Provoking Fate: Paradox, #4

By Henry Brown

Ike Jaeger blazes through his senior year surrounded with opportunities. With two Bowl championships under his belt, he's earned the interest of a professional football team. The US involvement in Vietnam is escalating, opening up a commission and even fighter pilot slots. His talent for engineering is earning him respect among the scientists on Planet Valhalla and elsewhere. There's no shortage of beautiful wife material, either.

 

He can't quite get over the JFK assassination, though. The official narrative is ludicrous, and he won't accept it. Finding the truth behind the murder plot draws him down a rabbit hole that leads him through a whirlwind tour of history that exposes it as just one part of an international conspiracy that might turn out to be timeless.

 

In Provoking Fate, the Paradox series becomes a roller coaster ride fraught with epiphany, danger, and personal tragedy, flinging Ike toward a secret war that transcends multiple realities and  the dimensions in between.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Virtual Pulp Press
• Release date: Apr 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223390343

Book preview

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Events, characters and organizations depicted herein are products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously.

Heap big thanks to John Earle, for proofreading the entire Paradox Series (no small task!).

FOR ALL THE YOUNG MEN struggling to find their way in this toxic misandrist dystopia: learn from the mistakes of those who came before you.

Based on what I knew about the continuum, if I jumped a warp back to, say, a day or an hour before my family's disappearance, to remove them from harm's way before the fact, I would simply be splitting the stream. I might be able to protect Madalina and Sylvia's doppelgängers (so my own doppelgänger wouldn't lose them), but in my stream they would still be gone. This wasn't exact science, but I hoped that if I intervened at the perfect instant, the split would circle back into the stream so immediately that it wouldn't be a split at all.

I didn't know for sure that the Erasers had taken my family. There was plenty of evil in the world that could have happened to them without the use of warp generators and cloaking devices. I cursed myself for not considering that before. I should not have left them alone.

I jumped back to the time Madalina was last reported seen, and waited for her to emerge from the house she was reportedly seen in. I set up my observation point on a roof overlooking the street where the house was, thinking from a high elevation I would better be able to spot her in the foot traffic, predict which way she would go, and identify threats.

I watched droves of people go back and forth below. For a brief instant, I glimpsed a face that looked familiar. I only noticed her in the human kaleidoscope because she glanced up at me. But as quickly as I spotted the woman, I lost her in the crowd.

She wasn't anybody I knew; so where did I remember her face from? And what would anybody I had ever encountered be doing at these coordinates?

Something caused me to turn around from my perch on the edge of the roof. Maybe it was a sound, a vibration, a change in the temperature or light. Coming up behind me on the roof was a Predator-cloaked figure.

The sudden fear and panic froze me in place at first. The distorted light convulsed as it grew closer, confusing my eyes as to what I was seeing. Then I realized a cloaked weapon muzzle was swinging to bear on me.

It was probably all the martial arts and situational awareness Dad had drilled into me that saved my life that day. I pitched to the side and rolled across the roof as a suppressed shot hit the spot where I had just been less than a second before. I rolled to my feet and came up drawing my silenced M1911 from the holster concealed under my loose button-down shirt. I spotted the visual anomaly and fired. It went backwards and flattened on the roof. A .45 wadcutter makes a huge exit wound; but unable to see much in the way of detail, I fired again and saw the shape jolted.

Scared and furious, I approached the Eraser and knelt beside it, feeling the body with my free hand. My hand closed on something that felt like a rifle. The predator camouflage failed where I touched it, so that I could see parts of it near my grip. I pulled on it, but it was tethered to the body somehow. I holstered my pistol and used both hands to feel the weapon from one end to the other. I felt a cord of some kind. My hand closed over a connector. After fumbling with it, then giving it a stout yank, the connector separated and the carbine became visible. It looked like it might be an M4A1, under all that now-inactive predator camouflage.

