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