The Anachronistic Code: The Future-Past Collateral

By Dwayne R. James

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, 2035
Sixty-seven-year-old Josh Donegal had spent months preparing for this.

He thought that he’d anticipated everything that could possibly go wrong with his daring underwater escape from the autocratically-ruled Island, only to have it all go south for the unlikeliest of reasons.

What saves him might just be what stops him as well.

NEW YORK CITY, 1985
Seventeen-year-old Josh Donegal was not prepared for this.

Everyone fantasizes about going back and doing it all over again, but what happens when you miraculously get to do just that, and the past you go back to is, well ... different? What if those differences are clues that just might help stop a terrible future from happening again?

Josh has gathered allies and they’ve followed the clues to New York City. Unfortunately, they’re discovering that, when time travel is involved, you can’t plan for everything.

Especially not when the future-past collateral is concerned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dwayne R. James
• Release date: Mar 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781928015260

Dwayne R. James

Writer and watercolour artist Dwayne James lives outside of Lakefield, Ontario where he writes and paints as often as he can, that is when he's not spending time with his very forgiving family.Dwayne studied archaeology in University, and as a result learned how to write creatively. "The most important skill I learned in University," he says, "was the ability to pretentiously write about myself in the third person."With no formal art training, Dwayne has always preferred the self-guided, experimental approach. In fact, he taught himself how to illustrate archaeological artifacts while completing his Master's degree at Trent University. Said his thesis supervisor at the time: "There might not be much in the way of coherent theoretical content in Dwayne's thesis, but damn, it looks pretty!"After spending close to a decade as a technical communicator at IBM, Dwayne opted to look at their Jan 2009 decision to downsize him as an opportunity to become a stay-at-home Dad for his young twins, and pursue his painting and creative writing whenever they allow him to do so. It is a decision that continues to make him giggle with wild abandon to this very day.

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Chapter 41

The Ultimate Answer

Andi closed the door to her parent’s house behind her and looked at me. Despite the smile she was forcing my way, it was obvious from her puffy eyes that she’d been crying. If I—and most of the neighborhood for that matter—hadn’t already known that she’d just been in the mother of all shouting matches, I would have been able to read it on her face.

Easily.

Stoically, she moved away from the door, her jerky movements getting progressively smoother as she gradually mastered her emotions. By the time she reached the passenger door that I was holding open for her, her bearing was practically regal, as if she knew that her every move was being watched and evaluated by the two residents of the house through the window over their kitchen sink.

I leaned over to hug her, but she put her arm up to stop me. Through a constricted voice, she spoke to me mostly in monosyllables. Hug later. Drive. Now.

I did as instructed without complaint. Once she was settled into the passenger seat, I closed her door, returned to the driver’s side of the car, and steered us away from the Petras house in the kind of casual rush that dramatic situations like this demanded, where any sign of weakness was an admission to your opponent that they’d landed a blow.

Beside me, Andi was making the act of dealing with the fallout of a family argument look easy. From all outward appearances, with her back straight and head held high, she was successfully maintaining a dispassionate composure. That all fell apart the moment we were out of sight her parent’s house though, at which time the dam of her resolve burst, and she broke down into great wailing sobs. I comforted her as best I could with my right hand on her left knee, but wasn’t able to pull her into a hug until a few minutes later when we’d arrived at the parking lot beside the town fountain.

It was late August in the town of Robertson and the brittle leaves on the poplars and birch trees around us were already showing signs of the coming changing of the colours. It was a busy weekday morning on the streets of our hometown, something that was refreshingly familiar after so many weeks of a search that had taken us to so many places that were anything but. I’d hoped that being here at the fountain, even though it was right out in the open without much in the way of privacy, would bolster us both, what with our mutual history here.

After about ten minutes, and a small forest worth of tissues, Andi’s tears finally began to abate.

So, how did it go? I said lightly, knowing that it had not, in fact, gone at all well.

You tell me future boy, she said into my shoulder. I get the impression that you knew ahead of time what would happen.

I sucked lightly on my bottom lip before answering. Well, I can guess, I said, carefully. "I don’t have the ultimate answer. Just know that… well, there are worse things than being disowned by, um, well, toxic parents."

Andi didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her renewed sobs made it abundantly clear that I’d guessed correctly.

So, I stopped talking and just held her. What else could I do? I knew that this conversation with her parents was something that she had long-ago resolved to do and that it had been weighing on her mind for weeks, even if the harried events dogging our every move in that time had managed to distract her from it, at least a bit.

Tell me everything will be alright, she whispered into my chest.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the words dissolved away into uncertainty before they could usher forth. I knew, perhaps better than most what the future held, having already lived it and all. But, forces were at work trying to change that future. Hell, I was at work trying to change that future.

How could I tell her that everything was going to work out when I was skeptical of that myself?

When I’d agreed to let her come with me on my insane chase to find messages from the future, I hadn’t really anticipated that it would be like defeating the Hydra, where a score of new challenges appeared for every one we defeated.

