Chapter Text
Eddie wonders if he has committed a felony he is unaware of.
The Sergeant clears his throat and folds his hands on the desk before him. “Before we proceed with this,” he says. “I would like to clarify: anything and everything you hear from me is not leaving this room. You will not speak of this, you will not mention this, and you will not reveal this. Am I understood?”
Sergeant William’s office is tidy and neat, composed and not revealing anything, much like his terrifyingly blank face as he stares at Eddie. If Eddie pulled out a ruler and measured the distance between the stapler and the paperclip box, he’s pretty certain it would be exactly two inches. It’s a ridiculous thought that crosses his mind as he thinks distantly: this might be serious.
Eddie got the letter two days ago. He had ripped it open in a fearful frenzy the moment he saw the military logo, only to find a request for a meeting scheduled for the coming Thursday. He hadn’t been able to sleep the past nights, wondering if he was going to be whisked away by the CIA for a crime he wasn’t aware he had committed.
But so far, he hasn’t gotten thrown behind bars or put into an interrogation room, so he couldn’t have anything that bad, right? He even got a glass of water from the secretary outside. What kind of interrogation involves a glass of water, anyway (unless it’s laced, which he definitely considered)?
Eddie nods, careful not to express any external doubt. He’s not familiar with private meetings, but he is familiar with authority. Plus, if secrecy is what they’re looking for, he’s not looking to be a top fugitive just yet, so he chooses to nod obediently. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Sergeant Williams says. “We called you out here and requested your presence because you’re one of the very few being considered for an experiment.”
Eddie can’t stop the subtle falter that crosses his face this time. He tenses in his seat and hopes it’s not as visible as it feels. “An…experiment?”
“We specifically chose you as a candidate for your performance, and if you choose to participate, we expect the same efficiency.” Sergeant Williams takes a file from the top drawer and slides it across the desk. “You will get a decent reward in exchange for participation.”
Eddie carefully takes the file into his hands and flips it open. He skims through the contents and can’t stop the rise of his brows when he sees the number of zeros attached to the money. It would not only do wonders for Chris’s college fund, but Eddie’s sure there would be a hefty leftover.
But this—he—
“Is the experiment dangerous, sir?” Eddie asks tentatively.
Sergeant Williams gives a noncommittal hum. “No guarantee. You’ll have to read more into that and talk to the people part of the project,” he gives Eddie a one over and tilts his head ever-so-slightly. “Are you a family man, Diaz? Anything, anyone tying you down?”
Eddie gulps. He suddenly feels sweaty. “Uh—no, sir. Recently divorced. My ex-wife and son currently live in California.”
Eddie doesn’t like to think about his split with Shannon. It happened right after the news of her mother’s illness and the argument that ensued, the nail in the coffin being her crying that she couldn’t do this anymore. The softness of her confession, how truly devastated she sounded, had stopped Eddie right in his tracks, and he audibly heard his world crumbling to pieces around him.
It’d been a long time coming, now that he thought about it. He knew deep down that it wasn’t going to work; he always did in a way, but he averted his eyes out of his cowardly tendencies. The whole time, he was running away—a very frequent pattern with him.
The divorce had been fairly quick and simple, but talking to Chris was anything but. He hated sitting his little boy down and explaining that he won’t be around as much, but promising him that he’d still see him all the time. Custody was the iffy part, but he and Shannon both agreed that co-parenting was the best approach.
His parents were not happy. They desperately tried to have Eddie maintain full custody of Christopher, and despite their disdain for divorces, they seemed almost glad that he was separating from Shannon.
Eddie was—is livid about that, to say the least. After all, they were part of the reason why Shannon was slowly pushed to the edge. His mother never made it easy for her, and the audacity for them to express relief from having her “out of the picture”?
Eddie hated himself for leaving her alone in that condition, regardless of whether him being a “provider” or not. He hated himself even more for having a certain weight lifted off him after the divorce.
It feels criminal, to feel any ease from the consequences of his own actions. Forget his parents, who is he to be even slightly relieved? So what if he no longer had to listen to the footsteps of approaching doom for his marriage that he knew was coming? Shannon was the one who suffered here, not him.
Now, as a result, Christopher is in California, and Eddie can do nothing but retrace his footsteps to see where he went wrong.
(Everything, he thinks—he went wrong with everything in his life.)
“So you’re unattached?” The Sergeant says, and Eddie is brought back to reality.
Eddie nods once. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. There’s no safety guarantee with this, after all.” The Sergeant says casually, as if he hadn’t dropped the most ominous statement yet.
“Is there a high mortality rate with this experiment, sir?”
“Unsure. You’d have to ask the researchers for that type of information.” Sergeant Williams says. “That is, if you agree to participate in this project. Rest assured, Diaz, it’s not a human experiment or anything biochemical. It’s more of you pursuing uncharted waters. An expedition, if you will.”
“An expedition,” Eddie repeats. He glances at the numbers again. “For this reward, sir?”
“Yes,” the other man says. “Be honest with me here. Are you willing to participate? Because if you are, you can sign the bottom of that document, and I will tell you the details you need to know. If you’re not, you can leave this behind and forget all about it.”
