Box Set - The Time Magnet Series

by Russell Moran

  That looks like Nancy’s car.

  The traffic came to a standstill. He flung open his door and ran to the scene of the wreck. He ran with abandon, not watching what was in front of his feet. He tripped over some debris on the shoulder of the road, pitching him forward. He broke his fall with his forearms. When he lifted his face and looked forward, he saw what would consume his life for years. Yes, it was Nancy’s car. And there was Nancy, lying in the roadway, her body in two pieces.

  That scene became the focus of his every waking hour. What he had seen was unthinkable. God how he hated that word. If any manuscript came across his editorial desk he would take it out with a vicious stroke of his red pencil. Unthinkable. How do you unthink an image, an image as stark as any that the human eye can behold. Yes, the image of Nancy’s torn body was unthinkable, but how could he stop thinking about it endlessly. He not only contemplated suicide, he started to jot down plans for how he would do it. He considered finding the wormhole at Pearl Harbor and launching himself into war, an easy way to get killed.

  His friend and book collaborator, the psychiatrist Bennie Weinberg, took Jack on as if he were his most important case, because he was. As a psychiatrist for the New York City Police Department, Bennie was no stranger to traumatic depression. Jack, normally an outgoing man at ease in any company, had become withdrawn and sullen.

  Bennie Weinberg and Jack had become close friends over the years. After Nancy’s death Bennie tried to reach out to him, but his efforts got nowhere. Jack didn’t return phone calls. One day, after finally reaching him, Bennie invited Jack over for lunch.

  “Talk to me, Jack. You look like shit. What’s going on?”

  “The image Ben. That image of Nancy has become my life. I’ve tried everything to get it out of my face, but it’s always there. Always. It’s there right now as we’re sitting here.”

  “Asshole.”

  Jack couldn’t help laughing. Bennie could go from psychiatrist to tough cop in an instant.

  “It may be true, Bennie, but why do you call me an asshole?”

  “You’re an asshole because you think your brilliant mind can reverse everything we know about the human psychology. You think you can take a horrible image and force it out of your mind. Remember the old parlor game where the game master would tell everybody not to think about green elephants. Of course that’s the point of the game, the joke. The people playing the game couldn’t think about anything but green elephants. The psychology is simple. The more we resist something the more it persists. Okay, so let me ask you a question. What are you thinking about right now.”

  “Green elephants.”

  “That’s because you were trying not to think about it, just like you try not to think about Nancy’s torn lifeless body. Jack, work with me on something. I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting in your car right after you saw Nancy’s car crash to a stop.”

  “Bennie, are you trying to fuck with my brain?”

  “You’ve been doing a great job of fucking with your own brain, so how about giving me a crack at it. Okay, now I want you to reach into your glove compartment and take out a tape measure. Now I want you to open the door and walk slowly, don’t run, walk slowly toward Nancy’s body. Be careful, the road is slick with blood, gas, and oil. Now I want you to take the tape and measure the exact distance between Nancy’s upper torso and her lower body.”

  “Ben, you’ve got to be joking.”

  “What the fuck do I look like, a standup comedian? Just follow my instructions. Now tell me exactly how far Nancy’s upper torso is from her lower body.” Jack said nothing.

  “This isn’t rocket science, shithead, what’s the distance?”

  “Six feet.”

  “Exactly six feet?”

  “Well, six feet, four and a half inches.”

  Jack began to sob. “I’m sorry Bennie, I’m sorry.” He kept on sobbing.

  Bennie waited for the tears to stop. “Only an asshole like you could apologize for acting like a human being.” Bennie softened his voice and looked into Jack’s eyes. “Jack, when I heard about Nancy’s death and how you actually witnessed it, you know what I did? I cried. I cried like a baby. I cried for that beautiful woman who’s young life was snuffed out, but mainly I cried for my friend. That would be you, Jack. You’ve experienced a trauma like few other human beings will ever face. But you’ve been handling it by trying to force it out of your mind. That won’t work, Jack. That’s a green fucking elephant. That’s what the tape measure is all about. I want you to intentionally recreate that scene and allow it into your head. I want you to smell the smells, remember the sounds, listen to the sirens, hear the cops shouting. If you want me to be with you or on the phone when you do this, just let me know. That’s the only way you’re going to rob it of its power over you.”

