Wednesday's Child (30 page)

51.

William and Henry spent some of their capital getting us a hearing the following afternoon.  Tuesday morning, Ilene joined us on a high-speed train to Washington.

We’d convinced William, but we’d have to do better in Washington. William had no personal ax to grind, but each of the thirty-two powerful men and women we’d be addressing on Tuesday had an individual political agenda that might not coincide with either common sense or the common good.

The Secretary of Homeland Security introduced William and Henry, who used their currently high credibility to set the stage, warning the audience that what they were about to see would strain their credulity.

Including Ilene in the group was a stroke of genius.  We’d enlisted Jerry’s help in planning the presentation, and he’d insisted that we use Ilene to get the audience’s attention.  When she rose to present the videos of our alternate history, the prestigious audience saw an attractive woman who embodied self-assurance, intelligence, and that all-time favorite, family values.  She seemed the ideal fair witness, appealing to them, with irrefutable sincerity, to open their minds to what at first glance seemed unbelievable.

I studied their faces as they watched people succumb to radioactive smoke bombs and cower under cesium-laced clouds in the stadium.  I saw surprise, horror, confusion, consternation.  They didn’t know what to think when Ilene assured them that what they were seeing was real, that she’d recorded it herself.

I limped to the podium, next. “Ladies and gentlemen, I know what you must be thinking.  This isn’t even as credible as a video of an alien spaceship landing on the White House lawn.  If you doubt the authenticity of what my wife showed you, we’ll be happy to turn the files over to your IT people, who’ll find that they are exactly what we say they are.  These videos were recorded on Thursday, August 8
th
and 15
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, and placed on storage devices with the news websites we downloaded.  Ilene showed you only a sample.  There’s much more if you’d like to stay and view it when we’re finished.

“You’re wondering why you have no memory of these events.  That’s because, using a quirk of modern physics that none of us here is prepared to explain, we were able to reset the clock, as it were, and undo them before they occurred.  When your staffs told you we prevented thousands of casualties and averted crippling disruptions to our nation’s economy, they didn’t know those things had already happened before we were able to alter the events that caused them.  If you cannot accept that possibility, I won’t be able to convince you, but I’d appeal to your judgment.  Why would we who are already hailed as heroes risk public scorn and humiliation by inventing such a fable?”

I told them about how I’d gone to sleep on Tuesday, July 15
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and woke up to find that I had somehow skipped Wednesday.  And so on.  I explained that it happened again, every week since then, and how that enabled us to subvert the attacks in the absence of adequate intelligence.  Then it was time for the bombshell.

“Until a few days ago, only five people knew the attacks actually occurred.  But the attacks themselves are not our sole reason for being here. It’s their horrifying aftermath that we came to show you.”

Ilene then played them a brilliantly edited sequence of video clips: the President threatening nuclear strikes; prominent generals and politicians making speeches designed to stir up war fervor; counter threats from leaders of other countries; righteous appeals for an all-out holocaust of the Moslem world.  No less than nine of the clips were of people sitting in the room with us.  One after another, they gasped as they heard themselves publicly rallying the country toward nuclear war and genocide.

When the video ended, William re-took the floor.

“If you’re thinking this has been an attempt to shock you, you’re right.  If you’re thinking we hired a bunch of Hollywood special effects people to create fake videos for the purpose, ask your technical people what it would take to fake what you saw here, considering that for each minute of video we showed you, there are hundreds more on this device.”  He waved the flash drive he’d removed from the computer-driven projector.

“Ask yourselves what possible motive we four might have for doing such a thing.  Believable or not, what you saw is real.  We requested this briefing to convince you that if you and your counterparts in other countries don’t do something soon to change things, eventual nuclear devastation is a near certainty.”

They asked a lot of questions, some discerning and astute, some inane.  We answered them all with total candor.  They asked, repeatedly, how my day swapping could have occurred and we said we had no idea, avoiding any supernatural or religious allusions, knowing they had to get there themselves.

The President had appointed many people with deep religious convictions to critical posts in his Administration, a circumstance that Ilene and I despised, but that day, it proved useful.  One such was the Attorney General of the United States, a devout, some would have said rabid evangelistic Christian, who had attended at the urging of the FBI Director. When the questions and answers were done, he rose and addressed the room in the pompous tone that invariably infuriated almost everyone around him.

“In my opinion, what we have just witnessed was the hand of God, warning of the holocaust to come.  I thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Brice, Agent White, Mr. Franklin, for acting as His faithful messengers.  After we adjourn, I intend to issue a press release to that effect.  I invite my colleagues, here, to join me in spreading the Word.”

