3012: The Artifact by John M. Grier - HTML preview

Destiny Island, Bahamas 2002

Susan got up from the lounge chair and once again admired the view from the bluff overlooking the tiny lagoon on the Bahamian island named Destiny.  She had very easily fallen into a routine these past few weeks with Jack in his medieval castle, which seemed very much out of place in this tropical paradise.

She came with him without thinking much about it, realizing later that it may seem inappropriate to many people.  After all, she was a Christian and had been raised in a more conservative manner.  Her parents, if they were still alive, would have frowned upon this assuming something was going on that shouldn’t between two unmarried people.  But Jack was ever the gentleman and she found herself drawn to him even more because of it.                                                               

The fact that she was spending her much needed vacation in a year well before even her parent’s birth, an idea difficult to wrap her mind around, she found astonishing yet here she was.  And, what was even more amazing was that all of her friends were living a thousand years in the future.  Soon she would be returning to them in the future and her wonderful vacation would be over.

The world she knew up until very recently was much different from what Jack was used to.  She was born and had lived all of her life up until a few weeks ago, in what was now about one hundred fifty years in the future.  Her reality was of a world where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had grown in power, to the point that it was in the process of consuming the entire government of the United States, with its eyes on the rest of the world. 

As a Christian in a time that Christians were being hunted for their extreme ideas and continual disruption of ‘modern’ society, she had been in hiding with a group of similar minded people.  Just as the government was closing in on her small group of refugees, Jack and his friends showed up in a floating time machine in the shape of a boat and rescued them, transporting them an additional eight hundred fifty years into the future.  They planned to make a life there with the help of Paul and Janet, who were actually from that time. 

As she made her way back to the castle, she thought about Jack.  She hadn’t known him for very long, but in that brief period of time, they had become very close…closer actually than she was currently comfortable with.  But, she had to admit, Jack Murphy was a unique character.  She found his rugged good looks and salt and pepper hair attractive and, not that it mattered to her, but he was very wealthy for this time he lived in; 2002 of all times! 

She marveled at how different the world was from the world she knew in the not too distant future.  Everything seemed to be peaceful and welcoming.  Maybe it was just because she didn’t have to hide here and no one was shooting at them all the time.  She thought to herself that she would be sad to leave in a few days.

~***~

Jack was watching Susan walk back to the castle from one of its many turrets.  He simply loved the way the sun glinted off of her hair.  He still didn’t know what to call it; it was reddish in tint, but tended to be more blonde than red, perhaps strawberry-blonde was the right word.  He quickly made his way back downstairs to his study so she wouldn’t see him watching her.  He felt strange about it and didn’t want her to think he was a creepy old man but he couldn’t help but stare at such a beautiful lady.

The truth was that he was simply captivated by her beauty.  Her personality really surprised him.  He had spent the last ten years with a holographic companion, Suzie, who had been modeled after Susan without her knowledge.  He assumed Susan would have the same personality, and there were similarities to be certain, but Susan had been through a lifetime of experiences that Suzie did not share. 

Suzie, on the other hand, had about 850 years of life experience, all of which was concentrated on a military base.  She had only been allowed to grow into her own personality during the ten years she had known Jack.  As a result, she had a youth-like quality that made her very fun to be around.  Due to their vastly different life experiences, Susan and Suzie were more like sisters.  They looked alike and sounded alike, but were clearly not the same person. 

When Jack first realized this difference, he was sad because he could have easily fallen for Suzie, had she been a ‘real’ person.  However, Susan turned out to be just as captivating as Suzie had, but in a slightly different way.  This past month of relaxing had brought out more of the fun-loving girl that Suzie was, but her life of living in fear still showed through.

Susan Webber was Australian by birth and a veteran of the American military.  She had less of an accent than Suzie did, but there was still a bit of the exotic in her voice that Jack couldn’t resist.  He hated to admit it, but after a lifetime spent as a confirmed bachelor, he may have found the perfect woman with whom to share his bizarre life. 

