John Schettler - Paradox Hour

“Dobrynin was hearing that same sound as well,” said Fedorov quickly. “Now both men turn up missing, and they were also nearly wiped from our memory, as if they never even existed , just like the men on that list Doctor Zolkin gave to the Inspector General. But they do exist—in our minds.” He pointed a stiff finger to his head, where the black Ushanka cap he always wore was tilted at an odd angle. “We can remember them now, just like Kamenski told me.”

“Kamenski? What did he tell you, Fedorov?” asked Volsky.

“That he could remember many versions of the history we were living through. He said his books changed, from day to day, right before his eyes, but not his head .” He pointed again. “He could remember events that everyone else had no recollection of at all—events that history itself denied, as if they had never even happened. Do you recall those discussions, Admiral? Remember? Your Chief of Staff at Fokino knew nothing of Pearl Harbor—because our stupid intervention here changed the American entry date in the war. It was ‘Remember the Mississippi,’ not ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’”

“Who can forget that?” said Volsky.

“Some on this ship may have,” said Fedorov. “Just like we very nearly forgot about Tasarov and the others—my god—might there be more men missing? I was talking with Gagarin in the workshops, and he seemed very troubled, thinking he had a short shift, with a man missing. It was as if his old habits were at odds with the reality around him. I think he was struggling to remember something, just as I was, and Nikolin. Just as you did Admiral.”

“Who else?” said Volsky. “Might there be other men missing? What if none of us remembers? We’ll have to find a way to go over the entire crew with a fine toothed comb and count our heads.”

“Orlov would be the man for that,” said Fedorov, fingering the pocket compass the Chief had given him, suddenly remembering the man.

“Orlov?

Now Fedorov gave the Admiral another cautious look. “Gennadi Orlov,” he said. “The Chief. He’s the one who found that thing I threw over the side—the Devil’s Teardrop…”

“He reached for the dangling intercom handset again, grasping it and raising it to speak. “Chief Orlov, please respond immediately. This is Captain Fedorov.”

They waited, each man looking from one to the other, wondering, held in suspense, as if they were waiting at the edge of infinity itself. They had all climbed to this place together, and the rope of their recollection and memory was still dangling over that precipice, as they waited for the last man to come up.

But he never came. Fedorov repeated the call, but it went unanswered, his voice echoing plaintively through the ship, hollow, forlorn, lost. Orlov was gone.

Theystood in a circle around the Admiral in his chair, instinctively closing ranks, as if to guard against some icy wind that might sweep over the bridge and take another man—then another. Any man who ever joined the military, on land or sea, knew there would come moments when they would sit and stare at those empty chairs, the memory of lost comrades, fellow soldiers and sailors, still bright and glowing in their mind. But the men who made those memories would be gone, and that was sometimes an agony worse than a missing arm or leg. Those lost limbs sometimes still tingled with a strange sensation, phantoms, ghostly remnants of the life that was once there. Now they all felt that same prickling recollection of the men who were no longer there—Tasarov, Dobrynin, Kamenski, Orlov…

How many others were gone, forgotten, swept away on the tides of this sea of time, their memories hidden by the thick fog still enfolding the ship? They stood there in that circle, Volsky, Fedorov, Rodenko, Nikolin, Samsonov, five who knew, contemplating those empty chairs.

“Why, Fedorov?” said Volsky, reaching for understanding. “Is it that these men failed to survive our recent displacement? Are they out of phase, stuck somewhere else? Are we going to find them in a storage locker somewhere, like Lenkov’s legs?”

“No sir,” Fedorov said emphatically. “I know that Dobrynin was here after that shift—right in sick bay. I called on the Doctor to check on him myself when I was walking the ship to see about shift damage. Orlov was here too! I remember he came onto the bridge, complaining as he often does, and he handed me this!” Fedorov showed Volsky the pocket compass, its needle still wildly erratic.”

“Yes,” said Volsky. “I remember that… we all remember that. Correct? Rodenko?”

“He went over to have some coffee, sir,” said Rodenko. “Then he went into the operations room, but I was just in there, and there’s no sign of him. Not even his coffee mug.”

“So they were here after the shift we just made,” said Fedorov. “But I think Tasarov went missing during the shift. I clearly remember someone saying Velichko had the best ears in the fleet. No offense to Mister Velichko, but we all used to say that about only one man—Lieutenant Alexi Tasarov. Am I correct? It struck me as odd at the moment, but there was too much to worry about just then. After that I walked the ship, and I could see the men were somewhat confused and disoriented. One even reported he thought someone was missing on a work shift, but I took no real notice of that. Yet I know Dobrynin was in sick bay, so he must have vanished some time after that.”

He gave them all a wide eyed look. “That means this may not be over yet. These effects could continue.”

“Not over? You mean others could go missing—just disappear?”

“Like Dobrynin, Orlov, Kamenski…” Fedorov had made his point clearly enough. “Yes, I think Kamenski may have survived the initial displacement as well, but then he vanished too. We’ve clearly entered some altered state here, and like ice freezing, it doesn’t always happen at once. It takes…. Time…”

The thought that others might soon feel that cold freezing hand of time on the back of their neck gave each man there a shiver. Volsky lowered his voice, seeing other junior members of the bridge crew looking their way now.

“Why these men, and not us?” The Admiral had a scattered look on his face.

The anguish of the question clawed at Fedorov, though he had no real answer. All he could think of were the words Kamenski had spoken to him in their last meeting… Now you question the choices Death makes … Why do leaves fall in autumn, Fedorov? Who decides which ones go first?

“Consequences,” he said, unknowingly echoing the very same word Orlov had spoken to Karpov when Sergeant Troyak first burst through the bridge hatch when the Captain had tried to take the ship. That all seemed so very long ago now, another memory, another reality.

“If these men are taken from us, then we may have done something that affected their personal lines of fate. Then again, maybe that thing Orlov found had something to do with all of this. Dobrynin spent a good deal of time around it during his examination of the object. Even my brief handling of the object caused that strange event with my hand, and Orlov, god rest his soul, he was carrying the damn thing around in his pocket!”

“But Tasarov? Kamenski? They had nothing to do with that thing,” Volsky protested, inwardly grieving for the missing, like a father who had lost his children.

“It is only one possible explanation,” said Fedorov. “Maybe it had nothing to do with these disappearances. Perhaps it was us—the ship and crew—all of us, as I said earlier. We could simply be fated now, fated to face the consequences of the world we have created in the future with our actions in the past. I don’t have all the answers. Right now everything is spinning like a mad top. We’re somewhere, but we don’t know where. It isn’t just these three men that have gone missing. From Admiral Tovey’s perspective, we’ve all gone missing—right along with the ship itself.” Then something occurred to him, that had stood as one of those stubborn unanswered questions in his mind for so long. “Just like Alan Turing’s watch,” he said.