Eddie stares at the file in his hand, and the blank signature space at the bottom. He tries not to crease the paper, but his rigid grip digs into the file covers.
If he participated in this—whatever confidential experiment guaranteed no safety—that would be him running away again. The no promise of safety is also a noteworthy detail, because wouldn’t he be an irresponsible parent if he dove straight into something that assured nothing of his physical safety?
What would Chris think? That his father had left him for the military, yet again?
But the reward. The money. It’s so much more, infinitely times more than the jobs he’s taken in the past, and that’s including the military. This money would at least guarantee a good education path for Chris, and he can live a comfortable life. Eddie can help him. He may not be physically there with him right now, but this is the one major way in which he can prove to be purposeful as a father.
He can do something. This would allow him to do something worthwhile for his son.
Eddie, before his hands can start shaking, takes the pen from the desk and scribbles his signature on the document. He slides it back to the man across from him, and he takes a deep breath.
Sergeant Williams’ face is still scarily blank, but there’s an air of satisfaction around him. He takes the file and skims over it before setting it aside. “Your participation is appreciated. We’ll contact you when you’re needed at the base.”
Eddie fights the twisting of his guts. “May I ask what the experiment is, sir? ”
“You may,” Sergeant Williams leans back into his chair. “Time travel.”
Eddie stares at the Sergeant’s face and tries to catch even a trace of a joke in his stern, cold expression. He can’t help the nervous chuckle that escapes him when he finds none. “I’m sorry?”
“Time travel,” Sergeant Williams repeats. “You’re being sent back in time.”
-
There have been moments in Eddie’s life when he felt like he was living in a simulation.
The things he’d lived through felt too surreal—almost like a plot of a fabricated reality TV show. Half the time, he expected a cameraman or an overly gleeful host to jump out of nowhere and start interrogating him for his thoughts.
This is one of those times. Eddie is waiting for someone with a mic to pop out in the room that oddly looks like the waiting room of a hospital.
“Your health checks and physical exams came back with stellar results,” the man in a lab coat—Bryan, Eddie thinks—tells him as he flips through the papers on his clipboard. “And I hope you read through the materials we gave you?”
Eddie swallows the snort that almost escapes him. “The history homework? Yeah.”
Bryan levels him an unimpressed stare. “It’s so you will be informed of whatever events may be going on at the time.”
“Were you the one who assigned me to the 19th and 20th centuries?”
“No, but would you have rather gone to Medieval Europe? Battle the Plague?”
For the past two weeks, Eddie had been forced into studying modern history. He felt like he was back in high school, cramming the contents of the AP History textbook. At one point, he even dreamt of vigorously studying, and he’d woken up in a fright, a random historical date on the tip of his tongue. He’d even been given a worksheet testing him on the events he could potentially witness.
Soon after the meeting with Sergeant Williams, Eddie learned that he was one of the five participants. Each subject was assigned specific eras, and Eddie had the misfortune of being assigned the most chaotic times in human history—the late 1800s to the late 1900s. He wishes he could’ve gone to a peaceful era in the Roman Empire or something.
The concept of time travel had been challenging to process, in all honesty. For the first few days, he kept waiting for the joke to drop until he was taken to meet a group of scientists involved. Bryan was one of them, the youngest chief in history, but capable and very, very ambitious.
Bryan, who is still flipping through Eddie’s health exams. Because he apparently needs to double-check before Eddie gets transported through time.
“You seem more nervous than me,” Eddie comments.
“Forgive me if I’m nervous that my creation, which the government spent billions on, won’t work.”
Eddie huffs. “Hey, you’re not the one going back in time.”
“I’m responsible for this, Mr Diaz. If you or any of the test subjects disintegrate or end up in the Stone Age without a way to get back, it will be on me.” Bryan states coolly.
Eddie’s stomach drops. “I might never be able to come back?”
“It’s a low possibility. There’s a higher chance of you passing away in the past than getting stuck in it.”
Oh. Right. Eddie forgot that he could actually die during his journey.
That news had not been particularly enjoyable, especially considering how tumultuous his assigned years were, but it also made something click, because why else would the reward money be so substantial? It’s basically compensation, an insurance in case Eddie died and Shannon had to find out through a letter that her ex-husband died “in action.”
Eddie ensured that the money would go to her and Chris in the event of an emergency, going so far as to request that it be included in his contract. Otherwise, what would be the point of all this?
“Are you nervous, Mr Diaz?” Bryan asks once he sets the clipboard down.
“I think it would be worse if I weren’t,” Eddie answers. “You know, considering that I didn’t even know time travel was possible until a month ago.”
“You do remember what I told you?” Bryan says. “The rules and limitations?”
Eddie straightens, because he actually revised for this. “I can die, so I can’t do anything reckless. I can’t control when the years switch or when I’ll come back. My clothes will change according to the era, but everything else will be the same, so I shouldn’t talk much.” Eddie pauses. “Wait, how do you manage to change my clothes? I know I have to wear white head to toe when I go, but is it a programming thing? How does it automatically match up wherever I go?”
