"I’m afraid it will be another ten minutes, Mr. Jones." The pretty young lady said to me as I waited in the concrete-walled waiting room. I just nodded at her and shifted slightly in the uncomfortable, 70’s era plastic chair while she returned to typing something up on an old IBM electronic typewriter. An Army soldier stood guard at the door on the other side of her desk while another soldier stood guard at the door I had come in through nearly two hours ago.

With nothing else to do, I leaned back against the cool concrete and reviewed the events of the last month trying to make more sense than I had been able to do so far. After fainting upon seeing Brian’s body, I had spent every waking minute doing what I could to further the project, to fix the damage done to the time machine by a power surge, to prepare the President’s hand-picked man for his trip back into time, to bring an end to the madness that was this timeline.

Some of those efforts had been successful, some had not been. General Powell had managed to scrounge up resources through an Air Force General located at Travis Air Force Base in California. A company of soldiers had secured the equipment we needed, and after a day had even secured people who could not only operate the equipment but who were able to help in taking it apart. The price for their help had been easy to pay: take them and their family far away from the San Francisco Bay Area.

It had taken ten flights from Travis, and several gunfire exchanges with scared civilians as they moved the equipment from San Jose to Travis, for all the equipment, the personnel, and their families to make it to safety in Eureka. One of the transport planes had come under attack on the way, and had limped to the safety of Fallon Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada. It’s equipment and personnel had then been shipped by truck to us in Eureka. Another week had passed, during which the General at Travis died with most of his men defending their base from air attacks and the nearly twenty thousand Soviet and Chinese troops that had landed in the Bay Area.

That number had grown to sixty thousand by the end of the second week, and by the end of the third week they’d stretched the front lines all the way to Lake Tahoe. At the same time, the number of troops heading north from Mexico grew to over one hundred thousand and were even now bypassing Las Vegas in an attempt to head further north. So far, nearly thirty thousand of them had died taking Arizona after President George Herbert Walker Bush authorized the use of nerve gas against them.

The Soviets retaliated by gassing Travis AFB, along with several other California military installations.

For that first month, I had placed several calls to the President by secure satellite phone, but every single one had been rebuffed. The controls officially installed on the time machine would require Presidential authorization to send someone back in time, and as much as I might not like the man, George Bush was the President. President Reagan had purposely kept him in the dark about the project to build the time machine, and he needed to know about it, as well as needed to know that the ultimate objective of our enemy was most likely the capture of the facility.

Suddenly, two days ago, the silence from the President’s secret base, a missile storage facility deep in the Utah desert, ended and I’d been summoned there. To my surprise, General Powell had pulled me aside as I prepared to leave. His words had surprised me even more.

"David, I have to warn you of something." General Powell had said quietly in a corner of the bustling command center. He was now in command of all defenses for our sector of Nevada, and had slept less than I had, which was almost impossible.

"What is it, Colin?" I’d asked him. He’d insisted a week before that we start calling each other by our first names.

"President Bush already knows about the time machine." He had told me and I’d blinked in surprise. Shock was more like it, really.

"How?" I asked.

"When I met with him to discuss the Bolivian operation about a year ago, he asked me some very interesting questions." General Powell answered softly. "He’d already pieced together what was going on out here from a dozen different sources and was just looking for confirmation. He even threatened me, reminding me he’d likely win the ’88 election and that if he did, and I wasn’t on his team already, my career would pretty much end there. That’s when I told him about the project. On my next trip to Washington, I told President Reagan, and he directed me to continue feeding the Vice-President information and to not tell you. I figured the President already knew the Veep was figuring it out and wanted someone he trusted feeding the Veep information. Every now and then he’d tell me to hint that there was more trouble in the program than there really was, but the Vice-President must have had another source because he wasn’t always fooled. I passed it off as having better information than his other source, but I don’t know if he ever really fell for it."

"You could have told me this weeks ago, when the attack began." I noted, shocked by this revelation and feeling slightly betrayed. I should have been told the Vice-President was compromising the operation. More than likely, the leak to the Soviets had occurred somewhere in the chain he had used to keep tabs on the project’s development.

"I…to be honest, I was either too busy to think about this, or I was too ashamed to tell you." He admitted with a frown. "I don’t like being played for a fool, and that’s what has been happening to me. Once you’re gone, I have secret orders from the ‘President’ to seize the Do Over facilities, place Mr. Rule and Dr. Rush under protective custody, and to ensure all other facility personnel are personally loyal to the President. Not loyal to the United States, but loyal to the President."

"Is there a difference to him?" I muttered, thinking more of the son I’d known as President in the first timeline, but knowing that the father was in many ways like the son.

"I don’t think so." Colin Powell answered with a grimace and a shake of his head. He’d never asked about his life in the other timelines, what his future might hold for him, and I’d never shared that information either. "I’m tempted to advise you not to go now that I received those orders, but I know that would make things worse. Play the loyalty card; make him think you are loyal to him, if you can or you won’t be coming back."

"Thanks for the advice, General." I had said nearly two days ago. Since then I’d waited at one location or another, shuttled to different bases, even blindfolded, before finding myself led into this room where I’d been sitting for two hours, listening to the rattle of the female secretary’s typewriter.

I was wearing a dark blue suit that had been found in the Eureka base’s dry cleaning shop and was completely unarmed. After two days of being worn, the suit was rumpled and when the door behind the secretary’s desk opened to reveal a man in his late thirties or early forties, dressed in an impeccable suit, I felt decidedly shabby.

"Mr. Jones?" The short man asked in a slight southern drawl and at the sound of his voice I immediately recognized him.

"Yes, Mr. Bush." I acknowledged him politely as I stood. The President’s son, and President in his own right in another timeline stood aside and motioned me into the room beyond the door.

