Alternity: A Novel

By W.R. Hammons

Warning: a detailed plot synopsis (spoiler!) follows.

Wally Bayer is a graduate student of physics at Adams College in upstate New York who, along with his professor Alan Earhart and several others, is working on a top-secret time travel project funded by the Pentagon. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Halstead, a military history instructor at nearby West Point and a liaison with the project team, attempts to hijack the Box (as the enormous chromium cube-shaped time machine is nicknamed) with the assistance of twelve recruits from an Idaho right-wing militia. Halsteads men accidentally kill Earhart during their intrusion of the laboratory that houses the Box, then force all of his assistants but Bayer to flee for their lives as they prepare to travel to November 11, 1918.
Bayer starts up the time machine, then, to avoid death at Halsteads hands, leaps into the capsule that is dropped into a vertical tunnel containing an altered quantum state. Halstead leaps onto the outside of the capsule, and follows Bayer into the year 1918. Both men arrive in a subterranean lake beneath the laboratory site, and Halstead follows Bayer to the surface. Once again, Bayer escapes from Halstead, this time leaving him alone in the forest with a twisted ankle.
Bayer comes across a horse-drawn wagon on a rutted road, and accepts a ride into the town of Monroe, New York from an odd stranger. Bayer is able to tell himself he is still in the year 2003 until he sees a Model T rumbling along a cross street as the wagon approaches the town. The bewildered visitor from the future manages to find a job on a dairy farm, and settles down to earn a living until he figures out what he will do next.
Halstead, meanwhile, has traveled to chaotic postwar Germany via Denmark, and arrives in Berlin to visit the renowned plastic surgeon Jacques Joseph. Dr. Joseph, with the assistance of an anesthesiologist, gives Halstead a new face before both he and his assistant are brutally murdered by the patient. The still-bandaged Halstead, dressed in a Reichswehr corporals uniform, travels to the city of Pasewalk, where he begins the trailing of a man upon that mans release from the local military hospital.
Halstead and his quarry travel by train to Munich, where the former murders the latter by means of a lethal injection and drags the body across a pair of railroad tracks in the middle of the night. The defaced corpse of the victim is left for mutilation by an oncoming train, and Halstead reports to the barracks of the Sixteenth Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment as Corporal Adolf Hitler, complete with two iron crosses pinned to his chest.
In January 1919, Halstead appears as Hitler at the first meeting of the newly-formed German Workers Party. Halstead rapidly takes over the fledgling organization and grows it with carefully prepared nationalistic rants and ingenious organizational methods. In order to gain even more power and prestige, Halstead involves his Ordnertruppe (as the S.A. was originally known) in the spring 1919 right-wing suppression of the short-lived Bavarian Communist regime.
Wally has settled into farm life, meanwhile, and begins a flirtation with his employers eldest daughter that turns serious with the arrival of spring. Both of Sally Darcy's parents die in the 1919 flu epidemic, and Wally takes over the family farm when he marries the expectant Sally.
Wally uses his foresight from the future and arranges a partnership with Frankie Yale of New York City, a mobster and one-time employer of Al Capone. Wally begins the illicit manufacture of gin on his upstate farm, and ships the liquid in milk trucks to New York for distribution by Yale. With the onset of Prohibition in early 1920, the profits start to accumulate, and Wally begins to invest in the stock market.
Halstead has also been busy, having traveled to Egypt with Rudolf Hess in search of a collection of Coptic manuscripts that include the Gospel of Thomas, a long-lost

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469121000

W.R. Hammons

Bill Hammons was born in Germany during the early Seventies to a career US Army officer. He was raised in Odessa, Texas from the age of five, and graduated from Permian High School in 1993. He then moved to Manhattan to attend college, and graduated from New York University in 1997 with a degree in English and American literature. After a career in traditional book and magazine publishing (including seven years and seven days at Newsweek Magazine), he left the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the peaks and running trails of Colorado's Front Range. Alternity is his first published novel.

Book preview

Copyright © 2006 by W.R. Hammons.

ISBN 10: Hardcover 1-4257-3609-2

Softcover 1-4257-3608-4

ISBN 13: Hardcover 978-1-4257-3609-5

Softcover 978-1-4257-3608-8

eBook 978-1-4691-2100-0

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Dedication

To those who showed such an intense interest in this work of fiction so many years ago.

