Genetic Wars 2220
“The Paradox of Time Travel”
By Jonathan S. Coolidge
Additional concepts and characters by Thomas R. Weigel and Alicia Vogel
“Timeline” storyline by Thomas Weigel

Thursday, September 16th, 2004.
“Good evening, and welcome to Nevada. I remind you that outside of those involved with Operation Blue Moon and Blue Sentinel, this meeting never took place.” In a dimly lit room around a traditional oak table, a gray-haired man with thin glasses and a long, narrow face stood as light from a portable projector reflected images across his jacket and onto the wall behind him. Several others clad in the ubiquitous black attire watched as he made his presentation. “This briefing is about the alien threat code-designated ‘CZ,’ for lack of a better name.” As he spoke, he brought up an image of a diamond-shaped object in a grainy photograph, taken over a bayou. Light reflected from his glasses onto his face, creating in conjunction with the wrinkles around his lips and brow a diabolical impression. “While most of you are familiar with groups like the Grays or the Reptilians, you have so far come to know the CZ only as an obscure and innocuous entry in the resume of the cosmos. I only wish that were true.” With the push of a button, an image of a torn and mutilated human body appeared on and behind him. “The CZ aliens and their genetic engineering experiments are in actuality the single greatest threat to humanity, dwarfing by far the threat posed by any other extraterrestrial race. Whereas beings like the Grays appear to be involved in manipulating humanity’s future by subtle means, the CZ aliens have not only engaged in overt genetic engineering experiments on humanity and animals, but they have also unleashed those experiments upon us with frightening disregard for human life.”
He brought up an image of a sketch of an anthropomorphic, wolf-like creature devouring road-kill, with a full moon in the background. “Werewolves—from the hysteria of sixteenth century France to the sightings a decade ago near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, if you’ve never been assigned a case, their ubiquity has no doubt brought most of you at one point or another to wonder about them.” He changed the image to another torn body. “In May of 1987, over the Louisiana Bayou, several witnesses admitted to seeing a glowing red object described by one as ‘diamond-shaped and a little bigger than a Chevy Suburban.’ Around the same time, a man turned up missing. Two agents from Majestic investigated and found the man’s remains, and then discovered a second, surviving witness, who said that he encountered a being that first resembled a black female child nearing puberty, which then shifted into a wolf-like monster before attacking him. He escaped with several scratches and bite wounds. As the agents interviewed and observed him, he exhibited bizarre stigmata—eruptions of facial fur and sharp teeth.”
At the push of a button, the next image appeared. A blurred image of a creature apparently trapped somewhere between human and wolf lunged forward as the person taking the image struggled to flee and capture the photo at the same time. “He was held in custody for two days before he turned into this creature. The creature was terminated after a struggle, but the agent who took this photograph disappeared shortly after sending us this. He admitted feeling strange at first. Then he told us in his own word choice that he was moving to an undisclosed location before we had the chance to terminate him.”
The old man leaned forward. “From that account alone we know of at least two cases—the girl and the missing agent, both carrying a contagion that can transform people into these.” He gestured at the blurred image, and then brought up an old wood cut of a group of werewolves leaning against a wall. “Since then, Blue Sentinel’s mission has been to locate all those infected and contain this outbreak before it becomes the next SARS or AIDS, and to find out whatever we can about the CZ aliens.” The image appeared next of a young man with a long, narrow face and long, dark brown hair, with a dark-skinned lady in a black dress, who displayed a wide, sharp smile. “Our mission has become more critical now than ever to locate and acquire known and suspected lycanthropes, such as Elodea Taylor, pictured here with human-turned-lycanthrope Scott Gardener, our suspected young girl now in her late twenties, last seen in the Grand Teton Valley of Wyoming. If we fail, then God help us all.”
He brought up next the image of a Cozalien battleship. “This UFO, photographed less than a week ago by satellite, is believed by experts to be the largest CZ alien craft to date identified. To coordinate intelligence, British underground agency MI-13 has sent us Mr. Gordon Waldenrath.”
Rath entered the room, making an effort to keep his eyebrows separated and his teeth from showing points.

209 years later.

The longitudinally flattened L.S.S. Conus bolted through space at nearly the speed of light as its four passengers hung, nearly frozen in time. Inside the distortion of space and time created by relativity, the universe appeared compressed before the vessel, and the light from distant stars compressed in frequency to radiation.
Anderson Conus, the entrepreneur who refitted the Cozalien battleship to his namesake, was now a disembodied brain, suspended in nutrient fluid and connected by nanotubules and biocircuitry to the ship and serving as a symbiot with its Cozalien entity consciousness. “It’s 2213 now,” his holographic projection of his former human self said to his genetically engineered great-grandson Iston.
“Funny how the years fly by,” Iston answered. He had the appearance of a human in his late teens or early twenties, with the obvious exception of an enormous pair of white, feathered wings on his back and the altered musculature necessary to support them. His youth was maintained in part by nanomolecular repair devices engineered from protein and RNA molecules and in part by frequent trips at relativistic speeds. “Helen’s and my fiftieth birthdays should be coming up in a day or two.”
Anderson’s image sighed. “There should be some Champaign in storage in my old office. I’ll count down the moment for each of you tomorrow. I just wish I could share it with you.” He looked off and then back, into a field of space before him. Iston allowed his nanomolecular cybernetics to show what his great grandfather was seeing, a rapidly flashing stream of data of numerous news feeds, transmissions, and other signals sent to them in real time, a wizard-like glamour of information made possible by the magic of quantum mechanics. The information flow was incomprehensible to Iston, but his grandfather had the benefits of sharing consciousness with a Cozalien supercomputer. “The first round of League colonists were unable to oust the C.A.T. presence at Fomalhaut, and they’ve retreated to TW Piscis Australis. They’ve advised us to rendezvous with them there. It doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be able to change the situation before we get there in 2220, so I’m preparing to make the course alterations.”
Iston’s wings opened up slightly as he altered his stance out of habit. Having studied martial arts like many Utopians, he had ingrained self-defense into his subconscious. “So, we’ve now become reinforcements,” Iston noted. “What about the artifact?”
“Nothing yet,” Anderson answered. “But I’m keeping a close watch on it.”

Helen Conus positioned an old-fashioned early twentieth century camera and flash bulb onto a tripod, her two black wings sticking out of the back of a cloth drape over the back. She and the old apparatus stood on the control deck of the ship, focusing on the two animal anthropomorphs Rath and Xal, the latter sitting in the former’s lap as the two occupied the center chair. “A little closer—perfect.” She pressed her thumb over a button connected by a rope to the construct, and a bulb flashed.
“Those things are bright,” Xal moaned. “I’m sorry, I think I blinked during the picture.”
Rath shifted from lupine to near-human form, commenting, “wouldn’t it be easier just to copy an image from your retina?”
Helen uncovered her face from the instrument, revealing the heavy, pale makeup and black lipstick of the Goth movement at the turn of the millennium, paired with a short, pointed “Dutch boy” haircut reminiscent of the 1920s. “It’s just not the same.”
“We’d be in color,” Xal added.
Helen tossed up her arms and wings. “That’s not the point. It’s supposed to be in black and white!”
“Only because,” Rath said, “they didn’t have color back then.”
“Not necessarily,” Helen answered, disassembling her camera. “Artists were still shooting on old fashioned film in black-and-white at the time of the 2093 exodus, and that was a century after digital came along.”
Anderson Conus’ image appeared in one of the control deck’s holographic projection cylinders, to the left of the three chairs stationed at the center of the triangular platform. “I have an update on the artifact. League spies have successfully recaptured it from C.A.T., and at last check the engineers at TW Piscis are investigating it.”
Rath and Xal stood up and looked at another projection cylinder in the center of the room, depicting a disc-shaped object bearing three concentric indentations on one side. As Helen moved her old camera out of the way, Rath inspected the image closely and then looked back at Anderson Conus. “Any new updates now?”
Anderson paused, and then his eyes widened. “They believe it’s a remnant of a Gray vessel, used to generate a space-time warp.” The object in the projected image opened up its concentric circles to resemble a flattened jellyfish, with a central three-armed tentacle surrounded by two shorter rings of members. “With the right kind of quantum field amplification, they’re suspecting it could be used in accordance to Roddenberry Theory to propel a ship faster than light.”

