3~
The image on television showed the establishing shot of a man walking sedately through a forest clearing, unaware that he was being seen by most of the citizens of Crystal Cove.
The next scene was a closer shot of the man, now noticing that he was being recorded and responding with a friendly, peaceful smile.
"Hello, my name is Everest Greenman, former owner and CEO of the EverGreen Produce Company, and I am a warrior for this earth," he said with a nod to the camera. He then gestured broadly to the surrounding woods.
"Can you imagine a time when you heard a bird sing, saw a flower grow, or walked through a forest after a cool rain, and not felt ashamed of how the world saw you?" he asked. "There was a time, good people, when the word 'green' did not mean primitive, but meant beautiful, livable...powerful. I brought that word, and this world, back from the industrialized brink."
Greenman was favored another close-up, as he continued his walk. "You've seen the news, and I'm sure that you have questions. Allow me, then, to answer them. I did this. The world that you see, now, I did all of this. I conquered time, and I brought the world back to its senses. If you doubt me, you need only pick up a history book from outside of town, and compare it to what you have, here, to see the truth."
He stopped his stroll and faced the camera, directly, sincerely. "I tell you these things because I want you to join the community of the world. Don't be afraid of change, even if it came to you while you were sleeping. I promise, you'll find yourselves not grieving the death of the old world, but gladdened by it. How many people can say that they were given a fresh, new start in life? I give you a fresh, new world to live it in!
"But, to start anew, you must let go of your old ways. My beliefs say that sacrifice brings one closer to the truth, to freedom and understanding, and to the gods. You must sacrifice the old Crystal Cove, so that you may be ready to live in the new one. Forsake it; for it will not save you, in fact, its power was the very thing that kept you apart from the world and your loved ones. Leave it, if you must, but if you can't, then you must cast it off of you, with fire and ruin."
The camera panned back to allow the background of the clearing to be seen, to illustrate the immensity of what he said, next. "Do this, and imagine a place where every new day opened to new possibilities, every new person you meet opened new doors of discovery and opportunity."
The camera continued to pan back, and then, lifted itself into the sky, the scene ending as uplifting as his final words.
"This is the gift I bestow unto you, Crystal Cove. Embrace the new world, and let me be your humble guide through it. I have merely done the hard part, all you have to do...is believe."
The camera ascends into the clouds, and then, the commercial faded into a calming haze of white.
Mayor Janet Nettles picked up the remote control from her desk and turned off the television in her office, while her husband, Sheriff Bronson Stone, looked slightly perplexed.
"Was that some kind of political ad?" he asked her.
"It might as well be," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "With the people already worrying about how this new world will affect them, this character comes out of nowhere, and buys up advertising time, and makes his pitch to be the people's savior by telling them to burn their home to the ground, so that he can make it into a, quote-unquote, paradise."
Stone gave a dismissive shrug. "He must be a hippy. He's a hippy, right? He sounds like a hippy. I thought we heard the last of them when I busted that Ringleader guy, a few months back."
Mayor Nettles overlooked his revisionist version of events, and held her chin in thoughtful concern. "All I'm hearing, on the street, is that people are starting to agree with the opinion that I'm losing control of the situation. The last thing I need is a coup in Crystal Cove. I have to be there for my people, and I can't do that if I, somehow, ousted."
Seeing his wife troubled, put Stone on the defensive. No one inconvenienced a Stone and got away with it. "You know, wife of mine, as sheriff of this fine town, I have vast resources and broad powers of persuasion at my command. Just say the word...or not, and I can get this guy off your back, in a hurry, if you get my meaning."
Janet couldn't help but smile. He could always do that. She got up from her chair and walked over to him.
"Oh, Bronson," she said, laying her head upon his massive chest, hearing his manly heartbeat, and wishing it could drown out the thoughts in her troubled mind. "I love it when you hint at coercion and well-meaning violations of civil statutes, but strong-arm tactic won't work. I have to show the people that, even though they're in a panic, they can look to me and my administration to see them through this."
Stone gave her a kiss on the top of her head. "All right, then. No leaning on the fruit cake, but I'll be keeping an eye on him, just in case."
"Thanks, honey."
Stone gave a glance at the clock on the wall and reluctantly broke his hold on her. "Uh-oh, my lunch break is almost over. Duty calls."
"Yeah," Janet said, wistfully. "My duty calls, too."
"Then, I guess those laxatives are finally working," Stone joked, earning him a playful punch in the arm.
"I'll see you at home," she told him.
"Will do!" he answered back, with a jaunty wave, as he walked out of the office.
