No Time To Waste: From Under the Sun, #2

By Kordel Lentine

Winner of IndieReader's 2022 Discover Award for Science Fiction*

 

A B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree

 

Top Shelf Magazine's 2021 First Place Winner for "Young Adult Sci-Fi"*

 

In this sequel to Beyond the Bowling Ball Bombing, Terrance returns from the future to a world without Stanley. With Blaire's help, he uses futuristic technology to become well-known in school as the host of Football Field Games, the most popular collection of virtual reality games in history. 

 

Unfortunately, it is a charmed life that plays out under a dark shadow. Terrance and Blaire realize that the only way to prevent Stanley from returning to take control of their lives is to locate his hidden lab. That is a task that is easier said than done, and time is running out. Terrance accidentally left evidence in Stanley's bedroom that makes him the prime suspect in Stanley's unexplained disappearance, and authorities, who are interested in more than just Stanley, are closing in. 

 

However, Terrance is hatching a plan that could negate Stanley's disappearance and make himself grow up rich and popular. If he can locate Stanley's lab, it just might solve all his problems. 

 

Or it might be the biggest mistake of his life.

 

*The all-in-one hardcover won IndieReader's 2022 Discovery Award for science fiction and was Top Shelf Magazine's 2021 first place winner for "Young Adult Sci-Fi." That story is also available in paperback and eBook as a trilogy, of which this is book #2 (of 3).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kordel Lentine
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953812049

Kordel Lentine

Kordel Lentine was the kind of high school freshman who once wrote a how-to paper about how to write a how-to paper. No kidding. It was the most boring paper ever written. Even worse, when the teacher offered bonus points for students to read their papers in front of the class, he volunteered, as though his A+ in the class needed a boost. As far as horrible public readings go, it was not quite on par with Vogon poetry (since no one had to gnaw a leg off in order to survive), but it was nonetheless quite dismal, both for him and for everyone else in the room who happened to have ears. Kordel still bemoans that he simply could not think of anything more interesting to write about that fit the assigned criteria. It was the first time that he shared something he wrote, but thankfully not the last. Now that Kordel gets to choose his own topics, he likes to write science fiction novels with time travel and digital dinosaurs and no sign of how-to papers as far as the mind can see.Kordel was born and raised in South Bend, IN where screaming at the top of your lungs at the TV during Notre Dame football games was a regular family event. He now lives in Kansas City and has five awesome children. Four of his children have flown the coop while Kordel’s brilliant wife still homeschools the remaining two. (No, that wasn’t a typo or bad math—sorry unnamed not-awesome child!). Kordel is a CPA, his best time solving the Rubik's Cube is 47 seconds, he has a black belt in Taekwondo, and he enjoys activities that can be shared with his family such as scuba diving, board games, riddles, digital scrapbooking, and amateur astronomy.

Book preview

No Time To Waste title page

From Under the Sun: No Time to Waste

Copyright © 2021 by Kordel Lentine, Aspilos Books, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews, but only insofar as the reviewers promise to painstakingly read the book all the way through before writing their reviews.

Cover and other images designed by Brandi Doane McCann at eBook Cover Designs.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents on this planet, or anywhere in the general vicinity of the nearest star, are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-953812-09-4 (hardcover)

Also available in paperback and eBook as a trilogy:

Book 1: 978-1-953812-00-1 (paperback), 978-1-953812-02-5 (Kindle)

Book 2: 978-1-953812-03-2 (paperback), 978-1-953812-05-6 (Kindle)

Book 3: 978-1-953812-06-3 (paperback), 978-1-953812-08-7 (Kindle)

Ordering information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the author at www.KordelLentine.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920971

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lentine, Kordel, 1972- author.

Title: No time to waste : from under the sun, book 2 / Kordel Lentine.

