September 11, 2001
A small man dressed in clothes that seemed air dried after a rain storm stood in the restaurant’s entrance. Moments before, the vestibule had been empty, but now he stood as an oddity, staring about like a tourist.
The Maître de approached the man and considered calling for building security to aid in an ejection, but changed his mind when the small man smiled tentatively and spoke.
“Can I borrow a jacket?’ he asked.
The man obviously knew the coat and tie rule and the Maître de relented.
“Of course, is the gentleman alone today?”
“Yes.” A sad smile played across the small man’s face, fleeting pain touched his eyes suggesting compassion was in order, and the guardian of the restaurant quickly produced a nice button-down coat and tie that matched the visitor’s shirt.
In moments, he led the small man to a table overlooking Manhattan, the sight dizzying and the man stumbling slightly as he sat.
“Coffee?” the server asked. It was a slow morning, and the patrons received direct attention.
“Yes,” the man held a hand up to pause the server. “I have had a terrible day. Could I have some time before you bring the menu?”
“Yes Sir,” the server replied with a kind smile and hurried off to gather the coffee.
The small man looked out at the city. Somewhere out there a small boy was playing in the streets, or at school, the predecessor to the man who remembered this day when it happened.
More people would arrive at the restaurant and all of them would die. It was the last place the people searching for him would think to look; he was safe here unless his enemies were smarter than Robert had guessed.
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He checked his wristwatch against the clock on the wall behind the bar, corrected the hour and minute hands, then placed the watch on the white tablecloth directly in front of himself so he could see the time without effort. It was eight thirty am. In fifteen minutes, an aircraft hijacked by terrorists would hit the tower. It was the right place to be if a man wanted privacy.
He set a green notebook pulled from the back of his pants on the table and stared at the water-stained paper. Nothing written on the outside of the notebook suggested it contained information so valuable there could be no comparison. How many years had this notebook traveled? he wondered. He locked to the sight with morbid curiosity. The first time he touched it was eighty-nine years in the past.
“Your coffee Sir,” the server set a carafe and small tray of condiments on the table, then a cup on a saucer in front of the small man. He looked up as if to say something, then hesitated, the words caught in his throat. This man was going to die. To do anything different was to open a chance for bad people to continue altering time.
“Thank you,” the small man finally said to the server with a weak smile.
When the server walked away, the man looked around the restaurant. About seventy people sat across the restaurant in some form of business meeting.
Pulling a handheld computer from his pocket, the small man checked the history of this day. They were from something called Incisive Media Risk Maters group.
Glancing at the watch, the man saw he had wasted three minutes. He poured coffee, then opened the notebook as he sipped.
The answers to a time travel mystery were contained within the book, the key to stopping men who were far different from his friends. The complexity of the problem was the thing of legend, so strange when looked on that it seemed impossible.
The first sentence written in the notebook was simple.
“The Titanic observation failed and altered the timeline.”
That one statement without a description of what occurred contained more potential problems than anything the small man had ever read, while it also explained so much of what had happened. There were at least four timelines in play, as Robert had surmised.
Tyler pressed a hand to his eyes and tried not to be overwhelmed by the task. Everything depended on what he did next. The world would change for better or worse and he needed to do the right thing.
He returned to his task.