"Okay," said the technician, a dumpy little guy with front teeth that wouldn't quit. He reminded me of the dude in the Harry Potter movies that morphed into a mouse. The name on his shirt said 'Garth' but I doubted Garth was his real name. It didn't sound right. No mom would call her son Garth. Okay, one mom might.
He hadn't bothered to introduce himself but came right over invading my personal space after the dudes dropped me off at the lab in chains. I'm sure Garth thought he could get away with talking a few inches from my face since I was now strapped to a chair.
"You just sit. Relax. The Doc will be here in just a moment and he'll walk you through the procedure."
"The way this will work," said Garth when the Doc didn't immediately enter and we were obviously waiting for him. "Your body will be here, still sitting in this chair," He tapped my arm above the strap of my chair. "But you, another form of you, will be traveling. At least that's what is supposed to happen." Reassuring for sure. "Doc will fill you in on what you can expect."
I volunteered for this. Being a convict, serving a life sentence in a maximum-security facility, that's what they called it these days, a facility, sounded better than a penitentiary, which is what they used to call it. The Facility didn't sound so bad as the Pen, I suppose. It was all semantics to me, I was still locked up for the rest of my life, but could reduce my sentence to a mere five years in the Facility if I opted for this experiment. It was a no-brainer for me. Rumor had it though that a few cons had taken the early out option but unfortunately for them, they didn't come back. Whoops. I figured if I also didn't make it back, it would still be preferable to the possible fifty more years, if I lived that long, left in the joint. Joint, that's what I called it. I was a young man now, but all those decades later, I'd be an old dude. It was a quality of life issue...
The Time Card:
A Time Travel Mystery
By Denniger Bolton
I enjoyed two shorts about Time Travel but since one is 54 pages and the other 52, I decided to add them together for one article, but to review separately. One you get past the instructions to our prisoners who have agreed to test an experimental time travel process, in both books, the rest of the story is what you might get into if you could push a button and arrive somewhere else! That would be so cool, wouldn't it? And Bolton makes the trips both humorous and tempting to our imaginations as he gives us the potential of what might happen if it were really possible to time travel! I thoroughly enjoyed both stories and would recommend them!
"Okay, Fogarty, there are two controls on the Time Card," the tech said as he undid one of the straps that had me fastened to the chair. "I'm assuming you're right handed.
I nodded.
"Good...two controls. This one," he held up something that looked like a TV remote control, pointing to one of the dials. "This controls time. Just move these three dials up and down and they will dislay a date...I already knew the date I would choose and dialed it in. I was hoping that I would show up in the alternate reality before I needed to. If Garth was correct and the time of day didn't change, I'd be a few hours early. All that I knew was I had to get to Vegas before six o'clock on my chosen day...
~~~
Fogarty was the first prisoner who had thought things out...First he asked for money and he asked for clothes other than his prisoner outfit! And, he already knew exactly when and where he wanted to travel to, if this thing worked!
Then Fogarty was told that the whole thing was something like he might have seen in the movie Matrix! Geesh...now movies are ahead of the science, or wait, that's the way it is a lot of times. LOL... Anyway, Fogarty had seen the movie and loved it so he was soon ready to go!
He was going to solve a murder mystery! He was going to prevent the murder that he was accused of committing! He had been accused of killing a woman with whom he'd wanted to become friends, but her earlier boyfriend had killed her. At least Brad was the man he would going to find...
First thing that happened was complete blackness, apparently as he traveled, and then he fell in water! Fogarty was quickly to learn that the device must be attracted to water and he soon started to prepare--learning by doing always works for me too! Well, he found Brad, hit him over the head and got him inside a car. Fogarty felt bad about hitting him since he'd never hurt anybody before, but he was going to save his "potential girlfriend" and that was the most important thing!
So, Fogarty had made it, had cleared his name, he hoped, and went about visiting his parents, making money--think how you could. But there had been a time limit on how long he could stay before he'd automatically be back in the lab..Now What?
The Time Card Redoux:
a time travel mystery
“The future is uncertain but the end is always near.” Jim Morrison
The Time Card Redoux:
a time travel mystery
By Denniger Bolton
Fogarty had planned for just about everything so that he was enjoying the life of luxury and travel, having considered various ways to ensure money was available. His latest was a cruise with his lady-love...
That would be with the woman he had saved in the previous book, from being murdered...
At least until she had stolen everything and left him with nothing! What could be worse?
Well, winding up back in the lab would be first on the list!
