Tiny Time Machine 3: Mother of Invention

By John E. Stith

★★★★★ "A new high-concept idea for time travel!" - Reader review

Josh and Meg and the Tiny Time Machine are back in a brand new book! Meg and Josh, having traveled through time to save the world and her father, now face a showdown with her father’s murderous partner as they also try to save her mother! A new adventure from Amazing Stories.

John E. Stith is a Nebula Award finalist for Redshift Rendezvous. Aboard the hyperspace liner Redshift, the speed of light is ten meters per second.

In Tiny Time Machine 1, Meg and Josh, two loners on the run from the cops, discovered a time machine built into a cellphone and used it to avert a disastrous future. But along the way, Meg's father, the inventor, was killed.

Tiny Time Machine 2: Return of the Father. Meg and Josh work to save her father with the help of a sarcastic AI, a billionaire and his daughter.

Now, Meg and Josh are back in a third stand-alone adventure. Now they face a showdown with her father’s murderous partner as they honor their father's goal to save her mother!

TTM3 revisits the characters and time machine introduced in TTM1 and TTM2. Like TTM1, this is also a stand-alone adventure. But why not double your fun and try both?

Praise for Tiny Time Machine:

"This three-part tale of a couple of smart and unstoppable teens determined to save the world (and rescue a parent or two in the process) with the help of a pocket-sized time-travel device is fast-paced and full of inventive twists and turns. Science, danger, humor, romance--and glimpses of more than one all-too-possible future--there's something here for everybody! A clever, lively, and diverting read!" – Connie Willis, Science Fiction Grandmaster

"John E. Stith is one of our very best writers, and this is one of his very best stories: a big idea explored from every conceivable angle. Tiny Time Machine is a triumph." – Robert J. Sawyer, Nebula and Hugo Award winner

"Stith brings a MacGyveresque enthusiasm, a Tom Swiftian innocence and ebullience married to technological savvy, to this story." – Dr. Paul Levinson, past SFWA VP and author of The Consciousness Plague from Tor Books

About Stith's prior work:

“Stith writes in the best hard-sf manner, dropping characters into a situation that can be solved only by thought and reason, but he also, more modernly, creates real and believable characters. He is becoming one of the most eloquent modern hard-sf practitioners.” - Booklist

The list of science fiction authors who play the game the hard way by sticking to the rules of science is all too short. Now to that group which includes Clarke, Niven, Asimov, Bear, and Clement should be added the name of John E. Stith." - Dan Simmons

"This is the kind of story that brought me to SF. Put a little fun back into your life." - Science Fiction Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amazing Stories
• Release date: Jul 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224768042

Book preview

Tiny Time Machine 3: Mother of Invention Copyright © 2024 by John E. Stith.

Cover illustration by Anderson Cabral. Cover design by Kavin King. Copyright © 2024 by John E. Stith.

Interior Illustrations Copyright © 2024 by Nikolett Timar

Tiny Time Machine 3: Mother of Invention is an original Amazing Selects publication.

All Contents Copyright © 2024 by The Experimenter Publishing Company and their respective authors

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by The Experimenter Publishing Company, LLC.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is unintended and coincidental.

Amazing Stories®, Amazing Selects™ and their logos are wholly owned trademarks of Experimenter Publishing Company, LLC.

https://www.amazingstories.com

Praise for Tiny Time Machine

This three-part tale of a couple of smart and unstoppable teens determined to save the world (and rescue a parent or two in the process) with the help of a pocket-sized time-travel device is fast-paced and full of inventive twists and turns.  Science, danger, humor, romance--and glimpses of more than one all-too-possible future--there's something here for everybody!  A clever, lively, and diverting read! – Connie Willis, Science Fiction Grandmaster

"John E. Stith is one of our very best writers, and this is one of his very best stories: a big idea explored from every conceivable angle. Tiny Time Machine is a triumph." – Robert J. Sawyer, Nebula and Hugo Award winner

Stith brings a MacGyveresque enthusiasm, a Tom Swiftian innocence and ebullience married to technological savvy, to this story. – Dr. Paul Levinson, past SFWA VP and author of The Consciousness Plague from Tor Books

John E. Stith has created a truly memorable and fascinating character for this unusual time-travel story. Timemachining Meg not only strives to save the world; she is also forced to mature as a person. She shows brilliance, jealousy, and daring; she emotionally hangs tough as she also takes on the job of healing her relationship with her father. She is a complete person who gains common sense as well as wisdom during her and her companions' heroic journey. In my own world, I'd like for everyone to get to know someone like her as one of their models. –  MiRobin Webster

I’ll read anything by John E. Stith…. While teens are going to love it, and it’s a novel featuring young characters, it’s so full of buoyancy and hope that adults will gobble it up, too. –  Deborah J. Ross, author of Jaydium and Collaborators.

