Time Travel Omnibus, page 1100
But that was all done now. Kyle had had his fling with fame, leaving him with enough of the fortune to keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives. His son was grown and married and his daughter-in-law was just three months away from Kyle’s grandson. Oh, yes, they’d chosen to know the sex right away. No surprises for his boy. Get the future over with. Bring it on.
It made sense in a way, didn’t it? Out there in the living room, Cathy kept company with their son and his wife and the foreshadowing bulge in a dark, dangerous womb. That’s why Kyle had to kill her. What else could he do? If only she’d kept her mouth shut. If only she’d broken with tradition, stepped away from the past, chosen a future of her own.
But she hadn’t, had she? No, she just had to blurt it out about their son and the grand tradition her family had carried on for umpty-ump generations spanning two hundred years of mindless, spineless cowards who just did what their long-dead ancestors had told them to do. Damn her! He could still hear her sweet little bell-like voice tinkling along, explaining how in every generation, unbroken, her family’s male children had been saddled with the weight of their ancestors. It didn’t matter if it was the first, the middle, or stuck in a string of five, but every male child had one thing in common: the name Gadwin.
Kyle felt himself crashing against a stony shore, dragged by tides from the future and tossed by waves from the past. All along he’d been pushed this way and that, shoved along a course without any turns. He’d had no choices. There were no changes he could have made. It had all been predetermined. Well, that ended today.
He shoved the pistol into the pocket of the silly button-up sweater he wore because Cathy had given it to him. She’d seen Einstein wearing one like it in an old photograph and decided there was something “all dignified and emeritus-like” about it. It made her happy when he wore it. And the pistol fit nicely in the pocket.
Killing his daughter-in-law wouldn’t make Cathy happy. Or his son. Or himself.
“Kyle?” Cathy called from the living room.
“In a minute,” he called back.
What else could he do? How else could he break the chain from Gadwin to Gadwin that led to that final Gadwin’s brother and his evil alien weapons? Kyle checked his watch—that watch. He’d replaced the band a couple of times, and his mental adjustment was eight minutes, now, but the thing was still with him. Sorry I couldn’t do more.
Sorry wasn’t enough. You couldn’t just regret things. You had to fix them. You had to do more. If you wanted to send a message, send a good one.
Yes, that was it. Kyle pulled the pistol out of his pocket and stuck it back into the nightstand. He didn’t have to hurt anyone, didn’t have to kill. He just had to send a message. His life’s work had been about sending messages back in time. He’d been looking the wrong way. He needed to send a message to the future. He took the watch off his wrist for the last time and went to join his family in the living room.
In the following months, a great many people had cause to think that Kyle was losing his mind. As far as he was concerned, they may have been right, but he had enough notoriety—and enough money—that no one really cared. He chose the three most stable and prestigious law firms he could find and paid them staggering sums of money to contractually obligate them for at least two hundred years. As long as there were laws and courts and a country to keep them all enforced, those firms would keep his packages safe. They would watch over his descendents, tracking each generation of offspring. They would follow the trail of Gadwins no matter where it led, until one day Gadwin Smith would arrive.
The packages themselves weren’t cheap, either. Paper alone wouldn’t do. He etched his story into thin sheets of stainless steel. He had it encoded into every form he could think of and stored on every medium available. One of them had to make it through.
If you were going to send a message, make it a good one.
Kyle Preston checked his watch, subtracting the usual five minutes. He had plenty of time. It was still two hours before he had to meet Anna for lunch in Union Square. He was just about to sit down with a newly-arrived journal when the stranger appeared in the middle of his coffee table. There was a flash and a pop and there he was.
“My name is Gadwin Smith,” the stranger began. “I don’t understand how you knew about all this—this machine, my brother, the war.” His eyes closed as his lips pressed themselves into a thin, pale line. He looked tortured. “Your message says that I told you about it—will tell you.”
“What the hell?” Kyle walked toward the image, moving around the side of his found-on-the-sidewalk sofa. From every angle, the image still faced him. The coffee table sliced through the stranger’s legs just below the knees.
“All these years I thought it was a joke,” Gadwin Smith went on, “but I believe you now. And you have to believe me.” The image held up two objects that appeared out of nowhere. One looked like a sheet of stiff, shiny paper. The other was a watch. “I can’t stop him. No one can. Not now.”
Kyle looked at his wrist and back at the image. It definitely looked like his watch.
“Give me some time,” Gadwin said. “I need to tell you a story.”
“You want to tell me something,” Kyle said. He took Anna’s hand across the tiny café table, nearly knocking over the salt shaker.
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” He barely flinched when he heard the explosion. They were at a place on 13th Street, nearly a block away from Union Square. He clutched Anna’s hand as he felt his own begin to shake. It was New York. Loud noises were part of the scenery.
She looked past his shoulder. “What was that?”
“Not important,” Kyle said. He smiled, shifting sideways to put himself in her line of sight. “You’re what’s important.”
