Taft Ranch: A Thunder Mountain Novel

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “That keeps what has already happened in place. But now comes the hard part.”

  She smiled. “You mean jumping back through time over six hundred years isn’t the hard part?”

  He laughed. “No, actually, that’s now going to be the easy part. We have to show ourselves after they discover I am missing, but before they try to stop me falling off the horse.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Massive timeline disruption,” Lee said. “We would be there when they go back and stop me from falling and you would then suddenly be still alive, and I would be trying to return to a place I already existed.”

  “And that would happen through all of the timelines?” she asked.

  “Through an infinite number of timelines, yes,” Lee said. “No telling where you and I might end up or if we would even be together or even know each other.”

  She just shook her head at that, staring down at her chicken.

  “I hate that idea,” he said, “so we have to be very, very careful on how we return. And what exactly we do when we return.”

  She nodded. “What do we have to do first?”

  “We have to unplug that crystal that got us to this point and go one hundred years into the future.”

  Her eyes grew huge? “Why would we go back to that dead and rotting place again?”

  “We need to move that crystal,” he said. “To a place where it won’t be unplugged for any reason.”

  “Who would unplug it?” she asked. “Everyone is dead.”

  “But if we have anything to say about it, they won’t be,” he said, smiling.

  She stared at him for a moment and then slowly smiled as his idea of not only getting them back to their normal times, but figuring out a way to rescue people started to dawn on her.

  And he loved that smile more than anything.

  THIRTY

  September 12th, 2628

  Boise, Idaho

  IT HAD TAKEN them three days to come up with their plan. The early fall days in Boise had been wonderful, with warm days and cool nights that allowed them to sleep soundly with the window in the bedroom open.

  Joan had actually started to get used to the complete lack of sounds around them. She didn’t like it, but she was getting used to it.

  And she was loving the old Victorian mansion part of the institute, much more than she did the caverns under it.

  On the first night after the discovery that they could go home, she had asked Lee what he thought had caused the deaths.

  “No clue,” he said. “But it didn’t kill bacteria either because we have seen things being broken apart by time. Bacteria does that. So more than likely what hit this planet was something that disrupted brain functions of all living insects and animal and fish life. You’re the doc, you tell me what would do that?”

  She actually had no idea. But she honestly had no doubt that her focus on comas was going to now switch to a focus on what caused this massive disaster and how to stop it.

  On the morning of the second day they started what Lee called, “The Great Search.”

  “We’re looking for a very, very secret place,” Lee said. “It will be a cavern with crystals. But only a few of them?”

  “Why only a few?” she said.

  “The founders of the institute, meaning Bonnie and Duster and Dawn and Madison and some others, are all set in timelines more than likely right before the destruction here.”

  She nodded, not really understanding a word he was saying.

  “When you are back in a time, the wires remain linked to the crystal for two minutes and fifteen seconds,” he said.

  “I think I understand that at least at a surface level,” she said.

  “So the founders needed to move from 1880 to 2600 quickly, one hundred years at a time. Director Parks, in my time, ran all the hundreds of years of the institute. He could spend thirty years in one timeline and only be gone from the others for two minutes.”

  “Now that just hurts my mind,” she said.

  Lee nodded and went on. “So Duster and Director Parks would have to have built a special room for just their use, to make sure the crystals they were hooked up to were never bothered in any way, because the machine and the crystal exist in both timelines and everywhere between.”

  “So if we jump back six hundred years, the box we use will exist somewhere in these caverns for six hundred years?”

  “Exactly,” Lee said, nodding. “We don’t want anyone messing with it.”

  “And we need to find that special room,” Joan said.

  “If we can find the room, then we can install a crystal we are going to be using for the jump from a hundred years in the future to this time, and then a second crystal we are going to be using for the longer jump to our normal time.”

  “And tell the founders what we have done when we get there,” Joan said.

  Lee just nodded.

  They had no luck at all on the first day of searching. Over a dinner of freeze-dried steak and apples, which were amazingly good, Joan asked, “Which parts of this complex were built first?”

  “I honestly don’t know for sure on that,” Lee said. “But I do know the cavern I used is the one that has been there for sure from the start. But my understanding is that all of this was built at the same time in 1880.”

  “I think we should search that first cavern,” she said.

  So the next morning, they did just that. And it was Lee who noticed some faint footprints in the dust leading from a wall at the very end of the empty first crystal room.

  “Someone has been here after the disaster,” he said, pointing to the floor.”

  Joan nodded and they went to searching.

  It took them both an hour to find the hidden switch in the rock surface that opened up the cavern beyond.

  It was another huge cavern and the lights came up as the door swung open. Massive racks of clothing and tables covered with equipment filled parts of the room.

