Chapter 26

Ralph rode in the passenger's seat of Bill Maxwell's car as he drove to the airfield late that afternoon. He sat pondering the situation. He mentioned, "If Sam turns out to be a spy working for the CIA…" he let out a depressing sigh, "How stupid can I be? She's there's for the suit." he concluded. "That's why when I suggested she go to an advanced class and her test were excellent she started flunking everything. That's why she went from being my best student to my worst." Tears started to swell up in his eyes as he began to feel betrayed.

"She obviously wanted to stay in your class, Ralph. Hawke was pretty straight forward with me when he said they she was not working for the FIRM and the FIRM did not have anything to do with the time…engine." He recalled String said it was an engine and not a time machine.

"Engine!" Ralph pondered. He figured, "It has to be more to it than just time travel, huh."

"Sounds like it." Bill agreed as he pulled onto the field. He soon parked by the hangar near other vehicles. He spied KITT parked inside the hangar.

String and his crew waited with Sam and Michael Knight by the entrance.

Ralph observed, "Mr. Knight is in on this too."

"He's Knight Industries, Ralph. Special private investigator unit." Bill informed. "Guess they have something to do with it all too."

The two emerged from the car and walked to the hangar to greet their host. Bill spoke, "Mr. Hawke!" He gave him a nod and then acknowledged the faces, "Mr. Knight, Mr. Santini. Miss O'Shannessy and…" he looked to Sam, "If you are Mr. Hawke's niece then Saint John Hawke would be your father and your real name would be Samantha Hawke. Am I right?"

She smiled, "You are." She formally introduced herself, "I'm Dr. Samantha Hawke." She held out a hand, "It's my pleasure to formally meet you, Mr. Maxwell." She looked to Ralph, "And you…Mr. H." She offered him her hand.

Ralph grasped her hand after Bill's handshake. He asked, "Why pretend to be a student in my class?" He waited for her to say that she was there to feel him out and get the suit.

She confessed, "I accidentally landed there. When Uncle Dom went to the school to help me enroll as part of my cover, they asked what school I last attended and I said 'MIT' and Dom mad this idiotic cover story and said I was a dullard and needed help."

"I didn't say that." Dom defended. "I was trying to cover for you and came up with another school name. I mentioned you were struggling to make it sound more legit. I never said you were a dullard."

She asked, "Screw up then?"

Dom winced, "Just a little."

Michael assured, "You are not a screw up. You came a lot further along than I would have if I was in your shoes, kid." He looked to Bill and Ralph, "Why don't you two gentleman come inside?"

The group then led Bill and Ralph into the hangar.

Ralph noted, "I see you got your car parked in here, Mr. Knight."

"It's Michael." he told him. "And this is KITT or the Knight Industry Two Thousand. He's an artificial intelligence in a mobile platform."

Bill grinned, "Damn! That memo was on the ball." He looked inside, "I got a memo about a roving computer. I kind of brushed it off."

Ralph looked inside the car. His eyes grew wide, "Wow!"

Michael assured them, "You ain't seen nothing yet. It gets better."

Bill asked, "When can we see the time machine…or engine?"

Sam spoke up, "In a few minutes. Let me give you a little back story first. Do you know what a warp drive engine is?"

Bill shook his head, "Not a clue, honey."

Ralph stated, "Sounds like something out of Star Trek."

She gave a nod, "That is the premise. A warp engine would move a ship through space by warping space fabric around a vessel and push it like a surfer riding a wave of water."

Ralph followed, "I understand the premise."

She continued, "I was working on a prototype for a warp drive engine, right here in this hangar. During an initial test there was a power surge and it broke the containment field and warped space around the engine and in doing so created a hole through space time. I call it a wormhole. The hole is fixed between two time periods. One end of the hole is 1984 and the other end is the year 2022. The wormhole is fixed but it moved with us as we go through each day. So, the hole is more like a door. It's open all the time but to enter the engine has to push the subject through like a wave pushing the surfer. When the accident happened, Dom came through to my time, 2022. He spent three days with us and then I came back with him. We can go back and forth through the hole. Radio waves can go back and forth 24/7."

Ralph figured, "The engine is in 2022."

She nodded.

Bill asked, "Can we see this engine?"

She nodded, "This way." Sam led her audience to the corner of the hanger. She then grasped her phone and sent a text to Sinjin.

Bill and Ralph felt a slight shaking, like a small earth quake and a slight energy wave come over them. Then they found themselves standing in the same hangar but a table with a contraption sitting on the middle, a computer and a desk butted up against the table and an older man sitting at the computer.

Sinjin looked over, "So much for keep this low key." he miffed.

Bill asked, "That was it? I thought it would be more…dramatic."

Ralph approached Sinjin. He asked, "You are Sam's father?"

"I am." He stood up and offered a hand shake. "Saint John Hawke. People call me 'Sinjin'."

"Pleasure." Bill replied. He gasped at the engine, "This is real!"

"It is." he assured.

Ralph noticed the coin collection book sitting by the computer. "That's the coin collection."

Sinjin handed it to him, "I haven't brought it back home yet. My brother started it and then I finished it."

Ralph wondered, "Is this whole thing something you guys are doing on your own? Sam said she had a power surge that started it."

"No government oversight." he nodded. "The airfield is closed. I let Sam use the hangar to work with her engine she was trying to build. She was doing this on her own. She couldn't get funding. NASA is not what it used to be either."

Sam confessed, "I was going to sell it to a private company if I could get it to work. Space X would have bought it. Or some private investors. That was my plan anyways."

