Storiesonline.net
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                     Traveling Without Consequences
                              by Al Steiner

Copyright© 2007 by Al Steiner


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Description: Something new I'm playing around with. It might be in the Greenies universe, but I'm not sure yet. I think this plot is original. If it isn't, I've never read anything along these lines before. In any case, this is experimental for now and, as of yet, I make no promises to continue it.

Codes: MF voy
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Chapter 1

Scott Foreman sat lucidly behind the controls of the Cessna Skyhawk as it cruised along. The autopilot was now engaged, keeping the aircraft steady on a heading of 72 degrees and at an altitude at 6300 feet above sea level. He had taken off from a small airport in San Francisco fifteen minutes before and was now passing over the coastal mountains of northern California, mountains that were actually little more than tall hills. His destination was the town of Auburn, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, his course roughly following that of Interstate 80, which could be seen snaking through the passes in the hills like a long black snake. Behind him, the sun was rapidly approaching the horizon, still high enough to provide visual flying conditions, but low enough to impart a mellow light upon the landscape. The hum of the engine was a comforting white noise. Scott stretched a little to relieve the dull thrum in his back and then picked up the can of diet, decaffeinated cola sitting in the drink container. He had a sip and then leaned back in his custom-fit seat.

At forty years of age, Scott was about as comfortable in a cockpit as a man could be. Since that day in 1978 when he was fourteen and his father had let him take the controls of a rented Piper for the first time over San Jose, Scott had accumulated nearly 12,000 hours of flight time in more than fifteen different aircraft. He had gotten his private pilot's license on his eighteenth birthday and had flown crop dusters to help pay his way through college. After receiving his bachelor's degree in Aeronautics from the University of California at Davis he had joined the United States Air Force, where the low level flying skills he'd learned dusting crops helped get him into training in the A-10 Warthog — an anti-armor and close support aircraft. His six-year stint as an A-10 pilot — which included 42 combat missions in the Persian Gulf War of 1991 — was by far the most exciting time of his flying career. His life after the Air Force became a little more sedate — at least in terms of piloting skills. For five years he'd worked for Federal Express flying 737s back and forth across the country. These days he worked for American Airlines as the commander of a 767 on the Atlanta to San Francisco run. And of course, there was his private flying, which, until a year ago, had always been done in rental aircraft. The Skyhawk he was now in was the first plane he had actually owned — or at least that he was making the payments on. In only another fourteen years he would have it paid off.

He let his eyes scan over his instruments and then at the surrounding sky, this visual check automatic and instinctual, his brain noting nothing unusual enough to bring to the forefront where he would actually have to think about it. The forebrain, meanwhile, with no flying related duties to tax it at the moment, continued with the thought it had been mulling over since the autopilot had taken control, namely how nice a double Jack Daniels on the rocks was going to taste when he got home. Though he tried not to drink too much — his father was what society liked to term a "functional alcoholic" and he feared becoming one himself — it was the start of a five day off period for him and he craved the mellowing effect a few double Jacks had on him. He had just completed a thirteen-hour workday, including seven hours in the air and two layovers, and he felt he deserved some relaxation. So what if he would be drinking alone? Just because he did that once in a while didn't mean anything did it? It wasn't his fault that, as a divorced man without much social life, he had no companionship to call on.

The ring tone of "Paint it Black" by the Stones began to emit fro his cellular phone jarring him out of his boozy thoughts. He picked it up from the holder on the instrument panel and looked at the display to see who was calling him, hoping vaguely it was Diane, the accountant he had dated a few times after she'd done his taxes for him the previous February. No such luck. The number identified the caller as Janice, his younger sister and sole sibling. Janice was a lawyer who lived in Granite Bay with her "partner" of six years, Doreen. Scott was not particularly close to Janice, not because of her sexual orientation, which, as a California raised man he didn't really give a damn about, but more because of her abrasive, aggressive personality. They were not enemies by any means but the less time he spent with her the better they seemed to get along. Having her call him on his cell phone was a bit of an unusual occurrence. Curious about why she was doing it now, he flipped it open, answering it.

"Hey, Jan," he said. "What's up?"

"He's gone crazy!" Janice barked at him. "He's gone absolutely fucking crazy!"

Scott blinked, taking a moment to consciously order himself to remain composed. "Who has gone crazy?" he finally asked.

"Dad," she said, her voice flirting with a strange sort of hysteria he had never heard her employ before. "Who the hell do you think I'm talking about?"

"Good point," he allowed. Their father, Jim Foreman, was pretty much the only man she would be calling him up ranting about. And he was what most people — Scott included — would consider a borderline mental case. "I assume he's back in the neighborhood?"

"Oh he's back all right," she said. "After nine fucking months! Just when I thought that old coot had finally disappeared for good, he shows up on my doorstep with that weird-ass bitch he calls his wife."

Scott breathed a small sigh of relief before answering her. Ever since their father had suddenly divorced their mother when Scott and Janice were in their teens he had been in the habit of seemingly disappearing from the face of the earth for days, weeks, even months at a time. Nobody knew where he went when he disappeared and all who knew and loved him had long since tired of even asking where he had been when he returned. He would never tell anyone, would say nothing other than he'd been "traveling". He never brought back souvenirs from his travels, nor sent postcards from places he'd been, nor described the things he'd seen or done. He would just stay home for a few weeks at his house on the shores of Lake Tahoe and then disappear again.

At least that had been the pattern until about two years ago when he'd suddenly shown up with a young Slavic woman he called Beilke and announced she was his wife. Beilke, he said, was someone he had met while traveling in Russia, though he firmly denied any insinuation that she was a mail order bride. Since then his travels had become much more frequent, his stays away much longer until finally it seemed he'd completely fallen of the face of the earth. As Janice had pointed out, it had been a full nine months since anyone had seen or heard from him. And now he was back acting strange enough for Janice to be rattled by it. That was remarkable indeed.

"What did he have to say for himself?" Scott asked.

"He's out of his fuckin' mind, Scotty," she told him. "I think he's going to... you know?"

"No," he said slowly. "I don't know."

He heard her take a few deep breaths, as if bracing herself to say something. "I think he's going to... to... commit suicide or something," she finally spit out.

Scott raised his eyebrows. "Dad? Kill himself?" he asked. "That's absurd. Where in the hell did you come up with that from?"

"You haven't heard what he's done yet," she said. "Scotty, he gave me a million and a half dollars."

"He gave you what?" Scott said in disbelief. "He doesn't have a million and a half dollars. I mean, he's well off, but not that well off. I wouldn't go cashing that check just yet."

"It's not a check. He wired it to my account. I have a confirmation number and I called the bank and they told me it's no joke. That money is there and its already been cleared. He gave me a million and half bucks, Scotty. And he says he going to give you the same. He told me he doesn't need money anymore."

"Wow," Scott said slowly, pondering that with a strong sense of unease mixed with wonder. His father had three million dollars to give away? Where in the hell did he get that kind of money? He hadn't been employed since quitting his last job as bush pilot in Alaska shortly before the divorce. His ability to retire at a young age he had always explained as successful investing during his working years — a story their mother had always proclaimed preposterous — but he had always maintained it was a modest amount he had in reserve. Just enough to get by with. He had certainly never hinted that he was a multi-millionaire. And now he was giving away three million dollars? And telling Janice he didn't need money anymore? That really did sound like the actions of a man contemplating suicide. "Did he seem depressed or anything like that?"

"No," she said. "Not at all. He seemed deliriously happy, in fact. That's what scares me about it. That's the final sign they tell people to look for, the final stage they go through before they actually eat the gun or whatever. Once they've actually decided to do it they're depression goes away because they have a plan, a goal. They see the end of it all. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Scott said, nodding to himself. Now that she mentioned it, he did remember reading that somewhere before, probably in that psychology class he'd taken as an elective back in college. "Did he say anything else?"

"Just that he wouldn't be seeing me much anymore, that he was going to be taking a much longer trip this time." She paused, as if maintain control of her voice. "Scott, he was basically telling me goodbye. He hugged me. Doreen too, and you know he can't stand her. He wished us a long and happy life together and said he hoped it would be happier than his first marriage."

"Jesus," Scott whispered, mostly to himself but loud enough for the cell phone to transmit the word to Janice. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know," she said. "He said his goodbyes and then he and Beilke just left. And they left on foot!"

"On foot?" he asked. "Are you sure?" Janice lived atop a hillside in an isolated, gated subdivision. It was not the sort of place that one arrived at on foot.

"They just went walking off down the street," she said. "And they never checked in or out with the gate guards either. They just showed up. I'm telling you, Dad has completely lost it! He's gonna off himself, Scotty. We need to get hold of him and... do something."

"How are we going to get hold of him?" he asked. "You know he doesn't have a cell phone. And even if we do get hold of him, what are we supposed to do?"

"Have him committed, get him put on some sort of psychiatric hold... something," she said.

"You're the lawyer, Jan," he said. "He didn't actually tell you that he was going to kill himself, did he?"

"Well... no," she admitted. "But..."

"Look," he said soothingly, "if he stopped to say goodbye to you, he'll say goodbye to me as well. He'll show up at my house at some point, don't you think?"

"I suppose that makes sense."

"When he does, I'll talk to him, try to figure out what he's planning, okay?"

"But what if you can't?" she asked.

"I'll do everything I can, Jan," he said. "Don't worry too much. You know he finds it... well... you know... a little easier to talk to me than to you. He'll tell me what he's planning."

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully, although she didn't sound like she'd stopped worrying. "Jesus, listen to me. If you'd have told me two days ago that I would be frantic because that crazy fucker was thinking about suicide I'd of told you you were insane." She sighed. "I guess I have feelings for him after all."

"I guess it takes something like this to show us that," he said. "I'll keep my eye out for him and I'll let you know as soon as I know anything, okay?"

"The minute you know anything," she said. "The second."

"Right."

They said their goodbyes and disconnected the call. Scott made another check of his instruments, another scan of the airspace around him, and then closed his eyes for a second. He gave a silent sarcastic thank you to his sister and father for giving him something new to worry about.

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It was well after dark when he pulled his BMW into the driveway of his two story home. With a push of the remote control button the garage door slid obediently upward on its track, revealing a semi-cluttered three-car garage full of power tools he never used, Christmas decorations he never put up, and a Harley-Davidson Fatboy he rarely rode. He shut off his engine and got out, absently pushing the inside garage door button with one hand while digging out his house key with the other. As the door rattled shut behind him he put the key in the lock and opened the door. On the other side of it was the darkened back hallway that led past a guest bedroom and into the kitchen.

As expected, he was greeted by the steady beeping of the burglar alarm box just inside the door. He had thirty seconds to punch in his code before the actual alarm began to sound. The sound he didn't expect to hear, however, was the sound of classical music issuing from his surround sound system deeper in the house. He never left the stereo system on when he left the house and, even if he had, it most certainly wouldn't have been classical music. He looked at the alarm box and then down the hallway. How had the music come on?

He pondered this question for quite some time, his eyes peering through the darkened kitchen towards the direction of the family room beyond it. There was a light on beneath the doorway in there. He could see its glow on the tile floor. He never left the lights on when he left either. The only conclusion he could draw was that someone either had been in the house... or still was. But how could this person have gotten by the alarm? And why would he or she have turned on classical music?

The alarm panel began to beep more rapidly, indicating he had less than ten seconds to go. He stepped forward and pushed in his four-digit code, silencing it. In doing so, the music became more distinct, enough so he could identify it as Bach, although he could not quite remember the piece. It was the sort of music his father enjoyed listening to, that he had forced upon he and Janice while they were growing up. Was his father the one who had been in there?

He walked slowly down the hall, taking pains to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible. He entered the kitchen and looked around, his sharp eyes searching for anything missing or out of place. Nothing seemed to be amiss but this did little to ease his mind. If he had been burglarized — or was currently being burglarized — was there really anything in this room of the house worth taking? Burglars didn't cart out major appliances, did they?

He stepped forward again, easing across the room towards the beam of light beneath the decorative, swinging door that guarded the entrance to the family room. He put his hand to it and slowly pushed it open, wincing a little as a squeak emitted from the hinges. He looked through the gap created and beheld his family room — the room of the house he spent the most time in when he was home. It was a large room, tastefully decorated with leather couches and mahogany tables. A sixty-inch HDTV was mounted on one wall above a home theater entertainment sound system. The table lamps were all burning brightly and the ceiling fan was turning at high speed. Sitting on the couch, dressed in a tattered pair of denim shorts and a plain white T-shirt, was his father. He was sipping from a water tumbler that contained what appeared to be plain cola but that undoubtedly had a healthy shot of some sort of alcoholic beverage in it. Jim looked up as he saw his son enter the room and a warm smile touched his face.

"Scotty, my boy," he greeted, hefting his drink in a universal salute. "I've been waiting for you."

Scott let out a breath of air and stepped fully through the doorway into the room. "Jesus Christ, Dad," he said. "You scared the crap out of me. How in the hell did you get in here? And for that matter, how in the hell did you get to the house? I didn't see a car out front."

"I'm glad to see you too," Jim replied with an amused chuckle. "And as for the how's and why's of my presence, that will all be explained to you shortly." He stood up, leaving his drink on the end table and walking over to Scott. "In the meantime, son, it's good to see you." He put his arms around him, giving him a fatherly hug.

Scott returned the embrace automatically, though he was as confused and nervous as ever. How had his father gotten in the house without turning off the alarm box? And what was he going to tell him now that would explain all the 'how's and why's', as he put it. "It's good to see you too, Dad. A little disconcerting, but good to see you."

"Disconcerting is my middle name," Jim said, releasing him. "Let's get you a drink."

"Uh... sure," Scott said, forgetting that is was he that should be playing host and not the other way around.

As Jim walked across the room to the oak wet bar installed in the corner, Scott looked him over, marveling with wonder, as he always did, how young and fit he appeared. The man was seventy-three years old but looked fifty at best, maybe even mid-forties. He had a full head of thick, brown hair although Scott — who presumably carried the same genes — had started to lose his in his mid-twenties. Jim's stomach was fit and trim despite the lack of anything resembling exercise and despite a diet that consisted of booze, marijuana, and anything he could shovel into his mouth. This while Scott constantly had to count calories and work out at the gym to keep his beer guy from expanding into something that looked like a second trimester pregnancy.

"Jack on the rocks?" Jim asked as he pulled a glass down from the rack above the bar.

"Yeah," Scott told him. "Make it a double."

"How about a triple? You might need it for our little talk."

Scott considered the matter for perhaps a tenth of a second. "Sure," he replied. "Nothing like a good triple."

Jim opened the refrigerator and shoveled some ice into the glass and then poured a healthy amount of Jack Daniels over the top of it. He then carried it across the room and handed it to Scott. "Don't know how you can drink that shit without a little coke in it," he commented.

"An acquired taste, I guess. Where's Bielke? I talked to Janice earlier and she said she was with you."

"I dropped her off at our new home on the way here," he said. "She had a few things to take care of."

"Your new home?" Scott asked. "You have a home down here now?"

"No," Jim said simply, sitting down on the couch and picking up his own drink.

Scott looked at him for a moment. "Then what new home are you talking about?"

"I'll show it to you in a bit," Jim said. "I think you'll like it. In the meantime, why don't you sit down? Have a couple sips of your drink. We need to talk."

Slowly, Scott sat down. He did as suggested and took a large slug from his glass, relishing the burn of the whiskey as it went down his throat, luxuriating in the warmth it spread throughout his body. He set the glass down and looked at his father. "What's going on, Dad?" he asked. "You had Janice very upset. She said you deposited a million and half dollars into her bank account."

"I did," he confirmed. "And I've done the same to yours as well. I'm liquidating all of my assets in this world and giving them to my two children."

Scott thought about asking his dad where he had gotten three million dollars but decided that wasn't the important question at the moment. "Why," he asked, "are you liquidating all of your assets?"

"I won't need them anymore," he replied.

"I see," Scott said slowly. He licked his lips. "Uh... you're not thinking of doing anything... you know... rash or anything, are you?"

Jim smiled. "You think I'm considering ending it all?" he asked. "Did Janice give you that idea?"

"Well... you know... you're giving all your stuff away and you were just talking about not needing it in this world. What are we supposed to think, Dad?"

"A fair point," he allowed. "I assure you, however, I am not going to be ending it all. On the contrary, I've finally found what I've been looking for all these years and it is time to begin it all. My life, my real life, is just starting."

Scott took another large slug of his drink. "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about," he told his father. "What do you mean you found what you've been looking for? I didn't know you were looking for anything."

"You didn't know I was looking for anything? What do you think I was doing during my travels all these years, my boy? Did you think I was just traveling for the sake of traveling? I was searching for what every man desires, what every man searches for, whether he realizes it or not. I was searching for the perfect companion to spend my life with — a companion I found in Bielke while traveling in Russia. That was the first part of my quest. The second was the perfect home, which I found last year and have been setting up these past months."

"The perfect home?" Scott asked. "And where might that be?"

"Let's just say it's in Maui," Jim replied.

"Maui? You bought a house in Maui?"

