by Lorijo Metz
Hayes’ face looked pasty, his eyes glazed and confused and, without changing expression, he began nodding, indicating somewhere just to the right of the pool.
A dizzy, twirly, tornado-e-type feeling formed in McKenzie’s stomach; with each passing second, it picked up speed. Either she was going to pass-out or throw-up, but more than anything in the world, she did not want to look where Hayes was nodding. If this wasn’t a dream, the puppy, or whatever it was, could mean only one thing.
McKenzie took a deep breath and forced herself to look at Hayes. She didn’t know how, but their presence here was her fault. Then in one brief, awful moment, she also realized all the books she’d read—all the ones that told of great adventures and how much fun they were—had lied. This wasn’t fun. She wanted to go home. There must be a way, but she had no idea how. Certainly not the way they’d arrived. So, McKenzie did the only thing she could think of. She closed her eyes and tried to think of basketball.
There’s no place like home court.
She couldn’t click her heels together.
There’s no place like home court.
But she could twirl a piece of her hair. There’s no place like home court. McKenzie opened her eyes. The curl unwound from around her finger. Dad, Grandma Mir, her mother’s grave, they were all very, very far away.
Chapter 8
FBI TRANSCRIPT 21212
Agent Wink Krumm and Stephanie Chantos
Wednesday, April 15th
KRUMM: Describe your relationship with Principal Provost.
CHANTOS: Who told you—
KRUMM: That you work for him?
CHANTOS: Oh. Yes! Yes, of course. I work for Principal Provost. I’m his executive assistant.
KRUMM: And before that, Principal Shepherd’s.
CHANTOS: Yes. I had a work relationship with Principal Shepherd as well. Just like Principal Provost. That’s correct.
KRUMM: So you were here when Principal Provost arrived. How would you describe his arrival in Avondale?
CHANTOS: I’m not sure what you mean.
KRUMM: Was it, let us say…propitious?
CHANTOS: Lucky?
KRUMM: Exactly. Lucky, that he arrived in Avondale on the very day the old school building collapsed.
CHANTOS: I don’t know that he arrived on the ‘very’ day.
KRUMM: But then you can’t be sure.
CHANTOS: Well…come to think of it, I guess not.
KRUMM: Strange, not one resident in the entire community can remember.
CHANTOS: The day Principal Provost arrived?
KRUMM: The SCHOOL, Miss Chantos. The day the school building collapsed.
CHANTOS: I remember. It was…Well, I know it was around—
KRUMM: Ten full days unaccounted for and not one person witnessed the school building’s collapse.
CHANTOS: I suppose that is a little odd.
KRUMM: “A little odd” too, that during the same mysterious 10-day period the head principal resigned, and B.R. Provost arrived in Avondale?
CHANTOS: Believe me, Harold Shepherd was long overdue for retirement. And Principal Provost arriving when he did, well…I wouldn’t call that odd.
KRUMM: What would you call it, Miss Chantos?
CHANTOS: Propitious, Agent Krumm. Definitely, propitious!
***
VANISHED
Monday, March 16th
Earth
Principal Provost stared, as if doing so would cause the box and the girl to reappear. “Impossible…impossible.” The girl had activated the portal. “IMPOSSIBLE!”
He moved to where he sensed the pinicolis had last been. It was warm. Too warm. “Concentric help me,” he groaned. Never, in all one hundred and ninety-nine loonocks of his life, had any task gone so wrong. Then an even more frightening thought occurred to him: Rudy Hayes. Had he been in the office too? He turned around and rolled into the front office. “Buzz Nurse Prickel would you.”
Miss Chantos looked up from her work. She smiled.
“My phone seems to be out-of-order,” he muttered, Stephanie’s smile, as always, making him forget for a moment what he needed to say.
“Right,” she said in her typical cheery voice. “I’ll call tech support.”
Nothing seemed to faze the woman. She had the patience of a Circanthian and the face of an—
Provost shook his head. This was no time to be distracted. “No. Just buzz her for me. I’ll deal with the phone later—MYSELF.”
