Jayden’s travel coffee maker kicked on and, as if by magic, the scent of her favorite Hawaiian blend filled the studio. Jay was upright and in the kitchen, mug in hand, before the two-cup pot was full.
Patiently, we waited until her liquid jump-start cooled enough for Jay to gulp it down. Smiling, she declared, “Now it’s a good morning.”
I bolted to the shower before she finished the first cup, and then made breakfast while she took her turn. We sat at the counter and ate our French toast in thoughtful silence, each scrape of a fork against a plate resonating with some profound significance. There was a ‘last meal before a life altering experience’ air in the room. The fact that we knew we would soon experience something that would alter our lives gave authenticity to the atmosphere.
The whoosh of a Hopper came earlier than I expected; Michael appeared near the coffee table with Annika and another female companion. They were each wearing wigs, with Annika’s dyed to match Jayden’s hair and the other girl’s dyed to match mine.
My doppelganger smiled and extended her hand, “I’m Neve. It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”
I’d never heard of her, so it was a little awkward, “Uh, hi.” I returned her grasp, and looked to Michael, “So I take it we’re hopping out of here?”
“Yeah, Annika and Neve came up with it last night. This saves us a little time.”
“It’s beautiful, really,” Annika explained. “They’ve been out there all night, and so they won’t suspect a thing when we drive off in the Blazer. We’ll board the plane, and after we land, we’ll hop back to you at the Society.”
“Wait,” I interrupted her. “Who had been outside all night?”
“Two of the Travelers, and one of the BOAS, and none of them will be the wiser,” Neve winked. They were both obviously proud of their contribution to our escape.
“They are gloating more than Artemis did the time she swallowed a canary in the West Virginia coal mines,” Michael joked as he scooped up our feline friend.
She gave a quick “Maow,” in reply before she arched up to head-butt his chin.
***
The light deposited us in a parking garage, next to a Lexus SUV with the engine running. Then, the passenger’s side window rolled down, and Mom leaned over from the driver’s seat. “Let’s get going.”
Jay and I took the backseat while Michael loaded our luggage in the cargo space. Orion already occupied the hump seat, curled up in the safety bed that was buckled in, so I unzipped my backpack, letting Artemis jump in to join him. They began purring in harmony instantly, and Artemis began their ritual of grooming each other by licking his ears.
Michael slid in the front seat and looked at Mom, “Ready for this?”
“No, but I don’t have much choice,” she replied as she drove out of the garage. I recognized the area - we were in Ontario, near the airport
“How long since you’ve been there, Marion?” Jayden asked.
“Sixty years, or so,” Mom answered. “Certain people had hinted that some harm might come to me if Daniel didn’t bring the tree back, so we went underground. He only returned for the necessary formalities to keep them from coming after us.”
Michael turned in his seat to look me in the eye, “Don’t worry; the particular members who made those threats are no longer with us.” Jay’s mouth fell open in sync with mine. “It took me six years to track down the last three....”
“But he was unrelenting until he did,” Mom finished for him.
We stopped at a gas station just off the I-15, and Michael took over driving from there. We were soon on our way up the mountain, headed for the Cajon pass. I decided that it was a good time to relay the story that Bailey had told me the night before, though I was sure that Michael - or one of the other members of his team - had been listening and would already know. Alec and Kristoff were probably already doing research to verify the details.
Jay was the first one to respond, “Wow. Just, wow.”
“If that is all true, then I would believe that there is a possibility that Bailey is innocent,” Mom said. “I think we still need to watch him carefully.”
Like crossing over into another world, within seconds of passing the Summit Inn, the greenery of the mountains gave way to the harsh landscape of the High Desert. The winds were particularly strong that day, and the dust was thick in the air, painting everything an even duller shade of gray.
We took the I-15 to the D Street exit, turning left onto a stretch of Route 66 also known as National Trails Hwy. Though I hadn’t been told where we were going, I had a pretty good idea at that point. The more direct route would have been to split off from the 15 at Hwy 395, but I remembered this as a detour my father regularly took when we took family ski trips to Mammoth Mountain.
We had been driving for almost an hour and a half when we passed the Bottle Tree Forest, on the way to Helendale. All of that glittering glass was a strange, but beautiful sight. It must have been a recent addition to the route, sometime in the last decade I guessed, because I didn’t remember having seen it before. There must have been hundreds of trees, sparkling in the sun, like a bejeweled oasis. Though it was a fleeting image, the wonderment the glass trees instilled in me finally prompted me to voice what was on my mind. “I’ve been wondering ... why was Dad experimenting with forward travel? Was it just to protect the tree?”
“No, though that was part of it,” Mom answered. “I don’t know, Michael explains it better than I do.”
“Not that much better,” he protested, but she shot him a look that he knew better than to argue with. He cleared his throat, “The theory is that you can’t occupy the same time as yourself, and this theory is supported by the fact that assuming they continued to eat the Essence, Daniel and other members of the Society, including those from the future, should have made it ... been there when I was, in the future.”
“But how do you know they weren’t there?” Jayden hypothesized. “Maybe they were just deep underground. On Earth perhaps, not with you on the moon?”
