There Must Be A Mistake Ch. 20

"Zoie Schneider, you are going to be a graceful, beautiful bride."

"Gordon Luck, you have more faith in me than I have in myself."

"I can explain that easily."

"Go ahead; I can't wait to hear this."

"I never saw you with zits."

Zoie got out of her chair, smacked him on the shoulder, sat on his lap, and kissed him.

"They were ugly as hell. The dermatologist used everything he had, and couldn't control them. Nothing worked; absolutely nothing. Thankfully, when I turned fifteen, they disappeared. I expected to have craters on my face, but I don't have one. I was very lucky."

"I never had a pimple. I don't believe my mother has either. It must be genetic."

"Miss Zoie, it's time."

"Come on dummy, I'll show you how this is done."

"I'll sit here, because I know you're not talking to me."

"Come on Gordon it's time to get off the airplane."

"I thought you were taking dummy with you."

"Gordon, you and I are going to have a long talk."

"Zoie, your rear end, and my hand are going to meet quite often."

"Sadist."

He followed her instructions to a T, and watched her as she disembarked the aircraft. He did not hesitate when the agent put his hand on his arm, and said go. Seven seconds later, he was in the backseat of the limousine with Zoie and her parents.

"Great landing; Mrs. Schneider."

"Flattery will get you nowhere Gordon. I still owe you for the Justice of the Peace remark."

"That wasn't me ma'am, that was Zoie. I was the one that told Mister Schneider I was impotent and couldn't have children."

"What do you mean you can't have children?"

Dycke took Payne's hand and told her to relax. "Dear that was the joke they played on me."

"I thought you told me he was a very serious young man?"

"He was, until he met our Zoie. She has the ability to change people; you know that, as well as I do."

"You poor boy, I hope you know what you're getting into."

"MOTHER, that's not nice."

"Zoie, your parents could tell me you are Attila the Nun. You are still mine. Sometime between September 30 and December 24 of next year, we are getting married. If they continue to annoy you, one morning they will wake up to find out we have eloped, and you are pregnant with quintuplets."

She put her head against his shoulder and laughed.

Dycke and Payne were not laughing.

Payne looked at Gordon. "She is my only daughter. You would not deny me of the right to give her a big beautiful wedding."

"I would not deprive you of your dreams, Mrs. Schneider, as long as you treat my fiancée properly. If she becomes unhappy in her current situation, I will do everything in my power to make her happy. I am not dependent on anyone for money. I have several million dollars in the bank. I have patents in my name that will continuously make me money, and I have a job. If I were to lose that job, I guarantee you, when I put my 'Fusion Reactor' up for bids on the free market the first bid will be in the trillions of dollars. I will be richer than most governments on the planet."

"Listen to the young man Payne, because he's right. His reactor is the most important breakthrough of this century."

"No Mister Schneider, it's not. We've just made and another discovery that puts the reactor into second or third place. We will know soon enough. You may want to open your own bank to store this money, because you will own space.

Governments will pay you to lease these highways to get them from point A to point B. We already know we can get people from here to there, because my father has done it. The question is can we get them back. If we can, time is no longer a factor in space travel. It would be like getting on a bus, and going to work every day."

"Your dad didn't tell me anything about this discovery Gordon. When did he make it?"

"My dad didn't realize he did, until we talked about it. I went to work and fed what we discussed it into the computer. It was part of his experience after his operation. He thought he was caught in the blackness of Space; and Time had stopped. I used that as a model, and made the calculations that proved he discovered how to use 'Supersymmetric' properties to make the first man-made wormhole."

"Holy crap, how fast can you travel in it?"

"There-in lies the conundrum. We can judge the outbound speed. It is in excess of 100 times the speed of light. We know the destination because we can program it by using 'Open-Ended Bosonic Strings' into the computer and creating a pathway to the planet. The problem is we can't pre-program the spacecraft to come back through the wormhole. It has to be done at the other end.

