TimeTuner: Rescue in Palau

By Michael W. Blevins

Palau, an island nation in the Western Pacific, is a tropical paradise mostly known to scuba divers. It is not a likely site of international intrigue and extraterrestrial doings.

Keola Santos, a clever engineer/inventor, uses his experimental TimeTuner to jump back a few hours and rescue a missing scuba diver, but that event triggers the hidden extraterrestrial INdez Federation to contact Keola. Although initially only concerned that someone on Earth had unwittingly tapped into Q-energy, the ETs ultimately find it necessary to team up with Keola, Megan, and Salik to follow clues that reveal a sinister alien plot against Earth.

This is a mystery that opens in unexpected ways to involve aliens seeking conquest of Earth’s oceans. Keola and friends discover a hidden world of flying saucers, starships, undersea alien bases, as well as both benevolent and creepy extraterrestrials.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Mar 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781977253446

Michael W. Blevins

The question of possible extraterrestrial life has long fascinated me. I studied the literature extensively but never had a UFO experience. It seems fitting that I should shape my science fiction writing around the idea. I had a long career in journalism, engineering, and transportation management. I wrote for a transportation newspaper and outdoors adventure magazines. I also taught and practiced photography. My history also includes graphic arts, computer programming, electronics, and even amateur radio. My writing is also colored by hiking, camping, sailing, scuba diving, dance, and travel. As always, writing reflects life.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Wall Dive

Tiger shark, beware!

Megan’s underwater senses went to high alert as she spotted an extra-large tiger shark cruising off the lip of the wall. It was rare to see such a dangerous deep-water shark on a wall dive, but it was not unheard of. At least that’s what someone had told her.

Eighty feet down, Megan and eleven other divers were reef hooked into ancient coral rock to watch an endless show of marine life. Vast schools of barracuda, humphead wrasse, groupers, tangs, angelfish, Moorish idols and all variety of smaller fish were there because the upwelling current constantly pushed up nutrients from the deep. Such an abundance of marine life also brought in a steady stream of sharks and turtles who also cruised the wall.

Wall diving with upwelling current is considered one of the highlights of scuba diving in this part of the world. Divers use a large metal hook connected to three feet of cord that is in turn connected to their inlatable buoyancy compensator jacket (BC). Once hooked in they inject air into the bladder of their BC, which lets them bob like helium balloons on strings while observing the marine life cruising along the lip of the wall.

Whitetip and blacktip reef sharks are common sights along the wall. This time she even saw three small squid making their way, probably not so happy to be among all those predators. This was her second wall dive; Megan had already dived Palau’s famous Blue Corner.

But a tiger shark was rare and just a little frightening. They were known to be aggressive and potentially dangerous. Usually, however, they were found in deeper waters, 160 feet or more.

Checking her air reserves, Megan realized she had used more than half of her Nitrox tank (gas mixture with thirty-two percent oxygen) while hooked in at eighty feet. She caught sight of the divemaster signaling his team to unhook and retreat across the channel. As she released, she immediately felt the strong current sweep her back away from the wall.

There was little time to make eye contact with Crystal, her dive buddy, as Megan was pulled along by the strong currents. She emptied the remaining air in her BC to stay near the bottom of the channel.

For a vague reason, the divemaster wanted them to cross the channel while hugging the sea floor before rising higher into the water column.

Megan had her troubles as she fought the current to cross the channel. Finally she realized that the current was just too strong and began to kick upward toward shallower water. Once moving with the current, she realized that it was a very easy and fast ride.

Although knowing it was a risky strategy, she lost track of the others, as she was worried about her air supply and maintaining control in the current. She knew at least that the current would sweep them into the lagoon toward their dive boat.

Megan thought she saw the tiger shark once again as a dark object swimming into the channel, but maybe her imagination was on overdrive. We will have tales to tell this evening at the dive bar, she thought.

Spinning around, Megan couldn’t see any other divers. She decided she must be well ahead of her group as she rose toward the surface.

Megan had craved this adventure. To be out in the crystal-clear waters of Palau, with just a hint of danger; it doesn’t get much better.

Also it had been a delightful diversion from her job at the Office of Naval Space Tracking, part of the Defense Department. Her office provided space location services for NASA and the military.

Catching sight of a red underwater motorized scooter heading directly at her, she relaxed. She hadn’t realized that the dive operation was using scooters to retrieve errant divers, but who’s to complain?

