Chapter 1:  Tales Around the Campfire

"That was a great story, Grandpa!" exclaimed six-year-old Amelia. "Yeah," agreed her eight-year-old brother Ollie, "thanks, Grandpa!"

"Alright," I said, "we've been out here in the wild for an entire week, but tomorrow we have to go home. Did you both have a good time?" They assured me that they had. Then I said, "OK, we will have to leave early romorrow morning, so let's get to bed. We'll pack up first thing after breakfast and be on our way."

As usual, this was followed by a bit of childhood resistance. "Can't you tell us one more story before we go to bed, Grandpa? PLEEEASE?" 

"Well," I wavered, pretending that their request was totally unexpected, "I guess so. Just a short one though, and then it's straight to bed with no ifs, and, or buts about it. Agreed?"

"OK," they said in unison, settling back into their camp chairs in anticipation of another tale. As the fire crackled before me, I racked my brain for another story and then remembered something from my childhood, something that I had almost forgotten. Had it actually happened or had it just been a dream? It certainly seemed real, but it was so far-fetched, so unbelievable - even to me - that I sometimes had to wonder. The dog was real, I know that much for sure. But the adventure? Boy, oh, boy, I had to wonder about that, right from the day after it happened. Or was it from the day after I dreamed that it happened? Unable to decide for sure, I just filed it away in my memory. After all, I didn't want people to think I was crazy.

It would make a great story, though, for my grandchildren, so I decided to tell them the tale. And since it was possible that the story was actually true, I decided to present it to them as if that were the case. 

"OK," I said, after a long pause, "I am going to tell you something that happened to me as a child. It was the greatest adventure of my life and it all started when our dog ... well ... let's just say that he vanished and I had to go find him. The tricky thing, though, is that he decided to take off into the fourth dimension, which complicated things a bit."

"What's the fourth dimension?" asked Amelia, wrinkling her nose.

"Time," said I, trying to invest that one word with as much drama as I could.  

"Cool!" said Ollie. Amelia looked a bit puzzled.

"Well, let's see," I mused, "where shall I begin?"

"At the beginning!" shouted both kids in unison, because that's usually where I begin a story. I chuckled a bit and then said, "OK, let's begin at the beginning. If I remember correctly, I was about eight years old at the time. In fact, I think it might have been right after my eighth birthday. Anyway, we had run out of dog food and Rex - that's what we called our dog - was standing next to his bowl and giving us this pitiful look to let us know that he was hungry. He had that look down pat and on this particular occasion added an even more pitiful whimper, as if he was aware that there was no more dog food in the cupboard."

"'Take it easy, boy,' said Mom, 'we're heading out to the grocery store right now. We'll fill your bowl as soon as we get back.' Perhaps the dog understood what she was saying because he began to look a bit more hopeful, wagging his tail enthusiastically as he looked up at her. She patted him on the head."

"When we got to the store, we headed directly to the pet food aisle and I looked for our usual dog food in its usual spot, but there wasn't any. Not a single bag. I asked one of the workers if there was any of Rex's favorite brand in the stock room. 'I'll take a look,' he said and headed off to the stock room. Emerging a couple of minutes later carrying a bag of another brand, he told me that the delivery truck had been delayed and would probably not arrive until the following day. 'However,' he added, 'I found this bag of Tachyon brand dog food in the stock room.'"

'''I don't know,' I said, our dog is pretty picky. 'He might not like it. And I've never heard of that brand before.' The clerk said that he had never heard of it either, but it was the only bag of dog food left in the stock room. 'Take it or leave it,' he shrugged, setting it on the shelf and disappearing down the next aisle." 

"I asked my mom what she thought and she said that, since there was no alternative, Rex would have to make do with the new brand. I said OK and put the bag in the shopping cart."

"When we got home, I opened the bag and Rex's tail went into overdrive, wagging furiously back and forth. He began drooling as I began to pour his long-awaited dinner into his bowl. But when he saw it, the wagging and the drooling stopped abruptly."

"This new dog food didn't look like what he was used to. It was multi-colored and the chunks were not the same size and shape as our usual brand. Rex carefully approached the bowl and sniffed this strange new food. Then, to my surprise, he began eating it, crunching with enthusiasm and then wolfing it down."

"Suddenly, there was a blinding flash of white light in the place where Rex had been happily crunching away and, to my everlasting amazement, he was ..... GONE!"

"I looked around the room. There was Mom, staring at the spot where Rex had been standing. Her mouth was hanging open and there was a look of astonishment on her face. Ditto for Dad. The only thing I didn't see was Rex. 'What just happened?' I wondered aloud. No one answered my question. We just stood there, stunned. 

