Tomorrow is Too Far

Tomorrow is Too Far Plot Summary

Introduction

In the sterile corridors of Hart-Ewing Industries, a small fire burns in an abandoned storeroom. The flames consume nothing but waste paper, yet Chief Security Officer Carson knows this is no accident. The charred fragments whisper of impossible journeys—missions that reach the orbit of Mars in the blink of an eye, travelers who return speaking of tomorrow as if it were too far away. Carson has stumbled upon something that officially doesn't exist: a project so secret that even the security chief has been kept in the dark. As Carson digs deeper, following a trail of mysterious requisitions and midnight meetings, he discovers the truth is more terrifying than any industrial espionage. At the center of it all stands John Pebbles, a simple man who sweeps floors by day and flies aircraft with impossible skill by night. Pebbles carries secrets locked in his fractured mind—memories of a life erased, of friends who meant to save him but instead destroyed everything he was. In the shadows of this conspiracy, Carson will learn that some journeys exact a price beyond imagination, and that tomorrow might indeed be too far to reach with one's sanity intact.

Chapter 1: Suspicious Patterns: A Security Officer's Discovery

Carson stared at the blackened concrete floor where someone had carefully burned classified documents. The fire had been reported as an accident, a small pile of rubbish that somehow ignited in a supposedly fireproof storeroom. But Carson saw the truth in the details others missed—the cuphooks screwed into the window frames for blackout curtains, the aviation fuel residue, the charred fragments of typed pages bearing calculations about interstellar distances. For months, he had been tracking irregularities throughout the Hart-Ewing complex. Components manufactured to wrong specifications, then quietly written off as scrap. Meetings that produced no paperwork, no minutes, no trace they had ever occurred. Materials requisitioned for projects that didn't exist in any official capacity. The pattern suggested something vast and coordinated, hidden beneath the routine operations of the aerospace company. The breakthrough came when Carson discovered that John Pebbles, a simple-minded janitor, had been used to transport the combustible materials to the storeroom. Someone had called Pebbles, claiming a secretary had lost her engagement ring in the waste bins and needed them moved for searching. Pebbles believed everything he was told, did everything he was asked without question. He was the perfect unwitting accomplice. Carson began spending his nights prowling the empty factories, following the threads of conspiracy. He witnessed clandestine meetings between department heads who officially had no reason to collaborate. He saw chief designer Daniels and test pilot Tillotson huddled over calculations that dealt with impossible velocities—speeds that would carry a spacecraft beyond the edge of the solar system. The project was real, massive, and completely off the books. Standing in that burned-out storeroom, Carson felt the first stirrings of a terrible excitement. He had found something extraordinary, something that made his previous security work seem trivial. But as he studied the ash-stained fragments of paper, one phrase echoed in his mind like a warning: "COMMIT TO MEMORY AND DESTROY AT ONCE." Whatever he had discovered, people had died to keep it secret.

Chapter 2: The Curious Case of John Pebbles

Carson's investigation led him inevitably to the man at the center of the mystery. John Pebbles worked as a lavatory attendant, mopping floors and emptying waste bins throughout the Hart-Ewing complex. Officially, he was classified as mentally disabled—a thirty-year-old man with the intellectual capacity of a child. Personnel had hired him as part of their program to employ the handicapped, and his supervisor Silverman seemed eager to keep him in his current position. Yet Pebbles wore a distinctive tie with quiet pride, the kind worn by management, not custodial staff. When Carson encountered him in the facility restroom, stammering and struggling to form words, something didn't add up. Pebbles spoke of multiplication and division, of triangle velocity calculations, concepts far beyond what his disability should allow. His hands moved with precision, his posture suggested competence his speech patterns denied. The contradiction deepened when Carson learned that Pebbles spent his free time at the local flying club. Not as a spectator, but as a qualified flight instructor. The same man who could barely string together a coherent sentence was teaching others to pilot aircraft with skill that bordered on artistry. Carson's first flying lesson with Pebbles revealed a transformation—the stammering janitor became confident, authoritative, displaying an intuitive understanding of aerodynamics that seemed impossible. At the club, members spoke of Pebbles with genuine affection and respect. They remembered when he first appeared years ago, wandering the airfield perimeter like a lost soul, fascinated by the aircraft but unable to communicate his interest. Test pilot Tillotson had taken pity on him, offering a flight that changed everything. Suddenly, Pebbles could fly as if he had been born to it, learning at a rate that defied his supposed mental limitations. Carson began to suspect that John Pebbles was not what he seemed. The official story of mental disability felt manufactured, a convenient cover for something darker. As Carson dug into Pebbles's background, he found gaps and inconsistencies that suggested a carefully constructed identity. Whatever secret the Hart-Ewing project was hiding, Pebbles was either its most vulnerable victim or its most dangerous element.

