Accidents in Time: Time Without Motion, the House of Time, Twenty/Twenty

By John Plumb

Time Without Motion is the story about Mickey Manco. He tried to fix his generator bearings and by accident discovers a different reality. This zone as he calls it leads him into becoming a thief and murder. He ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list.

The House of Time was invented by Mr. Bridges It is house that mysteriously appears and disappears every ten years from a five hundred acre forest in Charleston, South Carolina. It is run by a secret society. From 1845 until present day. Not all the guests will survive and others will attempt to come aboard.

Twenty/Twenty is about a handcrafted pair of glasses that bends light and the inventor John Paul Bates can now see twenty minutes into the future. Looking only that far, his life becomes troubled and chaotic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796077551

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Copyright © 2020 by John Plumb.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/10/2019

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CONTENTS

Book I—TIME WITHOUT MOTION

Chapter 1 Genesis

Chapter 2 Entering the Zone

Chapter 3 The Day After

Chapter 4 Telling Willy

Chapter 5 The FBI

Chapter 6 Back in Benton, Arkansas

Chapter 7 Making More of Everything

Chapter 8 The Metropolitan

Chapter 9 Looking for a Break!

Chapter 10 Trying Out the Second Set

Chapter 11 The Response

Chapter 12 Onward and Upward

Chapter 13 The Big Score

Chapter 14 The Big Boys Arrive

Chapter 15 The Meeting with Mr. C.

Chapter 16 Back at HQ

Chapter 17 The Getaway

Chapter 18 Meeting Mr. Bill

Chapter 19 The Legacy Lives On

Book II—THE HOUSE OF TIME

Chapter 1 The House of Time

Chapter 2 All Aboard

Chapter 3 The First Ten

Chapter 4 The Return

Chapter 5 The Second Coming

Chapter 6 The Betrayal

Chapter 7 1885, Here We Come!

Chapter 8 The Turn of the Century

Chapter 9 1915

Chapter 10 1925 Roars

Chapter 11 1935

Chapter 12 1975 and Beyond

Chapter 13 Another Century

Chapter 14 A New Turn on the Story

Chapter 15 The Big Bang

Book III—TWENTY/TWENTY

Chapter 1 The Big Idea

Chapter 2 Money, Money

Chapter 3 Surprise of a Lifetime

Chapter 4 On Our Way

Chapter 5 We Arrived Alive

Chapter 6 The Big Score

Chapter 7 Our Problems Begin

Chapter 8 On Our Way Home

Chapter 9 Big Bad Things Start

Chapter 10 The FBI in Cleveland

Chapter 11 Back at the Ranch

Chapter 12 Apian in Vegas

Chapter 13 A Week of Worry!

Chapter 14 The Morning Has Come

Chapter 15 The Good News

Chapter 16 Is It Really Over?

Chapter 17 But Wait There’s More!

ACCIDENTS IN TIME

TIME WITHOUT MOTION

BOOK I

To Cindy for putting up with me and

encouraging me to write

CHAPTER 1

Genesis

M y name is Mickey Manco. You, being a level-headed person, may not want to believe what I’m about to tell you. Looking back at it now, I sometimes find it hard to believe it myself. I’m just your average run-of-the-mill person—nothing special about me.

I woke up one chilly Sunday morning in April just before dawn. I stared at the clock on my nightstand: it read five thirty. I knew I’d never get back to sleep. With bones groaning, I got up and limped over and got ready to take a shower. My leg was aching as it often did in cold weather. The warm shower helped tremendously. As the heat of the shower wore off, I then donned my usual attire for a cold day: jeans and a black T-shirt with a pocket. With little speed, I made my way to the kitchen to make myself some coffee and fix myself a fried egg with toast.

Little did I know that I would start down a road that would lead to something that would change my life and the lives of others forever. I would lead them down a dark path that would end in death for some. For others, it would change them for decades to come. My daily routines would now be impossible to maintain.

I was raised by normal parents. My father worked at a very large grocery store chain named Albertsons. The store was like a mini Walmart; it had a little of everything. He was the manager of the store here in Benton—been so for as long as I could remember. My father made a good living. Like most postwar wives, my mom worked as well. She worked at the telephone company doing God only knows what. But both had great retirement plans. My father retired first at the age of sixty-two, and my mother a year later at the same age. They moved to Tampa, Florida, because I believe it is the law that old people must move to Florida.

