Time Flying Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Half Title

  Preface

  One - A Note from Long Ago

  Two - In 1976

  Three - Living in the Past

  Four - The Road Not Taken

  Five - Time Passages

  Six - Acceleration

  Seven - Altitude

  Eight - Angels 30

  Nine - Descent

  Ten - Cruise

  Eleven - In Harm's Way

  Twelve - Overboard

  Thirteen - Crash

  Fourteen - Return

  Fifteen - Dancing

  Sixteen - The Quiet Past

  Acknowledgements

  TIME FLYING

  A Time Traveler’s Memoir

  A novel by

  Dan Garmen

  Copyright © 2012 by Dan Garmen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance it bears to reality is entirely coincidental.

  Produced by WorldWideWonderful Books

  TimeTravelerBlog.com

  To my wife in this and every other timeline I can imagine. Whether or not she knows it, she is Molly and Amanda all wrapped up in one.

  Time Flying

  A Time Traveler's Memoir

  Preface

  29 January, 1991

  0415Zulu (7:15am local)

  Near Um Qsar, Iraq

  What was happening to me was way beyond my understanding, but I knew I didn’t like it at all. A tiny, out-of-the-way portion of my mind vaguely remembered being human, and though I didn’t exactly feel dead, “alive” probably wouldn’t be the first word that popped into my brain if I had to describe my status. I longed to whimper, to retreat from this horrible existence, but as my humanity struggled to regain control, I caught myself, (I think) before anything came out. In reality, I doubt I could have made a sound if I tried.

  My mouth had been filled with a collection of dirt, rock, and powder, which combined into a dirty, smelly sludge that choked off any chance for a single, unobstructed breath. Seconds passed, and I began to be aware I possessed a body, arms, legs, and oh shit, a head that hurt so much, without the mouth-filling sludge, I would be full-on crying in pain, not caring who heard me. The limits of my body were being charted for me once again, and I kept waiting, seemingly in vain, to recover control of a part that didn’t hurt.

  Once my ears began working again, they began registering a low frequency droning coming from everywhere at once. Concentrating on it, however, I finally realized the sound came from within, rather than from the outside. I stirred, and tried to push myself off the ground, pausing on all fours to begin the process of spitting the dirt out onto the ground, once, twice, then three times, and on the last attempt, I had cleared my mouth out enough to taste blood, which I took to be a good sign. I would have given everything I owned for a single drink of water to wash out the remnants of the crap still coating the inside of my mouth, hiding among my teeth.

  As I tried to lever myself off the ground, a jolt of pain knifed through my head, pushing a groan from my now functionally cleared of debris mouth. “Shit,” I managed to croak, as I collapsed back into a sitting position. I raised my hands to the source my most extreme discomfort, my head, and as I tried to check for obvious injury, my hands stopped short when they struck something hard. That’s right, I’m wearing my flight helmet. Using both hands, I unbuckled the strap and pulled it off my head, setting off a new and even more intense wave of pain, this one morphing into nausea, forcing me back to all fours, the sickness in my gut sending signals to wretch and vomit, impossible, since I hadn’t eaten anything since early in last night’s mission.

  Where the hell am I? I asked, gathering the strength necessary to stand up, at the same time amazed I had accomplished the task. The deep ringing had ceased now, and as the seconds passed, the sounds of the world resumed. I began to be aware of the sound of voices, nothing in a language I understood, but by the sound of them, those talking were agitated and…seriously pissed. I had dropped my helmet when I collapsed back to my hands and knees, and it had hit the ground, rolled away, displaying an ugly, dark, dirty gray gash in the smooth white finish. The left side was marred, which made me as angry as the voices I could hear, the flight helmet being a source of pride and accomplishment for me, a black and yellow heraldic shield depicting a lion, a sword and a lightning bolt, covering most of one side. The dark gray, almost black, curved plexiglass visor hung from a single fastener, the violence done to my most important personal protection device infuriating me. What the fuck?

