In the Ruins
Brent Strasser, chief security officer for Mikel Technology, the largest electronics company in the world, was an expert on cybercrimes. His duties involved identifying individuals or groups who hacked into databases of financial institutions, government agencies or large corporations. He and his staff of dedicated programmers helped detect and repair security breaches for, among others, the Social Security Administration, eBay, Bank of America, United Airlines, Amazon and Netflix. Unfortunately, his expertise in computer network related offenses did not prepare him for what was to become the most baffling mystery of his career.
One Monday morning in late October Brent got off the elevator on the fifty-second floor and walked down the hall toward his corner office.
"Good morning, Hildy," he greeted his secretary. "Any messages?"
"Mr. Kovács wants to see you ASAP."
Lazslo Kovács, the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Mikel, had never contacted his head of security before. Even in cases of the most serious threats, Brent always dealt with Milton Gorman, the president of the company.
"I wonder what he wants."
"I don't know," Hildy said. "But it must be important."
"Could you call his office and tell his secretary I'm on my way? I'm just going to put my briefcase on my credenza."
Brent's palms began to sweat when he got off the elevator on the hundred and thirtieth floor, where all the executive suites were located.
"I'm here to see Mr. Kovács," he informed the receptionist.
"They're waiting for you in the conference room, Mr. Strasser."
Upon opening the door, he immediately spotted Lazslo Kovács and Milton Gorman seated at the long table but failed to recognize the third man.
"Strasser," the president announced when he saw the head of security in the doorway, "glad you're here. You know Mr. Kovács."
"Yes, of course," he answered, extending his arm to shake the CEO's hand.
"And this gentleman is Dr. Vaughn Williston, the preeminent archeologist."
"I'm sure you've never heard of me," Vaughn joked. "I'm nowhere near as well-known as Indiana Jones."
"I can tell from that perplexed look on your face that you're wondering what the hell you're doing here," Milton said.
"I assume there has been a security breach somewhere."
"That's the unfortunate conclusion we've arrived at," the archeologist answered. "But this one is not like any you've experienced before; I'll be bound."
"Show him," ordered CEO Kovács, a man of few words.
Dr. Williston opened a box and removed an electronic device, one that had become a ubiquitous fixture in the daily lives of billions of people around the world: a smartphone—specifically, a model manufactured by Mikel.
"What happened to that cell phone?" Brent asked. "It looks as though it's been through hell and back."
"In a way, it has. One of my colleagues found this, along with some Roman coins, gold jewelry and shards of pottery, while working at a dig site in Pompeii."
"One of the workers must have dropped it."
"That was my original assumption. However, my colleague assures me he found it in a mound of volcanic ash and that it has been there since Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 C.E."
"That's ridiculous!" Brent exclaimed.
"We've subjected this device to dozens of tests, all of which confirm it has been buried for close to two thousand years."
"That's just not possible!"
"You haven't heard the whole story," Kovács declared.
"Let me get you a cup of coffee," the president of the company offered.
"Coffee, hell! Get him a drink," the CEO instructed. "The stronger, the better."
Although it was not yet nine in the morning, Brent swallowed the shot of whiskey in one gulp. However, it did little to prepare him for what Milton Gorman was to say.
"Dr. Williston brought the phone to us, hoping we could determine its owner by accessing the data on it. You know, look for a contact list, photographs—anything that might help solve the mystery of how a cell phone wound up in Pompeii prior to the volcanic eruption."
"And what did you find out?"
"This is where things really get weird," Vaughn said.
"As if finding a cell phone in the ruins of Pompeii isn't weird enough!" Brent exclaimed.
"This particular cell phone hasn't been invented yet," Milton announced.
"I know. There were no phones at all in the year 79."
"No. That's not what I mean. I've had our research and development department take this thing apart. There are features in this phone that have yet to appear on any of the models we've released. One or two of them are currently being worked on, but there are three or four more that are barely in the planning stages. And one that even our most senior engineers cannot figure out."
"I'm sorry. I don't understand any of this."
"Let me spell it out for you," Lazslo Kovács said. "This phone that somehow wound up in the past comes from the future—our future!"