  The cavern was divided clearly into seven areas. Each area had a couple’s name over it. And then each area was divided down again into one hundred year gaps.

  The earlier years had no clothing or equipment in them, but the years labeled 2400 and 2500 were full for each area.

  “There are fourteen founders,” Lee said. “Seven couples. They are the only ones permitted to jump farther than a hundred years without permission from the founders. I imagine they are all set in the 2500 period.”

  Around the cavern were a dozen small tunnels. All had been carved to hold crystals. Lee and Joan looked into each tunnel.

  Seven of the tunnels were full of crystals and glowed with the light. Boxes lined up down the middle of the narrow cavern on tables. But none of the wires were hooked to any crystal or box.

  “Why aren’t they hooked up?” Joan asked.

  “Time hasn’t got here yet,” Lee said.

  She had no idea what that meant.

  Lee clearly must have seen her confusion.

  “They put all these crystals and boxes into place back when each founding couple joined the institute,” Lee said. “So they will always just go down through time.”

  She nodded.

  “Then, as a hundred years went by, someone from the future would go back and get them all.”

  “Jump with them like you jumped with me?” Joan asked.

  Lee nodded and went on. “They would then hook up a crystal in this cavern and jump back a hundred years, being established in the future where only two minutes was passing.”

  “Okay,” Joan said, still not completely understanding.

  “That would have been repeated onward going forward until suddenly everyone in the institute died.”

  “No one to jump back and bring them forward,” she said.

  “More than likely someone jumped in here after the disaster, saw what happened, and went back and got everyone to safety back in time.”

  “Thus no bodies,” she said.

  “That would
depend,” Lee said, “on if we are in a timeline that the people were saved or one that they had to die before the institute founders discovered the disaster.”

  “Yup, another headache coming on,” she said, laughing. She was just amazed she understood as much as she did.

  Finally, on the third day, they had their plan in place, including ways of contacting each other if they ended up in different timelines. They told each other personal stories that no one else knew as a form of greeting.

  Of course, as Lee reminded her, when they died, they would end up back in this timeline with only two minutes passing here. But neither of them wanted to be apart for a lifetime after only being together for a few days. She figured that would be awkward, at best.

  “You know,” she had said on the third night together in bed, “If the chance of us being separated is too high, we could stay right here. It’s certainly quiet enough for us to do our work.”

  He had laughed. “I think we’re going to make it just fine.”

  He had kissed her and she had felt a little better.

  Then he had said, “Besides, we need to lead six hundred years of advancement and brain trusts to save this planet. And we are the only ones that can jump so far into the future.”

  And with that, she had known the risk was worth it. But she wanted no part of not being with Lee.

  Finally, on the morning of the third day, after they had had a good, solid breakfast of eggs and waffles, they went back down to the cavern and the narrow cave with all the crystals in it.

  They stood beside the crystal with the wires hooked up to a box. It looked so simple, and so dangerous at the same time.

  He handed her one of the wooden boxes, the one he had taken the regulator off of so they could jump as far as they needed back in time. He had taken one apart carefully and then put it back together just as carefully so it would not be noticed.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  With a thick leather glove on, he reached over and unhooked the wire.

  She found herself standing touching the wooden box exactly as she had done when they used the box the first time.

  He unhooked the other wire.

  “What went wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “We are in 2728, a hundred years into the future from where we had been.”

  A hundred years deeper into the disaster. Not a place she wanted to be. Ever.

  THIRTY-ONE

  September 12th, 2728

  Boise, Idaho

  LEE HATED THAT they were so far into the disaster again. Hated it more than he wanted to say. But now they had to get ready to make the jump home and that was going to be amazingly hard.

  But they had planned every detail carefully.

  First they took the long hike back up the two flights of stairs and into the large main living room cavern, then down into the old section that he used to jump back to 1890.

  The lights flickered as they went, but enough stayed on for them to find their way. Lee carried the box he had altered and Joan carried a box they had taken from the very back of the 2500 crystal room. And they carried one set of wires.

  They went to the most distant empty crystal room off the hidden supply room and then went clear to the back of the very long and narrow room. They put the one box that would take them forward one hundred years on the table and then in front of it the box that would jump them all the way to their original time. He was going to need to carry that box a hundred years back into the past when they jumped.

  His fear was that someone would notice these in this room that wasn’t supposed to have any crystals in it before he and Joan announced their presence with Duster and Bonnie. Once they told Duster, then he could tell the others about it and the crystals and machines would not be bothered.

  After getting the boxes in the room, they headed back up to the living room area and back down to the rooms full of crystals off the 2500 supply area.