Indeed, if the last few weeks were any indication, we were in for a helluva roller coaster adventure, and I wasn’t sure that everyone was tall enough to ride.

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Chapter 42

The Scotsman

By the time we’d celebrated Andi’s birthday in mid-August, she and I had been searching unsuccessfully for the Shawshank oak for a little over three weeks. All told, aside from the occasional angry farmer or overly-aggressive dog, it had been relatively uneventful.

Boring even.

Well, maybe not so much in the evenings, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more…

So yeah. You could say that the search had become comfortably familiar. That all changed though the moment the little black girl showed up at the truck stop restaurant to dramatically whisk us out from under the Ensee’s clasping clutches. Within a very short period of time, she became the enigma that kept on surprising, especially when she turned out to be a time-shifted and—apparently—gender-shifted, Oskar.

It probably took me a lot longer than it should have to recognize the former grizzled PuckStop bartender in his tiny female form but, in my defense, there had been a lot going on at the time. Like, for instance, an SUV full of Ensee goons with guns hellbent on running us off the Interstate. It hadn’t been until we’d eluded them by escaping into the back of a transport trailer, Knight Rider style, that I finally realized that, when the girl had addressed me and Andi using one of my old friend’s favourite nicknames a few minutes earlier, it couldn’t have been a coincidence.

Hang on, Snowflakes! she had said as she had gunned the engine with legs that shouldn’t have been long enough to reach the gas pedal in the first place, and had peeled out onto the I95.

That’s when the gears in my mind had started to spin. This particular nickname was not unfamiliar to me, nor would it be to anybody else who had lived through the politically divisive environment of a post-social media world. But, it had been Oskar who, on the Pucks in the future, would turn it into a permanent moniker for me, presumably because of my Left-wing views.

What’s more, this girl had alerted us to the danger we were in by slipping me a note that, among other things, used the graphic of an eggplant to call me a ‘dick.’ The old man that I had known as Oskar had been foul-mouthed, politically incorrect and, as I’m sure Casey would attest to were he still around, often left me messages that contained the same insult.

Like I said, I probably should have clued in sooner.

So yeah, by the time we’d crested the ramp into the back of the mysterious eighteen-wheeler, I knew who was driving the car, even if I still didn’t know exactly how. It was the PuckStop’s former owner, my good friend, and one of the leaders of the Island’s underground resistance that had been formed to fight the very organization that appeared to have sent, what Andi aptly referred to, as ‘men in plaid’ to apprehend us.

And so, Andi and I had joined forces with Oskar, his brother, Jackson, and their driver, Sharise in our search for the first clue, unintentionally fulfilling the first part of the message we’d decoded from altered song lyrics and movie dialogue. Namely, the part of the message that instructed us to gather others with ‘memories from tomorrow’.

Not that it helped us much, at least in the short-term, because that’s when the Ensee entered the hunt full-bore, displacing our comparatively diminutive efforts in the process. Still, I can’t complain. It was only by being forced to abandon our search in the Buxton area that we realized that we had been looking in the wrong place. What’s more, we owed credit for figuring out where we should be looking to Andi, who went from being frustrated at not knowing what to do next, to being the one who had the epiphany to search where the movie version of The Shawshank Redemption was filmed instead of where the book was set.

And voilà, less than a week later, we finally found the oak we’d been looking for, just in time for McTavish, another old friend from Prince Edward Island, to enter the picture. When I had asked him how he had known where to find the tree, he had answered simply, as if the answer had been an obvious one, I knew where to look.

I had still been driving the van at that point, on our way to the ‘Sneezy’ emergency rendezvous point to meet with Jackson and Sharise in the big rig. Andi was watching the road behind us for signs of pursuit and Oskar was using his emergency services scanner to monitor police activity.

Ye ken I love running marathons, Mac explained in his pronounced Scottish brogue. "And would look for them whenever I was traveling on business. Well, in 2017, I was up in Sandusky Bay, workin’ on a huge marine salvage operation, when I’d heard aboot th’ Shawshank Hustle, a run that visited a bunch o’ sites used in th’ movie. The tree wasn’t part o’ th’ run, d’ya ken, but ‘twas part o’ th’ drivin’ tour. It had been hit by lighting a few years earlier, ‘n’ only part o’ it was still standing, so ‘twas hard to recognize. Sure was crackin’ tae see it in its glory earlier today, tho’, ‘n’ without all th’ tourists."

"It was called the Hustle?" I asked. In the background, Oskar was giving me directions. Although I had memorized the road system in preparation for our search, I appreciated the prompts, as this made it easier to focus on what Mac was saying.

Aye.

And the medal, I said as I made a left down a dusty country road with leafy branches hanging over it picturesquely. It was a big tree with the word ‘Hustle’ beneath it, right?

Well, aye, Josh. How in the hell didja ken that?

I smiled. "In your wee den on the Island, I said. It was up on your wall with all those dozens of other medals. I noticed it when we were at the Beltane celebration last May. When the three of us met to talk about the final modifications to the microsub."

