Both Bonnie and Duster laughed and Bonnie pointed to Dixie’s half-eaten sandwich.
“Might want to finish that,” Bonnie said. “We have dinner reservations at seven and that’s a good six hours and a scary car ride from now.”
All Dixie could do was nod and take another bite of the wonderful-tasting prime rib sandwich.
Duster stood and took his chair and went out onto the road to the middle of the bridge and sat down facing up the valley and the lodge. His oilcloth duster draped around him, his cowboy hat tipped back slightly.
He was clearly a man used to being alone with his own thoughts, Dixie could tell that. Typical for most mathematicians and she was no exception.
Dixie took another bite of the sandwich, letting her mind roam back through the assumptions she had proven mathematically over the last year.
After a minute, Bonnie stood and started cleaning up.
Only the sounds of the water over the rocks and the light breeze through the pine needles broke the silence.
Dixie finally finished as much of the sandwich as she could and moved it aside. Everything they had told her, except the memory of being in another timeline, was possible mathematically.
Physical travel to another timeline was another matter.
As Bonnie picked up Dixie’s plate, she said, “I know we sound crazy, but we really aren’t.”
Dixie looked up at Bonnie, into her dark eyes. “If I hadn’t done a year of math working with you both to prove what you just told me was real, I would be looking for a way to walk out of this valley right now.”
Bonnie nodded. “And honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed you in the slightest.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
July 7th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
AFTER LUNCH, BRICE had gone for a walk, heading back down the trail to the lake. He had passed a couple coming out who looked sunburned and were smiling.
“Wonderful valley, isn’t it?” the woman said to him as he stepped out of the trail to one side to let them pass.
“Beautiful,” he said.
But his mind was a long ways from the valley and the warm afternoon. He was just letting his mind drift back over everything Bonnie and Duster had told him, including the new job offer and actually showing him the time nexus. If that actually existed, he wanted to see it more than anything else.
But now his mind was going back over a year’s worth of work for them. They had just told him that his work for that entire year hadn’t been theoretical, but actually real.
That changed the perspective on everything.
He had proven mathematically that the same person could not exist twice at the same moment in the same timeline. So in reality, he could not go meet himself in another timeline. Time and the very math of time would not allow that to happen.
And Bonnie and Duster had already proven, and Brice had confirmed with his calculations, that any decision, no matter how small or by whom, split off an alternate timeline. Most of those timelines merged almost instantly back with the main timeline it had split from. But sometimes a decision kept the timelines branching into infinite numbers of timelines.
Brice really needed to see the physical aspects of the time nexus because mathematically, alternate timeline Bonnies and Dusters should not have been able to accidently stumble on this world to build that lodge. That had to be influenced by the physical nature of how they were traveling to other timelines.
With that alone, Brice had about a hundred questions he could think of.
He found himself again just above the small lake that covered the old mining town. In some alternate timelines, the town had not been destroyed by the flood, the landslide hadn’t happened, or had been smaller or diverted.
That timeline was an infinite number of timelines sideways from this timeline.
He understood the numbers, the scale, and the math of it all.
He sat down on a large rock looking out over the lake and just let his mind keep working over the last year.
He had become an expert on the mathematical theory of alternate timelines, thanks to Bonnie and Duster and their work. But with one simple crazy conversation over sandwiches, he realized how little he really did know yet.
His basic decision to stay with this job, or go teach, would cause major timeline shifts he was fairly certain. Most people made decisions and caused nothing more than side ripples that were reabsorbed into the main timeline. But he had proven with mathematical equations that getting married and having a child tended to start theoretical alternate timelines since the child moved forward through time and had children and so on and so on.
So the question was, could he really go teach, knowing this was here, even if he didn’t believe it?
The answer was clear. Of course he couldn’t.
He had spent a year with Bonnie and Duster: Brice liked them and he trusted them. Brice needed to see this through. It was too much of a challenge to not stay with them.
Brice stood and with one last look at the lake, he turned and headed back up the valley. He wouldn’t tell them his decision until dinner.
And then, if they really weren’t crazy, tomorrow he would see the nexus of time, where mathematically an infinite number of timelines were expressed in a physical form of some sort.
The idea of that just twisted his stomach. He couldn’t even imagine it outside of the mathematics that said it existed.
And he trusted math.
He just didn’t trust his own imagination.
CHAPTER EIGHT
July 8th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE STARED OUT the window as the big Cadillac SUV headed along the Snake River. Dixie and Bonnie and Duster had gotten an early start out of the lodge and had reached Cascade, Idaho, in just under three hours. They had stopped for a quick lunch, then gone toward Boise and then cut over toward the border with Oregon at a small town called Horseshoe Bend.
From Cascade to the Snake River had taken just under two hours. Duster had told her their ultimate goal was an old mine above an old ghost town named Silver City.
