The Wind Blows Ch 1

 7:00am, somewhere in New Mexico 

"Professor, are you ok?" A tall, lanky, man in a lab coat stood in a doorway. His head almost met the top of the frame and his eyes squinting into a dark room. "Why are you sitting there in the dark?" The man reached right, running his fingers against the wall until he found a switch. When he nudged it upwards, two light blubs flickered on to reveal a mess. Scraps of papers litter the ground, cabinets were stuffed to the brim with folders, and beakers lay sideways out of their holders. The usual clean surfaces one would come to expect from a lab room were nonexistent in the Professor's pigsty. Still, the walls were fresh, and there was a pathway through the room in between all the filth.

"Eh?" The Professor raised his head from a desk, his eyes crusty and half closed. A little pool of sour and lukewarm brew had gathered on the metal desk, courtesy of a tipped over bottle. The Professor stretched his neck and looked around for a napkin. He didn't have to look too far, as half of a roll of paper towels lay right beside his legs underneath the creaky chair he slept on. The old Professor took a moment to clean up his own mess, he always does. After he was finished, the Professor looked over his shoulders, thinning strands of white pointy hair waved as he moved, to identify the speaker. "Oh... Jim," the Professor spoke as he was surprised, "My boy is that you?"

Even from the doorway, Jim could see the Professor's bruised bags just below his eyes. A sight Jim has seen too often lately. "I told you to stop calling me that. You have a son. What happened Professor? You look famished. Were you here all night again?"

The Professor looked around the room, then down at his feet, as if he was trying to remember what he did. "Ah... yes. I was here since... since..."

Jim stepped into the room but immediately gagged as he took a whiff. Small tear drops slipped out of his eyes from the stinging atmosphere and almost rotten alcoholic smell. While pinching his nose, Jim exclaimed, "Good Lord cough what is that smell?"

Ignoring the rhetorical question, the Professor asked his own, "Tell me, Jim, do you remember what day it is?" Jim blinked in realization. He forgot the anniversary, he never forgot before. The usual bakery he ordered from hasn't opened yet, it was too early. Jim thought that he still had time to make things right. When he looked up at the Professor to speak he was hit with a blank stare. Jim felt the Professor looking not at him, but past him. As if there were apparition he couldn't see right behind. He dared not turn around, instead, Jim focused his attention on what was in front of him, that is, a bottle of beer in the Professor's hand.

"How many of those have you had? Tell me the truth this time."

"Let me finish this one and it will be the last. I didn't buy any more if that's what you're thinking. Today is, after all, the anniversary." As he spoke, the Professor raised an almost empty bottle of Ayinger UrWeisse up to his bushy white mustache. A motion he seems to have done a million times before. He finished the rest of the beverage with two chugs, wiped his lips with a stained lab coat sleeve, then threw the bottle into a pile of dozens of likewise empty bottles. The recently discarded bottle joined its brothers with a resounding ping.

Jim strolled over to the bottle pile. He picked one up and examined it under the luminous ceiling light. While tracing over the ingredients, Jim grimaced. "I know what this day means to you Professor, but you can't keep doing this to yourself every year. This toxin is going to kill you."

The drunkard tunned out Jim's warning and took out a pocket watch. When he flipped the lid open, the rusty hinge creaked like it has been used too much and too often. Inside laid a black and white photo of an older woman and a young woman standing side by side, smiling. One couldn't tell by the picture but the sun rays were particularly merciful that day, just outlining the two women with a glowing edge, but not overwhelming them so that their beauty will be undiscernable. The clock itself had ceased working a long time ago, the shorthand stuck on 9:00.

Somberly, the Professor said, "I finally figured it out, My boy."

Raising an eyebrow to the Professor's comment, Jim inquired, "What are you talking about Professor?"

"Last night, I had a breakthrough. A spark of genius, if you will... I have completed the formula."

Jim shifted his sight to the movable blackboard not too far away from the Professor. There was nothing written on it save for a few layers of chalk dust. However, Jim knew from experience that looks could be deceiving; as arguably, the drunken Professor was the MOST brilliant mind in the western hemisphere. He quickly paced up to the board and grabbed the top frame, a simple action for a man his height. With one swift downward spiral, the blackboard flipped over to expose mad chalk scribbles. Equations filled the entirety of the blackboard, a mess that starts nowhere and ends nowhere. It would take a genius to know what was written for it contained the secrets of nonother than time travel.

