***
Stealing Time
As Caroline lounged on the patio reading an ancient dog-eared book of poems, Ben realized just how much he treasured her. A love that spanned all time he mused in poetic verse. From time to time, she’d look up. Her green eyes would catch the sun and light up like emeralds, and then she’d smile and dive back into her pages. The September sun reflected off the pool and danced a magical light show over her tan skin. She was beautiful. The Florida weather would offer many more autumn days of swimming temperatures, and this was her favorite place. She would spend hours sitting next to the pool, reading or getting ready for the next day’s class at the University where she taught English Literature. She was an intellectual and an exotic beauty; not so typical a combination. There was nothing he would not do for her, she was like an extension of his person, and he couldn’t imagine being without her. Ben wondered if she suspected anything as dark as the truths behind the reality they lived.
Her husband, Ben Drake, pushed the question from his mind. “How could she suspect anything?” He thought. “Life is just one day after another, everything is normal, and life is good.” He reflected on the previous night, their love making and how exhausted and damp with sex they fell asleep in each others arms. “Everything is fine.” He whispered to himself.
Ben was fresh out of college when he first met her. She was an assistant to the owner of the company where he got his first job in Tampa Florida. Coil Corp made electrical transformers and other components for the power utility companies around the country. Ben would make the first draft drawings of a new component. His work would then go back to another designer who always made revisions and developed the plans further before work was started on a prototype of the new design. Many nights he worked late into the evening. Sitting at his desk he would watch Caroline punch out and leave at 5pm with the other office staff. She had caught his favor from the very first time he had seen her. More than pretty, with a feminine curvy body and short red hair, she stood out in a crowd. He was instantly attracted to her. A window near his desk offered him the daily treat of watching her take the top down of her old convertible Buick, and drive off into the sunset along the beach causeway. The golden sunset complimented her beauty in a way that stirred him.
They had dated a couple of times before she left Coil Corp for an assistant teaching position at the University of Tampa. The university was a beautiful and historic place. Originally built as a hotel and furnished on the unlimited budget of a railway tycoon, much of the original European imported furniture still dress the rooms. An entire wing of the building actually looks as it did over a hundred years ago, and acts as a museum, open to the public. She was a perfect match for the university; both she and the building had a special charm about them. As they dated, Ben was falling in love. Two years after their first date Ben purposed marriage to her while strolling through the park in front of the old hotel. In an odd way Ben and Caroline felt a kinship to the small riverside park that stood between the old university and the new glass and concrete skyscrapers of downtown Tampa. On one side stood the historic beauty and the romance of the grand hotel turned university, and across the river stood the technological wonders of modern civilization. This reflected their individual personalities, and just as the laws of physics demanded, opposites attracted. Ben knew they needed to be together.
They had no children. Both of them were dedicated to each other and their work. After seven years of assisting in the classroom, Caroline was granted a professorship at the prestigious private university. Leading her own class felt natural to her and she was an excellent teacher. The students loved her, the staff respected her. She was great at her work.
After they were married, Ben left Coil Corp for a research position at Strone Industries, a company that designed and built electro-magnetic components for the government and medical industry. He enjoyed his work prototyping experimental applications of the high power magnets. It was during these years at Strone that he began his own personal research of magnetic field variances. The owner of the company was a capitalist at heart, and he wanted to produce a needed product and make an immediate profit. He had little interest in research. In fact, Ben’s department budget was getting cut every year. When Ben requested an additional budget for research in magnetic field variance, Mr. Strone flatly denied it. This annoyed Ben, he was the kind of person who didn't like to take no as an answer and he knew there was a value to the research. Every day that Ben worked at Strone Industries he worked with the machines and computers that were essential to answer the questions about magnetic fields that grappled his mind. With his curiosity and theories mounting he worked within his existing budget to perform tests that satisfied both his defined work criteria and his own Magnetic Field Variance research.
Strone Industries was located near Tampa in St. Petersburg Florida. Twice each day Ben traveled across the Howard Franklin Bridge that connected the two cities. The bridge was often jammed with traffic that only crawled across the miles of water. This gave him a long opportunity to think about the days work. He didn’t know where his research was going to lead. Surely in the early days of collecting data he had no idea it would apply to time travel. It was on a traffic filled, fifty minute crossing of the five mile bridge that the implications came to him of what ultra high power magnetism applied in a particular way could do. Like a light bulb popping on above his head, a whole theory formed that integrated magnetism, gravity, String-Theory and Time/Space relations.
