Ghost in the Machine
(Further Excerpts from the Journal of Alexander Hartdegen)
Part II: Stranger in a Strange Land
February 27th, 802,702
Beloved Emma,
I have christened the airship the Liberty. We cast off this morning: Ayer,
Tull, Madi, Kalen and I. As we are uncertain of how long our journey will be,
we only brought a few days' worth of fruit, preserved fish, and jars of water.
When that fails us, if we are not returned, we shall have to put down to forage.
Our lift off went exactly as planned, but for one missing facet that plagued me.
Mara had not been in our dwelling when I had awoken; I did not see her as I
prepared to leave, and when the time to cast off arrived, she was not there to
see us off. At the time, I assumed that she was still upset with me for not
allowing her to join us. I asked Toren to tell her good-bye for me, and to look
after her until my return.
Imagine my surprise to find her, a few hours later, hiding in the gondola under
the blankets that we brought. I was quite short with her, I'm afraid; she simply
doesn't seem to understand the danger of this journey. I pointed out to her that
because of the weight concerns, we shall now have to send Kalen and the other
boys back with the children in the Liberty, whilst we return on foot (I will
_not_ allow her to make such a journey alone). We will undoubtedly be dogged
by Morlocks the entire way, and will be unable to rest.
And still she smiled when I told her this, saying that we would, at least,
be together.
I lost my temper, and said something terrible about her that I don't truly
believe. The look on her face tore my heart in two, but before I could speak
again, she slapped me across the face. She now sits in the prow of the gondola,
and will not look at me. Kalen sits by her, and I know enough of the Eloi tongue
to recognize that he tells her that I did not mean my words, but I am the one
from whom she needs such reassurance.
The choker that she bound about my neck so many months ago feels a great weight
just now, as though it too condemns my words. I must find a way to beg her
forgiveness, and still make her understand the fear that grips me when I think
that something might happen to her. I do not want to stand over her grave as I
did yours.
The problem, you see, is that we cannot set down to send her home; we are
already too far away. Once in the air, a strong wind sweeping down the river
caught us, and has carried us swiftly on our way. From the motion of the clouds,
I suspect that our trip back will be by tacking into a higher wind that flows
from east to west, rather than this rough north-south. I hope that the Liberty
will be able to reach that higher wind, carrying the children.
From this height, I can see the ocean, a glimmering line on the horizon. It
still exists, off to the east, but is now separated from the river by a wide
swath of rolling jungle that trails into grassland (and probably marshes) before
reaching the sea. To the west, the thick forest spreads to the foot of the
jagged, steep mountains that must once have been the gentle Appalachians. I
cannot see beyond their heights. To the north and south, the river flows on,
wending off into the blurred distance in both directions.
There is as yet no sign of any other Eloi village. It occurs to me that there
is no reason to expect this other village to look anything like ours, and I fear
that we may miss it completely. The boys are keeping a sharp lookout for any
sign of human habitation - such as smoke, or odd clearings - or of the boats,
though we have little hope of finding those at this point. If nothing else, we
will surely see any monumental architecture such as the Morlocks' Sphinx, which
I hope is a common method of warning off Eloi from their caves.
My eyes sting, surely because of the wind.
I believe I shall go speak to Mara now.
With Love,
Alexander
February 28th, 802,702
My Dearest Emma,
I can breathe again; Mara accepted my apology. When I told her why I had
behaved so despicably toward her, she embraced me, and asked forgiveness for
raising her hand against me. Curled against my chest, with her fingers twined
about the necklace that she made for me, she confessed that she felt the same
way: that she daren't let me out of her sight, for fear something might happen
to me when she wasn't there to protect me.
It is quite strange to me to hear that, from her. I know that it is something
you never would have said, nor even considered. But then, our Age never asked
us to endure such a perilous life as this.
Perhaps this Age is kinder in its honesty. The danger, in our time, was unexpected.
That was yesterday evening, before the sun set, that I apologized. The night
passed uneventfully; we slept in shifts, and we saw nothing below but the thin
silver ribbon of the river, illuminated by the remains of the moon. Ayer and Tull
passed their time quietly discussing their next story, bit said that they were not
yet ready to share it.
As the sun arose, however, we sighted something strange ahead of us to the south.