Holy shit!
  I vowed never to say anything disparaging about that self-righteous prig again.

The Attorney General was better than his word.  That evening, he delivered a fiery speech to a collection of hastily assembled journalists, referring them to us, by name, whenever they asked a question he couldn’t answer. 

***

When Ilene and I got home around eleven, our voice mail’s memory was full.  We’d turned off our cell phones on the train, sure that the press wasn’t going away.  They’d call back in the morning. 

The problem was that it was Tuesday night. 

“Nice of you to leave me with this mess,” Ilene joked. 

“What do you mean?  I’ll do my share when I get to Wednesday.”

“What happens if…” she began, then looked at me, obviously frustrated.  “This doesn’t get any easier.  I’m too confused to formulate a question.”

“Why even bother?  Let’s go to bed.  I’ll see you when I see you.”

For the first time in several weeks, I slept totally relaxed.  Not because what lay ahead would be easy, but at least the immediate terrorist threat was behind us. 

Ilene was beside me when I woke up, looking so peaceful, I was torn between waking her to ask how her Wednesday had gone and wanting to let her sleep.  I settled for finding a position that reduced the shooting pain in my hip and thigh until she opened one eye and smiled at me.

“Hi, husband, how was Thursday?” 
Uh oh.

“I don’t know, I haven’t been there yet.  Today’s Wednesday?”

“Unless I’ve been in a coma for a day-and-a-half.”

“He must have turned off his machine.”

“Who did what?”

“The Übermensch.  Apparently, I’m not skipping days any more.”

“That’s wonderful! Maybe it’s his way of saying ‘Well done, mission accomplished.’”

“Except that it’s not.  It’ll all have been for nothing if we don’t get things to change.  I think it means that since there’s no immediate terrorist threat, He doesn’t want to keep stressing the space-time continuum.  I wish He’d consulted with me first. I was planning a three-day sleep demonstration for all the skeptics.”

Have you ever wondered how Superman would feel if he woke up one day and couldn’t fly any more?  That was me. 

On the other hand, I was suddenly a celebrity.  Thanks to the Attorney General, the whole world believed I’d “single-handedly foiled two of the most dastardly terrorist attacks the world had ever seen,” with barely a wave given to the FBI and the Agency’s Anti-Terrorist Task Force.  Ilene was caught in the spotlight, too – the media seemed more interested in her than in me. 

We kept trying to deflect their attention to Henry and the rest of my team, to no avail.  The only one who escaped the spotlight was Rod.  It wouldn’t do to announce that we’d brought a Mossad agent into the fold.  He was just as happy we hadn’t.

Ilene made me take the cane I’d promised to use until my wound healed, and I headed downtown to Federal Plaza.  I got William, Henry, Rod, Mary, and Samir together – having explained everything to the latter two before we departed for Washington – and told them the news.  They seemed more shocked than I was.

“How do you feel about it?” Henry asked.

“I’m used to the idea that all this is beyond my control.  I was surprised, this morning, when Ilene told me it was Wednesday, but I knew it would happen one day.  There’s a sense of loss, but it’s a relief to be able to live normally again.”

“You certainly got what you wanted from the hearing,” William said.  “My desk is covered with requests for interviews, mostly with you.  What do you want to do?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re all in this together, unless anyone wants to drop out.  We need a strategy.  This is too important for any of us to wing it.”

“When do you plan to tell people you’re not skipping Wednesdays any more?”

“I think we should decide that together.  Keep in mind that things could change again next week.  I have no idea what the Übermensch has in mind for me now.

“I also need your input on something else, William.  As long as you’re my superior, you and the Government are accountable for anything I say or do.  Maybe I should resign from the unit or you should fire me.  As a free agent, I wouldn’t pose a problem for anyone else.”

“Didn’t you just say we’re all in this together?  If we decide you should quit, Henry and I probably should, too.  Rod can make his own choice.”

“I’ve been talking to my wife about that,” Rod said. “I probably told her more than I should have.  I’ve thought about quitting for some time.”

“I spoke to my General Counsel about our legal position,” Henry said.  “It was awkward for her, because in any legal action against me, she’d represent the Justice Department.  But she offered her opinion that the only one who’s liable for exposing Top Secret information is her boss, the Attorney General.  Once that box was opened, there was no way to close it again.  The Government would have a hell of a time prosecuting any of us for discussing the attacks openly.

