Time Will Tell

By Samuel Brown

Bronson’s Breakthrough has excited the scientific and business communities like nothing in recent history. This newly published theory seems to prove that the instantaneous transportation of matter, including human beings, over any distance is possible. Companies all over the world are hiring all the physicists and mathematicians they can in the hope of being the first to turn the theory into reality. Barry Beatleton is perfectly positioned for this new world having just graduated with dual degrees in math and physics. But the years go by without positive results and gradually Bronson’s Breakthrough falls into disrepute. One by one the companies downsize their staffs. Eventually Barry finds himself working alone and wondering if it’s time for him too to give up and move on with his life. And then the cat disappears. But where did it go? What Barry discovers is that he has not invented a transporter. He has invented a time machine. A time machine that lets him travel into the past where he can see but can’t be seen, hear but can’t be heard, can neither touch nor be touched. How should Barry best put his invention to use? Join Barry, teen prodigy Kate, and private investigator Shark as they learn the good, the bad, and the danger of traveling through the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samuel Brown
• Release date: Jun 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476380094

Samuel Brown

Samuel Brown is a retired accountant. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia with his wife Judy. Time Will Tell is his first novel.

Book preview

ONE

Just because what I invented wasn’t what I set out to invent doesn’t make me any less of a scientist, does it? I mean it isn’t like I was just fooling around and it happened. After all, I had been working on this project for over twelve years. And I do have a degree. Two degrees actually, one in physics and one in math. So what that I lucked onto the solution. And so what that it was a different solution. The point is that I am a legitimate scientist and that I had been working on this project ever since I got out of school. But I seem to be getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should go back and provide a little detail before this gets any more confusing.

My name is Barry Beatleton and for as long as I can remember all I wanted to be when I grew up was a Major League baseball player. I didn’t need to be the next Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle or Derek Jeter. I’d be happy sitting at the end of the bench as long as it was a Major League bench. That dream died in my early teens. Oh, I was a better athlete than most of the kids in school, probably better than ninety per cent of them. But that still left the other ten per cent that were better than me. So of the six hundred boys in my high school about sixty of them were better baseball players than me. When you think about all the high schools in the county, not to mention other countries, where ten percent of the boys would be better than me, it soon became evident that baseball would not be my career.

My fallback was math. Math always came easy to me, and I could never understand why so many people had so much trouble with it. I guess that’s the way great ball players look at those of us who aren’t. Anyway, my new career path was to go to college, and become a math professor at a top flight university. I was as surprised as anyone when physics came as easily to me as math. I solved the problem of what to major in by deciding to get a double major in both math and physics.

College was a pretty uneventful time in my life. Yeah, I went through all the usual stuff kids went through when they’re away from home for the first time but compared to a lot of the guys my college years were tame. Some might even say boring. Then in my senior year the event that would change my life forever as well as the lives of many others like me splashed across the front page of every newspaper that was left in the country and headlined the internet all over the world.

Bronson’s Breakthrough, as it came to be known, was hailed as the greatest scientific advance since, well maybe since forever. For those of you who have been living in a cave in the middle of nowhere for the last bunch of years and don’t know what I’m talking about, Bronson’s Breakthrough apparently proved that matter could be dissolved into a molecular stream and almost instantaneously transported and reassembled in its original form in another location. This, theoretically, could be done not just with inanimate objects but with live objects as well. It would even work with people. Yes, the Beam me up Scottie machine was within our grasp.

If you think this hit the scientific world like a bombshell, that was nothing compared to how it hit the business world. Think of how this would change things. Merchandise would no longer need to be shipped by truck, train or ship. It could all just be transported. What about the auto industry? People would no longer drive to work. They would just be beamed over. Since it was practically instantaneous distance would no longer matter. Location, location, location would take on an entirely different meaning when selling residential real estate. Instead of looking at proximity to subway stations or bus stops you could live by a trout stream in Montana or a beach in Florida and work in New York or Washington, DC. Space exploration and colonization were suddenly real possibilities.

No one really knew the total effect of all this but one thing all major corporations and venture capitalists knew was that they needed to be in on the ground floor of what was to come or they would be swept aside into the scrap heap of history.

It was into this world that I stepped with my diploma. I still wished I had the talent to play for the New York Yankees, but that aside I was perfectly placed for this changing world. While most graduating seniors were scurrying around after any possible job in a difficult market, those of us with double degrees in math and physics were courted like superstar quarterbacks.

I went on half a dozen interviews and was offered jobs at the end of each of them. I finally decided to go to work for General Consolidated Technologies (GCT) in Washington, DC. It wasn’t the biggest company in the field but was in the top five. My salary was a lot higher than I would have made as a professor, although not what the shortstop for the Yankees was making. But I wasn’t about to complain.

There were about thirty-five of us hired for the transporter development project at GCT. We were all young, ambitious and excited, each of us hoping to be the one to turn the theory of Bronson’s Breakthrough into reality. Companies like ours all over the world were gearing up and working like crazy to beat the others to the patent office. The rewards could be staggering Meetings were held each morning in our main conference room at GCT to discuss what had been done the prior day and what each of us would be doing that day. After a few weeks we settled into a pattern and the meetings were changed from daily to every Friday afternoon.

