\u201cMcKenzie\u2019s face paled and his eyes were wide.\u00a0 He said, \u201cSomething must have happened at the end of the program.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I need to review the instrument data.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is an enormous time change.\u00a0 It may take a few oscillations forwards and backwards to calibrate it perfectly to our present day.\u00a0 So, it may take us a few days to get home.\u201d\u00a0 I calmed down considerably after hearing this and told McKenzie to take his time and not to get upset.\u00a0 And he did seem calmer after I said this.<\/p>\n
The seven wise men got to work and were buzzing away at the data from the drive instruments for several hours.\u00a0 And over the course of those hours, I suddenly began to see this accident as an opportunity.\u00a0 I asked the photographic expert to see what he could do to capture as much data on Earth at 55 million BC.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And McKenzie lost one of his assistants as this fellow worked feverishly to record everything he could before we left the distant past.<\/p>\n
And within a day they had their program worked out.\u00a0 They even found out what had gone wrong.\u00a0 Apparently, the drive needed a slower de-ramping at the end of the cycle to completely rule out the overload we had experienced.\u00a0 McKenzie even cavalierly said it had been a lucky break because now we could add time travel to the capabilities of his drive.\u00a0 And I laughed seeing him so full of bravado.<\/p>\n
We set the time voyage for the next \u201cmorning,\u201d whatever that meant, and when the time was upon us, we put on a brave face but I could tell everyone was keyed up.\u00a0 We strapped in and the drive snapped on.\u00a0 All the familiar feeling happened and then after what felt like a slightly longer period it shut down.\u00a0 We cranked back the cover off the viewing port and there was Earth.\u00a0 And it was awful.\u00a0 The oceans were gone.\u00a0 The planet was a blasted airless rock like the Moon.<\/p>\n
We were all hit hard.\u00a0 I said to McKenzie, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d\u00a0 He looked even more upset than before but stammered out, \u201cI must have overshot by a billion years.\u00a0 This must be Earth after the sun runs out of hydrogen and becomes unstable.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t seem possible I could have been off so badly.\u201d\u00a0 He said he would use the position of the stars to get a read on how far in the future we were.\u00a0 I said, \u201cSure, go ahead.\u201d\u00a0 And I tried to sound casual but I was scared, plenty scared.<\/p>\n
The boys got busy figuring out the date from star locations.\u00a0 After a few hours McKenzie came back to me and said he had the date.\u00a0 I asked him how far in the future we were and in a flat intonation he croaked out, \u201cA thousand years.\u201d”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMcKenzie\u2019s face paled and his eyes were wide.\u00a0 He said, \u201cSomething must have happened at the end of the program.\u00a0 It got us back to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2510,1289,1263,4],"tags":[1290,265],"class_list":["post-33201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n