The Rangers Are Coming

by Phil Walker

  Arcadia came across the room and shook hands with Hank, “Relax, partner, it gets rough from here on.” She said it with a smile, and motioned Hank to a chair, while she sat in one facing him.

  “There’s no easy way to say this,” said Arcadia, “so I will just blurt it out. I’m here from the future. In my world, it’s 2025. The United States has been attacked by foreign enemies with weapons beyond your wildest dreams. 150 million Americans are dead, our greatest cities are shattered and we are about to invaded by an army whose sole purpose in life is to kill every Christian on earth. I prayed to God for an answer to this tragedy, we talked, for a long time. The God of Creation has determined, he does not want this to be the fate of America, and sent me and a few hundred of my friends back in time to undo the damage and save our country. God said the correction in the time path had to begin in 1770. So that’s where we started. We brought all our modern weapons from the 21st century with us, and the rest, as you have read, is history.”

  “Did you ever wonder where the Humvees, the Bradley’s, the 105s, the Blackhawks, the Chinooks, your assault rifle, body armor and camouflage uniform came from?”

  “I enlisted the support and trust of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, President Hamilton here, and James Madison. Madison will be President in two years. He is the last of the original Grand Conspiracy. Now we are going to have to go on with new men, men who have no idea of any of this. I’ve studied you and many more for years. You are my choice to become President when Madison retires and to serve for as long as you can be effective. The question is simple. Will you do it?”

  “All of this true, Mr. President?”

  “Every word.”

  “It sounds like an impossible job,” said Hank.

  “Oh we’ll give you lots of help. You and I are going to be together a lot. Also, you are going to go back to school and learn what our real history was, before we got here and started changing it. It’s a fascinating and tragic story. What’s more, we have to pray for guidance every day, or else by the time we get back to 2025, nothing will be different and the country will still have 150 million dead.”

  Arcadia smiled at Hank, “Look at it from the bright side. In less than two years we will be sitting here telling this story to another person who will be your successor and will have the same look on his face as you do now.”

  Hamilton broke out in laughter, and patted Hank on the back. “It’s a lot like following a script, only you have to keep rewriting it.”

  The three spent the rest of the day strategizing on how to turn Hank Taylor into a household name over the next two years and set him up to succeed James Madison in ten years.

  The next day Arcadia took Taylor to a situation room several stories below the White House and started him on the Master video of the old history of the United States. Taylor was used to seeing a video monitor, but he had never seen so many monitors of so many places in one place. In all, it took him three days to get through all the material.

  Meanwhile, Arcadia was briefing the incoming President James Madison on the choice. Madison took the news with calm acceptance and began to talk about the principal priorities of his time as President.

  “You will preside over the period of history from 1820 to 1828,” said Arcadia.

  “Despite having to put so much on hold because of the Volcanic winters, we have still made a lot of progress on the building of infrastructure. We have added another 30,000 miles of track to our rail system. We have built another 5,000 miles of highways. We haven’t gotten any further west, but we have connected a lot of cities without railroads with cities that do have railroads. We are now running a fleet of trucks from railroads to towns in many places that were heretofore isolated. We have 5000 trucks hauling freight.”

  “In the next 8 years we plan to concentrate on the highways and see if we can’t complete one of them from coast to coast. We’re going to fill in some more highways that lead to some of our national parks, build some buses and start offering vacations for people.

  “We don’t want to start a big movement to build smaller private cars. We’ll have a fleet for the White House and a few others for special use in Congress. Private cars are for the future, and I guarantee there won’t be millions of them, like my time.”

  “We want to expand our energy infrastructure. We have two new dams under construction. They will turn out enough electricity to light the whole east coast. Of course we will bury all the power lines in steel tubes.”

  “One of the projects I’m very excited about is the tapping of our huge reserves of natural gas. The idea is to build pipelines to the bigger cities and then break those down to move into neighborhoods and hook up individual houses and businesses to gas that will replace coal with furnaces that will have pumps to force hot air through the buildings.”

  “You already have a telephone you use to call the major offices and departments of the government. This system will continue to grow and expand. There will come a day in the future where there will be a telephone, electricity, lighting and heat in every home in the country.”

  “The next subject is just a little more tricky,” said Arcadia. “New technology is being developed in other countries. They think they are coming up with something new. Obviously, we already have these products, and they are registered at the U.S. Patent office. Just before these new inventions come out, we are going to introduce them to the world, and start including some of those products in our list of trading goods.”

  “What sort of things are being developed,” asked Madison?

  Arcadia thumbed through a notebook. “In 1825, somebody is going to announce they’ve perfected the isolation of a new metal called aluminum. We’ve been doing that for a while, and will offer limited quantities for sale.

  “Then we have Samuel Morey. He’s an American who has several patents on steamboats. We managed to purchase these patents to clear the way for our steam ships. Now he’s working on the concept of an internal combustion engine. We are simply going to file our patent first, under another name, and find a way to compensate Mr. Morey.”

