Meeting Dr. Stowel

Without completely duplicating the contents of the project files, a few points should be noted: first, that RS-TS01-A was thought to be dead; secondly that he was at least at one time considered to be a premier expert on quantum and temporal theories; and finally that he is currently in our custody in a questionable state of both body and mind. The subject has sustained severe damage to the right arm, resulting in a sporadic supraspinatus response, limiting all mobility below the rotator cuff on that side.

What I thought of as pure bunk just moments before started to transform into something much more. I didn’t now what a supraspinatus was, but to me it was evidence that this stranger, who had trespassed into my life, was the subject of these notes, RS-TS01-A. Whatever this meant was unclear, but I feared it might be something that could profoundly change the course of things if it were all true. It seemed too complex to be a hoax, and the methodical essence of the words was certainly believable, reminding me of my previous career as a documentation controller for a small law firm. Reading it under the light of its newfound authenticity it became something that was unbelievable, terrible, almost horrifying… and oddly stimulating. Glancing quickly through the new documents, still standing wide-eyed at my open front door, I extracted new and bizarre inferences. There was mention of aliens… of another planet… of time travel. It seemed that RS-TS01-A had actually traveled through time, sometimes willingly, sometimes unintentionally. "The subject" seemed to have had a chronic affliction of time that had trapped him far away from the Earth and humanity, and returned him on April 16, 2006, at which point these documents pick up the tale. Further into the documents there was some talk about an invasion, and a good deal more about aliens…

And then I saw it: the interview documented a brief discussion about a certain amount of missing research.

RS-TS01-A: The important documents went with me, and were left behind. Thankfully, only the ridiculous and self-indulgent notes came back with me. They must have certainly sparked your interest though. You’ve read them? What do you think?

TEA-R4592 Maya: I think it’s all terribly sad. And almost obsessive at times. You go on and on about sand. And you describe something in rather great detail. A ship, I believe. A spaceship? It’s hard to tell. I very much hope to learn more.

"The important documents went with me," he had said. Could they be talking about the same documents that I had dismissed to the bottom of a rather unimportant pile of papers, no further than ten feet from where I was standing, in my own home office? Not fully understanding what all of this meant, I ran to retrieve those notes.

A quick cross-reference revealed that RS-TS01-A was a scientist who had devoted his life to the study of time, had actually traveled through time, and that the TEA (the Temporal Exploration and Advancement project) was in some way connected with his return. He had developed time travel, thanks to a rather alternative way of looking at quantum mechanics that was thoroughly documented in the dog-eared notebook that now lay before me. Those documents, it seemed after looking further into the classified transcripts, were thought to be detrimental to humankind: an awful discovery akin to the atomic bomb that could launch Earth into an interstellar war. And I had those very documents in my possession!

And yet now here he was, RS-TS01-A himself, blinking in and out of my life with government documents, bizarre theories and a good deal of mystery. I made myself a quick drink out of bourbon and coke, put the dogs out, and sat in the quiet of my living room. I tried to read more, but my mind was racing too fast to absorb much. My wife would be home soon.