by Jeff Yee
“Kris, why don’t you join me up here,” said Sean as the video feed went live.
Kris joined his father and put one arm around him.
Sean smiled at Kris and then looked back at the camera. “In just a few minutes, we’re going to allow a handful of journalists into the lab to cover this event. Before we do, I want to thank all of you personally. Right now, it’s just us. It is this team – the dynamic and creative team – that has brought us this opportunity. It is Tace Technologies that has led the way. First through time suspension. And now through time travel. We have done it, my friends. This day is only possible because of each and every one of you.”
Sean had to clear his throat before he could continue. He had to pause to not get too choked up and emotional in front of his employees. After he was calm again, he continued, “Now that Congress and the President of the United States have cleared the way for human time travel experiments, we are not wasting any time. Our team here has been preparing our first experiment and I am the test subject. Shortly, I will be the first to volunteer for human time travel – transporting myself one day into the future. It is my honor and privilege to have this experience and to share it with you. We will carry it live to you on this channel, and we will carry it live to the world, with the help of the journalists waiting outside. The world will witness the ingenuity and persistence of the people here at Tace and the awesome power of time travel. My sincere thanks to all of you!”
Sean nodded to Maile Suzuki that it was time to bring in the news agencies. While Maile gathered the pre-selected journalists that would cover the event, Sean walked around the room to shake hands with his employees. Last on his quick tour around the room was his family. Stacey, Kris and Alyssa gathered closest to the time machine. He gave each of them a long and warm embrace. It was Alyssa, not Stacey, who broke down in tears as he let go. Sean gave his daughter a second hug and comforted her. “It will be all right, Aly,” he said staring into her eyes. “This time it’s just a quick trip. I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise.”
Three news agencies entered the room, including the crew from CNN. Camera crews positioned their video cameras quickly and began preparations to stream the live feed.
Without waiting for an acknowledgement that the journalists were ready, Sean waved to his team and briefly summarized his trip in four words. “See you all tomorrow!” he exclaimed. Then, he entered the time machine.
After Krishna locked the iron sphere’s door, Kris took the floor and began a narration of the events. “Sean Harrison, the founder of Tace Technologies, has been approved by our government to be the first man to travel in time. As you can see on the monitor behind me, he is safely inside our Betty. Betty is the name that we’ve affectionately given this time machine.”
Ryan Graves began a sequence of steps on the computer adjacent to the time machine. At the top of the spherical time machine, the LED light displayed a healthy green status.
“Mr. Harrison,” said Kris, referring to his father in a proper manner, “will travel twenty-four hours into the future. The time machine behind me will accelerate his pace of time by transferring energy into another dimension. His pace of time will become much faster, relative to our pace. And exactly one day into the future, we will decelerate this pace to match our time frame again. For Mr. Harrison, the result will be time travel of one day.”
Kris looked at Ryan to confirm plans. “Ryan, are we ready?”
“Ready!” reported Ryan.
“Without further delay, let’s get this started. Ladies and gentlemen, our first human time traveler.” Kris walked away from the time machine to give the cameras a full view of the sphere carrying his father.
Unable to hear the conversation outside the sphere, Sean sat inside the machine smiling. Tiny cameras inside the time machine were used to record his current state and to broadcast his progress to the world.
Ryan Graves touched a single button on the computer, and within an instant, the LED light on the time machine turned briefly to red and then to yellow. Meanwhile, a humming sound radiated from the machine.
A figure representing a slightly transparent Sean Harrison was suddenly motionless on the monitor. Just like previous experiments with lab animals, Sean came in and out of view on the monitor; motionless the entire time. Despite Sean’s transparency, the iron core in the middle of the sphere was static and clearly visible. All signs pointed to a normal and successful start to the test. Sean Harrison was traveling in time.
Chapter 54
Stacey Harrison had no intention of leaving the Tace Technologies laboratory. Throughout the entire night, she stayed with her husband, sleeping on a cot only five feet from the spherical machine. And she was not alone. Kris and Alyssa had sleeping bags of their own, staying overnight to comfort their mother. A handful of Tace employees chose to remain on watch overnight, along with five security guards that were tasked with keeping the building, the computer and the time machine safe while it was transporting its first human time traveler. Finally there were three journalists; each news agency was allowed to keep one member of their crew in the building overnight to monitor progress while Sean was in transport.
Although Stacey had been awake for a couple of hours, she kept quiet in her cot until Ryan Graves arrived shortly after seven in the morning. Ryan quietly stepped over the bodies spread across the floor, being careful not to spill the tray containing coffee that he brought for the Harrisons.
“Good morning,” whispered Stacey as she looked up at Ryan.
“Morning,” replied Ryan. “How about a latte?”
Stacey thanked Ryan for the coffee, sat up and took a sip. Then, looking at the monitor, she was disappointed to see that another six hours remained until Sean was due back into the present time.
“How’d you sleep?” asked Ryan.
“Not very well. I just can’t wait for this to be over. I want to see my Sean.”
“I understand. Not too much longer now.”
