Albert got on his knees and swept away leaves with his hand until he exposed the fertile soil beneath. He quickly gathered together a pile of small pieces of wood and dry leaves, then topped it off with a pyramid of larger twigs. Phillip handed him his Zippo, and the boy used it to ignite the kindling, then blew gently into the kindling, encouraging the flames until they bloomed and ignited the larger sticks.
“You are such a cool kid, Albert,” I said.
He looked up at me, confusion on his face. “Now we have the fire none of us will be cold,” he said.
I glanced across at Phillip who simply raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“No, I mean you’re cool… you know, never mind.”
Albert went to hand the lighter back to Phillip.
“You know what, Meredith’s right,” said Phillip, “you are a very cool kid. You keep it.”
The little boy beamed as though he had been handed a pound of gold, threw his arms around a surprised Phillip, hugged him then headed over to where he had set aside four long, straight branches. He brought the branches to the base of the tree, sat in the natural pocket made by its roots, and began to carefully examine them.
“You’ll poke your eye out with those things if you’re not careful,” Phillip said, then added, “Hey, where’d you get that from?” when he caught the glint of a small blade, about three inches long in Albert’s other hand.
“It’s mine,” said the boy, as if one of us might try to take it from him.
“Don’t worry,” I called to him, “it’s okay. Just be careful with it.”
I followed Albert out of the corner of my eye as he used the knife to strip away the bark from each of the branches, exposing the soft virgin wood beneath. He used the knife to whittle the end of each branch into a sharp point, then, one after the other, he placed the sharpened end into the embers around the edge of the fire.
I observed him in silence, fascinated by what the kid was doing.
“The fire hardens the tip of the spear,” Albert said, as he pulled the first branch out of the embers. “See?”
The tip of the branch had turned black. Smoke rose slowly from it into the evening air.
“We’ll take your word for it,” said Phillip, but I could tell he was impressed by Albert’s knowledge. “Where’d you learn to do that, anyway?” he added. “Wait, don’t tell me… books.”
Albert nodded enthusiastically. “I like to read. Here.” He handed the sharpened branch to Phillip. “It’s a spear. We can use it for hunting and spear-fishing.”
“That is one hell of a pig-sticker,” said Phillip, no longer trying to hide how impressed he was with the kid’s handiwork. He flicked the spear’s tip with the nail of his thumb and nodded as if it had passed some kind of inspection.
Albert handed Chou and me a spear each.
“Thank you,” said Chou. “We do not know what other predators live in these woods. This will offer us a modicum of protection. You have done well, Albert.”
Albert glowed at Chou’s praise. “I can make bows and arrows, too,” he offered, as if it was something he did every day, which, for all I knew, he did. “But that will take a bit longer, and I’ll need special materials.”
Night had closed in fast while we watched Albert work; shadows crawled almost imperceptibly between the tree trunks until, finally, all that remained visible of the world was contained once again in the protective orange ring of light extending out from the campfire.
“We will need to post guards tonight,” said Chou. “I will take the first watch. Phillip, will you take second?”
Phillip nodded, still inspecting the spear—which I think had relieved some of his feelings of vulnerability.
“And you, Meredith, would you take the third watch?” Chou asked.
“Of course,” I said. I’m a naturally early riser, so getting up a few hours earlier than normal wouldn’t affect my energy much. I mean, I’d barely gotten any rest last night and my energy and focus had been better today than they'd been in years.
We gathered closer to the fire and silently watched the flames for a while. Over the crackle of the burning wood, I heard things moving in the woods: strange animal calls echoing around us, the rustle of leaves and branches in the trees as things crept from limb to limb, the scratch of claws on tree bark.
“I didn’t notice how alive the forest was last night,” I said.
“Well, we were kind of preoccupied, but it’s a whole other world out here,” Phillip answered.
I caught Chou’s gaze move in Phillip’s direction, as if he’d said something deeply profound, but she said nothing, just continued eating the last of her coconut ration.
Phillip must have sensed the weight of her attention too because he said, “So, come on Chou. You’ve hinted all day that you’ve got some kind of a theory about all of this. You’ve obviously been chewing it over since we arrived. You going to share your insights about what the hell you think is going on here?”
Chou looked up slowly, her gaze moving from me to Albert to Phillip. She paused as if she was still considering whether to speak, words poised on her lips, then said, “Tell me, Phillip Yeoman, what language do you speak?”
We all looked at her a little oddly. It was perfectly obvious to the rest of us what language he was speaking.
“English,” Phillip said slowly, as though he’d been asked a trick question. “But then I assume you already know that as—”
“And what year were you born?” Chou said, with that same soft tone.
“My birthday? Look, I really don’t know what any of these questions have to do with—”
“Please, answer my question,” Chou insisted.
Phillip bristled. He outweighed Chou by a good fifty pounds, was in decent shape, and Albert’s gift of the spear seemed to have returned some of his earlier arrogance. But there was just something about Chou’s bearing that screamed that it would be the biggest mistake of his life to screw with her. Phillip must've sensed that too, because he answered her, albeit grudgingly. “October 30th, 1966.”
