The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time

by Samuel Ben White

  "What are you going to do?"

  She sat down and said, "The first thing I'm going to do is gather together everything we have so far, then try to put it in order. After that, we'll work on filling in the blanks."

  "But—"

  "No buts, Garison. You need to stop thinking about it and I need something to do for the next seven months."

  "You think it'll take that long?"

  "It will if you don't get out of here."

  Excerpt from A Fitch Family History, by Maureen Fitch Carnes

  Published 1957, South Platte College Publishing, Julesburg, Colorado

  According to an account in an Alexandria, Virginia, newspaper, Darius Fitch's departure from Mount Vernon was quite a celebration. Carrying a hand-written commission from General George Washington himself, Darius headed west amidst much fanfare.

  The main street of Mount Vernon was decorated festively, with bunting hanging from the lampposts and many front porches (as depicted in many woodcuttings from the era). The people of Mount Vernon, and even a few from Alexandria, gathered along the street and cheered as General Washington shook hands with Darius and wished him God-speed. Following a prayer of benediction and travel mercies from the Right Reverend Applebee, Darius set out down the main street, his face turned resolutely to the west.

  Notes in General Washington's personal diary indicate that Darius was against such festivity and would have preferred to just slip quietly out of town early in the morning, if for no other reason than to get an early start on his long journey. The idea of the festivities, however, was Washington's, who was having a rough time championing the cause of exploring the western lands and felt that the venture needed a little pomp and circumstance to generate public excitement. Preceding notes refer to the well-documented troubles George was facing trying to get the Continental Congress to come to agreement on a constitution and some have suggested that his commission to Darius was as much to give people a happy distraction as it was to learn about the frontier. There is support for this hypothesis on the grounds that General Washington had spent much time on the frontier and his desire for westward colonization was no secret.

  One of the most prominent figures to attend Darius's "send-off" was his grandmother, Sarah Fitch. Though well into her sixties at this time, Sarah is said to have still been a very beautiful woman and much sought-after by the sectegenarian gentlemen of the town (and a few younger than that if the stories are true!).

  Sarah was given a place of honor on the makeshift dais (really just a short extension added onto the hotel porch) next to General Washington himself. General Washington was known to have always kept close ties with Sarah and her children. It was rumored that George had been a great friend of Sarah's husband, but this seems unlikely as he would have been barely into adolescence at the time of her husband's passing.

  Why George Washington was always such a friend to the Fitch family has never been clear. In fact, Sarah's grandson Hiram Fitch—who had quite a career in local politics himself—was once asked about the relationship. Hiram replied that he wasn't sure but thought it had something to do with his grandfather.

  Years later, President George Washington rode all night through the rain from Philadelphia to serve as a pall bearer at Sarah Fitch's funeral. Hiram claimed in later years that Washington had told him nothing but a lead ball could have prevented him from coming to Sarah's funeral.

  Chapter Two

  The air was so crisp and clear in La Plata Canyon it felt as if it might actually be touchable on that morning back in '05 when Garison set out to change the world. Rocky Mountain air almost always had a life-like quality to it, but on days such as that one, Garison thought of the air as being just as much a part of the total experience of the canyon as the rocks, the trees, the animals and the snow he crunched beneath his feet. While Garison thought animism to be an unscientific faith born out of ignorance, he could guess how easily it might have evolved among primitive man when he looked at the beauty around the place he called home.

  Still forcing himself to be deliberate and methodical in all his moves, Garison carefully put all of his groceries in their "assigned" spot before preparing to head to the laboratory. His kitchen, like almost all his life, was carefully compartmentalized and sadly antiseptic. He packed a knapsack for the interdimensional journey since he had no idea what he might encounter. Realizing every item he brought might be hideously useless, he also told himself that every item he brought could be phenomenally crucial. Such thinking also made him wonder what important items he was not considering, but he realized such thinking was fruitless for one can't imagine what one can't imagine.

  In the canvas bag, Garison packed a couple flasks of water, some jerked beef, a couple tins of meat, a hunting knife, a compass, two boxes of water-proof matches and a still-shot camera. He already had a first aid kit stored beneath the pilot's seat of his machine and more water was there as well. He admitted to himself that he might encounter a situation where none of the items he brought would in any way aid him, but again, he felt it best to err on the side of caution.

  Putting on his new leather jacket he had recently purchased in Cherry Creek and slinging the knapsack over his shoulder, he stepped out the door and quickly crossed the yard to get to his laboratory. A light snow had started to fall just since he had gotten out of the car but he barely noticed it as his mind was on the experiment. Setting the knapsack just inside the door to the lab, he went out to the car to get the Box.

