The Time Stone (The Time Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by Robert F Hays

  The Time Stone

  First Book of the

  Time Stone Trilogy

  by

  Robert F Hays

  The Time Stone Trilogy

  The Time Stone

  To Wake the Living

  Victim of Circumstance

  White Oaks Productions

  www.WhiteOaksProductions.com

  © Copyright 2011 Robert F Hays. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  Paperback

  First published 1992.

  Revised Edition 2011.

  Third Edition 2013.

  Forth Edition 2014.

  Kindle

  First published 2013

  Chapter 1

  Old Earth, as modern man called it, was a desolate wasteland. The human population that hadn’t escaped a dying Earth to the stars centuries ago had died with it. Dr. Talin Redmond was a descendent of the bold pioneers who colonized and terraformed the alien planets. He sat at his control console following six old style, flat screened monitors. In front of the monitors lay a panel covered with scores of multi-colored, touch activated controls.

  He leaned back on his comfortable contoured swivel chair. While following the masses of symbols and scientific notation appearing on one monitor, his eyes flashed periodically to a second. Rapid mental calculations compared the values recorded from different facets of the experiment in progress.

  Yet another screen displayed a black pyramid shaped object sitting on a level gray floor. Its surface gleamed. It flashed brilliantly as the pure white light from various scientific instruments mounted on remotely operated bases glided smoothly in sweeping paths around the object.

  Unless told, one would never guess at the estimates of its age. Sharp edges and a mirror like exterior gave it a newly fashioned look.

  On Redmond’s lap lay a computer data pad, a flat screen above a small touch sensitive keyboard. Its basic shape and design hadn’t changed since humans left Earth 2000 years ago. It just became thinner. Miniaturization of non-voice controlled computers had limitations. The size of the input area was governed by the size of the human fingers. The dimensions of the output screen were dictated by the resolution perceived by the human eye. At Redmond’s fingertips was the knowledge of modern civilization.

  The doctor’s console was not the only one in the small, rectangular room. Two others, with equally absorbed operators, were against walls to his left and right. Behind him a fourth wall contained two doors.

  A uniformly glowing ceiling, lit by natural sunlight channeled from outside, illuminated the room. Decorative three dimensional pictures of forest scenes hung on light blue walls where they could fit between the scientific monitoring devices. The university that owned the complex had a department of esthetics. It was they that planned and maintained the decor. Employing a team of psychologists, the department tried to make working conditions as pleasant and stress free as possible. Centuries of research, using controlled observation, developed the configurations of colors, shapes and angles. Even the placement of equipment was carefully calculated to either challenge or relax the browsing eye, depending on the purpose of the room.

  Dr. Redmond was a graduate of Bennington University, on the planet Miramar, where he had majored in archaeology and history. His special field of interest was Old Earth. Not that the early planetary colonies, the Imperia or the dark ages held no appeal, he just had a fascination for human life when it existed on only one planet.

  Very little information still survived about civilization before “The Exodus”, the evacuation of Earth. Dr. Redmond’s talent was in the logical separation of fact from legend and fantasy.

  Redmond’s many discoveries had given him a reputation in the academic community. It was probably the key to gaining a larger than usual research grant. With that, he had organized another expedition to the old planet. It was a difficult venture. The daytime surface temperatures would instantly boil liquid water. The clouds of super heated steam and corrosive gases, whipped up by violent storms made detailed excavation a near impossibility. This restricted him, generally, to surface scavenging. Using the latest in detection equipment he had returned with some significant finds. The black pyramid object now on his screen was by far the most interesting discovery.

  “Are you picking up anything on your sensors, Andy?” Redmond asked over his left shoulder.

  “No doctor, just dust, pollen and a small amount of bacteria,” Andy replied as he extended a black hand and tapped two controls in frustration. “It’s about the same as the last two tries.”

  “Just stay alert Andy,” Redmond said. “You never know what’s going to pop out of that pyramid next.”

  “Yep,” Andy chuckled. “That dog creature that appeared yesterday took us by surprise. It took the veterinarians half an hour to corner it in the room.”

  “Levin,” Redmond said, pushing himself away from the console, “this thing’s doing it again. Nothing coming through from the bios. I believe this pile of aging junk’s overdue to go back to the factory.”

  The tall, thin technician to Redmond’s right stood, grabbing a small case from under his console. “It just takes a few nice words doctor. Calling it junk has probably upset it.”

  Redmond stood and smiled. Levin Simmons had been with him the longest. Levin had turned down numerous offers from other research teams to remain with Redmond. The main consideration was that few project directors were as open to the theories and suggestions of the staff under them. Redmond’s tolerance for idiosyncrasies such as Levin’ habit of conducting lengthy discussions with non-voice activated equipment was another factor in his decision to remain where he was.

  Levin poked a long slender finger through the hair thin wiring just inside the access hatch on the side of the malfunctioning machine. “Now, what’s wrong with you this time?”

