Spinning Time: a time travel adventure

by Jones, D. F.

  “Amelia, I need your help. I may have found Julia. I need a research assistant. Will you help me?”

  Amelia nodded and said, “I’ll do anything for you, Phillip, and for Julia too.”

  Chapter 8

  Present Day

  Monica and her team of enforcers—Azaria, Kalsan, Stormy, Johnnie, and Zane—entered the Earth’s atmosphere, landing ATTRA’s elite warship in the Black Mountains. After placing a shield of invisibility around the craft, the team, donned in the apparel of the day, headed for Burkett Falls. Ruben was in town, so her team operated in secrecy.

  Before arriving at the house of Andy’s neighbors, the Allister’s, Monica used a small drone to case the neighborhood to ensure Andy, Julia, and Ruben were nowhere in sight. The retired couple lived alone and had no living children. Monica and her team walked up to the front door with a dozen roses and balloons. She chuckled. They looked like a commercial for one of those goofy TV sweepstakes of this time period. She rang the doorbell, and an older lady opened the door.

  With a look of surprise, Mrs. Allister said, “Oh my, what beautiful roses. May I help you?”

  Smiling, Monica poured on a Southern accent. “Why, yes, Mrs. Allister. Is your husband home?”

  “Yes, he’s taking a nap in the recliner. Do you need him?”

  Monica leaned in and said, “We need you both. Congratulations! You’ve won the ATTRA sweepstakes.” It took everything in Monica not to laugh out loud.

  Mrs. Allister opened the door and said, “Please come in. I’ll get Thaddeus.”

  Once inside the door, the team of enforcers acted swiftly, executing Thaddeus and Meredith Allister; then Zane proceeded to dismember the bodies and stored them in the garage freezer.

  “Great work, team. We’ll set up the base here. I must return to Lunar City in the morning. Zane, if you see a window of opportunity to move in and take Julia, do it and bring her to me. I want no survivors, understand?”

  “You got it.”

  Monica looked at the others and said, “Zane’s in charge. I need you to follow orders because we don’t want the local authorities snooping around until we find the girl and get out of town.”

  Stormy rolled her eyes and said, “Not my first rodeo.”

  Johnnie stepped over and draped his arm around Monica’s shoulders. “You can count on me.” The team members knew Monica slept with Johnnie on the sly.

  Monica patted his cheek and said, “Good boy. Look, I’m going to take a shower and then sleep for a couple of hours. Zane, please come up in a minute and grab my clothes. I need you to wash them for me before morning.”

  Monica went up the stairs, overcome with exhaustion from the day. Stripping down, she kicked the bloody clothes to the side, turned on the shower, and stepped inside, allowing the scalding water to cleanse her skin.

  Monica had been plotting and planning her rise to power for decades. She ran the Tracker division on Lunar City under the authority of the Empyreal Palace. Lunar City was her base of command, but Monica wanted more, lots more. She had learned of an ancient civilization that lived on Earth one million years before the humans. A race far superior, but they fled before the enormous meteor hit, wiping out most of Earth’s living organisms.

  General Agriaous had implied the Lord Supreme and Prince Aelius were descendants of the ancients. Both were immortals with power to create or destroy entire galaxies, wormholes, and planetary systems including all life forms.

  Monica needed the damn time machine to travel back to the distant past to research the Lord Supreme’s origins. Gaining information on when and where his people fled was crucial to her plan. The Lord Supreme and Prince Aelius ruled everything in the Milky Way.

  If Julia’s son discovered a time machine with no past or future limitations, she could control and influence all future time events. Monica needed to travel into the future beyond the Plates of Prophecy to calculate and secure the number of warriors she needed to conquer the Empyreal Palace. She needed to know if there were others like the Lord Supreme that would come to his aid when she initiated the coup.

  If her abduction plan worked, Julia would live on Lunar City with Monica. She’d take Julia under her wing and make her feel safe. Then after the baby boy was born, Julia would be eliminated. In Monica’s youth, she had fantasized about a family. Julia Boatwright was going to give her one.

