Acme Time Travel Incorporated - Volume 2

The ACME-HUB (orbiting space satellite)

“Follow the yellow line to get to the client quarters,” Vicky said.

A bright yellow line, maybe three inches wide, appeared on the floor in front of them. It led up the corridor in which they were standing, then turned right at a junction ahead of them.

“Are you making that yellow line?” Gabriel asked.

“I thought it might help,” Vicky said.

“There’s no-one about,” observed Ginny. “Don’t you think that’s a bit strange? I would have thought that there would be a lot of people here. “

Then Ginny suddenly stopped. She turned back towards Gabriel and put her finger to her lips. They could hear footsteps coming towards them. It sounded like several people. They weren’t running, but they were probably either jogging or, at the very least, walking very briskly.

Gabriel felt his heart-rate quicken. He didn’t think that they were doing anything wrong, but likewise he didn’t want to have to explain their presence to anybody.

The footsteps got closer, then moved away. Who-ever it was must have moved away down an adjacent corridor.

“Ok,” Ginny said. “Let’s get going.”

. . . . . . . .

“The client apartments are just down here, on the left,” Vicky said. “I will be able to tell if they are occupied or not, so let’s find an empty one and go in.”

“God, this place looks like an expensive hotel,” Ginny said.

“I guess that’s what it is,” said Gabriel.

“Or was,” said Ginny.

“This one here,” said Vicky. “Room 8 ... it’s empty. I’ve de-activated the lock. Just open the door and go in.”

Gabriel pushed the door open. The room was amazing. It was palatial. Gabriel stood gazing in awe.

“Ok, let’s get on with it,” Ginny said. “Vicky, please find out what’s going on. Are you able to do that?”

Gabriel looked at Ginny. She seemed un-moved by the splendour of the room. She seemed ... what ... highly focussed. Like she had things to do, like there were things she had to get done come-what-may.

“Are you ok, Ginny?” he asked.

“I’m perfectly fine. Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You seem to be ...”

“Seem to be what?”

“Well ... you seem to be ...”

“For God’s sake, Gabriel. Say it. Say what you mean.”

“I’m sorry, Ginny. You just don’t seem yourself, and I’m ...”

“And you’re ...?”

“I’m worried about you, Ginny.”

Ginny gave a vague smile to Gabriel, whilst holding her hands up in a ‘you know how it is’ gesture.

Gabriel didn’t know how it was. Her vague attempt at a smile had looked very artificial. She wasn’t being honest with him, and he didn’t know what to do or say. He was very worried.

“I’ve pulled back the information on the data corruption,” Vicky said. “The database of coordinates was indeed corrupted, just as we thought. It happened on the same day that I tried to teleport back here with my last ACME INC client.”

Gabriel felt a vague sense of satisfaction from knowing that their guess had been correct.

“The ACME techs had identified that the coordinates database had been corrupted,” continued Vicky, “and also that all backups and mirrors had likewise been corrupted. They estimated that the time required to re-build the database from scratch would not be trivial. The trouble was that, whilst that would be going on, the various clients would be requesting their STU to teleport them back at the end of their trip.”

“So, what happened?” Ginny asked.

“Well, it looks like the techs didn’t notice that the coordinates had been corrupted for several days, seemingly because the coordinates weren’t deleted; they were tampered with ... so they still looked like real coordinates. If they had been changed drastically, such as their formats changed, making them unreadable, then the problem might have been picked up earlier, but they weren’t. So, when the clients returning from their excursions requested their STUs to initiate a teleport back, the STUs simply carried out the request.”

“And?” Gabriel said.

“ACME realised that there was a problem because a large number of clients didn’t return on their designated dates and times. The techs realised that the coordinates had been corrupted, which could mean that the clients could end up being teleported into space, into solid rock, into a volcano ... anywhere.”

“Shit,” Gabriel said.

“Quite,” said Vicky, “so the only immediate option open to ACME was to shut down the communication protocol used by the STUs. They disabled WORM-LYNK. This prevented the STUs from getting access to the faulty coordinates, but by the time that ACME had shut down its WORM-LYNK, most of the clients currently on trips would already have initiated their return teleport.”

“How many of them were there?” Ginny asked.

“37, excluding my own client, Mervin.”

Ginny lowered herself down onto a reclining chair. It instantly moulded itself to her form. She looked horrified by the information that Vicky had found.

“We could have saved those people,” she said.

“How do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

“Don’t be so bloody dim” she snapped. “If we had got here before the database corrupted, they wouldn’t have died. We could have told ACME ... told them soon enough to avoid ...”

“But Ginny,” Vicky interrupted. “If you had got here soon enough to warn ACME, then I would never have arrived in Walton-on-the-Naze. John Cullen would never have recovered from his catatonia, and you and Gabriel may have never met.”

“And I wouldn’t have met Steve and Roy,” Ginny said.

Gabriel looked up at Ginny. She was looking absolutely distraught.

“Ginny?” he said, and then the door burst open.

Four heavy-set men rushed into the room. Each of them was cradling some sort of short rifle. Gabriel jumped up and was immediately smashed back down to the ground by a blow to the head with a rifle butt.