And Ty agreed.
That was also annoying.
Alice was fine with him, but then she was used to cocky and annoying pilots from her time at Edwards Air Force Base.
When Mel had still been making “Make Mel Cry Uncle,” episodes, she’d met a lot of annoying and cocky men, but they’d been a different cocky and annoying.She mentally paused to consider that statement and why it was true.The thing was, she finally decided, where someone came from in time, it did add different nuances to their cocky and annoying.And there was definitely a different level and type to the risk-taking that pilots from the times that Jack and Connor came from.
As near as she could tell, the words “aviation” and “safety” had never been said at the same time by either man.
Jack had pointed out her crazy stunts while filming “Make Mel Cry Uncle,” but her crazy’d had a safety net of sorts.
Jack had snorted at this but he hadn’t pointed out the obvious.That safe and crazy were uneasy together.
Connor finished his report, his gaze sliding to Jack.So they’d been talking.Smoothly Jack took over.
“Our next test will be into the future,” Jack said.
No one looked surprised, not even Alice.Of course, she had already made a leap into the future.She was probably wondering what was the big deal.
“Are you hoping ourRaywon’t stick out in the future,” Connor asked, “because we don’t really know that, do we?They could think it was some kind of alien incursion or something.”
Mel gave a half smile.Where he came from the alien conspiracy theories were really ramping up…
Mel felt her thoughts stall into slow motion.Jack opened his mouth to respond and stopped.
Alien incursion?
Both Ty and Alice looked puzzled, then the light dawned in their eyes, too.
“Alien incursions,” Mel said.“We should look into those.”
It was a week later and Jack was out by the hangar waiting for Con to complete his trip into the future.Mel wasn’t too worried, but it was hard not to be a bit worried.
It was kind of annoying that it felt weird to have Con gone for a week instead of randomly popping up in the past.It was a good thing that Alice had some information on their alien incursions search to distract her.
Alice had spent the curiously long week doing research based on the premise that the rogue time travelers were using possible alien incursions to cover their travels.Or they were the alien incursions?
Mel was definitely conflicted on the issue of what was out there.If some super intelligent alien race did make it here they’d probably think, “you all are way too much work.”
“The opposition have to be coming back from the future,” Mel murmured, as she waited for Alice to finish setting up her presentation.It’s what they’d been doing.Jumping into the past and kicking over a few rocks, getting shot at and almost wiped out of existence.A normal day at the office, in fact.
It was Jack who started it—at least their part in it.
He’d felt guilty that his friend, Rick, had died saving his life.Jack’d had a theory of how to travel back in time, even when he was flying bombers in World War II.
He’d named his B-17The Time Machineand instead of a sexy babe painted on the side, he’d had a vortex that everyone thought was a tornado.
He hadn’t been entirely clear on how it all began, but somehow he’d managed to send Mel back in time, where she’d messed up the timeline very thoroughly and had needed to redo the redo.
She didn’t remember the first trip to the past, because, well, Jack had explained it.She still didn’t understand it.Something about it happening before or after the trip she remembered?Jack hadn’t been kidding when he told her that time was complicated.
Mostly, she was glad to have met Jack, the young pilot and somehow bring him back to the future with her.If it had caused ripples in time, well, they didn’t know what or how.
Somehow Jack’s fix-it time travel had turned into research to find out how who else was messing with time.She’d brought back proof of that tampering with her, but it didn’t tell them who or where the other time traveler or travelers came from.
It was while trying to track an anomaly in time that Ty had met Alice and they’d both made it back to the future.
There were a lot of technical things that had happened, but she and Jack had almost been wiped out by the other time travelers—or by time itself—before it all got sorted out.
