{fb1000000again, after what seemed like a life-time of being ignored. He'd just have to be patient and gain her trust again.
Not for McGraph a life of washing dishes and waiting at home for the bread-winner though. She wanted to be in the thick of it, whatever that might be. She'd certainly had her share of excitement over the past few years of relative freedom. One of her jobs as a Transporter allowed her just this, carrying goods all over the place in her small private craft, which she'd won in a bet with a new acquaintance who didn't believe all the stories about her, and challenged her to a drinking contest. He was a country-boy raised on the hard stuff, which he believed made him superior in that respect. What he didn't know was that the long-haul trips to Titan which McGraph engag- ed in regularly, (purely for financial reasons) were auto- piloted 90% of the way.
McGraph's only companions on the long-haul trips were a crate of Ginian Tonixa, a 350 year old computer, re-runs of 20th century films, and a collection of Bog Dylin Tragi song Mini-Discs from the 1960's. A lethal combination if ever there was one for a three month trip! Her escape was drinking to while away the time, and sometimes she played chess with the comp- uter. Of course she won, (it let her). It wasn't programmed to be better than humans in that way, just to put up an effective fight, to make them feel superior! It would finally 'lose' with a carefully executed move, planned a mere three days earlier! She never knew about this until Sonny, who had been a previous owner of the same craft years before, let the cat out of the bag whilst on a routine visit to her ship in his new position as a safety officer with Inspecta-Trol.
Inspecta-Trol advised owners of ships what requirement were needed that they, (the Transporters) could keep their licences to transport certain goods to certain corners of space. Of course they fined some heavily - those who hadn't complied with the recommendations on previous visits. McGraph wasn't one of these as she couldn't take the risk as she needed every penny she could find, for her future plan.
On one particular visit Sonny had discovered the games between McGraph and the computer via her log book, which included many trivial- ities that seemed important at the time. Trivialities gain 'unreal' qualities when you're alone in deep space and the only other life-forms on board are evolved from from the bacteria in yesterday's linen basket via the Speed-O-Matic molecular transformer, which can turn a 23rd century germ into a 20th century football supporter overnight! The reverse used to be true, but it was never used - allegedly!
Another triviality which occupied much time on these journey's, was McGraph's surreal thoughts about how many pints of urine she'd passed, compared to how much liquid she'd actually drank over a 24 hour period. It never seemed to balance out! Even using the equation that approximately 220ml of fluid leaves the body via the sweat glands in a normal night's sleep. She wasn't normally a 'sweaty' person so could never really come to terms with this fact. She reasoned with herself that those figures were for a 'normal' person, of which she was not, even by her own admission!
Back to the table of chess scores.
Sonny explained the situation, and about the computers programming, and promptly wished he hadn't as McGraph began ripping out the wiring under the monitor screen, to {fb1904000'...teach it a lesson. The devious bastard machine!"
"Don't do that you fool, he's controlling the ship!"{fb1000000 Carrying on regardless she ripped out a huge green cable and the ship was plunged into darkness! At this split second, the ship entered a time-hole. Neither McGraph or Sonny realised this at the time, but there lives were forever changed...
A time-hole can be thought of as a corridor or road to another version of what exist for the people involved. A parallel world. Everything appears to be normal in this new world, but all who enter begin a second existence. Both worlds exist at the same time, yet neither can ever meet or affect the other as they are divided by 2 separate time-lines. Time-lines can be separated by many years and distances too. McGraph's and Sonny's second life began a new chapter at this very instant. They had to accept what followed and they were powerless to intervene, in fact they were mostly unaware of the fact for a long time.
McGraph and Sonny knew nothing of the time-hole's future consequences and carried on aimlessly. They didn't realise their own time had stopped, (for them only), yet in their 'new' time had existed for almost twenty years. Twenty years spiralling towards the exit until they exited without a blip. No one saw them go, and no one saw them re-appear.
