Luke's Quest 01 - Prisoner Of Time (v5.0) Read online

  Actually, it barely paid the bills. Still, Willie had challenged my reputation as well as my ability. I needed to prove to him, as well as myself, that this book was legitimate.

  I hate to think my partner, Lisa Collins, did this to me. I’ve tried to rule out all the suspects who have come to mind in order to find the culprit, and, unfortunately, I cannot rule her out.

  I’m not a man of science in the logical deduction and reasoning methods, but more in the realm of causes and effects. I was hired to assist because of my knowledge of history as well as my understandings of sociology and influences of the social orders on society. I can relate each major historical era to the growth areas and the achievements of each major civilization in history. If I had to explain why or how these time-travel devices allowed us to travel through time, however, I couldn’t begin to do so.

  In short, they are two small devices about the size of a laptop computer, powered by a tiny nuclear unit. When activated, they create a "bubble," for lack of a technical phrase, in which we and whatever we are transporting can be held outside of the time stream for the few seconds it takes to travel back to the past or forward to our time. For some reason our science has not yet enabled us to travel into the future.

  My partner and I took many trips researching and documenting the past. That may have led to my murder, as well. Perhaps I must stop talking about my "murder." I’m, after all, still alive at this moment, although I’m trapped in the past. My mind is consumed not with vengeance, but curiosity. I want to know who and why. If Lisa isn’t the one who trapped me here, is her life in danger, as well? Is there a way, other than this journal, to warn her? If I do warn her and she’s the one who trapped me here, will this cause her to take further action to travel back and kill me quickly instead of slowly?

  Lisa’s my primary suspect for several reasons. She knows more about me than any other person at the agency. I would describe her as knowing me "intimately," but that has a sexual connotation, and we were never lovers. She was my friend, my best friend and close confidant. Yes, I admit I wanted to make wild, passionate love to her. I thought about it often. What man wouldn't? She’s about five foot six inches tall. Her shoulder-length, raven black hair always looks sexy when she wears it down and even sexier when she wears it up in a tight, small bun. Her eyes are a deep, dark, blue that I could look into and just melt. Her smile can be seductive, mischievous or revealing of a deep concern that she’s fighting to hide from others. Her body is absolute perfection, the type that belongs on a Roman sculpture. In fact, she did inspire several sculptures. To make matters even more wonderful, she has a master's degree in Theoretical Physics as well as a doctorate in History.

  She’s, in my mind, the perfect woman. The only drawback is the man she married and is deeply in love with, Doug Collins. He’s the administrator of our program. He’s more than a little protective of her. He does a very poor job of hiding his jealous streak when it comes to her. No matter how hard I tried to convince him that I wasn’t interested in stealing his wife, he wouldn’t believe me. She knew the limits and the depth of our friendship, but he couldn’t understand it. For all of her sexiness and physical appeal to me, she proved to be the greatest of friends.

  I was unsure what to make of Paul's descriptions of Lisa. At times I saw her as the villain who trapped him in the past, then at other times I was aroused by her. I wanted to know for certain if they were lovers. Yet it made me feel almost jealous to think of him as her lover, and I was uncertain why I had such feelings for a woman I had never met and probably would never meet.

  "So, do you admit it’s a fake?" Willie asked from the office with a touch more smugness than I enjoyed.

  His question broke my train of thought. Mentally I was seeing Lisa. "Not yet," I answered back.

  I picked up one of the ledgers. It contained financial records for The Wolff Mercantile store, which handled dry goods and clothing. The three ledgers contain several years of records. Each entry was either a sale or a purchase. I searched for the year 1881.

  Several entries caught my attention. The first said, "April 7, 1881, sold to Miss Lisa Collins one-quarter yard of calico material, thread and needles, $1.15." My mind raced back to the journal. The last day Lisa was in 1881 was April 7. Paul had mentioned something about a sewing circle or quilting bee that Lisa had attended. This could be proof she was there.

  Another entry stated, "April 22, 1881, sold Mr. Paul Robertson, one pair of pants, two work shirts, $3.71." This proved Paul was still there after the date he said Lisa returned.

  There were a few more entries for Paul but none for Lisa. The last entry for Paul was dated August 20, 1881, "sold Paul Robertson one slicker, $2.25."

  There was nothing more for him.

  A loose newspaper clipping fell out of the ledger. The first headline was, "Fire Destroys Wood's House Hotel." The next read, "Building Total Loss." It seemed that on the night of August 24, 1881, the Wood's House Hotel had burned to the ground. There were details of the fire as well as an editorial about the railroad's not making a decision between Newport and Jacksonport on its route across Arkansas.

  I knew I could make a little money back with this material, but still I needed to solve the mystery of the journal. My mind focused on what to do next.

