OLD MAIN

A Story In Time By Joseph Houk

 1990, 2012, Joseph Houk. All rights reserved. Cassie Wells, Keith Scott and other Times Like This references are copyright 2007, 2012 by Thomas Overbeck. The characters are used with his tacit approval, since he owes the author one. Times Like This is a web comic updated twice weekly at the URL www.timeslikethis.com. Please note: some of the content on the strip is considered to be for mature audiences. Parental guidance is advised. Cover photo of Old Main is courtesy of Flickr user "chopper744"; photo titled "Old Main on the UW-Whitewater Campus, before it was partially burned to the ground." Photo is credited to Terry Esrael.

Prologue

Old Main Burns Down

On the night of February 7, 1970, a call came into the city of Whitewater fire department from the campus radio station, WSUW. A student smelled smoke outside the studios, and noticed that the main building of the Wisconsin State University at Whitewater was on fire. That was the beginning of a long, fierce battle that resulted in the complete loss of the Old Main building of the Whitewater campus. The fire, which was believed to be started by arsonists, raged through the night, destroying three of the building's four wings including the original building that had been constructed back in the 1870's when the campus was new. The lack of fire doors and a bounty of combustible material made the fire that much more devastating. Though some books and papers were salvaged by students and professors, the contents of the building were a total loss afterwards. The loss affected every student on campus at the time, as the majority of classes at the school were held in Old Main. As the flames crossed to the central wing of the building, the bell in the tower that still adorns the University's school logo came crashing down as the supports gave way. The half-melted remnants were found later in the basement of the building. Students who witnessed the destruction were openly weeping as the Carillon that had announced the hour for decades had been silenced. The fire departments battling the blaze had an additional difficulty with the sub-freezing temperatures and the lack of water. Water was brought in from as far away as Palmyra, but the amount could not affect the level of damage to the building. At least one firefighter from Fort Atkinson was hurt trying to battle the blaze, as he had fallen off a ladder trying to reach an upper-level window.

As the night went on, the amount of water that had built up from dousing the fire along with the melting of snow and the near-dew-point temperatures towards morning caused the fire doors that had protected the East Wing (now known as Hyer Hall) from damage to burst open, flooding the basement of that building and causing a stream to run down Graham Street (what is now the Wyman Mall) towards Hamilton Field. Classes were canceled the following Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday students were meeting at various rooms in dormitories, the University Center and other facilities on campus. As the years have passed, no one is sure who may have started the fire or why. Some have suggested that the fire may have been politically motivated; others suggest that the building was a tinderbox that was just waiting for a spark to ignite it. No suspects were ever named in the ensuing arson investigation, though at least one person a female was detained briefly afterwards. Though the grand jury found one newspaper reporter in contempt because he refused to divulge information about the fire, no indictments were ever made. The loss of the symbol of the university had lasting effects for everyone on campus at the time and upon the entire city of Whitewater. Though a new alumni center was built on the site of the main building, the impact of the fire is still felt today, nearly 50 years afterward.
Excerpt from The University of Whitewater: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, 1868-2018, by Adrienne Daniels

Friday Morning, February 7, 2020 The alarm on Jamie Kourtens' iPad went off dutifully as he rolled over in his bed. He never liked getting up early on Fridays, especially in the winter time when it was cold and damp. That was why he'd programmed his ancient iPad 2 to come up with the most annoying song it could to rouse him from slumber. Lady Gaga definitely fit the bill. Whatever possessed him to get a copy of "Bad Romance" from his roommate, Terry Erikson well, he hadn't understood Terry the first time he'd met him during freshman orientation at Whitewater two years prior. Terry had been a real history buff, but he'd been even more of a technology and chemistry buff. That made his double-major in History and Chemistry that much more strange. He reached over and swiped the alarm off, then looked up at the ceiling of his bedroom at Starin Residence Hall. He had one class that morning, and as much as he wished he could just attend the class via FaceTime on his iPad, the professor insisted on not recording lectures. It didn't matter that the University of Whitewater was considered one of the most connected schools in the nation; this guy was old school. No FaceTime, no Googletubing of lecutures. He checked the weather. Whitewater was having a typical early February day, 23 degrees and cold, according to the weather app. He sighed, got up and gathered up some clean clothes with his bathroom "bag" as he headed to the suite's bathroom. On the way, he noticed that Terry wasn't in bed. That's strange, he thought to himself. He usually doesn't have any classes Friday, so he sleeps in for the long weekend. After cleaning up and getting dressed, he tapped his iPad to find out what was on the menu over at Drumlin Dining Hall that morning. He was non-plussed upon seeing it was scrambled eggs and sausage again. Since the 2016 Tax Revolt that led to Whitewater and the other former UW System schools breaking away from state control, the University of Whitewater had to cut corners in places to "continue

to provide the same level of quality education", as Chancellor Ohlmeyer had put it, as it had under UW. It wasn't easy, and there were still rough spots. The UC Caf had been closed since the spring semester of his freshman year, and students living in the on-campus residence halls were being charged for water usage on a bi-monthly basis. At least it wasn't so bad in Starin Hall, the all-suite residence hall building. You and your roommate could monitor the water usage, and since the building was only a dozen years old, it wasn't that much of a bill. In the older halls, they split the water usage between all students on the floor. If you had one guy or gal who took hour-long showers, it could get pricey. A friend of his from high school had heard of an entire floor over in Arey moving off-campus en masse in the spring semester of 2019 because one gal had accidentally broken one of the toilets in the bathroom right before Thanksgiving break. No one noticed until they returned on Monday and then everyone got their water bills two weeks later. Jamie switched off his iPad and put it in its protective sleeve, then packed it into his backpack to head over to Drumlin for breakfast. He put on his Whitewater knit hat and his winter coat and ambled out the door, making sure he still had his ID card on him. Bounding down the stairs to the main entrance, he waved at the person at the front desk, and pushed on out into the cold. The wind liked to come rushing down Starin Road from the west, where it got progressively colder as it whisked over the Warhawk Drive parking lot. The large open area between the athletics complex and the bookstore didn't help things. Starin Road essentially bisected the campus from the residence halls, parking lots and athletic complex from the academic parts. It also made for some very long walks to classes, especially if you were in the northeast residence hall complex by Wells. He quickly made his way across Starin, quickly walking past Bigelow Hall and the western residence hall complex. He walked briskly to the side entrance of Drumlin, knowing that staying out in the cold could make things difficult for his old iPad despite his attempts at keeping the tablet as warm as possible.

The large entryway to Drumlin Dining Hall had a lobby where students and staff could set their bags in storage lockers for safekeeping before heading up to the food line. He set his bag in one of the open lockers, took out the iPad, swiped his card and closed the door. Turning, he walked over to the kiosk leading to the stairs, and swiped his card again, allowing him to push open the gate to the stairway. As accessible as Whitewater was for disabled students, they still had to have a way to limit access to the cafeteria. The gate led to the stairs and the "lift" that took nonambulatory students up to the dining room. He, however, was ambulatory and hungry. Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned and entered the self-serve line for breakfast. It was the only line open in the morning, as there was usually a minimum of kitchen staff there until lunch time. He got his usual from the serveries: scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, and a bagel over at the toast station, with a glass of skim milk and some orange juice. Taking his tray over to the far side of the dining area, he found an open table in the back corner and sat down to eat. After getting situated and taking a few bites of breakfast, he tapped on his iPad and checked his e-mail. Nothing new, really; he had finally gotten the e-receipt for his tuition bill for the semester, and his Cultural Awareness professor was going to be going to Port au Prince next week for her lecture on Caribbean society. The email had the electronic code for the lecture feed, which he could watch back home at Starin on Tuesday. Oh, and there apparently was a two-for-one deal at Lance's Pizzeria over at Esker. He had just finished with his inbox and was about to switch over to Safari to do his morning web comic trawl when he noticed he had a new message via Messenger. It was from Terry: Jamie, Need to see you after class over at Perkins Stadium parking lot. Kinda important; involves my "secret project". Left the incentive as to why in your iPad bag. See you at 11:30 - Ter

Terry had been working on this "secret project" of his for about a year now, since his grandfather had died. Between his ramblings about history and politics and physics, he wasn't quite sure what exactly this project could be. Whatever it was, it meant that he had the suite to himself most of the time, especially as of late. He paused for a moment. When he had put his iPad into its sleeve back at Starin, he didn't notice anything in there, nor did he see anything when he set it down on the chair next to him. He turned and looked at his bag it had something sticking out of it, something that hadn't been there moments before. He pulled it out with a puzzled look, and realized it was a newspaper. Not just any newspaper, but a copy of the Royal Purple, the student newspaper. Now, normally this wouldn't be cause for concern or consternation on the part of anyone who attended Whitewater. It was, after all, the school's long-running newspaper, and the source of information about events on campus for years on end. Many who had attended Whitewater in years past wouldn't have even thought twice about it. However, there was one little thing about the edition of the Royal Purple that he held in his hands that made him pause: it hadn't been published in paper format for two years. The RP had gone completely digital in 2018, the year of the school's sesquicentennial. What made him really raise his eyebrows was the date on the paper March 22, 2000. His birthday. He went to open the paper and was greeted by a cavalcade of inserts and special offer cards that had adorned, at one time, the inside of the RP. The inserts were usually for credit card applications, magazine subscriptions or coupons for razors or deodorant or whatever was being marketed towards young adults. They also were never found in the versions of the paper located in the library, or in any other archive he'd seen, as they were usually used or thrown away after reading.

He initially thought it was a joke until he saw that one of the ads was for a check card from Bank One. He knew, from personal experience, that Bank One had been the name of ChaseRBC Bank back in the early 2000's. Chase Manhattan, as it had been called back then, had merged with BancOne Corp sometime around 2005 or so. He thumbed through the pages of the paper, not seeing much inside to make him think much of it. An article about Fiona Apple She was some pop singer in the 1990s, I think. Something about a new ice arena for the hockey program I didnt even know Whitewater ever HAD a hockey program? A front page article about how the alumni association was apparently selling student names to whats an "MBNA"?, he thought. He looked at the clock up on the wall and realized he needed to finish breakfast. He wolfed down the rest of his spread, slipped his iPad back in the sleeve with the RP tucked inside the ads he just left on the tray as he got up and bussed his tray at the recycling station. Sliding his tray down the dirty tray line, he made his way to the exit, bounding back down the stairs. The university had set it up where you came in on one side and left on the other, but the truth was that they could alternate entrances if they wanted to. There were a few times they had both sides open usually when it was steak and shrimp night. He reached the locker, slid his card and grabbed his bag and coat. Just as he was about to put his iPad away, the tablet beeped that he had another e-mail message. He slid it out of the sleeve, unlocked the screen and tapped on the notification: Jamie Hope you enjoyed your reading. Now, take a look at the one in your bags front pocket; itll give you a clue as to whats up. Ter P.S. Sorry I had to scan your locker twice. I owe ya $5 for the storage fee. The P.S. gave him a start wait a minute, when did I give him my ID card? Another beep from his iPad:
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Ill tell you later. Just read the paper while youre at class. You might need to refresh your WW history before you give me a hand. -Ter He looked around suddenly, expecting Terry to jump out from around a corner or something. He was getting stares from a few other students who were getting ready to head up to breakfast themselves. Jamies face twitched a bit and he just grabbed his bag, put his iPad and sleeve inside, latched it up and headed out the door. It took him about half a second to remember that he had never bothered to put his coat on. He remedied that by turning around into the vestibule and hastily tossing his hat on and pulling his coat on as well. He had a little bit of a hike to get over to Upham Hall for his 10:00 class, and it was already 9:48, according to his iPhone 3s readout. The cold air would provide incentive for him.

A half-hour later, he was sitting back in his desk chair in the lecture hall, listening to the professor drone on about Kinetic Theory and laws of motion. The professor was emphasizing that everything solids, liquids, gases were always in motion. Even the solid table in front of him was moving. Another student towards the front asked if that meant that the desk was moving in time as well. "That's a subject for a different course," he chuckled. "Solids are composed more of phonons, that, according to quantum mechanics, vibrate at the same frequency. When they all move together, they stay together rather simplistic, but the description fits." He went on into a brief discourse about Newton's First law, and as to how phonons fit this little piece of Newtonian physics. He turned to write something on the board, and Jamie noticed that his iPad's Messenger notification had lit up on the top of its screen.

