Stones of Time

by Andreas Oertel

“I believe I am too old.”

  “Sure, sure,” Eric said. “You just don’t want to get sucked back in time.”

  “No, that is not true,” he said defensively. “And I will try to explain.”

  “You’d better,” Eric said.

  Bruno pointed at the nearest pillar. “There are two ideas that appear to be repeated often on the stones at this location.”

  “What ideas?” I said.

  “The glyphs on these three stones indicate that during a certain meteor shower, the wormhole at this location, here in the cemetery, opens up. The meteor shower does not activate the portal, it has simply been used by the ancient people to mark the event.”

  “Like a calendar?” I said.

  He nodded. “Most ancient cultures did not have accurate calendars like we have today. Instead they used the sun, the moon, the stars, and other celestial events to predict and keep track of important events.”

  Eric looked up at the blue sky. “But there’s nothing happening up there.”

  “I assure you,” Bruno said, “the Perseid meteor shower is happening right now. You just cannot see it because it is daytime.”

  “Hmmph,” Eric grunted.

  “The petroforms at sites in other countries describe different astronomical events—solstices, lunar eclipses, and so forth. However, as I said, I do not believe these events cause the wormholes to open. More likely, people used the events to identify specific dates when they could time-travel.”

  Eric grunted again.

  “I imagine,” Bruno went on, “that for those first unlucky time travellers, the experience must have been quite a shock.”

  “Tell me about it,” Eric said.

  So he did. “One minute you are tending to your goats in Egypt, or shaping bricks for the Great Wall in China, or picking berries here in the forest, and the next minute … you are somewhere else entirely. I suspect that as those disappearances increased, people began to notice patterns.”

  “Patterns?” I repeated.

  “Yes.” Bruno nodded. “If anyone was paying attention, they would have noticed that people only disappeared during certain cosmic events and only from specific locations. And I am sure that as time passed, they marked those locations with the stones, and then documented the astronomical events with their warnings or instructions on how to get home.”

  “So I guess you’re saying,” Eric said, “the petroforms are kind of like instructions for time travellers.”

  “Yes,” Bruno hissed. “That is exactly what they are—they are instructions for time travellers.”

  “What’s the other idea?” I asked. “You said there were two things the other cultures wrote about.”

  Bruno nodded. “Many of the inscriptions mention youth, children, adolescence, innocence, and so forth. This seems to suggest that only young people can use the wormholes. I am not sure why that is … ” His voice trailed off and he stared at the sky again.

  I said, “I guess that explains why you didn’t vanish when you stood in the centre.”

  He nodded. “I would gladly go and bring the girls back. This is entirely my fault and you … you should have never become involved.”

  “Supposing that’s all true,” Eric said. “What do we do now?”

  “We shall quickly gather some basic supplies for you both,” Bruno said, focusing on the problem again. “And then you can travel to the past, where Anna and Rachel are. Find them, bring them back to the markers where you arrived, and wait for the proper astronomical event in that time and place. Then the four of you can come back—safe and sound.”

  “What if we miss the event?” I asked. “What if it’s already happened where the girls are?” I didn’t want to be a pessimist, but he was making it all sound way too simple.

  Bruno looked at the spot where the girls had disappeared. “It is possible,” he admitted. “But we have to start with the most likely solution—that if you hurry, you will arrive at a portal that is linked to this wormhole. And that wormhole should remain traversable as—”

  “Tra-what?” Eric said, cutting him off. “What does that mean?”

  “Sorry,” Bruno said. “That means the wormhole can be travelled: forward in time, and backward in time.”

  “This is one hundred percent nuts,” Eric said. “But I guess we don’t really have a choice,” he finished, quietly.

  •

  “Do you think we should call your mom,” I asked, “or my parents? You know, let them know what’s going on?”

  “No way!” Eric shot back. “My mom will go totally bonkers.”

  “But she might be able to help—call the police, or the army, or some weird agency with black SUVs.”

  A half hour had now passed since Rachel disappeared, and we were at Eric’s house, rummaging for the supplies we might need on the other side of the wormhole. We all agreed that we couldn’t just appear—wherever we might appear—with nothing. We needed stuff. So we raced through the house, frantically shoving extra clothes into our backpacks. Bruno reminded us that we might all appear in a cold climate. Great, just great.

  “I hope the girls are about the same size,” Eric said, hustling downstairs and heading for the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, slightly distracted, “me too.”

  You see, I was obsessing over ten things at the same time, and to tell you the truth, worrying about whether or not a sweater fit Anna was at the bottom of the list. I thought I had all my irrational paranoia and improbable fears under control, and now I found myself facing the ultimate unknown—travelling back in time. Through a wormhole! Unbelievable. I shook my head at the unfairness of the situation.

  Eric dumped another eight-pack of granola bars into his backpack. “Why are you shaking your head?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I said, and then quickly added, “Oh, nothing.”

  You have to understand, for a Worry McWorry-Pants like me, this situation was a major nightmare coming true. An hour from now, I might actually find myself in a nest with a T. Rex. Or in a volcano. Or on a glacier. Or—

  “Cody!?” Eric said.

