The Reluctant Whistleblower



Dead Planet LXXX
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The Reluctant Whistleblower

”What have you got planned for us, General Corso? For me & the Dirty Dozen down here? We'll probably need another safe house sooner than later. Maybe a safe planet. Some off-welt bunker? Like Mars maybe. Those DARPA chronovisor guyz are closing in, you know, sir....….”

“I dunno, kid. I’ve been talking it over—with some gentlemen. From the Future. Actually from the Past. They could just as well be from Mars though for all I know—or something they call the Galactic Council or whatever. I swear they're not human.”


“Probably Galactic Senators, General?”


“Well, well…ya know who I’m talkin’ about?”

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The kid shrugged.

“So many Time-Masters, so little Time,” he said. “Well, I got this call last night. Outta the blue. I didn’t know Beltway DC 1860’s had that capability back then?”

“They didn’t, sir. Not back then. But obviously they do now. Like I said…alt.timelines.”
“Well, anyway, son, take a look at this…”

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The message flickered, dimmed, then came on the vide-screen over Corso’s desk:
“I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Babylon Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.”—yours, Abraham Lincoln......................

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“He’s still meeting with us?” “I haven't heard otherwise, son. If this communication thing is authentic, then he’s talking to us straight outta the past, right? It's called email? Who is this guy, anyway? I’m getting the feeling he’s not who I thought he was. He's not just a hick abolitionist backwoods politician-lawyer from Illinois is he?—some guy who got on a train and…” “Yes, general. Like I said—he’s probably a Galactic Senator or some kind of representative from the Future. You know, like Tesla…” “Tesla? I’ve been going thru his File, too. Now that guy is obviously from another Timeline. Even I can see that. Talk about pre-DARPA Darth Vader…” The kid smiled, nodded. Corso was wising up fast…
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“That massive explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River over what's now Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia,” the general said. “That was Tesla showing off one of his scalar weapons, wasn’t it?”
“Yup, just like Haiti, Indonesia, New Zealand, Fukushima—and all the other ones. They’ve weaponized the Future...and now it's leaking into the Past.”

“Well, son” said the general. “I’ve gone over your debriefing file. You were pretty mum about everything. All that shit’s gonna hit the fan in these different timelines it seems. A goddamn multiverse nightmare. Seems like for every Lincoln holding it together—there’s a goddamn Telsa genius waitin’ in the wings to blow it all apart again.”
The kid nodded. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride, general.”

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“These corporate-breakaway timelines, kid. There’s just no such thing as a naïve, innocent general outta the Fifties figuring all this out. I don't understand all this singularity shit or complexification points, it's beyond me? Lincoln was deep in the middle of one of them way back then, wasn’t he? I hope these 4th dimensional beings can keep track of all these goddamned Threads...”


The kid nodded. If only the general knew the whole story…
“Well, some have suggested off-planet Alternative Plans, sir—maybe Mars, for example. As a third alternate. I don't know whether I like that plan or not—but like it or not some of us have seen ourselves there one way or another. I don't know. We may not have a choice. The Beakaways & Aliens are making deals right & left all the time even as we speak. The Babylon Banker middlemen are reaching back into Time like Lincoln said. Then there's Webre who wants to try negotiating an exo-treaty. He’s an attorney dontchaknow—one of those smart-ass Futurists. So many Players in the Poker game, right now, general.”

The general frowned & looked at the screen.
“Yeah, I know. But from what I hear—you’re gonna be a whistleblower Futurist attorney, yourself young man. But why should I trust you either? You know how attorneys get your fingers in every fuckin' pie, right kid?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what they say.”
“They say Lincoln was a pretty sharp attorney, too.” “Yes, sir. He saved a young man’s life once back there in Springfield or somewhere in Illinois. With his dry wit & sense of humor. That plus calmly knowing whether it was a full moon or not during the crime according to the Farmer’s Almanac. Whether the so-called witnesses could see the scene of the crime or not...”

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Corso bit on his cigar and pulled out a tome from outta a drawer in his battle-grey desk, placing it gently down on some other paperwork. It was "Exopolitics" by Webre. Then he pulled out a paper entitled “The Discovery of Life on Mars.” They sat there looking at the documents.