The Eraser's jumpsuit camouflage was still active, but I could see the two entrance wounds, and the area around them as blood seeped out to neutralize the camouflage. I checked the body for spare magazines, for a way to remove the jumpsuit, or a switch to turn it off. I scooted around the body, still groping around.

The suppressed gunshot and the sudden pain in my calf were just about simultaneous.

I dove to my stomach, putting the carbine butt to my shoulder and searching in the direction the shot came from. Another shot snapped over my head. I spotted the anomaly and fired four rapid shots.

At least one shot must have got him. He went down, his jumpsuit fizzing, sparking, then failing. I glanced down at my own wound. I thought it probably missed the bone, judging by the location. And it wasn't bleeding heavily enough to have sliced a major artery. Still, it hurt.

I limped over to the now-visible Eraser's body. I found his spare magazines, jammed them into my cargo pockets and thought about checking to see if he had some kind of identification. Then I noticed the sound of the approaching helicopter right before a machinegun burst stitched across the roof toward me. I jumped and rolled out of the line of fire as the burst nearly shredded the booth that covered the top of the fire escape that led to the ground level. I rolled to the side of the roof and looked below. A few yards farther along the roof, there was some kind of outdoor display cabinet where an old man was hawking his wares. I scrambled over to where it was below me. I glanced in the direction where I could hear the chopper (it was cloaked).

I jumped.

My good leg, ass, and back hit the rickety hutch. Wood splintered and merchandise smashed as the whole structure collapsed under my weight. The noise made everyone nearby jump and gape. Jagged wood, broken glass and pottery tore at my flesh. But it broke my fall.

I was at that early stage of a minor wound where the pain existed, but was obscured by the fog of adrenaline. I still had the carbine in a death grip. I climbed to my feet and right then the cloaked chopper appeared over the narrow street some thirty yards away. Shocked pedestrians turned their attention from me to the almost-invisible aircraft they could hear overhead.

I ran as best I could with my variety of wounds, firing at the chopper as I went. I flicked the selector lever to full auto and emptied the magazine at where I thought the tail rotor should be. I slipped around a corner just as the machinegun cut loose and chewed up the wall I had just passed.

People screamed as I hobbled down the alley at a double-time, trying to change magazines on the move.

I turned a corner into an even narrower alley, and backed against a wall to check my new wounds. I pulled a glass fragment out of my hip and a large wood splinter out of my thigh. My blood dripped to the ground from a dozen little areas of broken skin.

Changing magazines, my brain now had time for some thinking. I wanted to get back to where Madalina was scheduled to emerge. But the Eraser team was so determined to get me, they didn't seem to care that hundreds of locals were aware of their presence. They would kill them all if necessary.

Why were they after me? How did they find me?

I was in a big deadly mess, and had to get out of those coordinates, stop the bleeding, and come back with some serious firepower, body armor, and some predator camouflage of my own. That meant I had to get to the plane. I checked the digital map on my handheld computer, got my bearings, and chose a route.

The chopper's turbine engine grew louder and it passed by, directly overhead. If it had not been directly overhead, those aboard might have spotted me in the narrow gap between buildings. The bottom of the fuselage was what shielded me from view.

Once it was out of sight, I got moving.

I emerged from the narrow alley onto a street. Pedestrians, who no doubt had heard all the nearby gunfire, saw me and freaked out. I ran diagonally across the street to another alley that should give me good cover and concealment for about a block.

Shots rang out at ground level. One snapped the air right behind me. I couldn't place the Erasers in all the crowd movement. I sprinted the remaining distance to the alley and entered it. Ten yards in I stopped, whirled, and dropped belly-down with the carbine ready.

The light at the mouth of the alley bent strangely, and I squeezed the trigger. The Eraser went down, but there was another one behind him, who appeared to trip over his buddy and fall. I squeezed again and nothing happened. The carbine was jammed.

Cursing, I rose, pulled my .45 and pumped four rounds into the mass of distorted light. I turned and resumed my escape, hoping my bullets had found their marks, or I would take one in the back any moment.

