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The Principles of Sorcery

Copyright © 2010 Paul Edwards

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THE PRICIPLES OF SORCERY
Chapter One

The ships looked like they were thrown together from spare parts just lying around. Which in truth they were. They were both roughly rectangular the Discovery sleeker and slightly smaller then the Clipper, which was squarer and more utilitarian looking.

They both hovered silently about a meter off the desert ground, their unpainted aluminium skins gleaming in the hot sun, there were small stairs in front of the entrance hatches of both ships. A small stream of people was busy loading boxes and equipment into each.

"Come on people, let's get it together!" I turned around and looked at the Air force Captain who had just yelled out.

"We ain't got all day, stop gawking and follow me."

The Captain had the same tense look that all military officers I had met so far seemed to have.

I first assumed that it was because of the mission that they were in charge of, but lately I was realizing it might be because this was the type of person that was attracted to this type of job.

I followed the Captain along with the rest of the group as we headed towards a very run down group of hangars.

The air force base that we were on looked as if it had been built in the fifties and abandoned sometime during the end of the cold war. The runway was starting to be overrun with weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt. The outside of the Hangars was covered in peeling badly faded paint and there were thousands of bird droppings littering the apron around them.

The base we were at was secret and so far no one had divulged its location. I suspected that we were somewhere in Nevada, having been to Las Vegas years before and having a feeling of familiarity with the desert surrounding that city.

We eventually were ushered into the nearest hangar and then into a medium sized room off of the hangar floor.

The room had been recently renovated as well as being air-conditioned. There were 40 or so chairs arranged in front of a lectern, behind the lectern was a large screen. A modern looking projector hung down from the ceiling.

We all took seats and waited for what appeared to be a briefing to begin. After about 10 minutes a balding middle-aged man in a grey suit walked behind the lectern and started to speak.

"You all know why we're here, we will begin boarding the ships in 45 minutes, if you have any special equipment or supplies that you think you may need now is the time to ask."

I looked around at the audience to see if anyone had their hand up. A plain looking slightly chunky looking woman stood up and began to speak.

"Did you remember the samples? I added another 50 materials and objects to my list."

The bald man replied, "We got what we could, a lot of what you asked for can be synthesized when you get to Mars, such as the sterilized gases."

"But what if we get problems?" she whined.

"Then solve them. Anymore questions?" The bald man looked at the rest of the crowd while pointedly ignoring the woman.

"Ok lets start the briefing"

The lights dimmed and the projector lit up the screen with the start of a PowerPoint presentation. The first slide showed the planet Mars with the words OUR DESTINATION written on it.

The bald man started speaking again "The trip will take slightly over 3 hours, once you have landed the crew will unload the habitat modules from the cargo ship as well as the storage and science modules." The next slide showed a cartoon picture of seven modules on the surface of Mars decorated with various parabolic antennas.

"The Clippers crew will wait 2 days before departure to make sure that the outpost is functioning properly."

A slide with a cartoon version of the Clipper travelling through the stars appeared on the screen.

"After the Clipper departs Mars it will make a return trip every 3 weeks, unless there is an emergency. Remember you're safety drills, it will take at least 3 hours for the Clipper to make it back to Mars so its imperative to make sure you can get out a distress signal and get to the failsafe shelter"

A Slide with what appeared to be clip art of someone writing a report at a desk flashed up.

"We expect daily progress reports, daily!" The bald man gave us a stern look.

"The technology you are developing has to be evaluated immediately."

He straightened his tie and gave us an even sterner look.

"What you are doing is incredibly dangerous, not just for yourselves but the solar system in general, we have to make sure what you accomplish does not lead us to oblivion."

The final slide showed a cartoon of a bunch of happy looking people in space suits on a cratered surface.

"If you keep to your research requirements, we should have a safe and productive mission. That's the end of the briefing, smokem if you got em, we board in half an hour"

The lights came on blinding everyone for a few seconds, when my vision came back the bald man was already gone.

I looked around at the group of people that I was with. There were six of us, five men and one woman. The lone woman noticed me looking at her and the others and started walking towards me.

"Hi I'm Whitney," she said sticking out her hand.

"Hi I'm Bob", I said as I shook it.

On closer look she still struck me as quite plain, she did however have very large and pretty brown eyes as well as an ample bust.

"I can't believe this is happening huh? How'd you end up here?" she said

"The Second life Website. I was building a complex that contained a lot of the elements of transcendent technology, It's funny, I hated Second life, I only spent a few hours on it building the complex, I couldn't stand the people on it. I started calling it No life, it's a miracle they found me"

She looked at me with her big brown eyes looking slightly shifty, and started talking in a low voice.

"I overheard some of the suits talking, they were using a prototype NDA developed quantum search engine to comb the web for people, kinda scary eh"

"Ya, I guess they know about my porn addiction now," I chuckled at my own joke. Whitney just stared at me narrowing her eyes.

"Um, how did they find you?"

"It was my weird art, I was doing a show in a free gallery and I guess the guy who developed this stuff seen it and wrote my name in his notes before he lost his marbles."

"Do you know anything about him?" I asked

"Just that he flunked out of university, spent 10 years trying to figure out the nature of the universe while working as a security guard," she said.

"I also heard he was the guy that started the Pal-X corporation," I replied.

"You mean that company that faked a platinum mine in northern Canada?"

"Ya except it wasn't fake, I knew someone that worked there, they were producing platinum, it just wasn't coming out of the ground."

"Ahhh, that explains a lot," she murmured.

"So the mad genius was Franz Morton, and they found him because they knew the mine was a dud but couldn't explain were the platinum was coming from."

"Ya and then they just arrested him knowing no one would believe he could just make the stuff."

Her eyes showed a tiny bit of fear "So they just said he was nuts and took him away, scary."

"All right people!! Lets move out!"

The Captain was back, eager to get us going. We all started following him outside to the ships.

I looked at the Discovery as we got closer to our ship the Clipper. I noticed two men and one woman boarding it they were wearing blue coveralls with NASA written on one of many patches. I thought I recognized one of the men as a shuttle astronaut.

The Discovery gets the A team I thought, Mars gets us. I walked up the stairs and boarded the Clipper.

The inside of the Clipper was very utilitarian, the rooms contained nothing but boxes and zero gravity sleeping sacks hanging from hooks. The walls were all unpainted aluminium and every spare inch of floor space was taken up with boxes and equipment for our Martian expedition.

The flight deck consisted of a small cockpit with two pilot positions behind which were eight passenger chairs that looked like they were ripped out of a commercial jetliner. On closer inspection the chairs really had come out of a jetliner, complete with ashtrays and lap belts.

The two pilots were doing their pre-flight check as we walked onto the flight deck.

"Buckle up, we're departing soon." One of them said as he heard us come in. The co-pilot got out of his seat and walked passed us as we sat down. We heard him yell "hatch closed and secure."

The co-pilot walked back checking to make sure we put our lap belts on before he took his seat beside the pilot.

Whitney sat beside me looking quite calm. I was feeling quite a bit of trepidation finally realizing I was actually going to Mars. It seemed very surreal, thirty days ago I was working as industrial electrician, now I was going to be one of the first people to walk on another planet.

I heard the pilot clear his throat over the Clippers PA system.

"This is the Captain speaking, we will be departing in three minutes. If we have any in-flight emergencies along the way just shut the fuck up and do exactly as I say. Captain out."

He obviously didn't come from the same airline as our chairs.

The ship took off soundlessly, first straight up and then slowly forward. We were probably going only 150 kph which seemed kind of slow to go to Mars. The PA came to life just then.

"We are currently exiting earth's atmosphere, it will take about an hour to clear it completely. Then we can ramp up our speed into deep space and engage the transport window"

"I heard that these ships are too fragile for much atmospheric travel," said Whitney.

"That's reassuring," I said.

"Don't worry, the big danger in space is radiation and micrometeorites, this ship is equipped with a huge magnetic shield and self sealing walls, were probably safer then in a car."

"How do you know so much?" I asked.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Ya," I said.

"I looked over the shoulder of one of the suits while he was logging into a workstation, I have a really good memory for passwords and stuff. So when I was in my own room at night I just typed in the IP address he was at and logged into my workstation in my room using his username and password."

"That worked?"

"Oh ya, people are dumb when it comes to computer security, they were so paranoid about us emailing the outside world that they put us on their own secure Intranet system giving us low level access. They didn't realize how easy it is to get high level passwords from over confident scientist types."

"What all did you learn?" I asked.

"They don't have a clue how any of this stuff works. Morton designed and built two interstellar engines and two large power supplies. They found them when they searched his company building after his arrest. NASA built the Discovery and the Clipper using them.

They gave all of Morton's notes to the RAND Corporation so they could have the best minds available to decipher them. The RAND's scientists managed to open a dimensional window after a few days of study, unfortunately it was into deep space sucking all these great minds and most of Mortons notes into orbit around the sun.

The hole would probably also have sucked out a large portion of the earths atmosphere too if it hadn't closed on its own after a minute. That's why they're sending us to Mars, so if we have any catastrophic mistakes we only kill ourselves."

"How are we going to decipher anything if Morton's notes are gone? And why did they pick us?" I asked.

She replied "Morton escaped, using a dimensional window, he forgot to bring his transcendent program code with him, so we still have a small bit of something to work with. As to why we got picked, we're expendable for one, and we all have some connection to Morton or to his technology.

I was in Morton's personal diary and your second life complex matched his last known algorithm on some level."

The Clipper was now high above the earth, the planet looked like a large blue beach ball hovering outside the cockpit window. I heard the pilots talking in controlled almost terse voices when suddenly a vague rectangular patch appeared in front of us obscuring the earth. It looked like someone had cut and pasted a different section of sky in front of us using Photoshop.

This must be a dimensional window, I thought. The ship slowly passed through the rectangular section of sky in front of us then slowly turned to the right. Mars swung into view replacing the Earth.

I thought back to the crash course in transcendent technology they had given us in our 30 day training session.

Dimensional windows they explained are the basis of transcendent technology, they are always rectangular, use no energy to create, can be any size and open up a window between any two places in the universe. This is what enabled the Clipper to travel to Mars in just a few seconds. The placement of the windows also enables many unusual effects such as perpetual motion.

Place a window deep underwater in a lake with the exit above the surface. The pressure of the water under the lake forces water out of the exit window above the lake to fall back with the force of gravity. So the stream of water would never stop. Put a turbine in between to catch the perpetual flow and voila free energy.

The more I had thought about it the more things occurred to me that could be accomplished using these windows, such as non-invasive surgery, instead of an incision use a dimensional window to look inside someone. The possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately the only people who knew how to create and manipulate them were missing or currently orbiting the sun.

I asked Whitney "Why didn't they dissect one of the interstellar engines to find out how they worked"

"They dissected Morton's platinum creation machine and discovered nothing, they didn't want to risk the star drives," she replied.

"Did you ever come up with an idea about how the platinum creator worked? I could never figure out how connecting two different places in the universe could create platinum," I asked.

"I think there is more to this technology then anyone knows," she said.

The Clipper started towards Mars. After an hour of travel we were slowly descending through the atmosphere. They had decided to place the outpost near the equator, using the well-known NASA protocol of landing on the flattest most boring spot of any celestial body.

The Clipper finally landed in what looked like an lendless plain of red gravel, there were only a few gentle slopes to break the monotony.

"OK kiddies we're here," the Captain blurted over the PA.

The next few hours were a blur of work, we donned spacesuits and exited the spacecraft with little fanfare. Whitney was the first person on Mars, accompanied by the Captain yelling "Hurry the fuck up!" over our suit intercoms. A murmured "go fuck yourself," were the words first spoken by the first person to set foot on another planet.

We dragged the inflatable habitat modules into place, then we connected them together with inflatable access tunnels. The whole outpost was basically six inflatable buildings and a seventh metal container that would be released from the ship prior to taking off. It held a nuclear power generator and other electronics as well as our water and air supply.

The inflatable modules had super conducting wire woven into them; these would provide us with a magnetic radiation shield when power was applied.

We then hooked up the power and communication cables to the habitats and when that was done sat down and rested as air compressors filled each module.

When the modules were completely inflated we checked them all for leaks, which was easy to do because the moist heated air in the modules would instantly condense in the cold thin Martian atmosphere showing up as a fountain of steam.

We finally and wearily entered the air lock of one of the modules and went inside. The two pilots of the Clipper wanted us to start unloading all our equipment and supplies immediately and kept informing us of this on our suit intercoms. We however were exhausted and after checking all our habitats safety equipment removed our suits and fell asleep on our inflatable beds.

When I first woke up after my first night on Mars, I had an instance of confusion wondering where I was and why I felt so light. I quickly remembered my journey of the previous day and felt very surreal. I was on Mars, wow.

I looked over at Whitney who was sleeping on a bed on the other side of the same module. I was amazed at the size of her boobs. She was wearing just a t-shirt and they were completely unencumbered by a bra.

She woke up as I was staring at her, she quickly pulled up her blanket to cover herself, she smirked involuntarily as she pretended not to notice my gawking.

I quickly looked away in embarrassment.

All of us quickly got up and ate some rations. We then donned our space suits again in order to finish unloading the ship.

The two pilots did little to help other then constantly yelling at us to hurry up. Thankfully it looked like they had spent a sleepless and uncomfortable night in their ship.

It took a good eight hours to unload everything and test all the habitats systems. We waited until we were satisfied that everything was working before we pulled the release pins to free the seventh module from the ship.

We didn't trust the pilots not to fly away before we knew everything was working, and from their anger and steady stream of profanity we were probably right. They took off within seconds of the module being released without so much as a goodbye.

We were alone on Mars.

We sat together around our inflatable table in our main living module. It was the first time we were all together and could look at and talk to each other without our space suits on.

There was Fred an ex-military paratrooper, he was the only one of the group with no connection to Franz Morton. He was there in case of any unexpected consequences of our research. Fred was in his early forties balding and built like the incredible hulk.

Sparky Smith, had worked as an assistant to Franz when he was running Pal-X. Sparky was young thin and nerdy. We peppered him with questions about Morton, all he could recall was Morton seemed to appear and disappear nobody ever seen him arrive or leave. He was always prepared, always gave very direct and easy to follow directions, wasn't the type to chat and was sometimes accompanied by an impossibly beautiful exotic looking young woman.

Joe Bark was picked from an internet search like me. He was in his early thirties and had the start of a large paunch. He worked as a robot repair technician. He had written some robot manipulation code that had somehow matched Morton's last algorithm.

I asked him if he knew what code it was.

"Not sure, I belonged to a tech support group on the web, we swapped miles of code with each other. It could have been anything," he replied.

The last person was Miles Danderling. Miles had been Morton's accountant. "I never saw him much, but god what a weird guy, he always wanted to solve his financial problems by paying more money."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Most people when they have a hidden fee or large tax bill, try to squirm out of it, that's why people hire accountants. Not Franz, if paying more would solve his problems that's what he did," he replied.

Miles obviously didn't know that Morton could create platinum out of thin air.

I decided not to be so quick to blab everything I knew about Franz Morton, Whitney was giving me a wary look and shaking her head almost imperceptibly.

We all decided to cook a meal and go to bed early as we were exhausted. We would sort through all our supplies and equipment tomorrow. The two habitat showers were working so while the food was warming up we took turns washing up and changing clothes.

After our meal we all decided to keep the same sleeping arrangements, so Whitney and I would sleep in the same module together again. I asked her if she would like to hang a curtain for privacy, she gave me a little smirk and said she wasn't self-conscious.

