9 Shall Rise: A Phoenix on the Fault Line Novel

By Chip Strohs and Tony Ferreira

This is the first of a ten part series about how the nine musicians of Phoenix on the Fault Line ended up in possession of the most advanced Noetic Steam Ship ever build, capable of traveling between realities to examine the fabric of our existence. Along the way, they must face dangers from dictatorial governments, reptilian aliens, zombies, and other natural hazards of traveling between realities where anything is possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626757646

Book preview

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Time Travel…Sort Of

Most people say something profound when they make a breakthrough that alters mankind's perspective forever. Eureka or One small step for man… Tony just ran into the Bunker yelling, Holy shit! Holy Shit! HOLY SHIT! The rest of us didn't pay much attention.

Tony almost always yelled something like that when he walked into practice. Usually it was What's up, Foo's!, or had something to do with some conspiracy theory he'd just gotten into, Chem trails or RFID chips, or that he shaved another ten seconds off his Rubix cube record. It never occurred to us that he might have something other than nonsense to talk about.

So that day, as he ran around swinging his arms like a madman, squealing with excitement, the rest of the band, all eight of us, stayed in the circle we always formed around the Bunker bar. The Bunker was our name for the one car, freestanding garage we'd renovated into an awesome jam room. It was only about fifteen by thirty, but other than the oak bar built into the front corner, it was all open space, perfect for nine overweight musicians to write great music. The entrance was just in front of the bar, forcing everyone that came through to stop for a drink, pulled in by the unnatural gravitational force, which is why we always started practice in a circle around it. We'd built it before Prospect joined the group, so we built it just big enough for eight people. After he joined, there wasn't enough space for everyone, but it worked out okay. Once the bar filled up, we knew it was time to get the music started. The bar became our role call.

That day, the eight of us were standing around the bar with a phoenix burned into the top, talking about how many concrete gnomes it would take to fill up an average castle room. (Not sure why I remember that's what we were talking about, but it stayed with me.) Five minutes later and Tony was still bouncing around trying to get our attention, his hair flailed out like it always was when he was too distracted for personal grooming. His plaid button up shirt wafted out at the top of his shorts as he twisted and jumped around trying to get our attention, but the rest of us were still pretty caught up in the gnome conversation, which by then had shifted to Teddy Ruxpin dolls.

Tony was fed up, so he powered up the PA and picked up his microphone. I'VEGOTSOMETHINGTOTALLYAWESOMETOTELLYOU!! he screamed.

Conversation paused for a second, before Nate, our bass player, kept the flow going. Nate was mid explanation of British saluting styles circa WWI, and he needed to finish up before Tony finally had the floor. Nate had been a walking history encyclopedia long before he joined Phoenix on the Fault Line. He'd played in a band with Tony years before, and Nate had been the same way back then. He was a great friend to have when you had a history report due. He was tall, with dark hair and a face split by a smile 90% of the time. He liked to talk, a lot.

Holy crap, dudes! Holy freaking crap! said Tony after the rest of us had shut up.

Yeah we got that part, Jon said as he finished his Ice House and pulled another one from somewhere. We never really knew how Jon was always able to do this or where he hid the spare beers, but he always had an Ice House on him. He'd picked up the habit while serving in the Navy, and a decade later, he still hadn't managed to shake it, probably because it's never occurred to him to try. Spit it out already, he finished as he cracked open the fresh brew and took a drink. A dribble of foam spilled down his eight-inch beard, soaking into the mixture of red and grey hair. He was a red head, but spent most of his days with his head shaved bald. Easier than bein' stylish, he used to say. He was a little taller than average, and always wore a T-shirt with jeans and moccasins in the spring, summer and fall. In the winter he added a plaid jacket, but that night, he was just wearing a T-shirt with a taco that looked like a cat on it. Or maybe it was cat that looked like a taco. Either way.

Dude! I have no idea where to begin! Tony said. I was messing around in my lab…

It's probably important to know that his lab was more of an office, or maybe one of those rooms a schizophrenic guy might have going in his basement, full of random pictures with strings of yarn going from one to the other. He had his computer workstation in there, along with a handful of dry erase and chalk boards covering the walls. It wasn't really a lab, he just liked to call it that.

So I was in the lab, finishing up this book I've been reading about Noetics…

No ethics? Prospect asked. Like people who cut in line, or stop dead in the middle of a crowded sidewalk? Prospect was our trumpet player, and our newest member. A big dude, coming in at six foot four and around 350 pounds. He was also the older brother of Andy, one of the drummers. Being the Prospect, a new and probationary member of POTFL, he was still new to Tony's random outbursts of weirdness, and he'd yet to learn it's best to let most of it slide. Keep the questions to a minimum. Prospect had a real name, but we'd been calling him Prospect for so long, I doubt all of us even knew it. His brother even called him Prospect at family functions.

