by Jude Watson
“Abandon the compound?” Kimberly asked. “That doesn’t make sense. We worked so hard. We’ll get rescued eventually.”
“Leaving is the right thing to do,” Anna said. “You have to trust us.”
“But you don’t know any more than we do, really,” Kimberly said. “I mean, no offense—none of us really know much. We’re all guessing. You saw a diagram of a thing you can’t identify at the end of the valley. That’s it. You don’t know what it is, or why it’s there, or if it can help us. You listened to your friend, who might be under a spell or a truth serum or something. He said there was help for someone like Cal. But what’s the proof?”
“How do you know about Oliver?” Molly asked.
Kimberly hesitated. She looked at Hank.
“I told her,” Hank said gruffly. “I tell them everything.”
“Everything?” Molly asked sharply. Hank looked away.
“My point is,” Kimberly said, recovering, “you could be heading into worse danger.”
Pammy nodded. “We lost so many people already.”
“Listen, I’m all for bashing through the defensive line for a touchdown,” Crash said, “but only if I have a good chance of reaching the fifty-yard line.”
“We figured out how to stay alive,” Dana said. “I’m sure that planes are still searching. And even if they’d given up on us, now they’ll be looking for you!”
Molly looked at the Killbots. Javi silently shook his head. But Yoshi and Anna both nodded. Kira and Akiko seemed like they knew what she was about to say, too. She saw sympathy in their gazes.
“There’s something you don’t know,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Hank doesn’t tell you everything.”
No! Don’t do it, Molly, don’t tell them …
“You’ve been here longer than you think,” Molly said.
“How much longer?” Kimberly asked.
Javi bored into her with his eyes. He willed her not to say any more. But she wouldn’t make eye contact with him.
“Over fifty years,” Molly said.
Kimberly laughed out loud. “Sure. And I’m a grandma.”
“Well, your mother probably is,” Anna said.
Molly shot Anna a warning look. Javi knew that look. It meant, Let me handle this.
“What are you talking about?” Dana asked. “Hank?” She looked at him for answers, and he shook his head and glanced at the ground.
Javi saw the fear and confusion on her face, and he looked away, too.
“Listen, you’re in some kind of … a time-distortion field,” Molly said. “It seems like it’s just here, in the woods. It ends at the stream, we think.”
“A time … what?” Dana echoed.
Yoshi cleared his throat. “She means that time is moving differently in the forest. Outside, fifty years have passed while you’ve been here in your compound.”
“This sounds like bunk. How would that even be possible?” Crash asked. He looked around at his friends. “We look the same as we did when we got here.”
“We don’t know how it works, exactly,” Anna said. “All I know is that lots of the science stuff we learned in school functions differently here. Gravity and nature are all screwed up—why can’t time be screwy, too?”
“Think about it … ” Javi said weakly. Now that the cat was out of the bag, he couldn’t just let Molly flounder. Or the Cub-Tones. “Doesn’t time feel strange here? Don’t you lose track of it, the way some days are long, like when you’re in school, and some days are short, like summer vacation? Or how long the car ride is to the beach, but how short it feels coming home? But hey, you’re still the same age at the end of the year, right?”
“That doesn’t explain fifty years passing in a couple of months, dad,” Crash said. “You can’t noodle that out.”
“Sure we can,” Yoshi said impatiently. “We’re from the future. To bend time you just go to a Starbucks, activate a venti, and hyperlink into a Prius. We do it all the time.”
“Yoshi,” Molly chided. “Can you please cut it out? Look, we know this is a lot to absorb.”
“I don’t believe you,” Pammy said. Her voice shook.
“Theories,” Crash said. “That and a quarter will buy me a loaf of bread.”
“Not anymore,” Yoshi said.
“Let me get this straight,” Dana said. “You’re really from … the future?”
“Did you crash your spaceship?” Stu asked in a teasing voice.