  Monica lay on top of the covers, nude. She rarely thought of her former life. The sweet girl from long ago no longer existed. Closing her eyes, she could picture every mental image. It was the only thing she had left of her past

  1902 Adamsville, Colorado

  Monica Adams sat with her parents in their parlor after breakfast. Sunday services began in an hour, and Monica had no intention of attending. She feigned a headache and sighed, “Mother, would you mind checking my forehead? I’m not feeling well, and my head hurts.”

  Eleanor rose from the Victorian settee and went to her daughter, placing her hand on Monica’s forehead. “Hmm. You don’t feel warm, but if you have a headache, maybe you should lie down. Colin is coming over this afternoon to visit. I’m sure you’ll want to see him.”

  Ugh! Colin Pinewood was a bonehead. The last thing Monica wanted to do was spend any time with the man. But she and Daniel had made plans to run away today and didn’t want to raise any suspicion. Her packed bag waited for her under the bed until she could make a mad dash into the forest. “Yes, Mother. I’m sure you’re right. I should lie down. Is it okay to miss church service?”

  Her father, Theodore, coughed a couple of times, then chuckled. “I think I may be coming down with something too.”

  Eleanor placed her hands on her hips. “Teddy, you aren’t sick. We’ll miss the singing if we don’t leave soon. It’s my favorite part.”

  Teddy smiled and said, “Aw, Ellie, I wouldn’t want you to miss that. Come along.” He turned to Monica and raised a brow. “No mischief, young lady. Go straight to your room, and we’ll be back around lunch to check on you.”

  Monica went to the stairs and turned to them and said, “I love you. I’ll be right as rain when you return.” She’d written letters to her father and mother explaining her elopement. Monica would write to her parents as soon as she and Daniel were married and settled.

  She watched from the second-floor bedroom window as her parents and the servants walked along the path to the church at the end of the street. Reaching under the bed, Monica grabbed her bag, put on her boots, then ran down the servant’s steps and out the back door. She was completely out of breath before she stopped.

  Looking up, Daniel sat on a boulder next to a bubbling brook. He stood with a huge grin on his face.

  And what a face—he had the greenest eyes like spring grass. Hitching up her dress, Monica ran toward him and fell face-first into a vine-covered ravine that opened into vast darkness.

  Brilliant lights floated in the air when she hit hard on the ground in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and twenty.

  Monica stared into the face of a menacing warrior wearing black clothes hugging his body and covering everything but his head. Dark wavy hair, sun-bronzed skin, and even darker eyes glared at her, and she fainted.

  Monica woke in Lunar City in the private quarters of Commander Drummond Prescott. She learned later that Drummond traveled to Earth on an expedition for new recruits from the time portals.

  He had found Monica, trained her personally to be a warrior, but he also trained her to be his whore.

  Years of abuse at Drummond’s hands had turned Monica bitter and cold. She put up walls and vowed never to let them down. Only when she felt so alone and isolated, did she think of the girl she used to be and the true love she’d lost. The mental images didn’t last. Then she clung on to what she wanted more than anything else.

  Her passion became power. Her desire became control.

  Monica killed Drummond twenty years to the day he had made her his whore. She had cultivated others like her who were loyal and lethal. The
most lethal were Zane, Stormy, and Johnnie. She began building an army, a legion of warriors under her control.

  At Drummond’s death, the Lord Supreme appointed Monica as an interim Commander. She kept the position and the title. She made all the right decisions. Monica knew how to pour on the charm, use her brains, and if she made a promise, she kept it. The Lord Supreme trusted and respected her.

  Then in 1967, during one of Monica’s space explorations with General Agriaous traveling through a wormhole in the Andromeda Galaxy, the two of them discovered an inhabitable planet Monica named, Veetreous.

  Memories flooded her mind the day she’d first explored the new planet.

  One day while they walked together exploring the new world, Monica talked with Agriaous. He was one of the few generals that had access to the Plates of Prophecy. He said, “It’s prophesied that a major eruption from the super volcano in Yellowstone is destined in the next hundred years. An explosion so large the like has never been seen in modern civilization.”

