old main (ebook version)
DESCRIPTION
OLD MAIN: A Story In Time by Joseph Houk. An undergraduate student at a small Midwestern university has an opportunity to travel back in time to help a friend - and possibly save a long-lost landmark in his school's history. A "speculative historical fiction" look at time travel and a building that burned to the ground - and affected an entire city. Story (C) 1990, 2012 by Joseph Houk. Some characters (C) 2007, 2012 by Thomas Overbeck. The characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The presentation of how events unfolded on the night of February 7, 1970 in Whitewater, Wisconsin, are based on what was reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal and from accounts by eyewitnesses – but the causes and possible reasons for those events as presented here are fictional. Some individuals who were named in this work are real persons that were mentioned in the supporting materials. They are used here as historical references. Also, in case you haven't heard, there is no such thing as time travel, nor does the bell tower of Old Main still stand on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.TRANSCRIPT
OLD MAIN
A Story In Time
By Joseph Houk
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© 1990, 2012, Joseph Houk. All rights reserved.
Cassie Wells, Keith Scott and other Times Like This references are copyright © 2007, 2012 by Thomas
Overbeck. The characters are used with his tacit approval, since he owes the author one. Times Like This is
a web comic updated twice weekly at the URL www.timeslikethis.com. Please note: some of the content
on the strip is considered to be for mature audiences. Parental guidance is advised.
Cover photo of Old Main is courtesy of Flickr user "chopper744"; photo titled "Old Main on the
UW-Whitewater Campus, before it was partially burned to the ground." Photo is credited to Terry Esrael.
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Prologue
Old Main Burns Down
On the night of February 7, 1970, a call came into the city of Whitewater
fire department from the campus radio station, WSUW. A student smelled
smoke outside the studios, and noticed that the main building of the
Wisconsin State University at Whitewater was on fire.
That was the beginning of a long, fierce battle that resulted in the
complete loss of the Old Main building of the Whitewater campus. The fire,
which was believed to be started by arsonists, raged through the night,
destroying three of the building's four wings – including the original building
that had been constructed back in the 1870's when the campus was new.
The lack of fire doors and a bounty of combustible material made the
fire that much more devastating. Though some books and papers were
salvaged by students and professors, the contents of the building were a total
loss afterwards. The loss affected every student on campus at the time, as the
majority of classes at the school were held in Old Main.
As the flames crossed to the central wing of the building, the bell in the
tower that still adorns the University's school logo came crashing down as the
supports gave way. The half-melted remnants were found later in the
basement of the building. Students who witnessed the destruction were
openly weeping as the Carillon that had announced the hour for decades had
been silenced.
The fire departments battling the blaze had an additional difficulty with
the sub-freezing temperatures and the lack of water. Water was brought in
from as far away as Palmyra, but the amount could not affect the level of
damage to the building. At least one firefighter from Fort Atkinson was hurt
trying to battle the blaze, as he had fallen off a ladder trying to reach an
upper-level window.
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As the night went on, the amount of water that had built up from dousing
the fire – along with the melting of snow and the near-dew-point temperatures
towards morning – caused the fire doors that had protected the East Wing
(now known as Hyer Hall) from damage to burst open, flooding the
basement of that building and causing a stream to run down Graham Street
(what is now the Wyman Mall) towards Hamilton Field. Classes were
canceled the following Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday students
were meeting at various rooms in dormitories, the University Center and
other facilities on campus.
As the years have passed, no one is sure who may have started the fire –
or why. Some have suggested that the fire may have been politically
motivated; others suggest that the building was a tinderbox that was just
waiting for a spark to ignite it. No suspects were ever named in the ensuing
arson investigation, though at least one person – a female – was detained
briefly afterwards. Though the grand jury found one newspaper reporter in
contempt because he refused to divulge information about the fire, no
indictments were ever made.
The loss of the symbol of the university had lasting effects for everyone
on campus at the time – and upon the entire city of Whitewater. Though a
new alumni center was built on the site of the main building, the impact of
the fire is still felt today, nearly 50 years afterward.
– Excerpt from The University of Whitewater: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, 1868-2018,
by Adrienne Daniels
5
Friday Morning, February 7, 2020
The alarm on Jamie Kourtens' iPad went off dutifully as he rolled over in his
bed. He never liked getting up early on Fridays, especially in the winter time when it
was cold and damp. That was why he'd programmed his ancient iPad 2 to come up
with the most annoying song it could to rouse him from slumber. Lady Gaga
definitely fit the bill.
Whatever possessed him to get a copy of "Bad Romance" from his roommate,
Terry Erikson – well, he hadn't understood Terry the first time he'd met him during
freshman orientation at Whitewater two years prior. Terry had been a real history
buff, but he'd been even more of a technology and chemistry buff. That made his
double-major in History and Chemistry that much more strange.
He reached over and swiped the alarm off, then looked up at the ceiling of his
bedroom at Starin Residence Hall. He had one class that morning, and as much as he
wished he could just attend the class via FaceTime on his iPad, the professor insisted
on not recording lectures. It didn't matter that the University of Whitewater was
considered one of the most connected schools in the nation; this guy was old school.
No FaceTime, no Googletubing of lecutures.
He checked the weather. Whitewater was having a typical early February day,
23 degrees and cold, according to the weather app. He sighed, got up and gathered
up some clean clothes with his bathroom "bag" as he headed to the suite's bathroom.
On the way, he noticed that Terry wasn't in bed. That's strange, he thought to
himself. He usually doesn't have any classes Friday, so he sleeps in for the long
weekend.
After cleaning up and getting dressed, he tapped his iPad to find out what was
on the menu over at Drumlin Dining Hall that morning. He was non-plussed upon
seeing it was scrambled eggs and sausage – again. Since the 2016 Tax Revolt that
led to Whitewater and the other former UW System schools breaking away from
state control, the University of Whitewater had to cut corners in places to "continue
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to provide the same level of quality education", as Chancellor Ohlmeyer had put it,
as it had under UW.
It wasn't easy, and there were still rough spots. The UC Café had been closed
since the spring semester of his freshman year, and students living in the on-campus
residence halls were being charged for water usage on a bi-monthly basis. At least it
wasn't so bad in Starin Hall, the all-suite residence hall building. You and your
roommate could monitor the water usage, and since the building was only a dozen
years old, it wasn't that much of a bill. In the older halls, they split the water usage
between all students on the floor. If you had one guy or gal who took hour-long
showers, it could get pricey. A friend of his from high school had heard of an entire
floor over in Arey moving off-campus en masse in the spring semester of 2019
because one gal had accidentally broken one of the toilets in the bathroom right
before Thanksgiving break. No one noticed until they returned on Monday – and
then everyone got their water bills two weeks later.
Jamie switched off his iPad and put it in its protective sleeve, then packed it into
his backpack to head over to Drumlin for breakfast. He put on his Whitewater knit
hat and his winter coat and ambled out the door, making sure he still had his ID card
on him. Bounding down the stairs to the main entrance, he waved at the person at the
front desk, and pushed on out into the cold.
The wind liked to come rushing down Starin Road from the west, where it got
progressively colder as it whisked over the Warhawk Drive parking lot. The large
open area between the athletics complex and the bookstore didn't help things. Starin
Road essentially bisected the campus from the residence halls, parking lots and
athletic complex from the academic parts. It also made for some very long walks to
classes, especially if you were in the northeast residence hall complex by Wells.
He quickly made his way across Starin, quickly walking past Bigelow Hall and
the western residence hall complex. He walked briskly to the side entrance of
Drumlin, knowing that staying out in the cold could make things difficult for his old
iPad – despite his attempts at keeping the tablet as warm as possible.
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The large entryway to Drumlin Dining Hall had a lobby where students and staff
could set their bags in storage lockers for safekeeping before heading up to the food
line. He set his bag in one of the open lockers, took out the iPad, swiped his card and
closed the door. Turning, he walked over to the kiosk leading to the stairs, and
swiped his card again, allowing him to push open the gate to the stairway. As
accessible as Whitewater was for disabled students, they still had to have a way to
limit access to the cafeteria. The gate led to the stairs and the "lift" that took non-
ambulatory students up to the dining room.
He, however, was ambulatory – and hungry. Reaching the top of the stairs, he
turned and entered the self-serve line for breakfast. It was the only line open in the
morning, as there was usually a minimum of kitchen staff there until lunch time. He
got his usual from the serveries: scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, and a bagel over at
the toast station, with a glass of skim milk and some orange juice. Taking his tray
over to the far side of the dining area, he found an open table in the back corner and
sat down to eat.
After getting situated and taking a few bites of breakfast, he tapped on his iPad
and checked his e-mail. Nothing new, really; he had finally gotten the e-receipt for
his tuition bill for the semester, and his Cultural Awareness professor was going to
be going to Port au Prince next week for her lecture on Caribbean society. The e-
mail had the electronic code for the lecture feed, which he could watch back home at
Starin on Tuesday. Oh, and there apparently was a two-for-one deal at Lance's
Pizzeria over at Esker.
He had just finished with his inbox and was about to switch over to Safari to do
his morning web comic trawl when he noticed he had a new message via Messenger.
It was from Terry:
Jamie, Need to see you after class over at Perkins Stadium
parking lot. Kinda important; involves my "secret project".
Left the incentive as to why in your iPad bag. See you at
11:30 - Ter
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Terry had been working on this "secret project" of his for about a year now,
since his grandfather had died. Between his ramblings about history and politics and
physics, he wasn't quite sure what exactly this project could be. Whatever it was, it
meant that he had the suite to himself most of the time, especially as of late.
He paused for a moment. When he had put his iPad into its sleeve back at Starin,
he didn't notice anything in there, nor did he see anything when he set it down on the
chair next to him. He turned and looked at his bag – it had something sticking out of
it, something that hadn't been there moments before. He pulled it out with a puzzled
look, and realized it was a newspaper. Not just any newspaper, but a copy of the
Royal Purple, the student newspaper.
Now, normally this wouldn't be cause for concern or consternation on the part of
anyone who attended Whitewater. It was, after all, the school's long-running
newspaper, and the source of information about events on campus for years on end.
Many who had attended Whitewater in years past wouldn't have even thought twice
about it.
However, there was one little thing about the edition of the Royal Purple that he
held in his hands that made him pause: it hadn't been published in paper format for
two years. The RP had gone completely digital in 2018, the year of the school's
sesquicentennial. What made him really raise his eyebrows was the date on the paper
– March 22, 2000.
His birthday.
He went to open the paper and was greeted by a cavalcade of inserts and special
offer cards that had adorned, at one time, the inside of the RP. The inserts were
usually for credit card applications, magazine subscriptions or coupons for razors or
deodorant or whatever was being marketed towards young adults.
They also were never found in the versions of the paper located in the library, or
in any other archive he'd seen, as they were usually used or thrown away after
reading.
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He initially thought it was a joke until he saw that one of the ads was for a check
card from Bank One. He knew, from personal experience, that Bank One had been
the name of ChaseRBC Bank back in the early 2000's. Chase Manhattan, as it had
been called back then, had merged with BancOne Corp sometime around 2005 or so.
He thumbed through the pages of the paper, not seeing much inside to make him
think much of it. An article about Fiona Apple… She was some pop singer in the
1990’s, I think. Something about a new ice arena for the hockey program… I didn’t
even know Whitewater ever HAD a hockey program? A front page article about how
the alumni association was apparently selling student names to… what’s an
"MBNA"?, he thought.
He looked at the clock up on the wall and realized he needed to finish breakfast.
He wolfed down the rest of his spread, slipped his iPad back in the sleeve with the
RP tucked inside – the ads he just left on the tray as he got up and bussed his tray at
the recycling station.
Sliding his tray down the dirty tray line, he made his way to the exit, bounding
back down the stairs. The university had set it up where you came in on one side and
left on the other, but the truth was that they could alternate entrances if they wanted
to. There were a few times they had both sides open – usually when it was steak and
shrimp night.
He reached the locker, slid his card and grabbed his bag and coat. Just as he was
about to put his iPad away, the tablet beeped that he had another e-mail message. He
slid it out of the sleeve, unlocked the screen and tapped on the notification:
Jamie – Hope you enjoyed your reading. Now, take a look
at the one in your bag’s front pocket; it’ll give you a clue
as to what’s up. Ter
P.S. Sorry I had to scan your locker twice. I owe ya $5 for
the storage fee.
The P.S. gave him a start – wait a minute, when did I give him my ID card?
Another beep from his iPad:
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I’ll tell you later. Just read the paper while you’re at class.
You might need to refresh your WW history before you give
me a hand. -Ter
He looked around suddenly, expecting Terry to jump out from around a corner
or something. He was getting stares from a few other students who were getting
ready to head up to breakfast themselves. Jamie’s face twitched a bit and he just
grabbed his bag, put his iPad and sleeve inside, latched it up and headed out the door.
