Back In Time: A Historic Western Time Travel Romance (An Oregon Trail Time Travel Romance Book 3)

by Susan Leigh Carlton

  “You got it, Allie. Have a good day.”

  “You too.”

  A steady stream of calls came in from friends and former students. At 10:30, Allie answered and was greeted with “Mrs. Thornton, my name is Kelli Raine from Morning in America. How are you this morning?”

  “Busy, the phone has been ringing off the wall all morning,” Allie said.

  “I’m not surprised. That was quite a show last night. It is all anyone is talking about this morning.”

  “Ms. Raine, first, I would like to make one thing clear. “It was not a show. It was about our daughter and the experiences she had. She was only seventeen when we saw her last. She had four children, our grandchildren and we will never see them either. If you saw the program, you didn’t see any smiles on our part.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you,” the caller said. “Everyone loved the program and would like to hear more about you and your daughter. The producers of Morning in America would like to have you on our show, and it is a show.”

  “How would that benefit us or our daughter?” Allie asked.

  “It might give some relief to families with missing loved ones.”

  “We talked about that in Haynes Falls. We’re afraid it might give a lot of people false hope,” Allie said. “We considered not participating in the program at all for that reason.”

  “That is a possible consequence, but on the other hand, it might cause someone who is missing to come forward after seeing all of the anguish you and your husband have suffered.”

  “What would be involved?” Allie asked.

  “We would bring you to New York as our guest, and you could tell your story.”

  “I can’t make such a decision without talking it over with my husband. Why don’t you give me a number and I will call you tomorrow?”

  “We would like to have you while it is fresh on everyone’s mind.”

  “I understand that, but Barry and I make decisions together. I have another call coming in.” She wrote the number down and said, “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  The next morning…

  “Ms. Raine, Allie Thornton. We agree to be on your show, but under the condition you come here. We don’t want to come to New York. One other thing, we are not going to make the rounds, there will be one show only and it would have to be here.”

  “I will call you back within the hour,” Raine said.

  An hour later…

  “We agree to do the interview from your home,” Kelli Raine said. “We will need time to set up the lighting and camera angles. Our producer, Zak Greb will call you to get the details. Thank you on behalf of everyone in the Morning in America Show.”

  A week later, the tech crew arrived and put tape marks on the floor for the cameras, and tested a motor generator that would provide power for the lights. The cameras were battery operated. The producer gave Allie and Barry a list of questions that might be asked.

  “We’ve seen the original show, and since we will be shooting live, you can be thinking about the questions. I’m also open to any suggestions you might have,” the producer told them.

  “Our daughter’s room has been kept as she left it, if you would like to see it,” Allie said. “She won quite a few honors and awards as an athlete, as well as being salutatorian of her class. Those trophies are in her room also. She was all state in basketball and volleyball, and had almost made up her mind to take the basketball scholarship to the University of Nebraska over the other offers. We were on our way home from a visit to Nebraska when the accident happened.”

  “If you like, you could show us her room and the awards. It will add to the magnitude of your loss. Maggie will do an introduction and outline how the discovery was made. “This will pretty much be along the lines of the original discovery of the coffin and the news clip you saw on Facebook.”

  “I can do that,” Allie said.

  “That’s about all I can think of right now, but something always comes up,” he said.

  “I’d like to ask one question. Ignore it if you don’t want to answer. Why don’t you want to do one of the late night shows? It’s a completely different audience.

  “It always seems to me the same people move around to the different shows and are asked the same questions and they give the same answers. I don’t have anything to promote and am not looking for sympathy.”

  “I understand completely, and you’re right. Most of them are looking for publicity for their next movie, endorsements or whatever. We did a piece last year at MIT. A professor there has a research group on time travel. You might contact him. He may have something of interest for you. Use my name when you call.” He turned, “Kelli, would you give Mrs. Thornton Doctor Fujikawa’s telephone number please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Using a Surface, she opened a screen, and wrote a name and number on a Post-it note. “It’s Doctor Fujikawa,” she said.

  “I’ll give them a call. Thank you,” Allie said.

  Chapter twelve

  MIT Research

  The phone was answered with a curt, “Research.”

  “My name is Alexandra Thornton. I was given this number by Mr. Greb of the Morning in America television show and told to ask for Doctor Fujikawa.”

  “I’ll transfer you,” the voice said.

  The phone went dead briefly, then a ringing sound. “Doctor Fujikawa,” came over the line. English was not the speaker’s first language.

  “Doctor Fujikawa, my name is Alexandra Thornton. Mr. Greb of Morning in America interviewed my husband and me for their show.”

  “Ah yes, Mister Greb. He call. Your daughter traveled in time.”

  “Yes, her name is Angela. She went to 1866. It happened right after school was out this past semester. She was seventeen at the time.”