I decided to turn in right away, Whitney followed me to bed about thirty minutes later just as I was drifting off to sleep, I watched her undress through my barely open eyes as I fell asleep. Her clothes had hid very attractive voluptuous curves. My last thought before falling asleep was that with five men and one woman there could be trouble.

The next morning after we got up we started sorting and storing all our equipment and supplies. It was fortunate that Whitney was there because she had a knack for arrangement and decoration that the rest of us lacked. She managed to make our main living area somewhat homey. This I thought would probably be important since we might be here for months.

Chapter Two

After all the sorting and rearrangement was done we still had a few hours left in our second Martian day, we all sat around our all purpose dinner/conference/workbench table drinking coffee and talking about our plan of attack.

Fred spoke first "We have to have all the available info you folks can provide so that we can figure all this out, so I suggest we start listing what we know, I'll keep notes," he said producing a large yellow legal pad and a mechanical pencil.

Joe replied "We need Franz's final algorithm."

"Can't that wait?"

Whitney then piped up "Look Fred nobody elected you Mayor, we all know why you're here, but we're the ones who are going to figure this thing out, just give us the algorithm."

Fred's eyes lit up in anger for a split second but he quickly controlled himself. He struck me as the type who probably took all the other kids toys when he was a child. I also started to get the feeling that Fred wasn't going to be real interested in our well being once our purpose had been served.

Fred got up and went to one of the other modules, he returned a few minutes later with a steel brief case with a sophisticated electronic lock on it. He had already opened it before he returned. I wondered if he knew about Whitney's knack for finding out passwords.

He reached in the case and pulled out five photocopies of Franz Morton's last known writings. There seemed to be more stuff in the briefcase but I couldn't see it before he quickly snapped it shut and locked it.

The photocopies were quickly passed around. I looked at mine and this is what I saw.

Reference X

Lock reference

New TSW

Label "escape1"

Creation time:1545 EST 15 July 2008

Shape: Rectangular

Size: X=1m Y=1m

Distance from reference: +2m 180 degrees True N

Elevation from reference: +0m

Orientation off perpendicular from reference:

X axis: +0 degrees

Y axis: +0 degrees

Z axis: +0 degrees

Duration: 30s

B time: +0s

B space: +500m

New TSW

Label "escape2"

Creation time:1545 EST 15 July 2008

Shape: Rectangular

Size: X=1m Y=1m

Distance from reference: +1000m 180 degrees True N

Elevation from reference: +0m

Orientation off perpendicular from reference:

X axis: +0 degrees

Y axis: +0 degrees

Z axis: +0 degrees

Duration: 30s

B time: +0s

B space: +500m

End

It looked to me to be some kind of computer code written by hand by someone with meticulous handwriting. I looked around the table at the others, Joe had a look of enlightenment he was trying to hide and Whitney was looking at me with what appeared to be anticipation.

"I bet he escaped at three forty five on July the 15th"," I said looking at Fred.

"Obviously," Fred replied.

"What I don't understand is why he's appeared to have created two dimension windows?" I said looking at Joe.

Joe was trying very hard to be expressionless and failing badly.

"OK Joe, you obviously know something. If you don't tell us we're still going to try to do this on our own, you'll be going down with the rest of us if we kill ourselves," I said.

Joe caved in with a look of relief.

"It resembles a code I was writing for two different robots, it was an idea I had. I was just doodling. I put it on my tech support group forum to see what they would think."

"What was the idea," Whitney asked.

"Well robots now generally work on assembly lines. The job comes by and they do their thing, screw on a part etcetera, then the job moves off to the next robots station. My idea was to get rid of the assembly line and have the robots hand off the job between themselves. I wrote a bit of code just for the hand off procedure between two robots. That's what this is, there are two windows whose exits meet 500 meters from a reference point with the two entrances 1000 meters from each other."

"Why not just use one window with the exit 1000 meters away?" I asked.

Nobody had an answer. I also didn't understand how this simple set of what appeared to instructions could create anything, let alone a dimensional window.

We decided to call it a night and get a fresh start tomorrow, I followed Whitney to our module. Once we closed the door Whitney turned to me and put her index finger in front of her lips and shook her head. I kept quiet while she turned on a small ghetto blaster which started pumping out loud music.

She sat down next to me on my bed and began whispering in my ear.

"I know why he used two windows," She said.

"Why?"

"I think TSW stands for Time Space Window. I think these windows open up into another universe, so in order to stay in the same universe he creates a second window to meet the first one in that other universe," she said.

"Huh? How do you get that?" I asked.

"That was the theme for my art show that Franz had seen. I read an article in a magazine years ago about time travel I think it was in Scientific American. It was about time travel and paradoxes. The solution to the paradox of going back in time and killing your mother before you were born, was that every time you travelled back in time a new parallel universe was created. This parallel universe would be exactly the same up to the point that you arrived. From that point on things would be different."

"How do you make an art show about that?" I asked.

"I had a painting of a descendant of a concentration camp survivor shooting Hitler when he was a just a young man. And other stuff along that line," she said.

"So every time someone opens a dimensional window it creates another universe?" I said.

"Yup, and if you look at Franz's escape code again you can see that there is a spot for going back in time."

I looked at the photocopy again.

B time: +0s

B space: +500m

It suddenly made sense, B time and B space must be the time and distance from the reference point in the second universe. The whole thing suddenly made sense the reference point X was just used to give a starting point, something to define were the window would appear. The lock command would just lock the reference point so if someone moved the paper the X was written on the reference point would stay in the same spot.

"So Franz just walked through his dimensional window, appeared 1000 meters true south from his prison cell and then his "TSW" disappeared 30 seconds after he left," I said.

"Yup, and then he just walked away or created another TSW," she said.

"Why didn't the brains at the RAND corporation figure this out?"

"I don't think that all this is possible with the current theories, guys with PhD's in physics aren't so big on huge new radical ideas. I don't think they could believe it was so simple. That's probably why they ended up killing themselves. They didn't believe it, and blindly opened up a window into deep space," she said.

"This doesn't make any sense, how could defining a dimensional window on a piece of paper make it appear, and do it all using no energy," I said.

"It works, we know it works otherwise we wouldn't be on Mars," she replied.

"Are we going to tell the others?" I asked.

"Not yet."

Whitney got up and shut the Ghetto blaster off. "I'm going to bed," she said.

I said good night and went to bed myself.

As I tried to sleep I started to think about Morton's platinum creation machine, it suddenly occurred to me how it worked. Morton had just created a window five seconds back in time in front of an ingot of platinum and then reached through and took the same brick from the second universe.

I drifted off realizing that with the manipulation of these TSW's almost anything was possible.

Chapter Three

I woke up the next morning hearing Whitney get out of bed. I pretended to be asleep as I watched her through barely open eyelids. She was standing naked except for her panties. The low light of her bedside lamp outlined the perfect curves of her voluptuous body in a dark ink of shadow and shading.

She certainly was magnificent.

I waited until she put on her robe and left for a shower before I got out of bed.

After I took my own shower and brushed my teeth I met the others sitting around the table in the main living module eating breakfast. Whitney followed me as I sat down.

"We'll have fresh fruit, eggs and bacon for a week" said Fred. Then we'll be eating mainly pre-packaged crap."

"Are you saying this for some kind of motivation," I replied.

Fred just stared at me. Whitney was eating cereal, she gave me a quick glance with her big brown eyes.

"I guess we can start after breakfast," I said.

We all quickly ate and cleaned up the table. NASA had given us a conventional stove as well as regular plates and utensils. Most of our equipment and tools were off the shelf because of the immediacy of our project. The inflatable modules were originally prototypes for a future Mars mission.

Thankfully all the familiar objects made our short time here a little less jarring and surreal. We all sat down at the table again after it was cleared and the dishes cleaned and put away.

Whitney pulled out a note pad and a pencil from one of the pockets of her cargo pants. The pad had some kind of undecipherable writing on it. I couldn't even find letters from the alphabet on the scribbles.

"What kind of writing is that?" I asked

"Oh I know shorthand" she said

"Shorthand? Were did you learn that? Isn't that from the fifties?"

Whitney just smiled at me then started to speak.

"Ok I have come up with an idea. I thought that if we just change the numbers in Franz's formula we could see if anything happens. We know that he escaped with this algorithm and that he probably created a window with an exit 1000 meters away. We don't need to understand the rest of the formula to make it work."

Sparky piped up with a look of alarm on his face,"What if it blows a hole in the module?"

"We'll all put on our spacesuits, and use one of the peripheral modules so if its damaged we can just isolate it from the main one." she replied.

"We can always signal for a rescue as well," Fred said.

"Our suits are good for 72 hours."

We decided that we all had to start somewhere so we started to put our spacesuits on. Once the main part of our suits were on we grabbed our helmets and gloves and followed Whitney into our sleeping module.

Whitney took out a blank sheet of paper and a large pen and put it on a small table we had. She then put one of her suit gloves on and grabbed the pen and wrote her name on the paper. It was reasonably legible.

"OK I can write with the suit gloves on, I'll change the distance to 1m and the time 5 minutes from when I finish writing it, our suit watches are quartz so we have an accurate time reference. Lets put our helmets on and do our pressure checks."

We finished putting on the rest of our suits checked each other's and did a pressure check.

Whitney took out Franz's formula and started copying it and putting in the changes. It took almost 20 minutes because of the difficulty she had writing.

When she was done we all looked at our watches and waited.

Nothing happened.

We all checked the formula independently, it was flawless as far as we could tell. We waited another 20 minutes just to be safe. Then we took our helmets and gloves off.

"Well that didn't work," I said.

"We're missing something," Whitney said.

"Miles you and Sparky worked with Franz the most, did you ever see anything like this formula?" she continued.

"I did" Miles replied.

"It was on his laptop when we had a meeting in his office, it was a lot longer and I think it had different types of commands in-between the TSW stuff. I don't remember much just that it had stuff on it similar to what's on the photocopy."

"What about you Sparky?" Whitney said looking at him.

"Nothing, he was very secretive, he used to say confusing things sometimes and laugh like it was some kind of inside joke," Sparky said.

"Like what?" I asked.

"You can always do a control break on life, that was one of his weird sayings, or its always between the header and footer," he said.

I suddenly knew what we were missing. I looked at Whitney and started to wonder if she was telepathic, she could tell I knew, and managed to convey this, and to be quiet with just a look.

We all decided to get out of our suits and brainstorm some more. They left Whitney and I alone to get out of our spacesuits. Whitney turned on the Ghetto Blaster again and started whispering to me.

"What are we missing?"

"Control break is an old basic computer language command, its to stop the program so you can change it or insert new lines of programming," I said.

"How does that help?"

"There must be some kind header and footer code that goes on the top and bottom of the algorithm to stop the grand program of everything so new code can be inserted," I said.

"Franz probably just took that part with him or destroyed it when he escaped," I continued.

"What could it be?" she asked.

"I don't know."

We continued taking our spacesuits off and walked back to the main module when we finished. Whitney accidentally brushed my arm with her boobs as she sat down.

"Fred do you have anything else in that suitcase of yours?" asked Whitney.

"Nothing you need to see," Fred replied.

"What about the Platinum making machine, do you have pictures of it?" I asked.

Fred put on a sulky look, "What do you need that for?"

"So you have pictures of it?" I asked.

"No, I don't," said Fred.

"You have the machine here don't you," said Whitney.

Fred crossed his arms with a stubborn look and said nothing.

"Look Fred, we're not going to get anywhere without all the available information, if you have the machine get it, or we will," said Whitney.

"Ya, get the machine," said Joe.

Fred went back to his module and returned a few minutes later with a pelican case and put it on the table. I opened the case up and looked inside. There were a bunch of metal plates that looked like they had been cut apart with a hack saw. We all grabbed a piece to examine. There was no writing on any of the pieces except for a small X on one piece. They were all constructed of unpainted 14 gauge steel.

Whitney suggested that we reassemble the machine, she produced a roll of duct tape and we quickly matched the pieces and then held them together with the duct tape.

We ended up with a metal box about a foot square with one side open, we orientated the box with the small X on top.

I remembered my thoughts of the previous day on how the machine would work. I took my coffee mug and placed it inside the box. I waited 10 seconds and took the mug out. I looked into the box and waited. A coffee mug suddenly appeared. I reached in and took it out as everyone gasped. I compared it to mine, it was exactly the same I couldn't find any difference.

"Holy shit, that's amazing, how did you know that it worked that way?" Whitney said.

"Just a guess," I said.

We tried copying a few other things until we realized we had a limited amount of space on our base and shouldn't fill it up with junk.

"I can't believe it still works after being hacked apart," said Sparky.

Fred wanted to report this by radio immediately, I got the feeling that nobody in RAND corporation had bothered to try and work the machine before they cut it apart. They cut open the golden goose before it even laid a golden egg.

Nobody had any ideas on how the device worked, we spent the rest of the day examining the box and copying a thumb tack to see it we could see anything. We then disassembled the box so we could examine each piece again.

Fred wrote a long report and sent it back to earth via our transmitter.

As we prepared for bed in our module, Whitney and I had our usual whispered conversation with the Ghetto Blaster playing music.

"Do you have any ideas," asked Whitney.

"The X on the top plate is a reference point, the code could be anywhere, it just has to refer to that reference point," I said.

"Yes but on his escape algorithm the reference point was with the code, it has to be near," she said.

I had a sudden thought.

"Maybe the code is in-between the steel plates. What if he glued two plates together to make one."

"Wouldn't the RAND corporation have found it?" she said.

"Not if it was regular ink, it wouldn't show up in an x-ray," I said.

We decided to sneak back into the main living module after everyone had gone to sleep and see if we could examine the top plate more closely. We waited until one o'clock in the morning then Whitney put her robe on and snuck in and grabbed the top plate off the table. It was in three pieces. She didn't run into any of the others as she snuck back.

We looked at the three pieces under a lamp closely examining it to see if there were 2 plates glued together. It wasn't they were one solid piece.

Whitney started to look at the plates again under the light looking very closely around the reference point.

"There's something there, I didn't notice it before," She said.

"What?"

"Look at all the scratches on the plates."

I looked more closely at the fine squiggles all over the plate. They just looked like random scratches made by grinding and being knocked around.

"I don't see anything,." I said.

"It's written in shorthand, it looks just like scratches if you don't know what to look for," she said.

Whitney grabbed a piece of paper and started to transcribe it. This is what she wrote.

Chapter Four

Reference X

START

New TSW

Label "Copier"

Creation time: now

Shape: Rectangular

Size: X=.3m Y=.3m

Distance from reference: +0m

Elevation from reference: -.15m

Orientation off perpendicular from reference:

X axis: +0 degrees

Y axis: +0 degrees

Z axis: +0 degrees

Duration: 10s

B time: -10s

B space: +0

CHANGE Distance from reference: -.3m

GOTO START

She also wrote two lines of what seemed to be random letters one above and one below the code. Each line was about one hundred and fifty letters long.

I looked at it and it twigged on how it worked. It created a new TSW 10 seconds back into the past then it moved that window backwards .3 meters leaving the copied object in our universe. The TSW would last 10 seconds and then the cycle would repeat.

It suddenly occurred to me how dangerous this was. If someone had stuck their hand in the box at the wrong time the TSW would cut it off when it appeared. It occurred to me how lucky we had been. I quickly told Whitney to keep her hands away. The top plate was separated so the code probably didn't work but the paper she had just transcribed was whole. I lifted the paper up with some utensils and ripped it in half.

