They didn’t talk much more until they reached the big white Cadillac. Duster had moved it over into the shade under some trees and just off the road.
Bonnie and Duster had pulled out folding chairs from the back of the car and set them up in the middle of the wooden bridge over the fast-moving water of Monumental Creek, staring up the valley and back at the ridgeline where they wanted to build the lodge. Duster still had on his standard oilcloth coat and cowboy hat, but Bonnie was down to a light white blouse and jeans.
April liked them both, and they seemed to be in a much better mood now.
“Dawn and Madison are spending a little private time,” Ryan said as they approached the bridge.
“As they should,” Duster said, continuing to stare up the valley at the ridge.
“That’s the first time they have been together in this valley in the present,” Bonnie said, smiling at the two of them.
“I like it a lot more here when the town is alive and booming and the valley is full of noise and piano music,” Duster said, his voice almost angry.
“So do I,” Bonnie said, patting his arm.
April had no doubt that these people really had their time-travel delusion set solidly. Yet they did not seem at all crazy except on that one subject. She liked them all, and her little voice was telling her that they were totally safe people to be around.
But that crazy idea they could travel in time sure seemed to be a reality to them. As Ryan said, she had accepted that they believed it.
Bonnie climbed to her feet and indicated Ryan should take the chair next to Duster. Then she looked at April. “Mind helping me unpack that lunch Madison made for us?”
April suddenly realized she was really hungry. She glanced at her watch. It had been over four hours since breakfast.
“With pleasure,” April said, and followed Bonnie to the back of the Cadillac.
“What did you think of the valley?” Bonnie asked as they pulled out a folding table and a couple more chairs and then opened the two big coolers.
“This is a strange place,” April said. “I love the ridgeline and the views from up there a great deal. And I am in love with all of Central Idaho and these mountains. I want to hike them all.”
“Duster is the same way,” Bonnie said, nodding. “He knows more secrets about these mountains and their history than anyone alive. I, on the other hand, enjoy my days spent in the wilderness, but prefer my better days to be spent in luxury in San Francisco.”
“I wouldn’t mind that either,” April said, laughing.
“I figured as much,” Bonnie said, smiling. “And how are you and Ryan getting along?”
“We’re going to work wonderfully together on this project,” she said, smiling at Bonnie.
“Only work?” Bonnie asked, grinning.
“If I have my say about it,” April said, “there will be more. Just not sure when.”
“With someone that good looking,” Bonnie said, “I can’t imagine how you could do anything else.”
April glanced over at where Ryan sat on the bridge beside Duster. “He really is good looking, isn’t he?”
Bonnie just laughed. “And smart. A scary combination.”
April couldn’t argue at all with that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
May 24, 2015
RYAN SAT BESIDE DUSTER on the bridge, staring back up at the ridgeline at the end of the valley. Under them Monumental Creek flowed quickly, its water slightly brown from all the dirt it was carrying downhill in the spring melt.
Besides the sound of the running water, the valley was silent. Not even a wind stirred the tops of the pine trees. And the sun was warm, making Ryan wonder how Duster could just sit there in that long oilcloth coat and cowboy hat.
Sometimes it seemed he never took them off.
They talked for a few minutes about the construction on the lodge.
Finally Duster chuckled. “You and April think the four of us have gone not only around the bend, but bought the crazy part of the bend on the way past.”
Ryan laughed. “April still does, but I’m starting to wonder.”
Duster looked at him from under his dark cowboy hat, his eyes intense. “Well, that’s a start.”
“How many lifetimes have you lived in other timelines?” Ryan asked, deciding to just get to some of the questions he had. “You seem like a far more mature and relaxed version of Duster than I knew just a couple of years ago. In fact, you don’t seem to be the same nerd math-guy at all.”
Duster sort of laughed and shook his head.
“Madison said you had lived something like a thousand years in the past in other timelines. Is that true?”
Duster laughed again. “I honestly don’t know. Bonnie figured it out last year when we were trying to convince Dawn and Madison to go with us. At that point it was around a thousand years. Considering how much I have gone back over the last year real time, it’s a bunch more than that now.”
Ryan rocked back in his chair.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Duster nodded. “Remember, a lifetime in another timeline only takes just over two minutes here.”
“You and Bonnie always stick together?”
This time Duster really laughed and looked over at where April and Bonnie were working on setting up lunch. “I love that woman. She’s my partner. Always will be. But after a few hundred years here and there, we both like to go our own directions. I love living in the Old West, she loves the old cities. In the here and now we stick together.”
With that Ryan decided he had better just change the subject. “So you can’t figure out why timelines leak from one to another?”
Duster sat up and turned and looked squarely at Ryan.
Ryan smiled. “Madison and Dawn tried to explain it to us at the cemetery. Why Madison’s name was on the plaque and his grave there but empty.”