  As they went through all the tables of supplies, Joan said, “I sure wish I knew what some of this stuff was used for.”

  Lee glanced around at the equipment on the tables. No doubt for someone around 2500 all this looked normal, but he had no idea either. It would be like someone from the 1600s looking at a cell phone.

  What he found amazing was that so much had stayed mostly the same. Clothing had fashion looks, but it was still mostly the same and some of the stores they had gone into seemed amazingly similar to stores from four hundred years earlier.

  And then other stores in that big mall they had seen had products in it neither one of them could venture a guess as to what the products did.

  They took a large synthetic fiber bag and a bunch of synthetic fabric with them into the most distant of the long crystal rooms. They also both had on very heavy gloves and they had also put on large and heavy coats. It was this part of the task that worried Lee the most.

  The reason they went to the last crystal room from the door was that rooms in that position were seldom used. Everyone seemed to stay closer to the first rooms and since there were thousands of crystals in every room, that didn’t make much difference.

  They went clear to the back and as Joan laid out the pack on the table and put the heavy fabric in it, Lee went into the wire cage wearing thick gloves and moved toward one of the crystals in the last row near the ground.

  He also had two wooden boards he had salvaged from the mansion.

  He didn’t want to just touch the crystal through thick gloves. He wasn’t sure that wouldn’t send him into the timeline. He knew that the crystals were changed out all the time over the centuries, but he had no idea how it was done. And since they were over a hundred years past the disaster, they didn’t have much to work with.

  But he had a hunch the crystals had an area under them that had attached to the cavern walls originally and that area would be what he would touch.

  He glanced back at Joan. “Ready?”

  She nodded and said nothing.

  He took one of the boards and eased it into the space and tried to push it under the crystal.

  The board actually pushed the crystal back and then tipped it away from them.

  He had been right, the bottom of the crystal was a dark stone about three inches thick.

  He made sure the bottom was showing and then picked up the crystal from the bottom.

  It felt like nothing more than a rock about the size of a baseball. Not light but not heavy either. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, actually.

  Holding it on the bottom with both hands and keeping it away from his body, he moved back through the gate.

  Joan was standing back, her eyes wide, clearly as tense as he felt.

  He placed the crystal gently in the thick cloth. He turned the bottom of the crystal so it was to the side they would be carrying it and then carefully wrapped the cloth around it and then pulled the bag up around it and closed it.

  Then, keeping the bag away from his body, he picked it up, making sure to stay on the bottom side of the crystal and set the bag down on the dirt floor.

  Then he stepped back, sweating, even though the cavern had felt cold when they entered.

  “You all right?” Joan asked.

  “One down,” he said. “You ready to get this into place and jump back in time a hundred years?”

  She nodded and started toward the front of the cavern.

  Keeping the bag as far away from his body as he could, they made the long climb up the stairs, across the large living room area, and then back down two flights of stairs to the older area. It felt more like he was carrying a ticking time bomb than a rock.

  Ten minutes later he had the crystal in the lowest spot clear to the back of the long empty chamber coming off the founders cavern.

  Two minutes later he had the wires hooked to the crystal and the timer set for one hundred years.

  He then hooked both wires to the box and stepped back, taking off the leather gloves and putti
ng them on the table. He picked up the box he had altered and tucked it under his arm.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Remember to touch the box at the same moment I do.”

  She nodded.

  He counted it down and they touched the box.

  They both then stepped back.

  He put the box down on the table.

  She stood, staring at the box hooked up to the crystal. “So from now on out, everything we do, we are only living two minutes in that time one hundred years in the future?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Just amazing,” she said, shaking her head.

  And with that they headed to go get a crystal that would take them home.

  THIRTY-TWO

  September 12th, 2628

  Boise, Idaho

  GETTING THE SECOND crystal went as well as the first one had gone. Even though Lee did all the work, the stress was something awful watching him.

  He got it into the slot in the rock wall just above the first one they had moved. Then they had stopped and taken drinks of water.

  Then when he had the box hooked up to the crystal, he set the date on the timer to July 15, 2018, at midnight.

  “That’s about a week after I left the last time,” he said. “I don’t think we dare get any closer.”

  She nodded. They had talked about that and she understood completely. And they had also talked about her going back to her time as well. That conversation had ended with “Let me just see what happens when we get out of this.”

  “On the count of three,” he said.

  She nodded and they both touched the box at the right moment on the count.

  Then they both stepped back.

  “Did we make it?” she asked, looking around.

  “I don’t know,” he said, first glancing at the wires on the two boxes and crystals that were there.

  The boxes and the crystals were now in this time with them and in every year between now and the future point.

  Lee turned and headed for the door of the long empty chamber.

  He took two steps into the chamber and stopped.