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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Science Fiction
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 05/02/2016
A Step Through Time
Born 1941, M, from Santa Clara, CA, United StatesA Step Through Time
It has always amazed me; time travel I mean. Think of it. If you could, where and when would you go? Would you go back to shoot Hitler and save millions of people? Or how about Stalin? He killed even more people than Hitler. OH, you can’t forget Mao, he holds the record. What kind of hero would you become for making the world a better place? Then, you could go back with financial information and a little money in the right company and you would become the richest person of all time.
I was sitting in my Livingroom watching a movie with my wife. The movie was Stagecoach with John Wayne. It was made in the late 1930’s. I don’t know why, but I asked my wife, what if you could walk into the TV and just step through and out into the desert where they were shooting. From there you could take a ride on a Greyhound bus anywhere you wanted to go. You might head home to see your parents. What would you tell them and would they even believe you? How about talking to yourself. There is a lot I could tell me, but I know who I was then and I would end up punching him in the mouth just to shut him up.
Still, the attraction to travel through time is more than I could pass up. Now where do you begin? You would be surprised to hear how many books you can find in the library on practical physics, electronics, theoretical physics, and several papers on the subject of motion differential transmogrification.
I began reading. This in itself was a major issue. When I was in grade school the Nuns said I was lazy because I had trouble reading. My knuckles were introduced to the ruler many times during those years, so much for child abuse. You are thinking, “Why didn’t you tell your parents stupid.” Right, tell my father, the man who said, “If I find out that the nuns hit you I’ll hit you twice as bad.” Yeah, I could run to him. Well anyway, reading was still a problem. I spent as much time in dictionaries as I did with the articles. As time passed, I became proficient in a number of the sciences. There was one article that really caught my eye and that was written by an unknown physicist on the device in a car featured in “Back to The Future.” I know what you’re thinking, “That was a movie you can’t think it was anything but a prop.” Well, read the paper and then tell me I was wrong.
I was spending so much time in the library and with my books that my wife began to think I must have someone on the side. Our marriage became strained to say the least. To make matters worse, I turned my garage into a lab and stored electronic equipment all over the house. My experiments weren’t always successful. I not only blew the lights out in the garage, on more than one occasion I did the house, the neighborhood and half the city. Now I was looking at injunctions from Local, State and the Federal government. Homeland Security and the FBI had been to my house and I was invited to their offices more than once. Hell I got to be on a first name basis with most of the agents, but none offered to take the first trip or come with me when the time came to try out my “Time Machine.”
Well, it was almost five years since the conversation with my wife about stepping through the television and I had made great progress. It was time to try my latest version of the device. If it worked, I would give it an official name for my submission to the Scientific Journal of North America. If I could sell the idea to them, well the sky would be the limit. I would be a shoe in for a Nobel in Science. The Russians were the first to send a dog into space so why not a cat into, well who cares it was a cat. My wife really loved that thing, and me, well I guess you know how I feel about cats – no great loss. This experiment would be a simple one. I would send the cat into the future by only a few seconds. It would disappear and reappear in less than a minute. Its meow would be my invitation to history and fame. I put the cat into its transporter, set the duration monitor, powered up the generator and pressed the button. I watched as the launch indicator climbed to 100%. The green light popped on and I pressed. In a flash the cat was gone. I looked at my watch and counted the seconds. No, there was no clash of thunder, no lighting the cat just reappeared. It looked as if it had been baked a little too long. It was charred and smoldering. If you fail “try and try again.”
I went back to the drawing board. There were calculations to check, components and power settings tweak. In a little less than a month I was ready for a second shot at my claim to fame. This time my choice of subjects was determined my wife prompted by, in her words, “Your lame ass concern for other living things.” I wanted to make a dog, cat or even a snake famous, but my wife was adamant about not killing anything else. So, this trip would be made by a photo of my wife, and charcoal coming back would not sneered at by me.
Again the transporter was made ready and the photo placed inside just not as gently as the cat. My adjusted calculations and setting were made and as soon as the green light came on the button was pushed. I didn’t care if the photo made it so I really didn’t pay too much attention to the passage of time. But, when I finally looked it was there. My wife’s face even looked as if it had a smirking smile. The next step was mine. I would have to modify the transporter to accommodate a human, and then another test before my trip to wherever.
I made the modifications and transported a mannequin twice. Both times the mannequin came back without even a wrinkle in his clothing. These test were more involved. They included duration and location. In one test I sent my mannequin to a street corner. Its sudden appearance scared the daylights out of a woman waiting for a bus. But, the results over all were great. I am ready.