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Dude, this stuff's boring. Use VR to record this and go read the other paper I put in your bag. Please, I'm gonna need your analytic mind on this problem. -Ter This didn't sound like too bad of an idea to Jamie, and so he tapped on the Voice Recorder app on the iPad and set it to record, pointing the mic towards the front of the class. He slipped the paper out of the front of his bag carefully and put it on his lap in front of him. He looked down and saw a scary sight a photo of the burnt-out remnants of Old Main on the front cover of the Milwaukee Sentinel, dated February 9, 1970. Right below a headline stating "FIXED MEDICAL FEES URGED" was a sub-headline that stated, "Arson Suspected in Campus Fire". Below that was an eerie photo of the burned-out shell of what used to be Old Main's west wing and central wing. A wooden snow fence had been erected around the building, and many onlookers were gathered, looking at what was left of the building. He scanned the article briefly: a guy by the name of Joseph Farrar, the deputy state fire marshal, claimed that the fire had been started in three separate places: "the top two floors of the west wing and the north part of the central wing." Apparently, two men and a woman had come up to the security desk at the UC (the old name for the University Center) and said something about "there was going to be a fire in Old Main." He looked up briefly as the professor made a point about kinetics, and then turned back to write something more on the whiteboard. Jamie took the opportunity to flip to the page where the article continued: The north wing, which was the oldest of the four, was scheduled to be razed but no one knew where to go with the art and music departments. Jamie gave a half smile at this; so that was the impetus behind the construction of the Center of the Arts. The article continued: "Clocks around campus, connected to the same system as those in Old Main, stopped at 10:14 p.m. Saturday." He frowned a minute. The previous paragraph said that the first call to the fire department didn't come in until
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four minutes later. At least four minutes between whenever the fire reached the clock controls and when the fire department was notified. The next paragraph said the blaze wasn't brought under control until 3:30 AM. He thought about that for a moment. Nearly six hours from what was likely the first setting of the blaze to where the building was pretty much smoldering ruins. He looked up from his reading yet again, and noticed that the professor seemed to be wrapping things up. He looked down at his iPad and saw that it was 10:59. "No questions? Okay, keep in mind we'll be looking at chapters four through six in the book next week. Have a good weekend," the professor said with a wave, and the exodus from the class began. Jamie quickly stuffed the paper back in his bag, sliding his iPad into its sleeve with the copy of the old RP and noticed something on the screen. Smudge marks. What? He thought to himself. Then he looked down at his fingers. He had light gray smudge marks on his fingertips, from reading the newspaper. It took him a moment to process what exactly that meant: that newspaper was just printed recently. But that can't be right; it's nearly 50 years old. Any ink, even in an archival copy, would have set in and started fading by now. He wiped his hands against his jeans, slid the iPad into its sleeve and then into his bag. This time, he didn't forget to bundle up for the long walk across the parking lot to the Williams Center, which he'd have to trundle through to get to Perkins Stadium. By the time he reached the back entrance of the WC, he felt frozen. He wandered over to the Kachel Fieldhouse located just next door to the WC and headed upstairs to the coffee/snack bar in the viewing area. I need a coffee before I go back out into the cold, he thought. His iPhone buzzed yet again. Another text from his roommate: Don't bother with the coffee. We can stop for a fresh cup at this place I found. Just get on outside to the parking lot; I'm over by the first W on the locker room of Perkins Stadium. -Ter
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Terry was never one to mince words. Suddenly, he realized he had plenty of questions for his roommate. He stepped out through the north entrance, down the long ramp to the athletic parking lots. The wind had calmed a bit, but the sidewalk was still chilly. There weren't many cars back here, since most classes were over by now and everybody was gone home for the weekend. Whitewater was still known as a "suitcase college" stay there during the week, then drive home for the weekend. With the lack of things to do around town, it usually wasn't a bad idea. He had to avoid some remnants of the last snowstorm by walking around to the entrance of the lot, but he crossed over to the Perkins Stadium parking lot and saw straight ahead of him a VW bug. Not a modern "New" Beetle one of the original ones, like what you saw in films from the 1960's. THIS is what he wanted to show me? Jamie thought as he waved at Terry. He had to walk carefully as the lot hadn't been completely cleared of snow since the last major snowfall, but he managed to get over to the car, where Terry had rolled the window down. "How was the discussion on Kinetic Energy?" he asked with a bit of a chuckle. "I'm never going to understand you, you know that?" Jamie replied. "You lead me on through the morning, leaving two newspapers in my bag how, I have no idea and then you have me come all the way out here to see that you've bought an old VW Beetle?" Terry smiled and motioned to him to get in. "Well, I can explain how I got the papers and everything, but I have to contend that this is far from an 'old' VW Beetle, thank you." He put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot as Jamie got situated in the passenger seat. "For one thing, old VW Beetles didn't have GPS controls and hands-free phone and text controls." Jamie could see that as he checked out the car. He also noticed something else the interior was rather "clean" for a car that was at least 50 years old. He mentioned this to Terry. "Well, there's a reason for that," he said as he turned on Prairie, passing by the Esker/Wells complex and heading back towards the main
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campus. "First, though, I have to ask you what did you think of those two newspapers I got for you?" "Interesting," Jamie said thoughtfully. "I don't know how you got that copy of the RP, though. And I swear that the copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel had something on it, because my fingers are all gray." "That's called ink staining," Terry said patiently. "And there's a reason for that, too." "So what's the reason, then?" Jamie shot back. Terry held up a hand as they turned on Starin Road. "Hey, the dorm's back that away," he pointed as they turned to the east. "To show you the reason, we have to go over to Starin Park," Terry explained. "See, I finally got to finish the first part of that project I've been working on. I'm in the middle of the second phase of the project right now." He pulled into the parking lot on the far side of the hill, opposite the old water tower, and put the car in neutral, pulling up the parking brake as he did so. He turned and looked Jamie straight in the eye. "What I'm about to show you, I have to have your promise of secrecy. No one can know about this, okay? Just you and me." Jamie shrugged. "Okay," he said. "But what could be so earth-shattering that you require me to promise secrecy?" Terry revved the engine a bit, looking at a gauge on the dash one that appeared to be an ammeter, as it had "AMPS" and "DISCHARGE" on it. "This," he said, tapping the GPS attached to the dash of the car, "is more than just a GPS. It's a control panel for a device that Well, let me show you." He pressed a few of the buttons on the bottom part of the GPS, and then pressed the green button on the far right. Suddenly, a bright light shot from a beam on top of the car's front windshield. That's when Jamie noticed a slight glow along the edge of the dash, then over to the right A-pillar. Before he could ask what was going on, Terry had lurched the car forward and into what looked to be a "window" of light, about the size of a garage

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door. With a FZZZT sound and a sudden feeling of heat, the car had driven through the window and into Starin Park, where it was right around sunrise. And, where before there were piles of snow and trees barren of leaves, there was now green grass, robust trees and the two of them sitting in a VW bug with winter clothes on. Or, at least Jamie had winter clothes on. Terry was now in a white shortsleeve button-down shirt, and his pants were actually shorts. Both which Jamie had not noticed when he'd gotten in the car. "Where are we?" Jamie asked as he shed his coat. "More like when are we, you mean," was Terry's reply. "Look at the readout." Jamie turned to the GPS screen and saw that the date indicator said 1969-08-07. "Not bad for a side project, hey? Oh, you might want to not disrobe completely this is Whitewater in the 1960's, after all." He pulled the car out of the driveway and onto Starin Road, where he turned left to head down to Fremont Street and downtown Whitewater. "If you reach in back there, I've got a white button-down for you to slip on. You might prefer wearing it so people don't look at you strange, okay?"

