This tale is a continuation of the adventure to find our missing Aunt Matilda.
Start with part one, where we search in Salem 1692 here.
Or read the last adventure in the Prehistoric Garden here.
Matilda is Missing: Part 5
The Greenman’s fingers were still wrapped around my wrist as I fell through time. The dreamlike state consumed me until I startled myself out of it with a hypnic jerk. I looked down to see a ring of dried, dead leaves around my wrist. I brushed them away and sat in the sand to compose myself.
The air was thick with the smell of smoke. It was a poignant chemical smell of something that shouldn’t be burning, and that I shouldn’t be breathing. It tinged the sky to sulfuric sepia tones. I looked to find endless rolling sand dunes in every direction. On the horizon to the south were lines of rising smoke so dark that I couldn’t tell whether they were factories or fires.
I consulted the dials on the wrist of my Timesuit:
Date: May 24th, 1999
1999? That can’t be right. 1999 hadn’t looked like this anywhere in the world. I spun the dial to display the location:
Location: GM79
I was puzzled, but considering this was the first time I had explored the readouts, it occurred to me that I might be using them wrong. I took a deep breath, shuddering through the smog and let out a sigh. Wherever I was, whenever I was, the world around me had been depleted.
I saw the Greenman’s point. The world I had started from was far from perfect, but it was a lot closer to the garden than it was to this absolute wasteland I found myself in. What was I even doing here? I was supposed to be looking for my Aunt Matilda. I had needed a rest between my misadventures, but after spending a day in the prehistoric garden, I felt ready to resume my search.
I spun my wrist dials to set the coordinates to take me back to the lab at Cambridge and closed my eyes. When I opened them nothing had changed. I checked the Timesuit’s display to find a disturbing message:
OUT OF RANGE
Out of range? I didn’t know what that meant, but the message sent a bolt of panic through me. The switch for the time machine I had used to depart Cambridge was still hidden in a false tooth in my mouth. I gently applied pressure to it. I wasn’t quite ready to try that, yet. I wasn’t ready to find out whether I was stuck here.
I looked at the sun, which was so well filtered by the smoke or smog that I could see the yellow disc hanging in the west. It was time to find shelter.
I walked to the south over the dunes and slid down into the valleys between them. Each felt like a small mountain of sand and I climbed them carefully.
After a few hours, dusk was upon me and I had no choice but to keep going. The smoke on the horizon didn’t look any closer, but it was the only thing around to aim for. I was trying very hard to not think about how badly I needed water.
Shortly after dark, I crested a dune and found a small oasis sparkling in the reflection of the rising moon. I stopped in shock. There was no life around it. Normally, an oasis would be surrounded by plants and trees thriving on the rare water, but this one had nothing. My need for water was too great to pass it by completely.
The water was still and clear as I stood at the edge of the pool. I had no way to determine whether it was safe to drink and stood for long moments wondering how to find out.
Then, from behind me, a small voice said, “hello?”
I turned to see a fennec fox about the size of a kitten with large ears and a fluffy tail. “Ah, you can speak,” I said. “Hello.”
“Of course I can speak,” The fennec said. “I’m glad you can speak. Many of the humans seem to only be able to hoot and yell and make loud engine noises as they drive around.”
“There are other humans around?” I asked.
“Sparsely, yes. Most of them gather to make the dirty smoke.” The fox looked to the south and the smoke rising from the horizon. Then, it came down the dune to get a closer look at me. “You seem different. You are… human?”
“I am,” I said. “I’m just not from around here.”
The fennec approached and sniffed at me cautiously. “You smell… clean.”
I chuckled. “Not entirely, but compared to this world, I suppose I am.”
“How did you get here?” The fennec asked.
I held up my arm to indicate the subtle glow on the wrist of my Timesuit. “This handy piece of might-as-well-be-magic technology.” I sighed. “Say, is this water safe for drinking?”
“Certainly,” the fennec said. “That’s why we’re here.”
We? I thought, and then looked to the ridge of the dune to see several dozen fennec foxes along the ridge, each with their oversized ears pointed toward me.
I sat by the oasis and drank with the fennec foxes. The one who had said hello introduced himself as Mura.
“What happened to this place?” I asked.
