Chapter 35: Expanding Horizons

August, 1986

Charlie POV:

We met up for lunch at the restaurant in the yacht club. Everyone was there with the exception of Sarah and Willie, or Bill as I was planning on calling him. I had the feeling calling him ‘Willie’ made him uneasy.

The kids seemed antsy from being cooped up in the hotel all night and this morning. When Annette suggested they go to the beach that seemed to brighten their spirits. The fact that they needed swimsuits did mute that somewhat. We discovered that there are no nude beaches anywhere in the Caymans. So, Ralph gave the ladies a wad of hundreds and they got together to hire a van/taxi to take them shopping then to the beach.

Ralph had been waiting and acting like he had ants in his pants.

Once the kids and most of the women left he began, “Okay, I think we need to talk. When I was talking to the Harbormaster about getting the boat upgraded he told me about a 200-foot motor yacht that’s been for sale. It belongs to some rich guy who discovered he had severe seasickness!

“He’s tried everything, but just as soon as the boat gets out a few miles he starts puking his guts out. This thing was custom made and only has 100 hours on the motors, and the desalinization system has never been used. The thing is like brand new. The guy paid $34 Million for it and wants out so badly he’s willing to let it go for $30 Million!

“I went and looked and the thing is perfect for what we need. It has, state of the art Navigation and Radar and Sonar systems. There’s 5 Master Staterooms and the crew area would be perfect for the kids. The yacht has a crew who will gladly sail back to Texas with us and they were very interested in buying OUR boat so they could go into business for themselves! They will show us everything there is to know on our way back to Texas as well as hire a couple additional crew to pilot our boat back. The Captain said that for a yacht this big it was really easy to operate. It has bow thrusters that make docking much easier than how we have to dock with our much smaller boat. Do you want to go see it?”

Mary, who’d stayed behind along with Marion, grinned, “That sounds exciting! Maybe if you guys don’t want it we can buy it ourselves?”

I gave her the ‘Father’ look, which caused her to giggle. We didn’t know squat about operating a yacht, although, I had to wonder if Stan might want an upgrade? Her enthusiastic response left no doubts that Matt had all but been talked into at least checking it out.

It did make me realize that we had so much money now, we literally didn’t know what to do with it. Philanthropy was about the only way we were going to be able to use it without my conscience getting the best of me. Especially when Greg told me what he and Bob did with the other two pallets of Raphael’s cash! I think I’ll just let Stan keep everything I left on his island. I’d feel guilty asking for any of it back!

When we walked over to see Ralph’s ‘find’, the yacht was breathtaking. The thing was huge! There were 4 levels above the main deck and at least two below. The thing was shimmering, like they just got finished polishing it. Judging from Stan’s Dream, this thing could easily accommodate 100 people. I would definitely buy it for Stan if Matt and Ralph didn’t want it.

They did want it!

When they saw the living quarters they were already planning on where the kids would bunk. The ‘Captain’s Suite’ was bigger than our Great Room at home with a double king sized bed. The other ‘Master Suites’ all had king sized beds and private heads with decent sized showers. The main salon or lounge was luxurious and could seat 40 to 50. The galley was half again bigger than Stan’s with an appropriately appointed kitchen area. The guy who bought this must have had kids, since one room looked like the playground in a McDonalds. That pushed Matt and Marion over the edge.

Now it was time to talk turkey.

We met with the owner’s attorney. He didn’t look hopeful, due mainly to the way we were all dressed in shorts and T-shirts. When he asked about how Matt and Ralph planned on financing the yacht, his eyes popped out when they said, “CASH!” He took a deep breath, then a huge smile came over his face.

He looked at Matt, “Are you serious? Did you understand the price is 30 Million ... not 30 thousand?”

We all chuckled, then Matt confirmed, “Not a problem ... if you have the title, we can drive over to the bank and do an electronic bank transfer.”

I did a little ‘Mind Check’ on the attorney as we all shook hands, just to make sure this was legitimate.

I didn’t want Matt to squander that much if this was some kind of scam.

