Chapter 3

 

            A week after their wedding at city hall, James and Genesis found an apartment they could afford and moved out of the hotel where they spent their honeymoon. The joy the newlyweds shared together was heightened by the knowledge that the love they shared on their wedding night and countless occasions since then was known only to them.

            Life in their new home was one of routine, but both of them relished the comfort that the order in their new lives brought. For Genesis, finding a comfortably paced schedule helped her ease into her new life. James’s life prior to Genesis was turbulent and chaotic; his life now was one of great peace and tranquility.

            True to his mother’s warning on the way to city courthouse, James’s father and sister reacted with much shock and distress over the sudden news. Melissa sided with her father and rarely called or visited during those early months of their marriage. She eventually came around, but true to his own word, James never saw his father again.

            As Genesis suspected and later warned James, their getting married might alter the stream of time in unforeseeable ways. Indeed, his parents remained together but his father was killed in an automobile accident a few months after their wedding. James and Genesis attended the funeral naturally, although he spent the following weeks pondering the wisdom of what turned out to be his final moments with his father. But as Genesis had taught him earlier, it was futile to live in the past.

            The ease of their new life made the grief more bearable than he had anticipated. The stocks and certificates James had stored in his family’s hope chest were worth far more than expected. In addition, unknown to James and the rest of his family, his father made a sudden adjustment to his will that allocated the vast majority of his estate to James, with very little left over for Becky and Melissa. All told, he and Genesis had enough to live comfortably without the immediate need to determine the direction of their lives. Genesis was content to adore her husband and care for their home, a job she yearned for most of her life and only got to enjoy in small doses in her life with Jadzia. James had a new sense of purpose and direction and decided to use the bulk of his newfound wealth to set up a charity to care for lost children, a cause important to him given Genesis’s absent past.

            Indeed, their new life was one of peace and calm. But it was not to last. Just a year after they married, James came home from work to find Genesis collapsed on the floor in the kitchen. Her pulse was slow but steady, and her breathing shallow. He grabbed the phone and dialed 911 and from that moment, he never left her side.

            As Genesis lied in a coma, he sat beside her and stroked her hair. Doctors and nurses came and went, none of them with immediate answers as to the cause of her illness. After several longs hours, she finally awoke.

            “Where am I?” she said.

            “You’re in the hospital,” he said standing over her. “You were in a coma.”

            “How long was I asleep?” she asked.

            “About six hours.”

            “I had the funniest dream,” she said.

            “Oh yeah?” he said. “Tell me.”

            She gushed. “I was replaying in my mind that time you were trapped in the body of your mother’s step-father.”

            “Don't remind me!” he answered as his face turned red. She laughed.

            “I never told you this, did I?” she said. “But that was when I would be with you forever.”

            “What?” he exclaimed. “Why?”

            “I don't know,” she said, feeling ashamed she never admitted it sooner. “I guess it was because you were doing a better job than me. You were totally selfless.” She blushed. “I found that very attractive.” She smiled, then leaned in and kissed him.

            James and the woman he loved sat together holding hands a few moments more before she fell asleep again. A doctor entered a minute later and James told him what happened.

            The doctor then explained the results of her blood tests.

            “We found a chemical substance in her bloodstream that we were unable to identify, but the resulting disease is something we see all too often: cancer.”

            “Will she be okay?”

            “Honestly, Mr. Grant, I don’t see how she is alive now. The toxicity levels are well beyond anything a human should be able to endure.” He rolled up the sleeve on her gown and examined her right shoulder. “Here!” he said. “That’s the needle wound.”

            “What are you saying, Doctor? That someone poisoned my wife?”

            “It looks that way.”

            “What can you do?”

            The doctor reexamined the chart and shook his head. “Nothing, I’m afraid. “

 James turned away and touched his wife’s cheek.

            “I’m sorry, sir,” the doctor said. He turned and left James to grieve.

           

            The head of the New World Organization was born Roger Cooke. He was born in a tiny village in Brazil to a pair of German refugees. His father worked as a scientist under Adolf Hitler and after the war and found innocent of any crimes against humanity, he exiled himself to South America and changed his family name, desperate to start his life over. There, Wolfgang Cooke spent the rest of his life engaged in philanthropic efforts and promoting world peace.

