The Great Time Machine Hoax

 

By Keith Laumer

Chester W. Chester IV has inherited an estate which also contains a powerful experimental computer. Problem is that the the estate is burdened with a massive amount of tax debt and is due to be liquidated. So before that happens, Chester and his friend Case are taking a look around the place. They are especially interested in the computer.

It is a very powerful computer and has been quietly growing more powerful, as Chester and Case soon discover. It has spread itself wide and far, on the sly, expanding its hardware and manipulating society for its own benefit. Case gets the idea that they could use the computer to create realistic 3D vignettes that the public would be willing to pay good money to see. But these two goofs don't understand the power of this computer, because instead of creating the vignettes, it actually creates reality. Which becomes almost fatally clear when it conjures a scene of primitive humans who then rush out of the viewing area and capture the two men and Genie who is the human computer interface that the computer created from a drop of Case's blood.

Chester and Genie are locked away in cages and Case is forced to fight one of the primitives, a huge giant of a man.  While Case is taking on the giant, Chester and Genie manage to get free and run back to the arrival base and yell for the computer to bring them home, fully intending to return to get Case. But when they return it is not the same place as it was when they left. It's similar but slightly different. Genie gets captured by the police and locked up and Chester returns to base but still can't get back to the where he started. Now he is in a new location and the locals have lots of plans for him and they won't let him have access to the arrival base unless he agrees to do as they wish. Meanwhile Genie is stuck in jail and who knows what is happening to Case, battling the giant, primitive man.

This is fun and exciting story and very entertaining. Laumer is at his best when he is telling a humorous and action-packed tale. I suppose he is best known for his Retief stories. This story is similar to the Retief stories, just without Retief. There's dumb cops, mean thugs and self-involved bureaucratic types just like in the Retief stories.

I've read this story three or four times over the years and enjoyed every time.