by Paul Siluch
Dungeon. Outcast. He rolled the complex words on his tongue, understanding their meanings and enjoying how rich they felt.
Another new insight appeared in his mind. Perhaps the universe isn’t empty. As other races got smarter, they sped up too. Maybe they’re all there and we just can’t see them.
Albert could sense the white singularity ahead that no one else could. The tipping point when mankind would start thinking at the speed of light. And moving at the same speed.
He looked at Dr. Blackman’s desk where the pictures were pinned. One showed Albert with a woman at a Christmas party, part of a group surrounding the professor in the center. He understood intuitively the rank of everyone by their proximity to Dr. Blackman. He was an assistant in this life, and Janice was no longer his first and last love.
He could still sense the whorls of time spinning around him. One last gift from his father remained.
One more time.
Albert closed his eyes and thought back to his mother’s last moments as she lay dying of cancer. She told him of an event he did not know had happened, one she had carried with her until the very end.
“You’re different, Albert, because your father hit you. Hit me, when I was carrying you. I’m so sorry. You’re so smart already. What more could you have done if you’d had the chance?”
His used his own anger now to deepen his concentration even further. The world spun backwards from the event at the store, back past diapers and walking for the first time. Before his very first breath.
His could not open his eyes this time, perceiving red through thin eyelids. His swam in a world warm and safe. The sense of time that had haunted him all his life was gone. The gentle and reassuring beat of his mother’s heart washed like a warm surf. Then, he heard a loud noise from the world beyond. He shifted and tossed, tasting his mother’s fear.
A single thought appeared in his fetal mind.
Kick.
His tiny leg jerked out, moving his head fractionally to the right. Suddenly, a shockwave thundered everywhere. A hard object struck where his head had been a moment ago. Then, his world began to shake and roll as if the universe itself was running away.
♦♦♦
Albert opened his eyes. He felt a soft and rich carpet beneath him. He lifted his arm to look at his watch. It read 8 p.m. At the centre of the cluster of pictures near the computer was one with him and Dr. Blackman, both in suits, accepting an award together. Another showed him with a woman and a little girl.
The snow had stopped falling outside the window. A small layer had built up on the ledge against the glass. As the wind picked up, it worried away at the edges of the snow, fraying it away a flake at a time.
Albert felt the memories of a painful leg, a simple mind, and slow time fall away like a bad dream. He stood up and opened the door of the machine he and Dr. Blackman had built and walked out.
His watch read 8:02 p.m. as he closed the door for the last time. He had all the readings they would ever need from inside the monitoring cage, but he still had so much more to do.
Ω
About the Author
Paul Siluch is a portfolio manager living in Victoria, British Columbia. He has published two short stories and two others have received Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest. He divides his time between work, running, farming, and writing science fiction.
The Widow in the Woods
by K.P. Hornsby
Max’s mother warned him throughout his childhood of a great many bad habits that would invite unhappiness, ailment, and an early death. But none of her dire predictions ever came true, so he stopped listening sometime around puberty.
As the battered pickup truck rounded another corner, though, Max’s mother’s words echoed in his mind. You mark my words, son, you spend time with bad people, and bad things will happen to you.
Until the moment Riley threatened him and drove them an hour from the city, Max had thought the physics major just another drinking buddy from campus. Sure, Riley cheated at poker and stuck Max with bar tab more often than not, but Max never thought of him as a bad person.
But he thought so now.
As the sun dipped below the rocky horizon, they turned off the state highway and jostled down a bumpy secondary road. Riley glowered at the cracked windshield. His crew-cut and black jacket attracted more attention from girls than even his feigned charm. But now he just looked angry and dangerous.
Max turned his attention to his own reflection in the side mirror. He needed a haircut. He pictured his mug shot in the local paper, accompanied by the headline university student arrested after jeopardizing archaeological site.
“Are you listening to me?” Riley asked.
Max sighed. “Look,” he tried to reason with Riley, “you don’t need to blackmail me. I’ll give you directions back to where we camped, just let me out.”
“No, I need more help than that.”
“Come on, will you just…” Max raked a handful of hair out of his eyes. “I should never have taken you guys up there. That area’s protected. If you get caught you might get away with saying you stumbled into an archaeological site, but if I’m there—”
“My brother’s missing!” Riley swallowed hard, the movement of his unshaven jaw accentuating his gaunt look. “I’ve got bigger things to worry about than your secret dirt-digging project!”
A state-preserved archaeological site was hardly a dirt-digging project. But the damage was done. Dennis was lost and Riley said he wouldn’t file a missing person report if Max helped search. A report would raise questions about the brothers’ access to the remote, restricted site.
“What were you guys doing all the way up there, anyway?” Max asked.
“I was running an experiment.”
“Damn it, Riley—”
“I didn’t do anything that would disturb your arrowheads and pottery shards.”
“But you did let Dennis wander off and get lost?” Max fumed.