"What, what is this? Is this... really it?" Jim had trouble pushing words out of his mouth. On one hand, he thought the clutter of numbers was absolute chaos and can't possibly be the equation they been working towards all this time. On the other hand, in the back of his mind, Jim somehow subconsciously knew that this was it, the breakthrough they been waiting for all this time. He couldn't keep his excitement out of his voice when he spoke again.

"How... how did you do this in one night? We worked on this for two years..."

"Men in grief can do wonders." The Professor slid the pocket watch back into his pants pockets. He then stood up, patted some dust off his coat, then commanded, "Walk with me, Jim."

The duo walked. They walked out of the rancid smelling lab room. Then, they headed left, down a broad empty hallway. Their boots came in contact with the kind of pristine white marble flooring one would see in some fancy government building. They passed by other long winded hallways each with their own double sided reinforced door. They walked in silence as the route they took was a route taken often. They walked until they reached what seemed to be the end of a hall, a dead end.

When they stopped, Jim looked downward over to the Professor, expecting an explanation of sorts.

Focusing on the wall, the Professor slid his index finger over a non-spectacular tile. His action resulted in the tile retracting into the wall to expose an access panel. The Professor typed in a series of codes into the panel, which responded with a gleeful beep every 5 digits. Once all the digits had been entered and confirmed, the wall broke away into to two to show a reinforced door equipped more heavily than the other rooms. Still not looking directly at Jim, the Professor answered, "My previous work killed hundreds of thousands. I've brought you here to make sure this doesn't."

At the center of a cavernous hangar, littered with opened containers and tools, the culmination of months of hard work stood proudly in the middle. Walls three stories tall housed a strange, almost parade float like machine. Its sleek and round, almost half sphere-like, dome cockpit blended well with its white paint job and smooth structuring. A cool blue glow radiated from the radiators surrounding the half dome, regulating the internal temperatures of the various intricate subsections. Three sizable tubes connected the top of the machine to coolant tanks in the back, outside the view of Jim and the Professor. The spherical cockpit is held up by a steel base, although it would seem that the necessary plating for the base was left unfinished, for sections of its framework were exposed. The pipes coming from the sphere and reached overhead were expanding and contracting While taking the recyclable coolant throughout the machine. Thus the entire vehicle seemed to be animated, breathing and humming along, an unusual trait for what was supposed to be an unfinished machine.

The hangar surrounding the machine wasn't as impressive. A combination of concrete and steel beams made up the very tall walls. No paint had been applied, just bland gray, The entire space was structured almost like the inside of a quartz, with walls angled so that eight sections can make an entire round. Up at the top of the walls, across from the Professor and Jim, right where the ceiling would meet with the side walls, was a comfortable looking room. Pure white paint plastered the walls. Two lines of cushioned red chairs sat behind a reinforced glass panel, stagnating almost like in a movie theater. Dust rested on top of the seats, lifeless. The original purpose of the room was to house potential military investors. Unfortunately, it has never been in use because the Professor pushed out every investor himself.

Upon seeing the activated machine, Jim's jaw unconsciously dropped. He had never expected the drunk Professor to finish the equation all by himself, never mind getting the damned machine to work. He raced to his workstation, typing in his work I.D on his personal computer -mistyped it once- and checking the statistics of the now functional 'Chronosphere-Time Transporation Tool'. Once he read the data, he looked up at the Professor with a triumphant grin. "Professor, you actually did it? Did you actually get the machine to work? That's AMAZING!" Jim moved his arms up over his head and let out a cheer of glory.

The Professor pressed his lips together, gave a thin smile, then replied, "Like I said, Men in grief can do wonders."

Once his excitement passed just a little, Jim spoke again, "Just, imagine the prizes you will earn, the fame you will receive, the honor, and the money. They will name you the greatest scientist of the world, no, of all TIMES!" Jim chuckled to himself. He was quite fond of that pun. Usually, the Professor would laugh right along side him, this time he didn't.

