“The weather?” asked Marshal.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s drawn little suns when it was sunny, rain clouds when it’s rainy and so on and so on. He even blocks out the days when the 360 comes and the winds blow.”
“That sounds pretty detailed,” said Robert and I could tell he was impressed by it.
“I thought so too,” I said. “Then I saw it.”
“What?” asked Marshal.
“There’s a pattern,” I explained. “He didn’t notice it but I did. It’s probably because he’s been looking at it every day and I just saw it for the first time. He’s probably too caught up with carving in the lines and keeping them grouped properly that...”
“Nicole!” Robert interrupted me. I guess I was rambling on. “What was the pattern?”
“Sorry,” I said. “The weather repeats itself.” I waited for their oohs and ahs but nothing came out of their mouths. They were staring at me, not understanding what this meant so, I continued to explain. “You see, every year has the same weather on the same days, year after year. If it rained on the third day of July this year, then it rained on the third day of July every year since he came down here; every day is the same as that day the year before. It’s like the year just repeats itself over and over.”
“Are you sure?” asked Robert and I could see his mind was working something out. I nodded.
“That’s weird,” said Marshal. “It’s like, it’s like...”
“A time loop,” whispered Robert.
“A what?” I asked.
“I have to go,” Robert sprang from his stool and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going?” I asked as I ran after Robert.
“I have to go back to my place,” he answered.
“You mean back to Marshal’s?” I asked, knowing that he meant the place where he and Madge used to live. I had no idea he still had anything left there.
“Yes, yes,” he answered. As he walked down the tunnel to the entrance he called back, “I’ll explain everything later.”
“Hmph,” I went back to Marshal and his microscope. “That was weird. I wonder why he went back to his place. I thought we moved everything out of there.”
“We did, did, did,” said Marshal. “But he still has some books that he’s stored away in a trunk. He didn’t want to move them because he thought they’d take up too much room and he didn’t think he’d be reading them anytime soon.”
“Books, eh?” Now, it made sense why he wanted to go there. He probably had a book that had information about repeating time over and over. I laughed to myself. It was like that movie where the guy kept waking up on the same day and repeating it over and over again. He was stuck in the same day for the rest of his life. Could that be what’s happened to all of us? Were we all stuck in the same year, repeating it over and over for the rest of our lives? It was too much to comprehend right now so, I turned my attention towards Marshal and the rocks.
“Anything new?” I asked.
“It’s all new, new, new,” he said. “That’s the problem. I can’t identify any of it. Every single rock we’ve collected is made of some kind of material that I’ve never seen before. I don’t get it.” He went back to the microscope and I stayed in the lab and helped him break apart some of the samples so he could study them better. Colonel Al never came back and neither did Robert. Finally, I told Marshal we should go and the two of us packed up everything, put on our coats and bundled up. We said goodbye to the colonel and headed back home. Barker decided to go with us. He’d stayed with us the whole time we studied the rocks, barking every time we broke one apart to put it under the microscope. I guessed he didn’t like the dust we created when we did this.
I was surprised to see how dark it was when we left the mine. I knew the sun disappeared in the early afternoon at this time of the year but, still, I didn’t realize it was so late. Despite the absence of the sun, though, it was still relatively warm out and the walk back to Marshal’s would actually be nice; we wouldn’t freeze for once. That’s probably why Barker decided to come back with us, I thought to myself. Marshal and I didn’t talk very much on our walk. We’d just spent the last two hours with each other; there wasn’t that much more to talk about.
We got back home half an hour later and I was surprised to see Robert there. I was convinced he would be lost in a book in the underground home he used to live in but I was wrong. He was sitting at the table, drinking tea and flipping through the pages of a book that must have been three inches thick. Cornelius and Emma Lee were playing cards with Kitten and Billy in Robert’s new house. They had been out making snowmen and having snowball fights all afternoon and were now enjoying being inside. I took off my coat and boots and put them out to dry. Despite it being warm, there was still lots of snow and snow was wet and my boots were damp inside.
“So, Robert,” I walked over to the table and sat across from my friend. “What ya’ reading?”
“Physics,” he said and closed the book.
“Done already?” I asked.
“You could say that,” he said and took a sip of his tea. “I thought I’d look up some theories I knew were in this book.”
“Theories, eh?” I smiled. “Anything interesting? Anything to do with repeating weather conditions?”
“Yes, I think I’ve found some of my answers,” he smiled back at me.
“Well, come on! Tell me what you found,” I pleaded with him.
“Okay, okay. Marshal do you want to hear my theory as well?” Marshal nodded and Robert waited for him to sit down. “Nicole, when you told me about the calendar the colonel’s been keeping and how the pattern of weather has been repeating itself year after year, I was reminded of something I had read in this physics book years ago. You see, when the world above imprints on this world for a few brief days, I make it a priority to collect as many books as I can. I try to take a variety of books, you know, some current text books, novels, manuals even some cookbooks. It’s my way of trying to keep up with things.”
