Back when I finally made the decision to break my enormous tome into a series, I somehow came to the conclusion that dividing it into books of about 20 chapters each would result in five books.
Nothing seemed obviously wrong with my calculation. I even used a calculator. And a quick browse convinced me that approximately every 20th chapter sat some sort of plot element I could tweak into a story conclusion.
Then today, while looking for that point in what is slated to become Book Four, I couldn’t find it. Huh? How come it seemed workable then, but the 20th chapter in this soon-to-be book doesn’t look remotely like anything that could be tweaked into an ending note?
Well, that’s my problem, not yours. Bottom line and long story short: looks like the series will have six books instead of five. And I’m not sweating it, because these are the kind of problems I enjoy solving.
The Paradox series is officially launched, with the publishing today of the first book in the series. Heap big thanks to those who pre-ordered.
Be advised: at the end of the book I linked to where you can leave a review on ‘Zon…but the fact that I made the link from the pre-order page caused an error. I was able to upload a correction/working link now that the E-book is live, so henceforth, no worries. But apologies for the inconvenience to those who already have your copy. I have learned my lesson and for subsequent books I will simply wait until the publish date before I try adding the review link.
I sure hope I got everything right on the paperback, because there is no more revising the content, and that publish date is on Tuesday.
E-book and paperback versions of the first Paradox book go live in just a few days. I have also edited the second book, which is scheduled to be published just before Christmas.
The color scheme for this cover has already changed, BTW.
I used the paperback proof again this time and caught all kinds of text that needed tweaking. Funny how that works.
But wait–there’s more! I may be done with the major tweaks to the third book. Well, based on recent experience, probably not. I’m about to order the paperback proof for that one–no doubt I’ll find all kinds of stuff to edit.
The first book in the Paradox Series is close to debut. The e-book goes live on November 11, and the paperback is scheduled for November 14. Just got the proof in the mail.
Cutting it kinda’ close, I know, but I’m giving it another once-over, on a physical book this time. I dunno why this is, but I’m finding all kinds of tweaks to make now that I’m actually looking at ink on paper. The deadline’s coming up fast for final revisions, so you know what I’ll be doing this weekend and for all my spare time coming up.
I’ll be tweaking covers too, when I’m done with this. Might share the covers here in weeks/months ahead.
Curious about Amazon discounting my debut novel, I surfed over to the Retreads Series page and found that Tier Zero is also discounted. Right now it is $5.09–cheaper than the current discount on the Kindle version and less than a third of the normal price.
Notice the paperback version has the Mack Bolan-esque retro cover painted by Derrick Early. This is yet another good gift idea for somebody who likes to read about kickass operators bringing smoke on bad guys. In this case, the bad guys are modern pirates, human traffickers, a murderous black ops team, and a turncoat mercenary.
Just as with Hell and Gone, I don’t know how long this discount will last…but I do know that Christmas is coming up fast.
Apparently Amazon does this sometimes: they have been discounting my bestsellers. I thought it was a mistake, but no.
What this means right now is that you can get the Hell and Gone paperback for less than a third of it’s normal retail price. In fact, it’s the same exact price they have discounted the Kindle version to: $4.17.
No idea how long this will last so you might as well strike while the iron is cheap hot! BTW, with Christmas around the corner this is a good gift idea for anyone you know who likes military thrillers, men’s adventure, action novels, or all the above.
With what’s happening in and around Israel right now, this book might be as relevant as ever.
The Big Based Book Sale ends tomorrow. You still have time to save money on some good reads by non-woke authors.
Wow–my Retreads trilogy made the top 10??!??! To think I almost didn't put them in this time… And I've been plugging the sale mostly to sci-fi and fantasy groups. https://t.co/lV3rvGqNaE
And despite it being mostly a sci-fi/fantasy deal, my Retreads trilogy made the Top Ten in sales. If you haven’t picked up my paramilitary adventures, now’s a good time to get those for cheap, too. (Not just on Amazon, BTW. There are universal book links on the “Books” page right here at Virtual Pulp.)
My thanks to Hans Schantz for putting this sale together. Hopefully the first novel in my new series will be ready by the time of his next sale. Or the one after that…
You’d have to be blind to not notice how stupid-happy I was after that short little evening and morning. Still, Dad didn’t press me on it. He left me alone with my thoughts and fresh memories for the next leg of our trip.
I did finally ask him if it would be possible to correspond with Gloria. He turned thoughtful, gave me a long look, turned back to the road, thought some more, and finally said, “It’ll be tricky, but maybe we can work something out.”
***
After a few more days, I was able to function again and actually think about something other than Gloria Benake.
While meandering through the plains and deserts of the Southwest in that hot rod Willys, we got into a discussion about time travel. Dad asked me a question he had to rephrase a few times. But once I understood what he was getting at, I would think about it a lot as I got older.
“Okay, Sprout: You’ve been to a few different points in time already. You started out with your life there in St. Louis. Then you jumped back to the Orange Grove. You jumped forward with me to BH Station. Then way back to New Orleans for Sullivan-Corbett. And now back to this road trip. Did I get it in the right sequence?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Really? You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you figure? How can you be sure of any linear sequence when the illusion of time is no longer relevant?”
My reply was steeped in wisdom and just slopping over with all the intellectual prowess of a pre-adolescent boy: “Huh?”
“The only solid evidence we have that time even exists is entropy,” he said. “But anyway, of all the space-time coordinates you’ve visited, New Orleans is the earliest. BH Station is the latest. So wouldn’t the correct sequence of your travels begin with New Orleans, and end with BH Station? And where we are right now should be in the middle, right?”
“No,” I said, vigorously shaking my head.
“Why not? That’s proper chronological order.”
“Because that’s not the order of how it happened.”
“So you’re saying that St. Louis is the singular reference point; that everything else is lined up in the sequence according to that coordinate.”
“Um, yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
“But why? How do you know what sequence is correct? 1892 came before any of the other coordinates, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“And 1934 comes after 1892. Then 1947 comes after 1934. So the chronologically correct sequence is New Orleans, the Orange Grove, then this vacation, St. Louis, then BH Station. That’s just simple math. 1892 is the earliest date, so of course you went there first. 1934 is the next earliest date. So that’s where you went next.”
“That may be the historical sequence,” I said, “but I visited those times in a different sequence.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I remember how it happened.”
“Ahh. So your memory is calibrated from that one reference point, back in St. Louis. And your memory records remain consistent throughout the series of warp jumps. Why is that?”
“Because that’s just the way it happened.”
“What you’re saying is, that’s how all the puzzle pieces fit together in what you consider reality,” he said. “But can we even define reality anymore? Is our concept of reality even relevant?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I said.
“I’ll answer the question for you: Yes. You’re right. And the supporting evidence is relative growth. Even though you’ve been moving backwards and forwards through time, you’re still aging—according to a sequence that is anchored in the reality you lived in St. Louis. You didn’t grow decades older when we went to BH Station, and obviously you didn’t grow younger for every year we went back, or you would have ceased to exist before we got to these coordinates. So you’re right. But why are you right?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t know either, Sprout. But I’ll tell you—I sometimes wonder if that truth is ironclad. Maybe reality can change—and our memory will self-adjust to accept it. Wouldn’t that be a mind-blower?”
I didn’t answer. This whole conversation sounded crazy.
“Pretty smart scientists have proposed that time itself is just a stubbornly persistent illusion,” he said. “Other scientists have determined that there are at least six dimensions beyond the four that we perceive. Now, somebody with a warp generator can pierce the illusion and jump through unperceivable dimensions. That means it’s theoretically possible to exist outside of time altogether.”
I wasn’t following his logic, so I remained quiet.
“Let’s say it’s Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Parade is underway. You’re watching it from the top of a skyscraper, with binoculars, while most people are watching it at street level. Down there, the Budweiser float has just passed the people standing at Times Square or wherever. Right in front of them is the Coca-Cola float, and if they lean to peak around that Coca-Cola float, they’ll see the one with the Charlie Brown and Snoopy balloons.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to picture the scene he described.
“So you remember the Budweiser float. You see the Coca-Cola float in front of you right now, clear as day. And you think you can see far enough to predict that the Peanuts float is coming next. Budweiser is the past, Coca-Cola is the present, and Peanuts is the future. Well, up on top of the skyscraper, you see all three floats simultaneously. You can see every float in the entire parade. You don’t have to remember or predict anything, because past, present and future are all there for you to clearly see. In fact, there is no past or future. Everything is present.”
“How does that relate?” I asked. “You say I’m on the skyscraper…outside of time. How could I actually get there? Who could actually be there?”
“Outstanding question, Sprout. Maybe you can’t ever get there. Probably only God is outside time like that, looking into our stream and seeing everything at once. But if He’s there, looking at past, present and future simultaneously…then that’s the reality that supersedes all others, ain’t it?”
I had no answer for that; nor was I prepared for what came next.