  "I understand why you don't want to go to the dance tonight," Willie interrupted my thoughts. He had left the office and was now standing next to me. He held up the electric cut-off notice. "They will shut you off on Monday, so let me pay it."

  "I appreciate your offer," I admitted. I tried to look him in the eyes, but it wasn't easy. Neither of us was good about thanking the other for anything. We could help each out, but "thank you" just wasn’t part of the deal. "A client told me she mailed me the money she owes me. I should have it Monday."

  "Just let me pay it to be certain," he came back. "Besides, you need food and have other bills that need paid, as well. I use your computer all the time, and it uses electricity."

  "OK." I should have said more, but that was all I could think of at the moment.

  Willie took a long look at me, I waited for him to speak as I could see from his face he wanted to say something. “Go ahead, get it off your chest.”

  “Luke have you thought about refinancing this house? I mean it’s been paid off ever since you dad died.”

  “No bank will do it. I’m a bad risk with no steady income. If I sell it, I’d have more payments in rent. So I’m stuck here. Always stuck here.” I thought back to the scholarship I had lost. It had been full tuition, books and board back east where I could have become a real historian or even archeologist. Had I not blown my chance, I could have been doing real research in a real library and not trying to use the small town libraries and the internet only. But, I had gotten mouthy with a teacher and he wrote to the college and they rescinded the scholarship.

  "If the dance is boring," he said putting on his jacket, "I’ll come back by here. No sense us both being bored alone."

  Once Willie was gone, I returned to the journal.

  August 22, 1881

  This surely must sound like the ramblings of a mad man, but I swear to you on all that is holy in my life, it’s the truth about how I came to be here. If nothing else, it will allow me to feel better that I somehow documented it. It’s the duty, after all, of any researcher to document his findings.

  Fantasy and science fiction writers as well as their readers love to debate time paradoxes. Of course those who have never been able to study actual time travel and time manipulation can give only a vague guess based on the little they know and what their imaginations allow them to envision.

  The first lesson of time travel for those of us who came to experience it first-hand and were allowed to revise history was to understand the paradoxes that can occur. Once we step out of the time stream as a traveler, we know what changes we made. We know the general course that history took based on our own knowledge before we changed the events. Consider the following example: I
f I went back and kept John Wilkes Booth from killing President Abraham Lincoln, even when I returned to the present, I would know that in the main time-line or time stream Lincoln died as the result of an assassin's bullet. Nothing can change my knowledge. Therefore, when I get back to "my time," should I see something like the "United Confederate States of America," I would know that this was a changed event based on my actions. This would allow me to have the knowledge to return and restore events to the way they are accepted as having been, or even the way I want them to be. Of course, had another time traveler made the change, then I wouldn’t know what transpired and to me, the wrong time line would be normal.

  This is why we always required two people traveling and working as a team when we traveled back to change events. This gave us two chances to keep from changing the past, then two chances to undo what we had changed, should it work out for the worse.

  Now for the important step, proof I speak the truth. Find my grandparents in my correct time. Between them, they guard a secret that bears my proof and might allow you to save me, somehow. It’s a small secret and well contained to survive the ages. If you are into digging for the truth as they say.

  The journal writer went on, citing many other incidents from his alleged time travels as well as a few other observations about the Jacksonport area in 1881. Now I suspected there was a box or something buried in a cemetery. I just had to find the names of his grandparents and where they are buried and hope no one had been there before me.

  In some ways, I was actually starting to believe the journal. I read all of it, understanding parts and being confused by other parts. The story in the journal sounded like a hoax, but if it was a hoax, it was the best faked material I had ever seen.

  Researching genealogies for clients for the last seven years, I had read many family Bibles from the 1880s and had examined many similar documents. The ink and paper certainly seemed correct, but it would take more tests than I was able to conduct from home to prove it, and the cost of such tests could be expensive, so testing the paper and the ink wasn’t a current possibility. I could do some research locally, however.

  Really, I needed to use the library for more information gathering. Unfortunately, it was now Saturday night and it was closed and would be closed on Sunday, so it would be Monday before I could go there. I did, however, have an internet connection. My genealogical research experience would benefit me here.

  Since this Paul Robertson had mentioned some people by name from Jacksonport, I chose the 1880 census. There was a good chance that since he was there in 1881, the people he had mentioned were there in 1880. It would, at least, be a starting point.

  Searching the 1880 census was relatively easy. Page 490 of Jackson County, Arkansas, did list a Peter Bach, his wife Jennie and a nephew Adam. The census listed Peter Bach's occupation as saloonkeeper. Further research yielded a Joseph Phillips listed as a county judge. I even found the sheriff Jimmie West listed. Therefore, the names in the journal were real names of people who did exist in the correct historical context.

