OMG, A CUL8R Time Travel Mystery (15 page)

MONDAY

They pulled into a vacant spot along the beach
just north of the Fishing Pier. Scott looked around then jumped out of the back seat with his backpack.  “Come on before we get old shellers.”

“Shellers?” Kelly asked.

“People combing the beaches, looking for sea shells.  The good ones are out on the west side of Sanibel, but you get some here too.”  Almost as soon as he finished speaking, an elderly man wearing nothing but baggy shorts and a floppy hat appeared from under the pier.  His body was darkly tanned, and his hair was long and gray, flying wildly in the wind.

“Hey, Dan,” Austin called and waved.  The man looked up, smiled and waved back, then continued walking.  He had on a set of earphones and was carrying a strange-looking machine on a pole.

“Who’s that?” Kelly asked.

“That’s
Old Dan.  My mom said he used to be a doctor, but he’s lived out here on the beach for as long as I can remember,” Scott explained.

“
On
the beach?” Kelly echoed as if she’d heard him wrong.

“
Yes, as in homeless,” Scott confirmed.

“He’s a really nice
man,” Austin added.  “And very smart.  But he doesn’t like to hang around people.”

“How sad.  But what’s he doing?”  Kelly watched as the old man stopped, dug a hole in the sand, sorted through it, then put something in the bag that was tied around his thin waist.

“That’s a metal detector.  He finds enough lost coins and jewelry to pay for his meals,” Austin told her.  “And he makes things out of the shells.”

They watched until he had walked out of sight behind a row of salt grass.

“Okay, let’s get to it before someone else shows up.” Scott led the way up the beach a few dozen feet away from the pier.  He stopped in a clear area partially surrounded by tall grasses.  “This will do.”  He put his backpack on the sand and knelt down by it.  “Austin, here’s your phone, and Kelly, here’s yours.”

They took their phones and watched as Scott pulled Lilly’s turtle out of his backpack and placed her on the sand.

“Why do you have Violet?”  Kelly’s mind tried to put all the pieces together, but Scott wasn’t making it easy.

“You’ll see
.”

“What’s going on?”
Austin asked bluntly, not as patient as Kelly.

“Listen . . .
last night I told you I have something that would allow us to help Wendy.  And I knew that this would sound so farfetched that I would have to show it to you before you would believe me.  So, I brought Violet along.”

“
A turtle is going to help Wendy?” Kelly asked.  “How?”

“
No,
we
are.  We’re going to go back to 1966 and find out how we can save her.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Austin asked.

“I’ve invented an app for our phones that will allow us to travel through time,” Scott stated confidently.

Austin smile
d and looked at Kelly who was trying hard not to smile.  “Time travel?  Marty McFly and
Back to the Future
?”

“
H.G. Wells?” Kelly added.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me
, and I can see why you’d be skeptical.  It sounds far out, but I’m sure it will work.  But since I haven’t actually tried it, I thought it would be a good idea to start with Violet.”

Austin had turned away
and tried not to laugh.  He finally turned back toward Scott.  “Violet’s going to be a lab rat?”

“
Okay, do you guys have all the jokes out of your systems?” Scott asked, piercing them with a steely glare.  They nodded solemnly.  “Good, let’s get on with it.  Here’s what I’ve done.  We each have my time travel app on our phones.  We’re going to place Violet in the middle of a triangle of our phones.  All the phones have been synchronized as to the time and satellite coordinates to within five inches of each other.  When we trigger the app, whatever is inside the triangle will move through the wormhole that connects different regions of time.”

“Wormhole?  Really?”
Kelly shook her head.

“Let’s go ahead and see what it does,” Austin suggested.  “I can still get back and catch some
zzz’s.”

Scott took over
, ignoring their lack of encouragement.  “Okay, hit the app icon on your phone labeled
CUL8R
and a second screen will pop up.”  They did that. “Everybody got the next screen?”

“I don’t know
.  Is this it?” Kelly asks as she flips her phone to where Scott can see it.”

“You’re
good. Austin?”

“I match.”

“Now, there are two icons in the center of the screen.  You have to hit both of your icons at the same time, and we all have to do it simultaneously., or it won’t work.”

“Yeah, what are the odds this isn’t going to work?” Austin teased.

Again, Scott ignored him.  He knew this had to be seen to be believed. “The phones have to triangulate the subject, so place them on the sand with Violet in the middle.”  He demonstrated with his phone, and Kelly and Austin followed suit.  “Push on the top icon and hold it, then on my count, we’ll all push the bottom one together.  Okay?”

“Ten-
four,” Austin said smiling.

“Yes
, sir,” Kelly responded.

Scott was visibly
annoyed with the lack of respect his best friends were showing him.  “Remember, never take your fingers off either button until I say it’s okay.  Ready? On one.”

They all
knelt on the sand next to their phones.  They reached out and pushed the top icon.

“Three . . . two . . . on
e.”  Scott counted down, then pressed the bottom icon just as Kelly and Austin pushed theirs.

For a nano-
second nothing happened.  Suddenly, the sand in front of them began to swirl clockwise as if they were the center of an oversized dust devil.

“Don’t move your fingers,” Scott shouted.

They ducked their heads, trying to avoid the sting of the swirling sand, but they kept their fingers pressed to their phones.  Kelly screamed, but the sound was swallowed up in the noise of the wind, and her mouth filled with sand.  She spit and sputtered, but kept her mouth shut from then on.  She couldn’t see or hear Austin or Scott.  She wasn’t even sure if they were still there or if they’d been swept away.  But she couldn’t force her eyes open long enough to look.  All she could do was bury her face in her arm and wait it out.