It took him about half a second to remember that he had never bothered to put
his coat on. He remedied that by turning around into the vestibule and hastily tossing
his hat on and pulling his coat on as well. He had a little bit of a hike to get over to
Upham Hall for his 10:00 class, and it was already 9:48, according to his iPhone 3’s
readout. The cold air would provide incentive for him.
••• ••• •••
A half-hour later, he was sitting back in his desk chair in the lecture hall,
listening to the professor drone on about Kinetic Theory and laws of motion. The
professor was emphasizing that everything – solids, liquids, gases – were always in
motion. Even the solid table in front of him was moving. Another student towards
the front asked if that meant that the desk was moving in time as well.
"That's a subject for a different course," he chuckled. "Solids are composed
more of phonons, that, according to quantum mechanics, vibrate at the same
frequency. When they all move together, they stay together – rather simplistic, but
the description fits."
He went on into a brief discourse about Newton's First law, and as to how
phonons fit this little piece of Newtonian physics. He turned to write something on
the board, and Jamie noticed that his iPad's Messenger notification had lit up on the
top of its screen.
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Dude, this stuff's boring. Use VR to record this and go read
the other paper I put in your bag. Please, I'm gonna need
your analytic mind on this problem. -Ter
This didn't sound like too bad of an idea to Jamie, and so he tapped on the Voice
Recorder app on the iPad and set it to record, pointing the mic towards the front of
the class. He slipped the paper out of the front of his bag carefully and put it on his
lap in front of him. He looked down and saw a scary sight – a photo of the burnt-out
remnants of Old Main on the front cover of the Milwaukee Sentinel, dated February
9, 1970.
Right below a headline stating "FIXED MEDICAL FEES URGED" was a
sub-headline that stated, "Arson Suspected in Campus Fire". Below that was an
eerie photo of the burned-out shell of what used to be Old Main's west wing and
central wing. A wooden snow fence had been erected around the building, and many
onlookers were gathered, looking at what was left of the building.
He scanned the article briefly: a guy by the name of Joseph Farrar, the deputy
state fire marshal, claimed that the fire had been started in three separate places: "the
top two floors of the west wing and the north part of the central wing." Apparently,
two men and a woman had come up to the security desk at the UC (the old name for
the University Center) and said something about "there was going to be a fire in Old
Main."
He looked up briefly as the professor made a point about kinetics, and then
turned back to write something more on the whiteboard. Jamie took the opportunity
to flip to the page where the article continued: The north wing, which was the oldest
of the four, was scheduled to be razed – but no one knew where to go with the art
and music departments. Jamie gave a half smile at this; so that was the impetus
behind the construction of the Center of the Arts.
The article continued: "Clocks around campus, connected to the same system as
those in Old Main, stopped at 10:14 p.m. Saturday." He frowned a minute. The
previous paragraph said that the first call to the fire department didn't come in until
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four minutes later. At least four minutes between whenever the fire reached the clock
controls and when the fire department was notified. The next paragraph said the
blaze wasn't brought under control until 3:30 AM. He thought about that for a
moment. Nearly six hours from what was likely the first setting of the blaze to where
the building was pretty much smoldering ruins.
He looked up from his reading yet again, and noticed that the professor seemed
to be wrapping things up. He looked down at his iPad and saw that it was 10:59. "No
questions? Okay, keep in mind we'll be looking at chapters four through six in the
book next week. Have a good weekend," the professor said with a wave, and the
exodus from the class began. Jamie quickly stuffed the paper back in his bag, sliding
his iPad into its sleeve with the copy of the old RP… and noticed something on the
screen.
Smudge marks. What? He thought to himself. Then he looked down at his
fingers. He had light gray smudge marks on his fingertips, from reading the
newspaper. It took him a moment to process what exactly that meant: that newspaper
was just printed recently. But that can't be right; it's nearly 50 years old. Any ink,
even in an archival copy, would have set in and started fading by now. He wiped his
hands against his jeans, slid the iPad into its sleeve and then into his bag.
This time, he didn't forget to bundle up for the long walk across the parking lot
to the Williams Center, which he'd have to trundle through to get to Perkins Stadium.
By the time he reached the back entrance of the WC, he felt frozen.
He wandered over to the Kachel Fieldhouse – located just next door to the WC –
and headed upstairs to the coffee/snack bar in the viewing area. I need a coffee
before I go back out into the cold, he thought.
His iPhone buzzed yet again. Another text from his roommate:
Don't bother with the coffee. We can stop for a fresh cup at
this place I found. Just get on outside to the parking lot;
I'm over by the first W on the locker room of Perkins
Stadium. -Ter
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Terry was never one to mince words.
Suddenly, he realized he had plenty of questions for his roommate. He stepped
out through the north entrance, down the long ramp to the athletic parking lots. The
wind had calmed a bit, but the sidewalk was still chilly. There weren't many cars
back here, since most classes were over by now – and everybody was gone home for
the weekend. Whitewater was still known as a "suitcase college" – stay there during
the week, then drive home for the weekend. With the lack of things to do around
town, it usually wasn't a bad idea.
He had to avoid some remnants of the last snowstorm by walking around to the
entrance of the lot, but he crossed over to the Perkins Stadium parking lot and saw
straight ahead of him… a VW bug. Not a modern "New" Beetle – one of the original
ones, like what you saw in films from the 1960's.
THIS is what he wanted to show me? Jamie thought as he waved at Terry. He
had to walk carefully as the lot hadn't been completely cleared of snow since the last
major snowfall, but he managed to get over to the car, where Terry had rolled the
window down.
"How was the discussion on Kinetic Energy?" he asked with a bit of a chuckle.
"I'm never going to understand you, you know that?" Jamie replied. "You lead
me on through the morning, leaving two newspapers in my bag – how, I have no
idea – and then you have me come all the way out here to see that you've bought an
old VW Beetle?" Terry smiled and motioned to him to get in.
"Well, I can explain how I got the papers and everything, but I have to contend
that this is far from an 'old' VW Beetle, thank you." He put the car in gear and pulled
out of the lot as Jamie got situated in the passenger seat. "For one thing, old VW
Beetles didn't have GPS controls and hands-free phone and text controls." Jamie
could see that as he checked out the car. He also noticed something else – the interior
was rather "clean" for a car that was at least 50 years old.
He mentioned this to Terry. "Well, there's a reason for that," he said as he turned
on Prairie, passing by the Esker/Wells complex and heading back towards the main
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campus. "First, though, I have to ask you – what did you think of those two
newspapers I got for you?"
"Interesting," Jamie said thoughtfully. "I don't know how you got that copy of
the RP, though. And I swear that the copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel had something
on it, because my fingers are all gray."
"That's called ink staining," Terry said patiently. "And there's a reason for that,
too."
"So what's the reason, then?" Jamie shot back. Terry held up a hand as they
turned on Starin Road. "Hey, the dorm's back that away," he pointed as they turned
to the east.
"To show you the reason, we have to go over to Starin Park," Terry explained.
"See, I finally got to finish the first part of that project I've been working on. I'm in
the middle of the second phase of the project right now." He pulled into the parking
lot on the far side of the hill, opposite the old water tower, and put the car in neutral,
pulling up the parking brake as he did so. He turned and looked Jamie straight in the
eye. "What I'm about to show you, I have to have your promise of secrecy. No one
can know about this, okay? Just you and me." Jamie shrugged.
"Okay," he said. "But what could be so earth-shattering that you require me to
promise secrecy?" Terry revved the engine a bit, looking at a gauge on the dash –
one that appeared to be an ammeter, as it had "AMPS" and "DISCHARGE" on it.
"This," he said, tapping the GPS attached to the dash of the car, "is more than
just a GPS. It's a control panel for a device that… Well, let me show you." He
pressed a few of the buttons on the bottom part of the GPS, and then pressed the
green button on the far right.
Suddenly, a bright light shot from a beam on top of the car's front windshield.
That's when Jamie noticed a slight glow along the edge of the dash, then over to the
right A-pillar. Before he could ask what was going on, Terry had lurched the car
forward and into what looked to be a "window" of light, about the size of a garage
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door. With a FZZZT sound and a sudden feeling of heat, the car had driven through
the window – and into Starin Park, where it was right around sunrise.
And, where before there were piles of snow and trees barren of leaves, there was
now green grass, robust trees and the two of them sitting in a VW bug with winter
clothes on. Or, at least Jamie had winter clothes on. Terry was now in a white short-
sleeve button-down shirt, and his pants were actually shorts. Both which Jamie had
not noticed when he'd gotten in the car.
"Where are we?" Jamie asked as he shed his coat.
"More like when are we, you mean," was Terry's reply. "Look at the readout."
Jamie turned to the GPS screen and saw that the date indicator said 1969-08-07. "Not
bad for a side project, hey? Oh, you might want to not disrobe completely – this is
Whitewater in the 1960's, after all." He pulled the car out of the driveway and onto
Starin Road, where he turned left to head down to Fremont Street and downtown
Whitewater. "If you reach in back there, I've got a white button-down for you to slip
on. You might prefer wearing it so people don't look at you strange, okay?"
16
17
Thursday, August 7, 1969
I can't believe this, Jamie kept telling himself as they drove through downtown
Whitewater. The stoplights were all funky and old fashioned; people were walking
around in button-down shirts and slacks – and it was 86 degrees! At least that's what
the sign on the First Citizen's State Bank said. Wait – that doesn't look anything like
the First Citizen's bank!
"Motor banking?" Jamie said aloud as he read the sign by the drive-up windows.
Terry chuckled a bit as they turned west on Main Street, heading back to campus.
"You're not all that up on what things were like in the late '60's, are you?" he
said as they passed the city library. "We're kinda here for a reason, but I wanted to
show you around Whitewater a bit. Downtown's changed a lot, hasn't it?"
Jamie was staring straight ahead as they waited for the stoplight on Franklin and
Main, just as they were heading down Fraternity Row.
"Is that… is that what I think it is up ahead?"
Terry didn't need to make any sort of response, as there air was suddenly filled
with the sound of chiming bells. The sound came from the tower up ahead, perched
on a building located on one of the highest points in the city of Whitewater. It was a
sight that Jamie had only seen in photos and old school stationery. And there it was.
Old Main. The symbol of the University of Whitewater and the oldest building
on campus – until it burned down.
The carillon got louder as they drove down Main towards the campus, and then
Terry slowed the Bug down, turning into the driveway that led up the hill to the main
entrance. For years in Terry and Jamie's past, this was the driveway to the school's
alumni center – a short, one-story building that was almost an afterthought compared
to the building in front of them.
Jamie turned to Terry and just said the only word he could form: "How?"
Terry put the car in neutral after swinging it around the circle, then put on the
parking brake. "First of all, you're not seeing things. This," waving his hand around
18
at the scenery outside, "is all real. It's August 6th, 1969, and that really is Old Main.
We got here with the help of this little thing." He tapped the GPS unit. "Look, I told
you about keeping this secret, right?" Jamie nodded. "Well, this is more than just my
secret. It's my grandfather's, too. See, my grandpa Lawrence was involved in
physical science, and he was working on a project for the NSA here at Whitewater."
"Here?" Jamie asked. "Why not at Madison?"
"Quieter and more out of the way," Terry said. "Or so everyone thought.
Apparently it didn't work out that way." He sighed briefly. "Anyways – he found in
his studies that there was an element that was previously thought to be unstable and
highly radioactive. However, in one of his scans he accidentally found something
that made the government give him a grant for his project." He turned to Jamie.
"Don't laugh at this, but they're called micro-tachyons. They're little sub-atomic
particles that exist at all points of time in the history of the earth."
"Micro-tachyons?"
"That was what he called them. What he found out about them was that they
could be manipulated by amplified light rays." Jamie paused, and then pointed at
Terry.
"Lasers!" Terry nodded in assent.
"Yep. Apparently, if you could focus them in a particular pattern, they could
create an opening in time, where they would travel either forward or backwards. And
he was trying to figure out a way of creating a device that would allow you to focus
the micro-tachyons in a way so that you could transmit light or sound through the
opening."
"Obviously, this is much more than just an opening," Jamie said. "Why put all
that trouble into a time-travel cell phone when you can just physically go to another
time period?"
"There's a slight problem with it," Terry said as he looked down at the extra
gauge on the dash. "Even by 21st century standards, it takes a heckuva lot of energy
to create that little window we drove through. After I did this the first time, it took
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me two days to get the machine charged back up. This car's battery does allow for it
to charge up faster, but it takes a few minutes – and the car has to keep running until
the ammeter reads in the green." He looked down at the dash. "I think we need to
take a lap around the school to get it to that point, though." He took off the parking
brake and put the car in gear, heading down the driveway and back to Main Street.
"Why a VW bug?" Jamie asked.
