Chapter Thirty-four

1985-Those who left us behind

July 4, 1985

Vatican City

The early hours of the night had arrived.

The figure glided along in complete silence, trying to pass unnoticed by the other people of the College of Cardinals passing beside him.

Each one was engrossed in their own affairs, whether of an earthly or divine nature, and no one paid any attention to the priest with an affable face, but with thick wrinkles already furrowing his face.

The last few years had passed quickly for him. Perhaps it was true that as a person grew older everything seemed to speed up. Being a priest and at the same time an academician, he could not help but find a certain relativistic grace in that. Although he had gone through some tough situations over the years, those trials had not changed his impetus and that affable appearance that had characterized him.

Father Verneti smiled to himself and walked through the corridors of the Apostolic College, between the labyrinthine corridors, towards the exit at the Portone di Bronzo.

In the last few months he had been going there often. All because of certain news that had been leaked to the media and that had brought him more sorrow than anything else. Those news said: The Vatican is investigating in time machines, or The First Photograph of Jesus Christ, among other things. Due to certain incidents that occurred in Rome during those months, many journalists had started to investigate some things that were not well known. From mafia dealings, death of judges or detectives investigating bank accounts, to the occasional polemic over even worse matters.

All of this had led to the leaking of news that was not well known, such as the Vatican research institutes, or even the science departments. From a look at the research funds, a project had come to light that had been going on for years, and that was the one Verneti had worked on along with other scientists.

Although the project had never yielded the expected results, the press had drawn attention to it and, in order to sell more headlines, the news had been exaggerated, including some false data to make it more sensational.

In any case, it was over. Verneti himself had made sure it was. As he walked to the door and crossed the pilasters of the Vernini Colonnade, he felt a strange relief. Although the project had not worked, it had been an adventure that had led him to learn incredible things over the years, not only in the field of science but also in mysticism. Now that he was old, it was time to rest and perhaps reflect on all that he had experienced. Science, music and, although not well known, exorcisms, had been his life.

But just a few minutes ago he had closed a chapter of his life. That adventure had come to an end.

He went out to the Piazza San Pietro and there he saw that the last visitors of the day were almost leaving the place. Not far from there, admiring one of the illuminated fountains in the square, stood Dr. DiMati, who had been a tireless companion in his search over the years. The years had passed for him too. The thick mustache had grayed and he had gained a few pounds, although he still retained some of the robustness of yesteryear.

Verneti walked up to him and patted him on the back.

DiMati turned to look at him. "What happened?"

"There, it's all right."

"You were able to leave it without a problem?"

"Yes."

They both looked at the crystal clear water flowing from the fountain and stood for a couple of minutes in silence.

"I guess that's it then," sighed DiMati.

"We've come a long way with that machine. Even though it hasn't given us the results we wanted."

DiMati nodded and then frowned. "Are you sure no one will touch it?"

"Yes. Just as Jack asked, I left it in the place he indicated."

"I suppose it will be for future generations to unravel the riddle. A bit sad, really."

Verneti put a hand on his shoulder. "Well, we can go as far as our science allows us in our time. They didn't get the desired results either apparently, given what happened to that young scientist on the project."

"Yes, I suppose that's true."

"On the other hand... why are you so upset? You learned enough computer science to apply it to those predictive algorithms, didn't you?"

"Yes, that's true. The stock market is very interested in that."

They both started walking away from the square as DiMati turned around for the last time. "I think I'm going to set up my lab nearby for my new project."

"Really?"

"Yes. The ones who are most interested are the banks after all. Next week we're having a meeting with my team to talk about research funding."

"You want to build the supercomputer here?"

"Close. In the Janiculum if all goes well, there's a pretty good facility. On the other hand... I'm close by if something were to happen to the machine... I don't trust leaving it there honestly. Even though Jack says it'll be safe."

"Always so worried."

"Well at least I'll be close by. You'll retire to Venice and I'll stay here just in case with my numbers and my equipment."

"Always with your numbers, too."

"One day algorithms will rule the world, old friend."

Verneti smiled and nodded. "Maybe..."

The two friends walked away from the square, moving along the pedestrian sidewalk of the Galleria San Pietro.

At that very moment, several dozen meters below the ground, three square metal suitcases had been placed in a certain tunnel dug during World War II that no one visited anymore.

Although they would be visited in the not so distant future, the truth was that they would not be moved for more than two hundred and forty years from the place where Verneti had put them.

But that would be another story for the future.

***

California

Through the windows one could see how the midday sunlight bathed the streets and that contrasted with the few lights in the bar. Inside there were only a few men and women in the place, who seemed too engrossed in their conversations. Intermingled chatter and whispers. The ceiling fans barely moved in the place, which made one wonder if they were only working for decoration.

