History Shattered

Bubonic Plague Symptoms, Prevention & Treatment – 1. It is caused by the yersinia pestis bacteria 2. The plague occurs between two and six days post-infection 3. It can progress into septicemic plague 4. In about 20% of cases, it moves into the lungs and becomes pneumonic plague which is extremely lethal 5. The bacteria multiplies within the body’s lymph system, which is a major component of the body’s immune system 6. Symptoms can include: a) vomiting b) abdominal pain c) diarrhea d) Buboes, which are large swollen lymph nodes usually under the armpits or around the groin or neck and at the infection site, ranging in size between one and ten centimeters. Buboes are tender to the touch e) gangrene of the extremities (fingers, toes, lips, tip of nose). This blackening is how the plague pandemic in the 14th century came to be referred to as The Black Death f) high fever g) muscle cramps h) seizures i) coma 7. The best cure is prevention and the separation of infected individuals from the healthy population 8. Lab testing is required to properly diagnose and confirm the plague 9. Administration of antibiotics within the first 24 hours after infection is highly successful, reducing mortality to less than 15 percent 10. A plague vaccine is no longer commercially available in the U.S. 11. If untreated, the plague’s historical mortality rate ranges between 50 and 90 percent. (Multiple sources)

Tyler slept through the night without waking for the first time since his return from Caffa. He arose stiffly from the cot which was serving as his bed in Station 28. At least it was more comfortable than the bathroom floor had been. The body aches which had been his constant companion for the past few days were still haunting him. He shuffled into the station bathroom and took his temperature. It was down to 100.4, the lowest reading he could recall since his exposure to the plague bacteria. If this was to be his last day in the present, or at least this ‘present’ before embarking on another journey into time, then at least it was off to a somewhat healthier beginning. He shuffled into the control room and held the headset up to his ear and mouth.

“Anybody home?”

“Roger that, 28.”

“Will you inform my keepers that I will be ready to begin today’s chase through the proverbial maze in search of cheese in fifteen minutes after I take care of some business and eat breakfast.”

“Affirmative, 28. I will notify the History Team leader.”

“Thanks…, think I’ll go take a crap now.”

When Tyler returned to the control room, a video link between him and the History team had already been established. They were once again assembled inside Station 3’s control room. He was pleased to see both Jasmine and Monica were smiling into the camera on the other end of the feed.

“Good morning, all!”

“Good morning, Tyler. Should we assume you’re feeling a little better this morning since you’re sharing bathroom humor with our military friends?”

“So that bastard ratted me out, huh? Man, ya can’t trust anybody these days. What happened to all that ‘Band of Brothers’ shit?”

“Uhhhh, whatever obscure, your world reference that was supposed to be…, I don’t get it.”

“And apparently neither did the guy on the comm link. So…, since nobody seems to be getting or appreciating my jokes, what’s on the menu for today?”

“We are gonna need to establish protocols for your time travel. We need to attempt to cover as many contingencies as possible, including what needs to happen if you travel to a different time or place, making contact with the indigenous population, how you should proceed under various scenarios…, that kind of stuff.”

“How I can get back here…, let’s not leave that off the list.”

“Yeah…, how did we not think of that one? We’ll need to put together a supply list. If there’s stuff you need that’s not already in 28, I’ll need to see if Colonel James will let us in there with Hazmat suits to deliver it. We’re targeting noon tomorrow for the anomaly re-creation event, so we need to do all of this planning on the fly.”

“I need a record of what’s gone on here the past few days, too.”

“Why?”

“Because if I come back to a different history than either of the ones we currently know about, then you guys aren’t going to believe me, and I sure as hell don’t wanna go through all of that again.”

“We can do all that documenting after you’re gone. That way, we can provide documentation about how the test went.”

“That won’t work. I mean, that’s fine if you want to do that, too, but I need proof travelling with me in case none of you are here in the present day I come back to. Remember, we have no idea how all of this is going to work.”

“Wow…, that’s right. We need to arm you with at least enough ammunition to be able to prove to us what we did. This thing can really swirl around in your brain, can’t it? There’s so much we need to do. If you’re feeling better, maybe we should postpone the collision for another day or two.”

“Normally, I’d say that’s a good idea, but I’m not so sure this time for a coupla reasons. First, this little health rally of this morning may be fleeting. We don’t know that I’m actually improving or that I won’t die from either the plague or the combination of the plague and H2N2 very soon. I’m not trying to be morbid, but that’s a scenario which could be very real. Second, and I think this is even more critical, there was a distortion in time between what was occurring at the other end of the wormhole versus how fast time was moving here. Remember I was in Caffa for the better part of a coupla days while only three or four hours went by here. If we were to extrapolate that time shift, it may already be a month later in Caffa. I’m not sure what I’ll find or what I can do about it, but I’ve got to get to Caffa before the European merchants leave at the end of the winter of 1346-47. Once they depart, there would be no way to contain this thing or reverse what I’ve already done.”