“Did Hayes’ head start bleeding again?”
Principal Provost felt ill.
“Never mind.” Stephanie was frowning now. “I’ll buzz her right away.”
“NO WAIT!” Hayes had been in his office. That could mean only one thing; Hayes was in— “Concentric help us all!”
“Goodness me! What’s wrong?” Stephanie stood up so quick her chair went careening back, bounced against the wall and then rolled back just in time for her to sit down again. She reached for the phone. “How ‘bout I buzz Nurse Prickel?”
“NO! No, no, no, no—please don’t do that.” He was making a complete fool of himself. “I’m sorry,” Principal Provost mumbled. He had to remove himself from Stephanie’s presence—and quick. “Of course, I’ll call her from my office.”
“But your phone?”
Wonderful, my forehead’s sweating. “What? Oh yes—my phone. I’ll talk to…”
“Tech support? But how?”
“Right. Sorry to have bothered you.” Principal Provost began backing away. “One more thing, Stephanie…” He paused, his mouth open, only slightly aware that his face had flushed almost as pink as his secretary’s. “I mean, Miss Chantos.”
Stephanie blinked twice. Principal Provost took this as a yes.
“I’m in a very important meeting right now with ah…?”
“McKenzie and Hayes?”
“Yes! And do not wish to be disturbed.”
********
I wonder if it’s a full moon? Even on a good day, B.R. Provost was a mystery. He was the most intelligent man Stephanie had ever met, but also the most mysterious, the first one to school every morning and the last one to leave. The few times she’d driven past the school late at night, the lights were always on in his office. And, as far as she knew, he had no close friends and no one had ever been to his house. Today, though, he seemed even odder than usual.
Stephanie Chantos pushed her wispy, gray-speckled bangs out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair. He needs a vacation. Goodness no! What he needs is a wife, someone to keep him from working too hard. I’ll have Nurse Prickel schedule a physical for him—right after I find out what’s going on.
********
His office had a fresh, clean scent, as if all the particles of mildew and dust had followed McKenzie—McKenzie and Hayes—through the portal.
Great Concentric! What now?
The answer was obvious, at least part of it. Upon arriving on Earth, he’d placed two sets of time disrupters around the city of Avondale. One set activated immediately, for ten days, when he’d desperately needed time to disguise and integrate himself into the Earth community. The second set standing by, ready to activate from his office the moment he was prepared to return home with the Corona-Soter. Then he’d waited, choosing to trust the instincts that had brought him to the remote town of Avondale. Instincts…and the fact that on a planet this size the only logical way to search for a being he knew little about, save for the vague description of Wheeled Warrior, was via a brilliant invention called the Internet. A marvel that almost rivaled travel through time and space.
Provost groaned. The time disrupters were capable of lasting 365 Earth-days, plus or minus a few. Avondale would be a black hole of time displacement, but it was the only way to provide enough time for the Corona-Soter to fulfill her destiny and return unnoticed.
At least, that had been the plan. Now he would have to use the second set of disrupters for himself.
Principal Provost locked the d
oor, withdrew a set of keys from his inside jacket pocket and rolled behind his desk. To the right was a black, nondescript, two-door filing cabinet.
Time to activate the disruptors, he thought. One loonocks, approximately one Earth-year by his calculations, to find a way back…or quietly disappear.
Chapter 9
FBI TRANSCRIPT 21207 - 8
Agent Wink Krumm, Edith Snipe and Helen Nimrev
Thursday, April 16th
KRUMM: Approximately six and a half years ago, sometime within a…mysterious ten-day period, Avondale High School collapsed. And no one—absolutely, no one—witnessed it.
SNIPE: Dear me! Helen, did you hear, the school building collapsed again.
NIMREV: No, Edith. Agent Krumm was referring to the original school building.
SNIPE: Ohhhh, that was a bit of a mystery.
KRUMM: There was also an incident involving all the clocks in Avondale.
SNIPE: The entire town was taken. You know, by aliens. I saw it on TV.
