Kozi

Jillina keyed and rekeyed the diagnostic code into the program. It was showing complete with no errors. It couldn’t be correct, could it?

Kozi was complete. She sat back amazed that her pie-in-the-sky matter-energy transporter dream that she shared with her dad was ready for human trials. Her dad, the original Kozi, Daniel Kozik, would have been so proud today.

Five years ago, dad shared his dream with her and his death sentence. He had incurable cancer with less than one year to live. Dad’s dream was to find a low cost solution to global travel and shipping, saving the Earth thousands upon thousands of carbon credits and billions of dollars on fossil fuels. So long as a location had a transporter/receiving pad, a Kozi unit, theoretically you could transport anything you desired. Jillina envisioned it working similar to a phone system with a home alarm attached.

Jillina sat back in her chair. She had been a fledgling physicist to her father’s professorship when he’d shared his dream. She’d moved back in with her mom and dad working at a local company. It was beneath her skills but allowed her time to help with dad and the Kozi project. Also, there would be no claims of conflict of interest or trying to claim the Kozi for themselves.

Now, where to place the second Kozi? Where to land? There was her boyfriend, Brandt, but they were having troubles and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to know. Her aunt’s house was across town but she was a little forgetful and Jillina didn’t want to scare her.

She’d make that decision tomorrow after talking with her mom. It was getting late tonight.

On the way home, the rain poured like the last five days straight. Jillina walked into the house soaking wet.

“Jillina, you can’t use that device!”

“Mom, calm down!” Jillina carefully placed her coat over her dining room chair hoping it would be dry by morning. She was tired of the rainy weather.

“No, Jillina, I won’t. Those horrible people at the oil company lobbyist organization sent me a threating message saying if we continue with this research they will find a way to stop us. Did you tell anyone?”

“Just Brandt. Where do you think I should place the second device?” Jillina walked into the kitchen. Mom hadn’t even started supper yet that wasn’t like her. “What are we having for supper?”

“How can you act like you don’t care?”

“Because I don’t! It’s just scare tactics. Once Kozi is widely adapted, it’ll put them out of business. . . “

“And lot and lots of people out of work, too!” Mom interrupted, “Doesn’t that worry you?”

“A little, Mom, but other industries will flourish and replace those jobs.”

“Are you sure, little girl?”

“No, I’m not. I don’t have a crystal ball.” Jillina placed her hands on her hips. “But if history tells us anything. I should be right. So, where do I place the second Kozi?”

“I don’t know honey. I’m scared. What if we take it public? Would that keep us safer?”

“What are you thinking Mom?”

“What about the White House?”

“I don’t think you could get the pad inside with all their security safe guards.” Removing her hands from her hips, Jillina walked towards the kitchen. “Let’s get supper then I’ll do some research.”

Later downstairs in her workshop, Jillina turned on the Kozi. It beeped, displaying connections to landing pads. What the hell? She hit the button to turn it off.

She ran up the stairs screaming, “Mom? Mom?”

Mom met her at the top of the steps. “Jillina, what’s wrong? You’re waking the neighbors?”

“Someone has stolen our technology!”

“There’s no way! What makes you think that?”

Jillina panted. “There were three other locations blinking at me as landing pads.”

“That’s great, which ones did you choose?”

“No, Mom. You’re not understanding me, I didn’t choose any. They were there when I turned on the Kozi.”

Mom frowned, “Oh, dear, that’s not good.”

Jillina rolled her eyes at mom’s power of understatement. She slipped past her mom into a chair at the breakfast nook table. “It’s over, mom, I’ve lost.”

“Now, now, little girl that doesn’t sound like you. You’re not a quitter.”

“But what else can I do?”

“Step through that machine and demand to know what’s they think they’re doing!”

“Mom, I couldn’t do that!” Where did this fire come from? A little while ago, she was afraid of finishing the Kozi.

“Why not?”

“It’s possible that they might have guns, if they stole our . . .” Jillina pocket vibrated and she pulled out her phone.

“Whose that this late at night?”

“Brandt.”

“Tell him to get lost.”

“Mom!”

“You’re in the middle of a crisis. You don’t need him bothering you right now. Give me your phone I’ll tell him.” Mom reached for Jillina’s phone.

Jillina pulled the phone away from her mother’s grasping hands. “I’ll do it.”

“You better and you better step through that contraption.” Mom huffed out of the room, mumbling under her breath. “I’m missing my show!”

Jillina walked back downstairs. What were her options, really? If someone was sitting at the console, they might have seen her blink in and out depending on their settings that was the worst case scenario. But was she on long enough to see her coordinates and if it was late at night it might not even be staffed.

She decided to take a chance and turned on Kozi again. The locations blinked alive. No doors being knocked down. No phone calls. Jillina sat down to the simple task of copying down the coordinates to the locations. It was simply matter of translating them and turning off Kozi.

The first was near the White House, the exact location was classified as were the locations near NORAD and Ft. Campbell, KY.

Jillina gathered the second unit into a laptop bag. She was going to try Fort Campbell. It was the least formidable. Her hands shaking, she stepped onto the pad, selecting the coordinates. She felt stupid for grabbing the 2nd unit but she really didn’t know if they had a fully operation system or what?

Pushing the green button, she was hurled into the darkness. Damn, she forgot her flashlight. Jillina grabbed for her phone, catching one of the side buttons. It lit up, she was in a lab alone. She looked around for cameras. None, they weren’t expecting unexpected company.

It was her design. She ran the code, something was different. She looked around for documentation, doubting she’d find a mission statement, but maybe she could find something to explain the differences.

Rifling through the papers on a nearby desk, she found an official Kozi Operation Manual and memos dated about a year from now.

What? Time travel? Could that be the change in the code so that time travel wouldn’t happen again?

Taking her time, Jillina read the manual. Yep there it was in a disclosure buried in the fine print on page eighty five. “Unauthorized modification to the programming code could result in time travel and the possibly of being stranded in an unknown time.”

A hand written note had Jillina scared and mad. They wanted to confiscate her time travel code and set up a secret base to change world history.

Had they already?

© 2015 Kim Izzy