"Please, come in." He said politely and I moved into the other room. It was like most other rooms in this underground bunker, drab with concrete walls, but it held a large desk, an American flag, and had several other doors that were all closed. Behind the desk sat the elder George Bush, along with several other men, all of whom I recognized immediately.

The room’s occupants read like a litany of all those whose politics I abhorred. Dick Cheney stood at the President’s right hand while Donald Rumsfeld stood at his left. Condoleeza Rice, a junior staffer at this point, sat at the far end of the room along with a few other junior people like Wolfowitz. Jeb Bush stood nearby as well, and all of them looked at me like a rat that made its way into the kitchen just as the Thanksgiving Turkey was being brought out of the oven. The President himself rose to his feet as I entered, and came around the large desk with his hand outstretched.

"Mr. President, it’s good to see you again." I said, taking the initiative and shaking his hand firmly. He held onto my hand for a moment and gave me a long look.

"Is it, Mr. Jones?" He asked, motioning for me to sit in a chair that sat around a small coffee table along with a few other chairs. He also sat down, as did his two sons while his senior advisors moved to stand behind his chair. We were facing each other, with his son George on my left and Jeb diagonally across. "Tell me why I had to find out about your little project from other sources instead of from you. I thought you had agreed to be an advisor to me."

"Mr. President, I did agree to be an advisor to your Presidential campaign." I began smoothly, having rehearsed this in my head ten dozen ways over the last two days. General Powell’s advice had not gone to waste. "I would even have agreed to be an advisor during your Presidency, if you had wanted me to serve in that capacity, sir. I am loyal to the President of the United States, and until this war began that was Ronald Reagan. Since then, you have been the President and whether you knew it or not, you have had my loyalty in that capacity. That is why I have been trying to get in touch with you."

"You’re not surprised I know about your little project?" He asked me with a tilt of his head and I could see the junior staffers like Rice lean forward as if they were about to see a prize fight.

"Mr. President, you are far from being a stupid man with no resources." I said carefully and slowly, doing my best to keep condescension out of my voice. Certainly many people had underestimated the Bush clan over the years of my three lifetimes, but I refused to be one of those. "I wouldn’t be surprised if you were able to tell me down to the last penny how much the project has cost, how many failed experiments we’ve had, or how many circuit boards we’ve ruined over the years. When this war broke out, I merely sought to confirm openly what you had probably discovered through your own considerable resources."

"Why should we believe you?" Donald Rumsfeld said with derision. He’d hated me after what happened to him a few years ago in the Reagan Administration. The fact that Bush had kept him around had only been a major disappointment for me. Then again, one good thing about this President was that he repaid loyalty with loyalty.

That was a tool I could and would use.

"Why shouldn’t you believe me?" I answered without a hint of the disdain I was feeling inside. "I have kept my word to you, Mr. President. I also kept my duty to President Reagan while he lived. When you assumed the Presidency, you deserved and received my full loyalty. I immediately tried to contact you to give you an update on the damage to our equipment, our plans to repair it, and to await your orders on how to proceed once that was accomplished. Right now, Sean Rule and Dr. Rush should be installing and testing the new circuits and within another two weeks we should be ready to conduct final testing before being ready to send someone back. We would not, cannot, take that final step without your express orders to do so, sir. When you summoned me here, I left that base as soon as it was possible. Not one of my actions since we talked in 1984 has in any way been less than honest and in line with my duties to the office of the President and to you."

"He has a point." Jeb Bush agreed with a nod of his head. It was all I could do to not let out a sigh of relief as the President studied me for a long moment.

"You say you will be ready to proceed with actually sending someone back in a few weeks?" The President asked me in the silence that followed his son’s statement.

"Yes, sir, on your command." I assured him.

"Who will you send back?" He asked me and I took a deep breath.

"President Reagan selected an agent of the National Security Agency for the mission." I told him. "If you concur, we will send him back. He has been fully briefed and is prepared to carry out the mission."

"You aren’t going back again?" George Bush, the younger, asked me with a hint of surprise.

"I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to go back in time again." I said with a shudder, pushing my father’s words from the day the war began from my mind. Brian’s words were harder to ignore, but I did so anyway. "I’m old. I know I look young, but I’m an old man inside. I’m tired of living life over and over again. I haven’t heard a new song in decades of living. The only surprises have been minor changes in the timelines and far too many of those have been negative in nature. I haven’t celebrated a new birthday, a true new year since the first 2004 when you were President, George W. Bush. I’m more than willing for this existence to end. Sure, there’ll be another me in that timeline with memories of what I think of as my second timeline, but it won’t be me."

"All this timeline junk gets confusing." Dick Cheney said sarcastically and I let loose with a bit of a chuckle.

"Try living through them all, sir." I told him with a wry grin. "It gets even more confusing from this side of the equation. Sometimes, I can’t remember if something happened in my first lifetime, my second, or this one. I’m tired of it all and will be more than happy to pass the burden over to someone new."

"What if I want you to send someone else back, someone besides this NSA person?" President Bush asked in a thoughtful voice. His eyes bored into mine as I answered him.

"Sir, you are the President of the United States of America." I began my answer, meeting his gaze steadily. "If you order me to go back, I’ll go back even though that is the absolute last thing that I want to do. Your deciding that we should send someone else back in time is no problem to me. That is your right, your decision to make as the Commander-in-Chief. Whatever you order, I will obey."

"Good." The President said with a nod of his head. "I apologize for having doubted you, Mr. Jones."

"I’m here to serve, Mr. President." I said simply and he nodded again.

