Investors, they’ll invest a million in some idiotic dot com idea but they won’t invest any money in inventions these days. I presented them with my invention, the electromagnetic chair and they kept asking me if it would work in space or not. It would but I guess my answer wasn’t good enough for them because after two hours of presenting them with cost projections and profitability projections they said thank you we’ll get in touch with you. Fairly simple gadget too, all it is is a chair that creates a electromagnetic field for a person to sit on and it is extremely comfortable too. This is my fifteenth invention since I started “inventing” things five years ago. I quit my job because I had a dream about a handy little hand tool that a lot of people use today. I made a bunch off of it, but I spent a lot of it on developing my next few inventions which didn’t do so well. Oh I have enough to live on and take care of my family for several more years adequately but I get very bored just sitting around the house twiddling my thumbs.
I have several inventions I’m working on now, but the chair is the one I’ve pretty much perfected. My other invention that I hope to unveil sometime in the future is a transporter. Yes, just like the star trek gadget. I’m not a physcist or anything, I went to college for a advertising and marketing degree in business. I like to read a lot though and I figured out how I could make one. It takes a Beowulf cluster of computers for all the computing power I need which I have, but the energy is the problem. I will need approxiamately fifty thousand megawatts just to get the thing to start. I have spent months looking for a power supply that could do this but I haven’t been able to find one, except maybe the hoover dam and four nuclear power plants. If only this were the future, but alas it’s still only 2004.
How does it work? Well in simple enough terms it uses a modified laser to read whatever item you’re trying to send, inputs the data into the Beowulf cluster and then at light speed sends the data to another Beowulf cluster and a reconstruction laser far away. Voila, a transporter. Only thing I need is enough power to make the thing work. That isn’t going to happen anytime soon, so I’m just doing little inventions on the side for now.
My car, a lexus of course seems to like to quit on me every now and then for no reason these days. I’ve taken it to the shop several times but all the mechanic can tell me is that its some unknown defect in the engine that he has no idea how to fix. That’s where I am now, sitting on the side of the road with the hood up hoping that it’s just a small problem. Of course, there’s nothing I can find that I can fix. Wonderful morning I’m having. I get out my cell phone to call my wife who is probably at home watching price is right on the tv. She’s another story. I love her, but she is just a bit too nagging these days for my taste. I don’t know why either. She’s got everything she could possibly want and she doesn’t have to work anymore because of my inventions. Our kids are almost out of the house, Jerard is eighteen and going to college this fall. Frannie is out of the house and living in an apartment in town, but she is still constantly at the house. Oh, I’m forty three and my wife is forty five.
“Honey, it’s me. The lexus broke down again. Can you come and get me?” I ask when she answers after seven rings.
“Why should I? Did you get those investors to invest in your chair thingy?” she asks.
“No, I didn’t and why should you come get me? Because if I don’t get home I won’t be able to look for more investors and you won’t have a husband to pay your bills!” I said starting to raise my voice.
“Alright, alright but when you get home you’re going to have to take out the trash and the basement needs cleaning from the party Jerard had last night too.” She answered.
“What party? When did I say he could have a party? And why can’t he clean it up himself?” I asked, almost yelling now.
“ Oh he asked me two weeks ago and I said okay. It was just a few of his friends. He can’t clean it up because he had to go to work this morning, remember?” she said.
“ Well it can just wait until he gets home from work. The boy needs to be more responsible. I have my own work to do. “ I said. Jerard works for a small advertising firm in the mail room. They often have “emergencies” that he has to attend to. Although what those could possibly be in a mail room I have no idea. I think the kid’s just lying to get out of stuff. Tried to get a straight answer out of him but all he says is “Whatever, dad” and walks away.
“No, it can’t wait. I have friends coming over for a makeup party and we will need to use the basement if you’re going to be working in the office upstairs. “
“Why can’t you clean it up yourself?”
