The Time Portal 2: Escape in Time

by Joe Corso [time travel]

  Lucky grabbed the lone standing, hysterical young girl by the wrist and pulled her to his side. He placed his arm around her waist, practically carrying her, as Charlie walked, gun aimed high, covering them. The three of them hurried up the stairs as they fought against the tidal wave of people rushing toward them, eager to make their way downstairs as well. Someone in the angry mob recognized the girl, began to scream, and attempted to pull her from the men, but Charlie fired one shot and they scattered. Lucky continued to plow past people, knocking them out of his way. Some other soldiers, heading for the lower stairway, suddenly spotted the young lady and they, too, began pushing people out of their way in their effort to get to her. That was when Lucky came to a screeching halt. He turned and faced the group directly, shot and hit the knee of one man and fired off another shot, stopping the soldiers and the bloodthirsty mob in their tracks. The crowd then turned into one hysterical, screaming frenzy as Charlie and Lucky’s gunshots echoed loudly off the walls of the large room. The group dove, taking cover, and scattered, fighting and scratching their way to the doors, exiting en masse, trampling each other as they did. The scene was more chaotic now than when they had arrived. The hunters were now the hunted and their flight to safety provided enough time for the men and young girl to make their way into the portal.

  When they stepped out of the portal and into the darkness of the train barn, Charlie turned to Lucky and said, “I had no idea.”

  “Hey, mate, you’re fine. Just provided me a little excitement – some that I don’t care to see again, but nevertheless, I know now for sure that the ole ticker works. I could see her beating right through my shirt,” Charlie said as he wiped his brow a bit.

  “Everything will be all right,” Charlie kept saying as he gently squeezed the young girl’s hand, trying to comfort her using soft soothing voices, but each time, she responded in a garbled language they could not comprehend

  “Stay here and watch her, Charlie. I’ll only be gone a minute. I want to take a look at where this new portal takes me.”

  Lucky looked out of the portal and this time, what he saw was an entirely different scene. There was a sea of tents, almost arranged in perfectly straight lines, each open on all sides and clearly visible, with hundreds of merchants displaying their wares. There were buildings of stone being constructed. Lucky could make out the words on one sign that said, “Dentist/Barber” and, in the distance, there was a sign that said, “Rhyolite.”

  Lucky wracked his brain, but could not recall a city by that name.

  Chapter Eleven

  At first, the young lady was hesitant to get into Charlie’s new truck. She was frightened of it, but after seeing both of the men, Charlie and Lucky, settle themselves inside with no harm, she cautiously climbed into the back seat. The truck took off, lurched as it bounced over a rock, and frightened her terribly. She grabbed onto the side strap and held on tightly and only seemed to calm down a bit when they entered the smooth concrete road. After traveling a few miles, she began to look around and take in her surroundings. It was odd, these trees and roads, so foreign, so different but yet so open and comforting at the same time.

  “Wonder what it feels like to her, riding in a car, uh, a truck for the first time,” Charlie said to Lucky.

  “I know. She’s probably scared half to death. I can’t imagine what must be going through her mind,” Lucky answered.

  Charlie turned on the radio and the young girl jumped, almost right out of her seat. She leaned forward, staring at the source of the music. From the back seat, she reached her arm in between the men and touched the buttons lightly and uttered a few words. She was mesmerized. Lucky pointed to a button. He pushed it and a television screen popped up with the local news. She giggled with delight even though she couldn’t understand a word being said. She could not take her eyes of the screen and remained glued to it, occasionally letting out a giggle or a few foreign words in between.

  Mickey greeted them at the door and curiously eyed their guest.

  “Son, you missed one a hell of a show,” Charlie said. “Awfully glad we got back in one piece after all the shooting and fighting. It was sad and revolting, but oddly, the adventure of it all made me feel like a young lad again.”

  “Fighting? Shooting? What the hell is he talking about, Lucky?” Mickey asked in a concerned voice.

  “Well, to tell you the truth,” Lucky answered, “we ran into a little trouble and we had to take this young lady with us or she would have been killed. I’ve never seen so many crazy people in one place, at one time, in my life. Today was, well, it was up there. It’ll be hard to beat what we saw. Hard to talk about it.” But they did.

  Lucky started off and he and Charlie took turns filling in the blanks for each other, relaying it all, even some of the gory details of the killings. Sam sat quietly for a while and finally asked Lucky about the girl.

  “Her mother, father, and sisters were there and were some of those murdered in the basement of this building,” Lucky said. “The only things that saved us were our guns and the fact that the portal was close by, those things and the grace of God. We should not be here right now, telling this story. Thank God for modern-day fire power,” Lucky said.

  “Sam, perhaps you can understand her. I know you’re trained in more languages than I am,” Lucky said. “I was stationed in Russia for two years and picked up a little Russian, just enough to make myself understood and I actually understand it better than I speak it, but this young lady is speaking a dialect that I cannot pinpoint or understand.”

  “Sure thing,” Sam said.

  Sam asked the girl her name, but the young lady couldn’t understand what she was saying, so Sam used sign language.

