Empty Planet

by Lynette Sloane

  Knowing it wouldn’t be safe to stay where I was, I very quickly made my way back the way I’d come. The barking was getting closer and I knew I couldn’t outrun the dogs, so as soon as I got to the cenotaph I grabbed hold of the creeping ivy, using it as hand and foot holds, and climbed up as high as I could. The ivy was well established, the lower parts thicker than my arms. I was safe for a while. Near the top of the monument was a ledge, so I pulled myself up and sat on it, leaning back against the corroded bronze statue of a soldier who stood holding the remains of a rifle above his head in victory.

  A dozen or more ferocious, wild dogs came racing into sight and circled the cenotaph below me, excited at the prospect of a hearty meal. A couple of the larger dogs ran at the monument trying to climb up, but, to my relief, failed and fell back. Their long legs, pointed ears, and their vicious, barred teeth, reminded me of the time I was attacked by a Doberman when I was a lad, the scar at the top of my left arm a reminder of the occasion. Mum had saved me that day; she’d hit the dog with a large stick and the creature had run off yelping.

  After a while the dogs gave up trying to get to me and lay down watching and waiting for me to climb or fall down. My handgun was in its shoulder holster and I had extra ammunition, but there was no way of knowing how many more dogs were out there and I didn’t want to use all my ammunition now only to get attacked and find myself helpless around the next corner.

  “Hey!” A voice called out from somewhere on my right, startling me. I looked around but couldn’t see anyone.

  “Up here.” The man’s voice called again. I looked higher up the building. John was waving to get my attention.

  “John,” I called out. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

  “Looks like you’re the one who needs rescuing.”

  “Yea, I’ve never been very good with dogs.”

  “Wait there.” Great idea, I thought, I have no intention of wandering off anywhere.

  John disappeared from sight, a few minutes later reappearing in the branches of a very large oak tree growing about five metres behind my sanctuary. The tree towered many metres overhead, some of its branches extending out over the monument. I would have tried to climb up to it before, but the nearest branch was well out of reach.

  John called down, “Watch out, I’m dropping you a rope.”

  I stood up wondering how he managed to have fresh rope. Anything found in this time frame would have been rotten.

  The end of the rope dropped past my head causing me to loose balance as I instinctively stepped back, grabbing hold of the bronze soldier for balance. My stomach turned and my hands became clammy from the realisation of my near fatal fall. The dogs stirred below me, expectantly moving towards the bottom of the monument.

  The bronze soldier, the likeness of a brave, long dead hero, was still saving lives.

  “Climb on up,” called John. I grabbed the rope, holding it tightly in both hands, and pulled my weight up off the ledge, then bent my legs placing my right foot over my left one, with the rope in between. I straightened my legs, pushing myself up, and moved my hands further up the rope. I repeated this until I was high enough to reach out with my legs and grab a branch. I was glad I’d paid attention in physical education classes at school; learning how to climb a rope had saved my life. I used my legs to pull myself closer to the tree, then loosed go of the rope with my left hand and grasped a small branch to steady myself. Once I had managed to step onto a good sized branch I loosed go of the rope with my right hand and climbed onto the large, thick branch near to John. How strange to look into the young face of my father knowing only a few years separated us in age.

  “Follow me,” he said, skilfully making his way along the branch towards the tree trunk. I followed very carefully. It was obvious that he had done this many times before. He climbed onto a higher branch, edged away from the trunk, passing through an opening in a derelict office block, and dropped off the branch onto the concrete floor inside the building.

  “It’s a good thing dogs can’t climb,” he said. If that had been a puma or other large cat things would have turned out very differently.”

  We talked as we walked, making our way past broken and rotten pieces of office furniture that lay all around us.

  This office block was in a similar state of disrepair as the one Gemma and I had encountered several weeks before; the floor was covered in pieces of crumbling, fallen plaster and there were dead leaves in the corners of every room. Small animals and insects were thriving and scurried away as we walked through the large rooms. A breeze blew through the window spaces airing the building and taking with it the strong smell of rat and mice urine. We were heading towards a rope ladder which hung down out of an opening in the ceiling some four metres above us on the far side of the building.

  “So Section sent you to rescue me,” said John.

  “Yes, they realised you were trapped in the future, but didn’t know where, or when. Then the other day I saw you as I stepped back into natural time. It was too late to take you with me, as the vortex was already closing, and I couldn’t come back sooner as I needed to recover from that jump before I went on another one.”

  “That was only about a week ago,” John informed me.

  “For me it was just over six weeks.”

  We arrived at the bottom of the rope ladder.

  “I live up here,” said John, taking hold of the ladder and stepping onto the bottom rung. “Follow me up.” He smiled and started to climb. I waited for him to disappear through the hole in the ceiling then climbed up after him. The top of the ladder was tied to a metal support beam that held the roof of the next floor in place, and the rungs continued higher up than the floor I was climbing onto making it easier to step off the swaying ladder. When I was safely inside the room, John pulled the rope ladder up onto our floor. “Just in case,” he said, “I don’t have a door key you see.” He gestured around the large room. “Welcome to my crib.”