The alley continued straight across the street, but I wanted to put buildings between myself and pursuit. I darted to the right on the street, causing more panic among bystanders, then turned left again, zigzagging into another alley.

All this time, I could hear the chopper stalking me. I stopped and caught my breath again, clearing the jam in the carbine.

The chopper grew louder, and then the sky distorted behind and overhead. This time it rotated in place, hovering. They had spotted me.

Chapter 1: Wake-Up Call

Kennedy had been shot .

I had completely forgotten the significance of it being late November of 1963. It all came rushing back, now.

Forgetting I was supposed to be in class, I headed for the dorm. Female faces shined with tears. Male faces scowled in disbelief. Students and professors wandered around campus like zombies as I weaved in between them.

The dormitory break room was packed, and the TV was already on, at full volume. I squeezed in just in time to hear that the President was dead.

My dormmates deflated as their last desperate hope disintegrated.

Why would somebody do this? one guy asked, with a blank stare.

Everybody loved him, someone else said, even the ones who voted against him! He was taking us to a new frontier.

I was pretty young, way back in the future, when Reagan was shot. I had no interest or understanding of politics then, but I noticed a lot of adults reacted as if it were good news, or funny.

I thought back to the end of my freshman year at Yosemite Polytechnic, at my present time-space coordinates. My roommate then, Gartenberg, had the radio on while he took his magazine clippings down from the wall. Kennedy was giving a speech to media bigwigs, and warned about the danger of secret societies (ironic, since his brother's alleged assassin would be a Rosicrucian).

At one point in his speech, Kennedy said, We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence...

He went on to mention the behavior and impact of the conspiracy, and prophesied that dissent would be silenced. That sounded like the status quo in the future Dad saved me from. In fact, all of it sounded similar to Dad's perspective on the world.

Kennedy had discovered something, then denounced it in public. He revealed a secret. Was that what got him killed?

BARELY HAD THE SHOCK of the assassination set in, when the lead suspect, while in police custody, was himself murdered. The murder was nationally televised. People couldn't believe anybody had both the ability and the gall to stage something like that openly, with TV coverage. Whoever had orchestrated this sequence of evil events was rubbing our noses in it.

I was just as stunned as everyone else, even though I had heard about the assassination when I was a kid who had no interest in history or politics and just wrote it off as another boring topic grown-ups liked to talk about.

I smelled a rat immediately. A conspiracy of rats.

People who had more information than me were likely suspicious already, but when the sleazy nightclub owner bumped off the lone nut assassin before the public could even hear what he had to say, the stench became almost unbearable. No thinking person could accept the narrative being weaved for public consumption.

When asked why he murdered Oswald before he could be made to talk, Jack Ruby's stated rationale was that he didn't want newly-widowed Jackie Kennedy to have to return to Dallas for the trial.

Yeah, right. Sounds legit.

Classes were cancelled the day of the President's funeral. Before and after the funeral, both students and professors went through the motions of class in a daze.

The world was deathly silent for days. Nobody wanted to talk. It was rare to hear music—or anything but news reports—from the radio or TV. Any noise that wasn't absolutely solemn met with annoyance and disdain.

Even at the Yosemite campus, so far from Dallas, I could feel the Big Spooky descending upon the country.

Now I understood why the atmosphere in Bloomington had changed so drastically over two succeeding visits to see Holly. One was before the assassination, and one was after. The event had permanently changed America.

The national mood was still very bleak when school broke for Christmas. I remembered the visit to the scene of the assassination back when Dad took me on that Big Spooky tour. He had planted surveillance drones at the site. I had forgotten all about it and never asked him what he found out.

Perhaps it was Dad's influence on me: I considered the assassination, the Erasers, the CPB, and probably even Fate, as conspirators all linked together somehow, all pushing toward the same insidious goal. I didn't know exactly what that goal was, but it involved turning America into a dystopian cesspool, destroying anyone who tried to expose the truth, and preventing anyone else from escaping the worldwide shitshow they were creating.

