Mr. Lincoln and Me

            I’m a historian.  It’s been my life’s work.  But few historians have had the advantage that I have.  My name is Franklin Little.  Twenty years ago I had the good fortune to become acquainted with a man by the name of Robert Reed.  Robert…Bobby, as I call him…is a computer techno-wiz.  And so, between his knowledge of electronics and static polymer materials, and my grasp of quantum physics, (it was my minor in college) we were able to build any historian’s wildest dream.  We created a means of traveling through time. 

            It sounds outrageous, I know, but we did it.  Mostly, the theory was mine, but Bobby was really the one who put it all together and made it work.  We keep it pretty much under wraps.  We don’t want Uncle Sam to know what we’re doing.  We’re sure that if the government finds out what we’re up to they would either step in and stop us or take it all away and keep it for themselves.

            It’s a pretty nice system really.  We installed all the computers and equipment inside a large motor home.  We can drive to whatever place in the US that we want to study and make the trip from there; and since my specialty is American History, it works out pretty well.

            You would think that we had the world by the tail.  And for the most part things have gone pretty well for us.  I say for the most part because there can always be a few glitches.  Nothing is perfect.

            I’ll never forget the day that we first experienced one of those so-called glitches.  And to tell you the truth, it was a big one.

A Little Too Cocky

            My dad always told me that too much success, too fast, can make a man too sure of himself.  I didn’t know it, but I was about to find out first hand what he meant.  I had made at least four trips already.  My last one was to Sutter’s Mill in 1848 to witness the discovery of gold in California.  Everything had gone according to plan and I got some great pictures, (with a tiny camera in the button of my coat); one of Bobby’s technical marvels.  I was sure that we had this time travel thing down pat.  So I decided to go for the big one.  We drove from Ohio to the outskirts of Washington DC, my heart intent on meeting my all time favorite heroic figure in American History; Abraham Lincoln.  We didn’t want to go into the city itself because we were concerned about all the anti-terrorist security devices that might detect our traveling laboratory.