This entire valley was amazing. Exciting to explore and sad at the same time.
By the time they had hiked back along the lake and up the trail the mile to where Duster waited, the excitement of being in the wilderness and exploring the past had completely pushed aside any feeling of sadness.
She was really coming to love Idaho and the huge mountains and the beauty of it all. And a year ago, she hadn’t expected to when she moved from Phoenix.
CHAPTER FIVE
July 7th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
BRICE GOT BACK to Bonnie and Duster just under two hours after he left. He had found the lake amazing and the small cemetery depressing. Even though he knew from studying this place as a child that no one had died in the big landslide and flood that buried the city of Roosevelt, it still felt just amazing and creepy.
There were a couple of campers tucked off in the trees above the lake, their red tent bright against the natural colors of the trees and rocks. He had decided after seeing that tent that there was no chance he would ever camp near this lake.
The valley was wonderful, the area fantastic, but camping near a lake with an old mining town under it was just too damned strange for him. Even if it didn’t have ghosts.
Bonnie was working to set out a lunch on a card table and after a few minutes, just before she was almost ready with everything, Duster patted Brice on the shoulder.
“Come with me,” he said. “Something I want to show you before we start lunch and our conversation.”
Duster, wearing his long brown oilcloth coat and brown cowboy hat, even though it was warming up, walked into the road and toward the bridge over Monumental Creek. It wasn’t much of a bridge, more like some logs framing in a culvert that the stream went through.
Duster got to the middle of the bridge and turned and looked back up the valley.
Brice stood beside him and looked back up the valley as well.
The huge Monumental Lodge dominated the ridgeline, even from a few miles away. It was a stunning building, sitting there like that, filling the saddle between two large mountain peaks.
“Amazing place, huh?” Duster asked.
“It is,” Brice said, letting Duster lead the conversation.
“I’ve stood in this very spot and that lodge was not there,” Duster said, simply.
“I’ve lost what you mean,” Brice said, turning to look at his boss.
Duster had a very, very serious expression on his face as he stared up at the huge lodge on the ridge.
“I built that lodge in another timeline,” Duster said. “And when I returned to this timeline, the lodge was here. And that’s what we have had you working on for the last year, trying to help us figure out how that could happen.”
With that, Duster turned and started back toward Bonnie and lunch, leaving Brice standing there, staring at the lodge, trying to even grasp what Duster was talking about.
Or more likely joking about.
CHAPTER SIX
July 7th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE MANAGED TO not say anything or ask any question about Duster’s wild statement that he had built that lodge in another timeline until Bonnie got all of them sandwiches and some fruit and bottles of water on the folding table.
They were sitting in the shade of some tall pine trees and only the sound of the stream and a faint breeze through the trees disturbed the silence of the valley.
Dixie had spent the last year working the math, with Bonnie and Duster, on the likelihood of various timelines and what was possible between such timelines, if they existed.
But that had all been theory.
Mathematical theory.
Not building a lodge.
Dixie took a bite of her sandwich, which Bonnie had had the kitchen in the lodge prepare. Dixie had ordered a prime rib sandwich with light horseradish sauce on it on a thick bun. It tasted wonderful and she let herself slowly chew on the sandwich before saying anything.
Bonnie finally broke the silence.
“What Duster told you is true,” she said. “We built that lodge in another timeline because we had always heard of a big lodge being there, but in this timeline, it didn’t exist.”
Dixie put the sandwich down on her paper plate and stared at Bonnie, trying to even grasp why they were saying what they were saying.
“When we returned to this timeline,” Duster said, “there it was.”
“We figured that alternate timeline forms of us,” Bonnie said, “came to this timeline and built it while we were in another timeline building the same thing.”
“But the math we had up until that point didn’t back that up,” Duster said. “We have the reality. Now we need to just back it up with equations, with numbers that explain the reality.”
“Before we talk math,” Dixie said, trying to get her mind to settle down and just think, “explain to me how you can move into the past in another timeline. Not the math of it, the physical ability of it.”
Bonnie nodded. “Good question and one we expected. On the way back to Boise we’ll show you all that. But in your equations, didn’t you see that all timelines could be reflected in a physical location? In fact, didn’t you find that all timelines should be represented in a physical manner?”
Dixie forced herself to sit back and think.
Bonnie and Duster went back to eating, not pushing Dixie, giving her the time, which she appreciated because right now she was worried that her wonderful bosses and her job were about to vanish into moments of insanity.
When she had started working for them, the level of progress in mathematics of alternate timelines had been very advanced, as she would have expected from two of the great math brains on the planet. She didn’t understand exactly their fascination with the topic, but they were paying her and that was their interest, so it had become hers as well.