My father plays golf, and my mom does a lot of reading and knitting scarves for me. Once a week, she will play shuffleboard with the gals around their street. I go to see them as often as I could, perhaps once a year. They have a bigger house now in Florida than they did in Benton where they raised me. They both are living the good life, and they deserve it. They’re both tanned, and they have cocktails at 2:00 p.m. each day with their new friends.

When I call them, usually once a week, they would have to tell me all the latest gossip around their little gated community. Dad’s newest toy had been an RV. They were going to see America. That was short-lived because he had a heart attack up in Maine. He needed a triple bypass. When he was well enough to travel, I flew up to drive them back home to Tampa. The RV became mine. I did not want it, but it is hard to say no to my father. He taught me to be honest, faithful, and to work hard, and good things would happen. After hearing what I’m about to tell you, tell me if you believe it’s true.

Getting back to my story. I’m here to tell you that prior to them leaving Benton, Arkansas, I did my four years in the navy serving my country. That is where I learned my trade of welding and compounding metals. Which now makes me wish I had been an electrician. First, because I would be able to walk without a limp. About a year ago, a large half-an-inch-thick plate of steel fell on my left leg. It was up against the wall, and I tried to retrieve a smaller plate of steel that was behind it and I leaned it too far forward, and down it came. I lay there for about three hours in pain before I was discovered by my friend John who just happened to stop by. The fire and rescue team came and got me out from underneath it. The hospital did their best to fix my shattered left leg; however, it still left me with a limp. I was in surgery for five and a half hours while they tried to put the shattered pieces back together.

Second, if I had become an electrician, my life would be spared the evil that is to come. Most all the trouble was of my own making.

When I got out of the navy, my parents moved to Tampa. They gave me the house without a mortgage. The first thing I did was to take out a first mortgage to buy all the tools that I needed to start up my new welding business.

I went on and got an associate’s degree in business from a junior college here in Benton. Doing it all at night while I established my business, it took me four years to graduate. I maintained a B average. At the time, I was planning on going on to get a four-year degree. Then we were all on break from class, and one time, I overheard a few guys talking about how much money they were going to make after they got a bachelor’s degree. They were bragging about $47,000 a year. Well, hell, I was already making $85,000 as a welder in my backyard. I never went back to school.

I started down this road of destruction on that chilly Sunday morning when I tried to invent a new type of bearing. I had been repairing my old generator for what seemed to be the thousandth time. Mind you, I had enough money to buy a new one; but I’m not the type to throw things out. I believe that there is enough crap in our landfills. I also believe we should maintain what we have and not be a part of such a disposable world.

While I was looking at the need for a new bearing, suddenly, out of the blue, a revolutionary idea came to me. Would it not be a far-reaching and an exciting invention if bearings could be magnetized? Just like the new monorails. The trains that float on magnetized rails and do not touch the rail.

One ring of the bearing could be charged positive and the other negative. With this concept applied to bearings, there would be no need for the steel ball bearings. Therefore, no wear factor. These magnetic bearings would last forever!

I could make a fortune and be famous all at the same time. Manco bearings! Has a nice ring to it, does it not? Up until then, all my talents have been wasted just casting metal and welding different types in my backyard. Now I was on to something big.

In the navy, I was certified to weld thirty-two base metals in all positions. Working out of my garage, I had no need for such talents. Like most people, I wanted more out of life. I’m not altogether sure what I wanted, but it was more than working out of my backyard. Perhaps a larger manufacturing company with many employees. In a large building that I owned.

Being in what seemed to be a manic state, I jumped right in, not wasting any time to think it through. I set out to make two highly charged rings that could fit inside of each other. That was my Sunday, and it was the beginning of my troubles and where my adventure begins. Life as I knew it would never be the same again.

Working on the project all day into the evening hours, I soon learned that in order to make this type of rings, I needed to compound a different type of metal. I needed to start with a compound of metal that did not yet exist. This was not new to me because I have done this type of metal working most of my life for a living.

It took a lot of work, but I started compounding different metals together. I had begun doing this type of work when I was in the navy on a repair ship.