“No, we came on a plane, just like you,” Molly said. “And we’re not from the future … We’re from the present.”
“I’m so confused,” Kimberly said.
Molly held up her smartphone. “But we have these. This is a phone that runs on a battery. But it’s also a computer.”
“Computers are big,” Stu said. “That’s impossible.”
“I can get movies and TV and music on it,” Molly continued.
Javi looked at the faces of the Cubs. They were disbelieving, but … fascinated.
“I can play games on it, and I can send messages, and I can access search engines. That means that if I type in a topic, in seconds I’ll find out everything about it. If I typed in Bear Claw, I’d have a map of where it is, directions on how to get there, what the population is, and the best place to eat breakfast on Sundays.”
“Like fun you can!” Crash exploded. “Is it April Fools’? Is that it?”
“So show us, if you’re telling the truth,” Kimberly said. Her voice was quiet.
“I only have a little bit of battery life,” Molly said. “And obviously I can’t get a signal to communicate with the outside world. Phones connect to satellites, but you have to be within the network.”
“Well, that makes no sense at all,” Crash said. “Phones connect to wires. Everybody knows that.”
“How does it work?” Dana asked.
“It connects to a tractor beam on Tatooine,” Yoshi said. “Then it’s rerouted through the Pilates system.”
“Cut it out!” Molly snapped. “This is hard enough for them, Yoshi!”
“So stop hesitating. Just turn on the phone and show them,” Yoshi said. “Compassion is a swift sword. Do it!”
“No!” Pammy leaped back. She looked at the others frantically, whipping her head around. “What if that’s some sort of Commie device? From Russia or Red China?”
“Actually, it was manufactured in China—” Anna started, but Molly shot her a furious look.
Molly held up a hand. She turned on the phone. Javi thought she might access the photos, but of course she didn’t. That would have felt wrong—like a violation. He peeked over her shoulder as she opened the music, scrolling quickly through the list of songs until she found one she wanted to play. Despite the seriousness of the moment, she made a small smile when she tapped the screen.
It was like getting smacked over the head. Javi knew immediately what Molly had chosen. It was “Up on the Roof,” a song the two of them had sung together once at a school talent show on a dare. An old song about leaving the world behind.
They hadn’t done very well. Singing, it had turned out, was not among their talents. But it had still been an amazing night.
“I know that song,” Kimberly said. She took the phone and stared at it. There was a screen saver of twisting, pulsating multicolored lights playing across the screen.
“What … is this?” Dana looked over Kimberly’s shoulder.
Kimberly silently passed the phone to Dana, who passed it to Crash, who passed it along the line. Pammy refused to touch it but couldn’t resist looking at it.
Javi closed his eyes when the music abruptly cut out. The battery was dead. It felt like losing another link home. He thought of their own phones, lost in the exploding plane. They had held pictures of parents, homes, streets, cupcakes, birthday cakes, beaches, parks. Favorite songs. Old texts. Gone forever now.
Dana reached for Kimberly’s hand. She looked shaken. “If this is true … nobody’s looking for us
anymore.”
“No,” Molly said. “But if it helps, I don’t think anybody is looking for us, either.”
“Fifty years,” Pammy said. “That means that … my big brother is older than my dad!”
“No, he isn’t,” Dana said quietly. “It means your father is as old as your grandfather.”
“If he’s still alive,” Anna pointed out. At Molly’s look, she added quickly, “I mean, of course he is, I’m just saying … the world is, you know, different.” As Pammy began to cry, she added, “Life spans are even longer now, especially if you don’t smoke.”
Javi’s gaze went from one face to another. He saw it happen before his eyes, each one of them absorbing the news, thinking about their parents, their siblings, their grandparents, their teachers, their pets … Everything they had, everything they wanted to get back to, was gone or completely different, as though they were now strangers in the world.
Every face. Except Hank’s.
“Why did you tell them?” Hank cried. “I told you this would happen!”
