Book IV Page 10

  Muldey stood with her arms crossed and said, “What’s so bad about her coming back? I mean she was an accomplished woman and Mr. Noonan had a life of his own. I don’t see what harm it could do. Plus the country would get back one of their bright spots in those days of the Depression.”

  Joseph shook his head in a slow, deliberate manner. “Boy, I don’t know. The world went on without her. We just don’t know what would happen if we change it that way.”

  Alexis Shuntly now stood and came right to the point. “Listen. We are members of a group entrusted with keeping things on the correct path. The world of today doesn’t even know we exist, and, all we owe them is to keep the history they know on track.” She paused and eyed each member before she continued.

  “If we change it for one woman and one man just to keep an icon alive, well, we don’t know what’ll happen.” She raised an index finger to make an additional point and said, “However, I do think it’d be nice to see how she would have progressed in her field. Her life and his were cut short after all.” She sat down as she went on, “So, I propose we all take an era of time, and see if her return changes anything that is bad for us and our people.” She looked at them. “Does that sound reasonable to you?”

  Joseph nodded and answered, “We’ll need a time limit. We can’t let this develop into something that becomes a reality, unless we clear it all the way to today.”

  “Two days,” proposed Anthony Landi. “We each take an era or two and look it over for two days. Sound good?”

  Everyone nodded and Joseph said, “Okay, I’ll work out a schedule for who does which era and when they can look at the returning hologram from their assigned era. Meanwhile, I suggest we break and come back in an hour for assignments. I’ll take the first six hours starting tonight.” He stood up. “See you all back here in one hour.”

  It was day two and Maryellen Mudley sat in the council room and watched holograms that the latest probe had brought back from her assigned era. San Francisco looked beautiful on this early summer day in 1965. The sun was high and a light breeze blew offshore as the tourists explored the myriad food shops and souvenir stores. They did what tourists had done for years in the City by the Sea: eat, shop and take pictures.

  A seagull probe circled low over the bay. Its program was to check on the 1960’s West Coast.

  A small tremor shook the port, doing no damage but scaring the tourists as the storeowners sought to make light of it for fear of losing their customers. The drone finished its mission and sent its hologram message to its home in 2066.

  Muldey was about to send the probe further up the coast when something piqued her curiosity. She zoomed in and sat looking at the hologram as the tourists went about their vacationing.

  She pressed a button on a small intercom by the leather seat she occupied. The button summoned Ted, who, as usual, sat just outside the door whenever one of the members was in. He opened the door and looked in.

  “Yes, Ms. Muldey, can I help you?”

  “Ted, would you be so kind as to call the group in for me? Say, in one hour’s time?”

  “Yes ma’am,” answered the young man as he turned and left the room.

  One hour later, the room took on an air of congeniality as the members gathered. One at a time they took their seats and quieted down as Muldey stood with her hands on her hips.

  She started off with a warm smile and said almost apologetically, “On one hand I don’t want anything to have gone wrong, but on the other, I’d feel bad calling you all in here if it’s nothing.”

  “Don’t be silly, Maryellen, it’s happened to all of us at least once,” said Joseph as he pushed back his long hair from his eyes. As usual it fell right back.

  “Well,” said Muldey, “take a look at the hologram and see if anything strikes you. I’m assigned the 1960s and this is San Francisco, 1965. See what you think.” She reached over and activated the hologram.

  The same scene she saw earlier was reenacted as they watched. The hologram finished after the tremor.

  “Notice anything?” she asked.

  Jerry Sullivan quipped, “Yes, I realized I need a vacation.”

  The group laughed as Maryellen shook her head. “Maybe it’s nothing after all.”

  “Wait,” said Alexis Shuntly as she sat closer to the hologram. “Play it again. I just want to see something.”

  Muldey played it again. “Anything, Alexis?” she asked.

  “Were there always so many Asians visiting San Francisco?” Shuntly asked. “I mean no disrespect, but I didn’t see any Caucasians, or for that matter any blacks or Hispanics either, just Asians.”

  Muldey nodded her head. “So, it’s not just me. It just seemed odd that there were no other nationalities there except Asians.”

  “I think we should send back another probe, aimed at checking out the tourists,” said Sullivan as he cleaned his glasses.

  Muldey looked around the table and said, “All agree?” Every hand went up. “Fine then,” and she summoned Ted in.

  “Ted, we need to send back another drone. San Francisco again, same time, but concentrate on the people, tourists, shopkeepers, police, the whole gamut.”

  Ted wrote down the instructions for the hologram and said, “Yes, Ms. Muldey, I’ll need an hour.”

  “Good,” she said, turning to the group, “back here in one hour?” They left the room as Ted went to send back another probe.

  An hour later Muldey activated the latest hologram as they sat around the table. The jovial banter had stopped as they all watched it.

  A policeman waved a group of tourists across a street as they headed to the waterfront to watch the seals beg for food. The probe lifted and glided across the street as it transmitted back a steady video-hologram to the group. The signs on all the storefronts were written in an Asian language. The street signs were in Asian characters as was everything that the probe flew past. It settled on a pier and turned its head around, sending the visuals back to the group. Finally, it took off and headed inland.