“So if that’s the true reality, then there is no actual separation. There is no linear progression. It’s just a stubbornly persistent illusion—it’s an imposed limitation. Well, I suspect our subconscious mind can glimpse into the unperceived dimensions sometimes. Some people more than others, probably. But that might explain where some of our weird dreams come from. Or bizarre phenomena like deja vu.”
“Dreams?” I asked.
“I have dreams, sometimes, that don’t make much sense,” Dad said. “But when I analyze them, I wonder if they’re not evidence that my subconscious is perceiving into different streams. If there is one true reality, then not only do past, present and future exist simultaneously in a given stream; but even the different streams themselves…the different realities…are all actually one. God simply determines which illusion we are limited to and calibrates our memory accordingly. You, me, anybody with a warp generator can trespass into illusions we weren’t assigned to, but our calibration anchors our cognition to the reality we originated in—at least during conscious thought. And our biology, too.”
“I’m confused,” I admitted. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
He chuckled and shrugged. “Well, at least remember this conversation. Think about it. One day you’ll understand at least what I’m asking. And if you ever think you’ve found an answer…let me know.”
“Okay.”
Not long after that, we were driving somewhere north of Roswell, New Mexico, and I experienced an oppressive, creepy, foreboding sensation. I got goose bumps, and began looking around in and outside the car, wondering if the source of the feeling was visible.
Dad noticed me looking around and studied me. He noticed the hair on my arms standing up, and pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road. That’s when I noticed that he had goose bumps, too.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
He rubbed his own arm, then looked down at mine. “You feel that, right?”
“I feel…something,” I said.
He got out of the car, gesturing for me to do the same. “Describe what you feel,.” he said.
I did my best to put the sensation into words.
He nodded, using his more expansive vocabulary to clarify my attempt at description. “Ominous. Tumultuous.”
“Maybe evil…?” I suggested.
“Interesting,” he mused, looking out over the plains. “I guess this might make sense.”
“It does?” I asked. “What does?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a weather balloon after all,” he muttered.
“Say what?”
“I guess you never read the details about this,” he said, then pointed out into the plains. “Somewhere out there is a ranch—not very far, I’d guess. Right about here and now, something has crashed, is crashing, or will crash very soon at that ranch. You never heard of the Roswell UFO?”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “Area 51. Hangar 18. Right?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I’m not a UFO nut. But now I know something is happening here, too.”
“Here, too? You lost me, Dad.”
He chewed on his lip for a while, studying first me, then the landscape. “Tell you what: let’s take another field trip real quick.”
We got back in the car, took off, and immediately warp-jumped to a place he called “S.A. Station.” The scenery was exotic and beautiful.
It turns out “S.A.” stood for South Africa, and the year was 1958. But we had only stopped there to pick up the VTOL with cloaking capability.
The VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) was quite an aircraft, even without the Predator technology. It had retractable, forward-swept wings and cowled propellors that could swing from vertical to horizontal. But Dad distracted me from examining it much by showing me some equipment similar to what the Erasers used.
It was like a heavy poncho—the outside of it covered with thousands of little L.E.D. screens. Wires crisscrossed inside the fabric of the poncho. For every screen, there was a microcamera on the opposite side of the poncho, recording whatever it “saw.” So the LED screens displayed live footage from behind whatever or whoever the poncho covered. No matter what angle you looked at it from, you simply saw a distorted image of the background on the far side of it. An electronic, active camouflage. Dad said that more advanced cloaking tech had come out since the poncho was made, available in jumpsuits and facemasks. He said the suits were very heavy and hot to wear, and they still just distorted the light rather than truly enabling invisibility; but made a person or vehicle extremely difficult to detect, unless you knew where and what to look for. He turned it on, and it became just a visual anomaly. Then he handed me his sunglasses and told me to put them on. When I did, I could see the poncho, with all its tiny LED segments glowing.
“That’s why you wear these all the time,” I said. “What are they?”
He hung up the poncho, shut it off, and took the shades back. “Relatively simple technology. The lenses block ultraviolet light, and are also polarized. The polarization keeps the LEDs from tricking you.”
“So you can see the Erasers, plain as day,” I said.
He nodded. “One of my science labs is working on a contact lens prototype. For now, we’ve got these.”
“Can I get a pair?”
“I guess so, Sprout. But let’s hope you never need them.”
We strapped into the VTOL and took off—up and away. We shot a warp and Dad cloaked the craft as we approached a large city.
There was a park or something with a little patch of woods inside the city. Dad guided the VTOL down through a gap in the trees and landed it expertly. We disembarked. Using the electronic compass in his “pocketwatch,” Dad navigated on foot to the edge of the copse, coming to a halt before breaking through the treeline. He held his arm out sideways to keep me from emerging into the open.
The city we saw from our ground-level perspective was quite an eyeful. Tall columns lined the streets, colorful banners hanging from them. Heroic sculptures were placed all over. The architecture of the buildings was alien to me. Some of it could perhaps be described as art-deco, but most of it looked like something else—gleaming new, but stylistically a throwback to antiquity.
Upon a large parade ground were perfectly- arranged mass formations of soldiers and vehicles. Just beyond this, dominating the scene, was a colossal structure, shaped like a sporting arena. The enormous stadium reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the ancient coliseum in Rome, only much bigger. A roar of a great multitude cheering rose out of the stadium.
“You’ve been studying history, right?” Dad asked in a hushed tone. “You know where we are?”
“Nazi Germany,” I said, noting the hundreds of huge red banners with black swastikas inside white circles.
“Specifically, the Olympiad,” he said. “Berlin, 1936. The Olympic Games. I discovered this at a Nuremburg Rally, but it’s here, too.”
“What’s here? I asked.
“The Big Spooky. Relax for a minute. What do you feel?”
Before I could answer, what looked like clouds of swirling confetti wafted up from the stadium and into the sky—defying gravity. The roar of 100,000 voices shook the air again.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Pidgeons. Or doves. Some kind of birds. Supposed to symbolize world peace or something.”
“Yeah, right,” I said with a sneer, remembering what the Nazis actually brought to the world.
“Concentrate, Sprout. Evaluate what you feel.”
I tried to both relax and concentrate at the same time, ignoring my conditioned response to all the swastikas, and the inherent danger of the situation which caused us to speak quietly, lest we be discovered.
“It’s a lot like what I felt back in Roswell,” I said, incredulous that the same unusual oppressive atmosphere would be here on the other side of the planet and 11 years earlier. “Only, there’s also…”
Dad nodded. “Right. In this case, it’s ominous…but it’s also got a seductive quality, doesn’t it?”
“Seductive?” I repeated, confused. “You mean like in sex?”
“That’s not how I mean it. I mean appealing. There’s almost a temptation to want to be a part of the great, momentous event going on.”
“Yes!” I agreed, amazed at how accurate his description was of something I personally felt. “That’s it, exactly.”
He nodded again. “It was the same at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution. But I’m not taking you there. This is a big enough risk.”
“But this is a sporting event,” I observed. “Not a UFO landing.”
“Right. I don’t know exactly how the Olympiad is so significant in the scheme of things, but there’s no denying the sensation. And that extra, seductive aspect…it must be the added zeitgeist factor—like at Nuremburg and 1917 Petrograd, and 1959 Cuba, and…”
“What’s a zeitgeist?” I asked.
“It means ‘spirit of the times.’ It’s when mass portions of a population all get on the same page. They all jump on the same bandwagon, share the same emotion collectively, believe in the same ideology, adopt the same goals…this is one coordinate right here and now that has it in droves.”
“Too bad we can’t watch the Games,” I said.
“Yeah. Jesse Owens won four gold medals for America and embarrassed Der Fuehrer right out of the stadium. But we’re taking a big enough risk already, Sprout. Neither of us speak the language and you don’t want to go barging into one of these socialist Utopias without your papers in order. Besides, the games last for two weeks, and the cloaking tech is gonna drag down our batteries much sooner.”
He took one last glance toward the imposing stadium, and sighed. “What’s really going on here, under the surface? It’s more than pole-vaulting and discus throws.”
We returned to the VTOL and lifted off out of the little copse, into the sky.
We jumped a warp once airborne, and Dad began to breathe a bit easier. But soon we were approaching another city—more modern, but at least as big. He noticed my curious expression, and announced, “Dallas, Texas. November 1963.”
We approached a downtown area, descending on the way. “This…sensation you felt,” he told me, “I discovered it by accident, but I started tracking it through history. It happens a lot, at coordinates all over the four-dimensional map. We’re just hitting some of the highlights this time. For some reason, in the ’60s they spring up all over, like popcorn. Like weeds. Most of them are like the Olympiad—meaning I don’t know exactly what’s so significant about the coordinate. I picked this one for this trip because it’s fairly easy to grasp the significance.”
He lowered the VTOL to a landing in a grassy field in the middle of a square bordered by multi-story buildings, and shut it down while leaving the cloak active.
“This is such a public place, out in the open,” I observed, as we stepped outside. “What if somebody bumps into the VTOL?”
