Smith's Monthly #16

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “All having this same conversation,” Duster nodded.

  He turned and headed for the table. “Come on, we’ll show you how it works. No risk at all. Just don’t touch those walls as I said.”

  “Energy?” Jesse said.

  Duster nodded.

  Jesse and Kelli sort of followed Duster and Bonnie like two zombies, both of them doing more staring around them than paying attention to where they were walking.

  When they all got near the table, Duster put on gloves, then attached a flexible clamp to one crystal on the wall that looked more like a woman’s hair band. Then he attached two wires to the band.

  Then he came back over to the box and attached one wire, leaving the other wire from the crystal on the ground for the moment.

  Then he adjusted a dial on the wooden box.

  “How did you find this place?” Kelli asked.

  “We’ll tell you all that over lunch,” Bonnie said. “For now, when we tell you, just touch the box.”

  Duster picked up the wire with his gloved hand and connected it to a terminal on the side of the box. Then took his glove off.

  “When I say touch, touch the box,” Duster said.

  He hovered his bare hand over the wooden box and Bonnie did the same.

  Jesse and Kelli did the same

  “Now,” Duster said.

  Jesse, at the same time as everyone else, touched the wooden box.

  And not a damn thing happened.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  October 14th, 1878

  Above Silver City, Idaho

  “WHAT WENT WRONG?” Kelli asked as Bonnie and Duster stepped back and indicated that she and Jesse do the same.

  She glanced around at the massive cavern full of crystals. Nothing had changed as far as she could tell. The box was still hooked up to a crystal on the wall.

  “Welcome to 1878,” Duster said, turning and heading for the doorway.

  “Follow him,” Bonnie said.

  Kelli turned as Duster got to the big door and opened it. It had been open before. How did it get closed?

  “What did he mean by 1878?” Kelli asked.

  She couldn’t decide if she was just flat stunned by the huge caverns or by all the lack of information. But this was again making her slightly angry.

  “Duster sat the machine for October 14th, 1878,” Bonnie said as they followed Duster down the short tunnel and back into the big supply cavern. The placed looked a little less crammed with tables and supplies than before.

  And the kitchen area where Dawn and Madison had gone was dark. And looked a lot more rustic.

  Duster led them back down the mine tunnel toward the entrance.

  “Are you saying we are in another timeline now?” Jesse asked. “Or in our own past?”

  “We are in another timeline,” Bonnie said. “But one so close to our own as to be indistinguishable. So it basically is our own past, yes.”

  Kelli had no idea what to think of that, so she just said nothing, trying to control the anger she was feeling. Somehow she knew she was being duped. She just didn’t understand why or how.

  They went the rest of the way down the mine tunnel in silence. Kelli decided she liked the big caverns much more than this narrow mine tunnel, even if Duster and Jesse said it was safe.

  At the end, Duster showed them how to look through a big scope to see if anyone was close by.

  When Kelli did, what she mostly saw was white. Which made no sense at all to her.

  Duster showed them the large button on the wall on the inside that opened the big metal door and slid the rock back. Then he hit it.

  The blast of cold air that smashed into Kelli damn near rocked her off her feet. Light blowing snow flew past the opening and a couple inches of snow covered the top of the mine tailings.

  When they had come in here, the day was promising to be hot. This wasn’t possible.

  “I think I’ll just go pull the wire,” Bonnie said. “Too damn cold for all of us out there for too long.

  Duster nodded.

  Bonnie stepped back as Duster and Jesse and Kelli moved out into the light blowing snow and the rock slid closed behind them silently.

  The intense cold cut through Kelli instantly. She forced herself to look around as much as possible. The old cabin looked brand new and it still had windows and a stove chimney sticking out of the roof.

  Duster moved carefully over toward the edge and pointed down.

  Jesse took Kelli’s hand and they followed Duster.

  Kelli felt strength coming from Jesse, even though he had to be feeling the same emotions she was.

  When they reached the edge of the mine tailings, down through the light blowing snow they could see the town of Silver City. Only it clearly wasn’t a ghost town anymore. There were hundreds of buildings and many of them had lights on and smoke coming from the chimneys.

  “Silver City is at its first peak right now,” Duster said. “A very rowdy, bustling mining town.”

  Kelli knew that. And what she was looking at looked exactly like the pictures of Silver City in its prime. Only covered in inches of snow.

  “So we are really in 1878?” Jesse asked.

  “Yes,” Duster said. “I’ll explain how my family got this mine and how we built all those security features in this time over lunch.”

  Kelli looked around, trying not to shiver so hard she would lose her grip on Jesse’s hand. Through the light snow she could see dozens of other mines and some of the shacks on the tops of the tailings had lights in them.

  “We’re going to need to get inside,” Jesse said.

  “We will,” Duster said. “When Bonnie pulls a wire off the machine, the connection to this timeline will be broken and we’ll return to the cavern in our own timeline.”

  Kelli was about to say, “Soon, I hope.” But the words never got out of her mouth.