The buzzer on the intercom came on. "Yeah," said the general.

"Some kind of distortion going on in Japan, general. A nuke plant in northern Japan...some TEMPCO GE plant in a city called Fukushima. There's been an earthquake & meltdown. They..."

General Corso flicked it off & looked at the kid. "Well?" the general asked.

The kid frowned. "It's begun."
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“Who are you anyway, young man?” Corso asked.

“That book Exopolitics & that paper of mine, “Life On Mars,”—both were published on the same timeline. A long time ago, sir—in the future.”

“Young man, I know that. I just wish I had your smarts back when I was your age. I would've never joined the Army. The first time I met you—I swore to god that I’d met you before. And then when you took me back to Gettysburg, well—there we were. Standing in that muddy field, waiting for Lincoln to give his speech. I realized right then & there—that that’s where I’d met you before. You’re my déjà vu liaison lieutenant with the Past & Future, aren’t you, son?”

The kid shrugged at the general.

“Son, I still don't get what's happening right now. All these so-called psyops games coming at me outta the Future, well, and now the Past. They've been saying since the Trojan War to beware Greeks bearing gifts, isn't that what they say?"
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The room stayed silent for a long time. Corso lit a new cigar and was lost in deep thought trying to plan ahead. It was like Roswell all over again. Many conflicts dropping outta the sky or was it outta Time? And then this seemingly inevitable top secret security coverup scrabble at the last minute. Finally Corso said, "You tell your young colleagues down in the bunker to sit tight. They’re safe from DARPA for awhile anyway. Who knows how long though. All you young clairvoyant gentlemen—you’re supposedly time travelers, so what am I gonna do with you? You probably sense better than me or any of my staff or the rest of us—what to do or what’s coming down. Any suggestions, young man?"
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The kid didn't say anything.

"If and when the DARPA boyz breach our defenses," the general said, "then they'll probably do a jump down here into the bunker, don't you think? Do we have much time to teleport your asses outta here—safely somewhere else? But where? These black ops boyz as you say—they can probably do anything they want to now or back or in the future; anytime they want. There’s no privacy anymore—not here in third dimensional time or quantum time or space either. Not with them nosing around, right, kid?”
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“Some of the older trainees need medical attention, general.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, they’re vulnerable. LIKE do you think it’s possible for a person to be a whistleblower & not know it?”

“What’d ya mean, young man?”

“I mean like what if maybe some of us were “sleeper-time-travel” agents. Just waiting to be activated by DARPA or whoever—and didn’t know it? They can erase memory too, general.”

Corso bit on his cigar. Jaysus christ, he said to himself. This kid’s really been bruised & beat-up. On the other hand, it's pretty convincing that he’s onto something.

“Well, don’t blame me for getting goddamn paranoid, kid. I know I am right now. And probably you too. The same with that tall gaunt man back in the 1860's Beltway... Goddamn it, he's goddamn paranoid too. It wears a man down. He didn't look well. I guess it goes with the turf, so be it…”

“But General Corso—like I’ve talked it over with some of the other younger teleportees downstairs in the bunker. Some of them knew—some of them didn’t know. Some of them only found out thru hypnosis & dream-regression. Others got a crash-course in time-recognition—when we made our breakout from DARPA training headquarters.”

“Found out what, kid?”

“That they’re just like me…”

“What’d mean?”

“That we’re all precog chrononauts.”

Corso nodded & lit his cigar. The kid was worried about something. But he wasn't saying what it was. If the kid was precog, then...

“Well, yes, of course I believe you, young man. I wouldn’t have taken all you boyz under my wing here at headquarters—if I didn’t think you had something going. Whatever it is, give me a clue. Do any of you need emergency medical attention right now? What can I do, son?”

"Some of us don't have much time left, sir. Open-heart surgery hasn't been perfected yet back here in the Fifties yet...."

Corso leaned back in his swivel-chair & blew smoke-rings at the ceiling—thinking things over. The snoopy nervous DARPA lieutenant’s sudden appearance had complicated matters immensely. Yet it gave them away too. What was DARPA up too?