  Monica gave him a sympathetic sigh as she placed her hand in the crook of his arm. He stared into her eyes and stopped walking. “The eruption will obliterate everything in its path for hundreds of miles around the surrounding area, and ash inches deep will cover North America, killing all vegetation. If we start colonizing Veetreous now, we’ll have a place for the human species to survive.”

  Monica said, “Agriaous, I want to be Queen of this planet. Will you be my King?”

  He pulled her into his arms, kissing her. “I would like nothing better.”

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she said, “We mustn’t tell anyone of this planet. I can start sending Spinners to help you colonize. Of course, you’ll still have to make appearances at court. But when the time is right, you and I will declare our planet and our rule.”

  Monica partnered with General Agriaous and began to siphon tens of thousands of Spinners over the last five decades to work as slaves building the colonies on Veetreous. While Agriaous had the survival of the species at heart, Monica’s goal was to become Queen and sole ruler. No free election system. The people of Veetreous would be subject to her rule. Agriaous had fallen in love with her and believed her. What a fool!

  Lunar City’s former Commander Prescott had taught Monica how to be ruthless. He’d taught Monica how to bend others to her will. Men looked at a beautiful woman and wanted sex, and she knew exactly how to use that against them.

  Chapter 9

  Present day, Burkett Falls

  Over the next several days, Julia learned how to work the household appliances, and Andy continued to train her on his computer. In the evening, Andy divided Phillip’s journals into two stacks. One stack of journals contained Phillip’s work on time travel, and the other journals were letters to Julia. Andy worked through the time travel journals looking for any material that could help them devise a plan, any plan to get her home. Julia went through Phillip’s letters and placed them in chronological order. She intended to read the letters in private.

  After keying in a couple of hours’ worth of complex mathematical formulas into his laptop, Andy yelled out, “Shmoly! I think I found something we can use.” Julia pushed her chair away from the table and moved it closer to Andy. He pointed to a page and said, “Phillip has a blueprint for a spacecraft of sorts.”

  Julia reached for the folder and said, “May I look?”

  “Sure thing.” Andy handed Julia the document and let out a deep breath.

  Julia read down the pages. With an edge of frustration in her voice, she said, “How in the world are we going to construct a time travel machine?”

  “I think I can work with his plan to create a prototype of the craft he sketched, but it’ll cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build one. But let’s not worry about that part yet. The main thing, I have a plan with his formulas to work in my project software. It’ll help me move on with developing applications, data processing, and analyzing the information. I can troubleshoot Phillip’s code. I feel like he’s with us, watching over us.”

  Andy let out another deep breath, then rubbed his hand over his mouth. “You might as well enjoy your time while you’re here. Theories and formulas are great, but proving time travel, even with the craft, is a daunting task. But, hey, I love a challenge. I haven’t been this excited in years. Julia Boatwright, I think you have opened my eyes to my real purpose in life.”

  Andy moved away from the desk and gave her a hug. “I’m glad you’re here. You make my grandfather alive again. And together, you and I are going to accomplish something great.”

  Andy stepped over to the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to Julia.

  She said, “I’m counting on you, Andy. Every time I look at you, I see him. You’re so much like Phillip, and he would be proud of you. I know I am. Do you think you could help me buy a laptop? I can type sixty-five words a minute. You can teach me how to key in data. I want to help.”

  “You got a deal. We’ll go to Electronic Beats in the mall and pick you out one.”

  Julia scooped up a handful of letters and turned to Andy. “I’m tired. I think I’ll read these letters in bed. Are you still going out of town tomorrow?”

  Andy pushed the journals aside. “I was planning on it, unless you don’t want me to. I can call Denise and reschedule.” Andy’s friend traveled for work, and they hooked up once a month. He’d made plans before Julia arrived to take Denise to Phillip’s Chalet in the mountains for the weekend. Andy had told her that it was Phillip’s private retreat, learning of the property after Phillip’s death.

