A Glint in Time: A Novel of History and Time... and the Ability To Do Something About It!

By Frank J. Derfler

Imagine that, within the strict and actual limits of physics, you had an ability to influence past events... to change history. What would you do? Who would you consult? Who would you trust? How about unanticipated consequences? In this book, a small group of people, mostly military, deal with those problems and do their best to do the best for the US and the world. This story is tightly tied to real history and real technology. There is only one development that hasn't taken place yet... that we know of. If you like technology, history, and military action, this is the book for you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623096106

Book preview

Tons

A Glint in Time: Book I 1995

By Frank J. Derfler, Jr.

Chapter 1:

Beach History

Monday, June 5, 1995 1300 Central Time Zone

Destin, Florida

Excerpt from the Personal Narrative of Dr. William E. Wirtz, PhD

Recorded May 2006

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET/TA

About that time in 1995 I was like a deer in the headlights. I was an ostrich with my head in the sand. Pick your analogy. I had no idea what was going on. But yet, I probably wouldn't have done anything very differently.

Sally Langley had the heel of her right foot on the accelerator and toe on the brake as she downshifted her new 1995 BMW 325i convertible from fifth to fourth gear to pass the heavy lumber truck moving eastward on US 98. The highway had many two-lane sections as it meandered along the Gulf of Mexico. She was ready to move after staring at the license plate of the tractor trailer and eating its dust for almost ten miles. Despite the dust, Sally was glad to be on the road and away from Atlanta. She needed a change of scene, her last boyfriend was ancient history, and a few days of work at double her normal fee with an advance already in the bank was too good to pass up.

The fishing village of Destin, FL is at point A. The red square shows the approximate location of the beach house. Eglin AFB occupies the land north of the bay. Historic Hurlburt Field is NW on Highway 98. Map from maps.Google.com

She slowed down to the speed limit and watched for her next turn. A piece of paper with driving directions was clutched in her left hand. The trip odometer showed the correct distance since the last turn and there was a road coming up, but no sign she could see. She took the turn, fishtailed a little on the gravel, uttered a quick Damn, and headed for the beach. As the faxed instructions described, the yellow stucco house was at the end of a sand driveway off a gravel road. The side of the house she saw was level with the top of a dune, but it was evident that the side facing the beach was open and expansive. She stopped for a moment after getting out of the car to look around. Sea oats and a few scrub pine trees sticking out of the sand passed for landscaping.

Her knock was answered by a young man with a short haircut, glasses, tattered shorts, and a tee shirt. As the door opened, Sally noticed the blast of cold dry air and then, after a heartbeat to identify it, the familiar smell of ozone and hot plastic from computer equipment. The smell was familiar, but the setting was strange. Sally said, Hi, I'm Sally Langley looking for Doctor Wirtz. Is this the right place?

Sure! was the reply. Go up the stairs to the right. At the top of the stairs, Sally was greeted with a panoramic view of the blue Gulf of Mexico lapping at a sugar white beach. Hey, are you Sally? The man asking was wearing shorts, sandals, and a tee shirt with well-washed spots on the front. Just over six feet tall, he moved well as he came to greet her. Blue eyes set off a pleasant face, but he wore glasses and his eyes looked bleary. Sally pegged him as early 30s.

Sally was still dressed in Atlanta business casual –a skirt and blouse with some tasteful jewelry. Her only concession to her drive to Florida was sensible flats. She knew she had great legs and a long slim waist and she didn’t need heels to set them off. At 26 she felt she was in her prime. Big hair was in this year, thanks in part to Jennifer Anniston, but she kept her dark hair cut short. She paid an upscale Atlanta salon to make sure her layered razor cut looked at least presentable coming out of the Beemer convertible. She wouldn't be caught dead as blonde but blue contact lenses pushed the reflected color of her hazel eyes a little up the spectrum.

My goodness, she said as she smiled and shook his hand. It’s beautiful, but this is a pretty strange place for a research center. She turned her back on the view and looked at the computer workstations that filled this floor of the Florida Panhandle beach house. What are you doing here in what even the natives call Frigging Lower Alabama?

Hey, Bill replied, not missing a beat. You’re the communications expert. You know that a research center doesn’t have to be in any particular place anymore. We can reach out and tap databases and people anywhere around the world.

