The Sphere: A Journey In Time (12 page)

I left the safety of the trees, and keeping my head down against the wind, walking hurriedly through the square past a wooden platform in the middle. I glanced up long enough to see the Advent wreath Noah had mentioned hanging from a wooden beam structure. There were only two candles lit. I stopped in panic for a moment before it occurred to me that they probably lit the candle after the church service. I ducked my head back down and continued across the square to the house where Noah would be. I made it to the front door less than two minutes after arriving in 1693.
So far so good
, I thought to myself. My heart fluttered with nervousness as I knocked on the door. I kept my head down, breathing deeply to try to calm myself while I waited. The sedative helped me focus on getting here but it wasn’t doing much for my mental state now.

The door opened and before I could lift my head I heard Noah’s voice say, "You're early." He stood to the side to let me in and I walked through without saying a word, eager to be out of the cold. "Do you have somewhere you need to be?" he asked.

I lifted my head and took my bonnet off. "Noah."

He looked disheveled. He was wearing proper clothes for the time but they looked dirty and untidy. His hair was a bit of a mess and he hadn’t shaved in at least a few weeks by the look of it. His eyes blazed with some intense emotion I couldn’t place. "Addy!" He rushed towards me and embraced me roughly. His grasp on me felt desperate and he let out a maniacal sort of laugh.

I hugged him back and felt overwhelmed by the relief at his recognition of me. I had half expected him to already not know me. I couldn’t help but notice the resemblances between him in this chaotic state and the older version of him I had spent the past few days with. It dawned on me that the intense fear I had seen in the older version of Noah was mirrored in his younger eyes. I wondered what he had to be so frightened of.

He released me from the hug but kept his hands grasped on my arms, as though he was worried I wasn’t really here. "How did you know?"

I pulled back a little to give him a puzzled look. The fear was gone but there was still a desperate look about him. "Know what?"

"That I wasn't able to come back."

I was confused. After spending so much time with the future Noah I had assumed the choice to stay was intentional. "What do you mean you weren't able to come back?"

"The sphere, it's not working.” He let go of my arms and vaguely gestured to some spot in the room. “How did you know?"

This news did not ease my confusion. "Noah, you did come back."

Now it was his turn to be confused. "But I'm still here," he said and gestured at himself.

"Well yes.” I hesitated, since I knew this news would upset him the most. “You didn't come back for seventy-two years."

He still didn't seem to understand. "Why would I wait seventy-two years?"

"That's what I'm here to find out. You're about to lose your memory, Noah. You won't even know what the sphere is for in a few hours."

Some small amount of clarity dawned on his face. "Oh, Adelaide. Oh no. That woman, the one who survived the witch burning..."

"The one you came here to find out how she survived? What about her?"

"She's coming here shortly. She's coming to erase my memory."

Chapter 12

I stood dumbstruck for a few moments. A witch was coming to erase Noah’s memory. What did he do to make her so angry at him? How could she possibly have that power? And why would he know this was going to happen and just accept it? I wasn't sure which question to ask first. "How soon?"

"About 2 and a half hours."

"Then I think you better start from the beginning of your mission."

He moved to the kitchen area, grabbed a bottle of something and poured two glasses. I didn't know what it was but I could smell the alcohol from across the room. "Sit down." He took the glasses and set them on a wooden table in the corner of the room. As I walked over I got a glimpse of the room for the first time. It was the equivalent of a studio apartment. There was a fireplace on the wall where I entered and a wood burning stove and some cupboards on the opposite end. A small bed was arranged in front of the fireplace. The table had a few papers scattered over the top of it and was barely large enough to sit two people comfortably. I sat but left the cup untouched as Noah began his story.

"Sarah Clayes is the woman who survived the burning. It was simple enough, actually. She knew what was coming and donned a leather bodice and leggings that had been soaked with water. She also covered her exposed skin with a mixture of dirt and a chemical that seems similar to asbestos. All she had to do was wait for the ropes that bound her to catch on fire then she was able to break free and run. Her overclothes were burning well enough no one thought she could survive let alone make it very far, and they were too afraid to pursue her right away anyway. I met her during her escape and helped her dispose of her burnt clothing and wash and find a place to lay low and recover from the wounds she did receive.