Mura sat and thought for a long moment. “When my great, great, great grandfather was young, the land was green and lush. We stayed away from the human’s cities, living happily in the deserts.”
Mura continued, “then the Green Man came to our people and told us that the humans had lost their way and that he would soon be leaving this world.”
“Leaving for where?” I asked.
Mura tilted his head like a shrug. “I’m not sure. Are there other worlds?”
Now I shrugged. “It’s looking more likely.”
“After the Green Man left,” Mura said, “the trees and plants began to wilt. Soon after that, the humans set their skies and their cities on fire.”
“You mean they set each other’s cities on fire, right?” I asked.
“What’s the difference?” Mura asked.
“It’s true what they say about foxes, you know,” I said to him.
His ears perked and his head turned to the south. “People are coming,” he said. And then all of the fennec foxes scampered away over the dunes. Leaving me alone at the oasis.
I was alone at the oasis when the first of the cars appeared. I had considered running like the foxes, but where would I go? So, I mustered all of my confidence and stood with my arms crossed as if I had been waiting for them.
There were three old muscle cars and a small tanker. Each thoroughly covered in rust and dust with decorations of chains and bones and spare tires and jerry cans. The lead car, and possibly the only one with working headlights, approached and stopped thirty feet in front of me.
I stood, unflinching as I heard the door open. Then a man’s voice with some sort of British accent said, “Oy! Are you a specter?”
I slid my tongue over the false tooth trigger of the Cambridge time machine. It would probably work if I needed it… Probably. I decided to be bold. “I would have been if you’d kept me waiting any longer.”
I heard another car door open and then close. I couldn’t see anything past the headlights pointed directly at me. I could hear them talking to each other, but over the rattle of the engines and the thickness of their accents, I couldn’t tell what they were saying.
Then the man who spoke first came forward. As he cleared the front of the car, I could see that he was dressed in tattered linens and leather and held a crossbow in his arms. “Are you dangerous?” he asked, coming to a stop in front of his car.
“Do I look dangerous?” I asked.
“No. And that scares the daylights outta me.”
“We’re gathering water for the battle,” the man, who had introduced himself as Hydro, had said.
I sat quietly beside him in the car after bluffing the troupe into giving me a ride. Had I realized we were headed for a battle, I might have taken my chances in the dunes.
“You’re a quiet one,” Hydro said as he drove us south toward the city.
I looked at him with a stone faced expression. Anything I said would certainly crack my facade of prowess in this world. So, I decided to pretend to be annoyed and look as stoic as possible.
An hour or so later, we arrived at the edge of a city. There were hundreds of people and almost as many cars gathered around a large metal geodesic dome.
“There’s the Battle Dome,” Hydro said. He drove slowly through the maze of people and tires and cow skulls and barrels being used to hold bonfires for warmth in the cold desert night. As we got closer to the dome, more people hollered and slapped the car as we passed. The air was charged with energy and excitement and I was increasingly regretting getting involved.
The crowd slowly parted to allow Hydro to drive right to the edge of the dome. In the center of the dome, standing in the spotlights being cast down from above, was an intimidating woman wearing a top hat and a necklace of raven feathers.
She looked right at us and shouted into her microphone, “our friend Hydro has brought the elixir of replenishment. LET THE BATTLES BEGIN!”
“Strangers go first,” Hydro said and then began to cackle.
I found myself shoved into the Battle Dome. Dust from the packed sand floor glistened in the overhead spotlights. The crowd roared and cheered and beat against the steel bars. Across from me an extremely large man was climbing into the arena. He was well over six feet tall and seemed to be carved out of pure muscle. He flexed and strutted and the crowd got even louder.
This was way more than I signed up for. I really just wanted to find my Aunt Matilda, and now I was about to be demolished by this wasteland gladiator. I took a deep breath and bit down on the trigger that would pull me back to the time machine in Cambridge.
And nothing happened.
I tried it again and again, but there was no response. My eyes went wide with fear as I realized I was stuck here, alone in a dome with a real life giant. I turned to Hydro for help, but he just winked and pointed his finger at me in the pantomime of a gun.
So this is what they do to strangers in the wasteland.
