Time for a Change

By Chris Corrente

Isaac is a teenager who’s been unhappy most of his young life. When his father died tragically while time traveling through history, his only child, Isaac, inherited his property and his time machine. As Isaac quickly sold the property to acquire IPO stocks from the mid-1970s, suddenly, the young man became a multimillionaire in today’s timeline. The youth also inherited his father’s addictive personality. Isaac overindulged to the extreme, which led to a hedonistic lifestyle and tragic results. Isaac then decided to help people avoid misfortune. However, the pushback from the space-time continuum often led to deadly consequences. After many trials and errors, Isaac went after simpler time travels to find happiness for himself. With his machine, he searched through the ages to earn the love of a fine woman. Once he was a high school loser, but now with his time machine, there’s always time for a change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662439681

Book preview

Chapter 1

My name is Newton Isaac Tudor, Newt for short, and I’m the second-time traveler this world has never known. My father, Joseph Tudor, was the first to travel time, also the first to die doing what he loved to do. I have just returned from my fifth excursion in time, which was cut short due to an encounter with some very nasty people. This is a true record of my ongoing experiments with time. I have just spent the last seven months, from March 22, 2015 to October 20, 2015, in an alternate timeline. Both my uncle and father built a perfect time machine over decades of hard work. I inherited the machine and plan to use it in order to find some measure of happiness in my dismal young life. My quest for a better life started with my great-uncle Newton Tudor’s idea to build a machine that could make the theory of time travel a reality. Uncle Newton joined the Air Force during the Korean War and rose to the rank of flight captain of jet fighters. In 1955, he was discharged and soon landed an R+D job at Northrup and moved to Palmdale, California, near Edwards AFB. During every spare moment from work, he developed a revolutionary fuel injection system for jets. He got a patent and eventually sold the rights to the Air Force and received twenty million dollars. He then concentrated his efforts into building his fantasy, a time machine, which he worked on for the rest of his life. He died in 1982, leaving all to his only heir, Joseph, my dad, which included all his papers, blueprints, a scale model prototype time machine, and his house and lab plus eight million bucks. My dad also inherited a most vital power source: enriched plutonium. My uncle had purchased the plutonium for five million in gold bullion bars from an ex-Nazi scientist named Hahn in Argentina. The plutonium was then processed there into atomic slugs. Each slug, of which there were ninety-two, was capable of a round-trip time venture.

My father, Joe, was an excellent student who showed great promise with computers. With his near-perfect grades and money from his trust fund, Joe got a master’s degree from MIT in computer science. He also acquired a bad addiction to alcohol during his sophomore year. After graduation, he quickly found a job at a computer firm and, in his spare time, worked diligently on the time machine. He started by updating the components with state-of-the-art chips for the time control remote. The hardest part was developing the gossamer net that attached to the titanium base. The net was made up of very fine tungsten fibers coated with pure gold. The net was woven into a sleeping bag shape and completely encased the traveler like a cocoon. When the device was powered up by the atomic slug, a plasma field created a mini black hole to travel back and forth through time.

In the meantime, Joe quit his computer job and moved to Palmdale, where he started working for Northrup as a programmer. There he met my mother, Carina; she worked at a restaurant as a hostess. My dad went there almost every morning for breakfast. He became very smitten with her petite blond looks and flirted every time he saw her. Eventually, she responded and went out on a date with him to nightclubs and dance halls. He drank a lot but was still charming, and they got married a year later. I came along a year and a half afterward. We then moved into his house on the outskirts of town. The house wasn’t grand, but there was five acres of land with a workshop off to the side where Joe continued to refine his machine. He began to spend most of his spare time in the workshop, and when he was done, he drank. A couple of times, he became violent to my mother, slapping her when she complained about his ignoring us. He denied having a drinking problem and refused to seek help. After five years of ups and downs, my mom had enough of the drama and filed for a divorce. Ironically, after we moved out, he sobered up and finally finished the time machine after sixteen years of hard work.

Meanwhile, my mom and I moved to Los Olivos, California, to my aunt’s house. We stayed there only two months until my mother got a waitress job at a burger barn diner. My mom rented us a small two-bedroom apartment, and I started school in a rural elementary school. Times were tough for us as my mother refused alimony from my father. I, however, was set up with a ten-thousand-a-year trust fund from my dad until I turned twenty-one, when I would get an undisclosed amount. I was always a very good student; learning came easy, and the teachers liked me for some reason. I wished my fellow students felt the same because I suffered a lot of physical and mental pain throughout my entire school years. First of all my name was Newton Isaac Tudor, Newt for short. Also, I was short and slight, the double death! All day I heard, She turned him into a newt, only he got better—he wasn’t green! The redneck bullies had a field day with their taunting and tossing me into the dumpsters. My life became a living hell at school. And as I got into my teens, my face looked like a greasy pepperoni pizza. I never had a girlfriend or any social life. Growing up, I had only one friend, a loser like me named Ralph, and he had no friends. I was so glad to graduate high school and soon found a job as a dishwasher in my mom’s diner.

