The night before Dad and Austin were to take their first big ride on the composite bicycles they’d made, I spent the evening sulking in my room. Dad had taken my suggestion and was using the composite to make new rock climbing equipment for us, but I was still jealous that Dad and Austin were going to be spending the entire day together on their ride.
I heard Dad and Austin enter Dad’s office below me; so I slowly opened the grate to listen to them.
“Why do you want ride, using old paper maps?” Austin asked. “Our coms will tell us all the turns to make and anything else we would need to know.”
“Family tradition,” Dad replied. “It started when I wasn’t much older than you are now. You’ve heard that when I worked for The Corps, the only way for me to break the code created by the Christians was to read the Bible, right? Well, I realized right away that I needed a mode of transportation that didn’t have cameras and scanners; so I bought a bicycle from an antique shop and fixed it up. I knew I’d be tracked through my com - so I learned how to read paper maps.”
“There must have been some old electric bikes that you could have bought. Why did you go with just pedal power?”
“Looking back at it now, I think God had a hand in that decision,” Dad said. “There’s just something about exercise and athletics that feels godly, if you ask me.”
“Really?” Austin asked.
“Of course. Athletics are all about challenging yourself and finding an inner strength that you didn’t know you had. Our Lord lives inside us through the Holy Spirit; so what better way to feel His presence, than by reaching inward for strength?”
Austin paused for a minute; then asked exactly the question I was thinking.
“You were an atheist when you first started cycling. Why would cycling have felt godly to you back then?”
“It didn’t at the start, but now I think it was the first, small step towards God – and all it took was complete exhaustion, and two days in bed to recover.”
“It sounds like there’s a story in there,” Austin said.
Dad said nothing for a while, presumably he was deciding whether or not to tell the story.
“Locating old bibles anonymously was very difficult,” Dad began. “Anything you did with a com would be tracked, so I had no choice but to research in old paper libraries and talk to people. I heard a rumor about an elderly lady in rural Maine, who was said to have an old family bible, but when I contacted her, she was too scared to meet with me at her house. She suggested that we meet in a place called “Oh my god” corner on a particular road in two hours, and warned me not to be late.”
“How could any place have had God’s name in it back then?” Austin asked. “All religious references had been banned.”
“It couldn’t - at least as far as any map was concerned,” Dad replied. “All I had was the name of a road, and no clue as to where to stop to find this lady.”
“What did you do?”
“I rode - hard. I thought the more ground I covered, the better chance I had in finding the right spot before she left. It turned out, the road was mostly uphill, and there was wind and rain in my face the entire time. I learned a valuable lesson about mercy.
“Mercy?” Austin asked.
“Hills, wind, and rain have no mercy, and neither does time,” Dad replied. “I climbed kilometer after merciless kilometer, watching the seconds tick away on my chance at getting that bible. It was beyond exhausting. It was also the first time that a new idea popped into my atheistic head. After the first hour, the thought occurred to me that muscles and sinew and bones weren’t even turning the cranks anymore. It felt like the work was being done by something much deeper … something beyond my physical body.”
Dad paused, and it sounded like Austin had been holding his breath during the story, as he inhaled deeply.
“I know what scientists would say,” Dad continued. “They’d say the pain caused my body to release endorphins and that I found what was known as runners’ high - but that’s not what it felt like to me. To me, it felt like God created hills and wind and time as a way to remind us that the only true source of mercy is Him; so that when we reach the end of ourselves, amid all that mercilessness we’ll finally find that He was waiting inside us the entire time … waiting for us to finally look inward for Him.”
“What happened next?” Austin asked.
“I found the strength to keep pushing forward, until I turned a corner and hit a spot where the trees disappear and you’re looking out across the Carrabassett Valley. A non-believer might miss it, but anyone with even the tiniest connection to the Holy Spirit can’t help but say “Oh my god” when they look out across the wonder of His creation. I hit the brakes and just stood there in the rain.”
