Future Tense

By Eddie Upnick

Future Tense is a reality-based thriller, which takes place in the near future ( 2022-2028 ) with a science fiction twist. The first book in the series, Time Will Tell, told the story of four scientists from a Nazi-controlled future ( in the year 2133 ) who travel back in time to 1938 to try to change the outcome of World War ll. In Future Tense, Vito, the son of Clem Rizzoli (from TWT) is recruited by his childhood friend, who happens to be the current president of the United States. During his travels, Vito meets a man who had known his father and his father's closest friend, the time-traveler, Jeff. Over dinner, this man reveals the top-secret work that Clem, Jeff, and a British agent named Louise, together accomplished with world-saving consequences. This knowledge sets Vito on a new path to learn more and, after meeting Jeff and Louise's daughter, Victoria, a CIA officer, to team up with her to deal with domestic, international, and extra-terrestrial crises.
Victoria's children, Jake and Lola, are endowed with extraordinary mental gifts by a supreme being known as "The Defender", this supreme Being assisted their grandfather in Time Will Tell. Vito, in turn, adopts a set of orphan twins who are battling leukemia. An special gift from the Defender returns Vito's adopted children to health.
Blue-collar Vito and British-born Victoria make for an interesting team.
Future Tense is a "what-if" with humor and richly-drawn personal relationships. It combines real-life looming problems with possible solutions in a page-turning format. Reality based science fiction at it's best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eddie Upnick
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311159298

Eddie Upnick

Eddie Upnick’s Media Page Biography of Eddie Upnick, author of Time Will Tell, Lonely Heroes, Future Tense, and 2052 Eddie Upnick was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. He graduated from Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside, New York in 1971. In 1976, he graduated from New Paltz State University of New York with a BA in Anthropology. He worked as a joke writer for Rodney Dangerfield, among others, and as a situation comedy writer off and on between the years 1975-1996. He invented Super Chess which Games Magazine declared one of the top ten strategy games of the year in 1987. He has been married since 1981 and also shares his home with two parrots. While on vacation in Antigua, in 1995, Upnick met Sidney Dowse, an Englishman who was one of the men who had escaped from Sagan, the prison camp portrayed in the 1963 movie, The Great Escape. Dowse had information regarding World War Two that was not in any history book. After days of prodding from Upnick, Dowse reluctantly related events from his own recollections, as well as those he himself had been told by his associate, Stewart Menzies. (Menzies, the head of MI-6 during World War II had daily meetings with Winston Churchill.) At Dowse’ request, Upnick promised that he would not repeat anything that had been revealed to him, until after Sidney’s death. Mr. Dowse died in 2008. Dowse’s incredible recollections inspired the writing of Time Will Tell, Future Tense and the final book in the trilogy, 2052. Facts, lost to history, are woven into these stories. Upnick reveals that Winston Churchill actually knew the date and time of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor and what he decided to tell Roosevelt. Did time travelers help the allies win the war? Menzies thought so. Future Tense, the sequel to Time Will Tell, takes place twenty years after TWT ends, during the years 2022-2028. In Future Tense, Putin’s assassination triggers the Russian mob’s takeover of the country. Meanwhile, in the United States, 50 trillion dollar deficits cause forty states to attempt to secede from the union. The heavy debt-load of the other ten states threatens to bring America to its knees economically. Yet, these stories are only a small part of Future Tense, as our planet is under threat from an impending Ice Age. Finally, aliens both friendly and deadly enter the picture as the story moves forward. The final book in the series, 2052, continues the adventure of the next generation players as Upnick delves deeper into Earth’s possible futures. Threads of truth can be found throughout all three of these reality-based science fiction books. Has future history already happened? 2052’s shocking ending may answer that question. Lonely Heroes the fourth book and the Time Will Tell screenplay are complete as well. Video Link to trailer: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq2cvj_time-will-tell-by-eddie-upnick_shortfilms http://www.eddieupnick.com/Reviews/Oracle%20Review.pdf audio link to an interview which explains everything about the author and his reasons for writing these books. http://www.spreaker.com/user/espenblog/time_will_tell_future_tense_by_upnick Eddie Upnick with Lennon

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Well, here I am on this alien spaceship, talking into my multi-functional I-Pen device, trying to make sense of the last five years of my life. This is such a bizarre story, that I hardly know where to begin. I may as well start at the beginning, back in grammar school.

