Terra

by Robert Turnbull

  Gil smiled “We were both ‘not so good’ in our pasts, but you see…we are different people now.”

  Sue nestled her face in his neck and sniffed “You went back to school and became an astronaut, I’m still nothing…she gave a slight chuckle “not a lot of colleges to go to anymore.”

  Gil cradled her head against his shoulder and neck as he laughed warmly “Guess we both graduated from the school of hard knocks haven’t we?”

  He could feel her shake as she softly laughed and shifted her position slightly as her arms slid up around his neck.

  “It seems that I dropped my robe a while back and neither of us noticed. If I move now…” she chuckled musically “Never mind, I just remembered that you’ve pretty much seen most of me naked already.”

  Gil laughed softly, “Oh I noticed alright and didn’t have to look down to see there was no robe there with those poking my chest. Didn’t mean to embarrass you, didn’t want to break the mood.” he sighed and cursed himself for doing so much sighing…and then sighed again “The truth is, I never had told a soul about the murder and you were getting your past off your chest, and I knew how you felt, having a past of my own and all.”

  “And my chest on your chest wasn’t going to stop the moment.” Sue said in more of a contented statement than question “I know, I felt the same way.”

  “Felt?” Gil asked as her hands now cradled the back of his head and her lips brushed his ear. Her warm breath became rapid as her lips brushed the side of his cheek and this chest to chest thing they had going on became a shirt ripping experience as their lips met and he felt her moist tongue enter his mouth.

  “I have to warn you that I have a lot of catching up to do…”

  He kissed her again even more deeply “Good…so do I, maybe more...”

  “In my past I was a very naughty girl, and just because I’m sober now, does not mean…” she kissed him harder, then pulled slightly back to look him in the eyes “that I have forgotten how to be very naughty.”

  All Gil could do was sigh deep and long…and this time he didn’t care that he was noticeably sighing as she ripped at his clothes. For him…it had been a long time.

  Chapter 20.

  The following morning Sue walked Gil to her door, kissed him deeply although neither of them could go for another round of their hot, passionate love making. As she opened the door they were met by a loud round of applause and catcalls from below. Both turned beet red and headed down the stairs just grinning. Somehow Gil knew the teasing would not stop as long as Izzy wasn’t with them, so he gave Sue a little kiss and back toward his room he hurried while Sue went the rest of the way down the ramp to join the rest downstairs for breakfast.

  Gil knocked on his door and when Izzy didn’t answer, he slipped in to find her sleeping on his bed. As he approached she rolled over and smiled at him.

  “Geezzz…” she sleepily muttered as she stretched and sat on the edge of the bed and picking the lint off her faded jeans.

  “You two bumped uglies all night? We need you awake and alert this morning if we’re…”

  “Christ Iz, don’t you worry about anything other than…” he smiled and sat next to her “I mean Izzy…uh…your sister and I, well we decided that we are going to start, ummm…dating and…”

  “Really? Jesus Gil, I’m almost fifteen now. I know what sex is and I’m so happy that you and Sue found each other.” she bounced to her feet “Now get off yer ass, we’ve got a busy day today and I’m famished.” Izzy looked over her shoulder and gave him a sly smile “Just because I’m a growing girl…” she snorted a laugh as she tossed her head “you know that I am by no means naive.” and she walked out the door without another word leaving Gil to sit there with a blank stare.

  “Christ, mentally she’s so much older than I am.” looking at his watch he muttered “and she is so right about being tired.”

  Meeting the rest for omelets, bacon, potatoes, and so much more he couldn’t believe that all they ate had been freeze dried or preserved in ways he didn’t know existed.

  “Stasis, remember Gil?” Dr. Rand chuckled.

  “Yeah, I’ve been there remember.” he winked at Izzy “Hope that you all don’t intend to eat me as well.” Which brought a girlish laugh from Izzy.