Ralph figured, "But that wormhole it created that we just went through changed all that." He didn't know what Space X was but figured it was a private company with power and money.

She admitted, "My plan was to send Dom back and close the wormhole."

Ralph asked her, "Why didn't you do that?"

Sinjin explained, "Because Dom will die in a year and a half, my brother will be wounded for life and I wanted to change that. It was my idea to use it to save Dom's life. Sam never intended to do this or go back to 1984. None of us thought about the money. They use more credit cards and computer banking today. Lot less cash. Sam knew she would need cash so…she took some out of her bank account to spend. None of us thought about the dates. It was an honest mistake." He then added, "It's not like there a manual to follow for this or anything."

Dom cheered, "Sam is writing the manual as we go along."

Ralph looked to Sam, "Manual?"

She replied, "The Explorer's Guild to Time Travel."

Bill figured, "You guys are doing this all on your own!"

"Yes!" String sounded. "Not even the FIRM knows. This need to know only. Black budget level."

Ralph asked, "So…why bring us in? It's the suit!"

Sam shook her head, "I don't give shit about the suit, though I would not mind having a look at it. I bet's embedded with nano technology. The reason I decided to bring you two in is because there is an alien element that is screwing with the whole damn world and what they did to you, Mr. H. is appalling." She then handed him a print out of his blog, "You wrote this, Mr. H. Thing is no one in my time remembers any man in any red suit flying around and busting up criminals. They take the suit away from you and wipe everyone's memory clean. I had no idea of any of this until I went back and read it in the papers. You cannot find anything, anywhere on you or the suit now. They used you in some kind of experiment, left you high and dry and took everyone memory, all the proof so everyone now thinks you are nuts. I want to find these…little green assholes…and get some answers from them. Why they fucked you over and I want to look at their engines."

Sinjin cheered, "That's my daughter. Screw the suit, we want the whole damn ship."

String confessed, "I want the whole damn ship too."

Bill grinned at Sam, "I like you, kid."

Ralph read his own words, "My god…I wrote this?"

"You have videos posted online. You are video taping lights in the sky, trying to find proof that you are not crazy." Sam explained. "I know you are not crazy. I saw you flying, in the suit, with my own eyes. We landed and talked to you. We helped you and Mr. Maxwell with Airwolf take down gun and drug runners. I read about the bust in the paper and today, no such story exist. It's gone! Erased along with history."

Sting stated, "In the blog, Ralph said the aliens contacted you by the radio. How did they do that?"

Bill explained, "They turned the dial back and forth to make a sentence out of words that were being broadcast over the airways."

Sam rolled her eyes, "Really! They copy and pasted the radio?"

Sinjin chuckled, "Sounds like it."

"Copy and pasted the radio?" Ralph asked.

String stated amused, "Copy and past is a term used on the computers in 2022. You can copy a word, save it and then move it someplace else." He picked up a laptop from the nearby shelf. It was the laptop assigned to him. He held the computer in his arms, opened it and showed it to the men. "This is called a laptop computer. It's more powerful than what's in Airwolf and KITT in our time. This is social media. Here is your account, Ralph. And older version of you is managing it. Posting videos of lights in the sky and as you can see you have a following. Most think you are crazy but some do believe you. Thing is, you have no proof. But Sam did get you some proof. She brought the articles, intact in the newspaper to the future. She can't just cut the article out, since the newspapers have been compromised. Her mom, Jo tried to send a paper to you. Had tracking on it. The thing disappeared. Someone intercepted it. These…aliens…are still working to erase any mention of you in any newspaper even in 2022."

Ralph looked to Bill rather concerned. "I'm going to lose it because of that suit."

"We will figure it out, Ralph." his friend assured. Bill was starting to feel the need for a cigarette as the information was overwhelming. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a dog biscuit. He began to nibble on it.

String asked, "What are you eating, Maxwell?"

"Dog biscuit." he told him. "I'm trying to quit smoking. When I feel the urge to lit up I just eat one of these."

String soured, "There has got to be a better way of quitting."

Bill explained, "It a nice meaty flavor to it. Kind of works."

Ralph rubbed the side of his face as he read over the social media page. "This is terrible." he admitted. "I sound like a loon."

Sam asked, "Can I look at the suit? If I can examine it maybe I can help you figure out how it works. I think the warp drive engine is somehow protecting anything in this hangar. I figured any advanced civilization would have taken it. But they have not touched it. Also, Cait had clipped all the articles and placed them in the scrapbook. She brought the book here. The book the older version of herself kept is still in her possession. Thing is, all the articles she clipped are blank. Just the paper remains. I want to run some test on how they are removing the information. This is also an information war we are in. Our alien overlords are still keeping everyone from remembering you and the red suit."

Ralph admitted, "I have it in the trunk of Bill's car. Just have to go and get it." He placed the computer down and turned, then looked out the hangar and found only a large truck sat outside. The tarmac was full of weeds and airfield looked abandoned. "It's not here." Then he figured, "Of course it's not here. I'm in 2022." He let out a heavy sigh.

Sam picked up the computer and started to read the comments. She came across a familiar name, "Tony commented on your page. He says he remembers it."

Ralph walked over to her and looked over her shoulder, "Tony remembers."

"He says he remembers the red suit and he thought it was you when he was younger." She clicked on his profile. "Wow, he still looks good." She grinned for she did like Tony. She went to his bio, "He went into the military after graduation. He was enlisted, mechanic in the Navy. Served 8 years." she reported. "Not married, no kids. Owns a garage fixing cars. Avid coin collector." she noted. "Look at that. I sparked a hobby."