Chapter 4
Sonja Penner and Dorothy Larson joined Tony and Alex at the site, both of which were staff scientist’s brought in by Robert Brinkman to assist on the investigation. Sonja and Dorothy were also experts in the field of physics, Sonja holding a minor in history and ancient civilizations. She was a woman in her forties, a very stuffy professional type of individual with a no no-nonsense approach to her work. She was a strong female who stood on her own giving off an aura of power and intelligence. Dorothy was a more docile woman not imposing her ideas on others staying in the background until called upon. She was in her mid twenties having only been out of school for a few years working her first teaching job in a small community college prior to working for the government.
It had been a week since they had arrived and Jesse Brinkman refused to tell the men of their true purpose until he thought the time was right. Sonja was helpful explaining some of the details of the operation and how the remains were identified.
"At this time the government has a large DNA database which they could use to identify the remains of the passengers by sampling the skeletal remains and letting a super computer search the files of current US citizens," she stated. "This database was unknown to most all citizens, the samples gathered at birth and sent to a secret government agency in order to keep track of the goings on of its people."
Tony knew this searching was not necessary. He had worked the paradoxes over and over in his mind trying to figure out how and why they were even able to find the plane. He knew there was no reason to identify the passengers, because it would be impossible to stop the events from happening again. If it were, the plane would not be there. The team met for lunch in Robert Brinkman’s tent.
"I’ve been thinking this over." Tony said.
"And…" Jesse added.
"You realize the answer is already here," he said.
"The answer?" Jesse asked.
"Yes, we are dealing with a time paradox," Tony said. "The answer was planted in the wreckage and I am sure you have already found it,"
"Explain."
"If you were able to stop the plane from departing in on the day it crashed, it would not be sitting over there now. The second you do anything that could stop it from taking off, time will shift and we will too."
"I think I’m starting to understand," Alex said.
"For example, if we were to find the names of all the passengers and lets say kill one of them, the event could shift the flow of time and may possibly change the path of the plane. It also could possibly change the departure time or do something that would prevent it from coming in contact with whatever sent it hurling back in time," Tony said.
"As of now no such thing has happened," Alex said. "Because it is still here. If we did something to change time, we wouldn’t even know it."
"Correct!" Tony said. "I think we have already been through this time line. I think we have our answer somewhere on this site. We sent ourselves the answer. We just need to find it."
"Answer?" Brinkman asked. "In what form?"
"A recording device." Tony replied.
"And how do you know this?"
"You would have sent it. You would have made this as easy as you could. You realized we would sit around and brainstorm. We would have picked the most obvious answer."
"I see," Alex said. "If what you say is true, I’m surprised you haven’t tripped over it already."
Everyone looked puzzled trying to imagine what kind device Tony was referring to.
"We did," Brinkman said. Brinkman stared blankly for a moment thinking hard. "I was shown something about thirty years ago, on the first day of cataloging, that was very odd."
Dorothy perked up. "You’re telling me in the future we planted a recording device on this plane and sent two hundred and thirty two passengers to their deaths?"
All were silent for a moment.
"Yes but now it is possible to save them," Tony said. "We have discovered a recording device which explained how this happened, the event can now be prevented it from occurring again."
"I think your theory is flawed." Alex Parsons said.
"If it is Alex, we have four years to think of another." Brinkman said. "Let me show you what we found that day. It is in the morgue."
The group climbed into a military transport vehicle and drove across the camp to the metal shed, which housed the many boxes of remains found at the site. An armed guard stood at the door and several personnel were shuttling boxes into the building non-stop. Brinkman showed his identification to the guard and the group entered the building. Large shelving units held the boxes into well-organized groups and each was labeled with a date and approximate location of excavation.
Brinkman walked along the rows of boxes looking for the ones dated to the first day. He asked a clerk to assist him in finding the correct container and was led to a box with red writing and a label printed on it. It was marked because of a special artifact found with the remains. The clerk unlocked the lid of the box and opened it exposing the contents inside. The group huddled around peering inside looking for whatever Brinkman had been referring to back at the office. Carefully Brinkman reached into the box and started placing the remains of one of the crash victims on the counter top in a random fashion. After a few moments he produced the artifact in question and set is aside the pile of remains.
"Oh my God!" Tony said in amazement. Upon the table set polished chrome humorous bone with a snake of wires protruding from several locations along its length. The wires connected to several unidentified objects resembling sensors. Engraved on the shaft of the artificial bone read the date September 28, 2008 and the name Tony Rhine underneath. Tony looked in shock as he viewed his own remains laid out on the table. He now realized how this went down and understood that he had volunteered for a suicide mission knowing he would discover the device at the wreck site and somehow learn what had happened. It was a strange sensation coming to know he had been here before and this was the second time he had been through the timeline. He did not know for sure this was the second time through, it could very well have been the 3000th time for all he knew. He might be caught up in a continuous time loop forever reliving these events over and over again.