Dad went silent. He has a remarkable capacity for reliving the emotions of an experience, and I’m sure he was reliving that moment as he stood in the rain. Austin shifted his weight in his chair, and Dad continued with the story.
“A few minutes later, a woman came out of the woods. She said: ‘This bible has been in my family for eight generations. I don’t want to give it to you. I just know that I need to.’”
“I only said one word to her: ‘Why?’”
“She said: ‘I’ve been watching you on the public cameras along the road. I’m old enough to remember sports, and I saw something today that I haven’t seen in a very long time. Your legs were done thirty kilometers ago. By all rights, you should have fallen off that bike, unable to move another centimeter up the hill - but I was watching your eyes, and I could see something burning inside of you that just would not give up. You need this book, young man. You need to understand what’s burning inside of you.’”
“She disappeared back into the trees and I never saw her again, in person.”
Austin said nothing at first, but I desperately want him to ask Dad the next, obvious question. After that experience, how could Dad use the bible he’d obtained to break the Christian code and kill so many?”
“What do you mean, you never saw her again in person?” Austin asked.
“After I used her bible to break the last Christian code, I saw her picture in the case files. The Corps picked her up, along with most of her relatives. Without intending to, I had used her family bible to end her family. I recorded their deaths in the bible, and buried it at ‘Oh my god’ corner as a reminder that I, as much as anyone, need God’s mercy.”
“Dad?” Austin asked. “You can solve any puzzle that anyone can put in front of you. Why couldn’t you see that God was working on your heart through that experience?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “What I do know is that, even after that ride and what the lady said to me, I was still in a place of darkness. I think perhaps God knew that I couldn’t come out of the darkness all at once, because seeing His light all at once would have been too bright for me.”
******
I turn myself over and brace myself against the tunnel walls. Then, using the strength of my legs, I push the rock out of the way and listen to it crash to the bottom of the pit.
I ease myself over the edge and find that we’re about thirty meters below the surface; so the bottom of the pit is another thirty meters or so down. It’s not a sheer drop, and I know that I can climb down from here, but Austin and Zera probably shouldn’t try it.
There’s a ledge big enough for me to sit on just ten meters away, and I climb to it. Austin’s head pokes out of the old tunnel.
“Now what?” he asks.
“Now, we think,” I say.
I look up at the edge of the teardrop-shaped hole. We’re not far from the pointed end. Around the perimeter, at about the same height of the ledge where I’m sitting, I can see where each of the three escape tunnels used to be.
If Albert shaped the explosion to protect something, it should be close to the pointed end.
“What’s she doing?” I hear Zera’s muffled voice ask.
Bethany House was collapsed into some old mine tunnels. How did he get down into them to place his explosives? An air shaft?
“Thinking,” Austin replies.
No, it must have been an elevator shaft, which connected to various side shafts. The time travel arena must be hidden in a side shaft.
I look to the bottom of the pit. I can see what looks like a rusted metal cable, attached to some twisted metal that must have once been a small elevator.
They were so wasteful back then. They could have recycled all of that metal.
Next to the elevator cage, there’s a large slab of old concrete, sitting at a slight angle.
“Ouch! What are you doing?” Austin asks.
Albert used the elevator shaft as the point of the tear drop. So where is the side shaft?
Zera’s head appears. She crawled over Austin and is now lying on his back.
He needed to hide the side shaft too, so that no federal drones would find it when they investigated the explosions. How did he fill the side shaft?
“The air was getting thick back there,” Zera says.
This is Albert. He would have used an explosion to cover up the side shaft. What signs would an explosion leave behind?
I scan the rocks for burn marks, and find none. Most of the wall face is solid dirt, but one spot looks like loose sand and rubble.
Bingo.
It’s only thirty meters along the wall and another ten meters down from my ledge; so I start climbing to the spot.
“Where are you going?” Austin asks.
“To find a time machine.”
“Should we come too?” Austin asks.
“Speak for yourself,” Zera says. “I’m pretty comfy right here.”
“Stay there,” I say. “I only have a theory.”