Contents

PART I

I   

II   

III   

IV   

V   

VI   

VII   

VIII   

IX   

X   

XI   

XI    I

XIII   

XIV   

XV   

XVI   

XVII   

XVIII   

XIX   

XX   

PART II

XXI   

XXII   

XXIII   

XXIV   

XXV   

XXVI   

XXVII   

XXVIII   

XXIX   

XXX   

XXXI   

XXXII   

XXXIII   

PART III

XXXIV   

XXXV   

XXXVI   

XXXVII   

XXXVIII   

XXXIX   

XL   

XLI   

XLII   

XLIII   

Bibliography

PART I

I   

And that, my cadets, is the way it really happened. Not the way it should’ve happened, but the way it really happened.

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Halstead killed the light of the projector that illuminated the stained film map of Europe labeled May 7, 1945. He looked across the room of West Point cadets sitting in the gray light of a mid-December afternoon, light that filtered through a bank of windows and drawn shades to his left. The buzzcuts and bobs were directed backward and the forty pairs of eyes held uncomfortable stares focused on the professor of military history standing behind his projector. The man with the buzzcut beginning to gray at the temples swept across the sea of faces with his own eyes, then looked away. I want to thank all of you for an excellent semester studying the history of World War Two. Class dismissed.

The mass exit for the door and the renewed blazing of the overhead lights were coupled with the mumbling of the students comparing notes on their activities of the remainder of the afternoon, and on the study sessions that would ensue before Halstead’s final exam. One cadet approached the professor standing ramrod straight at the back of the room to hand him an overdue paper, and a second approached a bit more hesitantly, saluting and mumbling, Sir.

Yes? Halstead asked with a glare.

You and I have a session tomorrow morning to discuss my paper—

Yes, at ten-thirty.

Well, sir, I was talking to O’Brien, the cadet continued with a Midwestern twang that grated on the officer’s ears, and he told me he has a session scheduled in the same slot.

Is that so? Halstead asked with an unsurprised tone. Well, I’m sure it can be worked out. Just be at my office tomorrow at ten-thirty.

The cadet took a step away. Should I tell O’Brien, sir?

No, no need to worry about O’Brien. It will all be solved soon enough.

The cadet gave a blank look at this cryptic response, then walked out of the now-empty classroom after saluting his professor once more. Halstead returned the salute crisply, then stared out a newly-cleared window at the darkness gathering early, near the nadir of the seasons. After a few moments of staring out the window, he turned the projector back on and stared at the map before him.

Afternoon, Colonel.

Halstead looked with a start from the map to the dean and his superior, who marched up the low steps of the classroom with slow, steady paces. Afternoon, Colonel.

Colonel Lewis smiled at his subordinate’s repetition of his own greeting, stopped in the center of the floor, then turned to stare himself, at the dark stains spread across the northern and central Europe of mid-century. I can see you ended right on schedule.

I ended on schedule—I had to skim a few topics, like the Battle of the Bulge. Halstead was fidgeting with the same pen he had used throughout the semester to point out spots of interest on his maps.

Lewis moved closer to both projector and professor. Yes, well, that leads me to what I came here to talk to you about. The dean looked into the light filtering in, then renewed his smile. Now, Colonel, I noticed a while back that your time is coming.

Halstead’s pen clattered against the tiled floor. You did?

Of course. Lewis now stood directly in front of the projector, allowing his form to block the artificial light. May I be frank?

Of course. Halstead gripped the edges of his machine.

I’m aware that you may be moving on soon. Where, I have no idea, and that’s really none of my business. Now Lewis leaned over in Halstead’s direction and placed his hands on the projector. What is my business is seeing to it that all of my professors have their course plans into my office on time.

Halstead leaned back. Well, Colonel, if you know what I’m doing, then you know—

I don’t know what, but I do know when, Lewis pointed out with a slight nod of his head and shoulders. I know this spring is going to be twenty years for you. He straightened his back and looked out the window with his hands behind him, unaware of his fellow officer’s look of sudden confusion. I know how it is, Colonel: you’ve been doing the same thing since the Gulf War, you start making plans for your next life, and the little details don’t seem so important anymore. You’ve done your bit for your country, and now it’s time to start drawing that pension and see what can be done for Adam Halstead. He looked back with a paternal smile. Am I right?