"That being the case, I want you to prepare my son, Jeb, for travel back into time." The President ordered and I hid the slight surprise I felt. I’d kind of expected he’d be putting forward his own person to go back in time. Truth to tell, I thought it would have been George W. Then again, I’d forgotten that until George W. won the Texas Governorship first, Jeb Bush had been his daddy’s favorite. . "He will go back and report directly to me. You will have him sent to the summer of 1979, is that understood? I expect you will prepare him as much as possible for what will happen and what he will need to know. He will know how to convince me that he has come back in time."

"Yes, Mr. President." I said with firmness and no hint of the disdain I was feeling inside. I remembered very well that George H. W. Bush became Reagan’s Vice-President after losing to him in the 1980 Republican primaries. By sending his son back to 1979, he’d be able to better prepare for that race, and might even be able to pull off a victory in 1980.

Yes, I’d made personal gains through my time travel, but that had never been the purpose of my traveling back through time. The Chinese, and Alexei Shevardnadze had traveled back in time for that purpose, and now the Bush family sought to do the same. If there had been any truth in the lies I’d been spinning since entering this room, they were gone now as I realized the man was more intent on securing his own power rather than serving the people of the United States.

"Excellent." The senior Bush said as he rose. His sons and I rose at the same time and he leaned forward to shake my hand and to clap me on the shoulder warmly. "Welcome to the team, old man."

"It’s my honor to serve, sir." I said with a smile.

"Good, now why don’t you and Jeb go get some chow and you can begin briefing him on what he needs to know."

"Thank you, sir." I said as Jeb Bush led the way through a different door.

Oh yes, this was no more than I had really expected.

*~*~*~*

Whoever believed the Bush family was stupid was most likely extremely near-sighted without the benefit of glasses.

Over a three week period, I met for several hours a day with Jeb Bush, discussing everything from what it was like when you woke up in the past (the machine is unable to ‘write’ the new memories into the younger self while your younger self is awake so the whole process is essentially like going to sleep as your older self dies and you ‘wake’ up in your younger body) to the side-effects of memory (you can remember things much more clearly than before although it isn’t a ‘photographic’ memory). As an example, I recited the winning statistics of professional football teams from 1970 through 1980. I’d read them on a long flight back in the last timeline. In a self-test, I’d found that I couldn’t remember most of the scores, while I distinctly remembered the scores of every Super Bowl from 1981 onwards, because they were ‘written’ through my first trip back in time.

In this timeline, I remembered all of them perfectly and even wrote them out for him. Later that day he’d had some staff flunky check the information and they’d proven totally correct. In this time, I could tell him who had won the Super Bowl earlier this year, but not who had been in the playoffs (mostly because I hadn’t paid much attention to sports in this timeline). It was a weird dichotomy that he found fascinating.

The main reason for the delay was the damage done to the Eureka Base’s infrastructure. While the equipment and workers needed to make the circuit boards had arrived, we had no real clean room for them to work in. Without a clean room, the engineers were hesitant to guarantee they could manufacture anything that worked. A hastily assembled room barely met their skepticisms and they still didn’t guarantee anything was more than ‘possibly sufficient’.

Another problem was the base’s power supply. The time machine needed much more power than it was capable of generating after the attacks. The heavy damage to the power plant was still being repaired and the plant could barely put out enough power to operate the base’s vital systems. Even more problematic, repairs were being made amidst continued missile strikes.

More pressing was the continued advancement of enemy troops into Nevada. All of Arizona was now either glowing in the dark, poisoned by chemical weapons, or in the hands of the enemy. Las Vegas was under siege, with the Hoover Dam destroyed and Lake Mead emptying into the Colorado River (causing massive flooding all the way from the dam to Mexico).

After a fierce air battle in which both sides took heavy losses, a fleet of transport planes headed up from bases in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Those planes managed to drop over ten thousand light infantry and special operations commandos behind our lines in Nevada. Fallon Naval Air Station took heavy damage from saboteurs before they repulsed the attack, losing six planes that had survived the recent air battle and cutting their number of operational aircraft in half. Austin, Nevada, eighty miles to the west of Eureka was now controlled by over a thousand enemy troops who were digging in to repulse any attack made by the National Guard garrison at Winnemucca.

To the south, Tonopah had also fallen to a combination of Special Forces and airborne infantry. With firm control of Tonopah, the enemy was able to prevent reinforcements heading north to Eureka from the Las Vegas front (not that they had troops to spare in Las Vegas). To Eureka’s west, the vital town of Ely had also fallen to nearly five thousand enemy troops. Their company of almost two hundred National Guard troops had fought nearly to the last man! The only prisoners taken by the enemy were those who were too wounded to hold their weapons.

Eureka was surrounded now, and as soon as the enemy got enough troops to take the place, they were going to attack en masse. The good news was that the President had sent nearly two thousand Army, Marines, and National Guard forces to reinforce the base’s garrison, including a full company of M-1 battle tanks. Any attempt to take Eureka that didn’t include heavy armor and helicopter gunships would fail.

Despite all of these setbacks, the atmosphere in the Presidential bunker was almost jovial. Most of the preparation work included reading dozens of tactical reports from front-line troops on our enemy’s capabilities. I went over most of it with Jeb Bush, helping him to better understand some of it so that when he went back in time, he could share this militarily valuable information.

"What’s the best thing about time travel?" Jeb Bush asked me over lunch on the last day of the third week since my arrival at the Presidential bunker. I’d lost track of the days of the week since before I came here, and never bothered to track down which day of the week it was.

"Being able to make choices differently than the first time around." I answered after a moment of thought. It had taken that moment to remember that it could be good instead of just pure misery. "We’ve all made mistakes in life, and being able to choose differently can be wonderful."

"What’s the worst?" He asked me and my smile was more one of sadness than anything else. Given the first question, this one was no surprise. He was wearing a pair of slacks and a blue dress shirt, having been better prepared than me for an extended stay. I was stuck wearing a pair of borrowed camouflage uniform pants and a brown t-shirt.