Despite the whispers, the discussion woke Kris and Alyssa who were sleeping next to their mother.
Kris opened his eyes and his first instinct was to check on progress. “How do things look Ryan?” he asked while reaching for his coffee. “Oh, and thanks for the brew.”
Ryan read the status on the computer and then answered, “Everything appears to be normal. No issues as far as I can see.”
The news was a tremendous relief to Stacey. Nevertheless, she was very impatient. She had waited eighteen hours but still had another six to go. She got up and looked at the time machine. The LED at the top of the machine was still yellow, which indicated that the machine was in use.
Alyssa watched her mother anxiously pace the floor of the lab. “Mom, why don’t we grab a bite to eat at the cafeteria?”
“No, I’m staying here. I’m not hungry.”
“Okay,” said Alyssa. “I understand. But I’m going to freshen up and then grab something. I’ll bring you back breakfast.”
The personnel in the room changed throughout the morning. Employees came in and out of the lab checking on the progress of the time transport. The security guards were replaced at the end of their eight-hour shifts. And the news crews swapped journalists to keep their cameramen fresh and alert. Everyone rotated in-and-out of the lab at one point throughout the day and night except for Stacey. She sat quietly in the lab and watched the countdown on the monitor, eagerly waiting for it to reach zero – the time when her husband would return.
With one hour remaining, the lab was relatively quiet. Kris used the opportunity to answer questions from the press in Building Twelve’s lobby; its size allowed access to a broader group of news agencies than the three agencies that were limited to cover the event in the small lab.
With Alyssa joining her brother for the public relations event, Stacey found herself alone in the lab with a handful of Tace Technologies scientists. Suddenly, she heard a short, high pitched buzzing noise from the computer hooked to the time machine. Eeeeeeeee!!!!
At that same instant, the LED on the machine began flashing yellow. Startled, Stacey looked up at the monitor. No change. There was still a glimmer of a motionless, transparent figure inside the time machine. She looked around the room. Kris and Alyssa were busy with the media. And where was Ryan Graves? Who would she ask about this flashing yellow light? What did it mean? She had no time to wait for a familiar face. Stacey ran up to the short, stocky woman that was the closest Tace employee to the computer.
“Help! What’s going on? What are these noises and the flashing lights?” Stacey pointed to the LED on the time machine as she spoke with fright.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Harrison,” answered the technician. “It’s a feature that we’ve recently added that warns us that there is less than one hour remaining. There’s nothing wrong.”
Stacey let out a sigh of relief. Indeed, there was now less than one hour remaining. She looked up to confirm the time on the countdown clock. It read fifty-nine minutes. There was less than an hour until she would see her husband again. She continued to watch every minute subtract one-by-one. At thirty minutes, the room became more crowded. Kris completed the media session and then returned to the lab. Excited Tace employees filled the lab to witness the historic moment. And by the time the countdown reached twenty minutes, it was a standing room only in Lab Murray.
When there was only two minutes left, Kris addressed the crowd, “In just a moment, we will literally witness history. By that, I mean, we will bring back a man from the past. Our founder of this great company will be brought back into the present by decelerating his pace of time to match ours. This is the moment that we have all been waiting for. This is the moment where we will prove that human time travel is possible.”
Ryan Graves and a team of key scientists were busy studying the monitors and checking the final sequence.
“Ryan, everything ready?” asked Kris.
Ryan realized that everything was functional and on autopilot. There was nothing that he or his team needed to do at that point. He answered, “As ready as we’ll ever be.”
With thirty seconds remaining, there was complete silence in the room. No one spoke. The slight humming noise of the time machine was apparent again as the crowd quieted. The LED at the top of the machine was still flashing yellow. Finally, it was time for the final countdown.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Like previous tests, the LED turned from yellow to red. A red light meant that the machine was in a transforming state. An energy shift was occurring inside the machine to change the energy of the system. This change in energy affected Sean’s pace of time, relative to his surroundings, once again bringing his pace to match that of the outside world. Sean had traveled into the future by increasing his pace of time and then decreasing it correspondingly exactly twenty-four hours later.
A thunderous applause was the immediate reaction from the crowd in the lab when the LED turned from red to green. A fraction of a second later, the same applause trickled throughout the Tace Technologies campus and spread across the world as those that were watching the live video from the laboratory all saw the same thing – the image of Sean Harrison in the time machine reappeared. Sean was visibly active on the monitor. Within a second, Sean was recreated from his motionless, mostly transparent image, to his normal, flesh-bodied self.
Krishna was the first to open the time machine. The crowd quieted as the door was opened, and then erupted with another ovation once they saw a live Sean Harrison.
Slightly dazed, Sean stepped out with his right foot first and offered his arm to Krishna for support to pull him out.
Krishna spoke softly so that only Sean could hear him. “How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy,” he replied. “Hold me up for a moment, if you don’t mind. Until I get my feet under me.”