Halstead returned the smile with a forced sheepishness. Of course. I’ve been getting ahead of myself, haven’t I?

Lewis gave a slight nod of his head and turned to head back toward the door. Don’t worry about it, Colonel. Just get next semester’s plans in my office before the week’s up.

Will do, Colonel, Halstead replied to his superior’s departing back. Colonel?

Lewis turned around to stand beside the illuminated silver screen. Yes?

Halstead took a step forward, to stand beside the projector and stare some more at the vision on the screen. How would you have fought World War Two? What would you have done to win it, if you were the other side? If you were the Germans?

Lewis glanced at the splotches of darkness in the center of the screen, being devoured by the colors of light on all sides. Won it? I wouldn’t’ve started it. Get those lesson plans to me, Colonel. He marched out of the room, leaving Halstead alone with his fantasies once more.

How was class? Wally Bayer asked the young woman who approached his table near a window in the Adams University Student Center.

Hey there. It was okay. Is that what you’re having for dinner? Stacey Darien looked down at the chocolate milkshake in Bayer’s right hand.

Yeah, you want some? Bayer tilted the cup in her direction.

Stacey shook her button of a nose as she sat herself opposite her date and next to the window which looked out upon the December night that had just fallen on the Quad. She smiled. I brought my own dinner.

Bayer sucked furiously on his straw and watched Stacey pull the rubber band off a box of sushi. He made a mild look of disgust.

Stacey caught the look as she slid her chopsticks out of their sleeve. Makes more sense than a milkshake, Buddy.

Yeah, but this shake here has carbohydrates in the form of milk and sugar, as well as an ample supply of the fats group, not to mention protein, which of course takes us back to the milk part—

Wally, you’re so strange, Stacey observed with a smile as she split her chopsticks.

Sorry. Wally sucked more furiously than before.

Stacey tilted her head to one side as she smiled at the soy sauce squirting out of its package. It’s okay. She reached for the wasabe. How’s your research going? Still not going to tell me what you’re working on?

The hollow sound of a straw sucking bottom emanated from the cup. You know I can’t say that.

The chopsticks reached for a piece of sushi. I was hoping I was special.

Wally returned the grin and set the empty cup down. Oh, you’re special. But I still can’t say what I’m working on.

Okay. Stacy stopped the conversation to chew and swallow. At least tell me what you’re doing for Christmas.

I fly back home on Friday. And you?

Same, though my brother’s picking me up and we’re driving back. Stacey reached into the top of the knapsack she had set on the seat beside her and reached for the water bottle that was within.

What’s Manhattan like this time of year?

Stacey stopped to consider the question. Very nice, everything considered. Very Christmasy.

Sounds nice.

You should come visit sometime. She washed down the latest piece of her dinner with a swallow of designer water. How’s Chicago?

Wally played with the straw of his consumed shake, scraping the bottom of the cup. Oak Park isn’t quite Chicago. It’s quiet. He stared out at the silent snow drifting down on all beyond the window. Then he smiled. It’s Christmasy. In its own way.

Oak Park. Hemingway lived there, right?

Ah yes, the English major. Wally stopped playing with the straw and leaned back from the cup. He lived just down the street.

Stacey pulled a Hemingway title from her knapsack and placed it on the table between them. You should read him sometime.

Wally shrugged his shoulders. I know what he’s about.

Wally and Stacey pulled to a stop in front of Monroe Hall, one of the traditional freshman dorms. Wally slid his hands deep into the side pockets of his parka. We probably won’t see each other again before the holidays.

Stacey held a notebook tight to her bosom as she beamed up at him. Well, I hope you have a safe flight home.

Thanks. You have a safe drive.

You still won’t tell me what you’re doing?

Wally looked into the pair of blue eyes framed by blond hair, and exhaled a cloud of frosted vapor. Time travel.

The smile disappeared from Stacey’s face. You don’t have to make fun of me, Wally.

I’m serious. We’re working on time travel.

Stacey looked away from her escort. Merry Christmas, Wally. See you in Two Thousand Two.

Wally reached out a feeble arm, and called out to the withdrawing figure. Stacey!

