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Chapter 32

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature." – Tom Robbins

"We’ve decided to drop a nuclear bomb on the CERN facility…."

Lucien, Weinberg and Sebastiano stared at one another for a very long moment. Finally, Lucien cleared his throat and leaned forward and spoke.

"Uh—Dave—Mister Acting President --that is a somewhat…unusual… procedure. With all due respect but is that…wise?"

"Is that the polite Canuck way of saying ‘That has to be the most idiotic and fucked up idea that you Americans have ever come up with and that’s really saying something’, Lucien?"

Sebastiano had to put his hands over his mouth to stop from giggling and Weinberg leaned back and just nodded his head in agreement. Smirking slightly. Lucien continued.

"Perhaps…"

Acting President Howery sighed loudly.

"Truth be told – I would have agreed with you. But unlike some of the other fucked up ideas we’ve come up with in the past, this one actually has some basis in fact and logic and reason. Well—as close as we can get under the circumstances."

There was another long sigh.

"This wasn’t an idea that we came up with lightly though. Remember that extraction team that the French sent in? Well—they came out with a few surviving scientists. Gotta admit—I’m impressed with those French eggheads. Whole planet going crazy, their collider is getting all freaky and refuses to be shut down, most of their friends and coworkers are killed – but a few insist on staying at their posts and try to collect as much data as possible. The information they collected was invaluable. Well—those guys just spent an entire hour discussing –and by the term ‘discussing’ I mean ‘scream at the top of their lungs’ – with their counterparts in Russia and here in the US. You ever had to listen to thirty scientists yelling at each other in six different languages, Lucien? And each and every single one of them refusing to use any words that has less than four syllables-- along with such easy to understand terminology like magnetic monopoles, strangelets and – my personal favourite – quantum chromodynamics."

There was another long sigh from Howery,

"Seriously, Lucien – if we get out of this in one piece, I’m going to make it my life mention to include ‘listening to a bunch of theoretical physicists yell at each other’ in the list of cruel and unusual punishments that’s banned under the Geneva Convention."

Lucien slowly nodded his head.

"I…see," He surreptiously glanced over at Sebastiano, who seemed to be completely engrossed in writing down notes. He turned his gaze back towards the speaker. "I can sympatize with you, believe it or not. What did they eventually ascertain?"

"Bear in mind that I’m giving you the Reader’s Digest version of what was told to me. I could send you the full transcript of what was actually said but I fear that your brain would melt and your eyes will bleed.

What seems to have happened has to do with that asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. When that thing hit, it seemed to have…uh…created cracks."

"Cracks?" repeated Lucien, obviously very confused. He glanced over to the others seated next to him. He wasn’t the only one.

"Yeah—cracks," continued Howery. "Somehow or another, the damn thing made what the eggheads here are calling…er…" There was the sound of many papers being shuffled "…non-Euclidean unstable rifts in a fourth dimensional quantum fold…"

"Uh…" interrupted Sebastiano "…do they mean cracks in the time-space continuum—like in Star Trek?"

"God—where the hell were you before?" said Howery "It took me five minutes before I could get those idiots to use a term I could actually understand. Yeah—pretty much just like Star Trek—only they used words like non-Euclidean and quantum in about half a dozen different ways before they deigned themselves to use – in the words of one egghead – ‘such crude terminology’. Yeah—cracks in the time-space continuum. And yeah—I had exactly the same look on my face that you guys no doubt have on your face right about now. Just be glad you weren’t getting this shi—uh—stuff in multiple languages like I was."

"But—I…I don’t understand how something like that could have happened…" said Sebastiano, equal parts confusion and annoyance in his voice.

"Join the club, dude. I’ve got about four different theories sitting on my desk on how that happened. Each one of them contradicting the others, of course. Suffice to say – somehow it happened. Now comes the really confusing part…"

"When that thing hit, it shattered time-space. But not completely. Think of it like a hairline crack. It’s enough to make things look a bit ugly but not enough to actually cause any real damage. And it could remain that way for a very long time and be perfectly harmless. Unless, of course, you do something stupid and hit the crack in just the right place with just the right force."