"What, you think a DeLorean would be less conspicuous in 1969?" he asked,
somewhat sarcastically. "I managed to get a hold of this thing brand new for only a
few thousand dollars. Toughest thing was trying to find currency from the 1960's that
wasn't completely worn out. Had to do some short back steps – that was why I
haven't been around much lately." They headed out towards the far western edge of
town on US 12 – which was almost completely undeveloped the further west they
went. The only thing at the far end of town that was the same as in 2020 was the old
Hawk Bowl. They turned around in the parking lot of what was marked as a Pamida
store, and headed back into the city.
"This all doesn't answer the question of why we're here in 1969, though," Jamie
stated as they headed back towards campus. He was amazed at how much the tower
of Old Main dominated the skyline of the city, and found it hard not to stare up at it
as they stopped in front of the old McDonald's at the corner of Tratt and Main.
"My grandpa's project was stored in Old Main's basement," he said as the light
changed and he guided the Bug north on Tratt. "The plans were down there in a
locked safe when the fire started, and they were destroyed with the building. The
problem is, I have no idea where."
"How could that be?" Jamie asked as he motioned around the Bug's interior. "It's
obvious you built a time machine, but how could you do that without plans?"
"I don't have the plans for the communication device," he corrected Jamie. "This
thing was the result of something my grandfather gave me two years ago, when he
was in the hospital. He told me to use it to find the plans." He shrugged as they made
their way to Starin Road. "It didn't take me long to figure out how to make a time
20
machine with what he gave me – an old Garmin and some wiring. But figuring out
what to do with it was another matter." They turned down Starin, and as they got
closer to the campus, Jamie had another "huh" moment.
"Where's Starin Hall?" he said. "Wait a minute – where's the Williams Center?"
"Starin won't be built for another 30-some years," Terry said. "The Williams
Center is still on the drawing board right now." They drove down to the Moraine
Hall bookstore, and then – in a move that completely floored Jamie – turned down
Graham Street. "The Wyman Pedestrian Mall that replaced this street won't be built
for several years, either," Terry said as they drove past the University Center,
Hamilton Field and Gym, and then to the entrance of Hyer Hall. Pulling into a
parking space outside the entrance, he reminded him – "Remember, it's the east wing
of Old Main, and not Hyer Hall." He looked down at the gauges on the dash. "The
ammeter says we have enough of a charge. Let's go do some reconnaissance of the
place while I get an idea of where the plans might be," he said, finally turning off the
car.
He unplugged the GPS from its connections, put it in his satchel bag and got out
of the car. Jamie followed suit, though his jeans seemed a tad bit out of place in the
old campus grounds. They bounded up the stairs to Hyer's entrance, and Jamie held
the door open for Terry as they went into the vestibule.
"The school records and registrar are in the basement here in Hyer," he said.
"I'm going to see if I can look up my grandpa's schedule from last spring to see
where he had classes."
"How are you gonna do that?" Jamie asked.
"As of right now, my name's Larry Erikson. I'm just asking for my own
academic transcript." He smiled as they bounded downstairs to the records
department.
They went in to what Jamie vaguely remembered as the Financial Aid office,
and Larry did his "impersonation" of his grand-dad. The lady behind the desk said it
would take some time before the basic transcript would be done, as the computer
21
system had to be loaded before they could print anything out. "Larry" nodded and
paid the woman for the transcript request, and told her he'd be back in an hour. The
two of them went back up the stairs.
"That gives us some time to do something that Whitewater students like us have
never done," he said with a solemn pause. "Go check out Old Main." The two of
them exchanged looks as they bounded up the stairs to the second floor, outside the
lobby of the auditorium. They walked along the marble floors to the end of the
hallway – and Jamie noticed the first difference about the building.
"There's another building out there," Jamie said, pointing at the windows
straight ahead in the hallway. "You look out those windows in 50 years, you see
trees in the distance." They took the corner at the end of the hallway, and instead of
seeing an elevator on the right and a window to the left, they saw a set of double-
doors to a hallway.
"Ready?" Terry said as they pushed the doors open and walked across to the
main wing. Jamie took a moment to shrug as the two of them walked into the
building.
The first thing that overwhelmed both of them was how old the place looked.
And felt. Jamie heard, as they walked along the hallway, a noticeable creak with
each step. They turned a few corners, then found the main staircase at the front of the
building. Terry was about to head downstairs when Jamie tugged him. "I want to see
something over in the North Wing," he told him as he walked down the hallway.
When he got to the back of the central wing, he turned to the right – and let out an
"ohhhhh."
"What?" Terry said, now taking his turn at being the confused one.
"I see why this building went up like a tinderbox," Jamie said. He pointed at the
stairwell in front of them that connected the Central Wing with the older North
Wing. "Light a fire down at the base of this thing and it'd burn forever."
"Okay, I think you've been watching too many episodes of CSI," Terry quipped.
"How in the world do you know how the fire started?" Jamie smiled in response.
22
"My uncle is a fire investigator for the Mount Pleasant Fire Department," he
said. "I actually thought about getting into forensics when I started here, but I
decided to go into educational engineering instead." He looked down, then over at
the old building. "This was probably where the one part of the fire was started." He
sniffed the air. "Eww, that's turpentine."
"The art and music departments are located over here in the north wing," Terry
said. "That's probably why you're smelling it."
"And that's why this building went up so fast," Jamie replied. He thought about
that for a moment. "You know, if we try to do any stopping of the fire, we could end
up changing how the university looks in our time. The school didn't have the impetus
nor the money to build what eventually became the Center of the Arts until this place
burned down. In fact, practically every student on campus had a class in here."
"Including my grandfather," he replied. "Look, we don't need to keep the place
from burning down. We just need to find out where the safe was, get the plans out,
and head back home to 2020." Jamie looked up at the clock in the middle of the
hallway.
"Looks like we have some time before the transcript is done," he said. "Where's
this coffee shop you were telling me about? I could use some after all this."
••• ••• •••
The coffee shop was as good as Terry had advertised. What he hadn't mentioned
was a girl behind the counter who was very easy on the eyes – something Jamie
commented about as they headed back to campus.
"Where'd you find that place?" Jamie asked. Terry shrugged.
"I heard about it from my parents," he said. "Apparently grandpa was a regular
there. He met my grandma there in his senior year," he explained as they pulled back
up to the entrance of Hyer Hall ("East Wing," Terry reminded him) and got out of
the car.
"So that's why the gal behind the counter thought she knew you," Jamie said.
23
They walked back up the steps and into the building, then down to the registrar's
office. The transcript was ready to go, and Terry took it out and looked at it eagerly.
"Hm, looks like my grandpa was right. He did have a lot of classes in the West
Wing." He frowned a bit. "Looks like he had two in a different location, though.
What exactly does 'CN' mean?" Jamie shrugged.
"Maybe check out a copy of the school catalogue for this fall?" he suggested.
Terry went over to the table where they had several of the older class offerings lists,
and thumbed through the pages.
"Here we go," he said, finding the index. "CN… that's listed as being 'Central
Wing'. He actually had all of his classes here in Old Main." He looked down at the
key; "Looks like the rooms were numbered by floor. We'll just find out which floor
his classes were on, and go from there."
They both went back up the stairs and through Hyer Hall, back to Central Wing.
Terry wanted to look through the West Wing first, since that was where most of the
classes on the transcript were located. As they walked through, Terry couldn't quite
tell why the building would have burned so fast over on this wing.
"Other than the wooden floors, this wing is just as solid as Hyer," he commented
as he peeked into yet another classroom.
"The reports said that they poured a whole bunch of gasoline down the hallway,"
Jamie replied. They took a short flight of stairs up to the third floor, then up to the
hallway on the north side of the building. "This was where they believe the first part
of the fire was started." He pointed at a set of doors that went between the West
Wing and the north end of Central Wing. "Someone broke in, ran up to this floor,
doused the hallway with gasoline, then ran down another floor and doused the front
hallway with more gas. Then, it was just a matter of tossing a few matches."
They poked around on the third floor, and though Terry apparently found a few
of the classrooms that his grandpa had attended in 1969, none of them looked like
laboratories. They both took one more flight of stairs up to fourth floor, and had the
same result. When they got to the front of the building, Jamie pointed out that the
24
other fire had been set up there. He did a quick assessment: "Yeah, it's doable.
Maybe a Molotov cocktail up here, then run down these stairs here," as they took a
short flight of stairs that led to the connecting hallway with the central wing. "Then,
run down there and toss another cocktail on third floor, then head out to that first
area we saw at the end of the central wing." They walked down that staircase again,
and the smell of turpentine hit them again. "The arsonists probably didn't need much
to send that part up in flames," he said, finally. "Did you find all of your grandpa's
classes?
"All but two. One's over in the basement of the West Wing, and the other is
downstairs here in Central." They took the stairs down to the door where Jamie said
the arsonists had broken into the building. Terry found the classroom, but he realized
quickly it wasn't a lab: "This is a lecture hall." Jamie looked it over.
"I think this is where the other guy was when the fire was reported," Jamie said.
"There were only three people in the building – two working at WSUW and a
business major working here." Terry frowned at that.
"Why was he working in here on a Saturday night?" Terry asked.
"I have no idea," Jamie replied. "Apparently the other two knew he was down
here, though." He shrugged. "Probably a roommate or a frat brother of one of them,
I'd suspect." He looked up. "He said he heard sounds and footsteps, and then the two
others – with a campus policeman in tow – found him and told him to get out of the
building." They headed back over to Central Wing, and stopped in the connecting
corridor. "So we have an idea of how things burned down, but no idea of where your
grandpa's stuff may have been."
"Well, there's still this last room," Terry said. "It's in the basement of Central, if
I'm reading this right." He looked at the stairs heading up from the corridor, and saw
two doors off to the side. One said "GENTLEMEN" and the other said
"STORAGE". He looked at that and thought for a moment, and then went back up
into Central Wing, over to the side closest to Hyer/East Wing, and went down the
matching staircase. Sure enough, there were another two doors: "LADIES" and
25
"LAB 110". Terry looked down at his transcript. "There it is." He reached for the
doorknob, only to find it locked. The window was opaque, so there was no way of
telling what was on the other side of the door.
"Damn," he said, more or less to himself. He looked up at the walls and ceiling
of the area where the doors were located, and noticed something. "Where are we, in
terms of the rest of the building?" Jamie looked up as well.
"Uh, well, we're on the east side of the Central Wing, by the passageway leading
to Hyer," Jamie said. "Why?" Terry took the flight of steps up to the first floor, then
looked down at something.
"The lab has to be in the basement." He walked briskly down the main corridor
of the old building's central wing, all the way to its north end. There, at the end of the
hallway, was a door that said "STAIRS DOWN". He tried it, and the door opened.
Jamie caught up to him just in time to follow him down some metal stairs. At
the base was a small vestibule that led to the alleyway between the newer North
Wing and the West Wing. The other door was to the basement. This door, to Terry's
relief, was unlocked. They went in and discovered a passageway to a central
hallway. Terry took a look down the hall and saw a couple of doors at the other end
of the building. He nearly sprinted down the corridor, which was only partially lit.
The door to the lab, which was on the Hyer side of the building, was locked – but
this door wasn't opaque. The lights were off in the room, though, so he couldn't see
in.
Jamie wasn't sure what Terry was doing when he started rummaging around in
his satchel, but it suddenly made sense when he pulled out his MagLite and shine the
beam into the classroom. Taking a quick sweep, he smiled. "Right over there, on the
right," he pointed.
He grabbed an older digital camera from the satchel and, after doing some quick
fiddling with the controls – and looking around to make sure there wasn't anyone
else looking – he snapped a picture of the safe through the window. After he got a
26
few pictures – including one of the door and the hallway – he slid the camera back
into the satchel, tightened it up and turned to Jamie.
"Okay, I think we're good here," he told him. "Now, Mr. Forensics, what can
you tell me about how the fire affected this part of the building?" Jamie looked
around for a bit, looked at the two doors and at what appeared to be another set of
stairs upward.
"Let me see what's up here," he said. The two of them went up the small
stairway to a door, which Terry was all ready to try to open. "Wait," Jamie said. He
felt the door – which was a solid one, without windows. He looked down at the lock,
noticing that it wasn't a traditional skeleton key-type lock. He tried it – it was locked.
"Let's go back upstairs," he said. The two went back up to the main passageway
of Central Wing, and back to where they saw the STORAGE sign on the window.
Jamie followed the wall by the storeroom back towards West Wing, looking up at the
framing of the wall.
"That was an exterior door," Jamie said. He motioned to Terry to follow him
back over to the West Wing. Jamie took the hallway over to the stairs, went down a
flight and took the exit down at the northeast corner of the building.
The exit led out into a small alleyway between the West and Central Wings.
Jamie followed it back to the front of the building, where he found the door from the
basement.