His date did not respond as she disappeared through the front entrance of Monroe Hall.

How was the walk, my friend?

Wally rubbed his hands together in the new warmth of Dr. Alan Earhart’s office. It was cold.

Earhart stared at the red hands of his most talented graduate assistant. Gloves are usually called for in weather like this.

I forgot them, Wally replied as he walked to his desk adjacent to Earhart’s tiny office, which rested behind a pair of makeshift walls in a corner of the elongated room. Wally’s workstation was at the front of one of two neat rows running the length of the room that looked out upon a gigantic cube of gleaming chromium which was the focus of all of Earhart’s efforts of the preceding six years.

Dr. Earhart removed his spectacles and stood up from the papercluttered desk which had a computer monitor set on one corner. A framed black-and-white photograph of a young Earhart and an equally young woman was set on the opposite corner of the desk which took up most of the office’s floor space. He exited his office and walked to a standing position a pair of feet from Wally’s desk. Out with that little tart again?

Wally looked up from his own cluttered desk, and the computer he was booting up. The tart named Stacey? We just had dinner in the Student Center.

Ah, yes, dinner in the cafeteria. Earhart pulled his gray ponytail over one shoulder to rest it on his chest, crossed his arms on that chest, and leaned against the wall that stood between his desk and Wally’s. I’m curious: has anyone asked you what we’re doing here?

Not really, Wally told him.

Earhart nodded, then brightened when he saw a trio of Wally’s fellow assistants come walking through the door of the laboratory. Welcome!

Wally turned himself, away from the computer screen, then rose to greet his three colleagues and the two others who followed close behind. A minute later, all twelve of Earhart’s graduate assistants were standing near his office when he re-emerged from that office with a small wooden crate in both hands. Stephen, did you bring the cups?

Stephen Dwyer held up a plastic-wrapped stack of red cups. Ready to party, Doc.

Good. Earhart set the crate on Wally’s desk and pulled off the loosened lid. Welcome, everyone, he began with one arm buried in the crate’s packing, to the first annual John Everest Graduate School of Physics Christmas party, sponsored by our very own Department of Defense.

How can it be annual if it’s the first? Dwyer asked, prompting a pair of laughs from the two females present.

Earhart laughed as well and tensed his arm in the packing. Well, that would be inaugural, wouldn’t it? But rest assured that we shall be doing the same thing next year. The hand below the arm was pulled from the interior of the crate, and a bottle of Dom Perignon emerged from obscurity to several murmurs of appreciation. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Merry Christmas! everyone shouted back, and Dwyer proceeded to rip the plastic off the cups as Earhart pulled out the second and third bottles of champagne.

It wasn’t until after the cork in the first bottle had been sent flying across the room to hit a computer monitor that Earhart addressed the party again. And before we indulge, I would just like to point out that today is a very special anniversary.

Kitty Hawk, Wally volunteered from his chair leaning against one wall.

Earhart smiled at his favorite assistant. Pre-empted, I am. On December Seventeenth, Nineteen-Oh-Three, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew a heavier-than-air machine for the first time, ushering in a new century and a new age. The first cup of champagne passed from Earhart’s hand to the nearest lady present. And I would like to think that we’re trying the same thing here. So let’s celebrate both anniversaries!

And drink twice as much! someone from the back of the gathering called out, prompting only a single supportive laugh.

Twelve more cups were filled with the bubbly, and the merriment of a holiday party spilled over the crowd gathered at one end of the double rows of desks. One of the two women, one named Judy, peeled away from Dwyer, who was paying an inordinate amount of attention to a bosom normally protected by a white lab coat, and approached the Wally sitting in his chair against a wall and accepting the last cup filled by Earhart. When are you headed home for the holidays, Wally?

Wally glanced up from his cup at the rouged lips that seemed very out of place in the laboratory, even among the red cups being held and raised at regular intervals. On Friday. You? He set his cup on the desk at his side.

Judy smiled. On Friday. You’re from Chicago, right?

Sortuv. Oak Park.

And you?

Judy ran a hand through a side of brown hair. Boston. Ever been?

Never. But I would like to some time. What’s there to do?

Judy’s smile turned amused. Oh, I don’t know. You sort of find out when you get there.

