This Time Around
by
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The young Spaniard studied the pensive Columbus intensely, trying to ascertain something of the man’s character. These ninety men and boys of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria had embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, placing their lives in the hands of a man most of them hardly knew, searching for bounty that could not be proven for a certainty to exist.
"How long do you reckon afore we fall over the edge, Admiral?" Ninos jested. Columbus was far from amused. He had grown exceedingly weary of small-minded men making game of him and his precious enterprise. To the good fortune of young Peralonso, the 41-year old explorer had mastered the slippery art of patience, so invaluable at navigating the infinitely more treacherous waters of courtier negotiation.
"The issue at hand, Senor Ninos, is not the sphericity of the Earth, for Eratosthenes tells us it is so. No flat-world nonsensicalness, no bogey terrors of sea monsters and shoals. Rather it is the width of the Atlantic Sea that concerns us."
"Aye, sir, a distance you make to be 750 leagues."
"By my dead-on reckoning, a journey to the easternmost edge of the known world navigable in forty days with a sound and steady leeward wind, God willing."
"I trust your judgment, Admiral, and that of the Queen’s mathematicos. My interest lies in your inspiration. The Portuguese have repeatedly availed themselves of naught upon this course--"
His eyes twinkling and pulse quickening, Columbus responded, "In my travels, I came upon a most vexing sight at the westernmost isle of the Azores, said island of Corvo. Thereupon hewn of natural rock rests a statue of a horseman pointing out into the sea. His immortal spirit beckons us ever westward, into the unthinkable fathoms. Our logic, stout hearts and these sturdy ships shall carry us to that destination."
"To fortune and glory," Ninos sighed, his breast swelling with a glowering conviction. In his mind’s-eye, he envisioned himself wallowing in treasures as yet unimagined. These brave sailors would be forever enshrined in history, a manifest destiny as certain as the sunset into which they sailed.
Notwithstanding, "forever" is an abstract and subjective concept, as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of temporal mischief as its sister notion "reality." Racing across the waves off the starboard of the armada’s lead ship Nina, a strange 110-foot long hydrocraft of indeterminate origin came forth into view. It matched the speed and bearing of the Spanish vessels precisely. On its surface, a hatch opened, and two figures in windbreakers peered out with binoculars from the belly of the fiberglass and steel beast.
"Is it really him, professor?" Terry asked his mentor in utter astonishment.
"It is," the elderly man replied with grim certitude. "The greatest criminal in the history of our race...guilty of crimes against humanity that cry out over the gulf of 500 years. There is no more decisive moment in our mission than the one we now face. Are you ready to take fate by the throat and strangle it to your indomitable will?"
It was an unspeakable step for Terry Montgomery Tarrant. The fate of hundreds of millions...twenty-five generations...were in his hands. Everything he and the professor had executed up until now was mere dress rehearsal. Although they had already played God with their disingenuous machinations, he was now going to have to take human life. He was going to become a mass murderer. The man-child knew he had to do this thing. But the knowing and the doing are such drastically different creatures. Nothing in his twenty-year existence could prepare him for a moment like this. He was once again becoming overwhelmed with anxiety.
"Professor, I..." The words caught in his throat . He looked to his elderly counterpart for reckoning.
"I know, Terry. You know that no one will ever understand better than I do. Just as I know you understand why we must do this monstrous thing. It is for the greater good...to free ourselves from the tyranny of genocide and oppression. Pick up the rocket launcher...you’ve got some wet work to do."
"Wet work"...the professor’s macabre euphemism for an unsavory chore. Terry reached down into the bowels of the Manatee hydrocraft and produced the cylindrical weapon, carefully mounting it on his shoulder as his military trainer Colonel Pinderhughes from the mid-21st Century taught him. He peered through the crosshairs and aimed it directly at Nina’s bulging side.
"Every day comes with its own little surprise." The professor placed a reassuring hand upon the youth’s shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "Aim just below the water line. Pull the trigger and know that history...the new history...will record us as the greatest heroes of the black race for all time."
