Taft Ranch: A Thunder Mountain Novel

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  If anyone knew time and timelines, it was Lee.

  And since no one was alive after the event, it made no difference to a timeline if Lee and Dr. Failor lived or died after the event. All the timelines would merge back one way or another.

  It only mattered if they didn’t die and got back before the event somehow.

  So it came down to Lee saving the two of them.

  Bonnie glanced over at Duster. “You think Lee can figure out how to save himself and Dr. Failor?”

  “Knowing what we know, could you?” Duster asked.

  Bonnie smiled. “I think so. Could you?”

  Duster nodded. “I would hope so. But one hundred plus years after the event, just getting to the institute is going to be major and a dangerous undertaking. That’s the part that worries me.”

  “If they do get back here,” Bonnie said, “doing it right worries me even more.”

  Duster nodded to that.

  Parks and Dawn were both looking at Bonnie and Duster like they had lost a nut.

  “What are you two talking about?” Dawn asked.

  Duster smiled and said, “Let me call Brice and Dixie first to see if they have narrowed it down any farther on how far into the caverns they were sent.”

  He took out his phone and a moment later Brice answered. Without even saying hello, Brice said, “They were dumped between 120 and 130 years after the event. How fast they got moving and how fast they walked would make it closer to one hundred and twenty than one hundred and thirty.”

  “Thanks,” Duster said. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing,” Brice said. “I’ll call you if we find anything.”

  Duster hung up, knowing for a fact that those two brilliant minds would not be able to come up with any way to save Lee and Dr. Failor in all timelines.

  “As we already know,” Duster said to Dawn and Park and Bonnie, “they didn’t get close to the event since they would have arrived back by now. Brice and Dixie think they are at least one hundred and twenty years past the event.”

  “Will the crystals in the cavern get them back a hundred years closer?” Park asked. “Will the boxes and wiring still work?”

  “We designed them to last a lot longer than that,” Bonnie said, nodding.

  “So yes,” Duster said, “they will work.”

  “So there is thirteen years between when we can go in after the event and where they are,” Dawn said. “Might as well be a million years.”

  Duster nodded, trying not to smile. “That might as well be, you are right.”

  “But you think Lee still might be able to save them?” Parks asked.

  “I am hoping he can,” Duster said. “Depends on so many factors I’m afraid.

  “We all are hoping,” Bonnie said.

  And with that the four of them went back to sitting in silence.

  Waiting.

  That was all they dared do.

  Any decision at that point might be deadly to Lee and Dr. Failor. So they could make no decision, not even a decision to not decide.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  September 9th, 2628

  Boise, Idaho

  LEE FELT BETTER the next morning.

  He and Joan had walked hand-in-hand back into the institute. Then they had gone exploring in the old mansion, finding a large bedroom with what looked to be a modern and very comfortable large bed in it. It was on the second floor and to the back.

  To one side was a small table in a window with chairs around it and a large empty closet.

  Off of the bedroom was an actual working bathroom with a working shower with hot water. And in another direction was a small working kitchen. It was like a small apartment and they decided they would make it their base.

  To Lee the apartment felt comfortable, more than likely because it still retained the charm of the 1890s Victorian home.

  They went back down into the big cavern and got their packs off the kitchen counter there, then went back up to the apartment.

  “I claim first in the shower,” she said, smiling at him as she pulled off her clothes and tossed them on a chair and then walked naked into the bathroom.

  “Don’t take all the hot water,” he said, admiring her wonderful body as she went. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, of that there was no doubt.

  And maybe one of the smartest as well.

  He sat in a chair and eased off his shoes and socks. His feet were a mess, but nothing looked infected. He was damn lucky, that was for sure.

  He was almost naked when Joan appeared, soaking wet in the door of the bathroom, steam pouring out around her.

  She smiled at him. “The shower is huge and the water temperature perfect. Come soap up my back.”

  Then she turned and went back into the bathroom leaving a trail of water on the wood floor.

  He instantly felt like he was back in college again. But this time it was with a woman he respected and really was falling for.

  He quickly pulled off his underwear and joined her under the wonderful spray of a shower.

  It was heavenly, just heavenly, and Joan looked amazing with the water running off her perfect skin.

  He soaped her back and then she soaped his.

  Finally, at one point, they ended up kissing, pressed together.

  And the kiss was wonderful.

  Just wonderful.

  Perfect, actually.

  He had never had a kiss like it.

  They dried each other off and crawled into the bed, holding each other.

  They made love slowly, then passionately, and then fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  The next morning she was in the shower again when he awoke. The sun was just lighting up the trees outside the apartment windows. By the time he crawled out of bed and got into the bathroom, she was done.

