As they walked around the gravestones, the Colonel stared at the names that had been etched on them over the centuries. The inscriptions on the stones were all well weathered, and most were difficult to read. He counted forty-five stones in all. The surnames on the stones were not all the same, there seeming to be at least three different families in the plot. The most modern stone that he found was dated 1876, belonging to a Miss Abigail Sneddon. She was only 17 when she died. The oldest stone that he found was dated 1760. The other family names on the stones were Richards, Gregory, Martin, Wainright and Grey.
There was one name in particular that the Colonel was looking for but could not find.
"Check them all again for me, please Corporal Jones, I am looking for the name Kate Schwartz. If you find it, I'll make sure that you are promoted!" The Colonel then turned to his Sergeant. "Toss me over your camera, and then find a way to climb the fence. I want you to go round all the stones and photograph them. I want a record of all the names, the inscriptions and the dates."
Grass and bushes grew in the entrance porch to the small church at the center of the graveyard. No one had been here in a long, long time, and the Colonel had to fight his way through the vegetation to get to the door. It was locked.
The Colonel tried pushing the door and forcibly turning the handle. The old door rattled.
He turned around looking over at Corporal Jones who was engrossed in his duty scanning the gravestones for Kate's name.
Quickly the Colonel threw his weight against the door, managing to break the rusted lock and push it open.
Once inside it took a few moments to acclimatize to the darkness, but once he had, he could see that it was only a small family church, about eight rows of pews on either side of a central corridor that led five yards to an altar. There was a stained glass window above the altar which colored light flooded through.
Above the altar, embedded in the wall, there was a large headstone.
The Colonel walked slowly down the aisle, coughing in the dank air, and reaching quickly for a handkerchief which he put over his nose.
He stepped around the stone altar, and stood beneath the stained glass window above the headstone.
Now his eyes had adjusted to the interior of the church, he realised that there was actually quite a lot of light. Certainly enough to see the inscription on the stone in front of him, which unlike the stones in the graveyard outside, had been sheltered from the elements and the passing of the years and had not been worn down.
As he read the inscription on the stone, adrenaline flooded through his arteries and he could feel his heart skipping beats. He had not felt this excited since their first teleportation experiment had worked, and the half-inch metal ball had disappeared and reappeared twenty-seven days later.
There were two names on the stone. They belonged to a man and a woman. The woman had obviously married, for her surname had changed.
Underneath there was an inscription. It was a simple inscription that made the Colonel smile when he first read it, but which brought tears to his eyes when he read it for the second and third times.
The Christian name of the woman on the stone was Kate. For some reason the surname did not register with the Colonel on first reading, he was just so pleased and overjoyed by that first name.
Kate.
It could have been any Kate, and not his Kate, was it not for the message that was so clearly delivered by the other words on the stone underneath it.
First of all her birth date: AD 1986.
Then the date she had died: AD 1740.
When the Colonel read these dates, he clapped his hands together with joy, the tears still streaming down his face.
Underneath the inscription said:
"On 22nd June 1699 I arrived in this world on wings of steel, my birth in years to come, my husband not even yet born. Together we built a life, denied to us before. And together we died, before we were even born."
"Thank you Kate," the Colonel said quietly. "You have kept your promise."
The Colonel bowed his head slightly and said a short prayer.
It was only when he opened his eyes, wiped away the tears, and then tried to focus back on the stone, that for the first time he read the name of the man she had married, his details recorded underneath the inscription. When he read the name, he blinked twice and did a double take.
Colonel Patterson could not believe what he was seeing.
Immediately, he knew that they had a dreadful problem.
The world was in terrible danger.
--------------------
Bush Center for Geo-Electromagnetic Studies
New York
Tuesday
1:30 p.m.
Derek sat at his desk, beginning to scan the vast array of readings that had been taken by the hundreds of different measuring devices that they had employed during the 'experiment': humidity, wind-speeds, electrostatic densities, magnetic fields, air-pressure, gas-content, moisture content, ...the list went on. They had taken thousands of measurements, looking at and recording every possible physical description of the environment inside and around the storms. There would be some obvious trends that they would be able to observe from simple inspection of the data, but hidden within the statistics there would be a myriad of subtle observations that they would never spot by themselves, unless they were very lucky.
Luckily, this was the era of 'Big Data': the ability for computer systems to store unparalleled amounts of data in virtually distributed storage systems, which could be scientifically scrutinized and analyzed using artificial intelligence, in a way which only ten years ago would have been impossible.
Over the coming months or years, Derek and Mick would be able to dice and splice the data in any which way they wanted, utilizing the capability of their search algorithms to examine the data and correlate disparate data points, and look for trends, groupings or anything 'interesting' buried within the data that might remain hidden from obvious view.
Derek was confident that they would find the secrets of Nature that were hidden from them at this point in time.
