From Cascade to the Snake River had taken just under two hours. Duster had told her their ultimate goal was an old mine above an old ghost town named Silver City.
From what Bonnie said, they were about an hour away, so they would reach the old mine around two in the afternoon.
It had been an amazing beautiful drive, down out of the central Idaho mountains, then across the large Treasure Valley to the Snake River, and now they were headed into a mountain range on the southwest side of the state called the Owyhee Mountains.
Dixie had loved it all.
Idaho was such a spectacularly beautiful place in its ruggedness. But the closer they got to the blue-tinted mountains ahead, the more her stomach twisted.
Dixie had told Bonnie and Duster last night over a wonderful dinner in the big lodge that she wanted to stay and keep up the work, and she wanted to see the time nexus.
They both had seemed very pleased and Duster had offered a toast.
“To the future,” he said.
“All of them,” Bonnie had added.
And they had all drunk to that.
Dixie had decided at dinner that she didn’t want to ask questions about what she was going to see until she saw it. She had decided she had just wanted the mathematics she had worked on over the last year to speak for itself.
She had a thousand questions, and both Bonnie and Duster had agreed with Dixie’s idea to hold the questions.
“After you see the place,” Bonnie had said, “we’ll answer any question you might have. On anything.”
So they had enjoyed the meal, talking about the lodge and the fantastic mountains and history. Bonnie and Duster seemed to know a great deal about the area’s history and their stories were always wonderful to listen to.
And because of the cool night air coming in through the window and the deep featherbed, Dixie had managed to get a good night’s sleep even with the worry about the next day.
When Duster turned off the paved highway onto a wide and fairly smooth dirt road that headed up into the mountains, Dixie finally couldn’t hold the questions anymore.
“Can you give me some history on how you found this place?” she asked.
Bonnie nodded and indicated that Duster should tell the story.
“My great-great-grandfather was a prospector in the first boom of the Silver City area. He dug a gold mine on the side of Florida Mountain to the west of Silver City. For a time he had a good gold vein and then it pinched off. He dug a little farther and gave up.”
Duster had the big SUV moving at around fifty up the wide and fairly straight road. He clearly drove it a lot, and Dixie wasn’t anywhere near as nervous as when they went up the narrow, winding road to the lodge.
“After a few years, my great-great-grandfather reopened the mine and dug, hoping to hit another vein,” Duster said, “but instead he hit a large cavern. He worked it a little more off the big cavern until he broke into an even larger cavern full of crystals. That was when he boarded the mine up and went to Boise to have a family.”
“Crystals?” Dixie asked.
Bonnie nodded. “Each timeline is represented by what looks like a rose quartz crystal.”
Dixie couldn’t even begin to imagine that. “How big is this place?”
“Infinite,” Duster said.
“The crystals that are nearest where his grandfather broke in are just one tiny area of timelines, and there are billions there and more forming all the time.”
“We believe it moves off into other dimensions of a sort,” Duster said, “but haven’t been able to mathematically confirm that either.”
Dixie didn’t know what to think, other than her stomach was clamped into a knot.
“The mine stayed boarded up and in the family. My grandfather showed the mine to my father,” Duster said, “who then showed it to me and Bonnie after we finished at Stanford with our doctorate degrees.”
“We spent the next four years living in an apartment behind my parent’s home in Boise,” Duster said, “doing nothing but studying the place and doing some of the basic math calculations that you have checked for us this last year.”
“I would call those far from basic,” Dixie said.
“Those calculations got us to the idea of using the power of a crystal to actually shift timelines into the past,” Duster said.
Dixie decided to not question that. After she saw it, she might be able to put the math on the reality and see what they did. But right now questions on that topic would just confuse her even more.
“How many people know about this place?” Dixie asked.
“Duster and I, six historians and an architect and an interior designer we hired to build the lodge. So you will be the eleventh person.”
“Not counting my mother and father,” Duster said, “who don’t like this place and want nothing to do with it. They have no idea what we’ve been doing up here and don’t want to know. They moved to Arizona a year ago and seem happy there.”
Dixie was shocked at the mention of an architect and interior designer. “Are you telling me Ryan and April know about this?”
Dixie had met them numbers of times in and around Bonnie and Duster’s office. They had their own design firm down near the Boise River, but always seemed to be in and out with Bonnie and Duster.
Dixie had liked them a lot. She had never met a couple so much in love and who laughed as much as they did.
“They designed and built and furnished that lodge,” Duster said.
“It still looks almost exactly how they built it,” Bonnie said. “Or at least how their counterparts from another timeline built it.”
With that all Dixie could do was sit and stare out the window as Duster took them higher and higher into the mountains.
And the wide road got narrower and rougher.
CHAPTER NINE
July 8th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
FOR BRICE, THE last part of the drive into the mine had been flat horrifying. Duster had left the narrow dirt road right after a bridge over a mostly dry creek and started up what looked to be nothing more than a game trail.