"I tended to her burns and left her with directions on how to treat the wounds and gave her some antiseptic ointments. Then I promised to check on her in a few days and left, with every intention of not following through on that promise. I came back here, updated my journal and packed my things. Here." He pulled the journal out from under a stack of papers and handed them to me. "April 23rd. Look it up, it was supposed to have been my last entry."

I leafed through the journal to April 23rd. There was Noah’s explanation of the witch burning, just as he told it to me. I turned the page and found the next one.

April 23rd, still.

I don't know what's wrong, I activated the sphere but nothing has happened. I'm still here. The button is not glowing, it usually glows. It can't possibly be out of power, can it? They never mentioned that as a possibility. They never mentioned getting stuck as a possibility either. I'll try again tomorrow. I don't know what else I can do.

I turned the page again.

April 24th.

There's still no light. I think the sphere might be dead. Nothing is happening when I push the button. Dear God, I think I might be stuck here in 1693.

I turned the page again.

April 25th. Still nothing.

April 26th. Still nothing.

April 27th. Still nothing.

It went on like that for a week until finally:

May 1st.

A new month. I went to see Sarah today. I didn't know what else to do. Her wounds are healing nicely. A few more weeks and she should be back to normal. The doctor questioned me today as to where I've been. I told him I was sick with a fever, and didn't want to run the risk of infecting anyone else. He was pleased with my dedication to the town's welfare. I left in a daze. Is this what my life is reduced to? The sphere failed to work again. I've been trying every few hours. I'm not going to give up trying. There is hope, I'm sure of it.

I closed the journal. I was relieved to know Noah’s delayed return was not intentional, that he did want to come back. I had doubted the lab’s belief that he was trying to be rebellious. I knew he enjoyed his job too much to give it up, and here was my confirmation.

I turned my attention back to the sphere. I knew at the very least that the sphere hadn't run out of power, since it wouldn't have worked in the future if that were the case. Perhap some external influence rendered it useless. "Did you try taking it outside? Perhaps this place is interfering with it somehow?"

"I did, Addy. I tried outside. I tried back in the woods where I arrived. I tried on the platform where they kill the witches. I tried in the church. I've been carrying it around with me ever since the day I accomplished my mission. I don't even care about my notes or my journal anymore. I'd leave them behind in an instant if it meant I could get back."

Panic struck me. I pulled out my own sphere and inhaled sharply. I opened the lid and saw the faint glow of the red button. I exhaled with a bit of a frantic laugh as I closed the lid again. I looked back up at Noah and felt a pang of guilt at his face.

"Well at least you can get back." His words had no sympathy, it was pure bitterness.

"Noah, I'm not leaving until we solve this." I tried to ignore the fact that that wasn't exactly what I was supposed to do. But what would they do when I got back, fire me? I didn't care. Kill me? That seemed an extreme response even for them. I'd never be allowed to go back in time again, I was fairly certain about that. But none of that mattered. What mattered was figuring out how to fix Noah’s sphere. "Can I see it?"

He pulled it out of a small pouch hanging off his belt and handed it to me. "Think you can fix it do you?" His voice sounded like a sneer.

"Noah, this is not my fault!"

His face fell. "You're right. I'm sorry, Addy. I've just been so desperate."

My attention wavered from him as I held the two spheres, one in each hand.

Noah continued, "This place is just so primitive compared to our time. The people are so foolish."

I flicked open the lid of his sphere and mine again. My light still glowed. It looked fine, still as strong as normal. On his though, absolutely nothing. A fear gripped me that whatever had happened to his sphere might happen to mine. I resisted the urge to flee immediately and tried to focus on the spheres, looking for another difference. Technically, they were both the same sphere.

"I was desperate," he said again.

The tone of his voice caught my attention again. He sounded afraid. I moved my gaze from the spheres to his face and focused on him instead. "Noah, what have you done?"

"I gave up, Addy. That woman, the one I helped, Sarah, she says she can help me forget everything. I didn't tell her why, I just told her I wanted to forget my past and she said she knew a potion that could help. She's making it now. She's bringing it here today, in a little while for me to drink."

"Why would you do that?"

"It's been months that I've been stuck here in this hell. This place, it gets to you. The people, their paranoia and obsessive religious practices. The complaints, all the time, and I can't do anything real for them.” He stood up from the table and started to pace, his hands pressing against his temples. “Simple things, like fevers are deadly. A small scratch can lead to an infection that leads to gangrene that leads to a lost limb that leads to another infection that leads to death. I couldn't take it anymore. I figured, if had never known, if I never knew what life could be like outside of this time." He paused and tried to calm himself. He sat back down and looked at me in earnest. "I thought maybe I'd be better off never knowing there was any other way to be. She said she owed me a favor, to thank me for helping her out." He rested his forehead on his hand on the table and took a few deep breaths. "You said seventy-two years?"

