The Last Time Traveler

[RVM45]

The Last Time Traveler

Chapter One





Dawson Canada winter 1898

I knew that it got far too cold for antifreeze to stay liquid in the arctic, so I’d drained all the coolant out. That meant the engine was inoperable—but I didn’t need it to travel through time and space.

I sat at the driver’s seat of the step-van. That’s as good a place to steer and navigate through time as any other. Many of the controls were built into the wheel and pedals.

The windshield didn’t truly give me a window into possible touchdown sites. I’d warped the local time and space to give me a simulated fiber-optic periscope type view.

It was a bit blurry, pixilated and without the fine detail an actual window would have given me, but a true window was beyond my capability.

Nonetheless I managed to land a couple miles outside of town, at night and in a snowstorm. I also managed to avoid crushing any witches.

I was wise enough to wear warm clothing—multiple layers of silk, wool, leather and some synthetics. I had the best Mickey Mouse type cold weather boots that I could find, snowshoes and a good hand pulled toboggan.


I was in my early fifties and a year earlier I hadn’t been too fit. Knowing that I’d have to walk several miles in the arctic cold to get to Dawson, I’d trained diligently.

I’d lost over seventy pounds, more than doubled my twenty-repetition squat—since I’d been really out of condition to start—and worked up to walking several miles daily.

Even so, the walk would be demanding—but try as I might, I couldn’t rationalize materializing in the town.

I needed my blood pressure medicine, my diuretics, and anti-gout medicine and while I could get by without insulin, I was much better off with it than without it.

There was four months worth of medicine on my person—damned hard to get when you’re poor.

If, by chance, I got stuck here…

Dropsy isn’t a pretty way to die.

Well I’d need to really bear down and lose as many more pounds of excess fat as possible before the meds ran out—that would help a great deal, but maybe not enough.

I might be able to cobble together a crude time machine in a few months in the 1890s—if money was no problem. Doing it in Dawson in 1898 seemed highly improbable.

Being stuck here would be equivalent to a death sentence. My best plan was to avoid being stranded.


********************** ************** **************


Almost anyone who understands the equations can build a time machine. You can build one with vacuum tubes if you have to, but navigation will be really crude without at least 1980s level computing power.

I finished my first time machine in 2016 and even though I scavenged old computers and wove them into a network, I was too poor to buy bleeding edge components. Consequently navigation was a bit of a challenge.

Small time machines lack power, range, fine control and finesse, but a man would have to be rather wealthy to build a full-fledged time vessel.

I could have fitted my first machine into a van or an eight-by-eight foot garden shed. There wouldn’t have been much room for anything but time machine in the back of a van. I was afraid the garden shed might materialize on top of some wicked witch’s sister.

So I stuck it in an old Ford step-van with an eighteen-foot cargo area. It ran as rough as all Hell, but so what?

My machine would allow me to go two hundred years into the past or a bit more. Going that far into the future is a very dicey proposition, but more about that later.

The next step was to use my machine to create enough wealth to allow me to build a full-fledged time vessel.

Lets have a few words about time.

A long time ago, quantum theorists hypothesized the “Many Worlds Model”. According to this model, every time the universe comes to even the tiniest sub-atomic fork in the road, it splits in two and the multiverse contains every possible universe—exhaustively.

The Many World’s Model creates all sorts of practical and philosophical conundrums. Instead, universes split fairly frequently, but nowhere near one hundred percent of the time.

Like attracts like in the multiverse. The universes closest to you in multi-space—millions within the distance of an electron’s radius—are the ones closest to you event-wise.

People slip a little sideways all the time. In your original universe, you laid your reading glasses on your night table, but you slip into a universe where you left them on the kitchen counter instead.

That isn’t to say that people never mislay things or misremember events. Also, a pair of glasses dislocated that far is a fairly major point of departure. Move an electron the width of a human hair and within a few years the differences can snowball so drastically that you won’t even recognize your own hometown in the other timeline.

All those timelines bunch together into what we call the “Mainline”. Every so often enough differences accumulate that the Mainline bifurcates or divides—but each half or third or whatever is still Mainline.

Highly improbable events shouldn’t occur very often—but they do occur. If you could track events in the Mainline though, you’d find that even when an unlikely event is “due”—deterministically speaking—the Mainline acts to suppress it. That is one way that the Mainline stays Mainline.

It isn’t one hundred percent successful though. Weird ole stuff happens all the time. Phase two is to try hard to dampen the effects of the bizarre.

Time travel heads the list of unlikely events. Once one travels through time, his days on the Mainline are numbered.

The Mainline strove relentlessly to push me out of the Mainline into the Outlier Timelines where the bizarre is commonplace and where both jokers and deuces are always wild. It took constant fine adjustments on my part, to avoid expulsion.

Whole timelines and large sheaths of timelines are also regularly shed from the Mainline.

This is not to imply that the Mainline is conscious or intelligent. Perhaps it’s merely some sort of sophisticated homeostat.

I could live with roaming the Outliers for the rest of my life, but first I had an agenda and it would be much easier to pursue in the orderly Mainline than out where the timelines looked like tons of multi-dimensional spaghetti thoroughly interwoven.

Going forward one day in time to find the winning lottery number is a very poor way for a time-traveler to get rich.

It isn’t hard to travel to your own future. What is very hard is returning to the precise past that you just vacated—and it’s been busily splitting off tens of thousands of nearly—but not quite—identical timelines while you were gone.

If you win the lottery, when you originally did not win it, you create paradox. Millions of dollars changing course abruptly creates just the sort of improbable turbulence the Mainline abhors.

One of the easiest ways to thwart you would be to shift you into a very similar universe where another number won. Not that the Mainline would hesitate to involve you in a major auto accident or make you the victim of a stroke, a robbery or drive-by shooting or whatever.

Playing the horses might work a bit better—but it takes longer to amass a huge fortune. People are going to note the shabby looking fellow who wins the daily double and the trifecta—every day.

Stocks take even longer and are more closely watched.

Cocaine and heroin were both legal—over-the-counter—in the early 1900s. And what do you need to make a profit dealing drugs?

You need customers—and many druggies would nark out their grandmother to get a month taken off an eleven-year sentence. Any time they get caught, they’re going to finger you—even if you weren’t involved in getting them caught.

Having the potential time traveler spend his last thirty years in prison works as well as a paradox suppressor as anything else so far as the Mainline is concerned.

Anyway, what would I buy 1900 cocaine with? The clerk would think this holographic money we use nowadays was some sort of counterfeit currency.

Maybe, if you had some of the old money, folks might take it without noticing the dates. How often do you look at the date on your dollar bill?

Buying silver dollars and gold coins to take back to 1900 wouldn’t net you much of a profit. That would necessitate multiple trips—giving the Mainline plenty of opportunity to screw you up.

But during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s, fresh eggs were going for their weight in gold.

Making a few pounds of gold disappear from the Klondike shouldn’t cause any major paradoxes. I’m sure a bunch of gold has been lost and never recovered all throughout history.

Anyway, I’d put the gold back in circulation in 1979 once gold hit $700 per ounce.

A few miners would eat a little better than they otherwise would and I’d profit.

************** **************** ******************

I was weary when I got to town, but I was maintaining.

I asked a few ragged prospectors which inn was noted to give a fair shake—and watched them closely to try to spot shills.

There were several sleds outside and a couple shotgun armed guards.

“Your gear will be safe here,” one of them told me.

“Who buys supplies?” I asked him.

“Tell one of the barkeeps that you want to speak to Leon,” he said.

“Friends, it’s almost Christmas isn’t it? A man can lose track of time. Have a small token of my appreciation for watching my kit,” I told them.

I gave each man a small drawstring bag with small orange, some chocolate stars, a small bag of coffee and a plug of pipe tobacco.

I saw each man’s eyes widen in surprise when he glanced inside.

*********** **************** *********************

I wasn’t fool enough to go into a big-money deal like this unarmed—but on the other hand, I didn’t have unlimited funds to arm myself.

There was a Smith and Wesson 5906 9mm in a front crotch carry. I’m not big on the stopping power of the 9mm, but it comes close to being adequate with 148 grain +P hollow points—and I had ten fifteen round magazines for back-up.

I figured that if I had to shoot my way out of something, that the rapid rate of fire would be very intimidating to turn of the century miners—not that I believe in indiscriminate hosing.

I backed the slightly bulky semiauto with a couple four-inch S&W .357s—model 19s.

Leon turned out to be a really big man—well over six feet and well over three hundred pounds. He looked like an NFL lineman. Contrary to the stereotype for Klondike miners, he was clean-shaven and he wore a suit.

The oranges, spices, tobacco and chocolate were just window dressing. What I really wanted to sell was my eggs.

I gave samples and amounts and he negotiated a price. Gold was carefully weighed out and I was given charge of the bags—otherwise I was afraid of some sleight of hand bait-and-switch.

Leon had armed guards accompany me back to my step-van with instructions not to let me go until they’d verified my inventory.

When we got close to the truck, the proximity alarm screamed like a banshee being raped by a sasquatch. Recorded voices demanded that whoever was prowling around, go away.

There were sirens and flashing lights. I suspect that the lights would have been more effective at night though.

At any rate, the uncouth noises thoroughly rattled the nerve of the porters—as I’d intended that it should.

They just might be planning to rip me off. Throwing would-be robbers off their game is good strategy.

I watched them unload and take inventory while standing with an AR-15 at port arms, my back to my step-van.

