| Visit our Bookstore |
|
|
|
|
The Incident
By Rudy Chase
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques
MOSES MALCOM is a topnotch physicist. He is employed by M.I.T.
and
makes a good living, but he is not satisfied with doing research
for the
school in his spare time. He does some inventing in his secret
basement.
MOSES loves to invent. His new project is called linear time
travel.
He is not satisfied with the way the world has turned out. Moses
intends to travel back in time and try to correct the mistakes
of the
past, hence creating an alternate time-line .
MOSES has been working on a machine WHICH, if perfected, will
change
history for the better. He has perfected a small but practical
fusion
reactor. It is very portable. He has also built matter -antimatter
injectors, for it will take a powerful time and space dilation
projector to make the whole thing work .
GETTING most of the parts was fairy easy, but the anti-matter
was
another story. He had to pilfer a small amount from M.I.T. D-
day was
almost upon him. In one week's time Moses would be ready--the
time
machine was almost ready. A connection here, a bolt there, he
had to
install the navigational computer that would take him through
the
linear time-stream.
AT last the momentous day had arrived. The machine was complete,
the
reactor was functioning perfectly , the matter and anti-matter
containment field were up and working. The two components were
breaking
down in a controlled manner. At last he fed the data needed to
make the
trip to the right time period, where all the trouble started,
some six
thousand years ago.
FROM time to time Moses would have to stop in some time period
to take
spatial readings, which would require him to exist on the timeship.
As he
turned the main power on the control panels began to come online.
HE punched in the coordinates and the ship began to hum and
throb with
power as he looked out the view screen--his basement. Everything
began
to dissolve. The humming was replaced with a sense awesomeness.
The
time indicators showed that the ship was indeed moving backward
in time.
The viewscreen showed a white nothingness, as if all of reality
had
vanished .
AS Moses scanned the indicators, they read two thousand .B.C.
The time
machine was automatically programmed to stop so he could take
his
readings. The ship was coming to a stop and on the viewscreen
Moses could see a
vast plain and on that vista were two armies clashing. Well! He
had to
take a reading so he turned on a forcefield which radiated several
feet
around the ship.
THE two armies that were locked in mortal combat stopped to
see what was
happening. A brilliant flash had occurred and it had alarmed them.
After the
flash had gone, in its place a strange looking oval shaped metallic
device and a doorway appeared and a strangely garbed man emerged
. In
his hand he held a device of some kind and pointed it at the sky.
Moses
took his reading and went back inside. The door slid closed and
the
time machine disappeared in a flash of light. The soldiers could
not
believe their eyes .
THE timeship had resumed its journey. Time slipped by in an
instant; the time indicators read four thousand. B.C. The time
machine
came to a stop as if it were it supposed to be ,somewhere in the
fertile crescent ,the birthplace of humanity.
THE SHIP rested on invisible energy beams, and on the view
screen,
there was a woman immersed in a kind of glow. She appeared not
to have
any clothing on. Moses watched as she approached a tree and not
just any
tree. It was the tree of good and evil. He also saw a reptilian
like being,
a biped approaching her. Moses knew what he had to do.
ABOARD the timeship was a positronic brain capable of transmitting
a
human-like emotion of alarm. As Moses punched the codes into the
brain, it began to send out those emotions of fear and dread and
they
reached another human figure. This figure was also clothed in
the same kind
of glow.
AS the feelings penetrated the man's brain ,he looked up in
alarm.
"Where is eve?" He turned and ran off at a gallop. The
male figure kind
of had a hunch were she was. He soon reached the forbidden tree
and,
just in time he prevented the woman from reaching for the fruit
of the
tree.
ADAM pushed her away from danger and set about tossing the
reptilian being out of the Garden of Eden. Just for a brief moment
the
pair saw the timeship but they did not know what it was. It disappeared
in a
flash. Maybe it was sent by GOD to check up on them. They held
those
thoughts for the briefest moment. What were they doing by the
tree of
good and evil? It was perplexing; they feel that something strange
had just occurred.
EPILOGUE..... MOSES MALCOM sat up in his bed confused about
the dream
he had just had. He only half remembered. Oh well! It looked like
another perfect day outside. He had just celebrated his five hundred
birthday yesterday. Life was wonderful on this unspoiled world
called
EARTH and that might not had happened if the great patriarch Adam
had
not stopped Eve, the mother of all humanity, from plucking that
fruit from
the tree of good and evil. That bothersome bush no longer exists
for,
after the incident, GOD had destroyed it. Somehow Moses felt he
had a
hand in the whole affair , but it only seemed like a dream.
The End
