by John M Grier
Jack’s Story
Jack settled down into his big comfy command chair, and began his story with a question. “Paul, do you remember that day we met, ten years ago?”
Not sure where his friend’s question was leading, Paul simply replied “Yes, why?”
“Well, it’s very important to my story” Jack said. He seemed deep in thought as if trying to figure out where to start. Finally, he said “Ten years ago, by my personal reckoning, I made a stupid decision. I woke up that day in the year 2002, just off of the east coast of Canada. I was in possession of a time machine, which was housed in a boat. It was a beautiful summer day, and I was sailing toward the south. I had come into possession of this machine in my youth and had used it all my life.
“Normally, I would keep my time jumps restricted to only a few hundred years either way. However, this day I was feeling adventurous and decided to jump a thousand years into the future to see what it was like. All of the scientists of the day were saying ‘Global warming due to our over use of hydrocarbons and fossil fuels is causing the polar ice to melt’ so I didn’t take into account that the arctic ice was not too far to the north of me. Back then, Canada was not as ice covered as it is today. In fact, the ice was mostly restricted to the Polar Regions.”
He could see that his friend was skeptical, so he hurried along. “So I jumped. And promptly found myself encased in ice. It took me nearly a week to dig to the surface. If I’d had any sense, I would have simply jumped back, but I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.” He paused in his story with an involuntary shiver, then continued “I hate the ice!
“Now, every time there’s an expedition to the ice, I want to be a part of it. I’m always hopeful that it’s near my boat. That’s why I was so upset at this last expedition. You see, just before I made that jump ten years ago, I could see a lighthouse on the shore just west of my position. Although I’m not 100% sure that lighthouse we found is the same lighthouse I saw that day, I am extremely hopeful that it is.
“You can imagine my thoughts when Janet said she closed the dig! I was ready to kill her...figuratively speaking, of course. She had just sealed my fate to this time.” Jack displayed a look of exhaustion mixed with depression. “I really was born more than one thousand years ago, which is why I know so much about the past, especially the twentieth century. I just want to go home, Paul.”
Paul could see that Jack was sincere in what he was saying. But his story was so crazy! Time travel indeed! He had been watching Jack intently as he relayed his story. It looked to him that Jack believed what he was saying, or maybe he was simply crazy. He did, after all, live in the ruins and he ate meat regularly. As these thoughts entered his mind, a near panic overcame him when he made the connection…“Maybe I’ll go crazy now too, since I just ate that meat! Didn’t I recall reading of a Mad Cow epidemic in the latter part of the 20th century? But, Jack seems okay, for the most part. Okay, calm down Paul, maybe your just letting your imagination run wild.” After sitting in silent thought for several minutes, he finally said “Jack that is the craziest story I have ever heard. Do you actually expect me to believe you can travel through time?”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I have never said anything about it before. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” Now that he had started telling his story, he felt the need to open up completely and tell Paul everything, hoping desperately that he would believe him.
Skeptical, but willing to hear his friend out, he said “Sure. At least it’ll be entertaining.”
Jack began pacing as he related his story. “In my younger days, I was living on a remote island in The Bahamas when an abandoned boat ran aground about a mile south of the tiny US Navy base where I was living and working as a contract employee.
“It was my day off and I was walking south of the base, as was my custom, and I saw a boat with the unlikely name of ‘Time Awaits’ stuck in the sand at low tide. As I made my way to it, I realized there was no one around and it had all appearances of being abandoned, so I decided to explore it.
“Boat is perhaps the wrong word, since this boat was plenty big enough to live on very comfortably. Back then, people would have referred to it as a ‘live aboard yacht.’ Everything seemed as if this boat was simply abandoned at sea and just happened to end up on the island where I was living.
“As I made my way through the boat, I came to the conclusion that someone had lived there alone. There were personal items that indicated the occupant was a single guy and had been living on this boat alone for some time. There were no obvious ‘female touches’ anywhere…the place had very much a “bachelor” feel to it.”
“Wait a minute, what’s a bachelor?” Paul asked. In the current state of things in the world, marriage, divorce as well as terms like bachelor, husband, wife, mother, father and the like were things of the distant past. As an archeologist, Paul understood the concept of husband and wife, but in an abstract way only, much like a scientist understands the cellular structure of a living cell. He can see evidence of its existence, but truly have no idea what it would be like to actually ‘be’ one. However, terms like ‘bachelor’ and ‘bride’ had been completely lost to history.
