Alice glanced at her friends again and noted with satisfaction that she was once again the center of their attention. “I began digging a little deeper and found a patent application for an invention of a device called ‘Time Traveler’, which was based on the use of electro-magnetic and gravitational forces. I’m not going to bother you with all the complicated scientific jargon, though you would be amazed at how much I picked up while working with Professor Kroll.”

“Thank you, honey,” Dana smiled. “I’d rather you speak in plain English.”

“Your will is my command, girlfriend. So, speaking in plain English, this patent was submitted in 1859 and the papers claimed that Sir Halsey and a group of scientists he funded had discovered a way to travel through time and space with the help of said ‘Time Traveler’ device. The patent included a proof of some sort of space travel, in which a local homeless man was used as a guinea pig and who disappeared right before their eyes after the device was used on him. The homeless man was found about ten miles away and couldn’t remember or describe how he got there, as if no time had passed for him.”

“This is exactly what we were talking about yesterday,” Shane exclaimed. “Two similar scientific experiences conducted at two different time periods.”

“What happened to the Sir Halsey’s patent and the experiment?” Bette asked.

“Well, it only gets more interesting,” Alice was on a roll now. “Here’s a copy of the preliminary examination of invention that the Patent Bureau filed along with the patent. ‘This group of persons having conceived an idea which they think maybe patentable and were advised to make a sketch or model of their invention and submit to patent office. The points of novelty were carefully examined and we found that a few pages of the invention description along with the sketch were missing. Upon a thorough investigation, it was discovered that a local servant woman who was hired by the scientists to cook and provide any other kind of service, went missing on the same day the patent was submitted to our office. Further investigation revealed that not only she took the pages from the patent but also the device itself. The application was rejected with the stipulation to have another chance to be submitted at a later time after the theft of the papers had been solved.’ I have searched and searched and Halsey’s team had never submitted another patent application.” Alice finished reading and looked at the girls again.