"The CERN experiment," said Lucien.

"Bingo. When the switch was flicked on that thing, it pretty much zapped the whole network of cracks. And that was enough to – finally – cause the hairline cracks that were sitting there minding their own business to open up. The next thing you know – blam! We’ve got ourselves an exchange of places across time. And here we are."

There was a very long period of silence as everyone in the Centre exchanged glances with one another. Lucien cleared his throat again and leaned forward.

"So—what does this have to do with the nuclear bomb?"

There was another long sigh.

"That too was the subject of a… uh… long and frank discussion among multiple scientists in a variety of languages."

"The cleaners needed to wipe the blood off the walls afterwards, sir?" asked Sebastiano.

"Pretty much. One good thing out of all this is that I’m learning how to swear in six different languages. In any case –the basic concept of the whole idea is that we’re going to recreate the experiment. By dropping the nuke, we essentially…uh…’re-zap’ the whole network. If the idea works, then we’ve got ourselves a reversal of the original accident and everything goes back to normal," There was a very long pause. "Well—as near to normal as we can get under the circumstances."

Lucien stared at Weinberg and Sebastiano. Weinberg looked like he was getting another migraine and Seba was just shaking his head in disbelief.

"Dave –how confident are your people that this will actually work?"

"Truthfully? I’ve got half the guys swear on their mother’s grave that it will work and the other half who think that we’ll end up blowing up the world. Your guess is as good as mine. The one good thing from all this is – if we do end up destroying the world, I get the pleasure of ordering my Secret Service agents to shoot the idiots who talked me into this hairbrain plan."

There was the sudden sound of several people scrambling in the background behind Howery. A voice broke into the conversation.

"Uh—Special Agent Baldwin here, Mister Acting President. I’m afraid we can’t execute anyone, sir."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Cause that’s illegal, sir."

"Really?"

"Yes sir."

"Well—can I get you guys to accidentally push them down the stairs a couple of times?"

"Oh that we can do, sir! No problem at all!"

"Good! Glad we cleared that up! Ok—where was I? Oh yeah—so that’s the story so far, Lucien," There was another long sigh. "This is going to be one weird-ass of an operation. We’ve got British air crew on an American bomber flying to a French base to pick up a French nuke and—with the help of Russian spy satellites – drop it on a Swiss target. God—talk about multi-country cooperation."

"What about Geneva, sir?" asked Sebastiano. "It’s only about five kilometres away from the CERN facility. There’s nearly a million people there, counting all the suburbs and stuff. Won’t they have to be evacuated?"

There was a long pause.

"No—they don’t have to be evacuated. Most of Geneva is now a rather large swamp."

"Oh."

"When will all this be taking place?" asked Lucien.

"It’s being put together as we speak. Given all the chaos that’s going on and the mish-mash of resources that survived and is available to us, I’m impressed on how fast we’ve been able to get this together. We’re anticipating having the nuke dropped on the site in about ten to twelve hours."

"Here’s hoping it works."

"God, I hope this works, Lucien. We need to get our people back. If there’s even a slight chance that this will work…" Howery trailed off, not finishing the sentence.

"Lucien—there’s one more thing."

"What is it?"

"If this crazy-ass plan actually works, then all the areas that have been replaced are going to be sent back. We’ve been trying to spread the word to people to avoid the areas but…"

"Yes?" prompted Lucien, when Howery didn’t go on.

"There’s a lot of places –especially in the Pacific Northwest - where communications are still messed up. I know that you’ve got your people already helping out our people in communities all along the border states right now. Do you think that you –"

"Say no more, Dave. I’ll make sure that the word gets spread. But Dave—we can only communicate with just those places along the border. What about the rest of the areas that are still dark?"

There was a very long silence.

