“There is an elevator under each building that also goes up into a hidden room in the mansions above, but most of us find it easier to just take the stairs when moving around down here.”
Zane nodded. It was that way a hundred years in the future as well.
The staircase did two switchbacks before Dawn went through another metal fire door and out into a very high-ceiling room.
It was clear the room was a cavern and had been carved out of the bedrock. Zane would have loved to have been part of the massive construction project on this place in 1880. From what he understood from institute history, the founders had brought in crews from major eastern cities, housed them away from the locals, and then rotated them out regularly so no one crew would know the extent of everything.
The room they had entered called the Living Room was larger than most high school gyms and was set up like a giant living room on steroids.
A good dozen couch-and-chair areas were scattered around a massive stone fireplace that clearly burnt real wood from the faint odor of wood fire that seemed to fill the place. All the couches and chairs were brown cloth covered and overstuffed. Each area had maple end tables and a large coffee table in front of the couch.
Tall fake trees of some sort or another divided the areas, giving each a sense of privacy.
Across from the massive lounge area was a modern kitchen with a brown granite counter that seemed to stretch longer than many bars in old fashion saloons. Twenty or so bar stools were on the lounge side of the counter and on the other side was a duplicate kitchen, with two modern stainless fridges, two stoves, three large sinks, and more dark-stained cabinets than Zane could imagine in five normal kitchens.
The institute founders never thought small in the construction of this place, and this room showed that. Zane’s favorite place a hundred years in the future was over near the fireplace.
But without a lot of people coming and going, this cavern just felt empty.
Director Parks, Madison, Duster, and Bonnie all were at one end of the kitchen counter. Bonnie was doing something on the kitchen side while the three men sat at the counter with drinks of some sort in front of them.
Zane again hesitated. He couldn’t believe he was actually talking with some of the founders. Especially Bonnie and Duster. He needed to be extra, extra careful with what he said.
“Let’s move over to the couches,” Dawn said as they approached the group.
“Need something to drink?” Bonnie asked them.
“Bottle of water would be nice,” Dawn said, indicating a group of couches close to the kitchen area.
Zane agreed that water would be good, as did Belle.
Then making sure he stayed close to Belle, they went over and sat down on the closest couch.
The other five sat in the chairs across from them after Bonnie brought three plastic bottles of cold water.
No one said a word and Zane could feel the tension in the air.
And if this group had any chance at all of getting Belle to stay until dinner, they had a lot of explaining to do to her, and quickly.
A whole hell of a lot.
And they didn’t know it, but a lot of the future of the institute rode on this coming conversation with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
June 9th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
SO FAR THIS day had been one stunning thing after another for Belle.
From the offer to join the researchers at the institute, to the knowledge that there was a wonderful apartment for her to live in and free food.
And she had met a man she had been instantly attracted to, someone she could think of as an equal. Someone who shared her same passions and interests.
Then the day had seemed to just go sideways and she was having a very difficult time trying to let her mind catch up. Two of the great historical researchers working today, two people she almost idolized for their work, had basically said they were her great-great-grandparents.
And now this incredible underground area.
Nothing was making sense.
Beside her, Zane was clearly worried and tense as well.
They both needed answers and they needed them soon.
Bonnie glanced around and then looked directly at Belle with her intense dark eyes. She seemed to be in control and calm, something that Belle didn’t understand completely in this situation.
“I’m going to give you a very short story about how all this came about,” Bonnie said. “You will not believe me, remember that. But after the short story, we would ask that you trust us just long enough to allow us to show you one more thing.”
Belle nodded.
Beside her Zane made no movement at all.
“Back in the 1870s, Duster’s family had a gold mine that ran out of gold fairly quickly,” Bonnie said. “The mine was closed and handed down through the years until Duster’s father showed it to the two of us.”
Bonnie took a sip of water and sat the bottle on the end table beside her chair.
“At one point,” Bonnie said, “Duster’s grandfather had decided to try to work the mine and had opened it back up and broke into a massive room of crystals. A cavern that is almost impossible to imagine even when you see it. The discovery scared him and he closed it up, showed it to Duster’s dad, who only maintained the mine and never told anyone. When he showed it to us, we both had the idea of what the giant cavern was. But it took us three years of intense research and calculations to prove our theory correct.”
