Avalanche Creek

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Brice had to admit that the piles of cut wood, now tanned and deteriorating with age, looked very, very creepy.

  “So all these trees have come up since?” Brice asked. “This valley had no trees from the looks of how much lumber was cut.”

  “Darned few,” Duster said. “Over a hundred years of growth will make for some tall trees, even in these harsh conditions. No one needed to cut any of them down after the town went under and the mines played out.”

  Brice nodded and just sat back and watched the scenery. They passed the remains of a few more old log cabins and he could see more ruins tucked against the far side of the valley.

  Then suddenly the valley opened up to about two football fields wide and Duster pulled the Cadillac off into a parking area with four other SUVs, all empty. Clearly the occupants were exploring the area somewhere.

  The road went directly across the valley, over a low bridge, and then up a side valley.

  “The lake and remains of the town are down the valley about a mile’s hike from here,” Duster said. “No road in there.”

  He stopped the car in the shade and turned it off and all three of them got out into the warm morning air.

  Again the smell of hot pine trees hit Brice. The only sound was water running over rocks in the stream. Otherwise the valley was in complete silence.

  The ridges towered over them. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in this valley for an entire winter.

  “How many people lived in this valley when the town of Roosevelt was in its prime?” Brice asked.

  “At one point,” Bonnie said, “over ten thousand people were living and working in this valley. Less than a few hundred ever stayed over for the winters, though.”

  Brice couldn’t imagine ten thousand people in this small, steep-walled valley. It must have been damned noisy at times.

  Bonnie and Duster both took out lawn chairs from the back of the SUV and a small table and started to set them up in the shade.

  “You’re not going to the lake?” Brice asked as he watched them.

  “We’ve seen it,” Duster said, his voice kind of low, which Brice had come to know after a year meant that Duster was upset about something.

  Bonnie took Brice by the arm and walked him toward the trail leading along the left side of the canyon, handing him a cold bottle of water as they walked.

  “Take a look at the town,” she said, “go across the logjam and on down the trail about a quarter mile to the cemetery. Then come back and we’ll have lunch. We have some things to talk about.”

  Brice looked into the intense eyes of Bonnie and then nodded. “How long?”

  “If you take your time and enjoy it, about two hours. We’re fine here. Don’t rush.”

  He nodded.

  With that Bonnie turned back to Duster.

  Brice watched her for a few steps. His two bosses were sometimes very strange people. But he liked and trusted them and he wouldn’t trade his job for anything.

  He turned and headed down the wide trail toward the lake that had buried a town over a hundred years before. The excitement of finally seeing it had his stomach twisting.

  This valley was the real past, not the theoretical mathematical past. And sometimes he just needed to get away from the numbers and see the actual reality.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  July 7th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  DIXIE KNELT BESIDE the metal plaque attached to a stone near the old Roosevelt Cemetery. The tall trees around her kept the area completely in shade, and below her about fifty paces, Monumental Creek tumbled over rocks, the only sound in the valley.

  Bonnie stood about twenty paces back up the trail toward the lake. Duster hadn’t wanted to come with them, saying he had seen it before. Bonnie didn’t want Dixie going alone, so she had walked with her.

  And Bonnie’s answers to Dixie’s questions about the valley and the old town were stunning in the detail. Dixie could tell that this valley was really something special, and when she stood on the side of that crystal blue lake and looked down through the water at the remains of a few buildings still there, she felt a great sense of loss.

  She wasn’t sure why.

  “How many people died in the landslide and flood?” Dixie had asked after looking down into the water for a time.

  “None,” Bonnie said. “Numbers of people died in this valley before the town went under the water, but it took five or six days to back the water up over the town and the valley clear back up to where we are parked.”

  “That far?” Dixie had asked, stunned.

  Bonnie had nodded. “Monumental Creek is bringing down sand and mud and slowly filling the lake. In another hundred years this will be nothing more than a meadow.”

  Then Bonnie had led her across the logjam of the remains of old homes that blocked the stream at one end and up a wide trail about a quarter mile to the cemetery.

  The metal plaque said simply,

  In Memory of the Thunder Mountain Dead

  of Whom Thirteen are Known

  to Rest in this Cemetery.

  There were ten names there and three unknowns. The plaque had been put there in 1949 and clearly someone still maintained the small cemetery since a large rope showed the outline of the cemetery and a few graves had headstones still. Most graves were just depressions in the dirt.

  One name was a Smith, with W.D. initials. She would have to do some research on that person when she got back to see if it was a distant relative of hers. That would be interesting to find out. She did have some Smith relatives in the Idaho area in the past. Her mom down in Phoenix kept that kind of information. It would be fun to find out.

  Dixie stood and again she felt the immense sadness of the area sort of settle over her like a blanket. She was never a sad person. She always figured life was too exciting to be sad and too much fun. So this felt very strange to her.

  She want back down the trail to Bonnie who was watching her.