I realized that we also had the header and the footer code, it must be the two random strings of letters at the top and bottom of the code. If this was right we had our answer. I explained this all to Whitney. She looked at me with her eyes sparkling with excitement.

"We have to test it now, before the others figure it out. If it works we would we able to do anything," she said.

We hastily constructed a box made of paper, straws and scotch tape. Whitney wrote the code on top with a sharpie. I took a thumbtack and put it in the paper box using a spoon to manoeuvre it for safety. I waited 10 seconds and then took it out again with the spoon. I waited another 10 seconds and looked in the box. There was a new thumbtack in the box. It had worked.

"What now?" I asked Whitney.

"We need to leave," she said.

"How?"

"Let me think. What if we say there's an emergency and get picked up?"

"They'll know we're bluffing when they show up and nothings wrong. Then they'll and think we have something," I said.

"I have another really crazy idea."

"What?"

"We give Mars an atmosphere open the door and run away," she said.

"Huh?"

"We have two tablet PC's I think we can put the code into them. We put a version of the copier in them both. We then run a continuous copy of a sample of our atmosphere from inside our module. We wait until the atmosphere builds up outside then we grab some supplies and run away."

"What do we do when our supplies run out?" I said.

"We just copy them," she replied.

"How long will it take to build up an atmosphere?"

"I used to be pretty good at math, let me figure it out."

Whitney spent a good thirty minutes doing the calculations on her laptop.

"I've got it, if we use 10000 windows 2 meters square it should take about a day. I'll leave it to you to write the code," she said.

"What about cosmic radiation when we go outside?"

"We should be safe for a few days by then we can come up with a solution," she replied.

I spent the next hour writing code, by then we were both exhausted. We decided to get some sleep and finish up in the morning. Whitney snuck back and put the plates back on the table in the main living area but not before we had scratched off all the shorthand. She made it back unnoticed.

The next day Whitney and I both went through the motions of trying to figure out transcendent technology. The rest of the group put the copier back together and were shocked when it didn't work anymore. I proffered the explanation that it had been abused too much by being cut apart and put together and was now broken. This seemed to satisfy everyone except Fred who kept staring at us both with a look of suspicion.

I surreptitiously completed the rest of the code to give Mars an atmosphere. I also wrote another transcendent code I called The Doorway. It was a variation of Morton's escape algorithm, but instead of a fixed doorway I used the QuickBasic compiler in the tablet PC to make the code changeable. I could move the window and change its size by changing the orientation and size numbers on the code displayed on the tablet.

I was unsure if this would all work. The tablet displayed the algorithm the same as a piece of paper so it should, except I had no idea how any of this worked. I also had quite a bit of trepidation about giving Mars an atmosphere as well. It seemed to be kind of excessive in order to escape. I tried to think of another way to leave but couldn't.

We implemented our plan at midnight. Whitney cranked up the heat in our room so the atmosphere we created would be warm counteracting the cold of the planet. She also took out a bag of grass seed, Kentucky Blue grass, and threw a handful in the air right before we implemented the program.

"If we're going to terraform this planet we might as well go all the way," she said.

I pressed return and started the program. It opened 10000 TSW's five seconds in the past in our alternate universe's habitat module and then cycled over and over. The 10000 TSW's were placed around the planet.

We left our module before we started, feeling guilty because our other selves in the other universes would be sucked out onto Mars surface if we stayed. The philosophical implications of all this copying could be quit large. I could technically create infinite copies of anything even people.

We went back into our module after about 10 minutes and cleaned up the grass seed, which had settled on the floor.

"Why do we have grass seed?" I asked Whitney.

"I knew we could copy stuff, and I knew we were going to Mars, so I brought it just in case what I thought was possible was possible," she said.

"Mars is going to look like one big golf course if this works," I replied.

"Better than a gravel pit."

We packed two duffle bags with everything we thought we would need including four fully charged extra batteries for out tablet PC's.

We then went to bed, there were no obvious effects of what we had done yet. We didn't even know if it worked.

We work up at 5am to a horrendous noise. I snapped on the lights and seen with much horror the walls of our inflatable module moving back and forth. The sound outside was like a jet turbine spinning up. Fred burst into our room, and started screaming at us.

"Windstorm Windstorm!! Get into your spacesuits now!"

He hadn't realized what was going on, in his defence who would?

Whitney and I quickly got into our suits, we were scared shitless while doing it.

"Do you think we went to far?" she said.

"Probably, but we're committed now, these modules weren't meant to last in a partial atmosphere so we have no choice but to wait it out. We have 19 hours to go."

The next 19 hours were an indescribable eternity of horror. We got as low as possible grabbing onto each other and our duffle bags.

The modules walls started to shred after 5 hours, we had no idea how the others were doing, all the power and communications systems had stopped working. It reminded me of the one hurricane I had experienced except this was about 100 times worse.

The sun started coming up and I took a quick look around. The module was gone, we were lying on the deflated floor which was basically just a tarp now. I could see the others lying down as well. Thankfully we had not upped the humidity in the module before we copied it or the rain that was falling would be much worse.

I estimated the wind to be about 200 kph. Thankfully the rain kept the possibility of dust down to a minimum. The wind began to abate when it started to get dark again and was a stiff breeze by midnight.

Whitney and I were again able to communicate with the others.

They still had no idea what was going on. Fred told everyone to wait, the ship would be here soon. He was probably right.

We all fell into an exhausted sleep.

I woke up feeling someone shaking me. I was stiff and sore. I looked up to see a flashlight in my eyes. I pushed it away and saw Whitney looking at me. She wasn't in her suit. I popped off my helmet. The air hit my face, it smelled just like the air in the module. It was warm with a stiff breeze blowing into my face.

"Come on get out of your suit and hurry! The others are still asleep," she said.

I got out of the suit as quickly and quietly as possible. I was sore and smelled unbelievably bad. We grabbed our duffels and left as quickly as possible.

We had to walk slowly with the flashlight so as not to trip on all the rocks. Our pace soon quickened as the sun came up and we walked as fast as we could.

The sight that greeted us with the new dawn was spectacular, the red earth was now much darker with pools and puddles of water. We could see the grass seed covering everything. The once red sky was now full of white clouds with patches of deep blue showing through.

"We have to get out of here, the ship will find us if we don't get a good distance away," I said.

"How?"

"I can try my new algorithm, Doorway."

"Doorway?"

"Watch," I said.

I took out one of the tablet PC's, thankfully they were military grade and waterproof. I started the algorithm and immediately a TSW appeared in front of me. It was about a foot square.

"I want to see the sights," I said.

"What sights?" said Whitney.

I fiddled with the controls moving the far end until I found what I was looking for then I enlarged the TSW so we could walk through.

We walked through to the most amazing sight I have ever seen. Whitney gasped as she saw it as well.

We were at the foot of Olympus Mons. It's 16 miles high, the highest mountain in the solar system. The clouds had cleared on this part of Mars and we could see the whole thing. I had never felt so small in my life. The mountain just towered, It looked all at once ancient powerful and stoic.

I then realized how naïve the human race was, ignorant to the universe. We have no idea such things exist, that our own planet has nothing to compare to this.

I closed the TSW as Whitney continued to gawk. She turned to me with tears in her eyes.

"Thank you," she said.

"There's one other thing I want to see."

I opened A TSW again and started searching for Mars's other tourist spot. I enlarged the window when I found it and we stepped through again.

We both gasped this time. The Valles Marineris was in front of us. We couldn't see the other side of the canyon, but we could see the bottom, 3 miles down. There were clouds and mists below us and what looked like a river flowing. The ecology of Mars had already started to change, the grass would be growing soon, as well as whatever life we had brought with us.

"I guess we should be taking pictures," said Whitney.

"Who would we show them to?"

"I know how to get back to earth now," I said.

"I can use the Doorway algorithm. I don't think there is any limit to how far you can go in time or distance."

"How will you find earth?" she replied.

"It'll be a big blue dot in the sky at night."

"We should find a hiding spot until then," she replied.

We found a small cave, and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. We shut off the tablet PC's in case they had a way of tracking them. We were 1000's of miles away from the outpost so it would be a long time before someone would find us.

We had waited until the sun had just started to set, then there on the horizon was a very bright large blue dot. I turned on my tablet and created a TSW a centimetre square. I manipulated the far end towards the earth hearing a high pitched whine as the air was sucked into the vacuum of space as the far end of the TSW went through deep space.

The whining noise stopped as the far end entered earths atmosphere. I was able to match the velocity of the orbiting earth with a bit of trial and error.

"Were do you want to go," I asked Whitney.

She thought for a minute and then said.

"Las Vegas, we should be able to blend in there."

It took me a few minutes to find the city, I then found a private spot in a small park area to step through. I enlarged the TSW and we stepped back onto the earth. We took our duffel bags with us. Whitney told me to keep the window open, then she started digging up dirt from around her feet and throwing it back through the window onto Mars.

"More terraforming, gotta have worms and soil bacteria. It'll give humanity a new place to live," she said.

I closed the window when she was done. We tried to clean ourselves up without much success. I used a TSW to take the money out of a nearby bank machine. The Doorway algorithm had endless uses. We walked to the nearest casino wearing baseball caps and sunglasses we had procured the same way and checked in.

The checkout clerk gave us some odd looks but gave us a suite when we showed her the cash.

We went straight to the suite. Once inside we peeled of our filthy clothing and took very long hot showers.

We emerged clean and in the bathrobes supplied by the hotel.

"We have no clothes," I said.

"I'm to tired to care," she said.

Whitney grabbed the remote and turned on the big screen TV and flipped the channel to a cable news station. A news announcer appeared.

"In our lead story tonight, scientists around the world are amazed and befuddled with the sudden changes that have occurred on Earths closest neighbour Mars. It appears that the planets crust has suddenly released large amounts of gas giving the planet a much thicker atmosphere. We have the latest pictures from the KEK telescope in Hawaii."

The TV showed a fuzzy image of Mars now blue and white with a tinge of red.

"We have with us renowned astrologer George Smith to answer some questions."

"That's astronomer Gwen," said George.

"Ya whatever, so what's the scoop Mr. Smith is it aliens or what?"

"Umm, aliens? We think what's happening is the temperature has risen on the surface for some reason releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide."

"What does this mean for us, will Mars crash into the Earth now?" said the announcer.

"No No! that shouldn't happen."

"But it could, right?"

"No!! Earth is fine."

"We have to take a break now, we'll be back with our lead story, Mars, new danger in the solar system."

Whitney shut the TV off.

"Nothing changes huh," I said.

"Ya. Wanna have sex?" she said.

"OK."

So we did, and fell into a deep sleep holding each other in our arms.

We woke up the next morning with the sun shining through the window. It was such a relief to be back on Earth. We decided that since we had already started to lead a life of larceny we would continue to just take what we wanted. I used a memory stick to copy and transfer my Doorway algorithm to Whitney's tablet PC. I then showed her how to use it.

We used a small TSW to scope out a department store a couple of miles away. We enlarged the window when we found something we wanted and yanked it through. Hopefully nobody would see the stuff disappearing.

We now had clothes and a couple of suitcases. We also had two Personal Digital Assistant's. I transferred the Doorway algorithm to both of them. We each kept one. We packed our tablet PC's with our luggage.

"What now? We're safe and were anonymous," I said.

"I've never been to Las Vegas, lets see the sights," she said.

We spent the rest of the day walking around, neither one of us was much of a gambler so the casino's started to get boring. We had two meals in the most expensive restaurants we could get into. Afterwards we saw a show at one of the casino's.

We went back to our room afterwards.

"Man this place is kinda boring huh?" said Whitney.

"I think you have to be addicted to gambling to have fun here," I said.

"Lets go somewhere else, like New York."

"What are we going to do after that? We have an ability that we have just scratched the surface of. Travelling is going to get boring after a while," I said.

"It isn't now, we'll do something different later, we'll pay the bill find a quiet place to create a TSW and see New York," she said.

The next morning we grabbed our stuff and went downstairs to check out. The clerk raised an eyebrow when we paid for everything in cash.

"We won big and quit while we were ahead," I said to her.

"You'd be the first," she replied suspiciously.

We left the hotel and went back to the little park where we had first arrived on Earth. I took out my PDA and used it to create a small TSW. I manoeuvred the far end to New York. I was getting used to looking through the inch square TSW and finding the places I wanted to go to. It was real life version of Google Earth.

I put us in an alley next to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We walked through and then spent the whole day looking at exhibits.

"This is more like it," said Whitney.

Afterwards we ate at the most expensive restaurant we could find, and then checked into a hotel. We had sex again and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning, hearing someone walking around the room. I assumed it was Whitney as I reached out next to me expecting to find an empty bed. I felt her shoulder. I bolted up wide-awake and saw a young man in an expensive suit standing at foot of the bed.

"Hi, I'm Franz Morton," he said.

I quickly jabbed Whitney in the side with my elbow, she looked at me with sleepy eyes and said "What?"

I point towards the man at the end of the bed she turned looked and yelped a startled "Oh!"

"How did you get in here," I asked Franz.

"Stupid question, I invented TSW's remember."

"Franz Morton is a 55 year old man, you look like your in your early twenties," I said.

"Brain transference device. Look why don't you two get dressed and meet me at the restaurant downstairs. I'll buy you breakfast and explain everything."

With that he walked out of the front door to the suite.

Whitney and I quickly showered and got dressed. We took the elevator to the lobby and walked across the floor into the large restaurant on the other side of the room.

We saw Franz sitting by himself at one of the tables drinking a cup of coffee. We walked over and sat down.

"What is a brain transference device?" I asked.

"You know enough about TSW's to realize you can copy anything by taking it out of another universe that's a few seconds behind. I took a copy of myself, first tranquilized of course, and then used a TSW to put my brain in his body."

"That's possible?"

"Sure the skull and body are 100% compatible. I used a computer to move and change the size of back to back TSW's, like the doorway algorithm. It moves through my skull with the B side moving through his skull. Replacing his brain with mine. I just stayed immobile for a few hours to heal."

"Wouldn't all the arteries leak because they've been cut?" I said.

"Because TSW's are 2 dimensional, they have no thickness, therefore they are as sharp as anything can be. When you cut things at an atomic level and put the ends back together they fuse. There is a thin line of dead cells one cell thick. This heals pretty quickly."

"What about the poor guys brain you just removed?" I asked squeamishly.

"Can't make an omelette unless you break a few eggs," responded Franz.

A waitress came over and took our food orders. Whitney and I both ordered bacon and eggs.

"How did you find us?" I asked when the waitress left.

"I created this universe, I am from the Prime universe. I opened a TSW one second in the past. It's easy to follow people from a prime universe. You just open windows into the past where you know a person once was and then just follow them. I followed you from Mars."

"So we have originals of ourselves in your universe?"

"Yes but they aren't having such an exciting time as you." Said Franz.

"Why are you following us?" asked Whitney.

"You guys are the first people other than myself to discover TSW's. I was curious to meet you. I would actually like to bring you back to my complex and show you my research on all this. It would be nice to have another perspective."

"Why didn't you just tell other people," Said Whitney.

"This is the most powerful thing ever discovered, I didn't trust anyone. You guys have figured it out and kept your mouths shut, so I can sorta trust you not to let the cat out of the bag."

Our breakfasts arrived and we began to eat.

"So will you come back to my complex with me?"

Whitney and I looked at each other. She turned and faced Franz. "Yes, I guess we don't have anything to loose. If you had wanted to do something bad to us you could have done it easily enough already."