Moments are like that. You get one at a time in life, moments that is, but I still had a hard time wrapping my head around this one. I couldn’t believe it. One moment I was tossing down vast quantities of cold San Miguel pale ale in a seedy bar in Manila, Philippines, the next one I’m sitting strapped in a chair in the lab. The love of my life, at least my current life, skipped-out-the-back-Jack with a wad of cash, my cash, all my cash, which I made not exactly all that honestly from betting on Germany to win the World Cup in football, which is soccer to anyone else in the world besides the US of A. I had a bit of an advantage with my bet in that I already knew Germany would win. I’ll tell you how I knew in just a bit, but it’s complicated and I had another immediate, more pressing, and thus bigger problem.
I was back in the lab. He was so close I could have bit him on the nose but not telling what diseases I might pick up. The name embossed over his shirt pocket read ‘Garth’ and Garth said something to me that although he said it a couple of years years earlier, it sent a shiver through me like I hadn’t experienced for a while. Not since I climbed the ladder to the top diving platform at Peony Park pool in Omaha, Nebraska. I was eight years old and it was the first trip to the pool since summer vacation from school kicked in. On a bet I climbed the slippery ladder up some 1000 feet or so, or at least it seemed like that to me at the time. My climb was in response to a double dog dare from a classmate, which one I don’t recall. I lost my rung count about a third of the way up. My heart had beat itself up into my mouth and was wiggling around in there and I couldn’t get my breath. Did I tell you I was afraid of heights? Bigger kids behind me on the ladder urged me on with encouraging words like, “Come on asshole, you’re holding up the line!” And ‘Move it, doofus!’ I plodded on, one step at a time, trying not to look down. I had no exit strategy. Jumping off the platform wasn’t part of the dare. I hadn’t really thought it through very well. Maybe I’d just stay up there until somebody came to rescue me, but being airlifted by a helicopter seemed even scarier.
When I got to the top, kids were jumping off right and left and diving without a care in the world, but I was petrified and crouched, hiding in a corner. After what seemed like four or five hours, but it was probably more like one, enough time for my so called friends to likely lose interest, I got my breath back and heart rate under two hundred. Crawling over to the edge, I peeked down at the water far below and felt a foot on my butt, pushed probably by some kid with a mean streak. I fell through space toward the water far below, arms and legs akimbo, to my imminent death. Actually, since I’m here telling this story, I didn’t die that day but instead got a tremendous wedgie, crapped my swim trunks and belly flopped.
It was that same feeling I got when rat faced Garth, the Time Card technician with the onion and garlic breath, said, “The way this will work,” he paused, “your body will be here, still sitting in this chair, but you, another form of you, will be traveling in time and space. At least that’s what is supposed to happen. We’ve sent close to a dozen of you convicts on this trip. None of them came back. This Time Card though is the newest model...
I was back in the lab. He was so close I could have bit him on the nose but not telling what diseases I might pick up. The name embossed over his shirt pocket read ‘Garth’ and Garth said something to me that although he said it a couple of years years earlier, it sent a shiver through me like I hadn’t experienced for a while. Not since I climbed the ladder to the top diving platform at Peony Park pool in Omaha, Nebraska. I was eight years old and it was the first trip to the pool since summer vacation from school kicked in. On a bet I climbed the slippery ladder up some 1000 feet or so, or at least it seemed like that to me at the time. My climb was in response to a double dog dare from a classmate, which one I don’t recall. I lost my rung count about a third of the way up. My heart had beat itself up into my mouth and was wiggling around in there and I couldn’t get my breath. Did I tell you I was afraid of heights? Bigger kids behind me on the ladder urged me on with encouraging words like, “Come on asshole, you’re holding up the line!” And ‘Move it, doofus!’ I plodded on, one step at a time, trying not to look down. I had no exit strategy. Jumping off the platform wasn’t part of the dare. I hadn’t really thought it through very well. Maybe I’d just stay up there until somebody came to rescue me, but being airlifted by a helicopter seemed even scarier.
When I got to the top, kids were jumping off right and left and diving without a care in the world, but I was petrified and crouched, hiding in a corner. After what seemed like four or five hours, but it was probably more like one, enough time for my so called friends to likely lose interest, I got my breath back and heart rate under two hundred. Crawling over to the edge, I peeked down at the water far below and felt a foot on my butt, pushed probably by some kid with a mean streak. I fell through space toward the water far below, arms and legs akimbo, to my imminent death. Actually, since I’m here telling this story, I didn’t die that day but instead got a tremendous wedgie, crapped my swim trunks and belly flopped.