So you do historical research here? That's what I understood on the phone? She moved around the room. She looked casual, but Sally the electrical engineer from Georgia Tech was evaluating the quality of the cabling, the equipment cooling, and general layout. Everything was done professionally and she didn't see any shortcuts. She silently nodded in grudging approval.

Well, as I explained on the phone, we call it research into historical alternatives. We look at what might have happened if certain elements of history had happened differently. In one way, you can look at it as a study in sociology, politics, economics, and history all rolled into one.

Yeah, but on a university campus you’d have people to collaborate with, wouldn’t you? Sally knew she was sounding bitchy, but she was both curious and on alert. She expected to be at the end of the technological universe, but instead she found herself on the Holodeck of the Enterprise. She was out of sync and taking it out on her client. Mentally, she told herself, "Stop it".

Academia took a dim view of my research into historical alternatives before I got funding from my sponsors. I was published a few times, but the feeling among my peers was that I was writing historical fiction instead of doing academic research. Now, of course, several universities tell me they’d love to have my money and equipment on campus, but I don’t need them. I’m working hard, but I can also find the time here to enjoy myself without snoopy peer review boards and department heads.

So where do you find the people to help you run this equipment? she asked.

That’s the easy part. Eglin Air Force Base is just across the bay. They have a big development center there. The kids I have working here after 6 PM spend their days programming the guts of drone aircraft and smart bombs. They’re good, but their day jobs are pretty narrow. In this project they get to do different things with the latest technologies. I pay them a healthy wage on the local scale, which is still half of what I’d have to pay graduate students on some campus. Besides that, they know how to keep their mouths shut.

How important is that? Keeping your mouth shut, I mean, Sally asked. As they talked, she moved through the building inspecting the consoles and equipment rooms. It was evident that the first floor of the relatively spacious house on the beach had been gutted and converted to office and equipment space. You told me on the phone that you’re financed by some big money guys in the computer gaming business. Do they enforce security? I don’t see any guards or television cameras.

Oh, the television cameras are here, see that nail hole in the wall? That’s one of them. He pointed a long finger at the hole that looked like it had once held a hanger for a picture. But they’re here mainly to please the insurance company that covers all the equipment. The best security in this case seems to be the dullness of the subject matter. Doing what-if historical sociometrics doesn’t interest many people, but if these folks signing the checks are in the computer game business like they say they are, then I guess they have competitors. He shrugged as if indicating that the business of games was beyond his understanding.

You really don’t know what they’re doing with your results? You only think they’re designing games using your scenarios and reports? Sally raised an eyebrow. Isn’t that a little strange?

Well, maybe that’s why you’re here. They told me to bring in a communications expert to establish a high speed data link to Indonesia. You’re it. You’re the imported talent from far away Atlanta. Maybe we’ll find out why an Asian consortium is so interested in history. The computer game idea makes sense, but there is never any consistent story line in their questions that we can find.

So how have you been communicating with these people? How do you get their questions and send replies now?

We started out with faxes. They contacted me originally by fax, we negotiated by fax, and they told me how to contact the bank in a fax. Then, after I made some initial equipment buys, we moved up to using MCI Mail online to exchange questions and scenarios. They don’t want these computers to have any connections to any commercial network, so I’ve been dialing an international number and connecting with a server twice a day, updating my e-mail, and dropping off files. Wirtz gestured to a computer screen showing the Crosstalk communications program ready to dial.

Have you got a copy of the message they sent with the high speed connection requirements? Sally asked. Wirtz nodded and handed her a printout.

Well, she said as she scanned the sheets, they only want a T-1 line. She noticed the blank look on his face. That’s one point five megabits per second. Ah, it’ll move about one hundred ninety eight kilobytes per second of data --more if we use compression. I’ll have to work with the local telephone company and a major international carrier to set this up. But uh-oh, they want it installed within seven days. We might wind up with a satellite dish and some pretty high costs.

Wirtz smiled and waved his hand again. I’m a historian and sociologist who understands programming, but communications technology is beyond me. We’ve never sent them a report of more than 10 or 15K of text, but I can tell you that the subject of costs for the circuit never came up. I don’t think they care. But they did say that we should arrange for the circuit from this end and pay for the whole thing in dollars.

Well, the dollar is cheap for them right now. I guess they think they’re getting a bargain. I’ll see if the local telephone company business office is open in the afternoon.

If the fishing’s good, it might not be. That’s the way they work around here. Wirtz gave her directions for the telephone company in Destin and smiled as she went out the door. She got into her car and headed out to get going West on US 98 leading into the town.