I dropped to my knees and sat on my heels. I focused on my breathing, trying to meditate away the nightmare I found myself in. The lights dimmed and a single spotlight illuminated myself and my opponent. Then, the music started. It was a slow building drone that amped up the crowd, who had started chanting something about only one of us leaving the Battle Dome.
The beat dropped into an electronic dance rhythm. I opened my eyes, expecting to see this mountain of a man about to beat me into the ground. But, to my surprise, he was… dancing.
My opponent in the Battle Dome danced. He jumped and swayed and then did a cartwheel and spun on the top of his head. I stared in disbelief. He was agile and talented, and in spite of his massive form, managed to move with grace and precision. The crowd was loving it, and cheering him on. The beat of the music intensified and as it dropped, he came to rest, pointing both of his fingers at me.
I didn’t hesitate. I jumped to my feet and started to dance. I wasn’t thinking, just moving with the music and feeling the crowd cheer me on. Just moments ago, I thought I was about to be mutilated in combat, now I danced with joy and gratitude that the battle was a dance off. If I hadn’t understood the Green Man’s point when I arrived, I certainly did now. Life itself is the source of gratitude.
By the time my segment of the song was finished, I was exhausted. The lights came back and the MC gathered us and raised my opponent’s arm in victory.
I returned to Hydro, who was crying with laughter. “The look… ahaha! The look on your face when you saw him.”
I laughed too. “You call it the Battle Dome. I thought I was finished when I went in there,” I said.
“Did you think we were savages?” Hydro asked.
“Weeelll…” I said. “I apologize for assuming, but you kind of look like it.”
Hydro waved a hand. “Nah. All of that died with the old world. Humans are endangered now. We all take care of each other. Where have you come from that you didn’t know that?”
After the dance off in the Battle Dome, we stood around a burn barrel warming our hands. I told the crew of my adventures slipping through time, and they shared insights of their culture.
I was moved by the way humanity had come together after so much destruction. It felt ironic after every post-apocalyptic story was built on survival of the fittest, that in this reality, it had just served to wake everyone up to the ideals of cooperation and community.
At dawn, Hydro drove me into the city to find The Boffin. He was a gray-bearded old man who had made a home in a defunct power plant. The plant looked familiar with four giant smokestacks and beautiful art deco lines… but I couldn’t quite place it.
“A Timesuit, you say?” The Boffin asked, pulling a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket.
“Yeah! I …well, to be honest, I have no idea how it works.”
The Boffin studied it for a while, turning my wrist this way and that. “This is incredible. The circuitry is so miniaturized that it fits within the fabric itself. Where are you trying to go?”
“I was trying to get back to Cambridge, to reset my journey to find my missing Aunt Matilda, but it says I’m out of range.”
“Ahhh,” the Boffin said. “I think I understand the problem. You were in Cambridge when they found you.”
“What?” I asked. “I was in Cambridge? There were fennec foxes. I thought I was somewhere in North Africa.”
“The world has changed a lot since…” The Boffin said. “I had a theory about this before the fall. I was working at Cambridge myself in those days, some thirty-plus years ago.”
“The Timesuit thinks we’re in 1999,” I said.
The Boffin scratched his head. “Yeah, that matches my tally. But 1999 wasn’t like this where you came from, was it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
The Boffin laughed. “All this time, haha! All this time, I knew I was right. I just had no way to prove it.”
“Right about what?” I asked.
“Well,” the Boffin said, “if your 1999 and my 1999 are different, that proves there are multiple 1999’s. Multiple TIMELINES!”
All at once what the Green Man was saying hit home. “Oh! So… my world is still…” I was reluctant to say alright, “the same?”
“Yes!” the Boffin said. “And if there is one, then there will be practically endless timelines that are each unique. It means there are many worlds where the Earth is still alive.” His eyes brimmed with tears. “There’s nothing wrong with the Timesuit, you just can’t get to where you were trying to go from here.” He slid the dials on the wrist control. “There. That should be somewhere you’ll be able to reach.”
“I wish I could take you with me,” I said.
“It’s alright,” he said. “Just knowing that it’s out there is enough for me.”
“Thank you, Boffin,” I said. “Thank you, Hydro. It’s good to know that at their core, most humans are genuinely good. That gives me a lot of hope to face whatever I’ll find next.”
I activated the Timesuit and was on my way.
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