by Jude Watson
“None of this explains why you moved us fifty years ahead!” Kimberly cried. “It’s horrible! I don’t want to be in the future!”
“I didn’t know!” Hank insisted. “When Molly told me fifty years had passed I couldn’t believe it! I thought it might have been a few years, five or six at the most. Obviously, I messed up somehow. But we stayed alive.”
“That doesn’t explain why you tried to trap us with you,” Yoshi said.
“What?” Hank asked.
“We thought we were here two days and it’s been over two weeks,” Molly said.
“You … trick us,” Kira said, her eyes narrowed.
“And by the way,” Yoshi said, “the Beatles broke up.”
“I didn’t do it!” Hank insisted. “I wouldn’t trap you here. I wanted you to stay, sure. We could use your skills. You probably know things from the future that could help us. But I wouldn’t trap you!” Hank made an impatient gesture. “I wish I’d never found that device.”
“The Beatles broke up?” Pammy moaned. “Could things get any worse?”
“If I’ve learned anything in this place,” Crash mumbled, “it’s that the answer to that question is always yes.”
“Can we see the device?” Javi asked Hank. “You said it didn’t look like the others.”
Hank reached into his oboe case. He held out a small metal object.
Yoshi peered at it. “I’ve seen this before,” he said.
Anna turned the device over in her hands. She looked up at Yoshi. “The jawbug nest.”
“Same shape, right?” Yoshi asked.
She nodded. “Exactly the same. But … why? This is crazy. Why should the timey-wimey device be part of an insect nest?”
“Maybe it isn’t a real nest,” Yoshi said. “We didn’t truly examine it. Why would we? Who would pick up a wasp nest?”
“Of course … ” Anna said. “The metallic sound. The nests are made of metal. And there were dozens of them in that grove where you killed the snakehog.”
“And covering that cave opening,” Yoshi said.
“Wait a second,” Hank said. “There’s a cave?”
Yoshi nodded. “I saw it. It’s deep in the grove.”
“Okay, theories?” Molly asked. “Because if the nests aren’t nests, then maybe that means the jawbugs aren’t bugs.”
“What else could they possibly be?” Kimberly asked.
“Robots,” the Killbots all said together.
“Maybe the jawbugs don’t just attack because they’re guarding their nest,” Anna said. “If they’re machines like the ones we’ve seen, they could be protecting something else.”
“What are they protecting?” Molly asked as Yoshi translated for the sisters. “Theories? Conjectures?”
“Another pod like the one in the desert?” Javi suggested.
“Or some larger piece of machinery,” Anna said. “When I was above the trees, I thought I saw the time folds radiating out from a central spot. They looked like spokes on a wheel. I saw … something in the middle. I think it was the glint of metal. Kira said there are no rock formations in the forest.”
“There’s also the apex predator,” Yoshi said. “I think it lives in the cave. Anna and I could feel the vibration of something moving below the ground.”
“The Thing,” Dana said.
“So, we should never go there, right?” Pammy put in with a nervous smile.
Molly whistled. “If the Thing is living in that cave with the jawbugs, it could be more intelligent than we realized,” she said. “Maybe it’s not a simple predator. Maybe it is like the pod Javi saw in the desert. Maybe it’s part of whatever alien species built this place.”
“Wait a second,” Crash said. “Have you flipped your lid?”
“You mean, like Martians?” Stu asked.
“We don’t know what planet,” Anna said. “But it’s unlikely to be Mars. There’s no life there. At least not anymore. Let’s stick to the facts.”
“Creatures from another planet are facts?” Drew asked, his mouth open in disbelief.
“Not necessarily a planet from our solar system,” Anna said. “Could even be from another galaxy. But there’s something else … ” Anna pulled a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Another element that doesn’t quite add up. Yoshi and I found that field Hank mentioned. It was full of destroyed worker robots, the kind we’ve seen everywhere. To be honest, it looked like a battlefield. Some thing—or things—had gathered them there to be destroyed.”
