26 )
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This was a special scientific experiment. Any magnetism would throw the readings out of balance. The company spent several fortunes to block out anything that resembled magnetism, including the planet's magnetism. They wanted nothing to throw off the data. Nothing in the office was magnetic. Any printers or even computers where heavily shielded from releasing magnetic signals.
The project got started and was getting good data. The corporate heads needed information and the scientists found themselves overwhelmed with paperwork to supply the information. They brought in some tech assistants and then some secretaries to handle the paperwork, and then brought in several bosses to keep things under control.
The company then decided the experiments should be secret, and the lab staff were separated from the office staff. Within a few years, the office staff, who were swapped around with other organizations, had no clue what was going on in the complex.
Vendors came in with supplies. They gave the people cute magnets with the company names on it. Most magnets went home, but one or two went on the refrigerator. The scientists were not sure if they saw a deviation in their readings. It was not enough to know for sure.
Over time, the refrigerator was covered in magnets, both decorative and vendor related. There were several magnetic pen and pencil sets. there were dozens of magnetic pens and such. One guy had a speaker magnet connected to the case of his computer to hold his paper clips.
A lot of the equipment was replaced with more efficient equipment or machines that did the job better. Of course the shielding casings were tossed along with the old machinery.
The researchers did not like any of their data. they complained many times to the high officials since it was nothing like anybody else was getting, and they were trying to pin point the differences between various readings. This type of error was unacceptable. Researchers scanned the magnetism on the planet surface. It was well within tolerances expected.
One day, one of the scientists went to the office to answer a few technical questions. The first thing he saw was all the magnets on the refrigerator. he then saw the replaced equipment, and the magnetic office supplies. when he got back to the lab, he made everybody shut down the entire experiment. He got everybody to pack up all the equipment as if it was not going to be run again.
The high security people asked why there was no data. The answer security received is send someone familiar with the nature of the experiment to the main offices and report what they find.
Several weeks later, the entire office staff was immediately shipped out to the worst assignments the company could find. The company then spent a couple fortunes to strip the office and rebuild it to test specifications.
When asked how this happened. the researchers gave the officials the list of documentation that was required, with the ones the scientists personally give, circled. They also sent documents of security rules, which meant that no one in the office would know about the nature of the project.
A large number of corporate heads were let go in shame. The research started again. An office was set up in another part of the city for the soul purpose of buffering the scientists from the corporate bureaucracy. The scientist answered to their office, not the corporation. They eventually got the data they were after. Their experience with the magnets in the office actually helped them fine tune their equipment that others would never be able to do.

27 )
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The small town's income came from traffic to the national park. This park was unspoiled natural beauty. Trees the size of houses, under story vegetation, the only marring of the scenery were narrow trails that wound through the forest to several lookout vantage points.
The forest was a rare commodity, one where the national park was established before anybody other than the first-in scouts had been there. The planet itself was pretty much left alone too other than a space port that was built on a fairly barren island.
Boats took the visitors to the different parks. Some parks were more developed than others, out of necessity. This park, though, was virgin except for a few selected sites.
The town was the last bit of civilization before one entered the forest. There was a parking lot and visitor's center, but that had none of the amenities people needed and had no supplies at all.
The town was just off a cross road for a major tourist highway and that provided most of the supplies the town needed.
The planet decided they needed a bit of advertizing so they sent word out for ideas. A man who said he was a landscape painter said h e would do his work. People would hear about the place through his paintings and the planet would become popular.
The planet's fathers knew a lot about hype so they told him he was going to have to do everything on his own dime. His money would come from whatever he could get out of the work.
Months later, the landscape painter showed up. They talked to him and he told about painting, how changing one's vantage by just a few steps one would have a new painting. Since he was on his own, they did not give him any word about permission. They just listened
He went to the park with a large tour group that brought their own transportation. He stopped at many of the sites around the world. No one ever saw him bring out a canvas or even a camera.
He finally passed through the town and into the forest. it was kind of late in the day to hit the trails.
He drove out late in the morning and went directly to the space port. He was back in space by evening.
Hikers came back to town at about noon and reported vandalism in the forest. National park officials arrived an hour later by air and entered the forest. They rounded a hill and saw a city scape. As they got closer, the city scape changed to a desert scene. as they got close, it looked like they were inside a space station with a large window.
They got to the actual site and there were bands and blobs of paint on the trees and foliage. They looked over the scene. Coming the other way on the trail there were other scenes.
investigating, they found marks in the ground. those points were where the scene was absolutely perfect. as one moved other colors started to become visible and become messy until one got to the next mark in the trails.