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Thursday, August 7, 1969 I can't believe this, Jamie kept telling himself as they drove through downtown Whitewater. The stoplights were all funky and old fashioned; people were walking around in button-down shirts and slacks and it was 86 degrees! At least that's what the sign on the First Citizen's State Bank said. Wait that doesn't look anything like the First Citizen's bank! "Motor banking?" Jamie said aloud as he read the sign by the drive-up windows. Terry chuckled a bit as they turned west on Main Street, heading back to campus. "You're not all that up on what things were like in the late '60's, are you?" he said as they passed the city library. "We're kinda here for a reason, but I wanted to show you around Whitewater a bit. Downtown's changed a lot, hasn't it?" Jamie was staring straight ahead as they waited for the stoplight on Franklin and Main, just as they were heading down Fraternity Row. "Is that is that what I think it is up ahead?" Terry didn't need to make any sort of response, as there air was suddenly filled with the sound of chiming bells. The sound came from the tower up ahead, perched on a building located on one of the highest points in the city of Whitewater. It was a sight that Jamie had only seen in photos and old school stationery. And there it was. Old Main. The symbol of the University of Whitewater and the oldest building on campus until it burned down. The carillon got louder as they drove down Main towards the campus, and then Terry slowed the Bug down, turning into the driveway that led up the hill to the main entrance. For years in Terry and Jamie's past, this was the driveway to the school's alumni center a short, one-story building that was almost an afterthought compared to the building in front of them. Jamie turned to Terry and just said the only word he could form: "How?" Terry put the car in neutral after swinging it around the circle, then put on the parking brake. "First of all, you're not seeing things. This," waving his hand around
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at the scenery outside, "is all real. It's August 6th, 1969, and that really is Old Main. We got here with the help of this little thing." He tapped the GPS unit. "Look, I told you about keeping this secret, right?" Jamie nodded. "Well, this is more than just my secret. It's my grandfather's, too. See, my grandpa Lawrence was involved in physical science, and he was working on a project for the NSA here at Whitewater." "Here?" Jamie asked. "Why not at Madison?" "Quieter and more out of the way," Terry said. "Or so everyone thought. Apparently it didn't work out that way." He sighed briefly. "Anyways he found in his studies that there was an element that was previously thought to be unstable and highly radioactive. However, in one of his scans he accidentally found something that made the government give him a grant for his project." He turned to Jamie. "Don't laugh at this, but they're called micro-tachyons. They're little sub-atomic particles that exist at all points of time in the history of the earth." "Micro-tachyons?" "That was what he called them. What he found out about them was that they could be manipulated by amplified light rays." Jamie paused, and then pointed at Terry. "Lasers!" Terry nodded in assent. "Yep. Apparently, if you could focus them in a particular pattern, they could create an opening in time, where they would travel either forward or backwards. And he was trying to figure out a way of creating a device that would allow you to focus the micro-tachyons in a way so that you could transmit light or sound through the opening." "Obviously, this is much more than just an opening," Jamie said. "Why put all that trouble into a time-travel cell phone when you can just physically go to another time period?" "There's a slight problem with it," Terry said as he looked down at the extra gauge on the dash. "Even by 21st century standards, it takes a heckuva lot of energy to create that little window we drove through. After I did this the first time, it took
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me two days to get the machine charged back up. This car's battery does allow for it to charge up faster, but it takes a few minutes and the car has to keep running until the ammeter reads in the green." He looked down at the dash. "I think we need to take a lap around the school to get it to that point, though." He took off the parking brake and put the car in gear, heading down the driveway and back to Main Street. "Why a VW bug?" Jamie asked. "What, you think a DeLorean would be less conspicuous in 1969?" he asked, somewhat sarcastically. "I managed to get a hold of this thing brand new for only a few thousand dollars. Toughest thing was trying to find currency from the 1960's that wasn't completely worn out. Had to do some short back steps that was why I haven't been around much lately." They headed out towards the far western edge of town on US 12 which was almost completely undeveloped the further west they went. The only thing at the far end of town that was the same as in 2020 was the old Hawk Bowl. They turned around in the parking lot of what was marked as a Pamida store, and headed back into the city. "This all doesn't answer the question of why we're here in 1969, though," Jamie stated as they headed back towards campus. He was amazed at how much the tower of Old Main dominated the skyline of the city, and found it hard not to stare up at it as they stopped in front of the old McDonald's at the corner of Tratt and Main. "My grandpa's project was stored in Old Main's basement," he said as the light changed and he guided the Bug north on Tratt. "The plans were down there in a locked safe when the fire started, and they were destroyed with the building. The problem is, I have no idea where." "How could that be?" Jamie asked as he motioned around the Bug's interior. "It's obvious you built a time machine, but how could you do that without plans?" "I don't have the plans for the communication device," he corrected Jamie. "This thing was the result of something my grandfather gave me two years ago, when he was in the hospital. He told me to use it to find the plans." He shrugged as they made their way to Starin Road. "It didn't take me long to figure out how to make a time
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machine with what he gave me an old Garmin and some wiring. But figuring out what to do with it was another matter." They turned down Starin, and as they got closer to the campus, Jamie had another "huh" moment. "Where's Starin Hall?" he said. "Wait a minute where's the Williams Center?" "Starin won't be built for another 30-some years," Terry said. "The Williams Center is still on the drawing board right now." They drove down to the Moraine Hall bookstore, and then in a move that completely floored Jamie turned down Graham Street. "The Wyman Pedestrian Mall that replaced this street won't be built for several years, either," Terry said as they drove past the University Center, Hamilton Field and Gym, and then to the entrance of Hyer Hall. Pulling into a parking space outside the entrance, he reminded him "Remember, it's the east wing of Old Main, and not Hyer Hall." He looked down at the gauges on the dash. "The ammeter says we have enough of a charge. Let's go do some reconnaissance of the place while I get an idea of where the plans might be," he said, finally turning off the car. He unplugged the GPS from its connections, put it in his satchel bag and got out of the car. Jamie followed suit, though his jeans seemed a tad bit out of place in the old campus grounds. They bounded up the stairs to Hyer's entrance, and Jamie held the door open for Terry as they went into the vestibule. "The school records and registrar are in the basement here in Hyer," he said. "I'm going to see if I can look up my grandpa's schedule from last spring to see where he had classes." "How are you gonna do that?" Jamie asked. "As of right now, my name's Larry Erikson. I'm just asking for my own academic transcript." He smiled as they bounded downstairs to the records department. They went in to what Jamie vaguely remembered as the Financial Aid office, and Larry did his "impersonation" of his grand-dad. The lady behind the desk said it would take some time before the basic transcript would be done, as the computer
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system had to be loaded before they could print anything out. "Larry" nodded and paid the woman for the transcript request, and told her he'd be back in an hour. The two of them went back up the stairs. "That gives us some time to do something that Whitewater students like us have never done," he said with a solemn pause. "Go check out Old Main." The two of them exchanged looks as they bounded up the stairs to the second floor, outside the lobby of the auditorium. They walked along the marble floors to the end of the hallway and Jamie noticed the first difference about the building. "There's another building out there," Jamie said, pointing at the windows straight ahead in the hallway. "You look out those windows in 50 years, you see trees in the distance." They took the corner at the end of the hallway, and instead of seeing an elevator on the right and a window to the left, they saw a set of doubledoors to a hallway. "Ready?" Terry said as they pushed the doors open and walked across to the main wing. Jamie took a moment to shrug as the two of them walked into the building. The first thing that overwhelmed both of them was how old the place looked. And felt. Jamie heard, as they walked along the hallway, a noticeable creak with each step. They turned a few corners, then found the main staircase at the front of the building. Terry was about to head downstairs when Jamie tugged him. "I want to see something over in the North Wing," he told him as he walked down the hallway. When he got to the back of the central wing, he turned to the right and let out an "ohhhhh." "What?" Terry said, now taking his turn at being the confused one. "I see why this building went up like a tinderbox," Jamie said. He pointed at the stairwell in front of them that connected the Central Wing with the older North Wing. "Light a fire down at the base of this thing and it'd burn forever." "Okay, I think you've been watching too many episodes of CSI," Terry quipped. "How in the world do you know how the fire started?" Jamie smiled in response.
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"My uncle is a fire investigator for the Mount Pleasant Fire Department," he said. "I actually thought about getting into forensics when I started here, but I decided to go into educational engineering instead." He looked down, then over at the old building. "This was probably where the one part of the fire was started." He sniffed the air. "Eww, that's turpentine." "The art and music departments are located over here in the north wing," Terry said. "That's probably why you're smelling it." "And that's why this building went up so fast," Jamie replied. He thought about that for a moment. "You know, if we try to do any stopping of the fire, we could end up changing how the university looks in our time. The school didn't have the impetus nor the money to build what eventually became the Center of the Arts until this place burned down. In fact, practically every student on campus had a class in here." "Including my grandfather," he replied. "Look, we don't need to keep the place from burning down. We just need to find out where the safe was, get the plans out, and head back home to 2020." Jamie looked up at the clock in the middle of the hallway. "Looks like we have some time before the transcript is done," he said. "Where's this coffee shop you were telling me about? I could use some after all this."

The coffee shop was as good as Terry had advertised. What he hadn't mentioned was a girl behind the counter who was very easy on the eyes something Jamie commented about as they headed back to campus. "Where'd you find that place?" Jamie asked. Terry shrugged. "I heard about it from my parents," he said. "Apparently grandpa was a regular there. He met my grandma there in his senior year," he explained as they pulled back up to the entrance of Hyer Hall ("East Wing," Terry reminded him) and got out of the car. "So that's why the gal behind the counter thought she knew you," Jamie said.

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They walked back up the steps and into the building, then down to the registrar's office. The transcript was ready to go, and Terry took it out and looked at it eagerly. "Hm, looks like my grandpa was right. He did have a lot of classes in the West Wing." He frowned a bit. "Looks like he had two in a different location, though. What exactly does 'CN' mean?" Jamie shrugged. "Maybe check out a copy of the school catalogue for this fall?" he suggested. Terry went over to the table where they had several of the older class offerings lists, and thumbed through the pages. "Here we go," he said, finding the index. "CN that's listed as being 'Central Wing'. He actually had all of his classes here in Old Main." He looked down at the key; "Looks like the rooms were numbered by floor. We'll just find out which floor his classes were on, and go from there." They both went back up the stairs and through Hyer Hall, back to Central Wing. Terry wanted to look through the West Wing first, since that was where most of the classes on the transcript were located. As they walked through, Terry couldn't quite tell why the building would have burned so fast over on this wing. "Other than the wooden floors, this wing is just as solid as Hyer," he commented as he peeked into yet another classroom. "The reports said that they poured a whole bunch of gasoline down the hallway," Jamie replied. They took a short flight of stairs up to the third floor, then up to the hallway on the north side of the building. "This was where they believe the first part of the fire was started." He pointed at a set of doors that went between the West Wing and the north end of Central Wing. "Someone broke in, ran up to this floor, doused the hallway with gasoline, then ran down another floor and doused the front hallway with more gas. Then, it was just a matter of tossing a few matches." They poked around on the third floor, and though Terry apparently found a few of the classrooms that his grandpa had attended in 1969, none of them looked like laboratories. They both took one more flight of stairs up to fourth floor, and had the same result. When they got to the front of the building, Jamie pointed out that the
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other fire had been set up there. He did a quick assessment: "Yeah, it's doable. Maybe a Molotov cocktail up here, then run down these stairs here," as they took a short flight of stairs that led to the connecting hallway with the central wing. "Then, run down there and toss another cocktail on third floor, then head out to that first area we saw at the end of the central wing." They walked down that staircase again, and the smell of turpentine hit them again. "The arsonists probably didn't need much to send that part up in flames," he said, finally. "Did you find all of your grandpa's classes? "All but two. One's over in the basement of the West Wing, and the other is downstairs here in Central." They took the stairs down to the door where Jamie said the arsonists had broken into the building. Terry found the classroom, but he realized quickly it wasn't a lab: "This is a lecture hall." Jamie looked it over. "I think this is where the other guy was when the fire was reported," Jamie said. "There were only three people in the building two working at WSUW and a business major working here." Terry frowned at that. "Why was he working in here on a Saturday night?" Terry asked. "I have no idea," Jamie replied. "Apparently the other two knew he was down here, though." He shrugged. "Probably a roommate or a frat brother of one of them, I'd suspect." He looked up. "He said he heard sounds and footsteps, and then the two others with a campus policeman in tow found him and told him to get out of the building." They headed back over to Central Wing, and stopped in the connecting corridor. "So we have an idea of how things burned down, but no idea of where your grandpa's stuff may have been." "Well, there's still this last room," Terry said. "It's in the basement of Central, if I'm reading this right." He looked at the stairs heading up from the corridor, and saw two doors off to the side. One said "GENTLEMEN" and the other said "STORAGE". He looked at that and thought for a moment, and then went back up into Central Wing, over to the side closest to Hyer/East Wing, and went down the matching staircase. Sure enough, there were another two doors: "LADIES" and

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"LAB 110". Terry looked down at his transcript. "There it is." He reached for the doorknob, only to find it locked. The window was opaque, so there was no way of telling what was on the other side of the door. "Damn," he said, more or less to himself. He looked up at the walls and ceiling of the area where the doors were located, and noticed something. "Where are we, in terms of the rest of the building?" Jamie looked up as well. "Uh, well, we're on the east side of the Central Wing, by the passageway leading to Hyer," Jamie said. "Why?" Terry took the flight of steps up to the first floor, then looked down at something. "The lab has to be in the basement." He walked briskly down the main corridor of the old building's central wing, all the way to its north end. There, at the end of the hallway, was a door that said "STAIRS DOWN". He tried it, and the door opened. Jamie caught up to him just in time to follow him down some metal stairs. At the base was a small vestibule that led to the alleyway between the newer North Wing and the West Wing. The other door was to the basement. This door, to Terry's relief, was unlocked. They went in and discovered a passageway to a central hallway. Terry took a look down the hall and saw a couple of doors at the other end of the building. He nearly sprinted down the corridor, which was only partially lit. The door to the lab, which was on the Hyer side of the building, was locked but this door wasn't opaque. The lights were off in the room, though, so he couldn't see in. Jamie wasn't sure what Terry was doing when he started rummaging around in his satchel, but it suddenly made sense when he pulled out his MagLite and shine the beam into the classroom. Taking a quick sweep, he smiled. "Right over there, on the right," he pointed. He grabbed an older digital camera from the satchel and, after doing some quick fiddling with the controls and looking around to make sure there wasn't anyone else looking he snapped a picture of the safe through the window. After he got a

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few pictures including one of the door and the hallway he slid the camera back into the satchel, tightened it up and turned to Jamie. "Okay, I think we're good here," he told him. "Now, Mr. Forensics, what can you tell me about how the fire affected this part of the building?" Jamie looked around for a bit, looked at the two doors and at what appeared to be another set of stairs upward. "Let me see what's up here," he said. The two of them went up the small stairway to a door, which Terry was all ready to try to open. "Wait," Jamie said. He felt the door which was a solid one, without windows. He looked down at the lock, noticing that it wasn't a traditional skeleton key-type lock. He tried it it was locked. "Let's go back upstairs," he said. The two went back up to the main passageway of Central Wing, and back to where they saw the STORAGE sign on the window. Jamie followed the wall by the storeroom back towards West Wing, looking up at the framing of the wall. "That was an exterior door," Jamie said. He motioned to Terry to follow him back over to the West Wing. Jamie took the hallway over to the stairs, went down a flight and took the exit down at the northeast corner of the building. The exit led out into a small alleyway between the West and Central Wings. Jamie followed it back to the front of the building, where he found the door from the basement. He looked straight up and saw the edge of the bell tower, straight above him. "Uh, I think we better be getting back," Jamie said. "You're not going to like what I'm going to tell you."