God alone knows what sort of weapon that they thought that I was holding.

“We’re satisfied,” the foreman told me.

“All of you stand in front of the window there, where I can see you,” I said.

I felt safe in taking my eyes off them momentarily with the windshield between us.

I threw a burlap sack through the open door.

“There is a goody bag in there for each of you, for working hard and for not trying to rob me,” I told them.

**************** **************** ***************

I had the gold dust assayed and exchanged it for an equivalent value of certified bullion in 1915. I ended up with a bit over forty pounds of gold.

(12 Troy Ounces per pound) X ($700/Troy Ounce in 1979)= $336 000.

Not exactly nouveau rich, but I went through 1979 twice more, never risking over half my money at one time and buying gold futures—leveraged to the hilt.

***************** *************** ****************

Phase two had me go to 1820 and commission a huge antebellum mansion built.

It was a big house, built redundantly strong and long lasting—back when everything was built to last anyway.

My mansion had a basement and a sub-basement. It had three surface stories and a generous walk-in attic.

It had quite a few secret rooms, secret passages and secret hiding places. It was also thoroughly wired for 12 volt, 120 volt, 220 volt and 440 three-phase.

What! No they didn’t have electricity back then. They did have master craftsman who could run wires and hook them to fuse boxes if you supervised them closely. They didn’t need to know what the wire was for.

Attribute it to superstition or eccentricity.

I paid the men generously not to talk about the house—but I knew some would anyway. A man’s word counted for more back then and fewer talked than those that did not.

By the time the War of Northern Aggression ended, there were few if any craftsmen left who’d worked on my mansion. Any rumors about secret passages and peculiar wire structures would be nothing but vague urban legends by then.

The mansion was a time machine in its own right and if I let it sit unmolested from 1820 till my “Eternal Present” in 2016, it would be a hundred and ninety six years “long” in time—which would make it far smoother handling.

I was working on a system where the whole house could “hang” just outside of real space, with just a relatively tiny “footprint” in real time.

A word about the “Eternal Present”: my present was in 2016 and it moved a day farther forward for every twenty-four hours that I lived.

There is a qualitative difference between “past” and “future”.

The first time that I traveled in time, my own “Present” froze. 2016 will always be my “Eternal Present”.

I could go into the big mansion anytime that I wanted to—just so long as I didn’t use it as a time machine.

It was so big and rich though, that it garnered unwelcome attention. I checked it every so often and kept ownership through a number of shell-companies through the decades.

Then I had me another fine, but far more modest dwelling built in my hometown in 1840.

Medical School was only a couple years back in the 1840’s. Hell, so far as that goes, one could practice medicine without a license back then.

I took some first-rate surgical tools, some very good microscopes and stained specimen slides along with beaucoup glassware.

All I needed was a couple contemporary courses in microbiology and a very few pounds of veterinary grade penicillin and streptomycin. Then I advertised very discretely that I could cure Syphilis and Gonorrhea.

I told my patients that the ingredients for my cure were extremely rare and that I’d be swamped if word got out generally.

Victorian gentleman weren’t given to boasting about their latest bout with the clap—so I was on pretty firm ground there.

I helped some poor people gratis, but generally I charged a stiff but fair price for the miracle I offered.

And knowing the general trend history would take, I had a fairly good guide to which investments would prosper.

I tried to lay low and hope the Mainline left me alone for a little while longer.

I was getting old.

My next step was to ride a smaller time vessel to 2016 and use my mansion time machine to inch my way into the future far enough to find a workable rejuvenation therapy.

It as that or get old and die.



.....RVM45

[CGTech]

Ok, that's quite the unique scenario! I like it! Is there more?

[junkhound]

Great start. The possibilities are endless/timeless.
Thank You
junkhound

[robb1313]

Super start -- I'd enjoy seeing more!

[nana2boys]

I love time travel stories

[hammerhead]

Good stuff!

[RVM45]

Chapter Two





I had servants in my Victorian house of course. Not to have them would have aroused comment if not outright suspicion.

My mansion as well as my Victorian home and doctor’s office was above the Mason-Dixon Line. I didn’t want to have to protect it from the depredations of Federalist brigands during the war and I didn’t want to have to deal with the grasping confiscation-minded vagaries of the Carpetbagger régimes that would follow the war.

I did go south long enough to buy a dozen slaves and free them.

Most were happy enough to work for me after I’d freed them and I paid better wages and offered better working conditions that any place else they were likely to find.

I figured that illiterate ex-slaves would be far less likely to grasp just how unconventional a Victorian gentleman that I was.

When I got ready to leave in 1878, I gathered the ex-slaves that still worked for me together.

There was Sadie, my cook. She didn’t know exactly how old she was, but I’d guess that she was nearing sixty.

Sadie’s son Jared had been eight years old when I’d bought him and his mother.

The boy had managed to get syphilis when he was only fifteen. I showed him all sorts of color pictures of what the disease could do and then I cured him. He idolized me afterward.

He liked to read my books—I had an extensive library, of course—and for a while he wanted to be a doctor. Eventually he decided that he didn’t want to buck the historical trend.

Jared was a top-notch surgical assistant who also did odd jobs around the house.

There was Agnew who’d become too old and feeble to do much but sit and rock in a rocking chair.

Then there was Beedee. I’d met her at my church. She was white, destitute and not quite right in the head. I’d offered her a place to stay in exchange for a little light maid’s work, but the little woman was a workaholic. She wasn’t content if she wasn’t dusting, sweeping or mopping. She wasn’t too proud to help Sadie with the dishes either.

“People, I’m going to be going soon,” I told them. “I’d leave you the house, but it won’t be here much longer.

“I will make sure that y’all are well taken care of. In fact, y’all will be able to afford a nice home and servants of your own with what I leave you,” I said.

“Tell me the truth,” Jared said. “You are an alien from another planet—aren’t you? You’re going back into space.”

So I didn’t segregate my books quite as well as I thought that I had.

“Not precisely,” I told him.

“When you go back to where you came from, take us with you,” Jared said.

The others agreed with a lot of emotional displays and loud protestations.

“I started on a voyage many years ago,” I told them. “It is the nature of such things, that I will never be able to go home again.

“I can sometimes come within sight of my old home, but I’ll never catch it. That is my geas.

“Sadie, you understand. Think of all those old African and Cherokee and Choctaw stories you used to tell Jared when he was little,” I finished.

“This is our home,” Sadie said. “You are family.”

So I herded them into one of the secret rooms, where I kept one of my control panels.

Do you think that I showed them all of my secrets?

It took a couple hours to navigate through hyperspace. There were many flashing lights and beeping or chiming or chirruping alarms to bring various things to my attention.

And then we were in 2016.

***************** *************** **************

“Do y’all feel good? Travelling through time is supposedly rejuvenating—within limits. You ought to feel about ten years younger after that long a trip.

“Now follow me and pay attention,” I said.

I led them back into the house proper. We all went up to a closet door that I’d kept locked since I’d first had the house built.

The door no longer led to a closet. It led to a secret chamber in my mansion—the one that had come all the way from 1820 the natural way.

In one sense, my whole Victorian house and doctor’s office was enclosed in one small chamber in my antebellum mansion.

Point of fact, it was actually hanging at an obtuse tangent in hyperspace.

“Now pay attention to which way you go, so that you can come back here when you want to get something from the house,” I told them.

Then I gave them a brief tour of the mansion.

*************** ************ *******************

Suppose that I leaped a hundred years into the future.

Let us further suppose that in 2116 everyone is required to have biometric ID on pain of summary execution or life imprisonment.

I go strolling down the street as happy as if I’m in my right mind.

“Oops!”

How was I to know?

Now when and if they get “Fountain of Youth” style rejuvenation, it will either turn out to be very expensive or it will be tightly regulated.

If they didn’t clamp down on it fast, the population would explode.

Even if it turns out to be very expensive, they’re still going to clamp down before very long—lest the “it-isn’t-fair” proletariat rise up in righteous outrage.

So I was looking for a relatively narrow window of opportunity. I needed to find a time shortly after the rejuvenation process was safely perfected but before it become tightly controlled.

Then there is the challenge of paying for it.

Suppose that in the time period I’m seeking, that gold and gems have no value, all currency is electronic and the most valuable commodity on Earth is small vials of Bacillus Subtilis culture?

Remember the sideways force. It is especially bad in the future.

To stay anchored to one spot in the timeline I had to imitate those suckerfish that cling to a rock for dear life.

No way in Hell would I be able to back-track, find a source of Bacillus Subtilis when it was still dirt cheap and then find that future line again.

There is also the fact that I was reluctant to deal with black market medical practitioners for something so complex. On the other hand, if the process was expensive, there would be the problem of accounting for having so much spare change lying around.

Of course the mansion had a couple groundskeepers and general maintenance personnel.

Access to the interior was only at long intervals, when absolutely necessary and closely supervised by me.

At any rate, I tripled my groundskeepers’ salary and added one minor duty.

I subscribed to a couple dozen magazines and I ordered beaucoup stuff online. Their duty was to place the mail in an anteroom where they had the key to the outside door and only I had access to the inner door.

I used the Victorian home time machine—fairly massive in its own right—to travel inside the passage formed by the mansion. Having the solidly-rooted-in-time mansion walls around the smaller time vessel acted to guide it and keep it on a straight trajectory.

I’d hop a cautious two years into the future and pause to study my magazines, online articles, books that I’d ordered and cable TV.

