On Friday I left early, letting her know that I would be back home before four, I headed to the university’s history department to keep my appointment with time.

The department had been bequeathed a new Apple Industries “Chrono-Porter”, and after the first ten years of use in pure historical research the department had started to become a profit center as the device allowed placement of recording devices in crime locations, solving many dead file crimes from the last decade.

I approached the department dean with my request to record my proposal to my than future wife. As another potential income stream the idea was wholeheartedly supported, my payment accepted and I was introduced to the grad student / technician on duty.

With Goggle Map World View up on the main screen we zoomed on the GPS coordinates I provided and using pre-recorded “street views” we programmed the entry and aiming points for the recording aperture. I had set the time that I had proposed into my personal calendar that day and had later downloaded it into face book, and its descendents. To this we added a leading five minutes to allow that my recorded time may have been in error. For some reason recordings cannot be live screened, for the ten minuet recording, an hour of real time would need to be processed and collated to reproduce the original view.

While waiting I inquired why I heard of so few dead file cases solved in the decades prior to the present?

Time is among the electro, magnetic, gravimetric phenomenon that are subject to the theory of general relativity, to transport the sensor aperture and maintain it requires energy in proportion to the squared amount of mass displaced and multiplied by the total time differential between the two points. In other words the greater the time displacement, the greater the amount of energy displacement and when the field opens and collapses the energy discharges are spectacular. A displacement of a decade would create a discharge large enough to distract those present at the potential crime scene, reducing accuracy and potentially changing history. Your recording is the greatest differential in time we have recorded to date.

I went home a shattered man, I am a lifelong bachelor now, after viewing the recording we made I called up the news for the day on the internet archives, the story in the Asheville Citizen-Times said it all…

“A young Tennessee woman was struck and killed by lightning on one of her favorite North Carolina mountain trails only moments before her boyfriend was about to propose to her…

Richard Butler, 30, said he and Bethany Lott, 25, both from Knoxville, had ignored the rain and kept heading up Max Patch Bald, a spot that Bethany had longed to show him.
In his pocket, he had his own surprise -- an engagement ring.
About 30 seconds before the lightning struck, Butler tells the newspaper, Lott turned around to say: "'God, baby, look how beautiful it is.'"
Butler, who suffered second-degree burns in the ordeal, says he remembers seeing three lightning flashes.
"I was spun 180 degrees and thrown several feet back," he says. "My legs turned to Jell-O, my shoes were smoking and the bottom of my feet felt like they were on fire."
He then crawled to Bethany, who was lying motionless only a few feet away.
"I did CPR for probably 15 minutes and the whole time was trying her cellphone, but I couldn't get anything out," Butler says.
He then drove for help, but it was too late.
"I put the ring on her finger while the EMTs were working on her," he tells the Citizen-Times. "They are listing me as her fiancé in the obituaries."
(Posted by Doug Stanglin of the Asheville Citizen-Times)”