The ship was the USS Bushnell (AS-15)—a submarine tender. We called it the Burning Bush because of all the fires we had on board. I accidentally started a few myself. Also, it was called Building 15 because it never went anywhere. At the time, I worked in the welding shop repairing the pig boats that were tied up next to us. We called them pig boats because the submarines smelled so bad. The reason they smelled was the fact that the crew could not take regular showers because of the shortage of water on board. When they were under way, the AC did not work well, so there was a lot of sweat to go around. The odor never went away.

The only good thing about being stationed on the Burning Bush was that we were docked in Key West, Florida, and that’s where I met my wife-to-be.

She was in a bikini on the west beach of Key West the first time I saw her. Like always, it was hot and humid that day. I was used to it; she was not. When I saw her, I was instantly in love with her. It was a case of love at first sight.

She had long light brown hair and had a great figure. Her breasts were on the small side, which was one of the things I liked about her. I was not into large beasty breasts.

Normally, I would have combed the beaches looking for my next conquest. But not this day. She was lying down soaking up the sun. I sat down next to her and struck up a conversion. Her name was Sarah. There was a not-so-pretty girl on the other side of Sarah.

After a lot of small talk about the weather and what I did for a living, I found out she sold real estate. After about forty-five minutes of chitchat, I then got up the nerve to ask her out to dinner. With what seemed to be great excitement, she said, Yes.

As it turned out, she too was from Arkansas. She lived just outside Little Rock, in a small town called Sherwood. I lived not far away, just a little south in Benton. In the same house I grew up in. Sarah had come down with her friend Linda, and that was a little bit of a problem because I found it hard to be alone with her. But we did work around it. More times than not, we let her fend for herself. I tried to fix Linda up with a fellow shipmate. Turns out she had a boyfriend back in Arkansas and would not entertain the idea of going out with someone else, even for just a week. With Linda now in tow, I took Sarah on the conch train that ran around the island guiding tourists. I also took the both of them to the Hemingway house. After a week of wining and dining Sarah on this small island, she went home. I had even brought her on board the ship to see where I worked and to have lunch in the mess hall. All the sailors’ eyes were on her as I gave her a tour of the ship.

When she left, I told her that I would write and call her, and so I did. I had one more year left, and I would be out of the navy for good. I was hoping that she would wait for me. I had thought briefly about a career, but that definitely ended when I met Sarah. My thoughts now were to live happily ever after with Sarah’s five-foot-six frame by my side. The letters and phone calls flowed.

It was during this letter-writing period that I really got to know Sarah. She had tried to go to college but dropped out. She said that studying was not her thing, and she partied way too much. She told me that she went from job to job. She even tried waitressing at Barn’s, a well-known steakhouse around Little Rock. She started selling real estate and found she liked it. However, making enough money was not that easy. She said that it was feast or famine—that was why she still lived with her parents.

Within a year after my return, we were married. The wedding was a grand affair. Both our parents went all out. There were at least a hundred and twenty people there. It was the first time in a very long time that I had been in a church. The reception was at the Drake Hotel in downtown Little Rock. It was in their main ballroom, where they did all their large receptions. The room had a vaulted ceiling with crystal chandeliers hanging down. All the wood, work was trimmed in gold. The room gave everyone a sense that they were part of high society. It had a long bar at one end, and drinks flowed on the open bar that afternoon and evening, well until midnight. Many guests ended up staying in the hotel due to the amount they drank.

The next day, we left for our honeymoon in Nassau. It was the first time Sarah was out of the country. I, on the other hand, had spent my first two years on a ship that went all over the Mediterranean. I had been to many countries. I’d had a lot of drunken escapades, many of which I’m not proud of. Like the time I broke into a women’s prison in Greece. Not my finest hour. My favorite places were Athens and North Africa.

At the time, Nassau was all we could afford, and it was the break we both needed. We had a suite in Paradise Island. We both enjoyed the casino where Sarah won $900 on the slot machines. The noise of the casino was exciting and quite intoxicating. With all the people trying to win it big and the clatter of the bells ringing from the slots. I played blackjack and won as well. Not as much as Sarah. It was pure luck that I had won because it was my first time in a casino. However, $700 was a tidy sum of money.

We went to the straw market, where Sarah had her hair braded like that of the natives. I bought a flowered shirt that I never had the occasion to wear again. All in all, we had a great time. After the honeymoon, Sarah moved in with me in my house in Benton. She continued selling real estate. Again, money was not always forthcoming, but we had more than enough to get by on, and it kept her mind occupied. Sarah liked to read a lot, and soon, after a few years, she had to start wearing glasses. She thought she was getting old. I told her that it made her look scholarly. Everything was good with us until that day that my life fell apart—when she died at the hand of a drunk driver. It’s been three years since she passed away.

