Once more, the ludicrous hypothesis that had sought him out earlier, returned to his mind. What if the satellites aren’t actually there at all? Not just dysfunctional; but not even in the sky? What if they no longer existed? It was insane, the thought of a desperate man. He pushed it aside once again.
He needed another way of finding out where he was. As he searched through the bright icons, a solution came to him quickly. The only non-standard application downloaded was a star map. All employees in the Division of Astronomy and Space had received it; a lark by the administration team for a department full of astronomers. Pocket Universe. He flicked through the introductory notes and settings – his Sydney location had already been input. But there are no satellites for global positioning - would it even work?
His cracked lips tightened as he held the star-studded screen to the night sky. He exhaled with relief. The screen swivelled as he turned, needing only the magnetic compass to determine the direction he faced. Obediently, the star map shifted, reflecting back to him what he saw in the sky above him – or didn’t see.
The bright celestial sky did not match the one stored in his phone’s memory files. The screen was off centre, twisted. He raked the sky for a familiar constellation. Crux. The Southern Cross sparkled to his west in the middle of the Milky Way. It stood vertical in the black sky, with its four brightest stars depicting the tips of a Latin cross. The fifth faintest member of the cross, epsilon Crucis, sat snugly under the right cross bar of the lower quadrant. Often misleading young astronomers with its dim light and random placement, Neil recognized it instantly as the orange giant it was, nearly one hundred and fifty times more luminous than the sun. Good, a place-mark. A strict Christian upbringing had highlighted its importance before Neil’s career had even begun. In biblical days, the Crux constellation was revered in the Near East before finally disappearing over the horizon at the time of the Christian crucifixion in Jerusalem. It was no longer visible in the Northern Hemisphere at latitudes north of twenty-five degrees. This gave Neil a starting point. I’m still in the Southern Hemisphere.
Neil fumbled through the search mechanism of the software. So where should the Southern Cross actually be positioned? The constellation Crux appeared on the tiny screen. It lay sideways against the black backdrop littered with name labels. He blinked, stunned. Not only was the cross displaced in the night sky, but it had rotated ninety degrees. He blinked again. Holy Shit. This can’t be. I’m an astronomer for Christ’s sake - and this is impossible! The only explanation for a rotated constellation was that the earth itself had travelled further in its rotation around the sun since he’d left– three months further. He counted on his fingers; he had been here less than a week. Even if he had lain unconscious on the forest floor for another one or two days, Crux should still have held its position. Three months?
Again, that ludicrous hypothesis reared its ugly head. So you’re not where you should be… and you’re not when you should be. Time itself has changed…
Furiously, Neil punched his fingertips onto the screen. The exact position of the Southern Cross where and when it should have been on March 12th, Sydney Australia – popped up on the screen. Latitude 215 degrees… Longitude 36 degrees. He committed the numbers to memory and picked a new default location in the long list of settings. Brisbane, Australia– latitude still too far south. He couldn’t go above twenty-five degrees or the Southern Cross wouldn’t have been visible to him the way it was. Below twenty-five degrees… Neil stared at the volcanic jungle thoughtfully. Hawaii was the only US state below twenty-five degrees’ latitude. It was volcanic, heavily forested. He selected the location and studied the new map. Both latitude and longitude are way off now. Something a bit closer to home…Papua New Guinea – still too far North-East. Asia? Jakarta, Indonesia. Very close. Neil bent to his task, engrossed. He needed to get further east, but there were no other options. Somewhere between Jakarta and Port Moresby… he considered the archipelago of volcanic islands crowning the top of Australia. I’m somewhere in there…
Hanging above him, the Southern Cross lent weight to his conviction. He was in the wrong place, obviously, but at least now he had a ballpark. The Indonesian Archipelago. The location seemed to fit. The volcanic rifts, dense jungle, humidity… but when?