Even the concept of raising a child was foreign to Paul and his contemporaries. In this strange, future world, people not only lived alone and never married, but had no concept of marriage or family. If a woman somehow ended up pregnant, the fetus was removed immediately. The government decided whether or not the baby would be allowed to develop to full term, and if so, was born outside of the mother, without the mother’s knowledge.
The children were raised in what was called orphanages, which were somewhat similar to the institutions of Jack’s day. The children were raised by machines in this environment, educated and brought to adulthood completely by themselves. It was no wonder people preferred to live alone these days. They simply did not know any other way.
“Paul, no questions, remember? Remind me later and I’ll answer any of your questions I am capable of.” Jack paused once more as he gathered his thoughts, then continued “Even though I felt like I was trespassing in someone’s home, I made my way to the captain’s cabin. There was a desk with a letter on it that caught my attention. As I read the letter I began to get the feeling that I had hit the jackpot.
“The letter stated that the ownership of the boat was to be transferred to the person who possessed the letter I had in my hand! Wow! All of a sudden I had a boat! I began to think of myself as Captain Jack Murphy, and immediately thought of all the pirates of the seventeenth century. Corny I know, but I have always fancied myself a pirate at heart.”
“Pirate! History only touches on pirates, but the general consensus is that they were evil people. Why on earth would you want to be a pirate?” Paul interrupted again.
“Paul, do you want to hear the rest of this story, or not?” Jack was clearly irritated, and in no mood to be patient now that he was finally letting his friend in on his story.
“Yes, Jack. I’m sorry, please continue. It won’t happen again, I promise!” Paul meekly replied.
“I spent another hour exploring my new boat before I discovered the library of manuals covering everything from how the electronics worked, to how to operate the engines. Everything was there as if the owner expected a novice to happen across the boat and needed instruction as to how to operate it.
“As it turns out, just about everything was state of the art and very much automated to the point that all I had to do was tell the boat where I wanted to go and it went there. I had never heard of anything like it before but, I had never owned a boat before, and wasn’t very informed as to what was ‘state of the art’ in modern luxury yachts either.
“I stayed there for several hours waiting for the tide to come in. When it finally did, the boat freed itself from the sand it was resting on. Elated, I fired up the engines and motored back to the base. I couldn’t enter since I d
idn’t know how to approach the base in the proper “navy” way so I dropped anchor just off shore and just to the south of the base.
“I walked back to the base and made my way to the harbor to find out what I needed to do to secure ownership of my new boat. I had the letter in my hand granting me ownership, but figured there would be several layers of ‘red-tape’ to wade through before the boat would actually be mine, in the legal sense. I soon discovered it was a relatively simple procedure since the letter was signed by the registered owner and was already registered in The Bahamas. The harbor master helped me contact the Bahamian authorities and in no time the boat was registered to me and I was able to move it into the harbor.
“Over the course of the next few weeks I further explored my new boat learning everything I could about it. Eventually I came across a laptop computer with a journal on it. Naturally, I began reading the journal.
“It seems the prior owner was an inventor that had created a device which was housed within the boats hull, actually a part of its construction. There was an interface to operate it on the bridge, under a panel that you would not notice unless you knew where to look.
“As a fan of adventure stories, I was naturally intrigued. I looked around the bridge and sure enough, there it was. The panel lifted open as the journal said it would, and sure enough, there was a control panel underneath that had a rather ordinary looking keyboard attached to it, along with a display screen.
“I decided to read more before activating it since I had no idea what it did. As I read on I came to the biggest shock of my life. The control panel I found was actually the controls to a time machine! Finally, the name of my vessel made some sort of sense.
“Naturally, there were rules as to how I should use it. For example, it should not be engaged where anyone can see it “disappear”, since that is exactly what it would look like to people watching from another boat or from shore. Come to think of it, maybe that’s where all those stories came from about the Bermuda Triangle, with boats disappearing all the time. But, I imagine you would not have heard of that, either.
