AGENT O’NEILL: Okay.
COL. SMITH: Douglas carries the recessive trait for moving between time lines—like all of the DRAGON’S TEETH children. The world-walkers used a fertility clinic in Boston to run a rigged artificial insemination program, to breed more children who were also recessives. We figure they were going to approach some of them, as adults, to become host mothers or sperm donors … The point is, the first-generation carriers aren’t able to world-walk themselves. And that goes for Douglas. When the terrorists set up the DRAGON’S TEETH program they already knew about her, hence her name appearing on the database. But she was born years before they set that wagon rolling. Anyway, her birth mother is most definitely one of Them—Miriam Beckstein. In fact, she was one of their ringleaders. There’s an outstanding warrant for her arrest. Charges include mass murder, terrorism, crimes against humanity, violations of the Espionage Act, theft, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and treason. Oh, and narcotics trafficking.
AGENT O’NEILL: Any outstanding parking tickets? Tax evasion?
DR. SCRANTON: I didn’t see any reason to complicate things needlessly.
COL. SMITH: So we have this baby, born and adopted out long before her mother showed up on our radar. Back in the nineties, so long before 7/16. This terrorist baby is just a baby, and not her mother’s responsibility anymore. We tracked down the father and it turns out he’s on his third marriage. He’s a successful clinical oncologist in a teaching hospital in the Research Triangle. Naturalized citizen, born in Pakistan, came over with his parents when he was three. He was investigated by DHS in the wake of the Indo-Pak war, but came up clean. More recently we screened him for that same JAUNT BLUE recessive gene trait the world-walkers share, and he’s negative. Whereas the Beckstein woman was most definitely positive, an active world-walker.
AGENT O’NEILL: So you’re saying she’s an adult recessive carrier. Older than the DRAGON’S TEETH cohort, but still Generation Z? And she’s not some kind of ringer?
COL. SMITH: Yup. She’s clean. No criminal record. Two loving middle-class parents, three surviving grandparents, mixed-race adopted kid. She had a really good childhood. Not silver-spoon privileged, but she never went short of evening courses or hobbies or summer camps during vacation. Lots of Girl Scout stuff: I mean, you couldn’t make this up—she’s your all-American straight arrow. They put her through college, then got out of her way when she struck out to make a life for herself, but they’ve always been there when she needs them. She’d be totally normal if she wasn’t a carrier for the JAUNT BLUE capability.
DR. SCRANTON: And she has no background with the world-walkers.
AGENT O’NEILL: Don’t tell me this is new information.
DR. SCRANTON: Of course not. We’ve been tracking Rita Douglas since the bad old days. She was just a kid when they nuked the White House. She was on a watch list for eight years—one of my predecessors thought maybe Beckstein would come for her eventually, but it seems they’re not that kind of family. Or maybe she’s forgotten all about her college accident by now. Or thought she could protect the kid by burying her. Anyway, as a civilian and a recessive carrier, Ms. Douglas was of no use to us. Until now.
AGENT O’NEILL: What changed?
DR. SCRANTON: This is classified: the brainiacs in the lab under the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory finally figured out how to switch on the JAUNT BLUE world-walking trait in carriers. Carriers such as the DRAGON’S TEETH teenagers and our current person of interest. You’re now authenticated and listed for that particular code word. We’re going to recruit, motivate, train, and run her as an intelligence asset. A para-time spy. And that’s going to be your job.
AGENT O’NEILL: Holy crap.
DR. SCRANTON: The DRAGON’S TEETH kids are still mostly in their teens. They’re too young for the job we have in mind. It demands a certain maturity. But Rita Douglas is in her mid-twenties and fits the profile like a glove. I mean, she’s so clean it’s eerie—almost as if her family were aiming her at the political track, or a job in national security. Maybe they knew something, or guessed enough to train her to keep her head down instinctively. Either way, she’s almost the perfect candidate for this operation. Almost.
AGENT O’NEILL: You’re talking about turning her into a world-walking agent. Actually taking the war to the enemy’s time line?
DR. SCRANTON: Eventually, yes.
AGENT O’NEILL: They’re still out there? We have confirmation? You’ve got a fix on them?
COL. SMITH: You bet your ass they’re out there. As for their location … that’s a need-to-know matter. Let’s just say, we can’t just barge in and trash the joint this time. Which is why you’re being pulled into this sandbox as of now. We think Ms. Douglas is the right tool for the job. We want you to run Rita. Are you up to the challenge?
AGENT O’NEILL: That’s a big responsibility you’re putting on me, sir.
DR. SCRANTON: Don’t blame me, blame Project Oversight. But yes. They’ve got a high opinion of you after Stockholm. Question is, are you on the team?
AGENT O’NEILL: I’ll do my best, sir.
COL. SMITH: Well, now we need to get your authorizations upgraded. Lifelogger, disable code [REDACTED].
SECURITY LEVEL EXCEEDED
LOG REDACTED
Motivating Rita
SEATTLE, MARCH 2020
Being questioned by the men (and women) in black from the DHS was a lot like being under arrest, minus the handcuffs, and with “please,” “thank you,” and makeup remover pads in return for cooperation. Rita was grudgingly grateful. But, as she kept reminding herself whenever they let her alone, it could be a lot worse. Might soon get a lot worse, if … She shied away from that thought. You didn’t need to be guilty of anything to get into trouble with the feds: you just needed them to think that you might have something to feel guilty about.
They left the conference center in a Tesla with blacked-out windows, then drove her for half an hour through the trackless, office-zoned industrial yards of Seattle. Their destination was an anonymous warehouse with a loading dock and a windowless door. There was nothing to distinguish it from hundreds of others except for a couple of unobtrusive bird-drones soaring overhead like legless, featherless seagulls with telephoto eyes. Inside, it was furnished with office cubicles and, disturbingly, a shipping container tricked out as a motel room—if motel rooms came without windows and had doors that locked from the outside. Gomez and her sidekick—Rita gathered he was called Jack, but his surname remained elusive—ushered Rita into a room like a compact Holiday Inn, then locked the door. Half an hour later it opened again and a uniformed cop shoved her suitcase inside. It had been searched and clumsily repacked, but everything was present.