The Lincoln Project

by Dan Gutman

  “No. I’m going to send you to the Hershey Sports Arena on March 2, 1962.”

  “That’s nuts,” David insisted, still sitting in his chair.

  “Well, if it’s nuts, then it won’t work, right?” asked Miss Z. “Nothing will happen. I’ll look like a fool. So you have nothing to lose. Would you just go stand over there in front of the Board for a moment?”

  “Go ahead,” Luke said. “Do it, dude. It’ll be funny.”

  David got up reluctantly and stood in front of the Board.

  “Closer, please,” said Miss Z. “Your body must be within two feet of the surface.”

  “This is wack,” David said as he moved closer to the Board.

  “Have fun, David!” said Isabel.

  “Yeah, nice knowin’ you,” said Julia.

  “Okay,” said Miss Z as she typed something on her computer. “Are you ready, David?”

  “Yeah, ready for nothing,” he replied.

  Miss Z typed a few more commands and hit the Enter key. There was a brief buzzing sound, and then the screen on the Board lit up. Five bands of color appeared, and after a few seconds they merged together to form one band of intense white light. It appeared to stretch out and away from the surface of the Board until it reached David. He put up one hand to shield his eyes.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “It’s so bright!”

  “You’ll see in a moment,” said Miss Z. “Better close your eyes.”

  “Is he okay?” asked Julia, frightened.

  “We are circumventing the first commandment of relativity!” shouted an excited Miss Z. “The laws of physics now make it possible to warp the matter and energy of the observable universe! Light, time, and space are combined in a whirling magnetic field!”

  There was an intense humming sound, a low frequency rumbling like a diesel engine idling.

  David appeared to be flickering, like the image on a television screen just before a power outage. He was clicking on and off.

  “What’s happening to him?” asked Isabel, alarmed.

  “Stop it!” shouted Julia. “Turn it off!”

  “What the—”

  And with that, David was gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  IT WORKS!

  FOR A FEW SECONDS, LUKE, ISABEL, AND JULIA just sat there with startled looks on their faces.

  “Where is he?” Isabel asked. “What happened to him?”

  “I told you what happened to him,” said Miss Z. “He’s gone.”

  “This isn’t funny,” said Julia.

  “It’s a trick,” said Luke, getting up to investigate. “He’s hiding behind the Board.”

  Luke looked behind the Board, then got down on his knees to check under the furniture. But David was nowhere to be seen.

  “The trick was to warp space-time!” Miss Z said triumphantly. “David is exactly where he wanted to be.”

  Miss Z was absolutely right. On March 2 in 1962, David opened his eyes and found himself standing on the steps outside the Hershey Sports Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

  TONIGHT, the sign read, NEW YORK KNICKS VS. PHILADELPHIA WARRIORS.

  “Oh man!” David exclaimed. “You gotta be kidding me!”

  It was dark outside the arena, and cold. A slight rain was falling. A roar could be heard inside, and David climbed the steps to follow the sound. There was a ticket booth, but nobody was in it. There was no need to sell tickets anymore. The game was almost over.

  David pinched himself to make sure he was real. He walked around in a daze, almost bumping into a lone janitor sweeping the floor with a long broom.

  “You okay, sonny?” the janitor asked.

  “Yeah,” David mumbled. “Hey, what year is it?”

  “Nineteen sixty-two, of course,” the man replied. “You sure you’re okay? Need me to call a doctor?”

  David waved him off and pulled open the door that led inside the arena. The roar grew tenfold. The crowd was on its feet, so he couldn’t see what the people were so excited about. But he could make a pretty good guess.

  “Wilt! Wilt! Wilt!” people were chanting.

  The Hershey Arena was small. It still is. It holds about eight thousand fans, and it was half full on this night. There were plenty of empty seats. As David made his way down the steps toward the court, he wondered why two NBA teams would be playing in such a rinky-dink arena.

