by J. C. Allen
She bent down to test the water, making it look more difficult than it was.
“Do you think you can get in on your own or do I have to throw you in?”
“I think I can manage…” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were ready to start undressing. Rick got the hint and sped away, closing the door behind him and yanking his own smelly shirt off as well as his shoes and socks and headed straight for the hot tub.
He nearly broadsided Kaylie, who was just outside the door. “Where are you going, Rick?” she asked. “I was looking for you while Alex took her bath.”
“I’m gonna relax in the hot tub for a few… days,” he answered.
“Mmmm, that sounds really nice, can I come with you?”
“Um, well...”
“Oh,” she said, almost embarrassed, “you and Abby?”
Rick tried to hide his own embarrassment, “Uh, yeah, but—”
“I’m sorry, I won’t disturb you two,” she gave the same, exact sly grin that Abby had given just minutes ago, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might be setting a bad example.
“Oh, nonsense, come on down and—” he looked at her clothes, “I mean go get on a bathing suit and join us!”
“You sure?” she asked, disbelieving.
“Of course I am! I’d love it if you joined us, you’re always welcome—”
“You’re sure I won’t be… interrupting?”
Rick switched on his best poker face. It didn’t fool Kaylie a bit, but she let him think it did. “Interrupting? Interrupting what? Go get on your suit, and bring your own rubber ducky, OK? You can’t have mine,” he joked.
She giggled, “OK!” and ran back up the stairs.
Rick stood and pondered for a moment. Just what exactly did the thirteen-year-old suspect? She couldn’t know — or could she? Maybe she just thought she knew but really didn’t. No, not Kaylie, she wouldn’t really know what was planned… no, she probably would.
During his internal struggle, he had almost forgotten… “Oh, Abby!” He rushed down the stairs and clambered into the tub just seconds before Kaylie waltzed in and slid into the water beside them with a huge audible sigh of contentment.
“That’s really a nice suit, Kaylie,” Abby said casually.
“Thanks, I just got it last weekend. It’s my first real bikini. Alex says it makes my boobs look big though.”
Rick coughed.
Abby noticed his embarrassment and decided to add to it, for fun, “That’s what a bikini is supposed to do, draw attention to a girl’s… features.”
Rick was feeling out of place, “OK, let’s not go there. It looks nice; let’s leave it at that, OK?”
Abby looked at Kaylie and they shared a snicker, and then discussed the subject further while Rick tried to pretend he needed to dunk his head under water. Eventually, they tired of tormenting him, “Rick, you should feel honored that she would feel safe discussing such things around you. I wouldn’t even talk to my own mother about personal things at her age.”
Rick splashed her, “OK, I’m honored, now can we discuss it again when she’s 25?”
Abby gave him a dirty look, as if to say if she wanted to talk about it, he should buck up and go through it for her sake.
“Really, Kay, we’ve talked about this before and I still say don’t worry. You’re years away from having to worry; enjoy being young while you can!” He glanced at Abby with a slick smile, “In the meantime, if you have any other female concerns, feel free to ask Abby to discuss them with you.”
Abby elbowed him under the water. Kaylie knew she could discuss things with Rick, but she just realized that he was embarrassed by Abby being there when she did it.
Alex popped her head in the door, “There you are! I thought you went to get a drink.”
“I did, but I went to find your dad and ran into him on the stairs, he invited me to join them—”
“Can I get in, too?”
“Sure!” Rick answered, figuring the more the merrier, “but I need you to go check on Anna first — I left her in the bathroom.”
Alex took off before he finished and came back five minutes later, in her own swimsuit, to inform him that Anna was laying on the bed with wet hair, so she had apparently taken a bath. Alex complained that she had to drain the tub because Anna had forgotten, and hopped in the bubbling, fragrant waters.
“Aah! So what were you saying about the tunnels when I came in?”
“I was just saying I’m going to print out all those pictures of that hallway. There has to be a path there, somewhere! Abby is going to double check the maps and surveys to see if we could have been lost, took a wrong turn or were above or below it.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked Abby.
“Anything’s possible,” Abby replied, “but we won’t know for sure until we check it out thoroughly. Luckily, Jessie took a lot of hi-res pictures of each tunnel and intersection. There’s also no way to know how accurate those 160-year-old maps are, or if they’re complete.”
“Or how accurate the 250-year-old drawing is?” Kaylie pondered out loud.
“The drawing!” Abby yelped as she jumped up and scrambled over the edge, causing Kaylie to choke on a tidal wave and Alex to stand to avoid it.
“What is it, Abby?” Rick questioned, still startled by her abrupt departure from the tub.
“Follow the path!” she seemed to be scolding herself. “Stay here, I’ll show you.” Dripping wet, she grabbed a towel on her way out the door.
“Follow the path?” Alex asked.
Rick shrugged, “Well, that’s what Jessie said before she figured out how to open the box. Maybe it’s the new ‘open sesame’.”
The girls giggled at him.
“Here!” Abby exclaimed as she returned a minute later, still dripping wet, but with the towel around her head. She was carrying a printout of the map from the drawing, very much enlarged. “Follow the path!” she repeated.
