“Yes. But sadly, a lot of people have seen what happens when you go against the ruler. They have seen people beaten and killed. And so they either throw their hands in the air and give up, or else they choose to believe things aren’t so bad and remain silent. A lot of people would rather play games or sit around watching—he almost mentioned people’s propensity to watch hours of mindless television before realizing that would only require much explanation—“birds, than march on the ruler’s house and insist on change. The leaders are smart; they make things worse a little bit at a time so the people don’t get too frustrated all at once.”
They came to the end of the cave. Each rock seemed to change shape as the light flickered here and there. Benio held the torch out so the walls around them became illuminated. Instead of shining black, the color of lava rock, or green, the color of moss and fungus, the walls sparkled a deep crimson.
“My god,” Anderson said, putting his hand to a section of the wall, letting his fingertips glide over the smooth stones.
Rubies.
“Pretty, eh?” the elder said.
All around him, the walls glowed with what looked like red energy. There were more rubies than he had ever seen. Enough to fill a jewelry store. Enough to fill a hundred jewelry stores. He had seen the women with red stones worked into their necklaces, the men with red stones engraved into the gold handles of their knives and daggers. Now he knew where they came from.
“Not just pretty,” Anderson said. “Amazing.” He watched as the red energy flowed in every direction as the torch burned. “Just this amount,” he said, rubbing his hand over a small chunk of scarlet stone, “is enough, where I come from, to pay for someone to become a leader and have them do your bidding.”
Benio held the torch closer to the wall to make sure they were looking at the same thing. “This stone? Why? It doesn’t do anything except look nice.”
“People have a distorted sense of value, I guess.”
He thought about how much the Tyranny’s friends convinced everyone that diamonds were worth their paychecks. They weren’t of course. There were a thousand times more diamonds than there were soccer balls. Yet one was supposed to be valuable even though it was plentiful and did nothing, while the other was handmade and gave people enjoyment. All because the Tyranny’s friends convinced everyone it should be that way. The same went with the pretend money the Tyranny printed, which had no value other than what they could convince people it had. Unlike diamonds and the printing of magic money, rubies actually were fairly rare.
Benio pointed to the sparkling walls and said, “Sometimes, the women come here and take the stones to make necklaces and bracelets, but they don’t get much for them. They are shiny, but they don’t actually do anything the way chickens and sheep and crops keep people fed and clothes and blankets keep people warm.”
“Our leaders treasure this more than the welfare of their people.”
The more Anderson looked around, the more he appreciated the immensity of the ruby deposits surrounding him. It wasn’t just carats or pounds or cubic feet, it was enough of the precious stone to fill the trunk of his car, his wife’s car, his neighbors’ cars. A blood-red fortune.
“What are you going to do with it?” he said.
Benio laughed. “Do with it? There is nothing to do. It is okay where it is.”
The elder turned and began walking back out of the cave and Anderson followed. But the entire time, as they made their way back toward the village, Anderson barely paid attention to Benio’s questions. All he could think of was the glowing red cave.
Another day, after one of the boys taught Anderson how to shoot a bow, the child said, “Have you ever killed a bear?”
“No,” Anderson laughed.
“Have you ever fought in a battle?”
The Mi’kmaq had never had to engage in a war but they had met people from other communities who had been invaded by some of the more aggressive nomadic tribes further south.
Anderson didn’t know enough about American Indian history to know what became of the Mi’kmaq tribe, but if their fate was anything like all of the tribes Anderson did know about—the Cherokee, the Navajo, the Mohawk—they would either be forced off their land or else be slaughtered.
“I hope you only ever use your bow to hunt,” Anderson said, patting the boy on the back.
“But the elders tell stories of great warriors who fought and became stars in the sky.”
“Those are just stories,” Anderson said. “I hope you never have to shoot your bow at another person. Imagine if someone from another tribe killed you just for fun,” he said, remembering what it was like seeing the Tyranny’s men shoot people in the street just because they could. “I’ve seen it and I hope you never have to know what it’s like. Death is not that pretty. It is not as simple as them living one moment and then dying the next. They struggle to breathe. They beg to continue living. They cry. They call out in hopes of seeing their families one last time.”
The boy’s head lowered so Anderson couldn’t see him, but even without being able to see the tears welling up, Anderson could tell the child was crying from the way he sniffled while his shoulders shook.
He continued, though, even as the boy cried. He kept on because he had wanted to prevent the Tyranny by changing the Theta Timeline and instead he was here. He kept on because he would never see Debbie or Carter again and it was for nothing. But most of all, he kept on because maybe, just maybe, if he convinced this one boy just how horrible war was, the boy might convince his friends of the same thing. One by one, people around the world might slowly realize that wars were avoidable and that with each bomb dropped and each city ruined, with each poor man dying in the blasts, gasping their final breaths under the remains of decimated buildings, rich men became a little richer.
