In the Triassic, Sam stood on the beach, staring at the Absolom sweater hanging from the tree.
He looked down at his own sweater, searching for any differences. He didn’t see any. Which opened another possibility: the sweater in the tree might be his sweater, left here in the past.
There was one way to test that.
Sam had needed the sweater to float better on the sea. But it was far too warm to wear it on shore.
He pulled the garment off and stretched it tight with his hands. He stared at the sweater in the tree as he ripped his own.
The one hanging above didn’t change.
It wasn’t his.
Which meant there was another prisoner here. Why?
The people sent back via Absolom were the worst of human society. Murderers. Terrorists. Serial killers.
Well, with the exception of Sam himself.
Why would someone send a killer here? There was only one good answer Sam could see: to kill him.
The scientist in him couldn’t help but wonder how the other prisoner had gotten here. Absolom should have sent him to an alternate timeline—and it should have sent other prisoners to their own timeline. No two Absolom prisoners should ever meet. Unless they had somehow used Absolom Two to send the other person—and sweater—here.
Sam realized then that he had more to do here than survive. He had a mystery to solve. A secret to unravel.
If he was going to do that, he needed to recuperate. The sea and a few days without food had left him weak. He needed to get his strength back. Then he would sort out who else was here. And why. And how they had gotten here. He sensed that in that answer was the key to learning who had killed Nora and perhaps a way to get home.
He tied his sweater around his waist and waded into the forest, stopping near the tree where the other sweater hung.
There wasn’t any sort of trap that he could see. It seemed the white garment was some sort of sign, a signal perhaps to any other prisoners who might see it. But why? Was it a lure of some kind?
The mystery would have to wait. Sam was hungry. And thirsty.
Past the shrubs, the forest was dark where the thick tree canopy blotted out the sun. Sam felt as though night had fallen in just a few steps. Behind him, the light-drenched beach was disappearing.
The trees around him reminded Sam of redwoods. The bark was thick with deep grooves, and the wide trunks seemed to extend all the way to the clouds. He felt as though he had been shrunk and dropped in a land where everything was oversized—which was technically the case.
The forest floor was covered in moss. Large ferns clumped together where there were holes in the tree canopy, positioning themselves to get hit by the sunlight.
Sam reached out and touched one of the fern leaves. It was thick and soft, almost like velvet. On the underside were spongy red spores. In the valley of the blades, small puddles of water remained from the storm. Sam tipped the closest one and drank the cool water. It coated his throat like aloe on a sunburn.
He exhaled and breathed a few times, savoring the relief.
He moved to the next fern frond and tipped the leaf to his mouth and drank. He repeated the action until his belly was full and his chin and undershirt were soaked. Sam was so consumed with quenching his thirst that he didn’t hear the rustling beside him. When he looked up, the creature was ten feet away, staring up at him, its scaly head cocked, as if curious.
The dinosaur was a small theropod, shaped like a T. rex, with large hind legs and small forelimbs. But this creature was smaller and more slender, about six feet long, with a head that came up to Sam’s waist.
But it was big enough to do Sam some serious damage. Or kill him. Even a deep wound would be deadly out here. The smell of blood would draw larger predators.
Slowly, the dinosaur opened its mouth, revealing jagged teeth that were razor sharp. This was a carnivore. No question about it. And it was hungry. Its tongue slithered in its mouth, bouncing left and right.
Sam didn’t move.
The forest was quiet as the carnivore took a step toward him, the three sharp claws on its hind legs digging into the green moss. Its forelimbs rose. Anticipating.
Sam’s breath came out of his nose with the force of a wind tunnel, the sound like a foghorn to him. Could the dinosaur sense his fear? Smell it?
A thud landed somewhere nearby, followed by a screech, another screech, and the cracking of limbs and twigs underfoot.
The dinosaur advancing on Sam whipped its head around, eyes darting back and forth, and launched into the forest, feet pounding the ground as it gave chase to the other creatures.
Sam fell to his knees and exhaled.
He had to get his head in the game. He was reminded of his sessions with Daniele, of her verbally shaking him, trying to convince him to focus and learn.
He had to get it together. Or he wouldn’t last the night.
What was the priority now?
A weapon. That was number one.
He glanced around, found a piece of fallen wood, but it was too soggy. Moss had already begun to grow over it, breaking it down.
In fact, everything in this forest seemed to be rain-soaked and dissolving, as if the darkness and dampness were turning everything to mush.
He tried two more sticks before finding one he liked. It must have recently fallen from a tree during a windstorm. It was about the length of his arm and strong, but light enough for him to easily carry and swing.
