Chapter 1

SETTING: MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
TIME: 2012

CAST
Martin McTavish - ME, 58
Linda Bigelow – my married sister, 55
Lorraine McTavish – my mom, 77
George McTavish – my dad, 76
Jennifer McTavish – my wife, 54
Susan Robbins – my divorced aunt, 72
Dr. Emmett H. Huckabee – the Doc, 52
Dave McTavish – my married brother, 51

Hello There - My name’s Martin McTavish, everybody calls me Marty except my mom, who insists on calling me by my ‘Christian’ name at all times.

I’m 58 years old, married with no kids. My wife Jennifer is off at a Mary Kay convention (That’s a Beauty, Skin Care & Makeup Corp). Let me tell you about what happened a few days ago, when I went to my old friend Dr. Huckabee for my semi-annual medical check-up...

Dr. Emmett H. Huckabee is a GP, a General Practitioner - 52, with an office in his home. He actually has a shingle that says, “Open for Business” – A neighborhood doctor in the strictest sense of the word. Anyone under 20 years born in the Harambe Neighborhood of Northern Milwaukee was brought into this world by good old Emmett!

“Marty, come downstairs, I have got something I think that you’d find interesting in my basement!” he said to me after my twice a year check-up was over (On my birthday).

“Sure thing – Doc!” I followed him downstairs.

The room was full of odds and ends. With a great deal of flourish, he pointed his key fob at the back wall and a very high-tech looking golf cart that seemed to appear ... out of nowhere?

I looked it over, it still had the tassels and the big oversized wheels, but that’s about all that there was that still resembled a traditional golf cart.

Going up to it, I noticed it had a large TV style screen, about 25 inches tall by 35 inches wide, where the steering wheel should be. That sprouted out of a large block of concrete that glowed a little bit yellow on all four of the sides I could see. I also saw two sets of seat belts on it.

“Doc, I see two problems – How the hell are you going to get it out of the basement, and how can it go anywhere as heavy as it looks?”

“Marty, it doesn’t need to ever leave the basement, so how heavy it is doesn’t really matter!” he replied as though I had pointed out something really stupid.

“What it is exactly, Doc?” I asked.

“A Time Machine, Marty!”

I laughed so hard I almost fell over. After a minute or so of chuckling and snorting, I got it together and saw Doc Huckabee sit in the seat showing me the controls. He buckled up and told me to, causing me to laugh again. What a kidder!

“This display shows the date where you are starting from, including hour and minute – below it is the place to input the date and time you want to go to. It’s all touchscreen technology based. Mac OS – really easy!”

Letting him have his fun, I asked, “How’s it powered, what’s the source of that yellow glow?”

“It’s an Electron-Neutrino Based Engine – it collects Neutrinos and they are bombarded with traditional electrons, creating an unlimited supply of electrical power!” he said with a straight face.

“It powers the electrical circuit for the Touch Screen and by running it through a Gamma radiation filter, it creates an unlimited series of Gamma Radiation Bursts (GRBs), thereby creating the Stable Time Relative Event Sequence Separator, also known as STRESS Engine.”

“What about the yellow glow, Doc?” I asked.

“That’s the result of the extra neutrinos mixing with the excess Gamma radiation – It’s completely safe, don’t worry?”

I started to laugh again, this time even harder. Doc unbuckled his seat belt and got up at the sound of his front door bell. I unbuckled my seat belt and moved over to in front of the “Time Machine’s” touchscreen.

For a piece of silliness, it did look pretty good – the wheels were shiny. It looked like it had all the bells and whistles as Doc came back down with a box in his hand.

“This is all really cool, Doc – have you tried it out yet?” I chuckled.

“Just yesterday, Marty. I went back 30 days, purchased, and sent myself a box of electrical components. Take a look?”

I looked at the box in his hand and it had a postmark date of just under a month ago. Nice trick, Doc!

“So, you’ve got a Time Machine and you have only been back 30 days in time?” I asked.

“Oh, Marty, I have been testing it for a while now, working out the bugs, checking on the hard parameters I set in place!”

“Such as?”

“Well, the person operating it, doesn’t just go back in time, they get younger the farther back they go, so I configured it so even if you were to go back before your own birth, you would appear to be 18, regardless of how far back you went. The other direction, the future, you stay your current biological age – you get no older. The Time Machine never moves from where it is right now, it has a EPS underneath the seat.”

“An EPS, Doc?”

“An Earth Positioning System, based on the magnetic core, otherwise, if you go back to when this house wasn’t here yet, you’d find yourself fifteen feet underground. The Time Machine knows where it should be, unless if where it should be doesn’t exist yet.”

“Wow, Doc – you have thought of everything, haven’t you?” I said, “Can you take me with you on a short trip?”

Figuring we had come to the end of the ‘show,’ Doc surprised me by getting in the Cart next to me. He buckled up and gave me a look for not already being buckled up.