Page 4 of Reversal of Fate

Carter saw something in her eyes when she wished them good luck. Was it the same sentiment that his sisters had expressed, his two sisters who would never bear children of their own? Had he seen the flash of hope that one day soon, the cries of babies would fill maternity wards and homes once more?

3 – Mission Possible

The waiting room was just as sparse as the room where the Romeos had received their equipment, with one difference: the walls acted as seamless monitors that showed a series of refreshers about how to behave in 2025, which rules to abide by, and how to use the devices issued to them. In the middle of the room, twenty-four chairs were arranged in a circle facing outward so that each recruit could watch the projections effortlessly.

Carter had barely started to watch the videos, when he was called into a separate, much smaller room. There was only one desk and two chairs. It reminded Carter of interrogation rooms he’d seen in classic movies made in the 2020s.

“I’m Dr. Mandell,” the African American man said and shut the door behind Carter. He was in his mid-forties and sported a goatee. He wore a lab coat with his name laser-imprinted on it. Embroidery had gone out of style.

“Take a seat.”

Carter followed the command, and watched Dr. Mandell tap on a spot on the desk. A large hologram opened up. First, random numbers and letters appeared, while Dr. Mandell tapped on the desk’s virtual keyboard. Finally, a file opened up, showing the picture of a young woman in the upper left hand corner.

Carter homed in on the image. The girl couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old. Her long hair was dark brown, her eyes a pretty blue. But what made her truly beautiful was her smile: open and unpretentious, warm and inviting.

“You’re assigned to Julie Schneider, a sophomore at UCLA. She will contract the virus at the beginning of October 2025, at the start of the new semester. Within two days, she’s hospitalized and in a coma. She will die on October 8 without regaining consciousness.”

“Tragic. She’s so young,” Carter said, and thought of his own sisters. They were eleven and twelve, yet already wise beyond their years. They were the last of their generation. There would be no more if the Romeo project didn’t succeed.

“She turns twenty in August of 2025. We’ve accumulated all the information we were able to get our hands on: school reports, social media postings, legal documents, anything we could find in the historical archives. She was prolific in documenting her life on Social Media. Thank God for Facebook and Instagram, right?”

Carter shrugged. “I guess.” Truth be told, he couldn’t imagine why people in 2025—and the entire first quarter of the 21st century—were so keen on posting every detail of their private lives on a public platform for anybody to see.

“Well, I don’t see the appeal of it myself either,” Mandell confessed. He pulled in a breath. “At least, this gives you enough information on her to make a quick inroad into her life. You’ll have six months to win her over.”

Carter chuckled. “I don’t need six months, trust me. Give me six weeks, and she’ll be putty in my hands.”

Mandell sighed. “Ah, I see, we have an overconfident jerk on our hands. Nothing new there.”

“I’m not a—

“Don’t continue digging when you’re already in a hole, Mr. Ambrose.”

Carter suppressed the curse sitting on his lips.

“Your father told us about you.”

That really pissed him off. His father had encouraged him to be one of the first to sign up for the program. His father had told him that he believed in him, yet he’d gone behind Carter’s back?

“After I sign up to help my people my father bad-mouths me?”

Now Mandell was the one chuckling. “He wasn’t bad-mouthing you. He called you a hothead. He’s not wrong. He also told us that you needed a challenge, otherwise you won’t take the job seriously.”

“A challenge?”

Mandell nodded and motioned to the hologram. “The girl is a virgin.”