“Allow me,” I said because I actually knew a little about dimensions. I read a lot of fantasy novels over the last five years. “The first dimension is a line. The second dimension is a flat drawing on a piece of paper. The third dimension is like a sculpture; you can see all sides of it and the fourth dimension is time. We can’t have anything without the fourth dimension but Colonel Al thinks that the fourth dimension is screwed up down here and that’s why we’re stuck.”
“So, if we can figure out what messed up the fourth dimension, we can get out of here?” asked Emma Lee.
“Give the lady a prize,” exclaimed Colonel Al. “See, Nicky, she gets it. Why can’t you?”
“I get it,” I said, angry that he was making fun of me. “I know the fourth dimension is messed up but I don’t know why or how we can fix it and I don’t see how studying rocks and plants is going to help us.”
“Maybe it won’t, but it’s interesting how different things are down here,” admitted Colonel Al “And the rocks? What if they’re the fuel we need to power our clocks?”
“I really don’t think starting the clocks will do anything,” said Robert.
“Won’t do anything?” Colonel Al was mad that someone was questioning his theory. “Of course it will do something! We start the clocks, we start time. Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t,” said Robert. He sounded so calm and logical compared to the hysterics the colonel was displaying. “If we start the clocks, we start the clocks that’s all. Clocks are merely machines that report the time. They don’t actually create time nor do they make time work. Although it’s mysterious that wind up clocks don’t work here, it would mean absolutely nothing if they started ticking the seconds away. It doesn’t help us if we figured out how to start them.” The words came to the colonel like a slap in the face and he just stood there staring at Robert.
“Robert’s right,” I said trying to break the silence.
“Yeah, yeah, I suppose he is.” The colonel looked defeated and lost; his military professionalism gone. He turned away from all of us and headed for the door. “I suppose he is. I have to go now.”
“Colonel? Are you okay?” I asked but he walked right by me, not hearing a word I said. “Colonel?” He kept walking out of the room and down through the tunnel.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Billy.
“I think he just realized that Robert’s right and all the effort he put into starting those clocks was pointless,” I tried to explain. “I think he’s in shock. Robert, I think you opened his eyes to something he refused to acknowledge.”
“I don’t know how he could have thought that starting a clock would change everything,” said Robert. “He seems to be somewhat intelligent but this wasn’t a very smart assumption.”
“At least he tried,” I said softly, looking down at the ground. I knew that Colonel Al was a little on the extreme side but I liked him and I admired that he was trying to get back home. He wasn’t just sitting around and accepting that this was where we were going to be stuck for eternity.
“Nicole?” Robert waited until I looked at him. “I didn’t realize that getting home meant so much to you. I thought you were getting used to being here.”
“I am,” I said, “and, don’t get me wrong, I really like you guys but I miss my home. I miss my mom and dad and even my brother. If I could go home, I would in a heartbeat. Colonel Al may be a little out there but he believes there’s a way back and I want to help him find it.”
“Okay,” said Robert, “then we’ll all help. The clocks were a bad idea but his attempt at communication makes sense and his discovery of these new rocks is fascinating. Marshal? What do you make of it?” He squeezed my shoulder before turning his attention to Marshal. I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t offended him.
“The rocks, rocks, rocks?” Marshal asked and Robert nodded. “I don’t know what to think. It’s weird, weird, weird. They don’t seem to match any of the rocks in your book. I don’t know what they are.”
“The plants are different too don’t forget,” added Cornelius.
“But different how?” asked Robert. “Is it something you’ve never seen before or is it something that doesn’t belong here?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I asked.
“No,” answered Robert. “Something you’ve never seen before means that it could be new to this planet; something that doesn’t belong here means it could be plants that are only found in, say, Africa.”
“Or sometime else,” said Cornelius, suddenly excited by something. “Let me take a look at that grass again.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, damn,” said Cornelius as he stared through the microscope. “I can’t tell from this and I can’t bloody well remember what the professor said.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked as I walked over to the table that the microscope sat on. Everyone else slowly made their way to the table too. “Cornelius? What can’t you remember?”
“It was a class I had, something about plants...but I can’t remember,” he looked up and was startled to see us all staring back at him. “I’m sorry, it just evades my memory.”
“What does?” I asked.
“Well,” he explained. “What if the reason the plants look differently and the rocks seem foreign is not because they’re from a different place but because they’re from a different time?”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t get what he was suggesting.
“Are you saying that this world started years ago and that’s where all this is from?” Robert seemed to be getting it. Why wasn’t I?
“Not just years ago,” said Cornelius, “but centuries maybe millennia. We have no idea how long this world has been here. I know I’ve been here for four hundred years and I knew a few men in Europe who have been here longer. How about you guys? What’s the longest you’ve heard of someone living here?”
“Well, I knew a few down south who have been here for a couple of hundred years,” said Emma Lee. “But no one who came earlier than that.”
