by Michael Rigg
"Life functions ceased."
She said flatly, "One hundred forty-two years, three months, six days ago."
"In this existence."
I glared at them. "Then how can I fix it? How do I get him back? How do I get Pandora back, stop the ghouls, stop this Atlantis thing? How do you expect me to be the solution?"
Their white faces slowly turned to face one another, then turned back toward me. The woman spoke first.
"We do not expect you to be the solution."
His voice darkened when he stepped closer, waving the brass tongs at me. "You wanted to be the solution."
"How?" I whispered harshly. "What am I supposed to do?"
They stared.
"How do I get back to where I belong if I don't belong here?"
They continued to stare.
Finally, the woman spoke in a low, sad voice, "You cannot."
"Existence does not revert."
"It only changes."
"You came into the other's change."
She nodded, agreeing with her pale brother. "Too late."
"You cannot be the solution."
"And you cannot go home."
"You can only remain."
"Or change again."
"Only those of the circles of life—"
"—may change."
I frowned at them, glared. "Circles? You mean that scar you put on my back? What about Ray? What about Bryce and Lucien and Adeline? How am I—?"
She shrugged, "Change is absolute."
"Once in motion."
It was his turn to shrug. "It has moved."
"Wait." I started to ask them something else when a knock sounded at the door. A woman asked if the powder room was occupied. Before I could respond, the lights came back up and I stumbled backward as the momentum I had put into my arm finally followed through. The strange couple, however, was gone and I only tumbled back into one of the stall doors. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck, on my arms. "No! Wait!"
The woman's voice: "Miss, are you all right?"
My chest heaved as I tried to balance my breath. My vision was blurry and the color was only now starting to bleed back into the things around me. I tasted copper in the air. "Um... Just a minute. Sorry."
"Oh, it's all right, dear. Take your time. I only wanted to clean up a bit before—"
I pulled the door open and nodded slightly to the late middle-aged woman. She started when she saw me, but my smile quickly put her at ease. "So sorry," I said. "Please... Go on in." Then I moved past her, pulling Lucien's coat around me as I made my way back to the booth, ignoring her curious stare.
Bryce stood as I neared the booth, then sat down with me as I sat across from him, next to Lucien as the butler made room. "Alice? Are you well? You look ill."
I nodded slightly. My mind was rushing with what the Clockwork Carpenters had said, the things they told me about existence changing because of Ray and how I wanted to be the solution. If I was understanding this correctly, Ray somehow traveled back in time, or sideways through reality—to somewhere when the flags of the country changed during the Civil War—and altered existence. Drastically. However it happened, I must have tried to follow him to bring him back. That's what they have to mean by solution, right? I nodded slightly to myself. That seemed to make some kind of crazy sense, but... how do I fix this? Can I fix it? Should I? If I could somehow change everything back, what would happen to Bryce and Lucien, Adeline and Savannah?
According to the creeps from the bathroom, what I tried to do was impossible. I altered reality—or rather Ray altered reality. I'm simply stuck here in what he'd done with no way to get home.
It didn't really matter because I had no memory of where I was from. I didn't even know my real name. I only knew Ray, and I knew he and I were part of some kind of CIA or governmental agency, a security or military force. I wondered what we could have been part of to lead us to this.
"Alice?" Bryce repeated.
I blinked out of my daydream and offered him a smile. Then I glanced and smiled to Lucien as I lifted my cup. "Sorry. I just got a little sick. It'd been too long since I ate."
Lucien leaned close. I could smell the cider on his mustache. "Would you care for more? I don't think it would be unladylike considering the circumstances." He nodded toward Bryce. "She could stand to use a little meat on her, wouldn't you say, Bryce? The girl is practically bones."
Bryce only smiled at me. His teeth were white. "Lucien, you should know better than to comment on a lady's weight. Besides, I think Alice is fine the way she is." Then his smile faded and his eyes narrowed. "Are you sure you're all right? You look pale as a ghost."