"Here’s hoping that the people there are smart enough to avoid those areas. Hope is the only thing we’ve got right now."

"Indeed. We’ll know in twelve hours whether or not we’ll need anything else, won’t we?"

"Indeed so. Good luck, Mister Prime Minister."

"Good luck, Mister Acting President."

"…that Ontario should have about 25% of its grid up by this evening with a bit of luck," said Sebatiano.

"And the rest?" asked Lucien.

"Both Hydro-One and Hydro-Quebec are coordinating their efforts with each other and their counterparts in New York, Vermont and New Hamphire. Most of the New England states are currently sitting at about 5 to 15% of their grid up now. The Maritime provinces are doing a bit better at about 20%, the rest of the provinces are at about the same, while Quebec’s got about 30 to 40% of their grid back up. All of the interconnections we’ve got with the different provinces and with the U.S. have been both bad news and good news – bad in that when stuff started going down, it took out nearly everyone before they could stop it; good in that some of those connections are still intact and we’re able to shuffle some of the juice through various alternate routes to get around all the breaks. Things are still a mess though and we won’t be anywhere near full power until we could start repairing all the stuff that’s been destroyed or vanished."

"Any ideas how long that will take?"

Sebatiano shook his head "Who knows? Days for sure—most probably weeks, I’ll bet. If that crazy plan works, it’s not going to press the magic restart button, that’s for sure. We’ve got a long road ahead of us no matter what."

"I take it you’re a bit…dubious…about the nuke plan?"

"I’m not a physicist, sir, so I won’t comment on it. Suffice to say that I’m vastly amused by how this whole thing is turning into the stereotypical Hollywood big-budget disaster flick," replied Sebastiano with a smile.

"Uh—how so?"

"In every Hollywood disaster movie, there’s always some scientist dude who comes up with some crazy-ass plan that involves blowing something up with a nuke. And sure enough—here we are and guess what plan the Americans have come up with?" said Sebastiano, with a near maniacal grin on his face.

"Oh come on—it’s not every movie!"

"Oh?"

"Of course not! There was Independe- er – Armage - er – War of the – er – The Cor – er - …"

"See?" said Sebastiano, still smirking.

Lucien hrumphed and turned towards Weinberg.

"Updates?" he asked.

Weinberg was about to say something when a soldier knocked on the door and came in. He quickly handed Weinberg a sheet of paper and just as quickly saluted and turned around and walked out.

Weinberg stared at the sheet, a frown tigging on his face.

"What’s happened?" asked Lucien, dreading the response.

"We have a final update on the civilian and military aircraft we lost."

"Oh God," said Lucien, rubbing the brow of his nose with a thumb and middle finger. "How bad?"

"Actually—not as bad as we thought. The confirmed number for Canada is now 9 crashes and 17 disappeared."

Lucien sat in his chair, stunned, for a few seconds.

"Excuse me? We’ve had 9 plane crashes and that’s good news?"

"It could have been a hell of a lot worse, sir. There were over 4000 planes over North American airspace when the Event occurred – about 300 or so of those over Canada. The entire North American power grid went down within seconds –along with various satellites that are crucial in navigation. Not to mention, several major cities and airports. For obvious reasons, every plane in the air was ordered to land at the nearest available airport while everyone tried to sort out what the hell was happening. Most of the planes were able to land at alternate destinations but there were a few that, for whatever reason, couldn’t. We’re lucky that it was just 9. We know where those crashes occurred and we either already have teams there or will have teams there soon."

Lucien just nodded his head, still stunned.

"And the 17 that disappeared?"

"By pure chance they happened to be flying over those areas that got replaced. Most of them were in the process of landing so assuming that they got sent back into the past, the chances of them sucessfully landing were quite high."

"And those that weren’t in the process of landing?"

Weinberg shrugged his shoulders.

"There were a few that were in between cities when the Event occurred. What happened to them is anybody’s guess," Weinberg shrugged his shoulders again.

"And the number of dead from those crashes?"

