by M. L. Banner
Dr. Ron tied a bandana around his head to protect it against the sun’s punishing rays, secured his satchel of supplies around his shoulder and peddled back to his own laboratory. His peddling was methodical but unenthusiastic. He knew where Dr. Mendelson was now—at least where he was headed—but Colorado was a long way away on a bicycle. Even if he could make it in this harsh environment, how would he find this man, get the cure and get back in time for the one or two probes Monty might be able to send? No, his mission was a failure. He would at least tell his friend what he could expect in the present-day world, coming for them in less than a year. He would ask him to try and send another probe or two, but suspected he would be prevented by others from doing so: Monty would be lucky to stay out of jail after getting just one probe back through the time slip right after him.
He kept thinking about his decision to come here and leave Betsy.
The heat sucked up his energy and made his mind wander back to the same memory. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was something else…
It was their 20th anniversary dinner, at Betsy’s favorite restaurant, The Saltgrass Steak House. They were sipping their glasses of Cabernet when he told her his concerns about their current work.
“I’ve come to a decision,” he said tentatively, as he watched her delight in the taste of her wine.
“What’s that, Doctor?” She always referred to Ron this way when he made a serious proclamation.
He grinned at her playfulness and relished how she looked at him, with joyful love and seriousness all at once. “I’m afraid of where we’ve gone with our research. We know that we can generate an almost unlimited amount of gamma radiation with minimal power usage. But what we hadn’t considered are the implications. If this technology were to get into the wrong hands, imagine what could happen.” He paused to take a sip of his own wine.
“Someone could create a big green Hulk that would smash everyone in sight, right?” She beamed at him.
He had told her his concerns about the release of too much gamma radiation—the output of the technology they had created— and what it might do to the earth’s magnetic fields. He had reminded her about his ideas to generate clean power using the same technology, and he had already received an agreement from their backers. She had agreed and they toasted some more.
That night, they had talked about his plans to create the same collider that sent him through time. If she hadn’t supported it, he wouldn’t have traveled through time to save her, and failed. It was her agreement, and the fact that his old lab had been burgled and vandalized that same evening: all his computer equipment and all his research notes were stolen…
Ron almost drove past his building, his mind hanging onto something that escaped him.
He pulled up to the lab and rested his bike on the ground before going in. Once inside, he stopped at the railing and looked out over the giant laboratory, wrecked from an explosion and scarred by fire. He wondered if a time slip would ever be created again in his lifetime, or the next.
Then he noticed it, right past the middle of the two accelerator tubes. It looked like a propped up white board, with writing on it.
He trotted down the stairs and then to the back of the lab, coming to a stop in front of the white board. He had planned on using it to write his own message. And yet there it was, a message already written on it. The first words stunned him. He fell to his knees, as if his legs could no longer bear his weight. His face quivered, his eyes filled with tears and he gulped a breath of air and held it. Finally, he finished reading the words and cried tears of joy. He wiped his eyes with his sleeves and reread the message once more, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. It was definite.
He looked upward, closed his eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” He hopped up, as nimble as a sixteen-year-old, and his mind turned over what items would go on his next shopping list. He was about to bike hundreds of miles, to someplace in Colorado. And although he would be tired, he would find the energy. He was going to go see his wife again.
Chapter 27
June 27th
After ten months and seventeen days of hiding, their wait was at an end.
Monty drove past the sign in the middle of the road announcing, “Welcome to Cicada” and pulled up to the large gate. Sounds of their anxiety filled the cab of Monty’s Explorer.
Until today, they had spent untold hours discussing their plans after getting the message from the future. “What do you do with this foreknowledge?” was their greatest debate. “How do you sit on something that may save millions, but might cause harm to those who delivered the message to them?” was another biggie. In the end, Monty was the most persuasive and they agreed on the plan, to wait until this day and then drive here.
The waiting was the hardest, the long days spent in solitude in the Arizona White Mountains, while the world went about their daily activities. It allowed their minds to harbor doubt, and that laid waste to their surety of purpose. By the time this day rolled around, they all questioned the reality of the message, in spite of all they witnessed: the retelling and presentation of the data Monty saved was convincing, but above all, it was Betsy’s miraculous turnaround. And yet, the waiting ate at their resolve and all wondered, Would the Event really come on June 28th? But yesterday evening’s very abnormal auroral light show seemed to confirm its probability. Would this place they were going to go to even exist? And yet, here they were, parked in front of Cicada.
The gates creaked open and the vehicle’s occupants watched in anticipation of what would come next.
~~~
They were all seated around a giant cherry conference table, in sumptuous leather chairs on rollers, more like being in the board room of some giant Fortune 500 company than the conference room of a remote research facility.
