The Amulet (The Time Chronicles Book 1)

by Michael Dodd

  “How is that possible?” Michael asked his gray-haired son, “Did you lose it or something?”

  Gates smiled and reached into his pants pocket, pulling out the amulet. “No, it has never left my sight since I landed in 2020. Here,” he said, handing it to his father, “look for yourself.”

  Michael took the amulet and studied it. “Then how…”

  “At the time,” Gates interrupted, “I had no idea, but I knew it was the same amulet. After all, I’d had the exact same amulet in my pocket and I’d been looking at it for 45 years.”

  “Did you ask him about it?” Michael asked.

  “No, I was so startled that there was more than one of them, I just bit my tongue; however, I just couldn’t let it go. So, I managed to befriend him and even got a job at his new company. I thought that would give me a chance to find out more about it.”

  “Did you ever find out?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Gates said with a wry smile, “I did.”

  Michael was nonplused. He had never considered that there could be more than one amulet. “How many of these amulets exist?” he asked, almost to himself. Then, addressing himself to Gates, he asked, “Did you ever discover whether there were more amulets, or just the two?”

  “Actually, Dad, what I discovered was that there was only one amulet in existence, or at least, to my knowledge. The one he had in his pocket was the same one I had in mine.”

  Michael was at sea. “How is that possible? If he had it in 2065, how could I have had it in 2065? That’s the year I traveled to from 2125. I had it with me always. It was never out of my sight.”

  Gates reached down and stroked his mother’s hair before looked back at his father and replying, “That’s gonna take a little more explaining.”

  ‡

  2140

  Mick Jagger looked at the wonder-eyed faces of the now suddenly-seated TimeCorp. He always loved that trick. He looked back at Kenneth Graham, still standing beside him. He looked like he’d just come out of the womb.

  Cathy Akers sat in stunned silence, watching Mick Jagger smile with satisfaction at Kenneth Graham. Suddenly, it hit her. This was the man who’d spoken so strangely to her back at the U of C cafeteria. How could she not have remembered that face? It all made sense now. The questions about time travel. The things he said about him sending someone back in time to change history. Oh, my God! He said the man he sent back was my old boyfriend and that his name was Xylon. It was Michael Xylon that started MJ Technologies. Oh, my God! He also said I was someone else in that other timeline! He called me, Juno!

  Mick could see that Kenneth was about to lose it. He walked over to him in order to assuage his fears. “It’s okay, Dr. Graham,” Mick said, reaching out for the amulet. “It’ll take a little time to wrap your mind around it.”

  Kenneth Graham backed away from Mick just enough to give him pause. “Here,” Mick said, reaching out towards him, more earnestly requesting the return of the object Kenneth still held in his hand, “give me the amulet and have a seat with the others.”

  Now, Kenneth looked almost frightened. He began to back away, extending his left hand outward to ward off Mick, while at the same time, clutching the amulet more securely with his right. Now, Mick realized what Kenneth was contemplating. “Don’t even think about it, Dr. Graham!” he called out. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with!”

  Kenneth Graham seemed to have made up his mind. He looked as frightened as a mouse in a room full of cats. Suddenly, he shouted out, “I don’t care!” Then, he quickly looked down at the amulet in his right hand, seemingly to assure himself that he was about the press on the correct side. As Mick lurched forward to stop him, Kenneth Graham pressed down on the raised side of the gold artifact and seconds later, disappeared into thin air.

  Mick landed flat on his face. He quickly regained himself and sprang to his feet as the room filled with gasps, mutterings and confusion.

  “Did he just do what I think he just did?” Gerald Cisteric said, giving voice to the thoughts of everyone in the room.

  Mick looked dumbfounded. “Yes,” he said softly, as if he was still trying to process what had happened, “I think he did.”

  “So, what does that mean?” another of the group asked. “Can he go back in time and change our history?”