All the time I worked on my time experiment I had a destination in mind. I was going to visit myself. I picked a date in October 1952. I was in grade school at the time. I wanted me to know that it was going to get better.
My grade school was in an Italian neighborhood and there was an Italian owned bar right across the street. At lunch time I would take 75 cents and go to the bar where I could buy a roast beef sandwich (on Italian not French bread) get two dill pickle wedges and an orange soda. I did the same thing every Thursday during the school year because Fridays were meatless, and it was like being a grownup to walk into a bar and being served, besides the sandwich was delicious.
I set the date, time and the exact GPS coordinates into, my now computer controlled, transporter. For this trip I had also developed a portable unit that fit into a briefcase. The portable unit was for me to get back with, obviously. You might think how would I get by with things from 60 years in the future back in the 50’s. Not so easy but doable. I hadn’t planned to be in the fifties for more than a few hours, but getting the 75 cents for the sandwich wasn’t as hard as you might think. The major issue was the mass difference between human and mannequin. The introduction of coins and their conductivity could be a problem. The money was taken care of by utilizing an anti-magnetic pouch, the mass was a gamble I would risk. OH, who would push the button? Hey we are in the twenty-first century, the computer of course.
I rechecked all the settings and then stopped to take a look around. Did I want to do this? Was this the stupidest thing I could do? Am I tempting fate? Am I challenging God? I answered yes to all my questions. Stepped into the transporter, put the briefcase at my feet, clicked the enter key on the computer and closed the transporter door. There was a sudden odor of ozone, I had never smelled ozone but this had to be it. The walls around me faded to white then gray and then to reds, greens and browns as the street, trees and buildings appeared. I was not only home I was 65 years in the past.
Across the street was my school. It was the old one. It was built in the 1920’s and was a three story wood Victorian. It was 11:45 am the lunch bell would ring in fifteen minutes. My younger self would be coming down the school steps any time now. The doors opened and at the top of the stairs stood a boy. He was skinny with brown hair wearing a blue shirt and maroon corduroy pants. I knew him right away he was an eleven-year-old me. I watched as he bounced down stairs, crossed the street and went through the rear door without even giving me a second glance.
I followed behind him to the steam table where Paulo stood. Paulo said, “AH, Antony! Nice to see you. You want your usual?” Anthony said, “yes sir, please.”
I then said, “Make it two and put it on my bill.”
Paulo then asked, “You know this a boy? I have never seen you here before.”
OH. Poor Paulo, I thought, you have but you just don’t know it. “yes I do,” I answered.
“Hey Antony you know this a man?”
“No sir I don’t,” answered little Anthony.
“Maybe you should just go mister,” said Paulo to me.
“You don’t understand. I just want to talk to Anthony,” I said.
“Hey mister, you just get out of here before I call a cop,” exclaimed Paulo.
“What’s the matter Paulo,” asked a voice from behind me.
“This man is bothering little Antony.”
“I see.” said the voice. “lets you and me step outside for a chat. What do you say pal?” I turned to see a member of the local police department standing there.
“look officer I don’t mean anything by this. I just want to tell Anthony somethings that he might find useful in the future.”
“Sure and I have something you might find useful now.”
“And, what might that be?”
“How ‘bout you’re under arrest!”
I have to tell you it went downhill from there. I was thorough in my preparations, so thorough that I had nothing with me that might betray when or where I came from. I knew there was no way to explain, so I placed my briefcase on a table to set up my get-away. Well the cop saw me and knocked the case to the floor ending any thought of a fast exit. When I told the cop what I just told you he thought I was nuts. Well I can see you are thinking about the briefcase. You’re not as dumb as some may have tried to make you look. You are right they sent it to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I am sure their engineering people must have gone through it with a fine tooth comb, and I am also sure they are now the proud owners of patens for all the parts that didn’t exist in 1952.
Now I ask you is it fair for me, almost seventy-five years old to be found guilty of pandering sixty years in the past? You are reasonable and intelligent people, is it so hard to believe what I just told you?
A Step Through Time(Anthony Colombo)
A Step Through Time
It has always amazed me; time travel I mean. Think of it. If you could, where and when would you go? Would you go back to shoot Hitler and save millions of people? Or how about Stalin? He killed even more people than Hitler. OH, you can’t forget Mao, he holds the record. What kind of hero would you become for making the world a better place? Then, you could go back with financial information and a little money in the right company and you would become the richest person of all time.