The driver motioned for her to hold onto a second hang bar on back of the scooter. Megan grabbed on and soon they were cruising along. They rose to fifteen feet for a three-minute safety stop, as was standard practice in the scuba diving world. This safety provision ensured that divers equalized with the surface pressure and outgassed any residual nitrogen bubbles.

It was only when they surfaced behind a large, all black runabout that Megan realized that something wasn’t quite right.

Where’s the dive boat? she asked as she spit out her regulator mouthpiece and climbed aboard to a seat on the dive platform extending beyond the rear transom.

Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered, said an Asian crew member as he lifted off the tank, regulator, and BC. He also took her fins onto the boat. But then Megan felt the sting of a needle through her wetsuit and almost immediately fell unconscious.

A sense of panic was slowly building as the boat captain finished checking off divers boarding the Deepwater Scuba boat named Albura.

Where’s Megan? he yelled, thinking that she had gone forward to the boat’s bow or maybe to the head.

That’s what I was trying to tell you, exclaimed Crystal. I lost track of Megan just after she unhooked from the wall. She seemed to be ahead of us and was struggling in the current. Sorry I wasn’t there for her, but it all happened so fast.

The captain was becoming concerned. After counting off the divers once again, he had two rescue divers jump in the water while he started the engines to make a pass around the inner lagoon in hopes of spotting a missing diver on the surface.

It was not totally uncommon to have a little difficulty collecting all divers after this wall dive, but it was outside of the usual routine.

After a half-hour search, Captain Jason Tibbits called the dive base to put out the word that a diver was missing out on the Shark Wall dive site. Other operators would soon spring into action to make an all-hands search.

Chapter 2

The Search

Hey bro, great to see you again, said Salik as he walked onto the expansive outdoor deck at Keola’s new house on Arakabesang Island.

Hey, Sal, fantastic to see you. Did you just fly in from Hawaii? asked Keola.

Yeah, I’m here to visit family, but now I’m picking up assignments as well.

You should have just told them you were on vacation.

It’s all routine politics, mumbled Sal, but I’ll never get used to how you, of all people, could be so blessed with such a beautiful villa after being off-island for only six years to make your fortune.

Just lucky, I guess, replied Keola as he stopped tinkering on his latest project and walked over to fully greet his long-time friend, Salik.

Yeah, right, lucky as a clever bastard, chided Salik, knowing full well that Keola’s engineering work had resulted in several U.S. patents in telecommunications. They had netted him a small fortune, enough to become independently wealthy at only thirty. Then he surprised everyone by retiring back to Palau to pursue his own projects.

Palau is an archipelago in the southwest corner of Micronesia some 830 miles west of Guam and southeast of the Philippines and north of Indonesia. The islands had seen several colonial countries in control over the years.

Early in World War II the islands were overrun by the Japanese but were eventually liberated by the United States military and have maintained close ties with the U.S. ever since.

Now Palau is a presidential republic in free association with the United States. English is a common language, but only one of several heard on the islands. Total population is just over 18,000 but there are many visitors from around the world.

Keola and Salik were both natives and longtime friends dating back even before high school in Koror, Palau’s largest town. After graduation both had gone off-island to the U.S. mainland to pursue higher education and their careers.

After a four-year degree and grad school study, Keola had proved that his early engineering brilliance was not just luck. He was responsible for major advances in telecommunications, paving the way for cell phones.

Salik joined the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and became a field agent in Hawaii covering the Pacific territories, including the Northern Marians, Guam, and American Samoa. Occasionally he worked in Palau when cases involved American citizens.

Keola, I’ve been called in on a missing-diver job. Did you catch the news from yesterday where a female diver was lost off Shark Wall?

Yeah, I heard about that. Very sad, replied Keola, but why would you be involved? She was probably swept out to sea, as sometimes happens; hardly an American FBI matter.

Well, it turns out that Doctor Megan O’Malley was a noted research analyst for a Department of Defense Office. She was involved in super-secret military projects. They want to make sure that there was no skullduggery involved. In fact, this is high priority. Fortunately for them, I just happened to be heading here to visit family.

Any idea what sort of things she was working on?

Satellite communications or something like that, I think.

Okay, but why are you coming to me? asked Keola. His interest had been piqued at the mention of space telecommunications.

Well, you know we were talking on the phone about your latest mind-blowing project a few days ago. I was wondering if it might be used to look at the dive site to see what actually happened to Megan.

Hmm, and you think it’s been about eighteen hours since this happened? asked Keola while looking at his watch. I’ve never actually used the TimeTuner to venture back more than a few minutes. I don’t even know if it’s possible.

