Dixie just nodded.
“You can stay in another timeline as long as you want,” Duster said. “You can age and even die there.”
“But you will only be gone from this timeline for two minutes and fifteen seconds,” Bonnie said. “And if you die in another timeline, you return here very much alive.”
Before Dixie could ask another question on that impossible fact, Duster said, “Look at it this way. The power of the machine only allows one hundred and thirty-five seconds in this timeline to pass. When you are in the other timeline, you become a part of that timeline. By your very arrival there, you change that timeline and more timelines branch off.”
“You can have children, raise a family, die of old age in the other timeline,” Bonnie said. “Your family and everyone you influenced stay in that timeline when you return. Only two minutes and fifteen seconds elapse here.”
“How many other timelines have you visited?” Dixie asked, trying to get her mind to form even a solid thought.
“Hundreds and hundreds,” Duster said.
He pointed to the wall of crystals closest to the table. Dixie could see small hairband-like bands on many of the crystals. “April suggested we start marking crystals we have attached to, but that’s only been in the last year or so.”
Dixie had to ask, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“How many years have you two lived?”
Duster shrugged and looked at Bonnie. “You still keeping track of that sort of thing?”
“I stopped about a year ago when we went past a thousand years,” she said. “Counting it just made me feel old.”
Before Dixie could even catch her breath, Duster put on a pair of thick leather gloves and attached the wire ends to a glowing rose crystal on the wall that seemed to be a major one and had to be a good ten inches long.
“Bonnie, why don’t you take Dixie on a little test run and I’ll start working on that meal April and Ryan left us.”
Dixie wanted to scream and run from the room.
“It will be fun and we’ll be right back, I promise,” Bonnie said. “Just touch the box.”
Dixie touched the smooth polished wood on the side of the box. It wasn’t hot or cold. Just wood.
Duster adjusted the dial on one side of the wooden box and then Bonnie touched the box beside Dixie with her bare hand and picked up one of the wires leading to the wall with a glove-covered hand.
Duster attached one wire to the box, then smiled at Dixie. “See you in two minutes and fifteen seconds.”
Bonnie attached the other wire and Duster vanished.
“Where did he go?” Dixie asked, the panic filling her voice.
Duster had just vanished from the big crystal room.
How was that possible?
The big wooden table was still there, the wires were attached to the wood box, but no Duster.
“He didn’t go anywhere,” Bonnie said, smiling and putting her arm around Dixie to both give her support and turn her toward the now closed metal door leading back into the cavern. “We did. Welcome to 1878.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
October 14, 1878
Brice’s Timeline
BRICE LOOKED AT Duster. Bonnie had just vanished out of the crystal cavern.
“What do you mean we moved? What do you mean 1878?”
Duster laughed. “Don’t worry, it freaked me out beyond words the first few times I jumped timelines. Bonnie is still back in July in 2016 in our home timeline.”
Duster pointed to the wire leading from the machine over to a crystal on the wall. “We are now in the timeline contained in that crystal. If we change something, other timelines will start forming because we are now a part of that crystal’s timeline.”
Brice managed to nod, but he wasn’t really believing what Duster was saying.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Duster said, heading toward the now-closed metal door that led out into the other cavern. The lights in that cavern came up as they entered. Brice noticed his bottle of water was not on the table where he had left it.
Brice followed him to a rack of clothes where Duster grabbed a long coat off the rack for Ryan and a cowboy hat. “Slip this on in case anyone spots us.”
Brice did as Duster headed for the mine tunnel leading to the entrance.
Brice just stumbled along behind him, doing his best to even form a clear thought.
And failing.
Brice prided himself in thinking clearly in emergency situations, but this was something different. Duster was trying to get him to believe that all the work Brice had done in theoretical math and alternate timelines had actually been about a reality.
Brice was a mathematician.
He didn’t deal in reality.
He dealt in theory.
At the entrance to the mine, Duster showed him the scope that let Duster check out the hillside for people close by. Brice looked through it as well and could see no one.
It looked strange out there. Almost dark, and with gray overcast.
Duster closed the door and hit the big button to open the outside door.
The blast of intense cold air caught Brice by surprise and snapped some thinking back into place.
There was a moderate wind and it was snowing lightly as they stepped out onto the flat area of the mine tailing. The old shack now had windows in it and an ore car sat between it and the boarded up mine entrance.
“The Cadillac is parked over on that hillside in 2016,” Duster said, pointing to a barren ridgeline with no car that in one hundred and thirty-eight years would hold a stand of trees.
Duster moved over to the edge of the mine tailings and pointed downward.
It took Brice a moment to realize what he was seeing through the blowing snow.
A thousand feet below him, Silver City was a live and flourishing town, with hundreds of buildings. Many of the buildings had lights coming through windows and smoke from chimneys mixed with the blowing snow.