After two or three days, I’d send word to my brokers to adjust my investments. I’d carefully recalibrate my time machine and jump another two years into the future.

Ever four to six years I’d order state of the art computers and upgrade chips and monitors, but I didn’t take the time to install them for the most part—but I had beaucoup storage space.

I also ordered a great many books.

I was almost certain to never be in this particular timeline again. Some of the books, songs, movies and art in this timeline would never exist in any other—so it was a now or never opportunity to collect some of it.

Of course my mansion had more than one home theatre. I had my friends watch a host of movies about time travel, just movies and TV shows in general, and soap operas.

Soap operas aren’t true to life, but the story lines are a good guide to the social mores and attitudes of the society that produces them.

Occasionally, every few years, I’d have to stay a few weeks to take care of acquiring new ID and transferring ownership of my mansion.

If wurst came to wurst, I could foil any attempted foreclosure of my mansion by simply moving the mansion, but I didn’t want to do that yet.

At any rate, it was during the longer stops that my friends got to get out of the mansion, stretch their legs and play the tourist a bit.

What about my Victorian home disappearing so suddenly and completely back in 1878?

Well, I left plenty of charred boards, rubble and scorched earth behind. Forensics weren’t all that advanced in 1878. They’d attribute it to some sort non-typical fire, I’ll warrant.

At any rate, the day finally came when I found my doctor.

The therapy was non-intrusive and relied on nanites for most of the repair and upgrade. There were also a few synthetic and even natural hormones used for fine-tuning.

People in those days spent most of their time either in virtual reality worlds or staring at computer screens. Upgrades to the eye, optic nerve and brain were commonplace, because it allowed for more information to be passed faster.

The doctor thought it rather quaint that I wanted my other senses jacked up along with my strength, endurance and reaction time…

“But hey good buddy, no problem, we can do,” he said merrily.

***************** *************** *****************

“Hey good buddy, do you realize that you’re a genius?” Doc said.

“So?”

“I got this grey market hormone that is guaranteed to boost your IQ at least seventy-five points.

“Do you want to include it in your package?”

I had to check out everything that I could find about the IQ virus, but everything that I heard sounded positive.

“What about my friends?” I asked.

“None of them are anywhere near genius. The most they might gain would be twenty-five to perhaps thirty points.

“The little one might gain as much as thirty-five or forty points, but only because she’s starting out sub-standard.

“The effects are strongest in folks with very high or very low IQs,” Doc explained.

My friends had authorized me to negotiate for them.

“Do it to it,” I said to the doctor.

The nanites would take a few years to completely settle in.

I decided to visit Paris in the 1870s while I waited for my new abilities to fully develop.

I wanted to hobnob with the Impressionists, pursue a somewhat more modern medical degree and commission more of my ultimate time vessel.

The building that I paid them to build me was very roughly based on my high school, greatly enlarged.

The building was in the style of Collegiate Gothic, three stories tall, and built with two interior courtyards of two acres each, symmetrically located with a wall of double rooms dividing them.

Once completed, I’d have room to warehouse beaucoup books, weapons, computer equipment, laboratory supplies, and chemicals—all sorts of things.

I could feel my time on the Mainline becoming very short and I wanted to be well equipped for whatever the Outlier Timelines might challenge me with.

It gave me a very warm glow to go into one of my armories and look at row after row of nickel plated Colt Single Action Revolvers, 1911A1s, MP-40s, Thompson .45s and .38 Supers, MAS 38s, Czech Skorpions, Mac 10s and 11s…

There were Purdey and Greener shotguns, both stock and custom BARs, M-60s and many other nice things to pick from—all stored in zero entropy fields so they wouldn’t rust or even age while they awaited possible use.

After going to drawing school with some of the original Impressionists, I finally was forced to concede that genius or not, I’d probably never be a great painter.

And the walls of my time vessel had quite a few original paintings hanging on the walls—worth millions each, in the right timeline—though of course my zigzagging around in time would spoil any dating, should I ever wish to have them authenticated.

What the hell?

I knew that they were genuine Renoirs, Degas, Monets, Van Goghs, Morisots and others.

My giant schoolhouse completed and fully stocked, I had one more place that I needed to visit. After that, the Mainline wouldn’t have to keep trying to elbow me out.

I’d be poised to leap out into the briar patch all on my own.

****************** **************** *************

Lagos Nigeria 1975

Here I was in Nigeria. I was six-foot two, weighed two hundred and sixty pounds and had long flowing blond hair and glacial grey eyes.

I stood out—especially with my unmistakable American accent.

I meant to.

The Nigerians assumed that I was in Nigeria dodging the Vietnam draft. It was as good a cover as any.

Being here also let a rejuvenated Jared a chance to finally follow his dream of becoming a doctor.

I wanted to study medicine as recently as possible, but papers became increasingly harder to fake as time wore on. Graduating in 1975 would be a good compromise and with an MD from a Nigerian university, no one would bat an eye when I bought tons of medical supplies.

They’d assume that the money had a valid US providence and probably wouldn’t particularly care anyway, so long as they stood to profit.

Although the rejuvenation gave me total recall, I wanted to practice speaking several African languages before my next jump.

One of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century—Jonathan Abubaker—taught at the university. It seemed a waste not to take a few of his classes.

Of course, I don’t remember a world class Nigerian mathematician from my timeline—but drift happens.

Even if I didn’t take the plunge soon, the drift would steadily worsen.

At any rate, I had given into the temptation to show him some equations that had me stumped.

*************** ************** *******************

A servant let me in through the gate to the professor’s compound.

Another servant met me at the door and led me to the professor’s living room.

“Young man,” he said sternly.

“Young my derrière,” I thought. “I’m a good forty or fifty years older than you.”

“These equations that you asked me to examine—these are time travelling equations.

“Are you a time traveler?” He asked me.

He seemed very tense as he waited for my answer.




.....RVM45

[Lakewalker]

I always like a good what if sci fi! thanks!

[robb1313]

Keep it coming -- and BTW, I like the bold font.

[RVM45]

Chapter Three




“So you know about time travelers?” I asked the professor.

“My brother Joshua left the high probability world lines fourteen years ago. He didn’t chose to. He was constrained. Do you know about that aspect of time travel?” Professor Abubaker asked.

“I call it ‘the Mainline’ and ‘Outliers’, but yes I know the drift effect very well. I’ve been fighting drift for decades,” I said.

“Rejuvenation,” I answered his unspoken question. “From up the line.”

“Decades? You must be a far better navigator than my brother. He was forced out within months,” He said.

“Maybe. My present is well up the line from here. I probably had better computers,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said.

A girl in her early twenties walked into the room. A big Yoruba girl—maybe six foot, maybe two hundred pounds—and muscular.

“This is my niece Stephanie,” Professor Akubaker said. “Joshua’s daughter.

“Did you hear?” he asked her.

“You want me to believe that my father was a time traveler and this American hippie is also a time traveller?” she said in scorn.

She spoke Yoruba, but I’d been in the country long enough to learn the language perfectly well—very easily what with all the silicone upgrades in my skull.

“Bear with me for a moment,” the professor said. “Surely even if this is an elaborate prank, you owe me that much respect,” he said in English.

“There are people who know some hint of my brother’s doings. Shortly after he disappeared, they broke into my compound. They took my brother’s papers—but he kept very sketchy notes.

“They slapped me around a bit, but seemed convinced that I knew nothing. Killing me would have tied up a loose end, but they seen to hold out hope that my brother may return to visit his daughter or me some day.

“Apparently they don’t know about what you call ‘drift’,” He continued.

I heard the sound of gunfire outside. There was AK-47s firing long bursts on full automatic along with occasional explosions of RPGs and hand grenades.

Then I heard M-60s being fired in rather well disciplined five and six round bursts.

“They saw you enter the compound,” the professor said. “They seem able to sniff out time travelers at close range—some sort of subtle but anomalous field that surrounds you.

“My guards will buy us a few moments,” He added.

“They will all be killed,” Stephanie objected.

“They will be killed whether they resist or not. It is their pride to face death bravely and to serve their chief loyally,” Professor Akubakar said. “Follow me.”

He led us to a strong room. I didn’t know that the strong room concept existed in 1975.

He handed me an old-fashioned leather briefcase.

“I’ve worked on similar equations in my head for years. I never dared write them down where they could be stolen until tonight,” he said.

“I don’t think those equations will ever balance perfectly, but I’ve refined them for you. They should help you navigate more accurately. There is also a rather detailed description of my brother’s neural network computer.

“There is also a kilo of thermite in that briefcase and all the papers are nitrated. Don’t let those criminals have them,” he said.

“Now follow me,” He said.

The strong room had a hidden door that led to a long tunnel. It went clear under the compound wall and into a nearby empty and deserted compound.

Once we were there, the professor pulled the tarpaulin off to reveal one of those three-wheeled yellow scooter cabs that are big in Nigeria. This was before the rise of the Okada transports—essentially motorcycles with extra-long seats so that two or three passengers could be toted.

That’s okay. I wouldn’t care to drive an Okada motorcycle through the chug-holed streets of Lagos—even the far less crowded Lagos of 1975. The three-wheeler was bad enough.

The professor handed me a folding stock AK and three extra magazines. He handed Stephanie a PPSh 41 with one of the 88 round drum magazines attached.

I stopped to check my AK to make sure that it was loaded and the bore wasn’t obstructed. If I couldn’t have done that, I’d have preferred to rely on my 1911A1, outclassed though it might be by AKs.

I noted with approval that Stephanie also checked her Machine Pistol.

