Killing Time - A Time Travel Adventure Novel

by Jack Hunt

  He breathed in deeply. “I know. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Nothing you can do, or you won’t do anything about it?”

  He slammed his hand against the table. “Kid, I understand the pain that you are in. I get it. Losing someone is hard. But it’s the way life was meant to be. Some things are meant to happen the way they do.”

  I stared back at him.

  “Why did you pull out and go into hiding?”

  His chin dropped a little. “Eat up. When you are done I will take you back to the airport.”

  “Airport? I’m not going anywhere. You think I traveled back in time, risked my neck, and witnessed my father get shot again just so you can shuffle us away? Don’t you get it? In eight years from now millions are going to die.”

  He sipped at his drink and looked out the window lost in thought.

  “When I was about your age… let me guess, you are twenty-ish?”

  I sighed.

  “I used to think that what we did mattered. You know, giving money to the poor, rescuing the rain forests, making a stand against war.” He paused. “It was the reason why I began to research time travel. I thought if I could find a way to change things, the future for my child would be one full of promise. Instead all I did was open a Pandora’s box. You see, it doesn’t matter what we manage to change, in some timeline people are suffering. So what? We make a change now and prevent some major tragedy. Then what? I will tell you what happens. First you get to live out your life under the pretense that nothing like that will happen again. You live under the lie that you are in control but you’re not, none of us are. We all are all just one hairline away from screwing up again, and again, and again. Nothing changes. It never has, we have just swapped one atrocity out for another. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that in some other timeline all the things you wanted to avoid are happening right now.”

  I frowned.

  “That’s right. Now you might say, well as long as it’s not happening in this timeline then who cares, right? I mean who cares if people are starving in another country, as long as it’s not happening to you in yours. It doesn’t matter. But it does. When you realize that everything that could or will ever happen is happening right now in another timeline, it changes you.”

  He got up and took the bottle back to the cabinet.

  “Who did you lose?” I asked.

  He stood by the sink, gripping the rim tightly and staring out of the window. I looked over to the cabinet where glasses and photo frames were. My eyes drifted over them. That’s when I saw a young boy. I got up from my seat and went over and picked up the picture frame.

  “Is this your son?”

  He turned around not realizing that I had picked it up.

  “Put it down.”

  “Just a question.”

  “Put it down!” he yelled. I set it down and walked back over to the table.

  “Come on, let’s go to the bus station,” I said to Kelly. She screeched her chair back.

  “But?”

  “He’s not going to help us.”

  I walked towards the front door to leave. I glanced back at Martin who continued to look out the window.

  “You know, we’ve all lost people and life sucks but that doesn’t mean we should give up on others,” I said.

  With that I closed the door and we started making our way down the path.

  “What now?”

  “It was a bad decision coming here. I thought he might able to help but he’s clearly not in the right frame of mind to do anything. The guy isn’t in hiding, he’s given up on life.”

  “Do you think he’s right?”

  “About?”

  “You know, that all the good and bad of life is happening right now in different timelines and no matter what we do, someone somewhere is still suffering.”

  “Even if they are. We can only deal with what’s in front of us. In this timeline.”

  It was a long walk back to the bus station. We passed by numerous stores along the way. Our legs were killing us by the time we arrived.

  “You would think that if they could figure out how to travel through time they could think of a way to teleport people all over the country. It would save a lot of time, gas and money.”

  “Maybe they have,” Kelly replied.

  We bought two tickets to Portland airport and took a seat in the waiting room. Our bus wouldn’t arrive for another hour. I rested my feet on the seat across from me.

  “What’s going to happen when we go back to our time?”

  “I don’t know anymore, Kelly. I’m at loss for what can be done. No matter how it plays out, according to him my father dies and so will Dempsey. I guess it doesn’t matter what kind of technology we have, at the end of the day it’s the person behind it that determines how it’s used.”

  I got up and went over to a vending machine and slotted in a dollar note to get a can of pop. A can of cream soda clunked to the bottom.

  “You want some?”

  “No, I’m okay,” she replied.

  There was something very freeing about knowing the future. Although ours meant certain death, a part of me accepted it. Like going through the five stages of grief. I had a mix of anger and yet at the same time I was ready. It wasn’t that I wanted to accept it. But there was no point in getting worked up over something I couldn’t change.

  “You know they’ve changed the taste of Coke over time,” a voice said from behind me.

  I glanced around to see Dr. Whetherby.

  “I was hoping that you hadn’t left,” he continued as he approached us.

  “Yeah, the bus doesn’t come for another hour.”

  “Time is a pain, isn’t it?”

  “Depends what you do with it,” I replied taking another swig from the can.

  “Well, we can’t be waiting around here. Let’s go. I have a helicopter on standby.”

