The Cosmic Ark Read online

  “I managed to move my phone,” Liam said, forgetting himself again. “And this cushion sank down a bit when I sat on it.”

  “Another thing I’ve become adept at,” the old woman went on, “is zeroing on a specific date, even an exact time. It’s not just about twisting the dial, you see.” She tapped the side of her head. “It’s all in the mind.”

  Liam sighed. “Why are you telling me this?”

  The old woman tapped the open journal. Intrigued, Liam got up to look over her shoulder.

  4:03 PM. Liam’s house. Quarter-mile away. Huge monster-filled storm in Liam’s backyard. All kinds of weird creatures descended on us from the sky. Liam had the bright idea of riding a gas beast up to the wormhole. He alerted the robots in ‘the Ark’ that their prisoners had escaped. They snatched them all back up. Wrong or right, this was better than letting them run loose on our street.

  His eyes widened. Madison had finished writing this mere hours ago and yet here it was, the ink fading on the yellowed page.

  The old woman lifted the time wand. “I’m so glad I was meticulous in copying the messages into the journals. Now I know exactly what to write in my sleep when I pop back in time.”

  “The time wand won’t work,” Liam said, immediately focusing on the practicalities of using the tool rather than the mind-bending concept of what she proposed. “It needs—”

  “Boost power, please,” she said softly. The moment she said the words, something in the room beeped softly and a hum came from below the floor. Liam looked down in surprise. The hard white floor glowed softly.

  Her time wand lit up blue. The dial turned slowly until it was nearly all the way around. Now that it was attuned to her, a relatively tiny slice of life remained.

  Instead of reaching up to twist the dial, she simply stared at it. The dial began moving again, turning much of the way around to other side. Old Madison’s eyes glazed over and her jaw grew slack. She was gone, astral projecting or ghosting or whatever the correct terminology was.

  Her right hand began to twitch. She seemed to be writing something with an imaginary pen. Liam let out a long sigh, picturing a younger Madison back in her room, bundled up in bed at night, her own hand clutching a pencil and scrawling the message on the notepad, guided by her future self.

  A minute later, the old woman blinked awake. “Power down,” she whispered.

  She placed the time wand on the open journal and looked toward the sofa. Liam hurriedly sat so that when she spoke again, he felt she was looking directly at him.

  “That’s another one done. It’s very difficult, which is why the messages are so brief and untidy.” She frowned. “This one could have been a little less cryptic, but I’m afraid to change what’s already etched into time.”

  She shrugged and turned to the next page.

  Liam stared at the fading glow in the smooth white floor, his mind reeling. “This isn’t possible,” he muttered. “How did you know where and when these events were taking place? You can’t go back in time and tell yourself something you couldn’t have known in the first place. That’s just . . .”

  She said nothing but looked up from her journal, a faint smile on her lips. She spoke as if answering him, though she probably just had a good idea what he was fretting over. “You should probably go back now, young Liam, before your head explodes. And do me a favor?”

  She gestured at the journal.

  “Don’t tell my younger self about what I’m doing here. I’m not due to figure it out for another seventy years or so.” She winked. “Let’s not spoil it.”

  Chapter 10

  Liam felt it was time to go. He had a dozen questions, but she couldn’t hear him to answer them. Maybe that was for the best. He was already straddling a thin line between what he needed to know and what he absolutely should not know.

  As the bright living room faded, replaced by the darkness of his dad’s garage, he returned to his physical body and felt suddenly heavy as though climbing out of a pool. He carefully put the time wand down on the bench and flexed his sweaty fingers, then stamped his feet. When he shut off the portable generator, he stood and listened.

  Silence. Everybody was still asleep.

  He fished in his pocket for the message Madison had written. Sitting on an upturned bucket, he read it again.

  Liam, this one is for you.

  Visit the future. Your death. See me there.

  Don’t tell the others.

  He pondered over it for a long, long time, unmoving. He wished the old woman had confirmed that Ant would live a long time as well. She’d hinted he would, but if he had actually died a horrible death in his twenties or thirties, she probably would have kept that to herself to spare Liam the heartache and worry.

  “You and I have had a lifetime of adventures, young Liam,” she’d said. “You, me, and Ant.”

  He had to cling to that.

  The alternative was to change the future. He could destroy the time wand or throw it away instead of burying it. If he couldn’t dig it up in the future, Old Madison wouldn’t be able to pop back in time and write all those sleep messages, and then none of them would ever know anything about wormholes.

  Only then Liam couldn’t have seen what he’d already seen: the old woman cradling the journal and time wand, talking about all the wonderful adventures they’d had together . . .