"It soon occurred to me that it must have been the dog food that caused Rex to disappear, even though I knew that didn't make any sense. I grabbed the bag, plunged my hand into it, and withdrew a fistful of kibble. Staring at the odd colors and shapes in my hand, I did not know what to make of it. Then, without really thinking about it, I shoved the kibble into my mouth and crunched into it with my teeth. It tasted horrible, but I continued chewing and then gulped it down. There was a sudden flash of light and then I found myself tumbling through a whirling vortex, which was like being picked up and tossed hither and thither by a tornado. It was terrifying!" 

"After what seemed like a long time, the whirling began to subside, When it stopped completely, I found myself standing in a quiet tropical glade. 'Am I in Florida?' I wondered. I would soon learn that it was a far more exotic place than that."

Chapter 2:  Opportunity Knox  

"Was that your dog?" shouted someone behind me. Turning around, I saw a man at the edge of the glade, a tough-looking dude who seemed quite at home in this strange environment. "You'd better get to him before some of the critters around here do, because if you don't he won't last long in this spacetime."

"Spacetime?" I repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, not again!" shouted the man, who was the spitting image of Indiana Jones. "Are you another amateur?"  

Not quite sure how to respond to that question, I asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, son," he answered wearily, "I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I'm just gonna spill the beans and you can believe what you want. Ready?"

"Ready," I replied, gunuinely curious about what was going on.

"I am a time traveller and so are you, but I suspect that you do not yet realize it. Based on your clothes, my guess is that I am from your future. I am an entrpreneur who travels into the past - often the distant past - to bring extinct creatures back to my spacetime. We don't have a time machines like in the old time travel movies. What we do have is a selection of tachyon-based pharmaceuticals that allow us to travel both forward and backward through spacetime, and it appears that you and your little dog have accidentally gotten into a batch. Wherewhen are you from, young man?'

"Wherewhen?" I asked.

"You know, where AND when do you come from?" he replied, clearly becoming a bit annoyed by my inability to fully grasp the situation. I told him where I lived and what I beleieved to be the exact date. 

"And how is it that you and your little pup ended up here?" he asked. "Did you two happen to eat something unusual?"

"How did you know that?" I asked. Rolling his eyes, he responded that it was "just a lucky guess." I told him about the dog food and the flash of light and the vortex and my sudden arrival in this field. He didn't seem to be the least bit surprised. 

"It happens more often than you might think," said the man, who finally decided to introduce himself. "My name is Nicholas T. Knox, but my friends call me Opportunity Knox. And you, son, can call me Mr. Knox." I told him my name and then remembered my dog and what he had said about the dangerous "critters" in this place. 

"Where did Rex go?" I asked. 

He pointed to a nearby jungle. "Through there," he said, "but I wouldn't advise you to go wandering in after him. You wouldn't last five minutes in there."

Nevertheless, I ran toward the jungle and began calling out Rex's name. "Come here, Rex!" I shouted again and again. There was no response. I was too afraid to go into the woods but I couldn't just leave Rex out there. "What do I do?" I asked.  

"Well, son, I will be going in there in a few minutes in search of a triceratops, so I guess you could come along with me if you want to. I'll do my best to keep you safe, but I can't make any guarantees. Once I go in there, you'd probably be in more danger out here anyway. What do you say?"

"It doesn't sound like I have much choice," I answered.

"You're smarter than you look," he muttered. "Come on over here and help me with my gear."

"Did you say 'triceratops'?" I asked. "Yup" he said and I responded, "Isnt that a dinosaur?" "Yup," he said again, and I began to wonder if I was dealing with a crazy person in an isolated field in Florida. I swallowed hard but decided to help.

Chapter 3:  Into the Jungle 

As we approached the jungle, my senses were heightened. Fear has that effect and there was plenty to fear. I had never heard sounds like that before, loud shrieks and howls, thundering footsteps, and sudden scurryings in the undergrowth nearby. My hands were sweaty and my heart was pounding in my chest, but Knox seemed right at home as he slashed through the dense growth with his machete. It was hot and the air was thick with mosquitoes and other bugs. It was hard to breathe.

After what seemed like an eternity, I heard a dog barking in the distance. "Rex!" I shouted.

"Shh!" whispered Knox angrily. "You'll scare the triceratops!" 