The landscape painter applied paint to the landscape rather than paint a picture of the landscape. they figured out that he mounted a projector onto the scene and his people would slap paint onto the trees, rocks and ground where the light hit.
The pristine park was ruined. The paint he used was permanent and would not come off unless the surface was removed.
They had him arrested for vandalism, and they got more serious charges on him after he was booked. In his records, they found other vandalisms that were even worse.
To help the tourist industry, the planetary fathers had some new trails cut avoiding any sight of the vandalism. The town, without permission gave guided tours to view the scenes the landscape painter painted. It would be decades before the last of the paint had faded, but the town made good money from the tours. The only way one could get to the trails was by guide so other people had no idea about the damage.

28 )
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Everett built a time machine. Based on the math and design, he knew it would work. He also knew that he would have to build a new machine at the destination in order to come back. Otherwise it was a one way trip.
Everybody knew this. The math showed that he could go into the future, but when he came back, he would return after he left. There was some question about it because of how far they could reliably carry the decimal point, but they figured that at minimum, he would be gone at least an hour. most of them theorized that the time he was in the future hours, was how long he would be gone here.
Everett put on a special space suit he had made. It carried all the data of the time project so he could rebuild every part and piece from scratch if needed. it could take air from outside and filter it if needed. It had a tiny nuclear battery that would keep the suit going for about twenty years. It also reprocessed his waste into something to keep him alive if he was stuck within the suit for longer than a couple days.
Ready, he got into the space suit and settled into the time machine. His travel through time would be bound to gravity, the planet first, the sun second and the galactic center third.
He disassembled his computers and equipment, put several nuclear batteries to the side, disconnecting them so the material in them would not be spent. he then closed the vault that contained them. The team would stay for a year then shut the system down and go onto other projects.
He flipped the switch and the time machine started. In moments he was gone.
He spent a day in a swirling void, quite disoriented. He talked about his feelings, sensations and observations.
He finally appeared in space just outside a space station. He out-gassed some of the suit air to push him against it. He followed the finest ridge around the outside of the space station until he found an entrance.
Inside a couple air locks, he wandered around until he met a bunch of other people in space suits and joined them. "this space station was abandoned for centuries. Meteor impacts destroyed anything that resembled electronics." one of the suited people said over the radio. Everett now saw holes going all the way through the space station, some big enough to climb through.
They are really shocked that the space station is still in space. It should have broken up completely over time. Nothing last for centuries.
He follows them to a ship and they go down to the planet. The planet was abandoned. plants took over what remained of cities. "They saw the disaster coming and built several interstellar fleets to go to the stars. They took everybody and everything." They climbed into several transports and left the ship. "we detected this site by accident. It seems to have some remains of high technology."
They arrive at a weathered hill. getting out, some experts opened a heavy door and they walked in. Everett recognized it as the time machine facility.
"What is this place?"
"It looks like nothing I have ever seen."
Everett checked different things on the time machine. It would take a little bit of work but could be made to work again.
He then walked over to the vault which they were trying to figure out what it was. He did the combination and opened it to their shock. He then walked in. There were gasps about the archival equipment in there. No one had no idea what it did.
Everett started assembling piece by piece until he had a computer ready to operate. He took out several nuclear batteries and found that most were spent. He found one with power and plugged it in. The computer blinked on to their shock.
"He put that together as if he did that last month!"
"That is impossible."
Everett ran through the programs. He knew how to use each one expertly. He even played a few quick games for them before he got to the data he needed. He brought up the plans for the time machine and checked to see what would need to be replaced based on his quick examination of the machine. He then goes to the store room and digs for parts.
He changes out parts quickly as there is a running monologue of what he is doing. He has to make a few parts from scratch as the old ones degraded.
They are learning about this old technology as he works on it.
The machine is ready to run. He finally speaks to them, telling them about the project and his experiment. He tells them that he is going back into the past using the machine. After he is gone, they can remove all the technology from the building, start with the store rooms and vault and take out the time machine equipment last. He does not know if it pushes him through time or sends him and is no longer needed.
They do note that his language is strange but they can understand him. He explains about his time and conditions back then, answering questions. He learns that they were from one of the populations that went to another star when they saw that the planet would be destroyed.
He gets into the time machine and activates it. he arrives back at his own time and appears about a mile away from the complex. he walks to the complex.
He orders the complex to be immediately shut down, items and raw materials he needed in the past is stored away. He shows them the data from the suit.
Everett converts his project into building space ships to take the world population off the planet.
He guides the populating the asteroids and the building of two interstellar fleet when a blob is detected outside the solar system. Immediately the governments start clamoring for star ships. Because he had developed the technology, star ships are built, the planet is stripped. he dies before the fleets leave the solar system. his dust is dumped into the thrust chamber to add power to thrust of one of the ships. His going into the future saved mankind.