She smiled back at him. “Good,” she said. She reached over with her other hand and touched his bare wrist. “Your father’s watch?”
Kyle stared at the spot where Anna’s fingers touched skin that had been kept too long away from the light and air. “His watch,” he said. “Not mine. I can do better.”
“Yes, you can,” she said. “And you will.” Then she told him her news.
By the time they heard the sirens in the distance they were too deeply wrapped in their life together to notice. Kyle smiled, took a deep breath, and cast himself into the unknown, uncertain future.
A TIME TO KILL
Melanie Rees
“Jordan, it’s over here.” Ella stood on the banks of the river.
Jordan descended the rocky slope to stand by Ella.
“See, I told you it’s beautiful.” She stared out across the water.
In the moonlight, the rippling stream shimmered.
“Yes it is.” He met her gaze.
Ella smiled and reached for his hand. He flinched.
“What’s wrong?” She reached out again.
“Ella, there are things you don’t know.”
“I know all I need—”
“I’m not from this place . . . this . . . time.”
“I don’t understand.” She wrapped her cardigan around her as a breeze rustled the leaves of the tree above.
“What I do is for society’s future. The Time Agency knows what they’re doing. Future terrorists, dictators . . . it’s justified.” He touched the revolver inside his jacket, but as he looked at her wide questioning eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Pull yourself together, Jordan. It’s just another job.
“Ella. The Agency know what’s best. They . . . you . . .” he choked on the words. He gazed at the river. “I should know by now only to get close enough to do the job, but not so close that . . .” He looked back towards her and instantly regretted it, the night’s veil failed to conceal her distress.
She took a step back. “Wha . . . but . . . we . . .” She turned to run, but with one swift move he spun her around and clasped her neck. Her strength was no match for his strong arms. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the sounds of her gasping. It took just seconds. There was a wrong and a right, but as Jonah lowered her limp body to the ground, he questioned whether The Agency knew which was which. Her face shimmered blue as a slit of light pierced the sky. A hooded courier walked from some unknown time onto the riverbank.
“Well done.” His monotone voice revealed no emotion. “The Agency has another assignment in this same year and date.” He handed Jonah a data chip.
“I don’t know if I can.” Jonah knelt down next to Ella.
“I’ve been told no one else in The Agency has the infiltration skills needed for your next assignment.”
Jonah focused on Ella’s slender frame. “What was she going to do? I hardly picture her as a future terrorist.” Jonah closed her eyelids gently.
“I’m just a messenger.” The courier avoided Jonah’s gaze.
“You know something. I can tell.”
“I’d be risking my life if I told you. I’d be risking the future of The Agency. Mind you, my sympathy for them is waning.” The agent shut his eyes deep in reflection.
“Please, tell me.”
The agent scanned the rocky slopes. “She was going to have a wise man’s child,” he whispered in Jonah’s ear. “The child would have stirred something in the father. Prevented him from doing his job, his assignments.” His voice was ruthlessly steady.
Jonah shrugged. “I don’t understand. How would that risk The Agency?”
“I have to go. The Agency would’ve seen the future shift by now. They’ll be after me for breaking my silence.”
“Please!” Jonah grabbed the agent’s wrist.
“You are a wise man, Jonah, figure it out.”
The End
STEALING TIME
Douglas W. Daech
As Caroline lounged on the patio reading an ancient dog-eared book of poems, Ben realized just how much he treasured her. A love that spanned all time he mused in poetic verse. From time to time, she’d look up. Her green eyes would catch the sun and light up like emeralds, and then she’d smile and dive back into her pages. The September sun reflected off the pool and danced a magical light show over her tan skin. She was beautiful. The Florida weather would offer many more autumn days of swimming temperatures, and this was her favorite place. She would spend hours sitting next to the pool, reading or getting ready for the next day’s class at the University where she taught English Literature. She was an intellectual and an exotic beauty; not so typical a combination. There was nothing he would not do for her, she was like an extension of his person, and he couldn’t imagine being without her. Ben wondered if she suspected anything as dark as the truths behind the reality they lived.
Her husband, Ben Drake, pushed the question from his mind. “How could she suspect anything?” He thought. “Life is just one day after another, everything is normal, and life is good.” He reflected on the previous night, their love making and how exhausted and damp with sex they fell asleep in each other’s arms. “Everything is fine.” He whispered to himself.
Ben was fresh out of college when he first met her. She was an assistant to the owner of the company where he got his first job in Tampa Florida. Coil Corp made electrical transformers and other components for the power utility companies around the country. Ben would make the first draft drawings of a new component. His work would then go back to another designer who always made revisions and developed the plans further before work was started on a prototype of the new design. Many nights he worked late into the evening. Sitting at his desk he would watch Caroline punch out and leave at 5 P.M. with the other office staff. She had caught his favor from the very first time he had seen her. More than pretty, with a feminine curvy body and short red hair, she stood out in a crowd. He was instantly attracted to her. A window near his desk offered him the daily treat of watching her take the top down of her old convertible Buick, and drive off into the sunset along the beach causeway. The golden sunset complimented her beauty in a way that stirred him.