The four passengers gathered around a table in a briefing room behind and to the right of the control deck. Though the table was largely utilitarian in form, its center contained a recessed display case bearing a specimen Conus gloriamaris seashell that Scott Gardener had given Anderson Conus when he was still in a human body. Above it floated, in the field of view of each of them, an image of the alien artifact, generated by each of their nanomolecular cybernetics.
“Roddenberry Theory,” Iston explained, “or, the warping of space-time, is currently the leading theory of how to bring about a practical form of faster-than-light travel. It is the method believed used by the Grays to visit Earth. Back in the twentieth century, a stable isotope of the superheavy Penrosium, element 115, was recovered, which was believed to have special latent properties that warped space around it, though efforts to pinpoint this phenomenon were unsuccessful, and the dense object was eventually put on display at the Groom Lake Museum after it went public. Latest intelligence reports has it that C.A.T. has tried once again using modern technology to develop a stable space-time warp shell. And, while the League has done its own research, we’ve had to do so using unstable isotopes from fusion reactions, lasting only microseconds. By the time the warp is detected, the source of it is gone.
“This could be our chance to turn the tide and help us get there first. And, this artifact appears to do a considerably greater part of the work for us than the raw Penrosium sample in C.A.T.’s possession. It is identical in appearance to an artifact recovered by Blue Sentinel agents in 1998, who reported it as having ‘psychic’ properties, responding to thoughts directed around it.” Iston sighed as he brought up a two dimensional photograph of the object with two men wearing turn-of-the-millennium business suits and ID badges. “However, like so much information collected around that time, the reliability and objectivity of those reports has been questioned. It was apparently lost in 2004, when, during an attempt to have a psychic examine it, it was taken by an angel.” Rath and Xal looked over at Iston and Helen. After a silent pause, Iston glanced at his sister and back, as he shifted his back wings. “What?”

The L.S.S. Conus pulled up beside a small construct in orbit around TW Piscis Australis 2, consisting of a large, rotating array attached to a spindle, behind a large disc, blocking the radiation of the orange flare star from the station’s occupants, while harnessing it as energy. Down below, lights could be seen on the planet surface from a colony on the perpetual night side of the planet.
A small fusion-powered shuttlecraft rose up from the planet, towards the station. Unlike the Conus’  Cozalien origin travel pods, the craft approaching was rounded and organic, resembling a small cluster of bubbles around a central spindle. The various constructs in space floated together in tandem, linking in unison.
A zestful middle-aged man greeted Rath, Xal, and the Conus siblings as they exited their ship, emerging into a terminal leading to a causeway connecting to the rest of the station. “Welcome to the year 2220. I am Nathan Shepherd, Prime Minister of the League presence at TW Piscis Australis. I trust you’ve found the last week or so pretty interesting.”
Xal nodded. “Elvedea is now a Councilor representing the out-world colonies. Being in space for so many years on the way over allowed us to vote in her jurisdiction.”
“The Gray artifact,” Iston promptly added. “You think you can use it to send a spacecraft through a warp?”
Nathan smiled as he shook the angelic Conus’ hand. “Our engineers can have it ready in a few weeks. We’ve been afraid to use the Adamo because we needed a ship here in case C.A.T. decides to try to take the system. Now that you’re here…” As he spoke, he guided the travelers through a causeway into an elaborate hub section, where numerous electromagnetic false gravity corridors lead towards outward, rotating sections that emulated gravity using simple sling-force rotation.
Iston nodded, “we can defend the system while you test the artifact’s warp shell?” He and Helen looked up as another winged form overhead flew from one corridor to another, floating through several mid-air “glamour” displays—departure and arrival data screens, news feeds, and billboard advertisements projected into the line of sight of those with nanomolecular cyberware able to see them.
“Actually,” Mr. Shepherd continued, “if your great grandfather Anderson is willing, we thought the Conus could make the test run. Its primary weapons array is detachable, so we could have both our defense reinforcement and a test ship. And, if this thing works, we could go and get additional firepower from Utopia years before C.A.T. has a chance to reinforce Fomalhaut—we could reclaim the system.”

As a handful of engineers verified the stability of a large, open cluster of semicircular struts and devices connected to a series of channels off the engine of the L.S.S. Conus, Helen Conus stepped aside for a moment, commenting to a cat anthropomorph technician, “make sure your system prevents feedback resonance past the power transfer interfaces; Cozalien power harmonics are a little off from the League’s organics.” As the feline being nodded, Helen reached for a portable late twentieth century camcorder, looking into it while playing with its buttons. “This is Helen Conus, coming to you live from the League Star Ship Conus, about to embark on the first faster-than-light voyage, assuming this thing works as planned and doesn’t blow us into undetectable fragments.”
Helen turned the camera around and pointed it towards Iston Conus, who walked in, carrying the alien artifact. “There’s my brother Iston, carting in the Gray artifact. We’re testing the idea that those mysterious little guys with big heads and big eyes travel through space using Roddenberry theory—that is, that they use space warps to travel faster than light.” The image of engineers working around the device bobbed back and forth in Helen’s hands. “Now, we think there’s at least two other ways to do that. Lucas theory works with the idea of extra spatial dimensions—hyperspace. That’s the one that famous psionic physicist Xau Zolan champions; he thinks some day we’ll be able to use the astral plane for hyperspace travel, just as remote viewers sort of do today.” As she continued, she pointed the camera back at her white face, black lipstick, and dark eyeliner. “Half of the scientific community thinks he’s the next Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. The other half thinks he’s breathing too much spice.” She focused the camera back on the artifact, recording images as it opened up from a flattened disc to an inverted jellyfish shape. “The third idea is Scape theory, or wormholes. That idea was more popular back in the early days of string theory…”

Rath and Xal sat next to each other on the control deck’s navigational and scientific consoles, respectively, while Anderson Conus’ image projected behind them. On the screen overhead, the cylindrical undercarriage of the ship moved away beneath them, heading back towards the space station in the distance. Near the station the rocket sled-shaped L.S.S. Adamo waited.
“The Conus Two module is clear,” Anderson Conus reported. “I hope Commander Tanaka takes good care of her; she really came in handy back at UV Ceti a few years ago.”
“Don’t remind me,” Xal answered, monitoring the science data readouts. She could barely follow the technical details of how engineers were trying to coordinate Cozalien, Gray, and League technology together, but all the lights were flashing a friendly green, and all the technicians appeared to be in a good mood as they described various energy flow conduits, quantum field capture parameters, and warp shell amplification scenarios. As Rath reached over to pet her forehead, she noted, “I bet the Grays don’t go through all this hoopla. They just turn it on and do it—less is more.”
“The Grays have the advantage,” Rath answered, “of being a mysterious civilization countless millennia more advanced than us. We can only guess at their motives and their way of doing things.” He then noticed an object entering sensor range of both the Conus and the League outpost. A C.A.T. ship had appeared. “Tactical alert!”
Iston, who was at work cross-linking the Gray artifact with the Conus’ intelligence core, appeared on Rath’s console. “Should we cancel the test run?”
“No,” Anderson Conus stated. “That’s what C.A.T. is probably trying to do. Tanaka and the Adamo are both moving to intercept. They insist they can handle them.” Rath’s field of vision revealed two floating displays—one of Commander Tanaka in Conus Two’s control station and one of Captain Hameroff, a dark-haired woman on the control deck of the Adamo, with the stigmata fur tufts and amber eyes of lycanthropy.
“They must have contaminated some of us with nano-spies,” Hameroff suggested. “Their timing is too perfect.”
“Conus One,” Tanaka addressed, “C.A.T. could be trying to hack into our engineers’ perceptions, using their glamour to trick them into doing their dirty work.”
“Right,” Xal answered back. “Been there; done that.” She announced over an intercom, “Everyone, turn off your nano-gear. We’ve got a potential security threat.”

Iston cursed as he switched off his floating mental notes, while the scientists frantically worked to reorient their work with the computer banks outside their bodies. As Iston reached over a cluster of wires to plug in a non-glamour interface to the construct to activate the Gray artifact, he realized that the problems caused by the sudden forced abandonment of familiar glamour interfaces, both in time delays and potential mistakes, was a significant sabotage on C.A.T.’s part just by showing up at the right moment.
“Damn them,” Iston muttered, “we’re still doing it first.” He looked closely at the artifact as it glimmered in front of him, and then, he looked down at a display panel. “I’m still showing good quantum field capture, and we’ve got Great Grand-dad’s interface showing everything lined up right. We’re still good to go.”
“Then, let’s give C.A.T. a crash course in Roddenberry.” The tiger-like lead technician answered.
Iston placed his hand over the artifact itself, and it began glowing a bright orange color, while emitting a euphonic hum. The surrounding framework began shaking and vibrating slightly as Iston and the technicians looked at each other. One of the engineers gritted her teeth. “…Angels of grace…” She stopped and looked at Iston.
“What is it about the wings?” As he withdrew his hand, the thought about the other Gray artifact’s recovery in 1998, and the report that it was taken by an angel.
The ship shook about slightly, but one of the engineers reassured, “we’re OK; that’s just…the C.A.T. vessel, shooting at us.”