“It’s a good thing, too, Robert,” said Marshal. “I know you’ve learned a lot from those books and I have too. You’ve been kind enough to lend them to me. That’s one of the reasons I know so much about rocks.”
“Yes, well, sharing knowledge is far better than sharing wealth,” Robert said. “Wealth comes and goes but knowledge will stay with you forever.”
“Anyway,” I said. They were getting off the subject and I was losing my patience. “Tell me what you found!”
“Okay,” he said. “I think I’ve figured it out.”
“What do you mean, mean, mean?” asked Marshal. “What have you figured out?”
“Why the weather keeps repeating,” he said. “Why the plants are from a different age, maybe, even why the rocks are posing such a headache. I think I can explain it.”
“So, explain,” I said.
“I think we or, rather, this place is caught in some kind of temporal loop,” he said.
“A temporal what?” asked Marshal and I could tell that he didn’t know anything about the subject. I knew about it from watching movies and TV shows, especially Anime. Anime dealt with temporal or, rather, time loops all the time in their stories.
“I think you’re right,” I said.
“You do?” Robert seemed surprised that I was agreeing with him.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I think we’re in some kind of parallel world with the real world and, you’re right, I think we’re caught in some kind of time loop, repeating the same year over and over.”
“Yes,” said Robert, amazed that I knew what he was talking about. “That’s what I was going to say but a little more scientifically.”
“I don’t know the science behind it,” I explained, “but I figure it’s like any good rpg game except I’m actually living it.”
“What’s an rpg game?” asked Marshal.
“Role playing game,” I answered. “You see, in the world today, this kind
of thing; dimensions and time loops, are everywhere. There are books about it, movies and TV shows revolve around it and everyone I know has at least one video game that has some kind of paradox being played out in it. Having said that, though, doesn’t mean I know exactly how it works or how we can fix it.”
“I’ve no idea what these games are that you talk about but you’re right about books,” said Robert. “I know the writer, Jules Verne, talks about time travel in his books. If it’s become commonplace to speak of these things, then it doesn’t surprise me that you know so much about it.”
“Well, I don’t understand it,” said Marshal, obviously angry that he didn’t know what we were talking about.
“Let me try to explain,” said Robert. “You know what dimensions are, right?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Marshal. “2D is a painting, 3D is a sculpture.”
“Yes, that’s the simplest way to explain it,” Robert smiled at Marshal’s elementary description. “Scientists believe that there are many more dimensions. They state the fourth dimension is time and that subsequent dimensions involve multiple timelines, multiple worlds and even multiple universes. To get from one dimension to the other there must be a fold in the dimension.” He picked up a sheet of paper he had been writing notes on and bent it so that one side touched the other forming a wide tube. “You see, we come from a four dimensional world; length, width, depth and time. There must be some sort of fold that happens every 360 days that allows some of us to jump from one dimensional world to another. Now, here we are in this new world and we don’t know its origins; how it was formed. We do know it’s different from our world and that the principles that govern it are foreign to us. This could explain why you can’t identify the rocks. They must be made of material that is only found in this world. I think, however, they may have the same function as similar rocks from our world.”
“Which is?” asked Marshal. He was anxious to solve the puzzle of the rocks.
“Well, the mountains contain coal and other rocks that can be manipulated to create power right?” asked Robert.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Marshal, excited that he could finally understand something.
“Right,” said Robert. “We must be able to manipulate the rocks here to produce power. We just have to figure out how.”
“You’re right!” Marshal sat back and thought about the possibilities. “You’re a smart man, Robert.”
“What about the time loop?” I asked. This concerned me more than the rocks.
“The same as the worlds,” Robert explained. “I think there’s a fold in the dimensional timeline here. The start of the year follows a line until the end of the year and it should keep going; year after year, decade after decade, but it doesn’t. Instead there’s a fold that happens at the end of the year creating a circle and this world keeps going around this circle again and again year after year. I have no idea when or how it started but, by the age of the plants, it’s been going on for a long time.”
“If that’s the case,” I wondered, “shouldn’t we be repeating everything year after year as well? I mean, our memories should be erased at the end of each year and we would start the year doing the same things over and over.”
“I don’t think so,” said Robert. “I think we are merely observers here; visitors if you will. If we were born of this world, perhaps, we would repeat ourselves but we are here by mistake and the only thing that remains the same year after year or, in reality, fold after fold, is our age. Not really a bad thing if you think about it.”
“Or a good thing if you’re Kitten or Billy,” I said beneath my breath.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Robert. “It would be nice to be ten forever. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Yeah, but you’re never taken seriously and you can’t physically do things for yourself,” I said, “and you never get to fall in love and be with that person forever.”
“No one gets that,” Robert said and quietly stacked the papers in front of him. How stupid of me to be so inconsiderate. Robert was still hurting over Madge and what I had just said was so cruel. I’m an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and reached out to touch his hand. He pulled it away and stood up.
“Now,” he said, “the only thing we have to do is figure out how to reverse the fold.”