At first it appeared to be some sort of immense bubble, but as we neared, the object
revealed itself to be an immense mass of what appears to be glass. It is not a
smooth dome as was imagined to perhaps shelter a city in our day; rather, it seems
to be warped and bulbous, with a skeletal structure of metal, similar to a glass-
house. I suspect that it was constructed by need rather than graceful planning.
Whatever need drove this city to so cover itself - be it the moon-fall or something
else before or after that cataclysm - the shelter eventually failed. The thing is
fallen at one side, torn and broken.
A massive outcrop of bare rock juts out from the ruins. Perhaps it was indeed the
moon-fall that felled this place.
As we near, Madi's sharp eyes have just picked out something in the fields beyond
woods, previously hidden to us by the outcrop of rock. It appears to be a structure
surmounted by some kind of statue; from this distance it resembles our Morlocks'
Sphinx, although the construction seems to be more solid.
I can see white pillars among the glass below. Perhaps we have come so far as
Philadelphia or Washington, or some younger city with whom I am unfamiliar, with
this swift wind at our back.
In any case, we may have found our destination. We are landing to investigate.
With hope,
Alexander
February 28th, 802,702 (evening)
Darling Emma,
We have indeed come upon what was once Washington. Apparently, the city survived
the initial fall of the moon intact, and its people desperately tried to remain
above-ground by encasing the entire area in the shelter that I described earlier.
That lunar catastrophe must have continued for some time, however - rather like an
earthquake that trails smaller tremors in its wake - and the "outcrop" of rock must
have fallen into the city later on.
We put down up river from the "dome", for lack of a better term, and spent the
morning cautiously walking in. We must be wary in our approach of the possible Sphinx,
if we are to successfully rescue the children, so we chose to approach it by land;
it is on the far side of the city from us. The Liberty we hid, as well as we could,
in a dell among the trees.
It was the monuments of the city that identified it - white columns still standing,
reaching like fingers to the sky - and the right-angles of what remains of the streets. Unfortunately, most of the buildings are gone, toppled and swallowed by the swamp
that the city seems to be sinking in to. It is primarily the dome itself that tells
us that a city died here - little trace remains.
The way has been rough; we have been wading, constantly walking on submerged broken
stone, feeling our way with sticks, and swimming the gaps that must have been streets.
Already, the sole of my left shoe has come loose, and I've had to bind it back on. The
place hums with small insects of the carnivorous variety, and on our way we sometimes
glimpsed large movement in the water. The humidity only makes the warmth more
oppressive. Perhaps on the way back, we shall skirt the city through the higher woods
to the west, instead.
We stopped to rest at a dry hill. It appears to have been a building at one time,
but has been so covered in silt and vegetation that it barely resembles the original
structure. It reminds me of the sketches of abandoned temples in India that the
Smithsonian published. Of course, it occurs to me that one of these hills probably
was the Smithsonian, long ago.
We intend to rest here for the night, keeping watch in shifts as we did before. We
cannot risk a fire, as it might draw attention to us. I must stop writing now, for
the sun is setting.
Yours Truly,
Alexander
March 1st, 802,702
My Cherished Emma,
We have encountered Doctor Taylor.
Last night, I was awoken by Ayer, who was on watch. Only the thin moonlight
illuminated the misty swamp around us as he led me to the edge of our guardian
trees, and pointed. There seemed to be something coming toward us through the fog,
stumbling through the water. From the sound of it, it was human-sized, and drawing
near.
Ayer motioned that I should hide, or perhaps warn the others, whilst he planted
himself with his staff in wait. However, at that point we heard another sound that
the intruder was making - it seemed to be muttering to itself. I must confess, it took
me a little to realize that the voice was speaking in English - but more rapidly than
I've grown used to. As soon as I realized, I motioned Ayer back.
Cautiously, I called out, "Hello?"
The sound stopped, then suddenly erupted in a frenzy of splashing, sloshing through
the thick swamp water. The figure that emerged before us from the fog was that of a
filthy, bedraggled woman.
She crawled up onto the great tree-roots that reached from our "island" to the water,
pitifully reaching upward and begging for help. I took her hand, and Ayer and I pulled
her up, whence she collapsed in my arms.
Her clothing - fitted pants and a jacket of some strange material that I did not
recognize - was torn, exposing a few gashes and cuts, and her muddied hair was cropped
somewhat short. She babbled her thanks, and of hideous beasts, and of some unfavorable
report that she was going to give. We soon quieted her and guided her back to where the
others slept. I instructed her to rest under our protection, and tell us her tale in
the morning; she was only too happy to comply. I remained awake, on watch with Ayer,
until the dawn.
