“Cap wants to verify today's date."
"You're kidding? He knows what it is."
"Humor him. Nothing seems right out here. We’ll be in touch.”
“Keep the channel open.”
“Can't. Not enough light to keep the bat charged. Beep me if you get anything.”
“First break in the cloud cover, we’ll get an astral fix. Can't pull up a global positioning satellite either. Except for occasional extraneous signals, there’s still nothing alive out there...electronically.”
“Strange.”
“To say the least.”
“I’ll pass that on.”
“Be careful.”
“Later.”
Don shot a quick glance at Lauren, a troubled frown creasing his face, then turned away and sat down, the cushioned seat giving out a slow whoosh as his weight settled.
Lauren offered a small uptick of the corner of her mouth to acknowledge his concern, but said nothing. Even though partially concealed by thick foliage, the blast from Wendell’s lasrifle had startled her, and the exchange with Baider did little to dissuade her there were unknown dangers ashore. She scrunched up, tucked a leg beneath, studied the bow vid display of hills receding from the bay. She tapped in a command, set the scan program to incremental. The bioputer began highlighting, then cataloging landmarks. She went about her self assigned task, even though her insides ached from the stress of shielding her self-perceived weaknesses and fears, limitations and contradictions, and what she felt were inappropriate affections for George.
Her thoughts drifted. Owen was off tinkering with the mechanical guts of the ship. In her quarters the night before Slinker’s maiden launch, while sharing a beer after a late dinner, he told her it helped him relieve the anxiety incumbent in his managerial duties. Promotions and added responsibilities had made it nearly impossible for him to indulge such simple pleasures. and Though base-side duties were shelved for the duration, with all the prototype systems aboard, there was just as much to keep him occupied.
Rotating her chair, Lauren studied Farrell and Don, so engrossed they failed to note her scrutiny. Don busied himself analyzing atmospheric readings collected by sensors woven into the fabric of George’s backpack while Farrell monitored the shore team’s position and screened data from Slinker’s external sensors.
Lauren sighed and turned away, distracted by ribald dream images of George. Not that she was desperate or anything, but these days she found herself frequently measuring the men in her life. Neither Don, who was semi-living with an aquatic engineer, nor Farrell, held out promise of a committed relationship. She had spurned Baider’s advances his first day at the base – his macho mannerisms suggested he was singularly interested in physical conquest, not a relationship – and now he was sweet on Heather. Not that she blamed him. Heather was younger, prettier, smart and funny, and tauntingly irresistible when she desired attention. By comparison, Lauren felt drab, colorless and unappealing, though the floor length mirror in her base quarters revealed a firm, lithe figure that had yet to adopt the droopiness common of women her age. She detested the sprinkle of freckles bridging her nose and the way her left eye was a micrometer higher than her right. Despite braces as a child, her teeth were not perfectly aligned and her lips too thin and pale. She often chided herself for being so self-critical, and had considered surgical corrections, but innate frugality denied the expenditure. She would just have to stay ugly. There were moments though, especially when George complimented her, as he did more often the closer the Seascape project had approached completion, she felt almost pretty.
She was grateful the way George would set aside whatever he was doing when she wanted, needed, to talk, but she understood that his devotion to Seascape precluded everything else. Yet, dreams of a domestic relationship stoked a tremulous heart, drove her often to the brink of revealing tempestuous passions that would no doubt complicate their working relationship at a time when he could ill afford the distraction. On many a lonely night, her desires spawned pleasurable dreams that compelled her to satisfy her lust via woefully inadequate self-manipulation. Now, she worried she might never see him again or worse yet, he might fall for Heather. She saw the way George eyeballed her best friend when he thought no one was looking. Oh! What a mess that would be! Heather and Baider were probably in love, but the girl shamelessly toyed with the passions of other men, including George. It was all just so unsettling.
*****
“All right.” George checked his lasrifle and wondered again if he should disarm Wendell, but decided against it. Unarmed, he might prove even more of a liability, should they encounter an openly aggressive foe. “Let's check out the next ruin, then that tall building up the hill.”