Aye! Suddenly, Mac was very excited, and I knew what he was going through—having already experienced his state of mind a few times myself. The Beltane event that I was talking about had happened only a few short months ago by our reckoning, but they’d still been fifty years in the future and, to say the least, there had been a lot of confusing things that had happened since. For his part, Mac was just now cluing in to the fact that there were gaps in our collective knowledge, since neither of us knew exactly what had happened to the other after I’d escaped the Island. No doubt, he especially wanted to know what I’d found at the end of the power cables.

The rebreather, he said instead, surprising me. How did it work?

I laughed. This was typical Mac. More concerned about whether one of his devices had functioned as well as he’d promised it would. He was an Engineer at heart even if he wasn’t on paper.

The rebreather worked fine, I answered as I swerved to avoid a rut in the dirt road. Better than fine, actually.

Good, Mac said. And yer trip? How did … um, well th’ microsub work?

He was editing himself. I’m sure he had been about to use the sub’s name, Celeste, but had decided not to at the last minute. Likely, he was concerned that the mention of the family that I’d left behind would be a soft spot either for me or for Andi.

The ‘bro code’ was strong with this one.

Also better than designed, I replied.

I should hope so, since ye’re th’ one what designed her.

I was laughing again as Oskar cut into the conversation to inform me that we were just a turn away from our destination.

Thanks, I said in Oskar’s direction.

So, what did ye find? Mac asked, finally. At the end of th’ power cables. You got there, nae?

Sighing, I answered. It’s a very long story.

Aye, Mac mused. I expect it is, at that. But tell me this, your trip, is that why we … well…

Why we all shifted back into our ridiculously young bodies? Oskar finished Mac’s thought for him as he folded up his map and slid it into his shoulder bag.

Aye.

No, I answered as I turned right onto the sideroad that led to our final destination. I had nothing to do with it. I’m as confused about it as you.

That goes twice for this whole Anachronistic Code thing, Oskar added before telling me to turn down an overgrown forest access road on our left. To ditch the van, he explained to me as an aside. This didn’t come as a surprise. One of the things we had looked for when we had identified each of the seven emergency rendezvous spots was a small road close by to each where we could abandon the van if necessary—especially in situations like this one, when we didn’t want to risk exposing ourselves by opening the back of the trailer to switch the vehicles.

A couple hundred meters down this road, I turned onto an even smaller path that looked like it had been made for ATVs, and drove along it for a time, before finally bringing the van to a stop and shutting it off.

Leave the keys in the ignition, Oskar said Maybe somebody will come along and take the van before the authorities find it.

After a quick once-over of the vehicle to wipe it down and to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, we headed off through the thick woods in the direction of ‘Sneezy.’

Bushwhacking was a little more difficult here than it had been in the environs of Mount Jeez, but it was worth it. Twice, we watched through the trees at the distant road as police cars sped by on the hunt, presumably, for a blue van last seen driving away from an oak tree that, unbeknownst to most people in this era, would one day become famous.

Jesus, that was close, breathed Andi after the second car whistled by.

Jesus? I said.

Yeah, I swore, Snowflake, she bantered. Get over it.

Well fuck me, Jack Benny, I said. Oskar’s become a bad influence on you too.

She ain’t the first young woman I’ve led astray.

Ok, ew, I said in mock disgust. Act your age will ya?

Ew? Andi asked.

Another futurism.

I like it.

Ok, shut it, lovebirds, barked Oskar quietly. We’re almost there.

We took up a position in the trees behind the bend in the road that we’d nick-named ‘Sneezy’ and settled down to wait. Ten minutes later, Oskar’s mobile HQ pulled up, slowing down just enough for us to haul ourselves into the trailer via the side door.

"Welcome to my own wee den, Mac," Oskar said as he flipped on the light switches and strutted into the open area of the modified transport trailer, arms spread wide.

A stupefied Mac followed after the youth, his eyes darting about under his bushy eyebrows, taking in all of the electronic glory that was Oskar’s tribute to the Knight Rider F.L.A.G. mobile unit. As he walked through the kitchen area, glancing up at the recessed bunks above it as he went, the young man whistled. Ye’ve got a serious fetish for lairs, Oskar, he said. "Are ye sure you’re not th’ villain?"

Oskar giggled maniacally in response as he activated the intercom on the conference table.

So? spoke Jackson’s voice before his brother had a chance to say a word.

Success! Oskar answered, patting his shoulder bag even though his older sibling couldn’t see what he was doing.

And then, suddenly, it was as if we’d all remembered that we’d just scored a major victory in our search for clues, and we started hooting and hollering and clapping our hands together in painful high-fives. It was a celebratory mood that got ramped up even higher a few moments later once Andi and I had scanned the bank of closed-circuit TVs that provided a 360-degree view of our environs, and didn’t see any evidence of pursuit.

Congrats y’all! Sharise called out through the speaker. Now, where we headed?

Oskar looked at me as if seeking validation for what he was about to say. New York City … eventually. But, for now, get us away from the area and find a truck stop or somethin’ where we can get lost in the crowd. We need to discuss logistics.