Noetics is the study of how human thought effects the physical environment. Tony answered. Seriously, it's a real thing. Google it. Prospect pulled out his phone to do that while Tony continued.

Anyway, I finished reading this book, which was unbelievably cool. Chip, you need to read it, man. And I started playing with my Rubix cube, leaning back in my chair, using my brain waves to get that thing moving! I was totally gonna break my record…again. He started into his low-pitched, play-by-play voice he used on stage when telling stories between songs. My fingers were flying and my brain was on overdrive! I was in the Rubix zone, foo's! He threw his elbow up as he finished. He paused here, I'm assuming for some sort of effect, but it was lost on us.

Anyway, three moves shy of finishing off the cube and beating my record, I got all excited, leaned too far back in my lab chair, and fell over backwards. I cracked my skull on my computer desk and splattered more blood than has ever come out of my body all over my dry erase board.

Nice job, dude. Ocho said. Ocho was one of our two Drummers. He'd been in a band with James prior to POTFL and had come on board sometime in our second year. Starting out, he played mostly auxiliary drums, congas, the occasional vibra-slap, but as he and Andy evolved together as players, they made the decisions to put Ocho on a second kit. The rest of us rolled with it, but it was a strange adjustment. He was about my height, average, and he like to smoke, drink, and have a good time, usually all at the same time. If he'd had a super power back then, it would have been stamina. That guy could drink more than anyone we had ever met and still be the last one standing at the end of the night. None of us could match him.

He was dressed in his Jaguars jersey, his head freshly buzzed, with a fuzzy blonde goatee.

Hey, shut up. Tony returned playfully before continuing. I haven't gotten to the important part yet. The blood splattered and smeared all over the algorithms I've been studying to improve my Rubix cube time. When I finally woke up and got back on my feet…

You go to the hospital? I interrupted.

Dude, I ain't got insurance! Who you think I am, Rockefeller? At this point his karate chop hand gestures kicked in, I got an ice pack and a damp rag, (karate chop) then went on with my day! (Fist in the air.) But after I got the ice pack, I went back into my lab to clean up the mess (Rapper hand motion)…well… I'm not exactly sure how it happened. (Shrug shoulders, hands in the air.) Maybe it was random, or maybe I'd just knocked myself stupid and did it all myself, but one way or another, the blood smeared with the equations, messing them all kinds of up. (At this point I was distracted by Ocho doing a funky dance, making fun of Tony, kinda like the lollypop guild dance, so I'm not sure what hand motions Tony was using from here on out.) It wasn't real obvious, but they'd been changed, purposefully, not just randomly smeared. It took me hours of playing with em, but I finally figured out what my brain blood was trying to tell me!

That you need to stop being such a geek? said James. I mean that with love, man. James was the other red head in the group. He didn't tan well, but other than that was a good dude. He was one of the guitar players and had been there since the beginning. He had a knack for calling things how he saw them, and was passionate about the music. He'd thrown on a reddish plaid button up shirt and an old pair of work jeans with holes in them. His hat was torn from months of construction work, (he was an electrician) but he kept it anyway, wearing it almost daily, like a pair of lucky boxer shorts.

Hey, I got a 'shut up' for you too, pal! Tony returned before getting back to the point. I don't even know how to explain this… Just come outside to my car for ten minutes. I gotta get some stuff set up.

He threw his hands up as he spun around and marched out of the bunker. We watched him go, then turned back into our circle to give each other our usual, what is wrong with Tony? look. Darby, our Trombone player was the only one smiling, but Darby was almost always smiling. We slammed our beers and filed out the door after Tony.

He was already pulling stuff out of his trunk, piling it behind him one weird, random piece at a time. When I finally got a look at him through the sea of dudes in front of me, he was done with the ordinary stuff, like an air compressor and a lap top computer, and had moved on to more random items. He was holding a square metal box, like an old backup battery for a computer. It had duct tape wrapped around it with circuit boards sticking out both ends. Refrigerator magnets lined the bottom. To this day, I have no idea why. Standard Tony inventions.

What are you gonna do with a hibachi? asked Jon.

And a laptop? Andy laughed. I think you might have a few mismatched systems here. Might need a flange or somethin'. Andy was our other drummer and Prospect's younger brother. He was every bit as big at an even 6'7" and right around the same weight, but instead of Prospect's black hair, Andy rocked a blond mop on his head. Between the two of them, it was like having a pair of NFL linemen in the band.

