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Journals: Book 1, Entry 21 “The Aftertime” Quatrain 81, Century 5: "Dusk will become dawn / And the man twice-bless’d will be resurrected / The follower will beckon him to the great war ahead' s tears washes away ties to Rome / Fear extracts vain sacrifice, until the raging pyre of the deluge is quenched" I had no idea what Nostradamus was talking about till we got a message on our Web site from someone claiming to be Joshua. He asked me to meet him in an abandoned lot in Cleveland, Ohio. Can’t say I trusted him, but couldn’t turn the meeting down either. I had to hear what Joshua had to say. He told me someone using the handle "Rover" had intercepted a Gua transmission and recorded it on disk. If this was another alien experiment I wasn’t playing. I was already walking away when Joshua showed his real hand. It was a warning – the Gua would find the tape, and Rover would be killed. Challenge or set-up, Joshua got to me. I needed to help the hacker. Had to get to Rover first – the contents of the disk could be vital to the fight. Eddie used his tech-skills to zero in on Rover’s location. Posing as an agent for the FCC, I discovered the hacker. Stephen was a teen-ager operating a ham radio through his computer, all from the basement of his mother’s Chinese restaurant in downtown Cleveland. He was lucky I got there first. When I pressed the kid, he got spooked and took off with the disk. I caught up with him and got the disk back, but not before the Gua picked up our trail. They chased us with guns drawn. Just when I thought I’d bought it – things got really weird. Some kind of portal opened up in the street and a woman jumped through. She was ready for combat and took out the agents with a series of incredible martial arts moves. The other Gua grabbed Stephen. I tried to follow but G.I. Jane had a different plan – she also had a gun. Her name was Lizbeth. She claimed she was from the future, come to take me back before I was assassinated. She showed me tattered newspaper clippings that reported me gunned down in the street. She said that after I was killed the Second Wave was launched and no one was left to lead the resistance…and Nostradamus’ prediction was realized. 19 million died on the first day. She said I was their only hope… Lizbeth knew the quatrains, and she passed a cut test. Figured it was time to introduce her to Eddie. He was as skeptical as ever. She painted a bleak picture of the future to come. Humanity would be enslaved except for a small resistance hiding in tunnels under the major cities. She confirmed my worst nightmare -- the Gua ruling the Earth in human form, ready to wipe us out for good. By saving me that day, Lizbeth hoped she’d already changed the future. She had two days to convince me to go back with her – claimed I had no choice. I had other ideas. Seemed to me there was more at stake than just my life. There was still Stephen and the information he held. Eddie said we’d need the kid’s computer equipment to triangulate the Gua transmission and decipher the encoded material. Lizbeth wanted me to stay out of the Gua’s sights. But I had to do more. I owed it to Stephen and to Lizbeth’s future. What kind of future would I be creating if the life of one person didn’t matter anymore? With the picture that Lizbeth painted of the invasion to come, I still needed to make a difference in the present. There was no clear path, only one thing remained constant -- I had to do anything to stop the Gua …whether it be in the here and now, or in a future where the Gua believed they’d already won. Lizbeth told me I’d cheated death that day. I was gonna make it count. “The Aftertime” Writer: Theresa Rebeck Director: Mark Sobel Executive Producers: Francis Ford Coppola, Larry Sugar Created by: Chris Brancato Guest Stars: Roger Cross, Jorgito Vargas, Kathrin Nicholson. |
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