Description: Platte City, MO : Aspilos Books, 2021. | Series: From under the sun, bk. 2. | Summary: Terrance returns from the future to a charmed life but risks it all to try to solve his problems.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020921798 (print) | ISBN 978-1-953812-03-2 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-953812-04-9 (ebook : epub) | ISBN 978-1-953812-05-6 (ebook : mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Young adult fiction. | Science fiction. | CYAC: Teenagers--Fiction. | Time travel--Fiction. | Virtual reality--Fiction. | BISAC: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Science Fiction / Time Travel.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L46 No 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.L46 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]--dc23.

First Edition, 2021

Visit www.KordelLentine.com

For Sharen.

Though I was only able to share the first part of this book with you, your presence has been felt to the very end. You are dearly missed.

Contents

Author’s Warning

Book One Synopsis

Chapter 1 - Back from the Future

Chapter 2 - Catching Up

Chapter 3 - Bed Bugs Bite

Chapter 4 - Time-Cloning

Chapter 5 - The Search for Stanley’s Lab

Chapter 6 - Football Field Games

Chapter 7 - 3-D Dropt

Chapter 8 - Jack’s Turn

Chapter 9 - Dinosaur Stomp & Chomp

Chapter 10 - The First Breakthrough

Chapter 11 - Beneath Stanley’s House

Chapter 12 - Arrested Again

Chapter 13 - Blaire to the Rescue

Chapter 14 - The Final Clue

Chapter 15 - A Busy Cemetery

Chapter 16 - Buried Alive

Chapter 17 - Stanley’s Lab

Chapter 18 - Inside the Replicator

Chapter 19 - Hanauma Bay

Chapter 20 - Terrorist-Trouncing Terrance

Chapter 21 - One of the Worst Mistakes of His Life

Chapter 22 - A Terrible Clone

Chapter 23 - Desperate Pleas

Chapter 24 - An Unlikely Ally

Chapter 25 - Stanley’s Advice

Chapter 26 - Abort

Chapter 27 - Walter

Chapter 28 - A Reluctant Farewell

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Hat Tips & Easter Eggs

Terrance’s Story Continues…

Books by Kordel Lentine

About the Author

Author’s Warning

DON’T DO IT!

This is the second book in a series. If you have somehow stumbled onto it without reading the first book in this series, then it is imperative that you put this book away and read From Under the Sun: Beyond the Bowling Ball Bombing. Trust me—you will thank me later.

There are only a few scenarios where you should even consider reading the following synopsis. One possibility is that you have been kidnapped by radical terrorists and locked in a tower with only bread and water and a lifetime supply of chewing gum while they demand a ransom from your family in the form of a dozen bushels of albino guinea pigs. And after waiting for weeks inside your cell, you have read and reread everything you can find, and you keep coming back to this warning and dutifully stopping. If that is you, then I reluctantly give you my blessing to begin this series with the following synopsis. It pains me to think of how much you will miss by skipping the first book, but that would be better than rereading the ingredients on that chewing gum wrapper while letting this book go to waste.

Another possibility is that it has been a long time since you read Beyond the Bowling Ball Bombing, and you want to refresh your memory on the basics and where it left off. If that describes you, then feel free to proceed.

On the other hand, if you recently finished the first book and do not need a review, then you should probably skip the following synopsis and get right back into the story.

BOOK ONE SYNOPSIS

With his books still damp from being tossed in the toilet by his usual tormenters, Terrance walked home after his first day as a junior in high school. He thought that his troubles were done for the day until a bowling ball plunged out of the sky and almost killed him. He barely escaped the ensuing devastation that turned the surrounding suburban neighborhood into a disaster area. In the media frenzy that followed, the incident was dubbed the bowling ball bombing and overnight Terrance became an unlikely national figure and high school celebrity.

Experts were baffled by the incident while crackpots suggested theories that ranged from alien tractor beam malfunctions to government conspiracies. Most reasonable people, including Terrance, concluded that the world would never solve that mystery. Then Terrance received an unusual puzzle box with an inscription that claimed that he would learn the secret when he opened the box exactly five months after the bombing at 7:57 pm. He was shocked when the prediction came true and the box led him to a hidden lab where he met a boy named Stanley, who claimed that Terrance had unwittingly inspired the creation of time travel when they were in fourth grade together.