"We’re still picking through the crash sites and there are quite a few people in critical condition who might not pull through but the current death toll from the crashes is now at 1,037. That brings the total confirmed death toll from the Event at just over 12,000 now.

Lucien leaned back in his chair, letting out a deep sigh.

"Never thought I’ll find myself in a position to be actually relieved that we lost ‘only’ 12,000 people, General."

"All of us have been finding ourselves in odd situations, sir."

Lucien nodded his head, staring vaguely into space for a few seconds, Weinberg and Sebatiano doing the same. After a few seconds, Lucien blinked his eyes and turned towards Weinberg.

"You were going to say something before you got that plane crash report."

Weinberg blinked in surprise for a second or two and turned his gaze back down to the file folders in front of him.

"Oh yes—just wanted to give you an update on various situations. We’ve sent in various units into Montreal to start clearing out any dinos that are there and to get assistance to the civvies that have been trapped there since last night. It’s slow going but we’re making good progress. We think we can have some kind of control over the whole area by tomorrow morning with a bit of luck. The same goes for Toronto. As I stated earlier, most of the big suckers seem to be fairly content to stay close to the replaced areas unless somebody pisses them off or they are attracted by food. The smaller bastards, on the other hand, are making our job really difficult by scurrying all over the place. The fact that the meat-eaters seemed to have gotten over their confusion and clued in that we humans make tasty snacks is making our jobs doubly difficult. Refugee centres are filling up as fast as they’re being set up and we’re coming up short on…well…pretty much everything, to be honest. We’re digging deep into all our military reserves and pretty much commandeering any warehouses filled with useful supplies to augment everything but we’re going to need some extra stuff soon."

"When do we reach critical levels?"

"Uh—we’re pretty much already there, to be honest, sir. Best guess is that we’ll be reaching the ‘Oh shit, we’re totally fucked’ level in about a week or so unless we get a bit of outside help."

"The rest of the world isn’t in that much shape to help us, as you may have noticed General."

"True – but I’m fairly certain we can start coordinating our resources with the rest of the world once we’ve tackled the current situation. We’re still good for food and oil, for example. Big problems in distributing that stuff at the moment, of course, but we still have more than enough to cushion us. The same goes for everyone else, I suspect – everyone’s got something in excess and something in critical shortage. It’s going to be simply a matter of figuring who’s got what and acting accordingly."

"Simply?"

Weinberg shrugged his shoulders again.

"Hey—we’ve survived the impossible. Doing the ‘merely difficult’ should be child’s play now," replied Weinberg, with just the barest hint of a smile on his face.

"I have a feeling that you may just succeed in doing just that, General. But getting back to the here and now – what else do you need to accomplish your duties?"

"Aside from another fifty thousand soldiers?" replied Weinberg. He shook his head, going back into his ‘Serious’ face. "Time. Time is what I need. Even with using every active and reserve unit available and augmented with thousands of police and civilian volunteers, we’re still stretched pretty thin. There’s just too much to do and not enough time to do it. Hell—just taking care of Montreal and the surrounding regions should by all rights require a quarter of all the resources we have available just to do an adequate job. Add to that Toronto, what’s left of Ottawa, the messes in the prairie provinces and the rest of it…" Weinberg trailed off again, shaking his head. He turned his gaze back at Lucien. "I will, of course, endeavour to try my best to do my job with what I’ve got, Mister Prime Minister."

Weinberg stood up, collecting his files.

"Now if you’ll excuse me, I must leave now. There will be an update at 1800 hours."

Weinberg turned and walked out the door, Lucien watching him leave.

"I almost feel sorry for the guy," said Sebastiano a few seconds later. "He’s trying to do his job with only half the stuff he needs to do it."

"No sympathy for me, Seba?"

