Sand Glass

by A M Russell

  I could hear a noise. It was the familiar sound of a crowd of people. The echo in the right angled corridor beyond. There the floor was smooth and the panels seemed metallic and militaristic.

  ‘How many Davey?’ Jared looked at me desperately, still feeling round for the hidden latch, ‘It must be here!’

  I listened, ‘About thirty.’

  ‘Is that the thing you need to press?’ Janey pointed to their right.

  Marcia looked at the spot. ‘Yes that’s it!’

  Jared dived for the latch. I could hear the stomping of feet getting closer. Jared couldn’t quite reach it. He scooped Marcia round the waist and lifted her. She pressed it and they both fell through. Janey jumped right over them inside the smaller tunnel. I scrambled after, less nimbly, but with equal speed. Jared jump up. He and I pushed hard against the door. I could see through the crack, faint reflections flickered from the tee junction. It wasn’t shutting. Janey and Marcia added their weight to the heavy door and it moved suddenly and dropped back into place.

  The sudden silence and the darkness were alarming. Jared had his torch out on a moment.

  ‘We have to break the latch mechanism. They will know someone’s been there. And we can’t be followed.’

  Marcia sat down suddenly. The three of us ignored this. Jared lifted Janey; who had dropped both her and his pack onto the floor; and she reached above to the bar.

  ‘It’s loose. Pass me some rope.’

  ‘Davey! Get it.’

  I took the end of the rope from Marcia’s pack and quickly passed it to Janey. She fastened it firmly.

  ‘I can hear them…’ I said.

  ‘Okay. Everyone pull on three. And you!’’ Jared grabbed Marcia by the arm and forced her to her feet.

  Jared made the count and we all pulled as hard as we could. In the semidarkness I heard a creaking whine of grinding metal. We all pitched backwards with a breaking force and slammed into an uneven wall and floor. Jared grabbed his torch again and pointed it at the internal latch mechanism. We all tried not to groan from the jarring crunch into the rubble. Someone was pressing it from the outside. We saw it move. The broken end waggled uselessly and the bolts remained in place.

  ‘I think…’ said Janey.

  ‘Shh!’ Jared was motionless, then very softly, ‘don’t move. Wait.’ He clicked off the torch. I heard a tiny sound from Marcia. But we remained like that for several minutes.

  It was if we could sense the presence of someone through the thick impenetrable wall. I visualised them listening just on the other side.

  Some minutes later Jared’s torch came back on. This time pointing into the gloom of the dusty corridor. We all began to slip silently along. Marcia grabbed my hand and squeezed it rather hard. This time I understood. I wasn’t liking it myself, the thought of being entombed; but I certainly was more afraid of what was on the other side of the door. And the air in here was a lot fresher that it could be if there was no way out. Something was circulating it from somewhere. I sensed rather than felt the slight drift of the airflow in these ancient fissures.

  After Ten minutes of walking we stopped. Marcia sat down. Jared got out the little camping light and turned it up slightly, so we could all see each other clearly.

  ‘I’m so sorry sweetheart,’ he said to Marcia, ‘I know what you are feeling. Would you like me to give you something for it?’

  ‘Yes please.’ said Marcia through gritted teeth. She was sweating and trembling.

  Janey helped Jared get the med case out. We gave her what was known as a “B dose”; it was in the second case Marked with “B” (I guess sometimes we weren’t particularly creative about this). These were the “downers”. They were either to counteract the effect of the “uppers” in the “A” case, or for painkilling reasons. The “George special” was in here too, my little dose of heaven at that time in the past. This one was just a standard dose for exactly these sorts of things. I supposed that it was a bit like the feeling I had up that tree as a child. Abject panic coupled with a feeling of shame. I didn’t know if it was a feeling like that. For Marcia was it claustrophobia? I’d read somewhere that it isn’t the enclosed space, so much as the feeling of not being able to get out of it. My fear was of heights and falling. The effect of gravity. We all had these things in there somewhere.

