“Good morning, Mr. Haines. I hope all is well with you and your family.” Corcoran dismounted as he said it, not waiting for an invitation to do so. Mack followed suit.
“Good morning to you as well, sirs.” Haines put down his ax and went to greet them. “What brings you to my humble home?”
“Well sir,” Mack began, “we’d like to offer you and all the other able-bodied men living on what is now BLE land a chance to earn a little extra money before Christmas.”
“Doing what, exactly?” Suspicion tinged Haines’ words.
“Marking out land along the River Road for the new school building, a new Assembly Hall, and a bank. You folks know the land, and more importantly, the flood plains, along the river.”
“Which will, just coincidently, get us out of the way down along the river while you do whatever it is you plan to do along the high ground,” Haines said. “Why don’t you tell me where you folks are really from, because you sure as hell didn’t come here directly from Ireland?”
“What makes you say that?” Corcoran asked.
“Your accents. Yours isn’t so far off that I mightn’t mistake you for being from somewhere in the emerald isle, but the rest of the party hasn’t more than a trace of the brogue. And your speech patterns are strange, at once more precise but less formal than the King’s English.”
“Well, Mr. Haines, I hate to disappoint you, but we come from the Aran Islands in Galway Bay off the coast of Ireland. The place has been extremely isolated for a long time, and we developed our own speech patterns.” Corcoran could tell Haines wasn’t buying it.
“How long, exactly, will you be needing us out of the way?” he asked.
“The job should take the rest of this week,” Mack replied evenly.
“And how much would you be paying?”
“Fifty cents per day,” Corcoran said. “Plus a bonus of one dollar at the end of the week for each man that shows up every day. And a fifty cent recruiting bonus paid to you personally for every man that shows up every day.” Corcoran wasn’t above buying the man off.
“I’ll take your money,” Haines replied after a few seconds reflection. “But don’t for a minute believe that I trust you or your people. I’m not sure what you’re up to, but I don’t think it’ll be good for the Republic in the long run.”
“Without us, the Republic won’t last another two years,” Corcoran said.
“Why should I believe that?” Haines said.
“Because your militia is no match for either the British or the Americans, and they’ll both want this land before long,” Corcoran replied. Whether Haines believed him or not, he agreed to recruit the others.
* * *
The Fallon Party set to work first thing the next morning. One of their sleighs held a Type A portal generator and all the necessary parts to build a twenty-one-foot diameter support matrix. Assembling the frame structure took only a few minutes, but it took the remainder of the day to painstakingly fit and calibrate the fiber-optic cables that stabilized the portal edges. They’d hedged their bets – the wagons held the necessities of life, and would have sustained them through the winter and into the planting season, should the portal not work for some reason. Fortunately, once calibrated, the portal worked just fine.
Corcoran had no reservations about retrieving the full arsenal of accessible technology, including systems powered by Johnston Electric Power Sources. This inexhaustible source of electricity powered electric engines in most of the systems they would bring through the portal. The JEPS technology drew on the tremendous electric potential difference between our familiar three dimensional space and the fifth dimension, which Dr. Dwight Johnston had accidently discovered in 2018. Corcoran was here to force a dramatic change in the history of the human race, and he would introduce whatever technological, political, or cultural shifts were necessary to put the Republic in position to stop Thunder pestis, the outside world be damned.
Once the portal was fully calibrated, Barbara O’Malley opened it to a temporal artifact of 2028, and 21st Century equipment, materials, and supplies flooded into the Republic.
Winters in the Republic were harsh, with short, cold, and windy days, and falling snow more likely than not. The first items they brought through the portal were a pair of large JEPS-powered snow cats, which would be used to scrape the snow from a fallow field west of Hill Road. They created temporary windbreaks by piling the snow as high as possible at the edges of the field. Two more large snow cats, one configured as a fire engine and the other as an ambulance, soon emerged from the portal. Smaller snow cats dragged thirteen large camping trailers into a row. The first twelve trailers were meant to house one family apiece. The last was equipped as a medical clinic. Each well-insulated trailer had its own JEPS to provide heat, light, and power.