“I have seen more battles and more killing than you could ever imagine. It is almost never necessary. When battles are fought, they are fought because rich men, who do not go into battle themselves, make a profit produced by war. They send other men on their behalf by making death and dying sound glorious. There is no glory in killing a man because it satisfies someone else’s greed. There is no glory in dying just because a powerful man says that doing so will earn you honor.”
The boy continued to cry until Anderson patted him on the shoulder and told him to get running along. When he was alone again, he thought of all the men he had known who had been shipped off by the Tyranny to die on the other side of the world. And for what? So someone who made millions of dollars off of each bomb could lean back in his chair and look at his bank account? So a corporation could control a slightly larger percent of the world’s oil supply? It was madness. But then, everything the Tyranny did was madness.
It was a shame time travel was a one-way journey. Already, he wished he could return so he could see his wife and son again. But now he wished he could return with all the rubies he had seen so he could buy the leaders away from their rich lords. He would promise each leader a hundred pounds’ worth of rubies—more wealth than they could imagine—just as long as they stopped passing laws that benefited a few at the expense of the many. He was sitting on a treasure that could make that very thing happen, but there was no way to use it.
“Life has a funny sense of humor,” he said.
In response, a crow gave a caw-caw and flew away.
He had been sent too far back in time to stop any of the events he and the other Thinkers had targeted, and they had all agreed to limit themselves to only those events. All of the time travelers had heard stories of men who had gone back too far in time and taken extreme and unorthodox measures.
He knew better than to attempt the same thing, knew he should be content with living out his remaining years in peace and quiet. And yet all he could think of were his wife and son living under the Tyranny’s rule. Each time he told one of the Mi’kmaqs about the dangers of leaders who cared about staying in power more than doing what was best for the people, he
felt like a failure rather than a teacher trying to instill values in future generations. Any time he thought of the red cave, sparkling with possibility, he imagined all the political influence those stones could buy in the Tyranny.
After another discussion with Benio, this one focusing on what the tribe should do with a young man who refused to obey the town’s rules, Anderson thought about how the simple idea of locking him up might eventually lead to gigantic prisons owned by the rich to make them even richer.
“What punishment should he receive instead?” Benio said.
Anderson thought about all the people he knew who had been sent to prison for trivial actions, some not even real crimes, while the richest people in the Tyranny could kill entire families or run a drug cartel and not serve a single day behind bars.
“Any punishment needs to be applied to everyone equally,” he said. “And you should focus less on punishment and more on helping them.”
“Help?” Benio said.
“The goal is not to create someone who wants to continue breaking rules but someone who is punished and then wants to return to the village.”
The opposite was true in the Tyranny. Men were sent to prisons, many of whom had never actually committed a real crime, and once they were there they had no option but to live a life where they returned to prison over and over. The tyranny wasn’t concerned with rehabilitating its prisoners; it wanted people to spend their entire lives behind bars so the corporations running those prisons could increase their profits.
Every discussion he had, every innocent query he answered, made him more desperate to keep the Tyranny from forming even though it wouldn’t form for another five or six centuries. His mind worked on how he might accomplish that. He could turn the Mi’kmaq into an army and drive off any foreigners who would claim the land as their own. He could convince the tribe to welcome the foreigners and act as their friends, only to turn around and give them blankets infested with disease, using the white men’s evil trick against them. But when he considered the implications of turning peaceful men and women into killers, each of these ideas seemed more insane than the previous.
He couldn’t turn a peaceful tribe into murderers. These were some of the happiest, most content people he had ever met. All around him he saw villagers who were happy for everything they had, who laughed and treated one another with respect, who cared so little about the materials that made up their fancy necklaces and bracelets that they would gladly trade a gold ring encrusted with rubies for a lousy chicken, because for them, the chicken had more worth than some shiny metal and stones that could be pulled out of the ground.
A light came on.
For a moment, Anderson stared at the natives in the distance, unsure whether the idea that had just entered his mind actually made sense. As if testing his own sanity, he said it aloud: “They care more about a chicken than they do about all of their gold trinkets and red stones.”
And then he knew how he might be able to prevent the Tyranny.
8 – A Cruel Temptress
Date: 1803
In the years following the pit’s discovery, plenty of other people visited Oak Island. None of them attempted to continue the excavation Daniel and his friends had started, however. There was no shortage of enthusiasts who went to the island with just that intention, but once they saw how far down the four boys had already dug, they knew the task was beyond their abilities. A thirty-foot hole in the ground is an intimidating thing to see when all you have are shovels and buckets.
The lack of attempts didn’t stop people from talking about the hole and what might be buried down there. Every sailor who docked in Nova Scotia heard about the odd things that had been found at the pit. Hand-carved circular stones. Floors of wood every ten feet. When they left, they went home and told their families about the story they had been told. Almost everyone had heard about the mysterious flagstone and the wooden planks every ten feet, and each person agreed that a vast treasure had to be buried there. Why else would anyone go to the trouble of digging such a hole?