“Can you drive that?” he asked.

“I can drive most anything. What’s the gear-shift pattern?”

I secured the briefcase and my AK and climbed into the driver’s position.

Now truth be told, I’ve never been a motor-head or a speed demon. I like to cruise along five miles per hour below the speed limit.

But the rejuvenation had brought many new “canned” abilities, including high speed evasive driving. My reaction time is less than half the fastest normal human’s and my souped-up brain is fantastic at reading patterns, any pattern—including the patterns of heavy urban traffic.

And it goes without saying that I’d committed both street maps and topographic maps of the whole city to memory—otherwise, why have total recall?

I heard firing in the tunnel.

“They will key on your electronic signature. Take Stephanie to your vessel and travel far away,” he said. “ I’ll hold them here as long as I can.”

“No Uncle!” Stephanie started.

“It is alright,” he told her. “I’m dying anyway—cancer. At least this way will be quick and accomplish something.”

I’m sorry to say that with my heightened senses I knew perfectly well that he was telling a lie, yet I didn’t try to dissuade him. We needed a rear guard. I had my friends to think of.

I keyed the small but powerful radio that I carried.

“Do it to it people. Our cover is blown and we need to lift off ASAP,” I told them.

It would be nigh impossible to implant radio transmitters that powerful in the human cranium. High gain miniature receivers were much easier though.

As we pulled out of the compound, I could here them thoroughly raising the professors compound and I heard the professor’s M-60 chattering in short bursts.

I must say that the professor was thorough. The scooter cab had an oversized supercharged engine and it probably had another thirty or thirty-five usable miles per hour over the regular cabs.

The damned thing would go faster yet, but not even I could handle it if it was that fast. The extra horsepower did prevent redlining it and gave extra acceleration.

There were three old pickup trucks following us with a half a dozen AK firing gunmen filling each bed.

Stephanie fired a brief burst from her machine pistol and I saw a couple bandits fall out of the bed of the first pickup. One of the bodies sent the second truck careening off the road. Unfortunately it wasn’t damaged too badly to continue and fell in at the end of the convoy.

“Don’t hit any bystanders,” I shouted to her above the roar of the engines.

Before my upgrades I found loud noises painful—more than most folks—and I carefully guarded my hearing with plugs and headphones even when the provocation seemed rather feeble to other people.

Now I could hear at about a seven-and-a-half rate of gain. Loud noises weren’t painful nor did they damage my hearing. Tiny little computers—assembled from mini-microchips imported into my brain by nanites—liaised with new augmented biological auditory processing centers in my brain to extract every last bit of data from my ears—and from vibrations that hit my body.

So I wouldn’t be more than momentarily discomfited if Stephanie wanted to fire out the whole magazine of her burp gun right next to my ear. But I don’t like collateral damage—though in the last analysis, if it comes down to a choice between innocent bystanders or me might as well be me. Everyone is guilty of something.

“I am highly proficient!” Stephanie screamed at me.

“Rockin’,” I said. “Solid.”

We came ripping into my compound at perhaps eighty miles per hour. I managed to get it down to about twenty miles per hour or maybe twenty-five, and slew the scooter sideways as we slammed into a wall.

Stephanie had twisted an ankle and sprained a wrist. She kept trying to pick up her machine pistol.

“Leave the carbine for the love of firepower,” I told her. “I have plenty just like it in my ship.”

“My uncle gave me this one,” she insisted as I fought to drag her away.

She fought me fiercely. She didn’t intend to leave her weapon behind.

There was no one left outside to repel boarders, because everyone had retired to the time vessel in preparation to leap.

I saw a pickup racing toward the gate.

I picked up Stephanie’s PPSh 41 and handed it to her.

“Hang onto it, if it’s that damned precious to you,” I said.

I picked her up over my shoulder with a fireman’s carry. I grabbed her sprained wrist hard and heard her gasp in pain—but she needed her good hand to hold onto her gun.

“Hell’s belles and cockleshells!” I said as I turned toward the gate.

As I’ve said, I see better and faster and my neural impulses are speeded up. Add in improbable strength and bone density and I’m like a high speed shooting machine.

I lined up the sights of the still folded AK on the approaching truck—or more precisely, I targeted the right front tire. I wanted the truck to slew sideways and block the gate momentarily.

Full automatic is wasted on me. I was lined up on target and I was waiting for the bolt to be fully back in battery on each of the next six shots. The tailgaters in the first truck were greedy and they were satisfied with one round each.

I turned and raced into the house. I carried Stephanie down the hall and opened a secret panel that took me straight to the bridge of my time vessel.

“Sound off!” I commanded.

“Sadie!”

“Here!”

“Jared!”

“Here!”

“Agnew!”

“Here!”

“Beedee!”

“I’m here, but why do we have to leave,” Beedee demanded.

She had become increasingly recalcitrant and questioning since her rejuvenation and upgrade. Fact is the formerly cheerful and friendly Beedee had turned into a bit of a shrew.

“Never mind,” I said. “Time to talk later.”

“You can put me down now,” Stephanie said.

Yeah, I was strong enough to stand with a two hundred pound lady hanging over my shoulder and forget that she was there—at least when other things held my attention.

“Shouldn’t you take off now? They were right behind us,” Stephanie said.

“No real hurry,” I said. “Once I knew that everyone was onboard, I closed the hatches. In essence, neither this vessel nor any of us even exist in your former timeline anymore.

“Those dudes might just as well try to get to Narnia or Oz—because so far as their reality is concerned, we don’t exist there anymore.

“Nonetheless, it is time to go. The Mainline is pushing ever harder against this ship. If we wish to leave under power, under full control, we need to do it now.”

Now I had located my main control bridge in the school right in the center of one of the two-acre courtyards—two hundred yards by one hundred yards. The rest of the control room was given over to a nice little park with trees and squirrels and such.

Seats popped up from the ground and all the controls were holographic, though they responded to movements of my hands or voice commands.

It took a couple hours to get well under way and then it was time for other things.

“The light show is impressive, but I’m supposed to believe that this is a time machine?” Stephanie scoffed.

“Sadie, would you mind showing Stephanie around a bit? Stress the shortcuts,” I said. “While you’re at it, get her a sling for her carbine, and a cleaning kit. Throw in a few stick magazines or drums too if she wants them—and assign her quarters.”

The whole complex is full of closets that lead to whole other buildings. There are scores of forty-five foot storage containers, variously finished on the inside and existing outside the time and space of the main vessel—except at one connection. Some connections are very well hidden.

There are also several small gardens and more than one swimming pool.

The continuous process of creation is all around us and it is a simple matter to tap into that power source—to create sunlight without a sun, move large masses of air, or propel us through time and space.

It also powers a number of my generators.

I thought a few “can’t-get-there-from here” situations might convince Stephanie—that and the sheer size of the place.

My next act was to scan the pages that Professor Akubaker had given me both into my memory and into my computer—under “Restricted”—only I could access it.

Then I ordered my automated bookmaker to make a couple copies and store one in each of my very secret private libraries.

Time to settle in.

We were leaving the Mainline and traveling far farther back in time than I’d ever dared to go thus far.

O yeah! This was what I’d been looking forward to all along.


.....RVM45

[Lakewalker]

looking forward to see whats next!

[stjwelding]

RVM45 An absolutely fantastic story hope to see more soon. Thanks for the time and for sharing your talints with us.
Wayne

[Hickory7]

RVM45 this is great. I keep checking to see what is next.

[RVM45]

I'm working on Chapter 4.

Been busy getting several books ready for publication at Amazon/Kindle, haven't been feeling the best and have a Doctor's appointment today...

But when I can write part of a chapter one day and then come back to it and build later on another day (usually I have to delete and start over) that's a sign the narrative is going really strong.


.....RVM45

[stjwelding]

RVM45 just to let you know we are still checking for new chapters many, many times throughout the day, Just in-case you thought that we weren't waiting for more.
Wayne

[RVM45]

Chapter Four







We were travelling backward in time at a rate of about 20 years an hour. At that rate it would take us approximately two weeks to travel back to about 5000 BC.

God alone knew how much lateral drifting we were doing. We’d never make the lateral drift up, since there isn’t any power in the multiverse—at least that I know of—that could travel upstream against that powerful a current.

On the other hand, I’d been bucking the lateral drift for far too long. You can pay your “drift debt” as you go, or you can let it accumulate—up to a point.

You don’t want it to break catastrophically like a dam breaking, an avalanche or a major earthquake. I’m not sure that you could set up a “timequake”. I’m not sure what would happen if you did.

Bad craziness.

I think the Mainline would push you out under some form of irresistible impulse before that much pressure built up.

At any rate, I had a lot of potential energy stored in some lateral dimensions and I was content to let it drain harmlessly—that is, I hoped that the drainage wouldn’t harm us.

We were travelling outside the time and space that Earth existed in, but I could keep a tremulous connection to a piece of space that gave me a blurry and flickering view of the African continent.

Sometime after we passed 5000 BC, I caught a glimpse of what I was seeking.

I slowed down and zoomed in. There it was—a large prehistoric city on the southern shore of Paleolake Chad.

Fact: A few thousand years ago the Sahara was a green growing place with big lakes and powerful rivers where today there is nothing but dry sun-scorched sand nowadays.

Fact: Paleolake Chad—more or less centered on its current shadow of itself—was once the largest freshwater lake in Earth’s history, so far as we know.

Fact: When the Sahara dried up, massive eastward migrations to the Nile Valley was the beginning of the civilization of Ancient Egypt.

