Tempus Book One

by

R.A.BINDER

TEMPUS CHAPTER ONE

 

The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.

Joss Whedon

Sand armies invaded every bit of clothing he wore until every square inch of his body had a million billion razor-sharp grains embedded. Sand sprayed his hair and eyes and beard, as he lay on his side and dug with the sawed-off shovel. He was cramped in, hot and sweaty under the crawl space swearing with every shovel full.

The digging was at least easy but slow. He had to dig down ten feet to hook up a new sewer line that was forced on him by some overpaid city employee. He prayed and wished he could be anywhere except here.

Five feet down, exhausted he took a rest against the side of the ditch. He chugged down another bottle of water, tossing the empty up onto the pile of sand behind him.

Leaned back and comfortable he slept and dreamed about grey-haired train robbers and horses. Carefully removing the sharp grit from his eyes as he woke he remembered the dream and chalked it up to watching too many westerns.

He still had five more feet to go. Life had been hard on him now 35 it was summer 1992. He had financial success once, and then little by little his small fortune had been whittled away. If he had it now someone else would have been hired to do the digging.

He lived alone with a couple of cats in a small subdivision from hell on the side of the South Thompson River East of Kamloops, cat haters on one side, scary scissor-wielding crazy woman on the other side. On good days she could be seen chasing her husband around the backyard, screaming threats of murder swinging Hitchcock scissors.

Once he was married, she was beautiful, with long dark hair and hazel eyes. They had three, almost perfect children together. There was more than enough money and happiness in those days. It all came to a train hitting a rock wall crash. He lost everything.

When asked, he would mention something about his family being killed in a plane crash. The truth was harder to bear. He had caught her with another man, one among many. She had been cheating all through the marriage, with every breath another lie.

He had suspected but hid it in denial. It was too horrible to believe. When he had proof, she was confronted. The lying continued for hours until she got her stories wrong. The next day he asked her to leave and she did. She took the children with her and disappeared. He never saw his children again. He was left with the two cats, an unfinished house and some memories.

He found her once after that, long enough for her to sign divorce papers, then he never saw her again. Gone were all the people who mattered in his life. Most of all he lost his best friend, who betrayed him in the most horrible ways. He thought about how sad it really was. If she was the best he could attract, then he wasn’t more than the broken-down biker trash he now thought he was.

She left him with all the debt. He struggled hungry most days. Some days staring at a lone can of dog food in the pantry, a leftover from before the breakup when there was a family dog. He had already sold everything he had except his motorcycle and tools.

No matter how bad it got, he never let the cats go hungry, they were his only connection to his children. They belonged to them. On desperate days the happiness and maintenance of the two cats were reason enough to keep going.

He dug harder thinking about his family hoping that God was taking care of them. It wasn’t anger that made him dig harder it was loneliness. There were those times he did struggle with the bitterness when he thought of his children and the woman he gave vows to.  All he ever wanted was a family, she never did.

She had taken them out of spite. He had exposed a rarity, a female sociopath and narcissist, destroying a fantasy self-image of being good and superior to those around her. This had nothing to do with the reality. He had induced her wrath by daring to suggest that there was something wrong with her actions.

He didn’t heed the warnings from the man who she was cheating on to go out with him. He had called her a lying slut in a phone call, back then he thought it was just sour grapes. He even ignored words from her own mouth. “I don’t do Kids or Kitchens”

Looking back he should have run right at that moment, but it was too late. He loved her then and he still loved her now. It was a terrible place to be.

It had been three years and some months since that night. Never had a Christmas since never had a date. If there really were zombies, he had become one, just shuffling through, day-to-day looking for the next mindless meal.

Seven feet down three to go. The air had become thick and foul, sand and sweat now crusty and biting with every move, he kept digging. Almost finished his shovel hit something metallic, brushing the sand and dirt away, it was a tin box, buried treasure he hoped. He laughed about it, he just wasn’t that lucky.

In the dim light, he could see inside the box, a package wrapped in leather held papers and a gold watch. He had a hard time making out the writing on the side of the antique timepiece. T-E-M-P-U-S F-U-G-I-T.  He didn’t have a clue what the fuck that meant. He pocketed the watch closed the box and put it by the entrance to the crawl space. He would deal with that later.

After wiping the sweat from his forehead he kept digging, he wasn’t going to stop now till the job was done. When he finished digging, he had a quick water break, then he laid down the sewer pipe carefully and made sure each joint had more than enough of that smelly yellow glue, never again would he ever come down here again, except to fill in the ditch.

He crawled out of the ditch, jumped in a bath and tried to remove the ancient river sand, leftover from the melting of the last ice age, now in every crevice and every fold of skin.

