Chapter 1.

Year: 2056

Ah, the price of insight. Greg must have been sitting in the same place for hours. The lab seats, no matter how much the government paid for them, and how "plush" they were, started to hurt after the first two hours or so. Greg starting to get ideas of going elsewhere, but he quickly shook them off. He had work to do, and he was going to do it. Even if it took him all night long. All year long, at this rate. Greg yawned, and suddenly the realization that he hadn't had any real sleep, save for scattered naps with his head down on his desk, in about 48 hours, hit him. He decided to go to the sink next to his desk in the lab, and splash some cold water on his face. That should help to snap him out of his fatigue for a while. Greg dried off his hands on the white ragged towel, which hadn't been washed in weeks, and wiped his now-dirty hands on his white laboratory jacket. He sat back down at his chair, and felt the shock of landing on a now flattened cushion rise up his spine. He needed a new chair if he was going to get anywhere. Perhaps tomorrow. Or this weekend. Come to think of it, the weekend after that might be best. Greg felt around his desk with his right hand, pushing off papers, found a large, light red button, and pushed it. Immediately, a piece of in the middle of his desk, about an inch wide and 10 inches long, popped open, and a screen swished out of the flat oval hole that had been revealed. The screen lit up, and in the center flashed the message, "Welcome to Microsoft Windows 2054! Please touch screen to start." Greg tapped the screen, not even bothering to read the message for he had done it so many times before, and looked at the screen that came up. His background, which he should really change before anyone sees it, and his touchklik desktop glowed in the dim fight around him.. He scanned the screen for the icon labeled "Project", and tapped it with his finger. The program immediately came tip, ind the screen was exactly as he had left it when he last worked with it. He felt up the side of the monitor, and came across a small button. The monitors image jumped off of the screen, until the flat picture looked about an inch away from the flat surface. About an inch in front of that. the words, "Packard Bell 3D Monitor Mode enabled" hovered unwaveringly. It disappeared in , few seconds, and Greg scanned the toolbar on the program he was running. He found the button labeled "3D Mode", and tapped it with his finger, which passed though the now floating image. Suddenly the flat grid which had once occupied the bottom portion of the image had jumped out until it was no longer flat and floating but a 3D floating box. The fight blue glowing lines contrasted well with the darkness of the lab around him. The buttons which had once been flat and fused to the main image were now also 3-Dimensional boxes suspended about 2 inches above the rest of the display. Greg looked at them, adjusted his eyes to the now 3D display,, and then found the button entitled "Run". He tapped it with his finger, and a dark blue menu with white writing appeared. 3 choices were displayed: "Run Simulation from Last Start", "Run Simulation from Run-Time Input Variables and "Reset Simulation and Run". & Greg chose the last one. and a white screen popped up with a blue status meter a message that said "Compiling Data, Please Wait." The status meter reached 1000/o, and the screen disappeared. The light blue grid enlarged to fill the entire screen, and up at the top of the screen three buttons appeared. "Start", "Stop" and "Pause". Greg waved his finger in the air where the "Start" button was floating, and suddenly, in the middle of the screen, a wireframe box appeared. A strange, orange, broken sphere-oval like thing then appeared around the box. It began to twist and turn and expand and contract, and then holes began to appear, exposing the wireframe box within. The sphere tried to regain it's shape, but it was so distorted that it failed. It blew apart, sending pieces of orange flying to the edges of the grid, where they disappeared. The wireframe box within was demolished as well. Greg swore loudly as a gray message box popped up that said "Space-Time Bubble Destroyed, Time Travel Simulation #6,784 failed." Greg tapped "Ok", and then slammed his head down onto his desk. He had spent hours reworking the variables on this thing! What kept going wrong! This was sure to work! Why hadn't it? This was getting very frustrating. It looked, however, that the time-space bubble had gone semi-stable for a few seconds before it blew apart. To confirm this, Greg walked over to a large double-door on the side of the small lab. He pulled out his keys, and unlocked them. Thrusting them open, he reached beside him to the light switch, and flicked it on. Suddenly the room was huge, like an old airplane hangar. In the middle of the room, there was a large, upright rectangular thing that resembled an elevator. It had a small, foot high antenna on top, and a light. Greg walked over to the machine, and typed a security code on the keypad next to the doors. They slid open, and Greg stepped inside. The lights inside had come on when the doors were opened, and the startup security panel was lit up on the main control panel. Greg walked over to it, and pressed in a different access code. Upon pressing the last digit in the code, everything inside the machine went on. All of the instruments on the control panel lit up, indicator lights all over the place lit up, and the screens came on, all displaying "Welcome to Microsoft Windows 2054! Please Touch Screen to Start." Greg touched the large, central, main screen, and all of the screens turned into a specialized touchklik desktop, with two options: "Start Up Time-Machine, and "'Shut Down Main System@'. Greg touched "Start Up Time Machine", and a whirr rose from beneath and above him. Satisfied, Greg stepped out of the machine again, and looked up at the light on top of the antenna. It was red, and flashing intermittently. Greg walked back into his laboratory, and sat down at his desk. Once again he felt the shock of flattened cushion on his back. He ignored it, and went back to the 3D image emanating from his screen. He pressed the button on the screen labeled "Resef', and the small wireframe box was once again sitting in the middle of the blue grid. Greg looked up in the top right comer of the screen, and found three buttons floating separated from everything else. One was labled "x", one was labled " - ", and one was labled "[]". Greg pressed the " - " button, and the screen disapeared. There was a small bar running along the side on the screen, which now displayed in a button, "3D Time Simu...". The button next to it read "Time Travel C ... 7'. Greg touched that button, and the first screen that he had been working on came up. He went back into the main coding for the time travel variables, and started going through each line, looking for thinkgs that might not be right.