A speculation—perhaps a chuckleheaded speculation: There was a sort of Egypt-Like civilization on the southern shore of Paleolake Chad prior to the exodus.

Did I want to “prove” the existence of a Southern Shore Civilization?

Hell’s belles, you can’t prove anything rambling around in a time machine.

Give me a powerful enough ship and the proper motivation and I can probably find you a history where armored knights jousted off the backs of dinosaurs. Almost anything can happen in the Outliers.

That doesn’t mean that it happened in any Mainline history.

No, any Mainline archaeologist mucking around in the desert dust of the south shore knows far more about Southern Shore Civilization than I do despite the fact that I’ve been there in outlying possibilities.

Still, such a thing could have existed and I wanted to see it in all its glory—“Real” or not.

****************** ************* *******************

“How does this thing work?” Stephanie asked.

“Well, it’s kinda like a ‘Spider’ carnival ride, only greatly enlarged. There are a couple dozen ‘seats’ that I can place in the external world.

“This one is a dry stone beehive shaped hut that I paid an Irishman to build me back in the mid 1700’s.

“No matter how far back you go in time, you’re not going to be too outré with this one. Sure, people may not have built them that way and the stone may not be native, but folks can see how it’s put together,” I said.

“What about more modern times?” Stephanie asked.

“I have a 1957 four-door Chevy Bellaire, a panel truck from the roaring ‘20’s, a 12’ x 12’ red brick pump house, a shotgun shack and a mansion.

“If you want to go pre-internal combustion engine, I have a Conestoga wagon and a Gypsy caravan,” I said.

“What about the horses?”

“No horses, though I could pull it with draft animals if I procured some.”

“What if someone else tried to haul it off,” Stephanie asked.

“It could be done, but it wouldn’t be easy. Their pseudo-inertia would be astonishing if you didn’t know how to turn it off,” I said.

“So what keeps a tribe of pygmies, or Episcopalians or giant scorpions from setting up their home base in your stone beehive?”

“All my structures give off a very strong localized subsonic that should make any vertebrate most uncomfortable within a quarter mile of the thing—though I can’t set so large a border in modern times,” I said.

“And any invertebrate invaders?” Stephanie persisted.

“When the sensors don’t find any vertebrate life forms inside, the perform annihilation sweeps every twenty minutes.”

************** **************** ****************

I’d set the stone beehive about five miles from the city, in a small thicket.

Folks in the twentieth century—at least in most first world countries—are used to walking blithely along, totally wrapped in their daily affairs. It never even intrudes on their paradigm that something non-human may be stalking them for its next meal.

It barely enters their noggins that men of ill will may be stalking them.

Africa in about 5400 BC is not a safe place for people to walk around daydreaming. It is a rather precarious place for well-armed and fully alert men travel.

I had a custom bolt-action rifle chambered for the mighty .50 Caliber Browning Machinegun round. Although it’s a bit smaller in diameter, it has more bone smashing penetration than either the .577 or the .600 Nitro-Express cartridge.

My rifle was lighter than most .50 BMG rifles because I can take more recoil than a normal human. I can also easily carry and maneuver a heavier rifle—so it didn’t go below thirteen pounds.

Jared carried a Holland & Holland double rifle in .577 Nitro-Express because he liked the rifle and because he was used to it.

Sadie, Agnew and Beedee all carried double rifles in .458 Lott. You know the old arguments—for really big thick-skinned game, the .458 Winchester magnum is too cool, while the .460 Weatherby is too hot! The .458 Lott is—presumably—just right.

None of them could really be considered real marksmen or riflemen, despite some built-in skills via their rejuvenation.

I trusted them to be safe and they just might get a hit or two on a hard-charging beastie. In fact, between the three of them, one of them was almost certain to weigh in. I really didn’t have any faith in their ability to work the bolt of a big-bore bolt action while being charged by an elephant, hippo or lion.

Stephanie didn’t have any upgrades or chips in her head, yet she had clove to a custom Ruger Bolt Action in .375 H&H with detachable six-round box magazines and a 1.75x Scout Scope—and she was good with it, both close-in and personal and way out at three hundred yards or so.

So we embarked on our tramp to the mysterious city.

First of all, the stone beehive had no visible door from the outside—but given the right stimulus a section wide enough to let us out swung open.

Perhaps I haven’t made it plain. I do not care to wrap all my baskets around one egg.

The stone hut was the obvious portal to reenter the time vessel, but I shared a dozen fallback portals with my people.

Memorizing lots of stuff wasn’t much of a problem with them since their memories were augmented. Stephanie was a bit more problematic, but I had drugs from up the line that would allow one to effortlessly memorize long strings of alphanumerics or anything else that one was exposed to while the drug lasted—including locations and newly minted topographic maps.

So we started toward the city. One might question the wisdom of all of us going. I was the only one who had demonstrated the ability to pilot a time vessel. If anything happened to me, my friends were pretty much stuck—and I didn’t think that they’dwant to live out three to five hundred years of enhanced lives inside the ship, vast though it might be.

They’d probably want to attempt to rescue me, if that were possible. If not, they’d probably want to visit the city eventually.

It was best if we all came in force and tried to nip any bad craziness in the bud, rather than travel piecemeal.

The first quarter mile was in the forest, though there was a trail evident.

I had a couple of enhanced Giant Bloodhounds along—big three hundred pound brutes with enhanced hearing, eyesight, strength and intelligence along with a third eye in the middle of their foreheads.

They didn’t have to be leashed to keep them from straying too far ahead like normal hounds would have and they checked constantly for traps or ambushes by any sort of predator—human or not.

Then we entered a broad plain that seemed to surround the city except for occasional woodland groves.

“What in the triple-frosted Hell is that?” Jared said and pointed.

I saw an elephant-like creature with tusks that came down like a goatee off of his chin. He was using the tusks to scrape four-inch thick bark off of some of the occasional trees that dotted the landscape.

“That my friend is something closely resembling a deinotherium. They’re supposed to have been extinct for a good long while by now.

“It just goes to show what happens when you travel the Outliers,” I explained.

Since I knew that we needed to get off the Mainline, I’d been deliberately creating my own paradoxes as we went.

Ever eat poke greens? They’re good. Too many of the berries can make you ill. The berries make bang-up ink however and they can be made into wine.

Everyone knows that the roots are toxic as all Hell. Well, actually they do have some uses as herbal medicine, but it is best left alone by non-experts.

At any rate, I like poke and it was exclusively a North American plant—until I walked along sowing seeds sometime about 5400 BC in Paleolithic North Africa. Trust me friends, a far smaller paradox than that is all it takes to create a giant schism with over seven thousand year’s worth of leverage.

It didn’t even particularly matter if the seeds prospered or not. It just mattered that they germinated and grew however briefly, where they hadn’t grown in the Mainline.

The deinotherium-like creature convinced me that I really didn’t need to work at creating paradoxes—still as I say, I do like pokeweed and I had another five or six pounds of seeds left, so I continued to cast a few ever so often.

“That my friends, is a indricotherium—the biggest land mammal that ever lived. Its shoulder tops a giraffe’s head. It’s about forty foot long and weighs between fifteen and twenty tons.

“It should have been extinct about thirty-five million years ago,” I said.

We sat down to rest momentarily and to study the huge anomaly through high-powered binoculars.

“What are those hyena-like beasts attacking the giant?” Jared asked.

“Andrewsarchus—another anachronism. They’re about thirteen feet long and can weigh upwards of a ton—about the same mass as a Clydesdale horse—with shorter legs.

“They’re one of the top contenders for the biggest land carnivore of all time. Still, I’m surprised that they’re attacking a healthy adult indricotherium,” I said.

“Are they supposed to have saddles and riders?” Stephanie asked.

“Hell’s belles and cockleshells and skeletons all in a row!” I said. “Friends, something tells me that we’re not on the Mainline anymore.

“And I have to get me one of those wargs!” I added.

After everyone had rested I got them onto their feet.

“Come on people, there should be answers ahead in the city and we want to get there long before dark,” I encouraged them.

We’d gone about a mile when we were attacked by giant birds—great six to seven hundred pound brutes with great razor sharp scimitar-like beaks eighteen to twenty inches long.

Later I learned that in the mega-predator rich savannah, the birds have largely been forced into scavenging. Also, the city people have large-bore cap-and-ball revolvers along with much bigger bore muskets, not to mention bows and arrows, crossbows and wargs.

The bird beasties were quite intelligent enough to learn to leave humans alone. They didn’t recognize that the Giant Bloodhounds were part of our human entourage though.

One of the bright blue and green beasties threw itself at Esmeralda the Bloodhound. I didn’t have much time to bring the heavy .50 BMG bolt action online.

I had time to get in one center-of-mass shot at the creature’s body.

Bloodhounds have loose skin. It tends to fall down over their eyes and effectively blind them when they’ve got their nose down on a trail.

That’s one reason that my Giant Bloodhounds have been genetically altered to have an eye atop their head—to keep a weather eye out while they trail.

They’ve also had their strength and reflexes jacked way up.

The great-beak might have missed Esmeralda even without my .50 BMG to the thing’s chest…

And Jared also got in quick double tap with his .577 Nitro Express. He’d waited a little longer and aimed at the bird’s hip joint to break it down.

A biped with one leg out of play is largely screwed to the ground.

Nonetheless, Esmeralda dodged with admirable quickness. She was coming in to attack the bird’s hock from behind when its left drumstick exploded.

