Inspiring Novelists:

[Jer4clarity]

“Hell found me!” John’s desperate words over the control room speakers startled everyone. The transmission had been lost and only the eerie cries of misplaced electrons crowded their ears and their hearts. Everything had been going so well and then this. The Time Travelers stared at each other in disbelief. The lights flickered but nothing changed. What could have happened?

Thurston Wells surveyed the blank stares and dropped jaws of his elite cadre. Each of the five Travelers had proven themselves worthy of the Time Chamber’s complexities. Each was the top of their class in the company’s recent simulation exercises.

“What happened, Daniel? Get John back, right now! Now damn it!” Daniel looked at every icon on his panel. Nothing was out of order. Everything looked perfect. Daniel’s words trembled out of his mouth, “Everything looks fine. He...he just disappeared. Vanished! Right off the tracking system, sir.” Thurston’s mind was racing through every scenario the Wells Traveler Computer system had predicted. What just occurred was outside of any conceivable problem. The one thing they all knew was that if they ever lost someone in travel they only had 10 minutes to track them down and bring them back or the Time Link would be broken.

Nellie Armstrong had been given the task of Search & Rescue at Wells Traveler for any situation. She was responsible for the only survivor from Thurston’s Beta Travelers, his first project that ended in the tragedy when five of his first six Travelers were lost. Nellie was behind the S & R panel for the Beta Travelers and remained calm even during the Time Chamber’s disintegration. John was the only survivor and that was only because Nellie switched his Personal Chronos Indicator a millisecond, an instant, before the Time Chamber's malfunction. It happen so fast she couldn’t get to the others. Thurston knew he could count on her cool reserve.

The Traveler’s Time System didn’t even recognize that John had disappeared but Nellie had immediately time stamped the S&R panel with John’s last words: 2120:A:12:18:47:07. A minute had already passed and what just transpired wasn’t anywhere in the S&R manual. Nellie’s heart was pounding wildly as she retraced the last fifteen minutes of John’s travel in her thoughts. She was stumped.

She recalled how he had broken through the thin veil of the fourth dimension without any complications, all his vitals were good and his molecular structure had maintained its integrity. They had been communicating back and forth about his experiences once he broke through. John said he could see his body but had no sense of touch. He sounded ecstatic as he detailed how his entire being felt soothed with warmth. The many minutes that followed were full of descriptions that were difficult for John to explain and for the team to understand. It was all recorded. Nellie caught herself drifting from the dilemma she was facing. She pushed the hi-speed replay icon and transferred the recording to the public setting. Everyone was listening to the rushed dialog of the past quarter hour. As a Time Traveler you were trained to overcome anxiety but this had pushed them all over the edge.

The voices were indistinguishable, almost rumbling over the control room speakers.

Thurston burst out, “There! Stop it there, Nellie”.

Nellie noted the digital counters number and quickly began the playback, this time in normal mode.

“I could never dream of such a beautiful light like the one that I’m floating in”, John’s voice seemed confident yet intrigued. “I don’t think I will ever want to leave this light” there was a pause and when John’s voice came back in he said, “but I know the Time Traveler's Mission is more important. What’s my time and location??”

It seemed that John struggled with bringing himself back to the Well’s Traveler task at hand.

“That’s it! Play it over Nellie. Start just before the pause where John says something about not wanting to leave the light.”

Nellie had watched the digital counter and knew right were to start it back up.

“Take out any white noise with the filter and turn the volume up” There was tension in Thurston’s command.

Every ear strained toward the speakers as they all stood frozen and silent. “I don’t think I will ever want to leave this light”. It sounded more like a response this time. It had a faint but luring pitch that quickly faded out and then returned.

Thurston thought he heard a voice. “Replay that again, Nellie, only this time start just before John speaks. Amplify that pitch and slow it down.”

Nellie’s fingers found all the necessary icons and the room was filled with an ever-so-dim but enchanting voice. Everything should have been slower and more deliberate. But this captivating voice was not affected by the measured playback. It was more like an angelic song.

“Come to the light! I am beautiful! Come to the light!” and then John’s reply, “I don’t think I will ever want to leave this light”.

“Follow me, Follow me,” the voice sang as it faded, then returned “I am the Time Traveler’s Mission”.

Thurston looked around him. Every Time Traveler seemed to be in a hypnotic state.

“SNAP OUT OF IT!” Thurston shouted.

Nellie’s reaction was to push the pause button. She too had been drawn into the promise of fulfilling the Time Traveler's Mission. The room fell silent. Thurston knew deep inside that John’s disappearance had everything to do with this encounter.