Clad in the simple disguise of a lab coat, to pose as a scientist, Marcie left the Clue Cruiser parked by the old, grass-choked path that turned off of the seaside road that wound from the edge of town.
Her hair and clothes rustled against the ocean breeze that played through this elevated area, which lent her a view of thick cloud banks, moving across the sky, like frigates. A small, square building was the only structure standing, besides the crooked, broken, weather-beaten picket fencing that still tried to encircle the property.
Marcie pulled out a folder sheet of paper from her jacket pocket and unfurled it, studying the printed-out map, computer-translated from raw coordinates, which showed the location of where the Questoid prototype had been broadcasting to. It seemed to be the place.
As she approached closer, crying seagulls, possibly alerted to her presence, circled high over the guano-covered roof of an old beach house, a bungalow, which sat two hundred feet from the edge of a bluff that commanded the view of the sky above, the beach below, and the sea beyond.
Stepping through a gap in the fencing, she made her way up the walkway to the rotted stairs and the equally decrepit porch, where she saw a pelican smoothly turn its head to regard her.
She was strongly reminded of her past entry into Quest's facility in old Gatorsburg, with its entrance hidden under the rot of the old Bellow Mansion, and guarded by electronic means via animatronics of local wildlife. The pelican, which was watching her near with its tiny camera eyes, opened its pouched maw, revealing a small keypad within.
Marcie gave a sigh of trepidation, as her hand hovered over the keys. There was no doubt that security was studying her on the other side of that 'bird's' eyes, and if the entry code that the prototype provided, didn't match with their records, then like before, she feared that platoon of quick-witted guards would burst through the front door and overwhelm her before she had a chance to reach her car.
She tapped in the alphanumeric string that she committed to memory, into the keypad, all the while, trying to look as though she had always belonged there.
The pelican said nothing to confirm or deny her, and continued to stare, the gulls, overhead, sounding as if they were laughing at her failure.
The silence and Marcie's anxiety grew by seconds, and she knew that if she just broke and ran, it was all over, so she held her nerve for as long as it looked convincing.
Looking at the keypad, she wondered what she missed, when she noticed a green button below the rest of the key, jogging her worry-addled mind.
"Ugh! Forgot to press Enter, you pea-brain," she scolded herself, in a whisper. She tapped it quickly, and hoped that security hadn't notice her lengthy faux-pas.
"Enter," the pelican bade with a tinny, electronic voice.
Marcie exhaled, gratefully, as the secretly reinforced front door slowly swung open for her, and she walked cautiously into the foyer.
The first-floor interior of the bungalow was naturally smaller than Bellow Mansion's, but no less rotten and decayed, as she moved from the foyer into the neighboring mini-kitchen and towards the breakfast nook, looking for any sign of an elevator.
"If the layout's the same as it was in Gatorsburg," Marcie mused to herself. "Then, the elevator should be..." She turned right.
Next door from the nook was a pantry room. Mentally recalling that the elevator shaft in Bellow Mansion was erected in the center of its first floor, she also remembered the overall size of this building, from outside, and surmised that she was now in the very center of it, so she opened the pantry's weathered door and entered the room.
The 'pantry' turned out to be a narrow, cylindrical room, with an elevator button panel built into the curved wall.
"Hmm, smaller than I remember," she muttered, studying a wall map of the reduced dimensions of this base, six levels instead of the twelve in the Gatorsburg lab; Entrance Level, Administrative/Residential Level, Bio/Chemical Research Level, Electronics Level, Hangar/Storage Level, Engineering Level.
Still, all of the levels followed a similar layout, huge, circular affairs with the main elevator and another shaft that started on the next level, positioned at what would have been polar north and south on a compass.
"Well, here goes nothing," she said, pressing a button marked Two.
The room stood still, but the floor under her shuddered slightly, and then, descended, taking Marcie down into the dim depths of the service shaft.
The curved door of the shaft opened before her, and she exited onto the lobby of the Administration Level. The bright, now familiar, hexagonal corridors were as she remembered them, filled with lab coated staff moving from here to there, on their assigned tasks.
Confident that she could successfully blend in, Marcie stepped out into her role as another white-clad, non-descript lab worker.
The mini-map on the wall next to the elevator door showcased the various rooms on this floor, and she was about to read the marked rooms, when a voice called out to her, feminine and ebullient.
"Hey, stranger! Long time, no see!"
Marcie anxiously turned to the sound to see, unexpectedly, another fixture to a place like this. Tanya, the lab worker that greeted her in Gatorsburg, walked over, upon seeing her.