"Let's say I buy into all this Twilight Zone-Outer Limits stuff ...."
"I'm afraid it's an undeniable fact," Vaughn Williston insisted.
"Okay," Brent conceded. "What has any of this to do with me?"
"You're the head of security," Gorman replied. "We need you to try to find out where this phone came from and how it was sent back in time."
* * *
Brent Strasser sat in his office, staring out the window at the city below. He had been given what he believed was an impossible task.
I have no idea how that phone wound up in the ruins of Pompeii because I can't even begin to imagine how time travel is possible. This is far worse than being asked to find a needle in a haystack. At least both the needle and the hay are tangible and exist in our time.
A happily married man and dedicated father, he wanted nothing more than to put in his eight hours behind a computer and go home to his family at the end of the day. He had no desire to play a modern Sherlock Holmes in search of a cyber Doctor Moriarity. As much as he would have liked to decline the assignment, though, refusal was not an option. He might very well lose his job if he did so. That meant kissing his salary, his benefits and his pension goodbye.
Since Brent doubted he would find any answers in Pompeii, he decided to concentrate on learning what he could about the prototype cell phone. Some of the features were currently being developed. Perhaps an existing employee might offer some clues to the puzzle. Five weeks later, however, having interviewed everyone in the research and development division, he was still no closer to solving the mystery.
"Maybe you shouldn't take people at their word," Milton suggested when his head of security gave him a verbal progress report.
"I'm not, sir. I've already begun looking into everyone's background—including Dr. Williston's."
"Good. Keep me posted."
Two days after meeting with the company's president, Brent received an unexpected visit from the archeologist.
"I'm sorry I didn't request an appointment," Williston apologized. "To be perfectly honest, I thought it was a conversation that would best be conducted in the privacy of your office."
"Oh? Have you found out anything more about the phone?" Strasser inquired.
"Not exactly."
"What is it then?"
"I've been talking to a number of my colleagues, and it seems Pompeii is not the only archeological site with an unexplained find. It seems a British pound bearing the image of Queen Elizabeth II was found among the treasures of King Tut's tomb."
"But that was discovered in 1922 when George V, Elizabeth's grandfather, was on the throne."
"I know. But the team only recently discovered the coin, and they believed it was just a practical joke."
"Maybe it was."
"No. As is the case with our futuristic cell phone, all tests indicate it has been buried for over three thousand years."
"Damn!" Brent exclaimed, wishing he was not caught in the middle of an unsolvable enigma.
"And that's not all," the archeologist continued. "A key to a 2015 Subaru Forester was found at a dig at Machu Picchu, a Fitbit at Petra and an iPod Nano at Troy."
"Are you absolutely sure this is not all some elaborate hoax directed at you?"
Vaughn reached into his pocket and took out a Ziploc bag.
"This," he announced, taking a SanDisk USB flash drive out of the bag, "was recently brought up along with other artifacts salvaged from the Titanic."
"Was it found inside the baggie like that?" the security chief asked hopefully.
"Yes. Whoever left it onboard that ship wanted it protected from the water."
"You think it was meant to be found?"
"I know it was. The drive contains a message for us."
The archeologist handed the flash drive to Strasser, who then plugged it into the USB drive of his computer. There was only one file, a simple video taken with a digital camera. There were no signs of its content having been edited. He clicked on the icon and played the clip.
"Have you seen this yet?" he asked Vaughn.
"Yes."
"Check out at this guy in the mask. He looks like he's right out of the cast of The Phantom of the Opera."
The man in the video, who referred to himself only as the Time Traveler, confirmed that he had left the cell phone at Pompeii, the pound coin in Tut's tomb, the Subaru key at Machu Picchu, the Fitbit at Petra and the iPod at Troy as well as transporting other current and future items to the past. It was necessary, he claimed, to prove his time-traveling abilities.
"Since you now have irrefutable proof that I have access to both the past and future, you must be asking yourself how I plan to put my unique talent to work. Like a true capitalist, I want to profit from my skill. Now, I could go back in time and invest in stock in Amazon, Microsoft or Apple and make a lot of money, but I find such means quite boring. I want to do something more ... creative, more exciting. Something like ... extortion. Yes, that's more to my liking. I want to pull a D.B. Cooper. I'm demanding one billion dollars in gold or else I will destroy the world as you know it."
