By The Hermit

Samual Nelson Munson -- 1790/1858

"Whoa, whoa I said, you lop-eared son of a bitch! Whatcha tryin ta do, kill us both -- you ornery critter?" Old Sam Munson tried desperately to keep the mule from sliding any farther off the narrow trail cut into the side of Devil's Gulch, but his efforts were useless, and he cried out in frustration as Sassy, the mule and all his provisions slid over the edge and out of sight.

Sam sat on the edge and swallowed his rage long enough to take stock and face reality...with Sassy gone and no provisions, he, Samual Nelson Munson, was as good as dead. If he didn't die of thirst, he'd surely starve to death 'cause he'd stupidly made Sassy carry his scatter-gun. Damn! if only he hadn't been so damn lazy. Well, if he waited too long or thought too much about it, he'd chicken out, so best get it over with... Sam stood up, saluted an imaginary flag and jumped out into space....

Bobbie D Harris -- 1927/1958

Bobbie pulled into the gas-check at the end of lap two and fell off the bike. He had been in motorcycle races before, hundreds of them, but this hundred and fifty mile man-killer was the roughest he'd ever rode. Why they decided to lay out a course through Devil's Gulch was beyond him. It was not only dangerous, but it was sure to destroy a guy's equipment. And keeping a racing bike in running shape was expensive.

When his heart slowed down enough to where he could drink without puking he drank about a pint of cool water, ate a hershey bar for some quick energy and jumped back on his refueled bike.

"Go gettum, Bobbie!" His pit crew yelled encouragement, "you're running sixth and two of those guys look like death warmed over. They won't last another fifty miles." He lowered his face shield and took off in a huge cloud of alkali dust. Running easy and smooth at about sixty, he got a chance to rest a little more for about five miles, then he entered the rocky approach to the Gulch itself. The way was strewn with sharp lava rocks -- both large and small. The small ones could destroy a tire and the large ones -- well, 'nough said!

Soon he was on the narrow trail cut into the wall of the Gulch. At some points it was over six-hundred feet straight down on his left side and straight up on his right. The trail sometimes narrowed to six to eight inches and then widened to several feet. It was on this trail that Bobbie caught up with the rider running fifth.

Bobbie tried several times to pass him, but each time the guy would swing in or out to prevent Bobbie from passing. Usually the trail would narrow down at a turn then immediately widen out afterwards. The rider ahead would always slow way down in the real narrow part of the turn, so Bobbie figured the only way to pass was to wait for an inside turn, then go fast enough to ride the wall as he passed the guy and then drop back down ahead of him.

It would have worked, too -- except for that dust-devil. Bobbie was just starting to pass when this whirlwind filled with choking alkali dust enveloped both riders. The one on the level slammed on his brakes because he couldn't see two feet in front of his face, But Bobbie couldn't stop, Bobbie couldn't see and Bobbie went sailing over the edge and down out of sight to the rocks below. Search crews were never able to find the body or the bike because of the roughness of the terrain, but with the eye witness account given by the other rider and the depth of the fall, there was never any doubt about Bobbie being with the angels.

Jan -21-2134-157 -- 2134/2158

Jan-21-2134-157 glanced at his instrument panel, and his forehead wrinkled with worry as he spoke,

"Zender, this field strength meter has malfunctioned. The zweedle is pegged! Do I have a spare?" Zender, the computer did two rapid searches and ran diagnostics,

"Jan, there are no other Jans in the immediate area; therefore protocol permits use of first name. You have no spare. Only parts critical to ship's survival are carried in sets; however, there is nothing wrong with the meter in service. We has entered an area with an unstable spatial matrix and is generating enormous amounts of magnetic energy. We will be trapped in thirty-two seconds."

Jan slammed the decelerator into reverse mode, but all that happened was that they dropped out of hyper just in time to drop like a rock into Devil's Gulch. The ship landed in soft sand, rocked back and forth a few times and came to rest. The field strength meter had returned to normal.

"What happened to that field? I thought it would tear the ship apart." There was no answer. "Zender, what's wrong? Where are you? Oh Zed, I'll bet that damn field wiped out his ICs. Now, what am I going to do?" Jan put his head in his hands and started weeping. Tears streaming down his cheeks...

