The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-54810-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2005-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

“So it's a game.” Frank nodded. “I thought as much.”

They were back at Dorso's house so Dorso could watch Darling, who was dressing the cat as an astronaut. Dorso had told Frank about meeting the man in the prehistoric swamp. The cat, Dorso thought, looked catatonic. He smiled, wondering if that was where the word came from; somebody, somewhere, kept dressing a cat in different costumes until it simply sat there, numb. Darling was hooking the cat into a little parachute harness while she studied the upper landing of the staircase, and Dorso knew he would have to step in soon or the cat would be learning what free fall meant. “You didn't think any such thing.”

“Well, maybe not, but I had a hunch.” Frank smiled.

“Right.” Dorso rubbed the back of his neck. He had started to have a dull ache back there about the time he'd shown up with wet pants in front of Karen. It wasn't getting worse, but it wasn't getting better either. Just a dull, throbbing ache. “The guy looked like one of those outlaw gamesters you see in the backs of magazines; kind of wild and crazy.”

“So if it's a game, what kind of game is it?”

“A very dangerous one, if they're messing around with the time paradox. Remember last year when you went onto the Net and asked what would happen if you fundamentally changed the line of time, changed how things happened, so that you could actually go back and kill your own grandfather, which meant you wouldn't exist in the first place to go back and kill your grandfather, but if you did it then clearly you must exist even though if you didn't have a grandfather you couldn't exist to kill your own grandfather …” This, Dorso thought, isn't helping my neckache. “What did that theoretical physics professor tell you?”

“He said that time is based in some ways on the speed of light, and that if you alter time in an impossible way it's like trying to change the speed of light, which can't be done, and that in the end it can mean big trouble.”

“How big?”

“Well, if you go back in time and you meet yourself and try to occupy the same place at the same time, it's apparently like bringing matter and antimatter together. Everything ends, ceases to exist.”

“So that's their game? To make everything end? Are they that crazy?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's just the gamester thing, you know. One guy does something, the next one tries to undo it, or fight it, or change it. But how did it all start?”

“He said something about a chip, a game chip, how he thought there were only two of them, and that I must have a third one. And he said something about how I jumped with his line. None of it made any sense until he mentioned that bit about it being a game.”

Frank leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking, and Dorso smiled. When it was all

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