  “Wow, this is unexpected,” I said. Creepers still grew through two huge window spaces at the far end of the room, spreading out across the walls and ceiling, but I could see that John had spent time clearing out the room and sweeping up the debris. To my left, a little way from the wall, was a make shift lab made up of a long, roughly made wooden table, several racks of test tubes, a solar burner and a dozen or so small chemical jars, some of them half-filled and others nearly empty. To my right I noticed a camp bed and sleeping bag. I took off my rucksack and laid it on the concrete floor. Next to the bed was a small open box containing ammunition and a solar powered digital recording devise.

  “Over here,” he said excitedly. I followed him into a smaller room where several wooden boxes had been placed next to the back wall. I could tell by their new condition that John must have brought them with him. I walked over to the largest box. John opened it saying, “There’s still three months supply of instant meals and several sets of clothing in here. I was expecting to stay a while so I came prepared. I brought all this through the vortex, the rope and ladder too.”

  “How long were you planning to stay?” I asked.

  “A few months. I brought the extra rations in case something went wrong. Anything I find out here could be of great importance back home; we need to know what happened to the human race.” I was tempted to tell him about the super-virus, but knew that premature knowledge of the virus might change the timeline in ways no one could predict, so I said nothing.

  John continued, “I record all my findings on the digital recorder.” I remembered how the photos I took with my mobile always degraded soon after returning to natural time so I warned John about this.

  “No worries, I’ve got all the information stored in here,” he said tapping his forehead. “I memorise and revise my notes every night. The recording’s just a back up just in case anything happens to me. How are we going to get back?”

  I fetched my rucksack, opened it, and took out the instrument Dad had given me. John looked intrigued.
r />   “It that a portable vortex interface?”

  “Yea, kind of. It’s a temporal transceiver; we call it the remote. I have orders to open a vortex that will take you back in time. I’m afraid it won’t take you all the way back as you wouldn’t survive a jump of that distance. The nearest I can send you is ten years after you first left.”

  John was clearly upset and asked, “So neither of us can get back home?”

  “I won’t be following you through this vortex. I belong to another time. Section is opening my vortex after I send you back.”

  John looked at me intently, “You obviously come from my future. We haven’t developed anything like this yet.”

  “Yes, we have a lot to talk about.”

  I told him how his older self had sent me back and how I knew where to wait for him, although I’d hadn’t planned on being chased up the monument by wild dogs.

  “So, who are you?” he asked, intrigued. “You can’t come from too far into my future if you know me.”

  “I’m, twenty-two and my name’s Steve Blakely.”

  John opened and shut his mouth a few times, stunned by the revelation.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, gathered his thoughts, and then said, “I thought there was something familiar about you, but I wouldn’t have guessed you were my son. How are Maisie and Charlie? Did they forgive me for being absent from their lives for so long? You boys must have been without a Dad for ten years.” He paused, “Unless your mother remarried … Did she remarry?”

  “No. Mum raised us by herself. I remember the day you came back. Mum was shocked to start with, I was excited, but Charlie found it hard.”

  “Yes, he would I suppose.”

  Recovering from the shock of finding out life would never be the same again, he asked, “Can I hug my grown up son? You were eight months old the last time I saw you.” I nodded and he gave me a long hug.

  As we stepped back from each other he spoke again, his voice much quieter this time and full of emotion, “I thought I’d return to the same day that I left from, and go home to Maisie and my two young sons … maybe change your nappy and tell Charlie a goodnight story before cuddling up with her on the sofa … Do you have any other surprises? Logically, your presence here means the disaster hasn’t happened yet.” John wouldn’t find out what would wipe out the human race for several years: not until I’d met David Senior on the thirty-year jump and returned with the information.

  “Well the world is still intact, but I can’t tell you too much as it might compromise the time line.”

  “I understand.”

  “But I have been instructed to tell you one thing.” John looked at me expectantly, hoping it was good news. Your older self told me to tell you that you’ll need to save Gemma and me off the Pen-y-Garreg Dam near Rhayader when it collapses during the forty-year jump. I know that won’t mean much to you right now, but it will in the future—I was … I mean, I will be twenty when it happens.” Dad nodded and said he would. “And Dad? My young father smiled at the thought of a man only twelve years his junior calling him Dad. “If you don’t rescue us I won’t be here to rescue you today, so you might be trapped in the future forever.”

  “I get it Steve, and it’s ok, you can call me John seeing as we’re quite close in age.

  “Right.” I smiled back. It did feel bizarre calling this man Dad. “Is there anything you need to take back with you?” I asked.

  John nodded. “Just the digital recorder, everything else can stay here.”

  I said, “I have one more thing to give you before I send you home.” I took the zip-up case out of my rucksack and handed it to him adding, “You’ll need to inject yourself with this immediately before the jump back, but wait until I’ve opened the vortex. It’s imperative that you step through it within moments of taking the injection or you probably won’t survive. It will stabilise your internal organs, help your body cope with the effects of temporal stress, and stop most of the side effects you would otherwise suffer in the coming years. Even so, you will age quite a bit when you pass back through time. I’m sorry; this is unavoidable.”