As he pondered these things, he came back to an issue that seemed to pop up in the strangest times.  Quite simply, Jack had no idea how old he was.  He considered 2002 to be the present and was born in 1966.  However, having a time machine can wreak havoc on one’s personal calendar.  For example, Jack would frequently get the urge to explore a time in the past and simply go there in his time machine.  He would spend a few days or weeks and on some occasions, years before returning to the exact moment he left. 

This had a detrimental effect on his ability to compute his age.  When he looked in the mirror, he saw a man that he figured looked about 60-ish.  He wasn’t sure how old Susan was, but she was certainly much younger than he was, or, she at least looked considerably younger.  He didn’t really care, though.  He figured a long time ago that age was just a number and not really important.  He hoped it was equally unimportant to Susan. 

He was pleasantly surprised to find that she seemed to find him attractive.  After all, he was never considered the best looking guy in the room.  He had average looks and height, although a bit stocky, with salt and pepper hair and a nearly white Van Dyke beard and mustache.

Jack spent this past month not only relaxing, but performing a few much needed upgrades to his boat, the ‘Time Awaits’.  On a recent trip to the distant past, he popped back into existence on dry land.  Normally, he would have emerged from his journey through time in the same location he left from, although in a different time.  

This time, however, he wasn’t sure exactly what happened.  He and his companions searched for hundreds of miles and never found an ocean.  Apparently, there was a time when the oceans were not as they are here in the twenty-first century, or any other time period Jack had ever visited.  As a result, he had to improvise a way to make the boat sit upright so he wouldn’t sink when he popped back into existence on an ocean upon returning to his own time.is ife 

He hired a friend of his that owned a machine shop on another island nearby to help him retrofit a cradle of sorts.  What they came up with was a system that would automatically deploy in the absence of water to hold the boat vertical and would close itself back into the hull when it was submerged again.  Since his boat’s engines operated using seawater as a fuel, they also repaired the damaged seawater tank and added a backup tank.

His second project was to build a more permanent way to park his old beat up, yet very futuristic hovercraft, at least by 2002 standards.  His current method was to simply park it on the roof of the upper deck of the Time Awaits and lash it down with cargo straps.  His friend helped him build a platform that would suffice above and slightly to the rear of the upper deck.  It was still not a perfect solution, but looked much better and was fairly easy to access.

His time machine came to him quite unexpectedly one day many years ago.  He was a young man working on a remote island as a contractor for the US Navy on a small base right here in the Bahamas.  He found an abandoned boat one day while walking along a deserted beach.  Upon exploring it, he found a letter granting ownership to the person that found the boat. 

Naturally, the first thing he did, once he found out the boat was actually a time machine, was to go back in time and suddenly win the Florida Lottery.  His life had been financially secure ever since.

~***~

Susan came into the study and said “Hi Jack.  You’re missing a beautiful day!  You should come outside with me after lunch.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.  I think I’ll take you up on that.  It’s my opinion that tropical sun and relaxing should be enjoyed every day, especially on days like this.”

“I’ll go rustle up some lunch.  Want to help?”

“I’d love to.  I’ll be there in a minute.”  Jack closed the book he had been pretending to read, noticing that he had been holding it upside down.  Groaning about having to explain that to Susan, he replaced it on the book shelf. 

As he entered the kitchen, Susan said with a grin “Did you enjoy your book?”

With a slight grin on his face, he said “It looked great from where I was sitting.”

“You’ll have to teach me how to read upside down someday.  That could come in handy, I would imagine.”

“You saw that, did you?  Sorry.  Actually, I was upstairs in one of the turrets watching you.  Please don’t think I’m a creepy old man, I’m just captivated by your beauty.  I can’t help it.”

With a stern look on her face, she said “So you’re saying it’s my fault?” She crossed her arms and tapped her foot as if she were dealing with an errant child.  Not able to keep up the ruse any longer than a few seconds, she burst out laughing and said “I’ve known it all along.  I saw how you and Suzie acted together and now, all of a sudden you have access to the real thing.  I’m not offended at all; in fact I find it rather flattering.”