“So, Dr. Montgomery, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me why you are here,” asked Preston with a tone that was more command than query. He was the head of the facility and the man they had been told to seek out.
“Please call me Monty. May I call you Preston?”
“Yes, fine.”
“Tomorrow, the world will experience the worst solar storm in recorded history. The Event, as it will be known, will not only turn out the lights, but kill much of the world’s population.” Monty watched for Preston’s reaction: his face remained stoic, the statement eliciting none of the shock, or at least disbelief, Monty expected. “You don’t seem surprised.” The words were merely a verbalization of his suspicion that Preston somehow knew what was coming.
“You haven’t answered how you found out about Cicada and what you are doing here.” Preston’s tone now confirmed Monty’s suspicion. He knew already.
Monty opened his satchel and withdrew two stapled pages he had printed, each containing the imbedded screen-shots of the meticulous handwriting on a whiteboard: the message that sent them here. The first page said,
My name is Dr. Greg Mendelson. I am writing this for two reasons: first to warn you of an impending apocalypse that will hit you on June 28th and second to give you the cure to Betsy Stoneridge’s cancer. You will find the formula for an experimental drug we have found to be 100% effective in all of our early tests against most forms of cancer.
I am not prone to flights of fancy, yet here I am, after being told that I would write this at this point in the future, to warn others in the past. Paradoxical improbabilities aside, I knew this to be real when I was told “Luxembourg1989”—my computer password—as the place and date I met my wife, now deceased from cancer.
A giant solar storm will cause mass deaths and collapse the world’s economies. After this, one of the few places of hope left will be Cicada, a place from which I received much of my grant funding for my pandemic research that led accidentally to my cancer research.
To all who read this:
Get the formula below to Dr. Valdez immediately, but have him bring his patient to a safe place where he can still produce this and adminis
ter it. Results will occur almost immediately, and a complete recovery can be expected within days, assuming there was not too much cellular damage to her other organs.
Preston flipped the page abruptly, his mouth slightly ajar. This, he didn’t expect.
You are to tell no one about this, even though you will be tempted to do so. You risk changing what has already occurred. And although it may mean you will save a few people temporarily, they will ultimately die anyway because there is no escaping what is to come. BEWARE! There are also enemies about, who would kill you to get this info. So protect yourselves and stay in hiding and on June 27th, the day before the Event, present yourselves to Preston at Cicada (38 32 48.55N & 104 52 30.00W). Tell him “Stephanie has blue eyes” and he will let you in.
Preston looked up from the page with a what-the-hell? gaze that burnt holes into Monty, before returning to reading.
Then show him this message. Tell him your qualifications and he should let you stay. Finally, when I arrive at Cicada, with my invitation, seven days later, show me this message so that I’ll be convinced to write it.
To Dr. Valdez, here is the formula:
One part: C27H29NO11 to 4 parts: C17H26O4 administered in doses of 500 milligrams once per day for two weeks.
Preston flipped back to the first page and read the whole message again. He thought for a moment before looking up at Monty. “How did you come by this information?”
“This is the part that will be hard to believe.”
Preston snorted. “That’s probably an understatement. Go ahead.”
“Well, my friend invented a machine that creates a controlled time slip, allowing him to monitor and get data from the future, and”—Monty hesitated, then continued—“and allowing travel forward to that future point, through the time slip.”
“So where is this Dr. Ron?” Preston asked and then answered his own question, in a snarky tone. “No, let me guess, he’s jumped back into the future in his trusty Delorean?”
Monty chuckled too, picturing Dr. Ron dressed like Michael J. Fox in the 1980s hit. “I know this is hard to believe. If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” He pulled out the portable hard drive. “However, I have all of the research and test data here. Let me show you and any of your scientists the proof.”
~~~
July 1st
“Dr. Gregory Mendelson,” he said, extending his hand. “Preston says you know me and wanted to see me.” He glanced over at Betsy and Dr. Vasquez and pumped Monty’s hand.
“No, we’ve never met but I have a story to tell you that affects you—well, all of us. I believe you’ll want to sit down before I share it.” Monty motioned Mendelson to the same conference table where they had shown Preston the same message not long before. Monty slipped the pages across the table.
Mendelson took the news in stride, and after seeing his unique handwriting and speaking with Betsy and Dr. Vasquez, he knew the story to be real. He told them about the miracle cure that never made it to trials, as they were interrupted by the Event. He told him he was one of the scientists chosen for Cicada because he had suspicions that the world’s end would come as a result of genetic manipulations to fast-growing cancer cells. It was for this that he received funding from Cicada.
