I hadn’t counted on this. I had no idea what to do with myself. I had no idea what year it was, and I had been detached from the real world for so long, I was nervous about the idea of leaving the complex. I needed to know what happened and what year it was. The fact that algae had been growing in the bath meant it had to have been at least a few months since anyone had been in there. But what would have caused the place to be abandoned? Almost certainly it had something to do with the hole in the dome. So when did that happen? Was this a split in the timeline, or was I in the future?
I certainly couldn’t remain where I was. I walked over to the main entrance Jim and I had used when I left for the island. My stomach knotted. I hadn’t been outside since my trip to the island, and that hardly counted as the real world. Perhaps I could find a way to get back to the island. I could live with Marina and Adam and find some way to be useful to them. When I got to the doorway it didn’t open, but I was expecting that at this point. Unlike my own doorway though, there were no ridges in the door. There was nothing I could see to grab hold of and force it open. I tried sliding it using just the friction of my hands against the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
Panic gripped me for a moment. What if I was stuck in here? How would I survive? I walked back to the nearest quarters and forced that door open. There was a photograph in the entryway of someone I didn’t know. “Adelaide MacDuff mail.” I waited for a moment, but there was no response. My sigh was more out of frustration than disappointment. I hoped maybe a back-up power system would kick in to respond to me, but I hadn’t actually expected that would work.
There must be another way in. I had rarely seen the main door used, but I knew we must get deliveries somehow. The farm made the most logical sense to me. If they had to take delivery of certain foods and supplies that would be the closest place to store things. I turned back towards the farming dome.
I had only been this way once before, with Noah. He wanted to show me a new plant he created by suggesting a cross breeding of two other plants. I couldn't remember the name of the original plants or what the creation was. In the end it tasted horrible and he gave up on it. The farmer had destroyed the small section of crop to Noah’s dismay. I laughed lightly at the memory of his indignation and the sound was swallowed by the emptiness. The glass door leading to the farming area had been propped open. A large house that I assumed was where Montgomery, the farmer whose name Noah used on missions, had lived and worked was off to my left. Several fields stretched out in front of me. I had forgotten how big this section of the complex was. An orchard with various trees was off to the right.
"Ok," I said to myself. "If I were an alternate entrance, where would I be?" I thought about the root cellar Noah had found just a few hours ago. It seemed like years ago to me now. I felt like I was being watched and glanced back through the doors to the living dome. Nothing moved. There wasn't even a breeze to rustle the tall grass. "Root cellar it is." Talking to myself was a habit from when I was young and my parents would leave me alone in my room for hours at a time. Someone had told them it would help my creative side to be left alone like that. I guess it did, though I never actually created anyone in my mind who was listening. It was a comforting thought, to pretend someone was there and to speak to the silence.
I walked around the back of the house. From what I could see, like everywhere else it was dark inside. I smiled when I got to the back to find there was an actual cellar there. It was still latched shut but wasn't locked. I lifted the latch and wrenched one of the doors open. It was dark inside there as well so I relit my disc and headed down the shallow concrete steps to the cellar below the house. The room was much bigger than I was expecting. That made sense though, at least a thousand people had lived in this complex. Though not all our food came from here a vast deal of our fruits and vegetables had. And I knew that one of the fields was planted with soybar, which could be made into many more types of food with the produce conversion system.
There were vast shelves full of containers. I pulled one down off the shelf closest to me and read the label; carrots. "Now all I need is salted beef and cabbage." My shoulders fell as I put the container back on the shelf. Even if I managed to find a way out of this place I had no idea what to do after that. For all I, knew Noah hadn't been taken to this time period. Perhaps he had made it back to normal time as he was supposed to. Would he try to find me? Were they tracking me right now? "First things first." I walked down the aisle a little further and pulled another container off the shelf, just out of curiosity. I read the label to myself, "Juniper." I put it back and continued down the aisle. About halfway to the back I pulled another container down and wiped the dust away to see the label. "Orange slices." I put the container back and wiped the dust away from my hand with the other, then looked at my hand for a moment. There hadn't been dust on the first containers. "Wait a minute." I turned and quickly walked back along the aisle. About halfway back the containers failed to be covered with dust anymore. I grabbed another container and stared at it in disbelief. Someone had put these here recently.
That someone was suddenly pointing a disintegrator pistol at me. "Put that back please, and place your hands on your head."
I did as he asked, my swift movements betraying my sudden fear. "I'm not here to rob you." He was old, but his hands were steady with the gun. I didn’t like my chances if I tried to rush him.
"How did you get in here?" he demanded. The gun moved an inch closer to my torso.
"The doors were unlocked. I was looking for... something."