She took a deep breath of the clear mountain air and let it out slowly. Dixie’s assignment for most of the last year had been to go over all of Bonnie and Duster’s previous work, checking everything for mistakes. She had checked the mathematical aspects of time being expressed in a physical location that existed in all timelines at the same time. A sort of nexus or hub of time.
Math said a nexus or hub existed, at least in theory, tying all dimensions and timelines together in a physical location.
Dixie sat forward and looked first at Duster, then at Bonnie. “Are you telling me you discovered the nexus for time?”
Bonnie nodded and smiled.
“By accident, actually,” Duster said. “My great-grandfather stumbled into the physical area of it in this dimension while digging a gold mine.”
“That’s what we can show you on the way back to Boise,” Bonnie said. “But you checked our math and proved mathematically that it needed to exist, right?”
Dixie nodded. She didn’t want to, but the math didn’t lie. She had just thought it all theoretical.
“Actually, we found it and then came up with the math to prove it was there,” Duster said. “We didn’t believe it for years, either.”
“Even after you see it,” Bonnie said, “you’ll have trouble believing it.”
“But assume for the moment we’re crazier than loons,” Duster said, smiling at her. “Let’s just talk math and what you have done in the last few months to advance our work.”
Bonnie nodded and indicated that Dixie should take another bite of the prime rib sandwich.
Dixie did, then took a drink of cold water, then another bite as they all ate in silence. The sandwich was wonderful, the mountain valley beautiful and even comfortable in the shade. And so far she hadn’t gotten too much sun, so her skin was fine.
She forced herself to just calm down and let the food and cold water and beautiful day ground her.
“So over the last two months,” Bonnie said, “you have shown mathematically that with the infinite number of alternate timelines that exist, when we decide to go to another alternate
timeline, an almost infinite number of our counterparts make the same exact decision.”
Dixie ignored the travel aspect and went back to her calculations in her mind. She nodded after a moment. “With any decision, an infinite number of our counterparts would make the same decision if it really was a decision. And an infinite number of alternate timelines would split from that decision.”
“Your work also proved, at least to me and Bonnie,” Duster said, “that an infinite number of those alternate timelines would then flow back and merge if the decision point had no lasting impact on the larger universe.”
“Correct,” Dixie said, nodding again. “But you have already checked my work on all of this. Why tell me this here and now?”
“We need you to take your work to the next level to really help us,” Duster said.
Dixie wasn’t sure what he meant by the next level. So she kept silent.
Bonnie nodded. “When we returned from the alternate timeline past where we built that lodge, we returned to a timeline where the lodge had always existed for us in our lives. It had been built.”
“Our memories shifted,” Duster said. “We remembered both timelines, one where that lake and town were a forgotten part of Idaho history, and the lodge didn’t exist and another where that lake is a major tourist attraction and that lodge exists.”
“You are saying your memory is of two timelines, two alternate histories?” Dixie asked, not believing it. “I don’t think that would be mathematically possible.”
“We agree with you there,” Duster said, nodding. “But convince our memories. And it’s not just the two of us, either. There were six travelers who helped build that lodge and all six remember the previous timeline just as clearly. It is a fact.”
“So somewhere, our math is wrong,” Bonnie said. “Or we haven’t found the right calculation for it yet.”
Dixie really wanted to ask who the others were, but knew that would derail the focus of the conversation, so again kept silent. She could ask that later.
“We need you to help us figure out mathematically how that is possible,” Bonnie said. “Since it happened.”
“We are not only giving you a raise on your job if you decide to stay with us after all this,” Duster said, “but we will make you independently wealthy if you agree to help us.”
“Your job is about to change dramatically,” Bonnie said, nodding. “Once we show you the focal point, the nexus of time and show you that it exists and that you can move into alternate timelines from it, your entire life and belief systems will change as well.”
“In other words,” Duster said, smiling, “we trust you and need your fantastic mind on this task. Maybe, between the three of us, we can actually advance the understanding of time and space.”
“And help us figure out a mathematical reason why we can remember that lodge not being there,” Bonnie said. “We were raised in a world where the lodge was there, and we were raised in a world where the lodge was not there. That should not be mathematically possible.”
“Yet here we sit,” Duster said, shrugging.
Dixie took a deep breath and let it out. They had just tossed a lot of things at her. She was going to need time to think.
“But realize,” Bonnie said. “You can decide to walk away right now if you would like. And honestly, as crazy as all this sounds, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I honestly think you would be crazy to stay,” Duster said. “Considering everything we’ve just said. But you have to admit, it’s a hell of a mathematical challenge.”
“And we want you to stay,” Bonnie said. “We flat need your help. In all the country, we couldn’t find a better mathematical mind than yours.”
Dixie nodded. “Being needed feels great, I have to admit. And the challenge would be great. But give me some time to think about it and ask a few hundred really stupid questions before I give you an answer.”
