. Bradigan thanked them and composed himself before approaching her.
She must have seen him coming because she spoke without looking up, “It’s so strange,” she said, head resting on her hand and watching the earth spinning out in space. “It’s like watching a plant. You know it’s growing but you can’t see it.”
Bradigan looked out and saw an earth he didn’t quite recognize. The ground was mostly barren and only patches of green dotted the continents which weren’t quite the same shape as he remembered. He sat down across from her and together they watched in silence. After a while, the view shimmered and the earth suddenly changed appearance. “What happened?” Bradigan asked.
Valeria looked at him like he was stupid. “You know, it’s not a real window,” she said. “It’s just a video feed. Every few minutes it refreshes to keep the earth looking current.”
“Oh. Of course,” Bradigan said. “I wonder what the footage looks like in real time.”
“Probably just a blur.”
“Probably.”
They sat in silence for a bit longer before Valeria spoke again, “So how do you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“How do you stay so calm? Se centered?”
The question surprised Bradigan. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a scientist so I see things differently.”
“You’re also a hermit so you don’t care about people,” Valeria said.
“I care,” Bradigan insisted. “I just…” His words trailed off as he searched for an explanation.
“Who do you care about?” she pressured. “Do you care about them?” She nodded toward the earth.
“Well I…” Bradigan faultered.
Valeria caught his eyes with hers and wouldn’t let them go. “Do you care about me?” she asked.
Bradigan suddenly regained his composure and calmly looked back at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
His change in demeanor surprised her and she turned back toward the window. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I just…I live with my emotions. I do what feels right to me and pour my whole self into it.”
Bradigan waited.
“I’m just having a hard time separating myself from this ‘beta timeline’ thing,” she continued. “Look, I’m sorry for insinuating that you don’t care. I’m just jealous that you seem to be taking this far better than me.”
Bradigan laughed. “I’m not any better off than you,” he said. “I’m scared to death we’re going to screw something up. It’s the responsibility that weighs me down.”
It was Valeria’s turn to laugh. “That’s a feeling I’m used to,” she said. She looked at Bradigan and smiled. “Thanks for being here with me.”
Writer by Grace 