an unpublished novel
Ripley eyed the spider on the wall above her bed. A tiny silver spider like a bead of mercury with legs.
The room was bigger than her punishment cell at the Grand Isle School. Bed, sink, toilet. Spotless white walls and floor. So white it hurt her eyes.
She had been taken to the room shortly after entering the compound. The boys were taken somewhere else. Ripley had wanted to run—a voice in her head was screaming, Get out of here, now!—but the driver had a pistol and the fence was topped with razor-wire that would have sliced her to ribbons, and past that lay the woods: dark, deep, endless.
Someone had left a pair of navy overalls on the bed. Ripley changed into them and sat cross-legged on the mattress. The spider crawled from a tiny hole where two walls met the ceiling. It was good to know that even in a place like this, nature could find a way in. In a million years when this building was dust, the spiders would still be here.
The door opened. The man she had met back at Grand Isle stepped inside.
“Hello again,” he said. “My name is Christopher. Sorry for the late introduction.”
Ripley couldn’t recall another time when an adult had introduced himself to her by his first name.
“I am going to be your guide through all this, Ms. Ripley. Please, come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re already here, Ms. Ripley.”
“Who are you, the Cheshire Cat? What is all this?”
“Every adventure requires a first step,” said Christopher, marching out of the room.
After a moment’s hesitation, she followed him down an antiseptically white hallway. The floor declined gradually under her feet. She could hear the steady hum of machinery behind the walls.
At last they came to a door with a wheel on its outside, like the ones you see on bank vaults. Christopher punched numbers on a keypad. The hiss of compressed air. He cranked the wheel and threw his weight against the door to push it open.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You’re supposed to be here, Ms. Ripley. This is where you belong.”
A shiver travelled down Ripley’s spine. She had no earthly idea where she belonged, so how could this guy?
She stepped through the door. Her breath caught.
“Welcome home,” she heard Christopher say.
The room’s walls went up and up to meet a ceiling that must have been two hundred yards above the floor. Everything was the same dazzling white as her room. She couldn’t see any lights—so where was it coming from? From all around it seemed as if the walls had been built of pure light. The floor was bare whitewashed cement. Four folding metal chairs sat in the centre of the immense room.
Christopher shut the door behind them. Its outline disappeared: the wall looked whole, as if they had stepped right through it. He led her to the chairs and offered her one. She sat.
A square of darkness appeared in the far wall. Another door opening, she realized. The big boy stepped through it. Christopher called out: “Over here, Gavin!”
The large boy—Gavin, apparently—walked over. It took him a while: the room was that big, and Gavin’s head swivelled to take it all in. He wore the same overalls as she did. He glanced at Ripley—the skin crinkled at the edges of his eyes, but his lips didn’t smile—then sat down.
Another door opened to their left. Oliver stepped through. His voice drifted up to the ceiling. “Whoa.”
He sauntered over, clearly trying not to look overwhelmed. He kept making a gesture as if to slip his hands into the pockets of his overalls—but they didn’t have pockets, so his hands slid uselessly down his thighs with a whispery sound.
Once Oliver was seated, Christopher pulled the fourth chair around and sat facing them.
“I imagine you have some questions,” he said.
“Give the man a cigar,” said Oliver.
Ripley had so many questions that they nearly overloaded her brain.
Why are we here?
Who are you?
Who are these other two?
What did we do?
Are you going to let us go?
“Why us?” was the question she settled on.
Christopher knit his hands on his lap. “The answer to that—like a lot of things I’m going to tell you—will sound crazy.”
“As crazy as a freakin’ pyramid in the middle of the woods?” said Oliver. “The bar’s set pretty high.”
“I’m glad you see it that way, Mr. Cooke,” Christopher said. “Now, Ms. Ripley, as for your question: the simplest but most confusing answer would be that you’re here now because you’ve been here before. You’re coming back.”
Now that was crazy. Ripley had never set eyes on this place. She would have remembered. And she would have run as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
“Your names were on a list.” Christopher spread his hands. “A list that came from … well, from the future.”
“I get it,” Oliver said, eyeing Christopher cagily. “You’re some rich weirdo, right? Did you build this place? Is this some kind of game? Okay, I’ll play along. Whatever you want. We can climb into your cardboard time machine and go look at dinosaurs together.”
Another square of darkness appeared in the wall. A third boy came through it. He was in a wheelchair. The boy rolled his chair over to them slowly; Ripley could feel him sizing everyone up. He was slender, with dark hair that fell over one of his eyes. He wore the kind of fingerless gloves that weightlifters used.
Christopher said, “Jake, meet Ms. Ripley, Mr. Cooke, and Mr. Leon.”
The boy nodded at them—a sharp, not entirely friendly gesture.
“Nice of you to bring your own chair,” Oliver said to Jake.
“Nice of you to use so little of your own,” Jake shot back.
Oliver’s head rocked back as if he’d been punched.
He rubbed his jaw and stared at Jake with a newfound appreciation.
“Ms. Ripley just asked me why the four of you are here,” Christopher said to Jake.
“The five of us,” Jake said.
“Yes, we’ll get to him,” Christopher went on. “I told them about the list. Mr. Cooke seems to think this is some elaborate joke.”
“I wish it was,” said Jake.
Christopher said, “But it’s not, is it?”
Jake turned his gaze on Ripley and the other two.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“So as to why you’re here—I mean, you four specifically,” said Christopher. “I can’t tell you that. Maybe you volunteered. Or maybe you were selected based on your natural capabilities. Whatever the case, you ended up on the list.”
“I don’t have any capabilities,” said Ripley.
Christopher said, “You have no idea what you’re capable of, Ms. Ripley. We will train you. Here, over the coming months.”
“Train us for what?” Oliver said.
Christopher and Jake exchanged a glance. They both looked weary.
“You will not believe what I’m going to tell you now, either,” said Christopher. “But you will in time.”
“Oh, I’m all ears,” Oliver said scathingly.
“This place—everything you see—was not built in the past. It was built in the future,” Christopher said. “It simply appeared. One day—one second—it did not exist. The next, it did. And this building holds the answers as to why it appeared. There is no place like it on earth. The potential power within these walls is incalculable. So we must be very, very careful.”
Nobody said anything. Not even Oliver.