Praise for Stith’s Prior Works

Analog:  How can you possibly resist?... Superscience SF in the classic vein, fast-moving, heroic...loaded with sensawunda. You'll love it."

Booklist: absorbing, fast-paced action and witty dialogue.

Chicago Tribune: Fascinating, intelligent account of people--some ordinary, some extraordinary--struggling to define and confront events that are beyond anything they have dared to imagine. One of the better surprise endings to come down the cosmos in light-years.

Denver Post: Another blockbuster idea. A big book of spectacle, adventure and mystery, as Stith does a wonderful job of drawing out the suspense and twisting the plot in new directions.

Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine: I let a couple of John Stith's SF mysteries go by without checking them out.... If I'd been a little faster off the mark, I could have turned you on to a good thing earlier....

Kirkus: Narrative momentum and plot nudges to keep readers guessing and turning the pages.

Library Journal: Stith's well-developed characters and the hard science propel this space-faring story. Highly recommended.

Locus: Entertainingly breakneck pace and considerable power at inventing techno-epic detail.

Magazine of Fantasy & SF: Sense of wonder story-telling at its best, with enough danger to keep me reading long past my bedtime. Come on. You've been good. You deserve to read Deep Quarry.... Stith can do it every time.

New York Review of Science Fiction: Some ideas are just too good to pass up... the pleasure is in the nonstop action and the problem the characters must solve.

Publishers Weekly: [Stith] has always had a real talent for describing bizarre environments...will offer fans of hard SF much to satisfy their sense of wonder.

Rocky Mountain News: One of the best science-fiction novels I've read in years. Stith has always been a master of hard science fiction. Unless there is a real surprise, I vote this the best science-fiction novel of the year.

San Diego Union: Furthers his reputation as an up-and-coming hard-science writer. Many scenes and situations that inspire that much-coveted 'sense of wonder.' Exciting, thought-provoking summer reading.

Science Fiction Age: [Stith can take] a mind-stretching concept and push it to its uttermost limits, all the while making the reader feel anyone could easily encompass each new development and twist, thanks to Stith's clear descriptive prose and keen visual sense.

Science Fiction Chronicle: Wondrous situations, marvelous discoveries, good characters, and a nicely tuned plot.

Robert J. Sawyer: This is science fiction on a grand scale, full of stunning visuals of New York City being ripped from the surface of the Earth, vast starships, and intriguing extraterrestrials.

Dan Simmons: The list of science fiction authors who play the game the hard way by sticking to the rules of science is all too short. Now to that group which includes Clarke, Niven, Asimov, Bear, and Clement should be added the name of John E. Stith.

Dedication

This is for Karen.

Meg’s Recap

WELCOME BACK TO MY WORLD...

I never asked for any of this. My dad being killed, us saving the world, us saving Dad, not any of it. But as I said, sometimes life drags you kicking and screaming into action.

While I was out investigating reports of polluting companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, I met Josh in the back of a police car. The next time we ran into each other, we wound up on the run from the cops, and when we went to my estranged dad's laboratory-apartment, we found him dying of recent wounds.

Before he died, Dad handed me what looked like a cell phone and told me to use extreme caution—because it's a time machine.

Together, Josh and I fled the scene and ultimately discovered that Dad was telling the truth. The time phone could open a portal to 31.4159 years in the future and back. When we activated the viewfinder, we could see the other time. If we pressed the shutter button, the time phone opened a rectangular portal in the same proportions as the viewfinder. We could then step through the portal to the other time before the portal closed ten seconds later. The time phone would let us return to home time, but it couldn't let us go to any other time.