Belle just kept listening.
“You know that Duster and I have advanced degrees in theoretical mathematics?” Bonnie asked.
“Dawn had us do a search for your names on the way back here,” Belle said.
Bonnie nodded thanks to Dawn.
“In simple terms, a major theory of physics now is that matter, energy, and time are all connected in fashions we do not yet understand,” Bonnie said. “Our calculations always came to the conclusion that there was a physical location where all three needed to manifest in a physical form. Until the big cavern in the mine, we assumed that was only in theory.”
“Are you saying that physical location exists in a mine?” Belle asked. She was following, but barely.
“I am,” Bonnie said, “but let me finish.”
Zane nodded and Belle sat back.
Belle wanted to reach over and put her hand on his, but didn’t. They both needed to concentrate right now, but holding his hand would most certainly calm her some.
Bonnie went on. “When any person makes any decision at all, math proves that timelines split from that decision. For example, you decided to hear us out and are sitting here in billions of timelines. There are billions of timelines in which you decided to walk away in the cemetery.”
Belle shook her head. “You mean a timeline splits because of what I picked for lunch? That seems ludicrous.”
“Math proves it without a doubt,” Bonnie said. “But most split timelines merge back into one another if the changes don’t have any impact. Time and energy and matter are fluid. But using your example, for lunch you picked one food and were fine, but in billions of other timelines you picked another food that was tainted and you got sick and by being sick, missed something important and the timelines stayed apart.”
“That would mean there are almost an infinite number of timelines,” Zane said.
“That is correct,” Bonnie said. “The cavern we found merges with untold numbers of other caverns with billions of crystals on the walls in every cavern. We believe the crystals in the first cavern are the ones that are closest to this timeline we sit in.”
“It must be one damn big cavern,” Zane said.
“The Superdome in New Orleans would fit inside just the first cavern without touching the walls or the ceiling,” Bonnie said flatly. “And every inch of it is covered by crystals of various sizes and every crystal represents a timeline almost identical in all aspects to this timeline we sit in now.”
&nbs
p; Zane sat back hard, clearly stunned at the idea of a cavern that large.
Belle just shook her head. “I’m not imagining something that big, so go on and explain how this concerns us.”
Bonnie nodded. “After Duster and I had all the math together, we figured out a way to step into other timelines from this timeline, into the past of other timelines. Effectively, time traveling into the past.”
Belle shook her head and was about to get up and ask for the closest exit.
“I think it’s time we show them a few of the crystals from the cavern,” Duster said, standing. “Then give them time to come up with questions over some afternoon snacks, or have them head for the door.”
Bonnie nodded and looked directly at Belle. “Just give us fifteen more minutes of your time. Please?”
“Yes, please,” Director Parks said.
Belle glanced at Zane who nodded and then said, “Why not?”
He stood.
“Fifteen minutes,” Belle said, standing beside him as everyone stood. “Then I’m booking a plane back to San Francisco.”
“And I’m going with her,” Zane said.
Duster nodded and turned and started off toward a door off to one side of the large kitchen area.
Bonnie and Madison followed.
Dawn looked at Belle and Zane. “I told you that you would not believe us, but let us at least show you one more thing before you rightfully walk away.”
“I’ll be honest,” Belle said, looking at Dawn. “If I didn’t respect you and Madison’s work so much, I would have already been gone.”
“Thank you,” Dawn said, nodding slightly in appreciation. She then turned and followed the others leaving Belle and Zane to follow behind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
June 9th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
ZANE HAD BEEN surprised that Belle was willing to give these people any more time, let alone trust them to take them deeper underground. She had some real courage, he had to give her that.
He just wasn’t sure how to play all this. He needed to remain in part, as if from this time. But he honestly hated to lie to anyone, especially Belle.
He and Belle followed the five down even deeper into the underground cavern under the old institute building. The deeper they went, the more concerned he could tell that Belle was getting. And he honestly didn’t blame her in the slightest.
Plus, this area they were headed was an area he hadn’t been in before.
On the third level down, Duster led the group through another door and into a large storage area full of massive amounts of supplies, vintage clothing hanging on racks, and older model guns and ammunition behind locked doors.