“Oh I have to get ready for my friends. Ok, Joe sweetiepie?” she said in her sweet voice. That voice infuriates me and also turns me into mush at the same time.
“Fine, just hurry up, come get me.” I said closing the cell phone without saying goodbye. The lexus has gps and lowjack built into it. Her car has a locator system in it that will find me easy enough so I don’t have to tell her where I am everytime the thing decides to quit. I called the towing company that I use to come get the car fifteen minutes earlier and take it to my “mechanic”.
She showed up, finally about twenty minutes later looking beautiful as usual. Sarcasm, wonderful tool. Anyways she got me home and I took the trash out and cleaned up the mess that was Jerard’s. After that I headed to my office which was also my laboratory for all of my inventions.
I had a desk with my computer and filing cabinets right beside it. I went over to the filing cabinets and opened my briefcase that I had taken to the invenstor’s meeting. I found the file folder for investor’s stuff and put all of the projections and proposal papers into it. I thought about just burning the stuff, but I had learned that if I kept all of my past stuff, eventually I would need it for another invention or something. I had stuff in that filing cabinet from 1990 when I was still working at Mcgruffin and Neals.
Mcgruffin and Neals was the advertising company that I worked at for five years. I quit when I burnt out over an advertising campaign that was my first lone assignment. Why did I burn out? Oh there were several factors including my coworkers, my boss and my family. I had one “friend” that was helping me with the project but all he wanted to do was date all the secretaries and put me down about how sad my “family” life was. My boss, well he didn’t respect me one bit even though I stood up to him on several occasions and it was only by luck that I got the advertising campaign to work on as it was. The guy that had been assigned to it before had quit suddenly with no reason and with most of the other ad exec’s on vacation I got lucky. He would call me nightly at exactly the same time to see how I was doing on the “project” and would praise my “friend” about what he did at work that day. Nothing, about me. My family was giving me difficulties as well at the time. Melissa, my wife had just been fired from her job because one of the interns she was working with found out about some money she had been “borrowing” from the petty cash fund and told her boss. Melissa told me she was going to pay the money back after she got paid that week but she didn’t get the chance. She worked at a stock broker’s office as a cpa and you know how stock broker’s can be about money. To top it all off, the car I had at the time decided it didn’t want to work anymore and I didn’t have the money for a new or even a used one. Oh and Jerard was having health problems that I won’t go into, because that was really a scary and angry time for me.
So I turned to
inventing things after all of that. Took all of my savings for my first
invention but I made money at it and all the pressures of life left me for
awhile, anyways. My computer has been an outlet for me though, back then I
didn’t have the money for a computer. I have friends all over the world with
the thing now. A lot of tthem are inventors of course
but not all. Jackal is from japan and he’s in the
military on a base there. Then there’s shybunny,
she’s an artist in
Turned on my computer and sat down at the desk after closing up the file cabinet. It booted to my email program and I scanned threw them. Just the usual stuff mostly. No spam thankfully, I don’t publish my email address except to my friends and it’s a combination of letters and numbers. Then I came to the last one downloaded. It said, Come to the Lokor’s hotel at six this evening. I have interest in your latest invention, Joe. It was from a Mark Ericson and the originating ip came from the Pentagon. I didn’t know anybody at the Pentagon and I don’t know why anyone from there would be interested in a magnetic chair. Only people that new about my inventions were my friends online and they knew enough to not tell anyone. Maybe they want it for a military application to keep the soldiers but’s in tip top shape. I laughed aloud at that. I’m by nature a curious person so I decided I would go see the man and I could get out of the house away from my nagging wife. Never know, they might buy my invention.