  I shifted my eyes over to Kelly. She shrugged.

  “Well? You do still want to change the future, don’t you?”

  Kelly got up and came over and we followed him out. His black truck was idling outside when we hopped in. Inside, cool air blew against our faces.

  “So where are we heading?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 23

  Dr. Whetherby drove us into Portland to a place where they did helicopter tours. It was located near the coast. There were two large hangars full of small planes and one that contained two helicopters.

  “This is what you do for a living now?”

  “Problem with that?”

  “No, I just imagined someone with your expertise would be working in a lab somewhere.”

  “My days of doing that are over. I enjoy this. I get to take people all over Maine. I should have done this years ago. Back when I…” he trailed off. “I lost my son nine years ago in a car accident along with my wife. I of course thought I could change things. I went back and made a phone call to them to make sure they didn’t go on the trip. My wife Stacey was going to head up to see her mother for the weekend. The roads were really bad and well, a truck driver lost control of his vehicle and they both died immediately upon impact. Anyway, when I went back in time to prevent it, it worked. They were alive and for a time I reveled in the fact that I had changed things for the better. But I was wrong. In the process of preventing the accident, I had made it possible for the driver to regain control before he left the road and so he reached his destination alive and well.”

  “What? That’s a good thing, right?”

  “He worked for an auto factory. He’d been fired the day before, that day he was on his way to kill his boss and as many people as he could. Fifty people died that day because I had changed the past. That’s what I’m trying to say here. Messing around with time doesn’t change anything. People will still die. We don’t know what atrocities have been prevented or created by making changes. Like a stone being dropped in a lake. It ripples out and changes
everything around it. Maybe you get lucky. Maybe you don’t.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded slowly as if acknowledging.

  “So why are you are willing to change the past now?”

  “Let’s just say that I have enough blood on my hands. I’m getting older and I don’t want to go to my grave knowing that I could have saved millions. Saving one is one thing, saving millions of lives, well…”

  “But the butterfly effect?”

  He shrugged. “What will be, will be. Maybe tomorrow we wake up and everything is still the same. People are still starving. People are still cutting down rain forests and doing all manner of atrocities to each other. Maybe we can’t change that permanently. But we can at least have lived in a way that lets others know we didn’t accept it. Then in time, perhaps we will change our ways.”

  To be honest I really didn’t understand him but as long as he was going to help, that was enough.

  We arrived and hopped out. Someone was already waiting for us. He waved us into the hangar and took us out the other side. Waiting for us was a red and white helicopter.

  “It’s all fueled up.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” the doctor said.

  “You ready?”

  “I’ve never been in a helicopter.”

  “Well, I guess you are in for a treat.”

  We were about to load into the helicopter when suddenly from around the hangars came six black cars. Flashing lights pulsated on top. These weren’t your typical cop cars. They skidded into view. Several men hopped out and from behind the doors they held guns at us and told us to get down on the ground.

  The doctor placed himself between them and us. “Get in the helicopter.”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t get in there now, this is the end of the line for all of us.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you, kid.”

  “Dr. Whetherby.”

  I’d heard that voice before. It was Carl Simons.

  “Carl. Long time.”

  He nodded as he approached slowly.

  “I’m going to need to take the kid and girl in.”

  The doctor sucked air in through his teeth. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Now, doctor, you know the protocol for these kind of things. We can’t let them leave, they know too much.”

  There was still a fair amount of distance between them and us. I don’t know what they were waiting for. Perhaps the doctor knew they wouldn’t shoot him for reasons related to his work. He edged us back towards the helicopter. I reached for the door and opened it and both of us got inside. Dr. Whetherby was still outside talking with Carl.

  “So who gives the authority to kill the next president?”

  “It has to be done. You know as well as I do, that this isn’t about who runs the country. It’s about who is best suited to be in control of time. She would have disbanded the project.”

  Dr. Whetherby snorted. “So you would rather see millions die from a nuke strike than see Project Icarus disbanded?”

  “We can change what happens. One thing at a time. First the president, then North Korea. But we can’t correct things without the project.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be run this way.”

  “There’s a lot of things that were never meant to be a certain way. They are what they are. And this is what it is.”

  Carl pulled a gun out at the same time the doctor did.

  “Put it down, doctor.”

  “You can’t shoot me. You need me.”

  “Not this version we don’t. We can go back and make a few corrections.”

  The doctor reached for the door and was about to get in when they shot him. He returned fire and they tried to take cover. He hopped in the helicopter and started it up. Bullets were pinging, one cracked the windscreen as the engine roared and the rotors whipped into a frenzy. Within seconds we were up in the air and yet we could still hear the sound of gunfire. I thought that at any minute we would go into a spin and fall to a fiery grave. Instead, the doctor pulled sharply left and we went higher into the air, placing more distance between them and us. Below they rushed back to their vehicles. The doctor was bleeding. He’d been hit in the shoulder.