Bryan looks at him like he’s slow. Eddie shuts his mouth, knowing he spoke a little too much. “Right. You can’t even tell me the aim of this whole thing, so why would you tell me how it works?”
“It’s protocol,” Bryan reasons. “You forgot the last rule.”
Eddie swallows a sigh. “I have to keep my interactions liminal, if not none.”
“And why’s that?”
“The butterfly effect.”
“Which is?”
“The smallest thing can affect this current reality,” Eddie mutters. “Like a ripple.”
Bryan nods, satisfied. “Very much like a ripple.”
“Would my going to the past change anything, though?” Eddie questions. “If time travel hasn’t been done before, who’s to say that I’ll change a thing?”
Bryan blinks and stares at him for a stretched second before saying, “I think you know my answer to that.”
Eddie thumps his head on the wall behind him. “Right,” he sighs. “You can’t tell me anything.”
“The less you know, the better.”
I’m the one going into this with the possibility of death, and I don’t deserve to know? Eddie bites back from saying. He was given the details he was allowed to know already, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the questions festering in his head. He would maybe opt for keeping himself in the dark if it weren’t for the very real threat of dying.
This is, in a way, scarier than enlistment. Sure, no bullets are flying at him, but this is delving into a world he hasn’t begun to understand.
Something crackles on the line connected to Bryan’s earpiece, and he mumbles something back before telling Eddie to follow him. He leads him out of the room, navigates through windowless halls that look eerily bulletproof (it most likely is), and they walk for what feels like decades. Eddie distantly thinks he’d never be able to get out if he were to get lost in this labyrinth.
By the time they reach the destination, Eddie’s vision is used to the monochrome walls, and he instinctively squints at the room’s brightness. Once blinking away the shock, Eddie sees what’s before him, and his lips part.
A dozen scientists are bustling around the giant space, some yelling out orders and others working silently at whatever respective task is assigned to them. And in the middle of it all, there’s a glass room surrounding what looks like an elevated landing pad. It’s silver and every bit intimidating, like a looming presence sticking out like a sore thumb.
Eddie knows, in an instant, that he’d be the one standing on that platform.
One of the scientists approaches Bryan and hands him a bag. Bryan, without even looking in, hands it to Eddie. Eddie peeks in and finds a shirt and a pair of pants, both completely white. He glances up, and Bryan is already pointing to a small changing room.
Things go quickly from there. Now clad in white, Eddie undergoes a final health examination and receives another review of the rules. Then, he gets handed a watch. It’s an unassuming one—an analog one with brown leather straps, something that could be found in a dollar store. Eddie frowns in confusion.
“This is the only equipment you can bring from the present and into the past,” Bryan tells him. “The watch will tell you when you’re about to be transported to another period. It will give you two vibrations, one for five minutes prior, and one for the final minute. Once you feel it vibrate, make sure to find a secluded area to avoid anyone seeing you when it happens.”
Eddie fiddles with the watch. “How long would I stay in one period?”
Bryan remains stoic. “That’s up to us. All you need to worry about is this watch and the rules given to you.”
Of course. What did Eddie expect?
Eddie slides the watch around his wrist and straps it securely. Two scientists—two—fret over it, pulling and tugging to make sure it can’t come off. He nearly asks if four pair of hands are really necessary to check how well he can put on a fucking watch.
All words die on his tongue, however, as he is led towards the glass room.
The bolted door, also glass-like, is carefully opened by gloved scientists. A gust of cold air washes over Eddie, and goosebumps rise across his entire body. He’s sure the chill isn’t the only reason behind the goosebumps.
“This is it,” Bryan says. His face looks much more strained than when they were in the hospital waiting room lookalike. “You’re on your own from here on out. Do remember the obligations you are under.”
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” Eddie attempts a joke, but his voice wavers ever-so-slightly, and it loses its footing before it comes close to landing.
Bryan, wise and cold Bryan, only nods and takes a step back. “Good luck, Mr Diaz. I hope to see you soon.”
Hope? Not expect? Eddie thinks, and the choice of word ties around his heart and squeezes like a lasso. He is practically shoved into the glass room, and he almost can’t find the willpower to move his legs until he takes in the number of scientists around the transparent walls. Tentatively, he stumbles across the room and climbs the short steps of the elevated platform.
Once he reaches the red dot marking the center, he turns around to look at the people beyond the glass. There’s a mix of emotions—anticipation, confidence, fear, wariness. The only one with a steely expression is Bryan, but even he looks nervous in the slightest way. That nervousness doesn’t disappear as he nods, and the scientist next to him operates what looks like a control panel.
Eddie gulps. This is it. No going back now. Worst-case scenario, he was somehow going to get transported to the ice age and drown in freezing waters. Or maybe they’d accidentally send him to some era far from the ones he was assigned to, and maybe he’d get caught in the guillotine and—
The platform beneath him suddenly stirs to life. There’s a loud whirr, and a bright light fills the transparent room. A high-pitched frequency abruptly pierces his ears, and he thinks he hears himself scream. He’s not sure, especially when everything else is deafening. It’s like the world is folding in on itself.
Then, Eddie sees black.