“Just in case you are seen,” Parks said as they turned toward the other side of the cavern.
“Seen when?” Sophie asked.
No one answered her. She dropped the question because she had a hunch she would know in a moment.
On the other side of the storage cavern was a wall of about thirty doors spaced evenly along the carved-stone wall like hotel room doors. Duster went through the door closest to the right wall of the supply area and into a long room.
The room wasn’t more than a normal living room wide, but it must have been the length of a football field long, if not longer, carved out of the solid rock.
It had to be the strangest cave Sophie had ever seen.
Wooden tables stretched along the length of the center of the room with a simple wooden box on each table.
A wire fence that went from floor to ceiling ran along both walls on both sides of the room, making the room look like it had a fenced-in hallway down the middle.
And through the fence Sophie could see thousands and thousands of slots carved into the rock.
Each slot held a glowing pink crystal.
“This isn’t the cave your ancestors discovered, is it?” Wade asked.
“Oh, no,” Duster said. “That’s a long ways from here in the mountains.”
“Each crystal here has been brought to the institute from the original cavern and basically represents a timeline,” Bonnie said.
Wade squeezed Sophie’s hand and she just held on. Her mind was numb. It was becoming clearer by the moment that Bonnie and Duster were telling the truth.
Wires ran from each box on each table and through the fence. All the wires were on the ground.
Each crystal was clearly marked on the wall under its slot with a lined sheet of paper on a board. Some sheets had notations on them, others were blank.
“Oh, shit,” Wade said softly as he studied everything.
Sophie couldn’t even manage to say that much.
“We want to show you what exactly we are talking about,” Bonnie said to Sophie, “as we promised.”
Sophie watched as Duster moved over and opened up a gate in the fence near the closest machine, then Duster put on thick leather gloves and hooked up two wires to one of the crystals.
“Never touch a crystal with your bare hands,” Duster said to Wade and Sophie as he came back out of the fence-protected area and shut the gate. “Extreme energy. Far, far more than we’ve been able to calculate so far at least. We don’t even know what kind of energy it is.”
Sophie just stared at the crystal with the wires hooked to it with a soft band. Could that actually be an entire timeline there? How was that possible?
Duster turned to Director Parks. “You mind staying behind for the two minutes as an example?”
“Glad to,” Director Parks said, smiling.
With the leather gloves still on, Duster adjusted a fairly plain-looking dial on one side of the wooden box, then hooked up both wires and took off the gloves.
“Move in close to the wooden box,” Duster said.
“Trust me,” Dawn said to Sophie and Wade, “this will not hurt and if you want to really understand what is happening here, this is the easiest way.”
Wade squeezed Sophie’s hand and together they stepped closer to the wooden box on the table.
The two of them were now between Bonnie and Duster.
“On the count of three, just touch the wooden box at the same time,” Bonnie said.
Director Parks moved around so that he was standing just across the table from Sophie and Wade, smiling at them.
“One, two, three,” Bonnie said.
Sophie touched the wooden box at the same time as Wade and Bonnie and Duster.
Nothing happened at all, or at least that was what it felt like.
Nothing.
She didn’t know what she had expected, but not simply nothing.
Except that Director Parks just vanished without a trace.
Or a sound.
“Where did Director Parks go?” Wade asked, his voice sounding almost panicked as all four of them stepped back from the box.
Sophie didn’t even trust herself to speak. When she felt like this her voice just squeaked and very few words could be understood.
“He didn’t go anywhere,” Bonnie said. “We did. We are now in the timeline that is represented by that crystal there on the wall. In December of 1885.”
She pointed to the crystal.
All Sophie could do was stare at the crystal. Could they really be inside that crystal?
Duster turned to Bonnie. “You want to wait here and pull the plug in twenty minutes, save us the walk back down here?”
“Glad to,” Bonnie said, smiling.
“Let me show you the reality of what is really going on here,” Duster said, turning and heading for the door.
Sophie took a deep breath and, with her hand firmly in Wade’s hand, they followed a famous man from the past who was also a famous mathematician in the present.
Their old present, if what Duster was saying had actually happened.
TWENTY-TWO
December 17th, 1885
Boise, Idaho
WADE STAYED BESIDE Sophie as they followed Duster out of the fenced crystal room and through the warehouse of old clothes and supplies. The room did not look as full as when they had gone through a few minutes ago.
That fact alone bothered Wade far, far more than he wanted to think about. And Director Parks just vanishing right in front of his eyes seemed flat impossible.
But if the story they had told was right, both things would be logical. Director Parks was still back in the present of their own timeline and since they were so far back into the past, no need for as many supplies in the warehouse cavern.
Part of him just wanted to stop and shake for a moment because he knew, just knew, they had been telling them the truth. But he still didn’t want to admit it even to himself.