I was the kid who dressed like a child of the 1950’s. Even in sixth grade, my outfit consisted of cuffed dungarees, a black leather jacket over a white tee shirt, and black boots. Most of my friends were divided into two opposite camps. Either you dressed like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, wearing disco clothes, or you were a follower of Cheech and Chong, clinging to the last remnants of the hippie era, wearing tie-dyed shirts, torn jeans, and smoking pot behind the gymnasium.

My parents were cool. They cursed in the house constantly, but you could tell that deep down, they still loved each other, at least most of the time. My father used to tell me, The best thing about fighting all the time is the never-ending make-up sex. I was eight at the time, so I had no idea what he was talking about.

Despite the four-letter dialogue that bounced off the walls in our home, it was a very open and friendly environment to grow up in. It was such a gas to be able to curse at will, because none of my friends could do that. Naturally, all of my friends wanted to come over to my house, so they could curse too. My brothers and sisters were all much older, and had already moved out, so I got away with murder. Dad was also the king of the one-liners. My thirty-five year old sister who was still unmarried, and complaining about it, took a direct hit from dad’s verbal arsenal one day when he said, Just because some guy wants to fuck you, it doesn’t mean he wants to marry you. Pop was tough, but we all understood his point, especially when it was directed at you.

In school, no one messed with me or anyone under my protection. One of those guys under my protective umbrella was Gerald Finkelstein. I liked little G, as I affectionately called him, but truth be told, seventy-pound girls used to beat him up. Gerald would let me cheat off of him on tests in exchange for my protection. I wasn’t stupid, but I knew Gerald would ace any test he took, so why not borrow his brain for 45 minutes at a time? Then there was Peter Taylor. Tall, good-looking, and smooth, all the girls loved him. Class president, editor of the school paper, voted most likely to succeed…you know the type. I got along well with Peter, but I knew his friendship always had some strings attached. For example, in high school, he’d ask to borrow my vintage navy blue ‘57 Chevy, to impress some girl. In return for my lending him my car, Peter would negotiate on my behalf with the principal, to get the penalty for my latest infraction of school rules reduced.

Flash forward forty years: I was happy as a clam running a vintage car lot. I had five employees and we all made a decent living.

Gerald Finkelstein was now the secretary of state under President Peter Taylor. Yup, those guys got the brass ring in life. I had not seen either Gerald or Peter Taylor in over 40 years.

REUNION

I was working in my garage, chastising a co-worker for being a vegetarian, when two guys with black suits, ear-pieces, and sunglasses walked in. I was sure Big Al had sent these guys over, as I owed my local bookie a few hundred bucks from some wrong-sided sports bets I had made recently. These two men told me that they were not sent by Big Al, but by President Peter Taylor. I spread my arms wide to show my workers that I hadn’t been lying when I told them I knew the president personally. Telling my friend and co-worker, Ted to take over, I got into a black SUV with the Secret Service agents.

We drove from southern New Jersey outside of Camden, where my shop was located, to Washington D.C. We hit a local rest stop on the way down on I-95 in Maryland, and I popped the hood to modify the engine timing, as it seemed off to me. These hybrid electric/gas engines still had some bugs in them. I made a quick adjustment, and the car rode much smoother after that. The Secret Service guys seemed to be impressed with both the car’s improved ride and my talent for fixing not only vintage cars but present- day ones.

This was my first trip to the White House. I was ushered in to meet the president in a small room. Peter Taylor came in and told the agent to leave us alone. We went through a few minutes of small talk before Peter got to the point of my being there. President Taylor always reminded me of Otter from the movie Animal House. You had to get through all of his layers of political bullshit before you could find out what it was he really wanted. Finally, I just said to the president, Cut the bullshit, Peter. What the fuck do you want? That seemed to snap him out of his political double-speak mode.

