2 Hero Jenkins

A Storm in

Memphis

3A Storm in Memphis

A Storm in Memphis Copy r ight 2012 by Sa’Quon DeEse Publ ish ing

This is a work of fiction. All Characters and events, even those based on real people and real events are entirely fictional. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-duced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, record-ing, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except brief quotations used for review.

Sa’Quon DeEse is a registered trademark of Sa’Quon DeEse Publishing, LLC

Sa’Quon DeEse PublishingLahaina, Hi.

Visit www.saquondeese.com for additional information and special content.

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4 Hero Jenkins

Part One

5A Storm in Memphis

Chapter One

It was close to midnight and so far I had managed only a glimpse of the man I was hunting. I called out to him.

“Why in the world would you want to kill John Wayne?”His reply was immediate.“I don’t want to kill him, I want to challenge him to a gun-

fight.”“You realize that John Wayne is an actor, right? You know

he is not a real gunfighter… right?”He didn’t reply right away and when he did his tone seemed

both confused and frustrated. “What are you talking about?”That was when it hit me, this guy was nuts! How in the hell

did he get his hands on a time machine?I looked up and noticed a full moon.That explained a lot!The crazies are always at their worst when the moon was full.“John Wayne is an actor,” I repeated.“What do you mean he’s an actor? I just saw him in a docu-

mentary about the Wild West, he’s a gunfighter.”“I don’t know what you saw, but it had to be a movie. It was

fake. It wasn’t a documentary. Look around, does this look like the

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Wild West to you?”Silence… except for the crickets.Then I saw his head pop up as he looked around. I guess the

presence of cars, not horses, wasn’t a big enough clue.I should probably explain a little about what is going on.

Our world was nearly destroyed by a nuclear war that we call the “Last War”. Humankind had been on the brink of extinction but we made a comeback. Then time travel became a reality and ever since the government has been scrambling to keep everything from spiraling out of control.

Nevertheless, there is a sincere thirst to discover our history and every now and then a civilian stumbled upon an artifact, some snapshot of the past or in this case, a fragment of a John Wayne movie. They can’t resist investigating history on their own and occasionally we came face to face with this… someone who had moved beyond the mere investigation of history and had decided to become a part of history.

We were in the hills somewhere near Bel Air, California. According to my computer, John Wayne had been a movie actor from about 1950 until around 1970… something like 500 years before I was born. Right now he was inside a friend’s mansion attending a “wrap party” for one of his movies. He had no idea that this nin-compoop was hiding behind the cars out front, waiting for him to come out so that he could challenge him to a gunfight.

I was moving through underbrush thick enough to chal-lenge a squirrel and at 6’2” that ain’t easy… and oh yeah all while trying to be quiet.

I crept in closer.The glare from a streetlight nearly blinded me. I adjusted my

thermal night vision goggles and spotted him crouched behind a car. He was short, plump, about mid forties, balding, and dressed in full cowboy regalia, right down to chaps and spurs.

“Unbelievable,” I moaned.I didn’t see his time machine anywhere. He must have ditched

it and ditching a time machine is often an indication that they had no intention of going back. That made him extremely dangerous.

I wish I could say that this sort of thing rarely happened, but

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I would be lying. It wasn’t always like this. After the war people in my time endeavored to live in complete harmony with one another. They strove to follow the path of non-violence championed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and for centuries they did. However, this technology changed all of that. This technology would allow a single individual to adversely affect the lives of everyone on the planet.

So how did a non-violent society respond to a fringe element of ideological killers in possession of technology that could destroy them? Well... they identified their own killers... then they trained them and looked the other way as they sent them out to wage war on societies behalf.

I was one of the first.My name is Will Compton and it is my job to stop these peo-

ple before they can interfere with the past and change the future. I had the advantage and I knew it, I was not alone. My back-

up was Lieutenant Mara Parker and I could see her circling around, moving in behind this wacko.

I also had a technological advantage. I have implants in my eyes called I-HUD’s, which among other things has a kind of radar built into them. The implants allow the computer to identify and then “tag” people like in the old video games. Mara was tagged with a green circle, which lets me know that she is a “friendly” and not to shoot her. But this idiot is tagged with a red triangle… him I can shoot.

I could tell that he was trying to track my voice... that he was searching the bushes with his eyes... desperate to identify my posi-tion. He shuffled to his right and moved behind a car.