All the bathers looked at each other with deep concern that Abby had flipped her lid completely.
“Don’t look at me that way. Check this out, right here, where the missing path is that leads to the X, see? You see? That tunnel does not connect to the one we were in; it goes through, er, over or under or… I don’t know, but you see?” She traced a line to its end, “This appears to end, but it also goes just a bit beyond where it stops.” She paused as if everyone were supposed to understand and agree. “Don’t you see? Look closely, they don’t end there, it’s erased!”
Alex’s face showed the dawn of recognition. Kaylie, equal to Alex in eye and mouth size stuttered, “So… that first intersection… we should have… gone straight?”
Abby nodded emphatically as she grabbed Rick’s arm, attempting to pull him out. He finally cooperated and got out. “We’ll be back,” he told the girls as Abby forced him out of the room while he was frantically trying to dry off.
“What do you want?” he finally asked at the desk.
“I don’t know how to work your camera and I need the pictures of that intersection.”
“Oh, OK,” he plugged the camera into the computer, quickly transferring the contents and then opened the photos.
“Let’s see… Jess dancing… Alex’s swim meet Wednesday… Kay and Alex acting stupid, that’s not unusual… OK, here’s the track meet, soccer game, aah… cave entrance.”
They located the pictures of the intersection where they had taken the first turn; Jessica had taken four pictures of it. He printed them all out on his 46-inch plotter/printer.
Alex and Kaylie joined them as they were printing the pictures. “Alex, can you tape these up under the floodlights?” he pointed to the far wall as he fumbled through his desk for tape and tossed it to her.
Alex took the first photo to the wall; Abby followed with the second. She began studying the first one, a picture taken roughly ten feet before they reached the intersection. Kaylie brought the third enormous print and held it for Alex to
tape. Abby moved on to the second image, studying this four-foot-wide scene. It was taken point-blank, straight at the wall in question. Alex and Kaylie studied the third, an eerily dark tunnel to the right with only a part of the wall in question, as Rick posted the fourth print while Alex absently handed him tape for it.
The room filled with quiet tension as each eye scrutinized the scenes. Abby finally broke the silence, “Just like the dead-end, nothing indicates another tunnel...”
Kaylie moved her eyes over the picture and commented, “It looks as solid as a rock.”
“It is a rock, dork!” Alex scoffed.
“I don’t understand; it looked so much like a tunnel had been erased that would run right into this one. There must be lines for a door or something!” Abby complained.
“Um, Abby,” Rick tapped her shoulder, eyes locked on something in the picture. He missed her shoulder a couple times. He was staring across to the first photo, “Look at the first picture—”
“That one’s too far away, it doesn’t show anything,” she answered, not taking her eyes from the image she had been studying.
Rick clasped his hands over her ears like earmuffs and maneuvered her head toward the first picture.
“What?” she barked. She pried his hands from her head with a huff, so Rick decided to use them the old-fashioned way: he pointed.
Now Abby could clearly see what had grabbed his attention. There, in the center of the wall, was a shadow from one of the other flashlights aimed at a different angle from the camera flash — a perfect square, an indention in the otherwise random rocky texture.
“Oh my god! Where is this on the second picture?”
Eyes darted back and forth between the two images, trying to locate the faint lines; many seconds ticked by.
“There!” Kaylie yelled, startling everyone. She stepped up and placed a finger on the glossy photo and traced an extremely faint, but now perfectly visible swirl. It was an exact mirror image of the one on the cube.
Rick immediately ran to the computer, loaded the image and zoomed in on the area. The girls were gathering at his side as the detail showed a more obviously perfect square indention with a swirl pattern. He held the cube beside it, “The vortex is the key!” he announced loudly, almost bursting with excitement.
The girls jumped up and down, screaming and hugging each other. Rick stared at them and shook his head, “Strange specimens, indeed, these human girls...”
“Don’t you know what this means, Dad?”
“It means we found a spot on a wall that the cube might fit into, Alex. Please don’t get your hopes up too high again.”
“We found the time machine!”
“We found a wall.”
“Whatever! We are going back tomorrow!” she declared, posing defiantly, hands on hips.
“Sorry, honey, but tomorrow we’ve already planned to see the world’s largest ball of wax,” he teased with convincing solemnity.
Alex stuck her tongue out at him.
“Why don’t you girls get in bed so we can get up early?” he suggested.
“I don’t think I could sleep right now,” Kaylie said.
“Me either,” Alex agreed.
“I think I can stay up a while myself. Wanna watch some of those movies we rented, before we have to take them back tomorrow night?”
“I think I’m going to bed...” Abby said, stifling a yawn.
“How can you sleep at a time like this?” Kaylie asked her as if she had to be an alien to do such a thing.
Abby smiled, “I uncover mysteries, artifacts, treasures, and documents every day. And I know to get a good night’s sleep before undertaking this type of mission.” She hugged the girls and kissed Rick, heading up the stairs after bidding them all good night.
“OK,” Rick looked at the girls, “you girls go get dressed for bed—”
“Awww! Dad! I thought—”
“Chill! We can’t sit on the couch in wet bathing suits, doofus!”
