Killing Time - A Time Travel Adventure Novel

by Jack Hunt

  “That’s the name I gave to this project.”

  Kelly nodded.

  He lowered the shotgun never taking his eyes off the scrap of paper.

  “But they were going to use this for medical purposes.”

  “Maybe. But it ends up in the wrong hands. It evolves into something more. I’m not sure how but it does and it’s used to change the past. You need to destroy your research and the first prototype.”

  He shook his head slowly as the reality of what he had created dawned on him.

  “I just thought I could help humanity.”

  He slumped down into a chair, placing the shotgun on the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What’s it like?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “To travel through time?”

  “Haven’t you worked on a human?”

  “No. We haven’t done that experiment. Animals, yes. Inanimate objects, yes. But not humans.”

  I stared at him before answering. “It’s odd.” I tried to find the words to convey the way it felt. “It’s what I imagine being sucked into a black hole must be like. Everything around us goes into slow motion, objects lift in the air and then it all implodes. After that there is darkness and then you wake up in a different time.”

  He smiled. “I knew it. I knew it was possible.”

  “Unfortunately people aren’t ready for this kind of power, doctor.”

  He looked at us and back down at the paper.

  “When this happened. Where was I?”

  “Training the CIA to use it.”

  “The CIA?”

  “If there is no talk I’m guessing that won’t happen. However, you need to know that if that doesn’t happen others will die. The trucker who hits your family with his vehicle was on his way to kill his fellow employees. But you could avoid that by telling authorities. Perhaps some lives can be saved. Regardless, if nothing is done, millions die.”

  “Why wouldn’t I have done that before?”

  “I think you tried. You told us that you prevented your family from dying but then saw that others were murdered. I don’t think you wanted to try again. It’s like Russian roulette. Maybe you make a change, pull the trigger and get lucky. Another time, the gun goes off.”

  He breathed in deeply. “Leave it with me. You’ll need to go. Return to wherever you came from before I destroy it all, otherwise you won’t be able to return.”

  “Is the tower on?”

  “Why?”

  “This is the furthest we have come back in time and if you only have one prototype it’s probably not on like the way the others are.”

  “Others?”

  “Yeah. You build a whole network of them.”

  He smiled and went over to the table. He unzipped a large leather folder and pulled out paperwork. He opened it up and showed us. There was a plan that showed towers all over the map, each one joined by lines towards a central hub.

  “It would have worked.”

  “Yes. It does work.”

  He placed the plans back into the folder and zipped it all up.

  “You can still turn this around, doctor.”

  “Do you want to see it?”

  “What?”

  “The tower I built. The first one.”

  “Sure.”

  I glanced at Kelly and she came with us out the back, down a steep grassy incline to a large clapboard building. Beside it was a huge tower that looked like something a radio station might use.

  “Let me go switch everything on. It works off the…”

  “Earth’s natural energy grid. Yeah.”

  “You know.”

  “That’s the perks of the future. Though there are some things that I wish I never knew.”

  When he came back outside we could hear a distinctive humming coming from the tower. His property backed up to a lake that was surrounded by oak trees. He breathed in deeply the afternoon air and his lip curled up.

  “I wish it could have been different.”

  “It will be. Humanity is not ready for this yet. One day they will.”

  “I guess I can watch you two leave.”

  “That you can.”

  He extended his hand. “It’s been good to meet you.”

  “You too. You might want to step back.”

  “Oh, right.” He moved away further up near his house. “One minute, do you mind waiting? I just want to show them.”

  He rushed inside and a few minutes later he returned with his wife and son beside him. They looked on with curious eyes.

  “Ready to go?” I said to Kelly.

  She blew her cheeks out. “More than ready.”

  I tapped in the year, month, day and time of when we had left.

  “Will we come out here?” I asked the doctor before leaving.

  “I don’t think so. Once I destroy the prototype and plans, time travel won’t exist. There is no telling where you will come out as there will no longer be the means to travel. You will be part of a new timeline.”

  I clasped Kelly’s hand. Both of us were scared.

  “Will we remember this?” she asked me.

  “I don’t think we will. A new timeline will have different memories. One where we never came back in time. We’ll have never experienced time travel.”

  “Or each other?”

  I snorted.

  It might have sounded strange but we were about to step into the unknown. We were leaving a past with the means to bend time and space and entering a future where the technology would no longer exist. A brand new timeline.

  I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around what would happen when we came out the other side.

  For all we knew he could change his mind. Then of course there was a chance that we might not come out. We had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. There was no telling what the future would hold. Who would live, who would die. For this future had not been experienced or perhaps it had? That was the mystery of time. I pressed the button.

  And everything changed.

