Tag: stories

Wormhole Part Four

Timothy Price58 Comments

At the end of Wormhole Part Three, Captain Fremont was overwhelmed by El’s technology and his unbelievable stories about the future. It gets worse.

“Please sit down, Sir? I need to explain a few events that will happen in the future to put this satellite map into context,” El explained as he sat back in the chair looking at the bewildered captain.

“In the future, the USA and many other countries launch what are called satellites into orbit above the earth’s atmosphere…”

“Launch?” The captain interrupted. “How are they ‘launched’?”

“They are launched on rockets,” El answered. “Rockets become very useful beyond wars in the future. Satellites are mostly used for communications, spying, and taking pictures of the earth from space. The image you see on the screen is a picture taken by a satellite and a map put on top of the picture.”

“How did you get the picture onto the screen?” The captain asked. “I downloaded it from Google Earth…” “Google Earth? What kind of name is that? It sounds ridiculous.” The captain replied. “Indeed it does!” El answered. “Google is a search engine, and it has an app called ‘Google Earth’ that allows users to search for satellite maps all over the world in 2016.”

“You make my head spin with all the incomprehensible words you use. I do not understand all this.” The captain explained, exasperated over El’s strange vocabulary.

“I can see how difficult this is, but I don’t know how to explain this stuff in 1943 terms.” El showed frustration trying to explain concepts that the captain had never imagined. “Satellites are the result of ‘The Space Race’. In 1957, the Soviet Union will launch the first satellite into space on a rocket called ‘Sputnik’. A few years later, the Soviet Union launches the first man into space…”

“A man in Space?” The captain interrupted. “You are getting more and more unbelievable!”

“And it gets even more unbelievable,” El continues. “The USA starts trying to catch up to the Russians, and in the 1960s we send men into space and by the end of the ‘60s, we send astronauts to the moon.” The captain just shook his head in disbelief. “You are correct. What you are telling me is unbelievable. Now you are going to tell me that people can go and live on the moon in 2016?” “Ha! Ha!” El shook his head. “That’s what they were thinking in the 1960s, but the space program was cut back in the 1970s, due to civil unrest over the Vietnam war, the oil shock, and cultural and political changes from the 1960s into the 1970s. We continue developing satellites and launching them into orbit. By 2016 there are literally tons of ‘space junk’ orbiting the earth. Anyway, this map on the screen is the product of those satellites.”

El closes the image on the screen and opens another folder with photos in it. “The photo I want to show you is in this batch of photos” El explained. “Now I’m doing what we call ‘scrolling down’ through the images to find the particular photo I want to show you. Here it is.” El double-clicked on a photo of the Sandias, and the photo opened up into a larger window. “See all those towers on the Sandias? That’s what I was referring to when I told you that after I came through the wormhole, I noticed there were no towers on the Sandias.”

“I see the towers. There are so many of them. What are they for?” The captain asked.

“They include radio towers, TV towers, cell towers, and towers for wireless Internet service. KOB radio was one of the first stations to put a tower on the Crest.”

Sergeant Prescott came back in and announced that Major Pierce would be joining them shortly.

“Prescott! Come over here and look at these photographs!” Capitan Fremont commanded. Prescott walked over and looked bewildered at the screen and asked about all the towers on the Sandias.”Those are the towers he said he noticed were not on the mountains when he came through the time warp.” The captain told Prescott.

“I can’t believe the color and detail in the photograph.” Sergeant Prescott noted as he stared at the screen. “What is this ‘device’ I am looking at?” He asked.

“It’s a personal computer in the form of what we call a ‘laptop, notebook or portable computer. Specifically, this is an Apple Macbook Pro.” El explained. “You might have heard of IBM? They made one of the first personal computers, which evolved from what will be called ‘Main Frame’ computers. The closest thing you may have to a computer in 1943 would be an ‘adding machine’ I believe?”

Prescott and Fremont looked at each other “Adding machine?” Fremont said. “Do you know what that is, Prescott?”

“I think I saw them in accounting once, Sir. The accountants had machines with punch keys like a typewriter but laid out differently. I can’t say for sure if they were ‘adding machines,’ but they probably were. But thinking about them now, they were primitive compared to this ‘device’ as he calls it.”

A tall, slender man walked into the room. Prescott and Fremont turned and saluted him.
“At ease,” he told them. “What’s all this about security clearances and labs that you were talking to me on the phone about Prescott?”

“Excuse me, Sir!” El interrupted, “I can explain the security clearance issue.”