I emailed and im’d my friends for half the day and by then it was dinner
time so I started dinner because Melissa was still wagging on with her friends
downstairs. I have diabetes so I like to prepare my meals because Melissa
doesn’t and she won’t eat the stuff I eat. I gathered some stuff out of the
fridge and ate it quick because it was nearly
I had to use her
blue buick regal but I had
her keys on my key ring so I didn’t have to bother her about that. She’d
probably not mind, but then she has a way of making things bigger then they
are. The Lokor’s hotel is the city’s biggest and
finest hotel we have so it was easy to find. They advertise all over the city
and the gps system featured it as a “travel”
destination. The clock read
“Hello, Joe. I’m Lieutenant Mark Ericson. How are you today?” he asked sitting down opposite me.
“Fine. How are you?” I asked, waving the approaching waitress off with my hand. He hadn’t offered me his hand to shake, surprisingly.
“I am quite well
thank you. Day in the army is like a day in
“Why and how did you find out about my invention?” I asked, still wary of all of this.
“Oh I suggest you read your folder.” He said handing it to me.
The folder had top secret marked all over it and inside as well. I read through the “briefing” as it was called and it was mostly my history in the army which was twenty five years ago. At the end though it had a paper that detailed my “skills” It said that I had an extraordinary understanding of engineering and should be considered for the army corps of engineers. Twenty five years ago I got out of the army after being a grunt for four years. I only enlisted so I could get enough money to pay for college. I was never even approached to be in the corp of engineers.
“Why are you giving me this twenty five years after I got out?” I asked
“When you were in the army, you were tested like all of our recruits are tested for what skills they may possess. We keep these records, permanently. Why? Because the Army must use every resource available to it to be the best Army in the world, including previous enlisted men. We also have people that watch recruits over the years, quietly of course for those skills to develop. I am one of those people, Mr. Graden. Your skills have developed and we have need of them. That is why I come to you today. I know about your “transporter” invention and the Army is very interested in helping you to develop it.” He said and leaned back. He had been leaning forward the entire time and I hadn’t noticed.
“How do you know about my invention? And what gives you the right to spy on me? I will get a lawyer and sue you for invasion of privacy!” I said and got up to leave. Then he said something I will never forget. Something, that changed my life.
“Your invention will and can be something much more Mr. Graden then just a transporter. Your family will be taken care of for the rest of their lives and their progeny will be taken care of I promise you. I cannot say what your invention will develop into here in a public place, but it will change the world in the best way that all of humankind ever wanted to change the world.“
I sat down and just stared at him for several minutes. He didn’t say anything, just stared back at me. I was thinking about all my failed inventions and just how mediocre they all were. Even the ones that did well in the market. Change the world? My stuff? Well the transporter might change the world a little but the way he phrased it I just couldn’t believe that something I made could do that. All my life I had had various problems occur that just limited everything I did and made my life a fairly sad affair for me. I got lucky a few times, Melissa being one of the few times I had tremendous luck and I was very thankful for it. The first invention I created actually being something of a success too, but I had to fight very hard just to get it on the shelves. My kids though, I’m just so afraid I’ve screwed them up somehow with all the problems they are having and giving me. Melissa now I’m just not sure of, whether it’s something I’m doing or its just her but she is a handful these days. I have more stress in my life then when I was working for the advertising firm.
“You’re kidding right? I mean I’ve got a few inventions that have sold ok, but I can’t even get the thing you’re talking about to work-“
“Only because you don’t have enough energy, Mr. Graden.” He interrupted. “We can help you there. And we have to help you, because in helping you we will be helping ourselves and the entire world.”
“Alright, so where do we go from here then? I am interested, but I would like to know what exactly this is all about. This isn’t another Nuclear bomb or something is it?”
“No, Mr. Graden nothing explosive. We are not proposing to build a weapon with your device, I assure you. If you will come with me I will show you our lab and the other people working on our project. I think they will help you to make the right decision.” He rose to leave.
“First, shake my hand.” I said grabbing his arm as he rose.
“Of course, Mr. Graden. I am sorry I didn’t do so earlier. I was rather excited about meeting you.” He replied and shook my hand. Then he walked to the elevator door and I followed as quickly as I could.