Terrance learned that the bowling ball bombing was an unfortunate byproduct of Stanley’s first experiments with time travel. After perfecting the process, Stanley decided to share the discovery with Terrance. Claiming that he owed Terrance a favor for almost killing him, he let Terrance choose to travel almost one hundred years into the future to try to find out how his life would turn out.

After arriving in the future, Terrance learned more about the virtual reality glasses, called NOKIs, that Stanley had lent him. While using his NOKIs to access library archives, he found an article that described how he had disappeared without a trace while still in high school and was later declared dead. He misinterpreted this mysterious disappearance as part of a sinister plot by Stanley, so he tried to flee for his life. When Stanley caught up with him, Terrance realized that he had drawn the wrong conclusions and that Stanley was not necessarily trying to harm him.

However, Stanley became irate when he found out that Terrance had shared everything that he learned with a classmate named Blaire. With an appallingly cold and calculated manner, Stanley described his plans to manipulate the past to prevent Terrance and Blaire from remaining friends, which included burning down Blaire’s house.

Before Terrance could try something desperate to prevent Stanley’s plans, they were interrupted by two police officers who had identified Stanley as a suspect in Terrance’s unsolved disappearance.

This brings us to the final scene in Book One:

…The officer was clearly becoming agitated. This was not helping. The time box was just a few feet away. If they would just turn their eyes for a moment, Terrance might be able to dive for it. He had another impulse that he acted on spontaneously without taking the time to think it through. This one had a good chance of getting him killed.

In order to cause a momentary distraction, Terrance suddenly yelled, Stanley, don’t do it! The officer standing by the box whirled to face Stanley. Terrance dove for the time box as soon as the officer turned his head. However, Terrance did not account for how quickly the officer could move. By the time Terrance reached the box, the officer was already pointing his gun at him.

It was too late to turn back. In one fluid motion Terrance tucked into a ball and pressed the four quick-release corners to open the time box. Just as he hoped, it instantly opened a time tunnel around him. Unfortunately, the officer’s gun, now pointed at Terrance’s chest, was just inside the radius of the tunnel. An invisible force suddenly grabbed the gun and yanked it out of the unsuspecting officer’s hand. This caused the trigger to pull against his finger and the gun went off.

Terrance felt a flash of intense pain in his chest, and then Terrance Brown was no more.

Chapter 1

A mysterious clock in the sky

Back from the Future

Terrance fell several inches, landing on something hard and pointy. He would have been worried about the sudden pain in his back, but he was preoccupied by the intense pain in his chest where the officer shot him. He tossed the time box aside and grabbed at his chest, feeling for a gaping flesh wound. That was a mistake. It was excruciating to touch. However, he did not feel a hole in his shirt, and he was not bleeding.

He took several deep breaths as he attempted to calm down, then gently unbuttoned his shirt to take a closer look. He found a large square bruise in the center of his chest that had already turned a grotesque shade of purple. It was the shape of the time box.

He rolled onto his side, wincing at the pain in his chest, and picked up the time box. He saw that the bullet had struck it on the bottom. It had suffered far less damage than Terrance would have expected. He mentally praised Stanley for the quality of his craftsmanship which had probably saved Terrance’s life. The box had a deep dent in the bottom, but otherwise looked fine. The hinge between the top and bottom parts was unaffected, and both screens appeared to work. He would want to take a closer look at the box soon, but first he needed to figure out where he was.

He was lying on his right side, apparently in someone’s bedroom. A pile of dirty laundry blocked his way, so he rolled back in the other direction to get up but instantly felt sharp pains in his back again. When he put both hands on the floor to help push himself to his feet, he felt a sudden sharp pain in the palm of his left hand.

He groaned in frustration then finished bumbling to his feet, acutely aware of the throbbing in his chest, as well as the new injuries to his back and left hand. Once he was standing, he was able to get a better view of his surroundings. He started with the sources of his new ailments.

