Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

The little man looked up and then down to me and said, “Up!”

  I looked over to Charmian and she shook her head. I looked back to the little man. He suddenly bounded out of the recess and danced out along the edge of the lake, twirling about in circles, and raising his wooden bowl containing the handcuffs high in the air and shouting:

  “Up! Up! Up!”

  “Come on,” I said to Charmian. “I think we’re going up.”

  We followed the little man as he spun his way along the lake’s edge, dancing almost like a Whirling Dervish. We came to a bend in the cavern and could suddenly see how it opened up into a massive cave room with a ceiling perhaps 75 feet in height and all a-glow with that purple light. Only the little man, Charmian, and I made our way through that vault of stone.

  The little man suddenly turned off from the main cave room into a branching tunnel. We followed him on along for about a hundred yards and then came upon another large cave room. Here we encountered a massive stone stairway, and in front of it something like a well— a circular opening in the cave floor ringed around by a masonry wall of volcanic rock. I went to the wall of the well and looked down. Its long shaft diminished away into a black void. Charmian came over, stood beside me, and looked down. I looked up at her, then over to the little man who stood with his bowl filled with the handcuffs, and then up to the top of that massive stone staircase which ended abruptly before a wall of volcanic rock.

  “Now who built this place?” I asked. “Sarah Winchester?”

  “Up!” the little man said.

  “Yes, yes!” I said. “By all means up! But how do we get through that wall of stone at the top of those stairs?”

  It was almost as if the little man had understood me, for he came up to Charmian and me, stopped in front of the well and said:

  “Monkeywampum!”

  And then the little man cast his bowl and the handcuffs into the well. I heard the bowl and the cuffs strike the walls of the well shaft and then clatter on down into blackness and silence.

  A moment passed, and then there followed a deep rumbling from below, like the rumble of an earthquake.

  “Magic!” Charmian shouted.

  I looked up from the well and saw Charmian at the foot of the massive steps, looking up to that solid wall of volcanic rock which…was moving!

  We stood there watching, Charmian, the little man, and I, as that wall of rock slowly rumbled aside, moving from left to right, until it had shifted completely away revealing another set of massive stone steps flooded down from above by the light of the sun.

  Charmian had not moved a muscle all the while, but had just stood there while this phenomenon unfolded and flooded sunlight upon us.

  Then the little man turned to me, ever so slightly and said quietly:

  “Up.”

  I kept looking at the little man and he made a bow. I turned to Charmian. She was staring, transfixed, up at the sunlight. I went to her side.

  “Up,” I said to her.

  “Up,” Charmian said.

  “Up,” the little man said.

  And we all began mounting the stone steps to the light of day above us.

  In the U.S.S. Cypher Mr. Tesla was having no success in breaking through the etheric vortex. He, Lt. Nimitz, Mr. Czito, and Jack stood in the pilot’s cabin watching the electric beam explode upon the shifting rainbow in the sky in front of them. The pilot of the Cypher sat at the wheel and fought to keep the ship from being deflected by the tremendous force of the vortex.

  “We’re not making a dent, sir,” the pilot said.

  “Keep holding your position,” Mr. Tesla said.

  Lt. Nimitz went back into the control room and spoke to a sailor. He then came back into the pilot’s cabin.

  “It’s the engines, sir,” Lt. Nimitz said to Mr. Tesla. “The circuitry is reaching its heat limit.”

  “We need a single burst of energy to interface with the vortex,” Mr. Tesla said, “and we can’t get that amount of power from the ship’s engines. We’ll have to get it from another source.”

  “What other source?” Mr. Czito asked. “We’re twelve thousand years in the past!”

  “There is no power source in this time we can use,” Mr. Tesla said, “that is true. Therefore, we will have to access another source.”

  “Another source?” Lt. Nimitz asked. “Where?”

  “Not where,” Mr. Tesla said. “When. The answer to our power problem is not to be found in space, but in time. We will make use of this ship’s temporal functions to access a power source. We will access a power source existing in another time.”

  “What source?” Lt. Nimitz asked. “When could such a source exist?”

