A Space in Time by Glen Marcus (classic books for 13 year olds .TXT) 📖

Wade Langerhans flipped on the light switch and hurried to the window, near his desk.  The florescent tubes above the young scientist flickered with each pulse the backup generators produced.  Peering out the cracked, sooty glass, he could see indistinct figures eighteen floors below him on the ground.  It didn’t matter if he could see their faces...Piling out of four, half-track vehicles, the Global Forces Regimen had tracked Wade’s location!  Retreating to his desk, the young man removed his Micro-Palm from his pocket and Bluetoothed into the BetaDyne’s server network.

                “Password.  2-8-9...Kilo...5-2...George,” Wade spoke each word in trembling tones.

                “Password confirmed,” came the digitized voice from the handheld unit, “Biometric scan in progress.”  Langerhans passed the palm of his hand rapidly over the small screen.  A shrill tone was followed by the voice again, “Hello Wade, how may I be of assistance?”

                Wasting no time, the apprehensive scientist responded, “Access all ‘Hermes’ files,” as he caught the distinctive sound of the hallway elevator, making its descent.

                In less than ten seconds, the device replied, “A total of seven encrypted folders and two hidden files accessed.”

                “Deletion code.  Alpha...4-2-4-2...Langerhans.  Delete all ‘Hermes’ files!”

                “Deletion complete, Wade.”

                Grabbing the oversized, bronze paperweight from his desk, Wade raised it above his head and brought it down with a crashing blow, destroying the Micro-Palm.  Racing around the desk, he flashed the back of his hand to a discreet, wall-mounted RFID scanner.  A large section of shelving began to sluggishly move, revealing an egress.  As Wade was pulling the steel-reinforced door to its closed position, the ding of elevator doors in the distance, announced the troop’s arrival.

                “Lights,” echoed Langerhans request.  The enormous room erupted with the glow of soft-white incandescence.  Hidden behind the tame facade of BetaDyne’s robotics research facility, lay a vast array ‘super-tech ’equipment, used as of late, for far more than cyborg development.  Unbeknownst to the other employees at the company, Charles Demetri, BetaDyne’s founder and Langerhans’ mentor had fashioned this working laboratory for a special purpose.

                Demetri had always been light-years ahead of his competition in the robotics market.  When he patented the first ‘Cyborg One’ model in 2016, the media had a field day, accusing the elderly physicist of cloning because of its realistic semblance to the human body.   Two short years later, BetaDyne began outsourcing the mass production of thousands of the lifelike units, for the public’s purchase.  But the pair’s greatest invention had been unmasked to the Global Forces in an unfortunate error of timing, two days ago.  This mistake cost Charles his life and put Wade directly in the Regimen’s crosshairs.

 Demetri had always been enamored with the idea of time travel.  While Wade, the scientific mind, ground out the details of the robotics technology, Charles’ physicist leanings always drew him to the abstract.  He constantly studied the theories of Einstein’s Special Relativity, which is the basis of space-time continuum.  It basically stated, that a single manifold idea melds three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.  By combining those theories on super galactic and subatomic levels, Demetri concluded a fourth-dimensional space-time is created.  Further, he integrated studies of Hermann Minkowski, who postulated wormholes create a ‘shortcut’, thus allowing an object to supersede time and cross into the past or the future.

                Of course, Einstein and Minkowski were working with early twentieth-century technology.  Nowadays, in the year 2020, Demetri experimented with light and laser refractions to try and’ bend’ time.  By using what he called “Chrono Triggers”, a process to harness super galactic wave frequencies of light, Charles had finally gleaned limited success.  After months of testing, the pair of scientist sent one of their cyborgs back in time.  After reversing the process and transporting it back to their laboratory, the two were ecstatic on the information gathered.  But sadly, that was all behind them now.     

                A cold chill ran down Wade’s spine as he realized how almost a decade of work had concluded.  Being on the cusp of utter fame and fortune held little solace for the brilliant man, who stood there alone, watching it crumbling around him.  The hordes of soldiers pouring into his office shown on the bank of monitors in front of him.  It was only a matter of time before they would breach his lair.  He knew he had to work fast.

                Powering up the control center, Langerhans then cleared the platform,directly under the superstructure of the mammoth contraption.  Programing the settings to the selected date, Wade entered the delayed start sequence and moved into position beneath the device.

                A myriad of thoughts pierced the young man’s mind in the moment.  Would he survive the jump?  How would his body react to the transition between dimensions?  Being untested on humans, would the molecular structure of his anatomy be scrambled in the process?

                All of the answers to his questions were the same…It didn’t matter.  The only solution was to go back in time before all the chaos started.  Back before Charles and Wade’s involvement, inadvertently brought the terror.  Back before the Global Forces almost leveled the city with their Armageddon-style bombs and attacks, and of course, before they killed poor Charles.  Maybe if he succeeded, all this destruction could be averted…just maybe.

                Preparing himself for the inevitable,a large blast broke the silence of his thoughts.  No more than thirty feet away,heavily armed soldiers came charging through the mangled,metal door.  The humming of the machine now reached a frenzied pitch and the soldiers stopped short,to cover their ears from the pain of the whine.  Blinding steaks of what appeared to be lightning, flashed in hues of blue and red, encompassing Wade in its midst.  As the radiant glow began to swirl around him, Langerhans reached into his pocket and produced a grenade.  Pulling the pin and flinging it with all his strength,it bounced atop the machine’s control panel.  In an instant, the flashing lights had vanished.  And so had Wade Langerhans.

Text: GlenMarcus ©2013
Publication Date: 07-29-2013

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