We finished our breakfast. Franz left a crisp 1000-dollar bill on the table as we left.

"Money doesn't mean anything when you can copy it huh?" I said.

"Nothing means anything when you can copy it," he replied.

We left the restaurant and were on the way to the elevator when we heard the waitress yelp in amazement. We went to our suite and collected our things. Franz looked at our PDA's with mild curiosity as we packed.

We went back down to the lobby and checked out paying in cash.

We all left through the front door.

"So how do we get to your complex?" I asked.

Franz motioned us down an empty alley, he pulled out a very expensive looking PDA from his pocket. "Had it custom made," he said.

He then pressed the touch screen and a TSW appeared in front of him.

"We're going back to the Prime universe and then through another TSW 30000 years in the past, where my complex is."

"How do you go back into the prime universe once the TSW is closed?" I asked.

"You never close a TSW that you walk through or you'll trap yourself. I just shrink it down to molecular size and then increase the size when I need it to go back. My PDA controls it. You can bring the algorithm that created the TSW with you into the alternate universe."

We walked through the TSW he had just created and stepped onto a beautiful pink beach. I smelled the scent of the ocean. I looked to the right and saw the rippling water stretching to the horizon. There were coral stalagmites jutting out of the water in various places.

Franz gestured to my left and Whitney and I both looked at a large steel structure about 500 meters away. It looked like a half played jenga game, it was made of rectangular steel bricks stacked on top on top of each other.

"Its made of titanium. The rectangles are all hollow," said Franz.

He motioned us to follow him as he walked towards the structure. As we approached the building I saw that there was an open area at the bottom about 10 meters high and 50 meters square. There was a large swimming pool in the centre with what appeared to be people walking or lounging in reclining patio chairs.

As we got even closer I was able to make out the people, they were almost all spectacularly beautiful young women. The few men seemed to be dressed in security garb. One of them suddenly took off and flew into the air to my amazement. Franz looked at my startled expression and smiled.

"Flying harness. The anchor goes through a small TSW into the prime universe, then all you have to do is move the TSW around which moves the person in this universe."

"Why do you need security in 30000 BC?" I asked.

"Its amazing what fossils don't tell you. I always thought Neanderthals were confined to Europe. That was sure wrong. There are some on another island close to here. They tried to attack us when we first moved here. I had to scare the shit out of them to get rid of them. Smelly nasty brutes."

"Where are we?" I asked.

"We're in the Caribbean, This is the ice age so water levels are quite a bit lower. These coral atolls would be deep under the surface in our time," replied Franz.

As we got closer a very beautiful shapely young woman in a bathing suit with long dark brown hair walked up to Franz and smiled at him.

"Hi toots'" She said.

"Hi Norma." said Franz as she walked by.

"God she looks exactly like Marilyn Monroe," I said

"She is, she's not suffering from mental problems though, like the one in our reality. I always liked the way she looked so I created a TSW into the past and became her benefactor. I got her mother psychiatric treatment and made sure she had a stable life. It's nurture by the way nature doesn't do much. She's a relatively normal woman now because of what I did. No fantasies of becoming a movie star."

"Does she know all this?" asked Whitney.

"No, she thinks I'm her benefactors nephew, and that she is just a normal woman. She is aware like all the people here that time travel is possible and that I can control it but that's it."

As we passed more women, others looked familiar as well. I recognized one as an actress from the eighties whose career had petered away.

"How do you get them all to stay here?" I said.

"When you can give people whatever they want, getting them to stay is not the problem, getting rid of them is."

We walked through an open door on the side of one of the metal bricks. As we walked through we entered a brightly lit spacious hallway with windows that opened out onto a forest meadow.

I realized the door and the windows were probably more TSW's. Franz looked at me.

"This whole structure has thousands TSW's, even the toilet drains are TSW's. Nothing is what it seems."

We walked down the hall and entered through another door and walked into a very large office space complete with a massive oak desk. The walls were lined with a variety of paintings. I looked closely at one of the nearest.

"Marilyn Monroe as painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. I had her painted by a number of artists. Her look really is timeless, they all loved painting her," said Franz.

She was dressed in a 13th century outfit in front of a 13th century Italian cityscape. She looked so very different from all the pictures I had ever seen of her. Just a bright eyed confident woman, no overt looks of wanton sexuality.

Chapter Five

I turned around as I heard the door open in the room. A very slight spectacularly beautiful woman walked in. She walked over to Franz put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"I missed you lover," she said in a completely unrecognizable exotic accent.

"I missed you too Neffi," said Franz.

Franz led her over to Whitney and me and introduced us.

"Bob, Whitney, this is my girlfriend Nefertiti."

We both shook her hand, It appeared to be a custom she was not used too.

Having had the extraordinary appear ordinary in this place I assumed she was the original Nefertiti .

"Are you from ancient Egypt?" I asked.

"You've heard of me?" she said delighted.

"Franz always tells me I'm just another waif he's saved from misery. I have my doubts though." She smiled at Franz.

"I am from ancient Egypt, Franz brought me here when I was ten years old. Thank god, my parents had just sold me into slavery. If I was lucky I would have been someone's concubine, if not...."

"Don't you want to go back?"

She laughed. "To what? I had no idea how bad things were until I left. Disease and suffering was our normal life. Franz explained to me where disease comes from when I first got here. Its sad, all those people who died because we spent thousands of years shitting where we ate and not washing our hands."

"Have you spent all your time since then in the complex?" I asked.

"Oh no. I've been everywhere with Franz. I've seen many things. He wants me to start going to university in a few months."

"How were you schooled?"

"Franz had tutors teach me everything, I learned English, math and physics. It was all amazing to me, all those things I once thought were magic explained. I learned how to play the guitar too, I love Bob Dylan."

"Neffi will find out the truth about herself soon, she's going to go to UCLA. I hope you forgive me when you find out," Franz said holding her hands.

"Oh Franz, you're so dramatic lately. I'm pretty sure I know what would have happened to me. I know I'm pretty good looking, I was probably a consort for some nobleman had a few children and died young. Right?"

Franz looked at me.

"You can tell her if you want, she has to learn sometime."

Neffi looked at me with her beautiful eyes. She had an expression of excitement and trepidation.

"You ended up as Pharaoh Akhenaton's wife. You helped start a new religion and build a new capital city. Nobody really knows what happened after that, you both disappeared from the historical record."

Nefertiti looked astonished. "Really."

Franz spoke up. "I don't think you have any idea how smart and tenacious you really are Neffi."

"Nobody knows what happened after that?" she said.

"Well there's one more thing, three thousand years later an archaeologist dug up a bust of your head, you became known as the most beautiful woman in antiquity." said Whitney.

"There's tons of cosmetic and beauty products named after you."

"Oh Franz, you asshole! He told me Nefertiti was a French word for beauty."

"You're not disappointed?" I said.

"Oh god no, I seen Akhenaton once, I was in awe at the time, but I know now he wasn't a god. He was really weird looking too. If I did all that stuff, it was probably for self preservation." She said.

"I know what happened next Neffi, if you want I can tell you," said Franz

"OK," she said.

"The ousted priests started a coup by bribing the leader of the military. The military then killed the entire royal family. The leader of the military became the next pharaoh and restored the old religion. They were unable to completely wipe out the new religion however and it became the basis for Judaism and ultimately Christianity and Islam," he said.

"It was all your idea Neffi. Akhenaton was pompous, greedy and not very bright. You thought this all up on you own and then implemented it to take back control of Egypt from the priests."

"Wow, what am I gonna do to top that?" Said Neffi.

"You don't have to do anything, you have a second chance."

It suddenly occurred to me that Nefertiti had already topped herself. Franz was way more powerful then Akhenaton had ever been and she had him completely under her spell. I wondered how much she had already known about herself. She seemed way to smart to be fooled by Franz telling her that Nefertiti was a French word for beauty.

I tried looking at her objectively and found that I couldn't. She had a unique mix of amazing charm, exceptional beauty and a kind of electric presence. I was pretty sure that if she turned her attentions to me it would very hard to resist her.

Chalk one up for Nature.

Neffi had some things to do and said goodbye. Franz took us to another room in the complex, as we walked through the door we stepped into bright sunshine. We emerged at the bottom of a large amphitheatre created from limestone blocks. It was cut into the side of a hill and surrounded a large stage.

"We're in Greece around 500 BC "said Franz.

" The actors will come out in another hour to do their performance."

"Do you speak Greek?" asked Whitney.

"No, I bring the odd scholar here to acclimatize them to time travel. I just wanted a quiet place to explain the rest of what you've started to discover. You must have a lot of questions."

"Oh ya," I said. "Why do TSW's exist?"

"I'll start at the beginning, as you know I had a pretty auspicious beginning to my career."

"You were a security guard," said Whitney.

"My security guard career came more from laziness and depression than my lack of ability. I did however have a hobby writing software programs. It was from that I started to figure it all out. I took a Linux course a few years back, as I was taking the course it struck me that the way Linux worked, the quirky little scripts the infinite ways to do the same thing was simply because someone made it that way.

Linux was like a little universe unto itself and it was the way it was simply because somebody thought it up that way."

"That's not too profound," I said

"It is if you start to think our universe was just thought up in the same way. What if the big bang was not an explosion of matter and energy but an explosion of consciousness, and matter and energy was just an idea that that same consciousness dreamed up."

"You're talking about God," I said.

"No I'm not. We have very closed ideas about intelligence and consciousness, we have only ourselves as examples. There could be many of these consciousness's, we might be part of them, or they could be fundamentally and profoundly different than us."

"You met them?" I said.

"No, but they are part of my theory. I call them the Brains," said Franz. "I thought how would I make a universe, if the brains are real and they thought up the universe, what would they use to create something consistent with what exists."

"Two dimensional planes in time and space, that are variable in size and shape," I said

"Bingo, that's my theory, everything that exists every effect is created by TSW's. Whenever a Brain came up with an idea, like gravity or mass they used algorithms and TSW's to create it."

"How did you find out how to manipulate them?" asked Whitney.

"It's simple, one of the things about nature and about us, is we use the same tool for different things. When the Brains thought up electromagnetism, they used the same mathematical formulas as gravity to control its effects.

Why waste time inventing new ones? So our minds probably write algorithms the same way theirs do. Why think up a new way? So if you keep extrapolating from that then the Brains probably invented debug tools for the same reason humanity did when we started programming."

"That's what were using, the debug tool?" I asked

"That's my theory."

"How did you find the header and footer code used to insert an algorithm? And why are the algorithms written in English?" asked Whitney.

"I theorized that since we are part of the code, I should be able to find it with introspection."

"Huh?"

"I thought that a lucid dream probably used the same laws and systems as the universe, again why would the Brains waste time writing a different set of algorithms. I had a lot of control over my lucid dreams. It took a long time but I managed to figure it out. As for you're other question. Its all in English because its not the language that matters it's the idea.

The complier of the universe works on properly structured ideas in a properly structured language. Ask any linguist and they will tell you that there really is only one language, with many different variations."

"Don't the brains care that you're fucking around with the universe?" I asked.

"I don't know. They haven't so far," said Franz.

There it was, the nature of the universe, maybe. It did change my perspective of things. I wondered about the Brains. Did they know about us or were we like bacteria to them, too inconsequential to bother with.

The actors and the audience had started to arrive in the amphitheatre. They did not seem very surprised to see us. A older bearded man approached Franz.

"Hello Franz, you stay for acting?"

"Sorry Sophocles, not this time."

"Is too bad have new writings, you not bring moron this time?"

"You mean professor Franklin?"

"Yes yes, many stupid questions." said Sophocles shaking his head.

"Not understand, if don't write what audience want to hear, don't eat, that is characters motivation."

Franz said goodbye to Sophocles and we walked through the door back into the complex.

"They don't go through the door sometimes?" asked Whitney.

"No the TSW shrinks to molecular size after I walk back. If they open the door they just see a blank wall."

"Don't they wonder how you do it," I asked.

"Their theory of everything involves magic and spirits, I fit into that quite nicely. To them I am just a benevolent minor god or magician."

Franz showed us to a suite of rooms. He told us he had things to tend to and would meet the next morning. We were free to walk around were we wanted. Just don't go through any locked doors.

Whitney and I decided to leave our PDA's behind if we decided to walk around so we wouldn't have to resist temptation.

Whitney started to cook us a dinner after discovering a fully stocked fridge and pantry as well as a kitchen in the suite.

I found a small wine rack in a closet stocked with some eye-popping vintages. There was palm wine in a clay jar labelled with hieroglyphics, as well as bottles of what looked to be ancient roman and Greek wines. I picked out a bottle of chardonnay 2008, not wanting to test my sensitive stomach.

As we sat at the table eating Whitney and I started to talk.

"What are we going to do?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" Whitney said with what appeared to be a poker face.

"If we leave, and Franz doesn't care what we do. We can do anything."

"So," she said still poker faced.

"I love you Whitney, but we're not in Kansas anymore. The universe is our oyster now. I can literally think of a million things I want to do. I'm sure you can too, but they probably aren't the same things."

Whitney looked at me, silently thinking.

"I love you too Bob... Wanna have sex?"

So we did. Resolving nothing.

I took a shower after we finished, Whitney wanted to take a nap so I decided to walk around the complex while she rested. I went back outside to the pool. At heart I guess I was just another shallow man unable to resist the chance to see and talk to all those beautiful women.

I walked out into the open area, I was disappointed to find the lounge chairs and pool empty. I decided to keep walking out of the complex and back to the beautiful beach we had arrived on.

After the short walk I was back on the beach. I took my shoes and socks off and walked along the beach as the surf washed over my bare feet.

The beach was picture postcard beautiful. The water was crystal clear and the bright sun helped show the contrast of dark pink veins of fine coral against the lighter pink sand of the beach.

I felt someone come up behind me, I turned around and saw a very pretty very young woman with a bobbed haircut. She was wearing a gauzy see through robe that ended six inches above her knee. There was clearly nothing on underneath.

"All the other broads are inside, if your looking for them," she said.

"Umm.. No I'm just walking," I said.

"OK sure." she laughed. "I'm Lulu by the way," she held out her hand.

I took it and gave it a little shake, as she studied me with her large penetrating eyes.

"I'm Bob, where are you from?"

"Well Bob," she said running a hand through her hair, "I'm from 1931, Hollywood California. Funny place this is huh? Were you tell everybody when you're from as well as where."

"You're a movie actress?" I asked.

"You sure ain't no film buff Bob. I was the bees knees as far as movie stars go," she crossed her arms with a miffed look on her face.

"Ah.. Sorry."

She looked at me pouting, then a beautiful smile lit up her face. She looked so breathtaking I had no problem envisioning her as a movie star.

"I'm Louise Brooks, look me up in the Encyclopaedia sometime."

"Why are you here?"

"Why wouldn't I be? The land of everything, who could resist that? Franz also showed me what happened with the rest of my film career. It didn't turn out so good, I didn't have a lot to loose."

"What happened?"

"Gonna have to look it up Bob, I ain't into ancient history. When are you from?"

"2010."

"Wow! The future. I love the future man, been there a bunch of times. Everything is so bright and exotic, and that Internet shit just slays me."

"So what does everyone do here?" I asked.

"Whatever they want honey, you lonely?"

She put her arms around my neck pressing her lithe body again mine. She smelled wonderful. I felt my arms involuntarily wrap around her. She started kissing me. She felt so soft and warm in my arms I couldn't even fathom letting her go.

I ended up cheating on Whitney.