I reach the spot and start to dig. It goes quickly because the rocks are all hand-sized and smaller; and because I don’t have to worry about where to put material, it all falls to the bottom of the pit. After just a half a meter, my hand pokes through into empty space. Soon I have a space big enough to wiggle through.
There’s enough light coming in through the hole that I can see I’m inside a tunnel that was dug by machines, rather than the hand-dug tunnels built by Four to create Bethany House. Unfortunately, the light doesn’t show me much beyond about ten meters; so I don’t dare explore very far. I turn to wiggle back through the hole and retrieve the flashlight I left in my pack, when I remember the old light stick that I got from Brill.
Dad would be proud.
I retrieve it from my pocket and snap it to start the chemicals mixing. It gives off a faint purple light.
Brill said these things were banned because people burned their eyes. It’s so faint you’d have to stare at it for hours.
Once my eyes have adapted, even the faint light is enough to let me walk around slowly, but safely. I don’t have to wander very far, because the tunnel is only about twenty meters long. Along the walls, I can see the remains of wooden shelves that once held emergency supplies of canned food and water. The wood rotted away long ago, and most of the contents are now in a jumble on the floor, except for a few dozen cans that are still neatly stacked.
Near the end of the tunnel, I can see a pile of composite metal pieces in a heap.
Look away. You MUST NOT look at them.
As I turn, the little bit of sunlight behind me goes dark. Austin is standing in front of the hole as he digs it bigger for himself. When he gets inside, he snaps on a flashlight, blinding me.
“How did you get over here?” I ask.
“I may not be at your level, but I did learn a few things about rock climbing from Dad. Besides, I was digging through your pack and found your rope and some pitons; so I installed a quick safety rope for Zera.”
The sunlight is again blocked, as Zera joins us.
“Well?” she asks.
“The arena is back there,” I say. “Go look for yourself.”
“Albert’s blast must have really shaken this place,” Austin says, when he reaches the pile. “This is definitely our composite, but the cage has been reduced to pieces.”
He comes back with a piece in his hands. I look away.
“Dad and I used some specialized equipment to weld the bicycle frames,” he says. “Jocie, I don’t know if I can fix this.”
“You don’t have to fix it, Austin. It was never welded together.”
“Then how …”
“It’s a puzzle, Austin. The cage is a very complex, three-dimensional puzzle.”
******
We return to Wendy’s house feeling somewhat dejected. Wendy has one extra bed in the house, and I offer it to Zera, while Austin and I spread hay on the barn floor. Austin thought we should sleep in the hidden basement as a “family tradition,” but Wendy convinced him that it’s too stuffy and full of mice.
When I roll over for the tenth time, Austin speaks.
“It’s a long list, isn’t it?” he asks.
“List?”
“The list forming in your head of all the things that we need to do. We get it from Mom. I have one, too.”
“Tell me your list,” I say.
“Well, we can salvage enough electrical and computer cables from the ruins of Bethany House to power and control a time machine; so at least that’s not an issue. We’ll need several computers to run the whole thing, but since it was last done on twenty-year-old computers, I guess we can find some old ones somewhere.”
Technical problems. Dad said members of Four always obsessed over technical problems.
“Software will be an issue,” Austin continues. “None of us have the skill to write the necessary software from scratch; so we’ll need to recruit someone for that…”
Dad says whenever technical problems come up, the first thing to do is to clear you mind through prayer.
“The time travel arena would be the next step. How on earth are we going to get the materials we need? Carbon fiber cloth, iron, and aluminum are all pretty easy, but where will we get titanium, chromium, molybdenum, and vanadium?”
Lord, I need help … and I’m not talking about finding vanadium.
“I went through the tools here in the barn and found a narrow-spectrum parabolic fiber laser that Bill must have used for cutting metal. I can adjust the beam to melt everything …”
Lord, you’ve even made time itself into a beautiful, perfect puzzle. Thank you for showing me how some of the pieces fit together.
“Zera’s right about the crystals, too. Where are we going to find more of those?”
It’s going to crush him.