“The Adamo has taken damage,” Rath noted, “but they’re holding them off.” Then, he gasped, right as Anderson Conus also looked up with disbelief. “There’s a Cozalien battleship closing in—wedge configuration, just like us!” He looked down at Iston on his display panel. “We’ve got to call it off; we’ve got a new problem…the Cozaliens have joined the fray!”
“What?!?” Iston punched away at his own display panel and began working on stopping the series of energy volleys bolting around him.
“The warp shell is already expanding,” one of the technicians shouted. “I’m trying to shut it down, but I don’t think we can!”
“Angels of grace” indeed, Iston thought, as he tried to pry the artifact out of its housing, only to get blown back several feet into a nearby wall as the object flashed out of existence. “It’s gone!”
Space and time rippled in a scintillating flash of light around the Conus, rocking the vessel about before dissolving back into the familiar four dimensions. They were, however, no longer orbiting TW Piscis Australis 2. Instead, they were floating over a blue and white orb with a single gray moon in the distance, and a yellow star beyond.
“Earth,” Rath said.
“No C.A.T. battle cruisers, no space elevators…” Anderson Conus noted. “Just a modest number of obsolete satellites and a rudimentary space station…we’ve traveled back in time, to somewhere near the turn of the millennium.”
Xal brought up Iston’s console. “We’ve got some major philosophical issues to address. Briefing room, everyone!”

“Assuming this isn’t a trick—either by C.A.T., the Grays, or anyone else,” Rath said, leaning over the briefing room’s triangular center table, “we’ve discovered something beyond faster than light travel. We don’t know the ramifications of time travel; we could have already altered history just by showing up. And, we don’t know the consequences of a contaminated timeline.” He looked out an array of open windows, viewing the clouds swirling over blue ocean and multicolored islands. “Maybe it’s for the best that we lost the artifact.”
“Maybe we were supposed to be here,” Helen answered. “Maybe Iston or I am supposed to go to the planet surface and have the Blue Sentinel give us a replacement. It’s 2004, only a few weeks before the right moment.”
“We can get back,” a feline engineer suggested. “we could explore a dozen star systems, be the first to get to Beta Hydri or 82 Eridani, or the Zeta Reticularis binary. After taking into account the effects of relativity, we could arrive in our own time again with a wealth of knowledge of otherwise unexplored space, probably without contaminating the timeline at all.”
“Or,” Iston countered, “we could stop Shann’s rise to power here and now—if we got to Scott Gardener before Blue Sentinel does, Shann’s opportunity to build his power base would never happen. And, think of all the other tragedies and catastrophes we could change—the wars in the Middle East, the Chinese nuclear attack, the Cozalien War—who is to say that we couldn’t make a better timeline?”
Xal scratched her head. “That gets back to the issue of erasing our own past.”
“We’re already here,” Iston answered. “Most theoretical physicists agree that people erasing their own existence is just an old tele-program plot device.”
Xal tapped her clawed fingertips on the table top. “What if they’re wrong?”
Helen brought up a recording of the events immediately prior to their trip through time. “That Cozalien ship that showed up—I think it’s us.”
“See,” Xal answered, standing up, flicking her tail back and forth, and thrusting her arm out. “The time travel spaceship passing itself—we’ve already experimentally proven at least one plot device!”
Rath looked over at Helen’s recording. “At least we know we’ll get back, assuming we meet our obligation to the timeline.” He scratched his head and then stroked Xal’s shoulders. “The bottom line is, we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know the effects that time travel involve, so until we know more, we should leave well enough alone and start heading back to our own time.”

The L.S.S. Conus dove across Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, recharging its energy reservoirs through the planet’s enormous magnetic field. Below, the planet’s atmosphere boiled as storms the size of smaller planets swirled and fired massive lightning flashes. The ship then pulled upwards and away from the massive planet’s gravity well.
On the control deck, Rath, Xal, and Iston had taken various positions, along with one of the engineers from the TW Piscis colony.
“Two hundred and sixteen years in a few months,” Rath commented. “Right now it’s Monday, August 23, 2004. Quite an adventure ahead between us and our own time.”
Xal looked up. “I wouldn’t mind turning my glamour back on. It’s going to be awhile before C.A.T. worm programs have anyone to leak to.”
“I don’t see why not,” Rath answered. “Right now we’re pretty much alone out here.”
Iston glanced over at his tactical station’s console. “Well, that’s not exactly true.” He brought up the image on the overhead display. A formation of three disc-shaped objects closed in on them rapidly. Suddenly, the three objects disappeared, replaced by a long, smooth cylinder flanked by a row of circular portholes. “An unidentified vessel has just appeared, and it matches the reported appearance of a Gray craft.”

Helen Conus made her way through the cavernous corridors of the ship, until she came upon a young man, who in spite of his age had already begun experiencing balding of his light blond hair. “Father?” She was confused, wondering at first why Jason Conus was there, and then she wondered where she was, as the room around her looked more like one in the Mendel Institute back home than on the Cozalien-designed Conus ship.
Jason tinkered with a holographic of a being resembling a large praying mantis, one of his many engineering projects. Then, he deactivated it and looked up at Helen. “The question of free will and time, Helen.”
She wondered why he spoke so enigmatically, and she scratched her hand to see if she were dreaming. She activated her nanomolecular recording devices, hoping to be able to make sense of the conversation when her head cleared. “Does that have anything to do with time travel? How would you know?”
“Free will is the answer to the paradox of time travel. When you make a choice, you create the future. If you make the right choice at the right moment, you keep the future you created for yourself earlier intact.”
Helen tried to clear her head, feeling as one does struggling to remain lucid in a dream. “OK, why are you here in the past with us?”
Jason exited the room, saying, “trust your instincts,” as he turned towards a hallway.
“Wait!”
Helen stepped out to follow him, but found him gone. She stood once again in the crystalline passageways of the Conus, wandering only a short distance before Iston ran up to her.
“Helen, what happened?”
Helen scratched her head. “I saw Dad. I don’t know what he was doing here.”
Iston held onto her shoulders. “You didn’t see him here; you’ve been gone more than two hours.”

Helen and Iston made their way back to the control deck, where Rath and Xal greeted them. Rath then took the deck’s center seat and brought up a display on the overhead viewer, showing the long, narrow cylinder they encountered earlier. “This Gray ship disappeared right as we were about to launch a rescue party for you.”
Helen took the science station console towards the front of the triangular control deck, explaining, “the conversation with my creator Jason Conus obviously had to be an illusion. He was saying something about free will being the key to solving a time travel paradox.” She raised a Y-shaped device in the back of her chair. “I recorded the conversation.”
On the overhead viewer, Helen could see a view of three short, gray figures with large, oval eyes looking down at her. A bright light loomed overhead, and an array of unfamiliar metallic devices pointed towards her. A sudden sense of dread flooded Helen as she moaned, “that’s quite how I remember it.” As the chair antenna retracted and the overhead image vanished, she turned back around towards the others. “But, we need to go back to Earth.” She stood up and flared out her wings. “I don’t know what they did, and I’m not sure I want to know, but I do know now that free will holds the key to making or breaking the timeline, and I was told to trust my instincts; and, my instincts say in order to preserve the timeline, we need to go back. We’re the angels who take the artifact.”
“You realize,” Rath countered, “that there is a Gray agenda involved in this. You’re doing exactly what they told you to do.”
Helen paused for a moment, glancing out at Jupiter’s swirling cloudscape out the array of windows, and then back at Rath. “You could be right.” She threw up her arms. “But, there’s still the Gray artifact in Blue Sentinel’s hands. Maybe the Gray agenda is to keep humanity from getting time travel back in 2004.”
Rath answered, “but they already didn’t.”
Helen tilted her head and gave a wide grin, standing next to Iston, rolling her eyes towards him. “Because…they gave it to an angel?”
“Apparently we are going back,” Xal added, “because we did.”
Rath leaned over a console and waved his hand, as Anderson Conus appeared in his projection cylinder. “My advice?” Anderson responded. “The Grays are considered hostile and dangerous; but, experts in xenosociology generally compare their abductions to the tagging and relocation programs that brought about wolf recovery in places like Yellowstone around this time in history. For the time being, I’m inclined to favor Helen’s recommendation, though I do think a more thorough post-abduction survey and an exam of her recordings is in order later.”