I got this, dude! said Tony as he plugged a rubber hose up to the metal box he was holding. I had it all put together in my lab this afternoon. Tested it out myself.

For the next ten minutes Tony refused to talk to us. Wouldn't answer questions or even tell us what the thing was supposed to do once it was hooked up.

Just wait. was all he'd say. Over and over. Just wait.

So the rest of us stood watching and talking smack as Tony put together the oddest concoction of parts I have ever seen. James grabbed his DeWalt radio from the garage and tuned it to the local rock radio station. We stood around listening to it while we waited for Tony to finish up.

When he had it all wired together, somehow or another, he turned back to us. Okay, I'm pretty sure we all need to think of the same number.

You're not about to give us brain cancer are you? Andy said. The rest of us laughed, but he didn't. Hey, with Tony, one of us has to at least ask.

How about 3317? Tony continued, either ignoring or missing Andy's statement. It's from the album anyway. It's as good a number as any, and we might as well go big. Okay, everybody close your eyes and think of that number.

Seriously? Darby asked. As a trombone player, he was a smooth operating Canadian from Iowa who liked home brew, obscure whisky, and even more obscure music, like all good trombone players do. He was tall, with a blond goatee that occasionally transformed into a Fu-manchu. Nine times out of ten, he wore shorts and a T-shirt, even in winter, but that day, he was wearing an orange zip up windbreaker, an odd choice for him on an October afternoon.

Tony was the only one who closed his eyes to focus on the number. It was like watching other people pray at church.

Okay, everybody got it in their heads? Again, no one answered. I'm not sure we were thinking much of anything, at least I wasn't. I was too busy watching the latest episode of Tony goes legally crazy.

Here goes nothing! Tony said, and he hit enter on his laptop.

There was a flash of blinding white light, maybe lasting half a second. Then Goosebumps erupted all over my body. My short sleeved, blue T-shirt with the word College written in white block letters felt like a poor wardrobe choice for the day, but my bald head was at least somewhat protected by the skull cap I was sporting.

I'm Chip by the way, the other guitar player of POTFL. I'm short, bald, and grumpy. I started playing guitar in high school and was in my first band with James and Andy. After that, I went to college, traveled a bit, and then settled down to start a new band. Right then, I was regretting that decision.

Uh, what the hell just happened? Prospect said. And why are my balls cold?

When the white spots cleared from our vision, everything around us was different. Almost everything anyway. We were all still standing in the same circle. Tony was still directly across from me crouched down with his laptop. Jon to his left. The hibachi, air compressor and the rest of the gear were still on the ground behind them. James was standing to my left, next to his radio, but it was no longer blaring Alice in Chains.

The bunker was gone. So were the trees surrounding it. So were the fence, the neighbor's house, and the scraggly cat that crept around practice. Even the radio signal. Now all we could hear was a faint hiss and a few high pitched squeals coming from the speakers as it searched for a signal, not that we could hear much of anything over the howl of the wind that had picked up out of nowhere.

We were standing on a frozen field of ice. There wasn't a building in site, and the temperature had dropped at least fifty degrees.

It's a bit chilly, eh? said Darby. Glad I wore my windbreaker. He zipped it up and looked comfortable. The rest of us were freezing.

Seriously, what just happened? I said.

Holy crap! We did it! We really did it! Tony yelled.

Why do you sound so surprised? said Jon. You said you tested this thing.

I know! I did! said Tony. But I only went five minutes. I mean, in theory it doesn't matter how far you go, the physics are the same. At least I think it is. I don't really know. I'm still trying to figure out the details, but hey, it works!

That's all great, dude, James broke in, but answer the question. What just happened? Calm down, and take it from the top.

Time travel! Tony yelled. I'm pretty sure I just invented the world's first and only noetic steam drive. We just transported ourselves to the year 3317. That's why we were all thinking about that year!

Time travel? yelled Jon over the wind. Are you freaking kidding me?

It's all good! Tony yelled. Just some quick calculations and I'll have us back to the bunker in no time. 3317 to 2011…carry the seven, minus the gravitational constant relative to the distance from the Earth's core…and…Alright! Got it! Ready to go!

Tony's fingers danced across the keyboard a second longer, then he brought his right index finger down on the enter key in a dramatic arc. I braced myself for another flash…

But nothing happened.

He hit the button a second time. His brow furrowed in confusion as typed a few more things, then tried again, each time moving his hand in the same dramatic arc. The rest of us were losing patience. Freezing to death has that effect.

What's the hold up? asked Jon. Need to get out of here before the shrinkage gets too severe.

I don't know, said Tony. This should be working, as long as we're really in 3317. Everyone focused on that number when we jumped here, right?