He had apparently cut his hand on a broken ceramic bowl when he was getting up. It was a small cut, but blood was pooling quickly in the palm of his hand. He grabbed a white sock from the floor by his feet and gripped it in his left hand, applying pressure to the wound. He hoped it was a clean sock, but by the look of the room, he doubted it.

The pain in his back had been from a fork, sticking out of a bowl filled with the congealed remnants of raviolis. He twisted to look over his shoulder while pulling at his shirt in order to verify that he now had two large spaghetti sauce splotches on the back of it. At least he was able to verify that there were no holes in his shirt and that the fork had therefore not pierced his skin. It was a maneuver that his throbbing chest instantly regretted.

What a pigsty, thought Terrance. This room was the exact opposite of his own meticulously organized bedroom. Terrance had landed in the middle of a floor that was littered with clothes, papers, wrappers, and other debris. Dingy brown carpet showed through in a few places, but only a few. Most of the floor was covered with an opaque layer of filth. So was most of the bed. The room also contained a dresser, a chair, and a computer stand that appeared to serve as a small desk. They were all equally covered with clutter. Since this was the emergency destination chosen by Stanley’s time box, Terrance assumed that it must be Stanley’s bedroom.

A dull odor emanated from everywhere. It was probably related to the food items that were strewn about the room. Terrance counted three empty snack cake boxes among the rubbish, and no less than eight soda cans and bottles. Dirty dishes from at least four meals were scattered around the room. Candy wrappers were everywhere. How is that scrawny little guy not an obese blimp if he actually eats like this? wondered Terrance to himself.

He had heard somewhere that geniuses were often very messy people. Terrance had never really understood that concept, though. He figured that really smart people should know that living in the middle of a disorganized mess is a really stupid way to live. Terrance wondered if that statement would qualify as a simple observable fact, or if he was maybe being overly judgmental. He cast another glance at the surrounding chaos and muttered, Simple observable fact.

If sloppiness was proportional to intelligence, he suspected that Stanley might be even smarter than he thought. But how did it make any sense to plan on returning from the future onto a half-eaten bowl of raviolis? It occurred to Terrance that Stanley was probably not planning to arrive on his back. In fact, Terrance remembered that Stanley was not planning on coming back at all. He had intended to only send back the NOKIs with a record of Terrance’s trip. Then why did the time tunnel lead here and not to Stanley’s lab?

Terrance mentally debated the pros and cons of showing up in the lab instead of this bedroom. He felt that trying to understand the inner workings of Stanley’s brain was a code he might never crack. Terrance experienced a brief surge of panic as he wondered what time he had returned to, and if he might encounter an earlier version of Stanley. However, with a sudden flash of insight that showed that he was finally beginning to understand some of the basic mechanics of time travel, Terrance realized that if the time tunnel was supposed to bring back Stanley, it would be set for a time after they left, but if it was supposed to bring back the NOKIs, it would be set for a time before they left.

The alarm clock said that it was 6:24 pm. That was a couple hours after Terrance had warped to the future. Therefore, this must have been Stanley’s quick-escape destination, and no version of Stanley should be in existence at this time. Terrance decided that there must be a different way to open the box that would have let Stanley send back the NOKIs instead.

The awkwardness of his sudden presence in Stanley’s bedroom was just starting to sink in when he heard a voice calling from the end of the hallway that was visible through the half-open door.

Stanley, dear, are you alright? You asked me to check on you in a few minutes.

Oh no! thought Terrance. He quickly pushed the door shut and locked it, frantically wondering what he should do next. He scanned the room for exits or hiding places. There was one window. Hopefully Stanley’s room was on the ground floor.

Stanley’s mom knocked on the door. Is everything alright in there?

Uh-huh, said Terrance, trying his best to not sound like an intruder who had marooned her son in the distant future.

Was that supposed to be a yes or a no, Stanley?

This encounter suddenly made sense to Terrance. If Stanley had to use the emergency wimp-back escape option, it stood to reason that he could be in trouble and might even be injured. If he was seriously hurt and warped to the lab, he would be totally alone, without anyone to help or take him to the hospital. Code cracked, said Terrance, mentally patting himself on the back.

