Authors: Brad Dennison
Scott felt investigating him might be worthwhile, and it was on their ever-growing list of things to do.
Quentin Jeffries had seemed to fall off the proverbial face of the Earth after Scott beamed him from the complex back to Boston, almost a year and a half ago. Mandy had seemed to disappear, also. Peter LaSalle had been sprung from prison about a year ago, and Scott and Jake suspected Quentin to be responsible. There had also been a couple robberies that might bear Quentin’s mark.
Scott had no logical reason to suspect Mandy was working with Quentin, other than they both seemed to disappear at the same time. Scott was using the thing humans called intuition. Something Sammy seemed to be devoid of, despite how fast he could think and how well he could multi-task. Oh, he could understand humor, and enjoyed a good belly laugh. But human intuition was simply beyond him.
Behind Sammy, in a playpen, was little Jeffy.
Little Jeffy’s first birthday had been a couple weeks earlier, and he was in a cute dark blue onesie with the New York Yankees logo on the front. Baseball, again. A gift from Sammy. Of course, Jeffy’s father Jake didn’t find it cute, because he was a die-hard Red Sox fan. And it seemed to be a rule of physics that Yankee fans and Red Sox fans were two of the strongest opposing forces in the universe. It was merely Sammy’s attempt to good-naturedly annoy Jake. And it worked.
Little Jeffy, being his father’s son, theoretically had the power to punch a hole through the concrete wall of this complex with one finger. Not that Little Jeffy knew it, because he was only one year old. But just to be on the proverbial safe side, Scott had devised a small implant and placed it just inside little Jeffy’s skull, which generated an energy pulse to interfere with Little Jeffy’s ability to power-up.
Scott could simply have had the central computer generate the pulse throughout the entire complex, so the child would not have to carry an implant. Or he could have had it bathe the entire complex in the anti-zeta energy field he had used on the child during Jeffy’s gestational phase. But with either scenario, Jake wouldn’t be able to power-up, either. We can’t have that, Scott said.
Right now, Little Jeffy was playing with a truck, and was drooling.
Jake stepped into the alcove. “There’s my little man.”
He reached down and lifted Jeffy from the playpen. Jeffy smiled and kicked, and said, “Da-da-da.”
“That’s right.” Jake was grinning. “It’s Daddy.”
Sammy said, “I don’t think he was actually speaking a word. He’s a little too young for that. He was simply emitting the gibberish April calls
baby talk
.”
“No,” said Jake, looking into the eyes of his son. “You were saying
daddy
, weren’t you?”
Little Jeffy said, “Da-da-da-da.”
“See?”
Sammy rolled his eyes, with a grin. “I stand corrected.”
“Of course you do. The super android proven incorrect by a one year old. But what can you expect, from a guy who buys a kid a Yankee’s outfit?”
Sammy chuckled. “So, are you ready for this afternoon’s trip?”
“As ready as I ever am for one of Scott’s adventures. Are you sure you don’t mind watching Jeffy while we’re gone?”
Sammy smiled. “Taking care of Jeffy’s a pleasure, though Chuck will be helping, because much of my attention will be on monitoring the mission. Usually April helps, but she’ll be going along with you.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the gym, running laps. She got a late start, but strangely, she seems extra chipper this morning, even for her.”
“That’s April.”
Sammy’s eyes darted from one monitor to another. “You know, we have to figure something out. I mean, originally, April’s job was to be Scott’s lab assistant, and Girl Friday to both of you. But since this meta-human ability of hers has manifested itself, she’s been taking on more of a security role.”
“Logical development, I suppose.” Jake was holding Jeffy up with a hand under each arm, making the silly faces an adult tends to make when looking at a child. Jeffy was smiling widely.
Sammy said, “True. But we still need a Girl Friday. If, for nothing else, to help with Jeffy.” Sammy let out a long sigh. “I’m on the verge of posting something in the want ads.”
April stepped in, and she gave a wide, silly smile to Jeffy. “Hi, cutie.”
Jeffy garbled some syllables back at her. She took him from Jake, and said with the cooing sort of mock baby talk an adult takes on when talking to a baby, “Don’t listen to these two. They don’t know what they’re talking about. No, they don’t.”
Jeffy gave a little kid giggle. It reminded Jake of a stream of water babbling over some rocks.
April was in a tank top and running shorts. Her hair was pulled back into a tail, and sweat was streaming down her face. Her shorts were high cut, flashing legs that were toned and curvy. She was chesty, but not overly so, and had a smile that made the room light up. Hers was the kind of beauty that might be taken as subdued and ordinary at first glance, but the more a man looked, the more he would find himself wanting to look. Jake could easily see what Scott saw in her.
She looked at Jake and said, “Why does it have to be a
girl
Friday? What about a
boy
Friday, huh? I mean, Batman had Alfred, who was a guy, right? We need an Alfred.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Sammy said. “So, I’m a sexist android.”
“We all forgive you. So, who’s up for a fruit smoothie?”
The team gathered in the hangar deck. The roof was two floors high, with steel breams criss-crossing along a concrete ceiling, and the walls were simply gray, as April didn’t think earth tones would do much for a hangar deck. No matter how you tried to dress it up, it was still just a hangar deck.
Scott had assembled the teleportation apparatus in the hangar deck, because it was the largest deck in the facility. The equipment looked to Jake like four satellite dishes, each mounted on a four-foot pedestal. The dishes were positioned twenty feet apart.
Each member of the team was in a battle suit. Scott’s was a metallic gray, April’s the color of sunlight. Rick wore an orange suit, with a piece of artwork (courtesy of April) on the upper right portion of his chest resembling a comet with a fiery tail.
Scott had reminded her comets do not really have fiery tails. She replied by saying, “Oh, poo.”
