Another Place Episode 32

Another Place Another Time

Book Two

Luke and Traveler

Episode Thirty-Two

The roar of the retreating jets died in the storm before anyone spoke.

“Luke,” Rick began, “Andy and Lois and I have had about an hour and a half to digest this story we’re about to tell. You’ve had about five minutes. We’re going to catch you up, and then Charlie can fill in the rest. Is that okay?” He looked at everyone, indicating that it was a question for the group. Everyone nodded except Traveler, who wagged his tail.

Rick leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and considered his words carefully. Then he opened his eyes and leaned across the table toward me, “Just before dark, Andy and I were here in the kitchen talking and getting supper ready.” He nodded toward the food, long forgotten on the butcher block.

“Lois was out in the barn working on one of the tractors.” He paused, grinned and added, “That’s standard woman’s work, at least around here.” I noted Lois’s shy smile out of the corner of my eye and figured she heard those kinds of remarks often from her brothers, and probably everyone else who knew her.

“It was almost dark when the storm hit. We couldn’t hear anything except rain, wind and thunder. If Lois hadn’t been coming from the equipment shed at just the right time, none of us would have known what happened.”

Lois laughed, and picked up the story, “It about scared me to death. I was running from the barn to the house when I saw this strange airplane come flying over. It couldn’t have been more than fifty feet off the ground. It was wobbling, and looked like it was about to fall out of the sky. It wasn’t making a sound.” Charlie smiled ruefully.

“I stood there in the rain and watched it until it went out of sight near the hay field on the other side of the patch of corn, behind the barn. A second or so later I heard a thud, and I knew it had crashed. I waited for another few seconds to see if there was going to be an explosion, then I ran for the house.”

Andy picked up the story, “I’ll never forget the look on her face if I live to be a hundred and ten. She almost took the door off the hinges, and her face was all eyes.”

Rick jumped in, “If Lois were a practical joker, we would have never listened to her. In fact, it was a minute before she calmed down enough for us to understand a word she was saying, and when we did understand, we weren’t sure we were hearing it right. She shouted, ‘A plane just crashed in the hayfield.’”

Rick paused for emphasis and said, “It took us a while to respond even though we knew she had seen something, and she wasn’t going to shut up until she showed it to us, storm or no storm.”

Andy began to speak. It was obvious the Parkers were so close it didn’t matter who told the story. “We jumped in the truck, and I guess we were at the hay field in less than five minutes from the time that Lois first saw the aircraft. At first, we didn’t see anything. She drove about fifty yards or so into the field, and then we came to the place where the plane first touched down. It was easy to see, since a fifty-foot wide by a hundred foot long strip of hay was down. We drove another fifty yards and there it was. The weirdest airplane I’ve ever seen was parked right in the middle of our hayfield just as pretty as you please.”

For about thirty seconds nobody said anything. Then Rick said, “At first we didn’t see any sign of life. No smoke, fire, or steam…nothing. Then Charlie, here, came around the aircraft from the far side. He looked like someone whose pickup truck just stopped running on the interstate, and he was walking around to see if he could figure out what was wrong with it.”

Charlie laughed.

Traveler looked at him and wagged his tail.

Charlie looked directly at me. I sensed Andy, Rick, Lois, and Traveler turn toward him. I knew there would be no more changes in the storyteller.

Charlie’s words were soft, but commanding. “Luke, I know you have a thousand questions, and I’m going to tell you what I told the Parkers. We don’t have time for me to answer all of them. At least not until the ship is secure, by that I mean, ready to fly again. You just heard the jets. The government is looking for me. If I am taken, it will be a catastrophe for all of us,” he paused, “And I do mean all of us…all of the people on the planet today, and all that will ever live on the planet.”

He let that sink in, and then continued. “I’m not an alien from some far corner of the universe. I’m just as human as you are. I live on earth, just like you. In fact, my home isn’t far from here, in miles that is. However, I don’t live in this time…your time. I live fifty-years in the future.”

I guess my face revealed my disbelief. Charlie stopped his explanation and said, “I understand your skepticism, Luke. Let me briefly try to explain how it’s possible for me to move though time the way you and Traveler move across land.”

