The Test

by Robert Longley

  I couldn't help myself. "I thought his office was across the hall.”

  "No, it was here.”

  Kelly whacked me. There had been a small fire in his original office. I think I already covered my involvement in this incident. So yeah, he ended up moving across the hall. My son says, "How would you know where Albert Einstein's office was. You've never been to Princeton before?" Thank God for the History Channel. I said, "I saw a biography on him" and that was good enough. We were looking around and there were a lot of old pictures. There were several pictures of Einstein. Then I saw the picture I was in but somehow, I was cut out of it. That's not the way I remember it. You could only see part of my face and my arm. It wasn't enough to tell that it was me. That was probably a good thing.

  We met a couple of professors, although one of them looked strangely familiar. I wouldn't know until later what that was. We got in the car and my daughter says, "Can I drive?" I said, "After yesterday?"

  "Yeah, that was nothing. GTA trains you for things like that.”

  Not sure where she gets the nerves of steel from. I'm guessing my wife. You know she's got the steady hand of a doctor. I was never quite that cool under pressure.

  We headed home and stopped at DQ for blizzards. Perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. What can I say, I'm addicted. We had some laughs and didn't see any unmarked black SUVs along the way. It was a relief. But I was walking on eggshells. I knew that it wasn't over. It was just a matter of time.

  Chapter 23 - Why Me?

  My cell phone rang. "Hello.”

  "Hey, it's Henry. How's it going? How'd you enjoy Princeton?"

  "Are you guys watching me again?"

  "Oh, I wouldn't say again, but yeah."

  "My son enjoyed it.”

  "I hope he's not too disappointed he didn't get into MIT.” "What do you mean?"

  "Well, we had to make sure that he ended up at Princeton.” "I don't get it.”

  "Yeah, we'll get to that. Did you have a nice trip down memory lane? How was it being back there?"

  "It was a little strange. Things have changed a lot. But there were a few things that are still the same.”

  "Well that's good"

  "I thought I saw one of your guys while I was on the tour.” "Well, yeah, probably. We do have one professor there.”

  "Douglas?"

  "Ah, I see you've met Andrew. Your son's going to love his class by the way.”

  "Did you say, Andrew Douglas?"

  "Of course. I told you this was a small family business. Andrew Jr. is the third of four generations to work on the project."

  “Four?" I said.

  "You already met Kennedy"

  "I guess I didn't get her last name"

  "Maybe I left that out. Her great grandfather may or may not have been one of the first to jump. He was primarily the one who set up most of the finances early on. He brought his son into the project towards the end of the war, and he dragged all of us along with him. So now you know the highlights."

  "So back to the MIT thing. Did my son get into MIT?"

  “Technically yes. And don't worry; he will get in there again when he decides to do his graduate work. But yeah, for right now we needed him to be at Princeton for his undergraduate. Oh, and you're welcome for the scholarship by the way.”

  I was a little insulted, "I think he probably earned it on his own."

  "Yeah sure, but we wanted to sweeten the pot a little bit.” "You know, it's still an expensive school even with the scholarship.”

  "Oh, don't worry. He's going to be getting another award shortly. And boy, that kid does deserve it. Let me tell you.”

  "Okay. I suppose I should be grateful. I don't know exactly how you're doing all this, but you seem to be able to do anything you want. So, what does this have to do with me? I don't understand the connection to Princeton and these guys that keep showing up in my life with the sunglasses.”

  "Well, it has to do with you and Albert Einstein. You two spend quite a bit of time together, planning out the setup of Project Rainbow.”

  "Yep. I was there quite a bit along with some of the other guys."

  "Yeah, but you are the only one his assistant remembered. He got grilled extensively after Einstein died. Everyone wanted his papers. They never found them. Even the assistant said he didn't know where they were. After Project Rainbow, Einstein supposedly destroyed all his research. Within a few months people gave up looking for any notes.

  When the assistant was on his death bed, he changed his story and said there were some secret files, but no one would find them. The Feds think that you might know where they are. The whole DNA test thing was just a reason for them to screw with your life. That's kind of how they found you. But they can't come out and say you are a time traveler. That would be crazy because time travel is impossible – right?"

  "So, are you looking for these papers too?"

  “Well, it would be nice to have them just for insurance purposes, but I don't think we need them. We were able to continue with the technology, whereas the government wasn't. And we've kind of been able to keep them from developing the technology up until recently. And that's where you came into the picture.”

  "Let's see if I can fill in some of the blanks for you. Have you ever heard of Project Icarus?"

  "Well, that's one of the things that the sunglasses guys asked me about.”

  "Project Icarus was a reboot of a Project Rainbow, except they tried it on Apollo 18.”

  "I don't think there was an Apollo 18.”

  "That's what everybody thinks. It was a secret mission and didn't go as planned. They tried to open a time portal in space because they thought it might be safer. According to the classified project final report, they ended up losing two astronauts during the test. But don't worry; we grabbed them in the process. They work for us now.”