Jim laughed loudly, shaking his head in obvious amusement. "Bought a house? How linear your thinking is, my son. No, buying a house does not entail a perfect home as I choose to define it, as any real man should chose to define it. It is not the dwelling or the land that makes a perfect home, but the existence that you carve out. I have carved out my perfect existence on Maui, Scotty, and now that it is complete, I will spend the rest of my life there with Bielke at my side."

"I see," Jim said slowly. "You know, of course, that I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. Anyway, I'm glad you finally found you're... uh... perfect existence. But why all the drama? It's not like we're not going to be seeing you anymore. Hell, Janice takes vacations in Hawaii all the time. And I get free air travel. I'll probably visit you a couple times a year. Hell, maybe more since I'll have a place to stay there."

"Yes," Jim said. "Indeed you will. I will need you to keep me supplied with certain items. Janice, however, will find it a little more difficult to visit me. I don't believe she is ready to see my new home. You, on the other hand, are. You are your father's boy in many ways."

Scott sighed. Just when he thought he was starting to get a handle on what his father was spouting off about, he threw another curveball at him. "Keep you supplied?" he asked. "What are you talking about? And why can't Jan visit you? What kind of weird-ass house do you got there? Are you living in some sort of commune or something?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Jim replied. "But that's not important now. As I said, I'll show you my new home soon."

"You have pictures?"

"No pictures," he said. "You will have to see it in person."

"You want me to fly out to Maui with you?" Scott asked. "I only have three days off. I don't think I can make it out this week, but maybe at the beginning of next month? I can do a couple of flight trades and get six days off. That way... what?" He saw that Jim was shaking his head.

"We won't be flying there," Jim told him.

"You want me to take a boat to Hawaii?" he asked. "Why? What's wrong with flying? I do it all the time."

"I have a much more efficient means of travel," Jim told him.

Scott raised his eyebrows up, thoughts of his father's mental instability coming to his forebrain again. "More efficient than flying?" he asked. "And uh... what exactly might that be, Dad?"

"It's what I've come to talk to you about, Scotty," he said. "It's what I've come to give to you tonight, to teach you how to use so you can begin your own quest for that perfect existence."

Scott licked his lips slowly. He was now wondering if his father was an undiagnosed schizophrenic babbling on about delusional ideas he thought were real. This conversation certainly had the air of something out "A Beautiful Mind", didn't it? "Dad... I uh..."

"Hold up on your judgments for the time being, Scott," Jim told him. "I know how all this must sound to you and I know you're probably thinking I'm insane. I assure you that I am not and I never have been. I will explain what I'm talking about and then give a demonstration. All I need from you is an open mind for the next few minutes."

"Open mind, sure," Scott said. "I can do that."

"Okay," Jim said. "Do you remember when you were a child and I lived in Alaska? When I worked as a seaplane pilot for Far North Adventures?"

"Yes," Scott said. And it was true. He remembered that well. It had been when he and Janice were in their early teens, about two years after Jim and their mother had divorced. Jim, seemingly going through a vicious mid-life crisis, had quit his job as an airline pilot and had moved to Alaska to shuttle tourists into the farthest reaches of the vast state in seaplanes. It was the last job he would ever work. After doing it for two seasons he had abruptly quit and his "retirement" had begun, and with it, the mysterious disappearances he called "traveling".

"While I was flying for Far North I developed somewhat of a relationship with a band of Eskimos in the village of Atqasuk, which was an overnight stop for us while we were waiting to pick up our tourists from whatever lake or river we dropped them at. We pilots were virtually the only white people who visited this village. Not even the flying doctors went there. It was an isolated place, accessible only by sled or by aircraft. There were people there who had never even seen a white man prior to Far North's use of it as a waypoint. I found these Eskimos fascinating. They were truly wild people, living the life their ancestors had lived instead of the corrupt and despairing life their kindred were living in Nome and Fairbanks and all the other places where white influence and domination had choked them. I took the time to learn their language and to socialize with them. Eventually they accepted me as a white man they could trust. It was then that they brought something to me one night, something they had found in a cave near the village, something that had been buried beneath some rock and had been there for a long time."

"What was it?" Scott asked, his curiosity piqued a bit.

Jim lifted up his shirt and unclipped something from his belt. "This is what they gave me," he said, holding it up so Scott could see. It was a small black box, about the size of a cellular phone, but thinner and less complex looking. It seemed to be made of steel instead of plastic. There were some ventilation holes in the side of it and a few things that might or might not have been buttons on the front. Other than that, it looked completely uninteresting, more like a child's toy than anything else.

"Okay," Scott said. "What is it?"

"It's a teleportation device," Jim told him.

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Scott blinked and took a few deep breaths. "A... teleportation device?" he asked slowly.

"That's right," Jim told him. "I'm not sure exactly how it came to be in that cave where they found it. My best guess is a time traveler from the future put it there."

"A... time traveler from the future?" Scott said, backing away from his dad the slightest bit.

"Yes," Jim agreed. "Although why he or she put it there is somewhat up in the air. You see, it was a brand new device, still in its original box. The Eskimos told me it had been wrapped in some sort of plastic type wrap that kept out the moisture."

"It was in the original box, huh?" Scott asked, his tone mild and careful. "That's uh... uh... amazing, Dad." He was now convinced that his impression of a few moments ago had been correct. His father was an undiagnosed schizophrenic and was deep into a complex delusion. The question was, what should he do about it? Was his father dangerous? Should he contradict this fantasy or go along with it until he could call the authorities?

"I'm not schizophrenic, Scotty," Jim said, his eyes showing mild amusement. "That is what you were thinking, right?"

"Uh... no, Dad, of course not," he said, maintaining the careful, placating tone. "If you say it came from a cave in Alaska and it's a teleportation device, then that's what it is."

Jim chuckled. "You should be commended for your tact, son," he said. "I know how this sounds and what you're thinking. When I read the directions for the device the first time I was thinking the same thing. But I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you I'm sane and that I speak the truth when there's a much easier way to convince you. I will give you a demonstration."

"A demonstration?"

"Watch me carefully, son," he said, holding the device up before him. "The way you view the universe is about to change."

"Dad, look..." he started, and then stopped suddenly as his father disappeared before his eyes. There had been no flash of light, no smoke, no sparkling in the body, only a slight popping sound, like someone clapping their hands together. His father was just gone, the only trace of him the indentation in the couch cushion where his butt had been a moment before. And even that was slowly resuming its natural shape.

"Oh no," Scott said numbly, staring at the spot, his mouth wide open, his heart hammering along in his chest with the adrenaline rush. "I did not see that. It did not happen." But he knew he was lying to himself even as he spoke. He had seen it happen and there was no way he could convince himself it was some kind of trick. It was not an illusion, not a hologram, not a sleight of hand. His father had simply disappeared right in front of him. And that clapping sound he had heard... his well-read mind even knew what that was. It had been the sound of air rushing in to fill the space his father had occupied before... before... leaving.

He picked up his drink and took a tremendous shot of it, downing it like it was water, the whiskey burning his throat like fire but going immediately to work soothing his mind. What in the hell was going on here? Where had his father gone? Had he been telling the truth? Did he really have a teleportation device from the future, as mad as that might seem? That was impossible, wasn't it? But then, what he had just seen was impossible too, wasn't it?

A minute ticked by, and then two, and then three, and then four. Scott continued to sit in his chair, feeling the whiskey go to work on his overloaded brain and staring at the spot where his father had been. He had just gotten around to convincing himself that he was the one having the delusion, that he had imagined the entire encounter with his father — this despite Jim's drink still sitting on the end table, despite the classical music still issuing from the speaker — when a blast of air struck him gently in the face and his father reappeared, this time standing behind the couch instead of sitting on it. As had been the case when he had left, there was no lights, no twinkling, barely any sound. One second we wasn't there and the next, he was. He held something in his hand, something about the size of a brick but dull yellow in color. The manner in which he held it indicated it was extremely heavy for its size.

"Forgive me for how long it took," Jim said, walking around the couch and resuming his seat. "I forgot to take a flashlight with me and had to pop over to my house in South Lake Tahoe to get one. It was very dark inside the vault."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Scott whispered. "Dad... you... you... I mean... holy fucking shit."

His father put the yellow brick down on the coffee table, where it landed with a solid thunk. Scott looked at it numbly, trying to credit what he was seeing.

"Is that what I think it is?" Scott asked.

"It is if you think it's a brick of gold bullion from Fort Knox," he said.

"Fort... uh... you mean... Fort Knox?"

"The United States gold reserve storage facility," Jim told him. "Perhaps the most secure place in the nation — even more secure than nuclear weapons and plutonium storage facilities. In less than five minutes I entered it, took a brick of gold worth more than three hundred thousand dollars, and returned to your living room in California. Furthermore, if I chose not to return this brick, they would never know it was gone until the next inventory. Even if they did know it was gone, they would never know what happened to it. Not unless I was so dumb as to try to cash it in."

Scott shook his head, wanting to embrace denial but finding it extremely difficult. He was a man, after all, who tended to believe his senses. "How did you do this, Dad? Tell me it's an elaborate trick of some sort. That this is some well planned out joke you're playing on me."

"No joke, no trick," his father said. "I dematerialized here, was transmitted through the ether to the inside of a vault in Kentucky, and was rematerialized there. As I said, I then had to go to my house and then back to the vault, but you get the idea."

"You were dematerialized?" he said. "You mean... well... what do you mean? Were you broken up into tiny little bits?"

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Keep in mind, I know little about how the machine actually works. I only know what was printed in the instruction manual and in the help functions and what little information I've managed to pick up in my travels. But basically, it converts all of the mass in my body, and of course, any possessions or clothing I happen to have, into pure energy, which can then be transmitted at the speed of light, or even at hyper-light speed to other places. It seems that in the future such devices are relatively commonplace. Once I arrive at my destination, it converts the energy back into the original mass or masses and poof, there I am, just as good as new."

"It doesn't need a transmitter or a receiver? How is that possible?"

"The machine acts as its own transmitter and receiver. Again, the physics of it are quite beyond me. Quite beyond anyone who is currently alive, I imagine. The nearest I can figure, the device I have — this one here — originally came from approximately ten thousand years in the future."

"Ten thousand years?"

"At least," he said. "And remember what Arthur C. Clarke had to say about such things. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. That is true, Scotty. Oh so true. If I've learned nothing else in my travels, I've learned that."

Scott reached forward and put his hand on the gold brick. It was warm and smooth to the touch. Stamped on the front was the seal of the United States of America. He tried to heft it and found that he couldn't, at least not with one hand. It had to weight at least sixty, maybe even seventy pounds. It was real. He didn't have a test kit to confirm this, wouldn't even know how to use one if he did, but he had no doubt this brick was in fact gold and in fact had come from Fort Knox. "This is incredible," he said softly, still trying to grapple with it. He looked up sharply at his father as something occurred to him. "Is that how you got three million dollars?" he asked. "You've been using this thing to go into banks and steal money and gold?"

"No, not exactly," his father told him. "I simply brought back the gold brick as a demonstration for you. I have every intention of putting it back. But you are right in one sense of the word. The device is responsible for the modest fortune I've accumulated and I suppose you could say I was stealing things." He shrugged. "I think you'll decide it doesn't much matter once you know everything about what the device is capable of."

"It doesn't much matter?" Scott asked. "What do you mean it doesn't matter? How could stealing things not matter?"

"I think you'll find that pretty much everything doesn't really matter," Jim told him. "Not when you come right down to it. That's a fact of life — of lives — that is hard to take sometimes. It can be depressing if you let it. We human so much like to put meaning to everything, so much want everything to have meaning. But we're a ways from that lesson just yet. Let us first discuss the most basic function of the device — the linear teleportation mode."

"No," Scott said. "I think we've discussed this thing enough."

"We haven't even begun yet, Scotty," he said patiently. "How are you to operate the device if I don't show you how to use it?"

"Operate it? Are you insane? I'm not going to operate that thing! I don't ever want to see it again. I sure as shit don't want it scrambling me up into little pieces and shooting me across the country."

"The process is quite painless and quite safe," Jim assured him. "Take my word for it. I've teleported in both the linear and the hyper-light mode thousands of times, maybe tens of thousands of times. It is an instantaneous trip. You blink your eyes here and when you open them, you're somewhere else."

"Not me," Scott insisted. "I don't know what made you think I was going to go somewhere with that, but..."

"Scott," Jim said, leaning forward, "you're letting your base emotions blot out rational thought. Just in the linear mode alone, think of what you can do with this thing. You can go anywhere on the planet, see anything you want. You can even go into space if you want, assuming there is a spacecraft for you to materialize in. Bielke and I have been up to the International Space Station several times." He gave a wink. "Ever wanted to try zero gravity sex? This little baby can arrange it for you."

Scott took another drink of his Jack Daniels, finishing it off. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation," he said. "I thought I was just going to come home and have a few drinks and listen to some music and enjoy my first night off in a week. Instead, my crazy ass father is telling me he's broken into a goddamn space station using a futuristic teleportation advice and that he's boffed a young Russian girl in there. Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this?"

"You're my only son, that is what you did to deserve this," Jim said. "And you seem to think I'm offering you something unpleasant. Scott, push your fear and superstition to the side and think about this for a moment. I'm offering you the world and everything in it. Quite literally."

"You're offering it to me?" he asked. "You mean you want to give it to me?"

"As I said before, I don't need it anymore. I've done all the traveling I need to do. I have found my soul mate and I have found my home. It is time to pass the gift on."

"That's okay, Dad," he said. "You can keep it."

"No," Jim insisted. "I can't, Scotty. I need you to accept the gift if I'm to continue to live in my home. I'll need you to travel to me from time to time."

"Why?" he asked. "I don't understand. Just take the freakin' thing with you."

Jim sighed. "That is an option, but not the optimum one. As I said before, you don't understand all the functions and benefits of this device. And I refuse to allow you to refuse it until you do understand them all."

"What are you talking about?" he nearly screamed. "Can't you stop spouting a bunch of metaphysical bullshit and just say what you mean?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid that there's a little too much to swallow without demonstration. Scotty, travel with me. I beg of you. We'll start in the linear mode. I promise it is harmless."

"Dad... I... can't," he said. "That thing scares me."

"Don't you think I was scared the first time I used it? Just take a few trips and tell me what you think. If you don't like the linear mode, if you don't start to see the possibilities, I'll leave you in peace." He held out his hand. "Travel with me, son. The world is ours. Let me show you some of it."

"Dad..." he said, looking at the black device with fearful awe. "I just... I don't..."

"I'll tell you what," he said. "At least come back to Fort Knox with me so I can put this thing away. If you don't like that, I'll bring you right back and never bother with you again. It's just a short trip. We can be there and back in less than two minutes."

He hesitated, continuing to stare at it, wondering if he was really considering such a mad form of transport, wondering still if this wasn't some sort of hoax.

"Two minutes, Scotty," Jim repeated. "There and back. That's all I ask of you for now."

He let out a breath of air. "How would we do it?" he said, not quite committing himself yet.

His father held out his hand to him. "Simply take my hand," he said. "That will join you to me and the machine will do the rest."

"Won't it get our DNA mixed up or something? Like in the movie The Fly?"

Jim found this particularly amusing. He laughed aloud. "I would've thought you'd have more faith in the engineering skills of our distant descendents than that," he said. "The machine is designed to accommodate multiple travelers and even inanimate objects as heavy as two hundred tons. Bielke and I have traveled together many times. Everything always comes out pretty much like it went in."

"Pretty much?" he asked, keeping his hand firmly at his side.

"A bit of a joke, Scotty. Sorry. I promise, you won't be merged with my DNA, you won't be merged with a fly or a bacterium or a virus. You won't even end up wearing my underwear. This machine has a considerable amount of artificial intelligence." He pushed his hand forward a little more. "Now hold out your hand to me."

Scott slowly held out his hand, unable to believe he was doing such a thing. His father's hand grasped it, as if they were shaking. Scott felt his heart hammering in his chest in a way it hadn't done since he'd climbed into an A-10 for his first combat mission of the Gulf War.

"We'd better stand up for this," Jim said, rising to his feet but keeping a firm grip on Scott's hand. As he stood, he pulled a cheap, two-cell aluminum flashlight from his back pocket and switched it on. He handed it to Scott. "We'll need this." He then picked up the brick of gold from the table, seemingly effortlessly. "And we'll need this as well."

Scott stood up too, his legs shaky and reluctant to keep holding him up. "Now what?" he asked.

"Now, we travel," Jim told him with a smile. He moved the hand holding the gold brick to his belt, where the black device was now clipped.

"Is it going to..." Scott started. His mouth stopped as the light suddenly dimmed down. He thought for a second that the power had gone out in his house but then realized that was not what had happened at all. His living room was gone. His entire house was gone. He was now standing in a large, darkened room, illuminated only by the cone of light from the flashlight. The floor and even the walls were made of polished gray steel. All around him were heavy shelves that rose to the ceiling. Installed in each shelf were drawers labeled with numbers and letters in sequence. He let go of his father's hand and stared in awe. "Holy fucking shit," he whispered.

"Welcome to Fort Knox, my son," Jim said. "We're in Vault Six-C on the main level. I will advise you to keep your voice down a bit. Though there are no guards inside the vault, and though we're away from the security cameras and the motion detectors, I can't be sure there are no microphones in here. In the interests of time during my demonstration, I was unable to properly recon the area."

