Twice Upon A Time (The Wells Retrieval Project Report Book 1)

“We are a research expedition from your future. We would like to understand your society better, your culture. We would like to ask you some questions, have you participate in some tests. We are asking you to help us.”
Professor E.H. Engals, Ph.D., Chief Investigator

3006
Nicholas Hayne is a genetically engineered mathematical prodigy on the faculty of the New Stanford University. When he discovers a mathematical system that can direct an object into another dimension and bring it out wherever and whenever he specifies, Aaron Spielberg, the university president, knows it is too big for the university to control. He negotiates a deal with the North American Council of Governments to give them authority over dimensional travel development. In exchange, New Stanford will be the first to utilize the new technology. Professor E. Howard Engals will direct a research expedition 1000 years into the past.
Four faculty members are selected for the Wells Retrieval Project. Dr. Engals is a sociologist and historian, Dr. Andrew Byron Schneideman is a physician and geneticist, Dr. Rachel Taylor is a neuropsychologist, and Dr. Nicholas Hayne, the physicist who developed the ships navigational guidance system. Colonel Glen Usaki will serve as the pilot and security officer. Everyone assumes he is a spy for the Alliance Military.
Brilliant professionals, massive government funding, an expedition as carefully planned as any in history, how could it fall apart so completely in just days?

2006

The genetic machinations that allow Hayne to conceptualize esoteric dimensional structures have left him psychologically impaired. Whether due to some pre-existing condition, or the stress of the transport, or some flaw in the transport process itself that scrambled his brain, but Nicholas Hayne has changed. Always arrogant and demanding, he is now as mad as a hatter.
Jacob Layton is a marathoner. On June 4, 2006, while running on the slopes of the Organ Mountains in southern New Mexico, he becomes the first of only four human subject recruited for the WRP research. Their story of time travel is crazy, of course, but when he and the others sees their flying disks and a house sized ship that floats in the air with no visible support, they know they are is in for something completely different.

1880

They intend to transport the subjects back to the date and time of their recruitment. But when they move Layton back to his capture date and leave him on the mountain slope, he discovers that the roads and buildings have disappeared. The ship has been sabotaged, they are all stranded in 1880.

This is the epic adventure of four ill-prepared academic researchers, one professional soldier with a personal agenda, and four random subjects recruited in 2006, as they travel the wild southwestern landscape in 1880. It’s a stirring time in New Mexico history; the Lincoln County wars, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, to the west, Geronimo and the Apachers. The time travelers are held together by a vague hope that they may be able to re-power their ship and get back to their own time. They just have to pull the right element from the earth of central New Mexico. But they are not part of the same team. Can they overcome their distrust and suspicion and work together to survive? Or are they right to be suspicious? Are some members of their group willing to sacrifice the rest for their own ends?
This isa fast-paced thriller about a desperate run across the desert and mountains of southern New Mexico, and about the courage to persevere, no matter what it takes.
Twice Upon A Time is novel, approximately 94,000 words, the print edition is approximately 300 pages. This is the first of a two book set. Both are complete and available through Amazon and Kindle.