Four Years Ago
“No, gravity and magnetism are different,” he explained his theory to Caroline as they prepared their dinner salads that evening, “but a magnetic field is very similar to a gravitational field.” She was listening, but not completely understanding the techno-babble. Still, she listened, just as he pretended to listen to the poetry verses she often read to him. “The sources are different but the fields are very much alike.” She grabbed a cucumber and started slicing while he cranked the salad spinner. He spun it faster than necessary to dry the lettuce. “To make a gravitational field you need a spinning object of great mass, but to make a magnetic field all you need is power.” The lettuce was portioned out into two large bowls as he continued. “In nature the gravity of a collapsing star warps space, but I believe with enough power I can create a magnetic field that would do the same thing. All I need are the right components,” he said while he topped the salad with tomato, cucumbers, croutons and bacon bits. They sat at the bar that separated their large kitchen from a casual dinning area. A wall of sliding glass doors displayed a purple and crimson sunset over Tampa Bay.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Said Caroline as she took a small fork of salad. “What would that accomplish? What could you do with a giant magnetic field that warped space?”
“It wouldn’t have to be giant, just powerful,” he clarified. “If theorists are correct, and string theory has any truth behind it, the field could be used to create a transport to a parallel universe or even time travel.”
Caroline stopped, her fork lifted half way to her mouth. “You mean like Well’s Time Machine,” she asked. “Are you serious?”
“Theoretically, but who knows if it’s actually possible. No one knows what’s in a black hole.” Ben munched his salad, contemplating the question. “All I know is that with what I’ve seen in Magnetic Field Variance, a super field is possible, but I’m not exactly sure what you’ll get once you have one in the lab.”
“Are you making a black hole in your lab at Strone,” she asked, not believing she mouthed the words.
“No, it’s not in the budget,” Ben quipped back.
Three Months Ago
It would have frightened the neighbors had they been aware of the experimental lab that was built in the garage behind the couples two story, modern home that looked out over Tampa Bay. In front of the house, Bay Shore Boulevard ran south to Ballast Point Park where a monument comme
morated that Jules Gabriel Verne made Tampa Town the launch point for the fictional space adventure “From the Earth to the Moon”, written in 1865. Now over a hundred and fifty years later, the neighborhood was the site of another experiment.
Ben had put the lab together when his theories and experiments expanded beyond the work place. At first he would only spend an occasional hour in the garage tinkering on the computer. But as the months turned into years it became more than a hobby to him. The experiment consumed his thoughts. At work, he performed his duties with half his mind someplace else. Strone Industries became just a job, a means to accomplish his goal. His real passion was the project behind the house where he spent more and more of his time.
Caroline occasionally commented on the time and money that went into the garage project, but she knew it meant a lot to him. She never felt neglected, though sometimes she did notice his mind wandered. Always kept informed of the progress, Caroline often questioned what it would lead to.
“It would all be worth it in the end,” he assured her, even though he no idea what they would gain.
The couple did feel a financial strain. Their Bermuda vacation was canceled, and they had to settle on visiting relatives in Michigan. It was a nice trip, but it wasn’t Bermuda. They were surviving on Caroline’s paycheck alone, which wasn’t enough for the upscale lifestyle they enjoyed. All of Ben’s wages from Strone went to cover the credit cards that had been allocated to the project. The cards had been maxed out for a while, and collectors were calling regularly. All they could pay was a fraction of the monthly payments. Ben had been forced to look to creative ways to acquire the last few components that he needed. An old friend from Coil Corp supplied two pole transformers on a “no questions asked” basis. They cost him only one hundred dollars each. The transformers were old and one of them slowly leaked PCB’s into a tray, but they worked. They were hung inside the corner of the garage with wires salvaged from a demolished building connected them to a control panel that supplied power to the project. The machine was beginning to take shape. Ben assured her their troubles would be over soon.
He wasn’t exactly working blind. He knew that space and time were related, and when one was warped, so would the other be affected. His machine would warp space, but he wasn’t sure what this would accomplish or how it would effect time. He did know the experiment wouldn’t dilate time, or slow its’ passing. Nor would it challenge the law of relativity which states that time moves slower for objects moving faster. This machine would do something completely different. There were theories regarding warped space that guided him, but blending together Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity was new territory to everyone except a few physicists. His machine would create more than an electromagnetic field, or “London Moment”, as other researchers in Europe had named a similar event they had created. Ben developed a design that allowed the fields to be manipulated and magnified a thousand times with independently controlled spinning superconductors. The “Gravito-metric London Moment”, as Ben named his high power event, would open a wormhole in space or a passage through time, Ben hypothesized.
One Month Ago
“I think I’m ready to go to full power,” Ben announced as he plopped down in front of the television. The soft pillowy chair almost consumed him. His knees and his head were all that Caroline could see of him from her usual comfy spot in the TV room.
Concerned with the possibility of danger, she pulled her attention away from the television. It was only reruns, she thought, the satellite service had been disconnected months ago. Caroline always had worries about the project, though she never voiced them. They were mostly financial worries. It was like an expensive hobby for Ben, and she tolerated it. She knew of other wives that watched their husbands waste thousands of dollars on motorbikes, gambling, or countless other things. The husband of one friend at work spent thousands of dollars on hunting trips. The project in the garage was not so bad, she rationalized, and at least Ben was at home with her.
