Mitheral
"Growf!"
Project Chronos
Dugway Proving Grounds, UT
1845 hrs MST June 9, 2085
Project Chronos had had two possible directions its research was supposed to be able to follow. One was the one that Dr Xavier Thomas was supposed to follow. It was the path that scared people spitless. It was time travel - into the past. The usual argument against his research was the usual - paradox. But he argued that paradox - while not completely impossible, was extremely difficult to cause even intentionally. Time, he said, was extremely resilient, and destroying the river of time would be like trying to destroy the Amazon River.
The other fear was a perversion of the technology Xavier called a Time Bomb. He had troubles explaining what a time bomb was exactly. But its effects he assured everyone would indeed be extremely devastating - much as the atom bomb seemed to the people of the 1940’s. In short a time bomb disrupted the entropy and gravitational structure of a region causing massive devastation. Conservatively he placed the shockwave of a weapon the size of Little Boy - the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - as capable of destroying the state of Utah - without destroying anything else.
But that is exactly what he designed the project to have safeguards against. Only an intentional act of sabotage could pervert his creation into something like that. Even then he had designed his system to limit the devastation from such a blast.
At the center of the temporal displacement facility was the Fugue Chamber. This was the chamber that would be sent back in time during the experiment. It was, in effect a one way bathysphere for 6 men. The trip would be one way. So the Fugue Chamber was kept supplied with a state of the art first aid kit, a month’s supply of MRE’s for 6 men, a water reclamation unit, a supercapacitor / solar generator, and CBR gear.
When the system started to go critical and the evacuation alarm went off, Xavier’s first thought was try to shut the system down. He knew there would be no escaping the blast if it wasn’t contained. That was HIS job. And so while most people were on their way out, he was on his way in. There was no real fear in his mind. He was too busy running the calculations.
What he didn’t count on was the saboteur still being right where he needed to go. That part had never dawned on him. What sort of fool would stick around for this? A fanatic. he was lucky. Hell everyone was lucky. His newest bodyguard - the angel whose beauty graced his locker - had followed him in intent on beating some sense into him and dragging him out. She found him dodging for his life.
When the firefight ended he still refused to leave, explaining that it was too late for that. he was injured and she would never have been able to carry him out even if he could create a “temporal shunt.” He didn’t waste time explaining. Instead he had her help. Then he had her take them both to the one place where they would be safe from the blast - the Fugue Chamber. He would later explain that the shunt had limited the blast to a fraction of the radius that it would have been - probably saving most of not all of the evacuated personnel.
Dugway Proving Grounds
Parachronic Arrival Site 001
Dugway Proving Grounds, UT
1845 hrs MST June 9, 2085
External sensors revealed that the Project was gone - as if it never existed. Of course, the real expert - Xavier - would need to be consulted. He had passed out from blood loss. He had taken a shot to the leg and the weapon hadn’t been a standard issue - even for military. The idiot hadn’t said anything about his wounds being serious. Then again at the time he had also said there had been no time to lose. And he had been right. They had barely made it to the Fugue Chamber. There could have been “no way” the rest of the Project personnel survived that blast.
The First Aid kit had a portable X Ray and MRI in it along with a Smart Bandage. The Scanner looked like nothing more than a thin flexible sheet of metallic plastic. The Smart Bandage was a sort of Doc in a Box - about as large as a stack of 20 old DVD’s. Placed over a wound it would remove shrapnel, inject painkillers, antibiotics, and coagulants, laser stitching the wound. We had come a long way from arterial clamps issued to law enforcement personnel back in 2015 to provide better odds of surviving gunshot wounds.
While serious, the wounds could have been a lot worse. He was going to heal just fine. And he would be mobile soon enough. But his injuries were going to slow him down for awhile - or rather they SHOULD slow him down. Xavier wasn’t a man known for his patience. The only reason he hadn’t bled out before Clara could save him was his battlesuit. Clara hadn’t even known he wore one. But it had automatically acted to prevent blood loss by constricting his leg.
He had neither a broken bone,nor a severed femoral. But the wound had still been serious. He had whined about the pain, but tried to stubbornly refuse drugs. Then he had thanked her when she had threatened to use “old fashioned anesthesia” her weapon. He hadn’t been sure of she was joking so he finally nodded. Then he babbled about that being a great idea before finally passing out for nearly an hour - plenty of time to take stock of their situation without his yammering.
Unfortunately she had no real idea what their situation was. The one thing she could be sure of was that there was none of the usual satellite activity. Her GPS was down. They were “lost.” She couldn’t even recognize the land structures in the distance.
