Chương 225: Book Five, Chapter 128: The Meteor Finder 9000

🔴 REC OCT 18, 2018 15: 01: 47 [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]"Finally got the battery charged," I said, moving the camera around the dusty office where we used to work seven years prior.

"I've got Internet up too," Antoine said.

"Not through legal means, obviously."

"I don't really care if we get arrested at this point," Kimberly said.

"It would be a nice change of pace." We were back at the Museum of Crime, back at the old jailhouse.

"It's nice to know that after our mysterious disappearances they didn't just replace us," Logan said. The year was 2025. We had finally found a place to hide where we were relatively certain Generation Killer would not come looking. Who were we kidding? He could be right around the corner. He may not like the idea of coming to 2025 to look, but his counterpart on the other side of time might have already known we were there.

"Do you make anything of those plans?" Kimberly asked, looking at Camden, who had the large roll of paper—on which the designs were detailed—spread out over a table.

"This isn't the base communication device," he said.

"It's something else. If you look here, you're meant to put one of the meteorite fragments inside the device." Kimberly was looking over his shoulder, and I moved the camera to get a good view. The device looked handheld. Of course it was; that was more convenient for what was coming.

"Do you think you could make one?" Anna asked. Camden shook his head.

"No. These plans are incomplete, and even if they weren't, I don't have enough time." He pointed to a execution date on the plans—four days in the future. To my eye, the device looked like a fish finder, as silly as that sounded—one of those devices that used radar to detect schools of fish underneath a boat. Except this was a handheld version with a strange handle.

"We have to assume that this is related to Event B, right?" Antoine asked. Camden nodded but didn't respond otherwise.

"So, if we can't make one," I said.

"We have to steal one," Camden replied.

"I know just the place," Logan said.

"I'll show you around. We can safely assume that this timeline doesn't know about us." In fact, this appeared to be our own timeline, or at least a later branch of it. Camden nodded his head.

"All right," I said.

"You keep looking at those plans. The rest of us need to be time thieves." ■ STOP On-Screen. Perhaps not wanting to retread old ground, much of our trip back to KRSL headquarters was Off-Screen. I had left the camera behind. My reasoning was that the entire place had security cameras—it would be unrealistic for me to have my camera there this time. We were going under cover as actual employees or whatever it was the badges we had been given signified. And if Carousel needed footage, well, pick a camera, any camera.

The only time we were On-Screen was when we used our new fancy anonymous key cards to get into the facility, followed by a few shots of us making our way down the hallways. When the security guard saw our super-convenient secret badges, he got wide-eyed and super polite all of a sudden. It was me, Kimberly, and Logan. Simple and sleek—enough Hustle to get in and out, enough Moxie to talk our way out of trouble. What else could we ask for? We knew the way to the lab with the device we were looking for.

We stopped by the employee lounge to pick up some white lab coats so we'd look the part, but honestly, I wasn't sure those were even necessary. We played it cool. How well that would work on our way out—I wasn't so certain. We were walking down one of the long, white hallways when we passed a group of scientists, including a much older Dr. Black—this version of whom had not died as a child.

She saw us and had a funny look on her face for a moment—not one of true recognition, yet she certainly had that look, as if she had seen us in a dream sometime. And perhaps she had. She continued talking with her colleagues as we passed by.

"That was a close one," Kimberly said after we were clear.

"She didn't make us. She's never met us," Logan said.

"I'm not sure you're right," Kimberly replied.

"She definitely noticed something." We had sought to make time travel sentimental in this storyline, and we had definitely succeeded. Because Kimberly was right. Even though I didn't have her Social Awareness trope, I had sensed that faint glimmer of recognition in Dr. Black's gaze—using the power of my two human eyes. We made our way to the secret room, which was in the exact same location as before.

We keyed our way in with no complications, and that's where we found a much more sophisticated version of the communication relay we had seen before. We must have gotten there at lunchtime because the room was empty. How convenient. This wasn't going to be a high-conflict scene unless we screwed up. After a few moments, Logan ushered us over to a computer screen near the relay.