“It’s just a little more complicated than that. I’ll explain when we get there.” Riley glanced over. “He’s my brother.”
Max just shook his head and concentrated on the passing landscape. How would they find Dennis in the dark? If anyone found out he’d taken them up there he wouldn’t just lose his internship, he’d face charges and lose his freedom.
The poorly maintained dirt road gave way to an unmaintained one that grew rougher by the mile. Night fell. They gained altitude and trees closed in around them as the road narrowed. Max tried not to think about mountain lions and rattlesnakes. They finally reached the clearing where they had camped a month earlier. A strange metal framework cast angular shadows in the headlight’s glare. Cables connected the frame to a generator and some other unrecognizable machinery.
“What the hell is that?”
“I told you,” Riley said as he stomped on the brake, “I was doing an experiment. I had to leave all this in place once I’d gotten it assembled.”
“This mess had been here for days?!” Max’s stomach quivered. He got out when Riley did, slamming the door on its squeaking hinges. “What if the team I work for had come up here?”
Riley crossed the front of the truck. The headlights’ harsh illumination made him look like a ghost in the clearing’s inky backdrop. “I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t think you’d ever have to find out I’d been back here.”
Riley started the generator. It clattered to life.
“How does this help us find Dennis?”
“Because that’s where I lost him.” Riley pointed to the metal framework. “I didn’t lose him in the woods. I lost him in time.”
Max stared.
“I need you to go through and bring him back.”
“What?”
Riley fiddled with switches and made some calculations, furrowing his brow and gazing skyward while he counted under his breath.
“Riley,” Max said, waiting until he had the other’s eye contact. “Are you saying you th
ink time travel is possible?”
“I know it is. Don’t hurt yourself trying to comprehend it, just do what I tell you, okay?”
“You’re saying,” Max said, “that you’re going send me back in time to look for Dennis?” He wondered just how crazy Riley was.
“Yes.”
“Even if it were possible,” Max hedged, playing along as best he could, “why don’t you go back in time to get him?”
“Because someone’s got to man the time portal and I don’t have time to teach you how.”
Max watched Riley for another few seconds. The brothers were playing a prank on him. They had to be. Dennis worked for the campus news program. He probably had a video camera hidden nearby, filming the whole thing. No wonder Riley refused to go to the police.
After another minute’s fiddling, Riley turned, his finger poised over a toggle switch. “You’ll have four hours before the window re-opens in the same spot. Find Dennis and get him back before then, okay?”
“I’m supposed to find a missing person in the woods in four hours?” Max tried to play along.
“He won’t have gone far. He’s not that stupid.”
“All right,” Max tried to sound sincere.
“Here we go.” Riley flipped the switch. “Wait until I say. And don’t forget, four hours!”
Sparks erupted from the leads that connected the generator to Riley’s work console. The metal framework emitted a low hum and something began to smolder. Riley ignored the tendrils of smoke. Without looking up, he yelled, “Now!”
Max jogged toward the metal arch. Dirt and small tumbleweeds danced alongside him. Had Riley set up a wind generator for dramatic effect? Would the truck’s headlights give Dennis enough illumination to film their prank? As he passed through the metal construct the wind increased, strong enough to threaten his balance. Impressed, Max didn’t have to fake his surprise.
Blackness engulfed him.
“Okay, guys, that was really cool.”
He expected Riley to point and laugh. He expected Dennis to come crashing from the undergrowth, jeering at his gullibility.
Max stood alone in the clearing. He turned, his eyes adjusting to the moonlight. Dennis didn’t emerge from the trees. There was no sign of Riley, the truck or the metal archway. A tumbleweed fragment tangled in his shoe laces.
Stars winked and branches rustled in the night air. For a few seconds Max thought something was wrong with his eyes; the stars looked much too bright. Then he realized the depth of the sinking, swallowing darkness around him. No hazy wash of distant electricity softened the night.
An owl hooted.
Seconds dragged out to minutes and Max’s stomach began to knot.
Time travel?
Max stopped steeling himself for a long wait for the pranksters to tire of their game. No one was going to burst from the shadows to laugh at him.
Had Riley really sent him back through time?
An unsettled, uncivilized world yawned around Max, a monster to swallow him whole.
“Dennis!” Max shouted. “Dennn-nnnis!”
With the shout still ringing in his ears, Max thought about the first time he’d seen this place. He and his co-workers had searched for Native American artifacts. Arrowheads, as Riley had said, but no pottery.
I surely won’t die here, or I’d have already dug up my own bones.
Someone from the historical society had gone along with the archaeology crew, not to sift through the soil but to investigate the remnants of a log cabin, the only evidence of any homesteading in the area.
If Riley really had sent Dennis back in time before him, then perhaps Dennis had sheltered in the only man-made structure that ever stood near the clearing.
Making his way as fast as he dared, Max followed the slope that led from the clearing. Later, he promised himself, when he caught up with Riley, he would punch him right in the mouth.