  The Box was a device of Garison's own invention. Originally designed to just serve as the casing for the miniature nuclear power plant he had invented, the Box had been the one item that had made him a fortune—as opposed to scientific fame. No more ostentatious than its name suggested, the Box was merely a container for carrying radioactive items—such as the uranium it now held. It was so much lighter and so much more efficient and safe than the lead-lined boxes that had previously been used, Garison had been able to lease the licensing rights to a large manufacturer in Cherry Creek and was receiving a healthy monthly check from them, an odd bit of capitalism in a socialistic world. It was constructed of a synthetic material Garison had developed for containing radioactive isotopes and had proven both strong enough and rigid enough to be fashioned into containers of sizes varying from quite large to no bigger than a coffee cup.

  The nuclear power plant Garison had invented was the first successful use of cold fusion known to man and, contained as it was in a Box constructed specifically for that use, Garison had come to refer in his mind to the power plant as, simply, "The Fitch-Plant”. But while it was rumored that Garison Fitch had invented a safe and compact fusion reactor—capable of being carried by only two men—most people thought the rumor false. Garison contributed to the doubts whenever he could.

  Garison actually had two such devices—one powered the experiment and the other powered his house and lab—but he had never released his plans even to the government. Neither had he ever admitted to having them—or even hinted. Garison just didn't trust society with a "home-use nuclear plant" and had hesitated about even releasing his storage Box for public consumption for fear people would become too casual about their use of radioactive materials. Garison knew his own government had disposed of nuclear submarines—some still with hot rods—by just scuttling them.

  As the main and on-board computers performed one more system diagnostic, Garison carefully took a uranium rod, in its container, and placed it in his nuclear generator. The system automatically sealed itself and moved the rod from the container into the reaction chamber as Garison placed the second rod in a stand-by chamber. The case the rod had come in (perfectly safe and, of course, invented by Garison) was then re-sealed and ejected, to be stored in another Box and returned to the uranium plant for reuse. One rod would have provided enough power to illuminate Durango for well over a year, but Garison's experience with losing battery power so fast on the previous experimental attempt of his machine had made him think the once supe
rfluous second chamber might actually be quite helpful. Interdimensional travel apparently took more power than he had originally estimated, which made him wonder what other new discoveries were out there just waiting for him. Such wonder didn't make him nervous, however, when hindsight would later show that it probably should have.

  The knapsack stored, the Box and its two remaining rods safely sealed, and the computers giving the green light following their diagnostic, Garison turned to the cameras he had positioned about the room to record his every move. Turning on the hand-held model on the dashboard—a wonder in the burgeoning field of video tape, pioneered by its maker, the Tesla Corporation—Garison cleared his throat and stood up.

  Once more making sure that the blue safety light indicated that the nuclear plant's housing was containing all the radioactive isotopes and that the green light on each of the cameras was glowing, Garison spoke like a showman. "Ahem," he cleared his throat again. "Hello, once again this is Garison Fitch. I am recording this so that it will be a record for what I am about to do here today for everyone to see and know that it truly happened. In the event that this experiment is a failure and you are witnessing my death, I apologize if it was gruesome. I do not believe such will be the case, but there is always that possibility when dealing with the many unknowns this experiment entails.

  "What you see behind me is my machine. I have not named it, because I never was good at naming things. I once had a pet kitten who was blessed with the nomenclature of 'Kitten' until his death at the age of sixteen. I digress. Should you think of a suitable name for my machine, feel free to submit it. In the meantime, I will call it...Bob."

  Garison walked around Bob as he spoke to the camera, "If you have watched my previous video tape, made three days ago, you are already familiar with my initial voyage into another dimension. You are also aware that it was only a two minute voyage due to battery drainage and that the video from two days ago is fundamentally useless. I believe I have solved the power problem by replacing the batteries with this: the Fitch-Plant, as I call it; I could never think of a good name for it, either. If any of you have somehow become familiar with the possible power output of a Fitch-Plant following my demise and the release of all my secrets, let me calm your fears. I have installed a regulator of my own invention to keep me from blowing up La Plata Canyon. I am also using the filament wire I invented for use with the power plant as conventional wiring would not withstand the power output. In addition..." The next few minutes were taken up with Garison explaining what he was attempting to do. Since most of it was of a highly technical nature, that part can be skipped over. Of all the people who could have seen that tape, only Garison would have understood all of it. We will, then, jump to the end of his presentation.

  "No matter how long I travel through the other dimensions, I will return here at the moment I left. Those of you watching on video tape will see only a brief disappearance of Bob and me, followed by our reappearance seconds later. In fact, you may not see a disappearance at all as the travel will be instantaneous to this dimension. Or should be. There's an element of uncertainty when dealing with variables of this magnitude.

  "Because of that, I have mounted a video camera on Bob's dashboard which I will use to video tape where I go. Or when I go, or however you choose to look at it." He laughed and added, "I guess I can't stay out more than eight hours because that's all the tape I have in the machine. I'll have to work on that for the next trip.

  "I am getting into Bob and strapping myself into the seat. The straps are more of a precaution than anything, because my previous trip contained no movement whatsoever. I felt as if I were sitting still the entire time—which, in a manner of speaking—I guess I was. However, I felt it best to plan for contingencies. If nothing else, there is the possibility of seeing things the human mind has never encountered and suffering from a—'visual overload', if you will. The straps will then, hopefully, keep me from falling over—should I pass out—and doing serious damage to either myself or the machine, were I to pitch forward and hit my head on the control panel.