  Around he went, his mind spinning.

  When he finally checked the time on his phone, he could hardly believe it was 4:13 AM. Blearily, he rubbed his eyes and stood up. He rummaged around until he found a cheap lighter and held it up to the bottom corner of the mysterious message he still clutched in his hand. He re-read the final line:

  Don’t tell the others.

  It started here. With a sigh, he thumbed the lighter. The flame licked high, and the paper blackened and curled.

  He let it fall to the concrete floor and burn. When it was a collection of small fragments and ashes, he swept them aside with his foot.

  Grabbing the time wand, he headed next door.

  ****

  Ant was still asleep on Madison’s floor. Liam carefully woke him. “Shh. Come on. We need to go downstairs.”

  Rubbing his eyes, Ant took a moment to realize where he was. He bolted upright. “Did she write anything?”

  “No. It’s a washout. Let’s go.”

  He felt bad about lying. As they tiptoed downstairs to the living room, Liam knew he’d have to get used to that if he planned to live his life with Madison without upsetting the fundamental laws of time and changing history—if indeed he could do such a thing. If he told Madison about the message she’d written, she’d guess he would have followed up and visited the future, and he’d have to tell her all about it, and then she’d learn everything she was not supposed to know. Her knowledge would change, and if that happened, she might make different choices, and even the tiniest alterations, the slightest deviations from her path, might affect the way life played out. It was the theoretical ‘butterfly effect,’ where even the slightest ripple in a calm lake could lead to larger ripples farther out.

  He was terrified of changing what promised to be a fabulous future. And with Madison as his wife.

  “Can’t believe that was a wasted opportunity,” Ant complained as they returned to their assigned beds for the night.

  “Well, she doesn’t sleep write every night,” Liam said from the sofa, pulling the covers up over him. “I’m tired. See you in the morning.”

  Ant mumbled on about something for a while, but Liam was already asleep.

  ****

  They performed a solemn burial ceremony in a hidden corner of Madison’s yard, behind some bushes and under an oak tree. She was already puzzled.

  “But why bury it in my yard and not yours?”

  Liam shrugged as he worked the shovel. “I figure your house is newer and bigger and more likely to be here longer. I want this time wand to be safe in case we want to dig it up in the future.”

  �
��And we’re burying it why?” Ant asked, equally puzzled.

  “Because it’s dangerous. I thought about it a lot last night, and I think I’ve been an idiot. Seeing the future could be bad.” He paused. “I saw the firemen wandering around the yard before it happened, and it rattled me. I saw myself flying through a wormhole wearing a futuristic suit of armor, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. We can’t go through life with stuff like that on our minds.”

  Madison scowled. “I happen to agree. I just don’t like the way you’re making this decision without us.”

  “Yeah,” Ant said. “And what’s wrong with visiting the past? I didn’t even get a chance to use it. I wanted to pop back and see myself as a kid. It would have been fun to—”

  “It’s overrated,” Liam said shortly. He tossed the shovel aside and picked up the small plastic box. Inside, wrapped in a cloth, was the time wand. “You have to trust me on this. Leave it for now, okay?” Seeing their disgruntled expressions, he added, “It’ll always be here for us later. After we’ve had a bit more experience with all this wormhole traveling.”

  He bent and placed the plastic box into the hole.

  “I suppose you’ll be burying the recorded message as well,” Ant grumbled.

  Liam had started pushing dirt onto the plastic box, but he paused again. “No. Actually, I wanted you to listen to it again.”

  He pulled the small metallic recording device from his pocket and sat on the grass with his legs crossed. Ant and Madison, unable to help themselves, sighed and joined him.

  “I’ve been playing the recording all week,” Liam said, “and I’ve been catching new words here and there like they’re hidden behind the gibberish if you listen hard enough. But now the whole recording is in English.”

  “Play it!” Ant demanded.

  Liam smiled and thumbed the button.

  You won’t understand this message for a day or two, the giant’s rumbling voice barked. Your translator needs time to kick in. When it does—

  “Whoa,” Ant said over the recording. “It’s still gibberish.”

  Liam stopped the playback. “Ah. Okay, I figured you’d say that. Maddy?”

  She shrugged. “It’s the same as it was before. Like Ant said, complete gibberish. You can understand it?”

  “I can. Let me translate it.”

  He restarted the recording, and this time he spoke over it, stopping and starting when he needed to catch up. To his ear, though, it was perfectly clear:

  You won’t understand this message for a day or two. Your translator needs time to kick in. When it does, your brain will hear an approximation of what I’m saying. It works for most of the cosmos, but I warn you, sometimes there are misunderstandings. Wars have been waged over poor interpretations.

