Time Tours

Time Tours is a short story written by Matthew Reilly, released online and available to read on his website.

Synopsis

It is January 1st 2006, and at the Time Tours International office in Austin, Texas, a press conference is underway to present the first ever Time Tour, undertaken by six celebrities, including Australian author Mitchell 'Mitch' Raleigh, model Laura, and book reviewer Humbert Hughes. The Time Tours CEO, Tad Ellis, steps up on stage to make the presentation; users wear a virtual reality headset which send microwave signals directly into the user's brain, allowing them to experience a fully immersive and interactive computer-generated environment set in a different era of Earth's history, such as Ancient Egypt and World War II. Raleigh quietly remarks that it sounds similar to The Matrix, to which Ellis tells him this is far better before having the celebrities take their seats and don a headset.

When his headset activates, Raleigh finds himself in Dinosaurland, being flown in a hovercopter piloted by an AI program he nicknames Pi over a lush landscape filled with dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Laura is in Global Superstar, a more modern simulation which has her being the most famous celebrity in the world.

As the media focus on the monitors showing what the celebrity users are experiencing, a technician approaches Ellis to warn him that Hughes, within the WWII Operation Overlord simulation, is going into a deep coma-state. The technician suspects Hughes took a huge dose of a sedative before doning the headset, and his brain's synaptic pulses so weak, they are unable to safely extract him from the simulation. Suddenly, alarms blare, and it is found that Raleigh, Laura, and the other celebrities are also going into deep-coma states. As it turns out, Hughes has become disenfranchised with the state of the world, and so laced the wine he shared with the other users before they put on the headsets with sedatives, intending to isolate them all within the program, and remake the world of his Operation Overlord simulation to to own liking.

After having the media removed, Ellis questions why Hughes would drug the other guests, just as it is reported that within Operation Overlord, Hughes has made a deal with Germany and united all forces in Europe under his command. What makes this so terrible, however, is that Hughes is leading his forces to London's Trafalgar Square, and the chief technician realises that Hughes knows about their "portals", and is intending to lead his invasion force to another simulation. These portals lead users to the other virtual simulations, made as a stablising feature for the entire program.

Concerned, Ellis decides to call for "Mr Black", aka, former Marine Nathan Black, who is in charge of Time Tours' recue and recovery team. Their job: to enter the program in the event of a user's loss of reality to convince them to come out through an emergency exit portal (EEP), since extracting someone from the program by force would cause irreparable brain damage. A technician reports that Hughes' army has emerged in the Superstar world, being completely unopposed since that simulation has no armed forces in it, and Ellis realises Hughes is going after Laura alone, and the others are merely collateral. As Black prepares to move in, Ellis orders him to extract Laura (who is revealed to be President Bush's niece), since the deep-coma state means that if she dies in the simulation, her brain will overload and shut down.

Not wanting to go directly into Superstar and run afoul of Hughes' Nazi army, Black decides to drop into Dinosaurland, which has a similar emergency exit portal location, and will allow him to pick up weapons from that world's armoury. Upon entering the simulation, Black begins gathering weapons, just as Raleigh's hovercopter lands nearby. Though the author tries to express his enthusiasm for the simulation, Black warns him of the situation and tells him to leave via the EEP. Mitch implores Black to carry on as the recovery specialist enters the booth-like portal to Superstar. When Raleigh enters the booth to activate the emergency exit, he becomes worried if Black can save Laura alone, and asks Pi to show him to the armoury, intending to go into Superstar as well. Raleigh then teleports into the portal booth in Superstar, located at Westminster Abbey, just in time to see Hughes' Nazis gun down Black.

Since he was not in a deep-state coma, Black awakens alive-and-well back in the real world, reporting that Hughes has the portal guarded. At that moment, a technician discovers Raleigh's entry into Superstar. Raleigh watches from within the booth to see that Hughes has captured Laura, and as he has her taken away to be kept under guard at the Tower of London, Hughes tells his forces to kill anyone who emerges from the portal. Raleigh and Pi barely manage to get out from the booth unnoticed and prepare to go rescue Laura, intending to retrieve her before she gets to the Tower, using Pi's parachute to glide down from the bell tower's parapet towards Hughes' motorcade.

The modern weapons taken from Dinosaurland allows Raleigh and Pi to easily take out the WWII-era vehicles and weapons of the motorcade, before the pair land in and take control of the jeep holding Laura. As they move to head back for the portal at Westminster Abbey, they find themselves pursued by Hughes' 40,000-strong united Allied and Nazi force. Pi gives Raleigh a liquid plasma-filled RPG, which the author uses to bring down Big Ben to block the street between them and the army.

Upon returning to the Abbey, Raleigh, Laura and Pi find Hughes and an SS squad waiting for them, having known they would return for the portal. Needing only Laura alive, Hughes orders his men to kill Raleigh, but all are surprised when Pi jumps in front of him and takes the bullet in Raleigh's place. Raleigh is quick to act, taking one of Pi's acid grenades and throwing it at their enemies. Upon its detonation, the Nazis howl in pain, as does Hughes, whose eyes were hit by the acid. Raleigh speaks in German to trick Hughes into thinking he is being led to a field hospital, when in fact Raleigh takes him and Laura to the portal booth and activates the emergency exit function.

Awakening in the real world, Raleigh is commended as a hero for saving the President's niece, going on to feature in several news bulletins covering the incident. As Hughes is sentenced to a psychiatric facility, Time Tours' launch is cancelled as they go back to research and development to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Though he tells the press that he won't be going back to Time Tours soon, Raleigh actually visits them several times to meet up with the regenerated Pi within the simulation.

Characters

• Mitchell 'Mitch' Raleigh
• Laura Bush
• Humbert Hughes
• Tad Ellis
• PI-5A26X / Pi
• Nathan Black / Mr Black

Trivia

• The latest novel that Raleigh is said to have written, Seven Deadly Wonders, is a reference to Reilly's novel Seven Ancient Wonders.
  • Seven Deadly Wonders was also the title for the U.S. release of Seven Ancient Wonders.