Sitting at the bar, in a secluded corner, two men had their gazes lost and in silence. They did not seem to be participating in the same hustle and bustle as the rest of the people in the bar.

They had taken off their jackets and loosened their ties.

Jack Pierson sipped from his glass of whiskey, while Carl Scott drummed his fingers on the rim of his glass. The day had begun well for both of them, but an hour ago they had both received news that had tinged everything else with mourning.

Father Verneti had spoken to them earlier in the day to let them know that he would put the three parts of the machine in safekeeping that very day. That had always been part of Jack's original plan.

The orders he had received were that the thing was to be hidden in the tunnels after the investigation was over. After all, while Verneti and DiMati had been able to study the properties of the mysterious rock half they had, it was useless if they could not activate those properties. The last time both halves had been activated was in 1977, and only the half that Jack and Scott had was the one that had absorbed all the power and then the machine had been destroyed due to the residual energy released. So many pieces put together over the years to be destroyed in the blink of an eye. Only the half of the stone had survived, although its size had been reduced a little.

On the other hand it was vital that the half on the other side of the pond was blocked, in case something happened. That had always been the reason for the two sides to be separated. According to Satou Nobuyama's notes he did not know what energy they could unleash if they were together in the future. That was considering that his measurements had not gone beyond 1977, and that the particles in the stone did not seem to be due to emissions of other types of particles, other than those from the heart of solar reactions.

But that was the way things were. After all, Nobuyama himself had left orders that they were to be kept separate. Which the Yanagida family had done, keeping one half under lock and key in the family safe, while the other half would be somewhat more secluded.

But that was over now. Now the boxes with the machine built by Verneti and DiMati would rest under another layer several meters below the ground in the secret tunnels of the Vatican.

Yet that was not what kept both men in a gloomy mood. In fact, that it was over too was a relief, even though they were in no mood to celebrate.

Scott took the bottle and filled Jack's glass, then poured his own.

In Scott's mind swirled the memories of the past few years, like ice spinning in that perspiring glass. The happy and sad moments. The adventures from that December 1959, until it all came to an end eight years earlier, in 1977. His hair had turned gray in some places and the first signs that he was close to fifty were already appearing. The recent years had softened what had once been the hard features of his face. After all, he was a family man. It had changed him.

Despite the madness that had been his life in his younger years, he had managed to marry and have a beautiful girl, already in her eight years. With his years of service in the RIA he could already be thinking about retirement. Something that did not appeal to him in the least. Despite the losses he had suffered, and the horrors he had seen, his work as an active agent had led him to see the world in a very different way and to form bonds with people he could never have imagined. Both for the better, and for the worse in other cases. Because of his family in recent years he had been doing more office work and higher rank, but he missed the clandestine work in some ways.

Jack, on the other hand, barely showed that he was in his early fifties, even though both sides of his head were already showing gray streaks in his ever-twirling hair. He had spent the last few years studying rocket engineering thanks to the support of the royal family. Rocketry and chemistry had always been his favorite subjects.

Although they were in different areas working for the royal family, the truth was that friendship united them. And there was something else too. A final mission, if that could be called a mission.

The tinkling of the bar door made them both squint, and in walked the last person they were waiting for to down that bottle of whiskey.

A man in his late thirties had just entered the bar.

He wore a light colored suit, a hat and carried a briefcase in his right hand. He was limping slightly on his left leg and his movements were a bit slow. The man fixed his gaze on them and approached as he removed his hat.

Despite being younger he had a more aged face than Scott or Jack. But those were not wrinkles from the effect of time, his face had traces of burns on the upper part, from the cheeks to the forehead. His hair, much grayer than Jack's and Scott's, grew unevenly more on one side than the other, due to those burns that reached even the scalp.

Leteo Waters approached slowly and deposited his briefcase and hat on the bar counter, then took off his jacket without saying anything.

He sat down on the stool next to Jack and asked for a glass. Jack took the bottle and silently poured him a drink.

Scott, for his part, swallowed the lump in his throat with a gulp of whiskey.

That night of May 1, 1977, he and Jack were able to see with their own eyes what that infernal machine had done to Leteo's body. The molecules of his body had finally coalesced, but at a costly price that took him more than a year to recover. Not counting another year of rehabilitation until he could walk.

The marks that trip had left were as if his body had been burned in some parts. He would have to live with those marks for the rest of his life. As well as Jack and Scott would have to live with the marks of lying to him that they had been friends for years.

But, the way the next few years had gone, it made them wonder at times if Leteo really had always been there.

Scott had been preparing for years because of what Jack had told him. They had to pretend that they had known each other for some time. Although Jack had done his best to give Scott all the details he knew, and had been ordered to reveal, that had been perhaps the hardest mission they had both faced.

