Tag Archives: time travel

On Thursday the Time Traveler Walked Out

driving drunk

Image: nbc15.com

“I quit. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about anything. You’re going to get me killed.”

Martin Fields removed the Temporal Jump Suit and threw each piece on the floor of his bedroom rather than packing it in its customized carrying case.

“That idiot in Las Vegas almost shot me.”

Isis stood passively listening to Martin as he started removing his clothing, which was appropriate in New Mexico of 1879 but would look like a foolish costume in the present day.

“That idiot was John Henry Holliday, also known as Doc Holliday, and perhaps he would have been less inclined to threaten you if you hadn’t been staring at his common-law wife’s nose.”

Continue reading →

On Wednesday the Time Traveler Got Wet

ocean

“Damn!” It was the only word Martin Fields could get out before falling into the Pacific Ocean near the equator, north of what would one day be called Papua New Guinea, and thousands of years before he was born.

As his head resurfaced above the equatorial waters, he heard her say, “Try again, Martin.”

Before Martin could try anything, he could feel changes in the circuits of his Temporal Jump Suit and he was on dry land again. More specifically it was the vast Australian Outback. His virtual display told him he had only moved geographically. Chronologically, he was still walking the Earth several centuries before the birth of Christ.

“What the hell!” He instantly went from treading water to collapsing in hot, dry dust. It clung to his still soaked suit, though fortunately, the mysterious technology that allowed it to travel through time was immune.

Continue reading →

Chasing the Zodiac

photo prompt roger bultot

© Roger Bultot

Martin Fields looked out window of his rented condo at a street recently swept of snow. “So primitive, Isis, but we won’t be here long.”

“It’s your fault we’re here at all.”

Fields turned to face her. She was beautiful by design, reminding him that she wasn’t human.

“How could I know he’d find my time machine? It was a one in a million shot that he figured out how it worked.”

“We gave you time travel so you could enforce justice.”

“We traced him to 2014, forty years after the Zodiac Killer disappeared. This time he won’t get away.”

I wrote this as part of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers Challenge. Using a photo prompt, authors are supposed to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words in length. My wee missive weighs in at exactly 100.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

There are two influences for my story. The first is the Star Trek original series episode Assignment: Earth. The starship Enterprise travels back in time to Earth of 1968 to do historical research and encounters a human being beaming from a planet light years away to New York City accompanied only by a black cat.

The man is the descendent of humans taken to another planet thousands  of years ago by an alien race to be trained as secret agents intended to guide humanity to become a peaceful race. The agent’s name is Gary Seven (played by the late Robert Lansing), and he made a similar statement about primitive humanity looking out the window of his penthouse down at the streets of Manhattan. His cat was named “Isis” and was actually an alien metamorph.

The second influence is the 1979 film Time After Time. In late 19th century London, writer and visionary H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) invents a time machine which is then stolen by his friend Stevenson, who has been discovered to be the notorious murderer Jack the Ripper (played by David Warner). Wells chases Stevenson to 1979 San Francisco to stop him from killing more women and somehow to bring him to justice.

In my case, I changed Jack the Ripper to the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have murdered up to 37 people in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and 70s.

I added a twist. Future humanity didn’t invent time travel. It was a gift from non-human entities who have chosen certain people to act as their agents, doing justice across history.

I know. You’re probably getting bored  of  time travel stories by now, however I want to see how many I can write based on these prompts.

Addendum: If you liked this story, I’m featuring the same characters in another, slightly longer tale called On Wednesday the Time Traveler Got Wet.

You Never Have To Wait For A Time Traveler

time travel

Image: BBC News

Pamela had an unusual job; she was a time traveler. She worked on contract for the Department of Temporal Affairs. She was one of a dozen or so time workers who traveled up and down eternity detecting and correcting potential rifts in the time stream, events that, if left unchecked, would threaten the static history her society depended upon.