“That would have been nearly impossible,” he dismissed the idea flatly.
“Why?” Mom, Jay and I all asked at the same time.
His eyes were focused on the road, but I could tell by his expression he was seeing something in the far distant future. “I don’t know what I am or am not allowed to say. What could or could not affect the timeline.” He clenched his jaw, deep in thought. “Then again, the more I think about it, maybe it is possible,” he sighed. “But back to the forward travel; at some point the plan was to go forward to a point not long after I left so that we could stop the UCE from meddling with the past.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, “And so that we could save Nathaniel from whatever fate he met after I was gone.”
I had not considered what became of my great grandfather, or what would become of him since he hadn’t been left behind yet. I could only imagine what the UCE might do to him. The silence in the next five minutes was unbearable.
“Michael, you can’t leave them in suspense like that, tell them.” Mom urged.
“He was taken into custody after Samuel and the others escaped. They had severely damaged the equipment and destroyed much of the research, so Nathaniel was coerced into helping fix what his son broke.
“As far as I know, they didn’t cause him physical harm. Some of the Travelers have alluded to....”
Mom interrupted, “They were trying to distract you, and they played on your guilt.”
“I know, I know,” he shook his head. “I hope so, or I hope to prevent it from happening again if it does.”
“But anything you change in the future now also affects our past, right?” I was getting dizzy from it all again.
We turned off the highway when we reached Helendale, but instead of driving down into the remote community, Michael reset the tripometer as we went right on Helendale Road., continuing north.
“That’s why the goal is to get back to a time as soon after
Michael left as possible,” Mom said. “He has already been so important to this timeline; we can’t risk him not having come back at all.”
Michael laughed, “Marion, I think you may be my biggest cheerleader. But yes, for that, among a multitude of other reasons.” He went silent again after that. We could tell then he was done talking for awhile.
When the tripometer reached 10.2 miles, Michael began to slow the Hummer, and at 10.4 miles he pulled over, leaving the engine running. “I’ll be right back,” he remarked, and got out.
We watched after him as he stalked off into the desert, “What on Earth is he doing?” Jay wondered aloud.
“Oh, he’s just retrieving a key to the side door,” Mom winked at her.
Seventeen minutes passed before I saw him returning; with the sunglasses on and the trench coat billowing around him, his appearance might have been menacing to others, but I found it comforting.
He got back in the car and Mom handed him a bottle of water, which he chugged down in a few gulps. Then we got back on the road, and took the 58 West, back to the 395, and on to Mammoth.
***
We didn’t go as far as Mammoth Lakes, taking the turn-off for Convict Lake instead, and then right onto another road I didn’t see a sign for. After about five miles, Michael pulled into a deep turn-out, and then he took the Hummer off-road, at a slow crawl.
We rolled a hundred and fifty feet into the woods before we came to a stop in front of a wall of boulders, a seemingly natural formation, much like the one off Highway 39. Michael got out of the car, and pulled a metal rod from his coat. It was about eighteen inches long, with prongs at one end and a handle at the other, like the tool - we called a thingy-ma-bob - Mom used to turn on the sprinklers in the backyard. He inserted it between three of the stones, turned it one hundred eighty degrees counter-clockwise, and then pulled it back out. The boulders responded immediately, morphing their way into a cavernous opening that led to a dimly lit, two-lane paved tunnel.
Jay had not seen the other rock transformation from the exterior, and she gaped in amazement. “This is a side door?”
“Yes,” Mom replied. “The main entrance is on the North end. They didn’t see us coming, but they’ll know we’re here now.”
CHAPTER 20
09/28/2006
Welcome to the Society
The tunnel went on for what seemed like miles, but we were crawling along at fifteen miles per hour which made it seem longer. As we drove, I noticed carvings in the walls, most of which were difficult to make out as we passed, but the one I saw clearly depicted several gargoyles of the winged and monstrous variety.
After twenty to twenty-five minutes, we came to stadium sized cavern. It was well lit, and scores of other vehicles were stowed away in a honey-comb like structure along the walls.
We got out of the car and Michael led us to a doorway as a robotic forklift zoomed over, lifted the car, and placed it on a shelf on the fourth level of the parking structure. At a glance, it looked about half full, with maybe three hundred or so assorted vehicles. I wondered how many members of the Society would be there, and if any of them had carpooled.
“Ladies,” my attention turned back to Michael, who bowed beside an open carriage. “Your chariot awaits.”
The ‘chariot’ was an oval shape with a stainless steel - or something that looked like it - exterior finish, and a thickly padded black leather couch wrapped around the entire interior. The part that I found unnerving was the lack of any mechanical features. There was nothing holding it off the ground, yet there it hovered eighteen inches above.
“It’s magnetic, dear,” Mom whispered.
“All aboard,” Jay was clearly thrilled and led the way.
Mom gestured for me to go next, she followed and Michael came last. The door slid shut behind him and he took his seat. “At the risk of sounding like a theme park attendant, please keep your hands and feet within the car at all times.”
