Prologue

“ADRI is trying to achieve that goal, was trying” revealed Mark. ADRI is the marvelous AI program tasked with improving the flow of traffic going in and out of the big city. It had already achieved a better than 10% time gain for all commuters, earning the team located on the fourth floor of city hall the Monthly City Key Award.

He summarized, “A shift occurred in how they interacted with light. No, with air, which means they moved differently. The way light moves through air, in waves, making them faster.”
“Fifty times faster?” asked Trudy. “That would have to be faster than rocket propulsion, more like… time travel.”
        “Time travel is instantaneous. This is speeding up within time.”

“Are they.…trapped? Over 5,000 people?” Joseph’s voice squeaked in asking.
Mark whispered hoarsely, “So this is us. It was ADRI.” His head fell onto her shoulder.

Chapter 1
“Sorry.” Mark raised a hand as if he was stopping traffic. “What makes ADRI unique is that it can design multiple trials to determine if there is improvement over a period of a day or a week. When altering the timing of traffic lights, many tests will be run. In one day, there could be hundreds of variations in the timing of the lights tested, exceeding the quantity that a human could design and analyze in a year. This includes a complexity of that timing, modifying by the tenth of a second, each direction at every intersection, something any one human could not possibly process.”
“Today at three we will launch ADRI,” said Director Stanton.
“First of all, he did not say hello, he shook us.” Trudy was already laughing. “Second, he does not know our names. He probably calls us Intelligent 1 and Intelligent 2. Thirdly, I have to go back and forth between here and ADRI about 500 times today alone. That is 4 flights of stairs and there is not even a bathroom along the way.”

Chapter 3
“ADRI is not going to suggest that we pick up route 40 and move it 5 miles south out of my district, is she?” The councilman bellowed with laughter after his question and shot the mayor an elbow to the ribs. The mayor enjoyed the banter, especially if it shows in the website video that he is just one of the people.
“No, no,” Mark responded waving his arms before the laughter died down. “Frist, ADRI is a computer that we always refer to as ‘it’. An AI must be taught by inputting information such as the map of the city and how to use the sensor data. We taught it about the movement of people in vehicles.”

Chapter 4
Her box of codes for this program had grown such that she was now scrolling in it to reorder the new ones which she plunked in rapid succession as she spoke. Since they would not watch an artist work for this length of time, the men could have been watching a chef to see the basting of a rack of barbeque ribs. After clicking the refresh button, the ship reappeared in the middle to begin its floating movement again. Trudy pointed the mouse away from the ship and clicked. A laser sound was made as a small dot seemed to splash in the imaginary ocean of black.
“Tell me again that I don’t like games,” remarked Trudy. “But the ones I make are better ones than you probably play.”

Chapter 5
“The number of out-of-range data points is coming down daily,” stated Mark.
          “Nothing like a few thousand wrong numbers to brighten the day,” grumped Joseph in response.
          “You’re like a sheriff, Joseph. Rounding up the worst offenders first.”
          “Even Wyatt Erp had a posse to help bring in the gang,” added Trudy.
          “Well, keep it up. There are fewer there every day. That number was below 200 yesterday.”

Chapter 7
As Mary turned the corner onto 4^th street, she touched the accelerator to get up to speed. Wave Trial #560 had been engaged. The force that she experienced pressed her deep into the driver’s seat while barely keeping her fingertips on the wheel. A blur of buildings rushed by like stars do when a spaceship jumps into warp speed. If she had been starting a blink, she could have missed the whole incident. Breathing was not an option.

Chapter 8
The data showed that the vehicle veered off course. Before doing so, the time gain of the moving object was 88%, far exceeding any expectations that the computer understood from the literature. In fact, some literature didn’t claim that this was possible. Because veering off course was not an acceptable result, the subjects would have to be included in the next trails.

Chapter 10
The process was continued along the one highway for traffic going only in one direction. ADRI was predicting an average of 98% improvement in time.
          The snag occurred with a few speeding vehicles. While their time improvement data was close to the average time, ADRI noticed that they veered off course at the end of their shift. The previous wave was still in their path just before they were shifted back to normal time. A correction could be made for these speeding vehicles in the next Wave Trial.

Chapter 12
Mark answered his phone with “Yes, Jermaine.”
Both team members turned in their chairs to watch him. It was a one-sided conversation, meaning he was to listen.
“I understand.” Mark hung up.
“Trudy, allow me the chair a moment.”
She politely stood and stepped beside the chair. Mark sat and faced the screen, hands instantly ready to type. It was only a couple of lines.
“You halted all actions by ADRI,” Trudy quietly acknowledged.
“Actually, the Mayor’s orders. He wants everything everyone is doing stopped while ‘he’ investigates this morning’s events.”

Chapter 14
“Okay, Trudy,” he began. “Set the time for a one second interval, and I’ll be within range of this laser for the return.”
          “I’m not so sure about this, Dr. G.”
          “But you’re ready? One subject to shift?”
“We have you identified, in the street if that’s you. And should be able to track you, then bring you back, or shift you back. Whatever it does.”

The other woman asked, “Then why are you like this? What did you do?”
“I haven’t slept in two days according to my phone, but it was weird because the sun never went down.” He took full breaths between parts of sentences, slow but not forced breaths. “And you were just standing over there, I mean, you were at the far side of the building earlier, but it took you an hour to get to the door.” His arm slowly raised up. “I thought you were going to go in there, the City Hall, so I checked and found out your name,” he said with another breath pointing to one woman, “is Cindi with an i.” “
How do you know my name?” came the scared response.
“I went into your purse,” he replied with a breath as his head now seemed to droop downward.
“And saw your driver’s license. I know how old you are too.”
“What?” she screamed as she dove into her purse.