  Sam pointed to herself and said, “My name is Samantha. Samantha. I am Samantha.” She then pointed to the girl. There was no response. She repeated this exercise several times until finally the girl, replied, “Anastasia.”

  “Anastasia? Anastasia?” Sam asked, pointing to the girl.

  “Yes,” replied the girl. “Anastasia Nikolayevna.“

  At this point, Sam began to ask more and more questions and with much effort and hand movements, working together with Mickey, Lucky, Charlie, they all pieced together bits of her story. It seemed that the palace was destroyed and the royal family had moved to another palace in Siberia. The mob, upon discovering their new location, marched there to destroy them and every one of its occupants.

  Charlie interjected, “We stepped out of the portal right smack dab into the Siberian Palace, into the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution. Crikey!” he exclaimed. I’ve read about that! We arrived at the palace just in time to save this young lady right as her family all around her, was being murdered. Crikey, mate, do you realize this? This is carzy,” he said looking toward Lucky.

  “Crazy,” Lucky corrected.

  “No mate, carzy – our version of crazy. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had gone up those stairs instead of down into the cellar.”

  The room was quiet. It was powerful and all consuming. Lucky stood silently, taking it all in. Charlie was right about the revolution. He knew his history.

  Finally, Charlie broke the silence. “Now that we have her, what do we do with her?” he asked.

  As they began discussing their options, Anastasia calmly removed a cigarette from her pocket, pulled out a pack of matches, lit the cigarette, and began puffing on it. It surprised everyone in the room.

  Later, by virtue of the Internet, it wasn’t long before a few interesting facts began to emerge about Anastasia. For example, at the age of sixteen, right around the time that war broke out, she began to smoke, secretly. With Russia's hard times and revolts becoming a constant and the tsar's popularity decreasing, her anti-stress ritual was to walk in the garden and smoke without her parents’ knowledge. Sometimes, Olga, her sister, would join her.

  Anastasia enjoyed the tranquility and the safety of the ranch and she seemed to be quite comfortable with the wor
kers, Lucky, and friends. Eventually, by hanging out with Sam, she was able to communicate that her father was indeed Nicholas II of Russia and her mother, Alexandra Fyodorovna. Her depression over the loss of her family was strong, but began to ease a little throughout the weeks as she adjusted to her new surroundings. She was a fun-loving girl, a prankster, who given her nature, could not remain depressed for long. Soon, she began to blend in and feel safe at the ranch, but the fact remained that she was still royalty from another time.

  “I don’t really know what to do with her,” Lucky said to Mickey one evening. “I can’t just take her back to her own world, where she will be killed, yet I’m in a state of altering, or have already, altered history.”

  Mickey just listened. Then it hit him, Lucky’s words.

  “Damn, Lucky.” he said. “Geez, man, this is a pretty big deal. I never thought of it that way. Well, let’s check right now on Wikipedia and see what it says about her. Since you already changed history, it should be there, right?”

  Lucky’s eyes lit up. Mickey was right. History had already been changed and it was certain to be duly noted on the internet, in history books, and in classrooms around the world. This was a big dilemma and one that he just could not handle in one evening. There was a lot to think about, another day, after a good night’s rest.

  The following day, Lucky had Mickey drive Sam and Anastasia into Alice Springs to get the young girl outfitted for clothing appropriate for ranch living. They were gone the better part of the morning and when they returned, Mickey laughingly told the story of how upset Anastasia had become after eyeing the women’s bikini bathing suits and short dresses. She found them disgusting, as in her time apparently, women’s bathing suits covered the entire body from head to toes. Modesty was key, as Anastasia had explained to Sam, and was considered the epitome of class.

  The boxes were placed on the table and Anastasia began to open them. Lucky got a kick out of watching her. Sam and Mickey collected the clothing and carried the items into her room. A short while later Anastasia emerged, looking and acting every bit the typical teenage girl, glowing as she paraded around the room, modeling. The group applauded as she emerged with each new ensemble, none of them being exactly what Lucky had intended for ranch life. As she walked around, proudly displaying her new handbag, she heard Charlie call from outside. She turned around to see his head peering through the door. Charlie motioned for her to step outside for a moment. Anastasia put down the purse and walked out onto the porch. Standing before her was a majestic white mare, her tail wagging and her head raised high, in an almost regal way. Next to the mare stood a towering, stallion, as black as night.

  Anastasia smiled at the horses.

  “Beautiful,” she said in her broken English.

  Charlie was a compassionate type of man, unafraid to show his genteel side. His compassion showed as he tended his animals, the way he dealt with his hired hands and the welcoming arms that he extended to those in the community. This empathy now extended to Anastasia. He felt sorry for her having lost her family, being whisked away to a new world and he had grown fond of her – her sparkle, her spirit, her child-like wonder.

  Charlie pointed to the mare and said, “Moonbeam. Moonbeam is her name.“

  He held out his arm and helped Anastasia onto the horse. She squealed with delight. It was not clear as to whether or not she had ridden before, but there was a good likelihood that her family had owned horses and stables. She was not afraid, that much was certain. Nevertheless, Charlie guided her step by step, showing her how to mount the horse, how to dismount, and how to gingerly get Moonbeam to move along, slow down or come to a complete stop.