Halstead pulled up to the trio of SUVs parked alongside a forest road otherwise devoid of traffic, and killed the headlights of his own vehicle. He waved away the muzzles of the assault rifles pointed in his direction by several of the armed and camouflaged men standing in the vicinity of the vehicles, the several of the twelve who were not smoking cigarettes beneath the snow-encrusted canopies of trees along the side of the road.

Halstead returned the salutes of the guards. What are you assholes doing standing by the side of the road?

The nearest of the men pulled his M-16 upward to point at the lightless overcast. Waiting for you, Colonel. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the mixture of snow and mud adjacent to the blacktop. Everything’s a go.

Halstead stared at the five men beyond the parked vehicles who were stomping their cigarettes out in a snowbank. The trucks are loaded and ready to go?

Affirmative, a second man replied as he tugged upward on the zipper of his camouflage parka.

Good, then let’s do it. We attack at twenty-two hundred hours, and I want everyone in position well before then. Let’s move. All twelve men and their leader did indeed begin to move, piling into the SUVs and riding off down the otherwise-silent road.

Wally stared to focus his eyes, and seized the clock on the nearest wall of Earhart’s office as a focal point for the vision blurred by the three cups of champagne he had consumed in the course of the evening. He managed to make out the pair of hands in the vicinity of the 10, one approaching the mark and one departing, then let his eyes drop to the professor sitting below the clock. Quite a nice little party you’ve thrown, Doc.

Earhart laughed beneath his glasses and sipped the last portion of his last cup. I can see kids you enjoyed it.

Kids? Judy repeated from her seat beside Wally’s desk, between Wally and Dwyer. We’re all adults here, Doctor Earhart.

Please, Alan. No offense, but I was building better nukes for the DoD while you folks were still in diapers.

Judy’s eyes drifted to the clock after Earhart’s observation. There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you.

Earhart glanced at a merry burst of laughter from the distant center of the room, where the nine other partygoers had just shared an unheard story or joke. He placed his hands behind his head. Try me.

Well, Judy sipped from her cup, it’s really simple. Why can’t someone using the Box return? Her brown eyes went from the floor of the room to the cube nicknamed the Box.

Earhart smiled, Let me tell you, constructing the Box in this period has been difficult enough—

I know it wouldn’t be practical, Judy snapped, erasing the professor’s smile. But why can’t someone return in theory?

Earhart nodded once with closed eyes, removed his hands from the back of his head, and reached to Wally’s desk for a sheet of paper. A pencil, Wally.

Wally produced one as Earhart pushed his rolling chair to the edge of Wally’s desk. Dwyer stood up from his chair to approach Earhart, and he, Wally, and Judy all leaned close to their professor as his pencil started to move across the page.

It’s a very simple principle. The ‘Alternity Principle,’ I like to call it.

Alternity? Dwyer asked.

A combination of ‘alternate’ and ‘reality.’ Earhart’s hand had drawn a single straight line down the center of the page, and now marked it with a ‘T’ before attaching two short lines at one end to make it an arrow. "Behold the stream of time, everflowing and constant, at least according to Sir Isaac Newton.

Yet, now Earhart’s hand quickly drew two parallel arrows, one extending less and one extending further from the same imaginary baseline, and marked them T¹ and T³, respectively, before adding a superscript 2 to the original T, Einstein showed that Newton was wrong, that time can be slowed down or sped up; that time is relative.

Okay, we may be kids, Alan, but—

Patience is one of the hallmarks of maturity, Judy, Earhart informed her without looking up from his pencil. That, and an open mind. As all of you learned as undergrads, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity opened up a whole new world. Werner Heisenberg followed some twenty years later with his Uncertainty Principle, which not only made our little quantum machine out there possible, Earhart made a singular gesture with his pencil, but also paved the way for my Alternity Principle.

By paving the way for Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds’ Theory, Wally piped in.

Earhart half-glanced up at Wally. True. Then he gave a full glance to Judy as the pencil found the paper once more. Let us imagine that the multiple frames of reference implied by Einstein’s theory are the many worlds of Everett’s theory. The three graphite lines had been extended to a single point of connection at the bottom. As you know, what our so-called ‘Box’ out there is doing is transporting subjects back in time by speeding their frame of reference past the light barrier.