Sophie seemed to be handling this a slight bit better than he was. But at the same time she wasn’t saying anything at all. And she kept squeezing his hand.
The three of them got into an elevator that looked like an antique.
“This isn’t as old as it looks,” Duster said, indicating the elevator. “We just had to camouflage it in case someone who wasn’t supposed to be in here got in. We update it every decade or so along the way.”
Wade was very glad to hear that because this looked exactly like the elevator that had been in early hotels around the1890s or so. And those had not been safe by any stretch of any imagination. A person could do an entire book on the deaths and accidents in early elevators.
The ride up three floors was quick and the elevator emptied them into a wide room with no furnishings at all. Just polished pine floors, painted walls, and two doors.
“We in the main building?” Sophie asked.
“We are,” Duster said. He pointed to his right. “That goes into the back part of the institute main building.” He moved to the second door. “This one goes into the main room.”
“I don’t remember a door into that main room,” Sophie said. “Besides the front door. Only archways.”
“Lots of secrets around here,” Duster said, laughing.
Duster looked through what seemed to be some sort of viewfinder, then turned to them and pointed to the viewfinder. “This will tell you if anyone who doesn’t belong is in the main room. As expected, no one at all is there.”
He pushed the door open slowly and led the way into the main room of the institute, the one where Wade had met Sophie months before.
The big desk was there and a fire was crackling softly in the fireplace. The same furniture sat in front of the fireplace. Even the drapes on the windows were the same and were pulled closed.
For some reason that made Wade feel better. They really hadn’t traveled in time. But then he noticed that the room had a slight chill to it. It had been a warm day outside, so some sort of hidden ai
r-conditioning must be on, set too low.
Sophie and Wade both looked around as they stepped into the big room and the door slid closed with a click behind them.
Wade was impressed. The door now looked exactly like a wall with a large framed picture on it.
“Now that’s something from a novel,” Sophie said. “You would never know there was a door there.”
“Good,” Duster said. “Latch to open it is built into the trim on the column there beside the door.”
He pointed to it and Wade and Sophie both nodded.
“Now let’s take a look outside,” Duster said, turning toward the front door.
Duster opened the big front door and stepped outside into the gray light beyond the door.
Wade felt the incredible cold hit him almost instantly as he and Sophie moved toward the front door.
Duster moved out onto the front porch and Sophie and Wade followed. Duster pulled the big front door closed behind them.
Wade was having a very hard time grasping what he was seeing and feeling.
Impossible.
It was all impossible.
A light snow was blowing through the trees in front of the mansion. The leaves were long gone from the big trees, and it had to be ten degrees, if that.
The cold cut through his thin suit jacket and shirt like it wasn’t there.
“Wow, this is cold,” Sophie said beside him.
Through the snow he could see the stone wall along the front of the mansion, but it had no hedge growing on it as it had when he went through the main gate months before.
And the Warm Springs Avenue that he could see beyond the wall wasn’t anything more than a wagon trail.
“Welcome to December 17th, 1885,” Duster said. “It’s about two in the afternoon.”
“Amazing” Sophie said, moving toward the front of the porch.
“How is this possible?” Wade asked. His mind still wasn’t letting him accept what he was seeing and feeling.
“We stepped into another timeline,” Duster said. “One that is for every intent and purpose identical to our timeline.”
“So you were telling us the truth?” Sophie asked, looking back at Duster.
Wade could see her eyes wide and round and intense.
“We were,” Duster said, nodding. “Every word. And we have a lot more to explain, but you would not have stood for it without seeing and experiencing this first.”
“Mind if we walk out to the road?” Sophie asked, turning back to stare out into the snow.
Wade just shook his head, but he wasn’t going anywhere without Sophie and if she needed to see more, then so be it.
Duster laughed. “Be my guest. I’ll be inside.”
Together, hand-in-hand, they went carefully down the front steps and along the front stone walk quickly getting covered with snow.
Wade was so cold, he could barely feel his arms and feet, but that didn’t matter at the moment. He needed to prove to himself as well that this was actually happening.
They walked through the blowing snow without saying a word until they reached the front gate.
Wade managed to get the wrought-iron gate open and they walked into the middle of the wagon road that went past the mansion.
This was a major five-lane road.
Or it will become one in the future.
Clearly they were in the past.
And at a different time of the year as well.
The two mansions on either side of the main institute building were all that was here. No sign at all of anything else being built along this wagon road.
“They were telling us the truth,” Sophie said simply after looking first one way, then the other along the wagon track. “We are standing in 1885.”
“They are offering us this so we can research our books better,” Wade said, finally realizing what this was all about. “No wonder Dawn and Madison’s books have such crisp details.”
“I know, I just realized that as well,” Sophie said. “And if I wasn’t so cold, I’d be jumping up and down with excitement.”
“Yea, me too,” Wade said. “The impossible really is possible. We can go meet and actually talk with the people we want to write about.”
