Time And Dust

By Rob Vagle

Time travel and more.

5 science fiction stories.

 

Time travel in a variety of ways.

Through a secret government project.

Through a time tunnel in the back of a school locker.

With a watch, whether fancy or cheap.

Four time travel stories presented here stretch the boundaries of the imagination.

 

In the fifth science fiction story to this collection, a man draws in the dust and learns the truth about the corporation he works for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Vagle
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201020552

Rob Vagle

Rob Vagle's short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony, Heliotrope, and Strange New Worlds. He lives and writes in Tempe, AZ. He grew up in Minnesota and lived in Eugene, OR. for fifteen years. Stories and novels published by Dog Copilot Press, available wherever ebooks are sold. He drinks coffee.

Book preview

Time And Dust

Time And Dust

Rob Vagle

Dog Copilot Press

Time And Dust

Copyright © 2021 by Rob Vagle

All rights reserved.

Cover Art copyright © Eti Swinford Time And Space at Dreamstime.com.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Introduction

From Flickers To Flashes

Unrighteous Time

Closing Of The Third Eye

Imprecision

Corporate Dust

Who is This Writer-dude?

Also by Rob Vagle

Introduction

Time travel is my favorite subgenre of science fiction. Playing with time in fiction can be at once fun and also frustrating. Can be mind bending. It also can be wondrous.

Submitted for your approval, here is four time travel tales, plus another science fiction story, Corporate Dust, which covers the wonders of stardust.

Happy Reading.

---

Rob Vagle

Mesa, Arizona

May 2021

From Flickers To Flashes

The cold, bitter wind of March raced through the streets of Washington as Lydia Grace walked to the Project. The traffic in the street slipped by her, and she felt lucky to have the silence of the electric cars and delivery trucks after traveling to other eras when the automobiles were loud monstrosities. The air still smelled like rubber and hot metal, but behind it all she thought she smelled the cherry blossoms down the block.

She passed people on the sidewalk with the daydreaming expression everybody wore when they watched flashes, films that were played directly in their heads. Lydia had seen more people wearing those expressions recently and she thought they seemed too distracted to function. She wondered how some people managed walking and watching flashes at the same time—she couldn’t do it. She might end up tripping over something or getting run over by a car.

Two decades ago it was still common to see people staring at their smartphones, staring at a screen, and doing a variety of things on those hand held computers instead of paying attention at what they were doing. They were not aware of their surroundings and didn’t interact in public because they were staring at their phones.

Today, it was the same with flashes. Lydia thought it was noteworthy she had counted six people (two walking, four sitting) with that tell-tale expression. Of course, some of them may have been simply daydreaming, but Lydia doubted that was the case. The flashes look was well known and distinct from daydreaming. It was the stare, the thousand-yard stare as if they were staring at something in the distance. Some people stared with their heads tilted up, staring at a point just above the horizon. Others tilted their heads down and to one side with quick, flittering glances up to see where they were going if they were walking.

Lydia worked for The Truth Project, a multi-nation secret project designed to investigate events in world history. Lydia knew of two other centers like hers, one in China, and one in England, where agents like her went back in time to verify information. Sometimes they even changed history. She imagined there were more centers in other countries. As she was only an agent and not a Handler, let alone not in the top spot, Control (whoever that was), she had limited information on need-to-know basis. The only reason she knew about China and England is because she worked with agents from both nations to prevent the Sydney Incineration in 2032.

Erasing an event from history was never easy. Massive amounts of evidence had to be gathered to red flag an event for erasure.

Many of the missions involved small investigations. Missing person cases of famous people and regular citizens sometimes required an agent to follow their movements. Other investigations involved witnessing a recorded event like the Great Comet Sighting of 1744, as well as attempts to observe the creation of Stonehenge and the building of the Egyptian pyramids.

In the Benton Building, she was relieved from the force of the wind. Her body didn’t have to fight it any more and she ran her hands over her head, patting down her hair. The hallway smelled like floor wax and furniture polish—it smelled like life but no other person was around. She took the elevator to the basement, walked a long corridor to a closed, roll up door. She stood still as the cameras scanned her for identification and clearance. The whistle sounded and the steel door lifted, opening to another corridor.

Once Lydia stepped through threshold and the security doors dropped with its silent glide, she was inside the project until the mission was complete. The hallway stretched before her, the floor lighted a green line directing her to the mission door. Her mission door. There were six doors on each side. Three of them had red lights outlining the door. When Lydia entered hers, that door would switch from green to red.

She followed the green line, her footsteps on the concrete floor loud in the empty hallway. The walls were bare and cinderblock. The doors were metal, which she thought was overkill on the security, as if an agent might manage to bring back a Tyrannosaurus from the Cretaceous Period.

Her door was the last door on the right