Sally’s meeting with local and long distance telephone companies didn’t inspire confidence. The clerk talked a lot about needing engineering studies in order to design the circuit. It seemed that no one really knew what kind of cabling was in place out to the area of the beach house.

She placed an order for the circuit to get things moving and arranged for expediting charges, but when she was in the car she also used her mobile phone to call a company in Atlanta that specialized in satellite terminals. She got some basic information, but she also learned that satellite communications systems were in high demand and that terminals weren’t available off the shelf.

She was back at the beach house by dusk, so she and Wirtz sat on the deck and watched the sun chase down the beach to the West. The mood was quiet, so Sally thought it was a good idea to find out more about the client. What kinds of scenarios have your sponsors asked for, Bill?

If Wirtz noticed the use of his first name, he didn’t show it. A wide variety of stuff. Of course they wanted to know what would have happened if the Trinity shot on July 16, 1945 initially failed so Truman didn’t have the atomic bomb to end World War Two, but everybody asks that. They sent other scenarios like what would have happened if the Prussian Prince Wilhelm had fallen overboard from the battleship Baden in 1917 and drowned. The answer is an immediate end to World War I and no World War II. Another one was what would have happened if the El Nino weather pattern hadn’t stayed for so many seasons in the 1990s. Some things were very specific, but a few were general.

Hmmm. Pretty esoteric stuff. So what would have happened without the atomic bomb?

Several things, Wirtz replied. First, the idea of atomic explosives was being explored in at least five countries before the war started, so even if the American tests had failed, atomic bombs would still have been developed at some time. The most immediate effect if Truman didn't have the bomb would have been an invasion of the southern Japanese islands by the Americans in the Spring of 1946. Interestingly, almost every scenario shows the Soviets invading Japan from the north at almost the same time. We projected American losses in terms of the tens of thousands, but some projections show the Soviets literally eliminating the ethnic Japanese population north of Tokyo. We never spent the computer time on more simulations, but a divided Japan would certainly have been another hot spot like divided Germany and divided Korea.

You have the databases and processing power for those kinds of scenarios? she asked with some surprise.

Well, you know that as processing power intensifies, the computers shrink. We have an IBM AS/400 with the new 64-bit processors in the back of the house. I worked on the database for almost a decade, but I gathered most of it after I got this contract two years ago. Then Wirtz shifted in his chair and got closer to Sally. But the real outcome involves a lot of guesses. The basic problem is how much weight to give to any particular sequence of events. There is a lot of guess work there. The tone of that admittance was something between a delicious secret and a shameful one.

But how can anyone ever prove you wrong? Sally asked as she moved slightly away. No one knows how history would have turned out if any of those things had happened!

Ah, but don’t forget, we do know how one set of events interacted. That’s our own real history. That template gives us valid checkpoints for a lot of assumptions and weightings. Then, we can test the sensitivity of each assumption to see how much leeway we have in weighting specific events and influences. We set a lot of these weightings on the fly. No, I’ll never have proof that we’re right, but we can demonstrate good logic and well, I’d bet on our predictions anytime.

That’s a bet where no one collects. So in some cases it doesn’t matter if one individual is never born, but in other cases one birth or death is critical to the unfolding of major events. Wow. Sally lived in a world of data flow and electronics. History interested her when it was linked with places she visited, but some elements of history were too painful and personal to allow her to contemplate the why of historical events.

Yes, but the forward scenarios, the ones where we try to describe what would have happened if this or if that, those are comparatively easy. The hard ones are the backward scenarios. In a backward scenario, someone sets a condition or circumstance and we have to come up with the best scenario leading there. Suppose, for example, we set a condition where we say that in the year 2000 the American Indians are the dominant culture in North America. What things had to happen, and when did they happen, to make that condition happen? Bill sat back for a minute and let the question hang in the air. He was testing to see if she got the idea.

So maybe the American Indians have a strain of measles that they were immune to, but that decimated every party of European explorers and settlers? Sally almost snorted, this wasn’t science, it was fantasy. But she could play the game.

Yes, exactly! In fact, we’ve run that solution several times. The Europeans still dominate by sheer force of numbers, but you’ve got the idea. My point is that those backward scenarios burn up a lot of time and processing power. Sometimes we come up blank, which is interesting in itself. The people in Indonesia have been giving us a lot of those lately. Some things just never happen unless you make preposterous bends in the events leading up to them.