“The time fold?” Marshal looked surprised at this. “But, Robert, if we do that, we’ll start to age. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Marshal must like being young and innocent.
“No, not the time fold!” exclaimed Robert. “The dimensional world fold. If we can figure out how that works and reverse it, we should be able to get back home.”
I sat back in my chair, not any more at ease than I was before Robert explained everything. Reverse the dimensional fold. Just how the hell were we supposed to do that?
Chapter 13
Howling Wolf and Max
Max hated to admit it because he never wanted to admit any weakness, but he was exhausted and frozen and finding Howling Wolf and his men, once again, was a blessing. He knew the Lakota warrior and his men weren’t a group you just strolled up to. They were savages in every sense of the word. When Emma Lee described what had happened to her people, he knew it could only be the work of Howling Wolf except he didn’t know them as the Blood Demons and there was a lot more of them now. The fact that they had a name now meant that they were more organized; more dangerous. They wanted people to know who they were and to be afraid when they heard their name.
Max met Howling Wolf five years ago, after he had killed the ‘Punks’ and before he found Cornelius again. The charismatic native American only had about twenty men then; a large group but not large enough to take over some of the makeshift towns down here. Howling Wolf lived by the rule of survival of the fittest. He knew that he who held the power held everything. Part of gaining that power was reinventing himself as a god. The warrior was smart and knew that the people who fell down here were vulnerable. He knew that they were alone and confused and fresh from a world that believed in a god that controlled their destinies. Howling Wolf convinced them that if there was a god there, then there was a god here and that he was the voice of this god. He was the prophet, the saviour the demi-god all wrapped into one. Follow him and you would be saved; disobey him or fight him and you would be sacrificed and he was an expert at the sacrifice.
Howling Wolf was an expert at ritual killing; sacrificing those who disagreed with him or posed a threat. Every drop of blood spilled was consumed by him and his followers. He had them convinced that the blood of their enemies would give them strength to defend themselves, to conquer new land. So far, it had worked; they had beaten every enemy and conquered all the land they wanted. Max guessed that this was why they called themselves the Blood Demons. The name would intimidate anyone; except Max. He knew the real Howling Wolf. He had seen through his façade from the first time he met him. He knew that the god the warrior preached about was a lie used to control his men. What the warrior really was, was an angry little boy who wanted the whole sandbox to himself.
Five years ago, Max was a mess. His massacre of the ‘Punks’, especially the boy, Tommy, had filled him with shame. How could he kill such an innocent boy? His mind told him it was an accident; that when he turned he didn’t consciously slit the boy’s throat. It was just a mistake; a horrible, irreversible mistake. But every part of him knew that he had ended the life of a helpless, innocent boy and the guilt took over his mind. He wandered for months, then years, from one group to another, from one empty relationship to another. He went through women, through friends and through bottle after bottle of alcohol. It was the alcohol that did the most damage.
He drank anything he could get his hands on, whiskey, vodka, rum, it didn’t matter as long as it made him numb enough to sleep or numb enough to live. Each day blurred into the next until he didn’t know where he was or how long he had been there. Then, one day, he hit the bottom of his self-dug pit. He met up with
a group of newcomers, all women, who had been exiled by the communities from which they came, shunned for being new. If they could survive a year on their own, they would be welcomed back. They didn’t want to go back. Instead, they wanted to survive as a group on their own. They had been doing a good job of it, too, until Max showed up.
A group of women only presented a new challenge for Max and his charming ways. Instead of wooing one women, he sought the affections of three. He probably would have pulled it off too if his efforts hadn’t been soaked in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. His drunken carelessness uncovered his prowess with each woman, their affairs no longer done in secret. This caused fighting amongst the women, each one wanting Max all to herself. Jealousy between desperate women is ugly and two of the women ended up shooting each other in an old fashioned duel. Neither died but they did come to their senses and realized their only true enemy was Max. So, one night, they held a celebration and promised him that the three would share themselves with him. They pampered him and teased him and poured two bottles of whiskey down his throat until he was close to death by alcohol poisoning. But he didn’t die; he only passed out. The women stripped him naked, took his clothes and left him in the middle of a field under the hot sun.
Max woke up a day later, sun burnt and sick from the worst hangover he had ever had. He could barely open his eyes but he knew he had to get up and find some water and shade. He had no idea where he was and no recollection of what the women had done to him. He didn’t care; his head hurt and his stomach was turning violently inside. He wretched on the ground beside him and then struggled to his feet and staggered off to find water.
He hadn’t gone far when he ran into a group of men led by a man with long black hair and strong native features. He had heard of the Native American population before but, until now, had never actually met one. He didn’t know what to expect or if he should be afraid but he needed water and clothes and maybe even a shot of whiskey. He held up his hand as a welcome but stood still, waiting for the group to approach him. He knew that if he walked over to them, it would put them on their defence. If he let them feel like they held the control over him, they would be hesitant to do him any real harm.
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