"The worst has to be when the new choices you make turn out worse than how things were before." My answer was totally honest, and full of grim acceptance of just how bad some things had been made by my choices in this time line. I had been far too optimistic about how things would play out, and my rushing directly into action with the government back in March of 1981 had probably been my biggest mistake.

"What do you mean?" He asked me with a look of genuine curiosity. Try as I might, I could no longer demonize him and his family. They did what they thought was best, not only for themselves but for the country as a whole. Probably the biggest difference between us was that for them, what was good for them was most likely good for the country. That was probably the biggest sticking point in my dealing with them.

"This entire timeline has been nothing but a clusterfuck for me." I answered after another, longer, silence. He simply raised an eyebrow as a way of asking me to continue with my explanation. The salad I was eating was rather wilted on the edges and I pushed it aside as I thought of all the things I could point out.

Twenty minutes later I had covered most of the things from the way AIDS was handled, to the inability to kill the enemy time travelers, and things like the death of my grandparents and other relatives. There were several points where he interrupted me to ask for clarification, or just to comment on something. By the time I was done, I felt like I’d managed to review everything that had gone wrong in this timeline, and where I’d fucked up.

It was almost too bad I still refused to even consider being the person to go through that time machine.

"Sirs, the President would like to see the two of you." A soldier’s voice interrupted my retelling of finding Mom and Brian’s dead bodies in the morgue on the first day of the war. Jeb nodded, and we rose together, leaving our trays in the small room we had been using to meet and heading down the hallway towards the President’s office.

"I do appreciate your candor, David." Jeb told me as we neared his father’s office. He put a hand on my shoulder and I turned to face him as we both stopped for a moment. I was surprised at the friendliness of the smile on his face. "My father was fairly certain you were Reagan’s man through and through. He was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get what we needed out of you, but you’ve proven yourself to be someone we can trust, and speaking for me personally, to like as well."

"Thank you." I answered his kind words with a smile. "I have to admit that having gotten to know you better, I’ve had to adjust some preconceptions as well."

"That’s good to hear." The Bush son told me before he started moving again, passing the secretary and entering his father’s office directly. I followed just a few steps behind him.

The President was waiting for us in the small conference area near the front of the room, furthest away from his desk. Dick Cheney was there, as were a few of the junior staffers in their usual spots near the far wall. We were waved towards the two free chairs so that it was just the President, Jeb, Dick Cheney, and myself sitting around a small circular table.

"Jeb, do you think you’re ready?" The President asked his son and I managed to not suck in a deep breath. It sounded like it was show time.

"Yes, sir, I am." The younger Bush answered with a nod of his head.

"Then I’m going to authorize your ‘Do Over’ as I believe the term is used." The President said with a slight smile and his son nodded. It was my turn next, for the President’s direct attention and he looked at me for a moment before continuing.

"David, I must admit you’ve proven to be quite an enigma for me." He told me in a tone that I’d learned to recognize as being congenial. "I’ve always considered you to be Reagan’s man, and until this war started, you never really did anything that made me reconsider that assumption."

"I am the President’s man, sir." I said with a slight shrug. "Whoever the President might be."

"There are very few like you that I have ever met, and I admit that it is an honor at last to understand you this well." President Bush said and I nodded in acknowledgement. "If I had known this before, well let’s just say I’m sure we would have gotten along better. As it is, Jeb tells me you have been invaluable in preparing him for his trip. I’d appreciate it if you would perform one last duty for me and escort him back to the Eureka facility and make sure the transfer goes well."

"I’d be honored to, sir." I said with nod and a smile. At least now I wouldn’t have to sneak my way out of the facility. Plans had already been laid for that eventuality, but it was better to not have to kill anyone here. There was one thing I had to make sure of, just in case they were testing me. "Mr. President, you are aware, are you not, that after the time traveler is sent back, the machine forms a bubble in time approximately one hundred feet in diameter? Anyone inside the bubble exists for as long as the bubble exists. With the current set-up, depending on the amount of power stored in the special batteries located within the bubble zone, the bubble will remain in existence for up to a year, and still possibly have enough power to send another person back in time. Now, if we were in 2004 and sending someone back, there wouldn’t be enough power to send the second person back twenty years, but since we’re only going back to mid-March of 1981, and it’s currently 1987, we could conceivably send a second person back to April or May, depending on how much power the main power plant produces, and how much power the batteries will have to supply."

"I was wondering if you were going to mention that." The President stated, leaning back in his chair with a broad smile and a short glance over at Dick Cheney. I leaned back in my own chair and hid the smug grin. It seemed I still had a good understanding of people.

"Up to now, I hadn’t known I’d be going back to Eureka." I answered him softly. "I assumed that you already knew about it and would give special instructions to whoever was going to be in the bubble zone. If you’re going to have me there, I wanted to make sure I understood what you would want from me."

"Besides making sure the surface of the planet doesn’t look much like it does now?" The President asked with a hint of sarcasm. It was the first direct reference to the fact that right now most of the Earth’s surface was either blasted by nukes or suffering damage from radioactive fallout. Most major cities that hadn’t been nuked were now being abandoned with those remaining behind facing starvation. Loyal troops, or at least those with nothing else to cling to but the concept of the United States were still funneling to the front lines, but for most of the country, the concept of a nation no longer existed.

"Something like that." I agreed with a grimace. "Unless something major changes with technology we’ll be able to monitor communications traffic through at least this year."

"Just make sure those bastards on the other side are all dead." The President said fiercely and there was a glow of anger in his eyes. "The absolute top priority for Jeb, and anyone else you decide to send back if things don’t work out, is to stop those commie bastards."

"That, I can make sure of, sir." I assured him without hesitation. "We can use the original planned traveler as a backup if things don’t work out at first, and we have a backup for him as well, so there’s three."

