Three Kings

She told him the same impossible story that she had revealed to Gordon the previous evening, all about the secret group that had been established by the Royal Navy, secret even from the British government itself. She told him how they had begun to receive strange signal transmissions, video feeds of events that seemed to make no sense-until they happened four days later. They had seen the horrific attack on the World Trade Center, in pixel perfect video that replicated the entire event, but four days before it happened! They had been send a list of the closing price of every stock on the Dow three days before the big crash, and it was accurate to the decimal point. That got their attention. Someone was trying to communicate with them from the future, trying to warn them of a great, impending doom, and it all had something to do with that Russian ship, the battlecruiser Kirov.

Morgan stood there, a stunned look on his face, and Captain MacRae clasped his shoulder. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” he said. “Just as I did when I was told this last evening. At least I had a good stiff gin at hand when I got the news.”

“You mean to say…”

“Yes, it’s all true,” said Elena. “It sounds impossible but it’s been known for some time, really, since 1942 when British intelligence finally figured out that a strange ship they had been calling Geronimo was actually not from their own time, but the future. That’s when the Watch was set, a group of highly placed men in the Royal Navy who set a watch on history itself. You see, that Russian battlecruiser appeared, raised hell for a time, and then simply vanished. The Watch was established to wait for its next appearance, a dozen sheep dogs waiting for the wolf to return. It was started by a very famous British Admiral, the man commanding Home Fleet at the time, John Tovey. It also had a man inside Bletchley Park, Mack, someone you’ve long admired, Alan Turing.”

“Turing? He knew about all of this?”

“He was the one who figured out the Russian ship had to be from the future.”

“But you’re sayingtha ’ box there is from the future as well?” Gordon pointed again.

“I believe so. It must contain a fragment from the Tunguska event-sorry, that’s a part of the story I haven’t told you about, but we eventually sorted it out. You all know of that event.”

“The big explosion in 1908?” Morgan had heard of it.

“Exactly. Well it wasn’t just nuclear detonations that seemed to fragment time, but any massive explosion could do the same now that the china has been cracked. This is what we’ve learned.”

“But there have been massive explosions all through history. Are you telling me they’ve all affected time?”

“No, just the one’s after 1908. The Tunguska incident was different from any other similar event in the earth’s history. We don’t know why yet, or even what actually happened that day, but whatever it was had a profound effect on time, and like the first crack in a piece of pottery, the whole thing is unstable now. Time has a crack in it, and now any big explosive event seems to be compounding the damage. Beyond that, the event left remnants of a strange element that seems to cut time like a diamond. We’ve found a very few samples, and learned that they can be activated or catalyzed by any nuclear detonation, or other means. Something about the proximity of this element to nuclear fission creates some most alarming effects. We aren’t really sure, but we think the Russians were using it in the control rods of the nuclear reactors aboard that battlecruiser- Kirov. It took a good long time for us to discover that, but we put the clues together with skills you would be privy too Mack, good intelligence work.”

“Then there’s a piece of that thing from Tunguska right here,” said Gordon, “in that bloody box?”

“Correct. It was sent to us… from the future. Tunguska had more profound effects than anyone realizes. Whatever it was that exploded over Siberia that day fragmented spacetime itself, created cracks, fissures, like a stone breaking glass. Stumble upon one of those cracks and you can move right through time. We’ve found quite a few over the last eighty years, and taken great pains to conceal and secure them. In fact, those we have found are behind lock and key.” She reached for her own key now, dangling it to make the point.

“I thought our little foray to Delphi was going to be a farewell journey through one of those fissures in time, but finding that box was the real surprise for me.”

“Well how did you come by that damn key?” Morgan wondered, somewhat pointedly.

“Because I’m a Keyholder,” said Elena. “I was a member of that secret organization-the Watch started by Admiral John Tovey.” She smiled, telling him how she had been recruited seven years earlier. Then she revealed those final lines in the scroll that had been hidden within the box.