It wasn’t ... and I had to laugh when I discovered WHO the owner was! He was a well-known Sports figure who was known to have ‘more money than brains’. He was also famous for being impulsive, which fit the situation whereby we were able to get a deal like this.

It took the rest of the day for Matt and Ralph to get all the paperwork done. The rest of us went back to the old yacht to wait. I laughed when I saw Sarah and Bill sitting on a loveseat, drinking some iced tea. Bill looked sheepish, while Sarah was nearly glowing, cuddled on his lap.

He staggered trying to move Sarah so he could stand up. She giggled, sensing his nervousness and scooted over.

He looked at me with anxious eyes, “Charlie ... I think we need to talk.”

I smiled and patted him on the shoulder, “Great. I need to talk to you, too. I’ve had a busy week and I still have much I need to do. Some of which I’d like your input on.”

He choked out a chuckle, “I just hope you’re still smiling when I tell you what’s on my mind.”

“Not going to be a problem. Let’s take a stroll out to the nearest bar and get us a drink? I think we can fend for ourselves for a while. Everyone knows how to get ahold of me if they need us.”

He looked back at Sarah, who blew him a kiss and saw Mary giving one to me.

He visibly relaxed, then, we headed out to the yacht club’s bar.

Greg POV:

This morning, after Charlie and I put our $487Million into four Cayman banks, we had a little talk. I told him I was ‘chomping at the bit’ to go and do a visit to the island that Bob had found. He was all for it and since we were presently ‘on vacation’, I should get with Bob, Linda and even Ed and go check it out. He wanted to go too, but would stay behind this time, since he didn’t want all three of us to be gone from the rest of the Family for any length of time.

I told him that Bob and I would go see Ibera today or tonight sometime to get the plan together and find out what it would entail. Bob was pretty sure that the time dilation on our ‘space trip’ would be close to a one-to-one as far as our time away from home. He said that Ibera had mentioned something about that time dilation, unlike how the time we spent at Ibera’s place translated to only minutes here.

In other words, if we stayed on the planet for a week, a week would pass here. It was things like that we needed to check into before we actually tried to go. I was hoping to go for at least three days this first time.

Charlie felt that sailing with our new friends to Texas would likely take close to a week, since they needed to do some things to the boat. He also felt like they might just be in the market for a newer, bigger boat. At any rate, I felt like three days would be doable.

After lunch, when the ladies planned on taking the kids to the beach, Bob and I decided to go visit Ibera.

We discovered that teleporting to a planet that was over 350,000 light years away involved a dimensional travel through a wormhole.

Ibera explained that the time dilation was like a steel ball rolling along a spiraling magnetic path. Think of a spring, shaped like a cone. Understand that as the spiral got smaller, the ball would travel much faster. The ball signified time. Now imagine there are billions of these spirals connected tip to tip and base to base. As the wormhole passed from the base, or widest part down through the narrowest part, or ‘tip’ of the cone, time would accelerate, forward. It would then slow back down, and go backwards in time as the next cone or spiral got bigger.

Since this was all in the 5^th dimension, to us traveling, the trip would only feel like it took about 5 to 10 minutes. In actuality, without the wormhole effect, it would take many hundreds of years, but, due to the wormhole and exact timing, we’d get there just minutes from when we left.

The critical thing was the timing!

Ibera had a watch-like device that one of us would wear, to tell us when we needed to step into the portal to come home. This was absolutely critical.

The time displayed would almost always be red. It would reflect our time on the planet. The timing of the wormhole and its effect, as far as this planet was concerned, was calculated by this device. We found out we HAD to go for a specific amount of time. It went on a kind of mathematical progression. For this planet, we could go for three and a half, or seven or 14 or 28 days. After that, the next increments would reverse that progression. I.e., 14, then seven, then three and a half. This progression would then continually repeat. The way it would work, is since we wanted to go for three days, (actually 84 hours) we’d get a warning beep at 83 hours and 59 minutes. The digits would turn yellow and begin to flash. Since everyone going could teleport, that was plenty of time to get to the portal. When the digits turned green, we had two minutes to step into the portal. If we missed that ‘window’ the digits would flash yellow for thirty seconds before going back to red.