As suddenly as it
had started, the dust devil stopped.  Kelly opened her eyes to a mere slit, still protected by the fringe of her lashes and bangs.  For a second, the sand hung suspended in the air, then fell straight down.  The only sound was the rush of the waves onto the sand and the seagulls calling out overhead.

She raised her head and was immensely relieved to see Austin and Scott were still there, looking as stunned and sand-whipped as she was.
They looked down at their phones, now partially covered in sand.

Violet was gone.

“What a freak sand storm.” Austin started to cough and shook his head, sending out a spray of sand.

“Can we move our fingers yet?” Kelly asked.

“Oh, yeah.  I guess,” Scott answered, but his gaze was focused on the bare spot of sand in the middle of the phones.

“It worked! 
Hot dog, it really worked.” Scott actually jumped up and shouted.  “She’s gone.”

“She’s prob
ably just got scared and ran into the grass,” Kelly suggested.

“How many times have you seen a turtle run?” Scott pointed out.

“Okay, then she got blown away by that tornado . . . or whatever it was,” Austin offered his possible explanation.

“Come on g
uys.  Help me find Violet.  Lilly’s going to be upset if we don’t bring her home.”  Kelly stood and tried to shake the sand off herself and her phone.  “Honest to God, Scott, if this ruined my phone, I’m going to be really mad.”  She felt like her skin had been sand blasted.  There was sand in her hair, her nose, her ears and even inside her clothes.  She started to push aside clumps of grass, looking for the small turtle.

“Don’t bother
, Kelly.  It actually worked!  Epic!” Scott held his hand up for a high five with Austin who ignored it.

“Help us find the turtle
, dude.” Austin was blowing sand out of his nose and rapidly losing his patience.

“Okay, five minutes.  If we can’t find her, then will you believe me?” Scott asked.

The others didn’t really agree, but he joined in with their search to humor them.  In his heart, he knew he had succeeded.  But he accepted that they had to be convinced.  So he halfheartedly joined in on the search.

Scott sat down after about a minute and watched
.  A couple of minutes later, Austin joined him.  Kelly continued searching for well over the five allotted minutes, digging in the sand, pushing aside the grasses and looking around, trying to catch a glint from Violet’s sparkly jewel-encrusted shell.  Finally, even she gave up and plopped down next to Scott on the sand.

“I’m telling
you we sent Violet back in time,” Scott stated matter-of-factly.

“Let’s say you’
re right.  How do we bring her back?” Austin always had the logical questions.

Scott considered that for a moment.  “I guess we can’t.  Our phones are here, with us.  But
when we go back, we’ll get her.”

“What?  Are you nuts?
” Kelly exclaimed.

“She’s back
four days before the night Wendy died in October, 1966.  All we have to do is find her when we go back to help Wendy.”

“How did you do this, really?
” Austin demanded.

“Normally
, wormholes are thought of as only connecting two points in space, but I found a way by connecting different regions of time . . . sort of multiple co-existing alternative histories.”

“Understand it now?” Kelly asked Austin.

“So, you’re telling me there’s an app for that?”  Austin joked to hide his own confusion.

“Ha
ha,” Scott said without humor.

“Let’s say we
are
able to go back to 1966, are you sure we can get back to here?” Austin asked.

“Yeah,
you seemed a little surprised, too, that Violet was gone.” Kelly chimed in.  “That doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about all this.”

“I think this is even scarier than the Spirit Radio
, ya know, guys,” Austin said.

“That’s what people said about electricity and the internet.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t going through wormholes or whatever the heck you said,” Austin snorted.

Kelly tilted her head and studied Scott.  “Two weeks ago I would never have imagined that I would be sitting here, on this beach, right now with you two guys.  I guess, I’m thinking that you can’t always be safe and not take chances
.  The one thing I’ve learned is that you can’t control life.  If Scott thinks we can do this, then I’m game.  I say we go.”

Austin still looked reluctant, but if Kelly was okay with it, he couldn’t be the only one to hang back.  “
Okay, I’m in, too.”

“
Good,” Scott said, as if he knew all along that they would agree.  “There are some things we need to talk about before we go.”

“
You think?” Austin didn’t hide his sarcasm.

Scott pulled
his backpack up on his lap and unbuckled it.  Sand poured out of the creases as he flipped the top over.  He pulled out three pieces of paper and passed one to Austin and one to Kelly.

“What’s this for?” Austin asked.

“This discovery is even more powerful than the Spirit Radio that’s been around for eighty years and lots of people have claimed to have heard.  But time travel?  No one has done it, and we have to be very mature and responsible about this.  If someone who meant to cause harm would go back and alter the past, who knows what could happen.”

“
I wouldn’t even trust the government with this.  They are already trying to rewrite history, and they could really screw things up with this,” Kelly commented.

“I agree.  No one outside this circle can ever find out about this.
  I think we should have a signed contract between us of what we can and cannot do.”

Kelly beg
an to read the contract out loud.  “
We the undersigned do hereby agree to the following time travel rules:

1.
We will do nothing during or after our time travel missions that would cause any personal gains, i.e. stock market, collectible toys and comic books.

2.
We will not take anything with us not critical to the success of the mission to the past or anything from the past to the present day.