Now, at the moment of truth, she wondered if her husband was as brilliant as he seemed. Could he really be an Einstein? She had the sinking feeling deep inside her that he was not the genius inventor he wanted to be. Could she rescue him from that despair if he failed? Could there even be greater dangers? What ever the case, she loved him and would support him in any way she could. “Do you think it will be safe,” she asked as she switched off the set, knowing Ben wanted to talk.
“The machine is not dangerous,” he said. “Compare it to a door. If everything goes smoothly it will just swing open.”
“What if there is a storm on the other side,” Caroline asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben confessed. “Who knows what will happen when I warp space so far it ruptures. I really have no idea.” He was sinking farther into the feathery down cushions of the chair as he relaxed. “Only theories,” he said.
“Like what? I know you’ve told me your thoughts before, but what is your latest guess on what’s going to happen.”
“Hypothesis, not guess,” Ben corrected.
They both laughed. ”Okay, hypothesis then, what do you think will happen.” She asked again, loving to hear his voice get excited about his work.
Ben sat quiet for a moment. “I believe there are multiple time and space dimensions. String theory predicts a finite amount, but I think time could have limitless possible dimensions. Call them realities.”
Ben had sat up and was pulling himself from the chair so he could be seen. “If the machine opens a worm hole it will be a passage to another space/time reality.” He said.
Caroline was on the edge of her seat too, listening, and trying to understand. “Will it go to the past, or to the future?” She asked.
“It can’t go to the future. We are at the furthest point of our time line, the present. There is no future to our reality but the one we make. But, there is a past.”
Caroline was thrilled with the new theory. She had not heard this before now. “How far back will it go? Could we travel through it?” She asked. She had always loved history.
“Traveling through a worm hole is questionable,” Ben answered. “How far back it will go is another issue.”
“What do you mean?”Caroline asked.
“The worm hole can’t reach further back in time than the moment that the machine is activated.”
“What?” Caroline looked confused.
Ben explained. “The machine is not a vehicle that you ride on through time. It’s a machine bolted in place, inside our garage. You can’t go someplace that it does not exist. Once I turn it on tomorrow, that is the only place it will take you.”
“Where?” She asked, still confused.
“The garage,” Ben answered, “tomorrow morning, August 25th 2009.” He stood up. “I know it’s not as exciting as going back to the signing of the declaration of independence. But you can’t travel back earlier in time then when the machine first existed.”
”So, it will only take us to our garage.” Caroline’s confusion did not ease. “But, that’s where it’s at.”
“Exactly,” Ben agreed. “And three years from now, if the machine is left operating that long, the garage is exactly where the worm hole will lead, except to the past date of August 25th 2009.”
A flash of understanding rushed over Caroline’s face. ”Oh, I get it now.” She said.
“It’s only a theory.” Ben explained as he settled back into the overstuffed chair.
“Sure,” Caroline sighed, trying to grasp the abstract concepts.
“There is more to it than that,” Ben continued. ”When I say the worm hole would lead to our garage on that date, I really mean our garage on that date, in another dimension; another ‘reality’” he corrected.
“Of course,” Caroline chimed, getting lost in theoretical physics again.
“It’s not too complicated really,” Ben continued. “When the machine g
ets turned on for the first time nothing should happen. We are the alpha reality, the lead timeline. At least, I think we are.” He smiled.
“I hope we are anyway.” Caroline nodded, not really sure why, as he continued his explanation. “Our reality is the only reality there is, until we make another one.”
“We make a reality,” she asked.
“Yes! Let’s say after the machine is on for two hours I toss a rubber ball into the worm hole. I would be creating a second reality. The second reality would be exactly like our own up until the point that the machine is functional. At that point, two hours in our past, but in another reality, a ball bounces out of the machine as soon as it is turned on.” Ben tried to explain it another way. “The worm hole connects two different points in time, in two different realities.”
Caroline smiled, now understanding. “It has to be a different reality because a ball didn’t come out of our machine when you started it.”
“Exactly,” Ben said, happy she seemed to really understand.
“Wow,” she said as they both sat quietly grasping the complications of it all. “How many realities can there be?” She asked.
“As many as we make.”
“Are we like Gods?” Her question was left unanswered as the evening slowly turned to night and they sat contemplating the answer.
Tuesday, August 25
Caroline was usually at work on a Tuesday morning, but she took a personal day to be with Ben in the garage lab. She hadn’t spent a lot of time working with him on his project, just an occasional hour or two when he needed an extra hand, and she was amazed at the size and complexity that the machine had become. Ben had rearranged his work schedule at Strone Industries to work three days of twelve hours. Thirty six hours was still considered fulltime, and it allowed him two additional days each week to put into his home project.