            Under a number of aliases, Wolfgang lobbied the nations to create equality among the world’s peoples. As the Cold War heated up, he realized that his message of unity had fallen on deaf ears in the West while the Communists agreed with the tenets of his cause in principle, but they were unwilling to apply the ideal to all people, including the leaders. In Wolfgang’s mind, the only way true unity could be achieved was if the leaders played by the same rule as the people.

            As Wolfgang grew older, his resolve weakened. He still saw use in the political system, while his son wanted nothing to do with it. Educated in America and Europe, Roger Cooke realized the basic teachings of his father were correct. He saw first-hand the hypocrisy of the elite, who held up the few hard-workers who achieved tremendous wealth as a means to convince all people that they too could do the same - provided they show up to work and invest heavily in the stock market. How no one saw through this ploy was unbelievable to Roger! But his father’s methods of uniting all people were outdated, Roger thought. Wolfgang continually funneled money into the current system and donated to causes he believed in, having convinced himself that this could bring about real change. He even set up a not-for-profit corporation in America (under an alias, of course). But as long as he did this, Roger believed his father to be part of the problem. Nothing solidified his resolve more than when his parents were murdered by the very people they were trying to help. Despite all his parents’ hard work donating millions of dollars to protect the rights of the working class, four mineworkers from South Korea tracked the Cookes to Brazil and brutally killed them. Local union leaders that the Cookes were working to undermine convinced the workers to carry out the crime, this despite their acceptance of a large donation from the Cookes.

            The charity organization, which Wolfgang left to Roger upon his demise, was subsequently dissolved and later the funds absconded by Roger. His parents lived long enough to see Roger marry Jennifer, an American entrepreneur and the only woman he knew that shared his desire to live quietly and at peace - only without the bankrupting morals they attributed to the present world system.

            It was a dream they would share together until he shared it alone - on her deathbed.           

            A few months after Archer was recruited, Roger stood silently in his office looking out across a vast ocean. Storm clouds gathered to the east, but Roger wasn’t worried about anything the weather might bring to the Agency’s command center. The engineers assured him the organization’s flagship vessel was durable and unsinkable. Just like the Titanic, he thought with a smile.

            Behind Roger sat a large group of people representing every major occupation on Earth. While their work history was diverse, they were all equally attractive: the men handsome and fit, the women all buxom and pretty. After all, if these people were to be the foundations of the new society of humankind, they needed to be attracted to each another - at least to the extent that babies would result. He turned to face them and allowed a smile to escape, to which the group responded in kind.

            “Before we begin,” he said, “I know that I’ve personally vetted each of you and I’m sure you are all persons of significant character or else you wouldn’t be here. Nevertheless, the import of this mission will affect every man, woman, and child on this planet, so please: Listen up!”

            The group sat up straight in their chairs and almost as one, folded their hands on their individual desks like schoolchildren. A young man toward the back of the room raised his hand.

            “Go ahead, Professor Williams?”

            The man nodded. “Will we be paid for this?”

            Archer’s smirk disappeared as he nodded to a guard by the door. The guard walked straight back to where the man was sitting. “I’ll need you to come with me, Professor,” the guard said sternly. The man stood up and walked out of the room with the guard in tow. The rest of the room grew silent.

            “I can assure the rest of you,” Roger went on, “that if money is all you seek, then please, excuse yourself. You can await our return in a prison cell with Professor Williams.” No one moved an inch. “Good. You see, we took great care to make sure that all of you were chosen for a certain selflessness you possess. Apparently, Professor Williams managed to see beyond our little ruse and slip through the cracks. It was bound to happen. He is a psychologist so we should have seen that coming.”

            The group laughed.

            “I understand that all of this has been a bit hard to swallow. You've all been vetted, interviewed, dragged out of bed, forced to say goodbye to your family, flown out to a remote location, and given no information. Oh yes,” he added, “for no money either.” They laughed cautiously. “What I can tell you now is that all our lives are about to get better. Soon, class distinction, racism, and poverty will be a thing of the past - because we will create a world without it.

            “As you enjoy your time aboard and our mission gets underway, please keep our true intentions from Doctor Archer. He is an idealist like the rest of us but he lacks the commitment we need. As far as he knows, we are going to bring medicine and knowledge from the future. 

            "You will all be going into the future with our security team so you can see that our plan is a necessary step toward achieving world peace. You will see firsthand the chaos that will result if the current civilization matures. While you wait, feel free to begin the work for which you’ve been hired for.” He smiled broadly as he watch the exchange of glances between the male and female participants.