“That’s still a pretty rough mining town at this point in history,” Duster said. “Just in the middle of its first boom phase.”
The cold air made Brice pull the long coat in tight around his body.
He had no idea how this was possible.
None.
Brice looked around. The big rock was closed back up, the old mining shack looked like it had only been built a few years before. The boards over the mine were fresh and the dirt they were standing on looked recently dug, not settled and packed by years of weather.
And below Brice was the booming town of Silver City, Idaho. A place he had read and heard about as a ghost town his entire life.
Only the town below was far, far from a ghost town.
“How about we head back in and get that food Bonnie’s started on,” Duster said. “Damn cold out here.”
“That’s real?” Brice asked, pointing down the hill at the town.
“Very real,” Duster said. “This is 1878, identical in all ways to the 1878 of our timeline. Maybe in this timeline someone got stuck in traffic and in our timeline they didn’t.”
“No differences at all?” Brice asked as they turned back to the rock and Duster, with a quick look around, opened it.
“I’ve been into the past in hundreds of different timelines,” Duster said, “and never once saw a difference from ours, until I returned to our timeline after building the lodge and someone had built it in our timeline as well.”
Duster stepped through the door.
Brice followed with one last look around at the blowing snow and the barren hillside where the Cadillac should be parked in trees.
He had about a thousand questions, he was sure.
As soon as his mind returned and started to actually work again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
October 14, 1878
Dixie’s Timeline
“THESE THIN COTTON dresses are far too light for this weather,” Bonnie said. “This is dangerous. Ready to hea
d in?”
Dixie had been shivering for the entire time they had been out in the snowstorm, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the shock of what she was seeing. Bonnie had had her put on an 1880s style dress over her clothes without buttoning it in the back.
Bonnie had done the same thing, saying it was just in case someone saw them from a distance.
Dixie just couldn’t believe they were actually going out of the mine into 1878, but she was still numb from Duster disappearing in the big crystal cavern.
After Bonnie checked to see if anyone was nearby through a scope and showed Dixie how to use it, she had opened the door and they had stepped out into blowing snow.
And out there Dixie had seen things that didn’t seem possible, such as a real town where a ghost town had been before. And no trees where the Cadillac had been, and the cabin looked much newer and still had windows.
Bonnie quickly checked around for anyone watching and opened back up the rock and they stepped back inside.
For a moment they were in pitch darkness before the light came up and the door to the mine opened.
“Wow, was that cold,” Bonnie said. “Duster could have dialed us in a summer month just as easy.”
“It wouldn’t have been as believable,” Dixie said, following Bonnie down the mine tunnel and into the mountain.
“Maybe not,” Bonnie said, “but it would have been warmer.”
They quickly put the dresses back on the rack, then headed back out into the beautiful crystal cavern.
Dixie was still shivering from the cold and was blowing on her hands when she followed Bonnie into the big glowing cavern.
She made it two steps before stopping and just staring again.
“Come on,” Bonnie said. “Hot drinks are waiting for us in our timeline in the future.”
Dixie nodded and got herself moving and over to the table.
“Put your hand on the box,” Bonnie said.
Dixie put her hand beside Bonnie’s hand.
Bonnie pulled a wire from the box, then quickly slipped on some leather gloves and removed one wire clamp from the crystal.
“I’ll label it later,” she said.
She came back over to the box and unhooked the other wire, then took Dixie by the arm. “Let’s get something warm, what do you say?”
“Where is Duster?” Dixie asked.
“He better damn well be two minutes and fifteen seconds into making us some food and something warm to drink.”
“Oh,” was all Dixie could say.
She was still shaking and she still wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or information overload.
She had just taken a round trip to 1878.
In another timeline.
How in the hell was that even possible?
She knew the math she had worked on for the last year said it was possible.
In theory.
But reality was another matter all together.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
July 8th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
BRICE FOLLOWED DUSTER out of the crystal cavern and into the storage cavern. Part of Brice’s mind wasn’t allowing him to accept what he had just seen, and the other part of him was slowly getting excited.
He had just traveled in time, traveled to another alternate timeline. How incredible was that?
But it couldn’t really have happened.
It just couldn’t.
Bonnie was in the modern kitchen area of the big cavern, working at the counter with her back to them.
There was a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of one chair at the big table and Duster took that chair and wrapped his hands around the mug. Brice’s bottle of water was still sitting where he had left it.
“Wasn’t sure if you wanted some hot chocolate, tea, or coffee,” Bonnie said, glancing over her shoulder at Brice. “Coffee is going to be instant.”
“Hot chocolate sounds great,” Brice said, sitting so he could face Duster and Bonnie across the big wooden table.
The hot chocolate smelled wonderful and rich and Bonnie took a mug of steaming water out of the microwave and stirred in a spoon-full of mix and set it in front of him. Then she went back over a cabinet, took out a pack of small marshmallows and tossed it onto the table in front of them before going back to what she was doing.