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Friday, February 7, 2020 The old Volkswagen suddenly reappeared in the cold February winter of Whitewater in the 21st century. The parking lot of Starin Park was as empty as when they left and just as cold. The windows of the Beetle fogged up rather quickly as Jamie threw his coat back on. Terry snapped off the time machine, then unplugged it from the power connector. There was a sudden lurch as the draw by the unit on the VW's battery made a groan with the defroster fan. Terry quickly put the car in gear and tried to keep the car moving, but he slipped in putting it into first and the car idled wildly for a second, then the engine stalled. "C'mon, c'mon," he said as he tried to get the car to start back up. The alternator protested, then, with a lurch, the car sputtered and moved ahead. Terry quickly spun the car around on the slick parking lot surface and pulled the car over to the Starin Road entrance, gunning it out onto the street and eastward towards downtown. "How often does that happen?" Jamie asked, a little worried. "Not that often," Terry said though not convincingly. "You do have to watch it after the window closes. That's when the greatest draw on power is for the unit." He looked down to see that the ammeter was in the red. "I've got to keep this thing going for a while. I'm going to take this thing over around the waste treatment plant. Tell me again what was so bad about where the safe was?" "Well," Jamie explained as they accelerated down Fremont Street and north from town. "Eyewitness accounts say that when the fire hit the Central Wing, the roof of the building went up quickly. At least one alumnus who saw the fire witnessed the bell in the tower give way and collapse all the way through to the basement." He turned and looked at Terry. "They found the smoldering, melted remains a week later. It looks like it fell right onto where the safe was located." Jamie thought for a moment. "If something that heavy could fall through four floors, all the way to the basement, I'd have to think there wasn't anything left of the safe when they found it."
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"Something grandpa didn't tell me," Terry said as they turned onto the rural county road by the waste water and biomass plant. "So it looks like we're going to have to get in there, get the safe open and get the papers out of the building before the fire gets to the Central Wing." Jamie blanched. "What? The smell out here isn't as bad as usual." "No, no, that's not it," Jamie explained. "The fire was started right next door in the West Wing, remember? The reports said that they found someone had broken in to West Wing on the first floor, then did the dousing I told you about. They apparently started it at that connecting hallway to Central, practically in front of the building." "Okay, then," Terry said as they turned on Tratt Street, heading southeast back towards the campus. "What are we talking for a timeframe here?" "I thought you didn't like CSI," Jamie teased. He thought for a second. "They didn't hear the sound of glass breaking until about ten to ten. The fire didn't reach the clock controls until 10:14 PM, and the fire department didn't get the call until four minutes later. By that time, most of the place was ablaze." He pulled out the newspaper that Terry had given him, and scanned the article again. "It burned out of control for about five and a half hours, which means the place was essentially gone by four the next morning." Terry pulled the car into the Athletic Fields entrance to the campus, and turned onto Schwager Drive. "We still need to get the amps up on this thing," Terry said as they pulled into the parking lot by the soccer complex. "I'm going to take a few laps around here to get this thing charged up a bit more." Jamie nodded. "Wouldn't it be easier to limit the size of the time window, so you don't use up so much power?" Jamie asked. "I can do that," Terry replied. "If I've got the unit in hand-held mode, it creates a three-by-six window that you can walk through. Only problem is, you touch the edges and you get a pretty bad burn. It also consumes about a third of the battery

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power. Unless you put it on a charger right away afterwards, it'll die after two more uses." After a few laps around the lot, he pulled into one of the spots in the parking lot and put the brake on. "I do have a spare battery and an AC adapter in the satchel there, but that only gives us three additional portals and it'll take about nine hours to charge them with the adapter. And it'll take a few minutes for the GPS unit to reset to allow us to go through it again." "Why does the system take so much energy?" Jamie asked. "And why so long to recharge?" "That's what's funny about it. It doesn't take that much energy to open the time window. It's the amount of energy to close it. See, when you open the window, it's just 'point the laser and go'. When you close it, though, it's like this big power suck. Kinda like a voltage spike in a thunderstorm." "Does that mean you can't open a window hooked up to an AC line or AC generator?" "Well you remember back in early November, when half the campus was shut down because a transformer blew?" He sighed as Jamie nodded. "That was me. I tried that with the time window. I got it open, but when I turned it off, the portal cycled through about five open/close cycles before POP! WE Energies blamed it on a squirrel chewing through the lines. What they didn't tell anyone was that the squirrel they found was nowhere near the transformer, because the resulting arc blew the little beastie about halfway to Fort Atkinson." He looked down and revved the engine a few times. "I think we can head on back to the dorm now," he said, satisfied at the Bug's electrical charging system. "It's just about at full recharge. We can discuss our plans over lunch." They pulled out of the parking lot and turned back towards the campus. Neither of them saw the mailbox that had been sitting by the entrance of the soccer complex move slightly, then tilt, and disappear into a circle of light.

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They talked into the afternoon about the plan. Most of it was pretty simple: get into the building, get into the classroom, open the safe, get the plans, get back to the car, then get the heck back to 2020. Jamie made some contingency suggestions: what would happen if they were spotted or if they ran into the arsonists? The consensus was that they'd get out of there, get back to the car and try things again. Either way there'd be no telling anyone about who they were. Terry had his "alias" set up, but Jamie needed one. "How about Joseph Beckford?" Terry suggested. "He was my grandfather's roommate in college; you could pass for him." Jamie wasn't thrilled with it, but he couldn't come up with an alternative since none of his grandparents had ever attended Whitewater. Jamie also pondered what would happen if they ran into the arsonists after they got the plans. Terry suggested splitting up; maybe taking the plans, putting them in two separate satchels, and then heading out in two separate directions from the lab. Jamie brought up on his iPad some of the archival footage of the aftermath of the fire; "Heading over to West Wing probably wouldn't be a good idea," he said. "That part went up in flames fast, and you're more likely to run into whoever broke in." "Yeah, but heading back over to Old North would be just as bad," Terry pointed out. "And we're not gonna want to park over on Graham Street." "We probably won't be able to," Jamie replied. "They were holding a winter festival over at Hamilton Gym, on the other side of the street." He flipped through some more of the archival notes; "It was called the Ice-O-Rama Winter Festival. We're probably gonna want to come in through the west side instead." He looked at an old plat map he had found of Whitewater. "Come down Case Street, park by McCutcheon, then head up to the building." "Okay, that's going to be where we could have problems," Terry said. "That area behind Old Main was basically one large loading dock area, with a parking lot." He looked at it the overhead again. "That's one good thing that came out of the fire the hill looks a lot nicer now."

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"I think that was more a product of the times and what they decided to do with the land," Jamie noted. "We're going to have to give ourselves some extra time if we park over there, especially in the cold." "What about afterwards?" Terry asked. "If we have to wait too long for the other, we might end up having an issue once we get back to the car." He paused again. "The time machine is going to have to come with us, in case something happens. As much as I'd prefer to leave it in the car, we may need it for a quick getaway to another time." A sudden thought came to mind. "We'll get our 'Pods synchronized with the clock at Old Main, then we agree to meet back at the Bug by no later than 10:30. By that time, I doubt they'll notice us. If we get split up and can't make it back to the Bug by 10:30, we meet over by" He looked down at the photo of the campus Jamie had on his iPad. "Over there. Drumlin Hall's loading dock area. Get the Bug over there, and then wait for an extra hour for me to arrive. I'll keep the time machine on me." "Two things I don't like about that scenario," Jamie said. "First of all, what if something happens to me?" "You'll take the safe route, through Hyer/East Wing," Terry decided. "That way, you'll avoid any issues. Anyone asks you why you're there, just say something about dropping off an album for WSUW. If you have to, go all the way around, through the UC, and over to White Hall, then go over to see if the Bug is already over at Drumlin. You should be able to see if it's there from Starin Road. If it isn't, head over to wherever we park it on Case Street. If it's there, but I'm not well, I'll just make sure to meet you over at Drumlin. This thing will make sure of it. I've got the other battery charging right now, as we speak." Jamie still had an uncertain look on his face. "What's the other issue?" "I don't know how to drive a stick," he said.

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The two of them wandered back into their room that night, after they had spent most of the rest of the day over at the parking lot behind the Center of the Arts with Jamie learning how to drive the Beetle. Terry admitted he did a passable job as the night wore on, and he was even able to drive over to Esker for dinner without popping the clutch until they pulled into the parking lot by Fischer Hall. They both agreed that they needed a full night's sleep before they were going to execute their plan. They were both pretty confident that things were going to work out. Jamie had just gotten into bed and was about to turn out the light for the night when he had a sudden thought. "What about the door?" he asked. "You mean the door to the lab?" Terry replied back. "Yeah," he said. "How are we going to get in and out of the room if we can't get into it in the first place?" "Simple, we just use a skeleton key." "That won't work," Jamie said. He brought up the photo Terry had taken of the door on his iPhone. "That's a regular key lock." He paused. "What about using the time machine itself?" "Like, how?" "Project a window in the door, reach through and open it from the inside?" Terry shook his head at that idea. "The time window is only about a molecule wide, with the frame only marginally larger. You wouldn't be able to reach through the door and open it." They both were silent for a few seconds. "Unless" they both said in unison. Terry pointed to Jamie first. "We open a small time window, to a time earlier in the day, week, month, whatever," he explained. "We note exactly when the door would be open, then go in, then time window back to the same time as we were on the outside except now we're inside." Terry nodded.
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"We can also use that bathroom that's right across from the door as a way of waiting, too." He looked down for a moment. "I think we're going to have to make sure we have enough time to charge the time machine's battery before we get going," he said. "I wonder if we could find another battery for this thing, and get it charged up in time." "Wal-Mart's probably got one," Jamie said. "I can drive." Terry laughed.

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Saturday, February 8, 2020 The next morning was a little less chilly than the previous day. The new battery had charged up overnight, and that at least gave them some breathing room for getting in and out. They opted for the continental breakfast at Drumlin, sitting in silence as they both reviewed their iPads. Jamie was looking over some of the references about the fire and trying to figure out the best way for them to proceed. Terry lifted his head from reading Schlock Mercenary. "C'mon, it's not like we're going to miss something. With the extra batteries, we'll be fine." "It's not that," Jamie said. "I'm just worried what we're going to find when we get to Old Main. No one no one ever found out who was responsible for the fire." He tapped the table nervously with his spoon. "What if these people weren't exactly model citizens? You've heard about the racial tensions and anti-war stuff that was going on at the time and not just at Whitewater." "Kent State wasn't for another three months," Terry said. "The bombing of Sterling Hall in Madison didn't happen until August of that year. In fact, my grandpa had a few friends who worked at Sterling Hall at the time. He also attended Robert Fassnacht's funeral." He paused for a moment. "You know that Fassnacht was working on maglevs for trains and superconductors? And had absolutely nothing to do with the Army Physics center that had been there for years?" "Please tell me we're not going to go and try to get his notes next," Jamie said with a pained look. "No, no," Terry said. "Grandpa had suggested to me that it had been rumored that Fassnacht's research might have been close to the holy grail of physics cold fusion but he was only working on stuff that would have been developed in a few years, anyways." He munched on the last of his bagel. "The two brothers who were the main perpetrators Karl and Dwight Armstrong really screwed up in their bombing attempt in Madison." He shrugged. "Yeah, there was a lot of anger on college campuses that year, but it was more or less racial issues in Whitewater."
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"They tried to tie the Old Main fire to the bombing of Sterling Hall, you know," Jamie said. Terry said nothing in response. Jamie suddenly realized something: "You want to stop them. Stop the Armstrong brothers, before they kill Fassnacht." Terry gave him a very angry look. "No," he said, firmly. "Look, we can talk about this after we get the plans." "Like hell," Jamie replied. "We're talking about this now, or I'm not going to be joining you." Terry looked around at the rest of the mostly empty dining room. "My grandfather and I talked at length in the weeks before he died, Jamie. He knows that the Armstrongs weren't on our campus at the time." "How'd he know?" "Because he talked to them." He suddenly looked at the juice he was drinking and put it back down. "Those two ran this stupid deli Radical Rye on State Street in Madison. Grandpa was visiting Madison one day, happened to track them down and asked Karl point-blank about it. He said that when Mark Knops, the 'journalist' who wrote about their bombing exploits, asked if they had done anything with the Whitewater fire, they essentially lied to him." Jamie raised both of his eyebrows. "They wanted to build up their 'gang' so it looked like they were more serious than they were. Truth is, neither of the Armstrongs even knew where Whitewater was, let alone really cared about whether it burned down or not." He looked at Jamie with a very serious look. "Even if Knops would have told the grand jury about the arson, they wouldn't have been able to place them in Whitewater at the time. Hell," Terry said with a wave, "they were looking more at trying to blow up the Old Red Gym on the Madison campus than do anything in Whitewater." They sat in silence for a good minute or two; then, Jamie shut off his iPad and put it away. "We could be in for more trouble, then," he said finally as they got up to dump their trays. "If it wasn't them, and we still don't know, 50 years later, who did it" His voice trailed off.

