Joan and Smoot sat atop the massive water-scarred and pine-dotted rock that was Maryland Heights on a picnic blanket that her young partner had been thoughtful enough to include in their day-tripping kit. They sat un-lady-like with their long forearms propped across their shins just below their bent knees, looking down over the Potomac into Harper’s Ferry. From this vantage they could see the slow waters of the Shenandoah churning into the surging swells of the Potomac just beyond the railroad trestle.

This is beautiful, one of the best places in the Eastern U.S. for such a fairytale to unfold, or at least be told.

Smoot spoke up, “If asked to report on the contact we just made, what do we go on record with?”

Joan grinned. “Yes, I couldn’t expect one of you Quantico do-gooders to be any good at disinformation. The key is to change the minimum, so we don’t have to synchronize a complex lie. We use only her code name ‘Pocahontas’ and we place her there, above that town, on Bolivar Heights: address withheld as a condition for the granting of an interview. Everything else remains the same. Scrub Frederick Maryland from your mind. The story starts here and picks up at Miss Ann’s front door. We stake this out and grab him down there on that bridge on his way to Frederick for his time-bending booty call.”

Smoot was getting contemplative so Joan fired off, “So, what do you think of her on a personal ‘Christian’ level?”

Smoot eyed her hesitantly, so Joan loosened her up, “Lana, it’s lunch break, off the record and off the radar.”

Lana exhaled expressively and sighed, “She is utterly and completely believable. As a scientist it’s a hard pill to swallow and I’m ripping it apart in my mind. As a Christian I want to believe that Three-Rivers is a Christ-like expression of God’s love for the natives of this land in some other branch of Time and that your man Bracken is his brimstone hammer. But that seems too fantastic…

“…What was on the beaded quilts though, to me, is all true. Whether it all just happened in the mind of that young woman or as part of some messianic time-war I can’t—don’t dare to—guess. I’m not being very courageous with my hope here—how about you ‘Aunt Joan?’”

Let her in. She will be no good to you fumbling in the dark.

“When he disappeared—hell, that dickhead Wong still hasn’t even decided what to call it yet—I am absolutely certain that I saw an event horizon.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

“I’ve followed this phenomenon from Istanbul to this rock. I believe now that there are time-travelers among us from the past, the present and the future; and that one of them is a stone-age warlord who will, in the not-too-distant future, come rumbling across that bridge on a motorcycle, headed to Granny’s house; having bent Time itself to dip his wick in the Bead-worker Apparent.”

Smoot gave a throaty, “Wow! Wouldn’t that be a mind-bender, to have the guy that led an army across that river four-hundred years ago turn his back on some cross-chronological war just to keep you company, if only for a night.”

“Yep, it sure would be nice.”

She just smiled and closed her eyes, letting the late afternoon sun warm her body as Lana whistled in contemplation.

“Yeah girlfriend, you chew on that while I conjure up a brimstone hammer.”

Come back to Joan you man-eating whack-job. She misses you.