For the first time Caroline realized the immensity of it. She sat at the control desk where a computer displayed several status reports, and key readings. Next to it, where Ben sat, a panel of dials and switches controlled the machine. Ben called it a Mass Simulator, because that is what it did. If all went as planned, an area of defined space would react as if it contained great mass. At one end of the large garage Ben had built a smaller room, about 10 feet wide and the length of the building. The left side of the room had a door that allowed access, and through a wall of Plexiglas, the machine inside could be seen. The left end of the machine Ben called the ring, for obvious reasons. Built of wood and shinny aluminum, a circular frame evenly spaced about twenty large coils. They reminded Caroline of giant rolls of thread. Side by side the coils circled the frame creating a five foot ring. Caroline thought it looked similar to a giant rotary engine of a propeller driven airplane. From her seat she viewed the ring of coils from the side. Each coil was wrapped with copper tubing that snaked into a pump unit and tank on the floor. Ben explained it was the cooling unit.
Heavy rails on the floor allowed a second section of the machine to be rolled to the right, away from the ring. This unit was called the generator. Where the ring was a fixed 5 foot diameter, the ring of coils on the generator could be adjusted to a smaller diameter, and this ring was designed to spin. It all looked pretty impressive. All the wires and coils and hardware dizzied her. Where had it all come from? She wondered. This really seemed more than she thought it ever would be, and what scared her most was that it looked like it really could do something.
8:00 am
The floor vibrated and Caroline felt the quiet hum of the transformers when the large master power switch was flipped. Nothing moved inside the room, but several small yellow indicator lights lit up on the machine. With a flip of a small switch on the control panel a pin light of red blinked on. Ben seemed satisfied. “I’m, going the cycle up the Ring Coils now.” He said, as he turned a dial on the control panel.
“Is it working?” Caroline asked.
“So far so good,” Ben answered. He pointed out that the cooling coils were frosting up. A fine mist rose from them as the heat from the unit evaporated the frozen condensation. Then he pointed to the red pin light. “That is a laser that passes in front of the ring to a receptor on the other side.” As the mist passed over the laser’s path it could be seen as a tiny horizontal beam of light. “We’ll need to keep an eye on that light beam.” He said.
Caroline watched as Ben flipped a few switches and turned a knob that brought the machine to action. The Generator started spinning and the coils slid into a tight, angled formation making a cone-like arrangement. All the coils were aimed at the center of the stationary ring on the left, then the generator moved along the floor rails, closer to it.
“I’m taking it to full power.” He said. The floor vibration grew slightly as the motors on the generator revved up to high speed. The machine was not silent, but it was not loud. The hum that emanated from the room was more the sound from the air being disturbed by the spinning coils, than anything else.
Caroline felt excited to be part of the experiment, curious of what would happened next and happy to be working close with her husband on his dream. She watched the tiny beam of red light as the machine came up to speed. At first no change was visible. Then, it slowly appeared to be pulled toward the ring, bending it into a smooth shallow arch. “The light beam is bending.” She said. At that point Ben activated another switch and the generator started moving down the rail to the right, away from the ring. The generator coils separated, doubling the diameter of the spinning coils. The laser beam arched deeper into the ring, and as it passed into the circle of coils a flash of light filled the void, then it turned to black.
“Look!” Ben shouted, pointing at the ring. “Something is happening inside the ring.”
It looked like ripples of color within a field of black. You could no longer see through the ring and to the other side. Your vision was blocked by a shimmering black veil inside the ring. The machine wasn’t straining or shaking. It showed no effort in the task it was performing. The machine and the little room seemed perfectly at ease bending the laser beam into the center of the ring. The beam of light never reached the other side. It seemed unnatural to both of them, but it was happening.
Ben quickly hit a switch on the panel and a digital clock mounted on the wall started to count time.
“Is that a worm hole?” Caroline asked.
“There’s only one way to find out.” He answered.
10:00 am
The digital clock displayed that 1:50 had passed. The area in the center of the ring continued to shimmer with a colorful random light pattern on the field of black. Ben was pleased to comment that nothing had come out of the machine, reminding her that if something had, their reality would have been the product of another. The two of them had been updating a text document that Ben created on the computer. It was a message they planned to send into the worm hole. They burnt it onto a disk and inserted it into a case. When the event clock displayed 2 hours, Ben tossed the disk into the shimmering light pattern within the ring.
Caroline half wanted it to fly out the other side of the ring, but it didn’t.
8:10 am
Caroline noticed it first. Something was happening inside the diameter of the ring.
“Look!” Ben shouted, pointing at the ring. It looked like ripples of color within the circular portal. You could no longer look through the ring and to the other side. Your vision was stopped at the precipice of the ring and danced over the shimmer of color on a curtain of black. Ben quickly hit a switch on the panel and a digital clock mounted on the wall started to count time.
“Is that a worm Hole?” Caroline asked.
Before Ben could answer, a flat square object came out of the left side of the ring and landed on the floor. It slid a foot and stopped before they recognized it as a jewel case with a CD inside.