  "For the first 10 years or so, we didn't do anything except building infrastructure and leverage the profits that we had gotten during the depression. There were a few familiar names in the Foundation leadership, but they did their best to stay out of the history books for their contributions. So, we won't go into that right now.”

  "It has been about building the capabilities to continue Project Rainbow on our own. The main issue has always been power. That's why we have a nuclear generator in our basement thanks to NASA, but that wasn't possible in the 1950s. It's not your typical Three Mile Island or Chernobyl type reactor. We call it Rutger, after the Blade Runner guy. It's a radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). We helped NASA build a few in the early 60s for satellites and then we sort of kept one of the spares. They are generally pretty safe, but I wouldn't stand too close to it for very long if you want to have any more kids.”

  "In your case, it didn't take much more than a diesel generator to open the portal because of where we did it. The natural portals open and close on their own but other than the occasional Bermuda Triangle story, it doesn't usually impact anyone. If you go to Stonehenge today, there's a fence around it so people don't go walking through the middle of it. It's not just to protect the site if you know what I mean. Early on they also couldn't steer to a specific time or destination. That's where it gets expensive."

  "I thought you said that when they did the first jump they planned for a specific date?"

  "That was a little different. Doing a loopback as we call it, is the same place, but a different time. That is some risky shit because you can't have the same matter in the same place from different timelines. There's some speculation on the creation of black holes and other end of the world type scenarios. So, we try to be careful to not move too close in time or location at the same time. I could give you more detail, but I would need slides and a whiteboard."

  "If you want to hit a specific date and location, we use about 500 megawatts for the duration of the portal opening. We've taken out parts of the U.S. power grid on a couple of occasions.”

  "Even with Rutger, we couldn't genera
te enough power. It wasn't until the 1960s that we were able to start jumping again. You may have heard of the blackout from 1966. Yep. That was one of ours. We brought a couple of people back during that time. They worked on the Apollo stuff. There were more investments in infrastructure and not much jumping for the next decade or so. Several of us came through in 1991.”

  "Where did you end up going when you jumped?" I asked. Henry sort of went pale. It wasn't the reaction I was expecting. He looked away and said, "Egypt about the same time as you.”

  I tried to lighten up the mood a bit, "So you know who built the pyramids?"

  "Not exactly"

  Henry regained his composure. "No, they were old when I got there. I can tell you how they got to look the way they do now though."

  "How's that?"

  "Well, I ended up as a slave.” Henry paused for a minute and got quiet again. I sense that this was probably not as good of an experience as mine. He took another deep breath and said, "Charlie Olson and I ended up in the same place and we probably weren't there long. I never learned the language. We were part of the crew that dismantled the great pyramid.”

  "What do you mean dismantled? That still looks like a pyramid.”

  "Yes. But it had white casing stones on it when I showed up and there was a top to it.”

  "Oh yeah. It does have kind of a flat top now.”

  "Well before it had a metal top.”

  "That's kind of cool. So, is that the portal for that area?"

  "No, the portal is a bit closer to the paws of the Sphinx from what I could tell. At least that's where I ended up getting picked up. I never got to see where I landed because I was unconscious for quite a while after. And by the time I woke up, Charlie and I were in a slave labor gang. At the time, we didn't even know that we came through near the Sphinx. We woke up in a camp. I think it was west of where the pyramids are now. It was pretty unceremonious and there wasn't any due process. There was nobody I could appeal to. It's just okay, you're a slave. And not knowing exactly where we were or when we were, even the idea of escaping was not practical.”

  Henry seemed to get a little more comfortable talking about his ordeal. "The work wasn't horrible, and they fed us, so we just kind of went along with things. As far as I could tell, the pyramids were already old when I got there. You can't tell it as much now, but there was a giant crack up through the casing stones on the one side. It almost looked like there had been some sort of explosion within the pyramid. Whoever built it knew a lot more about construction than the group that I was working with. They just started haphazardly removing blocks from the bottom. This didn't always go so well. They had already ripped a path up one side of the pyramid. When I got there, they hadn't touched the side that had the crack in it. They kind of ignore it because many of the blocks were damaged. The pharaoh was using the blocks to build a new temple. They were actually in some kind of economic depression and he couldn't afford to have new stones quarried so he just ripped them off older buildings.”

  "What about the top you mentioned?"

  They ignored many of the cracked blocks on the one side because they were obsessed with getting to the top. It was supposed to be solid gold. The pharaoh thought this would be the end to his money troubles. When we got up there, we found it was gold plates over a wooden frame. It looked very impressive from the bottom. But once you started taking it apart, there wasn't much to it other than it had wires coming off the plates that went into the pyramid.”

  "So, it was probably not what most people think it was. Sounds almost like some sort of a power plant.”