Both Bonnie and Duster laughed and Bonnie pointed to Dixie’s half-eaten sandwich.
“Might want to finish that,” Bonnie said. “We have dinner reservations at seven and that’s a good six hours and a scary car ride from now.”
All Dixie could do was nod and take another bite of the wonderful-tasting prime rib sandwich.
Duster stood and took his chair and went out onto the road to the middle of the bridge and sat down facing up the valley and the lodge. His oilcloth duster draped around him, his cowboy hat tipped back slightly.
He was clearly a man used to being alone with his own thoughts, Dixie could tell that. Typical for most mathematicians and she was no exception.
Dixie took another bite of the sandwich, letting her mind roam back through the assumptions she had proven mathematically over the last year.
After a minute, Bonnie stood and started cleaning up.
Only the sounds of the water over the rocks and the light breeze through the pine needles broke the silence.
Dixie finally finished as much of the sandwich as she could and moved it aside. Everything they had told her, except the memory of being in another timeline, was possible mathematically.
Physical travel to another timeline was another matter.
As Bonnie picked up Dixie’s plate, she said, “I know we sound crazy, but we really aren’t.”
Dixie looked up at Bonnie, into her dark eyes. “If I hadn’t done a year of math working with you both to prove what you just told me was real, I would be looking for a way to walk out of this valley right now.”
Bonnie nodded. “And honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed you in the slightest.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
July 7th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
AFTER LUNCH, BRICE had gone for a walk, heading back down the trail to the lake. He had passed a couple coming out who looked sunburned and were smiling.
“Wonderful valley, isn’t it?” the woman said to him as he stepped out of the trail to one side to let them pass.
“Beautiful,” he said.
But his mind was a long ways from the valley and the warm afternoon. He was just letting his mind drift back over everything Bonnie and Duster had told him, including the new job offer and actually showing him the time nexus. If that actually existed, he wanted to see it more than anything else.
But now his mind was going back over a year’s worth of work for them. They had just told him that his work for that entire year hadn’t been theoretical, but actually real.
That changed the perspective on everything.
He had proven mathematically that the same person could not exist twice at the same moment in the same timeline. So in reality, he could not go meet himself in another timeline. Time and the very math of time would not allow that to happen.
And Bonnie and Duster had already proven, and Brice had confirmed with his calculations, that any decision, no matter how small or by whom, split off an alternate timeline. Most of those timelines merged almost instantly back with the main timeline it had split from. But sometimes a decision kept the timelines branching into infinite numbers of timelines.
Brice really needed to see the physical aspects of the time nexus because mathematically, alternate timeline Bonnies and Dusters should not have been able to accidently stumble on this world to build that lodge. That had to be influenced by the physical nature of how they were traveling to other timelines.
With that alone, Brice had about a hundred questions he could think of.
He found himself again just above the small lake that covered the old mining town. In some alternate timelines, the town had not been destroyed by the flood, the landslide hadn’t happened, or had been smaller or diverted.
That timeline was an infinite number of timelines sideways from this timeline.
He understood the numbers, the scale, and the math of it all.
He sat down on a large rock looking out over the lake and just let his mind keep working over the last year.
He had become an expert on the mathematical theory of alternat
e timelines, thanks to Bonnie and Duster and their work. But with one simple crazy conversation over sandwiches, he realized how little he really did know yet.
His basic decision to stay with this job, or go teach, would cause major timeline shifts he was fairly certain. Most people made decisions and caused nothing more than side ripples that were reabsorbed into the main timeline. But he had proven with mathematical equations that getting married and having a child tended to start theoretical alternate timelines since the child moved forward through time and had children and so on and so on.
So the question was, could he really go teach, knowing this was here, even if he didn’t believe it?
The answer was clear. Of course he couldn’t.
He had spent a year with Bonnie and Duster: Brice liked them and he trusted them. Brice needed to see this through. It was too much of a challenge to not stay with them.
Brice stood and with one last look at the lake, he turned and headed back up the valley. He wouldn’t tell them his decision until dinner.
And then, if they really weren’t crazy, tomorrow he would see the nexus of time, where mathematically an infinite number of timelines were expressed in a physical form of some sort.
The idea of that just twisted his stomach. He couldn’t even imagine it outside of the mathematics that said it existed.
And he trusted math.
He just didn’t trust his own imagination.
CHAPTER EIGHT
July 8th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE STARED OUT the window as the big Cadillac SUV headed along the Snake River. Dixie and Bonnie and Duster had gotten an early start out of the lodge and had reached Cascade, Idaho, in just under three hours. They had stopped for a quick lunch, then gone toward Boise and then cut over toward the border with Oregon at a small town called Horseshoe Bend.
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