They had dated a couple of times before she left Coil Corp for an assistant teaching position at the University of Tampa. The university was a beautiful and historic place. Originally built as a hotel and furnished on the unlimited budget of a railway tycoon, much of the original European imported furniture still dress the rooms. An entire wing of the building actually looks as it did over a hundred years ago, and acts as a museum, open to the public. She was a perfect match for the university; both she and the building had a special charm about them. As they dated, Ben was falling in love. Two years after their first date Ben purposed marriage to her while strolling through the park in front of the old hotel. In an odd way Ben and Caroline felt a kinship to the small riverside park that stood between the old university and the new glass and concrete skyscrapers of downtown Tampa. On one side stood the historic beauty and the romance of the grand hotel turned university, and across the river stood the technological wonders of modern civilization. This reflected their individual personalities, and just as the laws of physics demanded, opposites attracted. Ben knew they needed to be together.
They had no children. Both of them were dedicated to each other and their work. After seven years of assisting in the classroom, Caroline was granted a professorship at the prestigious private university. Leading her own class felt natural to her and she was an excellent teacher.
The students loved her, the staff respected her. She was great at her work.
After they were married, Ben left Coil Corp for a research position at Strone Industries, a company that designed and built electro-magnetic components for the government and medical industry. He enjoyed his work prototyping experimental applications of the high power magnets. It was during these years at Strone that he began his own personal research of magnetic field variances. The owner of the company was a capitalist at heart, and he wanted to produce a needed product and make an immediate profit. He had little interest in research. In fact, Ben’s department budget was getting cut every year. When Ben requested an additional budget for research in magnetic field variance, Mr. Strone flatly denied it. This annoyed Ben, he was the kind of person who didn’t like to take no as an answer and he knew there was a value to the research. Every day that Ben worked at Strone Industries he worked with the machines and computers that were essential to answer the questions about magnetic fields that grappled his mind. With his curiosity and theories mounting he worked within his existing budget to perform tests that satisfied both his defined work criteria and his own Magnetic Field Variance research.
Strone Industries was located near Tampa in St. Petersburg Florida. Twice each day Ben traveled across the Howard Franklin Bridge that connected the two cities. The bridge was often jammed with traffic that only crawled across the miles of water. This gave him a long opportunity to think about the day’s work. He didn’t know where his research was going to lead. Surely in the early days of collecting data he had no idea it would apply to time travel. It was on a traffic filled, fifty minute crossing of the five mile bridge that the implications came to him of what ultra-high power magnetism applied in a particular way could do. Like a light bulb popping on above his head, a whole theory formed that integrated magnetism, gravity, String-Theory and Time/Space relations.
Four Years Ago
“No, gravity and magnetism are different,” he explained his theory to Caroline as they prepared their dinner salads that evening, “but a magnetic field is very similar to a gravitational field.” She was listening, but not completely understanding the techno-babble. Still, she listened, just as he pretended to listen to the poetry verses she often read to him. “The sources are different but the fields are very much alike.” She grabbed a cucumber and started slicing while he cranked the salad spinner. He spun it faster than necessary to dry the lettuce. “To make a gravitational field you need a spinning object of great mass, but to make a magnetic field all you need is power.” The lettuce was portioned out into two large bowls as he continued. “In nature the gravity of a collapsing star warps space, but I believe with enough power I can create a magnetic field that would do the same thing. All I need are the right components,” he said while he topped the salad with tomato, cucumbers, croutons and bacon bits. They sat at the bar that separated their large kitchen from a casual dining area. A wall of sliding glass doors displayed a purple and crimson sunset over Tampa Bay.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Said Caroline as she took a small fork of salad. “What would that accomplish? What could you do with a giant magnetic field that warped space?”
“It wouldn’t have to be giant, just powerful,” he clarified. “If theorists are correct, and string theory has any truth behind it, the field could be used to create a transport to a parallel universe or even time travel.”
Caroline stopped, her fork lifted half way to her mouth. “You mean like Well’s Time Machine,” she asked. “Are you serious?”
“Theoretically, but who knows if it’s actually possible. No one knows what’s in a black hole.” Ben munched his salad, contemplating the question. “All I know is that with what I’ve seen in Magnetic Field Variance, a super field is possible, but I’m not exactly sure what you’ll get once you have one in the lab.”
“Are you making a black hole in your lab at Strone,” she asked, not believing she mouthed the words.
“No, it’s not in the budget,” Ben quipped back.
Three Months Ago
It would have frightened the neighbors had they been aware of the experimental lab that was built in the garage behind the couple’s two story, modern home that looked out over Tampa Bay. In front of the house, Bay Shore Boulevard ran south to Ballast Point Park where a monument commemorated that Jules Gabriel Verne made Tampa Town the launch point for the fictional space adventure “From the Earth to the Moon”, written in 1865. Now over a hundred and fifty years later, the neighborhood was the site of another experiment.