  They talked as she dried off and then he got into the shower. They needed to find a grocery store that might have food still worth salvaging, if there was such a thing as a grocery store. At least they needed to find a camping store with more freeze-dried meals. They knew those existed at least.

  “Why wouldn’t there be a grocery store?” she had asked at one point.

  “In my time lots of groceries were starting to be delivered on demand,” he said. “No telling how it would be done in this time.”

  She had said nothing to that.

  Since the clothes in the stores were only twenty years old instead of over a hundred, they also figured they could find some comfortable things to wear that wouldn’t fall apart.

  They sat at the table in their room looking out through the trees and the grounds around the mansion below. They were eating some prepackaged ham and eggs that tasted amazingly good.

  “Sounds to me,” she said, “that we are talking about settling in for a long haul here.”

  “I’ve got a few ideas I want to try,” he said, “to get us back to 2018. But it might take me some time to figure it out, so we might as well be comfortable.”

  She nodded to that. “Just tell me what I can do to help.”

  “Honestly,” he said, looking at her, “I doubt I would have made it this far without your help.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “That’s just silly and you know it. But a very nice thing to say, I must admit.”

  “It’s the truth,” he said, looking into her wonderful green eyes.

  She just shook her head and went back to eating, but he had no doubt at all it was the truth.

  And no doubt at all that he was falling in love.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  September 9th, 2628

  Boise, Idaho

  LEE HAD BEEN the most gentle and wonderful lover she had ever had. They had both taken their time until they no longer could stay slow.

  And sleeping in his arms and waking up beside him had been amazing. Even though they were in deep trouble and she was in a place she never could have even dreamed about, being with Lee made her feel confident they might just get back to where th
ey belonged.

  It felt right and natural, even when they were just walking and not talking, which they seemed to do a lot. And she felt no need to fill the silence with chatter either. She just felt comfortable with him all the way around.

  They walked about ten blocks to where they both remembered there had been a large business complex six hundred years before. They found one of the large sporting goods stores in a smaller version of the mall they had first found.

  But except for the course of the river below the institute, nothing at all seemed the same in Boise. Nothing.

  As far as she was concerned, she might have well been walking in a city in another country.

  And the silence was almost unnerving. Only a slight breeze rustled the trees. Nothing else except the sound of their steps.

  It felt like she was in a bad movie with the sound turned off. Cities were supposed to have noise in them. Never silence.

  Never.

  They loaded up large packs with freeze-dried meals of all sorts, then found some clothes in a few clothing stores and then headed back to the institute.

  “I need to get something,” he said when they returned to the apartment and tossed the packs in the small kitchen and the clothes on the bed.

  “You need my help?” she asked.

  “Just going down to the cavern with the crystals and get some tools. I’ll bring it all back up here.”

  She worried about the two of them splitting up, but she just nodded and then she focused on trying to organize the food they had grabbed in the tiny kitchen.

  He came back carrying a tool belt over one shoulder and one of the wooden boxes that had been in the crystal room.

  He set it on the small table they had eaten breakfast at. With the light over the table and the light from the morning outside, the table was almost bright. A perfect place to work.

  “What’s your idea?” she asked.

  “To my knowledge,” Lee said, “no one but Bonnie and Duster know what is inside these boxes.”

  She came over and looked at the wooden box that she had paid little attention to in the cave. It was about the size of an old breadbox her grandmother had had sitting on a counter. It would have been completely square if one of its sides hadn’t been slanted down. So it was a box on three sides, but had a small top and a large bottom and one side slanted.

  It had two posts on one side for hooking up wires. One was a red post, the other a black post.

  The angled side was polished wood that sort of angled upward like you could put a book on it to read. That was where she and Lee had put their hands. On the narrow top was a date timer of sorts that was now just black, no date or time showing, but when they had jumped to this point, the timer had read a date clearly.

  Lee picked the box up and said, “It’s surprisingly light. And the wood looks just like a standard oak, polished and stained.”

  He turned it over and over in his hands.

  “There’s no way to get into it,” she said.

  Lee was frowning. “They had to put it together somehow.”

  With that he set the box down on the floor and took out a hammer.

  “You think it will be safe to just break into it?”

  Lee shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, but I also don’t see much choice and since we have thousands of these down in those caverns, sacrificing one or two to learn how they work seems to be worth the price.”

  “Before you just hit it with a hammer,” she said, reaching down and picking up the light wooden box, “let’s try a few other tricks.”

  “Like what?” he asked, putting the hammer back on the tool belt.

  “Steam, to start with,” she said. “Chances are this wood was glued together. And we need to find some sandpaper as well.”

  “To sand off the finish so we can see the seams,” he said, nodding. “I’ll be right back, I think I know where some might be.”