"On the contrary, sir—I have loads of it for you. When all this is over, people are going to be screaming at you no matter what you do. Half the country will think that you’re not doing enough and the other half will think that what you are doing is the wrong thing to be doing. You will have every word, thought and action analyzed and interpreted and re-analyzed –and then they’ll do it all over again. People will make careers out of pointing out just why you’re not up to the task of leading the country and others will be slowly arranging themselves to take over once you’re gone. And you’ll be going through all this every single day until you hold an election. And if by some miracle you actually get yourself re-elected—you’ll have five more years of all this to look forward to."

"You really missed your calling as a Self Help Guru, Seba."

"Nah—I’m a bit of a misanthrope, I’m afraid. Really can’t stand people and have trouble dealing with them on a day to day basis. That’s why I became a civil servant."

"Civil servant humour?"

"I’ve got a million jokes like that but I’ll spare you the indiginity of hearing them."

"Thanks."

"Are we set up, General?"

"Just a few minutes" replied Weinberg to Lucien, before turning around and resuming barking orders into a telephone.

Sebastiano and several technicians were busily hooking up a wall-size projection screen. There was a brief argument between them about exactly where the red wire was suppose to hook up into which was easily resolved when one of the technicians just yanked the wire out of his companion’s hands and jammed it in.

With a brief pop sound, the dark screen resolved into a wall of static.

"Status on the helicopter, General?" asked Lucien.

Weinberg finished barking one final set of orders and slammed the phone down and turned around.

"Any second now, sir."

"Let’s grab a seat, people!" ordered Lucien.

"Oh good—always wanted to see the Apocalypse on a big screen. Anybody bring popcorn?" said Sebastiano as he and the others in the room took their seats.

Seconds after taking their seats, the static filled screen resolved itself into a view of a vast forest taken from about a thousand feet up or so.

Ottawa.

Or rather—what was left of it.

"Connection holding," yelled one of the technicians. "We’re good to go."

"Status of the bomb?"

Weinberg looked at his watch.

"Five minutes until detonation."

"Still think this plan will fail, Seba?" asked Lucien.

"Bet you a bottle of scotch that this plan—if you’ll pardon the expression –will blow up in our faces."

"You’re on, Seba."

"I’ll like to get in on the bet as well," said Weinberg.

"You never struck me as the optimistic type, General. No offense intended, of course," said Sebastiano, genuinely surprised

"I’m not—but if it gives me a chance to get some free scotch from you, I’m in."

Lucien couldn’t help but smirk at the interactions between Weinberg and Seba.

It had been obvious that Weinberg originally barely tolerated Sebastiano. Truth be told, Lucien strongly suspected that Weinberg had barely tolerated him either. The only reason that he had done so was because – Lucien suspected – that Weinberg’s sense of duty and loyalty over-ruled any personal distaste he might have had. Lucien couldn’t fault Weinberg too much.

Let’s be honest, man – when the main reason that you’re even here has mostly to do with the fact that you had decided to get shit-faced in your cabin instead of any actual skills or experience as a politician or leader you may have, then you’ve got a long road ahead of you to vindicate yourself. Besides which, Weinberg looked like he hated everybody. Talk about a tough audience…

Lucien glanced over at Seba and Weinberg again—who appeared to be taking the bet seriously and were arguing over what kind of scotch the loser will have to get for the winner.

Lucien couldn’t help but smile at that image.

"One minute!" shouted someone.

Instantly, everyone stopped talking and turned their gaze towards the projection screen.

"Hope this works," muttered someone.

"It better work – we only get one shot at this!" replied Sebastiano.

"Why just one shot, Seba?"

"We are nuking the CERN facility, sir. Even if 99.9% of the nuke’s energy is funnelled into this crazy ‘space-time crack network’, there’s not going to be much left of the facility after this."

Lucien nodded his head in acknowledgement.

Sure...let’s make this into a totally cliché disaster movie…

"Ten seconds!"

Lucien took a quick glance around.

Everyone around him – from the lowliest technician to General Weinberg himself – were counting out the seconds out loud. Lucien realized with a start that he was as well.