I was sitting in my Livingroom watching a movie with my wife. The movie was Stagecoach with John Wayne. It was made in the late 1930’s. I don’t know why, but I asked my wife, what if you could walk into the TV and just step through and out into the desert where they were shooting. From there you could take a ride on a Greyhound bus anywhere you wanted to go. You might head home to see your parents. What would you tell them and would they even believe you? How about talking to yourself. There is a lot I could tell me, but I know who I was then and I would end up punching him in the mouth just to shut him up.
Still, the attraction to travel through time is more than I could pass up. Now where do you begin? You would be surprised to hear how many books you can find in the library on practical physics, electronics, theoretical physics, and several papers on the subject of motion differential transmogrification.
I began reading. This in itself was a major issue. When I was in grade school the Nuns said I was lazy because I had trouble reading. My knuckles were introduced to the ruler many times during those years, so much for child abuse. You are thinking, “Why didn’t you tell your parents stupid.” Right, tell my father, the man who said, “If I find out that the nuns hit you I’ll hit you twice as bad.” Yeah, I could run to him. Well anyway, reading was still a problem. I spent as much time in dictionaries as I did with the articles. As time passed, I became proficient in a number of the sciences. There was one article that really caught my eye and that was written by an unknown physicist on the device in a car featured in “Back to The Future.” I know what you’re thinking, “That was a movie you can’t think it was anything but a prop.” Well, read the paper and then tell me I was wrong.
I was spending so much time in the library and with my books that my wife began to think I must have someone on the side. Our marriage became strained to say the least. To make matters worse, I turned my garage into a lab and stored electronic equipment all over the house. My experiments weren’t always successful. I not only blew the lights out in the garage, on more than one occasion I did the house, the neighborhood and half the city. Now I was looking at injunctions from Local, State and the Federal government. Homeland Security and the FBI had been to my house and I was invited to their offices more than once. Hell I got to be on a first name basis with most of the agents, but none offered to take the first trip or come with me when the time came to try out my “Time Machine.”
Well, it was almost five years since the conversation with my wife about stepping through the television and I had made great progress. It was time to try my latest version of the device. If it worked, I would give it an official name for my submission to the Scientific Journal of North America. If I could sell the idea to them, well the sky would be the limit. I would be a shoe in for a Nobel in Science. The Russians were the first to send a dog into space so why not a cat into, well who cares it was a cat. My wife really loved that thing, and me, well I guess you know how I feel about cats – no great loss. This experiment would be a simple one. I would send the cat into the future by only a few seconds. It would disappear and reappear in less than a minute. Its meow would be my invitation to history and fame. I put the cat into its transporter, set the duration monitor, powered up the generator and pressed the button. I watched as the launch indicator climbed to 100%. The green light popped on and I pressed. In a flash the cat was gone. I looked at my watch and counted the seconds. No, there was no clash of thunder, no lighting the cat just reappeared. It looked as if it had been baked a little too long. It was charred and smoldering. If you fail “try and try again.”
I went back to the drawing board. There were calculations to check, components and power settings tweak. In a little less than a month I was ready for a second shot at my claim to fame. This time my choice of subjects was determined my wife prompted by, in her words, “Your lame ass concern for other living things.” I wanted to make a dog, cat or even a snake famous, but my wife was adamant about not killing anything else. So, this trip would be made by a photo of my wife, and charcoal coming back would not sneered at by me.
Again the transporter was made ready and the photo placed inside just not as gently as the cat. My adjusted calculations and setting were made and as soon as the green light came on the button was pushed. I didn’t care if the photo made it so I really didn’t pay too much attention to the passage of time. But, when I finally looked it was there. My wife’s face even looked as if it had a smirking smile. The next step was mine. I would have to modify the transporter to accommodate a human, and then another test before my trip to wherever.
I made the modifications and transported a mannequin twice. Both times the mannequin came back without even a wrinkle in his clothing. These test were more involved. They included duration and location. In one test I sent my mannequin to a street corner. Its sudden appearance scared the daylights out of a woman waiting for a bus. But, the results over all were great. I am ready.
All the time I worked on my time experiment I had a destination in mind. I was going to visit myself. I picked a date in October 1952. I was in grade school at the time. I wanted me to know that it was going to get better.
My grade school was in an Italian neighborhood and there was an Italian owned bar right across the street. At lunch time I would take 75 cents and go to the bar where I could buy a roast beef sandwich (on Italian not French bread) get two dill pickle wedges and an orange soda. I did the same thing every Thursday during the school year because Fridays were meatless, and it was like being a grownup to walk into a bar and being served, besides the sandwich was delicious.