Instead, the Professor stared at the activated machine. Gazing deeply at the object, so much so that it seemed like he was looking into the future. With his hands resting in his lab coat pockets, the Professor replied, "I'm not interested in that Jim."

Jim's thrilled face depressed. He finally caught on to the Professor's odd behavior. Jim was no psychologist, but he did take the crash psychology course back in high school once. There was something different from all the other times the Professor has gotten drunk. He was too calm this time, too focused. "I'm not sure I heard you right Professor, what did you say?"

Still staring, the Professor repeated, "I said, I'm not interested in any of those things."

Jim narrows his eyes, then starts to shake his head. "Wait wait wait, hold on just a second. You are not thinking of actually using this machine to go back to save them, are you?"

A silence that could envelop an entire hill permeated the air.

The Professor started slowly walking towards the machine, step by step. Jim stood behind his station, watching in shock as the man he admired for his brilliant mind acted against all logic.

"In case something goes wrong." The Professor shifted his shoulder just enough to point to the emergency power switch in the back left corner of the room. His gaze not leaving the machine.

"That's impossible. Not by yourself. And, if you do this you will disrupt the entire space-time continuum, think of the consequences!" Jim was practically shouting, his face reddened. "You're not thinking straight. Let's just get some breakfast over at the Black Bear diner to sober you up. Chicken fried steak and french toast, your favorite." Stepping out from behind his station, Jim moved towards the Professor. One of his arms stretched out to grab the turned away Professor by the shoulder.

At that point, the drunk professor retrieved a Colt.45 pistol from his pockets. He spun around speedily and aimed the barrel straight at Jim. "I've missed them for the past 30 years. They didn't deserve to die, not by the hands of that madman. I have the power to make history right, a history without tragedies. It's not just about me, I will be saving millions with this act. Don't try to stop me. Just shut the machine off if anything seems off"

Jim was not advancing anymore, instead, his hands were in the air. Two brown eyes squinted at the gun. Jim breathed, "You're insane. What makes you think I'll let you go back?"

The Professor finally meets Jim's gaze, his own black pupils jabbing at Jim's. "I am the sanest I have ever been."

"If you're so set on changing the past, then What about your adopted son, my best friend?" Jim inquired rather loudly. "What would happen to him if you weren't there for him?"

"He will manage without me. He's smart, resourceful, and driven."

"No he wouldn't, he will become swallowed by revenge, you know that. You were the one who convinced him that the past is set, not to be meddled with, that revenge is foolish. Now you are here doing the same thing you warned him against. You're a hypocrite!"

"You're right... I'm a hypocrite. I'm not nearly as strong as he is. brief huff That's why I have to do this. I'm not asking for much Jim, think of it as a parting gift, watch over the energy consumption and make sure the machine doesn't explode."

While training his sights on Jim, the Professor inched closer and closer to the machine. Getting ever so near the center entrance hatch of the machine little by little. When the Professor reached the hatch opener, another entryway opened instead. The same sliding door that Jim and the Professor passed through reopened. A young man with auburn hair also dressed in a lab coat, walking with a little bounce to his step, entered into the hangar. A slim glasses frame hanged off the bridge of his nose, which was pointing downwards at a clip pad.

"Oh there you are Jim, the Professor wasn't in his room so in thought you two already started working on..." his voice trailed off when he saw the gun.

The Professor widened his eyelids by the arrival of the third research team member, his adopted son. He hasn't expected his son to arrive so early at the laboratory, then again, his own sense of time was distorted by an immense amount of alcohol. The Professor didn't want his son to see him like this, it went against everything he had taught to the youngling. He didn't want his lessons to go to waste, to ruin someone else's life if the time machine does fail. For perhaps a split second, maybe a little more, the Professor became distracted by the newcomer. Jim leaped at the chance, quite literally. He sprang forth, sprinting full speed towards the Professor with him arms stretched out, hoping to bat away the pistol. Unfortunately, he was not Barry Allen, the fastest man alive.

"ArggGGG," Jim's momentum carried him forward half a meter before stopping. Red stained his pristine white lab coat.

The new arrival immediately dashed to his fallen friend. He kneeled down and grabbed Jim's torso in order flip him back up.

