“Yes,” answered Castillo, “knives, cutlasses, flintlocks.”
“Not flintlocks! Matchlocks!” corrected Bloomberg. “The flintlock was not introduced until the 17th century. The matchlock used a slow burning match to ignite the flashpan, and it was very unreliable. The match would go out and the weapon would misfire half the time. But they were still capable of killing. Now, I ask you. If these men were re-enactors, why were they using live ammunition?”
“Well…” began Castillo, laying his good hand on his right cheek.
“And if these men were terrorists, why were they armed with matchlocks? One of the most unreliable firearms in history. Not very smart.”
Castillo looked at Taylor, who shrugged. “So…what’s your conclusion?”
Bloomberg took their measure, his gaze going from one man to the other. “I have concluded the galleon crew were not deluded in any way. We are!”
Castillo frowned but said nothing.
“They knew exactly who they were and what their mission was. We, on the other hand, believe we are still in the modern world…the year 2014!”
Castillo exchanged glances with Taylor again. Taylor opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.
“When the Apparition system went critical, it caused either a portal in the terrestrial timescape or a dimensional rift. There are two schools of thought on the subject. I was just reading up on it.” He held up an ereader with a cover page to a book on quantum mechanics displayed.
“So…” began Castillo slowly, feeling for the proper words. “What you’re suggesting is…” He stopped, stuck.
“Either we have slipped the bonds of time and made a huge leap backwards, as the stars suggest, or we are in another dimension, very similar to our own home dimension, but we have entered it at a time that is not our own.”
Castillo blinked. “Well, there must be a way to undo this and get us back.”
“I don’t know of one. This happened as the result of a catastrophic accident.”
Taylor erupted and slammed the bulkhead angrily with his palm. “I knew it! I knew we were fucking around with something dangerous! Didn’t I try to tell you, Don?”
Castillo put his good hand on Taylor’s shoulder and said, “Easy, Mase. Finger-pointing isn’t going to help us now. We need cool heads.” He took a deep breath and turned to Bloomberg. “Norm, I’d like you to make a presentation to the rest of the crew. We have some very fine minds on board. If we all think on this, maybe we can come up with a solution. Use Power Point or whatever you need and do it on the mess deck where we have the most room. Can you have something by this evening?”
“Uh…sure…I don’t know what I’ll say exactly.”
“Say what you just told us, then we’ll throw it open to questions and answers.”
“I have a feeling there’ll be many more questions than answers.”
Chapter 9
Norm Bloomberg had erected a large 4 foot screen slaved to a laptop on the mess deck On it he displayed a colorful graph of a timeline. It showed centuries and important events that occurred in history. The messdeck was crowded with more than 60 crewmen and civilians. They were transfixed by Bloomberg’s presentation, listening with hushed attention. Castillo made arrangements to record the presentation so the watchstanders could view it too at their leisure.
“We were here!” He balanced on his crutches and pointed to the section representing the 21st century. “Now we are here!” He pointed to the 16th century.
There were confused faces all around. “How do you know exactly where we are?” asked a crewman.
“I don’t really know. All I know for sure is we have shifted in time. The alignment of the stars supports this and the crewmen of that Spanish galleon believe it is the year 1588. And the Spanish were using the Gregorian calendar, the same as we do now.”
“What exactly is a parallel universe?” asked another crewman.
“It is something supported by the theory that at the inception of the universe, the big bang, many universes were created. Universes we cannot see and are completely unaware of because of dimensional boundaries. A parallel universe is an alternate reality. A world similar to ours but with differences. Perhaps, there were no ice ages, or no moon, or something much smaller like no WalMart.”
“Well,” asked Susan Lambert, “how do we know whether we are in a parallel universe or simply displaced in time in our own?”
“We don’t. At least I don’t. I’m not really an expert. I just read a lot.” Bloomberg shifted his great weight on his crutches.
“But,” said a crewman. “If we’re in our own dimension, won’t we affect our own timeline, the future of our civilization, Dr. Bloomberg?”
“Please! Not doctor! I work for a living!” This elicited a few laughs and glances toward Lambert. “Yes, any action we take will have an effect in the future.” Bloomberg hit a key on the laptop and the picture on screen changed to two people in cartoon form, greeting each other. “If you shook hands with a man in this time, and delayed him long enough that he didn’t catch the eye of a young lady who is about to enter a shop.” He changed the picture again to a cartoon of a young woman entering a shop. “A young lady he is supposed to marry and father two children with.” He changed the picture again and it showed an ancestral tree with many branches. “Lets say that each generation produces two children, on average. That means that over 500 years these two people have populated the earth with over 65,000 people! By shaking this man’s hand, we have wiped out 65,000 people! This is extreme, but it’s a good example of the multiplicative effect of a small action over time. And what if one of these people was an important leader or an educator who touched many lives. The ripple effect just gets worse and worse.”
No one said a word. They just stared at Bloomberg, stunned. The breath had been sucked out of them.
“Now, let’s talk about the moral imperative.” Bloomberg changed the picture again. It was a picture of the starship Enterprise from the old Star Trek TV series. “How many people here remember Star Trek?”