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My note said "A time traveler visits an archeological site. He looks at computer equipment and assembles a computer and runs the program like he did just a few years ago. He could do it because he just did.”

29 )
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He had a caretaker around him all the time. The caretaker saw to it that he had everything he needed. There was really never when they were not together.
He was waken in the morning, early and they rushed to get going to an appointment. He wondered if the alarm even worked so he set it to go off in the afternoon when they were supposed to be back. Their day rushed around and by the time they got home, the alarm had long stopped. The next morning, they were waken before the alarm and off and running. Again they had a busy day doing different meetings projects and work.
After nearly a week, he noticed he never heard the alarm go off. His caretaker would turn off the alarm, or make sure he never got home in time to hear it.
He set the alarm like he normally does to hear the alarm when he got home. As they were rushing out, he palmed the alarm and secreted it into his clothing. They were rushing around again, he could see that they were not going to get home in time.
When the time came, his alarm went off. His caretaker looked at him in panic.
He suddenly woke in his bed to his alarm. He realized he was dreaming the entire time. The caretaker did not want him to wake up. Hearing the alarm would have woken him.

29 Reply)
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I realized after I posted this idea, that there should never have been an alarm in the room when he woke. Instead, the alarm was only in the dream.
When he wakes, he is either in an institution where they are trying to keep him out of commission, or in some form of hybernation. Another idea is that something from outside his dreams are controlling what is going on. This could be entities that feed off his dreams, or it is a computer program that is supposed to guide him.
When he wakes, he is out of the control of those that were keeping him a sleep. Awake, he can stop them, fight them, or escape their grasp.
EXAMPLE: He is on a ship and the crew is in suspended hybernation. The computer monitors the sleepers and also guides them in their dreams, making sure nothing within the dreams wake them until the system decides they need to come out to exercize. There is a glitch in the computer and is keeping them asleep longer than it is supposed to. The ship is also off course or has a problem that needs to be fixed.
His body says it needs to get up, so the alarm becomes part of the dream. The computer is fighting to keep him asleep. He hears the dream alarm and wakes in the hybernation cell. He gets up, sees the problem and wakes the others so everybody is up. They put the ship back on course, fix the equipment and correct the problem with the computer before they go back into hybernation again.
EXAMPLE: They are entities that feed on the energies of the sleeper. the longer the person sleeps the stronger they get. Again, the alarm reoccures in his dreams and the entities stop him from hearing it until he slips it into his clothing. It goes off and he wakes. He is able to escape them since they are suffering shock of being forcefully thrown out of his mind. He could have been someone exploring caves and fell asleep. He gets back out into the sun and is free of them.
EXAMPLE: He is a powerful leader. when he wakes from his dream, he finds he is hooked to all sorts of wires. He rips them off and gets up. attendants come in and try to talk him into going back to sleep. He leaves, no one can stop him because of who he is. he finds that his enemies were operating against his policies because he had disappeared. His showing up foils their plans and exposes them for what they are.

30 )
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There is a song where a guy wishes heaven was closer so he could show his family his long lost friends and relatives. His complaint is that heaven is so far away. There are beliefs in many cultures of ancestor being able to help them. These two concepts came together into this story idea.
Magic in the land allows the spirits of the ancaster to remain, to provide advice and guidance, answer questions. The spirits are unable to lie, but they can make themselves scarce or not answer questions. When someone talks to them, they gain a little bit of manna and become more prominent. It is said that a spirit that has most of the population talking to them, could come back alive. that is quite unlikely as no one, even the most powerful people in life, are worthy of everybody contacting them.
People commonly call on recent ancaster to learn from their experience. Workers will ask their bosses for guidance, youngsters will ask for grand motherly love, they will learn about old time games for their children, gain moral guidance based on the deceased experiences.
Grembolyn was a scholar. He decided to learn about the past. By clearing his mind, then opening it to the time period he was after, he called up long forgotten spirits. They showed up, and one by one, he recorded their words about their times. He asked detailed questions about how they lived and how it was different than now. He then put his notes together and published a book. The book was popular as it answered some questions.
While glancing through the book, he noticed a comment about a great battle where the participants fought to the last man. There were no survivors from either side. That perked his curiosity.
He searched for ancestors who might know where the battle was. He finally located it in the middle of a broad river so he anchored a skiff over the place.
Clearing his mind, he called on the warriors of the battle. He wrote fast and furious about what they knew and what had happened. His big question was why they would fight to the last man and what the fight was about anyway. Each side told what they knew from their side, and what they thought the other side was about.