Time had changed. According to the celestial sky above him, that base measure of time and navigation for all humanity, it was June. Three months later than it should be. But was it June this year, or June last year? And if time had travelled instantaneously, as it seemed to have done, perhaps the year he had woken up in was not a year he’d ever been meant to see at all. And if that was the case… those cave-dwelling monkeys the woman is with - what if they are proto-human? Neil pushed his imagination to its limit. He had trekked for hours yesterday with no sign of civilization. Since he’d arrived, the miniscule freaks had had no other contact by researchers or scientists or the outside world. Had he travelled so far back in time that civilization didn’t exist?
The ludicrous hypothesis that had thrown his logic suddenly did not seem so ludicrous after all. Time has shifted and I am in the wrong time. I have travelled through time. There was no other explanation. Short of moving the very stars themselves, there was no way he could be here, now, without a time shift. Gulping down the horror of being so inescapably disconnected from the world as he knew it, he sat motionless on the cold rock. For a long time, Neil considered.
Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Whether that lab knew what they were doing or not, they created this potential. The energy field that I discovered– I uncovered their research, I tracked them down. Whatever happened in that lab happened for a reason. It happened for me. I did it. I’ve travelled through time and space and I survived.
Neil dissected his epiphany. Maybe this primitive death-trap isn’t the curse I thought it was. Maybe it’s an opportunity. He could use it. Not just to control energy but to control time itself. To control time… the possibilities were endless. The opportunities it offered, infinite. Benjamin… What the boy needed was time. To recognise his condition sooner. To travel forward where a cure may be waiting. To return it to him and save his life. The boy would have time then. Time to grow, time to live his life. Time to see his father for what he really was. A hero. There was no higher power than to have a hand in the very essence of time itself. My own hand. But how?
There was always a conduit, a reactant. What was he missing? The time shift had happened in that laboratory as soon as the woman had walked in. The woman… what could she have possibly done to create…?
He saw a flash of black stone against the white skin on her throat, before it pulsed electric blue like a neon light, stunning his eyes.
It was the amulet.
The thought solidified his lingering resolution in sweat. The black stone that now dangled from her wrist had reacted with the lunar energy field. It wasn’t the physics lab that was drawing the energy field toward the earth – it was her. More specifically, it was her necklace. The lab must have amplified the frequency, distorting and fracturing it somehow. He would figure it out, recreate it. Control it. If I did it before I can do it again. But first I need that amulet.
So his path of action was going to be easy after all. She was dispensable – but that stone wasn’t.
The stars above Neil glorified his singular new purpose; Get that stone.
Orrin paced as far from the riot as he could, pushing through people until the night was once again quiet between the tall buildings. A stream of blood dribbled from his nose into his mouth. The woven ivory of his shirt soaked it up with a wipe, leaving his face smeared and bruised. Orrin wandered, dazed. It’s all so wrong. The city was a stranger and everywhere he looked, Orrin struggled with the discontinuities of the space around him. Landmarks were the same, but just different enough for uncertainty to crawl under his skin. It was surreal and disorienting. His eyes burned as they sought recognition in the dark streets. Sporadic neon lights illuminated the city's ruined fac
e and Orrin noticed more and more peculiarities. Are there more electrical cables than usual?
Two carriage horses clipped him as he turned a corner, and Orrin jumped backward. A load of tourists misbehaved drunkenly in the back and he felt a twinge of sympathy for the beasts pulling them. Blinded by eye covers and assaulted by traffic, they still managed to keep in perfect step. The rich smell of horse and manure fought with gasoline and city smog in the streets. Orrin gingerly pushed the swollen bridge of his nose and cursed as pain shot into his forehead.
Liam doesn't know Ivy. It made no sense. No one knows her. Again there was nothing but a black void where she should have been. His gut wrenched and Orrin felt himself drifting again. Nothing else mattered but this sinking insanity that was swallowing him up and dragging him under. He stopped resisting it and vaguely considered the alternative truth. I am the problem here. I don't even know myself anymore. Had he crossed some dark, invisible line, sanity on one side and fantasy on the other? Had Ivy been a fantasy? I can't fix what I don't understand and nothing here makes sense.
