The Theta Prophecy (14 page)

“What a weird world people make for themselves,” Winston said, trying to find anything else to look at other than stone monsters.

Year: 1961

Dulles looked at his clock. A pattern had formed: he was still behind his desk after everyone else had gone home for the day. Dinner would be cold by the time he got back to see his wife. She would be spending most of the evening alone, as she did too often these days. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had put in his time. All the hours he had spent earlier in life doing the things no one else wanted to be associated with. All the travel. Working seven days a week. It was supposed to have been so he could relax in his later years and enjoy everything money could buy. And yet here he was, with still more work to do before he could pack up his suitcase and turn off his office light.

When his phone rang, he actually thought about ignoring it. No one called his direct line, however, unless it was urgent. And no one called it this late at night unless it required immediate attention.

“Hello?” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

He listened for a moment, then reached across his desk to a pile of folders he had not yet gotten to.

“When was this?” he said. “Last night? To the Newspaper Publishers Association?”

He put his left hand to his temple. With the caller still talking, Dulles scanned the transcripts of JFK’s speech the previous night, April 27, to a room full of men and women in the newspaper business.

He had to reread each sentence a second time because the voice on the other end of the phone wouldn’t shut up and kept breaking his concentration. “Hang on, dammit, I’m reading it now.” Then, he added, “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. I’m getting too old for this.”

The throbbing in his head only grew worse as he continued to read. After his opening, the president was quoted as saying:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

The voice on the other end of the phone started saying something else.

“I haven’t gotten there yet. Let me finish reading.”

As soon as he looked back down at the typed speech, Dulles saw what the caller was talking about. Kennedy went on to say that although there was no active war, the country, the country’s way of life, was under attack. No war, he said, had ever posed a greater risk to the country than the secret threat he was referring to. And then he saw what the caller was referring to in particular:

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

“My lord,” Dulles mumbled, “This Kennedy thinks he’s a god.”

JFK went on to ask the men and women in attendance for their help in fighting this secret war by informing the people and making sure they had all the facts about the men in the shadows, who were not elected, but still held incredible power.

As the man on the other end of the phone started talking again, Dulles read that Kennedy ended by telling his audience, “With your help, man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”

“I know,” the Director of Central Intelligence said. “I know. But let’s give him some time. He’ll come around.”

Dulles pulled the phone away from his ear when the man on the other side began to yell.

Once the barking was done, Dulles said, “We can tell people he was talking about Communism. They’ll believe it.”

This put the caller at ease somewhat, but Dulles still held the phone with his hand instead of letting it rest against his shoulder so he could quickly move it away if the caller began to scream again.

Dulles said, “No one will care about this speech a week from now. We can make things escalate in Cuba. That will show people he was surely talking about the Russians. And it will distract him from more important matters. Maybe, after he cools off, he’ll come around and start to see things our way.”

He listened for a long while as the caller went on and on. As important as he knew all of this was, Dulles wished he could just hang up the phone and go home.

“I know,” the director said when the caller was done lecturing him. “But let’s give him a chance. It’s easier than the alternative.”

When the call was over, Dulles knew it wouldn’t be very long before he would have all the time he wanted to spend with his wife at their luxurious home. He couldn’t do what Kennedy wanted, disband the group of people working to stop any time traveler from interfering with the country, which would mean he would either be dismissed or have to retire. But he also couldn’t see himself doing what the caller had insinuated. Was he losing his touch? He had no qualms about sending his men into countries and weakening their governments until there were riots in the streets, bloodshed, women and children dead. That was part of the business. He had no problem signing off on the orders to have other countries’ elected leaders poisoned or gunned down. But what he was being told to do now was different. It was his own leader. It was his country’s leader. If he signed off on this, it was proof that nothing was off limits, that there was nothing the men who really controlled things wouldn’t do to stay in power.

One thing was for sure: he was too old for this.

Year: 1956

They fingerprinted him. They took his mug shot. They did this even though he wasn’t under arrest and wasn’t being charged with any crime.

“Sorry, buddy,” one of the police officers said. “Protocol.”

“I guess this saves you guys time if I ever come back, huh?” Winston said, offering a smile.

“Turn to your left,” the cop said, not returning the pleasantries.

What’s the point of a mug shot when I have a bruised and swollen forehead and a pack of gauze holding my nose in place
, he thought. But the cop was doing what he had been told to do so Winston kept silent in hopes that less talk would mean getting on with his new life more quickly.

Somewhere, in a different part of the police station, a woman was yelling that the cops had no right to treat her this way, whatever “this way” was. Even without seeing her, Winston could tell by the way she slurred all of her consonants that she was roaring drunk. A few men, Winston couldn’t see them either, whistled each time the lady yelled curses at the cops, egging her on, until one of the officers demanded that everyone shut up.