Molly frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. The worker robots maintain the rift and everything in it. Why would something do that, especially if it’s a part of all this?”
“Weirdsmobile,” Crash agreed. “Like, we find devices that help us survive, and yet the whole forest is trying to kill us. This is not consistent with my general world view, dad. Are we dealing with friends or enemies? I’d just like to know.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Anna.
“Why not?” Dana asked quietly. “Crash could be onto something. What if there are two forces at work?” She glanced from Javi to Anna to Yoshi, her eyes finally landing on Molly. “There’s the something that brought us here and wants us to find whatever’s at the end of the rift—and the something that wants to keep us from it. Maybe even trap us in time.”
Molly opened her mouth to respond but stopped, her expression thoughtful. Her eyes found Anna’s.
“We just always assumed the robots were on the same side … ” Anna muttered.
“And it fits our theory,” Kimberly said cheerily. “The Commies versus the Red, White, and Blue!”
Anna thought back to how they’d arrived—how on the plane she’d felt chosen to survive—and how the devices helped them while the environment tried to hurt them. Hadn’t the pincer bots and the workers been at odds occasionally?
“So, what do we do?” Hank asked.
Molly sighed, running a hand over her face. “These are interesting theories, but for now that’s all they are. Before we do anything, I’d like to try to get through to Cal. Earlier, he had me put my hands on the ground. He wanted me to feel something.”
“I’m feeling something right now,” Javi said. “Confused.”
“He could know something we don’t, is my point,” Molly said.
“He’s over by the fire,” Dana said. She looked over Anna’s shoulder. Then her eyes suddenly widened in alarm. “Cal, NO!” she shouted.
Cal stood by the table, holding Hank’s reeds in his hands. Javi could see his green rash pulsing in the gray light.
“Two five six!” he shouted.
Hank ran across the compound. “No, Cal!”
He held the reeds high.
Hank stopped a foot away. “Please. Don’t do it.” His voice broke. “Those are my last reeds. I can’t play without them. You know that.”
Cal broke the reeds in half and threw them in the air. Then he reached for Hank’s oboe. He held it in his hands as though he’d never seen an instrument before. Like a stick he was about to snap. “Frequency sequence!” he shouted.
“Stop!” Dana and Hank shouted the word at the same time. They launched themselves at Cal, but he twisted away. The more they tried to hold him, the more violently he resisted. He put his mouth on the oboe and blew. A discordant note bleated out, then slid wildly from one pitch to another.
There was something about their desperation and that sound that almost tore Javi’s heart out. “We have to do something,” he said to Molly.
But Molly had a strange expression on her face as Cal blew into the oboe again. “I’m starting to get it,” she said.
“Get what?”
“Sounds, words,” she said. “Scraps of meaning.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Javi looked from Molly’s rapt expression to the writhing Cal, who was now crouching over the instrument as he tried to hold off Hank. The sounds changed, becoming short and fast.
The
blue cubes flickered and went out.
“STOP!” Molly shouted, and Dana and Hank looked over at her, surprised.
“Cal just did that,” she said. “He turned out the lights in the gel cube. With the oboe. It’s a sound that said ‘off.’ I heard it.”
Hank looked from the oboe to the gel cubes.
“Play, Cal,” Molly said. “Do it again.”
Cal blew into the oboe. The lights in the cubes flared.
“Don’t you see? There’s a reason he broke the reeds and tried to alter Dana’s flute,” Molly said. “He’s losing our language but he’s gaining another at the same time. He wants to be able to tell you.”
“Tell us what?” Hank asked.
Molly ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know. I just know he’s trying to communicate. Do you remember when you were playing that weird music with Akiko? All those funny notes?”
“Actually, it was a series of glissandos. You glide from one pitch to another—”
“Whatever! The light in the cubes flickered. You were controlling it, you just didn’t know it. And all those times you tried to play with the reeds that didn’t work?”
“I did it at night so I didn’t drive everyone crazy.”