He looked straight up – and saw the edge of the bell tower, straight above him.
"Uh, I think we better be getting back," Jamie said. "You're not going to like
what I'm going to tell you."
27
Friday, February 7, 2020
The old Volkswagen suddenly reappeared in the cold February winter of
Whitewater in the 21st century. The parking lot of Starin Park was as empty as when
they left – and just as cold. The windows of the Beetle fogged up rather quickly as
Jamie threw his coat back on.
Terry snapped off the time machine, then unplugged it from the power
connector. There was a sudden lurch as the draw by the unit on the VW's battery
made a groan with the defroster fan. Terry quickly put the car in gear and tried to
keep the car moving, but he slipped in putting it into first and the car idled wildly for
a second, then the engine stalled.
"C'mon, c'mon," he said as he tried to get the car to start back up. The alternator
protested, then, with a lurch, the car sputtered and moved ahead. Terry quickly spun
the car around on the slick parking lot surface and pulled the car over to the Starin
Road entrance, gunning it out onto the street and eastward towards downtown.
"How often does that happen?" Jamie asked, a little worried.
"Not that often," Terry said – though not convincingly. "You do have to watch it
after the window closes. That's when the greatest draw on power is for the unit." He
looked down to see that the ammeter was in the red. "I've got to keep this thing going
for a while. I'm going to take this thing over around the waste treatment plant. Tell
me again what was so bad about where the safe was?"
"Well," Jamie explained as they accelerated down Fremont Street and north
from town. "Eyewitness accounts say that when the fire hit the Central Wing, the
roof of the building went up quickly. At least one alumnus who saw the fire
witnessed the bell in the tower give way and collapse all the way through to the
basement." He turned and looked at Terry. "They found the smoldering, melted
remains a week later. It looks like it fell right onto where the safe was located."
Jamie thought for a moment. "If something that heavy could fall through four floors,
all the way to the basement, I'd have to think there wasn't anything left of the safe
when they found it."
28
"Something grandpa didn't tell me," Terry said as they turned onto the rural
county road by the waste water and biomass plant. "So it looks like we're going to
have to get in there, get the safe open and get the papers out of the building before
the fire gets to the Central Wing." Jamie blanched. "What? The smell out here isn't as
bad as usual."
"No, no, that's not it," Jamie explained. "The fire was started right next door in
the West Wing, remember? The reports said that they found someone had broken in
to West Wing on the first floor, then did the dousing I told you about. They
apparently started it at that connecting hallway to Central, practically in front of the
building."
"Okay, then," Terry said as they turned on Tratt Street, heading southeast back
towards the campus. "What are we talking for a timeframe here?"
"I thought you didn't like CSI," Jamie teased. He thought for a second. "They
didn't hear the sound of glass breaking until about ten to ten. The fire didn't reach the
clock controls until 10:14 PM, and the fire department didn't get the call until four
minutes later. By that time, most of the place was ablaze." He pulled out the
newspaper that Terry had given him, and scanned the article again.
"It burned out of control for about five and a half hours, which means the place
was essentially gone by four the next morning." Terry pulled the car into the Athletic
Fields entrance to the campus, and turned onto Schwager Drive.
"We still need to get the amps up on this thing," Terry said as they pulled into
the parking lot by the soccer complex. "I'm going to take a few laps around here to
get this thing charged up a bit more." Jamie nodded.
"Wouldn't it be easier to limit the size of the time window, so you don't use up
so much power?" Jamie asked.
"I can do that," Terry replied. "If I've got the unit in hand-held mode, it creates a
three-by-six window that you can walk through. Only problem is, you touch the
edges and you get a pretty bad burn. It also consumes about a third of the battery
29
power. Unless you put it on a charger right away afterwards, it'll die after two more
uses."
After a few laps around the lot, he pulled into one of the spots in the parking lot
and put the brake on. "I do have a spare battery and an AC adapter in the satchel
there, but that only gives us three additional portals – and it'll take about nine hours
to charge them with the adapter. And it'll take a few minutes for the GPS unit to reset
to allow us to go through it again."
"Why does the system take so much energy?" Jamie asked. "And why so long to
recharge?"
"That's what's funny about it. It doesn't take that much energy to open the time
window. It's the amount of energy to close it. See, when you open the window, it's
just 'point the laser and go'. When you close it, though, it's like this big power suck.
Kinda like a voltage spike in a thunderstorm."
"Does that mean you can't open a window hooked up to an AC line or AC
generator?"
"Well… you remember back in early November, when half the campus was shut
down because a transformer blew?" He sighed as Jamie nodded. "That was me. I
tried that with the time window. I got it open, but when I turned it off, the portal
cycled through about five open/close cycles before POP! WE Energies blamed it on
a squirrel chewing through the lines. What they didn't tell anyone was that the
squirrel they found was nowhere near the transformer, because the resulting arc blew
the little beastie about halfway to Fort Atkinson." He looked down and revved the
engine a few times.
"I think we can head on back to the dorm now," he said, satisfied at the Bug's
electrical charging system. "It's just about at full recharge. We can discuss our plans
over lunch." They pulled out of the parking lot and turned back towards the campus.
Neither of them saw the mailbox that had been sitting by the entrance of the
soccer complex move slightly, then tilt, and disappear into a circle of light.
••• ••• •••
30
They talked into the afternoon about the plan. Most of it was pretty simple: get
into the building, get into the classroom, open the safe, get the plans, get back to the
car, then get the heck back to 2020. Jamie made some contingency suggestions: what
would happen if they were spotted – or if they ran into the arsonists? The consensus
was that they'd get out of there, get back to the car and try things again. Either way –
there'd be no telling anyone about who they were. Terry had his "alias" set up, but
Jamie needed one.
"How about Joseph Beckford?" Terry suggested. "He was my grandfather's
roommate in college; you could pass for him." Jamie wasn't thrilled with it, but he
couldn't come up with an alternative – since none of his grandparents had ever
attended Whitewater.
Jamie also pondered what would happen if they ran into the arsonists after they
got the plans. Terry suggested splitting up; maybe taking the plans, putting them in
two separate satchels, and then heading out in two separate directions from the lab.
Jamie brought up on his iPad some of the archival footage of the aftermath of the
fire; "Heading over to West Wing probably wouldn't be a good idea," he said. "That
part went up in flames fast, and you're more likely to run into whoever broke in."
"Yeah, but heading back over to Old North would be just as bad," Terry pointed
out. "And we're not gonna want to park over on Graham Street."
"We probably won't be able to," Jamie replied. "They were holding a winter
festival over at Hamilton Gym, on the other side of the street." He flipped through
some more of the archival notes; "It was called the Ice-O-Rama Winter Festival.
We're probably gonna want to come in through the west side instead." He looked at
an old plat map he had found of Whitewater. "Come down Case Street, park by
McCutcheon, then head up to the building."
"Okay, that's going to be where we could have problems," Terry said. "That area
behind Old Main was basically one large loading dock area, with a parking lot." He
looked at it the overhead again. "That's one good thing that came out of the fire – the
hill looks a lot nicer now."
31
"I think that was more a product of the times and what they decided to do with
the land," Jamie noted. "We're going to have to give ourselves some extra time if we
park over there, especially in the cold."
"What about afterwards?" Terry asked. "If we have to wait too long for the
other, we might end up having an issue once we get back to the car." He paused
again. "The time machine is going to have to come with us, in case something
happens. As much as I'd prefer to leave it in the car, we may need it for a quick
getaway – to another time."
A sudden thought came to mind. "We'll get our 'Pods synchronized with the
clock at Old Main, then we agree to meet back at the Bug by no later than 10:30. By
that time, I doubt they'll notice us. If we get split up and can't make it back to the
Bug by 10:30, we meet over by…" He looked down at the photo of the campus
Jamie had on his iPad. "Over there. Drumlin Hall's loading dock area. Get the Bug
over there, and then wait for an extra hour for me to arrive. I'll keep the time machine
on me."
"Two things I don't like about that scenario," Jamie said. "First of all, what if
something happens to me?"
"You'll take the safe route, through Hyer/East Wing," Terry decided. "That way,
you'll avoid any issues. Anyone asks you why you're there, just say something about
dropping off an album for WSUW. If you have to, go all the way around, through the
UC, and over to White Hall, then go over to see if the Bug is already over at
Drumlin. You should be able to see if it's there from Starin Road. If it isn't, head over
to wherever we park it on Case Street. If it's there, but I'm not… well, I'll just make
sure to meet you over at Drumlin. This thing will make sure of it. I've got the other
battery charging right now, as we speak." Jamie still had an uncertain look on his
face. "What's the other issue?"
"I don't know how to drive a stick," he said.
••• ••• •••
32
The two of them wandered back into their room that night, after they had spent
most of the rest of the day over at the parking lot behind the Center of the Arts with
Jamie learning how to drive the Beetle. Terry admitted he did a passable job as the
night wore on, and he was even able to drive over to Esker for dinner without
popping the clutch until they pulled into the parking lot by Fischer Hall.
They both agreed that they needed a full night's sleep before they were going to
execute their plan. They were both pretty confident that things were going to work
out. Jamie had just gotten into bed and was about to turn out the light for the night
when he had a sudden thought.
"What about the door?" he asked.
"You mean the door to the lab?" Terry replied back.
"Yeah," he said. "How are we going to get in and out of the room if we can't get
into it in the first place?"
"Simple, we just use a skeleton key."
"That won't work," Jamie said. He brought up the photo Terry had taken of the
door on his iPhone. "That's a regular key lock." He paused. "What about using the
time machine itself?"
"Like, how?"
"Project a window in the door, reach through and open it from the inside?" Terry
shook his head at that idea.
"The time window is only about a molecule wide, with the frame only
marginally larger. You wouldn't be able to reach through the door and open it." They
both were silent for a few seconds.
"Unless…" they both said in unison. Terry pointed to Jamie first.
"We open a small time window, to a time earlier in the day, week, month,
whatever," he explained. "We note exactly when the door would be open, then go in,
then time window back to the same time as we were on the outside – except now
we're inside." Terry nodded.
33
"We can also use that bathroom that's right across from the door as a way of
waiting, too." He looked down for a moment. "I think we're going to have to make
sure we have enough time to charge the time machine's battery before we get going,"
he said. "I wonder if we could find another battery for this thing, and get it charged
up in time."
"Wal-Mart's probably got one," Jamie said. "I can drive."
Terry laughed.
34
35
Saturday, February 8, 2020
The next morning was a little less chilly than the previous day. The new battery
had charged up overnight, and that at least gave them some breathing room for
getting in and out.
They opted for the continental breakfast at Drumlin, sitting in silence as they
both reviewed their iPads. Jamie was looking over some of the references about the
fire and trying to figure out the best way for them to proceed.
Terry lifted his head from reading Schlock Mercenary. "C'mon, it's not like we're
going to miss something. With the extra batteries, we'll be fine."
"It's not that," Jamie said. "I'm just worried what we're going to find when we
get to Old Main. No one – no one – ever found out who was responsible for the fire."
He tapped the table nervously with his spoon. "What if these people weren't exactly
model citizens? You've heard about the racial tensions and anti-war stuff that was
going on at the time – and not just at Whitewater."
"Kent State wasn't for another three months," Terry said. "The bombing of
Sterling Hall in Madison didn't happen until August of that year. In fact, my grandpa
had a few friends who worked at Sterling Hall at the time. He also attended Robert
Fassnacht's funeral." He paused for a moment. "You know that Fassnacht was
working on maglevs for trains and superconductors? And had absolutely nothing to
do with the Army Physics center that had been there for years?"
"Please tell me we're not going to go and try to get his notes next," Jamie said
with a pained look.
"No, no," Terry said. "Grandpa had suggested to me that it had been rumored
that Fassnacht's research might have been close to the holy grail of physics – cold
fusion – but he was only working on stuff that would have been developed in a few
years, anyways." He munched on the last of his bagel. "The two brothers who were
the main perpetrators – Karl and Dwight Armstrong – really screwed up in their
bombing attempt in Madison." He shrugged. "Yeah, there was a lot of anger on
college campuses that year, but it was more or less racial issues in Whitewater."
36
"They tried to tie the Old Main fire to the bombing of Sterling Hall, you know,"
Jamie said. Terry said nothing in response.
Jamie suddenly realized something: "You want to stop them. Stop the
Armstrong brothers, before they kill Fassnacht." Terry gave him a very angry look.
"No," he said, firmly. "Look, we can talk about this after we get the plans."
"Like hell," Jamie replied. "We're talking about this now, or I'm not going to be
joining you." Terry looked around at the rest of the mostly empty dining room.
"My grandfather and I talked at length in the weeks before he died, Jamie. He
knows that the Armstrongs weren't on our campus at the time."
"How'd he know?"
