A Loop in Time

by Clark Graham

  “I only wish we had built a whole new airplane around the engine instead of just sticking it in an existing fuselage.”

  The general sat back in his chair. “We spent all the money they allowed us and even quite a bit more. We did the best we could with what we had. If the test goes as well as I expect it to, we will have all the money we need for an all new airplane.”

  “I hope you’re right. Did we get another one of the blips today?”

  “Yes, even closer,” Avery replied.

  “Swamp gas?” Zurcher smiled as he said it.

  “That guess is as good as any.”

  “Do we scrub?”

  “No, not over swamp gas.” The general smiled.

  “I suppose not,” Andy agreed.

  Andy left and Avery finished reading the reports. He went home early to prepare for the tests in the morning.

  “Control, can you hear me?” Jason said through his headset.

  “Moondog, everything looks good from up here. Go through your preflight checklist.”

  “Roger, Control, going through the list.” John looked over to the side where a built in metal clipboard was. He went through each item one by one. Flaps, brakes, stabilizer and ailerons. They all checked out good. “Preflight good,” John reported.

  “Roger that. Clear to start your engines, Moondog.”

  “Roger, starting engines.” A loud roar started up behind him as he pulled the engine start switch. Then it settled down to a deep hum. He checked his engine status and oil pressure. “Engine running good, Control.”

  “Roger, you are clear to taxi out to runway 32.”

  “Copy.” John put the throttle forward until the plane started to roll. When he left the hanger and got out into the bright sunshine, he put down the sun screen on his visor. It didn’t take long for John to align himself with the runway. “Ready for takeoff.”

  “Roger, Moondog, you are clear to takeoff.”

  “Copy.” John pushed the throttle forward and the low hum went to a dull roar as the plane started to vibrate. John released the brakes and soon the plane was building speed as it rolled down the runway. When the speed was sufficient, John pulled back on the yoke and the plane sliced gently up through the air. It did not take long before he could see the runway far below him.

  “Moondog, get to a cruising height of 35,000 feet.”

  “Roger, Control.” John watched as the world passed by below him. He was up above some mountain peaks that were snow capped. He recognized the city of Denver below him.

  John leveled off the plane then reported in. “At the cruising altitude, Control.”

  “Roger, Moondog, it is time to activate the auxiliary drive.”

  “Roger,” John said and reached for the button marked ‘Vmax3 Drive.’ When he hit the button the plane jumped forward and his head was pushed backwards in his seat.

  He looked at his controls when it smoothed out some. “Holding steady at mach 0.5 Control.”

  “Roger that, we are reading the same thing.”

  Suddenly John heard a loud pop behind him and the plane started buffeting wildly. The stick was shaking and all of the aural warnings went off at the same time. “Massive system failure.” He was now going mach 1.5, faster than the fuselage was designed to go.

  “We’re losing him!” The normally calm controller was yelling.

  There was a sudden flash of light from the monitors then all of the monitors went blank.

  “Get him back,” the general had lost his calm. “Get him back!”

  “He’s gone,” the controller replied.

  “No data,” reported the lead technician.

  “We need men on the ground, get a grid search out there, I need aircraft too, find him and bring him back.” The general was upset. He didn’t want to have lost a pilot and the plane that they had spent so much money and time on. It would be a catastrophe.

  “Yes, Sir,” the lead technician responded.

  The controller called out all available craft to start searching the latest reported place that the plane could have been.

  “What am I going to tell the family?” The general sat down heavily.

  “Sir, he didn’t explode, Sir. I would have gotten partial data as the different pieces of the airplane fell to the ground. It’s like he just... disappeared.”

  “Planes just don’t disappear. There have to be parts of it somewhere.”

  “Yes, Sir, I was just reporting the data.”

  “I understand. I am going to my office to file a report then I am headed to the search area. I at least hope we can find him alive.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The general rushed to his office to change clothes. He decided the report could wait; he wanted to get out there right away. When he passed his secretary, he didn’t notice the man sitting across from her, waiting for him.

  “Sir, there is someone to see you,” she said as he rushed past.

  He turned and saw John for the first time. “I am sorry, I am having an emergency. I cannot meet with you now.”

  John just smiled. It was good to see his former commanding officer for the first time in forty five years. He had just the thing to stop the rushing man in his tracks. “I know where your plane is.”

  That spun the general back around. “What?”

  “I know where the F117 went down. You will never find it.”

  “Come into my office immediately.” It was a command and not a request. The general slammed the door after John entered. “How do you know about a top secret project and what do you mean you know where the plane went down? That’s impossible.”

  “I was a part of this project; that’s how I know about it, and I was in the plane when it went down.” John waited for the general’s face to show utter confusion before he went on. “My name is John Buck, but you know me as Jason Ralston. You sent me forty-five years into the past when you put me in that plane this morning. You will not find any wreckage; the United States Army and time have taken it all away. I do know where the black boxes are, though. We can get those back, at least. They are in a time capsule in Arizona on a military base.”

