[Sequoia]

by Adrian Dawson

  He gestured to the siberium sphere, still sitting patiently in it’s titanium cradle in the centre of the lab. There was a gentle hum coming from the room, like mild electricity.

  He widened his eyes. “Was it… a) Nothing, b) considerably less than nothing, c) it wiped a whole acre off ‘le carte’, or d) all of the above..?” He winked. No reply was forthcoming. “It’s d), fellas. And it did it… ooh, let me see…” He looked up to the atomic clock. “…6 days, 23 hours and forty-five minutes ago. Precisely.” He winced again and pursed his lips. “Now, there’s a rumour going around town that this week’s show will be just that little bit closer to home. Close enough for a few of the buildings in this part of town not to exist. You know… after the event.”

  Nervous guard, the one closest the door to the corridor outside, as opposed to the door behind Milton himself - the door to the lift which led to the now defunct lower cells - looked to his friend. The other man remained resolute. Military stance, gun held low in front of him and eyes, he suspected, firmly on Milton himself. He was not moving a muscle.

  Milton shrugged. “Don’t believe me? Hey, that’s fair enough. It doesn’t matter to me. And it won’t matter to you in…” he deliberately checked the clock again… “44 minutes and 12 seconds.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. “You might want to let your boss know, though. Keep her informed, so to speak. I mean, I don’t know why she left in such a hurry - do you? No, but it wouldn’t take a moment to let her know that she’s going to die shortly, would it? After all, she’s just out in the corridor, taking a call. Isn’t she..?”

  His stressing of the words clearly made nervous guy just that little bit more nervous.

  “Go check,” Milton said, deliberately aiming it at nervous guy and shrugging. “We’ll wait.”

  Nervous guy looked to tough guy who, without moving any other muscle, nudged his head, indicating that his friend should indeed go and check. Nervous guy took one hand from his gun and, carrying it down by his side, turned to the door. Then he turned to Milton.

  “587#6122” Milton said.

  The guard keyed the code and the door opened. He stepped outside.

  Tough guy continued to stare firmly back at Milton. Milton, meanwhile, carefully rested the dollar on the back of his quivering thumb again, but this was not so that he could roll it. Not this time. Instead, he positioned it very carefully and made ready to flick.

  “Heads we live…” he said breathlessly. “Tails we die in such a way… that they have to… bury… all three of us… in the same shoebox,” he said, he voice laboured. He forced a slight, guttural laugh then winked, knowingly, and flicked the coin high, spinning it many times in the air. A moment later, in one fluid movement, he caught it again in his right palm and slapped it hard on the back of his left hand. It shook uncontrollably. He left it there for just a few moments before carefully lifting one side and peeking in so that only he could see the result. His hands continued quivering and he kept closing and opening his eyes against the constant pain.

  He looked up to the guard and raised his pencil-thin eyebrows. “Uh-oh,” he said, smiling.

  The door opened and nervous guy was back, his body language already speaking volumes. Without a word to his colleague, he shook his head and the message was clear. No sign of Scalise whatsoever. The corridor and every room which bordered it were completely empty. Tough guy looked to Milton again, who just shrugged.

  There was an awkward silence.

  “The further you run, the more chance…” he gritted his teeth, breathing heavy as he continued,”…they may have of actually having… something to… send …to your wives,” he said. “If that helps?” He said it like he meant it.

  Tough guy looked back to nervous guy, then both looked back to Milton, who just looked wide-eyed and innocent, though it hurt like holy hell for him to do so. In an instant, the decision was made. Both men abandoned their duties and were back out of the door in seconds, their swift-booted footsteps echoing along the corridor beyond.

  “Run along boys,” Milton said, closing his eyes gently and swivelling his chair awkwardly back toward the console. “For all the good it will do.”