  “I know of several,” Mr. Tesla said. “Three should be sufficient. It will be one power source accessed at three separate times— 1903— 1908— and 1915.”

  “What power source existed on the earth in those years?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “I think I know,” Mr. Czito said. “You’re thinking of the Wardenclyffe Tower, aren’t you?”

  “That is correct,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are going to tap electrical energy from the Wardenclyffe Tower at three different temporal nodes in its time-line.”

  “That’s what those strange signals were back then,” Mr. Czito said. “That was us, wasn’t it, Mr. Tesla?”

  “I believe so,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “What’s he talking about, sir?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “The strange phenomenon we experienced in the years 1903 and 1908,” Mr. Tesla said. “In 1903, while experimenting at the Wardenclyffe Tower, Mr. Czito and I picked up a transmission which sounded uncannily like my own voice. In fact, the speaker said that he was me, contacting me from the future. He announced that he would be drawing power for a ten second interval starting in thirty seconds exactly. He advised that all workers stand well clear of the generators and electrical equipment. And in exactly thirty seconds from his announcement, all our generators, which we then had running at top power in a test run, reacted just as if they had been attached to a massive power load. The effect lasted only ten seconds and then ceased. Isn’t that right, Mr. Czito?”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Czito said. “And then in 1908, the very same thing happened again. The Wardenclyffe Tower had been officially shut down, but Mr. Tesla and I were still carrying on secret experiments there. During one of those experiments, we heard that strange transmission again. At the time I thought it was a recording, because the mysterious voice said exactly the same thing that it had said in 1903— and exactly the same thing happened.”

  “Almost exact,” Mr. Tesla corrected. “In 1908, not only did we experience a draining of power from the generators, but a massive back-surge of electricity, what I now believe was some kind of time-wave phenomenon. This back-surge of electrical power then traveled out from the Wardenclyffe Tower over the surface of the earth, moving at a superluminal speed and exploded in a massive aerial discharge over Lake Baikal in Siberia.”

  “So that’s what we are going to do?” Lt. Nimitz asked. “Create a massive explosion on the surface of the earth in 1908?”

  “We have no choice,” Mr. Tesla said. “We must break through that etheric vortex out there, and there is no other way. Lt. Nimitz, take command of the ship. Mr. Czito and I have much work to be done in the engine room.”

  The little man had led us up the massive stone steps to the daylight of the surface. When we got to the top of the steps we found that we were in the midst of a city of stone buildings constructed by some ancient master builder from long slabs of basalt. It was a city of black stone, accented by gray-silver lines of granite. Upon second glance, I saw that it was a deserted city, overgrown with the vines of the jungle and devoid of a living populace.

  The little man, who had been so merry, now stood in solemn silence, his eyes mere slits, but still betraying an unspeakable sadness, an inexpressible heartbreak— inexpressible in words— but in his silence I read the story of the lost homeland, the lost
family, the broken heart— but the spirit still intact.

  “What is this place?” I asked. “What is its name?”

  I turned to the little man, swept my arms across the towers of the city and asked: “What?”

  The little man walked in front of me and Charmian so that his back was to the city, stopped, stood with his feet together, his arms to his sides— and then he slowly and solemnly raised his hands, and said:

  “Mu!”

  Mr. Tesla and Mr. Czito had returned to the control room. Lt. Nimitz and Jack came out of the pilot’s cabin and approached them.

  “We have made the adjustments,” Mr. Tesla said. “Now we will attempt the power extractions. We will do them all simultaneously in this time. We will tap power form 1903, 1908, and 1915.”

  Mr. Tesla turned to the communications officer.

  “You will send out my announcement on these frequencies of longitudinal waves,” Mr. Tesla said, giving the communications officer a slip of paper with a series of numbers and equations written upon it in pencil.

  “You will patch the transmission through the ship’s generators and its time-phase system we have attached,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “Through the ship’s generators?” the communication officer asked.