  Now, five years after he lost Nancy, Jack was emerging from his cave of despair, thanks in no small part to his friend Bennie. He seldom thought of women, only a woman, Nancy. But he recognized that he was having a strange feeling, not an unpleasant one. Here, on a warship at sea in a strange time, he was becoming interested in a beautiful woman, his commanding officer. It was more than an interest, more like an infatuation. He liked the feeling.

  Okay, thought Jack. Time to get back to work.

  ***

  He began examining his two prior time journeys. Jack noted that, in his prior travels, one to the defunct golf course in 1929 and the other to Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was able to go back by finding the exact spot he came through. In the golf course trip, he walked in the opposite direction, but over the same spot. In the Pearl Harbor incident, he stepped on the same wooden plank in the same direction. These observations checked out with the other time travelers he had interviewed for his book. The key, obviously, is to find the spot, no matter how you cross it.

  But the California had a problem. He talked extensively with Ivan Campbell, the ship’s navigator, as well as the quartermaster of the watch and the OOD at the time of the Daylight Event. Because their last navigational fix was done by dead reckoning, simply plotting course and speed and making an educated guess of your position, they could have been anywhere within miles of where they hit the time portal. To get back to it the ship would have to steam in a dizzying monotonous back and forth pattern for God knows how long. His new-found navigational knowledge told him that wind, current and sea conditions could have a big impact on how straight they travelled.

  He also had another concern, a big one. All of the people he interviewed had crossed a land- based portal. This was his own experience as well. His extensive research revealed nothing about time travel through a portal in the ocean, nor had he ever heard anything about a large ship with 630 people slipping through the same portal.

  But they were stuck with that fact.

  There are no signs that say, “Time Portal – Please Enter Here.”

  Chapter 24

  After lunch in the wardroom Father Rick asked Ashley if he could speak with her in her office. “Of course,” said Ashley. If there is one person on the ship her door is always open to it’s Father Rick.

  “What’s up Father? I hope you’re going to tell me somebody slipped us all one big mickey, and we’ve all had the same strange dream.”

  “I wish I could, Captain.”

  “I want to talk to you about the crew. I’m worried that morale is starting to stretch thin. It’s been a few days since we crossed the time portal. At first it was an interesting diversion for everyone on the ship. Some may have even enjoyed the excitement of it. But I’ve been getting vibrations that people want out of this, or at least they want you to try to get the ship back home. As you decided, very few secrets about time travel have been kept from the crew. Jack Thurber has made us all amateur experts in travelling through time. Every crew member knows one thing. They’ve heard about the idea of getting back to the time we came from by finding the exact location of the portal. Captain, if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard
it a hundred times in the last two days, ‘When are we going to start looking for the portal?’”

  Chapter 25

  After Father Rick left, Ashley was alone with her thoughts. With all of the feverish activity of the last few days, she seldom had time to just think. Or was it that she kept busy because she didn’t want to think? A thought kept intruding, not a fully formed thought, not fully formed perhaps because it was so difficult to deal with. It was like a dark weather front on the horizon. You can’t ignore it, you know it means trouble; you just wish it would go away.

  Pretty soon my crew is going to expect me to commit treason, Ashley thought. Word was out, as Father Rick just reminded her, that the way to go back was to find the place you came in. She never asked Jack Thurber to keep it secret. Under their strange circumstances secrecy can be a morale killer. Every person on the ship had the same question, “When are we going to try to go back?”

