Podioracket Presents - Glimpses

by Podioracket

  Francis searched his pockets and found a quarter to slip into the slot provided. Apparently coins had not changed much in the last ten years, as the machine accepted his money. The headline and picture shrank and text appeared below it. He pulled a pair of reading glasses from a coat pocket with a trembling hand, perching them on his nose before he began to read.

  "In a move that has been long promised by the military government, John Felch was appointed as the first civilian leader since the inception of martial law. Mr. Felch is well known to the Joint Chiefs, as he has worked closely with them over the years in the private sector at various defense contractors and research firms."

  Cold dread settled over the aging scientist as he read. It was too much of a coincidence that John Felch should rise to power scant years after his creation of the time machine. The fear that Francis felt began to grow as the article related the history of the civil unrest that began in 2009, eventually leading to the assassination of the president and vice president in 2015, and the disbanding of Congress in 2017 when the military asserted control.

  "Hey, Pops!" said a loud voice from behind, drawing his attention away from the story. He turned to see a man in his early twenties wearing an Army uniform and brandishing a machine gun. The weapon was not pointed at Francis, but he realized it could be very quickly. The soldier looked wary and was clearly suspicious.

  "It's almost curfew. You got your papers, old man?" he said with a scowl.

  "Y-yes, of course."

  Papers? Curfew? Francis thought in growing consternation.

  He considered pulling out his wallet, but his ID would be many years out of date. Instead he slowly slid his hand into his jacket pocket. The gun rose slightly as the soldier carefully watched Francis' movements. Gripping the PDA, he pulled his hand out in a deliberate, smooth motion intended to keep the soldier at ease. The man frowned when he saw the device come into view. It was clearly not what he was expecting.

  "I have it right here," Francis said as his thumb pressed the power button.

  The screen lit up with the Borrowed Time display.

  The soldier narrowed his eyes as he looked at what Francis held, and the scowl deepened. The gun rose a bit more, and the barrel began to swing toward the older man.

  "I don't think that's…"

  The aging scientist didn't wait but pressed the button that would return him to his home time. A moment later the disturbing vision of the future faded, and he found himself back in 2008 standing in his home office. He sank gratefully into his desk chair while his heart pounded, and for a little while he thought he would be sick. As he coughed and tried to recover, the scientist wasn't sure if his reaction was from the effects of his device or from the horrific future he had experienced.

  For a few moments he could only sit and try to assimilate what he had seen. Over and over his thoughts kept coming back to John Felch being named chancellor. It was a very odd title for a leader of America.

  And martial law, Francis reminded himself, not to mention gunfire in the streets. How could events have gone so wrong?

  Yet, John's rise to power remained the most surprising to him. While Francis had known from the many times they had met that the CEO was an ambitious man, he had no idea that Felch held any interest in government.

  He pulled a laptop computer out of a desk drawer. A few minutes later when he was able to get online he searched for "John Felch." Francis found his LinkedIn page and some articles that chronicled the executive's rise through the corporate ranks. As far as he could see, John had never taken any form of public office, not even on a small scale.

  Francis frowned and connected to the Intellisys network. He logged on and started a search with the keywords "John Felch, Leader, Military." Even though he searched all areas of the network he had access to, nothing was returned.

  Francis sat for a moment and considered his options. As he mulled over different solutions, his mind went inexorably to one he purposely had not thought of in a long time. It was another invention of his; one he had never been entirely comfortable with.

  His first task at Intellisys had been the creation of a robust and secure computer network, and he had done his work well. Yet a small, vocal part of him had advised caution. This had driven him to create a deeply buried, secret ID called Balrog. It gave him god-like rights to everything on the network, including supposedly personal files. Like the dread creature he had named it after, Francis feared rousing it from its slumber, and he had long resisted the temptation. Such power could be intoxicating, and he always intended it as a final resort. He thought again of the letter hidden in his desk, then of the future he would never see. The future he hoped no one would ever have to see.