  “My sister might.” And as horrified looks came back to her smiling eyes, it dawned on the innuendo she made and gasped “Ohhhh…noooo…I mean that she’d eat him up, ‘cuz she loves him so much…not that she’d eat him for real.”

  Sue began chuckling “Oh, we thought you meant…uh…never mind.”

  Gil was going to say something else but Izzy turned so only he could see her face and with a sly smile, winked at him. She knew exactly what she had implied.

  “Yup! Fourteen going on thirty.” he chuckled and shoved more food in his mouth as the rest looked at him mystified. Again, this sprite of a girl had proven herself more adult than child, and Gil was beginning to see her that way. She had saved his life and could hold her own verbally with grownups. He smiled and continued eating as did the rest; this was indeed going to be a busy day.

  After breakfast everyone wanted to get into the main chamber that awaited below them three stories down. Dr. Rand had not been able to get into the chamber they had called ‘Zed lab’ as someone had locked him out nearly a year ago. He stopped at the door and looked perplexed.

  “My main assistant was afraid that if we tampered with the portal that we’d make things worse. He reset the password and deleted the biometrics for everyone so no one could enter the lab and as none of us were sure what we could do, we never tried to break in…which by the way would be next to impossible.”

  “You could do worse than a world full of grinders and swarmers?” Sarge bemoaned “That was stupid on her part.”

  Dr. Rand nodded sadly “Oh, she was right, alright. I’ve had time to think…that and since Joe and I had a little time to chat this morning, I realize now that we could have made things much worse.” The burden of knowing that his team had been responsible for the world’s problems wore on his face as he pressed the code into the pad and swiped his pass card. Before he looked into the retinal scan he looked over his shoulder.

  “And now it is I that am worried that we might do something to wrong.”

  Megan laid her hand on his shoulder “It’s ok doc, this world is pretty much screwed as it is now.”

  “I know Megan…I know, but I caused this mess we’re in and would hate to die thinking that I wound up destroying it as well.” He looked into the scanner and Val’s musical tone echoed throughout the small secure room.

  “I have managed to reprogram your biometrics back into the security system and to override the lock. Doctor, please stand back I do not yet have access to the cameras in Zed lab, it could be dangerous.

  The huge door swung open and Gil saw it was another steel door that had to be over six feet thick.

  “Christ Doc, don’t you guys ever build things with normal sized doors? HOLY SHIT!”

  As the team walked into the main lab they were met with a sight that not only left them speechless, but in complete and total awe. Before them was a lab that had to be one hundred yards in diameter that had various computers and electronic gear that formed a large circle along the outer wall and was several rows deep…but to the center of the lab were three large arched arms that formed a peak near the top. From that peak, there was a strange dark blue and purple star shaped glow. Below that was a three foot diameter beam the same color that vanished into what looked to be a glowing ball of purple water with small flashes of light dancing along the surface. All that was indeed impressive, but not nearly as stunning as the domed ceiling.

  A swirling mass of dark gray clouds slowly rotated around another object that looked like a black hole, or as close to one as Gil had ever seen depicted.

  “Jesus Christ Doc…is that a black hole?”

  Doc chuckled nervously “It would appear to be, wouldn’t it?” he walked over to t
he main control panel and pointed to the original arched controlled portal “That’s what we started with. Our team figured a way to create a wormhole here on Earth instead of space. Oh, the scenarios we ran showed everything to be perfectly safe. We called for Captain Parker, your dad Joe. We decided to keep Gil suspended as we had created a portal and power device that we could pass through and one man could set up. We sent Joe through with some security and needed him to power up the portal on the new world to create a permanent opening. He went through, things were going well…” he pointed to the massive wormhole above them that covered the entire dome “an hour into the mission that appeared and we don’t know why. Less than a day later the first reports of grinders started coming in from all over the world. Oh, we survived down here ok. I mean we had a new complex, well stocked, and totally secure. A month later, back when we used to have a civilization, we began getting reports of swarmers. Hell, we don’t know how long they had been coming as communications were so spotty and even a year later everyone was still confused as hell.”

