(no subject)
Chapter 11
Sam shook both of there hands with the firm handshake of a man with something to prove. He invited them to a table and one of his man servants brought them some calamari and poured them a glass of wine.
“So what brings you illegally into my home?” Sam started off with.
“I lost my anchor and need to get back in touch with TL 1.”
“Ha you know that is impossible.”
“Poor choice of words my friend, it is very possible, all I need is your computer, it’s just not legal.”
“What makes you think that I would be willing to let you do that?”
“Sam?” A woman interrupted from the entrance of the room. James and Dylan spun around and saw the most striking red head that money could buy. The women looked like she was pulled out of a fantasy. “I am going to the pool; will you come out and rub on some lotion for me?”
“Sure sweet heart, just have one of the servants apply the first coat and I will be out shortly.”
James and Dylan turned around, but not until she was completely out of sight. They were greeted by a smile of accomplishment on Sam’s face for his trophy girl.
“Sam? Having people call you by your own name is illegal as well, Ishmael.”
“Sam is a shortened version of Ishmael.”
“No it isn’t.” James said chuckling a little.
“It’s close enough. Besides even if the powers that be decided that was illegal it would be a minor infraction. What happened to your anchor anyways?”
“Not important, can I please use your computer to contact the man upstairs?”
“James, it would best for you to understand you can’t bully me or manipulate me to get what you want. I taught you practically all the tricks you know. So let’s skip the coy game and get to business.”
“Fine but that goes both ways, obviously you knew I was going to come here to contact TL1 and if you didn’t plan on letting me do it you wouldn’t have let me in the house. So what do I have to do to do it?”
“For starters tell me how you lost your anchor, and then we can work from there.”
James thought he had avoided this issue, he took a deep breathe and began his story. “I went to a bar the day before I was going to be pulled back, I got drunk and I got mugged.”
Sam let out a full hardy laugh. Dylan must have been wearing his confusion proudly on his face because Sam felt the need to explain
“Your friend must not have told you this yet but if you get hired and sent on a job they implant an anchor on you.” Sam opened his mouth and showed a gold tooth in the back of his mouth. “This device allows them to pull you back to TL1 whenever they want.”
“TL1?” Dylan asked.
“Time line one, I told you that.” James replied.
“Shit yeah, sorry.”
“So these punks kicked you ass, robbed you and then had the gall to actually rip a gold tooth out of your mouth.” Sam broke into another fit of laughter.
“Yeah, yeah laugh it up.” James said annoyed but also a little amused at his own expense.
“The best part is that the anchor itself is worth close to three million and the probably sold it at a pawn shop for twenty bucks.” Sam was now laughing even harder. This time James and Dylan both joined in.
“Alright back to business.” James interrupted after a moment. “Can I use it or what?”
“What do you have to offer for my being an accomplice to your criminal activity?”
“Really I don’t have to offer shit because I have 20 years of debriefing that they need from me. Mr. Holloway will probably be pretty angry if he doesn’t get that back.”
“He sure will, with you, not with me. If I let you contact him illegally then we both very well may be faced with his ire.”
Dylan was fascinated to watch these two battle wits. Even though he didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. He was confused especially by James saying debriefing. What exactly did he mean by that?
“You know what I can do Sam, what do you want.”
“Are you leaving me an open request involving any of you skills.”
James looked at Sam for a long time. He seemed to really be debating on the issue. “Fine, but no plan b.”
“But that is what you’re best at. I don’t think it is fair to take that out of the equation.” Sam seemed to say this with a hint of sarcasm
“Fuck you, no plan b.” Dylan said not budging on his position.
Sam smirked “Fine then, the computer is in the backroom, Jared can show you the way and the password is Deckon. Your friend stays out here though.”
“Fine.” James said and walked off out of the door.
Sam watched him go and returned his full attention to Dylan, this made Dylan very uncomfortable.
“So you’re interested in becoming a time traveler?”
“Yes sir I am.”
“That’s good we always need more good men working for us, there is a lot of work to do. So has James told you a lot about the business?”
“Well it certainly seems like a lot but it is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
“So what branch of the time traveling business do you want to get into?”
“The same as James I think.”
“Really?” Sam said surprised. “His isn’t a very popular profession. So if you have any questions I am the best person to ask.”
“There are so many I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Dylan said an attempt to not give himself away.
“Well its ok I know what your first question must be. So if you like I can go ahead and just tell you.”
“That would be great.” Dylan responded. He was curious if Sam was going to be correct like James had been.
“Is it possible to heal a time line, to effectively change the past?” Sam said.