  I let my young Father collect his solar powered recorder, then keyed the password into the temporal transceiver, pointed the devise towards the space at the far side of the room and pressed the enter button as I’d been instructed. A sparkling light appeared, quickly growing to the usual size, before darkening in the middle revealing trees and a pathway. I put the gadget back in my jacket pocket and zipped it up.

  John took the syringe out of the case, prepared the injection, and sat on the camp bed while he injected himself in the top of his left leg.

  The compound was thick and so the injection took several seconds.

  “That burned a bit,” he said, rubbing the injection site.

  He stood up, a look of pain and fear appearing on his face as he stumbled forward.

  He gasped, “I feel dizzy and sick,” then sank to his knees and collapsed landing facedown on the floor. I leant over and shook him but he didn’t awaken.

  “John,” I called, shaking him harder. “John, you have to go through that vortex.” He still didn’t respond, so I crouched down behind him and turned him over, checking for a pulse. He was alive, so, pushing both my arms under his I dragged him backwards towards the vortex, the rubber heals of his shoes leaving trails across the flooring. I remembered what Dad had told me before I left: if I failed to send John through the vortex he would die. The resulting temporal adjustment would take older John out of natural time and Gemma and I would also disappear, having perished when the dam collapsed. There were no second chances.

  I was acting outside of my orders but there was no alternative. I dragged John through the vortex and out into the park near my childhood home, lowering him onto the grass. I shook him again, anxiously calling out, “John, come on, wake up.”

  He moaned and started to stir, then slowly sat up and covered his face with his hands.

  “Good grief, whatever did I put in that shot?” he asked.

  “No idea. You going to be ok?”

  “Yes, you’ve gota go,” he said, looking up at me, the urgency showing in his voice. “Get back through that vortex!”

  I stood up and ran towards the vortex trying desperately to reach it before it faded. As its power drained the sparkling perimeter started to weaken. I dived forward through its centre, but while I was still in mid air the vortex expelled its last joule of energy and disappeared, leaving me stranded about ten years before my natural time. I landed on the grass, rolled over and turned to face my father, panicking a little. Age lines were appearing under his eyes and his hair was turning white at the sides. Within moments he took on the appearance of a man in his late fifties.

  “Don’t worry, Section will get you back to the right time frame,” he assured me, standing up and appearing a little unstable on his feet. “It’s a good thing no one saw us coming through that vortex.” John paused, looking thoughtful. “Before I take you to Section I need to see someone.”

  When he felt a little better we began walking towards the old railway line. He knew he felt different, but was shocked when I told him he looked about twenty-five years older than he had a few minutes before.

  “It’s Mum you’re going to see, isn’t it?” I pressed.

  “Yes. She’ll wonder where I’ve been the last ten years.”

  I was nervous and excited at the possibility of seeing Mum again. Life was so strange: in natural time she was dead, yet in this time frame she was alive and in her mid-thirties, and in a few minutes I might be able to see her again. I would have to be careful not to let John suspect anything had happened to her.

  We walked through the gates at the far end of the park. Taking the path leading down the old railway line would avoid the town and the probable stares of the neighbours, many of whom would remember my father’s disappearance some ten years previously.

  The railway line had been taken up well before I was born, and was now a
bus route edged on either side by trees and bushes, although the parallel pathway was still popular with dog walkers. Fortunately, today we only passed a couple of teenagers.

  Soon we were standing outside my childhood home. The sight of it brought back so many memories: sitting in front of the fireplace sipping hot chocolate on cold winter evenings, Dad and I planting a tree in the back garden, and Mum calling me in for my singing lessons when I wanted to play football with Charlie. I didn’t think it fair; he didn’t have to have singing lessons because he couldn’t sing.

  My old bike lay on its side on the front lawn next to the pansies in the front flowerbed and Charlie’s football rested under the orange blossom bush. It was the perfect summers day; the sky was blue and there was a gentle breeze.

  Dad said, “Wait here a moment.” I stood next to the front stonewall where I had a good view of the front door, already knowing how Mum would react.

  He walked up the driveway hesitating for a few seconds before knocking. The thought of seeing Mum again gave me butterflies in my stomach. After a few moments the door opened and a young lad stood in the doorway. My heart almost missed a beat when I realised it was Charlie. He had been fifteen when Dad returned.

  He didn’t recognise the man at the door so called out, “Mum it’s for you,” then walked back into the house letting the door close. A few seconds later Mum opened the door holding a pile of laundry; the sight of John caused her to gasp and drop it on the floor.

  Watching the replay of a scene I had witnessed years ago, this time from the other side of the door, stirred so many emotions: love, excitement, apprehension, and a deep longing to feel Mum’s arms around me again, the way she hugged me when I was a child.

  John spoke tentatively, “Maisie. I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I’m home now if you will have me.”

  Mum stepped forward suddenly angry, and slapped him hard across his face.

  “You think you can just walk back in here after all the hurt you caused us!” she cried, looking fiercer than I’d ever seen her look. “Where’ve you been? I thought I knew you. I thought we were good together.”