  “In 1829, the first electric motor is going to get built in Europe. We’ve been using electric motors for years. We’ll be filing for a patent during the next year.”

  “In terms of world activities, the United States is remarkably uninvolved in the next ten years. We think we have a nice window during your administrations to build our infrastructure, makes lots of money in foreign trade, and continue to improve the quality of life of average Americans.”

  “I’m grateful I don’t have to face the problems Hamilton had,” said Madison.

  “The best thing you can do is to set up Hank Taylor to succeed you. We think he will have a nice long run, and there are a lot of fireworks coming up in the next 30 years.”

  37

  Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

  The years of James Madison’s presidency from 1820 to 1828, were used by

  Arcadia to consolidate all they had gained. In the 50 years since their arrival, the corps of workers from 2025 were expanding in all directions. The quick jettison of the British from the colonies by a modern, high-tech army of Ranger’s in 1776 had bought Arcadia ten years. It also gave her a freehand to redraw the boundaries of the United States to make it the biggest country in the world, running from the Arctic Circle in Alaska to the Isthmus of Panama.

  An advanced Republic emerged with all people regarded as equal. Slavery was no more, women had the right to vote, the Native Americans were in a state of their own with the rights of citizens. The population of the huge country had been stirred and interconnected with the Homestead Act that gave free land to all willing to work for it. Racial discrimination was not only against the powerful Christian ethic, which dominated the lives of nearly everyone, it was also simply impractical.

  For 50 years, modern schools with a quest for the advancement of knowledge, had been churning out gushers of new developments, technology and improvements in al
l areas of life. Just a gentle push here and there had produced the world’s biggest output of high quality, cheap steel. Oil and natural gas were being produced to power the growing number of engines, which were going into continuously expanding machines from grain combines to asphalt pavers. In physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering and medicine, the brilliant students were moving beyond their mentors. Routinely they were pushing into sciences that were excitingly new and progressive.

  Railroads and highways were crisscrossing the country like rivers, and transportation of products was easy and inexpensive with a big fleet of sleek trucks hauling consumer and manufactured goods of every description. The steam trains, which had seemed so modern 20 years before, were now being rapidly replaced with engines that ran on huge diesel powered motors. Modern steel cargo ships were now being powered with liquid natural gas. That particular development was modern even by Arcadia’s standards. A group of brilliant students in one of the research schools had developed an effective way of adapting the process of putting this technology into ships. They were faster, and had three times the cruising range of steam or diesel ships.

  Electricity was plentiful from the giant turbo generators at the big dams that were built with concrete and steel rebar, across chasms where wild waterfalls used to fall. This made everything run, from the subways in Washington and New York to the electric lights in every home and building. Nearly everyone now had telephones.

  Arcadia was particularly pleased with the independent development of radio broadcasting. The early uses of radio were largely industrial, especially in shipping. However, it wasn’t long before an enterprising pastor of a church found that he could reach a much bigger audience by radio. The whole system made a huge leap forward with the nearly simultaneous discovery of the transistor, the key component to the modern computer. Another research center at one of the universities developed the compact battery, which made radios small enough to carry.

  In the beginning, it was the government doing all the innovating and invention. However, Arcadia could see that was backwards to a truly Capitalistic society. As each new technology was perfected, Arcadia formed private companies and took them through the IPO process, the Initial Public Offering of stock in these companies. The New York stock exchange traded these stocks to ordinary people who found Mutual Fund Companies waiting for them. The concept of watching a portfolio of stocks grow to provide healthy retirements was introduced to the American people.

  Of course, the IPO’s originated with the government and it was the government that benefitted from the creation of these new companies. The surplus of money in the federal treasury ballooned to stupefying amounts. It was Hank Taylor who announced, in behalf of the President, that 1827 would be a tax-free year for all Americans and American business. The loss of income to the government for that year was significant, but was just a speed bump in its overall wealth. It also did wonders for Taylor’s image as a wonderful successor to the dour Madison.

  The number of really wealthy people in the United States grew rapidly and was limited only by the hard work and enterprise of dedicated men and women.

  The first company Arcadia privatized was the big network of Emporiums, she had used to break up the slave business. She was pleased to see a significant number of competitors angling to carve off a segment of the Emporiums business. Some were very successful, some failed. That was the natural nature of risk in a free market society. America was growing up.

  Up was a good thing. Arcadia watched with interest as a couple of retired Rangers, who were helicopter pilots wondered if they could develop an aircraft that had more range and could carry more passengers. Soon they had a prototype airplane and wondered why it didn’t work very well. One of the Arcadia’s staff looked at their flat wings and suggested they study the wing design of birds. They did, and discovered the concept of lift from the airfoil. After that, it was easy. The boys looked around for something strong and light and another of the “advisors” talked about the existence of aluminum. They found a bank willing to back them in developing aluminum production and within two years, they had an airplane that would fly 500 miles and carry ten people. After that came the radial combustion engine running on gasoline, and an airplane that would fly 2,000 miles with 50 passengers aboard emerged.