"Why are you leaking like that?" Came a familiar voice, "were you damaged in the crash? When the radiation became dangerous, I went into my shield bubble; otherwise, I'd be gone by now."

"Oh Zender, I'm so glad to hear your boring voice. Don't ever scare me like that again. You still haven't answered my question -- where did that damn field go?"

"If you asked the question, I was still in my bubble. I believe the field is still here, but we are inside the core and there is no activity. If we try to leave while the field is still active, we will be destroyed. We must move closer to the field, so we can monitor it's strength. As unstable as that spatial matrix was, I'm sure this field is periodic."

Jan restarted the engines and slowly slid through the sand at a ninety degree angle to their original skid marks. Soon, he started picking up a reading on the meter, when the zweedle reached the medium range he stopped. He turned and spoke,

"Zender, is this a safe level for you?"

"Yes, Why?"

"Because I'd like you to alter your circuitry so we can go exploring and still monitor that meter while we're away."

"No problem, at this radiation level, I can transmit and receive for approximately 3 clacks."

Jan made some quick environmental checks, then satisfied, he put on a broad brimmed hat, shouldered into a backpack and left the ship. With Zender floating and flittering back and forth in front, he strode off in the direction of a cloud of dust visible to the North.

"Zender, flit on ahead, determine the reason for that cloud of dust and report back."

"Aye Aye, Sir!" Zender replied sarcastically.

"What in the Burning Zone does that mean?"

"It's an anachronism, don't be offended." Zender disappeared in a flash headed North. Almost instantly, he was back hovering nervously.

"Well, report...what caused the dust cloud?" Zender replied after a moments hesitation.

"There are two humans in conflict...apparently over the younger human frightening the older human's large ugly animal with his mode of transportation. The older is angry and threatening to do harm with a weapon which fires lead shot propelled by a chemical explosion...amazing!! More amazing still, they have no implants!! I tried to identify them, but could not."

"No implants, impossible! All humans have been implanted for the last two-hundred years. Your sensors must have been damaged in the crash. Let's go see these amazing humans." Jan hurried off toward the dust cloud. As he walked he tried to imagine how horrible it would be -- living without an implant:

You could be lost without being missed or searched for.
You could carry around a deadly virus undetected and be damaged.
A person could commit a crime against you without being apprehended.
A person could father a child and not bear the burden of responsibility.

Without the implant, a person wouldn't have any individuality. Jan's identity was being the 157th baby implanted on the 21 of January in the year 2134. Jan was the one and only Jan-21-2134-157 that would or could ever exist, so there was no need to break from society to establish his own individuality. In fact, society was engineered around individuality.

Low cost, solar-powered monitors blanketed the surface of the earth. They stored only the passage of the last 100 implants. When a person passed a monitor, his passing was recorded and number 100 dropped out of memory making room for the next. In times of emergencies the movements of any person on the planet could be tracked by satellite.

Jan shuddered at the thought of losing the security and protection provided by the network of humanity and his helpmate Zender. His eyes started filling with tears which he hastily wiped away -- not wanting to try to explain them to Zender.

He squeezed between two huge boulders and came upon a strange tableau. An old grey-bearded man stood pointing an ancient weapon at a strangely garbed creature. The creature was in the act of removing its huge bulbous head. The huge head turned out to be a helmet similar to the early space helmets worn by the ancient space explorers. The young man dropped the helmet and spoke,

"Hey Grampa, put down the shotgun. I didn't mean to scare your damned old mule. I sure didn't plan to fall off the trail and crash down here...speaking of here, where the hell are we anyway, and why ain't I dead? It musta been six-hundred feet straight down into this canyon. Seems like I only sailed a few feet and my motorcycle landed in some soft sand. Sorry 'bout scaring your mule."

Sam slowly lowered his scatter gun, and ignored Bobbie as he walked around the motorcycle in dumb wonderment.

"Boy, what in God's creation is this contraption? You say you was a riding on her when you fell off the trail? I ain't seen nothin like this in all my born days." Bobbie grinned and replied,

"Gramps, you help us get out of here, and I'll take you for a ride."