It had been four hours of looking through the coding before he decided to do something else for a while. It was nearing I 1:00 pm, and he wanted to watch the I I o'clock news. He felt around on the left side of the moniter, and pressed a button. The screen went flat and black for a second, and then turned blue. In the center. the words "Packard Bell Moniter Holographic Television Mode Enabled." There was a list of buttons on the side, with different channel names that Greg uses the most. Greg pressed the one entitled "6", and the whole screen jumped back out. A large, red can was hovering in front of the screen, and there was a face on the flat screen behind it. On the can was the word, "Fol dgers. " The words, "A fresh start to every day, it's Foldgers in your cup!" appeared over top of the can, in 3D fancy letters. The screen went blue for a second, and then the words "The 1 1 o'clock news with William Grossner" appeared in 3D letters, and behind it a 3D picture of the Philadelphia skyline. The skyline rotated behind the title for a few seconds, in fairness to those who are slow readers or still tuning in, and then it snapped to a 3D picture of a news studio. There was a light blue desk that popped about 4 inches off of the screen, and a man that was sitting behind it. He was an older man, perhaps in his 80's, but he looked well nonetheless. He had a full head of white hair, and a definatly amctured yet somewhat rounded and kind face. He had his share of wrinkles, mainly on his cheeks and forehead. When he spoke, however, his voice was smooth, unwavering, and strong.

"Welcome to the channel six 11 o'clock news. I'm William Grossner. In our top stories tonite, North and South Vietnameese peace talks once again dissolve, and the two countries remain separate. The Shuttle Nomad is less than 2 days from Earth, returning from it's second expedition to Mars. The president is under investigation for illeged illegal money laundering, involving several well-esteeined foreign organizations. And finally, the British Association for Scientific Development has made defini+Live progress in the time- travel project."

Greg cringed at the thought of the British Associatiation for Scientific Development. The BASD was the group that he was competing with on the time travel project, and he hated them like nothing else.

"The first story we bring you tonite is that of the British Association for Scientific Development, or BASD. The BASD have spent the past several years working on ways of timetravel, and most recently have made several huge leaps in their advancement. A time- travei machine has been constructed in thier laboratory, and although it is not yet functioning, it is helping greatly with thier progress.

"We went to the BASD recently, and were given an exclusive tour, and an interview with the leader of the te@ Grahm Harold. Let's go to that interview now."

Greg was actually eager, in a hateful way, to see what the inside of the BASD laboratory looked like. He was sure that it was much worse than his. He always had pictured it as a small, dirty place, with a small lab area and old-fashioned computer systems. He pictured the machine that they had built as being small, and shoddy, and haphazardly thrown together. On the 3D image emanating from the screen, the picture of a young, dark man appeared. Beneath him were in blue the words "Jim Thomas", and below that a thick blue line, and below that line were the words "BASD Laboratory, London, England." He was inside some sort of lobby-type area, that remided Greg of a Hilton hotel lobby. The man began to talk, and he had the same strong, unwavering voice as the main anchorman, only deeper.

"Welcome to the BASD laboratories, which I'm sure that you have heard of at one time or another in the past few years. They have made a name for themselves in time-travel therioes, and most recently have announced the completion of a near-working time- machine. I'm here in the BASD laboratory main building lobby, with the head of the research and development team, Grahm Harold. Hello, Mr. Harold."