The Conus entered Earth orbit, taking care to avoid the one small space station circling closer in, or the numerous imaging satellites. Humanity’s communication network was pretty active, mostly consisting of television broadcasts, intermixed with radio, telephone, and early Internet protocols. Below, the planet’s white clouds churned over blue water and scattered across multicolored continents.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Rath sighed, seated in the center chair of the control deck, Xal leaning next to him in the seat beside him.
Helen placed her hand over a console at the science station, answering, “no sign that the Grays did anything other than putting me into REM sleep for a short while. Still, watching my recording is creepy—knowing those little hands were touching me.”
Anderson Conus, appearing in one of the projection cylinders, appeared to be busy with mental calculations. He pulled out of that state as he brought up a series of displays on the overhead screen and several side consoles. “There’s a lot of analog television signals being relayed by satellites, plus a few in low resolution digital. The Internet consists mostly of old-fashioned html web pages and data accounts on server nodes, using some pretty simplistic protocols. It wouldn’t be too hard to hack into it.” The overhead display flashed through headlines about guerilla attacks on soldiers in Iraq, a pair of planes crashing in Moscow shortly after takeoff, and of the recovery efforts surrounding Hurricane Charlie’s strike along Florida’s west coast. “A tough part of human history,” Anderson noted. “Terrorist uprisings, the UFO cover-ups—we’ll have to fight the temptation to intervene and alter history, knowing what we know.”
Iston leaned over Helen’s shoulder and then brought up a display of the planet, pointing towards a tropical depression. “I thought Earth’s weather was better than Utopia’s. It looks like that cyclone could hit southern Japan in a week.”
“There’s another one in the Atlantic,” Anderson noted. “They’re calling it Frances. We could be looking at several more rating four cyclones heading towards my home town of Tampa, Florida. You’d think we were back over Christmas City!”
Helen tapped the console, jogging her memory. “Florida, the American province…weren’t they having election scandals around this time?”
“Getting back to our objective, any idea for a plan?” Iston suggested, turning around from his seat at the tactical console. “I don’t think we’re going to find Blue Sentinel showing off their Gray artifacts on their web site.”
Rath shifted into a fully human form. “Iston, Helen, I’m afraid your wings would draw too much attention.” He stroked Xal’s forehead, adding, “And your spots are a dead giveaway.” He leaned over a display panel next to his seat. “Any of you on the research team look human?”
On the display, several feline anthropomorphs stepped back, as a human with slanted, feline eyes stepped forward. “When in dim light, my eyes get rounder.” He smiled slightly, showing pointed teeth.”
Rath sighed. “I can go to the surface and start scouting, since I’m the least likely to draw attention. It’s just a matter of how and where I fly in.”
Anderson Conus brought up an image of the west coast of North America. “Your best chance is to fly in over the region of Oregon, Wyoming, and northern Nevada. It’s fairly poorly patrolled in spite of its proximity to several covert organizations, including Blue Sentinel’s north Nevada facility—the one where Scott Gardener will end up.”

An electromagnetic suspension beam lowered Rath into the Conus’ shuttle bay, and he stood on his human feet again, wearing period shoes and socks. His period attire included dark slacks, a jacket, white shirt, and a tie that vaguely resembled a silk collar and leash. On his arm he had a wrist watch, and in his pockets were a small collection of forged identifying cards and paperwork identifying him as belonging in turn-of-the-millennium America. Rath reminded himself that he would run into numerous social biases and notions that would eventually fall out of favor, such as sex-segregated bathrooms, heavily salted and oily foods, and a culture preoccupied with youth. More than eight years before Elodea Taylor first disrobed to shapeshift in public, the place’s government was busy levying fines because another African woman exposing her breast for a split second at a major sporting event. The period in history was forty years after the Vietnam War protests and forty years before the Junebug Coriander riots, and the political climate was shifting from apathy to strongly divided opinions, with the election scandals in the United States just around the corner for a second time. Even now, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was showing, not as a part of a history lecture, but in cinemas.
Rath entered one of the small and compact diamond-shaped flight pods, as its crystalline walls became transparent, showing the shuttle bay opening up. Then, the Conus ship bolted upwards and the planet circled underneath him. Gradually, Earth’s horizon filled the bottom half of space. Rath reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of large diamonds, common on Utopia’s neighbor Tau Ceti 4, but rare and inflated in price on 2004 Earth during the days of the DeBeers mining cartel.
He activated his nanomolecular bionics, bringing into his field of view a display window, floating in the air before him, showing the Conus’ control deck. “I’ll see if I can get you some souvenirs—maybe a new camera for Helen.”
Helen smiled back, presenting a display of a contemporary two-dimensional web page. “I found this Canon model on eBay. Five megapixels!”

Earth’s gravity was stronger than Utopia’s, but Rath enjoyed the fresh scent of evergreen. He had not seen the planet in years, and even then, so much of what he saw was urban development. As he walked away from the travel pod, he had to resist the temptation to pull off his clothing, shift to wolf form, and run for miles. However, he knew he had to stick to the task at hand. Northeast Nevada was relatively unguarded, unlike the southern portion of the state which harbored the notorious Groom Lake U.S. Air Force base, still in operation.
A small town—more an outpost of people in the wilderness than a city community—appeared in a clearing. Rath continued ahead with the idea of finding a motel as a temporary base of operation.
“Will that be cash or credit card?”  The hotel office was scarcely larger than a restroom, with a single host attendant and several stacks of notebooks and papers behind him, as well as an American flag and a poster of the U.S. Presidents throughout history.  Rath also noticed behind him a computer with an Internet browser open, visiting a date-matching service site.
Rath handed over a large, cut diamond. “I don’t suppose you could make change for this.”
The host, a heavyset man with balding hair and the prominent odor of cigarettes, looked at the gem and then back at Rath. “How do I know this ain’t fake?”
Rath scratched a window with the stone, and then handed it to the clerk, who dug around for a magnifying glass and inspected the stone, poking at it with a pocket knife. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars, plus a night.”
“He’s bluffing—he’s willing to give you more.” Iston told Rath by way of his cyberware. Rath kept an open two-way channel, allowing the others in orbit to see and hear his experiences and provide feedback. He was in essence the ultimate spy. And, with his lupine perception and smell, he could sense the man’s subtle changes of body temperature.
Rath leaned forward, sending a text message back to Iston and the others. “A hundred dollars—is that a lot?”
Iston looked up a stream of information extracted from the turn-of-the-millennium Internet. “The wholesale value of a zero point five carat diamond in that condition is at least a thousand, making its typical market price considerably more. A typical meal for one person sells for five to twenty dollars at a restaurant, depending on quality.”

Rath sat down in his hotel room, flipping through the stack of rectangular paper notes. Most were green and white, though two $20 notes had splashes of psychedelic color, an attempt to foil counterfeiting. Given its condition, the money would be worth a fortune to currency collectors in 2220. Each bill had a different set of scents associated with it, indicating the strange paths currency notes took.
He flipped through a local newspaper, describing the security surrounding the Republican National Convention and the recovery efforts involving Hurricane Charlie in Florida. No mention was made of Typhoon Rananim or the devastation of Zhejiang. Rath sniffed at the television remote out of habit before picking it up and turning on the TV, scrolling through a sitcom, a reality show, CNN, and the ground-breaking Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
“Now I need to find Blue Sentinel,” Rath sent to his comrades in orbit.
“Maybe we’re being too discrete about this,” Xal suggested back.

Clarissa stepped out the back door and descended the stack of bricks to her small house, into her rust-colored late eighties model Ford Taurus. She backed out of her driveway as dawn colored the sky. As she made her way down Highway 140, she saw an animal up ahead by the side of the road, which she first thought was a large stray dog. She slowed down for a closer look. It was unmistakably a wolf, looking back at her.
Then as she passed, suddenly, to her disbelief, the creature stood up on its hind legs. She stomped her foot on the accelerator, feeling a flush of panic as she looked in the rearview mirror, realizing that the thing was chasing after her. She barreled her car faster as her heart rate accelerated.
As the car disappeared from view, Rath dropped down to forepaws and hind paws again and loped back towards town.

A distant signal emanated from an object emerging from high gamma, just beyond Mars’ orbit. It was Cozalien. “Re-engage communication protocols.”
“We’ve got another problem,” Anderson Conus stated from his projection cylinder. The triangular overhead brought up an image of space, zooming in on a small point, to reveal a Cozalien colony ship. “According to historical estimates, they weren’t supposed to show up and abduct Gardener and Taylor for another two and a half years. And, to make matters worse, they want to chatter.”
Xal sat up from her curled position in the center chair of the control deck. “Can we tell them to bugger off?”
“I tried that,” Anderson answered. “They told me to retransmit.”
Helen brought up a display of various Cozalien entity designs. “Shouldn’t we outrank them?”
“Cozaliens don’t have ranks,” Iston answered. “They all think they’re the same being.”
Anderson added, “If we indicate we’re not part of Four One, for that matter, they might send a larger ship our way to fix us—which could have serious consequences for Earth.” He flickered for a brief second. “I may be able to convince them to disregard us.”
Helen looked back over at Anderson’s projection. “Are we about to cause 2065?”
“I know history has to happen,” Anderson replied, his image taking on a look of worry. “But, I can’t have that on our conscience.” His expression shifted to one of relief. “There. I managed to convince them to ignore us until the other three Wedgies of Doom show up. Hopefully that will be awhile.”
The array of spindles around a central pyramid continued its forward advance towards Earth.
“But,” Iston said, “for the sake of the timeline, do we still need to convince them to wait until 2007 before abducting Scott and Elodea?”
Anderson sighed. “I’m starting to feel like that guy on Quantum Leap.”

