Richard discovered all his planning had been child’s play. Years of drawing on coasters with Walnut. Working out the money with the VA and the credit union.
He and Walnut had walked for hours through the district to get the residents’ permission to apply for the liquor license.
A lot of people he had known most of his life, but he had discovered an odd thing. For a town this small, there were a lot of people he’d never met.
The church folks were the most difficult, but then some of them had signed right away. With a smile and a God bless you, son.
The Bottom of the Hill Bar and Grill was what the town needed. He had felt it in his bones.
But his dreams didn’t hold a candle to what was going on under the surface. Not just Maggie’s scam, either.
It was a science fiction conspiracy that made his head swim. As Richard listened to not-so-old Gabe Anders spill his guts, he could only stand and listen.
He shook his head in wonder and disgust.
It was easier now that he had been reassured Bobby and the girls were safe under the bar. Naomi and Duncan swore to it. He didn’t know how they knew, but he couldn’t help having a feeling of his own.
More of his plans were about to come crashing down.
Anders crossed his arms. Regarded Grismer like he was beneath him. Wouldn’t even look at Naomi.
He was not the kind old man Richard remembered.
“It’s simple,” Anders said. “There was a precognitive Stonecaller in California who was certain a catastrophic-level event occurred at this location. In this town. I found an expert in gravitational temporality and convinced him to come here with me.”
Grismer narrowed his eyes. “Who was the expert?”
Anders pointed to the old man behind him. “Young Jessup, here.”
Jessup bowed over his white beard. “Not so young as I was, all the sudden. But I’m at yall’s service.”
Richard snorted. “How’d you convince him?”
Anders smiled. “A lot of money, Richard.”
Richard looked at Jessup. “Was it enough?”
The old man looked pointedly at Anders’ new youth. “Not so much.”
Anders scowled. “Gentlemen. I nearly died waiting for the actuality to realize. I was a very sick man, after all. Even with my success underground, I cut it close. Too close.”
Grismer crossed his arms, the mirror of Anders’ posture. “And what were you looking for?”
“Four things. Limestone, iridium, and graphite.”
Richard wasn’t a mathematician, but that was only three.
Grismer hissed. “Calling stones.”
“Correct.”
“But how did you get them inside you?”
Gum laughed. “What, did you eat it?”
Anders nodded. “Yes. Pulverized by the gravity pulse generator below us, it was as small as each substance could be. Suspended in a dextrose solution with a little mint, it wasn’t half bad.”
Grismer held up his hands. “Wait. How big is the generator?”
Jessup grinned. “Big enough we needed a null wave terminal to hide it. If anybody came looking real close with the right tools, this building would look like it didn’t exist.”
Duncan’s voice filled the spaces between thoughts. “The Unity has such tools.”
Jessup flapped his hand. “Yeah, but they ain’t looking.”
Richard pointed at Anders. “You said four things.”
Anders nodded. “I did. The last was cadmium.”
Grismer threw his head back. “Of course.”
Richard sighed. “Of course, what?”
“Cadmium has an affinity for bone. The suspension had more than dextrose and mint in it. The three key ingredients rode the cadmium into his skeleton, and … what? What about the zinc and calcium?”
“Yeah,” Gum said. “Isn’t that super bad for you?”
Anders smiled. “It was, indeed. But, I was dying. And I gambled on time.”
Duncan shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You created it.”
Anders sneered. “I beg your pardon.”
“The anomaly your Stonecaller saw was you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Duncan turned in a circle. Lifted his hands to indicate everything around them. “You did not wait for an event to occur. You actualized a desire. You invented the event.”
Anders took a step. Pointed an angry finger up at the titan. “Now look here—”
Duncan was a blur of movement. He traveled from Richard’s side to Anders in a blink. His thick fingers knotted into the man’s shirt, and he lifted him until they were eye to eye. “You are a stupid human, Gabe Anders. Did you discover the components of the Calling stones before you came? Or after this building was erected?”
Anders batted at Duncan’s fist, but the titan was unaffected. “It was before. One of the reasons we chose this location.”
