by Mark J Rose
Matt Miller in the Colonies
Book One: Journeyman
Mark J. Rose
The Skydenn Looking Glass
Simi Valley, California
Copyright © 2017 by Mark J. Rose
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below:
The Skydenn Looking Glass
508 Longbranch Rd.
Simi Valley, CA 93065
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rose, Mark J., 1965 –
Matt Miller in the Colonies : Book One: Journeyman / Mark J. Rose.
ISBN 978-0-9975554-1-7
1. Science Fiction. 2. Historical Fiction.
Title: Matt Miller in the Colonies : Book One: Journeyman
Second Edition
Contents
1. Toothpaste, Part I
2. Matt Miller
3. Toothpaste, Part II
4. Uncomfortable Friends
5. Mister, Can You Give Me the Time?
6. Toothpaste, Part III
7. Biding Time
8. Richmond
9. Lunch at King’s Tavern
10. Farmhand
11. Damn Dog
12. Nature’s Bounty
13. Ibuprofen
14. Lasting Impressions
15. Goldthread
16. Horse Sense
17. Improprieties
18. Mad Money
19. Corn
20. Riding Lessons
21. Apothecary
22. Levi
23. Physician, Heal Thyself
24. Revelations
25. Horse’s Ass
26. St. John’s Church
27. Graine
28. Sit-down
29. Strategies and Plans
30. Men’s Breeches
31. I Don’t Know
32. Harvest’s End
33. Court Well, Mr. Miller
34. What’s Up?
35. Toothpaste, Part IV
36. Hay Barn
37. Rich Men’s Sons
38. Five Minutes
39. Minuet
40. It Was Her Idea
41. Time to Go
42. Toothpaste, Part V
43. Now What?
1
Toothpaste, Part I
The physicists took care not to step on the eight legs of the hissing stainless steel spider as they worked to adjust the power supplies that formed the magnetic containment field. None of the four was even remotely aware that they adjusted a machine that had the power to change history. Brian Palmer, a stocky man with an unruly mop of dark hair and a mustache, used a rag to clean the glass portal on top of the reactor that would allow them to observe the Chernenko-Einstein particles as they formed. Although they had an overwhelming trust in the analytical equipment and sensors that would measure the reaction, there was no substitute for seeing it with their own eyes.
Jacob Cromwell, a tall, thin scientist with red hair, spoke with a thick Southern drawl. “What time is it?”
Palmer set the rag down and checked the phone in his pocket. “Six a.m.,” he replied.
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” Palmer said, discouraged. “I can try one more and then I gotta go. I have a presentation to give in four hours. I’ll be sleepwalking through it.”
“Fine by me,” Kevin Moore, the third physicist, answered. “My hands are starting to shake from all the coffee.” Kevin then turned to a fourth man who had worked his way under the reactor holding a crescent wrench. “David, you good for one more?”
“Might as well,” David Greer replied as he slid partially out from underneath the stainless steel monster. “It’s a wasted day for me either way. I can’t function on three hours of sleep.”
“One more try, then,” Palmer declared. “Almost ready?”
Greer reached up while still on his back to make a last-minute change. “Done, I think,” he said. He slowly took his feet and backed away from the reactor. Each stood close enough to see into the glass portal.
“Wait,” Palmer said calmly. They watched as he tried to squeeze between the reactor and the wall. Palmer reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and set it on the shelf. The empty pocket gave him just enough space to squeeze through and turn the last calibration knob. He eased his body out and joined the rest to watch the product of two hours of adjustment.
Cromwell pulled the switch. A steady vibration could be heard from the reactor and then a green glow started to emanate through the glass. The men looked on with some interest. After so many attempts, all were surprised to see the reactor finally begin to produce particles.
**********
Outside, the town of Oak Ridge was beginning to wake. The residents were unaware of the experiment that was taking place in the basement of the government laboratory, but four people would soon experience the direct effect of a concentrated beam of Chernenko-Einstein particles as they escaped containment.
One of these four, a mountain biker named Patrick Ferguson, was starting to think that fall would never end in Tennessee. October had been unseasonably warm, resulting in the most brilliant colors the state had seen in decades. He was making a habit of waking early to be in the wooded hills as the sun rose to light the leaves. Oak Ridge was a stunningly dull place to live compared to his hometown of London, but for sheer beauty, it would’ve been hard to beat the southern United States in the fall. He was breathing hard as he pedaled his bike through the countryside and listened to music from the phone in his breast pocket. He felt the phone vibrate, but it was unlike the vibration it made for a call. He reached for his pocket to verify that the phone hadn’t fallen out.