As the grey mist hid the sunrise from us, the others awoke. I introduced the poor
woman as we ate the fruit that we'd carried with us, and told of how she had appeared.
She then spoke, thanking us for the food, and explained herself. She could proceed no
further than her introduction, however, before she was interrupted - for her name is
Doctor Cassandra Taylor.
"Are you the one who fixed the other Photonic?" Kalen immediately asked, sitting before
her with his hands in his lap as he did when listening to one of our Vox's stories. The
other boys mimicked the pose.
Doctor Taylor nodded, frowning. "What do you mean, 'other Photonic'?" she asked in
return. "Are there others still in operation?"
"Only ours," Mara said, moving forward to inspect a long scratch down the woman's
arm. I noticed the Doctor bite her lip in uncertainty, then allow Mara to take her
arm. "I will bind this, help it to heal," Mara told her, and moved aside to one of
our supply sacks for bandages.
"Thanks," the Doctor responded, unconsciously picking dried mud from her blond hair
with her free hand. "I take it Marian finally got through, then. She hadn't found a
satellite when I left her."
"Marian?" I asked, confused - and then realized that she meant the Photonic that she
had repaired.
"The Library of Congress Photonic is one of the oldest, the first mark III that was
set up," Doctor Taylor explained. "She retains a lot of the mark II programming from
before that. Somewhere along the line someone named her Marian the Librarian and it
stuck. More personable than Vox DC-001, I suppose."
At this point I began to strongly suspect the woman's origin. "How is it that you know
so much about Photonics?" I asked. I realized that I must have sounded quite suspicious
of her.
She looked at me with an odd expression, then winced a little as Mara lay Nefi leaves
over her wound and began to bind them on. "Why is your accent different than theirs?"
She asked me, brow furrowed. "And why do all of you speak English at all, for that
matter?" She tilted her head, staring at me again. "Do I know you?"
"I don't believe so," I responded, but something in the tilt of her head caught in my
memory, and I realized that I had indeed seen her before. Several months - eons -
previous, I had encountered her on the streets of New York City, shortly before I
first met the Photonic. Indeed, she had been the first person in the future that I
had spoken to.
"Hey, yeah!" She suddenly exclaimed, straightening up. "You were the guy with the
cappuccino machine!" She slapped her free hand to her forehead. "God, everything
makes sense now. I never put it together because your rig wasn't gyroscopic - when
did you start out?" She suddenly rocked forward onto her knees, thoughtlessly pulling
her wounded arm from Mara's hands and bringing her face uncomfortably close to mine.
"Where's your machine?" She asked, with a strange look in her eyes that was at once
desperate and exhilarated.
"His machine is gone," Mara said, taking her arm again so that she could finish
bandaging it. She pulled the Doctor back a bit more roughly than I would have
expected, causing the woman to wince again.
"Did you travel through time as well?" Kalen asked with interest.
"Are you also a wandering idiot?" Tull asked at the same time, with mock innocence.
Ayer and Madi snickered.
Doctor Taylor opened her mouth as though she was about to speak to Kalen, but
instead gaped at Tull, confused. "Aveh," Madi spoke a word of agreement to his
fellows, and the boys snickered.
I cleared my throat in the hopes of quieting them. "Forgive me - we did not
complete our introductions," I said, changing the subject as best I could. "This
is Ayer, Tull, Madi, Kalen, and Mara. I am..." I hesitated, but I wished to give
this woman the proper respect due her title, if only to make her a little more at
ease. "...Professor Alexander Hartdegen."
Doctor Taylor snapped her mouth shut, blinking as she sat back. "That - that really
does explain everything," she said simply, shaking her head. Then she extended her
free hand, as though she knew better than to disturb Mara's work again. "I'm very
pleased to meet you, Professor Hartdegen. What little of your work we could find was
quite useful to our own project."
I shook her hand, my questions answered without being asked. Some time after our
brief meeting in New York, she (and several other scientists, from the sound of it)
had also discovered the secret of time travel.
She blinked again, hesitating as she withdrew her hand. "Have you -" she seemed to
be sorting through something in her mind. "Yes, if your machine is... gone... then
you must have met me already. I can't remember it very clearly, I'm sorry. That
was... going on eight years ago, for me."
I similarly tallied in my mind. "A bit more than seven months ago, for me," I
informed her. "But tell us, what happened to you, since you fixed the Photonic?"
