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  He hesitated. Before he could answer I continued.

  “How about a George Bush? You see, it doesn’t matter. In all cases there is reason to have doubts. Even if there were a leader who would truly use the ability wisely, eventually the power would transfer to someone else who probably couldn’t be trusted.”

  “And it’s okay for you to have and use it?” he asked cynically.

  I thought of the mistakes we had made and of people who had died. “Probably not. However, I do have it, and there is a greater threat than my using the device that needs to be addressed.”

  Suddenly in a flash of intuition, Jeff saw the truth. “It’s not really yours, is it? I thought you and your team built it. You didn’t, did you? Who did build it? Where did it come from? It doesn’t matter anymore if I know.” He watched me expectantly.

  Well, I had wanted to give him something to think about. He was right that it didn’t matter if he knew. It might even help him decide his loyalty should be with us. So I told him.

  I had given Jeff plenty to think about so I left him to go check on the status of my wife. I was looking for Ed, but then noticed Carol and Naiya talking across the room and headed that way. They seemed in the middle of a thoughtful discussion that they hurriedly ended when they saw me headed their way. I wondered briefly what it might have related to, but then forgot about it as my wife slipped into my arms in greeting.

  I hoped for a more extended reunion with Naiya a bit later, but for now settled for a kiss and a quick exchange of news. I suggested we three go off somewhere for a bit of brainstorming, but discovered that wasn’t in the cards. Carol informed me she was headed back uptime. Not just to take back her transport vehicle, but she planned on staying at least another week there. I knew she had been neglecting her life uptime, not spending much time there lately, but was surprised that she was planning to do so now. I started to ask her about it when Naiya quietly touched the back of my hand, signaling I should drop it for now. In the end, Naiya and I escorted Carol back to her transport, and watched as she disappeared toward town. I tried to pry anything out of Naiya, but all she would say is, “Carol’s just tired.”

  Chapter 26

  Wednesday, 23 August 2006

  Seattle, Washington

  August had arrived, bringing with it the warmest days of the year so far. Progress was still slow, but at least there was progress. Over all, things were looking up. People had settled back into their previous routines, with the exception of John and his team who remained focused on their primary task of working their way through the alien language. During the past couple of weeks, many of us had also adjusted our focus back to our personal lives. The realization that months, perhaps years, would be required to complete the task begun with the translator had deadened the sense of urgency with which we had all felt shortly after recovery of the device.

  Carol had been back for a while now. She actually stayed uptime more than two weeks after leaving us with the new equipment and returning to her other home. Whatever had been bothering her appeared to have been resolved. I attempted a number of times to pry it out of Naiya, but she deftly shifted the conversation elsewhere on every occasion. I finally realized it was a topic I should leave alone. Naiya knew all about it and wasn’t concerned, but it was something that the two of them shared and didn’t think it important that I know. At least for now. But it was good to have the three of us back together again. We had all even spent the last weekend at the lake. Long days of lounging around, a bit of water-skiing, and evening barbecues had been good for morale. Too many weeks of anticipation had been taking their toll.

  I had just signed off on the last of the proposals we were submitting to the government based on the RFP’s I had approved a few weeks back, when John walked into my office. He closed the door for privacy and said enthusiastically, “I think we have an answer for the inner ring of keys for their computers. At least a partial answer.”

  I hadn’t seen him this enthusiastic in a while. “You’ve found the translation for them?” This was great news. We had all been mystified what these few remaining keys might be. Hopefully knowing the function performed by these remaining keys would shed some light on how the computers operated. So few input options had been unsettling.

  Surprisingly he shook his head, indicating they hadn’t. “Not exactly,” he added. “But the new software has been great on finding patterns in the symbols and making suggestions on possibilities. A number of possibilities have been associated with each of the keys now. In some cases only a couple, and in others more than a dozen.”

  I was having trouble sharing his enthusiasm. I had to be missing something. “But each of these ‘suggestions’ don’t match the symbol on the key?” I asked.

  “None are a match,” he agreed. “But, if you look closely you can see each of the lines comprising the symbols recommended by Carol’s software can be found as a subset of the whole symbol on the keyboard.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “So you think the symbol on the key isn’t really a single word, but a composite of several possible symbols?” That might explain why we had so little luck finding a match up to now. It would also help with our concern surrounding the limited number of keys available to the operator. Each of these keys might be multi-functional, although how each of the independent functions was selected remained unanswered. “That might explain a lot,” I added, “but do any of the possible matches make sense?”

  He nodded enthusiastically this time. “Included are all of the usual mathematical functions which we tried to match earlier. Also a number of functional equivalents to our own keyboard inputs are included. Some of the symbols don’t appear to make sense, but again, they are only possibilities. They don’t all have to apply. The software is matching items that seem to fall into the range of symbols that could be made from the composite symbol.”