In the meantime, as I was finishing up high school, my dad put the last nut and bolt on his machine. He made a remote control device that regulated the time coordinates, no larger than a standard universal TV controller, also a round titanium base that held the atomic slug and all the rest of the mechanicals. The entire 45# package fit neatly into a custom-made backpack for ultimate mobility. My father also considered safety when he installed fail-safe software that wouldn’t let a traveler appear inside a wall or other unsafe areas. If a danger signal appeared on the controller, the person would automatically be warned not to go. He was not ready for time travels, of which he decided to use a small rabbit. He placed the rabbit on the round base along with one of the two synchronized stopwatches. The time controller was set for five minutes into the future. The net was closed over the rabbit, and he pressed one button, and everything vanished. My father paced anxiously in his lab until the machine popped back in time. He then lowered the mesh and checked the watch: only a few seconds had passed. The rabbit then hopped off the base, completely unharmed. He was so happy he then shouted for joy at his success. All the years of hard work and most of his inheritance paid off. He couldn’t wait for his turn to travel and started planning the times when he wanted to go.

Joe was an American history buff, so he planned various travels to sites that played a big part in making the US what it is today. He decided on witnessing the First Battle of Bull Run from the war between the states in Manassas, Virginia. Since his machine wasn’t a transporter, he booked a flight and rented a car to get to the general area. He then time-traveled from a nearby restroom and walked to a small hill overlooking the battle site. He hung around with other lookie-loos waiting for the Civil War to start when the Union Army was routed and started running in all directions. He was ready for it and quickly retreated behind a tree to his machine and later flew back to his lab, unharmed.

Joe’s next excursion was to visit San Francisco in 1906. He arrived on the morning of the big quake and made his way to the outskirts to view the temblor from a safe vantage point. When the quake struck, it was quite a shock—the violence was huge and kept going on and on. He saw many buildings collapse and people panicking in the streets. He made his way among the rubbled streets and heard many voices crying and screaming for help; he knew that he must not help anyone or else history could be changed forever. Realizing the consequences of any action on his part to try and save the trapped people made him very depressed, so he left after only one hour in the ruined city.

My father’s next time travel was to Dallas on November ’63. He first thought about going to Ford’s Theater in 1865 but changed his mind because of the close proximity of Lincoln’s shooting. The thought of sitting close to the president being head-shot was too much, so he headed for the grassy knoll. He picked a spot that had a view of the book depository and of Kennedy’s motorcade. He noticed nothing amiss behind the fence, just a few people smoking and waiting for the big Lincoln to arrive. When the car came into view, Joe looked up to the sixth floor of the depository and saw the three muzzle flashes that ended Kennedy’s life and changed America’s course forever.

My dad’s fourth and final journey was to Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Whenever he took a time travel, he always wore a pin-body camera to record his experiences. This is how I found out about his disastrous last trip. Joe picked out a spot on a flat field above the harbor on that infamous December morning. He watched the first wave of zeros and dive bombers attack battleship row. When the Arizona was blown out of the water, he had to turn away. The sheer violence and destruction before him were worse than any movie he ever saw. Toward the end of the first attack of planes, a dive bomber was hit by some ground flack and caught fire. The plane fled away from the ships to where my father was watching and jettisoned its last remaining bomb twenty feet from him. Shrapnel pierced my dad’s chest and shoulder and knocked him ten feet away. When he recovered, he staggered to his machine hidden in some bushes, barely able to make his escape to the present. He then used his cell phone to call a cab to go to a hospital. The cabbie helped him load his backpack, carrying my father in his arms. Unfortunately, he died at the hospital of a collapsed lung and loss of blood. That afternoon, the police tried to question him about his injuries, but he slipped into a comatose state after surgery. The authorities closed their case and shipped his coffin and machine back to California where my mother and I received them. Lucky for me, I got back everything my dad took to Hawaii. The most important items were the machine, pin camera, and data recorder I found hidden in his vest. His clothes were cut off in the ER and stored in the locker, but the police had no chance to search them. If they had, it would have been front-page news, and my tale wouldn’t have been told.

My father fortunately made a will that gave everything to myself. I received a detailed operating manual on the time machine and many journals, computer disks, and videos of his previous travels. I also received the house and workshop, where I started my own experiments in time travel.

