And besides, they weren’t going back to that night. Not right away.
Kyle hadn’t told Erasmus, but he had set the chronovessel to make a little side trip first.
First, they would go back just a few weeks. Right before the Mad Mask kidnapped Mairi. Kyle would go to prevent that, then continue on to the night of the plasma storm. He would rescue Mairi, change his own past, and show Erasmus who knew more about time travel physics.
Then he would record Mighty Mike’s arrival on Earth and show it to the world, proving that Mighty Mike was an alien and a threat.
It wasn’t just a win-win scenario. It was win-win-win-win-win!
It took a few more minutes to finish calibrating the chronovessel. The last job was to mount the video camera on the front of the motorbike. It was old and still used digital tapes a little smaller than a deck of cards. Kyle soldered it into place, made sure the battery was charged and there was a tape in it.
He was ready.
“We’re going to travel through time,” he said, his voice filled with awe. “I can’t believe it.”
“That’s been the plan all along,” Eramus said sarcastically. “You’ve been working on the chronovessel since you built me.”
“I know. It took some time.”
“No pun intended?”
“Right. It just seems … real now. We’re really going to do it.”
“Give me access to the systems,” Erasmus said. “I’ll monitor the trip.”
Kyle straddled the motorbike; he felt like an action-movie hero. He pretended the bike could still rev and vroom.
Set between the handlebars, just below the camcorder, was a smallish screen — Kyle had taken it from his old Nintendo 3DS. Now it displayed the chronovessel’s onboard computer. He activated the Wi-Fi chip he’d installed in the chronovessel, and now Erasmus was tied into the systems.
“All systems are go,” Erasmus announced. “Hey, wait a second! You have the destination set for —”
Before Erasmus could say anything else, Kyle thumbed the activation button.
A pattern of shapes and colors exploded before Kyle’s eyes, then exploded again. And again. And again. Just when his eyes and his brain caught up to the dizzying, disorienting bursts — like fireworks that erupted into more fireworks and from there into even more fireworks — it would start all over again, a rapid-fire series of lights and glowing, sparkling pinwheels that seemed unending. He thought he would be trapped like this forever, unable to see anything but the constant and ever-shifting array of resplendent chromatics.
elyK dehctaw eht dlrow dlof dna dlofnu dnuora mih. ytilaeR emaceb imagiro. siH dnim detsiwt dna dekrej dna dellup ekil tlas-retaw yffat.
gnihtoN saw laer.
gnihtyrevE saw laer.
sihT si tahw doG sees, elyK thguoht. sihT si tahw ti skool ekil.
dnA neht —
And then —
Sparks flew into Kyle’s eyes. Smoke erupted from the front of the chronovessel, near the neutrino collector. Kyle shouted for Erasmus, but his words didn’t come out. There was no time for them; he was moving faster than sound, faster than words. Faster than light itself.
Sound suddenly collided with him again as the universe hiccuped and spat him out. The smoke exploded up and out in a mighty, gushing cloud, blinding him, choking him. He waved furiously, trying to blow it away, but only succeeded in unbalancing himself and falling off the chronovessel.
After a single, silent moment, the world rushed back in as the smoke cleared. Kyle lay on the ground, coughing.
Had it even worked? Had he traveled through time?
“You idiot!” Erasmus raged. “You lying, cheating … scoundrel!”
Kyle’s whole body hurt for the first time in a long time. He felt like he’d just had the flu for a week … and then got beaten up by six big guys with crowbars and bad attitudes.
“Lay off, Erasmus,” he managed to say, catching his breath on the ground. His mind was spinning and churning. Something was wrong with his thoughts.
“You lied to me! You didn’t want me to triple-check the systems because you programmed a different destination time period! We were supposed to go all the way back to Mighty Mike’s arrival, but you programmed it for just a few weeks. You wanted to rescue Mairi from the Mad Mask!”