"You wouldn’t send yourself back again?" Dick Cheney asked, speaking for the first time.

"Not unless there’s no other choice." I answered once again. "I’ve had enough trips back in time to last me for all the rest of the timelines there might ever be."

"I don’t know that I’d ever be able to pass up an opportunity like that." Cheney said and I had to shake my head ruefully.

"The first time is great, after that it’s all downhill." I answered back with a tinge of regret in my voice and was met with another shake of his head. That was when the President stood, and we also rose as was customary.

"Your plane leaves as soon as you’re aboard." The President told his son, holding his hand out to Jeb. "Good luck."

"Good hunting." Cheney said as held his own hand out to Jeb.

"I’ll see you on the other side." Jeb told his father before turning to leave. I got a nod from the President before I followed his son out of the room and up, towards the surface.

There was a military jeep, complete with a junior officer and driver waiting for us. After we climbed into the jeep, it took off for the nearby airstrip. A truck packed with two full squads of soldiers followed us. The strip was crowded with an assortment of fighters, Air Force One, and a few cargo planes parked in different locations. I had been quite surprised that the modified passenger liner that was Air Force One had been able to land on the dirt strip. We didn’t head for that airplane though, rather one of the smaller, propeller-driven C-130 Hercules.

"Sir, we’re ready to go as soon as you’re aboard." An air force crewman in a flight suit said as soon as we got out of the jeep. The junior officer who had escorted us over without saying a word had moved off just as quickly and began barking orders to the troops who were now dismounting the truck. I wasn’t surprised that they were boarding the plane, obviously under orders to escort us all the way to Eureka.

"Let’s get going." Jeb Bush ordered, easily assuming an air of authority. I received little notice except as an adjutant to the President’s son. The C-130 had web seating along each side of the fuselage, most of which was already full with soldiers strapping in after having hastily stowed their weapons and other gear. The officer in charge of the guard detail motioned me to one of the web seats near the tail of the plane while Jeb Bush was escorted up to the flight deck where he’d likely sit in the jump chair in the cockpit. Before the officer could bother instructing me in how to fasten the seat belt, I was strapped in and ready for take off.

It took another few minutes for the crew to ready the plane for take-off. The propellers began spinning about the time a crewman handed me some ear protectors. I was at the very end of the seating area, and had an unblocked view out the tail ramp that was being raised as the propeller engines picked up speed and the aircraft lurched forward. The ramp wasn’t raised all the way, and I could see out the tail of the plane as we taxied to the hard-packed dirt runway and took off.

Behind us, two F-15 fighters also taxied and took off as our escort.

"You know where we’re heading?" The young soldier sitting next to me leaned over and half-whispered, half-shouted as the plane climbed just high enough to clear the nearby mountains. I looked over at him and was surprised for a moment to see that he was just about my physical age.

In my mind’s eye, he was just a kid.

"Some base in Nevada." I told him and he got a worried look. "It’s not on the front lines yet."

"Oh, okay." He said weakly and leaned back against the webbing to close his eyes. He certainly looked afraid. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid, really. Rather, I was feeling a great deal of relief. This damn fucking ordeal that was this timeline was about over. Sure, I had some tricky business ahead of me, and might very well have to kill a few people before my mission was completed, but it would be over soon and I could look forward to watching the bubble zone collapse after we successfully sent someone back in time, who wasn’t me, to fix things.

I must have fallen asleep, despite the constant maneuvering of the plane as it hugged the ground as close as the pilot dared. The sound of screams woke me though, and for a moment I was completely disoriented. As the plane completed its roll, I understood that my disorientation was because I’d woken as the plane was rolling upside down and then back right side up. Bullets were spraying through the cabin, and there was a fine mist of blood filling the air as huge 20 mm cannon shells from some type of fighter ripped the bodies of soldiers to shreds. Instinct took over and I made myself into as small a ball as possible while still strapped into the seat. Next to me, the young scared soldier was no longer scared.

A shell from the attacking fighter had ripped through his chest, leaving a gaping hole the size of my head.

The plane went silent a moment later as it began a longer, slower roll to the right and I guessed that the engines were dead, or the wings shot off. The C-130 could take a lot of punishment, it had been built to take lots of damage, but from the blood-filled cabin I guessed we’d taken so much damage even a C-130 would crash. Screams filled the cabin again as several of the soldiers realized we were going down, and since we were flying so close to the ground that meant there wasn’t much time before we crashed.

At the last moment, I felt nothing but a sense of peace wash over me. At long last I was about to find out what it was like to die, and that no longer scared me. Instead, I almost welcomed it as the plane hit the ground and I lost consciousness just as a sharp pain began in my left arm.

*~*~*~*

Death was boring, I thought to myself as I lay floating in an inky blackness devoid of sound or sensation, or light for that matter. If I’d ever been in a sensory deprivation chamber, this must be what it would have felt like. When it didn’t end in a burst of pain, and there wasn’t any bright light through a long tunnel, or my mother waiting for me with the pearly gates (or red lakes of fire) beyond, I began to wonder if this was all that happened when a person died. Did, in that last moment before the body failed, the consciousness enter some weird state where a moment lasted for eternity while in reality we were long dead?

"You always did have weird thoughts about things." Brian’s voice wafted out of the darkness, and if I’d had a body I would have jumped. It was the voice I remembered from those last days in Taiwan, before the last Do Over, mature with over thirty years of life.

‘Okay, how does one speak to his dead partner when he doesn’t have a body to make a voice?’ I thought to myself and was treated to well-remembered laughter.

"Can’t you figure out I’m hearing your thoughts, and you mine?" Brian asked and I let out a mental sigh that somehow resounded through the inky blackness. It mingled with his laughter and began to sound like the clear tinkling of wind chimes. "I’ve missed you, Davey."

