disturbing. If we pulled off the trick, then it was an easy jump to say that others in the future would do so as well.”
“You mean they were traveling in time?”
“Exactly, and the sad thing is that there seemed to be a disagreement underway. Oh, let’s be plain about it—it was war—time war, and it was getting most uncomfortable. Since we believed our own project pre-dated their operations, we decided to do something about it.”
“Aye?” said MacRae. “What was that?”
“Put a stop to it.” Dorland took a deep breath, realizing he had too much to convey here, and too little time to do it. “Something happened, and it was somewhat catastrophic. We tried to reverse that outcome, and thankfully, we were successful.”
“Catastrophic? What are you speaking of.”
“Never mind that now. We prevented it, so there’s no use discussing that. Then we found certain individuals in the future were not pleased with what we had done. This event was a deliberate act, which is the only reason we were able to reverse it. Then we found out there was a great deal more to that operation, and we had to get more directly involved.”
“Involved in what?”
“In the war,” Dorland hurried on. “We figured out a way to keep an eye on things—the history. When things went awry, when we learned of aberrations and deviations from the history we knew, then we set our minds to correcting them. Believe me, this was no small task, but in the course of events we were quite successful—even in persuading these individuals to cease their little time war, and to stop meddling with things. We forced them to negotiate a peace.”
“These individuals you speak of,” said Elena. “They were not from our day, 2021?”
“No, they were from a future time, though we never really determined how far off that was.”
“Then the war was not fatal. It wasn’t the cause of the calamity.”
“What are you speaking of?” Dorland leaned in intently.
“Grand Finality,” said Elena. “It’s a term I was given, though I can’t really say what it means.”
“Yes, I’m very familiar with it,” said Dorland. “I was the man who first coined the phrase.”
“You?”
“Quite so,” said Dorland. “We were the first, you see—the first to open the continuum. At least this was what we once thought. Then I discovered that key, on a mission I was undertaking to set right a little aberration in the history. For an artifact of that nature to be found embedded in the Selene Horse was most alarming. I examined that key very closely, and found it had… properties that could not have been engineered in the past. So what was it doing there in that ancient Greek sculpture?”
“You say you took it with you? After finding it aboard Rodney?”
“Correct.”
“Took it back to the United States?”
“Yes, to the year 2021… July of 2021, to be a little more precise. Just a few weeks before the final alert came in on the 28th of that month.”
“So you’ve just been flying about like a banshee?” said MacRae. “Traveling through time?” He rolled his eyes, incredulous.
“Yes, we can move in time. That’s what our project tested and achieved. My presence here should be argument enough. How you pulled it off is the real question I have. You say it had something to do with that key? Well this is what I came to suspect as well. Then a very strange thing happened—on the 28th of July, 2021. I had that key in my possession for some weeks before that, and then it vanished.”
“It was stolen?” asked Elena, finally realizing how the key had disappeared in May of 1941. This man claimed he was right there, aboard Rodney, and most likely in this very same costume. He claimed he discovered the key in the Selene Horse, and then took it with him. No wonder it was never found again in all the years between that date and 2021.
“Not stolen,” said Dorland. “It literally vanished. I kept it on a chain, just as you have that one there, but it vanished. Naturally I wanted to know why, so I came back here to look for it at a time and place I was reasonably certain to find it—the place where I first discovered it.”
“I see…” Elena thought deeply now, taking all of this in, somewhat amazed. “Well, Professor Dorland, I do not wish to disappoint you, but as you have determined, this is not the key you discovered aboard Rodney.”
Dorland smiled. “There are more than one,”