Time Travel Omnibus, page 794
The Idea
The researchers continued working on the time transporter, but with little hope of success. Then one day Dr. Ashburn wanted to join her fellow scientists for lunch, but didn’t have enough money. Payday was only a day away, and as with most absent minded professors, Dr. Ashburn was always forgetting her money. Just before she was going to tell the others to go without her, she noticed an envelope on the time transporter. In the envelope was a twenty dollar bill and a note in her own handwriting that said “pay me back later.”
While at lunch, the three professors discussed a minor technical problem with the machine. Dr. Jameson said that one of the displays on his computer had stopped working. If he had the parts, he could fix it in five minutes, but it would take two days to get the parts from the vendor.
Dr. Katz said that what he needed was a time machine that could send the part back to when the display died, and then he uttered the now famous line, “When it absolutely, positively must be there yesterday.” Everyone laughed for a moment and then Dr. Ashburn thought about it for a minute and shared her tale from earlier in the day. From this lunch sprouted the seeds of the most famous company in the world today.
The Beginning
Today, Temporal Express is a world-wide organization with its home offices in the City of Time also known as Columbia, Maryland. Columbia is located halfway between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. This location was close to Maryland State University where the trio worked as professors. The location also proved important in later years since it provided easy access to the legislators who created the laws that made it possible for TempEx to be very profitable.
But Temporal Express did not start out as an immediate success. Its early years were extremely rough. While Dr. Katz and Dr. Ashburn remained with the University, Dr. Jameson tried to raise money to build a second machine. Failing to do that, Dr. Jameson was at least able to raise sufficient money to buy the rights to the existing time transporter from the University. The University had begun to find the entire project an embarrassment and wished to distance itself from all the negative publicity. After getting sole possession of the temporal transporter and its related technology, the threesome then relocated the machine to Dr. Ashburn’s garage. From there they began to offer their services . . .
At first most potential customers were skeptical of the service. The service was both expensive, (costing over ten thousand dollars for a one pound package delivered the previous day) and extremely restrictive due to the time transporter limitations and the Theory of Useless Information. However when a multi-million dollar machine was destroyed at a local manufacturing plant because a small, relatively inexpensive part failed, TempEx was able to save the day. They delivered the part just before the machine broke down, and the manufacturer’s staff was able to replace the part before disaster struck.
Their second customer was a major airline who managed to avoid a huge aircraft disaster by replacing a small circuit board in the control system of their new Boeing 787 aircraft. If the board hadn’t been replaced before the aircraft took off, it was almost certain that all twelve hundred passengers would have died.
These stories are simply the first in a series of disasters prevented by the timely delivery of a package by TempEx. Over the next twelve months, TempEx was able to move out of the garage into a large office complex. Two years later, TempEx completed a hostile takeover of Federal Express, followed shortly by DHL and Airborne Express. Thus the corporate motto, “Any time, any place.” Other companies acquired over the years that followed include: Chrysler Corporation, General Electric, and Hewlett Packard. Temporal Express had reached the big time!
After all of the skepticism surrounding the initial announcement, Dr. Jameson, Dr. Ashburn, and Dr. Katz deliberately suppressed their theories about time travel which left their competitors without sufficient information to build their own time transporters. As TempEx grew, there were many attempts by their competitors to build their own temporal transporters. The most aggressive of their competitors was the United Parcel Service (UPS). In the early twenty-first century, UPS had achieved a near monopoly on the package delivery service in the United States. Having bought the U.S. Postal Service from the federal government in 2003, it had very little competition left and it had sufficient funds to try to duplicate the temporal transporter.
When UPS was unable to develop the temporal transporter on their own, they decided to sue TempEx for the information on the grounds that the time transporter technology was developed with public funds and thus should be open to everyone. TempEx was successful in proving that their device was built using grant money from several different corporations such as Hewlett Packard, Chrysler Corporation, and General Electric.
Following this decision, TempEx turned their attention to Washington and Congress. They were able to convince Congress that transporting objects though time was a risky business and should only be attempted by organizations with sufficient experience. Since TempEx was the only organization with an operational time transporter, they were immediately granted a license by Congress. A review board was established to determine if an organization has sufficient expertise to experiment with time transportation. Since the members of the review board were required by law to have temporal experience, no other organizations were permitted to develop that technology. For all practical purposes, TempEx now had a monopoly on time transportation.
The Service
Temporal Express has positioned itself for growth well into the twenty-second century. Currently it is the second largest corporation in America, only ten trillion dollars behind Microsoft. It is larger than the rest of the Fortune 100 combined. Its research and development budget is larger then the gross national product of many countries.
Today, Temporal Express is an international organization that can deliver and pick up packages anywhere on Earth as well as the moon and Mars. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, TempEx is planning to expand their services into the asteroid belt in the next 12 to 18 months.
Originally TempEx was organized as a star network, with a central hub in which all of the packages flowed through and where the temporal transporters were located. This is the same organization that proved successful for Federal Express. However, demand for TempEx’s services overloaded the central facility. Now TempEx has several smaller hubs located at key points around the globe and one on the moon.
