History Shattered

“A Sound of Thunder” is a science fiction short story written by Ray Bradbury, first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952. As of 1984, it was the most re-published science fiction short story of all time. The story begins in the future, in which the time machine has been invented but is still very temperamental. A hunter named Eckels pays to go travelling back in the past on a guided safari to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Author’s Note: Without giving away Bradbury’s story, things go downhill from there!) – Wikipedia (A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury)

The work schedules of virtually all of PD’s scientific team revolved around Tyler’s wake and sleep cycle. Jasmine started rotating members of her team to take naps whenever Tyler crashed. If he was awake and communicative at four in the morning, she wanted at least a majority of her team to be awake and conversing with him. Nagging at the back of everyone’s mind at the end of each conversation was that they might’ve just spoken their final words with their colleague.

One of the more interesting dialogues had involved the shifts in the world’s population in Tyler’s history versus their own. As a virologist and epidemiologist working for the CDC, Tyler had a strong working knowledge of the world’s population, as he tracked disease and epidemics around the globe. The first dramatic difference was tied to the total global population. In Tyler’s history, the world’s population had grown to approximately 7.2 billion people by the year 2018. In Jasmine’s 2043, the world population was just 6.2 billion. Somehow, despite another generation and a half of population increase, the world was apparently short about a billion souls. Evidently, the cumulative impact of The Black Death and the H2N2 virus which had claimed about an extra one-to-two hundred million European lives in the late 1340’s had translated into an impact of about 1.2 billion current inhabitants of the planet. It was an incredibly difficult concept for the scientists to wrap their brains around. The number was almost too large to process rationally when talking about walking, talking, breathing humans.

Just as fascinating was the shift in regional populations. When adjusted for the quarter century variance, the population in Asia (roughly 3.7 billion), and its subsets China (1.4 billion), and India (1.2 billion), were virtually unchanged. China and India also remained the two most populous countries on the globe. There was logic and symmetry in that math. The Black Death had left Asia largely untouched in both histories. As might be expected, Europe was the most dramatically affected of all the continents. The European population in Jasmine’s 2043 was only 360 million, a full quarter billion people lower than Tyler’s numbers of twenty-five years earlier.

Africa was the only continent to reflect an increase in population in Jasmine’s world. Because of the migration and enslavement of European whites to and in Africa, the population was actually about 200 million larger in Jasmine’s 2043 than in Tyler’s 2018. That left only the populations in South and North America to account for. Tyler had predicted that both continents would have significantly smaller populations in Jasmine’s version of history because most of the exploration of the western hemisphere had originated in Europe. His prediction was spot on. South America’s population was down almost a hundred million bodies, and the shrinkage for North America was even more dramatic. The US, which was the world’s third most populous country in Tyler’s world at 310 million, had just over 200 million inhabitants in Jasmine’s 2043. Tyler suggested it was the equivalent of the US population of the 1960’s in his world. It could be looked at like 110 million people were missing or eighty years’ worth of populace or four-to-five generations. No matter how they analyzed the numbers, or how much logic they could bring to the effort of accounting for the shifting population patterns, they were all forced to come back to the stark reality which would not be ignored. Over a billion people were missing.

Other topics produced similarly eerie conversations. The change in the world’s religious landscape was jarring. The world’s Christians were no longer some elaborate mix of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and countless other byproducts of the Protestant Reformation of 16th century Europe. Apparently the likes of John Calvin’s and Martin Luther’s ancestors must’ve been among the casualties of a more vigorous Black Death. By the same token, the Catholic Church had seemingly become a gentler, less pompous version of itself, triggering less opposition from both within and outside its ranks. Almost all Christians in Jasmine’s version of history were either Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, and the splintering of Christianity had simply never occurred.

Judaism had a much greater influence on both American and global culture in the new history. First, there were more of them. The Holocaust, which had taken the lives of about six million Jews, had not occurred in this revisionist history simply because Hitler, Nazi Germany and World War II had not darkened Europe with their respective presences. Also absent in this new world was the country of Israel. The need for its creation had never manifested. Their increased presence was joined by a similar increased prominence of the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Europe’s decline created exactly such an opportunity. The Muslim faith remained largely centered in the Middle East, but the hatred so vehemently exhibited in Tyler’s history toward both Judaism and the West had moderated substantially.

