Free The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen

man laughed. “Tell him exactly what…” He paused and watched a bird fly past and Dorso realized that the forest around them was alive with the sounds of birds singing. “Don't you think this is much nicer than a housing development?” the man asked, but Dorso could tell he didn't really expect an answer because he was thinking. “How to start… Well, here, let's do it this way. I am an engineer and I made some fundamental discoveries that will change how we think about everything forever. How's that?” He smiled at Dorso.
    “Too quick. How come you're the only one who did this, who understood this?”
    The man looked at the trees again, then nodded. “A good question. Sometimes the most amazing discoveries are made by one person who has a bit of luck. Madame Curie discovered radiation—and it killed her later because she didn't know how deadly it could be. One man in a Texas garage discovered that silicon would let current flow only one way, and that led to transistors, which led to chips… well, you get my drift. One day I was sitting in the lab—I worked for the computer company that makes your laptop—and I remembered that many years ago a man named Michelson discovered that light, the photons of light, have mass. I theorized that if images are made of light, which has mass, and can be moved through time and space—as we have been doing with historical holograms—then why not the bigger mass, the actual person or thing. I worked to develop a chip that would incorporate my thinking, or several chips working together, and one day I sent a banana frommy lunch back ten minutes. Then a week later I sent my cat, Richard, back a day with no ill effects. The following week I sent myself back a month.”
    “And nobody at the company knew you were doing this?”
    “Correct. I kept it secret for two reasons. One, it would make a devastatingly destructive weapon in the wrong hands, and I am a peace-loving man.”
    “And the second reason?” Dorso almost smiled, thinking of Frank and his always having two reasons.
    “That's a bit more complicated. Part of it is that I have always been poor and do not believe in wealth, but with this discovery, I am ashamed to admit that I started to think in terms of personal gain. And the other part is pure ego. I had made a stupendously colossal discovery that could change the world, and if I let it out it would no longer be just my discovery.”
    “And it got out,” Dorso said. “The two gamesters found out what you were doing.”
    “Precisely. I was not as secure as I thought. One of them hacked into my computer when I was online gathering some of the initial data on how Michelson discovered the mass of light. Eventually they got my address through further hacking and the two of them showed up at my door. They took my computer by force, and two extra chips that I had been working on, and told me I had to continue to keep it all a secret or they would destroy me and the rest of the world.”
    “And you believed them?”
    “Not at first. But you saw them, you saw their eyes! Then they started playing that game about one trying to change time while the other one tried to stop him, playing a game that could literally end everything, and I realized they were telling the truth. They would do anything.”
    “Why didn't you go to the authorities?”
    “It was impossible. The hackers could act faster than me, and although I manufactured two more chips without them knowing about it, they would know if I tried anything. They also worked at the company and watched me like a hawk, both digitally and on camera. There was nothing I could do. So I worked out a kind of plan—a thought, really—that if I could somehow get somebody else involved maybe that person could do something.”
    “Why me?”
    “Why not? They wouldn't suspect you, you're young, you seemed to be bright, judging by your work on the computer—I looked in the memory when I worked on it. And there was the time