The Time Traveler then provided detailed instructions as to where, when and how the ransom drop was to be made.
"You may go ahead and inform the police, the FBI, Homeland Security, Interpol or whatever other authorities or government agencies you chose. It won't hinder my plans in the least. Just remember, if I was capable of getting aboard the Titanic, planting a flash drive and getting safely back to my own time before the ship sank, I can just as easily assassinate a world leader, start a war or create a panic far greater than the one on 9/11."
Brent and Vaughn sat silently staring at the computer screen long after the video came to an end. Finally, Mikel's chief security officer picked up his phone and called Milton Gorman. He knew the company president would notify the CEO, who in turn would then alert the White House.
* * *
Not one but six federal agents were posted around the perimeter of the drop site. There was no way, they all assumed, that the culprit could get that much gold out of the abandoned warehouse without being captured.
"We're talking roughly twenty-eight tons of gold bars," special agent Lonergan told Brent and Vaughn while the gold was being transported via a Brinks truck to the designated area.
"Surely the Time Traveler must know that a billion dollars in bullion is not something he can stick in his pocket and then sneak off to a hideaway in the past or future," the archeologist said.
"Maybe he's not as intelligent as we think he is," Strasser replied.
For more than a month the ransom remained in the warehouse under around-the-clock surveillance. During that time, no one attempted to retrieve it. In fact, no one except the FBI agents assigned as guards approached the abandoned building.
"It must have been a hoax after all," Mikel's chief of security concluded. "That or our masked extortionist was scared off by the sight of twenty-eight tons of gold bars. Either way, I'd be willing to bet we've heard the last from him."
"I wouldn't be so sure," Vaughn declared. "He went through an awful lot of trouble setting up his crime. I doubt anything short of death would prevent him from attempting to collect his payment."
"Well, since the FBI stepped in, the entire business is out of my hands."
"You mean you don't want to know who the man behind the mask is and how he manages to go back and forth in time so easily?"
"Honestly? No. Years ago, I accepted the fact that there are a lot of things in this universe I'll never be able to understand and questions to which I'll never know the answers. Right now, I'm going home to my wife and daughter. I'll let the federal boys chase our masked Doctor Who."
Three days later when Lonergan, the special agent in charge of the operation, was contemplating returning the gold to Fort Knox, he learned from his men in the field that the Time Traveler had somehow managed to get the bars out of the warehouse without having been seen.
All the agents had the same story to tell: "The gold was there one moment; the next it was gone!"
The video surveillance equipment confirmed their testimony.
* * *
Nearly three years after the masked man absconded with a billion dollars, Brent Strasser suffered a devastating personal loss. His wife, Cindy, and daughter, Kayla, while traveling to Florida to visit his in-laws near Orlando, were killed in a plane crash. In an instant, his whole world turned upside down.
With no family to go home to, he put all his energy into his job. When he was not detecting breaches of security, he spent time looking into the backgrounds of the world's wealthiest men.
Decades passed and he narrowed the suspects down to four men, all of whom were multibillionaires. One, he learned, had a background in physics and an interest in archeology. Although the man was a profound recluse, Brent persisted in his pursuit and was eventually able to ferret him out.
"Aha! I've got you!" he exclaimed when he traced his prey to an address in rural Maine.
The following day, he rented a car at Logan Airport and headed north.
"May I help you?" the elderly British butler enquired when Strasser finally arrived at the secluded mansion.
"I'd like to see Mr. Smithson."
"I'm sorry, sir, but Mr. Smithson never sees anyone."
"I'm sure he'll see me. Tell him I have the cell phone he lost at Pompeii."
"But ...."
"Just give him my message."
The perplexed butler returned several minutes later and announced, "Mr. Smithson will see you now. Please follow me."
The man appeared much older than Brent had expected. His face was heavily lined with wrinkles, and what hair he had left on his head was snowy white. He had seemed so much younger in the infamous video clip.
"Thank you for seeing me," Strasser said.