Dad shrugged. “People are gonna see all kinds of stuff here tomorrow that doesn’t make much sense. Whatever doesn’t fit The Narrative will be ignored or discredited. At worst, somebody’s story of an invisible futuristic craft parked in Dealey Plaza the day before the assassination will be easily dismissed as just another ‘crazy conspiracy theory’.”
“Assassination?” I asked.
He just nodded.
We strolled around the plaza. Dad studied the top of a few buildings; a rain gutter and a grassy area behind it; sections of the street; trees, light poles and signs. “You feel it?” he asked me.
I nodded. The ominous sensation was as thick as gravy. You couldn’t see it, hear it, smell it or touch it, but it was there in abundant quantity. I wondered if being exposed to deadly atomic radiation was like this, or if you wouldn’t even know you were exposed to it until your skin started falling off. Or maybe some people could feel it—as I was feeling whatever this was, now.
Assassination. Dallas. 1963. Dealey Plaza. These words came together in my mind and triggered something in my long-term memory. “Kennedy! JFK—this is where he was shot?”
“Not ‘was’ shot. Will be shot. Tomorrow.”
It began to rain. Pedestrians around the plaza opened umbrellas. Dad ushered me back to the VTOL.
Before he took off, he opened a metal case and activated a squadron of microdrones, disguised as flying insects. One at a time he remote-piloted them to different spots around the area, landed them, and placed them on “stand-by.”
“You’re going to record the assassination?” I asked, strapping in.
“Yup,” he replied. “I plan on getting a lot of footage from multiple angles and vantage points. Nobody here and now knows about my drones, and therefore they can’t be tampered with.”
He fired up the engines and we took off.
“Why?” I asked, remembering his speech about how changing history would split the timestream and tip off the CPB to our presence.
Dad shrugged. “‘Cause I want to know what really happened. Don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. The JFK assassination happened long before I was born, and hadn’t particularly interested me so far. The name “Lee Harvey Oswald” echoed through my mind. They knew who the killer was, so there was no mystery to solve. To me the battles of the Crusades or the best Rose Bowl games ever played were much more interesting.
***
Our next stop was Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention. Yup—same old goose bumps. Same ominous, foreboding sensation. The “Big Spooky” was on the scene. We mixed with the crowd a little bit, seeing what we could see. I watched smelly, long-haired potheads and drug addicts clash with police in riot gear. Dad seemed more interested in listening to people not engaged in violence—whether they were in a conversation or shouting slogans to any who might hear.
“What’s different about this coordinate?” Dad asked me once we had broken away from the crowds and had some relative privacy.
“Nobody was fighting at the other coordinates,” I said. “There was unity. Right?”
“Yes and no. There may not have been a manifestation of violence in Berlin or Dallas, but there was violence in the air. And don’t let the conflict here fool you—there’s still a zeitgeist at work…a powerful one. This is just a struggle for control of the left-wing. People on both ‘sides’ want the same thing; it’s just that the New Left want it faster than the Old Left, while the Old Left wants to maintain the facade of actually loving what they’re trying to destroy.”
“Who wins?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hegel.”
“I don’t know who that is, Dad.”
“You’ll learn about him when you’re older.” He pointed to the building where the convention was being held. “Thesis.” Then he pointed to the rioting protestors. “Antithesis.” Now he waved toward me, then himself. “The world we grew up in is the synthesis.”
I had no interest in politics yet, and let the subject drop.
“The ’60s is the beginning of the end for America; but it still has a lot going for it if you can ignore that,” he opined, as we strolled back toward where he had hidden the VTOL. “Fantastic decade for a young man—especially the last half.” He craned his neck to ogle some women in miniskirts walking toward the convention. “It’s easy to get girls; females are still feminine; and obesity is still fairly rare.”
Meeting Gloria had jump-started a process in my body and mind that would soon result in radical changes. My attitude toward the opposite sex began to change with it, so I did take an interest in Dad’s observation.
***
Our next stop was another November—this one in 1910 at Brunswick, Georgia. After leaving the VTOL cloaked in an area surrounded by tall trees, Dad and I snuck over to a small, lonely, terminating rail station. We chose a discreet point to observe from, and ate snacks quietly while a train rolled up in the dark of night.
It was the shortest train I’d ever seen, and I whispered as much to Dad.
“That’s a private car in between the locomotive and caboose,” he whispered back. “Came all the way from New Jersey. If you knew anything about railroads, you’d know somebody powerful had to pull some strings to get this little train’s routing priority above all the crucial freight and passenger trains. In these times, the railroads are the national infrastructure. They’re how people get mail, food, fuel…everything. You don’t make room for some private ‘duck hunting trip’ in the middle of all that unless you’ve got enormous clout.”
“Duck hunting trip?” I echoed.
Dad nodded toward the private rail car. It looked fancy. The windows glowed dull yellow—probably from kerosene lamps inside. Shadows flashed in the flickering light, betraying movement inside.
“That’s their cover story,” Dad said. “Do you feel anything?”
I shook my head. “Feels normal.”
He nodded, then gestured for me to follow. We left our observation post and crept quietly toward the train. When we came within a few yards of the private rail car, the Big Spooky hit me with such force, I nearly wet my pants.
Dad looked at me, an expectant question in his eyes. I nodded.
On the other side of the train from us, the conductor opened a door on the rail car, and a handful of men began filing out. I could make out feet and legs by peering underneath the train. I heard their voices, too.
Now the Big Spooky throbbed so excessively that my eyes watered.
Dad grasped me by the shoulder and steered me back toward our surreptitious vantage point. As we went, the oppressive sensation faded. Once back in our spot, I felt tremendous relief.
“Why didn’t I feel anything until we got close?” I asked.
“It’s concentrated, here,” Dad explained. “I’m not saying we can’t find the Big Spooky at earlier dates, because we definitely can. I have. But here and now it’s like…I don’t know…a seed, or something. Maybe a beach head. From here it grows and spreads out—like to the other places we found it.”
“It sure was intense right there,” I said. “Is this another one you don’t understand, or is there something significant about these coordinates?”
“Oh, it’s significant,” he said, solemnly. “The men getting off that train—they’re gonna climb on a boat that takes them to a private venue on an island, where they’ll have a meeting. In that meeting, they’re gonna develop a plan to destroy the United States of America, and freedom…and a whole lot of other stuff.”
“Destroy America?” I asked, confused. “But…”
“Not tomorrow,” he said. “Not next week. Not by some sudden catastrophe. In fact, their plan won’t seem to have made much of a difference for a long time. For three years there won’t be any evidence at all that an American could point to. But they’ve put something in motion. Three years from now, they’ll take a big step toward their goal.”
“Their goal…” I mused. “Destruction of the USA?”
He nodded. “In seven years they’ll take another step. They’ll suffer a few setbacks here and there, but 19 years from now they’ll take another big step. In 22 years they’ll start taking huge steps, one right after the other…starting in another November, in fact.”
I didn’t understand what he was alluding to, but I was getting the idea that November was a popular month for the Big Spooky.
“There will be plausible deniability for generations,” Dad went on. “In the post-war USA, it’s the most prosperous time anyone in world history has seen. Only a crackpot would argue that anything could be wrong, right? Even back in the coordinates you came from, almost nobody could see the problem.” Now he pointed to the locomotive. “America was a big, powerful, fast-moving engine, with a lot of momentum built up. It took over a hundred years for the cancer, eating away at her from the inside, to be obvious to enough Americans to even be mentioned in the mainstream. By the time there’s enough people aware of the problem to demand repairs, the poison will have spread everywhere. It’ll be too late. The locomotive will come off the rails; the boiler will explode; the whole thing will collapse into a pile of mangled metal. Then all the foreign vultures we’ve helped and protected over the generations will move in and pick through the scrap, taking whatever’s valuable to them. That was happening in the coordinates I came from.”
His speech had lost me. He must have realized my confusion, because he sighed and forced a grin as he tousled my hair. “But you and me have a way to cheat Fate. At least we can survive the slow-motion train wreck. And some day you’ll take an interest in history. We’ll talk then—a lot. Then all this should make more sense.”
We made our way back to the VTOL. Once inside it, I asked him, “Is there something special about us? I mean, why can we feel the Big Spooky but nobody back in Dallas or Berlin did?” I frowned and scratched my head. “Or did they? That would be even more confusing.”
Now Dad’s smile didn’t appear forced. “That’s a great question, Sprout.” He leaned back in the pilot seat and folded his hands. “You ever hear the parable of the frog?”
I shook my head.
“If you want to boil a frog,” he said, “you don’t throw it into a pot of water that’s already hot—it’ll jump out. What you do is put it in the water with the temperature nice and comfortable…then gradually turn up the heat in stages. Be patient. The frog gets used to water that’s 70 degrees, then you turn it up to 80. It’s uncomfortable for the frog at first. It may complain a little, but if you’re patient, it’ll become acclimatized to the discomfort. Then you can turn it up to 90. It’s uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough for the frog to jump out of the pot. The Founding Fathers said something, in the Declaration of Independence, along the lines of: ‘men prefer to just suffer, while evils are sufferable.’ That’s what the frog does. If you keep cranking up the heat, but you do it gradually enough for each new level of misery to become the status quo for a while, eventually you’ll boil the frog alive.”