NIMREV: Really, Edith.
KRUMM: Yes…well, shortly after the collapse, the Head Principal—
NIMREV: Harold Shepherd. A real stickler for punctuation.
KRUMM: Harold Shepherd retired, and within a matter of days, B.R. Provost arrived.
NIMREV: It is rather fuzzy. You’re right, though. The school had just collapsed, Harold retired—oh, and that new company—
SNIPE: Circles, Phasers, or something…
NIMREV: Sphaera Technologies. Thank you, Edith. Sphaera Technologies moved into town, and somewhere in the midst of it all our wonderful Principal Provost arrived.
SNIPE: Not to mention all those wheelchair people.
NIMREV: Edith!
KRUMM: Ladies! Please, focus. B.R. Provost arrived in Avondale, having somehow heard about the unannounced job opening and was immediately hired.
NIMREV: He had an excellent record.
SNIPE: And so handsome and with so many good ideas for building the new school.
NIMREV: More important, he’s never once corrected my grammar.
KRUMM: Thank you. Thank you, ladies. Your assistance has been…invaluable.
***
CONNECTIONS
Monday, March 16th
Earth
Provost sighed. It felt like only yesterday he’d stood before the cortext. Probably in the very same spot Revolvos had stood over a hundred loonocks before that. He could still recall asking Concentric for strength to particle-weave his way across the universe, for wisdom to help find the Corona-Soter; and, chancing one additional prayer, for luck to find his old mentor, Petré T. Revolvos.
Strapped to his back, along with a few personal possessions, had been the pinicolis. More vital to the success of his journey than the cortext, the pinicolis would enable the portal to remain open for the return trip. In his haste, his old mentor had been ignorant of the need for a pinicolis. A cortext was the point of origin, the beginning, but always remained behind.
Fingers in place, supplies secured, he’d opened his mind and envisioned a portal through time and space, a door to another solar system and, within it, one giant sun. Beyond that, a planet much like his own, only larger; described, but unnamed in the Circolar. Provost had felt sure it was Earth, the planet H.G. Wells had traveled from. A planet, Wells claimed, inhabited by god-like beings like himself, capable of producing advanced technology such as the Tsendi and Circanthians had never seen.
Who better to design a device such as the cortext? And, Provost had hoped, where better to find the being capable of defeating H.G. Wells, the Corona-Soter. Translated into the Earth language, the Wheeled Warrior.
Now, over six years later, if Provost was sure of one thing, it was that humans were not gods and, though clever, did not possess the knowledge to design a cortext. And yet…
His gaze shifted to the bottom of the bookshelf, to an oversized book bound in gold foil attempting to pass itself off as gold leaf, garish and cheap compared to the leather bound volumes surrounding it. He’d taken, or rather, borrowed Write Like An Egyptian from the student resource center after noticing it, purely by accident, laying open on a table. At first glance, he’d been sure his eyes were playing tricks. Exhausted and desperate, having already spent five unsuccessful years searching for the Corona-Soter, he’d come as close in that moment to having what humans referred to as a heart attack as was Circanthianly possible. There, right in front of him, for any being to see, was a book containing pictures of the exact same language used in the Circolar.
Provost had grabbed the book and then for weeks and months afterwards, poured over its contents, as well as any other book on Egyptian hieroglyphics he could lay his hands on. He’d searched the Internet, he talked to Egyptian experts, but for all the similarity to the writing in the Circolar, he could find not one single clue, beyond the style of writing, which linked the Egyptians to the planet Circanthos.
Another dead end. But at least now he knew his old mentor, Revolvos, was alive, on Earth and—Concentric help me—he had no idea where. That was the problem with dream talking, somehow you always seemed to wake up at the most pivotal point in the conversation.
“I have failed,” Provost lamented, staring at the spot where the pinicolis should have been. “McKenzie will arrive on Circanthos alone and unguided—right in the center of Tsendi territory.”
