Time Vault

James: 1999

The alarm sounded at 5:00 am as James rolled over in bed to hit the snooze button. James Jynx was 23 years old and worked everyday at the local high school as a physics teacher. As a young teacher, just out of college, the students loved him as being not only a role model to the boys, but a crush of most of the girls. One of the many downsides of being a high school teacher, as James would come to learn. James was an average young man, who enjoyed working out, playing video games, and partying a little too late with his buddies on weekends. James lived alone, as his parents passed away in a motorcycle accident when he was halfway through college. He inherited their house, but it felt empty without their presence.

Since James had about 2 hours until he had to leave for work, he enjoyed a morning run of 6 miles before breakfast. His route had been the same since he was a teenager on the cross country team. He ran down his road, around the lake, through the trails in the woods, and then back home again. When he was in high school, he was leader on the team with a sixteen minute, thirty second 5K time. He maintained his pace into adulthood, by being consistent with his training, which meant that his morning run took him less than an hour to complete, usually. Today was going to be a little different.

As James was making his way through the path in the woods, he came across a leather bound, black book with his name embroidered on the front of it. So of course he stopped his run to pick up the mysterious object and examine it. James didn’t own a book like this and it was quite curious why he would find it in the middle of his running path. As he examined the cover, he noticed that it seemed to be sealed and did not appear to be openable. Puzzled, James walked the remainder of his run towards home looking the book over as he went. Nothing. No openings, no zipper, no lock, just sealed all the way around. The only resemblance to a book that it had was that it was marbled, like the composition books from standardized tests at work, and the embroidered name on the front “James Jynx”. James’ father had a journal once that looked similar, but he was buried with it. It couldn’t be the same book, especially because it couldn’t be opened, nor would it still be intact.

When James reached his home, he looked at the time, it was past 6:00, which meant he was running late. So he threw the book onto his kitchen table and raced up to get ready for work. He would have to investigate it further later. Right now, the young minds of the future were counting on him.

Dominick: 2142

Dominick Chanty worked for the Time Vault as a time guard for the past ten years. He made his reputation as the most ruthless officer on the force. Not one of his tasks ever escaped unscathed. Police brutality did not apply to the time guards, because people could not prove that it even occurred, which was the perfect job for an ex-marine with hard-skin and an even harder heart. Today was like every other day, he reported to work and logged into his computer to search for abnormalities in the timeline. Part of the requirements to be a time guard was an extensive knowledge of history and most of the job was simply reading newspaper articles from the past. There were teams of 20 people designated to each decade throughout history, as far back as 356 BC, the time of Alexander the Great. His office was in charge of the early 21st century, from the year 2000 to the year 2010.

Dominick, Dom for short, was itching for a new mission. Unfortunately after his last mission, where he killed his charge and several others, he was transferred to one of the most boring decades in history. Not many people travelled to the early 2000s. The music was terrible, the styles were boring, and no one wanted to relive the attack on the twin towers in New York City nor the recession in 2008-2009. Dom hated his job and was determined to change the minds of his bosses about him not being a threat to the timeline, but an asset. He was on his last strike, being that it took the guards quite a lot of time and money to clean up his last mistake. Of course, covering up the death of one of the nation’s elite was a lot easier than replacing the deaths of two innocents in the past with clones. Replicating DNA from the past took more skill, time, and finesse to complete. The guards had to steal a sample from them while they were alive and then record their entire life by implanting a microchip in their brain as an infant. It was never easy to get close to a newborn baby to do the implant without raising any suspicion of the nurses and doctors in the hospital.

Making a clone of a traveler was as easy as taking their DNA sample, required on floor two, and re-growing them in their capsule on the sixth floor. The reprogramming stage came next from the memory copying that happened on the third floor. It was not uncommon for travelers to get hurt, injured, or worse in the past. So the precautions were taken, and people were replaced on a semi-regular basis.

Dom was in luck, because today in the papers was a new name. In the year 2007, a man named James Jynx cashed out one of the largest gains in the history of the stock market, making the newspapers as “The Seer of Stocks”. He apparently bought a bunch of stocks in the early 2000s that no one knew would grow so quickly and cashed out on them right before the 2008 crash and made a fortune. Dom immediately printed the paper out and brought it to the director's office.

