chapter 59
TEAM 1 & 2, YEAR: 1200
Jake watched as Finn counted the teams down. As he predicted, the teams disappeared, but he remained behind. Jacketless. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying not to panic. He was stranded in the year 1200 for good. He was now on a permanent vacation where he would have to learn how to live all over again. But this time, he would need to be entirely self-sufficient.
When he opened his eyes, he saw something had been left behind. Sitting on the grass where the supply crates stood just seconds ago, were several compressed buildings and all of the Elevanium battery packs. Riley, he thought, unwaveringly pragmatic. He knelt down and picked up the miniaturized house trailer, food pantry and work shed. She would take a lot of heat for leaving him billions of dollars in tools and buildings, but he suspected they would go easy on her, given the circumstances.
Jake decompressed his living quarters and set it where it had stood for the last six months. Thankfully, the trailer’s heat and electricity ran on Elevanium and the battery packs would last longer than hundreds of his lifetimes. He thought about the irony of how he was sent back to destroy the Elevanium but now, the few crumbs that remained in the battery packs would actually save him. He smiled weakly. Thanks to Riley, he would be living in luxury compared to where he thought he would have to sleep tonight.
Beside the trailer, he decompressed the work shed and the food pantry. Jake walked into the pantry unsure of what he would find inside, if anything. The meat was long gone, but surely a few NRD rations remained. He opened the freezer door. It was completely empty except for a small, white box frozen to one of the bottom shelves. It had been labelled “Darren’s Spices” but then crossed out. He pulled hard on the box to break it free from the ice and opened the lid. He pulled out what looked like brown cardboard packing peanuts. That’s an odd way to pack spices, he thought. He shrugged, placed the box back on the shelf and closed the door. He knew he would have to go hunting at some point. This freezer would be a valuable asset.
He walked among the rows of steel shelves and straightened them after being jostled around in the supply crate. The shelves, so full six months ago were nearly bare except for the occasional box here and there. A shelf at the back caught his eye. He saw the words “NRD Dehydrated Food Rations” stamped on the top of each package. He flipped through the packages and read the labels. Despite his gratitude, he shuddered. “Liver ’n’ Onions,” “Salisbury Steak” and “Beef Buddy.” What the hell is Beef Buddy? he wondered, looking at the package. Guess we’ll find out tonight. He kept the Beef Buddy and set the rest of the white packages on the shelf.
Jake shook the package idly in his hand as he meandered around the different shelves to see what else remained. As he knelt down near the back of the pantry, he picked up a large can and read the label. “Pickled Jalapeños.” He set the can back on the shelf and turned to stand when he noticed three white cardboard boxes tucked under a wooden shelf along the back wall. He got down on his hands and knees and pulled one of the boxes forward. If he had been standing, he would have fallen over. The box contained enough compressed food to feed an army. Jake poked through the tiny boxes of cereal, soups, noodles and cans of fruit and vegetables. He slid the box to the side and reached for the other two and found they contained similar contents. Jake inspected one of the miniaturized boxes of Mini-Wheats. He smiled, tossed it back into the box and folded the flaps back down.
Jake decided it would be wise to decompress everything just in case something happened to his VersaTool. He carried the boxes of food to his trailer and spent the next several hours unpacking and decompressing the food in the kitchen he had never used. He looked at his overflowing kitchen cabinets and closet, filled with cans and boxes of food and he remembered the box in the freezer. He raced back to the food pantry, not wanting to get his hopes up. He flung the freezer door open, grabbed the white box and opened the lid to inspect its contents more closely. They were not spices, but compressed packages of meat. He decompressed the box and it filled over half the freezer. The discrepancies in Maya’s inventory now made sense. The food had not been stolen after all, just overlooked in haste.
That night, Jake lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, unable to stem the flow of thoughts and emotions that raced through his mind. Life as he knew it had ended. His heart ached over the loss of 2097, and he missed his family all over again. The biggest blow of all came when he realized that the only pictures he had of his family had been the ones he carried in his wallet.