‘Oh, Brian.’ My thoughts rang out in the void as I felt the old sadness, the old loss coming back to me. No matter how much I tried to ignore it in the last timeline, it had still been there. ‘I’m nothing without you, Brian.’

"That’s a crock of shit, David Jones." Brian’s voice scolded me lightly and I reveled in it, even if he was chiding me.

‘I’m lost without you.’ I countered and was greeted with silence for what seemed like an eternity, a mere nanosecond.

"You sure seem to be." Brian’s voice answered, but it was different. That subtle timber that came as he aged was gone, and it was the young Brian of this timeline, the Brian whose body rested with my mother’s and dozens of others in a mass grave near the base. I wasn’t quite sure how I knew, but I knew. "Davey, you missed the point this time around."

‘What point?’ I demanded in a mental shout that reverberated in the starless void.

"The first time you did a Do Over, what did you do?" This was the older Brian, the one I thought of as ‘my’ Brian.

‘I tried to keep to myself, to not change anything.’ I thought gently.

"Yet you did change things eventually, didn’t you?" The older Brian asked.

"Of course he did, he met you, met me, didn’t he?" This was the younger Brian and I could feel their distinct, yet oh so familiar presences somewhere out in the dark void.

‘Okay, I did eventually start changing things, but I kept them small.’ I answered the unspoken point they were making. I didn’t get involved with the government; I didn’t leap out and shout ‘I’m a time-traveler, I know the future!’ like I did this last time.

"You established yourself in the timeline, you grounded yourself." Older Brian’s voice stated and I knew what he said was the truth.

"This last time, you never invested yourself emotionally, personally in the timeline." Younger Brian continued as if they were speaking the same thought, and the void started to change slightly. Somehow, somewhere some light was creeping in and I could feel the two Brian’s merging as they continued to speak.

"You didn’t make yourself part of the time you’re in, Davey." Older Brian said softly

"You went through the motions, but you left your heart behind in the last timeline until it was too late." Younger Brian said and in the brightening void I could see them, albeit they were blurry, shoulders touching as golden light reflected off their blond heads. Both of them had gentle smiles on their faces as they looked at me and stepped forward. They merged as they moved, until I saw Brian not as a young adult, or a mature adult, but rather as that twelve-year old boy who had invited me over one afternoon to practice some wrestling. He had to look up at me as he stood so close I could feel his warm breath. When he spoke again, his voice was like it was when I first met him. "Davey, go back; don’t let them send someone else. Make yourself part of that time, and then come find me before you do anything else. Davey, go back, be with me, and don’t make me live another life without you."

That last sentence rocked me so much, because those were the words that this timeline’s Brian has last spoken, his dying plea to me as I prepared to leave the chopper that had rescued us. My eyes blurred with tears so that I could only see a hazy light, and the smell of death and smoke filled my nostrils while my entire body began to ache, especially my left arm.

<This one is alive.> The voice was not Brian’s and it came through a haze of pain like I hadn’t felt in years. With the pain fogging my brain, and the shock of my vision of Brian, or whatever it was, it even took me a moment longer to realize I wasn’t dead, I was alive, and the voice that had spoken was not speaking English.

"Don’t move, Yankee." This time the voice was in English, albeit broken English with a thick Russian accent. A cold metal object, most likely the barrel of a rifle, pushed against me cheek and I realized I was lying on the floor of the plane with something heavy lying partially over my lower back and butt. My left arm hurt like hell, as did my right leg, which I took to be a good sign that my back at least wasn’t broken. Sure, my head was still foggy from the crash, and the vision, and I was most likely now surrounded by enemy soldiers, but I was alive, alive and with a new purpose.

"Ya ne ‘Yankee’" I spoke in Russian, except for the word ‘Yankee’ and was satisfied with the grunt of surprise I heard. My vision was still blurry, and I could barely see anything beyond a hazy blur of light. "Ya Russkie."

I am not a Yankee was my first sentence, with ‘I am Russian’ being the second. The soldier standing over me fired off a rapid shout in Russian, basically calling over a senior non-commissioned officer and I could hear boots coming in my direction. I shifted slightly with my right hand and was able to lift my head up a bit. The soldier standing over me was dressed in a standard field uniform, and had a Spetznaz patch. He wasn’t exactly young, but he wasn’t that old either. The non-commissioned office was more grizzled, and had a noticeable gut. He also moved like a very seasoned veteran.

<What is going on here?> He demanded of the younger soldier when he was standing over me. I could see him examining me before turning his gaze back to his own soldier.

<He says he is Russian, not American.> The younger soldier said in a voice that expressed his disbelief.

<I didn’t know you spoke that much English.> The older soldier chuckled and I decided it was time to speak up.

<He speaks English poorly.> I said in Russian, knowing my accent was more like a rural native than a city-dweller. The non-com actually jumped in surprise and stared at me hard while bringing his weapon to bear on me. <Fortunately, my parents taught me the language of my true home. Get your officer and get me out from this wreck!>

<Get the officer and the zampolit.> The non-com ordered the younger soldier who moved quickly to obey. Then the non-com was calling out for more men to clear the wreckage out from on top of me. By the time the officer arrived, along with the political officer who turned out to also be KGB by his epaulets, I was freed from the wreckage that had been the seat I was sitting in during the flight. With the two officers came a medic who clucked over my broken arm, gave me a shot of painkiller, probably morphine, and began to work on cleaning a gash in my head that had caused blood to spill over into my eyes.

The painkiller was morphine, or something like it, and I knew they intended it to loosen up my tongue. It did help, I was able to think more clearly, and most of that was in Russian now, as it should be if I was going to pull this off.

<Who are you?> The KGB officer demanded in a harsh tone as the medic began to clean up the blood from my face and placed a bandage over the gash.