Copy, that, Sharise said. Well done. Who’s the new guy?

An old friend, I answered. His name is Mac.

Welcome to the gang, Mac! Sharise said as the truck accelerated sharply as it came out of the curve. Looking forward to getting to know ya!

A few minutes later, just as Oskar was lining up four shot glasses on the table, Andi and I spotted a police car on the cameras. We held our breath collectively until it had passed us by, making it obvious that the cops, like our pursuers on the I95 a few weeks back, had never seen Knight Rider, and were still focused on finding our, now-abandoned, mini-van.

Feeling even more relaxed now, the four of us gathered around the table as Oskar pulled the cork out of the bottle of Glenfiddich that he’d been saving for just this occasion.

Where is it? Andi asked Oskar as he filled the glasses as best he could with the trailer bouncing and swaying on the rough country road.

The mug? Back in the tin, he answered with a nod towards the shoulder bag that was now sitting on the end of the table. A moment later, Andi was pulling the tin box out of the bag and opening it to look at the mug. I picked up two of the shot glasses and offered one to her.

Lifting his own glass into the air in front of him, Oskar proposed a toast, To Stephen King!

Aye, seconded Mac as he tossed back the contents of his shot glass along with the rest of us. He was the only one of us not to wince slightly as the golden liquid burned its way down our throats.

Oskar was in the process of refilling the shot glasses as Andi held the mug up in the air between us, turning it slowly so that we could see it from every angle.

Up close, there really wasn’t anything new about the cup that I hadn’t noticed before. It was a standard white coffee mug with no maker’s mark on the bottom. What’s more, the design of the soup can with the superimposed red Swastika was a simple one, with no hidden text that any of us could discern.

Andi said, I still don’t see how this points to New York City… but stopped suddenly as she stared into its depths. What’s this? she asked as she reached into the mug’s opening. A moment later, she was extracting what appeared to be a thick piece of rolled up paper.

Fuck me, Jack Benny, Oskar exclaimed predictably. I didn’t even see that!

Not surprising, Andi said as she put the mug down. It fits up against the inside walls and isn’t all that noticeable unless you’re looking right at it.

Unfurling the thick paper on the table like a scroll, Andi glanced at a block of what, from where I was standing, appeared to be type-written text. What’s a geo… um, a geocache? she asked—pronouncing the word like ‘Jo-cash’—as she set the paper down on the table for everyone to see.

Geocache, Oskar corrected as he moved closer to get a better look. What some people did in the future when they had too much time on their hands. Usually, white people.

Oskar was never into leisure activity that didn’t involve alcohol, I explained sardonically, as I stared at the piece of paper on the table, a little taken aback by what I saw there. Beneath the familiar-looking message that explained what a geocache was, and what to do with it, there was a space meant for people to record the date on which they’d found it. Amazingly, there were a trio of dates on the log, each in a different hand and colour of pen.

Well, this changes things, Oskar said.

So, we’re nae the first, then, Mac mused.

No, I said staring at the note in thought. We’re not the first. I’m not sure how I felt about this fact, to be honest. I mean, I know that part of this whole quest was to find others, but I’d never been a fan of somebody else beating me to the solution of something.

As the others studied the note, I took a closer look at the tin box in the off chance that, like the coiled paper inside the mug, there was something in the box that we may have missed. The exterior of the squarish box was grey and non-descript, unlike the container under the tree in the Shawshank movie that had a painting of the Queen Mary cruise ship on the lid. The interior was padded to keep the mug from getting jostled around, but a close examination showed that it was nothing more than moulded Styrofoam. There were no other notes, and nothing that appeared to be scratching or writing anywhere on, or in, the box.

As I flipped the lid closed and put the container back on the table, I realized that it actually made a certain amount of sense that the mug would be the focus here. There wouldn’t be much time for a person who was hunting for this clue to do a thorough examination of everything under the tree, not while they were trespassing. Not when there were more people looking for the clue.

I don’t understand, Andi said. What’s geocaching?

Matt and I used to do it all the time, I answered. Up in Gooderham, Ontario, the Geocaching Capital of Canada.

Why in hell do you always sound like a tourist brochure when you speak, Snowflake?

Andi was still looking at me waiting for my explanation, so I ignored Oskar and continued. People would hide these caches in public areas, record their coordinates, and other people would use a Global Positioning System device, or a GPS, to find them.

Likely anticipating Andi’s next question, Oskar added, The GPS that Josh is referring to is a handheld device that communicates with satellites to show you its position on an electronic map.

Yes, I said. And this map would indicate where the geocache was located, within a few feet at least. Usually, this geocache would be a small weather-proof container that held a note just like this one that explained what it was, just in case somebody stumbled upon it accidentally.

Ah, Andi said, nodding her head even though I was pretty sure that this explanation barely scratched the surface of the many questions she had.

Which is a great way to hide a clue like this in public, Oskar admitted. This note doesn’t identify that this mug is a clue to something bigger…

Like a quest for clues t’ save th’ future, or anythin’ Mac quipped.