“Crap…, you’re right. We need to keep this on as fast a track as we can.”

“Now, realize I could be wrong about all of that. It’s strictly theoretical…, but we can’t really afford to take the chance that I’m not right about it, because this particular genie won’t go back in the bottle.”

“Tyler, I know you’ll need to sleep tonight, but there may not be much of that happening for the rest of us.”

“I doubt I’ll be sleeping much, either.”

The next hour was spent with Tyler adding randomly to his hastily constructed version of history. The team even checked briefly on Tyler’s history prior to 1346 A.D. to make sure both histories were in alignment prior to that date. They all recognized that having as much detail as possible in Tyler’s narrative would provide them with the only tool ever available to them in determining whether or not this attempt at a historical repair effort had been successful. And if it was only partially so, in what ways it had succeeded and in what ways it had failed. In addition, the documentation would need to apply not only to Tyler’s version of history, but also to theirs. If Tyler’s accidental brush with history had taught them anything, it was that even a seemingly innocuous infringement upon the historical record could produce incredibly powerful changes after seven hundred years. It was quite reasonable to expect that another venture into the past would produce a new history; one that might lie somewhere between the two versions they were currently documenting, or one that spun off in a new and unexpected direction. It was the historical equivalent of playing with fire.

This part of the pre-collision process would be the key to assessing the success of the mission. It needed to be able to convince whoever was at this end of the wormhole when Tyler returned that he was indeed returning to the present, even if that was a different version of now, from a trip to repair history. Achieving virtually instant credibility was of paramount importance. In case an additional voyage into time was needed to finish or further correct what Tyler started, time would be of the essence, and time lost in debating the veracity of his journey would be nothing but wasted. Beyond that, it would be up to the detail and accuracy of the historical records. They would need to be able to provide whoever was on the receiving end with the ability to evaluate the relative success of this effort and identify what if any, additional attempts might be required or if they should even be considered. Everyone involved now fully understood that any trip into the past ran as great a risk of causing damage as it did in producing effective repairs.

The moral and ethical debate on this initial occasion had been delayed by the need to first become convinced that time travel had actually occurred. Once that most basic of questions had been satisfactorily answered, then the dilemma had been in deciding what to do about the inadvertent alteration of history. Those questions should not be in play after this new attempt. Time travel had been proven, and this was now a deliberate mission to alter history, or perhaps, depending upon the viewpoint of the individual observer, to correct it. This new debate would be one of degrees. How much would need to be altered and how successful would repairs need to be to be deemed successful enough to eliminate the need for additional efforts? That would be a much more slippery slope than the ethical mountain they had scaled yesterday. In addition to the amazingly complex scientific task they were facing, this seemingly purely scientific particle collision test had now taken on many complex layers of a completely different ilk…, ones which almost made the science fade into the background. This entire exercise had morphed into a bizarre nightmarish experience none of Monica’s team of scientific experts could possibly have imagined four short days ago.

Tyler had consulted with Captain Weisberg, the facility’s physician, regarding proper ongoing medical care for himself. The two also discussed appropriate treatment regimens for anyone in Caffa who appeared to be suffering from the Bird Flu. The first assumption they were forced to make was that any medicines and supplies that Tyler entered the wormhole with would actually remain intact and effective when he exited. Tyler had joked that at least none of them would be past their expiration dates. The second assumption relied upon Tyler actually returning to Caffa, and that the timing of his arrival still offered an opportunity to contain the spread of the H2N2 infection. They also were forced to analyze the effect that any of the available anti-flu medications might have on the plague itself. As bizarre and twisted as it seemed to Tyler, he would be attempting to simultaneously control the spread of one disease while essentially promoting the active spread of another. Nothing in either his education or his experience as a virologist and epidemiologist could prepare him for such a scenario.

The first problem they needed to address was how to deliver any medications. Nobody in 14th century Caffa had ever received an injection or seen a syringe. They may already have a certain level of trust in Tyler as a physician who had performed surgery on a few of their soldiers, but that trust couldn’t be expected to allow him to do things clearly outside their understanding. Mass inoculations would not be happening. They believed upping the dosage by approximately fifty percent would allow for effective oral administration of the drugs. Both men estimated that roughly a third of the medicine would pass through each infected person’s digestive system without being absorbed. Tyler estimated he had enough meds in Station 28 to treat up to half of the villagers living in Caffa. The two physicians believed that the amount of medicines in 28 should be sufficient to do the job. If the H2N2 bug had spread beyond that level, it would likely be impossible to contain anyway. That had been Tyler’s call. He had worked in too many infectious disease scenarios to believe he could contain an outbreak that had spread to a majority of the settlement’s population.

