Chapter 1

I don't know how the bloody thing works. To be honest I don't need to. That's not my job. Paper shuffling used to be my job. Soon I won't have a job, thank god.

The eggheads explain it like this:

It's not really time travel. It looks like it, but it's not. It's travel between universes, and the control is still rough. Very rough.

Normally, of course, you would test, test, test again. That's how the brain boys usually figure this sort of thing out. The problem is this; with the way this thing works, every test needs a person in the load. They tried to explain something about needing a conscious mind along with the load to collapse the waveform. Apparently there also can't be two conscious minds since conflicting perceptions will jam the system. Further, the damned thing only seems to work with people. Cats, rats, even extensively trained monkeys, no dice.

So, they put out a call for volunteers. They claim they will come get us, someday. I doubt it, personally. they admit that it's going to take more than a hundred thousand tries before they can hit the same dimension a second time. Probably as many more before they have it fine-tuned enough that they can do it every time they try it. After that they will need to go back over their logs, and figure out where that two hundred thousand plus volunteers ended up. Plus, like I said before, it's not time travel. Time continues to advance on both sides. Just because I am going to an earth with a slightly different time rate doesn't change the fact that it may take them a hundred years or more to perfect this thing.

Even once they have perfected it and found us all, theory limits the load size to the current one person and 10 tonne of materials. The equipment they need to generate the power can be broken into pieces, but the smallest ones that can be assembled without advanced technology are all larger than 50 tonne. Even once they have managed to push that huge fusion reactor through, then there is the massive collection of machinery required to do the jump. I figure they will still be working on it long after I am dead. Assuming they can keep getting volunteers.

To me it's nothing more and nothing less than an all expenses paid one-way trip away from this godforsaken society. If I play my cards right I might even get a chance to start a society of my own. I guess I'm just a throwback, but I hate the crowding, the processed food, the plethora of rules, and the tangled corrupted bureaucracy. I go hunting, fishing, and camping as much as I can and I still have to spend 240+ days every year in an office. I can't seem to mesh with anyone, especially women. They all seem so vapid and shallow. So when this offer popped up, I decided to see what world I could make.

The upshot is that I get to choose the target. Mostly. Give or take a thousand years of development, and within a surface area of five square miles, I can pretty much pick where I want to land. I can also pick my own ten tonne of materials.

I had to sign away everything I own, not that I own much. I also had to sign away every right I could possibly have to a piece of this technology. The only right I have is to some minerals from my time line, if they happen to be able to contact me ever again, and my choice of stuff to take.

I'm aiming for northern France, at the end of the Mesolithic period. Call it about 10,000 B.C... Humans at that time were just learning to preserve food, but had a good solid spoken language. Some tribes of humans were starting to figuring out basic agriculture, but none outside Egypt and Mesopotamia. They could make rudimentary housing, were using flint tools, had advanced from the spear to the bow and arrow, but had as yet only showed scant sign of domesticating animals.

First I decided on how to transport my stuff. I want with custom built wagons. I had a long list of features I wanted. Luckily they already had it mostly designed, and just modified it to meat my wishes. They had a high horsepower electric motor, off-road treaded metal tires and a drop-down rear tailgate The entire bottom of it was sealed for floating, and had drain plugs at the corners. I had them mount a strong roof frame, to which I had them attach a rolling-garage-door style retractable roof that rolled up at the driver side, with an extra set of shutters front and back to protect me from attack while I slept. We mounted a strong winch in the bed with pulleys mounted in various places (for lifting things, pulling the wagon out of mud, pulling down trees, whatever), a gas suspension system to smooth out the bumps with a compressor to recharge them. They already had an autopilot built on them, with a low level AI. I figured I would barely need it, but I let them leave it on.

Of course the wagon was mostly titanium! Everything that I possible was going to be made that way!

Now I had to decide what to bring. I would have to bring a pantograph, of course. It's slow, heavy, and energy hungry, but at least it allows me to think up new things later. The best one I could reasonably use had an assembly compartment one meter on a side. Between the hopper, assembly chamber, self-repair unit, and a wagon to carry it, I was using up half my mass, but it was well worth it. I could create simple things, like an ax, or a rifle, in about an hour. Complicated electronics were slower, of course, but I only needed one computer. It would take almost three days to turn out one of those. It could even make me food, but it would be just barely enough to keep me from starving.

Now I needed something to provide power to it, and it was power hungry. I considered solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro; all the renewables were good, but none were perfect.

Wind takes towers, and is erratic.

Solar takes cleaning, and is even more erratic.

Hydro was good, but it was going to take years of working alone before I could have something set up.

Geothermal just took more tools, and more manpower to set up, and I would accept.

I ended up going three-tiered. My final solution would be Hydro, my interim solution was cold fusion, and my backup was solar panels mounted on the top of the pantograph wagon. Given good sunlight, the panels could run the pantograph all day. More likely, given the weather in northern France, I was going to get 8 hours a day out of it, tops.

As far as the cold fusion, to be honest I wish I had another choice. Unfortunately, there isn't one. It's the only power source I can think of that is small enough to transport, will produce enough power to keep the pantograph running, and can work long-term. Even with an adequate power source, I will still have to stay near the ocean to keep the pantograph going or else spend a day a week having it make deuterium from scratch. I will also have to spend at least one day a month having the pantograph make electrodes for itself before its existing electrodes lose their crystal structure.