Chapter 3: Unraveling the Mind: Memories Lost and Found

Dr. Jean Marshall's medical records painted a picture of John Pebbles that contradicted everything Carson thought he knew. When Pebbles had first arrived at Hart-Ewing, his pre-employment physical had revealed something extraordinary hidden beneath the facade of disability. During vision tests, he had been unable to read the eye chart—not because his sight was poor, but because he was only just learning to read, like a child discovering language for the first time. The truth was more disturbing than Carson had imagined. Pebbles had been found naked on a remote beach four years earlier by a nurse from the MacNaughton Clinic. He lay unconscious among the rocks, his right hand clutching five colored pebbles from the shore, his body bearing the marks of someone who had never learned to walk properly. The clinic staff assumed he was the victim of some maritime accident, suffering from exposure and a complete loss of memory and basic human skills. At the clinic, Pebbles had to be taught everything—how to use a toilet, how to eat with utensils, how to form words and understand speech. Yet he learned with remarkable speed, as if recovering abilities rather than acquiring them for the first time. His physical coordination was excellent, his capacity for learning in technical areas seemed unlimited, but his social and emotional development remained that of a child discovering the world. Carson's investigation revealed the orange plastic material found near Pebbles's body had never been properly identified. The nurse described it as unlike any boat or life raft material she had seen. No missing person reports matched Pebbles's description, no family came forward to claim him. He had appeared from nowhere, a blank slate with the body of a man and the mind of an infant. The medical staff at the clinic had tried various treatments for amnesia, but Pebbles showed none of the typical patterns of memory loss. He wasn't recovering forgotten skills—he was learning them fresh, yet with an underlying familiarity that suggested prior experience. Dr. Marshall, who had worked at the clinic before joining Hart-Ewing, recognized the signs of something far more sinister than simple amnesia. Someone had deliberately erased John Pebbles's mind with surgical precision, leaving only fragments of muscle memory and technical aptitude intact.

Chapter 4: The Secret Project: Time's Dangerous Currents

Carson's eavesdropping on a clandestine meeting in Daniels's office revealed the scope of the conspiracy. Through a carelessly placed telephone receiver, he heard fragments of conversation that spoke of impossible journeys and tragic failures. Wayne Tillotson, the company's chief test pilot, was dead—not from an aircraft accident as officially reported, but from something called a "minus trip" that had driven him to hysteria before his capsule burned up on reentry. The project was working with velocities that defied conventional physics. Carson heard references to instantaneous travel across interstellar distances, to jumping between points in space faster than light itself could travel. But the technology carried a terrible price. Test animals returned from these journeys alive but confused, their behavior patterns disrupted for weeks. Human subjects faced even worse consequences. Daniels spoke of philosophical implications and the need for human test subjects who could report on psychological effects. They needed volunteers with no close family ties, people whose disappearance wouldn't raise difficult questions. Carson realized with growing horror that John Pebbles fit that profile perfectly—a man with no past, no connections, no one who would miss him if something went wrong. The project had been hidden from Hart-Ewing's official security apparatus on the theory that classification and oversight would only draw unwanted attention. A single shadow security officer, operating outside normal channels, protected the secret through methods that included murder when necessary. Herbie Patterson, the accountant who had been asking too many questions about budget irregularities, had died in what appeared to be suicide but showed all the signs of professional elimination. Carson understood that he had stumbled onto something that could reshape humanity's relationship with the universe—or destroy it entirely. The project was developing not just a space drive, but a weapon that could deliver nuclear warheads to any target instantaneously, making all conventional defenses obsolete. The race was on to perfect the technology before enemy powers developed their own version, but the psychological toll was mounting with each test flight into the impossible distances between stars.