  In fact, the league was only in its sixteenth season that year. Professional basketball was not a major sport at the time, and the NBA would play occasional games outside of big cities to attract new fans. There were no TV cameras around the court, no giant video screens overhead. The game wasn’t televised.

  David instantly noticed another big difference in the game—only a few of the players on the court were black. In 1962, there were only thirty-seven black players in the whole league.

  “Give it to Wilt!” the crowd chanted. “Give it to Wilt!”

  David spotted an open seat ten rows up from the court and slipped into that row, trying to be inconspicuous in case the security guards might be checking for tickets. Standing next to him was a boy, about ten years old, wearing a Philadelphia jacket. He was holding a program in one hand and a pencil in the other. The program had a photo of Wilt Chamberlain on the cover.

  “How many points does Chamberlain have?” David asked.

  “Ninety-one!” the boy shouted over the crowd noise. Then he showed David what he had written in his program. “Wilt had twenty-three points in the first quarter, forty-one at half time, and sixty-nine at the end of the third quarter. Did you ever see anything like this in your whole life?”

  “Not me,” David replied. “That’s for sure.”

  Down on the court, Wilt Chamberlain was standing at the foul line. He was a huge man—seven feet one inch tall, weighing 280 pounds. And this was in an era when basketball players were smaller than they are today.

  A little background, reader. Wilton Norman Chamberlain was called “Wilt the Stilt,” or sometimes “The Big Dipper.” He wore number thirteen. David knew that Wilt played for the Philadelphia Warriors before they moved to California. In 1963, the Philadelphia 76ers were born.

  The referee flipped Wilt the ball. He was one of the few players who shot free throws underhand, and he was also notoriously bad at it, averaging about 50 percent over his career. But not on this night. When all was said and done, he would sink twenty-eight foul shots in thirty-two attempts.

  Wilt took a deep breath and made the shot, bouncing it off the backboard and into the net.

  “Ninety-two!” shouted the boy next to David, along with about a thousand other fans.

  David watched, enthralled, as the Knicks dribbled the ball downcourt. He wasn’t thinking about how he got there, or how he was going to get back home. All he was thinking about was that there were two minutes and twelve seconds left on the clock, and Wilt had eight more points to score. How was he going to pull that off?

  “A hundred! A hundred!” the crowd began to chant, urging Wilt on.

  “He’s gonna do it,” David said to the boy next to him. “It’s a lock.”

  “No way!” the boy replied. “Eight points in two minutes? It’s impossible.”

  “Wanna bet?” David asked holding out his hand. “If Wilt doesn’t score a hundred, I’ll give you ten bucks.”

  “And what if he does score a hundred?” the boy asked. “What do I have to give you?”

  “How about you give me your program?” David said.

  “You got a bet!” the boy replied, and they shook on it.

  The Knicks were passing the ball back and forth as they moved slowly downcourt, trying to burn seconds off the clock. They knew what was going on. No team wants to be known for giving up a hundred points to one guy, so they were doing their best to stall for time.

  Finally, one of the Warriors intentionally fouled the Knick with the ball. The guy made the shot, but the score didn’t matter anymore. The Warriors were ahead by over twenty points. All that
mattered was getting the ball back, and getting it to Wilt so he could put up another shot.

  Wilt was double- and triple-teamed as the Warriors took possession, but nobody could stop him. Somehow, Wilt’s teammates got the ball to him close to the basket. He dribbled twice, spun around with those big elbows pushing the Knicks out of his way, and launched a fadeaway that dropped gently into the net without touching the rim.

  “Ninety-four!” four thousand people screamed.

  There were less than two minutes left on the clock now. Wilt looked exhausted as he backpedaled downcourt. The Knicks were trying to run out the clock again, but one of them got sloppy and a Warrior stole the ball from him. He could have taken an easy lay-up himself, but he didn’t. He slowed things down, waiting for Wilt to get into position under the basket. Defenders were all over the big man, but he had a height advantage over them. The Warrior with the ball lofted up a lob pass. Wilt leaped to grab it, came down, and then jumped up again to jam the ball through the hoop.