The question gave her pause, and she closed her eyes. "I should have gone directly
back to my machine, when I found that... that what I was after wasn't here. I was...
I was trying to track down this big shockwave we detected... happened somewhen about
now, plus or minus three years. Massive time distortion. It'll pretty much prove my
time-model theory, if I can locate the source and use the vortex to..."
She stopped herself. "Sorry. Going all technical there... That's rude in mixed
company." She smiled a bit at Kalen and the boys - and then her expression melted
into something rather like shock. "Oh..." She turned back to me. "You... you didn't...
overload your machine, did you? You said it was gone..." She swallowed, appearing quite
uncomfortable.
"Alexander destroyed his machine, so that we could escape," Mara began. "He came to
save me when -"
But Doctor Taylor simply spoke over Mara, her breath quick and her skin quite pale,
as though she'd just had a terrible scare. "Well... Well, I'm very glad that my
theory holds... Under the single timeline theory, we should have ceased to exist."
She gave me a rather nervous smile. "Whew! So you hit upon the timeweb theory on your
own, didn't you? Of course you did..."
I really didn't know what to make of her babbling. At my blank expression, her face
went ashen again, and she put her head in her hands. "Oh... my... you... you twit."
I've still no idea of what set her off so. Mara put out a hand to the Doctor's
trembling shoulder, but the woman suddenly uncurled again, an unnaturally bright
smile on her face. The boys actually looked concerned at her behavior, and Kalen
moved a little closer to me.
"I'll just not worry about that now," she said in a strained voice. "You asked about
what happened. I went exploring, that's what happened. And when it got dark, I headed
back to my machine, only it was gone. And then these... these _things_ came out of
nowhere, and took me down a bunker and locked me up... I must have been down there
for days before I got one of those monsters with my tazer and managed to get out.
Took me forever to figure out where I was... I was heading back to Marian. Nothing
better to do."
"You were captured by Morlocks?" Kalen asked.
"What's a tazer?" Ayer interrupted, quite interested in anything that could
"get" a Morlock.
"It gives electric shocks," Doctor Taylor said to the boy. "Doesn't matter, the
battery died, and I lost it in this... swamp..." She scowled at the foliage about
us. Now that the sun was up, the mist was burning away, it was becoming quite warm
again. "What's a Morlock?"
I was surprised when Mara answered before I could. "They were once people, like -
like Alexander," she said, struggling for a frame of reference. "That is what their
Lord told us. But they turned into monsters..." She shrugged.
"And here I thought that Doctor Moreau had taken up residence,"
Doctor Taylor grumbled.
"I will explain to you later," I told her; I shall have to ask about her comment
later. "Can you take us back to where you escaped from, or at least show us the
way? These... these creatures have also captured my..." I faltered, and Mara
turned to me. It still seemed odd to say it. "...My village's children..."
Of course, we still had no idea if we had found the right Morlocks, and there was
still the added factor of the kidnappers being Eloi. In fact, Doctor Taylor has
made no indication of encountering Eloi in this area at all. However, her next words
set our course of action in stone.
"Those were your children?" She asked.
And so we now set out again, with Doctor Taylor in the lead. She says that she
intended to return to this underground in any case to retrieve her machine, after
consulting Marian, which will be our first stop. She also gave us the greatest news
that we could have hoped for: the children were still alive, as of when she had
escaped, about two days ago.
I shall write more when I can. Wish us luck, dear one.
With hope,
Alexander
Author's Note: There are no coincidences. (cue X-Files theme)
Look! Look! Info for Theed and anyone reading!
fanfiction.net has finally put up an H.G. Welles category in the Books section.
(There's nothing there yet, so you can't check it out... but we can upload to it!)
I'll be moving my stuff there, but it will take re-uploading and deleting the stories
in the current section, since it's not in the Movies section.
That means we'd lose our feedbacks...
so I'll be pasting mine into my chapter files as I re-upload. :-)
(Maybe this will get me to go back to playing with "War of the Worlds" as I once did...)
I won't be moving my stories 'till I'm done with this one, though, to reduce confusion.
...might move the one-shot first, though. But not tonight...
Anyway... more for Theed. Found, on amazon.com of all places,
that... Emma's last name is Malloy. That's according to their movie cast, but
that's the only place I've seen it (it's not even on the official site). Odd, eh?
...And that's it from me... I'm going to bed.