Orrin got swept into a wave of night commuters. Dressed for dinner, a small boy patiently shadowed his mother in front of him through the rush-hour pedestrians. Distant bells and clangs from passing trams broke through the quiet spaces in Orrin's mind as he relentlessly tested his own sanity. No. I didn't imagine her. Did I? Am I that desperate? That crazy? He tumbled over her face in his mind and breathed the faint scent of vanilla. His hands tremored and Orrin shoved them into his pockets. His gut told him Ivy had existed; quirky, distant and alluring. She wasn’t the sort of woman he'd conjure up for private fantasy, like the blonde he'd stolen from playboy in his teens or the fine things gyrating in his head after a few pints.
No, Ivy was real. He’d felt her breath on his face under the jacaranda. He’d felt the goose-bumps of her skin under his fingertips. Hadn't he? Again the vanilla scent plagued him like a dying man seeking white light. Ivy Carter, where are you?
A mischievous giggle nearby alerted him to his frozen pose. Deep in thought Orrin had stopped walking in the middle of the pavement beside a busker, splitting the flow of pedestrians behind him. He ducked to the side where a small audience had gathered. Laughing and clapping chubby hands, the little lad’s attention had apparently been caught by a small animal dressed in a gaudy jester's hat and jacket. The boy’s blonde mop of ringlets frizzed as he bounced to the music, like the halo borne of a static balloon. The child’s mother edged to the outskirts of the crowd, relieved with his distraction as she argued into her mobile.
The jester spun awkwardly for his audience, with bird-like movements and tapping feet. Orrin pushed through the laughing crowd to stand beside the boy. Jesus, no. A slow churning of acid in his stomach rose to his throat. Please, no. Not this. It was the same type of creature he had come across in the lab. A hobbit. Olive-skinned, tiny, an extraordinary fusion of familiar and bizarre. A man. His hair had been crudely chopped and shaved under the three-pointed fools’ hat to more closely resemble a miniature human. Terror-stricken eyes kept his flat feet moving. A plastic tambourine was clutched in his hand. The ground moved. Orrin swallowed the bitter bile and reached for a cold street lamp to steady himself, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Watch'it, dero! Don't you go puking on my gig!” The words were spat from a sneering man who sat by the jester, crippling his portable chair with overhanging weight. Greasy hair fell across his red face as he turned to survey his audience with greedy eyes.
“Dance, monkey-man! Isn't he great, folks?” The man dressed his face with a cheery smile. “What a funny little fellow, he can even somersault and clap for the kids! Look at him spin! That's got to be worth a dollar or two; can you spare some coins for charity? Ma’am, how about you?”
From his canvas throne, he slid the tin toward the crowd with a filthy boot. Orrin clenched his jaw. There was nothing charitable about this man.
Only now did Orrin notice the chain that snaked its way to the bloodied ankle of the jester. The hobbit had its lips pulled back into a grimace, the pretence of a gummy smile. Orrin felt a surge of disgust as he realized his teeth had been forcibly removed to prevent biting. The hobbit man twirled and hopped clapping his hands maniacally, and his audience cheered in delight. Roars of laughter and exclamations pitted the crowd.
“Isn't he cute darling?”
“Look at him jump!”
“It almost looks human!”
Clapping pulled more passers-by into the audience and gold coins flew into the tin. Orrin stared incredulous at the men and women around him, appalled by their sanction of the spectacle. Only the small mop-haired boy at the front was not laughing now. His face was serious and concerned, his little jaw jutting out pensively. His bottom lip quivered and he looked at the crowd, at the fat ringmaster and then back to the jester. The creature’s shaved body was mottled with bruises under the too-short jacket, pants and hat.
Around the boy, the audience laughed and jeered. Parents smiled indulgently to their children as the hobbit enlivened the tedium of their day with a few minutes of entertainment for the price of a gold coin. The ringmaster had returned to reading his newspaper and with the exception of Orrin, the amusement of the crowd kept them oblivious to the child's increasing distress.