Weeks went by and then months with no real progress being made but our enthusiasm never waned. Oh, some experiments looked promising but they turned out to be false alarms. Then it was time for our first anniversary review. Management was disappointed but not surprised by the lack of progress.. Everyone had hoped for quick results but still had confidence that discoveries were just over the horizon. And the fact was that no other company had beaten us to the Holy Grail. So we were wished good luck and sent back to the labs for year two.

Year two was much like year one. And so was year three. By the time our third anniversary review rolled around the boundless enthusiasm we had all shared at the beginning was starting to show wear. Management was growing impatient and grumbles of cost effectiveness and stockholder dividends were being heard. But still no other company had made any progress either so we were still in the running for the big payoff.

By the end of year five, impatience had turned into debate. How much longer could GCT continue to fund such a large department with no realistic goal in sight for an income producing product? My colleagues were also showing concern. It was getting harder and harder to think of new experiments to try. Tempers were starting to fray. Some were even beginning to question whether or not there might be flaws in the basic components of Bronson’s Breakthrough.

Over the next two years several of the original members of our research team left, no longer believing in the viability of our work. When the seventh anniversary meeting was announced a feeling of inevitability hung over us all

We began this journey seven years ago amid great excitement, certain that we were on the path to a new and fantastic future, Joe Davis, the president of GCT stated. Unfortunately we must now face reality, he continued. The bright future we glimpsed just over the horizon has eluded our grasp. And it appears now that it may never become the present. Even though there are many in management and no doubt many in research who still believe in the transporter project the time has come to face economic realities. In today’s economy we can no longer justify spending the volume of money we have been spending on this project. So today I am announcing a fifty per cent cut in the transporter project budget including a fifty percent cut in the number of staff working in this area.

Our fears were now officially fact. Details of the cutback were soon distributed to all. Members of the research team would be offered a fairly generous severance package. If not enough people elected to resign then management would decide who else to terminate. We had one week to decide.

That night I went home and stared at a blank TV for hours. I started to go out to eat but found I had no appetite. It might have helped to be able to talk it over with some of the others on the team, but even after seven years the truth was there was no one there I really considered a friend. I’ve always been a very private person, you might even say introverted. I was between girlfriends at the time, never been married, no siblings. If my parents were still alive my mom would say what she always said, Move back home. Your room is still here. You can work with your dad at the store.

After much soul searching I found that I still believed in the project and did not want to give up. Of course that was only one half of the equation. I could still find myself unemployed if enough of the others felt as I did.

My luck held out. Of the thirty remaining scientists on our team seventeen elected the buyout. Management accepted all the resignations, so my job was safe at least for the time being. GCT was by no means the only company cutting back. All of the big companies were reacting in the same manner. Many of the small companies had already gone belly up and venture capital was non-existent. And so under these conditions I went back to work. The anxiety faded over the weeks and we began to get used to working with fewer people, fewer frills and a smaller budget.

Over the next couple of years more of our staff drifted away. One day near the end of year ten I was working away and gradually noticed that by mid morning I was still the only one of the remaining three of us in the lab. That’s when my boss poked his head into the lab and said he needed to speak to me in his office. Is this the end, I wondered? Are they going to tell me that they are shutting the project down and firing me?

But that wasn’t quite the case. Barry, I called you in to tell you that Frank and Tom came into my office this morning and submitted their resignations, Mr. Ferguson my boss stated. Here it comes, I thought. They’re shutting us down. I wanted to feel you out on your intentions, he continued. We would like you to stay and continue with your experiments. I realize this may come as a shock but I need to know if you are willing to go on as a one-man department".

He was right, I was shocked, and I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t want to lose my job, especially now when I was contemplating a major change in my life, but how long could this go on? Did I really want to work by myself? In the end, though, fear of being unemployed trumped all my other concerns and I agreed to continue.

After the meeting I went back to my lab. It really was MY lab now. I took a small box out of my desk, opened it and looked inside at the ring I had purchased yesterday. I was having dinner with Jill that night at our favorite restaurant and was planning to propose. I know, I haven’t mentioned Jill before but I told you I was a private person. We had been dating for about eighteen months now and for the last three I had been trying to work up the courage to pop the question. Tonight was the night. I couldn’t ask her to marry me if I didn’t have a job.

Jill was working late, so we decided to meet at Alfredo’s, a small Italian restaurant not far from Jill’s apartment that we found shortly after we started seeing each other. It was the kind of quiet neighborhood place that we both enjoyed. Jill seemed a bit distracted when she came in but I didn’t think too much of it. I was too busy being nervous about what I planned to say. We ordered, chicken marsala for her and chicken parmesan for me and a salad to share.

After we finished eating, I was reaching into my pocket for the ring, when Jill said, Barry, there’s something important I need to say. You’ve been working almost ten years on a dead end project and I think you need to face reality. You need to move on in another direction with your career before it’s too late. This was not how I had envisioned the evening going. Can’t you see, she continued, you’re becoming obsolete. The others in your field have almost all gotten out and found new jobs while they still could. Get out now before it’s too late. Face it, Bronson’s Breakthrough was fools gold.