“What do you mean?” Kimberly asked. “You knew?”
“Molly told me earlier today,” he said.
“We think you knew earlier than that,” Molly said.
Javi had to admire the way Hank took his time answering Molly’s challenge. There were no heated denials. He seemed to think through his options before speaking. “Why would I tell them? Look at them now. Are they better off?”
“Because we needed to know!” Kimberly burst out.
“Because we deserved to know,” Dana said.
“I don’t want to know,” Pammy said, sobbing. “I wish I didn’t! I miss my mom!”
Everyone went silent for a moment. Kimberly slipped her arm around Pammy and drew her close.
Molly’s eyes glinted in the firelight. Javi knew that look. She was zeroing in on Hank. She was about to hit him with some truth. “There’s a fallen tree in the forest,” she said. “One of the ones that grow upside down so the roots are exposed. It’s marked—someone was using it like a calendar. Trying to count the years.”
The Cubs all turned to look at their leader.
“Hank?” Kimberly questioned. “What is she talking about?”
“How did you do it, Hank?” Molly asked. “How did you make the time warp? Is it the device?”
“Stop accusing me! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Hank spit out the words.
“You did,” Molly said. “You knew that time was advancing. How could you know that if you weren’t doing it? You’re the one who created the time warp. How?”
“Don’t listen to them. Kim! Crash! Stu … ”
They all shook their heads at him. Kimberly turned away.
Dana stood. “We need answers.”
“Answers?” Hank chuckled hollowly. “That’s a laugh! You didn’t want to know! I’m the one who went beyond the stream, who saw a creature almost rip my best friend’s face off. I was the one who dragged him back alone. All you needed was to feel safe. I protected you!”
“No!” Dana shouted. “We protected each other! What did you do to us?”
Hank’s lips pressed together.
“You’re no leader,” Crash said. “You’re just a rat fink.”
“Search him,” Dana said.
Yoshi crossed to Hank. “Turn out your pockets.”
“Kim? Crash? Go through his lean-to,” Dana said.
Hank turned out his pockets. They were full of holes. He couldn’t hide anything in them anyway.
Pammy was still sobbing, and it was distracting. If Hank was manipulating time, they needed answers fast. Yoshi felt his own panic race through him, and he turned angrily. “Will you please put a sock in it?”
“Yoshi-chan!” Akiko spoke to him sharply in Japanese. “Would you put yourself in her place right now?”
“If I were in her place, I’d suck it up!”
“If you were in her place and were filled with grief, we would try to comfort you.”
The remark stung. She was chiding him. Warning him about his lack of omoiyari—compassion and sensitivity to the needs of others.
He touched his katana for reassurance. It made him feel strong. Not at the mercy of emotions the way Pammy was. What did Akiko expect from him?
But how would he feel, knowing the world was fifty years ahead of when he left it? That it had continued to spin past days and weeks and years without him in it? It had to be about the loneliest feeling imaginable.
Was he just a frog in a well? Not seeing the whole picture, not understanding how shocked the Cubs must feel?
“Nothing in the lean-to,” Crash called.
Omoiyari. And Anna’s words in his head. “Don’t you ever just talk to people?”
Yoshi glanced at Hank. This time he really looked at Hank, past his defiance into his panic. And his sense of responsibility for the Cub-Tones.
“Hank, listen,” Yoshi said. “This place is hard on all of us. I’m guessing whatever you did, you did it to protect your people. Tell us how it works. We all want the same thing. To get home.”
Hank took a deep breath. Like he was in a witness box about to testify, Yoshi thought. Why not? They were all facing him now, like a jury.
“We were hungry,” Hank said. He turned to face the Cubs. “Do you remember? Day after day, it got worse. The plane food ran out fast, before it even occurred to us that we should be rationing it. We thought we’d be rescued within days, remember? We couldn’t manage to catch the slide-whistle birds. We didn’t have a sword, or even a sharp knife. And water … The stream kept moving. Some days we couldn’t find it at all. We couldn’t get enough water, so we had to ration it. Every time we tried to hike out, we got lost, or attacked. It was … chaos. We lost five of our friends in the first two weeks. Five! We ate bugs and berries, and we were getting weaker by the day.”
