Authors: S D Taylor
The pause lasted for a full minute until Tom said, “I think this is where I am supposed to kiss you.”
Megan nodded slowly. “Yes. That’s true. You need to kiss me now.”
The two lovers had been brought together by a plane crash, pursued by terrorists and nearly killed five times in three days. But along the way had found something together that they wanted to last long after all the action was over. Neither could say exactly what that question and that kiss meant, but they both knew from that moment forward they would be looking for the better to balance out the worse that they had already experienced.
After their kiss, their wet clothes embrace quickly convinced them that naked embraces were the better way to go. “We need to hit the trail before it gets any later. Ready?”
Megan put her hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m ready. And thanks for helping me survive this adventure. Thanks so very much.”
Tom put his hand on hers and smiled. “You will never know how much I love you.”
They walked across the small clearing and into the dense forest to the south. “Will we ever get back to this spot?”
Tom turned for one last look. “I hope so. It is a great place to dry clothes.”
Chapter 14
It took Erin a second to orient herself when she woke up on the future people’s boat. Peter and Gaby were still asleep, squeezed together in one of the lower bunks, enjoying the physical closeness while they could. At least fully dressed physical closeness. Erin knew that even the tug of hormones would fail to make anyone feel very sexy in this sterile, futuristic jail cell. Especially when you knew they were watching your every move. Erin wondered what their world was like. She didn’t have to wonder any longer about what they ate since she saw it was sitting on the small shelf by the door. Apparently it was delivered in the night by an unseen waiter. Probably a waiter that looked a lot like Insect Man.
Erin walked over to the food, trying to stretch a bit as she got up. The bed was reasonably comfortable but she had apparently curled up like a pretzel during the night. Her neck was suffering the worst. She wished Doug was there to rub it for her.
There were three small trays on the shelf. Each one had a glass with a green drink, a small covered container of some type of fruit in a sauce and plate with what appeared to be a rectangular yellow omelet sitting in a reddish brown sauce. There was a single utensil that was designed to cut and scoop, but not be used as a weapon. It had a plastic handle attached to a rectangular piece of metal with a slightly concave side opposite to where the handle attached. It was essentially a square spoon. You could use the straight edges to cut with. Erin didn’t think it would work well with a steak, but maybe they didn’t have meat in their strange future world.
She took the small tray back to her bunk and decided to be the brave one and try the food. The green drink was the biggest challenge, but it was not as bad as she envisioned. It tasted like apple juice and tomato juice mixed together. Slightly sweet. The fruit in the cup was round and melon-like. The sauce had a faint mint taste that was quite unique. The yellow substance might have been egg, but it was egg in a much different way than Erin had ever seen. She had seen the omelets prepared by sushi chefs and this was similar in size and texture. The sauce it was sitting in was the biggest surprise. It was much spicier than Erin had been expecting and it shocked her at first. But after a couple of bites, she became quite fond of it. The breakfast was good and for the first time, she found herself able to attribute a slight bit of humanity to these future people. Until she ate that breakfast, she envisioned that they ate live rats or something else equally disgusting.
Peter and Gaby finally began stirring and immediately showed interested in Erin’s breakfast.
“Should we wait for a half hour to see if you survive?” Gaby stretched her neck to get a better view of what Erin was eating.
Erin laughed. “I think it is safe. I found it to be quite good. Surprisingly good.”
Peter grabbed the two remaining trays and handed one to Gaby, who was still sitting on the edge of the bunk. Peter sat on the floor and studied the unique utensil. “Is this a spife or a knoon?”
Gaby looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Well the fast food places call a combination spoon and fork a spork. I was trying to figure out what they would call a combination knife and spoon.”
“I vote for spife. Knoon will be too confusing with noon or spoon.” Erin set her dishes back on the shelf and wondered when they would receive their next visit from Dara.
She lay back on her bunk and thought about her visit with the older Erin. It had been so interesting and yet shocking at the same time. So much of life revolves around the journey of discovery. The journey defines us, both the good and the bad. After reflection, Erin wondered if it was a good idea to find out what happened in that alternate version of her life. She wondered how many versions of her life were underway now with the temporal distortions resulting in different Erins in different realities. She imagined that there could be many Erin stories that were happy endings and many others that were tragedies. Was it possible for her to change any of those results or were each of the versions following a predetermined path?
“What are you thinking about? You seem to be lost in thought.” Dara stood at the door.
“I was wondering when we might see you again. Thank you for breakfast.” Erin looked up at her, but did not get up. She was afraid of what might come next.
“You need to come with me, Erin.” Dara opened the door just wide enough for Erin to pass through.
Erin walked over slowly and went through the door, keeping her eyes on Dara the whole time. “What are we doing today? I hope you are not planning to saw my leg off.”
Dara paused and looked at Erin intently. “What a wonderful idea. That was not the plan, but we could make an exception if it would make you feel special.”
Erin made a note to lay off the sarcasm before it got her into real trouble. She turned to Dara and said simply, “I apologize. I was only joking.”
“Good. That’s better. Come with me.” Dara walked briskly through the door at the end of the cell block and into the larger room beyond.
The cells were arranged around two hallways that ran down the center of the boat. Future Erin was kept in a cell in the other hallway. The room that Dara led Erin into was designed to serve multiple functions. On the port side there was the boat’s galley. Large doors that were refrigerators or freezers, as well as neatly organized shelves that held a variety of packaged foods and cooking utensils. Everything was shiny and new looking. Just what Erin would have expected from people from the future. There were a couple of small round tables attached to the floor and there were a number of three legged white plastic chairs scattered around the tables.