A teenage girl, Sarah Morris, was holding her phone when the reactor started, so the sensation felt more like an electric shock. She studied the phone, wondering if something was wrong, but her mother driving up in a black Mercedes-Benz interrupted her thoughts. By the time the car stopped, she had entirely forgotten about the phone. Her mother got out of the car in the long black dress and short grey fur she had worn to a charity fundraiser the night before. She reached down to pick up her daughter’s violin case.
“How was it?” Sarah asked.
Her mother gave a noncommittal nod. “I donated more of your father’s money,” she said.
“How’d you sleep?”
“You know I hate hotels, but it was too late to drive home.”
The last person to experience the effect of the Chernenko-Einstein experiment was a twenty-six-year-old hiker named Matt Miller. He was high up in the Smoky Mountains, trying to interpret a paper map using the compass function on his phone. When the shock came, it made his fingers go numb and the map drop from his hand. Irritated, he glared at his expensive new phone.
The only other creature aware that the reactor had successfully begun to generate a Chernenko-Einstein particle string was a squirrel that was sitting on the Rutherford Q-band cell phone tower high atop Clingmans Dome, the highest peak in the mountains of Tennessee. The ‘Q’ stood for quantum, which was the new cell technology that had been introduced recently by the Rutherford Company. Of all the creatures feeling the effects of the successful generation of Chernenko-Einstein particles, the squirrel was in the best position to realize that the sensation they felt wasn’t an electrical shock at all, but that of matter being disrupted by the first few particles
to escape the reactor.
**********
In the lab, three of the four physicists stared intensely at the humming metal bug. Cromwell kept his eyes glued to a computer monitor as he called out readings. “Ten thousand…twenty thousand…thirty thousand…man…it’s fifty thousand!” He glanced away to look through the reactor window. The room had begun to take on a green hue from the particles interacting with the magnetic field. The faint green light was accompanied by a calm hum. Cromwell looked back to the energy monitor and called out with excitement, “Holding at one hundred and twenty thousand!”
“My God,” Palmer exclaimed, “we’ve done it!”
They looked at each other, smiling. “You have data?” asked Greer.
“Tons,” replied Cromwell. A bright green flash and then a sharp snap like the sound of a bullwhip punctuated the end of his sentence. Their gazes were frantic. The only thing more startling than the fact that the reactor had begun working was that it had as abruptly stopped. Cromwell scrutinized the monitor. “They’re gone,” he said.
“Gone where?” Greer asked. “The trap wasn’t open.” He watched as Cromwell flipped switches to the off position.
“The containment field’s broken,” Palmer said.
“Where’d they go?” Greer repeated.
Palmer stooped down to inspect the reactor casing. “Probably through here,” he said as he moved his two fingers inside a round hole in the stainless steel housing. “Cold and smooth, like it disappeared.” With his eyes, he followed the angle of his fingers to where they pointed at the wall. A hole had been bored through the laboratory shelf. He stood to retrieve his phone and found that a perfect two-inch core was missing from the screen. They all inspected the damage as he turned it in his hand. “This cost me half a month’s salary.” All their eyes returned to the shelf.
“They went through the wall!” Greer exclaimed. The physicists followed him into the next lab. The hole was there too, but this time bigger, exiting through the ceiling. They ran together up the steps to the first floor. Cromwell waved his badge to open the secured door and glanced into the lab directly above the reactor. He pointed down the hall. “Entrance and exit holes going straight that way,” he said. “East side of the building.”
They hurried out into the morning light to inspect the outside. “They didn’t make it out,” Moore said, relieved. He was watching Greer rounding the corner.
“Yes, they did,” yelled Greer.
“They would’ve had to change direction!” Cromwell said doubtfully, rushing to join Greer. There was a hole through the bricks in the southeast corner of the building. The men arrived in time to watch a large oak tree begin to teeter where a two-foot section had disappeared from its trunk. The tree crashed to the ground, sending bright fall colors and dust in every direction. Once the tree was gone they saw the circular path that the particles had carved through the forest on their way to the town of Oak Ridge. They stood paralyzed by the destruction.
“We better call Colonel Gabriel,” Cromwell said.
2
Matt Miller
Matt awoke with the violent gasp of a drowning man. Aside from this, nothing seemed out of the ordinary as he lay there on a makeshift bed looking up into the wooden rafters of a large barn. He had slept in many hiking shelters in the last few years and was used to waking up under rustic rooftops. He breathed in deeply. It was a bouquet of hay, dirt, and manure; the wholesome smells of a farm. Matt stretched his arms and legs to rise from the bed but his sore muscles fought him. He relaxed, trying to remember what he did the day before that would explain his aching limbs. His body hurt more than it should for the third week of a hike.
His mouth was dry, so he gently rolled over on the wooden bench to grab water from the pack underneath. He felt around, then reached again deeper, but still grasped only air. He dropped his head over the side of the bench but it was too dark to see. Light streaming through the barn’s glassless windows threw long shadows and made the things around him barely visible, so he eased himself onto the hay-covered floor for a better view. The space below him was empty and his pack was nowhere to be found. Someone had walked off with his stuff. The gun!
