Chapter 01: Wrong Delivery

The lid on the cardboard box shut, and a roll of clear tape screeched as it sealed the container securely closed. A shipping label was stuck to the top of the box, and a scientist in a white lab coat began writing an address on it.

The lab was cramped, but not for lack of dimension. Work tables dominated the space, covered by a blanket of electronic components, spools and loose bits of wire, and all the tools necessary to work with them. The cluttered workspace of people more busy creating than cleaning left barely any room to move around and only a narrow pathway to the doors.

"You can't be serious," a balding man in gold wireframe glasses said as he burst through the double doors leading into the lab.

The first man stopped writing on the address label and looked up. Unlike his rounded coworker, he had a slender build and the intellectual look of someone who might be thrilled if accidentally locked inside a library.

"What are you talking about, Bill?" he asked, resting an arm on top of the box.

Bill used a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his smooth scalp before pushing his glasses back up to a better position on his wide nose. Nervousness hovered around him in a cloud.

"Perry, we've been working on this project for the last five years, and I know you're the senior researcher, but are you seriously going to send that through the mail?" Bill asked while pointing at the box under Perry's arm.

"It's very well cushioned," Perry assured him. "I could drop it from the top of this building, and it wouldn't damage anything."

"You know what I mean," Bill insisted. "It's dangerous. In the wrong hands, This thing could cause untold amounts of harm."

"What would you suggest, an armed escort?" Perry questioned.

"How about an armored car and a battalion of Marines?" Bill offered.

"It's not going to end the world," Perry said dismissively.

"It might!" Bill yelled.

"This thing is the prototype," Perry explained. "The power cell is only good for a few uses before the whole thing shuts down. Stop worrying. Even if it somehow got used by the wrong people, it wouldn't last long enough to do any real harm."

"I still don't like it," Bill reiterated.

"It'll be fine," Perry assured him. As he lifted his arm off the box, he failed to notice how the edge of his sleeve brushed across the wet ink of the label, smearing the address. "We don't have anything to worry about."

Perry set the box on a cart for the afternoon mail pickup and headed for the door.

"Relax," Perry suggested, switching off the light. "I'll buy you lunch."

***

The seemingly unimportant cardboard box was delivered by a uniformed postal worker to the front porch of the Jenkins house. The postal worker returned quickly to the mail truck parked at the curb, not knowing how a misrouted package was about to turn the lives of the Jenkins family upside down. As the small postal truck pulled into the lane, a bright yellow school bus approached.

The bus slowed to a stop, and red warning lights flickered from the stop sign that swung out from its flank, halting traffic. Children came clamoring down the steps and out the moment the front door of the bus hissed open. The children laughed and talked loudly, excited to be away from school, even with the homework they carried in their heavy backpacks.

From the opposite direction, Cassie and Sean Jenkins drove toward their house. They'd taken the side streets rather than the main thoroughfare to avoid being stopped by the bus. They pulled into the driveway an instant before the bus retracted its sign and drove away, it's diesel engine roaring loudly.

Cassie was seventeen years of age and the current beauty every male student in the school had an eye for. Her hair, a medium shade of coppery brown, fell in loose waves about her shoulders, and the faux diamond hair clip positioned on the side of her head above the right ear added a flashing touch of elegance that drew the attention of anyone who wasn't already looking in her direction.

Cassie's attire consisted of a short sleeved shirt of hot pink tucked into the top of her bleached white jeans. The shirt and jeans fit just tight enough to barely reveal her feminine shape. Although her outfit was very flattering to her form, she avoided wearing anything that showed her off too much. She liked the attention she got from most guys, but she definitely didn't want to attract the wrong kind who weren't interested in anything beyond her looks. She wasn't shallow, and any guy who was wouldn't even register on her radar.

The flame red car she drove was an early graduation gift from her dad. Seated in the passenger side was her fifteen year old younger brother, Sean. His hair was a shade darker than Cassie's and very thick. Unlike his sister, Sean preferred not to be the center of attention. He spent more time by himself than in anyone's company, even his family. He'd exchanged his standard all black clothing today for a shirt and pants of dark brown and green camouflage.

His demeanor and choice of wear generally put those around him at a distance, and he'd liked it so much, Sean had started playing into the role to keep people from intruding on his life. Sean didn't hate people; they made him feel uncomfortable, and he only felt truly at peace when alone. Sometimes his family was okay, but solitude was his home.

As Cassie and Sean stepped out of the car and onto the paved driveway, a second car pulled in. A deep shade of forest green, the new car parked beside them, and its two occupants disembarked.

"Did school let out late today?" asked the driver of the green car. Tall, lean, and athletic, Cassie's father fixed his gray eyes on her while waiting for an answer. His fit build was a holdover from his earlier days as a track star. Being an electronic engineer hadn't broken him of his standard exercises, keeping him in perfect shape.

"A stupid assembly held us up," Sean grumbled.

"There's some sports event going on," Cassie explained in a voice of total unconcern, but it lacked the hostility Sean projected. "Dad, can I stay out later than usual tonight?"

Cassie's father closed the driver's side door of his green car and loosened the red silk tie of his black suit.

"You know the rules," he reminded her. "What's going on for you to need an exception?"

"I have free passes for the midnight screening of a new movie at the mall cinema," she explained. "A few of my friends will be at the mall tonight, but I didn't want to invite them until I knew if I could go."

Her father thought about it for a moment. "Ask your mother. If she has no objections, then neither do I."

As he headed for the house, Sean in tow, Cassie turned eagerly toward her mother. "How about it, Mom?"