He dried off and threw on a pair of almost clean threadbare jeans. He grabbed the old watch and looked at it with some hope it was worth something. Groceries were getting thin, with just a couple of boxes of macaroni and a couple of tins of food left. The bills were way behind.

The Government had frozen his bank accounts because he was behind in his income taxes. He couldn’t fathom a government that would harass the poor and let the rich get away with what they did. He was already living way below the poverty line. How could a Government he once swore to serve and protect make it impossible to live or pay bills, wasn’t poverty enough? He would remember what that overzealous Rev Can agent had done. She called him a liar over the phone when he told her he had no money to pay.

All of his phone calls lately were from bill collectors. It didn’t matter, he really didn’t have many friends, he didn’t want any. He thought most people were cruel and self-serving. There were only two friends in his life that mattered, and he had lost contact with them. He had his two cats; all they needed was cat litter, food and love. In exchange, they returned the love and a few dead mice and some poop.

He looked at the watch again. It was Saturday night nothing was open except the bars and a few restaurants. There wouldn’t be any answers tonight.

He felt some hunger after the day’s hard work, soon a pot of water was boiling for some macaroni elbows covered in what might have been considered cheese on another planet. He remembered the vow made; if ever he got rich again there would always be Mac n’ cheese on his menu. Not because he liked it, but because he never wanted to forget how he was living right now.

A little mayo and the last can of tuna mixed in, he sat in front of the TV watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live. The host Sharon Stone had caused some fuss earlier in the year in some movie. She forgot her panties or some such problem, looking at her on the TV it really didn’t seem like a bad thing, she was hot.

He didn’t go out in public much these days, a movie was out of the question, people talking, kicking at the back of your seat. No fucking way he said to himself. He thought people who talked at movies should be dragged behind horse or Harley for a few miles on gravel.

After scraping the last few macaroni elbows from the pot he used for a bowl, he reached for the watch, using a coffee cup half full of water and an old t-shirt he started to clean up his prize. The words were clearer and he could make out wings wrapped around the words. Under the wings were 12 spoked lines and two squares one inside the other at 90-degree angles. The inner one was pointing north. Compass lines maybe. The engraving on the back was a man on horseback about to lance a dragon. Cool, he thought to himself it was St. George. He was his favourite Saint.

He wasn’t really religious but he had his conversations with God. Mostly when he was pissed off, but he made sure to thank him when things went right, especially the little things. Like rolling up to the gas pump just as he ran out of gas, which seemed to happen on a regular basis or a small job that netted him some cash for food.

The filigree and detail were something to look at. It must be worth something. He tried prying it open with the knife he always had strapped to his belt with no luck. He knew enough not to mark it up, should it lower the value.

He looked closely at his knife blade now scarred and pitted, every nick and every scratch had a story.

Tired from digging in the hot crawl space all day, his mind wandered back to why he always carried that knife. He thought of his younger years out in a violent storm out on the Pacific in an area called Whisky 6. Three ocean currents violently crashed into each other just off the coast of British Columbia. On calm days it was hell. During a storm, and not just any storm, the worst storm the Northern Pacific had seen in a hundred years. It was an ocean Apocalypse ready to swallow all who dared to defy it.

During his Navy days on a Destroyer Escort, he was getting dressed for the middles watch, the graveyard shift from 12:00 to 4:00 AM.

He searched for the folding knife he always carried on his belt. Half asleep groping around his locker he looked at the time. He had to get to work. You didn’t show up late in the Navy,  a little drunk yes, late never.

He couldn’t find his knife in the darkness and decided that he didn’t need it. What could happen? He buttoned his shirt, put on his boots and ran down the low narrow hallways and metal stairs that led him to the Radio Room, a difficult maneuver while the ship was rocking and heaving violently in the storm. The hatch tops came in at five feet high he was over a foot taller. It took all the coordination he could muster not to split his head open on the sharp metal.

There was another man already waiting in the radio room. He looked a little green and was manning a plastic bag.

“Big fucking waves Wolf.”

“Try crackers Benson.” He held up a half-eaten open package as he tried to hurl into his plastic bag. Crackers were the only cure for extreme seasickness, it wasn’t really a cure but gave you something to upchuck.

A half-hour into the shift in the Radio Room, as he was hanging on during the violent movements, the man overboard bell sounded. Someone had gone outside and fallen off the ship.

“You have the radio room.” Benson nodded and moved to Wolf’s chair bringing his plastic bag with him.

He grabbed a life-jacket and a portable radio, and an extra battery and ran for the lifeboat. His job was communication. Six others were there to man oars in case the engine of the 27-foot Boston whaler failed. The last man was Master Seaman Armstrong who was the man in charge of the whaler when it was in the water.

The swells were rolling in at over fifty feet high, and the rain poured into the 27-foot-long boat like someone had turned on fire hoses. The gale-force winds gave every effort to send the men flying out of the boat. The ship was rising up and down on the waves out of time with the whaler. The wood and fibreglass boat would violently slam the ocean or the ship on the way up and down again.

