The Gatespace Trilogy, Omnibus Edition

by Alan Seeger

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Harper. Had your brother been ill very long?”

  “Uh… no. No, it was very sudden,” Rick replied.

  “You elected not to arrange for a burial plot or crypt. Are you planning a private ceremony?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Stefanie volunteered. “We’re taking him home to St. Louis.”

  “Oh, I see,” said the funeral director. “Well, you won’t be able to fly out today. Not after what happened in New York this morning. They’ve shut down all the airlines.”

  Rick and Stefanie glanced at each other. “Yes, we know,” said Rick. “We’re not going to be flying.”

  After nods and thanks were exchanged, they walked out into the lobby of the funeral home and stood there thinking for a moment.

  Rick held the box in his hands, clearly moved by the idea that this was what remained of his father. He remembered his dad from when he was a child as an energetic, ambitious man who liked to roughhouse with his son. They had occasionally played catch in the small back yard of the same house where his mother had passed away; tossed a football back and forth with a couple of the other neighborhood kids.

  Then he’d simply disappeared for more than thirty years. Rick hadn’t known for sure whether he was dead or had a new family somewhere.

  Now he was older than his dad had been when he disappeared, and suddenly they had found each other again, but only for five days.

  “If I’d have known…” he began. He looked at Stef with red-rimmed eyes. “If I’d have had some way to know, I’d have spent every minute of these last five days with him.”

  “Of course you would, sweetheart,” Stef said. “It just goes to show you, no one knows how long we have left in this life. Every morning, you should hug the people you love; every night, tell them you love them.” She smiled at him, a smile that lit him up inside. “I love you, Rick.”

  They walked out of the funeral home into the misty September morning, Rick carrying the box that contained his father’s earthly remains.

  ~~~~~

  They hailed a cab on Valencia Street and gave the cabbie the address of the now-familiar diner in the Marina District. Stefanie tipped the driver $20 and they stood on the sidewalk across from the mouth of the alley.

  Rick and Stefanie looked at each other. Rick’s throat was dry as sand. Was it nerves, or his illness flaring up again? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was he wanted to get home as quickly as he could.

  They walked down the alley. Rick felt as if he’d been here so many times that he could practically count the number of bricks in the pavement.

  His heart was pounding as they neared the end of the alley, and the right hand jog it took that hid the green whirlpool. As they began to turn the corner, Rick felt the anxiety wash out of his body. The heavy cloud cover made it dim enough in the narrow corridor that he could see the telltale green glow flickering against the far wall.

  They turned the corner and there it was, slowly rotating like a spiral galaxy in miniature, the emerald light playing over the brick walls behind and on either side of it.

  “I can’t believe they’ve had this thing open for five days now without some street person stumbling across it and reporting it,” said Rick.

  “Or going through it,” Stef replied.

  “Maybe they did. Maybe they’re dealing with one of your old shelter clients right now,” Rick laughed.

  “If they are, I’ll just start a support group,” Stefanie said, smiling.

  They held hands and looked at the Gate.

  “Ready to go home, babe?” Rick said.

  “Am I ever.”

  They took a running start.

  CHAPTER 98

  And a good time was had by all.

  It was 11:23 AM local time. The ChroNova staff had been back in full watch support mode since 7 AM for the second full day of watching the Gate when Rick and Stefanie suddenly emerged from the green whirlpool back into the present time.

  They were amazed to discover that a total of only 25 hours had elapsed since Rick had gone back through the Gate in search of Stef. In their San Francisco experience, a full nine months had elapsed from the time that Rick had first arrived there on December 15, 2000 until the both of them had finally stepped back into the Gate for the return trip on September 11, 2001.

  Well… the three of them. Rick still held the box that contained the mortal remains of Arthur Harper. He walked over and gently set the box on the counter, as if he might be a little afraid that it would cause a nuclear reaction when the matter from 2001 made contact with the matter from 2016, but nothing happened. Everything was normal.

  “What is that?” asked Randall.

  “That,” said Rick, “is all that is left of my father. We miraculously found each other, fifteen years in the past, five days before he passed away.”

  Randall walked over to Rick and wrapped him up in a huge bear hug. Then he reached one arm toward Stef and she joined in. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay, Randall. For more than thirty years, I never knew what had happened to him. I thought he just… left. Now I know that he had an accident and he didn’t know who he was or even who we were. He was homeless on the streets of San Francisco for eighteen years before he died.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “He lived and died in Northern California. I’m gonna take him home to Sacramento and bury him there.”

  Terry got a worried look on his face. “But you don’t mean…”

  “Huh…?” Rick said. “Oh, no. God, no. Not through the Gate. We’re gonna fly.”

  The tension relieved, they all smiled and laughed and moved in to hug Rick and Stef.

  ~~~~~

  Just as Rick and Stefanie returned from the past, a baby girl was born to author Steven Denver and his wife Lynne. It was Saturday, May 14 at 10:23 AM Mountain time when Callie Louise Denver made her debut at Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman, Montana. She weighed six pounds and twelve ounces. Dr. Ronald Mead was the attending physician.

