The jet propulsion folder sat on Robert's desk for two days, a silent, accusing monolith. He didn't open it. He couldn't. To engage with its contents was to cross a line from which there was no return. He spent the hours staring out his window, watching the P-47s roar into the sky—planes that now flew with his ghostly fingerprints on their blueprints. Each successful flight was a monument to his compromise, a step deeper into the moral quagmire.
Albright did not return the next day. The silence was more threatening than any confrontation. It was the calm before the storm, the patience of a predator that knows its prey is cornered.
On the third day, Robert was summoned not to his office, but to a secure, windowless briefing room deep within the main administration building. Albright was there, along with two other men he had never seen. One was a high-ranking Army Air Corps general, his uniform crisp, his gaze like granite. The other was a civilian, older, with the keen, weary eyes of a scientist who had seen the unseeable. Robert recognized him from grainy, future history books: Dr. Vannevar Bush, one of the chief architects of American military science.
The air in the room was thin and cold. Robert's heart sank. This was no longer about a consultation.
"Mr. Vale," the General began, his voice echoing in the sterile space. "Your contributions to the P-47 and other projects have been… noteworthy. You have a gift."
"Thank you, sir," Robert murmured, his mouth dry.
"A gift we intend to fully utilize," the General continued. "Dr. Bush is overseeing a new, centralized scientific effort. The National Defense Research Committee. We are consolidating our brightest minds to work on problems of supreme national importance." He fixed Robert with a stare that allowed no dissent. "You are being reassigned. Effective immediately."
Reassigned. The word was a death knell for what little freedom he had left.
Dr. Bush spoke for the first time, his voice quiet but incisive. "Mr. Vale, we have reviewed your work. The pattern is… anomalous. You do not reason from first principles to a solution. You seem to arrive at the solution intuitively and then work backward, as if you already know the destination." He steepled his fingers. "It is a talent unlike any I have encountered. We have a facility in New Mexico. Isolated. Secure. You will have resources, a team, and a single mandate: to accelerate our advanced weapons programs."
New Mexico. Robert's blood turned to ice. He knew what was in New Mexico. Los Alamos. The Manhattan Project. They weren't just asking him to design jets; they were asking him to help build the atomic bomb.
He couldn't. He would not. This was the absolute line. To provide the precise calculations, the isotope separation techniques, the implosion design he knew from historical records… it would be to become the author of the very horror that had defined the apocalyptic potential of his own century. He would be responsible for unleashing the nuclear genie decades early, into a world even less prepared for its terror.
He looked at Albright, who met his gaze with an expression of cold finality. The protector had become the procurer. He had delivered his unique asset to the highest bidder.
"I… I am a mechanical engineer, sir," Robert stammered, desperation clawing at his throat. "Aircraft structures. This… this is physics. Nuclear physics. It's beyond my scope."
"Is it?" Dr. Bush asked, his head tilted. "Your annotation on the P-47 stability calculations involved harmonic frequencies and damping coefficients that border on the metaphysical. Your suggestion for the B-24 fuel system demonstrated a systems-level understanding that is, frankly, prescient. We are not asking you to split the atom, Mr. Vale. We are asking you to look at our problems and point the way. As you have done here."
They were going to take him. They would put him in a box in the desert and mine his mind until there was nothing left, until he had handed them the keys to Armageddon in exchange for his continued breath.
He was trapped. There was no refusing. No more clumsy excuses. To resist now would be to confirm their deepest suspicions—that he was not just a genius, but a man with a secret so profound it was worth defying the entire United States war machine.
He felt the weight of the wooden swallow in his pocket. Find your way home. There was no way home. There was only forward, into a darkness he had helped create.
He took a slow, deep breath, the last free breath he felt he would ever take. He looked at the three most powerful men he had ever met, men who held his fate in their hands.
"I see," Robert said, his voice unnaturally calm. "When do I leave?"
The General gave a curt nod, a transaction completed. "Within the week. Albright will handle the details. Your country thanks you for your service, son."
The words were a mockery. They filed out of the room, leaving him alone with Albright.
Robert didn't look at him. He stared at the blank wall, seeing nothing.
"It's for the best, Robert," Albright said, his voice devoid of its earlier menace, almost gentle. "This is where you belong. This is what you were meant for."
"No," Robert whispered, the word meant only for himself. "This is what I was sent to prevent."
But the decision was made. The castaway was being promoted. No longer a ghost in the factory, he was to become the Keeper of the Flame—the man who would hold the very fire of the sun in his hands and be commanded to let it loose upon the world. The final, terrible purpose of his impossible journey was now clear. He was not here to observe history. He was here to end it.