He paused, and looked at Tamara for reaction. But all he got was a frown. She had seen plenty of top secret projects in her work, but never anything as weird sounding as this.
“And what is the good of this?” she finally asked. “Besides an interesting and expensive science experiment.”
“Don’t you see? The military potential alone is tremendous! Let’s say you want to know some technical secret hidden deep within a foreign country. You just scan back in time to when that secret was written down, locate it – which is another development we discovered almost by accident – and you copy that piece of paper right here into the lab. Would work well for industrial secrets. Of course,” he admitted almost shyly, “a hell of a lot of historians, anthropologists, paleontologists and such would beg to get their hands on this if they knew about it.”
“Which explains why this project is classified at the highest level,” interjected Dr. Stryker.
“Yes, well, someday...” Crane muttered.
“Just how far along are you?” she asked.
The two men glanced at each other.
“Pretty far. Marshal, why don’t you show her the museum?”
“Yes. Good. Come along, Miss Graves, I’ve got some interesting things to show you.”
Chapter 2: Trinkets
The “museum” was just an office on the main floor, not far from the conference room. But, unlike most offices, it lacked a desk or even chairs. In fact, the only furniture was two tables and a couple filing cabinets. The only adornment was a single framed picture on one wall. Tamara walked over to it. On a plain white background was a single piece of paper, only a few square inches, brown with some black markings on it.
“That was our first object retrieved from the past,” Dr. Stryker told her. “Well, except for test items from the near past. This was the first real piece of history we retrieved. It is a piece of papyrus dating from one thousand BC. Not much to look at, but it was a scientific breakthrough standing right up there with the printing press and the splitting of the atom.”
She looked a little closer. Yes, those could be hieroglyphics. But they lacked the faded look she had seen on other papyrus documents. It looked as if the printing had been done only yesterday.
“In case you’re wondering, it’s part of a legal document. A deed to some land being granted to a noble by the pharaoh,” added Dr. Crane.
Directing her attention to one of the objects on the nearest table, he held up a frame containing a large piece of dull gray paper on which were lines of tightly packed writing.
“In 1215 a bunch of barons ganged up on King John of England and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. This is the original document with the king’s signature and all. There are four surviving copies from that time. We compared it with the copy in the British Library. It is identical. You will note the ink seems fresh. It is.
“This,” he said, putting down the framed document and picking up a small, dull gold colored rock, “is the first piece of gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. John Marshal was supervising the construction of a sawmill and found this in a creek. It started the gold rush in California.
“That dirty black top hat was worn by President Lincoln while he gave his Gettysburg Address. Those sparkly red shoes were worn by Judy Garland in 1938’s ‘Wizard of Oz’. That somewhat battered sword there belonged to Hernán Cortés, the guy that overthrew the Aztecs and conquered Mexico. It has bloodstains on it.
“That beat up wooden box there was the portable writing desk designed and used by Thomas Jefferson. In 1776 he wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence on this desk. And that frame next to it has the actual first draft.”
He was warming up to his task, and apparently enjoyed showing off the items they plucked from history.
“This is a freshly minted 1804 silver dollar.”
“Is it worth much?” she asked.
“Well, actually, quite a bit. Has an interesting history. I’m sort of a coin collector and have studied this one. In 1804 the US Mint records indicated that 19,750 silver dollars were minted. However, it was the practice at the time to use old dies until they were worn out. All of those coins minted in 1804 were dated 1803. Silver dollars with the 1804 date did not appear until 1834 when a set of coins was minted as gifts to certain rulers in Asia. The mint employees knew that 1804 was the last date for those types, so they produced a set with that date. They only produced seven copies since they were supposed to be gifts, not for release to the public. Then, between 1858 and 1860, a number of these coins were illegally struck by a Mint employee. He sold them to collectors in a store in Philadelphia. However, Mint officials hunted them down and seized all but one.
“Anyway, to answer your question, the last one sold at auction fetched just over four million dollars.”
Tamara pursed her lips. “I can see the potential for acquiring a great deal of wealth with your time machine.”
“Oh, we take precautions to assure that none of these items ever gets out of here,” Stryker immediately said.
“Okay, if you’re not making money with it, what do you use the machine for?”
“Mostly for research,” Crane said. “We have a small staff of university professors here who are collecting artifacts for study. We’re making wonderful strides in many areas of historical study. And we are constantly working on ways to make the process faster and less resource draining. You’d be surprised at how much electrical power the Machine requires. And lots of computer time. Oh, and we don’t have any fancy name for it; we just call it ‘the Machine’.”
“And that’s all?” she asked them, her investigator’s nose sensing there was something more.