The pilot of the spacecraft will be able to maneuver it after they get to our designated coordinates. They will fly the ship to and land it on the nearby the planet. The pilot and crew will be able to take samples, pictures, do scientific studies and anything else they were tasked to do while here on earth. When they return to space, they have to return to the exact coordinates of the exit of the wormhole. From that point in space, they must program their return trip. Even a minute error could send the spacecraft careening off course by billions of miles.

To start this process, you have to build another spacecraft. We don't have the time to do it. The shame of it is everything we need is already here. We have the infrastructure. We have the experienced mechanical and technical personnel. Our Supply chain is intact. We would keep some of our current scientists but most of them are at their scientific limits. We would have to bring in advanced thinkers to replace them. What we don't have is time. We don't have enough time."

"The scientists would need new leadership; someone who could bind them together, and keep them focused on the vision ahead. Everyone here looks to my father for that leadership. You could get that kind of leadership ability if you could convince someone like Doctor Maes from Berkeley, or Doctor Oyster from Caltech to run the program. There are a few other wonderful scientific minds that are not as charismatic but could run this program. There are not that many great charismatic scientist around this nation. There are fantastic scientists here, but they could bore a wall to death when they speak.

Then there's the money, and who you would trust them to handle it. After 'The Good Luck' leaves on its journey, many people are going to call it a hoax, a big joke and so forth. Even though every camera on the globe will be following our progress, there will still be those naysayers that will say it never happened. We are going to file a flight plan so they can follow us and transmit over every available frequency. The question is how many times are you going to be willing to put up $17 billion of your money to build a spacecraft? Maybe the government would be interested in financing the project after our success, but I wouldn't want them to rule the project. Congress would screw it up royally, by cutting off funds to cut the deficit, or pay for one of their pet projects.

The design is rather straightforward; it could be a duplicate of 'The Good Luck,' either bigger or smaller. The power needed to do it is astronomical, but using the design of my sister's engines, you could produce that much power on site. It could be done, and whoever is chosen to take that first trip is in for the ride of their lives. One hundred or more times the Speed of Light, and 'The Good Luck' will only be doing seven or eight. It is inconceivable, yet we have already conceived it. It's all part and parcel of Einstein's Unification Theory. He proved that motion through one medium (either time or space) effects the other. It's part of his Special Relativity Theory. Scientists have been working on all portions of his works since they were published in the early Nineteen thirty's, until he passed away. The latest models are "The Bosonic String Theories. Today there are Twenty-Six Dimensional Space/Time Coordinates. He didn't call them by that name, but it is his theories that promulgated the current science.

My dad didn't realize he used one of them to break through what he called a dream. It was not a dream. He used a mathematical formula for an Open Ended String, and opened a gate in the Space/Time Continuum that allowed him to make his way back to us.

My dad is an awesome thinker. I don't think there is anyone on this planet like him. I believe the last one like him was Albert Einstein, and I believe Einstein was not of this earth. He was at least 300 years ahead of everyone else. There is no explaining that brilliance, except to say he was from another world. I am not the first one, nor will I be the last one, to make that supposition."

The last Great Genius before Einstein was Sir Isaac Newton. Although my sister proved you could negate gravities hold on a 'mass,' you can't negate it on a planet. The work he did in the late sixteen hundreds until his death in the seventeen twenties still hold true today. The comets he tracked still pass us by exactly as he predicted.

Three Hundred years before Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus studied the nighttime sky using a telescope of his own design. His 'Heliocentric'(The Sun is the center of the universe) got him excommunicated from the Catholic Church because it was 'Heresy.' He discovered Trigonometry, and other mathematic formulas that are still used today.

Do you notice these Mega-Geniuses show up every three hundred years. I find it an uncanny coincidence, and I do not believe in coincidences."

"Do you always glow when you talk about science?"

"I didn't know I was glowing, but I know I always get excited when I talk about it. It's an awesome feeling, when you can touch the future with your mind.