Next, they had to convince Mendelson to go, but he was the one that posed the question back to them. “The bigger question is what would happen if I didn’t go? This would cause an enormous paradox, because if I don’t go, how could I have written that message to begin with? And if I didn’t write that message, Betsy wouldn’t be alive and you wouldn’t be here.”
Mendelson agreed and then excused himself. His daughter Victoria had made it two days earlier, with her family, and he wanted to spend a little time with them before leaving the next morning. Betsy stopped him before he left and said, “May I ask you a big favor?” Her eyes begged him.
“For you, of course.” He smiled a genuine smile that reached clear up to his eyes.
“Would you leave this note for my husband below your message?” She thrust a piece of paper that was folded in quarters and stapled. On the front she had written in cursive, “To my Dearest Husband Ron.”
“I would be honored.” He took the note and kissed her hand. Then he looked up at her and said, “You know I’m going because of you? Your being alive is the culmination of my life’s work. I told my wife long ago, before she died, that if I could save just one person with my work, it would be worth it. Besides, I’m hopeful that your husband will find my message and now your message and will make it to Cicada and you. Maybe you both will get the second chance I never did with my wife.”
Chapter 28
Sometime Later
He pedaled at breakneck speed, almost losing his balance twice on the loose gravel, fueled by excitement and adrenaline. In spite of his muscles screaming in pain, he wasn’t about to relent now. It had taken him almost a month, although it felt longer, to bike the eight hundred miles. He was aware that his body showed the effects of all of those miles, not the least of which was that for the first time in his life, he was skinny—probably too skinny. But after a long journey and not eating at all some days because he couldn’t find food, that was to be expected. None of that mattered today as he steadied himself once more, almost going down again. He had somehow made it this far, and soon, maybe in a few minutes, he would see his wife.
His mind repeated the words from her note, left for him below the white board, with Greg Mendelson’s Sharpie attached to it—he almost didn’t see it with all the other debris, “I will watch and wait for you, that day you come back to me. That day will be the happiest day of my life.”
He hit the brakes, slid to a stop, and looked up at the massive gate. He wasn’t sure what to do next, so he yelled out, “Hello?”
After waiting a little longer, he yelled out again, “Hello, is anyone there? This is Doctor Ronald Stoneridge. I have traveled eight hundred miles to see my wife Betsy. Is she there? Hello?”
After a moment, the gates opened. They swung in and stopped, leaving just enough room for a single person. And then he saw her standing there, her arms outstretched toward him. It would be his happiest day as well.
Epilogue
Rodney Deerwester turned the bubble mailer around in his hands, inspecting it with the greatest curiosity. He stared at his name and address printed from some stamp program. There was no name on the return, only an address in Dallas, Texas. He only knew one person from Dallas, and that was his old friend Monty, who was horrible at keeping touch and whom he hadn’t corresponded with in years.
“Sign here,” demanded “Mr. Smiley,” the name the kids called him because he never smiled.
Rodney scrawled his name on the electronic pad, his writing almost unintelligible. “Thanks, Bob,” he said to the mopey postal worker and left, already zipping open the top of the mailer. Rodney stopped at the garbage by the exit, discarding the stringy piece and intending to dump the envelope too. He turned it over and gave it a flick to dislodge its contents. A stainless steel stick skidded out into his awaiting palm, but nothing else. He looked inside, thinking a note should be there, but there was nothing. Tossing the envelope in the trash, he pushed the flash-drive around his palm, as if he expected it to come alive and tell him its purpose. The mystery would have to wait. He had to get to the Y, then he had to give his class, and then maybe he could load the contents into his computer and find out the answer to this mystery.
He shoved the stick into the pocket of his warmups and walked down Massachusetts Avenue to the YMCA.
~~~
The man blew out a long cloud of smoke, dropped the cigarette on the ground, and drove his heel into it, extinguishing it completely. A woman walking toward him looked up, her face dark with scorn, her lips preparing to launch a tirade of words about his littering and smoking in public. Then she saw his face, and her scorn transformed into surprise and then terror. She wanted to look away, sure she was seeing evil in person,
but her gaze was stuck on the man’s features: the long vertical scar on his cheek, the scabbed-over areas of his head, the hair mostly absent on one side, the thin lips that curled into a smile and those eyes, dark as a nightmare.
The man glanced past her, ignoring her altogether, as his gaze followed his target; he was headed to the Y to do his workout. Finally, he had gone to his box and picked up the package. The man had watched his target dump a stick drive in his palm and discard the envelope, before shoving the drive into his pants pocket. It was the stick he was after… Simple. Then that would be the end of this whole Stoneridge-Merriweather affair.
Read what happens next in The Stick (Coming 2015).
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