“Ah, well, there are certain government agencies who use some of our resources,” Stryker said. “Of course, I cannot...”
“Tell me who they are or what they are doing,” she interrupted. “I’m familiar with the routine. I don’t have a need to know.”
“I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course. Well, this has been interesting, especially that little side tour into the world of numismatics. I think I have an idea what your project is all about. If you’ll just provide me with a desk and computer terminal, I’ll get about my job. And I’d like to have one of your staff available to answer questions and assist.”
“I’ll attend to it that immediately,” Dr. Crane offered. “You do realize, of course, that everything you’ve seen and heard is classified at the highest level?”
“Of course. I won’t say a word to anyone,” she said as she made a zipper motion across her lips. She smiled at them.
As they walked down the corridor, she suddenly asked, “Is the project name what I think it is?”
“You mean Project Dry Wells?” Crane smiled widely.
“Yes. Would that happen to be a reference to H.G. Wells?”
His smile widened. “Of course. He was the author of ‘The Time Machine’, wasn’t he?”
Chapter 3: The Good Book
The Machine took a lot of power to run, and the lights dimmed every time it was turned on. Williams glanced up at the dimmed lights and grimaced, hoping that no one else would notice. There was little chance that anyone else would be working this late at night, but with scientists, one never knew.
The lights resumed their normal glow, and he turned his attention to the massive control panel before him. Half a dozen display screens overflowing with numbers and codes spoke of what was happening inside the chamber and in the support equipment around it. Two keyboards plus assorted other input devices allowed him to give orders to the most highly advanced electronic device ever built by man. His eyes tracked the main power gauge as its red line slowly crept towards the right end of the scale. When it stabilized at 100%, he touched a few keys to initiate the probe imaging. The largest screen flickered, the numbers disappeared and a picture took their place.
The picture was blurry, out of focus, but seemed to show the inside of a room with a small sli
t window allowing a shaft of sunlight in to fall upon a table. As the computer subtly nudged the fine settings, the image became more focused until one could see the texture of the stone walls behind the desk, the tiny motes of dust in the sunbeam, and the leather-bound book sitting on the rough wooden table. The brown cover was detailed with gold leaf inlay along the edges and across the spine where the words “Biblia Sacra” could be read, also in gold.
Glancing up at a second screen, he nodded to himself. The time and location were right on: March 1454, Mazarin, Germany. Using twin knobs with extreme delicacy and care, he placed a red square around the book. A few typed-in commands and the view of the book rotated until the sides of the pages were visible. Again he positioned a red square of lines on the screen. With the book properly defined, he typed some more and the red lines began blinking. He was smiling as he punched the final ENTER key.
The low background hum increased as the Machine began operation. Most cruelly it twisted the fabric of time-space, digging a tunnel through it, linking that book with the empty platform in the chamber. Subatomic particles called quarks were forced into entanglement at either end of that tunnel; billions then trillions, and then far greater numbers of quarks, the building blocks of matter, were linked in a strange manner that defied the laws and logic of physics. Incredibly thin beams of photons focused on the center of the platform. Slowly, molecule by molecule, a copy of the book was being built from the bottom cover upward. Each page appeared magically from nothing, the black text and red highlighting becoming visible for just a moment before the next page overlaid it. The intertwining vines and red flowers used to enliven the text seemed to be growing around the pages.
Eleven minutes later, the Machine ceased weaving the book from nothing and reduced to its background hum. Immediately, the man shut it down. The room became suddenly silent, making his footsteps loud on the metal floor. Swinging open the chamber door, he stepped in and bent to pick up the book. Fighting the urge to stroke its soft leather cover and admire its gold decorations, he closed the chamber door. The book he placed on a cart, along with a squat clay bowl decorated with black and red primitive images of dancing deer and leaping wolves. Next to those were two other artifacts, a flint spear point and an oval piece of wood with crude symbols carved on the surface, looking almost more like scratching than a language.
The other items were enclosed within glass boxes with sealed lids. But the book he simply covered with a towel.
Leaving the large room where the Machine was housed, he took an elevator up to the office level where he deposited the glass boxes on a table. In the morning, the scientists who had requested those items would pick them up and take them to whatever lab they had, to do whatever it is they did to them. Williams really did not know or care. His job was simply to take the list he was given, search for, find and duplicate those items.
His last stop was the small office he shared with the other operator who ran the Machine during the daylight hours. Looking around to make sure that no one was present, even though that was highly unlikely, he took the towel off the book and lightly ran his fingers along the spine. Almost reverently he opened the cover and touched the black letters on the page. He could not read the Latin, but he knew what it said – more or less. This was a copy of the Bible. But not just any copy. This was a very special copy. This was a Gutenberg Bible, the first major book ever printed. In 1454, Johann Gutenberg used moveable type on his invention, the printing press, and changed the world. No longer did books have to be painstakingly printed by hand. The information explosion he had created ushered in a whole new world of technology and innovation the world was still recoiling from.
