The Chair (3 page)

“The problem is that you should never really have been able to acquire the chair and now we need to decide what to do about it.”

 “What about your father, he is missing isn’t he?”

She looked down at the floor. “Yes he is. Professor Timothy Gratten, my father, has been using the chair to work in London England for research on many related projects. His co-workers have affectionately given him the title of professor because of his self taught knowledge in scientific endeavors. It was he that was supposed to return in the chair when you turned up.”

“Why don’t you just go back to England and get him?”

“I only wish it were that easy. Unfortunately there’s more to the story you need to be made aware of; but we’ll have to leave it for now. While you’re here you will have to stay somewhere and it might as well be my father’s apartment in the sanctuary.”

“The sanctuary?”

“You’ll see; there is a great deal for you to discover here, but it will have to wait till tomorrow.

CHAPTER

THREE

S
he walked over to the teakwood desk and opened one of the small drawers at the bottom, closed it and opened it again. Suddenly, one of the walls in the room began sinking into the floor revealing a hidden tunnel with some sort of refined wooden vehicle sitting on a tramway.

“This is my father’s private transport; it’ll take us to his apartment,” she said, pointing to the metal hatch door.

“This is really quite something, but who built all of this?”

“I’ll explain it all in time Richard; please sit down and fasten that shoulder harness around you.”

I sat down looking through a glass window to a long dark tunnel ahead. Ara sat on the opposite side facing me with a smile on her face, as if anticipating my upcoming reaction to the trip we were about to take. She strapped herself in and pulled the hatch of the transport closed. The wall separating us from the map room began closing again and there was a slight winding sound as the lights on the transport lit the tunnel walls surrounding us; we jerked slightly just before beginning to move, sluggish at first and then slowly gaining momentum. I could tell we were moving up a grade. It traveled along fairly smooth with a buzzing whirring noise as the walls of the cavern moved by growing darker ahead by the second.

“Is the tunnel long?”

She looked around and then back at me with a smile. “No, we’ll be coming out of it any moment.”

No sooner had she spoken those words than  the tunnel seemed to be growing lighter and brightness from the mouth of the cave suddenly lit up the transport as we broke free from the darkness out into the light of day; the track emerged from the tunnel on a high cliff and the view was breathtaking.

Palm trees lined a canyon floor as we began a gradual descent along the track. I looked to each side of us and the cliffs rose up as walls surrounding the canyon, green and lush. Large wooden trestles supporting ridge crossings were scattered all along the canyon and wound around the cliffs supporting the tramway, it was dazzling; I’d never seen such a sight. As we slowly descended we could spot various homes just below, built into the smaller hills against the canyon walls. Animals were sheltered in fenced areas and I could see children playing here and there, running down roads connecting the homes in small farming communities.

Then moving forward at a quicker pace and leaving the lush green, we passed over limited desert like terrain with spreading sand dunes, green vegetation and boulder like projections protruding from the landscape. Passing a group of nearby palms, a flock of colorful birds took off as if they had been unexpectedly disturbed. I could just catch a glimpse here and there of the ocean surrounding us as the transport made its way through the island.

“Can you see it yet?” she asked anxiously.

“See what? Oh yes, those buildings ahead!”

“That’s it, our sanctuary…Oceanus! It was named after the ship that brought the original colony here over a hundred years ago.”

I marveled. “You people have been here a hundred years?”

We began moving closer to the edge of a largely dense urban community with oddly shaped buildings constructed low to the ground some round some oval and some rectangular, but all very neatly laid out with carefully laid out streets. Oceanus had been very efficiently planned out down to the small innovative wooden carts pulled by oxen here and there.

The transport then took a dive once more down under the tops of the foliage, along a stream bed swallowed up into another tunnel that seemed to be headed straight in the direction of what she called the sanctuary.

This must be the private entrance to his flat, I thought, as we moved steadily along the dark tunnel only illuminated as we moved along by this remarkable machine. The whirring noise seemed to subside and the machine was now coming to a standstill. The lights from the transport were still illuminating the tunnel as another wall moved to the side, revealing the private entrance to her father’s apartment. We both climbed out and I could see through the room to a large window on the other side of it; it was overlooking what appeared to be the very central area of the sanctuary.

Ara motioned for us to enter. “Well this is it, my father’s apartment. He wanted to be in the heart of the sanctuary and continually be able to observe what was going on.”

I walked over and stood by the large window peering down at the populace and commented. “Yes, certainly is a great vantage point, to be sure.”

The flat was very nicely laid out with plenty of light streaming in; the furniture was luxurious similar to the conduit, with a bar on one wall and a large couch with a plush carpet at the foot of it facing the huge window. There was another room that appeared to be an office or study of some type. Walking over to it, I quickly glanced inside. World maps of every sort were on all of the walls, several of which were marked with red pins denoting places either already traveled or possible future destinations. Then I noticed a second desk with a most interesting object sitting on top; an extremely detailed model of three chairs. One of the chairs, the one in the middle, was an exact scale model of the chair I arrived in and the other two on either side of it being a little different and smaller in size.

 “Sit down Richard, I apologize that you’ve stumbled into all of this quite by accident, but there is much more that you need to know.

“This island began for our people as a place of refuge for several families long ago when their ship was driven off course and shipwrecked here by a fierce hurricane while on a scientific expedition.

“They were sent from a British colonial research institute in Australia years ago and the ship was a rather large experimental hybrid steam and sailing ship, the Discovery-Oceanus I mentioned to you earlier.”

“They would have been certainly reported as missing. Didn’t they send other ships to search for them?”