  He held the coin in his still-shaking fingers and opened his eyes to examine it once more, smiling gently. To the world around him it was, quite stupidly, worth millions of dollars right at this very moment. And yet soon it would be no more than molten metal, if that, and worth next to nothing. In terms of securing him his own freedom, it was completely worthless. Yes, indeed. Liberty was most definitely a fickle mistress.

  He started to sing as though he was going insane with the pain, like he was losing it. Deliberately, he put some real appreciation in for the guitars: “Darling you’ve got to let me know… da da da da da da da da!” Poetry indeed, he thought. He rested the coin on his right thumb and began again. “Should I stay or should I go..?”

  The hand quivered but still he managed to flick, the coin echoing its previous journey up, down and back into the palm of his right hand. “If I go there will be trouble…” he flipped it over to his left. “If I stay it will be double…”

  He closed his eyes, took a deep, rasping breath and opened them again. He gritted his teeth against another surge, one which seemed to spark like lightning from his foot to the top of his spine, lifted his hand and peeked.

  And it seemed that Liberty, like he, fully understood the inherent the error contained within the song; the one which pretty much negated the song even existing in the first place. The answer was there all along. When faced with contrasting evils, one should always pick the lesser of the two. Every damn time.

  He looked to the buttons on the console and realised he had a problem. It took him a few moments before he hit on the solution. Removing his cPad from his inside jacket pocket, about the size of the antique cigarette cases his father had been so fond of, he placed it gently on the thin ledge of the sapphire glass window which separated the lab from the console room. He made sure that it was very precariously balanced indeed.

  “Oh, there’s going to be trouble all right,” he said.

  Even with gritted teeth, he still managed a smile.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Friday, July 21, 1645.

  Furze Hill, Essex, England.

  He was panicking now. Just a little. He didn’t like to panic, if he was honest, so he tried to keep it sedate and under control, but he was definitely panicking. There really was no other word for it.

  The damn thing just wasn’t falling.

  By the time Milton had gotten rid of the guards it was five to. Probably not enough time. By the time he was out of his clothes and into the jump-suit, his foot bleeding over everything and the pain almost too much to bear, it was four minutes to. He wasn’t even sure that the jump suit was necessary but he felt compelled. It was made of a thin, red, paper-like material, unlike his clothes. If this went seriously wrong and he ended up in 1643 melded to half of his former attire like something out of The Fly then he would rather it was paper than the hard-wearing cotralon mix his trousers were constructed from or the steel belt buckle that had been holding the damn things up.

  By the time the machine was primed again using the same settings he had used for Strauss, it was three minutes to.

  So he set his alarm for 2:58am, grabbed the one thing he needed in his right hand, squeezed it tight and entered the lab.

  The alarm had gone off as planned, but the cPad had been buzzing and juddering for almost one and a half minutes and nothing had happened. It stayed firmly on the ledge. The pain from his foot had now spread like a virus, his whole body now feeling as though it had been filled with acid. He felt physically sick.

  Every buzz of the cPad seemed as though it was the one which was finally going to tip it, making it fall directly onto the button below and triggering the final part of, he laughed, the sequence. He had no idea that the system already had a three second delay built in which, like Mason some time before him, would have allowed him time to hit th
e button and get through the doors. So, instead he had had to improvise. Badly, it seemed.

  He looked through the glass to the atomic clock on the wall, watching as the deathly accurate second hand hit its nadir - the six - and headed back up toward twelve. It was less than thirty seconds to 3:00am and game over. He closed his eyes for a second and actually prayed, though he had absolutely no idea who he was praying to. He figured that anyone that would care to step in and offer a little assistance would do just fine right about now.

  The cPad continued to buzz, but did not fall. As the second hand approached the nine he figured that this was indeed the end of a very bad plan and, in sheer frustration and quite out of character for such an unflappable man, he screamed “Fucccckkkk!!!” as loud as he could.

  The cPad began to fall.

  Initially, it just leaned forward, as though simply readying itself, then a moment later it tipped and dropped the eight or so inches to the console below. It caught the corner of the time dial just slightly and then, having landed on its thinnest edge, folded itself over and fell down onto orange button two. It took about a second to apply its full weight but then the button sank.