After we finished I watched as Lulu walked naked into the ocean for a swim. She had a very fit and toned body with long beautiful legs. She must have been a dancer once.

I watched her bob around for fifteen minutes, then she walked out and back to me. She put her robe back on, the fabric clinging to her wet body.

"I'll see you again? I have suite, just ask Franz were it is."

"I'm not alone," I said.

"I know. You're a newbie here you still don't know. When you can have everything, eventually everyone caves in to it. She will too."

"Why me, I'm no Brad Pitt."

"You know what Franz knows, that makes you a pretty interesting guy. I like interesting guys. Who's Brad Pitt?" she said.

"2010's Valentino."

"Oh."

We walked back to the complex. I had a horrible feeling of dread as I walked to the suite alone. I wasn't a good liar and I was sure Whitney would see right through me.

I walked through the suite door to see Franz and Whitney sitting at the dinner table talking, Whitney had a intense look of anger and pain on her face.

She looked right at me when she noticed me.

"So you love me huh? You fuck another chick a half hour after you say it!"

I was stunned. I suddenly realized Franz had probably set me up.

"It's better this way, you guys were going down a very bad road," Franz said.

"How do you know!! Maybe we we're different!" Whitney yelled.

"Nobody's different. You would just have dragged it out a lot longer and hurt each other even more." said Franz.

"You set me up?" I asked dazed.

"It didn't take much."

"Whitney, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," I said.

"Get out, just get out, don't talk to me," she was crying.

"Franz grabbed my elbow and led me out.

"Why did you do this?" I asked still in a daze.

"You'll thank me in a few days, I'll show you to Lulu's place."

I felt horrible, my heart ached for Whitney. There was though a very small feeling of relief. I began to realize as much as I didn't want to that Franz was probably right.

We arrived at Lulu's suite. She opened the door dressed in a body hugging bright red dress. She truly was beautiful. I couldn't resist her.

I woke up the next morning with the sun shining through the window. Lulu was still fast asleep. I shook her shoulder gently but she just mumbled and pushed me away. She wasn't an early riser obviously. I got up showered and ate breakfast.

Lulu got up as I was finishing. She was absolutely naked as she walked around the suite.

"You don't like clothes?"

"Why you want me to dress?"

"No."

"Good." she sat on my lap and put her arms around neck and kissed me. "You're going to have a big day today," she said.

"Franz wants you to meet him by the pool."

I kissed her once more and left to meet Franz.

Franz was waiting by the pool talking to Marilyn Monroe again.

I walked up to him as she kissed him on the cheek and said goodbye.

"You've slept with all of them haven't you," I said.

"That's why they're here."

"Don't they get angry, violent?"

"I don't lie to them, and they can all leave whenever they want. Very few of them do."

"Don't you feel bad, don't you love?" I said.

"There is always someone better, there really is. I was like you once, but I just gave up."

"What about Lulu?"

"Don't get too wrapped up in her, she loves sex to much, she will never be faithful to you."

I thought it would probably be a good idea to read up about her.

"What's going to happen to Whitney?"

"I've given her the same splurb I'm going to give you. She's gone back to her own universe," said Franz.

"She's gone?" I said.

"It's for the best. She'll get over it, and then she will start enjoying her new found life."

"Why are you doing this for us?"

"I am curious what someone else would do with transcendent technology, It's been all me so far. I can't help wondering what else there is to accomplish."

"Why us?"

"You were the first to figure it out, I'm not into killing people so I can't stop you. You would have figured out the basics eventually I'm just speeding up the process," said Franz.

"Come on it's time to meet the crews"

Crews?

Chapter Six

We walked back into the complex down the hall and into another door. We emerged into a modern office. It was divided into cubicles each equipped with computer workstation a phone and a stressed out looking person.

"Welcome to the Simulator Software company," said Franz.

"When and where?" I said.

"This is in my prime universe, so its now to me. It's in Massachusetts."

One of the people in the nearest cubicle noticed us talking, he stood up and walked towards us.

"Mr Morton, we weren't expecting you," he said nervously extending his hand.

Franz shook it smiling.

"You know me Rob, just passing through. I'm going to meet the guys in Nerdsville."

Nerdsville?

"Good luck," said Rob.

I followed Franz to the elevator, we got in and Franz pushed the button for a floor two above ours.

"What is Nerdsville? I asked.

"You'll see."

The elevator stopped and the door opened to a completely different office environment. There were no cubicles just random messy desks with a variety of nerf balls and RC vehicles as well as other junk all over the floor. The walls had posters of scantily clad young women.

The room was populated with slightly overweight young men, most had scruffy beards and were dressed in poorly fitting jeans and t-shirts.

Franz walked over to what I assumed was the head Nerd.

"So what do you have for me Frogger?"

"Ah, well we are still working the latest simulation you asked for. It's taking a lot longer then we thought."

"Can you run what you have? I'm curious what it looks like," said Franz.

"Sure I can run it through our 50 inch monitor in the lounge."

We followed Frogger into another room that had a bunch of easy chairs surrounding a large monitor hanging on one wall.

Frogger had a tablet PC in his arm and was busy typing on the touch screen. The monitor flashed to life and a red cube appeared in the middle of it against a white background.

"How many shapes can you make?" asked Franz.

"We have programmed forty two so far," said Frogger.

"Show me the woman."

Frogger typed a few strokes on his tablet and a Very realistic looking beautiful woman appeared on the screen.

"That's pretty good."

"We upped the resolution as much as we could. It will only work in a very large computer."

"Can she walk and talk?" said Franz.

"She will be able too, but we still have about a month more to go," said Frogger.

"I sure wish I knew what you need all this weird code for Franz."

"Military contract, Frogger. Everything has to be secret."

"What the fuck does the military need software that uses hundreds of virtual two dimensional squares to make shapes against a blank screen. Most of the stuff we do could be done with off the shelf animation software. Why do we have to define every square with this bizarre system?"

"I'll just say it's an add on for a older piece of equipment," said Franz

"We'll be back in a month."

I followed Franz back to the elevator. Franz pushed the button to open the door and we both walked in.

"That software it's to create three dimensional shapes with TSW's isn't it," I said.

"Yup. I call it the Pixilater. I can create people, cars, anything. The very small TSW's open in front of different colored small pegs. Then they move back and shrink around the shaft. That way when you touch the pixel you touch the tip of the peg not the TSW which would cut your finger. I have hundreds of different types of pegs, soft, hard and textured. The pegs are a quarter of a millimetre wide so you have to look very close to see that what is created isn't real."

"So you get the Nerds to write all the transcendent code for this thing so you don't have to," I said.

"Time is the most valuable thing I have. They are way better at programming anyway, it's all they do. They get paid very well too," said Franz

"They have no clue?"

"Nope. They have written tons of transcendent code for me."

"You must have a massive computer to run this if your simulating people?" I asked.

"A Cray XT5 Jaguar."

"What do you use all this stuff for?" I asked.

"To play with of course. My favourite super hero when I was a kid was the Green Lantern. I plan to go into another universe as sort of a super hero of my own. I even have a costume. I'll use the Pixilator to be super."

"All this to play?" I asked.

"When you can do anything, that's what you end up doing."

We had left the elevator and walked back to the door we had arrived from. Franz opened it and we walked back into the complex.

"I showed you this so that you would be able to save time. You don't have to write your own code," said Franz.

"Come on I'll show you the next bunch you'll need to know, I call them the documentarians."

I followed Franz through the complex into another large section. This area was decorated like a nineteenth century mansion. There were curiously familiar looking artefacts set in displays in every room. I saw a solid gold spectacularly beautiful ancient Egyptian death mask, it wasn't pharaoh Tutankhamen's famous one. Franz noticed me looking at it.

"It's Akhenaton's, same goldsmith who did Tut's but he had more time, I got him to make me some other stuff. He was an artistic genius."

Franz walked over to a display that had a small nondescript clay cup. He grabbed it and tossed it over to me. Startled I almost dropped it.

"What is it?" I asked.

Franz smiled.

"It's the holy grail."

I looked at it.

"The holy grail of what?"

"It's the Holy Grail, you know the crusades. That's what they were looking for."

I looked at it more closely, it was just a well made non descript clay cup. It looked hand made but in such a way that gave the impression that the maker had made hundreds of them.

"It doesn't look that old," I said.

"It isn't, it was picked up by one of the documentarians through a TSW about a year ago."

"Who are the documentarians?"

"I'll introduce you to one of the Christ specialists," said Franz.

We went through one more door into a spacious office. It had large bookcases that filled up all the wall space, and in front of a large window at the far end was a huge wooden desk with a staggering amount of paper and books piled on it.

I could just make out the top of someone's head bobbing up and down behind it.

"Professor Mitchell, I have someone for you to meet," said Franz

A young thin balding man with wire rim glasses emerged from behind the desk.

"This is Bob."  
"Pleased to meet you," said the professor as he shook my hand.

"Bob would like to know what you."

"Ahh, very simple, I go back into historical times with sort of a documentary film crew and make documentary films. Sort of."

"Sort of?" I said.

"Instead of a camera we use TSW's. We find the pertinent times and events and open a large TSW so that an audience can watch what really happened."

"Don't the people you're watching get a little bit spooked when the see an audience on the other side of the TSW.?

"The TSW is only opened for 1/1000th of a second then repeated at a 1000 hertz at the exact same time and place for one 1/24th of a second. We repeat this process 24 times a second. It works like a film camera except we're not exposing film. The people we are looking at cannot register anything that appears for a 1000th of a second, but it is more then enough time for light to get through to the audience," said Mitchell.

"How do you know when and what to film," I said.

"We do tons of research, I can speak several ancient languages and have spoken to many historical figures. Jesus is my speciality for now, but I'm thinking of switching to something else."

"Why?" I said, "He must be kind of interesting."

"That he was, but not for the reasons you think," said Franz.

"Again why?" I said.

"I'll give you a brief synopsis, but you should really watch the documentary, its quite fascinating," said Franz.

"Jesus was a rabbi, he had gone through rabbinical school and was practicing as a rabbi when he had a great idea.

It's an idea that has been used over and over basically since civilization and spiritualism started. It's being used to this day by hundreds of self-help gurus.

It works like this, first you need to have a doctorate or a medical degree or some other kind of other laurel to rest on.

Then tell everyone you became alienated and disappointed with life and went on a long spiritual journey into the wilderness, or Tibet or India or pick the spot, and came back with all the answers to the meaning of life.

Now you can sell books, T-shirts and collect lecture fees telling large audiences exactly what they want to hear, that happiness requires no effort and that they're really not a bunch of losers."

"Jesus was a huckster?" I said.

"Oh Ya. A real good one. He was raking in a mountain of cash. He even had his own entourage. That was the problem. The traditional rabbi's weren't too happy he was mowing their lawn.

Jesus should have just took off and left Jerusalem, he knew they were pissed off but he was getting pretty full of himself. The rabbi's went to Pilate and basically threatened him with riots unless he got rid of Jesus. Pilate was just putting in time as the Roman governments representative in Israel and didn't want any problems so he sent a few soldiers out to pick him up.

Jesus was absolutely shocked when the Roman soldiers showed up. His entourage did what entourages do and just scuttled away. This is were some of the quotes in the bible come from albeit within a completely different context.

So the soldiers nailed him to a cross, and Pilate forgot about him.

There were guards to watch the crucified but not many. Most people nailed to crosses didn't have a lot of friends, so someone trying to free them wasn't a big problem.

This is were Judas comes in.

You know what they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Judas was actually a pretty decent guy. He had known Jesus before he had become a minor celebrity and was still his friend. He had tried to talk the soldiers out of arresting him without much luck. He did suggest something else though, and after much persuasion they agreed to do it.

The deal was this, they would pick up Jesus after the trial and try to make his crucifixion as comfortable as possible.

He would only have to hang there for a couple of days, and they would also give him water.

The whole vinegar thing was invented by the soldiers, that's what they told anyone who asked what was on the sponge they kept putting up to his mouth.

Afterwards if he agreed to get the fuck out of Jerusalem and never come back they would take him down and give him to his family.

Judas paid them thirty pieces of silver.

After hanging on a cross for three days Jesus had no problem agreeing to leave.

The guards told their bosses that Jesus had died and that they had given the body to his family for burial. Unfortunately a few people spotted him walking around before he fucked off.

That's were the whole resurrection thing comes in, it was made up to cover up the fact there wasn't a body in the tomb and that people had seen him alive.

The rabbi's never really believed he had died but didn't care, Judas had convinced them he was leaving for good.

Jesus changed his name and spent the rest of his life in a nearby city working as a carpenter. He got married and had had four kids with his wife. He died fifteen years later."

"So Judas was innocent!" I said.

"You bet," Franz said, "but Jesus' entourage had had their eyes opened, a bunch of them started running the same scam Jesus had started. They were clever enough not to do it in Jerusalem though, the whole resurrection thing was a great little addition to their spiel."

Mitchell continued, "They did however have one little problem, Judas was still alive and he knew the truth. So they added a little spin to the story and blamed him for everything.

If Judas had done nothing for his friend, Jesus would have just died and that would have been the end of it."

"Is all history like this?" I asked.

"Oh ya, most of the books on history and historians are completely out to lunch," said Mitchell.

"Like what?"

"There were hundreds of civilizations that had a huge influence on the development of the modern world that historians know nothing about because they built everything out of wood and all the remnants have rotted away.

Booze and pretty women were the major impetuses for just about everything.

Most great ancient battles only had a few hundred casualties, if one side started loosing they just ran away. It just goes on and on."

"What about great men like Alexander?" I asked.

"He operated the same way Al Capone did. He was just a mobster, if he was alive today he'd probably be the leader of the Hell's Angels. He wasn't gay either, he just had typical mobster relationships, which seem kind of gay out of context," said Mitchell.

I turned to Franz and said "Why do you have these people comb through history?"

"Curiosity, I find it all very interesting. It also gave me some great insights into human nature," he replied.

I suddenly had a bizarre question pop into my head, something I had been interested in as a teenager.

"What about Roswell?"

Franz looked at me with a blank look, "Roswell? I always thought all that UFO stuff was just bullshit. I never looked into actually."

I looked down at the Holy Grail in my hands, slowly turning it around. All it did was make me feel thirsty.

I was amazed at all the stuff that I heard. I had always had niggling doubts when I was younger about history. It had always seemed to me to be a little bit smug for someone to infer all these grandiose facts from a very limited and contradictory amount of information.

Franz turned to me and said, "Now we go off to the fixers, the final tool of the transcendent specialist."

We said goodbye to professor Mitchell and made our way back the way we came.

"How many of these documentarians do you have?" I asked.

"I got about ten crews of four people, but if I'm curious about something I just get more."

"That must take up a lot of time," I said.

"That's what the fixers are for."

I put the Holy Grail back on the pedestal it had been sitting on as we both walked back into the main complex. I followed Franz through another maze of hallways and doors until we came to a large area filled with small living quarters and offices.

Each office consisted of a desk with a weird monitor like device sitting on top. There were names on the office doors and large yellow legal pads covered with numerous notes stacked on the desks.

"The monitors on the desks are simple TSW's that they use to look back in time and space. The TSW is miniscule, I use a lens to blow the image up full size. It's basically a sophisticated pin hole camera," said Franz.

"This place is usually empty, most of the fixers are out fixing, but I asked one person to stay."

We walked to a specific office. Sitting on a chair in front of a desk was a young ordinary looking woman.

"This is Mary, Mary say hello to Bob."

She stood up and shook my hand saying Hi.

