“Good morning, Miss Sykes.”
“Morning,” she said. Her stretch ended with a shout. “Morning, oh my God, what time is it?” She realized the room was very much brighter. Her eyes turned to the clock on the nightstand. “Oh shit, I slept in! I’ll be there in half an hour. I’m so sorry; it won’t happen again.” She hung up, stripping off her clothes before she realized what she’d done. “I hung up on him. Oh my God. What the hell was I thinking?” Anger and a need to hurry propelled her through the shower. Twenty minutes after the phone call, she was headed into the garage. That has to be a record, not only for me but all women, to get ready in twenty minutes, she thought. A satisfied smile crossed her face. Women can be fast if we want to, but we’d rather take our time and do it right the first time. Now, I just have to get to work in one piece.
Michael smiled, replacing the receiver. He hadn’t expected to wake Heather. Her proposal last night had taken him off guard. Obviously, she’d been disappointed, but he couldn’t tell her about his plans. He wanted to apologize and make her feel better. Only Billy knew the details, and the chances of success were less than fifty percent. If he were killed or trapped in time, he didn’t want her to suffer now that he knew her feelings.
Billy called up from the lab to say they were ready to begin trials on the software. “I’ll be right there,” Michael said. He stopped on the way to the elevator. “If Miss Sykes calls or comes looking for me, I'll be in the lab with Billy. She can join us there,” he told his secretary.
After a ten-minute walk, he entered the lab, remembering when he and Billy started the business. They worked out of Michael’s basement apartment. Now, they had a four-story building sprawled over two hundred acres. There was a thirty-acre “clean” room where components for the space program and the company’s hardware were assembled. Offices, testing, and further assembly took up much of the rest of the acreage. A relatively small area, five thousand square feet, was tucked in the corner of the massive building reserved for the computer room. Most of the space housed the hardware running the business. The machines in this room were designed and programmed by Michael to be technologically more advanced than anything else invented. He built them from custom-designed parts, many of them manufactured in house. No other computer company had the same level of technology. He walked toward an office set in the corner, big enough for six desks, computer terminals, and the people to work them.
Finding Billy hunched over a desk beside three other technicians as he entered, “How’s it going?” Michael asked.
“We’re just programming the last of the code.” He swiveled in his chair to look up at Michael. “Five minutes and we should be ready for testing.” The smile on his face didn’t hide the fact he was worried but trying to be enthusiastic at the same time.
“It’ll work,” Michael said. “No problem, Billy. I’m certain.” He gave his friend a wink and a smile.
Billy’s face sagged, the color draining away, and his mouth fell open as he realized what Michael was saying. Michael held up his left hand to cut off any further comment.
“Ready, sir.” Another man next to Billy looked up, waiting for confirmation to continue.
“Go ahead, Randal.” All eyes turned to the monitors mounted on the wall. Cameras had been focused on the probe at the far side of the lab. A finger punched the enter key and immediately streams of words—in this case, code poured across the monitor. Thirty seconds passed as the words scrolled and they held their breath. When the cursor stopped at the bottom of the screen, three seconds had ticked by before anyone reacted. Lights on the probe activated. Cheers and backslapping erupted. The process would be faster when commands were sent directly to the probe because the program would run continuously.
“We did it,” Billy yelled and jumped around the room. The tech guys shook Michael’s hand and said, “Well done, sir. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, but you men did the most work; the praise is all yours.”
“Ok, so we know the code is fine, but how do we test the system under space conditions?” Billy chuckled with relief and draped an arm over Michael’s shoulder.
“We’ll begin with more in-house tests. If those go well, then we can move outside.” Michael was talking to Randal.
Billy stepped back and said, “Outside…what do you mean outside? I thought this was supposed to give NASA the ability to speak to the probe in real time. How is taking the probe outside going to tell us if the software does the trick?”
“We’ll move the probe to the other side of the country, definitely to another time zone, so we can gauge the results. If that works, there shouldn’t be any delay in connectivity between the probe and the computer.” Michael had explained all of this to Billy before.
“How is this going to benefit NASA? They want to be able to communicate instantly for whatever reason, but I don’t see how sending the machine across the country is going to work. Forgive me, Michael, but I’m just a bit slow today, and the truth is, I never listened when we started planning this project. I figured you were the brains, and all I had to do was schmooze with the buyers at NASA.”
“The onboard computer can steer the probe out of harm’s way while traveling through space, and even maneuver the craft into orbit. They need to be able to see what the probe sees and instantly control the machine on Mars. Imagine yourself going on a road trip from here to New York. Before you start, you have to figure out what’s going to happen each foot of the distance you’re about to travel. Not only that, but you need to imagine every second of the time you spend in the Big Apple. Can you do that?”
Billy thought for a moment. “No, but they already know how to do that, what difference is this going to make to them?”