They had scientifically recorded every aspect of the storm's make-up that was possible to record, using the most advanced technology available.
As they had hoped and predicted, something very wonderful had happened when the four hurricanes had collided in the Atlantic. Within the coming months, they were going to understand every aspect of the phenomena that had taken place.
Staring at the reams and reams of data that he had printed off, which was only a sample of the data they had gathered, he began to feel like an artist sitting in front of a blank canvas, wondering where to begin and what picture would emerge once he started.
As Derek sat staring at the figures in front of him, something began to niggle him at the back of his mind. It was something to do with lunchtime in the cafeteria. He knew that he would never be able to concentrate until his mind was clear from distractions, so he kicked back in his chair, sipped his coffee and closed his eyes. What was it that was bugging him?
Then suddenly it was there. It had to do with the terrorist attack in the Caribbean,...Puerto Rico... where the terrorists had all dressed up in pirate costumes. The flag...yes, it was the flag. The reporter had said that the flag the pirates were flying was an obscure Flemish flag that had not been used for hundreds of years.
A small alarm bell began to ring in Derek's mind: there was something important about this fact which deserved greater attention.
Turning to his laptop, he did a few searches on the news that had come from the resort, and within seconds he had a picture of the flag that had been identified by a researcher in Harvard as the flag being flown by the terrorists.
It was an obscure flag, used by a company based in Antwerp in Europe that had owned three merchant ships. The company had only existed for a period of twenty years, had prospered briefly but had gone bankrupt after two of their ships had been sacked and captured by pirates in the Cari
bbean in 1667. There was nothing special or remarkable about the company, its trade, or any of its associations. The company had achieved nothing of any importance, and, on the face of it, there was no reason why terrorists should choose to adopt the colors of such a flag.
One of the reports that Derek read had a short video clip, taken earlier that morning by a helicopter which had flown over the resort. The researcher in Harvard, whose specialty was in 'Vexillology' -which according to Wikipedia was the 'scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general' - had commented on the video, stating that he had been 'fascinated by the appearance of the flag', which had sparked tremendous interest amongst academics as to why terrorists would choose to copy such a flag.
He had stated, that in his opinion, the flag was 'particularly boring', one of the least exciting examples of flags from that period in history. However, he did note that prior to the image of it being shown on the television, flying high upon the terrorist's ship, there were only two recorded examples of that flag's design in the world. No examples of the flag had survived, two of the flags having been captured with their ships by pirates in the Caribbean, and any others being lost in the course of history.
The alarm bell in Derek's mind began to ring louder.
He was missing something important here. But what was it?
Instinctively something told Derek that there was more to this story than met the eye.
Derek became fascinated by the events that were unfolding in Puerto Rico: he spent the next hour reading everything about it that he could, trying to piece together a timeline of when it had started. He took screenshots of the pirates that had been captured on film, blew them up and examined them. He sent the images of the pirates to one of his researchers and instructed her to research and find an expert on 16th-18th Century pirates from the Atlantic at some academic institute somewhere, and then seek and request comments on the clothing, the pirates, and their ship, as soon as possible.
In the meantime, Derek himself studied the footage of the pirate ship that was taken by the helicopter, and became fascinated by the detail.
What began to concern him was a simple question: if a band of terrorists were going to attack a large, wealthy and influential vacation resort, would they not go in completely armed to the teeth, using the latest military technology that Al-Qaeda could provide them with, or whatever terrorist group they were fighting for?
Dressing up as pirates was one thing, but building a pirate ship which was so authentic in every detail imaginable, and then arming themselves only with replica weapons that would have little effect or pose only a small threat against police or soldiers armed with modern weaponry... none of it made much sense.
A terrorist group fought to gain respect for a cause.
Although there was an initial PR and novelty value in dressing up as pirates, once you got beyond that, this band of terrorists were in danger of making a mockery of themselves, and any cause they represented.
Within forty minutes of requesting his researcher to investigate the authenticity of the pirates' clothing, ship and any other details that close inspection could throw up, she came back to him with a result.
She had made contact with an academic in England, who was one of the most prominent acknowledged experts in the field of piracy. She was apparently not the only one to have found him on the internet and sought his opinion on the questions she raised: almost every major newspaper and television or radio station had had the same idea. Within minutes of contacting him, he had sent her a copy of the reply he had issued to everyone else who had approached him with the same questions.
In summary, the expert had stated how astounded he had been to observe such detail on the Puerto Rican pirates. Their clothing was as authentic as you could imagine, their ship was authentic and the tools they used were authentic replicas. Even the language they were apparently using to issue instructions and communicate with their hostages was authentic in detail.
The expert was so interested in the terrorists and the trouble they had gone to to capture and replicate so much detail, that he had even approached the Governor of the island of Puerto Rico to request special permission to fly to Puerto Rico and meet them personally, at his own risk.