For normal previous day delivery in the United States, TempEx will pickup and deliver a one pound package for only $10,000. Two day delivery costs $35,000, and one week delivery is available by special quote. While not very popular, one week delivery is believed to have been used several times in the past at a cost of over $1 million dollars per delivery.
The largest package ever handled by TempEx was a twenty-six pound oxygen recycling module that was needed by the Lunar Authority to replace a similar unit that was damaged by a meteorite. With the primary unit already offline for major repairs, over half the colony’s population would have died due to lack of oxygen before a replacement unit could make the 12 hour flight from Earth.
The Future
While the original founders of Temporal Express do not participate in the day to day operations of the company, they are active professors at Future University (the new name for Maryland State University after it was purchased by TempEx). They teach doctoral seminars in temporal theory at Future University and advise the University president, Dr. Therese Jillion, on policy and direction.
Through Future University, TempEx is actively pursuing technologies that will improve the range and efficiency of their current time transporter. Also TempEx is investing a large part of their research budget in an attempt to combine their time transporter technology with conventional spaceship technology to build the first practical starship. It is expected that this starship will be ready to launch within the next five years.
It is clear that from the beginning, Dr. Christopher Jameson, Dr. Samantha Ashburn, and Dr. Terry Katz, believed that Temporal Express would be successful. Even though the early years were rough, all three professors stuck with their idea and nursed it into the corporation it is today.
Sources
“Future University: A Status Report to the Shareholders.” Jaybird, J. B., Temporal Express Press, 2013.
“Temporal Express Annual Report.” Temporal Express Press, 2013.
“The Official History of Temporal Express.” Ashburn, S., Adler & Robin Books, 2012.
“The Rise and Fall of UPS.” Brigham ton, L., Chrissam Press, 2010.
“The Unauthorized Life of Christopher Jameson.” Jillion, T., Chrissam Press, 2011.
Grade: A—
Your facts were very good and so was the presentation. While you used five references, you should have included references for the Wall Street Journal article and the “60 Minutes” television episode since you referred to them in your report. Overall a very good job.
—Miss Bonnie J. Goemmer
NOBLE MOLD
Kage Baker
FOR A WHILE I LIVED IN THIS LITTLE TOWN BY THE sea. Boy, it was a soft job. Santa Barbara had become civilized by then: no more Indian rebellions, no more pirates storming up the beach, nearly all the grizzly bears gone. Once in a while some bureaucrat from Mexico City would raise hell with us, but by and large the days of the old Missions were declining into forlorn shades, waiting for the Yankees to come.
The Company operated a receiving, storage, and shipping terminal out of what looked like an oaken chest in my cell. I had a mortal identity as an alert little padre with an administrative career ahead of him, so the Church kept me pretty busy pushing a quill. My Company duties, though, were minor: I logged in consignments from agents in the field and forwarded communiques.
It was sort of a forty-year vacation. There were fiestas and fandangos down in the pueblo. There were horse races along the shore of the lagoon. My social standing with the De La Guerra family was high, so I got invited out to supper a lot. And at night, when the bishop had gone to bed and our few pathetic Indians were tucked in for the night, I would sneak a little glass of Communion wine and then relax out on the front steps of the church. There I’d sit, listening to the night sounds, looking down the long slope to the night sea. Sometimes I’d sit there until the sky pinked up in the east and the bells rang for Matins. We Old Ones don’t need much sleep.
One August night I was sitting like that, watching the moon drop down toward the Pacific, when I picked up the signal of another immortal somewhere out there in the night. I tracked it coming along the shoreline, past the point at Goleta; then it crossed the Camino Real and came straight uphill at me. Company business. I sighed and broadcast, Quo Vadis?
Hola, came the reply. I scanned, but 1 knew who it was anyway. Hi, Mendoza, I signaled back, and leaned up on my elbows to await her arrival. Pretty soon I picked her up on visual, too, climbing up out of the mists that flowed along the little stream; first the wide-brimmed hat, then the shoulders bent forward under the weight of the pack, the long walking skirt, the determined lope of the field operative without transportation.
Mendoza is a botanist, and has been out in the field too long. At this point she’d been tramping around Alta California for the better part of twelve decades. God only knew what the Company had found for her to do out in the back of beyond; I’d have known, if I’d been nosy enough to read the Company directives I relayed to her from time to time. I wasn’t her case officer anymore, though, so I didn’t.
She raised burning eyes to me and my heart sank. She was on a Mission, and I don’t mean the kind with stuccoed arches and tile roofs. Mendoza takes her work way too seriously. “How’s it going, kid?” I greeted her in a loud whisper when she was close enough.
“Okay.” She slung down her pack on the step beside me, picked up my wine and drank it, handed me back the empty glass and sat down.
“I thought you were back up in Monterey these days,” I ventured.
“No. The Ventana,” she replied. There was a silence while the sky got a little brighter. Far off, a rooster started to crow and then thought better of it.