“I’m not saying some of us ended up like Manchurian Candidates or anything like that…”

“But son, that’s what’s being implied. That DARPA trained & used you guyz for time-travel underground or black ops missions—and that you were, well, somehow unknowingly maybe even unwillingly programmed for secret TTT missions or clandestine assignments without knowing it? Right?”

“Well, sir, there's something else. Like it's…”

“Well, I know what you're gonna say, son. The early DARPA program used kids like you & you were just expendable for their own black-ops purposes—and the program was supposedly canceled. The quantum jump timeline results weren’t consistent like they wanted. Each time you were teleported back to the same location resulted in some kind of minor distortion or difference to the plot or characters or some other detail. It wasn't totally verifiable & repeatable. Or cover-up proof. And yet the program obviously continued, right?”

“Right, sir. It’s still online.”

“And what you you suggested was that DARPA just shifted its game-plan a little bit? Rumsfeld had plans for you guyz to end up at the Naval Academy in Annapolis—some military place under their thumbs, somewhere where they’d have total control of you bigtime? Once they picked the cream of the crop from the pool of trained youngsters?”

“Yes, sir. We were a test group, a pool of tested quantum jumpers they could easily use for a bunch of spies or whatever. Or future proxy POTUS candidates."
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"Yes, we've gone over that too; with Bush, Clinton, Obama."

"They axed our program because it was supposedly too transparent—but the TTT intelligentsia just wanted their assets more covert that’s all. The program went deep black ops even further—selectively erasing our memories. What could be more covert—than a time-traveler that didn’t know or remember it? Like after a Mars assignment or political appointment or assassination rogue rotation.”

“Hmm. Yup, I see what you mean. So where you going with this angle?"

“Well, some of us older participants have already been developing heart-valve defects—because of all the jumps. The ventral valves in our hearts are too rigid now. The teletransportation causes heart problems.”

“Like what kind of problems?”

“Well, for example, mitral valve prolapse where the valve fuses into a kind of butterfly effect, so that the cardiac surgeon asked my parents later on how I developed this murmur valve problem—a birth defect problem from some early childhood disease they thought?”

“Hmm.”

“Later we know many of the adult participants after many time-jumps had to have open heart surgery operations in the future to correct this hardening & degeneration of the heart valves. I’ve got a pig’s valve inside my heart right now—calcification & actual thickening of the heart valve due to all the time-jumps & living in alt.timelines...”
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“So, you’ve gone thru surgery—as well as this hypnosis regressive therapy thing—and…”

“I’m a whistleblower they cultivated to help the program grow into the future, sir. They let me know early—others didn't find out until now.”

“All 12 of you down there?”

“Yes, sir. We were all expendable. I got them outta there just in time.”

“Jaysus christ…”

“Most of us were early DARPA student trainees. They didn’t discontinue the program. They only went deeper into black ops with us.”

“You remember some of the black ops missions?”

“You don’t wanna know, sir.”

“Son, it’s my business to know. Whatever you time-traveler kids did or were forced to do—I need to know everything. All of you are safe for now. At least temporarily anyway.”

“Yes, General Corso, but some don’t trust you either…”

Corso got angry at first, then thought about it. He relit his cigar & nodded to the young man.

“Your right, young man. All of you were set up. I don’t blame you for not trusting anybody at this moment in your lives. All of you have been used & abused—in ways I’ll probably never be able know or comprehend.”

They sat in silence for awhile.
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“Well, here I thought the Nazi Breakaway Gang was a nasty mob of thug characters—them and the Babylon Bankers. But then maybe they’re the ones who'll end up getting used by all this devolving TTT espionage bullshit. Along with blowback from using all those initial South American dictators plus all the young Latino victims…”

The kid shrugged. He tried to stay outta exo-politics. The general smoked his cigar.

“Well, young man. Our little Gettysburg jump back then caused quite a flap here at Headquarters. With the DARPA boyz too. BTW who was that handsome young Union captain accompanying you back then in that crowd? Jaysus, he looked kinda familiar, didn’t he, son?”

“You should know, general,” the kid smiled.


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