A thin, lanky man, in his early 40's perhaps, looked down upon the much shorter Jim. He wore glasses that were small and oval like, which had been popular over 50 years ago, but had faded out of fasion. The glasses accented his thin face, however, which was shaped like one of the lenses he was w@ng, only stood straight up. The man had an air about the way he sttod, with his neck arched in what must have been a most uncomfortable and unhealthy manner. That, along with the heavy British accent, made him seem like the stereotypical Englishman.

"Allo, Jim. It's nice to have ya in our labs taday. Would ya ratha go about the tour first, or are ya goin ta intaveiw me first?" It was obvious that the reporter was having some dfficulting getting through the accent.

Had Greg not been an afficiando of British Comedy, such as the near century old Monty Python, and other, more recent 2030ish British Comedy, he would have had trouble making it through the accent. The reporter started to venture out with a sentence, having finally gotten the jist of what the Englishman was saying.

"Well, Mr. Harold, whatever suits vou the best, I suppose."

"Aright, Jim, why dunt we go on tha tour first, that way if ya have any questions, ya kin ask me then."

"Sure, Mr. Harold." Harold began to walk in the direction of two glass doors, and Jim followed him. The camera followed both of them through the doors, and down a long, completely gray corridor, to another set of doors. Only these doors were metal, and had a control panel in the middle of them. Harold tapped in a code, and there was a large clunk sound from inside the doors. Harold tapped a button on the gray walls, and the doors swished open. The two men, and the cwnera man who followed them, walked into the room. It was a huge room, with many people working inside. Some were at desks, working at computers that were the same kind that Greg was sitting at watching the show. Others, with heavy lab coats on, were at long, white tables. Some of the tables had electronics strewn about on them, and others had pieces of metal. A few of the scientists were over in the comer, near the coffee machine, drinking a late night coffee to keep them awake. Greg was astounded at the level of the lab that he was trying to compete with. He, who was expected to do- this basically alone, with other people only when needer for assembling pieces of the machine, and some matenence. The US Government really did put this project at the lowest level of importance, just high enough for them to actually set money and time aside to do it. Greg didn't know how he was going to get the machine done before the British did. Mr. Harold tapped the reporter on the shoulder, and then began to speak once again.

"This, Jim, is our main reserch laboratory, This is where our top scientists play with the computers an drink all the'coffee."

Both Harold and the reporter laughed.

"But seriously, Jim, in this room right now, are some of the most brilliant minds in all of Europe. They toil endlessly in this build'n ta bring this time-machine ta life. And they be Makin dome pretty good progress with it. Say, wouldja like ta see tha machine itself?"

Jim nodded eagerly, and the two of them, along with the cwnera trailing behind, unnoticed as usual, walked up to a large silver door. Harold pressed a button next to it, and the door rolled up, much like a large garage door. The three of thern walked through it, and came into a huge room. It was white all around, with artificial lighting high above and no windows whatsoever. This room must have been the center of the entire complex, for maximum security. They walked over to a large machine, that looked kind of like an elevator, only thinner, wih an antenna on top and a light on top of the antenna. The light was yellow, and flashing at a steady pace. Greg almost fell out of his chair at his desk. Then he almost hit the screen he was watching this on. Then he finally decided to just watch it through. This was horrible! The British machine looked almost exactly like his! What had those damn Brits stolen from the US Gov't now? Damn British spies! They all watch too many damn James Bond movies. My god there had been 32 of them, dating from early to mid 20th century.

"This, Jim, is the compilation of all our work here. It's the time machine itself. It's not workin' yet, though. Do ya see that light up on top? It's yellow, an' flashing. If the time machine was workin', that light would be green, an' not flashing. If the time machine didn't work a'tall, that light would be red, and blinkin" intermittenly. Ya see, that yellow flashin' light means there is a space-time bubble formed 'round the ship. It's not stable enough to actually travel, though. The bubble is only in a semi-stable state. It's a great achievment, thoupa to be able to have the bubble in senii-stable state. That's never been accomplished before for such a long a period of continuous time, in all of the history of knowledge of space-time, and the space-time bubbles that can carry you through it."

Jim nodded to Harold.

"That's very interesting, Mr. Harold. Now, you don't mind if I ask you a few questions, do you?"

"Not at all, Jim."

It was very obvious that the reporter was getting annoyed at the scientist calling him by Jim, his first name, while he had to call the scientist Mr. Harold.

"First of all," started the reporter, "when did your group first conceive of undertaking this massive project?"

Harold thought for a moment, stroking his clean-shaven chin with his thumb and forefinger.