Today, we have an excerpt from John E. Stith’s Tiny Time Machine, which collects the author’s trilogy of the same name. It’s a sci-fi adventure for younger readers. To mark the occasion, we have an excerpt from the book. First, though, here’s the synopsis:

When Meg’s mother died in a hospital mishap, her scientist father set out on an obsessed journey to develop a tiny time machine to save her. He became so angry that he and Meg have rarely spoken since the death of her mother.

Now a loner preoccupied with combating polluters, Meg meets Josh at a break-in at a paint company in efforts to expose their practices when they suddenly find themselves on the run from the cops. Meg heads for the one man who should always take her in — her father.  But when they reach him, they find him dying before he can perfect his device.

It’s all up to Meg and Josh to fix a disaster set to render the Earth uninhabitable, dive back into the past to rescue Mom and Dad, and overcome an adversary who wants the Tiny Time Machine for his own purposes. Can they succeed?

*

My dad and I were in one of our many non-speaking periods when he conducted his first truly successful time portal test.

I only found this out after the fact, and it wasn’t because I talked to him. I would do anything if I could talk to him again, but that ship has sunk to the bottom. I learned this from the recordings I found after his death.

My dad, Frederick Vauntage, was conducting what he called, “portal test number five.” As it had before, the portal snapped open between a brick-wall-lined alley here in our San Francisco and the corresponding location in the other San Francisco. But this time was different. This time, the portal stayed open for more than a second. Some people measure success in millions. Dad measured his in seconds.

The portal itself was a simple rectangle about the median size of an ordinary window in a typical house. The bottom was roughly level with dad’s belt, and the top about even with his receding hairline.

Dad had been partly prepared for the possibility of a stable portal. He took a couple of quick pictures, noting with surprise that while his San Francisco was overcast and cool on that day, the other San Francisco was hot, dry, dusty. But something else made an even bigger impression. Not a meter away lay a dead body, fairly badly decomposed. A man, apparently, in work clothes and worn brown shoes. Near one foot was an empty beer bottle. Down the alley, another body lay crumpled on the ground.

While Dad was hoping for a stable portal, his preparations were not completely thought out. Quickly he extended a pair of fireplace tongs through the portal and toward the bottle.

He was obviously nervous about extending his arm through the portal, not totally certain of how long the portal would stay open. The tongs were an awkward tool for picking up a bottle lying at an angle. And haste makes fumbles.

His anger went from zero to rage in two seconds.

“Come on, come on! Oh, for—” The tongs touched the bottle but just managed to roll it farther away. Simultaneously his warning timer started up. “Don’t do this to me! You son—”

He decided correctly, and luckily for him, that he couldn’t risk any more time. He drew back. His hands, grasping the handles of the tongs, retreated through the portal. The tongs themselves were about halfway through when the beeps stopped and the portal closed.

Instantly his hands rose and the ends of the tongs climbed in a corresponding arc, as if he were skeet shooting. The tongs had just lost half their weight as the closing portal severed them cleanly. In the other San Francisco, the loose ends must have clanked as they hit the alley pavement.

If he’d been competing for stringing together cuss words, he would have easily made the nationals. Maybe the internationals.

I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course. I hadn’t spoken to Dad since our most recent blowup, our last blowup as it turned out. I wasn’t even out of high school yet, and he had gone off about me not making enough of my life, about me not realizing my potential. It was like he thought I should already have my first Nobel Prize. I was less than deferential, more than ready to be confrontational, and suddenly we were once again immersed in scorched-earth yelling and pulse-pounding anger. Darn it, Dad.

So I’m an angry scientist’s daughter, not a mad scientist’s daughter. Maybe in the future, if the dictionary police keep legalizing common errors, “mad” will no longer mean “crazy” and instead it will be nothing more than another superfluous synonym for “angry.” But to many, “mad” still means “crazy” and my dad wasn’t crazy. He just had anger issues. And, too often, like father, like daughter. Darn it, Dad.

Some people are repelled by bad-example parents and gravitate toward the polar opposite. Some are blinded by their parents’ shining path, and they can’t see any alternative trail. And then there’s us. We are disgusted with our parents’ selected course, but, try as we may, we drift into the same orbit. Sometimes, though, the things you least expect can kick you right out of your trajectory.

Or they can just kick you in the butt. Sometimes you don’t know the difference until later.

*

John E. Smith’s Tiny Time Machine is out now, published by Amazing Stories.

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