1.2.0 Love and Tachyons

Jessup, MD

It was time for Ansem's daily routine of crossing paths with Rebecca as he got home from work and she was leaving for her shift at the hospital. 

“Hi, Mr. Weathers.” 

Christ, she called him mister. If he only just opened his mouth and talked to her she would find that he was not that much older than her. The beard throws people off. Every time he tried to talk his voice would drop out, but he went for it anyway, “Hi, Reb…” his words dissipated into the air as he tried to pick it back up with a wave, “...becca.” Ansem smiled like an awkward idiot and was unsure if she even heard him; another squandered moment.

He walked into his house and made himself dinner. Later Rebecca would get home at four in the morning. The only light that was still on in Ansem’s house was coming from the basement window. Rebecca was so tired she thought little of it. The next day Ansem finished his truck route to the pharmacies and sporting goods stores and looked forward to his daily moment with Rebecca. All the way home he practiced different ways to say hello, “Hi Rebecca!” “ Great Day today!”  “Hey neighbor!” “Same shit, different day!”  That last one might leave too much of an impression. But maybe that’s exactly what he needed to do.

When Ansem got home and parked his enormous truck out on the street instead of in his drive, as he was known to do, he saw Rebecca talking to someone else. It was the mailman. But it was too late for him to still be making his rounds. This could only mean one thing... He was there on a personal call. Ansem walked down the stone path to his front door facing them the entire way. It wasn’t so bad, the awkwardness was cut with a brown bag of groceries he was holding, blocking any potential eye-contact. He thought about waving but that seemed silly.

Ansem rushed into his house and closed the door. When he turned his head to have a look out the window, he tripped on the ottoman and spilled his groceries all over the floor. The carton of milk broke open. It was a mess. Ansem got up and screamed. He pulled the fireplace spike out and slammed it into the ottoman, cutting holes in it, carving out the stuffing. Ansem got all his pent up frustration out. He briefly fantasized about them hearing him and coming over. Ansem’s paranoia then got the best of him and he immediately calmed down, cleaned the mess, and fixed the ottoman before hiding down in his basement for the rest of the night.

New York, NY

Samuel was spending days on end at his campus laboratory. He kept telling Vanessa that he was on the verge of a breakthrough that could save his career. He was not able to give up this theory. They were threatening to take away his grants and tenure. Samuel didn't want to go home because he feared they would change the locks on him.

“If I can just make the tachyon converter work…” Samuel muttered to himself in front of the chalkboard. It was almost two in the morning. He was staring through over-tired eyes and blotchy glasses. Only one thing could break him from this spell... Vanessa walked into the office. “You can make it work tomorrow, honey. Let’s go home.” She brought his jacket over and covered him with it.

“Oh, Vanessa, I think I screwed up bad this time.” The bourbon was heavy on his breath. The empty bottle went unnoticed on the floor between the couch and the wall.

Vanessa Chase drove her husband home and he did not lose his job, for the time being. Thankfully, nobody saw her drag his drunk-ass out of there. The next day Samuel woke up and saw his last dream echoing in his mind. It looked like the formula to the tachyon converter, but then it became a silver box with an indented curve riding down both sides of it to a point, at the point there was an opening that light was pouring out of...

Every time the light broke his vision the feeling remained the same. This was the tachyon converter. Vanessa was right; he did find it the next day. What they both did not know, what they could not know, is that time travel required more than just particles that travel backwards through time. Samuel would have to find that out the hard way in the days to come. 

to be continued...

1.1.0 Two Di Are Cast

“Two truths will always be... You cannot put chaos in a formula, and man will never be able to see what is coming next. Make no mistake, the latter follows the former.”

                        -Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase (Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics) 

Jessup, MD

He had a good life. He had a good job. Driving while he works everyday was a plus for Ansem. He never thought he would have this much to begin with. He owned the truck and basically had his own shipping company. Right off Route 1, Ansem was not twenty minutes from Washington, D.C.; the center of it all. There was always business in the capital. Ansem was swelling with jobs. He had no real family. He could drive all across the country if he wanted.

Ansem instead lived in his late parents’ house, the house he grew up in. He stayed in crowded Maryland and made thousands and thousands of dollars over the years of getting contracts. Ansem did not do much. He never went out nor had people over. He had very few hobbies. When he was a kid, the only thing he played with was his chem-set.