Dwyer broke in with a small cough. Well, Doc, we don’t know if we’re actually doing that—

Keeping me honest. What we do know is that those rats and dogs went somewhere. Earhart had drawn a reverse arrow that hugged T² and led back to the point of connection. Anyway, the ‘Box’ leads us back to the point of origin for all three of these frames of reference, or worlds. The point that I make to you, Judy, is that once a traveler has returned to an old frame of reference, he or she has created a new universe."

But that doesn’t make any sense, Judy observed with a frown at Earhart’s newest arrow, which was labeled T⁴ and shot away from the point of origin, towards the right edge of the diagram.

It does, if you think out of the box, no pun intended. The graphite returned to the point of origin of all the lines. When you enter a universe, you create a new, additional universe, just by the fact of your presence there. If you go back to the birth of Christ, you have not returned to our universe around the year One A.D.; you have created an entirely new universe with Judy Coppola as its distinguishing feature. For all of your intents and purposes, your original universe no longer exists.

And you’re in an entirely new universe that goes off in an entirely new direction, Wally observed.

Not entirely, perhaps, but distinctly. All eyes followed the pencil as it ran back and forth across T⁴, emboldening it. The new universe of T-Four will be different, how different depending on the new arrival’s actions. Does she murder the Emperor Augustus? Or does she give birth to a child whose descendants change history further down the line of T-Four? Perhaps she becomes somehow responsible for the death of infant Jesus in the manger.

Assuming, of course, that Jesus really existed. The new speaker recoiled from his colleagues’ stares over their shoulders. Sorry, meant no offense.

None taken. Earhart calmly replaced the pencil on the desktop. In fact, that leads me to one of the many thoughts that have filled my head since this theory took hold up here. Earhart left his index on his temple after he finished tapping.

What’s that? Wally asked as he reached for the sheet of paper.

What if Jesus Christ was a time traveler? All motion stopped among Earhart’s four listeners, and the remaining eight occupants of the room began to drift in his direction. What if he were from our future, or from another universe entirely, and traveled back to the reign of Augustus, complete with technology embedded in his body?

Devices that let him walk on water—

Or raise the dead, a third person suggested.

I think we’ve had too much champagne here, Dwyer declared with a laugh that died when it found no company.

Yes, I’m glad all of you see. Earhart ran his fingers over his ponytail. Farfetched, I know, but so were all of the theories before it.

Wally stared into his empty cup. And not just Jesus Christ. How else to explain Joan of Arc? Or Rasputin?

Earhart stared at Wally, then matched the stare with a smile. Yes, other figures with supernatural powers who altered the course of history.

But the theory you just described doesn’t allow for multiple travelers. Once one traveler arrives in a universe, he creates a new, distinct universe.

That’s correct, Wally assented as he pushed Earhart’s diagram back to the center of his desk and reached for the pencil. But you’re forgetting that multiple travelers could arrive at multiple points. Jesus could arrive at One A.D. and create our universe, as we’re familiar with it up to the fifteenth century.

At which time Joan of Arc arrives from a universe in which the French lost the Hundred Years’ War, a new party to the discussion offered. Everyone clustered around Wally drawing a new arrow that came from the top of the diagram and intersected at an angle with T², about three-quarters of the way up. A new upward arrow was drawn from an angle at this point, and was labeled T⁵.

And the universe as we know it continues on with a French victory—

And then Grigori Rasputin arrives in our universe in the late nineteenth century—

From a universe in which the Russian Revolution never happened.

Wally nodded to all of this and drew yet another downward arrow, one which intersected with T⁵ near its top extremity and prompted the drawing of yet another upward arrow, which he labeled T⁶.

And what if someone had arrived in our universe from a reality in which Hitler had won the war? yet another person asked.

Or what if Hitler himself was a time traveler? someone at the back asked in a soft voice.

Okay, that’s it for me, Dwyer declared before standing up and draining the last of his cup. I’ve got an a.m. flight.

Ditto.

With that, the party began to disperse, and its individual components started looking for their respective coats and scarves thrown across the chairs and workstations in the room.

Wally swished his last half-cup within the white interior of the plastic, folded the diagram into quarters, and stuffed the paper in his jeans pocket as he looked up at Earhart. Merry Christmas, Doc.