As soon as the lodging problem was solved, a material handling system pumped standard twenty- and forty-foot-long cargo containers, each eight-feet-wide by eight-feet-tall, through the portal. Working over a three day period, they used rough-terrain container handlers and cranes to pile three hundred and sixty containers into twenty-four-foot-high stacks, surrounding the little encampment with twenty-four-foot-thick walls. Each container was securely locked to its neighbors. The interior space measured four hundred feet by four hundred feet. The structure would be known as Fort Evergreen, for the shipping company logo emblazoned on most of the containers.
Twelve of the first level containers, which were referred to as garages, held personal vehicles for each family: JEPS-powered snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, and extended-bed, four-wheel-drive crew cab pickup trucks. One container held their only helicopter, a partially disassembled AS-7JEP Raider armed scout helicopter. Another held a dozen RQ-7JEP Shadow recon drones, four control modules, and spare parts. Containers 78 and 195 held ten tons of platinum each, containers 79 and 197 held ten tons of gold each, and container 239 held five Davy Crockett weapon systems.
Once this initial stock of containers was through the portal, the heavy equipment emerged, primarily civilian construction vehicles and some military vehicles. The heavy combat systems – tanks, self-propelled artillery, and armored personnel carriers – would remain in the artifact for a while longer, until the Fallon Party had secured a grip on local government. The last two items to emerge from the artifact of 2028 were a portable cement plant and a portable saw mill.
Satisfied that they had all of the equipment, supplies and materials they would need to survive and prosper should they never be able to activate a time machine again, Barbara pushed a button on her portal generator and the 2028 portal snapped shut. Along with her colleague, Fiona Forte, she began the task of recalibrating the Type A portal to access a specific time and place in the 22nd Century.
It took the matched pair of slim brunettes twelve hours to ready the portal. Then they reactivated the time machine and opened another portal, this one to an artifact of the year 2125.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Kellen asked. “If something unexpected happens, we won’t be able to help you.”
“You know I’m the only one that can go forward to the 22nd Century,” Corcoran replied. “We need more of the nano-vaccines, as well as the learning machines. ‘Tis worth the risk.” Without further comment, Corcoran climbed into his pickup truck and drove through the portal.
Corcoran had told everyone that it would take him from one to two hours to locate, load up, and retrieve the cargo he sought. They grew anxious as the three hour mark passed with no sign of his return.
Finally, after spending just over five hours in the artifact of 2125, Corcoran emerged from the portal in the driver’s seat of a different truck, with a trailer in tow. Everyone broke into smiles as he pulled through the portal. Not only had he returned safely, but they now possessed a trailer with four Sync-pattern Learning Machines, or SPLM’s. And they could reproduce as many as needed, as long as they could access an artifact of that moment.
5 - DWIGHT<
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Snow Cat: A tracked, JEPS-powered vehicle designed to operate on snow-covered fields or roads; there are two basic variants, an articulated passenger vehicle and a cargo vehicle which normally has a plow blade attached. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.
Colebrook, New Hampshire, USA, Tuesday, December 25, 1832
Dwight Carver’s second interaction with the Fallon Party occurred on Christmas Day, two weeks after their arrival. Along with his wife Mellissa and seven-year-old daughter Jennifer, he made the fifteen mile trek to Colebrook, New Hampshire by horse-drawn sleigh to attend Holy Mass at the nearest Catholic Church. A tall, angular man with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, he towered over raven-haired, blue-eyed Mellissa. Jennifer had her mother’s hair and round face, but her father’s eyes. She stood slightly taller than her classmates.
As he climbed the church steps, Dwight saw a long column of bizarre coaches come to a stop next to the church. The coaches rolled on belts wrapped around five sets of wheels, apparently without benefit of any horses. He watched along with the other bewildered parishioners as the coaches stopped and twelve Irish Catholic families emerged and filed into the church in silence.