That poor bastard from another time, with his body almost destroyed, the first thing he had done, when he could articulate a few words, was to ask if they were all right. They were the accomplices that the man was in that state, but for Leteo it was another story. That scene years ago had marked Jack and Scott. So much so that even for a few days they wondered if they could do it. But as the days and months passed, they came to terms with the idea. They had both seen too much. Leteo was the proof that everything they had accomplished over the years was necessary.

The final mission. The simulation had begun.

With the help of the royal family everything had gone smoothly. Maximilian Norton, the royal prodigy with interests in the space race and links to academia, was the one who had handled all the paperwork to give Leteo Waters not only a place at the California Technological University, but also a place to live.

Leteo Waters' careers would be that of a theoretical physicist and materials engineer. That had been done many years in advance, setting the stage for the simulation with the directions Jack had given. A house, some extra friendships, forged papers, and others that proved that he had always been there. Everything prepared to give that traveler a glimpse of reality.

A false life, which for him had not conferred any problems. For Leteo it was as if he had simply continued his life. For him that false life was his reality. When they had found a gap in those memories it was Leteo himself who thought that it was due to his accident.

For Jack and Scott it was as if a person had suddenly appeared who remembered them all their lives, as if he had been there with them always, in all their missions. Traveling the world with them.

The story, the lie, was that they had met in 1972, when Jack and Scott contacted him for academic help regarding the machine that was being built. He had also met Hisui and Quincy and Dr. Bender. Ishida and his family included, when he had visited Japan.

Of all those involved, only Ishida was the one who knew most of the story from the beginning, although in the last few years he had become somewhat detached, because he had to return to Japan to take over the family business after the death of his father.

Of course, there were some parts where they had to lie a little more and include in the whole scenario two involuntary participants. For example, they had to convince Verneti with some trickery that Leteo had always been helping since long before, but they had never noticed him before since he was still young when he had joined the search party. Leteo had even managed to strike up a real friendship with Dr. DiMati in the last few years, as they were both physicists and corresponded often. Correspondence that was monitored by the royal special services, to avoid any slippage that could cause an error.

Gehirn only learned that a member of the lab team had an accident. It cost too much to convince Hisui not to reveal the truth. As Gehirn was, it was possible that he wanted to approach Leteo in order to study him.

The stone and its mysterious origin remained the same, but what had changed was the truth of Leteo's accident. That had been an experiment trying to glimpse the stone's capabilities. An experiment based on the assumption that, as Satou Nobuyama had written in his diaries, the stones would be activated by an emission of savitronic particles from the sun.

Those measurements of Satou Nobuyama had an error of several hours, which caused Leteo to be near the machine when those particles reached the Earth and the fragment in the machine in the laboratory caused an explosion when it was activated. That explosion was the one that had shattered and burned part of his body.

Be that as it may, the man seemed to have a spirit of iron. Despite the recovery and rehabilitation time, he never stopped studying. Asking for papers to study what had gone wrong in the experiment.

The nature of the experiment in simulation was to find out the capabilities of the stone for strategic uses. Basically information in the future. A lie prepared years ago by the team of real scientists who had been building the machine until the very last moment.

It seemed like many years had passed since then. The timing had been perfect and there had been few problems. Leteo sometimes got angry when he couldn't remember some things. The truth was that those memories had never existed to begin with. Only in his mind.

The false memories.

That worried Scott. Where did they come from? Who had planted them? From what Jack had told him even he didn't know about it.

Leteo's voice brought Scott out of his memories. Bringing back other painful memories of why they were drinking in the middle of the day.

"Is it true?" Leteo asked taking the glass, with a somewhat hoarse voice. Burn marks could also be seen on his neck.

"Yes," Scott nodded, dragging his assertion a little.

"What the hell happened?"

Jack took a sip of his drink before answering. "A car accident. Gehirn was on the first plane out to Japan when he heard the news."

"I mean how?"

"We don't know yet. But all indications are that it was an accident, Scott replied."

"Nothing unusual behind it?"

"We don't know. Aya is the one who notified us."

"Miss Himeji?"

"Yes, she must be a mess, poor thing. She loved Masako," Jack nodded.

"Well, she was her older sister," Scott added.

"The police found the two vehicles as if they had overturned in the same place?"

Scott nodded.

"Is it known if it was instantaneous?"

"Ishida and Masako yes due to the blows. Quincy was thrown through the windshield."

Leteo closed his eyes heavily upon hearing that, as if reenacting the scene in his mind. "And Hisui?"

Jack made the ice dance in the empty glass. "From what the police could see the windows on the passenger side also had signs that someone had been ejected…"

"And?"