"Because he talked to them." He suddenly looked at the juice he was drinking
and put it back down. "Those two ran this stupid deli – Radical Rye – on State Street
in Madison. Grandpa was visiting Madison one day, happened to track them down
and asked Karl point-blank about it. He said that when Mark Knops, the 'journalist'
who wrote about their bombing exploits, asked if they had done anything with the
Whitewater fire, they essentially lied to him." Jamie raised both of his eyebrows.
"They wanted to build up their 'gang' so it looked like they were more serious
than they were. Truth is, neither of the Armstrongs even knew where Whitewater
was, let alone really cared about whether it burned down or not." He looked at Jamie
with a very serious look. "Even if Knops would have told the grand jury about the
arson, they wouldn't have been able to place them in Whitewater at the time. Hell,"
Terry said with a wave, "they were looking more at trying to blow up the Old Red
Gym on the Madison campus than do anything in Whitewater."
They sat in silence for a good minute or two; then, Jamie shut off his iPad and
put it away.
"We could be in for more trouble, then," he said finally as they got up to dump
their trays. "If it wasn't them, and we still don't know, 50 years later, who did it…"
His voice trailed off.
37
"We're going to have deal with it, either way," Terry said after they got outside
into the cold.
They went back over to Starin, where they got the stuff for their "operation."
Two large duffel bags with the stuff they'd need, including the two extra fully-
charged batteries for the unit. Gloves, so they couldn't trace anything. With a nod,
they got into the VW, pulled out of the parking lot, and went over to Starin Park.
Terry looked at Jamie as he got the controls for the machine ready. "You ready
to do this?"
"Unless there's something else…" Jamie's voice trailed off. Terry said nothing.
"Let's go."
38
39
40
41
Saturday, February 7, 1970
The VW crept slowly down Case Street, on the west side of Old Main. The two
of them looked around as they did so, looking out for anyone and everyone. Jamie
had already mentioned to Terry that most of the activities around the Winter Ice-o-
Rama happened during the day; the formal dance was the culmination of the day's
events. And, from the amount of cars over on Graham Street, it was obvious most of
the activities now were over by Hamilton Gym.
Terry looked at the clock on the GPS – it now said 9:05 PM. They had to do a
little bit of driving around campus before they could stop, or the machine wouldn't be
useable. Finally, they pulled up to the driveway that led up the hill to behind Old
Main. He looked at Jamie.
"Should we head up?" he asked. Jamie looked up and down the street.
"I can't believe the number of cars parked along this street," he said. "Guess
there was a reason why they were building all those new residence halls." He looked
up the driveway. "As long as we can get back out before this place goes up."
Terry nodded and pulled the Bug up the driveway. Once at the top, they turned
into the smaller parking lot and silently – with lights off – pulled the Bug into a spot
in the far corner. Looking at the ammeter, he disconnected the unit from the car
charging system. The reading went up into the green. He let out a sigh of relief. The
time machine unit had a 66% charge still on this battery.
"Okay, let's go," he said, stepping out of the car. "I have something in the trunk I
want to get first, though." Jamie abruptly shut the door when he heard this, and
immediately went to the front of the car – he didn't trust Terry after what he had told
him that morning. What he saw, however, was a complete surprise.
"Is that Flame Repel?" he asked.
"Yeah, that stuff they developed for firebreaks after the wildfires in the state
back in 2018," he said. "I figure that if we use it on the vestibules that lead to the
West Wing, it'll give us some time to find the papers." He shoved one canister in his
42
bag, and put another in Jamie's bag. "Let's go, and remember – nothing about the
future."
They silently headed for the back door of Old Main's Central Wing, in between
the North Wing and the original building. They found the entrance that the campus
radio station staff used to get to the studios on the top floor of Hyer, over on the
north side of the complex, and managed to find an open door. They took the corridor
down through the addition to the North Wing, reaching the north end of the Central
Wing. Just before Jamie was about to head down to the basement, they both heard
voices and ducked into the stairwell, just out of sight.
"Those two idiots from Madison got cold feet at the last minute," came a clipped
voice with a slight German accent. "He didn't believe me when I told him there was
military research going on here."
"Well, the ROTC unit here is pretty much an organized drinking party," came
another voice. "I still can't figure out where we're gonna get over to the west wing,
Al."
"Keep looking," he said. "They don't lock all of these doors up." Jamie looked at
Terry, and Terry quickly went over to the doors they had just entered and threw the
lock on them. He quickly but quietly ran back over to Jamie.
"I think we may need to use the Flame Repel, just be safe," he said. "Let's do a
quick pass, from the top on down, before we go after the documents." Jamie nodded
and they bounded up the stairs to the fourth floor.
Flame Repel, Jamie recalled, was a very effective means of keeping a fire from
spreading. The University of Wisconsin had developed it as a means to essentially
rob flame of two of its key components – oxygen and heat. He'd actually seen it at
work when he was in high school; his science teacher brought it in to emphasize safe
handling of flammable material. Flames literally stopped when they reached a
surface coated with the stuff.
They quickly closed the doors to the hallway and sprayed the Flame Repel along
the frames, then did the same at the top of the stairwell to the West Wing corridor.
43
They sprayed down the doors on all floors, doing the north doors quickly, then the
ones in the West Wing segment.
After the last set of doors, they reached the bathroom where they were going to
"base" their operations. It was locked, but Terry pulled out a skeleton key. It worked
and the door opened. There were only two stalls, but that was going to be enough.
Terry pulled the machine out of his bag, tapped in a time of about 1 PM the previous
day, and activated it.
No one was in the bathroom at the time, so he stepped through the time window.
"I'll be back," he told Jamie. "Meet me by the door to the lab." Jamie did this,
grabbing the two bags and putting them over by the lab door.
He peeked inside the door and saw a brief flash of light. A figure came over to
the door, and with a click and a turn of the knob, Terry opened the door for Jamie.
He pulled the bag into the lab, shut the door behind him, and quickly went with
Terry over to the safe for the papers.
"Wait a minute," Jamie said. "This is a combination lock safe." Terry looked at
it with his MagLite pointed at the door.
"There's an override key slot, though," he said, pointing at the keyhole at the end
of the knob. "They did that so they could give different students access with a new
combination every year." He looked down for a moment, and then looked around the
room.
He saw a desk near the front of the room, went over to it and pulled out a
drawer. Using his MagLite, he looked around a bit, then reached down and pulled a
tray out of the top drawer. He pulled out a key attached to a paperclip. "I think we
got it," he said.
Back over to the safe, he put the key into the slot, held the knob and turned it.
There was an audible click, and then Terry pulled down the handle. The safe door
swung open. Terry flashed the light into it, and there, on the top, were two leather
portfolio folders with his grandpa's name on them. They were two pretty good sized
folders, so he just handed one to Jamie, and took the other for himself.
44
"All right, we're getting dangerously close to zero hour," he said, looking up and
noticing that the clock said 9:40 PM. "Let's see if we can get out of here before those
idiots torch the place." Terry put the keys in his pocket, closed the safe and headed to
the door. "Remember, head to Hyer while I head over to the West Wing." They got
back out into the hallway, and headed back slowly to the connecting corridors
between the two wings when they heard voices coming down the hallway.
"…If we can't get into the lab, we'll just leave the place to be torched," came the
German voice. Both of them froze in their tracks.
"Hey, I think I saw someone down there," came another voice. Terry dashed
towards the West Wing corridor. Jamie decided he didn't want to stick around to see
if the guy was coming after him, and he stormed up the stairway. He got up to the
third floor, turning into the hallway to see if anyone else was coming up the stairs,
and he heard faint footsteps.
He quickly headed up another flight of stairs on the opposite side of the hallway,
tore down to the front of the building, and found another door – which appeared to
be unlocked. He surprisingly found himself with a set of metal circular stairs ahead
of him – and a chill in the air. Ahead of him and beyond the stains he saw three
narrow windows. That was when he saw a flashlight from behind him, and he
clambered up the stairs quickly.
He suddenly realized where he was – right in the middle of Old Main's bell
tower. He continued his climb up to the top of the stairs. Reaching the top platform,
he slid out a small access door to the very narrow balcony outside. The cold air
caught his breath, but it wasn't the reason why he couldn't breathe at that moment.
The view he suddenly had was of the front of Old Main, with a balcony opening up
to a landing on the third floor below. He grabbed on to his sack after nearly pitching
it over the side in haste.
He listened for his pursuer, but couldn't hear anything. He looked down quickly
at his iPod – it said 9:47. He had about three minutes to get back over to the Bug. He
45
thought he heard some voices below, but didn't see anything as he looked down the
staircase.
Slowly, he went back down the staircase and to the access door. He peeked out,
but saw nothing. Sliding along the side of the hallway, he then slid along the handrail
down to the third floor. Looking around, he ducked into the hallway to the East wing
and ran over to the stairs there. Getting back down to the main floor, he slipped out a
side door behind what would now be the Hyer Auditorium, walking between Old
Main's Central and East Wings.
He carefully edged his way past the original Old Main building, coming out on
the far north side of the complex. The VW was there, but with no sight of Terry. He
got in using the spare key that Terry had given him, quickly tossing the bag in the
back. A quick consult of his iPhone told him it was 9:50, which was when the DJ's at
WSUW heard…
KT-TSSSHHHH! The loud noise of a window being smashed filled the air.
Jamie turned to look and saw a flash and some movement over behind the back of
the buildings of Old Main. Suddenly a figure appeared from the west side of the
buildings. It was Terry, running full tilt towards the car. He was apparently yelling
something. Jamie opened the car door to see if he could hear what he was saying…
"START THE CAR!"
Jamie didn't hesitate at that. He turned the Bug over, put it into reverse, then
spun over to where Terry was. Terry opened the passenger door and tossed his bag in
unceremoniously "GO! Get OUT of here!"
Jamie sped the car down to the driveway, but he saw two people coming out of
North Wing. They tried to give chase, but the ice in the parking lot made it hard for
them to do any running.
Terry quickly attached the time machine to the car, and fumbled a bit with the
connections. Jamie looked back and couldn't see if anyone was coming after them.
"ACTIVATE THE WINDOW!" he yelled at him as they skidded out of the
driveway and on to Case Street.
46
"I'm TRYING!" was Terry's response. Jamie accelerated down the empty street
as Terry kept pressing buttons. The window suddenly appeared, and Jamie lurched
the Bug through it.
Unfortunately, Jamie forgot something about Case Street.
It didn't exist in the future.
The window opened, and all Jamie saw in front of him was sidewalk and
grass… and snow. The Bug lurched at the sudden change of surface under it, and the
car started skidding. Jamie corrected the steering, but he was sliding along the
sidewalk – and heading right into a big snow bank.
He swerved, nearly missing a sign on the sidewalk, then swerved around again
with a BUMP and a THUNK as he was back on what appeared to be street. Jamie
kept the car going, even though the time window had closed behind them and they
were now…
When?
He looked down the street, and saw immediately that there was nothing but an
empty lot on the left, where Starin Hall was located. He suddenly realized he had just
gone through a stop sign on the corner of Starin and Case, and floored it in case
someone had seen them. He started to accelerate down Warhawk Drive.
Only it wasn't Warhawk Drive. It was the Starin Road parking lot.
And it was just about to end.
SCREEEEEEEEECHHHHHHHHH! Jamie slammed on the brakes of the
Beetle, and it slid sideways. Just before the car was about to smash broadside into
another snow bank, he popped the car into gear and accelerated down the parking lot.
He swerved to avoid another curb, and slowly got his mental facilities back. He took
the car out of gear and slowly pressed on the brakes, pulling into a parking spot
facing north.
The two of them caught their breath, looked out at the field in front of them.
That was when Terry made the observation: "Where's the Fieldhouse?"
47
Up ahead of them, to the northwest, where the Kachel Fieldhouse was supposed
to be, was instead an open field. There was also supposed to be another parking lot to
the north of them – but there was nothing but snow-covered field.
They both looked at the GPS at the same time. The readout on it said 2002-02-
08 – 9:55 PM.
They looked at each other and said the exact same thing:
"CRAP!"
48
49
Friday, February 8, 2002
"I must have pushed the wrong button as we were heading out of the driveway,"
Terry said.
"We can just try again, right?" Jamie said. "Get over to Starin Park, drive
through the window and everything?"
The Beetle answered the question for him with a sudden rrrrrrrrr-click. The
lights on the car suddenly shut off, and the ammeter was down in the no-charge
range. He tried to re-start the car, to no avail.
"How the hell did THIS happen?" he yelled at Terry. "I thought you said the
machine didn't draw this much battery juice?"
"I also never drove the car through the window at 88 miles per hour!" he replied
testily. Jamie tried to get anything to work as Terry unplugged the GPS from its
moorings.
"It drained the whole battery," Jamie said. "I can't even get the lights to come
back on." Terry looked down at the time machine and frowned. "What?" Jamie
asked.