"Jim! Are you OK? Where are you shot? Oh god, OH GOD, OH GOD! There's blood everywhere!" The dark red color of blood seemed to originate from the left lung, barely missing the heart. That same blood covered Jim's coat, the new arrival's hands, and the floor. The young man's shocked face could not fix the wound. The only person in the room with medical knowledge was the man who had the gun.

A bloody hand rose up from the shot man on the floor. He grasped the young man's palm and choked out, "... stop him... from... going... back..."

"What do you mean go back? What is he doing?" Seeing that Jim could not possibly give him more information, the young man stood up, a scowl on his face, and demanded, "Dad! What are you doing? Why did you fucking shoot Jim?"

"I didn't mean to shoot him... he forced my hand... I... I... didn't mean to. But, what I'm doing is important. It's something that should have been done a long time ago my child... you would understand, right? You too desire to change the past."

"Stop this! I gave up on trying to go back years ago. Help me stabilize Jim before he bleeds out! Please! He's dying!"

"Do not worry child, Jim and many others will still be alive when I return."

"What, are you, talking, about? Tell me you are not thinking of saving them. You can't break them out of the camp. It was too secure, too air tight. You told me that yourself. It was the same with my parents. It's not POSSIBLE!"

With each sentence exchanged between the two, the young man's scowl intensified, as well as the Professor's own darkly expression. The man with the gun explained, "With this machine comes possibilities unimaginable before. If the camps never existed in the first place then..."

The young man's eyes widened at the implication, "No...no, no no, that's too dangerous. You will change too much! Who knows what will happen to the time stream."

"The world will be a better place either way."

"Please don't do this... Dad." the young man pleaded.

"Farewell Siegfried, we may never see each other again."

A hatch came down on the cockpit of the machine, sealing the Professor inside. A vortex of pale blue light exploded out from the time machine, spinning round and around the enclosed hangar. The vortex kept increasing in speed and size until it enveloped the entire machine. Little sparks shot out of from inside the vortex, the process isn't completely refined yet. Those sparks zapped the walls, crates, and even Jim's workstation. Siegfried could do nothing but watch as Jim bleed out on the floor, he has never felt so confused and helpless in his life. At the final stage of the transportation process, the vortex collapsed on itself and consumed everything inside, leaving behind only burnt metal and the smell of ash.

(LINE BREAK)

''' 20th December 1924, Landsberg, Germany. '''

A young lad with a particular mustache carried a brown sack over his right shoulder. He had just gotten out of prison. They gave him a fresh set of clothes, including a rather nice suit jacket. All the time locked behind iron doors made the lad long for the indulgences of the outside world. "A brand new day", he thought. But not two steps out of the prison and into his new life, a man with long ruffled hair in a dirtied strange white coat greeted him. In rough German, the estranged man asked the lad, if he was indeed Adolf Hitler. The young, ambitious Hitler wasn't about to deny it, he was quite proud of his name, even if it was his father's damned name. So, he answered yes. What Hitler did not expect was for the eccentric man to pull out a gun, a Colt.45 to be exact. When the security guards opened the gates to investigate the noise, all they could find was a body, sprawled on the ground.

(LINE BREAK)

 7:30am, Somewhere in New Mexico 

The spinning vortex that had brought the Professor back in time appeared again in the room it had just left. Hot metal hissing as the energy necessary to achieve faster the light travel dissipates. The hatch of the cockpit slowly lifts up to let the hangar light shine in. To the old Professor, the light was unusually bright, but he did not expect everything to be the same. He just needed to confirm one thing. What startled the old man when he stepped out from the time machine was a band of people he has never seen before clapping. They were all dressed in the same uniformed labcoat expected from an employee of the laboratory. All pearly white, all well ironed, all absolutely bland. The whole working environment was changed also. It was cleaner, more organized. No random crates lying around, just neat workstations with nameplates. Even the walls were painted, again, in white. Jim, perfectly unharmed with no puncture wound through the lungs, yelled out from behind a control panel, "You did it, Professor the Chronosphere works! I bet they'll be as ecstatic as we are."

"They?"

"Allied high command. You know, the ones who funded this whole program, to begin with? The people sitting in the room above us?"