"Jesus fucking Christ," he said, shining the light back and forth, looking up and down the row of shelves. "We're really here, aren't we, Dad. I mean... I mean... we really teleported."

"We really teleported," he confirmed.

"I didn't feel anything," Scott said. "No tingling or unconsciousness... or anything."

"As I said, the trip is instantaneous. Would you mind shining that light over to the right? On that bank of shelves there in front of me?"

Numbly, Scott did as asked. His father walked over to a drawer labeled 9375-D-213 and opened it, tugging quite hard to get it to move. Inside were at least thirty other gold bars exactly like the one he held, stacked neatly in groups of three. There was one missing from the nearest stack. Using both hands, Jim placed the stolen one back in the pile. He then shut the drawer again.

"Amazing," Scott whispered, pondering all of that gold, pondering the fact that he was now standing, undetected, in what his father had called the most secured vault in the United States.

"Isn't it?" Jim asked. He turned back to him. "How do you feel?"

"I feel fine," Scott replied. "I'm not sick or anything."

"No, I mean, how do you feel?" Jim repeated. "Get in touch with your body for a moment. Tell me how you feel."

Scott stared at his father in the cone of light for an instant, wondering what kind of metaphysical bullshit he was spouting now. He opened his mouth to say something, probably something sarcastic, and then shut it again as he realized what his father meant. He felt physically good. Really good. Better in fact, than he'd felt in years. The mild fatigue that usually came from a long day of flying was completely gone, leaving him feeling as if he'd just awakened from a good night's sleep. The dull ache that seemed to always be in his back — the legacy of a profession in which he spent most of his time sitting down — was gone as well. Not just faded, not just eased, but gone. As if it had never been there. "Wow," he whispered, the sense of awe deepening. "What did it do to me?"

"You feel good, do you?"

"I feel great," he said. "My backache is gone, I feel like I've just gotten a good night's sleep." He paused as something else occurred to him. When he'd left, he'd been mildly intoxicated, somewhere between a medium and heavy buzz. That was gone as well. He felt as if he hadn't had a drop of alcohol in days. "The booze is gone too. What happened, Dad? What did that thing do to me?"

"Well, as far as the booze goes, that can be seen as either an unpleasant or a pleasant side-effect of teleportation, but it is a constant one. Any intoxicants or poisons in your system are deleted when you are reassembled. This has the effect of instantly sobering you. As for the aches and pains and fatigue, that too is a side effect. Any minor flaws in your DNA and any damage to your body systems are repaired by the computer prior to reassembly. Thus, the inflammation in your vertebrae and disks has been fixed, any arteriosclerosis plaque in your vessels was removed, any arthritic joints were fixed, and any pancreatic or liver damage was repaired. Any fillings in your teeth are now gone and the teeth themselves are as good as new. If you had any harmful viral or bacterial infections brewing, they too were removed. If you'll take a look at your stomach, you'll find that the scar from your appendectomy is gone as well."

Numbly, Scott reached down and lifted up the bottom of his shirt. Though the moderate beer belly he'd developed over the past few years was still there, the six-inch scar that was the legacy of the inflamed appendix he'd had removed fifteen years before was gone without a trace. "Jesus," he whispered.

"Are you starting to see how I stay in shape?" Jim asked with a chuckle. "This one trip you took, Scotty, has probably increased your natural life span by at least forty years. If you'd like, we can reduce your body fat content, improve your eyesight, strengthen your muscles, including your heart, we can even reverse the graying and the hair loss you are experiencing, although you will have to wait for the new hair to grow in."

"This little machine does all that?" he asked, still trying to come to grips with the fact his father had just repaired most of the effects of natural aging.

"That and much more," Jim said, "although those things I just mentioned are options, not default settings like the damage repair. As for the sensation of having just awakened from a good night's sleep, part of that is reaction to the repairs that were made — after all, your heart, your muscles, your entire body, have just been made more efficient — but mostly it's because you have, in effect, gotten a good night's sleep just by traveling. When you are reassembled, all the effects you usually get from sleeping are automatically performed."

"You mean... you get a good night's sleep just by traveling?" he asked, imagining the possibilities of that.

"Well, for the most part," Jim said. "Now you may think it is theoretically possible to never sleep again, to simply teleport from one room to the other whenever you get fatigued, but, in practice, you can only do this for about a week or so. Your brain still requires REM sleep on a regular basis in order to catalogue the information it has gathered, to clean out the subconscious and so forth. Failure to get some actual sleep once in a while will cause things like irritability, delusions, paranoia, and, eventually out and out hallucinations and insanity. So do be careful with that sort of thing."

"Jesus," Scott repeated, pacing back and forth in the small corridor, his mind spinning, on overload. This was some very heavy shit his father had just dragged him into. Some very heavy shit indeed. "So you're saying..."

"I'm saying that this device opens up the world for you," he said. "And it makes sure you'll be around long enough to enjoy it. And that's only the surface. I still haven't shown you the best part."

"What's that?" Scott asked, excited in spite of himself.

"Well, how about we find a little better place to discuss this," Jim suggested. "Are you willing to travel a little further with me? Or would you prefer to go home and forget about this little device."

"Let's travel a little further," Scott told him. "I think I'm starting to see what you meant, Dad."

"I thought you might." He reached down on his belt and fiddled with the buttons on the device for a moment. "Now then. Hold out your hand again."

Scott did so, almost eagerly this time.

Jim took it. "Let's travel," he said, and pushed the button.

The dim darkness of the vault instantly gave way to sunlight so bright he had to close his eyes against it. The air was pleasantly chilly, with a steady wind pushing against his face at fifteen to twenty knots. The air smelled of sea salt and the ground below his feet was hard and rocky. He took a few breaths, letting go of his father's hand as he did so, and then slowly opened his eyes to see where he was now. As his eyes became accustomed to the light and adjusted he felt that last breath freeze in his throat as saw the view.

"Wow," he whispered in awe.

They were up high in the air, standing atop a flat, rocky plateau with sharply sloping cliffs falling away before them. He could see the ocean, which one he knew not, stretching out to the horizon in the direction he was facing. Dozens of ships could be seen dotting the surface of the ocean, tankers and cargo ships mostly, but the odd warship and cruise ship thrown in for variety. From this height they looked tiny, like ships seen from an aircraft in flight. To his right and far below he could see gently rolling plains and beyond that, a large, urban cityscape, complete with hazy pollution, that stretched off to the horizon in that direction.

"Where are we?" he asked his father as he took everything in.

"South Africa," Jim told him. "Atop Table Mountain on the Cape of Good Hope to be exact. Over to the right there is Capetown."

"We're in South Africa? You mean... we're really in South Africa? We're really on top of Table Mountain?"

"We really are," Jim confirmed. "I have a host of different places I like to travel to for meditation or relaxation, or just to take in the view while making love to a woman. I had to choose one in the eastern hemisphere right now because it's daylight here, about 7 AM, if I'm not mistaken. As you can see, the sun has just come up and the air is a bit on the brisk side since it is autumn this far south of the equator."

Scott continued to look around in awe, pondering the fact that even the fastest commercial airliner would take nearly eighteen hours to fly from California to Capetown, South Africa but that he and his father had made the trip in a millisecond. "This is just mind-blowing, Dad. Absolutely fucking mind-blowing."

"This is one of my favorite meditation places. The view is inspiring, isn't it? Unforgiving sea contrasted with wildlands and one of the largest metropolitan regions on the continent. You can see everything from up here, although in this time you run the risk of the odd climber being up here. We were lucky today."

"In this time? You mean during the day?"

"Something like that," Jim said. "As I said, we're merely in linear travel mode at the moment."

"You keep talking about linear mode and hyper-something mode. What does that mean?"

"We'll cover that later," Jim replied. "No sense overloading your senses all at once. Let's have a seat and talk a bit." He walked over to some boulders that were stacked about five feet way. He waved Scott over. "C'mon, son." He reached into an inner pocket of his shirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and then offered the pack to Scott. "Smoke?"

"You know I don't smoke, Dad," he said, grabbing a seat on the boulder next to his father.

"But you used to, and presumably you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"Well... yes."

"And why did you quit?"

"Because it's bad for you," he said as if talking to an idiot. "I didn't want to die of cancer or emphysema."

Jim chuckled again. "That's not really a concern now, is it?" he asked. "The next time you travel any damage caused by the cigarettes you smoked will be automatically repaired. So, spark up, why don't you? It helps one to think."

Scott found he had no argument to counter that with. His dad was right. Why shouldn't he smoke? And a cigarette would certainly go down well about now. He reached out and took one, putting it in his mouth.

"That's my boy," Jim said, utilizing a butane lighter to fire up his smoke. He took a few puffs and then handed it across to Scott."

Scott fired up as well, taking a few tries to get it lit against the wind and coughing over the first inhale. He took a smaller drag the next time and relished the sensation of nicotine coursing through his veins, making him a little dizzy in a pleasant sort of way. He stared out at the ocean far below and took another drag, increasing the dizziness. He then looked at his father. "What if there would have been a climber up here?" he asked. "What would he have thought, seeing us appear out of thin air like that? Or what if we'd materialized right where he was standing? You know? Two objects trying to occupy the same space? Would that be dangerous?"

His father seemed impressed by his questions. It showed in his face. "Well," he replied, "in the first place, it's impossible for you to materialize directly atop another person or object. The machine probes ahead to the landing area before transmitting you and makes sure that doesn't happen. It also makes sure the landing area in question is still there. You will never arrive fifty feet above the ground, or six feet below it."

"The machine probes ahead?" he asked incredulously.

Jim nodded. "It sends a pre-signal to the landing area, probes the vicinity, and then reports back prior to the main transmission. It takes about a tenth of a second or so. And as for other people being in the vicinity, it is possible to transmit where others are nearby — I did that in your living room, you'll recall — but I have the machine set to secrecy mode, which means it will find a place out of view of any human eyes or any other means of detection."

"It does all that?"

"That's how it found an unobserved place in the vault at Fort Knox to transmit me and then us. The vault is lousy with security cameras but we were dropped in a place unobserved by them."

"Then how come it let you appear in my living room right in front of me?"

"I overrode the setting for that particular trip," he said. "The machine has a multitude of options, as I've mentioned. It takes quite some time to learn some of the more obscure ones."

Scott took another drag of his smoke, a deeper one this time, which caused him to have to fight the urge to cough. He exhaled the smoke, watching it torn away by the wind, secure in the knowledge that he would not be harmed by it. "How long did it take you to learn everything this device can do?" he asked his father.

"More than a year," he said. "And even after that, I still kept stumbling across options I was not aware of for many years after."

"Wow," Scott said. That was even more complex than learning the flight and navigation systems of a Boeing 767. But then, this device certainly did a few more things than a 767, didn't it? Yes, it surely did. "You mentioned an instruction manual?"

"I did, and I will give it to you and allow you to read it, but..."

"It's written in English?"

"It is," he confirmed. "It would see that in the world this particular device came from, English is the primary language. There are, of course some nuances and words you won't understand, but, surprisingly, there are not many of them."

"What do you mean, in the world this device came from?"

"We'll go over that later," Jim promised. "For now, we're just focusing on the basics of teleportation. In any case, what I was saying was that the manual is not very large. It merely explains the use of the device and the basic functions. Most of the actual instructions are in the help screens within the device menu itself."

"The device menu?"

"Exactly," Jim confirmed. "I'll show you that in a minute. For now, however..." He pulled the device from his belt and held it in his hand. "Let's just go over the device itself."

Scott looked at the small black box in his father's hand. He had only gotten a glimpse of it before, now he was able to examine it in detail. It looked so amazingly simple. There was a large red button on the top of it. Next to that was a smaller, white button. On the face of it were four more white buttons, small ones, numbered 1,2,3, and 4 in simple black print, arranged in a square. Below this, near the bottom of the device, was a slightly larger, green button with an M printed on it in white. And that was it. There was nothing that resembled a display screen, a battery level, or even a battery compartment.

"The device is made of an advanced alloy," Jim told him, turning it this way and that. "It is virtually indestructible. You can hit it with a sledgehammer, submerge it in water or even acid, burn it with a blowtorch, and it will not be harmed. The only thing you don't want to do, is lose it."

"I see," Scott said, pondering that little tidbit. Though he had no reason to think his father was exaggerating, it was still hard to believe. What kind of alloy was that indestructible? Something much stronger than aircraft aluminum or the titanium used to make certain submarines. It would be stronger, even, then the depleted uranium that the 30-millimeter slugs he'd shot out of his A-10 were made of, and that was the densest metal available on Earth.

"The device is powered by an advanced micro-fusion generator chip," Jim continued. "From what I understand, the device generates the electricity it requires — which, as you can imagine, is considerable — by drawing in elements from the atmosphere and then fusing them for energy. This is something that is far beyond even the theoretical physics of the day but that is apparently very common in the far future. The vent holes you see are for absorption of these elements, not for ventilation of heat."

"So you never have to change batteries?"

"You never have to change batteries," he confirmed. "Let's talk about the range now."

"The range?"

"How far you can travel. We'll discuss the hyper-light mode later, but in strictly linear travel, which is how you get around the world, the range is limited to five light seconds."

"Five light seconds?" he asked, grappling with that concept.

"A light second is how far light travels in one second, or, about 186,000 miles. Five light seconds is roughly 930,000 miles, or about four times the distance of the moon. This means you can visit any structure in Earth orbit or lunar orbit, but not much else."

"So you can't visit Mars or Venus then?"

"No," Jim said. "And why would you want to? You would materialize and instantly die from the poisonous atmosphere or the heat. There's not much fun in that, is there?"

"I suppose not."

"And if you do decide to visit space, stick to the International Space Station while in strictly linear mode. That's the only place you can materialize unprotected currently. The space shuttle is possible as well, but it would be a bit hard to appear there privately. I'm sure you appreciate that this device must be kept secret, right?"

"Right," Scott said seriously. He could imagine what certain very powerful people, most notably his own government, would do to get their hands on such a device, if for no other reason than to prevent other countries from utilizing it.

"So anyway," Jim continued. "The five light second range puts you within reach of anything and anyplace on Earth and above it. As I told you earlier, it's currently set to secrecy mode, which means it will automatically drop you outside the detection range of any human beings or electronic devices capable of recording the materialization. If the machine does detect either humans or recording devices that could observe you, it will either abort the transmission, automatically adjust the transmission to put you in an unobserved portion of the same place, or will halt the transmission and ask you what you want it to do. This all depends on menu options, which will be different under each circumstance."

"Menu options," Scott said. "You keep mentioning that. How do you access this menu? I don't see a screen on that thing."

"It's holographic," Jim replied. "And quite complex, I might add. We will get to that in a minute. First, do you understand the range and the transmission protocols?"

"I think so," Scott said. "Five light seconds and it won't drop you where you can be seen or detected."

"Unless you want it to," Jim said.

"Unless I want it to."

"Very good. Let's move on to the buttons."

Scott nodded, leaning a little closer.

-------


"This button," Jim said, pointing to the large red one on top of the device, "is what is known as the home button. No matter where you are or what you are doing, whether you are in linear mode or you've used hyper-light mode, it will bring you back to whatever you have programmed as your home. In my case, that location is programmed as my house in South Lake Tahoe. My living room to be specific, although if the cleaning crew happens to be there at the time the secrecy mode setting will automatically select another, unoccupied portion of the house. When I give the device to you, I would suggest you set your house in Auburn as the home."

"So if you pushed that button right now," Scott said. "You would vanish and reappear in your living room?"

"Correct," Jim said. "As you can imagine, it's a very handy button to have. You don't have to worry about waypoints or menus or coordinates. One push and you're home. It works well in an emergency, particularly if you've been injured somehow and need to be repaired by teleporting, or if you've fallen off of something, or if you're in a plane that's about to crash, or something along those lines. Remember, any damage to your body can be repaired simply by teleporting a single time. Just make sure you don't get so injured you are knocked unconscious or killed instantly."

Scott looked a little warily at his father for a moment, wondering just what he was getting into. "Where exactly do you travel that you have to worry about those sorts of thing?" he asked. "Have you been visiting Iraq or something?"

"Places that make Iraq look like Utopia at times," Jim told him. "But don't worry about that right now. That's advanced study. Do you understand the function of the home button?"

"Yes," Scott said.

"Okay, then, let's move on to the transmit button. That is this button here on top, next to the home button." He pointed to the unmarked white button. "This does pretty much what you would expect. It's activates the transmission mode. It is what you push in order to execute a travel order you've either programmed through the menu or punched up on the keyboard. It must be used in conjunction with one of the other functions. Simply pressing it by itself will do nothing."

"Okay," Scott said slowly. "I think I get it. It's kind of like the enter key."