He had to change his skiff's location several times to get different opinions. he finally asked them to bring their officers. It took some effort but he finally got the officers to talk to him. he learned from them that the soldiers had no clue what was really going on. Both commands liked to their soldiers and had been doing so for several years before the battle. Both commands expected it to be a few skirmishes and then they leave satisfied they fought well, but the soldiers were out to destroy the other side entirely because of the lies and the commands got caught up by the battles.
From them, he learned other times and places to explore. He went to other locations in the world to talk to the spirits to verify the stories told by the soldiers and to get more background.
When he finally publish this book, it was a three volume set and explained the life and times, along with the political intrigue, of the period leading up to the battle and that followed.
The modern politicians were shocked by the revelations in the books. It turns out that they were following the same path almost exactly.
That Grembolyn was searching for spirits of the distant past, and not taking their words as absolute gospel, was something no one else was doing. Most of the spirits had no idea what was going on outside their surroundings and that shaded their opinions about events and times. It also pointed out that many only knew what they were doing and were not paying attention.
Ancestors were still a treasure trove of knowledge, but now they were not thought of as all knowing. they were now looked on as reasonable guides for what they knew.

31 )
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Siegial was a minor thief. He saw a stranger with something that looked valuable. It was some cheap metal but was ornately carved and had some jewel like rocks in it. the man held it on top a big box he was moving, making sure it stayed in the center of the lid, almost panicking when it started to roll. That told Siegial that it had to be valuable.
That night, Siegial slipped into the building, found the object and left with it. He delivered it to the pawn shop where the object would eventually leave the planet. anything stolen did.
Later that night, a monster pushed the lid of the box open and searched out the man. the man knew nothing about the missing object. He searched and could not find it. The monster lost its temper and killed the man. It wanted the seal that allowed it to sleep. It sensed around and found the track of the stranger that had entered the building from the window. It slipped out the window and followed the tracks.
The monster noted all the places Siegial had stopped. It found Siegial that night. The monster learned a name of where the object was left, and then killed the boy.
the object passed through several hands, couriers fences, appraisers, decision makers. before it got to where the true value could be determined. It was of some value by the materials it was made of, but the design not seen anywhere else, made it a worthy art object.
The monster followed the trail of the object, it learned to sense where it had been left for a while, but located the person who had it and killed them after it gained some information. handling the object without it being able to sleep was a crime that resulted in death.
The big boss, sitting in the space station in orbit, studied information that came in from the planet. He got information about all his crime activities. No one knew the extent of his network, each person only knew one or two people they dealt with. the police that was not under his control could never find more than a tiny bit of information to lead to anything. Those in his control never bothered looking.
Data showed something strange in the police reports. A number of his people were found dead. entire offices were found full of bodies. The police were gaining information about his network. What made it really bad was that each death opened up records of activities of a bunch of people below which lead to others above and below being arrested. The deaths were following some link but he had no idea what.
AS the deaths lead up his organization, he considered shutting everything down until things calmed down. He did not want to lose that much revenue and likely such a command would be traced to himself.
A special art object shows up at the space port. It is appraised by the team there and they decide it needs to go to the top art market where their best stolen items can be untraceably sold.
They mount it into the ship in the packing and resume classifying items to be shipped.
the monster arrives and after interrogating the people, it kills them. when it arrives, the people are frozen in place. It reads their minds and they cannot lie. when it is done, it simply kills their stricken bodies. It goes to the ship and the hatch with the object is already sealed. it gets into the crew space and waits.
The ship is automatic. it shuts all the hatches and launches without some of the expected load on board. It follows the computerized plans and goes to the space station. It docks. The creature has been working through the hatches and corridors from one loading bay to the other, trying to get to the one that has its object. the ship is opened up the first loaded bays first. the monster reaches that bay just after that load is gone. It interrogates the unloaders and then follows.
The boss hears about the deaths almost immediately. He just happens to be going to see the special art object that just arrived.
He gets there just as the monster does. the monster interrogates everybody and then kills all but the boss. the boss finds he is now to serve the monster. A crate of the right kind is selected and the monster gets inside. the boss has the object on top the box. the monster is always in his mind. he gathers what portable wealth he has and gets into a ship that will take him away from any place he has any influence.
The police, even those that don't want to find anything, end up arresting and convicting the bosses entire organization from top to bottom, including finding evidence against legal businesses. Only the boss had escaped.
He arrives on a planet and the art object almost rolls off. He catches it, keeping it in the center of the box and gets it into the house he just rented.
He goes to sleep that night, the monster slips out of his mind for a short while as it sleeps for once.
A small time criminal saw the boss arrive. He slips into the house and steals the art object. the monster wakes up and when the boss cannot find the object, the monster kills him and then searches for the thief.....