Albert reacted like he’d been slapped hard, his head whipping first to Phillip then back to Chou. And I understood why—or thought I did, at least. Phillip Yeoman looked to be no more than a couple of years older than me. I’m twenty-seven, and there was no way he could have been more than thirty-five, tops. And yet I was born on August 7th, 1990. Which meant Phillip was twenty-four years older than me. That put him around fifty-two.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I blurted out, unable to contain my surprise. “Whatever exercise program you’re on, you have to let me in on it.” I laughed briefly at my sad little joke.
Phillip just looked at me oddly. “What are you blathering about?” he said.
Before I could answer, Chou said “And that would make you how old… precisely?”
Phillip sighed as though he were answering an imbecile. “I’ll be thirty-three this coming October.” He must have seen the look of disbelief on my face because he added almost slyly, “Why?”
Chou ignored his question, turning her attention to me. “And you, Meredith; when were you born?”
I gulped, my mouth suddenly dry, then told her my birthdate.
Now it was Phillip’s turn to be taken aback. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, “look at you! You look like you’re the same age as me. You should just be a child, younger than Albert even. It’d be impossible for you to—”
Chou cut him off again. “And you, Albert. When were you born?” her voice was now soft, comforting.
We all turned to look at the boy who suddenly seemed very vulnerable and confused under the weight of our combined gazes.
“I don’t… I… I,” Albert stuttered.
I walked the four steps to his side, sat and placed an arm around his shoulder. I squeezed him gently. “It’s okay, kiddo,” I said. “Take your time.”
Albert drew in a deep breath. “I… I’m twelve years old. I was born on January 5th, 1898.”
I did the math quickly in my head. That would make him around… one-hundred-nineteen years old. I’ve changed my mind, I thought, I need whatever diet the kid’s on.
Phillip finally found his voice. “That’s just… I mean… no way. Just no way. Is this a joke?” he hissed. He sat back down again and stared into the flames, not pressing for an answer.
“And what about you?” I asked Chou. “When were you born?”
Chou turned her ice-blue eyes in my direction. “I was born in March of 2253. When I entered stasis, I was almost one-hundred-and-twenty-two years old.”
Phillip’s head lifted momentarily from the flames to look at her then drifted slowly back again.
Albert started to quietly cry.
I blinked hard, several times. But you want to hear something weird? I absolutely, unequivocally believed her. Believed all three of them. Because, unless these people were professional actors, there was no way they could come up with such outrageous fabrications and deliver them so believably. No damn way! And when I took into consideration everything else that'd happened since that strange voice had asked if I wanted to be saved, well, there was no doubt in my mind that I had wandered so far off the normal path I’d taken up permanent residence in the Twilight Zone. And everything that had happened since the Bay Bridge had begun with that question: Do you wish to be saved?
A question of my own burst in my mind like a firework.
“Hey,” I said. “Right before we ended up… wherever this place is, did any of you hear a voice? Did it ask you a question?” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to ask it before.
“How did you know that?” said Phillip.
Chou nodded slowly. “Yes, I did.”
Albert said, “A voice asked me if I wanted to live.”
I turned to Phillip, trying to frame the question I had in my head as succinctly as possible. “Can you tell me what led up to the voice talking to you?”
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, his gaze already focused deep into the fire again, but he pulled his eyes away and spoke.
“I was on a sabbatical. Truth is, I hadn’t been able to write a thing in over a year. So, I decided to leave Los Angeles and head to Argentina for a road-trip. Just something to try and grease the cogs again.” He tapped two fingers of his left hand against the side of his temple.
“You’re a writer?” I asked.
He nodded. “Author. I left my son in my ex-wife’s not-so-capable hands for six weeks, pocketed my passport and hopped on a plane to Bolivia. About a month later, I’d made it to Argentina, and I was heading through the Los Glaciares National Park, remotest damn place I’ve ever seen. Beautiful. Cold. Snow and ice everywhere. I think I hit a patch of black ice, lost control of the rental car, headed off the road and took a nosedive into an ice lake.” He paused for several moments as he recalled what happened next. “Everything seemed to… I don’t know… slow down, like when you put a video-recorder on slow-mo.” Phillip took a deep breath. “Then a voice came over the radio just as the car was about to hit the water. It spoke to me by name. Told me I was about to die. It started to tell me all these things about my life, personal things, things no one else could have possibly known about me, not even my family. It said my body would never be found. And then it asked me again if I wanted to live, yes or no? I said ‘yes.’” His voice trailed off.
“I’m… sorry,” I said, lost for words.
Phillip shrugged. “Don’t be. At some point, I’m going to wake up and find out this is all a bad dream. Right?” He gave me a half-hearted smile. “I just hope my boy’s okay.”
Turning to face Chou, I asked, “What about you, Chou? What’s your story?”