“That’s just amazing,” Sophie said.
Wade looked both directions down the wagon road, then back at the institute buildings over the wall. Then he let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulder. “I’ve seen enough. How about you?”
She nodded.
“Let’s head back,” he said.
They had made it back through the gate and were about halfway to the front porch, both of them staggering from the intense cold, when suddenly they found themselves touching the wooden box in the long crystal room three levels underground.
Bonnie had a wire in a gloved hand and was smiling at them. Director Parks was basically standing in the same place he had been.
Bonnie and Duster were also touching the box.
Wade could feel Sophie’s legs start to get weak and he caught her and held her up. She was shivering and wet and he was colder than he had ever remembered being before.
Bonnie got on one side of Sophie and together they all headed out of the long room with Duster leading.
Wade couldn’t feel his feet, but somehow he just kept walking, helping Sophie along.
“Let’s get you both to a hot shower, dry clothes, and some hot chocolate,” Bonnie said as they headed for the door of the crystal room. “Then over some early dinner we can explain all this in more detail.”
All Wade could do was nod, but he had to admit, that sounded wonderful.
“Perfect,” Sophie said. “Especially the hot shower part.”
TWENTY-THREE
October 18th, 2018
Boise, Idaho
AFTER THE HOT shower and some chicken soup that tasted wonderful, she finally got around to asking a few questions. She and Wade had both had to change clothes, but luckily Bonnie and Dawn had predicted the outcome and got them some exercise clothes to change into that would get them back to their condos just fine.
While they were in the showers, Director Parks had gone back to work and Madison had headed to his office to do some research, leaving just Bonnie and Duster and Dawn to explain things.
Wade sat beside Sophie at the big kitchen counter in the cavern. Duster, Bonnie, and Dawn all leaned against the back counter in front of Sophie and Wade like three bartenders waiting to serve two customers.
All three had bottles of water in their hands and all three gave off an air of complete control. Nothing seemed to worry these three much. And Sophie was starting to understand why.
“So tell me how this traveling into the past of another timeline works, exactly,” Sophie said, finishing up the last of her soup. The chill wasn’t completely gone, but she felt a lot better and actually refreshed. That had been extreme cold. Not at all something Sophie was used to without preparing ahead of time.
And going from a warm fall day to the dead of winter in a few minutes was not preparation in her mind.
Duster nodded as Bonnie pointed to him to start.
Duster had taken off his oilcloth duster and cowboy hat and had tossed both over one of the stools down the counter. He didn’t look at all fazed by the few minutes he had been in the cold.
“We spent just over twenty minutes in that timeline,” Duster said. “We have recorded on the ledger under the crystal who went back and to what date and the duration of the stay in the past.”
“So others can use that same timeline?” Wade asked.
“Exactly,” Duster said. “And if we had stayed long enough to start to alter the timeline, new crystals would have formed in the original nexus caverns.”
“Wondering how the unlimited timelines didn’t instantly fill those tunnel rooms here,” Wade said.
“We would not have been able to do that if new timelines didn’t just form in the nexus instead of here,” Bonnie said, nodding.
�
�So we were there for just over twenty minutes,” Sophie said. “But I remember you asked Director Parks to just stay for the two minutes we would be gone.”
“The time elapsed here is just two minutes and fifteen seconds,” Bonnie said. “No matter how long you stay in the past of another timeline.”
Sophie sort of stared at Bonnie with that answer. Her mind just wouldn’t wrap itself around what she had just heard.
“So we could have spent ten years in that timeline and only two minutes and fifteen seconds would have happened here?” Wade asked.
All three nodded.
Silence.
Sophie still couldn’t grasp what that meant entirely.
“You can live full lives in other timelines,” Dawn said, “and even die in other timelines and only just over two minutes will pass here.”
Now Sophie really had a problem. “Die? What happens when you die in another timeline?”
“In that timeline, you actually die,” Duster said. “But when the wire is pulled from the machine or the crystal here, you end up back in your original timeline, alive and with just over two minutes and fifteen seconds older.”
“Madison and I have raised families at the Monumental Lodge now in sixty-three different timelines,” Dawn said. “We always stay until our kids have grandkids every time before we come back.”
“And those kids and grandkids still existed when you left?” Wade asked.
“Yes,” Dawn nodded. “They all think we are lost at sea or some other way that our bodies will never be recovered.”
“You actually live in the other timeline,” Duster said. “So anything you do creates still more timelines.”
“Infinite number of timelines,” Sophie said, more to herself.
“Exactly,” Bonnie said. “But all the timelines we can reach in our area of the nexus are so close to this timeline as to be indistinguishable.”
“So you three have all actually lived for a very long time, even though you don’t look much over thirty now,” Sophie said.
“A very long time,” Dawn nodded. “Thousands and thousands of years, actually.”
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