  "It appears the time has come," the aging scientist muttered in the quiet room.

  Francis logged off his normal ID, and then logged in as Balrog. He started another search with the same keywords, which quickly returned a number of results. Most were funding documents for various projects. He saw his own name on one and opened the file. It showed that the Department of Defense had been bankrolling his research that had produced the PDA. Apparently John did have close ties to the military, as a few more minutes of searching revealed that most of the projects underway at Intellisys held secret military funding.

  Francis grunted to himself as he scrolled down past endless minutiae until another entry caught his eye. It was simply labeled "Plans," but what stood out was the file's location. It was the sole item found in John Felch's personal directory. The scientist hesitated, weighing the consequences of snooping in the CEO's private document. Then he remembered his appalling glimpse of the future and he double-clicked on the file.

  The computer took a few moments to retrieve the file from the network, and Francis could tell it was a large one. It took almost a minute for the first pages to display. While the document continued to load he perused the table of contents. He saw entries for "Organization," "Obstacles," and "Milestones," among others. He clicked on the latter item and was presented with a bulleted list.

  "Balance the parties in the Senate and House to increase government stagnation," Francis muttered, reading aloud one of the first entries from the page. As he read he saw the developing trend of a government that was more and more ineffectual, while Felch was causing increasing destabilization through several terrorist-like cells spread across the country. He stopped when he saw the part of the plan that indicated the inception of martial law in the United States, followed shortly thereafter by the United Kingdom. He already knew what came next.

  Returning to the table of contents, Francis clicked on the entry for "Obstacles." There was a simple list of people and planned elimination dates. The names were familiar as many of the people held public office. As in the previous list, John plans apparently spanned the globe. It also didn't escape Francis that many of the elimination dates were actually years in the past. Some of the names were of people he recognized, that he knew were alive today. That pointed to John sending assassins or saboteurs into the past.

  With my time machine, the scientist thought grimly.

  He felt equal parts dismay and anger as he scanned the list. Part of him wanted to throw up in his wastebasket as he read through the plans for the utter corruption of the world's governments. The rest of him boiled with rage that the executive would use his device, his device, to achieve such ends.

  Not with my work, the scientist thought vehemently.

  Returning to the beginning he clicked on the link that would take him to the organizational details. Not surprisingly, John Felch was listed first with the simple title of "Leader." Below him was Paul Robbins, the security chief at Intellisys. Francis knew of Robbins, but they had only met once in passing. He was a large man with an equally large reputation, one that hinted at much with little of it being good. If half of what was said about him was true, Robbins was an extremely dangerous man. Assuming he was the student of cruelty everyone thought him to be, he seemed the perfect candida
te for head of a secret police force. According to the document, if John Felch had his way that would be Paul's next job title.

  The sound of his front door opening pulled Francis' attention from his sickening research. A frown crossed his face as he was expecting no visitors, and no one had a key to his home. Had he missed a car coming down his driveway? It wouldn't be the first time that he ignored the world around him as he performed his work. Francis' frown deepened, knowing this intrusion could only harbor ill for him.

  He closed the laptop and quickly put it back in a drawer. Then he picked up the PDA and set it for a jump two weeks in the past. The scientist only had time to place his hands in his lap, concealing the PDA, before Paul Robbins walked in as smoothly as a shark sliding through calm waters. Francis' imagination supplied an image of the big man in a black uniform, not unlike that which the German SS wore. He blinked and the chilling garment disappeared, for the moment just a dark flight of fancy. Another man, thin with close-cut gray hair, followed Robbins into the office but remained standing near the door.

  Francis realized he could escape into time, but only if he didn't return to this moment. Eventually he would run out of borrowed time and die. He would have to sacrifice himself to prevent these horrible men from accessing his work. His mind went back to the letter that lay concealed in a drawer, no longer the sole harbinger of his doom.