"Mary explain to Bob what you do," said Franz.

"Sure," she said.

Franz excused himself and said he would be back after taking care of a few things.

"Well Bob, its simple I use the monitor here to look for things in time and space, and then go there in person to change them or bring them back."

"You know transcendent technology?" I asked.

"Oh god no, Franz would never tell us that, he just provides us with the tools. We travel back using the time doors at the back." She gestured at a wall lined with doors, each had a weird monitor device built into the wall beside it.

"We manoeuvre the door where we want it with the time space probe, we set it against a wall in the alternate universe as inconspicuously as possible then we go through carrying the key."

"What if somebody tries to break through," I said.

"Its made from battleship armour four inches thick, the lock is from a bank safe." she said.

"What if you loose your key?" I said.

"There's a hidden buzzer and a peephole. We have a security crew on call 24/7 to answer the buzzer."

"What do you mean change things."

"Well that's complicated. One of the first things I had to do was test the great man theory of history because Franz was curious if it was right," she said.

"What is the great man theory of history?" I asked.

"That history is shaped and moulded by great leaders, and that if these leaders hadn't been around the world would be fundamentally different."

"How did you try to see if it was right?" I asked.

"I started with the Russian revolution, Lenin was the great man supposedly responsible so I took him out of the picture. I simply did things that pulled him away from being a revolutionary leader when he was a young man. I gave him money, had numerous women seduce him, basically turned him into a lazy bum. It sure wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It removed him from history though. He was no longer a great man."

"How did you get girls to seduce him?" I asked.

"You forget I have an unlimited supply of money, jewels anything I want. I just pluck it up with the probe and the door. Women and men will do almost anything for a lot of money," she said.

"Didn't Lenin get suspicious?" I said.

"Suspicious?" She laughed, "I just threw more money and women at him, no more suspicion."

"So what happened with the Russian Revolution?" I asked.

"Same old same old. It didn't make any difference, everyone still died, World War two and the battle of Stalingrad still happened."

"Did you try removing Karl Marx?" I asked.

"Yep, that was next. I gave him two grand, he drank himself to death in two days, I felt pretty bad." She said with a bit of sorrow in her eyes," they called it the revolution for fairness, everyone still died and Stalingrad happened once more."

"How far did you go," I asked.

"I did everything, got rid of Czar Nicholas, Trotsky, Stalin, you name it. It just changed the name of the war to the Russian civil war or the Russian Orthodox crusade, or god knows what, and everybody still died and Stalingrad happened again and again only it was called the battle of Volgograd."

"What was your conclusion?" I asked

"Russian people are addicted to misery, was all I could come up with."

"What about getting rid of Hitler," I asked

"That was really touchy, Franz had a few close friends who were affected by Hitler, he wasn't about to let him off the hook, but eventually curiosity won out. I had him shot him in the head when he was young man in the trenches during World War One. I felt he deserved it," she said defiantly. "I put down a trail of gold coins near a British sniper, he followed them right to a perfect vantage point at just the right time. He got him in one shot."

"Did it do anything?"

"Well German Jews ended up winning as many Iron Crosses as anybody, and the war lasted an extra eight months, but a million people still died in Stalingrad."

"It's was a real change though, no concentration camps," I said.

"I know, but the gist of it was the same. It just seemed to me that the weather was a more important factor. Russia was starving before the revolution, it made for a perfect opportunity for some very nasty people to take over every single time. Germany took advantage of a weakened Russia every single time after the revolution as well."

"No great men?"

"Just great opportunists," she said.

"This is all you've been doing?"

"Oh no, I recruit people, I pick up artefacts. I set up companies in alternate universes to make stuff Franz wants. I can fix anything," she said.

"Why do you do this?"

"Are you kidding? It's fun, not to mention I can do whatever else I want as long as I tell Franz. I only have to work three days a week too. It's hard though, I have to stop myself working sometimes cause I'm so curious."

"Do you get paid?" I said.

"Paid? Again your kidding, I just take what I want man. Franz doesn't care. I'm a Billionaire 20 times over."

"What other things have you fixed?" I asked.

"Tons. Franz is a bit of a baseball fan so he had me fix it so that Babe Ruth would play in the modern era."

"Why?"

"Well Duh. That's what every hard-core stat head baseball Junkie would want to know. How accurate are the stats. How would an old time athlete do in the modern era." she said.

"How did he do?" I asked.

"Really badly, we discovered the truth behind athletics, coaching and conditioning are far more important then talent. He had been coached and conditioned for 75-85 mile an hour fastballs. He couldn't hit anything when he started seeing 98MPH fastballs.

We even went further, we took a bunch of random street kids as well as a 8 year old Babe Ruth. We then paid the best coaches we could find and had them train and mentor these kids for 10 years. We gave them every opportunity to succeed as well as a stable home life and people who believed in them."

"And it didn't make any difference right?" I said.

"Wrong, it made all the difference, they all became spectacular people. They were pretty good ball players too, Ruth and two others ended up playing professionally. "

"How did you manage this?"

"We made up some bullshit about a baseball trust fund set up by an eccentric millionaire, it was a lot of work. I had to get families to adopt them, not just for money either but for love. Serendipity was my middle name. All of them are beyond superstitious because of all the coincidences I engineered. It sure changed my own way of thinking though, for someone to succeed in anything its all about opportunity."

"What else?" I said really curious.

"I arranged for Franz to be the starting pitcher in the seventh game of the 1927 World Series against the New York Yankees."

"How did he do?"

"He won after fourteen tries," she said laughing. "He spent hours training. He managed to get his fastball up to 81mph. He had faced all the Yankee hitters so many times he knew all their weaknesses. He was thrilled when he finally won."

"That was one amazing party afterward," I heard Franz say behind me.

I turned around to see him.

"Now you know what Fixers do," he said.

Chapter Seven

We walked back to the main part of the complex after we said goodbye to Mary.

"Now you know everything you need to. I will give you all the commands you don't have for transcendent technology as well as example algorithms. You should be able to do anything I can."

"I guess you want me to leave," I said.

"There's nothing here for you," said Franz.

"Can I take Lulu with me?"

Franz gave me a sideways glance.

"You can have all the Lulu's you want. Taking this one won't make any difference."

"This one knows me."

"She's all yours, if she agrees. I'm not her boss," said Franz.

Franz gave me a small book labelled The Principles of Sorcery. I quickly looked through it. The first half had all the transcendent commands I had already used plus other new ones I hadn't, all with definitions and examples of how to use them.

The last half of the book was filled with whole algorithms with names like The Builder, The living statue, The Flying harness and Franz's favourite The brain transference device.

I thought about using this algorithm to live forever, I wondered how long my brain would last constantly being transferred into a new body every twenty years or so. It made me feel kinda icky.

I went back to my suite to pick up my PDA and other stuff. I walked to Lulu's suite and knocked on the door. She answered me wearing a beautiful green form fitting dress. She also had what looked like expensive diamond earrings on and bright red lipstick.

"Hi Lulu, I'm leaving and I really want you to come with me," I blurted out.

"Oh!" She said startled.

"OK sure, just let me grab some things. I'll meet you at the pool in an hour."

I had the distinct impression that she had been counting on me to take her with me when I left.

I walked back to the pool, I noticed a wooden door in a frame standing by itself like a monolith among the deck chairs. Franz had opened a TSW back to my universe.

The pool area was full of women lounging around again. I glanced at a pretty and voluptuous blonde in a bikini standing next to the pool. She saw me looking and walked over and introduced herself.

"Hi I'm Amy, you must be Bob," she held out her hand.

I shook it then asked,"Are you famous? I don't recognize you."

"Sorry, I was a waitress working in a restaurant in New York in 1963 when I met Franz, I guess I was just his type."

"Why are you here."

"I didn't have a lot of prospects where I was, there's no big future in waitressing. My parents both died in a car accident when I was 18. So I was on my own. It wasn't fun."

"Why do you stay? Franz has hundreds of girlfriends," I said.

"He doesn't expect loyalty and I'm going to school now. I have a future. I can pick my spot to start from, and you never know maybe Franz will fall for me after all."

I felt someone grab my arm and start pulling me away from Amy with a hard jerk.

I looked over to see Lulu.

"No need to be meeting the locals," she said with what looked like an expression of jealously on her face.

"Bye?" Amy said as Lulu almost dragged me away from her.

She marched me right over to the door to my universe and kicked it open.

"Times a wasting," she said smiling at me.

We walked through together. I turned around after we had gone through. The door vanished completely after a few seconds.

"Where are we?" asked Lulu.

"It smells like New York," I said.

We were in a small alley. I could see modern looking cars going back and forth on a busy street at the far end.

We walked out onto the open street. We where in New York all right on a busy street.

"Well here we are, what do we do now."

Lulu grabbed my arm tightly and looked at me with an almost childlike expression of excitement.

"Anything! Lets go to Hollywood first. I haven't been back since I left in 1931."

"We have to find a quiet place so I can open a TSW. Lets rent a hotel room."

We walked down the street until we found a large Holiday Inn and rented a room. Once inside Lulu quickly turned the TV on and stared at it mesmerized.

"Franz didn't like television so he never had any TV's in the complex. It's so amazing, can you get the Internet too?" she said.

I took out my tablet PC and was about to use the WIFI to connect to the hotels high speed when I had second thoughts. The people who had found me originally had access to quantum search engines. It wouldn't take much effort to find the MAC address of this Government Issue PC if I connected it to the Internet.

I used doorway algorithm on my PDA to find a big box computer store nearby. I grabbed a laptop from their storeroom. I gave it to Lulu.

"Fill your boots," I said.

Lulu quickly opened the box and took the laptop out, started it and was quickly surfing the Internet.

"How'd you learn to do that?" I asked amazed.

"I'm pretty clever babe," she said while staring intently at the computer screen.

I looked over her shoulder and looked at the web page she was staring at. It was her wikipedia page, Louise Brooks.

"That must be weird reading stuff about yourself that you haven't done yet."

"It got me off the booze. I read about my future when Franz first showed me the Internet. It was so sad. I had the world by the tail and I screwed it all up because all I wanted to do was drink and fuck. It also gave me some real insights into myself too. I hadn't realized I had wanted to be a mother so badly until I read some of the things I said about myself during my future life, like calling myself barren Brooks."

"You said that?" I asked.

"I never got pregnant. Franz fixed me when I found out. He got a bunch of specialists to figure out why and then they fixed it using transcendent technology. It was my tubes or something, now I'm forbidden fruit again," she said smiling at me.

"I read about what happened to my friends in the business too. The studio heads were such assholes when talkies started. They killed all of our careers, I think they did on purpose. They were all so worried we would become too famous for them to control."

"They lost control eventually, the stars today make millions and pick their own films," I said.

"Can you give me another chance?" Lulu blurted out.

"What, to become a movie star again?"

"Of course. I watched a lot of my sound clips on Youtube. I never really got the hang of talking in front of a camera until the late thirties. By then I was long forgotten. I was so stiff and wooden."

"Can I read your wikipedia page?"

"Sure, I can't stop you."

We put the laptop on the bed in front of us, and laid beside each other while I read. I was kind of shocked, Lulu was basically the archetype for the modern tabloid celebrity, she slept with all her co-stars, directors and anyone else that came along (Even Greta Garbo). She did everything to excess, drinking, partying and sex. She even told her studio head to go fuck himself and left Hollywood for Europe.

She moved to Germany and made some of the most groundbreaking movies of the silent era with director GW Pabst. None of which were seen in America because of their themes of abuse, lesbianism and prostitution.

"When sound came along it killed the international film market because of the language barrier. With silent's you just had to change the language on the storyboards and voila you had a German or French film. I could only speak English so I had to go back to the states for work but I'd burnt so many bridges I could only get bit parts. People were sick of the whole flapper thing too," she said.

I read further, the article sort of insinuated that after her film career died Lulu became a high priced call girl to make ends meet. I looked at Lulu after I read that part.

She smiled at me.

"Ya that part frightened me, sleeping with creepy old geezers for money. I would never have thought I could stoop to that."

The rest of the article chronicled her descent into obscurity, her life ending as an alcoholic recluse. The only happy part in her later life was her small success as a writer of magazine articles about the silent era.

"There are clips of me on the internet being interviewed as an old lady. It was so scary, I didn't even recognize myself. All I saw was this poor old woman, all she had to cling to was booze and her past," she said.

"This is so weird, reading about this with you," I said.

"I know now because of Franz that there are an infinite number of futures. Whatever happens from this point on I know I'm not going to be living that one," she said pointing to the laptop.

"I did have an epiphany though, I didn't realize I was a good writer. That shocked me."

She reached over to a suitcase opened it and pulled out a binder full of hand written notes.

"My script," she said showing me.

"I watched every modern movie I could for about six months. Franz thought I lost my mind. Most of them were so god awful I thought the producers must have been on drugs. There were some good ones though. I found a website that listed film grosses to find out what makes money now. The films that do well seem to either have a lot of special effects or big stars but realistic dialogue seemed important too.

So I wrote a script for myself taking all these factors into account."

She opened up the binder and showed me the first page of the script. The title was Nefertiti Queen of Egypt.

"I was able to consult the worlds foremost expert on the subject," she giggled. "It's sort of a modern Cleopatra-ish Gladiator type film," she said looking at me. "I read you gotta keep the pitch to twenty words or less."

"Well I think you're gonna have to sleep with the producer," I said.

She giggled again.

"So lets make it," I said.

"How are we going to do this? At the very least you're going to have to change your look, you're still kind of flapper-esk."

"I already got it figured out, I'll just get hair extensions. I've been working out too, modern actors have to be super fit now." She said flexing one of her biceps. "All we need to do is to pitch this to a big time producer."

"Why would they listen to us?" I said.

"I'm pretty sure Hollywood hasn't changed much since the twenties, once you tell a producer you got the money to back a film he'll probably have an orgasm."

"So lets go to Hollywood," I said.

I showed Lulu how to use the probe on the PDA. She spent the rest of the day basically snooping around Hollywood with it. God knows what she found out. She had her producer picked out when we left for dinner. We found a trendy quiet place to eat.

"Who'd you pick?" I asked after we sat down.

"It's the guy who did all those stupid teen monster movies."

"Lenny Krapitz, why him? Those movies were horrible."

"I know, but he's really good getting stuff distributed, and he's about as honest as a producer can get, which isn't saying much. The coup de grace though is he's in the closet, if things get nasty I got some leverage on him."

"That's pretty mean," I said.

Lulu laughed. "God I thought I was naïve. Producers are basically soulless vampires, if movies were made the way they wanted they would use real ammunition filming gunfights to save money on effects and payroll."

"What are we going to do for money?" I said.

"Just get a big bunch of uncut diamonds from an alternate universe, I'll do the rest."

I had never actually considered this, but it suddenly made sense. If I took stuff from another universe it wouldn't be missed here. I wouldn't have to worry about stuff being reported stolen.

We finished dinner and went back to our room. I took out my tablet PC and started writing code to make a probe that used only one TSW. After I finished I did some research on South African diamonds and where they came from. I used the probe to find a large mine during the 1960's. I found the vault were they stored the diamonds and took what was in it. I probed the vault in many different years and kept taking the largest stones. In the end I estimated I had about forty pounds of very large uncut gem quality diamonds.

I showed Lulu my haul. Her expression changed to an eerie predatory stare when she seen the pile. I had to wave my hand in front of her face to get her attention.

"Sorry. Wow, I think I'm starting to get wet," she giggled.