You must have had that same feeling as you were building your business empire Mister Schneider."

"Yes I did. The only time I glowed brighter was when I found Payne. She was as naked as the day she was born, and I said the same words to her that you said to Zoie. 'My God are you beautiful.' That's when we both knew you two were going to be trouble."

"Why were you naked mom?"

"Do you see what you started Dycke? Why can't keep your mouth shut."

"It was your mother's doing. She set me up."

"Don't you two change the subject; why were you naked mom?"

"It was your father's fault."

"It was not, it was your uncle's fault."

"After all this time, you two can't agree on whose fault it was?"

Dycke said, "Zoie, it was my eighteenth birthday party. My parents invited all their friends to our house for the inside party. I invited the few friends I had for the teenage party that was being held outside. One of the people that came was your Uncle Steve. That year, at the State Track and Field Finals, I beat him in all three of our 'head to head' races. We were not what you would call 'FRIENDS' back then. He came over to me and asked what college I was going to attend. I told him I had not committed to any college yet. I asked him why he wanted to know.

He said, "I don't want to go to the same college you do. I want to run against you for the next four years, and run you into the dust. You only beat me in the mile by 1.3 seconds. I can pick that up in a heartbeat."

I insulted him by saying, "I hate to burst your bubble Steve, but I was coasting from the three-quarter mile mark." As soon as I said it, I took off running, because I knew what his reaction would be. He came after me with a vengeance. As I was turning the corner around the pool I saw this young woman sitting there reading. I slowed down to avoid hitting her, but Steve did not. He hit me, I hit her, and the three of us went into the pool.

The screaming and yelling that went on was epic. The young woman kept cursing at Steve, and tried to kill me every time I went to help her. Our parents got us out of the pool, separated us, and took the young woman away. We changed into dry clothes, and underwent an interrogation by our fathers.

When it was over, I asked if I could apologize to the young woman, I knocked into the pool. I was told it was not a good idea, because if Steve went into the room his head would come out first. Your grandmother said, "I think it's a wonderful idea."

I walked up the stairs, into my parent's bedroom, and your mother walked out of the bathroom completely, gorgeously naked, drying her hair. I said those magic words, and a few minutes later, we were holding each other and kissing. That's how I saw your mother naked."

"What was so terrible about that story mother? Why would you try to hide that from me?"

"Have you ever seen pictures of me before I was eighteen years old?"

"No mother, I never have."

"There is a reason for that. A few days after Steve and I were born, we were on our way home from the hospital, when we were hit by a vehicle trying to escape from the police. My face was smashed to a pulp. For the next eighteen years and numerous operations, I was called every vile name you can imagine. I still looked that way the day your father saw me. He wasn't reviled by the way I looked. He said, "My God are you beautiful." I knew there had to be someone else in the room, because he couldn't be talking to me. I asked him if he was blind. He said no. I asked him if he looked at my face. He told me he was looking at it. I wanted to know what was wrong with him, but I didn't see anything wrong with him. He told me he wanted to say he was sorry for knocking me into the pool and he told me how it happened.

Somehow, during our conversation, the towel I held in front of me moved down to my side, and I was standing there naked. Your dad walked over, took the towel out of my hand, and wrapped it around my body, covering me completely. We began kissing and needless to say, to make that perfect moment disappear, my mother opened the door, and asked me if I want my clothes. What was I going to say, "No."

It was the first kiss for both of us. The next day we did a lot more than kiss, but our clothes stayed on.

My face looked like chopped meat, run through a cheese grater that was left out in the sun to dry, but your father still loved me. We knew one day the doctors would be able to do something with my face, but the outcome was never a sure thing. When I went to Duke to have it done the only sane person there was your father. He drove me crazy, but that was part of his plan. If I couldn't think of the operation, I couldn't get nervous. He would show up at the hospital in the early morning hours, and do very nasty things to me. I would wake up in the morning and not remember if it was a dream or if it was the real thing. I would wake up perfectly clean, my underwear would be on properly, and the hospital nightgown would be tied just the way I tied it the night before.