I knew very little of the facts behind what all had just happened, but marveled at the teamwork, discipline, and solidarity it must have required. Evil people, working together, could accomplish great evil.

Where was the opposing force?

The police were obviously not part of the resistance, and only a moron would count Jack Ruby on the side opposing evil.

In World War Two, our whole country opposed evil.

Couldn't good men, working together, accomplish good?

Where were the good men, now?

What were they doing? Nothing?

What was I doing? Nothing.

That had to change, or evil would triumph.

Chapter 2: Dealey Crossfire

Ihad to find Dad.

I searched everywhere I knew he frequented, disturbed to find out that nobody had seen or heard from him for a while.

I left a message for him at predesignated coordinates, but grew impatient for him to check them and find me.

I jumped a warp to Dallas the morning of the assassination. I brought some equipment to intercept the transmission from Dad's drone footage. I planned to also position myself somewhere at Dealey Plaza where I could observe the motorcade, in real time, and maybe try to place the shots. If none of that bore fruit, I was willing to jump back to the previous day and force a meeting with the younger Dad who brought the younger me in on the VTOL.

I rented a hotel room nearby in Dallas and set up the equipment borrowed from BH Station. Then I drove to the Plaza, parking the GTO in the parking lot behind the Grassy Knoll about an hour before the motorcade was due.

I had heard of the Grassy Knoll at my native coordinates and, after a quick jump to 2013 and some intense research, learned that most conspiracy theorists believed the sniper who fired the fatal headshot had been located there. I would scout the entire area, but observe the Grassy Knoll closely when the limousine drove by.

Even an hour early, the Plaza was crowded and the Big Spooky made my skin crawl. I examined every person I saw with suspicion, imagining any of them could be in on the plot.

I noticed the umbrella man when he arrived. I caught a glimpse of a guy I thought could be a young George H.W. Bush. I even thought I recognized Lee Harvey Oswald himself at one point, standing in the crowd on the street in front of the Book Depository.

I strolled around the entire Plaza, and made it back to the Grassy Knoll with 15 minutes to spare. I positioned myself in the shade of a tree, where I could watch the motorcade while keeping my eye on the location where the street-level sniper might appear.

As I waited, I noticed a Top Tier woman strolling on a route parallel with what the motorcade would take, when it arrived.

Aside from her exceptional good looks and sexy walk, she should have blended in just fine. Her hairdo, dress, gloves, shoes, and purse were all in perfect keeping with the latest styles in 1963. But while everyone else was anxious or excited, she looked perfectly at ease, and even a little amused—like a joke had just been told and she was the only one who heard and understood it.

I wondered if I should try to keep my eyes on her, too. Maybe she figured somehow in what was about to go down.

I was so focused on her and observing the Knoll that I had developed a blind spot in my situational awareness. Somebody grabbed my arm from behind and spun me around.

What the hell are you doing, Hero?

Dad! You're here—I've been looking all over for you!

Even more wrinkles and gray hair accented his features than I remembered from the last time I saw him. How did you get here?

I drove the GTO.

Where is it?

I pointed toward the parking lot.

Shit—let's go, he said. We gotta get out of here now, before you FUBAR everything.

We hurried to the Pontiac and he jumped into the passenger seat, urging me to get us out of there fast, but without burning the tires or doing anything else to draw attention.

Where to? I asked, approaching the freeway onramp.

You staying somewhere local?

I told him about the hotel, and he ordered me to take him there.

In the hotel room, he looked over the equipment and asked, Where'd you get this?

Borrowed it from BH Station, I said.

He turned on the room's television. Pandemonium already flooded the airwaves. Kennedy was murdered while we were driving from the site.

He fixed me with a grave stare full of fear and possibly some anger. Have you talked to anybody since you've been here?

Just the desk clerk.