Chapter thirty-one
1977-Leteo
May 1, 1977. 3AM. Ancient Era.
Somewhere in the Mojave Desert.
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It had gotten more complicated than it should have.
Scott, frowning, looked at Jack with a mixture of anger and confusion. Jack, for his part, simply looked confused and self-absorbed. The sound of the OH-58 Kiowa, in which they were traveling, did not seem to bring them out of their thoughts at that moment.
[Three minutes!] The voice of the helicopter pilot, belonging to the base near the Providence Mountains, was heard through the headphones.
Come on, come on! Scott thought.
They were aboard one of the two helicopters that was taking them to the base. More specifically to the base hospital. They were accompanied by two soldiers beside them, who were going in complete silence. But that silence was not the circumspect silence that they should have for their service in the army. That silence was one that looked at Jack and Scott almost with suspicion. The suspicion was because of what they had seen when they arrived at the hangar that served as a laboratory, for the scientists who were working on a certain joint project of the Department of Defense and the Royal Intelligence Agency.
What they had seen was in the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter of the base's ambulance service at the time, which was ahead of them. The soldiers had no idea what they were working on in that hangar, but it had left them speechless.
The two helicopters landed on the helipad of the military hospital and there were already doctors and nurses from the base waiting for them.
When the door of the ambulance helicopter opened, they quickly moved the patient they were transporting to a stretcher and the doctors looked at the patient with wild eyes, who was screaming guttural screams of pain, panic and horror.
"Let's go! Let's not waste time, hurry up!" one of the doctors urged the two nurses, who were also looking at what seemed to be a human on the stretcher. But they obeyed and the group began to move the stretcher into the hospital.
Jack and Scott hurried out of the helicopter they were riding in and followed them. Scott was dismayed. From his vantage point he could see the man on the gurney groaning in pain. But it was his movements that had him perplexed. It was as if the man was suffering some kind of epileptic seizure. But those movements were beyond anything he had seen. They were tremors that should not be possible for a human. They were too fast. It was as if the subject was vibrating on the stretcher and its contours were blurred due to the violence of the tremors.
"What the hell?!" Scott said, looking at Jack.
"It's the molecular reconstruction. Something must have happened, it wasn't supposed to happen this way," Jack stated next to him but, despite what he said, his tone seemed to indicate that he wasn't quite sure of his own words.
They entered the hospital like a gale, rushing through the corridors, while some of the staff turned to look at them because of the strangeness of the scene.
Jack had approached and looked at the face of the guy whose features he couldn't see at all. Where the face should be he saw something vaguely reminiscent of a face. It was like seeing that face through a frosted glass, but it was because his whole body was vibrating.
That being, man, shadow or ghost, it could well be all of those things, stared for an instant at what seemed to be his gaze on Scott.
"Hey. It's going to be okay." He said to him. He felt sorry to see him. The man was undoubtedly suffering for it.
"Sir, please step back for now." A nurse stopped him.
"We came with him."
"We know, but try to calm down now. We'll try to do the best we can."
What the hell are they going to do with a patient like that? Scott thought.
"Don't worry, we'll let you know, please. Now we'll just try to stabilize him," the one who had spoken was one of the doctors who had ridden with him in the helicopter ambulance. "If this is a side effect, we will probably just have to wait until the molecules cohere properly."
The group of doctors and nurses carrying the stretcher got lost in the long hallway and Scott stopped. Jack had stopped a few feet behind, one hand nervously scratching his hair.
Scott turned and started walking toward Jack, with a gesture he had seen him do only a few times in all the years they had been working together.
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Here we go, Jack thought and started walking in the opposite direction. Out of the hospital. The last thing he wanted was to cause a scene there.
They both walked out to the main entrance. Fortunately they were far enough away from the heliport and there was no one there to overhear the conversation.
"What the hell does this all mean?!" exclaimed Scott, unable to hide his agitation. "This wasn't supposed to happen, right? Why are we here, and why are we involved in this?"
"This wasn't supposed to happen like this."
"Who is that poor bastard? He's the one we've been setting all this up for, isn't he?"
"Yes. Although it has happened sooner than expected."
"How the hell can you be sure? Did you even see him? You can barely make out a face!"
"From the color of the hair and the build of the body it's him. There is no doubt."
"Poor bastard!" Scott was genuinely incensed. "On top of that, if he survives we have to lie to him? Who is he really? Enough lies and half-truths!"
"I haven't lied to you in years!" Jack replied angrily.
Scott faced him and spoke to him with his face just inches away. "You've been like a brother to me these years. Thanks to you I even met my wife and we've had more adventures than others would need three lifetimes to tell. But I want the truth now. No more lies with royalty. I want to know who he is."
"I don't know! Damn it!" Jack said, angrily.
"How the fuck are you not going to know?!"
Jack sighed deeply, his eyes fixed on Scott as he struggled to find the right words. He knew the time had come to share the final truth, or at least the part of it that he knew.
"Carl, you've been by my side for years, and maybe you're right," Jack began in a calmer tone. "I haven't told you everything."