Damn it! I lost my shot.I could see Mara moving into position, she should have a

shot any second now.Suddenly there was a rustling sound behind him. A cat or

something bolted from the bushes and spooked the crazy man I was trying to shoot. He spun around and raised his gun. I couldn’t tell, but… was he pointing it at Mara?

“Hey,” I called to him, “I just thought of something.”He spun back around at the sound of my voice. Now he was

pointing the weapon in my direction again.

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I changed locations before I said, “It’s midnight. Aren’t these things supposed to happen at high noon?”

Silence again… but this time even the crickets had stopped chirping. Apparently they wanted to hear his answer to that one.

“You there?”He started to cry.Oh jeeze, that can’t be good!Then, without warning, he stood up and started running in

a beeline for the front door of the mansion.Yup, I think he may have just popped his cork.It can be dangerous to confront the delusional with the obvi-

ous. It can sometimes cause them to become even more unstable and push them to do something rash and unpredictable.

Smooth move ex-lax, now you’ve done it.It is imperative that people in the past remain ignorant to

the existence of time travelers from the future. As a result we went to great lengths to avoid being spotted and have mastered the art of stealth and camouflage. Yet if discovered it would be better if they thought we were aliens from some advanced civilization who have arrived to enslave mankind. That they could accept. But the knowledge of travelers from the future seems to drive them insane. It is a fundamental directive that is drummed into us throughout training. But this guy was leaving me no choice. I had to go get him before he reached the house even if it meant I would be spotted.

I was about to leave cover when I saw Mara step from the bushes and take cover behind a tree. She aimed her disperser gun and fired. The disperser beam struck him midstride and then POOF… he immediately disintegrated into a cloud of dust.

I nodded my approval.Nice shot.She did a curtsey.I couldn’t hold it; I had to laugh out loud.I worked my way around the cars parked in front of this Bel

Air mansion and joined her over by the tree.“Good shootin Lt. Parker.”“Why thank you Pard-ner, Ah-Huh,” she said with a fake

Texas drawl that I guess was supposed to be a John Wayne imitation.

9A Storm in Memphis

Actually it sounded more like someone had stepped on her foot.“Listen, you finish up here,” I said, “make sure he didn’t leave

anything behind. I am going to look for his time machine.”“Not a problem Commander.”She was about to turn away. I touched her arm to get her

attention. I was afraid she would relax now that the hardest part was done.

“Mara, be careful... and stay focused, we’re not out of this yet,” I cautioned, then a moment later I softened, “See you at the spot later?”

Mara and I had a special spot we would go to whenever we were assigned a mission in twentieth century Los Angeles. I would be a little uncomfortable until we got there… you see, 1950 Bel Air was not the most racially diverse part of Los Angeles. Mara and I were both black and although twenty-fifth century America had gotten over that black/white thing centuries ago… not so much in the twentieth century. I really wanted to get this thing over with and get out of here. Hiding in the bushes while wearing a black skintight bio-suit in 1950-something Bel Air, was not exactly healthy for us.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said with a smile.

***

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11A Storm in Memphis

Chapter Four

Time travel… Years ago a bunch of college kids figured out how to do it.

They figured out how to travel back in time.Those bright young minds had spent years developing their

theories and when they were done they meticulously drew up the plans needed to build it… a friggin time machine. But not long after the plans were completed, division arose within the group. They had been so focused on “developing” the technology; they had not given any thought as to how they would “use” the technology.

Most agreed that they should use it for financial gain. By trav-elling into the past with knowledge of the future, they could make discreet investments and instantly be rich beyond their dreams the moment they returned. Or they could jump to the future and then return with priceless knowledge of future trends.

Yet some members of the group were offended at the thought that they would use the time machine for anything other than for the benefit of mankind. It was possible that a man of the future could travel back and figure out ways to reverse some of histories

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greatest atrocities. Or they could travel to the future and learn of new medicines or techniques and bring them back to heal the sick or raise the dead.

The debate was settled when one of the group came up with a solution to the problem. Without the knowledge of the others he posted the plans on the new Internet thus making them available to everybody. He figured he would let “fate” decide and the only one who was surprised when governments around the world col-lectively freaked out… was he.

The United States Government was caught completely by sur-prise. They downloaded the plans and then marshaled every available resource to build a machine. The scale of the project eclipsed the Manhattan Project and the Space Race combined. But they weren’t alone; records showed that the plans had been downloaded more than a million times before the site could be shut down.