"Detonation!"

A burst of light appeared on the screen. Lucien was aware of a few people letting out small screams and turning their head away, eyes shut tightly.

Lucien was one of them.

He slowly pulled his gaze back towards the screen a few seconds later, his eyes partially closed and weird green afterimages still flittering in and out of his vision.

It was still glowing.

It’s working! It’s actually working! shouted an inner voice. Lucien couldn’t help but grin.

The grin slowly faded as he looked at the people seated around him.

It was the way they were staring silently at the screen.

"Seba! What is it?!" whispered Lucien frantically.

Sebastiano took a few seconds to respond. With great reluctance he turned his gaze away from the screen and faced Lucien.

"It’s…it’s going on too long. The initial event only lasted a second or two. This one has already gone on for –" Sebastiano glanced quickly at a wristwatch –"thirty seconds. Maybe more…"

Lucien turned to look at the screen again.

And still it glowed, washing out any view of the city.

For a full 60 seconds the screen glowed white.

Then 90 seconds.

Lucien was realizing that he was beginning to sweat when the light suddenly stopped at the 115 second mark.

The abruptness of the light fading caught just as many people off guard as the initial abruptness of it blazing into light.

Lucien sat there, stunned, as he slowly blinked yet more afterimages from his vision.

He turned his gaze towards the screen, staring intently as his vision began to return.

As his vision began to clear, he saw, on the screen –

Trees.

Nothing but trees.

Nothing but a forest.

Nothing had changed.

Nothing at all.

"NO!" screamed Lucien, rising out of his chair and slamming his fist into the table in front of him.

Lucien was aware of a cacophony of noises all around him as all the other people in the Centre saw the screen.

Weinberg was swearing up a blue streak in no less than three different languages simultaneously. A wall of swears and yells and curses, in Englsih and French and Italian and several other languages assaulted Lucien’s ears.

Lucien let out a long sigh and turned to an aide next to him.

"Get me Howery on the phone."

The aide nodded his head and, still swearing under his breath, walked off.

Lucien stared at the crowd around him.

Lucien looked in front of him.

Not everyone was yelling and cursing and swearing and otherwise making their disappojntment known.

Seba was standing just a few feet in front of the screen, staring intently at it.

"Seba?" inquired Lucien.

"Sir—I…I…think it worked!"

Lucien noticed Weinberg turn to stare at Sebatiano.

"What the hell are you talking about? The forest is still there!"

"But it’s a different forest!" yelled Sebastiano. His fingers started stabbing relentlessly at various spots on the screen. "Look! That tree wasn’t there before! And those trees were different heights! And those bushes weren’t there before! It’s a different forest entirely! It worked!"

Lucien stared at the trees again, paying much closer attention to them now. He was aware of the others doing the same.

"Hey! There’s something moving near those bushes!" screamed Sebastiano.

"General!" yelled Lucien "Get that pilot to –"

"Already on it, sir!" screamed Weinberg. He turned and started barking more orders into a telephone.

A moment later, the screen jumped and jerked and faded to static for a few seconds. When the image returned, it was a close-up of the line of bushes that lay on the edge of the forest.

There definitely was something moving down there…

The bushes parted and something appeared in the helicopter searchlight.

A gasp of shock tore through the assembled people in the Centre.

Lucien stared at it, his jaw nearly dropping to the table.

It was massive – easily 10 feet high and covered in heavy reddish-brown fur. The two tusks on either side of its jaws were equally impressive – easily the size of a human. The creature reared up on its hind legs, trumpeting silently with its truck held over its head, obviously annoyed at the strange new creature shining a light donw on it.

Lucien sat down heavily in his chair, nearly numb with shock.

It was a Mammoth.

A Wooly Mammoth.

The likes of which had not been seen in Canada since…

…the Ice Age…

The assembled group stared silently at the Mammoth for a full minute.

Sebastiano was the first to speak.

"Well. That was unexpected…."

**

On to the Epilogue

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