  Apparently my time was more fleeting than I had known, Francis thought ruefully, but then was struck with a firm resolve.

  I will do what I must to protect the future.

  Feeling no small amount of guilt that his success had made possible this distortion of the time line, Dr. Francis Bertrand straightened in his chair, ready to shoulder this burden for a future he would never see. His finger hovered over the button that represented his escape and his sacrifice. He glared into Paul's dead, black eyes and prayed he would have enough time and strength to prevent the forthcoming reality that his work had brought into being.

  https://podiobooks.com/title/borrowed-time

  Blind Curve

  Dave Donelson

  Benon Otema was a good man and proud, so when the village drunkard offered to tell him how a man in Kicheri became instantaneously wealthy, Benon wasn't sure he should listen. It was beneath him to be seen even talking with a drunk like Joseph Mkala, although everyone knew the man was one of Benon's best customers. In the end, Benon gave in and listened to the tale--even giving Joseph a free glass of banana gin to lubricate his tongue--but afterwards he regretted it.

  Benon's trouble started a few days after the conversation, when four screws turned up missing at a particularly inopportune time. Benon had opened the twist of paper that should contain six wood screws but found it now held only two. He groaned when he saw the ragged tear where the others had rubbed their way through the paper packet while his son was carrying them home. The screws were lost forever, Benon knew, dribbled out along the three-hour walk from Bugota, where he had purchased the metal door the screws were meant to mount, to Rwenkagi, the tiny community where Benon was proudly building his newest house. He had trundled the heavy metal door over the rutted dirt road lashed securely to his bicycle while his son Dennis straggled along behind carrying a banana leaf wrapped around a fistful of nsimi for their lunch and the scrap of newspaper containing the six precious screws. Benon felt a flush of anger, then a deeper stab of self-reproach at his own foolishness in expecting the four-year-old to complete the simple but important task.

  Dennis was a darling toddler with a chubby belly and a quick mischievous grin that never failed to bring a chuckle from Benon, who often marveled that the boy was unlike his other children. They loved and respected him too, of course, but they never tagged after him like Dennis did, singing a nonsense ditty to himself as if he didn't have a care in the world, kicking up the dust with his toes and stopping now and then to pick up a pebble or a twig that caught his eye. When he was with his father, he was as happy as a little boy could be. It made Benon happy to have the tiny fellow by his side.

  Now, though, the boy had let him down. Without the screws, Benon could not put the new door in its frame. His house would be incomplete and the raw admiration of his neighbors would be tempered.

  This was Benon's third house. Even without the new door, it was unquestionably the finest in the village, made of fire-hardened brick rather than the cheaper sun-dried ones Benon had used to build his second house. That one had been admired by his neighbors, too, because its rough, soft brick walls were a big step up from their own mud-and-wattle huts which were just like Benon's first house. Also, the second house had been roofed with corrugated tin scraps Benon had salvaged from the abandoned soldiers' quarters across the river, a marked improvement over the thatch above everyone else's heads.

  That sun-dried brick house with the tin roof had been the first of its kind built in the village, something that gave Benon great satisfaction. He started it with bricks he made himself and finished it later with more bricks bought with the earnings from his work as a porter for the tourists in the mountain gorilla reserve. It was hard to both work his farm, build his house, and carry the tourist backpacks up the steep trails through the misty mountains, but Benon had done so for several years. Felicity, his wife, did much of the field work that put food on the table while Benon worked for cash that bought the bricks, course by course, and the mortar, load by load, until the second house was built. Timber for the roof joists Benon cut himself in the forest, waiting until he knew the rangers were elsewhere. If they caught him, he would have to pay either a heavy fine or a bribe; either way, it would be expensive.

  The only complaint about the second house came from Felicity, who objected to its location near the dirt road that ran through town. Every vehicle that passed raised a cloud of dust, she said, and much of it drifted into the new house. It was farther away from the fields, too, so that she had a longer walk to and from work every day.