"You're half right."
Both men looked at me as I smirked. Their expressions were serious. I should have known that, in a world where witches and ghouls and clockwork phantoms co-existed, they'd hold on to my last phrase expecting to hear a tale.
I decided not to hide anything anymore. I'd tell them everything and let them decide how to proceed. I no longer cared what they knew, particularly Bryce. I saw how he looked at me and I knew he'd look after me for as long as it took to get my brain sorted out.
So, I told them.
I told them about the visits from the Clockwork Carpenters, how they came to see me in the powder room aboard the SkyTrain to Louisiana, and about my nightmare where they branded me. I told them about Ray and the flag and the changing of existence.
Their eyes were wide. I could feel Lucien trembling next to me. Bryce's jaw set and he started to say something, but Lucien spoke first.
"I-I-I can't believe it. Carpenters, here!"
Bryce rested the heel of his hand on the table and lowered his palm in a bobbing motion to tell the butler to keep it down.
Lucien nodded and glanced around to make sure he wasn't overheard. He nodded again and repeated himself, "I can't believe this, Bryce. The Carpenters?"
Bryce said, "I believe in the Holy Spirits, the Great Machinists, The Carpenters, but I wouldn't believe this tale if it came from anyone other than Alice. All she's been through... it makes sense."
I smiled weakly. "I still don't know where I'm from or my name, but I guess I came here to stop a man from changing things. I guess I failed." My smile quickly turned down.
"Not from where we're sitting," Lucien grumbled. "Good lord, had you succeeded, we might not even be alive."
And there it was.
"But ghouls wouldn't exist," I pointed out, suddenly finding a small rationale in all of this madness. "Or the Thinking Machines," Bryce said with a slight nod toward Lucien. "All we have and all we are came from ADAM and EVE."
"And their carpenters,” Lucien added quietly. “Quite so... I was just—" Then he stopped. His eyes grew wide and he looked like he was about to lose his dinner.
"Lucien?" I reached around his shoulders and rubbed his back. "Lucien, are you—?"
"I need to check something!" He said as he nearly pushed me over as he scrambled out of the booth and marched toward the counter, the tiny curled horns of his white wispy hair flying up at the sides and looking like wings. My mouth hanging open, I watched him trundle off before sliding in next to Bryce. Bryce watched him go, but then turned back to me. He reached over and took my hands. "Alice... or whatever your name may be ...My original promise has not changed. If the Clockwork Carpenters have some sort of unspoken use for you, or if you came into our lives as some twist of happenstance that led to our very creation, I'll do all in my power to help you return to where you belong. You said so yourself; things will change, but that's from your perspective. We'll still be here. You could still go home and find out who you are."
I squeezed his hands. They were so strong, even in my own app
arently well-trained hands. "Bryce, no. I don't think I can. They said that existence could change, yeah, and I assume that just means for me, but they also said I couldn't go back."
"Do you honestly believe that?" Something in his question, the look in his dark eyes, made me think he knew more about the Carpenters than he was telling me, like he had seen them too at some turning point in his own life. I searched his eyes.
"Alice, you have no idea who they really are, do you? You only have the stories and tales from us, from the time you arrived in this place. And, based upon what you'd told us, they hurt you. Does that sound like the work of an angel or a purveyor of existence?"
I blinked. I was suddenly too tired to shrug.
"It doesn't to me. For all you know, they're the gatekeepers of the—whatever it was—that brought you and your man Raymond here and nothing more. Maybe it's their job to scare you into not doing what the two of you had already done." He leaned closer, held my hands tighter, as another thought occurred to him. "What if the mark they put on you isn't a holy symbol at all. What if it's a mark they can use to trace you, to follow you wherever you go and torture you with nightmares to keep you away from the thing that brought you here in the first place? What if it's more than a scar? What if there's something implanted in you, or a marker of some kind – like a corporate ident." He nodded and his jaw set with confidence. “They're protecting themselves, not you.”