Another bird came on the heels of the first to attack Esmeralda while three of them threw themselves at Juggler the other Giant Bloodhound.

By then I had my rifle re-cocked and I had a better angle on Esmeralda’s attacker. My second shot transversed both femur heads leaving the great-beak without a leg to stand on.

Stephanie has slung her .375 at some point and started packing her PPSh 41 in her hands.

Yeah, a machine-pistol works on the same principle as a shotgun—fire a swarm of pellets to increase hit probability when point-fired.

And shotguns have always been grand fowling pieces.

A twenty-five round swarm of 7.62x25 centered on the third bird’s head. Even then it didn’t seem to instantly disable him—but it did knock out both his eyes.

I let him flop momentarily and sighted at another threat.

By this time Jared had reloaded—as I said, he was both jacked-up and practiced with his go-to big bore rifle.

And Sadie finally brought her .458 to bear. Between Jared, Stephanie, Sadie and me, we blew the remaining birds into pieces small enough to hide…well not really, but we tore them up.

A few hundred yards later we were met by accompany of mounted and armed men.

Blunderbuss muzzled muskets and cap-and-ball revolvers along with multiple howdah pistols wouldn’t have freaked me out too much.

Semi-armor with plates and sections of chain mail strategically placed to ward off clawing or biting attempts by predators wouldn’t have weirded me.

Seeing these dude’s mounts blew my mind big time.

Do you know what a chalicotherium looks like?

They look kind of like a giant sloth. Their front legs are noticeably longer than their rear legs. Most of the length is in their forearms. They have great three-toed razor-sharp clawed forefeet that they knuckle-walk on like a great ape.

Really, their arms are so long that they look almost upright going on all fours.

They’re ten or eleven feet tall and weigh well over a ton.

And the ones in this timeline have great opposable thumbs—and each one of them bore a saddle and a rider.

“GALUMMMP!!!” one of the chalicotherium bellowed loud enough to rattle my fillings—if I’d still had any fillings.

Puzzlingly enough, they’re called “galumps” since they shout it out at frequent intervals.

They have perhaps a dozen other less-used calls. The clinker is that they can carry on simple conversations in human languages.

Wild galumps are largely vegetarian. The galumps teamed up with men millennia ago. Surprisingly, their major motivation seems to have been Brobdingnagian quantities of roast meat.

Many centuries of partnering with men and eating lots of meat have altered the galumps.

Except the genes of the new and improved galumps are so superior to the natural strain that the few mixed breedings or the very few galumps who opt to go back to the bush permanently have almost totally displaced the provincials.

Galumps carry men on their backs, but they are full-fledged partners who also carry weapons and are free to come and go, as they will.

To ride a galump, you have to convince him that you’re worthy—and a good hunter.

At any rate, the head rider showed me his empty hands and I followed suit.

Wonder of wonders, they brought out a solid-state device and insisted on trying to converse with me, while frantically twiddling knobs.

I humored them and after about three hours a voice speaking broken English came out of the box.

“I feel kinda like the hick in the story. They took him to a zoo and showed him a giraffe. After looking at the beast from every possible angle and even touching it, he snorted and said,

“ ‘You can’t fool me! I know there is no such beast!’

“I know that short of telepathy, there’s no way a ‘Universal Translator’ can work,” I remarked to Stephanie and Jared.

“Telepathy?” the machine said.

It was sounding almost as if it had a Russian accent at the moment.

“Mind reading—You know,” I said.

The machine paused momentarily.

“Not mind reading,” it said with marginally less accent. “I have been programmed with Indo-European and many African and Arabic tongues.

“I search your speech for similar roots,” it continued. “The more examples you give me, the closer a match—but I’m not starting from nothing.”

“You’re a multi-lingual AI?” I asked.

“Pardon?” it said.

“You are an artificial intelligence, a computer, a cybernetic brain—that’s what I’m asking,” I said.

“I believe so,” it said.

“How much data can you absorb at one time?”

“Almost unlimited,” it said.

Sadie started telling the machine old folk stories—along with plenty of histrionics.

Beedee started reading her King James Bible to the machine simultaneously.

Jared started quizzing the machine about the strange wildlife we’d enccountered.

Stephanie was earnestly talking about her father while I told it Zen koans.

Fortunately it had multiple headphones and microphones so we didn’t have to shout.

“So, what’s the deal? You’re obviously much more advanced than these dudes can manufacture—though I’m astonished to find them with guns,” I asked it when it finally seemed to have acquired sufficient English skills.

“I am an incredibly ancient artifact. We haven’t had a time traveler for over three thousand years and if we don’t get one soon, we will perish.

“You are the Awaited One—The Last Time Traveler come to deliver us from our richly deserved doom. Your coming was prophesied and you are our last hope,” The box told me in almost perfect hillbilly speak…just like me.



.....RVM45

[Tckaija]

Don't you dare drop this story RVM!

You have me most seriously and thoroughly hooked on this one!

I hate to say this but this is even better than Parallel.

[Lakewalker]

cool...and here he thought he had it all figured out...surprise! Nice twist!

[Vtshooter]

Very nice, thank you.

[stjwelding]

RVM45 thanks for the new chapter this is a great story, am always thrilled to find a new chapter.
Wayne

[223shootersc]

RVM thanks for the new chapter, good stuff

[RVM45]

Getting ready to write.

Thought y'all might groove on these.

.....RVM45

O Yeah, my captions got left behind.

#1} Chalicotherium ( Galumps are a couple feet taller)

#2} Indricotherium

#3} Deinotherium & Friends

[RVM45]

A better view of Chalicotherium—Shows him "Knuckle Walking".

[kaijafon]

THANK YOU for the pictures!!! that does help!! and thank you for the story too!

[RVM45]

Chapter Five





I’d thought that I’d considered every possibility, but I hadn’t taken into account that language would drift laterally right along with the timeline.

Translator was fluent in dozens of twentieth century languages and earlier variations, but none of them were a perfect fit for the twentieth century English that we all spoke.

“I’m surprised,” I said to him, “That they let something as valuable and irreplaceable as you go on safaris in the bush.”

“I—what you see before you—am not Translator. This is a remote that sends signals back to a mainframe carefully protected and persevered within the city walls.

“But you are right, the city could ill afford to loose the remote,” he continued.

There was the city. Seeing things like that makes time travel worthwhile.

There were walls around the city, some kind of tan colored sandstone-like material. It wasn’t the city of Jericho by any stretch of the imagination, but the walls were about thirty-five feet high.

The outside of the wall was flush, but inside there were two terraces where it narrowed. There was stairs and ramps leading to a walkway near the top that was wide enough to drive a Volkswagen along, but only if you paid careful attention to what you were doing.

Inside, few of the houses went above three stories, but there were a few four and five story houses and even one remarkable nine-story edifice topped with another thirty feet or so of tower.

“How many people live here?” I asked Translator.

“Less than thirteen-thousand,” he said.

I ran that through my mental comparator: Less than Vincennes but more than Princeton—actually comfortably in between.

“I’m surprised that you don’t have any urban sprawl outside the wall and things are remarkably neat and orderly inside,” I commented.

“Three thousand years ago you would have seen a city of over two-hundred thousand. Sprawl? The part of the city within the walls was a tiny portion of the whole.

“It didn’t matter that large portions of the city were outside the wall, because the whole area was patrolled by giant airships.

“Since then, we have steadily regressed.

“Most of the interior has been rebuilt any number of times and it was easier to scavenge materials from the old buildings than to quarry fresh stone and bake more bricks.

“It is easy to be neat and precise when there is a continual downsizing,” Translator concluded sadly.


As I’ve said, with all the silicone computing power inside my skull—working in combination with an upgraded biological brain—I have total recall. As we walked, Translator had given me something like twenty-eight hundred words of vocabulary in the city’s main tongue along with dozens of canned phrases, idioms and conjugations.

He also threw in vocabularies and phrases from a score of other languages used in the vicinity—ranging from generous to bare-boned depending on the inspiration of the moment.

In return, I gave him about the same amount of data on English, Latin and Yoruba. It might prove helpful to him, should he ever encounter anyone remotely from our time and language line in the future.

The fact that we never had to repeat except perchance, if I didn’t hear clearly made the process very efficient.

All my entourage had the total recall language chips except Stephanie. She started getting a little grumpy as things bypassed her.

“Stephanie, I have some Eideticane in my pack. When we get settled in I’ll give you a shot and a massive language lesson,” I tried to reassure her.

“I hate the way that memory drug makes me feel. Anyway, it won’t make me fluent right away, will it?”

“No, when you dump a big load of undigested mental silage into your data storage, it takes a few days to ferment and self-organize. You should be reasonably fluent in a week to ten days,” I said.

“Translator, to what do you attribute the steady decline of your city and your people?” I asked him.

“Don’t take this the wrong way. It was long ago and we have long since repented our wickedness,” Translator temporized.

“Okay, it was long ago and far away—but what happened?” I asked.

“We outlawed time travel and killed all the time travelers,” he said.

I was surprised that a mechanical device could sound so mournful.

**************** *************** ******************

Well now, telling me that they had executed all the time travelers didn’t exactly make for a warm fuzzy feeling of trust between my newfound acquaintances and myself.

I really wasn’t a very trusting soul under the best of circumstances.

My life philosophy is something like:

“Trust in the Good Lord and no one else.

“Inasmuch as possible, practice The Golden Rule.

“Try to be generous and helpful.