“Oh,” Duster said, shaking his head and turning back to stare at the ridgeline.
“So can’t figure it out, huh?” Ryan asked again.
Duster shook his head. “Bonnie and I have three major supercomputers crunching numbers for us as we speak on the problem. But for some reason I just sit here and expect that big lodge we are designing to suddenly just appear on that ridge up there.”
“Sort of a leak somehow?” Ryan asked. He really wanted to keep Duster going on this before April and Bonnie got finished setting up for lunch over by the car. He knew he wouldn’t understand the higher math, but if his old friend Duster really had invented a time-travel device that shifted people to other timelines, Ryan had decided he wanted to be a part of it and sort of understand it. He really liked the idea of being able to live and explore these mountains for a very long time.
“I don’t know how,” Duster said. “Each timeline is contained in a crystal that grows and changes as events in the timeline shift. Each crystal is distinct from one another.”
“There’s a place big enough to hold that many crystals to represent all timelines?” Ryan asked, trying to even imagine that.
“Well, not really,” Duster said. “But we found a tiny part of it. Bonnie and I both think the crystals go off into other dimensions. But the crystals that represent a few billion timelines close to this timeline all exist in one place.”
“In one large space?” Ryan asked, having a hunch that he might give Duster an idea as to his problem. It was a common contamination problem in architecture.
“Sort of,” Duster said, still staring up at the ridgeline. “It’s a big cavern.”
“It’s the air,” Ryan said.
“The air?” Duster said, turning and staring at Ryan.
“Sure,” Ryan said. “A contamination problem from room to room and area to area is common in architecture construction of certain types of facilities. Have you tested the air in the room that all the crystals are in? If they are all existing in the same air, that’s what they have in common, as well as the material they are connected to. Tha
t material might be the cause of a connection as well.”
Duster just stared at Ryan for the longest moment. Ryan wondered after a second if he had actually insulted his friend or something. But he kept going with his wild idea.
“And if you are going back, then there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of alternates of you going back with each decision, right? So that much dust in a room that connects you all would be a pretty solid contamination.”
Then Duster suddenly stood, almost knocking his chair over backwards and off the bridge. “Son-of-a-bitch!”
He turned and headed for Bonnie at almost a run, his long coat flapping behind him.
Ryan left the chairs and followed, worried that he had said something wrong.
“Bonnie!” Duster said. “Ryan figured it out!”
Both Bonnie and April looked up from the table where they had food spread out.
“Figured what out,” Bonnie asked as Duster got close.
“Why there are echoes between timelines,” Duster said.
“He did?” Bonnie asked, very puzzled as she looked at Ryan.
Ryan just shrugged at the strange looks on both women’s faces.
“We tested the rock,” Duster said, “We know it’s completely inert and not a factor in the echoes. But we never tested the air around the crystals.”
Bonnie blinked.
“And with the room being the central place for hundreds of thousands of timelines branching every time we go back, the dust we move from one timeline to another will be substantial. On our shoes, on our clothes, in our lungs.”
Bonnie then blinked again, clearly lost in thought.
Duster just stood there staring at his wife, smiling.
April looked at Ryan with a very puzzled look on her face.
Ryan just shrugged.
Air contamination was so common in architecture designs, there were entire fields of study in it. He was surprised that Duster hadn’t thought of that.
Then Bonnie said softly, “We’re the cause of the echoes.”
Duster nodded. “And all of our varied alternate realities as well. We know the crystals never get dusty. The energy in them pulls in anything that touches them. But we bring back all sorts of dust and contaminations from different timelines and stir up the dirt on the floor in there as well.”
Bonnie slowly smiled at her husband. “The dust and the events of the timeline where the dust is from get absorbed by another timeline and thus create echoes of events, but no actual events.”
“Exactly,” Duster said, nodding and smiling like a little kid. “We’ll need to change the focus and run the numbers, but I am pretty convinced that will be the answer.”
Suddenly Ryan got worried that he had just cost him and April a job.
“Are we still building the lodge, then?” he asked.
Duster and Bonnie both laughed.
“Of course we are going to build a lodge up there,” Duster said. “Dawn and Madison want a place to live and raise kids. And no matter what happens over the next two months, you two are getting your bonuses. I will guarantee that and put it in writing.”
April looked at Ryan and smiled. “What did you do?”
“Just pretending to be an architect,” Ryan said, smiling and shrugging. “It’s what I do.”
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWELVE
July 19, 2015
THE JULY SUN was starting to really warm up the Boise streets outside as April stepped into the air-conditioned two-story office building Duster had bought her and Ryan for the lodge project. She had on a linen blouse and jeans with tennis shoes. Her long brown hair was pulled up and held with an antique comb. And she had on no make-up. In fact, since starting this project, she had not worn make-up at all, and didn’t miss it.
