Tag Archives: time travel

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?”

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The Corridor

corridor

© Dale Rogerson

Ken Watanabe wasn’t shown the entrance off the courtyard when he took over Santa Fe’s historic Museum. The ex-Curator gave him the keys. The door had been locked since 1943. No one knew why. There was no eastern door inside, but it was apparent on the outer wall.

Hesitantly, he used his key, opened the door, and saw a lit, multi-arched corridor. Then he heard a voice at the other end. “Glad those Japs were locked up after what they pulled at Pearl Harbor.”

His father was interned here 74 years ago on Ken’s first birthday. He never opened the door again.

There’s a larger story being told but it’s hard to compress into 100 words or less.

The photo reminded me somewhat of Southwestern architecture, which is why I placed my tale in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I wanted to do a “corridor through time” story, but I needed a date where the other end of the tunnel linked. I looked up Santa Fe at Wikipedia and discovered that during World War Two, it had a Japanese Internment Camp. Beginning in June 1942, 826 Japanese-American men were arrested and imprisoned.

I remember actor George Takei saying that when he was a small child, he and his family were similarly interned because of their Japanese heritage. Thus my tale was born.

I wrote this as part of the Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The goal is to write a short story of 100 words or less based on the photo prompt you see above (and as I mentioned, I just made it at exactly 100 words).

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

Taking Care of the Family

counterclock

Image: Odditymall.com

It worked. I changed everything for the better. Now my son Charles marries a hardworking, loving wife and mother instead of a depressed lay about. Now my son Chris makes his career decision five years earlier and gets a tenured position before the recession hits. Now my wife has that business she’s always wanted and the franchise money will make her rich. The Time Changer worked, but with one catch. Instead of me being a successful scientist, I’m a divorced drug addict, dying of lung cancer in the local hospital’s charity ward, a total human failure. It was worth it.

I’ve been writing so much flash fiction over the past few days, that when this idea popped up, I thought I’d take advantage. No prompt, no challenge. Just the way my head works.

Uncle Eli’s Machine

the machine

© Sandra Crook / Found at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blogspot

For two weeks, Evan had been investigating the odd, sprocketed contraption in the basement of the house he’d inherited from old Uncle Eli, an eccentric inventor who’d been tinkering with it for the past sixty years.

Evan didn’t fathom the machine’s purpose, but he did think he could get the gears moving.

He made one last adjustment with his screwdriver.

Evan jumped back as the large driver cog suddenly lurched one “ka-chunk” counterclockwise.

Then the light changed. “So, my time machine finally worked, I see.”

Evan turned. The figure speaking to him was Uncle Eli at age 26.

I wrote this as part of (last week’s) Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction using a max of 100 words and base it on the photo prompt you see at the top of the page. The details are at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blog (scroll down).

Read all of the responses to this flash fiction challenge at InLinkz.com (over 80 as of this writing).

My story is exactly 99 words long.

The Five Billion Year Love

ancient mars

Image: NASA.gov

Juan Villanueva’s name was often mentioned in the same sentence as Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk, and yet all he really wanted was to be alone. The thrill of starting one company, amassing a fortune from his work, and then selling it for another fortune had lost its allure, at least since Carrie died.

Carrie, his beloved Carrie. How could he go on without her?

But he did, because that’s what Villanueva was all about, overcoming challenges, even grief and death.

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Time Line Twisted

time travel

Image: BBC News

The Third Hunter and Ellison Time Travel Adventure and a direct sequel to In Search of the Time Traveler.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Josue.”

“Stop that! This is serious. This isn’t when we are supposed to be.”

Josue Hunter and Wyatt Ellison thought they were finally closing in on Heloise Amanda Westcott, the mysterious and elusive time traveler first detected in 1885 England. They’d found H.G. Wells, author of the famous novel “The Time Machine” and confederate of Westcott in Texas in 1940, and persuaded him to reveal the place and time they could locate her.

Wells wrote it down on a pad of paper with the letterhead of the hotel in which he’d been staying. Friday, 15 August 1994, 8150 Olive Avenue, Huntington Beach, California.

“Checking the unitool.” Hunter’s all-purpose utility device was disguised as a wrist watch. He set it to review the most recent log of their trip back in time.

“Damn.”

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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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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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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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