Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (4 page)

Now that he thought about it, a mind-altering device couldn’t explain the first watch disappearing before his eyes because he hadn’t even been wearing one yet.

No, as hard as it was to believe, this thing was sending him somewhere.  The question was
where
?

Was it a teleporter after all? 
Was he really considering such fantastic ideas?

He returned to the oak and carved a cross deeply into its surface.  Then, he pushed the button.

He stumbled, yet would have stayed on his feet this time except for the violent nausea that returned with a vengeance.  It racked his gut and drove him to his knees.  He lost control of his body while his vision swam.  It was a good fifteen minutes before he could pull himself together.

When he was finally able to stand again, Mark staggered to the oak and searched the trunk for his carving.  He saw no cross, but the question mark he’d originally carved was back.

Check that.  He could just barely make out the faint form of a cross right below the question mark.  It looked like the bark had swollen up and over the marking, almost completely covering it,
as if the cross had been carved decades ago.

Suddenly, Mark struggled for control over his breathing.  Had he been shifting back and forth between
times
?  Was the watch a time machine?  How could such a small device do such a thing?  It wasn’t possible.

He closely examined the digital displays.  He’d only changed the lower one, and it read:

010000P-09071890

If you read that the right way, the numbers could represent 1:00 PM, September 7, 1890.

1890. 

Impossible.  Absolutely impossible.

Ridiculous.

The upper display read: 080347A-09072011.  If he followed the same line of reasoning, it would be read: 8:03 AM (and 47 seconds), September 7, 2011.

That
could
be today’s date.  Honestly, he’d lost track. 
Was it September already? 
Mark had purposely not kept track of the days since he’d begun this long hike of his, but he had left “civilization” in July, and that had been about two months ago.  It could easily be around 8:00 in the morning.  In fact, he’d be surprised if it wasn’t. 

Time travel was impossible — yet here he was, witnessing strange things that had no other explanation.

There was no easy way to prove what was going on one way or the other, at least not while he was in the woods.  Since there was no obvious means of ridding his wrist of his new adornment, he was apparently going to have more than ample opportunity to test his new theory, and there were a lot better places to experiment than the middle of a forest.  A town of some sort, for example, would provide definitive proof.

Plus, he was going to have to wait longer between pushes of that button if this nausea were going to continue.  He couldn’t take much more of that.

For the first time in a long time, Mark felt intrigued and excited about something.

What then is time?
  If no one asks me, I know what it is.

If I wish to explain it to him who asks,
I do not know.

                        ~ Saint Augustine

Mark wandered, not fully decided on what his next course of action should be.  He was still grappling with the idea, this inconceivable possibility of time travel through something as small as the thing encircling his wrist.

He’d left the clearing and headed west through the woods, but he hadn’t walked more than the length of a football field when the trees parted again unexpectedly.  A simple, two-story house stood in the center of a much larger, second clearing.  Its style was traditional American and an old-fashioned, wrap-around porch dressed its bottom floor, adding a flourish of character.  The siding wasn’t painted, but stained a golden oak color you might see on someone’s back deck.  He instantly liked it. 

At least one mystery was solved.  Whoever owned this home had to own the shed as well, although the shed did seem much older.  This house couldn’t be more than fifteen to twenty years old.

With luck, perhaps the owner would be at home and could start answering some questions — and Mark had a
lot
of questions.  If the house was as empty as the shed, maybe he’d just give into temptation and get a good night’s sleep for a change.

He climbed the porch and pulled the screened door outward, cringing as it moaned loudly.

He knocked.  No answer.  No movement from inside.

Well, he’d already broken into one building.  Why not go exploring a second time?

The front door turned out to be unlocked, but unlike the screen, the smooth silence of well-oiled hinges accompanied Mark’s push as he swung it inward.

“Helloooo?” he called,  listening expectantly.

No answer.  He called a second time with the same result.

The home was indeed simple, outside and in.  The furniture was sparse and minimalist, yet modern, all of it neatly arranged and dust free.  The faint smell of freshly cut lumber lingered in the air, just like the shed, yet this time mingling with a stronger scent of lemony Pine Sol.  The place seemed lived in, but was spotlessly clean.

Finding no sign of life on the first floor (Nor, to his dismay, any food in the refrigerator), Mark ascended the stairs.  He winced when the last step creaked awfully.

On the second floor, he found the home’s apparent owner.

In the master bedroom, an old man lay on his back in a king-sized bed.  His countenance was peaceful, his eyes shut and his hands at his sides.  His suit looked pressed, giving him an eerie appearance, as if he’d been laid out for a funeral.

Mark crossed the room to feel for a pulse.  The moment he picked up the man’s wrist, his eyes fluttered open and he stared at Mark intensely with a look that pierced him through and through.  It was as if the old man knew every inch of him, as if he could see into the very depths of his soul with that penetrating gaze.  Yet, somehow, the old man also felt familiar to Mark.

The fragile face smiled.  It was a weak smile, but warm, animated by an intensity that momentarily equaled the stare.  The man gripped his wrist and squeezed, like he was holding on for dear life, never taking his eyes from Mark’s.  After a moment, his grip loosened and fell away, taking the brief smile with it.  The man’s eyes fluttered shut and a strange, rattling breath escaped his lungs.  His whole body relaxed with that breath, as if sinking deeper into the large bed.  Mark felt his pulse fade, and then it finally ceased.