“Apparently we are not the Alpha Reality,” Ben said as he walked to the d
oor.
The thought of being something less than original confused Caroline. They had talked of alternate realities, but she had always known they were the real thing. Now, she didn’t know what to think. Ben did not seem upset by the revelation. “What does that make us?” She asked in a broken voice.
Ben became aware of his wife’s emotional distress. She was upset by her misunderstanding that they were something less than they were a moment before. “We are the same.” He answered. “We were born and lived our own lives. We invented, built and started a mass simulator that does warp time!” Ben was excited. Although it seemed to Caroline that they were not actually the first to achieve the goal, Ben did not feel that disappointment. He had accomplished what he set out to accomplish. He stepped into the room and grabbed the disk. “Now let’s see what I had to say to me,” he said with a smile.
11:10 am
Ben half guessed a response from the second reality would take an hour, but he didn’t know for sure. As the event timer hit 3 hours the CD case plopped out of the ring and slid across the floor. Even expecting it, the arrival of the case startled Ben, and Caroline nearly jumped from her seat. They both ran to the door to retrieve it. Electric excitement filled the room as Ben let Caroline get the CD and load it into the computer. The couple read the file and looked at each other in amazement and wonder. All Ben’s theories seemed to be correct. Caroline didn’t know weather to scream or cry.
The next few hours were spent with a series of disk trades, and experiments, between the two realities. They had learned that a time piece could be passed between realities without loosing a second. The two dimensions were connected and moving together, progressing into their own futures. They had learned that up until the disk came out of the ring in the second reality, that the two realities had been exactly the same. Their jobs, their home, their finances were all identical. The weather outside, the flower blooms in the garden, the sailboats skirting across the bay, all were the same. The only differences were the first person actions and reactions between the researchers. Life outside the experiment continued in duplicate. The final experiment of the day showed them that a mouse in a small cage could pass back and forth between realities unharmed. This cultivated the seed of an idea to visit themselves in the past.
9 pm
“What do you think they are doing right now,” Caroline asked. They were finally relaxing for the night, and celebrating. Ben was drinking iced rum and coke while Caroline sipped a red wine. They sat on the patio, under a clear sky, full of stars, while a bay breeze kept them comfortable. The machines’ hum was barely audible as it continued to warp space in the garage.
“I bet they are having a cocktail, just like we are.”
“What’s next?” She asked.
Ben said what both of them had been thinking. “I think we need to visit them.”
“Sure, but shouldn’t we tell someone, or get a patent or something. This will solve all of our money problems, just like you said it would.”
“Even though this thing is all I’ve been thinking about for years, I’m not sure how to sell it.” Ben sighed as he took a long drink. “The government would probably make it classified and pay less for it than any big corporation. Still, that’s probably what we should do. It could be considered a threat to the nation.”
“I wondered about that.“ Caroline admitted. “But, if anything done in the other reality can’t affect ours, how can it be a threat?”
After a thought, Ben answered, “A person could be kidnapped from a different reality, tortured for information, and not even be missing.”
“Our government would love it.” Caroline added.
Ben had been so consumed with building the machine and the physics involved that he barely thought about the ethics of using it. The situation dropped on them like a bomb. Any government would use the machine to have an advantage in world politics. Any big business would use it to gain an advantage in the market. There was no question that the machine was valuable. It was obvious that whoever controlled it had a clear advantage in business or government. Whoever controlled it had to be trusted.
Caroline broke the silence. “Why did you build it?” she asked.
“I had to see if it could be done, if I could do it.” In his voice she noted the pride of his accomplishment. He stood and walked to the wet bar in the corner of the sun room and made another drink for himself. The ice rang like a bell as it dropped into the empty glass. When he returned he carried the near empty wine bottle for her and poured. “I think I was caught up in the physics.”
“You said everything would be alright, like we would get rich from the discovery. Bill collectors are calling every day. We need to do something.” She knew that she was excited and she was getting a little loose lipped from the wine. She had to watch what she said, but her mixed emotions regarding the machine began to surface. “If we can’t somehow pay for that thing, it’s going to kill us.”
“Maybe I can get a paper published on the physics of time. That will bring in some extra money, a few hundred anyway.”
Caroline sighed. “Your work is worth so much more than that. If you publicize your theories someone else will build a machine. It should be you to get the glory.” The wine was going down easier then it was earlier, she was starting the get drunk and her thoughts were bouncing back and forth between selling it to a big corporation for a million dollars or the government. Ben had different thoughts.
“Why couldn’t we just keep it to ourselves for a while?”
“That won’t solve any of our money problems,” she reminded him.
“If we sold the machine to a big company they would use it to make a profit, so why can’t we?”
How could reaching into the past help us make money?” Caroline asked.
“We are the alpha reality and we know the future of any past reality we create. We could win the lottery, or go to the dog track and win on long shots. All we need to do is to go back a few days.”