"God that must be a fortune. Franz would show me stuff like that all the time. I never got used to it. I'm just a typical woman at heart I guess."

The next day Lulu left to get her extensions put in her hair. I packed all our stuff and used the probe to find a quiet spot to go through to Hollywood. I made a reservation at the most expensive hotel I could find. I also probed the Department of Motor Vehicles in California and through much effort got two drivers licences for Lulu and me. We were now Bob and Louise Smith.

Lulu came back a few hours later looking like a different person. Her hair was now past her shoulders and she was wearing an expensive and sophisticated jacket and skirt combination. She also had black patent leather high-heeled shoes on and with subdued makeup. She looked like a beautiful lawyer.

"Ready for our meeting with Lenny?" she asked.

"How did you make the appointment?"

"Appointment? We're going to corner him tonight we when accidentally bump into him at a gay bar," she said." We'll bring a couple of diamonds with us to show him."

"Won't he be suspicious when we pay in diamonds."

Lulu just smiled. "I've worked on many pictures financed by hoodlums. Just let me do the talking."

I opened a TSW to Hollywood. I had added some more code so that I was able bookmark locations that I had been to. It made travel a lot quicker. We walked through next to our hotel.

We quickly checked in and settled into our room. Lulu was very amorous and we spent the rest of the afternoon in bed having sex. She was insatiable and loved to scream and moan.

We got ready for our meeting at the bar Lenny frequented and left at eight o'clock. I was wearing a conservative grey suit Lulu was in her jacket and skirt.

The nightclub the cab pulled in front of looked very ritzy. There was lots of brightly coloured neon on the façade. Lulu slipped the doorman a hundred dollar bill while flirting with him. He let us both in, he was staring at her ass as she walked by.

The inside was still quiet, there were only a few men. The interior was very dark lit only with neon and diffused light. I followed Lulu as she made a beeline to a man sitting alone at the bar giving furtive glances at the other men.

"Lenny! Wow imagine meeting you here."

Lenny's head spun around his face white and his eyes with a deer in the headlights look.

"Do I know you?"

"It's me Lulu, we met in Cannes. I was in that arty film, Lesbian Suicides. We talked about making a movie together."

"Oh ya ya. I remember."

The look on his face conveyed only confusion.

"I told you I had a backer, I was going to set up a meeting with you, but wow here you are. Meet Bob, he's into pharmaceuticals, he imports them."

"It costs a lot to make a movie," said Lenny.

"Bobs loaded, there's been a few deaths in his family lately, and he got a really big inheritance," she said reaching into her purse. She pulled out the two large uncut diamonds and showed them to Lenny.

A sudden shift appeared in Lenny's posture as he saw the diamonds.

"How much are you willing to put up?"

"Whatever it takes, we can front you a hundred large. We can trust you right? Bob's really into trust, he gets so disappointed when people lie to him."

Lenny looked at me with what appeared to be a equal mix of fear and greed.

"Ok lets set up a meeting for tomorrow at 10 AM in my office. Here's my card. Oh and I would appreciate if you didn't tell anybody where you met me."

"Of course not Lenny, we wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea," said Lulu.

We both shook hands with Lenny and left the nightclub. Once we had walked a couple of blocks away Lulu started laughing. "God that was priceless," she said.

"He thinks I'm some kinda mobster now."

"Oh don't worry about it, he's harmless. We'll give him the diamonds tomorrow then they're his problem."

"How's he going to get rid of them?" I asked.

"This town is even more crooked then when I was here. He'll have no problem getting rid of them. There were many films made in my day just to launder money. Nothings changed."

We had dinner that night at a restaurant popular with members of the film industry.

It was amazing, word had already gotten around that we had the money to back a film. People just came up and introduced themselves. Lulu was absolutely in her element.

"I just loved the Lesbian Suicides, loved it, you were amazing," this from a vaguely familiar looking young actor who had just introduced himself.

"It was so emotionally difficult to portray a crippled insane lesbian. It's all about the craft though. You have to challenge yourself in order to grow," said Lulu.

"Oh yes yes, the craft is so important. It's so refreshing to hear that. Here's is my card, I'm always looking for new challenges." He kissed Lulu's cheek and left.

"Isn't somebody going wonder about this Lesbian Suicides movie?"

Lulu looked at me.

"Everybody in this town spends all their time surfing on an ocean of bullshit. Nobody is going to care whether I did the movie or not."

By the time we had left the restaurant Lulu had about twenty business cards from a variety of people.

"I got a few cards I wanted," she said. "I think this is going to work out."

We went back to the hotel and went to bed.

The meeting in Lenny's office the next day went pretty smoothly. Lulu and I spent the morning trying to find out how many diamonds it would take to make 100 million dollars. We figured 30 pounds would do it so we gave Lenny 35 pounds just to be sure. He seemed happy with it.

"Who do you want for a director?" Lenny asked Lulu.

"Uhh, Spiedleberg?"

"Did you say Spielberg?"

"Ya Spielberg," Lulu said more confidently

"I don't think he's available, plus he costs a fucking fortune. I was thinking of going with an up and comer I know."

"He isn't your cousin or something is he?" said Lulu.

"Well no, coincidently your right on one part he is a distant relative."  
"How distant?" said Lulu suspiciously.

"Why don't we leave the director decision for later on," Lenny said quickly.

"Where's your script?"

Lulu pulled her script binder out of her purse and plopped it on Lenny's desk.

Lenny opened it up and looked at the cover page.

"Wow Nefertiti, who is that exactly?"

"Sort of like Cleopatra, just from an earlier age. I want to do a big period piece like Gladiator except with pyramids," said Lulu.

"I'll have one of my writers go over it and make some notes. If we get some big names to do this it'll run the budget up to 200 mil with the CGI."

"Bob will cover it."

"Who were you thinking of to play Nefertiti and her love interest?" asked Lenny.

"Well, me for Nefertiti of course. I was thinking of Rob Liner for the love interest. He's available right?"

"He's at a scientology conference right now, but he should be back in 3 weeks. There's a package deal with him right now. We could fill out all the major parts in one fell swoop and save some money."

"Who's he's bringing along?" said Lulu.

"Tom Travers, and John Antonio plus a couple of major supporting actors," said Lenny.

"I'll go for that, try to swing the deal. I'll try to think of a director. I like your idea about an up and comer. I think with all the money we're putting into this we don't really need a name guy, besides I don't want to spend a lot of time arguing with some egomaniac."

Lenny gave Lulu a contract to sign. She said we would bring it to her lawyer and have it back in a week.

We talked for a bit more then Lulu told Lenny she had another meeting. So we all shook hands and left.

"What other meeting?" I asked Lulu as we walked out of Lenny's building.

"Lunch with my lover," she said as looking at me, beautiful smile lighting up her face.

"What's this Scientology stuff?" she asked me as we kept walking.

"Oh some bizarre religion half the stars in Hollywood follow, something about everyone being aliens."

"Really? In my day the stars just got drunk and screwed everything that moved," said Lulu.

"Scientology's probably a little bit better," I said.

"I hope so. It was always so sad to see people loose their looks and become mean and hard because of booze."

"Who did you have in mind for a director? You can get anyone," I said.

"William Wyler."

"He's your up and comer? I think he's been dead for 30 years."

"You have a time machine Bob, and he'll be an up and comer when you pick him up as a 25 year old, he'll be happy for a job."

"Why him? Why not Spiedleberg."

"Very funny. I loved Roman Holiday, he did Ben Hur too. He was fucking brilliant and he knows how to do period stuff."

"Lulu, what do you think about all of this? The strange music, weird movies with aliens, ipods. You have such a unique perspective of everything," I asked.

"I like some of the music, I love to dance and you can still dance to it. As for weird movies and ipods, I spent a year with Franz, it takes more then digital music and overblown special effects to impress me now. You'll see soon enough that all this crap we make for ourselves is just window dressing. People aren't so very different through the ages."

"How far back have you gone in time?" I asked.

"I met mitochondrial Eve."

"Who?"

"The mother of the human race Bob. That was interesting, I mean really interesting. I met a lot of supposedly great people Jesus, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare you name it. Most of them weren't very different then people you meet in everyday life, seeing her with the other women in her tribe was enlightening. You know her name really was Eve."

"What was so enlightening about her," I asked

"You know that bitchy nastiness women have when they're mad or miserable."

"Oh Ya," I said.

"Well she had it, but the rest of the women of her tribe didn't. Franz told me they had done research and found out that that was her evolutionary advantage. That was what dragged humanity through plagues, starvation and god knows what else. This was amazing to me, I spent my whole life feeling guilty for all the times I was mean and selfish, now I really know its just a part of being a woman."

"How was Shakespeare?"

"Nothing like changing the subject huh Bob? Typical writer, all he did was drink and hit on me."

"Caesar?"

"Kinda sickly looking shifty sort of guy. I always got the creeps when he walked behind me. Honestly Bob just meet these people yourself. Nothings stopping you."

"I find your descriptions of them very interesting," I said.

"Really?"

"Yes. Did you meet Isaac Newton? Archimedes?" I asked.

"Franz brought Newton into the future and gave him a computer to play with. That's how I met him. Total anti-social nerd. He spent 20 hours a day on that fucking computer. Franz is still trying to figure out what the hell he was doing. After a year he erased everything on it, got angry and demanded to go home. So Franz sent him back. I never met Archimedes."

"Who was the most interesting person you ever met?"

"Franz."

"Other than Franz."

"You."

"Uh, really? Thanks. I mean other than me."

"To be honest nobody really stands out. Lets talk about something else."

We stopped at a small restaurant and had lunch and chatted some more. We decided that I would rewrite the probe algorithm on my PDA so that it could probe through time as well as space. Then we would use it to find William Wyler.

We finished lunch and went back to the hotel. Lulu made an appointment with a lawyer she had picked and scheduled a meeting with him that afternoon. I spent my free time rewriting the probes code.

Chapter Eight

I fell asleep while writing the new code. Lulu woke me up when she came back from her appointment with the lawyer.

"How was the contract? I asked.

"The Lawyer liked it so I signed it."

Lulu stared at me with what seemed to be a sad look.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"You don't have to stay you know."

"What do you mean?" I said alarmed.

"It's going to take over a year to get this film made. It's going to be really boring for you. I don't want to force you to stay," she said.

"I'm not leaving you, we'll get Wyler, you'll start the film after that I'll be gone for about a month. I have one thing I really want to do."

"What?"

"Its guy stuff you won't understand"

"You're not going to screw around on me are you," she said as her eyes turned dark.

"No of course not, I'll tell you later. Lets get some sleep we'll pick up Wyler tomorrow," I said.

We woke up early the next morning. Lulu used the modified probe to locate a 25 year old William Wyler in the 1930's. He was already working in the Hollywood film industry. We found a time and a place were he was alone opened a TSW and stepped through.

"Hello Mr. Wyler we're from the future and we want to make a deal," said Lulu.

"Really," Wyler said with a bemused look. "I recognize you even with that awful hair Miss Brooks."

"Uh oh," Lulu said putting a hand up to her mouth.

"You were pretty famous once upon a time Lulu, I think you forgot," I said.

"Ok Willie, you got me, but we really are from the future and I'll prove it. Look at what we just stepped through," she said.

"Hmmm, interesting effect, mirrors?" said Wyler.

"Yes, Ok mirrors, look just follow us and you can see how it works, we were thinking of selling it as a stage illusion," said Lulu.

Wyler was overcome by curiosity and followed us through. Once we were all in the hotel room I shrunk the TSW to molecular size. Willie was shocked this time.

"How...How is this possible?" he said.

"It just is, we want you to direct a movie, we'll pay you really well and you can go back when it's done," said Lulu.

Lulu and Willie talked for the rest of the morning, she took him around Hollywood in the afternoon. Willie agreed to direct her film that night. How could he not? His shocked look didn't wear off for a good week.

Lulu and I rented a large estate for the duration of the shooting. Willie would live in one of the guesthouses. Lulu was going to give him 3 months to get up to date by watching modern movies and meeting with contemporary directors.

Chapter Nine

I started writing the code for my dream project while Lulu was working on her film. She was so busy I hardly seen her during the day. She never looked happier though. I just hoped I would have her back when she was finished.

My dream project was to be Superman. He wasn't my favourite superhero when I was a kid, but he was the one all the kids fantasized about being because he was the toughest.

I figured I would go back into the twenties and fight crime. There seemed to be a lot of it then because of prohibition. I wouldn't use the same costume, I always thought red and blue looked garish. I hired a design firm to make a snazzier red and green one without the external underwear look.

I wouldn't have all of Superman's powers either. Some of them were just stupid, like super breath, others were more trouble to make then they were worth.

I decided on super strength, flight and invulnerability. I would call myself Painman.

I used the flying harness concept Franz had shown me, using anchor points in other universes attached to a harness in this one, then moving them around to move the person in the harness. I used the same idea for super strength using anchor points in my gloves. I would control all this using pressure switches in the gloves that would move the TSW's. The code got so complicated I hired a software company to finish it.

I was able to give myself invulnerability using small TSW's under the suit arranged like scale armour. The TSW's opened in front of an anchored piece of 8 inch thick battleship armour. It took about a month to finish the suit.

I figured I would try it out stopping the St Valentines day massacre in Chicago. I researched this famous crime's location and time. I put on my suit dialled up a TSW and went through. I was standing in an alley next to the parking garage were the massacre happened. I shrunk the TSW put my PDA away and took off flying.

Flying was really hard. The suit was designed to be controlled by my body movements and I hadn't practised. I banged into a lot of stuff as I finally was able to fly into the parking garage. The invulnerability part worked, as the TSW's took the blow every time I hit something, protecting me.

I stumbled to a bad landing and found myself looking at four men with Tommy guns about to shoot a large number of men spread-eagled along a wall.

"Hey!" I said.

The men with guns turned, stared and then opened fire. They were so shocked they didn't realize that when they turned to face me the guys in the front were in the line of fire from the guys in the rear.

The bullets bounced off of me with spectacular effect.

Two of the men firing were not so lucky as they were all hit from the two firing behind them. I walked towards the last two standing. They emptied their clips firing at me, threw their guns down and ran away terrified. I thought about following them but didn't think my flying skills were up to it.

The men who were spread-eagled took off as well when they realized they were free. I was left alone with the two fallen men. I walked over and checked to see if they were alive. They weren't, both had bled out enormous pools of blood. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. I heard the wail of sirens in the distance so I decided to get the hell out of there.

I took off flying. I spent a good three hours practising until I was able to control myself with a small degree of effectiveness.

I flew around Chicago looking for crimes in progress, seeing what it was like being a superhero. Nothing happened. The most I did was help a cat get down a tree.

I started to realize being a superhero was a pretty boring job. I now understood why comic book writers had invented super villains, something I wasn't willing to create.

I flew around for the rest of the day. It was really fun swooping down and scaring the shit out of people. I decided to stop when the police started shooting at me. It was time to go anyway.

I flew out of the city to a secluded area in the countryside, landed and opened the TSW back home, being a superhero was out of my system.

Chapter Ten

I spent the rest of the day wondering what else I was going to do. Lulu was going to be very busy for many more months. I was trying to think of other fantasies I had had during my life. Unfortunately most of them involved beautiful young women. I really cared for Lulu and I wanted to be faithful too her. I did not want to do to her what I had done to Whitney.

I thought about building a star ship and seeing the universe, this was perhaps something that should wait until I had a better grasp of transcendent technology. I also didn't think I was ready if I actually encountered aliens. The thought was actually kind of terrifying. Did alien races know about TSW's?