“Have you ever done that to a frog?” I asked, disgusted.
He sneered. “Of course not. I’m not a sick, sadistic dirtbag. This is a parable. A metaphor. It’s how America will be destroyed. It’s why the people who wouldn’t take shit from the Japs, or the British, or the Barbary pirates, will let their freedom and future be stolen from them by enemies in their own government. In fact, they’ll obediently fund the thieves who do it. But I think it might also be why people living in certain coordinates never notice the Big Spooky. It comes on them gradually enough, they acclimatize to it. You and I notice it because we ran into it from ‘normal’ times, and it hit us all of the sudden. Like a stinky house—if you live in it, you get used to the smell, and don’t notice it. But if you enter from out in the fresh air, it hits you hard.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “But what is the Big Spooky? What causes it?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I wish I did.”
***
We jumped a warp and came down inside another city—this one easily the biggest I’d ever seen. It had art-deco skyscrapers to prove it. We landed inside a vast expo complex and, this time, Dad turned off the cloak and shut all the power down. I asked him about this as he locked the VTOL’s hatch. He told me people would assume our craft was an exhibit and, by the time organizers looked into it, we would be gone.
It was 1939 in New York City and the goose bumps sprang up from that oppressive, ominous sensation. Again, Dad said there was no obvious reason why the Big Spooky was present at that space-time coordinate, but it was unmistakable—although at a weaker dose than other stops on our tour.
He also revealed the purpose of this tour: to confirm that I recognized the same sensation at the coordinates where/when he experienced it.
The research portion of our experimental time tour over, he advised me to try ignoring the Big Spooky and enjoy the rest of the day.
Over the course of the day I gradually grew accustomed to the Big Spooky—kind of like how I hardly noticed the noise of traffic, barking dogs and gunshots around the old trailer park. I did enjoy the 1939 New York World’s Fair, very much. We spent the entire day there exploring “The World of Tomorrow.” I was fascinated by everything—in detail and as a whole. And I could tell Dad enjoyed it all, too.
There was a big robot (named “Electro the Moto-Man”); a time capsule; a carnival-style ride that took us through a “city of the future”; some fantastic, futuristic (in an art-deco way) locomotives and trains, showed off in a special railroad park; new fabrics and inventions on display (including the “tele-vision” and a “View-Master” which you could use to look at three-dimensional slides); new music, sculptures, paintings and other art; and a science fiction convention.
Evidently this was the first world sci-fi convention ever held. Dad bought me an armload of books (and some of the very first superhero comic books, about characters like the Human Torch and the Submariner) while he stopped and chatted with some of the authors.
Of course most of the speculative “technology of tomorrow” envisioned at the World’s Fair was long obsolete by the time I would be born, but I still found it incredibly cool. I had never owned or seen a View-Master before, so the 3D slides were new to me. It was neat seeing what television was like when the technology was new. And it was cool discovering what artists, authors and scientists thought the future…my lifetime, give or take…would look like, even though they were almost all completely wrong.
For most of my life after that initial exposure to the 1939 World’s Fair, I found myself wishing that the future some of those dreamers imagined had turned out to be the real one.
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I organized the belongings I had collected since that first day at the Orange Grove—except for the fancy shoes and custom suit from Mami. I didn’t have that much, yet, so I easily packed it all in a very old suitcase Uncle Si gave me—made out of something like cardboard covered with wallpaper, lined with something silky on the inside. I asked if I could take some of the adventure magazines (“pulps” he called them) with me, and permission was granted.
Uncle Si packed whatever he was taking in a similar suitcase, and we met at one of the hangars, dressed in duds from the wardrobe. This time, my clothes fit me pretty well.
Inside the hangar, he opened the trunk of a strange-looking old car, and put our luggage in it. This automobile had the same flowing, rounded contours of the cars at the Orange Grove, but it wasn’t as low-slung or long and sleek. I asked him what it was and he said, “The body is based on a ’41 Willys.”
I had never bothered to memorize anything about cars before. Just like my interest in football began with a few pictures and stories, my interest in automotive machinery began with passenger experiences in a few special vehicles from Uncle Si’s collection.
Our first stop was the Orange Grove to spend the weekend with Mami. I was anxious to get started on the vacation, but I missed her and was happy to see her again. She seemed delighted to see us as well, as usual. She tested me to see if I’d kept up on the Spanish she’d been teaching me. Then, using both languages as needed, she asked me how I was doing in general, if I was excited about our pending road trip, and so on.
She slept in late with my uncle again, both days. After waking early the first day and finding the kitchen empty, I wandered by the master bedroom, looking for her. I heard her voice from inside. At first I thought she was in pain of some kind—she moaned and wailed and made what sounded like pleas for mercy. I was afraid somebody had broken into the house and was torturing her. But just as I was about to try forcing the lock and breaking in, she calmed down. Her cries mellowed out. She sighed and whispered. She sounded happy. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized the breathless tones and inflections as of an extremely affectionate nature. And a couple times she spoke my uncle’s name.
She pronounced it “sigh-moan,” which I found ironic after all the sighing and moaning she’d done.
I certainly didn’t understand sex yet, but I’d heard enough and seen enough in the movies to figure out what was up.
The next morning I read some “Black Bat” stories in my room until I heard voices and movement from the kitchen. I figured it was safe to come out, then.
Over breakfast, Uncle Si looked uncomfortable when he told me, “Because of the risks involved by interacting with regular people, we have to make some changes. I’ll let you know about those as we go, but there’s one starting now; and we’ll have to practice it during this vacation.”
I paused from chewing my food and paid close attention.
“When we went back to see the Sullivan-Corbett fight, we went as father and son,” he said, with a blank face. “Well, that’s gonna be permanent, starting now. Don’t call me ‘uncle,’ and don’t even think of me as your uncle. Start thinking of me as your father. Then you’ll be less likely to slip up in conversation and arouse somebody’s suspicion.”
“Suspicion of what?” I asked, doubting many people could guess that my uncle was an international supervillain who traveled with his nephew through time and space.
“Of anything. We want to seem as normal and unremarkable as possible to anybody we encounter. A boy who has no parents, adopted by his bachelor uncle is not normal. You also have to be cognizant of where and when we are at all times. Don’t talk about Madonna or Mike Tyson or Dodge Vipers, if we’re in, say, the 1970s. Don’t say anything about Vietnam in the 1950s. Don’t mention Pearl Harbor in the time we’re in right now. Savvy?”
“I savvy.”
“Your name is gonna change, too,” he added. “Both of ours. I’m still working on that. For now, go by your first name, only. If there’s a situation where we have to state a last name, for now it’s ‘Harris’.”
“Well, it’s already an improvement over Bedauern,” I said. He nodded agreement.
From that moment forward, I had a dad.
When Mami cleared the table and went to the sink to wash dishes, I asked Dad, “What about her? A kid with a father but no mother is unusual, ain’t it?”
“It is. So when we’re out and about, Mom is simply ‘back at the house’ if anybody asks. If we’re actually at one of my houses, then whichever woman I have living there is ‘Mom,’ so far as anybody else is concerned.”
This made me wonder how many women, like Carmen, he had. But I didn’t feel comfortable asking about it.
***
We took the ’41 Willys back to 1947, and began a tour of the USA—something Uncle…Dad said he’d wanted to do for a long time. We visited Valley Forge, Concorde Bridge, Gettysburg, Kittyhawk, Mount Rushmore, the badlands, the site of the Little Bighorn battle, parts of the Oregon Trail where wagon ruts were still visible in the hardened mud, what was left of Dodge City and Tombstone, Yellowstone, the Redwood Forest, Hollywood again, and all sorts of places in between.
One aspect of 1947 I noticed that was consistent regardless of where we went, was that everyone seemed to be happy. Dad explained that this generation was optimistic by nature, and what he called “pop culture” (music, movies, magazines, etc.) encouraged their optimism. Nobody (outside of college professors, he speculated) openly bad-mouthed America like everyone did at the coordinates I came from. All the movies, music, TV shows, celebrities, teachers, and audiences of all the above from my old world hated America, and anybody who dared suggest America wasn’t horrible. These people in 1947 were proud to be Americans, and grateful to be living in the USA. Furthermore, they had just come through a Depression and a World War. Their lives had all gotten much better two years ago, and the peace and unprecedented prosperity they saw unfolding in the country was assumed to be unstoppable. Nobody suspected anyone would want to stop it—why should they?
That ’41 Willys was some car. Dad once confided in me, “There is nothing factory-stock on this entire car. Nothing. I built it from the ground-up with all the best parts I could find from the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond. I don’t let anybody look under the hood or snoop around underneath it.”
