Prologue

    As the blue light faded around him, Sam found himself raking leaves at a 
small house in a large metropolian city. Two kids were in front of him, a 
teenager holding a leaf blower which was on and a pre-teen girl putting 
leaves into a brown bag for the sanitation department to haul away. On the 
steps stood two young women. The redheaded thirty-year-old looked familiar, 
and he figured that he remembered her having something to do with the 
Project. The little girl hauling leaves also looked familiar as if she came 
right out of his own childhood, but he guessed that couldn't be possible 
because he was older than Tina and the kid was younger than her, . . . well, 
it did just didn't make sense logically.
    The boy pointed the machine toward Tina, and her skirt blew up a tiny 
bit. He grinned devilishly. "Hey, Tina!"
    It dawned on Sam what the boy was trying to do. "Oh, boy!"


                                           *  * * * * * * * * * * * 

Chapter One
    The imagining chamber door opened, and Al caught side at what his 
childhood best friend was trying to do. He smiled impishly. "That's David for 
ya!" he commented. "Funny how we have a history of chancing the same chicks."
    "Huh?" Sam asked.
    "That's my girlfriend standing over there."
    "Oh," Sam said. "What year is it?"
    "2001. Actually, September tenth, 2002." Al got a saddened distant look 
on his face as he took a long somber drag from his cigar. "The day before 
9/11."
    "What's nine eleven?" Sam asked. "Besides two numbers."
    "You don't remember 9/11?" Sam still had a perplexed look on his face. 
"The day that will live in infamimy."
    "Peal Harbor was in the last century."
    "We were bombed again, Sam. This time by the Taliban."
    "The Tali-who?"
    "It's a Muslim extremist group. A few suicide boomers high jacked two 
passenger jets and ran them straight into the Twin Towers the morning of 
9/11, making the buildings collapse."
    "Oh, boy!" Sam was shocked at the news.
    "Oh, now I remember. You were too busy leaping around in time to be told 
about it."
    "So, I'm here to stop it?"
    Al looked at the hand link. "Actually, Ziggy says that you're here to fix 
time -"
    "Don't I always fix time."
    "No, the time machine." Al could tell that his best friend was confused. 
"Remember, the Viaggio's are time travelers too." Al looked Sam and the two 
kids working in the yard. "That's Dodger, but she didn't get that name yet, 
so you have to call her Kelly." Al pointed to the girl, and then to the boy. 
"And that's David."
    "Who am I?"
    "Hey, mom!" David said. "I think we're done."
    "I think so, too," Sam agreed. 
    Sam walked up the steps, but was stopped by Patty. "Sis, do we have time 
to work on the car?"
    "Sure, I guess so," Sam had no idea as to what the leapee's sister was 
talking about.
    "Like, can I help?" Tina asked, snapping her blue bubblegum. "It's kinda 
like my pet project too, like okay."
    All three of them headed toward the garage. 
In the garage, there was a 1940's black Ford. "It's a beaut! Does it run?"
"It always ran," Patty said. "The question is if it could travel through 
time."
       Tina hunched over the workbench, putting the finishing touches on the 
program she built into the top-notch Gateway laptop. They were already behind 
schedule, but there were benefits to a grassroots time travel project:  no 
government council to tell them what to do, since the three of them were 
their own bosses, no red tape, and also no men to mess things up (except for 
maybe David, but he was more like a boy than a man, and his only job was to 
be the auto mechanic.)
"Like I think I'm done, okay?" Tina said, before hooking the computer up to 
the car's motor. 
       "We'll travel tomorrow," Sam commented. He had to stop 9/11 from 
happening.
       For all of his degree's and Nobel prize in physics, all Sam did was 
wash the car inside and out with a bucket of soapy water and a old beat-up 
towel.


diana beckett
(C) June, 2002