IMPETUS

 

-one-
 

On September 18th, 1972, physicist Sam Boyd finally refines his greatest invention, the awesome device he calls The Time Stream Manipulator, in his personal laboratory in the basement of his home in Killeen, Texas. While his wife and 3 children got along with life in the upper part of the house, Sam Boyd got along with playing the benevolent mad scientist in the off hours from his classified work deep inside the bowels of Fort Hood Army Base.

The time, the money spent on equipment, the enormous electricity bills... it all just paid off as all that hard work is now tangible, real, and working just fine, thank you very much.

He made his final calculations for the day, shut down the proper equipment, and rushed upstairs to share the good news with his wife. How big would her smile be?

-two-

 

Sam's wife, Nancy, knew when she married Sam ten years ago, three years after they met as seniors at Texas A&M University, that his need to invent was pathological and in order to fully understand his love for her... she needed to understand his passions, and accept them. She was already aware of the brilliant science student, of whom she had not yet met, who had just spent a year studying in England at the British Thompson-Houston Company as an intern where he was exposed to his great obsession at that time in his education... X-ray Microscopy. The campus was now abuzz with the talk of Sam Boyd's potential... him returning with the knowledge he had gained over seas.

Soon after his return, the university set-up a lecture for Sam to share what he had learned in England. Nancy, a biology student, attended the lecture with her roommate, Annie. The standing room only crowd packed the lecture hall to listen to the very informative information relayed by the often funny lines from the lanky, tall blond haired freckle faced young man. It was obvious he was a genius... and obvious that he knew things most of the audience would never know.

After the lecture, there were the obligatory hand shakes, signature signings on the programmes and hellos and goodbyes as the audience slowly moved toward the exits. And by chance, because Nancy was thinking only of leaving the building to get back to her books for some study before bedtime, she was not paying attention to who was standing on the other side of the exit. When she stepped through the threshold, into the foyer, she discovered that the audience was being ushered by Sam Boyd for handshakes and goodbyes. And when Nancy Harrington finally made it to Sam Boyd's place outside the door... and she placed her hand in his hand to shake it in passing, their eyes locked... and time stood still in the building for them. Sam's eyes followed hers as the audience behind Nancy pushed her past him and basically out the door into the street.

Well, what happened next is beyond obvious. The two college students used their great minds to track each other down. The fact that Nancy was 6' tall like him was cool, the initial meeting went fantastically, the dating began, love was in the air and years later they are still together and never regretting a moment of their instant love attraction!

And so, Sam's basement was his own personal sanctuary where he would not be bothered. His wife made sure of that because of her love, and protective nature, of her man.

-three-
 

The Time Stream Manipulator, when pointed at an object, makes visible the object's time stream signature. The Time Stream Signature, the name Sam has given to this fascinating pathway into the past, allows Sam to trace the path that an object has moved through time and space to finally rest in the place it now occupies.

Sam Boyd uses his vastly powerful, self-constructed array of basement computers to map the Time Stream backward. He has discovered that The Time Stream moves along in real time. He can calculate exactly how far back in time he needs to follow the stream in order to map, and find the the origins of specific events that have occurred in the life time of that particular time stream.

Also, important fact to know -- time streams only last for 37 minutes before they degrade in a sudden flash of electron sparkles. That is must remember information...

But with a lot of calculations and manipulations of his formulas, Sam also invented a means to clone individual time streams to video recordings to increase their integrity to the 120 minute mark... but only one stream at a time, viewed on his monitors. With live video he could play the stream backward to its origin, pause it it certain time periods, calculate exactly where in the world that location is and do with that information as he wanted.

He imagined the practical use would eventually be for police work. 'Imagine,' he mused. 'If the police had such a devise on hand, they could take a monstrous bite out of crime.' That thought made him smile, imagining a means to protect children like his own three daughters.

It was nothing at all for Sam to work his 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM, 40 hours per week on the Army base, go home and spend 3 hours with the family before heading down to the basement for 3 hours of refining his Time Stream Manipulator. And finally, to cap off the night... go upstairs to his wife, spend a few hours bonding with her before going to sleep to awaken the next morning to start all over again. This is normal life for Sam and his wife. Their daughters, ages 7, 8. and 9 were typical kids... they were too busy being kids to concern themselves with what mom and did were doing.

-four-
 

 On September 17th, 1973, Sam is finishing off the final touches on the large devise he has set-up in a rented, empty airplane hangar at Skylark Field Airport. This device was the Time Stream Manipulator, Version 2. He has now refined the manipulator to the point that he should be able to project the time stream as a large hologram on a 60"X60" specially coated viewing screen.

He was giddy thinking of the new possibilities.

Before he showed off his life's work of the past year to the public, he wanted to make sure this hologram theory would work as well as it should. He had simulated the hologram in a smaller scale twice. Now is the time to produce an image of The Time Stream large enough to impress the heads of the corporations who would hopefully fund large scale research.

But that would happen tomorrow... Tuesday, September 18. Sam's sometimes assistant, and full time friend, Vince March, would be his lab technician tomorrow. They just might witness history together. Tomorrow, at 1:00 PM, was going to be a big day for science, and quite possibly... the world!

-five-

 

 

(Next... INERTIA)

 

 

RLJ