"Exactly," Jim said, smiling at the reference. "And that brings us to these four numbered keys here on the front. Those are what you use to access pre-programmed locations. You pre-program those locations, obviously, in the menu and of course you can access and transmit from the menu as well. These are mostly so you can punch in where you want to go quickly, and without anyone seeing what you are doing. For instance, that is how I left your living room. Earlier today I programmed the Fort Knox location into my list of linear destinations. It was assigned number 4-2-2-1. I simply punched in that sequence — and believe me, you will quickly learn the numeric pad by feel — and then pushed the transmit button. Poof, I disappeared right before your eyes. Of course, I then found myself in the dark so I pushed the home button at that point and traveled to South Lake Tahoe. Most of the time that elapsed on that trip was me looking for a goddamn flashlight in my kitchen drawer and then changing the batteries. Once I had the light, I pushed 4-2-2-1 and transmit again, and then I was back in the vault, able to see this time. Once I had the gold in my hand, I punched in 2-2-3-3, which is the code for your living room. Poof, I was back, although standing that time since I had been standing when I left."

Scott continued looking at the device in fascination. He took one last puff of his cigarette and then dropped it on the ground, crushing it with the bottom of his shoe. "So that means you can program in... uh..."

"256 locations," Jim told him. "In truth, that's about two hundred more than you can reasonably be expected to memorize and recall at a moment's notice. You'll find that, in practice, you only use the keyboard commands for ten or twelve of your favorite places in each linear mode. You may have many more stored and available for keyboard access, but you won't remember their numbers and will have to go into the menu to call them up. Once in the menu, it's easier just to select where you wish to travel and then hit the transmit key. The menu will automatically close when you teleport."

"Uh huh," Scott said. "And my living room is one of the places you've memorized? How often to you visit my house?"

"That is the first time I've been in your house uninvited," Jim said, his tone indicating he was somewhat hurt by the accusation. "I only programmed a number in for easy return during our talk."

"I see," Scott replied, ashamed of his statement. "Sorry, Dad."

"No problem, Scotty," he said. "No problem at all. Let me show you a few of my favorite places real quickly, just so you can get the feel of the device."

"You want me to teleport us?" he asked, suddenly scared again.

"You have to do it sometime," Jim told him, offering him the device. "Just be sure I'm holding your hand when you push the transmit button, okay? I'd hate to get left atop Table Mountain and have you not know how to get back to me."

Scott licked his lips nervously but took the device from his father. To his surprise, he found it extremely light, less than an ounce he estimated. Despite this, it felt solid in his hand, solid and sturdy. "Okay, what do I do?"

"Well... let's see," Jim said contemplatively. "Let's remain on the daylight side of the planet, shall we? How about you punch in 1-2-2-3? That's another of my favorite meditation spots."

"Where is it?" Scott asked.

"Now that would ruin the surprise, wouldn't it?"

"I guess so," he said nervously. He looked down at the device in his palm, at the white buttons with the numbers on them. He put his finger on the 1 button and pushed it. There was no beeping or booping or any other noise to indicate it had been activated. Somehow this didn't surprise him. He then pushed the 2 button and then did it again. Next was the 3 button. The sequence was complete.

"Now remember, take my hand," Jim warned.

"Right." He held out the hand that was not holding the device. His father took it. He took a deep breath and then moved his thumb so it was hovering over the transmit button. He rested it atop the button for the briefest moment and then, mentally deriding himself for being a pussy, pushed firmly down on it.

Table Mountain, the Cape of Good Hope, Capetown, and the wide blue ocean all vanished right before his eyes, replaced with another view, this one just as majestic. Once again, they were up high in the air, standing atop a rocky surface. Only this time, the surface was much smoother, showing the hand of mankind manipulating it. It was a structure of some sort, an ancient structure of impressive girth, and they were inside of it. The walls were made of solid stone and had large windows cut in all sides, giving an impressive, 360-degree view of the entire landscape. In the direction they were facing was the slope of a large hill leading down to a gully. All around them were other rolling hills covered with green vegetation. Off to both sides a massive stone wall stretched up and over these hills and out of sight. Spaced at regular intervals, usually at the hilltops, stone structures were atop the wall, obviously to serve as lookout points. Scott realized they were inside one such structure.

"The Great Wall of China?" Scott asked as he took in the view.

"Indeed," Jim told him. "A section that is about eighty miles north of Beijing, in a very rural, difficult to access area. Since there are no roads out here, not many people visit this portion of the wall. It is untouched by human encroachment, weathered only by time. You can see the view as the ancient Chinese did as they watched for invading Mongols from the north."

Scott found himself overcome with wonder and delight as he looked out over rural China, as he pondered his father's words. The sensation was much more than he'd felt upon materializing atop Table Mountain. He had been too numb then, his mind still grappling with the reality of what he'd always thought an impossibility. But now... now he was standing in a guardhouse on the Great Wall of China. He was standing there, atop a structure he'd always wanted to see in person, but he had expended no effort to get there. He had paid no travel agency to arrange the trip. He had dealt with no bureaucracy to get travel documents in order or to obtain a visa. He had not ridden in a cramped aircraft for eighteen hours. In fact, less than twenty minutes ago he had been sitting in his own living room, sipping a drink. Nor would he have to stay in a foreign hotel and deal with the reverse of all the bureaucracy and travel in order to get home. If he wanted to, he could be back home in less than a minute. Or he could go somewhere else, see something else. Now he was starting to understand what his father had meant when he'd told him the world was his. The world really was his. The Taj Mahal? He could visit it right now. The pyramids of Egypt? He could materialize atop one, or deep inside one if he wished. Stonehenge? He could pop over and have a picnic lunch there. Easter Island? He could have his dinner there.

"This is awesome, Dad," he said, staring at everything, pondering everything. "This is just... it's just..."

His father was grinning. "It is, isn't it? I remember my first few travel experiences. I suspect I looked about like you do right now. Are you beginning to see this device as I do, Scotty? As a gift? As something to be revered, not feared?"

"Yes," Scott said. "I do. Thank you for sharing it with me, Dad."

"I'm not simply sharing it with you, Scotty. I'm giving it to you. And as beautiful as the view is, the lessons must continue. Let us pop back to your living room, shall we? There are less distractions there."

He nodded. "Okay."

-------

They each had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other as they sat on Scott's couch. From the surround sound speakers, classical music was still issuing. The teleportation device was sitting on Scott's lap, waiting for him to utilize it.

"Now I've already put you down as an authorized user in the menu," Jim explained to him. "Your DNA was cataloged the first time I teleported with you and the machine will now allow you to use it for any function."

"So... you mean other people can't use it? Someone can't just pick it up and accidentally pop into your living room?"

"Well, I would advise you not to leave this machine lying around where someone could pick it up. It is undoubtedly the most valuable and unique thing on this entire planet. But, in answer to your question, no, only the owner — which is currently logged as me — and authorized users — of whom you are the only other one — may utilize the device on your own."

"Bielke can't use it?" he asked.

He shook his head. "The potential for misuse of this device is tremendous. I don't even trust Bielke, as much as I love her, with that sort of temptation. But I do trust you, Scotty. I've raised you to be a good man. I know in my heart that you will use it as it is intended."

"As it is intended?"

"It is intended to travel with, to enjoy life with, to forge an existence for yourself. Those things it should be used for."

That wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting to hear. "Not for the betterment of mankind?"

"Fuck mankind," his dad said in all seriousness. "It can take care of itself... or maybe it can't. The idea is to make your life rich and fulfilled and to benefit those you deem worthy. As I told you before, you'll find that not much really matters. There really isn't a great scheme of things, much as we like to believe there is."

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"You will," his father said. "It will become clear soon, after we enter hyper-light mode."

"And what is..."

"Later," Jim told him. "For now, we have one final button to cover, the most important button." He pointed to the green button on the bottom. "This one here is the key to everything this device does and is capable of. It's the menu button. Pick up the device and push it."

Scott set his drink down on the table and picked up the teleporter. He hesitated. "What's going to happen?"

"You won't travel anywhere," he said. "It just brings up the holographic menu interface. From there, every function can be accessed."

"Okay," Scott said slowly. He extended his thumb and pushed the button. Again there was nothing audible to indicate something had happened. But something visual certainly took place. Oh yes indeed. A globe of the earth suddenly popped into existence before him, about a foot from the tip of his nose. The globe was about eighteen inches in diameter and extremely realistic looking, the continents marked with thin black lines and the countries neatly labeled in small print. He was looking at the western hemisphere. A red dot was visible in the United States, right about where the Sacramento region was located. Off to the sides of the globe were dozens of small rectangles, they too floating in mid-air. Each was labeled with a word. Scott's eyes registered a few of them — SECURITY, VIEW MODE, ANATOMICS, and ZORDON OPTIONS were but a few. Floating above the globe were two larger tabs, one labeled LINEAR MODE and the other HYPER-LIGHT MODE. The linear mode tab was currently lit up. Floating below the globe were two more tabs that read CLOSE MENU and TRANSMIT.

"This is a hologram?" Scott asked, staring at it in awe. "It looks solid, like I can reach out and touch it."

"It is solid," Jim replied. "At least in a manner of speaking. And you can reach out and touch it. In fact, that's how you make it work."

"Wow," he said, tentatively reaching out towards the globe, but withdrawing before he actually made contact. "I won't mess anything up, will I?"

"Nope, only the transmit tab will cause you to actually teleport from here, and only if you've programmed in a location to travel to. And even if you did do that without me holding onto you, you know how to get back, don't you?"

"2-2-3-3 and transmit," he answered.

"Right," his dad replied. "Later on I'll have you program your living room in as the home destination. But for now, don't be afraid to touch anything and experiment with the menu tabs. That's the only way you're going to learn."

"Okay," he said, but still didn't move his finger forward.

"Lets start with first things first," Jim suggested. "The globe. You'll notice it looks fairly realistic?"

"Yes," Scott said. "I did notice that."

"That's because in a way, it is realistic. The globe is a real time projection of the Earth. For ease of use, anything you likely wouldn't be interested in has been removed from the picture — things like clouds and fog banks and orbiting satellites and the moon. The night side has been lit up as well. You can put those things in if you want, but trust me, it's easier without them. Also, for ease of use, the current political boundaries have been drawn in. As you zoom in, local divisions and cities will be labeled with names as well."

"When you say real time... do you mean... like... real time?"

"Indeed I do. You see, the machine is not idle as it sits there. It is constantly scanning within its functional range with hyperwaves. It is, in effect, a huge camera that can see everything — kind of like a panoramic camera. The dot in north central California is, of course, where you currently are. As you start to zoom in on a particular place, the hyperwaves will concentrate more heavily in that region, to the exclusion of places you're not looking at. That way, you can get a completely detailed picture of where you want to go."

"I'm not sure I followed all of that, Dad," Scott told him.

"Well then, I guess I should have you demonstrate it to yourself. You can look at anything on the planet. Anything. Pick something for me."

Scott looked at him, wondering if he were serious. "Anything?" he asked.

"Anything," he assured him.

"Hmmm," he said, intrigued. He couldn't seem to think of anything. Impulsively, meaning it as a joke, he blurted, "How about the women's locker room over at the gym?"

His father didn't seem to think it was a joke, however. He grinned. "You are certainly your father's boy," he told him. "That's as good a place as any. Take your finger and..."

"Wait a minute," Scott said. "I was just kidding."

"I'm not," Jim said lecherously. "Let's check out some poon, my boy. Use your finger and draw a circle around the Sacramento region."

"You're serious?" Scott asked.

"I'm dead serious. Do it."

"Wow," Scott said. This was unbelievable. He turned back to the globe and slowly extended his index finger. He made contact with it just north of the dot in California. Slowly, he began to move it in a counterclockwise circle. As his finger moved, a thin red line stretched out behind it. The circle extended from the edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the eastern fringes of San Francisco Bay. To the north and south it extended from about Redding to Fresno. When it was complete, he withdrew his finger. The circle remained in place but nothing else happened.

"Tap your finger once inside that circle and it will zoom in," Jim advised.

Scott did so. The globe suddenly vanished and was replaced by a flat, three-dimensional view of the geographic area within the circle he'd drawn. As his father had told him, it was a detailed map, in full relief. In the portion where the Sierra Nevadas were, on the right side, the mountains rose up from the surface. There was even snow upon them. In the valley itself, the land had contours, lakes, rivers, streams and creeks. Thin black lines represented highways and freeways. Where the cities were located, the buildings were not visible, but the geographic boundaries were all neatly drawn and each labeled with its proper name, which seem to float in the air a few inches above the map. Sacramento, Stockton, Redding, Vallejo, Roseville, Rocklin, Auburn. Even the lesser suburbs — those areas unincorporated but populated — were labeled as well. Carmichael, Fair Oaks, El Dorado Hills, Meadow Vista. To the left, right, above, and below of the floating map, all of the menu tabs remained in place, just as they had been when the globe was there.

"Now zoom in further," Jim told him. "Bring in the Auburn area. Then you'll start to see streets and buildings."

He did so, drawing another circle around Auburn and tapping it. The map became a closer view, more detailed. As Jim had said, he could see the streets now, the main ones labeled with their proper name. Even the larger buildings, such as the courthouse and the Wal-Mart were visible.

"And closer still," Jim said.

He drew another circle, this one around the section of Auburn where he lived. Now every street was labeled, every building, including his very house, a stark relief on the map. Trees and bushes could now be seen, as could swimming pools and patios. To his astonishment, he could see tiny people moving about in some places, could see cars driving back and forth along the streets. Near the airport, tiny planes were circling around, waiting their turn to land while others on the ground were waiting their turn to take off.

"This is a live shot?" he asked in amazement. "These cars are really driving in these spots right now? These people are really walking around where I see them?"

"You got it," Jim confirmed. "As I said, the hyperwaves are concentrated intently upon this region and are ignoring the rest of the planet."

"How close can you zoom?"

"As close as you need to. Now zoom in some more. Do you see the gym building yet?"

"No," he said. "But I see the strip mall it's a part of."

"Zoom in on it."

He reached out and drew another circle, this one around the strip mall in question. When he brought it in, it was like he was looking at a shot from a helicopter hovering a thousand feet above it. Cars moved back and forth in the parking lot. People walked to and fro, close enough that he could make out their sex and what kind of clothing they were wearing. He could see steam and smoke coming out of the vent pipes of the various buildings.

"Now that you're this close," Jim said. "Tap on the gym building itself. That will isolate that particular building and give you a schematic of it."

He did as suggested. The view of the strip mall disappeared and was replaced by a zoom of the building only. The roof was now gone and black lines, outlining each of the rooms, took its place. The people inside were not visible as yet.

"Tap on the main workout area," Jim told him. "That will give you an overhead of the room."

He did so and suddenly he was looking at a shot of the entire gym. He saw all of the exercise equipment, all of the people in it. He saw the television sets, most of which were tuned to the Kings/Lakers playoff game that was underway. It was like a camera had been installed in the ceiling, but, at the same time, it was not. The view was not two dimensional, as would have been the case with a video feed, it was in full color and three dimensions. The people, the equipment, everything in the room had depth to it. He saw men and women running on stationary bikes and jogging on treadmills. He saw them pumping weights on the machines and sipping from water bottles. It was like he was actually hanging from the ceiling of the room, looking down on them.

"You'll notice there are now controls on the side of the hologram," Jim said.

Scott looked and, sure enough, there were protrusions on the side of the view. One was a wheel with a + on one end and a — on the other. Another was a trackball of some sort. It was not labeled with anything. The last was a small joystick that looked like it could be operated with one finger. It was not labeled either. "What do they do?" he asked.

"The slider is a zoom control," Jim said. "The trackball is so you can move about the building. The joystick is to change your orientation, like if you want to look from the perspective of standing on the floor, for instance. Play with them a bit. Move around the building and check things out."

Scott did as suggested, putting his right hand on the controls and manipulating them one by one. He zoomed in a little, so he was just above the floor, and then used the joystick to tilt the perspective to that of someone actually standing on the floor. Still using the joystick, he was now able to look around, up and down, just like someone turning his head.

"Now move around a little," Jim said. "Check the place out."

He put his finger on the trackball and began to move it. The view began to move down the walkway between two rows of stationary bikes. On his left and right, men and women were pumping away at the pedals, most of them looking at the television screen above them. One of them was a particularly attractive brunette woman. She was dressed in tight fitting spandex and a sports bra. Scott stopped and turned towards her, zooming in a little more.

"She's a hottie," Jim said appreciably. "You ever tap any of those women down there?"

"No," he said. "Most of them are quite shallow, I've found. I usually just keep to myself there."

"But you like to look," he said. It was not a question.

"Oh yes," Scott agreed. "That's the main reason I don't just buy my own treadmill."

He turned forward again and began to move along the walkway once more. As he did so, a large middle-aged man dressed in gray sweats and dripping sweat was heading in the opposite direction directly toward him. He moved the view a little to the right out of instinct and — though he should have known better — he actually expected the man to move to his right as well. But the man didn't know there was anything to move out of the way of. He grew extremely large, blotted out the view for a moment, and then disappeared.

"He ran into me," Scott said.

"No, he ran into nothing," Jim replied. "You're not really there, remember? All he did was pass through a concentration of hyperwaves. He noticed it no more than if he'd passed through a particularly dense concentration of regular radio signals."

"I see," Scott said. "So no one will have any idea I'm there? No feeling of being watched or anything like that?"

"None whatsoever," Jim assured him. "Now, how about we check out that locker room you were so eager to see."

"Right," Scott said enthusiastically. He began to move in that direction. It was near the far end of the room and he followed the walkways, making lefts and rights at the intersections. Several times people walked right through the view, blotting it for a second and then disappearing. When he came to the swinging door that guarded entrance to the room, he stopped, hesitating.