Caroline nodded. “Or, we could find partners in the past who need some extra cash as badly as we need it.” They both looked at each other over the rim of their glasses. “Know any?”
Laughing now, Caroline was seeing the end to their troubles. It really was time to celebrate. Skipping over to the wet bar on the side of the patio she opened the ice box and pulled out a bottle of Champaign. Ben took it from her and helped get the foil off and pop the cork. When he looked up Caroline had shed her clothes and was slipping into the dark waters of their pool. She was beautiful. In the moonlight, her perfect breasts and shapely hips, beckoned him. “It’s time to celebrate,” she cooed with a flirting smile. He slipped out of his clothes and joined her; together they would drink straight from the bottle.
August 30
Five days before, the connection with the other reality was broken by shutting off the machine. When they needed to, they would start it up again and connect to a new reality five days behind them, again on Aug 25th when the mass generator first powered up. Ben and Caroline had been busy collecting newspapers and watching the odds on the sports pages. With a bright red marker all the long shot winners and lottery results were circled.
The Florida lottery paid out millions weekly, but it was monitored by the government and would take time to pay out. The big number teased them, but it wasn’t an option. Tampa had other options. There were two dog tracks less than an hour away. Thousands of dollars could be won on dog racing nightly. Not too far away was the Tampa Jai Ala fronton. Wagers were placed before the rounds and the winnings could be huge. The state also offered horse racing and off site betting on races across the country. The Seminole Indians offered poker and casino gambling at a resort hotel near the fair grounds. There was no shortage of ways to risk your money. But their plan eliminated the risk.
The real question was if they should covertly travel to the past and gamble, or work with their second r
eality duplicates. The duplicates were in dept and over the barrel, just as they themselves were. They would love to have the benefit of knowing the winning dogs at the track. And, shortly after the mass generator is started up, the duplicates would be thinking similarly. Ben and Caroline figured they would need to be included. It would be almost impossible to pass back and forth each night, five or six evenings in a row, and not be discovered. It was decided they would work together and be fair about it. The second reality couple would deserve at least 30 percent more because they would carry the tax burden.
When six days had passed they were ready. They had several hundred dollars in cash ready to wager and all the best long shots circled in red marker on the Tampa Tribune Sports pages. One cheat sheet for each of the next five days had been made for each of the participants in the endeavor. The Alfa couple would go to the Tampa Dog Track and the Beta couple would go to the Seminole Casino and do some off track horse betting. All they had to do was to introduce them selves to the second reality in the same way they had previously. They would go through the motions of passing the CD back and forth, exchanging data and creating a relationship with the second reality, just as they had done the first time. When the evening ended, they would all relax on the patio again, and think of all the possibilities and riches that the machine could offer them. In the morning, after recovering from the hangover, the second reality couple should have it in there minds that their debt needed to be paid before they went public. They would want to get out of debt, maybe get a new car, and then come up with a way to market the machine to the government. They figured it would ultimately get under government control anyway.
August 31
Everything had worked perfectly again. A connection had been made with a reality
six days in their past. They passed a CD back and forth several times and experimented with small caged animals as well. It was incredible to think that they really could connect with a reality that was the same but completely different from their own. Everyone was excited and out of control with the thoughts of what could be done with the machine. It was agreed that at noon on the next day they would be ready for further experiments. At that point Ben and Caroline would suggest the benefits of gambling. It should be accepted without much hesitation, because the Beta reality had surely thought about it the night before.
9 PM
“What do you think they are doing right now?” Caroline asked. They were finally relaxing for the night. Again, Ben was drinking his favorite cocktail while Caroline sipped a red wine. They sat on the patio, under a clear sky, full of stars, while a bay breeze kept them comfortable. The machines’ hum was barely audible as it continued to warp space in the garage.
“I bet they are having a cocktail, just like we are.”
They looked at each other and laughed. Caroline held a week old paper in her lap glancing at the old news while Ben scanned the race results for the tenth time. They had done there homework and were ready for the next evening at the Dog Track. Caroline would be betting the dogs. It wasn’t until the third race that a dog named Brave heart would take the win at twelve to one. A three hundred dollar bet would bring in over three thousand dollars. Race five had a dog named Clover at sixteen to one. Caroline would place five hundred on that one. The final pick of the evening would be Toledo Sam. The odds were ten to one. By the end of the night they should have over sixteen thousand dollars. Roughly three thousand of that would be taken out for taxes. They would be using there own IDs and numbers. It would be completely legal, and only a little unethical. There were no rules against using time machines. It would be there lucky week!
Ben heard a gasp from Caroline and looked over to her. Her face was frozen by what she read in the paper. “What is it?” He asked.
“You got to look at this,” she said getting out of the lounger and heading to the patio table where the light was better. She laid out the paper and pointed to the headline that read: “Four Dead after Shootout!”
