Greatest American Hero (Hero League 9): Hero in Black
Chapter 1
It had been over two months since the Hero League tech team had packed up the large Green Guy Timeline Project device found at the Hijau facility in Indonesia and brought it back to the Hero compound for study. They had reassembled it and were working on figuring out how it operated. The large green guys had utilized it to view alternate timelines with the highest potential for affecting a desired outcome. The large green guys were trying to set up timelines to produce a significant prophetic vision of a catastrophic event, overload Ralph Hinkley's psychic abilities, and kill him. They came close to succeeding.
The science team saw other potential uses for the device. What if more power was pushed into it? Could a physical portal be opened to allow a person or item to pass back and forth between the timelines? If they could produce a transverse portal and find timelines that would help them access advanced technology, this would be useful to protect planet Earth from future invasions and defeat the large green guy scourge. Only a viewing portal could be created as the device was currently designed. Where could they get the significant power needed to open a portal fully? The Hero physicists and scientists were all working on this problem.
Arnold Burns, one of the Hero physicists, a short, meek man with brown hair streaked with a few strands of grey and a brilliant mind, had been involved with disassembling the large green guy Ultimate Weapon that would have destroyed life on Earth. He remembered the power source used for this device and thought it would be sufficient to work with the timeline device, but they would have to repair the cable that Ralph Hinkley, the First, had broken during the battle to save the Earth from the alien invasion. The Timeline Project team proposed restoring the cable and pulling power from the Earth's core to the Hero Science Committee. This power could then be utilized for different projects. The Science Committee agreed, and the plans were approved.
The tech and science team dug out the tunnel Ralph Hinkley had created, and collapsed when the conduit and cable broke by placing supports on the walls so the tunnel could not easily collapse again. They repaired the cable and patched the conduit to prevent power leakage. The power was pulled from the Earth's core and transferred into the quantum generator the large green guys had developed. The quantum generator produced the special power frequencies needed for the timeline generator. They experimented with various frequencies and power levels and were finally ready to perform a test to open the first transverse portal.
Eric Thornton, the Hero League Director, was in the quantum generator building for the test. The science team was excited about performing the experiment. Everything was ready, and the quantum generator collected energy from the Earth's core. Everyone in the room was studying the control panels and computers. No one saw Pam Hinkley enter the building.