History Shattered

“I personally believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn’t prevented by the over-arching laws of physics, we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.” David Deutsch, British physicist and Professor at the University of Oxford

The walk seemed shorter than he remembered, but then he had been extremely disoriented last time, and the walk had been broken up by his chance encounter with the traveler on horseback. He wondered about that meeting now. Was that man one of the accidental victims of H2N2? He recalled the man reflexively flinching away when he had coughed. Had his altering of history begun that soon after his arrival? How could he possibly be expected to know what to do? The enormity of the situation began to overwhelm him. He stopped in the middle of the road and forced a semblance of control on his breathing. The last thing he needed to do was hyperventilate and pass out in the dust. Think, Tyler…, think. Rely on your training. If anyone can handle an assignment like this, it’s you. Could anyone reasonably be expected to handle this assignment? Was it even possible? Think…, think! Follow your protocols. You’ve already been here once. You know where you are. This is just like any of a dozen other infectious disease outbreaks you’ve traveled to. Get a grip! Work the process.

As he approached the village gate in Caffa, an enormous sense of relief washed over him. One of the guards at the entrance was a soldier he had performed surgery on during his prior visit. The man seemed healthy and appeared to have full use of his surgically repaired thigh. He recognized Tyler immediately and greeted him heartily in Latin. Tyler momentarily hoped that conditions were less dire than he might’ve initially feared, but then the man failed to offer him an embrace or handshake, informing him that the practice had been temporarily abandoned due to the horrific onslaught of illness ravaging Caffa.

At least Tyler was being greeted warmly. In his darker musings on the subject he had convinced himself that the good folk of Caffa might blame the appearance of the physician-stranger for the outbreak of illness in their midst. That they would’ve been at least partially correct in making such an assumption made it that much easier for him to convince himself of the likelihood that they might harbor some ill will and resentment towards him. The guard and his partner began describing the ongoing assault on the settlement taking place to the northeast of the city’s walls. The Golden Horde, the name they ascribed to the invading Mongols, were evidently relentless in their attacks on Caffa, and had begun using catapults to launch corpses over the city’s high protective walls into its interior. Tyler remembered from his thesis studies that the invaders had apparently been ravaged by the plague and had practiced an early form of biological warfare when they launched the bodies of their dead into Caffa, assuring the spread of the plague inside the settlement’s walls.

All in all, this humanitarian mission was off to a pretty mixed start. Tyler needed to convince himself this was a humanitarian undertaking. He couldn’t focus on the passing of so many from The Black Death. It would be incredibly difficult to ignore all of the death and suffering being inflicted on Caffa’s citizenry, but he knew he needed to force himself to do just that. He would be stopping H2N2 from adding to the misery, and that would save literally billions of lives. He thought of it as undoing the murder of billions. Maybe the term ‘murder’ was a little harsh, but since he considered himself the perpetrator, he felt he could take whatever liberties he deemed appropriate in how he described it.

Once inside the city gates, Tyler made his way back to the inn. Word would spread quickly that the physician had returned. Unless there were townspeople too sick to leave their beds, he wouldn’t need to go searching for H2N2 sufferers. They would be seeking him out. Perhaps this historical repair was doable after all. He reminded himself that nothing he was about to do would allow him to ascertain his relative success or failure. He could at best achieve relative certainty that an H2N2 outbreak had been contained. How that might eventually morph into a less lethal Black Death pandemic would be impossible to measure. That would be left to God and the pages of history. Tyler detested the combination of the certainty in what he knew he must do, mixing haphazardly with the total ambiguity of its relative success or failure. He realized how comfortable he had become in his percentages and probabilities. This unknown shit sucked!