Standing beside the passenger door of the green car, Cassie's mother appeared the image of refinement. A straight, ankle length skirt of jet black rippled like water as she walked around the car, her black stilettos clicking on the driveway pavement. The top button of her long sleeved, collared shirt of pure white was undone, revealing a necklace of a single gold strand glittering at the base of her throat. Cassie's mother lacked the darker colored hair shared by her husband and children as hers was a radiant blonde, nearly appearing white in the touch of the sun, but it was her eyes that always drew Cassie's gaze; her eyes were a striking bright blue, resembling an iceberg barely submerged in artic waters.

"What's the movie about, and when would you be home?" her mother asked.

"It's about a young maiden kidnapped by slavers, but her prince charming is on the way to rescue her," Cassie explained excitedly. "It should be over by two, two thirty at the latest."

"I suppose it'll be alright this once," her mother agreed.

"Thanks, Mom!" Cassie cheered, hugging her in gratitude.

The two women headed for the house and noticed Sean holding the box previously left on the porch.

"What is it?" Cassie asked.

"I don't know," Sean admitted. He stared hard at the address label, but it was smudged. There was no name. The numbers looked similar to the Jenkins' street address, buy he could only discern something about electronics. "This must be for Dad."

"Mike," the mother called into the house where her husband had vanished after unlocking the front door. "Did you order something through the mail?"

"Not that I am aware of," Mike answered, reappearing at the threshold and taking the box from his son. He stared at the label. "I don't know what this could be. I suppose we'll have to open it and see."

The Jenkins family proceeded into the house, and Cassie, being last, shut the door behind them. The living room held a couch and two reclining chairs of matching brown set up around a low coffee table. The tables and chairs were positioned so everyone might be able to see the TV housed inside the entertainment center in the corner of the room. The thick green carpet was fairly new and caused their shoes to sink in slightly as they walked across its plush material.

"Alison," Mike said, setting the box on the coffee table. "Would you please get me a pair of scissors?"

His wife disappeared into the other room momentarily. After retrieving the requested implement, she returned to the living room, walking past the photos in the hall. The framed memories showed Mike and Alison many years in the past at the athletic competition where they'd met. Mike had been a track star while Alison had vanquished every opponent in a fencing tournament. Currently a fencing instructor, Alison's experience showed as she carried the blades of the scissors like the hilt of a sword. She offered them to Mike.

"Thank you, dear," he said as he took the metal cutters from Allison's outstretched hand. Carefully slicing through the tape to avoid damaging anything inside, Mike opened the mysterious container.

Several layers of polystyrene foam were removed from the top of the box before anyone could see what lay beneath. A complex electronic device sat nestled in a cushion of plastic airbags for impact protection. Mike pulled the invention from the box for a better look.

Without having to be asked, Alison reached up and pulled the chain on the overhead light, brightening the room and allowing everyone a better view of the technological curiosity delivered to them.

No larger than a checkbook, the flat and rounded device possessed a gray plastic covering, but it had been molded in such a way as to reveal the wiring and circuits underneath the thin veneer. A single button of a latch was centered on the front. Mike thumbed the latch, and the device split horizontally in half, opening like a clam shell along a rear mounted hinge.

A display screen filled the upper portion of the open case. Currently shown on the screen were the numbers 891 above a rounded rectangle of bright green.

The lower half of the open device was filled with controls. A small toggle switch sat near the edge of the case on the right, and a softly glowing red button the size of a thumbnail resided on the left. Positioned in between them was a grouping of four dial controls. The dials were flat and held a fingertip sized depression near their outer edge. Numbers in increments of ten measured out beside horizontal marks along the outer circumference.

"How very interesting," Mike said as he turned the hand held device over, examining it from all angles.

"What does this button do?" Sean asked. He pointed to the softly glowing red button on the left while Mike was turning the entire component around. When the device was flipped upright, Sean's pointing finger accidentally touched the red button.

The button lit up brighter, and an electrical hum filled the air, followed almost immediately by a crackling of electricity. Arcs of energy whipped out from the device, enveloping the family in a sphere of blue-white energy. The sphere abruptly shrank, and the entire Jenkins family vanished from their living room.

***

The fields of grass waved slowly like the surface of a green ocean as the winds drifted across them. Trees swayed in the breeze, their leaves fluttering as they were brushed by the invisible force passing them.

Electricity crackled, and a sphere of energy, no larger than a man's fist, appeared and hovered over the landscape. As the electrical arcs inside the sphere continued, the orb of blue-white energy expanded to ten feet in diameter. In a flash of light and a thunderous explosion, the orb vanished, depositing the Jenkins family in the middle of the field.

"What happened?" Cassie questioned as she looked around, disoriented. Her mother also took in the lush vegetation in all directions where their house and neighborhood had once stood.

"I don't know," Alison replied. "I really don't know."

Mike examined the device further, looking for any change to explain the odd occurrence. The only things he found different were the green rectangular bar on the display screen had turned black, and the red button no longer glowed.

"You won't believe this," Sean said from the top of a moderately sized hill he'd climbed for a better view.

Mike closed the device and put it securely in his pocket. He ushered his wife and daughter up the hill to see what Sean had discovered. None of them spoke for several minutes when they looked down from the hilltop.

Situated at a fair distance, stood a mighty castle. It towered over the tops of nearby trees, and the cone shaped roofs of its spires lifted higher still into the air. Battlements lined the top of the outer walls between the square topped turrets adding additional fortifications, and a huge drawbridge spanned the surrounding moat.

"I think we just traveled through time," Mike suggested.