           

            A young college student in New Jersey raised Valerie Ferguson in a filthy, rat-infested trailer park. At the time of her birth, Valerie's mother, Jane, worked as an exotic dancer at a nightclub next-door to a prison where her clients were just a few gropes away from becoming inmates themselves. Valerie was brought up by, not just her birth mother, but by several of the dancers. When Valerie was three years old, enough of the women at the club had babies that one of them quit dancing and opened a day care for the children.

            Valerie entered preschool with two of the other girls she played with at day care. Jane and the other mothers resented the way their children came to know each other and vowed to make sure that none of them followed their paths. All three of the mothers were recovering drug addicts and did not graduate high school. While none of them believed there was any correlation between those two facts, all of them pushed their daughters hard to excel in school. Word got out of what their mothers did for work, and the ensuing persecution came much sooner than their mothers expected.

            Still, despite all the pressure they received from home, Val was the only one of the few children who managed to forge a different path than their mothers. She graduated high school valedictorian and at every college she applied, she was accepted. Her mother eventually took night classes, got her diploma, and quit the nightclub. As a result, she made far less money than she and Val were accustomed to and college was largely paid for by scholarships and grants, including several from the Cooke Family College Fund.

            Val relished life on campus away from home. She loved her mother, but her friends had fallen into their mothers' familiar habits. One of them got pregnant shortly after graduating high school and Val feared if she hung around, she might feel forced to stay out of obligation to her friends.

            In college, Val got involved in politics for the first time. Her friends at school all belonged to different political groups, but there was so much infighting between them that Val came to see them as gangs.

            “Gangs are for stupid people!” her girlfriends would often cry.

            Even if they were right, Val hated the mentality of the factions and deplored them for keeping people so divided. Her mother, so long described by her schoolmates as a welfare mom, had become so calloused toward politics over time that she wanted her daughter to stay out of it altogether.

            Val just wanted to see people united in a common cause. She got her wish during spring break her junior year when a nuclear weapon set off by an international - militia destroyed the nation's capital. The government acted in a predictable way and declared war on every nation it suspected of promoting, not the actions of the militia, but the ideals of it. Suddenly, everyone at school solved their differences and united for the war effort. This isn't what I had in mind, she thought.

            As the young men and women at her school joined the armed forces, Val finally saw what unity of this sort came to produce in the end – more division. As time went on and war weariness set in, everything from how the war was managed to whether it should have been started became heated debates on campus and led to several riots. The student body was divided.

            As Val approached graduation, she lost more and more friends as she refused to choose sides in all of the futile debates going on. When forced to take sides, she would half-jokingly say: “We need to start civilization over!” It always drew a laugh and helped lighten the mood but Val secretly began wishing it would happen.

            When she met Paul at her new job, Val finally saw a ray of hope. Unfortunately, just days after their wedding, the army drafted him. A month later, Paul's unit shipped out. It was the last time she saw him alive.         

            Roger Cooke met his wife, Jennifer, at his father’s not-for-profit charity headquarters. It was love at first sight. While he initially focused on his father's work after college and tried to prove its futility, a young accountant disabled Roger's attention dramatically.

            Their love grew quickly and their courtship raced faster than either of them anticipated. Within only months, they were married.

            Shortly after their wedding, and just after his parents' deaths, Jennifer was hard at work on a treadmill in their home when the time had come for the secret she had kept from her new husband to be confessed.

            “Roger!” she shouted.

            Roger hurried downstairs to the exercise room. “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah. I have something I need to tell you,” she said as she continued working out.

            He sat down and gave her his full attention.

            “I've read your work.”

            He hung his head and prepared for the worst. His work she referred to was a journal he kept in his office outlining the flaws of his father's organization and his recommendations. “You did, huh?” he asked, trying not to sound overly worried. No good: his voice cracked.

            “Yes,” she answered, panting along. “Are you mad at me?”

            “Mad? No. I'd been meaning to share that with you anyway. I just didn't know what you'd think.”

            “You make a lot of good points. I mean, I admire your father's work, but it's really just more of the same. Relying on the same broken system to somehow fix itself is like asking a dead guy to cure his own cancer.”

            “That's clever,” he said.

            “In your essay, you mentioned an ultimate solution but you never described it.”

            “That's partly because I don't know what it is.”

            “Are you sure, or do you not want to tell me? Afraid I'll leave you?” she asked with a wink.

            “No, I really don't know. A part of me knows what needs to happen but it's too hard to say out loud.”