  “You will come talk to me, yes?” he asked.

  “You want us to come to Boston?” she asked.

  “Yes. You come talk to me,” he repeated.

  “When?”

  “Any time. You come. We talk.”

  “I will need to talk to my husband, and call you back,” she said.

  “You come.”

  * * *

  “It was the strangest conversation I’ve ever had,” Allie told Barry. “All he said was, ‘You come, we talk.’ He said it twice and then said, ‘You come,’ and that was it.”

  “I guess if you’re trying to build a time machine, you don’t have time to waste words,” he said.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem. If you say something wrong, you could just go back and say them all over. If I’d had something like that, I could have graduated magna from college. Do you want to go?” she asked.

  “Why not? Look how much we learned when we went to Oregon.”

  “I’ll call him back tomorrow morning.”

  “Doctor Fujikawa? Allie Thornton. We will be able to come any time you say.”

  “Next Tuesday. You come. We talk,” The connection was broken.

  * * *

  A post-graduate student was assigned to them. “I’m Charles van Landingham. I will be your go to person while you are here. You will be meeting with Doctor Fujikawa after lunch. I will be there too. He can be hard to understand at times.”

  “Are you a grad student?” she asked.

  “I’m a post-doctorate fellow,” he said.

  “Are you allowed to tell me what your project is?” she asked.

  “We are working on general relativity, or what you call time travel.”

  “I know it’s possible. Our daughter proved it,” she said.

  His smile was benign. “It’s possible.”

  “Have you done it?”

  “Once. We have a glitch right now, but we’ll get there,” he said.

  “What would be the benefit?”

  “It’s the capability. We might be able to rescue some of the great minds. Just think what someone like Galileo or Euclid could do with the equipment and knowledge we have today.”

  “Wou
ld you go?” she asked.

  “In a heartbeat,” he answered. “Would you?”

  “It would take me longer than a heartbeat to decide, but if I knew I could go to the time where my daughter was, I would.”

  “When would that be?” he asked.

  “One hundred forty years ago,” she said.”

  “Doctor Fujikawa will ask you that,” he said.

  “I brought some information,” she said. “Will he be interested?”

  “Doctor Fujikawa is interested in everything, except wasting his time. What do you have?”

  “I know where she was in 1866, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910 and 1920. I know she died in 1925.”

  “You evidently used census records. How do you know about 1866?”

  “She filled out a homestead claim, and also she was married that year.”

  “How do you know the woman that died in 1925 was your daughter?”

  “Our DNA was compared and matched.”

  “But how do you know the woman in the coffin was the same one that died in 1925? Please don’t get me wrong. A scientist has to make sure of the facts so his research can stand up to questions.”

  “I understand. The real question is how far do you take it. At some point, you either believe or you don’t. I also believe in paralysis by analysis. I’m not on your level of course, but I am a physics teacher.”

  “A fellow scientist. We have a common ground,” he said.

  “The lady that would become her mother-in-law kept a journal. She identifies the day they found Angie and it documents what she told them. She told them her name and where she was from. The place didn’t exist at the time. Apparently she didn’t tell them she was from another century. I have a copy of the journal with me, as well as the other records.”

  “Doctor Fujikawa will definitely like that.”

  “How many people in your project?” she asked.

  “We have eight at the present. It’s all we have funding for.”

  * * *

  Van Landingham introduced her to Doctor Fujikawa. He didn’t shake hands. Instead, he bowed slightly.

  “You come. Mr. Greb call me. Tell me about your daughter. How do you know?”

  She showed him all of the records she had brought. “There is also a journal written by the lady that helped her on the wagon train. I have a copy. The original is in a museum in Haynes Falls, Oregon.”

  “You show me where this happened?” He led her to a large hanging map. It was dotted with push pins of various colors.

  She took the offered pointer. “We live here,” she pointed to Brevard. We were returning home from Lincoln. I don’t see the stream on the map, but let me show you on my iPad.” She tapped the Google Earth app and found it.

  “We were going east on this highway when we went into the stream.” Van Landingham took the longitude/ latitude coordinates, and put a red pin on the spot on the map.

  “What are the red pins?” Barry asked.

  “Other events like your daughter’s.” Van Landingham said.

  “There have been that many?”

  “Yes sir. Unlike what you have, we have no details on the others beyond the point of disappearance.”

  What happens?” Barry asked.

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘wormhole’ in physics?”

  “I heard of it in college, but to be honest, I don’t remember it,” Allie said.

  We believe that for a small period of time, there is a wormhole in the space time continuum. The person passes through the wormhole and lands on the same point, but in another time.”

  “So there’s no travel, just into another time,” she said.

  “Yes, another time,” Doctor Fujikawa said.

  “Have there been any events here?” Allie asked, pointing to Haynes Falls on Google Earth.”

