Chapter Four

Saturday, August 14, 1999
12:21 A.M.
Elmdale, Iowa

Cindy Cox wondered once again just what the hell she was doing.

The twenty-year-old was at an abandoned parking lot on the outskirts of town. She was waiting for a friend of hers, Sam Powell, who had asked her to meet him there, with a camcorder, at 12:15. She had put up with a lot of weird crap from him over the years and, with all of the math help he had provided her, she felt that she owed him one.

She leaned on the hood of her black Ford Probe and pulled a can of pepper spray out of her purse.

After only another minute or so, she saw a VW bug pull into the lot. At least, it looked like a bug, or maybe a dune buggy, with a giant funnel sticking out of the left rear seat. Other things were attached to it, including something that resembled a rollbar. She knew immediately it was Sam, since she had seen him with the car before.

He pulled up in front of her car and waved, shouting out through the window, "You're early!"

"Early?!" Cindy shouted back, "You're late!"

After Sam rolled up the window, she could see that he was tapping his watch. She saw him mouth the word "Fuck!" Cindy couldn't recall ever hearing Sam swear before.

"Of all days for this watch to give out," he muttered as he got out of the car. He walked over and gave Cindy a hug, another something unusual, "I'm sorry, but I'm really glad you're here."

"And why am I here?"

"You'll see, you'll see," Sam said, walking over to the passenger side of the car, "Start filming!"

Cindy shook her head, but got her camcorder out anyway and turned it on. Sam had returned, holding what looked like a control for a toy RC car.

"You're filming me?" he asked, "Okay, good. I'm Samuel Powell, it's…what time is it? Okay, it's twelve twenty-three A.M. on Saturday, August 14, 1999, in Elmdale, Iowa, and you are about to witness the world's first temporal displacement."

"The first what?"

"All in good time, Cindy. Follow me," Sam said, leading Cindy over to the passenger side of the car. A large, old-fashioned alarm clock was in the passenger seat.

"This is why I'm upset that my watch stopped," Sam said, "But you said it was 12:23?"

"Uh-huh," Cindy replied.

"Well, we can calibrate from there," Sam said. "Note that the clock here reads 12:24 and eleven seconds."

"Right, check."

Sam closed the car door, "All right, now let's step back."

After giving the car plenty of clearance, Sam picked up the remote control and told Cindy to keep the camera on the car.

"Is that why we're here?" she asked, "To show you can control the car?"

"No," Sam said, accelerating the car in a wide loop. He turned the car around and it sped towards them.

"Jesus, Sam—!"

"I'm not going to let it hit us," Sam said, "Not that it would…"

Sam was right; the car was positioned to pass them. But when it was about a hundred feet away, the front bumper and some of the components on the side began to glow bright blue. When it was about twenty feet away, there was a brilliant flash and the car seemed to explode.

Both gasped. Cindy nearly dropped the camera, while Sam screamed "Yahoo!" and ran around in circles, jumping nearly a foot into the air.

"It worked! It worked!"

A wave of heat blasted Cindy, from the two fire trails that were left behind where the wheels had been.

"Jesus Christ!" she muttered, as Sam opened the door of Cindy's car and looked at the clock.

"According to this," he said, "Temporal displacement occurred at about 12:25 and thirty seconds."

"'Temporal,'" Cindy repeated, the word sounded familiar. It suddenly clicked, and she spun around to face Sam, "'Temporal'?! You built a time machine?!"

"Yes, yes!" Sam said giving Cindy a hug, "And in a few seconds, we should catch up to it. Quickly, get your camera on the spot where it left!"

No sooner had Cindy done so than the car reappeared after three bright flashes, spinning out of control. Sam grabbed the remote control and applied the brakes, stopping the car.

The two slowly approached the car. It was covered in ice. Steam poured out of the funnel in the rear.

"I can't believe this!" Cindy said as they walked towards it, "You built a time machine? Into a bug?"

"It was available," Sam explained, "My grandfather tried to build it into a 1957 Chevy Bell Air."

"A '57 Chevy?" Sam walked around to the passenger side as Cindy asked, "The car you gave to Harry Campbell?"