I frowned, then it was my turn to pull on Bryce's hands, to lean close to him. "So you're saying that they could just be trying to scare me off? You think they want to keep me here?"
"I think they just want to keep you from going back, maybe, from seeing what you've seen and telling others... about them."
His breath caressed my face. I realized how close we were now, like two kids holding hands and excitedly leaning into one another to bat eyelashes at each other. But there was something in his hands, in the strength I could feel in his arms, that held me in his eyes. "Bryce..." I whispered softly. It was a question. A statement. A weak plea. Though I had been through so much more since he'd found me. Since I had the strength to defend myself against anything—including a ship of pirates—I still felt lost and vulnerable. I still felt like I needed something. I longed for him to hold me like he did when we were on the horse together, like he held me in the freezing cockpit of the plane. I wanted him to be my guide, my translator, my hero, my confidant. More than anything else in the world right now, I wanted him to kiss me, to feel his warm lips press into mine. "Bryce...?"
His eyes glanced to my lips and he smiled warmly as if reading my mind. "Alice, I... I think...." He turned his head slightly so our noses wouldn't bump, then he leaned forward and—
"Here it is!" The book slammed on the table between us and Bryce and I reared back from Lucien's sudden attack of bad timing. I pressed my hand to my chest to steady my heart, though whether it was beating from the scare or from the fact that I had nearly kissed Bryce Landry, I couldn't be sure.
Bryce blushed but quickly pushed it aside as he turned to his man. "What in the name of Lee's ghost are you doin', Lucien?" Lucien pointed over his shoulder toward a door at the far end of the diner's counter. I glimpsed the sign of a souvenir shop.
"What is it?" I managed.
"A book of Confederate history, including all the sights to be seen. The Capitol building, the Court of Grace, the Tomb of President Lee. Ah!" Lucien flipped the pages to a spread of portraits surrounding a black line drawing of a wide boxy building. He turned the book so it faced Bryce and I. Shoulder-to-shoulder, we leaned forward to see what Lucien pointed out.
"The Hall of Thinking Machines. It's where they were born." Bryce smiled at me in reflection of Lucien's exuberance, but that quickly changed. “Baton Rouge.” I barely caught Bryce's expression, a wariness, a warning? To Lucien? It was a look that said, 'shut up, you old fool.' But why?
I nodded my understanding and listened, more anxious than ever to hear what Lucien discovered.
"ADAM and EVE are the two gigantic Thinking Machines that have forged Confederate history, decided wars, established takeovers, and essentially kept the world in an uneasy peace since the early 1900's."
Lucien directed to Bryce, "When you were talking about the machines, and our dear Alice mentioned her man, I knew I'd heard the name before." He pointed to the first portrait on the page. In an oval was a line drawing reproduction of the man I knew from my dream memories. I gasped slightly. "It's Ray."
Lucien read, "Raymond R. Simcoe, Founder of the H.O.T.M., 1863."
Bryce scowled, but also looked relieved. "That doesn't make sense. How could he have come there and you here?" To Lucien, he said, “You must be mistaken. Besides, there could be other Raymond Simcoes besides—”
“It's him.” I put my finger on the portrait and nodded. Even a line drawing captured over a century ago couldn't hide his face. “It's him. I know it.”
Lucien, was eager to play detective. "Perhaps this thing that brought you here fluctuates somehow." He looked to Bryce and tapped his shoulder, "Oh, like the Tesla Bridge Mystery of 2005."
"What's the Tesla Bridge Mystery...?" I wondered aloud.
Bryce smirked as if he didn't quite see where Lucien was going, but he explained it to me. "Ten years ago a SkyTrain vanished from a hub in Fargo. The train and two dozen souls all vanished."
"Vanished?"
Lucien nodded. He leaned close to me, his eyes piercing me over his spectacles. "Gone for all but twenty seconds."
"They disappeared for twenty seconds?" I repeated.
"No," Bryce shook his head. "They showed up in Austin twenty seconds later." Lucien said, "Over twelve hundred miles due south of their origin."