  “I’ll bet,” Gil muttered “probably like when I woke up.” he gave Doc a shrug “Hell, Doc I had no idea what was going on but any idiot working on this project could put two and two together. I knew it had to do something with…that! I just didn’t know how they got from the portal in space…obviously not in space I see now.”

  Doc nodded sadly “Oh, we tried to shut it down from this side. Tried to send someone through to shut it down from the other, they never came back, nor did it shut down.”

  Joe who had been silent until now spoke up.

  “They couldn’t shut it down.” Everyone looked at the man from the future as he sat against one of the blinking consoles “As I told you all, I am not a scientist, my mother was. She told me a lot, but from the time I was old enough had me memorize sets of figures.” he looked at Doc “You see the wormhole that you created was perfect, it would have worked had you known that there was a black hole between this planet and the new planet you were trying to reach. As the wormhole passed the event horizon of the black hole, it curved space and time and sent the wormhole back to Earth.”

  “In the future.” Sue added.

  “Correct!” he looked back to the huge swirling mass and muttered “The times between the two portals were but a few years apart in your time, they were much greater in the future. I told you all of the Orian world and their attack. Mom thinks that they too made a similar mistake. You see our scientists figured out the miscalculation in your figures Dr. Rand and corrected to get to the Orian home world. They had been at war with other worlds as I said, and mom thinks that they too made the same mistake. As their attack portals crossed the event horizon, they followed our portal initially.”

  Gil snorted “Obviously something changed that.”

  Joe nodded “Even mom isn’t sure what happened, but somehow their portal became entangled in your first portal and the invasion changed from my time line to yours.”

  “Just fuckin’ great” Sarge muttered with a snort “so you two fuckin’ geniuses fix it.”

  “The paradox possibilities are incredible.” Doc muttered and everyone could see his mind racing faster than his expressions changed. They could see the good doctor was horribly conflicted.

  “By changing this time line, you should have never lived in yours…I mean, due to the invasion, the time line you came from should have changed…” he looked over to Joe “drastically. Perhaps we fail?”

  “If I were to go back now, no doubt it would be Doc, I can’t worry about that now. We have too many portals intermingling and mom thought we could straighten it out…”

  Gil looked at Joe as he moved next to him “There’s a big ‘but’ coming, isn’t there?”

  Joe nodded slowly “I can stop the portals…except that if they have become intermingled with a natural wormhole.” he sighed “If so, then there is no guarantee what will happen. Like you Doctor Rand, mom’s theory is perfect, the unknowns are vague.”

  Sue knew she didn’t grasp most of what was being said, but being a quick study merely smiled “And so what about this little group of ours gets to work to fix this shit?” she looked at Joe and then Doc “Soooo…what’s first?”

  “First I have to find a console that I can enter the figures into.” Joe reached into his backpack and produced a small magnetic device that would stick to any magnetic material. It was about the size of a small laptop with one strange looking pin at the top.

  “The first set of coordinates will let me pass through the first portal, travel along the wormhole you first sent Doc. They are now one and these coordinates will allow me to travel along it to the Orian home world.”

  Sarge stopped leaning against one of the other consoles and straightened “This part isn’t sounding good.”

  Joe smiled “Relax Sarge, I go alone.” before anyone else could speak up, Joe smiled and continued “Look guys, I go through and whatever the Orians used to create this portal I put this device on the portal or lay it directly next to it. Once I pull the pin on it, it can’t be shut down.” he grinned wryly “It causes a feedback and will reverse the portal for me to travel back here and when the first thing to enter it…that would be me and assuming mom was right, I should arrive seconds after I leave.”

  “And if the fuckin’ Orian bastards see you and follow you back here?” Sarge blurted out.

