Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) by Craig W. Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

eliminated the very reason why he needed to go back in time,” said the general. Jeff had shaken his hand as well, but people were flying at him furiously, so he wasn’t able to retain all of the names. He just remembered his hands were rough and that he’d scowled at him. Guilty until proven innocent. “Even if he’d come back like he was supposed to, there would be no reason in this present time for him to go back at all.”
    “You’re assuming that I’m correct in assessing what his intentions were,” Dexter said, jumping in. There were a dozen people around the table – eleven men and one woman. Jeff had been informed by a phone call to his hotel room at 5:30 a.m. that a car would pick him up at 6:30 and take him to the USTP, where he’d be participating in a meeting with the organization’s leadership. The purpose of the meeting would be two-fold: (1) so he could tell them the truth about his experiences; and (2) so they could pick his brain on the Kane situation. They’d skipped ahead to the second part of the meeting almost immediately, which was beneficial to him, since he was able to use the time to assess the various personalities around the table.
    “Well, if you’d correctly assessed his intentions before leaving, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now talking about it, would we?” the general asked.
    “Alright, alright,” said Bremner. Jeff could see leadership in him. He was calming and authoritative at the same time. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The real reason we’re here this morning is to talk about Dr. Jacobs’ sudden arrival yesterday. We’ll get to the Kane situation in a bit.” He unexpectedly turned to Jeff. “Dr. Jacobs, the floor is yours.”
    “Thank you,” Jeff said with confidence, even though he hadn’t anticipated giving a presentation. He thought about what Dexter had said the evening before – while he had this grand story about the Soviet Union, he could really say anything he wanted, claiming to have experienced it in an alternate reality. Despite that leeway, though, he decided to go with the truth; if nothing else, it would be easier to remember, complicated as it might be. “First, though, General, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time traveling, it’s that the concept of ‘paradox’ cannot be proven.” Jeff was actually pleased to get a divisive grunt out the man. “You see, every decision that is made on a daily basis, by every person on the planet, unfolds a new universe. You picked up – what is that? – a cheese danish this morning from the buffet table. There is possibly another universe where you chose a scone. If you were to time travel back ten minutes and throw all of the cheese danish in the trash to ensure that you would not pick a cheese danish, and then come back, it doesn’t stop the fact that in some reality you chose a cheese danish. We may not be able to comprehend that reality with our minds, but it exists. And even if the rest of us in the room didn’t know about it, you, the time traveler, would know it exists. Point-in-question, if and when Benjamin Kane shows up back here in the present time, in his mind he will know the history that took place before he decided to time travel. If it exists in his memory, it exists.”
    He took a deep breath. Standing in the shower that morning, he’d decided he wanted to wow them. Not bad, he thought now, for not having had anything prepared. Some of the smartest minds in the country were sitting around the table, and so very quickly he had them hanging on his every word.
    “Why don’t you tell us your story, Dr. Jacobs?” said Bremner.
    Jeff nodded, then delved into it. He gave quick details on his discovery of time travel, and came clean on his team’s desire to use time travel to find treasure in the past. He talked of the FBI agents introducing him to Evelyn Peters and his trip to Russia with her younger self: jumping back and forth between the present and the past