“Well, well. To what do I owe the pleasure, et cetera?” I prompted.
She gave me a sharp look. “Company Directive 080444-C,” she said, as though it were really obvious.
I’d developed this terrible habit of storing incoming Green Directives in my tertiary consciousness without scanning them first. The soft life, I guess. I accessed hastily. “They’re sending you after grapes?” I cried a second later.
“Not just grapes.” She leaned forward and stared into my eyes. “Mission grapes. All the cultivars around here that will be replaced by the varieties the Yankees introduce. I’m to collect genetic material from every remaining vine within a twenty-five-mile radius of this building.” She looked around disdainfully. “Not that I expect to find all that many. This place is a wreck. The Church has really let its agricultural program go to hell, hasn’t it?”
“Hard to get slave labor nowadays.” I shrugged. “Can’t keep ‘em down on the farm without leg irons. We get a little help from the ones who really bought into the religion, but that’s about it.”
“And the Holy Office can’t touch them.” Mendoza shook her head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Hey, things change.” I stretched out and crossed my sandaled feet one over the other. “Anyway. The Mexicans hate my poor little bishop and are doing their level best to drive him crazy. In all the confusion with the Missions being closed down, a lot of stuff has been looted. Plants get dug up and moved to people’s gardens in the dark of night. There are still a few Indian families back in some of the canyons, too, and a lot of them have tiny little farms. Probably a lot of specimens out there, but you’ll really have to hunt around for them.”
She nodded, all brisk. “I’ll need a processing credenza. Bed and board, too, and a cover identity. That’s your job. Can you arrange them by 0600 hours?”
“Gosh, this is just like old times,” I said without enthusiasm. She gave me that look again.
“I have work to do,” she explained with exaggerated patience. “It is very important work. I’m a good little machine and I love my work. Nothing is more important than My Work. You taught me that, remember?”
Which I had, so I just smiled my most sincere smile as I clapped her on the shoulder. “And a damned good machine you are, too. I know you’ll do a great job, Mendoza. And I feel that your efficiency will be increased if you don’t rush this job. Take the time to do it right, you know? Mix a little rest and rec into your schedule. After all, you really deserve a holiday, a hard-working operative like you. This is a great place for fun. You could come to one of our local cascaron balls. Dance the night away. You used to like to dance.”
Boy, was that the wrong thing to say. She stood up slowly, like a cobra rearing back.
“I haven’t owned a ballgown since 1703. I haven’t attended a mortal party since 1555. If you’ve chosen to forget that miserable Christmas, I can assure you I haven’t. You play with the damned monkeys, if you’re so fond of them.” She drew a deep breath. “I, myself, have better things to do.” She stalked away up the steps, but I called after her:
“You’re still sore about the Englishman, huh?”
She didn’t deign to respond but shoved her way between the church doors, presumably to get some sleep behind the altar screen where she wouldn’t be disturbed.
She was still sore about the Englishman.
I may have a more relaxed attitude toward my job than some people I could mention, but I’m still the best at it. By the time Mendoza wandered squinting into morning light I had her station set up, complete with hardware, in one of the Mission’s guest cells. For the benefit of my fellow friars she was my cousin from Guadalajara, visiting me while she awaited the arrival of her husband from Mexico City. As befitted the daughter of an old Christian family, the senora was of a sober and studious nature, and derived much innocent pleasure from painting flowers and other subjects of natural history.
She didn’t waste any time. Mendoza went straight out to what remained of the Mission vineyard and set to work, clipping specimens, taking soil samples, doing all those things you’d have to be an obsessed specialist to enjoy. By the first evening she was hard at work at her credenza, processing it all.
When it came time to loot the private gardens of the Gentes de Razon her social introductions went okay, too, once I got her into some decent visiting clothes. I did most of the talking to the Ortegas and Carrillos and the rest, and the fact that she was a little stiff and silent while taking grape brandy with them could easily be explained away by her white skin and blue veins. If you had any Spanish blood you were sort of expected to sneer about it in that place, in those days.
Anyway it was a relief for everybody when she’d finished in the pueblo and went roving up and down the canyons, pouncing on unclaimed vines. There were a few Indians settled back in the hills, ex-neophytes scratching out a living between two worlds, on land nobody else had wanted. What they made of this woman, white as their worst nightmares, who spoke to them in imperious and perfectly accented Barbarefio Chumash, I can only imagine. However she persuaded them, though, she got samples of their vines too. I figured she’d soon be on her way back to the hinterlands, and had an extra glass of Communion wine to celebrate. Was that ever premature!
I was hearing confessions when her scream of excitement cut through the subvocal ether, followed by delighted profanity in sixteenth-century Galician. My parishioner went on:
“. . . which you should also know, Father, was that I have coveted Juana’s new pans. These are not common iron pans but enamelware, white with a blue stripe, very pretty, and they came from the Yankee trading ship. It disturbs me that such things should imperil my soul.”
Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!