  “Not that we know of,” Van Landingham said. “What we are trying to do is find everything that was going on at the time of the event. We would like to recreate it in the lab if possible.”

  “Have you had any success?” she asked.

  “Some.”

  “People have gone into the past?”

  “Twice. We couldn’t bring one of them back.”

  “Why not?”

  “The wormhole collapsed on him and we don’t know where he is.”

  “And you kept experimenting?”

  “All new science carries a certain amount of risk,” Van Landingham said.

  “How do you mitigate the risk?”

  “I only went back a week. When they couldn’t bring me back, I showed up on my own, three days before I left,” he laughed.

  Allie didn’t think it was funny and told him so.

  “It’s kind of an inside joke,” he said.

  Chapter thirteen

  Wormholes

  Like black holes, wormholes arise as valid solutions to the equations of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and, like black holes, the phrase was coined (in 1957) by the American physicist John Wheeler. Also like black holes, they have never been observed directly, but they crop up so readily in theory that some physicists are encouraged to think that real counterparts may eventually be found or fabricated.

  In 1916, the Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm, while looking over Karl Schwarzschild's solution to Einstein's field equations, which describes a particular form of black hole known as a Schwarzschild black hole, noticed that another solution was also possible, which described a phenomenon which later came to be known as a “white hole”. A white hole is the theoretical time reversal of a black hole and, while a black hole acts as a vacuum, drawing in any matter that crosses the event horizon, a white hole acts as a source that ejects matter from its event horizon. Some have even speculated that there is a white hole on the "other side" of all black holes, where all the matter the black hole sucks up is blown out in some alternative universe, and even that what we think of as the Big Bang might in fact have been the result of just such a phenomenon.

  Physics of the Universe

  * * *

  “Mrs. Thornton? This is Charles Van Landingham. Doctor Fujikawa asked me to give you a call.”

  “Good to hear from you. Is there something we can do for you and the good doctor?” Allie asked. “Barry is here. May I put you on speaker?”

  “We may be able to do something for each other,” he said. “We’ve made considerable progress. We’ve learned how to be selective in using the wormhole.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “We can more or less pick the year, and we can return. The window to return is very narrow and has to be back to the same point as the departure point which is here at MIT.”

  “What is the risk?”

  “If our equipment malfunctioned, you would be stranded in the past.”

  “How does it work?”

  “A wormhole or door to the past would appear as a dark tunnel. A tunnel into the past, if you will. You simply walk into it. When you pass through to the other end, you’re in another time.”

  ‘So what are you asking us?” Barry asked.

  “Would you like to visit your daughter?” Van Landingham asked.

  Allie gasped. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “The offer comes from Doctor Fujikawa himself.”

  “What would we have to do?” asked Barry.

  “Sign a release absolving MIT from any responsibility for what might happen.”

  “That’s all? How long do we have to decide?” Barry asked.

  “We haven’t discussed that yet. We would have work to do in order to set it up.”

  “What if we decided to make it a one way trip?” Allie asked.

  “That would reduce the risk by one-half,” Van Landingham said. “We would not have set up the return trip.”

  “How would you know it worked?” Allie asked.

  “You could send us a note,” Van Landingham said.

  “Now you’re being funny again,” she said.

  “Think
about it. You write a note saying you made it, and leave it in a protective container in a designated place. We retrieve the container and read the note.”

  “That is ingenious,” Allie said.

  “We have some thinking to do. If we decide, and I do mean if, we would have to have something of value to exchange for the money of the day.”

  “I would suggest diamonds, they’ve always been the world’s most valuable commodity,” Van Landingham said. “Let me know your decision as soon as possible. By the way, we haven’t offered this opportunity to anyone else.”

  “Thank you for calling, Doctor. We’ll get back to you soon,” Allie said.

  * * *

  “Talk about a bolt out of the blue! What do you think of all of that?” Allie asked her husband.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to digest it all,” he said. “Would you do it?”

  “I’d do it tomorrow, but only if you were 100% sure and went with me,” Allie told him.

  “It could end our lives.”

  “And if it did, who would know or care besides our neighbors?” she asked. “What would make your life more complete than it is now?”

  “If you put it that way, having Angie back would do it for me,” he said.

  “She isn’t coming back, but this is a chance to go to her, and her family.”

  “We’d have to liquidate everything if we don’t plan to come back,” he said.

  “How long would that take?” she asked.

  “A month, maybe. There would be no turning back, once we start,” he said.

  “That would be all right too. If necessary, we could start over somewhere else. I think I would like Oregon.”

  “We would have to go to Boston, and then once we’re in her time, we would have to travel across country,” he said. At least it would be easier than the way she had to do it. The transcontinental railroad was completed in the 1860’s.”

  “Have we made a decision?” she asked.

  “I believe we have. “I’ll call Doctor Van Landingham back tomorrow.”