  Janey sat next to Marcia and hugged her tightly. I don’t know much about girls and how these kinds of friendly gestures work, but she seemed instantly cheered and calmer. The drug kicked in a couple of minutes later and she took some deep breaths and rested her head on Janey’s shoulder. I remembered the smoothness of the concoction I had been given. This I guess rightly was rather like the nervous system calming effect that a double of gin would give you, but without the other unwanted results. This one was better than some of the drugs in the case. They didn’t make you queasy or give you a headache when it wore off.

  We continued with Marcia and Jared in front, and Janey and me behind them. The narrow corridor began to open out and it was only a little while later when we detected the definite movement of air flowing from somewhere to our right. We stopped. Jared seemed undecided. We were at a junction of two intersecting tunnels, both appeared to be naturally formed and subsequently braced and cleared by the ones who moved in secret around this place. The second tunnel came in at a sharp angle from behind and to the left. So we were looking at a straight on, or an almost straight on and to the right.

  ‘I can’t work it out.’ Jared looked back at me and Janey, ‘this wasn’t here before.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ I said, ‘we must be in a different time completely.’

  ‘That’s possible.’ said Jared, ‘but maybe we just don’t know these caves as well as we think.’ He took Marcia’s hand and drew her closer, ‘it is ok. We will be with Elland soon. In less than an hour. We just need to get near enough to him.’

  ‘Do they have a radio?’ asked Marcia at once.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Try it now.’ Jared said to me.

  ‘It’s in Janey’s pack.’

  We got the small radio out, and set it on the open channel.

  ‘Are we on receive?’ Jared asked me.

  ‘We will hear them if we get near and they are transmitting.’

  ‘Is there a chance that they will be on another frequency?’ I asked.

  ‘Hard to say….’ Jared looked puzzled, ‘there is something very odd about all of this that I have yet to extract from the known facts.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Marcia asked as we carried the tunnel that was for us straight ahead.

  ‘All this time… I thought we were working our way to a point in time, when things were resolved. But now… I’m not so sure.’

  ‘About things being resolved?’ Janey this time.

  ‘No. About things going forward to a certain point.’

  Janey looked at me. ‘Do you think you could find it in yourself to forgive for something that I don’t remember but I think I did?’

  ‘What?’ I said trying to catch up.

  ‘Do you remember the first time we were here?’ asked Marcia suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ Janey was frowning, ‘but there is a halo around it in my mind as if…. as if..’

  ‘….as if it hadn’t happened yet.’ Jared finished her sentence. She looked at him. Nobody moved. Janey took my hand and gripped it in that way that is almost uncomfortable, but sends the message “Help Me”.

  I was the first one to speak; ‘You must have an idea about that.’ I looked at Jared, waiting for him to respond. But he stared at Marcia as if he saw something that he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘You have the most beautiful eyes.’ he said to her. They stared at each other, as if some wonderful idea had grown and flowered in a moment.

  ‘Please don’t go now.’ she said. ‘Please stay.’

  I was totally perplexed by this interchange between the two of them.

  ‘I remember…’ said Janey, staring at them.

&nbs
p; ‘What?’ I really did not get any of what had just been said.

  Jared turned to me, ‘We are all connected. Every one of us. Even Hanson, and Rimmington; and the science bods who do nothing but complain about the “wild” parties they thing the rest of us are having. But there is one thing that is common to all of us. No one escapes that common ground. Not one. The reason why I drove to London that night and didn’t make it. The reason we are all here. The reason we all stayed. We all took part. Everyone at some point, in some place or another. Common ground. One thing….’

  ‘Jared!’ said Janey, brightening and coming alive next to me, ‘I know it! I do!’ she turned to me, eyes bright. ‘It’s going to be alright…. It really is…. I know how all this works. And the only ones it’s not going to work for are the ones who want to misuse it.’

  ‘Please… please will someone explain what on earth you are all talking about?!’ I was at the point where I felt I should legitimately be able to “get it”. But perhaps being made to feel stupid at regular intervals was actually the purpose of this trip for me. I resolved to practice humility, and then I would perhaps see it for myself.