"I congratulate you on discovering my identity," the frail old man answered in a weak voice, not bothering to deny the truth.
"I half expected you to vanish into the past or future when you saw me coming."
"I'm afraid my time traveling days are over."
"Oh, why is that?"
"It takes too much out of me, and I fear that I don't have much time left."
The old man hobbled over to the window and looked outside.
"You came here alone?" he asked with surprise. "No FBI agents?"
"You mistake my intentions. I haven't come to arrest you. I came to learn your secret."
"What secret is that?"
"I want to learn how to travel back in time."
"Why?"
Brent told Smithson about the death of his wife and daughter.
"I want to go back and prevent them from getting on that plane," he concluded.
"You can't turn back your biological clock. If you travel to the past, you'll be the same age as you are now. Don't you think your loved ones will notice?"
"I don't care. All I want to do is save their lives. Besides, my wife will still recognize me."
"I never deliberately tried to change the past. I don't know what effect you will have on the present and future if you save two lives that were meant to be lost."
"Let me worry about that. Will you just tell me how to do it?"
Wayne Smithson was undecided.
"I don't know ...."
"Please!"
"Time travel has its drawbacks. It will age you prematurely. Look at me. I'm only in my mid-fifties, but I look and feel like a ninety-year-old man."
"I don't give a damn! I've spent years searching for you in order to save the lives of my wife and daughter. I'll swear I'll kill you if you don't help me!"
"All right. I'll teach you, but I can't guarantee your journey back in time will have a happy outcome."
* * *
It took more than six months for Brent to learn how to operate Smithson's time machine, a device the approximate size of a playing card. It was due only to his own extensive knowledge of electronics and computer programming that he was able to do so at all—that and his burning desire to save his family. A person of average intelligence would never have been able to grasp the concepts of time travel that the genius mind of Wayne Smithson had devised.
During those six months that Bent lived and studied with the Time Traveler, he was witness to the man's rapid decline. Each day he grew visibly older and weaker.
"Don't pity me," he said one day when he caught his student staring at him. "My fate is all of my own making."
"I don't feel sorry for you," Brent said, being brutally honest. "I'm wondering how long you've got left before your body gives out, and I'm hoping your mind doesn't go before then."
Smithson laughed. He was growing quite fond of his pupil although he knew the feeling was not reciprocated.
"Don't worry. Before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I'll impart all my knowledge of time travel to you."
"There is one thing you haven't told me yet."
"What's that?"
"How did you get all that gold out of the warehouse undetected?"
"I'll go into the fine details during the final stages of your training, but in simple terms, I stopped time."
"You can do that?"
"Yes. This device I created allows me not only to travel through time and space but to manipulate time as well. While time was frozen, I was able to get into the warehouse undetected and remove the gold bars."
"It must have taken you quite a lot of time."
"It was easier than you think. The entire operation required very little physical effort. I simply popped into the warehouse, loaded as many bars as I could into a case and then took them to the future where no one could find them. Once they were out of the warehouse, I allowed time to continue. It appeared to everyone that the gold had vanished in an instant, but it hadn't. It took me the better part of a day and dozens of trips to move it all."
Brent shook his head, perplexed and amused at Smithson's explanation.
"If you could stop time and remove a billion dollars in gold undetected, then why the elaborate plan in the first place?" he asked. "You could have stopped time and entered any bank vault or even Fort Knox itself. And why do you need money at all? You can simply take whatever you want. Why did you go through all the trouble of leaving modern objects to be found at ancient sites?"
"Why does a man spend money on tackle, drive to a lake and spend hours sitting in a boat, waiting to catch a fish when he could go down to the local grocery store and buy fish already cleaned and ready to cook? He does it for the enjoyment. I had fun walking down the streets of Pompeii and strolling on the deck of the Titanic, knowing that I was a part of history."
"Some fun!" Brent said with disgust. "You were surrounded by people who were about to die."
"We're all going to die. You, me, everyone on Planet Earth is bound for the grave. That's the one thing my little time machine here can't change. No, I stand corrected. It can change the course of human life. It shortened mine considerably."
