Lost: Somewhere in Time [Published - Sample Only]

Chapter 4 - Time Travelers Never get Drunk Downrange

Chapter 4 - Time Travelers Never get Drunk Downrange

TIME-COORD: 6/11/2045/2000hrs. GEO-COORD: Cleveland, North American Alliance. Vector: Null.

Later that night, after James, Hiroko, Michael, and Gina returned to the main house from the subterranean levels, they gathered in the kitchen as James and Hiroko took their turn to prepare a late meal. The three visitors were silent and still in shock at what they had seen; so to start the celebration, James retrieved a bottle of champagne from the wine cellar which had been carefully preserved when the old house had been moved from its original location to its new foundation over the secret underground facility. He looked at the dusty bottle and said. "Was 2015 a good year?"

Hiroko laughed as she chopped onions on the butcher block. "Beats me, never been too much of a drinker."

"Okay, we'll save it for dessert!"

Michael broke in. "Hey, we're all over 18 now. We can vote, join the Exploration Corps, enlist in Fleet and even have a drink or two!"

Gina gave her friend a gentle cuff and said. "Okay with me, it's a special occasion after all."

James removed four bottles of beer from the cooler under the counter, opened them and handed one to each of his friends.

Hiroko had prepared meals many times in the gourmet kitchen. James' late grandmother had it upgraded to a restaurant quality six burner gas stove, double oven, and refrigerator unit. The counters were all well-oiled butcher block which matched the style of the century and a half old house perfectly. All of the best gatherings of friends and family over many years seemed to take place around the large center island.

Gina sipped her beer and then asked James directly. "Just how in Hell did your grandfather get an eight-level underground facility, superconducting AI supercomputer and his own personal fusion reactor put in his basement? I mean, I'm just sayin'."

James laughed and sipped his beer. "Um, sub-level one is just the wine cellar, it has always been there. The rest, that was easy. The NAA Fleet Engineering Corps did it for him."

Gina gasped. "How..."

James continued. "After he and his colleagues completed the ten thousand megawatt commercial fusion plant, he made a deal with Fleet. He would develop a smaller ship size reactor, a self-contained unit for their new faster sublight starships. He told them that he would do it for free and assigned the patents and rights to Fleet with only one catch..."

Hiroko shook her head. "Which was..."

James smiled wryly. "Not much, they just had to build this place for him, install a small ten-megawatt reactor and give him use of the most advanced AI supercomputer available."

Gina shook her head in disbelief. "Why, on Earth, they are the freaking government. They could've just taken it all, they do that sometimes you know!"

James gave his friend another wry smile. "Yeah Gina, you are right. But I think that they knew that they needed him. He never ever told them about time travel. Only he, the four of us and House know about that."

Michael looked around and gestured broadly. "Dude, how is that possible, I mean, this facility and all of this top-of-the-line tech. There's just no way dude."

James grinned. "Don't ask me bro, but it's here and my grandfather made it all happen. I guess those Fleet guys can do just about anything when they put their mind to it. I mean Military people have been building secret underground stuff since the Romans!"

Hiroko asked quietly. "He, your Gramps that is, gave the world fusion power, unlimited electricity and the like. It has solved so many of the world's problems. That electricity has provided water to the deserts, food to the hungry and so much more. What could he have held back?"

James R. Scott II nodded. "I'm not exactly sure. But I think his next line of theoretical research had something to do with artificial gravity..."

Hiroko gestured to the grand old library across the hall from the kitchen. There were well-ordered textbooks covering several University disciplines, old leather-bound classics and even a small rack of paperback novels from the last gasp of the print age in the early 21st century "So, this old house and all of the the...the...stuff in the basement..."

James answered his friend. "Yes, all of it is the result of my grandfather's deal with Fleet they built this place and then left him alone with promises that if he discovered how to produce artificial gravity he would give all of the secrets to them. So yeah, they more or less left him alone..."

After dinner was over, James opened the chilled bottle of 30-year-old California Champagne. He poured four glasses and made the first toast. He looked around at the old oil portraits of Scotts going back almost 200 years and said to the latest generation to use the grand dining room. "To all of you, my three best friends."

They all took a sip and Gina commented as the bubbles tickled her nose. "An excellent vintage, I think!"

Hiroko smiled and squeezed James' hand and said. "You promised us the rest of that log entry, now seems as good a time as any..."

James nodded. "House, security level Bravo please."

"Standby sir, scanning. No unauthorized personnel in the facility. White noise generator set. Dampening fields in place. External data feeds blocked. You have security level B sir."

"Please bring up log entry number 41-315 Bravo on the vid screen in the main dining room."

The old oil painting slid aside revealing a flat screen monitor. James nodded gravely before telling the story. "As it turns out my friends, all of the rules have been learned the hard way."

Angelina gave a wide-eyed look. "Even the one about killing Hitler?"

"Yep, especially that one. Gramps killed Hitler once in the year 1918 in Belgium."

Michael looked at James and said. "But all the history books say he died in Berlin in April 1945?"

James nodded again. "He did...in this, our timeline."

Hiroko, who was to be a physics major pursed her beautiful full lips. "Curve-linear time loop?"

James smiled. "Yes, as near as I can understand. Gramps wrote the whole story down. He wanted to make sure that I never tried anything so stupid, you see killing Hitler in 1918 caused the world or least the European side of it to be destroyed in 1961..."