“We are really in 1887?” Ryan asked, his grip on her hand firm and hard.
“Looks like early May,” Duster said, nodding.
“Now, can we go back inside before I freeze?” Bonnie asked.
April wasn’t sure that she was ready to go back in yet, even though she was freezing as well.
She needed a few minutes for this to sink in.
“Another minute,” Ryan said before she could.
“Tell you what,” Duster said to Bonnie, “Go on in and unplug us in about ten minutes.”
“Will do,” Bonnie said and went back inside, letting the big rock slide closed over the fake mine entrance.
“Sit down,” Duster said.
He sat down on one side of April and Ryan on the other, staring out over the impossible site of Silver City, Idaho in 1887.
“So, now you see why we wanted plans for that lodge?” Duster asked.
“You’re going to build it, aren’t you?” Ryan asked.
Duster nodded. “A number of times in a bunch of timelines. Your theory about the dust was spot on. There are millions and millions of us in different timelines who have decided to go back and build the lodge. And we all bring in dust from each timeline. That’s how the echo rumors of the lodge got into so many timelines.”
“Because you go back and build it?” April asked.
“Because we do,” Duster said, nodding. “In a million timelines at the same time. And all four of us hope you two would come back and help us build and furnish it.”
“I’m still trying to grasp that,” Ryan said, pointing down at the city just waking up to a snowy morning in May.
“Me too,” April said.
But now something had finally snapped over in her mind and she really, really believed this. That’s how the four historians inside could write such fantastic books. They had years of time and firsthand research.
They had all the time in all the alternate realities to do so.
“So,” April said, “We could live in that city from now, 1887 now that is, for how long?”
“Until you die of old age,” Duster said. “And you end up right back where you started inside there, two minutes and fifteen seconds later.”
“How many times have you died in another timeline?” Ryan asked.
“Too damn many,” Duster said. “Dying in the past is never a pleasant experience and I would try to avoid it at all costs, even though you end up back here just fine.”
“Is that what happened to Madison on their first trip?” April asked.
Duster laughed. “I have a hunch I’m going to hear that full story at the same time you do.”
Suddenly April found herself standing beside Ryan and Duster and Bonnie in the crystal room.
Bonnie smiled at her and Ryan. “I came in and simply unplugged the machine from the crystal and that brought you all inside.”
“We were in that other timeline for about thirty minutes total,” Ryan said.
“And only two minutes and fifteen seconds passed here.”
April just shook her head and shivered. She still felt cold. Very cold.
“Come on,” Duster said, using a glove to take the wires off the crystal on the wall. “Let’s go hear a story.”
With that, the man in the cowboy hat and duster headed for the exit to the crystal cavern.
“Let’s get out of these clothes first,” Bonnie said, smiling, indicating the dress she had slipped over her blouse and jeans.
“And something warm to drink?” April asked, rubbing her hands together and staring around at the beauty of the big cavern of crystals.
Some were huge, some tiny. Millions and millions and millions of them. All created by a single decision someone made.
“One question,” April said before Bonnie could turn away. “If I had decided to not come up here with you today, where would those crystals be?”
Bonnie smiled. “Our best guess, and it is only a guess, is about a hundred miles in that direction.” She pointed down the vast cavern.
“It goes that far?” April asked, trying to grasp that.
“It’s infinite,” Bonnie said. “More than likely this also exists in other dimensions and in other timelines. Every crystal you can see here and off into the distance is so close to our history as to be indistinguishable.”
“Oh,” April said, looking at the millions and millions of glowing crystals around and above her and stretching off into the distance. “So in every one of these Ryan and I came with you today.”
“You did,” Bonnie said, nodding.
“Hard to grasp,” Ryan said.
“Even for a mathematician,” Bonnie said, “almost impossible.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
July 19, 2015
RYAN WAS AMAZED that April seemed to now be accepting all this a lot quicker than he was. At least she was asking some really great questions, things his shocked brain couldn’t seem to even think about.
They held hands again and went back into the large cavern. After they got out of the period clothing, they followed Bonnie back to an area of the cave that surprised Ryan.
Tucked in what seemed like a side cavern was a completely modern kitchen. Ryan was working on something at the counter and Duster was sitting at the head of a large dining table in the middle of the area, his hat and coat off.
The appliances in the kitchen were the most modern possible, the countertops marble, and a soft tile covered the false floor built in over the cave dirt floor. A living room area, carpeted in a soft brown carpet sat off to one side of the kitchen. Three large couches filled that area with a couple of reading lights and a bookcase against one wall full of books.
Dawn was sitting beside Duster, smiling. Neither of them were saying anything.
“Wow, who built all this?” Ryan asked.
Duster pointed to Madison and Bonnie. “They didn’t like the hotplate and icebox I had back here for some reason.”