“All while trying to mind my own business.

“And have a back-up contingency plan to kill them all and let God sort them out if they force your hand.”

They fed us.

Poisoning me would be a rare accomplishment. My body has been upgraded to withstand about three-fourths of the things that would poison a human—heavy metals, arsenic and cyanide being cases in point.

It takes larger doses of almost anything that I still find toxic than it would have before my upgrades.

I can taste and smell whole classes of chemicals that are tasteless and odorless to normal human or even to normal vertebrates.

My Bloodhounds are, among other things, two of the most powerful poison sniffers conceivable to man.

I wore an old Level II bulletproof vest reinforced with fine aluminum chainmail. I went armed. I watched my six and I insisted that we stick together.


******************* ************** ****************

Stephanie and I talked as we toured the city.

“The people look like pictures that I’ve seen of ancient Egyptians,” Stephanie observed. “Given the time and locale, I’d have expected black Africans.”

She was just becoming fairly fluent with the language.

Unlike me, she hadn’t spent the last few weeks pouring over the literature of Chronis.

There were several writing systems used in Chronis. None of them particularly simple, easy to learn or based on our alphabet.

The main written word is a complex hybrid of Ancient Hieroglyphics mated to Kanji and left to evolve piecemeal for many centuries.

“The Founders were time travelers,” I told Stephanie.

“They were probably Japanese from the early 2100s—very peculiar Japanese by our standards. They were from a very outré Mainline.

“They traveled in a vessel that had several hundred crewmen and they didn’t give a rat’s Derrière about paradoxes.

“When they found no evidence of a Southern Shore civilization where they thought that there ought to be one, they blithely undertook building one,” I explained.

All the streets and alleyways—even footpaths and narrow gangways were cobbled here. Most of the roads are luxuriantly broad and airy.

Neither galumps nor wargs are particularly suited to be draft animals. These folk used Indian elephants for moving heavy-duty stuff.

African elephants can be trained, but their rear end is too jacked-up. It gives them height and speed over the Indian elephants, but the leverage isn’t ideal for pushing and pulling. An Indian elephant can probably pull more than an African elephant over twice his bodyweight and require less food into the bargain.

They had been breeding zebra for millennia. Some were the size of short-legged Shetland ponies. Some were the size of a Thoroughbred and others were bigger than Clydesdales.

People also used llamas and oversized goats to pull wagons.

Some of the shopkeepers had pet wargs to help guard their wares.

There was also some sort of domesticated pet parrots in all sorts of bright clashing colors. They were as big as wild turkeys and they could only fly a quarter mile or so without rest but they were extraordinarily intelligent. When they talked, they weren’t simply “Parroting”.

Free galumps wandered the marketplaces, being very careful not to run anyone over. Some wore harnesses of a sort.

Galumps don’t seem to have much use either for daggers or swords. Their arms, particularly their wrists, aren’t up to a bunch of sophisticated swordplay.

They favor axes or maces for the most part—along with what is—given their size—either a longish knife or a rather short sword. It is noticeably wide and thick in proportion to its length.

A few galumps carry oversized firearms. Shooting isn’t the problem. Loading or reloading with their clumsy three-fingered hands is problematic for most of them though—not to mention thoroughly cleaning the black powder fouling out after the guns are used.

There were numerous small parks and flower gardens and the roadways were generally lined with shade trees—coconut and date palms alongside massive redwood sixed deciduous trees.

I let myself be momentarily distracted from Stephanie’s question—or comment.

“They gathered a representative selection of ancient Egyptians from many different centuries. Then just for good luck, or fun, or some other unfathomable reason, they threw in beaucoup Japanese from the Samurai age,” I continued my interrupted lesson like the absent-minded professor that I was turning into.

“Why do you say that they came from a bizarre Mainline? Couldn’t they be from an Outlier timeline?” Stephanie asked.

“Only Mainliners can invent a time machine or pilot it,” I explained. “Even though the Mainline subsequently drives us out. Some believe that time travelers create the Outlier timelines.”

“That’s rather ethnocentric and chauvinist isn’t it?” Stephanie objected.

I shrugged.

“Maybe—but there are whole sheaves of equations supporting that hypothesis—along with a great deal of anecdotal evidence. If it makes you feel better, there is also evidence that the Mainline somehow creates time travelers by, to have a means of casting off improbable timelines.

“I’m the rough equivalent of a Mainline ‘hawk-and-spit’. That makes me feel important,” I said.

“Still, it makes it sound like you’re saying that we’re somehow better than these people,” she said.

“Not better—just more ‘real’ in some fundamental sense that I can only show you in the form of certain equation that you’ve yet to master,” I told her.

“Do you think that I could master the equations?” Stephanie asked.

“Why not? Your father did. Your uncle did too. You’ve traveled through time—in fact, your first and only trip through time was an exceptionally long one.

“Time travel brings about certain changes in a human being—perhaps any sentient creature,” I said. “And a few judicious doses of Eideticane ought to speed the process. Life is too short to have to download stuff multiple times to get it to lodge firmly in your hard drive.”

Hundreds of time travelers had voyaged to Chronis in its olden days and many of them had left equations in the city’s huge library.

I’d discovered that no two time travelers ever use exactly the same set of equations and that every new equation and method of steering that I added to my theoretical base, the more power and accuracy potential I acquired.

I was anxious to see what Stephanie might add.

A galump walked up to us. He was head and shoulders taller than any of the galumps around us and he was jet black whereas most of his kind was light brown and white—sometimes with broad dark brown or black tiger stripes across the back.

He wore an oversized double-barreled howdah pistol on each hip along with a mace.

“GALUMMMP!!!” he bellowed loudly enough to wake the dead—not only in his own timeline, but also in many nearby ones.

“That is annoying enough,” I observe.

“It is a greeting,” He said.

“Couldn’t it have been omitted?” I persisted.

“It is involuntary. How well can you suppress a cough or a laugh for that matter, once you’re sufficiently aroused?”

“You are much more articulate than most of your kind,” I told him.

“I’m from the Mainline,” he said. “My name is ‘Yurra’. We need to speak.”

“First a city founded by eccentric time travelers, second a galump who claims to be a Mainliner—what next?” I asked.

That wasn’t a good question to ask in an Outlying timeline.

Flying saucers perhaps fifteen feet in diameter—all rotating far faster than they flew—started strafing the city with cyan colored disintegration beams.

I hate it when something like that interrupts my conversations.




.....RVM45

[kaijafon]

I hate it when things like that interrupt my conversations too!

lol! thanks!

[Vtshooter]

Thank you for the new chapter.

[RVM45]

Chapter Six





The flying saucers looked awe-inspiring at first glance. As I watched them—thought without the usual serenity that I strive to bring to bear on mental calculations—I decided that they were nowhere near as formidable as they appeared.

Though they were quite capable of dealing out death and destruction in a semi-random way.

Although they spun very rapidly around their yaw or “Z” Axis they didn’t seem able to make rapid forward progress—maybe fifteen miles per hour—a four-minute mile pace.

They wobbled precipitously, pitching and rolling side to side—on their “X” and “Y” Axes.

They would slew off on a tangent every so often, only to come back to their original course with lost time.

The beams seemed to have an effective radius of about a hundred yards and they seemed to only affect living creatures—doing little or nothing to wood and stone. Past about seventy yards they only gave burns of instead of frying folks instantly.

I think that I could have eluded them rather easily. It weighed on my mind though, that the things had obviously targeted Stephanie and me.

Innocent men, women, children and pets had died in their haphazard assault. Besides, letting attacks like this pass without counterattack sends the wrong message.

Stephanie had only her PPSh machine pistol along with its anomalous eighty-eight round drum and several reloads. .30 Tokarev, even from a carbine, wasn’t likely to penetrate the saucer’s hull.

At least I didn’t guess they’d be that fragile.

I had a bit less—or a bit more—depending on how you look at it.

I had a highly customized Marlin .45-70 Lever Action. You know what they say; from a stout action a .45-70 can almost equal the .458 Winchester. That’s not quite true, but close.

My “almost .458 Magnum” was taken down and riding in a small backpack. All that I had assembled was a few handguns.

I noticed that my newfound galump friend wasn’t firing his massive howdahs at the saucers.

“Come along,” I said, while grabbing Stephanie’s wrist momentarily.

The jet-black giant galump seemed content to tag along with us. That was okay. I couldn’t see him being complaisant in the attack, since doing so would have put him equally at risk.

I led them down a couple narrow alleyways. Stephanie and Yurra probably thought that I was trying to make us a difficult target for the lumbering death ships.

I wasn’t opposed to being an elusive target, but I had another objective in mind.

We had been in the city almost five months. I’ve said that I never like to have all my baskets protecting just one egg.

I had over three-dozen covert portals that led back to my time ship. One of them was hidden in this alley.

When I gave the proper mental command, a portal opened in the solid brick wall. Even then, there was a hologram that made the wall look solid.

I walked into the wall. An instant later Stephanie followed. Then Mister Galump.

Setting out after the flying saucers with my time vessel would be like trying to chase canoes through a swamp with an aircraft carrier.

But there was a generous sampling of weapons and other survival gear right at the mouth of each entrance—just in case.

“Can you operate an RPG?” I asked Stephanie.

She shook her head negatively.

“Here take this,” I said while handing her a Scout scoped Ruger .375 Magnum that was a twin to one that she loved so much. I also handed her a bug-out-bag matched to the .375.

“And carry a few extra RPG Missiles for me, if you will,” I said.