Eight one-inch twisted hemp ropes hung down, one beside each man as a safety line should something bad happen. He couldn’t see this being much worse, he was wrong, behind him as the ship rose up and down the lightning made sure he could see the spinning 28-foot high brass propellers that were about to chew them into ragged red plankton.

Either fear or stupidity caused Armstrong to start the whaler engine too soon. One of the safety lines wrapped around the small prop on one of the trips up the giant waves. The 4 cylinder engine wailed then stalled out. It caused the whaler to smack the side of the ship even harder as it was tilted forward caught in the rope. Armstrong shouted an order to use the long oars to keep the whaler from being smashed against the ship.

Above the small boat, a stupid mistake was made, visibility was so poor in the storm no one could see the caught rope. The crew above kept lowering the boat. Armstrong froze. The men in the boats looked at Wolf for instruction when they saw Armstrong had lost it. He reached for a knife that wasn’t there. “GET ME A FUCKING KNIFE” he yelled over the storm to the other sailors in the boat.

No one had a knife. Everybody was supposed to have a knife on. He tried the radio, dead as usual. The hand-held radios never worked in the corroding salt air. He threw down the radio and waved frantically up at the crew that was in charge of lowering the boat. He made sawing gestures of what he needed.

“KEEP THE BOAT OFF THE SHIP” he yelled at the six that were holding three oars to keep the whaler off the side of the ship. Just then one of the oars snapped from the extreme force and sent a deadly ten-foot-long jagged chunk of oar straight at his chest. He sidestepped the flying spear and kept going. Davy Jones was looking for new recruits, fuck you he thought I am not ready to die yet.

He could hear faint yelling from above. He could see they were trying to throw down a knife. He watched carefully knowing there was only one chance. In a few seconds, the whaler would be chewed in the propellers of the big ship. He caught it and opened it up. He dived for the caught rope, hanging between ocean and boat with one hand while sawing with the other. While he was hanging out there trying to cut the rope, the boat spun around moving closer to the spinning screws. The force of the 2000 lb. boat spinning around almost launched him into the screws like an arrow from a giant bowstring. The men were ready to jump off the boat.

“MAN THE OARS” he yelled as he furiously sawed at the rope meant to kill them. Once through the hemp, he Tarzaned back onto the whaler dropped down and landed on two feet like something out of an old Errol Flynn Pirate Movie. He yelled orders loud as he could “PUSH OFF AND ROW MOTHERFUCKERS, ROW TO SAVE YOUR LIVES”

They managed to get away from the ship and out into the angry sea. The broken oar meant only four of them were rowing one had come back to take the rudder the other one helped look for a flashing light on the water. There was one more life to save before this nightmare was over.

“FLASHING LIGHT TWO POINTS OFF THE STARBOARD BOW” was the yell made by the lookout. Somewhere off the front of the boat and to the right, was the missing man.

In a few minutes, they had found the man overboard. It was Albert a life-size plastic Mannequin wearing a Navy issue inflatable life-jacket complete with strobe light and whistle. He was used for man overboard exercises, usually in calm weather.

He could hear the men in the boat swearing and grumbling. “DO YOUR FUCKING JOBS AND LET’S GET THE MAN BACK TO THE SHIP. NEXT TIME THAT MIGHT BE YOU.”

“ROW THE FUCKING BOAT, YOU ARE SAILORS YOU DON’T NEED A FUCKING ENGINE NOW ROW.”

Cristian knew the engine would never fire on this trip out, the rope still caught in the prop and trailing behind the boat.

Row they did. He could see the lights of the ship still a mile away, the sea, a churning hell with massive walls of water and foam between them and safety. The four men rowed up and down the mountains of water. During a flash from the lightning, he could see that the two-story-high propellers had stopped spinning.

A sailor from above managed to throw a line right into the whaler. The sailors pulled on the line and hooked up the little boat that was being tossed around like a cork in the blender.

The boat was raised, and he could see the men were badly shaken up. He yelled out at the men “NOW YOU ARE FUCKING SAILORS AND YOU DID YOUR JOBS AND DID THEM WELL.” He didn’t know where that came from but it was the right thing to say.

When the boat was locked in, he yelled his last order “JOHNSON, BECK GET ARMSTRONG TO SICK BAY”

“Right away Leading Seaman” was the reply referring to his rank.

“Good job Leading Seaman Wolf,” said the watch commander, a green Sub-Lieutenant asshole standing beside the Captain. Cristian didn’t like officers. Waste of fucking air. Sailing the ship should be left to the men that worked for a living. Except for the Captain, he was a decent man. Tough but fair.

“May I speak freely sir?”

“Please.”