<I am Yuri Alexei’ich Rokanov, the son of a maskirova family.> I answered him in my rural-accented Russian. I could see the look of surprise on his face. <Do you know who was on this plane and where it was headed?>

<Of course.> The KGB officer demanded with indignation. <If you are who you say you are, how did you come to be here? What is your recognition code?>

<I joined the Army Reserve while attending university as was my orders.> I stated with a wince as the medic did something with my arm that jolted me even through the haze of the painkiller. <I was assigned to a unit in Kansas when the war started. I managed to be attached to a unit assigned to guard the President’s son. In the American university, I was in their ‘College Republican’ group and was deemed trustworthy to be an aide to the son of the American President.>

<What do you know of where this plane was heading?> The KGB officer demanded after I’d also rattled off the recognition code. He wrote that code down and I knew he’d check it out. It would work, I knew because everything I’d just given him was the truth, except beyond having the same color hair as the real son of a Soviet deep-infiltration team, very little else was similar. If he got a picture of the real Yuri, I’d be dead, but if I was careful that would never happen. Three agents had died getting this information I was using, and if it worked, the information they had gotten out would be worth the price paid in blood.

<It is the reason for this war.> I answered with a long look at the medic, the officer, the non-com, and two other soldiers who were all listening.

<Leave us!> The KGB officer demanded and within seconds we were alone. He loomed over me, staring down hard at me. <Tell me all you know.>

<I know of the American time traveler, David Jones, and about the son of our own leader who came back in time, as well as the Chinese men.> I answered him carefully and was rewarded with a look of pure surprise on his face. He took off his officer’s cap and rubbed the short, black hair on his head. From the look of him, he was approaching middle age, and the major epaulets on his shoulder led me to guess he was senior enough to have been briefed on at least the basics. <We somehow found out the Americans had built another time machine. Their new President believes this is why the war started and is preparing to use the machine. It is ready to be used. As soon as we arrived, his son was to go back and make sure our time travelers would be murdered before they came back in time to warn our country.>

<We knew that was the purpose of this flight.> He said softly, looking around at the plane. <We lost all but two of the last fighters we have available to shoot it down, but the price we paid was worth every bit. I was not informed we had an agent in place on the American’s team. We were told the American traveler David Jones was on this flight.>

<He was sitting next to me.> I said, pointing at the corpse still strapped into the seat next to the one I’d been sitting in. The name on the uniform jacket had been obliterated when the fighter bullet had blown a hole in his chest. <I was present during all the briefings of the President’s son. It was chance that I was there. When I learned that they were sending another person back, I knew I had to go with them. There was no way to report to my controller. I don’t even know if she still lives, but I knew that command would not want him to go back in time. With my position, I would be able to get into the room with the machine, and I knew I could sabotage it so that it couldn’t be used. You realize it is ready, do you not? Stopping him won’t stop the machine. There is already another man there who they could send, but they wanted David Jones there to make sure it worked properly, and they wanted to send back a relative of the President. He has another son he could send, and if you are right that we lost most of our planes, there is little we could do to stop them.>

<If only we had known you were present.> He said with a sigh as he rubbed his shaved head again. <We could have let the flight go, and you could have sabotaged the machine. We will take that town within a week, we are certain.>

<Too bad we could not just destroy it.> I muttered and he shook his head.

<No, this war has damaged too much of the earth.> He said sadly. <Alexei Shevardnadze himself has come to the war theater. He is in Mexico now, with reserve troops that will come forward to take the base where the machine is located and then he will go back in time once it is captured, but we must ensure the machine does not work. Wait here while I radio command and inform them you are here and alive.>

I nodded at his words and waited as patiently as I could. The real Yuri was was dead. He’d been discovered when we had gotten the information from the agents before their deaths. Since being able to watch him and his activities gave us valuable information about procedures and activities, he’d been allowed to join the Army Reserves, and attend college all the while thinking we hadn’t known about him.

The first week of the war, General Powell had arranged to have him arrested when his Reserve unit was activated. Interrogation had yielded little we didn’t already know and he’d been quietly executed a few days later. I was quite certain the enemy would have lost track of him in the mess that was war, making the story I’d weaved on the spur of the moment believable.

<You will come with me.> A soldier I hadn’t seen before ordered, breaking up my thoughts. He was standing on the ruined tail ramp of the plane and gesturing for me to get up quickly. As I stood, the broken arm, head wound, and pain killer made me quite dizzy and I had to lean on the Soviet soldier in order to get out of the plane.

I needed even more of his help to make it out of the long furrow the plane had dug into the ground. Nearby was a large Hind attack/transport helicopter and the KGB officer was standing in its doorway, gesturing for me to hurry. I did, as much as I could and was handed a radio headset as soon as I was close enough. The KGB officer had a similar set already on his head.

<He is here.> The officer said into his headset’s microphone.

<Yuri Andrei’ich, do you hear me?> A vaguely familiar voice asked over the radio line.

"Da." I answered simply.

<This is Alexei Eduardovich.> The voice said and I let myself gasp in surprise, not even having to force my eyes to go wide. <This signal is scrambled, but I will not risk saying too much. We have confirmed your identity and approved your mission. Do you think you can find a way to complete it?>

"Da." I answered again, hoping against hope he’d never recognize my voice. We’d never even come close to speaking directly before, but I could feel my knees start to shake. He might have seen and heard me in that first Do Over chamber, back in the first time line, but I hoped he’d not heard enough of my voice then to recognize it now. Sure, my reaction would only help my cover, an agent speaking to a high leader of his government for the first time. In reality, I was shaking because this was the closest I’d ever come to the man I considered my arch-enemy, and here I was trying to fool him into ordering his own men to help me! <I will get into their base and destroy their machine.>

<Damage it only!> The strident command came back over the line.