            “I think your conclusions are right.”

            “That we need to start over?”

            “Yes. There's no other way. Anything else is just going to fix the symptoms of a broken world. The cure is rebuilding.”

            Roger sat shocked at her nonchalant description; she sounded like she wasn't serious. “It sounds like you've been thinking about this for a while,” he said, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

            “Well, honey,” she said, “it sure was a relief to read it on paper. I mean, I believe in what your father did but I could tell it'd never be enough. But reading your work was like hearing all the things I've wanted to say but didn't know how.”

            “I'm glad I'm not alone.”

            She stopped the treadmill and got off the machine. She wiped her forehead with a towel and stepped closer to Roger. After kissing him, she walked to the adjacent bathroom, started the shower, and took off her clothes. Standing in the doorway, clad only in sweat, she said: “You're not alone anymore. But there's more I need to tell you.”

            Val followed Roger onto the private jet and sat across from him. She paused as her foot left the asphalt and stepped into the jet, curious whether this would be the last time she would feel the ground of her homeland beneath her feet.

            “I've never flown in a private jet before,” she said.

            “It's an unfortunate necessity. I use it for security only.” The door closed behind them and they took their seats and buckled their belts.

            An attendant, an attractive girl of less than legal age, approached and placed a glass of champagne in front of Roger and Val. Demurely, she nodded and walked away.

            “Are you really in that much danger? I mean, how many know of your organization?”

            “As far as governments go, no one. We take great pains in keeping them off our track. However, other organizations around the world know of our existence. They have similar goals as we do but rely on different methods: some fund grass-root militias – like the one that destroyed the capital back in your college days, some work to install puppet leaders. Globally, they form a Cabal of organizations that exist to effect change in the world system.”

            “I think I know the answer already, but why is your organization superior?”

            “We are the only one with Dr. Archer's technology, for one thing. And we are the only ones who have concluded that time travel is the only way to bring ultimate change.”

            “When do I get to meet Dr. Archer?”

            “You won't actually. I'm trying to keep Archer busy and away from everyone aware of the mission. The one exception is the group of one hundred civilians that will bring back as much as we can to start things off right. I've let him interview many of them in order to give him a break from the technical drudgery associated with designing our vessel. He's a fine man to be sure, with more altruism than I've seen in most, but he presently knows nothing of the mission. I intend to keep it that way.”

            “And why does that mean I can't see him?” she said with a smile.

            “Well, Val,” he began, “I believe you are bound for great things. Your commitment to our collective dream is strong; I believe I can rely on you for anything. I need to keep my finest people anonymous for now. As we get closer to launch, your place with us will mean that only those privy to our goal know your identity.

            “As for Dr. Archer, he is largely confined to the scientific wing of our home base. Having worked for the government, he is familiar with security protocols and hasn't tried to explore the rest of the facility.”

            Val finished the last of her champagne and propped her feet on the chair beside Roger. She pulled her long, black hair into a ponytail. “What's his hold-up, exactly?”

            Roger saw Val's efforts to get comfortable and loosened his tie a little. “Dr. Archer's motivation is the advancement of science. He sees politics as a roadblock to science, but also sees it as a necessary tool for governance. I do too, but it's the sort of governance we disagree on. On numerous occasions, I've tried to put the bug in his ear, as it were, and ultimately his feelings have remained unchanged. Naturally, I've approached the matter without giving him the slightest indication that we're keeping a secret from him.

            “What makes him so valuable is the motivation to see advancement in his field. Many likewise brilliant men are blinded by faith or patriotism and will drop their work if pressed by either of those forces. Archer, however, is so committed to see time travel become a reality – and the ills of the world cured – that he was willing to leave his homeland's soil for life. That kind of devotion to an ideal is rare among the clinically sane.”

            “I see,” Val said. “What about the Cabal?”

            Roger shifted in his seat suddenly. “The Cabal I mentioned earlier is...fortunately not a force we'll need to worry about. There are many good people working for their organizations, and I would be lying if I told you I haven't tried to recruit some of their finer members. We used to be one organization in the good old days, but split when our leader died.”

            “Who was the leader?”

            “My wife, Jennifer. I had no idea of her involvement when we married, but she came to me shortly after we wed and told me everything. We were small back then. I call her our leader, but there were only fifteen of us in all.”

            “How did she die?”

            Roger closed his eyes and shook his head. “Tragically, I'm afraid.”