  ‘Is this to do with the fact that everyone has the same birthday?’ I asked.

  ‘Birthday?’ said Marcia, ‘what birthday?’

  ‘Yours.’ I responded, ‘and yours, and yours…’ I pointed at each of them.

  ‘Yes…’ Jared stared at me in wonder, ‘that is it! A second strand…. It’s true! What I was going to say was like this; but this is truer and even more certain. What do you do on someone’s birthday?’

  ‘You send them a card.’ I said.

  We stopped at the next small cave we found. We mashed some tea. Marcia got out her notebook. We were all called to this by two common denominators. Jared had the first, and I the second.

  Everyone had been sent a letter; and everyone had the same birthday. Marcia’s job was to pull out of her memory all the d.o.bs of staff who had been at Base and or were expedition personnel. We needed to find our “sample group” as if were. The thing that connected us, and embraced us. We were joined by more than coincidence. I was sure that the people at Base who wished to control this, knew why it was so. Or they guessed. We were all quiet while Marcia wrote down the information from out of her memory that Jared requested. It turned out that Marcia hadn’t been exaggerating when she said she remembered everything. George may have suspected, but even he didn’t know. It was only the involvement of Hanson then seemed to nullify her ability up to a point.

  Marcia showed Jared and the rest of us the list. There were at least sixty names. They included all of us, Aiden’s group, Elland’s Team, and a number of people who only ever worked at Base.

  There were two significant dates that kept reoccurring. The First of August. And the Fifth of November. There was a sprinkling of others but these turned out to be sponsors who didn’t work there, but had visited.

  Jared stared at it. Then looked at me. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty Seven.’ I said.

  ‘Marcia is…’ Jared began.

  ‘Twenty Seven; if you’ll let a girl speak for herself.’ Marcia leaned closer.

  ‘And I am…’ said Jared.

  ‘Twenty Seven.’ Janey finished, and smiled, ‘I don’t need to add to that.’

  ‘But…. But that means….’ I stuttered, ‘we are all…. I mean it’s incredible!’

  ‘No,’ said Janey, ‘Just very, very improbable!’

  ‘So what about bonfire night?’ I asked.

  ‘That is the date the experiment was to end. The date we set for the Modulator to run to. It always has to be set with an end point. But there seems to be no correlation on the year in this case.’ Janey thought for a moment, ‘Jules set the start point. I set the end point. The whole thing had to run in between 90 and 100 days. Round about three months. That way we would have enough data to retrieve from the experiment. We were to do short tasks and no one was to be exposed to the modular frequency for longer than a week continuously. But it didn’t specify that the week was a week outside. That must mean that time would expand and stretch and keep repeating endlessly within the frame we had set!’

  We all sat enthralled by these revelations. Janey looked up. Her colour had returned.

  ‘We were all called in to the experiment by a letter issued by the university. But it was provoked by the setting up of the Modulator. That means that I was already there before the letter was actually issued. I was the experiment. But why the exact date?’

  ‘Let me ask one question?’ I said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘How many digits was the start point?’

  ‘Six.’ Janey looked puzzled, and then slightly horrified, ‘No, it couldn’t be. It was supposed to be this year’s date. Then the end point would just be the same year, so only four digits were needed. Oh no!’

  ‘What did you and Jules do?’ Jared was calm.

  ‘We set it to start on the first of August this year. But what is the one date that everyone automatically writes without a thought?’

  ‘Their own birthday…’ I said.

  ‘But who?’ I asked.

  ‘It was someone else….’ said Janey thinking hard, ‘there was one person who was sent to report back to the sponsors and to make sure we set everything up just as we were supposed to.’

  ‘Who?’ I knew what was coming.

  ‘The rat!’ Marcia exclaimed, ‘Oh shit! It’s my fault!’

  ‘Hanson?’ I asked, ‘and it absolutely is not your fault.’

