CHAPTER 3 - THE BURDEN OF KNOWING

The War Bird took off from the parking lot, destroying a few more zombies with the fire’s emitting from the jet-engines. Atticus turned the autopilot on and left the pilot seat. He walked over to where Samuel was covering Rebecca with a blanket. She was in a prolonged state of shock. Rambling on and on about her husband and the undead. Samuel rubbed her back and consoled her. Her ramblings were but crazed whispers.

Samuel looked back at Atticus and asked, “What now?"

"I'll radio back to NORAD and get new orders.”

Atticus walked by them and sat down at the communication station, putting the headphones on, and moving the mic attached to it closer to his mouth. “NORAD this is Arrow 1, we have recovered precious cargo and are awaiting orders…Over…”

“Proceed to the following coordinates Arrow 1”

“Are we going back to Cheyenne Mountain?”

“No…” Atticus entered the coordinates into the navigational system, “…East…”

“New York?” Samuel asked.

“Sorry, Doc. . . Hartford, Connecticut.”

Atticus sat back down in the cockpit changing course. Samuel walked anxiously back and forth in front of a confused Rebecca.

“Why are we going to Connecticut?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said. Samuel.

The helpless realization that they were basically flying over New York, and his loved ones, draining him of eveything but dread. He tried not to let his eyes wander over to the sleek windows lining the aircraft. He knew if by chance the ground were to come into focus he might be able to make out the isle of Manhattan. The thought of actually seeing the city burning shook Samuel to the core, breaching a buried insecurity.

From the breach escaped the sheer regret of how he left things. The late nights on campus. How his work got in the way of his family and consequently his marriage. Samuel had to snap himself out of this downward spiral. He had to remain in the moment at all costs. Luckily, Atticus steered the ship along with the conversation back to current affairs.

“They’re sending us into quarantine…” Atticus tried to sort it out, “This is bad.”

“What?”

“Worse than where we just were?”

“This is really bad.” Atticus looked back at Rebecca, “It’s her, she’s the key to the cure.”

Rebecca pulled the blanket tight over her shoulders and avoided Atticus’ glare. Samuel saw the blush hit her face, as Atticus went on, “If the cure starts with her then it makes sense that they would want us in the eye of the storm.”

“No safer a place, right?” Samuel sarcastically agreed.

“It’s not about that. We’ll be in danger but no more so than the military elite. I’m talking about generals with more than one star. Our guest is the belle of the ball and we’re the pumpkin carriage.”

“Hartford is the infection front-line.”

Atticus finally locked eyes with Rebecca, “And you thought the worst was behind you.” Something was not right about him, Rebecca felt uneasy when he looked at her.

“I never thought the worst was over, not when the love of my life rose from the dead to attack me, and not now.”

“Your husband was the one with you in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened, why he turned into one of those things? How he got sick?”

“It was supposed to make him better.”

Atticus and Samuel both stopped what they were doing, looked at each other with mutual concern, and then listened to what Rebecca had to say. She had their full attention now. Although she did not look at them, Rebecca felt it necessary to tell them what happened. For she knew, where they were going Rebecca would have to repeat the story over and over again. In the hands of the government her relationship with Ansem would get dissected and stripped of all humanity, but right now, this conversation was her chance to tell it from the heart.

“Ansem’s death would have been hard enough without the supplement. He created an unlicensed antibiotic that attacked the common cold on all fronts. I checked every test personally, it all worked, not one mistake.”

“Well, you should have double-checked it,” Atticus scoffed.

“If it was perfect, why didn’t he bring it to the FDA?” Samuel asked.

“Ansem was as paranoid as he was brilliant. He thought they would destroy his work to save the jobs and livelihoods of all those put out on the street after the Cleanex and Nyquil industries go under.”

“That’s insanity,” said Samuel.

Rebecca cried. The realization of just how foolish and blind she was rushed over her. But she forced herself to continue her story, “I- I um, I helped him take the full regiment of pills even though he got worse every day. The day he died no more than five minutes went by before he came back to life, like that.”

"So that's it then. One guy's blind ambition is another man's apocalypse."

“Do you have to take the full regiment to turn?” asked Samuel, in an attempt to distract Rebecca from Atticus.

“I don’t think so.”

“Just one pill might be all it takes.”

“Is there anything else?”

“By the time I knew what it did-”

“Don’t. It’s not your fault,” comforted Samuel.

“You just got in bed with the harbinger of humanity’s death,” said Atticus. He wasn't holding back.