Jan stepped out from behind the boulder and quietly asked,

"Would you citizens please tell me why you're not implanted? Every baby on the planet has been implanted for over two-hundred years, and suddenly, I find two who have no implants in the same place on the same day...It's quite worry-some." Both men spun around and gazed wide-eyed at Jan as he approached.

"Just who the hell might you be?" Sam growled as he half raised his scatter-gun, "and what in blue blazes is an implant." Zender floated close, speeded up the molecules in the barrel of the scatter-gun until it got too hot to hold. Sam dropped it with a yelp of pain. Zender floated above Jan's head and spoke,

"Jan, let me scan for some points of reference before you try to explain implanting." The floating, doughnut-shaped ring that was Zender hummed, glowed and settled first over Sam's head, then over Bobbie's...in a few seconds it was back over Jan's humming and glowing. Jan's eyes opened wide with amazement as he received the information.

When he spoke he tried to keep his voice calm and as soothing as possible although inside his brain was racing in all directions like a trapped animal. He sat down and crossed his legs and started,

"I think before I get into any discussion about implants, I should try to give you two citizens a status report. A sort of analysis of where we are and what we can do about it. First, in answer to where we are...When my ship's instrumentation indicated a huge electromagnetic field, I figured it to be an unstable spatial matrix. I tried to avoid it but couldn't stop in time, so here I am. I arrived here at 11:23 A.M. 6/18/2168."

"Bobbie, you rode your motorcycle off the cliff during that dust storm and arrived here at 11:15 A.M. 6/18/1958."

"Sam, You and your mule Sassy arrived here at 11:10 A.M. 6/18/1853 Now Sam, how long does it seem like you've been here?"

"'Bout twenty minutes, maybe. You gotta be teched mister! You trying to say I been sitten here fer almost three hundred years..." Bobbie chimed in,

"How come I don't even need a shave yet, if I been down here for two hundred and ten years...get outta here. This must be some practical joke!" But Bobbie wasn't laughing because this stranger was telling things that only he and Sam should know. Bobbie had a flash of inspiration,

If you want us to listen to your wild tales, show us this ship that, you say, you arrived in." If it looks like it was made in the future, maybe we'll listen to some more of this crap, Otherwise, I'm going to fire up my trusty bike and head outta here.

Jan shrugged, "Zender, go bring the ship to the other side of those rocks. Keep the field strength constant because I want to know the minute it starts to become unstable, Okay?"

"Aye Aye Sir,"

"Get out of here, you clown!"

Zender disappeared over the boulder and headed South.

"What was that?" asked Sam who had been quiet ever since Jan told him the present date.

"That is my personal companion, helpmate and computer. It's sort of like having a friend, a father, a protector, a teacher and a huge database floating above your head twenty-four hours each day watching over you. Having a personal Zender and the implant network guarding and protecting you makes social security a reality throughout your full lifetime rather than just during your twilight years." Jan went on to explain how each baby get implanted with a tiny transmitter that constantly transmits its identity number in a hundred foot radius for as long as it is alive. It also transmits a stream of code indicating vital signs, organ function conditions and indications of virus infections. It senses fear and turns on a distress frequency.

"Don't think I'd like it." Old Sam snorted, "Hell boy, you ain't got no privacy A-tall. Them thar sensor take a good whiff when ya fart, too?" Bobbie laughed in agreement.

"What may I ask is a fart?"

"Gaseous by-product of the digestive process," Zender replied. He had returned during Sam's tirade. "It's usually expelled via the rectal orfice. From the other direction, I believe It's called a burp. Both are disgusting habits carried over from archaic times when people ate flesh of the animals or recently killed plant life."

Jan quickly put the picture from his mind before he became ill. He lead the way around the boulder with Zender floating over his head. He spoke back over his shoulder,

"You wanted to see my ship, well there it is...it's the latest geological survey model. Strictly short range -- nothing out of this Galaxy, you know. The budget is always tight and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas doesn't have a pot of gold for scientific research. But we make do..." He stopped and turned around. Sam and Bobbie were standing petrified. For once in his life, Sam was struck dumb. He just stood and stared at the huge replica of Zender resting lightly on the sand.