At those words, Scott pursed his lips and nodded. "Well, let's get started then! What haven't you told me?"
Jack nodded, his gaze focused on an undefined point as he tried to articulate the revelation he was about to make. "Yes, I came here tracking down the parts for the machine, but not because I wanted to. I was sent to make sure things happened in that order, because if they didn't, there would be no future for anyone."
"That's what you told me years ago!"
"But you've always refused to believe it in part. It's the truth. The reason we're both here, it's all been for tonight."
"What are you talking about?"
"If we hadn't made the machine, we wouldn't be having this conversation to begin with. There is no future. For any of us."
"You're telling me the future of all mankind depends on that guy?"
"Yes. Not just the future of humanity, the future of the feys and the aeon as well."
"Aeon? What's that?"
"It doesn't matter. What matters is that all the complicated stuff is over. No more traveling all over the world. No more running away and busting out and all over the place. That's all over now."
"Why is that guy so important?"
"Because he has to be here. He will do important research that will shape the future of the world, but that will be a long time away. That's all I know."
"You're from the future, for crying out loud! You're going to tell me you can't even tell me that?"
"I don't know, damn it! What do you want me to tell you? You obey orders! I came here doing the samething, because no one else could do it."
"What do you mean?"
"Time travel isn't as easy as you think. Only certain people can do it."
Scott snorted and tried to calm down as he put his hands on his hips and walked a few steps away from Jack. "So? Now what?"
"Now we simply have to be with him. See what the investigation leads to, just like we planned."
"Pretending to be his friends for years..." blurted Scott throwing a crooked smile and looking at the ground. "I've never seen that man in my entire life and I have to pretend I've known him forever."
"Come on, I told you years ago. This is going as planned, a few minor hiccups, but we're making history."
"A history I have no idea about. Tell me, if you're really from the future, what the hell happens from now on?"
"I can't tell you. I never knew what happens to us, I just know some details and what I was ordered to do."
"Sure, and how did you give those lottery numbers to Ishida when you met him?"
"That was part of the plan! It was necessary to prove to him that I really came from the future. But I don't know anything else, only what I was ordered to do. If I knew everything, do you think the Royal Family wouldn't have been interested in knowing what was going to happen in the war? Or that Prime Minister Kennedy would be assassinated? Or that Apollo 19 would never return from the Moon? I don't know everything, I'm not a god."
The impact of those words resonated with Scott, leaving him speechless and with a mixture of shock and dismay on his face. But he had calmed down a bit. "What does the royal family know? You never told me that."
"Just some code words they've always used to communicate. They are the same in the future. That got me released from that Japanese jail through diplomatic liaison, don't you remember?"
"What else did you tell them? Because I'm pretty sure you must have told them a lot more things in that time for them to have given us support for this all these years?"
"And you're asking me that now? Eighteen years later."
"You always gave me the runaround, asshole!"
"I told you some things I knew, like intelligence issues. And some things about the future. What I was ordered to do and nothing else."
"Are you sure you don't know anything else?"
Jack sighed. "I don't know anything else. Because I wasn't allowed access to any more information. I don't know what's going on with me or that poor guy in there. As far as I know, we're where we're supposed to be and nothing else."
"But you were born in the future. How can that be possible?"
Jack swallowed hard. At that point he would have liked to tell the last truth he had to the one who had become more than just a co-worker, but he knew he couldn't. He wouldn't understand. Carl Scott had become like a brother to him, any memory he might have held of the past had faded with the passing years. "The information from the future-past was erased from my mind," Jack lied, just as he had repeated those words to himself over the years.
That was half truth and half lie. It was true that he did not know the future of himself, nor that of Scott. But he did know that of the subject inside the hospital but, even so, he did not know his past. He did not know that information because he had been told that it was not necessary for him to know it.
They spent a few minutes discussing the subject. But the mood of both was calmer. As the two were about to deepen the conversation, a nurse approached them, from inside the hospital with news.
"He's stabilizing."
"He's recovering?..." asked Scott in a hesitant tone, not sure if recovering was the exact word to describe the man's condition.
"Yes. In the last few minutes the tremors and vibrations are diminishing."
Jack sighed in relief. If that man died everything they had done up to that point would be in vain.
The woman then made a strange gesture: "The patient is speaking incoherently, but he is also showing concern."
"What is he saying?"
"He's asking how the experiment went. He's asking if you two are okay."
Scott looked at Jack. He had already told him that a long time ago, but now the moment of truth for Carl Scott. The era of adventures around the world had ended and an era of lying for the sake of the future was beginning.
Jack, inside him, felt something similar. He had only seen the man for a short time, but now he would have to pretend to know him as if they had known each other for many years.
The simulation that Jack had said at their first meeting so many long years before had begun.
"There's something else," the nurse pointed out.
"What is it?" Scott asked.
"We asked him his name, and all he said was Leteo."
Scott and Jack exchanged puzzled looks.
The name didn't mean anything to either of them. In Scott's case simply because he had never heard of it. And in Jack's case because he had never known the name to begin with, only his final destination.