On a trip like no other
 |
| Image: All Rights Reserved, |
| New York: Random House |
| c2010 |
“You know how Leonardo invented all those crazy things, like submarines and helicopters and hang gliders?” Tommy said, and Luke looked over at him, guessing what he was going to say next. “I’ve just been thinking that maybe he didn’t invent them at all. Maybe he saw them.”
“You mean he travelled to the future?” Ms. Sheck said.
“Yeah.”
Luke nodded; he’d been thinking exactly the same thing. “He saw some of these things and went back and tried to design them, but using fifteenth-century technology.”
There were murmuring voices and footsteps in the corridor outside their cell. Luke glanced up to see Mueller and Mumbo walk past the barred gate.
Each of them wore the black uniform of a 1940s German SS officer.
“They’re getting ready to leave,” Luke said.
On a trip like no other, he thought. A journey back to World War II.
“We’ve got to stop them,” Ms. Sheck said.
“How?”, Luke asked, looking at the thick bars of the gate.
“I don’t know how, but we have to. The Nazis came very close to inventing an atomic bomb in the 1940s,” Ms. Sheck said. “With Mueller’s plans, they will succeed, and they will win the war.”
“We’ll be Nazis,” Tommy said glumly.
“I don’t think so,” Luke said. “I don’t think we’ll exist.”
Tommy looked up sharply.
“Well,” Luke said, “if you change history that much, you’ll change everything. Your grandparents might never meet. Your parents won’t be born. So you will never be born. Same for everyone else we know. It’ll be a completely different world, with different people in it.”
Luke examined the gate again. Surely there had to be some way to get out. But it looked solid, if brown and rusted, and it still looked just as locked. It was secured with a heavy-duty modern brass padlock.
Maybe with Tommy’s lock pick they might have had a chance, but that was in his backpack. And the Werewolves
had that.
“If we could not get out of here,” Luke asked Ms. Sheck, “what would we do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But if they get back to the 1940s with those plans, then that’s the end of everything.”
Extract from the book The Project
By Brian Falkner
All Rights Reserved.
New York: Random House, c2010.
Call Number: Y English FAL
Extract contributed by Wen Di, Librarian, Public Library Services
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Available at NLB
Title: 11/22/63: a novel
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Title: Stravaganza : city of secrets
By Mary Hoffman
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Title: Nick of time
By Ted Bell
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If you have a chance to travel back in time and alter something in history, will you do it, and why?
November 17th, 2012 at 11:38 am
I have a mum unlike others. She is a super mum, who takes care of us single-handedly as my irresponsible father disappears from our lives since I was 5 years old. On the other hand, she is also a psychotic who taunts us with suicide and physical threats, which grew in intensity the older we grow. Trapped in between her undying love and her psychological problem, my sister and I became estranged from her in the last decade. She finally disappeared from our lives 5 years ago.
Despite all these, I still love her very much and I am constantly tortured by the ghost of this strange circumstance.
If I have a chance to travel back in time, I would travel back 2 decades to guide my mum towards more adult companionship and social interaction so that she would have an outlet for her angers while we grew up. I would also steer her towards medical help so her psychotic tendency are depressed and her loving tendency surfaces more frequently. As a daughter, I would shower her with loves, hugs and kisses constantly, in spite of my Asian upbringing that prohibits me from showing overt love.
But really, I cannot travel back in time and I am stuck in the present.
December 9th, 2012 at 10:50 am
It has been a dream of many to be able to travel back in time to right some wrongs done in the past or to make better decisions.
For me, I would love to go back in time when my mum was deteriorating in her dementia condition.It had been tough holding a job, juggling a family of two young children besides watching my mum who was getting worse by the day. I had been snappy and unkind in words and actions and if I could go back in time, I would have showered her with more attention and love instead of leaving her in the care of the Filippina maid. When she passed away, I was filled with regrets and pain even though I know that God and she had forgiven me.For those who have sick and elderly parents, do pray for more love and patience before it is too late.Seize the moment to love and care for they are with us very briefly.
March 27th, 2013 at 6:37 am
Another great book!