Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade Read online

  Paradox:

  On the Sharp Edge of the Blade

  E. S. Martell, Ph.D.

  Copyright © 2016 Eric S. Martell

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my readers. Each time you read one of my books, I'm thankful and happy that you're finding time in your life for my stories. Thank you!

  SOMETIMES A PARADOX IN TIME CAN BE A GOOD THING

  Logan Walker needs to graduate from college in four years in order to gain his inheritance. The problem is that he's a video game playing slacker. His attempt to earn enough credit hours takes a nasty wrong turn, resulting in a discovery that may cause him to be expelled from school.

  His life becomes even more complex and hazardous when he finds he's somehow accidentally traveled in time back to the Pleistocene. Once there, he discovers he must adapt to a fierce world that allows no replays.

  His survival hinges on the goodwill of a mysterious Clovis culture girl with problems of her own. Together the two encounter enemy tribesmen, fierce animals, and war while stumbling into an unexpected relationship.

  Will they survive attacks from warriors, and animals? Will Logan win out over his modern adversaries? Will the two defeat their most powerful enemy: Time itself?

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  SOMETIMES A PARADOX IN TIME CAN BE A GOOD THING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A SPECIAL THANKS

  Chapter 1: NERDS OF A FEATHER

  Chapter 2: TO DIG OR NOT TO DIG

  Chapter 3: SAND, DUST, AND MUCK

  Chapter 4: A REVELATION

  Chapter 5: DISCOVERY AND TROUBLE

  Chapter 6: A HOPELESS MESS

  Chapter 7: HIGH AND FAR AWAY

  Chapter 8: ADAPTATION

  Chapter 9: DISCOVERY

  Chapter 10: A MEETING AND A KILLING

  Chapter 11: SERENSAA

  Chapter 12: PURSUIT

  Chapter 13: MAMMOTHS

  Chapter 14: THE FOREST

  Chapter 15: THE SAND HILLS

  Chapter 16: SEPARATED

  Chapter 17: WESTWARD ALONE

  Chapter 18: A FOX

  Chapter 19: CRYSTAL RIVER

  Chapter 20: ATTACK

  Chapter 21: ALONE, AGAIN

  Chapter 21: BACK

  Chapter 22: ETHICAL BEHAVIOR

  Chapter 23: MONEY CAN'T BUY YOU LOVE

  Chapter 24: AGAIN, THE FOX

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BLOG INFORMATION

  HEART OF FIRE TIME OF ICE

  CAN A MODERN WOMAN LEARN TO SURVIVE IN THE ICE-AGE?

  Chapter 1 – KATHLEEN: A CHILLY MORNING

  Chapter 2 – SUCCESS IN THE LAB

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I'd like to give thanks to Fred Alan Wolf whose ideas on time-travel influenced the story. I'd also like to thank the American Museum of Natural History for stimulating my childhood interest in prehistoric fauna. Finally, I'm grateful to my wife, Sally, who has been very supportive of my writing.

  A SPECIAL THANKS

  My special thanks to Aleksandra Klepacka for her wonderful cover art. She is talented and exceptionally good at understanding what the story demands in terms of cover art. Her cover illustration compliments the story quite nicely.

  Grateful thanks also goes to Adriana D’Apolito and 3P Editing for her many invaluable suggestions. Her careful work greatly increased the readability of the manuscript.

  Chapter 1: NERDS OF A FEATHER

  The whip of his round kick made the fabric of his sweaty uniform crack, but despite the speed, his opponent blocked and redirected the force upwards, leaving him off balance and vulnerable to a leg sweep. He landed on his back with a “whoof”. His vision flashed with the impact, then cleared in time to see the instructor hold up his hand, awarding a point to the brown-belt with whom he was sparring.

  Logan rolled over, climbed slowly to his feet, and looked at his opponent again. He felt his face flush. His opponent just had to be Mandi. She was cute and he wanted to impress her. Falling flat on his back didn't cut it. She flashed him a mocking grin, as she looked back. He thought to himself, “That really hurt. It's true, Walker, you are nothing but a loser wimp.”

  His instructor looked at him closely. “That's enough Walker. Go to the other end of the gym and work on your forms.” Then turning to the other yellow belts, he selected another victim, pointing at a wide-eyed student as he said, “Next.”

  Logan slowly walked to an open space. He initially thought he liked Tae-kwon-do, but he was getting tired of being shown up by a good-looking girl who he would like to ask out if he could get up the courage. Of course, she was a couple of levels above him, but he outweighed her by at least forty pounds. The only way she'd go out with him was if she found out about how much he stood to inherit and that seemed too much like trying to buy her interest. That kind of relationship definitely wasn't what he wanted.