-Starherd
(Further Excerpts from the Journal of Alexander Hartdegen)
Part II: Stranger in a Strange Land
February 27th, 802,702
Beloved Emma,
I have christened the airship the Liberty. We cast off this morning: Ayer,
Tull, Madi, Kalen and I. As we are uncertain of how long our journey will be,
we only brought a few days' worth of fruit, preserved fish, and jars of water.
When that fails us, if we are not returned, we shall have to put down to forage.
Our lift off went exactly as planned, but for one missing facet that plagued me.
Mara had not been in our dwelling when I had awoken; I did not see her as I
prepared to leave, and when the time to cast off arrived, she was not there to
see us off. At the time, I assumed that she was still upset with me for not
allowing her to join us. I asked Toren to tell her good-bye for me, and to look
after her until my return.
Imagine my surprise to find her, a few hours later, hiding in the gondola under
the blankets that we brought. I was quite short with her, I'm afraid; she simply
doesn't seem to understand the danger of this journey. I pointed out to her that
because of the weight concerns, we shall now have to send Kalen and the other
boys back with the children in the Liberty, whilst we return on foot (I will
_not_ allow her to make such a journey alone). We will undoubtedly be dogged
by Morlocks the entire way, and will be unable to rest.
And still she smiled when I told her this, saying that we would, at least,
be together.
I lost my temper, and said something terrible about her that I don't truly
believe. The look on her face tore my heart in two, but before I could speak
again, she slapped me across the face. She now sits in the prow of the gondola,
and will not look at me. Kalen sits by her, and I know enough of the Eloi tongue
to recognize that he tells her that I did not mean my words, but I am the one
from whom she needs such reassurance.
The choker that she bound about my neck so many months ago feels a great weight
just now, as though it too condemns my words. I must find a way to beg her
forgiveness, and still make her understand the fear that grips me when I think
that something might happen to her. I do not want to stand over her grave as I
did yours.
The problem, you see, is that we cannot set down to send her home; we are
already too far away. Once in the air, a strong wind sweeping down the river
caught us, and has carried us swiftly on our way. From the motion of the clouds,
I suspect that our trip back will be by tacking into a higher wind that flows
from east to west, rather than this rough north-south. I hope that the Liberty
will be able to reach that higher wind, carrying the children.
From this height, I can see the ocean, a glimmering line on the horizon. It
still exists, off to the east, but is now separated from the river by a wide
swath of rolling jungle that trails into grassland (and probably marshes) before
reaching the sea. To the west, the thick forest spreads to the foot of the
jagged, steep mountains that must once have been the gentle Appalachians. I
cannot see beyond their heights. To the north and south, the river flows on,
wending off into the blurred distance in both directions.
There is as yet no sign of any other Eloi village. It occurs to me that there
is no reason to expect this other village to look anything like ours, and I fear
that we may miss it completely. The boys are keeping a sharp lookout for any
sign of human habitation - such as smoke, or odd clearings - or of the boats,
though we have little hope of finding those at this point. If nothing else, we
will surely see any monumental architecture such as the Morlocks' Sphinx, which
I hope is a common method of warning off Eloi from their caves.
My eyes sting, surely because of the wind.
I believe I shall go speak to Mara now.
With Love,
Alexander
February 28th, 802,702
My Dearest Emma,
I can breathe again; Mara accepted my apology. When I told her why I had
behaved so despicably toward her, she embraced me, and asked forgiveness for
raising her hand against me. Curled against my chest, with her fingers twined
about the necklace that she made for me, she confessed that she felt the same
way: that she daren't let me out of her sight, for fear something might happen
to me when she wasn't there to protect me.
It is quite strange to me to hear that, from her. I know that it is something
you never would have said, nor even considered. But then, our Age never asked
us to endure such a perilous life as this.
Perhaps this Age is kinder in its honesty. The danger, in our time, was unexpected.
That was yesterday evening, before the sun set, that I apologized. The night
passed uneventfully; we slept in shifts, and we saw nothing below but the thin
silver ribbon of the river, illuminated by the remains of the moon. Ayer and Tull
passed their time quietly discussing their next story, bit said that they were not
yet ready to share it.
As the sun arose, however, we sighted something strange ahead of us to the south.
At first it appeared to be some sort of immense bubble, but as we neared, the object
revealed itself to be an immense mass of what appears to be glass. It is not a
smooth dome as was imagined to perhaps shelter a city in our day; rather, it seems
to be warped and bulbous, with a skeletal structure of metal, similar to a glass-
house. I suspect that it was constructed by need rather than graceful planning.