  "Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking too. Disconnecting the plates caused some sort of a time ripple and that's how my team was able to find me. When we disconnected the plates, the whole thing shook like a small earthquake. And because of how we had carved our way up from the bottom it just shook the whole thing. Blocks started tumbling off the side of the building. Luckily, I was partway down when things started shaking. Charlie, on the other hand, wasn't quite as lucky. As far as I can tell, he was crushed by one of the blocks. As I fell off the side, I happened to be running towards the Sphinx when it lit up like a Christmas tree. The next thing I hear "Hey, Henry, this way". Since that was the first English I'd heard in about two months, I just followed. Next thing I know I'm in Nebraska, finding out what MTV is and eating hot pockets. They're delicious, by the way.”

  "Does everyone come back when there's a war going on?"

  "No, but it helps. One of the nice things about wars is that you can take over an entire power plant in a country and nobody notices. Then you blow it up and everybody's happy. So, about that time, we started following Project Obelisk. This was a government program where they started to re-explore the whole time travel issue. They realized that if you were at certain sacred sites, you didn't need as much power to reactivate a portal. That was one of the main reasons for the Gulf War. Sadaam invading Kuwait created the conditions to give us access.

  They knew that at least one site in Iraq was a possible time portal. They didn't know which one and they needed access to the entire country to test different location. The fact that you're here says they eventually figured it out. But based on the highly classified nature of the project and the fact that it was blown up with a missile strike, it set them back a little way.”

  "So, basically time travel is your toy and you don't want any up anybody else playing with it.”

  "Yeah, that's about right.”

  "And if the Einstein papers do exist, it might give somebody a jumpstart in getting back into the game.”

  "You know, I did notice something unusual when we were taking the tour.”

  "Hey, did you see the picture of your arm next to Einstein?"

  "How did you know that picture was of my arm?"

  "I'm probably the only one who knows that. Isn't Photoshop wonderful? So yeah. When we started watching you a few years ago, we made the connection to you and Einstein in Princeton. We happened to find your picture with him, hanging prominently on the wall, outside of Einstein's office. We removed it for a little bit of editing overnight. And now it's just your arm in the picture. You're welcome, by the way. If you want a copy of the original, I'd love to share it with you.”

  "Okay. But it's not outside of Einstein's office. He was actually down the hall. We had a little fire in his office, and he had to move. I never was in his office after that.”

  "I guess we've got to get you back in there and do a little poking around.”

  "So, when am I supposed to do this?"

  "Well, you have to move your son in, don't you? I think we can wait a couple of months. Enjoy graduation. Spend some time at the lake. Maybe even sign your daughter up for the NASCAR circuit."

  “Very funny.”

  "We'll be in touch in a little bit. I'd say see you in September (because I love that song), but it's going to be August. Hopefully, we can do a little exploring then.” “Right.”

  I didn't want to tell him that I was pretty sure I knew where the documents might be. I didn't know if they were still there, but I at least knew where Einstein kept his stuff. Now I had to sit on it for the entire summer.

  Chapter 24 – Summer Fun

  Over the next couple of months, I laid low, kept my eye out for guys wearing sunglasses and tried to live a normal life. Michael graduated from high school and that magical scholarship from Princeton came in right on schedule. It made the prospects of the next four years much more affordable. Now I just need to figure out what my daughter is going to do.

  Both kids got summer jobs in Lake George. I knew we would be spending a lot more time there, so we let them live up there by themselves during the week. Kelly and I both went to summer hours. We worked Monday through Thursday and then headed north. We took our chances during the week, but we didn't want the kids having wild parties over the weekend at the lake house. I knew I didn't need to worry about Michael, but if Stephanie did something, he would just ignore it and go read a
book. Not exactly a roadblock but kind of a wet blanket. Besides, I knew the house was bugged and Henry would let me know if anything happened.

  We had a couple of new commercial projects come in, so I knew that was going to be taking up some of my time. I still made it a point to spend time with the family given everything that had happened. This was my last summer before college for Michael. And who knows what was going to happen with Stephanie. We started looking at colleges while we were at the lake. Unfortunately, other than a geographic circle that we came up with, she liked anything with a football team.

  I spent a lot of time kayaking and we did some of the usual fun stuff. I still like to go over the revolutionary warships in the lake and get a closer look. We'd watch the fireworks Thursday nights when we got up there. It was almost a welcome celebration depending on what time we left work. Between the rodeo and music in the park, this always feels like home. We had thought of selling our house and moving here full time, but it just wasn't practical unless we won the lottery.

  Kelly read a book or 12 while we were there. The kids worked at night, slept during the day and just seemed to enjoy themselves.

  Pretty soon the weekly fireworks at the lake were coming to an end. It was time to pack up my son and head to Princeton. And I knew that I was going to be thrust back into the drama that I had left a couple of months ago. We didn't talk about the events of the last couple of months while we were at the lake. We'd wanted to forget about it and put it behind us. But I think even Kelly knew that something was still looming. We waited until the last possible minute to pack up the house and close things up. We wouldn't be shutting it up for the season yet. We would still be coming up for the balloon festival and a few other things during the year.