“But it was right outside Cal’s hut! He could hear it!”
“Sometimes it would calm him down … ”
“Maybe because he thought you were trying to understand the language.”
“Sometimes it would agitate him.”
“Because you were getting it wrong! Don’t you see? He always reacted. Maybe he was trying to stop you! What if you were turning up the time sometimes, by mistake? If sound can affect the technology here, you could have been doing it without realizing.”
Hank looked stricken. “I hope not. That means … that means it is my fault.”
“Well, of course it’s your fault,” Anna said. Javi nudged her. “I mean, technically. You kept the time-changer a secret.”
Kira was flipping through her sketchbook excitedly. She brought it over to Molly and pointed to a drawing. She had sketched the Cubs’ and Killbots’ devices side by side. She pointed to the markings that ran along the outside of the devices, markings they had never quite figured out.
“Scale,” Akiko said.
Kira nodded. She handed her pencil to Akiko, who placed a treble clef on the lines.
“A musical staff,” Hank said. “The indicator lights line up like notes.”
“Music,” Akiko said.
“Exactly.” Hank turned excitedly to Cal, now sitting on the ground. “That’s what you were trying to say! It’s not a chromatic or a diatonic scale. It’s not music that’s pleasant to our ears, but it’s mathematical, just like our music is.”
“Ratio,” Cal said.
“The numbers!” Dana cried. “Four, five, six.”
“Why didn’t I get it?” Hank thumped his head. “Major chord!”
“Can you translate for the nonmusical here?” Molly asked.
“What’s the difference between music and noise?” Hank asked.
“Um, music sounds good?” Javi suggested.
“Exactly. It’s all about tones. If the sound waves produce an irregular vibration, we hear it as noise. Notes vibrate at certain ratios. Like major chords. A four, five, six ratio makes a major chord.”
“Four five six is not the ratio,” Cal repeated.
“I always thought that we could express anything in music with the notes that we have,” Hank went on. “But what if there are other kinds of scales that communicate? That would create different vibrations, different harmonies!” He turned to Molly. “Remember what you said about the ‘multiverse’? This is the same thing. It’s a whole different dimension of sound.”
“But if it’s not a kind of scale you know, how can you translate it?” Javi asked.
Hank tapped Kira’s sketchbook. “There’s got to be a marker,” he said. “Like middle C. Something that makes sense of the scale. So, we can communicate. We could decode the language. We could talk to Cal!”
Cal began to play the oboe again. Instead of the sweet, mournful sound, something else emerged, some kind of noise that was urgent and precise. Javi saw the musicians in the group wince, but he could tell they were trying to pick out notes. Something to decipher in their language of music.
Molly, though—she could hear it. He saw her chin lift, and something flashed in her eyes he’d never seen before. It scared him, but it thrilled him, too. Something powerful, something … beyond.
“ ‘Breakdown’!” she cried. “That’s the meaning the sound is making!”
“What does that mean?” Javi asked her.
With a sudden movement that felt like a huge exhalation of breath, birds left the trees and took to the sky. For a moment the sky was so covered with birds that it was as dark as night.
A moment later they were gone.
Now they could hear the eerie silence of the forest. No birds twittered. No leaf stirred.
Cal blew into the oboe again. The sound seemed to pierce Molly. She jerked backward. The word that came rushing out seemed to surprise her as much as them.
“ ‘Danger,’ ” she said.
Anna broke the silence. “We’ve been in danger since we got here.”
“This is different,” Molly said. She beat her fist against her leg. “It’s like I’m only hearing static. A word might break free, but … I can’t understand the whole. But it feels very urgent. I don’t have time to decipher it! The only one who can help us is Cal.” She bent down next to him. “Cal, you have to try. You have to remember your old language. Our language. You can’t let it go!” She looked up at Hank. “Give him a memory.”
“What kind of memory?”