Jay started humming It’s a Small World; I shook my head and asked, “How does this work?”
In response, Michael waved his hand to the back of the door, which was a touch screen panel. He leaned over and drew a circle with his index finger, and then tapped his finger in the center, and we were off.
The concept of the magnetic hover car was something I had browsed in techie mags and websites, but the infrastructure required to make it mainstream would take decades to develop, along with technology this sophisticated. The ride was swift, silent and smoother than any form of transportation I’d yet encountered, with the exception of the elevator to the Mansion.
Our first stop brought us into a room in which the ceiling, walls and floor were all a lustrous, semi-reflective black surface. A wall slid in place behind us, sealing the way we entered and leaving no trace of any way out. The room was so small that the walls were only an inch from the sides of the car, and the ceiling was only inches from Michael’s head.
Illumination seemed to come from within the walls, as there were no fixtures in the room. There was no warning either when the lighting changed from white to black light. The wall to my right began to glow in a neon turquoise hue, and moved toward us. For a fleeting moment I thought we would be smashed between the walls, but it was an optical illusion and the turquoise was actually a beam of light about an inch thick and appeared opaque; it stretched from one wall to the other, from floor to ceiling. Slowly, it drew across the room, like the light in a flatbed scanner. It went across, then back and across again, making three passes in all.
“It’s the security system,” Mom explained, noticing the stunned looks Jayden and I wore.
After the third pass, the turquoise beam melted back into the wall, the black light flipped back to white, and the wall opposite the one we entered opened.
On through a series of narrow corridors we flew. The walls were too close to allow for more than one car and at a few intersections, I saw the blur of another vehicle paused for us to pass. After five or six other cars had paused for us, we came to a swift but steady stop to allow another through. This one traveled a bit slower than ours, and was longer, carrying ten or twelve passengers all dressed in formal ballroom attire. It appeared to be eighteenth or nineteenth century formal ballroom attire. Weird.
After twenty five minutes of twists and turns at near roller coaster speeds, we glided to a stop in the middle of a dimly lit tunnel. My mother put her thumb on the control panel of the car; when she removed it, the door to the car slid open at the same time as the smooth granite wall on the other side did, and she led the way into my family’s suite. She waved her arm around the room like a tour guide, directing her group’s attention to the next attraction, “Welcome to your other home away from home.”
Jay giggled, “So what’s this make now, like thirty?” She was referring to the real vacation homes that were among my inheritance from my father.
“Not funny,” I punched her in the arm. There were eight, but two of them were technically time shares. Most of the time, the six houses were rented out, but that was all managed by Dad’s company. Mom used them from time to time on her adventures, but I had only been to each of them once or twice since Dad died.
But this was far different from any of those places, and from the Mansion in the Mountain. The walls in the main room were the same glossy black as the security screening room, and I would find them the same throughout. As I stepped closer, my reflection materialized to a near perfect image a foot away, hovering like a ghost in the darkness surrounding it.
The furniture was all white, curvy and modern in style; the room felt clean, pure. For decor there were five orchid plants in clear glass pots, each perched atop a three foot tall white marble cylinder, full of gorgeous white blooms. Everything seemed to be floating, creating an ethereal ambiance.
“Ladies,” the tone of Mom’s voice went up half an octave on the second syllable, and we both cringed. She was ready to handle business. “I’ll show you to your rooms, so you can get dres
sed. We have a ball to attend.”
***
The Great Hall at the Mansion in the Mountain was dwarfed in comparison to what Mom called the ballroom. The smooth polished face of the inner mountain looked down from forty feet above. Twelve black marble columns running down each side of the room, each spaced twelve feet apart, and stretching the full height of the hall.
I was glad we changed our clothes, though Jay and I weren’t quite the right period - the gathering much resembled what my mental picture of some high-society debutante ball on the Upper East Side would be - in the mid-nineteenth century. Though I felt out of place in my little black dress, it would’ve been worse if I’d worn my jeans and boots.
A few couples were on the floor dancing a waltz, but the way most of the ladies in gowns and gentlemen in jackets moved fluidly around the tables laden with drink and delicacies gave the scene an air of a well-rehearsed production, complete with a string quartet to supply the music. It wasn’t long before our entrance interrupted the show.
A hush fell over the room, even the music fell from forte to pianissimo. Within seconds our presence was marked, as was Mom’s youth, and the vultures fell upon us. Several women who looked to be around the age Mom was a week ago were the first to approach.
“Marion, it’s been too long!”
“How wonderful to see you!”
“You look marvelous!”
“Oh, how we’ve missed you!”
Yes, it was that sickening.
Mom showed that she had skills in their game by jumping right in to play with them. Smiling as graciously as a queen returning to her subjects after a long sojourn in a foreign land, she introduced us, “Ladies, allow me the honor of introducing my daughter, Samantha, and her friend Miss Jayden Gage.”
My hands were being seized by strangers, as were Jay’s, and we were received with exaggerated enthusiasm.
“What a lovely young woman you’ve become.”
“How nice to meet you.”
“Your dress is beautiful.”
“That color is so becoming on you.”