Poor wee lad. This has to stop…Orrin looked for the child’s mother but couldn’t see her through the crowd. He patted the boy’s shoulder in comfort. The little boy looked up at him with tears spilling from his eyes.
Abruptly, the dancing hobbit froze and spun to face the child. He stepped closer. The audience started and shuffled back, tripping each other as they watched wide eyed. No one reached to help the child and Orrin tightened his grip, unsure what to do. The boy frowned. He sniffed loudly and pulled away from Orrin, stepping toward the chained hobbit instead. He cocked his head to the side with a landslide of messy curls as the crowd drew a collective breath.
Child and hobbit were the same height but there the similarities ended. The jester’s face suddenly carried the true shadow of an old man. All pretence was lost to the dirty pavement. His ridiculous outfit hung on his skeletal frame, all its humour dissolved in an instant. Miserable, tortured eyes spoke to the child and pure compassion poured back. Seconds passed. Only seconds, but an eternity to the unlikely pair in the street.
The boy reached out his hand. The hobbit man took it.
There was a collective draw of breath from the now silent crowd. Time hung suspended behind the devastating reality they finally saw. What do they see in each other’s eyes? Orrin wondered, a blameless child and a slave to humanity, across species so divided and disparate. Transfixed by their connection, Orrin stepped forward, accidentally kicking the collection tin in a shower of gold and silver.
“Oi, you! Ya bloody idiot, I thought I told you to get lost!” Heaving to his feet, the fat ringmaster realised all at once that his audience were not laughing or clapping. Instead they stared, caught between horror and confusion. The tinny music played on, but the ringmaster’s dancer was not dancing. He pulled hard on the chain, sending the jester sprawling onto the concrete.
“Dance for the people! Dance you useless brute!” The man grinned nervously at the crowd with cracked lips, knowing he’d lost them. He angrily tugged again on the chain, sliding the helpless creature along as he scrambled to his feet.
Orrin took a step forward, with flashing eyes and gritted jaw.
“That’s enough!” he shouted as the little boy rushed forward, reaching out to the fallen hobbit. “Leave the poor thing be, you can’t treat it like that.”
“I can do what I damn well want to.” The ringmaster growled back.
“You’re hurting it -”
“I own it!” the man hissed, waving a laminated registration tag at Orrin’s face. “So mind your own damn business and bugger off!”
“Finn! Come here this instant, don't touch that animal!” The boy’s mother appeared, shoving the phone into her handbag and grabbing his hand. “Good god c
hild, you don't know where it’s been, you could catch something!” She pulled the boy away through the crowd as the child twisted and struggled to see what had happened to his fallen companion. His wails echoed up the street.
“Hey, you! I said move it!” The accusing glare from the ringmaster inferred Orrin was responsible for the rapid decay of his spectacle. The crowd had moved on. Orrin hesitated, caught between pity for the creature and desire to escape its reality. The man lowered his voice to a spiteful whisper. “You going to feed my family are you, dero? You bloody activists, you think you know everything. Here’s a dose of reality for you - a bleedin’ heart’ll get you nowhere in this world. You think I like doing this?” At his feet, the crouched hobbit was now gathering gold and silver under the fat man’s direction. His demeaning jester’s hat had fallen away. “I can’t stand the filthy animals,” the ringmaster said. “I’m barely scraping by, working three jobs myself – you think I chose this life? You think I wanna sit here every night in the cold? This is my reality. Now get the hell off my gig.”
The hobbit looked up at Orrin from the pavement. He had the eyes of a man. He was intelligent. He was broken and resigned to his fate. He knew. Dumbed with shock and cold sweat, Orrin clenched his fists in his pockets and stumbled away.
Orrin made his way to Flinders Street Station. All about him, commuters wove in and out as they hurried for their homes. He felt like the only person alive, the only person to see the world for what it really was. Or wasn't. Or perhaps it’s them who are alive, and I’m dead. Perhaps this was what death felt like - isolated, confused and disembodied.
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