"Check this out," he said. As he pointed at the screen, I saw the computer was processing the very messages we knew KRSL had received from itself in the past. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"We could change the message," Logan said.

"We haven't thought it through," I replied.

"We need a plan. Any change that we create will have ramifications, and we don't know how large."

"I thought you and the one-armed kid said that changes don't echo through time—that time tries to heal itself," Logan countered.

"Yes, which is another reason why you shouldn't change the message. It may have no effect at all—not unless we find a really good one." He shrugged his shoulders.

"So, where is this device we were supposed to pick up?" he asked.

"You mean this one?" Kimberly asked, pointing to the device we had only seen schematics for.

"It's just lying on the desk?" Logan said.

"The device that somehow destroys the Earth is sitting next to the paper clips." It sure was. I was struck by how small the device was. If we didn't know what we were looking for, we might have never even noticed the thing.

"How do we get this out of here?" Kimberly asked as she picked it up and examined it.

"There's no way they would let us just walk out of here with it."

"Well," I said, "we can either have a huge standoff, barely manage to escape through the vents, with one of us getting shot, or..."

"Or what?" Kimberly asked. I walked to the other side of the room and picked up a cardboard box that had contained some kind of specialty-made part. I dumped it out and then held it up.

"I have an idea," I said. Off-Screen. ~-~ On-Screen. The way out was a lot more stressful than the way in. Not only were we On-Screen the entire time, but security had been beefed up because—like déjà vu—a woman in a van had just rammed the outside fence to distract the guard looking at the camera feed. It just occurred to me that Gabriel had not merely recruited the Dina from our starting timeline but had apparently branched off to other Dinas from other universes within the time anomaly.

Those Dinas had lost their sons, but not in time—their sons had died in the sinkhole at the roller rink. I had no idea what this story looked like from Dina's perspective, but I had a feeling that she was helping from the background in more ways than I knew. We were in a line with everyone getting individually checked as we left because of the security threat. To our knowledge, no one knew that the device was missing, but if they caught us with it, they would probably figure it out real quick.

Up ahead, I saw a woman with gray hair, handcuffed and sitting in a chair. We made eye contact for just a moment. It was Dina. She must have been around 70 at this point in time. That had to be the most that any one of us had been aged up. Ahead of us in line, a security guard was apologizing, saying that some loon had put in a bomb threat and they had to go through procedures. We had no identification other than our little blank anonymous key cards. Needless to say, we were a bit nervous. Logan was first.

He held up his blank key card. The security officer scanned it, then patted him down and sent him through toward the exit. The officer apologized even more profusely to him. Did he think we were executives? Kimberly was next, and she received the same treatment. I was allowed through right after. No hiccups. No problems. No mysterious device. We had found another solution. I wasn't even sure we needed one after that treatment.

"There is no way they don't check outgoing mail," Logan said.

"So what if they did?" I replied.

"Like the mail guy is going to know which devices are allowed to be mailed out. After he saw our badges he would have mailed a human heart if we told him to." We walked down the street at a quick pace, getting as far away from KRSL as we could. My solution to get the device out of the building was simple—wrap it up, box it, and send it via courier to the coffee shop across the street from our museum.

I sent it to my own name because, if they tried to look me up, they'd find that I had gone missing seven years prior.

"I refuse to believe it," Logan said.

"There is no one whose job it is to stop classified material from getting out?"

"Of course there is," I replied.

"They just assume that no one without a top secret executive ID is going to get into that building. Security is built on assumptions, and most security plans don't have the time traveler contingency. Although if one did, it should have been them."

"But still—they're like a multibillion-dollar corporation," he said.

"You shouldn't be able to steal things just by taking it to the mailroom and telling the dude there that it's urgent." Of course you could—because I had high Savvy, and ultimately, the retrieval of this device wasn't a big source of conflict in the movie. We had already snuck into that place before; sneaking in again would be kind of boring for the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if Carousel cut that entire trip from the final cut.