  “Ninety-six!” four thousand people screamed.

  “It’s a Dipper Dunk!” shouted the boy next to David as they both jumped up and down.

  Wilt was also fouled on the play, so he got two free throws.

  “Ninety-seven!” four thousand people screamed when he made the first one.

  “Ninety-eight!” four thousand people screamed when he made the second one.

  Now there was a minute left in the game. The clock seemed to be ticking down faster, and the fans started counting it down.

  “Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven . . .”

  Wilt needed just one more basket. The Knicks had the ball, but one of the Warriors committed a foul right away to get possession back.

  After the missed foul shot, the Warriors brought the ball downcourt again.

  “Forty-nine! Forty-eight! Forty-seven . . .”

  Wilt set up in the post. Everybody knew what was going to happen next. The Warriors would try to get the ball to Wilt so he could take one last shot. There were Knicks all over him. They weren’t guarding any of the other Warriors.

  Miraculously, a bounce pass found its way into Wilt’s hands. He didn’t risk a dribble that might be stolen. He leaped up and shot.

  Miss. The ball bounced hard off the rim. One of the Warriors got the rebound. The crowd was going crazy. The calmest person in the arena was David, because he was the only one who knew what was going to happen.

  Wilt got the pass again and took another shot.

  He missed again! Forty-four seconds left now.

  Once again, the Warriors rebounded.

  They passed it to Wilt a third time.

  There were five Knicks sticking their hands in his face and trying to strip the ball from him.

  Wilt muscled away from them, took one step, and jumped.

  He shoots. He scores!

  “A hundred!” four thousand people screamed.

  For the first time in history—and the only time in history—a player had scored a hundred points in an NBA game. And it hadn’t even gone into overtime.

  The crowd, needless to say, went wild. People were throwing papers up in the air and storming the court. Grown-ups wanted to shake Wilt Chamberlain’s hand. Kids wanted to clap him on the back, or simply touch him.

  “I told you it was a lock,” David said to the boy next to him.

  “You were right,” the boy replied, handing David his program. Giving it away didn’t bother him very much. He had witnessed an historic moment that he would never forget, something he could tell his children and grandchildren about someday. David rolled up the program and stuck it in his back pocket.

  There was just one problem. There were still twenty seconds left on the clock. Unless you play forty-eight full minutes, it’s not an official game.

  The referees cleared the spectators off the court and resumed play. The Warriors tried to get the ball to Wilt again, but he didn’t want it. He stood at midcourt, shaking his head, with a big smile on his face. He didn’t want to score any more. Wilt knew very well that “a hundred points” sounded a lot better than “a hundred and two points.”

  The buzzer rang. The final score was 169–147.

  “Okay, I think that should be enough time,” Miss Z said as she fiddled with her computer.

  She typed a few more commands on the keyboard and hit the Enter key. There was a brief buzzing sound, and then the screen on the Board lit up. The five bands of color appeared. After a few seconds they merged together to form one band of intense white light. Julia, Isabel, and Luke shielded their eyes but didn’t dare look away.

  The light seemed to stretch out and away from the surface of the Board until coming to a point about three feet in front of it. There was that humming sound, and then there was an image, almost like a hologram. It was flickering at first, and then it solidified.

  David was back.

  He fell to his knees, panting and gasping for breath. The others rushed over to him.

  “Are you okay, dude?” Luke asked David, putting his beefy arm around him. “Where were you?”

  “It works!” David replied. “It really works!”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE FLASHBACK FOUR

  THE OTHERS HELPED DAVID INTO A CHAIR. HIS hair was a little messed up, and his clothes were somewhat disheveled. But he had a wild look in his eyes, as if he had just stumbled off his first roller coaster ride and couldn’t wait to go back for another one.

  “It works!” he kept repeating. “I can’t believe it works!”