“I had been placed in deep suspension onboard the Shining Way. Several years into our mission, my husband alerted me that he had detected a catastrophic problem with the ship. He woke me to help assess the situation. There had been some kind of malfunction with the life support system, and it was only a matter of hours before the ship’s atmosphere would be exhausted, and I would die. We were still over a million light-years from our destination when the—”
“Wait a second. Wait just a damn second,” said Phillip, interrupting her. “Life support? A million light-years? You’re telling us you were on a spaceship?”
“Have I not made that fact obvious?” Chou asked. “Yes, the Shining Way is an interstellar research vessel. Our mission was to reach and study an area of dead space. We would spend an estimated eight years there before returning to Earth with the information we gathered. But I suspect that our mission may have been sabotaged. There were factions back on Earth who did not believe fully in the mission. A failure of our ship’s system was close to impossible. Outside interference is the only other possibility. Either way, there was nothing that could be done. I was doomed.”
“You were doomed?” I said. “But you said your husband was on the Shining Way with you, too. What about him?”
Chou’s head tilted slightly toward her shoulder, as though I was asking her the strangest of questions. “Ah, of course,” she said, “the bonding of human and non-corporeal intelligences is not yet possible, let alone legal, in your times.”
“Wait,” I said, “you’re telling me your husband was… an artificial intelligence?”
“A Non-Corporeal Intelligence,” she insisted. “For our mission, my husband was, for all intents and purposes, the Shining Way. His personality once merged into the ship’s system core would allow him to pilot and control the ship while I, upon reaching our destination, would carry out all of the required scientific experiments.”
Everything Chou had just said should be completely unbelievable. And yet, I believed her. And if she really was from three-hundred and fifty years into my future, it also explained why her language had been so utterly unrecognizable to me.
“A few seconds before the atmosphere became unsustainable, my husband asked if I wanted to live. Confused, I said of course I did. My next memory was plunging into the ocean off-shore of this island.”
Phillip seemed overwhelmed by everything he had just heard. I decided to shift the topic back to him.
“You said you were an author,” I said, touching Phillip on the forearm. “Write anything famous?”
Phillip nodded slowly. “I wrote Last Stand at the Maple Leaf Lodge.” He delivered the line as if that would explain everything I needed to know.
“Don’t know it,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Really? You’ve never heard of it?”
He seemed quite taken aback, bordering on hurt.
“It was on the New York Times bestseller list for like twenty months. Have you been living under a stone?”
I know writers have fragile egos, but his reaction seemed a little much. He continued, “They made a movie out of it that won three freaking Oscars. Jeff Daniels played Lazlo. He said it was his defining role. You never heard of it? Really?”
“When was the book published?” I asked.
“1994. The movie was released in ’96.”
I shrugged. “Sorry.” And even though it wasn’t true, I added, “But then I’m not much of a reader.” Still, it did seem weird that the book’s title didn’t ring any kind of a bell with me. And while I did like to read, I loved to watch movies, especially old movies from the eighties and nineties, so I was sure I would have remembered Last Stand at the Maple Leaf Lodge; especially if it had really won as many Oscars as he said it had.
Phillip turned his head toward me. “What about you? What’s your story?”
“Suicide,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I got some bad news, and I was dealing with some personal problems, so I decided to jump from the Bay Bridge into the San Francisco Bay.”
I welcomed the momentary silence that descended over us. It allowed me a few seconds for all the new information to sink in. Then I said, “So, what seems perfectly obvious to me is that we were moments away from
dying when the voice contacted us. What we don’t know, is who the voice belongs to and why they chose us.”
No one appeared to have an answer to that question, so we retreated into silence. Chou placed a couple of branches into the fire. The wood, still damp from the rain, hissed and spat, but eventually caught and the flames rose higher. The warmth was welcome, comforting.
“I believe,” said Chou, eventually, her eyes still staring deep into the flames of the campfire, “that whoever has brought us here did so for a very specific purpose. An intelligence capable of plucking each of us from our own specific time, depositing us together at this same point in time, must have access to incredibly advanced technology. The energy required to move just one person must be incredible, but to move the several hundred I saw arrive on the beach with us would require access to massive stores of energy. And if the people on this island are not the only ones that have been brought here…” She allowed her words to fall away.
I got the impression Chou was talking more to herself than us, and though I had questions, I didn’t want to break her train of thought to ask if she’d also seen the distant continent the day we first arrived. Or the huge structure towering over it.
Chou continued. “Energy so immense it could only come from…” Her words faded again as her eyes drifted skyward, they lingered there before returning to the fire.
“But who on earth would be able to do something like that?” I said when I judged she was open to questions.
“Who said anything about the voice being from Earth?” said Phillip. “Maybe it was aliens.”
Chou looked at him. “In my time, we have established colonies in many of the nearest star systems, explored even further than that. But we have never encountered or seen any evidence to suggest there is any alien presence elsewhere in our sector of the galaxy. The likelihood of aliens being responsible for this, seems… improbable. Although it cannot be ruled out completely.”
“Well, if it’s not aliens, then who is it?” Phillip sounded put out that Chou had shot down his idea so quickly.
“I don’t know,” Chou admitted.
The Paths Between Worlds Page 6