And Duster didn’t slow down because the hillside was so steep. The big Cadillac just bounced over ruts and holes, eventually turning a sharp left and heading across the hill through the trees.
Brice held on for dear life through the bumps. And when the car turned to go across the side of the steep hill, he desperately wanted to climb to the other side of the back seat. He was behind Duster and Brice felt the car was about to tip over and roll down the steep hill. But at the same time there was no way he was going to unbuckle his seat belt.
So he just leaned to the inside of the car and held on tight and hoped as Duster bounced them through the trees going across the steep slope, finally pulling into a grove of scrubby pine trees, the nose of the car pointing upward.
“We walk the rest of the way,” Duster said, shutting off the car and climbing out.
“Fun ride, huh?” Bonnie said, glancing back at Brice before unbuckling her seat belt and climbing out as well.
“I’m up for walking down,” Brice said as he managed to catch his breath and release his grip on the side of the seat. His hands were shaking as he climbed out into a warm blast of thin, mountain air.
As with the town of Roosevelt under the water, he had always wanted to visit the ghost town of Silver City, but again had never made the time. Now about a thousand feet down the hill below him he could see the remains of the old mining town in the bottom of the valley.
There looked to be only about twenty buildings left standing and two buildings had some cars parked in front of them.
“Not much of a town left, is there?” Duster said as he waited for Brice to calm his nerves and look around.
This area was much, much drier than the Monumental Lodge area and the hot smell of sagebrush mixed with the hot pine smell. Brice loved both smells.
“We walking very far?” he asked, figuring he would need
some sunscreen if they were.
“Nope,” Duster said. “Just across the hillside there. Watch your step on the trail. It’s a long ways down.”
Duster led the way, followed by Bonnie.
Brice fell in behind them.
He had been stunned that ten other people knew about this place. That means Bonnie and Duster had led eight others like him to this old mine. He would have to ask them later if they were as scared as he was feeling.
They reached the flat top of an old mine tailing. The remains of an old shack still barely stood to one side in front of a boarded-up mine. It was clear that the earth had caved in behind the boards.
He didn’t know much about mines, but he knew for a fact there was no way they were going into a mine that way.
Had Bonnie and Duster just been playing an elaborate mind game? That didn’t seem like them, but at the moment this looked like a bust.
“What we are about to show you has to remain between us and the few others who know about this place,” Duster said.
“We trust you or we wouldn’t be showing you this,” Bonnie said. “You can quit and leave at any point, but the non-disclosure agreement you signed when you came to work for us must remain in full force. Understood?”
“Not sure who would believe me anyway,” Brice said. “But I understand.”
Duster laughed. “That’s what they all say.”
He took what looked like an old skeleton key from his pocket and looked around.
Bonnie did the same. “Clear,” she said after a moment.
Duster nodded and turned toward a huge rock near the mine entrance and twisted the head of the key.
The face of the rock slid back, showing a door behind it that clicked open.
Brice was impressed. In a million years he never would have thought that rock moved.
“Just some of the many, many security features we have installed,” Duster said as the three of them went in the door to a small room.
Duster hit a large red button and the door closed and the rock outside slid silently back into place.
It took a few seconds in intense blackness before the lights came up and a big metal door opened into a mine tunnel.
It had huge timbers and the remains of a small-gauge mine-car track running up the middle.
Lights hung from the ceiling clicked on, showing the mine leading off into the mountain.
Brice stepped out into the tunnel and looked around at the big timbers. He was about to ask if it was safe when he noticed above the timbers how everything had been reinforced. A major earthquake wouldn’t knock this place down. It looked old, but was far from old. Another security feature in case someone got in here.
Bonnie and Duster had started down the mine tunnel, so he followed, feeling the air temperature cool the deeper they went.
As the mine tunnel and tracks curved to the right, Duster just walked straight ahead and through the rock wall and timbers.
“Hologram,” Bonnie said, stopping and waiting for him. “Give me your hand and close your eyes and I’ll get you through it.”
She took his hand and disappeared into the wall. Just as his face was about to smash into the wall, he closed his eyes.
Nothing.
After a step he opened them again as Bonnie let go of his hand and looked back down the mine tunnel.
“More security protections,” Duster said. “And if anyone got that far, I would have been notified and set off even more protections from anywhere on the planet.”
With that Duster turned and kept on going down the mineshaft, again walking through what looked like the end of the tunnel.
Bonnie didn’t wait for Brice this time and vanished behind Duster.
Brice managed to keep his eyes mostly open and his hands in front of him as he walked through the wall.
That was just downright creepy.
On the other side of the hologram was a huge cavern. The lights had come up showing a massive number of shelves filled with supplies and racks and racks of various clothing all looking like it was right out of a period costume party.