Chapter 2

After the funeral, I moved into the house in Palmdale, California, and began studying all the material left to me. It took over two months to fully grasp what my dad had accomplished during all those years locked away in his lab. I had no idea growing up what he was doing as he told no one in our family what he did in his spare time. With utmost care, I proceeded to load the atomic slugs I got from the lead-lined safe and started my own travel experiments.

My first trials were of short-duration trips, only ten minutes into the future and one hour into the past. Back and forth until I got the hang of them. I set the time travels on the keypad and pushed one button to preset the return time for a quick exit if necessary. I just followed the instructions that my father wrote and had no problems at all. My dad’s previous trips were in the interest of history. But mine were for me to become a wealthy young man.

The majority of my life I lived like a pauper, first in Palmdale in the Mojave Desert, then in Los Olivos out in the boonies of a dry desolate area. I lived with my mom in a small dirty apartment and felt like a total loser. I longed for the good life like I saw on TV and the movies. Therefore, I knew that it was time for a change. I did some research into the stock market and spotted an IPO of a little American fruit company from over thirty years past. By selling my dad’s old Palmdale house and land, I raised 340,000. I converted the majority of the money into bearer bonds and transported them with me.

I then made a quick jaunt back in time to a stock brokerage firm. There I bought the stock with the stipulation to reinvest the dividends in more stocks. To my amazement, the stocks in 2015 were worth in excess of 32 million and change. I was finally rich and ordered my broker to sell off one-third of my stock. Then I began planning my new life in a search for happiness.

The first thing on my list to buy was a house, so I had a realtor show me some houses in the Malibu area. The one I picked was a steel-and-marble mansion, next door to an A-list actor. It was a split-level, five-bedroom, six-bath home right on the beach. The property cost a cool eight million for a California cottage. I next started working out with a personal trainer six times a week in order to bulk up. I also went to a Hollywood dermatologist to take care of my zit face. After three months of my regimen, I put on twenty pounds of muscle, and my face cleared right up. I finally looked around rodeo drive and purchased an entirely new wardrobe of classy clothes. Finally, I looked like I stood a chance of getting a girlfriend and losing my virginity at last. While I did these things, I had a contractor convert a walk-in closet into a panic room. That was where I moved my lead-lined safe containing the atomic slugs. I also bought a small fire safe to hold the nearly one million in cash I wanted to have on hand, just for fun.

I began to settle into my new life. One day, my next-door neighbor, the actor, invited me to a movie-wrap party at his house. There was excitement in the air; he told me there would be many starlets, A-listers, and Hollywood suits to hang with. What a party it was, like nothing I’d ever seen except in the movies. The women were all beautiful, the champagne was Dom, and they had a live rock band. I met a starlet named Jennifer, a petite blonde with a great body and pretty face. After many glasses of champagne, I finally got up the courage to take her to my house and make love. She spent that night and most of the following day with me; it was lust at first sight. I was the happiest I’d been in my short life; Newt was dead, and I began calling myself Isaac to everyone around.

After a few weeks of dating Jen, I asked her to move in with me, and she readily agreed. I had leased a BMW 5 Series, but it seemed that the maids in Malibu all drove them. I decided to get some cars to fit my lifestyle. The cars I bought were a brand-new Ferrari 488 GTS, one black cabrio, and one red coupe. What a thrill to put those 660-horsepower cars through their paces. Jen mostly drove the cabrio and really looked great tooling around PCH in style. She also lent a hand in furnishing my house. Jennifer bought designer furniture, objets d’ arte, and fixtures to make my house very comfortable and warm. I was so happy with the way my life was then; the love and security Jen gave me were the best.

Jennifer was between acting jobs. She had a month off, so we decided to do a road trip up Highway 1. I made reservations for a weekend in Carmel at a romantic bed and breakfast, and we left on Wednesday to spend a few days visiting my mom. As a surprise, I bought my mom a new Toyota Camry. Jen followed me in the convertible Ferrari to my mom’s work at the diner. I introduced Jen to my mother. The look on my mom’s face was priceless as I handed her the keys to the Camry. She had been driving a decrepit Oldsmobile at least fifteen years old, so I told her to junk it and drive in style on me. My mom had never seen me with any girlfriends and exclaimed what a beautiful girl Jen was. They both hit it off very well, so I took both my girls out to a fine dinner and a movie. We spent the next couple of days catching up and just having fun. I explained the Ferraris as a splurge purchase, but I was careful not to tell them about the machine; they assumed my inheritance paid for all the toys and my house. All too soon, it was time to go to Carmel, and we had a fine vacation stay at the four-star B+B. I was really falling for Jen. When I look back on those first months together, I realized they were our salad days, but trouble was soon to follow.