We were NOT to go into the portal under any circumstances unless the digits were green.

Doing so at any other time would screw up the timing of the wormhole in relation to the time at the portal at Ibera’s place. We could end up anywhere from pre-prehistoric times to as many as 10,000 years in the future! AND we couldn’t then ‘Time Travel’ to get back to our own time. We would experience what Ibera called ‘Lost Time’. Trying to Time Travel would only throw us into another reality. One in which nothing would be the same.

With these conditions, my ‘antsiness’ about going almost became ambivalence. It seemed like there were many things that could go wrong.

The good thing was, if we simply followed the rules, we’d only be gone from home the same amount of time we spent on the island/planet. I knew we needed to take enough provisions to get us by for at least two weeks, just in case we missed the first window.

Ibera assured us that her warning was so dire, mostly so we understood the importance of the timing. She assured us the watch-like devise was accurate and would never lose power. It was also waterproof and really durable.

Being there and seeing the island again through the portal gave me a gazillion things to think about. I was glad we had time, due to the time dilation, to ask more questions and check out more things.

Ibera answered many of my important questions.

The water on the planet was all ‘potable’. One of the ‘features’ of all the portals was identifying the dangerous or treacherous features of every world that came into its view. Since I’d seen the movie, ‘Andromeda Strain’, I was concerned about possibly encountering bacteria or viruses that we might inadvertently either ingest or bring back with us. Ibera assured me the portal would neutralize any ‘things’ we might either bring with us or take back with us that could harm either world.

I had an idea. I wanted to test some seeds I wanted to bring, to see if they’d grow there. If they would be harmful, then the portal would neutralize them so they wouldn’t germinate.

She also told us that this planet was only half the size of Earth. The gravitational forces, for us, would make us near ‘Supermen’ on the planet. We’d be able to jump nearly high enough to pick coconuts! (If they had them?) The caveman like inhabitants of the rest of the planet were much smaller than our earth’s counterparts. The average height of adult males was only 4’ and weighed only the equivalent of about 85Lbs. We would be like giants to them, even Linda who stood only 5’1” tall. Obviously with our psychokinetic abilities, we WOULD be like gods to them.

That made me wonder if that might be how things like the pyramids had been built. If Zeus or somebody like us would have visited Earth back then, what would have been impossible could certainly have happened.

It made me go ... Hmmm?

Sooo, with water not being an item we’d need to bring, that left many other things that we could afford to carry with us instead. Food would be one big item, since there would be no telling, on our first trip especially, what we could eat. While there wouldn’t be any viruses or hidden bacteria to be concerned with, there was no guarantee certain things wouldn’t make us sick to our stomachs, or taste good.

Bob had a good idea and we watched the natives to see what they ate. They were on a large continent that appeared to be north of our island. We’d have to determine direction with an actual compass, since there were no guarantees that the northern pole was the actual magnetic north.

Another adventure waiting to be discovered.

After we saw what the natives were eating, I got busy making a list and mentally taking notes for my later use. Many of the ‘fruits and vegetables’ they were eating I’d already seen on our island, so I was feeling like even if our food supply ran low, we wouldn’t starve.

Well, since our first trip would only be three and a half days, water would be the only thing we’d need to survive.

There was one other thing Ibera warned us of.

We wouldn’t be able to communicate telepathically with anyone not on the planet with us. The distance made that obvious. She pointed out that she would be able to see us and anyone with her could watch us, almost live, on the portal. I figured if we had an emergency, we could write a message in the sand and point to it. She further pointed out that when we were on the planet, we wouldn’t have the ability to ‘visit’ any other ‘dimensions’. We could teleport anywhere on the planet, or even a moon, but nothing outside our current galaxy. That also included ‘Spirit Walking’, since even if we did it from home, it involved using the 5^th dimension.

When Bob asked her what would happen if we tried, she frowned, “Let’s just say ... the beings that you found there may not be friendly!?”