“Hard to imagine we need hot chocolate to warm up in July, isn’t it?” Duster asked.
Brice still felt chilled to the bone from the short trip outside. “It is,” Brice said, dropping some marshmallows into his cup and then blowing on it to cool it all a little before sipping the rich, thick drink.
It warmed him some, but not all the way yet.
“So, ask anything you want,” Bonnie said without turning around.
Brice looked at the two of them. Clearly they had lived a very, very long time, as they had said, in different timelines. So there was one thing right off that bothered him more than anything else.
“So why exactly did you hire me?”
Duster laughed and Bonnie just shook her head without turning from the sandwiches she worked on.
“Not the question we were expecting,” Duster said. He sipped on his hot chocolate, then set it down. “We hired you because of that lodge appearing in our timeline. We are clearly not seeing the math of how that can happen.”
Brice nodded. “Mathematically, from everything I have been working on with your original calculations, it can’t happen.”
“Exactly,” Bonnie said, turning and putting a sandwich in front of Duster, then Brice. “We hired you because we wanted fresh eyes, a fresh mind on this problem.”
Brice sat back, holding the hot chocolate in his hand. “Each crystal out there is the physical manifestation of a timeline. At least from the math you two have worked out and I checked.”
Both nodded, but said nothing, letting him go on.
“Even though it may seem like a lot,” Brice said, “there are a finite number of crystals in that one cavern. All of the crystals in that room are worlds that are very, very similar, down to almost every detail.”
“Indistinguishable,” Bonnie said, nodding.
Brice was now, as far as he was concerned, back working in theoretical form. For the moment he was going to let the fact that he had actually traveled to another timeline just sit.
“So the math is firm on the fact that if someone in this timeline attached to a crystal in that room,” Brice said, “and the same person in another timeline did the same, a new timeline would form that would allow both to go to that timeline, and not meet themselves.”
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “And we tried once to stay past our own birthdates and we found ourselves back here. The timeline spit us out, in other words. Time does not allow the same person, in any form, to be duplicated in a timeline.”
Brice nodded. “From the math you both knew that would happen, correct?”
“We wanted to test it,” Duster said, nodding.
Brice took another sip of the hot chocolate. He was finally starting to warm up.
“So you hired me to determine the math that explains why you could remember the lodge always existing and the lodge not existing at the same time. Correct?”
Both Bonnie and Duster nodded.
“We were stumped and still are,” Duster said.
Brice forced himself to take a deep breath. Having two of the greatest math brains to have ever existed say they were stumped was something to hear.
“We think you are on the right track,” Bonnie said. “That’s why we wanted to show you the reality of all this, to maybe help you jump to the answer.”
“It’s going to take a bit for the reality of this to settle in,” Brice said, indicating the cave around him.
“Yeah, it would at that,” Bonnie said. “Duster, how about you take Brice back to say 1901 Boise for a late summer and early fall? Boise is always so beautiful in the fall. That will give Brice time to think. The Idanha Hotel is wonderful.�
�
Brice knew the Idanha Hotel. It was a classic landmark in Boise and it had been renovated and saved a few years back. It had been built in 1900, so it would be in its first full year of operation. It was a stunning place renovated, at least from the outside. Brice could only imagine what it looked like in 1901.
“There’s no need to do that,” Brice said.
Duster laughed. “I got a guy who gets shot in Flagstaff in October 1901 that I wouldn’t mind trying to rescue in a few timelines. So we go back in the middle of August and that will give me enough time to get to Flagstaff.”
Bonnie laughed. “Whatever you want, Marshal,” she said. “But leave Brice in Boise, at the Idanha Hotel, to think on his own and get used to the past and the idea of all of this.”
“How’s that sound?” Duster asked, turning to Brice. “You up for a couple months in a fancy hotel, getting used to the reality of all that math you’ve been working on?”
Brice nodded, but his stomach clamped up tight at the very idea.
“Finish your sandwiches,” Bonnie said, pointing to the half-finished sandwich in front of Brice. “I’ll make you some traveling food while you get ready and I’ll do the dishes and clean up while you are gone.”
That startled Brice even more. He could spend a few months in the past and only slightly over two minutes would pass here.
He would only age a few minutes.
He knew that from the math he had done.
Damn, reality was confusing at times.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
July 8th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE WATCHED AS Duster appeared touching the wooden box on the table in the vast crystal cavern. He took a glove and carefully undid one wire only from the box, then stepped away, leaving the wires all attached to the same crystal on the wall.
He carefully adjusted the dial on the machine just slightly.
“Two horses are tied up outside the shed and saddles and some extra supplies are in the mine shaft near the door,” Duster said. “The horses should be fine there for a couple of days. They have enough food and water. And the weather is good, not too hot.”
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