"You can go right through the door," Jim said. "You don't have to wait for someone to open it."

"Oh, of course," he said. He moved forward again. The view blotted as he passed through the doorway and then cleared. He was now in a short corridor. He turned left, moved a little forward, and was suddenly in a place no man was meant to tread. He hesitated again. "Are you sure we should be doing this?" he asked. "I mean... this is an invasion of privacy."

"So?" his father asked him bluntly.

"Well... it's wrong... isn't it?"

Jim simply shrugged. "You're not hurting anyone. You're just taking a little peek at something you've always wanted to see. No one in there will ever know you were there and their lives will be unaffected by what you're doing. So why not do it?"

That answer seemed too easy, to accommodating, too much like a twisted rationalization. But all the same, Scott allowed himself to accept it. After all, he did want to see the inside of the locker room, didn't he? "I guess you're right," he said. He moved the view forward again and turned the corner into the main locker room.

There were three rows of lockers on the right side of the room with a wooden bench that ran the length of each row. On the left side of the room were six shower stalls, each with privacy doors. In the back of the room was an enclosed bathroom area that, if it were like the men's locker room, would contain four stalls. The locker room was not particularly crowded, which was somewhat of a disappointment. Directly in front of him was a chubby woman in her fifties. She had just finished putting on an obscenely tight set of spandex and was fixing her hair. In the next row over, a mid-thirties woman with an impressively fit body had just finished dressing after her shower and was putting her sweaty workout clothes in a gym bag. He turned towards the showers and saw that all of the doors were standing open, all of them unoccupied at the moment.

"Not exactly what I was hoping for," Scott said.

"Yes," Jim agreed. "You'll find that reality very rarely lives up to the fantasy in your mind. You were probably thinking everyone was going to be nude and attractive and that a few of them might even be dyking out, right?"

"Well... uh... yeah, I guess so," he admitted.

"Sorry to spoil your illusion. If you wait awhile, however, I'm sure you'll see someone undressing and showering. Perhaps even someone you would want to look at. I would suggest, however, that if you really want to use the device for pure voyeurism, there are much better places to look in on than a locker room. Hotel rooms for instance. If you go room to room in any large hotel at pretty much any hour of the day or night, I guarantee you will see a variety of nudity and sexual activity, most of it quite conventional, some of it quite shocking."

"You've done this?" Scott asked.

"A thousand times," Jim assured him. "I have the same sex-drive and voyeuristic tendencies of any man, and this device is a voyeur's dream. But we digress. You can look at naked women and fornication later. For now, I'm teaching you how to use the device. Suppose you wanted to teleport to this locker room now that you've looked at it."

"Okay," he said, pondering what a stir that would cause if he were to suddenly appear in the woman's locker room.

"All you would have to do is push the transmit tab on the menu or the transmit button on the device itself and you would appear there. In the current privacy setting it would teleport you to a back portion of the room where you were out of view of anyone. That's the easiest way."

"Right," Scott said.

"You can also lock this location in by pushing the LOCATIONS tab on the right lower side. See it?"

Scott looked over at the tabs on the right side and found one marked LOCATIONS about three-quarters of the way down. Curious, and remembering his father's advice to experiment, he pushed it. The locker room remained in place but all of the tabs on both sides disappeared and were replaced by new ones, only a few this time and only on the left. They were marked, STORED LOCATIONS, SAVE LOCATION, TRACK THIS LOCATION, LOCATION SETTINGS, and EXIT TO MENU. In smaller letters, floating just above the main display, were the words, This Locations menu applies to linear travel only.

"As you can see," Jim told him, "the menu is pretty user friendly, for the most part. If you wanted to save this location, all you would have to do is push the SAVE LOCATION tab. It would be assigned a four-digit number and you would be asked to give it a name. If you don't wish to give it a name it will be named for its geographic coordinates on the globe."

"Give it a name? Is there a keyboard or something to type it in?"

"No, there's a voice interface. All you have to do is speak what you want it named. And keep it simple. Call it, gym locker room or something along those lines."

"I see." He pushed the EXIT TO MAIN tab and the menu returned to normal.

"Okay," his dad said now. "Let's zoom back to the globe and have you pin down a location you can actually travel to. Push that tab marked REFRESH MENU."

He did as he was told and the basic lessons continued.



-------

Chapter 2


The temperature was quite a bit beyond brisk at this altitude at this time of the year. It was downright freezing — quite literally. The teleportation device had informed Scott that the current air temperature was sixteen degrees Fahrenheit (metric measurements were the default for the machine, but Jim had long since instructed it to convert all such things to the archaic American system). Scott's cheeks were numb and rosy and with each breath he took a dense cloud of condensation streamed from his mouth and nose. Though it was mid-April, all around him was a thick blanket of winter snow that likely wouldn't melt until well into August, if even then. He was unconcerned with the snow or the cold however. He had on his heaviest winter coat, the insides lined with goose down. On his hands were a pair of rabbit fur gloves.

He was on the summit of a peak called Mount Fields in central Montana, right in the heart of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, 8600 feet above sea level. Mount Fields, though not a particularly high mountain, sat directly astride the continental divide, the last large peak before the Rockies sloped sharply downward to become the Great Plains. Scott sat on a rocky outcropping over a sheer cliff that dropped nearly 1500 feet, a place that ordinarily would have been inaccessible to even the most experienced and well-equipped climbers, a place that even a man rappelling from a helicopter would have been hard pressed to land safely upon. For Scott, with the assistance of the marvelous teleportation device his father had given him, it had been no more difficult than pushing a button.

He was facing east, towards the rising sun, which was now about five degrees above the horizon. There was not another human being around him for at least twenty square miles. The view was astonishing, one of the most beautiful he'd seen so far in a long night of traveling. The jagged mountains gave way before him to the gently rolling hills of the plains that stretched to a horizon exponentially further away than one could see at ground level. Some twenty to thirty miles in front of him he could just make out a faint, gray line. That was State Route 89, which led to Great Falls to the southeast and Glacier National Park to the northwest. It was the only man-made thing in view. He could see no telephone poles or electrical cables. No radio towers or cellular phone towers poked up into the sky. There was no litter here, no cigarette butts ground into the rocks, no empty beer cans or used condoms on the ground. There was no graffiti or vandalism. It was not unrealistic for Scott to suspect that he may be the first human being in the history of time to visit this particular spot, and, if not the first, the number would certainly be in single digits. This was what the device was all about. This was what his father had meant when he told him to explore.

He had been traveling all night long, teleporting from place to place all over the globe with the fascination of a child playing with a new toy. His father had shown him the basic functions of the device and the menu, had programmed in Scott's own living room as the home setting, and had then sent him on his way to explore whatever he saw fit to explore. And explore he had. Most of his night had been spent in the eastern hemisphere since that was where the daylight was. He had teleported to Egypt and visited several pyramids, had gazed at the Suez Canal, had sat atop the highest skyscraper in Cairo and stared out at the ancient city. He had gone to Israel and visited the Dead Sea, had waded in its salty waters. He had gone to New Zealand, to Bali, to Java and had stood atop their highest peaks. He had visited isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean, standing on real estate no more than a few hundred yards across, hundreds, if not thousands of miles from any inhabited places, from any people.

He had seen the sunrise seven times now, always from isolated, scenic vistas, teleporting steadily westward hour by hour. He had watched it from the Baltic seacoast, from a cliff overlooking the English Channel, from an iceberg in the North Atlantic, from a volcanic crest in Iceland, from an island lookout off the coast of Maine, from the top of the John Hancock building in Chicago, and now, from Mount Fields in Montana. In the next hour he planned to teleport to the most isolated western shoreline of the Great Salt Lake and take it in again. From there, he would go to the top of the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. After all, the world was his.

He was not the least bit tired, despite having been awake for the better part of twenty-six hours now. Nor was he in any way sore, despite having been in cramped and chilly places all night, despite having turned his ankle quite painfully atop one of the pyramids of Egypt. The machine kept him fully rested and fully in good repair, with each trip refreshing him completely and fixing any damage, no matter how slight, that might have been done to his body. Arm scrapes, skinned knees, bruised skin, even sprained ankles ceased to exist the moment he teleported to the next destination. Even damage and staining to his clothing was repaired. A rip in his jeans from catching them on an antenna guide wire on the John Hancock Building, a mud stain on his jacket from the Icelandic volcano, seagull droppings from the Maine island, all had disappeared without a trace, leaving him with clothing that was as good as brand new.

One thing the machine did not take care of, however, was hunger, and Scott was definitely experiencing that now. He had eaten nothing since the meal service on his Atlanta to San Francisco flight the previous day. As he watched the sun rise higher and higher into the sky over the plains, his stomach growled with increasing insistence.

"I hear you," he said good naturedly after a particularly fierce growl. He unclipped the teleporter from his belt and pondered it. Where should he get something to eat? He had an entire world to choose from. A hot dog from a New York street vender? Fish and chips from a London shop? Bratwurst and beer from a Berlin eatery? Authentic Hungarian goulash from Budapest? Though all of these ideas sounded appealing, he elected to simply return home instead. He had no identification or currency in his possession at the moment, let alone Pounds or Euros, and the insistence in his stomach was enough to convince him that meeting other people, exchanging currency, and paying for goods in foreign places was not something he was ready to undertake prior to feeding himself. He took one last long look at the vista before him and then pushed the "home" button on the teleporter.

Instantaneously he found himself sitting on his couch in the darkened living room. He took a few breaths of the stale, processed air that was spit out by his air conditioning system and then reached over and turned on the lamp. The living room was empty and quiet. He stood up and walked upstairs, looking into the guest bedroom. His father was in the bed, curled up under the sheets, his breathing deep and regular. When he had sent Scott on his way Jim had told him he had been up for nearly a week straight and was looking forward to getting some actual sleep. Well, it looked like he was getting it all right.

Scott went back downstairs and opened up the refrigerator, checking to see what was there. After a few moments consideration he pulled out a carton of eggs and some cheese. He then went to the pantry and pulled out a can of chili. He fired up the stove and went about the process of constructing an omelet.

When his omelet was done, he put it on a plate and carried it over to the kitchen table. As he started to eat he pondered the device, which he set down next to him. Accessing the menu he brought the globe up and began to zoom in on the Atlanta, Georgia region of the United States. As his father had said, the device was a voyeur's dream, the ultimate Peeping Tom machine. It was time to play around with that particular function a bit. Not so much to spy on people, he told himself, but just to fine tune his zooming skills. He picked Atlanta because it was daylight there, almost 8:30 AM in fact, and because he had a fairly decent working knowledge of that particular city since he spent the night there ten times a month.

Utilizing his father's advice, he zoomed in first on the Callahan Suites Hotel, which was where the airline always put him up on his overnighters. It was a thirty story building on Camp Creek Parkway, five miles from the airport and just a few blocks from the Georgia International Convention Center. Since his zoom brought him in over the top of the building, he entered the upper floors first. His first room view was of the five-star restaurant that looked out over the city. The room was completely deserted this time of the day, all of the chairs stacked neatly atop the tables, all of the blinds shut, the only illumination from the emergency lights in the corners.

Using the virtual controls on the menu, he dropped down a floor, to the 29th, and found himself in the middle of a luxurious penthouse suite. It too was empty, the beds neatly made, the hot tub idle, the lights all turned out, the blinds drawn. Undaunted, he moved to left, passing through furniture like a ghost until he came to the far wall. He passed through this obstacle as well and was now in the adjoining suite. This one, it turned out, was indeed occupied but also quite uninteresting. The occupant was an elderly man who had to be at least eighty. He sat in an electric wheelchair listlessly eating oatmeal from a tray before him. The only other person in the room was an overweight Hispanic woman in her fifties, obviously a nurse of some sort assigned to take care of him.

"Boring," Scott mumbled. Nevertheless, he paused for a moment, his hands going to the tabs on the side of the menu. One of them was marked SOUND OPTIONS. He pushed it and activated the sound, intending to calibrate it in this room so it would be at optimum level for further exploration. He adjusted the volume control to about mid range, until he was able to clearly hear the slurping of the oatmeal and the soft humming of the nurse as she removed clothing from the closet and laid it out on the bed.

"Maria!" the old man suddenly barked, his accent thick and southern. "I shit myself again! Come and change my goddamn diaper so I can finish this slop."

"Yes, sir," Maria sighed, her tone that of a woman resigned to her lot in life. She began to head toward him.

"I think that's enough calibration," Scott said to himself, quickly locking in the sound settings and then putting his finger back on the movement controls. Before Maria even reached her target, Scott moved downward, passing through the floor.

He found himself in another penthouse suite, this one occupied by an elderly couple in their seventies who were pondering the room service menu on the television screen and trying to decide what to order. He decided to move downward again. This brought him to the mere luxury suites, which were a few steps below the penthouse stature. Here he found the first hint of what he was looking for. A balding, middle-aged man was laying on the bed, naked, his small penis in his hand and being jacked enthusiastically while he watched a pay porno movie on the television set.

Scott turned quickly away from this scene, a mild feeling of disgust pervading him, and moved next door, where he found something even less appetizing going on. It was another man in his sixties and he too was naked and holding his penis in his hand, only he was not watching the television. This gentleman had a condom on and was smearing lubricating jelly all over it in preparation for what was to come. In the hands and knees position on the bed before him, naked and holding his butt cheeks open, was a young, well-built man no older than twenty, possibly much younger.

"Come on, you old fuck," the young man said over his shoulder, a come-hither look on his face. "You paid for this nice, juicy ass. Now stick that cock in there and get your money's worth."

"Jesus Christ," Scott said. He had nothing against homosexuals — after all, his sister was one — but he had absolutely no desire to see two men go at it, particularly not when one of the men was old enough to be his father. He quickly dropped through the floor, going lower in the hotel.

This floor was filled with ordinary suites, the level above the standard room that he was put up in on his overnighters. Each consisted of a large sitting room surrounding the bed compartment and a sunken Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. All of these rooms were occupied and he passed from one to one slowly, seeing what there was to see. In the first two, middle-aged couples, one Caucasian, one African-American, were eating breakfast from room service. In the third, there was a woman showering but she was well into her sixties and not the least bit attractive. In the fourth he finally found something worth looking at. An attractive woman in her twenties stood before the bathroom mirror combing out her long, obviously bleach-blond hair. She was dressed in a skimpy bra that did justice to her store-bought breasts and an even skimpier thong.

"Nice," Scott whispered, manipulating the view so he could see her from all angles. It was hard to believe that this scene was actually happening in a hotel room on the other side of the country and that he was actually seeing it happen, not just as a video clip but in three-dimensional reality.

A man emerged from the shower stall, a naked, slightly overweight, balding man in his late forties. He walked over to the woman and kissed the back of her shoulder blades gently. She cooed a little but pulled away when he tried to put his arms around her from behind.

"Not while I'm getting dressed, you horny old fuck," she said affectionately. "I don't want to have to take a shower again."

"Spoilsport," he told her, giving a gentle squeeze of her left butt cheek.

"I'm sure you'll have lots of uh... dictation for me after the convention today, won't you?" she asked slyly, putting a definite emphasis on dictation.

"Yes, I do like to keep my secretary occupied," he replied with a chuckle.

Scott continued to watch for a few minutes as they bantered with each other, tossing thinly veiled innuendo back and forth. When the woman began to put her clothing on, thus covering up what he was most interested in, he left, passing through the wall and into the next suite.

He traveled from room to room, examining each scene he found before, gradually working his way down to the normal rooms that only had a bed and a bathroom. In most there was nothing of consequence going on — usually just a couple eating breakfast or perusing the television before embarking upon their day. In a few, however, he paused long enough to admire a female form taking a shower, or getting dressed. He saw a few breasts and a few vaginal regions uncovered, just enough of a glimpse to maintain his interest between bites of his omelet. It was down on the twentieth floor that he hit pay dirt again.

The slapping sound of intercourse in action was the first thing to greet his ears. He paused a moment in confusion, since the bed was unoccupied, the covers thrown to the side. He manipulated the view, turning in a circle until he discovered the source of the sound. A naked woman in her thirties, slightly overweight but by no means unattractive, was spread eagle against the window, which overlooked downtown Atlanta in the distance. Her legs were spread widely and she was grunting happily as an older man in his forties thrust in and out of her from behind while squeezing her large breasts with his fingers. Both were sweaty and obviously quite turned on.

"Fuck me harder," she panted, her face pushed against the window. "Rape my pussy, you fucking asshole!"

"Yeah, bitch," he said enthusiastically, slamming harder and harder into her.

This one was enough to cause an erection to spring in his pants. He was actually watching people have sex, watching them perform the most intimate of acts in what they thought was the privacy of their hotel room, and they had no idea, not the slightest inkling, that he was watching them. He abandoned his omelet — which had gone quite cold anyway — and manipulated the controls, bring the view in closer and changing the angle. The detail of the tryst increased, allowing his to see the man's erect cock sliding in and out of her swollen vagina, to see juices of arousal dripping down her legs. He looked upward and took in her heaving breasts, at the erect nipples between the roughly squeezing fingertips of her companion.

"Your husband never fucks you like this, does he?" the man grunted, giving an extra-hard thrust that caused the window to rattle in its frame.