The race was on. Everybody knew that the first person to build a working time machine would control history and therefore the present and the future.

Luckily we were the first to build it and immediately we set about putting the toothpaste back into the tube. One of our first mis-sions was to go back in time and eliminate every single one of those bright young minds… well, after they had finished the design of the machine, of course… but before the schematics could be posted. That way we would be the only ones to possess this technology.

It worked… almost.Somehow remnants and rumors persisted in the public…

we don’t know how. Experts believed that the creators must have shared their theories with others as they went along. The bottom line was, a lot of people had various parts of the plans in one form or another, but no one had a complete set. However, it was just a mat-ter of time before someone obtained all of the pieces and assembled a complete schematic.

It took almost a year for a complete set of plans to surface and not much longer for someone to be foolish enough to actually build a machine with the unverified schematics. Predictably, most of them only managed to blow themselves up.

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But no one was fooled; we all knew that it was just a matter of time before someone else would succeed in traveling back in time.

Who hasn’t dreamed of going back and righting a wrong or fixing a past mistake? But the past is not something to be tampered with, and only a fool would try to change history.

It took nearly three years before others were able to success-fully travel into the past and we were ready. At first we barely saw one a month. These days, we deal with several every day… we call them “Skippers” or “Skips” for short.

Fortunately, time travel produces a temporal rift or distur-bance in time that is easily detectable. Every time we detect a rift, we immediately dispatch a team of hard, cold killers to the site. Their goals are three fold. First we want to capture anyone involved with the unauthorized intrusion into the past, but more importantly we want to destroy the equipment and prevent another intrusion. Finally, experience has taught us that there is a thread connect-ing these folks obsessed with the past. So we want to pull on that thread and possibly locate other “time skippers”. We want to find their machines and stop them before they launch.

Time travel also leaves a temporal wake, or trail so to speak. Our computers are able to pick up that trail and predict where and when the “Skip” will land. Whenever we detect a temporal wake someone also has to follow it and go after the “Skip”.

That is where I come in, I am a “Chaser” and it is my job to protect the timeline from anyone foolish enough to try and “fix” the past.

***

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Chapter Five

In a matter of seconds I was back in my time. As usual I materialized inside the specially designed temporal cocoon known as the launch platform.

I never know when I will be sent out on another mission so, if time permitted, I would try to grab some sleep. But first, lest I wind up like Hendricks stranded in the past, it is imperative that I recharge my suit by plugging it into the recharger.

That done, my thoughts turned to Mara. She had been in good spirits on the last mission, but that was not always the case. Most times she was withdrawn and gloomy… her normal disposi-tion bordering on depression. This job, being hurled through time takes a toll on all of us. It was time for us to retire, to leave this awful business to the younger generation. But I was having a diffi-cult time convincing her to get out and I couldn’t understand why. But I had to get her out before it was too late, before she lost what was left of her sanity.

***

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“Commander,”

the soft female robotic voice interrupted my thoughts. The voice belonged to HANA, our computer. HANA is an acronym for… Something. To be honest, over the years, I forgot.

A 3D hologram of HANA appeared in front of me. I don’t know whose idea it was to program this face to go with that voice, but I’m glad they did, she was beautiful.

“We have a Skipper Commander.”

“Copy, HANA.”I used my I-HUD to check the status of my bio-suit’s systems.The I-HUD is an amazing device. It is basically a mechanical

display surgically implanted into every Chaser’s eyes. I do remem-ber what I-HUD is an acronym for. I-HUD stands for Intra-Ocular Heads Up Display. An I-HUD is like the old school Heads Up Dis-play or (HUD) that they used to put in jet fighters, but on steroids. It is linked to HANA so everything that can be displayed on a com-puter monitor can be displayed on the I-HUD. The information just seems to float in the air right in front of us.

***

“Move me to launch posture, HANA.”Immediately my launch platform rotated to a near vertical

launch position.

“Launch posture achieved.”

“Thank you HANA.”

“Commander, your back-up will be Sergeant Reyes, he will launch shortly.”

“Roger that HANA. I show Bio-suit functions are on-line, Quantum capacitors are charged… show me green and ready to

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launch.”