  “Ready to head back for some lunch?”

  Dixie only nodded and then with one more look back at the small, roped cemetery and metal plaque on the stone, she turned and followed Bonnie up the trail.

  This entire valley was amazing. Exciting to explore and sad at the same time.

  By the time they had hiked back along the lake and up the trail the mile to where Duster waited, the excitement of being in the wilderness and exploring the past had completely pushed aside any feeling of sadness.

  She was really coming to love Idaho and the huge mountains and the beauty of it all. And a year ago, she hadn’t expected to when she moved from Phoenix.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  July 7th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE GOT BACK to Bonnie and Duster just under two hours after he left. He had found the lake amazing and the small cemetery depressing. Even though he knew from studying this place as a child that no one had died in the big landslide and flood that buried the city of Roosevelt, it still felt just amazing and creepy.

  There were a couple of campers tucked off in the trees above the lake, their red tent bright against the natural colors of the trees and rocks. He had decided after seeing that tent that there was no chance he would ever camp near this lake.

  The valley was wonderful, the area fantastic, but camping near a lake with an old mining town under it was just too damned strange for him. Even if it didn’t have ghosts.

  Bonnie was working to set out a lunch on a card table and after a few minutes, just before she was almost ready with everything, Duster patted Brice on the shoulder.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Something I want to show you before we start lunch and our conversation.”

  Duster, wearing his long brown oilcloth coat and brown cowboy hat, even though it was warming up, walked into the road and toward the bridge over Monumental Creek. It wasn’t much of a bridge, more like some logs framing in a culvert that the stream went through.

  Duster got to the middle of the
bridge and turned and looked back up the valley.

  Brice stood beside him and looked back up the valley as well.

  The huge Monumental Lodge dominated the ridgeline, even from a few miles away. It was a stunning building, sitting there like that, filling the saddle between two large mountain peaks.

  “Amazing place, huh?” Duster asked.

  “It is,” Brice said, letting Duster lead the conversation.

  “I’ve stood in this very spot and that lodge was not there,” Duster said, simply.

  “I’ve lost what you mean,” Brice said, turning to look at his boss.

  Duster had a very, very serious expression on his face as he stared up at the huge lodge on the ridge.

  “I built that lodge in another timeline,” Duster said. “And when I returned to this timeline, the lodge was here. And that’s what we have had you working on for the last year, trying to help us figure out how that could happen.”

  With that, Duster turned and started back toward Bonnie and lunch, leaving Brice standing there, staring at the lodge, trying to even grasp what Duster was talking about.

  Or more likely joking about.

  CHAPTER SIX

  July 7th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  DIXIE MANAGED TO not say anything or ask any question about Duster’s wild statement that he had built that lodge in another timeline until Bonnie got all of them sandwiches and some fruit and bottles of water on the folding table.

  They were sitting in the shade of some tall pine trees and only the sound of the stream and a faint breeze through the trees disturbed the silence of the valley.

  Dixie had spent the last year working the math, with Bonnie and Duster, on the likelihood of various timelines and what was possible between such timelines, if they existed.

  But that had all been theory.

  Mathematical theory.

  Not building a lodge.

  Dixie took a bite of her sandwich, which Bonnie had had the kitchen in the lodge prepare. Dixie had ordered a prime rib sandwich with light horseradish sauce on it on a thick bun. It tasted wonderful and she let herself slowly chew on the sandwich before saying anything.

  Bonnie finally broke the silence.

  “What Duster told you is true,” she said. “We built that lodge in another timeline because we had always heard of a big lodge being there, but in this timeline, it didn’t exist.”

  Dixie put the sandwich down on her paper plate and stared at Bonnie, trying to even grasp why they were saying what they were saying.

  “When we returned to this timeline,” Duster said, “there it was.”

  “We figured that alternate timeline forms of us,” Bonnie said, “came to this timeline and built it while we were in another timeline building the same thing.”

  “But the math we had up until that point didn’t back that up,” Duster said. “We have the reality. Now we need to just back it up with equations, with numbers that explain the reality.”

  “Before we talk math,” Dixie said, trying to get her mind to settle down and just think, “explain to me how you can move into the past in another timeline. Not the math of it, the physical ability of it.”

  Bonnie nodded. “Good question and one we expected. On the way back to Boise we’ll show you all that. But in your equations, didn’t you see that all timelines could be reflected in a physical location? In fact, didn’t you find that all timelines should be represented in a physical manner?”

  Dixie forced herself to sit back and think.

  Bonnie and Duster went back to eating, not pushing Dixie, giving her the time, which she appreciated because right now she was worried that her wonderful bosses and her job were about to vanish into moments of insanity.

  When she had started working for them, the level of progress in mathematics of alternate timelines had been very advanced, as she would have expected from two of the great math brains on the planet. She didn’t understand exactly their fascination with the topic, but they were paying her and that was their interest, so it had become hers as well.