Thinking about aliens did give me another idea though. What about Roswell? What had happened?

Franz thought it was all bullshit and hadn't bothered to find out. I thought this would be a perfect start for my career as a transcendent technologist.

I did some research about Roswell and found out the whole story pivoted around a rancher named Mac Brazzel. He had found the supposed wreckage of the alien ship and had later recanted his story saying it was just a weather balloon.

It was very easy to find the time of the incident. It had been reported it all the papers after the US air force had uncharacteristically sent out a press release saying they had recovered an alien disc.

I used the probe algorithm to look back in time in the Roswell area. It took me a while to find Brazzel's ranch and then Mac Brazzel himself.

I followed him with the probe the day he discovered the wreckage and voila there it was.

There was a large scar in the ground on a remote part of his ranch. There were big chunks of silvery medal scattered all over much like a plane crash.

I decided to go back in time at the spot of the crash to see if I could tell what had crashed. It would also give me some time to walk around the crash area to see the wreckage.

The object crashed three days prior to Brazzel discovering it. It lit up the sky as a large fireball before crashing into the ground. This was obviously not a weather balloon. I went forward to the next day with the probe in order to give the wreckage time to cool so I could investigate it more thoroughly.

I opened a TSW to the spot and stepped through. I had brought a Geiger counter with me just in case there was radiation present. There wasn't. I started examining the wreckage.

It was obviously some sort of small craft. It looked like a crushed egg with chunks of it scattered in a 200 meter radius. The wreckage consisted mostly of some type of aluminium alloy. It was shiny in appearance with char marks. I picked up a small piece and tried to bend it. It was strong but malleable.

I walked up to the main structure and peered inside the many cracks and openings. There appeared to be some kind of sophisticated computer type equipment inside. It was obviously unmanned there was no space inside larger than a few centimetres. My best guess was that it was some sort of orbital probe.

I looked closely at the guts of the interior. I recognized forties era electronic components, complicated arrays of tubes, large leaking capacitors and what looked like compact lead acid batteries to power it all.

I then noticed something that made my blood run cold. I saw what could only be transcendent code written on some of the flat surfaces. The header and footer codes had been written with some kind of degradable media and had burnt off.

This made sense, if the probe crashed these codes would disappear keeping the most important part of transcendent technology secret.

I thought it best to get the hell out of there. There were obviously other transcendent technologists in the history of the world. Franz wasn't the first.

I went back through the TSW back home. I decided I had to find out what the hell was going on so I modified my probe algorithm yet again. I added a very sensitive microphone to a second small TSW.

One TSW would work as a pinhole camera the other as a pinhole microphone, both were too small to be noticed unless someone used a magnifying glass.

I spent a week monitoring the wreckage to see what had happened. The story played out very much like the all the books depicted. Brazzel showed the military the wreckage, they secured the area and picked it all up.

The wreckage was brought to Edwards Air force base to be examined, the military really did think that this was part of some kind of classified research program that had been created by the US air force. They thought up the alien craft story to obfuscate what had really gone on. They then changed the story again to a crashed weather balloon to further muddy the waters.

When the Air force examined the craft they tried to find out where the components came from. They were all stolen from various manufacturers. They then tried to figure out the crafts function. They wrote out all the transcendent code which turned out to be extremely complicated and seemed to be a small part of a much larger algorithm. The actual circuits seemed to be some sort of electromechanical TSW manipulator.

It was all way beyond anything the military's scientists or I could figure out. I decided to trace the probe back through time to its origin. I followed it through about 150 decaying orbits around Earth until it appeared through another TSW, which opened for just a fraction of a second.

I was able to get the probe through this TSW and ended up looking into a large lab with three people in it.

I went back another hour in time so that I could listen to their conversation prior to the launch of the probe.

Most of what they were talking about was very technical and beyond my comprehension. I was however able to discern that what they were doing was some kind of search for the "originators". I was pretty sure what they meant by the originators was the same thing Franz had called the Brains.

I used a camera and took a picture of each person through the probe for future reference. I was unable to find out their names.

I lost my nerve eavesdropping on them and quit. I realized that they were way out of my league as far as transcendent technologists. I had no idea if they were benevolent or nasty and really didn't want to find out. They must still be around, I was sure they were more than smart enough to figure out the brain transference algorithm.

Chapter Eleven

I waited until Lulu came home that night and told her the whole story.

"Good God, that's scary. There are more guys like Franz and you out there," she said.

"I'm starting to think we should be careful and not draw too much attention to ourselves."

"It's too late for that, I've been on some of the nationally syndicated TV gossip shows," said Lulu.

"I think we should be alright for now, Willie is keeping his mouth shut and you look a lot different, not so iconic now that your hair is longer. I think we would draw a lot more attention to ourselves if we disappeared suddenly," I said.

"Everybody is convinced that you're a criminal and I'm your main squeeze, which is pretty much normal in Hollywood. I don't think we stand out, after the picture is done we'll take off," said Lulu.

We went to bed. I didn't sleep very well. I had a lot of bad dreams in which strange shadowy people were chasing me.

I woke up alone in bed. Lulu had become an early riser since she had started making her film.

I decided I should start writing some algorithms that would protect us both in case of an emergency. All the algorithms I had used so far were pretty basic and primitive. I hadn't really started to explore what transcendent technology was truly capable of.

The first algorithm I wrote I called sanctuary, it created a TSW above a person and then lowered it quickly transporting them to an out of the way spot in the emergency room of a large hospital in New York City.

I had the code engraved onto a medallion, which hung on a necklace. The medallion was in two pieces, a circular piece which rotated inside a donut shaped piece. All that had to be done to activate it was for the interior piece to be rotated 180 degrees which enabled the code on the interior piece to line up with the code on the donut activating the algorithm.

I used Franz's idea of writing everything in shorthand so that the code would appear as just scratches on the medallion. The medallion had an abstract design on it so that it would appear as simple jewellery. I copied the original so that I had two.

I gave one medallion to Lulu, and explained how it worked. She hung it around her neck immediately.

I wrote another protective algorithm for my PDA. I called it concussion, it opened a series of TSW's for a brief period of time in a circular ring around me. I timed it so that it would be open just long enough to let a shock wave from a large explosion in another universe through, then it would close. Anybody watching would see a bright flash and then go flying fifty feet backwards as the shockwave hit them.

I wrote algorithms for anything I could think of. I put items I thought I might need on a pedestal and then book marked the coordinates so I could open a TSW slightly below the surface of the pedestal and pick it up.

It looked quite impressive, I would activate the code and the object would appear hovering next to me sitting on a rectangular platform so I could pick it up. I selected a variety of tools, food, bottled water and a copy of my PDA.

It took months of writing and testing to do all this. It kept me busy while Lulu was getting her movie made. I still had a few weeks to kill when I thought of one more thing I could do before Lulu was done and we would disappear.

I wanted to see what happened to the other ship I had seen when I first departed for Mars. The Discovery.

I had been curious about Roswell because of the possibility of finding aliens. I hadn't found any but I was still curious.

I was pretty sure the Discovery was going to do much more then ferry people around the solar system. The personnel I had seen boarding the ship looked like hardcore astronaut types who would be more interested in exploration.

I used the probe algorithm to find the secret air force base we had departed from and then went forward in time to see when the Discovery departed and when it returned. The mission they were on had lasted approximately a month. I decided to meet the crew of three when the ship appeared above the earth after going through the transport TSW and prior to the decent through the atmosphere.

It took a lot of trial and error to match the TSW I was going to use to step through with the velocity of the spaceship, when I finally did, I stepped through. I had a fully charged taser with me in case the crew decided to get physical.

I emerged in one of the storage rooms closed the TSW and started to look for the crew.

Surprisingly the Discovery had gravity, I also noticed a number of other differences between this ship and the Clipper, which could only have meant it had a much more sophisticated TSW system.

Franz must have made the two drive systems differently one was bare bones, the other with lots of bells and whistles.

I noticed food dispensers, which must have used TSW's, the living quarters had full showers and toilets as well which probably used more TSW's.

I finally found one of the crew working in a small science lab.

"Hi, I'm Bob," I said.

There was a woman working at a bench she jumped up and turned around with a startled look on her face.

"Who the hell are you! How did you get in here!"

"I'm a protégé of Franz Morton, I was curious about your mission."

"You know transcendent technology?"

"Yes, but don't get any idea's. I'm fully capable of protecting myself," I said.

"Why should we tell you anything?" She said looking slightly defiant.

"I'll find out anyway, why wouldn't you?"

"Oh."

I was able to convince her to round up the other two crew members and get them all to give me an impromptu lecture on what they had found. They were reluctant to at first, but the excitement of all the discoveries they had made and not having anyone to talk too about them changed their minds.

The woman's name was Helen. The other two crew members were Tom and Jim.

Helen connected her computer to a built in projector system to show me pictures of what they had seen. She started the lecture with a synopsis of what the mission was to accomplish.

"We were to visit Alpha Centauri, our closest neighbouring star and depending on the success of that, we would visit one or two more star systems before returning to earth. The ship functioned flawlessly, we never had a problem with any of the transcendent technology systems, which surprised me."

It didn't surprise me, since I knew how easy it would have been for Franz to get one of his software design crews to work out all the bugs.

She continued.

"We really had no idea what to expect from Alpha Centauri, all we knew about the system was that it had three stars one of them very similar to our sun the other slightly smaller and the third much smaller orbiting at a large distance from the two main ones.

Once we arrived we mapped all the larger orbital objects by using our computerized telescopic motion detector system, NASA had specifically designed this for our mission.

There were a lot of orbiting objects. It appears our solar system is in a bit of a celestial desert compared to Alpha Centauri. We counted ten earth sized or larger terrestrial planets around the main binary as well as eight gas giants. There were also four asteroid belts. The system appeared to be pretty stable however, we did not see a lot of rogue asteroids.

The smaller stellar body had eight small terrestrial planets as well as a very small gas giant. We spent a lot of time mapping all these objects so we decided that exploring any of the other nearby stellar systems was not going to be feasible. We then concentrated on the large terrestrial planets orbiting the main binary.

This is were it gets exciting," she tapped her computer keyboard and a picture flashed up on one of the ships walls from the projector. It was of a large blue planet. She pressed the same key again and another blue planet appeared.

"We found two earth like planets, they had large oceans and large landmasses covered in what looked like vegetation. We were amazed. So we orbited both of them and did a survey with our high resolution camera system, also designed for this mission. We think we have found signs of intelligent life on one of them."

She flashed up pictures of what appeared to be large structures like buildings and roads huddled around large rivers and on coastal areas.

"Our camera resolution was not good enough to make out individual creatures so we don't know what they look like. We did a spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere to try and estimate how industrialized they were.

From what we could tell they are still iron or stone age cultures. They have migrated over most of the planet.

The other planet didn't have any obvious indicators of intelligence, but that doesn't mean it isn't there."

"Why didn't you just go down and look," I asked.

They all looked at me horrified.

"We can't risk contaminating them or us. We all decided that we would try not to repeat all the mistakes humanity has made on earth," said Helen.

"Do you think NASA will agree?" I said.

They all turned and looked at each other with uncomfortable expressions.

"We don't know, we have been having some pretty long discussions. We know we could stop this by getting rid of the two star ships. What do you think?" she asked.

"This is absolutely your problem, I just know the earth does not need anymore plagues or pestilence, I would personally stay as far away from both those planets as I could."

"What are you going to do when we land, which is going to be soon, they're probably going to want to talk to you," said Tom.

"Talk? You mean interrogate, I'm a transcendent technologist now, I can leave any time I want."

With that I opened a TSW and stepped through back home.

So we aren't alone in the universe, this was pretty amazing stuff to me, and our new brothers and sisters, assuming they had two sexes, were in our stellar back yard.

Chapter Twelve

I went to the kitchen and started to make myself a sandwich when I heard Lulu come through the front door.

"Bob! Bob! Where are you?"

"In the kitchen."

She ran into the room with a big smile on her face.

"We're done! The editing is finished and they're ready to distribute the film. The wrap party is tomorrow night. How was your day?"

"Well I just found out we aren't alone in the universe."

"Really? That's pretty cool," she said as she grabbed my sandwich and started eating it.

"Nothing impresses you anymore," I said.

Lulu giggled.

I told her about my trip to the Discovery and what they had found. She was very curious about these aliens.

"We should find a way to see them without contamination, that would be pretty fucking interesting," she said.

"That's for another day, we have to leave soon."

"We'll do the wrap party tomorrow, then wait around until a week after the film is released to see what the grosses are and what the reviews are like. Then I can find out if I'm the next James Cameron or just another hack."

"Aren't you nervous?" I asked.

"Not really, I did my best, and I had control over everything, I don't have any regrets. If it flops, that's life. I have a pretty different attitude about things since I met Franz."

We went out to dinner to celebrate.

The next day Lulu went to the stylist and got the hair extensions taken out and her Bob restored, she was iconic once again. I was pretty sure she would raise a few eyebrows at the wrap party. I was worried someone would recognize her. The pictures she had been in that were directed by G.W. Pabst were probably compulsory viewing in most film schools.

We would be gone in a few weeks so it shouldn't matter.

That night I got ready for the wrap party, I put on an expensive Italian suit and waited for Lulu.

She came down the stairs dressed in a beautiful vintage twenties dress, looking spectacular.

"Oh my god Lulu! What if someone recognizes you."

"I want to be myself, just this once. I want them to know it was me however impossible it will be for them to believe."

"As long as you know the risks," I said.

"Oh you'll protect me," she said confidently, grabbing my arm.

"Lets go."

I wasn't as confident as her.

The party was wild to say the least. Seeing Lulu bopping around to techno music in her flapper getup was very surreal.

She turned heads whenever she walked by. There were more then a few guests who must have been film school grads. I overheard many comments about her uncanny resemblance to the nineteen twenties most iconic movie star.

Lulu and I danced and talked until three in the morning. I began to realize that I had fallen completely in love with her. I also realized that my Lulu had changed. The person I had read about in the wikipedia article had disappeared. The cynical promiscuous alcoholic was gone forever.

Franz probably never realized how much his relationship with her had affected her life. I wondered what knowing my own future would have done to me, how would I change things if I had a second chance.

We went home after the party and collapsed into bed.

We spent the next few weeks waiting for the release of the film in semi-seclusion. I did not want NASA or the Rand Corporation getting wind of us. Fortunately Lulu did not stir up any unwanted publicity when she went to the wrap party as herself. I was safely out of the public eye not being a major part of the film. Lulu did all her publicity interviews wearing an expensive wig and in conventional clothes.

The film opened to reasonably good reviews and did decent box office numbers. Willie our director from the past was a little disappointed. Lulu was more than happy, since it was her first try as a screenwriter and a producer.

We sent Willie back to the thirties to the place and time he came from. I had kept his TSW at molecular size in anticipation of his return.

I thought that he would be making some pretty different pictures in his future. He had become quite an expert at CGI, it would be interesting to have seen how this would affect his films made with thirties technology. A lot of what we think of as new technology is really just new ways of using old technology.

The film cost two hundred and fifty million dollars to make, but it was really free since I had a never-ending supply of diamonds. It still made money. Lulu packed a copy of the HD DVD to bring with us.

It was time to leave. I started to notice multiple black sedans with antennas on their trunk lids driving around our rented estate. I was pretty sure NASA and god knows who else was onto us.

We packed our Gucci suitcases Lulu threw off her wig and I opened a TSW.

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise," I said.

The end.