He had an instrument that helped to guide him to his prey. He called it a "beast detector" and it looked kind of like a cell phone from my own - uh - spacetime. We seemed to be heading in the same direction as that barking sound. I began to wonder if it was really Rex or perhaps a similar sound made by one of these prehistoric creatures. "Nah", I thought to myself, "that's ridiculous!"

Suddenly Knox stopped, silently motioning for me to stop as well. We stood there absolutely still for a good five minutes and then Knox took a knee, silently indicating that I should do the same. He opened his backpack and pulled out a dart gun with the biggest dart I had ever seen. "This is for the triceratops," he whispered, as he parted the dense undergrowth to line up his shot. That's when I saw Rex, barking defiantly just a few feet in front of the gigantic beast. The triceratops was advancing toawrd him and did not appear to be in a friendly mood.

"Rex," I yelled, "run away! Come here, boy!"

No sooner had I made that outburst than Knox fired the dart at the triceratops. He missed and turned to me in anger. "Your outburst startled me just as I pulled the trigger!" he yelled at me. "You caused me to miss my shot and now the triceratops has run away!"  He stomped around in anger for a minute or two and then began to calm down.

"That was my last capture dart," said Knox. "Now I'm going to have to use a mind swap, and that's an iffy proposition - not that that would mean anything to you! And on top of everything else, I see that your little dog has run off again." Calming down a bit, he added, "So I guess this was a disappointing experience for the both of us."

"What's a mind swap?" I asked timidly.

"A mind swap is an experimental thing that I'm supposed to field test on this trip. I was going to use it on a small creature, but now it appears that I will have to use it to capture the triceratops. I fire a mind swap dart at the beatstie and then I swallow a mind swap gummy. If it works as advertized, my mind goes into the triceratops and his mind goes into me. Then I - in the body of the triceratops - walk into a force field cage and wait for the mind swap to wear off. When I return to my own body, I return to my spacetime with the beastie in tow."

"Oh," I said, pretending to understand what this seemingly crazy person was saying. I had to keep reminding myself that I had just seen a living dinosaur.

So, on the off chance that Knox was actually NOT crazy, I asked, "What about me and Rex? How do we get home?"

"Return gummies," he mumbled. "The less you know about it, the better."

"Look, kid," he said after a long thoughtful moment, "maybe we should find your little dog and send both of you home first. Then I can go triceratops hunting with no distractions. How does that sound?"

"That sounds great!" I answered.

"Alright," said Knox, "let's go out there and find the little pooch."   

"We could use the beast detector to find him," I suggested.

"Yeah, maybe," said Knox, "but he's pretty small compared to a triceratops. I'll have to recalibrate it."

Knox fiddled with the device for a minute or two and then we set off together, pushing deeper and deeper into the dense jungle. He led the way, slashing through the thick leaves and thorny vines with his machete. Finally, I heard him say, "I think I've got something."

"Rex?" I asked. 

"Maybe," he replied, "or something about his size."

Chapter 4:  The Mind Swap

We continued tracking the signal and Knox announced that we were almost upon whatever it was we were tracking. I heard barking in the distance and was finally sure that it was Rex that we were tracking. As we continued to make our way through the dense undergrowth, the barking became louder. I began to worry that Rex had caught up to the triceratops and that they were facing off once again.

Finally, I as able to see Rex and said, "There he is!" 

I asked Knox if the beast detector showed the triceratops nearby, but he told me that since he had recalibrated it for smaller animals, it would filter out any larger ones. In other words, he had no idea whether the triceratops was near us or not.

All of a sudden, I heard a terrifying roar. Knox looked up from his beast detector and became very still. Whispering, he said, "Don't move a muscle. If he doesn't see us, he will leave us alone. Any movement - ANY movement - will attract his attention and there is no way we could ever outun him, especially here in this thick jungle. DO NOT MAKE A SOUND." I froze, but Rex was still barking like crazy. 

"What kind of animal is that?" I whispered to Knox.

"The king of beasties!" he whispered back.

"A lion?" I asked incredulously.

"No," he replied, "a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Are you familiar with this dinosaur?"

"Uh-huh," I whispered back as a shiver ran up and down my spine. Despite the heat and the sweat covering my arms, I had goose bumps and was in the grip of the greatest fear I had ever known. I kept silently repeating the words "stay calm" to myself, but I remained on the verge of panic.

"I'm sorry, son, but I don't think we are going to be able to rescue your little dog," whispered Knox. "It's just too dangerous."