He suspected loneliness would bother him the most. The few months after Brit and the kids died were the loneliest of his entire life. Even when standing in the middle of a busy street or being in a room full of co-workers, he always felt alone. Lexi had helped him come back to the land of the living, and now that he remembered the joy of being around others, everyone had been taken away.
He thought about how he would never have to work again. This made him less sad, even though he had enjoyed his job immensely. On the other hand, he had already lived here for six months and there was something warm and familiar with the surroundings. He decided to embrace his fresh start.
The next morning, Jake perused the work shed. He opened the toolbox drawers and saw the array of tools. Boxes and crates were stacked hastily along the wall beneath the mezzanine. He expected them to be full of useless, miscellaneous parts and proprietary tools. But he made a mental note to go through them later because he stumbled across something far more interesting. He pulled Ben’s fishing rod and tackle box out from underneath the mezzanine stairs and headed toward to the lake.
The first few days flew by. During the op, there had been no real time to fully appreciate or explore his surroundings and now, having nothing but time, he spent his days exploring his new back yard. However, by the end the third week, the novelty had worn off and time had slowed considerably. He kept his mind busy to avoid dwelling on his circumstances, fearing that if he thought about it too much, he might go insane. While skipping rocks across the water where he and the others had spent so many warm sunny afternoons, he wondered if he should build a more permanent home. The trailer was a life-saver to be sure, but it was poorly insulated and not overly sturdy. If a tree fell on it, its slight aluminum structure would crumple like a tin can. The thin door would be no deterrent if a bear was determined to get in.
The idea of building a house was a dream Jake used to distract himself—a happy place his mind could go when he became overwhelmed by his plight. He thought about the idea sporadically at first, but it quickly became an obsession. He even had the perfect place picked out for it—the grassy meadow that overlooked the lake where he and his team spent much of their free time. He had never built a house before, but he had seen it done enough to get an idea of how to go about it. After extensive thought and contemplation, Jake decided it was something well within his ability to accomplish considering the tools he had available to him, particularly his VersaTool. With nothing else to do, it seemed illogical not to try.
As Jake cut down and collected the trees he would need, he thought about the differences between the early settlers building their homes and the home that Jake planned to build. He recalled his fifth-grade history books and the illustrations depicting settlers building homes with axes and other rudimentary tools. He could not imagine how painfully long it must have taken. Jake had never shied away from hard work, but he shuddered at the thought of being in his situation without his VersaTool. He could do more work in one hour with the VersaTool than a handful of settlers could do in one week. Thinking about the inefficiencies of the past renewed Jake’s appreciation for how good he had it, despite how bad he had it. His situation could have been far worse—he could have been stranded with nothing.
Nearly two months had passed since Jake had found himself stranded. The summer weather continued well into the fall and, for this, Jake had been grateful. The time spent building his home had been uncomfortably warm, but he could remedy that
with a quick dip in the lake. It was far better than the alternative: early snow.
Jake stood inside his unplumbed, unfurnished home and celebrated his major milestone. He took in the vaulted ceiling and loft area. He imaged how the space would look with the furnishings from the trailer. He held up a plastic wine glass filled with water and peach crystals and drank to the roof over his head. Satisfaction and accomplishment filled him. Unquestionably, the home lacked the polish of a professional builder, but he had built himself a solid home that he could comfortably spend the rest of his years in.
Jake sat in the empty window frame and looked out over the lake. The warm fall sun sparkled like diamonds on the waves blanketing the water’s surface. He watched a squirrel run up the tree beside him carrying an acorn in its mouth as he scratched his chin through his scruffy beard. With no one around, shaving and haircuts were a thing of the past. However, thanks to Riley, a hot shower was not.
Despite the warm days, the nights were growing cooler and Jake sensed the streak of pleasant weather may be drawing to a close. He knew the weather could change from fall to winter in the flick of a switch. He wanted to scavenge the windows, heating, plumbing and other fixtures from the trailer and get them installed in his new house before it became too cold.