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"We're going to have deal with it, either way," Terry said after they got outside into the cold. They went back over to Starin, where they got the stuff for their "operation." Two large duffel bags with the stuff they'd need, including the two extra fullycharged batteries for the unit. Gloves, so they couldn't trace anything. With a nod, they got into the VW, pulled out of the parking lot, and went over to Starin Park. Terry looked at Jamie as he got the controls for the machine ready. "You ready to do this?" "Unless there's something else" Jamie's voice trailed off. Terry said nothing. "Let's go."

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Saturday, February 7, 1970 The VW crept slowly down Case Street, on the west side of Old Main. The two of them looked around as they did so, looking out for anyone and everyone. Jamie had already mentioned to Terry that most of the activities around the Winter Ice-oRama happened during the day; the formal dance was the culmination of the day's events. And, from the amount of cars over on Graham Street, it was obvious most of the activities now were over by Hamilton Gym. Terry looked at the clock on the GPS it now said 9:05 PM. They had to do a little bit of driving around campus before they could stop, or the machine wouldn't be useable. Finally, they pulled up to the driveway that led up the hill to behind Old Main. He looked at Jamie. "Should we head up?" he asked. Jamie looked up and down the street. "I can't believe the number of cars parked along this street," he said. "Guess there was a reason why they were building all those new residence halls." He looked up the driveway. "As long as we can get back out before this place goes up." Terry nodded and pulled the Bug up the driveway. Once at the top, they turned into the smaller parking lot and silently with lights off pulled the Bug into a spot in the far corner. Looking at the ammeter, he disconnected the unit from the car charging system. The reading went up into the green. He let out a sigh of relief. The time machine unit had a 66% charge still on this battery. "Okay, let's go," he said, stepping out of the car. "I have something in the trunk I want to get first, though." Jamie abruptly shut the door when he heard this, and immediately went to the front of the car he didn't trust Terry after what he had told him that morning. What he saw, however, was a complete surprise. "Is that Flame Repel?" he asked. "Yeah, that stuff they developed for firebreaks after the wildfires in the state back in 2018," he said. "I figure that if we use it on the vestibules that lead to the West Wing, it'll give us some time to find the papers." He shoved one canister in his

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bag, and put another in Jamie's bag. "Let's go, and remember nothing about the future." They silently headed for the back door of Old Main's Central Wing, in between the North Wing and the original building. They found the entrance that the campus radio station staff used to get to the studios on the top floor of Hyer, over on the north side of the complex, and managed to find an open door. They took the corridor down through the addition to the North Wing, reaching the north end of the Central Wing. Just before Jamie was about to head down to the basement, they both heard voices and ducked into the stairwell, just out of sight. "Those two idiots from Madison got cold feet at the last minute," came a clipped voice with a slight German accent. "He didn't believe me when I told him there was military research going on here." "Well, the ROTC unit here is pretty much an organized drinking party," came another voice. "I still can't figure out where we're gonna get over to the west wing, Al." "Keep looking," he said. "They don't lock all of these doors up." Jamie looked at Terry, and Terry quickly went over to the doors they had just entered and threw the lock on them. He quickly but quietly ran back over to Jamie. "I think we may need to use the Flame Repel, just be safe," he said. "Let's do a quick pass, from the top on down, before we go after the documents." Jamie nodded and they bounded up the stairs to the fourth floor. Flame Repel, Jamie recalled, was a very effective means of keeping a fire from spreading. The University of Wisconsin had developed it as a means to essentially rob flame of two of its key components oxygen and heat. He'd actually seen it at work when he was in high school; his science teacher brought it in to emphasize safe handling of flammable material. Flames literally stopped when they reached a surface coated with the stuff. They quickly closed the doors to the hallway and sprayed the Flame Repel along the frames, then did the same at the top of the stairwell to the West Wing corridor.
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They sprayed down the doors on all floors, doing the north doors quickly, then the ones in the West Wing segment. After the last set of doors, they reached the bathroom where they were going to "base" their operations. It was locked, but Terry pulled out a skeleton key. It worked and the door opened. There were only two stalls, but that was going to be enough. Terry pulled the machine out of his bag, tapped in a time of about 1 PM the previous day, and activated it. No one was in the bathroom at the time, so he stepped through the time window. "I'll be back," he told Jamie. "Meet me by the door to the lab." Jamie did this, grabbing the two bags and putting them over by the lab door. He peeked inside the door and saw a brief flash of light. A figure came over to the door, and with a click and a turn of the knob, Terry opened the door for Jamie. He pulled the bag into the lab, shut the door behind him, and quickly went with Terry over to the safe for the papers. "Wait a minute," Jamie said. "This is a combination lock safe." Terry looked at it with his MagLite pointed at the door. "There's an override key slot, though," he said, pointing at the keyhole at the end of the knob. "They did that so they could give different students access with a new combination every year." He looked down for a moment, and then looked around the room. He saw a desk near the front of the room, went over to it and pulled out a drawer. Using his MagLite, he looked around a bit, then reached down and pulled a tray out of the top drawer. He pulled out a key attached to a paperclip. "I think we got it," he said. Back over to the safe, he put the key into the slot, held the knob and turned it. There was an audible click, and then Terry pulled down the handle. The safe door swung open. Terry flashed the light into it, and there, on the top, were two leather portfolio folders with his grandpa's name on them. They were two pretty good sized folders, so he just handed one to Jamie, and took the other for himself.
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"All right, we're getting dangerously close to zero hour," he said, looking up and noticing that the clock said 9:40 PM. "Let's see if we can get out of here before those idiots torch the place." Terry put the keys in his pocket, closed the safe and headed to the door. "Remember, head to Hyer while I head over to the West Wing." They got back out into the hallway, and headed back slowly to the connecting corridors between the two wings when they heard voices coming down the hallway. "If we can't get into the lab, we'll just leave the place to be torched," came the German voice. Both of them froze in their tracks. "Hey, I think I saw someone down there," came another voice. Terry dashed towards the West Wing corridor. Jamie decided he didn't want to stick around to see if the guy was coming after him, and he stormed up the stairway. He got up to the third floor, turning into the hallway to see if anyone else was coming up the stairs, and he heard faint footsteps. He quickly headed up another flight of stairs on the opposite side of the hallway, tore down to the front of the building, and found another door which appeared to be unlocked. He surprisingly found himself with a set of metal circular stairs ahead of him and a chill in the air. Ahead of him and beyond the stains he saw three narrow windows. That was when he saw a flashlight from behind him, and he clambered up the stairs quickly. He suddenly realized where he was right in the middle of Old Main's bell tower. He continued his climb up to the top of the stairs. Reaching the top platform, he slid out a small access door to the very narrow balcony outside. The cold air caught his breath, but it wasn't the reason why he couldn't breathe at that moment. The view he suddenly had was of the front of Old Main, with a balcony opening up to a landing on the third floor below. He grabbed on to his sack after nearly pitching it over the side in haste. He listened for his pursuer, but couldn't hear anything. He looked down quickly at his iPod it said 9:47. He had about three minutes to get back over to the Bug. He

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thought he heard some voices below, but didn't see anything as he looked down the staircase. Slowly, he went back down the staircase and to the access door. He peeked out, but saw nothing. Sliding along the side of the hallway, he then slid along the handrail down to the third floor. Looking around, he ducked into the hallway to the East wing and ran over to the stairs there. Getting back down to the main floor, he slipped out a side door behind what would now be the Hyer Auditorium, walking between Old Main's Central and East Wings. He carefully edged his way past the original Old Main building, coming out on the far north side of the complex. The VW was there, but with no sight of Terry. He got in using the spare key that Terry had given him, quickly tossing the bag in the back. A quick consult of his iPhone told him it was 9:50, which was when the DJ's at WSUW heard KT-TSSSHHHH! The loud noise of a window being smashed filled the air. Jamie turned to look and saw a flash and some movement over behind the back of the buildings of Old Main. Suddenly a figure appeared from the west side of the buildings. It was Terry, running full tilt towards the car. He was apparently yelling something. Jamie opened the car door to see if he could hear what he was saying "START THE CAR!" Jamie didn't hesitate at that. He turned the Bug over, put it into reverse, then spun over to where Terry was. Terry opened the passenger door and tossed his bag in unceremoniously "GO! Get OUT of here!" Jamie sped the car down to the driveway, but he saw two people coming out of North Wing. They tried to give chase, but the ice in the parking lot made it hard for them to do any running. Terry quickly attached the time machine to the car, and fumbled a bit with the connections. Jamie looked back and couldn't see if anyone was coming after them. "ACTIVATE THE WINDOW!" he yelled at him as they skidded out of the driveway and on to Case Street.
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"I'm TRYING!" was Terry's response. Jamie accelerated down the empty street as Terry kept pressing buttons. The window suddenly appeared, and Jamie lurched the Bug through it. Unfortunately, Jamie forgot something about Case Street. It didn't exist in the future. The window opened, and all Jamie saw in front of him was sidewalk and grass and snow. The Bug lurched at the sudden change of surface under it, and the car started skidding. Jamie corrected the steering, but he was sliding along the sidewalk and heading right into a big snow bank. He swerved, nearly missing a sign on the sidewalk, then swerved around again with a BUMP and a THUNK as he was back on what appeared to be street. Jamie kept the car going, even though the time window had closed behind them and they were now When? He looked down the street, and saw immediately that there was nothing but an empty lot on the left, where Starin Hall was located. He suddenly realized he had just gone through a stop sign on the corner of Starin and Case, and floored it in case someone had seen them. He started to accelerate down Warhawk Drive. Only it wasn't Warhawk Drive. It was the Starin Road parking lot. And it was just about to end. SCREEEEEEEEECHHHHHHHHH! Jamie slammed on the brakes of the Beetle, and it slid sideways. Just before the car was about to smash broadside into another snow bank, he popped the car into gear and accelerated down the parking lot. He swerved to avoid another curb, and slowly got his mental facilities back. He took the car out of gear and slowly pressed on the brakes, pulling into a parking spot facing north. The two of them caught their breath, looked out at the field in front of them. That was when Terry made the observation: "Where's the Fieldhouse?"
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Up ahead of them, to the northwest, where the Kachel Fieldhouse was supposed to be, was instead an open field. There was also supposed to be another parking lot to the north of them but there was nothing but snow-covered field. They both looked at the GPS at the same time. The readout on it said 2002-0208 9:55 PM. They looked at each other and said the exact same thing: "CRAP!"