“Restrooms back there,” Bonnie said, pointing to the back as she moved over and sat on the other side of her husband, facing Dawn. “Men’s on the right, women’s on the left. Showers and lockers where Steven and Janice are in the middle.”
April nodded and headed that way and Ryan decided he might as well wash up before dinner as well. But he wasn’t certain he was going to be hungry for a while.
Five minutes later, both he and April were back out at the table sitting with a few chairs between them and Bonnie and Duster. Madison had brought them both a bottle of water and was getting April a cup of hot tea as well.
Duster was clearly waiting for Steven and Janice to join them, so Ryan figured he had time for a few questions, since what had just happened wasn’t really sinking in.
“Can I ask how many people you have shown this place to?”
Bonnie laughed. “The six of us and Janice and Steven. Everyone is here at once.”
That actually surprised him and he sat back. “So the lodge is why we are part of this?”
Duster laughed and Bonnie patted his arm and answered. “Actually, no, it’s because you both have a keen interest in the mountains and history of the West. And both of you specialize in historical reconstruction and are the best in the country in what you do. We figured that if you had actual access to the past, it would help your work.”
“Like it helps our books,” Dawn said, and Madison nodded.
“The lodge idea was only a bonus,” Duster laughed, “and we figured it was a way to test you both.”
“That lodge design is just fantastic,” Dawn said.
“It is,” Duster said.
“More than I had hoped for,” Bonnie said, smiling.
“Thank you,” Ryan said.
“Yes, thank you,” April said. “And thanks for trusting us enough to show us this.”
Ryan nodded. “And giving us a chance to work together.”
He put his hand on April’s and she smiled at him. When she did that, most logical thoughts went right out of hi
s head. He was really, really falling hard for April, more every moment now that they had broken the ice on going to the next step.
Bonnie and Dawn smiled, and Duster just shook his head and dug into his pocket and handed Bonnie another ten dollar gold coin.
“You bet against me again?” Ryan asked, smiling at Duster.
“No, I bet April would have too much class to fall for an architect.”
With that everyone laughed, and April leaned over and kissed Ryan. Then she looked right at Duster. “No one has ever said I had class.”
And again everyone laughed.
Ryan could not believe how much he really, really liked these people. All of them were fantastically smart and talented. And here they were in a completely modern kitchen inside a big cavern talking and laughing.
How had he gotten so lucky to have them find him?
And he find April, the beautiful woman who was smart and fun and beautiful and liked camping as much as he did.
At that moment, Janice and Steven came out of the back. Both of them were dressed in comfortable shirts and jeans. Both had wet hair and were drinking from bottles of water.
They sat at the table, one on each side, clearly very comfortable in this space.
Then Janice looked at Ryan. “Any way you can figure out how to put hot showers in that lodge on the pass?”
Ryan shrugged. “Sure, most of it could be done in 1900s technology. I sort of had that planned to be honest.”
“Perfect,” Janice said. “That’s what I miss the most when I’m in the past.”
“Okay,” Duster said, looking at the two of them. “What did you do?”
Ryan squeezed April’s hand and the two of them sat back to just listen.
“We noticed you had a movement pattern on the crystals on the wall,” Steven said. “And after hearing Dawn talk about her winter in Roosevelt on their first trip back, we wondered if we could hit the same alternate reality.”
“We figured the Roosevelt area was a choke point as well in time,” Janice said. “Since there were only seven thousand people in there. We figured there would be a vast number of timelines where Dawn and Madison experienced that horrid first trip. So we tried to hit a timeline that they might be in in Roosevelt that winter, the same one you hooked up to when you four went back, and after almost a dozen trips back, we did.”
“We couldn’t say anything to you in Roosevelt,” Steven said, “because you hadn’t met us yet in this timeline and given us a chance to go back.”
“We only told Dawn because we knew she could keep it secret for the year and she needed the support after Madison died and you and Bonnie both left, leaving her alone.”
“Keeping that secret was the hardest damn thing I ever had to do,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “Because it was more than a year. We’ve traveled for about seven hundred years since last time I saw you. And then I almost forgot about it today.”
“We knew you hadn’t,” Steven said, smiling, “but we didn’t tell you that.”
“You’ve aged well in seven hundred years,” Janice said, smiling at Dawn and everyone but Duster laughed.
Ryan squeezed April’s hand and she squeezed back. He wasn’t completely understanding everything they were talking about, but it seemed important enough to not interrupt with stupid questions.
“So when Dawn told you her story of that winter,” Duster said, “did she mention you two at all before you went back?”
“None. All she said was that some nice people rode with her from Roosevelt to Silver City,” Janice said. “That was it. We didn’t realize that was us until after all the events happened in Roosevelt that winter.”
Bonnie now leaned forward, a frown on her face. “So when you three got here in 1903, you all unplugged the wire together. Right? Dawn returned a year ago, you two just returned. Right?”
Janice and Dawn and Steven nodded.
