Portals and Plutonium (The Time Flow Stories Book 4)
Portals and Plutonium
The Time-Flow Stories
#4
Laurence E Dahners
Copyright 2023
Laurence E Dahners
Kindle Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
Other Books and Series
by Laurence E Dahners
Series
The Ell Donsaii series
The Vaz series
The Bonesetter series
The Blindspot series (which interweaves with this Time Flow series)
The Proton Field series
The Hyllis family series
The Time Flow series
Single books (not in series)
The Transmuter’s Daughter
Six Bits (a collection of short-length stories, some of which interweave with this Time Flow series)
Shy Kids Can Make Friends Too
The Little Redheaded Boy and His Flying Saucer
For the most up-to-date information, go to:
Laurence E Dahners website
Or the Amazon Author page
Table of Contents
Other Books and Series
Table of Contents
Recaps
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Author’s Afterword
Acknowledgments
Other Books and Series
Author’s Note
Though this book can “stand-alone” please understand that it’s part of an overall series of stories that weaves in some of my other books.
If you’d like to read them in temporal order:
The first story in the combined series would be the novelette “Porter” which can be found in my collection of short-length stories called Six Bits
The second story would be The Girl They Couldn’t See
Third would be The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss
Fourth would be Fast-time at Aldmont High (The first book in the “Time-Flow” series)
Fifth would be Talents and Tyrants (The second book in the “Time-Flow” series)
Sixth would be Joy and Justice (The third book in the Time-Flow series)
Seventh would be Portals and Plutonium, the book in your hand
Last would be the short story Guitar Girl, also found in my collection of short-length stories called Six Bits
I’ve minimized the repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books to provide a better reading experience for those who’ve read those stories.
Recaps
For those of you who’d like some refreshers about the characters’ psychic talents:
Regarding Allie/Eva (from the short stories “Porter” and “Guitar Girl”):
She has a psychic power that allows her to perceive the interiors of objects and people and to form small ports from one nearby location to another.
Regarding Roni (from “The Girl They Couldn’t See”):
Her telepathic talent allows her to keep people from noticing her (or other things/people), essentially making them invisible. She can also make them look like something else.
Regarding Hax (from “The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss”):
His talents include hyper-coordination, letting him throw and shoot with astonishing accuracy. Also, he can telepathically convince people of things. This gives him a powerful step up in leadership.
Witt’s time-flow talent. This is quite complex. You don’t need to fully understand it to read the books but in case you’d like to better comprehend it, here’s a summary of what Witt learned about his talent in the first Time-Flow book, “Fast-time at Aldmont High”:
He can speed (fast-time) or slow (slow-time) his personal time, allowing him (and objects or people he includes) to move very fast or very slowly.
When he goes into fast-time, colors shift toward red (red-shift) because light waves arrive at his eyes farther apart (lower frequency).
He can tell how fast he’s going by the color shift of his violet school wristband (as long as it isn’t in his time bubble with him).
At a 20% speed increase, the wrist band turns light blue-green. At 80% it’s red.
When he’s going over twice the normal speed (2X - or more than 200%) the world goes dark (because, in our environment down here on Earth, there isn’t much UV light to be redshifted into visible light) so the wristband is very dim.
He can use a flashlight to see in the darkness he encounters when he’s beyond 2X.
The light from that flashlight gets blueshifted up into the UV and X-ray ranges as it leaves his bubble, but is so low power that it should be harmless.
When the light from that flashlight bounces back to him, it redshifts back down to the normal light range so he can see it. However, because UV and X-ray energies are absorbed/reflected differently from visible light, what he sees appears somewhat bizarre.
There is a bubble or transition zone surrounding him in which time slows back down to the 1X speed of the rest of the world.
He can change the size/thickness of that bubble.
That bubble can glitch electronics like computers/phones because different components of the computer are working at different speeds.
He can go as fast as 400X normal.
If he walks at 3 mph while at 400X, he’s traveling at 1200 mph, well over the speed of sound, however, his bubble muffles sound and prevents sonic booms.
Please understand that this tale takes place in a world that parallels but doesn’t exactly replicate our own. Though Cyreea has similarities to Syria, the Union is similar to the United States and Ruchia resembles Russia, etcetera, they are not identical. I hope you can accept that this is fiction, intended to address similar situations, but that these are not historically or politically accurate representations of events, people, or places in our world.
Prologue
Reiters News Service, Kvg City, Ucryn— Rather than retreating from the current battle front as had been hoped, Ruchia has been holding in place. Many had assumed that after the death of Pootin, the pressure from all the demonstrations being mounted back in Ruchia would weaken the military’s resolve to maintain or push ahead. This has not proven to be the case.
