Future Assassinations

Xander sat there staring at the data stagnant on the screen. He rejected the conclusion as he was not going to support another assassination. He considered fudging some numbers, but he did not want to lose all the work he had spent the last three weeks calculating. He ran down the years, 1954 they began construction of Disneyland, 1955 opening day, 1959 began scouting for the second amusement park, 1963 Walt considers Orlando, 1964 begins purchasing land, 1965 major land purchases are completed and the success of Disneyworld is locked in.

All of his data pointed to the need for a tragic event to halt all of Disney’s progress after 1959 when Disneyland became overcrowded. It could not happen earlier because that would stifle the popularity of Disney and the theme park industry may never have taken off. It could not happen after because the push to build the park may have continued after Walt’s death.

Xander played with some scenarios trying an accident in the park, but that killed the industry. He toyed with the idea of sabotaging their film division, but it just caused more focus on their theme park division. Whether he liked it or not, assassination was the only solution to his problem. Knott’s Berry Farm could only take over the industry if they built on the east coast first and it had to be timed perfectly, just like Disneyworld was.

Xander placed his hands on his desk letting out a large sigh worried about implicating himself with another murder, granted the statute of limitations passed a hundred years prior by the ultra conservative movement would protect him from being brought to trial, but a murder two hundred years in the past still felt like murder. He peered into the small screen one last time before he pressed the button on the side to send a copy to his boss.

He looked over at his mediaganizer knowing that he would receive a call from his boss soon confirming his findings. This job was not what Xander had expected when he decided to be an analyst. He assumed that he would be looking into numbers and making decisions, but not decisions of life and death.

He looked around his small apartment allowing the reality sink in that this was his life, his world, his failure. Little light came into the four hundred square foot cave found in the middle of a mid-rise building. Clothes littered the floor just as old food littered the kitchen, it should not have been a way of life, but it was. He had not left the small space in months, there was no reason to. He had all he needed inside the small room, his job, his life, his entertainment it was all confined to the apartment.

The madiaganizer lit up with wonderful illumination resembling the flashing lights required by any modern musical concert. The slick black necessity shook in anticipation of its owner utilizing it. Xander took a deep breath as he reached across the couch to snatch up the small black device.

As his hands glazed over the screen, a picture of his old fat boss cued up before Xander’s eyes. The old man’s slightly sweaty and plump skin glistened in perfect view over the screen with better clarity than Xander’s eyes could deliver.

“I just wanted to go over your findings with you. You know how it is. It costs a lot of money to change the past.” The man’s neck bobbled to the sides while he spoke imitating the movements of a turkey. There was the occasional cough or hiccup, but it was a repulsion that Xander had become accustomed to after he took the job half a decade before.

“Yes sir.” Xander always tried to display the utmost respect to his superiors.

“1959? We see the highest ROI in that specific year?”

“Yes sir. In order to cripple the Disney Corporation in our current life time, we need to destroy their greatest success which of course was Disneyworld.” Xander did his best to ignore the idiocy of having to dictate what his report had already told his boss.

“Why 1959?”

Xander hid the sight of his boss as he pulled up his report on the mediaganizer so he could read it verbatim. “The timeline needs to be left unharmed up to the point where the market demanded the east coast amusement otherwise we could be jeopardizing the United States position in the world.”

“Blah blah blah. I get it. So, your analysis presents the idea that an assassination of Walt Disney in 1959 would cripple the Disney Corporation leaving us the only true world market power corporation left in the current year? What about retaliation? Disney has the rights to the next time travel dates, what do you think they will do in response?”

“My analysis suggests that they will no longer have the power to travel on that day, they should be defunct before we all wake up. But even if they do, the next allowable history alteration will be in five years from now.”

“Got it. We will push this through and there will be some changes overnight on Friday.” The fat man deactivated the device and Xander was left alone in his apartment with nothing but his conscience.

Xander spent much of the next few days preparing for the transition to the new physical time line. Changing the past always sent such a shock to everyone’s systems. The occasional person went missing due to the change of them never being born, companies dissolved over night due to their assets never having been collected, and some of the misfortunate lost their jobs, their wealth, and on a rare occasion, their health.

Other than those types of changes everything else pretty much stayed the same, people’s memories remained as only the physical timeline changed, the mental stability of the specific dimension they were in remained constant. It was a function of the mind. For thousands of years it was misinterpreted that the brain and mind were the same thing. The mind is actually an external entity that remembers the past even if it no longer exists hence the ability of creative people to create situations and characters that do not exist.

On Sunday night Xander went to bed hoping for a change. He knew a few things for sure: one, he would still be alive, two he would still be an analyst for Waloogle. If these two statements were not true then the assassination would not work, the creator of the assassination must still be the creator of it after it has happened or everything would naturally revert to the original state of the world.