I looked between the two men. "The passengers?"
"Dazed, some of them sick," Lucien said, "But otherwise none the worse for wear." He took a deep breath and stood up straight, hitching his thumbs in his pockets. "My point is that the same kind of anomaly might have happened between your friend Ray's arrival and your own, separating you by centuries rather than miles."
Bryce leaned back and folded his arms. I could tell he understood that this had to make some kind of sense, but he couldn't fathom the logic. "The question remains. If there is some kind of mystical doorway that brought Alice to us—and her Mr. Simcoe—where would it...?"
All three of us shared wide-eyed expressions as the pieces to the puzzle fell into place.
"Atlantis," I said. “It has to be. It's been attracting everyone to it who had anything to do with me.” I stammered as Bryce started to slide out from the table, feeling my eyes grow wider as Lucien's mustache twitched. “Oh my God. I showed up at the moment you were about to sign the contract, changing everything.”
Bryce jumped up and dug into his suit jacket for his wallet so he could pay the bill. He handed a folded wad of bills to Lucien. "Here. I want you to run out and find Alice some clothes." Lucien reared back, but took the money and reached across the table for his hat. "Where are we going, Bryce?"
"Where do you think?"
Lucien said as he stood, "You can't be serious. They warned her not to go back there." Bryce said, "But Bradford Thorne is on his way there. What if he starts sending ghouls through this gateway thing? What if they end up all over the Confederacy, scattered throughout time. Hell, Lucien, if Alice's tale holds even a drop of water, one breath in this thing that brought her here could change existence as we know it—even destroy the world."
Nodding, Lucien parked his bowler on his head and spun around until he spotted his coat around my shoulders. I leaned forward and let him take it. "What are you two going to do?"
"I'm going to take her someplace nearby. Someplace safe within sight of this diner. You come back here within the hour."
"Yes, Capta
in."
"Nothing too fancy on the dress."
"Yes, Captain."
"Oh," I said. "No dress. Pants."
"Yes Cap—" Lucien stared at me, but then he nodded. His mouth opened to say something, but Bryce spun him by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shove toward the door.
When he was gone, Bryce looked at me. "We may have finally found your way home, Alice."
I started to say something when he turned toward the counter to pay our bill. I looked down at the big blue book Lucien left on the table. I wasn't sure how I felt about any of this, but I had a horrid feeling we were about to make a huge mistake.
CHAPTER 32, “Tremors in New Yorke”
The late September air in New Yorke city chilled after sunset. Gas lamps flickered to life and the golden glow from windows peeked through shutters as the lower levels of the city sealed themselves from the denizens of the subway tunnels.
New Yorkers were a different breed from those in Philadelphia, and didn't close off the entire city from the third story down. They lived their lives as they had since the city was founded, hustling and bustling about on the streets, their carriages and rattle trap trucks and steam-powered sky cars all thrumming along with the daily swell of activity while SkyTrains and airships buzzed overhead.
Until nightfall.
At twilight every evening, New Yorke shut down to the outside world. Only the taller buildings with skyports and access bridges remained open to public transportation. Vehicles on the street level were locked in garages, the garages closed and sealed with chains. Every window was shuttered and barred, doors were padlocked. The streets were left deserted.
Few New Yorkers ever claimed to have seen a ghoul. Some even braved the streets late at night, anxious to go somewhere or to make that ground-level shortcut. Sure, they heard the stories about ghouls crawling in other cities, saw the news reports, but not here. Not in Yorke. Not in the corporate capitol of the Empire.
Of course those people were never heard from again.
After twilight, the ghouls would prowl up from the sewers and subway tunnels, hunting for people on the streets, looking for dogs and other animals in Central Park, unattended horses. By sunrise, and the return of the workaday throngs, no one would know they were there. The carriage man would return to his carriage and wonder at the teeth marks on the horse's bridal, but no blood or corpse would be left to be found. The horse would simply be gone.