Jonas worried as he shut down Center 2. He called for an immediate full staffing. The Center needed all the possible information they could gather, faster than they could gather it. They would double check records and verify what they could from the Center 1 transmissions. What a shock. The Center from the future contacted them. And wanted information.
Jonas believed Center 1 should have the information. He realized all kinds of glitches occurred with any operation, but something still felt wrong about this whole situation. Center 1 should have more information available than they did. What are they not telling us, Jonas intuited there was more than one gap in what they were told. Perhaps we will find out in the next broadcast, he thought. There were a lot of possibilities to discuss. With a lot of people.
Emergency meetings dominated the next twelve hours. Jonas hurried to face to face meetings and held others over video and holograph.Reluctantly he assigned other staff to similar meetings. Summary reports and logs flowed in continually. The analysts were earning their overtime pay reviewing and consolidating data for Center 2. They were inundated with data. Updating everyone was impossible. They could only make the effort. Data would get missed or overlooked. Jonas and his own Center staff could not effectively evaluate everything that came in for themselves. They had to rely on their workers.
Center 1 was busy too. Ishmael aka Mael, aka Mael 442cx watched Jake and William as he closed down the transmission from Center 1 to Center 2 and the link to his key two players. Reception was now passive. Everything those two did would continue to be recorded and studied, and by both centers, he knew. His staff, experienced with the floods of data, would do a good job.
Center 2 would not figure out that Mael kept the monitoring link to their Center open too. He frowned, distracted by one fleeting fear. Were there others watching Jake too? Could they see what was happening? Could they record what the Centers recorded? He shook his head in denial. Impossible, he thought. Still, he did worry about it. What if he was wrong and other links existed? He had to believe Center 2 would detect the links, or that Center 1 would with the additional tools Mael had at his disposal. So far no surprises had surfaced.
"Why did you lie to them, Mael?"
"What choice did I have, Agnes? It is bad enough that they believe we are fifty years in their future. If they knew the truth-" He shrugged, unwilling to finish his thought. "Call the second shift in early. We will need sleep and at least three days to analyze what we have. We have to be certain before we move onto our second step with Center 2. Announcing our plan is going to be tricky. With all that is at stake here, there is no more room for hesitation in this timeline. Or error."
"Yes, Mael. I understand. But none of our attempts have worked over the past centuries. Why do you think this one will?"
"Because it has to. We'll test the effects of communications. We have to every time, but we must make this work. I'm certain we have found the right two people who can correct the situation."
"What if you are wrong? Every probability treecomes back to them."
"Then our last chance to save Earth is finished. Humans on Earth will be dead. We will cease to exist here, and never know. The rest of humanity, spread among the stars, will be wiped out in only a few short years. This is our last chance. We have to succeed."
"Why, Mael? We've explored this situation for centuries and made dozens of attempts to change our present. What makes this one so different?"
"Simply the fact that we could bumble into one or more of those failed past attempts and create an interactive effect that could speed our end. We've made too many attempts. The count shows we've killed off Jake and William twelve times. The last time they ceased to even exist. We could not find any record of them. I still don't understand that one. We were lucky to find them again. I can't even tell you the total number of missed opportunities, we've blown. We have a great record of identifying the perfect moment after we cannot use it."
"Couldn't that bumbling help this time?"
"Not according to the probabilities."
Mael was reviewing the preparations to send a privacy device to Jake when a very unexpected call came in. He listened.