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Friday, February 8, 2002 "I must have pushed the wrong button as we were heading out of the driveway," Terry said. "We can just try again, right?" Jamie said. "Get over to Starin Park, drive through the window and everything?" The Beetle answered the question for him with a sudden rrrrrrrrr-click. The lights on the car suddenly shut off, and the ammeter was down in the no-charge range. He tried to re-start the car, to no avail. "How the hell did THIS happen?" he yelled at Terry. "I thought you said the machine didn't draw this much battery juice?" "I also never drove the car through the window at 88 miles per hour!" he replied testily. Jamie tried to get anything to work as Terry unplugged the GPS from its moorings. "It drained the whole battery," Jamie said. "I can't even get the lights to come back on." Terry looked down at the time machine and frowned. "What?" Jamie asked. "The GPS battery is dead," he said. "When I unplugged it, the machine shut off. I tried turning it back on" He showed him the unit. "Nothing." "Use one of the spares," Jamie said. Terry reached back into the back seat and grabbed one of the batteries, and swapped it into the unit. It came on briefly, then said "BATTERY LOW" on the screen, and shut off. Terry let out an unintelligible grunt and got out of the car to try to find the other battery. "Look over on your side; it may have fallen out when I tossed the bag into the back." Jamie got out of the car and immediately noticed something. "I think we may have another problem," he said. Terry looked up and over at him, as he pointed to the back of the car. Terry put his bag down, went around the back of the VW, and saw the problem the left rear tire was now practically flat. Jamie looked at the front of the VW, and saw something just as worse the front tire
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was also flat. The hubcap was gone as well. "Great two flat tires and a dead battery." Terry went back around to the other side of the car and rummaged through his bag. "The third GPS battery isn't here," he said frantically. He grabbed his MagLite, looking all around inside the car. He thought for a moment. "Crap. I bet I left it back in 1970." He threw the bag back into the back seat. "I had to dodge that guy with a German accent, and in switching out batteries, I think I dropped it in the classroom where I was hiding." "So that's why that second battery was dead?" Jamie asked. Terry nodded. "I set it to go back 48 hours earlier," he explained. "I got out through a door in the back corner of West Wing, and thought I could just activate a time window to 9:50." He looked down. "The idiots were breaking into the building just to the right of me as I closed the window. That was why I was running full speed through the lot." "Do you at least have the charger?" Jamie asked. Terry nodded. "But it's going to take us nine hours after I get it plugged in. And I don't know how we're going to do that." He had a thought. "What time does your iPhone say?" Jamie pulled it out and tapped on the Home button. The lock screen appeared with the time as 10:01, and the date was listed improbably as Friday, February 8. He unlocked the screen, and the "no service found" notification came up. He dismissed it and clicked on the Calendar app. It said, dutifully, that it was February of 2002. "Part of me is impressed that it can go back that far," Terry said. "Ha, ha," Jamie said sarcastically. "We can't use it to call anyone, though. And even if we did, what are we gonna say?" He slammed shut the driver's door of the Bug. "This night could not possibly get any worse." "Yes it could," Terry said, pointing as the UW-W Campus Police car came around the corner.

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"Remember NOTHING about the future," Terry whispered to Jamie as the patrol car pulled up to the car. Jamie turned and looked down at the tires on the Bug, then back at the cruiser. The policeman got out of the car or, more correctly, the policewoman. A platinum blonde with long tresses stepped out with a flashlight in her hand. Her jacket had the old Whitewater Old Main logo on the sleeve, along with the words "CAMPUS POLICE" surrounding it. "What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?" she asked in greeting. Terry spoke up for them: "We had a little issue with some flat tires, ma'am." He pointed to the front and rear wheels. "I was teaching my buddy here how to drive a stick, and he must've hit the curb a few too many times." She looked at the two of them skeptically. "We got a report from someone over in White Hall that there was a car driving erratically over on Case Street," she explained as she pulled out a small notebook from her coat pocket. "Camera in the visitor's center showed y'all skidding around the parking lot here like it was a skating rink." Jamie swore he heard a bit of a southern accent, but not heavy enough to be from the deep parts of the South, like Louisiana or the Gulf Coast. Terry raised his gloved hands in protest. "We weren't trying to do any drifting, ma'am, if that's what you're asking," he said. "Honestly, he had some trouble with the car, and it just got away from him." He turned to look at the car. "Unfortunately, he killed it so many times when he was trying to use the clutch, the battery's dead. Won't even turn over." The officer raised her eyebrow at that. "Do you need a jump start?" she asked. "I've got cables in the back of the car." Terry looked briefly at Jamie. "I don't know if it'll do anything, since it's got two flat tires." "Make that four," she said, as she pointed to the right side of the car. They both looked down at the tires and saw that they were also flat. Both of them had a very

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pained expression on their faces. "Well, at least you can call for a tow on your iPhone there," she said to them. "I don't have any service out here," Jamie replied and then noticed Terry's horrified expression. Suddenly, Terry looked at the officer with a squint. "The iPhone isn't scheduled for release for another five years," he said with an icy stare. The blonde officer closed her eyes in pain, and instinctively brought her hand up to just below her neck. Terry looked down at her badge "WELLS" was her name. "Let me guess, you're the great-granddaughter of a noted English writer who happened to be given a little family secret?" "No," she said in response. "I'm a nanotech researcher from Dallas who happens to be a contractor with the FBI." "That explains the accent," Jamie said. Terry didn't keep his eyes off her. "That doesn't explain what you're doing here, in the middle of Wisconsin, in the middle of winter," he accused. "Look," she said with some exasperation. "We know what's going on. We've been trying to track the two of you down for a while now." Terry looked around with a furtive glance, as did Jamie. "We?" Suddenly, a mailbox that Jamie didn't remember seeing on the sidewalk next to the parking lot started to move a bit. The side door swung out, and something emerged from the inside. "Gaaaaah," came a voice. "It is way too cold out here for this crap," the figure said as it trudged across the parking lot to where they all stood by the car. As the figure came closer, Jamie realized that it was a midget of some sort. A midget who was bundled up from the cold in what looked like several layers of clothes and a burka-style hat. And, as Jamie had guessed about "Officer" Wells, this guy appeared to be a Texan as well.

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A set of eyes finally emerged from behind a scarf, and a gloved hand reached into one of its pockets and pulled out a badge. "Agent Keith Scott, Temporal Investigation division of the FBI." He looked at Terry. "You must be Erikson. We know about your grandfather's research into temporal communication devices. He was doing the work for us." "Why should I believe you?" Terry said to him. Jamie kept his eye on the Wells lady. He swore he recognized her from somewhere, but couldn't place it. "You ran into the arsonists earlier," he said. "You knew it wasn't going to be the 'New Years Gang', but you were surprised by the German fellow." Terry raised an eyebrow. "Your grandfather knew him. His name was Alex Gordon, and he was a student at Whitewater in 1969." He paused. "Only that wasn't his real name. His real name was Aleksandr Gortovsky." Terry's eyebrows shot up. "KGB?" he asked. "Not quite," Agent Scott shook his head. "He was a double-agent working for the East German government. He was trying to get your grandfather's time travel plans, but he failed when he couldn't get into the safe where your grandfather hid them. The fire was supposed to be a diversion, but his cohorts were a little too militant." "And they apparently did a pretty good job of hiding all these years," Terry said. "Especially if they never figured out who set the fire, nor did they figure out it was this Gortovsky guy." "Gortovsky died five years later, trying to cross Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin," Scott stated. "His cohorts were never found mostly, we think, because they were taken out by the KGB before year's end. That's why we didn't even know about Gortovsky's involvement in all this until about eight years ago your time." "So you guys are from 2012?" Jamie asked. The Wells girl nodded. "We figured a few things out," she said, then turned to Terry. "A few years ago, your grandpa gave you something, while he was in the hospital, right before he died.

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It was a medallion, about two inches in diameter, and it had a greenish-yellow tinge to it." Terry was slightly shocked. "How did you know?" he asked. She smiled and grabbed the top of her collar, pulling out a pendant that looked like an old Native American artifact. "I'm very familiar with the emission signature of sesquicentium," she said with a smile.

Cassie Wells was sitting back and relaxing on her couch in her North Texas home. A new episode of Storage Wars was on, and she was really getting into the latest auction when she heard a noise out in front of her house. She looked out her front window and saw two dogs wandering around in her front yard: a collie from a few doors down, and a yellow-ish mutt like dog. The collie was trying to sniff the yellow dog's butt, but the yellow dog was having none of it. Cassie chuckled to herself as she went to the front door and out to the front lawn. "Go on, Tillie, get on back home," she told the collie. The collie looked puzzled, especially after the yellow dog went and hid behind Cassie. "Go on," she said with another wave of her hand. The collie dejectedly wandered away, looking back at least once as Cassie continued to wave her away. "I've got to get a different disguise," came a voice from the dog. "You should have remembered from last time that Tillie liked your dog robot," she said as a door emerged from the front and Agent Scott stepped out. "I'll have to go back to the Escalade, then," he said. "I'm kinda here on business, actually. Did you happen to visit the Midwestern US in 1968 recently?" "No, why?" "We had some strange readings of someone buying a VW back in February of 1968 at a dealer in Milwaukee," he explained. "The car was purchased and

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registered to a person named 'Terry Ericson' when it was new, and then apparently sold and re-registered to a 'Terrence Erikson' in 2020." "The name's not familiar," Cassie replied. "It is to us," Agent Scott said. "If he's who we think he is, one of our former researchers may have revealed the secret of time travel to his grandson."