Ansem wanted to be a scientist his entire life; not just any science, but one remembered and rich, with his own laboratory, someone who cured something major, like cancer or AIDS. And yet his life did not lead him there. Out of high school he went away to college and was called home halfway through his first year when his mother fell ill. It took her nine months to die, the same amount of time he grew to live inside her womb. Ansem never returned to school. Instead he stayed home and took care of his heartbroken dad. In five years their lives were beginning to get better. Ansem’s father then died of a heart attack.

He had no chance to get him to the hospital. The heart attack took three seconds, three seconds… one moment’s thought…that is all it took to kill his dad. There was nothing anybody could do. In all honesty, his father was dead the moment they lost his mother. Ansem was left alone, and with this big empty house. There was only one reason he did not move and start his life over. Instead, it has been over twenty years and Ansem is a quiet millionaire living amongst normal people, maintaining his guise as the blue collar delivery guy. He did all of this, all these years, for one person in mind, the reason he stayed...

There is nothing in this world that he would not do for her and she had no idea. They barely even knew each other. But Ansem had lived next to Rebecca for seven years now, and he knew enough about her to know that he loved her. Now all he had to do was talk to her.

New York, NY

The Manhattan morning was clear with a bright blue sky. The kids were all up and getting ready for school when Samuel came downstairs. “Did I miss breakfast?” Samuel asked his wife.

“No darling, the girls just wake up early with Mommy. And Warren!” Samuel’s wife banged on the wall, “…is going to be late!”            

Just then a bedroom door opened and the front door slammed shut. Their oldest was in his last year of prep school. Samuel walked up behind Vanessa. 
“Could it be, Doctor Chase…that we have the house to ourselves?”
"I wouldn't say that..." remarked Samuel as the neighbor's dog came running into the kitchen, looking for some breakfast.

"Warren keeps letting him in and not taking him back to Allen," Vanessa explained.
"Go home, Jackson!" Samuel shooed the pup out the back door.
“You’re going to be late too, Doctor.”

“They can wait for me.”

An hour later, Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase entered his research company’s funded wing at Manhattan Tech. He was late for his presentation on his latest theory. Dr. Chase was the head of his department, albeit the smallest department in the field of physics.

Samuel got through the door of his office and switched out of his jacket and into his blazer. He slid his already-knotted tie around his neck and under his collar. A quick brush to the hair and he was back out the door. Samuel ran back into the office to get his notes and finally got to the meeting in the lecture room over twenty minutes late.

When Samuel opened the door the clocks were rolled back. He laughed and to cover catching his breath he scoffed, “Now suppose I just went back in time.” Everyone had a laugh or a gasp at the reality and comfort with Samuel’s tone. They talked amongst themselves as he got ready. He got his stuff together and onto the podium and started up his laptop. He turned on the projector and opened the slideshow he had ready.

Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase was a leading mind in theoretical and quantum physics. Today his lecture was on the theoretical analysis of whether time travel was possible and/or achievable. There were six representatives from the pentagon present at the lecture. All but one got up and left during it. General Saarsgard of the Air Force stayed and let the eccentric doctor of science finish what he had to say.

The other representatives shrugged it off as nonsense, but in reality they were listening to a man far ahead of his time. He was talking about cracking the scientific code of chaos and unlocking the space time continuum. The general took away one important fact over all of them when he left, exactly what Samuel intended, Traveling to the future was impossible, you could not be able to tell what would be there waiting for you; but a carefully constructed window into the past could be ascertained. Unbeknownst to anyone, a squad of pilots was chosen and issued orders by General Saarsgard to begin top secret training in Cheyenne Mountain for navigating through “deep space”.

It was a hard couple of months after that for Doctor Chase. From how the Pentagon reps had reacted to the lecture to the talk around the institute, rumors of his theory had turned Samuel into a social pariah. His field was always on the edge of fact and fiction. This might have put it over the top. He continued his research with his grad students, but even they started to dwindle in numbers. He was losing his integrity as a scientist. Soon he would have to make a decision…call off this crazy hunt for time travel or risk losing his career and family over it. Samuel could always see down the line; no matter how thick the fog got…

to be continued...