Yeah, Oskar continued. "So, if somebody did happen to find it, it sounds official. Most people wouldn’t understand what geocaching is, but they’d still probably be convinced that it was harmless."

And people like us would see the note as the anachronism that it is, I added, considering that the technology that will make the geocaching activity possible won’t be publicly accessible for decades. What’s more, the note describes the two most important commands in geocaching, that we’re supposed to put the container back where we found it…

Which, obviously, we could nae do, Mac said.

"Not unless we wanted to basically give it right to the Ensee, I agreed. And secondly, that those who found it should indicate as much by dating the log, as these three individuals did."

Are there hints in the text? Andi asked.

Aye, Mac said, pointing to the last three words of the second paragraph. Like with these words ‘around th’ world.’ Could that mean that th’ clues we’re followin’ are global?

I was thinking about that too, I said. We all have valid passports, right?

Nobody answered me as Oskar picked up the note and held it up to the light, presumably to look for watermarks. Then he pulled a lighter out of his shoulder bag and used it to heat the paper in what appeared to be an attempt to activate invisible ink.

As we all looked on in silence, I noticed for the first time that the floor of the trailer wasn’t jostling as much as it had been earlier, and that we were moving faster, proof that Sharise had successfully navigated the big rig out of the rural areas around Mansfield and gotten us onto a larger thoroughfare.

Finally, Oskar dropped the note back onto the table top. Well, that ain’t surprising, I suppose, he said in reference to his unsuccessful science experiments. After all, the mug and note ain’t supposed to be taken from the field are they? So, there can’t be hidden messages anywhere that can’t easily be decoded or found on site.

Agreed, Andi said. And even the note itself isn’t all that important. Like if somebody failed to see it or something, it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world for them.

Or the end of their quest, I added.

Exactly, Andi continued. To me, it feels like the note is just a way to drive home the first part of the decoded message that brought us here: the gathering of people.

Th’ what now? asked Mac.

Oh, not you too! I groaned.

There’s more tae the message? I only knew about th’ part with th’ oak tree.

I grabbed my notebook from my shoulder bag, flipped it open to the page with the handwritten message, and handed it to Mac.

As he read it, Mac whistled. Well the gathering part is new tae me, but I already knew I was nae alone. There are loads of us on the Island.

I wondered about that! Andi said. I suggested that we go looking there, to gather others, I mean.

Well it would nae have bin easy, Mac said to Andi as he handed the notebook back to me. "We’re a suspicious lot there after so many years o’ Ensee rule. Most o’ us just assumed th’ time travel was some kind o’ trick, so didnae talk about it. After a few weeks tho’ a few o’ us who knew each other in th’ ILM in th’ future started tae reach out and drop hints. Then aboot a dozen of us met in person, but did it in secret because we didnae know who to trust, out of fear that there might hae been some Ensee sympathizers who came back too. And then there were those who were angry aboot it all."

Seriously? Andi asked. Angry about what? The time shift?

Aye, some were ripped away from what was a pretty comfortable life without permission, most tae become teenagers again, and nae old enough to drink!

I nodded at Oskar for confirmation as to what we’d been discussing when he’d first floated the idea of turning the VW into a microsub: how the Island society was a myopia, one in which people were willing to ignore inequities and the lack of personal freedom because they were very well taken care of and freely given plenty of distractions.

There were a handful o’ friends that I trusted, mind ye, the Scot continued. So, we got together occasionally. Some of us mentioned the changes tae the songs and whatnot, but nobody thought they represented a message from th’ future. That is, until Esther found me.

I’ve been meaning to ask about that, I said. When did that happen?

Weel , let’s see, Mac said as he rubbed the bottom of his chin. I arrived on April 17…

Same here, I said.

Ditto, Oskar spoke up.

… and Esther found me … I guess about two weeks ago. Ye’d hardly recognize her, bein’ a young lass, no older than Oskar here.

I ain’t no lass.

Clearly, Mac said through a grin. At first, Esther just wanted tae ask if I knew why we had come back ‘n’ if there were more like us. I didn’t much trust her any more ‘n’ I useta be able t’ throw her, so I told her that she was the first I’d met. Then she told me that she didnae know where else to turn because her parents didnae believe her…

Well, there’s the first lie! I spat.

How do ye figure?

Esther was an orphan, I said, shivering as I thought of the other details that Remmus had shared with me, and hoped that my friends wouldn’t press me as to how I knew even this much.

Well, it would nae be the first lie she told me. I was right in not trustin’ her then. After this, we met a few more times, at her request.

Why in the hell why? Oskar asked.

She and I had had a good workin’ relationship at one time, so there was that. But also … I guess I felt a tad sorry for her, being so young and so out o’ place. She also seemed apologetic, for what happened in the future, d’ya ken. She wanted me tae know how sorry she was about how things had gone, and t’ ask about the two o’ you.

I was waitin’ for that.