Every weekday morning at precisely 8:01 a.m. and 10 seconds, she put on her time harness, kissed her husband Morton good-bye, and left for work, vanishing from the center of their living room…

…only to reappear one to five seconds later. Her work days might be an hour or several days long, but she always returned to Morton as soon as possible after her departure.

“I love you, Mort. See you in a few seconds.”

“I love you too, Pam. Have a good day at work.”

They kissed, Morton stepped back several feet so as not to become caught in the harness’s temporal field, and watched his wife of six-months wink out of existence…

…only to wink back in three seconds later.

“Miss me?”

Continue reading →

Two Lost Children

yacht

© C.E. Ayr

The miniature yacht and skiff pulled floaters as it drifted up channel. The yacht’s deck was covered with torn tarps from the storm it weathered the night before. The current carried the pair up river by midday. They were noticed by a lone Ranger, who called it in to the Park Service.

A small police boat pulled alongside, tied up to the larger vessel, and Officers Bridger and Kahn climbed aboard. The children were huddled in the main cabin, terrified.

“It’s okay, kids. We’re here to help.” Madelyn Kahn loved her own children, and loved everyone else’s. One moment, Erin and her little brother Matty were cringing from the strangers, and the next, they were sheltered in Maddy’s embrace.

Craig Bridger left them to search and found nothing on the yacht.

Then he used his binoculars to scan the skiff. It was another alien Time Skimmer. It used the storm to pull the vessels from the past to escape the temporal police. It probably killed the parents, but needed indigenous beings to time travel on Earth. Unconscious, they’d take it into custody and turn it over to the time authorities.

The two kids could be re-educated to transition from 1922 to 2016.

Written as part of Sunday Photo Fiction – January 29th 2017, which uses a photo prompt to inspire flash fiction of no more than 200 words. My wee tale comes in at exactly 200.

To read more stories based on this week’s prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Rediscovering Serenity

koi pond

© Sora Sagano, Nemichi-Jinja, Seki, Japan

It had been years subjectively since Tamara had been to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, years since she’d let herself relax and stare at the serene Koi pond. For the last ten years, she struggled, on the run, hiding from Slaver Gangs, scrounging for food, making alliances, and often being betrayed.

Then she found the bunker. She’d traveled further into the Forbidden Zone than she ever had before, further than anyone dared. The disaster that caused civilization’s collapse started here. She found a breach in the bunker that led to the Temporal Accelerator. The power source still worked. Tamara had been a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Labs before the collapse. She figured out how to opeate the controls.

She went back before the collapse, back to a more peaceful time in her life, a time when her Mom and Dad used to take her here, to this pond, to the Zen Garden. She used the time machine to send her on a one-way trip to the past. Tears streamed down her face as she watched her parents holding her hands. She was only five years old. “I miss you both so much.”

I wrote this small piece of flash fiction in response to the Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner – 2017 Week #05 challenge. The photo prompt is at the top of this page.

Stories can’t be more than 200 words and mine comes in at 197.

To read other stories based on this prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Man Out of Time

the premonition

Pilot Jim Darcy (Dewey Martin) and his wife Linda (Mary Murphy) in the 1965 episode of “The Outer Limits” television show “The Premonition”

When the pilot and his wife ran from my shadowy, fluid form, leaving me standing in the NASA control center in the Mojave Desert, they placed a lit road flare just outside the door to keep me from following them.

They knew I was a being out of time, a man trapped in an endless limbo only they could see. Fire didn’t bother me just like anything else in normal time, but the pilot and his wife were out of synch with normal time, thrown ten seconds into the future and for them, time was passing thirty minutes for every one second of real time. The flare was also out of synch and was a real danger to me.

Of course, as a limbo being, I could have walked through any wall and followed them, even attacked them, but what’s the use?

I was greatly tempted to replace one of them when time resynchronized, leave one of them trapped in my place, in limbo, timeless, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Someone tried it on me before and it didn’t work. I’ll never know what happened to him.