From what Bonnie said, they were about an hour away, so they would reach the old mine around two in the afternoon.
It had been an amazing beautiful drive, down out of the central Idaho mountains, then across the large Treasure Valley to the Snake River, and now they were headed into a mountain range on the southwest side of the state called the Owyhee Mountains.
Dixie had loved it all.
Idaho was such a spectacularly beautiful place in its ruggedness. But the closer they got to the blue-tinted mountains ahead, the more her stomach twisted.
Dixie had told Bonnie and Duster last night over a wonderful dinner in the big lodge that she wanted to stay and keep up the work, and she wanted to see the time nexus.
They both had seemed very pleased and Duster had offered a toast.
“To the future,” he said.
“All of them,” Bonnie had added.
And they had all drunk to that.
Dixie had decided at dinner that she didn’t want to ask questions about what she was going to see until she saw it. She had decided she had just wanted the mathematics she had worked on over the last year to speak for itself.
She had a thousand questions, and both Bonnie and Duster had agreed with Dixie’s idea to hold the questions.
“After you see the place,” Bonnie had said, “we’ll answer any question you might have. On anything.”
So they had enjoyed the meal, talking about the lodge and the fantastic mountains and history. Bonnie and Duster seemed to know a great deal about the area’s history and their stories were always wonderful to listen to.
And because of the cool night air coming in through the window and the deep featherbed, Dixie had managed to get a good night’s sleep even with the worry about the next day.
When Duster turned off the paved highway onto a wide and fairly smooth dirt road that headed up into the mountains, Dixie
finally couldn’t hold the questions anymore.
“Can you give me some history on how you found this place?” she asked.
Bonnie nodded and indicated that Duster should tell the story.
“My great-great-grandfather was a prospector in the first boom of the Silver City area. He dug a gold mine on the side of Florida Mountain to the west of Silver City. For a time he had a good gold vein and then it pinched off. He dug a little farther and gave up.”
Duster had the big SUV moving at around fifty up the wide and fairly straight road. He clearly drove it a lot, and Dixie wasn’t anywhere near as nervous as when they went up the narrow, winding road to the lodge.
“After a few years, my great-great-grandfather reopened the mine and dug, hoping to hit another vein,” Duster said, “but instead he hit a large cavern. He worked it a little more off the big cavern until he broke into an even larger cavern full of crystals. That was when he boarded the mine up and went to Boise to have a family.”
“Crystals?” Dixie asked.
Bonnie nodded. “Each timeline is represented by what looks like a rose quartz crystal.”
Dixie couldn’t even begin to imagine that. “How big is this place?”
“Infinite,” Duster said.
“The crystals that are nearest where his grandfather broke in are just one tiny area of timelines, and there are billions there and more forming all the time.”
“We believe it moves off into other dimensions of a sort,” Duster said, “but haven’t been able to mathematically confirm that either.”
Dixie didn’t know what to think, other than her stomach was clamped into a knot.
“The mine stayed boarded up and in the family. My grandfather showed the mine to my father,” Duster said, “who then showed it to me and Bonnie after we finished at Stanford with our doctorate degrees.”
“We spent the next four years living in an apartment behind my parent’s home in Boise,” Duster said, “doing nothing but studying the place and doing some of the basic math calculations that you have checked for us this last year.”
“I would call those far from basic,” Dixie said.
“Those calculations got us to the idea of using the power of a crystal to actually shift timelines into the past,” Duster said.
Dixie decided to not question that. After she saw it, she might be able to put the math on the reality and see what they did. But right now questions on that topic would just confuse her even more.
“How many people know about this place?” Dixie asked.
“Duster and I, six historians and an architect and an interior designer we hired to build the lodge. So you will be the eleventh person.”
“Not counting my mother and father,” Duster said, “who don’t like this place and want nothing to do with it. They have no idea what we’ve been doing up here and don’t want to know. They moved to Arizona a year ago and seem happy there.”
Dixie was shocked at the mention of an architect and interior designer. “Are you telling me Ryan and April know about this?”
Dixie had met them numbers of times in and around Bonnie and Duster’s office. They had their own design firm down near the Boise River, but always seemed to be in and out with Bonnie and Duster.
Dixie had liked them a lot. She had never met a couple so much in love and who laughed as much as they did.
“They designed and built and furnished that lodge,” Duster said.
“It still looks almost exactly how they built it,” Bonnie said. “Or at least how their counterparts from another timeline built it.”
With that all Dixie could do was sit and stare out the window as Duster took them higher and higher into the mountains.
And the wide road got narrower and rougher.
CHAPTER NINE
July 8th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
FOR BRICE, THE last part of the drive into the mine had been flat horrifying. Duster had left the narrow dirt road right after a bridge over a mostly dry creek and started up what looked to be nothing more than a game trail.