“Are you the one responsible for almost sending eight men to their deaths for a plastic dummy?”

“Yes,” he said sheepishly.

“You sir should be very careful standing near the guard rails in this storm, it is very dangerous. A man could fall off.”

“Was that a veiled threat Leading Seaman?”

“No sir a fact, if I give you a threat you won’t have to question it” Wolf answered with a distinctly menacing tone.

“The leading Seaman is showing concern for your safety Sub-lieutenant. Get below and wait for me in my cabin.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Leading Seaman I understand you showed great courage and leadership in bringing those men back alive.”

“No sir Captain, I did what needed doing that’s all.”

“Thank God you were on that whaler” he paused “Master Seaman Wolf. Those men owe you their lives.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The captain saluted the Master Seaman and he returned the salute. “Get below and get dry.”

“Sir.” The captain headed back to his cabin to discuss the exercise with the sub-lieutenant who was flown off the ship by Helicopter on the next mail run for his own safety.

The Master Seaman went back to the radio room alone thinking about his new rank and swore he would never start his day without his knife strapped on, and he never did.

He focused back on the present moment. There was a thumbwheel surrounded by a loop of gold meant for a chain, he thought it was for winding it up. He tried winding it, but no luck. Almost instinctively he flicked the loop over to one side and clicked downwards on the wheel. The watch opened up.

Inside was a picture of a grey-haired man with a heavy moustache and a woman looking at each other. Out loud he said. “I wonder who they were?”

A voice came out of the watch “He was the previous Keeper of this watch. She was someone he loved. Her name was Amelia Alice McDermott.”

“WHO FUCKING SAID THAT?”

“I did” was the reply, again from the watch.

Right then and there he thought he must be having a flashback from his LSD days. He had given up drugs and alcohol years ago.

Not one to panic he thought he would go along for the ride.

“And who and what are you?”

“I am the watch and the Watcher.”

“That must have been some good acid.”

“There are no acidic compounds within the immediate proximity.”

“So what do you watch Watcher?”

“Time and the Keeper.”

“Who was the owner of the watch?”

“Ezra Allen Miner.”

“Where is he?”

“He is waiting.” said the watch.

“Explain.”

“The tin box was buried in 1906 where you found it. In another space-time location, he is awaiting help from his current predicament.”

“What do you mean space-time location?”  

“In the future travel to different times and locations becomes possible. Ezra is in incarcerated in one of those spacetimes.”

“You mean a with a machine that allows you to travel back and forth in time like in that H.G. Wells book?”

“No that would not work, all of the theories about time travel in this time period, were slightly flawed? ”

“Again explain.”

“The work by H.G. Wells the time machine is pure fabrication. He could not tell the truth about his travels.”

“Let me get this straight H.G. was really from another time?”

“Yes, it was perhaps foolish of him to write about the travel and his writing about the new world order, which will surely be mistaken for another cause of the same name. He exposed himself to them, the Elders. I believe they might be responsible for his mysterious death. Some say it was liver cancer, some heart attack he was quickly cremated before the real cause was investigated.

Even the epitaph he wrote for himself is a clue “God-damn you all: I told you so.” Some think it is a message to the Makers.

Now back to time travel. The Earth spins around the Sun, the Sun around the center of the Galaxy and the Galaxy is moving through the Universe.

The earth and this galaxy are moving at approximately 2,724,665 MPH. The earth is not in the same place right now as it was ten seconds ago. A ship would be needed to travel back to the same location in a different time.”

“So I just need a ship that can travel through space and time?”

“Not a complete answer but yes.” said the Watch.

“Where would I get a ship like that?”

“There is a ship thirty miles from this location.”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“I don’t kid.”

“Can I use it?”

“You are the new Keeper, I do as you ask.”

“Like a genie? So whoever holds you gets the ship?”

“I am more like an adviser and what you would consider a computer or AI. No, your voice and biosignature are imprinted, if you were to die of natural causes, enough time passes, or with a voluntary transfer, the Keeper can change. The Natural cause is part of my programming and is a safety protocol to protect me from being taken by misadventure.”

“So you are a 386 or maybe like the car in Knight Rider.”

  “Only a few Billion times more advanced. I retain all the information for all time spaces that were in existence at the time of my manufacture, plus all time-spaces I have ever existed in.”

Feeling dizzy at all the information passed to him, he slumped back into his old tattered brown fake leather recliner.

“Where do we start?”

“I would suggest getting a chain.”

Laughing he said “good plan Watcher.”

He pulled the biker wallet out of his back pocket, with a pair of pliers he broke a link in the chain that held the wallet, then he ran it through the loop in the watch. He joined the two ends of the chain together and put the chain and the watch around his neck. Then he fell asleep in his chair.

Tomorrow or Yesterday was going to be a big day.