"No, I mean the dome, how did you get in this dome?"
My eyes followed the tip of the gun as it moved just slightly away from me when he gestured with it.
I realized what he meant. He thought I was from the outside world. A reasonable assumption given the state of this place. "Please lower the pistol! I'm not here to steal from you or anything. I need help," I pleaded.
He lowered the gun slightly, but kept a firm grip on it. "No funny stuff now."
"No funny stuff," I agreed. I lowered my hands from my head but kept them held out in front of me as a sign of trust. "I need help."
"So you said. What kind of help?"
"I need to find a way out of this place."
He grunted in amusement. "Just head back out the way you came in."
"That's easier said than done. Do you know what year it is?"
He laughed at me. "What nonsense is that? I haven't kept track of the date in years." He gave me a look that said he thought I was either crazy or up to something. I noticed his finger twitch back towards the trigger on the pistol. "What are you doing in my root cellar?"
"Your root cellar? You live here? You work here?"
"Live here, yes. Work here, used to be. Nobody's been here to work for in years."
I had only met the farmer a few times but I certainly knew his name. "Are you Montgomery Welsher?"
He gave me a dark, mistrusting look. "Now how would you know that?" He raised the pistol again and pointed it at my head this time.
My pulse sped again, desperate to get him to trust me. "I'm a librarian. My name is Adelaide MacDuff, I'm a good friend of Noah Kent."
"Adelaide MacDuff?" His look turned from confusion to surprise and a small laugh escaped his lips. It built as he lowered his gun and clutched his stomach, bent over with laughter.
"What!" I yelled at him to get his attention.
"Oh, Adelaide." He stopped laughing and gave me a wry smile. "You’ve pissed off quite a few people, you know. Come with me."
I followed him outside and up into the house. He turned on a light in his kitchen. "You have power too," I noticed.
"Too? Yes, I have a small generator, it's enough to keep this place going. Have a seat." He gestured to the kitchen table and pulled out a bottle of some pale yellow liquid. He placed it on the table and retrieved two glasses, leaving the pistol on the counter. At least I knew I had his trust now. He poured two glasses of the liquid and pushed o
ne over to me. "Drink, you're going to need it." He took a sip of whatever it was and stared at me as he put the glass back down. "Adelaide MacDuff," he said again, almost breathlessly, as he looked me over.
"What happened here?"
"So you don't know what year it is?"
"No idea at all. I just got back and everything was wrong. It looks like no one’s been working here for years."
He gestured to the drink again and I took a small sip. It was harsh on the back of my throat, and I made a face.
"That they haven’t. It’s been just me for a long while now. The year is 2168." He watched my reaction.
I couldn't speak. 2168. How could I have ended up here? I took another sip from my glass. And if I ended up here what became of... "Noah?"
"Oh he came back in 2073, as was expected. But boy, oh boy when you failed to show up an hour later like they had programmed?" He laughed again. "Being out here I never got to hear about much of the goings on, but Noah came to visit me a few days after his return and told me all about it. They were furious with you. They thought you'd found a way to outsmart them and go somewhere else. They grilled Noah for days trying to figure out where you had got to. And come to find out it was their own fault, a screw up with the programming." He chuckled again. He clearly didn't have much faith in the people who ran this place.
My face had fallen as he explained this. Noah came back on time and was gone now.
Montgomery seemed a little giddy with excitement. "He gave me a note for you. Knew you’d make it back at some point."
I looked back up at him with a pleading interest. "Noah did?"
"Yep." He groaned a little as he got out of his chair and walked over to a desk. "Had to do it rather sneaky too. Came over asking about some plant I had mentioned a few weeks before, wanted to go out into the fields and see it. Talked about them the whole time while he slipped two notes into my pockets. Slid them into a book when I got inside and took it back out into the orchard a little later on." He was rummaging through a draw of some papers. "Read the one addressed to me like it was part of the book, just in case. Always knew they were watching but could never find the damn things." He pulled an old leather bound book out of a drawer and set it on the top of the desk then kept looking. "Told me about the other letter, which was addressed to you. Told me he believed at some point you'd return, that he thought he had worked out what happened. And if I was still around when you did, I was to give you this." He produced a folded piece of paper which was sealed shut at the edge. "I'll be off to the facilities for a little while. Give you a bit of privacy."
I sat back down at the table and took a deep breath. The letter opened easily enough and I recognized Noah’s writing.