  He'd signed up for the class and it had gone well for a time, but his lack of motivation made it easy not to practice and now that he was expected to perform at a higher level, he was losing interest. He'd told his friends that martial arts would make him better at the three dimensional shooter video games that they played most of the time. They had laughed and made fun of him, then returned to their almost continual game playing.

  Three game consoles were set up in the apartment. At least one was always on, making it difficult for any of his roommates to study. They were all college students, but their poor grades made it a recurring question if they'd be around to enroll for the next session. His roommates depended on their parents to provide living expenses, but to date none of them had demonstrated anything near the GPA needed to get any form of scholarship.

  Logan Walker didn't worry about funds; he had an adequate amount of money needed to finish his college degree. He just didn't have much time left. He'd gone through three years of schooling and the most noticeable advancement he'd made was in his ability to reach level 41 of Alien Slayers. He'd started playing it the first month after moving into his apartment and had progressed steadily, but no one was offering him a grade or credit towards graduation for his game-playing prowess.

  The money left to him by his grandfather covered his living expenses and would continue for another year. After that, if he hadn't graduated, he'd have to start working for a living. The will provided for exactly four years of expenses and then he had to have a degree. If not, the $200 million and change would go to charity.

  Either he got his college degree and inherited the money, or, if he didn't get it in the specified four years, he'd be on his own resources. He had no illusions on that score. He would have to get a job stocking shelves or working as a bus boy. He had absolutely no marketable skills, unless someone was to offer a job playing Alien Slayers.

  He'd known about the terms of the will for several years, but had never worried about it. Now that his graduating on time had become an issue, he'd decided that he needed to speak to the trustee, his grandfather's attorney, Mark Schmitzke. Maybe Schmitzke could somehow find some wiggle room for him. If he could just get another six months...

  Logan desultorily worked through the form he had to know in order to test for his next belt. It had several moves requiring both strength and balance that he found difficult. He had fairly good balance, but first-person shooter games didn't involve much movement, besides the use of his fingers. His cardio was poor and it only took a couple of repetitions
of the forty-move form to reduce him to a limp, sweating muffin.

  After the students were dismissed, he showered, and started for home. Randy, Ed, and Steve were seated in front of the TV, as usual, so deep in a game that they barely acknowledged his arrival. Eddie raised his head and said, “Hey, guys, Walker the Texas Ranger just showed. Hey, Walker, why don't you call for a pizza? I'm hungry.”

  Logan rather grudgingly complied. The way he figured it, the pizza would arrive just in time for him to grab a couple of slices before he had to head out to his Archaeology-303 class. He'd taken a very wide range of subjects during his first and second years of study.

  First, he'd thought that he was interested in philosophy. That field had been around so long that, surely, the philosophers knew what made humans tick. It didn't take too long before he dismissed that notion. Most of the reading assignments were difficult and what he could understand of them seemed to him to be some form of advanced navel-gazing.

  Then he happened upon psychology. That was a subject he thought might be interesting. The psychologists claimed to be making huge gains in the understanding of how the human mind works. A couple of classes were enough to convince Logan that psychologists were full of it. Most of the studies were contrived investigations that required heavy statistical manipulation in order to show any valid results. He wasn't a strong mathematician and had difficulty with the statistics that were used.

  Finally, he'd settled on archaeology. It was mildly interesting and he wasn't worried about getting a job in the field after graduating. There weren't any jobs other than teaching ones and he wasn't enthusiastic about teaching for a career. What could be more boring than teaching a bunch of boneheads like himself day after day?

  Anyway, archaeology was fairly easy for him. He had a good memory and could regurgitate a lot of material after reading it once. In between game playing, he managed to keep his grades at about a C-minus average. That would be good enough to graduate – he hoped.

  Unfortunately, it looked like he might be four credits short of the minimum required to graduate by his next spring deadline. Unless he got lucky, there was no way he could take the remaining required courses, including one watered-down math class, some kind of crazy requirement for sensitivity training – the university's administration was convinced that they could advance civilization by training their male students to be more aware of their privileged status – and the remaining sixteen hours of archaeology that he needed.

  He hoped to get into an advanced self-directed study seminar for the summer. That would be three hours, and then if he took a five-hour course, and three courses of three credits each, he'd be there. The five-hour course was something of a problem – it always filled up rapidly during enrollment. With his last name being nearly at the end of the alphabet, his assigned enrollment period would probably mean that the class would be filled by the time he showed up.