Smithson did not regret the choices he made in his life. He was paying a high price for his knowledge, but he felt it was a fair one. His years, though cut short, had been filled with excitement, and he had lived every one of them to the fullest.
"And since the time travel device consumes the life energy of the person who uses it, it will shorten yours, too."
"I don't give a damn! As far as I'm concerned, my life ended when Cindy and Kayla died. The only reason I didn't take my own life at the time was that I wanted to find you. You were my one chance to get them back."
"Then let's continue. You still have a lot to learn before you take your first journey into the past."
Two days after the student completed his education, his teacher passed away in his sleep. Brent took a few moments to mourn the passing of what was one of the greatest minds in human history.
"Goodbye, Wayne," he said to the ancient-looking corpse that was laid out on the bed. "Maybe we'll meet again somewhere in the past—or the future. If not, thank you."
Having expressed his gratitude, the soon-to-be Time Traveler was eager to be on his way.
"As much I would like to stick around and attend your funeral, I've got to go."
He then strapped the time machine onto his wrist and returned to his home.
* * *
When Brent opened his eyes onto the past, he recognized the living room furniture in the home he had shared with his wife decades earlier. He smiled when he saw Kayla watching cartoons on the family television.
"Oh, my God!" he heard Cindy exclaim. "What happened to your hair?"
He turned in her direction and heard a sharp intake of breath.
"Just a minute ago it was dark brown, and now you look ...."
"Older? I know."
"Daddy," Kayla laughed. "Why is your hair all gray?"
"It's nothing, sweetheart," he replied. "You watch your cartoons now. Daddy wants to talk to Mommy about something."
His wife continued to stare at him in horror as though he had been stricken by a fatal disease.
"You're going to find this hard to believe ...."
It was an understatement. He spent more than an hour explaining his association with Wayne Smithson, the Time Traveler.
"You're telling me you came here from the future?" she asked.
"Yes. With the help of Mr. Smithson's time machine."
"But why?"
"You know the trip to Florida you're planning tomorrow."
"Yes. What about it?"
"The plane is going to crash," he whispered so that his daughter would not overhear him. "The two of you will be killed."
Cindy's eyes widened with fear, and she stifled a scream with her hand.
"I've come back to save you. You're not going to fly to Florida. Instead, we'll drive there together."
"But what about the young you? The one that's at work now and due to come home for dinner in another two hours?"
Brent had not taken the possibility of his meeting his younger self into account. If the two men should meet face-to-face, what would happen? He did not want to take the risk of finding out.
"We'll leave before then. Get your clothes packed quickly. We'll leave before he—or rather I—get home from work."
"I don't know. I just can't ...."
"Please! You have to trust me. Our daughter's life and yours are at stake."
In less than half an hour, Brent put the suitcases in the trunk of his wife's car and began the long drive to Florida. Rather than travel through the night, he stopped at a motel in Virginia.
"Do you have your credit card on you?" he asked his wife.
"Why? What's wrong with yours?"
"Look and see."
When she saw the expiration date printed on the card was nearly forty years into the future, Cindy asked no further questions.
"Here's my Visa. You can use this."
The family woke up early the next morning, ate breakfast and got back out on the road before nine.
"If I stay on I-95, it will take me right near Orlando."
"Grandma and Grandpa promised to take me to Disney World to see Mickey Mouse," Kayla announced excitedly from the backseat.
"Won't that be fun!" he said.
Ten miles south of Richmond, Virginia, a man driving a tractor trailer heading north fell asleep behind the wheel. His rig crossed the grass median and hit Cindy Strasser's Toyota Camry head on. Miraculously, the man from the future was not harmed, but his wife and daughter were killed instantly in the crash.
"No!" he screamed when he saw the bloody, broken bodies of his loved ones. "I meant to save them!"
His mother had believed in pre-ordained death, what some people referred to as fate.
"When it's your time to go," she told him many times, "it's your time. Nothing can change it."
Brent Strasser had turned back the clock to save his wife and daughter, only to lose them anyway.
You were right, Mom, he thought as he headed back to the present. It was their time, and I couldn't change it.
If Salem had a time machine, he would want to visit Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, a well-known cat lover.
