(continued from summary)
corporation that has put them in trouble. They are then preparing to travel into the past, and must protect themselves…500 years ago…
By the way, this was adapted from Timeline by Michael Chrichton.
MY FIRST FANFICTION!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE NO FLAMES!!!!!!!!!!
Read and review!!!!!! Many thanks to my sister!!! Read her stories!!! Her pen name: alohaturtle
--
Quondam phone, makes me roam
To the place I belong, Old Black Rocky, country byway
Quondam phone, it's on roam
--
"What the-"
The car jerked to a stop, causing the couple to hit the dashboard. They both peered over the car's fuming hood.
"Honey, what was that?"
"Just a pothole…don't worry…" the man hummed an unusual tune as he searched for his sunglasses' case. The sun had gone down a while ago across the desolate desert land. "Argh. Honey, turn on the light. Dark as hell down here…"
"What is up with this highway?! There are so many potholes!! I swear, if we went on the correct road…" She went on and on about potholes and the highway they were on as she and her husband stretched in different ways like contortionists to hit the light and find a little black case.
Finally the light was on and the man stopped struggling. "Honey…"
"…like we actually-what?" She looked in the direction her husband was. Her eyes grew wide in horror as she stared at her onlooking husband. "Did we…?
Her husband only nodded in reply as he stared at the old man's body on the dirt road. The lady yelled all the curse words she knew as she jumped out of the car.
The newlyweds ran over to the man and bent over to inspect any damage.
"Excuse-"
"Quondam phoooooooone makes me ro-ooam…" the man sang in glee, smiling an ear to ear smile, rolling in the dirt as if nothing had happened to him.
"Potholes, eh?" She asked her husband. "God, it's hot…"
The man went to retrieve a huge, heavy duty flashlight from the trunk. Coming back to the man, he saw that he was shaky, balding, and bearded. And old. So how did he get out in the middle of the desert without a car?
"I can spit fire, I'm not a liar!" In a supposed attempt, he spit out a wad of mucus, landing on his head. He merely laughed. The couple looked at each other worriedly.
The man's black flowing robes were sprawled out on the dirt road, arms out above his head as if he were flying. The groom looked closer, relieved not to see blood.
"I think he's hurt." the woman said, kneeling.
"Yeah. He certainly seems confused."
"Confused, amused, bruised…" the man said, laughing, causing a cloud of dust to rise.
"Come on, we have to take him to a hospital." the woman said.
Acting the obedient husband, he nodded and helped the man up by his armpits. His clothes were heavy, made of a sort of felt material, but he wasn't sweating the way the man expected him to. In fact, he felt cool, as if he had just stepped out of an air conditioned building.
He heard the man muttering, "Left it, heft it, go back now, and get it now and how..."
Something white next to where the man had been laying, though, caught the woman's eye. It was a ceramic, and she saw the letters ITC stamped on one side.
"Quondam phone makes me roooooooooooooam!!!!!!!!!" the old man's voice made her remember their business. She helped her husband set the man in the backseat, and then clambered into the passenger's seat herself. They then made their way to the Nagoya Walk in Emergency Hospital, continuing on the straight road.
--
"How are you feeling?" the lady asked as the man awoke from laughing and flailing.
The road had brought bags to the couple's eyes, though the man had gotten a good twenty minutes of sleep.
"Feeling? Peeling, reeling, fine, fine…" the man responded. He then blinked about five times. "The quondam phone made me roam."
"What's your name, sir?
"Name, dame, blame, same old game."
"Rhyming means he's a schizophrenic." the husband said. "I saw it on TV."
--
"Unhand me, unband me!" the man shouted as soon as they had strapped him onto the gurney.
"Take him to the Trauma unit."
"So you say, out of my way!!"
The nurses wheeled him into a room under a sign that said 'Trauma Unit. Doctors and Nurses only. Others only on important calls'. The couple stayed behind in the waiting room.
The senior unit nurse, Sato Matsuyamo, later came to the couple along with a policeman, Masatoshi Takuro. "Did you get anything?" the couple asked.
"We searched for pockets, but he's wearing a robe so we only found one main compartment. Nothing that really helped us recognize who he is. No wallet, no credit card, no keys… Matsuyamo held out a neatly folded piece of paper and showed it to the couple.