“Anything! Good, bad, everyday ordinary; perfect, spectacular, horrible, terrible—”
“Okay!” Hank crouched down near Cal. “We were eleven, maybe twelve? You were helping me with a chore. Painting the garden fence for my mom. Remember? It was a heat wave in August. We were halfway done and just about ready to quit, except we knew my dad wouldn’t let us. Then he drove up in the truck and said, ‘Hey, boys, you wouldn’t want to go to the lake right now, would you?’ We jumped in the truck and then swam all afternoon. It was the best day.”
Cal’s face was a blank.
“Your mom’s peach ice cream,” Hank said, desperation in his voice. “Or the time we snuck out that summer night and ran through town at midnight and Garvin Tyler saw us and told on us. That time you threw a baseball out the window during class, just so you’d get detention with me. The way your mom would say Calvin Emerson Tapper, and that’s when you knew you were in trouble … ” Hank stopped as Cal’s face stayed completely blank. “It’s no use, Molly. He’s gone.”
“He’s not gone if he’s still here,” Javi said fiercely. “Let me try.” He crouched on the ground next to Cal. “You’ve got to remember what you lost, pal. Friendship.”
“Please,” Cal said in a small voice. “Hurts.”
“Copy that,” Javi said. “Life hurts. Especially here. But look, if you can forget about the almost-getting-killed stuff, and the total lack of cheeseburgers, you have to admit this is cool. We’re figuring this place out, one step at a time. Together.”
“Frequency sequence.”
“I get it. Sounds are becoming your language. Molly explained. But you still have words inside you. We just need more of them. And you’re still Hank’s best friend, dude.” Javi looked into Cal’s face, trying to break through the blankness. “It’s hard to remember ice cream when you can’t get any. But if we lose that memory—of cold and sweet—if we lose what made us happy, then we lose, period.”
“Bad good,” Cal said.
“Everyday, ordinary, perfect, spectacular,” Molly said. “Horrible, terrible. All of it.”
Cal struggled to speak. “Strawberry peach!” he burst out.
“That’s right, buddy,” Hank said softly. “That’s your favorite. I forgot. She made i
t for your birthday.”
“Intruder,” he said.
“No, Cal,” Hank said, frustrated. “Molly isn’t—”
“Not her,” Cal said. “The battle. Ambush. Two forces. Robots destroyed.”
“The battlefield,” Yoshi said.
“The Intruder tried a takeover. Maintenance is in damage mode.” He gazed at Molly, and Javi could see something human reach out to her. “You said there was help.”
“We think so,” Molly said. “We hope so. Do you … ever see a building?”
“Like a tower. Bigger than a ship. It comes in dreams.”
“Yes.”
“I need to get there.”
“Of course,” Hank said. “Of course, we’ll all get you there. Together we can make it.” He looked up at the Cubs. “We’re going to get to the ridge and we’re going to keep on going.”
“Of course,” Dana said, and the others joined in.
“We stick,” Hank said.
Cal almost smiled. He struggled to get out the words. “Like … glue.”
The Killbots were packed and ready in minutes. They followed behind the Cubs, helping to gather supplies. They packed water gel cubes, dried fruit, seed cakes, and as many tubers as they could carry. Dana brought the first aid kit she’d assembled. They rolled up blankets and tied them to backpacks.
“Everyone ready?” Hank called as they assembled in the middle of the compound. The eyes of all the Cubs were on the musical instruments left on the long table.
The flute, the oboe, and the piccolo weren’t a problem. They were light and easily carried. But when it came to essential items, would a French horn, a saxophone, a trumpet, and cymbals qualify?
Crash put his hand on his glockenspiel. “Good-bye, pal.”
Stu patted his saxophone. Drew put his French horn next to it. Pammy cradled her trumpet. They all looked as though they might cry.
Molly understood. Music had kept them together and kept them going.
“I don’t think there’s anything funny about a glockenspiel anymore,” Javi said.
“Thanks, little buddy,” Crash said.
Hank and Yoshi took the lead. Molly hung back. She touched Javi’s arm as he trudged up, shouldering his pack. “Walk with me?”