“Affirmative Commander, we show you green. We have a lock and the trace is active… you launch in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

***

Time travel can be disorienting at first. The temporal changes can really mess with your body. I couldn’t tell you the number of times that I’ve chased down an illegal time jumper only to find a dead guy strapped to a time machine. Very few can even survive the trip. It takes an entirely different kind of individual to make repeated trips.

More than thirty of us are always on stand-by… always suited, booted, and strapped. We spend our entire shift sealed inside our cocoons waiting to be hurled across space/time in pursuit of ille-gal time travellers and since our equipment is generations ahead of theirs, we almost always arrive first.

Most of the clunky counterfeit time machines being built these days are primitive death traps. We never know what to expect. “Skips” are building time machines into just about anything from footlockers to refrigerators. I’ve even seen one that was built into a hollowed out torpedo.

But time travel requires a lot of power therefore the lower the mass the more efficient the machine. My “time machine” is compact and state of the art and is integrated into a specially designed bio-suit.

When a Chaser “launches” into the past, there are no flash-ing lights. There are no clanging alarms. It’s like the world slowly goes out of focus. Then you get the sensation that the ground has suddenly been yanked out from beneath you. It’s like that gut-tightening sensation you get on the downhill side of a roller coaster drop. Then, just as suddenly, the world refocuses and you are in a different place and time.

***

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Chapter Six

I counted to myself… one thousand one, one thou-sand two, one thousand three… only three seconds and suddenly I was there.

When the world came into focus I was in a garage of a house I didn’t recognize. It was huge, clean and well equipped. There were several very expensive cars here and they were modern cars so obviously I had not travelled that far into the past. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows. The side door was ajar and I could hear children playing outside. A gust of wind blew the door open just enough. The strong sweet smell of cherry blossoms filled the air. If I had to guess, I was in Washington DC and it was springtime.

Sergeant Paulo Reyes arrived and immediately moved over to the window. “Peg leg Paulo” as he is called, referring to his bionic leg. He is competent enough, but he is cocky and a risk taker, which is how he lost the leg. But then most of the new guys were cocky and short too, what’s that about? No doubt some genius bean counter must have figured that short equals less mass, less mass conserves

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energy and less energy means lower costs.Two seconds later, I saw the Skip materialize. He was dressed

in something that resembled a deep-sea diver’s suit, complete with that giant round helmet. I saw a huge backpack strapped to his back. I had no doubt that his time machine was in that pack.

He could barely move beneath the weight of the suit. Slowly, cautiously, his arms came up and he began wrestling with his hel-met. It took him a while, but he managed to remove it. Hey, I know this guy; he’s a politician. I think I even voted for him once. This guy has big bucks… it figures… those are usually the ones who make it without winding up a wet spot on the carpet. Time travel done right ain’t cheap.

He looked around and spotted me and he knew why I was there.

“Y-Y-You don’t understand,” he stammered, “my little girl… she drank… I mean she’s about to drink a bottle of poison… I have to stop her,” he tried to explain. Then he held up a padlock for me to see. “All I want to do is lock that cabinet so that she can’t get to it.”

***

Timeline preservation is a tricky business, a Chaser can’t afford to take the time to try and reason with a Skip. Even inciden-tal contact between a traveler from the future and a person living in the past can have a devastating effect on the timeline, unintended consequences that could change the course of human history.

Therefore, a Skip has to be dealt with, quickly and harshly, before their “mere presence” in the past contaminated the timeline. By law, the Skip’s “mere presence” in the past is an automatic verdict of guilty for the crime of unauthorized time travel. The penalty for unauthorized time travel is death… a death sentence to be carried out immediately.

How many had reached their destination only to find me, or somebody like me, waiting for them.

I have been at this for more than twenty years and to be hon-est with you, I’m tired. Tired of the desperate look on the Skip’s face right before I snatch their lives away from them.

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Reyes must have sensed my hesitation. He stepped out into the open. Reyes is part of that young, new breed of Chaser that is becoming the norm in the Chaser Corps. They seem to relish this part… jeeze… was I ever like that?

“You wanna ‘dust’ him Commander, or shall I,” Reyes said.To ‘Dust’ someone is a euphemism for killing them. What is

it about Chasers that we have so many names for killing people? But ‘Dust’… I’ve always hated that one, probably because it is so brutally accurate. Brutally accurate because ‘dust’ is all that remains when a Chaser uses his ‘disperser gun’ on a Skip.