  Felicity stopped complaining when, not long after the house was done, Benon's neighbors elected him to the village council in recognition that a man of his seriousness and accomplishments would be likely to give good advice to the headman. The appointment fueled Benon's ambitions, although he was careful to keep any trace of swagger out of his walk and to remain deferential to his seniors on the council. He also worked hard to keep both his houses in good repair. Soon, several others in the village started building sun-dried brick homes of their own.

  His neighbors also followed Benon's footsteps to the tourist camp, swelling the rota of available porters and reducing the number of treks Benon could work each week. Benon was resourceful, however, and turned the oversupply of labor to his advantage by mounting a double seat on the back of his bicycle so that he could earn a few shillings taxiing his weary fellow porters back and forth between the village and the tourist lodge. He could have earned more on any given day as a porter, but there was no assurance that he would work each day. The bicycle taxi business, though, had customers every day, so his total earnings were greater. Besides, while the porters were tromping up and down the mountainsides, Benon could attend to his other affairs, returning only at the end of the day to pick them up again. A motor scooter would have been even better, but Benon couldn't possibly save enough money to buy one. Unlike a new house, which you can buy a brick at a time if you need to, the entire purchase price of a motor scooter was expected at once.

  When the first neighbor completed a sun-dried brick house just like his, Benon decided it was necessary to start building a grander home. Fortunately, Felicity had provided the means, albeit unwittingly, by bearing two sons in two years, then two daughters before she had Dennis. The two boys were now old enough to not only work the field, allowing Benon to run the bicycle taxi service full time, but they could be trusted to tend a still Benon built to make banana gin near his old mud-and-wattle house where the boys now slept. He had put it there so the smoke from the constantly-burning wood fire under the drum of slow-boiling banana wine woul
d blow away from the new house. It was also close enough for the boys to keep an eye on the simmering still but far enough so that if it exploded, Benon's new house would not be destroyed.

  Felicity also gave him two daughters. The younger of them had a twisted leg but she got around fairly well. Now she was old enough to sell tomatoes and yams at a table by the side of the road. She also sold the banana wine and gin made by her brothers.

  Felicity lost a baby after the girls were born and Benon assumed his family was complete. But, three years after the birth of the girl with the twisted leg, Dennis came along, a big surprise to everyone. His mother treated him like found treasure; his sisters like a doll. Even Benon, ambitious and busy as he was, often found time to scoop him up and nuzzle his bare belly, which always sent the baby into gales of squeals and giggles. Dennis was now sturdy enough to be helpful around the house like the other children, although the loss of the screws had shown Benon the little boy wasn't good for much yet.

  The older girl was the real prize. She was a beauty even at fourteen, with long, lithe legs, wide hips that promised easy childbearing, and a perky upturned nose above full lips that spoke of sweet nuzzlings in the night for her lucky husband. Her face made the newest house possible when a wealthy man in a neighboring village paid a spectacular bride price for her--sixteen cows!

  Benon bartered the cows for enough fire-hardened--not sun-dried--bricks to build his newest house. He should have kept at least some of the cows so his sons would be able to buy brides when their time came, but Benon figured they could fend for themselves as he had done. He had received no help from his own father, why should they? It would be good for them to show their mettle by earning their own brides just as Benon had done. Besides, he needed every shilling from the cows to buy enough bricks to build a house. Those bricks were much better than the sun-dried ones he had used in the house by the road. They were harder so they would last much longer and more uniformly shaped so they could be set in neater, more compact lines with less mortar making a stronger bond. Above all, they spoke of richness, of accomplishment that put the owner of such a house apart from his fellow villagers. Benon set the newest house back from the road on a little hillock that raised it above the surrounding fields and made it clearly visible from nearly everywhere in Rwenkagi. When the new house was completed, the older one would become a store or perhaps a tavern by the road.