One of the elements working in his favor was that he was less than six weeks removed from his prior visit on the calendar. Due to the colder weather conditions, there would be less interaction between the townsfolk. In addition, since autumn had turned to winter the migration of travelers into or out of Caffa would’ve been minimal. About the only visitors outside of Tyler himself, were the corpses being launched over the walls by the Mongol army. He noticed a rotting pile of them less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the inn. His immediate reaction was to have the corpses burned and to make sure all of the soldiers tasked with handling them wore some kind of protective clothing when handling them. Tyler no sooner had that thought than he reminded himself that was exactly what he shouldn’t do. He was here to insure the plague worked its insidious evil. He had to remember that his only current enemy was H2N2. This was going to require greater subtlety than he had imagined. His job had always been about containment. Now he would be forced to juggle containment with a complete lack of same, and perform that sorting routine on a patient population without any kind of medical understanding of the issues and exhibiting many symptoms which could be produced by either illness.

When Tyler finally came up for air several hours later, he estimated he had seen almost half of Caffa’s villagers. He had determined after seeing just a handful of patients that the easiest form of diagnosis was to try to identify whether or not patients had painful swelling in their necks, armpits, groin, or in the area of any potential flea bite. That allowed him to fairly conclusively diagnose the presence of a bubonic plague infection. Beyond that, he would check for buboes or gangrene. His system was by no means foolproof, but it was fast, non-invasive and most importantly, tolerated by the villagers.

