Chapter 1 (partial)

I realized I was exhausted after all my running around the world then hiking in and out of Korea to kill Haoran. I decided to head back to the States to rest at Jackson House for a while.

It was fun coming home to my family. I hadn’t got to spend time with any of them for months.

The biggest change was in Denny. He was now seventeen and looked all of it. He’d had a growth spurt, and it looked like he might catch up with me. He was already six foot three.

Eddie and Mary had also grown but not that much. Mary seemed more mature all the time. Eddie was still waiting on puberty to hit, but it would be any day now.

Mum and Dad were still Mum and Dad. They both had a little grey in their hair but not much.

Mrs. Hernandez was getting married and would soon be moving out of the house. The way she had dated, I thought she would marry some highflier. Instead, he seemed to be a down-to-earth nice guy who owned his own insurance agency.

I loafed around for the first week, playing some golf and surfing. I even stopped by the studio to see what was going on, but everyone was busy on sets. I did get roped into being an extra in a sword-fighting scene. I wasn’t even fighting one of the main characters. It was a byplay in the background. I bet it ended up on the cutting room floor.

Mum was having one of her charity events. I was waiting for the shoe to drop and be asked to escort some young lady. The shoe didn’t drop. Is it possible to be disappointed and relieved at the same time?

I did make the time in my second week to go over to the new R&D campus. The buildings weren’t all new, as some bold start-ups overreached themselves and lost it all. We picked it up for a song.

There would still be many additions made, but it was a good start. The building I was interested in was the “Desktop Computer” building. There they were prototyping and testing the first commercial computers, which would sit on an office desk and maybe in homes in the future.

The hardware was working like a charm. That is except for early burnout of components. They had to bring the supply chain up to expectations.

The real problem was the green screen of death. This would appear when the software is locked up. The only way to get out of it was to reboot the computer, hoping the software problem wasn’t in the rebooting sequence.

To fix this issue, they had to run tests, thousands upon thousands of tests. The computer had to be run until the green screen popped up, then the experts would take over and try to figure out where the conflict in the code was occurring.

They had a huge building with five hundred computers set up. These were run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Anyone in the area that wanted to work had a job. There were men and women from ages sixteen to eighty-seven running the machines.

Cast in Time Book 6 Available in June 2024!

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More details coming soon.

Earl E. (Ed) Nelson

I have always wanted to be an author. I had my first rejection slip in about 1965. Wish I had saved it. For many years the only writing I did was technical as pesky things like three children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren came along.

My technical writing was in the field of quality in several different journals. I worked in the field of quality for over fifty years, starting as a line inspector and ending up as a Vice-President of Quality and elected a Fellow of the American Society for Quality.

Then a wonderful thing happened. I lost my job and was out of work for almost eight months. To keep from going crazy I wrote. I posted my stories on an online site, and lo and behold people read them and said nice things. Fast forward about eight years and I am retired and writing for the fun of it.

A lot of what is in my stories is based on my life experiences, gasp! Give or take a lie or two that is. The one fortunate thing in my career is that I got to travel worldwide and have been to most of the locations I write about.

In my younger days, I tried hot air ballooning, sky diving, white water rafting, spelunking, and target shooting. I have collected stamps, drove in road rallies, lowly rated by the US Chess federation. I built a Kentucky long rifle and a dueling pistol. I am a licensed HAM radio operator. My hobby is having hobbies.

My true passion is reading. Trapped in a hotel room I would read the telephone book. The TV would not be turned on. I have averaged 200 books a year for the last sixty years. I knew those long flights were good for something.

BTW I was born in the middle of an air raid in England during World War II, the house next door was destroyed and our windows were blown out. That is probably the most interesting thing I have been involved with. Mum never forgave me. Happily married for 56 years I hope my wife doesn’t catch on to what a goof I am.