Ascent of the Aliomenti (35 page)

He’d enjoyed the generator design Anna and Sarah had developed, and was able to study the plans and memorize them so that he could reconstruct it on his island. He then focused on changing the design from one using a turning wheel to generate electricity, to one that used salt water as a fuel. One he was able to identify the correct adjustments, he had a combined generator and engine that ran cleanly and produced sufficient power to propel his craft through the water and power the interior. He hoped.

After painting the name
Nautilus
on the side, Will had teleported into the craft to begin the final preparations for the test run. Like the bunkers, it had been built for one with Aliomenti skills, and therefore there was no need to compromise the integrity of the hull by creating a hatch he didn’t need. The view through the panoramic window showed nothing but the waters of the Eden island river leading out to the ocean, and he was struck by the silence despite the clarity of the view of the outside. The silence would give him a sense of true isolation, turning the vessel into a place where he could be alone to think, to enjoy the view as everything crawled by.

It was time. He stepped back to the rear of the craft. The engines burned the salt in the water of the ocean as fuel, and there was little salt here near his house. He powered up his Energy and used it to float the craft down the river toward the ocean, and eventually the water turned salty as the craft approached the mouth and entered the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He pulled his Energy back in and used it to spark the engine, to prime it for its initial operation and movement.

The spark initiated the burning process, propelling the wheels and gears that suctioned salt water into the system. The flow of the water triggered the equivalent of a spark plug that would ignite with the fuel’s entry into the engine chamber. The spark separated the salt from the water as if it was triggering a fission-style explosive reaction, propelling the liquid through the tubes leading out to the sides of the craft. His steering system was very basic. Turning the wheel altered the amount of water propelled out of the tubes, so that the amount expelled was greatest in the direction opposite the way he wished to move. The propulsion system was clean and simple, and at this point it was also slow. He had the backup system that could not fail, his own Energy and telekinetic abilities, but he had no interest in relying on them. If the craft couldn’t move at high speeds at this point, it was an acceptable outcome.

The ballast system was next. Without taking on water for weight, the craft floated in the water as would a normal boat. Will had decided that he’d spend evenings afloat rather than below the water. Until he could develop more advanced computing systems that could handle the calculations, until he could develop sensors able to detect obstacles that might damage the craft, he could not risk sleeping below the surface.

The water moved in to fill the ballast tanks, the
Nautilus
gained mass, and gradually it began to sink below the surface of water. Will held his breath, listening for the telltale sounds of a leak, but nothing came. The craft was waterproof, or was so at the modest depths he currently occupied.

Will allowed the craft to find its level for the amount of ballast it had taken on, and it stabilized roughly three hundred feet below the surface. With his concerns about the security of the hull and windows cleared, he now turned his concern to the air purification system. The air system extracted oxygen from the water processed by the propulsion system, in which oxygen was released by the spark that expelled the desalinated water out the sides of the vessel. It was a simple and elegant solution, one that had taken him a century of design and testing to perfect.

The air remained clean and pure, and he felt no signs of light-headedness, no indication that problems with the air would slowly poison him.

He moved to the wheel, and pushed the lever to increase the inflow of water to the propulsion system. The act forced the system to widen the intakes, pulling water in more quickly and forcing the spark plug to fire with greater frequency. The flow of water spurting out the back increased, and the
Nautilus
picked up speed. Will tested the steering, veering first left, then right, and then moderately adjusted the depth up and down. The craft worked well and navigated smoothly. His first trials had not gone so well; he’d run prototypes that had not been able to return to the surface, one in which he’d not been able to move to the left, and another in which the propulsion system failed to cycle oxygen into the air purification system for breathing. Each lesson, each small failure, had gone into building this craft, and each system was refined and perfected until it was the best he knew he could build, failing another evolution in technology.

The approach had served him well in building this first operational craft. He propelled the
Nautilus
forward, deep enough that he’d remain unseen by any ships passing above, but shallow enough that he could still navigate by the light of the sun. He’d made a note on his list of enhancements to build lights on the outside of the craft in the event he’d need to travel at night or at greater depths. Mentally, he made a note to make the exterior lights upgrade a priority upon his return to Eden.

He headed south, using the compass he’d built as a guide, and the propulsion system moved him at a rate he judged at about fifteen miles per hour. He didn’t
need
a speedometer, because he wasn’t on a timetable. He wanted to enjoy the journey, not race through it. In the future, he’d upgrade the engines to provide greater speeds in the event he’d need them, and a speedometer to measure the speed of the craft, but he didn’t consider those critical upgrades.

Will traveled through the depths of the ocean waters for an hour before resurfacing, an effect much like teleportation. He’d left his island and suddenly resurfaced in the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight. As the ballast water was released and the craft floated to the surface, he found himself letting go a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. As much as he’d tested, as long as he’d spent building the craft, he still feared the unknown and the potential failure.

The craft broke the surface and settled atop the water, the waves lapping gently against the side. Will could see both above and below the surface via the clear hull section, but he wanted to breathe the salty air. He teleported to the top of the craft with a bit of food and a mug of water, sat down, and enjoyed a private picnic lunch, lulled into a sense of serenity by the gently rolling waves.