♦♦♦
Moonlight and memory guided Max. This particular region had remained unimproved and uninhabited, save for the poor souls that had built that cabin. Settlers who had arrived later in the valley had logged out this particular canyon. Max stumbled from one patch of silver light to the next and thought of his boss talking about the network of hunting trails. Imagine walking through here when there were still old-growth trees.
Max very much preferred imagining the past to experiencing it.
He caught a whiff of wood smoke and increased his pace. He plunged down the narrow, darkened trail and then burst out through a break in the trees.
There stood a cabin, weak light shining from cracks in the logs.
He struggled for air as if he’d fallen from a great height. Riley hadn’t lied. It wasn’t an elaborate trick.
“Dennis!” Max called out. He hurried forward.
The door swung inward, the light inside framing the silhouette of a woman in a long dress.
Max stumbled to a halt.
“Who’s out there?” She sounded young, a current of anger beneath the strength in her voice.
Max paused. He was talking to someone from another age. What should he say? “My name’s Max.”
Someone else jostled in the cabin’s gentle glow. “Who is it?” He tried to push his way around the woman, “Move it!”
Dennis came out, whipping his head back and forth as he searched the darkness.
“It’s me, it’s Max!” Max dared to close the distance. He studied the cabin, remembering the rotting pile of logs he’d seen while doing field work. “Riley sent me. He said the, uh, window, whatever it is, would open again in four hours. I mean, four hours from when I left.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Maybe half an hour.” Max grimaced. He hadn’t taken careful note of the time.
A fresh wind swept around them. The cabin’s door creaked. “Might as well go back inside for a while,” Dennis grumbled. He led the way.
Max followed. The woman waited just a few steps from the threshold. A fire crackled in a small hearth and an oil lamp burned on a crudely-built table. Though dim, the light revealed the woman’s frown. She took a step back when Dennis bulled through. Her gaze fell like a hammer strike upon Max.
“Hi, um, sorry.” Max risked a smile that she did not return. He had to force himself to look away from her. Unembellished by makeup, she had a stern beauty that far outshone the girls he knew.
Dennis went over to the table and sat down. There was only one other chair.
Max looked around. Knowing a cabin had stood at the site was different from seeing the place with furniture, oil lamps, and threadbare quilts spilling across a bed big enough for two. A pair of leather boots, a man’s boots, stood like soldiers at the foot of the bed.
“You gonna sit down?” Dennis snapped.
“I don’t need to sit,” Max looked to the woman. He gestured to the remaining chair as a way to apologize for Dennis’ rudeness.
She shook her head, golden tendrils escaping the braided bun on the back of her head. She retreated to stand near the fireplace.
Dennis gave an impatient grunt and kicked the empty chair. Then he returned to mauling his way through a pan of cornbread, scattering crumbs. Max sat.
“How’d he get you to do it?” Dennis garbled the words while he chewed.
“What?”
“How’d Riley talk you into coming after me?”
Max hesitated, wondering how much they should say in front of a third party. Dennis followed Max’s eyes and then rolled his own.
“Celia knows,” he scoffed, “at least, I told her how I got here. It’s her fault I didn’t make it back.”
At last she moved forward, flinging her arms down to hold them stiff at her sides. “How was I to know? I thought to save you!”
Dennis crammed more cornbread into his mouth and rolled his eyes again.
Celia took another step, speaking to the back of Dennis’ head. “You came to me, with your wild story! I scarce believed you until now!” She locked eye
s with Max. “It’s all true, then? And you’ve come from the same place?”
“Uh, yes,” Max said, adding, “ma’am,” for good measure.
“Deviltry!” She paced back to the fire. She shot Max a look full of pity, but her eyes narrowed when his gaze met hers. “You’d best not think to stay as long as he has!”
Max realized that Dennis sported so much more than his usual stubble that it qualified as a genuine beard. “Den? How long have you been here?”
Dennis glowered at him, and Max waited. Riley had teased his brother mercilessly about how long it took him to grow any facial hair.
“A month,” Celia said, when the silence had gathered too thick around them.
“A month?” Max looked from her to Dennis. “We played pool last weekend.”
“Riley said that might happen. He said if I didn’t get back through that I could be stuck here and more time might go by for me here than was going by for him back there. Or then.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to know how to talk about time like that.”
Max forced himself to take a breath and then another. “When he said it would be four hours, does that mean that a longer amount of time will have gone by back home?”
“Less time. Four hours here, but just a few minutes there, I think.”
“You think?!”
“What do you want? I’m not the physics major.”
Max wanted to have never met either of them. He flirted with the notion of asking Riley if the portal could make that possible.
“Then…” Celia moved so that she stood within sight of them both. “You are both from the same place…in the future?”
“Yeah, like I already told you,” Dennis sneered. He shoved the tin toward Max, offering the last of the cornbread.
Max shook his head. A month? He felt sorry for Celia. A month with Dennis was unjust punishment. He looked to the young woman. “You live here by yourself, Miss…uh…Celia?”