It was that same feeling I got when rat faced Garth, the Time Card technician with the onion and garlic breath, said, “The way this will work,” he paused, “your body will be here, still sitting in this chair, but you, another form of you, will be traveling in time and space. At least that’s what is supposed to happen. We’ve sent close to a dozen of you convicts on this trip. None of them came back. This Time Card though is the newest model...
~~~
 |
| I worked fast and picked out a dress that looking like some sort of tapestry and was even big for me and I'm a big guy, but it was way short. I had an image of what the room occupant must look like, and it wasn’t good. Sort of like Granny Clampett’s fat maiden aunt in a miniskirt. I shook it off, put on the dress and opted for the red headed wig. It matched my coloring better, but the hair on my legs had to go. I rummaged around in the bathroom until I found a razor and a can of shaving cream, put in a new blade and went to work. At about the time I finished shaving my legs, which I’ve never done before I’ll have you know, I heard a key in the lock and the door opened. I dove for the Time Card, which I left on the bed and adjusted both controls slightly. On a previous time when I needed to make a quick exit, I dialed it without thinking in a just-get-me -outta-here panic mode, I rematerialized in a bloody puddle during the American Civil War. I almost got killed, bullets and cannon balls were zipping by my head. Those soldiers did not mess around back then. Soldiers were falling left and right. I did see Robert E. Lee on his big white horse standing majestically... ~~~ |
But he didn't have time in advance to plan and so he didn't ask for clothes or money--which, of course, sets readers up for more comedy as he tries to find clothes, get money, and get re-established as a world-wide traveler...
Of course, there was the one little troubling thing Fogarty couldn't forget. What if he somehow met up with himself? After all, Fogarty was out on a cruise right now, and his lady-love was about to abscond with the cash!
Well, Fogarty knew one thing...He wasn't going to let that woman get away with leaving Fogarty/him... One way or another he was going to save Fogarty/himself! Yikes!
While the genre might be sci-fi and fantasy, I must say that the primary writing is about creating fun and enjoyment for the reader! And the author has proven to provide just that.
The amazing characters I found quite strange were Fogarty's parents, who were visited several times over various time periods and yet took everything that was happening in stride and dear old Dad even worked on the Time Travel Card. This time, he figured out what was needed the most! Can you?
Another thing I was curious about was whether Fogarty, if he got back to the cruise ship before the theft of his money, would take his lady-love back and allow her to continue to travel with him? LOL...
All I can tell you was that he was not alone once he had found his way back to where the ship would dock next...
Take a break from the routine types of mystery and see if you can solve the mysteries presented by time travel!
Highly recommended!
GABixlerReviews
Denniger has written & published 5 books in the B.B. Rivers mystery/action adventure series, and is working on number 6. He's a full time author working at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas in the Texas Hill Country or at a coffee shop or in the grass at Barton Springs pool. The novels in this series are set in Austin, Texas but B.B. travels to exotic and thrilling locals like Costa Rica, Taos, New Orleans and San Francisco.
He has begun a new series of four books for children of all ages focusing on the adventures of Harley, a retired meter reader and his pet raccoon, Dog who live in a small American town. He has series also for children, set in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the first book in the series titled Gordo & the Gringo, the second Gordo & Abuelita and the third Gordo & El Mariachi, just out, plus another series of three books called Middle School Assassin Series as well a new series of time travel mysteries titled The Time Card, The Time Card Redoux and just out The Time Card a Trois. He has a new children's series called "Samantha Post, Private Eye about a 10 year old private eye. If you liked Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, you'll love Sam.
He has a couple of books on publishing, writing and another on fitness. His books are on Amazon and Kindle.
If you would like a free short story called "The Boycott of B.B. Rivers" drop him a note to denniger@javelinabooks.com for your free copy.
He has begun a new series of four books for children of all ages focusing on the adventures of Harley, a retired meter reader and his pet raccoon, Dog who live in a small American town. He has series also for children, set in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the first book in the series titled Gordo & the Gringo, the second Gordo & Abuelita and the third Gordo & El Mariachi, just out, plus another series of three books called Middle School Assassin Series as well a new series of time travel mysteries titled The Time Card, The Time Card Redoux and just out The Time Card a Trois. He has a new children's series called "Samantha Post, Private Eye about a 10 year old private eye. If you liked Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, you'll love Sam.
He has a couple of books on publishing, writing and another on fitness. His books are on Amazon and Kindle.
If you would like a free short story called "The Boycott of B.B. Rivers" drop him a note to denniger@javelinabooks.com for your free copy.
