Beyond the Benign by J.T. Ryan

Author:J.T. Ryan [Ryan, J.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781524687571
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2017-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

“TIME TO TRAVEL”

A sci-fi/ histo-fi short story by J. T. Ryan

Tom glanced down at the colorful ticket in his upper left pocket on the way to LAX. Several years ago there had been a contentious argument about whether to rename the historic old airport. In keeping with tradition, the political body made no decision, and LAX kept its name. Tickets still showed a rendering of the modernistic, but dated, LAX restaurant and airport.

Tom Travers had long looked forward to this trip. As a retired Space Force Technical Officer in the year 2060, he’d spent much of his career in aerospace physiology, helping astronauts deal with the challenges of space travel. Now he too would become an astronaut.

The air taxi hovered over endless urban landscape en route to the LAX Space Terminal. Tom recalled the dramatic advancements of recent decades that enabled his upcoming adventure. He would soon embark on an odyssey considered science fiction only a couple generations ago.

It was only about forty years ago, Tom thought, when travel through space and time was first considered achievable. Traversable wormholes were the key. Back in the twentieth century, Einsteinian physics theory predicted that a bridge could exist to provide a shortcut through the time-space continuum. That bridge was termed a wormhole.

Wormholes enabled travel through space over a great distance in a short time – the equivalent of exceeding the speed of light! A firm axiom in physics had always been that the speed of light could not be exceeded but, wormholes provided a loophole through the space-time fabric.

Disembarking from the air taxi at LAX, Tom gathered his travel cases and boarded a high speed train to his departure terminal. Whizzing along through the rail corridor, everything outside the train window appeared blurry. Tom viewed his life also as a kind of blur, now that he’d reached retirement.

Tom glanced once more at his travel ticket and observed two milestone time destinations printed on the stub: 1860 and 1960. His ticket also indicated the location and time frame for each stop.

“Space Port Los Angeles – next stop,” announced the robotic train speakers. Tom knew well the many terminals at LAX for points around the globe but, leaving planet Earth entirely would be a first for him.

Tom stepped off the shuttle train into a waiting area. As he sought out comfortable seating, his thoughts returned to their two kids. They were grown now, and shared their Dad’s curiosity about the universe. Tom liked to pose far-out questions for his family’s discussions. One such inquiry was: If man is destined for a spiritual state of being, might there be any clues within the physical universe as to the nature of such an existence? The search continues.

Tom’s older child Travis majored in astronomy and liked to question his Dad about space travel. Shortly before Tom left home in suburban Los Angeles, father and son had just such a conversation about his upcoming voyage.

“What do you hope to achieve by taking this trip, Dad? I mean, aren’t

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.