There were plenty of places in 1947 with no posted speed limits, and he opened it up on those stretches. He couldn’t quite let it all hang out like he had when we visited the Bonneville Salt Flats, because the quality of the roads usually wasn’t good enough. But that hot rod seemed faster than a speeding bullet. After one such jaunt, while buying gas at a service station, a police car approached from the direction we’d come, siren blaring and beacon shining.
The light on this police car was so different from what I was used to, it piqued my interest. It was like a round floodlight, only mounted horizontally, facing the front, and the red lens spun.
Anyway, I assumed the cop would race past us on his way to whatever, but instead, he pulled into the service station, parked nose-to-nose with the Willys, and got out to confront Dad, who was returning from the restroom.
“Do you know how fast you were going back there?” the cop asked.
“About 180,” Dad replied, simply. I knew he didn’t like cops, but his demeanor was pretty friendly.
“Nobody likes a wise guy,” the cop said, frowning. “No car can go that fast.”
“How fast will yours go?” Dad asked, conversationally.
The cop seemed to lighten up a bit as he patted the hood of his patrol car. “I’ve got her up to 110 on a long downhill stretch before. This engine has got power like…” He sobered up again, somewhat. “But you left me in the dust back there. I had it floored, and you were still losing me.”
He began walking around the Willys, and Dad visibly stiffened.
“Where in the world did you get tires like these?”
“Custom made,” Dad said.
The cop made his way around to the driver side and peered through the open window, whistling. “I’ve never seen a speedometer that read so high. Most of them don’t even go up to 100.”
He turned back to Dad with a look of bewilderment. Dad extended his hand, “Simon Harris. I’m an engineer at the Automotive Division of Planetary Future Technologies. I’m testing out some of the equipment we might be using in a prototype to be unveiled at the next Automobile Expo.”
The cop shook his hand. “Jumpin’ catfish, fellah. They let you play with these gizmos a lot?”
“I play with these, and a lot more,” Dad said.
“And you get paid for it, to boot?” He whistled again, then ran his hand over the smooth, glossy surface of the Willys body. “Why did you stuff all the new features inside a pre-war model car?”
Dad shrugged. “Let’s me test it out on public roads while still remaining incognito…except when it comes to sharp eyes like yours. No use letting the whole world, and the competition, see everything we’re working on.”
“No, I guess not, at that,” the cop said.
He began asking technical questions. I don’t know how honest Dad was with him, but he had answers for everything that evidently impressed the cop. Afterwards, Officer Bob Frey shook his hand again and, almost apologetically, said, “We don’t get that many scientific engineers comin’ through here in futuristic vehicles. And even though there’s no posted speed limit, I still have to get folks to slow down when it strikes me that their speed is unsafe. If you still need to test this thing out around here, your best bet is take it out to Bonny Lass Road. Nobody should bother you out there.”
Dad thanked him, they shook hands again, and we drove off our separate ways. Officer Frey no doubt went off to meet some fellow cops and tell them a story over coffee and doughnuts that would eventually become an “urban legend.” We drove off to find Bonny Lass Road, of course.
“Cops sure are different now, too,” I observed out loud.
Dad nodded. “Once upon a time, decent men became cops. They wanted justice and to actually help people. Obviously, something changed. Maybe it was all the jingoistic cop movies and cop shows—I dunno. But it became just a way for would-be Hitler Youth to get their sick jollies pushing people around and hiding behind a badge.”
Aside from the conveniences of advancing technology, everything was better in the past, it seemed.
***
I had an even higher opinion of Dad during and after the vacation than when it began. We talked about anything and everything that interested me: sports; music; gadgets; even the pulp stories I’d been reading. He had knowledge in every subject that intrigued me, and either shared my interest, or could remember back to when he had. We didn’t watch a single television show the entire time (TV was pretty new in 1947, fairly crude and expensive, and only some people even had it) and yet I was thoroughly entertained the entire time.
I noticed now and then that he occasionally limped, and often massaged his knees when sitting. I asked him about it and he mumbled something about parachuting, but never answered in detail. However, that did lead to what would prove one of his many lectures about health. He went over good habits vs. bad habits, and how they would affect my knees and back. He also warned me to never starve myself for any reason. While I should never be gluttonous, I should also never reduce the amount of food I ate to below what my body wanted. There was no need to, he told me, because he had kitchens throughout space and time, well-stocked, with competent cooks, and I’d always be welcome to eat three squares a day, free of charge, even after I was old enough to make my own way.
We stayed in hotels and motels periodically, taking advantage of the showers (and swimming pools, in some cases), but mostly camped out, with a tent and sleeping bags. The smell of pine trees, and smoke from campfires, would forever cast my memory back to that fantastic vacation, no matter how old I got.
More than once, when we went swimming at a lake, the ocean, or in a hotel swimming pool, people would notice the scar tissue all over Dad’s back. It soon became obvious who had fought in the war and who hadn’t, not just by their age or physical condition, but by how they reacted to Dad’s wound. Those who hadn’t served would invariably ask, “Did you get that in the war?” Veterans would either simply ask, “Where’d you get that?” or ignore it, at least initially, and maybe get around to probing the issue later.
We ran into veterans vacationing with their families (nearly every man over the age of 21 was a veteran in 1947), and I managed to make friends with their kids. We would swim and play while the grown-ups talked.
New friendships are always exciting. Plus, when the other kids were younger than me, I became the default leader—so it was a sort of leadership practice, and I learned a little about group dynamics.
I never paid attention to an entire conversation Dad would have with the other adults, but I caught fragments. Dad mostly asked questions and kept the other folks talking about their own experiences. But he evidently had a cover story set for how he got burned; and (as I came to appreciate later on) he knew a lot about World War II—more than enough to make his cover story sound plausible.
When we camped out, often we just pulled off the main road, followed an unpaved path to a suitable spot, and pitched the tent. Out West there were vast areas of public land; so we made use of it. We did find this one purpose-made campground, though. We got the tent set up and the fire ready to light by about an hour before dusk.
The place had public restrooms with running water in sinks—quite the ritzy setup for the time. Dad let me take a stroll up to these centrally-located facilities by myself. In one of our many conversations, Dad revealed that women or children were safe to walk alone at night pretty much anywhere in the country (excepting cesspools like Chicago and New York City, of course) up until maybe the 1970s.
After relieving myself and washing up, I took a stroll through the campgrounds, mostly just observing the natural scenery, and the many different families, their cars, and their shiny silver camp trailers.
When I came to an area with unoccupied campsites, I figured the secluded area would be safe to try something I’d had an urge to do ever since watching Tarzan and His Mate. I pounded both fists against my chest and, at the top of my lungs, bellowed my best impression of Johnny Weissmuller’s ape-man yodel. It didn’t sound as good as I imagined it would, even to my own ears. But still, it was kind of fun. With my upbringing, I had learned to amuse myself to fend off boredom…and sometimes I could do it via quite unsophisticated means.
By the time I found my way back to our campsite, there was a family of new arrivals at the next site over. The man from that group was talking to Dad while the man’s wife set up some cooking implements, and a pretty girl about my age looked on.
Dad looked away from the man briefly, noticing my arrival. He must have heard the Tarzan yodel, as sound carried so far at night there. In retrospect, I realize he almost certainly knew it was me who did it, too. But he never mentioned it. I was so sure I was doing something brave and rebellious with that ape-man imitation, but of course it was just silly kid stuff—tame (or lame, depending on perspective) by the standards of my original generation.
After the men’s conversation went on for several minutes, Dad introduced me in passing. The man nodded; his wife smiled and bid me hello; the pretty daughter mumbled hello with an expression I would, years later, come to recognize as the Female Glare of Guarded Evaluation, or FGGE. At the time it looked like disgust or hostility, so I turned away and prepared to light our fire.
The family’s name was Benake. They were from Oakland. The hostile pretty girl’s name was Gloria. She was blonde, but darker blonde than her mother.
Before I lit the match, Mrs. Benake called out to her Husband. “Honey, why don’t you invite our neighbors over, instead of standing there talking over the bushes all night?”
“Well, I guess she’s got a point, at that,” Mr. Benake told Dad. “Why don’t you and your boy come on over and eat with us? We brought more food than just the three of us can eat, to be frank. We even have marshmallows to roast for dessert.”
“Thank you,” Dad said. “That sounds fine.”
Mrs. Benake seemed pleased as she looked at me. “Peter, would you help Gloria fetch some water from the public washroom, so I can boil the corn?”
I glanced between Dad and her. Dad nodded, slightly.
“Sure,” I said. “What should I pour it in?”
Gloria spoke, holding up a big metal pail by its handle. “I’ve got it right here.”
I didn’t have much interest in spending time with somebody who took an instant dislike to me, so I said, “I can get it by myself, if you like.”
Both Gloria and her mother shook their heads.
“It’s heavy when it’s full,” Gloria said. “You’ll see.”
Her countenance had changed to a more friendly, welcoming configuration since our initial sighting of each other, so I shrugged and agreed.
Once I was beside her, she said, “I’m not sure where the public bathrooms are.”