Brushing a hand through his thinning locks, he took a deep breath and focused on the small blue box he’d removed from the filing cabinet; a box much like the one that had housed the pinicolis. “I may die a failure,” he murmured, “but I will not give up!” As if by magic, a keyhole appeared. B.R. Provost inserted the larger of two keys and what had once been a solid piece of wood, split down the middle and swung open.
Inside was a mushroom-shaped object, as un-alien looking as anything could be. Several smaller versions were already in place at various points around the outskirts of Avondale. They’d been there, unobserved, since shortly after his arrival.
Principal Provost placed the object in front of him. In less than an hour, surely someone would begin to wonder why the students had not come out of his office. Headlines began popping into his mind.
Missing Students Last Seen in Office of Alien Principal!
Alien Principal’s Body Dissected…
Great Concentric! He had to do something. Not even Stephanie would cover for a locked door all day.
Quickly, he reached out with his mind to touch the object—then paused. The disrupters would only work once.
Slow down! You still have time. First, you need a plan.
If McKenzie could particle-weave, then she must be at least part Circanthian. He shuddered. This meant, of course, once again his old mentor was responsible. Only Revolvos would do something so arrogant—so impulsive—as to mate with a human. It was the only plausible explanation.
An image of Stephanie Chantos popped into his mind. He smiled. Not that humans weren’t worthy. He quickly pushed the thought away.
But why had Revolvos remained on Earth? Love? Surely his mate, whomever she was, could not still be alive. Revolvos was old, even by Circanthian standards. Was McKenzie a great-granddaughter or a great-great granddaughter? How far back did it go? And how many other humans existed that were part Circanthian? Who could particle-weave! He had to do something—and quick.
H.G. Wells had manipulated time and space to travel to Circanthos. He must have. Yet, Provost had never been able to locate even the smallest evidence of such technology—apart from a ridiculous book of fiction written by H.G. Wells himself.
Provost rolled out from behind his desk and stopped. There remained one other option. Six and a half years ago, he’d built his own cortext. Surely, if he could find Revolvos they could build another one together. Based on their ability to communicate via his recent dream, his old mentor was close. Was he on his way to Avondale? On his way to see relatives, perhaps? If McKenzie was somehow related to his old mentor, then the best place to begin searching for
Revolvos was at the Wu house.
It seemed he had his plan.
Giving his eyebrow one last tweak, Provost gazed at the mushroom-shaped disrupter on his desk—the main disrupter node. Three hundred sixty-five days, a long time, but would it be long enough? Time was the enemy.
Checking that both the blinds and the door were secure, he moved to the center of the room. With mixed feelings B.R. Provost unsnapped the vinyl costume he’d worn almost every waking moment since his arrival—then jumped out of his wheelchair.
His roticolar, a sphere-like appendage made up of thousands of smaller bones and joints, began to unfold to its full circumference. The navicals, tiny nerve-like endings that suctioned the roticolar to the body, allowed for a full 360 degrees of rotation; as well as, transmitted messages stimulating the tiny bones and joints to expand and contract as needed, pulsed as if unaccustomed to being used and began to work.
With mixed feelings, Provost gazed at the now empty wheelchair. The human contraption had provided perfect cover, allowing him to blend in and feel almost ‘human’ in the process.
He frowned.
It was a shame so many of the two-legged humans believed he should be pitied; even worse, averted their eyes as if his presence made them uncomfortable. “Fools!” Provost sighed and returned to his desk.
Placing his left hand on top of the main disrupter node, he allowed his mind to fall into a deep, meditative state. If he were going to search for Revolvos, he would need to weave a bubble of present time around himself before initiating the disrupter nodes. Remaining in the present while time paused all around you was not an easy task, even for B.R. Provost. It required a weave of great complexity. Particles manipulated around particles, allowing one layer to remain active while the others slept.
A dangerous and delicate trick!
If his bubble of present time collapsed, Provost would instantly become woven into the time displacement field, trapped along with everyone else in Avondale—one loonocks, three hundred and sixty five days—until the disrupter nodes wore off. B.R. Provost took a deep breath.