Look, Vito, I need your help with something. I am taking a lot of heat from certain members of my cabinet and the military regarding our secretary of state.

I chimed in, You mean little G?

The president smiled. Yes Vito, little G.

The president moved to a small bar in the corner of the room and asked if I wanted a drink. I told him I’d have whatever he was drinking. He made me some drink with one of those umbrellas in it that you’d get in a Chinese restaurant. I drank it and didn’t complain, even though the drink tasted like stale vodka and sour Tom Collins mix.

Vito, Gerald is perceived as weak in meetings with foreign leaders. Not only physically weak, but he is not showing the backbone needed in verbal banter with our allies and potential enemies. I remember you from sixth grade through high school – you always protected Gerald from bullies. Would you do that for me here, on a much larger stage?

So let me get this straight. You want me to sit in on meetings with world leaders, and make sure Gerald doesn’t get taken advantage of?

Basically, yes. Vito, I have had you completely checked out. You passed the Series Seven exam and became a stock broker, a successful one at that. Then, you gave it all up to do what you loved, repairing and restoring vintage cars. Vito, I know you can do this. All I want you to do is to add a physical presence for the United States at these meetings. Play it by ear. Don’t embarrass Gerald, just back him up somehow. I’ll leave the method up to you. I’m tired of being pushed around in these international negotiations. My administration is considered weak on foreign policy. I’m counting on you to help change that image.

I asked the president if Gerald knew about this plan of his. His raised eyebrow, followed by a quick comment, We’ll figure out something to tell him, was less than reassuring to me. However, the president of the United States had asked me a favor and I wasn’t about to turn him down. I asked Peter Taylor why he was taking such a risk by putting me at the conference table. After all, I was, in all probability, a diplomatic time bomb. The president looked at me and said, I am taking a political risk to be sure, but I’m in the middle of my second term, so my downside is limited.

Finally, I asked Peter if Congress needed to confirm me for this job. He laughed… Yeah, that would be the most entertaining confirmation hearing in history. No Vito, we’ll call you an ‘Assistant to the Secretary of State’. No confirmation hearing required.

I shook the president’s hand and repeated what he said: Assistant to the secretary of state, huh? That’s A.S.S. for short. Perfect.

I returned to Washington the following week, after tying up some loose ends with my business. The president personally walked me onto the plane, before its scheduled takeoff for Paris. Gerald didn’t see me at first, as he was buried behind a pile of papers at his seat. The president walked in front of me and Gerald got all flustered that the leader of the free world might be joining him on this flight. I am not joining you Gerald, but an old friend of ours is. The president gestured for me to pass by him.

When Gerald saw me, he got very excited. He practically jumped off his seat and raced toward me.

Vito Martino?! What in the world are you doing here? You look just like I remember you. I think you’re even wearing the same clothes. I took a quick look at the president to see if he wanted to tell Gerald why I was here, but he chickened out.

The president said something like, I’d guess you two would like to catch up on things…oh, look at the time, I’ve got a national security meeting. Then the president left the airplane. As the plane doors were locked and I was still sitting next to him, Gerald soon realized that I would be joining him on his Paris-bound flight. For the moment, I just told Gerald that I was his bodyguard; he seemed fine with that.

It was really great to see little G again. We got all caught up on our lives on the flight to France, which was the first leg of this trip. It turned out that G was married with three daughters. As I would have expected, he was totally dominated not only by his wife but his daughters, as well. When the conversation moved to my social life, I wasn’t proud of my three failed marriages. I told Gerald that I was glad to be rid of the first two wives, whose favorite pastime was putting me deeper into credit card debt. However, I truly missed my third wife, Gina, as we were now separated.

Suddenly, in the middle of telling a story, I heard a loud snort behind me. I turned around, and saw someone who looked 90 years old, snoring loudly behind us. I asked G, Who the fuck is that? He told me he was the under secretary of state, Walter Krone. The guy looked like Peter O’Toole in his later years, but more wrinkled. The under secretary of state looked like he wasn’t too far from the undertaker. When I got to know Walter Krone better, however, he turned out to be a very cool guy, and he became a good friend.