  Before the Daylight Event, everyone aboard knew that they would return home after their deployment to the Persian Gulf. Return home to husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and lovers. As Father Rick reminded Ashley, people can only operate for a short time with no hope for a future. He had just told her that the crew was getting obsessed with the idea of going back.

  This is the storm cloud she worried about, and she knew the storm could be rough. Ashley decided to stop forcing the trouble out of her head.

  So here’s my problem, Ashley thought. This is an American warship, the property of the United States Government. We take our orders from the government, ultimately from the Commander in Chief, Abraham Lincoln. After he speaks to Gideon Wells, Lincoln will want the California to join the fight, either in direct battle support or as the lead ship in the blockade of the South. But my crew wants to go back to where we came from. They want to go home. I can’t fight the Civil War and go back to where we came from. It’s one or the other.”

  I risk mutiny or commit treason.

  Nice choice.

  Chapter 26

  It was 1850 hours and the mess hall was crowded. The crew’s mess was open 24 hours a day to accommodate sailors coming off watch. For those who had a regular workday, the mess hall followed the traffic pattern of any food service facility.

  Suddenly there was a loud sound in the corner of the hall, a sound of plates crashing to the deck. This sound is not uncommon at sea, where a sudden wave can reduce a well-stacked rack of dinnerware to a pile of rubble. But the sea was calm, which made the sound that much more startling. First Class Petty Officer William Jordan was lying face down in the smashup of plates. Petty Officer Emilio Lopez, a hospital corpsman, was eating nearby. Instinctively Lopez rushed to the man’s aid and immediately saw that Jordan showed symptoms of a heart attack.

  Lopez yelled for people to clear the area while he administered CPR using a defibrillator that he grabbed from a nearby bulkhead. The medical department had been called, and Lt. John Ambrose, one of the ship’s two physicians, was on the scene within two minutes. Lopez’s CPR had stabilized the man, who was immediately carried to the medical department on a gurney. Jordan took fast breaths and sweated profusely. Commander Joseph Perino, the ship’s medical officer, arrived within moments. Jordan’s pulse rate was extremely high and his breathing became shallow. Perino ordered an emergency tracheotomy and a breathing tube. He also injected nitroglycerin to help with the man’s pain. Perino could see that this was more than a mild heart attack.

  People in the medical department often joked that the most important medical equipment on the ship was the helicopter pad on the stern. In normal circumstances Perino would have ordered a helicopter Medivac to a shore hospital, or, if at sea, to the nearest aircraft carrier, which is equipped with a larger hospital unit. But these weren’t normal times. The last place Perino wanted to send this man was a hospital ashore.

  All physicians are familiar with the history of medical progress. Perino didn’t have to do research to know that the state of medical technology in 1861 was primitive by modern standards. He knew the statistics. Of the 620,000 casualties in the Civil War, over half were from disease. Most of the disease was spread by unknowing battlefield doctors and nurses, spreading infection from patient to patient. A doctor would amputate a leg, then go to the next victim and treat the man’s wounds without even washing his hands.

  The accepted theory of disease propagation in the mid-nineteenth century was the miasma theory, the belief that disease spread through the air by vapors released by rotting matter or fetid water. A person would breathe in a bad vapor and disease would result.

  It would be many years before germ theory, the idea that infection can be spread by microorganisms, was accepted by the medical profession. In the decade after the Civil War, an English surgeon named Joseph Lister, working from the microbiological theories of Louis Pasteur, would develop the concept of a sterile operating environment. Until then, hospitals were not much better than battlefield medical tents. Civil societies created hospitals as places where people would go to get better, to have their wounds treated or their diseases cured. The sad irony was that, in mid-nineteenth-century America, a hospital was the most dangerous place to be if you needed medical help. No, thought Perino, the best place for this poor guy is this warship.

  Perino then had a disturbing thought. That goes for the rest of us, too.

  Chapter 27

  “Captain I’d like to talk about the Butterfly Effect,” Father Rick said. Ashley, Father Rick and Lt. Jack Thurber were in the captain’s office for a scheduled meeting. Ashley thought of these two men as her Time Travel Brain Trust, friends and guides to help her cope with their new reality.