Whatever need drove this city to so cover itself - be it the moon-fall or something
else before or after that cataclysm - the shelter eventually failed. The thing is
fallen at one side, torn and broken.
A massive outcrop of bare rock juts out from the ruins. Perhaps it was indeed the
moon-fall that felled this place.
As we near, Madi's sharp eyes have just picked out something in the fields beyond
woods, previously hidden to us by the outcrop of rock. It appears to be a structure
surmounted by some kind of statue; from this distance it resembles our Morlocks'
Sphinx, although the construction seems to be more solid.
I can see white pillars among the glass below. Perhaps we have come so far as
Philadelphia or Washington, or some younger city with whom I am unfamiliar, with
this swift wind at our back.
In any case, we may have found our destination. We are landing to investigate.
With hope,
Alexander
February 28th, 802,702 (evening)
Darling Emma,
We have indeed come upon what was once Washington. Apparently, the city survived
the initial fall of the moon intact, and its people desperately tried to remain
above-ground by encasing the entire area in the shelter that I described earlier.
That lunar catastrophe must have continued for some time, however - rather like an
earthquake that trails smaller tremors in its wake - and the "outcrop" of rock must
have fallen into the city later on.
We put down up river from the "dome", for lack of a better term, and spent the
morning cautiously walking in. We must be wary in our approach of the possible Sphinx,
if we are to successfully rescue the children, so we chose to approach it by land;
it is on the far side of the city from us. The Liberty we hid, as well as we could,
in a dell among the trees.
It was the monuments of the city that identified it - white columns still standing,
reaching like fingers to the sky - and the right-angles of what remains of the streets. Unfortunately, most of the buildings are gone, toppled and swallowed by the swamp
that the city seems to be sinking in to. It is primarily the dome itself that tells
us that a city died here - little trace remains.
The way has been rough; we have been wading, constantly walking on submerged broken
stone, feeling our way with sticks, and swimming the gaps that must have been streets.
Already, the sole of my left shoe has come loose, and I've had to bind it back on. The
place hums with small insects of the carnivorous variety, and on our way we sometimes
glimpsed large movement in the water. The humidity only makes the warmth more
oppressive. Perhaps on the way back, we shall skirt the city through the higher woods
to the west, instead.
We stopped to rest at a dry hill. It appears to have been a building at one time,
but has been so covered in silt and vegetation that it barely resembles the original
structure. It reminds me of the sketches of abandoned temples in India that the
Smithsonian published. Of course, it occurs to me that one of these hills probably
was the Smithsonian, long ago.
We intend to rest here for the night, keeping watch in shifts as we did before. We
cannot risk a fire, as it might draw attention to us. I must stop writing now, for
the sun is setting.
Yours Truly,
Alexander
March 1st, 802,702
My Cherished Emma,
We have encountered Doctor Taylor.
Last night, I was awoken by Ayer, who was on watch. Only the thin moonlight
illuminated the misty swamp around us as he led me to the edge of our guardian
trees, and pointed. There seemed to be something coming toward us through the fog,
stumbling through the water. From the sound of it, it was human-sized, and drawing
near.
Ayer motioned that I should hide, or perhaps warn the others, whilst he planted
himself with his staff in wait. However, at that point we heard another sound that
the intruder was making - it seemed to be muttering to itself. I must confess, it took
me a little to realize that the voice was speaking in English - but more rapidly than
I've grown used to. As soon as I realized, I motioned Ayer back.
Cautiously, I called out, "Hello?"
The sound stopped, then suddenly erupted in a frenzy of splashing, sloshing through
the thick swamp water. The figure that emerged before us from the fog was that of a
filthy, bedraggled woman.
She crawled up onto the great tree-roots that reached from our "island" to the water,
pitifully reaching upward and begging for help. I took her hand, and Ayer and I pulled
her up, whence she collapsed in my arms.
Her clothing - fitted pants and a jacket of some strange material that I did not
recognize - was torn, exposing a few gashes and cuts, and her muddied hair was cropped
somewhat short. She babbled her thanks, and of hideous beasts, and of some unfavorable
report that she was going to give. We soon quieted her and guided her back to where the
others slept. I instructed her to rest under our protection, and tell us her tale in
the morning; she was only too happy to comply. I remained awake, on watch with Ayer,
until the dawn.