Duncan sighed and lowered Anders back to his feet. “You are a bigger fool than I realized.”
Richard grabbed his friend’s shoulder and pulled him around to face him. “What is it, Duncan? What did he do?”
“He created all of this. It wasn’t a response. It was actualization. A power I have never heard of. To see the possibility of an event that you yourself will have caused. Then, to steer events to that temporal actualization. From possibility to reality by will alone.”
Richard shrugged. “Isn’t that how you guys fixed me? And Jericka’s leg?”
Duncan shook his head. “There were already realities in which you both existed whole. We did not create them. We pulled atoms from one in exchange for ones in another. There is still balance, you see. We didn’t create out of nothing. We actualized a possibility as we understood it to be.”
Anders shook his head. “This is ludicrous.”
Jessup shrugged his shoulders. “You been pushing since we got here, General. Bitching and moaning when it took longer than you thought it would. What the titan says makes sense.”
Anders turned to scoff, but Duncan continued. “You heard of an event of which you could take advantage. The energization of your temporality by the gravity drives of ships responding to a crash. And what caused that crash?”
Jessup clicked his teeth. “We was told it was a gravitational anomaly.”
“That is what we experienced on our circuit of surveillance. It caused idiomatic failure of our main drives.”
“So, the crash wasn’t the anomaly?”
“No. The crash was an effect of the anomaly. It was your null wave generator.”
Anders took a step back. “This is speculation.”
Jessup held up a finger. “Hang on a minute. She shut off that day. Just a blip, but she sure went down.”
“It was the explosion on the hill that disrupted power to the lab.”
Jessup nodded. His grin still stretched his lips, but the twinkle was out of his eyes. “I never looked at the logs. You took ’em, and I never gave it another thought. There was a helluva lot going on that day.”
Duncan growled. “When did you first contact the Unity?”
Anders stood up straight and tightened his tie. Dignified even in his lies. “I was tired of waiting for an event promised to me by CORE psychics and NASA scientists. I was dying. Toxic metal poisoning. Osteoporosis. Cancer. Feeding myself that slop day after day. When the Astrals appeared, I knew it was time. I stood in the center of the null wave and opened the power circuit. Gravity lifted my consciousness into the heavens, and there I spoke with gods. The power was mine, and all I had to do was let them in.”
A bitter laugh shot out of Richard’s nose. “Then the ship crashed, closing us all up inside.”
Anders shook his head in confusion. “Not at all. The blip, as our white-bearded friend so eloquently called it, was an age of measure. I have been outside the temporal well the whole time.”
Grismer nodded. “They energized your bones. You are a live Calling stone, and in return, you opened the town up to their collective mind.”
“Of course. They cured me.”
Duncan laughed, with a physical voice approximating the roar of a lion. His mirth still filled Richard’s brain, but the sound of the titan’s physical voice loosened his bowels.
“You think you are cured! They want you for study. I have not seen a thing like you because they have not seen a thing like you. Everything in this town was to be held for study, but your intentions were never in an idiom that could have been actualized. You have created a path for time to travel down that has no end. The Unity has found the ultimate tool in species development, and they will stop at nothing to retrieve it.” Duncan dropped his head. “We must now be thankful for the Dark Father.”
Naomi spoke for the first time. “The hell we do!”
Duncan looked up, and his eyes flooded with tears. “But we must, for he has provided us with not only an escape, but a solution.”
Richard raised his hand to grab the titan’s shoulder, but the memory of the terrible laughter made him hesitate. Even so, Duncan was still his friend. No matter what else happened.
Richard would hang onto that thought until they all died.
He took Duncan’s arm. “The solution to what, my friend?”
Duncan smiled down at him. Covered his heart with both hands. This was a very different titan than the pompous asshole from outside the bar when he first woke up. His smile widened into a grin. “Thank you for that, Richard. It means more than you know. The solution I speak of is for everything.”
Naomi gasped in delight. Her face split in a grin to match Duncan’s. “I see it!”