  The memory of what had happened came back in a rush, and I turned to the right, my eyes moving to where an obviously dead body lay on its back, one eye half open, the other closed, a small, neat hole an inch or so below his hairline, halfway between the centerline of his nose and left eye. Laying next to the dead man was an AK-47 rifle, butt in the dirt, the muzzle across its former owner’s right thigh. There was enough light to see the rocks behind where the dead man had been standing hideously painted with blood and other things I didn’t want to think about. Had I done this? The thought immediately ran through my mind yes, Richard, you did that. I looked down at my right hand, but I held no gun. I’d had a Beretta 9 mm auto at some point, but the weapon was nowhere to be found. As I began to frantically search for my misplaced pistol, I found another AK within arm’s reach, and knew even though the rifle didn’t belong to me, I had fired that one. I remembered the texture of the carved wooden pistol grip in my right hand, the smoother, finished wood of the fore stock in my left, and the loose, noisy way its action worked as it fired.

  I continued the scan of my surroundings, and as more memories flooded back in, I quickly turned to my left toward where the other body lay, the sight seeming to flip a switch in my brain, downloading the rest of my memories.

  Oh no.

  The second man I hadn’t killed. He was dressed exactly like I was, same flight suit, with the same patches sewn on. The heraldic insignia, lightning bolts, lion rampant and the words “ATKRON 145” on the bottom. His helmet, which I knew displayed the same design as mine, was twisted around, hiding his face, but I knew what it looked like.

  How had this all happened? How did I get here? I’m a 47 year old software designer, I’m in a cover band who plays gigs one weekend a month. I have a wife and a daughter, and I do not wear a uniform, and fight with other men in the desert, sometimes killing them. What the hell is this all about?

  Recovering alcoholics and drug abusers talk about how having a "moment of clarity,” which usually starts them back on their journey to normalcy. Is that what this is? I asked myself. A moment of clarity? A final realization the world I've been living in for these past...What, 15 years now, isn't real? Or, was this "clarity," just the intense desire to extract myself from the horrifying situation I suddenly found myself in. No, this really horrifying situation I had gotten myself into. There was no one to blame here but me, no one responsible for these two dead bodies but me. 15 years ago, I woke up not where I should have been, but someplace I never thought I would see again. Waking up there was not my doing. The things I'd done since then, the decisions I'd made since the spring of 1976 though, all my doing. As awareness of my situation kept returning, I remembered there weren't just two dead bodies I was responsible for, there were four. I closed my eyes, a rising tide of dark despair filling me. My life wasn't supposed to be this way. What the hell had happened?

  Enough of me had returned to feel a
ccountable, and responsible. I had failed my friends, but the failure hadn't been because I hadn't cared, or wanted to succeed. The dice had been tossed and my friends’ numbers had come up, killing them. I still felt a crushing responsibility though, an emotion as raw right here, right now, as they were across so many years and miles.

  In the desert that night though, I had to play it all through. Rebooting out wasn’t an option. I had been in this world, real or not, and only one exit existed. Nobody gets out of here alive, the saying goes.

  Or do they?

  As if in answer to my question, a shockingly loud tsunami of sound washed over the small, enclosed circle of rocks I shared with two dead men and I looked up just in time to observe the tail of a jet black helicopter streak over, slicing the blue/gray early morning sky.

  Time to go.

  ONE

  A Note from Long Ago

  “Hon, you better get up,” the voice said, more insistent than a few seconds ago, which I saw from the clock on the bedside table had actually been 12 minutes ago. Another snooze cycle. Funny how our minds work. When you are asleep hours can feel like seconds, or sometimes, no time at all, even though events seem to happen quite normally in dreams. But back in the “real” world, the clock seems to reassert its power over you.