I was thinking about snow cones. Andy said. Tony focused a horrified expression in Andy's direction. The giant didn't appreciate it. Sorry…I guess. Though for future reference, if you going to teleport us through time, might put a little more emphasis on how important focusing is.

Ahhhggg! Are you serious? Tony asked.

You really wanna fault me for not thinking correctly? asked Andy. Prospect knew his brother would get pissed if Tony answered, so he changed the subject instead. No one liked to see the six foot seven inch giant get angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

Steam drive? Are you serious that thing is steam powered? Prospect asked through chattering teeth.

Dude, I actually thought this one through. Tony answered. I could have hooked it up to a wall socket, or a car motor, any power source really. But I actually thought ahead! Because you never know what kinda power source will dominate the world at any given time in the future or past, so almost any system you use, oil based, solar, geothermal, batteries, any system could be useless if you went far enough into the future or the past. Maybe we use a car and we travel to a future where the gas is all gone…

Or like Back to the Future 3, where they went back before gas had been invented. said Nate.

That's exactly what gave me the steam idea! said Tony. Water is a base molecule, one of the most common on Earth, present at every time period in Earth's history. All we need is a heat source. I used the hibachi, but a campfire would work just as well. It doesn't take much steam to get it going, plus, it recycles the vapor, so that's good. Recycling is always good.

What happens when the laptop battery dies? I asked.

Tony looked at me with his jaw hanging open like a hinge. I hadn't thought of that, he said.

This is all great, but it's freaking cold, man. James said. Throw that thing in reverse and get us home.

Sure, yeah, no problem. Tony answered. Just give me a few minutes to figure out when and where we are.

We didn't have time to be pissed, no matter how much we wanted to be. We were too busy freezing, so we decided the rest of the question and answered session needed to wait. But we also couldn't stand around while Tony figured out what he'd done. If he couldn't, or if it took too long, we'd freeze to death. There wasn't a debate, just a silent consensus. That's how we made most of our decisions.

The rest of us broke off to look around for anything we might be able to use for shelter, or to build a fire, anything that might help. We made it about twenty yards before we realized it was a stupid plan since we could see absolutely nothing but flat hard packed snow fields for miles around.

As Tony worked, we could hear him saying, "holy crap" over and over again, and every few seconds, he looked over his shoulder at us with that wide eyed smile he always had plastered on his face when he was geeked out on something.

The wind intensified, whipping shards of snow and ice through the air like machine gun fire. I crouched low to the ground, trying to minimize the effect. As I stooped, the wind threw me off balance, and I sunk my hand in the snow in front of me, trying to find my equilibrium without face planting. It didn't do much good. Instead of solid ground, my hand went straight through the top layer of ice into a small crevasse barely concealed below the surface, and my face wound up in the snow. As I lay there, pinned to the ground by an unexpected, unusually strong gust of wind, my arm dangled underneath of my body, hanging in the open space beneath me. I struggled to right myself but couldn't. The cold was beginning to effect my muscles. James fought through the wind to get to me, to help me to my feet. He reached down and caught the crook of my free arm in his, shouting above the howling wind, I got ya, buddy! As my arm lifted from the hole in the snow, I felt claws dig into the skin of my hand, just above my knuckles.

Something is eating me! I screamed. Get me out of this hole!

In the half a second he had to react, James had no way of knowing what I was talking about, but he recognized the panic in my voice and heaved on my other arm, pulling me free of the snow. As my hand broke the surface, so did a ball of orange fur. It was a cat, not any larger than a well-fed house variety. Once he was clear of the hole, he released his claws from my hand and fell to the ground, where he calmly sat and set to work licking my blood from its paw.

It's Ray! Nate yelled from a few yards away. He must have got caught in Tony's trap too!

Ray was an outdoor cat that frequently haunted bunker practices. He was fat, and a little too brave around humans. We'd nicknamed him Ray after Ray Liotta in Field of Dreams. In the movie, Ray appeared from a cornfield, materializing from beyond this world. We'd joked that the cat did the same thing. He'd come skulking out of the foliage on the side of the bunker, appear magically inside of sealed cars, even inside the bunker while we were playing. He was the sneakiest cat any of us had ever seen, and almost the fattest. And now, he'd done it again, appearing out of nowhere in a place he shouldn't have been.

Little punk scared the hell out of me! I said as I wrapped my hand up in my shirt. How did he get under ground anyway? After clearing the blood from his paw, Ray walked through the snow toward the falling sun. He didn't look back, and it didn't take long before we lost sight of him. He'd vanished into the snow, just like Ray Liotta into the cornfield.

