Matthias Oreklein’s Blog

How did he ever get into this mess in the first place?!  Being tale gated by a crazed time patrolling codon wasn’t what Cedric had in mind.  Cedric frantically touched the controls to accelerate the craft, but it was in vain.  The best way to truly understand Cedric’s predicament would be to travel back to the day this began: today, but earlier in the morning.

Cedric had always envied the time-space pilots and there ventures back in time to conduct experiments, unfortunately he never actually gotten to know exactly what they were doing.  There were several rumors circulating around the offices that the temporanauts, as they were called, went back in time to change small random events that caused a blooming effect in another universe they could observe.  Another was the notion that the temporanauts analyzed the past for the truth, such as the deep past for dinosaurs, or something as mundane as venturing back to prove a trial.  Cedric believed the first more on the count that they could just use a time lens to look back in time.

There were rumors that they traveled forward in time, which according to the current laws of physics proved possible, but such a voyage was so dangerous that anyone who believed that was ruled off as a crack pot.

Cedric admired the gleaming, colorful, streamlined space-time crafts with their large circular hover disk wings, and their cleverly concealed temporal gyroscopes.  In the olden days time flyers were actually cannon ball like crafts flung trough an orbital time ring far away from any life.  The crafts had to be spherical and specially designed with geometric shapes that negated the crushing gravity forces.  Technology had come along way in two decades.

Cedric pressed his face to the glass of the civilian viewing deck as he watched the latest temporal launch.  The large holographic count down outside the station clicked down rapidly.  The craft was suspended in emptiness as its electric blue hover disks began to whir. This ship leaned forward as its gravity bending technology warmed up.  A horizontal array of blue lights illuminated on its sides and grew brighter until the rift generator was charged.  The crowd held its breath, then gasped as two high power lasers beamed from the tops and bottoms of the hover disks.  The lasers began to bend into unbroken loops of light bent and controlled by the immense gravitational forces.  The loops began to rotate and spin until it looked like the whole craft was encased in a sphere of light.  Triangles of light began to spread and move across the surface of the sphere and once they aligned, the whole sphere went dark like a television set being switched off.

Cedric smiled.  If he was going to have his fifteen minutes in space time, he had to take it… now.

Cedric lifted his bag and headed for the tour leaving for the holding station of the time flyers.

“Contrary to popular belief,” began to the tour guide in her nasally drawl, “The Temporanauts are to travel back in time to only observe the past.  All time flyers are equipped with specialized cloaking technology beyond anything detectable.  They literally bend light and radiation around them.  More over the Temporanauts actually have specially designed suites that serve the same purpose but enhances it even more by giving them intangibility, literally, walking through walls if they so choose.

“That is their main mission, though there have been twelve documented missions to change past events and observe possible futures created in parallel universes.  The time lenses are used to ensure the mission is carried out as planned.  One famous alteration mission, as they are called, was to see what would happen if Adolph Hitler was never born, the finding of which are held classified and are still being analyzed.

“Despite the voyages in the past, there have been only two documented voyages to the future,” she put an unusual inflection on the word ‘documented.’  ”One that is still continuing because the flyer that was sent lost it’s time travel capabilities but we are still in contact with it.  The other was a successful deep future unmanned voyage to visit the geologic outcome of the earth.

“We currently have eleven thousand unmanned time probes mapping a complete lexicon of earth DNA, from it we have been able to cure cancer and rid the human race of almost all ailments as well as develop better, stronger, genetically base materials and foods specifically designed for non-temporal space colonization.”

Cedric raised his hand, “Is there any way that a civilian could pilot a time flyer? Or are there any plans for the commercialization of the time stream?”  She looked like she was about to laugh at him.

“I’m afraid not,” she replied, almost mockingly.  “Time is too fragile to allow commercialization and there are specific requirements to be a Temporanaut, of which must be genetically engineered.  You have to be born a time traveler.”

Cedric looked down sadly.  It was time, he thought.  He had to know what it was like to fly through time.  Discretely, he broke away from the group, there weren’t many people around.  He was surprised how easy it was to escape.  He wove his way around the time flyers until he found a small, one manned time skid.  The cockpit was opened so he climbed in.

The ship opened from the bottom and once he was seated, the floor closed from beneath him.  The interior was made up of a comfortable seat, three touch-control panels (one to either side and then a larger one just over his lap) all in easy reach, and a wind shield.  It was pretty simple.  Luckily Cedric had flown space freighters before they were replaced by portals.  It seemed nowadays that everything worked through a portal.  The time flyers were the only vehicles left.  The controls didn’t seem that alien.  He at least knew how to activate it.