  “If this is some type of sick joke, it’s not funny. I have a good mind to have you arrested.”

  “Take my DNA; do anything you want with me. I tell you I am Jason Ralston and you sent me into the past.”

  “That is impossible.”

  John just sighed, “You keep saying that.”

  The general opened the door, “I need the MPs here. I want this man escorted out.”

  The secretary was very surprised, but called for the MPs right away.

  “You’re wasting your time. I am the pilot and I know where the black boxes are,” John told him.

  “You are a nut job,” the general said as he was leaving.

  Chapter Thirty

  It had been six days of scouring the desert looking for any clue of the missing plane. There was none. The general had set up operations at a small military hospital in Arizona. Every day he walked past a cement box that read, Closed 1966 Open April 18, 2014. He scratched his head, but he walked on. One day he got the base commander aside and asked, “What is that?”

  “It’s a time capsule. It’s been there a long time. We are going to open it on April 18th, but with all that is happening we postponed it.”

  The general suddenly remembered Jason’s words, ‘They are in a time capsule in Arizona on a military base.’ “Open it now, its past April 18, 2014. I think it might have something to do with our missing plane.”

  The major looked shocked.

  “No, I haven’t lost my mind. I have only lost a plane. I had a crazy man say the black boxes were in a time capsule. At least I thought he was crazy. I just want to check it out.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the major said, but he was still looking at the general suspiciously.

  The orders were given, and an hour later a small crane showed up to pull the top off of the time capsule. Inside rested a lot of paperwork and
two mangled orange and white Black Boxes. Avery picked up the papers that were on top and started to read.

  Feb 17. 1966. To General Avery. The F117A crashed in the desert in 1966, forty five years before it took off. The Pilot Jason Ralston survived the crash. You will find the black boxes here. It was decided not to report this incident to anyone other than those on the base, for reasons that made sense at the time.

  Colonel Rodgers, United States Army.

  The general got on the phone. “What are the serial numbers for the black boxes on the F117?”

  When he read the serial numbers out loud, the major, who was checking them nodded that these were indeed the ones.

  The general made the arrangements to return with the boxes. He would meet with John again, but he would have a lot more information this time around. He didn’t like bring caught off guard the first time he met John.

  He waited for a week until all the data had been compiled and then he met with his investigators. One of them had compiled a program from the information on the flight data recorder and the other on the cockpit voice recorder. He also brought in someone from Military Intelligence.

  When everyone was seated, he turned to one of his men and said, “Major Thompson, can you start?”

  “Yes, Sir. I have the voice recording of the crash.”

  He hit the play button.

  “We’re losing him!”

  “I’m still here-”

  “We’re losing--” the voice cut out, then there was silence.

  “Control, do you read me? Control?”

  “The first voice you hear is the tower and then that of the pilot. We have done a voice analysis of the tape to see if it was altered in anyway. It was not. The voices you hear are of the actual event.”

  “Thank you, Major. Now Colonel James, what do you have?”

  The colonel pointed at the technician to start the computer simulation. “Here we have the flight data from the plane. It started into a rapid increase in speed after the engines became unstable. We lost contact with it at thirty-one minutes into the flight, but the craft kept going an hour after that, reaching speeds of mach 2.5 before it started to disintegrate. It slowed down enough for the pilot to eject when the engines burned themselves out. It stopped recording data about that point.”

  “What are those numbers flashing across the bottom so fast that they can’t be read?” the general asked.

  “That is the puzzling part, Sir. That is the date it is getting off the GPS satellites. The interesting part is the date is going backwards.”

  “Can you slow down the simulation so we can read it?”

  “Of course,” the colonel replied and nodded to the technician. The whole room watched as the plane moved slowly back in time.

  “Why does it stop in 1978?” the general asked.

  “It ran out of GPS satellites at that time. That is when the first one became operational.”

  “So what do you make of all this, Colonel?”

  The colonel was hesitant to reply but did. “Sir, it looks to me like we have invented a time machine. Unfortunately, one we cannot control, and we have lost a pilot because of it.”

  “I have just one more question. Those radar blips we saw going up to the time of the test. Are those our own plane going back in time?”

  “Yes, Sir. We watched the plane going back in time, but had no idea what we were seeing.”

  “That brings me to the next report. Captain Jacobs, you go first, then I want to hear from you, Captain Smith.”

  “Yes, Sir. I brought back the papers from the time capsule in Arizona and read through them. They tell an amazing story of how a strange plane landed in the desert. This was in the middle of the Cold War and they thought at first it was Russian. They found out differently, but they tell of a man from the future who was hospitalized in Arizona with amnesia because of his injuries suffered during the crash. They nursed him back to health and sent him on his way. This was back in 1966.”

  “Why didn’t they report this up the Chain of Command?” the general asked.

  “It would have been a career ending move. Roswell was still fresh in their minds at that time. The men at the base didn’t think anyone would believe them anyway.”