Yes, they were referring to time travel. Keola had been working on a time machine, or TimeTuner, as he called it. This revolutionary idea had occurred to Keola while he was still working in the telecommunications field on the U.S. mainland. It involved tapping into an unknown type of energy field which could apparently distort space-time. He felt compelled to pursue his idea and had moved back to Palau for privacy and freedom. More importantly he also missed the islands

But just think, Keola, this could be the first real test of the practicality of your device. It’s almost perfect. We could just sit in the water and watch the end of her dive to see what actually happened.

Keola had moved over to his computer and was plugging in some numbers to determine if such a time hop was even possible with his current device. Salik stood behind him.

Well, could we do it? asked Sal after a few minutes of waiting while Keola pondered the problem.

Maybe, but we would need more power. I just received some additional new batteries. If I can quickly install them, we might try it. Do you have scuba equipment with you?

Am I a Palauan? asked Sal. Of course. I have diving gear from my parents’ house, if you loan me a tank.

Okay, get it. I’ll start connecting the new batteries. I’ve already added a new battery shelf in the wet submarine.

Keola’s experiments were unusual, to say the least. He had mounted his invention on his handcrafted underwater wet sub. Using it required scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) equipment. The wet sub provided steering, propulsion, and buoyancy control while also housing the TimeTuner electronics.

The entire point of the submarine in his experiments was to provide some three-dimensional wiggle room to account for likely physical displacement when arriving at a new time point.

Either making the hop in air or water seemed like solutions, but creating a displacement field large enough to enclose an airplane or helicopter required considerably more power and expense. Doing it off an underwater wet sub in scuba gear was the obvious way to save energy and money during his early tests of the concept.

True, a few batteries seemed a feeble power source, but Keola had discovered that this unusual energy field seemed to tap into amazing amounts of quantum energy. Once the field was initialized, it seemed to be self-sustaining.

He had attempted only a few short time trips, but his practical experiments were running well ahead of actual theory of how it worked. What he did know was that it involved quantum entanglement.

How tinkering with time might change the past, present or future was certainly a serious issue. Keola had avoided tests that might affect the timeline.

The Wet Sub Design

Keola’s wet submarine looked like a simple cylinder with tapered ends, sort of like a torpedo. It was just over twelve feet long with room for two divers sitting one behind the other.

There were places on the sub to insert scuba tanks, so they didn’t have to wear them during a quick dive. Air from the tanks was piped to second-stage regulators and octopus emergency regulators at the divers’ seats. For safety, divers could exit the sub with their complete scuba gear just by strapping on the tank.

Like a conventional sub, there were ballast tanks along the bottom to let the sub submerge and surface. Ballast air was supplied from the scuba tanks.

The divers could enter and exit the sub from simple sliding half doors along the side. There was no top or clear water shields in front of the divers.

The propeller on the rear was driven by a battery-powered motor. It was capable of 2.2 knots (four kilometers an hour) underwater. The divers could control the sub with hand-operated dive planes in the front and foot-activated rudders behind the propeller.

The critical TimeTuner device was located between the two divers. When initialized it generated an ovoid, or egg-shaped, field that engulfed the entire submarine and divers. For safety each diver station had a control panel.

In forty minutes they were ready. They had lifted the TimeTuner onto davits along the side of Keola’s small trawler/dive boat and then stowed their scuba gear.

Let’s go, said Keola. Time is critical.

Shark Wall was about ten miles from Arakabesang Island. Cruising among the beautiful islands of Palau was always a treat. The Palau Archipelago consisted of more than 340 islands, some of which were composed of coral limestone that had been pushed up from the sea floor over many millions of years.

Because the rock was soft, some islands in Palau had a distinctive mushroom look because waves had cut away at the soft limestone at the waterline.

Approaching the channel and lagoon where Shark Wall was located, they noticed several dive boats and police boats still cruising about looking for Megan, or at least her body.

Salik got on the radio to identify himself as FBI and said he and Keola planned some underwater current direction and flow tests to determine where the body would likely drift.

Salik and Keola were well known to the Palau police and dive operators who welcomed their assistance.

They moored the Sea Blip onto one of several dive buoys that would keep the boat in place. Because of the need to protect the reef, the local dive operator’s association had placed fixed dive buoys at many popular dive spots around the islands. The buoy they used was well back into the lagoon, away from the wall.