We took my car, as he explained that he took a taxi to the hotel and he would like to talk with me in private. He punched in out destination to the gps system and I headed out. On our way to the facility, Mark explained about the observation I had been under for the past twenty five years. It was to my ears fairly benign and harmless. They kept tabs on various people that had been in the arms services and shown some skill in a way that made them interested. The government had been doing this since the country was born because they knew as a new country they would have to be strong and to be strong you must utilize every resource you have, including your citizens. How they kept tabs on me was mostly through public records and they didn’t record any private conversations of mine. How they found out about my transporter? I had signed up for a newsletter on research that the government was doing in this area and the website that published it had certain connections with the government. I had done searches on the website and posted questions on the websites forums that let them surmise what I had built. Some of the parts that I had purchased were from various government agencies and they have to keep records for the GAO or general accounting office if you don’t know the abbreviation as well.
The place we arrived at just looked like a warehouse, no fence around it and no guards like you would expect. I looked at Mark questioningly and he just smiled. He walked up to a door that had a simple combination lock on it, bent down and held his eyelids open with his fingers. A voice said “Identity Confirmed” and the door clicked open. The place was no warehouse inside. The room we entered had a partition that was behind what looked like bullet proof glass and two guards with a bank of monitors beside them.
“Hello Lieutenant, Joe.” The guard sitting down said pushing what looked like a tablet pc through a slit in the glass. A very small slit at that-the tablet pc was maybe a half inch think if that. Mark signed it and handed it to me. I signed it with the small stylus and slid it back through the small slit.
“Hold on Joe. This is an elevator and we go down very fast from here.” Mark said and from the sides of the room small handles appeared so I did as told and grabbed onto one of them.
He was right. The floor seemed to drop out from under me and in about a minute we stopped. Another door but this one looked as if it could take a nuclear blast and not even be dented. There was a palm scanner and an iris scanner with a small speaker underneath it in the door.
“Agent No 48923 and guest requesting entrance.” Mark said while he put his eye and hand to the door.
“Granted. ID confirmed. Joe Graden, please press your hand to the palm scanner so I may record it for future reference. Thank you.” A very female sounding voice asked.
So I did and the door opened after. I was right about the nuclear blast thing. The door was at least four feet thick with what looked like a electromagnetic locking mechanism. It unlocked silently and swung open silently so it must be using electromagnetism to open. Mark said it was when I asked him.
The room we entered was you could tell a huge lab with computers sitting everywhere and several people working at small cubicles that were made of glass arranged in a semi circle around a large spherical object that looked like something out of star trek or star wars even. A very attractive woman came up to the two of us, smiling. I smiled back forgetting for a few seconds I was even married.
“Hello Mr. Graden I am the lead scientist for this project, Dr Elena Henderson. I am so glad that Mark managed to bring you here. What we are doing will change the world, something that I surmise Mark hinted at already didn’t he?” I shook my head yes “I guess the easiest way to tell you is to show you what we are doing and how we will need your help. Please, follow me.” She said and headed straight for the spherical ball. I followed, all the while looking at her figure.
She opened the door to the object and gestured me inside. There was a view screen mounted on one side and three chairs facing it with what looked to be some kind of restraint system on each. Elena followed me in and shut the door behind us. It was also as silent as the nuclear blast door and it had a small speaker in it. She spoke into it and said to turn off all monitoring. Mark replied that he had and she sat down beside me. She smelled wonderful. She had strawberry blonde hair that smelled wonderful. And her eyes were the bluest you could imagine with an amazing sparkle in them that let you know she was so alive.
She said one word, “Start” and the viewscreen came to life with an image of the solar system. To summarize it for you, the project is attempting to snare a wormhole in outerspace, entice it to connect to this warehouse and using this bubble, time travel. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and I was also wondering why would they need me for something so out there? I also had a small inkling that this was all some sort of scam by some big corporation and they were trying to get me to make stuff for them for free.