  “That is correct,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are sending the modulations through the generators so that they will flow into the time-phase system and be transmitted backwards in time. Mr. Czito and I have pre-set the nodal points of resonance. All nodal points will receive the modulations simultaneously. Now commence opening the channels.”

  The communication officer began flipping switches, and then said, “All channels open, sir. Ready for communications to commence.”

  Mr. Tesla spoke into the microphone on the control board:

  “This is Nikola Tesla calling from the future to Nikola Tesla in the past. I am in desperate need of electrical power and must access your generators. I will make a ten second access and then return your system to normal. Do not touch any of the switches in the station. Repeat: do not touch any switches. This is a ten second access which will commence in thirty seconds from— now!”

  Mr. Tesla timed the interval with his watch that he held in his hand. At the end of thirty seconds he said to the communications officer:

  “Close the switch for power access!”

  The communications officer closed the switch, and instantly the ray of light firing into the rainbow hanging beyond the ship exploded in a brilliant shimmer.

  “We have power!” Lt. Nimitz shouted. “Hold her steady!”

  The pilot fought with the wheel as the Cypher locked into the etheric vortex in front of it and began being drawn into it.

  Mr. Tesla came into the pilot’s cabin and watched the spectacle along with Lt. Nimitz, Mr. Czito, and Jack. The pilot sat, trying to maneuver the ship with one hand and flip switches with the other.

  “I need the co-pilot!” the pilot shouted.

  “I’ll do it,” Lt. Nimitz said, and he sat down in the co-pilot’s chair and began flipping switches to keep the ship at a level in relation to the wall of the vortex. The ship was now moving laterally through the sky, moving laterally ever faster, its prow pointed at the wall of the vortex and the length of its body swinging around at a right angle to the direction in which it was pointing. The Cypher had been caught in the vortex, and was being drawn into its whirlpool in a gigantic spiral in the sky.

  “Hold her steady!” Lt. Nimitz shouted to the pilot. “This is where we really learn to fly!”

  Through the sky the U.S.S. Cypher careened like a ball swung around on the end of a string. The lateral movement could only be detected through the windows of the pilot’s cabin where the view of earth and sky kept shifting to the side. The center of the ship’s spiral movement was somewhere on the slopes of the giant volcano.

  “Power access complete,” the communication officer announced.

  The Cypher was now amidst the walls of the etheric vortex. A rumbling, crackling sound reverberated along the length of the ship’s hull and the windows in the pilot’s cabin lit up with great electrical flashes.

  “Hold it, hold it straight!” Lt. Nimitz snapped at the pilot.

  The prow of the Cypher pointed upward, then to port, then to starboard— and then down to the earth. The windows of the pilothouse were filled with a view of the ground flashing by below.

  “Bring her up!” Lt. Nimitz barked.

  The prow of the Cypher slowly lifted, and then the ship leveled out. The view of the windows now showed the giant volcano as it was rotating before them; it was actually the Cypher that was circling the volcano.

  “We’re almost out of the compression wall,” a sailor called from the control room.

  “I’m getting better steering control,” the pilot said.

  “Keep holding her steady,” Mr. Tesla said. “Let the vortex do the work.”

  Now the treetops of the jungle came into view in the windows of the pilot’s cabin.

  “Were out of the compression zone,” the pilot said. “I can feel it in the steering.”

  “Try a forward motion,” Mr. Tesla said.

  Suddenly the treetops in the windows stopped shifting to the side and began shooting out of view under the ship.

  “We have forward motion, sir,” the pilot said.

  “Find a clearing and take us down for a landing,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” the pilot said.

  Charmian, the little man, and I had wandered through the city of stone. The sky was filled with green and pink clouds broken by patches of blue sky. Lightning continually flashed amidst the clouds. The ground upon which we walked was a pavement of cyclopean basalt blocks precisely fitted together in a jig-saw pattern. Vines and grass grew up around and over the stone buildings. As we walked through this abandoned city, I do not recall seeing even one statue or any kind of ornamentation. The lines of the buildings were simple blocks and cubes.

  We came upon a round tower at the center of the buildings, a long black cylinder of stone possibly sixty feet tall. I could see no doorway or place of entry into the tower.