Dwight recognized Corcoran Fallon and Kellen Coyle as they walked past him. Unsure of what else to do, the Carver’s heeded the tolling bell and entered the house of worship. Later, as everyone filed out of the pews after the service ended, they whispered to their friends and relatives from New Hampshire about the strange group that recently moved into the Republic.
By the time Corcoran Fallon reached the back of the church, the ushers had already informed Father Thompson of the rather sizable increase in the day’s collection. The addition of twelve evidently wealthy Irish Catholic families to his small flock was more than welcome, and Dwight saw the priest greet Fallon warmly. Corcoran introduced the rest of the newcomers to the priest, and Father Thompson introduced them to the wary parishioners in turn.
There were lots of questions about where the new group had come from, and more questions about the machines, which they called snow cats. Each member of the Fallon Party told listeners about the group’s emigration from Ireland to the Republic, and described how the battery-powered snow cats worked.
In addition to their generous contributions to the collection plate, the group had also brought several crates full of donations for the poor. The crates, containing blankets, overcoats, mittens, hats, and dry goods, were unloaded from one of the two larger snow cats. Father Thompson would oversee distribution of these to the needy families of the countryside.
By eleven o’clock all of the new parishioners had been duly registered in the parish records. Fallon’s group piled back into the snow cats and the convoy headed north, back to the Republic. Dwight followed as closely as his horse-drawn sleigh allowed.
There were no permanent churches in the Republic, so Protestant Yuletide services were conducted in Assembly Hall, led by an itinerant United Methodist minister. The celebration was just ending as the Fallon Party convoy pulled up outside the church, followed by Dwight and his family. The congregation was just as astonished by the snow cats as the parishioners in Colebrook. And Reverend Smith was just as happy to receive the second set of crates full of donations for the poor.
Dwight helped manhandle a crate into a shed behind Assembly Hall. John Haines fell into step beside him as he was returning to help with the next crate. “So, it looks like Fallon isn’t above buying off the clergy either,” Haines said. “I wonder what the hell they’re up to.”
“Can’t say for sure,” Dwight said, “but so far they just seem to be helping people.”
“Have you seen that structure they built up north? Some are calling it Fort Evergreen. Where did they get all that stuff from, not to mention these machines?” Haines pointed to the snow cats.
“I reckon they dragged all that stuff here from somewhere up north with those snow cats when we weren’t looking,” Dwight replied. “Probably brought it all in by sea from Ireland and dragged it overland from the Saint Lawrence.”
They arrived back at the snow cat just in time to hear Fallon offer employment with his newly formed company, Back Lake Enterprises, to any able-bodied man willing to help clear parts of the forest for road construction and building sites. Eleven men agreed on the spot. Another six men, including Dwight, gave a tentative pledge, pending further family discussions.
“Et tu, Brute?” Haines said. Dwight shrugged.
Their business concluded, the Fallon Party climbed back into their snow cats. Dwight watched with envy as they rumbled off, heading east on River Road towards Fort Evergreen and Christmas Dinner.
* * *
Republic of Indian Stream, Wednesday, December 26, 1832
When Dwight arrived at the stables the next morning he found sixteen men waiting. Richard Blanchard, Jr. had apparently decided not to take the offer. This surprised everyone, since Junior, as every knew him, was thought to be deep in debt to a creditor in Sherbrooke, Lower Canada, a debt so large that even his share of the BLE land sale had not covered it.
Kellen Coyle and two other drivers arrived in three snow cats and got the new employees settled into the vehicles. The convoy headed out of town on River Road. Dwight and the other newbies sat in silent wonder as the snow cats roared up the road to the Fallon Party’s initial campsite. Three large tents – the group’s original lodgings – still stood, repurposed as logistical facilities for local hires. The workers were told they wouldn’t be allowed into Fort Evergreen, an imposing structure on the other side of the clearing. Dwight would have liked to have a peek inside.