  Ten seconds to three. Nothing.

  He’d done something wrong, he was sure of it. He couldn’t think what.

  Nine seconds. Still nothing.

  Eight.

  Seven…

  Suddenly, the three second delay he was not even aware existed was over and the system kicked in. As if the pain which coursed through his body was not enough, the air around him now felt as though it was ripping at his skin. In addition to his own screams, he could also hear a thousand more coming at him from every direction. His right hand clenched hard against the pain, creating yet more. The titanium walls seemed to bend in front of his eyes, their highlights stretching like ghosts toward him. Then a bright light, brighter than he could ever have imagined. That, however, did not stop it getting brighter still just a moment later, only now it seemed to be tinged with orange. Any sensation he had felt before was instantly doubled, trebled, quadrupled. It took an instant for true recognition of what was happening around him to kick in but, before he passed out completely, he did have the sickening realisation that he had been too damn late. The lab was exploding, on cue, and it was probably taking the whole building, a sizeable chunk of the block it had been built on, and him, with it.

  Try as he might, he could not stay away from the light. The light, now, was everything. This, he reasoned, was death.

  Slowly, he fell into warmth and comfort, as though the sun was now beating down on his face and gently caressing his skin. Everything was calm and peaceful and there was a deep silence he had not heard since he had moved into the city. It was a silence he missed and he wanted to go to it. He closed his eyes and let the soothing darkness envelop him.

  When he awoke, just under five hours later, the first thing he thought, oddly, was: ‘Ouch’. His left foot still hurt like holy hell. For a short while he just lay there, wincing and musing that it would be really unfair if this was heaven and he had somehow managed to smuggle pain into it. When he finally found the strength to open his eyes the first thing he saw was a perfect, blue and white sky directly above him occupied only by a large hovering bird, perhaps a vulture, waiting and circling. The second thing he saw, or more accurately noticed, was that within that sky was not one airplane trail. Not one imperfection or evidence of any human intervention whatsoever. Just pure clouds, unhindered on their journey across his very narrow field of view.

  He sat up, awkwardly and still in great pain, and could see both that he was completely naked - as expected even if this was indeed heaven - and that all of his thin, lithe body was now a mess. Literally, a bleeding mess. Tiny shards of glass and metal had peppered his pale skin. They glistened in the light and left his whole body feeling as though it was crackling with fire. Had he been so inclined, it was clear that he could have put his finger through the top of his foot and scratched the sole. He was not so inclined. Moving his left hand, stiff and aching, he could feel that he was resting on soft, dry sand. It stuck to the sweat and blood which coated his body and made the half that had been laid on the ground look as if it has been constructed by a professional as some sort of bizarre sand sculpture.

  He lifted his right hand and opened the palm to look. The Peace Dollar, having been surrounded by living tissue, was still there. It had also, it seemed, burnt his flesh and welded itself quite firmly to that tissue.

  This was not heaven, he realised. Clouds might symbolise heaven but glass, metal, sand, vultures and - most notably - pain were most definitely earthly concoctions. This was either the U.S.A, either version, or more likely the land that would one day become it. This was home, before home had even been discovered.

  It had worked. He laughed. Loudly, through the pain. It had god-damned worked. What’s more, it had worked and he was still alive, and that was always an added bonus.

  So where was Strauss, he wondered? He looked around, seeing only desert peppered with cactus and tillandsia, tall dark mountains in the distance. No sign of his friend. He turned and looked behind, puzzled. Given that he did not know exactly how this all worked, he reasoned that he should either have arrived at either exactly the same time as Strauss, or about twenty minutes later. Either way, surely Strauss - in this bleak environment - had not somehow managed to pick himself up, set off walking and get himself completely out of view in only twenty minutes? He should have been able to see him, if only as a faint dark shape in the distance?