The two physicians worked together to create the medical element of the protocols for the mission. If Tyler believed his efforts at containing the spread of H2N2 would be ineffective, he was to stand down and return via the wormhole. If he believed his containment efforts had a probability of being successful, then he was to do whatever he could to accomplish the mission. Neither man spoke of the possibility that doing so might mean staying until after the wormhole once again dissipated, but both men recognized such a scenario could easily present itself. That knowledge did nothing to deter Tyler. He spent much of the remainder of the day reviewing other aspects of the mission protocols with teams charged with such details. Included in his briefings was time spent with Major Hailey addressing several military protocols. That meeting was particularly troubling. Tyler had long been uneasy around the man, and the briefing did nothing but heighten his apprehension about the Major’s intentions regarding the particle accelerator and its new and heretofore unanticipated functionality.

One of the strangest meetings had to do with what actions he should take if his trip through the wormhole delivered him to a place and/or time other than Caffa, Crimea in the autumn or winter of 1346. The instructions given him by both the military and his fellow scientists were crystal clear. He was to reenter the wormhole and return through it to PD. He was not to make any contact beyond the act of ascertaining that the wormhole had sent him to the wrong address. Tyler had laughed. The likelihood that everything would work out properly and that he would be taken back to the scene of his time crime seemed desperately remote. They were all piling hopes on top of suppositions based on assumptions tied to theories and conclusions. It would take a miracle to pull this off. And yet…, a miracle was exactly what he and everyone else were expecting.

By the end of the day, Tyler was exhausted. He still hadn’t had the opportunity to have any kind of private conversation with Monica. They both had been focused on doing their jobs, and on a grander scale, doing what needed to be done in the interest of all mankind. He knew things had changed. He knew Monica was now of a different generation and history than he was. Her memories of their times together were far different than his own, and yet, they were all still memories of a loving relationship that had flourished in two very different environments. Somehow, they had found each other in these two different worlds. Could the past handful of days destroy all of that? He was uncertain of what he should say, or even what needed to be said, but given the perilous nature of tomorrow’s attempt to create another wormhole, there needed to be words that would allow both of them to feel a sense of closure. He fell asleep determined to find the time for such a conversation in the morning.

~~~~o~~~~

Colonel James tracked down Monica as she was heading to her dormitory room to grab a few hours of sleep. His face was the stern one he used when he was in full military mode. She had seen that look often enough over their years of working together in PD to know that the forthcoming conversation was unlikely to be a pleasant one. He saw the mixture of exasperation and exhaustion on her face, but was undeterred. Sympathy was not a skill that generally accompanied the stern face.

“I said we needed to talk, Monica.”

“Yeah, Mike…, I know what you said. I heard you, and I understand, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a shitload of stuff coming down around here right now. Isn’t there some way we can let this wait until after noon tomorrow? Please!”

“Most of it can wait, but we still need to be clear with each other. First, thanks for jumping in when I was being put on the spot by your team last night. There was no way for that conversation to have ended without your team feeling like I was lying to them, because there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to discuss the military implications of what’s occurring in PD right now with the entire scientific contingent.”

“You’re welcome, and while I don’t believe my team should be kept in the dark about those military implications, I also agree that last night’s meeting was neither the time nor place to have that particular conversation. Are we done now?”

“Not quite. I know your focus is on tomorrow’s particle collision, and that’s why I’ve stayed out of your hair today. I have a job to do around here just like you, and part of that is to evaluate and report to my superiors about any aspects of this operation which could be considered to offer some kind of military benefit, use or advantage. Part of my agreement with allowing tomorrow’s collision is because of that mandate.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean exactly, Mike.”

“Let me put it simply. I don’t know if time travel is something that should be militarized. That discussion will happen largely above both of our heads. I also don’t know if you’ve actually stumbled into it or if what happened earlier this week was just some kind of freak accident. I’m hoping tomorrow’s attempt to create a second wormhole will answer that question. If Tyler is somehow successful in restoring a history that should really be in place, and after the collision tomorrow if a twenty-five years younger version of you is having this kind of conversation with my father, well…, then I guess that’s great. If he isn’t successful but time travel occurs again successfully, then that’s great, too. Either way, we’ll know more than we do now, and you and I, or possibly you and my Dad, will have the rest of this conversation then. I just want to be clear on where I’ll be coming from.”

“I appreciate the candor as always, Mike, and I guess right now I’ll have to say that I’m rooting for having this chat with your Dad. Either way, I guess we’ll know tomorrow. Good night, Colonel.”

“Monica, for the record, my Dad was old school military. Any conversation with him will likely be more difficult than one with me.”

“Yeah, but at least it sounds like it’d be taking place after a largely successful historical repair. I think I’d still like that conversation better. No offense intended, Mike.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, but be careful what you wish for. Goodnight, Monica…, get some rest.”

Monica turned and headed to her room, trying not to think about what the military could do with such a weapon. Instead, her thoughts drifted back to Station 28, where the love of her life was exiled, and about to be sent into an unknown that seemed almost certain to prevent him from ever returning to her embrace.