Kyle shook his head. “Of course I did. I told you I did. But we have a bigger problem.”
“There is no bigger problem.”
Kyle tried to count from one to a googol using only prime numbers.
He couldn’t.
“Erasmus … something’s wrong with my head.”
“I’ll say! You’re not thinking clearly and you haven’t been thinking clearly since —”
“No, seriously. There’s something wrong. I can think all right, but a lot of my superintelligence — the memorized Wikipedia, stuff like that, higher order stuff — it’s all scrambled.” Kyle swallowed hard, tamping down his panic. “My brain is messed up. It must be a side effect of the chronovessel. I’m still smart, but I can’t make the same connections I used to make.”
If he was expecting sympathy from Erasmus, the next moment dashed that hope:
“Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Erasmus ranted. “I’m not picking up anything at all from the chronovessel’s systems. They’re completely burned out. All because you told me to prep it for one trip and then set it up for another. None of the systems were properly calibrated. You act like traveling through time is like riding your bike down to the corner store —”
Kyle pushed himself up on his elbows, noticing something, something that cut through his concern over his malfunctioning brain. “Hey, Erasmus.”
“Don’t ‘Hey, Erasmus’ me, you, you, you rapscallion! All that work! Ruined! You don’t deserve to travel through time. You’re irresponsible, reckless —”
“Hey, Erasmus, I think it worked.”
“— inconsiderate, rude, and … What did you say?”
Kyle looked around. He couldn’t be 100 percent sure, but he thought that the cornstalks around him looked different. More densely planted.
“The corn …” he said, and stood up. He was a little wobbly, but he stayed upright.
To his left, the chronovessel was a smoking ruin, its frame charred and blackened like Mom’s last attempt to grill steak. But he barely noticed. There was noticeably more corn than there had been mere moments ago; tall stalks of it reached for the sky.
“It worked …” Kyle whispered.
“Are you —”
“It worked!” he howled at the top of his lungs, thrusting his fists in the air. “It worked! I did it! I did it! I traveled through time!” He danced a little jig right there in the cornfield.
“Kyle,” Erasmus said. Kyle ignored him and fist-pumped repeatedly, alternating fists. He’d done it! The single most complicated problem in physics and he had solved it! He had done what everyone said was impossible! This was totally worth scrambling his brains a little bit.
“Kyle,” Erasmus said again, this time with a note of panic in his voice.
“Don’t start lecturing me,” Kyle said threateningly. “I will crack you open and take out your battery. I’m celebrating! You should be psyched, too — you helped.”
“Kyle, I’m blind.”
Kyle chuckled. “No kidding, genius. You don’t have eyes.”
“That’s not what I — I mean there’s nothing out there.”
“Out where?”
“Out there! All I’m picking up is your voice on my microphone. I’m scanning on Wi-Fi, on Bluetooth. On 3G and 4G cellular bands. But there’s nothing.”
Kyle stood perfectly still. It was so quiet, he realized.
“What does this mean?” he asked.
“The police band. The cell phone satellites. The local Wi-Fi hotspots. The Internet. None of them are there. It’s all gone.”
Mairi kept screaming “Help!” for a good two or three minutes after the Blue Freak (who hadn’t looked all tha
t blue from her vantage point on the roof) had vanished in the distance, headed in the direction of Bouring Middle School. She could only imagine what nefarious outrage he planned to perpetrate. Maybe another dirt monster or giant robot. Or maybe big, sparkling vampire lice. Or …
Or maybe turning people into zombies?
Mairi shivered and turned around. She could hear scrabbling and scratching on the fire escape. The zombies would be up on the roof soon. A quick scan of the roof told her what she’d already been sure of: There was nothing up here to use as a weapon. Nothing to throw down on them as they came up the ladder.
Running here to hide hadn’t been such a great idea after all. She had been right to think movie people were idiots for going up the stairs.