He paused, and it was obvious he was considering how he could explain time travel to a truck driver and a bunch of farmers. A few seconds passed and his eyes lit up. He said, “See if this makes sense. In his theory of relativity, Einstein said that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. He said many other things that were revolutionary, which means they needed confirmation: most were proven; a few were not verifiable. However, in his lifetime, and until your time, everyone agreed that he was right, that nothing could exceed the speed of light.”

Charlie paused and looked at each of us to make sure he had our undivided attention. He even looked down at Traveler, who was staring intently at him, just like the four of us at the table. “Einstein was wrong about the speed of light. There is something that travels infinitely faster than light, and Einstein knew what it was; however, he gave it no credibility. Thought travels faster than light. Einstein gave thought no credibility because it is impossible to weigh, measure, or observe thought. Nevertheless, thoughts are real. Collectively and individually, we use them to create our lives and our world. Everything that man has created, he created with thought. You know, everyone knows, that in an instant your thoughts can take you anywhere you send them. Your thoughts have no limits other than the limits you place on them.”

Again, Charlie paused, letting his words register before continuing. “When Einstein framed the theory of relativity, the computer was in its infancy. Today, in your time, millions, probably billions of people own and routinely use computers. Advances in computer technology haven’t slowed; in fact, the rate of advancement of computer technology has increased. Scientists in my time have created a link whereby we can effectively connect computers to the human brain. The basic technique is amazingly simple. In fact, the children of my time are building interfaces at home. We have scientists, computer engineers, and computer programmers working together to advance the basic design even further. The progress they have made rivals any scientific progress since the beginning of recorded history.”

“You’re probably wondering what thoughts have to do with time travel. Trust me, the two are inseparable. To understand, I want you to think of time in a different way than you’ve ever thought of it before. Time is not a measure of anything. Time is a simple reference to location. All-time exists, from the beginning of the universe to the end of it. Astronomers looking through their telescopes are in fact looking through light-years, or to put it another way, looking through time. Remember your science teachers telling you that many of the stars you saw at night were no longer there, because they had burned-out, collapsed on themselves, and ceased to be a star?”

Charlie paused, and we nodded our heads as we recalled hearing that at various times. “That’s not an accurate statement. The way they should have explained it is, when we look at a star, we are looking through time to a place where the star existed as we are seeing it. Or think of this, the sun, our sun, obviously exists as a bright, vibrant star, in our time. However, it is also a burned-out collapsed star; a black hole, in another time, or to be more accurate in another place. When you realize that time is a place, not a linear system of measurement, your perception shifts, and you will see how I can be here with you even though I’m from a place fifty years in the future. Time is a statement of location in ‘All-time.’ Here’s another way to think of it. Luke, if we get in your truck and I say let’s go to California, you know where that is.”

I laughed and said, “You’d better believe it.”

Then he said something that made the idea of time travel clear to me. “If we get in my aircraft and you say let’s go to 1967, I know where that is just like you know where California is. You see, ten minutes ago, ten years ago, ten million years ago haven’t stopped existing because we are not currently in them, any more than California has stopped existing because we are in Tennessee. To get to California you need a vehicle that will take you there. To get to ten minutes ago, or ten years ago, or ten million years ago, all you need is a vehicle to take you there.”

He paused, looked at me, and I guess my eyes told him that I understood, because he continued, “All we have done is couple the ancient astronomer’s knowledge of what time is, with our newly discovered technology for linking human thought to computers, and created a method whereby we can travel in time.

He paused as if he were unsure about his next words. Then he said, “The technology is new for us. I’m what you would call a test pilot. This is only our second try at traveling in time. I flew the first mission also. In your time that first mission occurred thirty years ago. In my time it was only ten days ago. The difference is, from a specific point in time, say fifty years from now, it’s possible to travel to any point in time just the way you travel over land from here to some point ten miles away or three thousand miles away. The time difference between my first trip, and this, my second trip, is of no consideration. I’ve simply made two trips to different locations. I was in 1969 for a few hours, and then I returned to my time. Two weeks later I traveled to 2000, and, hopefully, I’ll only spend a few hours here, then I’ll return to my 2050.”

We laughed and I said, “Okay, I’ve got it.”

