Chapter 2
He got back to his office and busied himself, still thinking about what
the young officer had said. "This isn't supposed to be
here!" The words filled him with a kind of horror, a kind of
foreboding that simply wouldn't go away. WHAT wasn't supposed to
be here? He tried not to think about it. Finally he got a
call from the hospital that their guest had regained
consciousness. Davis hurried over. "just got him something
to eat," the doctor remarked, emerging from the room as Davis
arrived. "Try not to be too long, please! I want that man
to rest. He's been through some kind of horrendous ordeal. He
needs to recover."
"I'll be as quick as I can," Davis promised. He went into the
room and the young officer looked at him.
"Well, I didn't get a name," Gen. Davis remarked. "though
you look familiar! I have a feeling I should know you."
"You will, in a couple of years!" the officer answered. "I
will be the last of your son's children. It's probably him that
you recognize in me."
Davis stared in utter bewilderment. "What are you talking about?"
he asked.
"I'm your grandson!" the officer answered, "I've come from the
future. Everyone is dying there. Somebody came, told us
why, and gave us the means to fix it. But we don't have much
time. Empathy is growing very quickly and if we do not undo what
was done in short order, mankind is finished."
"This is some kind of sick joke, isn't it?" Davis asked.
"I only wish it was!" the younger man moaned. "I only wish
it was! All of this is not supposed to exist. The south
lost The War Of Northern Aggression. Something happened somewhere
that wasn't supposed to happen, and history was changed. And this
false history leads only to mankind's extermination. The only
hope we have is to go back and fix what went wrong."
Davis got up and went to the window. "This is insane!" he
moaned, "This is absolutely insane! How can you possibly expect
me to believe this?"
"Look out the window," the young officer remarked, "your aide is
rushing here with a message from headquarters. One of your peace
keeping units in The Sudan has been attacked, wiped out. The
field commander there is asking permission to make a full retaliatory
strike. Your aide will start to cross the street. There's a
truck coming loaded with sewer pipes. It'll stop at the
light. Another truck will come up behind it and ram it. One
of the pipes will come off the truck, strike your aide, and kill him."
Davis stared out the window. To his horror he could see Lee
hurrying down the street to the intersection. In agonizing
precision everything that the man on the bed described came to pass!
Davis stared in shock out the window, then turned and looked at the man
on the bed. "What in the hell are you? he asked, "WHO in
the hell are you?"
"I told you," the young man answered, "I'm your grandson!"
Davis stared at him for a moment, then looked out the window
again. The man behind him muttered, "And this is just the
beginning of your day. In a few minutes a state police officer is
going to arrive to inform you that my sister has been murdered with her
fiancee by a group of white supremacists, angry that someone of her
station would be marrying a colored man. I don't have much
time. The transfer device only gives me 48 hours in this
time. Despite your grief, you must help me find out where things
went wrong, and get ready to make the next step into the past to right
it."
"What?" Davis asked.
"This is 2,005," the young man continued. "We can only travel one
hundred years into the past. That is all the transfer device will
give us. Then we will automatically be thrown back into our own
time. Nothing can stop it, nothing can prevent it, we must find
the point of diversion so you can go into the past and fix it. We
will all disappear, but the human race will survive."
The doctor Davis had been speaking with earlier entered, a bewildered
look on his face. "Gen. Davis," he managed, "there's a state
police officer out here. He must speak with you, sir!"
"I saw the accident out the window," Davis asked. "How is my
aide?"
The doctor grimaced. "I'm sorry, sir," he answered, "he's dead,
sir. Never had a chance, sir!"
Davis stared at the man on the bed, then turned and hurried out of the
room. The state police officer must've been a soldier at one
time, because he came to attention when Davis appeared. "Sir!" he
snapped, "it is with deepest regret that I must inform you that your
daughter and her fiancee have been murdered. The murderers were
The Sons Of Purity. The security guards at the function killed
three of them. Two have been captured. As soon as possible,
sir, we need you to identify your daughter's body. We have
already contacted your wife, and she has said that she simply could not
do it. Can you accompany me, sir?"
Davis again stared back into the room from which he had emerged.
"I will accompany you immediately, sir!" he answered.
"Please stand at ease!"
The next few hours were living hell. Seeing what had been done to
his daughter enraged him. Witnessing the interrogation of the
killers and there leader, who had been picked up within minutes of the
incident, enraged him even more!
"I thought this was behind us," he muttered, as he stood by the two way
mirror.