  “Getting up,” I answered my wife, Molly, who was at her dressing table in the adjoining bathroom, “her” bathroom, getting ready for the day. Even though her commute was just down the hall, since she worked from home, Molly was almost always up before me, spending more time getting ready for the day than I ever would, ironic in that her considerable beauty was already in evidence before she applied the first bit of eye shadow, blush, or whatever makeup women used. Molly was never disheveled, never less than magnificently presentable, a truly beautiful woman who used makeup for subtle enhancement, not deception or repair. Her television background taught her that fine art, even though several years had passed since she had been on-camera.

  I stumbled out of the bedroom, pulling on a t-shirt and heading to “my” bathroom, which by design belonged to the guest room, but in practical use, served as mine. The guest room’s closet housed my clothes, since our home, fairly spacious for middle-class San Diego suburban life, didn’t have enough closet space. So, the master bedroom’s two closets belonged to Molly and her well maintained and ordered wardrobe, also habits born in her television career, all fine with me, since my clothing needs were minimal, consisting of a few shirts, mostly Polo, several pairs of khaki Dockers, and a manageable inventory of underwear, socks and shoes. Two sport coats, three belts and a rack of ties numbering probably 40, the vast majority of which I’d never worn, completed the collection. With regard to wardrobe, I am a simple man.

  The clock in the bathroom informed me 7am was history, and further down the hall I could hear the water running in our daughter Samantha’s bathroom, as she got ready for school, the last Monday of the semester for her, since Sam’s 2006 Christmas Holiday would start after a half day on Tuesday. We were all looking forward to the holidays this year, to our trip to Coer d’Alene, Idaho where we would wear parkas and, mittens, sit in front of big fireplaces and look at or play in lots and lots of snow. Both Molly and I grew up in the Midwest, where we had experienced enough snow for a lifetime, but Samantha had spent her 13 years so far in Southern California, where the snow is a day trip you Can wear shorts to and from. She wanted to immerse herself in a colder lifestyle, and we were all too happy to oblige. Molly’s job was going well, plenty of writing and editing for her to do, her television news background had prepared her well for the growing online news industry. My company, LeftCoastX Development, creates software for Apple computers, server and data mining applications for the most part.

  I had founded LeftCoastX with my best friend, Gary Danner, an engineer, mathematician and a former “Googler,” who had worked for the search giant in the company’s infancy and had an employee number higher than 20 but lower than 50. Always the pragmatist, Gary had cashed his Google stock options at a time that he had determined was best after calculating the present value of the cash, what his algorithms predicted the stock price would do over the next two years, and hell, for all I know, the position of the stars. Gary took the money and didn’t look back. He hadn’t been one of the youngest members of the Google team, but there weren’t many at the company who were smarter, and after weeks of begging Gary to stay, the two founders of Google, 10 years younger than Gary, finally offered him something he wouldn’t be able to resist; An “emeritus” position, first right of refusal for the purchase of his portion of LeftCoastX, and a promise to travel with the founders the next time they flew their private jumbo jet around the world to observe a solar eclipse.

  Gary used a tiny portion of his Google money to help found our company, along with a much more substantial codebase he had written in the two months after leaving Google. We had to make sure none of the code duplicated anything he had created for the search company, even going to the unbelievable (to me, anyway) length of emailing the code to one of the company’s founders to make sure he wouldn’t have any legal claim to what would be an important cornerstone of our company. I, of course, told Gary no corporation in its right mind would fail to say, “OURS” when someone asked, but of course, Google isn’t a corporation in its right mind. Apparently, the founder dropped whatever he had been doing, pored over the code for at least half a day (even a super genius would have needed several hours to understand it all) and sent an email back to Gary with the simple message:

  “I love how u propose sorting feedback in lines 1,045 to 2,889! I’ve Never seen it before in my life. Go for it.”

  Gary rendered me speechless late on the same afternoon, when he forwarded me the email from the Google founder. I had figured we’d be lucky to get a response from Google in less than a couple months, and in all probability, there would be a number of problems with the codebase. When I expressed my shock they hadn’t held us up and claimed ownership of a chunk of code we couldn’t do without, my friend, puzzled, asked “Why would they do that?”