His mind raced. Matt had bought the pistol one day after a mama grizzly chased him up a tree. He’d been uncomfortable carrying it right from the start, so instead of strapping it at his side, where he could actually use it against an attacking bear, he kept the pistol packed away in his bag, unloaded. The box of bullets was tightly wrapped because he had the suspicion that they would be jarred somehow and start going off like firecrackers. The gun, along with everything else he carried, was expensive, so he imagined there was a happy thief out there somewhere.
Matt stood upright and a searing pain went through his head, causing his knees to buckle. This was more than soreness from the trail. He pulled himself back onto the bench to catch his breath and wait for his headache to diminish to a dull throb, then eased himself onto his feet. He fought off dizziness as he walked to the barn door and slid it open. The light was blinding and the pain hit him again, but he managed to remain standing. He squinted to see a farmhouse in the distance, framed by large oak trees. Chickens clucked to his right, and the wind was rustling the leaves. He stood there, trying first to steady his legs, and then to get his bearings. He had expected to walk out into something familiar, but nothing was recognizable. Nothing looked at all like the Appalachian Trail.
“Good afternoon to you, sir.”
Matt turned toward the chickens, shielding his eyes from the sun. Standing behind a wire coop was a tall middle-aged man in a worn white shirt and faded blue trousers. He was using a hammer on a coop fence as chickens frantically pecked at and around his feet. Matt struggled to say something. The trail often brought him face to face with poor mountain people, and this was no exception. He wasn’t always comfortable around these people. These thoughts and the pain in his head clogged his response, but he finally managed to say hello.
“We thought you’d never awaken,” the man called.
Seemingly from nowhere, a large shepherd dog trotted forward. Matt stepped back as the dog stood to face him and barked loudly. “Easy, Cujo!” Matt said. The dog stopped as soon as he spoke and tilted his head as if he understood, but after a moment resumed barking.
“Scout!” the man said. “Come hither!” The dog looked to the man and then grudgingly trotted to the coop. He split his gaze between Matt and his destination for the ten yards it took to go to his master, then sat down next to him and continued to growl. “Calm down, dog,” the man said as he stepped between the chickens. He walked to Matt and reached his arm out. “Thomas Taylor,” he said.
“Matt Miller,” replied Matt, reaching his arm out to shake. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“Almost two days.”
“Two days?” Matt said, surprised. “How did I get here?”
“We fetched you from the road,” Thomas replied.
“The road?” Matt looked around, head still pounding, trying unsuccessfully to remember how he got into the barn. Finally he thought to ask, “Have you seen a backpack?”
“In the house,” Thomas replied. “I’ll wager you’re not a Frenchman.” He grinned.
“Why would I be French?”
“My sons thought this by your clothes.”
It made sense to Matt. The Appalachian Trail attracted thousands of people every year, many from Europe. “No, I’m American,” Matt replied. “Could I get my pack?”
Thomas nodded and said, “I’ll be finished in a moment.”
“Can I use your bathroom?” Matt asked.
“A bath?”
“Not a bath,” Matt said, motioning downward to the center of his body. “Somewhere to pee.” Thomas looked at him strangely until he noticed the hand motion, and then he pointed to a narrow outhouse a good distance from the barn. The dog started to follow as Matt walked away, but Thomas called him back sharply.
By the time Matt returned, Thomas was f
inished with his fence. “You should have a meal before you leave,” he said. This man seemed too well-spoken to be living in poverty.
They walked to the house and the dog followed immediately behind them, making half growls to let Matt know he was still there. Matt climbed the six steps onto the porch, steadying himself against the railing. He didn’t know what to expect as he entered the home and was surprised that it was clean inside. He didn’t see a television, or anything else that required electricity. Matt scanned the floor for electrical outlets and saw none. Do people still live like this?
There was a kitchen at a lower level directly in the back of the house. A woman was working in front of a soot-stained hearth. Matt could smell the burning wood. As he walked into the house, there was no longer anything to hold to steady himself, and he became disoriented. The room grew rapidly hot, and then a cold feeling washed over his body and his vision blurred. He couldn’t stop himself as his legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor unconscious.
**********
Matt woke in the shade of the oak trees behind the house, looking into the kitchen. He pulled himself upright in a wooden chair next to a table. “Drink this,” a woman standing over him said with a German accent as she held out a tin cup of water. She was dressed in a simple country dress and her hair was pulled back. Her teeth were straight but yellowed and Matt became obsessed with her mouth for more than a moment, caught himself staring, and looked away. Obviously, she hadn’t been to a dentist in a while.