"Golly Jesus!! Does that contraption really fly? Fly to the stars? Oh my, I gotta sit down, my old heart can't take too much of this crap." He just collapsed into a heap in the sand. Bobbie's eyes were gleaming. He was impressed, but not awed. He had always known that space travel was coming, but he hadn't figured to be around to see a real space ship, now he was beginning to be consumed with the desire to take a ride. Racing his motorcycle was fun, but the speed this beauty could achieve was almost unbelievable. He just had to experience for himself.

"Is it hard to learn to drive?" he asked. Zender flashed several orange flashes, then returned to normal color. "Why'd he flash like that?" Bobbie asked.

"Yes Zender, what is it?" Jan questioned although he already knew that Zender's warning signal came from intimate knowledge gleaned during the brief scan done earlier.

Zender, replied after a brief moments confusion,

"My co-processor finalized the details of our escape from this force field. I will explain, and then I think we should start our preparation. First, a brief description of our problem...

We are trapped in a small intersection in time and space where time has stopped and space is not a place, but exists as a crossroads in time. Should we try to leave here we would only pop into existence at some time in the past, present or future. From an historical point of view, no one has ever escaped into the past because there would have been some record or report of such a happening. Forget about getting trapped in the present and immediately returning to the present because when Sam arrived, it was only about ten minutes before Bobbie scared hell out of the mule, Sassy, but outside -- a hundred years had gone by. They were still arguing when we arrived two hundred years later, right?" Everyone nodded their heads sadly.

Jan, who was prone to leaking eyes, pulled his hat down over his eyes and asked,

"Zender, are you sure we can get out of here. Every minute we waste talking takes us years farther away from where we entered?" The others looked up at the little, blue doughnut floating in the air, their eyes almost pleading for the answer.

"Well Jan, try to visualize the past, present and future as a huge long tapestry. A tapestry that stretches from the beginning of time to the end. Into this cloth is woven all of life's events. Something like one of the old interactive virtual reality adventure games. I know the others won't understand, but the analogy is similar. The game is always there on the disk -- beginning, middle and end. Always static until you arrive to make it active. Okay, now listen,

"The point in the game where Sam and Sassy fell off the trail is still there at that point in the game. If I monitor the field closely, and when it starts to distort, I carry Sam and Sassy up and drop them on the trail just ahead of where they fell off; old Sam here will just feel a little vertigo for a few seconds. Problem is, if I don't get back through the rift quick enough, I'll have to hide out until the field goes unstable again, It'll only be minutes to you and Bobbie, but it might be a few years for me."

Jan, not wanting to be without his Zender, asked,

"Are you absolutely sure it will work and you won't be stuck forever in the past?"

"I'm sure that if we don't try, we'll be stuck here in Limbo forever. And I'm sure if someone way back in the nineteenth century found me, I would have read about it. I have digital records dating back to the year 500 B.C. The is no record of reverse time travel. That is...from the future back to the past. If it was ever accomplished in the other direction the evidence hasn't arrived yet."

Jan took Bobbie for a guided tour through the ship, but couldn't take him for a ride because he wanted to be watching when Zender levitated Sam and Sassy up the canyon wall to where they had entered. He couldn't wait to see the expression on the old prospector's face.

Zender flitted around the rocks piled at the juncture of the sandy floor and the rocky wall. He kept flashing from green to a light-blue color. Suddenly, he changed to a brilliant yellow and started humming loudly. After a loud crack a large yellow nugget emerged from the wall of rocks. Zender floated it over to Sam,

"Is this the metal you have been searching for?" he asked.

"Glory Be!!" Sam bent over and slowly lifted the nugget, "This beauty must weigh over ten pounds. Zender, you just made us rich!"

"You keep it, Sam. I have no use for this metal. My electronic circuitry and contacts are coated with the stuff, but it's just to keep me from corroding." Sam put the nugget in one of Sassy's saddle-bags and asked,

"How soon do we head fer town, little buddy?" Zender replied,

"Soon now, Sam -- soon. You better get up in Sassy's saddle because the field is starting to distort, and we might not have much time." He turn up his sound volume,

"Jan, take Bobbie inside the ship and raise the shields -- it's starting." Sam grumbled,

"Sassy cain't climb that darn wall by herself, let alone with me and all this gear on her back. I'll have ta get off and help her." Zender in his hurry forgot to turn the volume back down, so when he spoke from his position about a foot over Sam's head, he roared,

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE! JUST DO AS YOU ARE TOLD! I'll help both you and Sassy up and out of here."