***

What is a disperser gun?The “disperser gun” or “disperser” is an extremely nasty

hand held energy weapon and it does exactly that, it “disperses”. It has enough power to completely blow apart the atoms that make up the human body and render it a cloud of fluff and ashes indistin-guishable from common household dust. Hence the term ‘dusting.’

***

“Please,” he begged. “I can’t live without her.” His voice cracked. He was obviously near a breakdown.

I was surprised at the coldness in my voice as I raised my disperser and pointed it at his chest. “Don’t worry,” I said, “you won’t have to.”

In a matter of seconds what was once one of the most respected politicians of our time was reduced to a cloud of dust swirling in the air before it settled on the floor of his own garage.

What a waste.The door started to open and I could hear the excited chatter

of the children as they burst into the garage.I hid behind one of the cars.Sergeant Reyes took my cue and ducked behind a car while

I checked my “correlation sensor”.

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***

Every Skip Chaser carries what is known as a “correlation sensor”. The correlation sensor is basically an indicator light, a Chaser’s only way of knowing if the action they took had restored the timeline. It is too complicated to explain exactly how it works right now. Suffice it to say, if the light is red, then the future I left behind is not there. I have been trained not to return to an altered future because in the altered future I may not have even been born. Therefore, I would simply cease to exist upon arrival.

***

My correlation sensor was green… it was time to go home. I initiated my “jump-back” procedures. My suit’s quantum capaci-tors have to charge before I can “jump back” to the present, it usu-ally takes a few seconds. A separate sensor lets us know when the capacitors are fully charged. Actually it was a series of bars… five in all and once it reached five bars my suit would activate and I would simply fade away.

A little girl, bounced into the garage.I looked on while I waited.

***

People look upon Chasers as cold and heartless. Chasers look upon me as colder than most. But that’s not true. I am passionate about the future, but the past is a different story. The past is some-thing that has already happened. It is dangerous to let your emo-tions dictate your actions in dealing with those who are attempting to change what has already happened.

Therefore I do not.

***

The little girl and her friend stooped to examine the contents of the unlocked cabinet. I knew what was going to happen, and I

21A Storm in Memphis

felt… nothing.It’s the past, it has already happened. I tell myself.My focus fades out just as the little girl reaches into the cabi-

net and pulls out a gallon-sized jug containing a cloudy liquid.When the world refocused, I was back at the Ops Center.

“Good work Commander.”

“Thank you, HANA,” I said tiredly, “I need to recharge my bio-suit and I am going to grab some sleep while I plug in.”

“Acknowledged Commander.”

***

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Chapter Seven

The Operations Center or (Ops Center) sits at the center of the Chaser Compound. It is a gigantic high-tech marvel constructed with materials and methods that are still classified. In the heart of the Ops Center is the launch bay where all of the Chaser’s “Launch Platforms” are kept prepped and ready to go.

The launch bay is a huge cavernous room. There are probably about fifty launch platforms setup in this room. Usually, only about thirty are occupied. There is always a chaos of activity in the launch bay. Technicians can be seen racing around and maintaining the machines. Chasers are always coming and going either beginning or ending their shifts. Launch Platforms are always being popped open so that injured Chasers could be pulled out. Medical teams could be seen rushing in to treat them. Occasionally the coroner’s gurney arrived for the dead.

Up above sits the Control room where Controllers watch their screens for signs of illegal temporal activity. They are usually busier than air traffic controllers. Overseeing it all is HANA our supercomputer.

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Every Chaser must report to the Ops Center for their work-day. A workday consists of a twenty-four hour shift on what is called “Alert status” and then they have a mandatory three days off.

While on Alert Status a Chaser’s world is reduced to a small cacoon-like chamber that the designers call a “launch platform.” In reality, a “launch platform” is just a fancy name for a high-tech reclining chair sealed inside a five by five by eight-foot box. Most Chasers call this box the “crypt” because it more resembles a coffin.

We spend the entire shift encased in our bio-suits. The bio-suits we wear are completely self-contained. They internally dispose of all of our human waste. We eat, drink and whenever we can, sleep in the suits during the twenty-four hour shift.

I checked the time, I was nearing the end of my shift. As a Commander I have access to readouts that lists outcomes from completed missions. According to HANA a couple of guys got hurt in their last mission and had to be pulled out of the rotation. With staffing levels the way they are and taking into account mandatory rest periods between missions, I should be undisturbed for the remainder of my shift. I checked on Commander Boyd’s status. He and his partner Sergeant Reyes were up next in the rotation.

