Timelines

by Bob Blink

  Nothing, of course. She didn’t have a key, and even if she had, the entrance had never existed in this time. Still, it felt almost if the complex should be just a few steps away. Muttering to herself, she walked to the left edge of the wall where the rock made a forty degree turn towards the back regions of the cave. The spot picked for the drop was supposed to be in a crevice twenty feet back from this corner. This was a long way back into the cave, but the selection of the message drops was always a trade-off. The spots needed to be away from the normal dangers of weather, and also where people would be unlikely to discover the messages over the passing centuries. The preferred choice was some cavity or natural pocket around the tunnel opening that could be covered over. Sandy knew that in a couple of cases the message drop had been more than a mile from the tunnel opening because nothing suitable could be located close by.

  Walking slowly and counting off the paces, she kept her light on the face of the rock. When she reached the appropriate spot, she didn’t see the expected break in the rock. For a moment she felt a surge of panic, then realized she should stand back a bit from the wall. Moving back a couple of steps, she slowly worked the light back and forth across the surface of the cave wall, starting at eye level and extended fifteen feet on either side of the place where she stood. Finally, when the light was a waist level, she saw something just at the far edge of her pass. Slowly, keeping the light on the spot, she walked further into the cave. “There,” she thought to herself.

  In the end she had to put on her gloves, dig out a couple of larger rocks piled on top of the hidden container, and then pull out the storage tube she had been shown back in the center before she had left. Checking carefully to be sure there weren’t any more in the hole in the rock, she also looked around to see if any other crevices were nearby in which something could be hidden. Nothing she decided.

  Eagerly, she hurried back out of the cave into the sunlight where she could see what she had found. Finding a shaded flat rock just outside the entrance, she sat and opened the container. It was a little tricky, but they had showed her how. They wanted her to take a look and see what the messages might be. Inside was a thick wad of papers, with dates spread over multiple years. All of them were signed by Martin. It was a diary, she realized. A history of his explorations over the years. The last one indicated he was going to observe the revolutionary war, and would return after with a record of his observations. He never made it back. The notes he alluded to were not in the tube.

  She found a much smaller packet of documents. These were from the various members of the team, written after they discovered the tunnel into the complex was gone. The largest, only four pages in length was a summary from Martin on their findings. Sandy quickly scanned this and realized this is what they had been searching for. She needed to get this back to the complex! She would scan these four pages and send a file by their encrypted network. Then she would fly back with the whole package of documents.

  Chapter 30

  Northwest Africa

  52,000 BC

  As we passed through the tunnel room on our return from Rome base, I showed Naiya the swirling circles of light we assumed would sooner or later become new tunnels. “No change,” I noted as much for my own benefit as for Naiya’s. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the light in the forming tunnels looked exactly the same as when I had left. Maybe I thought the lights would sink deeper into the wall as the tunnel progressed eventually disappearing as a completed tunnel was formed. If that was going to happen, then progress on the new tunnels appeared to be slow and we had significantly more time than everyone thought. There was no obvious progress visible on any of the four tunnels that had been started a couple of days ago.

  Tests had shown no radiation coming from the active areas, and the area had been declared safe for people who needed to move around the tunnel room as they traveled between eras. There had been initial concern that the tunnel room would have to be avoided, which would have been a significant problem with our preparations. Still, I was not entirely comfortable being too close to the active regions, and we hurried past towards the tunnel that would take us back to the base. I saw Naiya take special notice of the colored lights that now filled the region that had previously held the path which Martin and his team had taken. It was one thing to hear about the tunnel being gone, but another to witness for one’s self.

  “Each time they come we lose someone,” she remarked.

  Mike and Ed had added the first level of security we had talked about. I knew Carol felt it was inadequate and that we needed to get setup with a more serious defense approach. As soon as the meeting was completed, Mike would have the go ahead to make more permanent preparations, unless I was completely surprised by the group’s attitude and the team elected to move out. If that happened, a smaller group of us would have to decide what we intended to do.

  For now, there were a pair of guards armed with the .308 M14’s that Mike preferred over the more common M16 rifles. In addition, each man had several grenades that Carol had somehow managed to acquire. I realized she and Ed had been more active in acquiring defense material than I had ever realized. I suspected there would be other surprises as well. The men were situated so their field of fire created a crossed “V” from either side of the ramp leading down from the control area above. Anyone coming down would be an easy target, but would have difficulty targeting either of the men without exposing themselves to fire from the other man. Each had a two-foot barrier to hide behind. It was composed of two layers of heavy sandbags, with a plate of the alien steel sandwiched between the bags.