Later, Sally and Wirtz collaborated on a message to his sponsors describing the alternatives for communications circuits and asking for help in establishing the commercial or satellite circuits in Indonesia. She explained, A lot has to do with the kinds of computer interactions they want. A satellite link to Indonesia from here is actually a double hop with a relay in Hawaii. The delay caused by going out and back to two satellites and through the relay will be a couple of hundred milliseconds. If they want heavy interactive communications, then the undersea commercial circuits will be a better path because they have less delay, but if they’re going to blast files in each direction, the satellite circuits will work. I suspect we’ll go with the satellites.

After Wirtz posted the questions on e-mail, Sally left the house and found a motel down the beach. She was in Destin, Atlanta’s beach playground, so she was going to enjoy it. She unpacked her bag and walked the beach in the dark. She thought about the strange situation at the beach house. A faceless Asian consortium paying all the bills for a brilliant geek who lives in a little paradise and produces studies of what would have happened if certain elements of history had changed. She looked out at the dark waters of the Gulf of Mexico and thought about what parts of her own history she might like to change.

Chapter 2:

Good Bodies

Tuesday June 6, 1995 0830 Central

Destin, Florida

Excerpt from the Personal Narrative of Dr. William E. Wirtz, PhD

Recorded July 2006

UNCLASSIFIED

Sally was a ball of fire. In fact, she still is!

The next morning, after an enjoyable beachside breakfast, she drove back up the sandy road to the house thinking about the setup of the communications circuit and the really different work it would support. She didn’t expect to find Wirtz around yet. His type usually worked all night and slept all morning. One of the computer crew she’d been introduced to the previous day let her in and produced a printed version of an e-mail message. This came in when we checked the MCI Mail this morning. It’s all about comm circuits, so I guess it’s for you.

She’d made a few notes on the message when the sliding glass door to the beach opened and Wirtz walked in. He was wearing a brief pair of trunks and was toweling off. A pair of goggles hung in his right hand and he didn’t have his glasses on. Sally realized that he looked better nearly naked than he did wearing the ratsy clothes he had on yesterday. "Hmmm, she silently reflected. I guess the clothes, or lack of them, do make the man!"

Good morning, she said out loud. So you swim?

Swim and bicycle, he replied. Running kills my knees, so I swim until it gets too cold and then get on the bike. What do you do to stay in shape? No, wait... I have you pictured doing aerobics in a pink leotard in a trendy Atlanta spa. The kind of place with pots of ferns between the machines and CNN on every TV.

His use of the word shape had involuntarily caused her to straighten her back. She rose and said, Let me get my Speedo and I’ll tow you around in my wake for a while.

He held out his hands and backed off. Hey, okay, we can do that, but later. She noticed that he had a great smile. What do you have there? he asked pointing to the message in her hand. More games?

Directions from your sponsors on the communications link. Somebody at the other end either has been thinking about this for a while or they have excellent connections -um, I mean political connections. This is a list of names and numbers of people to talk to, information on the network router, satellite earth terminal configurations, signaling, compression, and all the technical details. By the way, they’re engineering this so we can upgrade to a faster connection than a T-1, but this is going to cost some bucks. We’re going to need a bigger satellite dish so we can have a better signal to noise ratio. I’ve got to get to work. What telephone can I use?

Sally had a double-E degree from Georgia Tech and her consulting business had given her a lot of practical experience. But, creating an international satellite link called for more diplomacy, research, and cajoling than technology. She often thought that women were better at making things happen then men. She found the electronics for a satellite terminal packaged on a palette in a California public television station with more dreams than pledges of support. She got a dish antenna on a truck headed south out of Virginia, found a local contractor who said he could quickly build a concrete pad when offered enough incentive, and negotiated the satellite transponder circuits with two major international carriers. Then she got the network router moving in her direction from San Jose. After a little thought she ordered more communications interface modules for the router.

She remembered some fruit and yogurt appearing in the middle of the day, but when she finished the last call to California the sun was racing down the beach again and she was hungry.

Wirtz! she called. This time the use of his last name did get some response. Bill’s head appeared around the corner of the office divider and his eyes were wide.

You called? he said somewhat meekly.

Swim first or eat first, which is it? Either way, you’re buying dinner.

Get your Speedo, he replied.

They were each surprised when they found they were quite well matched in the water. Bill showed her the landmarks on