"Hey, fancy meeting you here," Marcie said to her, sliding into small talk. If there was anyone who could guide her through this place without suspicion, it would be Tanya. "I, uh, guess we all were transferred when the Gatorburg base went up. I just arrived. I would've got here sooner, except for all of the red tape."
"Oh, I hear you. I saw you looking at the map on the wall. Trying to know your way around, again?"
Marcie sheepishly shrugged. "Yeah. I guess I'm always lost. Can you help me? I'm trying to find where computer records are kept, like an archive."
Tanya brightened. "Oh, you want Operations. I'll take you there. It's on my way."
Tanya lost no time leading Marcie along, navigating through the groups of workers in the hallway, with purposeful ease.
"I'm glad you got out when the last base went up," Marcie said, conversationally, yet she was being sincere about that. The woman felt like an oasis of amity in a sea of ill-will. "I wonder what happened."
Tanya waved it away. "Oh, you know. A couple of meddlers find a way to get in, tamper with a time machine, and then, sabotage everything before they high-tail it back to Crystal Cove. The usual."
Marcie chuckled lightly to keep up the pretense, as they reached the gleaming white doors of Operations, the department that oversaw everything in the complex.
"Thanks again, Tanya. You're a life-saver," she said, waiting for the doors to open after pressing the large button on the wall in front of her. "Y'know, I was, kind of, curious. What department did you work for back at Gatorsburg?"
The doors finally parted, terrifying her. A self-satisfied Benton Quest standing in the threshold, flanked by two Questoids.
Marcie gasped at the sight, and then, stiffened and gasped more sharply at the stabbing of a dart fired into her backside at point-blank range. Her consciousness flew away from her, as she collapsed by the doorway.
"I was in Security," Tanya said, holstering the dart gun, and standing over her sleeping captive.
"I have taken my rightful place, my gods, a seat that I should have never left empty," Greenman said, with solemn pride, to his alter.
"Do you regret leaving the past to follow your destiny, or give us our due?" asked the trio, from their clearing in the mind-forest, in unison.
Unbowed, Greenman stared into their unfathomable eyes. "Never. I left when I did, so I could hurry and catch my prey while he still lived. I took a great chance in changing history, in light of this. He could have been swept away in the change, like so many others, and I would have failed to give my father the avenging he deserved."
"Do you think your words sway the people of this village?"
"I believe so," Greenman nodded. "Despite Crystal Cove standing untouched from the time change, I can use the town's fear and uncertainty to my benefit."
"To what end?"
"As the people's anxiety grows, their desire to lash out at what they don't understand will manifest," he explained. "The mayor and the police will be too busy trying to control them to focus on my devotions, leaving me free to fulfill my oaths to you and my father."
The three gods nodded, approvingly. "Cunning, as always, but be mindful."
Greenman knew who they were referring to, yet again, and he risked their offense by scoffing at their council. "Of the Marcie girl? I will crush her, if she stands against me. I will crush her, in any event."
"Be careful, all the same," they warned. "She is the unwitting druidess who will harm your legacy. If she claims victory over you, in her wisdom, she may not travel down the river of time to undo your great and terrible works, but she will unseat you before the false followers, and they will claim her as one of their own. In her ignorance, she will steal your power. Defeat her."
Greenman frowned at such a scenario. Nothing should conspire to undo his efforts, now. "How?"
"By her past actions, she is your mirror," said the cryptic answer. "Use her strength against her."
He was confused. "My mirror? Her strength? Do you mean her intelligence?"
"Something more primal," they pressed. "Consider. Why does she vex you so? What...or who does she fight for?"
There was a moment when Greenman had to slow down from his plans to think of her, her annoying defiance at the undoing of her...
The answer struck him, like enlightening thunder, and he had to smile at the utter cunning of it.
"Of course!" he whispered in awe, to himself, before taking his cell phone out of his silk vest pocket. "Of course."
Marcie's eyes fluttered open despite the mild headache she was suffering. Vision clearing, she looked around at the dark-colored room she was in.
Three figures stood by a bare table, sitting a few feet from in front of her-Benton Quest and his two bookend Questoids.
As her senses returned to her, Marcie noticed that she was sitting upright in a reclining metal chair, and that, when she tried to stand from it, was securely restrained in that chair.
From her condition, and the spartan environs of the chamber, it didn't take Marcie long to make a conjecture about the place's function.
"What is this, an interrogation room?" she asked the trio, ahead. "Who has that in their laboratory?"
"I do," Quest said, as he calmly walked over to the immobilized girl.
Marcie turned her head to watch her captor, and sighed when it made her had throb. "Y'know, Quest, if you want, I can give you the formula for a much better knock-out solution. None of the headache, all of the fuzz."