  “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “No time.”

  “No time? We have all the time in the world.”

  He smirked. “Kid, I’m actually beginning to like you.”

  “Where are we going?” Kelly asked.

  He winced in pain and tried to focus on flying. “Vermont. What we need is at my old cabin.”

  From then on he didn’t say any more. Everything below looked like little specks. We passed over roads and buildings, then a large forest. It took us quite a while to get there. We must have been traveling for just under two hours when I saw the mountains. I kept my eyes fixed on him. He was looking even paler as time went by.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “How long until we are there?”

  “Not long. We are close.”

  When he brought the helicopter down I imagined he would have picked some local airport. Instead he brought it down in a massive property. There were acres of green grass and hills that led up to a log cabin.

  As we pushed outside the door, the doctor fell to the ground.

  “Doctor?”

  I came around and put one of his arms over my shoulder and we carried him up to the cabin. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. We entered and dragged him into the living room area.

  “Go grab some hot water and towels,” Kelly said.

  “Forget it. There’s no time,” he said.

  “But…”

  “Listen to me. You need to jump through time now.” He glanced at his watch. “In precisely an hour from now I will be leaving this cabin with the plans that created what exists today. I had created the first watch and tower. Now I’m not going to listen to you in the past. You have to understand. I poured my life into this project. Everything I had. But you are going to have to get my younger self to listen to you.”

  “How? How the hell are we meant to do that? You barely listened to us today and that was after you no longer cared about it.”

  He pointed to a large mahogany dresser drawer. “In there, open it up.”

  I went over and pulled the drawer out. There was a lot of paper inside.

  “Pull it out and bring it over.”

  I did as he requested and when I brought it over he began rooting through it all. Every few seconds he would wince in pain. Then he retrieved an old newspaper clipping. It showed a photo of the wreckage and listed all the details of his family’s death.

  “When you go back my family will be alive. Show him this and tell him that it’s for Michael.”

  “Who’s Michael?”

  “My son.”

  I glanced back down at the paperwork. There was no mention of the child’s name, only the mother.

  “Go, go now.”

  I pulled back from him and took a hold of Kelly’s hand. The doctor leaned against the sofa.

  “What year, month and time?”

  He gave us the details and I tapped them in.

  “Good luck.”

  Those were the last words I heard as the world around us folded in and we were pushed through time and space. I felt the jolt of my body as we were forced out and appeared in the exact same place that we had left. However now the doctor was no longer in front of us. I could hear music playing. It was light jazz. As I wandered around the room I caught sight of him. He looked much younger but it was him. I could recognize the small scar on the side of his face. He was smoking a cigar and holding a glass with bourbon in it. He was swaying to the music with his eyes closed as though he was celebrating a great accomplishment.

  “Dr. Whetherby.”

  His eyelids snapped open and he dropped his drink.

&nbs
p; “What are you doing in my house?”

  He rushed over to the phone but I moved quickly towards it and slammed my hand down on it.

  “We’re not here to harm you. You sent us.”

  “What? I don’t even know you.”

  “Not you. Future you.”

  “What? Why would I send…”

  He was in mid-sentence when he saw Kelly. “How many are there of you?”

  “Just us.”

  “Martin? Who is that?”

  We heard a female voice and then a few seconds after feet pattering across the ground. A boy dashed into view. He had blond hair and couldn’t have been more than five years of age.

  “Michael, stay back, there’s broken glass.”

  The kid stopped, he looked at us, then the floor but didn’t say a word. I was still holding in my hand the scrap of paper. My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “We just need a moment of your time and then we’ll be gone.”

  He glanced at us and navigated his way around the glass and led his young son out. We waited in the kitchen looking around. I could hear words being exchanged outside the room, then a cabinet being opened. A few more minutes passed and then he reappeared. However, when he did he was holding in his hand a large double-barrel shotgun.

  “Get over there.”

  “Dr. Whetherby.”

  “Shut up. Move it.”

  “Look, you sent us.”

  He let out a laugh. “I sent you?”

  I brought up my wrist slowly to show him the watch. His eyes widened.

  “Here. Read this.” I held out the piece of paper hoping he would take it. Instead he just kept the gun on us while his eyes darted back and forth between the paper and us.

  I laid it on the ground slowly and stepped back. He edged his way over and then reached down and picked it up. Keeping the shotgun pointed at us he brought the paper up to eye level.

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “I’m afraid not. The breakthrough that you have made today. The one you are going to share with DARPA. You can’t do that. Not only does your family die but in twenty-one years from now nukes will be fired at America in response to conflict with North Korea. Five years before that a president is killed who would have disbanded what will become known as Project Icarus.”