John Schettler - Meridian

“Good God,” Kelly seemed to slump in his chair.

“It’s eleven-o-five,” said the visitor. “We’re a minute past your official recorded time of death now, so I suppose this is another life for you, Mr. Ramer—perhaps another life for us all. But we haven’t much time. The first wave is due to hit the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at eleven minutes past seven, Eastern Standard Time—just after 4:00 AM locally. After that the situation begins to spiral out of control. In another two hours it hits the Eastern Seaboard, and the damage will be too severe to reverse. The event will solidify. For the moment, however, we still have a chance. We’re in a void, you see. It’s a rare interval of grace; a little null spot, like the eye of a hurricane. The tempest rails all around us, but for the next six hours we have to make the most of it. We’ve only this one chance.”

Dorland was taking everything in, smiling to think that his theory on the possibility of time travel had been vindicated—proved beyond any doubt even before they had a chance to test it! His dear friend Kelly was to have died tonight, and he passed a moment of profound thanks that the amiable man was still sitting there, albeit a bit flustered, looking from the visitor, to Nordhausen and then Maeve. In the midst of his elation, however, a nagging thought came to him. He had explained it to the others just a few moments ago when Kelly had been arguing about juggling the numbers on the Arch coordinates.

“Just a moment,” he interjected. “I’m as amazed as everyone else to hear all of this, but there’s something wrong.” The visitor smiled turning his attention to Dorland as if he expected the comment. “The eruption on Palma…” Paul continued looking from one face to another. “It’s a natural event, not a willful event. If you’re thinking we can somehow use these six hours to change things, I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. Oh, I assure you, I’m profoundly grateful if what you’ve said about Kelly is true. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But the fact of the matter is this: The Palma eruption is an Imperative—Probably a Grand Imperative, and it can’t be changed.”

“I’m afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension,” said the visitor. Everyone looked at him, waiting like supplicants at the throne of the Oracle. “The eruption was not a natural event. You’ll learn this momentarily if you keep your shortwave tuned to the BBC, Professor Nordhausen.”

“What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was up and reaching for the radio, intending to tune in the British news station again as he wagged a finger at Kelly.

“Not a natural event?” Now it was Dorland’s turn to swim in the eddies of confusion that seemed to pervade the room.

“I’m afraid not. Oh, it was probably going to erupt one day on its own, but this time it had a little help.” The visitor looked at his watch. “Let me be brief: The BBC is about to announce that there has been evidence of an unnatural explosive event at the time of the eruption. In point of fact, it was a twenty kiloton nuclear device that was smuggled on to the island by Islamic radicals over a year ago. The plan was in the works for some time, you see. They rented a small villa on the western slopes of the mountain—very secluded. After the World Trade Center incident, and all the talk about an Islamic bomb in Iraq, everyone was so concerned about security in the major cities that they never thought to look in a place like the Canary Islands. To make matters brief, they did their research and managed to get a device onto the island by helicopter. They were months drilling through the cellar level of the villa to get a pipe deep enough to plant the device where the blast would do them some good. We’ve got this first hand from… reliable sources. The recent upwelling of the magma dome on Cumbre Vieja was coincidental, of course, but it led them to believe they could trigger a major eruption with a device of sufficient strength. It so happened the volcano was amenable to their little plan, and the rest, as they say, is history. At least it was history. I’m hoping we can change that.”

“Listen,” said Nordhausen. “BBC is reading a statement that was supposedly sent by a group of the terrorists!” He adjusted the volume on his shortwave and they all leaned in to hear the news.

‘…We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who’s waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.’

“Then it was a willful event after all!” Dorland’s was breathing quickly as he spoke. “The Palma event was the work of a Free Radical.”

“Precisely,” said Graves. “It was the brain child of one Ra’id Husan al Din—Oh you’ll learn about him soon enough. If you thought Bin Ladin was a Free Radical, then just you wait. Well, as you know from your own time theory, Mr. Dorland, the work of a Free Radical can give rise to significant variations in all the time lines they cross. Sometimes these variations can be quite profound, as in the case of the Bin Ladin nine-eleven attack back in the year 2001. But this, ladies and gentlemen, takes the prize. The Holy Fighters of Husan al Din, as they came to be called in the West, came up with this little gem and set the whole world off its kilter. His name means the ‘Sword of the Faith,’ and appropriately so. He cuts the fabric of the time continuum so badly that chaos ensues.”

He looked at them, eyes flashing under his cinder brows. “The Palma Event was not a Grand Imperative, as you first concluded, Mr. Dorland. It was, however, a Radical Transformation: a catastrophic alteration of the time continuum due to the influence of a profound Free Radical. You said it yourself on the tape I’ve listened to so many times: hundreds of thousands of people are going to die when the sun comes up on the east coast tomorrow. All those time lines are going to be changed forever—unless we do something about it in the next six hours.”

A stunned silence fell on them all. Nordhausen was fiddling with the shortwave and a glint of satisfaction sparked in his eye. “He’s right!” He nearly shouted at them. “BBC is announcing evidence of unusually high radiation levels. The Brits sent a Canberra out of Gibraltar to over-fly the island.”

“It will be confirmed shortly by American Satellite Intelligence,” said Graves. “They picked up the initial explosion on their early detection system. By now the President is in an airplane heading west with a fighter escort, Section ‘R’ of the emergency government has been activated, and there’s quite a panic underway on your Eastern Seaboard. It’s just after two in the morning back there, and it’s going to be a long, terrible night.”

“No shit…” Kelly’s eloquence seemed to sum things up.

“There’s still something troubling me,” said Dorland. “We would have heard this news in time. The professor there is already piecing it together. Are you saying we found out about the terrorist attack and failed to act in time?”

“You failed to act at all.” The visitor looked at Kelly. “It was Mr. Kelly’s fate that preoccupied you this night, not the fate of the Eastern Seaboard. In the midst of the greatest tragedy in modern times, the simplicity of one man’s death had a profound effect on all three of you. Your telephone was supposed to ring about the same time I arrived at your doorstep. It was supposed to be the hospital, of course, with news of Mr. Ramer’s accident. I made sure nothing like that could happen by cutting the line an hour ago. It was just a backup plan in case my intervention failed to prevent the accident. In the history I know, however, the call came in and the three of you rushed across town in the midst of all this rain and growing alarm. We don’t really know why you never tried to use the Arch. There’s been a great deal of speculation, of course. Some think that Kelly’s computer savvy was the key to getting the right calculations in order; others attribute the failure to the deep depression that seemed to settle over Mr. Dorland there after the death of his friend. And you, my dear Maeve, were quite shaken by the events of this night. Still others felt that it was your input on Outcomes and Consequences that was most needed, and with the death of both your mother and your emerging…” He seemed to catch himself, pausing for a moment. “…The suffering of your new-found friends here,” he corrected himself. “It was all very traumatic.”