  There had been a number of sheets of the steel in the back storage room. Most had been thin, about a half inch thick. The same thickness as the interior walls. One sheet was more than an inch thick and heavier than hell. We suspected the thicker material was used in the exterior walls of the complex, but that was only a guess. Unlike the corroded green of most of the artifacts, the steel matched the walls of the complex, appearing almost bluish in color. We had made a number of tests on the material, finding it incredibly tough and resilient. The most powerful explosives we had would only dent the stuff, and it would dull even diamond blades when we tried to cut it. And that was the thinner material. It would make a good protective barrier, and it gave me some confidence against a battle inside the control center.

  All of us had speculated what was on the other side of the walls of the complex. Some felt we were underground, but that was probably based on the fact all of the entrances opened into caves or tunnels. We had mapped the area around the most entrances, and it was clear that there was no room to house the complex in the area around most entrances. The other favorite placed the complex in space somewhere. The basis here was clearly the large entrance door that looked like an airlock. Artificial gravity would not have posed a problem for their advanced technology. In Carol’s time, the period she had been cut off from, they had just solved the problem of artificial gravity and were planning on building it into ships designed for interstellar colonization. I liked the latter location, and suspected on the far side of the walls we would find vacuum. Having the structure built of the strong alien material gave me more confidence we could support a battle without rupturing the walls and killing everyone inside.

  “Let’s look upstairs,” suggested Naiya, also curious to see what preparations had been made. I agreed, and instead of continuing around to the downtime tunnel, we turned back and headed up the ramp. At the top of the stairs we found even more activity. John’s team was busy documenting everything in the control room. In the ‘lab’ area they were setting up equipment for some experiments John had planned. All of the hardware in the lab remained dark, but I knew John had hopes of changing that in the next day or two.

  In the control room, opposite the long walkway that led to the airlock, a variety of defense mechanisms were being set up. More of the three-tier barriers had been established, with armed men manning two of them. In addition, I could see tha
t a number of explosive devices had been positioned all along the tube. I suspected they were claymore anti personnel devices based on movies rather than personal experience. The guards also each had a couple of LAW anti-tank single shot rocket launchers close at hand. In the back of the room behind a third barrier, a team of techs was mounting a very large industrial laser. I knew Carol was behind this. The laser was the closest thing we had to the rifle she had used. She still worried about the possibility of some sort of shield that might protect the aliens. When she had killed the one with Neural Inhibitor Rifle, a pinkish barrier momentary flashed partially around the alien. I don’t know how one interprets reactions from an unknown race, but she has indicated on several occasions that the alien seemed momentarily surprised her weapon was effective. If they had a means to protect against our weapons, we might have more trouble on our hands than anticipated.

  I saw that the bin that normally held the extra keys was empty. One of the crew noted my inspection and said, “Carol came and took them yesterday. She said there was no reason to give the aliens a chance to slip into one of the tunnels and get away.” He paused for a few seconds and then added. “I think she is worried because the two aliens that came through the other day took keys and didn’t return them.”

  It was ironic that after all the time we had been careful to ensure the keys looked undisturbed in case the aliens returned, one of our first actions was to remove them. Still, their presence the other day had allowed the aliens to complete their business without becoming aware of us, so the idea had worked.

  “Has anyone thought about the alien’s flying devices?” I asked the man. I had noticed the room at the bottom of the stairs was still filled with all of the strange devices that Carol said the aliens used for transportation. I didn’t know what other capabilities they had, but perhaps we should remove them from their access as well.

  “Carol and Mike wanted to talk with you about that,” he answered. “I think they want to move them as well.”

  “We better go,” Naiya reminded me. “The meeting will be starting in a while and we should get there early to coordinate with Carol.”

  There wasn’t anything we could do here, but I had wanted to see what Mike and Carol had been setting up. I wasn’t sure what else they had in mind, but so far our preparations seemed a bit inadequate. I turned and followed Naiya back down the ramp and we headed downtime for the meeting.

  ---------------------

  Al caught me on the way to the meeting. “Martin left a message at the drop,” he informed me without preamble. “Actually, he left a lot of messages, but it appears that they managed to confirm the death of the French Colonel was very likely due to one of the aliens.”

  “You said he left a lot of messages,” interrupted Naiya. “I still don’t see how that is possible.”

  Neither did I. That wasn’t characteristic of the way the tunnels had worked all along and I said so.

  “It looks like they spent several months investigating the death before returning to the gate. They weren’t surprised to find no one there to let them in. When the planned communications had suddenly ceased, they had suspected something must have happened.”

  We had an arrangement for twice a week communications. When they returned, we would normally have known to expect them, and one of the couriers would use a key to trigger the tunnel to provide them access. This approach limited the number of keys floating around and prevented the loss of one of the valuable devices if something happened to the team while they were out of the complex.