Her eyebrows rose. “No one ever found out; and from what we’ve been told, there has never been a rescue ship sighted in all these years.”

I got up and started walking in circles reasoning it out. “Probably didn’t want to loose another ship, I imagine, or maybe they weren’t sure in which direction to search.”

She raised her hand massaging her neck. “Evidently those that were originally waiting for rescue were also very resourceful; there were engineers, geologists, scientists and naturalists, who ended up building a small community here. All this was just prior to the amazing discovery that changed everything for us here impressively.”

“Discovery? What kind of discovery, you mean gold or silver?”

“Something much more valuable than that― power.”

“Power Ara, you mean a new power source?”

Standing up, she walked over to the window. Her demeanor was much more pleasant now, but still serious in her description and she was somehow slowly becoming, very attractive to me. I’ve never been the type to fall for the first beautiful girl to cross my path and I needed to put that thought out of my mind as quickly as I could; the thought of Catherine not being able to find out what happened to me was what I needed to focus on.

Ara answered, quickly bringing me back into the conversation. “Not that kind of power Richard, I mean power over people and things and places.”

“So what do you mean then, what kind of discovery?”

She walked back to the couch, sat down crossing her legs and began describing more of the island’s history. “Long story short, the father of Bradley Dunford, who still resides on this island, was one of the original crew shipwrecked here. When first exploring this island he had, quite by accident, stumbled upon a cave concealed in the side of a cliff. The story goes that upon entering the cavern, he found the three chairs sitting together on a stone ledge covered in cobwebs, yet still inexplicably in very good condition. The huge window and controls were also in an adjoining chamber of the cavern hooked up to strange batteries which had long since been drained of power.

“After moving everything to his own quarters and laboratory set up, he cleaned up the chairs and sat down in them. When sitting in the main chair he blacked out and when coming to, suddenly found himself in South America. It was only by accident that hours later he once again sat down in the chair which immediately returned him to the point of origin in his laboratory. No one has yet to find the connection between the display controller and the chair’s, it all remains to this day a mystery.

“From there the facts become more interesting in both constructive and destructive ways, but let’s take a break and I’ll show you around.”

 We walked out together on a veranda overlooking the populace of Sanctuary Oceanus. I was thinking this was all too much; it was exiting and at the same time unnerving. I had to get back to Catherine and explain to her what had happened; but was it possible?

 “The population must be in the hundreds here now and growing,” she remarked, “and we are yet to be discovered by the rest of the world.”

“Ara, there must be records, documentation or some journals of all of this; it’s simply amazing how it all came about.”

“There
is
someone who knows most of the history of what happened here first hand and could explain it in more detail than I; the old man I mentioned earlier, William Dunford; We know he’s still alive but over the years word has it he has become a bit senile. He lives here on the island in secret and only a select few know of his whereabouts.”

“Are you one of the select few?”

“Yes, I am.”

Looking her in the eyes, I smiled, “And you’re going to
keep
it a secret I presume.”

“For now it must remain that way only because of another element to all this I haven’t told you yet.” She instinctively rested her hand on her weapon. “A dangerous element that is loose; not just dangerous to this island but the rest of the world.”

“Where do I fit in now in all of this?” I said, resting my arm on the metal railing and looking out at the buildings.”

“Her blue eyes looked into mine, “I’m not sure yet. You will have to stay here for now though so make yourself at home; I’ll be back tomorrow,” she concluded with a smile, walking toward the hidden tunnel entrance. She turned just as the wall was sliding open, “There’s more to what’s going on here and we’ll finish it tomorrow over lunch, that is, if you would like.”

“Yes I would, but when would it be possible for me to return home?”

“I’m afraid for that you’re going to need a little patience, good afternoon Richard.”

I had no idea what was happening back in London and I wasn’t sure that Catherine or anyone else even knew I was gone. It had been hours, not days and my mind was turning as to what would happen if and when they found I was gone.

It was getting to be late in the afternoon and I was exhausted. This whole venture was unbelievable and yet it was happening! It was as if I now had another identity in a separate life. Bedtime was my only priority now trying not to over think all of this. It all had an explanation  and a rational one I was sure, but what was this other element she had yet to divulge in this mystery. I had to know everything there was to know about this place, but I knew it would have to wait till the next day.

CHAPTER

FOUR

T
he next morning I was hesitant even to try to venture out without her. There were too many possible surprises waiting out there and some of them could be very unpleasant.

She finally arrived late in the morning with a bundle of clothes for me. “You’d better put these on,” she said. “You don’t want to be too conspicuous walking around the streets in those.”

The clothes were very earthy but modestly appealing and we both took the back stairs from the veranda down to the street level. I was expecting this small village to have the conveniences I had just witnessed in the conduit room or Professor Gratten’s flat. Everything was indeed thriving, but mostly as a thriving third world village would have it, yet there were some things that did indeed seem modern; it seemed a mishmash of the old with the new. Everyone I passed in the streets seemed to be pleasant and friendly, all dressed in clothes similar to the ones Ara had brought for me. Most men seemed to be wearing some type of linen pullover shirt tucked into wool trousers usually with a vest and boots. Women were wearing full ankle length one piece dresses of wool or cotton, and those working had aprons in the streets or shops.

We walked into what looked to be a pub of some sort and Ara motioned to the keeper as we sat down at one of the tables outside. A man came speedily up to take our order.

 “Hello Joseph, we’ll both be having some of your lentil soup with bread, cheese, and some slices of that beef. Would you like a glass of beer or wine Richard?”