Above the research team was indeed a full room of military personnel. Commanders and Generals from all branches of the United States military with their own colorful dress uniforms. Men dressed in blue, green, black, and white all stood on their two feets clapping furiously. One Navy officer even took off his cap and threw it in the air in celebration, only for it to hit the ceiling moments after.

The Professor didn't care about those war hounds, he just needed to know one fact about this new timeline. So he blatantly, unapologetically asked, "I... see. Tell me, Jim, where are my wife and child?"

Jim's ecstatic face again transformed into a scowl. He dragged the Professor outside of the lab, much to the surprise of everyone else in the room. Jim hissed, "Prof... are you having a relapse again?".

"No... I simply wanted to know what happened to my family."

Jim took a big breath through his nose and exhaled with his mouth. "Your wife and child are dead, they have been dead for the past 10 years. They perished when Stalin occupied Europe. Remember?"

"No... it… it can't be... I've... failed, it's all been for nothing." The Professor pounded his fist into a nearby wall, which was undeserving of his wrath.

"What are you talking about Professor, you haven't failed anyone. You created perhaps the most powerful weapon we can use against the Soviets, time itself. Isn't that worth... at least a billion dollars?"

"That voice." The Professor arched an eyebrow at the familiar sound. He turned around to see his ex-adopted son walking down the hallway towards the now labeled 'testing room'. "Siegfried?"

"That's right, your protege in the flesh." Siegfried expanded his arms to show off his frame. He wore a professional black suit, with a straight red tie. He had no glasses this time covering his pure blue eyes. His hair was strung up with products and present itself rigidly. On this face was a smirk, a grin, a smile that seemed almost alien to the Professor. It was a smile of a businessman, a trademarked smile with tons of applications and reusability. It has been trained into the face muscles perfected through testing. That was not a smile the Professor ever expected to see on Siegfried's face.

Lightly putting his hand on Jim's left shoulder, Siegfried continued, "Hey, I say after celebrations, -I called the local brothel, they'll be here in a few- we take the design right over to Allied command and have them dump boatloads of funds on this project. What do you think? Then, we can do whatever we want with this. Perhaps, weaponize it, make it deadly." Siegfried paused and project both of his hands into the air as if to make an image, "Imagine the looks on those Reds' faces when we blast their ass into nonexistence."

This time, it was the Professor's turn to shake his head, "No, we can't. This technology, it too dangerous, unstable. A million different events can occur in a single chronosphere fluctuation to erase the entire space-time continuum. If we weaponize this, the result can be catastrophic."

Again, that trademark business smile designed to disarm people found its way onto Siegfried's face. His edged closer to the Professor with a casual opened armed body language. "Then we will make it stable, after all, Professor Einstein, you are the greatest scientist the world has ever known. There's nothing you can't do."

"I am not the greatest. We are not the greatest." With that, Albert Einstein took the very same gun he has been using to murder. "Professor… WHERE DID YOU GET THAT GUN?!" Placed it gently against his cortex, "NO STOP! Professor Einstein!" and pulled the trigger.

(LINE BREAK)

Author's Note: AAAAAND CUT! So... This. This is just a fanfic of mine, my very first shot at making a published fanfiction, so I am profoundly sorry if it has less than desirable quality. This fic is a "what-if" scenario which puts the Mental Omega universe, a mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, in the world of the Tiberium series. Why? Because WHY THE HELL NOD?? (get it? No? Aw…)

So, from the title of this story, you might – or most likely not – realize that one of the major players would be the Foehn Revolt. The GDI of MOAPYR, so to speak. Unfortunately, no Epsilon here.

Now, I plan to update this story ASAP, but I did skimp on the prologue. And to that, I apologize. I had this idea sloshing around, and I do not have the patience to think it out further. I was also sleep and food deprived if that's any good excuse. And about the prologue, it was practically a copy of the At Mind's End prologue. Suffice to say, I was stumped on how to introduce the Foehn. My idea was for the Revolt to get their hands on Chronosphere blueprints and started building a large one in Last Bastion's main HQ in Alaska, just for Epsilon to realize their intents and try to prevent the timeline from getting overridden. Since I can't get the idea off the ground, I decided to start things off with this.

So I humbly ask you dear readers, to help me with this. And thus, I bid you adieu.

++BATTLEFIELD CONTROL TERMINATED++