  "I am now switching on Bob's camera which will monitor activity in the cockpit until and while we are in another dimension.

  "I am placing this oxygen mask over my face as a precaution, also. There are so many unknowns to this voyage that the installation of this seemed wise. I have, however, opted not to wear any sort of protective suit other than this leather jacket. I had considered wearing a helmet and a protective suit of some sort, but I decided to leave such clown suits to the cosmonauts. While my earlier test was far from conclusive, it is my thought that even the oxygen mask is unnecessary."

  He began to flick switches and said, "I am turning on the power plant, now. I am disconnecting Bob from the lab power source and preparing to transfer to internal power. In a moment, I will turn Bob on and allow him to get used to his new source of power. This will only take a second, then I will be ready to go. When I press this red button on the control panel, the voyage will begin. I would ask you to cross your fingers for me, but you will be seeing this long after the fact. And, even if you were here, by the time you got your fingers crossed, I would be back." He added, "Or, so it would seem to you." He turned briefly to the camera, giving the viewers he didn't know if he would ever meet a slight smile.

  He reached under the seat to make sure two items were in place: a change of clothes (presumed unnecessary, but he liked to be prepared) and a gallon of water. He had no idea what they drank in other dimensions, if anything, so he thought it best that he bring his own. It again crossed his mind that everything he was bringing might be so useless as to be humorous for his whole perception of extra-dimensionality might be incredibly flawed,.

  He watched the display on his console go to "ready" and he gave the thumbs up sign to the cameras, turning lastly to the Teslavision portable mounted in front of him. This thumbs up signal had been the "OK" sign for the old Royal Air Force pilots in the first World War and, feeling like a pioneer aviator, Garison had resurrected it in modern times.

  Garison bowed his head, took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer. He had never been taught to pray, but had taken to doing the best he could since reading and copying the Bible. With a barely audible, "Amen," he raised his head and said to the cameras, "Well, here goes."

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard for just a second, then he hit the button designated to start the countdown. Five agonizingly slow seconds passed by before some unfathomable level of his psyche detected the power build-up that would soon propel him into another dimension.

  The electricity generated by the nuclear power plant was in the billions of watts range and, as Garison had explained, required a special coupling to keep the enormously high voltage from destroying the wiring on contact. Even with Garison's specially designed ceramic superconductors, his regulator was an absolute necessity.

  The regulator had been built in an area of the lab Garison had designed to be especially dust free. Since being assembled, in fact, the regulator had never been in contact with natural air. Even the miniature cooling system which surrounded the regulator used recycled and filtered air.

  But, as Garison knew, there is no such thing as a one hundred percent sterile environment. Small particles of dust and molecules of foreign material are all around in the natural air and the greatest filters in the world will not catch every single one. And somehow, that one molecule in a billion which escapes every filter, had found its way into the regulator. It had drifted around in the microscopic concealed space of the regulator's housing for the six months since its construction, bouncing about as atoms do.

  At the moment when the electricity first encountered the regulator, the foreign molecule passed between two conductor heads and was vaporized in less than an instant. But that one one-millionth of a second caused a back-wash of power which then surged through the regulator and into the circuits of the interdimensional machine.

  In that briefest of moments, a moment so small the human mi
nd cannot comprehend it let alone recognize it, Garison Fitch was propelled somewhere he had no idea he could go.

  Excerpt from A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

  Traveling on foot, as most people did in those days due to the lack of trails suitable even for horses, Darius set out for the western lands. According to his account of the journey in his diary, it was almost a month after departure before he left "civilization" behind.

  Even then, the last few settlements Darius passed, we would hardly think of as such. They were congregations of four or five shanties gathered in the same valley, sometimes a mile or more between houses, out on the frontiers of present day Kentucky and Tennessee. Darius's writings and those of his contemporaries describe these "villages" as made up of hard-working, pioneering people who had left the east coast because it was either becoming too crowded or out of a desire to push ever westward and till new soil.

  Their cabins were made from the woods around them and from the porches hung meat they had killed in the nearby woods. They grew their own patches of corn and maize and sometimes potatoes and they were unquestionably a hardy lot. Many of these backwoodsmen were God-fearing people and Darius wrote of enjoying a Sunday morning church service attended by families who had—in some cases—started out long before daybreak to arrive at the farm where services would be held that week.

  Between these settlements, Darius found many more people living in isolation. For one reason or another, single men or even entire families had decided to risk Indian attack and all sorts of other deprivations for the chance to plow virgin soil, or just to live where no neighbor's smoke could even be seen. Among these people Darius remarks that he met all kinds, from sullen, cantankerous old men who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, to gregarious women braving the frontier without the aid of menfolks, to even an old dutchmen who had papers showing he had once been a baron and a man of some importance in Europe.