"No..." she panted, seemingly aroused when the illicitness of the encounter was brought to her attention. "Never... neverrrrrrrr!"

"Nope," the man agreed. "If he would've taken care of business at home, you wouldn't be whoring yourself out in my fuckin hotel room, would you, slut?"

"No," she moaned out. "I... he... ohhhhh..."

She came, her pussy going into spasm around his cock. He followed shortly after, squeezing her tightly and hammering into her hard enough to force her head against the window.

Scott was now painfully erect and quite aroused. He watched the two lovers as they slowly uncoupled from each other and walked back to the center of the room. When he finally looked away from them he noticed his father standing in the doorway to the kitchen, an amused grin on his face.

"I see you're putting the device to good use," Jim said.

Scott found himself blushing in shame, as if he'd been caught masturbating. His erection wilted as if it had been burned. He quickly got rid of the menu and the hotel room scene, leaving himself with just the device and his cold omelet. "I was just... uh... looking around at things and happened across that," he said, rather lamely he knew.

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Scotty," Jim said, coming over and grabbing a seat. "Like I told you last night, nothing really matters anyway. I trust you've had a good night of traveling?"

Scott put his embarrassment behind him the best he could and told his father tales of the places he'd been and the things he'd seen. Jim listened attentively while helping himself to a glass of orange juice and then eating the remains of Scott's omelet.

"So it sounds like you have the basic concepts of traveling in linear mode down," Jim said when he finally wound down from his stories. "You know how to zoom and isolate, how to save your locations, how to access most of the functions on the linear menu, and, most importantly, how to get home when you need to or want to."

"I think so," Scott agreed. "I didn't run into any problems. And when there was something on the menu I didn't understand, I was usually able to figure it out with a little probing."

"As I figured you would," Jim said, putting the last bite of omelet in his mouth. "Now how about we go over some of the more advanced features of the device? I think you're ready to learn about those now."

"The advanced features?"

"Hyper-light mode," he said. "That's when the true value of the machine will be evident to you. Linear mode is nothing but a plaything, a transportation and snooping device if you will. Hyper-light mode is what true traveling is all about, what the device is really intended for."

"What exactly does hyper-light mode do, Dad? Is it like... does it take you to other planets or something?" He wasn't really sure he wanted to visit an alien world just yet. There was plenty to look at and do on this one.

"Well, not really," Jim said cryptically. "The device, in either mode, is confined to the five light second range around Earth. Perhaps there were more advanced models further in the future or perhaps not. Either way, I think it will be easier to show you what hyper-light mode does instead of explaining it to you straight out. Are you ready to do some serious traveling with me?"

"Well... uh... sure, but where are we going to go?"

"It's time I showed you my new home."

"We're going to Maui?" Scott asked. "But its only 4:30 in the morning there. It'll still be dark."

Jim chuckled. "Don't worry too much about dark and light right now," he said. He reached over and picked up the device. He called up the menu and the globe appeared before him. He accessed the hyper-light menu with the touch of a finger and the tabs on the side disappeared and were replaced by new ones, these smaller and greater in number. The angle was such that Scott couldn't read any of them. Jim pushed a few tabs, changing the menu with each push and then seemed to have set it for whatever he was trying to set it to do. He closed out the menu. "Okay," he said. "I think we're ready to go." He held out his hand.

"Am I dressed okay?" Scott asked him. "Maybe I should get my jacket first."

"I think it will be quite warm enough there," Jim assured him. "Trust me, my boy. Have I led you astray yet?"

"No, I guess not." He held out his hand.

Jim took it and then pushed the transmit button on the side of the machine. The kitchen and the smell of cooking vanished instantly as they were teleported to a new place.

-------

They reappeared inside of a house in what seemed to be a living room. It was smaller than Scott was expecting, not tiny or cramped, but certainly not as large as what you'd expect a multi-millionaire's living room to be. It looked almost simple, in fact. Maybe three hundred square feet and roughly rectangular in shape. An oak entertainment center stood against one wall, supporting a large-screen television and a complete audio system. An expensive looking couch and recliner sat atop wall-to-wall Berber carpeting. A large picture window faced out toward the ocean. The window was open and a gentle sea breeze was blowing in. It was bright daylight outside.

"Here we are," Jim said, letting go of his son's hand. "Home sweet home."

"It's uh... very nice, Dad," Scott said, looking around. He could see two hallways leading off from the living room and an entryway that led to the kitchen. Music could be heard drifting out of the kitchen. Scott recognized the tune as "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots.

"Bielke must be in the kitchen," Jim said. "She's developed a taste for that godawful heavy metal music. This, despite all my attempts to introduce real music to her."

"Nothing wrong with STP," Scott said in Bielke's defense. He had actually seen them live once and thought they rocked.

Jim gave him a sour look and shook his head. "Excuse me for a moment," he said. "I'll just let her know we're here so she can come out and say hello."

"Right," Scott said.

Jim disappeared into the kitchen. While he was gone, Scott took a closer look around, checking out the details of the living room. Unsurprisingly, an elaborate marijuana bong, sculpted out of granite, sat atop the living room table and served as the centerpiece to the room. On end tables on either side of the couch were matching nautical themed lamps. A look in the corners of the room revealed surround sound speakers recessed in the walls. There were no air conditioning or heating vents visible, which Scott thought a bit strange until he considered that in Maui, where the temperature was almost always between sixty-five and eighty-five degrees all year around at any hour, an environmental comfort system probably wasn't really necessary. But still... you would've thought he'd put one in anyway, just for those rare occasions when the temperature did fall outside the normal range.

Still pondering this, Scott walked over to the window to take in the view. They were up on a hill overlooking a small, natural bay. As he looked down he saw the hillside was covered in lush green plant life. There were a few dirt paths meandering back and forth, working their way down to a sandy beach. About a hundred yards offshore, a motor yacht was anchored. It was maybe a fifty footer, complete with radar mast. It looked odd somehow, sitting out there by itself. In fact, as Scott looked from the hillside to the ocean to the beach and then back again, it occurred to him that the entire scene looked disturbingly odd in some way he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Was it because there were no other structures visible on what had to be a prime chunk of Maui real estate? There were no hotels or beach cottages or even condos anywhere in sight. Nor were there any power lines or telephone poles or radio antennas or power transformers. There were no roads in view either, Scott realized. Just those dirt paths. And then there was the beach. It was a pristine stretch of Hawaiian beach on a beautiful Hawaiian day and there wasn't a single person down there sunbathing or swimming or surfing. There were no other boats in the water either — no sailboats or catamarans or personal water craft.

And why is it daylight here? Scott wondered a little uneasily. It should be four-thirty in the goddamn morning, shouldn't it? The way the sun is, it has to be at least noon.

The sound of footsteps from behind him startled him out of his uneasy musings. He turned away from the window just as his father and his young wife emerged from the kitchen. Bielke was in her mid-twenties. She was a fair-haired blonde, her face plain but not unpleasant to look at, with classic Slavic features. Her body was trim and well-formed, curvy in all the right places. She was wearing a cropped cotton shirt and a pair of loose fitting cotton shorts. Her midriff was smooth and unlined, with no piercings in her naval like most girls her age. Her breasts were full and, based on the way they jiggled when she moved, currently unencumbered by a bra. Scott felt a wave of physical attraction sweep over him as he saw her and then felt ashamed of himself for lusting after what was technically his step-mother.

"Scotty," Bielke said in a heavily accented (and sexy) Russian accent. She was smiling broadly. "It's good to see you again. Welcome to our home."

"Thank you, Bielke," Scott replied. He then flushed as she stepped forward and put her arms around him, giving him a hug. Those jiggling breasts pushed into his chest and her soft lips connected with his cheek.

She disengaged from the embrace and looked him up and down for a moment. "You look good," she told him. "You enjoyed side-effects of teleport machine, no?"

"I haven't felt this good in years," Scott agreed. "You look good as well. Hawaii seems to agree with you."

"It is very beautiful here," she said. "Nothing like Russia. Always warm. People very friendly."

"And your English has improved as well," Scott told her. This was true. The first time he'd met Bielke, she had only been able to speak a few phrases of English. The last time, she'd picked up enough to be able to converse but it had been a chore. Now she was able to speak freely and express thoughts.

"Thank you," Bielke said. "Language program for computer that Jim give me help very much."

"It's how I learned to speak Russian," Jim said.

This too was something Scott knew. Jim was reasonably fluent in six different languages that Scott knew of: English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese. All of them he claimed to have learned with expensive language software and, of course, traveling to the countries where the language was spoken.

"I'm getting good at local Hawaiian language now too," Bielke said. "It very difficult for me since there no computer program for it."

"Why do you need to know the local Hawaiian language?" Scott asked. "Don't they all speak English?"

"They're getting there," Jim said. "They're getting there."

"Huh?" Scott asked.

"Never mind that for right now," Jim said dismissively. "Can I show you around the house?"

"Sure," Scott agreed. "I'm dying to see your dream home."

He was given a tour, Jim and Bielke taking turns describing certain features. It was not at all like what Scott was expecting. The house was small, even tiny by certain standards, and very simplistic. There were two bedrooms — one a master suite that contained a bathroom and a shower, the other a simple twelve by twelve with a queen sized bed. There was a kitchen that had only the most basic appliances in it — an oven, a stove, a microwave, and a small refrigerator. In all, the entire house consisted of maybe thirteen hundred square feet.

"It's not quite as big as I imagined," Scott admitted when the tour was over and they asked him what he thought.

"Well, considering that the two of us built it ourselves, I think it's a goddamn mansion," Jim said lightly.

"You two built it yourselves?" Scott asked, surprised. "Why did you do that?"

"Well there are various reasons, some of which I'll explain in minute," Jim told him. "But the most compelling, I think, is that the construction of this house was a labor of love. We put everything together with our own hands. When you do that, I think you appreciate your home a little more than if some contractor or, God forbid, a real estate developer builds it for you."

"I suppose you do have a point there," Scott had to admit.

"I saw you noticing the lack of modern amenities," Jim said.

"Yes, I was kind of wondering about that," Scott said. As they'd moved from room to room he saw lots of books and bookshelves, an extensive china and figurine collection, a display of sports memorabilia (much of it related to the San Francisco Giants and the Forty-niners, Jim's favorite teams), a cabinet full of pistols and rifles, and even a few Stars of David and a menorah (Bielke, though a self-described agnostic, had come from an orthodox Jewish family and she told him she still enjoyed performing some of the rituals). What he hadn't seen, however, because they weren't there, were a dishwasher, a dryer, a computer, alarm clocks (or indeed any electric clock), ceiling fans, or telephones.

"A little sacrifice we had to make in order to live here," Jim said. "You have to take the bad with the good when dealing with a dream home."

Scott was not quite following him. "You mean... uh... you couldn't afford to buy a dishwasher after you paid for the house and the land?" he asked, thinking that didn't quite sound right.

It wasn't. Jim chuckled. "We didn't pay as much as you might think for this land," he told him. "In any case, no, that's not the reason. You see, there is no electrical service here."

"No electricity?" Scott asked. "But what about the radio and the television and the lights?"

"There are solar cells on the roof," Jim told him. "Those generate all the electricity we need during most days. And, for at night and on cloudy days, I have two wind turbines installed just up the hill."

"Wind turbines?" Scott said. "Where did you get those?"

"I... uh... well, let's say I borrowed them from the Altamont Pass."

"You stole windmills from the Altamont Pass?" Jim asked incredulously. The Altamont Pass was a passage through the northern California coastal mountains just east of Stockton. It connected the central valley with the east bay area. It was a pass notorious for the steady and relentless wind that ripped through it even on the nicest of days and, as such, in the 1970s a wind farm, consisting of over six thousand wind turbines, had been built there to harness this force of nature.

"I did," Jim admitted.

"How did you get away with that?" Scott said. "Jesus, Dad!"

"It was easy with the teleporter," Jim told him. "I just teleported to some of the more isolated units with the appropriate tools to remove the legs from their mounts and then teleported the entire thing whole to the location I wanted it. Took about six hours per unit."

"And they never wondered what happened to their windmills?" Scott asked. He had certainly never read anything in the paper about two missing wind turbines from the Altamont Pass — something that would've surely made news just because it was so bizarre.

Jim merely shrugged. "I'm sure they did," he said. "It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter?" Scott said, exasperated. "You stole million dollar windmills, Dad. How can you say it doesn't matter?"

"I told you, Scotty," Jim said. "Nothing really matters. I believe I've mentioned that a time or two."

"Yes, you do keep going on about that," Scott said.

"Look," Jim said. "Why don't we forget about the wind turbines for now? I just mentioned them so I could explain how we get electricity here in a place with no electrical service. My whole point was that we only have a limited amount of juice to run everything. As long as it's sunny or the wind is blowing, we can run the lights and the television and the refrigerator, but we don't have enough to reliably run an air conditioner and a dishwasher and all of those other high-draw appliances. So we do without them. Who needs them anyway? And even with two different sources of electrical generation, sometimes it's cloudy and windless here and we get nothing. When that happens, I have a generator with a five hundred gallon tank of diesel that will automatically kick on to keep the refrigerator running."

"I see," Scott said, still picturing his father — a seventy-three year old man — stealing a one hundred foot tall windmill that probably weighed ten or fifteen tons by unbolting its legs from concrete. "But wouldn't it have been easier to just get whoever supplies electricity in Maui to string a line out here?"

"No," Jim said with a peculiar smile. "It really wouldn't have."

"Why not?" Scott asked. "I mean, sure, it would cost you a few bucks, but..."

"Scott," Jim interrupted gently, "there is no company supplying electricity in Maui at present."

Scott looked at his dad as if were schizophrenic again — but then remembered that when he'd looked at him that way in the house last night he had been quite wrong. "Uh... what do you mean, Dad?" he asked slowly.

"Do you remember making the comment a little while ago that it would be dark here in Maui?"

"Yes," Scott said.

"You'll notice that it's not dark here?"

"No, it really isn't."

"There's a reason for that, Scott," Jim said. "This version of Maui is not on the same timeline as the Maui back where we just were."

Scott blinked. "I'm not sure I'm following you, Dad," he said. "What do you mean, 'this version of Maui'? Is there more than one version?"

"There is," Jim said. "There are, in fact, infinite versions of Maui and everywhere else in the world. There are infinite versions of the world, of the universe."

Scott slowly licked his lips, the thought that his father was insane wanting to creep back into his brain despite everything that happened. "Infinite versions huh? Is that what hyper-light mode does? Takes you to different versions of Earth?"

"Yes and no," Jim said. "It's a little bit complex. Why don't we go have a seat out on the deck and discuss it?"

"Uh... okay," Scott said.

Jim turned to Bielke, who had stood quietly by during the entire metaphysical discussion, a pleasant smile on her face. "My dear," he said. "Do you think you could grab us some beers out of the fridge and meet us out there with them? I have a feeling Scotty is going to need one in a minute."

"Of course," she said. She turned and headed for the kitchen.

Jim waved his hand toward the front door. "Shall we?"

"I guess so," Scott said, both nervous and excited about what was going to be revealed next.

They stepped outside. There was a spacious redwood deck immediately adjacent to the house. Patio furniture was arrayed out here in a pleasing aesthetic pattern. The air was warm and pleasant as the breeze swept over them. Scott looked up on the roof of the house and, sure enough, was able to see that its entire surface was covered with solar panels. A look further up the hill revealed two wind turbines about three hundred feet above them, their three-bladed rotors turning lazily in unison.

Suddenly, things began to click together in Scott's mind, many clues he'd seen since arriving starting to form together and make sense. The lack of electricity, the empty beach, the lack of roads, the lack of any sort of modern trappings except what was found inside his father's house. Seeking something to dispel the horrible suspicion in his mind, he looked skyward. He had been to Hawaii a few times before and knew that all of the major islands were surrounded by some of the busiest airspace in the world. He saw nothing up there but a few wispy clouds and the occasional flock of seabirds. There were no tour helicopters, no private aircraft, no jetliners going into or coming out of Lahaina. There wasn't even a lingering contrail from a high-flying plane coming out of Honolulu International.

"Dad," Scott said, feeling a little mentally ill himself for even making the suggestion, "are you trying to say that we've... uh... gone back in time?"

"Well... yes and no," Jim said.

"Yes and no? What the hell does that mean? Did that teleportation thing take us back in time or not?"

"In the strictest sense of the word, no, it didn't. There isn't any such thing as the past."

"What?" Scott said. "No such thing as the past? What kind of bullshit is that?"

"The kind of bullshit that's true," Jim said. "Within the various universes there is no such thing as the past or the future. At least not in the sense that the past or the future are places in which things are still occurring or that you can visit. In all universes, there is only now."

"So we did not travel in time?"

"Again, the answer is both yes and no, depending upon how you view it."

The door opened and Bielke stepped out. She was carrying a silver bucket that contained ice and three bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Wordlessly, she carried it over to the table and set it down. She pulled the beers out and distributed them.

"Thanks, Bielke," Scott said, taking the frosty bottle and slamming down nearly a third of it in one drink.

"He is having trouble comprehending device?" Bielke asked.

"At the moment," Jim told her. "But give him a bit. We did just start on the subject."

