Chapter 8 — Don’t Look Back... in TIME!
“Well, girls, let’s go watch these movies,” Rick suggested to the gathered crowd.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Alex said, tapping the chronicler, “Let’s watch these movies!”
Everyone was more than excited about that idea, so Rick easily caved in, “Sure, let’s go to the couch.” He led the parade to the gigantic couch and they all settled in around Alex.
Alex popped up the menu again on the strange device and quickly selected playback, which caused a list to pop up on the clear display. She immediately selected the first entry: Jan 7, 5565 18:55.
First, a nose appeared, and then backed off to reveal a man of about 25 years. He was slim, but soft-jawed, and had thick, wiry brown hair parted on the left side and well-trimmed above the ears. He possessed small, almost squinting eyes compared to his bushy brown eyebrows. He spoke through a small mouth topped by a thin moustache that extended half an inch over each side of his upper lip.
“Dr. Jonathan Taylor here. Testing, one, two. Yes, we have a success,” he cried jubilantly. “This is it, the first test of the Universal Chronicler. With these necklaces,” he held up three necklaces, the fourth was around his neck, “we will be able to record all that occurs within the displacement machine.”
He took a small, proud look at something out of sight, then continued, “Now that I’m reasonably certain the system works, we will schedule our first trip. Within the next couple days—”
Alex adjusted the display, zooming out and rotating around the room. All eyes were glued to the images. There was literally nothing within view that appeared normal to them except the human and a cup on the table. By looking around, they could also see the man was not very big, judging him to be about 5’8”, but surprisingly sturdily built — totally incongruent to his nerd-like facial features. He was dressed in what looked to be the consistency of aluminum foil, but obviously not stiff or metallic. Or was it? He seemed completely comfortable in the outfit. Anna ran her fingers over the soft silk-like metal of the necklaces and thought it might be the same material. In the corner, there was a podium-like console which had an unbelievable 3D display of a brontosaurus bathing in a small lake.
“Amazing,” said Abby in awe, followed by similar comments by all.
“—this concludes our test of the Universal Chronicler,” the man ended and the menu appeared.
Alex flipped through the next few entries, perhaps a couple pages of them, before starting to see other dates. She stopped at one that brought several gasps: October 28, 75,252 12:01.
“Holy cow — 75,252!” Christy exclaimed.
Alex quickly chose it from the menu.
“Just as we expected,” murmured Dr. Taylor as a view of wasteland filled the screen. There were barely any shapes visible in the rust colored dust. “This is the precise location of the Earth Union Science Facilities of New Paris, built exactly thirty thousand years ago. As you can see, this entire city is gone. Forty-five million people lived in this city in buildings that stretched up to three thousand meters high. Now it’s flat,” he said sadly.
“My next mission is to find out precisely how and when it happened.”
“What do you think, Daddy?” Jessie asked somberly.
“I don’t know what to think,” he shook his head.
The video continued for a few minutes as the doctor collected soil samples.
The menu reappeared. “I don’t think I can handle any more of this today,” Kaylie said as a tear slowly rolled down her cheek.
“I think reality has just changed for all of us,” Abby said calmly, trying to comfort her.
“Go to the last entry, Alex, then we’re turning this off and watching a movie,” Rick instructed.
Alex began flipping through dozens of pages per second, taking more than a minute before noticing the scroll bar that would take her to the bottom with a simple movement. She found the last entry, March 21, 1756 20:45. She hit play.
At first, the Chronicler was in view. Dr. Taylor had evidently just selected to record and shut down the display. Alex adjusted the view to look at him from the front as he breathed very heavily. He placed the Chronicler on the folded out box, on the bottom square, and slowly traced the swirl that caused it to revert back to a cube.
“This could be my final hour,” he whispered dramatically. “I was planning on sneaking into the cave tonight — it’s been eleven, no twelve days. I thought he would give up by now, but he’s mad!” He let out an obviously painful cough as he got up. Now it became evident to the viewers what caused his distress: a bullet hole in his side. Alex deftly spun the view around to see a matching exit hole on his back, then returned it to his front again.
He now clutched the cube tightly under his arm and started to walk down a path, continuing to whisper, “He was lying in wait for me, but I managed to knock him down with a blow to the head with this—” he held up the cube, tapping it. “He wanted it bad enough, so he got it… but not before the blast of his pistol got me. I should have checked but wasn’t thinking. I have to try to reach Helen’s now, I have no choice; I won’t survive out here like this.” He suddenly reacted to a noise, turning to check it out. His eyes widened and he began to run as fast as he could. Faint sounds of beating hooves began to invade the sound of his breath and the crunch of twigs and leaves. Alex tried to locate the source of the sound, but could not. Taylor then darted off the path and through the woods.