  “Up?” I asked the little man, pointing at the tower.

  The little man went over to the tower and slid back a block of stone at the tower’s base, revealing its dark interior. Charmian and I went up to the opening, but the little man suddenly stepped in front of Charmian and took a defiant stance with his arms crossed and his legs spread wide apart.

  “I think he’s telling you that no ladies are allowed,” I said.

  “Hmph!” Charmain replied.

  “You stay here and I’ll take a peek inside,” I said. “I want to see if I can get up there to the top where I can get a view of the surrounding countryside.”

  “Hurry up then,” Charmian said.

  I slipped through the opening and the little man came in behind me and slid the stone back into place. He seemed to move the stone as if it was as light as a feather.

  Sunlight filtered down from the top of the tower through a number of tiny window-like openings. A spiral stone stairway wound along the inside of the tower’s walls, and I began mounting these steps with the little man following behind me. About half-way up I began hearing a “click-click” sound which I thought at first was coming from somewhere in the tower, but then began to realize that the sound was being produced somehow within my ears. Some kind of energy was being collected by the tower and I had become a sensitive receiving station. Then, before I got all the way to the top of the tower, I began hearing human voices singing in a harmonic chant. I looked down the length of the spiral stairs to the floor of the tower. The place was still empty except for the little man and me. I turned back around and went on up the steps.

  When the little man and I got to the top, I found I could see across the rooftops of the stone buildings for miles around. What I had originally thought of as a city was only a few stone buildings clustered around this central round tower, and all of this was su
rrounded by thick jungle in every direction. I did not know the time of day. If it was morning and the sun was in the east, then the giant volcano that rose beyond the jungle lay to the north of us and the lake lay to our immediate south. If it was afternoon, then the directions of the volcano and lake were reversed. At this time I had no way of knowing, and could only make note of relative positions.

  Closer at hand, my gaze fell upon a peculiar feature upon the slope of the volcano’s cone, just at a point above where the jungle came to an abrupt end at the cone’s base. This feature, which looked like a crater, seemed to be perfectly circular, and at its center arose an object that one could only liken to a gigantic pearl— only its color was not the milky, shiny whiteness of a pearl— no, this object was a bright, shimmering, cherry red. I instantly knew that it was a thing made of the same kind of metal as Jack had discovered on his ranch. I knew this lusterous red sphere was part of a time machine— and it must have been enormous for me to view it so clearly at this distance. I estimated that it had to be a sphere at least fifty feet across. Later we would determine that the shining red object was some two hundred feet in diameter!

  Just as the implications of this object began to form in my mind, I heard Charmian scream down below on the ground. I rushed around to the other side of the tower and looked straight down to see TAR-A-GAL and several other Martians taking Charmian away as she cursed and fought with them.

  I made a start but suddenly felt the little man’s hand upon my arm. I was startled by the strength of his grip. I snapped my head around to look at him. He had his finger to his lips and a frown upon his hairless brows. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

  “I’ve got to—“ I started to whisper.

  “No,” the little man whispered sharply in English.

  I stared at him. Then I heard TAR-A-GAL’s voice.

  “I will not waste my time looking for you now, Houdini,” TAR-A-GAL said. “But we will be back for you; you can be certain of that. You cannot escape me.”

  TAR-A-GAL then turned and went over to the other Martians, and I could now see that they were placing Charmian astride some kind of long, floating object. All the Martians got astride this thing as if they were riding horse back, and then it lifted up into the air and came toward the tower. That was when I got a good view of the thing. It was simply a large tree trunk that had been cut down, its charred ends suggesting that it had been cut with the electric beam of one of the Martian’s ray guns. The two anti-gravity grips had then been attached to each end of the log, converting it into an airborne vehicle. A Martian at one end of the log had his hand on one of the anti-gravity grips and was obviously piloting the thing. All of the Martians in the scouting party with Charmian between them floated high above the tree-tops on the log and then turned and flew toward the cone of the volcano where that shining red sphere was embedded upon its slope.