In concluding his report he summarized that in every aspect he examined, the pirates in Puerto Rico achieved top marks for detail and authenticity.
He concluded that they and the ship were almost too realistic to be fakes. If it wasn't for common sense, you would be tempted to consider them real.
Which, of course, was impossible.
--------------------
Bush Center for Geo-Electromagnetic Studies
New York
Tuesday
2:00 p.m.
When the phone rang on Derek's desk he had just stepped out of the room to get a coffee. He heard first his cell phone, then the desk phone ringing as he walked back down the corridor towards his office. He hurried as quickly as he could without spilling his drink, but just missed it.
He had to wait a minute or two before the message registered on voicemail, and he could listen to it.
It was the Colonel.
"Hi, Professor Martin. This is Colonel Patterson here. Can you please call me back as soon as you get this message. I've just made an amazing discovery, and I think you should be the first to hear about it!"
Derek's heart soared. The Colonel could mean only one thing. Sipping the coffee and putting it down on his desk, he looked up the Colonel's number on his computer, clicked on the number displayed with his mouse, and waited for the telephone handset on his desk to ring, indicating that his computer had established a call to the Colonel and that he had answered it.
The phone rang, and Derek grabbed it.
"Colonel, it's Derek here. I'm sorry, I just missed..."
"She's alive, Derek. Kate survived! She made it through the Hunraken Vortex."
"She's alive? How?"
"Sorry, I meant she's dead, now... but the plane successfully traveled through the Hunraken Vortex and was transported back to the past, as I suggested it might have. I've just been to the place on the map that you drew, and although I couldn't find anything exactly where your map said it might be, we did find something a few hundred yards away."
"What? What did you find?" Derek asked, his heart pounding, still trying to get over the momentary hope that she was still alive.
"Her gravestone."
"Her gravestone?"
"Yes, with a message on it from her to me. It gave her name, an inscription, and her birth and death dates: Born 1986 and died 1740."
"What did the inscription say?"
"I'll tell you later. There's more to tell you Derek. A lot more! But I've only got half the story just now. I'm just on my way to find out where she lived and about the life she led after she arrived in Jamaica. Apparently she became a very successful businesswoman. I'm in a helicopter now so I can't hear you very well. I'll call you as soon as I have more to tell you! But I thought I should call you straight away and give you the incredible news. We'll speak more very soon. Bye."
Derek had so many questions he wanted to ask, but before he had the chance, the Colonel hung up.
He couldn't quite believe what he had just heard. Kate had survived! Not only had she managed to make it through the Hunraken Vortex, but she had managed to start leading a new and successful life back in the past.
Where? How? What year did she arrive in? How much longer did she live after she arrived in the past?
Derek sat down hard in his chair, and stared out the window of his office at the white clouds in the blue sky beyond.
Kate was dead. If the Colonel was right, then she had been dead now for over two hundred and seventy years.
Strangely, instead of feeling immensely sad, Derek felt excited. Excited that Kate had survived. Excited that she had been successful in delivering a personal message that had survived intact all these years,
and had finally been delivered to the intended recipient.
And relief that she had not died as a result of his obsession with trying to capture and measure the collision of the four superstorms.
He tried to imagine what it would have been like for Kate, arriving back in the past, and trying to come to terms with her new world, learning how to live again in a strange new world, and then prospering in it.
Then slowly the true meaning of what the Colonel had said began to dawn on him.
Kate had traveled from the present to the past. And survived.
And if it had happened once, it would be possible again, and again.
After today, the world would never be same again.
Because now, as they had just proven scientifically, 'Time Travel' was possible.
Derek sat up, woke up his sleeping laptop, and found the video that had been recorded by the satellite in which they could clearly see a pulse of light as Stormchaser 3 had entered the Hunraken Vortex and disappeared, travelling back into the past.
He played the video several times, staring at the pulse of light, and trying to visualize what it must have been like inside the airplane at that moment.
What would Kate have experienced? What would she have seen?
The pulse of light fascinated him. He replayed it over and over again.
It represented the moment that Time Travel was first observed by mankind, when someone traveled through time from 'A' to 'B'. In the future, this small piece of footage might become as famous as the moon landing!
Derek was just beginning to fantasize about the implications of this discovery when he forgot to hit the replay button and he let the video play out and finish. It was then that Derek saw the second pulse of light again, the halo which appeared and spread out like a wave until it had dissipated and gone.
Derek sat bolt upright.
He replayed the video again.
First of all he watched the first pulse of light, the moment when Stormchaser 3 had entered the Hunraken Vortex and traveled back in time. Then he watched the second pulse of light.
TIME SHIP (Book Two) - A Time Travel Romantic Adventure Page 9