With a nod from George, Baider took the lead. Heather followed close enough to touch him and jittery Wendell stayed within a long step of her. Concerned about what Wendell had actually seen, George took one last look around. He made a complete circle, hesitant to dismiss the suspicion they were being watched.
Cracked and jutting polyphalt, edged with bits of polycrete curb and crumbling sidewalk slabs, led southeast past several red or brown brick ruins, then curved to the left and upslope. Fifteen yards to their right, beyond the polyphalt, the ground melted into the dark waters of the eerily calm inlet.
At the curve in the road, Baider warily mounted three crumbling steps and entered the ruin George had indicated. His boots crunched on broken glass. What remained of an aluminum framed polyglass door hung by a single, faded blue hinge. The opposing door frame had long since corroded beyond its ability to support itself. To either side, empty sockets remained where large, double-pane polyglass casements once allowed blue skies to call attention to the store’s displayed goods.
As George drew close, Heather and Wendell reached the top step, stopped side by side, and peered curiously after Baider as he methodically explored the cluttered polyphalt expanse. Mostly eaten away, the roof I-beams seemed securely polycreted in place. The brick and mortared back wall had collapsed inward, forming a jumbled slope thick with decayed vegetation. The carcasses of plastic shelving and display cases, debris cloaked piles of broken bricks and irregular chunks of gray polycrete, littered the floor. A small dark mound protruded from the remains of a display case.
Baider kicked at the pile. Scattered, the debris revealed bright swatches of fabric. He scooped up a handful, but the stuff fell apart in his hands. “Shirt. This was a clothing store.”
“What’s that...under the bricks near the back wall?” Heather pointed, her thin, black gloves accentuating long, finely chiseled fingers. She sounded more like her old self.
Wendell leaned through the window aperture, though he held himself away from the edges. “Looks like a safe to me.”
“Be careful.” Behind him, George gripped Wendell’s shoulder and pulled him back. “For all we know, the slightest contact could bring these walls down.”
“Far be it for me to spoil the party.” Wendell smirked. He held his arm up and bent his neck as if he were hanging himself. Apparently, he’d gotten a solid grip on his fear.
Meanwhile, Baider made his way to the safe and kneeled before it. He cleared away loose bricks and forest debris, exposing a waist high black metal safe, its surface badly rusted. “Shall I open it?”
George pursed his lips. “With the laser?”
“Yeah, Cap. What else?”
“I’d suggest you set the beam strength to minimum.”
Baider nodded, adjusted the power slide atop the generation chamber, stepped back six feet, leveled his lasrifle, and fired. A narrow yellow pulse melted the top hinge. A second split the bottom hinge, yet the door remained in place. Baider took aim at the left side and took a two second slice along the edge. The door remained stubbornly in place. Baider shouldered his weapon, cocked his leg back and kicked with ball of his foot. The door separated slightly at the top. A second blow and the thick metal slab toppled with a thunderous crash, barely missed Baider’s as he s
prang to one side. Thunderclaps rippled through the ruins. Rotted and moldy wood fragments and dead leaves scattered. A thick, stunted, grayish brown rodent scurried for cover.
George cringed inside. As if Wendell’s stunt hadn’t already alerted anyone within a mile, this would dispel all doubts.
Baider laid his lasrifle aside, kneeled before the safe and rummaged its contents.
“What do you see, Baider?” Forcing his voice to a dead calm, George wanted to rush to the safe and scour its interior, but it wasn’t necessary to risk two lives — should the door falling have further weakened the structure.
“Money, papers, coin folders, leather sacks.”
“Anything with a date on it?”
Baider slipped off a glove and retrieved a bound stack of trim green papers. He thumbed through them. “2052...2056...on the twenties...fifties... and hundreds. Could be a hundred thou’ here.”
“Nothing past that? What about the papers?”