Almost every hand went up.
“Good! Do you remember the prime directive? What was that all about anyway?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It was based on the moral principle that an advanced civilization should not interact with a primitive society. Because to do so could do great harm to that society. The slightest interaction could influence the development of that society artificially. It could cause them to become a society of paranoid schizophrenics and stunt their artistic and philosophical growth. They could never achieve their full potential simply because they were made aware of an advanced civilization before they were ready to accept it.” Bloomberg stopped to let this sink in.
Chief Brown snorted. “This is all a rather moot argument, isn’t it? We’ve already interacted with these people to the extreme.”
“Yes,” said Bloomberg heavily. “We have. There’s no way to undo that, but perhaps we could limit any further interaction and thereby contain the damage.”
The air seemed unbreathable. Everyone in the room was struggling with this concept of time shifting and parallel universes. They looked askance at each other. Several people coughed nervously.
Finally Susan Lambert said, “Norm, is there no way we can undo this and get back to where we belong?”
A shadow fell across Norm Bloomberg. He shook his head, scratched at his goatee and said, “I can’t think of a way.” There was sadness in his voice.
“Can’t we duplicate the Apparition accident?” asked a crewman.
“It would be impossible to duplicate the exact conditions. And if we did,” said Bloomberg, “I wouldn’t trust it not to throw us another 400 years back. This is clearly something we have no control over. Besides, when the galleon attacked us, it severely damaged one of the Apparition emitter tubes so I think the Apparition system has been lost to us.”
The seriousness of their situation gradually began to dawn on the crew. Kansas was isolated an
d cut off from civilization with no way to get back. All their families and friends, everyone they had ever met or loved… gone… irretrievably lost.
• • •
Normally when Kansas was in port, the crew switched to their in port routine. They manned the ship’s systems with minimal crew, three shifts of watch standers. Lieutenant Commander Taylor assigned watches. This meant those not actually on watch could take liberty, but this time, they were uncertain where to take their liberty. There was nothing for them here.
The crewmen continued to perform their assigned functions but it was different. It was unusually quiet and the atmosphere seemed heavy with little chatter and very little laughing.
Crewmen were depressed at the sobering prospect of being stranded in time, and one of the hardest hit was Castillo. He sat shut away in his stateroom looking at the framed pictures on his small metal desk. There was a picture of his smiling mother and father in their Sunday best and a 5X7 of his family: he was in his dress blue uniform and Liz was beaming at his side in her fuschia jacket and skirt and white blouse and in front of them was Robin and Kelly in matching golden taffeta dresses. The picture was taken a couple years ago. They were so happy then. That was before Liz got sick. He had just taken command of Kansas. They were on top of the world. There was another smaller framed picture of Robin standing in the front yard holding her big yellow cat Stinky. He adored her chubby-cheeked smile. Everyone said she looked like him. And there was a picture of Kelly, tall and skinny in a bathing suit standing on the pool deck. It had been taken right after she’d gotten her braces. She was sunlit and exuberant.
Castillo’s heart was aching with the thought he might never see them again. He choked back a sob and dabbed at his eyes with a tissue. His girls were the reason for his existence and kept him going through difficult days. They enabled him to function on an even keel when it seemed the world had gone mad. Because no matter how bad his day was going, boring meetings, systems failures, failed tests, he knew at the end of it, his reward was waiting for him: his beloved Liz, Robin and Kelley. He loved them more than life itself. How could he go on without them?
There was a knock, followed by Mason Taylor’s familiar face poking through the door. He came in, stretched, yawned noisily and collapsed into a chair. “What a situation, huh? The people who have liberty are afraid to go anywhere because of what Bloomberg said about interfacing and affecting the future. And also they’re afraid what happened to you could happen to them.” He sized up Castillo and didn’t like what he saw. “Are you okay?”
Castillo was uncharacteristically quiet. Taylor looked from Castillo to the photos on his desk.
“There has to be a way back,” said Castillo without conviction.
“I don’t know about that, Don. I’ve got my hands full right now just trying to run the ship. The NWP 1-14M covers just about everything that can happen to a naval vessel and what a commander should do, but there’s not one word in there about a dimensional shift. We’re making it up as we go now.”
“There has to be a way back,” repeated Castillo.
Neither one said anything for a time preferring to sit in the oppressive silence.
“When’s the last time you saw your father?” asked Castillo.
“I was back home in May. We went fishing.”
“That’s good.” Castillo took a tissue and blew his nose.
Taylor stared at a spot in the floor and turned reflective. “If we never get out of this…fix we’re in, I’ll never see him again and that’s depressing. He was my pal and my best advisor. And Lani and I were getting serious, I think.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We had chemistry. We hadn’t really talked about taking the next step, but I think it was obviously a ring.”
“You two were good together.”
“What bothers me the most is the Navy’s going to notify dad of his son’s death…lost at sea.”
“Oh shit! I forgot about that.” Now he was picturing Liz’s shocked face at seeing a Navy staff car pull up to the house and two white-gloved officers coming to the door. She’d know immediately why they’re there. He pictured her pretty mouth distorted in anguish.