I thought about that for a few seconds, then rejected the idea of abandoning Rex. As soon as Knox turned his attention back to the T-Rex, I carefully reached into his backpack. Pulling out a bag of gummies, I took out one marked "mind swap" and then I grabbed the dart gun from Knox's belt. As he wheeled around, I swallowed the gummy and fired the already-loaded dart gun at the T-Rex.    

The mind swap felt like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner and then suddenly being released. All at once, I felt like I was twelve feet tall. Looking down, I realized that I actually WAS twelve feet tall. "Whoa!" I thought, but was unable to vocalize the word. All I could do was roar, which I did. And there at my feet was Rex, barking bravely at me, now in the body of the beast that towered over him. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but was unable to so in this strange body.

I looked over at Knox, who was trying to subdue the T-Rex, whose mind was now in my body. My body was roaring, too, but it didn't sound too scary. I did notice that Knox was being very careful to avoid my teeth, though. At this point, I wasn't quite sure what to do. I could not communicate with Rex or with Knox and hoped that Knox would figure out how to get us out of this dilemma. And I wondered how long this mind swap would last. Knox had not said.  A few minutes? A few hours? Oh, boy.

Knox was able to subdue the T-Rex in my body, wrapping one arm around his waist and holding him with his mouth facing away. He didn't have to worry about the arms because the T-Rex didn't realize how useful they could be. They were just flailing uselessly before him. With his free arm, Knox swallowed a mind swap gummy and then fired a dart at Rex. I heard Rex yelp when it hit him and then saw the dog calm down as Knox's mind entered the dog's body. He put his paw in the dirt and scratched out a message: "10 minutes." He looked up at me, still in the T-Rex's body, and I nodded yes, indicating that I understood. We had ten minutes to figure out what to do.

Looking over at where Knox and I had been less than a minute before, I saw Knox's body with Rex's mnd and my body with the T-Rex's mind eyeing each other curiously. It's hard to imagine what they might have been thinking.

Knox scratched out a plan in the dirt with Rex's paw and I read it using the T-Rex's eyes. As Rex, Knox planned to crawl back to where his body stood and wait for the mind swap to reverse itself. Then he would grab Rex's collar. I, as the T-Rex, would run as far away as fast as I could, putting as much distance between us as possible so that when my own mind swap reversed, I would be back in my body next to Knox and Rex and the T-Rex would be far away from us. Of course, the T-Rex might still have a general idea of where we were, so I added my own little wrinkle to the plan. When the ten minutes was almost up, I started spinning around like crazy so that when the T-Rex's mind returned to his body, he would be dizzy and isoriented. 

What I hadn't counted on was that when I returned to my body, I too would be dizzy. As soon as the mind swap reversal occurred, I arrived back in my body and immediately fell down. Knox laughed, "Ah-ha," he laughed, "the old spiineroo?"  

Apparently, he had done the same thing a time or two. We high-fived each other and began to make our way back out of the jungle. Rex followed. I could still hear the T-Rex roaring in the distance, probably wondering what he had just experienced. 

Suddenly. to our right, another unwelcome visitor appeared. It was a velociraptor. Knox and I froze in our tracks, as did Rex. "Raptors hunt in packs," whispered Knox, "so keep your eyes peeled for others."

"Oh, great," I whispered back. "Whats the plan?"

"Plan?" whispered Knox. "If you've got one, I'm all ears."

Rex had one: start barking. Apparently, he thought he came across as super scary.

The raptor turned its attention to this strange, noisy creature covered in fur that stood before him defiantly protesting rather than running for his life. Apparently deciding that Rex posed no real threat, the raptor once again turned its attention to Knox and me, stepping slowiy into our path but never taking its eyes off us. My eyes, in turn, never left the raptor, but Knox slowly surveyed the foliage around us. Suddenly, another raptor appeared to our left, causing Knox to spring into action. In  one swift motion, he raised his already-loaded mind swap dart gun and fired at the raptor to our left. Then he popped a mind swap gummy into his mouth. 

The raptor to our right lunged toward us, but the one to our left did not. It lunged for the other raptor, confirming that Knox had successfully swapped minds with it. That meant that Knox's body was now inhabited by one of the raptors and he was eyeing me hungrily. "Oh, boy," I thought, "I might still be in trouble." 

Rex was beginning to sense that something weird was happening, having already experienced his own mind swap, so he started barking and growling at Knox's body. The raptor in Knox's body backed off a bit, not quite sure what was going on. Knox, still in the other raptor's body, was using his martial arts training to subdue his opponent. Unable to understand what was going on, the defeated raptor ran off into the jungle. Knox, still in the raptor's body, ran off in the opposite direction to put lots of distance between us before the reversal of the mind swap. 