Adelaide,
If you're reading this it means I was right and you were sent into the future. I have a guess about how far into the future, but I won't bore you with my stunning intellect by explaining it here. Things are bad here. They're furious. They think it was part of some plan on our parts. I'm pretty sure I'm being let go. I've heard rumors of what happens to people from here who disappear, and none of them are good. If they don't just kill me, it's likely they'll find some way to neutralize me. I think I'd prefer death, I've seen what happens to people who lose their memory. Addy, I'm sorry for that. Jim let me watch some of the videos of your meetings with him. Well...me. That must have been so hard. So before that happens, I'm going to kill myself. I don't want to lose the first half of my life to these people. I want to remember it all. So I'm sorry again. Though if it's the year I think it is I'd probably be dead by now anyway. I don't know what to suggest you do at this point. I guess return to society, live the best life you can. Don't give up like I did. You're free now, you can go wherever you like. Enjoy it. -Noah
The stress of the past week and losing Noah for good hit me all at once. I lowered my head onto my arm and cried. I hadn't cried in such a long time. Life had been great here. I loved learning about the past and getting to travel and everything about it. I hadn't minded giving up the freedom; to me, it was worth it. Now I had no friends, no job, no place to go. I thought about the sphere in my pocket. I wondered where it would take me if I tried it again. By the time I raised my head again Montgomery had returned to the chair. I sniffed and took another sip from the glass. "So what happened to this place?"
"Witches."
I barked out a laugh. "Witches don't exist, Noah proved that himself."
"Well no, not real witches per say. But you've heard of The Gard?"
"Not really."
"A religion of sorts. Worship mother earth and nature and crap like that, but with a nasty violent streak. That woman that Noah saw escape the fire, she was a Gardian."
I froze in my chair. I felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. That woman who saw us disappear in 1692, that's who she was. "She saw us. I didn't notice her in the window, I was just desperate to find a way back for both of us."
"Exactly. She saw you up and vanish in front of her eyes, then went inside to see what happened. She found this." He reached back over to the desk, grabbed the old leather bound book from the top of it and handed it to me.
I opened the cover and immediately recognized the same handwriting from the letter I had just read. "This is Noah’s journal. We left it in my haste. We left everything.” I flipped through a few of the pages.
"Noah was a wordy one. And having had those months there without a way back, he wrote all about it in there. She kept it, passed it down through generations and generations. And as you know, most people have lost their religion over the years but there were some fierce believers. And the one thing they hated most in the world were the fierce believers in Jesus Christ. The people who had persecuted them so endlessly through the years. So they bided their time, working on their plans. They broke into this place-"
"The hole in the glass dome of the living quarters?"
"That very one. Didn't see it happen but heard it. Sounded awful. People said it was some witchcraft but I think they were just freaked out by it all. So a handful of them came down with some powerful weapons. Knew exactly where to go, took out any guards that got in their way and demanded an audience with the powers that be. Said they were taking over the lab. They wanted to send someone back to disprove the existence of Jesus Christ and any miracles he might've done."
I smiled slightly in amusement. Noah and I had talked about this very sort of mission but from the different side of things, wanting to prove that it all happened. I wondered how The Gard would have felt if going back proved everything to be true instead.
"Well as you can imagine, the leaders of this place weren't too keen on being bossed around. They gave in all too quickly and set about getting a librarian ready to go on a mission to meet Jesus Christ. They decided the first trip would be to see his birth. Angels singing to the sheep and all that."
I had no idea what he was talking about but nodded for him to continue.
"I mean, these people had guns and were threatening the lives of their very important employees, of course they were going to cooperate. But the Gardians, they weren't having it quite so tidy. They wanted to send one of their own folks back in time. There were arguments about our people knowing the process, knowing how to not interfere and all that, but the Gardians didn't believe they’d be honest about it all. They thought the librarians would lie to them. Don't blame them myself.
"So they got one of their own people trained up a bit and sent back in time. Only things is, they didn't get sent back to the birth of Jesus, they got sent back much further than that. To a time when the earth was just plates of hot magma swirling about. Surely they died instantly, and the sphere was lost."
I thought about the sphere in my pocket. Though I trusted Montgomery and he must have known how I arrived there, I didn't want to broadcast there was still a sphere out there. "They stuck with their principles,” I said. “They always said they'd rather destroy the technology than hand it over to anyone else.”
"They told the Gardians immediately once their guy had gone, what they'd done. The Gardians got a bit upset as you might imagine, broke into some boardroom and killed the whole lot of them. Their leader was killed in the scuffle though. The followers weren’t sure what to do then. Probably would've killed a whole lot more of us too if some people hadn't talked them down. Told them we were practically slaves there and had nothing to do with the management's decisions. They let us go and left. A bunch of people hung around for a while, tried to find things to do, but without the sphere and all the management gone there wasn’t much for us. Things started falling into disrepair and more and more people left. I told them about the tunnel Noah had taken to get out."
The Sphere: A Journey In Time Page 14