The Commander remembered other failures that had occurred with some of the older models of travel computers. The Empress had performed all the required upgrades over the years but that did not guarantee anything. The commander closed his eyes and asked his God for this not to be true, “Please protect the crew of The Empress,” he prayed.
After two hours, The Empress still had not responded to his hail so the commander set the message to replay every hour. The Commander, named General Williams, had now set the wheels in motion, and now only an inquisition board could stop the repeated hails to the crew of The Empress. The commander contacted the IFTT’s Board of Directors and explained the situation to them in a five-way conference call.
Within twenty minutes time, four engineers had overrun the commander’s office and were retracing The Empress’s last signal to see if they could detect any telltale signs of a failure. The last words spoken by The Empress’s skipper, Jill Marie Yutaka, kept echoing in the engineer’s heads as they repeatedly replayed The Empress’s final message. Jill’s words had been recorded because she spoke aloud and the computer had not disengaged the microphones transmit button as Jill pressed the engage button. The words Jill spoke were, “Computer, did I properly set the….” The engineers played the message back twenty or more times but none of them could think what Jill might have forgotten to set correctly that would have caused any failure during time travel. The star destination always originated from IFTT Headquarters, and then downloaded into the Empress’s travel computer. The computer on The Empress had validated the coordinates, and Jill had double-checked them.
Suddenly, one of the senior engineers slammed his fist down on the tabletop and said, “The fucking star date time clock was wrong on the travel membrane. Jill had performed her weekly maintenance checks and the older travel computers require a reset of the star clocks after the checks. Now I understand.” The engineer then explained, “The failure to perform that clock reset teleported Jill’s Father and Mother, Ronnie and Angela, to the last destination in their travel computer, which killed them. If the star clock time does not match the time sent from the IFTT, the travel computer will fault to the last travel setting. In Ronnie and Angela’s case, the travel computer had sent merchandise from the Open Market to Universe Number Six, which is a mirror of Universe Number Two, and is antimatter. Ronnie and Angela died when they stabilized in the antimatter planet of Keemus. This is the reason for the loss of five or six of the older model travel computers we have had. Commander please excuse me, I need to contact all four remaining vessels with the older travel computers at once.” The commander said, “I will do that for you right now. Please sit back down, and with the help of your partners here, write down in detail what you just told me. We will need this documentation for the inquiry board. The commander hailed all four of the vessels with one conference call and explained as best he could the problem. He said, “I will send you the details immediately as soon as the engineers are finished writing them. Does everyone understand the problem? Your vessels could be lost if your travel computers star date time clocks are set incorrectly. I will work with our engineers to correct this problem immediately, but do not time travel until we download the updated program to each of you.”
The commander leaned back in his chair and thought about the beautiful woman that had lain sweating under the sheets with him on the planet Earth during the vacation she and her partner had taken one summer. The beautiful woman was now probably dead as was the sharp-tongued woman with her. She went by the name of Trish. The commander quickly wiped the tear from the corner of his eye and tried to hide his eyes from his peers. The commander whispered, “I fell in love with you that night in that beach house on that beautiful beach in California, I still love you my friend.” The commander felt a hand on his shoulder and a voice behind him said, “We all lost some wonderful friends today commander, don’t hide your tears. We all knew them as if they were family, and our hearts are breaking.”
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In the year 21,006 AD, Earth time, five years after the disappearance of The Empress, the IFTT officially pronounced the vessel as lost and presumed destroyed due to a condensate modulator failure in the travel computer. On the front page of the thick report were the words: “Case Closed”
Ronnie Coleinger
Volume II Page 23
