Short Stories

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Kale sighed gustily as he settled into the seat cushion of the transport. The flight attendant made her way down the aisle and served Kale his chosen beverage. He didn’t indulge in the stronger liquors very often but on this occasion he savored the rare brandy with pleasure. “In just a few more hours I’ll be out of reach of all communication modes,” he mused. And never had he needed a vacation like this more. The pressures of his modern life and the demands on his time were terrible. Even if it was more or less the same as what everyone else faced. Once again Kale both blessed and cursed the inventors of the cochlear cell phone that made his fortunes possible but also made him available twenty-four hours a day no matter where in the world he went. When the Lunar base and the Phobos station had been networked in, even a minor ‘business trip’ could no longer bring him some rest. So when the Marscorp merger had finally closed escrow Kale felt he had finally earned himself a real vacation.

As the transport neared the wormhole Kale got excited. He tried not to show it since he didn’t want to advertise his newbie status to the whole compartment. When he had first boarded he had looked around a bit to observe his fellow travelers. It seemed there were several groups like him; businessmen and women looking for a vacation out of range of their own cellphone implants. But there was also a contingent of scientific types. They were probably conservationists going along to study the dinosaurs in a vain attempt to save them or some other nonsense. Kale snorted at their stupidity. After all, everybody knew the dinosaurs became extinct many millennia before man even knew they had existed. Just because a wormhole had been discovered that could connect modern people to the late Triassic period on Earth they thought they could now do something to save the stupid beasts. But basic paradox theory said that would never happen. And that principle was about as theoretical as evolution.

And that’s what made these safari trips so great, he thought. No moral dilemma about hunting these animals. No restrictions on importation of trophies. And nobody gets upset about someone wearing a nice pair of stegosaurus boots…just a relaxing vacation with no phone calls and no worries. That’s just what Kale needed about now. And here he was, about to arrive at the wormhole where he would be transported to Earth at a time before mankind, much less technology, had arrived on the scene.

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