"Here on the road, everything seems so normal. Same moon and the same windy night sky. After an hour of driving, its easy to forget all about that dead world back there I saw with my own naked eyes. But how could Lambert have survived though? Its like I just saw his body in that hospital and now I'm driving out to talk to him alive! How does that work? Ugh...this thought ties my stomach in knots. I better just let this slide and carry on!"
That's a dead end! There's a resort kinda place across this river, and there's a raft also but does it have enough gas? I checked it and it had very less in it! As night prevailed, the device lost power and for now was useless to me. I transferred some left over gas from my torn old car and went ahead with the raft without thinking that much.
♬ When I was a little lad.... And so my mother told me.... Way, haul away, we'll haul away Joe... ♬
I soon struck to the shore and walked to the entrance of Lambert's more of a resort like house. The grills were rusty and creaked a lot while opening. I went inside and saw a crocodile guarding the main door tied to a leash. "Woaah, what the... how..?" I nearly fell down and saw a mini trailer near the garden. Beside was a mini pool and a some kitchen equipment inside the trailer. I took a fish out and gave it to the croc who luckily went out of my way. The door was blocked or what it seemed like. There was a solar panel above the house and it reflected some of its remaining solar light on me and the device again started behaving. I pressed the button and went to the future where the door of the house was fully destroyed and broken. I went inside but suddenly the device started to lose energy and before I got stuck in the future, I immediately switched back to my own time and got immersed in Mr. Lambert's house...
"Wow...look at those walls and the bear carpet at the floor. The fireplace also is burning so Mr. Lambert must be nearby!" There was also a bookshelf with like tens of hundreds of books. There was a grand piano with a what seemed to me like a royal cloth on the chair besideit. I saw stairs leading me to the basement level. There were two rooms with a wine cellar in between with wines of maybe ages ago. In the leftmost room was a table with some chart papers and mini models and on the floor, a big round machine with incomplete sides and broken mechanism and on it written in big but partially faded words, 'Interdimensional Chronosync Rover' (prototype). Suddenly I heard some voices from the other room so I cautiously went to check and found Mr. Lambert with a gun in his hands and before I could have even moved an inch, I was put on gunpoint!
"STOP. RIGHT. THERE". "WHOAH WAIT! I...Mr. Lambert, sir, it's ME - Joe!" "I don't know you. What are you doing in my house?" "Y-You... sent me here, remember?"
"I've done no such thing. For an intruder, you're not very bright - you know that? Now you have exactly five seconds to explain what you're doing here, or so help me God I'm pulling this trigger and sending you on your way! Five". "I... I was sent here!" "Four". "By you...!" "Three". "You told me to find and meet your present self! To warn you something in the future about the end of the world...!" "Two". "Y-you were old, with white hair - and you got shot and-oh God, please don't shoot, Mister Lambert. "One!" "THIS! You gave me this earlier! It's an inter-something chrono- It's a time machine!"
I showed him that time machine. He slowly aimed his gun down and took that device gently from my hand. "I... Gave you that?" He asked me while looking at it and me. "YES! That's correct!" "I've never seen anything like it before. But on the back, that's... my family signet there. I... made this? It's simply magnificent...! I gave this to you? Why? Who are you?!" "Name's Joe, sir, I... I'm just a janitor - at the Archon Inc.
I found you in the basement labs this morning - and y-you were dying. You said you came from forty years in the future to... stop the end of the world there. I guess I was the only one around, so you gave me this and told me to find you and tell you all of this, and... I've been there. The future, I mean, a bunch of times. And you were right, Mr. Lambert. Everyone's gone!" "My God. So it did come to pass. They REALLY did it! Those stubborn goddamned greedy bastards... I told them this would happ- Wait, I was dying? How?"
"You were shot as much as I saw you in the labs. I actually had to find you at... ah... the hospital to get this address". "Shot? By whom? No, wait... Don't say anything else. You succeeded in finding me, which now means anything you tell me from this point could alter the course of action that had brought you to my doorstep. The less now I know, the better. So, Joe you've seen the future?! What did you see?" "It's like a bad dream, sir. Everyone's gone. Buildings are coming apart. Its all just...quiet. What happened, Mr. Lambert?" "Its... Doctor; Doctor Lambert. And considering all the effort you just went through to find me - not to mention bearing witness to this horrific outcome of one of the biggest breakthrough in the history of science,
I suppose I owe you some kind of explanation regarding all of this..."
'I was 24 when I got hired by Archon, or 'Arkáen', as it was called back then. German at first, Archon was one of the many weapon RD companies forged and formed during the Second World War. Unlike other RD companies that had retooled themselves to pursue peacetime activities after the war, Arkáen had made enough money to continue chasing the 'next big thing' in defense technologies. They were betting the farm on post-war Soviet expansion raising the level of government paranoia to create a lucrative market for esoteric weapons research and I'd say they made the very right bet till the war ended. As for me, still a theoretical physicist at MIT, my thesis on the very possibility of time travel via dimensional membranes - which got published shortly after I was hired in 1961. Company heads were so impressed, they gave me a team and a budget. Development exceeded even my own expectations, and after only six years we had the first primitive version of the time machine up and running....