Most likely she would have drifted into the lagoon here before she ran into trouble. After that, who knows? She could have drifted into an inlet and then been pulled out to sea when the tide changed, Keola said.

The fact that the United States FBI was involved raised the stakes a little. It had already been established that Megan O’Malley was more than just an average tourist diver.

Now Sal, said Keola, while we will be in her timeline, we can’t interfere, regardless of what happens. That could mean changing the timeline.

I know; we already agreed to that.

After lowering the TimeTuner into the water, they both jumped into the water to enter the sub. Then they went through their pre-dive safety check.

Salik, you do realize that this time-travel business is highly experimental. Something might go wrong. We could even be killed or lost in time.

Hey, it’s not like I have a wife or girlfriend waiting for me. Let’s do it.

Okay, I’m going to take us down to twenty-five feet, said Keola. If my calculations and time settings are correct, that will bring us to the point in time just past where Megan unhooked and started drifting back with the current. Of course we would likely be above her at that depth.

Chapter 3

Tuning Time

Once reaching a twenty-five-foot depth, Keola very carefully tuned the various adjustments on the machine to set the precise arrival time. Since he had never done this for such a long jump and with a distortion field that included two divers, he was a little anxious about the outcome. He reasoned that keeping it relatively shallow would reduce the shock of a large displacement while underwater.

Giving an OK dive symbol to Sal, he unlocked the safety and pushed the trigger button.

At first nothing happened, but they could hear a growing high-pitched sound from the TimeTuner’s field emitter. Then they were engulfed in a yellow-green mist. It steadily became stronger. Keola could not see beyond the field boundary.

Suddenly there was a flash, then a wild displacement jerk, but they hung on. The mist around them cleared. The gauges registered a 19.9-hour jump back in time, but Keola knew the limitations of his measuring system.

Salik gave him a tap on the shoulder and thumbs up. Keola could see that the displacement had moved them considerably closer to the wall. He could see bubbles, which meant divers were below at the lip of the wall.

Turning the wet sub, he shot away from the wall back toward the lagoon so they could keep hidden. He also dove deeper to reduce their visibility.

Again tapping him on the shoulder, Sal pointed toward a pink-tipped black object approaching. It was a diver and looked like a female, from her long hair waving in the current.

She was now slightly above them but seemed to be struggling a little in the swift current. She stopped trying to swim across the current and just drifted along with it instead.

As they watched the diver, Salik again pointed. They both could see a diver on a red underwater scooter moving very quickly toward her.

Megan didn’t appear to have seen them below but did see the approaching scooter.

At first Megan hesitated and then swung onto the scooter, picking up a second tow bar that was behind the driver. They rapidly moved off to the west.

Keola didn’t quite know what to make of this development but followed them after coming up to their same depth. It wasn’t long before they approached a large, sleek, open runabout anchored around a bend in the lagoon near a sand bunker. It was cleverly hidden from the dive boats moored out near the dive site.

Carefully surfacing, the time travelers watched the underwater scooter arrive next to the cigar boat. Sal aimed his underwater camera and snapped a few pictures. They were careful to stay mostly below the surface, with just their heads above the water line.

Megan sat on the rear dive platform while someone on the boat removed her scuba tanks, regulator, and BC. Those, along with her fins were carried back into the boat. She was handed a bottle of water.

But then another person came forward and appeared to jab her in the arm with something. She looked up and then slumped back on the seat. Soon they pulled her farther into the boat.

The dual V8 engines fired. Another person at the bow pulled up the anchor, and the boat rapidly moved away. Quickly picking up speed, it rounded a bend in the lagoon and disappeared behind the low sand bars on the edge of the lagoon.

Keola and Salik fully surfaced and pulled off their regulator mouthpieces. Well, that’s what happened, said Keola. It looks like she was abducted.

But why, and how did they plan such a smooth capture? Sal pondered. No wonder no one found evidence of her at the dive site.

They turned and headed back for the Sea Blip, Keola’s boat. At least she didn’t drown in some sort of freak dive accident. Let’s return to our time, said Keola.

Keola gave the signal to submerge, and they again dropped down into the depths. He took them to twenty-five feet and triggered the TimeTuner to bring them back to current time. The strange whine and then growing yellow-green mist enveloped them. There was a flash and then a strong displacement jerk before everything cleared. They were back in current time.

Surfacing, they headed for the Sea Blip.

After securing the sub and diving gear, Keola fired up the Sea Blip’s engines and they headed off around the bend toward where the black runabout had disappeared.

"Let’s see where they might