With that information, all efforts into Project Alpha and Project Gamma were abandoned and redirected to Project Beta.
Obviously the egg had come before the chicken.
Over the coming months, chimpanzees began to turn up regularly in the laboratory, each carrying cards and details or hints which helped them redirect focus or effort or overcome problems to which previously they could find no resolution.
By observing the eggs which the chicken was sending them, they got better and better at building the chicken.
One day, whilst one of the chimpanzees called David had been sitting in the Vortex Emulator in Lab 1, another chimpanzee had materialized in the laboratory next door in Lab 2. Within two minutes of this happening, both chimpanzees had died.
The reason for this happening was immediately established. The chimpanzee in Lab 2 was also David.
An important lesson had been learned.
An animal or person cannot travel back in time and meet itself, or come too close to itself, in case the objects began to interact with each other, with fatal consequences.
From this they realised the importance of ensuring that when Derek was transported back to Jamaica, that he must arrive before the earliest known and recorded instance of him being there. If they did not succeed in doing this, there was a danger that he would meet himself, and would die.
Fortunately, they knew that so long as they considered this in advance, that this would not happen, simply because history had already recorded their success in resolving this problem...
Week by week, month by month their knowledge and expertise grew. Their Vortex Emulator was refined, and their ability to transport an object from a specific time and location to another was improved.
They began to practice.
As the project progressed they started to transport and project chimpanzees to different locations and different times, throughout America and beyond. Careful research then revealed to them, that over the past thirty years, chimpanzees had mysteriously been appearing all over America and the Caribbean. In total, records of fifty-eight chimpanzees had been found. Most of the chimpanzees ended up in local zoos, as no one could figure out why chimpanzees were appearing and where they were coming from. Luckily, until then, no one had made any connection between the seemingly random appearances of chimpanzees: the communities into which they appeared just assumed that they had belonged to a local resident, and that the chimpanzee had escaped.
The records showed that most of the chimpanzees had appeared wearing wristbands containing short texts of information: the date on which the chimpanzee had been discovered, the location it had been discovered in, and another date, which did not correlate with the other two and seemed to represent a time and date some point in the future.
Using this information, the team working on refining the Vortex Emulator had been able to check how accurate their experiments had been.
They chose a time and place to which to send a chimpanzee back in time, pushed the button, and then did research to find out if there were any records available that reported the unexpected appearance of a chimpanzee near the intended target zone.
Incredibly, the research team responsible for tracking the appearance of chimpanzees in the past, managed to find two separate newspaper articles from the nineteen forties which were quite specific about the exact time at which 'a large, black, chimpanzee suddenly, and mysteriously, appeared' in the middle of a stage performance in a theatre in Los Angeles. At the time, the authorities had assured the public that the chimpanzee's appearance was solely the result of an intended magic trick that had gone wrong and was intended for another audience.
Using these details, the project team were able to tune and refine the Vortex Emulator, increasing its accuracy and reliability.
--------------------
A month before Derek now found himself sitting alone in the Vortex Emulator, primed and ready to go, Colonel Patterson and Derek had made one last trip down to Jamaica. Together they had stood in front of the painting in the hallway of the Bluebell mansion, and both of them had smiled as they realised that Kate had sent them another important message that until now neither of them had noticed.
Just the night before, Colonel Patterson had called him in the middle of the night and instructed him to prepare for another visit to Jamaica, early that coming morning. "There is something that we have both missed. Something important!" was all that he would say. But it was enough. Once again Derek was hooked.
Standing in front of the painting again now, it was immediately obvious to Derek what the Colonel had meant, and what it was that they had 'missed.'
On the edge of the painting, beside the image of Kate, the five children, Derek and the two dogs, was the painted image of a large chimpanzee.
Around the chimpanzees neck a small red card hung on a chain.
"Can you bring us a ladder please?" the Colonel had asked the ever eager Police Corporal, Winston Jones.
Five minutes later Derek was standing at the top of the ladder examining what had appeared to be writing on the red label. He read the writing out to the Colonel who wrote the words and numbers down into his iPad.
He laughed. "I can't believe we missed this earlier. You have just read out to me the date and time of when the chimpanzee was sent back here, the coordinates of where he was sent to, and the time that he was targeted to arrive at."
"But that can't be right...the date this label says that he was sent back from is only one week from now!"
"In which case, I think we'd better make our way back to Colorado as soon as possible..."
"Wait..., hang on a second..." Derek said. He was just about to climb down from the ladder, when he noticed that around the handle of the silver cane that the image of Derek in the portrait was holding, there was a small red tag, dangling from a piece of string.
Quickly, he scrambled down from the ladder, moved it across to stand directly in front of his own portrait image, and then scrambled back up the ladder.
Derek stared at the red tag in disbelief.
"Oh bloody hell!" he said aloud. "You are not going to believe this..."
The Colonel laughed.
"I will. Nothing surprises me anymore. What does it say?"