Terry Tarrant swallowed hard and stared for a good long time at that wooden bulk splashing about in the midst of this watery nowhere. His heart pounded mightily against his ribcage. How similar, he realized, Columbus’ ships are, precursors though they were, to the wretched slaving caravel in which Terry had been imprisoned and humiliated not so terribly long ago. Finally, drawing a deep breath, he capitulated to his conviction and did the dark deed. From the end of his bazooka, an Exocet rocket blasted noisily to life, it’s short sweet journey demarcated by a fiery plume tracing its malevolent path. Although well braced, the force of ignition jolted Terry backwards, slamming him into the bulkhead hatch.
In the blink of time’s eternal eye, it happened. The deadly missile tore through Nina’s hull and the body of the hapless sailor who had the misfortune of being in its path.
It slammed into the ship’s ballast and exploded with a stunning force sufficient to raise the 60-ton craft entirely, if momentarily, out of the water. More than half of her compliment of twenty-four were killed or hopelessly maimed instantly. The collateral force of impact with the ocean surface broke the wounded vessel in twain. In the toldilla, the captain’s stateroom, the ship’s skipper, Vincente Pinzon was thrown from his chair in front of his dinner table and brutally smashed into the wall. None aboard ever knew what hit them.
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About the Book
In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix was a legendary bird of unspeakable beauty, unique of its kind, which lived in the desert and then consumed itself by fire, rising again from its ashes as a paragon of youth and splendor. On this day of infamy, May 20, 2059, a desert-dwelling city called Phoenix was similarly devoured in the flames of Armageddon, her incineration as certain as her legendary rebirth apocryphal. For the virtually imperceptible length of a mere nanosecond, a dwarf star shone hot and bright, kissing the Earth with blistering lips of stellar conflagration.
A dozen dreams, a hundred, a thousand, a million more perhaps, evaporated in that sizzling, scintillating moment forever seared into eternity. In simultaneous synchronicity, one enigmatic fantasy, however, was wonderfully fulfilled. The fusion event twisted gravity for miles around, warping the space/time continuum, deforming reality itself. Fourth-dimensional barriers were rent asunder and a temporal phenomenon coalesced, never-before-existing and yet always-ever-there. Not magically but rather, methodically, the time sphere anomaly was born, neither here nor now, neither there nor then. And yet and still, it was. As predicted. As predicated.
All that remained was for Terry Montgomery Tarrant to find it. That thing. Out there. Somewhere. In the desert. Before somebody else did. Not that anyone else would be looking for it. Only he knew what he was searching for. Only he knew it existed. He created it. It belonged to him. A temporal playground of unfathomable scale and consequence. And once he found it, mastery over Time itself would be his.
About the Author
...was born 19 April 1964 in Detroit, Michigan, the third of three sons, to Spencer and Carmen Carpenter. Influenced by his parents, both educators, the young Brent took a very early interest in subjects varying from astronomy, history, geography and paleontology. His early artistic endeavors involved scripting and drawing comic books. Brent founded Foundation Studios and fostered an environment for artistic creativity. His comic book publishing efforts garnered the attention of CNN, which resulted in an interview that was broadcast internationally. Deciding that his true talent and love was for writing, he began to concentrate his efforts along those lines.
This Time Around was begun right after the May 2001 publication of his first novel Man Of The Cloth. The basic concept had been floating around in Brent’s head for years, but his intention was to complete several other less challenging works before attempting to tackle a story with such an ambitious plot. Convinced by a close friend that MOTC had more than adequately prepared him for such an undertaking, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the project with the same relentless passion found in his previous work. This Time Around is the long-simmering treatise on the condition of the descendents of the African race.
Concurrent to the production of this latest novel, Brent is also producing a biweekly column for the Michigan newspaper Between The Lines that he intends to collect into a book of essays, has drafted a screenplay of Man Of The Cloth for an independent Hollywood film producer, and has begun working on his next literary project: a coffee book bio/discography/music review of film score composer John Williams.