Gerald was reminiscing about every story he remembered from our youth. It amazed me how Gerald started each sentence with the same two words. Remember when so and so stole my lunch money, or remember when somebody stole my clothes after gym? Gerald didn’t seem to mind sharing his personally-embarrassing stories with me, so I went along. Finally, to change the subject, I asked little G what we were going to be doing in Paris. Apparently, American beef was not allowed into France at the moment because of the hormones our beef producers were injecting into their cattle. Secondarily, the French government was also trying to protect their own beef industry by limiting the competition. Gerald was sent to negotiate on behalf of U.S. beef producers.

I told little G that we didn’t have much of a chance to win this argument unless we threatened the French with something else. G was very uncomfortable about making threats to people or governments. He had been a Princeton professor who never had a job in the real world. My strength was in the street-smart department. My strategy was to study everything that France exported to the United States and then, at the right moment in these negotiations, step in and get something done for our side of the table.

This was my first trip to Paris. I was certainly looking forward to one of those outdoor cafés after work for a beer or two. But first we had to attend to the business at hand. Once the meetings started, G was really getting hammered at the negotiating table. The French were chastising the United States for using hormones on our cattle, which made importing them impossible. G glanced at me with a look of total frustration, as he was quickly out of ideas. I spoke up.

Gentlemen, you are correct: our beef producers should not use hormones in our cattle. You must also agree however, that your wine producers should limit nitrites in their wine. We all know that adding extra nitrites to your French wines can cause various cancers over time. I have been authorized to tell you that, if France does not allow American beef into your country, we must, by the same percentage, reduce America’s wine imports from France.

Of course I was bluffing, but the French negotiators didn’t know that and neither did Gerald. As the French president had already left the meetings when I said this, his negotiators were thrown into a state of complete panic. They huddled with each other for ten minutes on the other side of the room. Gerald whispered to me, Wow, I didn’t know the president was willing to roll the dice like this. When did he authorize you to propose this?

I looked at little G and said very matter-of-factly, He didn’t. Poor G started to turn even a paler shade of white than normal. I whispered, Look confident, and let me handle this.

Walter Krone, the under secretary of state knew I was bluffing, but he loved what I was doing. He just sat there with his arms folded, smiling at me. Finally, the French team broke up from their huddle and agreed to allow American beef imports into France, in larger numbers than Gerald or Krone could have hoped for. All the French negotiators asked in return, was that we would promise not to restrict or tariff any French wine imports into the United States. The guys in the suits typed up the agreement, and the next day we were back on our plane, heading to our next stop: Israel.

Gerald got off the phone with the president, who was thrilled with the results we had achieved at the meetings in Paris. President Taylor could now get the beef lobby off his back. Gerald gave me the credit and, when I got on the phone, I gave little G the credit for our accomplishments. After all, he was in this business for life, while I knew this was just a temp job for me. Krone sat down next to me on the flight to Israel and complimented me on bluffing the French into this agreement. He said that because I was a loose cannon in these negotiations, I could say almost anything at these meetings, whereas Gerald and he could not.

I asked Gerald what we were going to be talking to the Israelis about. Gerald and Krone just said that it was the usual land-for-peace initiatives with the Palestinians. I expressed my personal views on this subject, which left Krone laughing, and Gerald reaching for his antacid pills. All I said was that the United States had been trying for the past 60 years to force Israel into these peace talks, under who knows how many administrations, with nothing to show for it. I told G that the Palestinians didn’t want peace. Their leaders needed Israel as the enemy, just as the rest of the Arab world needed Israel to be demonized, to keep the focus off their own social problems. The unemployment rate of males 18-45 was 70% amongst Palestinians, and these numbers were also true of most of the Arab world. This, I believed, was the root of the problem. It had nothing to do with Israel. Krone agreed with me. Gerald just shook his head and prayed for divine guidance.