American culture had been shaped to a much greater extent by both Native American and Asian influences. Europe was no longer the center of history or cultural influence it had been in Tyler’s world. The global cultural landscape was as changed as were all the other topics broached in their discussions. Tyler was running on fumes. His participation in such intense discussions was threatening his fragile health. Jasmine finally pulled the plug on one discussion session, despite Tyler’s protests, after five hours. She ordered Tyler and her entire team to bed for at least the next six hours. They were all fried.

~~~~o~~~~

The military discussion, if now somewhat less heated, was getting more complicated. Major Beau Hailey had assumed the role of adamant defender of the need for complete military control of the entire situation. Colonel James had retreated from active participation in the discussion, preferring to let his subordinates debate amongst themselves. Aside from the occasional interrogatory or the need to function as referee, he just listened to the dialogue, assessing not only the argument, but the mindset of each officer as they made their opinions heard.

“Weaponization has to be our primary focus.”

“Beau, you keep saying that. Give it a rest. You’re on like step ten thousand while we should be on step three right now.”

“That’s what we get paid to do, Ray.”

“Look, we all agree there are potential military applications, but let’s not be so narrow minded as to forget that there are medical, scientific and probably about a thousand other potential applications for time travel technology. And all of this presupposes that whatever accidentally happened during the test the other day is actually repeatable.”

“That’s why we need to take control of this thing right now.”

“We don’t know the first thing about what happened, and we also don’t have a friggin’ clue about particle collisions or wormholes. Let’s focus on securing every aspect of this facility and the current containment crisis at Station 28. That means working with our scientific colleagues on the investigative aspects of what’s going on inside 28. This thing needs to be cooperative for now. Without trying to put too fine a point on it, we don’t know what we’re doing and they do…, sort of. The last thing we need to do is turn this thing adversarial. It’s got enough of a likelihood to get that way soon without us pouring gasoline on that fire. Unilateral action is not the proper course, Beau.”

“Ray, these eggheads already think they’re smarter than us. If we let them get too far out in front of us on this thing there may be no reining them in. Worse yet, they could try something dangerous or stupid…, or both, and then we’re looking at potentially compromising not only the facility, but everything that’s being done here.”

“All the more reason to work closely with them… and cooperatively. You’re arguing against yourself right now. We’re just going around in circles and not accomplishing anything. What’s your take, Colonel?”

Colonel James made eye contact with every officer at the table before he spoke. He wanted to be sure each man understood not only his tone and his words, but also his conviction.

“My father died ten years ago. He was a civilian when he passed, after having spent almost his entire adult life in the Air Force. I know what he was doing twenty-five years ago in what I’ll now label as our version of history, and it sure as hell wasn’t serving as the commander of a secret government particle accelerator outside Dallas. Yesterday, I was confronted with a photograph which our own experts have confirmed was not manipulated or altered in any way. It showed my Dad, in his full military splendor, standing beside scientists on the eve of accomplishing something never before attempted in human history. Many of the scientists in that photo and the others taken along with it are here…, in this building…, today. They are all older, and they’ve been joined by many new colleagues, just as many of us were here two days ago, but not twenty-five years in the past. All of these people, past and present, deserve our respect. They’ve earned the opportunity to attempt to figure out what happened and what’s happening. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m sure we haven’t yet assembled enough answers to figure that out. Until we do, we’re not jumping to conclusions, and we’re not taking any rash actions.

There’s a meeting scheduled for an hour from now in the central meeting room. Ray, I want you there. Beau, I want you there, too. We will answer questions asked of us. We will not be volunteering information. This will strictly be a fact finding deployment. If someone asks what time it is, we answer 2:10. We don’t say A.M. or P.M., we don’t say Central Daylight Time, and we don’t offer the date or the weather conditions or any other extraneous bullshit. If there’s a question regarding any military implications, assume it is directed to me and that whether or how it’s answered will be determined by me. We are at that meeting to support this facility’s scientific efforts. That will remain our primary focus until further notice. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Crystal, Sir.”

“OK, the rest of you get some grub and some shut eye. We don’t know what’s on the road ahead. I want everyone to be as frosty as possible no matter what’s in store for us. That’s all. You’re dismissed.”