Jake was in a suit that was black and navy blue, which replaced (again, thanks to April) his old God-awful ugly suit of aqua.
Mounted on one wall was a large-screen plasma monitor, on which was the image of Sammy, as he sat at his console. Behind them, they could see Chuck, a beer in one hand.
“All right,” Sammy said. “Here we go. Twenty seconds. Captain, try to power-down as much as possible. Your zeta energy is on the verge of creating a red zone, and then we’ll have to start the whole process over again.”
“Doing what I can,” Jake said. “And don’t call me Captain.”
Rick said, “Are you really sure this gizmo will work?”
“It should,” Scott said. “I did give it a trial run last week.”
“Right,” Jake said. “When you went two minutes back in time. Got to shake hands with yourself.”
Scott smiled. “That disproved a number of theories, didn’t it?”
April said, “Now, let’s remember to be careful. Don’t step on any butterflies.”
“Technically, the so-called butterfly
effect isn’t possible. From the point of view of theoretical quantum physics, one cannot actually alter the past. The reason being - ”
“Don’t start,” Jake said, cutting him off, “or I’m not going.”
“Sorry.”
They had taken their predetermined positions. Jake, along primarily as security, stood immediately behind Scott. To Scott’s right was April, and to his left, Rick.
After a few beers one evening, Scott had said to Jake, “You know, since you’re chief of security around here, maybe we should give you a red battlesuit.”
Jake said, “Not a chance. I know how you overly zealous leader-types treat security guards who wear red.”
A hum of energy began to increase, and to the team it appeared there was a growing light emanating from each disk.
“I forgot to mention,” Scott said, “this might tingle a little.”
“Thanks,” Jake said. “That’s what I need. A little tingle from a mad scientist.”
The light grew until it completely engulfed them, and then they were simply gone.
Watching from the monitor room, Sammy said, “And they have transitioned out of this current plane in the space-time continuum, into the alternate one. And without materializing them there, we are instead sending them backward through time, seven thousand years.”
“Cool,” Chuck said. “It will be even cooler if you can actually bring them back.”
“Really, huh?”
From the perspective of the team, the walls of the hangar deck seemed to fade away, to be replaced with a forest of tall, straight pines on one side, and a grassy plain on the other.
“Ooh,” April said. “That really did tingle.”
“Was it good for you?” Scott said.
She shot him a grin.
Grass stood knee-high all about them. Above, a wisp of cloud hung lazily in an otherwise blue sky.
“So, Egghead Man,” Jake said. “Do you have any idea where we are? Or, when?”
April said, “It’s
Mastermind
.”
Scott was ignoring them both, looking into the screen of a small device, a hand-held scanning and recording unit he could not resist calling a
tricorder
. “The location is exactly where I intended it to be. Southern France.”
“This is France?” Rick said.
“The question is – when. Looks like the year 5,136 B.C. Approximately.”
Jake said, “What day of the week is it?”
Scott was about to search out the answer, then caught himself and shot Jake a scolding glance.
“I’ve never been to southern France,” Rick said, “but this isn’t quite how I pictured it. Looks more like something you might see in northern Canada.”
Jake said, “The scenery would be different in this time. The European forests were still largely un-cut. And the climate is much cooler because the last ice age is still receding, just like it is on our Earth at this time.”
“Indeed,” Scott said.
Rick shot Jake a quizzical look.
Jake said, “Hey, I read.”
Scott said, “The first course of business is to find human life forms. Essentially, we must avoid contact with them, or even letting them see us. We can’t take a chance on disturbing their natural course of history.”
“I thought you said you can’t change the past,” Rick said.
“Theoretically, you can’t. But it’s best to play it safe.”
April beamed a smile. “And for scouting around, I’m best suited for the job.”
Scott returned the smile. “But please, be careful.”
“Don’t worry. Nothing can hurt me when I go all quantum.”
“Nothing we’ve encountered seems to be able to. But just for my sake, be careful.”
She planted a kiss on his cheek. “Will do, Mastermind. Back in a flash.”
Jake didn’t know if the pun was intended or not.
With the proverbial flash, pun or not, she disappeared.
“I still think it’s freaky when she does that,” Rick said.
“Tell me about it.” Scott focused his gaze back onto his hand-held device. “She and I have been together for more than a year, and I still can’t get used to it.”
Scott was staring into his scanning device as he spoke. Jake thought he was doing it more intently than it seemed like he should be, and a subtle frown had begun to form.
Jake said, “Scott, something wrong?”
“I’m detecting tachyon waves. Lots of them.”
“Well.., we did just emerge from the time stream.”
“Yes, but these aren’t emanating from us. This seems to be centering some place east of us. Maybe a few miles. Hard to tell exactly. And it looks like three life forms have just materialized.”
With a flash of light, April again stood among them.
“Scott, Jake,” she said, her normally bubbly smile gone, her brow furrowed with urgency. “We have a problem. A big one.”
They took to the air, following April. Rather than transform once again to light, she remained solid so she could communicate with the team, and relied on the anti-gravitational field generated by her battle suit for flight.
“Based on what you’ve told us about this time period,” April said, raising her voice above the winds at this altitude, “and what I’ve read in our preparation for this mission, these people I saw should not be here.”
They flew over an extensive pine forest, which gave way after a few miles to a grassy glade. There, in the center of the glade, stood three people. One was a man with a long, flowing headdress, reminding Scott of historical Egyptian fashion. The man was tall and wore no shirt. About his hips was a white sort of kilt that fell to his knees. He appeared to be wearing sandals. The man was muscled like an Olympic swimmer, and his skin was dark, though Scott could not tell from the distance if the coloring was due to genetics or just a really good tan.