"Yes. The memory erasure works. Seventy-two years from now someone makes you aware of the sphere. My only guess is that in fiddling around with it you accidentally press the button." I didn’t want to tell him who it was that drew his attention back to the sphere.

"But I've lost my memory. I don't know who you are? What I'm doing?"

"No. You come back as a completely different person." I shoved my sphere back in my coat and pulled the picture I brought with me out of my skirt pocket. "This is you, in seventy-two years."

He took the picture and looked at it with disbelief and recognition. He didn't gaze at it for long before dropping it on the table with a defeated look on his face. "Seventy-two years. That's an entire lifetime for these people."

I hesitated. Noah didn't technically need to know what happens to him in those seventy-two years. But I was too good a friend to let it go unsaid. "You have a life. A good life. You get married and have children and grandchildren. You love your wife."

He snorted and when he turned to me disdain filled his voice. "That's not me and you know it."

"It's what you're about to be."

"So that's what this place turns me into is it? An average Joe?"

"Technically an average Montgomery."

He laughed at my joke, almost pathetically. "Thanks. Not a terribly appealing option though." His body nearly crumpled in the chair under the weight of the idea.

I pulled my sphere back out and looked down at the two of them in my hands. Aside from the light glowing in the one I had brought there was no discernable difference between the two. I was furious with the situation. I glared at the broken sphere and willed the light to turn on. My face burned at the injustice of it.

I looked back at my own sphere. I could give it to Noah. Let him go back and take his place in this world for as long as I had to. Perhaps Jim knew I would consider that as an option. Perhaps that explained why he grilled me so hard on the 1690s. It didn't have anything to do with getting me to calm down, it had to do with an unforeseen complication.

No
, I thought,
there has to be a way
. If it will work again at some point in the future there had to be a way to make it work now.

I had been trained as an engineer before I started working at the lab, and that innate desire to fix things kicked in. I pocketed my sphere again and focused on his. I rapped it once, hard against the table, then looked back at the button. Nothing. I closed the lid and shook it next to my ear, trying to listen for a loose connection. Nothing.

I opened it again and for the first time really looked at it. The surface was a smooth transition from the outer surface of the sphere to the inner hollow where the button started. Even the button didn't seem to have a discernible edge. I pulled on it slightly, but it had no give. I'd have to break it to get at the insides and even then I'd have no idea what was waiting for me in there or how it worked. It was Noah’s only way back, at some point, so breaking it probably wasn't a good idea either. But the lure of wanting to know what was inside was strong. I realized I had never given it any thought before. "I'd kill for a hammer and a multimeter right about now."

Noah laughed. Even though the situation was dire, just being around him again made me feel better. He took the sphere from my hand and turned it in his own, as though trying to see it from an outsider's perspective. "So if in the future I don't know what this is, how do I come across it again?"

"By accident. It's in a case with some of your medical stuff and it accidentally gets pulled out when you're retrieving something else."

He sighed and shifted in his seat, staring at the sphere. "I didn't even want this assignment. Jim said it was one of the board's pet projects. And for some reason it got pushed on me. In the grand scheme of life, who is really going to care about a woman that managed to escape a witch burning?"  He poked at the sphere on the table and let it roll halfway across before stopping it. "Maybe I've been set up."

"You may be opinionated but that hardly qualifies as a reason for dismissal." The idea soured my mind and sounded not altogether out of question. I took his hand to try and reassure him. "Remember, at some point it will work again. For all you know that could’ve been a few minutes after you lost your memory." While my hand was still there I took the sphere back and regarded it again.

I had never really considered the operation of the sphere, let alone what was inside. The actual time travel part Jim had sort of explained, but without a degree in quantum physics it had been nearly impossible to follow, and likewise difficult for him to explain. But a button I understood. It was a button that pushed some mechanism that triggered the time travel. I couldn't imagine why the glowing aspect would matter, but my limited amount of evidence at present impressed upon me the rationalization that it did. It should merely be an indication of power. But to lose power and regain it again at a later date didn't make sense either.