Tony reached out and picked up the skull and held it in his hands. He was horrified peering into its hollow eyes and thinking one day this would be all that’s left of him. "How did it feel to die" he wondered? "How could he and this pile of bones occupy the same space in the same time?" Everything he knew about physics was wrong.
"Did you see this?" Sonja asked. Pointing to the back of the skull.
"What the hell!" Tony said as he turned it around. "What could have done this?" he asked examining an indentation and crack at the rear of the skull. "Something bashed in the back of my head and left a huge fracture."
Alex peered over his shoulder and took a look. "Looks like you went fast. Probably dead before the plane hit the water." He said with a grin.
"I can see that Doctor, I was just wondering out loud what could have done this to me," Tony said in a sarcastic tone.
"There are also burn marks there, see them," Sonja said pointing at the same area.
"Maybe the plane caught fire," Alex Parsons said. "Happens all the time. A fuel tank explodes and the whole thing gets ripped into a million pieces."
"That’s true," Tony said. "But this plane is intact."
"Mostly intact," Brinkman said. "A large section of the rear of the plane is missing."
"Missing?" Tony asked.
"We think the plane may have had to make a forced controlled landing. We know the area was covered by a sea, but a plane with its fuel capacity could have flown five hundred miles in search of land."
Robert Brinkman placed the metallic humorous bone and sensors into a box heading off for the lab. Tony, lost in a trance, stood staring at his bones piled up in a mix match of different parts, some missing some broken. He had to tear himself away and follow the rest of the group to the research vehicle. At the last moment he grabbed a bone from the table and placed it in his pocket. A good luck charm.
His mind raced as he made his way out of the building and into the transport vehicle. As it sped across the complex he thought about what he would have done if he knew he would find himself at a later time. He knew he would have to use today’s technology and make it as obvious as possible. They had stumbled upon this on purpose and he was hoping to keep right on stumbling. He thought it would be difficult to make a record of anything because over time it would deteriorate into an undistinguishable decayed mess.
The only object that stood the test of time that he knew of was bone, but that was if it had the opportunity to fossilize, and he knew the conditions were too poor for this to happen. The stainless surgical steel would not rust having the best chance of protecting anything electronic inside.
He knew this was some sort of recording device surgically implanted into his body just prior to boarding the plane. There were no places to attach the tendons to the device so he could imagine his arm was useless after the surgery. Most likely it had to be put into a sling or it would have dangled limply at his side looking unnatural. It would have been easy to get past the metal detectors and onto the plane, he would just have had to explain he was injured and had pins put in his arm to help the bone heal correct.
The sensors must have been hooked up to his optical nerve or light pin receivers were inserted into his retina to record the actual light entering the eye. The resolution would be poor due to the low number of sensors that could be safely implanted. Maybe ten by ten making it one hundred pixels per square inch. Poor even by today’s standards. The unit’s size told him that the recording time must have been very limited due to the ability of the memory circuits to hold much information. No more than an hour of streaming video or one thousand stills collected. The image timer must have either been preset, or he was able to record using a remote radio device that started at a push of a button. Audio sensors could have been placed anywhere with small microphones just breaking through the skin.
They reached the lab and everyone gathered around the recording device.
"Look for a portal," Tony said.
"How would you know…?" Sonja said.
"I would have planned it that way," Tony said. "With a simple hookup to a computer of today’s speed."
Brinkman flipped it around till he found an indentation in the shape of a square with the word "Port" engraved on it. He grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and peeled off the tab exposing a standard telephone jack.
"A modem connection," Alex said. "Clever, I’m surprised the sensor wires did not double as an output."
"I’m sure they did." Tony added.
"We have known for a long time what this was," Brinkman said to the group. "We have interfaced with the recording device through the sensor wires finding we were unable to tap into the memory chip without a password."
"Password?" Alex asked.
"Most likely put there so we would not access the information without the good doctor present," Brinkman said. "I can image that you made that a condition before you made the trip on the plane in the first place."
"How did I ever get involved in this in the first place?" Tony asked.
"The time line has already shifted we think. Whatever events occurred prior to this that led you on this path have disappeared. It is now a moot point."
Tony looked down at the mess of wires and stainless steel.
"What is the password Tony?" Brinkman asked. "You have the key to unlock the whole thing. That is why you were brought here."
"How about Alex? Why is he here?" Tony asked.
"Dr. Parsons," Brinkman said addressing Alex.
"Yes?"
"We have a box in the morgue with your name on it also."