When Knox's mind returned to his body, he was all smiles. "That was great!" he exclaimed. "What excitement! Did you enoy that as much as I did, kid?"  

"Oh, yeah," I said unconvincingly, "that was the thrill of a lifetime."

Chapter 5:  Nightfall 

By the time we got back to the glade, Knox decided that it was time to make camp for the night. "When it gets dark out here," he said, "it gets REAL dark. That glow that you're used to from city lights doesn't exist in this spacetime."  

"Is it safe to camp out here?" I asked.

Knox laughed. "Absolutely," he assured me. "We will be able to sleep in complete comfort and security. No beastie will be able to enter our campsite." 

"Where's your tent?" I asked after noticing that all he had was a small backpack.

"Tent?" responded Knox. "We are going to be sleeping under the stars, my boy!"

"Uh," was all I could say to that. I had a feeling that he wasn't telling me something, so I decided to just wait and see. 

It didn't take long to get an answer. I heard a strange electronic hum all around me, fairly loud at first but gradually fading away to nothing. Knox picked up a small stone and said, "Here you go, kid" as he tossed it to me. "See if you can hit that big tree over there, the old one with the huge trunk. It should be an easy enough target."

I looked at the tree, which stood about twenty feet away from me. "Easy peasy!" I bragged as I hurled the stone at the tree. The stone flew to within five feet of its target and then - with a loud crack and a bright flash of light - fell to the ground.  

"What was that?" I asked, reeling from the unexpected event.

"Force field," said Knox noncalantly. "We are at the center of a thirty-foot diameter force field dome. Nothing - including us - can get in or out. i would suggest that you not wander too close to the perimeter if you don't want what happened to that stone to happen to you. It won't be fatal, but it will get your attention."

"Cool," was all I could say.

Knox had a bit more to say, though. "The beasties will have to stay outside and any small beasties already inside - like mosquitoes - will fly around until they hit the force field and get fried. Within an hour or two, it will be mosquito-free in here." He grinned and finished with a question: "Not bad, huh?"

"Not bad," I agreed. "Are we going to build a campfire?"

"Not a good idea," said Knox. "The smoke would fill the dome and it would be very unpleasant."

We ate some of Knox's pre-packaged meals, which were surprisingly delicious even though I had no idea what most of the items were. Lying on the ground after dinner, we looked up at the stars and Knox became philosophical. "Some of those stars are millions, even hundreds of millions, of light years away. The light leaving many of them won't arrive on earth until your spacetime or even mine."

"Mr. Knox," I asked, "how did that bag of Tachyon Dog Food get into the stock room of our grocery store. Is it available for sale to just anyone anywhere anytime?"

"Oh, goodness no!" answered Knox. "Those things are highly regulated and available only to people with a special time travel licence. Of course, they sometimes do fall into the wrong hands."

 "How does that happen?" I asked.

"Well," said Knox, it's usually the result of irreponsible handling or an accident.  Just out of curiosity, where did you say you found that bag?"

I told him the name of the store and "wherehen" it was located. He was silent for a moment and then cleared his throat. "Ahem. I think I might have had something to do with that particular bag. It's kind of a long story. Wanna hear it?"

"Sure," I said, trying not to sound too eager.

"Well," he went on, "I was bringing back this beastie, a mastodon from the last ice age, and I miscalculated a bit. We were supposed to return to my own spacetime, but we ended up in that stock room instead. Fortunately, it was in the wee hours of the morning, just past midnight, so there was no one around. The beastie was very confused and frightened, as you might imagine, and I was having a difficult time controlling him. I reached into my backpack for a tranquiler dart and that bag of kibble fell out. I had been field testing it with the ice age wildlife, but they did not particularly take to kibble. Well, I tranquilized the beastie and then I heard a noise. It was the cops and they were headed toward the stock room. Apparently we had tripped a silent alarm when we arrived and we had to leave in a hurry. I kicked the bag of kibble over to the dog food section and we vanished just in the nick of time." 

"Wow," I said, "you sure do lead an exciting life."

"I sure do, kid. Good night," said Knox. 

"Good night," I said.

I woke up several times when a "beastie" crashed into the dome, but they all ran off before I could even tell what they were. It must have been pretty frightening to run into something like that, even for a fearsome beast like a T-Rex. 

Each time it happened, though, I quickly drifted back to sleep. I was exhausted by the day's events and the debilitating heat of the day. And I wanted to be well-rested for whatever tomorrow might hold in store.