“What’s that about?” Ben asked.
“Listen to this.” Caroling began reading. ”Police arrive early Sunday morning to find four suspected drug dealers dead of gunshot wounds. Inside their car was a box containing a large amount of cocaine and a duffel bag with 1.6 million dollars. “
Ben was silent while he processed the story. It explained that drug traffic through the port had been increasing. Despite police and port authority efforts much of it was getting to the streets. Large quantities were sold to out of state dealers, and they suspected this was an out of state buy that went bad. Two of the victims were from Kentucky, and two were known local dealers. The next morning police found ear witnesses who heard noises that may have been gunshots around 2am but they did not report the noises.
Ben’s mind was reeling but Caroline was way ahead of him. “We were so caught up in looking for long shots that we missed the news. This is exactly what we need. All we have to do is get there after the shoot out, but before the police find them, and take the money!”
“When did this happen?” Ben Asked.
Caroline flipped the paper over finding the front page date. “It’s the August 27th paper.” She answered.
“They find the scene tomorrow morning.”
“We need to do it tonight! Right now the second reality versions of us are celebrating their first contact and wondering what they’ll do with the machine. We were in a drunken stupor by midnight.”
Caroline recalled, “I hadn’t been that drunk in a long time, it was a bit too much celebration for me!”
“We need to jump back about 1am, there time, and do it,” Ben said.
Caroline flopped down into her lounger. “We’ve got a few hours to kill. I could use a nap”
Ben jerked in response to her comment. “How can you sleep? My head’s spinning.”
“Listen honey,” she soothed him, “we are closer now to having all our problems solved then ever before. It’s as simple as going to the post office and picking up a package. Relax, it will be fine.” She was right, Ben thought. Everything they needed to know was printed in black and white. Still, he had a hard time relaxing and never slept as the clocked ticked into the night.
3am
They were standing before the curtain of shimmering black. It was time to take a step into the past. A little fear upset there stomachs. Caroling felt jittery inside, and Ben had weak knees, but wouldn’t admit it. “We know the trip doesn’t harm an animal.” He said. “The mouse made it back and forth several times, and it still traveled the maze without a problem.” Even knowing it was safe, they couldn’t help but feel nervous.
“It’s time,” Caroline said and they stepped through the ring together.
There was no tunnel and there was no visual experience as illustrated in so many science fiction movies. It was anticlimactic. They just stepped into and out of a mechanical ring circled by electrical coils that hummed with electricity. They were in their garage, right where they started. It was like walking through a mirror and stepping into the reflection. With a raise eyebrow Ben looked over at Caroline, and was surprised to find her almost giggling with a smile. She was exhilarated; the adventurer in her personality was released. Like a character in a great novel, she was living out the classic story of time travel, and she loved it.
They quietly passed through the door on the side of the garage and walked down the stone walk to the driveway. To their right they could see their pool and patio. They paused to look through the hedges at their own history. Exhausted from celebration and sex they could see themselves passed out on the loungers next to the pool. Caroline grabbed Bens’ hand and whispered into his ear. “That was a great night.”
Rounding the corner of the walk they got into their own car parked on in the driveway. It was an older Ford Taurus, but the car was dependable. Ben pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. As expected, the tumblers were exactly the sa
me and the door opened without a problem. They pulled onto Bayshore Boulevard and started toward downtown Tampa. The port was on the opposite side of town and they were silent as they drove the short distance. Once they were close to the scene, Ben pulled off the road and parked under the cross-town expressway. “We should be able to hear the gunshots from here,” he said and they rolled down the windows to listen. It was the bad side of town, but they were watching their surroundings and to their pleasure the streets seemed empty.
It was a little after 2 pm when they heard the gun fight. Ben thought there were ten shots fired, but Carolyn counted twelve. After a short pause Ben started to the scene. They were headed for an old barn on the end of Alice Street, called the Crab Shack. It sat near the waters edge; in fact the back side of the building was on stilts above the bay. Local fishermen tie up and sell crabs and shrimp from the structure. A dock alongside the barn ran out into the bay about twenty yards and Ben saw several small boats tied to it. Everything seemed quiet and normal. On the far side of the barn was a gravel parking lot, at first glance it looked empty, but as his headlights swung around, they lit the scene. Two cars were parked close to the old barn. One car was a black Nissan and the other was a blue Corvette. He could see two bodies on the ground between the cars. A third body was laid over the hood of the corvette, and the fourth looked to be slumped over the steering wheel of the Nissan. Ben jammed the car into park and jumped out his door. He raced to the back of the Nissan and took a look inside. It was dark but with his headlights lighting the scene he saw a sports duffel bag in the back seat. Between him and the car door a small black man lay dead on the gravel. Blood soaked his white shirt, he had been shot twice. Still clutching a small gun, his open eyes stared blankly into the night. Stepping over the body Ben grabbed the handle and opened the car door. He heaved the duffel out and set it next to the body only long enough to pull the zipper an inch or two and see money inside. Satisfied, he grabbed the straps and ran back to his car, tossing it into the back seat.