  It wasn’t very long before everyone in the family was calling her Lulu.

  Steven would later be called Grandpa Steve by his descendants; centuries after his death, he would be revered as the Greatfather, the inspiration for the Global Initiative for Mankind (2452) and the Declaration of Human Brotherhood (2476). His philosophical essays on political and social science and the nature of human relationships, which he began to write at the age of 60, led the New York Times-Post to refer to him as ‘the Thomas Paine of the 21st century” in a memorial to him published after his death in 2066 at the age of 93.

  CHAPTER 99

  “Mr. Harper, thank you for coming back in.”

  It was a week after Rick and Stefanie had returned from their adventure in the past. Now he was sitting in one of the oncology clinic’s exam rooms on a return visit to see Dr. Geister after having come in to have a blood sample drawn a few days before due to his concerns over having felt ill a few days (and fifteen years, though he didn’t say that to the staff) before. Curiously, however, he had been feeling the best he could recall feeling in a long while since their return.

  Rick looked up as Dr. Geister walked into the room. “Please, doc, call me Rick,” he smiled. “Mr. Harper was my father.” He smiled to himself at the joke that the doctor would never get.

  “Sure, Rick. At any rate, I wanted you to come back in because, as you know, I requested that you come in and have some blood drawn a few days ago, and I wasn’t in the office that day.”

  “Right,” said Rick.

  “The samples that we took turned up some results that made me decide I wanted to rerun one or two of them… well, three, actually.”

  Rick’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “No, no, don’t get the wrong idea,” Dr. Geister said. “There were some strange results… but I must say, they were strange in a good way.”

  Rick gave him a puzzled look.

  “Well, you see…” Dr. Geister continued. “
When you were here several months back, as we discussed, your results didn’t look good. You’ll recall that your diagnosis was one of AML, which is acute myeloid leukemia. Now, of course, since that time, I understand that you have undergone several sessions of chemotherapy —”

  “Three sessions,” blurted Rick. He felt as if the room were closing in on him, the walls pushing in, the space getting smaller and smaller, the available oxygen dwindling. How could this be leading up to something good?

  “Three sessions,” repeated Dr. Geister. “Well, it would be most unusual for there to be any kind of dramatic change in a patient’s condition after such a small number of treatments…”

  “I understand,” said Rick.

  “But in this case, something seems to have made a huge difference.”

  “So what can I expect for…” Rick stopped for a moment, realizing what Dr. Geister was saying. “What?” he said in surprise.

  “The test results we got back this week were absolutely normal. No sign whatsoever of the typical types of cell abnormalities that are typical with AML. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that someone switched the blood samples. It’s still possible that there was a lab error, and that’s why I want to rerun these tests today, but if they come back the same way a second time, I would say it’ll be safe to forego your chemo treatments for now and have you come back in, let’s say, three months, for a retest. If those tests are normal, I’ll have you come back in another three, and if they continue to be normal, I’d say that you will be able to go back to a routine schedule of annual physicals with your general practitioner.” He smiled and looked at Rick, tilting his head slightly. “I won't say you're cured, but it definitely appears as if you're in remission.”

  Rick stared at him, speechless for a long moment. Finally he said, “I… I just can’t believe it. That’s wonderful.”

  “You’re a lucky man, Rick. A very lucky man. If I was a religious man, I’d call it a miracle.”

  “I’m not a religious man, either, doc, but I’ll take that. I’ll take a miracle any time I can get it.”

  The two men shared a laugh. Then Rick looked at Dr. Geister, suddenly remembering something from just last week, but in a way, from many years before.

  “Doc… do you remember a time, years ago, when someone gave you a note with a request that you always keep it in your wallet?”

  The doctor looked at him for a moment, tilting his head slightly. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Did you keep it?”

  Dr. Geister reached for his wallet. He opened it and pulled out a folded piece of tattered paper. “Actually, I did... but how did you…?”

  Rick smiled. “Twenty-fifteen,” he said.

  Dr. Geister unfolded the piece of note paper, revealing the blue ballpoint scrawl: 2016.

  He looked flabbergasted. “How…?”

  Rick shook his head slightly. “I’ll have to tell you about it some other time, doc. Right now I have an appointment with a hot brunette babe.” He walked out of the office grinning.

  ~~~~~

  Rick and Stefanie were lying next to each other on their bed, having celebrated from the time Rick arrived home from his doctor’s appointment.

  She had received the newly positive diagnosis with a stunned silence and then a shriek of joy, leaping into Rick’s arms. They had put away the items that Stephanie had gotten out of the refrigerator for the dinner she was planning, and forty-five minutes later, with Rick in a suit and tie and Stef looking radiant in a deep blue dress and diamond earrings, they climbed into the Jeep and headed out to dinner.

  They wound up at the Sidney Street Café, a wonderful restaurant located in a hundred-year-old building in Benton Park, south of downtown St. Louis. It had always been one of their favorite places to go when they were in the mood for a romantic dinner. Rick’s favorite dish from their menu was the steak au poivre, while Stefanie was partial to the steak wasabi.

  For desert, they shared a white chocolate turtle blondie. As Rick reached to take his first forkful, his fingers seemed to slip and his fork fell on the floor.

  “Whoops,” he said. “I’ll get that.” He knelt and reached under the table, seeming as if he were searching for it. A moment later, he started to get up, but while he was still on one knee, he looked up at Stefanie.

  “Steffi,” he said, holding a small, velvet-covered box in his hand, “would you please consider doing me the greatest honor of my life by marrying me?”

  He took the smile and the tears as a ‘yes.’

  The other patrons at the restaurant cheered and applauded.