  She found herself standing next to Bonnie and Jesse and Duster touching the wooden box on the table. Around her the massive cavern covered in crystals glowed.

  But she was still shivering and colder than she could remember being in a very long time. And she had only been out there for a very short period of time.

  Duster and Bonnie both stepped back and turned and headed for the open door.

  “Come on,” Bonnie said, smiling at Jesse and Kelli. “Dawn and Madison will have some hot chocolate waiting.”

  “Damn I hope so,” Kelli muttered as, shivering, she followed them.

  She wasn’t completely sure if the shivering was from the cold or the shock of just having traveled in time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  July 15th, 2016

  Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho

  JESSE FELT LIKE he sort of stumbled from the crystal cavern and into the storage area and then to the modern kitchen in a back corner. He had his coat on and still felt chilled. He couldn’t imagine how Kelli was feeling.

  The kitchen looked like it had been transplanted from a modern home and stuck in a back corner of a cave. A wood-like flooring, tan granite counters, wood-stained cabinets, a modern metallic stove and fridge.

  The center of the area had a large wooden table with eight padded chairs around it that matched the décor. On the other side of the table from the kitchen counters was a living room like area with two large couches and a number of overstuff chairs with reading lamps.

  Bathroom’s in the back,” Dawn said, pointing to a small tunnel that led off the kitchen area.

  She had hot chocolate on three spots on the table and pointed to two chairs on the living room side of the table.

  “Sandwiches and a salad will be ready shortly.”

  Jesse really wanted to ask how they got all this into the cavern without being seen, but his mind wasn’t really working. So he just sat down where Dawn pointed, leaving on his coat, and wrapped his hands around the ceramic mug of hot chocolate.

  The smell was wonderful and helped bring him back to hi
s mind, even though it was far too warm to drink.

  Bonnie tossed a bag of mini-marshmallows in front of Duster, then took her cup of hot chocolate and sat down next to him on the kitchen side.

  “Did that really just happen?” Kelli asked.

  Jesse was impressed. A far more logical question than he could form at the moment.

  “It did,” Duster said, nodding as he put marshmallows in his mug. “We took you back into a snowstorm to not only make it clear about what happened, but to show you the town below.”

  “So the picture wasn’t fake,” Jesse said, trying to grasp what had happened. “All four of us end up, at some point in the future, standing in Roosevelt in 1908.”

  Duster and Bonnie both nodded.

  “At least the four of us from another timeline,” Bonnie said. “We can’t go back into our own timeline. We are blocked from that, even if we could find which crystal is this timeline. And we are blocked from going back into any timeline when we are alive in that timeline, so we can’t go back and talk with ourselves.”

  “So we can’t just go back five years,” Kelli said.

  Duster and Bonnie nodded.

  Jesse glanced at the silver bracelet he was wearing. “That’s why I can be wearing this bracelet in the picture.”

  Again Bonnie and Duster nodded.

  “So how much time have you spent in the past of other timelines?” Kelli asked.

  Jesse looked up from his wrist at the silence.

  Both Bonnie and Duster were looking at each other and Dawn and Bonnie had their backs turned and were working on lunch. Jesse had no doubt that question was a hard one to answer.

  Finally, Duster started off the answer. “The mathematics of all this allow us to only be gone from this timeline for exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

  “It took us ten minutes to get out there and freeze our asses,” Jesse said. So the two minute number made no sense.

  “We spent ten minutes or so in that timeline,” Bonnie said. “But in this timeline you only aged just over two minutes.”

  “So why two minutes and fifteen seconds?” Kelli asked.

  “It’s the math of how that works,” Bonnie said. “Very complex, but it never varies.”

  “So how did we get to Roosevelt in 1908?” Jesse asked and suddenly Kelli was nodding in agreement to his question.

  “We rode horseback,” Duster said. “Takes about four days from here.”

  Jesse stared at Duster, then glanced at Kelli, who was staring at Duster with her mouth open.

  Bonnie smiled. “Let me be clear. We can go into another timeline, be part of that timeline, age in that timeline, even grow old or die, or be killed in that timeline, and when we are done, only two minutes and fifteen seconds have passed here.”

  Silence filled the cavern. Jesse had no idea what to say to that.

  “So answer my first question,” Kelli said to Duster and Bonnie. “How much time have you spent in the past?”

  Duster shrugged and glanced at Bonnie.

  “It adds up fast,” Bonnie said. “I stopped counting after the first few thousand years.”

  Dawn put a salad on the table. “I’m still counting. We have known about this place for a couple years now real time, as we call it. And because of the weather, we can only come up here in the summer. We have spent just over seventeen hundred years in the past.”

  “And died in the past?” Jesse asked, trying to get his mind around any of this.

  “I died on my first major trip back,” Madison said. “Maybe four other times since, once of old age.”

  “And you end up back here, alive, with only just over two minutes passed?”

  Dawn and Duster and Bonnie all nodded.

  “Holy shit,” Jesse said.