  That was the moment Arcadia had been waiting for. By her reckoning, the United States of 1828 was now at about 1950 in most areas. That was enough for her to begin the really hard work of taming a very wild planet.

  For the rest of the world, the United States was a huge mystery. Certain things were known. The country possessed an unbeatable army and navy. The Rangers were elevated to almost legendary status by the British, French and Spanish who had seen the army in action first hand. This folklore had worked its way clear down to the common man on the street. America was simply left strictly alone except in all of its business enterprises.

  The next thing the world knew about the United States was that it produced products of unimaginable ingenuity and value. The equipment, tools, and bumper crop of basic and exotic foods at prices nobody could beat, made America the superstore of every country on earth. Arcadia’s advisors told her that they estimated the economies of the top ten countries in the world would collapse without trade from the United States.

  That was about all anyone really knew about America. People immigrated, but nobody ever left. America was unique. It had embassies in every major country, but did not permit any foreign government to establish an embassy in the United States. The foreign embassies were guarded by stern faced Rangers in full dress uniforms, adding to their formidable image. There were a few incidents in which off duty Rangers were confronted by tough guys in various places around foreign cities, looking to make a reputation for themselves. Despite all their efforts to avoid any problems, according to their orders, the Rangers were permitted to defend themselves if lethal force might be involved. Sometimes it was, and the Rangers beat the bullies to a bloody pulp. Even though they never killed anyone, witnesses to the exhibitions walked away telling everyone they knew that the invincibility of the Rangers was real. Soon the incidents stopped and the Rangers became perfectly friendly ambassadors on their own, and always gave witness to God whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  It was all tied up in the mantra of a strictly neutral, and isolationist political philosophy. America just didn’t really need anything from anyone, and trade was mostly limited to exotic foods, most of the world’s supply of rubber and shiploads of seemingly worthless rocks and minerals. Yet the United States held large holdings in loans and stock in fifty foreign countries as a result of countries needing products and not having the trading materials or the cash to pay for them.

  Arcadia pulled her first big international move in 1829, just a year after Hank Taylor had gotten settled into office as President of the United States. Without any public announcement, men, equipment, supplies and heavy machinery began accumulating in the Isthmus of Panama.

  A team of engineers, both from Arcadia’s group, plus a large number of graduate engineers from American universities worked on the project for several years. They had to overcome the problems of disease, housing and feeding a work force of at least 10,000 men, and the colossal job of actually digging the canal. Huge machinery in dirt movers, big capacity scoop shovels, dump trucks, and railroad engines, had to be built and transported to Panama on ships. They used every scrap of useful information they had from the construction of the original canal. The locks, which had to be expanded in later years were designed bigger in the first place. Altogether, the canal had taken the United States ten years from 1904 to 1914 to build the canal, but the French had done a lot of work before abandoning the effort in the late 1800’s.

  The American engineers believed they could do the job in about 15 years. In 1828, the work on the canal began in earnest. The engineers almost got it right. The Panama Canal was completed in 1843. Almost all the work was done in a near vacuum of publicity. The entir
e Isthmus was located inside the United States and the border with Columbia was heavily guarded by Rangers. This was according to Arcadia’s plan. Her goal was to make a global statement, and use it to further her agenda of controlling world politics without violating the neutrality of the country, and engaging in a massive missionary mission to demonstrate the power of God.

  Henry Taylor completed his fourth term as President in 1844. He presided over a rapidly changing United States. The advisors from the future, became mostly happy observers, except in some of the fields of astronomy, the development of modern rocketry, extraterrestrial space technology and microelectronics. Now, nearly all the new developments, of which there were many, were coming from the research facilities at the universities. The slow drip of information that came from Arcadia’s team of experts gave the researchers a huge advantage. Just doing experiments trying to learn something would yield results. Knowing something existed provided a great many shortcuts leading to breakthroughs that were achieved in years, rather than decades.

  He was often amazed to find some new wonder discovered, perfected, and brought to market. But Henry Taylor was the most proud of the monumental effort that was put forth to build the Panama Canal. It was the summit of his 16 years as president. He would be happy to turn the reins of office over to his longtime vice president, Charles Gallagher, the first president to come from a state that was not one of the original 13 colonies.

  Gallagher graduated from the Political Science school at age 21. He made an immediate splash in his home state of Iowa. He was regarded as an expert on everything agricultural, although he was thoroughly conversant in all the other components of government. He was elected to Congress at the minimum age of 25. He caught Arcadia’s eye with his rather brilliant ability to find consensus and compromise to tough questions. She was very glad to see such an able man emerge when he did. President Taylor had chosen another man as vice-president when he took office, but he was tragically killed in an accident while he was supervising the final months of construction on the Panama Canal. So Gallagher was only 35 years old when he became Vice President.