“You must be the man from the future? Prescott told me unbelievable things about you.”

“Yes, Sir! I have a lot of unbelievable things here, but more importantly, I know about what’s happening with the war effort, plus the top-secret goings-on here and in Los Alamos.”

“How do you know about Los Alamos?” Major Pierce looked very surprised at the mention of Los Alamos. “Nobody is supposed to know about Los Alamos.”

“I’ve been thrown back in time, or into a parallel universe, from 73 years in the future. I can tell you a lot about what’s going on right now and what will happen in the future up to 2016.” El explained. “But when I mentioned the labs and the Manhattan Project to Sergeant Prescott and Captain Fremont, I realized they didn’t have the proper clearances to know about them. So I asked if they knew of anyone I could talk to with a top-secret clearance, and Sergeant Prescott called you. I hope I haven’t already got them in trouble.”

“This is a precarious situation,” said Pierce. “You obviously have information that regular people, especially civilians, are not supposed to have. You are obviously not from around here by the way you talk…”

“I was born and raised in the Albuquerque area, Sir, I may be more native than any of you!” El interrupted. “It’s not that I’m not from around ‘Here’; I’m not from this time,” El explained. “The situation is this, Sir. I have the technology on that computer over there to speed up and advance the whole atomic effort. I can do many of the calculations that are painfully done by hand in seconds on that computer. Since I know what happens in the future, we can possibly change the future. Unless I can find another wormhole or time warp to put me back into the time I came from, which I have no idea how to do, I’m stuck here, and I have no problem trying to influence and change the future.”

Major Pierce stood and thought for a while. He got a look of resolve, and said, “Let’s see if we can change the future!”

The End

Surprise

Timothy Price26 Comments

Jorge answered the door to find a strikingly handsome young man with cinnamon-colored skin and curly black hair on the other side of the door. “Hi, Dad!” ricocheted off Jorge’s ears, flooding his mind with memories of the blond woman, a serviceman’s wife, with whom he had an affair 20 years ago. “Mom told me all about the affair,” the young man said, reading the emotions on Jorge’s face. “She couldn’t bring herself to have an abortion.”

Wormhole Part Three

Timothy Price38 Comments

Wormhole part two left us knowing the year that El ended up in after driving through a wormhole.

A large, loud man with many medals on his chest burst into the room. “What the Hell is that parked outside the building?” he boomed. He continued looking at El. “It must belong to you. You must be the man from the future?”

“Yes! That’s…” El started to answer. “That’s yes, Sir!” Captain Fremont interrupted. “Yes, Sir!” El continued. “Captain Fremont, I presume? That is my car. It’s a 2009 Mazda RX-8 with a 1.3-liter rotary engine…”

“What are you talking about?” he interrupted. “You hardly spoke a single word that made sense to me… Prescott!”

“Yes, Sir!” Prescott answered, standing at attention. “Do you understand this man?” pointing at El. “Hardly a word, Sir. He speaks English, but he uses so many words I have never heard before that I don’t understand.” Prescott handed Captain Fremont El’s license. Fremont examined it for a moment.

“At ease Prescott.” Turning to El, “Can you explain how you got here in plain, simple English that I can understand?”

“I will do my best, Sir. I was driving home from the office on Coors Road…”

“Coors Road?” the captain interrupted. “That’s just a dirt road on the other side of the river practically in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yes, Sir! It’s dirt in 1943, but in 2016 it’s paved with six lanes and multiple traffic lights at various crossroads that serve shopping centers along Coors Road. The crossroads lead up to housing developments on the West Mesa…”

“2016? Did you say 2016? That’s…” the captain paused to calculate the time years.

“73 years in the future, Sir! And Albuquerque changes a lot in 73 years from now. There’s a million people living in Albuquerque in 2016”

“I can’t begin to imagine that. A million people you say?” The captain waved for El to continue, giving El a not-too-sure look. El continued: “While driving home on Coors… “

“In that car parked outside?” the captain interrupted. “Of course, carry on.”

“I saw what looked like heat waves rising off the pavement. I drove through the waves, and my car felt like the brakes came on as I came out from the other side of the waves. When everything cleared, I was no longer on a six-lane, paved road. I was on a sandy dirt road, in a bare mesa, looking at the Sandias without a single tower on top of it. I knew I had either driven through what we call a ‘worm hole’ or a ‘time warp,’ and I ended up at some time in the past. But at that point, I didn’t know what year it was.”

“How did you end up here?” the captain asked.