“Not... gonna… make… it,” he panted.
He ducked behind a tree just as Alex focused on a horse and rider in the distance. He looked scary and sounded even scarier. “I know you’re out there, Taylor! I know I winged you, too. Just give me the box and we’ll go get ya patched up!” he bellowed as the doctor stood frozen until the figure took off in the opposite direction.
“Thank God he’s as bad at tracking as he is at physics,” Taylor muttered painfully. “And thank God for the trees, or the moonlight would have given me away.”
Resignedly, he began reciting instructions as if by rote, “Dr. Jonathan Taylor, Earth Union Science Administration. If you should find this, you should destroy it immediately—” Then something seemed to have occurred to him. He paused, and then continued through the woods, noticeably weaker. “OK,” he continued, grunting out most of the words, “nothing can destroy it in this age, probably not for another fourteen hundred years or more, so I guess I’m just going to pray that if it is discovered before then, it is not misused…” He put his hand on the necklace, “This is one of four omni-directional cameras that interface with the machine,” he laid the cube on the ground and traced the spiral on top, waiting for it to finish unfolding. Once opened, you could see the other three necklaces, the stone and the chronicler. He hefted the stone, “This is the time stone; it powers the machine.” He stopped momentarily to catch his breath; it seemed incredibly difficult to speak each word. “This,” he laid a single finger on the chronicler, “is the Universal Chronicler. It records all four cameras automatically whenever you return from a trip in the machine, or manually, like now, until you remove the necklace or manually stop it. To end a trip, simply hold it in your hand and say ‘return.’ These instructions are all written...”
He rested a few moments and then trudged on, coming to a stream. He was carrying the open box carefully. “I destroyed the method of time displacement; it is not possible to change the past now, nor is it possible to change the future in it without a special command. However, the information in displaced time could cause you to change the future inadvertently, so be very careful. Each time anyone uses this machine from now on, in this mode you will enter a copy of this time-space, if you will, and it is contained in memory indefinitely. I was in the process of destroying the ability to enter future time-space and that is the reason Bignose, er, Bergamiser, put this hole in my side. It is dangerous to see the future; I found that out the hard way. I encourage you to never travel to the future. If you find this, Bergam
iser, may you rot in Hell for carrying out your evil plans. But it’s not too late to develop a…” He coughed, noticed it was blood he was coughing up and sighed. “I’m—” he forced a chuckle, “history! Be careful with time; it’s dangerous. There’s so much you need to know but I’m… I’m out of... time, hah! It’s necessary to learn before you—”
He gasped, clutching his chest, barely recovering this time. “It’s... time... time to go…”
He dug into his pocket, took out a coin and placed it with the other things, and then took off the necklace, which abruptly ended the recording.
“Any questions now?” a glazed-faced Rick asked somberly.
“Did he die, Daddy?” Jessica asked with a sad expression, full of empathy.
“Duh!” Anna answered for him.
“OK, let’s watch a movie,” Rick attempted to change the subject.
“No Daddy! We have to find out what happened!” Jessica implored.
“We have to find the time machine!” Alex added. “There could be more answers in the—”
“Stop,” Rick demanded. “We can’t find out anything else right now—”
“But there’s more on the chronicler—” Alex continued to protest.
“I said stop. You saw that list.” He snatched the device and shut it off, “There’s fifty to a hundred thousand or more recordings on this thing, it would take years to watch them all. Relax, take a chill pill!”
They all stared at him like he just kicked their dog.
Abby tried a different approach. “How about one of you get some bowls for the cheese puffs and glasses for drinks, and one of you get the Pepsi out of the fridge. And Anna, set up the DVD for us, OK?”
Each considered her words for a brief moment, and then Christy and Jessica went upstairs. Kaylie and Alex walked over to the fridge while Anna stuck a movie in the player. Moments later, they had food and drinks laid out in front of them, and Anna sat down with the remote to start their movie.
Finally, Abby got up to turn off the lights and Anna hit play, cranking the stereo system up considerably louder than normal, watching Rick to see if he protested.