<Sorry, sir, damage the machine.> I corrected myself with what I hoped was enough humility and shame.

<Good luck, and know you will be given the Order of Lenin for this.> He said firmly before the radio went silent. Sure, he expected that I would die after the machine was damaged, but if I had beenthe loyal agent he believed, that should have been enough to guarantee my willing completion of a suicide mission.

"What do you require?" The KGB agent said in excellent English, his eyes going to the soldiers around us to indicate I should speak in the same language for some privacy.

"I need the body of the President’s son, first." I began after a moment’s pause. "I assume he died in the crash?"

"He did." The KGB officer assured me. "He was crushed by an instrument panel."

"Could it look like he might have lived after the crash?" I asked.

"Unless a doctor cuts him open, I believe that could be so." The officer whose name I still did not know answered after a moment of thought.

"Good." I said firmly. "I will also need a pistol, preferably one from a dead American, and several of our grenades as well as a backpack or similar pack from an American soldier. We will load the body of the American President’s son on the helicopter. Tell the gunner to get out and the pilot to fly me where I direct. I will pretend that I woke up on the plane along with several other soldiers. We fought you and managed to get the President’s son aboard your helicopter while I took the pilot hostage. They will believe the son died during the trip from his injuries, and that I did a brave thing trying to return him to the base. Is it far from here?"

"No, less than two hours flight by helicopter." The KGB officer said and he looked towards the cockpit. Even if he spoke English, the pilot could not hear us. "You cannot risk the pilot talking and there is only one way to keep him from being taken prisoner."

"I will kill him when we land, telling them he tried to fight me." I assured him and he nodded, writing the pilot off as a necessary casualty.

<We will get you ready then, good luck comrade.> He said, switching back to Russian.

<Good luck to us all, comrade.> I said in reply and he nodded before turning to issue orders that were carried out with great rapidity. The officer even briefed the pilot, telling him that while he would be taken prisoner, he was to stick to the cover story of my having fought my way onto the helicopter. It took a half-hour for the preparations to be completed and the helicopter to take off with me as the only living passenger, and the body of one other American on board.

"You have got to be the luckiest man in history." General Colin Powell said to me a little more than two hours later. As soon as we were entering Diamond Valley airspace, I’d gotten on the radio and shouted out that I was on the helicopter. An Apache attack helicopter had escorted us into the base; its pilot probably read to fire on us the moment we deviated from his orders. For the last ten minutes of the flight, the Soviet pilot really had been held at gunpoint, just in case he understood enough to realize he’d been double-crossed. Lindstrom, who had led the marines to meet the landing helicopter recognized me and radioed the command center that it really was me in the helicopter.

"Right now, I wouldn’t contest that." I agreed with him. My arm was now hurting like hell, and while an American medic had put it in a sling and offered me a shot, I’d turned down the pain medicine. "General, I need to speak to the President right away."

"I’ve been told that he changed his mind about your…loyalties." General Powell said and I had a moment of doubt. Was Powell really loyal to the dead President Reagan or the living President Bush?

"Let’s just say that I’m loyal to the President." I said non-committaly, and he smiled before leading me further into the admin building and the waiting elevator. Five minutes later, I was on a scrambled radio call to the President’s bunker.

"At least you were able to bring his body back to us." The President said after I expressed my regrets over the death of his son.

"Sir, we’ve got a major problem." I pressed on after the ‘pleasantries’ were over. "Either they have an agent in your bunker or they’re able to unscramble our communications. Whichever it is, they’re going to know I fooled them any minute now, and they’re going to throw everything they have against this base and what it is guarding. I don’t know how soon you can have someone else out here to use the machine, but they’re going to have to get here quick."

"We think most of their planes were shot down in the attack, but I’m not sure if we can risk another flight." The President said. I had failed to inform him that I knew they only had two planes left.

"Sir, we could always send President Reagan’s man back." I offered.

"I don’t trust him." The President said flatly. "It has to be someone I trust, someone whose loyalty I am sure about."

"What about General Powell?" I offered, looking over at the man who was standing next to me, the only other person with a headset on that could listen to this channel.

"He’s a real possibility, but I don’t know if we have the time it would take to brief him fully." The President said after a moment of silence. "The machine is ready to go now, and I don’t want to take the chance on one more thing going wrong. David, I wouldn’t have thought this a few weeks ago, but you’ve earned my trust. I know this is the last thing in the world you want, but as President, I’m going to have to order you to use the machine and go back in time. Carry out the mission as Jeb would have done it. I’m sorry."

"I understand, sir." I said with a heavy sigh that totally belied the shout of triumph that resounded in my head. Not even General Powell could see the smile I was feeling on the inside. Brian’s last words were still a whisper in my head, but they no longer bothered me. "I don’t want to do it, but I will do my duty."

"I know you will son, God Speed." The President said before ending the radio signal.

"You wanted this." General Powell said as he took off his headset and studied me carefully.

"Let’s just say I had an epiphany during the crash." I answered him honestly and he gave a slight chuckle.

"At least you’re managing to do this by order of the President." He agreed. "I was half-afraid I’d have to go against the President to get the right man to use that machine."

"General, it has been an honor and a privilege serving with you." I said, holding out my hand.

"Get it right this time, Davey." He told me as he took my hand. With a nod I turned from him and headed down to the laboratory levels where I’d shortly make my third trip back in time. This would be different than any other time I’d done a Do Over. The first time I’d not really known what would happen, the second time had been out of a need to counter the Chinese agents who had already gone back in time.

This time I was going back with full knowledge, prepared for what was to come and I was not leaving anything behind that I would miss.

Watch out January, 1981, here I come!

As with all my stories, E provides immeasurable input, grammar checking, and all those other lovely editing thingies that make the story so much better!

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