Aye, she wondered if ‘twas possible that ye’d both come back too, and wanted t’ know if I’d been in touch. She tried to be nonchalant about it, too askin’ if I knew where ye’d grown up, ‘n all. When I told her that I didnae ken, she smiled and told me she understood, but I could tell she was seethin’.

She always did have a lousy poker face, I said.

And then, th’ last time we met, she gave me this. Mac reached into the pocket of his running shorts, pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and put it on the table where we could all see it. In an almost childlike scrawl was the following text:

Find the first hint under

a rock of black glass beneath an oak.

Hint? Andi said. She only had half the message and didn’t even have all the right words!

Aye, but that’s nae what she tol’ me, Mac said. She told me all about how she’d gathered all of th’ changed words ‘n’ used some computer game to organize them. She swore that this was a message that somebody was sendin’ from th’ future.

She got most of the details right, Oskar mused. Probably got too lazy to look for all the changes, though.

That’d be the pot calling the kettle… I started, but then stopped as I realized where that old idiom was heading and who I was talking to.

Go ahead, Snowflake, Oskar taunted good-naturedly. I dare you to finish it.

Sidestepping the subject entirely, I just said, What I mean is that she wasn’t the only one to take short cuts. You didn’t have all of the anachronisms either, Oskar.

I wasn’t lazy, Oskar said with a mock pride. I just had a more efficient way of doin’ it.

I was about to tell Oskar what I thought of his improved efficiency, when Andi interrupted us, steering the conversation back to Mac. What was Esther up to? she asked.

No idea, McTavish replied. She talked a good game. Like she knew it all. She was sure th’ message pointed to the Shawshank oak and that it was in Buxton ‘cause that’s where th’ book said it was. She said that she came tae me because she wanted to go after it, but couldn’t ‘cause o’ her age.

She wanted you to go looking.

Aye, Mac answered. Well, more that she wanted us both tae go. She was very insistent, but I told her that, if I did agree tae go, that I’d be goin’ alone. What I didnae say out loud was that no matter how sincere she seemed tae be, I still didn’t fully trust her, and that I wasn’t about to go on a roadtrip and cross th’ border with a seven-year-old girl that I was nae related to.

Smart decision.

I also didnae tell her that I had a pretty good idea where tae look, and it was nae in Buxton. I’d already bin tae the oak tree where they filmed the movie, so I figured I’d start there. Mac’s smile broadened at this, looking about as self-satisfied as the normally humble man had the ability to project. Turns out, I was right.

You found it faster than the rest of us did, I said.

Here’s the thing though, when I finally agreed to go searching for it, it was like she didnae care anymore that she could nae come wi’ me. Well, now I know that she did it on purpose so that she could have somebody follow me. I’m sorry about that, d’ya ken? Esther seemed so sincere, like she was tryin’ tae atone for what she’d done.

I’m willing to bet that she wasn’t as alone as she claimed to be, I said. "I’m going to make an educated guess that, not long after she shifted, she contacted the Ensee. I’m not sure what she said to convince them that she was from the future, but she certainly got them to believe that there was a plot against them. As paranoid as they are, it’s no surprise that they acted on it by sending such a strong show of force to Buxton. But that wasn’t getting them anywhere so, in a desperate effort to save face, Esther tried something different and contacted Mac and tried to make him think she was an ally so that he would lead her and her Ensee friends to this big prize."

To emphasize my point, I picked the mug up and held it out in front of me.

But we fuckin’ got there first, Oskar said.

Damn straight, I agreed.

Aye.

Beside me, Andi was still looking at the mug in my hand with a patient, if confused, look on her face. No doubt, she was wondering how a coffee mug with an image of a can of soup and a swastika on it pointed to New York City. I was just opening my mouth to tell her, when Oskar poured us another round of celebratory drinks and the conversation veered in an entirely different direction.

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Chapter 43

2035: The Morning After

Mirrors don’t lie, and the visage looking back at me from amongst the sticky-notes with the messages of encouragement from family and friends looked like death warmed over.

Maybe it’s the light.

There isn’t, after all, much to see by.

To save power, I had shut down all non-essential systems inside the submerged microbus and the interior was currently being lit dimly by a battery-operated dome light with a magnetic backing that I had hanging from a metal plate just above and behind the forward cupboards.

Pulling the light off the ceiling, I held it closer to my face. It didn’t improve the view.

Nope, it’s not my imagination.

I look like hell, and feel about the same.

It had only been seven or eight hours since my explosive escape from the Pucks and I was just starting to feel the full effects of the havoc that it had wreaked on my sexagenarian body. I hadn’t had this much broad-ranging discomfort since that time that idiot in high school jumped me, worked me over, and threw me into that muddy ditch.

I had aches and pains on top of my aches and pains, my joints were stiff, and I could feel a few tender, swollen areas on my upper back that stung like burns when I stretched. In addition, my left ear was still all but deaf, and my left eye was swollen and red, a great purple bruise blossoming around it.

Good morning, gorgeous, I said to my reflection as I unwound the bandage on my head. After a quick inspection of the wound underneath it, I decided that, even though it was tender to the touch, it didn’t look to be of concern. So, I wrapped it in a fresh bandage and popped a couple of pain killers, silently willing them to kick in sooner than later.