Earhart stood up, and waited for Wally to join his standing position. I’m glad you could make it.

Wally gripped the edge of his desk to balance his woozy self. One question. He gripped his right temple with four fingers. I’ve been meaning to ask it for a while.

Earhart’s voice was amused and patient. Anything. Within reason.

Wally looked up. Hasn’t the Pentagon figured out that whoever uses the Box can never come back?

Earhart’s grin was wide beneath his beard, as his eyes warily glanced at the chattering and departing crowd behind Wally’s back. Do you know what the world’s most famous oxymoron is?

Not off the top of my head.

Earhart leaned forward for emphasis. Military intelligence!

It was at that moment that the building shook with an explosion and a muffled roar. Everyone set their champagne cups on the nearest surfaces and pulled their outerwear more tightly about themselves. All looked instinctively at Earhart for direction, who stared in the direction of the one door that allowed passage to and from the labs.

Everyone stay calm, and don’t move! Earhart himself moved, walking out of the room that was the site of the Christmas party and into the large, eight thousand square foot space that housed the Box and its numerous auxiliary devices. All eyes followed the gray ponytail dangling behind the physicist as he walked past the bay of windows and approached the immobile plate of a steel door that separated them from the outside world and the rest of the research complex.

It was as Earhart reached the halfway point between Christmas party and door that the muffled staccatos of several automatic rifles drifted in from beyond that portal. Earhart spun around to return to the safety of the desks protected by bulletproof windows just before the steel plate was blown open by a tremendous blast that knocked him halfway across the room and into the very windows that would have protected him.

Judy screamed and more than one man moaned as Wally and the others remaining in the room watched Earhart’s contorted face stick to one window pane, then slide down to the floor with the rest of his body and leave a bloody trail on the glass. Wally was rushing past the others in an instant, narrowly avoiding restraint by Dwyer, and fell to his knees beside the twisted and bloodied body of Earhart.

Dr. Alan Earhart was still breathing, but his breaths were short and raspy and his eyes stared at the distant ceiling without seeing anything. Wally could hear bootsteps from the direction of the blown doorway, but his eyes remained on his mentor’s, orbs that soon turned on the face looking down upon him and hardened with recognition. Say hello to Katya for me, he rasped.

Who? Wally leaned further down.

Katya Varekova. Born Grenoble, Nineteen Fifty—

Wally did not hear the rest of Earhart’s whisper, as a bootkick to the right side of his head sent him onto his back and sliding across the floor. Now it was Wally’s turn to stare at the ceiling in shock, at least until the flaccid face of a stranger in a camouflaged parka blocked his view.

Get up, cockfuck! The muzzle of an M-16, its round circle of steel warm from firing, tapped his brow before being pulled back a foot.

Wally twisted around onto his knees and pushed himself up to a standing position with his hands held high in the air. He now looked through blood-stained glass into the room he had exited only moments before, and witnessed the other doctoral candidates being shoved out into the open space that housed the Box.

Wally looked down and to his side when he heard a long, loud gasp from Earhart, who lay on his back with eyes that were now unseeing in their final stare. One of several camouflaged figures with rucksacks on their backs stood up from a kneeling position beside the corpse and looked grimly at Wally.

‘Tell her that I love her.’ Those were his final words, Halstead explained to a wide-eyed Wally, with a matter-of-fact tone.

You, Wally choked on the words, fucking killed him.

The officer set his rifle on the floor beside the dead physicist and reached over to shut his eyes. We didn’t kill him, Bayer. It was an accident. Halstead continued to stare down at the mask of death as he spoke. Nice little party you’re having this evening. Now he stood and smiled at Bayer, who had been shoved in the direction of the other five standing against the near side of the windows. I’m glad my friends and I could make it.

At that moment, three more camouflaged men entered the room through the hole of a doorway, two of them carrying a third by each arm, a man with blood splattered over the front of his parka and his limp head hanging on his chest. How is he? Halstead asked on behalf of the nine others who stood with their rifles trained on the remaining twelve scientists.

He’s not gonna make it, Colonel. The man who answered made a jerking motion with his head to his counterpart, and the pair eased their wounded comrade onto the floor beside Earhart’s corpse. The spokesman leaned down against the mouth of the wounded, much like Halstead had done with Earhart, then looked up at his commander with his entire face twitching in grief. He done died, Colonel.