"Right!" Sam said as he reached from the door. He winced in pain—it was extremely cold. "I gave him the car in exchange for free body work on this car. It needed electroplated paneling to make the temporal transition easier. And you remember how often he talked about how much he wanted a hot rod to rebuild from the bottom up."

Sam picked up the clock and held it in front of Cindy's camera, "As you can see, it's about a minute behind and still ticking!"

Sam set the clock down in the driver's seat and sat down in the passenger seat, "Let me show you how it works."

A flat computer screen—Cindy thought it looked like the kind you'd see at a checkout counter—was mounted on the glove box. On the dashboard was a giant T-switch, mounted horizontally. Sam pointed at the switch.

"This turns the time machine on," he said, "Notice that it's currently in the on position. When you turn it on, you wait for the computer to boot and then you can set your destination."

Sam took a stylus attached to the computer—apparently it had once been a checkout stand credit card scanner—and pointed at the screen:

DESTINATION TIME:
TEST MODE…+1 MIN

DESTINATION LOCATION:
NONE SPECIFIED

CURRENT TIME:
08/14/1999 12:26 AM
ELMDALE, IA, USA

LAST DEPARTED TIME:
08/14/1999 12:24 AM
ELMDALE, IA, USA

"It's really quite simple," Sam said, "You just tap the words 'destination time' with this stylus, and as you can see, a virtual keyboard appears. You can pick anywhen and anywhere:"

NEW DESTINATION TIME:
12/07/1941
PEARL HARBOR, HI, USA

Y/N?

"So it can go to different places?" Cindy asked.

Sam nodded, "You have no idea how hard it was to get it to do that. The computers available today are barely powerful enough to perform the requisite calculations. It's easier to just stay in one location." He pointed at a group of three computer hard drives stacked behind the driver's seat.

"How come?"

Sam hesitated, "I'm not sure that I can explain it without using high-level calculus. Can you just take my word for it?"

Without waiting for an answer, Sam turned around and pointed at a glass box behind the front seats (the entire rear was filled equipment). Inside the box were three converging glass tubes, arranged in a capital-Y pattern.

"I wish I could take credit for this," Sam said, "But it was my grandfather who designed this, the Temporal Field Capacitor."

"Temporal Field Capacitor," Cindy repeated. She thought it was an ugly name, but she didn't say anything.

"This device makes time travel possible," Sam said.

"Interesting." What else could she say?

Sam got out of the car without a word and opened the hood. Inside were a trolley, three large metal containers, and a box.

"Is that an N64?" Cindy asked with a laugh.

"Yeah. Unopened and everything. I'm going to sell it in the future as an antique. I figure I'll need some source of income."

Sam took the trolley out of the car and set it up. It looked different than a regular trolley, most notably in that it had a giant crank on the side.

"Can you set the camera down and help me?" Sam asked, "These containers are heavy."

"Sure." Sam counted to three, and they both grabbed one and heaved it out of the trunk. It fell to the ground with a loud thud.

"Jesus!" Cindy shouted, jumping to make sure it wouldn't hit her foot, "What is it?"

"Americium-241," Sam said, "It's a radioactive material found in most smoke detectors. It's the power source of the time machine's nuclear reactor."

"What?!" Cindy shouted as Sam put the barrel onto the trolley, "This thing is nuclear?!"

"It's perfectly safe!" Sam assured her as he rolled the trolley over to the right side of the car. He bent the handles back and screwed them into two holes on the back of the car, flanking a hubcap-like protuberance, next to the funnel. "Could you film this?"

After Cindy had retrieved her camera, he opened a lid on the reactor core, then screwed open the top of the barrel. A thin, rubbery seal was underneath.

By rotating the crank on the side of the trolley, Sam brought the barrel level with the reactor core, then spun it 180 degrees. The barrel slid perfectly into the reactor core, a blade on the inside tearing open the seal and allowing the contents to slide into the core. Sam waited about a minute before removing the barrel and sealing the core.

"That's it," he said, "It's ready to go."

"The future?" Cindy asked, "When in the future?"

"I was thinking 2019. And I was hoping that you would come along."

"Now?" Cindy set down the camera, "How long are we gonna be gone? I'm gonna have to set things up, take a day off school…"

Sam laughed, "Don't be ridiculous! We have a time machine! We'll return at the exact time we left!"

Cindy considered that for a moment.

What the hell? she thought.