Rath entered a truck stop diner, while practicing in his mind turn-of-the-millennium idioms and phrases. He decided that his accent and occasional word-choice differences could be explained by claiming to be from England. No doubt had he been in Great Britain, he could pass himself off as an American.
A number of the people inside were contaminating themselves with inhalant nicotine. However, the scent of greasy food was not at all as bad as he expected. The eggs and pancakes both in fact smelled inviting, though he wondered what had been added to the strangely discolored and disfigured meat products, which had all discernable anatomical features ground and processed out of them. The scent of beer reminded him of a historical brewing booth he saw once at a Christmas City festival. Ethanol-containing drinks were much more heavily regulated back in 2004, at least in the provinces of the United States, but in spite of such, irresponsible use of it there was a leading cause of travel accidents.
He approached a counter. “Four eggs and toast.”
Anderson Conus sent a suggestion. “Ask for hot tea. Europeans preferred tea, whereas coffee was more popular in North America.”
“And a hot tea,” Rath added.
“That’s a nice tie,” the lady answered, while keying in a series of buttons on a mechanical cash register. “What’s the occasion?”
“I’m visiting from out of town.” He thought for a second. “I study the paranormal. Seen anything strange?”
“Well, you’re kind of different. Where are you from?”
“England,” Rath answered, picking up his hot drink. “That’s why I like tea.” He took a sip and tried to hide his expression, unprepared for its unusually sweetened taste. He walked over to a nearby barstool and sent a message to the Conus in orbit. “Is our Cozalien interloper still here?”
Iston appeared in a small display inside his field of view. “It’s entered into geostationary orbit over northern Africa. It seems to be monitoring a series of conflicts there.”
Rath flipped through a copy of the newspaper. “Islamic radicals,” he commented out loud.
“God bless America,” the person seated two seats over from him commented. “…And England too, of course. Aren’t you glad that we’re both free Christian nations?”
Rath gritted his teeth. As he remembered of history, Christian Fundamentalists would oppose the basic civil liberty issues brought about by both lycanthropy and genetic engineering through the twenty-first century, and they would insist that lycanthropes represented “the Beast” of Revelations. He remembered stories his grandfather told him about the panics in 2013 and of the violent sermons and movements started in Fundamentalist churches against therianthropes and later the genetically engineered. Rath noticed an article about the controversy surrounding gay marriages, still considered illegitimate in nearly every country and province, again because of the political pressure of Fundamentalists. “I’m worried about any religious viewpoint based on fear and aggression.”
The lady working the cash register commented, “Ah, a Jedi Knight.”

Three days had passed, and the Cozalien entity continued dutifully to ignore the L.S.S. Conus while it monitored activity around North Africa, the Middle East, and Chechnya, apparently interested in regions of human conflict. Rath had managed to trade in some of his diamonds for enough money to buy an elegant but nondescript black car, a two-year-old Toyota Camry with a moon roof, while he continued to work out of his motel room, occasionally scouting around the surrounding wilderness in wolf form. No less than a dozen people had seen him at one time or another; at least one of them by now he had hoped would report the werewolf encounter.
His efforts paid off; in a small side column of the paper, the local palm reader Clarissa Evans decided to forego her usual tips to disgruntled lovers and spiritual seekers to chronicle an encounter of her own. She was the one Rath chased down a highway on the morning of his first day. He startled her enough to reinvigorate her belief in the supernatural, but scared her in the process. As this article would hit the press, Blue Sentinel would scour the Internet and find it; all it needed to do was for a copy to be sent to the right place.
Rath sat back and turned on his nanomolecular transmitter. “Anderson, I’ve been sighted. I’d like to post this article on one of those old Internet blogs or discussion boards—maybe a therianthropy community.”
Back on the control deck, Xal looked at a floating display of a cluster of web sites. “I’m on it.” She nodded her head slightly as she thought out the action of copying the article from Rath’s vision onto the web page before her. Then she sat back again and looked up at the overhead display, where  the image appeared of a dark corridor, from the perspective of someone holding a large gun. The weapon fired at several zombie-like forms.
“Are those weapons fire?” Rath signaled back.
“It’s OK,” Anderson replied. “Xal managed to find on the Internet a stolen copy of one of those old, violent video games. She’s finding Doom 3 pretty addictive.”
Rath saw in the corner of his field of vision Xal’s character wandering through disturbing mazes, jumping back to dodge a strange, monstrous form lurching at her. “Just remember that those games used to cause people to kill their parents, join werewolf packs, and worship Satan.”

Rath approached the local palm-reader’s shop, and the aroma of incense greeted him. Once inside, the scents of various herb jars and bath salts flooded him. A moderately built lady with long, wavy blond hair and a multi-colored dress greeted him, asking, “can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Clarissa Evans.”
She shrugged her shoulders and sighed. “You’re asking about the werewolf article, aren’t you? Are you a friend of those other guys?”
Rath’s ears twitched forward slightly. He thought quickly, and he was glad he left an open link to the Conus, when Anderson suggested, “see if they left her a business card.”
“Other guys?” Rath asked.
“Two other gentlemen, both well dressed. They asked a lot of questions about the werewolf—said they were cryptobiologists.”
Rath pretended to sigh. “They beat me again, but I’ll still find the thing first. Did they give you a card?”
She handed him a small card bearing the name “J. Raymond” plus an address and phone number. As Rath wrote it down, he did so for show; the information was already memorized into his cyberware and sent to the Conus in orbit.
“That’s not a real address on any map,” Anderson advised Rath. “The phone number might be.”
Clarissa looked back at Rath. “What about you?”
Rath pretended to search himself. “I seem to have left mine behind.”
“Your phone number,” Anderson added, “is 775-555-4730.” I can manufacture a contemporary-looking mobile phone that will respond to it.
As Rath wrote down the number on a slip of paper, Clarissa smirked. “I thought five-five-five was supposed to be fake, like in movies.” Rath noted that the number on the card also included “555.”

Wind gusts built up along the shore as Clarissa stood, watching the waves build up. As she backed away, she patted her face. She was dreaming again. Hurricane Charlie came and went, but she was still having storm-wind dreams. She looked around for a landmark as she backed away from the beach. A sign blew down beside her, damaged, but identifying  Pensacola beach. She felt the winds blowing harder and harder, and the waves crashing higher and higher. She tried to run, but the winds kept her from moving. She could see on land a yellowish gray wolf looking up at her, and she tried to reach out to the animal. Then, water crashed against her.
She opened her eyes, and she was back in bed at home. She reached to her nightstand, turning on a lamp and grabbing her dream journal to record the experience. Then she turned on the T.V. and satellite receiver, scrolling to the Weather Channel. Instead of the usual map of the United States, a forecaster stood over a depiction of the Caribbean Sea and gestured over a swirling green and red radar image. “…Frances, now upgraded to a category 3 hurricane, is a major threat to the Bahamas, and could make landfall over Florida even as thousands are still without electricity from Hurricane Charlie.”
She looked at her dream log and stared at the entry describing the wolf. Obviously a reference to the creature that chased her a few days earlier. Could this werewolf be a variant of the Thunderbird or Mothman? Legends had told of creatures seen shortly before disasters.
But, it was not the first time she dreamed of werewolves and catastrophe. Clarissa sat up and flipped through her dream log. Several times in the last year she had dreams of the creatures. She looked at an entry back in April, when they leaped out from the sky as glass buildings around her exploded against storm winds. She wondered whether it was aftershocks of September Eleventh or simply a reference to a popular role-playing game many of her palm-reading clients played; she hoped it was not a premonition. But, she recognized the great flood and torrential rain as a reoccurring dream symbol as well, representing the end of the world.