Shuffling backwards awkwardly on my knees since my balance was also off, I slid open the moon roof shade and looked up.

The pitch dark of the water had finally started to fade to a dull green, meaning that the sun was finally starting its climb somewhere high above me. Hopefully, that meant that Casey and Finnegan were already having some success with the mission that I’d just sent them on.

Closing the moon roof shade, I slid open the one on the left side of the microsub to look out, but couldn’t see much of anything in the gloom beyond a few leafy plants that were undulating gently in the current. Sliding the shade shut again, I contemplated looking out the window on the other side of the vehicle, but decided against it—for obvious reasons.

Celeste was sitting on the floor of the Northumberland Strait in about fifty feet of water on the north-eastern edge of the vehicle graveyard beneath the shattered Confederation Bridge. Meaning, that if I’d have looked out of the right window, I might have, in what little light there was, actually seen one or two of the vehicles in that graveyard.

Ugh.

The primary reason for my discomfort was that many of those submerged cars and trucks still held the remains of their occupants, and I didn’t even want to think about the number of people who had been trying to cross the bridge on foot when the authorities had blown it up in May of 2025 to keep a deadly air-borne virus from reaching Prince Edward Island.

Obviously, I wouldn’t be this close to the submerged scrap yard if I didn’t have to be but, seeing as my microsub was a disguised derelict Volkswagen microbus, it was the ideal camouflage. I didn’t know if anybody would be glancing in my direction underwater, but when I was this close to the main shipping lane, I wasn’t about to take any chances.

Yes, here I was, to paraphrase Han and Leia’s exchange from The Empire Strikes Back, trying to blend in with the rest of the garbage.

As I moved towards the rear of the vehicle, I could feel the microbus shift slightly under my weight. When I had settled down last night, I hadn’t fully emptied the ballast tanks so as not to risk sinking too far into the soft seafloor beneath me and getting stuck. While I was parked here, I just needed to be heavy enough not to be swept away by the current, and, say, inadvertently into the sensor net or something.

Since I had some time to kill, I lay back on the bed (now folded up into its couch state) and stared into the darkness all around me. The lack of visual stimuli had made what was left of my hearing preternaturally better.

Superhuman even.

There are a lot of sounds in an underwater sub, even one that’s sitting inert on the bottom of the ocean. The problem with this is that, with my overactive imagination, every single one of those sounds was one critical system or another failing. This had also been the reason that I’d had such a difficult time getting to sleep last night.

I had finally drifted off around 1 AM, but it had neither been a deep sleep or a long one. It seemed that I had just barely closed my eyes when I was wrenched awake a by a song blaring out of the sub’s internal speakers. The song was one I recognized immediately as ‘The Morning After,’ the title song from the Poseidon Adventure, a marine-based disaster movie from the mid-70s in which survivors of a cruise ship that had been flipped upside-down by a huge wave had to fight their way up through the bowels of the ship in order to survive.

Was this song choice a coincidence, or was it another Easter egg from Wilson?

Either way, the song was eerily appropriate, and the hopeful message it contained, oddly uplifting. As the music played, I sat up and stretched. Sure, last night’s sleep hadn’t been all that good, but it could have been worse I suppose. Thankfully, my bedding had been mostly dry by virtue of the fact that it had been folded up inside the couch and, as such, had been protected from the water that I had brought in with me via the air lock hatch that is (admittedly) awkwardly placed above it. The only exception to this had been the huge purple comforter that I’d pretty much used to dry myself with last night.

Good morning, Mister Donegal, Casey’s voice said from the speakers once the song had finished. I have a pre-recorded message for you…

Oh God. What now?

The next voice to come out of the speakers belonged to my Granddaughter Wilson, and I could hear a bunch of childish giggling in the background, making it clear that she wasn’t alone in the recording. Good morning, Grandpa! Wilson said loudly, at which point the other voices spoke up in a cacophonous greeting that included a whole bunch of words and phrases that I couldn’t quite make out since they overlapped and competed against each other to be heard.

OK, that’s good, kiddies! Wilson said loudly over the voices of my other kids and grandkids. Now get out so I can talk to Grandpa alone. There was the sound of children being ushered out of the microbus even as they continued to talk to me as if I was actually in the room. Once they were gone, Wilson was back in front of the microphone. "Me again, Grandpa. Welcome to Day 1. I’d wish you good luck today but I know that I don’t have to, because you’re … well, you. If anybody has got this, it’s you, Grandpa. And besides, Wilson paused for a moment, as if unsure whether or not to continue, You’ve also got my secret weapon for luck. Open the drawer on the control chair."

Wilson stopped talking for a moment so that I could do what I had been told to do. Flipping on the small light beside my bed, I leaned forward and spun the modified office chair bolted to the OVUM laser pedestal until it faced me. Then, I slid open the drawer that I’d built into it to hold things like my polarized glasses and haptic gloves. I was peering into the depths of the shallow drawer, wondering what Wilson was expecting me to find, when she started talking again as if anticipating my confusion.