“I know how to get there,” I told her, with all the pride of a frontier scout informing tenderfoot pilgrims on a wagon train that I could guide them safely through Indian Country.
“Alright. I’ll go where you go, then.”
It’s rather pathetic how the male of the species turns to mush when an attractive female does something as mundane as smile and/or utter an innocent statement like that. But her assurance to go wherever I went triggered something in the fantasy-generating segment of my imagination which went far beyond a trip to fetch water. And this was technically before I had developed an interest in girls.
She carried the pail as we went, complaining, “Every time we go camping, I have to haul the stupid water. Makes me wish we would just roast weenies or something.”
Her opening up like this struck me as an improvement over the hostile glare from earlier. “I’m surprised you can carry it at all, by yourself, when it’s full.”
“I can’t,” she admitted. “Dad has to help me. But still, I’m probably going to get callouses from this handle.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, holding my hand out.
“Oh, thank-you.”
She handed me the bucket.
“You’ll probably need my help once it’s full, though—even though boys are stronger; I know.”
I turned to study her as we walked. This was a surprising admission from her. In my world all the movies, TV shows and literature portrayed females as superior to males in every way—including physical strength. And girls from my generation seemed to believe the message.
“Especially now,” she went on. “It seems all the boys from my class are getting taller and stronger every day.” Something strange happened to her voice as she said this. “Sultry” might be a good description of her tone right then, though my vocabulary wasn’t advanced enough to have chosen that word at the time.
She asked my age, and I, in turn, asked hers. She was a couple months younger.
She asked a lot of questions and got me talking about myself—just as Dad was able to do with the average grown-up. This was new territory for me. I didn’t normally open up about myself—even without all the secrets I now needed to keep. But she coaxed me into chattering away as if I was outgoing. I was careful to stick to the cover story, but that still left room for plenty of honest revelations, and I was flattered by the attention.
We filled the bucket, outside the building, from a spigot that appeared to be there for that very purpose. The full pail was indeed heavy, I found out, as we lifted it together. The weight of it made the handle bite into my hand. She had to stop and rest before we made it 30 yards; and again before we made it 20 more yards. The next time she had to stop I changed my grip and picked it up by myself. I had to lean away from it, compensating for the weight, and it was awkward to carry it without spilling the water.
“You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “I can help.”
I made it about 80 yards and had to set it down. I shook my hurting hand and prepared to lift it with my other arm, but she reached toward me and said, “let me see that.”
She took hold of my hand and pulled it toward her. “Oh, my,” she said, examining the sharp red indentation across my palm, in the diminishing light. “You are stubborn, aren’t you?”
I was absorbed in the contrast of her hands to mine. Hers were small, clean, soft works of art, with long fingernails. Her touch was a pleasant sensation. She flattened one of her delicate hands out, so those fingernails wouldn’t scratch me, and rubbed her velvety fingertips over the sore impression the bucket handle had left in my skin. I don’t know how effective her technique was, medically, but I forgot all about the pain.
“You’ve already got callouses,” she said. “What are those from?”
“Monkey bars,” I said. As part of my daily training, I had to go down and back a line of monkey bars in the gym at BH Station. It had caused blisters the first few times I did it. Those blisters ruptured as I continued. Later on, the skin toughened up.
We carried the pail together the rest of the way, and the next time she had to stop and rest, she showed me the red indentation in her own hand. This was probably an invitation to return the favor she’d done me, but I assumed it was my own genius idea.
Her touch was nice. Touching her back was nice, too. Even better was the way she accepted my touch.
We were chattering away when we returned to her parents’ campsite. The parents exchanged looks and Mrs. Benake said, “You two look like old friends already. Bring the water over here, please.”
In the midst of the fire were a couple flat-topped rocks. Mrs. Benake set a large pot on those rocks so that the flames licked all around and underneath it, and poured water from the pail into it. Then she dumped several corn cobs in the water. Mr. Benake said he’d gone pheasant hunting yesterday, and proved it by producing four gutted-and-plucked birds to roast by spit over that fire.
Gloria helped her mother for a while. I sat on a stump and stared off into the woods, forcing myself not to stare at Gloria. To my delight, when she came to sit down awaiting supper, she set up her folding chair next to me.
We continued to talk, and I was enamored. I remember Dad once mentioning that you should never stare right into a fire at night, or it would screw up your “night vision.” So I watched Gloria, who did stare right into the fire, for the most part. The firelight made her look even better.
She mentioned a lot of different music she liked, and various musicians. I’d never heard of any of them, so I mostly just nodded and listened. She asked me which songs and musicians I liked. Thinking fast, I coughed up some artists and titles I’d heard on the radio at the Orange Grove. Her eyes widened and nostrils flared after hearing me recite a few. “Those are so old!” she cried.
I shrugged. “My mom likes them. I’m not normally good with remembering the names, except for some of her favorites, ’cause I hear them so much.”
“Where is your mom?” she asked. “Why didn’t she come with you?”
“She’s back at the house. This is a father-son deal,” I said. “He’s busy a lot, so I don’t get to see him as much as the…as her. This is our time together.”
“That’s neat. Your dad seems like a great guy.”
I nodded.
When the food was ready, Mrs. Benake passed out dishes and utensils. But before we ate, Mr. Benake asked everyone to bow our heads. He spoke a short prayer, giving God thanks for the meal, thanking Him for the good company (meaning us, I deduced) and asking blessings on this, that, and the other. I hadn’t heard anything quite like it, and was fairly unacquainted with this custom anyway.
We ate, and roasted marshmallows afterwards. The food was good, but the company was better.
When I finally did drift off to sleep that night, it was contented sleep with pleasant dreams. The next day the Benake family packed up and left after lunch. Before that, Gloria and I went for a walk by ourselves. She touched me a lot when she talked that day, and we wound up holding hands on the way back to the site. Before they left, she wrote her mailing address on some notebook paper and gave it to me, asking me to write and come visit her someday if I could.
The immediate postwar years had really impressed me, and meeting Gloria was the icing on the cake.
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The next day, Uncle Si informed me that my training would resume. It was more important than ever now, he said, since the Erasers were after me.
But first, he gave me a tour of the Orange Grove.
“You ever think about how we have electricity out here?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
He nodded. “Of course not. In your time, everybody in America has electricity—even out in the boonies. But there’s no power company that has lines out this far, where and when we are right now.”
He took me to what looked like a tall, sturdy barn. Once inside the blazing hot structure. I saw that it had no roof. It was not a barn at all, but a disguise. Inside the walls was something like a green house, with a slot recessed into the floor, full of water. Sitting in that pool, but with the top sticking up out of the greenhouse, was a gigantic wheel, slowly rotating through the opening of the structure. The wheel was a circle of metal tanks, all connected by spoke-like pipes deflecting around a central hub. The hub drove an axle which also protruded from the greenhouse (horizontally, in this case) and into a gearbox which, in turn, drove a large circular mechanism.
Uncle Si pointed to this last component. “That’s the alternator. Don’t get too close; it puts out enough current to fry you to a crisp.” Then he waved to the big wheel. “That is a Temperature Wheel. Not very fast, but massive torque. Each tank contains a gas with a very low boiling point, and they’re all interconnected. It’s sunny just about all year ’round, here. The sun heats the pool, which heats the tanks that are in the pool. The gas expands, pushing through the pipes into the tanks that are up in the breeze–but under shade. There the gas cools down, settles as liquid, making the tanks on top heavier, and gravity pushes them back down.”
“…So the wheel spins,” I finished.
“I get enough juice to power everything here, and it costs almost nothing,” he said.
“Almost?” I repeated. “Looks completely free to me. You don’t have to pay for the sun, or the air. The water doesn’t get used up; and neither does the gas in the wheel.”
“But it did cost me something to build it,” he said. “And it does require occasional maintenance.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He pointed to the inner walls of the pseudo-barn. They were lined with heavy shelves which held large, solid-looking boxes all connected by thick, insulated cables. “For the occasional cold spells when I don’t get at least a 3.5 degree difference in temperature between the air above the greenhouse and the water in the pool, I’ve got a network of battery banks, to keep the property powered.”
“Those are batteries?” I asked, staring at the huge, dark casings. They were enormous compared to car batteries.
He nodded. “Nickel-iron. They’ll last forever and take plenty of abuse. Slow discharge, but with nearly unlimited cycling. Just about perfect for this place.”
Several huge concave mirrors were placed up high inside the walls of the open-top barn, reflecting extra sunlight into the greenhouse.
I stared at the huge, slow-turning wheel. “This is something else.”
“It’s crude technology,” he said, dismissively. “Since putting this together, I’ve stumbled on some mind-blowing stuff. But anyway: like with any of the goodies I have around here, you can’t ever tell anyone about it. Savvy?”
I hadn’t heard the term “savvy” before meeting Uncle Si, but deduced from context he was asking if I understood. “I won’t tell anybody anything.”
He nodded, then continued the tour.
He opened a big, up-swinging door on the other side of the hangar, and I discovered that there were airplanes there, after all. He climbed in one and started it. Twin propellers spun into a blur. He steered it out of the hangar and got out to shut and lock the hangar door.