Don't know how he got down there, said James. But it looks like he had the right idea. He was staring into the hole in the snow, shifting his head from side to side, trying to find a position that would allow light to penetrate into the darkness. There's something down there, maybe four or five feet. It's hard to tell. We should dig down. Even if it's nothing, we can take cover in the hole. The rest of us didn't argue, we just gathered to get the work started.

We worked in twos, digging our way toward a dark object about four feet down. We had no idea what it was but didn't much care at that point. We'd been exposed to the extreme cold for nearly five minutes. Our core temperatures were dropping. We didn't have long before the effects of hypothermia set in. The physical exertion of digging helped keep out body temperatures up, and that was more important than whatever we hoped to find at the bottom of the hole. Jon stormed over to Tony and dragged the hibachi over to where we were digging; all the gear connected to it came along for the ride. Tony came scurrying after. Jon turned the grill on high and huddled over it. Those of us not digging followed his lead.

You know, if we don't find something soon, we'll have to huddle together for warmth. said Andy. I call big spoon!

Shut yer mouth. said Ocho.

When we'd gotten down about four feet, Darby hit something metal. We'd been using empty beer bottles to dig since they were the only tools we had, and Darby's shattered when it made contact with…whatever it was. The metallic clang rang out above the wind, the sound reassuring us we might not die out there after all, and we were all visibly relieved we weren't going to have to cuddle together for warmth.

I hope there's beer in there, eh. Darby said, as we continued to dig around what turned out to be an access hatch. We didn't have a clue what it accessed, but we also didn't care.

The hatch wasn't locked, but ice had accumulated over the seams, sealing it shut. It took some time to get through. We considered trying to pee on it to melt the ice, but we were fairly sure even the piss would freeze before it could do any actual melting. So James used shards of broken beer bottle to chip away at the door while I climbed out of the hole to collect Tony.

We found some sort of hatch! I yelled over the wind. Let's gather up this gear and get it inside. We can figure out what happened once we're safe!

I don't know what the problem is! he yelled. His smile had vanished. We should have jumped back a few minutes ago. Pretty sure I've corrected for the time difference. I have no idea why, but it's not working."

Come on, man! I said. Get your stuff together. We'll figure it out inside!

Right on. Grab the hibachi and the Noetic scanner. I'll get the rest.

I grabbed the gear while Tony disconnected all the components and powered down the laptop. The Noetic scanner was apparently the metal box I'd noticed earlier, like a mini satellite.

When Tony finished breaking down, we plodded our way through the snow towards the hatch. The rest of the guys had already taken shelter inside. For all we knew, we'd just discovered an alien vessel, or Amelia Earhart's lost plane, or an abandoned port-o-potty. At that point, it didn't matter what it was, as long as it was warmer than outside.

I peered down over the edge. It was pitch black inside, but I jumped in anyway, trusting there was a floor not too far below me. After the short rush of free fall, I hit the bottom about ten feet down. I landed with a metallic clang that echoed in my ears like an oil drum. Tony followed me down.

I couldn't see any of the other guys, but then again, I couldn't see much of anything. I was snow blind for at least a minute, and the meager light shining through the opening wasn't enough for me to get my bearings.

But I could hear the others talking. I could make out each of their voices, which let me know that no one had discovered any additional openings or rooms. I started feeling for the walls, and within a few seconds had mapped the outline of the box we'd found. Four metal walls, two of which were twice as long as the others, no furniture, and no exits. We were in a box with no supplies, no idea how we had gotten there, and only a faint hope that Tony would be able to get us back to the bunker.

Conversation died out while Tony tried to figure how to get us home. Normally, we could talk for hours about the same stuff we'd talked about a thousand times before, but when our bunker vanished before our eyes in a blinding white light, the conversation dried up. Funny how that happens.

After about ten minutes of silence, we started discussing whether or not we should close the hatch. Tony argued that all the body heat we were generating was escaping out of the hole in the ceiling. Darby called him a wuss as he unzipped his windbreaker. Jon said the hole should stay open. He wasn't sitting in the dark with eight other guys. Besides, he said, if we can't get it back open, we all die smelling each other's farts, and I'm not going out that way. He cracked open another Icehouse as he finished his statement. His red-grey beard pointed straight forward as he took his first gulp, defying us to argue with him.

Tony was about to do just that when the hatch slammed closed on its own. At the same time, a small yellow emergency light flickered on, bathing us in a dim glow that made us all look jaundiced.

Dude, what is this place? Tony said nervously while he waved his hands through the air, karate chopping invisible monsters. "Prospect, check it out. See if you can open the hatch. And if you can, see if you can see what closed it. If it's a