The cop standing in front of Winston seemed not to notice any of the commotion in the other part of the jail. When the time traveler turned to his left as he had been told, another flash went off and the mug shots were complete.

He had not given his name as Winston or anything else. He was entered into their filing system simply as John Doe. They measured his height and weight, recorded the color of his hair and eyes.

“Sorry, more protocol,” one of the cops said. “Just in case we get a call from Los Angeles in a week saying someone matching your description hacked off his wife’s head.” The cop laughed after he said this, as if women had their heads taken from them in Los Angeles on a regular basis. The Black Dahlia case had happened almost ten years earlier, but it had left a lingering stain on the area, giving Hollywood one of its first blemishes and becoming a part of pop culture.

Even so, Winston was happy to go through whatever process they wanted if it meant he was one step closer to changing history.

It was only a procedure to register that a man with no identity had been there, but he couldn’t help noticing how similar it was to the process the Tyranny would eventually go through to intimidate anyone who would dare think about stepping out of line. Say something when one of the Tyranny’s men groped your wife or daughter at a checkpoint? Question why the Tyranny’s laws applied to everyone except the Tyranny’s friends? Point out that anyone is more qualified to lead the country than the leaders? Do any of these things and you were sent to one of the Tyranny’s security stations, your prints and mug shot taken. Except then, instead of being let go, you were left in a cell indefinitely. If you were lucky (if you had learned your lesson), you were released the next day. If you were unlucky (if you threatened to press charges or tell people about what had happened to you), the guards said you resisted arrest once they got you to the station and they were forced to protect themselves by blasting you ten times. The same thing happened if you didn’t answer every single question the security services asked you, no matter how embarrassing or irrelevant they were. Really, the Tyranny could drag you away for any reason it wanted. If anyone else complained, they were dragged away as well.

Luckily for Winston, those things still wouldn’t be common practice for about another four generations.

“Have a seat,” the cop said once they were done creating a file for him and after he had been escorted to a private room. “Someone will be with you in a moment. Can I get you any water or some coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

A minute later, a man in khaki pants and a short sleeve button-up shirt came in with a stack of folders.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Detective Marshall,” the cop said, dropping the folders so they made a loud bang on the table.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Winston said, but Marshall was already flipping through the folder with all of Winston’s John Doe information that the other cop had left behind.

“So the clinic gave you a clean bill of health?”

“I guess you can call it that. They looked for every possible reason to keep me there. When they couldn’t find one, they let me go.”

“That sounds about right,” the detective said, frowning and scratching his chin. “Well anyhow, you made it.”

“But what if I hadn’t?” Winston wanted to say. Why were so many people willing to turn a blind eye to possible injustices rather than making sure they didn’t happen? How many other men, of sound mind and body, were rotting away in insane asylums and prisons just because people like the good doctor wanted to have a new pet or because companies increased their profits with each additional offender they housed? Why weren’t the newspapers questioning these things? Was that where the first roots of the Tyranny started, with silently pretended obliviousness rather than with AeroCams in the sky?

Was the best way to change the Theta Timeline to get people to stand up for injustices when they first happened rather than letting small infractions—an initial abuse of authority, a war with false pretenses—turn into people being dragged away in the streets, reporters intimidated for writing stories the Tyranny didn’t like? Was the real path to changing the future not in changing the leaders, because leaders would always fall to the lowest common denominator, but in changing people, because when people were changed, leaders had to as well or else they wouldn’t have a job?

The detective was staring at him.

“I’m sorry, what?” Winston said, blinking back into the room he was sitting in.

“I said, you don’t remember anything?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“Well, this is going to take a while then,” Marshall said, shuffling his chair around closer to where Winston was sitting, then pulling the stack of files to rest between them.

Winston had no idea what was going to be in the folders until the detective opened the first one. On top was an 8x10 black and white photograph of a man, stapled to a stack of papers.

“I went through ahead of time and filtered out the ones who obviously weren’t you from the description I was given.”

The very first folder was of a man with blond hair. Winston ran a hand through his black hair.

“Yeah,” the detective said, “I know. But hair color is easy to change. Focus more on the rest of him. And even more than the picture—” he gestured at Winston’s broken nose and swollen face “because you aren’t looking your best today, no offense—read through the bio for each man and see if it triggers any memories.”

“Who are these people?”

“These are the people who went missing in the last three months and were never found.”

“That’s a lot of folders,” Winston said, surprised at how many men fitting his basic age and height were missing from just one city.