Once the convoy pulled to a halt, Kellen herded the men out of the snow cats and into the nearest tent. Space heaters kept the interior of the tent warm, a good thing since the first thing field boss Mack O’Malley did after being introduced was order them to strip. Mack was a huge man, not necessarily tall, but barrel-chested and heavily muscled, with a booming voice that commanded everyone’s attention.
Dwight and the other men were outfitted with warm but breathable undergarments, thermal underwear, pants, shirts, jackets, gloves, balaclavas and steel-toed boots. Hardhats and goggles were also provided by the three teenaged boys who helped the men select the correct sizes from clothing bins arranged along the centerline of the tent.
Mack informed the men that they would be able to keep the clothing as part of the first day’s wages, and would be expected to arrive for future workdays so attired. Worn items would be replaced; however they would have to pay for any lost items out of their wages. He then led them outside for on-the-job training.
All of the new men had experience felling trees; it was a necessary skill in the deep New England woods. Dwight was no exception. He expected to be issued an axe or a two-man band saw. Instead, Mack hefted a wicked looking item he called a chainsaw. He pulled on a cord and the thing sputtered to life, making a loud racket at first, then settling down to a soft purr. Mack demonstrated its raw cutting power on a large log that had been laid out for that purpose. The chainsaw noisily ate its way through a ten-inch thick log in a matter of seconds. Dwight was stunned – the chainsaw was a hand-held sawmill. Without a waterwheel, where does the power come from? He raised his hand and asked.
“The power comes from exploding gasoline mist,” Mack answered. “Gasoline is a distillate of oil. When you mix it with the right amount of air, and provide a spark, it explodes. If the explosion is confined in a cylinder, the exploding gas pushes a piston head, which drives a shaft, which spins the cutting chain.
“The small motor here,” he indicted the apparatus at the back end of the blade, “has the equivalent power of eight horses. The explosions rotate the shaft at about twenty-thousand rotations per minute.”
Dwight found all that difficult to comprehend, but the thing clearly worked, so he made no objections. Mack gave a lengthy safety lecture before letting each man give it a try, under his watchful ice blue eyes.
Satisfied that
they wouldn’t cut any arms or legs off, Mack moved to a living tree at the edge of the clearing and demonstrated how he wanted the men to cut and trim the trees. He used a big chainsaw with a three-foot-long blade to cut the trees down, and a smaller model to trim them. Each man took a turn felling and trimming a tree. Mack provided pointers for the benefit of the whole group as each man worked.
By the time Megan O’Rourke, the field camp cook, rang the lunch bell, Mack had decided who could be trusted to safely cut down the larger trees, a group that included Dwight. A second group would be restricted to the smaller trees and trimming duties. Mack also designated a third group which couldn’t be trusted with a chainsaw at all. That group would chain up the trimmed tree trunks so the big snow cats could haul them to the saw mill.
A line had already formed outside the mess tent when Mack brought the new men over. Upon entering the tent, Dwight watched as Fallon Party men in front of him took trays from a stack near the door, and added a chunk of fresh-baked bread, a soup spoon and a paper napkin to the tray. They were each given a bowl of steaming beef stew by Megan, who chatted up the men as they came through. Dwight was skeptical of any thin cook, but the stew smelled wonderful so he was prepared to give the lively blond woman the benefit of the doubt, at least until he tried it. He took his stew and went to sit at one of the long tables laid out in the tent. The newbies were soon calling compliments to Mrs. O’Rourke on the stew. Coffee was also available in large pots placed on the tables. One of the men asked for ale and got a stern rebuke from Mack, who cited the dangers of operating chainsaws while inebriated.
When everyone had been served, Mrs. O’Rourke circulated among the new men, freshening their coffee from a pot she carried, and asking questions about their homes and families. While he never saw her write anything down, Dwight got the impression that she was recording and cataloging the information on each man.
The Legend of Indian Stream Page 3