“I think you’ll discover it’s like that in this part of the world,” said Robert. “We are a continent that didn’t have a great population until about 250 years ago. There were indigenous people but I haven’t really seen that many since I came here and, if I did, it was in passing. I never got to know them long enough to ask how long they’d been here.”
“I think any other continent would have the oldest citizens of this world,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter because I think that this world,” said Cornelius, “has been here for a long time, longer than any of us. I also think that it hasn’t changed since it was created and that’s why all the confusion with the plants; they’ve been here since the beginning and are probably ancient ancestors of the plants in the world above. They haven’t changed; nothing here has changed.”
“And the rocks?” asked Robert.
“I can’t explain that,” answered Cornelius. “Maybe they’re supposed to be different. Maybe they have a purpose but we just haven’t found it yet.”
“What kind of purpose?” asked Marshal.
“Well, when I lived in England many years ago,” said Cornelius, “alchemy was very popular. Great myths were born of it. Perhaps looking at the rock from the eyes of an alchemist would solve the mystery.”
“That makes sense,” I said. The others seemed confused by what Cornelius said. I, on the other hand, had a real curiosity in anything based in fantasy; books, movies, video games. So I knew about alchemy. I always thought it went hand in hand with witchcraft and wizardry which was pretty cool. “But it still doesn’t answer the big questions.”
“What’s that?” asked Robert.
“Why was this world created and how do we get back home?” I asked. Silence filled the room and I could tell that everyone was thinking the same thing.
“I don’t know,” Cornelius finally answered quietly, sounding ashamed t
hat he didn’t know the answer.
Chapter 12
I found Colonel Al in the small room I discovered with Emma Lee and Kitten the first day I brought them all here. He was sitting in the dark with his back against the cold stone wall. I held up my lantern to get a better idea where he was so I wouldn’t trip over him. Barker was beside him, all curled up against his leg. I wasn’t surprised that the dog was there. Although I hated to admit it, Barker seemed to have a good relationship with the colonel.
“Colonel Al?” I walked into the room slowly.
“Hello, Nicky,” he said. “The Private told me you would come. He thinks highly of you and I think he’s right to do so.”
“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” I said. I sat down, cross-legged, in front of him. “So, are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I know that you’ve worked hard at getting the clocks to work and I know that what Robert said was upsetting.”
“He’s right,” he said. “I just couldn’t see it. Of course, the clocks don’t control time! I must be an idiot not to have seen it earlier. I’ve wasted so much time and now I’m back to square one.”
“I don’t think you’ve wasted time,” I tried to console him. “The other things you’re doing are important.”
“Do you mean radios and circuit boards with no power?” he asked sarcastically. “Or discovering rocks that don’t exist?”
“Well, if you put it that way, it does sound kind of pointless,” I said.
“You see? You see Private?” he was addressing Barker again like I wasn’t there. “I told you she didn’t want to help; that she would be judgmental.”
“Stop talking to my dog like I wasn’t here!” I exclaimed. “I’m right here. You know I’m right here and can hear every word you say to the dog! I never said it was a waste of time to study rocks and try to communicate with somebody to come help us. You’re the one who’s questioning it, not me.” Colonel Al looked at me, blankly. He turned to Barker and started to say something, then stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s not a waste of time but I think I’m lost. I don’t know where to go from here.”
“That’s why it’s good that you found us,” I said. “We can work together to figure it all out. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to find you.”
“Why?” he asked.
“After you left, we talked about everything,” I explained, “and came up with some sort of an explanation as to why the plants are so different.”
“Why?” he asked with a hint of skepticism.
“Cornelius figures that they’re plants that existed hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago,” I could see that I had piqued his interest. “He thinks that, maybe, this world has been here that long and that nothing has changed since then. Except, of course, that people keep dropping through some kind of portal here.”
“But why wouldn’t the vegetation change over all those years?” He looked like he was trying to understand this new concept.
“I don’t know.” The lantern started to dim and I reached down to turn it up. I had turned it down for the colonel’s benefit. I didn’t want to embarrass him by shining a bright lantern in his face but, now that we had talked a bit, he seemed a lot better. I felt it would be okay to turn the flame higher to light up the room. When I did, I noticed marks all over the walls. They were vertical lines in groups of four and a long horizontal line through each group. It was obvious that the colonel was keeping track of something. I got up and walked over to the wall and held the lantern up so I could see the lines better. There were little drawings over some of the groups. I saw a sun and what looked like rain coming out of a cloud. There were trees with leaves and trees without. Then I saw a block of ten with what looked like a cloud blowing gusts of wind over top of them.
“Colonel Al what is all of this?” I asked.
“It’s my calendar,” he said. “I started it after I found this place. The room was too small to do anything with so I used it as a calendar.”
“And what are all these pictures?” I asked.