While the casualty had been dragged to a lying position beside Earhart’s, a pair of Halstead’s men had entered the room beyond the glass and forced Wally’s remaining six colleagues out into the main room at gunpoint. On the way out, Judy was accosted by an arm around her shoulders and forcefully kissed by a leering member of Halstead’s party before being shoved into the main room with a laugh.

Halstead glared at his brutish follower, then looked at the prisoners standing opposite the pair of bodies. We expected losses, men. All of you, except Bayer, Halstead waved his M-16 casually in the direction of Wally’s remaining companions, get outuv here. I would run if I were you, ’cause we’re gonna blow this entire complex within a matter of minutes.

Judy’s hand was on Wally’s arm as the others started for the single exit. Come on—

No, I said all except Bayer, Miss. He stays behind to help us out. Get out of here, before you join your professor on the floor there.

The tear-streaked and lipstick-smeared Judy kept her hand on Wally’s arm, stifled a sob with her other hand as she looked down at Earhart’s cold form once more, then released Wally to run across the room and join the others waiting to escort her. Wally looked after her longingly before steeling himself and looking back at his lead captor. What do you think you’re doing?

Halstead smiled for only a moment. Showing up to one of these holiday office parties. Someone had to represent the ‘military intelligence.’ Why not your project’s Pentagon liaison?

Wally flushed. You bugged us.

Don’t worry. Your conversations, Bayer, are pretty damn boring. I just learned what I needed to learn: when you and the others come and go. And, what a fortunate surprise, a Christmas party on the night of the seventeenth. I guess you could say it’s turned into a going-away party for those of us who would like to use the Box.

Wally’s flush was now of anger. If you’ve been listening, then you know it hasn’t been tested on humans and you also must know you can’t come back—

We’re aware of all of that, Bayer, Halstead interjected. The men you see with me have all accepted the fact that they are taking a tremendous risk and that they are saying goodbye to the twenty-first century, to their wives, children, friends, and homes. There was a slight pause, a distant look, then another brief smile as he adjusted the pack strapped over his parka. At least those who have those things.

Wally opened his spread palms in the direction of the dozen M-16s trained on him. Fine. What year do you want to go to?

Nineteen Eighteen. November Eleventh is the date.

What time? Wally asked with a trace of pride.

Halstead looked surprised. You can set it to the time?

And maybe even second, Colonel, Wally replied. We’ve refined our techniques since your last visit.

Fine. Halstead looked down at the floor with thoughts. The eleventh hour.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month coming right up, Wally replied as he started for the steel ladder that led to a platform level with the top of the chromium cube but still below a training capsule left over from the Mercury program, a conical vessel which hung above the center of the cube and on the end of a crane.

Men, follow him up there, Halstead instructed to his party, and the ladder clanged with the steps of eleven pairs of boots. I see you know your history, Mister Bayer, he called out, with a raise of his voice, to the graduate student halfway up the twenty foot climb.

A man’s got to have his hobbies, Colonel, Wally replied as he set both feet on the platform and turned around to survey the scene below him. He stared at Halstead’s M-16 trained on him and remarked, I hope you’re not going to shoot me.

Not if you do what I say, Mister Bayer. Just get started on that programming.

I hope you’ve given me enough time. Wally now gripped the railing running along the edge of the platform and watched the eleven overweight, rucksacked, and heavily-breathing companions of Halstead’s slowly top the ladder and join him on the platform.

You’ll have plenty of time. That bomb threat was just a means of making sure your friends run as far away as possible.

Wally turned from Halstead, the Box, and the railing to begin the activation process. It’ll take a pair of minutes, he shouted out for everyone’s benefit. The creation of the proper quantum state takes a tremendous amount of energy.

Now that his followers were gathered on the platform and monitoring Wally’s every move, Halstead’s boots could be heard clanging alone on the ladder. That’s perfectly okay, Mister Bayer. We have plenty of time until the authorities arrive.

What did you do to the security guards, Colonel? Wally asked with an eye on a computer screen when Halstead arrived on the platform with a slow, easy breath.

Halstead walked to the inner ring of railing and looked down into the circular hole in the