NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This is a background thread, for the general enjoyment of simmers. I will be the only one actively posting in this thread (this isn't the main RP) for now.

Applications/Claims Page= http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=375052

General Info Page= http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=7517772&posted=1#post7517772post7517772

Somewhere In Colorado, May 15th, 2027:

George Welles was a man on the run. The Soviet American authorities had been chasing him for over a year throughout the western part of the NASSR. He had been trying to find this base, a legendary El Dorado for all men who craved freedom in their hearts. The legend of an actual time machine, created by a maverick American scientist somewhere in Colorado had been suppressed by the Soviet authorities. Welles figured it was because they had never been able to actually find it ... at least, that's what he hoped.

As he stumbled into the cave system, he realized that there was signs that something unusual was going on. There were lights in the cave, although the power was off. It may have simply been a normal secret laboratory, but there was no modern security at all. In fact ... it was open, hidden only by its incredibly remote location in the mountains. Could this be it? He could only hope ...

'Who is there?' A strange voice echoed from the walls.

Welles remained silent.

'You're not a Soviet, are you?' The voice replied.

He wanted to remain silent after this as well but he couldn't. It was too good to be true ...

'I don't take orders from the Russians.'

'Interesting.' The voice replied. 'Come in further.'

Welles felt strange about this ... this was all too bizarre to be true. But his feet moved him deeper into the cave system anyway ... he needed to find out. He didn't care if he was shot now. Ever since Soviet America was founded he had felt dead except for a tiny spark of hope. It was when he heard the rumours. The legends of a time machine in the mountains.

It was outlandish, but it was all he had. His faith in God had been shaken to the core as the Soviets attacked and then conquered America, establishing puppet governments. Ever since the summer of 2014, the world had been a nightmare. The Chinese had taken Japan and most of the Pacific, the Arabs had seized most of the British colonies, the Pakistanis had taken India ... there were no free nations left. Only tiny, struggling resistence movements.

There was nothing. Nothing at all. Just death and misery. Even the sky had become grey and dull since the Soviets took over. He didn't care about ideologies as much as the fact that he was no longer a free citizen of his own country. He had been a member of the Socialist Party of America before the invasion but when the Russians came, he and his left-liberal friends picked up their guns with the NRA and the right-wing militias and died with them.

The war wasn't about left and right ... it was about freedom and tyranny.

'We never had a chance.' The voice said.

'How can you say that? We fought bravely ... so many of us died!' Welles nearly screamed back.

His wife and son were in a gulag in Alaska ... they might be dead, might be alive. The purges had claimed the lives of millions of people in Europe and the Americas. The results of the war had devastated the agriculture of Soviet America and hunger had stalked a land that had not known a major famine in its history. It was supremely ironic, as Welles had been a major crusader against obesity. Well, Americans were leaner at least.

'Our scientists never discovered that people possessed psionic abilities. Our governments were subverted from the inside.'

Yes ... the telepaths. Thought police in the most literal form he could ever imagine. The President and so many of the other leaders had been subverted by them. Using them, the Soviets had effectively beheaded the Allied war effort. Perhaps science could help save the cause ... but how, and who? And was this really what he was looking for?

Welles stepped further into the cave system, his mind roiling with curiousity and fear mingled together. He felt like Moses approaching the Burning Bush. He half expected to hear a voice telling him to remove his shoes. But what he found as he went in deeper was not God Manifest, but a door. A perfectly ordinary looking steel door like one might find in any secure establishment.

'It should be opening right now.'

A second later, the door slowly creaked open mechanically. The relatively bright room within was a jarring contrast from the blackened tunnels of the cave he had entered. He squinted instinctively and walked further in. Could this be it? Had he found the tabled Colorado Time Machine?

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a short, elderly man regarding him curiously. He radiated the wisdom that only the aged can hope to possess, but also an odd playfulness more typical of a young child. A young child like the son and daughter that were being indoctrinated to hate their father and everything he stood for in the gulags of Alaska and the Northwest Territory.

The old man finally spoke, and now that Welles could see him it seem smaller and weaker than the one he had heard in the caves. Was it some sort of amplifier or just his own mind?

'Hello Mr. Welles. I am Dr. Edward Munzer and this facility does indeed contain a time machine. And you, my friend, are going to be the first and last man to use it.'

Welles turned absolutely pale. He felt like .... like the Apostle Paul when he saw the light of Christ on the road of Damascus. A strange tug from a place beyond his mind, not outside of it ... but deeper within told him that perhaps this was it. The purpose of his life. Or maybe he was just insane and he was hallucinating this at the hands of a psionic interrogator somewhere else entirely.

If so .. he figured he might as well incriminate himself fully. He was guilty of crimes against the State. But it wasn't his State ... his country was a far different place. It had a lot of flaws and he loved to point them out angrily in the past ... but he did it because he loved it. For all of its flaws, democracy was worth fighting for. And he would, whether this was real or not.

'But what impact could I have?' Welles asked.

Munzer smirked. 'None at all ... personally. I mean, you would do all sorts of things to the future, but you're not what we need.'

Welles sighed. 'What do you need me to do?'

Munzer looked at him. 'I would have done it myself ... but I'm old and frail. The process of time travel is rather hard on the body. You've heard of butterfly effect, no?'

Welles. 'Of course ... I mean, couldn't I make it worse?'

Munzer sighed. 'It's entirely possible. But things are pretty awful as they are. This is going to sound bizarre, but you're going to have to find someone and bring them into the Nineties ... to me. You're going to be going to the early Thirties to do that. Give me this in 1997.'

Munzer handed him a laminated letter, which seemed to contain absolute gibberish.

Welles. 'What is this?'

Munzer rolled his eyes slightly. 'Code. It's what I said I'd send to myself in the past. Trust me ... I'll believe it. By the way, I'll be in Germany then. I'll give you some more instructions later. But I think it's time for tea.'

Welles sighed. Was he or this man totally crazy? Or was this actually a chance to make things better?

Munzer may have been a physicist of unparallelled brilliance, but he was also virtually insane. Welles was desperate to believe in anything that would help his cause. The reality is that his actions would create huge ripples, spawning off countless alternate realities. But at least in those, the Allies might have a chance.

Welles didn't think of the finer points of temporal philosophy. He just wanted to believe that he could change the world, which he couldn't. The day he went into the time machine, he put an incredible quantity of possible alternate futures into motion. Everything he did afterwards would have a similar effect.

The time machine wasn't perfect ... the process wasn't instantaneous. But in 3.7 seconds from the time he stepped into the machine, Welles would emerge in the same place in 1932. His mission was to find a man who had published a book making claims of psionic phenomena that was rejected in his day and bring him into the 1990's, where hopefully he could verify his findings. Munzer, who was one of the chief scientists at the Free University of Berlin in 1997 would be able to integrate him into that society.

It was all so bizarre, like a B-movie plot. But it was all that Welles had to live for.