It was like a Walmart of old western clothes and supplies.
There had to be fifty long wooden tables in the large cavern, all with lights hanging from the ceiling down over the tables.
Zane found this really impressive. The supply area for his travel time was for this time and forward. This supply area was for 1880 forward. Wow, what a difference.
He knew that the institute worked like a giant train station with master stop areas. From one hundred years in the future, he had come back as far as he could, to what everyone called the First Step. He lived in the time of the Second Step and there were areas of the institute that he knew were Third Step and maybe even Fourth Step. No one in Step Two talked of them.
The private step areas in the institute kept the time travelers from different centuries from going back too far at once. Like a train station, you had to change areas to keep stepping back into the past.
Duster and the rest just walked through the warehouse without a word of explanation to Belle.
Zane glanced at Belle who, for the first time, was looking a little panicked. She clearly was thinking that there was no reason for this vast warehouse of vintage clothing and supplies if what they were saying about time travel wasn’t actually true.
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.
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 Zane could see thousands and thousands of slots carved into the rock. Each slot held a glowing pink crystal.
Zane knew that each crystal had been brought to the institute from the original cavern and basically represented a timeline.
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 ledger. Some ledgers had notations on them, others were blank.
“Oh, shit,” Belle said softly.
Zane said nothing. He was feeling stunned being in this area. From here, he could go all the way back to the start of the institute in 1880 if he wanted. The very idea of that scared him more than he wanted to admit.
“We want to show you what exactly we are talking about,” Bonnie said to Belle.
Duster moved over and opened up a gate in the fence near the closest machine, then he 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 Belle as he came back out of the fence-protected area and shut the gate. “Extreme energy. More than we’ve been able to calculate so far at least.”
Zane could only nod. Even in his time the scientists working at the institute had not been able to calculate the energy coming from a crystal.
Duster turned to Director Parks. “Jesse, 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.
Zane was amazed that even a hundred years into the future, this was still exactly the same system every traveler used.
“Move in close to the wooden box,” Bonnie said as Dawn and Madison and Duster did.
“Trust me,” Dawn said to Belle, “this will not hurt and if you want to really understand what is happening here, this is the easiest way.”
Zane was totally numb at this point. He couldn’t believe he was making a second step jump, but he moved to the box with Belle.
The two of them were now between Dawn and Bonnie.
“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 Zane and Belle.
“One, two, three,” Bonnie said.
Zane touched the wooden box at the same time as the rest of them.
Nothing happened at all, or at least that was what it always felt like.
Except that Director Parks just vanished without a trace.
Or a sound.
“Where did Director Parks go?” Belle asked, her voice sounding almost panicked as all six of them stepped back from the box.
“He didn’t go anywhere,” Dawn 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 and Zane just shook his head. He had made a second step jump. How fantastic!
“Some illusion,” Belle said.
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.
“If you think that was an ill
usion,” Duster said, glancing at Belle before turning and heading back the way they had come, “let me show you a real doozy.”
“I can only wait,” Belle said.
Zane was having trouble not jumping up and down with excitement and blowing his cover. He had done what few travelers in his time had ever done. He had made a Second Step jump back in time. He was now over two hundred and thirty-five years back in history from his own time.
Wow, just wow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
June 9th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
BELLE STAYED BESIDE Zane as they followed Duster and Dawn and Madison 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 her more than she wanted to think about. And Director Parks just vanishing right in front of her eyes seemed flat impossible.
Zane seemed to be handling this a lot better than she was. He seemed almost excited, but was containing it. But she could feel it from him.
She wasn’t letting herself believe they had actually traveled in time. But at the moment she had no idea at all what was happening.
They all got into the elevator that looked like an antique.
“This isn’t as old as it looks,” Dawn said, indicating the elevator. “We just had to camouflage it in case someone who wasn’t supposed to be in here got in.”
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.
“That goes into the back part of the institute,” Dawn said, pointing to one door. “This one goes into the main room.”
“There’s no door into that main room,” Belle said.
“Lots of secrets around here,” Dawn said, laughing.
Duster looked through what seemed to be some sort of viewfinder, then turned to them. “This will tell you if anyone who doesn’t belong is in the main room. As expected, no one at all is there.”
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