  To quote another geek I know, “Code is Poetry,” and I guess appreciation of good poetry is more important than ownership of it.

  By the time I finished in the bathroom, showered, shaved, teeth brushed and “So-Cal” presentable, Samantha had dashed out the door to school and Molly was hard at work on her computer in our shared office. Life on the West Coast isn’t always the laid-back experience the cliches suggest. Being three hours behind the East Coast means you’re always trying to get up earlier, groggy, sleep-deprived but still three hours behind the East Coasters. Dressed in one of my darker Polo shirts and standard hued Dockers, I kissed my wife on the cheek, looped the strap of my messenger bag over my shoulder, and left for work.

  We like living in San Diego a lot. Molly loves the sun, the outdoor activity, and the beach. Samantha, her mother’s daughter, agrees, adding in a partiality for surfers, much to the concern of both of us. I would be happy living anywhere. I Have lived everywhere. I grew up in Indiana, and went away to college as fast as possible after graduating from high school. Before my injury and subsequent…complications, my life had been charted for me, and would include college basketball paying for my education (even though my family could afford tuition) and then a good job. Those plans didn’t end up working out, so without the rudder I always expected to have, I wandered a bit. States I’d spent time living in, included Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Oregon, Michigan, Florida and Georgia. I’d loved the Pacific northwest, hated the South, and tolerated the Midwest. The eastern states were ok. Neither good nor bad, just places to live, places to work. In a couple cases, they were places to screw up good jobs and get fired.

  For the most part, my life hadn’t been particularly epic, but couldn’t be called a complete disaster, either. I’d saved a little more money than I’d squandered, but not close to enough, considering all the money I’d earned. By the time I moved to San Diego in the late 80s, a littl
e wiser, but still fairly screwed up and directionless I wasn’t particularly worried about not having changed the world, yet.

  I met a girl who changed that, however, a girl with whom I fell in love and married. For reasons beyond my understanding, she gave up her dreams for me and did something inexplicable.

  She married me.

  "Jeesh, I really don't want to go to Cincinnati," I told Gary pinning my Blackberry to my left ear with my shoulder as I slipped out of my SUV, a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The annoyance I felt with my partner was partly due to his insistence on using a bluetooth headset while driving one of the ragtop jeeps he bought, modified and then crawled all over the Texas outback in, requiring the person he was talking to work hard to pull his voice out of the heavy background noise the headset picked up. Most of the annoyance on this day, however, was because of his insistence I be the one to spend several months (winter months, no less) in Ohio, setting up an installation of our software which represented the biggest single sale of our company ever.

  The company, a Fortune 500 behemoth that produced hundreds of different products and services, in hiring LeftCoastX to build its in-house research and data-mining system, did three things. First, by moving from Windows to the Macintosh platform, a huge blow would be struck against Redmond, Washington's Microsoft. Second, by hiring us to build out the software running this part of the enterprise, they were making LeftCoastX a major player in the industry.

  The third thing our getting this job did, while not part of the public knowledge base of the transaction, would be to confirm a long-time friendship between two graduates of an exclusive Chicago prep school, one of whom happened to be Gary Danner, my partner and half-owner of LeftCoastX. Yea, the old-boy network at its worst. Or, at its best, if you happen to be on the team of one of the old-boys. On the one hand, the fact that Gary and the Chairman of the Board of the client went to school together would make Gary the obvious choice to go to Cincinnati, but, as he argued, this was exactly why he couldn't be the partner who made the trip. My going would make the arrangement less about the relationship between him and the Chairman (or, to be more accurate, Chairwoman) should their history ever come to light. If it did come to light, certain assumptions would be made regarding the nature of their relationship in the past and today, assumptions quite correct, Gary made clear to me. LeftCoastX got the company's business for perfectly sound business reasons, but reality would be beside the point. It would just be best for everyone if I went to Cincinnati and Gary stayed as far away from there as possible.