  “No. You go and have fun. I’ll be okay. Besides, I have lots of reading material, and it’ll give me time to hone my skills on the computer and sail with the TV remote.”

  Andy’s hearty laugh filled the room. “It’s surf, not sail. I’ll be back Sunday afternoon, and remember, the cabin is only forty-five minutes away. Ruben’s going to drop by around five tomorrow. He wants to do an intake form on your time travel experience. Is that okay?”

  Julia leaned against the doorframe. “Sure, I’m up for anything that’ll help me get home faster. I’ll see you in the morning?”

  “You betcha. We’ll eat breakfast together before I take off. Sweet dreams, Julie Bean.”

  Smiling, she said, “You too, little Phillip.”

  Walking into the bedroom, Julia closed the door, turned on the nightstand lamp, then changed into her nightgown. She jumped into the bed and grabbed Phillip’s letters. She began to read about their glorious night under the stars.

  * * *

  1948 Stargazing

  Out in the open field, Phillip set up the telescope under the moonlight. Dreams were made on nights like tonight. The warm, gentle breeze created a faint rustle of leaves from the trees. A heavy scent of fresh cut hay mingled with honeysuckle filled the air while crickets sang their sweet summer song.

  Julia dipped under Phillip’s arm to look in the telescope’s viewfinder.

  Leaning over her, Phillip caught a sweet whiff of Julia’s perfume and closed his eyes. Phillip burned for Julia and noticed her every movement from the slight tilt of her face, her upturned grin, and even the way she talked with her hands.

  Julia said, “I see the moon. It’s incredible.” She raised her head and looked over her left shoulder. “Want to see?”

  “Julia?”

  Tilting the angle of her face, Julia’s eyes connected with his gaze. “Yeah?”

  “Did you read about an incident last year in Roswell, New Mexico?”

  She squinted at him as if she were trying to figure out a mystery. “Hm-hmm, the people from the area thought a weather balloon was a flying saucer.”

  Phillip rubbed his hands up and down her arms and took a deep breath. “A friend of mine from the Air Force worked the crash site. He overheard a man whispering to the local sheriff that he found a flying saucer. The man found materials made from chemical elements not found in our periodic table. He hid the
m on his farm. That was June 14, 1947, and on June 20, 1947, the first rocket program was initiated. Whether the two events are related is merely conjecture, but my friend contacted me yesterday and invited me to Cape Canaveral for a possible job.” He paused and searched her eyes. “I want to take you with me.”

  Julia’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open. With a shaky voice, she replied, “You want to take me with you?”

  Phillip reached into his pant pocket with one hand and took a ring out of a black box. With his other hand, Phillip caressed the curve of her cheek. “The touch of your lovely face, the flowery scent of your silky hair, and the promise of a kiss from your sweet, full lips makes my heart burn brighter than all of the stars shining above us. I want you in my arms every morning and every night.” He leaned in and kissed her and whispered against her lips, “I love you, Julia. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes, Phillip, yes, yes and yes.” Julia’s face flushed with warmth.

  Phillip twirled them in a circle again and again. “You’ve made me the happiest man on the planet. My heart is near bursting out of my chest.”

  He gently lowered Julia onto the quilt and reached over to brush the hair away from her face and then slipped the ring on her finger. Leaning down, Phillip tilted his face to the right, and kissed her slowly and sweetly to savor the blissful moment.

  Breathlessly, Julia said, “I love you, Phillip.”

  Phillip held her face in his hands, kissing her and ever so lightly brushed his lips across Julia’s cheek up to her ear. “I love you too.”

  Blood thundered through his veins as he traced his fingers along the outer part of her thigh. Breathing hard, Julia closed her eyes and arched her back in response.

  “Oh, my sweet angel. You’re so sweet. So, soft and sweet.” Phillip placed tender kisses down the column of her neck.

  Julia's chest heaved up and down from breathing so hard. Her voice hoarse, she said, “Phillip?”

  “Yes, my love?”