I couldn’t remember ever seeing a prop plane in real life before. This plane was like nothing I’d ever seen—even in old movies. The windows were tinted such that I couldn’t see anything inside. The contours were sleek and swoopy, like so many other manufactured objects in this era. But still, it looked like something out of a 1930s cartoon, more than a 1930s airport.
“Get in,” he said.
He climbed in and out, checking his lights and other components. By the time he was done, the engines were warmed up and ready to go. He taxied around to an air field cut out of the sprawling grove.
“Is this plane from 1934?” I asked, once strapped into the co-pilot’s seat, scanning over some real sophisticated, high-tech-looking instrumentation around the cockpit.
“Nope,” he said. “It’s a one-off custom. I had it built to look like something that belongs in the age of art deco, but not even an aircraft buff could place this baby.”
I halfway expected him to slip on a radio headset, but he didn’t. He throttled up the engines, released the brakes, and we sped down the runway. The plane lifted off smoothly, and picked up speed as it climbed at a shallow angle.
Uncle Si fiddled with one of the instruments, and I was wracked by the same phenomenon I experienced in the badass car a week ago: my stomach free-floated; vision and hearing went haywire; then everything came roaring back to normal.
Normal except the airplane was flying over a totally different landscape, now.
The plane leveled off, then began a shallow descent. Ahead and below I saw another air field, with crisscrossing runways, hangars and other buildings , hacked out of a jungle between three mountain peaks. Uncle Si did put on a radio headset, now, and engaged somebody in a short conversation I didn’t follow.
“Where are we?” I asked, once he was done.
“BH Station,” he said, without looking away from the windshield. “One of my most advanced, extensive bases. The rain forest thins out a bit up here, but unless you know what you’re looking for and where to look, it’s the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
Ever since meeting Uncle Si, my vocabulary had been expanding. On my next session with a dictionary, I would have to look up “proverbial” and “art deco.”
The sights below stretched out from a map-like image to life-sized reality—surrounded by the dark green carpet of jungle extending to the horizons. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the transition of scale.
The runway grew underneath us until we could touch it. The landing was nearly as smooth as the takeoff. Then we taxied toward a long row of speed-bump-shaped metal buildings.
As we drew closer to one particular hangar in the midst of the row, it became obvious how enormous the structures were. They were painted to blend in with the surrounding countryside, and so hadn’t been noticeable from higher altitudes.
A man in greasy overalls ran past us to open the hangar doors, and Uncle Si stopped the plane to wait. I shifted my gaze from the front to below. My eyes were caught by something shiny in the pavement under us. It was a piece of metal—maybe from an old soda can pull-tab or something—which had evidently gotten mixed up in the asphalt somehow. Had we been 20 feet farther away in any direction, I never would have noticed it. It was only because I was on top of it that I even knew it existed. It seemed odd enough as to serve as a good landmark, but after the hangar doors were open and the plane began moving again, it disappeared into the texture of the tarmac. I could no more locate it now than I could before I knew it was there.
I didn’t ponder the contrast of microcosm to macrocosm very long, though, because of what I saw inside the hangar. There was a collection of aircraft (both jet and propeller) that belonged in a museum—everything from futuristic to antiquated.
Uncle Si disembarked and I followed him out of the plane into the hangar. The air was heavy, hot, and sticky. I began sweating almost immediately. But I stared at the other planes.
“What’s in all the other hangars?” I asked.
“Some of them are still empty,” he said, shrugging. “Most have other aircraft. This is the hangar for twin engine passenger planes.”
“Different vintages so you can visit different times?” I asked.
He grinned, but touched his index finger to his lips briefly. “Shh.”
The man in greasy overalls arrived. Uncle Si shook hands with him, asking, “How’s it going with the VTOL?”
“Still got some tweakin’ to do. But fuel consumption is down about four percent.”
Uncle Si frowned. “I was hoping for more than that.”
The man looked at me curiously.
“Sprout, this is one of my mechanics: Frank. Frank, this is…you can call him Sprout, for now.”
Frank nodded at me…a cursory jerk of the head…and turned his attention back to my uncle. Not a very friendly guy; or at least not all that interested in me. They walked and talked, and I followed.
Their discussion sounded technical, with too many words and acronyms I didn’t understand. Outside, Frank slid the hangar door shut and locked it. He walked away by himself. Uncle Si led me to a control tower.
“Um, Uncle Si? Who owns this airport?”
Without looking at me or breaking stride, he said, “I do,” as if it were a silly question.
Beyond the air strip, out around the fenced perimeter, I noticed men in green uniforms and mirror-like sunglasses walking routes, brandishing weapons.
My uncle is a James Bond villain!
After unlocking the steel door at the base of the tower, Si led me inside and locked the door behind us. He sure was security-conscious. There was a metal staircase leading up, but instead of climbing it, he turned to a chain-link cage with a warning sign that read: “DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE—KEEP OUT.” In the same font but some other language, it spelled out what I assumed was the same notice.
Ignoring the sign, Uncle Si unlocked the gate on the cage and opened it. Inside the cage was a large steel casing with more high voltage warnings, humming like a power transformer. He unlocked the casing and swung it open. Inside, of course, I expected to see some kind of control panel with buttons, switches, and gauges. Instead, there was a metal ladder extending down.
He sent me down the ladder while he locked up behind us. I reached an underground floor at the bottom of the ladder and looked around. I was in a small, hexagonal chamber with heavy vault doors on six sides. The temperature was much cooler down here, thankfully. Uncle Si joined me, placed his hand against a scanner on one door, pushed his face against an eyepiece, and the door popped ajar with a thunk. We walked through.
Down a gray concrete-lined corridor, we came to an enormous gymnasium that made The Warrior’s Lair look shabby by comparison.
A few pairs of men were sparring. Others were working the bags, stretching, practicing techniques, and all the other activities I’d grown used to.
Uncle Si turned to me, pointing to a locker against one wall. “You’ll find some work-out clothes that fit you over there. You’ve had a week to rest and goof off, but now it’s time to get back at it. The next couple days will be an evaluation to see how sharp you are. If you haven’t lost much, we’ll start adding to your skills again after that.”
A thin, dark man in a traditional white martial arts outfit left one of the sparring pairs and bowed to Uncle Si, who bowed back. They conversed in a language that sounded similar to Spanish, then they both looked at me.
“I’m too busy to stay down here for the duration of your daily training,” Uncle Si said, “but I’ll be checking on you regularly. This is Paulo. He’ll be your primary trainer, now. Pay attention to anything he tells you. For the most part, your routine will be the same one we’ve established. But he’s going to teach you some new stuff to add, now and then.”
I had a thousand questions, but it was reassuring to know that my training would continue.
***
I hadn’t collected any rust in the previous week. My movement was still solid, and I worked the bags with familiarity. Paulo only spoke broken English, and he didn’t seem the type to pat someone on the back, but I caught him nodding every now and then. Without words of encouragement (in fact, with hardly any words at all except when I needed correction), the old me would have been miserable under this training regimen. But something had already started changing inside me. I didn’t need as much encouragement as I would have required before Uncle Si came into my life. Now, even when I made a mistake, I nonetheless had a glimmer of hope in my core that I was a human being with value anyway, and would continue to improve.
At nights and at dawn, when the air outside had cooled off, I did my roadwork around the inside of the perimeter. The armed guards soon got used to me passing them on their beats. I would gaze up in wonder at the strange constellations in the night sky as I ran. Inside, before training with Paulo each day, I had to concentrate on conditioning. That included circuit drills, monkey bars, rope climbing, wind sprints, etc.
Aside from roadwork, and my three hours of training a day, Uncle Si let me have the run of the place.
BH Station (Brazilian Highlands Station, that is) had a small city concealed underground—all connected by concrete-lined tunnels and catacombs. It might have been the ultimate dream playground for any young boy with an imagination.
The power source wasn’t explained to me (and I probably wouldn’t have understood it at that point in my life, even if somebody tried) but Uncle Si did mention that it was far more efficient than the Temperature Wheel back at the Orange Grove. I did meet a man he introduced as an engineer, though, who evidently designed BH Station’s power plant, and spent most of his time working on stuff that was even more important. His name was Dr. Torstenson. I think he was Norwegian, though he wasn’t interested in telling me about Vikings—and didn’t seem to know much about them, or Norse mythology.
There was a library full of books and computers; a sprawling recreation area with raquetball courts, a swimming pool, video arcade and the coolest go-cart track ever (for electric carts that could really move); barracks for the guards; a cafeteria; a laundromat; commissary; motor pool; several laboratories; individual quarters for other people who lived there; and Uncle Si’s suite which included bedrooms, private kitchen and bathrooms, living room and the works. My palm print and retina scan was added to the security database so that I had access to most of the facilities in the complex, and several of the entries/exits.
There were guards; electricians; mechanics; engineers and assistants; pilots and drivers who lived there. There were also maids, cooks, dishwashers, nurses, and other women whose job descriptions I didn’t know.