“Oh,” she replied sheepishly. The two girls raced up the stairs.
Rick changed into some dry clothes he found in the laundry room, and set up the video.
Alex came down in her nightshirt with two bags of chips, Kaylie followed with cups of ice. They set the items on the table and raided the bar fridge for dip and a two-liter soft drink. Rick finally started the movie as they settled in beside him, pulling a blanket over them all.
Within an hour, Alex lay asleep propped up against her father’s leg while Kaylie rattled off her wish-list of places, or times, she wanted to see. She had been rambling on for thirty minutes or more, completely starry-eyed. “I’d like to see the pyramids being built, too, that would be so cool to watch, don’t you think?”
Rick had been fielding questions about ancient Rome, Greece, Africa, knights, conquests, ancient wonders, peoples, species, etc., and hadn’t really been able to pay attention to the movie at all. “Yeah, that would be neat, honey, but I really don’t want you girls to get your hopes up. We don’t know what we’ll find, if anything, and I’m not real sure I would allow any of you to actually go back in time.”
“Isn’t it OK to dream though?” she asked.
“Of course, just don’t expect all your dreams to come true,” he said carefully.
“Oh, come on; you know I’m just fascinated with history — like you. Don’t you want to see all those same things I do?”
“Every one of them, Kay” he smiled. “I’m just worried that you’ll be disappointed if you don’t get to go. I’m afraid maybe you’re getting a little too excited.”
“Maybe you’re not excited enough,” she retorted. “Come on! Get excited about something for once instead of just worrying. You’re really cool when you’re not trying to be an old fart!”
Rick shook slightly, trying to contain his laughter, “I’m supposed to worry — so you don’t have to — so you can be a kid all the time and not be an old fart.”
“Pfffft! Come on, what would you like to do with a time machine?”
“I... don’t really know, Kay,” he stuttered.
“Sure you do! You’re as much a kid as I am inside,” she elbowed his side.
“Well,” he thought a few seconds, “I really like all your ideas—”
“Your dreams, Rick, not mine!” she insisted.
“Hmmm… more than anything, really, I’d love to solve, well, find out the answers to some of the world’s biggest mysteries…” He stared off, apparently daydreaming about the prospect.
“Like?”
“Like… who shot JFK? Where’s Jimmy Hoffa? What happened to Amelia Earhart? Was there really an Anastasia? And even more importantly,” his eyes started to mirror the excitement in Kaylie’s, “where did we really come from? I mean, did we evolve from apes? Or did apes devolve from us? Or are we two separate, but similar species? Could we have both evolved from the same species? What was it? What stages of change did we undergo? Or were we really created? Which leads to… how did life begin? When did it begin? How were some of the wonders of the world built and who built them?”
Kaylie was rapt, seeing Rick share his desires. He only did that when they were alone and it made her feel like a true part of his family, a daughter, unlike the way she felt at her own home.
He went on, “Did Jesus really die or was he just in a coma? Oh, and who was really his father? I’d love to find out the truth about Noah’s ark, the Garden of Eden, witness the voyage of the Titanic, see if aliens really did crash at Roswell—”
Kaylie was grinning from ear to ear at him and when he finally noticed, he stopped rambling, “What?”
She giggled, “It’s just nice to see you so excited. You’ve been so serious all weekend, I like you better this way.”
He playfully grabbed her in a headlock and gave her a noogie on her head, “So you like me to play more and parent less?”
“No! Not that much!” she managed to giggle out as he proceeded to tickle her.
Alex stirred
and they immediately stopped, looked at each other, and burst out laughing again, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the noise.
“You know what would really be the coolest thing in the world, Rick?” Kaylie whispered, still smiling that happy, fun smile.
“What?”
She started counting on her fingers, “If I could go back twenty… twenty-two years and hang out with you when you were my age,” she said, watching for his reaction.
He stared at her a moment, then doubled over with his hands over his mouth to keep his laughter from waking Alex.
“What?”
He kept grinning at her.
“What?”
Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes he finally answered, “Kay, you wouldn’t have liked me at all then.”
She cocked her head sideways.
“Really. I was much more serious then. If you weren’t a motorcycle or swimming pool, I wasn’t interested. That’s all I did — I didn’t have an adventurous spirit, I didn’t give a hoot about history, or care one bit about being around anyone else. I cared much less about going to the park, movies, sporting events, or any of that stuff, and I certainly had no time for girls.”
She was still stumped, stunned and perplexed, “But you looked just as happy and friendly in that picture upstairs—”
“Honey, I was happy then, about as happy as I’ve ever been. But it was because my love then was swimming — that was my passion. Now it’s my daughters.”
“Including me?” she asked hopefully.
“Hah,” he tried to shrug off the seriousness of her question. “If you didn’t have parents already, I’d adopt you, Kaylie.”
“Well, I can answer one question you asked earlier… My parents — they’re aliens!” she giggled.
Suddenly sober, she added, “Rick, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think of you as a ‘father figure,’ more like my second best friend — although you’d definitely be a better father than mine.”