  “So the operator somehow selects a key set, and the keys would light with the appropriate parts of the composite symbol to reflect the operational function currently selected?” Carol was the only one of us who had ever seen any of the computers active and had indicated that the faint tracings we could see on the keys now had all glowed an off green at that time. Activating any of the machines had still eluded us. We believed this to be the single most significant hindrance to progress. For now we still had only the keyboard and the handwritten logs to work from.

  “That’s my best guess for now,” he agreed. “This remains only a theory, of course. But based on the types of symbols included in the ‘possibles’, I’d rate the likelihood we are on to something pretty high.”

  “You are planning to bring this up at the status meeting tomorrow?” I asked. “It would probably be good to have the composite symbols on a transparency with overlays to show how the computer options fit.”

  “Already in work,” he answered smiling. I should have known he would have already planned on how to present it to the group. “Oh, and you should check with Martin. He was looking for you early this morning. He was really wound up about something he found in one of the log translations. We have been making some headway there as well.”

  I promised to do so as John headed out the door. I wondered what was bothering Martin. He was one of Dave’s chief assistants. Another historian, he was a bit abrasive and impatient, but undeniably knowledgeable. I would much rather work with Dave, but he was currently in the Roman era now that we were nearly fully established, leading the search for clues to the historical oddities that got him interested in the first place. He wouldn’t be back to the office our time for a few more weeks. A sabbatical from his university duties had given him six months to indulge his curiosity full time. Naiya had plans to go back downtime early next week and finalize a few of the operational aspects of the facility there. She has us set up as a merchant family, allowing our people a lot of freedom to move around without creating unwanted curiosity. I noted that Carol wasn’t in her office as I walked past on my way down the hall. I had wanted to brin
g her up to speed on John’s discovery, but belatedly remembered she had a briefing with Boeing this morning.

  I made the walk to the elevators and traveled down to the lower level where I could transfer to the service elevator. When we had started to grow significantly and had decided to bring on a number of people who wouldn’t be ‘in the know’ about our real purpose, we had searched for a new location. Through one of our team we had found out about this complex as it was starting construction. We were able to make arrangements with the builders for some modifications, which included the second level of basement, which would be accessible only by one of the elevators, and then only with the proper access authority. We had added our own security after taking over the area, using more of the security gadgets from uptime as well as some very sophisticated equipment from the current era. Officially it belongs to another organization, and the existence of the area wasn’t common knowledge.

  It gave us a place outside of the complex or the base where we could locate some of the equipment and information relating to the project. Our people could leave their normal office upstairs, and in a few minutes slip into the controlled area unobserved. Any significant discussions regarding the time complex and associated activities were normally held here. It was also relatively easy to come directly into the facility from the parking structure. The complex is built in three radial wings, spaced 120 degrees from each other. Two of the wings are office spaces, with Epoch on the second and third floors of the western wing. The third wing, or spoke, is the parking structure. Where the three wings meet is the elevator hub. You can either take an elevator to the appropriate floor of your respective wing, or come down to the ground level which has the main offices for the complex, as well as a number of shops, and the rest of the elevators. It was here that I switched to the elevator that would take me to the basement. The elevator from the parking structure wouldn’t access the sub basements.

  I found Martin in the small office he had commandeered off to one side of the secure area. There were ten of the small offices around the perimeter, which most people used as a turn-around space in addition to their main office when working specific problems. One large room provided secure and alarmed filing where all materials were kept when not being used by authorized team members.

  Martin, however, had clearly moved in. He had pulled in a pair of small tables, which in addition to the desk, were piled high with messy stacks of paper and computer printouts. The floor had not been spared either. Stacks of history texts were piled everywhere. Books, as well as several trays from the cafeteria, which had been pushed to the far corner. Green ink had been used for notes that were scribbled across many of the pages. Martin was busy cross checking something in a computer printout against the contents of one of the textbooks. I could see he had been liberal in his use of green in on the computer page in front of him as well.

  “Martin,” I said to get his attention. “You wanted to see me?” I thought he hadn’t heard me when he didn’t respond for more than half a minute. I was just preparing to try again when he looked up.

  “This is all wrong!” he said, stabbing at the computer printout on the desk. “It never happened,” he insisted, looking at me over the top of the half glasses he used to allow him to read, yet still see at a distance. I always felt I was being examined when he would peer at me over the tops of the little things perched on the bridge of his nose.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Something with the translation doesn’t make sense?” I had no idea what was bothering him, and sometimes it was necessary to prompt him. Today, he was surprising patient for some reason.

  “You know we figured out how the aliens recorded dates, don’t you?”

  I nodded. That had been one of the first uses of our understanding of their numbering system. As partial translations of the logs progressed, we found date references, but at first they held no meaning for us. Then a couple of the logs were found with clear references to known historical dates which allowed correlation between their dating and our own. Consistent results emerged, and we had solved another piece of the puzzle. “You found some inconsistency with the date? Perhaps a translation error?” I suggested hopefully. Is that all this is about I wondered.