  I still wasn’t convinced the story was true, however. It had taken less than 30 minutes for me to find these names. Someone wanting to forge a document could have done the same work. The census had been available for many years on microfilm. In fact, I knew the 1880 census has been available to the public since the 1950s. If Paul had lived in or researched the area, it was possible he could have obtained this information several ways other than the internet. He could have written this document any time after 1881. Nevertheless, the writer mentioned laptop computers, television, radio, the cold war, as well as the jet, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill and other events a person living in 1881 couldn’t know.

  I began to search genealogy databases for his name. If Paul C. Robertson were alive in 2004 he wouldn’t be included in most genealogy databases. A general rule for privacy protection isn’t to include living people or people born after 1930. I did, however, find a private web site that a Paul Robertson had created with family photographs, stories and links back to his grandparents. Using his grandparent's information from his web site, I was able to search the databases and find his family tree. I found the family tree that a Paul Robertson had created and posted online, as mentioned in the journal. This was enough proof for me for now that he had lived in our time as this website had been recently updated.

  Eventually, I did find an Albert C. Robertson with his wife Sadie buried near Sulphur Rock, Arkansas. Sulphur Rock isn’t that far from Jacksonport. It was very possible his story was based on real people. Creating a journal using real places and people from the 1880s would take time to write. Aging the journal to create the look of an 1880s document is possible; fake documents appear from time to time just as fake artwork does.

  The real question nagging at my mind was, why fake it? What could be gained by creating such an elaborate hoax? Paul, or whoever had created the document, made no money. If a joke, what was the punch line? It could be some school project. It could even be a practice attempt for a would-be document forger. Still, I wanted more proof as to the validity of the journal.

  I heard the backdoor open. Blissville, Arkansas is a small town. I seldom locked my doors, and many friends had keys. I found Darlene in the kitchen with a box of leftovers.

  "I cleaned out the ’fridge at the diner today," she explained, putting food away. "You can eat this before it goes bad."

  I noticed a few things that were brand new as well leftovers from yesterday's special and more of today's meatloaf special. Half a peach pie was even included. She also wanted a chance to check up on me. I didn't say a word. I could never tell her "no," and I needed every bit of it.

  "So, how goes the book?" she asked. "Who is right, Willie or you?"

  "You heard everything?" I asked.

  "The diner’s small, and when it was just the two of you," she explained, "it was hard not to listen."

  "He thinks the book is a fake," I admitted.

  "But?" she asked.

  "I found proof that everyone mentioned in the book other than two lived in Jacksonport in 1880," I told her. "That is the first step."

  "Then what’s the next step?" she asked starting the kettle to fix us a pot of tea.

  "Willie’s convinced its fake," I told her again, "since it’s written by a man named Paul Robertson. I would have to prove he lived later or had some reason to fake it."

  Darlene was now looking through the box waiting for the water to boil. "This newspaper clipping says Paul Robertson died in a hotel fire."

  "What?" I asked. "I didn't read that, yet."

  It seemed that on the night of August 24, 1881, when the Wood's House Hotel had burned to the ground, Paul died saving a little boy. The family was so moved by his heroics, they paid for his funeral. The article said he was a drifter with no known family. It said he had come to town with a woman named Lisa Collins, but she had left town earlier, leaving him behind.

  The name of the infant shocked me. It was Joel Cailin Bradley, my own great grandfather. If time-travel was real, I had to be certain that Paul was there, otherwise I would never be born. Ellen had been right when she said the information would be invaluable to the right researcher.

  "This proves Paul and Lisa were in Jacksonport in 1881," I told Darlene who had returned to the kitchen, without mentioning the name or the connection.

  I reread the journal after Darlene left and went to bed thinking about it.

  The dream proved to me I was sleeping. I had dreamed this same dream so many times before. There I walked in a park with a beautiful, dark-haired woman. We held hands. I held her tight while we kissed.

  The first time I visited this dream I was a teenager. I never dated anyone like the woman of my dreams. I wondered if it were some women that I would never find her or happiness.

  Waking, I recalled the journal and the events of Saturday. The time travel tale was absurd, but just maybe — I mean, maybe if the rest of the journal was real… The telephone, I tho
ught. I rushed to the office, surfing the internet to the telephone directory pages. Mountain View is just south of Blanchard Springs Caverns. If there were some secret operation at the caverns, this would be the most logical town in which a person who worked there would reside.

  No Lisa Collins listed, but there was a Doug Collins listed with an address on State Highway 14. I checked the map. Highway 14 connected Mountain View and Blanchard Springs Caverns. Armed with a telephone number, I decided to take one further step. I started to dial the number for Doug Collins, but replaced the receiver. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it against my chest wall. What would I say if either of them answered?

  I picked up the receiver again. Three rings later, an answering machine beeped. A female voice greeted me, "Hi, this is Lisa. Doug and I are away from the phone, so leave a message." The sexy, sweet voice melted my heart. I quickly hung up, leaving no message.