  Suddenly, it occurred to Mick that Kenneth Graham could do just that. With his knowledge of the future and his background in particle physics, he could quite literally change the world that Mick and Xylon had given up so much to create. How could he have been so stupid? “Yes, Mr. Callahan,” he said, “I’m afraid that is a very real possibility.”

  Cathy could no longer hold her tongue. “But if he went back 60 years to 2080 and changed something, would any of us even be aware of it? Wouldn’t all of our memories of the previous timeline be erased in favor of the new memories we’d established living in this timeline since whenever he created the change?”

  Mick looked at Cathy. He could see the new awareness in her eyes. “Do you remember me?” he asked.

  “I do now,” she said, “but we can talk about that later. Right now, we need to be concerned with whatever damage Kenneth might have caused. So, could you answer my question? Wouldn’t we be changed right along with everything else?”

  “Normally, for those who have traveled through time,” he said in response, “like me and Michael Xylon…and now, Kenneth Graham, the changes do not affect our memories of previous timelines. However, for everyone else in the world, there would be no perception of change. It would be as though the current timeline had always been in effect.”

  “Well, that’s good then, right?” Mr. Callahan said with a sigh of relief, “because everything is just as it was before. We were all sitting in this meeting room when he disappeared and nothing has changed since…” He looked around the room for approval. “Has it?”

  Mick responded with sad acceptance and an ominous tone, “Not necessarily,” he said. “You see, when we had this building constructed, it was lined throughout with a combination of lead, titanium and electromagnetic seals. While we weren’t sure it would work, our hope was that any time travelling we might do would leave us protected from temporal effects in case we needed to go back and restore the previous timeline.”

  “Are you saying that we are protected from changes in the timeline?” Cathy asked.

  “Let’s go find out,” Mick said as he quickly made a beeline for the door. “Come with me,” he said.

  Like the Three Stooges trying to get out an exit at the same time, thirty people tried to do the same as they hurried to follow Mick Jagger to wherever he was headed with such fervor. When the last of them managed to extricate themselves from the meeting room and join up to Mick Jagger, they quickly found themselves in the same stunned stupor as their boss.

  Standing now with the rest of the TimeCorp crew, Mick looked out the window and saw what looked like an apocalypse had taken place. The buildings they’d come to know had all been either destroyed or never built in the first place. There was obviously a society surrounding their “timeless” building, but what kind of society was difficult to tell. Perhaps they were in a bad area of town in the changed timeline, he could not be sure; but, it didn’t look like the kind of place one would want to venture out into during the night…or the day, for that matter.

  Mick turned to the still agape faces behind him and yelled, “Nobody leaves this building for any reason!” He looked to his left at one of the maintenance men who’d joined in all the commotion. “Billy,” he called out to him with urgency, “Go lock every door to this building! Make sure nobody leaves or enters this building!”

  As Billy took off, Mick turned back to those of TimeCorp who were “in the know”, and said, calmly, “We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  2060

  When Kenneth Graham suddenly found himself standing in an open field, it didn’t take him long to realize that he had, in fact, gone back in time. He
looked to his left and saw the familiar skyline of Chicago—though changed, subtly—and knew that Mick Jagger’s assertions were true. That meant that he had gone back in time sixty years to 2080. He would not even be born for another 20 years.

  Wow! He didn’t even exist; at least, not as far as the people in this timeline knew. His parents would be alive at this time, but they’d both be little kids. The possibilities made his head swim. What should he do first? He’d have to find food and lodging with no assets to speak of. His Uniworld card would be useless at this time and he had no hard currency. He’d have to find some way of obtaining an ID card with a new identity or he’d never be able to get work. He decided that first thing’s first and went to the Salvation Army for food and lodging until he could formulate a plan. If he played his cards right, though, he could very quickly become a very rich and powerful man. After all, he knew everything that was going to happen over the next sixty years.