The ceiling of the huge cavern was rock and a good fifty feet overhead and the floor was smooth and hard.
“I need something to drink,” Duster said, heading through the cavern toward a back corner. “Anyone else?”
“A bottle of water would be nice,” Bonnie said.
Brice nodded as he looked around, staring at the huge space and all the supplies.
“Make that two more,” she said, following Duster.
Brice turned and followed them both past a wall of rifles and pistols, all looking like they were fresh out of a museum, yet looking almost new.
In the back area of the big cave was what looked like a modern living room, with couches and chairs on a large carpet and a huge modern kitchen with a dining table that could hold at least ten. The cave floor in the kitchen had been tiled.
Duster dug into the fridge and then laughed as he pulled out three bottles of water. “Ryan and April were here and left us dinner for the evening.”
“I wonder why they didn’t stick around,” Bonnie said.
“They have a great-great-grandkid playing in a softball league, remember?” Duster said.
Brice was about to ask how that was possible, then just shut his mouth and took the bottle of water. He would just add that to the thousand other questions he was sure he was going to have.
“So this is the first big cavern your great-great-grandfather found?” Brice asked.
“This is the place,” Duster said. “We use it now for storage and meals and such.”
Brice took a drink of the bottle of cold water.
“Might want to leave that on the table,” Bonnie said, setting her bottle down as well. “We’ll be right back anyway.”
Brice took another drink, set the bottle down, and turned to follow her and Duster back across the cavern. A huge metal door was locked on the far side of the cavern. It looked like it had filled in a mine tunnel.
Duster opened it quickly and on the other side was a dead-end mine tunnel.
“Yet another hologram,” Duster said and walked forward and right on through.
“Do not touch anything in this room except the ground,” Bonnie said.
Then she walked forward and vanished through the wall.
He followed her, again managing to barely keep his eyes open as he stepped through the hologram that looked like a solid stone wall.
Beyond it, the huge cavern took him a moment to even see.
He took about five steps over the smooth dirt floor and then just stopped.
A long wooden table with a small wooden box set to one side of the cavern. The wooden box had some wires running from it.
The cavern had to be as large as some huge professional basketball arenas. Every inch of the massive cavern was covered with millions and millions of quartz crystals of all size and shapes. All of them seemed to be glowing with a light of their own, giving the room a soft, clear light. It was as if every crystal had a light behind it.
Never, in all his life, had he seen anything so beautiful.
Crystals seemed to grow in clumps and in some areas massive numbers of crystals seemed to almost form shapes jutting from the walls and down from the distant ceiling.
To one side of the huge room was an archway that seemed to lead off into another massive cavern of crystals and beyond that more and more and more caverns into the distance.
“Every crystal you can see is a major alternate timeline very close to our timeline,” Duster said.
“Millions and millions of microscopic timeline crystals are forming around each major crystal every second,” Bonnie said, “and then being absorbed back into the timeline if the decision does not change anything major. If it does, then the new crystal grows and might eventually be a major timeline as well.”
“It’s real,” Brice managed to say.
“It is very real,” Bonnie said. “The math does not lie.”
“Math never lies when you do it right,” Duster said.
With that Brice just sat down in the dirt, staring at all of time on the walls around him.
CHAPTER TEN
July 8th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE MANAGED TO climb back to her feet after a few long moments of just sitting there staring at the massive cavern of crystals. Never had she imagined anything so beautiful. It was like she was standing inside a diamond.
She moved over to where Bonnie and Duster stood beside the big wooden table.
“Remember to never touch a crystal,” Duster said. “We’re not sure what would happen and we don’t want to find out. Luckily my great-great-grandfather wore gloves when he worked and broke through into here.”
Dixie nodded.
“This is the machine we invented to jump timelines,” Bonnie said, indicating the big ugly wooden box on the table with a dial on it and some wires leading out of it.
To Dixie it sure didn’t look like much more than what a kid could bang together in a garage.
“Not much to look at,” Duster said, “but it gets the job done.”
“What exactly does it do?” Dixie asked.
Duster picked up the two cords. “We attach one end of these two cords to a crystal on the wall and the other to the machine right there where the electrical terminals stick out the side. Whoever is touching the machine is transferred to that timeline for the date set on the dial above the terminals.”
“We can only go as far back as the mine is open,” Bonnie said. “So we’re limited to the late 1870s. We tend to like 1878 the best, since Silver City is past its first boom, yet still has a lot of supplies.”
“That’s also just after my great-great-grandfather boarded the place up for the last time,” Duster said.
Suddenly part of the math that Dixie had worked on concerned the variance of time and matter.
“How long did it take to build that lodge?” Dixie asked.
Duster shrugged. “A couple of years.”
Bonnie smiled. “Starting to apply the math you’ve been working on, huh?”
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