Boom Goes the Dynamite!

An Excerpt from The 25^th Hour (Book One in The Adventures of Mackenzie Mortimer):

The frantic blasts of the car horn and the noise of screeching tires were replaced by the eerie calm and silence of Q-Time. Mackenzie tumbled from his bicycle, landing unharmed on the asphalt road. “Phew! That was close. I could have been killed.”

“Yes, you could have. You should be more careful at intersections.”

“Usually, I am,” Mackenzie explained. “But I was rushing because…” He stopped when he realized he was still in Q-Time. Whenever he was in Q-Time, Mackenzie had felt like the last boy on Earth, alone after the desolation of a neutron bomb or some natural disaster had wiped out all other life on Earth. It was always eerily silent in Q-Time. For him to hear another person or object, it would have to be moving at the same vibrational frequency he was. He spun in the direction of the voice, realizing if he were encountering another person in Q-Time, it could only be the mysterious time traveler. He wondered if the cloaked figure before him was his future self, his grandfather, or his father? Then, he recalled the time bomb and realized the mysterious stranger might mean him harm. Afraid the man might vanish before he could find out, Mackenzie twisted the larger watch stem all the way to the right. He had read enough in his grandfather’s journals to theorize by expanding his chronal energy field to the maximum to encompass both himself and the time traveler, he could trap the traveler in the field. “Who are you?” Mackenzie demanded to know. He heard a subdued rumbling in the distance.

The figure stepped closer and lifted his hood, revealing a young man in his early 30s. “What have you done?”

“I’ve expanded the chronal energy field as far as it will go. If I’m right, it’ll counter your own field and trap you in Q-Time with me until I get some answers.” What had begun as quiet rumbling grew tonitruous in the usually silent realm of Q-Time. Mackenzie felt the air vibrate and the ground quake. “Are you the same time traveler who gave me the key? He was ancient and you’re young. Either you’re someone else or you haven’t given me the key yet, in your timeline. Which is it? Who are you?”

“Don’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it?” The traveler’s voice betrayed his panic. “You don’t know what you’re playing with… the forces you’ve unleashed. Keep this up much longer and you’ll rip the fabric of Q-Time apart. You’ll destroy us and everything else.”

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Time is running out… fortunately, Mackenzie Mortimer has a few more minutes than anyone else!