"The GPS battery is dead," he said. "When I unplugged it, the machine shut off.
I tried turning it back on…" He showed him the unit. "Nothing."
"Use one of the spares," Jamie said. Terry reached back into the back seat and
grabbed one of the batteries, and swapped it into the unit. It came on briefly, then
said "BATTERY LOW" on the screen, and shut off.
Terry let out an unintelligible grunt and got out of the car to try to find the other
battery. "Look over on your side; it may have fallen out when I tossed the bag into
the back." Jamie got out of the car and immediately noticed something.
"I think we may have another problem," he said. Terry looked up and over at
him, as he pointed to the back of the car. Terry put his bag down, went around the
back of the VW, and saw the problem – the left rear tire was now practically flat.
Jamie looked at the front of the VW, and saw something just as worse – the front tire
50
was also flat. The hubcap was gone as well. "Great – two flat tires and a dead
battery." Terry went back around to the other side of the car and rummaged through
his bag.
"The third GPS battery isn't here," he said frantically. He grabbed his MagLite,
looking all around inside the car. He thought for a moment. "Crap. I bet I left it back
in 1970." He threw the bag back into the back seat. "I had to dodge that guy with a
German accent, and in switching out batteries, I think I dropped it in the classroom
where I was hiding."
"So that's why that second battery was dead?" Jamie asked. Terry nodded.
"I set it to go back 48 hours earlier," he explained. "I got out through a door in
the back corner of West Wing, and thought I could just activate a time window to
9:50." He looked down. "The idiots were breaking into the building just to the right
of me as I closed the window. That was why I was running full speed through the
lot."
"Do you at least have the charger?" Jamie asked. Terry nodded.
"But it's going to take us nine hours after I get it plugged in. And I don't know
how we're going to do that." He had a thought. "What time does your iPhone say?"
Jamie pulled it out and tapped on the Home button. The lock screen appeared with
the time as 10:01, and the date was listed – improbably – as Friday, February 8. He
unlocked the screen, and the "no service found" notification came up. He dismissed
it and clicked on the Calendar app. It said, dutifully, that it was February of 2002.
"Part of me is impressed that it can go back that far," Terry said.
"Ha, ha," Jamie said sarcastically. "We can't use it to call anyone, though. And
even if we did, what are we gonna say?" He slammed shut the driver's door of the
Bug. "This night could not possibly get any worse."
"Yes it could," Terry said, pointing as the UW-W Campus Police car came
around the corner.
••• ••• •••
51
"Remember – NOTHING about the future," Terry whispered to Jamie as the
patrol car pulled up to the car. Jamie turned and looked down at the tires on the Bug,
then back at the cruiser.
The policeman got out of the car – or, more correctly, the policewoman. A
platinum blonde with long tresses stepped out with a flashlight in her hand. Her
jacket had the old Whitewater Old Main logo on the sleeve, along with the words
"CAMPUS POLICE" surrounding it.
"What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?" she asked in greeting.
Terry spoke up for them: "We had a little issue with some flat tires, ma'am." He
pointed to the front and rear wheels. "I was teaching my buddy here how to drive a
stick, and he must've hit the curb a few too many times." She looked at the two of
them skeptically.
"We got a report from someone over in White Hall that there was a car driving
erratically over on Case Street," she explained as she pulled out a small notebook
from her coat pocket. "Camera in the visitor's center showed y'all skidding around
the parking lot here like it was a skating rink." Jamie swore he heard a bit of a
southern accent, but not heavy enough to be from the deep parts of the South, like
Louisiana or the Gulf Coast. Terry raised his gloved hands in protest.
"We weren't trying to do any drifting, ma'am, if that's what you're asking," he
said. "Honestly, he had some trouble with the car, and it just got away from him." He
turned to look at the car. "Unfortunately, he killed it so many times when he was
trying to use the clutch, the battery's dead. Won't even turn over." The officer raised
her eyebrow at that.
"Do you need a jump start?" she asked. "I've got cables in the back of the car."
Terry looked briefly at Jamie.
"I don't know if it'll do anything, since it's got two flat tires."
"Make that four," she said, as she pointed to the right side of the car. They both
looked down at the tires and saw that they were also flat. Both of them had a very
52
pained expression on their faces. "Well, at least you can call for a tow on your
iPhone there," she said to them.
"I don't have any service out here," Jamie replied – and then noticed Terry's
horrified expression. Suddenly, Terry looked at the officer with a squint.
"The iPhone isn't scheduled for release for another five years," he said with an
icy stare. The blonde officer closed her eyes in pain, and instinctively brought her
hand up to just below her neck. Terry looked down at her badge – "WELLS" was her
name. "Let me guess, you're the great-granddaughter of a noted English writer who
happened to be given a little family secret?"
"No," she said in response. "I'm a nanotech researcher from Dallas who happens
to be a contractor with the FBI."
"That explains the accent," Jamie said. Terry didn't keep his eyes off her.
"That doesn't explain what you're doing here, in the middle of Wisconsin, in the
middle of winter," he accused.
"Look," she said with some exasperation. "We know what's going on. We've
been trying to track the two of you down for a while now." Terry looked around with
a furtive glance, as did Jamie.
"We?"
Suddenly, a mailbox that Jamie didn't remember seeing on the sidewalk next to
the parking lot started to move a bit. The side door swung out, and something
emerged from the inside.
"Gaaaaah," came a voice. "It is way too cold out here for this crap," the figure
said as it trudged across the parking lot to where they all stood by the car. As the
figure came closer, Jamie realized that it was a midget of some sort. A midget who
was bundled up from the cold in what looked like several layers of clothes and a
burka-style hat. And, as Jamie had guessed about "Officer" Wells, this guy appeared
to be a Texan as well.
53
A set of eyes finally emerged from behind a scarf, and a gloved hand reached
into one of its pockets and pulled out a badge. "Agent Keith Scott, Temporal
Investigation division of the FBI." He looked at Terry. "You must be Erikson. We
know about your grandfather's research into temporal communication devices. He
was doing the work for us."
"Why should I believe you?" Terry said to him. Jamie kept his eye on the Wells
lady. He swore he recognized her from somewhere, but couldn't place it.
"You ran into the arsonists earlier," he said. "You knew it wasn't going to be the
'New Years Gang', but you were surprised by the German fellow." Terry raised an
eyebrow. "Your grandfather knew him. His name was Alex Gordon, and he was a
student at Whitewater in 1969." He paused. "Only that wasn't his real name. His real
name was Aleksandr Gortovsky." Terry's eyebrows shot up.
"KGB?" he asked.
"Not quite," Agent Scott shook his head. "He was a double-agent working for
the East German government. He was trying to get your grandfather's time travel
plans, but he failed when he couldn't get into the safe where your grandfather hid
them. The fire was supposed to be a diversion, but his cohorts were a little too
militant."
"And they apparently did a pretty good job of hiding all these years," Terry said.
"Especially if they never figured out who set the fire, nor did they figure out it was
this Gortovsky guy."
"Gortovsky died five years later, trying to cross Checkpoint Charlie into East
Berlin," Scott stated. "His cohorts were never found – mostly, we think, because they
were taken out by the KGB before year's end. That's why we didn't even know about
Gortovsky's involvement in all this until about eight years ago – your time."
"So you guys are from 2012?" Jamie asked. The Wells girl nodded.
"We figured a few things out," she said, then turned to Terry. "A few years ago,
your grandpa gave you something, while he was in the hospital, right before he died.
54
It was a medallion, about two inches in diameter, and it had a greenish-yellow tinge
to it."
Terry was slightly shocked.
"How did you know?" he asked. She smiled and grabbed the top of her collar,
pulling out a pendant that looked like an old Native American artifact.
"I'm very familiar with the emission signature of sesquicentium," she said with a
smile.
••• ••• •••
Cassie Wells was sitting back and relaxing on her couch in her North Texas
home. A new episode of Storage Wars was on, and she was really getting into the
latest auction when she heard a noise out in front of her house. She looked out her
front window and saw two dogs wandering around in her front yard: a collie from a
few doors down, and a yellow-ish mutt like dog. The collie was trying to sniff the
yellow dog's butt, but the yellow dog was having none of it.
Cassie chuckled to herself as she went to the front door and out to the front
lawn. "Go on, Tillie, get on back home," she told the collie. The collie looked
puzzled, especially after the yellow dog went and hid behind Cassie. "Go on," she
said with another wave of her hand. The collie dejectedly wandered away, looking
back at least once as Cassie continued to wave her away.
"I've got to get a different disguise," came a voice from the dog.
"You should have remembered from last time that Tillie liked your dog robot,"
she said as a door emerged from the front and Agent Scott stepped out.
"I'll have to go back to the Escalade, then," he said. "I'm kinda here on business,
actually. Did you happen to visit the Midwestern US in 1968 recently?"
"No, why?"
"We had some strange readings of someone buying a VW back in February of
1968 at a dealer in Milwaukee," he explained. "The car was purchased and
55
registered to a person named 'Terry Ericson' when it was new, and then apparently
sold and re-registered to a 'Terrence Erikson' in 2020."
"The name's not familiar," Cassie replied.
"It is to us," Agent Scott said. "If he's who we think he is, one of our former
researchers may have revealed the secret of time travel to his grandson."
••• ••• •••
"We talked to your grandfather at his retirement home in Scottsdale," Cassie
continued. "He told us about his interview with the Armstrong brothers, and that he
was convinced that the fire was started by someone who had inside knowledge of his
research."
"He gave me a list of the people who worked on his project, and I ran them
through our database," Scott continued. "It took us a bit, but we managed to cross-
reference Gortovsky with his academic records at Whitewater." He paused. "Or, at
least, from the records we had to find from Whitewater."
"We had to go back to 1969 and figure out if Gortovsky was enrolled at
Whitewater for the fall of that year," Cassie explained. "The records were apparently
destroyed in the fire, and his computerized records were lost as well."
"Intentional, or from the ensuing flood of Hyer Hall?" Terry asked.
"We're thinking it was intentional," Scott stated. "It just so happened to be his
punch cards that disappeared out of the thousands that were on file afterwards. That
was why we made the jump back."
"And that was where we found your little VW here," Cassie said. "You had it
parked out in front of the entrance to the East Wing, and not only did the license
plate match the registration we'd found, we also detected micro-tachyon residue on
the car."
"Residue?" Jamie asked.
"The time portal window isn't supposed to leave anything behind when you
open, enter or close it," Terry explained.
56
"It is and it isn't," Cassie retorted. "Most elements and biological organisms
don't retain anything indicating they've just went through a time window. Except for
two things: diamonds and rubies." Jamie was confused.
"A VW Beetle doesn't have any diamonds or rubies in them," he said.
"But the laser that focuses the beam on the one-five-oh does," Terry said,
looking at Cassie. "And, I suspect, so would any wiring used to aim said laser."
Cassie nodded and took out a portable wand, waving it over the front end of the
Beetle. It whined as she waved it across the top of the A-pillar of the Bug.
"I checked it with our portable tachyon rad unit, and Agent Scott did the same
thing when he saw you travel back to 2020," she said. "We knew you were going to
end up back on campus, but we didn't know when you were going to show up."
"The agency looked up cases of 'unusual events' from 1970 to the present day at
Whitewater," said Agent Scott, "and we found the entry about your little skid from
this year." He shrugged a bit. "It was pretty easy to convince the campus police that
we would look into the situation ourselves."
"So what are you gonna do, take the plans from us?" Jamie said.
"They are government property," Agent Scott began.
"They're my grandfather's property," Terry insisted loudly.
"I think he'd agree with you," Cassie said as she pulled out a device and tapped a
few things on the screen. Out of the top of the device came a 3-D holographic image
– of Lawrence Erikson.
"Hello, Ter," the message began. "I'm making this quick, mostly because this is
right after the last time you saw me." His grandfather was sitting up in a hospital bed.
"I didn't know about Alex until Miss Wells and Mister Scott came to visit me a few
years ago. I told them I wanted you to find the papers – not them." He coughed for a
moment. "I gave you that Element One-five-oh coin for one reason – I trusted you to
get the papers back in the right hands. I knew I might not be around to see you
actually do it, but I wanted it to be you who did it. I also made these two promise me
they weren't going to do anything to you, or to your time machine – among a few
57
other things." He smiled for a moment before starting to cough again. "Damn
emphysema. Look – these two are here to help you. Let them, okay? And remember:
I love you."
The message ended, and Terry was trying to fight back the tears. Fortunately, at
just that time a car came charging down Starin Road, blaring Usher from its
speakers. Cassie rolled her eyes and then looked over at Agent Scott.
"I don't actually have to go chasing after those idiots, do I?" she asked.
"Nah," he said. "Look, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting freakin'
cold. How about we get your car to a shop and we can talk about what you found
somewhere else – preferably where it's warmer?" Terry nodded and Jamie shrugged.