A nice young college student with blonde hair and big green eyes named Cindy manned the front reception area and smiled at April as she came in, handing her a dozen messages over the big wood counter.
Since they were building a log lodge, she and Ryan had decided to decorate their office building with black and white photos of the Old West and comfortable log-style furniture.
The building was full of light and warm colors and lots of plants. It was the most comfortable office April had ever had by far.
She couldn’t believe she was half-owner of it with Ryan. This was far, far beyond her dreams and she almost hated to go back to her apartment at night.
Ryan and his architecture crew had the right side of the building as people came inside. April and her interior crew had the left. The center of the building was common meeting rooms and supplies and other equipment.
Duster had given April the Denver interior design business as he had promised right after they got back from that first trip to the summit. April had brought in three of the best people from there to work on this project with her. She left the former owner in charge in Denver to run the rest of the business. It didn’t interest her at all at this point.
She wasn’t sure it ever would again. She would deal with it all later.
Ryan had brought in two other architects to help him, a computer geek for the computer work, and an engineer for all the problems with the weight of the logs and wind problems. Ryan and the engineer had spent a couple weeks just working on the snow loads of the roof they were designing.
In the building and around employees, she and Ryan had made it a rule to never talk about anything to do with the crazy idea of time travel. April still thought the entire thing crazy and didn’t think it was possible, but at least now she was used to the idea of having clients who believed in it like it was something common, like food and water.
Bonnie and Duster had almost vanished from the project over the last two months while Madison and Dawn often met April and Ryan for dinner meetings away from the office.
As far as the office crew was concerned, this was an exercise in wasting money for a major client, but a fun one. And everyone seemed to really enjoy the challenge of it.
After getting back from the summit that first trip, both Ryan and April admitted to each other that they were attracted to each other. Seriously attracted, actually, but if they were going to focus on this huge project and get it done in less than two months, they didn’t dare act on that attraction until this was all over.
That had caused them both to relax. She now considered Ryan one of her best friends. They talked about everything and flirted all the time and they made a perfect design team for the lodge.
She really liked the flirting.
Plus, she had come to really like the Boise area. The people were friendly, the mountains really close, the cost of living very moderate. Plus just outside their office were the Boise River and the fantastic paths along its tree-lined shores. And there were three major large parks an easy walk down the river from their office. For a woman like her who loved her job, but also loved being outside, this didn’t get any better.
Her office actually looked out over the river.
And she had found a perfect historical house to dream about out on Warm Springs Avenue. It looked out over the river as well on a large estate. It had been built in 1901 and she loved the look of it from the outside. She had never had the courage to stop and ask to go inside.
Ryan loved it as well and they often took the long walk together to the old mansion and back on nice evenings, which seemed in Boise to be just about every evening in the summer.
She and Ryan had also taken two day-trips back up to the summit. And they had done two hikes together around the Boise foothills as a break. She also walked the River Walk every day at lunch. It had been a fantastic two months.
And if April had her way about it, the months would continue on and on.
But today was the day.
She and Ryan were going to present the lodge and the plans to Bonnie and Duster and Dawn and Madison.
She could feel her nerves tied up in her stomach and she had had a difficult time even choking down a breakf
ast bar this morning.
She gave Cindy at the front desk instructions to show the two couples to the big conference room on the second floor when they arrived. There were computer sketches and interior renderings of every room in the big lodge posted on the walls in there.
But that was only a tiny part of the presentation she and Ryan had ready.
She dropped the messages and her purse off in her office and headed to the conference room. She found Ryan there, sitting with his feet up on the big table, staring out the window at the Boise River flowing past.
To her, he had only become more attractive as the two months had gone by and they had worked closely on the lodge. This was almost over and now maybe that agreement they had made could end and they could take what was between them to the next level.
Finally.
She moved over to him and stood behind him, messaging his solid shoulders as she stared out at the beautiful summer morning.
He sighed and put a hand up on the top of hers. “Have I ever told you how much I enjoy your touch?”
“You have,” she said, smiling. “And I enjoy yours.”
He put his feet down and stood and turned to face her, holding her hand.
As normal, his eyes sent a shock through her and she just stood there, smiling at him and looking into those wonderful eyes that seemed to change color slightly with his mood. Today they were a light green with yellow flecks.
His hand gently squeezed hers.
“This is for luck,” he said.
He pulled her close and kissed her.
He felt better against her than she had imagined he would, and she had imagined a great deal, especially alone, late at night.
She just lost herself in his kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him close.
And kissing back hard.
No way she wanted this to end.
He tasted wonderful, like a fresh scent of morning forest on a summer day.
Finally, he pushed her back, smiling. He was slightly flushed and she could feel her face red and hot as well.
Smith's Monthly #4 Page 16