I set the date, time and the exact GPS coordinates into, my now computer controlled, transporter. For this trip I had also developed a portable unit that fit into a briefcase. The portable unit was for me to get back with, obviously. You might think how would I get by with things from 60 years in the future back in the 50’s. Not so easy but doable. I hadn’t planned to be in the fifties for more than a few hours, but getting the 75 cents for the sandwich wasn’t as hard as you might think. The major issue was the mass difference between human and mannequin. The introduction of coins and their conductivity could be a problem. The money was taken care of by utilizing an anti-magnetic pouch, the mass was a gamble I would risk. OH, who would push the button? Hey we are in the twenty-first century, the computer of course.
I rechecked all the settings and then stopped to take a look around. Did I want to do this? Was this the stupidest thing I could do? Am I tempting fate? Am I challenging God? I answered yes to all my questions. Stepped into the transporter, put the briefcase at my feet, clicked the enter key on the computer and closed the transporter door. There was a sudden odor of ozone, I had never smelled ozone but this had to be it. The walls around me faded to white then gray and then to reds, greens and browns as the street, trees and buildings appeared. I was not only home I was 65 years in the past.
Across the street was my school. It was the old one. It was built in the 1920’s and was a three story wood Victorian. It was 11:45 am the lunch bell would ring in fifteen minutes. My younger self would be coming down the school steps any time now. The doors opened and at the top of the stairs stood a boy. He was skinny with brown hair wearing a blue shirt and maroon corduroy pants. I knew him right away he was an eleven-year-old me. I watched as he bounced down stairs, crossed the street and went through the rear door without even giving me a second glance.
I followed behind him to the steam table where Paulo stood. Paulo said, “AH, Antony! Nice to see you. You want your usual?” Anthony said, “yes sir, please.”
I then said, “Make it two and put it on my bill.”
Paulo then asked, “You know this a boy? I have never seen you here before.”
OH. Poor Paulo, I thought, you have but you just don’t know it. “yes I do,” I answered.
“Hey Antony you know this a man?”
“No sir I don’t,” answered little Anthony.
“Maybe you should just go mister,” said Paulo to me.
“You don’t understand. I just want to talk to Anthony,” I said.
“Hey mister, you just get out of here before I call a cop,” exclaimed Paulo.
“What’s the matter Paulo,” asked a voice from behind me.
“This man is bothering little Antony.”
“I see.” said the voice. “lets you and me step outside for a chat. What do you say pal?” I turned to see a member of the local police department standing there.
“look officer I don’t mean anything by this. I just want to tell Anthony somethings that he might find useful in the future.”
“Sure and I have something you might find useful now.”
“And, what might that be?”
“How ‘bout you’re under arrest!”
I have to tell you it went downhill from there. I was thorough in my preparations, so thorough that I had nothing with me that might betray when or where I came from. I knew there was no way to explain, so I placed my briefcase on a table to set up my get-away. Well the cop saw me and knocked the case to the floor ending any thought of a fast exit. When I told the cop what I just told you he thought I was nuts. Well I can see you are thinking about the briefcase. You’re not as dumb as some may have tried to make you look. You are right they sent it to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I am sure their engineering people must have gone through it with a fine tooth comb, and I am also sure they are now the proud owners of patens for all the parts that didn’t exist in 1952.
Now I ask you is it fair for me, almost seventy-five years old to be found guilty of pandering sixty years in the past? You are reasonable and intelligent people, is it so hard to believe what I just told you?
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Pratik
05/26/2020You smelled ozone. Isn't it?
But ozone is poisonous. You should have died then.
By the way, I am going to publish a story about time travel. It will be named 'Deja Vu'. But it won't be better than your stories. This story was so amazing that my brain is forcing my finger to touch the 5th star. Should I?
Help Us Understand What's Happening
JD
06/11/2020Hi Pratik. Here is the reply that the author gave to you a couple weeks ago, which came to admin inbox, because the author did not respond directly to you here on this story comment thread. I am copy/pasting it for you and the author: "Nice to hear from you. My high school chemistry was 300 years ago but I thought mixing sea water with battery acid made a cyanide gas, and peaking over the lip of the conning tower wouldn't be enough exposure especially if the hatch was open for any length of time. Any way, I am glad to hear my time story sparked an idea. I look forward to reading your take."
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