One particular day he even walked in with my father and his side. I knew he was with me the night before, I just knew it. My father said it was not possible. He just met Dycke at the airport in his new airplane. I was sure I was going crazy.

A little while later, when my father left the room, Dycke gave me the eleven-carat diamond ring I have. It proved to me that he just got back like he said. I screamed and yelled after I saw the ring, my parents came in to see what was going on, and I showed them the ring.

When my parents went to lunch, your father asked me if I enjoyed my early morning entertainment.

I yelled, "I knew it wasn't a dream, I knew it."

The morning of the operation, I woke up when the nurses turned on the lights. He was already in the room holding my hand. The nurses had been warned not to say a word. Your father got his inheritance, and gave the hospital a $5 million donation. As far as their administrator was concerned, your father walked on water.

My operation went well, but not well enough. Every time I moved my mouth, my eyelids, smiled or laughed, the newly attached skin was tearing away from the areas they were supposed to remain attached to. This was causing me a great deal of pain.

My plastic surgeon came up with two ideas: they could re-do the surgery with no guarantee it would be any better; or they could put me to sleep for a month. Your father told Doctor Sage Wolf before he gave me the second option to stand behind my father. He would be safer there. He was right. If it was not nailed down, and was within my reach, I threw it in the direction of the doctor.

He started leaving the room and I asked him where he was going. He said, "You made your decision, I'm going to schedule surgery for the day after tomorrow.

"I told him I had not made a decision."

"It sure looked like it to me. I'm amazed your father is still standing."

He told me about going to sleep for a month. He said what the benefits would be, and what the possible down side was. He also said it was not covered by insurance. Your father said don't worry about the money, all the bills will go to him. It cost your father $500,000.00 over and above what the insurance company paid to have my face look as it does now."

"Nice work dad, mom looks like Uncle Steve."

"Very good Zoie, when we saw the glass head Doctor Sage Wolf brought into the room, we said the same thing. They are twins you know."

"Really, I thought mom was older."

Payne took off her shoe and threw it at her daughter. "You little witch I'll get you for that one."

"Are you coming to the beach with us tomorrow?"

"No, I don't want to inhibit you two. Go out and have some fun."

Gordon asked, "Where is that nude beach Zoie?"

He didn't see Payne's other shoe coming at him. It found its mark in the center of his chest.

"He is kidding isn't he Dycke?"

"He's in love with our daughter dear. You never thought it would happen. I never thought it would happen. I don't believe God ever thought it would happen; but it happened. It will take us a while to figure out what is truth and what is fiction."

"Why don't I find that answer comforting?"

"For the same reason I didn't find any comforting in saying it."

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

"We're home, have you ever seen the building this high?"

"Our home in Idaho Springs is higher."

"What are you talking about Gordon? Idaho Springs sounds like a two horse town, with one buggy."

"You're wrong; we even have a traffic light. This is a residential building, approximately 28 to 30 years old. It's well maintained and is approximately fifteen feet above sea level. The maximum height of this building is 320 feet above sea level.

Our home in Idaho Springs is 13,177 feet above sea level. You lose."

Zoe pounded him on his left shoulder. "That's not what I meant."

"It is what you said."

"I know what I said but it wasn't what I meant."

"The next time you say something, say what you mean."

Zoe glared at him. Her father used the same words to her when she lost a bet with him.

Gordon walked up to her and put his nose against hers.

"Repeat these words after me: I love you."

"I love you."

"Zoie try to follow instructions. Let's try this again."

"Repeat these words after me: I love you."

"I love you."

Dycke and Payne were standing by the entrance to the building listening to the two kids trying to hold in their laughter.

"It's no wonder your father keeps beating you on bets. I'm one foot away from you and you can't do what I ask you to do. I'll try this one more time, then we will go upstairs and I'll put it in writing for you."