Author Archives: James Pyles

Saving Julie: A Time Travel Story

broken timeWhen Andy found the abandoned time machine, he immediately decided to save his sister’s life.

Ten years ago, Julie had been 15 and he had been 10. He adored his sister, which seemed pretty unusual because at his age, most boys hated their older sisters, but not Andy.

Mom had died when he was a baby and Dad did his best, but Dad’s idea of parenting was working hard at his job so he could pay the bills. He really didn’t know how to comfort him when he skinned his knee at age 3 or to praise him when he came home with two A’s and three B’s on his first grade report card.

Julie knew how, even though she was so young herself. Julie and Andy only had each other and for a long time, that was enough.

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Tracks Across Time

time machine

Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells in the 1979 film “Time After Time

“The Temporal Event Indicator’s lighting up. Looks like we have another trip in our near future.”

“Or our far past, Josue.”

Wyatt Ellison walked over next to where his partner Josue Hunter was gazing down at the screen of the Indicator. It actually wasn’t a screen in a conventional sense. Both men were looking at a holographic projection inside a spherical depression about the size of a bowling ball (and they were among a very small group who still knew what a bowling ball was) set in a table top.

“The Sky Disc of Nebra, Hunter mused. “We can’t actually let these two morons find it.”

“That’s our job. Suppress revolutionary discoveries that would take the course of this time line on a different trajectory, Josue.”

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Daedalus One

rocket

Image: Space.com

August 29, 2064, Cape Canaveral, Florida

“There it goes. All our hopes for the human race surviving on another planet.”

Chester Menkin put his arm around his wife Helen’s zaftig waist as they watched the launch of the Daedalus One probe together. It was quite literally a “hot August night” as the Orion rocket’s enormous engines erupted with man-made fire, so like the gift of Prometheus, thrusting the space craft away from the launch pad and the surface of our world.

“We’ll eventually go extinct here on Earth, Chester, but we send the best part of ourselves to the stars.”

Dr. and Dr. Menkin were a brilliant Genetics team and responsible for successfully encoding human DNA onto bacteria so “we” could be sent on the long interstellar voyage to the new planet.

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A Time To Follow Your Heart

chanukah

Image: StepByStep.com

Sarah stood across the street from her Bubbe’s and Zayde’s house. The evening of December 24th, the first night of Chanukah this year, was cool, even in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, but she had dressed for the occasion. She made sure the coat she was wearing wouldn’t attract attention in case anyone saw her.

Sarah wished she could get closer. She wished she could just knock on the door and go inside, but she wasn’t supposed to be there and she wasn’t supposed to change anything.

Wait! There they were. She could see them through the window in the front of their house. Bubbe and Zayde. Her big brother Aaron, all of seven years old, was excitedly jumping up and down next to them. Sarah couldn’t hear anything of course, but she could see everyone’s facial expressions and imagined Zayde firmly but kindly helping Aaron to calm down.

Tradition says that the Chanukah menorah must be placed either in a central area of the home or by a window. The latter is to proudly announce that a miracle had occurred and this was the commemoration of that miracle. Sarah was watching her family tonight thanks to a miracle she had created herself.

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Rocketship to Mars

flight to mars

Image: From the 1951 film “Flight to Mars”

The four glittering, silver tail fins of Space Ship Ares One settled firmly on the red sands of the planet Mars as Colonel Bradley Graham flipped the toggle switch cutting the rocket thrust.

Then he picked up the microphone and depressed the transmission button on the side. “Space Ship Ares One to Earth Space Control. We have landed on the planet Mars. Repeat, we have landed on Mars.”

It would take minutes for the radio waves carrying his message to make the trip from Mars to Earth, but Graham vividly imagined the cheers of the crowd at Space Control and all of the Americans watching on their televisions or listening on their radios when they finally heard his voice from across the void.

“Okay, let’s get to it. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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The Good Old Days

orchard

Image: Core Orchards Detroit

Alexander May had created a way to save the world. Unfortunately, the rest of the world found out about it.

Dr. Alexander May, Ph.Ds in Particle Physics and Temporal Mechanics, retired Owner and CEO of TimeTeck, one of the largest and most profitable technology companies in the world, had watched that world continue its downward spiral toward an ethical and moral vacuum for most of his life. Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, plagues, and runaway environmental pollution was bringing life on Earth to a slow and agonizing end.

May knew he could fix it all. He could make the Earth life-sustaining again, bring peace to all nations, tribes, and clans. What was required was totally reorganizing the time-line and completely rewriting history.

All of the so-called climate change advocates were a bunch of hypocrites. They wanted to restore a sustainable planetary biosphere, but they didn’t want to make the sacrifices necessary. The world wanted to keep the Internet, their iPhones, their cat videos, and the rest of that crap.

You can’t have it both ways.

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Dreamless

coma

Image: From the 2012 TV Miniseries Coma

“Why is it so hard to wake up?”

“Because I don’t want you to wake up.”

“No, I’ve got to get out of bed. I can’t be late for work.”

“You are a lot more late for work than you think.”

“How do you know? Who are you? Why can’t I open my eyes?”

“Because I’m a Dream Eater and as soon as you stop resisting, I’m going to keep on eating yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

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Human for Sale

irish slavesMegan Kelly wept and tried to cover her nude body as best she could while on the selling block.

“She’ll fetch a fine price,” the Slave Hunter said to his V’thakian customer.

The Slave Hunter was human, a collaborator with the V’thak, a man who would hunt and sell his own kind to inhuman butchers and conquerors.

Megan was only twenty years old. Pale skin and fiery red hair matched her temperament and spirit. She thought she could push the limit and remain in the countryside outside the shelter a little while longer than the others.

Her fourteen year old brother’s broken arm was still healing and she wanted to bring home some extra roots and berries for him as a treat.

Instead she was caught by Galn, the Slave Hunter. He stripped her bare once he’d gotten her to the V’thakian compound, but he didn’t rape her. The V’thakians don’t like their slaves sullied, but neither do they tolerate them clothed.

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The Bubble

bungalow

Image: hookedonhouses.com

Friday, October 21, 2016

I might have lived alone in that 1920s bungalow that I inherited from my Grandpa for the rest of my life if I hadn’t discovered the Bubble. That’s what I call it because that’s what it looks like, a big soap-bubble suspended between the trunks of two Elm trees behind the house.

It’s mostly wooded back there, and the Bubble is almost completely transparent, so unless you’re right on top of it, you’d never see the thing.

I was walking around the property, Grandpa still owned it all when he died so I had plenty of privacy, and I only saw it at the last second (guess I was daydreaming) before I walked right into it.

I got dizzy for a few moments and then I walked out the other side. I looked back at it and my first thought was to wonder why it hadn’t popped.

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Tomb of the Pilot

glenn and friendship 7

Image: NASA

“I can’t believe we finally made it, Kent. We’ve made it to the tomb.”

“We aren’t there yet, Bethany. We still have to make it across this field.”

Kent and Bethany had been traveling by horseback for weeks, following the ancient maps and clues left by the Predecessors. They weren’t entirely sure how long ago the Predecessors lived or when the original maps had been created. Certainly it was in the time before the fall, before the plague that was rumored to have killed billions, before the return of the remnant of mankind to their simple farms and fields.

They stood a moment reviewing the scene in the mid-morning sunlight.

“There’s not much left. I mean, the reproduction of the map of this area showed more tombs and graves, many, many more.”

“Time, weather, a multitude of other factors have destroyed all this, Bethany. The Pilot’s tomb is supposed to be one of the few left.”

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