Jake returned to his house after falling several trees and he stacked them neatly behind his waterfront home before decompressing them. To keep his mind occupied during the winter months, he planned to try his hand at building furniture. The how of it he had not yet figured out, but he thought he would at least try.
He watched the sun sinking towards the water and debated whether to cut down another load of trees or begin disassembling the trailer to get a jump on the conversion tomorrow. Opting to finish collecting the trees, he headed into the forest. Careful not to cut down too many trees in one area, he headed deeper into the woods in the direction of the camp.
As Jake walked through the forest, he focused on the canopy above, looking for only the straightest and tallest of trees. He paid for his inattentiveness and tripped on a tree root, falling forward. He caught himself on a small birch before toppling completely to the ground. Jake laughed to himself as he had not learned his lesson from the previous three times he had done exactly this. He righted himself, continued to walk and looked down occasionally to watch where he stepped through the thick brush. In the distance he spotted a perfect tree and made a beeline for it. As he walked, he kicked something and stumbled. He stepped forward to catch his balance, but his feet had become tangled in roots and this time, he fell to the ground. He landed on the soft forest floor, but the side of his face collided with a fallen log. Dazed, he sat up and touched his right eyebrow with the back of his hand. His face stung and when he pulled his hand away, he saw blood on it. He sighed as blood dripped liberally onto his shirt. Laundry soap was an amenity he lacked.
He reached forward to unsnag his foot from what had tripped him and inhaled sharply at the sight of what had tangled around his feet. He blinked in disbelief. He removed his foot from inside the strap of a familiar black backpack. Thoughts flooded through his mind and as he tried to make sense of what he saw. Did the team send this back for me? No. It’s impossible. All the packs would have gone offline when they returned. Plus, they knew the coordinates of the camp. They wouldn’t have set it to drop in the bushes. It’s probably a pack Ian stashed in the forest as a backup? Or was it a trap set by Ian? The more Jake thought about it, the less likely the pack seemed intended for him and more the work of Ian, whatever his motivation may have been. He looked at the number at the bottom of the bag and his confusion doubled. Thirteen. This was the pack Ian had been using when they had captured him. The same pack Jake had been wearing when he landed on it, smashing the controls to pieces after the explosion at the tunnel. Unlucky thirteen. How did it get here? I saw Riley put it in the box just before they left. He unzipped the front flap and saw the control panel in one piece. What the hell?
He saw the oversized watch looped around the strap but did not put it on, afraid to get his hopes up. Instead, he turned the pack on. He heard the quiet whine of the control panel run through its boot sequence. The device seemed to fire up with no issue as far as he could tell, but then he had only used it once before. Had it been fixed? Would the pack work? Perhaps it would malfunction, doing God only knows what to him or, worse, take him somewhere else altogether.
Jake looked around the forest he had come to accept as his home. Was he ready to go? Did he even want to go? Could he afford to get his hopes up and have them dashed? He had just come to terms with being stranded. Upon reflection, other than the initial terror, he had found his time here very enjoyable. He thought about the easy start he had with food, tools and shelter, all thanks to Riley. Even the weather had held out for him. He wondered for a moment what it would be like living here when the temperature was thirty-five degrees below zero. Having to find food when it was thirty-five below…blizzards.
In Jake’s brief moment of internal reflection, he learned that he was more than ready to take a chance. With his mind now made up to leave, he felt a pressing urgency to leave immediately—as if this was a limited time offer and he needed to act right away. He ran back to the camp and into the work shed. He grabbed the nearest crate he could find, pulled off the lid, dumped the contents and ran out. Using his VersaTool, he compressed his trailer, the work shed and food pantry and placed all three into the box. He grabbed the crate and raced back to his home on the water’s edge. He compressed his new home and placed it carefully beside the other buildings inside the box and secured the lid. He grabbed a tag out of the backpack and tagged the box so it would accompany him back. He felt his arms and hands vibrating with excitement as he entered the date and time. He forced himself to take several deep breaths before fixing an error he had made on the year. He zipped up the pack, slid his arms through the straps and put on the watch. He readied his finger over the white LEAP button, closed his eyes and held his breath. He pressed the white button.