While not actually correct this question intrigued Dylan. “You got the nail on the head sir.”
“There are theories sure, but nothing ever proven to work.”
“Really, what’s the theory?”
“He theory is called the double jump. There are some that say if the original traveler jumps back to the time when he first entered a time line before he caused a split at the exact same location at the exact same time that he would meld with the original traveler healing the line.”
“How would a double jump heal a line?”
“If he did that he would be replacing the person that made the split originally and stop him from ever splitting it off in the first place?”
Dylan though on this for a moment but it just wasn’t adding up to him. “That is changing history though, wouldn’t that just cause another split?”
“Possibly, it is just a theory mind you. However it isn’t actually changing history it is just removing the element that caused the change to happen in the first place.”
“Ok I get it, it isn’t actually changing anything it is just restoring it back to its original position in the time line.”
“You have it. I can see why James selected you.”
“Well how come it is just a theory. How come no one has tried this out yet?”
Sam sipped on his wine before responding. “It was deemed too dangerous by Holloway.”
“Who’s Holloway?”
“Holloway is the man who invented the machine and is practically the ruler of all time as far as he is concerned.”
“What’s so dangerous about it?”
“It is two separate objects trying to occupy one space. All the laws of science say that doesn’t work. More then likely it would kill both of the travelers and might have cataclysmic effects on the time line. In short it is not worth trying it.”
Dylan thought about this for a moment until another question entered his mind.
“So I am sorry if I sound ignorant here but you can contact other time lines through computers?” Dylan asked.
“Yes, it’s a little more complicated then that makes it sound but it is possible. You see in our time line I invented a program that basically allows the user to research any information that has ever been put on the internet, since its conception. We have a monitor hub on each time line that we use to correspond and keep tabs on each time line. It is the only way to communicate across lines and had revolutionized how we do business here.”
“So what do you monitor the internet for?”
“James really hasn’t told you much of anything has he.”
“Apparently not, all he told me was that he was a researcher and he set up people’s trust funds or whatever.”
Sam laughed his arrogant laugh again. “Let me first answer your question with another question.” Dylan hated that phrase, as a journalist he knew that meant some one thought you were stupid. “If he did investing and banking, why would he be called a researcher?”
Now Dylan did feel a little stupid. He remembered thinking that it was an odd title but never put much thought into it. “Ok so what do researchers do?”
“Research, they toy with time lines and change global effecting events and see what kind of impact it would have on the world. They eliminate a world leader in one line and promote him in the next. They toy with your very existence. You ever hear of the cold war?”
“No.” Dylan said with a sick dread sinking into his stomach.
“You can thank James for that. James has manipulated and ended more lives then you can comprehend. Your friend is a murderer on the grandest scale.”
“What do you mean murder?” Dylan asked hoping he was just missing something
“What else could I mean; he has assassinated world leader’s dozens of times. He has been a Nazi and Jewish freedom fighter. He worked to help build up Martin Luther King and pulled the trigger that has ended his life, amongst dozens of others, not to mention the amount of times he has killed himself.”
“He didn’t know about that, he didn’t know enter the time line would kill that version of himself.”
“Entering the time line doesn’t kill the alternate version of you. You have to do it yourself.”
“That’s not true; he said it was a law of time travel.”
“It is, imposed by Holloway.”
“But why, who the fuck would make a dumb ass rule like that?”
“The smart man who is in control, vacations, retirement those aspects of the company are only a cover. The true purpose, the true money of this company comes from harvesting time lines for there resources and the study of time.”
It made sense, Dylan didn’t even need Sam to continue he knew what he was going to say next, and worse then that he knew it would be true.
“We monitor the internet to make sure that nobody knows about what we are doing. To make sure that no other line gains the ability to time travel. Can you imagine what it would be like if these split of lines knew that there lives were being manipulated and there resources stolen. There would be a war of time. Think about it, think of what you are feeling now multiply that by four billion people in the world, now multiply that by the thousands of other worlds that exist in the other time lines. There would be no where in time that would be safe.”
“So what you just suppress all the other time lines by killing everyone involved with the time machine in that line?”
“Exactly, although James is usually the one who actually pulls the trigger. Then we just monitor the world and if anyone comes close to inventing the machine or discovering the nature of TL1 we go with plan B.”
Dylan filled with anger and fear asked. “What’s plan B?”
“Plan B is the fall back; if the line can not be suppressed then we end it.”
“What the fuck does that mean? End it.”
“We end any chance of that line recreating the machine. We cause the apocalypse.”