  “It must have hit them hard to find themselves cut off,” Naiya commented. “Not knowing what had happened, and knowing they couldn’t ever get back home.”

  “From the various messages, it seems to have affected some more than others,” Al explained. “They each left a message for someone in case we are ever able to pass along their last words. They knew it might not happen, but hoped there would be a way for their final words to someday reach loved ones. Martin left a several page explanation of what they had learned about Colonel Tanguay. Then, there are additional entries, like a diary, spaced about a year apart.”

  “I still don’t understand that part,” I asked. “How can there be any entries when it has only been two weeks.”

  Al was enthusiastic. Here was a topic that offered him insight into the system. “Normally we would expect time events to work this way,” he reminded us. “This is past history, and has already worked its way out. The actions taken by Martin and his team have already happened. All of them. So the fact we have records written by them over a period of years is totally consistent. What has always seemed odd to me, has been the time-linked sequence of events in the various periods we could access by the time tunnels. Somehow the fact we could come and go from each of those periods had affected causality. Removing the link by closing the tunnel caused things to switch back to normal.” He hesitated to see if we were following his hurried explanation.

  When he was convinced we were following him, he continued. “Look at it another way. When the times were linked through the time complex, no message would have been found for a number of weeks until he returned and placed it there. Then we would have been able to retrieve it here uptime. The linkage seems to account for the fact we can interact, and even alter whether he places the message at all. Once that link was broken completely, his actions and ours are completely independent again.”

  “So how does this help us?” asked Naiya.

  Al looked momentarily put off. Then he continued with the same enthusiasm. “It might not be of any use to us at all. On the other hand, it might explain some actions or limitations of the system. For example, Carol always wondered why the aliens during her first encounter didn’t simply shift the time tunnel and save their friend. One would have thought they could gone back to the center, made a few adjustments, and bingo, appeared back before she could have done the deed. Both her and her brother could have been taken care of. However, they didn’t, which implies there are other limitations to the system we don’t know about. We have other hints available that suggest the same thing. They leave tunnels open. That may imply there are restrictions on the ability to reopen a tunnel into the same era. Perhaps there is a tolerance on how many years must exist between tunnel openings. Maybe there are other dangers of carelessly manipulating the tunnels. It might explain in some way why they tend to leave the tunnels open until they are convinced they won’t need to access that era again. I wonder what would happen if one opened two tunnels a hundred years apart, then allowed time to pass until the earlier one advanced enough to reach the period where the second tunnel was initially opened?”

  I could see he was enthralled by the possibilities. But now wasn’t the time. We had to get to the meeting. “Are there any suggestions you can make at this time that may be helpful?”

  He thought for a minute. “Maybe one,” he said slowly. “They seem to be interested in the uptime tunnel. Whatever they want to happen, they are watching for it in that time. If any of these theories are correct, then there is a reasonable chance that is one tunnel they wouldn’t want to close. You might want to consider placing a team up there.” He looked immensely pleased with himself.

  Naiya was in charge of the relocation. I looked at her. Like me, she was going to need to think about it a bit. Our baseline plan had not considered moving people there.

  I turned back to Al. “What about all these notes. Can I get a copy to read?”

  “Oh, I don’t have them yet. I only have Martin’s four page summary of their initial investigation. Sandy sent that via our link. The rest she is bringing back. I just got a brief summary from her on the rest. She should be headed to the airport and will have them here tomorrow. I’ll make sure you have a copy. They should be very interesting reading.”

  Naiya was pointing to her watch. She hated being late. We dropped the current discussion and made our way into the other room.

  Chapter 31

  Northwest Africa<
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  52,000 BC

  The meeting area began to fill up early, as people arrived in small groups wanting to sit with friends and get a better seat than they had the other day. Today they needn’t have worried. We had chosen one of the open areas and set up chairs outside of the conference room. With the additional people coming in from the various facilities, none of the rooms we had available would be adequate for the expected crowd. Dave and his people had sent a single representative, as had both of the other established period offices. Somehow I wasn’t surprised by their actions. We had all the people from home, and this time everyone who wasn’t on security duty from the downtime base was present. I couldn’t remember having this much of the group assembled at one time ever before. There were more than seventy people assembled in front of me. Perhaps a dozen remained in the field, and another half dozen on guard duty. I looked at the faces. In one way or another I had been involved in the approval of each of these people to the team. I was surprised at how many names I had forgotten over the years.

  We had discussed the pros and cons of having everyone assembled in one place, but in the end concluded it was the best way to achieve the common consent that would be necessary if we were to continue effectively. The appearance of the aliens had really changed nothing about our basic goal and decisions made when the group was being assembled. But more than a decade of complacency would have affected many of the people, and perhaps changed their outlook on how we needed to respond now that the return of the missing ‘Builders’ had finally come to pass.