  But Strauss was nowhere to be seen.

  It would take Milton over a week to reach La Paz, limping when he could, resting when he could, eating from the land and drinking from pure, clear streams. Only then, still battered and bruised, would he discover that, on falling, his cPad had caught the edge of the dial which controlled the power applied to the sphere. The power which controlled the amount of electrical force which, in turn, controlled the gravity produced by it and the amount of time one would ultimately be flicked back. It was only a small nudge, from 406 to 418, but it made a huge change.

  This was not 1643, and nor would it be for a very long time. This was 1602.

  Strauss was a long way away.

  * * * * *

  By the time the smoke had cleared, both literally and figuratively, Porter had ambled his way into the clearing. For a moment he just stood silently by Ravven’s lifeless and blood-ridden corpse, ignoring it as he watched, smiling, as I tried to calm Rachael. Her sobs were decreasing, but she was still some distance from calm. Things were happening around her, one after another, and these were things she could probably not fully comprehend. At least, not until her mind was repaired. She clearly had yet to be convinced that this was all over. In truth it wasn’t, but there was not far to go either. Not any more. One last indignity and we would be free. For how long would finally reside in our hands alone.

  Eventually, Porter took a few laboured steps forward and crouched beside me, his ageing features creased in genuine concern as he looked at the beautiful young girl before him.

  In the few moments I had granted myself before turning to calm Rachael, I had seen clearly that it was Porter who had fired the shot, standing in the dark distance of the forest. No-one could have been more shocked or confused as I was, but the old man had seemed more concerned with checking his gun and Rachael had always been my primary concern anyway. I had come too far to let her down now. The ‘how’ and, more importantly, the ‘why’ could wait. And it did. Until now. The questions were beginning to burn and they hurt. I turned my head slightly, toward Porter.

  “Why would you do that?” I nudged my head in the general direction of Ravven.

  Porter smiled. “Really?” he said, still looking at Rachael. “I thought you knew.” He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you knew as far back as Colchester..? When I inspected the line.” He looked me straight in the eye, just long enough to see if he had been even mildly correct, and got nothing. He smiled, as
though we were sharing a joke, and then shrugged slightly. “Well, I guess I misjudged you.”

  “Knew what..?” I asked. Whatever I was supposed to know, I genuinely didn’t.

  Porter, looking back to Rachael now, ignored the question. Instead, and softly - as though reading from the dusty pages of a classic work - he said: “And, therefore was just going; when, behold! A wonder, fair as any I have told. The same bright face I tasted in my sleep. Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap.” He reached for Rachael’s hand and squeezed it gently. She glanced at him, for just a moment and smiled softly. Then she looked away.

  Porter curled a gentle smile. “You don’t recognise me, do you beautiful? Well, even by your standards it’s been a while. For me, it already seems an eternity.”

  Instantly, I felt something spark inside my mind. Something that ignited a small fire of recognition. A memory of a soft voice quoting poetry. And not just quoting it to anyone, or about anyone, but quoting it to me. About Rachael. It had been well over a year, but when it finally came to me it suddenly felt like yesterday.

  I narrowed my eyes, barely daring to believe what I was increasingly sure was true. I stared at the old man, looking through the years and through the beard now covering his face. I looked to the eyes. Bright blue.

  “Milton...?”

  He smiled again. “No, that was Keats actually.”

  He seemed very pleased with himself, and I guess he had every right to be. “Endymion,1818, he continued. “Beautiful, beautiful words. The kind I like to carry wherever I go.” He tapped his temple knowingly.

  The penny finally dropped and so did my jaw.

  “Endymion... Porter.”

  Mythological shepherd and carrier of poems.

  “A little joke,” Porter explained. “With myself, mainly. And, if you don't mind me saying, Peter, it’s far, far better than Eli Morelock!” He laughed. “Jeez... what were you thinking?” He paused. “You do know it’s actually Eloi, don’t you.”