Tyler: 2142

Tyler slipped through the door at the top of the stairs to find himself in a large room full of time capsules. Next to each of the capsules was a monitor and a place to store personal belongings. The idea of how the capsules worked according to Tyler’s research, was a courier brings their traveler to a capsule. They place all of their belongings from the present into the storage space and lay naked into the capsule. The courier then programs the computer to dress them in the fashion of the time period they were traveling to and assign them identities and back stories for anyone they may encounter in the past. The only thing they had from the future was their time anklet, which was used to return. Tyler would have a challenge ahead of him figuring out how to send an object through time, on its own.

Tyler walked up to the capsules to look for one that was currently not in use. Typically, most were always in use because time travel was the latest trend after deep space became more available to the common folk due to the demand decreasing. The sixth capsule from the back of the room of about 600 capsules was open, so Tyler was in luck. He approached the monitor to try to figure out how it worked, which to his luck was clearly labelled with three dials, time period, clothing, and customer id number. Then a button that was labelled send. Tyler quickly got to work. He placed the Moleskine book into the capsule and shut the door. Then he turned the dials, 1999, 0, and entered a random number into the customer ID part. He hit send, and nothing happened. Panicking Tyler started to smash the button over and over hoping it would work, but still nothing. Just then he heard a voice behind him shout “Hey you, what are you doing up here?” Tyler made one last effort, turning the clothing dial to 1 and hitting the button one last time before he heard the gunshot. It would be the last thing that he heard.

James: 1999

Coming down the staircase of his old Victorian style house, James was ready to go to work. He glanced around, making sure that he had all of his belongings with him before leaving for work. Going through the checklist in his mind, lunch, books, laptop, graded papers, check. Something was missing. James had never run this late before for work, but panic did not set in. His confidence outweighed his fears every time, so he was always level headed, even in an emergency situation. Looking over at the dining room table he remembered the book he found and right next to it was his house keys, which usually would be with the rest of his work stuff, but today he was slightly rattled when he got home from his strange discovery. The notebook was clean and unmarked, like it was brand new, with his name embroidered on the front. Finding it in the middle of the woods also made the mystery more peculiar, and the fact that he couldn’t open it iced the cake. No matter to wonder about now, James snatched up his keys and the notebook and walked out of the front door. He had 30 minutes before his first class and a 15 minute ride to work ahead of him.

His day went as it normally did. Nothing too exciting happened in his classes, except maybe him having to assign detention to one of the boys in class for throwing pencil shavings in the popular girl’s hair. Lunch time was his favorite part of the day because he had the opportunity to interact with “real people” instead of kids. Today was a bit different though. James had a mystery to try to figure out, so instead of racing to lunch, he stayed in his classroom and examined the notebook. The cover was soft, with a hard interior, so cutting through it would prove to be difficult, if not impossible. There were no seams, no threads, nothing. It was almost like the book was not even a book, but a mini computer. There was nothing like it that James had ever seen before.

Just when he was about to give up, he noticed a small hole in the a in his first name on the cover. To examine it more closely, he put his face right up next to the book and looked at it like it was a peep hole. Nothing he could see made the hole relevant, so he huffed a deep breath as he started to pull his face away from the book to put it back in his back. CLICK!

The book flipped open and suddenly was open to a page that appeared to be a letter to him from someone he never heard of before.

“Dear James. My name is Tyler Jynx from the year 2142. You are my great, great grandfather. If you are reading this, I am probably dead, but my mission was a success. If you follow the instructions contained within this journal, you could change the course of our family’s history. Please use the contents within to help you on your way.”

Dominick: 2142

Standing over the body near the time capsule, Dominick was proudly smug knowing he stopped a rogue traveler prior to their departure. It was rare that anyone would travel without clearance, and usually it was a worker of the Time Vault or a passenger who returned and woke up early, sneaking another trip. The punishment for illegal travel was death, and a memory wipe before their resurrection. The man in the blue janitor jumpsuit, was someone who Dominick did not recognize. It was the duty of the time guards to know all of the employees of the Time Vault, so they were easily recognized, and Dominick prided himself in being thorough of his knowledge. A job well done, Dom was ready to call the real janitors to clean up the mess, when he noticed a green flashing light on the monitor. Upon a closer look he noticed that on the screen were the words “Trip Successful.” His job was far from over.

To be continue...

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I have been writing for a lot of years. I have several stories in the works, and lots of poems. I found Vocal Media in March 2021 and since then have been revising, editing, and creating more poems and stories. I absolutely love writing anything from poems and short stories to history. If you want to reach out to me and learn more you can find me @theodore_the_spartan on Instagram.

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Thank You For Reading!

~Theodore