What he really needed was a fire. If he had had a burning torch, that dinosaur would never have approached him.
The problem was that a fire would draw the other Absolom prisoner—if they were still out here.
He was going to have to make some hard choices. In a world where everything can kill you, one must choose which battles to fight.
The next challenge was what to eat. He was too weak to hunt or fish. He also didn’t have a fire to cook the meat. Not yet.
That meant foraging. For plants. Or insects.
He tried to remember the survival food pyramid from Daniele’s book, but his mind was like molasses flowing through a fine cheese grater.
Insects. They were usually safe. But not other bugs. Not spiders. Or ticks or scorpions. They were arachnids—with eight legs. Eight legs: bad. Six legs: good. Or, probably not death. Insects had six legs. And what else? Sam rubbed his temples.
Insects had… an exoskeleton. A three-part body. Six legs. And something else. But he couldn’t remember. He did know this: if he saw one, he would shove it in his mouth.
He was that hungry.
A week ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of it.
Now, he was hungry in a way he had never known.
Mentally, he went over the rules he could remember. If the bug was hairy or had a stinger, it was best to avoid it. Same for anything brightly colored.
At the moment, Sam just wanted to get something in his system. Food was the lubricant he needed to make the gears of his mind work. And his mind was the only thing that could truly keep him alive out here.
He reached out and rubbed the fern leaf between his fingers. Probably not edible. The survival food pyramid recommended wild greens, berries, fruits, tubers, roots, shoots, and flowers.
Except berries and fruits were likely out. The books and articles Sam had read indicated that flowering plants that produced edible fruit and berries were nonexistent in the Late Triassic.
He figured his best bet was to find a plant that showed signs of having been fed on. If his new Triassic neighbors could eat it, that increased the odds that Sam could.
He began stepping through the forest, slowly, careful to place his footfalls in the moss or soft ground. Noise could be deadly.
As he walked, he took stock of the plants he saw, as well as the nuts and seeds on the forest floor. He thought it better to wait on trying those. A plant’s reproductive material naturally evolves to harm any predators that might snack on them.
Sam stopped and eyed a group of mushrooms, his mouth starting to water. They might be okay. But he wasn’t ready to take that risk. Not yet.
The ground soon began to incline. The moss grew thinner, and the ferns were smaller with each step. Rocks covered more of the ground.
Up ahead, the tree line broke. Sunlight poured in like dawn through a stained-glass window. There was a clearing ahead, calling to Sam like an oasis in the desert.
When the trees began to thin, he slowed to allow his eyes to adjust to the light.
The clearing was a rocky expanse about half the size of a football field. From where Sam stood to the trees across the way, the ground rose perhaps twelve feet. Sam figured this was a large stony outcropping on the side of a hill.
He glanced up and sighted the sun. It was halfway past the point of midday. It would set in perhaps three or four hours.
A few feet away, rising up from the white rock, was a small, wiry shrub. It had green fruit-like pods that looked like faded olives.
Sam ran to it and jerked one of the oval pods off and split it open. There was a hard, textured seed inside. Sam discarded the seed and lifted the plant to his nose and inhaled. There was no odor except for an earthy scent.
He stretched out his left arm and placed the split pod against the inside of his elbow, where blood might be drawn, letting the plant flesh touch his skin. He held it there, waiting for any reaction—skin irritation, itching, burning, or numbness.
A breeze barreled through the clearing, bringing with it a cloud of spores like dust in an Old West town. Insects followed the cloud, zooming in and out.
Sam inspected his skin where the plant had been. It was fine.
It would be best to boil the green pod, but there was no time for that. He held it to his lips and waited again for any reaction. He really needed a watch. Without it, in his hungry, exhausted state, it was hard for him to judge the passage of time.
Finally, when his lips made no reaction, he stuffed the fruit in his mouth and held it there, using his last bit of self-control to keep from swallowing it whole. It had a slightly bitter taste, but it didn’t seem rotten. There was no irritation in his mouth, but it soon filled with saliva.
His mind screamed for him to eat, and finally, Sam swallowed the fruit down. He told himself to wait before eating any more, to see if his body rejected the potential sustenance. But he couldn’t.
He snapped the green pods off the shrub, threw the seeds on the ground, and chewed and swallowed like a robotic farm drone as he moved around the rocky expanse. With each gulp, life flowed back into him.
His mind unfroze. As he munched on the green balls of life-giving food, the name came to him: a ginkgo. That was what he was eating—a ginkgo, a type of nonflowering seed plant common in the Late Triassic.