"Two dates, and a location. The same location that was on the chimpanzee."
"What are the dates?" the Colonel asked.
"The second date is the 4th May, 1699."
"And what is the first...?" he asked, understanding the importance of his question, and holding his breath in anticipation of the answer.
"It's on Tuesday, at 2 p.m. One month from today."
--------------------
Tuesday
1.58 p.m.
2015
"Are you ready?" the voice of Colonel Patterson said into the earpiece built into his metal suit, his voice becoming increasingly difficult to hear over the rhythmic hum that was steadily building up around the spherical capsule in which Derek sat.
"As ready as I will ever be."
"Good. Because this is it, Derek. Only two minutes to go...If you haven't already done so, put on your dark glasses to protect your eyes…Derek, please say 'Hi' to Kate for me!"
"I'm already wearing them…Colonel, I have one quick question, before I go. All this time, I have been wondering something. It's been eating away at the back of my mind ever since I met you, a question that I've been wanting to ask you but could never remember exactly what it was. But now I remember."
The capsule was beginning to shake, and little flashes of light were beginning to appear in the air around the capsule.
"What is it?"
"It's about the picture in your office in the Pentagon. Your office is empty apart from one picture. And it's just like the oil painting that you have on the wall of your office here in Level 3."
"Thirty seconds to go, Derek." The Colonel replied.
"It's a rainbow. The picture in your office is of a rainbow."
"Twenty seconds
..."
The air outside the capsule was beginning to glow now, bright white light spreading throughout the Vortex Emulator chamber in which the capsule was sitting.
"Why?"
"Why the rainbow?"
"Yes."
"Fifteen seconds... The picture reminds me of my grandfather. He was one of the scientists aboard the U.S.S. Eldridge."
"The Eldridge navy ship used in the Philadelphia Experiment?"
"No. Its proper name was Project Rainbow. I never knew my grandfather properly. Something went wrong, the project was canned, and my grandfather spent the rest of his life in a mental institution. It broke my mother's heart. Ten seconds."
"And that's what this has all been about?"
"Yes. Project Rainbow failed. They got it all wrong. My father died twenty years ago. The last thing I did when I saw him before he died was to promise him that I would get it right. I swore I would find out what went wrong and correct it. It was the only time I saw him smile. Five seconds. "
"And have we?"
"Three seconds. Absolutely."
Inside the capsule the air began to light up and glow.
"Two seconds..."
"Goodbye, Colonel. I'll call our first born son after you."
"I know you will. You already have...Good luck Derek, and Bon Voyage!"
Deep underground in Colorado the whole of Level 3 shook. A bright light filled the chamber in which the Vortex Emulator sat. It only lasted for an instant of time, but when it passed, the chamber was empty.
Chapter 49
The Blue Emerald Bay Resort
Puerto Rico
The sun was slowly setting now, the large orange globe beginning to dip towards the edge of the horizon, the descending orb just visible from where they were sitting on the beach, looking out towards the open sea through the mouth of the bay.
Captain Rob McGregor was a changed man. He was sitting on the sandy beach, wearing light brown shorts and a T-Shirt that hugged his powerful torso. Ray-Ban sunglasses sat upon his head, and a gold chain hung around his neck on the end of which hung a single, gold doubloon.
The Captain turned and smiled at Miss Sally, a glass of wine in her hand, staring out at the sunset.
They were sitting close beside each other, the sexual tension between them sparking in the air like electricity.
"So, Captain Rob McGregor of the Sea Dancer. Now this is all over, I would like to ask you a question. But before you answer, I just want to say that from now on I would really like it if you would call me Sally, instead of Miss Sally. I would like us to be friends."
"I would like that too...Sally. In which case I think that perhaps you should start calling me Robert. And please, ask me this burning question of yours. I'm sure that now we are friends, I will have many of my own to ask you."
"Robert? ... Can you remember when we were in the hall addressing the survivors, the day we were set free from quarantine?"
"The day we were all arrested and dragged off to prison?"
"Yes...I'm sorry to remind you of that. But, I often think back to the speech you gave to your crew. You spoke so eloquently, as you always do to me. I know I've asked you this question before, but whenever you speak to your crew, you speak differently. You use different syntax, speak in slang, swear a lot...but with others...with officials - you are completely different. You are like a chameleon, chopping and changing who you are and how you speak according to the situation you are in and who you are talking to. So, Robert, who is the real you? And why the chameleon?"
Robert looked at Sally, then looked away back at the sunset. He sat quietly for a moment, as if thinking and trying to come to a decision about something. Sally said nothing.
After a few minutes Robert turned to Sally and became quite serious.
"You must promise, Sally, that you will never, ever breathe a word of that which I will tell you. To anyone. Ever. Do you swear it?"
"Yes."
"Then I shall tell you all about myself, and you will be the only person in the world that knows the truth. The few others that know this secret are long dead."
The Captain reached into the wine cooler beside him, picked up the bottle of wine and refilled both their glasses.