  “ he thought, He spent some time fantasizing that the department would make an exception and let him graduate with one less than the minimum number of hours, but then common sense prevailed. He was certain such a lucky occurrence wouldn't happen. Well,” “something will show up. After all, there's the summer session and both semesters next year before I need the degree.”

  The pizza delivery guy was late and gave a lame excuse blaming his phone's GPS. Logan threw a couple of twenties at the guy, opened one of the boxes and grabbed two slices, then ran out, heading for class.

  A couple of minutes later, he came back in, grabbed the textbook that he'd forgotten, argued with Eddie over the last slice of pizza, then left again. He was still hungry, and now he was angry with Eddie.

  “ he told himself with considerable self pity. People always seem to take advantage of me,”

  The first two slices hadn't been enough when he wolfed them and Eddie had spat on the last one to keep him from taking it when he came back. He sidetracked through the student union building to grab a bag of peanuts from a vending machine.

  The machine refused to give him change, causing him to spend a couple of moments shaking it and telling it what he thought of its bad character. He looked away, trying to act as if he hadn't been the one swearing, when two girls walked by. Things hadn't been going well. It'd been a crummy day, all told. He waited for the girls to leave, but then he remembered his class and strode off.

  There was a crowd of students exiting from the building and it took him extra time to thread through them. The end result was he ended up late.

  Professor Berensten was a bit of a martinet and, of course, she had to force him to explain his tardiness in front of the snickering class. It took him the next fifteen minutes to quit stewing about it enough to start taking usable notes. He was still scribbling the assignment for the next class when the rest of the students had exited.

  He tried to remember the topic at the first of the class, writing down what he could. When he lifted his head, Berensten was standing by his desk, frowning.

  “Okay, Mr. Walker, what are you doing now?” she asked in a kindly voice. He suddenly remembered that she was the primary reason he had become interested in archaeology. She not only was a good teacher, she had taken enough of an interest in him that she was now his adviser. She expected him to do well and he somehow didn't want to disappoint her.

  “Uh, I'm just, uh, trying to remember what you were talking about at the beginning of class. I didn't take very good notes,” he answered.

  She sighed, “Logan, that's your problem. You don't take anything seriously. As your faculty adviser, I have access to your records. It so happens that I reviewed them this morning for a special reason. They aren't very impressive. You're barely getting passing grades, but it looks like you might manage to graduate in a couple more years.”

  Logan drew a deep breath. He might as well broach the subject of graduating next year now. She'd been helpful in planning his course schedules the last couple of times he had met with her in her office. Maybe this time, she'd have another useful suggestion.

  He let out the breath and started, “Dr. Berensten, I know my grades aren't very good, but I just have to figure out a way to graduate by next spring. It's very important to me.”

  She shook her short, gray hair, negatively. “I don't see how you're going to manage. You currently need sixteen more hours in your major field. There's really not enough time, unless you get in a lot of hours this summer – ” She paused, then added, “And pass them. Something that I'm pretty sure you are capable of doing, but your past performance doesn't show that you're very motivated.”

  He didn't want to bring up the inheritance issue with her. It wouldn't help and would probably make her less sympathetic. He stretched the truth a little in his answer. “It's for my grandfather. He'd be very disappointed if it takes me more than four years to graduate.”

  It was her turn to sigh, then she smiled – something that made her look younger. She lifted a sheaf of papers that she had in her left hand.

  “Here. Fill these out. I don't want to be responsible for disappointing your grandfather. This is an application for you to go on a dig for the first summer session. If your work is satisfactory to the dig supervisor, you'll get five hours of credit. Then, if you apply yourself, you just might make that next spring deadline you've got,” she said.

  She paused, and then added, “The dig positions were all filled and there's a long waiting list, but I think I can get you in to a slot that unexpectedly opened up.”

  He held out his hand for the papers. “Uh, when does it start?” he asked.

  She said, “The Monday after finals week.”

  He grimaced. He'd have no time off. His finals were next Tuesday and Friday. The dig would start on the Monday after that. Ugh! After a little thought, the desirability of her solution sank in. He'd get to be outdoors tanning. How hard could a dig be anyway? Then something occurred to him, “Uh, where is the dig going to be, Dr. Berensten?”

  She had already turned and started to pick up her lecture n
otes, but she paused, glancing back at him. “Oh, don't worry about travel. It's right here in the state. Just over in the Tampa Bay area. A short distance from here. You do have an automobile, don't you?”

  He had an old motorcycle. It wasn't very reliable, but it usually got him from the university over to Ormond Beach, where his dad lived, whenever he wanted a depressing experience. His parents had divorced and then his mom had died. His dad wasn't much help and hadn't played a major role in his life. He'd been mostly left alone to make his way through high school, and then college.