“I’m tracking a formation of unknown vessels over Canada,” Helen said from the science console of the control deck. Xal stood up and looked at the overhead display, showing a formation of UFOs streaking at high speed over southern Saskatchewan.
“What about our Cozalien friend?”
Helen shifted the overhead view to the maroon four-pointed star-shaped object, now hovering several hundred miles over Bermuda. “It’s watching the Bahamas, apparently looking to see how the people there deal with Hurricane Frances.”
Iston turned around from his seat at the tactical console and folded his wings aside. “I’ve made it a point to research the 2004 cyclone season. Frances will hit those islands as a rating four cyclone; it’s a small population, but there’s still likely to be significant casualties.” He made use of the central projection cylinder to continue his weather report. “By the time it reaches Florida, it will have downgraded to rating 2 speed, but its large diameter and slow movement will cause considerable damage none-the-less. But,” he redirected focus to a cluster of clouds breaking away from Africa. “This proto-cyclone complex will remain stable for months and will continue to produce more super-storms.” He then brought up a series of broadcast footage and web pages from CNN and The Weather Channel, and then a three-dimensional diagram of the West Indies. “Hurricane Ivan will begin as ‘Tropical Depression Nine’ in a few days. It will then gain strength and cut across Grenada and Jamaica as a rating five cyclone, killing more than seventy people before making landfall in the United States as a rating three cyclone, where the coastline will be devastated, and where heavy rains and tornadoes will account for more than sixty additional deaths. The same complex will also produce Hurricane Jeanne, which will kill well over a thousand in Haiti as a rating…”
“We can’t interfere,” Xal interjected. “I know we could warn people. I know that with our force generators, we could even try to downgrade the storm like the Orion did with Cyclone Amanda back on Utopia. But, if we alter history, then what?”
Iston pondered, bringing up an image of a long, cylindrical Gray craft sighted over an enormous Utopian storm, headed towards the region of Coverdale and New Tokyo. “Suppose they had intervened?”

“I didn’t know who to turn to,” Clarissa explained to Rath as he entered her house. “I tried your colleagues, but they didn’t seem interested in helping.”
Rath looked around her home; it was modestly built and decorated, but much cleaner than many of the ones around it, and it had a much fresher and less musty scent. Clarissa took the time to decorate the walls with an inexpensive but pleasing assortment of objects, reflecting a metaphysical theme. The aroma of incense adorned the front living area. He accepted her invitation to sit down in an old, unsightly but comfortable sofa.
“Did you see the werewolf again?” Rath asked, however, he knew she could not have, unless there were another one.
“No; I almost wish that were it. It’s about a premonition. I don’t always get it right—I would have sworn back in 2000 that Gore would have won the election. But, I’ve got a strong feeling about some predictions. This—this is going to be one of the worst hurricane seasons in history.”
Rath nodded; Iston had already informed him a few hours earlier that such would be the case. However, it was not necessarily a psychic premonition, as the government’s weather agency had already made a similar prediction.
“But,” Clarissa added, “that’s only the beginning. Something big is going to happen in a few years—I can’t tell exactly what, but it happens in late 2012.”
Rath’s ears perked up. “What sort of thing?”
Clarissa sat down across from him. “It can’t be the end of the world, because something else happens in 2065—I don’t now what. But, whatever happens in 2012, it’s big and it’s very frightening for a lot of people. And somehow, I don’t know how or why, I think the werewolf is related.”

Rath paced back and forth in his motel room, transmitting to the Conus above, and conversing with Anderson Conus’ likeness projected in Rath’s sight in the room. “Her predictions about 2012 were unusually accurate.”
“Her weather forecast was also on the mark,” Anderson added. “She must be at least a rating four psion. Someone of that power is bound to have a lot of other coincidences happen; it’s no wonder she was the first one to see you, planned or not.”
Rath contemplated, creating his own glamour projection appearing in the room, of the Cozalien colony entity also in orbit, accompanied by various floating tactical readouts. “I’m sure the Cozaliens would also love to get their hands on someone like Clarissa. I’m afraid to ask what they’d turn her into.”
“One additional note. Clarissa disappears sometime after September sixteenth. I can’t tell whether Blue Sentinel is responsible or not, but her absence is in the history of our timeline.”
Rath paused for a moment. “It doesn’t say she dies—just disappears?”
“She disappears. She doesn’t show up for her column one day.” He brought up an article in the local paper, dated several months later, describing her disappearance as an unsolved criminal investigation.
Rath took a deep breath. “If they don’t find a body, then we still have some options.”
He looked at another illusionary object, a floating display of the time and of the address and phone number given to Clarissa by Blue Sentinel agents. Then he glanced over at a notebook computer he had recently purchased, plugging in a small device into its USB port, allowing a flow of information from his twenty-third century cyberware into the device, at the limits of the older technology’s speed and format. Rath took a series of images from his thoughts and loaded them into the laptop computer. “I’ll see if I can compile some things that might get Blue’s attention without giving away too much.” He frowned when he tried to move the cursor on the monitor with the computer’s touch pad, only to see it frozen in place on the screen. “This was not exactly the best time in human history for electronics.”
Rath then picked up a mobile phone and entered the number. “This is Agent Waldenrath, of MI-13. I understand you’re also looking into a lycanthrope sighting, and I hope you’ve noticed the increased CZ alien activity as of late. Something major is happening—I think we need to pool our resources.”

He waited outside a heavily worn wooden frame that once was a shack, for no more than fifteen minutes, before a maroon sedan pulled up next to Rath’s and two men in plain, dark clothes approached him. One of them, an old man with glasses, extended his hand to greet him. “Mr. Waldenrath, you have our undivided attention. What can you show us?”
Rath turned on his laptop and brought up an image of the Cozalien colony entity. “I hope you’ve seen this UFO in the last few days.”
The older agent nodded. “We are following a lead on what may be a second vessel, and we’re recruiting some additional agents to help locate stray lycanthropes. How up are you on the link between lycanthropy and the CZ?”
Rath felt his eyes starting to shift as he turned his head away. “I’ve gotten to know the lycanthrope viral factor quite well.”

“It’s going to take awhile before I can get into their inner sanctum,” Rath explained to the Conus crew in orbit. He was now in wolf form, meditating as he moved through the forest. “But, I’ve gotten their trust. Thankfully, MI-13 was never that organized, so if the Blues try to look me up, they’ll get a runaround for awhile. They won’t be surprised when they deny my existence.”
Xal answered back to him, “there’s a group of campers about a half a mile ahead of you; you might want to turn around. We’ll change the rendezvous site to about a mile South of your position.”
“Right,” Rath answered. “I’m picking up their scent, now that you mention them. The Blues already have their werewolf sighting for the time being. Once they start getting more active, I may have to give up these meditation runs. It will also make picking up supplies a little more tricky.”
Rath darted along over several curves and bends in the dense forest landscape before he could see an orange glow in the sky. He could see a Cozalien flight pod ahead, and he made his way over to it. As it sank down and opened up, Xal dropped out and landed on her feet. Rath stood up, becoming nearly human except for a thick fur coat and wolf-accented facial features. The two embraced each other, and Xal began emitting a purring sound as she said, “it’s been days since I’ve been able to stroke you.”
“Definitely mutual,” Rath answered, as she handed him a collection of manufactured MI-13 identifying credentials and assorted paraphernalia that such an agent would carry, including a firearm and ammunition, collected into a harness-styled backpack. “I hope Helen is enjoying the camera I sent her last time. What’s the latest on the storms?”
“Typhoon Chaba is a rating 3 cyclone hitting South Japan, and you’ve been able to follow Frances.”
“You realize because of global warming, these storms over the next few years will get worse before they get better.”
Xal nodded. “I know. Tomorrow, terrorists in Russia will hold up a school. It will last for three days, and then more than a hundred innocent children will be killed. Iston said if it were up to him, he’d intervene.”

September fourth had come, and with it Hurricane Frances’ landfall over Florida. Its unusually wide eye wall enveloped substantial portions of land, crushing thousands of houses and other buildings, while torrents of rain, wind, and waves crushed the Eastern coast. The siege in Russia had also transpired as Islamic extremists demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Chechnya held a school hostage.
Rath managed to see for the first time a secret installation in northern Nevada under Blue Sentinel’s operation. One of their agents guided him towards a briefing room. “We’ve been working with a psychic, with the hopes that she can help us pinpoint our lycanthrope. If this works, she may even be useful in locating others like Gardener and Taylor.”
Rath thought up a quick answer. “Remote viewing is not a very exact science, considering the luck we’ve had with finding Osama.”
“Still,” the agent answered, opening the door to reveal Clarissa, who looked up at Rath, somewhat surprised to see him there.
“Waldenrath?” She blinked for a second, as Rath pushed back a transient shapeshift reflex. He could tell that she was in good spirits, and thus did not appear to be acting under any coercion.
“I understand you’re using your psychic talents to find the werewolf.”
Clarissa answered, “I kind of suspected you weren’t just cryptobiologists. Not that I had to be a psychic to figure that out.”
Rath kept an open link to the Conus in orbit, and he was glad his allies were aware of this discovery. He knew he had to maintain his appearance, however. “Any luck?”
“He’s in human form, somewhere nearby, I’ve been able to see that much. If I only had some fur, or maybe a physical object that belonged to him, I’d probably be able to see a lot more.” She glanced over at Rath and started looking at him.
He felt a twinge of anxiousness as she began to inspect him, and he knew his lupine features could surface. Anderson Conus picked up on his vital sign fluctuations and suggested, “Concentrate your thoughts on the Cozalien War of 2065. I hate to use a tragedy in this manner, but it should redirect her focus.” Anderson flashed a series of images in front of Rath’s vision, of torn city landscapes burning and of people in the streets, panicking and running as a few of them transform into various strange creatures.
Clarissa ducked her head and blinked, recollecting herself. “I just had a vision—there’s going to be more storms in the gulf.”
“Well,” Anderson answered, “that’s also true.”