I couldn’t believe my ears. What I thought would be the happiest day of my life was turning into a nightmare. But the worst was yet to come.

Barry, I’ve been offered a great job with a college in Chicago. Jill was a history teacher.

Are you going to take it? I asked.

I can’t turn it down. It’s what I’ve been working toward for years, she answered.

Where does that leave us? I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

That’s up to you Barry. Are you willing to leave your job and go with me?

Like a fool I just sat tongue tied and stared at her.

That’s what I thought, she said sadly. Good-bye Barry. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I really do. But I can’t wait around any longer. And just like that she was gone. I started to get up and run after her. I should have gotten up and run after her. Instead I just sat there, a fool and his ring with no one to give it to.

Can I get you anything else? the waiter asked after I had been sitting alone for awhile.

No, except maybe a little common sense, but I don’t think it’s on the menu I answered.

I didn’t see how this day could get any worse but I was about to find out. Driving home I turned on the radio. And in other news, Theodore Bronson, the scientist who’s much ballyhooed Bronson’s Breakthrough was all the rage in scientific communities years ago was found dead in his suburban home just outside of Washington, DC this evening. Police are reporting the cause of death as an overdose of prescription medication. It has not been determined if the overdose was accidental or deliberate. Bronson’s theory of matter transportation which sparked such excitement when it was first published ten years ago, has fallen into disfavor among his scientific peers over time. It’s been reported that Bronson had become despondent and reclusive, rarely leaving his home… Are there storms on the way? Anita will be back with the weather after this commercial break.

Well, regardless of what Anita was going to stay the storm clouds had broken all over my life. I had moved past when it rains it pours, and on to when it rains it hurricanes.

I didn’t sleep much that night. My dreams were a garbled mess of people boarding a train, including Jill and all the original members of our project team, and me being left behind on the platform as the train pulled out. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to interpret that. I finally gave up trying to sleep, got up, made a cup of hot chocolate, and read for awhile. When I finally went back to bed sleep came more easily.

The alarm went off at the usual time, and I got up and went to work. I was surprised to find Frank in the lab.

Just cleaning out my stuff, he told me. I guess you heard I’m leaving. What about you? When are you going to wise up and get out of this dead end disaster?

I don’t know, I said. I really don’t. I hate to just throw away all these years.

Face it Barry they’re already thrown away. The best you can do is to not throw away any more of your life. I guess you heard about Bronson. I don’t want to turn on the TV in a few years and hear the same thing about you.

I thanked Frank for his concern and for his help over the years. Then he left just like all the others, leaving me alone on the platform watching the train pull out. I wasn’t really ready to start working but what else was there to do? Reading the paper wasn’t an option. The last thing I wanted to do was read about Bronson’s death. So I went about the usual procedures of setting up the days experiments for what it was worth. But there wasn’t much enthusiasm in it. I was just going through the motions. Was this what the rest of my career was going to be like, working by myself, endlessly repeating variations of the same experiments and achieving nothing?

And that’s exactly what it was for the next two years. A seemingly endless process of going to the lab and listlessly performing experiments I knew were bound to fail, then going home to an empty apartment. I realized now that keeping me on was just management covering their butts with the shareholders in case someone else ever did come up with anything. They could say Well we did our part. We kept our research going. They just found the answer first.

I was seriously thinking of just chucking the whole thing, and then the cat disappeared.

TWO

The cat’s name was Fido and belonged to Ms Jorgenson the chairwoman of the board of GCT. You read that right it was a cat not a dog and its name was Fido. Actually I’d never even met a dog named Fido either. It wasn’t unusual to see Fido wandering around the building. When Ms Jorgenson was in town she almost always brought the cat with her and it had full reign of the building. I think she spent more time asking people if they had seen the cat then in running the company.

I was setting up my experiment when Fido wandered into the lab. She slunk in quietly, yes Fido was a girl cat, as was her habit and climbed up right onto the box on the target transporter departure pad. I had my back to it and hit the send button before turning around. I yelled no Fido when I saw her there but it was too late. Before I could turn off the beam the box with Fido on it was gone. My first thought was oh my gosh I’ve killed the boss’s cat. My second thought was oh my gosh it worked. I stood there in stunned silence for several seconds not knowing what to do next. This had never happened before. Through all the experiments through all the years we would flip the switch, turn on the beam and nothing would happen. But now the cat was gone.

When I finally came out of my trance I sprinted to the next room where the transport receiver pad was located to see if Fido had arrived in tact, and found nothing. Nothing? Where was Fido? My first thought was that she had wandered away while I was in my trance. But then where was the box that she had climbed up onto on the departure pad? It couldn’t have wandered off. No, something was wrong. I was walking back to my lab when Ms Jorgenson came around the corner.

Have you seen my Fido? she asked. We have a plane to catch and I can’t find her anywhere.

No I answered trying to keep my voice calm. I haven’t seen her today.

"Well if you