White noise began to spill out of the control room speakers. The air in the room seemed to become lighter as a faint pitch faded and returned, faded and returned. Both Daniel and Nellie looked down at the icons on their panels. The speakers were not on. They were no longer in control. Thurston felt a lump grow in his throat. The static grew louder. The pitch turned into angelic voices. Nellie looked down at the time stamp on her panel. It was blinking. 2120:A:12:18:47:07. She looked at her Personal Chronos Indicator. The time stamp was the same. Not one second has transpired since John spoke the words, “Hell found me.”

Thurston noticed Nellie’s frantic expression. “What the hell is going on here?” he spurted. The lights flickered again until the brilliance enveloped the entire room. The white noise and the voices stopped.

The control room had vanished.

Thurston, Daniel, Nellie and the Time Travelers, were now all floating in the light. They had somehow pieced the fourth dimension, together. There were no icons to push or control panels to manipulate their environment. They were caught in the light. For a moment they all felt soothing warmth, but it soon turned to heat and the sensation of sulfur burning through their bodies. The voices were less angelic as they grew to a deafening crescendo. Nellie recognized Thurston in front of her. She reached out to grab him but her hand just fell through his arm. She couldn’t hold on to him. She tried to call him but the shrill of the voices drowned her words. In front of them, John appeared as an immense silhouette against the now reddening blaze.

John vanished again with the entire Well’s Time Travelers cadre rushing to the same fate.

John saw his friends coming towards the darkness he was now in. He wanted to help them escape this madness. He now knew he had been fooled by the warmth he felt and the light. It all seemed so good, so right. He was frozen but on fire, spiraling into obscurity. The sounds of wailing and gnashing teeth were driving a spiked pain deep into his eardrums, but he could see no one, sense no one. He was alone. He could take the screeching of other tormented souls no longer, he joined the cacophony with his own wailing.

The Texas monsoon storm caused the lights to flicker again. Thurston Wells heard his son, Johnny, scream. He ran down the hallway and burst through his bedroom door. Johnny was sitting up in his bed, trembling, tears rolling down from his eyes. “Daddy, Daddy…I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Daddy! It was just like you said, Daddy…I…I should have never played in the Time Chamber when you were gone. Daddy, hold me Daddy….Hell found me!”

[MsJacquiiC]

Oh WOW! Not what I expected at all - Riveting really - very well written with exception of a few punctuation errors... She recalled how he had broken through the thin veil of the fourth dimension with out any complications, all his vitals were good and his molecular structure had maintained its integrity. --- The detail of your story is really nice - I'd say you'd entered this into a contest - Your chances of getting the blue ribbon are very good.

Nicely written JER - And not saying this just to boost your ego - I've always been a fan of science fiction - and this piece is quite nice.

Well done - And thanx for sharing

Jacquii.

[Jer4clarity]

MsJ.

I am so honored that you like this piece...I was kind of shocked at how easy this was to write but don't know if I got another one in me....thanks again!

Jerry

[Mysty]

WOW Jer........ wonderful story. Just my kind of reading material. I loved it. Other than a few typoes it is perfect.


Mysty

[Jer4clarity]

Thank you very much for the review mysty!

Jerry

[nomadicrhymer]

Jer, this was a fascinating read! Very riveting and captivating as well through to the end. Awesome story...I love the end the best...wouldn't want to think of the travelers disintegrated into space with no hope of return!! lol!

Nomad

[PaintedDiary]

Dear Jerry,

This was amazing!!!!! I loved loved loved this! Well written from beginning to end, and drew me in! I cannot write sci-fi, and never tried, so this is inspiration for me!!!! Awesome Jerry, and the story line was a masterpiece!

Kim

[DaveKuzminski]

I'm going to be brutal. You deserve an honest opinion.

The premise is good. The execution is not. A paragraph should not mix dialogue from one character with action from a different character. Each should be a different paragraph. You do that in paragraph three, which should be two paragraphs because the initial speaker is not Daniel. He's being spoken to. Then Daniel performs action before Daniel speaks in that same paragraph. This really needs to have the paragraphs rechecked to fix that kind of problem.

You might want to try speaking the dialogue out loud. Some of it's a bit stilted. It's too formal sounding.

Also, watch for redundancy. For instance, a monsoon is a storm, so calling it a "monsoon storm" is just plain bad. There are a few other occurrences of redundancy such as the earlier one in the current paragraph four where "a millisecond, an instant" is used. Only one is needed. Using both slows down the action.

If someone can't sense others, then how can his voice join the cacophany of other tormented souls? Obviously, you have a conflict there.

Your ending has some problems. Why is there a time chamber in the home? I can see that you're trying to link the use of "Hell found me" to the beginning of the story, but it really wasn't clear to me. Are you trying to state that they went through time to their younger years? Or to an alternate universe in an earlier time? I recognize you don't have to clear that up and can leave it to the reader to interpret as the reader sees fit, but this reader simply didn't get it.

Yes, this is a good story, but it needs better formatting before you submit it anywhere.