One Day In November

Dallas in the 60’s was an odd place: big hats, bigger guns, bigger egos. It was the type of place no one looked twice if you looked out of time, and Special Operator Andrew Vogel looked distinctly out of time–which of course, he was with his anti-matter rifle and sleek black jumpsuit. Luckily, the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was as vacant as it was every time the Russians tried to meddle with this event.

Two men, handsomely dressed, incredibly cursed, aiming at the sixth floor from their covered position on the Grassy Knoll. This was what, the tenth time the KGB tried this play? Andrew lost count. It would have been easier with two shooters, but Vogel had grown used to operating on his own. Having a partner came with baggage you couldn’t leave in the past.

The funny thing about time travel was it ended up being incredibly, stupidly simple. All it took was two MIT students, copious LSD trips, and several rewatches of Interstellar to figure it all out. The issue wasn’t physics, it was energy.

Admittedly, Vogel didn’t pay enough attention during the orientation video to explain how GATEWAY rearranged entangled particles to replicate the exact configuration of the particular moment in time the CIA wished to influence. There were quarks, vector probabilities, E=MC2 type equations; all things that went over his head, but once he was that deep, they weren’t going to let him walk out the door, even if failed the Theoretical Physics portion of the exam. The one thing he remembered distinctly was the energy required correlated directly to the delta in perceived time between the target and the present. In layman's terms, the farther back you went, the more energy required, and they were already pushing the limits of human ingenuity on energy production for things within one century.

This, very unfortunately for a certain special operator, meant that he would not be seeing how the Aliens built the pyramids.

And with the help of GATEWAY, the CIA enjoyed hegemony in any conflict it wished to turn its energy against…right up until one of the MIT students secretly defected and the two men in Vogel’s scope appeared on November 22nd 1963 and shot Lee Harvey Oswald from the Grassy Knoll. Shit got real weird then–apparently Khrushchev really liked Jack being the one across the table. If there was one thing Vogel hated, it was traitors.

Overnight, the entire United States energy grid turned over to PROJECT GATEWAY in an attempt to repair the chaos unleashed on the timeline. Back and forth they dueled across time, erasing, recreating, blending events that grew ever complex as the atoms arranged and rearranged themselves within the GATEWAY machine.

It was a difference of fundamental doctrine. The good guys at Langley did everything in their power to preserve events, while the bad guys in Moscow did what they could to sow chaos. The KGB had no tact and always tried to break the timeline with a sledgehammer. Vogel and his partner Brian Jones had been the surgeons, carefully removing their agents with a scalpel. That was until ten KGB agents appeared outside the SALT Negotiations in Helsinki. Vogel still could not comprehend what lengths they went through to generate that much energy. The good guys won, but it cost Vogel his partner–something he relived every single night. He worked alone from then on.

Vogel took careful aim. He exhaled, letting his body settle, feeling the satisfying resistance on the trigger.

Click.

Vogel’s veins registered the coldness of the steel before his brain did.

“Hello, old friend.”

”You were dead,” Vogel said, thinking as quickly as his well trained feet allowed. He just needed to buy enough time to complete his mission. His scope was already locked in, and he trusted himself enough to hit the second target blind. Still, none of that accounted for a greeting from a ghost.

“Did you leave me?”

“You had a bullet in the head.”

“You know, even after I awoke and They whispered things that still warp my thoughts, I dreamed of this moment. A chance to ask you that one question.”

“So, they pull out your corpse and you whore yourself to the Reds. Tell me, Brian, did they pull your spine out too? Was it worth it for a nice Dacha?” Vogel made sure not to state the man’s rank, he didn’t deserve that. Still, guilt gnawed at the corners of his composure; Leave no man behind was basic doctrine after all. There would be time to dwell on that later. Andrew's was almost up; he just had to keep Brian talking a little bit longer. The moment he squeezed the trigger the second time, GATEWAY would extract him.

“Ahh Andrew…CIA, KGB, so very archaic, academic.”

Yes, keep talking. Be the dumb action movie bad guy. Only a few more seconds.

“Who sent you?”

“Things are in motion you cannot begin to comprehend, but I am hurt if you think me lowly enough to betray my beliefs. The…Beings make this,” Vogel watched his once partner’s shimmering shadow wave absently across the Book Depository’s bricks, “look so very insignificant. So very small. Dark things, terrible things, all unleashed by our puny human sins. Who sent me? I cannot comprehend Them. So I suppose, I am what you made me, Andrew.”

It was almost time. Vogel, or more likely, Vogel’s replacement would piece together everything else later. Vogel needed to preserve the timeline, and the rest be damned.

“Tell me, my dear friend. Did you leave me?”

“I did.”

There was no point in lying, his partner deserved that. Five seconds remained, if that.

“A pity. You know there’s nothing after, that is if They do not shape you into what I’ve become, shape you in Their image. Everything just goes… black. I always dreamed of reading some of those Top Secret files, always dreamed. We’ve meddled in things we shouldn’t Andrew, and the Things follow…consider this a mercy, Andrew. A mercy you could not give me. Who knows, maybe They’ll accept you and we’ll be partners once more. Maybe.”

Something was wrong. The figures in Vogel’s scope vibrated oddly, confused and immaterial.

“Oh if you’re waiting for the motorcade, they’re not coming. Jack never stepped off Air Force One.”

A single shot rang out in Dealey Plaza, and all went black.

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A/N:

Apologies Liam, final word count was 65 over. Challenge link below:

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