“I can see why whoever built the machine chose a boat as a platform. It’s easy to lose oneself in the vastness of the world’s oceans. Also, there was a recall feature that allows you to visit a time and return at the same instant you left, appearing to not have left at all. Very cool, I thought. There were more rules such as don’t go back in time and kill your parents before you were born, or you will simply cease to be. Fair enough. It also said you shouldn’t change the natural course of events in history, leave them alone. Okay, I can live with that.
“My first order of business was to figure out how to properly operate the boat itself and leave the time travel for later. As it turned out, it was relatively easy. I had already managed to move the boat twice, but for no more than a mile or so. I had yet to find a fuel gauge or even how to refuel it. However, upon reading the manuals that were in the manual library about the engines, I found out that they had not been invented yet.
“Great. Now what? I wondered as I read on. As I read, I found out that the engines used the sea water in some way that was way over my head to power the boat and as such, never needed refueling. I thought this was very cool!
“After a few weeks of reading the journal and the manuals, I felt I had learned enough to begin my first journey. I took a week off of work and set sail for Florida. I landed in West Palm Beach, docked at a marina and grabbed the first newspaper I could find.
“The lottery had gone unpaid for several weeks now and was a whopping 250 million dollars. I decided that should be mine. So I went back out to sea and tried the time functions. I returned the previous day in time get myself to a store where I purchased several lottery tickets, one of which had the winning numbers on it.
“After returning to the boat and getting it well off shore again, I pressed the auto return function button which brought me back to the original day. I reversed course and returned to the marina I had just left. The people there must have thought it odd that I was gone for only an hour or so, but I’m sure they’ve seen much stranger things in south Florida.
“Purchasing yet another newspaper, I discovered that there was one winning lottery ticket. I double checked my ticket and found I was a winner. I guess I really didn’t believe until that moment that I had actually traveled back in time, if only for a day.
“I arranged for the boat to be kept at the marina for several days and caught a plane to Tallahassee to cash in my ticket there and pay taxes, arrange for banks, etc. Suddenly wealthy, I had a new dilemma…now what to do? I made my way back to West Palm Beach wondering where to go and what to do. I had my own transportation as well as the ability to go whenever I wanted, but had no plan in place.
“Needless to say, I spent the next years going anywhere and everywhere and especially every-when that struck my fancy. That is, until ten years ago when I made a very serious mistake in judgment.”
After finally telling his story to his friend Paul, Jack let out a sigh of relief. He had been keeping this secret for so long now, that it had been eating away at him and he really didn’t like it. It was good to have someone to share with, even if Paul didn’t believe him yet.
“Wow Jack; that is some story. I’m sure you’re very much aware just how fantastic it sounds, right? I mean, you have to admit it's pretty hard to believe.”
“I know it sounds like something I made up, but I assure you, it is absolutely the honest truth.”
“Okay let’s just say for the moment that I believe you…which I don’t, by the way…how could you possibly have lost your boat?”
Once again thinking of that fateful day on the ice ten years ago, Jack said “Actually, that’s something that really has been bothering me. A thousand years ago we had something called a GPS. It stood for Global Positioning System...or Global Positioning Satellite, or something like that, I was never sure. Anyway, what it consisted of was a series of satellites in geosynchronous, stationary orbit. These satellites formed a basis for the ground units to triangulate your position, and were accurate to a few feet. I was shocked when mine didn’t work here. I know you have a system that works exactly the same way, but obviously, it is different enough that my old equipment no longer works. And when that bear began chasing me, the last thing on my mind was looking at my GPS. I guess that was another mistake. But, actually, there was nothing I could do anyway. I simply got lost. Thankfully, you came by and saved the day.”
Jack thought a moment and decided he had already gone this far, why not continue? “Paul, I am planning to go back to the dig site we were just at and find my boat. I would love for you to come with me. If you like, I would even be willing to offer you a ride into the past. As an archaeologist, you should find that offer irresistible.”
Suddenly fearful of his friend’s suggestion, he said “Jack, you know we can’t do that! The government would have us in re-indoctrination for the rest of our lives!”
Exasperated, Jack said in a tired voice “I have been stranded here for ten years. I simply can’t spend the rest of my life stuck in a place I only barely understand. I have to get back.”
Paul didn’t know what to think. He really wanted to believe his friend, but his story was just too fantastic to believe.