Stacey rushed to Sean’s aid. Sean placed one arm over Krishna’s shoulder and another arm over his smiling wife’s shoulder for support. Then he looked at Stacey, smiled and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Told you that I’d be back,” he said calmly to Stacey. Then, looking around the room, he mustered up the energy to say the one line that he had been preparing for days. With the loudest voice that he could use to be heard over the cheers in the audience, Sean joked, “One day missed by a man, one giant leap for mankind!”
Chapter 55
Within hours after completing his one-day travel in time, Sean was finishing the last of the diagnostic tests at Sharp Memorial Hospital. As a precaution, Sean was taken to the hospital to run a series of tests that were normally designed for men and women coming out of cryogenic suspension. In Sean’s case, there was not a set of medical tests that were prepared for someone who had completed a shift into a fifth dimension. Nevertheless, the researchers at Tace felt that Sharp Memorial Hospital would be the next best option given its experience with time suspension.
Inside one of the hospital rooms, Stacey glanced at the colorful image displayed on a monitor as its scanner passed across Sean’s body. “How does he look?” she asked the administering physician.
The doctor replied loud enough for Sean, resting on a bed thirty feet away, to hear the result. “He’s got all of his fingers and toes,” he joked. “As far as I can tell Sean, every last piece of you has returned. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
It was the good news that Sean and Stacey wanted to hear. With all of his tests completed, Sean was free to go. Although he was capable of walking under his own power, Sean was placed into a wheelchair and pushed back to a room where his son Kris and good friend Ryan Graves were eagerly waiting for him.
“Well… how did it go?” asked Kris when his mother wheeled his father into the room.
“Clean bill of health,” reported Stacey, with a sigh of relief.
“Glad to hear,” replied Kris, who then walked closer to his father. “Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask, but there’s been quite a crowd since you returned. What was it like? Traveling through time?”
Sean thought about it for a moment and then replied, “A blip really. I went from the past to the present immediately. Although for a second or two there was a blur.”
“A blur?” asked Ryan. “Can you describe it in more detail?”
“A blur as in things around me seemed to be moving much quicker. Like the world was going on without me for a second.”
Ryan asked curiously, “Do you think you could see outside? The lab? You were in a metal ball. I’m curious to see if you could see outside the ball.”
“I don’t know,” replied Sean. “I really don’t know. Like I said. It all happened so fast, like a second or two. And things moved really fast. But there were colors and objects that could have possibly been all of you moving in and out of the lab over a period of twenty-four hours. Next thing I know, I was being pulled out of Betty and I was very dizzy. That’s about all that I remember.”
“Fascinating,” replied Ryan in a short, concise summary.
“Okay,” said Sean changing subjects, “let’s talk about what we need to do for time travel into the far future.”
Stacey shrugged at the suggestion. She wasn’t interested in the conversation, so she walked towards the door and said, “Boys, I’ll leave this one to you. I’m going to call Aly and give her an update.”
Sean looked at Kris with a grin after his wife closed the door behind her. “Your mother doesn’t want to talk about it. She knows that I’m going to do it, but she’s avoiding the subject right now. We’ll ease her into it. We have some time.”
“I don’t blame Mom,” said Kris. “She’s been very understanding so far and I can see why she would be scared about you traveling twenty-four years into the future. It’s very different compared to a twenty-four hour trip. It’s a lot more complex and the risk is exponentially greater.”
“I know the risks and I certainly understand them,” said Sean, staring deep into his son’s eyes, almost forgetting that Ryan Graves was also in the room. He said with sincerity, �
��If anything should happen to me, please take care of your mother. She’s going to need a lot of support from you and your sister.”
“Nonsense,” interrupted Ryan. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
Sean smiled. “I know that you’ll do everything that you can Ryan. It’s the things out of your control that I’m worried about. For example, what happens to Tace Technologies in the next twenty-four years? Do we still own the lab and make payments on our electric bills that power the machine? Even if we do, how are we going to handle security for twenty-four years? Or natural disasters like earthquakes?”
“All things that we need to consider,” said Ryan. “And we have. We’ve talked about all of these scenarios before.” Ryan paused to stand, and as he walked around the room he continued, “I’ve been thinking about it. I suggest that we enlist the help of the government and move the machines to…”
“What!” exclaimed Kris, who was surprised by the suggestion. “The government? The same government that conspired to have you kidnapped? Of all people, I’m surprised that you would suggest this.”
“Let me continue.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“First off, the Cordeiros thing is behind us now. I don’t hold a grudge against the government. I hold it against Rob Cordeiros and the people he was working with. Second, as we think about the safety of our time travelers, I think we need to acknowledge that we need help. We have neither the resources nor the expertise to provide the safety that’s required for the time machines.”
Sean thought about Ryan’s points and then challenged, “Ryan, I agree that it’s possible that Tace Technologies may not be around in twenty-four years. Although governments change as well, I think we can safely assume the United States government will be around in a couple of decades. But let’s think bigger than that. What about future time travel experiments that are one hundred, two hundred or a thousand years out. Will our current government still exist? And if it doesn’t, what happens to our time travelers?”
