“We don’t need you to have vast amounts of years,” Duster said, his dark eyes boring through Zane. “You can get that quickly if you want. We need your fresh look at things, your ability in understanding deep caves, and Belle’s ability to understand the complexities of genealogy and genetics.”
Zane nodded. “Thank you.”
“Yes,” Belle said. “Thank you.”
Silence filled the large living room cavern for a few moments, then Duster smiled. “You two ready to get to work?”
Zane glanced at Belle, who was smiling.
“I am so ready,” Belle said. “I want to get going before I wake up from this dream and realize I am still on the plane headed here.”
Zane stood and extended his hand to help her up. “Whatever you do, for my sake, please don’t wake up.”
She took his hand and he helped her off the couch as the others stood as well, all laughing.
And the feeling of her hand in his felt wonderful. It took him an extra second to let go.
And Belle didn’t seem to mind at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
June 9th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
“LET’S GET YOU established in Stage Two first,” Duster said to Belle.
He turned and headed in a different direction from the living room than where they had come in or gone to the other crystals that had taken her into the past.
Belle still felt shocked. In fact, she was beyond shocked and all this just seemed so impossible. If she hadn’t seen Warm Springs Avenue for herself in 1885, in a snowstorm, she never would be believing any of this.
And even now this seemed hard to grasp. But she wasn’t fighting it anymore now, but going along and trying to learn. And she had a hunch that the learning was going to take more years than she could now imagine.
“The institute is divided up into four very secure sections,” Dawn said as they walked across the big living room cavern. “You saw the Step One sections of supplies and crystal rooms when we jumped back to 1885 earlier.”
Belle nodded. She knew those were in the other direction from where they were headed.
“The crystals in Step One were put into place from the cavern in 1880,” Dawn said. “Step Two crystals were brought from the cavern three years ago.”
“So no one from Step Two can travel back to the past, but only this far,” Zane said. “But how do you block the crystals from taking them back into the cavern?”
Duster laughed. “Bonnie and I designed the devices inside those boxes. Trust me when I say they can’t be tampered with or changed and they limit the length of time anyone can go back in any fashion. For example, if we allowed someone from this stage to go back before 1880, they would end up in an underground cavern with no way to get out that we know of.”
Belle nodded. That made sense. Containing all travel to 100 years segments, like changing planes on a long flight.
“Before Step Two was founded,” Dawn said, “all Step One crystals in the Step One rooms were returned to the cavern.”
“Let me show you Step Three transport rooms,” Duster said, reaching a large metal door and unlocking it.
“That needs to be better protected,” Zane said, pointing to the big metal door and how easy it would be for someone to get through it.
Duster smiled. “Not really. There’s nothing in here.”
Belle watched as Duster opened the big metal door and walked into a huge cavern carved from the stone. A few lights came up as they entered, but it was clear the cavern was completely empty.
“This is the staging area for the level three travelers coming into Step Two time,” Duster said. “The rooms of crystals and such will be beyond this, but they are all empty as well. They won’t have crystals until Step Two time frame. It was also filled three years ago, but a hundred years into the future.”
“And so on,” Dawn said. “Let’s get to Step Two and let Belle get established so she is safe in this time.”
They all left the empty cavern and Duster locked the door.
“Finding it hard to imagine that being safe part,” Belle said as they headed toward yet another side of the large living cavern.
“You’ll come to accept it more and more as time goes on and with more trips into the past,” Dawn said.
They reached another metal door and Zane knew exactly what was beyond this door. A lot of clothing for this time period, money, information devices, and so on. He was stunned the first time he saw it a hundred years in the future and was again stunned when Duster opened the door and the lights came up bright.
It looked like a giant department store had been set up in a vast cavern. Everything a person living in this time might need was provided.
“Wow,” Belle said. “Does Walmart know you bought one of their entire stores?”
“More inventory than one of their stores,” Duster said, his voice just matter of fact as he headed through the supply area and toward the crystal room doors on the other side.
Zane knew he had come into this timeline in the fifth room down, using a crystal tucked clear to the back.
Duster walked directly to the door and opened it. The lights came up on the narrow room with wire down both sides protecting anyone from touching any of the crystals in carved niches in the stone.
“How did you know I was here?” Zane asked as all four of them headed down the long row of tables and machines toward the only machine in the back hooked to a crystal.
“I had your director send you,” Duster said without looking around.
“Oh,” Zane said. He didn’t know what else to say.
“So why did you have him stay hidden for all the years?” Belle asked, glancing at Zane and then back at Duster as they reached the machine attached to a crystal in one wall.
“It was a sort of test,” Duster said. “And we needed him to get used to this time period and establish himself here as well.”
Duster looked at Zane with those intense eyes. “Did it work?”