Feeling introspective, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the diary. He’d not checked it for a long time, and had lost interest in what the device had to say. It was clear that they wanted him to work it out on his own, living naturally, and he began to wonder if
he
had told them to do that. The diary hadn’t built itself; the dates and messages were clearly chosen by someone with knowledge of what had happened. Who better than him? With a sigh, he realized the truth of the matter.
He’d
written the messages, chosen the times when the diary would provide guidance. A bemused smile formed on his face. Add another item to his list of things to do. Write down messages the diary should display, and the dates and times they should be available.

That raised another question. Even if he himself built the device in his hands, even if he crafted every message, he’d still need to get it to his children and Adam so they could plant it in the time machine for his journey. He realized that he’d need to give Adam the diary itself or the notes required to build it at some point before his birth. The trio had told him he’d not been seen in his current form after that time. Only Adam would be around both before his birth and at the time of Will’s rescue from the Hunters. Only Adam could ensure the diary made it back into his younger hands.

Could he trust Adam with something so important?

Did he have a choice?

He sighed. He was nearly five hundred years old, and yet his journey to that future point in time was not yet half over. Could he make it that long? Would he ever see Hope again?

Was all of this worth it?

He tapped on the diary screen, and nearly dropped it into the waters of the ocean.

He did not see words this time, but a picture with a caption.

Hope, her face pale but joyous. Josh, at the age of seven. Both had jet black hair. And with them was a tiny girl with hair of gold, wrapped into a papoose of blankets, held lovingly by her mother, her big brother beaming at the camera as he rested a hand upon her.

The caption was simple. Evangeline (“Angel”) Elizabeth Trask. Born September 1, 2030.

He’d been through a great deal. He’d needed to restore from near death two women dear to him from the horrific acts of others. He was trying to sail a craft that shouldn’t exist across the ocean. He’d developed abilities that most considered the realm of fantasy. Yet this simple photograph was the most powerful image, and provoked the most powerful emotion, he’d ever experienced. It was proof that what he was working toward for such an incredible amount of time
was
worth the incredible effort and agony. He was not living for today; he was surviving to make certain that the woman he saw in the image would become the wife and mother he’d known, and that those two precious children would come into the world at the appointed time.

That simple image helped him to realize the true advantage he held over the other Aliomenti. It wasn’t the technological or Energy advantage he had because he’d come to them from the future. His advantage was that his life had a purpose beyond his own. Without that motivation, he might well succumb to the temptation to end it all, for he might sense he had nothing else to accomplish. That was the fate of so many of the Aliomenti. The reason they reached such an end, though, was because they lived for the day, for themselves, for no purpose other than their own well-being. Eventually, there was nothing else they could accomplish for themselves, and life lost meaning. When their lives lost purpose, when they could not acquire anything more that provided them with any joy, they ended those lives that no longer seemed worth living.

But
his
life had a purpose, one greater than himself. The picture had reminded him of his journey and his true mission in the most powerful way it could. He needed to refocus, and make sure that nothing happened to jeopardize the success of that mission.

Nothing.

XXVII

Orphan

1600 A.D.

One hundred fifty years later.

Will piloted the submarine into the dock he’d built on the shore of the Eden island river. He’d made continuous refinements to the vessel over the decades, and had fine-tuned the craft to provide further amenities. In fact, it had become so comfortable for him that he thought of the submarine as his home, more so than even Eden, and far more than any of the Aliomenti outposts throughout the western half of the European continent.

His official residence at this time was Watt, the outpost on the southeastern coast of England, where he’d spent a good portion of his time over the past few centuries. Sarah and Anna had performed wonders with electricity, moving beyond the basic lighting and crude inventory tracking systems of yesteryear. They continued to improve the switches that controlled the flow of electricity, primarily due to the work of William. The former orphan had mastered the ability to create minute strings of metal capable of channeling electricity where it was needed, and the improved switches were of his design and creation. They’d improved the inventory systems, and the computing systems could now track their financial holdings, a far more complex set of operations. One resident had remarked that it seemed you could move
anything
through a duct, pipe, or wire, even images and sound.

Will smiled.

Their latest endeavor was wholly impractical, however. They had decided to create a light show, and spent nearly a year working on it. They created the glass tubes that glowed when electric current flowed through, and experiments revealed the proper means to turn the light different colors. The true innovation was the ability to have the switches turn off and on in a given sequence, one which they could set ahead of time. In something as simple and impractical as a choreographed light show, Will could see the beginnings of programmable computing technology. The flashing lights would symbolize far more to him than the entertainment.

His own advances were well ahead of that. He’d created sufficient computing technology to accurately locate his submarine on a map, and developed sensors that could record – and display – all manner of useful information about conditions inside and outside the
Nautilus
.

The light display was impressive, and with the appropriate background music would have been a worthy competitor to the timed, orchestrated displays seen on video sharing sites near each twenty-first century holiday season. The women did not have access to digital music files that could be set to play repeatedly, but that didn’t prevent them from creating an incredible display of moving art. Will wasn’t the only Aliomenti in attendance in awe of what they’d put together. William received many accolades for his efforts in creating the wires and switches that served as the raw materials for the display.