Sonja Penner and Dorothy Larson joined Tony and Alex at the site, both of which were staff scientist’s brought in by Robert Brinkman to assist on the investigation. Sonja and Dorothy were also experts in the field of physics, Sonja holding a minor in history and ancient civilizations. She was a woman in her forties, a very stuffy professional type of individual with a no no-nonsense approach to her work. She was a strong female who stood on her own giving off an aura of power and intelligence. Dorothy was a more docile woman not imposing her ideas on others staying in the background until called upon. She was in her mid twenties having only been out of school for a few years working her first teaching job in a small community college prior to working for the government.
It had been a week since they had arrived and Jesse Brinkman refused to tell the men of their true purpose until he thought the time was right. Sonja was helpful explaining some of the details of the operation and how the remains were identified.
"At this time the government has a large DNA database which they could use to identify the remains of the passengers by sampling the skeletal remains and letting a super computer search the files of current US citizens," she stated. "This database was unknown to most all citizens, the samples gathered at birth and sent to a secret government agency in order to keep track of the goings on of its people."
Tony knew this searching was not necessary. He had worked the paradoxes over and over in his mind trying to figure out how and why they were even able to find the plane. He knew there was no reason to identify the passengers, because it would be impossible to stop the events from happening again. If it were, the plane would not be there. The team met for lunch in Robert Brinkman’s tent.
"I’ve been thinking this over." Tony said.
"And…" Jesse added.
"You realize the answer is already here," he said.
"The answer?" Jesse asked.
"Yes, we are dealing with a time paradox," Tony said. "The answer was planted in the wreckage and I am sure you have already found it,"
"Explain."
"If you were able to stop the plane from departing in on the day it crashed, it would not be sitting over there now. The second you do anything that could stop it from taking off, time will shift and we will too."
"I think I’m starting to understand," Alex said.
"For example, if we were to find the names of all the passengers and lets say kill one of them, the event could shift the flow of time and may possibly change the path of the plane. It also could possibly change the departure time or do something that would prevent it from coming in contact with whatever sent it hurling back in time," Tony said.
"As of now no such thing has happened," Alex said. "Because it is still here. If we did something to change time, we wouldn’t even know it."
"Correct!" Tony said. "I think we have already been through this time line. I think we have our answer somewhere on this site. We sent ourselves the answer. We just need to find it."
"Answer?" Brinkman asked. "In what form?"
"A recording device." Tony replied.
"And how do you know this?"
"You would have sent it. You would have made this as easy as you could. You realized we would sit around and brainstorm. We would have picked the most obvious answer."
"I see," Alex said. "If what you say is true, I’m surprised you haven’t tripped over it already."
Everyone looked puzzled trying to imagine what kind device Tony was referring to.
"We did," Brinkman said. Brinkman stared blankly for a moment thinking hard. "I was shown something about thirty years ago, on the first day of cataloging, that was very odd."
Dorothy perked up. "You’re telling me in the future we planted a recording device on this plane and sent two hundred and thirty two passengers to their deaths?"
All were silent for a moment.
"Yes but now it is possible to save them," Tony said. "We have discovered a recording device which explained how this happened, the event can now be prevented it from occurring again."
"I think your theory is flawed." Alex Parsons said.
"If it is Alex, we have four years to think of another." Brinkman said. "Let me show you what we found that day. It is in the morgue."
The group climbed into a military transport vehicle and drove across the camp to the metal shed, which housed the many boxes of remains found at the site. An armed guard stood at the door and several personnel were shuttling boxes into the building non-stop. Brinkman showed his identification to the guard and the group entered the building. Large shelving units held the boxes into well-organized groups and each was labeled with a date and approximate location of excavation.
Brinkman walked along the rows of boxes looking for the ones dated to the first day. He asked a clerk to assist him in finding the correct container and was led to a box with red writing and a label printed on it. It was marked because of a special artifact found with the remains. The clerk unlocked the lid of the box and opened it exposing the contents inside. The group huddled around peering inside looking for whatever Brinkman had been referring to back at the office. Carefully Brinkman reached into the box and started placing the remains of one of the crash victims on the counter top in a random fashion. After a few moments he produced the artifact in question and set is aside the pile of remains.
"Oh my God!" Tony said in amazement. Upon the table set polished chrome humorous bone with a snake of wires protruding from several locations along its length. The wires connected to several unidentified objects resembling sensors. Engraved on the shaft of the artificial bone read the date September 28, 2008 and the name Tony Rhine underneath. Tony looked in shock as he viewed his own remains laid out on the table. He now realized how this went down and understood that he had volunteered for a suicide mission knowing he would discover the device at the wreck site and somehow learn what had happened. It was a strange sensation coming to know he had been here before and this was the second time he had been through the timeline. He did not know for sure this was the second time through, it could very well have been the 3000th time for all he knew. He might be caught up in a continuous time loop forever reliving these events over and over again.