  The rows and rows of trains were bugging Lucky. Where were those trains that he had seen while time traveling with Charlie? At the time he read a sign with that name, Lucky simply did not have enough time to explore it so he asked Mickey to do a search for a New York City train barn where old trains might have been retired or are currently being kept today. After a few minutes, Mickey motioned him over to his computer.

  “Look,” Mickey said as he pointed to a book displayed on the monitor titled Old New York. Lucky picked up the phone and called a local bookstore in Alice Springs, which told him that even though the book was not in stock, they would happily order it for him. He thanked the man, told him that he might be calling him back, and hung up the phone. He then called the local library and asked if they had a book by that name. After a few brief moments on hold, the librarian returned to the phone and informed him that the book was indeed in stock and that she would hold it for him behind the counter.

  It was right around eight thirty a.m. when Charlie walked out into the living area and told Lucky he was ready to drive him over to the library. True to her word, the librarian had the book stowed away behind the checkout desk. Lucky and Charlie found an empty desk toward the back, opened the book and began flipping through it. On page

  one fifty-six, there it was. Lucky recognized it immediately. The picture looked like the abandoned train yard that Lucky had seen outside one of the portals. The photo was called Train Shed and the caption said it was built in 1871. The picture showed a great canopy of iron and glass, completely covering it, apparently in its original form. The book stated that the Train Shed became obsolete in 1906. The rails leading out of the shed had long since been completely dismantled and the only tracks remaining were the ones buried deep under New York City. Grand Central Station was built around it; a post office was built directly above it. Old trains must have been brought to the Train Shed to be stored there, the men reasoned. After all these years, what Lucky saw was those old trains, apparently still waiting for an engine to pull them out of their underground tomb.

  “Glad to know the train portal’s location and her relevance in New York City history,” Lucky said. “Good job, Mickey.”

  Next, the men did an internet search for the city of Rhyolite and found references to a ghost town in Nevada located about an hour from Las Vegas. Lucky must have visited this town at the height of its success. It seemed that silver and gold had put Rhyolite on the map and that one of its unique features was a bank built with stones containing gold ore. At one time, three major railroads passed through it, and at its height, it boasted between eight and ten thousand people. After the mines ran out, so did the townsfolk, sources said, until the area dissolved into nothing more than a ghost town and a quick stop for sightseeing tourists.

  Chapter Twelve

  The gang – Sam, Mickey, Charlie and Lucky – all awoke to the wonderful smell of freshly brewed coffee and the wafting, alluring aroma of fresh, oven baked bread. Lucky got up and quickly showered, opting to forego a shave. Here no cared or would notice. There was something about the ranch and the Outback. It had a ‘healthiness’ about it and it brought Lucky to a tranquil place; one of no pressure, no anxiety, no looking over your shoulder. Letting his beard grow brought a little freedom, too. One such freedom was obvious – no sense of urgency, no laboring with a razor and shaving cream each morning – but also maybe a little rebellion. He could be a nonconformist, a little freer or, in this case, hide himself entirely, literally . . . with a beard. Whatever the reason, his beard grew rather quickly and to his chagrin, it grew in with a few more gray hairs than he would have liked. Yes, Lucky thought, there was something to be said for small towns and country living, well in this case, ranch . . . living.

  Lucky installed a small gym in a section of the new barn and as the professor busied himself with his flying machine, Lucky worked out. He needed to after all the monster-sized “brekkies” that awaited him each day. Without fail, Charlie cooked a few dozen eggs with enough bacon to feed an army. Throw in the toast with mounds of vegemite, purely an acquired taste, and it was hard to keep in shape.

  On this day, after breakfast, Lucky carried his coffee out to the big wraparound porch. He grabbed an ashtray from the far corner and sat down into a wooden chair that had a small table next to it. Just as he was about to
light his cigar, the professor, doing a slow sprint, came running around the house. Lucky looked up and the professor asked if he would be so kind as to follow him; there was something important he wanted Lucky to see. Lucky listened, proceeded to light his cigar, and stepped off the porch, leaving his coffee behind. Once inside the barn, the professor said, “Well, whatta you think?”

  Lucky found himself staring at a large, saucer-shaped contraption, eerily reminiscent of a UFO; well, at least it looked like the pictures he’d seen of UFOs.

  “Did you finish it? Is it ready to go?” Lucky asked as he stood facing the giant machine.

  “It’s finished, and yes, it’s ready to go. Come on in and let me show you the finished product.”

  The professor closed the barn doors and then proudly showed Lucky how he had cleverly modified a section from the upper part of the craft to include a fold-away ladder. When he pressed a remote, it activated a solenoid, or a coil formed into a helix shape that resembled an outstretched slinky, that in turned hydraulically opened and closed the steps. When it was completely closed, the bottom half of the ladder blended seamlessly into the body of the craft, completely unnoticeable. The professor walked around the spacecraft, showing off every inch of it, as he excitedly explained that while his original intentions were to build only a prototype, meaning a working model, as things slowly developed, he could not help himself; he just kept on adding and perfecting until he had constructed something capable of much more than flight. Lindstrom pointed to the aluminum shell surrounding the wooden underpinning.