“Wow, that’s certainly a relief” said Jack.  “I was afraid you’d be frightened off by it.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Jack.  I really like you, but you have to remember that for you, I may seem like a more real version of Suzie, and that may be true on some level, but for me it has only been a short time.  Please don’t rush me and maybe things will work out great for both of us.”

“No worries mate” said Jack in his best impersonation of an Australian accent.

Susan said “Okay, we really need to work on that accent.  Ten years with Suzie and that’s the best you can do?”  They both ended up in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. 

After lunch, they both returned to the bluff overlooking the lagoon.  This spot had quickly become Susan’s favorite place.  She spent several hours every day here and Jack usually spent some time each day right here by her side as well. 

Susan said “We only have a few days left before we have to pick up Paul and Janet, let’s do something exciting.”

“What do you have in mind?  You should know me well enough by now to realize I’m usually up for most anything.”

“I don’t know.  What do the locals do here for fun?”

Before he could answer, his cell phone rang.  Looking at the display, he saw that it was Paul.  He had given Janet and Paul cell phones before he dropped them off at the resort where they were spending their honeymoon.  “Hey Paul!  I didn’t expect to hear from you for three more days.”

“Yeah, I know.  It’s been great!  We’ve been enjoying ourselves so much and can’t possibly thank you enough.  But, tonight is a festival of some sort here and we thought you would like to join us.”

“Funny you should ask.  Susan was just asking me what the locals do for fun.  I’m sure we can make it.  I’ll call you when we get there.”

“Great!  See you then!” he said and hung up.

Jack said “That was Paul.  Apparently, there’s a festival of some sort on the island where they are honeymooning and they want us to join them tonight.  What do you think?”

“That sounds like fun!  But, what ever shall I wear?”  She batted her eyelashes in much the same fashion Suzie did when she was playing with Jack’s mind.  “You know I’m just a poor refugee with no clothes, especially something fit for a party.”

Jack laughed and said “I think we can come up with something, let’s go shopping.”

“I have a better idea.  Let me call Janet.  Perhaps she will let me rummage through her closet back in Harmony.  You’ve spent enough money on me already, I can’t possibly ask for more.”

“If that’s what you want, I have no problem with it.  It’ll slow us down four days though.  We have to allow time to get there and back and the Time Awaits can only go so fast.  But even so, we can still make it to the party tonight.”

“That still doesn’t make sense to me, but I know what you mean.  We leave here now, travel two days, jump to the future, raid Janet’s closet, travel two days back and jump back to today.  So tonight’s party is actually four days away for us?  Crazy!”

He led her back to the hovercraft, which was parked nearby.  They used it to go back to his boat and he started the engine.  Susan called Janet to make sure it was okay to raid her closet before they left and as expected, she had no problem with it at all.

“Shall we go?” asked Jack.  He grinned and gunned the engine, laughing when Susan lost her balance.  She screamed and he caught her before she could fall. 

“My hero” she said.  “But, I guess that shouldn’t count since that was entirely your fault, you know.”

“I know” Jack said with a big grin on his face. 

“I’m sure Janet has some beautiful dresses.  I hope they fit me well enough; Janet is a few inches shorter than I am.”

“If not, I’ll be more than happy to buy you whichever dress you like.”

“I know, and I really appreciate it Jack, but even though you have all this money, I don’t feel right spending so frivolously.”

What else am I going to spend it on?  I have more than enough money to meet my needs and wants and to be honest; it’s nice to have someone else to spend it on for a change.”

“You know Jack, the love of money is the root of all evil.  But since you have an abundance of it and it would suddenly seem I need a new party dress, why not?  Assuming Janet has nothing that fits me, I will allow you to buy me a new dress.” 

Jack was happy to see Susan opening up more now that they had a few weeks together.