Chapter 3

Jennifer still had three weeks left before her movie was to start, so we decided to tour the wine regions of Europe. We flew there in a private jet and set up the itinerary to get educated on the fine art of wine making. We started out in Burgundy Province and toured many wineries in the first week. The wine and food were fantastic, and we even stayed two days in a castle. Next we went to the champagne region where we toasted many times with the finest champagnes to our relationship and good fortune. Even though I started getting bad hangovers, I still drank mimosas at breakfast and continued to drink wine throughout the days. After a week in France, we left for Italy. We toured their museums, drank fine wines, and ate gourmet Italian foods till we practically burst. Jen had to get back to California to do some preproduction work, so we pulled ourselves away from Europe’s grasp and returned home. I felt very close to Jen and was contemplating getting engaged. Jen was my true love, and I hoped she felt the same way about me. That trip to Europe was my first real binge of drinking liquor; growing up, I had an occasional beer or two, but I never got drunk daily like I was doing then. Now it seemed I had to get drunk every time I could, and Jen’s harping on me to moderate wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I had to drink at least two bottles of wine a day; so what, it made me feel great, and I could afford the very best.

The Labor Day weekend was when things really started going south for us. Jen had only one day off that weekend, a Sunday, so we planned to have a party. She invited some starlets from her new picture, and I invited my neighbors around Malibu Beach. We planned on having thirty people come and have Spago cater the party. Unfortunately, more than seventy showed up, so we had pizzas for the latecomers. Also, we ordered three cases of champagne, four cases of various wines, and three cases of hard liquor. I started drinking early and often that night and had my valet-security man make another booze run to keep all the partiers happy. Jen never was much of a drinker. Usually two glasses did it for her, so she went to bed at 10:30 because of her wake-up call at five thirty in the morning. By 11:00 p.m., I was ready to pass out, but one random partier took me aside and offered me some coke. I had never tried it, but as soon as I did some lines, I was again the life of the party. The coke made me feel fantastic, and I had him sell me an ounce right then. He told me his name was Carlos Avila, and I could get more coke anytime I wanted. I passed around a mirror to my guests and made many people happy. I stayed up all night partying and didn’t get to sleep until after Jen left for the studio at 6:30 a.m. The next week went by in a blur for me; I totally went overboard with the coke as I bought some nearly every day. A lot of people started hanging around till all the coke that I got from Carlos was snorted. It was a nonstop party, and I footed the bill. I began neglecting Jen and stopped exercising in order to stay high as much as possible. Carlos one day brought over some crack, which after the first hit made me feel like Superman. I kept smoking and drinking mass quantities until one night Jen woke up and caught Carlos and I smoking a crack pipe. Jen flipped out.

What the hell’s up? You’re smoking crack. Are you addicted? Jen asked.

No way, I’m just trying it for kicks. I can stop anytime I want to!

You have a choice, me or the drugs? If we get busted, I’ll lose my job.

I choose you, babe. Carlos, get your stuff, and leave now.

I did quit for one day, but the pipe kept calling me, so I bought some more and tried to keep it a secret. A couple of days later, Jen found me asleep on the couch with a pipe and some coke left on the coffee table. We had a long yelling match, and we both said many bad things to each other. The worst thing I told her was to pack her clothes and never come back. An hour after she left, I kept hearing the last things she said. I love you, but I can’t live with you this way. If we get arrested here for crack, my career as an actress could be ruined. I’m very serious about it and can’t take any chances being around your drugs. Later, I partied the night away with my new friends, trying to forget what I had lost by making my questionable choice.

I soon settled into a pattern; Carlos would come by almost daily with some crack. I paid him cash from my safe, and everyone was happy, I kept telling myself. My exercise workout ceased as I was too burned out to even try, and my zits came back. With a vengeance. I stopped looking so hot as I was before; Newt was back, but I still had sex partners as long as I supplied the booze and drugs. The weeks flew by, but I still had regrets about Jen and the life we had together.

One Thursday night, Carlos and I were doing the usual things, drinking and smoking along with five other partiers. A knock came on the door, and my valet/security man James answered the door. I was over by the wet bar with Carlos opening some champagne when two large men in ski masks burst in and yelled, Get down on the floor. This is a robbery! I dropped the bottle, and Carlos took off for the patio. My man James grappled with one of the robbers. The leader was armed with a Glock and started shooting at Carlos, who took two rounds in his back. I took the opportunity to run for my bedroom and panic room within. As I hit the six stairs