Re-synchronization would only work with the living people who were thrown out of synch, those who still had a chance, those who hadn’t already been lost.

I knew I no longer had a chance. I was lost over five years ago. I’m not even still alive.

Continue reading →

Traveling the Road Back

old car

© Al Forbes

William Shaw was pulling the modified 1902 Cadillac Runabout behind his SUV to an abandoned country road where he would be unobserved.

He’d purchased it from an elderly widow, her husband’s pride and joy, but the old man lacked stamina and finances to restore this beauty.

Shaw unloaded the Cadillac at his destination. Appropriately costumed, he got in and activated the controls. He’d spent a century building wealth and the time transmitter so he, an immortal, could go back and correct his worst mistake. This time, he’d arrive in Southampton and prevent his beloved wife Julia from boarding the Titanic.

I wrote this piece of flash fiction in response to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers challenge using the accompanying photo prompt, and attempting to write a complete story in 100 words or less. I managed exactly 100 words.

To read more stories based on this week’s prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

I am somewhat manipulating the plot from the 1980 film Somewhere in Time starring the late Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

In this case, William Shaw, an immortal, or at least very long-lived person, met and married a woman named Julia in the very early 20th century. They had a falling out for some reason, and she left him. She boarded the RMS Titanic at Southampton on April 10, 1912, and died when it sank early the morning of the 14th.

Shaw is an immortal, but he can’t go back in time. However being an immortal, he has nothing but time and patience in amassing wealth and eventually inventing a method of time travel that could be incorporated into a vintage automobile (no, he doesn’t have to travel eighty-eight miles per hour).

In the original history, Shaw didn’t go after Julia and she died. This time, he intends to prevent her from boarding the Titanic and save her life. They’ll spend however many years they can together, until enough time passes and she finally dies of old age.

He creates one critical problem, though. Now there are two of him in the world, and from 1912 on, there will always be two of him.

Another Chance

goth

Image: mookychick.co.uk

Jeff and Mary Edge were getting a divorce and they didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Mary’s parents suggested that they try marital counseling, but Mary was tired of Jeff’s drinking and Jeff was tired of Mary not getting a job to help with the family finances.

They’d had it with each other and they weren’t going to talk to Mary’s parents, a counselor, or anyone else about it.

Jeff and Mary didn’t even talk about it with their seven-year-old daughter Morgan.

Jeff was at the wheel and Mary was sitting, sulking in the passenger seat after meeting with the divorce lawyer. He was going to take Mary back to her parent’s house where she was staying for now, and pick up Morgan for their weekend visit.

Jeff was sober and would be throughout the visit. When he dropped Morgan back with her mother Sunday night, he planned to go back to his seedy one bedroom apartment and get roaring drunk. The hangover he’d have when he went to work on Monday morning would be worth it.

Continue reading →

The Running Man

the man who walked homeThe explosion was centered near the southern shore of Groom Lake, Nevada, in what used to be a large military base known euphemistically as Area 51. It took out almost all of Southern Nevada along with parts of eastern California, as well as western Utah and Arizona. Hundreds of millions died and yet there was never an official explanation for the cause.

Earth’s largest crater was created on Saturday, August 7, 2048 at approximately 3:01 p.m. PST. The cloud of dust thrown into the atmosphere caused spectacular sunsets for the next decade. Unfortunately, the explosion also vaporized all of the nuclear weapons stored at the Groom Lake facility. Over that next decade, cancer annihilated nearly sixty percent of the human race worldwide, and that wouldn’t be the worst of it.

10,983 A.D. adjusted to the modern calendar.

“I’ve made it. I’m alive. But just what the hell happened?”

Charles William Jefferson stood gazing at the vast wasteland through the view screen of his Temporal Suit. He was only supposed to go ahead a century and instead, this.

“There’s nothing left. What the hell did those bastards do?”

Continue reading →