His desires were resembled hopes for him living in a tropical paradise in a large house with ungodly amounts of money. It would be a step up from his small dark box in the heat of central Mexico. He considered the idea that telecommuting may not be necessary, that he may get to go into a workplace, maybe his parents would still be alive. These wondrous thoughts danced in his head as he drifted into slumber.

The assassin did his job, relieving Mr. Disney of his life just before he let his partners know he was in the process of creating a new amusement park. The job itself was simple with technology from four centuries into the future death was brought on to look like a simple heart attack. The old human biology was very susceptible to remote control as natural selection had not yet created a defense to physical psychic attacks.

The assassin returned to the future moments after he left with the fond memory he witnessed of life in the twentieth century.

Monday was welcomed by the world awaking to a new version of itself. Much of the landscape remained the same. It was the reason historical manipulation was as safe as it was going that far back. A few buildings had been moved or never created, a couple of countries previously destroyed by war were back in full swing and to the chagrin of the Waloogle Corporation Disney had gone bankrupt hundreds of years prior.

Xander awoke to a bright room in filled with joy. There were pictures of flowers all over the walls and the room was plastered in a horrendous light pink. Xander’s mind hurt as his brain filled with memories of two separate lives. He received a relentless attack of new memories, those which felt like a dream, but were the current reality of everything in his life with the new history. Behind those hid the memories of his previous life which was no longer an existence. This being the first time he felt the history change, Xander fought with his mind on which memories were now realities and which were a suddenly fictitious past.

He got out of bed seeing the long pajamas he was wearing and laughing at his new and old fashioned style. He looked out the window hoping to see beaches and palm trees, but was welcomed by another unfamiliar sight. The land was covered in a thick beautiful cover of snow. His yard holding a huge amount of it, even under the massive trees he had.

Xander chuckled to himself realizing that this was the first time he had ever experienced seeing snow and it may be a better fortune than his dream of living on a tropical island. He went to the closet to put on his clothes. Any one of the dozens of suits had hung nicely on the clothing rack. He looked down at the mediaganizer on his dresser which was vibrating softly as it tried to alert him that he needed to send a message to corporate letting them know if he had experienced a change in his personal time line. He was quick to pull up the message application and sent off a note explaining that he was in a different time line than he was last night. Before he could put the phone down a message was returned asking him to come into the office for a historical briefing.

As Xander stepped out of the doorway to his room he scanned his memories trying to find out where the office was, he could not remember what train line he took to get there. But no matter how he tried there was no recollection of his travels to work. He continued down the hall and eventually down the stairs in a state of confusion until he was greeted at the edge of the kitchen by a beautiful woman. Her tall yet thick features jogged his memory to the fact that she was his wife of five years.

It was odd looking into her face feeling things for a woman that he felt only existed in a dream world, but he greeted her with a hug and a smile.

She pulled back a little to look him in the eyes, “Are you ok?”

Xander realized she had not felt the time shift as he did and that the world had continued as normal throughout the night. This meant she probably did not exist in his previous time line. “Sorry, honey.” He stumbled on the pet name, not sure if it was the normal one he used. “I changed time lines last night.”

His wife grasped him hard behind his back pulling him in tight to her body. “You were a different you last night? I am so sorry, but I love you and we have a great life together.” She felt a little hurt that the love of her life was only partially conscious of their epic love affair, but she understood. In fact everyone around the globe understood this was just the way life was and if you were unlucky then one day you would find yourself in a different place with a different life.

“I am supposed to go to the office to get a briefing.”

“Of course, we will spend tomorrow together then.”

“But, I don’t know how to get there.”

The question confused his wife, she pointed warily to the stairs that led to the basement. “There are transporters in the basement. Yours is the green one, just tell it to take you to the office.”

Xander robotically walked to the stairs while his wife stared off at him wondering what kind of world he came from.

He trudged down the steps into the small room damp and cold from the harsh winter outside. There were no decorations, just cold concrete on all four walls. In the center of the sat four sets of tracks, two had what appeared to be encased motorcycles on them. The other two were empty. He slid the hatch back from the green motorcycle box and slid into the plush reclined seat. The hatch closed automatically overhead.

“I need to go to the office.” Xander spoke unsure of himself, but the machine knew what he wanted and within seconds he was moving hundreds of miles per hour down dark narrow passageways.

The trip was only about half an hour, but the intense speed mixed with realization that he was inches away from solid concrete walls left him nervous. He arrived in another damp, cold basement. His transport was one of many resembling what he would have called a parking lot with each parking space attached to a set of tracks that dipped into the floor where they all met up into a single set of tracks.

Xander pulled himself out of his small vehicle and unsteadily made his way to the stair leading out of the basement. He walked through a doorway into a massive room filled with people all milling around as if they had no idea which direction they should be heading. The room was ten stories tall, but was open to the ceiling, with massive windows on either side. There were banners hanging across the gorge of a room welcoming everyone to the Anchorage location.