  I snapped out of it. “Sorry. I was just …”

  “I know, I know. You were freaking out,” Eric said, now shovelling drink boxes into his backpack. “That’s obvious. But we have to stay focused. We have to keep it together for Rachel’s and Anna’s sakes.”

  I nodded, watching as Eric looted the refrigerator. Maybe, when he said we had to stay focused, he meant we had to focus on taking enough food with us to last until Halloween.

  “I’d better find a cooler,” he said, “and maybe some ice packs.”

  “What!?” I said, staring at the giant salami Eric was holding.

  “All these cold cuts. They’ll go bad if we don’t keep them cool.”

  “Forget the meat,” I said, trying to zip up my backpack. “We have enough food. And besides, we can’t carry any more stuff.”

  After reluctantly putting the salami back, Eric closed the fridge. “I suppose we’re ready then.”

  “Check the paper one more time.”

  Eric scanned the list Bruno made for us. “Yup,” he said, “that’s about it.”

  We left the house and jogged (waddled, actually) back through the woods. When we neared the cemetery, I stopped to catch my breath. “You sure you don’t want to tell your mom what’s going on?” I asked again.

  “There’s nothing,” he huffed, “that she could do … that will help Rachel or Anna. We have to sort this out on our own.”

  I agreed with him, and it was a relief to hear him say what I’d been thinking. There really was no way anyone would believe what we had seen today. If we called the police, all three of us would be taken away and questioned for days and days. No one would ever accept that Anna and Rachel had just vanished into thin air—that’s crazy talk. And if we didn’t get back to those stones quickly, and through the wormhole fast, it would be too late for the girls—maybe forever.

  How did we get into these sit
uations?

  Back at the petroforms, we found Bruno pacing circles around the centre of the stones. When he heard us approach, he jogged over. “You have everything?” he asked.

  “Almost,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “We need a satellite phone. One that will work from anywhere on earth.”

  Bruno frowned. “That will not help you in the past.”

  “We know that,” I said. “But what about when we return? What if we come back through the stones in Cambodia, or on a mountaintop in Peru? Don’t you think we should call you when we get back with Anna and Rachel?”

  “Mein Gott! My God!” he said. “I never even considered that. But … but there is no time to purchase a satellite phone.” He pulled a smart phone from his cargo pants and gave it to me.

  “But how can we contact you,” I asked, “if we take your phone?”

  Bruno frowned. “I will wait right here for you in this cemetery. But should a complication arise on your return, and you find yourselves somewhere else, telephone anyone.”

  “Anyone?” Eric said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Phone your parents. Phone the police. Phone anyone you can. Be as resourceful and creative as you need to be. Like when you made that tablet and …” his voice trailed off.

  “I knew you looked familiar,” I said. “You were at the press conference.”

  Bruno nodded slowly. “That is true. I flew here a few weeks ago to investigate the authenticity of the Sultana Tablet. And I recognized you this morning when I … when I was looking for help.”

  “And you knew we made that fake plaque?” Eric asked.

  “Yes, yes,” Bruno admitted. “That was actually the coincidence that helped me find these stones.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that one,” Eric said.

  “I’ll try,” Bruno said. “But you should both get into position first. The Perseid meteor shower occurs for three days, and it comes in bursts. I don’t know if the time portal reacts the same way, but you may as well catch the next opening of the wormhole.”

  We put on our backpacks and walked to the centre of the three-stone formation. He made us stand back-to-back in the spot where Rachel vanished.

  He continued. “After hearing reports that an ancient Egyptian tablet had been discovered in the area, I had to investigate. You see, if a real Egyptian plaque was actually unearthed in Sultana, it would have confirmed my theory of a time-travel portal. Anyway, while the other experts were evaluating the tablet, I was exploring the area for wormhole markers. And I was not disappointed. The petroforms were right here in the cemetery. I was ecstatic.”

  “So you suspected there might be pillars in North America,” I said, “but it wasn’t until you heard about an Egyptian tablet being found in Manitoba that you located them?”

  “Correct,” Bruno said. He gave us a sheepish grin. “I knew that the Native North American symbols on the pillars in other countries resembled glyphs found in cave art in central Canada—Manitoba, to be precise. So I estimated, or guessed, that there might also be similar stones somewhere in Manitoba.”

  “So our fake tablet actually got us in trouble twice,” Eric observed.

  Bruno seemed not to hear Eric. “One of my earlier theories involved the use of dark matter to open the portal and allow time travel along the timeline. I thought that if your plaque was real, I could analyze and test it in the lab. But of course, that theory is crazy.”

  “Not like everything else,” Eric mumbled.

  “Pardon me?” Bruno said.

  “Nothing.”

  •

  After a half hour passed (without us being sucked into a wormhole), we both got tired of standing and sat down on the grass. Bruno had stopped pacing and was now searching in his rucksack for something.

  “Anything else we should know?” Eric asked. “You don’t seem to want to tell us anything unless we ask.”

  “Hmmm?” he mumbled absently. Then, a few seconds later he cried, “Aha, found it!” He tossed me a walkie-talkie and stepped back again.

  I waited for him to give me its twin, but he didn’t. “This isn’t any good,” I said, “unless you can find the other one.”