The detective shrugged. “It’s a crazy world.”

Winston flipped through the summary page of the first man’s life. The man had been out of work in the months leading up to his disappearance, had a history of petty theft and public drunkenness, and had a wife and two kids. It was exactly the opposite of what Winston was looking for.

What he needed, what all Thinkers relied upon when being sent back in time, was someone’s life who could give him a chance for upward mobility, the chance to gain authority and favors, so that when the time came, he could be in a position to change the course of history. Bums with drinking problems, criminal histories, or a family who would know he wasn’t the man he was pretending to be, were all automatic no’s.

What he was looking for was someone who had accrued a certain amount of prestige or wealth before disappearing, who was an upstanding citizen or, if that wasn’t an option, at least someone who had been anonymous in society. Someone who had either no family members or only a few distant relatives so no one would become suspicious at their loved one’s suddenly different eye color, dislike of sports, or fascination with complex math.

“Definitely not this guy,” Winston said, closing the first folder and moving onto the next.

This folder showed a man with black hair and dark eyes who could look like Winston if he squinted. The man had no family and had disappeared during a fishing trip, which was perfect. But Winston noticed the man was listed as having a pair of tattoos on his back, a scar under his chin, and a chip in his front tooth. Winston had no tattoos. His chin had never been cut. And even though his nose was broken and his face was swollen, his teeth were fine. If he claimed to be this man, the detective would never buy it.

Pretending to ignore this information and focus on the man’s life rather than physical traits that would ruin him, Winston said, “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“This is going to take forever,” Detective Marshall said. “I’m going to get some coffee. Can I get you some?”

“That would be great, thanks.”

With the detective gone, Winston could give up the pretense of acting as if information on each page might jog his memory and simply run through the key details he needed: a physical resemblance without any identifying marks, a missing person with no family or criminal history, and preferably one with a decent job. He raced through folder after folder, scanning the pages of each man’s life. Ten seconds after opening a folder, he was done and moving onto the next.

It wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for. The photograph showed a man with bushy hair and a beard, but Winston could easily say he had shaved the facial hair and gotten a haircut. In fact, the difference would make it easier for anyone who had known the man to believe he could look different than they remembered since they were used to seeing him scraggly. But even better was the line in the bio saying that the man’s only family had been his wife, who had also disappeared in the waters off San Francisco. He had no criminal history, nothing to keep Winston from taking over the man’s life and running with it. And best of all, the man had a decent job as the foreman at a rock quarry thirty minutes east of San Francisco. Jesse Cantrou.

He would become Jesse Cantrou.

He closed the folder and moved it underneath the next one in the stack, then waited patiently for Detective Marshall to re-enter the room and find his guest carefully poring over some other man’s life. As soon as they were sitting down again, sipping their coffee, Winston would close that folder, open the next one as if it were any other, and start remembering a life that had never been his.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the coffee that Marshall offered him.

“Find yourself yet?”

“I wish, but no.”

He closed the folder of the man he had been looking at, moved it over to the stack of folders he had reviewed, and opened the next one.

After a moment, he said, “This sounds familiar.”

The detective reached over and grabbed the file, not because he didn’t trust Winston, but because he was excited at the prospect of not having to sit in this room all day with a John Doe.

“Is there anything in there about working with his hands? Working outside?” Winston said.

“There is! He was a foreman at a rock quarry.”

“And I have a wife?” he said, smiling at the thought of someone he had planned to spend the rest of his life with.

The detective looked over the file, finding the place where it mentioned Jesse had disappeared with his wife in the rough waters and she had never been found.

“You are married,” Marshall said. “But I have some unfortunate news.”

Winston looked up at the detective with wide eyes, readying himself for the information that would have devastated the real-life Jesse. When he heard what the detective had to say, he didn’t try to burst into a fit of rage, throwing over his chair and screaming, “No! No! It’s not fair.” He merely put his head into his hands and slumped forward, trying to remember all the people he really had lost, albeit to the Tyranny, not to boat accidents. Losses were losses nonetheless.

“Can I have a moment?”

“Of course,” Detective Marshall said. “Of course you can. Whenever you’re ready, just come out and we’ll drive you to your house. I’ll take you there myself.” At the doorway, he added, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and then he was gone.

Winston remained in the room for another few minutes, not grieving over the woman who had surely died with her husband a couple miles off the coast of San Francisco, but thinking about what he would do once he got to Jesse’s house,
his
house, and what he would do the following day and the day after that.

In seven years, JFK would be assassinated and the Tyranny would be one step closer to becoming a reality. He needed to start thinking about what he would do to prevent it.