“Not sure about the test part,” Zane said, “but I like this time period. And I feel fairly established.”
Duster shrugged. “So it worked. And that’s why we made you this offer.”
Zane nodded. Then glanced at the wooden box and then at Belle before turning back to Duster. “May I show Belle Warm Springs Avenue in my time?”
“Sure,” Duster said. “But not much more. We need you both back here and no point in taking too many chances.”
Zane nodded and turned to Belle, who was looking both worried and excited.
“Ready to take another trip?” Zane asked.
“I think so,” she said. Her eyes looked worried again.
Zane quickly picked up a thick glove on the desk. “What time is it exactly?” he asked as he put on the glove.
“Three-forty in the afternoon on June 9th, 2020,” Dawn said and Duster checked a pocket watch and nodded.
“We’ll be back in ten minutes,” Zane said.
“We’ll be in the living room waiting,” Duster said.
Zane reached out his hand to Belle.
“Be close together,” Duster said as Belle took Zane’s hand.
Zane loved the feeling of touching her skin and as Duster said that, he pulled her close.
“Put your other arm around my neck,” Zane said. “And hang on. I’ve never done this before.”
“You are not encouraging me,” Belle said as she hugged him with her other arm and he pulled one wire from the box.
And Duster and Bonnie and Dawn and Madison disappeared.
After nine years, he was back in his own time, just over two minutes since he had left.
His own time was the last place he really wanted to be.
But at least Belle was hugging him and that felt wonderful.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
June 9th, 2120
Boise, Idaho
BELLE FELT STUNNED that the four founders had just vanished. That meant that she and Zane really had trav
eled exactly one hundred years into the future.
How was that even possible?
She was still holding his hand and hugging his neck.
He dropped the wire and turned slightly to her. They were very close and she loved being this close.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, smiling at her.
She slowly eased her grasp around his shoulders and neck and then let go of his hand, something she really didn’t want to do.
He took off the glove, then offered his hand again. “Come on, let me show you just a little of my original time, and now your time as well. Then we can jump back to the founders.”
His hand made her feel less afraid. “I would like that.”
Hand-in-hand, they headed back along the wooden tables and the fenced-in walls of crystals.
On the other side of the door was the same massive room that looked like the entire contents of a few major stores.
They headed through that and out into the big living room cavern. She could hear talking coming from the living room area, and some laughing, and someone was cooking what smelled like pepperoni pizza that made her stomach growl.
“Wow, that smells good,” Zane said as they headed, hand-in-hand to the right along the edge of the big living room and to an elevator.
She loved that he was holding her hand and guiding her. It made her feel about a thousand times more secure than she would have felt alone or with one of the founders.
Zane got on board the elevator and said simply “Street Level.”
The metal doors slid closed and then an instant later, without feeling of movement at all, the doors opened again and Zane pulled her toward the wall door.
“That was nifty,” she said as they stepped off into a closed room.
“Some things just speed up with time is all,” Zane said, laughing.
Zane quickly checked through a security device and then smiled at her. “All clear.”
They stepped through the door and right into the same front lobby where they had met.
Belle was stunned once again. It was the same old desk, same period furniture, same fireplace.
“Creepy, isn’t it?” Zane said. “We’ve traveled over two hundred years in time and this room still looks the same no matter where we are.”
“How is that possible?” Belle asked.
“Founders make sure it is maintained I guess,” Zane said.
He led her toward the large wooden front door and then outside into a warm summer afternoon.
The porch looked the same, with the same period furniture on it. The front lawn looked the same as well with the wall and hedge covering it. But through the old trees she could see a modern building just up the road. That building seemed to be all tinted brown glass and looked almost invisible against the trees and bushes around it.
Zane still had ahold of her hand and gently urged her to come with him down the walk and toward the street. The air smelled fresh and had a faint hint of cut grass to it.
“Just over two hundred and thirty-five years ago we froze our asses off on this sidewalk,” he said.
She remembered well. This was the third time she had been on this sidewalk. The first time in 2020, the second time in 1885, and now, supposedly in 2120.
She was going to need a lot of time to get used to all this and even absorb this happening.
Zane got to the gate, stated his name, and the gate opened automatically, and hand-in-hand they stepped through.
On the other side of the gate he let go of her hand, letting her just turn as she wanted to stare at the sight in front of her.
The wide and very busy five-lane street from a hundred years before was almost completely gone. Belle felt as if she was walking into a park with some gently curving paths winding through younger trees and shrubs.
On the paths were wide cars not much different in design from sleek cars of a hundred years before. They were all varying colors and makes. Only the cars passing them were clearly a lot larger and made no noise at all.
None.
They all moved at a constant rate and kept an exact distance apart.