  ~~~~~

  After they finished desert, they went home, and as so many times before, she reminded him of what it meant to feel like a man.

  ~~~~~

  They were lying in bed, watching the lights of passing cars make shifting patterns on the ceiling, when Stefanie turned to Rick and said, “Do you think that going back and forth through the Gate is what made your leukemia go away?”

  There was silence for a long time.

  Rick finally replied, “I don’t know… maybe.”

  “You should look into that. It could be a wonderful thing for a lot of other sick people.”

  “You’re right,” he said softly and thoughtfully.

  She cuddled closer and they drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 100

  One Year Later

  “I heard a theory once about why life seems to go by faster and faster as we get older,” said Terry. All thirty-seven members of the ChroNova staff were gathered in a banquet room at the best Asian restaurant in the University City area of St. Louis, just a mile from ChroNova’s offices on Delmar Boulevard. Terry was at the head table, and he was standing and addressing them all.

  “A friend of mine actually came up with this concept when he was about twelve years old. He didn’t think it was any big deal, until he read somewhere that a lot of brilliant minds, including Arthur C. Clarke, had formulated the identical theory years before. The idea is that when you are a tiny baby —” he smiled over at Sarah, who put her hand on her stomach and smiled back — “the first year of your life is one hundred percent of your life experience, and so it just seems to take forever to pass by. The following year, from age one to age two, however, is only half of your life experience, so it seems to pass a little faster, and so on. By the time you are, say, twenty years old, a year is only five percent of what you have experienced, so it seems to go by fairly quickly.”

  He looked over at Randall, who sat quietly listening, stroking his silver streaked beard. “By the time you’re as old as our esteemed leader here,” Terry continued, “one year is only one-sixtieth, or less than 1.7 percent, of your life experience; compared to the sum total of the rest of your life, it seems insignificant, and it just flies by. You can just imagine what it’s like for someone who’s eighty, or ninety, or a hundred.”

  “Randall will be able to tell us pretty soon,” interjected Rick. The room was filled with laughter.

  “At any rate, I think something akin to that is what makes time seem to pass at a variable pace when we access the past through the HOT6,” said Terry. “It’s not exactly the same, because it seems to pass more rapidly in some situations than in others. I call it ‘the weight of history.’”

  He lifted a glass of wine and looked around at all the staff, and then at Rick and Stefanie, who were seated at the table next to him.

  “To Rick and Stefanie; may the weight of your history give you many, many happy years together.”

  The newlyweds smiled and nodded their appreciation as everyone in the room drank a toast to them.

  At that moment, a shimmering effect appeared in the center of the square of banquet tables. There was an earsplitting crack of thunder within the room, and a brilliant flash of emerald light; suddenly a familiar green vortex began to materialize in midair.

  Everyone stared in disbelief. A Gate had opened right here in the room, more than a mile away from the HOT6 machine.


  After a moment, a figure emerged from the swirling whirlpool. It was a man with close cropped brown hair, wearing what appeared to be a military uniform made of a pale grey fabric. He wore a belt which had some sort of electronic device attached to its buckle.

  He looked around the room. “Terry and Sarah Cambridge,” he said in a clipped British accent.

  Terry looked at his wife, then at Randall and Rick. He stood up. “Yes, I’m Terry.”

  “I need for you and Sarah to come with me. I’m afraid there’s no time to explain.”

  Sarah looked at him. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s not so much where as it is when,” the man replied. “Please hurry.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” said Terry. “See, Randall comes up with these ideas, Rick figures out the math that makes them happen, and I build the machines… uh…” He realized that he had probably just proven the man’s point. “I really have no experience time traveling. I’m pretty sure you’re looking for Rick.”

  “Mr. Cambridge,” the grey-clad man interrupted, sotto voce. “It’s you that do not understand. I need both you and your wife to come with me to my time — the year 2814 A.D. Our studies have shown that you are the one of only three persons in history uniquely suited to solving a problem we are dealing with. I’m afraid the other two are from my own time, and, sadly, are now most likely part of one of several clouds of radioactive material that are circulating in the stratosphere. Sarah needs to come as well, to assist you.” His face was grim. He saw Terry’s hesitation and continued, “Should you refuse me, it will quite possibly mean the end of humanity.”

  Terry and Sarah looked around the room. Thirty-six pairs of eyes watched to see what would happen next.