I was exhausted. I laid back on my platform and before long; I was able to drift off to sleep.

I don’t know why I don’t dream; I don’t think I ever have. In fact I don’t know if any of us do… but we do have nightmares.

In every nightmare I am falling until I find myself at the bottom of a deep dark hole and I am never alone. There is always something lurking in the dark and I know that whatever it is, it desperately wants to kill me.

But this time something was different. I saw the little girl step out of the darkness. She was holding a black cup filled with a foul smelling bubbling liquid. I don’t know for certain what kind of liquid that was in the cup but whatever it was, it was pure evil... I could feel it. I watched in horror as she raised the cup to her lips and prepared to take a drink. My first thought was to knock the cup away, but something was holding me back. The girl drank from the cup and began shrieking and writhing on the floor in horrible pain. I wanted to go to her, to help her, but I was still being held

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back. Just as I struggled and broke free the little girl morphed into a large hideous monster before my eyes, then she quietly stepped back into the darkness.

Now my monster had a face and even more disturbing, now I knew why it wanted to kill me. I could hear it now… stalking back and forth, waiting to strike. I could feel its hatred, I cried out…

***

“Commander,”

the robotic voice intruded upon my nightmare,

“are you awake?”

My head was pounding. I was drenched in sweat.“I am now HANA, what’s up?”

“We have a Skipper Commander.”

“Copy, I will be green in about 10 seconds.”

“Acknowledged Commander. You should know that Corpo-ral Powell was ready on platform forty-five, he has already launched and will be your backup. You are to launch and take the lead upon arrival… advise when green.”

“Copy,” I replied as I shook off the cobwebs and prepared my suit for a time jump.

“Corporal Powell?” I couldn’t help but shake my head in disgust. Powell was as green as they came and to make matters worse, he was unpredictable, opinionated and headstrong. “Damn,” I thought… not sure whether or not I said it out loud.

“Problem Commander?”

“No, HANA,” I lied.

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You know you are getting old when everybody seems too young to be trusted. Then a thought occurred to me while I worked, “HANA… I thought Boyd and Reyes were next in the rotation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened?”

“All I can tell you is that they have launched and are cur-rently on a mission. Protocol prohibits any disclosure of what has happened in the past at this time. You will be briefed once you arrive on station.”

Seconds later I was ready.“Move me to launch posture, HANA.”

“Launch posture achieved Commander.”

“Thank you HANA. Show me green and ready to launch.”

“Acknowledged Commander, we show you green. We have a lock and the trace is active… you launch in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

***

Seconds later, I was on a narrow, almost desolate street lined on both sides with two and three story buildings of brick and wood. The wind carried the odor of rotting garbage and decay. I thought I was alone until I spotted the two drunks on a stoop sharing a bottle wrapped in a bag. HANA is usually pretty careful about us being seen. Our insertion points are usually dark storage rooms or places similarly deserted. But this time I arrived in full view of the public…

Something is wrong here.I checked my I-HUD it was still blank. It always takes a few

seconds for the data to download because our three computers, HANA, and her support computers (HOLLY and LEE) are physi-cally located on the moon.

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Why the moon?Well… my understanding is limited, but this is what I know.

When we started travelling back in time we learned that we needed access to our computer to do our job. Unfortunately we couldn’t communicate with the computer because it was still in the future.

From what I’ve been told, the eggheads had HANA and her sisters built and then brought back in time as far back as they dared to go. Rumor has it that they went back even before the dawn of man and since no one wanted to risk landing on prehistoric earth and stepping on the primordial soup that they believed would some-day spawn mankind, they installed HANA and her sisters on the moon instead.

My I-HUD came alive as the data started to flood in, but I already knew where I was, I would recognize this street in the dark. It was historic Beale Street, the birthplace of the blues, Memphis Tennessee.

I scrolled through my display modes and checked my chro-nometer. It showed Wednesday April 3rd 1968. I started to shake; I knew this date… everyone alive in my time knew this date. It was the day before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

The wind was starting to swirl, the sky was cold and angry. Dark clouds were forming in the west. A storm was coming to Memphis.

***

“A Storm in Memphis” will be available in late April.

For more information visit the Hero Jenkins blog at: http://herojenkins.blogspot.com/

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