With obvious reluctance, Baider laid the cash aside and picked up a manila folder with a wad of yellowed papers protruding. He leafed through the stack, then dropped it on the floor beside the cash. “Rental contracts. June 2057, December 2051, March 2053...”
George caught Baider’s troubled look and glanced back at Heather and Wendell. “I’d say this place appears to have been abandoned centuries ago, but nothing is dated newer than 2057 or much older. Whatever happened...whatever turned our world inside out, happened quickly.” He looked around, scrutinizing small details, hoping the answers they sought were right before them. Nothing hinted at how or why the world, assuming the phenomenon planet-wide, had changed so radically.
Heather shuffled her foot and drew a rough circle in the dirt. “This may sound crazy, but don't discount the possibility we might have been shoved into the future.”
“Time travel?” Wendell shivered and jerked his head around, betraying his discomfort. “That’s fantasyland, Heather.” He turned his back on them and scanned the landscape, lasrifle at the ready. He glanced back at George, then away. His worried frown returned.
“Not necessarily so.” Heather clicked on her lasrifle’s safety and slung the weapon over her shoulder. “In 2000, scientists discovered they could shoot a laser through a cesium chamber at three hundred and eighty times the speed of light. It happened so fast that the beam left the chamber before it even entered. By transforming mass into light particles, it's conceivable that objects, possibly people, could move backward, and conversely, forward in time. We can't rule out anything yet, no matter how improbable it may seem. But then, it’s possible this level of decay happened overnight. Like this area was caught in a temporal anomaly, like what we see on the vids.”
Baider rose, hefting five tan booklets. “Okay if I keep these coin folders?”
George nodded. “I doubt the previous owner will be showing up to claim them.”
“I’m a collector.” Baider shrugged off his pack, released the plastic clips and stowed the leather folders. “Washington nickels, liberty dimes, half dollars. They’re in good condition. Same as the money and papers.”
“Hermetically sealed, you think?” Heather took a step in the direction of the door, but George, with a gentle grip of her arm, held her back. She smiled disarmingly and acquiesced.
He smiled back and wondered what it would be like to kiss her, tamped down unexpected arousal, tucked away the tantalizing thought for now, though an after image lingered. “We’d better move on. We may have destabilized this entire structure.”
“Aye.” In one smooth motion, Baider slung his backpack on his shoulder and scooped up his lasrifle. An ominous crack echoed from above. He jerked his head up in an age-old reaction, then turned on his heels and sprinted for the door. The others scattered into the street. With a dying groan, what remained of the back and side walls collapsed inward as Baider leaped through the doorway and bound past them and up the street. Three I-beams screeched and twisted as mortar cracked, sending moss encrusted gray chunks clattering to the floor. With a shrieking groan, the I-beams followed. Thunderous booms toppled upon each other, rippled through the ancient structures. The rust red beams crumpled and shattered into jagged, green streaked lengths as hundreds of red bricks smashed to rubble or tumbled down existing piles. A dirty brown cloud belched from the ruin’s apertures, raining forest debris and colorful splashes of rotted cloth.
A splinter of window frame glanced off Heather’s arm as she dashed after Baider, with George and Wendell to either side. Several yards up the shallow incline, Baider stopped and looked back, breath rasping deep in his throat from the sudden exertion. They caught up with him and, curiosity shoving aside concerns for their safety, faced the store. Partially obscured by an expanding dust cloud, only the front wall remained standing, like ghost sentries.
“This has all been such a thrill. Can we go back to the ship now?” Wendell cried, flushed, breathing labored.
George chuckled, then sobered. “When we get some answers, we’ll go back.”
“What kind of answers?” Wendell cocked his head and squinted at him. “What on earth could we possibly learn snooping around these ruins, Cap? Besides, the next time we just might not be so lucky.”
“Can it, Wendy.” Flat, emotionless, Baider’s admonition echoed. He ignored George’s pointed frown, turned abruptly away.
“No name calling, Baider!” Two long steps and Heather swung to face him, blocked him from taking another step. “Please. No name calling.”
