What if a physicist went back to high school?
Read a sample and find out!
A sound startled me awake. I sat up on the couch and looked at my watch. Three hours had passed. The accumulators should be fully charged. I stood and then heard a muffled thud. It sounded like someone was trying to bust open the door into the lab area from the Physics building. I heard another thud, this time accompanied by the subtle sound of glass cracking. They were trying to break in.
I hurried back to my workstation and saw that everything was set to run. I quickly typed a command to stream the output directly to my public cloud account. I locked the workstation as the wire-reinforced glass of the door shattered. I could now hear their voices. Husky, male, with a lilting, foreign tongue.
“Quiet. The rent-a-cops may ignore the bribe if we’re too loud.”
“Do we care? The power of the sun is Allah’s, not man’s. Let’s destroy this abomination and get out of here.”
I grabbed my pad and card and headed deeper into the lab. Maybe I could hide from them long enough for the system to fire and confirm my results. The safety cage around the test machine might keep them out for long enough. Quickly, and as quietly as possible, I entered the code for the cage door, opened it, and slipped inside.
“Look at all this wasted crap.” A voice declared. It sounded like they were near my workstation.
Crash!
“Those are just monitors. We need to destroy the computers he is using and his test set-up, not just monitors. Spread out and let’s get busy. Mullah Azim wants this done quickly. We must destroy this work and the man who would dare this blasphemy.”
I tucked myself back under the test bench and looked at my pad. The firing sequence had started.
“Someone is in that cage!” I heard. I pulled my foot in, cursing myself for not hiding better.
“Come out, old man, and you will not be hurt.” They must think me an idiot.
“Ari, open that door.”
Boom! A blast shook the air, and I heard buckshot scatter against the wire cage and back wall.
“Idiots!” I shouted. “You’re shooting at a fusion reactor that is about ready to fire!”
Another blast hit the cage door, and then suddenly I was washed in incandescent white light and all sound ceased. My last thought: so this is what a fusion explosion feels like.
I awoke slowly, eyes still closed, aware of light against my eyelids. The bed felt warmer than I’d ever felt in my drafty Chicago apartment. I rolled my shoulders. They felt different too. No stiffness from my mugging six years ago.
A dream? Or was I dead?
I cracked open an eye. The answer was something else entirely. I was in my room. Not my apartment, but my bedroom on our family farm. Where I grew up. I looked at my arm. No wrinkles, no liver spots. The arm of a young man. Thirteen? Fourteen?
I threw back the covers and looked down at my body. Young again.
I rolled out of bed and stood. My balance was a little off, but I caught myself easily and stood up straight. I glanced at the clock radio I hadn’t seen in decades. Six-ten. Time for morning chores. I changed quickly and headed out to the barn. The cattle would tell me my age. Our loyal dog, Duke followed me out, but I could not tell how old he was. He just looked like Duke.
The barn looked newer and cleaner than the last time I had seen it. I pulled open the sliding door and headed inside. Blackie stood waiting, a twelve-hundred-pound steer with an all-black coat and a diamond-shaped white blaze on his face. I had bought Blackie the fall of my eighth-grade year. He had been my first steer, practically treated as a pet. Given his size and the temperature outside, it was almost summer. I must be finishing or had just finished eighth grade.
My body remembers the chores. Check the water tank to make sure the autofill valve was working. Fill the feed buckets and dump them into the feed trough, then up to the loft to throw down more hay for the manger.
I slowed my pace as I headed back into the house. How did I get here? Was the past I remembered so vividly a dream, or had I really been sent back in time? What day was it? Did I have school?
I opened the door and saw my mom pulling a box of cereal from the cupboard. Tears welled up in my eyes. Mom was still alive, of course. I pulled off my boots and crossed to her for a tight hug.
“What brought that on?” she asked as I moved away.
“Just wanted to say I love you, Mom.”
Her eyes seemed to moisten, but then she smiled and waved toward the table. “Sit down and eat some breakfast, or you’ll be late for school. You wouldn’t want to miss the last day, would you?”
This is one of the opening scenes from chapter one. Read a sample on Amazon to start from the beginning.
Charlie Forêt 