The two took the paper and peered at it. On it was an unusual gridlike printout with dots like colons. On the bottom: mon.ste.mere.
"Mean anything to you?" Takuro asked them.
"No…" the man responded. He was quick to get out. "Oh. Wait, honey, show him that thing you found earlier."
"Oh yeah…" the lady briskly pulled out the ceramic piece from her pant pocket, which she had put on a chain so it looked like a necklace. She handed it to the officer, who held a curious face as he took the piece. "And see," she pointed to the said; "it says ITC. And it didn't have the chain on it."
"Hmm. Where did you find it?" the officer asked, turning to the man, who had witnessed his wife finding it.
"I'd say about thirty yards from where we had stopped. Maybe about 10 yards from under an over pass. And right near a sign. The road had a merging arrow." the man stopped, out of breath, amazed he had remembered all of that. Like a computer.
"Nothing else?"
"No." Again, quick to respond.
"Thank you." the officer then took the ceramic piece and put it into his breast pocket.
"Oh…sir? Ma'am?" the lady turned to Takuro and Matsuyamo.
"Hm?"
"This is a church."
"A church?" Takuro and Matsuyamo looked at the paper to see if they had missed anything the lady hadn't.
"Yeah, the floor plan tells it all. Here's the longer axis of a cross, the nave…I'm sure. And the squares inside other squares…you know, this could be a monastery. And even the label: 'mon.ste.mere'. Doesn't 'mon' stand for monastery?" she handed the page back to Matsuyamo when her husband tapped his finger on his watch.
"We really should be on our way now." he said, dusting himself off and shaking hands in turn with the nurse and cop.
"Oh, of course," Matsuyamo smiled and shook his hand.
"Thank you so much for your help. We're sorry we delayed you. Have a nice trip." Takuro said, pointing them in the direction of the exit and waving as they drove off.
"Sato?" A young nurse poked her head around the corner. "MRI results are back."
"Already?" Sato walked down the hall to the room where the man had been scanned, the nurse and Takuro following at a quick pace to keep up with Matsuyamo's long strides.
"Okay." the younger nurse said briskly as she picked up the scan results from the table and lectured on and on. Basically, the point was that the newlywed couple had not run him over. The bump they said they had experienced was, as the man had said, merely a pothole.
"And how's he now?" Sato asked.
"Sleeping in his room. Took a while to get it that way, though."
"Where's his room?"
"Right around the corner."
"Funny," said Takuro;"how the folks said they found him in the desert. No car. No nothing for ten miles.
Ignoring Takuro, Matsuyamo said,"And his fingers?"
"Circulatory problem. They're turning purple."
"How the hell did this guy get into the middle of the desert?" Takuro paced.
"I don't know," Matsuyamo said, "but-"
Alarms began to sound a series of high pitched beeps. Their instinct was to run for the man's room.
--
As Takuro stood to the side of the room, three doctors ran in at top speed. The man lifted his head up from his pillow. His oxygen mask, clear before, started to fog up, and then turned a bright, shiny red color.
He had thrown up so much blood that it spurted out the side of the mask, splattering his cheeks, the pillow, the wall, even the doctors.
His eyes wide with panic, they pleaded for help as his mask, overflowing with blood, caused him to make gurgling noises.
"Turn his head, Sato!" a doctor yelled. "Turn it!"
Sato wrenched off his oxygen mask and attempted to turn his head, but he refused; he shook his head from side to side. Takuro rushed over to his bedside to hold his shoulders down.
"Suction!"
Takuro struggled for the suction tube on the wall, but the floor was slippery with blood. Falling to his knees, he grabbed at the bed's railing for support.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Come on!"
One of the doctors now held the suction ready at hand while Sato held open the man's jaw. The doctor stuck the tube in his mouth, on his tongue, as Takuro turned the valve on the wall.
Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…
The monitors' alarms changed pitch to a steady, long, ear-deafening one. Cardiac arrest.
They continued on until they smelled a sharp odor and immediately knew the man's bowels had released.
"Clear." a doctor said." Close the curtain, Sato."
The nurse yanked the curtain shut.
Beep…Beep…Beep…Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…