Sam shook both of there hands with the firm handshake of a man with something to prove. He invited them to a table and one of his man servants brought them some calamari and poured them a glass of wine.
“So what brings you illegally into my home?” Sam started off with.
“I lost my anchor and need to get back in touch with TL 1.”
“Ha you know that is impossible.”
“Poor choice of words my friend, it is very possible, all I need is your computer, it’s just not legal.”
“What makes you think that I would be willing to let you do that?”
“Sam?” A woman interrupted from the entrance of the room. James and Dylan spun around and saw the most striking red head that money could buy. The women looked like she was pulled out of a fantasy. “I am going to the pool; will you come out and rub on some lotion for me?”
“Sure sweet heart, just have one of the servants apply the first coat and I will be out shortly.”
James and Dylan turned around, but not until she was completely out of sight. They were greeted by a smile of accomplishment on Sam’s face for his trophy girl.
“Sam? Having people call you by your own name is illegal as well, Ishmael.”
“Sam is a shortened version of Ishmael.”
“No it isn’t.” James said chuckling a little.
“It’s close enough. Besides even if the powers that be decided that was illegal it would be a minor infraction. What happened to your anchor anyways?”
“Not important, can I please use your computer to contact the man upstairs?”
“James, it would best for you to understand you can’t bully me or manipulate me to get what you want. I taught you practically all the tricks you know. So let’s skip the coy game and get to business.”
“Fine but that goes both ways, obviously you knew I was going to come here to contact TL1 and if you didn’t plan on letting me do it you wouldn’t have let me in the house. So what do I have to do to do it?”
“For starters tell me how you lost your anchor, and then we can work from there.”
James thought he had avoided this issue, he took a deep breathe and began his story. “I went to a bar the day before I was going to be pulled back, I got drunk and I got mugged.”
Sam let out a full hardy laugh. Dylan must have been wearing his confusion proudly on his face because Sam felt the need to explain
“Your friend must not have told you this yet but if you get hired and sent on a job they implant an anchor on you.” Sam opened his mouth and showed a gold tooth in the back of his mouth. “This device allows them to pull you back to TL1 whenever they want.”
“TL1?” Dylan asked.
“Time line one, I told you that.” James replied.
“Shit yeah, sorry.”
“So these punks kicked you ass, robbed you and then had the gall to actually rip a gold tooth out of your mouth.” Sam broke into another fit of laughter.
“Yeah, yeah laugh it up.” James said annoyed but also a little amused at his own expense.
“The best part is that the anchor itself is worth close to three million and the probably sold it at a pawn shop for twenty bucks.” Sam was now laughing even harder. This time James and Dylan both joined in.
“Alright back to business.” James interrupted after a moment. “Can I use it or what?”
“What do you have to offer for my being an accomplice to your criminal activity?”
“Really I don’t have to offer shit because I have 20 years of debriefing that they need from me. Mr. Holloway will probably be pretty angry if he doesn’t get that back.”
“He sure will, with you, not with me. If I let you contact him illegally then we both very well may be faced with his ire.”
Dylan was fascinated to watch these two battle wits. Even though he didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. He was confused especially by James saying debriefing. What exactly did he mean by that?
“You know what I can do Sam, what do you want.”
“Are you leaving me an open request involving any of you skills.”
James looked at Sam for a long time. He seemed to really be debating on the issue. “Fine, but no plan b.”
“But that is what you’re best at. I don’t think it is fair to take that out of the equation.” Sam seemed to say this with a hint of sarcasm
“Fuck you, no plan b.” Dylan said not budging on his position.
Sam smirked “Fine then, the computer is in the backroom, Jared can show you the way and the password is Deckon. Your friend stays out here though.”
“Fine.” James said and walked off out of the door.
Sam watched him go and returned his full attention to Dylan, this made Dylan very uncomfortable.
“So you’re interested in becoming a time traveler?”
“Yes sir I am.”
“That’s good we always need more good men working for us, there is a lot of work to do. So has James told you a lot about the business?”
“Well it certainly seems like a lot but it is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
“So what branch of the time traveling business do you want to get into?”
“The same as James I think.”
“Really?” Sam said surprised. “His isn’t a very popular profession. So if you have any questions I am the best person to ask.”
“There are so many I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Dylan said an attempt to not give himself away.
“Well its ok I know what your first question must be. So if you like I can go ahead and just tell you.”
“That would be great.” Dylan responded. He was curious if Sam was going to be correct like James had been.
“Is it possible to heal a time line, to effectively change the past?” Sam said.
