All good science fiction is not just about science and fiction. It’s about
the very real emotions that make us human and the conflicts that define
us. The Rankin Paradox is not just about time travel. It’s
about the price of obsession and regret and, more importantly, it’s about
who ultimately pays that price. Dr. Charles Rankin is obsessed to find the
secret of time travel. Why is he so obsessed? What makes him driven to
discover this secret? He will find that by taking a disastrous shortcut to
his goal, he becomes the unwitting cause of his own anguish.
Story Synopsis
While
on a paleontology dig in the mountains of Montana in the year 2016,
paleontologist DR. ALISON REYNOLDS uncovers an enigma. Her boss asks the
critical question that starts Reynolds on her fateful search: “Maybe we’d
better call a theoretical physicist. Ask him, how does a 21st
century timepiece find its way into a 65 million year old fossil bed?”
DR.
CHARLES RANKIN is the top theoretical physicist in the world. His lectures
on time theory at Southwestern State University are legendary. It is to
Dr. Rankin that Reynolds is drawn. Their subsequent discovery provides a
link that enables Rankin to make his time travel theory practical.
Drawn
ever closer to Rankin as she works with him, she discovers the mystery
that motivates him to unlock the secret of time travel: Rankin blames
himself for the death of his wife and child in a car accident ten years
before. Researching the truth about the accident, Reynolds uncovers a
fatal piece of evidence. But she is too late to stop Rankin from using his
machine to go back in time to stop the accident.
The
machine has a fatal flaw: like all things human, there is a margin of
error. The machine brings Rankin back an hour early and 20 miles from
where he needs to be. In his race to stop the accident, Rankin hijacks a
truck and speeds to the accident scene. Driven by obsession to stop the
accident, Rankin drives the truck that kills his own wife and child.
Rankin
returns to the present a broken man. In a carefully crafted plot twist,
Reynolds corrects the time discrepancy, saving Rankin’s wife and child,
but at a terrible price.
Story Analysis