“I know you are asking yourself why are they showing me this? Well Mr. Graden we need your transporter technology in order to get this bubble ship into the wormhole with a minimum amount of trouble. A wormhole you see is very similar to a black hole in that it likes to tear things apart when it enters. Once inside the wormhole however, the environment is very stable, just like a tunnel here on earth. Your transporter technology will enable us to transport this bubble ship inside of the wormhole without the problems of being torn asunder. We know however that your technology is in the very early stages and that we will have to supply an immense amount of energy to get it to work correctly. We want you to come work for us for however long it takes to get this to work. We can pay you, but not much as this is a government project. If you choose not to help us, we would have to eliminate you and your family. I know this is harsh, but secrecy is of paramount importance to this project. Even the people in this warehouse do not exactly know what we are doing here and this bubble ship is air tight and surveillance proof. Myself, Mark, a few high level people at the pentagon, and the president are the only people that know what we are doing here. And now you know of course. If you wish to consider your decision, we have several rooms available for you.” She finished and looked at me expectanctly with those wonderfully blue eyes of hers. I didn’t hear half of what she said. I just mumbled out a yes and she said Great.
Over the next
several years I worked at the warehouse from seven in the morning until nine in
the evening six days a week. Elena and I became very good friends over that
time and a lot of the time I wished we could be more, but I always remembered
my wife at the last second. The Government had developed or found a unique power supply
for the system that was amazing. It was as I understood it based on cold fusion
technology that I always thought was impossible, but it worked amazingly. We
tested the power output of the reactor and it was rated at ten thousand
megawatts which was more then enough to power my transportation unit. The group
finished its work on
“Ok, Joe today we test it. Our astronomers have determined the location of a wormhole and we are using the gravity satellites to reposition the wormhole here. You are going to be our guinea pig.” I looked at him in disbelief for a second. “ You knew you would be the guinea pig when you started this didn’t you Joe? I thought it would be obvious, since the transporter technology is your’s.”
“Yeh I guess I did. Where am I going?” I asked looking at the huge steel sphere a little apprehensively.
“We will just do small minute by minute tests today to see if it works okay. This evening we will explain what we need you to do tomorrow. You will be the world’s first chrononaut Joe.”
So we tested it for ten hours. I jumped back and forth in time a few minutes here and there. Nothing seemed amiss to me. I felt great and it got sort of funny when I came into the future and they went huh? What are you doing here? Some of the time it was just seconds after they had sent me back in time and they thought something had gone wrong. We got it sorted out though and everything was fine. At least I thought it was.
That evening I found out what they wanted me to do for them. They wanted me to go back in time before I was married and make sure I never get married.
“Why? What life changing events could my not getting married create? I’m just an inventor and not a great one at that.”
“Joe, you are more important then you could ever imagine. By convincing yourself in the past to not get married to your wife, you will prove to us that we can change the past for the better. You do have problems with your entire family, don’t you?” I nodded. “We know, especially Elena. We are not sure that we can change anything, frankly. There are hundreds of theorists that say we won’t be able to, but there are also a hundred other theorists that say we will be able to. We need to know if we actually can change the past or not, before we try to change the big stuff. We also need to know what kind of effects just changing one small event like your getting married or not will have on the future. Traveling in time is expensive and we cannot afford to waste more time and energy on a project that will not work. You understand me?” Mark said in the conference room that we had worked in for the past six years designing everything.
“Yes, I guess I do. I have always wanted a different life. I love my wife, but lately she has turned into another woman that I know nothing about. I wish I could change that, but I just don’t know how to.”
“How is with the time machine my friend. You can change your life with it. It will be so easy. We have information on your wife and yourself that you can use to effect the change in the past. You will not fail I guarantee it. Trust me. “ Mark smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
I thought for several minutes really hard. Would my life be better if I had never married? I wouldn’t have the kids to clean up after and I wouldn’t have to listen to my wife’s complaining. I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not I raised the kids right because they wouldn’t exist! I could invent without having to worry about whether or not something will sell. I would be lonely and a forty nine year old man though. Could I really start over?