Williams had done his homework. A little research on the Internet had told him all he needed to know about this item. It was historical, very rare and very valuable. Gutenberg had printed only about one hundred and eighty of the two volume, thirteen hundred page book, of which only forty-two copies were known today, and only twenty-two of those were complete copies. The last complete Gutenberg Bible to be sold had fetched 2.2 million dollars. Those were 1978 dollars. One website estimated that a copy today would be worth between twenty-five and thirty-five million dollars – if one were available. Virtually all copies were in museums. Even leaves from that book were expensive, running between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars each, depending on the size and condition.
Almost unable to take his eyes off this prize, he had to force himself to put it in his briefcase. In a few hours, he would go off shift and take it home. He would then show it to Daisy – not that she would understand how special it was – and explain to her how he would break it into small sections and sell them individually through an antiquities dealer who asked no questions. Individually, the leaves would not bring as much in total as a complete copy, but would be much easier to pass.
And it would make him rich.
Flopping down in his chair, Williams let out a big sigh and put his feet up on the desk. This was one sweet job he had fallen into! And so easy. For the first few months he had simply done his job, using the Machine to fetch objects for the research staff. Then one day, a random comment about how valuable an ugly looking piece of parchment was set him to thinking. All he had to do to fetch an additional object for himself was to use the Machine a little longer after his regular night’s run to make an extra copy of something valuable. His first foray into stealing from the past was to make for himself a copy of the Hope Diamond, all 45.52 carats of it. It was only later that he realized he could not sell a stone that big without attracting too much attention. But after a while he got to thinking about what other things he could grab that would be worth the risk. That exact replica of the Hope Diamond was currently sitting atop the dresser in his bedroom next to a watch that needed a fresh battery.
He spent the rest of his shift filling out paperwork and daydreaming about what he would do with all that money. He and Daisy would travel around the world. She always said that she wanted to see the Pyramids in Egypt. Not that he figured they were much to look at; just a pile of stones. His tastes ran more to expensive cars, good booze and maybe – just maybe – a sharper looking girlfriend. Yeah, that was it! He’d have so much money that the gorgeous babes would be crawling all over him. Daisy was fun in bed but not the best looking dame in the world. Or the smartest. He deserved better.
A few hours later, he signed out, walked to the parking lot whistling a happy tune and swinging his briefcase, and then drove away with a very rare book on the seat next to him.
Chapter 4: Smiley
“Most people who work here stay in the nearest town, White Rock, but a few live in a small apartment building we have on the facility,” Dr. Crane told Tamara. “Since you’re only going to be here just a few days – I assume that’s right? – staying in the Mountain View would seem the best. Also, it saves you a drive each day.”
“I’m not sure how long my work will take,” she told him. “Depends on what I find.” It was a thinly veiled threat but she had found that being tough with clients worked best. Let them think you’re weak, and they’ll try to take advantage of you.
“If you want, I’ll take you over there as soon as we’re finished here.”
“That will be fine.”
Looking around the small office she had been led to revealed about what she expected: a desk, side table, and a cabinet and only one guest chair. At least a small window looked out towards the Jemez Mountains. And at least the walls and furniture were not the dull gray that seems to be prevalent in most government offices. These were of wood, and the walls were painted a pleasing shade of light blue. Immediately she went to the computer terminal sitting on the desk. With quick, sure motions, she flipped the on switch, and then began typing as soon as the screen showed a response.
“Windows 11.5,” she said, somewhat sarcastically. “You’re two versions behind.”
“You can log into our Unix system, if you prefer. Or Linux Mint 14. Or Omni 2.4. Whatever you�
�re most comfortable with.”
“Good. I’ll assume that I will have an account and password before the day is out.”
“Of course.” He said that with a straight face, so she could not tell if he was also being sarcastic or not.
The afternoon passed in getting her a permanent visitor’s badge that would give her access to the entire facility, and showing her around. The latter task was delegated to a secretary, or something much lower than Dr. Crane, who then made his excuses and left Tamara, his promise to personally show her to her apartment apparently forgotten. The young woman who was now in charge of the auditor was of Latin descent, witnessed by her brown skin, dark eyes and shiny black hair.
“My name is Carla. I’ll be happy to show you around.”
“That will be acceptable. Tell me, Carla, are you normally a tour guide?”
Project J Page 2