“They can’t possibly program every detail of what the probe is going to encounter into the onboard computer. First, they don’t know everything that could happen, and second, what if the probe lands and a Martian is waiting with a club to bash it to bits? The signal generally takes twenty minutes to get there. They must be able to make instant decisions and react to any situation that occurs. This is going to do that for them.”
“Oh, now I see. Not the part about Martians waiting with clubs because they aren’t real, but the twenty minutes waiting for the signal to go from here to Mars would make swift action difficult for them. So, they need a way to stop the thing instantly or be able to turn to avoid a problem. Makes sense now.” Billy was becoming calmer, and Michael could see that the previous discussions were coming back to him.
“We’ll ship the probe across the country, and if the program operates correctly, the machine should instantly receive the command from here. Normally, there are about six seconds between this coast and the east coast so twenty minutes will be the same. This program proves Einstein’s theory about bending time and space. We’ve eliminated the problem of traveling faster than the speed of light.”
The techs left the control room to set up the probe. Once they were out of the room, Billy turned to Michael.
“You’re one fucked-up bastard, you know that? You said you weren’t going to try to time travel without me there. Obviously, anything you say can’t be trusted because you went ahead with your personal agenda last night, didn’t you?” Billy’s face grew red as he moved menacingly toward Michael.
“No, I didn’t. At least, I didn’t go myself. I sent my Dad’s favorite mug with a keyhole camera back to our old house. Dad was there. He looked like he shit his pants when this weird thing appeared in the kitchen. All I got were shots of the cupboards and him, but something was just not right.”
Before they could say anything else, Heather Sykes entered the computer room. “How’d it go?” she asked submissively, her face not showing any emotion.
Michael glanced at his wristwatch and was pleasantly surprised she had taken less than an hour to travel there.
“Fine, the tech guys are moving the probe, so we can do the first obstructed short distance test. Once that’s done, we’ll move
outside for a longer distance trial.” He stared at her with an expression of amusement and pride.
“Shall I prepare a press release then? Initial success with further testing to proceed over the next few days.” Her face reddened under his scrutiny, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“I think that’d be good. What do you say, Billy?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but keep the wording low-key. We don’t want to sound too hopeful just yet.”
“The distance trials will be the critical point. If they go well, we can announce our success,” Michael added. She nodded her understanding and turned without another word. Michael smiled as he watched her walk away.
“You know she wants you, right? All you need to do is relax and let it happen.” There was nothing snide about the remark, and the smile was open and warm when Michael turned toward his friend.
“I might be ready to settle down, but not until I’m able to go back in time. Safely, of course,” he added quickly, seeing Billy frown.
“What happened last night? Why aren’t you satisfied?”
“The mug didn’t completely disappear. I know that traveling through time is possible because I have the video from the camera as proof. Did the cup fully materialize in the past or not? Would I be the same?” Michael was walking back to his office with Billy by his side.
“How are you going to find out? Sounds like there’s a plan, which better not include you lying on that table yet.”
“No, I’m not going myself. How many times do I have to say that before you believe me? I sent a camera in a mug. Maybe I could send a cat with the camera on a mast to get a picture of how the animal appears in the past. The trouble with that idea is keeping the cat in the same place long enough to bring it back.” Mike looked away, hoping Billy wouldn’t see the frown on his face.
“Which brings up another concern for me, what happens to you if you move or aren’t back when the clock runs out? There has to be some kind of fail-safe to protect you, or I’m not going to let you try. Can’t we put some kind of switch on you somehow that you can activate the computer here and bring yourself back?”
“Maybe, but the signal would need to travel forward in time to start the program. Without the computer, I don’t see any way of...” His voice trailed off as they entered his outer office. Walking past the secretary, and closing the inner office door, Michael completed his thought.
“The program is what makes everything happen.” Billy watched Michael pace while thinking aloud. “The object travels when the program activates the time distortion. Technically, this should be like the transporter on Star Trek, but either something isn’t working right, or the computer can’t let go of the object completely. Damn, I didn’t think about that. Even if I send myself back, I won’t be able to travel, Billy. All I can do is stand there and look around.” He pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand in frustration.
“Too bad we can’t put some kind of tracking device on you and then the computer could find you anywhere.”
Michael’s face brightened like a child’s on Christmas morning. “You’re right again, Billy,” Michael shouted. He felt like dancing. “There has to be something that will communicate with the computer in this time, something small, too. Perhaps I can rig one of those cell phones to ping the computer. I’ll work on that while you manage the probe testing. This will be great. Everything’s going to work out perfectly.”
Billy shook his head, smiling. He left the office. Michael ignored him, too focused on scribbling notes on a pad.
Chapter 4
Robert Eldridge sat heavily in his easy chair. He felt older than his seventy-one years.
Everything in his life had changed. Irene, his wife, died. He retired six years ago and ended up in this senior’s home. All that remained were memories and a famous son who didn’t visit anymore. His gaze fell on a rumpled magazine on the coffee table.