Tony reached out and picked up the skull and held it in his hands. He was horrified peering into its hollow eyes and thinking one day this would be all that’s left of him. "How did it feel to die" he wondered? "How could he and this pile of bones occupy the same space in the same time?" Everything he knew about physics was wrong.
"Did you see this?" Sonja asked. Pointing to the back of the skull.
"What the hell!" Tony said as he turned it around. "What could have done this?" he asked examining an indentation and crack at the rear of the skull. "Something bashed in the back of my head and left a huge fracture."
Alex peered over his shoulder and took a look. "Looks like you went fast. Probably dead before the plane hit the water." He said with a grin.
"I can see that Doctor, I was just wondering out loud what could have done this to me," Tony said in a sarcastic tone.
"There are also burn marks there, see them," Sonja said pointing at the same area.
"Maybe the plane caught fire," Alex Parsons said. "Happens all the time. A fuel tank explodes and the whole thing gets ripped into a million pieces."
"That’s true," Tony said. "But this plane is intact."
"Mostly intact," Brinkman said. "A large section of the rear of the plane is missing."
"Missing?" Tony asked.
"We think the plane may have had to make a forced controlled landing. We know the area was covered by a sea, but a plane with its fuel capacity could have flown five hundred miles in search of land."
Robert Brinkman placed the metallic humorous bone and sensors into a box heading off for the lab. Tony, lost in a trance, stood staring at his bones piled up in a mix match of different parts, some missing some broken. He had to tear himself away and follow the rest of the group to the research vehicle. At the last moment he grabbed a bone from the table and placed it in his pocket. A good luck charm.
His mind raced as he made his way out of the building and into the transport vehicle. As it sped across the complex he thought about what he would have done if he knew he would find himself at a later time. He knew he would have to use today’s technology and make it as obvious as possible. They had stumbled upon this on purpose and he was hoping to keep right on stumbling. He thought it would be difficult to make a record of anything because over time it would deteriorate into an undistinguishable decayed mess.
The only object that stood the test of time that he knew of was bone, but that was if it had the opportunity to fossilize, and he knew the conditions were too poor for this to happen. The stainless surgical steel would not rust having the best chance of protecting anything electronic inside.
He knew this was some sort of recording device surgically implanted into his body just prior to boarding the plane. There were no places to attach the tendons to the device so he could imagine his arm was useless after the surgery. Most likely it had to be put into a sling or it would have dangled limply at his side looking unnatural. It would have been easy to get past the metal detectors and onto the plane, he would just have had to explain he was injured and had pins put in his arm to help the bone heal correct.
The sensors must have been hooked up to his optical nerve or light pin receivers were inserted into his retina to record the actual light entering the eye. The resolution would be poor due to the low number of sensors that could be safely implanted. Maybe ten by ten making it one hundred pixels per square inch. Poor even by today’s standards. The unit’s size told him that the recording time must have been very limited due to the ability of the memory circuits to hold much information. No more than an hour of streaming video or one thousand stills collected. The image timer must have either been preset, or he was able to record using a remote radio device that started at a push of a button. Audio sensors could have been placed anywhere with small microphones just breaking through the skin.
They reached the lab and everyone gathered around the recording device.
"Look for a portal," Tony said.
"How would you know…?" Sonja said.
"I would have planned it that way," Tony said. "With a simple hookup to a computer of today’s speed."
Brinkman flipped it around till he found an indentation in the shape of a square with the word "Port" engraved on it. He grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and peeled off the tab exposing a standard telephone jack.
"A modem connection," Alex said. "Clever, I’m surprised the sensor wires did not double as an output."
"I’m sure they did." Tony added.
"We have known for a long time what this was," Brinkman said to the group. "We have interfaced with the recording device through the sensor wires finding we were unable to tap into the memory chip without a password."
"Password?" Alex asked.
"Most likely put there so we would not access the information without the good doctor present," Brinkman said. "I can image that you made that a condition before you made the trip on the plane in the first place."
"How did I ever get involved in this in the first place?" Tony asked.
"The time line has already shifted we think. Whatever events occurred prior to this that led you on this path have disappeared. It is now a moot point."
Tony looked down at the mess of wires and stainless steel.
"What is the password Tony?" Brinkman asked. "You have the key to unlock the whole thing. That is why you were brought here."
"How about Alex? Why is he here?" Tony asked.
"Dr. Parsons," Brinkman said addressing Alex.
"Yes?"
"We have a box in the morgue with your name on it also."
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