"We talked to your grandfather at his retirement home in Scottsdale," Cassie continued. "He told us about his interview with the Armstrong brothers, and that he was convinced that the fire was started by someone who had inside knowledge of his research." "He gave me a list of the people who worked on his project, and I ran them through our database," Scott continued. "It took us a bit, but we managed to crossreference Gortovsky with his academic records at Whitewater." He paused. "Or, at least, from the records we had to find from Whitewater." "We had to go back to 1969 and figure out if Gortovsky was enrolled at Whitewater for the fall of that year," Cassie explained. "The records were apparently destroyed in the fire, and his computerized records were lost as well." "Intentional, or from the ensuing flood of Hyer Hall?" Terry asked. "We're thinking it was intentional," Scott stated. "It just so happened to be his punch cards that disappeared out of the thousands that were on file afterwards. That was why we made the jump back." "And that was where we found your little VW here," Cassie said. "You had it parked out in front of the entrance to the East Wing, and not only did the license plate match the registration we'd found, we also detected micro-tachyon residue on the car." "Residue?" Jamie asked. "The time portal window isn't supposed to leave anything behind when you open, enter or close it," Terry explained.
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"It is and it isn't," Cassie retorted. "Most elements and biological organisms don't retain anything indicating they've just went through a time window. Except for two things: diamonds and rubies." Jamie was confused. "A VW Beetle doesn't have any diamonds or rubies in them," he said. "But the laser that focuses the beam on the one-five-oh does," Terry said, looking at Cassie. "And, I suspect, so would any wiring used to aim said laser." Cassie nodded and took out a portable wand, waving it over the front end of the Beetle. It whined as she waved it across the top of the A-pillar of the Bug. "I checked it with our portable tachyon rad unit, and Agent Scott did the same thing when he saw you travel back to 2020," she said. "We knew you were going to end up back on campus, but we didn't know when you were going to show up." "The agency looked up cases of 'unusual events' from 1970 to the present day at Whitewater," said Agent Scott, "and we found the entry about your little skid from this year." He shrugged a bit. "It was pretty easy to convince the campus police that we would look into the situation ourselves." "So what are you gonna do, take the plans from us?" Jamie said. "They are government property," Agent Scott began. "They're my grandfather's property," Terry insisted loudly. "I think he'd agree with you," Cassie said as she pulled out a device and tapped a few things on the screen. Out of the top of the device came a 3-D holographic image of Lawrence Erikson. "Hello, Ter," the message began. "I'm making this quick, mostly because this is right after the last time you saw me." His grandfather was sitting up in a hospital bed. "I didn't know about Alex until Miss Wells and Mister Scott came to visit me a few years ago. I told them I wanted you to find the papers not them." He coughed for a moment. "I gave you that Element One-five-oh coin for one reason I trusted you to get the papers back in the right hands. I knew I might not be around to see you actually do it, but I wanted it to be you who did it. I also made these two promise me they weren't going to do anything to you, or to your time machine among a few
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other things." He smiled for a moment before starting to cough again. "Damn emphysema. Look these two are here to help you. Let them, okay? And remember: I love you." The message ended, and Terry was trying to fight back the tears. Fortunately, at just that time a car came charging down Starin Road, blaring Usher from its speakers. Cassie rolled her eyes and then looked over at Agent Scott. "I don't actually have to go chasing after those idiots, do I?" she asked. "Nah," he said. "Look, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting freakin' cold. How about we get your car to a shop and we can talk about what you found somewhere else preferably where it's warmer?" Terry nodded and Jamie shrugged. A few minutes later, a flatbed tow truck arrived to take the VW to a shop over on the east side of Whitewater. Cassie took care of the towing costs, and took the four of them in the cruiser over to a hotel a few blocks away. "My dad always said that this side of Whitewater is what the town would have looked like without the school here," Terry said as they settled into the room. He immediately grabbed the battery charger out of his pack and plugged it in to the wall. Cassie chuckled at the sight. "It never occurred to you to go forward in time and get a different power source?" she asked. "Wasn't high on my priority list at the time," he said. "Besides, I had it rigged up to the electrical system of the Bug, and it provided more than enough power to get it through. I just didn't adjust for the possible compensation of motion by entering the portal." "You also wasted a lot of power by making the time portal window so big," she said. "That's probably the reason why you blew the transformer that one time." Terry raised an eyebrow. "How'd you know about that?" "We had to cover up that incident once we tracked you down," Agent Scott said.
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"I found out pretty early that if you made the window any larger than a door, it would fry the battery," Cassie said. "That's why I sought out a different power source." "Like what?" Jamie asked. "Not telling," she replied. "You can find that out on your own." "Excuse me, people?" Agent Scott interrupted. "The plans?" "Oh, yeah," Terry said as he reached into his bag. "We found them in the safe that got crushed by Old Main's Carillon. They were in two separate satchels in there." He handed the one satchel to Agent Scott, who looked it over. "That one's apparently the write-ups and extracts. The other one is the schematics; Jamie's got that." Jamie started looking through his bag for the satchel. "We expected there might be trouble, so we decided to split up and meet back at the car at a predetermined..." "They're not in here," Jamie said, somewhat frantically. "I had them in the bag, then we got separated, and then that one guy chased after me oh, crap." "What?" they all said. "The bell tower. I lost them in the bell tower." Jamie explained to them what happened that took him so long to get out of the building. "That was about the same time I was trying to change batteries in the GPS," Terry said. "I was hiding in a classroom over on fourth floor of the West Wing, and Gortovsky was walking past. I managed to portal out of there before he found me." Cassie and Agent Scott looked at each other. "We're going to have to go back to 1970 and get the plans," Agent Scott said. "And we better see if we can track down that spare battery for these guys, too," Cassie said. "You don't know if it would have done anything to the building that..." Terry cursed suddenly. "Chemistry lab," he blurted out. "Dammit, I was in the chemistry lab. No telling what happened after that thing caught fire."
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"Well, as long as there was no one else in the building," Agent Scott said, "there shouldn't be a problem." "But there was," Jamie interjected. "Some kid by the name of Keith Masuda was doing something in a classroom in the basement of West Wing when the two guys at the radio station heard the glass breaking." Cassie and Agent Scott looked at each other. Scott pulled out a netbook from his coat pocket, typed a few things into it, and sighed. "Damn. We're going to have to try to go grab the battery, too." "Why?" Cassie asked. "He's a bank executive back in his home state of Hawaii," he explained quickly. "Specializing in home loans for naval families in Pearl City." Cassie nodded at the reference. " He apparently helped quite a few of them during the housing collapse in 2008. It'd do too much damage to the timeline if he was killed." "So it looks like we go back to the West Wing first, then we can look for the satchel," Cassie suggested. "Wait they got the guy out of there before the building went up in flames," Jamie said. "He wouldn't be in danger because of an explosion set off in a different part of the building, would he?" "Where was the chemistry classroom?" Cassie asked. "Up on the top floor of the West Wing, in the back," Terry said. "That was one of the three places the fire was allegedly set. Jamie told me the guy was in a classroom down on the first floor, near the front, when he got the call about the fire." "Yeah." Jamie nodded. "I saw a light on in one of the classrooms closest to the main entrance. I think he was doing something in one of the business classrooms." He brought up a photo of the front of Old Main and showed it to Agent Scott.

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"The classroom he was in was right next to the front entrance of the West Wing, where that little terrace is located, by the tree. Terry was in back, in the corner by the older wings." Agent Scott pondered the photo. "How much of the building burned down, anyways?" Jamie pointed to the wing in the upper right of the photo. "That was the only wing of the building that survived the fire," he said. "Everything else you see in this photo was destroyed in the fire." Cassie and Agent Scott let out a slow whistle. Jamie pointed up at the tower. "I had actually gotten up to here, and I suspect that the satchel is probably lying down on that little landing right there, above the main entrance." He thought for a moment. "It was 9:47 when I climbed back down and out of the tower area, and headed over to the car from over by Hyer Hall." "Hyer Hall?" Cassie asked. "That's the current name of the remaining East Wing of Old Main," Terry explained.

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"There wasn't much room over on that side of the old building," Jamie explained. "I had to walk carefully along a path in the snow along the east side, mostly because I didn't want to meet up with Gortovsky and his gang." "So we just need to go back to just before then, get the battery over in the West Wing, then get the satchel over by the front of the building," Cassie stated. "That way, we can get this all taken care of tonight." She paused as the others looked at her. "Figuratively speaking, of course."

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Saturday, February 7, 1970 The four of them emerged from a time window on the southwest side of the Old Main block, on one of the walkways leading up to the main entrance. Jamie pointed out the light in the classroom as they approached the building. Agent Scott used a generic lock-pick to open the door to the West Wing's main entrance. Terry motioned to Cassie to pull the door shut after they had all entered the building. He quickly stuck his head around the corner, and saw the clock in the hallway read 9:25. Terry eased himself down to the entrance to the classroom that had the light on, and saw the student Masuda writing something on the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall. He looked around a bit, and saw that there was a telephone on the wall to the one side of his desk. He let out a breath and slipped back to the entrance. "All clear," he said. "He's got a phone on the desk next to him." He motioned to the stairs just to the left of the hallway entrance. "There's a bathroom upstairs; we can go back 24 hours and time window in just after I dropped the battery." Cassie nodded and followed him up the stairs. Agent Scott and Jamie waited in the foyer of the building, to keep an eye on Masuda. Once they got up to the top floor, they ducked into the bathroom use the time window. Going back 24 hours, they headed back over to the chemistry classroom only to run into a janitor. "Hey!" The old guy said. "What are you doing in here?" Cassie smiled at him. "Officer Sandra Wells, Whitewater Police Department," she said. "Mr. Erikson here is a student on campus. He has reason to believe that someone may be stealing chemicals from one of the chemistry labs in attempt to blow up the building." The old guy looked at her skeptically. "I didn't know the Whitewater cops had hired a girl," he said. "Hey, this is the '70's now," she said. "Get over it." She waved at the classroom where Terry would hide the following night. "We need access to that classroom. Or do I need to get a search warrant?"
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The old guy rolled his eyes and said, "All right, all right, not gonna argue with a broad." He grumbled under his breath as he pulled out his master set of keys. Cassie whispered something to Terry as the janitor snapped on the light to the lab. "Here ya go," he said, turning to face Cassie. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to know what is going " FLASH! Suddenly, the janitor was blinded, and had a dazed look on his face. "Wha Wha happen?" "You got too close to a couple of the chemicals, sir," Cassie said with some authority. "One of the students here found you passed out in the lab and notified campus security. I think you better head outside for some fresh air for a bit while we make sure the chemicals in here aren't leaking." The janitor nodded uncertainly, and wandered back down the hallway, then down the stairs. "So did Agent Jay or Agent Kay give you that?" Terry asked as he turned back to face her. Cassie just laughed. "Agent Scott gave it to me for just such emergencies." She punched a button on the side, and put it back in her pocket. "Come on; let's get back to where you were tomorrow." Cassie turned her time machine on and programmed it for 9:45 the time that Terry said he remembered the clock reading just as he stepped back 48 hours. Behind a separate table in the chem lab, she opened the window and had a look around. Cassie saw a flash of light coming from the other side of the room, and saw Terry's time window close up. She motioned to him to come with through the window. He quickly scrambled over to the table where he had hidden, and found the extra battery. He grabbed it and went back to Cassie. "Let's get out of here," she said. "We can go back to 9:25, and then head downstairs to meet up with your buddy and Agent Scott." She went to open her time machine, when he stopped her.

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"Allow me," he said. He had already slapped the battery back into the machine, and he turned it on to a full charge. He tapped in the time coordinates, and elaborately pressed the "activate" button. Nothing happened. Terry looked down at the readout. "Please set date and time to continue," he said aloud. Cassie laughed and opened her time machine. "I may just go get you some battery tape, just out of pity," she said as they walked through the time portal.

The clock on the wall clicked to 9:26 as they peeked out the door, scrambling back over by the bathroom where they did the initial back-step. Cassie heard the familiar FZZZT of the time portal, and motioned Terry down the stairs. At the second floor landing, Terry heard a noise, and motioned to Cassie to hold back. When he looked around the corner, he saw himself, from the "past", jogging down the hallway towards the corridor that connected the West Wing with the Central Wing. He thought about saying something to his past self, but then decided against it. He went back to Cassie and motioned to go back down the stairs. "We should stay away from the West Wing connecting corridors for a bit," he said when they got down to the main floor. "Why? We need to go back over to the Central Wing, don't we?" Cassie turned to see Agent Scott and Jamie waiting for them. Cassie waved them over and the two joined them heading back up the stairs. "We weren't quite done with our 'backup plan'," Terry explained. Cassie and Agent Scott looked at each other and it was just then that Jamie noticed that Scott had suddenly grown about three feet from leg extensions. "Backup plan?" Jamie was thrown for a bit, but slowly realized what Terry meant. "Oh, you mean the Flame Repel." They reached the landing on the second floor of West Wing. Now it was Cassie's turn to be surprised.
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"Wait a minute you applied Flame Repel in the hallways? Indoors?" Jamie and Terry nodded in assent. "Oh boy. I'd forgotten about that stuff." They kept moving up to the third floor, where they went over to the connecting corridor to the Central Wing. Cassie saw where Terry had sprayed the Flame Repel around the frame of the door. She was about to say something to Agent Scott when he pushed the door open and promptly slid all the way down the hallway, face first. "I was about to say," as both Jamie and Terry walked gingerly across the door frame where the chemical had been applied. "The silicone gel used to make it adhere to surfaces makes them nearly frictionless. That was the reason why they stopped making the stuff in 2025." Cassie turned to the two of them. "Debris from one side of an application could still fly through the stuff, and if it picked up speed, it turned into a flaming missile." "I'm alright, thanks for asking," Agent Scott said as he righted himself. Terry mumbled an apology as Cassie helped dusting him off. "Okay, we need to get over to that landing before we run into anything else." "It's one floor up," Jamie said as they got to the stairs. The floors creaked as Agent Scott walked over to them. "Uh, the floors in this section were notorious for being noisy." Agent Scott nodded and lowered himself down. They eased up the stairs, and Jamie heard a door shutting above them. He motioned them down, then looked around the corner to see Gortovsky and a darkhaired woman trying a few of the doors. They went over to the far stairwell by the Hyer Hall corridor, disappearing into the night. "That was close," he said. They turned the corner, and found the door that Jamie had used to get up in the bell tower. Agent Scott pulled out an infrared scanner from out of his pocket, opened the door, and looked up. He nodded and motioned the rest to stay back. About a minute later, he came back out with the satchel in his hands. "Let's get out of here before we meet up with your past self," he said to Jamie. They all headed over to the stairwell down to the main floor, and to the entrance foyer of Old Main. "Looks like we're going to get these plans out of here without a"
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An ominous click came from a person holding a gun at the main entrance to the building. "Why thank you, Comrade," Gortovsky said as he pointed the gun at him. "You just made my job easier." Agent Scott went to pull out his gun "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said as he quickly grabbed Cassie and held the gun against her temple. "Now, give me the plans." Agent Scott paused, slowly raising his hands. "You can't just try overcoming us all, Gortovsky," he said carefully. "I don't intend to," Gortovsky laughed. "This little lady is going to be my insurance policy that I get what I want and you go away." He motioned to him. "The plans. NOW." Cassie whispered something under her breath. Gortovsky looked at her briefly. "What was that, my little liebchen?" "You picked the wrong gal to mess with, comrade," she said as she slowly reached up towards her neck. "How so, dahling?" Cassie showed him. In one swift move she opened her time machine, pressed a button and aimed it at Gortovsky's other arm. A crackling "FZZZT" sound was made as the edge of the time portal opened up on his arm, making him scream in sudden pain. Then, with a quick push, Cassie sent him through the window and into a plywood sheet that covered the entryway to the building. Agent Scott quickly pulled out something from his bag, which looked to Jamie like a small flashlight, and quickly pressed a button on the side and with a flash of light, the time window closed. Cassie let out a loud sigh of relief, then turned to the others with a big smile. "Now THAT is how you use a time machine," she said as they quickly went out the front doors.