Chapter 5: The Guinea Pig's Journey: Into the Void and Back

Carson's investigation had made him a security risk that could no longer be ignored. Senior Patrol Officer Donovan, the project's shadow guardian, confronted Carson and Dr. Marshall with lethal intent. Behind his mild demeanor and pressed uniform, Donovan was a fanatic who would kill anyone threatening project security without hesitation or remorse. He had already murdered Herbie Patterson to protect the secret, and Carson and Marshall were next on his list. Only Carson's knowledge of John Pebbles's true nature saved their lives. He convinced Donovan that the project had been penetrated by enemy agents who had spent years positioning their operative for this moment. Pebbles wasn't just a convenient test subject—he was a sophisticated sleeper agent whose amnesia had been artificially induced to provide perfect cover. The clinic staff, the flying club members, even Hart-Ewing personnel had been manipulated into accepting and protecting him. Daniels, the project director, faced an impossible choice. The time travel technology his team had developed worked by exploiting the universe's constant motion through space. A journey into the future posed no problems—the traveler arrived at a predetermined point where Earth would be after its rotation and orbital movement. But return trips into the past created devastating psychological trauma, wiping clean the memories formed during the outbound journey. To save their lives and serve the project's needs, Carson and Marshall were recruited as internal security consultants. Carson would become the next test subject, making a round-trip journey that would take him millions of miles from Earth in an instant, then return him to the starting point with his recent memories erased. It was a form of controlled death and rebirth, the price of touching tomorrow and living to forget about it. As Carson prepared for his first journey into the cosmic distances, he realized the full scope of the tragedy. Pebbles had already made this trip multiple times, each return journey stripping away layers of accumulated experience and leaving him more childlike than before. The man sweeping floors and struggling with speech was a test pilot and potential cosmonaut whose mind had been repeatedly sacrificed to advance human understanding of time and space.

Chapter 6: Shattered Glass: Reconstructing a Fragmented Self

Carson's journey to a point millions of miles beyond Mars lasted only an hour in subjective time, but the return trip through the past erased even that brief experience from his memory. He awakened as a blank slate, his mind shattered like glass, retaining only the most basic functions while everything else had to be painstakingly reconstructed. Dr. Marshall became his guardian and teacher, helping him relearn language, motor skills, and the fundamental aspects of human interaction. The recovery process was agonizing in its intimacy. Carson found himself in the body of a grown man but with the emotional needs and understanding of a child. He could not comprehend the relationship between himself and the people caring for him, could not grasp the meaning of words or actions, yet some deeper part of him recognized Marshall's presence as essential to his survival. She became his anchor in a world that had lost all meaning. Day by day, fragments of his former self began to surface. Technical knowledge returned faster than personal memories, as if his professional expertise was carved more deeply into his neural pathways than his emotional experiences. He could understand complex documents and recognize patterns in data while still struggling to use eating utensils or navigate social interactions. The asymmetrical recovery created a painful awareness of his losses—he knew he should remember more than he could access. Marshall's presence accelerated his healing in ways that went beyond medical treatment. Her touch and voice triggered recognition patterns that bypassed his damaged conscious memory, reaching into deeper layers of association and feeling. Carson found himself drawn to her not just as a patient depends on a caregiver, but with emotions he couldn't yet name or understand. The relationship between doctor and patient blurred into something more complex and dangerous. Project Director Daniels watched the recovery with clinical interest and growing guilt. Each successful return from the deep time jumps proved the technology's potential while demonstrating its horrific cost. Carson would eventually recover most of his personality and memories, but the process took months and left psychological scars that accumulated with each subsequent journey. The project was consuming the minds of its test subjects to achieve the impossible dream of instantaneous interstellar travel.