Madison stood with a salad bowl in his hand, listening and frowning.
“Damn, I didn’t think that was possible,” Duster said.
“We talked about it,” Bonnie said. “The combined trips formed another crystal under the connection. Remember how time used to spit us out in our first trips until we loosened the connectors and made them expandable on the crystals?”
“Spit you out?” Madison and Steven asked at the same time.
Ryan just had no idea how time could spit them out. He was beyond lost and clearly both Madison and Steven didn’t understand it either.
Duster nodded. “When we first started exploring alternate historical realities, we put a tight band connector on the crystal to hold the connection in place. The connector would not let the crystal expand and grow as it should with our changes in the past, which caused all sorts of strange things to happen back in time.”
“One timeline the Titanic didn’t sink,” Bonnie said, shaking her head.
“We finally realized it wasn’t our presence that caused the strange events in one timeline, but the clamps constraining the crystals. Once we changed those clamps to let the crystal grow and change as it wants with events in the past, nothing strange has happened and we’ve been able to stay as long in each timeline as we wanted.”
Ryan just shook his head. He had a hunch there was a very long story behind that. Another question he would ask later.
“So I’m confused,” Madison said.
“Oh, thank God it’s not just me,” April said, and again everyone laughed. She was showing the sense of humor that Ryan had come to love over the last two months.
“What happens if you just left the band attached to that one crystal and we all went back and met ourselves in that timeline in Roosevelt?”
“It wouldn’t be the same timeline,” Duster said, shaking his head.
Bonnie nodded. “The moment we tried that, we would be shifted to a timeline and crystal where we were not there. Again, conservation of mass and energy and time rules. They are very firm.”
“In other words,” Janice asked, “we can only be alive in one timeline at a time?”
“That’s correct,” Duster said. “That’s why we’ve never had any worry about moving the cable very far along the wall. Time and physics won’t allow us to duplicate up in any timeline.”
Something dinged Ryan at that point, and he made a note to figure out what it was later.
“And that’s why we can’t just jump back ten years in another timeline,” Steven said. “It would switch us to a timeline where we didn’t exist.”
“We actually once tried to stay beyond my birth in a timeline,” Duster said. “The moment I was born I found myself standing back here.”
Ryan actually nodded at that. There was no way that time would let them go back and meet themselves. As far as he was concerned, that was a very good thing.
But what about the lodge? What happens if they went back and built the lodge? Did buildings have different rules than humans? Again he decided to not ask that question just yet.
“But it seems,” Bonnie said, staring at her husband, “that we can all go back at different times into the same timeline. Sort of like we do when you go ahead of us a year or so.”
Duster nodded, clearly deep in thought. “That’s a good thing to know.”
Ryan had no idea why it was a good thing to know, but he was trusting one of the math brains in the room to explain it to him.
At some point.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
July 19, 2015
APRIL JUST FELT SORT OF NUMB as the conversation went on for a few more minutes. Then Duster and Bonnie went off to work on some math in yet another side room off the cave that April hadn’t noticed.
Madison said dinner would be in forty minutes, so Dawn and Janice and Steven headed off to sit outside in the sun for a while and talk.
That left April and Ryan and Madison in the kitchen area of the big cave.
“Anything I can do to help?” April asked.
Madison shook his head. “Baked potatoes ar
e in, salad is done and chilling in the fridge. I’ll put the steaks on just before time to eat.”
He took a bottle of water and sat down at the table facing them. “I remember I had about a thousand questions when I was where you two are sitting, so fire away.”
“You’ve really been in the past for seven hundred years?” Ryan asked before April could even think of anything to say.
Madison nodded. “Dawn keeps track of all that, but yes, that sounds about right. We tend to go back around 1887 and stay for thirty or forty years. Once we managed fifty before Dawn got sick and I came back and pulled the plug.”
“So that’s not that many trips back, really,” Ryan said. “How long do you stay here between trips?”
“At first we just turned around and went right back,” Madison said. “But Bonnie warned us about doing that too much, so now we try to take some breaks and remember modern society. You know, remember how to drive.”
April just shook her head at that comment.
Madison went on. “And we don’t try to come up here in the winter. We teach those months and do all the book stuff that is required of publishing books.”
April just couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around what she was hearing.
“You are talking about lifetimes in the past,” she said. “Right?”
“Yup,” Madison said, nodding. “The shortest trip we have taken after our first quick ones like you just did with Bonnie and Duster was the one I died in. The one they were talking about.”
“You must really love it back in the old West,” Ryan said.
“We do,” he said. “It’s our passion. And we both love that Thunder Mountain area. You two really think that fantastic lodge you designed can be built on that pass?”
“Up until today,” April said, “we both thought it only an exercise in futility and a daydream of a very rich couple and their crazy friends, no offense meant.”
“None taken,” Madison said, smiling.
“But I think it can be built,” Ryan said, nodding.
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