No Future Christmas (15 page)

“Of course, the government never let on that the whole War
on Terror was planned from the beginning,” Louise continued.
She snuggled into
her husband’s arms.
“Every secret was guarded by the few involved.
Adams and
Lorry headed a secret society and each member was given untold wealth to keep
quiet.
Those that wanted out died.
You didn’t leave their underground club.”

“What happened, Mom?” Shauna asked.
“How’d the word get
out?”

“One man, the truest patriot of all time, leaked the
word—anonymously.
It’s since come out who he was.
James Centerfield.
He’d been
the secretary to the CEO of the secret society and knew all their secrets.
When
he drafted the documents that authorized an unknown man in the Middle East to
perform acts of terror on people to frighten them enough to conform to his
wishes, Centerfield’s conscience kicked in.” Louise pulled away from her
husband and sat at the table.
“You continue, Douglas, I can’t stand this part.”

A frown marred Douglas’ features and his eyebrows knit
together creating one line along his forehead.
He placed his hands on the back
of a chair.
The whiteness of his knuckles told of his anger.
Mike saw despair
clearly written on his face.

“You see, Mike, that man was Bin Laden.
The secret society
members only wanted small acts of terror to be performed.
An embassy bombed, a
few marines killed here, a hole in a ship, a few navy personnel killed there.
No one ever expected 9/11.
But the man craved power and notoriety.
When the
horror of the towers collapsing was shown worldwide, James Centerfield knew
he’d been the instrument to bring the evil and destruction to his country.
He
couldn’t live with it.
He copied the files that ordered him to draft the
document authorizing the random acts of terror, snuck them out of his office
and prepared to leak it to the world.
He did one thing to protect himself,
though.
That’s how the world eventually found out the real truth.
Which is
where the name for our digital newspaper came from, by the way.” Douglas
grinned.

“Centerfield mailed a copy of the document to a life-long
friend,” Louise said.
“Then killed himself.”

“Then why didn’t we know about the conspiracy in my day?” Mike
asked.
He felt angry, deceived.
He knew he’d never trust a politician again.

“It got lost in the mail.” Louise shook her head.
“The
simplest and stupidest explanation.
The mail system was backed up right after
9/11.
The airlines had lost their contracts with the postal service because
they didn’t have good enough security to protect their planes from the
possibility of bombs being hidden onboard.
The postal service had their own
planes but not enough.
The documents that James Centerfield mailed to his friend
never got there.”

“Then how did the world find out?”

Louise cut a pear into one-inch chunks.
She didn’t eat it,
just continued to cut the pieces smaller and smaller and smaller with sharp,
angry strokes.
“When the postal service went out of business—”

“What?” Mike stared at Louise.
“Who does the mail?”

“No one, Mike,” Douglas said.
“It’s all electronic.
Electronic documents, electronic signatures—instant mail.”

“Wow.” Mike sank into a chair at the table and hung his
head.
“This is too much to process at once.”

Shauna came over and rubbed his neck and shoulders.
She
leaned over and kissed the nape of his neck and hugged him.
“I know it’s a lot.
But you need to know why this world’s the way it is.”

“I know but…God.”

“Forty years later,” Douglas continued, “after hundreds of
thousands of dead and injured young military men and women, after an unpopular
draft, one brave woman, a granddaughter of James Centerfield, found the
original copies of the documents.
James had stored them with his collection of
antique stamps.
Appalled at what she found, she sent the documents to the
biggest newspapers in the world.”

“What happened?” Mike asked.
He shook his head and stared at
his hands.

Louise took up the story.
“Well, there was a global uproar,
as you would expect.
Politicians from this country and around the world cried
foul.
They demanded the opening of all the oil fields in this country.
Importation of Mid-East oil ceased immediately.
The OPEC cartel collapsed.
Terror ended within months.
With no need for their oil, the Middle East lost
billions of dollars that they’d used to support their terrorists.”

Mike pushed back from the table.
“That’s one hell of a
story.” He paced from the living room to the kitchen and back again.

“It’s the real truth,” Douglas said.

“I’m sure it is.
I see the way this world works.
Only a
conspiracy that big could turn around this country and get it away from oil.”
Mike stopped pacing.
“If we had so much oil, why did we stop using it?”

“Because,” Shauna said, “the population was so angry at the
oil companies for their greed they raced to put them out of business by using
alternative fuels.
Every oil company executive was arrested and thrown in jail.
The country had its revenge.”

“Good,” Mike stated.
“They deserved it.”

Shauna grabbed his hand.
“If it hadn’t come out into the
open, Mike, the world would be a vastly different place now.
For all we know,
there might not even be a world.”

“So what do we do now?” Mike asked Shauna’s parents.
“How
does the past conspiracy relate to the Fearsome Foursome?”

“We’re still digging,” Louise said.
“But we’re finding that
only one CEO runs the world.
He just lets us think the other three are in on
it.
We wonder if there is only one person alive.
Our research has found no
documents proving that the three CEOs even exist.
Oh, there are pictures of the
four men all over the place but we never see them together, ever.”

“Who’s the CEO who’s in control?” Shauna asked.

“Donald Carson,” Louise stated.