  Muldey reached over and fast-forwarded the probe through the next hour of flight. It’s showing that the only inhabitants of San Francisco and across the Bay Bridge were Asian.

  “What can this mean?” asked Joseph.

  Maryellen Muldey shook her head. “I speak a little Japanese,” she said, “and that’s the only language I heard from the probe’s audio system. Do you think this has anything to do with World War Two?”

  “Or,” asked Sullivan, “did Japanese simply purchase most of the stores in the San Francisco Bay area?”

  Alexis Shuntly shook her head. “Not likely. Too much money involved. Besides some places have been in the same family for generations. They’d never sell.”

  Joseph looked around at the group and said, “Well, I think we have to send back another probe. But this time we use a crawler probe.”

  He pointed to a library on the outskirts of the Bay City as he continued, “And send it into the library to scan some history books for a clue as to what took place.” He looked around the long table and asked, “All agree?”

  Nods followed his suggestion and Muldey summoned Ted back in.

  After briefing the probe manager, Joseph said, “Let’s have a lunch break, gang.” He looked at his watch. “Back here in one hour.” The chairs scuffed the floor as the group dispersed for lunch.

  In another hour, they were all back in their seats as Ted finished setting up the latest hologram. Joseph got up and activated it.

  The scene showed a library at night coming into view and he fast-forwarded it. The next scene was a book opened in the dark room as the probe scanned page after page using its infrared light.

  The book was printed in vertical columns of Japanese. Joseph had had Ted set up a translating machine next to the hologram for just such a reason. The translation appeared on the screen, which they all read.

  “A Study in Air/Land/Sea Operations Against a Powerful Enemy to Expand the Imperial Japanese Empire.
” Mandated Reading for School Grades Three to Five. By Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, 1947.

  “On Sunday December 25, 1939, at exactly seven o’clock in the morning, bombers and fighters from the glorious Japanese fleet which circled off the Hawaiian coast launched a devastating attack on the Hawaiian Islands.

  “The raid sank the imperialist American navy as they lay asleep in their beds after celebrating all evening. A few rose to do battle but were quickly dispatched by our glorious fighter pilots. The list of ships sunk included all three aircraft carriers and their aircraft.

  The second wave of bombers, unopposed, leveled the barracks; oil and storage areas while fighters attacked the artillery emplacements.

  That evening the Imperial marines landed on three different spots, once again against token resistance, and occupied the airfields and docks as paratroopers landed and captured their military headquarters. The American top military leaders were captured, some still in their nightclothes. The fighting lasted two more days, but the outcome was never in doubt.

  At the same time, the Imperial submarine forces destroyed the Panama Canal locks, preventing the enemy from receiving reinforcements from their Atlantic forces in a timely manner.

  (Footnote 1: Knowing the enemy forces must now come around the tip of South America to reinforce their beleaguered forces on the West Coast, the Japanese Submarine Command had its forces deployed and waiting for them. That only one enemy capital ship escaped, was a testament to the fighting spirit of the Japanese Submarine forces. This ship was sunk later off New York when the German Submarine forces joined ours in a successful blockade.)

  The occupation of San Francisco took place after Mexico joined the Axis Powers. Together, Japanese and Mexican forces invaded Southern California as Japanese troops landed simultaneously in Alaska and drove down the coastline to California.

  A truce was quickly arranged when the government of the, then, United States, realized that the people from the West Coast were running into the deserts, dying in droves as our carrier-based air forces ravaged them endlessly. The occupying powers settled for the west coast of America, all the way east to include Montana, Wyoming and Colorado for Japan and New Mexico and Texas for Mexico.”

  The room was quiet as they read and reread the book written by the Japanese admiral who they knew never survived the war.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Joseph as he leaped to his feet and stared at the hologram. “How the heck did this happen?”

  Muldey patted his arm, “Easy, Joseph, we just have to track backward to find the slip. Let’s just stay loose.”

  Joseph sat back holding his head. “Let’s send the probe to another book in that library, a timeline of the . . . the war.” He looked up at them. “I think that’s the answer. Look for a timeline of the war. Let’s see how they started the war and why they changed the attack date from 1941 to 1939.”

  They called Ted back in again.

  An hour later, Ted sent back the crawler probe to open and scan a timeline of the Second World War. Two hours later they were looking through the probe’s eyes as it opened another book printed in Japanese. The scanning began and the translating machine began transmitting as the group watched closely.

  “Air/Land/Sea Battle of Conquest Timeline of North America” By Amishi Kononda, Imperial War Museum 1952

  1 Attack the United States Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 25, 1939*

  2 Occupy the Islands

  3 Destroy Panama Canal Locks

  4 Sign Secret Mexican Agreement

  5 Attack Mainland USA with Mexican Troops

  6 Set Imperial Submarines to block the US reinforcements arriving at southern tip of South America and sink all but one.”

  Alexis Shuntly cut in suddenly. “See what the asterisk on number one is all about, Joseph. I want to see what it refers to.”

  Joseph shifted down to the bottom of the page to the footnotes and checked the asterisk of number one. It read; “*Note: The Amelia Earhart Incident persuaded the Imperial Naval Staff to push the attack date forward. Originally it was set for December 7, 1941.”

