TimeRiders: The Eternal War

CHAPTER 39. 2001, New York

Colonel Bill Devereau stared at the images on the computer screens: a slideshow of pictures pulled by computer-Bob off the system’s database at Maddy’s request. Photographs of New York, busy and vibrant. Times Square packed with yellow cabs and tourists, a giant billboard with Shrek’s green face leering out over milling pedestrians. A cowboy in his underpants and stetson and boots busking with acoustic guitar surrounded by grinning Japanese girls. A picture of the Spice Girls posing together in front of the Empire State Building.

‘My God!’ he whispered.

A picture of Lady Liberty, mint-green and undamaged by bombs and small-arms fire, standing proud and tall, holding aloft her beacon of hope.

‘I forgot what she looked like,’ he said.

‘Is the statue damaged in this timeline, Colonel Devereau?’ asked Becks.

‘Bill,’ he said softly. ‘I guess you two ladies can call me Bill.’

‘Affirmative, Bill.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘She’s no more than a rusting stump. Bombed by the South back in 1926 during the Second Siege of New York. They blew her up … then used Liberty Island to deploy several artillery batteries. From there they pounded Manhattan to rubble.’

‘Where — when — we come from, Bill,’ said Maddy, ‘I mean … it’s today’s date, September the twelfth, 2001, the very same date, but it’s a very different time. Anyway —’ she flapped her hand, dismissing the point — ‘the point is in our time New York’s all there in one piece.’ She smiled sadly. Well, sort of. She decided there was no point mentioning the Twin Towers to him. It would only complicate things.

He drew his eyes away from the slideshow of images. They glistened with moisture, tears he was determined not to shed in front of the girls — more importantly, in front of his own men. ‘This is … this is really how our world should be?’

‘Yes.’

He looked back at the nearest monitor to see an image of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair standing side by side behind lecterns, addressing an audience of the press. Then an image of Homer Simpson strangling Bart Simpson.

‘And you, and all these devices of yours —’ he nodded at the tall rack of circuit boards to their left, the displacement machine and the large empty perspex tube — ‘this technology of yours could change my world to how they appear on these … what do you call them?’

‘Computer monitors.’

‘These … computer monitors of yours?’

She nodded. ‘This war should’ve ended in 1865. That’s how history is supposed to go.’

He stroked the thatch of dark bristles on his cheek, deep in thought. ‘This really is quite some story you are asking me to believe.’

Maddy sniffed. ‘Well, it’s the truth. Although, sometimes, you know, I wish it wasn’t.’

Devereau pulled on his beard with a gloved hand. ‘And you say this technology, this time displacing device can send you to any time?’

‘And any place too … yeah.’

Devereau noticed Sergeant Freeman out of the corner of his eye, standing nearby and just as bewitched by the slideshow of images. ‘What’re you thinking, Sergeant Freeman?’

The old NCO shook his head. ‘Seen a lot of things in my time, sir. Perhaps too many things. But this …’ He hunted down the right words to express what he was thinking. ‘These … these here pictures, if they are what this city, what this nation was meant to be, then I guess I gotta wonder how the hell we been so stupid we ended up makin’ this mess of a world we all livin’ in.’

Devereau nodded thoughtfully.

‘If we can fix our machine, we could change it back,’ said Maddy. ‘It would cause a time wave that would correct everything. You’d all live very different lives. Be very different people.’ She wondered whether she ought to add that some of them might not even exist. A different century and a half of history would mean very different family trees for some of these men.

‘And the thing is,’ she added, ‘none of you would have a memory of this war, because … well —’ she shrugged — ‘because it will have never taken place.’

Sergeant Freeman nodded. ‘I say “Amen” to that.’

Devereau adjusted the collar of his tunic. ‘And what, pray tell, is a “time wave”?’

‘A vibration through space-time that leaves behind it a recalibration of reality,’ replied Becks.

‘A wave of reality overwriting reality,’ added Maddy.

Devereau frowned. ‘I would become someone else?’

‘Correct, Bill,’ said Becks. ‘Everything and everyone is recalibrated.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Then surely my allowing you to alter history would be like … well, not to put too fine a point on it, ladies … it would be like killing myself.’

Maddy pursed her lips. He was, of course, in a sense quite right. A time wave would erase Devereau and everyone else and in its wake leave other versions of themselves or, quite possibly, in many cases leave absolutely no version of them at all.

She looked back at the slideshow of images. There were plenty of things wrong with the 2001 she and Becks had come from, but it had to be better than this war-torn Hell. She could see Devereau’s eyes, Freeman’s too, eyes that glistened with a deep melancholy. After all, she guessed they were both men who had spent most of their lives living in concrete bunkers and staring across the rubble and the river at men just like themselves.

These images on the screen were a beacon of hope … of what could have been.

‘Something else I should explain to you,’ said Maddy. ‘There’s no guarantee this reality is stable … that it will hold. Things are unbalanced right now and somewhere at some quantum dimensional level reality is sort of “considering” whether this timeline is stable enough to stick with … or whether it needs to adjust itself again.’

‘Adjust itself? What do you mean?’

‘Another time wave could just as easily come along and wipe this reality away and replace it with something far worse.’

Devereau frowned. ‘Worse?’

‘OK …’ She gave it a moment’s thought. ‘For example, a world in which the South has already won this war.’

‘Good God! A victory for the Anglo-Confederacy?’

‘Or much much worse,’ she added.

‘Worse!’ He stiffened. ‘Worse than that?’

‘Oh yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Trust me, Bill. You ought to see some of the crazy stuff we’ve seen. It’d turn your hair white.’