"It is true. I am a chameleon. It comes from my training, and from necessity. In the job I have done, it has not always been possible to be myself. For the past three years I have sailed the high seas as captain of a pirate ship. Most pirates are illiterate, cannot read or write, and do not appreciate the finer points of speech. To be one of them, you have to become one of them."
"So who were you before?"
"I was a husband. A gentleman who owned lands and titles. The hamlet we lived in, several farms, and all the fields for miles around, 1000 acres in total, belonged to my family. It was awarded to my father - William McGregor from Dundee - by Charles 1st in AD 1644 for services rendered to the Crown."
"So how did you become a pirate?"
"Sally, I became a privateer, not a pirate, as I told you once before."
"A privateer?"
"Yes. There is a big difference. A privateer works for his Government, to whom I remain loyal to this day, although it seems they have forgotten me, but a pirate works for himself and his crew."
"So who did you work for?"
"For some very important nobles in the English Government." Robert sipped his wine. "Perhaps, if I explain it all from the start it would be simpler."
"Please."
"You know by now that my wife, Ann, was taken from me by the plague. The disease swept through England, decimating the population, and destroying families and lives indiscriminately. After it had passed through our lands, I fell ill in my mind. From day to day I wandered around in a daze, mourning my wife, and my unborn child..." Robert coughed, took another sip of wine, then continued. "Then one day I opened my eyes and found that I had wandered all the way to Portsmouth. I took a room in a house overlooking the harbor. I lacked purpose or direction in my life, and had no fear of death. Perhaps I had a greater fear of living than dying. So, one day I joined the King's Navy and took to a life on the sea. With nothing else to live for, I fought hard in battle, worked hard, and learned the life of a seaman. Soon I was promoted, and then again, and again. Several years later I woke up and found out that I was a captain in charge of my own ship."
"My rise through the ranks was fast, because apparently I was good at what I did. The Admiralty said that I showed great promise, even though I was still unknown to most other captains of the Navy. Then one day I was asked to report to London. I found myself in a room in Westminster with some of the most powerful people in the land. I was quizzed about my loyalty to the Crown and to England. I stressed that I was. England was my home, and I had known no other. I was asked what I knew about Captain William Kidd. I replied that I knew nothing, or at least very little. I had never met him, or discussed him. This made me, in the words of one of the lords in the room that day, 'an ideal candidate for the job.' 'What job?' I asked. 'The job of hunting down Captain William Kidd, capturing his treasure, and returning both he and it to England.' I was to be given papers from the King authorizing me to attack any ships belonging to enemies of the Crown, particularly the French, and was instructed to immerse myself in the ways of pirate lore. I was to become one of them, to learn their ways, to become trusted by them all, with the specific intention of learning where Captain Kidd was, and tracking him down."
"You went undercover amongst the pirates...almost like a Secret Agent? Like 007 James Bond!"
"Aha, the Secret Agent we saw last week in that theatre of movies? Yes and no. My secret mark was 'A4', not '007'. I never used my name in correspondence to my backers. I simply put my mark - 'A4' . I was given a Letter of Marque identifying my role and providing my license to plunder enemy ships, and a document setting out my orders from the Crown, but instructed that it was best to keep these secret unless needed. And then I was set free to pillage, plunder and sink any French ship on the high se
as, and to capture William Kidd. The men who appointed me with the blessing of the Admiralty were mostly members of the Whig Party - a powerful political force in England in 1699 - and also the East India Company, both parties who felt strongly aggrieved by Captain Kidd. Although I agreed readily to the challenge they set me, because I was younger and more foolish then than I am now, it was only later that I learned the truth of why I was asked to capture Kidd. It transpired that several years before Captain William Kidd was approached by many of the same men, given a ship, crew and funds, and asked by them to attack as many French ships as he could find and capture as much booty as possible. Kidd was given a license to plunder, and in return it was agreed he could keep a significant percentage of all monies and assets he brought back to his masters and to his Government and his King..."
"He was also a secret agent? I thought he was a pirate!"
"No. He was asked to become a privateer. He attacked ships only from nations that were declared enemies of the Crown, and shared the profits with those who had funded him. At first everyone knew he was a privateer. But, as time passed, Kidd became greedy. He started attacking any ship he could. He built up a great fortune, amassed wealth beyond imagination, and felt no need to share it with those who had funded him. Increasingly his acts of piracy had angered the East India Company, which is one of the most powerful companies in the world...or was...in my time... They made great profits from trade with India, which was now threatening to close down the trade routes the East India Company depended upon. As the situation worsened, my mission became more important. I received letters urging me to stop and destroy Captain Kidd at all costs."
"By this time, I had a good idea where he was hiding. We made a plan, we attacked his stronghold in a town called Puerto Bello de la Cruz, took all his booty, everything he had, destroyed his stronghold, and then set sail for sea."
TIME SHIP (Book Two) - A Time Travel Romantic Adventure Page 25