Duncan nodded. “Willis Kemp fell into another idiom. Dragged there by my brother, I suspect. Before he fell, he redirected the nodal constant of our shuttle, created a toroid of energy that provides temporal stability to our craft. It samples the timeline several thousand times a second to maintain navigational awareness. We must be somewhere and some when at the same time.
“It is a hole in the shield, but it was in the ground. Until Kemp turned it. Then, it lined up with the exit of the shaft under this building.”
Naomi nodded. “That’s where the creatures came in.”
Duncan shook his head, but he directed a smile at her. “I don’t believe so. My brother wrested control from the Dark … from Kemp. Then he redirected the opening to another shaft on the opposite side of town. He thought trapping Kemp would keep him from following, but Jerry made a mistake. He didn’t know Kemp carried the power of the Unity unchecked by the collective mind. We were pulled into the static idiom, where Kemp was able to usher in the reptar swarm, and as soon as they came inside the temporal well, they were under his control.”
Naomi crossed her arms. “So where is he now?”
Duncan shrugged. “He could be anywhere.”
Richard looked at Gum. “That sounds ominous.”
The grate gurgled with a splash of water. Richard smelled the familiar odor of burning acid, reminiscent of the rain that had fallen on his town for days. Sulfur and chlorine. Ozone and copper. A misty haze rose from the opening, and he backed away. Grabbed both Gum and Duncan. Pulled them with him, then lunged forward and grabbed Naomi.
Jessup leaned over the grate with his eyes squinted into slits. “It’s filling up.”
Gum crossed to pull Naomi in his arms. “With what?”
Richard hit the roll up door with his back. “Fucking acid. That bastard’s filling the mines with acid.”
The children were on their feet, adding to the wide arc of people backing away from the hole in the center of the room.
Jessup snapped his fingers. “All my shit’s down there.”
Stanley came out of the darkness of the back of the building. “I gotta piss.”
Jessup shook his head. “You wanna take the teddy bear with you. We ain’t got time for that shit, Stan.”
Richard’s eyes burned. His lungs hitched with the need to cough. He pulled his shirt up over his nose and rolled to the side door. When he looked through the little window, his balls shriveled into the ache in his guts.
The swarm was filling the Makers property.
He pushed back from the window with a cry. “Jesus Christ!”
Gum caught him and turned him around. “Stop it before you scare the kids.”
Richard leaned in and struggled to maintain a whisper. “The lawn is fucking full of ’em. The fucking monsters from before.”
Gum looked over his shoulder. “Okay, now you’re scaring me.”
“Take a look.”
The light on the rising liquid in the drain bounced off the ceiling. Like sun off an indoor pool. The squeals of the children and the chlorine made it a convincing illusion.
Droplets shot into the air as the fluid continued to rise. It was right at the bottom of the grate. Ready to spill over.
Gum pressed against his shoulder. “What are we gonna do, and why aren’t we doing it?”
Richard shrugged. Jessup looked at Stanley. “Why ain’t it come on, yet?”
Stanley shrugged. “I did the PM last week. The pH meter was the only one out. The level sensor works fine.”
“It’s PVC, right?”
Anders held his hands up to the children crowding around Chase and Janine’s hips. “There is no need to fret, children. The power of my Calling stone keeps the reptars at bay. They don’t even know we’re here.”
Stanley nodded. “Course it’s PVC.”
The floor vibrated as the room filled with a deep hum.
Jessup clapped his hands. “There she goes.”
Richard stood with his mouth sagging open. His plans never stood a chance against these guys.
The fluid drained with a sucking gush. As it dropped, it pulled the sour air with it.
He nodded. “Of course. You’re pumping it dry. You got your gravi-whatits down there.”
Before Jessup could answer. Duncan sighed and slid down the wall to sit by the door. “We are still trapped.”
“What do you mean?” Richard pointed. “It’s draining.”
Duncan looked up with that sad smile. “Is it safe to breathe down there? Is there more acid? Another swarm? No, Richard. We have lost.”