“Still, it will all be worth it,” Austin says. “I can’t wait to travel through time.”
Thank you, too, Lord, for the strength for what I have to do now.
“Austin?” I say. “I have a different list of things in my head, compared to yours. My list has just three things on it.”
“Okay, what are they?”
“Pray, think, act on what I’ve been called upon to do.”
“What you’ve been called upon to do? You’ve been called to help me.”
“We’ve always thought that, because we were allowed to think it. When Mr. Albert saw your initials on that piece of the arena, that’s what he thought. As he told people, and the rumors spread, everyone believed it - even Mom.”
“But not Dad,” Austin says.
“That’s right. Dad suspected the first time he saw that piece.”
“Suspected what?”
I turn on my flashlight and retrieve the hook-shaped piece from Austin’s pack. I stand it on its end.
“This is the piece of the puzzle that held it all together. When Albert pulled it out, the puzzle fell apart. It’s also the tallest point in the cage. Squish yourself down so you can sit inside a cage this small.”
He squats, he sits cross-legged, he curls up in a ball … but no matter what he tries, he’s too tall to fit under the hook. I thought he’d get mad, or that maybe he’d even cry, but instead he looks … lost.
His entire life was built around somehow following Dad’s footsteps. I have to give him a new purpose.
“Austin?” I say.
“He knew all along?” Austin asks. “Why didn’t he tell us? Why didn’t he prepare us?”
“Nobody understands the need to let a timeline play out naturally more than Dad, but he did prepare us in the ways that he could, Austin. He taught you how to make the materials we’re going to need. He taught me how to climb out of a hole. In his own way, he taught us both how to fight … but more than any of those things, he taught us how to love each other, and to work together as a team.”
Austin looks up at me from the floor.
“I need you, baby brother,” I say. “More than any other time in my life, I need you. I need your brains; I need your strength; and most of all … I need your love.”
He stands and hugs me, with his head on top of mine.
“You’ll always have that, shorty.”
We lie back down in the hay.
“I never really thought about what it must be like to be Mom,” Austin says. “I mean, Dad has all these things in his head, and he never tells her what’s going to happen. How do either of them live with it?”
“Faith, I suppose,” I reply.
“When Mom and Dad were hiding in the hole under this barn, do you suppose Dad already knew he’d someday be captured and tortured?” Austin asks. “Did he somehow know that he’d survive it? Or did he just know that God would be with him - no matter what came?”
“I like to think it was the latter,” I say. “I like to think that when everything around him was dark, Dad could already see a guiding light.”
“In his case, it was probably a guiding light stick,” Austin says, with a chuckle.
“Great idea,” I say. “This barn really is a part of our family history. Let’s celebrate the connection to Mom and Dad with a light stick.”
I find the box in my pack, remove a stick, and bend it.
“The chemicals must have decayed over time,” Austin says. “It barely throws any light.”
I look around the barn.
Of course.
“It’s throwing a ton of light,” I say, and snap another. “We just can’t see it.”
Somebody burned their eyes because these light sticks give off ultra violet light.
I walk to the barn wall, where I can see something glowing.
“There’s something written on this wall that reacts to UV light,” I say.
I hold the light stick higher and follow along, one letter at a time.
“The puzzle points the way,” I read aloud.
“Jocie?” Austin says. “It’s not just the wall that’s glowing. Look up.”
Above my head, there are glowing spots in the roof joists.
“Give me one of the light sticks. I think I can reach them from the hayloft,” Austin says, and begins to climb a ladder someone created by nailing boards to the wall studs.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“No words,” he says. “It just speaks for itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rest are made out of wood, but this joist is metal.”
“So?”
“According to the markings, it’s made out of titanium, chromium, molybdenum, and vanadium - in the exact ratios that I need to make the composite. Did Dad place it here for us?”
I climb up next to him and look at the metal. Where the materials are stamped, I find a date.
“This joist has been here since the barn was built, almost two hundred years ago,” I say.
“Two hundred years? Who built a joist like this two hundred years ago?”
I did.