As the grey mist hid the sunrise from us, the others awoke. I introduced the poor
woman as we ate the fruit that we'd carried with us, and told of how she had appeared.
She then spoke, thanking us for the food, and explained herself. She could proceed no
further than her introduction, however, before she was interrupted - for her name is
Doctor Cassandra Taylor.
"Are you the one who fixed the other Photonic?" Kalen immediately asked, sitting before
her with his hands in his lap as he did when listening to one of our Vox's stories. The
other boys mimicked the pose.
Doctor Taylor nodded, frowning. "What do you mean, 'other Photonic'?" she asked in
return. "Are there others still in operation?"
"Only ours," Mara said, moving forward to inspect a long scratch down the woman's
arm. I noticed the Doctor bite her lip in uncertainty, then allow Mara to take her
arm. "I will bind this, help it to heal," Mara told her, and moved aside to one of
our supply sacks for bandages.
"Thanks," the Doctor responded, unconsciously picking dried mud from her blond hair
with her free hand. "I take it Marian finally got through, then. She hadn't found a
satellite when I left her."
"Marian?" I asked, confused - and then realized that she meant the Photonic that she
had repaired.
"The Library of Congress Photonic is one of the oldest, the first mark III that was
set up," Doctor Taylor explained. "She retains a lot of the mark II programming from
before that. Somewhere along the line someone named her Marian the Librarian and it
stuck. More personable than Vox DC-001, I suppose."
At this point I began to strongly suspect the woman's origin. "How is it that you know
so much about Photonics?" I asked. I realized that I must have sounded quite suspicious
of her.
She looked at me with an odd expression, then winced a little as Mara lay Nefi leaves
over her wound and began to bind them on. "Why is your accent different than theirs?"
She asked me, brow furrowed. "And why do all of you speak English at all, for that
matter?" She tilted her head, staring at me again. "Do I know you?"
"I don't believe so," I responded, but something in the tilt of her head caught in my
memory, and I realized that I had indeed seen her before. Several months - eons -
previous, I had encountered her on the streets of New York City, shortly before I
first met the Photonic. Indeed, she had been the first person in the future that I
had spoken to.
"Hey, yeah!" She suddenly exclaimed, straightening up. "You were the guy with the
cappuccino machine!" She slapped her free hand to her forehead. "God, everything
makes sense now. I never put it together because your rig wasn't gyroscopic - when
did you start out?" She suddenly rocked forward onto her knees, thoughtlessly pulling
her wounded arm from Mara's hands and bringing her face uncomfortably close to mine.
"Where's your machine?" She asked, with a strange look in her eyes that was at once
desperate and exhilarated.
"His machine is gone," Mara said, taking her arm again so that she could finish
bandaging it. She pulled the Doctor back a bit more roughly than I would have
expected, causing the woman to wince again.
"Did you travel through time as well?" Kalen asked with interest.
"Are you also a wandering idiot?" Tull asked at the same time, with mock innocence.
Ayer and Madi snickered.
Doctor Taylor opened her mouth as though she was about to speak to Kalen, but
instead gaped at Tull, confused. "Aveh," Madi spoke a word of agreement to his
fellows, and the boys snickered.
I cleared my throat in the hopes of quieting them. "Forgive me - we did not
complete our introductions," I said, changing the subject as best I could. "This
is Ayer, Tull, Madi, Kalen, and Mara. I am..." I hesitated, but I wished to give
this woman the proper respect due her title, if only to make her a little more at
ease. "...Professor Alexander Hartdegen."
Doctor Taylor snapped her mouth shut, blinking as she sat back. "That - that really
does explain everything," she said simply, shaking her head. Then she extended her
free hand, as though she knew better than to disturb Mara's work again. "I'm very
pleased to meet you, Professor Hartdegen. What little of your work we could find was
quite useful to our own project."
I shook her hand, my questions answered without being asked. Some time after our
brief meeting in New York, she (and several other scientists, from the sound of it)
had also discovered the secret of time travel.
She blinked again, hesitating as she withdrew her hand. "Have you -" she seemed to
be sorting through something in her mind. "Yes, if your machine is... gone... then
you must have met me already. I can't remember it very clearly, I'm sorry. That
was... going on eight years ago, for me."
I similarly tallied in my mind. "A bit more than seven months ago, for me," I
informed her. "But tell us, what happened to you, since you fixed the Photonic?"
