“Just not by us?”
Boris smiled and shrugged. “Who knows? So many universes, infinite in fact. In some it’s got to be there. But we can’t tell, we’ve tried.”
“Why not? What’s stopping you?”
“A lot of things. Namely some pesky rules of temporal mechanics, the need for a psychic anchor, in particular, without which whoever goes in…”
A flash of an image with the man in a suit, tethered around his waist…
“…never comes out the same, if he comes out at all.” He sighed. “I won’t get into it all, just suffice to say, we need you, someone like you. With your ability, you can see through all this, all these different outcomes, and find one that works.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not sure how…” Caleb frowned, again looking around at this appealing world, this slice of happiness — if it could even be termed ‘real’, if anything Boris said could be trusted, much less something this wild and insane. Although, he had read about just such fringe things, post-World War II experiments with something called the Nazi Bell—a centrifuge device that might have been a small-scale particle accelerator, and with the Philadelphia Experiment, which witnesses claim not only created a rift in time, but to another reality where just such an anchor was all that kept the travelers from annihilation.
“It’s the ultimate objective you’re needed for, why we took you and your team. This…”
Again they were back in the lab, with various images hurtling past through the worm-hole/doorway. “There is a world in there, somewhere among the infinite realities of the possible, a world where we survive.”
“We?”
Boris stood before him, now again in the Pine Gap room. “We, as in all of us.”
He motioned to the left, to the little toy telescope in its stand, now pointing out the window into the desert and the twilight sky spreading over the sands.
Again, Caleb was distracted by the blue tinges around the world.
“This isn’t real,” he said.
“Stop it,” Boris replied, behind him, in his ear, and his voice separated, sounding like his mother’s, then merging into someone else’s, someone who hadn’t yet made her appearance.
Lydia’s soft fingers traced his neck and turned him around.
Her deep green eyes locked on his with such emotional pull, a long-lost tether restored. “You can be with me again, Caleb.”
He choked on his words, trembling in her arms now as her lips moved in, so close, and those eyes — full of forgiveness and trust, the promise of happiness and family.
Alexander was at her side, and behind him, holding his hand, a younger girl, all smiles and beaming eyes, the mirror of his own and Lydia’s.
The daughter I could have had?
His head spun, lost in possibilities and emotions far too complex to handle. Keeping his eyes wide open, he forced his vision away from Lydia’s begging expression, and again focused on the blue tinges.
“Not real,” he said.
“Not yet,” she replied. “But it could be. Help us, help us and it will be. Whichever reality you choose, or come with us into the one you find.”
“Which one?”
“The Earth where the comet never strikes. Where its presence passes forever by us instead of raining down damnation upon the world in just a few months.”
Caleb blinked and snapped free of the vision.
“Did you say months?”
Boris rose from the chair and nodded solemnly. “We don’t have much time. And there’s no other way.”
“There has to be. Otherwise…” He shook his head. “What are you saying? Escape through the wormhole to another reality, but just for a select few?”
Boris nodded again. “What else can we do? We’ll save as many as we can, but the process is difficult. Every traveler has to be specially prepared, which takes years unless they’re…well, like you and your team.”
“Psychics?”
“What can I say, you’re the chosen ones.”
“What about you? You’re obviously…”
“Different,” Boris snapped, and his expression darkened. “It’s…not the same.”
“How did you get your abilities then?” He had assumed it was like Nina’s situation, just a more unique form of extrasensory ability.
“Never mind that. We don’t have the time. Will you help, now that you’ve seen the motive? You must understand why we’ve taken such steps.”
“So you’re our saviors?”
“Saving some, I would have to say, is better than none.”
“Like Noah, you’re going to rebuild, but in another world.”
“This one’s done, as are most of the ones we’ve explored. It comes, as our scientists have known for years, and as the ancient records have foretold. One way or another, and soon.”
“I know,” Caleb whispered. “Always known. Didn’t want to believe that the consistency of the ancient tales and myths, the hidden secrets of the heavens, so much emphasis placed on the precession of the equinoxes… The myths about great gods and heroes all battling similar cosmic entities and the damage they wreaked upon the earth, with promises of return.”
“Our ancestors did what they could, and I believe some of them escaped — not only to the mountains or caves of this world, to emerge and pass on their knowledge to the primitive survivors generations later, but some maybe even did what I’m contemplating here. They jumped to other realms or other times. Maybe your pharaohs and their rituals and beliefs about living among the stars again after death…”
Caleb heard him, but at the same time, didn’t. Again he was focusing on the blue line around his sight. Holding his head, shaking it.
“Are you listening?”
Shaking his head again. Show me beyond the lie. Show me…
A fluttering out the window, as if a black crow had been caught in a net and was struggling to be free.
He pulled his attention to it just as it broke apart in a shower of black feathers that scattered, leaving behind a different view: a rocky cliff and a dull-green ocean, waves crashing against rocks, and a shadow of a tower falling over land to the edge.
Blinking, he walked to the window, undid the latch, lifted the window and then stuck his head out.
“Caleb!”
Looked up, to see a red-striped lighthouse tower above, framed against frothy white clouds overhead.
He ducked back in and stared at Boris, and then around the room — which was like where he had been, but slightly different.
“This isn’t Pine Gap.”
He squinted. The blue was gone.
This was real. “No woodpecker. Not a projection from you anymore.” Caleb spread his arms out. “We’re not in Australia. Never were?”
Sighing, Boris pulled the chair closer and sat down. “Good. Finally, you’ve gotten through. I can relax.” He popped another piece of gum in his mouth. “Oh but you’re wrong about one thing.”
“About what?”
“We were there.”
“Pine Gap? When?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
Caleb swallowed hard. Again, images rose in his mind of the doorway, electrical static, technicians and complex equipment. He looked over his shoulder. “And now…we’re…”
“Guess? You’ve been here before. Or close to it.”
“Not Sodus. It’s in, I’d have to say, New York though.” Caleb was dizzy, wanted so badly to sit down and just have a glass of water. The implications of what had happened, if true, were enough to savage his already stretched mind.
He remembered a trip out here once with the family. He couldn’t have been more than eight, but it was etched in his mind, as his mom and dad talked about the theories and weirdness about this place, the area around the lighthouse, and the connections to other places of power, a nearby nuclear plant, a secretive scientific lab, and especially…a connection to a certain experiment from the war.