  “Once I’m through, it will create another reverse, loping this time to all of their portals causing the grinders they are sending through to appear all over their world.”

  “So they are forced to shut down their portals and stop sending grinders or they’d flood their own world with them?” Meg snorted and frowned “If I was them, I’d just destroy your device.” she stated stoically “Wouldn’t they just shoot it, or step on it?”

  “That will be up to them Megan. My mother refused to kill anyone, even Orians…” he grinned “but was not above letting them destroy themselves.”

  “I’m lost.” Doc muttered.

  “It’s like this Doc. They find the device, realize what it did. They now have two options.” He smiled smugly “They can realize that we are not to be trifled with and stop the invasion and shut it down. If they do this then the portals will no longer exist and we’re stuck with the grinders and swarmers that are already here. All we have to do is kill those.”

  “And if they decide to continue the invasion and destroy your device?” Izzy muttered like she was afraid the adults wouldn’t like the question. Instead Joe grinned from ear to ear.

  “Why Iz, if they decide that war is going to continue and destroy my device, it will create a feedback and collapse inward pulling the black hole’s event horizon through to their world. The best case scenario, their world survives with probably very few left living, and at worst, it will pull their world through and destroy it…remember the wormholes are being fed by the energy of that monstrous black hole and has all the power it needs.”

  “And it won’t destroy Earth?” Sarge asked.

  “No it won’t Sarge. You see the portal will be sending toward the Orian home world, thus pulling the event horizon toward it. So if that huge monstrosity swirling above us blinks out of existence, which will mean that the Orian home world has been destroyed. If they decide to just end the war and close their portals, this slight suction you feel now will stop and should lesson in size…because remember that we are still connected to that same black hole as long as this device exists.”

  “That’s where that second set of calculations come into play?” Gil asked.

  Joe just nodded and continued by speaking “Either way, Earth has a chance to survive and that is the first of our chores to do. Doc can you direct me to the main input console? I have some work to carry out.”

  As Doc took Joe to input his formula Gil pulled Sarge back and the girls joined them.

  “Guy’s…” Gil sighed “something isn’t right about all of this.”

  “You mean Joe is going to try somethin
g that…” Izzy muttered softly.

  “No Iz, I didn’t mean that, I mean that this phase two that Joe refuses to talk about is bothering me.”

  “Why?” Sue asked “He said that…”

  “I know what he said about going back, but if…” Gil just walked away shaking his head leaving the rest to wonder what was nagging him. Some had been with him only a short time, while some had been with him longer, but all knew that when something was bothering Gil, he was usually right…and that was what worried them. Gil had usually been right about things and had become their unofficial leader. If Gil felt something wasn’t right, it probably wasn’t.

  On the other hand Joe was like a computer, he had trained on similar keyboards that his mother had taken from museums as his finger flew over the plastic buttons. The work was laboriously slow as he didn’t want to make any mistakes. As all but Doc and Joe chatted about what to do if things didn’t go well, Joe finally arose from the small swivel chair he had been seated at for several hours and nodded at the group; the numbers were in at last. Knowing that it was time for him to step into the small portal. If his mother was right, if he had put the correct formula in, then he would step through portal and hopefully end the invasion.

  It was the ‘if he failed’ they were afraid to think of.

  Chapter 21.

  One by one everyone either shook his hand, hugged him, or patted him on the back as Joe walked toward the short ramp that led to the small glowing portal.

  “Well if I succeed, I should return in here in less than a few seconds. On the Orian world, I could be a few minutes there…I think.” he smiled and stepped up on the portal platform and sighed deeply as he walked to the glowing blue and purple mass in the center.

  Izzy looked hopefully at Gil and held up her hand as she crossed her fingers. Gil smiled back and raised both his hands and crossed his.

  Joe raised the flat black device and flipped a removable cover on one end that exposed a wire loop that vanished inside the device. He stepped up to the wormhole, shoved his finger into the wire loop, and stepped into the portal.