~~~~o~~~~

Tyler was again awake. The subject matter for this final conversation was a departure from all the prior conversations he had engaged in with colleagues since his adventure began. The big group meeting was scheduled for less than an hour from now so every moment seemed precious. Pat Edmiston had successfully lobbied for a few minutes of dialogue related to the anomaly itself. He wanted to understand Tyler’s impressions of the field and its behavior. It was his hope that learning such information might allow him to more successfully tailor the behavior of his electromagnetic containment field on any future attempts. His team was still working with their collective heads buried in the reams of data they had received post-test, and Pat was hoping Tyler could help them narrow the focus, or at least better understand the behavior of the escaped energy.

“Tyler, can you just start out by describing the field?”

“It was temperature neutral. I expected it to either be very hot or very cold, and it was neither. It was, however, very noticeably electrically charged. It was like every hair on my body was standing straight out. Now, Pat, realize this was on my return trip from Caffa. I honestly don’t remember a thing regarding how I got there in the first place. When I woke up or regained consciousness or whatever happened to me on the trip there, I was already outside the energy field on the road beside it. I could’ve been thrown out of the field, or climbed out without realizing it. It may’ve been different because the trip there was triggered by the collision of the twin energy waves. Shoot, since the field was shrinking, it’s possible that where I woke up was originally within the energy field but was outside it when I woke up because of the field’s shrinkage. I don’t know what to tell you on that.”

“What you’re telling me is great, Tyler. I don’t expect you to have performed an exhaustive analysis on this chain of events. What else can you tell me about the energy field itself?”

“It was surging.”

“What does that mean? I don’t understand.”

“The best way for me to describe it is kinda like a wave…, a slow moving wave. It was like the energy would all seem to be flowing one direction and then, after a momentary transition, it would all start flowing back the other direction. Kinda like waves or tides. Does that help?”

“Sorta…, so you could feel a definite directional flow?”

“Yeah, that’s a better way to describe it.”

“Presumably, the flow was taking you away from wherever you entered the anomaly on the Caffa end and toward the end which I can only presume is current day Station 28. Would you concur with that description?”

“I would. And like a water wave, there was a sense of floating. I imagine it’s what it would feel like to be weightless in space.”

“OK, great. This may seem like a strange question, but could you see anything either within the field or outside of it that would’ve given you a sense of time…, or space for that matter? Since you travelled halfway around the world in addition to several hundred years, I can’t help but wonder how that destination was arrived at, or if it was merely where the earth’s rotation might’ve dropped you at the other end. Hell, I’m thinking out loud right now. I’m not sure what I should be asking.”

“The field was just kind of a grayish cloud. I definitely felt a sense of movement. For that matter, it felt like the movement was very fast, like I was literally hurtling through time and space, except that I didn’t know until after the fact that that was what I was actually doing. I couldn’t sense the passage of time, although that was one of the peculiarities out of all of this.”

“What was?”

“That time seemed to pass much more rapidly on the other end of the wormhole than it did here. I swear I spent the better part of two days in 14th century Crimea, but it was less than four hours here. Unless, of course, you consider that here is now twenty-five years later than here was when I left. I’m not sure what I’m saying exactly, but time moved at different rates on this end than on that end, at least while I was in contact with the wormhole. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I don’t know what else to tell you, Pat.”

“Did you get any sense of a magnetic pull of any kind?”

“Not beyond the surging sensation I already described.”

“Talk about how you exited the wormhole.”