  Listen up. I don’t know where you got the echo projector, but my scouts sniffed it out right away, and I’m sure others have too. That thing is like a homing beacon. You’re just a Class D planet, my friend. Up-and-coming, great potential, but still learning to walk. Maybe in a few decades you’ll be ready to step up, but right now you’re attracting unwanted attention. When a nothing-planet emits a signal like that, people want to know about it. They want to know who’s new in town. They want to know if your planet is worth trading with, maybe even colonizing.

  Consider me a good guy of human origin. They’re not all as nice as me.

  My advice would be to get rid of the echo projector . . . except it’s too late for that. The damage is already done. You’ve visited your future, and now that signal echoes through your timeline the way an elevator rises through hundreds of floors in a skyrise. You should have stayed on the ground floor, kid. You should have stayed in the present. Whoever gave you that echo projector was probably glad to be shot of it.

  Be warned. Some of the scum out there in the cosmos will have eyes on you already. Anybody whose timeline stretches into the future is useful. If you saw yourself alive and well years from now, it means you can’t die until then. Somebody out there will put you to the test, maybe throw you into danger to see how unscathed you are when you wriggle free. You’ll live, of course. And then you’ll be a target for something bigger.

  Good luck, kid. Welcome to the cosmos.

  When Liam finished his translation of the translation, his friends sat open-mouthed for a long time.

  Then Madison leaned forward and poked him gently in the middle of the chest. “That’s your translator? Where you were shot?”

  He nodded. “Guess so. It must have kicked in while the cloud was over the house yesterday. I could understand some of those creatures we met. The gas beast? And the spacesuit alien that we scrapped with? Even the robots on the Ark. I could read their computer screens even though they were probably filled with funky alien symbols or something.” He sighed. “So it sounds like somebody opened a wormhole deliberately and let those monsters out of the Ark.”

  “Told you we were targeted,” Madison said.

  Ant sighed and hung his head. “Liam, you’ve gone over to the Dark Side, my friend. You stole from aliens, you’ve been to the future, and now you have a universal translator in your chest.” He rubbed his chin as though an idea had just struck him. “Does that mean you can speak Spanish and other foreign Earth languages?”

  “Speak it? I don’t know.” Liam thought back to the gas beast and the spacesuited alien, with whom he had conversed to some degree. “I guess it works both ways?”

  “And the ‘echo projector’ is the time wand?” Madison, staring down into the freshly dug hole. The plastic box was half covered. “What does he mean it’s too late? We’ve hardly used it!”

  Liam opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Jumping into the future to witness his death had obviously left a contrail of energy through time, an ‘echo’ spanning most of his life. And that was just one trip. Old-age Madison had used it multiple times to visit her younger self in the past.

  Only he couldn’t tell her any of that.

  “So does this mean you’re invincible?” Ant asked him, wide-eyed.

  Liam stared at the ground. “I guess.”

  “Until when?”

  “Huh?”

  Ant was looking at him intently. “Exactly how far into your future did you peek? How long are you going to be invincible for? Months? Years? Did you see Maddy and me while you were there? If you did, does that mean we’re invincible too?”

  “I don’t want to know!” Madison cried, putting her hands over her ears. “Guys, just bury the stupid thing and forget about it. Or better still, destroy it.”

  “You told me not to,” Liam muttered.

  She glared at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She huffed and jumped to her feet. “I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t let you boys into my secret. If bug-eyed aliens abduct us from our beds tonight, I’ll know who to blame.”

  She stalked off. Liam watched her go, his smile broadening.

  “What’s up with you?” Ant said. “Do you enjoy riling her up or something?”

  Liam resumed pushing dirt into the hole, quickly covering the plastic box and the time wand within. “She’ll be fine. It’ll all work out, you’ll see. I’m going to marry that girl someday.”

  Ant laughed. “In your dreams, pal. In your dreams.”

  END OF PART 3

  COMING NEXT

  Liam looked around the fifty-foot chamber, taking note of the grid flooring and metal wall surfaces. He saw steel rafters overhead, several massive supports here and there, and numerous control panels laid out in front of the giant window.

  A star-studded blackness, he thought with sudden excitement. He headed toward the impressive scene, his heart thumping. Was it deep space? Could he be on a spaceship? He’d been on one before, but he’d never got to look outside.

  Stunned, he pressed his nose to the glass and looked down on the sharply curving horizon of Earth, bright and blue against the blackness above. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he m
uttered, awestruck.

  “Ah, you’re here,” a voice said behind him.

  Liam spun around and gaped.

  The tale continues in Impossible Mission.

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