  Miss Z had a satisfied I-told-you-so look on her face.

  “What was it like?” Isabel asked David. “Did it hurt? Was it scary? Was it fun? Tell us everything!”

  “I was there,” he said, “and Wilt Chamberlain was there. It wasn’t like he was a hologram or I was in some kind of virtual reality simulator. I was right there, a few rows up from the court, watching the game. Wilt scored a hundred points, and I saw it happen. Everybody was going nuts. It’s hard to describe what it felt like. It was scary, but it didn’t hurt. It was awesome. I pinched myself to make sure it was real.”

  “I always thought time travel was impossible,” Luke said, shaking his head. “That’s what my teacher told us in science class. And she’s an expert.”

  “I used to think that too, Luke,” said Miss Z. “You know, before the Wright brothers got off the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the experts thought human flight was impossible. It couldn’t be done. But these two ordinary bicycle mechanics did it. Before a guy named Roger Bannister came along in 1954, the experts thought it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. But he did it. And before I built the Board, the experts thought time travel was an impossibility. But I did it.”

  “Did you figure it out all by yourself?” asked Isabel.

  “Oh no. I have a team of techs who helped me,” she admitted. “I drove them hard to solve this problem. Worked them like dogs to finish as quickly as possible. And I paid them handsomely. But my firm—Pasture Company—owns the technology.”

  “Why do you call it Pasture Company?” asked Isabel.

  “It’s my little in-joke,” replied Miss Z. “I can’t take you to the future . . . but I can take you to the pasture.”

  David suddenly remembered the souvenir he had brought back with him from 1962. He took the rolled-up game program out of his back pocket and passed it around for the others to see.

  “Check it out,” he said. “See, it’s even got the date on it.”

  “Did you find that on the ground at the Hershey Arena?” asked Miss Z.

  “Nah, I made a bet with some kid that Wilt was going to score a hundred points,” David told him. “I won, of course, so he had to give me his program.”

  David was pretty proud of himself, but Miss Z shook her head in disapproval.

  “I don’t know how I feel about that,” she told David. “Taking artifacts from the past is risky business. You might remove some little thing that turns out
to be important, and change the course of history.”

  “Sorry,” David said. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

  Luke, Isabel, and Julia admired the program. They hadn’t asked to see any physical proof that David had actually traveled through time, but now they had it.

  “If I were you, I’d sell that thing on eBay,” Julia told him. “I bet a lot of basketball fans would want the program from the only game in history when somebody scored a hundred points. It may be a one-of-a-kind. You could make a lot of money.”

  “Sell it?” David said, taking it back. “No way. I’m keeping it forever. Seeing Wilt score a hundred points was the most exciting moment of my life.”

  “See what I mean?” Miss Z told them. “That’s exactly what I was telling you. I sent David back to see Wilt Chamberlain score a hundred points in a game. But I could have sent him anywhere, to any time. Imagine sitting in the boat next to George Washington as he crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776. Imagine watching the Wright brothers taking off on their first flight at Kitty Hawk. Imagine seeing Michelangelo working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa. The possibilities are endless! You four could work as a team.”

  The four kids, who had been skeptical and even dismissive of Miss Z earlier, were now convinced that she was the real deal. She had promised them the adventure of a lifetime, and she was obviously capable of delivering it.

  Each of them was anxious to go on a trip, for their own special reason. Isabel was thinking about her future. She was sure she wanted to go to college someday and study history, maybe to become a history teacher when she grew up. She imagined how awesome it would be to go back in time and witness history with her own eyes, and be able to tell her students about it one day. It would be the best research imaginable.

  Luke didn’t care much about history, but seeing the look on David’s face when he came back made Luke want to experience the same kind of excitement. Lately he had come to admit to himself what his parents had been telling him for a long time—playing video games all the time is boring. Staring at a screen for hours on end is deadening. He was craving something in the real world that couldn’t be duplicated in two dimensions.