Tempus Fugit – Part 4

“McKenzie’s face paled and his eyes were wide.  He said, “Something must have happened at the end of the program.  It got us back to Earth alright but then some kind of power surge must have caused a tachyon overload and shot us back along the time axis.  I need to review the instrument data.  I can figure out a way to send a tachyon pulse in the opposite phase and throw us forward but I need to do some calculations to calibrate the size of the pulse.  This is an enormous time change.  It may take a few oscillations forwards and backwards to calibrate it perfectly to our present day.  So, it may take us a few days to get home.”  I calmed down considerably after hearing this and told McKenzie to take his time and not to get upset.  And he did seem calmer after I said this.

The seven wise men got to work and were buzzing away at the data from the drive instruments for several hours.  And over the course of those hours, I suddenly began to see this accident as an opportunity.  I asked the photographic expert to see what he could do to capture as much data on Earth at 55 million BC.  And when I said this, it was like a switch was snapped on him and he got incredibly excited realizing what a scientific opportunity was in front of him.  And McKenzie lost one of his assistants as this fellow worked feverishly to record everything he could before we left the distant past.

And within a day they had their program worked out.  They even found out what had gone wrong.  Apparently, the drive needed a slower de-ramping at the end of the cycle to completely rule out the overload we had experienced.  McKenzie even cavalierly said it had been a lucky break because now we could add time travel to the capabilities of his drive.  And I laughed seeing him so full of bravado.

We set the time voyage for the next “morning,” whatever that meant, and when the time was upon us, we put on a brave face but I could tell everyone was keyed up.  We strapped in and the drive snapped on.  All the familiar feeling happened and then after what felt like a slightly longer period it shut down.  We cranked back the cover off the viewing port and there was Earth.  And it was awful.  The oceans were gone.  The planet was a blasted airless rock like the Moon.

We were all hit hard.  I said to McKenzie, “What is this?”  He looked even more upset than before but stammered out, “I must have overshot by a billion years.  This must be Earth after the sun runs out of hydrogen and becomes unstable.  But it doesn’t seem possible I could have been off so badly.”  He said he would use the position of the stars to get a read on how far in the future we were.  I said, “Sure, go ahead.”  And I tried to sound casual but I was scared, plenty scared.

The boys got busy figuring out the date from star locations.  After a few hours McKenzie came back to me and said he had the date.  I asked him how far in the future we were and in a flat intonation he croaked out, “A thousand years.””