“I think he’s coming around,” Amanda said. Laying her hand on his forehead, she anxiously waited to see what he came back with this time.
As his eyes slowly opened, Gabriel felt surrounded by a bright cottony gauze. When he became acclimated to the light, he could see that he was still in the lab, Amanda leaning over his body.
“You’re invading my personal space again,” he croaked, the dryness in his voice making his voice rough. “Am I going to have to file a harassment suit to get this to stop?”
“Shut it, you,” she replied, slapping him lightly on his stomach. She undid the straps holding him down and slowly raised the table so he was sitting up. “Have some water before you attract all the frogs in the forest.”
Chuckling, Gabriel sipped at the ice water she handed him, relishing the coolness spreading down his throat. They hadn’t been able to figure out why the procedure was dehydrating yet but it was a minor annoyance.
As he was finishing the glass and looking expectantly at Amanda for a refill, the door opened and Dr. Martin walked in, clipboard in hand and a smile on his face.
“So what’s the big secret Gabriel? What is this mystery event you wanted to tap into today?”
“As you both know, General Alexander has been running me through some test sessions of his own. That man never does anything without a purpose, and it’s become increasingly obvious to me that he’s on to something major. At least he thinks he is.”
A small coughing fit erupted, and Gabriel stopped to drink some more water. When he seemed back to normal, he continued.
“He’s had me poking around some pretty significant events in the last fifty years or so, things that we, as a project team, agreed would be too detrimental to go fiddling around with. The last session we ran yesterday afternoon was too much to ignore, even as just an observer. I had to go back and see again just what he might be trying to mess with. And I think I found it.”
Dr. Martin was deep in thought, the worry inside of him pinching his features as he listened. Amanda held Gabriel’s hands in her own, absentmindedly stroking the backs of them as she listened. Dr. Martin was the first to reply.
“I assume you went in as more than an observer this time, then”, half-question, half-statement.
“Correct. After yesterday’s session I replayed the recordings to see what specific changes he might be trying to influence. After a bit of analysis I narrowed it down to one thing, fairly obvious, as always, once the pieces were put together.”
“So why, exactly, did he stick you not just in the White House Cabinet Room in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in the President himself?”
“Well, Amanda, think of it this way – what happened that day was one of the most pivotal points in not only U.S. but world history. The decisions made in that room in those final days kept us from a potential worldwide nuclear war. And General Alexander seemed determined to push things in that direction.”
Dr. Martin was now pacing around the room. It reminded Gabriel of President Kennedy pacing around the Cabinet Room as the decisions swam around in his mind. He suppressed a grin as Dr. Martin crossed his arms across his chest, in an unknowing pantomime of the late President. His face tight in thought that transformed to anger, he stopped pacing and faced the two of them.
“Gabriel, how certain are you of his goal to push things that far? Do you think he would really want to force a war or is there something else beneath his actions that we just can’t see?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot, most of the day yesterday and as events unfolded in this last run. I’d like to think we’ve learned from this program so far that people can’t be forced into decisions or actions that they wouldn’t make of their own accord, just nudged in one direction or another. Declaring war on Cuba and, for all intents and purposes, a de facto war on the U.S.S.R., doesn’t necessarily mean an all-out nuclear battle. Historians have discussed this many times and several feel Kennedy would have eventually caved in anyways. I think the general is after what would the end result be if that were to happen.”
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to shuffle around the room. Walking over to the computer on the corner desk, he logged in to the monitoring system and starting scanning through the timestamps from the most recent run. Pointing at a prominent spike amidst the different wave patterns, he said “This is where it was. Up until this point I was just observing, as I did yesterday. This is where the general coached me to suggest the change in the time stream. Everything from this point on is post-change. We’d need to run this out longer to see anything for certain, but you can tell just from this graph that the outcome was substantially altered.”
He let his fingers trace across the screen as he continued the playback, noting the increased level in the waveform and the fact that it remained above the peak level until they dropped the connection about a minute later.
Amanda shook her head, her reticence obvious. “We’ve never gone that far into a stream before, Gabriel. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to carry something out to that much of an extreme. Dr. Martin, what do you think? The only thing I can think of that even comes close is the time we tried to keep your niece from meeting Tim, just to see if we could do it.”
An evil little smirk crept up on his face. “Yeah, I remember how mad Elizabeth was when she found out. Never could take a joke, just like her mother.”
Gabriel was still looking over the results when a voice emitted from a speaker in the ceiling.
“Dr. Martin, please report to General Alexander’s office. Dr. Martin, please report to General Alexander’s office.”
After a deep sigh, Dr. Martin started towards the lab door. “I’d like the two of you to go over the data again. See what you can find that we can use. If we can make it work and push things further on the timeline it might give us a better idea as to what he is up to. I doubt he’s ahead of us on the science on this one which means he knows, or thinks he knows, something we don’t. We can’t afford any surprises, especially ones that we can’t correct.”
“Sounds good, Doc. Amanda and I can tear this last run to pieces and see how it lines up with what he was pushing me on yesterday.”
“Great. And please, for the last time, stop calling me that!”