Moonliner: No Stone Unturned

by Hanzel, Donald

  “Too soon huh?” Lennox surmises. “Oh well, if anything is sitting out there now beneath that stone, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I suppose it doesn’t matter when you check anyway.”

  “Yes and no,” Cedric answers.

  “What do you mean by that?” Lennox asks.

  “Hypothetically, were the transmission to be received some time ago and a response left under the stone, the closer my next transmission to my original transmission, the better my odds are of establishing any two-way communication with whomever may have left the message under the rock.”

  “How so?” Lennox inquires.

  “These transmissions are incredibly precise, yet have exponential margins of error. I can easily and precisely repeat the transmission, which according to my calculations, would land it at precisely the same point in time in the past, plus any elapsed time between my two transmissions,” Cedric explains.

  “You can’t adjust for any lapsed time?” Lennox asks.

  “Not accurately, no,” Cedric replies; “Maybe after decades of successful, heuristic research and development, but any attempt I make to fine tune these transmissions to compensate for time would send the signals somewhere way off their temporal target.”

  “So what if there’s something under the stone?” Lennox asks.

  “There’s nothing under the stone,” Cedric responds.

  “I think you should take a look. Who knows? I’m definitely curious,” Lennox says. “It’s up to you though, however you want it. Or however she would have wanted it I guess,” he adds to be polite, not meaning anything by it. Those few words, however, have a huge impact on Cedric, for he knows all too well what Nikki would want him to do, and the pain of ignoring her instincts.

  The two get off the phone and Cedric sits back on his sofa, thinking. There’s an undeniable spark of curiosity in him as well, but a spark that would instantly extinguish at the turning of an empty stone. He wonders what he should do. Not looking beneath would leave the eternal question, leaving Cedric blissfully ignorant. Looking would potentially answer that question, but very likely with an empty answer that he just isn’t prepared to receive.

  Cedric stands next to a white wall, staring at a clock. The clock is running backward. He’s relieved to see this, knowing that time is running backward, back to her. The clock speeds up and Cedric begins to smile.

  “Soon,” he says to himself; “I’ll be back there soon.”

  “Your bath water is ready,” Phaedra says as the clock comes to a stop.

  “What do you mean?” he asks; “were going back to her.”

  “Your bath water is ready,” Phaedra again says, but Cedric can’t understand what she means.

  Cedric awakens abruptly, gets up, and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. In a tub full of bubbles, he sits thinking about everything; the transmission; Nikki; Lennox’s curiosity. He so knows that Nikki would want him to follow through, to look under the rock. Naturally, why else would she suggest it? And if she is still out there somewhere, as his calculations suggest, then she still wants him to take a look beneath the stone. It’s as if he’s been given another chance to follow her instincts. His smile quickly fades, however, with the fast setting reality that he’s going to the park to flip a stupid stone, all with some hope of finding a message left for him from somewhere back in time. And to think this is his last scientific option.

  Moonliner 3:05

  With a window seat on the Skytrain, Cedric stares out at the city as he zips through a downtown corridor and into the central tube, where his scenic view changes into a series of laser generated advertisements. They’re commercial pollution, but the ads do lower transportation costs. The city has learned to live with them.

  “Next stop Park Station,” an automated woman’s voice announces. Cedric gets up and stands by the door as the train slides into the station. For the first time since Nikki’s crash, he feels like he has something important to do. He’s up, showered, shaved, and sober for a change.

  That said, his rational side doesn’t want to be doing this, even though he has rationalized that he should. It’s just such a reach; such a shot in the dark. There had to be better ways to waste time.

  Then again, there’s the big what if that Cedric wants to leave hanging. What if? Cedric laughs a little to himself as the train comes to a complete stop and the doors open.

  “What if?” he whispers to himself, then laughs again a little down inside. He gains composure, then walks along Park Station’s long underground platform, up the escalator and into the park.

  He has thought about the overwhelming improbability of anything being under the stone to the point that he’s already felt most of the pain of rejection. Every time he has imagined turning it over, he has hit a harsh reality, based on probability. There’s simply probably nothing beneath it. So why relive a recurring negative? Maybe it really is time to turn the stone and put this issue to rest. Besides, he knows that he has spent far too much time pondering this lousy stone. It’s become a minor obsession and stands in the way of his thesis. It holds only sentimental value for its connection to Nikki. Flipping it now clearly seems like the logical way forward. Furthermore, if Nikki would want him to do it, she must want him to face whatever lies beneath, then move on.

  He sits alone on Nikki and his favorite bench by Lost Lagoon, basking in the final moments of an innocence that now has to move into the past, into the drab realm of experience. He was afraid of coming here but is now at peace, feeling time slow way down. Ducks quack on the Lagoon as a few inline skaters steadily roll by on the bike path. Cedric hardly notices; activity doesn’t seem to reach him. He sits in his daydream. It’s a calm, beautiful morning. It again blows Cedric’s mind to think that he had just sat in the same spot with Nikki not two weeks earlier, under the same tree, in the same season, even in the same month. So near, yet so far. Everything looks the same yet so different from his perspective.