“She thinks we have no liability concerning anything not explicitly included in the list of items that were classified.  I didn’t ask her, specifically, but I’m sure that applies to Dylan’s time-skipping.  It can’t be considered classified information because no one but us knew about it until the briefing, and then the Attorney General’s actions muddied the waters completely.  As to quitting, when I asked her about that she suggested that I request administrative leave for an unspecified time, during which I would be free to act and speak independent of the Bureau.  That may be the answer for all of us.”

The next order of business was deciding who to talk to and in what settings.

“The way I see it,” I said, “we’re in the driver’s seat. We’re a hot property and the media all want a piece of us, but they’re corporations, not the Government, so we’re not obligated to talk to them.  As long as we’re hot, we can negotiate our own terms.”

Everyone agreed, and we decided to deal only with people who had a demonstrated record of integrity and intelligent, unbiased reporting, respected journalists who’d already had successful careers and were now retired or working on ventures out of the public eye.  We reached out to the three we liked best and agreed to a series of televised interviews in which they would all participate, while alternating acting as moderators.  They convinced their networks to give us time to present our case in whatever manner we deemed most effective and we agreed that they could ask us any question that all three of them agreed was reasonable.

52.

The first interview was a ratings blockbuster for the three networks that aired it.  They helped us package our presentations and promoted them relentlessly. Viewer anticipation was high, and sponsors actually bid for commercial slots once they knew what we were planning.  More than a hundred million people tuned in, initially, and as word spread during the hour-long telecast, that number rose to almost two hundred million.

The journalists asked tough questions but the atmosphere was more collegial than adversarial.  That clicked with the viewers, and networks in thirty countries asked if they could carry future broadcasts. The sponsors gave the three commentators a blank check, and the next three interviews were all seen by nearly a billion people. 

Every telecast was followed by online chat rooms that went on for hours, with all four of us taking part in the discussions.  Networks and individual stations sponsored message boards and forums in which millions of people expressed theories and opinions. Thousands of websites sprang up overnight to discuss what we had revealed to the world.

After four successful broadcasts, in which we covered everything we could think of, we opened the format to permit viewers to phone in questions while we were on the air.  The response was overwhelming, with people calling from all over the globe.

A month later, the team assembled to assess what we’d accomplished.  Rod hadn’t been directly involved in the interviews.  Instead, he’d been carefully monitoring the responses of major media outlets around the world.  He’d prepared an enlightening review.

“First,” he said, “there’s no doubt that you got your message out.  Two-thirds of the civilized world knows about Dylan Brice, who lived days out of order and foiled the terrorists, but whether people took what you intended from the message is another matter. 

“Debates are raging all over the Internet.  The loudest and largest is whether, in spite of all the evidence and testimonials to the contrary, the videos are clever fakes. 

“A close second, at least in terms of the number of websites devoted to it is Dylan himself.  Some groups think he’s certifiable. Others believe he’s being manipulated by aliens, and a portion of those believe he actually
is
an alien in human form.  Some think, as the AG suggested, that he’s God’s messenger sent to warn the world about Armageddon, while others postulate less arduous interpretations of divine intervention: angels, demons, and such.  My favorite is a website devoted to proving that Dylan is under the hypnotic control of a secret international cabal trying to take over the world.”

We’d known from the first that the window of opportunity to effect change was limited.  Nevertheless, we’d been so involved in the details that Rod’s assessment came as a shock. 

Jerry had directed our approach ever since the first briefing. “You’ve done all you could to inform people,” he said.  “It’s time to change your strategy before this degrades to a circus.”

“Part of the problem,” said Rod, “was the impact of Dylan’s announcement that he wasn’t living days out of order any more.  It made people wonder if the whole thing had been faked all along.”

“I’m the one who lived it,” I said, “and even I’m beginning to doubt it.  I used to go to sleep at night wondering what day it would be when I woke up.  Now I half expect to wake up and find that it’s July 16
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, and all this was a dream.”

Jerry got us back on track.

“You need a new focus,” he said.  “Even among people who believe you and realize that things need to change, there are a hundred different ideas out there.  I think you should adopt the best ones, and try to get a grass-roots movement going, which was Dylan’s idea in the first place.  You should also continue to lobby people in power who’ve been sympathetic while you still have enough credibility to make them listen.”

“Two points of view are gaining prominence among people who think action is needed,” Rod said.  “One stresses better communication with the populations that support terrorism, improving relations with the Muslim world.  The other is the complete opposite, forming a solid world-wide coalition to fight a war of extermination with Islamic fundamentalism.”

“If you had to choose,” I said to the room, in general, “which would you support?”