Our first successful trials involved sending simple objects into the future with a timed return, but with Archon, now completely out of its German roots now running out of money, that was all the company bigwigs needed to secure a big, fat contract with the Department of Defense. Apparently we'd sold them on the idea that this technology could be very well used to go back in time and strangle communism in its cradle. But the reality, obviously, was that it couldn't. With due to the laws of causality, you can't travel back in time beyond the point where time travel was or being invented. And sooner or later, we'd have to explain that to our benefactors. When they started pushing for progress reports, Archon management had to come clean, but instead they just chose to ease government concerns by claiming the technology could be used to bring back advanced weapons from the future. But, this too was a lie!
At this point we'd already had our first of many human trials and we knew there would be no weapons. In fact, our results were as terrifying as they were baffling. Our time pilots were returning frenzied and confused, raving about empty streets and human remains. At first we assumed that the city had suffered a soviet attack in the near future and had been evacuated as a result, but as we pushed on further, the terrible reality started to become now more clear. Then our time pilots started returning fatally ill - and dying within a day or two from painful convulsions. Some of them never returned. We lost several pilots, our many machine prototypes and other equipments as well. When the first contamination erupted in the lab, we were completely unprepared, losing three lab technicians to what we later identified as an incredibly aggressive airborne virus.
Although we weren't equipped to handle biohazards of this magnitude, management insisted we contain and study it. To keep our pilots- and the virus-alive long enough for study, we co-opted experimental cryo technology from another project, 'Project Viro-Lazarus', and established a makeshift virus lab. Once again, the bigwigs managed to spin our setbacks into a success story for the now Department of Defense, claiming that the virus could be cultivated for use as a super biological weapon. The team threatened to resign, but outrage was swiftly quenched by promises of massive salary increases and stock options. I didn't take the bribe as I'd witnessed the lethal efficiency of the virus first hand. I knew there was only one way this was going to end, so I handed in my resignation and set up stop out here. For over a year now, I've been working to recreate the technology to bring me back in time and prevent mankind's extinction from ever happening...'
"...And now you're here! The harbinger of doom at my doorstep...that too wearing a
boilersuit. Who would have imagined that Judgement Day would also begin like any normal Monday in May. Well, in any case unfathomable as it may be that you were able to bring this trivia to me, knowing is still only half the battle won. Preventing the
outbreak will require more than just your knowing and tenacity". "Me? Wait, what?" "Yes, I'm afraid I must rely on you one more time. You must go back to Archon again and prevent the outbreak". "N-n-no, that's... Uhm... I ah, mean... I'm really honored and everything but..." "Believe me, you're now the last person in the whole world I want to entrust with this - and I mean that literally.
But by this time tomorrow, the entire city might have succumbed to chaos, panic or even death. You're here now...and you're all I got!" I looked at his face and yes he was actually very serious about this. It is now actually a 'life and death' situation for not only me or Lambert but for the whole city. For Mr. Reeve, Mr. Darian and for even Burke also. "But what about you? Can't you fix this, doc? Don't you have a plan?" "I can go but then that would break the laws of casuality. The only reason you are here to warn me now is because I was there from future to send you. You told me earlier you found me this morning, correct?". I nodded my head. "Then that means I failed to stop it and the outbreak has already began. The time traveller for today's trials might have accidentally brought the virus back from the future, which then somehow got out of the containment chamber and spread. So, listen to me carefully, you need to destroy the supercomputer mapped with the time machine registered for tomorrow. All the research data is stored there, too. You have
to make sure you destroy the computer before the time machine departs. Ok so I'm reconfiguring your device to send you back to one day earlier. This would allow you ample of time to get back into Archon.
One last thing... And I need you to listen carefully, becuse this is really very, -very- important: Make sure you do not meet the earlier version of you!" "Why? What will happen if I accidentally do?" "No one knows for sure. It's...uhm... one of those conundrums not yet accounted for. There are theories, of course. None of them are pleasant, so make sure you do what I say! Now let's get you ready!"
Dr. Lambert gave me one of his old vans. I was heading back to Archon on the same highway I was on like some hours ago. Suddenly I began to murmur words which were reaching directly to my mouth from my heart. "How did I get myself into this? I nearly died reaching Dr. Lambert, thinking he had a plan... And then it turns out it's me. I'm the plan! But I'm sure I'll think of something. I've still got several hours of driving ahead of me after all. It'll be almost morning before I get to Archon! I just hope I have enough time....