Dad had been obsessed with building a time machine capable of going back in time so he could save my mom from dying, but the rev 1.0 time phone couldn't do that.

In the course of our adventures, we found out that Mr. Hyatt, who lived across the hall from Dad, knew about the time phone and was responsible for Dad's death. We survived a confrontation with Mr. Hyatt, but we only won a battle, not the war.

When we investigated the future, 31.4159 years from the present, we discovered everyone was dead from thirst and the oceans had coagulated into a Jell-O-like mass. We traced events back to an immense ocean-going experiment run by Ted Teicher, one of the world's richest people. The project was intended to help solve the world's problems, but something went horribly wrong.

Josh and I enlisted the help of Olivia Teicher, Ted's daughter, and together, we made our way to Leviathan, the experimental vessel, where we found Ted Teicher's second-in-command was taking over with plans of her own.

Together, Josh and I and Olivia overcame the enemy, and saved Ted Teicher, and the future. Along the way, I fell for Josh.

Eventually, we found a way to enhance the time phone. We visited the future, the changed future now that we had averted catastrophe, and found it still had problems we wanted to fix. While in that future, we snagged an arrogant AI named Valex. We also fended off several pretty serious attacks from Mr. Hyatt.

And finally, we further enhanced the time machine so it could go farther into the past so we could then go back and save Dad. The bad news was that we were a little late to the party and Dad still wound up injured. But not dead. We brought him forward to the present so he could recover in the hospital.

And that brings us to today…

Tiny Time Machine Book 3:

Mother of Invention

by John E. Stith

"MISS VAUNTAGE? MEG? Your father is stable again and is asking to see you." The nurse was one I hadn't noticed before. She seemed calm, but her perfect posture suggested a new military recruit snapping to attention.

Josh sat next to me in the waiting room. On the other side of him, Olivia Teicher stretched her arms, slowly, first over her head and then reaching back. Josh did a pretty fair job of demonstrating that Olivia's provocative pose held no power over him.

On the far side of the squarish waiting room was Olivia's father, Ted Teicher, along with a couple of his men in black, or executive protection team. Ted sat forward in a chair as he talked quietly on his phone and the companions stood, watchful for paparazzi or assassins. Ted often wore business suits, but today, he was in a tasteful blue exercise outfit with a thin outside white stripe on each pant leg. The protection detail was here for our benefit, too, but Ted was the one who paid them.

I thanked the nurse and rose. I said to Josh and Olivia, You’re welcome to come, too.

Josh wore Valex, our AI from the future, on his wrist. Luckily, the hardware didn't look much different than current smart watches. By mutual agreement, we kept Valex's hologram invisible most of the time. Valex had let us know how highly insulting this was, but we agreed that for now in public, it would operate in what we were calling stealth mode. That meant we would address Valex as Siri or Alexa, and Valex would respond in the corresponding voice. Valex, under protest, also agreed to keep the sarcasm down until we were alone again.

This was brand new, negotiating with an appliance. Not that I called Valex that. Good luck getting any useful answers if I openly insulted it.

129

We were all in Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, the Hyde Street one. The EMTs brought Dad here after he was shot. Long story, involving a trip to the past during which Josh and I ran a little late so, while we were able to prevent Dad from being killed by Mr. Hyatt, we still weren't quite prompt enough to keep Dad from being shot. We counted it as a win.

After an intense period of interrogation, the police were unable to pin the shooting on Josh and me, so they brought us here, where we reconnected with Olivia. Coincidentally, this was the same hospital in which Mom had died after her surgery, but I forced away that memory for now.

Josh, Olivia, and I went into Dad's hospital room. The monitors were quiet as waveforms and numbers flashed periodically on a nearby screen. Dad had been shot near his right shoulder, the bullet passing through the fleshy part of the chest near the shoulder joint. Anyone shopping for a bullet wound might prefer one just nicking an arm, but this was not the worst choice. The bullet missed the lung and missed the shoulder joint. Dad should still have the range of motion necessary to raise his arm and point a finger at me.

The array of equipment surrounding Dad had almost as many readouts, graphs, and blinking lights as an airliner cockpit.

I said softly, Siri, does all of this look OK? Do you see any trouble?

Valex said softly, using