  The mouth of their favorite trail on the southern tip of Lost Lagoon has filled in with more vegetation. It almost conceals the trail completely from the park, making it even more inviting to Cedric. On usual years, this close to August, the park is far dryer than it seems to be this year, likely due to the wet spring and periodic well timed showers between its waves of heat. It’s still so green this year, so alive.

  Cedric enters the trail and walks slowly toward the large stump that sits just in front of the stone. The path is overgrown and teeming with thick, silky spider webs, forcing him to constantly wave a stick in front of his face to break them. Still, better the stick than his face. It doesn’t appear that anyone has walked down the path recently, but it’s hard to tell. Things refresh rapidly this time of year.

  He stops twice along the trail to swat at mosquitos. The deeper into the trees the more heavily infested. It’s much worse than the last time he was here.

  Cedric finally arrives at the large tree stump. Sure enough, the moon shaped stone sits next to it, half embedded in the ground. It certainly doesn’t appear to have been disturbed either. In fact, the way it sits in the ground, it doesn’t seem to have been disturbed in years and years. If something’s under it, he thinks, then it’s been there for some time.

  He loosens the stone a little with his foot then squats down next to it.

  “Sorry Nikki,” he says under his breath, knowing he’s about to close the last open connection he has with her.

  Cedric lifts the stone out of it’s now loosened, form-fit crater in the surface of the planet, where it seems to have sat snuggly for some time. He sets it down beside its large divot. Cedric takes a deep breath, then looks into the large depression to unearth whatever the stone has been concealing over time. The moment is surprisingly more intense than he ever imagined it would be. The intensity quickly fades, however, as he sees nothing beneath the stone. Oddly, however, there’s a small, thin, perfectly circular indentation in the ground beneath where the stone had sat.

  Cedric again fin
ds himself within an instant memory. He’s been here before, looking under the stone and finding nothing, then finding something. The memory is so intense that he has to take a few seconds and let it pass.

  As he goes to put the stone back in its place, however, something catches his eye; a metallic object stuck to the bottom of the stone itself. The intensity returns. Cedric pulls the object, a coin from the bottom of the stone and wipes it off with a neckerchief. He puts the stone back in its fitted location and makes his way to Nikki and his favorite hidden grove of trees. There, he sits on a tree trunk, pulls out the coin and takes a close look at it.

  The coloring within the coin’s laser engravings has faded, but the laser engravings themselves remain clearly legible. The embossed images and the number ten have weathered significantly, but remain clearly legible.

  Cedric looks really closely at the coin, holding it up into the sunlight. He flips it high into the air, catches it, and slips it into his pocket with a laugh, not believing in the least that it has any connection whatsoever to his laser transmissions.

  He wants to believe, nevertheless. Where he thought that looking under the stone would yield nothing and give him closure with Nikki, it has only opened new questions. With this mysterious coin, his connection with Nikki remains open, giving him a sigh of relief. In fact, even though he seriously doubts the coin’s connection to his transmissions, he likes that it gives him an unexplained connection with her, allowing further hope, regardless how dim. Still, from where the coin came and how it got beneath the stone both remain unknown.

  Cedric sits on the Skytrain, staring at the coin. He puts it in his pocket and looks out the window, then pulls it out to look at it again. He’s curiously drawn to it.

  Finally, he sits in his apartment, rubbing tonkatsu sauce on the coin to clean it, a trick he learned years ago in Tokyo. It’s late at night, but still quite warm and muggy. A sudden light rain can be heard from outside, showering the steamy pavement below. It’s a welcome relief from the heat.

  Then as sudden as the rain came, it stops. Through the night air comes the smell of steam from the rain rising from the pavement. Cedric can smell it wafting through the screen door of his balcony from the street below, a smell he likes. It’s a scent that takes him back to his childhood and the smell of those endless, dry, summer days.

  Moonliner 3:06

  Cedric sits on a monolithic bench next to a contemporary coy pond in the quad, a large grassy area in the center of his campus, squared off and enclosed by long, concrete walls on each side.

  Cedric’s University is a small yet renowned school that sits on a hill east of downtown. The campus is contemporary, comprised mostly of concrete. It’s like something from a sci-fi flick. The buildings, however, are somewhat dilapidated, crumbling in places from years of excessive rain and harsh hilltop weathering. The school, nevertheless, is sound.

  He’s holding out, sitting in the cool morning air not wanting to go inside. Since Nikki’s crash he hasn’t had the slightest interest in his academic work. It just seems so meaningless now, and so impractical. To Cedric, his laser-com work is purely theoretical with no apparent, pragmatic function in daily life.

  Cedric eventually walks into the Raybach building, hoping to find Pender, hand him the repeater he needs, and get out of there without seeing anyone else. He’s not in the mood to discuss his work, or lack thereof. He’s not looking for any sympathy or to talk about Nikki or the crash either. He’d just like to get home and have the day to himself to think.

  He makes his way to the elevators, presses the up button and patiently waits for one to arrive. Suddenly, standing next to him is a well-dressed, middle aged man in a suit. Cedric has seen him around before.