“She is; you know…” He thought back to the day they were sitting in the old kitchen—the father at one end of the table, the son in his usual spot on the side. They’d just returned home the evening of Irene’s funeral. Robert was looking sadly at the cupboards he’d never gotten around to replacing and the curtains that Irene had stitched with her own hands. “...Still by your side, making sure you stay out of trouble. I wish she could tell me how to run that damn washing machine in the basement, though,” he said and chuckled at the quick look from Michael. “I miss her too, son. Without her, I feel as if somebody came along and chopped off my right arm.” He swallowed hard to keep from bawling like a baby. “She did everything for me and you while she lived. You were her pride and joy, no matter how much you succeeded.”
He fumbled at the papers on the table and pulled out a rumpled Time magazine. “When this came out, I was afraid she’d buy up every copy at the store. This one almost went to bed with us the first night after she brought it home.” Another soft chuckle, this time from both men. “She read your story every morning and last thing at night until she died. I got home from work that day and found her lying on the floor holding this magazine.” Tears were streaming down the older man’s cheeks, and Michael was also close to crying. The water tap dripped in sympathy.
“I know, Dad. I came by earlier that day to see how she was doing. She never let on there was anything wrong. She seemed happy. All she talked about...was how proud she was to see my picture in Time magazine.”
Robert reached across the table and patted the boy’s hand. He looked up at the old curtains and remembered the day he saw his mug on the table with the gadgets sticking out of it. Never could touch that cup after that, he thought.
That was then. Today, his favorite chair sat in a single room of a nursing home in California, not in the house he’d lived in with Irene for more than thirty years. A few pictures and his clothes were all he’d been allowed to bring with him. His stroke last year had partially paralyzed his left side, which made walking and dressing difficult. He smiled, but he could feel the left side of his face sag. I guess my son being rich and famous doesn’t matter. The fact is that putting me in here was easier than hiring a nurse. I can’t blame him, though. He’s busy and doesn’t have time to take care of an old man.
The vision of the mug on the table drifted into his mind again. What the hell was that thing? That was my favorite cup, but I’ve never seen anything like the stuff stuck all over it. Where the hell did those come from? “Must have been a trick of my imagination,” he muttered, instantly afraid that someone might hear him. Piss on them if they can’t take a joke, he thought and continued his one-way conversation. “I could see right through it, but the damned thing seemed real enough, not a reflection or trick of the light.”
His hands twitched and rubbed together on his lap; a nervous habit that started years ago. “Wish I’d said something back then, but my family would’ve thought I’d gone nuts. I thought I was going crazy. Maybe I did. Perhaps this whole time I’ve been living in a nut house drooling on my pants, and this is just some kind of fantasy in my mind.”
He groaned as he shifted his backside in the chair. His eyes scanned around the room peering at what his life had become. “Nothing left but a place to die. Michael hasn’t been to see me in months, my friends are all dead, and I can’t do anything physical. Oh, Irene, I wish I’d died that day instead of you. You were better than I was at seeing the bright side of life. I miss you so much.” He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
The door to his room wasn’t closed. Two nurses standing at the station across the hall gave each other looks, which said they thought the old man was senile. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard the elderly talking to themselves, but this conversation was about weird mugs and wishing he could die. The senior nurse picked up the phone and dialed the doctor on call. He was going to have to contact the family and let them know their father was failing.
There was a knock on the door, and it opened. The assistant Michael called an hour ago stepped inside. “I
’ve got your cell phone sir, but there was a problem.” The young man wearing a lab coat over a pair of scruffy jeans nervously stepped up to the desk.
“What kind of problem?”
“They wouldn’t let me buy it without activation like you wanted.” He laid the phone box down in front of Michael.
“That’s all right. I didn’t know if they would or not, but that could work to my advantage. Thanks, Trefor, for doing this for me. How’re they doing down there?”
“Fine, so far. The probe is at the far end of the lab, and they should be running communications now, or at least by the time I get back.”
“Good. Tell Randal to call me when he’s free.”
Trefor gave a short nod and left.
Michael turned his attention to the red and white carton before him. The phone inside was heavy, the size of a typical telephone receiver but thicker. A number pad on the front and a retractable antenna on the top were the only distinguishing features that separated this thing from a brick.
He stared at it for a minute, wondering how its signal would help or hinder the trip through time. A picture was starting to emerge in his mind when the telephone on his desk rang.
After setting the cell phone down, he picked up the landline receiver.
“Hello, Michael Eldridge here.”
“Mr. Eldridge, this is Dr. Caraway at Central Park Manor.”
“Is something wrong with my father?” Michael demanded, expecting the worst.
“No, not really. I’m just concerned that his mental state is deteriorating. He’s conversing with himself more than other patients his age.” The doctor’s voice had a greasy, snakelike quality, which made Michael’s spine crawl.
“I do that all the time, Doctor, but I’m thinking out loud. Does that mean my mental state is slipping?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Eldridge; I thought you’d want to know about your father.”
An Altered Course Page 4
