Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Chapter 54

Sunday, 13 March 2022 – 8:00 a.m. MST

Quinn arrived at his office to find Valerie waiting. His face was drawn. He appeared almost sick as he slumped into the chair behind his desk.

“Is everything okay?” she asked as he entered.

Quinn shook his head. He pointed to a viewscreen and showed the recording from Brad. She watched in silence. She had worked at Q-Morrow for five years while Brad was still there, but she had never actually met him. After the short message ended, Valerie understood Quinn’s morose demeanor.

“Has Bryan reported anything?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Valerie responded. “Not anything like this.”

“He couldn’t have missed something this obvious.” Quinn’s statement sounded a bit like a question. He hoped he was wrong. Bryan had never been the most sociable employee nor the friendliest, but Quinn had never considered him dishonest.

“How could he?” Valerie asked in response.

“Do we have any reason to suspect that Bryan would be hiding anything from us?”

Valerie’s eyes shot to the floor. “Not until just now,” she answered. “He told me that he had been having trouble with the actual message. The way Brad described it, the message should be obvious.”

Quinn sighed. He leaned forward and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s inevitable, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Chaos. I had hoped that we could somehow contain this phenomenon – keep it inside. But when they left, they took it with them. Now it’s bigger, more widespread. Even if we weren’t fighting over it, there’s always been the chance that someone else would notice it. I never expected Brad ... but we forced him ... they forced him. And now everyone has access.”

Quinn tried to make sense of all the feelings that overwhelmed him. He had lost control. His empire was collapsing around him while his closest confidants seemed to be rushing off with as much as they could carry.

“What are we going to do?” Valerie asked. The weight of the situation began to sink in. She had not felt so powerless in years.

“About which part?” Quinn shot back. “The futurestream? It’s lost. Bryan? Enemy. Brad? Dead. Ramesh? Hates me. Laura? Going to die this week. What are we going to do Val? I have no idea. I am entirely at the mercy of the very people that I created and then turned against me.” Quinn stood and in one exaggerated motion, threw everything from his desk onto the floor. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Valerie got up and approached Quinn. He could see the fear and the sadness in her eyes. She reached out to him, to calm him.

“I’m sorry Val,” he quieted. He reached for her. In the past six years, he had lost his temper only a handful of times, but he had never directed his anger at Valerie. He hugged her. She felt the warmth and strength of his embrace. He had so much respect for her and had always cared for her. She had become such a close friend and confidant. He stepped back.

“I’m not sure what to do,” he said quietly. “I’m open for suggestions.”

“We need to prioritize,” she said. Quinn had always respected Valerie’s ability to clearly focus on her objectives even in the midst of chaos. “We need to determine which things we can fix, which we can’t and then make a plan.” She activated a viewscreen and drew up a timeline. “Ramesh has been flying for just over an hour. He won’t be here until tomorrow morning. Bryan has been working through the night. If we assume that he knows about the futurestream, he may have already accessed it. We know the timeframe for Laura’s ... I mean ... if we assume that things haven’t changed, we have a week to determine how to negotiate with Sireesha. We still have time Quinn.”

Valerie paused. She seemed to be calculating. Her eyes were bright with activity. Quinn just watched. His focus was dulled by his overwhelming emotional exhaustion.

“We need to divert Bryan. Give him a crisis. Keep him busy with something else for now. I can take care of that. Next, we need to strengthen our position with Sireesha. Brad spoke of a messenger. Do you know what he meant?”

Quinn stared at Valerie. He saw her lips moving and heard words, but the meaning escaped him.

“Quinn?”

He blinked. “Yes,” he stammered. “The messenger was something Brad always wanted to build.” Quinn spoke in a monotonous haze. “When his parents died, Brad became obsessed with fixing the past. He spent hours with Daniel dreaming up ways that we might use the same phenomenon that creates the futurestream to send messages through the timeline.”

“Is that possible?”

“Theoretically, but I opposed its creation. So did Sireesha and Daniel, apparently. But it seems that Brad persisted,” Quinn smiled.

“If we had the messenger, would it give us a stronger bargaining position?”

“Possibly. I don’t think that Sireesha would want it to use it. She would most likely want to destroy it – ensure that it never gets used.”

“We need to find it. I’ll go over the message again. Do we have anything else? We must take control of this situation.”

Quinn nodded. “Brad’s message contains more than what I just showed you. Much more.” He activated the viewscreen again and showed Valerie all of the additional information Brad had included in his message.

“Thank you, Brad,” Valerie smiled as she considered the new information.

Quinn looked up. “He died for this.”

“I’m sorry,” she responded. “I didn’t mean to be so...”

Quinn shook his head. “It’s okay. You never knew him. He was so...” Quinn struggled to find a word to describe Brad. There was no single word to describe how Brad lived. “He was so good.” That wasn’t the word Quinn wanted, but he was too exhausted to find the perfect word. “You just had to know him.”