  It was the only damn thing he could think to say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  July 15th, 2016

  Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho

  KELLI WORKED AT a wonderful ham sandwich with cheese spread with a mustard that had a bite to it. The idea that she could live a long time in the past without aging just had stunned her into silence.

  So finally, after halfway through lunch, Duster brought up the Season Medals she had been trying to track.

  “We tend to always go back on the first trips with everyone,” Duster said. “Show you the ropes of living and existing in the past.”

  Kelli nodded.

  “So you up for doing some research on the Season Medals,” Duster asked, “and the guy Bushnell, with us tagging along?”

  That stunned her. She almost asked about the helicopter coming back at four when she realized that with each trip only taking two minutes, she could spend hundreds and hundreds of years in the past and they could still catch that flight back to Boise.

  She flat didn’t know what to say. She really couldn’t grasp the idea that if she went back into the past, she could live and grow old in another timeline and just have two minutes pass here.

  But beside her Jesse seemed to be doing a little better in getting his feet under him after all this.

  “Kelli,” he said, looking at her. “I would love to help on the investigation of the crime. I’m a trained investigator and pretty good at my job. I might be able to help you as well.”

  She looked up into those wonderful green eyes of his and realized that she wanted him to help. She wanted to get to know him a lot better.

  And she really wanted to understand this gift Duster and Bonnie were offering her out of nowhere. If what they were saying even came close to being on target, the value to her research and her books would be off the charts.

  But she needed to know a couple more details.

  “Is it possible to change the past?”

  “In another timeline,” Duster said, “sure.”

  “When we go back into another timeline, we are part of that timeline,” Bonnie said. “If you had kids in that timeline, they would still be there if you came back here. Your actions change that timeline.”

  “But how can you go back if you have lived that long in the past?” Jesse asked. “There are only so many years available back there if you can’t be in the same timeline at the same time.”

  “That’s correct,” Duster said. “Say we jumped to 1908. Bonnie and I have lived through 1908 more times than I care to think about. But if we jumped back there now, we would just arrive in a timeline where we had not been before.”

  “Remember,” Bonnie said, “there are more billions of timelines than we can imagine, all basically identical to this one, and by us picking a date to go back, we split off a new timeline at the moment we arrive by the very choice.”

  “Oh,” was all Jesse said.

  Kelli was just trying to imagine investigating a crime in the past. She would have to back up anything she found in the past with modern references. But she could do that.

  She turned to Jesse and looked into his green eyes. “You up for helping me with investigation into a possible murder in the past? And tracking some medals?”

  He smiled. “I would love to.”

  She turned to Bonnie and Duster. “When are we leaving?”

  Both Bonnie and Duster were smiling.

  “How about as soon as April and Ryan get here,” Duster said. “Which should be any moment now. They are driving in from Boise. They left before we arrived from Portland.”

  “April and Ryan?” Kelli asked.

  “April is a historical interior designer and Ryan is an architect,” Jesse said.

  “We want to build the lodge again,” Madison said, laughing. “If we’re going to spend a decade or so in the Roosevelt area, we might as well be comfortable.”

  Kelli looked at Dawn and Madison, then at Bonnie and Duster. “How often have you built the lodge?”

  All of them but Dawn shrugged.

  “This will be the twenty-second time,” Dawn said, smiling.

  Duster laughed. “That means it exists in a hell of a lot of timelines
now, that’s for sure.”

  Kelli once again had nothing she could say.

  PART THREE

  The Trail

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  July 9th, 1906

  Oregon Coast

  JESSE NUDGED HIS horse up a slight rise in the wide trail that wound through thick old-growth pine above the rocks and pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean below him. The air was brisk with a slight wind coming off the waves a hundred feet below, bringing the wonderful surf smells and the feeling that the air was so fresh, it should be bottled.

  Sometimes the trails that wound along the coast were downright scary as they skirted near cliff edges and up and down steep grades. The ground along the ocean always seemed to be wet and muddy, even in the summer. This trail was just far enough into the shade of the old trees that it thankfully didn’t feel dangerous.

  Jesse reached the top of the slight rise and glanced back as Kelli expertly climbed the trail on her horse. He might look like a cowboy more than she did, but she clearly was a better rider than he had become. Over the last year in the past, they had both become fine riders. She just seemed to have a natural talent for being in control of a horse.

  He had on his standard jeans, thick cotton shirt, and long duster coat. His matching cowboy hat and worn leather boots completed his look.

  Kelli had on women’s riding clothes of this time, with leather-like dark-brown pants, a blouse with a leather jacket-like tan vest, and a wide-brimmed tan hat that she kept tied to her head with a strap under her chin. Both of them had saddlebags and travel bags strapped behind them, plus saddle rifles in holsters near their right legs.

  Over the last year they had both also become great shots, mostly for safety in chasing away animals they ran across. Neither of them had any desire at all to hunt or kill anything.

  She also had started wearing cowboy boots and actually admitted she liked them after a year now in the past. “Not as good as my tennis shoes, but not bad.”