Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  “It’s dark now, Grandfather. Don’t get me started. I’m not doing anything until daylight.” She shut off the GPS receiver and went back into the cabin.

  After a minute of pacing she opened her computer and then her email program. Her grandfather’s email wasn’t there. Of course not. She’d read it on-line on Ruth’s computer in the lodge. No difference anyway. There was no doubt that she was correct in the coordinates. That wasn’t the type of mistake that she was capable of making. Besides, even if she had made a mistake it was quite a coincidence that it would fall right in her backyard.

  Grandfather wants me to go to this place, 845 feet from here. Why? How would he know what is there? Maybe he flew here and wants to secretly meet with me in some hidden cabin, him and Grae and Bradshaw and Walshe. Maybe they brought their time machine hoping I’d finally come around.

  Now you’re being silly, Annie. She paced some more and then snatched up the GPS receiver, pressed the power button and went outside. Way less than a quarter mile. Five minutes to get there, one minute to look at whatever he wanted her to look at, five minutes back. Not that big a deal. Maybe, then, she’d be ready to sleep.

  She shivered, went back in and exchanged her lighter jacket for her heavier one, grabbed her flashlight and stepped back into the night.

  Five minutes was a bit of an underestimate she soon realized, if for no other reason than she had to stop and bite back a fear of the dark—a natural fear, she tried to convince herself—every hundred feet or so. The readout on the GPS receiver changed from a tenth of a mile to 522 feet. As she walked the numbers kept dropping.

  She was feeling rather proud of herself for making it this far in an environment about as foreign to her as the moon, when something rustled just to her left. She swung her light onto a pair of huge, glaring eyes.

  “Eeeee!” She jumped, caught her foot and fell flat on her back. She lay frozen to the ground, fighting to get her breath back, happily aware that whatever she saw was pounding away from her, not on top of her. When her heart slowed to a reasonable panic level she began applying logic to what she saw. It stood taller than eye to eye with her so that meant it was big, like Big Foot. Big Foot was not real, so maybe a grizzly. That’s not a good thought. Maybe a deer. Not tall enough. Elk are bigger, so it was probably an elk. Whatever it was it was as scared of her as she was of it.

  Yeah, right. Who’s flat on her back in panic mode?

  She stared at the stars until she was as calm as she was going to get and then sat up and looked at the GPS clutched in her still trembling hand. “This is really stupid. Where did I get the idea that it would be safe to go wandering through the woods alone in the middle of the night?”

  You didn’t think.

  “Damned right I didn’t think.” She stood and shined her flashlight about, relieved that there were no other glowing eyes peering back at her. “Now what? I’d be crazy for sure to go the last 176 feet. Go back and try it again in the daylight.”

  She turned to face the way she had come, or at least the way she thought she had come, placing the direction of the arrow behind her. In theory, she should be able to walk right back to her cabin, barely more than a tenth of a mile. The instructions had said that one could set waypoints to find their way back to certain places, such as back to ones car. Or back to ones cabin.

  “Too late now.

  “Here lies what’s left of Annie Caschetta because she failed to mark the position of her cabin. She wandered for days until she became a grizzly bear’s snack.

  “Make a great story to add to Chuck’s inventory.”

  She stood rock still, bent forward at the waist trying to see what was beyond the trees. She thought about the fact that it was 669 feet back to the cabin, but only 176 feet to the . . . the what? Grandfather’s little surprise? Whatever it is, he couldn’t have put it there, unless he is here. Maybe this leads me into a campground and right up to his tent, or someone’s tent. That’s what he’s doing; he’s sending me to someone’s tent or motor home or whatever. That means people. I can chance finding my way back 669 feet without getting lost or continue the last 176 feet to where there are people, even if I might not know them. They’d feel sorry for me, or laugh at Grandfather’s great joke, but they’d at least give me a ride back to my cabin, even if it is the middle of the night.

  She turned around and drew a visual line from the end of the little arrow to the far reach of her flashlight, into the dark beyond the trees. She picked the farthest point she could see, a pair of trees growing from the same root, and walked to it. From there she picked another identifiable point and walked to it. One more time and she was down to 81 feet.

  “No sweat.” Twice more and she was at 30 feet.

  “Where’s the camp ground? Where’s the tent or RV?” She cautiously moved forward until her GPS beeped and a new message appeared. “Arriving at your destination.”

  She stared at the tree in front of her and then the bush beyond it and the trees beyond that, all the way to the end of her flashlight beam. She walked around the tree while watching the GPS arrow jump about and the readout bounce anywhere from zero to fifteen feet. Even when she stood still it changed. “This is a bust,” she said into the dark, and then realized she had no idea which way was back. The arrow had swung 360° several times and everything looked the same.

  Now you’ve really blown it. Couldn’t wait until tomorrow, could you? Why did you bother to begin with, this wild goose chase thanks to Grandfather Hair? For being so damned smart, you sure are stupid. Tony is probably sitting up there laughing at you. She looked up at the sky. “Laugh all you want, Tony, but be an angel and lead me out of here.”