“Hurry! Go!” Caroline was urging him. He jumped into his seat and grabbed the gearshift, but some movement caught his eye. As he glanced up a shot rang out and punched a small hole through his windshield.
“Hurry! Go!” Caroline commanded again. Ben threw the car into reverse and hit the gas. Gravel sprayed from the tires as the car jerked around. From between the cars one of the drug dealers had gotten to his feet. It was the guy from the hood of the Corvette. Ben could see he had been shot more than once, his shirt was covered with blood and his pants were soaked as well. Even with the injuries, he was on his feet and stumbling in his direction. Ben jammed the car into drive and headed out of the lot. Just as he hit the solid pavement of the street, the side window of the Taurus exploded into a thousand chips and Caroline screamed.
“I’m shot!” She exclaimed.
Speeding back toward town Ben looked at his wife. Pale and clearly in pain, she held her hand over the right side of her chest. Blood slowly oozed from between her fingers. She rocked and grimaced as tears flowed from her eyes.
“How could I have gotten you into this? I should have never let you come.” He apologized. The car was racing near 80 mph through the empty downtown streets. He ran the lights and shot over the Hillsborough River Bridge back onto Bayshore Boulevard. Just ahead was the turnoff for Tampa General Hospital. He headed for the ramp.
“No, no, take me to our hospital.” Caroline pleaded.
Their home was almost mile down the road. “Can you make it?” Ben asked, “Are you sure?”
She nodded as the wind ripped through the shattered window and blew her hair. Ben could smell the salty iron scent of blood, but he aimed his car home and pressed the gas to the floor. Her pale skin glistened with sweat as every streetlight raced by. She coughed once and blood sprayed the windshield as they pulled into the yard.
Ben was out of the car and to her side in an instant. He flung the door open and started to pick her out of the vehicle when he realized it was too late. She fell from the car with lifeless wide eyes. Her whole right side was covered with blood. She was gone. Ben fell to his knees, horrified and ashamed, and clung to his wife. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he realized what he had done. His temples throbbed as he strained a muffled curse at himself. He couldn’t loose her, he thought, and he hung to her for a long time.
Sept. 1
“What do you mean it’s September 1st?” She asked. It took her a few moments to get her thoughts together. She was still recovering from the night of celebration. “Yesterday was the 25th.”
Ben held up the paper. It was the September first edition. “I’m still trying to put it together myself.” He said. “According to my log book,” Ben had collected all of his notes and journal. All the documents were scattered around the table where he sat. “We’ve lost our recent memory.”
“Huh?” Carolyn questioned as she lifted her hung-over body out of the lounger and stumbled to the table. She gently took a seat. Her head pounded and her whole body trembled and ached. She hadn’t partied like that in years. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. “What’s going on?” She asked.
“All I know for sure is that the connection is broken and we’ve lost six days of memory.” Carolyn glanced at the garage and finally noticed that the humming of the machine was absent.
Ben handed her the September 1st issue of the Tampa Tribune. “What the - I remember we made a connection and then it all goes black.”
“Look here,” Ben handed her a log book. Written in his handwriting was an account of the evening of the first connection. It was exactly as she remembered. She turned the pages and found five additional daily entries. “They came across to our reality?” She asked, reading the entries.
“Apparently they did. They were five days ahead of us, and that span of time has something to do with our memory loss.”
Carolyn was reading the log, “What’s this about money?”
“They came back here the evening we started the machine. They were going to help us gamble ourselves out of debt, but we never did it.”
Carolyn glanced over the bet sheets and odds. “What happened?”
“This,” Ben said as he handed her another newspaper.
Carolyn read the headline and skimmed the article. “How did that affect our plans,” she asked.
Ben smiled and gestured to his side where there was a black duffel bag. “It wasn’t a million dollar drug deal like the story says. It was a four million dollar deal. They took the money and split it with us!” Carolyn stared at the duffel not understanding what he was saying, and then slowly pieced together what he was saying.
The Present
It was only three o’clock in the afternoon but Ben was home from work. He pulled his new convertible Thunderbird into the garage. The transformers that once hung in the corner were now gone, as was the entire machine. Strone Industries sold Bens research to the department of defense and made a tidy profit. Ben was part of the deal. His new job as a consultant for the government allowed him to work close to home, at the Macdill Air Force Base. Ben loved the ten mile drive down Bayshore Boulevard to the base. The bay view was beautiful, with sailboats and the occasional dolphin arching into the waves. With the warm wind in his hair he didn’t have a care in the world. The black duffel bag had been emptied into a small safe that sat in the corner of his bedroom closet. His stress level was down, his debts were paid off, and his wife loved him. Life was good.
Time Travel and Dimensional Journeys Page 4