Borrowed Time: Saving John Lennon - A Beatles Fanfic

Chapter 5 - HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

One week had passed since Holly and Tyler had agreed to focus their efforts on preventing John Lennon's death. Holly woke up and made her way groggily into the kitchen, grabbing a coffee mug from the cupboard. Plopping down at the kitchen table, she stirred cream and sugar into her coffee.

She pushed the ever present stack of Beatles books on the table over to one side and ran her fingers down the spine of each one, thankful that she had kept them all these years. These books held the timeline that she would be basing her travel on, and she had three months to study them as best as she could.

Tyler and Holly had agreed to a "no physical evidence" pact. Holly couldn't write a single thing down. Any physical trace of her research could end it all before it began, so everything she learned had to be committed to memory. Holly picked out certain dates, cities, and countries, even hotel names, and committed them to memory as if her life depended on it. In a way, it did.

In the most recent group meeting for Project 1403-C  Holly had learned she would be making seven consecutive jumps, all in approximately five year increments. This many time jumps had not been attempted yet, and her main mission was to test the limits of the equipment, but she would also be testing its accuracy by jumping into multiple different locations all over the globe.

The secret plan that she and Tyler had come up with was simple, and yet vastly complex. She was to meet John before the Beatles got big and somehow work her way into a friendship. She would ultimately have to tell him who she was and why she was there, but those details would be left up to Holly in the moment. Then, after making initial contact with him, she would pop back into his life, every five years, until the ultimate goal of their secret mission could be accomplished.

Her final visit would be made in December of 1980. Originally they had toyed with the idea of simply having Holly show up in 1980 and physically stop the assassination, but every time they played out that scenario in their heads the results were too risky. Physically stopping the shooting could lead to her, or other bystanders getting hurt which was far too dangerous.

And then there was the idea of just wiping Mark David Chapman from existance before he had the chance to commit murder - discreetly poisoning him, or maybe even preventing him from being born all together, but both Holly and Tyler felt that option just wasn't feasible. Befriending John to prevent the shooting seemed like the safest, although probably not the easiest bet.

Holly sipped her coffee, thinking about the intricacies of the mission. Her time jumps would be monitored by the lab, but once she arrived at each time and destination, her movement was no longer trackable. Things were moving along smoothly and no one seemed to have even the slightest inkling what she and Tyler were planning.