“It was hard,” Dana said, her voice curt. “But it doesn’t justify—”
Hank interrupted her. “Then we found the tubers. They could be our main food source. The only problem was the long growing cycle. I grew up on a farm, and I know crop yields. The tubers grew so slowly … We’d run out. We’d starve. So Cal and I volunteered to leave. To go beyond the stream, look for new food sources. And you would have two fewer mouths to feed for a while. That was the trip when he was attacked. But before that … we came to this clearing. There were all these rusting metal parts.”
“They were robots,” Yoshi said. “Anna and I saw them.”
“That’s when we really knew that things were … seriously weird,” Hank said. “That it was no ordinary plane crash. And it’s where I found both devices. I mean, not just the water-changer that looks like your device, but the time-changer. We had no idea what they were. We just put them in our pockets. They just seemed like strange tools. We kept walking and we got lost. Again. We stumbled onto that grove of the upside-down trees. Cal noticed the broken ones all had the same number of rings. The fat trees, the skinny trees, tall or short … they were all exactly the same age. He said that was strange. He was smart about that kind of stuff.”
“It’s another sign this place is engineered,” Anna said. “It’s not really a natural environment at all.”
“Yeah, he said something like that, too. Anyway, I put a notch in one of the trunks, so we could come back and keep track of time. It seemed important. Then the jawbugs attacked, and we ran … right into a big beak.” He looked at Molly. “Well, you all know how awful that is.”
“Go on,” Molly said.
“We barely got away. In the panic, I forgot all about the devices. We made it back to the compound, but Cal almost died.” He stopped.
Akiko and Kira looked at Yoshi for a translation. Yoshi told them quickly, this time not leaving things out because he was bored or didn’t really care. As Hank spoke again, he would pause so that Yoshi could translate.
“I thought we were gone three days. It was three weeks. That was a surprise, but I just figured that shock had sort of un
hinged us or something. The others were in rough shape. The tubers had run out. I’d lost my device—had a hole in my pocket—but Cal still had his. Dana, you remember, you were helping me figure out the indicators and then we twisted the thing and just found out by accident—”
“That it turned the water into a gel,” Dana said. “The water pitcher just transformed before our eyes. We couldn’t believe it.”
“We could store water! And heat! And I thought—if this did that, what could the other one do? I searched and searched, and finally found it in the patch of wild tubers. They were fully grown! It was amazing. I realized that it had something to do with time. So I experimented with the symbols. There was no way to track how much time had passed except by the size of the tubers. That’s why I kept such detailed notes on them.”
“So you kept doing it,” Molly said.
“We always had enough food if I moved time a few weeks or months ahead,” Hank said. “I figured out how to measure out the time on the device.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dana asked. “It should have been a group decision!”
“At first I just thought I’d try it, see if it worked,” Hank said. “I didn’t want to scare anybody. And then, I thought … well, I pretty much had given up on search planes by that point. There were two things that could happen. One, we’d just live here until … well, until either we were killed, or we died of old age. Two, eventually technology would change enough, maybe better radar or something, better planes, and we’d get rescued. If time moved forward, that would better our chances. I broke my watch so that we couldn’t use it, but when I moved the indicator on the device I’d slip back to the tree so I could keep a record. It was hard to keep track, though. I think the device is imprecise, or the time folds it makes are unpredictable. There are places in the woods that warp time. Sometimes I’d get lost and not know how long had passed.”
“I saw distortions when I was above the forest,” Anna said. “I think they could be time folds. It’s like the heavy gravity ring that killed Caleb, or the cloaked barriers in the desert. They seemed to correspond to the trees with the misshapen trunks.”