He was mixing the flu drug with mead to mask the taste, and was guessing on proper dosages based on the assumptions he and Captain Weisberg had made back at PD regarding absorption rates through the digestive process. Each patient was given mead, including the ones with plague symptoms. There would be no placebo effect on display in fourteenth century Caffa. Some of his patients would recover and feel fine. Some would die awful deaths. There was nothing he could do to alter that outcome even as it hurt his soul to look in the eyes of many of the villagers who he knew he was sentencing to death through his disingenuous actions. Knowing it was what he must do at an intellectual level did little to reduce the personal emotional impact of effectively turning his back on their suffering. Knowing how he had been suffering for the past few days only heightened his feelings of empathy. He estimated that two more days of his makeshift clinical effort would allow him to accomplish about all he could in reversing the accidental transgressions from his prior visit to Caffa. He both wondered and hoped that such efforts would be enough to return history to its previous path. He also realized he would never truly know the answer to that question. Tyler could draw only one absolute certainty from this experience. He now positively abhorred time travel.

~~~~o~~~~

Pat wasn’t angry, but he was definitely frustrated. It was as if damage to the particle accelerator was a personal attack on him. He tried to be professional and factual in reporting the collider damage to Monica and Colonel James, but he still cursed more than Monica had ever heard coming from the normally reserved scientist’s mouth. His cursing vocabulary actually surprised and impressed her at some level, and she at least appreciated that he was so passionate about his work at PD, even if his descriptors were a bit more colorful than she would’ve preferred or expected.

As was immediately apparent to the facility’s Director and military chief, Pat’s news was not cheery. There was undetected damage from the first particle collision that had been worsened during the second effort. It explained why the power was lacking in the creation of the latest wormhole. Pat blamed himself for not detecting the problem soon enough to prevent the anomaly from closing with Tyler still trapped in the past. It was both a heavy and unfair burden. Monica and Mike attempted to point out the unreasonableness of Pat’s guilt, but despite his rational understanding of their words, the self-blame remained.

Pat’s collider news didn’t improve from there, either. The parts needed to return PD’s particle accelerator to full functionality were custom built by a German manufacturer and would take a minimum of six weeks to fabricate and ship. Nothing could be done to hasten the arrival of the part without jeopardizing PD’s secrecy and security. Whatever PD’s diminished capacity had now dropped to, it was all they would be able to squeeze out of it until then. Monica and Mike read between the lines of Pat’s matter-of-fact statement. Tyler would not be returning to them.

Before he left the room, Pat indicated that his team was working on some rerouting options which might partially compensate for the degradation of PD’s power capacity, but that it was far too early to discern whether their efforts would bear fruit. Monica thanked Pat while Colonel James just sat in silence. He looked over at Monica.

“I think it may be time for us to resume our dialogue. Everything seems to be moving very quickly. I don’t want to be behind this issue. I wanna be out in front of it.”

“Just so I’m clear, exactly which issue are you referring to, Mike?”

“You know…, the militarization of this aspect of what PD’s collider can do.”

“You’re seriously considering time travel as a potential weapon? Even for a military mind that would be colossally stupid. Wait…, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m not calling you stupid, Mike.”

“Well…, yeah, you kinda are. But that’s OK. You’re arguing exactly the opposite side of the coin from Major Hailey. His perspective regarding the naiveté of the scientific community rivals your perspective regarding the military.”

“I’m calling the idea of militarizing something clearly as dangerous and unproven as time travel ridiculous, and the last person in this facility I want to be compared to intellectually, emotionally or in any other way is Beau Hailey.”

“I didn’t tell you that to offend you, Monica. In the interest of us working together, I wanted you to know.”

“So is Hailey behind this? I’d like to think you’ve got a little more common sense than to consider something as crazy as wanting to do this.”

“OK…, for the record, I frown upon members of my senior staff bashing our scientific colleagues. I’m not going to sit here and listen to the role reversal version of that. Our military discussions are collaborative. I encourage participation and debate. It makes for better decisions and it exposes all my senior staffers to divergent opinions. They will all develop into better officers because of it. But it’s not my intention to discuss management development techniques with you. Whether you like how it’s played out or not, you’ve triggered a pair of time travel events within the past week. Those episodes can’t be undone, and it’s not like we can pretend they didn’t happen.”

“I don’t want to pretend they didn’t happen, but I at least want to attempt to understand what occurred. The first one was completely accidental, and the second one may or may not have been successful.”

“And that would depend entirely on one’s definition of successful.”

“Well, we damaged the collider, we damaged Station 28, we sent Tyler somewhere but we don’t know where, the anomaly was too unstable to sustain long enough to execute the mission we defined. Given all of those deficiencies in execution, I’d say describing the event as successful may be a bit of a stretch.”

“Monica, did you ever stop for a minute to ask yourself why the military presence inside PD simply stepped into the background and allowed you and your team to pursue the second collision?”

“I assumed you recognized what we were attempting to accomplish…, to correct. I thought you agreed with our analysis and agreed with our conclusions regarding trying to repair the past. Finally, I assumed you knew that the scientists in the facility were the only people capable of executing a second collision. If any of that doesn’t sound right, why don’t you tell me what I’m missing?”

“I’m not in complete disagreement with your motives, in fact, I concurred with the reasoning. I also respect the expertise required to trigger and manage both a particle collision and the creation of a wormhole. I’ll even admit to not understanding the physics behind wormholes in the first place. But from a military perspective, it was beneficial for us to be able to see whether or not you and your team could replicate the wormhole. In short, we wanted to see if you could do it again, or whether that first time was just a stroke of luck. Well…, congratulations, Monica…, you guys did it again.”

“Why do I not feel like accepting congratulations right about now? Why do I feel like your agenda for this second collision was not just different than our stated intent, but was covert? In spite of your claims of wanting to be up front and wanting to foster an open and positive dialogue, it strikes me that you’ve been disingenuous.”

“I’ve been nothing of the kind, Monica. I have never discussed military protocols with you before in all the years we’ve worked together. We’re constantly evaluating events around here involving both your team and Doctor Hesse’s team during the six months of the year they’re here. You have never shown an interest in or an awareness of any of the government’s military objectives for this installation. And don’t misunderstand me…, I’m OK with that attitude. You’ve got your own job to do. The only reason you’ve got an awareness of a military issue of any kind right now is because I made a conscious decision to tell you. That’s about as far from being disingenuous as it gets.”

“OK, maybe disingenuous is a bridge too far, but covert definitely isn’t.”

“The very fact that we’re having this conversation…, at my insistence, I might add…, would suggest that it’s not covert. It’s just a different agenda, Monica. That’s all. And rather than you being unaware, you’ve been invited into the conversation.”

“Why is that? Is it because you know you’ll need our help to replicate the procedure?”

“That’s obviously part of it, but I recognize this is a slippery slope. I recognize this discussion isn’t taking place in a vacuum. I also imagine that any kind of final decision, once word leaves this facility about what has transpired here, will be made way above both of our heads. The one chance we’ll have to matter in what happens to or with this technology is now. I’m trying to do this in some kind of joint way. I hope you can see that.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m opposed to militarizing time travel.”

“Yeah…, I already picked up on where you stand. Do you want to be included in the next senior staff discussion or not?”

“What…, just me and you and all your senior officers? That doesn’t sound right. As many of your folks as cared to attend we invited to our discussions.”

“This is a military discussion. I have no intention of opening it to a bunch of scientists who are clueless in regard to military concerns.”

“Then let me bring Pat and Jasmine. That’s just three of us. You’d still have us totally outnumbered.”

“In the interest of demonstrating my good faith, I’m going to agree to that request for one meeting. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t want either a fiasco or a shouting match. You need to promise me you’ll keep your folks in check.”

“Pat and Jasmine will be professional. They’ll voice their opinions, and I imagine they’ll be quite passionate, but they’re used to participating in rigorous scientific debate. They’ll be fine.”

“OK, we’re having our next senior staff discussion regarding weaponization tomorrow at five. And this doesn’t need to be shared with anyone else, just so we’re clear.”

“Yeah…, I picked up on that part. We’ll be there.”

“Good! If something comes up between now and tomorrow afternoon that you need to make me aware of, then I’ll expect to hear from you.”

“You will, Mike…, no secrets here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some scientists to talk to.”

