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Clockwork JFK: a time travel novel
A man travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination.
It is Black Friday, 2024. Cal Ellis is a retired lecturer in public policy at Pitt. In the wake of Trump’s re-election, he is texted by Liz Templeton, a historian at Carnegie Mellon and the daughter of a Republican Vice-President. Cal and Liz knew each other in high school, but have not spoken since she rejected him as a potential boyfriend.
When they meet for coffee, Liz reveals she has exclusive access to Police Box, a time travel project under direction of the head of CMU’s Physics Department, Dr. Tyson Neal. Tyson is the discoverer, at the Large Hadron Collider, of the Neal boson, also known as the Time Particle. Isolation of the Time Particle allows one to travel back to specific points in the space-time continuum.
Liz wants Cal, who has posted YouTube videos on the JFK assassination, to travel back in time to prevent it. If JFK survives, she believes Trump will never be elected, and the deep state her father helped create won’t be threatened by Trump’s purge of federal agencies.
The problem is that Cal’s age when he lands cannot be determined ahead of time. Sometimes he is 73, the age he is in 2024; sometimes he is 12 years old, the age he was then. There is no way to control which version of himself emerges in 1963.
As Cal makes multiple trips back in time, he discovers Liz’s real reason for sending him. The ability to time travel allows him to play God with American history. The only question Are the results worth it?
It is Black Friday, 2024. Cal Ellis is a retired lecturer in public policy at Pitt. In the wake of Trump’s re-election, he is texted by Liz Templeton, a historian at Carnegie Mellon and the daughter of a Republican Vice-President. Cal and Liz knew each other in high school, but have not spoken since she rejected him as a potential boyfriend.
When they meet for coffee, Liz reveals she has exclusive access to Police Box, a time travel project under direction of the head of CMU’s Physics Department, Dr. Tyson Neal. Tyson is the discoverer, at the Large Hadron Collider, of the Neal boson, also known as the Time Particle. Isolation of the Time Particle allows one to travel back to specific points in the space-time continuum.
Liz wants Cal, who has posted YouTube videos on the JFK assassination, to travel back in time to prevent it. If JFK survives, she believes Trump will never be elected, and the deep state her father helped create won’t be threatened by Trump’s purge of federal agencies.
The problem is that Cal’s age when he lands cannot be determined ahead of time. Sometimes he is 73, the age he is in 2024; sometimes he is 12 years old, the age he was then. There is no way to control which version of himself emerges in 1963.
As Cal makes multiple trips back in time, he discovers Liz’s real reason for sending him. The ability to time travel allows him to play God with American history. The only question Are the results worth it?
120 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2025
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