A few minutes later, a flatbed tow truck arrived to take the VW to a shop over
on the east side of Whitewater. Cassie took care of the towing costs, and took the
four of them in the cruiser over to a hotel a few blocks away.
"My dad always said that this side of Whitewater is what the town would have
looked like without the school here," Terry said as they settled into the room. He
immediately grabbed the battery charger out of his pack and plugged it in to the wall.
Cassie chuckled at the sight.
"It never occurred to you to go forward in time and get a different power
source?" she asked.
"Wasn't high on my priority list at the time," he said. "Besides, I had it rigged up
to the electrical system of the Bug, and it provided more than enough power to get it
through. I just didn't adjust for the possible compensation of motion by entering the
portal."
"You also wasted a lot of power by making the time portal window so big," she
said. "That's probably the reason why you blew the transformer that one time." Terry
raised an eyebrow.
"How'd you know about that?"
"We had to cover up that incident once we tracked you down," Agent Scott said.
58
"I found out pretty early that if you made the window any larger than a door, it
would fry the battery," Cassie said. "That's why I sought out a different power
source."
"Like what?" Jamie asked.
"Not telling," she replied. "You can find that out on your own."
"Excuse me, people?" Agent Scott interrupted. "The plans?"
"Oh, yeah," Terry said as he reached into his bag. "We found them in the safe
that got crushed by Old Main's Carillon. They were in two separate satchels in
there." He handed the one satchel to Agent Scott, who looked it over. "That one's
apparently the write-ups and extracts. The other one is the schematics; Jamie's got
that." Jamie started looking through his bag for the satchel. "We expected there
might be trouble, so we decided to split up and meet back at the car at a pre-
determined..."
"They're not in here," Jamie said, somewhat frantically. "I had them in the bag,
then we got separated, and then that one guy chased after me… oh, crap."
"What?" they all said.
"The bell tower. I lost them in the bell tower." Jamie explained to them what
happened that took him so long to get out of the building.
"That was about the same time I was trying to change batteries in the GPS,"
Terry said. "I was hiding in a classroom over on fourth floor of the West Wing, and
Gortovsky was walking past. I managed to portal out of there before he found me."
Cassie and Agent Scott looked at each other.
"We're going to have to go back to 1970 and get the plans," Agent Scott said.
"And we better see if we can track down that spare battery for these guys, too,"
Cassie said. "You don't know if it would have done anything to the building that..."
Terry cursed suddenly.
"Chemistry lab," he blurted out. "Dammit, I was in the chemistry lab. No telling
what happened after that thing caught fire."
59
"Well, as long as there was no one else in the building," Agent Scott said, "there
shouldn't be a problem."
"But there was," Jamie interjected. "Some kid by the name of Keith Masuda was
doing something in a classroom in the basement of West Wing when the two guys at
the radio station heard the glass breaking." Cassie and Agent Scott looked at each
other.
Scott pulled out a netbook from his coat pocket, typed a few things into it, and
sighed. "Damn. We're going to have to try to go grab the battery, too."
"Why?" Cassie asked.
"He's a bank executive back in his home state of Hawaii," he explained quickly.
"Specializing in home loans for naval families in Pearl City." Cassie nodded at the
reference. " He apparently helped quite a few of them during the housing collapse in
2008. It'd do too much damage to the timeline if he was killed."
"So it looks like we go back to the West Wing first, then we can look for the
satchel," Cassie suggested.
"Wait – they got the guy out of there before the building went up in flames,"
Jamie said. "He wouldn't be in danger because of an explosion set off in a different
part of the building, would he?"
"Where was the chemistry classroom?" Cassie asked.
"Up on the top floor of the West Wing, in the back," Terry said. "That was one
of the three places the fire was allegedly set. Jamie told me the guy was in a
classroom down on the first floor, near the front, when he got the call about the fire."
"Yeah." Jamie nodded. "I saw a light on in one of the classrooms closest to the
main entrance. I think he was doing something in one of the business classrooms."
He brought up a photo of the front of Old Main and showed it to Agent Scott.
60
"The classroom he was in was right next to the front entrance of the West Wing,
where that little terrace is located, by the tree. Terry was in back, in the corner by the
older wings." Agent Scott pondered the photo.
"How much of the building burned down, anyways?" Jamie pointed to the wing
in the upper right of the photo.
"That was the only wing of the building that survived the fire," he said.
"Everything else you see in this photo was destroyed in the fire." Cassie and Agent
Scott let out a slow whistle. Jamie pointed up at the tower.
"I had actually gotten up to here, and I suspect that the satchel is probably lying
down on that little landing right there, above the main entrance." He thought for a
moment. "It was 9:47 when I climbed back down and out of the tower area, and
headed over to the car – from over by Hyer Hall."
"Hyer Hall?" Cassie asked.
"That's the current name of the remaining East Wing of Old Main," Terry
explained.
61
"There wasn't much room over on that side of the old building," Jamie
explained. "I had to walk carefully along a path in the snow along the east side,
mostly because I didn't want to meet up with Gortovsky and his gang."
"So we just need to go back to just before then, get the battery over in the West
Wing, then get the satchel over by the front of the building," Cassie stated. "That
way, we can get this all taken care of tonight." She paused as the others looked at
her. "Figuratively speaking, of course."
62
63
Saturday, February 7, 1970
The four of them emerged from a time window on the southwest side of the Old
Main block, on one of the walkways leading up to the main entrance. Jamie pointed
out the light in the classroom as they approached the building.
Agent Scott used a generic lock-pick to open the door to the West Wing's main
entrance. Terry motioned to Cassie to pull the door shut after they had all entered the
building. He quickly stuck his head around the corner, and saw the clock in the
hallway read 9:25.
Terry eased himself down to the entrance to the classroom that had the light on,
and saw the student – Masuda – writing something on the chalkboard at the front of
the lecture hall. He looked around a bit, and saw that there was a telephone on the
wall to the one side of his desk. He let out a breath and slipped back to the entrance.
"All clear," he said. "He's got a phone on the desk next to him." He motioned to
the stairs just to the left of the hallway entrance. "There's a bathroom upstairs; we
can go back 24 hours and time window in just after I dropped the battery." Cassie
nodded and followed him up the stairs. Agent Scott and Jamie waited in the foyer of
the building, to keep an eye on Masuda.
Once they got up to the top floor, they ducked into the bathroom use the time
window. Going back 24 hours, they headed back over to the chemistry classroom –
only to run into a janitor.
"Hey!" The old guy said. "What are you doing in here?" Cassie smiled at him.
"Officer Sandra Wells, Whitewater Police Department," she said. "Mr. Erikson
here is a student on campus. He has reason to believe that someone may be stealing
chemicals from one of the chemistry labs in attempt to blow up the building." The
old guy looked at her skeptically.
"I didn't know the Whitewater cops had hired a girl," he said.
"Hey, this is the '70's now," she said. "Get over it." She waved at the classroom
where Terry would hide the following night. "We need access to that classroom. Or
do I need to get a search warrant?"
64
The old guy rolled his eyes and said, "All right, all right, not gonna argue with a
broad." He grumbled under his breath as he pulled out his master set of keys. Cassie
whispered something to Terry as the janitor snapped on the light to the lab. "Here ya
go," he said, turning to face Cassie. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to know what is
going –"
FLASH! Suddenly, the janitor was blinded, and had a dazed look on his face.
"Wha… Wha happen?"
"You got too close to a couple of the chemicals, sir," Cassie said with some
authority. "One of the students here found you passed out in the lab and notified
campus security. I think you better head outside for some fresh air for a bit while we
make sure the chemicals in here aren't leaking." The janitor nodded uncertainly, and
wandered back down the hallway, then down the stairs.
"So did Agent Jay or Agent Kay give you that?" Terry asked as he turned back
to face her. Cassie just laughed.
"Agent Scott gave it to me for just such emergencies." She punched a button on
the side, and put it back in her pocket. "Come on; let's get back to where you were
tomorrow."
Cassie turned her time machine on and programmed it for 9:45 – the time that
Terry said he remembered the clock reading just as he stepped back 48 hours. Behind
a separate table in the chem lab, she opened the window and had a look around.
Cassie saw a flash of light coming from the other side of the room, and saw Terry's
time window close up.
She motioned to him to come with through the window. He quickly scrambled
over to the table where he had hidden, and found the extra battery. He grabbed it and
went back to Cassie.
"Let's get out of here," she said. "We can go back to 9:25, and then head
downstairs to meet up with your buddy and Agent Scott." She went to open her time
machine, when he stopped her.
65
"Allow me," he said. He had already slapped the battery back into the machine,
and he turned it on to a full charge. He tapped in the time coordinates, and
elaborately pressed the "activate" button.
Nothing happened.
Terry looked down at the readout. "Please set date and time to continue," he
said aloud. Cassie laughed and opened her time machine.
"I may just go get you some battery tape, just out of pity," she said as they
walked through the time portal.
••• ••• •••
The clock on the wall clicked to 9:26 as they peeked out the door, scrambling
back over by the bathroom where they did the initial back-step. Cassie heard the
familiar FZZZT of the time portal, and motioned Terry down the stairs. At the
second floor landing, Terry heard a noise, and motioned to Cassie to hold back.
When he looked around the corner, he saw himself, from the "past", jogging
down the hallway towards the corridor that connected the West Wing with the
Central Wing. He thought about saying something to his past self, but then decided
against it. He went back to Cassie and motioned to go back down the stairs.
"We should stay away from the West Wing connecting corridors for a bit," he
said when they got down to the main floor.
"Why? We need to go back over to the Central Wing, don't we?" Cassie turned
to see Agent Scott and Jamie waiting for them. Cassie waved them over and the two
joined them heading back up the stairs.
"We weren't quite done with our 'backup plan'," Terry explained. Cassie and
Agent Scott looked at each other – and it was just then that Jamie noticed that Scott
had suddenly grown about three feet from leg extensions.
"Backup plan?" Jamie was thrown for a bit, but slowly realized what Terry
meant. "Oh, you mean the Flame Repel." They reached the landing on the second
floor of West Wing. Now it was Cassie's turn to be surprised.
66
"Wait a minute – you applied Flame Repel in the hallways? Indoors?" Jamie and
Terry nodded in assent. "Oh boy. I'd forgotten about that stuff." They kept moving
up to the third floor, where they went over to the connecting corridor to the Central
Wing. Cassie saw where Terry had sprayed the Flame Repel around the frame of the
door. She was about to say something to Agent Scott when he pushed the door open
– and promptly slid all the way down the hallway, face first.
"I was about to say," as both Jamie and Terry walked gingerly across the door
frame where the chemical had been applied. "The silicone gel used to make it adhere
to surfaces makes them nearly frictionless. That was the reason why they stopped
making the stuff in 2025." Cassie turned to the two of them. "Debris from one side of
an application could still fly through the stuff, and if it picked up speed, it turned into
a flaming missile."
"I'm alright, thanks for asking," Agent Scott said as he righted himself. Terry
mumbled an apology as Cassie helped dusting him off. "Okay, we need to get over to
that landing before we run into anything else."
"It's one floor up," Jamie said as they got to the stairs. The floors creaked as
Agent Scott walked over to them. "Uh, the floors in this section were notorious for
being noisy." Agent Scott nodded and lowered himself down.
They eased up the stairs, and Jamie heard a door shutting above them. He
motioned them down, then looked around the corner to see Gortovsky and a dark-
haired woman trying a few of the doors. They went over to the far stairwell by the
Hyer Hall corridor, disappearing into the night.
"That was close," he said. They turned the corner, and found the door that Jamie
had used to get up in the bell tower. Agent Scott pulled out an infrared scanner from
out of his pocket, opened the door, and looked up. He nodded and motioned the rest
to stay back. About a minute later, he came back out with the satchel in his hands.
"Let's get out of here before we meet up with your past self," he said to Jamie.
They all headed over to the stairwell down to the main floor, and to the entrance
foyer of Old Main. "Looks like we're going to get these plans out of here without a–"
67
An ominous click came from a person holding a gun at the main entrance to the
building.
"Why thank you, Comrade," Gortovsky said as he pointed the gun at him. "You
just made my job easier." Agent Scott went to pull out his gun – "I wouldn't do that if
I were you," he said as he quickly grabbed Cassie and held the gun against her
temple. "Now, give me the plans." Agent Scott paused, slowly raising his hands.
"You can't just try overcoming us all, Gortovsky," he said carefully.
"I don't intend to," Gortovsky laughed. "This little lady is going to be my
insurance policy that I get what I want and you go away." He motioned to him. "The
plans. NOW."
Cassie whispered something under her breath. Gortovsky looked at her briefly.
"What was that, my little liebchen?"
"You picked the wrong gal to mess with, comrade," she said as she slowly
reached up towards her neck.