The name of the dinosaur he had seen occurred to him too. It was a Coelophysis. Daniele had pronounced the C like an S, the first part of the name pronounced like “seel,” the middle like “oh.” He was amazed that his mind worked like that—he could remember the tiniest details that fascinated him (like dinosaurs), but most days he could barely remember what he did the day before.
He decided to call the dinosaur a “seelo.” If he ever saw one again.
He hoped he didn’t.
Sam moved to the next ginkgo bush and began picking the fruits and stuffing his mouth. They needed a name too. Green pods. That worked. It wasn’t exactly inspired, but it would do.
That’s how his mind worked: he liked to name things and order them. That may have been what made him a successful physicist.
Almost against his will, Sam laughed at that. Successful. Yeah right. What a career he’d had: faking enthusiasm for a time travel machine he thought was baloney (in order to make money to save his dying wife), then accidentally helping to create that supposedly fake time travel machine, and finally being banished from his own universe with the machine he had faked enthusiasm for in the first place. There were disasters, and then there was his life.
The question was: what was the next step to turning it all around? Surviving the night. That was the answer. And to do that, he needed shelter. A better way to protect himself would also help. The small stick wouldn’t be much protection against a major predator. A fire would do. It might draw the other prisoner, but Sam felt that was a risk he’d have to take.
He moved across the rock outcropping, picking the green pods and filling his pockets and his mouth. One thing struck him: there were no bite marks on the plants. The dinosaurs hadn’t been feeding on them. Why? Were they not ripe yet?
By the time he had circled the perimeter of the rocky area, his pockets were full and so was his stomach. Fatigue was catching up with him, and all of a sudden the sun seemed achingly bright. It was sinking faster now, diving in the sky like a roller coaster racing down its finale.
Shelter.
And fire.
Those were the priorities now.
Sam moved toward the interior of the rocky area, leaning on the stick. With each step, it was harder to keep his eyes open. The exertion from the day, mainly the journey from the beach, seemed to have caught up with him all at once.
Or was it something else?
He hadn’t been stung by an insect. He didn’t think. Couldn’t remember it. How long had he lain on that beach?
Near the middle of the rocky expanse, a large stone rose into the air. At the base was a hole about waist high.
Sam planted his feet and extended the stick into the mouth of the small cave and pushed into the darkness, half expecting a creature to burst out and maul him.
But it wasn’t a beast emerging from the depths of the cave that assaulted him. The attack came from inside. His stomach seemed to seize up like a fist closing, tightening, pain punching out through his abdomen.
Green mush flowed up through his throat and out of his mouth, a soupy goo that sprayed across the white-gray rock.
Sam’s vision blurred. Legs went weak. He sank to the ground, still clutching the stick, watching the dark hole for any sign of a predator. He saw only darkness.
Another wave of semi-digested fruit sprayed out. Then another. It was like an invisible attacker was reaching down through his throat and yanking out his insides. It kept pulling until his heaves were dry. His abs ached. Throat burned. Eyes bulged. He felt like his body was self-destructing, trying to explode.
The sun slipped behind the treetops, as if it couldn’t bear to watch.
Sam lowered himself from his hands and knees onto his side. The rock was cold on his face.
The rain started then, a soft pattering on the stones at first, then drumming, and finally pounding all around, like a symphony signaling his end.
In a fitting touch, the light from the sun faded behind the trees. A curtain being drawn on Pangea.
And maybe his life.
Was this his final act? Would it end in this rocky expanse in the distant past?
If not, what would darkness on land bring? A predator to finish him? The green pods had felled him. The kill was all that remained.
Get up, his mind said. Get up or you never will again.
He planted his hand on the rock, but it slipped on the wet surface, slamming him back down. He tried to push up again, but his body didn’t move.
He just needed to rest.
Just a little longer, he told himself. But there wasn’t any longer. It was now or never. He had to get up.
In his mind, he imagined himself stepping out of Absolom, hugging Adeline and Ryan, back in the world he knew, in his life, vindicated.
He had to fight.
He rolled onto his belly, set his forearms on the rock, and pushed. He got his knees under him. He reached out, grabbed the stick, and shoved it into the small cave. It hit rock at the back.
He army-crawled closer. There were no animal droppings near the mouth. Or inside.
He pulled himself deeper inside. It wasn’t really a cave, just a deep indentation in the rock, barely large enough for him to hide, with an opening small enough for him to defend.
He held the stick out, ready to stab anything that might approach.
He waited, eyes growing heavy. He retched twice more before night fell completely. In that time, he drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, and in the darkness, in one of those moments, under the soft glow of the moonlight, he heard rustling in the forest, near the tree line.
Slowly, tentatively, the creature stepped out of the shadows, into the clearing, and began moving toward him.