  “Tina found it,” he corrected me. Tina was one of his graduate students that he had forced upon us. We had been reluctant to bring her in, but she cleared the same checks as everyone else, and at Martin’s insistence had been made a member of the team. How the two of them worked together was a mystery. Frequent loud ‘discussions’ occurred, yet they made remarkable progress. “The date caught her attention at first and she brought it to me.”

  “You said something never happened. What did you mean?”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “We only have a fraction of this particular log. That is the problem with most of them. We only have fragments with too much still not translated. Usually the references are vague as well, and the purpose or reason for the log never spelled out.”

  I knew that, as did everyone else. That was what held us back, but slowly the blank spaces were being filled in.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “The date in question is sometime in the sixteenth century. A few of the references make it clear it is referring to central Europe. The problem is, the pieces that we have translated imply that everything is under Chinese control!”

  I wasn’t sure what he was implying. “Explain,” I asked.

  “This document is saying that China rules all of Asia and Europe. It appears as if whoever wrote this particular document is referring to something that never happened. What would be the purpose of doing that?”

  They had a time machine. I could think of one reason, but was hesitant to make the leap. As an historian, Martin wasn’t thinking along the same lines. “Have you seen anything like this in any of the other logs?” I asked, trying to hold back my excitement. Martin may have given us an important clue.

  “A few odd things, but nothing this blatant,” he informed me. “Too many remain in the preliminary stages of translation. There was an odd reference to the Roman Empire somewhere,” and he pointed to one of the messy stacks of paper over at the far table. “In there, I think. Anyway, the date had to be wrong because it referenced an event long after the Roman Empire had collapsed.”

  “There was another record that seemed odd. Something that took place in the mid thirteen hundreds, during what we think of as the dark ages. It sounded like something was going on in Ireland. Almost as if the aliens might be supporting some activity there, but the text was too vague.”

  “What else?” I asked. I could sense he had found others.

  “There was something from uptime. I need to run it by Carol. It didn’t seem to be consistent with what she outlined for me of the key history between now and her time. There was another I just started looking at that seemed to have some inconsistencies with the early history of the Americas.”

  Goosebumps had broken out on my arms. I needed to get some key people together. Carol, Al, John, Naiya, and Martin of course. I wondered if I should send for Dave. I was thinking about whom else might be important and missed part of what Martin was saying.

  “. . . . . useless if they are wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted Martin. “I was thinking. What did you say?”

  “I was just wondering how useful these are going to be, if they have errors like this. How much can we trust of what we read? Maybe it’s the translation, but I don’t think so. Some parts are very accurate descriptions.”

  “Martin, what about alternate histories?” I suggested giving voice to what had struck me a few minutes earlier. “Suppose these events were true when they were recorded, but aren’t anymore. Could something have been done to change events, redirect history along a different path?” I watched him as he worked his way through it in his mind.

  “You are implying the aliens somehow were able to make a change that altered the way our history has progressed. Why would t
hey do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know what I’m saying is even possible. But we have wondered what the time complex was for. Why did the aliens put it here? You may have found a clue. Some of us had considered and even talked about the aliens interfering in our history, but we never had any proof. We also had never considered the possibility of interference on such a huge scale.”

  “But some of the times referred to in these logs don’t even have tunnels going to them,” he insisted.

  That was easy. “We know they can close tunnels. Perhaps they shut down the tunnels to times they were finished with. Like they did to Carol’s home timeline,” I added. I paused, but now I was impatient. This was an idea he would need to think about. Meanwhile I needed to try out the concept on a couple others. “Look, try and find whatever references you can that appear odd. I want to have a sit down this afternoon. Can you do that?”

  He agreed to find what he could, but not promising to be able to locate everything in the disarray that was his office by 3 PM. I left, hurrying to locate some of the others. Maybe we had just been handed a big piece of the puzzle.

  ---------------------

  Lively was an understatement for the tone of the meeting that kicked off in the small room in the secure area a bit a head of schedule that afternoon. Carol was already convinced we had stumbled onto a piece of the truth. It was consistent with her brother being taken so many years ago. Some of the others weren’t so sure. We had never tested the idea of making changes. In fact, all of our activities in the various eras had resulted in no observed changes at all. Even when we had killed in self-defense, the deaths hadn’t appeared to alter the direction of history.

  That led us into the usual discussions of causality. Did we really know if we had affected anything? Perhaps our actions had indeed caused changes in the timeline, but being a part of the linked history, perhaps we saw the ‘new’ history as what it had always been. We no longer knew the history before we affected it. Our recollections had been changed along with history. Others thought that the time history might be very resilient, adapting to minor changes, and perhaps only being changeable by affecting key events or individuals. The problem was, we really didn’t know. We had a bunch of theories and ideas each of us had been exposed to over our lives. A decade of traveling through time had not prepared us with any answers.