One woman in particular lived in Uncle Si’s suite. In retrospect, Carmen was not only beautiful, but the Brazilian lady was classy, sweet, and generous. I couldn’t recognize any of that for some time, out of an instinctive loyalty to Mami. As much as I admired Uncle Si, his double life in different time-space coordinates struck me as a betrayal of the woman I loved like a mother.
Uncle Si flew in and out of BH Station at least once a day. He wasn’t gone for long…relative to my fixed perspective. But he used a variety of different aircraft, and on some occasions, left in a land-bound motor vehicle on a winding mountain road leading away from the complex.
One of my first nights there I had a nightmare about the Erasing of my mother and half-brother. It woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep right away. I took a walk around the complex, and heard something going on in the gym. Curious, but cautious, I snuck up to take a peak.
Uncle Si was in there by himself, working out like a man possessed. Did he do this every night when everyone else was asleep? He wore shorts and knee braces. His sunglasses were gone and his shirt was off. I wondered if I’d ever have muscles like his. Then I glimpsed his back. Most of it was covered by what looked like an awful burn scar.
I wondered how he might have got that scar. Maybe in the car accident that put him in a coma? It must have hurt bad.
There was still an awful lot I didn’t know about my uncle. What I did know was that I wanted to be like him when I grew up.
***
Although there were residents of BH Station from other countries, most were Brazilian. They spoke a dialect of Portuguese, which I couldn’t speak or understand. Nevertheless, Uncle Si warned me sternly not to discuss time travel with anybody. To me, that meant they didn’t know anything about dimensional warps and he wanted to keep it that way. Still, I kind of suspected Dr. Torstenson and some other engineers had at least some inkling.
Working beside my uncle, I overhauled my first engine in the underground motorpool. It was a small one…a V-twin motorcycle engine to be exact…but it introduced me to how internal combustion works. I would continue to build on that little seed of mechanical knowledge throughout my life. It also taught me the importance of math, which he insisted I study for a half hour a day.
He limited my time in the recreation center, requiring that I spend time each day in the library. He welcomed me to learn about any subject that interested me, but frequently emphasized the importance of knowing history.
Having never been much of a student, an assumption common to me and everyone I knew was that I had no aptitude for school learning. Somehow, Uncle Si knew better. It turns out I had a voracious appetite for knowledge. I was already anachronistic at coordinates like this in that I enjoyed reading, so it should have been no surprise that once I got my nose into the sagas of Ragnar Lothbruk, I couldn’t stop until I’d devoured all of them.
At BH Station, people were addicted to “smartphones”—little handheld devices that could perform computer functions as well as make telephone calls via radio waves—but I preferred books and full-sized computers.
From the Norse sagas I went on to research Atila; Alaric I; El Cid, Charlemagne, Harold Hardrada; William the Conqueror; Genghis Khan; Tamerlane; Saladin; William Marshal; Napoleon Bonaparte; Robert E. Lee; Carl Von Clausewitz and Helmuth Von Moltke.
Reading about all those historic warriors, generals and kings kept the concept of leadership toward the forefront of my thinking. The historical events surrounding those figures piqued my curiosity enough to read about the world wars, and that led me to research weapons. I already had an interest in lances, flails, pikes, etc., and looked forward to the day Uncle Si would teach me how to use swords and other melee weapons. Now, through my research, I learned the difference between rifles, submachineguns and machineguns; cannons, howitzers and mortars; infantry, cavalry and artillery.
(The guards who walked the perimeter at BH Station carried rifles, while the roving guards among the buildings carried either shotguns or submachineguns. All of them wore sunglasses, like Uncle Si’s.)
It turns out, by living this way, I received an education superior to anything an institution could have taught me in between their attempts to tame, socialize, and foment ideological conformity.
In time, I grew brave enough to ask Uncle Si to elaborate on what he’d told me about leadership. I asked him specifically about the characters in The Lost Patrol.
In quite a few of the big, modern properties Uncle Si owned, he had his own little movie theaters. He took me into the one at BH Station and we watched The Lost Patrol again. He commented on what characters said and did, and asked me questions. This would become a ritual of ours, and he seemed to enjoy it as much as I did: we would watch movies that depicted groups of people, whether in a military unit, on a sports team, in an office, or any other scenario that might require people to work together. We’d watch them twice. On the second screening, he would point out certain characters he called “real life,” and others he claimed were “total bullshit.” He gave them letter grades on how they handled different situations.
He went into more detail about the Ziggurat. On the top were who he called the Big Dogs. Whether they actually made good leaders or not, they almost always wound up in leadership because others were willing to follow them. Their confidence was such that they not only believed themselves to always be the best man to lead, they effortlessly made others believe it, too. He used Douglas MacArthur, Joe Namath and Vince Lombardi as examples.
The next step down the Ziggurat were the Lieutenants. They shared some qualities with the Big Dogs (like leadership potential) but were willing to follow and make the Big Dog look great by doing a good job with whatever authority was delegated to them. They not only felt protective of the Big Dog they served (until ready to become a Big Dog themselves), but protective of the Ziggurat itself. Like Omar Bradley, Sir Lancelot, Bart Starr, or Al Capone’s top henchmen.
On the middle steps of the Ziggurat were the Worker Drones. They didn’t get the best salaries, the best women, or much in the way of recognition; but were the backbone of pretty much any successful organization. They made it work. They were the offensive linemen. The defensive backs and special teams players. The infantrymen. The engineers and maintenance men. The truckdrivers, mechanics, and railroaders.
On the bottom steps were the Creeps. They resented their low position and thought they deserved better, but were lousy climbers. They could never get to the top unless somebody put them there—and then would do a lousy job. They were passive-aggressive cowards and liars; but embraced the delusion that they were superior to everyone else. They saw themselves as secret Big Dogs-in-waiting but nobody else did—especially women above Tier Six or so. The Creeps’ efforts with women were buffoonish and cringe-worthy; and the harder they tried, the more repulsive they were. They were the desperate salesmen, the pervy college professors, psychiatrists and grandiose comic book villains (“The fools wouldn’t listen to me, but I’ll show them! When my master plan is complete, they’ll all bow before the throne of the All-Powerful Doctor Creep!”)
There were two categories of men who existed independent of the Ziggurat. Dad called one the “Lepers.” Lepers were underneath the Ziggurat. They weren’t just socially awkward like the Creeps; they were socially non-existent. They were the nobodies who were nameless and faceless to men on the Ziggurat. They had nothing to say because nobody cared what they thought, and they knew it. They were the janitors, the meter readers, the lonely monks and the warehouse book keepers. The Untouchables.
The other category was the Loners. The Lepers were off the Ziggurat because they couldn’t get on it. Loners could find their place on the Ziggurat (maybe even at the top) if they wanted to; but they didn’t want to. They didn’t want to play all the political games that were necessary just to be a cog in a machine. They didn’t need the Ziggurat…sometimes were oblivious to it. They could sometimes pull in the highest salaries and Top-Tier women all while ignoring the hierarchy and its rules (which infuriated the Big Dogs). They were the explorers, inventors, Army scouts, buffalo hunters, mountain men, pilots, wildcatters, and pioneers in every field. Real-life examples might include Charles Lindbergh, Kit Carson, Nikola Tesla and the Wright Brothers. Tarzan, Conan, Batman and Zorro were a few fictional examples.
I hung on Uncle Si’s every word and thought about these lessons constantly.
***
I think Uncle Si must have known the bond I had to Mami, because every weekend we would warp-jump back to the Orange Grove. I missed her during the week, but this regular visitation provided the stability I needed.
My irritation at his unfaithfulness to Mami notwithstanding, I looked forward to any time I got to spend with Uncle Si. Unlike any other adult I’d known, he sometimes listened to me and considered my thoughts seriously. He taught me constantly on multiple subjects, but often asked me questions and seemed genuinely interested in finding out what my answer would be. I didn’t always have an answer, but it was really cool that he listened if I did.
Gradually, from remarks that came out in passing now and then, I was able to piece together some of his story. Uncle Si had been in some secret military unit when The Great Reset came about. (As near as I could figure, “The Reset” was an absorbtion of the USA into a foreign empire some time in the future…the future relative to my original time-space coordinates.) A veteran with an impressive record, he was drafted into the TPF and helped build the unit that would become the Erasers. He hadn’t known, at first, that the Erasers were to be a time-traveling death squad. After being ordered to lead a number of erasure missions, however, he secretly made a decision to desert and disappear. Although he’d never been a scientist, everyone had underestimated his technical aptitude. The way he told the story, he surprised even himself by successfully reverse-engineering a warp generator.
One part of Uncle Si’s personality that I didn’t understand or care for was his drinking. I hadn’t noticed him drink all that much before, but BH Station was evidently where he spent a lot of his time, and when he wasn’t busy doing something else, he indulged an addiction to straight vodka.
UPDATE: This book is published! Click here to buy on Amazon.
Curious about Amazon discounting 