“The weather report,” he said it like it should have been obvious to me what they were. “I kept track of significant weather changes.”
“Wow,” I said. “There must be...”
“16,317 days,” he finished for me.
“You know exactly how many days?” He nodded. “You must be bored.” I looked over the wall, finding it hard to believe that someone would take the time to document everything so meticulously and on a wall no less. He had actually carved out each line, I thought as I ran my fingers over the indented markings. Why would he do this? It wasn’t like anyone was going to see this. I looked at the little sun over one of the groups of five and smiled. He wasn’t a very good artist, I laughed to myself.
As I looked, I began to see a pattern. He seemed to have separated his years into blocks of about two feet by three feet. His lines were nice and neat and his drawings were small enough not to interfere with any of the groupings. I looked around the room and saw block after block; forty-four in all. Then something caught my eye and I went to each block, studying it carefully. I had to be sure I wasn’t just seeing things, but I wasn’t. There was definitely something strange happening in this world and, although Colonel Al had documented it, I don’t think he noticed it.
“Hey, did you know that there’s a pattern here?” I asked.
“Yes, I know. I have them grouped into years,” he said, “and each year into months and months into days. It’s almost like a calendar that way.”
“No, no more than that,” I said. “Look.” I pointed at the sun above one of the groups of five and then I went to a previous year and pointed at another sun. “See?”
“Yes, it was sunny on those days,” he said, still sitting on the floor and not understanding or caring what I was trying to tell him.
“No! Look!” I tried to stress that this was important. “It was sunny over this group of five here and it was sunny over the same group the year before and the year before that and so on. In fact, in every year over that group of five there’s a sun...”
“Yes, I know,” he was getting angry with me. He obviously thought I was wasting his time. “It was summer when those days occurred so, it was sunny. Not much of a mystery there.”
“Yes, but...” I went from block to block pointing at the different pictures, “...it rained on the same group of days year after year and it snowed at the same time every year. See? Look! I can see where the wind days have changed each year with the 360 but every other weather condition happens on the same day every year. Look!”
Finally, I had gotten through to him. He got up and walked over to the wall with skepticism. He stared at his pictures and then looked at the different blocks. I could see his expression change as he realized that I was right. There was a pattern!
“You’re right!” he said. “The weather does repeat in a lot of places.”
“Not a lot,” I said, “more like every single time!”
“Yes,” he said. “Private? Come take a look at this. The girl has discovered something.” Barker wagged his tail and barked as if he knew this all the time and was just waiting for someone to find it. “Now, tell me. What does it mean?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head. “But it must mean something. You’ve never seen this before?”
“No,” Colonel Al said as he kept studying his wall of ticks and lines.
“I think we should tell the others, don’t you?” I asked.
“You go,” he said. “I’ll stay and try to figure this out.”
“You sure?” He nodded and I left to find the others, Barker following behind me.
“Where is everyone?” I asked when I got back to the lab, seeing only Robert and Marshal. Marshal was still looking through the microscope and Robert was sitting at the end of the table reading some sort of te
xt book.
“Cornelius and Emma Lee took the children back home,” said Robert as he looked up from the book. “They were hungry and they wanted to make sure Cocoa had enough hay. How is the colonel. Is he still upset?”
“No, I mean, he was but I think I’ve found something else for him to think about,” I said.
“Oh, is that so?” Robert smiled. He knew me too well. He knew that I had something to tell him but he also liked to tease me. “I guess I’ll wait for him to come back to find out what it is.” He returned to his book.
“Robert!?” I pouted my lip and put my hands on my hips. He looked up again and laughed.
“Go on,” he said, “tell me what you found.”
“Okay! Marshal, you should listen too.” Marshal looked up from the telescope and came to the end of the table to join us. “Okay, you know that room that Emma Lee, Kitten and I found when we were searching the mine?”
“I’ve not seen the room but I remember you telling us about it,” said Robert. “It wasn’t very big, right?”
“Right,” I continued. “It was small and dark; we had to duck low to get through the door. Anyway, that’s where I found Colonel Al. He was all upset and sitting on the floor, Barker right beside him. Well, I turned up the lantern to see better; I hate talking to people when I can’t see them. So, I turned up the lantern and noticed all these marks on the wall.”
“Marks?” asked Marshal. “What kind of marks, marks, marks?”
“They were lines all neatly carved into the walls and grouped into nice little blocks,” I explained. “It seems Colonel Al was keeping track of the days he’s been down here.”
“That seems normal,” said Robert. “He wouldn’t be the first to check off days. I even did it when I first came down here but I gave it up when I came out west. It was too hard to keep track of days when I spent every one in a different place.”
“Well, Colonel Al kept a pretty good account of all his days here,” I said. “He’s made a perfect calendar in there. He has his years separated and his months are in their own groups. That’s not the only thing, though. He’s kept track of the weather too.”
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