Tuscan River: Portal to the Edge of Time
Story Synopsis
By T. Michael Richert
Sandra Hann, Rose and Ed Morgan, and Sawyer, Rebecca, and Chuck Evans are six children ages six to thirteen living in a cul-de-sac neighborhood just west of Springfield, Massachusetts. Playing in a river near their homes they discover a mysterious book hidden in a chest buried beneath the water in the river bed. Sandra is able to decipher cryptic instructions in the book and understand how to combine common consumer electronics products to create a device with an unknown purpose. When the children activate the device they find themselves transported through a portal into another world.
On this new world called Tuscan River the children meet Lisa who becomes their guide and mentor. Like most on Tuscan River, Lisa has evolved into an immortal being, though lived on Earth as a human many generations into the children’s future. Lisa explains to the children how the portal technology works and recounts some of her travels and adventures in different realities, including various lifetimes spent on past Earth timelines. She also tells the children about the Arpiann Confederation, a race of beings that captures and imprisons people from throughout the universe. Unexplained to the children is that it was Lisa who during a past excursion to Earth hid the chest they found in the river bed, and that she using a persona generated for her by the portal technology was already acquainted with them on Earth. After Lisa introduces the children to Portal Racing, a recreational sport in the world of Tuscan River, the children convince Lisa and the group of Elders governing Tuscan River that they should be allowed to participate in a portal race. During their first race Ed and Chuck are captured by the Arpiann Confederation before they can make it back to safety.
Although the portal technology will allow the remaining children to return to an alternate Earth timeline where other versions of Ed and Chuck will be safely waiting for them but nothing else will change, they decide that it is more important to risk their lives and welfare to save the captured friends that left Earth with them. Joined by a bounty hunter named Seep, Lisa and the children make a daring raid on the Arpiann Confederation home world, freeing the two captured friends and narrowly avoiding capture themselves. Safely back on Tuscan River, Lisa gives Sandra a message to take back to Earth. After going back home with her friends Sandra reads the message and learns the truth about Lisa’s current identity on Earth.