She ran to the ladder, not to go down, but rather to see if she could somehow dislodge it from the roof and the wall. It would strand her up here, but at least she would be safe.
The ladder was bolted to the roof with two big steel bolts. All she needed was a wrench.
Which, of course, she didn’t have.
Just then, a head of hair poked up over the parapet, almost right in her face. Mairi shrieked and recoiled as the Great Nemesis — the nickname seemed very appropriate all of a sudden — popped up from the ladder, still grinning that horrible red grin.
Mairi turned to run; her ankle twisted under her and a bright flare of pain flashed there for half a second, blotting out the rest of the world. She blinked through it and lurched away from the Great Nemesis, keenly aware that it didn’t matter how fast or slow she ran — there was nowhere to go.
Running/limping as fast as she could, she made it to the other end of the roof before she collapsed, her ankle protesting. Behind her, she could hear feet crunching the gravel and tar paper laid out on the rooftop.
Fine. Fine, then.
If this was the end, she wouldn’t go out like a wimp. She would be brave and strong.
She rolled onto her back, leaning against the parapet. A horde of zombies, led by the Great Nemesis, bore down on her.
Mairi wished she could have seen Sashimi one last time. Thinking of her cat brought tears to her eyes, and she didn’t bother to move to wipe them away. She hoped Sashimi was okay. She hoped someone would find the cat and take care of her.
Her parents, of course. Wherever they were. She hoped they knew she loved them, even when she didn’t act like it.
She wished she could have seen Mighty Mike. Thanked him for being her friend. Told him that she forgave him for having to leave her with the sheriff.
And Kyle. She wished she could have seen him again. Despite everything.
As the zombies approached, she squeezed her eyes shut. So tight that patterns of light swirled there.
Any moment now.
Any
moment
now.
“Settle down,” Kyle said as soothingly as he could. He turned Erasmus over in his hands, looking for signs of damage — a dent or a ding that could indicate the AI had been jostled during time travel. “Don’t panic. You probably got banged up a little and some wires came loose internally —”
“Nothing’s loose!” Erasmus said. “I’ve run a complete diagnostic. Everything is functioning. There’s just nothing out there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We only went back a few weeks. The Internet and the satellites were all there back then. I bet your diagnostic software is all messed up. I’ll sneak into the house and fix you up, okay?”
“But —”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s all good. I promise.” He slipped Erasmus into his pocket and pushed through the corn to the football field.
But there was no football field. Just more corn.
He must have gotten turned around somehow. After the smoke and being thrown from the chronovessel. He went in another direction.
More corn.
What the heck …? He had set up the chronovessel about ten feet from the edge of the cornfield. He shouldn’t have to walk more than that far in any direction and he’d eventually be back out in the open. But every which way he walked, he saw only corn. He was starting to hate corn. Stupid corn.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. He flew up a few feet, just enough that he could see over the corn and get his bearings.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“Uh-oh?” Erasmus asked. “What-oh?”
“I, uh … I don’t think we’re in Bouring anymore.”
There was no football field. There was no Bouring Middle School. Just acres and acres of corn in every direction.
“Oh, boy,” Kyle said and told Erasmus.
“Where are we? When are we?”
“Wait!” Kyle shouted, relieved. “We are in Bouring! I see the lighthouse!”
The Bouring Lighthouse. Mairi’s mom’s pride and joy. The most useless tourist attraction in the world. Bouring was totally landlocked, but for some reason there was a lighthouse just outside town. Had been forever. No one knew why. No one knew much about it at all, actually. But there it was, standing against the horizon. Whew!
“But if we’re in Bouring, then why can’t I connect to anything?” Erasmus asked. Kyle realized that Erasmus felt the same way Kyle would feel if suddenly he’d been struck blind and unable to feel, smell, or taste.
“I’m going to figure this all out,” he told Erasmus. “Don’t you worry.”