  She continued to look up at the stars as though expecting a reply until in frustration she swung out with her arms, kicked out with one foot and screamed, whereupon the flashlight struck a tree, flew from her hand and plunged her into darkness. She froze and listened to whatever her boot contacted bounce away with a clunk and rattle.

  Don’t panic. Stay cool. She dropped to her hands and knees and began feeling in the direction she assumed the flashlight went. By the end of one full minute her searching became urgent and then with each passing second, frantic until she was crawling about in panic, throwing to the side anything that didn’t feel like a flashlight. And then she suddenly stopped and wondered if there were snakes, or spiders. What kinds of carnivores prowl and hunt the woods at night? Do my fingers look like delectable snacks? She pulled her closed fists to her chest and took a couple of deep breaths. “Calm down. Calm down.”

  You’ve got two choices, Annie. Find the flashlight and hope it still works, or sit right here until daylight. Why didn’t you put on gloves?

  With her fingers still curled tight, fingernails cutting into the palms of her hands, she resumed feeling about. When she realized she had moved away from the place she was standing when she lost the flashlight, she stopped. She needed to keep that spot as a reference and widen her search circle from there. But where was that spot?

  She looked up at the stars. Why with a sky full of burning suns can I not see beyond my nose? And then she saw the shape. There were numerous bright stars and several very bright stars, all in a field of millions of pin pricks of stars. It was all framed by pure blackness, which had to be treetops. Could she figure out which one of the treetops belonged to the tree she struck with the flashlight? That would be her reference point.

  After a time of staring up into the night sky and getting nothing but a stiff neck, she gave up. She realized that she wouldn’t know the right tree if she ran headlong into it. She’d wind up going from tree to tree like a ball in a pinball machine. And then she had the mental image of being a blindfolded human ball in a pinball forest, bouncing from tree to tree until she fell, not into the gapping hole that captures all pin balls eventually, but into The North Fork of the Flathead River.

  The river! If I go east I can’t help but run into the river. I can follow that north until I see the the cabin lights.
Simple. Or . . . she pulled the GPS receiver from her pocket . . . I came here on a bearing of 138°. That means if I follow the inverse of that, like 222°, I should be able to walk right back to my cabin.

  She jumped to her feet and turned until the GPS pointed in a direction that approximated 222°. But it’d sure help if I had my flashlight. The next thing she noticed was the glow from the GPS screen. She turned it to face out and saw that she could just make out things. She turned around and looked at the nearest tree, the tree, she hoped, and then stepped to within arm’s length of it, got down on her knees and started searching by the light of the GPS. Within seconds she found a battery and then the top to the flashlight.

  “You cheap piece of junk! I’m going back and buying that Maglite.”

  She stuffed the parts into her pocket and then looked up at the tree and thought about how she was swinging her arm when she hit it, estimated which way the flashlight would have flown and then crawled slowly in that direction. Pointing the GPS with one hand she brushed through and under piles of rotting deadfall with the other, momentarily forgetting about her fear of snakes and spiders. That’s where she found the rest of the flashlight, buried under a rotten pile, the second battery still inside of it. She surmised that she buried it herself when she was frantically searching earlier.

  Expecting the worst, she reassembled the flashlight and pushed the switch to on. Nothing. She switched it off and on several times, banged it against her palm and then against the ground. Still nothing. Then she remembered that she had to loosen the top the other night to get it to work. She did so and it came on.

  “Cheap piece of junk!”

  She walked back to the tree, to the spot where she stood when everything suddenly went dark, and began looking for the thing she’d kicked. She spotted it right off, only a few feet away, about the size of a small briefcase. How did she ever miss that when she first arrived? She picked it up. It was a black case with hinges and catches, weighing maybe two pounds, like something a power tool from Home Depot would come in. After sitting down she tucked the flashlight between her chin and shoulder, flipped the catches and opened it.

  Chapter 17

  June 5, 2007

  What Annie was looking at was an Iridium 9505A satellite phone with spare battery, car charger, AC adapter, antenna, belt holster, and instruction manual, as well as an envelope labeled, “Annie.” She opened the envelope.

  Annie,

  Call the instant you find this, speed dial 2. Unlock code and voice mail pin are in the email I sent. This will work anywhere it can see the satellites. The batteries are fully charged. Read the manual. You have text messaging as well as email and Internet access, though very slow.

  GF

  She stared at the letter, and then the contents of the box for a long time, trying to believe that there was another way that Grandfather got it here, other than the one she suspected. She flipped through the manual, extracting what she needed, picked up the phone and turned it on. When it was finished powering up and the signal strength was settled at four bars, she recalled the email from her grandfather and the short string of alphanumeric characters which until now made no sense to her, entered them as the unlock code and then pressed the 2 button. There was a click followed by a long silence before two 1-second rings and then, “Do you realize it’s almost 3:30 in the morning, Annie?”

  “Nice to hear your voice too, Grandfather. Your note said to call instantly. This is about as instant as I can get. How did you do this?”

  “That’s what we need to talk about.”

  “You’re kidding. I thought it was going to be the price of tea at the North Pole.”