  He headed out the door and she took the wooden box into the bathroom shower, placed it up high, balanced on a ledge more than likely designed for shampoo or soap, then turned on the shower as hot as she could and closed the shower door.

  Then she went back to sorting out all the food they had brought back from the camping store. They sure had their share of beef, chicken, and eggs. By the time they ate it all, they were going to be sick of all three.

  When he arrived back with a couple sheets of coarse sandpaper, she went back into the shower, turned it off, and got the box out of the steam.

  “Already done the trick,” she said, carrying it back to the table in the window.

  It was now clear where a seam was around the face plate where they put their hands.

  And the back of the box clearly had a seam as well.

  Lee went at the back with sandpaper and after a moment it was clear where the back side of the box had been glued to the rest of the box.

  “Nice craftsmanship,” she said, studying the box. “Why do that for something that’s just going to sit in the dark in a cave?”

  “I always wondered why they never updated the design of these things,” Lee said. “This is exactly what they looked like from the very start. Clearly they came up with something that stopped the wood from breaking down over time.”

  “Ever ask Duster?”

  Lee shook his head. “Never came up in a conversation.”

  He put on some thick leather gloves, the same type he had worn when hooking up the box, then took a sharp blade to the seam in the wood around the back.

  Joan just sat there and watched, marveling at his patience and steady hands.

  One hour later she was about to suggest she get them some lunch when the back of the box popped free.

  “Duster, you are a bastard,” Lee said, laughing as he stared inside the box and shook his head.

  Joan came around the table to look over Lee’s shoulder.

  What she saw made no sense.

  Two heavily coated wires inside led from the posts to a metal plate under the slanted wood face. One wire, before hooking into the metal plate, led to what looked to be a clock device of some sort.

  The clock device was connected to the timer on the top of the box.

  Nothing more.

  “I clearly don’t understand,” she said.

  Lee just started laughing and shaking his head.

  She waited for him to stop laughing and explain.

  Finally he did. “There is no power source in here. They used the crystal to power the box. And the wood over the metal plate is to just protect the person touching it from too much shock from the crystal, but not so thick as to block the crystal’s impact entirely.”

  “Still not understanding,” she said. “How does that make this work?”

  Lee pointed to the clock-like device. “That’s an atomic clock, also powered by the energy from the crystal when it is hooked up.”

  She nodded.

  “So if we walked up to a crystal in one of the caverns with a thin board and pushed the board against the crystal, more than likely we would be taken to some random point in that other timeline. Any random point.”

  Again she nodded, understanding what the metal plate did now.

  “So the atomic clock is a measure of microwaves sent off from electrons. Set the timer at the top which sets the atomic clock, which then, when you touch the plate, sends you to that exact time in the other timeline.”

  “So why is this limited to only one hundred years?” she asked.

  He reached into the box and pushed up on the timer on the top of the box until it popped out of the wood.

  He quickly unhooked the two wires from the timer. He handed her the small, narrow timer with nothing showing on the black face. Then he took off a small device, about the size of a silver dollar from one of the wires that had been leading to the clock.

  “This is another atomic clock,” Lee said, holding up the small silver thing, “that I bet is programmed to only allow the timer to be set no farther back than exactly one hund
red years.”

  It took her a moment to understand what he was saying.

  He was just smiling and staring at the small circular device in his hand.

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” she asked.

  He nodded, smiling. “We take this off a box and we can go home.”

  She jumped into his lap and just kissed him and hugged him, harder than she had ever hugged anyone before.

  And she loved how he hugged her back.

  TWENTY-NINE

  September 9th, 2628

  Boise, Idaho

  AT FIRST, LEE had just wanted to take the regulator off of one of the boxes and just jump home, but the more he had thought about it, the more he realized that was a very, very bad idea.

  Joan was so excited, she also wanted to just jump right now.

  So after they had both calmed down, with the box on the floor in pieces, they sat at the window table eating a chicken stew and talking.

  “Here is what I think happened,” Lee said. “I jumped out of the institute, headed for 1955 on July 8th, 2018. Somewhere over the next month or so, someone is going to notice I didn’t return. More than likely Dawn up at the Monumental Summit Lodge where I go for dinners regularly. Someone, more than likely Duster, will go looking for me at my ranch and will find me not there. Someone will unhook the box in the crystal room I left through and I won’t appear. That’s when they will start discussion and calculations on what to do and where we ended up.”

  “So we can’t go back before that date,” Joan said.

  Lee nodded. He was glad she wasn’t yet talking about how to get back to her time. They would deal with that when they got back to his time first.

  “I’m pretty sure Craig was a traveler,” Lee said, “so we know they sent scouts to find out what happened exactly, which from their perspective would take very little time.”

  “So to keep as much the same as we can, we have to let them discover you are missing,” Joan said.

  Lee again nodded. So far she was following fine.