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"Where'd you send him?" was the first thing Agent Scott asked as they were heading down the walkway towards Case Street. Cassie showed him the time machine readout. "Oooh, very nice." "How long did you set the neuralyzer for?" Cassie asked. "Same amount except five years into the past." The two of them looked at each other, and then they both started laughing uncontrollably. "Care to explain what just happened?" Jamie asked. "I have an automatic 'panic button' on this thing," Cassie explained. "It automatically opens a time window to a set number of minutes, hours, days or in this guy's case years from the current time. I had it set for five years, just in case we needed to get out of here in a hurry." "And you used the neuralyzer on him," Terry said. Agent Scott nodded. "He will come to thinking that it's 1965, and he'll have forgotten all about Whitewater," he said. "I had the emergency setting on max, which is five years. "You're not gonna use that on us, are you?" Terry asked, fingering his time machine nervously in his pocket. "No, your grandfather wouldn't like it. He told Cassie and me specifically not to zap either of you. Didn't want to affect your studies. He made us promise, or he wouldn't go along with any of this." "Along with a few other promises," Cassie said as they reached the place where they'd entered from 2002.

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Early Saturday morning, February 9, 2002 "So, now what?" Jamie asked as they drove back to the hotel in the campus police car. "The plans go back with us to the year 2012," Agent Scott stated. "It'll take us a few years to go over them and see what's usable. You guys can go back to 2020 with your car. We'll take care of the cost of the repairs, relax. We'll let you know what we find from the plans. Either way you guys go your own way after this morning." Terry and Jamie bunked down for the night in the hotel room, paid for by the FBI. Cassie lent them some of her "cosplay" clothes from the 2000's so they wouldn't look completely out of place. The next morning, they met Agent Scott over at the repair shop as the car's tires were replaced. The technician mentioned that in addition to the tires and the battery, they had to do a front-end alignment as well because it looked like the car had run over a few curbs. Jamie rolled his eyes at that comment. "Still, that thing is in fantastic condition!" The technician handed the papers to Terry. "I was surprised it had so few miles on the odometer, though. Did you rebuild the engine or something?" "Yeah, something like that," Terry said, nodding to the guy in thanks. Agent Scott joined them back at the hotel to de-brief them, as they paid the bill for the night's stay. "Gortovsky found himself outside of Old Main in February of 1975 in the middle of a construction site in winter. He was hauled off by waiting FBI agents, and sent to prison for trespassing on state property and possession of a gun. "The CIA had him 'deported' back to East Germany," Scott finished as they headed back out the door. "He tried running when he was being 'transferred' across Checkpoint Charlie and ended up getting shot by DDR guards." "Did they ever figure out the identity of the woman who was with him?" Jamie asked.

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"We think so," he replied. "A woman was detained briefly by police after the fire started, but she wasn't charged with anything. It wasn't until our time that we discovered she was another double-agent, this time working for the KGB. She was apparently found dead from 'questionable injuries' a few months after the fire." They waved their goodbyes to Agent Scott, who suggested that they might not want to go over to Starin Park at the moment. "The lot you guys used to open the time window is covered with snow and the area is being used for a winter festival sponsored by the city." He suggested they head up to the industrial park and head back to campus from there.

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Saturday, February 8, 2002 "It is going to be so good to be sleeping in my own bed for a change," Terry said as they turned down Starin Road towards the campus. "I don't get it," Jamie replied. "There were a couple of times where I came back to the room and I was still in bed sleeping," he explained. "I had to use the couch a few times." They pulled into the parking lot off Warhawk Drive, where Terry parked the Bug facing Drumlin Hall. "Did you want to get lunch first, or get our stuff back into the room?" "Let's get our stuff back in," Jamie said. They had no sooner finished getting all their stuff together that they heard a noise coming from the center of the campus. They both looked at each other, and realized they had just heard that noise yesterday when they were back in 1969. The carillon bells. They both ran across the parking lot, to the sidewalk just across from the entrance to Starin Hall, and looked up to see the bell tower of Old Main, rising from the top of the hill on the Whitewater campus. Just then, Jamie heard his iPhone beep. He reached down into his coat pocket and pulled it out. He had a new text message from a 972 area code phone number. Your grandfather made us promise one other thing, too. It took us a bit, but we managed to get it done without damaging the timeline. Enjoy! Cassie Jamie turned to show the message to Terry, but he was too busy staring at the flagpole on top of the tower, tears streaming down his face.

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New Prologue

The Fire at Old Main

On the night of February 7, 1970, a call came into the city of Whitewater fire department from the campus radio station, WSUW. A student smelled smoke outside the studios, and noticed that the main building of the Wisconsin State University at Whitewater was on fire. That was the beginning of a long, fierce battle that resulted in the nearly complete loss of the Old Main building of the Whitewater campus. The fire, which was believed to be started by arsonists, raged through the night, destroying two of the building's four wings including the original building that had been constructed back in the 1870's when the campus was new. The lack of fire doors and a bounty of combustible material made the fire that much more devastating. Though some books and papers were salvaged by students and professors, the contents of the building were a total loss afterwards. The loss affected every student on campus at the time, as the majority of classes at the school were held in Old Main. The fire consumed most of the West wing of the building, where it is believed the fire started, and also consumed the older North Wing. However, for some reason that still baffles those involved today, the flames avoided the tower section of the Central Wing. Though the smoke and water damage caused most of the contents of the building to be a total loss, the bells in the tower were saved despite a great deal of damage to the remaining parts of the building. The fire departments battling the blaze had an additional difficulty with the sub-freezing temperatures and the lack of water. Water was brought in from as far away as Palmyra, but the amount could not affect the level of damage to the building. At least one firefighter from Fort Atkinson was hurt trying to battle the blaze, as he had fallen off a ladder trying to reach an upper-level window.

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As the night went on, the amount of water that had built up from dousing the fire along with the melting of snow and the near-dew-point temperatures towards morning caused the fire doors that had protected the East Wing (now known as Hyer Hall) from damage to burst open, flooding the basement of that building and causing a stream to run down what is now the Wyman Mall towards Hamilton Field. The torrent also ran down the main drive outside the entrance, which ended up destroying many of the alumni transcripts and other school records. Classes were canceled the following Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday students were meeting at various rooms in dormitories, the University Center and other facilities on campus. As the years have passed, no one is sure who may have started the fire or why. Some have suggested that the fire may have been politically motivated; others suggest that the building was a tinderbox that was just waiting for a spark to ignite it. No suspects were ever named in the ensuing arson investigation, though at least one person a female was detained briefly afterwards. Though the grand jury found one newspaper reporter in contempt because he refused to divulge information about the fire, no indictments were ever made. The loss of the majority of the building was somewhat alleviated when it was determined later that year that the main section of the Central Wing, containing the bell tower and the office of chancellor Carter, was determined to be salvageable, along with Hyer Hall. An anonymous benefactor donated the funds necessary to renovate the Central Wing now renamed "New Old Main" and a new walkway to the also renamed Hyer Hall. Both buildings reopened in the fall of 1972. The faade of the main entrance to New Old Main had to be repaired in February of 1975, as a snowstorm had caused a tree to fall on the building's southeast corner. The fire had lasting effects for everyone on campus at the time and upon the entire city of Whitewater. The New Old Main building was
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completely renovated in 2008, when another endowment by former UWW graduate Lawrence Erikson paid for the superstructure of the building to be reinforced and upgraded to house the alumni center, the new school records department, a historical museum about the university, and meeting rooms. The endowment also paid for a digital update to the carillon bells, allowing the school to keep their sounds continuing on for another century to come. To the many faculty, staff and students who suffered loss from the fire's effects, the impact of the fire is still felt today nearly 50 years afterward.
Excerpt from The University of Whitewater: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, 1868-2018, by Adrienne Daniels

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Epilogue Sunday Morning, February 9, 2020 The alarm on Jamie Kourtens' iPad2 sounded briefly, but not to serenade him with some song from ten years in the past. He groggily reached for it and swiped the unlock switch, seeing a notification that he had a message from Terry. Meet me over at Drumlin. Got news about the TCD. Ter Jamie sighed and looked at the clock 8:25. He put the iPad down and got out of bed, grabbing some clothes from his dresser to make himself somewhat presentable. After a check of the weather it had warmed up a bit since yesterday he threw on his coat and headed over to the dining hall. After going through the food line, he wandered over to the far side of the dining room, where he saw Terry talking to someone in a wheelchair which he suspected was Agent Scott. "Hey, sleepyhead," Terry greeted him. Agent Scott waved from his chair, dressed up in a disguise as a wheelchair-bound hippie. "Agent Scott has some bad news for us." "Yeah," he began as Jamie sat down. "The communication machine doesn't work. It was good theory, and he had gotten it right about a possible element that would emit micro-tachyons. Unfortunately, he ran up against the basic laws of physics: the laser that activates the time window creates heat which destroys any transmission that would go through the laser or any other means of transmitting a message." He tilted his head a bit in a note of resignation. "It couldn't even do Morse code." "There is good news, though," Terry said. "There doesn't appear to have been any significant changes to the timeline. There was still enough damage to Old Main after the fire that people who had projects, books and such that weren't originally salvaged from the building still ended up 'losing' them. It actually took about two years to rebuild the Central Wing, and by that time the university already went ahead with plans for other buildings to help shore up classroom space on campus." "What about the observatory?" Jamie asked.
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"It was built a little further back on the hill," Terry explained. "They shut down some of the lights by the back entrance when they're using it." "Terry's grandfather got an award from the FBI and NSA for his work in the study of Temporal Physics before he passed away." Agent Scott smiled. "That was the medallion he gave Terry. We intentionally made it out of sesquicentium." "I've still got the time machine," Terry said, showing the GPS to Jamie. "Cassie came through with her promise to give me some battery tape. The unit takes a lot less time to recharge now. I still have the connections in the VW, but at least we know now not to use the thing at high speed. She also got me a solar battery for the Bug, too, so we won't have issues with the car battery dying on us again. "On that subject," Agent Scott interjected. "We will be watching you. Both of you. Not me, personally I have my own caseload back in Texas. But keep this in mind: this is TOP SECRET stuff. You two, Cassie and a select few are the only ones who know about this machine." He looked at Terry. "That means no unauthorized time travels, no major changes to history and you HAVE to cover your tracks better. If you don't well, you saw what happened to Gortovsky. If you can't keep this secret, we'll have no choice but to take the time machine from you." Jamie and Terry both nodded at this. "Cassie sent me a bunch of tips about time travel and such," he said, holding his iPad. "It's been very informative. I would have never thought about adjusting for differences in the continents when going back to prehistoric times." "On that note, I have to get back to work," Agent Scott said, moving his wheelchair back and away from the table. "Do you need a ride 'back to the past'?" Terry offered. "Nope, I'm good," he said, pulling away from the table. "See you two around some time."

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Afterword
In case you haven't figured it out, all characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Also, in case you haven't heard, there is no such thing as time travel, nor does the bell tower of Old Main still stand on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The presentation of how events unfolded on the night of February 7, 1970 in Whitewater, Wisconsin, are based on what was reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal and from accounts by eyewitnesses but the causes and possible reasons for those events as presented here are fictional. Some individuals who were named in this work are real persons that were mentioned in the supporting materials. They are used here as historical references. Photo of Old Main shown in the text is courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection, History of UW-Whitewater. Photo Identifier 01-O-329 #1, used courtesy of the UW-Whitewater Archives (Local Identifier: UW.uwwhite0233.bib).

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