Using the advantages provided by the high-tech weapons its allies have provided, Ucryn has advanced into several of the areas previously held by the Ruchians but these advances have come at a significant cost. Nonetheless, some continue to hold out hope that the new Ruchian government will decide to avoid further losses while it attempts to stabilize its own situation.
There remains an undercurrent of dread that, having lost ground to their smaller neighbor, the Ruchians will decide to use tactical nuclear weapons to save face …
Allie and Witt were out at “brunch,” as they called it when they went out to eat in the late morning. This usually happened after they’d played a late show or the bus trip to the next venue had been long. In any case, they thought it decadent to go out for late breakfast.
When they were nearly finished, Allie leaned across the table and said, “When this tour’s over …?”
Witt’d been in a brown study. That interrupted, he looked up, “Uh-huh?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to meet my family?”
Looking concerned, Witt tilted his head. “Sure.
But I got the impression you and your parents didn’t get along. I’m not sure I want to be the victim of friendly fire.” Looking as if he’d thought of something worse, he continued, “Or, enemy fire?”
“Um, there was a time when we got along … badly, but we’re doing okay now.”
“If it’s okay to tell me, what was the problem?”
She frowned, “It … uh, has to do with my talent. My dad’s a physics professor, and—”
“Where?” Witt asked, suddenly sounding quite interested.
“Greyson University.”
“What’s his name?”
“Albert Dans.”
Witt’s eyes widened, “Really? Your last name’s Dans? You’re Albert Dans’ daughter?”
Glaring a little, she said, “I think I already said that.”
“Wow! How cool was it growing up with him? He’s like a god in physics!”
Glaring even more intensely, Allie said, “Have you forgotten about how I didn’t get along with him?”
Witt drew back, “You only said your dad’s a physics professor!”
“Well, he wanted to figure out how I form ports. He made my life a living hell trying to do that.”
“Oh!” Witt said, looking appalled … yet interested. “Um …”
“Um, what?”
“I was going to say, understanding how you do that would be—”
Allie leaned forward. “You’re not about to say that ports are so important that figuring them out justifies what he did to me, are you?!”
Wide-eyed, Witt leaned back. “No! Absolutely not! I was, uh …”
Narrow-eyed, Allie said, “You were, uh, what?”
Putting his hands up, “I was just about to, um admit that I think understanding your talent could be a boon to mankind …” noticing the expression on her face, he raised his hands higher in surrender, “but not important enough to do whatever it is he did.”
Allie rolled her eyes, “Yeah, I can see his point now. And, he sees mine,” she continued fiercely, “which is that he shouldn’t have treated me like a freaking lab rat.” She shrugged, “With that understood, we get along great.”
“Well, I’d love to meet him.”
Witt drew her out on what her dad’s research on her had been like. After a bit, she related the tale of her family’s kidnapping at the hands of Randall Forst. Finishing her description of the episode, she said, “At the end of that, Dad said he could see how dangerous ports were and that he understood they weren’t something that should be turned loose on the world.”
“Dangerous?”
Giving him a sharp look, she said, “Pepper spray in your windpipe. Water sprayed into your brain. You’re the one who taught me how to give people heart attacks.”
“Ah, yes,” he said settling back thoughtfully. “And, together, we can drop grenades wherever we like, right?”
“Uh-huh. Supposing we figure out how to enable anyone to do these things. There’re gonna be people out there who’d commit terrible crimes if they had such abilities, right?”
“If we figure it out, we should also work out how to keep it out of such people’s hands, huh?”
Allie gave him an exasperated look, “If we don’t figure it out, we won’t have to worry about it getting in the wrong hands.”
“But, Allie,” Witt said, “think of the good you could do! Like the plaques you pulled out of the coronary arteries of that old man at Borenko’s speech.”
She frowned, “You knew about that?”
He nodded, “When he moaned and grabbed his chest, I sent my psi-sense in there. Turns out I can, um, sense your ports when they’re open. They feel … heavy.”
“Oh,” Allie said, wondering what that’d mean in the overall scheme of their talents.
“It’s an enormously powerful thing you can do,” Witt said. “A good thing. When people speak of double-edged swords, usually it’s because they’re thinking about how something good can also be used for evil, but in this case, you figured out the weapon part first without thinking about all the good things they could do.”
She tilted her head, “I drained the blood out of my brother’s head … that was a very good thing. After that, I did think about how perhaps I should try to help more people with it.” She shook her head, and gave a soft snort, “But when I looked into it, there aren’t that many people who’d benefit from the draining of blood from their heads, and of course, no one would come to me to get it done, they’d all go to neurosurgeons. There may be other things I could do but I’d need to go to med school to be able to unravel the things that’d safely help people and figure out which ones would be dangerous.”