“Alright, I’ll do it. When do I go?”
“Tomorrow morning. Elena will have to go with you because she needs to observe the sphere under actual time travel conditions. We will inject you with a miniature computer that will provide you with all the information you need to do the job. Now, go home and get some sleep.”
I went home, but I didn’t sleep any. I had like six cups of coffee before I left in the morning. The sun was shining in my eye the whole way to the warehouse as if to say, You are not traveling back in time today Joe. Oh well I got there okay and Elena was the only one there. She had two syringes with what she said were the computers that would help me change the past. Big needles and dang it hurt when she poked me in the arm with it. She spoke the command into the sphere to open it and we jumped in.
“Now, Joe the
computer has been set to send us back to
“No, but I guess it will be for the betterment of mankind and all that.” I replied and she smiled her wonderful smile. Something I hadn’t seen from my wife in several years. Well that won’t be a problem anymore after this little trip. She activated the transportation sequence after we buckled ourselves into the seats and the transporter started to hum. It took five minutes of this humming until we heard the computer say,
“Wormhole destination confirmed. Activating transportation system.”
For a few seconds I could swear that I was inside out. Then I heard a loud, sharp click screech sound and I felt normal again. Elena looked at me with a strange look on her face.
“Was that normal?” she asked with a little bit of worry in her face.
“Yep, what I expected. I guess I should have told you, sorry. I was a bit excited I guess to think straight.”
“I understand. No big problem. Just was weird. I’ll turn on the viewscreen so we can see what’s out there. The sensor’s say we are inside the wormhole, but I think we should confirm it visually before we activate the engines.” She said and turned on the plasma viewscreen.
We were inside of the wormhole alright, but with a few suprises. All around us were shafts of pure white light dancing around us in circles. When I say pure, I mean the purest you could ever imagine and the brightest light possible. The light shone so bright from some of them that all you saw was a ball of light. Others though you could see the outline of a person with a halo of light surrounding them. There were hundreds of them around us. Elena and I just stared at the screen for what seemed like hours but in fact was only a few minutes. I broke the silence.
“What are those?”
“The sensors are not picking them up I’m afraid. There is no scientific reason for those to be there. I don’t understand this at all. Are we hallucinating from the effects of the wormhole do you think?” she asked
“I don’t think so, besides you’re the expert in wormholes.”
The lights continued to dance and sway as if to some silent music was moving them to. Then, suddenly one of the lights came forward and entered the sphere. The light being seemed to lessen the intensity of its light and formed into a human that had wings. An angel?
“Hello, is this the correct language for you?” It said. I couldn’t tell if it was female or male frankly.
“Yes, we are peaceful explorers from the planet earth. Who are you?” Elena asked going into first contact mode. We had a briefing on first contact a few weeks ago. One that I didn’t pay any attention to frankly.
“I am Lariel, an angel of god.”
“You’re kidding right? Angel’s don’t exist. They are just a creation of religion to make the masses believe. How does an alien know about Angels? Oh you’re probably a telepath aren’t you. That’s the only way you could be speaking our language.” I said in disbelief.
“No, Joe I am an Angel. God sent me to give you a message. It is thus,
Joe you will not be able to change the past, for I am God
I oversee all that is within time and space for the good of my children
Time is not to be changed by humans because your own wish is to not have this done.
I love you and I always will
That is the message. I will go now as I must. Belief will be yours to accept.”
Then the “Angel” left becoming the brightest of the lights outside the sphere.
We ignored it and continued on our way. I found my wife and stopped the meeting between us, but it didn’t work. We returned to 2010 to find nothing had changed. I was still married to my wife and Elena was still beautiful Elena. It was true what the Angel said. I really didn’t want to change the past because if I had, I never would have met Elena.