  As he walked around Chicago, trying to find the Salvation Army, he chanced to pass a magazine and newspaper kiosk. Curious about the current events of 2080, he stopped and perused the front page of the Chicago Tribune. Having little knowledge of anything but the most prominent of news events of the time, he expected only to get a feel for the current climate of the city. It did not take much time to notice the date on the newspaper: September 8, 2060. Wait a minute! 2060? How can that be? It’s supposed to be 2080! Mick Jagger said the amulet only took you back 60 years. Oh well, so much the better.

  Three days later, as he sat on a cot in a ramshackle Salvation Army housing building, a brilliant idea occurred to him. It was late and most of the losers lying in the beds around him were sleeping it off. He racked his brain trying to remember who’d won the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA championship, NCAA championships, etc. Then it came to him. The Cleveland Browns had won the Super Bowl in January of 2061 after an unlikely winning season. They had been called, the Miracle Browns because of the almost impossibility of a team with such little previous success suddenly marching through the playoffs and winning the title. The odds on them at this point—it was early September; the season had barely begun—would be astronomical. All he needed to do was get enough money together to make a bet on the Browns to win the Super Bowl and then wait until January; but, how to get enough money to make it a real killing.

  The next day, Kenneth used one of the Salvation Army computers to check the odds in Las Vegas. It turned out that the Cleveland Browns were given 500-1 odds to win the Super Bowl. If he could scrape a thousand dollars together and make a bet on the Browns, he’d get $500,000 next January. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Whether by hook or by crook, he’d get the money within a week; then the world would be his oyster.

  Five years later, on April 4, 2065, Kenneth met a rather extraordinary man named Gates Devaney—he’d taken the last name of the woman who took him in after he’d arrived as a ten-year old boy from 2080—and hired him to head up the computer technology division of his now, multimillion dollar corporation called, Linear Data Systems. While he was no spring chicken at the age of 55, Gates seemed to have a way with computers and an inherent understanding of the complexities of Linear Data System’s new temporal- data delivery and retrieval concepts.

  In essence, LDS (Linear Data Systems) had invented a way to send data of all kinds—including text, images, vocal recordings and even video—forward in time or backward in time, to anyone with the capacity to accept the format of a computer program. The possibilities of the technology were as vast as the internet itself. Assuming your “message” met with the right person, you could find out about all the future technologies and events before they were ever invented or occurred. You could even send messages back in time and warn of impending disasters, like the attacks of 911 or the 2025 9.0 California earthquake. In the wrong hands, of course, either could be a potential disaster. If future technologies were discovered and exploited before their natural date, the future of mankind could take a decidedly different turn. If, for instance, you could send a warning back through time to the FBI about the events of 911, the very present would change irrevocably, possibly for the good, perhaps to the demise of life itself. One could never really know.

  Kenneth Graham could only see fame, power and dollar signs. Gates Devaney, on the other hand, could see the dangers inherent in technologies not controlled. By 2070, five years into his employ by LDS, he had decided he needed to do something about it. While the technology had been proven to work, it had not been given the go-ahead by Mr. Graham to begin clinical trials. Even Graham understood that he could not just start tampering with the timeline without first assuring himself that he could use it to his betterment.

  Having never married, mostly for fear that he might someday return to his previous timeline, Gates lived in a very upscale condominium in the heart of Chicago. Always a bigtime sports fan, he started every morning by eating breakfast at a nearby diner called, Rita’s and reading the sports page of the Chicago Tribune, lapping up every word that was written about his beloved Cubs, Bears and/or Bulls.

  After reading that the Cubs had lost another game, he glanced at the front page while he finished his coffee. President Wooten, who had steered the world out of more calamities than James T. Kirk, was attending another world summit of the remaining “superblocs” of nations. It was more of a good-will tour than a global confab, but a couple of lines at the bottom of the article caught Gates’ attention:

  After the meeting, the President, only the second man to receive a third term in office, when asked how he was able to accomplish all that he had towards world peace, replied,

  cryptically, “No man can take the credit for what the world has wisely accomplished, but I suppose my friend, Michael Xylon, was most unusually supportive.” When asked, “Who is Michael Xylon”, the President responded with a short chortle and a quick exit.

