Briefing
By Tuesday morning the team was assembled, all six of them seated at the front of the small conference room, waiting for their briefing. They were dressed in whatever clothes they had been wearing or could grab when the MPs had come for them, and were already generally familiar with one another per protocol. Long ago the team had established relationships with each other, as for a mission such as this, there would be no time to get to know one another in the field.
“I seriously never thought we’d really be called in for something like this,” one man remarked. “To get a chance to see history for myself, to be history, is very exciting!”
The man was in his midthirties, an inch below six feet, and in good enough physical shape for an obvious academic, and had short black hair, dark eyes, a slight tan, and what he called his big Jewish nose. The clothes he wore were baggy enough for the many pockets filled with various notes, and in one case a small pocket computer.
The man seated next to him was a little shorter, about the same age, and a bit on the skinny side, and had tousled brown hair down to his ears, and hazel eyes. He looked as though he was in desperate need of a bit more sunlight in his life. “I’ll admit to some intellectual curiosity myself, Professor Stein,” the second man said.
“Oh please, it’s just Ben.”
Seated with them were the others: a lean young black woman with short-cropped hair whose gaze constantly assessed any possible threat in her environment and those around her; a man who had “career military” stamped all over him—fortyish, muscular, with crew-cut hair and a no-nonsense demeanor; and a younger man, six foot and all muscle, his uniform neatly pressed.
Finally, a man sat in the third row behind them all, carefully observing the other members of the team as if with a look he could assess their worth. Also in his midthirties, everything about him screamed average save that look in his eyes of careful deduction and a high degree of reasoning. Behind it was a mind that broke everything down into cause and effect, data and deduction.
General Karlson entered the room with an aide by his side. The facing wall had a six-foot monitor built into it. The aide approached it, sticking a small data stick into a slot while the general addressed his team.
The general got straight to the point. “We’ve just gotten word that both the German and Japanese teams are either assembling their own teams or have already done so. At the least they have both picked up the same TDW we did; at worst, one of them is the cause of that TDW. The goals of those teams are unknown but assumed to be nationalistic in nature.”
The screen behind him now lit up, displaying a schematic map of New York with various lines of data streaming by beneath it.
“Analysis of the TDW indicates that while it appears small in amplitude, it could still build like a tidal wave by the time it catches up to our present. Your mission is to make sure that tidal wave never happens. Now, as you can see by the display behind me, we’ve traced it to New York City around the year 1919.”
“No closer?” Professor Stein interjected. “That’s a pretty big city, even back at the turn of the last century. Close to six million people, as I recall.”
“We’re lucky we got it down that far,” the general stated. “We believe that this time and place is a temporal hinge point, which Dr. Weiss here can briefly explain.”
All heads turned to the one seated beside Professor Stein, who cleared his throat and proceeded to explain.
“A temporal hinge point is when a lot of key events are happening that will ripple around the globe and on through history. Picture it as something like a lit match—by itself nothing of any real consequence, but if said match happens to be lying within an inch of several loose trails of gunpowder and some highly unstable explosives, the result of lighting that match could be catastrophic. Or like a game of pool: a simple shot of the Q-ball into a cluster of other balls could scatter them all over the place. A temporal hinge point is like that: make a change at such a point and there’s no telling how many different cause-and-effect ripples it will send through history.
“We’ve been mapping a few of them,” he continued, “but the problem is that not all such hinge events involve actions known to our history books. Such a hinge point can range anywhere from a day up to a week.”
“Then that’s how long you people will have,” the general stated. “New York City of the year 1919 is one such point, and whoever went back before us has changed that hinge point. Your mission orders are to discover who’s gone back to that period, discover whatever it is they changed, and undo or prevent that change from happening, if in the judgment of your team leader such a change is inimical to the better interests of the United States.”
“A week,” Professor Stein said in a breath. “That’s not much time to track through a city of six million.”