“Electric cars that don’t need to be driven,” Zane said. “Some are large enough to get up and walk around in as you are traveling.”
Then he pointed upward to what looked like an elevated cable. As she watched, a bullet-shaped transport longer than an old bus flashed past, also silently.
Then a moment later another one going the other direction on a cable flashed by, again silently.
“Mass transit covers most all areas of this city,” he said.
Then he pointed to the west along Warm Springs Avenue. Through the trees she could see towering skyscrapers that now dominated the Boise downtown area.
“Boise restricted sprawl growth about eighty years ago and went upwards more than out,” Zane said. “It’s an amazing place.”
“Looks like it,” Belle said, slowly staring around at the silently moving cars and the park-like setting that used to be a busy street. Some old, some newer buildings lined the far side of the park. Everything she would see was perfectly maintained.
Through the park-like area, numbers of people walked, enjoying the warm day. And clearly the fashions of one hundred years in the future were not much different, since most everyone she saw seemed to be either dressed in business casual or jeans and light shirts.
She and Zane did not look out of place in the slightest.
“So most roads have become parks?” Belle asked, glancing at Zane.
“All city streets,” Zane said. “When the self-driving electric cars took over, the cities started tearing up the old roads, building the new narrow roads with the embedded tracks for the cars, and turning the rest of the area into parks.”
Belle suddenly realized what was missing. “There’s no place to park?”
“Cars are all stored underground in big facilities in every neighborhood,” Zane said. “Most of them under these streets. You need your car, you just push a button and it will appear in front of your home in less than a minute.”
“Wow,” Belle said. She was flat stunned.
And impressed.
And she basically lived in this time now. She was going to have to learn a lot to even get by here.
“Sure looks like everything developed nicely in the last hundred years,” Belle said, once again scanning the beautiful neighborhood.
Zane shrugged. “Looks wonderful standing here on Warm Springs Avenue in a fairly protected town of Boise, Idaho. But there were numbers of wars over the last hundred years, more than I want to think about, actually.”
Belle didn’t like the sound of that at all, but didn’t ask any more.
Zane went on. “Plus a huge earthquake wiped out a large part of the west coast about forty years ago, but that has rebuilt. And a couple of major cities were hit with bombs, but have rebuilt now as well. A couple major plagues wiped out millions through Asia and Africa before being stopped. World’s population is now lower than it was a hundred years ago. So not a smooth road to all this.”
Belle nodded, not even beginning to absorb some of the tragedy he had just outlined. “I have a lot to learn about my new time.”
“I’ll be glad to help,” Zane said, turning and smiling at her.
She offered her hand. “I’ll take you up on that. But I think for the moment we need to get back to Step One time.”
He took her hand and smiled.
Damn she was enjoying that smile and the feeling of his hand in hers.
She was standing a hundred years in the future and had only known Zane for less than twelve hours. None of this was possible, yet she seemed to be experiencing it.
They turned and hand-in-hand went back through the gate and up the sidewalk toward the institute.
She knew this all had to be a dream. She just knew it, but it was her dream and until she woke up, she was going to keep on holding Zane’s hand.
PART THREE
The Cavern
CHAPTER NINETEEN
June 16th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
THE LAST WEEK had gone so fast, Zane could hardly remember most of it. He and Belle had gotten back from 2120 and spent the evening talking with Bonnie and Duster and Dawn until his brain was fried.
Then he and Belle had walked to a nearby store to get her some food for her kitchen, then he had helped her get the bags of food into her kitchen and then had left her to settle into her new place.
She had looked as tired and shocked as he felt about everything that happened. And he was used to time travel, so he could only imagine how she was really feeling.
And the next morning when he rang her doorbell, he was very happy that she was still here.
The next six days had been mostly the two of them with Dawn and Bonnie, learning as much as they could handle about the institute, the history of the institute, and so on.
Zane had hoped that he and Belle would have more time just together, but except for walking to and from the institute, they hadn’t had much alone time at all. Zane hoped that was going to change at some point.
With every day, he had grown more and more attracted to Belle. And she seemed to be feeling the same way toward him, since she often just took his hand for comfort.
Finally, now, at three in the afternoon of the seventh day since Belle had come through the front door of the institute, they were back in the big living room area cavern, sipping on Diet Cokes and munching on a fruit plate that Dawn had made. They were sitting in the couch and chair grouping that was closest to the kitchen area. The stone fireplace had no fire in it and no one else was around.
Zane knew the coming conversation was going to be important because Dawn and Bonnie were now joined by Duster and Madison. Director Parks had joined the group as well.
“It’s time to talk about the next step,” Duster said, leaning forward slightly, staring at first Zane, then Belle with his dark eyes. He was wearing a gray silk shirt and jeans and cowboy boots. There was no sign of his long coat or cowboy hat.
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