  Redmond took the two paces to the third of the three consoles. Its operator, Andy Eastman, was somewhat out of his field in the isolation of the lab. He was a civil engineer with a distinct talent of making do with what was available. At the site of an excavation, if something was needed for a specific task, he simply invented it. Redmond kept him on for the lab work. He didn’t want to lose one of the best field technicians at the university.

  Andy pointed at the left lower screen as Redmond leaned over his shoulder. “There, single DNA strands. The section analyzer has isolated cellulose producers. The rest of the code’s gibberish to me. When’re we going to get a bio tech? If the read out looks nothing like a retaining wall I’m lost.”

  “You’re doing just fine Andy. All we need to do is isolate the material. The wizards at Jenson Hall can take over from there. How long will it take to complete the decon?”

  “Almost done, we’ll be ready for the next series in three minutes.”

  “Purple,” Levin mumbled. “Why did your indicator patch turn purple? Ah ha, so that’s it.”

  Andy swung around in his chair, his wide face further stretched by a broad grin. “What did it say?”

  “It has a burned out circuit chip,” Levin announced, oblivious to the sarcasm. “I’ll have it replaced and running in time for the next series.”

  “Fine,” Redmond said, returning to his chair. “Tell me when you’re ready and we’ll continue.”

  The right door slid open silently to allow another similarly dressed assistant to enter the room. “Doctor Redmond?”

  Redmond turned his chair to greet the man entering the room behind him.

  All the personnel present wore
the same off white protective coveralls with multiple pockets and utility belt. The belts contained a standard array of pen sized voice and visual recording devices, measuring instruments, including add on peripherals for the data pad.

  “Yes Carson, what is it?”

  Carson gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. “That chap Nagel from Compton News Network is here. Probably wants to put you on the 3V again. Shall I tell him you’re busy?”

  “No, I asked him to come. If we do not want the finance to stop flowing, we need all the publicity we can get.”

  “I’ll show him straight in doctor.”

  The assistant turned and walked out the door which slid shut after him. Redmond stood. The doctor was a medium height man in his early forties. Slightly overweight as was the fashion in his younger days he no longer cared that the style had changed to a more slender figure. In fact, he quite liked his mild bulge around the middle; it marked him as being older, hence more mature. He declined repeated suggestions by his doctor to undergo the minor alteration to his metabolism that would slowly reduce his mass by two kilograms.

  “Keep your fingers crossed gentlemen,” he said while pacing. The other two assistants in the room turned to face him. “The budget committee is still deciding between our project and the one of that idiot McCaffry. I’ve already proven that thing in Asia to be a man made wall. If McCaffry wants to prove me wrong, he can do it on his own department’s money.”

  “Do you think that a show for the media will help?” Levin asked, looking up from his position next to the console.

  “As my grandfather used to say: It won’t hurt.”

  “Won’t?” Andy laughed. “Where was he from?”

  “I know, I know,” Redmond chuckled. “He grew up in a small town. I’ve never figured out why city people never use the word ‘not’ in a contraction. We use contractions all the time: ‘I’ve’, he’ll, ‘they’re’, but a contraction with the word ‘not’ is socially unacceptable.”

  “City people did six hundred years ago,” Andy said. “I heard a theory that when they first set up the voice command interplanetary computer net, some contractions were not recognized due to a computer glitch.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Redmond said.

  The door opened again. A younger man, smartly dressed in a gray one piece business suit with a high collar stepped into the room. His neat, well groomed appearance denoted his profession.

  “Tal, what do you have for me this time?” the newsman asked.

  “Well... Carl... I’m not exactly sure how to explain.”

  “So, let’s go by the old journalist’s five Ws, who, what, when, where and how,” Nagel said, producing a pad from under an arm and preparing to make an entry. “To start with, who?”

  Redmond turned to move his chair out of the way. The base glided with ease across the floor. Nagel joined him standing in front of the console. “It’s not a who, it’s a what. The what is that, lower left screen.”

  Nagel peered at the black pyramid shaped object in view. It was about the height of a man, and in itself, not very interesting. The thing that did make him stare was the doctor’s apparent enthusiasm over whatever it was.

  “Well now, let’s add a sixth W. What the hell is it?”

  “That’s the problem. Made from an unknown material, it sat on Old Earth for an unknown number of years, apparently unaffected by the environment. It defies all attempts by our instruments to probe the interior and while appearing solid, it only weighs thirty kilograms.”

  “Man made or natural?”

  “Unknown,” the doctor said, stroking his chin with his right hand. “We’ve tested it with every instrument at our disposal, nothing will penetrate. It appears very dense, but its light weight does not make sense.”

  “Did you try hitting it with a hammer?”

  Redmond turned away from the screen, giving Nagel a disapproving frown. “How unscientific... and the hammer bounced off.”

  “And now, the where?” Nagel made an entry, one handed, on his pad. “You said Old Earth, can you be more specific?”

  “The south west of what was the United States of America. The location was at least five hundred kilometers from the nearest known old city, in what we believe to have been a desert.”