  “The Butterfly Effect,” said Ashley, “yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s a theory that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a disturbance in the atmosphere, and even though it’s a tiny disturbance, it can result in a hurricane in another part of the world.”

  “You summarize it perfectly Captain. Would you agree Jack?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I once wrote an article about the Butterfly Effect for the Washington Post.” Is there anything this guy hasn’t written about? Ashley thought. “While doing time travel research for my book, I figured I’d derive an article from a chapter. The Butterfly Effect is a scientific theory hatched by an American mathematician and meteorologist named Edward Lorenz. He was an expert on chaos theory. Captain Patterson summarized it well: a little flap of the wings here, a big storm over there. It’s become a metaphor for small actions having huge results.”

  “Let’s talk about the Butterfly Effect and the USS California,” said Father Rick. “We all saw the reaction of Gideon Wells when I summarized the history of the Civil War. The man was very upset about the casualty numbers I gave him. When I said that the war would last four years I thought the poor guy would faint. I think it’s pretty safe to say that he wants the California as part of his arsenal. He wants to use our modern weapons to intercede in the war and bring it to a fast conclusion. My guess is that we’ll be part of the naval blockade of the South, or the Battle of Bull Run about three months from now. So tell me if I’m wrong. Gideon Wells wants to use this ship to change history.”

  “I totally agree, Father,” said Ashley. “From the bits of conversation I picked up between him and Admiral Farragut, they were all but picking out targets. Yes, Wells didn’t like the history that he heard, and he wants to change it. And the California is a big part of his plan.”

  Father Rick didn’t want to put words in the mouth of his good friend and commanding officer. He asked her simply, “Is that okay with you?” Jack listened intently to this conversation.

  “Yes, it’s okay for two reasons,” said Ashley. “First, from my perspective as a military officer, I follow orders. The California is a US Navy ship, and Wells is the Secretary of the Navy. That’s the easy part. But second, I have to say this. Gideon Wells wasn’t the only one in the room who felt emotional after you read those horrifying casualty numbers. I kep
t wondering, how we can we prevent this.”

  “Captain, may I offer a contrarian view?” asked Rick.

  “Father, I may be your commanding officer, but you’re my pastor and my friend. Please tell us what’s on your mind.”

  “Well,” Father Rick said, “I want to talk about Iowa.”

  “Iowa?” said Ashley and Jack simultaneously.

  “Yes, Iowa. As I may have mentioned, I have a distant ancestor, Randolph Sampson, who fought in the Civil War on the Union side. He called Pennsylvania his home. I’ve tracked down my ancestral history and discovered that he had befriended a man from Iowa who was a wealthy landowner. They met at Appomattox, shortly after the South surrendered. According to correspondence between the two, the man had fallen from a carriage and sprained his ankle badly. Grandpa Randolph, according to the letter of thanks, carried the man on his shoulder to a doctor’s office some distance away. A few months later, as their friendship grew, the man offered Grandpa Randolph 100 acres of land for a cheap price. Grandpa Randolph was a farmer by trade, and he jumped at it. That was the beginning of many generations of Sampsons in Iowa, but most particularly, Peter and Margaret Sampson, my parents.”

  “I can never forget the story of how they met. It was May 19, 1963, a rainy day in Dubuque. My mother, a schoolteacher, was driving home when she had a flat tire. It happened right in front of Sampson’s Automotive Supplies. As she stood there looking at the flat tire, a young man came running out with a jack, followed by a clerk carrying a tire. ‘Do you get a lot of business this way?’ said my mother. She and the young proprietor of Sampson’s Automotive Supplies had a good laugh. He refused to accept payment, in exchange for her buying him a cup of coffee at the corner luncheonette. So they met, fell in love, got married and three years later brought into the world a future priest named Richard Sampson.”