  She took a deep breath of the clear mountain air and let it out slowly. Dixie’s assignment for most of the last year had been to go over all of Bonnie and Duster’s previous work, checking everything for mistakes. She had checked the mathematical aspects of time being expressed in a physical location that existed in all timelines at the same time. A sort of nexus or hub of time.

  Math said a nexus or hub existed, at least in theory, tying all dimensions and timelines together in a physical location.

  Dixie sat forward and looked first at Duster, then at Bonnie. “Are you telling me you discovered the nexus for time?”

  Bonnie nodded and smiled.

  “By accident, actually,” Duster said. “My great-grandfather stumbled into the physical area of it in this dimension while digging a gold mine.”

  “That’s what we can show you on the way back to Boise,” Bonnie said. “But you checked our math and proved mathematically that it needed to exist, right?”

  Dixie nodded. She didn’t want to, but the math didn’t lie. She had just thought it all theoretical.

  “Actually, we found it and then came up with the math to prove it was there,” Duster said. “We didn’t believe it for years, either.”

  “Even after you see it,” Bonnie said, “you’ll have trouble believing it.”

  “But assume for the moment we’re crazier than loons,” Duster said, smiling at her. “Let’s just talk math and what you have done in the last few months to advance our work.”

  Bonnie nodded and indicated that Dixie should take another bite of the prime rib sandwich.

  Dixie did, then took a drink of cold water, then another bite as they all ate in silence. The sandwich was wonderful, the mountain valley beautiful and even comfortable in the shade. And so far she hadn’t gotten too much sun, so her skin was fine.

  She forced herself to just calm down and let the food and cold water and beautiful day ground her.

  “So over the last two months,” Bonnie said, “you have shown mathematically that with the infinite number of alternate timelines that exist, when we decide to go to another alternate timeline, an almost infinite number of our counterparts make the same exact decision.”

  Dixie ignored the travel aspect and went back to her calculations in her mind. She nodded after a moment. “With any decision, an infinite number of our counterparts would make the same decision if it really was a decision. And an infinite number of alternate timelines would split from that decision.”

  “Your work also proved, at least to me and Bonnie,” Duster said, “that an infinite number of those alternate timelines would then flow back and merge if the decision point had no lasting impact on the larger universe.”

  “Correct,” Dixie said, nodding again. “But you have already checked my work on all of this. Why tell me this here and now?”

  “We need you to take your work to the next level to really help us,” Duster said.

  Dixie wasn’t sure what he meant by the next level. So she kept silent.

  Bonnie nodded. “When we returned from the alternate timeline past where we built that lodge, we returned to a timeline where the lodge had always existed for us in our lives. It had been built.”

  “Our memories shifted,” Duster said. “We remembered both timelines, one where that lake and town were a forgotten part of Idaho history, and the lodge didn’t exist and another where that lake is a major tourist attraction and that lodge exists.”

  “You are saying your memory is of two timelines, two alternate histories?” Dixie asked, not believing it. “I don’t think that would be mathematically possible.”

  “We agree with you there,” Duster said, nodding. “But convince our memories. And it’s not just the two of us, either. There were six travelers who helped build that lodge and all six remember the previous timeline just as clearly. It is a fact.”

  “So somewhere, our math is wrong,” Bonnie said. “Or we
haven’t found the right calculation for it yet.”

  Dixie really wanted to ask who the others were, but knew that would derail the focus of the conversation, so again kept silent. She could ask that later.

  “We need you to help us figure out mathematically how that is possible,” Bonnie said. “Since it happened.”

  “We are not only giving you a raise on your job if you decide to stay with us after all this,” Duster said, “but we will make you independently wealthy if you agree to help us.”

  “Your job is about to change dramatically,” Bonnie said, nodding. “Once we show you the focal point, the nexus of time and show you that it exists and that you can move into alternate timelines from it, your entire life and belief systems will change as well.”

  “In other words,” Duster said, smiling, “we trust you and need your fantastic mind on this task. Maybe, between the three of us, we can actually advance the understanding of time and space.”

  “And help us figure out a mathematical reason why we can remember that lodge not being there,” Bonnie said. “We were raised in a world where the lodge was there, and we were raised in a world where the lodge was not there. That should not be mathematically possible.”

  “Yet here we sit,” Duster said, shrugging.

  Dixie took a deep breath and let it out. They had just tossed a lot of things at her. She was going to need time to think.

  “But realize,” Bonnie said. “You can decide to walk away right now if you would like. And honestly, as crazy as all this sounds, I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I honestly think you would be crazy to stay,” Duster said. “Considering everything we’ve just said. But you have to admit, it’s a hell of a mathematical challenge.”

  “And we want you to stay,” Bonnie said. “We flat need your help. In all the country, we couldn’t find a better mathematical mind than yours.”

  Dixie nodded. “Being needed feels great, I have to admit. And the challenge would be great. But give me some time to think about it and ask a few hundred really stupid questions before I give you an answer.”