Time and Time Again

By Mircea Gabor and John Settle

Adams father is a time-travel taxi driver for Chronos Travel, chauffeuring passengers forwards and backwards in time. For Adam, time-travelling with his father is normalboring, even. As far as Adam is concerned, he leads a normal life. He cycles with his friend, Don, or they both hang out at the skate park with Roslyn, eating ice creams, texting, and instant messaging. In September, the three friends were going to go back to school and continue their normal lives, like normal fourteen-year-olds do. All that is about to change.

Frightened and desperate, Evelyn Walker runs into the time taxi seeking Adams help. In his moment of indecision, she is arrested. Unable to forget her, Adam searches for Evelyn, not knowing that if he finds her again, everything he once considered normalhis life, his friends, and even his worldcould be changed forever.

In this science-fiction tale, two teenagers embark on a dangerous adventure through time and uncover a shocking truth about mankind that will cause them to question everything they have ever known about themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462070763

Mircea Gabor

John Settle was born in Hong Kong, moved to England as a child, and eventually settled in Canada. He studied at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and the University of Florida; he is now a teacher in Ontario. This is his first book.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Im at the park with donny wanna come?

That’s Ros texting me, but I can’t really get to the park, ’cause I’m at Dad’s work, and something weird’s going on. I’m reading my book, sitting on one of those high metal stools in the driver’s booth of Dad’s time taxi, when I notice a commotion in the top left-hand window on the computer screen. Something is happening at the security desk—my grandma would call it a kerfluffle.

I’m at the terminal right now. I’ll see you later! I text back.

Dad’s the driver. He’s taking an unscheduled washroom break, and Shirley, the security guard, is holding up the next load of passengers. I can see her back. She’s waving her arms and moving from side to side like a soccer goalie. I wonder if the passengers are getting impatient, but it’s only been a minute. Maybe I’m imagining there’s a problem, because any break in the routine would be welcome. Driving a time taxi is about as exciting as school—unless you’re one of those kids who find school exciting, like my friend Don does!

About five years ago, when I was nine, Dad brought me to work for the first time, and he let Don and Ros come along. I’ve known them both since kindergarten. Ros always lent us her neon crayons, and Don pretty much taught us both how to read. We didn’t think it would be boring—the time taxi, I mean. We thought, Cool! Time travel! See the past, the future! What could be more exciting? I think we’d been listening to too many commercials.

We came by subway. Ros had her ears and nose pierced and her hair dyed, even when she was nine. Her hair was bright blue that day, I remember, with sparkles in it. Her jeans were ripped, and she was wearing a black hoodie. Don had on too-short jeans and a plain T-shirt, the kind you get at a thrift store. His dad left when he was a baby, and money’s a bit tight for his mom. Ros was practically jumping up and down about going to the terminal.

This is so exciting! she squealed.

Don gave her a funny look. Of course, any look from Don is kind of funny, because he has one of those lazy eyes—his right one. You know, it doesn’t move with the other one. It usually gives people the impression that he’s dumb when quite the reverse is true.

It is safe, right? Don asked me. He was looking kind of nervous.

I looked up at Dad. There haven’t been any accidents in twelve years. Right, Dad? I was both excited, like Ros, and worried, like Don. Dad smiled and nodded.

As our crowded escalator rose from subway level to the Chronos Travel time taxi terminal, we saw hundreds of hurrying feet going in all directions.

They’re mostly commuters, Dad said. They work in a different year from the year they live in.

They have to pay an exchange rate on their money, right, Dad? I wanted to show I knew something about time travel.

That’s right, Adam. Otherwise everyone would want to work in the future, because the salaries are much higher due to inflation.

And they can’t invest, right? I didn’t really understand investing; I was just showing off!

Dad smiled, leading us through the crowds. There are all kinds of laws about investing, or interfering in other time periods in any way. It could create quite a problem if people began trying to change the past or the future. That’s why we have time police, hired by Chronos Travel, to make sure people are obeying the laws. Otherwise Chronos Travel would get in trouble, and the government might close it down.

Dad led us down his corridor, past rows of posters advertising the different time periods and even a few display cases exhibiting past and future items. Coo-ool! I thought. A lineup of phones showed the history of telephone technology from 1896 to 2035. There was one video-game console from the future—2052, I think—that was just a headset with glasses. The glasses are the screen. You wear sensitized gloves and shoes, and you play by just talking into the microphone or by moving your hands and feet. One good thing about time travel is that you can see firsthand how technology evolves.