So I thought a humorous, anticlimactic theft might work better than a clever plot and sneaking. Besides, if Carousel thought it was too cheap, it would have let us know. Off-Screen. Moments later, we were sitting in the café when a courier showed up—a much older version of the same courier who had dropped off a videotape and gotten manhandled by Antoine. He stepped into the café, called out my name, and I gladly took the package. Luckily, we had managed to get the package sent before Dina made her threats.

Everything worked out. Perfect timing. We were past the midpoint and right before Second Blood, which, in traditional storytelling, is the point where the good guys have a few successes. The hard part came next. 🔴 REC OCT 18, 2018 18: 25: 14 [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%] I didn't know if Carousel was going to use my silly method of obtaining the device, so when we went back On-Screen and presented it to the others, we made sure to add some lines that Carousel could use in place of that entire sequence.

"The next time somebody has to sneak into a secret quasi-governmental facility to steal a world-ending device, it won't be me," Logan said as he placed the device on top of the schematics Camden had been studying.

"My heart can't take the stress." Camden immediately grabbed it with his one arm and began pressing through the menu screen on the device.

"Did you run into any trouble?" Antoine asked.

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Kimberly replied.

"Luckily, the key cards worked. The employees there looked at us like we were their bosses the moment they saw them." That much had been true.

"Still no closer to figuring out what Event B is, though," I said.

"We looked around the facility, but it's not like they had a big poster up labeling how they were going to destroy reality. Anyway, I'm going to go film around the building—that way we can rewatch it to see if there are any Generation Killers." While it was hard to picture the logic of what I had said, it made sense within the rules we had been given. If Generation Killer did end up showing up, it was very likely he would be caught in any filming that I did. I went outside the museum.

It was another beautiful day—which, in this story, usually preceded terrible things. I simply circled the building, intent on getting footage for Carousel to use. I also got some shots of the building—basic establishing shots, the kind of things Carousel really needed for the final cut. I made sure to get a good view of the large ancient stone that served as the cornerstone of the building. It was the same one that had been a part of the original jailhouse hundreds of years earlier.

Upon it, there was a plaque which read:"Cornerstone of the Carousel River Valley Jailhouse This cornerstone was part of the original jailhouse, destroyed by the Carousel River Valley Meteor in the mid-1740s. Recovered decades later, it was placed in the rebuilt jailhouse 40 years after the disaster. Now preserved in this museum, dedicated in 2018, it stands as a symbol of the town's resilience and renewal." I made sure to get that plaque in high detail. Then I went back inside.

As I walked into the office, everyone was in an uproar.

"What is it?" I asked. Everyone quieted down and turned their heads toward Camden. He looked at me, then at the camera, and then back at me.

"I figured out what the device does."

"Well, what does it do?" I asked.

"It coordinates signals across timelines—every timeline within the anomaly, I'm guessing. I don't understand all of the math yet, but if I'm right, I finally figured out what Event B was."

"And?" I asked. He picked up the device with his one hand and turned it to face me. I stared at the screen and zoomed in on it with my camera.

"Select impact site coordinates," I read aloud. I shrugged my shoulders but then suddenly realized...

"Wait," I said.

"You don't mean…" He nodded.

"Their goal was to find more of the material from the meteor, remember? So they could use it in their experiments. They found a meteor with exactly the right properties. The meteor—the original meteor—existed across many timelines all at once, all of its different permutations of fragments existing in different timelines, right?"

"Oh my God," I said.

"Are you telling me that Event B…"

"Event B was KRSL sending out a coordinated signal to attract the meteor to Carousel," he said.

"But they messed up. They attracted a meteor alright, but not a new one. Event B caused Event A." And that was why we were in a time anomaly. KRSL sent a meteor back in time, creating the ultimate paradox, the one that swallowed up all of the others. Event B had to happen... because Event A already did.