Xal watched a display panel showing an old science fiction show, as a crazed man jumped through an eye-shaped time-traveling construct to avoid what he feared to be assassins.
“Another extraterrestrial craft, this time over Israel,” Helen interrupted. “Maybe it’s a hurricane convention.”
Xal looked up at the overhead display, showing a spherical form with a circular row of lights forming a crown. “There was a lot of UFO activity over Earth during this turbulent period of history.”
“It matches a configuration reported with a race of beings sighted previously in the remote Russian village of Vepsia, hence, the Vepsians—a race of ball-like forms, covered in tentacles, varying in total size between one and five meters in diameter.”
Xal twirled her tail around her fingers, fidgeting. “What could they want?”
“Israel had a lot of UFO activity during their 150 year conflict with the Palestinians. Right now they’re building the West Bank Wall.”

Two weeks had passed, and Rath began to feel closer to finding the Gray artifact in Blue Sentinel’s possession. They had begun allowing him into their inner sanctum, as he began revealing knowledge about the CZ aliens—knowledge he knew they already had at their higher levels, but detailed enough to capture their attention.
He was also getting to know Clarissa better—enough to worry about her involvement with Blue Sentinel. Right now she was a hired consultant. But, if they had reason to be afraid of her or suspect she could decide to be less cooperative, her status might change.
He sat outside a meeting, where new recruits were being briefed. The leader, an older man, brought up next the image of the Conus. “This UFO, photographed less than a week ago by satellite, is believed by experts to be the largest CZ alien craft to date identified. To coordinate intelligence, British underground agency MI-13 has sent us Mr. Gordon Waldenrath.”
Rath entered the room, making an effort to keep his eyebrows separated and his teeth from showing points. “This ship is believed to be of CZ alien design in spite of the unusual lack of symmetry. Perhaps there are three others in the area. It appears to be focusing attention on this area, and probably has ties to our werewolf, who may very well be a fresh deployment rather than a later generation victim of the viral factor. If so, the threat represented is indeed serious. So far, for reasons unknown, it and another, more familiar CZ alien vessel sighted around the same time have virtually ignored each other.”
“Thank you, Mr. Waldenrath,” the older man stated. “No one must know of this, as the risk of widespread panic…”
As the older agent spoke, Rath exited the room and made his way up a staircase, exiting through a hidden door into a more informal and older building interior. As he picked up a pen from the floor, he realized that it must have slid from his pocket. Clarissa was there, looking nervously at him, quivering slightly.
“You’re him, aren’t you?”
Rath reached for her hand, attempting to comfort her. But, the moment he took it, she backed away, gasping. “You’re the creature…”
He knew he could not convince her otherwise. “It’s very important that they don’t find out.” Rath looked around, having conditioned himself out of habit to avoid conspicuously sniffing; a bugging apparatus is not likely to produce any scent anyway. “It would be safer to talk elsewhere.”

Clarissa navigated the back roads towards her home, feeling a strange sense of relief as she passed the area she had been dreading off and on the past few weeks.
Rath, however, received a signal from the Conus. Anderson warned him, “the Cozalien entity in orbit has just deployed a scout, and I think it’s headed towards you.”
He looked up out of habit, sending back, “Can’t you tell them to stop it?”
“They’re completely ignoring us, just like we told them to.”
Rath exhaled, causing Clarissa to glance at him. “What is it?”
“There are things,” he said, “I haven’t told you yet.”
Clarissa glanced at him and then back at the road. “About 2012, or 2065?”
“About you, actually.” He felt uneasy, finding himself rambling, hoping to steer the conversation towards the fact that she is about to disappear. “My associates have detailed history archives—since we can fit so many terabytes of information into such a small space, we can pack most of recorded history with us. We were locating your spot…”
However, Clarissa’s focus turned away from him, towards a floating object in the sky, moving towards them, with four giant outstretched arms. “My God…what is it?”
“It’s a Cozalien,” Rath answered. “Get out of the car.”
She threw the car to a screeching halt as she began gasping for breath. She threw open the door and started running out, stopping to turn around. “Waldenrath?”
He jumped out and tore off his shirt, starting to shift. Clarissa backed away. Rath looked towards her, saying, “use the trees for cover!” However, she seemed as afraid of him as she was of the Cozalien entity as she turned and ran.
Clarissa stumbled along through the forest in a panic, turning to dodge the mysterious shape, which seemed to be following her. Rath followed, now in wolf form.
“They’re not following me,” Rath transmitted. “The entity is chasing her instead.”
Xal was now talking. “We’re still not able to get them to respond to us. As for Clarissa Evans, they could be trying to see why they found her with you.”
Iston now added, “I’m coming down in a tactical pod, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to use it without jeopardizing a premature Cozalien War.”
Rath followed after Clarissa, who stopped to look as he caught up to her. She was now trembling with fear, but she held herself up as she shook. “Waldenrath…is that you?” He in his wolf form nodded. He looked around and sniffed; some other something was already on the ground, following them.
Rath stood up, shifting to a hybrid wolf form as he turned towards Clarissa. “Please…trust me.” She nodded, shaking. He bolted his head to the left to see the other creature, a werejackal in hybrid animal form, bearing an assembly of crystalline artifacts vaguely suggestive of a headdress. The being held up a pulsing, red, diamond-shaped instrument and started moving towards Clarissa. Rath leaped onto the being and began brawling him. The two growled and tossed each other aside as the werejackal tried to advance towards the petrified woman. The jackal entity picked up the throbbing device and pointed it towards Clarissa, who immediately began running to the side, dodging its direction as she screamed. Rath grabbed the being’s arm and bit it, trying to pry the device loose from his grip.
“It’s a scanning device,” Anderson told Rath. “It’s not a weapon.”
Then, the crown over the creature’s head began glowing and pulsing.
Rath signaled to the Conus. “What’s going on?”
“It’s some kind of signal to the colony entity—some sort of data exchange.”
As Rath held his grip on the werejackal, its features shifted into a bald, dark-skinned human, vaguely suggestive of ancient northern African heritage. “See that she is a magical being,” he told Rath. He tossed Rath aside and approached her, shifting back into part animal form. Clarissa backed away, stumbling to the ground as the being approached. He reached to grab her and bared his teeth, opening his jaw, ready to bite. Rath climbed towards him, but feared he could not reach the two in time to stop him from infecting her with some sort of therianthropic virus. However, just as the being was about to bite, his headdress flickered again, and the being stopped. He shifted form slightly.
“Resume without interference.” The being picked up his device and walked off.
Rath signaled to the Conus. “What happened?”
“I convinced your friend that you’re the one assigned to her.”
Then, Rath reached for Clarissa, who could no longer contain her emotions as she burst into tears. “This has got to be a dream…I have to be dreaming this…”
He took on a nearly human form as he guided her back onto her feet. “I’ll tell you the rest, as soon as you’re ready.”