  “Okay, Captain Smith.”

  The captain cleared his throat. “Sir, you asked me to look into a John Buck who had come into your office. I did. He was the pilot that crashed in Arizona. There is no prior mention of him anywhere before this happened. No birth certificate, no dental or medical records. It was just as if he appeared out of nowhere.”

  “What did he do afterwards?” the general asked.

  “He flew a crop duster for a couple of years and then he just managed his stock portfolio. He always seemed to find a winner and never lost any money on a stock. Another interesting thing is that he was married for one night and got it annulled. The couple claimed in front of a judge that they just found out that they were twins, but her twin brother died of alcohol poisoning two years before that. The nurse married a Doctor Ralston a week later. She is Jason’s grandmother.”

  “Do you mean that our pilot is still alive?”

  “Yes, he goes by the name John Buck. I have had his DNA tested and he is Jason Ralston.” The general motioned to the MP standing at the door. The MP left the room. Soon two more MPs came in escorting John.

  There were gasps all around the table.

  “Tell us who you really are, John Buck,” the general said.

  “I am Jason Ralston. I would give you my serial number but I don’t remember it after all these years.”

  There was a collective laugh.

  “Tell us about the crash,” the major asked.

  “The 117 wasn’t made for the speeds she was put through. I could not control the engines, but luckily they overheated and flamed out. I tried to pull the plane up but that just lost me both ailerons. Finally the plane was slowing down enough for me to get out. I should have waited a little longer, but the plane was catching on fire at that point, so I went for it. I woke up in a hospital bed with no idea of who I was.”

  “When did you get your memory back?”

  “On my wedding night. I figured out that I had just married my grandmother.”

  There was another round of laughter from the group.

  “I hope you figured it out before you consummated the marriage,” the general said.

  “I really don’t want to go into details like that.”

  “Of course not. How did you get on in your new life?”

  “Good. I got married, but I tell you, there are things I missed at first, the internet, the home computer, cell phones and especially television remote controls. I missed those the worst. Do you know how tedious it was to get up every time you want to change the channel even with only a few stations?”

  “I have a question,” the major said. “Did you worry about changing the timeline when you went back? You could have destroyed your own future and the future of all of us by your actions.”

  John got serious. “You can’t change time. I thought I could at first, but it repeats itself exactly. It’s on a loop. It just keeps looping. My former self has been back in time and now my future self just went back in time. I have seen myself as an older man and as a younger man. Everything happened the same all three time loops.

  “Do you think we will be able to devise a machine that travels through time?” the major asked.

  “It’s a one way journey. You will have to face that fact before you try those engines again. You will have to have someone willing to go even though they know that they are not coming back.”

  “Thank you, Gentlemen, that will be all for now,” the general said.

  As the men filed out the general got John to the side, “will you be willing to help test this thing? We may be on to something. My superiors believe we can turn this into a weapon. We can destroy key enemies before they are born.”

  “No, I would advise against it. It just complicates thin
gs and it might have just been a fluke anyway. You could spend billions and not replicate a time travel. That engine malfunctioned. You cannot replicate a malfunction. Meanwhile you will have put the lives of a lot of young pilots at risk. Besides, I am busy. I am going to take my wife to Paris. She has always wanted to go.”

  Books by Clark Graham

  Fantasy Fiction

  Dwarves of Elvenshore

  Lost Cities of Elvenshore

  Elf's Bane

  The Last of the Minotaur

  Curse of the Druid King

  War of the Druid King

  Dwarves, Druids and Dragons

  Short Stories

  Unexpected Tales

  Strange Kin

  Fantasy Children's Book

  Emily and the Shadow King

  Mystery (Jack Warden Series)

  Winning Numbers Deadly Numbers

  In a Sea of Troubles

  Murder on a Honeymoon

  On Deadly Seas

  Crime Books

  Murder Beneath the Palms

  Young Adult Fantasy

  Wizards and Heroes

  Sci-Fi

  A Loop in Time

  Millennium Man

  Sample Chapter

  Millennium Man

  Chapter 1: Montana

  Two Marines stood guard at the door. Director Phillip James walked to the most secure part of the top secret facility. It was deep in the mountains of Montana. Unlike NORAD, that had all sorts of publicity in comparison, this was a small operation. It was built with one single purpose, to support the Millennium Man. The hallway looked just like any hospital hallway in America, clean and white with the slight smell of antiseptic cleaners.

  Six foot two, with short brown hair, Phil was slender, a man that most women would consider attractive. Phil walked up to the guards at the door. He was in his white lab coat and carried a clip board. There was so much computer data being used your street clothes had to be covered up at all times by a lab coat. All dust and dirt was to be kept at a minimum both for the health of the man they guarded and the highly sensitive electrical equipment in the complex. The clip board did not have charts and graphs on it like most clip boards of executives. Phil had a bad memory and always carried the clip board to write notes and reminders on.