“Shit!” said Taylor. “I want them to deliver my dad a message saying his son is alive and well, but in a different dimension. He’d be sad at not seeing me again, but he’d be relieved I’m okay.”
Castillo looked a mess, thought Taylor. Kind of like a balloon that had lost all its air. How long had he been wearing that robe?
“Anyway, not to change the subject, but Jonesy has expressed concern to me that we only have enough food to last another ten days. Then we’ll be out. We have to replenish our food stores and I’m not sure how we’re going to do it. Have any ideas, Don?”
No response from Castillo.
“Don?”
“What?” responded Castillo quietly. He was in another world.
Taylor just shook his head and said, “Never mind.” He stood and decided to go discuss the problem with someone else.
• • •
Lieutenant Eric Tanaka was the Command Duty Officer. He sat in the command chair watching the camera screens. The shoreline outside was shrouded in a curtain of white mist. He could barely make out Kansas’s stern fin. Then something emerged from the fog. He picked up the receiver, turned a dial and said, “Mr. Taylor, could you come to the control room, please?”
Taylor was there in seconds. “What ya got?”
“Take a look, sir.”
They both watched as a small gray wooden skiff bumped against the hull of Kansas. Two young men stared at the submarine in wonder. They looked to be teenagers and one wore a black wool sweater and cap and one wore a heavy gray coat. The one in the sweater reached out with an oar and touched the submarine’s hull. After some discussion they decided to row around the submarine and examine it from every angle. They were like two boys with a found elephant. Taylor could imagine the discussion: What should we do with it? Let’s take it home. But me mum won’t let us keep it, there’s no room, maybe we could keep it in your backyard.
“I knew this was going to happen sooner or later,” said Taylor. “I was hoping for later.”
“Want me to blast the ship’s horn?” asked Tanaka. “That’ll scare the hell out of them.”
Taylor chuckled. “Tempting, but no. Are we buttoned up tight? They can’t get in, can they?”
“No, sir. Hatches are locked down.”
“Keep an eye on them.” Taylor went back to his stateroom.
As acting commander of Kansas, Taylor was facing a serious problem. He commanded a crew with no mission and no purpose. They awaited orders that would never come. He decided to start having daily meetings with senior staff to try and gage the morale of the crew. He tried to keep them focused on the day to day running of Kansas. He got them busy on solving the food shortage problem. The reports he received on the crew’s temperament were not good.
After three days Taylor began to notice small things that were very telling. Crewmen were not even trying to hit the trash receptacles any more. Wrappers and tissues were littering the floor. Taylor found half a tube of toothpaste smashed on the floor of the forward head. It seemed cleanliness and personal hygiene was a low priority.
In one of the daily staff meetings Taylor heard about two fistfights on the messdeck. One erupted out of a discussion on which state had the best fried chicken and one about whether Commander Taylor’s mother or father was white. Taylor couldn’t believe men coming to blows over such things. “And for the record,” said Taylor, “my grandma Taylor was of the pale persuasion.”
By the end of their fourth day at Gare Loch he could feel the despair settling over the ship. The despondent crew was talking, sharing information and speculating, and it was all negative. Taylor could see the fear in each haunted face. They were looking to him for an answer to their desperate situation. They needed to know there was a way back, and they were not stuck forever in this strange place and
time, cut off from the real world. Taylor wanted to tell them not to worry, he had a plan. But he couldn’t say that, and his silence worried them even more.
Everyone suspected the truth, but they were all afraid to give voice to it. They were never going back home. In every direction Taylor saw sullen faces and thousand yard stares. He decided to get some advice. He went to Castillo, but was dismayed by what he saw.
Castillo looked like a haggard phantom of his former self. His swollen left eye was looking better, but there was a deadness to his eyes now. He was still wearing the same robe he had been wearing days ago and he was still sitting in the same chair. And from the ripeness of the air, Taylor knew he hadn’t bathed. Had he slept? Had he eaten? Castillo turned his bearded face to Taylor and looked through him. Taylor realized he was not going to get any help from him. Castillo was in a bad place. He decided to go elsewhere.
Everywhere Taylor went crewmen avoided eye contact. Some men appeared on the edge of breaking down. This was bad, he thought.
He found Susan Lambert in the control room staring at the big screen. “Look!” she said. “They’re going to tow us away.”
On screen were three small rowboats full of men stroking hard under an overcast gun metal sky. They had thrown ropes over Kansas’s stern fin and were trying to tow it.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Taylor. “Our maneuvering thrusters can keep us on station against a strong current. They’ll get tired and quit.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Taylor regarded Lambert. She looked good. He didn’t see any of the inner turmoil the rest of the crew seemed to be going through. “I’m more concerned about what’s going on inside the ship.”
“I know what you mean. There’s a funeral-like atmosphere.”
“Aren’t you concerned about our predicament?”
“Sure, but I don’t think it will serve any purpose to brood on it. Our mission now is one of survival.”
Deadly Apparition Page 12