  ‘It wasn’t Hanson who pressed the button to start it,’ said Jared, ‘Neither was it Janey or Jules, or anyone who wanted to commit to science and the truth of what we could discover. There were always the people who had the power to overrule the passcodes on security, who could change the start or end point at the last minute. And they knew as we now do what effect that might have.’

  ‘It has to be Rimmington.’ said Janey. He was the one of two people from the directorship who came to see us that day.’

  ‘Who was the other?’

  ‘Ah that’s easy.’ said Janey, ‘It was Mr Rice. Davey’s Boss.’

  I couldn’t have looked more shocked if I tried.

  ‘One of them did this.’ said Jared, ‘but we don’t know who, and we don’t know why. So let’s not jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘So the obvious question,’ I said, ‘who has their birthday as the fifth of November?’

  ‘Marcia?’ Jared, Janey and I all looked to her for answers.

  ‘Mrs Cardell, Angelo, most of the technicians including George. They are all different years though.’

  ‘But what about Rimmington?’

  ‘There is no record of such as person.’

  ‘He doesn’t exist?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Marcia, ‘There is no record. He exists alright. But as for a birthday… well, you’d need a higher level of security or something to find that information.’

  ‘What about this Mr Rice?’ asked Jared.

  ‘You must know something?’ Janey looked at me.

  ‘Nothing… nothing at all. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There must be something…. Anything?’ Marcia looked to me for answers this time.

  ‘There is one thing. It probably isn’t relevant. But the Boss is insisting on all the staff from Blue Sky… well all the ones he has summoned, are to attend a golf club party on a date yet to be released. And it’s not an optional thing.’

  Jared looked thoughtful, ‘Could be useful. Very useful even. But there are real things for us to overcome before that. We really need to get out of here tonight.’

  ‘You mean right now?’ Janey looked relieved.

  ‘As soon as we deliver the time stabilisation drugs to Elland and his team.’

  ‘What about Aiden and his lot?’

  ‘They always had the power to leave.’ said Jared, ‘as soon as it starts to collapse they will all get out.’

  ‘They weren’t there. I
mean at their place two day ago. It’s not far from here is it?’ I was not certain if I was right.

  ‘Yes. But they are in a different time frame to us. It’s not always the same. They could still be there. The message will permeate soon enough if it hasn’t already. This is not our fight, not really. We really need to find Rimmington, and we ought to get Hanson as well.’ Jared’s eyes darkened when he mentioned Hanson’s name.

  ‘Why?’ I thought he has already got out?’

  ‘You need to think about where he was the last time anyone saw him.’ said Jared.

  ‘Well, wasn’t that right here somewhere?’

  ‘Maybe. The question that we need to ask… did anyone see Hanson?’ Jared sounded kind of exasperated.

  ‘Yes. I saw him.’ Janey looked pained. He was here right before I slipped the cuffs.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘so that’s how you did it!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘not terribly romantic I know. I just literally slipped away. But here’s the thing. Hanson was taken away by Rimmington himself. But at the time it didn’t know if he was in with him or not. Then I went to Aiden’s camp and stayed there. I didn’t think that there was anywhere else for me to go.’

  ‘You can leave now?’ I asked her. Janey lifted her eyes to me, huge and startled, ‘I’m sorry! What did I say?’

  ‘Janey….You said you remember?’

  ‘I can see a card; I can see Jared holding a pendant in one hand….’ With that she reached out and clutched his hand.

  ‘Janey….’ Jared hugged her. Marcia was motionless with her cup frozen in the middle of a gesture. This meant something to all of them.

  ‘Then what?’ I urged her gently.

  ‘Then….later, we went in the car and drove to London. We got there at about Three am….and…..and…..’ she looked at me, tears silently coursing down her cheeks, ‘I am in another life, the one I remember is the one that the roll of the dice did not include. I am one chance in a million. It was just one small chance. And here we are. Here I am. In another frame I died too. In another it was just me. I….. brought this here. This impossible thing. I don’t know who I am any more….’

  Jared looked at me enquiringly as Janey bent her head.