They each took a drink of their beer. Scott took another, belched a little, and then sat down at the table without bothering to excuse himself. "Okay," he said. "Let's try this from a different angle, shall we?"

"Of course," Jim said.

"What is the date right here and right now?" Scott asked him. "No metaphysical bullshit. Just tell me the current calendar date."

"As you wish," Jim said with a nod. "At this particular moment in this particular universe, using the Christian-based calendar used by most of the world, it is January 16, 1778."

Scott felt a little shudder go through him. "1778?" he asked, just for clarification.

Jim nodded, a small smile on his face. "1778," he confirmed. "I first came to this version of Maui two years ago. Bielke and I are the first white people to make contact with the native Hawaiians."

"The native Hawaiians," Scott said blandly, his mind still grappling with the fact that he was in 1778.

"Yes, the Polynesian people who call this island chain home," Jim said. "At this time, Hawaii is yet to be discovered — for lack of a better word — by Captain James Cook and his expedition. The Hawaiians are a somewhat feudal society consisting of villages run by chiefs. Each island has its own chief who rules over the people. The big island actually has several chiefs. There is a lot of war and raiding parties and conflict going on here, but other than that, the Hawaiians are a gentle, intelligent, relatively peaceful people."

Scott shook his head. "This is just insane," he said. "So you just popped in here and set up shop?"

"In a manner of speaking," Jim said.

"Are you making yourself out to be a god or something? Are you ruling all of these Hawaiians?"

"No, far from it," Jim said. "I have no interest in ruling anyone. I simply wish to live out my life in peace and be left alone. I have made some efforts to keep invaders from the other islands from disturbing Maui but I have left the chief — a very nice man named Pomaika — in power and have even reinforced the common people's belief in and respect for him."

"Who do they think you are?" Scott asked. "Surely they've seen the wind turbines and your yacht out there in the harbor."

"Oh yes, they are much impressed by them," Jim said. "In fact, I have given them five wind turbines of their own, as well as a variety of simple electrical and battery powered devices in order to use the power they are generating."

"You gave them electricity?" Scott asked, appalled. "Dad... you can't do that!"

"I already did," Jim said mildly. "They were quite appreciative of my gifts. And they wanted to worship me, of course, but I assured them that I am not a god, just a man from their future."

"You told them that?" Scott said, actually feeling sick to his stomach now.

"It's the truth, isn't it?" Jim said with a chuckle.

"Jesus Christ, Dad," Scott said. "You're messing with the natural timeline! You can't just appear on Maui in the 1700s and give the natives electricity! You can't tell them you're from the future!"

"Why not?" Jim asked.

"Why not?" Scott nearly yelled. "Because... because... you'll screw up the whole timeline of history! How could you not know that? How could you not care about that? Everything about history will change!"

Jim didn't seem alarmed at the idea that he could be changing history. In fact, he seemed quite amused. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and shook two out. One he handed to Scott. Scott took it and, using his father's lighter, lit it with a shaking hand.

Jim took a deep drag of his own smoke and let the smoke drift off in the wind. He then looked at his son. "There is no danger of changing history," he told him. "You can't do that."

"But you already have," Scott insisted. "You've given modern conveniences to ancient Hawaiians. There is no way our future can turn out the same after something like that."

"Ahh," Jim said. "But you have forgotten what I told you just a minute ago. There is no such thing as the past. There is no such thing as the future. There is only now."

"But we're in 1778," Scott said. "That's the past!"

"No," Jim insisted, "it's now in this particular universe. Nothing that is done in this universe can have any effect on our universe. Our history has already been played out and cannot be changed."

Scott was having an extremely difficult time with this concept. "So you're saying that this is an entirely different world, an entirely different planet, which looks like Earth and happens to have the same geographical features of Earth?"

"No," Jim told him. "This is Earth as we know it. It is the same planet in all ways, only in a different universe — a different dimension if you will. By using hyperlight mode on the transporter, I first traveled to this universe two years ago to a version of Earth as it existed in our Earth's past — 1776 to be exact. Of course, once I did travel here, I locked in this version of Earth (as I like to term it) and it did begin to change from the way our Earth turned out, but nothing that happens here has any effect on what happens on our original Earth."

Scott took a long, deep drag on his cigarette and then followed it up with a large drink of his beer. "This is too confusing," he said. "How can it be the same Earth but in the past? How can we be in the past when you say there is no past?"

"Because there are infinite universes," Jim told him. "Infinite, Scotty. That means endless, remember?"

"I get the concept," Scott said. "At least I think I do. But that doesn't explain to me why one of these universes contains the Earth in 1778."

"Not just one of them," Jim said, "an infinite amount of them. You seem to be having trouble grasping the whole concept of infinite. In the framework of these universes, every possible historical timeline exists an infinite amount of times — all the way up from the past to the furthest reaches of the future."

"So you can go into the future too?" Scott asked.

"No, because there is no future," Jim said. "Remember, there is only now."

"Okay, stop with the metaphysical bullshit," Scott said, irritated. "Can you go to a world that is a future version of ours?"

"Sorry, Scotty, I'm really not trying to be insolent here, but I just want you to stop thinking so linear about the past and the future and grasp the big concept that, while there are infinite past versions of Earth out there in the universes, they still only exist in the now. But, in answer to your question, no, you cannot use this device to travel to a future version of our home."

"You can't? Why not?"

"Because when I first activated the device it became attuned to my home universe — the world you and I came from. It can only lock onto versions of our Earth as it existed in the past, not in the future, because our future is yet to be written."

"And the past has already been written?" Scott asked.

"Exactly," Jim said. "I think you're starting to get it. You can travel to any version of Earth that is in a timeline before our home universe but you will always find that version to be exactly as it was in that particular when. The weather will always be the same as it was that day in our past, the people who existed in that past will always be there and will always be doing exactly what they were really doing at that time."

"But you've changed this universe by putting windmills up and altering the course of the Hawaiians," Scott said. "Why is it that you can still travel here? Won't everything be different from this point on?"

"Yes it will," Jim said. "In reality, the mere act of appearing on a version of past Earth alters it even if you are there only a second and don't talk to anyone. You've breathed some of the air, you've trampled some of the dirt, you've added more matter to that universe than it was supposed to have. Are you following me?"

"I think so," Scott said. "Kind of."

"So what happens is that once you visit an earlier version of our Earth, once you appear there for any length of time, you can go back to it but you cannot visit its past or its future."

Scott blinked. "I'm sorry. You kind of lost me on that one."

"Okay," Jim said. "Let me explain it in terms of this universe here. I came here two years ago, appearing on this island on this Earth. By merely appearing here, I changed this version of Earth from a past version of ours to a completely new timeline. That means I can come back here as often as I want, but I cannot go forward into the future of this planet or into its past any longer. I can go to another version of Earth, 1776, and land on Maui, but I can never do that again for this world. Did that make sense?"

"Because it's always now here," Scott said.

"Exactly," Jim said. "Time continues to pass at a normal rate while I'm gone to other universes. Time is continuing to pass at home while we're here. We cannot simply reappear in your living room one second after we left it. We've been gone about thirty minutes now. In your living room, thirty minutes have passed. If you're here for a week, a week will have passed back home when you return. When I leave Maui for a week, a week goes by over here."

"And you can't go to an earlier version of this Maui once you arrive here?" Scott asked.

"No, because once the timeline is altered by the presence of a traveler, it is no longer an earlier version of his home universe. The device can only travel to earlier versions of the home and to universes previously visited."

"Okay," Scott said, taking another large drink of his beer. "I think I'm starting to understand this hyperlight thing. You can't change anything about our home universe."

"Right," Jim said, pleased.

"But that doesn't make it okay to change this version of Earth from its natural course. You've still introduced modern technology to a primitive people centuries before they're supposed to have it. You've altered the path they're supposed to follow."

"There is no path they are supposed to follow," Jim protested. "There is no such thing as fate. Nothing is pre-ordained. This is but one of an infinite amount of universes. Their destiny is what the people of this planet make it. If I wouldn't have shown up here and interfered, there is no way these people would have followed the exact same path that led to the Earth that you and I know anyway."

This was kind of a startling thought. "How's that?"

"We're starting to get into the actions of the teleporter here now," Jim said. "Basically, what happens when you decide to go to... say, Maui in 1776, is that the device searches through the infinite versions of Earth until it finds one that matches exactly the path that our Earth followed up to the moment in time you selected. When you're dealing with an infinite number, there is always an infinite number of such Earth's that have followed our exact path through random chance. There is also an infinite number that did not follow that path. There are versions of Earth out there where life never evolved, where the dinosaurs never died out and eventually evolved into a sentient species, where the Asians ended up becoming the dominant race of people, where the South won the Civil War, where Germany won World War II. There are also an infinite number of versions where the differences are so minute as not to be noticed, where a single bacterium divided two seconds after it did in the original version. We, however, cannot visit any of those versions because they are not connected to the timeline of our universe. We can only travel to exact versions of our past. Fortunately, there are an infinite number of them for every second that occurred between the very formation of the planet and now."

"So you're saying that this version would probably have evolved differently anyway?"

"Yes," Jim confirmed. "This may have been the version where the Black Plague kills all human life in the early 1800s. It may be the version where the Cuban Missile Crisis leads to a major nuclear war. It may be the version where an asteroid has a slightly different path and hits this planet."

"Or it may be a version that leads to our now," Scott said.

Jim simply shrugged. "Theoretically possible, of course, but the odds are against it. When you're talking about odds on the order of one to infinity you almost always lose."

Scott was not convinced that this made things right. "Just because they probably don't evolve exactly the same as our planet, what gives you the right to come in here and completely change the way things were going? You have altered their future!"

"So what?" Jim said. "Why are you acting like everything that has taken place in our past is so great anyway?"

"What?"

"Take my interference in this particular case," Jim said. "What's so bad about it? I've landed on an island full of ignorance, where there is no such thing as a written language or medicine, where the life expectancy is somewhere around fifty years old, where the infant mortality rate is close to twenty percent. Bielke and I have enlightened these people, given them modern medicine, modern electricity, taught them to care for themselves."

"I've started teaching them to read," Bielke said, sipping from her own beer. "I'm also the midwife for all women. No baby has died in childbirth since we arrive here."

"We have improved life for these people," Jim said. "They will now evolve into a world power eventually. What's wrong with that?"

"It's not the way things are supposed to happen!" Scott said, exasperated.

"There is no fate," Jim said. "I thought we'd gone over that."

"But..."

"No buts," Jim said. "I have righted a terrible wrong that occurred in our history as it relates to these people. Do you know what their fate was on our Earth?"

"Well... I guess it wasn't all that nice," Scott had to admit.

"After Captain Cook's discovery of this place, it became a waypoint for European and American whaling ships. They pillaged the islands, corrupting the inhabitants, and shattering their very culture. In the two hundred years that followed that first landing, they killed nearly all of the natives with their diseases. Eventually, the Hawaiian race became subjugated, their land stolen from them and turned into a combination of military base, agricultural powerhouse, and tourist trap — all of it ruled by rich white guys while the natives live in poverty and squalor. What's wrong with changing all of that in favor of the Hawaiians?"

"Because it's changing the way things are supposed to be!" Scott nearly yelled. "You can't just come in and introduce modern technology to primitive people. Who knows what consequences there will be in the future?"

"I think you've spent too much time watching Star Trek, my boy," Jim told him. "You're all caught up in this prime directive bullshit. Suppose I told you that the world we live on, our Earth, has been interfered with many times in our past by other travelers?"

Scott's mouth dropped open. "Say what?"

"Didn't think of that, did you?" Jim asked.

"You're making that up," Scott accused.

"I do not make things up, Scott," his father said sternly. "If you bothered to think about it for a few seconds, you would know I was right. You studied history in school, did you not? Ever thought that there were a few too many strange coincidences in the stream of things? Ever wondered about those times when long odds were beat? How about the Battle of Midway? Ever thought how lucky it was that we just happened across the Japanese aircraft carriers and managed to sink them, thus turning the entire tide of the war? If we wouldn't have sank those flattops that day, the Japanese fleet would have annihilated our aircraft carries and finished the job of destroying our Pacific Fleet. We would have had nothing to counter them with and they would've taken the entire Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia."

"Are you saying that a traveler influenced that?" Scott asked.

"Yes," Jim said. "That is exactly what I'm saying. A traveler managed to get close to Admiral Nimitz and advise him on certain aspects of the battle."

"Like what?" Scott asked, fascinated despite himself.

"We didn't really break the Japanese JN-25 code. Nimitz knew Midway was the target of the Japanese attack because the traveler told him it was and convinced Nimitz that he knew what he was talking about. And once the battle actually began, our planes didn't just blunder across the Japanese fleet, the traveler told Nimitz the general direction. Most important of all, the traveler convinced Admiral Spruance to launch those ill-fated torpedo bombers at the Japanese fleet first, without escort. Though these torpedo bombers were sacrificed, it was because of them that the Zeros defending the Japanese fleet were down at wave top level when the dive bombers came in from up high."

The sequence of the American attacks on the Japanese aircraft carriers was something that Scott — who was a bit of a history buff — knew well. It was well-documented that the American's had been so successful on the first attack because the dive bombers had been able to come in from high-altitude unmolested by the enemy combat air patrol, which had been down on the deck dealing with the low altitude torpedo bomber attacks. The timing and circumstances of the battle had always been considered a fortunate quirk of fate by historians who studied the battle. And now his father was telling him that it hadn't been so quirky after all; that it had all been a carefully constructed plan by a time-traveler from another universe.

"That's... that's... ," Scott stammered, unsure how he should feel about this. On one hand he was outraged that someone had interfered with his planet's timeline. On the other hand, he was glad they had.

"It's just a part of our history," Jim told him. "This particular traveler was very active in World War II, by the way."

"What else did he do?" Scott asked.

"He influenced Hitler to abandon his early plans for the invasion of England, convincing him to wait until air superiority was won. That, as you know, was a hope that was shattered during the Battle of Britain."

"He influenced Hitler?" Scott said incredulously. "He spoke to him?"

"He spoke to those who advised Hitler," Jim said, "reinforcing what they already believed: that Germany needed air superiority in order to successfully launch a cross-channel invasion. It is possible these advisors were right. It is equally possible that Hitler was right and Germany could have successfully staged landings on Great Britain in July or August of 1940. They would have been bloody, of course, but if they had managed to take a single deep water port, the entire island would have fallen by year's end and the American forces would have had nowhere to stage a counterattack from. D-day would never have happened and Hitler would have been able to concentrate all of his energies on Russia. As you know, with the forces divided between the eastern front and the Atlantic wall, Germany came to within sight of the Kremlin itself before they were turned away. Imagine what would have happened if all those troops guarding from invasion from Britain had been able to join them."

"Jesus," Scott said. "How do you know all this, Dad?"

"I saw it," Jim said. "I transported to the era of World War II and, using linear mode, was able to be present in the room hen this traveler manipulated history."

"How is that possible though? I thought you said that you and I cannot go back once we've visited a universe and changed something."

"That's not what I said at all," Jim said. "I said that you and I cannot travel at will in a changed universe's past or future. For this particular traveler, he can drop in at will at points in our universe's history as long as it is part of the timeline of his original universe. So, you see, where he lived, Germany and Japan had probably won World War II and influenced everything up to his time. He simply went back and changed things and thus created the timeline that you and I are from."

Scott took a deep breath. "Wow," he said. "This is giving me a headache."

"You get used to it," Jim assured him. "All you have to do is stop thinking in a linear fashion."

"Right," Scott said doubtfully. "Who is this guy anyway? The one who is changing our history?" Have you talked to him? Do you know why he is doing it?"

"I have no idea who he is or what time period he is from. I have no idea what his motivation is for messing with our history. I have observed him through linear mode only. To confront him might be dangerous."

"Dangerous?"

Jim shrugged. "As I said, I have no idea what his motivation is. He is obviously from far in the future and a different timeline. Different timeline means different value systems, different societal norms, and different customs. For all I know he might kill me if he discovers me mucking about on what he thinks of as his planet."

"He might kill you?" Scott asked, shocked.

Jim held his arms out in an I-don't-know gesture. "That's a worst case scenario," he said. "More than likely he is just a traveler like myself, floating through time and correcting what he thinks are wrongs in the timeline. Maybe his world suffered during the post World War II era because Germany and Japan won the war. Maybe he's just doing it for his own amusement. I just don't know and it seems safer to avoid confronting him. That is my general policy when I discover another traveler and I would suggest you make it your policy as well."

"Another traveler?" Scott said. "You mean he's not the only one?"

"No, he's not," Jim said. "Our home timeline if full of interference from travelers. That is what I was trying to explain to you. World War II is just one of the more elaborate interferences. I've come across dozens of others — some meaningful, some completely meaningless, at least as far as I can tell."

"Like what?" Scott asked.

"Well, let's start with a meaningful one. The Cuban Missile Crisis. You weren't alive for that one, of course, but that was about as close as our planet has ever come to global nuclear war. A traveler prevented that from happening by convincing Kennedy to disregard the plans made by his advisors. They wanted him to bomb and then invade Cuba, to attack the Russian ships that were supplying the weapons program on Cuba. Had he done that, the missiles would've eventually flown. Because he blockaded Cuba instead, he accomplished two things. He did not back down in his assertion that we would not allow those missiles to remain and he left the Soviets with a way out of the crisis that did not involve pushing the button. This traveler saved our planet from nuclear war. I saw her do it."

