Wreckers Interlude -
Surprised at seeing Colonel Henry Sells on the other side of the entryway, Justin just stood there for a moment. He felt like his head was spinning, and then noticed that it seemed the room was spinning around him. Everything was spinning so fast that it was all a blur. He fell to the hard, stone floor, and coughed as the dust floated up around him.
Dust? He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a huge stone room, on a small dais. There in front of him, sitting on a large chair was...himself? No, wait, he shook his head as his sense of identity stumbled, and he remembered, "I, I, I'm Andrei!"
"Yes, you are, aren't you?" chuckled the figure in the chair, which Andrei now recognized both as J'Stan and Justin Ackeman.
"I don't understand!" Andrei stated (more like whined, thought J'Stan). "Did you send me back in time? What did you do?"
Still sitting in the stone chair, J'Stan tried his best to keep from laughing. "I told you that time travel to the past is the only thing forbidden. You remember everything I've shown you, don't you?"
"Yeah, it's almost exactly like it was me doing all that. It's like I was Justin, I mean YOU! What's with the name change anyway? Justin's a cool name, even though I've never heard it before."
"It seems like you've caught the habit of jumping from subject to subject like my younger self, too. Oh well. The name change happened about 5,000 years ago. I didn't like it, but it stuck, and like that damn other nickname, it's hard to get rid of."
"Should have thought of that before you let me see your memories, there, JAZ!" grinned the young Andrei. "I'm still totally 'mazed about the whole thing. Was that really the world during the Wreckers? Were those soldiers really the ones who wrecked the world?"
Rubbing his chin with his right hand, J'Stan thought about how to answer the latest batch of questions, and tried to ignore the pain of that long-forgotten nickname. Andrei could tell he was nervous since his new memories reminded him of that one nervous gesture. His new memories, or J'Stan's memories now in his head, also reminded Andrei of other things. He stood up on the stone dais, imagined a chair exactly like the one J'Stan was sitting in, and willed it into being. Behind and below, the stone of the dais melted and began to rise up, shaping into the form willed by Andrei. Once it was fully formed, he sat down in the new chair, crossed his legs, and smiled at J'Stan.
"I see that my memories are safely ensconced in your pretty little head," J'Stan commented wryly. "Good, I won't have to worry about your training now. As for your questions, let's see.
"Yes, that was the world during the Time of the Wreckers. No, those soldiers on the outside weren't the wreckers, we were. D'vad, I mean David, Henry, Alan, and Curtis. Together we blazed the path that ended the world."
"How," interrupted Andrei, "I mean, I KNOW you, at least as you were then! You didn't want anything more than to help! You're the one who saved the world after the Shaper's War!"
Shaking his head ruefully, J'Stan let the boy know the truth again, or tried to. The room started to spin, the distant stone walls become the inside of a long destroyed bunker, as J'Stan said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and our feet walked over the corpses of billions before we were done." Having verbalized that much, he let loose the memories he was most ashamed of, but the flood stopped suddenly.
"No," Andrei stated, consciously breaking the flow of memories from J'Stan. "How much time has passed here? How long since I came into this place?"
Pleasantly surprised at the rapid growth in, and use of, Andrei's abilities, J'Stan decided to answer honestly. "A few minutes, no more. I can still feel all those people outside. The method of sharing I used is fast. It helps you live the other person's life as if it were your own, and for each day that passes in memory, only a fraction of a second passes here."
"Good, then we can continue. I assume you were about to answer my questions?" said Andrei, surprised at his own assumption of the lead here.
"Glad you approve, Andrei, and yes, what happened after I met Henry on the other side of the door did change the world. To this day, I wish I had never left, but I did. He reminded me that outside the facility, we had to use established military protocol, like saluting and everything, but he also briefed me in mentally about our mission," said the ancient, young looking J'Stan as the room spun once more, settling into the small elevator that served as an exit to the facility.
Thanks to Ed for his editing once more!