"Well Okay, little buddy you don't have to get pissed about it." Suddenly he and Sassy started floating upward at a rapid rate of speed. When they could see the trail cut in the side of the canyon wall, Zender spoke quietly, be on the lookout for the marks where Sassy slid over the edge. We must find the exact spot." They started floating North at a fast rate.

"There, there," Sam shouted, "see those scratches! She dug quite a ditch before she finally went over the edge. And there in that chaparral bush, that's my gold-pan, it was hooked to the saddle-horn." Zender stopped directly beneath the scratches and lifted them vertically up above the trail. He flew twenty feet North dropped them and hurried back to the scratches. He zipped straight down until he could see the sandy floor before turning South toward the ship -- or so he hoped.

Floating along the wall on a Southerly course, Zender carefully monitored the strength of the magnetic field. When it started showing signs of disappearing, he hurried to the exact point of departure. He arrived just as the field distortion's collapse was displayed by a brilliant flash of orange in the sky.

Jan and Bobbie emerged from the ship. Jan once again had tears streaming down both cheeks,

"What went wrong?" he asked, "what happened to poor Sam and his mule? One minute he was sitting there on his mule with you hovering over him, and the next, he was gone in a flash of orange light, but you were still hovering in the same spot. Were they destroyed in the orange lightening?"

Zender explained how successful the escape had been and how he had plenty of time to return to the point of departure. He indicated that perhaps the ten minutes difference in time of arrival between each of them was the length of real time the field stayed unstable.

Bobbie who had been strangely quiet, quickly interrupted,

"You mean by our time, here in this canyon, every ten minutes we could escape to the outside world and explore the future, then come back here and leave right where we was when this all started?

"Theoretically yes," replied Zender, "but it would be totally uncontrollable. You would never know where you were going to find, or if you could locate the return point. What if this canyon becomes part of the Pacific Ocean floor at some time in the future. You would perish instantly."

"Well," Bobbie replied, licking his lips, "I think it's worth the risk. Don't you know that anyone who knows the future can rule the world. Where I come from they'd think he was the Christ reincarnated. I'd just grab a history book or two and I'd never have to work again. You gotta let me try it."

Jan shrugged his shoulders -- it really didn't matter if this greedy character from the past survived or not, Jan knew anyone Bobbie talked to about his adventure, would think he was quite mad. He nodded to Zender and said,

"It's your decision, but there's one drawback...Zender can levitate only tissue or items that are attached to tissue. What I'm trying to say is, Zender can take you out, but you must leave this antique motorbike behind."

Bobbie agreed, so they waited patiently for the field to start becoming unstable. Before long, Zender floated over to Bobbie, positioned over his head and started lifting. Jan ran for the safety of the ship. He locked the hatch, engaged the shields and peered out of the viewport. It didn't take long before Zender reappeared and floated over to the ship. Bobbie opened the hatch,

"How did it go?" he asked.

"Exactly as you knew it would," Zender replied, "you realize what you did was almost a homicide."

"Not so, if he'd been paying attention, instead of dreaming up greedy schemes, he would have remembered that the field only goes unstable every hundred years. It's ten minutes in here, but where he's gathering his historical data to get rich with -- it'll be a hundred years before you go back up to bring him safely down. Now get busy loading that beautiful BSA Golden-Flash into the cargo hold. I've had my eye on that bike from the first moment we arrived.

"We'll wait ten minutes and see if Bobbie lived to be 131 years old, if he made it back to the pick-up point and if he wants to go back home and rule the world. If he does, we'll drop him off before we head for home."

"Zender, those old foggies at the university will have to believe my report after they get a readout from your memory disks, and especially when they see that antique motorcycle. What is their logical reaction and course of action?"

"I would surmise that they will recognize it for what it is...a dangerous road hazard to hyper travel and a risk to national security. If individuals without implants could slip through undetected, it would put the whole structure of our society at risk; therefore, it must be destroyed." Jan thought a moment,

"Do we have to tell them?"

"They will know."

"Damn!"

[END]