Universe by Mistake chronicles the adventures of Engineering Physicist, Doctor Phillip Secress, who boards a plane in San Francisco bound for Washington, D.C. He wakes up from an inflight nap on another airplane bound for Queen Victoria International Airport in New York, the capital of The Dominion of America, one of five separate nations occupying what is the United States of America in his timeline. In his own universe, Secress is working on a time travel project for the Federal Government. While in this alternate New York, he is in the charge of Federal Agent, Helen Allen. After two weeks, The Dominion devises a plan to send him back to his own reality. The plan succeeds but Secress wants to return to that other world -- and to Miss Allen. He utilizes the government project he is working on to send himself back to the early morning hours of August 31, 1776 where he unwillingly kills George Washington and creates the new version of history. Secress re-emerges in the other New York, re-connects with Helen Allen, and begins a new life. The ending is summed up in the last word of the story: “OOPS!” Lost in the Desert recounts what happens to Captain Dan Shapiro, an Israeli Air Force pilot, who bails out of his damaged jet fighter over the Sinai desert on the first day of the 1967 Six Day War. Instead of being captured by some of the 100,000 Egyptian soldiers occupying the Sinai on that day, he lands on the empty desert floor with a sprained ankle. He takes shelter in a cave and is soon joined by a Bedouin family -- a man, a woman, and an infant. The man and the baby are sick and Shapiro treats them with some antibiotics he carries with him in his survival kit. During the course of their stay he protects the family from three horsemen by firing a pistol shot wounding one of the attackers and frightening them off. On the third day he crawls to the top of the incline in which the cave is set and sees the Israeli Army pouring across the desert. He is rescued but the Bedouin family mysteriously vanishes.

The Love U-Boat is the story of Bruce Upton Jr., the useless son of a Seattle used car mogul, and his ocean going yacht trip around the tip of South America with his “paid companion”, Tiffany Chardonnay, who loathes him. The yacht is suddenly caught up by a surfacing submarine. The yacht is damaged beyond repair and Upton, Chardonnay, and the yacht’s crew become captives. The leader of the submariners has plans for Upton and Chardonnay once they reach Argentina where Upton will become wrongly famous.

Conversation with the Future tells the story of rising star Seattle Attorney, Denny Collins, who loses his position and the chance for a partnership in the prestigious Law Offices of Marshall Adams and West over some missing case notes. When he calls home that morning, he himself answers the phone at the other end. Denny Number Two is speaking from one month in the future and assures Denny Number One that all will be well. This prediction proves true over the next couple of days. Denny is excited about his new job and its location. But the timing could not be worse.

In The Commuter, Seattle dentist, Dr. Jason Anselm shows up for work one morning at the practice he shares with two other dentists but no one on the staff recognizes him and he is thrown out by his supposed partners. Upon investigation, Anselm learns that he is a private investigator with an office in a seedier section of downtown Seattle. Anselm finds the office and also finds that his secretary is having an affair with him. Anselm realizes that something is very wrong especially since he commutes to Seattle by way of The Undersound, a train running underneath Puget Sound between Bremerton and Seattle that does not exist in this world. He returns by ferry to Bremerton, finds himself in his own universe, picks up his car, and drives to his Port Orchard home where he finds his wife, Ginny, on the telephone with what sounds like a boyfriend. In the ensuing argument Anselm pushes Ginny away from him and she falls and hits her head causing her death. Anselm returns to Seattle on the Undersound and gets off at the Undersound station which disappears after he exits the terminal. He later makes another trip back to Bremerton and learns that the other Jason Anselm has been arrested for Ginny’s murder. Anselm takes refuge back in alternate Seattle where he, or rather his alternate ego, was working on the case of an elderly woman with a toy boy husband whom she thinks is cheating on her. The story ends with a polar opposite murder.

In The Madela Effect, Seattle science fiction writer, Ken Enslow, is visited by Gary Bowman, a time traveler from Seattle in the year 2066. Bowman tells Enslow that some friends of his (Enslow’s) are going to die in a plane crash in two days and that their son, who was not on the plane, must be on it. Bowman takes Enslow on a brief visit to the Seattle of 2066 and, upon his return to the present, Enslow reluctantly agrees that the 14 year-old boy must be on the plane. He visits the family and talks the boy into going along. On the day of the crash, Bowman shows up at Enslow’s house and frantically explains that they have to keep the boy off the plane. They try to intercept the family at the airport but are too late. They arrive just as the plane is taking off. Miraculously, the boy survives the crash. Bowman’s next visit to Seattle is to kill Enslow to prevent another version of the future from unfolding. He kills Enslow but he doesn’t since careful planning will undo all of these potential futures.

Project Jump was the name of a mid-1950s government project to develop time travel. Frank Emerson hears on the news about a man struck and killed in a downtown Tacoma intersection who had the same name as his paternal grandfather. Emerson finds out that this man had a 1950s driver’s license, 1950s currency, and a TV Guide magazine from July 1956 on his person. This was before Frank Emerson was born. From information on a business card that the deceased man had in his wallet Emerson is able to find the scientist who sent his grandfather forward in time. Emerson convinces the scientist to send him back to 1956 in a duplicate machine. Emerson meets his grandfather but is not able to prevent him from making the fatal trip to 2016 from 1956 -- more than a year before Frank Emerson’s father was born.

A Tour de Force is just that -- a subconscious tour de force by Mike Brands, a Washington State employee living in Tacoma, through several other versions of himself in different realities. Two of the realities bear a close resemblance to his own but in another, his wife and children are fanatical Communists in a Soviet America while in yet another, the nations of California and Texas have allied against The Union and are massing on the Columbia River to invade Western Washington. In the last version his family dynamic is a little different but earth is facing an invasion from Mars.

Lunch Counter Encounter is an encounter by Tacoma private detective, Sam Delaney, who is hired by Quantum Physicist, Dr. Levi Bernstein to go back to the year 1958 and see if he can make a slight alteration in history so Dr. Bernstein can track the results of that alteration. Dr. Bernstein sends Delaney to a downtown Tacoma café that catered mostly to department store workers. Delaney engages Elmo Renner, a warehouseman from one of these stores, in conversation keeping him there for an extra half hour or so beyond the time he would have originally returned to work. During their conversation, a robber enters the café in a holdup attempt. Renner intervenes but gets killed. This makes a major change in Sam Delaney’s life in 2016 but that will change in more ways than one after Delaney persuades Dr. Bernstein to send him back to 1958 to thwart the holdup and save Renner’s life.

In all of my anthologies I have named many of the characters after people I have known. In Project Jump, I go one step further using my current address as well as one from my grade school years. The Landlord and next door neighbor are both named after the real landlord and next door neighbor from that time. The landlord’s daughter also makes a cameo appearance in the story. Lunch Counter Encounter is set in the R&B Café that was located in downtown Tacoma and was owned by my mother and her business partner, Ruth Evans, from 1956-60. Both Mom and Ruth are featured in the story.

Enjoy these stories. More are forthcoming.