Feedback

Lachlan must have seen Jason staring. He turned to one side, twisting his head and looking up.

“When we first met,” he grimaced. “You told me you knew how I died.”

Jason held his hand, not saying anything.

“I’ve always known this day was coming, but I believe in you. You can change this,” the dying man said, struggling to breathe. “History doesn’t have to repeat.”

“Time travel won’t allow for paradoxes,” Jason replied. “Nothing changes. Nothing can ever change.”

“Who says it’s a paradox?” Lee said, gasping for breath. “I think I finally understand what this is, what all the scribbling is … For years, we’ve wondered about the meaning. We didn’t understand that the equations are not the answer, they’re part of the question. A question that has been asked over and over, through thousands of time loops spanning tens of thousands of years.”

The old man slumped against the wall of the central dome. Jason squeezed the dying man’s hand gently.

“Feedback,” Professor Lachlan said.

“Feedback?” Jason asked, his mind remembering the word he’d seen chaotically spelled out when the photos had fallen to the floor of the RV. “You mean, like a microphone getting too close to a speaker?”

“Yes.”

Jason looked up, looking at the scratchings and messages, the words that seemed so disjointed and confused.

“So all this, it’s feedback from previous iterations? These messages we see here. These are messages we’ve left for ourselves?”

The professor nodded, his breath hitching as he said, “Each message defies fate. Each etching represents a small, subtle change. Each disproves the apparent static nature of time.”

“So we can break out of this feedback loop? We can end this?” Jason asked.

“Yes.”

“Feedback builds until something gives,” Jason said, realizing what the professor was getting at.

The old man nodded, saying, “Each time, we learn more.”

“But it’s too late!”

“It’s never too late,” the professor said, struggling with those final words. His eyelids drooped. His head bowed, and his hand went limp.

Lachlan was dead.

Jason struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. Tears spilled down his face. He was overwhelmed by the loss of this man. His mentor. His friend. This man who was two men had saved his life. Jason owed him every breath. So much had been lost here. Jason barely knew the man that had rescued him from North Korea, but he knew he owed him a debt that could never be repaid.

“We should have left,” he sobbed, feeling the weight of the professor’s death because of his irrational insistence that they stay with the craft. “I’m sorry. You were right. We should have grabbed what we needed and ran.”

Lily cried. She rested her head on her father’s shoulder and sobbed, combing his thin hair with her fingers.

“You and I,” Jason said, grasping the professor’s hand and squeezing. “We have lived for thousands of years, never able to escape this prison, but this time, it will be different. I promise.”

Jason knelt beside Lily, gently rubbing her shoulders, whispering to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Bullets sliced through the air around them, zipping past just inches away from striking them. A battle continued to rage beneath the creature, but there was only so long Bellum could hold out. It was only a matter of time before he was outflanked. Gunmen were moving in from all sides.

In the confusion, Jason had lost sight of Vacili, but the cameraman had been there. He’d followed them onto the wing of the craft although Jason had no recollection of him jumping down from the scaffolding. A blinking red light on the camera told Jason he’d caught Lachlan’s last few moments on video.

Jason looked up at Vacili, looking deep into the dark, cold, impersonal camera lens as a bullet struck the back of Vacili’s head. An explosion of red sprayed to one side as the cameraman’s body crumpled and fell. His lifeless body slid a few feet after hitting the hide of the great animal, while the camera rolled down the sloping wing, slowly gathering momentum before it bounced off the edge and out of sight.

Lily grabbed Jason, holding on to him as though she were desperate not to fall. Jason could feel the terror in her trembling body.

On the distant scaffolding, April Stegmeyer’s body lay prone, sprawled to one side in a pool of blood.

The gunfire beneath the UFO ceased abruptly. Bellum was either dead or had been wounded and captured.

“We need to go,” Jason said, pulling Lily to her feet.

“Where?” Lily asked.

“We’ll go where we’ve always gone. Back in time.”