Witt sat, looking thoughtful for a minute or two, then shook himself. “Yeah, I can see what you mean. Still, I think we owe it to the world to try to figure out what we can do. We don’t have to tell the world if we decide it’s dangerous, but it’d be a tremendous shame if we passed up something meaningful that we could do with your ports just because we didn’t know about it.”
She laughed. “Here I was worried you wouldn’t want to meet my parents. Instead, you want it too much! I’m the one having second thoughts about letting you talk to my dad!”
Witt was frowning in thought and she assumed it had to do with her jibe. Instead, he asked, “Are you named after your dad?”
Gritting her teeth, she gave a slight, uncomfortable nod.
He widened his eyes, “Alberta?!”
“Allie,” she said grimly, “and you’d better not forget it!”
He leaned back, grinning. “It is Alberta! I’m calling you that from here on and …” taking in the expression on her face, he amended, “Or, maybe not.”
Chapter One
ESPN, Arkon, Hayo, Track and Field Trials— Sprint phenomenon Witt Ryllin continues dominating the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 400-meter sprints. Today he broke the world record in the 200-meter race. Since he already held the world record in the 100-meter race, this means the only sprint world record he doesn’t hold is the 400. Also, though Ryllin has won the long jump in many meets, yesterday he broke a major record in the long jump for the first time, leapfrogging past the Union record for the event to become the world record holder with a jump of 9.07 meters. This was a big step up over the previous world record of 8.95 meters, a record which was set in 1991.
Many are wondering how, after so many gradual increases in his personal best in the sprints, he was suddenly able to make such a massive improvement in the long jump. When questioned on this topic, he responded that there are many, many technical minutiae involved in achieving a best performance in the long jump. “I just happened to put them all together today and fear I may never jump this far again,” he said. Others have pointed out that his speed in the run-up to the board was twelve meters per second, much faster than the 11 m/s achieved by other elite jumpers. While sprinters often better that 12 m/s mark, they don’t have to control their stride in order to take off just short of the foul mark on the board.
When Allie’s mom, Sarah, opened the door, she immediately threw her arms around Witt. He looked alarmed at first, then upset. Sarah quickly took him by the arm and led him into the house, proclaiming her enthusiasm for finally meeting Allie’s boyfriend.
Allie wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction to her mom but assumed it was typical male reticence toward meeting girlfriends’ families. Which irritated her, since she didn’t want a typical boyfriend.
Then Witt was being introduced to her dad and telling him, “I’ve so been looking forward to meeting you, Doctor Dans. I’m as excited to meet one of my physics heroes as a lot of music fans are to meet your daughter.”
Looking surprised, her dad said, “You know of my work?”
“Oh, yeah!” Witt said, “especially your papers on …”
Soon Witt and her dad were sitting out on the deck talking about physics over … A couple of beers? Allie thought worriedly. Witt always says he doesn’t drink because his dad’s an alcoholic. She stepp
ed closer to the window and looked more carefully. The bottle Witt had in his hand was an Izze—a soda pop Allie’s brother Stephen liked to drink—the bottle of which resembled a beer bottle.
Allie stepped away from the window and turned to her mom, “Where’s Stephen?”
“Out with some of his friends. I’m hoping outside and not in someone’s basement playing video games. Probably a forlorn hope.”
“Is he having dinner with us?”
Sarah nodded, “I texted him and got a thumbs up.”
Allie looked around the kitchen, “Is there something I can help with?”
Sarah nodded, “I’ve got it. Everything’s planned out in my head and it’ll just go better if I do it myself. You go hang out with your dad and your boyfriend.”
“At this rate, I’m never gonna learn to cook, you know?” Allie said, heading for the door.
“Oh, sorry! You want to stay with me and I’ll talk you through what I’m doing?”
Allie snorted and gave her mom a grin, “Not a chance. I’m just fine not knowing how to cook.” She pulled the door open.
Sarah shook her head amusedly, “You’ve always known how to push my buttons.” The door was swinging closed, so she rushed to call after her daughter, “Anytime you decide you do want to learn to cook …” she trailed off as the door banged shut.
~~~
Allie sat down next to Witt. He acknowledged her presence by taking her hand but kept talking to her dad. They were deep into a discussion of “the swirling fields around Allie’s ports.”
After a few minutes of this, Witt tried to draw her into the conversation by pausing and asking what she thought.
Not wanting to admit she hadn’t been paying attention at all, Allie merely shrugged. Witt went back to talking to her dad and after a few more minutes she went into the house and got her guitar.