Day 309 - Perfectly Executed. - Chapter 5.2 (1237 Words)

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PERFECTLY EXECUTED

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 5.2

Edward took each step towards the board room like his feet were made of lead, each step heavier and harder to lift up again. The light had faded a little outside the lab buildings; the ambient light from the windows had lowered, as clouds were covering the sun.  Edward had a feeling that this was portentous in some way, though he was not the superstitious type at all; this still gave him an uneasy feeling.

He did not have déjà vu, but the sense that he knew the complete stranger that lead him to a wholly unexpected meeting was pressing on him and suspicions were forming in his head.

He could not order his head properly to get any sense of logic or hypotheses about his situation. He had considered the paradoxical effect of time travel and the potential for confusion and contradiction, but this did not fit any of the wild theories or outcomes he had theorized would be possible.

The genteel and welcoming reception he got from a man who supposedly knew that his entire work and funding was for nothing threw him somewhat, after all this, if successful, would mean that all of this would potentially never exist, not if he managed to change what he meant to change. There would still be a job; these people would still exist, but the fake project the smoke and mirrors that he had snagged investors with, that would fall apart eventually.

Sooner rather than later when he had no impetus to keep the charade going.

So why was he now meeting this mysterious board, an entity he never had to deal with in the years he had been at the institute. They were a philanthropic unit and they spoke through directors and consultants only. It was rumored that they were not even in the country most of the time.  It was not a public company; there were no shareholders to pacify and the corporate entity that technically owned all the assets and proprietary intellectual property kept their names and histories well protected.

No one at the institute cared though, they opened the chequebooks and never interfered with the research and development going on and never quibbled about the results, even though some departments like Thompsons, never turned a profit but promised much.

He had set goals and ambitious result matrixes in the future, beyond the even critically generous estimates he had set about when he would be done. He never planned on delivering the final results, he knew that he would either be successful and the future would be… rewritten, or he would die trying to rewrite the present.

Death was always an option; it could be that despite all his precautions and theories, that man was not able to survive travelling in time. There was only one way to find out.

Death was now no longer an option, the old man, whoever he was, had ruled that out by telling him how he had already been successful. Which meant that someone, not him but maybe him from an earlier timeline, had been successful and yet had lead to the same results, the same madness that drove Edward Thompson to fix the past?

Did that mean that the man leading him had travelled too? Did he know more than he was letting on? Though to be fair he was not hiding anything from him, he was free with the information so far and was leading him to the answers to all of his questions? Except he had promised to not answer all his questions, and to the contrary had suggested it was futile.

Who was he?

Edward was walking at the same slow pace as the man leading him, hobbled slightly and moving at the pace that a man with a cane would manage. Edward reached out and took the man by the shoulder and brought him gently to a stop. Manners still mattered after all and despite the confusion and bizarre nature of whatever was happening, this was still an elderly and frail man.

A more insistent pull on that shoulder and he turned the lined face around to look directly at him and see who he was up close.

It made no difference and he could not place the face, yet that nagging sensation was still gnawing at him and trying to break through his conscious mind’s walls to recognition.

“Who are you?” He asked, holding firm and not letting the man move.

“No one of consequence, well not to you at any rate, not yet that is.” He stumbled over each part of his answer like he was trying to avoid saying the one thing that would make all of this make sense.

“Are you …” Edward could not bring himself to say it.

“We’re here.” The man nodded over his shoulder and the large wooden double doors were within sight, they had stopped just short of the destination. A sudden burst of energy and the man wrenched his shoulder from Edward’s grasp, wincing as he did so and obviously in pain from the maneuver.

“Come on, it’ll all make sense soon enough, I promise.” And before Edward could stop the man, he had limped quicker than he thought possible and opened the doors, revealing a room with three men inside.

“Hello Edward.” The nearest of the men had stood and extended a hand in greeting with the words.

The hand though was not extended to Dr Edward Thompson, but the older man, the one who had lead him there.

The four men were all identical, but of different ages. They were older versions of each other, and looking at the youngest of them, a man only a decade or so older than he was right now, the answer was as clear as it could be.

They were all versions of him, all about a decade or more apart. He was looking at four different versions of Dr Edward Thompson, and they were looking back at him.

“Drink?” the youngest of the board room Edward’s offered a glass with an amber liquid in it.

“I suppose you’d know what we like, no need to ask what it is. I’m sure I’ll like it.” Edward was processing what he knew and what was presented to him and it made no sense, but it also was a potential outcome. “Why have you not stopped it? There is five of us? Is there more? Why is she still… holy shit.”

Edward stopped in his tracks, swore and dropped the tumbler to the ground as he saw the person in the chair at the end of the table. It had been turned the other way and spun around once he had taken a swig of the whiskey, the same vintage as the one in the resort he had made a holiday home of recently.

“Jesus, don’t waste it … me!” the younger of his doppelgangers exclaimed and rushed to save the whiskey, though it was now just a discoloration on the carpet.

Edward did not care; at the head of the table frowning at the group of Edwards was the woman he married, the woman that Samuel Reid had brutally murdered.

“You’re… my…” he stuttered.

“Not yours I’m afraid, his.” She was pointing to one of the Edwards in the room, but he was not looking, he was staring at the woman he had come to save.