Rebecca threw her blanket off and charged at Atticus, slapping him repeatedly in the chest and then in the face, “Ansem Weather’s was a great man! The people who massed produced it addled his original formula to cut corners!”

Samuel pulled her off of Atticus. “You said you checked his work, do you have those formulas?”

“Yes, the General told me to bring everything.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“What general?”

“General Saarsgard.”

BEFORE

Jessup, Maryland

Ansem Weathers had a good life. He had a good job. Driving while he worked everyday was a plus for Ansem. He never thought he would have this much to begin with. He owned the truck and basically ran a one-man shipping company. Right off Route One, Ansem was only twenty minutes from Washington, D.C.; the center of it all. There was always business in the capital, and it led to a deep well of job opportunities.

He had no real family, enabling him to drive all across the country if he needed to. This is how Ansem formed bonds with his distribution contacts across the major cities. He lived in the same house he grew up in. After the death of his parents, Ansem stayed in crowded Maryland and made good money over the years acquiring nuanced contracts and leveraging his services into a higher market.

There was only one reason he did not move and start his life over. Instead, it had been over twenty years and Ansem was a quiet millionaire living amongst normal people, maintaining his guise as the blue collar delivery guy. He did all of this, all these years, for one person in mind, the reason he stayed.

There was nothing in this world that he would not do for her, and she had no idea. They barely even knew each other. But Ansem had lived next to Rebecca for seven years now, and he knew enough about her to know that he loved her. Now all he had to do was talk to her.

It was time for Ansem's daily routine of crossing paths with Rebecca as he got home from work, and she was leaving for her shift at the hospital. Long blonde hair, usually wrapped up in a messy ponytail, and glasses didn’t disguise the fact that she was the quintessential girl next door. A couple freckles sat atop her high cheekbones.

Her coat draped across her small frame which did not yield to her average height. Boys would call that thin. Girls know better. Her athletic body complimented her most noticeable physical attribute, hidden in all the attire. Rebecca’s stunning eyes, they were big bluish green, swirling around like a lava lamp depending upon the time of day, the amount of light, and sometimes even her mood. Ansem was absolutely smitten with her.

“Hi, Mr. Weathers.”

Christ, she called him mister. If he only just opened his mouth and talked to her she would find that he was not that much older than her. The beard threw people off. Every time he tried to talk his voice would drop out, but he went for it anyway.

“Hi, Reb-” his words dissipated into the air as he tried to pick it back up with a wave, “becca.”

Ansem smiled like an awkward idiot and was unsure if she even heard him, another squandered moment. Ansem didn’t even look to see if she heard him. He walked into his house and made himself dinner.

Later Rebecca would get home at four in the morning. The only light that was still on in Ansem’s house was coming from the basement window. Rebecca was so tired she thought little of it.

The next day Ansem finished his truck route to the pharmacies and sporting goods stores and looked forward to his daily moment with Rebecca. All the way home he practiced different ways to say hello, “Hi Rebecca!” “ Great Day today!”“Hey neighbor!” “Same shit, different day!”That last one might leave too much of an impression. But maybe that was exactly what he needed to do.

When Ansem got home and parked his enormous truck out on the street instead of in his driveway, as he was known to do, he saw Rebecca talking to someone else. It was the mailman. But it was too late for him to still be making his rounds. This could only mean one thing... He was there on a social call. Ansem walked down the stone path to his front door facing them the entire way. It wasn’t so bad. The awkwardness was cut with a brown bag of groceries he was holding, blocking any potential eye-contact. He thought about waving but that seemed silly.

Ansem rushed into his house and closed the door. When he turned his head to have a look out the window, he tripped on the ottoman and spilled his groceries all over the floor. The carton of milk broke open. It was a mess. He got up and paced around for a moment, trying to temper his outrage.

No luck. He yelled obscenities, pulled the fireplace spike out and slammed it into the ottoman, cutting holes that leaked shredded stuffing. Ansem got all his pent up frustration out. He briefly fantasized about them hearing him and coming over. Ansem’s paranoia got the best of him, forcing him to calm down.

Manhattan, New York

The Manhattan morning was clear with a bright blue sky. The kids were all up and getting ready for school when Samuel came downstairs. “Did I miss breakfast?” Samuel asked his wife, Vanessa.

“Well look at you, Doctor Chase. Very snazzy.” Vanessa always admired and resented her husband for how effortlessly skinny he looked. She would watch the guy eat an entire sleeve of Pringles or pack or Oreos and not gain a pound. Now Samuel was not the tallest guy in the world, but by no means short. He had kind hazel eyes with a swift brow but a stern square chin. Yeah, Vanessa caught herself a keeper.