Chapter 7: The Cycles of Forgetting: A Life Repeatedly Erased

The full horror of the project became clear as Carson's memories slowly returned. This was not his first time travel mission, but his eleventh. For years, he had been making regular journeys into the future, visiting Mars, the outer planets, and eventually interstellar space itself. Each trip advanced scientific understanding while erasing Carson's memory of the experience, trapping him in an endless cycle of discovery and forgetting. Marshall had been his constant companion through multiple recoveries, teaching him to speak and walk and remember his identity again and again. What appeared to be a loving marriage was actually a professional relationship between a patient suffering from artificially induced amnesia and the doctor dedicated to his rehabilitation. She had watched him deteriorate and recover so many times that the process had become routine, though no less heartbreaking for its familiarity. The project had achieved extraordinary breakthroughs through Carson's sacrifices. Automated cameras in his capsule had recorded views of distant worlds and stellar phenomena that would have taken conventional spacecraft centuries to reach. He had observed the birth of stars and the death of solar systems, had traveled so far into the future that he witnessed his own natural death from old age. None of these experiences remained in his conscious memory, but they had advanced human knowledge immeasurably. John Pebbles was revealed to be a victim of the same technology from an enemy project. He had been a test pilot or cosmonaut whose memory was erased after a similar time travel experiment went wrong. Left on a beach where clinic staff would find him, he became an unwitting sleeper agent whose conditioning was slowly breaking down under the influence of familiar aviation environments. His growing confusion and nightmares reflected the return of suppressed memories from his former life. The two projects, American and presumably Soviet, had been secretly exchanging information through their amnesia-damaged test subjects. Daniels had deliberately allowed Pebbles to be repatriated, carrying subconscious intelligence about the American program back to his handlers. In return, the Americans gained insights into alternative approaches to the time travel problem. The Cold War continued even in the realm of impossible science, with broken minds serving as unwitting diplomatic channels between enemies united by their pursuit of godlike power over space and time.

Summary

In the end, Carson chose to continue his journeys into tomorrow, accepting the price of perpetual forgetting for the chance to touch the infinite. Each return trip erased his memories of cosmic wonders beyond imagination, leaving him to rediscover love and purpose through Marshall's patient guidance. The project advanced toward its goal of safe interstellar travel, built on the accumulated sacrifices of minds willing to die and be reborn in service of human expansion into the universe. The secret facilities of Hart-Ewing Industries became a theater of the impossible, where time itself bent to human will and the boundaries between past and future dissolved. Carson and Pebbles, two men erased and reconstructed countless times, served as unwitting ambassadors to the deep future, their shattered memories the price of humanity's first faltering steps toward the stars. In their sacrifice lay both the promise of unlimited exploration and the warning that some territories of knowledge exact costs beyond rational calculation. Tomorrow would always be too far for the human mind to reach intact, but perhaps that distance was what made the journey worthwhile.

About Author

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James White

White investigates the intricate intersection of medicine and science fiction, emphasizing cooperation and ethics over conflict. His narratives, particularly in the "Sector General" series, utilize an intergalactic hospital as a microcosm to explore interspecies understanding. Through scientifically accurate depictions, White invites readers to envision a future where altruism transcends species boundaries. This perspective is embedded within a framework of thoughtful problem-solving and optimism, challenging the darker tones of the contemporary "New Wave" science fiction movement.\n\nFor readers interested in stories that merge hard science fiction with humanitarian themes, White's books offer a unique blend of medical emergencies and interstellar diplomacy. His narratives appeal to those who value stories rich in scientific detail and ethical dilemmas. Works like "The Secret Visitors" and "The Watch Below" extend these themes beyond the Sector General series, further reinforcing his commitment to narratives that prioritize peace and understanding. White's early work in tailoring and publicity, along with his active involvement in science fiction fandom, informed his unique storytelling approach, resulting in a bio that captures both the warmth and intellectual rigor of his stories.\n\nAlthough White never achieved mainstream fame, his influence endures through an award established in his name, honoring excellence in science fiction short stories. His commitment to themes of medical ethics and peaceful coexistence makes his contributions invaluable to the science fiction genre. While White was twice nominated for the Hugo Award and once for the Nebula Award, his true legacy lies in inspiring future writers to explore compassionate storytelling in speculative fiction.

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