Anyway to get back to the story. After several attempts at casting the right metals together, I started bringing the rings to my friend Willy. He had the equipment to highly magnetize them. It wasn’t his equipment; it was at his place of employment, the Bar Metal Works! Willy told people that he worked for BMW. I guess this was supposed to impress everyone.

Willy would magnetize these for me on the sly, after hours. I just had to bring him a fifth of rum. As far as friends go, Willy and I went way back. All the way back to our early high school days, to be exact.

What brought us together was because at that time, we both smoked. We would stand just off school grounds and smoke until the last bell would ring. Then we would go running into homeroom. We got to know each other very well. We both tried out for football and made the team.

Willy’s hair was not typical of a white person. It was like he had stuck his finger in a light socket. Also, of late, Willy hasn’t been into exercising these days. So he’s a tad overweight now. A tad being forty pounds! He now had a Dunlap: his belly Dunlap over his belt. He was shorter than me, standing about five foot eight.

He wasn’t always overweight. In high school when we both played football, we were in shape. The chicks loved us. We used to compete to see who could score the most on and off the field. Willy and I played defensive linemen, so we did not score any points on the field. All we did was cause fumbles. Off the field was with the most girls, if you get my drift By the time we graduated, we were tied twelve to twelve with off-the-field points.

Willy always insisted that he beat me because one of his conquests was a teacher. Ms. O’Brian! Personally, I wouldn’t have done her with anybody’s penis. She had a mole that was in the shape of Ohio on her left cheek. However, aside from that one defect, she was relatively plain and had thinning hair and was overweight for such a young teacher. I, on the other hand, did the one with the biggest breasts, even though large ones were not my thing. I had gotten Kate, and she had some monster ones, the largest in the school. They say anything more than a mouthful is wasted. I’m here to tell you she had a lot of waste.

I know I beat Willy because of the way we kept track of all the girls we went all the way with. At the end of our dates, we would take out our fingernail clippers and cut the tags off their bras. We simply told the gals that we were going to keep it in our wallets to remind us of how much we cared for them. Can you believe they all believed it! High school girls—go figure.

I’ll tell you what really pissed Willy off: Sylvia Benders. She wore the same bra on a date with him that she had with me once before. I had already clipped the tag. I let him sweat it out for a while. I had fun busting his chops telling him that it didn’t count.

There was no proof! I boasted.

I did finally give him the benefit of the doubt that he had gotten her. It was mostly because he described her birthmark. The funny-shaped one that was down under by the party spot.

I digress. Let me get back to my troubles. Most all the rings I made turned out to be almost but not quite. In other words, they failed. They didn’t even pass my simple test of just forcing them together by hand.

There was one set of rings that did work OK in my test machine for about thirty-six hours. However, the metal cracked, and they flew apart, hitting me in my safety glasses. Thank goodness I had them on. Despite that close call, I was spurred on. I tried repeatedly to get the compound just right. Days had turned into months.

What was about to happen next, no one could have expected. I made a metal alloy that should not have stayed together, but it had the properties that were best for magnetizing.

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It was bromide induced and laced with red oxide. To this day, I do not know how I got all the components to stay together and become a solid casting. It was my nineteenth attempt. I know in my heart that I probably could not make these again. I’m telling you this now so no one would ever ask me to make them again because they are evil! They ended up corrupting me and many more like me. People died on my watch.

I had always prided myself on my honesty. My father instilled that in me. For example, I always counted my change in a store. Not to see if they cheated me but, rather, if a casher gave me too much change, I would return the extra back to them. I know that they must balance their cash draw at the end of the day, or it would come out of their pocket.

One time, I was at the bank’s drive-thru, and I withdrew a hundred bucks. I counted the money in front of the teller and showed her that she had given me an extra twenty-dollar bill. She then screamed at me to give it back. Well, hell, that was the reason I showed her, so she would understand why I was about to give her some money back. She treated me like I was a thief. This will help you understand my hatred and actions later.

Anyway, after I poured this particular casting, I tempered it in oil, so it would not fly apart like the other one did. As usual, I took the two parts to Willy with a bottle of his favorite rum, the dark kind.

Talking to Willy, even for a few