Mary, who’d been silent until then, said, “We have to support both.  After decades of strife, it was the only approach that worked in Northern Ireland.  There has to be a believable, substantive attempt to resolve the grievances of the Muslim world, while we demonstrate that if that fails, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to win.  And since their primary grievances all relate to our presence in their countries, and the reason we’re there is oil, there also needs to be a total commitment to developing energy alternatives.”

We met with our three journalists to propose a new series of televised forums, in which we would argue that all the major powers had to align together to push both initiatives.  The networks were cool to the idea, however.  The novelty was gone, and we were entering the area of special interests.  Instead of science fiction and the supernatural, we were trying to resolve problems that had been around for centuries.

We got some air time, but the new effort never really got off the ground.  The Administration was comfortable with the status quo, with its friends in the oil industry reaping windfall profits and the unstable alliances in the Middle East propping up military budgets which made billions for its other chief supporters. 

It was depressing.  I had about run out of steam.  After everything we’d done it had come down to this.  Greed and selfishness had won again.  When our message stopped being fun, people had simply tuned us out.

It took weeks for the realization that I had failed to fully sink in.  When it did, I was mired in a malaise that sapped my energy.  Nothing mattered any more.  Ilene wanted me to talk to Jerry about it.

***

It was December.  The days were cold, the mornings colder.  Henry was back in Baltimore and I’d returned to my day job three or four days a week. 

One frigid morning, an Arab student in an overcoat boarded an R-5 commuter train at Bryn Mawr, got off at the 30
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Street Station in Philadelphia, and blew himself up in a crowded terminal.

That evening, I sat with Ilene watching the gruesome replays and listening to the crescendoing calls for revenge and retaliation.  I didn’t say anything, but she knew from my tortured expression and my silence that I was ready to explode in a different way.  She came and put her arms around me.

“It’s not your fault, Dylan.  You couldn’t have done any more.”

“I know.  That’s not what’s bothering me.  I want to know what the fuck July and August were all about.  Was it just a cosmic joke at our expense?”

“You said yourself HE might be testing us, seeing if we would heed HIS warning and save ourselves.  Maybe HE decided we’re not worth saving.”

“No,” I said.  “That’s not right.  If HE’s so damn smart, HE knows enough about human nature to understand that this couldn’t have ended any other way.  At least if HE’d left me able to demonstrate what HE’d done to my life in a way that no one could deny…but no, just at the critical moment, HE picked up HIS toys and went home.  This is HIS fault.”

I’d wandered out onto our deck while I spoke.  I looked up at the sky and shook my fist.  “You’re laughing at us, aren’t you.  You’re worse than we are.  If I could get my hands on you…”

“Come inside, Dylan.  It’s cold out there.”

I went in and fell into the chair I used for reading, pulling a book off the shelf at random, though I should have known that random had no meaning for me any longer, if it ever did. 
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
.  I hadn’t looked at it since my sophomore year at Columbia, yet it seemed appropriate, the story of a man living outside of his time. 

Ilene made me take a tranquilizer and I began to read, eventually drifting off to sleep like the dead.  I awoke the next morning, not in the thirteenth century, thank God, with a passage securely locked in my memory.  It must have been the last thing I read before falling asleep.

…it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me…

I called Tom Brenner, my favorite of the three journalists we’d worked with.

“Tom, can I impose on you one last time?  The suicide bombing, yesterday.  It’s too much.  I have to fix this.”

“What do you have in mind, Dylan?  My influence is limited, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Get me some airtime, tonight.  You and me.  Five minutes on the network news.  That’s all I ask.  I know how to turn all this around and make them listen.”

“You want to tell me what you’re planning?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

He said he did, and I told him.  I knew I could trust him.  I could even trust the network.  If they bought my idea, they’d never blow the surprise ahead of time.  They’d just tease people with a promise of another “must see” interview.

That was how I got my last TV spot.  At 7:10 pm, Eastern Daylight Time, thanks to a ten-hour promotional blitz, fifty million people saw and heard me throw down the gauntlet to the world’s leaders.  Only I knew I was throwing it at the Übermensch as well.  “Get your damn acts together or face the consequences.  You have one last chance to get it right.  Watch the sky at noon, tomorrow.” 

There was pandemonium all around me.  Was I making some kind of threat?  I felt totally at peace.  It was out of my hands now.  I turned off my phone and went home.

Mark Twain’s protagonist knew with the certainty of hindsight that there would be an eclipse the next day.  I knew that an eclipse the next day at noon could only occur as a result of a miracle.

Ilene had seen the page I was reading when I fell asleep.  The next morning, she said, “Let’s take the day off and drive to the mountains.  Someplace with an unobstructed view of the midday sun.”