Chapter One, Travel Back--2062

Hey, here is the first chapter of my book I am writing. (I just started today). It is the very first draft so it will most likely change a bunch, but I thought I'd get some feedback. Thanks!



What year were you born?

3124.

What year were you born?

Thirty-one, twenty-four . . .



“Why, Mr. Spektor do you insist on lying to us?”

“You know that I am not.”

The shaded figure on the other side of the thick glass window sighed. He shut the microphone off and turned towards another who was completely out of sight. It was silent in the man’s booth. He ignored the questions. They were not important. His booth consisted of the glass window, a small desk connecting to the window. The walls were cinder blocks painted over in white. Directly opposite the window was a large steel door which clicked loudly when shut, letting the occupant know he was stuck. The sealing was a bio grid—it monitored the patient to see whether they were lying or if they were planning some form of escape or suicide, it monitored any bio-signature they could leave.

He was not crazy like they thought he was. He had some less than sane habits which he had developed over the last seven years being in this place, but he was not crazy. He knew the risk of coming back at such a distant past. A past where the cylinders were not made public—a week before they would have been made public.

His thoughts were interrupted.

“Why did you come from this future, eh . . . 3124?” the voice was tired. they were going in circles.

“I did not come from the year 3124. That was the year I was born. I came from the year 2967.” He had tried lying to them at first, saying he was only a terrorist but after recognizing that he would never be released he began telling the truth. He had no reservations when it came to explaining where he was from. He spoke all he knew.

“2967 then . . . Why did you come back?”

“To prevent the cylinders from ever going public,” the man said, tiredly. They had asked him these questions countless times before and they were growing old. He knew why they did this, though: it was in hopes to find some error in the story. Some minor detail in his answers would tell them that he was lying. He thought this method to be humorous. After all, a crazy person believes their reality to be real—making up often time’s complex scenarios to compensate for incongruence’s with their reality. If he was crazy like they believed there would be no flaws in one telling or another in his story; nothing more than the average human’s variations of a story that is.

“And what are the cylinders?”

“How many times do I need to explain this before you get it through your damn thick skulls?”

“Just answer the question.”

He was silent. He was done. I will not do this again. Not today, or ever again, he thought, remaining silent. Three hundred and fifty-four! This is the three hundredth and sixty-fourth time we’ve gone over this. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. No!

“Alright, Mr. Spektor, I’ll see you next week for our session.” The man stood, his bald head gleamed in the small point of light shining through the glass. Before the man Spektor stood he was given a small paper cup with two pills in it. He swallowed them and was escorted back to his room, where he would be left for the remainder of the week, until his next visit. He would get there, gag himself to throw the dissolving pills back up and lay on his cot, reading whatever piece of literature they had given him that week.

There was a meal waiting for him when he arrived—eggs, bacon and ham—all still hot. He ate it greedily having skipped dinner the night before. His sessions started at six at night and would occasionally run long; hours and hours long—the same questions in the same way; it was absurd. He finished his meal and stuck the dishes into the small drop box built into his white wall. There was a single large sky light in the center of the room, which let in the early morning light from the rising sun. He laid down on his cot, his hands behind his head and stared up at the sky. Exhaustion took him and staring up into the blue sky he drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep.



They allowed them books and movies as entertainment. It helped calm the patients down and keep them generally mellow. As far as Saul Spektor knew, he was the only one who ever ordered books. The constant background noise of the various movies being played around him nearly drove him crazy—they were left on overnight. They were constant; drowning out any peace he could have had. After a year or more of this he had did not hear the background noise. He could not hear it.

He became obsessed for a full two years with books on time travel. The administration, in hopes that he would incorporate aspects of the books into his own stories of time travel allowed this. It would give them the proof they needed to verify his insanity. He read from such authors as: H.G. Wells, Connie Willis, Madeleine L'Engle, Kurt Vonnegut and many others, role playing the different parts as he read them. He spent the better part of a week as an Eloi from The Time Machine—doing nothing but laying in his bed and relaxing, he would pretend he could not read by holding the book upside down, licking it; trying to discover what it was he was holding—but he ultimately did not care what it was.

He experienced the books in a new way. He was the books. He was the characters –the protagonist and the antagonist, the love interest the doomed soul. He did not care if this made him seem crazier. It didn’t matter, their minds were made up—he was not from the future.

He couldn’t blame them, though. He was sure there were others in this place that thought they were from the future, but they were not. Only he had survived as far as he knew. But he did not know much and he knew it. Once he had been arrested all hope of escape was gone, all hope of outside contact was gone. No—this was not true—all hope was gone only if he succeeded. If he and the others had failed he was sure he would not be in this place. He was sure he would be free.