  Wow! Are they talking about my father? Did he travel back in time with that amulet and help the President of the United States? It was the only possible answer. That’s why Dad was so obsessed with that amulet. He knew the power it had and that’s why he told me and Mom never to touch it.

  Gates knew he had to contact his father. Maybe he could help him stop Mr. Graham from using his Temporal Data Software. He wasn’t sure how he’d find him, but how many people on the earth are named, Michael Xylon? Then again, if he contacted him before the date he’d gone back in time, would he be causing some kind of a temporal paradox? After all, how could he see his Dad ten years before he’d even gone back to 2020? If his Dad then stopped him from picking up that amulet, he would not have had the chance to meet with him, thereby making the meeting impossible. Perhaps he’d have to wait until the moment after he’d gone back to 2020, then he could speak to his father without any paradoxical concerns. Of course, would that be too late to save the world from the kind of disasters that this new technology could unleash? “Rita,” he called out, “Can I get another cup of coffee?”

  ‡

  2140

  “So, you were telling me the truth, huh?” Cathy said as she and Mick sat together in her office.

  “I’m sorry I blurted it out like that,” Mick said, “It was a stupid thing to do, it’s just that Michael wanted to see you before he died and I didn’t know any other way to go about it.”

  “So, you’re telling me that in a different timeline, my name was Juno, that I was living with Michael Xylon, whose name then was just…Xylon, and that you sent him back in time to stop World War III?”

  “That’s right,” Mick said, “The world wasn’t even called, earth, it was called, Omni, after the man who had taken total power and made the world into a totalitarian planet. You had no rights, to speak of; you were genetically engineered and raised in a communal home and you were forbidden to marry or have children of you own. Your whole lives were governed by and watched over by an artificial intelligence that reported your every action to Omni. The world you live in now is a much improved place than the one y
ou sent Xylon from.”

  Cathy’s head was spinning. Intellectually she could grasp it, but her heart could not imagine that she had led a different life than the one she now knew, or that she might have been responsible, to some degree, for changing the world as much as Mick seemed to imply. The idea that she was in love with Michael Xylon and that she gave him up for the good of the planet did not fill her with pride, it only reminded her how lonely she was. She decided to change the subject.

  “You know, I think Gerald’s idea of frequency modulation is worth another look. It seems to me, that if one can travel back and forth through time, then time itself must be stationary.”

  “What do you mean, ‘ stationary’?” Mick asked, reminded of the fact that he had no idea how the amulet worked. He was not a scientist.

  “Well, if someone can travel back and forth through time, then time, meaning the past, present and future, must all exist at the same time. You can’t go somewhere that doesn’t exist.”

  “Remember,” Mick reminded her, “the amulet only lets people travel backwards in time. Perhaps that is the only way we can travel through time. Einstein thought so, at least.”

  “Perhaps,” Cathy said, taking another sip of her water, “but, if I’m right, the future would be no different than the past. One could argue that the future doesn’t exist yet, but one could make the same argument that the past doesn’t exist anymore. If one can be traversed, I’ll bet my grandmother’s bedpan that the other can be as well.”

  “Okay, suppose for the moment you’re correct. Let’s get back to the frequency modulation.”

  “Oh…well…what I meant to say is that if past, present and future exist all at the same time, then the only way to suddenly disappear and reappear in another timeline would be if they, and I mean all the different timelines, were actually different dimensions. That way, a change in the frequency in which the body resonated might, sort of, scooch you over into another time. Perhaps that’s what the amulet does and why you have to push down with your thumb for five seconds. Maybe that’s the time it takes for the amulet to identify your frequency and alter its resonance. Why it would only take you back 60 years or 60 seconds is anyone’s guess, but it’s a place to start.”