“Luckily, I didn’t get stuck in the sand, so I turned the car around (I was heading north before the time warp) and drove south, knowing Coors would connect with Central. I presumed Kirtland and the labs were the safest places to go, so I drove down Central to get across the river, made it over to Gibson, and drove up to the gate. The guards didn’t know what to think of the car, but I told them I was here to show the car to scientists at the lab. They seemed puzzled but made calls, and Sergeant Prescott came out and escorted me here.”

“Labs? What labs are you talking about?” asked the captain.

“That’s right. Sandia Labs might not be very well developed at the moment. I believe they start to develop the labs after the war. But I know what becomes Sandia Labs is on Kirtland, and they are doing work to support the Manhattan Project…”

“What are you talking about?” interrupted the captain “Sandia Labs, Manhattan Project? Never heard of them, but you say they exist, now, in 1943?”

“Yes! What kind of security clearances do you and the sergeant have? If you don’t have top-secret clearances, or whatever level they call it in 1943, you probably wouldn’t know about the labs or the Manhattan Project. I don’t know if I can tell you anymore without the possibility of getting all of us in trouble. Can you find someone with a top-secret clearance I can talk to?”

The captain looked at the sergeant for a moment while he was thinking. “Go make some calls and see if you can locate Major Pierce. I know he has been working in those new temporary buildings they have put out east of here — the ones they won’t let the rest of us go near. Those buildings may have something to do with the ‘labs’ he’s talking about.”

“Yes, Sir!” The sergeant walked out the door after saluting the captain.

The captain looked at El. “What do you have on the table?” They walked over to the table and El show the captain the three cameras, cables, and adapters for the computer. “I carry these three cameras everywhere I go. That’s how I happen to have them. The cameras are all what we call ‘digital.’ No film.” El explained, “however, once the batteries run down the cameras will be of no use because I don’t have chargers to charge their batteries.” El looked inside his computer bag. “I do have the charger for the computer.”

The captain looked and the cameras, cables, and charger with much confusion. “I don’t really know what to say about these things. They are all so strange.”

El asked the captain to pull up a chair. “I want to show you some photos you will find interesting.” They sat down at the table, and El set his Macbook Pro in front of them and opened it up.

“I thought you were going to show me photographs?” the captain asked, giving the black screen a puzzled look.

“I am. I need to wake this thing up first.” El clicked the trackpad, and the Macbook’s screen lit up with a browser in the foreground on a page from his blog titled “Kissy Kats” showing a photo of two cats that look like they are kissing.

“What the Hell am I looking at?” the captain yelled as he jumped up out of his chair and stared at the screen.

“That’s my blog page with a photo of two of my cats grooming each other. The page is cached, so it still shows the pictures and writing.” El explained as he scrolled down the page. “If I refreshed the page, the page would go blank, and I would get a ‘Page not found!’ error or ‘Cannot connect to the Internet!’ error.”

“‘Cashed?’ That’s what we do with checks!” The captain commented, still glued to the screen. “You are not making sense. I see the colored photographs and the words. I hear you speaking, all in English, but I don’t understand anything I’m seeing or what you just said.”

“I don’t expect you to. This is not what I wanted to show you anyway.” El pressed ‘command H’ to hide the browser and then opened Adobe Bridge from the dock.

“What did you do? Where did it go?” The captain asked, completely bewildered.

“I hid the browser, and I’m opening a file manager that I use to organize my photos. See the icon with ‘Br’ bouncing in the dock? I hope it doesn’t try to authenticate over the Internet since there is no Internet.” A moment later, Bridge opened, and a grid of thumbnail photos covered the screen. “Phew! It opened!”

“Look at all those pictures. They are in color and so clear. How did you do that?” the captain asked, captivated by the screen.

“These photos are from the smaller of the three cameras we were just looking at, but I’m changing directories to photos from the camera with the big white lens on it. See how the screen only shows icons that look like folders with different names under each folder. When I double click on this folder, you will see a different set of photos.”

“Wait!” The Captain said looking at the screen. “What’s that?” pointing to an image that was not in a folder.

“Oh! That! Are you ready for this?” El asked as he double-clicked on the image. “Probably not!” The Captain replied. “What is that? It looks like a map, but not?” As the satellite map of Albuquerque opened on the screen. “It’s a satellite image of Albuquerque in 2016 with a map layer on top of it!” El explained.

“You are not making sense, but I can see what you are doing and the changes taking place. I can see that strange ‘Satel..’ whatever you called it.” The Captain said as he stared at the screen. “This is fantastic. It’s like magic!”