And Duster didn’t slow down because the hillside was so steep. The big Cadillac just bounced over ruts and holes, eventually turning a sharp left and heading across the hill through the trees.
Brice held on for dear life through the bumps. And when the car turned to go across the side of the steep hill, he desperately wanted to climb to the other side of the back seat. He was behind Duster and Brice felt the car was about to tip over and roll down the steep hill. But at the same time there was no way he was going to unbuckle his seat belt.
So he just leaned to the inside of the car and held on tight and hoped as Duster bounced them through the trees going across the steep slope, finally pulling into a grove of scrubby pine trees, the nose of the car pointing upward.
“We walk the rest of the way,” Duster said, shutting off the car and climbing out.
“Fun ride, huh?” Bonnie said, glancing back at Brice before unbuckling her seat belt and climbing out as well.
“I’m up for walking down,” Brice said as he managed to catch his breath and release his grip on the side of the seat. His hands were shaking as he climbed out into a warm blast of thin, mountain air.
As with the town of Roosevelt under the water, he had always wanted to visit the ghost town of Silver City, but again had never made the time. Now about a thousand feet down the hill below him he could see the remains of the old mining town in the bottom of the valley.
There looked to be only about twenty buildings left standing and two buildings had some cars parked in front of them.
“Not much of a town left, is there?” Duster said as he waited for Brice to calm his nerves and look around.
This area was much, much drier than the Monumental Lodge area and the hot smell of sagebrush mixed with the hot pine smell. Brice loved both smells.
“We walking very far?” he asked, figuring he would need some sunscreen if they were.
“Nope,” Duster said. “Just across the hillside there. Watch your step on the trail. It’s a long ways down.”
Duster led the way, followed by Bonnie.
Brice fell in behind them.
He had been stunned that ten other people knew about this place. That means Bonnie and Duster had led eight others like him to this old mine. He would have to ask them later if they were as scared as he was feeling.
They reached the flat top of an old mine tailing. The remains of an old shack still barely stood to one side in front of a boarded-up mine. It was clear that the earth had caved in behind the boards.
He didn’t know much about mines, but he knew for a fact there was no way they were going into a mine that way.
Had Bonnie and Duster just been playing an elaborate mind game? That didn’t seem like them, but at the moment this looked like a bust.
“What we are about to show you has to remain between us and the few others who know about this place,” Duster said.
“We trust you or we wouldn’t be showing you this,” Bonnie said. “You can quit and leave at any point, but the non-disclosure agreement you signed when you came to work for us must remain in full force. Understood?”
“Not sure who would believe me anyway,” Brice said. “But I understand.”
Duster laughed. “That’s what they all say.”
He took what looked like an old skeleton key from his pocket and looked around.
Bonnie did the same. “Clear,” she said after a moment.
Duster nodded and turned toward a huge rock near the mine entrance and twisted the head of the key.
The face of the rock slid back, showing a door behind it that clicked open.
Brice was impressed. In a million years he never would have thought that rock moved.
“Just some of the many, many security features we have installed,” Duster said as the three of them went in the door to a small room.
Duster hit a large red button and the door closed and the rock outside slid sile
ntly back into place.
It took a few seconds in intense blackness before the lights came up and a big metal door opened into a mine tunnel.
It had huge timbers and the remains of a small-gauge mine-car track running up the middle.
Lights hung from the ceiling clicked on, showing the mine leading off into the mountain.
Brice stepped out into the tunnel and looked around at the big timbers. He was about to ask if it was safe when he noticed above the timbers how everything had been reinforced. A major earthquake wouldn’t knock this place down. It looked old, but was far from old. Another security feature in case someone got in here.
Bonnie and Duster had started down the mine tunnel, so he followed, feeling the air temperature cool the deeper they went.
As the mine tunnel and tracks curved to the right, Duster just walked straight ahead and through the rock wall and timbers.
“Hologram,” Bonnie said, stopping and waiting for him. “Give me your hand and close your eyes and I’ll get you through it.”
She took his hand and disappeared into the wall. Just as his face was about to smash into the wall, he closed his eyes.
Nothing.
After a step he opened them again as Bonnie let go of his hand and looked back down the mine tunnel.
“More security protections,” Duster said. “And if anyone got that far, I would have been notified and set off even more protections from anywhere on the planet.”
With that Duster turned and kept on going down the mineshaft, again walking through what looked like the end of the tunnel.
Bonnie didn’t wait for Brice this time and vanished behind Duster.
Brice managed to keep his eyes mostly open and his hands in front of him as he walked through the wall.
That was just downright creepy.
On the other side of the hologram was a huge cavern. The lights had come up showing a massive number of shelves filled with supplies and racks and racks of various clothing all looking like it was right out of a period costume party.
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