Dugway Proving Grounds, UT
1845 hrs MST June 9, 2085
Project Chronos had had two possible directions its research was supposed to be able to follow. One was the one that Dr Xavier Thomas was supposed to follow. It was the path that scared people spitless. It was time travel - into the past. The usual argument against his research was the usual - paradox. But he argued that paradox - while not completely impossible, was extremely difficult to cause even intentionally. Time, he said, was extremely resilient, and destroying the river of time would be like trying to destroy the Amazon River.
The other fear was a perversion of the technology Xavier called a Time Bomb. He had troubles explaining what a time bomb was exactly. But its effects he assured everyone would indeed be extremely devastating - much as the atom bomb seemed to the people of the 1940’s. In short a time bomb disrupted the entropy and gravitational structure of a region causing massive devastation. Conservatively he placed the shockwave of a weapon the size of Little Boy - the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - as capable of destroying the state of Utah - without destroying anything else.
But that is exactly what he designed the project to have safeguards against. Only an intentional act of sabotage could pervert his creation into something like that. Even then he had designed his system to limit the devastation from such a blast.
At the center of the temporal displacement facility was the Fugue Chamber. This was the chamber that would be sent back in time during the experiment. It was, in effect a one way bathysphere for 6 men. The trip would be one way. So the Fugue Chamber was kept supplied with a state of the art first aid kit, a month’s supply of MRE’s for 6 men, a water reclamation unit, a supercapacitor / solar generator, and CBR gear.
When the system started to go critical and the evacuation alarm went off, Xavier’s first thought was try to shut the system down. He knew there would be no escaping the blast if it wasn’t contained. That was HIS job. And so while most people were on their way out, he was on his way in. There was no real fear in his mind. He was too busy running the calculations.
What he didn’t count on was the saboteur still being right where he needed to go. That part had never dawned on him. What sort of fool would stick around for this? A fanatic. he was lucky. Hell everyone was lucky. His newest bodyguard - the angel whose beauty graced his locker - had followed him in intent on beating some sense into him and dragging him out. She found him dodging for his life.
When the firefight ended he still refused to leave, explaining that it was too late for that. he was injured and she would never have been able to carry him out even if he could create a “temporal shunt.” He didn’t waste time explaining. Instead he had her help. Then he had her take them both to the one place where they would be safe from the blast - the Fugue Chamber. He would later explain that the shunt had limited the blast to a fraction of the radius that it would have been - probably saving most of not all of the evacuated personnel.
Dugway Proving Grounds
Parachronic Arrival Site 001
Dugway Proving Grounds, UT
1845 hrs MST June 9, 2085
External sensors revealed that the Project was gone - as if it never existed. Of course, the real expert - Xavier - would need to be consulted. He had passed out from blood loss. He had taken a shot to the leg and the weapon hadn’t been a standard issue - even for military. The idiot hadn’t said anything about his wounds being serious. Then again at the time he had also said there had been no time to lose. And he had been right. They had barely made it to the Fugue Chamber. There could have been “no way” the rest of the Project personnel survived that blast.
The First Aid kit had a portable X Ray and MRI in it along with a Smart Bandage. The Scanner looked like nothing more than a thin flexible sheet of metallic plastic. The Smart Bandage was a sort of Doc in a Box - about as large as a stack of 20 old DVD’s. Placed over a wound it would remove shrapnel, inject painkillers, antibiotics, and coagulants, laser stitching the wound. We had come a long way from arterial clamps issued to law enforcement personnel back in 2015 to provide better odds of surviving gunshot wounds.
While serious, the wounds could have been a lot worse. He was going to heal just fine. And he would be mobile soon enough. But his injuries were going to slow him down for awhile - or rather they SHOULD slow him down. Xavier wasn’t a man known for his patience. The only reason he hadn’t bled out before Clara could save him was his battlesuit. Clara hadn’t even known he wore one. But it had automatically acted to prevent blood loss by constricting his leg.
He had neither a broken bone,nor a severed femoral. But the wound had still been serious. He had whined about the pain, but tried to stubbornly refuse drugs. Then he had thanked her when she had threatened to use “old fashioned anesthesia” her weapon. He hadn’t been sure of she was joking so he finally nodded. Then he babbled about that being a great idea before finally passing out for nearly an hour - plenty of time to take stock of their situation without his yammering.
Unfortunately she had no real idea what their situation was. The one thing she could be sure of was that there was none of the usual satellite activity. Her GPS was down. They were “lost.” She couldn’t even recognize the land structures in the distance.
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