He waited several minutes to be sure, but he knew the man had died.  He recognized the death rattle, that strange last breath the dying make as they expire.  He considered calling the police to report the death, but he couldn’t find a telephone anywhere in the house and they were a long way from any town.   The old man had obviously known he was dying and had wanted to die here.  Mark would just leave him where he lay.

Mark’s earlier impression of the house being “simply” furnished crystallized into clarity.  With the exception of a few items like the refrigerator, there was not a single modern appliance or amenity to be found.  No television set, no radios, no telephones.

Maybe Mark really had traveled through time and was still stuck in the past.  No — the refrigerator was stainless steel, a newer model.  Puzzled, he continued to search.

The closets were bare.  There were no toiletries in the bathrooms, no sign of anyone having living here.  Except for the body in the bed.

It reminded him of the apartment of an old college buddy who traveled all the time for work: Sterile like a hotel room.  He’d asked his friend once how he could stand to live in such a bland environment.  His friend had replied that the opposite was true.  Being gone so much, the only way he could stay sane was to keep his apartment clutter free and as low-maintenance as possible.

Was the old man a traveler like his friend?  Even more importantly, was he a
time
traveler?

Mark took a closer look at the dead man and saw his wrist bore a silver “watch” identical to his own.

Guess that answers that.

Gently, he lifted the man’s arm, trying to get a better look at the device’s settings.  Upon his touch, the device began to whir softly.  Its band loosened and slid from the dead man’s wrist to the floor with a considerable thud.

Startled, Mark snatched it up, eyeing the body suspiciously for signs of trickery.

No movement.  The guy was dead.

If Mark’s theory was correct, then the bottom setting of the old man’s watch was set to three weeks ago.  The top setting matched today’s date and the current time.

Wait a second.  How could the top setting match the current time if the man had died a few minutes ago?  Checking his own watch, Mark saw his top setting matched the current time as well.  Perhaps the top setting was actually nothing more than a normal clock which acted as a reference point, an anchor of sorts for the time travel mechanism.  That made sense.  It would almost be a necessary feature.

The rest of the house was pretty bare, but he was curious to see what he would find if he “traveled” back to three weeks ago, the time on the dead man’s watch.

He didn’t dare put this newest watch on since it would probably lock onto him just like the first one had.  One irremovable, time-traveling device stuck on his wrist was more than enough, thank you very much, and unless he wanted to start looking like some New York City jewelry hawker, he’d wait until he found a way to get the first one off before adding a second.

If he activated the dead man’s watch, it would probably just disappear from his hand.  So, instead, he set his own to match the same time three weeks prior.  Then, he dropped the old man’s watch into his backpack.

He now had a total of three devices.  One on his wrist and two in his backpack. 
How many of these things were there anyway? 
He definitely needed to start paying more attention to people’s wrists.

Mark pushed his red button and felt the now familiar, but still unsettling sensation in the pit of his stomach.  The bedroom in general did not change, but the old man’s body disappeared from the bed.  In his place was a sheet of paper.

Your suspicions are correct.

The device you are wearing is a time traveling engine of sorts.

Follow your instincts.

These notes were really starting to freak him out.  They had been expecting him. 
Somebody
had been expecting him.

Frantically, he turned the house inside out searching for further clues as to what was going on but found nothing of interest.

The face of his watch was glowing red.  He hit the button to go back, but nothing happened.  Great.  He’d broken it.  Now what was he going to do?

He redoubled his search efforts and delved into every nook and cranny, but there was nothing in the house or the shed that would tell him more.

The note said to follow his instincts, and instinct told him to head back to civilization.  So, he set off into the woods in the direction of the closest highway.

What exactly does one do with
three
time-travel machines?

Had somebody specifically intended for Mark to find them, or were they left for whomever came along first?               

He hiked the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon pondering these questions.  In his imagination, time machines were big, bulky chambers, great unwieldy things with wires sticking out from all sides.  How could something as small as a watch be so powerful?

From what little he knew of physics, time travel, if it were even possible, would require an immeasurable amount of energy.  It was effectively unachievable.

This had to be some kind of elaborate hoax.  If a person can mentally smack themselves on the forehead, Mark did so now. 
Of course
, that was it.  Traveling through time wasn’t possible, and sure as heck nobody was going to find a tiny little watch in the north Georgia woods that could.

What about the nausea and the loss of balance though?  Maybe that had been the result of some kind of electrical shock.  Yet, the trees in the forest had shifted.  The old man’s body had disappeared from the bed before his eyes.  The first watch had evaporated from his hand, and the cross carving had clearly aged.  Were those just optical illusions?

He glanced down at the device.  The red glow was gone.  It was back to normal.

There was one way to settle this.

Stopping short in the middle of the trail, he flung his backpack to the ground and altered the second setting to match today’s date, but twelve hours in the future.  He punched the button.

Suddenly, he found himself shrouded in darkness.  The sun was gone, stars twinkled overhead and the moon was out.