What was that, dear? asked Stanley’s mom through the door.

Oops. Terrance remained silent, wondering what to do next.

Stanley, if you are alright, and I can go back to making dinner, just grunt twice. She meant it as a joke.

Terrance grunted twice.

She gave a shrug that he could not see and went back to the kitchen.

Terrance listened to her footsteps as they retreated down the hallway. He thought she seemed to handle that whole interaction with far more patience than she should have. Of course, if she allowed Stanley to keep his room like this, she must be a very tolerant person.

Terrance realized with both guilt and rising panic that Stanley was now a missing person. As far as the world was concerned, he had disappeared without a trace and would not be returning. Maybe there was something he could do about that. Maybe not. Terrance did not know. He would wrestle with the guilt and possible options later. For now, it was important to get out of that bedroom without being seen.

As luck would have it, Stanley’s bedroom was on the first floor. Terrance had one leg out the window when he noticed the police officer’s gun blending into the chaos on the floor. He decided it would be a bad idea for a futuristic gun to be discovered in Stanley’s room once people began to investigate his disappearance. Of course, Terrance did not want to be seen carrying the gun either. After a short mental debate, he tucked the gun into the back of his waistline and pulled his shirt over it.

Terrance held the time box in one hand and closed the window with the other, wishing for a way to relock it from the outside. He glanced around to see if there was anyone on the street who might be able to later identify him. To his left, three boys were playing basketball in a driveway four doors down. To his right, a lady was watering her flower beds only two houses away. None of them appeared to have seen him climb out of Stanley’s window. Directly across the street was a large graveyard.

No one had seemed to notice Terrance yet, and he wanted to keep it that way until he got farther away from Stanley’s house. Since the cemetery had no fence around it, Terrance entered it directly in front of Stanley’s house. He made it out the other side without seeing another person, and then walked several blocks before coming to a bus stop.

Terrance’s heart was racing as he entered the bus and took a seat. No one seemed to be paying attention to him, so he tried to relax. The gun pressed against the back of the seat and jabbed into his tailbone. He tried to reposition it while doing his best not to shoot himself. He thought he had put the safety on before he tucked it into his pants, but he was not sure that he did it right. He had never touched a gun before.

After repositioning the gun, he glanced up and saw the bus driver looking at him through the mirror at the front of the bus. Terrance gave a nervous smile that the driver returned with a startled look followed by an intentional effort to stare at the road. This made Terrance uneasy. He kept glancing forward and looking at the mirror out of the corner of his eye, and it seemed to him that he saw the bus driver doing the same thing.

Terrance did not begin to relax until he arrived at the station and was waiting for the second bus that would take him a few blocks from his house. Even then, some of the bystanders on the platform seemed to be casting sideways glances in his direction.

When his bus pulled up, Terrance saw his reflection in one of the windows that sent a surge of panic through his brain. He saw happy faces where his eyes should be. Oh no! thought Terrance. I have been wearing my NOKIs this whole time! No wonder people were looking at me weird! He yanked them off as he entered the bus and took a seat.

He intentionally tried to slow his breathing while he evaluated the situation. Aside from wearing strange glasses, there was no reason for anyone else to suspect anything unusual about him, and he had gotten away from Stanley’s house without incident. Stanley’s mom knew that someone was in the room, but she had assumed that it was Stanley, who had apparently been there just a few minutes earlier. Hopefully that would not change. When Stanley ended up missing, they would find the bedroom door locked from the inside, and the window unlocked. Everyone would assume that Stanley left through the window on his own. Maybe they would think he ran away.

Terrance felt another gut-wrenching twinge of guilt. He would have to deal with that later. For now, it was enough that he had gotten away without leaving any traces of his visit to Stanley’s room, or any eyewitnesses who could describe anything out of the ordinary. He was wrong on both counts.

In Stanley’s bedroom, he had left behind more than he thought, and later that night a bus driver would send authorities video footage from his internal security camera showing that a teenager, who had gotten on the bus four blocks from Stanley’s house, had bent over to sit down and