"Most likely she disappeared. She turned into a cloud of ashes like some feys do."

"My God... there's nothing left of her?"

Scott shook his head. "No, Aya and Masako had memories and pictures of her, and she's disappeared from the pictures. In both of their house are the belongings, but she has disappeared from all the pictures, neither are the papers or letters she had written."

"Damn it!" Jack said angrily

For a few minutes neither spoke, until Leteo raised his burn-covered hand, raising the glass in a cracked voice. "For our friends, for those we left behind."

"No, to those who left us behind," Jack remarked, raising his glass and clinking it against Leteo's. It seemed that the alcohol was hitting him outside more than the others.

Scott pursed his lips and clinked his glass with theirs.

"What's going to happen to the Yanagida now?" asked Leteo, after draining his glass in one gulp.

"Issei is still a kid, I guess the uncle will take care of everything until he comes of age. The Himeji family is there to support them."

For a few moments no one spoke, as if they were remembering the times they had been together, not only on missions or meetings, but also on more relaxed occasions, where even Gehirn had more than once joined in.

Leteo could have false previous memories, but those of the last few years were true. Without all that madness they would never have met in the first place. That almost endless mission over the years had brought them together to accomplish something important for mankind. But for those involved it had been something different.

A fantasy that had led Scott to engage with creatures of legend, hunting for lost pieces in the mists of time, while at the same time doing his job.

They might be lying to Leteo, but who was he to argue if Leteo himself was in his later years enjoying his life as never before? He was well known in academic circles and always seemed tireless.

It was a pity that what brought them together that day was the loss of four friends. If it really was an accident, it was a joke of fate, considering the dangerous situations they had been involved in in the past.

Ishida with that always carefree and adventurous tone. Masako had not been very close to them, but it was always a pleasure to see the couple. Who would have thought that an arranged marriage could really turn into such a successful relationship. Although there was a story that the two already had feelings for each other, even before the wedding between the Yanagida and Himeji clans was arranged.

Professor Bender had even become quite close to Ishida in recent years. The news had not yet reached the venerable professor. In recent months his health had deteriorated and he spent his time teaching his granddaughter historical subjects. They did not want to cause him any unpleasantness at that time.

And what about Hisui and Quincy? On more than one occasion they had saved Jack and Scott's ass when they accompanied them in the search for the final pieces for the machine. Days of adventures, discovering traces of a forgotten civilization buried in the most unlikely parts of the world, while at the same time they had to fool spies from other countries who were hot on their heels.

But the friendship that had united them was even greater, due to the time they had spent together in those missions. Although, when Leteo arrived, both Hisui and Quincy were in Japan.

Jack frowned at the memory. In the last few years they had been living in Japan, even though they used to travel to the United States Kingdom. But there was something on Jack's mind. For one thing. Why weren't Hisui and Quincy there when Leteo arrived?

Jack looked at his reflection in the bar mirror. Try as he might to recall it, he couldn't remember.

Scott poured himself a glass and refilled both of their glasses.

"And what about her? She wasn't with them, was she?" Leteo asked, taking the glass.

"Who?" Scott asked.

Scott and Jack looked at him, waiting for him to continue. Leteo hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "The girl, Hisui and Quincy's daughter? What will happen to her, who will take care of her now?"

Scott frowned, confused. "What daughter? Hisui and Quincy never had children."

The answer left Leteo confused, his thoughts crisscrossing his mind as he tried to comprehend what he had said. He put a hand to his forehead, disgruntled for a few seconds."I mean, wasn't the day of my accident, the first of May, also the day their little girl was born? Or am I remembering wrong?"

Now, Leteo's erroneous question had unearthed a memory that never existed.

Scott looked at him in wonder. Is that a side effect of the memories he was implanted with? he thought.

Leteo sighed, his gaze lost in space. "It's strange... I could have sworn I remember meeting a little girl. But now that you mention it, it doesn't make sense. Hisui and Quincy never had children." Finally, he shook his head, wondering where he would have gotten that idea

Jack looked at him. "Wait. A girl? Do you remember the name?

Leteo's gaze flew for a moment before he answered. "Little bell?”

"What kind of name is that?" asked Scott "Are you going senile?"

Leteo smiled weakly and shook his head. "No. It has to be one of those confused memories I often have.

Scott and Jack also smiled weakly and drank.

Still, sadness lingered in the air, like a shadow that could not be fully dispersed. They had shared a time together, had faced the dark world of their profession and had also found friendship in those who had now left.

One last thought crossed Jack's mind as he drank. A girl? he didn't know why but there was something that made him uncomfortable with the thought, although he didn't quite know why. Almost as if he felt that something had just disappeared.