“Well, like I said, I have no recollection of the exit process on the other end. On this end, it was kinda like I was ejected out the end of it. I remember a brief, hazy glimpse of the interior of Station 28, and then I landed hard on the floor and got knocked out. I’ve got a lump on my head, but I wasn’t bleeding and I don’t think I’ve got any other significant damage from the landing, if that’s what you could call it. I wish I could be more helpful.”

“One final question. Do you feel like you’ve got any symptoms related to exposure to radiation or something out of the ordinary?”

“Pat, I consider exposure to bubonic plague to be a little out of the ordinary, even in my line of work, but the simple answer is that I felt the energy. It was surrounding me, carrying me, but it didn’t seem to harm me.”

“OK. That’s all I’ve got for now. Try to get a little rest before the meeting starts.”

“I wish I could. Jasmine and her team want a few more minutes to talk with me about medicine and politics and art. Shit…, I’m about the last person on the planet to be talking to about art.”

Pat laughed. “Better you than me, buddy….”

~~~~o~~~~

Ten minutes before the meeting was set to start, Colonel James found Monica and asked her to join him for a private conversation. His tone was earnest.

“Monica, I need to establish a private dialogue here.”

“OK…, but what’s up?”

“I’m responsible for all this facility’s military operations and its security. You’re responsible for the scientific team currently on rotation within the facility. Between the two of us, we’re responsible for every person and every action which occurs within this place.”

“We both already know that, Mike. What’s going on?”

“I have a sense that we might end up with opposing agendas before too long, and I don’t want it to end up in a military versus science confrontation. We need to be on the same page.”

“Mike, first you tell me we may have opposing agendas, which I hate to hear in the first place. Then you immediately tell me we need to work together and be on the same page. You do realize those are mutually exclusive scenarios, don’t you?”

“What I mean is we need to rise above the level of any general discussions and come to some kind of agreement, so this scenario doesn’t turn into some kind of fiasco.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Mike? Speak English, please.”

“OK, this is a government facility operating under military authority, regardless of the fact that its purpose is essentially scientific. There have been lots of government-run scientific projects over the years which have served primarily military agendas. I’m not saying we’ve got a situation here where the science is going to be trumped by a military agenda, but I’m also not taking that possibility off the table. I’ve always been square with you, Monica. I’m trying to be that way now. You and I need to work together to make sure we do what’s right in terms of this project’s mission, whether that ends up being scientific or military.”

“Mike, are you trying to tell me that whatever happened with the particle collision and the anomaly in Station 28 may be about to be hijacked as some type of military coup d’etat?”

“I’m trying to prepare you for the possibility that discussions along those lines might be unavoidable.”

“Really…, well, that’s a load of shit. OK…, I tell ya what…, I consider myself informed now. I’ll also tell you that my focus is to try and figure out what in the fuck went wrong with the energy containment aspects of the particle collision. After that, I’m gonna focus on trying to get Tyler out of Station 28 alive. And after that, I’m gonna meet with my colleagues and attempt to assess the damage we may have done to the history of the world which may include the very real possibility that about a billion, and that’s billion with a fuckin’ ‘B’, people who are supposed to be walking around and living their lives on this planet right now aren’t. After all of that, if it seems important to have a discussion about the potential military implications of what’s transpired over the past two days, then fine…, you and I can have a talk. Until then, I’ve got more pressing concerns. Really, Mike…, where’s your head at?”

“My head’s exactly where it needs to be. Apparently, you fail to appreciate what that means. You don’t just get to play science in a vacuum, Monica. Everything you and your colleagues do here has the potential for some real life practical application. Some of those may be medical. Some of them may be scientific. Others might be military. I appreciate the context of what’s been happening for the past coupla days. Don’t think for a minute I don’t. That was my Dad who’s been dead for ten years in one of Tyler’s photos. I’m not saying there’s going to be a confrontation. What I’m saying is we need to work together to avoid allowing one to develop. I want you to not react exactly the way you are.”

“OK…, OK, I didn’t mean to jump down your throat, and I do appreciate that you’re trying to reach out to me privately to troubleshoot future problems, but I can’t promise you I’m gonna react any differently than I just did if we have this conversation tomorrow.”

“Fair enough, Monica, because neither can I.”