  With a gasp, they all sat back and looked at each other in shock. Sullivan said it for all of them. “The Amelia Earhart Incident? What the heck does that mean?”

  Muldey shook her head. “Well, we partially found out what happens if we have Amelia return. The war takes a bad turn.” She looked back at the hologram as she continued, “But why? What did Amelia do, to have this happen?”

  “Not a bad turn,” quipped Landi, “a very, very bad turn. They occupy almost half of the country. We can’t let this happen.”

  Sullivan nodded, “Right, but we have to find out what she did to have this happen. I mean, what happened to her originally? Did the Japanese shoot her down? And if so, why?”

  “The Japanese government always claimed they had nothing to do with her disappearance,” said Muldey, “but, who really knows?”

  “Send the probe back into the library,” said Joseph, “and this time have it look for anything to do with the ‘The Amelia Earhart Incident.’ We’ll come back in another hour.” Once again they all shuffled out as Ted went back to his Probe Command Console.

  A little over an hour later, the hologram showed the same library interior and another book the probe had moved to a table and was in the process of scanning. The interpreter computer came alive with the translated version. It read:

  “The Amelia Earhart Incident”

  By Yonishi Genda, Imperial Japanese Military Historian 1948

  “In 1937, when Amelia Earhart landed after her around-the-world record-breaking venture, the Imperial Japanese Government and Imperial Navy intelligence discovered that she had detoured slightly off her planned course to fly over Truk Island. At that time the Imperial Navy was using this island to place warships, especially aircraft carriers that they did not want the world to know of.

  The Japanese military buildup was kept secret to lull the American and British governments into thinking they had the upper hand militarily in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy was suspicious and asked Earhart to take pictures of Truk on the pretense of being off course.

  This revelation caused great concern in the American and British military and also in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Admiral Yamamoto was asked to push his plan of attack ahead of schedule. The Imperial Navy also commanded him not just to sink their fleet, but also to invade the Hawaiian Islands.

  At the same time, our intelligence in Mexico came up with an ingenious plan to have the Mexican Government join us in our endeavor to stop the U.S. from any further encroachment into our rightful domain, the Pacific Ocean area, and to regain their old territories, New Mexico and Texas.

  After our glorious victory over the American fleet and the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, our army and marines landed on the North and East Coasts of the American mainland as the Mexicans and some of our marine forces went north through Southern California, to destroy the United States Army between them. As General Tojo said at the capitulation of General Patton in the Nevada desert; “Banzi!”

  “(Note: For more information on the capitulation of the British Forces in the Australian campaign, refer to ‘The Burma/Australian Campaign’ by Mishi Honora, Imperial Military Historian.)”

  “Enough,” said Joseph as he stood looking at the hologram in front of them. “I’m afraid Earhart must be stopped from ever returning.” He continued, as his gaze settled on each member, “I hope you all think I’m right.”

  There was a unanimous show of hands.

  “All right,” he went on, “let’s get Ted to set up a meeting with Bill Scott from The 1800 Club as soon as possible. We have to have the best on this mission.”

  DATELINE: JULY 7, 1955 PLACE: CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Bill Scott aimed the pistol at the target along with six others as they waited for the signal to start shooting. He fit right in with the crowd visiting Coney Island as he was dressed in a black leather motorcycle jacket, wh
ite tee shirt, jeans and scuffed motorcycle boots. His longish hair was greased and combed back on the sides leaving a curl dangling between his eyes.

  He looked at the others competing against him: a boy about eleven, his mother, father and sister. Next to the sister was a tall man in his fifties and his grandson of about seven years of age. At the signal, they all started shooting.

  Bill was amazed to see the boy’s Ping-Pong ball in the glass tube rise faster than his as they filled them with water from their water pistols.

  Finally, the eleven-year-old’s Ping-Pong ball popped out of the top of the tube and the man behind the counter announced him as the winner. He handed the boy a Kewpie doll, as he tried to get everyone to try their hand at it again for only five cents.

  Bill shook his head and turned to leave. Isn’t it past his bedtime? he thought looking at his watch. It’s eight o’clock already.

  “Maybe I’ll take a ride on the Cyclone,” he said to himself as he looked over at the famous wooden roller coaster shooting down the steep tracks to the screams of the riders.

  The time traveler walked toward it but first made a stop at Nathan’s frankfurter stand. He ordered a frankfurter with sauerkraut, a side order of French fries and he smothered them with catsup. Bill’s first bite reminded him why Nathans sold the best hot dogs in the world. He followed the dog with cotton candy and washed it down with a lemon coke. He just finished and wiped his mouth as the communicator in his pocket vibrated. He walked over to an outside phone booth and closed the door behind him as he retrieved the unit and read the incoming message.

  “BILL, HELLO FROM 2066. HOPE THIS MESSAGE FINDS YOU IN GOOD HEALTH. WE HAVE ANOTHER MISSION FOR YOU AND WONDER WHEN I CAN TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT IN PERSON? YOUR GRANDSON, EDMUND SCOTT”

  Bill typed back instantly: