Ross and Mike had just seen a video on the screen that was centered in front of the large machine that was used by Beth and Maverick to steal memories from people. However, the video they saw wasn't just any old video; it was a memory of Bien's, entirely from his perspective, about what happened to him when he wound up inside the civilization.
"Man, I don't believe it," Ross said as he bent his forefinger and placed the middle knuckle on his chin.
"Can't believe what?" Mike asked.
"Well, Bien obviously remembers that he was an archaeologist and he remembers how to fight with rapiers, so those must be some of the memories that Maverick allowed him to keep."
"So?" Mike asked.
"Well, what about the fact he was using things and talking about things that are much more technologically advanced than what we have now?" Ross asked.
"He must be from a time period after ours," Mike said. (He deduced that Bien was around some time after the 1970s, which was the time period Ross and Mike were from before they wound up in this ancient civilization)
"Precisely," Ross said. "But didn't you notice something strange when we were watching that memory?"
"What's that?"
Ross looked a little annoyed that Mike didn't seem to have paid as much attention to Bien's memory as much as he had hoped he did.
"Didn't you notice something familiar about that cave?"
"Uh…it looked like the one we went through to come here as well," Mike said.
"Exactly," Ross said, similar to the way an investigator speaks when he's putting clues together to a mystery.
"Wait a minute!" Mike yelled. "So the reason we came here in the first place is because that white portal thingy was on the floor in the cave. But Bien was the one who opened it in the first place, so if he didn't open it, then we wouldn't be here!"
"Good," Ross said, happy to see that Mike was finally catching on.
"But…but I thought you just said that Bien came from the future," Mike said.
"That's right," Ross said, nodding his head. He was slowly beginning to smile. "He had technology that is way beyond anything we had available in our time period."
"But that would mean…that would mean we came from the future if we went through the same time gate as Bien and he's from the future!" Mike realized.
It was becoming very complicated now. Bien was from a time period about thirty years after Ross and Mike's time period. That meant that Bien opened the time gate in the cave a few years after the turn of the new millennium. However, for Ross and Mike to go through that exact same time gate, they would have had to have done it when they were in their forties, but they weren't; they were teenagers when they went through it. But they were teenagers in the early 70s, so how could they have done something and still be teenagers about thirty-five years in the future?
"This is getting so confusing," Mike said, grabbing the sides of his head and acting like he was ready to pull his thick, dirty blonde hair out.
"I know," Ross said. "What this means is that we were 15 years old in 1971, but we were also 15 a few years after the turn of the millennium when Bien opened up the time gate and we went through it."
"How is that even possible?" Mike asked.
"I honestly don't know," Ross said.
"Oh, no!" Beth yelled, waking both boys up.
"What is it?" Ross asked.
"I was supposed to have wiped your memories clean, just like I did with Bien."
Ross put up his fists like he was ready to fight. "Beth, I don't want to have to fight you. But if that's what it takes to keep my memories in tact, then be prepared to get my fist shoved into your jaw!"
"No!" Beth insisted, shaking her head and waving her two hands side to side simultaneously with her palms facing Ross. "I'm not going to wipe your memories!"
Ross looked surprised and lowered his fists. "What are you going to do?"
"I hope you guys are good actors. I'm going to escort you back out there and into the dungeon again. Several guards will ask how the mind wiping went, and just act like you don't remember a thing, got it?" Beth said, sounding very stern.
"I guess so," Mike said. "You sure it'll work?"
"It's the only thing we can do right now," Beth said.
"What do you mean 'we'?" Ross asked.
"Ross, I don't know how you did it, but you've managed to make me rethink things," Beth said.
Ross raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about? I didn't do anything."
"I don't know what it is," Beth admitted. "But somehow, seeing you again and seeing the way you act to this and seeing your determination…it's made me really resentful of Maverick.
Ross was so surprised he could barely speak. "For real?"
"Yes," Beth said, nodding sadly. "I'm being completely serious. I want to help you, Mike, Bien and myself get back to our time periods where we belong."
Ross and Mike looked at each other with great uncertainty.
"I don't blame you for not trusting me," Beth said, "but please. I want to try to make things right again. I want to be able to return to my own time with you guys."
"I dunno, Ross," Mike said filled with suspicion. "I don't know if we should trust her."
Ross didn't say anything, but he kept a very plain look on his face. But even though it was plain, it was clearly visible that he was thinking way too hard about something. Finally, he looked up.
"I say we take her along."
Beth looked relieved when Ross decided to trust her, but Mike wasn't as certain.
"Are you certain you want to trust her, Ross?"
"She didn't wipe our memories like she was supposed to," Ross said. "Besides, with her help, maybe we can figure out why we were teenagers when we went through the time gate to get here when we were actually supposed to be in our forties."
Mike scowled, but eventually gave in. "All right, fine."
Beth looked very happy and relieved to see that they both trusted her. She looked at Mike. "By the way, Ross never told me your name."
"It's Mike," Mike said, still not completely trusting her.
"Oh. Hi, Mike," she tried to say pleasantly.
Mike quickly put his hand up with his hand up like he was going to wave hi to her, but as soon as it was up, he pulled it down. He was never one for formalities.
"Now remember, try to look like your memory was wiped," Beth said as they started walking towards the door. "When we get to the door to the dungeon, all three of us are going to punch the guard at the same time and hopefully knock him out."
"Wait, what?" Mike said, sounding as confused as ever.
"I'm going to try to get you guys out of here. And to do that, we're going to need to make sure the guards are out of the way."
"Come on, Mike," Ross said. "We can at least get some payback on these stupid guards if we get to slug them. Besides, if all three of us can attack the guard at the same time, then maybe it would work."
"All right…"
Beth opened the door to the room and gestured for Ross and Mike to go out first. As soon as they went out, the two kids tried to put on their best "stupid" look. They had no idea what they were supposed to look like if they just had their memories wiped, so they decided they'd be better off just trying to look like they were just getting back from partying all night.
With their faces hanging and pretending they had absolutely no concept of what was going on around them. Beth was pushing them to go forward some more, just to make it look a bit more convincing. When she was just a few feet away from the door, the guard smiled at her.
"So, I take it the memory wiping went well?" the guard asked Beth.
"Yes, it did," she said with a confident grin on her face.
The guard turned around and opened the door into the dungeon. He was expecting Beth to shove Ross and Mike in there, but he got something else. Instead, Beth spun him right around and when he was facing the three teenagers, they all punched him in the face as hard as they could.
The guard staggered, but was not down. But the three teenagers didn't stop. They continued pummeling him with their strongest blows until he was finally down on the ground.
When the guard was on the ground, Beth ran over and kicked him in the side of the head. That rendered the guard unconscious.
Ross and Mike ran into the dungeon while Beth kept the door open. When they ran inside, they explained everything to Bien.
"So that's why you looked so upset before?" Bien asked Ross. "Because a long-lost friend of yours turned out to be working for Maverick?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Ross sharply said. "But yeah, that's it."
Mike then explained everything to Bien about how they had just seen his memory on the machine Beth was working at. He told him all about how he was archaeologist and was listening to some music and talked about playing a game on something called an XBOX. Then they told him about how they saw him go into the cave, say a bizarre incantation written on the walls of the cave and how it opened up the portal that Ross and Mike eventually went through to get to the civilization they were in.
"Strange…" Bien said softly to himself. Now he seemed to be having some internal conflict. Those names you mentioned…they sound so familiar. And yet I have no memories of any of that happening. As far as I can remember, I'm an archaeologist and I've been living here for a while."
"Well, it wasn't always like that," Ross said.
"Why is Beth listening in on us?" Bien asked, casting his glance to the girl holding the dungeon door open.
Ross sharply turned around and saw that Beth was hearing every single word of the conversation.
"Bien, she's decided that she's going to help us instead of wiping our memories like she did to you," Ross glumly informed.
"Are you sure you can trust her?"
"We don't really have a choice. We're not going to get anything accomplished if we just end up lying around here the rest of our lives."
Bien looked just as uneasy as Mike first did when the idea was suggested. But they saw that Ross trusted Beth, and if he could trust her, then anyone could.
"All right," Bien said. "What are we going to do now?"
"There's something I want to show you," Beth called into the dungeon.
Ross, Mike and Bien turned towards her with great interest about what it was that Beth wanted to show them. "Come on, follow me."
Ross, Mike and Bien quickly followed Beth out the door and began following her in close pursuit. She really seemed to know where she was going, and hopefully for the three, it wasn't into a trap.
Beth finally reached the end of one of the long halls and saw that there was a giant door. It was easily sensed that there was something important behind that door. But there was a lock on it, so the door obviously couldn't be opened.
But Beth seemed to have a back up plan. She reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a key. She promptly inserted the key into the lock and it opened.
"Whoa!" Mike yelled. "Where did you get that?"
"I stole it from the guard who was standing in front of the dungeon door when we knocked him out," Beth explained, not turning to any of her companions. "Come on, let's go in."
Beth went through the open door and opened it all the way so Ross, Mike and Bien would have an easier time getting in. All of them were shocked with what they saw.
"Whoa…" Mike said breathlessly.
"Unbelievable…" Ross said.
"How is Maverick capable of such a tool?" Bien asked.
It was a giant weapon that was in the room, but it looked very similar to the kind of robot vehicle seen in sci-fi movies. It had two supported legs with several rods connecting up to higher points. There was a torso with two side arms that looked easily controllable. The head had a face that was somehow forming a twisted sneer with two giant windows for eyes.
"How did Maverick make something like that!" Ross yelled.
"He didn't make it alone," Beth said sadly. "He had to make it based on some very complex mathematical formulas, which aren't even around now?"
"Then how'd he get the formulas?" Bien asked.
"He had to travel to another time period to a place where math and science were dominant. He got the formulas from that sheet of paper right there."
Beth pointed to a side table that had a piece of parchment sprawled out on top of it. It looked like it had seen better days, with many rips and tears in it.
"Ross, you don't think that's…"
"Yes, Mike. It is."
Ross went over to the paper on the table and slowly started lifting it up. It had several mathematical equations on and theories written on it that looked like they would be useful when constructing the giant robotic-like weapon.
"This is…this is the paper that Maverick stole from that guy in Rome," Ross realized as he stared at it. "That's why he stole it: to make this thing."
"But that doesn't explain what he wanted with all that coal from the industrial revolution that he stole," Mike said.
"Uh…I might know why he did that," Beth said.
Beth walked around to the back of the iron machine and opened up a latch in the back. In it, there was all the coal that Maverick had swiped from the factory.
"So he's using the coal as a fuel source to power this," Ross said softly. "It's kind of obvious when you think about it."
"Yeah," Mike said.
Bien suddenly looked pretty excited. "Hey, we want to stop Maverick from using this thing, right?"
"Yeah," the three teenagers said in unison.
"Then why don't we just take the coal out? No coal, no power."
"That's a good idea," Mike said. "Hope you don't mind getting your hands dirty for once, Ross."
Just as the quartet was about to start dumping all the coal out, a voice broke the silence.
"Beth! Why are these people here?"
Beth jumped and looked up. It was Maverick, and he was staring at Beth with a very suspicious glare.
"Oh, when I was trying to take them back from getting their memories wiped, they showed some resistance and started running. I ended up catching them in here," Beth tried to explain.
Maverick continued looking at her with an untrusting look. But still, it seemed like something won him over. "I thought I told the guard that I didn't want him to take the older one."
"Uh…maybe you should fire him?" Beth nervously suggested.
Maverick still looked like Beth wasn't telling him something. "Fine, then," he said. He looked at Ross, Mike and Bien. "Since all three of you showed unnecessary resistance, I think I need to impose a further penalty on you."
"W…what?" Bien asked.
"All three of you are going to have more of your memories erased!" he said in a threatening voice to Ross, Mike and Bien.
Saying this, Maverick snapped his fingers and an entire squad of guards came from behind him and pointed their weapons at Ross and Mike. They had no choice but to follow Maverick if they followed their lives.