“The CEO of Planet Energy Corp?” Shauna bounced up from the
table.
“Why the scheming, rotten, low-life…”

Douglas laughed.
“That’s my girl.
All riled up about an
injustice.” He gave her a big hug, wrapping her in his bear-like arms.

“Daddy, you taught me to care, remember?” Shauna asked, her
voice muffled, her face buried in her father’s shoulder.

“How do you plan to expose Mr.
Carson?” Mike asked.
He
drummed his fingers lightly on the wood table.
It didn’t have the ringing tone
of the plastic-type ones he’d seen of late but the solid thump he remembered
from his day.

“We’ve been working on that for five years, Mike and we’ve
made little progress.
We’re thinking we have to infiltrate the highest offices
of the other three corporations to see if a CEO really exists.
That’ll lead us
to exposure of Carson.”

“It’s late,” Louise said.
“Off to bed.
You’ve had a long day
Mike, and Shauna needs her rest.
The world will still be the same in the
morning.”

“Too bad, Mom,” Shauna muttered.

“Off to your room, young lady.
In the morning you can tell
me what you and your young man plan to do to get your name off the Global
Guardians’ most wanted list.”

* * * * *

Mike couldn’t sleep.
He tossed and turned and stared at the
ceiling.
If he didn’t know he was in the twenty-second century, he’d think he
was in any home in Bend, Oregon back in 2004.
The off-white ceiling was
hand-troweled and medium-toned wood beams decoratively crossed the top.
Rich
colors of blue and green with a hint of yellow covered the walls.
The pine
furniture was stained to match the ceiling beams and an old-fashioned comforter
with corresponding blue, green and yellow colors covered the bed.

But the comforter was a tangled mess.
Mike lay in
comfortable sweats that Shauna’s dad had loaned him.
He didn’t need the covers
since the house was warm from radiant heat.
His mind swirled from all that he’d
learned today about the conspiracy, the fact that there might only be one man
running the world.
The horror that 9/11 was brought on by the greed of a few
oil men who only wanted to fatten their pockets sickened him.
His world and
their way of life changed because of a few sick men.
He punched the pillow.
“Damn.”

Mike didn’t know what to do.
Should he go home and get the
word out?
How would he explain his knowledge of future events?
Would it be too
early to gather proof of the conspiracy?
Who would believe him?

No one.

He’d be branded a nutcase.
Plus, he’d probably change
Shauna’s world if he opened up that Pandora’s Box in his time.
No.
He had to
let it go, run its course.
His stomach knotted at the thought that so many men
and women would be killed in that war.

Then there was the problem of leaving Shauna.
He loved her.
He’d suspected it from when he’d first met her in her office but he knew it
when she’d been shot by Johnson.
He thought she was going to die.
If it hadn’t
been for the kind doctor, Shauna might not be here now.

But could he leave his brother?
Never see him again?
He
didn’t much care about his father.
His dad had been too distant when he and
Scott were growing up.
Their mother had died in a car accident just before Christmas
and his father had never recovered.
The man had rebuffed every overture he and
Scott made to become close in the years following his mother’s death.
Luckily
Aunt Evelyn, his father’s sister, had raised them.
Could he leave her too?
Every Christmas was spent with her.

No answers came to him.
Mike climbed out of bed, shoved his
feet into his boots and went in search of something to drink.
He found a beer
from some unknown manufacturer and sat at the kitchen table to drink it.
The
first sip tasted like honey.
He hadn’t had a drink since he’d blundered into
this century.
Mike guzzled the drink and grabbed another.

“Can’t sleep?” Shauna’s soft voice flowed over him soothing
and exciting him at the same time.
Mike’s body hardened.
He had only been able
to kiss her, hug her but not to spend any time with her since they arrived at
her parents’ house.

“No.
Too much information to process.
Come here, woman.” He
grabbed her hand as she passed and hauled her onto his lap.
Her light, citrusy
scent wrapped around him and he nuzzled the downy-soft side of her neck just
under her ear.
Shauna’s groan tore through Mike.
He wrapped his arms around
her, slid his hands up and down her and kissed her temple.
“I love you.” The
words were said simply but Mike felt them deep in his soul.
“I need you.”

Shauna turned in his lap and placed her hands on either side
of his face.
“I love you too.
I’m so in love with you, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, love.
What is there to be afraid of?” Mike kissed her
lush, bottom lip.
He licked it, nipped it, tugged on it.
Shauna squirmed on his
lap, rubbing him to an excruciating hardness.
“I want you.
Now.”

“I want you too.” Shauna ran her hands up under Mike’s
sweatshirt.
She lingered at his hard nipples lightly tugging on them.

Mike groaned and croaked, “Don’t.
Not yet.
I won’t make it
to the bedroom.”

Shauna laughed and the sound raced through him sending
shivers running up his spine.
He hauled her from his lap, dragged her by the
hand to his room and shut the door with his foot.
“Now I can ravish you to my
heart’s content.”

“Ravish away.”

He lowered her to the bed, kissing her on the way down.
Her
lips parted and Mike thrust his tongue inside, sinking into the moist warmth.
He tasted mint as he swept the inside of her mouth.
Shauna’s groan blended with
his and he covered her with his body.
His hands roamed from the hollow in her
neck to her breasts, lingering there long enough to hear her gasps and feel her
squirm under him.