  “So, in the middle of nowhere, eh. How did you find it?”

  “Simmons found it. He has a passion for early electronics and his particular interest is in portable devices. He adjusted the Hams scanner to detect a combination of nickel and cadmium, hoping to pick up on the old nickel cadmium batteries. Thirty six holes in the ground later he detected not just a reflection of his beam, but an energy pulse. We dug and found this.”

  Nagel frowned; pausing for a moment while trying to analyze the information he’d been given. “The people of Old Earth put this thing miles from nowhere. Were they trying to get rid of it?”

  Redmond shook his head. “It’s possible they did not know of its existence. It was buried just below the ground level that existed at a time before North America’s habitation.”

  “If they did not know about it, then who buried it and why?”

  “No one buried it. We performed a Radkin test on the surrounding earth. The results definitely indicated that it was buried by natural processes.”

  “Tal... ah... so.... you said it gave off an energy pulse, is it a power generator?”

  “No, the power was barely detectable, commercially useless. But, we found twenty eight other frequencies between one hundred and eight hundred kilohertz that induced a similar pulse. Combinations of those frequencies affected it in different ways.”

  “Some sort of key? A key to what?”

  “Follow me.”

  Redmond turned and walked toward the second door. It slid open on his approach. Nagel followed. The doctor’s enigmatic disclosures had stimulated his personal as well as professional interest.

  The door led to a short corridor, then to a second door which automatically opened. Inside, a large glass isolation case stood in the middle of a room surrounded by several monitoring instruments. Inside the case, a furry animal happily munched on a pile of fresh grass.

  “The geneticists say it’s a type of rabbit,” the doctor said, bending over and peering into the case. “By the way, Jenson Hall’s going ape over this. On and inside this creature they’ve found over three hundred bacteria and viruses with totally unknown genetic patterns. I guess they’ve become bored after redesigning the cow four hundred times and are looking for something new to tinker with. As you know, geneticists can only work with the material they have. The discovery of these new patterns has increased their capability somewhat.”

  Nagel waved his right hand and opened his mouth, taking a few moments to decide on an appropriate question. “Let me get this straight. You subjected that thing to a combination of frequencies and this... ah... rabbit jumped out?”

  “It did not jump out; it appeared about two meters away. We’ve examined the monitor recordings and they show it suddenly materializing mid-stride. It was as if the animal was running along some place else then was instantly transplanted to this location.”

  Nagel hesitated again trying to formulate a visual picture of the doctor’s explanation. “Ah... it’s a teleportation device?” He smiled, slightly rocking back and forth on his feet. “The 3V science fiction writers are going to let out with a big I told you so over this. Distance travel through parallel space without encasing a life form in metal.”

  “No, no,” Redmond exclaimed excitedly, “not teleportation, specimen capture and storage, as far as we can make out. Remember your high school inertial physics. A parallel universe, to us, is like a thin film. To travel great distances, we propel an object from one side and catch it at the other. The other side being, in our universe, some distance from the first. We have no control over the object while it’s inside the film. It’s the position, together with the angle of entry that gets it to the desired place. The manufacturers of this devic
e were able to hold it within the film, with full control over the exit. Not only that, they did not have to go through the massive calculations and positioning we do. It does it whenever and where ever it wants. The selected parallel universe does not have the dimension of time so it’s the perfect storage device.”

  “So where’s this specimen from, and who wanted it stored?” Nagel asked while tapping at the side of the case, trying to attract the animal’s attention.

  Redmond shook his head. “We do not know who made it. The device is well beyond our technology, let alone that of Old Earth. Where the specimen came from, we can only conclude, Old Earth before the Exodus. There’s no other logical explanation. Some micro organisms found are definitely Old Earth in origin. The odds are billions to one that their exact pattern was duplicated at another location.”

  Nagel looked up from the case. His eyes opened wide and he hesitated for a moment due to a mild skepticism. “You mean to tell me that this rabbit, with ears three times longer than any rabbit I’ve ever seen, is about two thousand years old?”

  Redmond raised a hand. “Not exactly. Remember, aging slows in cryogenics to a ratio of about two thousand to one. Here, it seems to have been arrested entirely. It’s as old as it was, plus the ten days it’s been here. I doubt if the creature knows that any time has passed at all.”

  “And that pyramid thing is not man made?”

  “With that level of technology it must be alien in nature. Even though we’ve never run across an alien species in space yet, it’s a hundred percent probability they exist. After all, man has explored less than a tenth of one percent of our own galaxy let alone the universe.”

  “Ah, anything else pop out?”

  “Mostly rocks, also two snakes, several birds and an odd dog like creature. This rabbit was the first. The other specimens are undergoing decontamination as we speak.”

  “Were humans around at the same time as these creatures?”

  “Definitely,” Redmond said. “The dog, although wild, had a metal tag clipped to its ear. There was a serial number and the name ‘Arizona State University’ printed on it. It was probably how researchers kept track of wild animals back then.”