"How so, dahling?"
Cassie showed him.
In one swift move she opened her time machine, pressed a button and aimed it at
Gortovsky's other arm. A crackling "FZZZT" sound was made as the edge of the
time portal opened up on his arm, making him scream in sudden pain. Then, with a
quick push, Cassie sent him through the window – and into a plywood sheet that
covered the entryway to the building.
Agent Scott quickly pulled out something from his bag, which looked to Jamie
like a small flashlight, and quickly pressed a button on the side – and with a flash of
light, the time window closed.
Cassie let out a loud sigh of relief, then turned to the others with a big smile.
"Now THAT is how you use a time machine," she said as they quickly went out
the front doors.
68
••• ••• •••
"Where'd you send him?" was the first thing Agent Scott asked as they were
heading down the walkway towards Case Street. Cassie showed him the time
machine readout. "Oooh, very nice."
"How long did you set the neuralyzer for?" Cassie asked.
"Same amount – except five years into the past." The two of them looked at
each other, and then they both started laughing uncontrollably.
"Care to explain what just happened?" Jamie asked.
"I have an automatic 'panic button' on this thing," Cassie explained. "It
automatically opens a time window to a set number of minutes, hours, days or – in
this guy's case – years from the current time. I had it set for five years, just in case
we needed to get out of here in a hurry."
"And you used the neuralyzer on him," Terry said. Agent Scott nodded.
"He will come to thinking that it's 1965, and he'll have forgotten all about
Whitewater," he said. "I had the emergency setting on max, which is five years.
"You're not gonna use that on us, are you?" Terry asked, fingering his time
machine nervously in his pocket.
"No, your grandfather wouldn't like it. He told Cassie and me specifically not to
zap either of you. Didn't want to affect your studies. He made us promise, or he
wouldn't go along with any of this."
"Along with a few other promises," Cassie said as they reached the place where
they'd entered from 2002.
69
Early Saturday morning, February 9, 2002
"So, now what?" Jamie asked as they drove back to the hotel in the campus
police car.
"The plans go back with us to the year 2012," Agent Scott stated. "It'll take us a
few years to go over them and see what's usable. You guys can go back to 2020 with
your car. We'll take care of the cost of the repairs, relax. We'll let you know what we
find from the plans. Either way – you guys go your own way after this morning."
Terry and Jamie bunked down for the night in the hotel room, paid for by the
FBI. Cassie lent them some of her "cosplay" clothes from the 2000's so they wouldn't
look completely out of place.
The next morning, they met Agent Scott over at the repair shop as the car's tires
were replaced. The technician mentioned that in addition to the tires and the battery,
they had to do a front-end alignment as well because it looked like the car had run
over a few curbs. Jamie rolled his eyes at that comment.
"Still, that thing is in fantastic condition!" The technician handed the papers to
Terry. "I was surprised it had so few miles on the odometer, though. Did you rebuild
the engine or something?"
"Yeah, something like that," Terry said, nodding to the guy in thanks.
Agent Scott joined them back at the hotel to de-brief them, as they paid the bill
for the night's stay. "Gortovsky found himself outside of Old Main in February of
1975 – in the middle of a construction site in winter. He was hauled off by waiting
FBI agents, and sent to prison for trespassing on state property and possession of a
gun.
"The CIA had him 'deported' back to East Germany," Scott finished as they
headed back out the door. "He tried running when he was being 'transferred' across
Checkpoint Charlie – and ended up getting shot by DDR guards."
"Did they ever figure out the identity of the woman who was with him?" Jamie
asked.
70
"We think so," he replied. "A woman was detained briefly by police after the
fire started, but she wasn't charged with anything. It wasn't until our time that we
discovered she was another double-agent, this time working for the KGB. She was
apparently found dead from 'questionable injuries' a few months after the fire."
They waved their goodbyes to Agent Scott, who suggested that they might not
want to go over to Starin Park at the moment. "The lot you guys used to open the
time window is covered with snow – and the area is being used for a winter festival
sponsored by the city." He suggested they head up to the industrial park and head
back to campus from there.
71
Saturday, February 8, 2002
"It is going to be so good to be sleeping in my own bed for a change," Terry said
as they turned down Starin Road towards the campus.
"I don't get it," Jamie replied.
"There were a couple of times where I came back to the room and I was still in
bed sleeping," he explained. "I had to use the couch a few times." They pulled into
the parking lot off Warhawk Drive, where Terry parked the Bug facing Drumlin
Hall. "Did you want to get lunch first, or get our stuff back into the room?"
"Let's get our stuff back in," Jamie said. They had no sooner finished getting all
their stuff together that they heard a noise coming from the center of the campus.
They both looked at each other, and realized they had just heard that noise yesterday
– when they were back in 1969.
The carillon bells.
They both ran across the parking lot, to the sidewalk just across from the
entrance to Starin Hall, and looked up to see the bell tower of Old Main, rising from
the top of the hill on the Whitewater campus.
Just then, Jamie heard his iPhone beep. He reached down into his coat pocket
and pulled it out. He had a new text message from a 972 area code phone number.
Your grandfather made us promise one other thing, too. It
took us a bit, but we managed to get it done without
damaging the timeline.
Enjoy! – Cassie
Jamie turned to show the message to Terry, but he was too busy staring at the
flagpole on top of the tower, tears streaming down his face.
72
73
New Prologue
The Fire at Old Main
On the night of February 7, 1970, a call came into the city of Whitewater
fire department from the campus radio station, WSUW. A student smelled
smoke outside the studios, and noticed that the main building of the
Wisconsin State University at Whitewater was on fire.
That was the beginning of a long, fierce battle that resulted in the nearly
complete loss of the Old Main building of the Whitewater campus. The fire,
which was believed to be started by arsonists, raged through the night,
destroying two of the building's four wings – including the original building
that had been constructed back in the 1870's when the campus was new.
The lack of fire doors and a bounty of combustible material made the
fire that much more devastating. Though some books and papers were
salvaged by students and professors, the contents of the building were a total
loss afterwards. The loss affected every student on campus at the time, as the
majority of classes at the school were held in Old Main.
The fire consumed most of the West wing of the building, where it is
believed the fire started, and also consumed the older North Wing. However,
for some reason that still baffles those involved today, the flames avoided the
tower section of the Central Wing. Though the smoke and water damage
caused most of the contents of the building to be a total loss, the bells in the
tower were saved – despite a great deal of damage to the remaining parts of
the building.
The fire departments battling the blaze had an additional difficulty with
the sub-freezing temperatures and the lack of water. Water was brought in
from as far away as Palmyra, but the amount could not affect the level of
damage to the building. At least one firefighter from Fort Atkinson was hurt
trying to battle the blaze, as he had fallen off a ladder trying to reach an
upper-level window.
74
As the night went on, the amount of water that had built up from dousing
the fire – along with the melting of snow and the near-dew-point temperatures
towards morning – caused the fire doors that had protected the East Wing
(now known as Hyer Hall) from damage to burst open, flooding the
basement of that building and causing a stream to run down what is now the
Wyman Mall towards Hamilton Field. The torrent also ran down the main
drive outside the entrance, which ended up destroying many of the alumni
transcripts and other school records.
Classes were canceled the following Monday and Tuesday, but by
Wednesday students were meeting at various rooms in dormitories, the
University Center and other facilities on campus.
As the years have passed, no one is sure who may have started the fire –
or why. Some have suggested that the fire may have been politically
motivated; others suggest that the building was a tinderbox that was just
waiting for a spark to ignite it. No suspects were ever named in the ensuing
arson investigation, though at least one person – a female – was detained
briefly afterwards. Though the grand jury found one newspaper reporter in
contempt because he refused to divulge information about the fire, no
indictments were ever made.
The loss of the majority of the building was somewhat alleviated when it
was determined later that year that the main section of the Central Wing,
containing the bell tower and the office of chancellor Carter, was determined
to be salvageable, along with Hyer Hall. An anonymous benefactor donated
the funds necessary to renovate the Central Wing – now renamed "New Old
Main" – and a new walkway to the also renamed Hyer Hall. Both buildings
reopened in the fall of 1972. The façade of the main entrance to New Old
Main had to be repaired in February of 1975, as a snowstorm had caused a
tree to fall on the building's southeast corner.
The fire had lasting effects for everyone on campus at the time – and
upon the entire city of Whitewater. The New Old Main building was
75
completely renovated in 2008, when another endowment by former UWW
graduate Lawrence Erikson paid for the superstructure of the building to be
reinforced and upgraded to house the alumni center, the new school records
department, a historical museum about the university, and meeting rooms.
The endowment also paid for a digital update to the carillon bells, allowing
the school to keep their sounds continuing on for another century to come.
To the many faculty, staff and students who suffered loss from the fire's
effects, the impact of the fire is still felt today – nearly 50 years afterward.
– Excerpt from The University of Whitewater: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, 1868-2018,
by Adrienne Daniels
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77
Epilogue – Sunday Morning, February 9, 2020
The alarm on Jamie Kourtens' iPad2 sounded briefly, but not to serenade him
with some song from ten years in the past. He groggily reached for it and swiped the
unlock switch, seeing a notification that he had a message from Terry.
Meet me over at Drumlin. Got news about the TCD. – Ter
Jamie sighed and looked at the clock – 8:25. He put the iPad down and got out
of bed, grabbing some clothes from his dresser to make himself somewhat
presentable.
After a check of the weather – it had warmed up a bit since yesterday – he threw
on his coat and headed over to the dining hall. After going through the food line, he
wandered over to the far side of the dining room, where he saw Terry talking to
someone in a wheelchair – which he suspected was Agent Scott.
"Hey, sleepyhead," Terry greeted him. Agent Scott waved from his chair,
dressed up in a disguise as a wheelchair-bound hippie. "Agent Scott has some bad
news for us."
"Yeah," he began as Jamie sat down. "The communication machine doesn't
work. It was good theory, and he had gotten it right about a possible element that
would emit micro-tachyons. Unfortunately, he ran up against the basic laws of
physics: the laser that activates the time window creates heat – which destroys any
transmission that would go through the laser or any other means of transmitting a
message." He tilted his head a bit in a note of resignation. "It couldn't even do Morse
code."
"There is good news, though," Terry said. "There doesn't appear to have been
any significant changes to the timeline. There was still enough damage to Old Main
after the fire that people who had projects, books and such that weren't originally
salvaged from the building still ended up 'losing' them. It actually took about two
years to rebuild the Central Wing, and by that time the university already went ahead
with plans for other buildings to help shore up classroom space on campus."
"What about the observatory?" Jamie asked.
78
"It was built a little further back on the hill," Terry explained. "They shut down
some of the lights by the back entrance when they're using it."
"Terry's grandfather got an award from the FBI and NSA for his work in the
study of Temporal Physics before he passed away." Agent Scott smiled. "That was
the medallion he gave Terry. We intentionally made it out of sesquicentium."
"I've still got the time machine," Terry said, showing the GPS to Jamie. "Cassie
came through with her promise to give me some battery tape. The unit takes a lot less
time to recharge now. I still have the connections in the VW, but at least we know
now not to use the thing at high speed. She also got me a solar battery for the Bug,
too, so we won't have issues with the car battery dying on us again.
"On that subject," Agent Scott interjected. "We will be watching you. Both of
you. Not me, personally – I have my own caseload back in Texas. But keep this in
mind: this is TOP SECRET stuff. You two, Cassie and a select few are the only ones
who know about this machine." He looked at Terry. "That means no unauthorized
time travels, no major changes to history – and you HAVE to cover your tracks
better. If you don't – well, you saw what happened to Gortovsky. If you can't keep
this secret, we'll have no choice but to take the time machine from you." Jamie and
Terry both nodded at this.
"Cassie sent me a bunch of tips about time travel and such," he said, holding his
iPad. "It's been very informative. I would have never thought about adjusting for
differences in the continents when going back to prehistoric times."
"On that note, I have to get back to work," Agent Scott said, moving his
wheelchair back and away from the table.
"Do you need a ride 'back to the past'?" Terry offered.
"Nope, I'm good," he said, pulling away from the table. "See you two around
some time."
79
Afterword
In case you haven't figured it out, all characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Also, in case you haven't heard, there is
no such thing as time travel, nor does the bell tower of Old Main still stand on the campus of the
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
The presentation of how events unfolded on the night of February 7, 1970 in Whitewater, Wisconsin,
are based on what was reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal and from accounts by
eyewitnesses – but the causes and possible reasons for those events as presented here are fictional. Some
individuals who were named in this work are real persons that were mentioned in the supporting materials.
They are used here as historical references.
Photo of Old Main shown in the text is courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection,
History of UW-Whitewater. Photo Identifier 01-O-329 #1, used courtesy of the UW-Whitewater
Archives (Local Identifier: UW.uwwhite0233.bib).
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