The question gave her pause, and she closed her eyes. "I should have gone directly
back to my machine, when I found that... that what I was after wasn't here. I was...
I was trying to track down this big shockwave we detected... happened somewhen about
now, plus or minus three years. Massive time distortion. It'll pretty much prove my
time-model theory, if I can locate the source and use the vortex to..."
She stopped herself. "Sorry. Going all technical there... That's rude in mixed
company." She smiled a bit at Kalen and the boys - and then her expression melted
into something rather like shock. "Oh..." She turned back to me. "You... you didn't...
overload your machine, did you? You said it was gone..." She swallowed, appearing quite
uncomfortable.
"Alexander destroyed his machine, so that we could escape," Mara began. "He came to
save me when -"
But Doctor Taylor simply spoke over Mara, her breath quick and her skin quite pale,
as though she'd just had a terrible scare. "Well... Well, I'm very glad that my
theory holds... Under the single timeline theory, we should have ceased to exist."
She gave me a rather nervous smile. "Whew! So you hit upon the timeweb theory on your
own, didn't you? Of course you did..."
I really didn't know what to make of her babbling. At my blank expression, her face
went ashen again, and she put her head in her hands. "Oh... my... you... you twit."
I've still no idea of what set her off so. Mara put out a hand to the Doctor's
trembling shoulder, but the woman suddenly uncurled again, an unnaturally bright
smile on her face. The boys actually looked concerned at her behavior, and Kalen
moved a little closer to me.
"I'll just not worry about that now," she said in a strained voice. "You asked about
what happened. I went exploring, that's what happened. And when it got dark, I headed
back to my machine, only it was gone. And then these... these _things_ came out of
nowhere, and took me down a bunker and locked me up... I must have been down there
for days before I got one of those monsters with my tazer and managed to get out.
Took me forever to figure out where I was... I was heading back to Marian. Nothing
better to do."
"You were captured by Morlocks?" Kalen asked.
"What's a tazer?" Ayer interrupted, quite interested in anything that could
"get" a Morlock.
"It gives electric shocks," Doctor Taylor said to the boy. "Doesn't matter, the
battery died, and I lost it in this... swamp..." She scowled at the foliage about
us. Now that the sun was up, the mist was burning away, it was becoming quite warm
again. "What's a Morlock?"
I was surprised when Mara answered before I could. "They were once people, like -
like Alexander," she said, struggling for a frame of reference. "That is what their
Lord told us. But they turned into monsters..." She shrugged.
"And here I thought that Doctor Moreau had taken up residence,"
Doctor Taylor grumbled.
"I will explain to you later," I told her; I shall have to ask about her comment
later. "Can you take us back to where you escaped from, or at least show us the
way? These... these creatures have also captured my..." I faltered, and Mara
turned to me. It still seemed odd to say it. "...My village's children..."
Of course, we still had no idea if we had found the right Morlocks, and there was
still the added factor of the kidnappers being Eloi. In fact, Doctor Taylor has
made no indication of encountering Eloi in this area at all. However, her next words
set our course of action in stone.
"Those were your children?" She asked.
And so we now set out again, with Doctor Taylor in the lead. She says that she
intended to return to this underground in any case to retrieve her machine, after
consulting Marian, which will be our first stop. She also gave us the greatest news
that we could have hoped for: the children were still alive, as of when she had
escaped, about two days ago.
I shall write more when I can. Wish us luck, dear one.
With hope,
Alexander
Author's Note: There are no coincidences. (cue X-Files theme)
Look! Look! Info for Theed and anyone reading!
fanfiction.net has finally put up an H.G. Welles category in the Books section.
(There's nothing there yet, so you can't check it out... but we can upload to it!)
I'll be moving my stuff there, but it will take re-uploading and deleting the stories
in the current section, since it's not in the Movies section.
That means we'd lose our feedbacks...
so I'll be pasting mine into my chapter files as I re-upload. :-)
(Maybe this will get me to go back to playing with "War of the Worlds" as I once did...)
I won't be moving my stories 'till I'm done with this one, though, to reduce confusion.
...might move the one-shot first, though. But not tonight...
Anyway... more for Theed. Found, on amazon.com of all places,
that... Emma's last name is Malloy. That's according to their movie cast, but
that's the only place I've seen it (it's not even on the official site). Odd, eh?
...And that's it from me... I'm going to bed.
-Starherd