Placing both hand on the side panels he waited for them to read.  It happened instantly.  The panels began to glow blue and interface code whirred across the surface of the main panel.  The system was sensing danger; the code didn’t appear that friendly.  Cedric knew he would have to hack it.  Pulling out his panel computer he placed it on to the main panel and glided his fingers across it in the freezing gesture.  Almost immediately the system locked up.  

Cedric reached for the side panels to reprogram the system when it started up again.  “Hello Cedric,” it said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come.”  The chair suddenly sprang to life, suctioning him in.  A gel began to secrete from the back to the chair and ooze through his clothes.  “Don’t worry,” said the friendly computer voice, “It’s just your time suit, and you can’t travel without it.  The gel began to cover his whole body; it was cool and nice to the touch.  It wrapped around his front then over his shoulders and then down his arms.  It covered his hands in white, and then continued down his legs and then ending at his feet.  Once he was completely covered, the gel began to solidify into a clothe-like material, consuming his original clothes in the process.  When the transformation was over he was cloaked in a full body, form fitting white and blue striped suit.

“Are you ready to go?” asked the system.

Cedric removed his panel computer and there on the main touch panel was a woman’s face. 

“Can I know your name?” he asked fascinated.

“Cassiopeia, but you can call me Cassi.”

“Okay,” replied Cedric, genuinely impressed.  He knew that Artificial Intelligence was possible but he didn’t expect one to be built into a time flyer.  He only knew of two in existence.  “Let’s go Cassi.”  He had forgotten all about being caught.

“You’re the pilot,” she replied.

Cedric smiled as he positioned his fingers onto the side panels and began to slide his fingers in piloting gestures.  The hover disks began to whir by his sides and the ship quietly lifted off the floor of the docking station.

“Enemy detected,” buzzed Cassi, and a rear image of a robotic time flyer was on his tail.  “Fly!”

“Gladly,” replied Cedric.  Half smiling, he thrust his hands forward on the panels and the ship shot forward.  Gliding out the docking station, the robot followed.

“You need to jump to the Time-way,” announced Cassi.

“The what?”

“The Time-way, a temporal highway that will be constructed sometime in the future to accommodate time travelers.  Just to let you know, it will be commercially funded.”

Cedric smiled, but then asked, “How do I get there?”  A command appeared below Cassi’s face.  It read, “Auto pilot.”  Cedric frantically touched it.

“Here we go!” sang Cassiopeia.  “Restraining pilot.”  The chair once again sucked him back in.  Cassi immediately sent them into a barrel roll.  Spinning and spinning, projecting the time lasers in front and behind them.  The lasers began to spiral and twist until the ship was wrapped in a spinning cocoon of light.  Then blinking out like a light bulb, the time skid was gone from the time period.

The next thing Cedric knew was the large vast blue tube of space time the skid was now traveling through.  The seat relaxed to allow him to see clearer.  Surrounding the skid were hundreds of temporal vehicles each carrying human or close to human beings.  “The ones that don’t look human were once, but have genetically been altered either on purpose or by time, but we are all related.”

“What do you mean we?” asked Cedric.

She seemed to be puzzled, then laughed.  “You think I’m an artificial intelligence?  No, I am a woman from the future.  Well not exactly from the future.  There will be a large group of humans, about on half of the population, who will separate from the time puritans; the ones who believe time should just be observed.  There will be a war over it.  Then the time travelers, the ones who actually use the time technology as it is supposed to be used will go and create a new culture and race located in the time and space between time and space.

“I intercepted this craft because we monitored you, and much other potential we were to rescue form the tyranny of your time.  Here in the time between times, all things happen at once, but move at a continual pace.  It is a little difficult to understand at first but you’ll get it soon.  Did you know that the tour guide mentioned a failed voyage to the future?  Their ship didn’t loose its temporal abilities, but instead the crew mates were brought here after their mission was complete.  And as a matter of fact, your time still has contact with us.”

“Amazing,” whispered Cedric.

“Look up;” replied Cassiopeia, “You are going to want to see this.”  There was a large amount of ships departing the time way into the space between, simply by navigating out of the tube.  Cassi descended the vessel until it crossed out of the Time-way and sprawled out below him; Cedric saw a massive floating complex made of huge rotating rings.  “This is Earth II, head quarters of the Tempo Sapiens as we call ourselves.”

Matthias Oreklein’s Blog by Matthias Oreklein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.