While not actually correct this question intrigued Dylan. “You got the nail on the head sir.”
“There are theories sure, but nothing ever proven to work.”
“Really, what’s the theory?”
“He theory is called the double jump. There are some that say if the original traveler jumps back to the time when he first entered a time line before he caused a split at the exact same location at the exact same time that he would meld with the original traveler healing the line.”
“How would a double jump heal a line?”
“If he did that he would be replacing the person that made the split originally and stop him from ever splitting it off in the first place?”
Dylan though on this for a moment but it just wasn’t adding up to him. “That is changing history though, wouldn’t that just cause another split?”
“Possibly, it is just a theory mind you. However it isn’t actually changing history it is just removing the element that caused the change to happen in the first place.”
“Ok I get it, it isn’t actually changing anything it is just restoring it back to its original position in the time line.”
“You have it. I can see why James selected you.”
“Well how come it is just a theory. How come no one has tried this out yet?”
Sam sipped on his wine before responding. “It was deemed too dangerous by Holloway.”
“Who’s Holloway?”
“Holloway is the man who invented the machine and is practically the ruler of all time as far as he is concerned.”
“What’s so dangerous about it?”
“It is two separate objects trying to occupy one space. All the laws of science say that doesn’t work. More then likely it would kill both of the travelers and might have cataclysmic effects on the time line. In short it is not worth trying it.”
Dylan thought about this for a moment until another question entered his mind.
“So I am sorry if I sound ignorant here but you can contact other time lines through computers?” Dylan asked.
“Yes, it’s a little more complicated then that makes it sound but it is possible. You see in our time line I invented a program that basically allows the user to research any information that has ever been put on the internet, since its conception. We have a monitor hub on each time line that we use to correspond and keep tabs on each time line. It is the only way to communicate across lines and had revolutionized how we do business here.”
“So what do you monitor the internet for?”
“James really hasn’t told you much of anything has he.”
“Apparently not, all he told me was that he was a researcher and he set up people’s trust funds or whatever.”
Sam laughed his arrogant laugh again. “Let me first answer your question with another question.” Dylan hated that phrase, as a journalist he knew that meant some one thought you were stupid. “If he did investing and banking, why would he be called a researcher?”
Now Dylan did feel a little stupid. He remembered thinking that it was an odd title but never put much thought into it. “Ok so what do researchers do?”
“Research, they toy with time lines and change global effecting events and see what kind of impact it would have on the world. They eliminate a world leader in one line and promote him in the next. They toy with your very existence. You ever hear of the cold war?”
“No.” Dylan said with a sick dread sinking into his stomach.
“You can thank James for that. James has manipulated and ended more lives then you can comprehend. Your friend is a murderer on the grandest scale.”
“What do you mean murder?” Dylan asked hoping he was just missing something
“What else could I mean; he has assassinated world leader’s dozens of times. He has been a Nazi and Jewish freedom fighter. He worked to help build up Martin Luther King and pulled the trigger that has ended his life, amongst dozens of others, not to mention the amount of times he has killed himself.”
“He didn’t know about that, he didn’t know enter the time line would kill that version of himself.”
“Entering the time line doesn’t kill the alternate version of you. You have to do it yourself.”
“That’s not true; he said it was a law of time travel.”
“It is, imposed by Holloway.”
“But why, who the fuck would make a dumb ass rule like that?”
“The smart man who is in control, vacations, retirement those aspects of the company are only a cover. The true purpose, the true money of this company comes from harvesting time lines for there resources and the study of time.”
It made sense, Dylan didn’t even need Sam to continue he knew what he was going to say next, and worse then that he knew it would be true.
“We monitor the internet to make sure that nobody knows about what we are doing. To make sure that no other line gains the ability to time travel. Can you imagine what it would be like if these split of lines knew that there lives were being manipulated and there resources stolen. There would be a war of time. Think about it, think of what you are feeling now multiply that by four billion people in the world, now multiply that by the thousands of other worlds that exist in the other time lines. There would be no where in time that would be safe.”
“So what you just suppress all the other time lines by killing everyone involved with the time machine in that line?”
“Exactly, although James is usually the one who actually pulls the trigger. Then we just monitor the world and if anyone comes close to inventing the machine or discovering the nature of TL1 we go with plan B.”
Dylan filled with anger and fear asked. “What’s plan B?”
“Plan B is the fall back; if the line can not be suppressed then we end it.”
“What the fuck does that mean? End it.”
“We end any chance of that line recreating the machine. We cause the apocalypse.”