Quest nodded, graciously. "Thank you, Miss Fleach. Remind me to ask you for that, while I'm interrogating you."
"No problem. By the way, what happened?"
"Oh, you were caught trying to infiltrate my base...again," Quest answered, circling her chair, patiently. "You see, Miss Fleach, I'm the spider, here, this is my web, and there isn't a single vibration on it that I'm not aware of."
He went to the table and stood between it and her, for effect. "For example, my security and I found it most fascinating that you, somehow, located my laboratory, and then, walked in using an entry code with a Questoid security prefix. That might have something to do with that distress signal that we detected, moving all over Crystal Cove, recently. Fascinating, but then, that's to be expected from the daughter of Lab Rat."
"Runs in the family," Marcie replied, smoothly.
"Speaking of which, your 'Lil Annie cost me a secret laboratory in the swamps. In the swamps! Do you have any idea of how impressive that was? Anyway, I never had the chance to find her and thank her for that, and for burning my boy."
Marcie stiffened. She was reminded of the continual threat her mother was under as long as Quest sought her out, but she would not give the satisfaction of her worry.
"You'll never catch her, Quest," she challenged. "She's way smarter than you."
Quest shrugged and retorted. "She's certainly smarter than you, because, here you are. But, I'll settle my business with your meddlesome mother, soon enough."
"Being meddlesome is in the blood, Quest. I'll stop you before any of that happens," she said, flippantly. "Anyway, where's Greenman?"
"Where are your manners, young lady?" Quest asked, coolly. "You will refer to me as Doctor Quest."
"Maybe, if you still were one!"
The scientist gave her an intimidating smirk that spoke of dark things yet to come. "Still defiant, hmm?"
"You don't scare me, you quack! Now, where is he? I know you two are working together."
"Who knows?" he sighed. "He comes and goes, as he pleases. He's probably at his home, in the woods, communing with the spirits, or talking to animals, or some such nonsense."
Marcie was taken aback by his knowledge of the man. "Then, you know that he's a druid?"
"That is what he claims, well that, and he needs my help with his mad, little crusade," Quest scoffed. "Yet, according to the local news, it's not so little, hmm?"
"Obviously," she muttered. "So, let me hazard a guess. You moved the Hour Arch from Gatorsburg, and then, allowed Greenman to go back in time to start his crusade and make the world pagan. But, what I don't understand why you'd help him do all of that, in the first place. Hadji said that you wanted to use the Hour Arch to save your wife and create a new, temporal empire."
Quest sat on the tabletop and decided to explain. Where was she going to go, anyway?
"Well, a partnership was struck because he had possession of the Sundial technology I needed, and was certainly rich enough to fund my work on reverse-engineering it," he said. "However, when I was done, I would need a guinea pig to test it. Just because I had it up and running, didn't mean it was ready for human trials, just yet. No matter what you may think of me, I am still a scientist.
"In any event, Greenman was so keen to jump into the past, and do whatever he was going to do there, that he couldn't wait. My people and I were just lucky that we moved operations, here, and that this town, somehow, protected itself from the end result of Greenman's little sojourn."
"What about your wife?" Marcie asked.
Quest sighed. "Greenman altered history so much, at this point, that I'm not even sure that my wife is still around. Theoretically, her personal history would have changed, as did everything else, so maybe, she's exists in this new timeline as someone who doesn't know me."
Then, he gave a tight smile of triumph. "What I am confident of, however, is that with history changed, my past is forever expunged. I'm a free man, with a new world opened before me and my science. As far as I'm concerned, my wife belongs in the past, whichever past she's currently in."
"What a romantic," she scoffed.
"As for the Temporacratic Imperium of Quest, it will still come to fruition, on the undone history of Greenman's moronic crusade, once he's eliminated, of course," he said, ignoring her jibe.
"So your stringing him along to get everything you can from him, and then, you're going to go back to before he started all of this, and undo everything he did?" Marcie asked, fascinated that her prime adversary was being two-timed by her secondary one. If only they could wipe each other out.
Benton stood up from the table, finishing his tale, and eager to move on. "Life is full of little betrayals, Miss Fleach. With a fully-tested Hour Arch, my trusted inner circle, and a growing, manufactured army of Questoids, history will soon be getting a serious make-over. But, that shouldn't concern you, anymore. I have to leave, now, to see to that new history, while I let Jonny see to you."
He looked back at the automatons that stood obediently on the other side of the table.
"Watch her until my son arrives," he ordered them.
Then, Quest muttered, as he departed through the room's opening door, "I just hope he doesn't leave too big a mess, this time."