  Chapter 24

  When my eyes opened. I was laying on my bed fully clothed. A band of warm sun bathed one half of my face. I awoke from what felt like a strange dream, as if I had lived another life and yet I couldn’t remember it, for just like any dream it disappeared from my mind before I could make sense of the fragments.

  I glanced over at my clock which was pulsating the date and time, 9:06 a.m.

  “Alex, are you ready yet? You are going to be late for your interview.”

  Interview? It took my brain a few seconds to catch up with what I already knew.

  “Come on. Don’t make me come up there.”

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose, wiping sleep dust from the corner of my eyes. Easing my way out of the bed I went over to the window and opened the curtains. Sunlight burned my eyes and I glanced away.

  As the shower water ran over my head that morning and streamed down the drain, the dream came back to me like a patchwork quilt. A mismatch of unorganized thoughts as if my mind was trying to piece together something it had experienced and yet none of it made sense.

  That morning I wore a dark navy suit and I was in the middle of adjusting my tie when my father came to the door.

  “That makes a change from those holes in your jeans.”

  I smirked.

  “Hey, let me do that.”

  “I’m twenty-one. I think I’m old enough.” A few more flips and I had it looking good. I didn’t think I would ever get used to ties. “By the way, I’m going to be moving into that new place if I get this job.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  “I hope you haven’t swayed their thoughts.”

  “I’m your father. It counts for something.”

  He was a Sacramento police officer and twelve months away from retirement.

  “One more year. What are you going to do with yourself then?” I asked.

  “Oh you know, drink a few cold ones. Maybe get a part-time job
down at the hardware store.”

  “Hardware store?”

  “What? It’s a respectable job.”

  “But they’ll be paying you a nice tidy pension when you retire.”

  “In what life?”

  The moment he said that, I felt something click in my head. It was the most unusual thing even though it only lasted a few seconds.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. “I had the weirdest dream last night.”

  “Don’t tell me it was about you and Kelly breaking it off again. I don’t think I can handle another drama. It’s just cold feet. She’ll be fine. And anyway, the wedding isn’t until next summer so I don’t know what she is worried about.”

  “No, it was about you. Yeah. You died and then there was a neighbor who moved in beside us who could travel through time. And we had to go back and fix things… I think?”

  He started smiling. “And…?”

  “Well, I don’t remember. It’s like it’s there somewhere in the back of my mind.”

  “Well, I can reassure you. I am very much alive and the neighbor… I highly doubt Mrs. Landers is a time traveler. Unless her wheelchair is her time machine.”

  I let out a laugh.

  “Come on, let’s head out.”

  “I’ll be right there. I just need to throw on some cologne.”

  “Don’t put too much on. The chief doesn’t like strong smells.”

  He stepped out of the room. I dabbed on some cologne before leaving. I paused looking back at my clock. I let out a chuckle, shook my head and closed the door.

  There were four of us going through interviews that day. I watched each of them go into a small room and then come out. None of them smiled. I thought about what my father had said about whether or not I wanted to become a police officer. It wasn’t a job. It was a career and one that would take up a lot of my time.

  An officer poked his head outside the door.

  “Alex Flynn.”

  I nodded. Swallowed hard and walked into the interview room. I’d never felt so nervous.

  “I’m Officer Mitchell, nice to meet you.”

  He shook my hand and gestured for me to take a seat.

  “We’ll get started in a minute, my colleague just stepped out.”

  I gave a nod and looked around the room while the officer looked over some paperwork in front of him.

  “How were the roads out there?”

  “Not too bad.”

  He glanced up. “So what do you think of the next president?”

  “I had my doubts about her but it looks as though people love her. Then again, things can change fast, right?”

  “Right,” he muttered.

  “Do you have your paperwork there?”

  They wanted to see the original copies of some of the files I had sent in. I was in the process of handing it to him when the door opened. I didn’t immediately look up but when I did I got this sudden sense of déjà vu.

  “Sorry about that. I had some family business to attend to.”

  I looked up at the man.

  “Have we met?” the man said.

  “No, I don’t believe we have.”

  “He’s Bryan’s boy,” the other officer said.

  “Oh, I probably saw your photo in his office.”

  “Well, let’s get started. I’m Officer Castle.”

  “Nice to meet you. Alex Flynn.”

  A Plea

  Thank you for reading Killing Time. If you enjoyed the book, I would really appreciate it if you would consider leaving a review. Without reviews, an author’s books are virtually invisible on the retail sites. It also let’s me know what you liked. You can leave a review by visiting the book’s page. I would greatly appreciate it. It only takes a couple of seconds.

  Thank you — Jack Hunt

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  About the Author

  Jack Hunt is the author of horror, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic novels. He currently has five books out in the Renegades series, and another called Mavericks: Hunters Moon. Jack lives on the East coast of North America.

  www.jackhuntbooks.com

  jhuntauthor@gmail.com