He had only been home for a moment when the phone rang.
“Hello? Is this Jack?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“This is David Kramer, from the National Space Exploration Agency.”
“Wait, why are you calling?”
“We want you to test our new prototype spaceship. I looked through your profile with the air force, and you look appropriately qualified.”
“I’m completely willing to do the job. When does it launch?”
“Uh...in three days...sorry about the short notice, we couldn’t reach you.”
Jack considered it. He had been on an assignment, also for the NSEA, for the past few weeks, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that he was getting another one on such short notice. It was a bit unusual for them to be giving him two in such a short period, though. There was something a bit odd about it. He thought for another moment, and then spoke.
“Ok, I’ll do it.”
“Great. We’ll send someone over to pick you up in half an hour. You might want to get packing.”
Jack looked around the room. His suitcase was laid open across the bed, and his clothes were scattered across the floor from unpacking.
“Guess it’s time to clean this up...” He sighed.
Approximately a half hour later, a loud horn sounded from the front of his house. Jack rushed over to the window and looked outside. An army-issue hovertransport bus with the NSEA logo on it stood next to the driveway. Jack ran downstairs with his suitcase, and opened the door. He walked out slowly, and hopefully professionally. The driver leaned out of the window.
“You’re Jack Arrand? The guy Kramer sent me to pick up?”
Jack replied, “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Well get in! You’re wasting time here.”
He climbed into the hovertransport, made his way to the back and sat down. They smoothly accelerated away from his house, and towards NSEA headquarters.
Three days later, Jack stood at the launch platform looking up at the huge spaceship pointed straight up at the sky. His odd feeling had intensified as he traveled to the NSEA headquarters, and then all through the training he had felt strange, almost like deja vu. It all seemed so familiar, somehow. But it was all buried in his memory, and he couldn’t summon the will to dig it out. It wasn’t important enough at the time.
He laughed, and chastised himself for thinking such silly thoughts. The prototype was waiting, and it was his job to fly it into space on its maiden voyage. Jack stepped into the elevator that would take him to the pilot’s deck. On the way, Kramer talked him through the mission.
“This is a time traveling spaceship. You’re going to take it out, away from the plane of the milky way, and then perform a 180 degree turn while accelerating past the speed of light. This will theoretically take you back in time, and in fact it’ll take you back before you launched. The extra time will compensate for the time you need to travel back here. You’ll arrive a few days after you left. Don’t overshoot, because we had a large asteroid crash into the Pacific the day before we called you. It wouldn’t be good if that hit you. But if it does, you can use the escape pod off the control room.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. “I think I’ll be fine.”
The elevator reached the top, and Jack stepped off and into the spaceship. He looked back at Kramer.