“Thank you, my dear.” Samuel posed for his wife, showing off the new gray suit with a matching gray vest but of a different more comfortable fabric, one he could really lecture in. The suit looked expensive but came at a reasonable price. She should know. Vanessa was the one who bought it.

“No darling, the girls just woke up early with Mommy. And Warren!” She banged on the wall, “…is going to be late!”

Just then a bedroom door opened, and the front door slammed shut. Their oldest was in his last year of prep school. Samuel walked up behind Vanessa.

“Could it be, Doctor Chase…that we have the house to ourselves?”

"I wouldn't say that..." remarked Samuel as the neighbor's dog came running into the kitchen, looking for some breakfast.

"Warren keeps letting him in and not taking him back to Corey," Vanessa explained.

"Go home, Jackson!" Samuel shooed the pup out the back door.

“You’re going to be late too, Doctor.”

“They can wait for me.”

An hour later, Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase entered his research company’s funded wing at Manhattan Tech. He was late for his presentation on his latest theory. Dr. Chase was the head of his department, albeit the smallest department in the field of physics.

Samuel got through the door of his office and switched out of his jacket and into his blazer. He slid his already-knotted tie around his neck and under his collar. A quick brush to his short light brown feathery hair and he was back out the door, then back in again to get his notes.

By the time Samuel finally got to the meeting in the lecture room, he was over twenty minutes late. When Samuel opened the door the clocks were rolled back.

“It must be getting early. The clocks are running late.”

“That’s a Grateful Dead lyric,” said the only student in the class wearing a tie-dye shirt.

“Gregory, you alone keep the college cliche alive and I applaud your efforts.”

Everyone had a laugh. They talked amongst themselves as he turned on the projector and started the slideshow.

Doctor Chase was a leading mind in theoretical and quantum physics. Today his lecture was on the theoretical analysis of whether time travel was possible and/or achievable.

Of the six pentagon representatives present at the lecture, all but one got up and left during it. General Saarsgard of the Air Force stayed and let the eccentric Doctor of Science finish what he had to say.

The other representatives shrugged it off as nonsense, but in reality they were listening to a man far ahead of his time. He was talking about cracking the scientific code of chaos and unlocking the space time continuum.

The general took away one important fact over all of them when he left, exactly what Samuel intended. Traveling to the future was impossible, since you would not be able to tell what’s there waiting for you, but a carefully constructed window into the past could be ascertained. Unbeknownst to anyone without the right amount of clearance, a squad of pilots was chosen and issued orders by General Saarsgard to begin top secret training at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex for navigating through “deep space”.

From how poorly the Pentagon reps had reacted to the lecture to the talk around the institute, rumors of his theory had turned Samuel into a social pariah. His field had always been on the edge of fact and fiction. This might have tipped it over.

He continued his research with his grad students, but even they started to dwindle in numbers. He was losing his integrity as a scientist. Soon he would have to make a decision…call off this crazy hunt for time travel or risk losing his career and family over it. Samuel could always see down the line, no matter how thick the fog got…

Samuel was spending days on end at his campus laboratory. He kept telling Vanessa that he was on the verge of a breakthrough that could save his career. He was not able to give up this theory. They were threatening to take away his grants and tenure. Samuel didn't want to go home because he feared they would change the locks on him.

“If I can just make the tachyon converter work…” Samuel muttered to himself in front of the whiteboard. It was almost two in the morning. He was staring through over-tired eyes and blotchy glasses. Only one thing could break him from this spell.

Vanessa walked into the office. “You can make it work tomorrow, honey. Let’s go home.” She brought his jacket over and covered him with it.

“Oh, Vanessa, I think I screwed up bad this time.” The bourbon was heavy on his breath. The empty bottle went unnoticed on the floor between the couch and the wall.

Samuel was driven home by his wife, and he did not lose his job, for the time being. Thankfully, nobody saw her drag his drunk ass out of there. The next day Samuel woke up and caught his dream echoing in his mind. It looked like the formula to the tachyon converter, but then it became a silver box with an indented curve riding down both sides to a point, where light poured out of a tiny opening.

Every time the light broke his vision the feeling remained the same. This was the tachyon converter. Vanessa had been right; he did find it the next day. What they both did not know, what they could not know, is that time travel required more than just particles that travel backwards through time. Samuel would have to find that out the hard way in the days to come.