While the movie played, the girls continued to whisper about the items, and what they had been used for. By 1:00 AM, Christy, Jessica and Anna were out cold, snuggled together like a litter of newborn pups. Kaylie was leaning forward, intensely into the movie, Alex was propped up against Rick’s shoulder, half-asleep, and Abby now leaned on his other side, also barely awake.
Without complaint, Rick slid out, leaving Alex to right herself, pulling Abby along with him.
“I’m going to bed,” Abby told him drowsily.
“Let’s check the messages first.”
“Go ahead, I couldn’t read it right now anyway,” she said, swaying groggily. She put her arms around him and slumped into a long, unstable hug, then backed off enough to plant a light kiss on him and dragged herself up the stairs after winking and saying, “Don’t be too long,” as suggestively as she could while nearly zombiefied.
Rick strode to the computer and settled comfortably into his cushioned chair.
Hearing the computer monitor come on, Alex roused and stumbled over and plopped down in his lap as he checked the messages.
There were four new messages: “12:00, Of course no match in USGS. 12:14, No topo or streams or rivers matching both lines. 12:35, Checking satellite images, found something, trying to get infrared and x-ray access. 1:02, You won’t believe me if I’m right.”
Rick glanced at the clock: 1:08. He figured Rob was still on and wrote a reply, “Rick here, whatcha got?” Just as he finished typing, he received a file.
Rob replied, “Got the picture?”
“Just did, go ahead and explain.”
“I trust my coin is well preserved?”
Rick was studying the picture. It was a satellite image from space of the area where Alex found the cube. The picture was huge. Another file arrived, then another.
“OK, I don’t see anything…”
“My coin?”
“It’s fine — sealed in carbonite, like Han Solo,” Rick answered.
“OK. Look at the image you gave me, then this photo. See the bike trail? It matches one line pretty closely — the middle line is the stream—”
“But the stream doesn’t match,” Rick said quickly.
“Waterways can change drastically in 250 years,” was Rob’s easy reply.
That made sense to Rick. “OK... what’s the other line?”
“Well, that took some effort. I had to merge infrared and x-ray images, but if you look at the next picture, you’ll see.”
Rick was already looking at it. “Wow,” he said out loud, causing Alex to perk up and check it out.
“That, my friend, is the forgotten trail. It appears to be buried by perhaps two to four feet of earth, but it leads to the next picture.”
Rick looked at the next image — a view of a mountain.
“And you’ll really like this next one — it’s a geological survey of this cave system you might find interesting.”
Rick received another file and quickly loaded it. He studied it carefully, comparing it to the inset map and discovered it matched perfectly, except... “Where’s the branch that leads to the X?”
“That, I can’t find. I did find some history of the caves, but this study was over a hundred years old and the last mention of it was shortly after. I pulled off property details, which is kind of standard if you’re planning a dig. I wasn’t sure if you wanted that or not.”
“Let me guess. Taylor?”
“Wow, close! The Taylor Foundation, a firm in Raleigh, owns the land. As far as I can tell, that is their only holding. It may be a wildlife preserve or something odd, but I’ll send the info!”
“Good. I’d like to see what kind of background these caves have.”
“All I can tell is that it’s completely grown over — you got the picture. There were no minerals found inside, either… maybe mined out? Hey! How did you get the name of the owner?”
“Did some research of my own; it was a lucky guess, really.”
“Oh, I get it. Can you send me a picture of the coin? I know someone who would probably jump right on it.”
Rick chuckled. “Hold on a sec…” He got up, took some pictures of the coin and sent them as Rob relayed the information about the current maps with GPS coordinates as well as the ‘Taylor Foundation’ information.
Rick printed all the information. Kaylie then lumbered over and asked what was going on. Rick took one look at her and decided not to tell her anything until morning because she looked so tired. “I think it’s time you girls get to bed. We have a track meet and a soccer game tomorrow.”
Both girls nodded, gave him hugs and kisses, and plodded up the stairs. Rick said bye to Rob and thanked him. Rob promised to continue researching and update him on anything else he could find.
He shook Anna awake and told her to go to bed. She whined, but agreed, and then promptly closed her eyes. He jolted her awake again and she realized he wasn’t going away so she reluctantly headed to bed. He then wrestled Jessica into his arms and woke Christy, eventually following her up the stairs and laying Jessica in the bed beside her.
Worn out himself, he finally retired to his own bed, where he slipped quietly in beside Abby and quickly entered dream world.