  Bruno either didn’t understand me, or he just felt like replying in his own roundabout way. “Anna,” he began, “likes to explore the archaeological sites I take her to on her own, so we use these portable two-way radios to stay in touch.”

  Eric and I waited.

  “They have a range of about one kilometre,” he continued. “I am sure she has the other one in her pocket. Mine was not turned on, because she had not wandered off. If she had left the area, we would have stayed in touch with the walkie-talkies.”

  I clicked on the radio, pushed the talk button and said, “Hello. Can you hear me, Anna?” I don’t think any of us expected a response, but we all held our breath anyway. I waited a full minute and then turned the power off again.

  “If Anna switches on her radio,” Bruno said, “you might be able to speak to each other, and to find each other.”

  I jammed the device into one of the outer pockets of my backpack and settled in to wait some more.

  Five minutes passed before anyone spoke again.

  “This is a horrible day,” Bruno said with a sigh, “but it is also a momentous day.”

  I wanted to say, “More horrible than momentous,” so I did.

  He ignored that (as I expected) and continued. “You four young people will be the first people in modern times to travel back and forth in time. And you will be doing so using the instructions left by ancient people on these petroforms. I always suspected this was the purpose of the stones, and now I have proof. You are the proof of my life’s work.”

  I had no interest in being the person who confirmed his crack-pot theory, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “In the movies,” Eric said, “when people time-travel, bad things often happen.”

  Bruno’s gaze shifted back to us. “I am sorry?”

  “Well,” Eric explained, “when people from the future (namely us) interact with people from the past, doesn’t that create problems? I mean, what if we make a bunch of cavemen sick with our germs? And what if they all get sick and die because of us?”

  Bruno’s face suddenly turned white. “You are absolutely right. Any interaction with the past, with any ancient civilization, could have devastating consequences. For the past, for the present, and for the future. You should just find the girls and come back. Do not linger.”

  My mouth was too dry to say anything, so I didn’t even try.

  Eric licked his lips, swallowed hard and croaked, “Okay.”

  “While you are gone,” Bruno said, “I will try to think of a way to present my discovery to the world.”

  “I think it may be starting!” Eric yelled suddenly.

  “And be very careful,” Bruno warned. “If you can time-travel—”

  “Yeah!” I shouted. “I feel something happening too!”

  We both jumped up.

  I wanted to run from the stones as fast as my legs could carry me, but I knew I had to stay put—for Rachel’s sake and for Anna’s sake.

  “What were you trying to say?” I asked Bruno. “Tell us quickly!”

  Bruno took two steps back and yelled, “Beware of … other time travellers—”

  And that was when we both fell into the wormhole.

  I heard a loud bang of static electricity, and that was followed immediately by a sensation of falling. At first it felt like I was being sucked into some kind of waterspout, or tornado, or giant vacuum. After that, I just fell, but I didn’t fall like I was being pulled by something—I fell slowly and endlessly. The whole thing could have lasted a few seconds, or it may have taken a month. Time had lost all meaning.

  Then I felt a subtle change—a new sensation, like something was whizzing past as I fell. Could these be points in time, on the unimaginably long timeline of history?

  I began to panic.

 
; What if we ended up in different places? What if I fell onto an island full of cannibals? What if Eric landed in Australia? What if we never saw each other, or Rachel, ever again? And that was when I really started to freak out.

  So I did the only thing I could think of to make myself feel better—I screamed my face off.

  “AHHHHH!”

  CHAPTER

  4

  “WAKE UP,” A VOICE begged. “Please, they will come back soon.” The voice belonged to a girl—a girl who spoke with a German accent. Just like her father.

  Anna!

  I ignored her and tried to return to the peace and quiet of my unconsciousness.

  “Hurry!” the same voice said, getting more urgent. “We must leave this place now.” I felt someone pulling my arm and then—

  SLAP!

  Ouch! That stung. I opened my eyes and saw a girl with short brown hair and big brown eyes kneeling in front of me. “You must be Anna,” I said, rubbing my cheek.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Yes, yes,” she said, sounding relieved. “Did Papa send you?”

  “Yeah.” I felt too dizzy to stand, but I sat up and looked around the clearing for Eric. Only he wasn’t there. “Oh no!” I groaned. Where the heck did he end up?

  “Do not worry,” Anna said. “Your friend is over there, throwing up.” Anna pointed to a cluster of pine trees on the edge of the clearing. I noticed her arm was scratched up and covered with bug bites.

  “That’s great,” I said. “I mean, not that he’s sick, but that he’s here.”

  Anna realized she was still pulling on my arm and let go of it. “We have to leave this place before they return.”

  Eric wobbled over on shaky legs. “I feel awful,” he moaned. “But am I ever happy you’re here with me.”

  I tried to stand up too. “Yeah, and Bruno was right about everything so far. We landed in the same place on the timeline as Anna. Now we just have to find Rachel and get back home from … from wherever we are now.”

  “I think they took her away,” Anna said.

  “What?” Eric asked.

  “The girl. Rachel. Is she about my age with a blond ponytail?” Anna asked.

  Eric and I stared at each other.