On the other side of the room was what appeared to Erin to be exercise equipment. A treadmill, two resistance weightlifting machines and a round, corkscrew machine that Erin couldn’t figure out.
Dara saw Erin staring at it. “It is a circular stair climber. The steps continually appear around the side while the tubular part rotates and pulses up and down. It takes some practice to become proficient. Please, follow me.” Dara led her out the door and onto the open deck near the bow. The bridge was above the room they had just exited. With the opaque windows, Erin could not see if anyone was in there watching them. She assumed someone was on the watch as the boat moved slowly away from the island. Dara went to the port railing and pointed back to the island. “Say goodbye, for now.”
Erin felt a sudden wave of fear. “Why? Where are we going?”
Dara turned and sat on the bench that ran along the side of the boat. “Please sit down and I will explain what we plan to do with you.”
Erin looked at her then slowly sat down on the small bench. The two women were sitting close to each other and Erin was very uncomfortable being this close to someone she judged to be so evil.
Dara broke the uncomfortable pause. “We are here to clean up the mess that was caused by you, Doug and the whole lot of you who were involved in the vortex weapon testing.”
Erin turned quickly towards her at that statement. “Hey, wait a minute. We didn’t do anything. Doug and I were on an airplane headed to Alaska and were shot down by the people with the weapon. All we did was try to survive and stop them from using the weapon. And hopefully get rescued.”
“It really doesn’t matter what your involvement in the affair was. We are not seeking to blame anyone. We are here to clean out anything that doesn’t belong here. Anything that ended up being moved into a different time. We have a way to identify your temporal signature. And we can produce the vortex on command now. We can target specific times we want to visit.”
“Why are you doing this?” Erin was surprised that Dara was talking to her without the superior attitude she had displayed up to now.
“We are trying to repair what you have done. Repair the world before it gets further out of our control with unexpected events. In our world, you won’t see the trees that cover the island out there in front of us. You won’t see the same blue skies and white clouds like you see above us. You will find that it is a much different world than what you are used to. And by different, I don’t mean better.”
Erin turned to face Dara. “This world is much different than my world as well. We are seeing a version of the island that is from a much earlier time than Doug and I come from.”
Dara cut her off. “More than two hundred years earlier, to be precise. The most recent time fracture brought you to the year 1790. All of you will remain here for the rest of your lives. Aside from those we remove for testing.”
“What if we don’t want to be removed for testing? We are not your lab rats. We are real people. Can’t you just leave us alone to live out our lives here?”
Dara laughed. “We are all someone’s lab rat in this great cosmic experiment. My team needs to find out whose reality was changed as a result of the time fractures. If we can eliminate all of them and then destroy all the time vortex weapons and their designers, we can eliminate all the damage that was done. That should create a timeline that preserves one version of the earth for future generations.”
Erin realized the implications of Dara’s statement. She and Doug might be able to argue that they were “originals” but Peter, Tom, Megan, future Erin and her two future daughters would all be slated for elimination if Dara’s team was allowed to complete their plans.
“I am not qualified to debate quantum mechanics with you, but as I understand it, every time we transit a fracture in the fabric of time and space, we are creating a new timeline and a new reality. Even if we went back to an earlier time from our perspective, it would not change the timeline we just exited. I don’t think you can fix things, even if you destroy all of us.”
“Well there isn’t any debate. We have our orders, our assigned mission and we will succeed. But we want to ensure that we are thorough and don’t cause any inadvertent changes to the timeline.”
Erin knew it was pointless to argue, but she had to try. “So you have no moral problems with destroying the lives of all these people?”
“We don’t consider any of you ‘people.’ We are from a highly refined civilization that you could not even imagine. Your primitive technology is laughable when compared to the achievements in our world. Your lives are meaningless to us. Frankly, they must seem pretty meaningless to you as well.”
Erin laughed now. “Oh my God! You are so full of yourself. If you guys are so wonderful, why is the pulse vortex weapon such a problem for you? It seems to me that all of your achievements were built on top of the technologies that we discovered earlier. What year are you from?”
Dara looked back at the island, enjoying the look of the green forest and blue sky overhead. “Our current time is 2315 in your terms. And as I said, it is very different world than what you are familiar with. You will see shortly.”
“Are you taking us there?” Erin felt a sense of dread deep inside of her. She was starting to wonder if she would ever see Doug again. She began to believe what Rin had told her.
“Of course. Why did you think we captured you?”
“Ok, then if I am just another one of the zoo animals to you, why are we standing here having this conversation?” Erin was also looking at the island in the distance, wishing she could be magically transported there. Wishing she could see Doug. See if he was alive or dead. At least have a chance to say goodbye. And thank him one more time for saving her life. Maybe one last time, she thought with sadness.
“I don’t know. I have never allowed myself to consider the humanity or feelings of any of my test subjects. The goals of my mission have always shielded me from such weakness. But seeing you and that older version of you talking, it started me thinking about the way we are approaching this clean up.”
“Why did that matter to you? Haven’t the other people you eliminated sparked any feelings? Did you kill them all after the tests?”
Dara paused as if she was trying to decide how to answer that question. “At first, the teams were ordered to kill anyone we found in alternate timelines that resulted from the quantum fractures. Then the Yir-Lak Command ordered that we study the phenomenon first before the destruction. So now we have a chance to study each of you for a time. It could be a few days or it could be a few years. We don’t tell you that. Unfortunately, we will probably kill you when we are finished. Since we started the capture and study method, we have not had many subjects that spoke English. Your group is unique. I can actually talk to you. And we haven’t finished studying anyone yet so I haven’t had to terminate anyone yet.”