by John M Grier
~***~
The next morning, He and Paul made their way down the hole, this time wearing their communication headsets. Well, Paul wore his. Jack had his around his neck, but refused to have it anywhere near where it might pick up what he was saying.
Paul started to comment on it, but caught himself before he got Janet riled already this morning. Jack watched this, knew what Paul was thinking and just stood there with a silly grin on his rugged face.
As they made their way to the barn, through the ice tunnels, Jack paid special attention to try to see as far into the ice as he could. It was surprisingly clear in places, due to how it was frozen as well as the mineral content of the ice. In some places you couldn’t see more than a few inches, but in others, you could see just about forever. The result was a somewhat distorted view of what the world used to look like.
Suddenly, he stopped. He stared intently through a particularly clear area of the ice, trying to see off in the far distance. Paul had gotten ahead of him so he called out “Hey Paul, does that look like a lighthouse over there in the distance to you? I think we may have stumbled onto a coastal village with an intact light house.”
Paul stopped his progression through the ice tunnel and turned to walk back to where Jack was peering into the ice. Cupping his hands around his eyes, hopefully to see a bit better, he asked “Where are you looking, Jack?”
Jack pointed in the direction he thought the light house was located. If it was there, it was just at the edge of his vision, but he certainly wanted it to be there. He was near a light house off the coast of eastern Canada when he became stranded here. Although there were hundreds of lighthouses in eastern Canada, most were not accessible by car, and many of them had a very unique look to them that made them great landmarks.
“You know, I think it just might be. Let’s look around this barn some more, then after lunch, maybe we can start melting our way over there to find out.”
“Sounds like a plan to me” Jack said with an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt in a long time. Little did they know, but their light house trip would not happen that day. As they poked around the old barn, Paul stepped on what must have been a trap door to a hidden place under the barn. His left leg went right through it and he was stuck for a few minutes.
Jack, seeing what was happening, came to the rescue right away. After freeing him, he opened the trap door and found another level under the barn. Locating a ladder, he carefully made his way down into the basement level.
The biggest shock came when he got about halfway down the ladder. The lights came on! Never, in his ten years as an archaeologist had the lights come on in an old dig like this. However, to be fair, most of the digs were not in as good condition as this one was. They were, for the most part, the sad remains of what once had been a building or town.
He got to the bottom of the ladder and looked around. What he found was obviously an underground church. He had figured out long ago that the very idea of a church was a thing of the past. He had never been a religious man, but didn’t have anything against it, either. He just figured it wasn’t for him and really was not disappointed to see that it had disappeared a thousand years in the future. Remembering his earlier comment about a church and especially Paul’s reaction to it, he simply said “Looks like a meeting room of some sort to me.”
This was the first place he had seen in his ten years here that even remotely resembled a church. Apparently, this was one of the last churches to survive. Maybe this place would hold a clue about the disappearance of the other churches. Even though he had never had much to do with church or religion of any kind before, it would be nice to know what happened.
He began looking around to see if he could find the source of the power. He struck gold behind the podium, where he found another trap door. Smiling, he discovered a power plant much like the one that powered his boat. The sea water that powered it had been piped in and apparently, somehow kept from freezing in the pipes. Perhaps that would explain why the building had not collapsed under the weight of the ice, like most had.
Even though this barn looked like it was old when the van in it was made, it was merely a disguise. It was, in fact, advanced by Jack’s standards. He began to realize that there was technology behind this building which was why it was intact, but yet empty. Otherwise it would certainly have collapsed long ago. Secretly, he made a mental note to himself that his boat, when he ever found it again, would probably fire right up, since the power plant here still worked after all this time under the ice. That was very good to know! Maybe there was hope for him after all. Also, for the first time since finding his boat all those years ago, he knew of a source for spare parts, if he needed them.
Paul, meanwhile, had found several boxes that had what may have been books in them a thousand years ago, but now were merely scattered shards of stuff that may or may not have been paper. Paper didn’t do well in a damp climate for a thousand years. “This looks like a bunch of old books to me, but they are so far gone that we couldn’t even tell what the titles were, much less ever hope to actually read them.”
“Well that’s too bad. They may have shed some light on what went on here, way back when. This could have been a secret meeting place for gatherings that were not legal, or merely a convenient place to meet and make use of otherwise unusable space.”
Paul smiled at his friend’s grasp of the obvious. “How did you come to know so much, Jack?”
“In my younger days I got around more than I do now” said Jack with a knowing smile. “Speaking of getting around, where do you reckon we are, anyway? I know we are on the east coast of Canada, but other than that, I’m not really sure.”
“Jack, you always ask that and usually I have no idea why you even care. As you know, most of Canada is under ice, as well as much of the northern parts of Europe and Asia. However, you are one of the few people who even care about what the names of places used to be. Even in the world of Archeology, most people don’t need to get any closer than say, ‘east coast of Canada.’ Sometimes the name of a providence will suffice, but that’s not what you want, is it? You want the exact address, don’t you?”
“Well, yes!”
“Maybe we’ll know more when we get to that light house. It doesn’t look like it will happen today, though. We can get an early start in the morning and head straight for it. With any luck at all, we can get there in a day or so.”
Boy, was he wrong.