Everyone laughed again and Rick asked, “You mean this is only the second time you have ever tried the brain computer link?”

Charlie replied quickly, “No, we’ve been working with the brain computer link for many years. First, we used the technique to travel only on Earth. Quickly we advanced the technology to the point that we could travel throughout the solar system, and now even beyond our solar system, but always in our time dimension. However, as I just mentioned, this is only our second try at traveling through time.”

“What happened the first time, Charlie?” Lois asked.

Charlie grinned, “At the risk of sounding incompetent, I crashed, just the way I crashed this evening. Well, not exactly like I crashed this evening. Today I was in your time much longer before I went down.”

Lois said, “I have two questions for you, Charlie. On the other hand, maybe it’s only one, I’m not sure. First, why do you need to travel in time? And second, why did you wait so long to try it?”

Charlie weighed his words carefully, “We have known since we perfected the mind-computer link, that we could travel in time, and it was tempting to make that our first priority because we wanted to know how some of our major problems, pollution for example, were created. We knew that knowledge would make it easier to correct some of the issues we are dealing with. However, we believed that we would have to be extremely careful not to change anything in your time that might adversely affect you, or the generations that follow you. The more our scientists study the subject, the more certain they are that it is not an issue. Indications now are that to alter something here will have no more effect on another time than, say, picking a flower in California will significantly affect anything in Tennessee. However, be that as it may, the only purpose of this mission was to check the technology that we use to move through time. The last thing we wanted was to make contact with any of you.”

Lois said, “But Charlie, how do you know that your time isn’t the way it is because you’ve traveled to other places in time and unintentionally changed something?”

Charlie laughed. “Lois, you are a quick study. The truth is, we don’t know, and there is no way for us to know. What’s happening here tonight could have repercussions throughout eternity. For example, Lois, if you and Luke fall in love, marry, and have kids who have kids, it will change the course of everything. And it will happen because I traveled through time and created the event that caused you to meet.”

There was silence around the table. I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself say, “I’d be willing to take that chance.”

I was blushing before the words finished ringing through the dining room. Then the room exploded in laughter. I was afraid to look at Lois, so I didn’t.

When some composure finally returned to the room, I looked at Lois and noted that she wasn’t blushing. In fact, her eyes looked into mine as if to find out whether my statement had been mindless or indicative of something else.

Hoping to change the subject, I said, “Charlie, it looks like you still have some bugs to work out in your computer-mind link.”

He laughed, “It would appear that way at first glance, but in fact, it wasn’t the mind-computer link that failed. It was the engine. We use the mind-computer link only to move through time or deep space. Conventional travel is by our cyber propulsion engine. The cyber engine can move us at just under the speed of light. You are still twenty years from discovering that technology. However, you will discover it; you’ll have to because you are rapidly exhausting the earth’s available fossil fuel.”

“What do you use for fuel?” I asked.

Charlie grinned, “I’ve given you a lot of information in the past few minutes. What I’m about to tell you will move right to the top of your unbelievable list.” He paused, and then said, “Water is the only fuel the engine uses.”

Without thinking I said, “That’s it! Now I’ve heard it all.”

“It’s true, Luke. We use only water. And that’s why I crashed. I was running short of water. Though we haven’t discovered why, we know that we use a lot more fuel traveling through time than we do traveling in our dimension. I was running short of water, so I hovered over the Tennessee River and picked up two thousand gallons, more than enough to get me back to my place in time.”

“What happened?”

“Exactly what happened ten days ago, or thirty years ago in your time, polluted water. I finished the water pickup and climbed to 75,000 feet. I was getting ready to make the mind-computer link that would have taken me home, when the water I’d just picked up reached the engine, and it failed. I didn’t have time to analyze the situation or take any remedial action. I dropped over 40,000 feet before I was able to get any power at all, and then only in spurts, just enough to keep some directional control, but not nearly enough to set up the mind-computer link. I managed to land in the hay field without damaging anything, but now I have to have cleaner water than I found in the river.”

Lois looked at me. “Luke, that’s where you come in, we have the quality of water that Charlie needs in our artesian well, and you have the truck we need to get it from the well to Charlie’s aircraft.”

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