Her hands were still shaking as she dropped tea bags into a pair of cups in her kitchen, for Rath and herself. “They’re coming in 2065, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Rath, now in human form, said flatly as he sipped his drink cautiously. “Your prediction does come true.”
“Thank God I won’t have to live through it! I’m sure I’ll be long dead by then.” She sat down and stared at the drink for a split second, and then looked away. “There’s no way to stop it?”
“My associates and I are not used to time travel—it was an accident. Therefore, we have no idea what would happen if we tried to change the timeline. But, I can tell you that humanity and the Earth both pull through. Things get rough for awhile, and the politics afterwards—well, you know humans. But, we pull through.” He also felt a need to warn her; “Blue Sentinel is more aggressive than they seem. You’re going to disappear—one way or another, you’re going to be gone very soon. Today is the last day you have an entry in the history record.” As he said this, Clarissa looked out the window; evening was approaching, as was a pair of headlights.
A blue sedan had pulled up, and two men emerged, one carrying a briefcase. They knocked on the door.
“I could go with you—into the future? I…I hate to give it all up here in today, but, if I’m going to have to anyway…”
“Hide in the back,” Rath said, as someone knocked on the door. “I’ll tell them you’re gone.”
She exited towards her bedroom, while Rath answered the door.
“Mr. Waldenrath?” the older, long-faced man with glasses and the briefcase asked. “We’re looking for Ms. Evans.”
“She’s out for the time being,” Rath answered.
“May we come in?”
Rath thought frantically for a reason not to invite them. He listened in on his channel to the Conus, but Anderson simply answered, “It would be best to work with them for now. Iston is almost there.”
As soon as Rath gestured the two forward, the one with the briefcase opened it to reveal a disc-like object bearing concentric rings, which opened up into a jellyfish-like formation. “We were hoping to use Ms. Evans’ psychic talents to find out more about this artifact. We believe it is the work of the Grays.”
Rath gasped, allowing his astonished expression to show. The other agent looked up at him, and then turned out the light, shining a flashlight on him. “Your eyes are glowing.” They both pulled out firearms. “What sort of being are you, and what have you done with Clarissa?”
“Iston,” Rath signaled, “Now would be a good time.”
“Stall for about four minutes,” Iston replied. “Your angel of mercy is passing into the troposphere.”
“OK, you found me out,” Rath stated. “I’m…”
“Don’t be too memorable—there’s no record of you in the historic Blue Sentinel files,” Anderson stated.
Rath continued, “I’m a spy from a distant alien civilization. I thought I figured out the human form from the CZ aliens, but, oops, it turns out, they’ve dabbled with it so much I got confused and I got it wrong.” He looked up. “No, that’s not it. I’m a…renegade Cozalien. We hate symmetry very much. We’re sick and tired of their obsessive-compulsive preoccupation with the number four. I mean, five’s a great number.”
“Do not move,” one of the agents stated, pulling out a mobile phone with one hand while keeping his weapon trained with the other. “This is Steven. Waldenrath is not what he seems. I don’t know what we’re dealing with.” Outside, a third man could be heard slamming the trunk and approaching.
“OK,” Rath explained. “I’m a werewolf.” He shapeshifted. One of the agents as a reflex shot him in the arm. As the gunshot echoed, Clarissa ran in, screaming.
Rath growled, gesturing for her to get back. Perhaps the agent was trying to protect Clarissa from the creature he thought Rath to be. Perhaps it was a reflex reaction. Regardless, the second agent fired another shot. Clarissa stumbled back. Then, the ceiling ripped open, and a crystalline construct opened up from the sky. An angel dropped down with billowing wings. Clarissa looked up, gasping, feeling her chest. There was no blood.
The great presence held up a large quadrillad, a hand-held four-bladed weapon used by some tribes of beings engineered by the Cozaliens. He jolted it in his hand, causing its four large blades to slide out, doubling the size of the tool and shaping it into an equilateral cross. Iston shouted, “I am the fire that ignites the fury of life! I am the forces of creation, destruction, and transformation! Behold the Mi-ka-el!”
The third Blue Sentinel agent ran in, stopping at the door as he saw Iston. The other two dropped their weapons and held up their arms, backing away. Iston knelt down and examined Clarissa. “The gunshot missed. You fell back—that’s all.”
Clarissa stood up, trembling again, as the two agents looked at her.
The angelic figure picked up the Gray device. “Behold the Crown of Chronos, Lord of Time!” He turned back towards Rath and Clarissa. “Lord of the Forest, Lady of Visions, arise!” A beam fired from the Cozalien tactical pod, and the three floated upwards into it. Then, they bolted upwards into the sky.
“Actually,” the angelic form said, “my friends call me Iston.” He began manipulating a number of crystalline devices, bringing up a display of the Caribbean, as Hurricane Ivan broke apart over Georgia. They started to rise, but tilted towards the horizon. Rath examined the display.
“What are you doing, Iston?”
“Free will, just like the Grays told my sister.” He gestured towards a map showing swirling storm patterns. “I couldn’t have saved the sixty or so killed when this rating three cyclone struck the continental landmass, but in four days, this rating zero tropical storm will strengthen and strike Haiti. In 2004, they’re still a poverty-stricken nation struggling with a series of political takeovers, and as such, they’ll be unprepared. Florida, Japan, the Bahamas—they have resources. But in Haiti, where there’s already instability, roughly two thousand will die. But, this tactical vessel has enough electromagnetic shielding power to make a difference.”
“Iston,” Anderson called out. “History is history. I know you want to help those people, but you have to let them go. We don’t know what will happen if you change things.”
“Right, we don’t know!” He shouted back. “How do we know that someone born in Haiti yesterday go on fifty years from now to defeat Shann’s empire before it starts? Who’s to say we can’t create a better timeline?”
Anderson’s image appeared inside the travel pod, invisible to Clarissa, who lacked cybernetic sensory enhancements, but who could feel his presence through her own powers. He turned to Iston, who could see him clearly. “Ever since we’ve arrived, I’ve been thinking about me and Elaine, and how I could go back and convince myself to stay with her. I know you want to take what we know today and change the past. But, we have no right to put all of existence and the universe at risk, dabbling when we don’t know what will happen.”
“We’re aware of the philosophical implications,” Rath answered, reaching for Iston’s shoulder. “But, now is not the time to test it.”
“Is there a better time? Maybe before China deploys thermonuclear weapons against Pakistan in August of 2019?”
“What?” Clarissa gasped, trying to collect herself.
“Free will,” Iston started to add.
Suddenly another extraterrestrial craft appeared. This one was organic in shape, with numerous sharp points and a light metallic blue sheen accented by a shimmering silver glow. It’s shape was basically triangular, with a complex array of attachments towards the front, rear, and underside, including ornate side-arms. A beam of energy emanated from the vessel, cascading across Rath’s and Iston’s travel pod. Then, suddenly, they and Clarissa stood on the control deck of the Conus.
A being resembling Iston Conus but much older appeared on the overhead viewer. “We were just on our way back from the early eighties, when I remembered being you, so many years ago, stuck in 2004. Don’t worry; Anon and Cicaria have figured out a way to transport hundreds of Haitian refugees and still inconspicuously leave behind some bodies.” He gestured towards two insectoid beings operating consoles vaguely suggestive of tactical and science stations. “We’ll make a quick stop by a few days from now, but first I had to keep history intact by showing up here.”
A reptilian being next to the future Iston told him, “They could be the colonists that showed up at ESS-29.”
Iston nodded and leaned into another console. “Diphonat, get ready to string-leap phase. We’re taking a ride to the year 3891.”
The metallic silvery blue ship made a close pass, and a dark maroon band across the mid-portion of the ship could be seen, bearing the name L.S.S. Conus. Its side arms folded upwards and onto the main hull, and a large, circular construct shimmered into existence around the vessel. It took on a golden glow and then abruptly bolted forward, disappearing into space ahead.

The feline scientists looked at each other nervously as Helen placed her hand over the Gray artifact, causing it to open up and vibrate. As energy flowed, she formed a mental image of the battle at TW Piscis Australis in 2220, while the technicians around her began reporting on quantum capture and field amplification parameters. Then, a glow enveloped the ship.
The L.S.S. Adamo had sustained damage, but it and the Conus Two module were holding their own. In the distance, the other Conus ship took a few shots from the C.A.T. vessel before turning,, backing off, and then suddenly disappearing with a burst of light.
“They still think we’re Cozalien,” Rath noted, looking at the projection of Anderson. “We can use that.”
“I’m telling them not to attack this vessel,” Anderson replied, noting that the Cozalien occupation entity in 2065 issued the same warning right before decimating most of humanity’s defenses.
“It seems to be working,” Iston noted. On the overhead screen, the C.A.T. vessel bolted away, retreating towards Fomalhaut.

Prime Minister Shepherd examined the Gray artifact, which had managed to remain present following the return trip. “Time travel—it’s an intriguing but extremely unsettling prospect.”
Iston placed the artifact in a small container. “I am not sure if we’re ready or not for it, but none-the-less, here it is. We do know that some day we will use it again. But, right now the temptation to change the timeline, and the obligations it creates, to all those who have suffered throughout history.”
Iston passed through a corridor, leading into one of the large, open areas, where he jumped and flew past several others floating in low gravity before landing on a platform with a view of the night side of the planet near the station.
Clarissa looked down and watched the stars and planet rotate by, and then looked up at Iston. “It’s going to take awhile to get used to all this.”
“You are not alone in that regard,” Iston answered. “I’m not sure I’m ready just yet to be a guardian angel for all of history. But, I know I will some day.” The two looked down again to see in the distance a small, cigar-shaped vessel transform into a cluster of three smaller saucers, which bolted off into space. “Whatever their agenda is,” Iston added, “I just hope free will continues to play into it.”