Eduardo picked at his thin mustache as he appeared to mull over his words before speaking. “The only connection between what I’m saying now and Albert Einstein is that I want you to focus on the letter; how one letter was the catalyst to monumental change. There’s been another pivotal point in history involving a letter, but unlike Einstein’s, it will never lead to world change because it was never delivered to the right people.”
Serena raised her hand and then spoke without waiting for an invitation. “To be clear, this letter has nothing to do with atomic bombs, the Manhattan Project, or Albert Einstein.” As soon as Serena said this she heard Estep groan. She mouthed, “What?”
Eduardo’s mustache picking escalated to the point that his upper lip was now stretched tight across his already taut face. “To be clear, no it does not.”
Beav was a man who kept his own time, and was not typically hurried by any outside stimulus, but at this moment his stomach was complaining of hunger. He prompted, “Our first project is to send Serena back to the year that the letter was written and see that it’s delivered to the right people?”
Eduardo’s face reddened. He stopped picking at his mustache and reached for his now-empty water glass. He scowled at the glass before directing an even deeper scowl at Beav. “My usage of the word ‘letter’ is metaphorical.”
Beav fought back the urge to rub the skin of his own upper lip as he watched Eduardo’s mustache pulling act. Beav was sporting a goatee these days. He also had long tresses that he had pulled back with elastic and had topped off with a bandana that brought out the gypsy in him. If Ann or Serena were to request that he wear a monkey suit, so be it. Meanwhile he sported a sleeveless t-shirt and his favorite denim.
Beav’s appearance belied his formal manner of discourse. His rebuttal to Eduardo was unhurried, his empty stomach temporarily forgotten. “While I understand what you are saying about using the word ‘letter’ metaphorically, I am at a loss about what you do mean in a literal sense. I too am frequently led astray by my own musings. However, if we can pin down…”
Agent Estep snarled, “Can we please get back on track? Some of us have to get back to our day jobs.”
Estep never missed an opportunity to rub salt in Beav’s wounds. Regardless of Beav’s hero-celebrity status, he had no hope of ever being reinstated. On the contrary, Estep was still in the agency’s good graces and even basked in the loyalty of the top brass. To top it off, Agent Estep was awarded a ridiculous number of sparkly medals following Operation Covert Coffee. Estep had, after all, carried President Ann Kinji out of harm’s way—literally in his arms, like a prince saving the princess, a story that the media would never tire of packaging into yet another feature. Beav couldn’t avoid seeing Estep’s digital smug mug for weeks on end, and now he was up close and personal with him again on a regular basis.
Eduardo had fetched himself a new glass of water while Estep and Beav stewed, refusing to look at each other. If Eduardo had picked up on the tension he didn’t show it. He launched into the rest of his speech uninterrupted.
“We are limited in our time travel by what we call the memory window. You see, each of us is born with a brain capable of nearly limitless possibilities to store sensory input, experiences, data and memories. Most of us have a relatively short memory window of about five years, give or take, meaning that we don’t remember much that happened beyond five years into the past and we have no access to the ‘memory’, or shall we say ‘awareness’, of future events.
Whereas, in individuals thought to have psychic ability, the areas of the brain that are completely untapped for most of us are accessible to those who ‘see’ the future. We now believe that there’s a simple scientific explanation to explain psychic phenomenon: Brain damage, birth defects, and anomalies can cause a spillage, an access point, into the areas of the brain that store future events.
Project Scarecrow Chapter 1
Start from the beginning