They both knew what I said was 100% correct, but they were diplomats and couldn’t say it publicly…but I could. Gerald made a big mistake, then, when he asked me what I would do to solve this problem. Never one to miss an opportunity to speak my mind, I hit them with the Vito plan. Give all the Jews in Israel dual citizenship, if they agree to buy homes in Florida, Nevada or Arizona. This would solve our housing crisis in those states, which had never fully recovered from the housing crash in 2008.

Krone thought my idea brilliant, but Gerald sat there with a raised eyebrow. Okay, you don’t like that plan, here’s another one…then how about making Israel the 51st state? If you need to keep an even number, make Puerto Rico the 52nd state. Fifty-two is a good number, gives us a full deck. Krone invariably smiled whenever I spoke my mind. I really liked that guy. This was when G began learning to ignore me.

To get ready for the Israeli negotiations, I downloaded the movie The Ten Commandments to my I-Pen. (I still can’t believe that Otto Preminger, the director, didn’t yell Cut! every time Edward G. Robinson, in the role of Dathan, spoke. He sounded like a gangster from the 1930’s: Yeah, where’s the messiah now, huh? Where’s the messiah now?!) The movie had just ended when the plane touched down in Tel Aviv.

As we walked onto the tarmac, I held a golf club high in the air, doing my best Moses impression and yelled, Behold his mighty hand. Little G was praying there were no cameras at the airport to catch my theatrics.

Gerald wanted me to stop calling him Little G in front of other people, so I went back to my other high school nick-name for him, Mighty Mouse. After hearing me call him Mighty Mouse a few times, Gerald asked me to go back to calling him Little G.

During the meetings with the Israelis, I actually fell asleep. The Israeli negotiator had such a deep and monotonous voice; it put me right out. I did have my sunglasses on, so I figured nobody knew my eyes were closed. However, Gerald knew, so he kicked me under the table right in my shin to wake me up. I must have yelled out, because everyone froze at that moment in their negotiations, expecting me to say something intelligent about whatever it was they were all talking about. I told the Palestinian representative to stop blaming Israel for all of their problems. Start some businesses, and put your people to work!

The Palestinian negotiator got really pissed off and his delegation got up and left the table in a huff. Little G almost had a panic attack, he was so embarrassed. Really, what difference did any of this make? These talks have gone nowhere for over six decades, and nothing I said or didn’t say today was gonna change anything. As we were all leaving the conference room, the Israeli negotiator smiled at me and thanked me for speaking my mind. He called it most refreshing.

I knew that I had fucked up. I told Gerald that I’d try to be more helpful in the future, if indeed I still had a future in this business. Krone came to my rescue as he calmed Little G down by spiking his Mountain Dew, to help soften his stance towards me – Krone always carried a small metallic flask in his breast pocket.

Later that evening, the three of us went out for dinner and talked about our personal lives in greater detail. Krone and I knew that Gerald was still upset about what I had said in the meeting room, so we didn’t discuss business. I talked about Gina, my third wife, who I still loved. She was a school teacher and had a kind heart. Despite the fact that her Uncle Anthony was the reputed head of the Jersey mob, I loved her and her family. I really screwed up when I lost her.

Krone then mentioned that he had once been married, fifty years ago, for three years. His wife died in a car accident and he never re-married. Gerald was shocked by Krone’s admission, as he had never heard him mention it before. Krone simply said to Gerald, You never asked me. Little G felt terrible that he hadn’t asked Krone about his personal life months or even years earlier. He knew that as the secretary of state, he should be a better listener, and he made a mental note to ask more questions of his friends and family in the future. I put my arm around G and told him not to

Reviews for Future Tense

[mybookaddiction_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

FUTURE TENSE by Eddie Upnick is an interesting science fiction/fantasy/time travel. The sequel to "Time Will Tell", but 20 years later in the year 2022. Intergalactic and time adventure that is fast paced and action filled with both human and aliens. The world and character building is great and easy to follow. Any sci-fi reader will enjoy this title as well as fantasy and time travelers. Received for an honest review from the author.RATING: 4HEAT RATING: MILDREVIEWED BY: AprilR, My Book Addiction and More/My Book Addiction Reviews