Artisans of Time

My name is Edward Harold Dalton. When this story began, I was fresh out of college and working as a reporter for a southern California based paper called The Gazette. The story you are about to read isn’t about me though, for I do not enter the picture until close to the end of this epic adventure. This story is about seven friends. These seven outstanding individuals, I now have the privilege of calling my friends. Their story begins on Saturday, March 13th 1993. At that time Rick, Erica, Dianna, Mike, Dan, Joe, and Ronda are seven high school students from different backgrounds drawn together by one cause. Before I get into their story let me briefly tell you how I met the first of these seven people, Rick. As part of my daily fitness routine, I run about two miles each morning. One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1996, as I left my apartment, I decided to go a different direction than normal. I turned right onto the side walk running east toward a more difficult course on hilly streets. A mile into my run, I found myself on a side street overlooking the bottom floors of the county psychiatric clinic. At the next corner, I stopped to wait for a car to pass and heard someone calling to me from an open window, “Hey, over here!” I turned in the direction of the sound, and at first only saw the clinic. It was a bleak older building, which was draining the counties funds just to keep it maintained. They had plans to build a new complex, but the ground breaking was on hold until after the next bond election. The ground sloped down rapidly from the sidewalk where I stood on, to the grounds around the building. From my vantage point, I was looking directly at the second floor. There was an open window just to my left, and as my eyes strained to see, I could just make out a man in the window. I walked a few steps back down the side walk to get the glare out of my eyes, and could then see the features of the man a little clearer. He was an older man that I guessed to be in his late 60’s or early 70’s. “Good morning.” I called over to him. His smile was warm and friendly and his eyes twinkled as he spoke, “I don’t have anyone to talk to today young man. If you come listen to my story, you won’t be disappointed. Everyone says I’m a good storyteller.” The older man’s soft tone and bright cheery eyes won me over, so I told him I would come up to see him. It wasn’t easy to get in to see him, but when I finally pulled out my press pass from my wallet they cleared me to move on from the front waiting area to the patient floor. When I left the elevator on the second floor, I was escorted to Rick’s room. The orderly unlocked the door and let me into the room. He said he would return in thirty minutes and then closed and locked the door behind me. At first it left me with an uneasy feeling, but I soon forgot all about where I was at as I listened to Rick’s story. After finally meeting him face to face, Rick started telling me all about his life. His full name was Rick Lloyd Johnson. He could fix anything with gears, and while he was in high school, he had a 1968 Chevy Chevelle SS with a 327 engine that his mom and dad bought him for $500. The car wasn’t running when he first got it, so he spent the next two years fixing it up when he had the money to buy parts. Rick said, ‘he had the car running just in time to take his driving test in it.’ Then the story took a strange turn, and became so farfetched that I figured all I would get out of this visit was a soothed conscience for taking the time to listen to an elderly man whose mind was gone. Rick told me that on March 13th 1993, he was seventeen years old and a high school senior and if that was true, only three years have passed! Rick then told me that even though he is 78 years old now, he was born on Earth in 1975. “No one will believe me of course and I am sure you feel the same way, why even my family refuses to believe me, but I am telling the truth. I tell you what I will do - I will press my finger against the crystal of your watch and you can run the fingerprint. It will belong to a Rick Lloyd Johnson, born March 20th 1975.” As a reporter, I see quite a bit of dead-end stories, and thought about blowing this one off. After going home though, I got to thinking about how sincere he seemed about checking his fingerprint. Then I thought; maybe I could get a good story about him for my column, and it would only be right to tell the public that I checked out the story and ran the fingerprint. So I contacted my friend at the FBI regional office and asked him as a favor to run the print for me. Interestingly enough, the print was matched to a Rick Lloyd Johnson born March 20th 1975! The finger print popped up as a match when it was cross referenced to the missing person’s database. The description in the database matched Rick exactly - except for the age. ‘So now what do I do?’ I asked myself. I figured I would pursue the story until I found a flaw in it, but only when I am off from work. To this day, I haven’t found a flaw in the story. Eventually, I even talked to Rick’s six friends. They were able to shed even more light on the story. So now, what I am bringing to you is a composition of their stories, made into two books that I have called the ‘Rings of the Gods’ and ‘Time, Friend and Foe.’ I have also written a third book that I present as a firsthand account of my story, entitled ‘Genetic Code.’ To start with, here is their story. On Saturday, March 13, 1993 Rick, Ronda, Erica, Dianna, Mike, Dan, and Joe were together on a high school field trip for an advanced Geology class. There were thirty-five students from two classes, two teachers, three parents, and the bus driver, that went on the trip. The plan was to drive a big 550-mile loop over a three-day period, stop at ten rock formations, and pick up samples. Today was the morning of the third day, and everyone was a little uncomfortable and edgy after riding for so many miles on the old bus. Of course the boy’s basket ball team was using the nice bus. We stopped at the next site and everyone got out. There were the usual reminders to stay in pairs as you look for rock samples and the typical safety tips; Make sure you watch out for snakes, be careful to keep a sure footing if you climb on any of the rocks, no horse play, etc., etc. After being in the bus for so long, the seven of us felt like burning up some energy hiking up the slope instead of just walking around close to the rest of the group. So we took off up this steep grade toward this rock outcropping about three hundred yards up the slope. The excitement started when Dianna saw an entrance to a cave just above the rock outcropping. Erica and Mike made it to the opening first. At first glance, it looked as if it were a man made tunnel going right though the top of the mountain and coming out the other side, but there wasn’t any evidence on the rock surface of it being cut or shaped by mining equipment. Since the floor of the cave was visible with our flashlights, we decided it was safe enough - and headed inside. As we went further into the cave, we could see it didn’t go completely through the mountain at all. Instead, something metallic was reflecting the light from the entrance, as well as our flashlight beams, back at us. We kept walking towards the reflection, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Finally, we decided to head back to the bus. Dan figured if we told one of the instructors what we had found that it would peak their curiosity also, and they would want to get out some of their equipment they brought and completely explore the cave. That was all forgotten when we stepped back out of the cave entrance. All of us were in total shock. Finally Dianna muttered in a soft voice ‘Were not in Kansas anymore!’ The terrain was different. When we entered the cave we were on a very small mountain, not much more than a hill, that rose only a few hundred f