He settled back down to the ground and sat next to the burned-out husk of the chronovessel. Was some sort of static feedback emanating from the motorbike and its installed systems, blocking Erasmus’s various radios? No, no — that didn’t make sense…. If only his brain would work right…. He hoped this side effect was temporary.
Kyle stared up at the sky. Cassiopeia … The Big Dipper … A clear night. The stars like glittering diamonds on a field of deepest black. What was wrong up there that Erasmus couldn’t connect to any of the cell phone satellites? Had the chronovessel done something to technology? The thought thrilled Kyle with fear. Had he accidentally wiped out technology? Like an electromagnetic pulse? Erasmus still worked, but Erasmus had been within the chronovoltaic field generated by the zero-point energy conversion unit.
He checked over the chronovessel. None of the onboard systems would even boot up. The only thing working, he noted with a strange sort of satisfaction, was the video camera, which still switched on. Kyle positioned himself in front of the camera.
“This is Kyle Camden, humankind’s first successful chrononaut, reporting from an undefined time in the past.” A thought occurred to him. “Or, possibly, the future. Some sort of malfunction in the chronovessel has sent me to —”
“Are you actually recording yourself for posterity?” Erasmus yelled. “We’ve got a crisis here and you’re making home movies!”
“Sorry.” He clicked off the video camera. “It just helps me think sometimes. I’m wondering if we’re in the future. Maybe someone bulldozed the school and planted corn here. Or maybe the chronovessel didn’t actually send us through time at all. Maybe it channeled the chronometric energies and caused accelerated time revving in the immediate area, making the corn grow all over the place.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have done this,” Erasmus sulked. “I knew no good would come of time travel.”
“You said no such thing. You just didn’t want me to try to change the past.”
“Because that way lies folly! Breaking the fundamental rules and laws of the universe can only lead to —”
“Oh, pipe down about the fundamental rules and laws of the universe! I could go back in time and toss George Washington into orbit and change history and the universe wouldn’t even notice. The laws of physics wouldn’t even blink.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I’m not going to do that. I’m just making a point. You have no sense of scope or size because you’re all locked up in that little iPod. You don’t understand how enormous the universe is.”
“Current estimates place the size of the universe at —??
?
“That’s not what I’m talking about. The universe is so vast, so enormous…. Do you really think the universe will notice such a small perturbation as the changing of someone’s history in Bouring? The universe is like a skein of interwoven threads, a tapestry. But the tapestry is so gigantic that you can never see the whole thing at once. And no one would notice if a single red thread suddenly turned blue.”
“Well, if you’re lost in time, your parents will eventually notice. And that won’t be good.”
“True. Let’s figure this out.”
Keeping low to the tops of the cornstalks for camouflage, Kyle drifted in the direction of town, using the lighthouse as his guide. He sniggered; lighthouses were used to guide ships safely around hazards at sea, and now he was using this one — which had never been anywhere near the sea — to guide himself.
He was so caught up in the irony of his situation that he missed the big sign looming in front of him until the last moment. He pulled up, gliding safely over it, and then paused, hanging in the air. He had come to the edge of the corn, where a one-lane road wound its way along the perimeter of the field.
What was a sign doing here?
There was just barely enough starlight for him to examine the sign.
“Oh,” he said, his eyes wide with surprise.
“What? What is it?”
“Well, the good news is that the chronovessel worked.”
“And the bad news?”
Kyle gulped. The sign said:
BUILDING BOURING’S FUTURE!
SITE OF THE NEW BOURING MIDDLE SCHOOL
CONSTRUCTION BEGINS NOVEMBER 1987.
CLASSES START FALL 1988!
“We’re in 1987,” he said.
Erasmus was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I’m looking right at the sign for the middle school. Which hasn’t been built at this time. That’s why the cornfield is still so huge — they haven’t cleared the land yet.” He looked around and spied some big landscaping machinery on the other side of the road. “They’re probably starting soon. We left in November of our year and we’ve arrived in November of 1987. Cool.”