"Her?" Scott said.

Jim grinned. "Another one who was obviously from far in the future. Nice body, nice tits, but she was completely bald." He shrugged. "I would've done her, but, as I told you, my policy is to avoid interacting with such people."

"So... without her," Scott said, ignoring his father's crude sexual appraisal, "you and I never would have been born?"

"Probably not," Jim said. "At least not in this universe. Our counterparts would have still existed in one of the other infinite universes where that particular sequence of events did take place though. Remember, with an infinite amount of universes, everything that is physically possible has already happened somewhere. And since our timeline is already set in our now, there's no sense wondering about what might have been. Everyone who is alive now, is alive now and there's nothing that can change that."

Scott blew out air through pursed lips and then drank down the last of his beer. He helped himself to another of his father's cigarettes. "So, what other interferences have you discovered?"

"It doesn't really matter, Scott," Jim said.

"No, but let's say the subject has captured my interest."

"Okay," Jim said. "Let's start with recent history and work our way back, shall we? The men who shot John Lennon and Ronald Reagan were both influenced to do what they did by a traveler. In both cases it was the same traveler."

"Why would he do that?" Scott asked.

Jim simply shrugged. "I have no idea and I made no attempt to find out. I also made no attempt to find out when I discovered that a traveler smothered Pope John Paul I while he slept in 1978, thus paving the way for John Paul II to take office in his place."

"John Paul I was murdered?" Scott said, shocked. Though the modern Foreman family was all agnostics at best, they retained enough of the Catholic heritage of their ancestors to follow the events of the church. John Paul I had suddenly died after only thirty-three days in office. His successor went on to become one of the most influential popes in modern history.

"I watched it happen," Jim assured him. "It was at least done cleanly and respectfully."

"A clean and respectful smothering?"

"When you've seen men cut out other men's eyeballs or hack their genitals off and use them to choke the person to death, a little pillow on the face of a sleeping, sick man is almost a kindness, isn't it?"

"I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it kind," Scott said.

Jim shrugged again. "When you've traveled as much as I have, my boy, we'll have this conversation again perhaps. In any case, I've also watched a traveler deliberately cause the bungling of the rescue of the Jewish athletes in Munich back in 1972. He did this by convincing German authorities not to allow Israeli special forces teams to do the job — something they were initially inclined to do. I've watched another traveler give precise targeting information to the Russians back in 1960 which allowed them to successfully shoot down Gary Powers' U2 spy plane. Going even further back, Henry Ford's first automobile factory — the birth of mass-production — was started with the assistance of a traveler."

Jim went on and on for a few minutes, giving example after example dating back to the early 1400s. This was all mind-boggling to Scott — who by now knew better than to even speculate that his father was lying or delusional. The history of his planet — his universe — was rife with interference from time-traveling meddlers.

"What about other things?" Scott asked. "What about 9-11? Was that interference?"

"Not as far as I can tell," Jim said. "I've traveled to that particular time period quite a bit and I've hovered over the hijackers themselves as they made their plots. Though I'm not fluent in Arabic by any means, I can understand enough to follow a conversation. There did not seem to be any secret involvement by the Jews or by the American government or anyone else. As far as I can determine, 9-11 was exactly what it appeared to be — a horrific terrorist act committed against the United States."

"You actually saw them planning it?" Scott asked incredulously. As an airline pilot — one who had been in the air on that fateful day and ordered to land immediately at Albuquerque Airport (which had not been his scheduled destination) — the hijacking of jetliners and using them and their passengers as terror weapons was particularly abhorrent. "You knew what they were going to do and you didn't try to stop it?"

"I didn't see it before it happened in our universe," Jim said. "I only knew to look into our past for it after the fact. Remember, anything that has happened in our universe has already happened and cannot be changed. When I saw the events unfold before they happened, I was in a different universe locked onto our timeline. You're thinking linear again."

"Yeah," Scott said wearily, still trying to wrap his brain around that one.

"And, as a matter of fact, I did stop 9-11 from happening in several universes."

"You did?"

"Oh yes," Jim said. "That is one of the reasons I'm reasonably sure it was not a plot by the American government or the Jews. You see, in two different universes I posed as a concerned Saudi who knew what was going to happen and sent detailed emails to high-ranking officials. In the first universe I sent this email to the head of the CIA. In the second, I sent it to the head of the Mossad. In both cases, the email was acted upon and the terrorists were captured as they attempted to board the planes that morning."

"You actually stopped 9-11?" Scott said. "Kept it from happening?"

"Yeah," Jim said. "It kept me amused for a few days. I've also stopped the JFK assassination a few times."

"The JFK assassination? So that really was Oswald acting alone?"

"No," said Jim. "In that case, it really was a government conspiracy — a coup de tat if you will — and a rather clumsy one at that. No travelers were involved in that one, just members of the government and big business who did not like the independence that Kennedy displayed during his term. I hovered over Dealey Plaza as the assassination took place and watched what really transpired."

"And what was that?" Scott asked, fascinated.

"It's really not all that interesting," Jim said. "All the conspiracy theory freaks were right all along. There was a second gunman hiding in the shadows of the grassy knoll. It was he who fired the fatal bullet that blew Kennedy's head off. He was a mafia hitman hired through three different cutouts by the government. He was killed himself less than two hours after escaping from Dealey Plaza. Jack Ruby, however, was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. The plan was put Oswald on trial, convict him of presidential murder, and eventually execute him. They were going to let him rant to his heart's delight about how he was a patsy and how he'd been set up. No one would have believed him and, if the trial had actually occurred, it is likely the conspiracy would have never been suspected. In one of history's genuine non-traveler influenced ironic twists, the non-conspiratorial murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby is what caused people to believe in the real conspiracy when certain facts came to light."

"This is heavy," Scott said. "And you actually stopped the assassination?"

"Yes," Jim said, smiling. "I stopped the JFK assassination three times in three different universes. Once by informing the secret service that the attempt was going to take place, once by actually killing Oswald and Richard Solano — the grassy knoll gunman — the day before, and once by firing shots into the air two blocks before the motorcade reached Dealey Plaza, thus changing the entire fate of the afternoon."

"You killed people?" Scott asked, shocked.

Jim simply shrugged again. "They were people who were going to die in a few days anyway, weren't they? What's the problem?"

"Well... I don't know," Scott said. "What about 'thou shall not kill'?"

Jim laughed. "Sorry, not a good argument. One of the first things I did when I started traveling in hyperlight was research the bible. Most of it is complete and total fabrication. There was no Moses, no burning bush, no Ten Commandments. There was a Jesus, however, but... well, he looks and behaves nothing like the Jesus we read about and the stories of his exploits were greatly exaggerated."

"You saw Jesus?" Scott said. His father had stopped 9-11 from happening, stopped the JFK assassination, and now... he'd met Jesus Christ. And not in the theological sense either.

Jim nodded. "Like most of the people back then, he was kind of short and not real big on personal hygiene," he said. "I also couldn't understand a word he was saying. Alas, though he was crucified pretty much as reported, there was no resurrection, no ascension."

"So you're telling me," Scott said slowly, "that with this device, you have invalidated the entire Christian religion?"

"Pretty much," Jim said. "At least to my satisfaction. Although, in truth, who would believe me if I told them about it?"

"Wow," Scott said, feeling strangely disillusioned by this knowledge even though he was a self-proclaimed agnostic like most of the rest of the family. It seemed that some part of him really wanted to believe.

"Anyway, I digress," Jim said. "We were talking about Kennedy's assassination. It seems that some very powerful people really wanted Kennedy gone. In all three of my interventions, he ended up dead within twenty-four hours anyway."

This was yet another startling revelation. "Really?"

"Really. All three times by the same method, I might add. Air Force One was sabotaged as a back-up plan. It crashed shortly after taking off from Dallas, killing everyone aboard. Johnson was still sworn in as president and, from what I can see during my infrequent visits to those worlds, history is pretty much continuing along roughly parallel lines. In all three, there is still a rampant conspiracy theory surrounding JFK's death. In all three, the Vietnam War was still fought. In all three, Johnson was followed by Nixon and Watergate and Ford and Carter and the Iranian Hostage Crisis." He smiled again. "I've stopped that as well, you know."

"The Iranian Hostage Crisis?" Scott asked.

"Oh yes. That was one of my most satisfying exploits actually. My friend the anonymous Arab informer made contact with the commander of the US Marines and, lo and behold, when the revolutionaries attacked our embassy they were engaged by five times as many marines as they were expecting. Most of them were killed and by time they were able to reinforce and try again, the entire embassy and all of the marines had been evacuated."

"Damn," Scott said, impressed.

"As I said, one of my finest exploits. I check back with that universe on a frequent basis."

"You check back with it?"

"Well yes," Jim said. "That is kind of the point of making changes such as that to the time stream — so you can pop in and out later and see what effects on history you've had. Of course you have to wait in real time to see the long-term effects."

"Oh," Scott said, finally grasping one of the rules he'd been told about. "Because you can't go forward or back in a world once you've done something to it."

"Right," Jim said. "It becomes a world separate from our time stream and you can only visit it in real time forward from the point you intervened. In the case of the world in which I interfered in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, I first went there in what was 1988 in our time, which was November of 1979 in their time. In that world, following my intervention, Iran still became a militant theocracy but without the teeth the hostage crisis gave them in our world. The Ayatollah Khomeini was viewed more as a crackpot dictator than anything else. The Iran-Iraq war was not fought in this world, nor did many of the terrorist attacks that marked the eighties happen. When Islamic extremists did commit terrorism, reaction from the western world was generally swift and brutal in response — thus discouraging further attempts. The first Persian Gulf War never happened. Though that world has not reached 2001 yet, it seems unlikely that 9-11 will happen there either. Since there is no US military presence in Saudi Arabia, the seeds of that particular attack were never planted."

Scott was fascinated by this tale. "You changed the entire course of history," he said.

"Yes," Jim said. "As I told you, that's kind of the purpose of traveling in hyperlight. You can play with history. You can right the wrongs if that's what you're into. I spent a fair amount of time doing that. It was during such an adventure that I first met Bielke."

Scott looked over at his stepmother, who was smiling gently at him. He looked back at his father. "Are you saying that Bielke is... is... not from our world?"

"She's not from our universe," he corrected. "Bielke, tell him where you and I first met."

"In my home village," she said. "It is called Kaniv. It is about sixty miles from Kiev, in Russia. I understand it is now part of country of Ukraine."

"I see," Scott said. "And... uh... what year was it when my dad found you there?"

She smiled again. "It was 1905. I was from orthodox Jewish family living on south edge of Kaniv, where all other Jews live. We make living fishing on Dnieper River and selling catch to riverboats that go up and down river. There were four hundred of us Jews in Kaniv. Tsar say we have to go. He give us three days to sell everything we own and leave town."

"And I convinced them that they should stay and fight for their land," Jim said.

Bielke smiled. "He bring us M-16 rifles, bullet-proofed vests, machine guns, infrared cameras to see soldiers who try to come at night. Militia got big surprise when they try to come evict us."

"Holy Jesus," Scott whispered.

"Jesus wasn't holy," Jim said lightly. "I thought we'd already established that."

"No... I mean... Jesus, Dad! You armed up a group of Jews with modern weapons in Tsarist Russia? What good would something like that do? They can't hold out forever, can they?"

"Of course not," Jim said. "They still had to leave eventually. Even armed with modern weapons they couldn't stand for long against the Russian Army. But they left on their terms, not on the Tsar's terms."

"We stayed for another month," Bielke said. "Army never make it into our town, though they keep trying and trying. Finally we get tired of killing them and Jim take us all out of there in night."

"Took them out of there?" Scott asked.

"I teleported them out one by one," Jim said.

"To where? Did you bring them here?"

"No, I had not discovered this place yet. I remained in linear mode for that particular universe and transported them to Krakow, Poland, which, at this particular point in history, has one of the largest populations of Jews in Europe."

"Yeah," Scott said, "but what about..." He cast a look over at Bielke and then back to his father. "What about... you know... thirty-five years in the future?"

"Bielke knows about the Holocaust," Jim said. "As do all of the people from her village. They still have the arms and equipment I gave to them. I have instructed them to put these arms in storage for now, to blend in with the population, and to go about their lives. I also told them to teach their children what is to come and to prepare for it. I told them not to try to prevent the invasion of Poland by the Nazis and the Russians in 1939, but to fight for their lives and their people when they are ordered into the ghetto."

"Wow," Scott said, imagining that.

"Wow is right," Jim said. "You can try to lecture me about changing history all you want, Scott, but it is my belief that in that particular universe, I have planted the seeds that will prevent the holocaust from occurring. By doing what I did, I may have saved more than twelve million innocent lives."

"Our rabbi believes he is the Messiah," Bielke said with adoration in her eyes.

"Even though I've explained that there really is no such thing," Jim said.

"He believes you are the Messiah whether you think you are or not," Bielke said.

"Well, I don't plan to lead anyone to the Promised Land anytime soon," Jim said. "But, speaking of innocent lives and changes to the timeline, it's about time that you and I go on a brief little adventure, my boy."

"What kind of adventure?" Scott asked, a little warily, a little excited.

Jim scooted his chair a little closer to Scott's and then pulled out the teleporter. With a push of the button, he pulled up the menu and switched it to linear mode. The globe of the Earth hovered in the air before them.

"Before I explain our task for the day," Jim said, "is there anything you want to look at? The day is January 16, 1778. As of yet, I have not affected anything in our historical timeline other than on the Hawaiian Islands so you can view anything else as it actually was. The American Revolutionary War is in full swing, although not much is happening at the moment. We can peek in on George Washington and the boys at Valley Forge if you want. They have just settled in for their long, miserable winter there."

"Uh... no, that's okay," Scott said. "Maybe later. Let's just see what you want me to see for now."

"Eager to get on with it," Jim said. "I like that. Very well." He used his finger and spun the globe around to the Pacific Ocean. He drew a circle around Hawaii and tapped on it, bringing the view in. Scott could now see the three-dimensional views of the islands, including the snowcap atop Mauna Loa on the big island. Jim then drew a circle around the most northwestern of the larger islands in the chain. Scott knew enough about Hawaiian geography to identify the island as Kauai. From the view afforded by the zoom, it looked lush and green and very wet. Jim zoomed the view in a little.

"What do you see?" he asked Scott.

"I see Kauai," he said. "It looks a little odd without the towns and the roads on it, but definitely Kauai."

"Right," Jim said. "Although, if you look carefully, there are several villages visible. The natives of Kauai number around five hundred right now and are ruled by two constantly warring chiefs. As of yet, they do not know of my existence or of the fact that I have greatly improved the standard of living for their brothers on Maui. My long-term plan is to unite all of the people here under a single system of government based loosely upon our constitution. But for now, the place that interests us is over here, on the western side of the island."

He drew a circle around a small bay on that side and it zoomed in. There was a village of huts near the water's edge and several canoes tied up in the harbor. The tiny figures of people — still too small in the zoom to identify gender or age — walked here and there in the village.

"This is Waimea," Jim said. "A tiny nothing of a village on an isolated spot on one of the least populated of the islands. Yet this tiny village will go down in history for a significant event that will take place tomorrow morning unless you and I do something to prevent it."

"What event is that?" Scott asked.

Jim smiled and then zoomed out again, putting the entire island of Kauai back in view. He then panned over a little and drew a circle that encompassed mostly ocean, with only a sliver of land included in it. He zoomed it in.

"Do you see them yet?" Jim asked.

"See what?"

Jim drew another circle, a smaller one. When he zoomed it in, Scott saw two objects in the ocean. They were still small, perhaps a quarter of an inch in size, but they were unmistakably two wooden sailing ships plying across the Pacific waves.

"Is that..." Scott started.

"Captain James Cook's expedition ships," Jim said. "That's the HMS Resolution in front and the HMS Discovery just behind it. They spotted the island of Oahu two days ago and Kauai yesterday. Unless they are stopped, they will make landfall at Waimea tomorrow morning at 0900 hours, thus discovering The Sandwich Islands — as Cook will call them. Though Cook's fate is to die here next year, word of the islands will quickly spread and in the next twenty years, the place will be crawling with disease-ridden white men looking to rape and pillage."

Hearing the way his father was talking about Cook, Scott began to get a little nervous. "What are you going to do, Dad?" he asked carefully. "You're not going to... you know... kill them, are you?"

"I considered it," Jim said. "But, contrary to what you might think, I don't enjoy killing people. In addition, there are maps and logs that Cook has made during this journey that are a vital part of seagoing history. He is the first person, for instance, to have mapped the west coast of what we know as the United States. So, no, I do not intend to kill anyone."

"Then how will you prevent him from landing?" Scott asked.

"I'm going to chase him away," Jim said.

"Chase him away?"

"Yes indeed," Jim said. He tapped a button and the map disappeared. "Give me your hand, my boy. I think it's time I showed you my yacht."


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Incomplete and Inactive
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Posted:  2007-10-09
Last Modified: 2007-11-13 / 04:54:14 pm
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