The fantastic tale not only continued to spread from person to person and port to port, it also found its way into a couple of newspapers around the world. Sixty years after Daniel and his friends first came upon the block and tackle attached to the tree limb, their account was mentioned in an English paper. Other accounts would be published in Canadian, American, and French papers. Never before had treasure been so clearly marked but also so elusive.
As news of the pit continued to spread, more ambitious people came to the island, determined to finish what Daniel and his friends had started and recover the promised wealth buried beneath them.
The initial response was always the same. A forty year-old fur trader, who was used to seeing fortunes made and lost, looked down at the thirty-foot pit, turned to the nearest man, and said, “Four boys did this?” A thirty-three-year-old shoemaker—not rich by some standards, but wealthy enough to bring a team of six men with him to the island—took one look at how far four boys had dug and said, “I think I have vastly underestimated the job.” None of the attempts made by these men lasted very long.
It wasn’t until Reginald Owen read an account of Oak Island that another serious effort was undertaken. Owen, the owner of a spice company in central Nova Scotia, sent a ship filled with men and equipment to uncover the buried treasure.
“I’m surprised they got that far,” the foreman said upon arriving to the island and seeing how far the four boys had managed to dig. “Further than I would have gotten with some shovels, buckets, and a couple friends.”
The first thing the new foreman did was have his men build a system of ropes and pulleys. Although the existing block and tackle the boys found still worked, it was old and could fail at any time. The new system allowed multiple buckets to be raised and lowered at the same time, making progress quicker than it had been before. Next, the foreman had a system of reinforced walls and ladders installed. This let the men climb up and down more easily, without having to rely on the ropes that would be needed to keep a continuous flow of dirt moving out of the hole. And lastly, he installed a set of mirrors outside the hole, positioned to reflect the sun’s light into the pit so the men could more easily see what they were doing.
All of these improvements were crucial for the quick results the new team expected to achieve.
“We got something,” a member of the crew said at forty feet.
The foreman went down into the hole to see for himself. After descending forty rungs of the ladder, he expected to find the thing Daniel had been searching for and that had eluded him to this point: a treasure chest filled with riches. Instead, he saw a set of the same wood planks he had been told were at depths of ten, twenty, and thirty feet.
“This is it?” he said.
One of the men, covered with so much sweat and dirt that he looked like a mud monster, said, “And this, sir.”
The foreman was handed a collection of rotted leaves. He squinted at the objects in his hand as if that would tell him what was significant about them.
“They’re from the ocean, sir,” the man said. “Whoever dug the hole brought them down here.”
“Why?”
Everyone shrugged. No one answered.
“We also found these, sir.”
The foreman looked against the pit’s wall. In addition to the chisel marks they found along the wall, where the hole’s builder had carved earth away before filling it back in, they found charcoal markings. It made as little sense to the foreman as it did to his men.
“Pull the boards away,” he said. “This might be it.”
But when the men pulled the wood planks away, they found only more dirt.
On his way back up the ladder, the foreman called out, “Keep digging. We must be close.”
After fifty feet, they found the same leafy fibers and charcoal, but this time, instead of wood planks, they found logs.
The foreman climbed back down into the hole. “This must
be it!”
But when his men removed the logs, there was only more dirt, the same as there always was. The foreman asked the workers if they were playing a trick on him. With his men covered in dirt, barely getting to see the sun, hungry and tired, the foreman was lucky to get back out of the hole and not become a permanent part of the pit.
At sixty feet, they found the same things. At seventy feet, they again found logs but no seaweed, or whatever it was, nor charcoal markings. Each night, the foreman had to write to his boss that the men were making significant progress but still hadn’t found any treasure.
The response that came back was: Then it’s not progress!
At eighty feet, they found more traces of wood planks. At ninety feet, after removing more pieces of wood and finding nothing but dirt beneath it, Owen sent his foreman a letter telling them to pack up their equipment and come home.
To his dying day, the foreman would tell anyone who would listen to him that if he and his men had only been allowed to continue digging a little longer they surely would have found the treasure.
Daniel could sympathize with how the man felt. He only ever returned to Oak Island one more time. Nearly thirty years old, with two sons of his own, he told his family what chores they should do that day, then rowed a canoe by himself to the spot where he had once thought all of his dreams were going to come true. His knees became weak when he looked down at the pit that he and his friends had started. So close, yet so far away.
Now, the latest expedition had also left. The hole that had been thirty feet deep when he last saw it was now ninety feet deep. He couldn’t verify this claim, though, because the mirrors had been disassembled and taken back to the mainland, and the sun didn’t reach the hole’s bottom. Part of him wanted to climb down there and touch the spot where the latest group of men had stopped, but with a family of his own he was no longer willing to do something as foolhardy as climb down a deep hole and risk it caving in on him. He had officially given up his childhood dreams and fantasies. In their place were a family and all the responsibilities that came with being a husband and father.
The Theta Prophecy Page 6