There is a little box in the back corner of the drawer, she said. Underneath your pencil case.

A moment later, I found the little box just where she had described it to be. With hands shaking from the excitement of the surprise that my eldest Granddaughter had planned for me, I slid the tiny container open and pulled out a necklace with a small compass pendant dangling from the end of it. I teared up the moment I recognized it.

Oh, Wilson. You didn’t…

Dad told me that Grandma wanted me to have this, Wilson continued. He said that you gave it to her back in the day with a sweet story about Einstein and compasses and using it to find her way. Well, I want you to have it for luck and, of course, to help you find your way out there in what’s left of the world. I knew you’d never let me give it to you in person, so I figured that the only thing I could do was to trick you into taking it. I could hear Wilson swallowing. This necklace means everything to me. That’s why I want you to have it… so that you know that what you’re doing means everything to me too. Abruptly, her tone of voice changed to something happier. Now, go save the world and I’ll talk at you again tomorrow. I love you.

And then, she was gone, the sound of the smile in her voice lingering in the air in the dimly-lit microsub for a preternaturally long time.

That kid.

I sat in the silence for a few minutes more, openly crying while I clutched the antique compass pendant in my shaking hands. Part of me wanted to fire up the sub, turn it around and head right back to my loved ones. To forget this fool idea of following power cables, and just live out the rest of my life with my family under the radar, all while promising never to leave any of them ever again.

There was only one problem, and it was a big one: I didn’t know where they were. That particular bridge had been burnt, along with my former home.

That meant that there was only one thing to do, and it involved paraphrasing the movie, Finding Nemo in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character Dory had so famously said, Just keep swimming.

Eventually, Casey broke into the silence tepidly, as if he knew somehow that he was intruding. Mister Donegal?

What’s up, Casey? I answered, surprised that I could actually see my breath in the chilly environment of the sub. I’d installed a small heater, but didn’t want to run it unless I absolutely had to.

It’s currently 5:02, the AI replied. Sunrise is in twenty minutes.

Then we should get you hooked up.

Before I’d gone to sleep last night, I’d informed Casey about my plan to supplement the microsub’s battery power this morning, and he was helpfully reminding me that we were running out of time to actually implement it.

Slipping the necklace over my head so that the pendant dangled (appropriately) at heart-level, I climbed out of the bed and began to fold it up. As I moved, bent over in the confined interior of the microsub, I noticed how unsteady I was on my feet. It felt like the sub was listing when I knew that it wasn’t, and I had to occasionally reach out to brace myself on the ceiling just to regain my balance.

God, I hope that’s just the ear injury.

The carpet on the floor of the sub was still a little damp beneath my feet, but not that bad considering it had been totally flooded just a few hours earlier. If I’d have left the dehumidifier going all night, it would have been better, but well, y’know… batteries.

Speaking of batteries…

Where does your power-level stand, Casey? I called out in the direction of the main microphone embedded in the ceiling just above and ahead of the centrally-located swivel chair.

Finnegan and I are at 76%.

"Good. And Celeste?"

She’s at 48%.

Damn, I muttered out loud as I pulled my dry suit out of the locker above the bed and began to slide into it clumsily. The batteries were about ten percent lower than I wanted them to be. Let’s hope this plan works.

Twenty minutes later, I was cycling the airlocks manually in order to save power (I’d attached a long lever to the awkwardly placed valve handle so that I could reach it when forced up against it in the tiny space), and re-entering the microsub. Casey and Finnegan were rising towards the surface, tethered to Celeste via a long power cable. The idea was that, once the sun came up, Casey’s plexi-panel body would soak up the rays and convert it to electricity that would then be transmitted back to the submerged VW. It wouldn’t be much—a trickle at best—considering that it would be too risky for them to break the surface completely into direct sunlight, but it would hopefully be better than nothing.

I’d have taken the entire bus up to shallow water to expose as many of its plexi-paneled windows as possible, but it had a greater chance of getting spotted by an Ensee surveillance drone than did the mostly transparent bodies of Casey and Finnegan.

Oh sure, most of those Ensee drones would be hovering over the newly formed crater that was all that remained of my home on the Pucks at the moment, but there could still be at least a few of them patrolling this area. Despite something as monumental as the explosion of an aquatic farm, life went on elsewhere on the Island, and fishing boats were still going to be heading out this morning as per usual, and they would still need to be supervised from the air so that none of them attempted to do above the surface what I was endeavouring to do beneath it.

A half hour later, after I’d had some breakfast (in the form of a couple of pickled eggs and a slice of hard cheese that I washed down with a package of orange juice that rehydrated a lot faster than usual because of the humidity inside the sub) and had examined myself in the mirror, I sat down on the folded-up bed and wrapped myself in a thick blanket, trying to warm myself up even as I simultaneously worked to calm myself down. The combination of the events of the last twelve hours, along with the uncertainty of the crazy stunt I was about to attempt, had my anxiety levels through the roof.