He shrugged, impassive. “My apologies. Can we move on?”
“Lead on, Baider.” Well aware of the seaman’s lack of forbearance regarding Wendell, George had asked him several times over the previous months to lighten up. He admitted that Baider had at least tried to keep his personal derision to himself, though he still looked askance whenever the men had to converse.
“By your leave, Ma’am.” Baider doffed his hat and bowed, then winked and straightened.
“No more names...hear?” She stepped aside and gave him a fleeting smile, then swatted his bottom when he stepped past. He was at once a head taller.
A look passed between, revealed a tenderness George hadn’t seen before. He was mildly comforted by their playfulness, given the uncertainty of their current situation, and wondered whether the pair were more than colleagues. Lauren would know if anything was afoot between them. He’d have to ask her about it when they reboarded Slinker.
Baider in the lead, Heather close behind, George and Wendell trailing, they trudged up the remnants of the road, past several gaunt, crumbling structures and through an intersection. The yellow grass and dark green vines thinned and shrunk to waist high as they left behind the lower ruins. A slight, chill breeze sifted off the ocean and bay waters grew restless, slapped against half-submerged ruins.
The road steepened, then abruptly leveled off where it rounded a gentle curve and approached the town’s tallest structure. A hundred and twenty yards from the waterfront, a barren, yet substantial four-story granite block rose, in sharp contrast to the red and brown brick ruins. Even the polyphalt surrounding it, save for rippling, was unscarred and free of the foliage blanketing the other structures.
“What is this place?” Wendell steered wide of Baider, who came to a stop several yards from the grayish black expanse surrounding the monolith.
“Only one way to find out.” Voice low and wary, Baider took another step.
“Baider, wait.” George jogged up to him. Framed by the darkening clouds, the structure appeared evil, or at the least, somber. “I had a premonition when we came through that anomaly. We were drawn here. It can't be a coincidence. One minute we’re forty-seven miles off the coast and the next, we’re in the foothills of the Cascades. And now...here we are, standing before the only building in this town that hasn’t rotted away. There are answers here. I can feel it in my bones.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that we ought to exercise caution.”
“Sure.”
Baider checked his lasrifle, flipped off the safety, then set off in a crouch, zigzagging toward the building. Not far behind, George matched him, but farther to the left. Heather and Wendell followed, keeping their backs to the men, snatching quick glances to verify they were still on track. They came together at the wall, beside an open portal twelve feet wide and nine high.
“Spread out.” George leaped inside, prepared to drop and roll if need be, but the faint illumination from identical portals in each wall revealed an empty chamber. The ceiling was lost somewhere in the darkness above.
“Nothing here.” Baider sounded disappointed.
“There is.” George shouldered his weapon and dropped his pack with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “We just have to find it.”
“I’ll scout around outside.”
“Don't wander far. Daylight's fading fast.”
Baider glanced his way and nodded. “Aye, Cap.” He set down his backpack, rechecked his weapon, glanced again at George, turned and quick-stepped to the far opening and disappeared.
Heather’s backpack thudded to the floor beside George, setting off a small storm of dust. She plopped down and looked up to George. “You were sounding kind of ‘Weird World’ back there. What gives?”
“Nothing polycrete.” George glanced away, then sharply back. “I...just premonitions, flashes really. There’s something here we need.”
She grasped his arm, unusually tense. “Like what?”
Confusion and worry lurked behind those pretty blue eyes. Had he brought them on a fool’s errand? No. Their presence here wasn’t by accident and neither was this dark and foreboding monolith. He’d never been so certain of anything in his life.
“I don't know. Maybe a way home.”
“George, what was, is gone. This world, our world, is a different place now. We don't belong here, but I don't see a way back either.”
“Impossible as it may seem, this can’t be real, but it sure as hell isn’t a dream. Maybe the timeline’s screwed up and we really are in the future, but I’m thinking maybe mass illusion.” He shook his head. “Regardless, we’re in a bad way unless we figure this out.”
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