“It’ll have to be,” the general stated. “Now I know you are all generally familiar with one another, but just to make things clear, allow me the introductions. Professor Ben Stein here is your historian. Besides being specifically versed in this period of history, his little data computer you see sticking out of his pocket is programmed with everything we know from the year 1850 to 1980.”
“Which I would caution,” the professor broke in, “is not everything that has happened in history. Prohibition was just ratified; President Wilson returns to New York from the Versailles Peace Conference about early July with his League of Nations proposal. There’s post-war recovery problems, an influenza outbreak. The Bolshevik Revolution just happened in Russia only a couple of years prior, and that has everyone on the lookout for anarchists leading to the Red Scare, and of course the Fascist movement in Italy. But those are only the major points. We need to be on the lookout for seemingly innocent events.”
“Which is why you’re on this mission,” the general continued. “Sitting next to him we have Dr. Sam Weiss, your physicist specializing in temporal mechanics. He’ll be on hand to handle any technical problems.”
Dr. Weiss gave a nod, and the general moved on to the lean black lady behind Dr. Weiss.
“Agent Sue Harris, special ops and combat specialist. Her job is to make sure that the rest of you survive long enough to complete your mission. Beside her is Captain Robert Beck.”
The fortyish man with the crew cut gave a terse nod.
“He’s the military observer to make sure this mission comes off at all costs.”
“All costs?” Professor Stein asked uncertainly. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that we’re expendable.” Agent Harris put it matter-of-factly. “But the mission is not.”
“Our very history is at stake here, people!” General Karlson snapped. “And to make sure that nothing gets in the way of that mission, we come to Lieutenant David Phelps, combat and infiltration specialist. He’s your muscle.”
The younger man in uniform beside the captain responded with a slight nod but nothing more. That left the man in the back, in the third row, whom the general now indicated with eye contact.
“Your team leader is Special Agent Lou Hessman. It’s his job to play detective and figure out what’s going on in 1919 and what caused that TDW. Professor Stein, you’ll be working closely with him to make sure he has everything he needs in the way of known events of that period.”
“Of course.” Professor Stein nodded.
“He also has his own little pocket computer with dossiers of the possible candidates that may have been chosen from the German and Japanese teams, complete with pictures to identify them when you encounter them. Remember, you have to complete your mission before they complete theirs.”
“So, in a city of six million, we have to track down whatever got changed and whoever did it, without even knowing the nature of the event we’re trying to track down,” Professor Stein summed up. “That’s a pretty tall order.”
“The resolution of the temporal scanner has been getting better,” Dr. Weiss stated, “but it still has its limits. If we’d had Dr. Graystein and his notes, we no doubt could have pinpointed things a lot more precisely. Or even Professor Miles’s temporal map.”
Special Agent Hessman finally spoke up in his quiet tone. “Murders that I don’t doubt were to pave the way for this TDW. General, as Professor Stein has noted, this task could take weeks or months, but I’m guessing we have significantly less time than that.”
“And you would be right,” General Karlson grimly replied. He indicated Dr. Weiss, who replied with the details.
“Analysis of the TDW leads us to believe that this particular temporal hinge point covers approximately one week local time. If our mission is not accomplished within that time period, then whatever changes that have been created by the other unknown team will most likely be permanent, or at least well beyond our capacity to repair.”
“A week,” Professor Stein quietly remarked, “to search for a needle in the haystack of New York City.”
“You will be dropped off as close to the origin day of the TDW as possible,” the general told them. “Now, if there are no other questions, you’ll be taken to outfitting and given some period clothing and equipment to wear, as well as some cash from that period to use as needed. Professor Stein’s and Agent Hessman’s pocket computers are a couple of the few non-period items that’ll be allowed. Am I understood?”
“Perfectly,” Captain Beck replied.
“Good. Then this briefing is at an end.”
With that, the general turned on his heel and headed for the door. His aide pulled the data stick out of the wall before following along behind him, while the others got to their feet as a soldier came forward to lead them away to be outfitted.