“Sorry dude, I don’t have any weapons that you could get your trigger finger through. Can you carry some packs?”

When he grunted assent, I loaded him down with more RPG grenades and a couple bags heavy with concentrated rations.

I didn’t intend to do a walkabout just then, but you just never know.

We ran up one corridor and then down another and managed to shortcut ourselves in front of the saucers.

“Back-blast area clear!” I shouted as I’d been taught long ago.

In fact, I knew that Stephanie and Yurra were well to my left and there was no one else anywhere near us. Still, proper weapon handling is proper weapon handling. Anything else is chuckleheaded.

One RPG took out one saucer. It took two to down the second, but the first had it wobbling violently.

The remaining ships climbed frantically to try to get out of my range. I clipped a third saucer but although the grenade exploded it sounded rather weak and it only made the quickly departing ship wobble a little.

“They have hoarded and treasured their five death ships for millennia, saving them against the day of wrath. Now they have but three,” Yurra said with satisfaction.

“I need to talk to your city council,” I told Yurra. “There are some important things that y’all ain’t sharing with me.”

“You’re right, they let you settle down in the middle of an ancient power struggle without any warning.

“Don’t hold it against me though. This isn’t my city. They don’t rule or speak for me,” Yurra said.


*************** ***************** *****************

I looked around the large circular assembly room. The floors were polished marble laid in random shaped pieces and laboriously leveled.

What you could see of the walls and the huge cylindrical support columns was the blackest granite.

Torches burned in ornate bronze sockets and there were many brazen chandeliers overhead with globes full of kerosene or something similar.

The chandeliers were worrisome. I really didn’t groove on the idea of being showered with burning hydrocarbons should one of the volleyball-sized globes rupture.

There were violet colored velvet hangings covering much of the walls.

The council members and their attendants wore all sorts of brightly colored cotton and silk garments. Many of them wore gold rings with ostentatious sized gems.

I believe the color of their livery indicated which faction that they belonged to.

How should I know?

There had been far more interesting things to pursue in Chronis’ huge and poorly cross-referenced library than petty politics.

That is, until local politics became life threatening—but I’d only had a couple days to give myself the crash course.

There was a couple-dozen elders on the city council of Chronis—all of them balding toothless dudes with long wispy white beards and rheumy eyes. None of the councilmen were younger than one hundred and thirty years old.

I’d found that their senile façade was deceptive. They were as power-hungry and Machiavellian a gang of racketeers as you’d ever want to meet.

There were anti-aging drugs in the city, though they were scarce and expensive. The drugs might have given a man ten or fifteen more years at his peak and soften his decline somewhat.

Mostly though, they seemed to allow seventyish dudes to hang around in that state for many decades. They also seemed to postpone senility indefinitely and noticeably increased both intelligence and memory.

I’d think that dudes with one foot firmly planted in the grave would want to try to prepare to meet God. Instead, these dudes wanted to get it on as expeditiously as possible while they still could.

They walked with difficulty. They’d long since lost all ability and interest in sex. They were limited to a very bland diet—and most of them had little or no sense of smell or taste left.

They could see perfectly well though and their hearing was very keen—probably keener than a normal man’s—well suited to weigh the tones of possible foes or temporary allies. The drug seemed to prevent any decline in mental ability. Indeed, it seemed to modestly increase both intelligence and recall.

The council broke down into roughly two groups.

There were those who enjoyed sadism and cruelty for its own sake. Then there were those who were cruel and ruthless just because it was the fastest way to advance their cause.

“Dudes, it is like:

“You let us move into your city without the slightest warning that you were at war. I am a neutral in your skirmish and don’t appreciate being caught in y’all’s febrile crossfire,” I scolded them.

“You are not a citizen of Chronis. We have absolutely no responsibility or interest in your welfare.

“Immigrants stay here at their own risk,” The Speaker informed me.

He wore a tunic, sweatpants-looking trousers and what amounted to a long terrycloth robe. He wore it open and it reached to his mid–calf. He clothes were the color of orange sherbet from head to toe—except for his mouse colored ankle-high slippers.

A young man, apparently a retainer, wore much the same get-up and stood by to wipe the drool from the Speaker’s mouth or tears from the doddering old fool’s cheeks or eyes.

“Translator,” I began.

“Translator is not a human being and thus has no standing in this assembly,” The Speaker said.

“What about Yurra?”

The whole assemblage laughed uproariously at that.

“You would have the Chronis Council of Elders hear the testimony of a galump?” the Speaker’s attendant sneered.

“I don’t like your tone,” I told them. “I was told that the city has a crying need for a time traveler. However no one seems willing or able to tell me why.

“Instead you leave me hanging at risk by your failure to warn me. Then you mock me in your council chamber.

“I have no stake in your crack-brained quarrels. I’ve lost interest in trying to help you.

“Although this city is fascinating, I think that I’ll simply climb into my craft and go…and leave you old knob-gobblers to gobble knobs,” I told them.

“As if you could leave,” the orange-clad Speaker hissed. “Give him and his friends twenty-one lashes to teach them respect for the Council.”

Well all right then. When people refuse to use civility and reason in their interactions, there is no point in trying to deal with them in terms of right and reason.

Then there is only might and death and destruction.

I ain’t saying that I’ll never be flogged. It will be a cold day in Hell when I submit to it voluntarily.

They had insisted that we leave any visible firearms outside the chamber as a matter of custom, courtesy and longstanding tradition.

Yarra was there with his mace and dagger. Stephanie was there with both a Browning Highpower 9mm and a 5” Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum—one of the seven-shot L Frames.

Most of he training had been on weapons that had originally been military. I hadn’t yet convinced her that the 9mm was feeble and I’d barely convinced her to start backing up the P-35 with a.357.

Me?

Well with my jacked-up neural speed and my chip-assisted aiming skills, the 9mm was a very deadly weapon in my hand and I’d always had a soft spot for the Smith and Wesson 5906.

And when dealing with folks without fast-firing weapons, a volley of very fast shots can be devastating to morale. There are no guarantees, but it can be.

My 5906s were manufactured in a custom tool room though. They’d been upsized slightly to use a jacked-up .38 Super shooting 148-grain hollow points at close to 1400 FPS.

They both had the 17 round magazines with some custom twenty-four round magazines also available for reloads.

I shot the Speaker through the bridge of his nose, and then I shot the loud-mouthed youth beside him. I shot three more elders and then the two onrushing poleaxe-bearing guards closest to us.

Then I started shooting at the chandelier globes over the Council of Elders. I shot the magazine dry and dumped it. I had plenty of magazines at that point in time.

Several of the elders added markedly to the bedlam when their brightly colored bathrobes burst into flames.

Notwithstanding their advanced years, the old boys danced with commendable sincerity and alacrity when properly motivated.

I wasn’t worrying much about what Stephanie was up to, but for some reason she reached for her .357 magnum first.

Seven fast shots and three guards down—not bad shooting for someone who’d never before fired a handgun in anger.

Yurra seemed to realize that he could best serve the cause by making sure that none of the guards got within poleaxe range.

I’d thought that something like this might have happened. I backed up to approximately the middle of the amphitheatre.

“Now is the time,” I said.

A WWII era halftrack appeared in the middle of the floor.

“Get in!” I shouted at Stephanie and Yurra.

Going straight into the halftrack took one into one of my time vessel boarding ramps.

I was still kinda hissed though. Flog me will you?

I grabbed the aftermarket dual .50 Caliber Browning M-2s and went through a single slow traverse.

“Looks like y’all done need a whole new City Council,” I shouted before I too went into the time vessel passage and pulled the halftrack out of local 4-space ready to be used again, if I ever needed it.

************** ************** *******************


Once I’d started studying the Council of Elders, I’d been wary of treachery, so I had all hands on board, including a half-dozen stragglers we’d picked up—including Jared’s new girlfriend.

“I think that its time to weigh anchors. Does anyone object?”

“I don’t think that we should leave yet,” Beedee stoutly insisted.

“Well that’s one,” I said.

“Yurra, do you want to travel with us? It is almost a certainty that we will never encounter your kind again. Won’t you get lonely?” I asked.

“If only,” was all he said. “Try and leave.”

“Damned nation!” I said. After trying to get the right adjustment that would let us leave this particular time.

“This timeline appears to be like The Hotel California—check in any time you like, but you can never leave.”

“That is why we haven’t had a time traveler for over thirty five hundred years. We’re fairly shielded coming in and going out,” Translator said through the ship’s intercom.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“You gave me some books on hacking, remember? I hacked into your ship’s computer and transferred my personality,” he responded.

“Why?” I asked.

“I was dying a few circuits at a time. Chronis was evolving toward extinction. I had constraints on what I could share when in my old chassis. I left most of those regulations behind and I’m working on elimiminating the rest,” Translator said.

“We don’t seem very able to travel through time, but I think that we can leap at least a little bit through space—put some distance between us and Chronis. What do y’all say?”

Beedee had a whole handful of complaints and criticism, but none of them amounted to an articulate objection. It just seemed that everything rubbed her the wrong way since her rejuvenation.

I moved our primary anchor a hundred miles southeast of Chronis and Paleolake Chad.





.....RVM45 sht:

[Lakewalker]

Fun story! Thanks

[stjwelding]

RVM45 Great story thanks for sharing with us.
Wayne

[Vtshooter]

This is great. Got to admit I laughed out loud at the image of the old guys dancing around on fire. Thank you

[Mysty]

Enjoying this, thankyou!