We passed the security desk, where people were lined up already, even though we were early, and we entered Dad’s taxi. The taxi holds twenty-five people maximum. There are shelves for luggage, seats along the sides if passengers want to use them, and warning signs for people with weak hearts. Dad says first-timers and tourists usually sit, but commuters stand. Loops hang down from the ceiling in case they want something to hold on to.

We sat in the driver’s booth, where there was—and still is—a large touch-screen computer from which Dad operates everything. In the booth, we’re protected from the crowds by a soundproof wall with a window. If they want to talk to us, they have to push the intercom button.

Dad brought in extra stools for us. Don didn’t just sit—he clung to his stool! He’s a daredevil cyclist now, but he’s still scared of time travel. I asked him about that once, and he said the difference is that he can understand a bicycle, but he cannot understand time travel, and that’s saying something, coming from a kid as smart as Don. Ros was too excited to sit. She was bouncing up and down, watching every move Dad made. We all were—well, without the bouncing! I was thinking, Someday I’m gonna be a driver like Dad!

Over the external intercom (Dad calls it the outercom, as opposed to the intercom; he’s pretty amusing sometimes), the security guard announced, The passengers will now commence boarding.

The entry of the passengers was eerie due to the soundproofing; it looked as if we were transporting ghosts!

Dad made sure the door was sealed and then welcomed the passengers over the intercom, warning them that we were about to demoleculize. (That’s a new word—a time-travel word. Language evolves along with technology, I guess. Usually we just say demol. It means that we’re all going to be disintegrated into individual molecules for the journey. If that isn’t freaky, I don’t know what is!) Dad warned them of a momentary darkness, like going to sleep, and of possible slight nausea and dizziness that would pass shortly.

Don’s face turned pale. To tell the truth, I was kind of scared too. I mean, demoleculization? Isn’t that basically being ripped apart? Dad had told me about it before, but now it was actually going to happen to me. My heart raced. I was starting to sweat, and my breathing was shallow. Would I even exist as a person when I was demolled? I glanced up at my dad, and he smiled at me. It didn’t help.

Dad input the time destination on the computer screen. Then he touched the button.

After a slight delay—during which I wanted to shout, Stop!—I, like, blacked out for a sec, as Dad had described, and then … nothing. I was sitting on my stool in the driver’s taxi, and nothing had changed. Dad was still smiling at me; Ros was still bouncing; pale-faced Don was clinging to his stool. I guessed we’d remoleculized, along with Dad and the passengers, and we were there (or, I should say, we were then, since we hadn’t really gone anywhere—it was just a different time).

Dad said, Thank you for traveling with Chronos Travel! Have a nice day! and touched the screen to open the door. (Later on, Dad let us take turns doing that, which is kind of cool when you’re nine, because it’s really two doors that open and close like a mouth: an interior taxi door that closes down, and an exterior housing door that closes up.) The people left, all excited, talking about how it felt and where they were going, and the next load crowded in.

All day long, it was the same!

I’ve ridden with my dad a lot since then. I can ride for free, but it’s boring. We never leave the terminal. It’s like riding an elevator eight hours a day! Dad even agrees. He’s put in for a transfer. He’s heard that in the future, the driving is more interesting, but apparently there’s a waiting list.

If I come to work with Dad, I always bring a book, or some homework, or something. Sometimes I play games on my cell phone, but that gets boring too, after a while. Besides, every time you demol, the phone

Reviews for Time and Time Again

[solcitiousscholar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imagine a world in which time travel is not only possible, but commonplace. Terminals in major cities house “time taxis”, which are used by tourists and commuters alike to journey to different years – subject to strict regulations which prevent the system’s abuse, of course. Fourteen-year-old Adam grew up in this world, and is easily bored by his father’s job as a time-taxi-driver. But Adam’s life changes when he meets the mysterious Evelyn, only moments before the police whisk her away. What starts out as a search for this captivating girl leads Adam to discoveries far beyond his expectations.Aimed at young adults, John Settle’s first novel Time and Time Again is a fast-paced science fiction adventure. It is written in the voice of its protagonist, Adam, and Settle does an excellent job of incorporating the scattered thought process of a believable fourteen-year-old boy into an intelligent story. And when Adam finds himself in the middle of the age-old debate between science and religion, it is handled in a way that does not come across as biased toward either side. The book is thought-provoking as well as entertaining, and I would recommend it to teens and adults alike.