  “You’re Cedric Davis, aren’t you?” the man asks.

  “Yeah,” Cedric answers; “have we met?”

  “No, not formally,” the man replies. “I’m Jonathan Archer with Cygnus. I left a message with you.”

  “Yes,” Cedric says shaking his hand.

  “I’m very sorry to hear about your personal loss,” Jonathan says to Cedric. It’s consoling to Cedric but he doesn’t care to hear it. He nods in return.

  “I’ve heard you’re on the brink of some potentially powerful discoveries and I’d like to hear a lot more about your work,” Jonathan goes on to say, changing the topic. “Cygnus is really interested in what you’re doing here. In fact, there may be a position for you on our team if your work is as good as your department head says it is,” he adds.

  The elevator arrives and the two men board. Cedric pushes nine for the laser-com department. Jonathan pushes seven.

  “Cygnus is a defense contractor, isn’t it?” Cedric asks. Jonathan nods, not answering verbally. He smiles.

  “Dr. Ridpath tells me you’re near completion of your thesis; that you have some interesting notions with time and space. I’d love to hear more.”

  “I’ve run into some unexpected delays,” Cedric tells Jonathan; “I’ve encountered technical difficulties.”

  “I’ve heard a little about your delays from Dr. Ridpath; he mentioned something about you needing more distance,” Jonathan says. “Maybe we can help?” he suggests.

  “How?” Cedric asks.

  “I could pitch the idea to Cygnus of having your tests conducted from the moon,” Archer answers. “I can’t guarantee anything now, but they do listen to me.

  “So you’re saying Cygnus might be willing to send me to the moon?” Cedric asks for clarification.

  “Again, I can’t promise anything at this point,” Jonathan tells him; “If possible though, are you interested?” he asks.

  “Highly,” Cedric answers. “I appreciate the offer to help and I’d seriously consider traveling to the moon to conduct tests.”

  “Sounds good,” Jonathan says as the doors of the elevator open and he gets off. “Let’s keep in touch.”

  Cedric smiles to himself, now warming up to the idea of dealing with Cygnus. They’re going to get his notes anyway, maybe he should befriend them. He questions whether he should really be holding out technology that could benefit a planet?

  The number nine illuminates on the panel above the stainless steel elevator doors just before they open. Cedric steps off the elevator and onto the floor. He walks over to the cafeteria area where he’s supposed to meet Pender.

  Moonliner 3:07

  Cedric takes a seat at a small table in the corner of a large atrium lobby, within the cafeteria seating. Some students are sitting around the area, chatting, drinking coffee, and studying but the place is mostly empty, which is not uncommon for late July.

  A clock above the elevator reads 11:48. Then out of nowhere, Pender suddenly pats Cedric’s shoulder. Cedric stands up to give him a quick handshake. They’re obviously happy to see each other.

  “How have you been?” Pender asks Cedric as he takes a seat across from him at the table.

  “I’ve been doing alright,” Cedric answers, clearing his throat a bit to make himself sound convincing. “I brought the repeater,” he tells Pender, pulling a small metallic object from his pocket and handing it to him. “I didn’t mean to keep it for so long, I’ve just been so….”

  “No worries,” Pender responds; “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Not at all,” Cedric says; “It’s no problem at all.”

  A waitress asks if they would like anything to drink. They both order coffee.

  “Dr. Ridpath is constantly asking me if I know where you are, or what you’re up to,” Pender tells Cedric. “They’re trying to be respectful and give you a little time in light of your loss, but this guy Jonathan Archer has really grown interested in your thesis.”

  “I know,” Cedric says. “I just met and talked to him on the elevator a few minutes ago.”

  “What did he say?” Pender asks.

  “They might send me to the moon,” Cedric answers.

  “To the moon?” Pender asks. “They really are interested in your work. I thou
ght they were pissed at you for missing the draft deadline.”

  “No, don’t worry about that,” Cedric answers. “I’m alright.”

  “Sounds like it,” Pender says. “So are you going to go?”

  “I’m not sure, maybe,” Cedric answers. “I’m still uneasy about handing over half a decade’s work to these guys. I’m calculating my next move.”

  “What should I tell Dr. Ridpath next time he asks if I’ve talked to you?” Pender asks Cedric.

  “Go ahead and mention that you saw me here,” he answers. “Jonathan Archer is probably going to anyway. Tell them that you saw me, that I was working on my thesis, and that I need more time and distance to conclude my work.”

  “Fine, I’ll tell them,” Pender replies, “but keep in mind that you have to convince the entire department board, not just Dr. Pender or this Archer guy. If you fail them, you fail the course, and they’re already unhappy about you missing the deadline. You have extended your program well past the final deadlines. You’re pushing it.”

  “I know,” Cedric answers, “but don’t worry. Dr. Ridpath talks with the other board members virtually every day. They know about my thesis, about Nikki, the whole picture. They’ll cut me some slack.”

  “I hope so,” Pender responds.

  The waitress returns with their coffees. It’s now past noon and the baristas are working the lunch rush, which isn’t too bad today.