~~~~o~~~~

Jasmine was exhausted. It was after four in the morning, and she had only been asleep for about two hours. She had no idea how long the phone had been ringing. In fact, she was so tired and disoriented that she didn’t realize it was her phone for several moments. Finally, the fog of sleep began to clear, and she rolled over in bed and began fumbling around, her fingers feeling wildly about the surface of the nightstand for the offending instrument. Opening her eyes was not yet a task she felt compelled to perform. Finally, she felt the small vibrating noisemaker and picked it up. She opened one eye just enough to punch the button which allowed her to answer the call. She closed it before she began speaking.

“Ugggh…, somebody had better be dead.”

“Uhhh, what? Jasmine, it’s Chandler.”

“Chandler, do you know what time it is?”

“No, I’m sorry, but I don’t. What time is it?”

“Chandler, I don’t have any idea what time it is because I haven’t opened my eyes, but I’m guessing it’s the middle of the night. Why would you feel the need to call me in the middle of the night when I’m gonna see you in a couple of hours?”

“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d check our historical markers while I was awake.”

She left the comment floating for a moment, trying to give her groggy team leader a moment to process the meaning behind her words. Jasmine took so long to respond that Chandler began to wonder if the exhausted woman had fallen back asleep without processing what she was being told.

“Wait a minute. Chandler…, are you telling me history’s changed?”

“Yes, Jasmine, that’s what I’m saying. I woke Chris up and made him look at it before I called you. He’s in agreement. Do you want to talk to him?”

“No…, Chandler, tell me this isn’t some ill-chosen practical joke, because if it is…”

“I’m not joking, Jasmine. I promise I wouldn’t do that to you about something so important, and especially not in the middle of the night when I know you’re whipped. This is for real.”

“OK, then assemble the team for a meeting at six. Assemble whatever documentation you can and be ready to explain what you’ve found. I’ve gotta get another hour of sleep, and I’ll notify the Director.”

“Will do. Sorry to wake you, Jasmine.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad you did. I’ll see you at six.”

“Alright…, goodnight…”

Jasmine disconnected from the call and allowed herself to relax back into her bed. She desperately needed sleep. She tried to turn her mind off, but after a couple of minutes of losing the argument going on inside her head, she gave up. Reluctantly, she threw the sheet and comforter aside and rolled into a seated position as her feet touched the cool tile floor. First, a shower, and then she’d call Monica. After that, some coffee…, lots and lots of coffee.