  “Why did it take you so long to find it?”

  “There’s not exactly a GPS store behind every tree here.”

  “But it’s the middle of the night now.”

  “I couldn’t sleep and I’ve got a new flashlight I was dying to try out, even if it is a cheap piece of junk.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. How did you get this here?”

  “You know how we did it, already, Annie.”

  “Quantum teleportation. Why, Grandfather? Didn’t anyone learn their lesson from my mother?”

  “Can you imagine the commercial and military use for this technology?”

  “For simple real-time teleportation of inorganic objects, maybe. You know that’s not where this is going. You’re talking about sending live organic matter, humans, through time. Why? What do you hope to accomplish? Why aren’t you paying any attention to the dangerous downside?”

  “You . . .” Robert coughed and then the phone went silent.

  She waited.

  “Sorry; have a summer cold. You can look at it as disturbing history, or you can look at it as our normal evolution.”

  “Our normal evolution, our predestination, is to travel back and fix things? That might be a stretch.”

  “It’s what your mother thought.”

  “That doesn’t mean she had it right. Also, you were really lucky back in ’87. There is so much that can go wrong. If I’ve got it right you’re virtually destroying a person in the process of scanning their atoms in the hopes that all of it can be reassembled on the other end, perfectly.”

  “Your satphone works, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s a difference between sending something around the planet in real time and sending a person around the planet after passing her through a wormhole.”

  “It worked for you and your mother.”

  “My mother died.”

  “From other injuries.”

  “How do you know that for sure? Did you take her to a time travel forensic pathologist? Maybe I’ve got a brain tumor and my head will explode some day.”

  “Be serious, Annie.”

  “I am serious. And even so, how do you know it’ll work every time, that some simple unknown, the unaccounted for fly in the ointment, won’t disrupt the entire process? Once the atoms are scanned and destroyed there is only complete reassembly or something that nightmares are made of.”

  “The greatest discoveries of mankind have not been without risk, Annie, or losses. If we never did anything because someone might die, we’d still be living in caves, dying instead from disease, the elements, and predators. If we could go back to the Challenger or Columbia space shuttle disasters, we would probably fix the problems that caused them, minimizing the risk, but we wouldn’t not do them.”

  “How are you minimizing the risk?”

  “Bringing the best minds we can trust into it.”

  “Best minds? Charles the Dweeb is a best mind?”

  “Who?”

  “Charles Walshe the Dweeb.”

  “He’s a genius.”

  “In our circle, Grandfather, who isn’t? There aren’t many that I would trust with my life, though. And that’s what you’re doing here. You’re putting someone’s life in the hands of a bunch of mad scientists. And I think it’s my life you want to play with. Professor Grae said to me, and I quote, ‘What if you could have the opportunity to talk to Tony one more time?’ After what you did to my mother, your daughter, how could you possibly have the nerve to try it again with your granddaughter?”

  “I was not involved with the circumstances that got your mother involved. No one asked for my help until they were in deep trouble. It was your father who instigated that entire fiasco.”

  “Does he know about this?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. If he did he’d be fighting it just like me. He learned a valuable lesson, one that seemed to pass right through you.”

  “We have to take risks.”

  Annie waited for her grandfather to finish another coughing bout, and then said, “Don’t give me more of the space shuttle, space exploration BS. There is risk and there is stupidity. When seven astronauts blast off from Kennedy Space Center they’re risking their own lives, and they know it and accept it. When you blast one person through a wormhole you’re risking t
he lives of everyone on Earth.”

  “That’s extreme, Annie.”

  “I don’t think so, Grandfather.”

  “I would have expected you to have a more open mind.”

  “There’s a limit to everything. I can see the value of teleportation in real time, even of humans if the individual is fully aware of the risk. But across time? What exactly are you trying to accomplish? And why me?”

  “You have a solid understanding of the physics, quantum physics especially. You have a personal interest, thus you can be trusted. You’re the right size.”

  “Size?”

  “Power requirement rises exponentially with mass. You’re 25 kilograms lighter than the best of us.”

  “Isn’t that just convenient. You didn’t answer my other question. What are you trying to accomplish? It’s already been proven that it can be done. What’s the mission now?”

  There was only silence from Annie’s grandfather.

  “I don’t need to see Tony again. It’d only set me back in trying to get over him, which is why I’m here in Montana.”

  “That was Howard’s idea to entice you to the meeting.”

  “Is it his wife? Does he think he can go back . . . no, send me back to do something to save her?”

  More silence.

  “That’s what you told him to bring him on board, didn’t you? You used his wife to entice him just as he used Tony to try to entice me. You were into this long before that, though, weren’t you? You want to save my mother. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Annie.”

  “It won’t work. Can’t you see that? She died because she was protecting her grandfather. If I was to go back and stop that, then he’ll die and bingo, Mom and I will cease to have ever existed. That’s called changing history, Grandfather. By saving her you would be wiping away the circumstances leading to her birth, and who knows what else. I already thought of this three years ago.”

  “Technically, Annie, that’s not true. Rebecca had already been born.”