ARCHER STARED AT THE SCREEN. HE WASN’T ENTIRELY sure what he was looking for. The digital earth appeared once more, the magnetic North and South Poles looking pretty much as before, the rings circulating north and south. Then, just a few seconds in, the North and South Poles appeared to shift. It was more of a wobble, Archer thought, the rings shifting a little one way and then the other.
“How much time is passing?” Archer asked.
“A week per second,” Rigby said.
The magnetic fields of the digital earth continued to waver. A few seconds passed. Then the whole screen flickered.
“Wait!” Archer said. “Did you see that?”
“Back it up three weeks, Rigby,” Doc Scoville said.
Rigby did. “Oh, now that is peculiar,” he said.
There had been a rogue fluctuation. A new ring of electromagnetic energy had formed for just a moment.
“Point of origin?” Doc Scoville asked. “Looks like the UK.”
Rigby clicked away. “Glasgow, Scotland.”
Archer frowned, something itching at the back of his mind, but nothing he could identify.
Rigby pulled up a picture within the main screen. “This field,” he said, “will monitor for similar magnetic spikes.” He tapped a few keys. “Going forward now.”
Archer lost count of the rogue spikes, but became mesmerized by the way the north and south fields were bouncing. One minute they were steady. The next, the graphic looked like a Slinky bent in half.
“Getting into this past autumn,” Rigby said. “That’s . . . that’s just incredible. The movement . . . so far.”
“There!” Doc Scoville said, pointing.
The east and west fields made their first appearances. They flickered and were gone, but in a few seconds they returned . . . and they remained. More and more rings appeared. They too began to wobble violently. Then there was a flash, and the screen froze.
Archer asked, “What happened?”
No one answered right away. Doc Scoville knelt to give Kaylie a high five, and then he yanked Rigby out of the chair and hugged him.
“What?” Archer groused. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“There’s still a chance,” Doc Scoville said.
“I think Kaylie’s plan will do it,” Rigby said.
“But we haven’t much time,” Doc Scoville said. “Reverse the algorithm. Reduce the frequency and go from the Rift to this very moment.”
“Right,” Rigby said, leaping back into his chair. “On it.”
Archer was fit to be tied. “Would someone please tell me—”
“Shhh!” Rigby, Doc Scoville, and Kaylie cut him off.
Another data field appeared on screen. As the digital earth’s EM fields jumped around, the numbers rolled on the new field. Then it all stopped again.
The number field read:
78:24:46:02
“How long is that?” Doc Scoville asked. “I’m too excited. I can’t think straight, heh-heh!”
“It’s a little over three days,” Rigby said, his tone much soberer than a moment ago.
“That’s a tight window,” Doc Scoville grumbled. “I still have so many tests. We’ll have to factor in travel. There’s so much to do, and just three days . . .”
“It matches up with Old Jack,” Archer muttered, leaping from his chair and trotting to the lab’s nearest window. “Yup! Three days left, and it looks like to the minute.”
“Old Jack?” Rigby echoed thoughtfully. “The clock tower you Dreamtreaders use, kind of like Big Ben in London, right?”
“Yup, yup,” Kaylie agreed.
Doc Scoville looked up from a notepad filled with calculations. “But I thought that was only in the Dream.”
“It just showed up again,” Archer explained. “But it’s keeping time differently. Not hours, but days.”
“How peculiar,” Rigby said, squinting. “And it’s at three days? Like the chronometer?”
Archer nodded, returning to his seat.
“Where does the clock—Old Jack—where does it come from?” Rigby asked.
“I don’t know actually,” Archer replied. “Master Gabriel has never said.”
“Not in the Creeds either,” Kaylie said. “Not the cause of it anyway.”
Rigby shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Is it like Dreamtreader will, maybe something out of your subconscious?”
Archer shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know.”
Doc Scoville looked up from his calculations. “Has it . . . has Old Jack ever steered you wrong? You know, showed the wrong time or . . . uh . . . put you in danger?”
“No,” Kaylie said emphatically, drawing out the word. “Never.”
“Why so interested in Old Jack?” Archer asked. “It’s harmless.”
“Well,” Doc Scoville said, “whatever it is, it managed to survive the Rift.”
Save for the quiet hum of the servers, the laboratory went silent. Archer had never really given much thought to Old Jack. The old clock was pretty much a part of the scenery of the Dream, a landmark like the Empire State Building or Mount Rushmore. The fact that Dreamtreaders could always see Old Jack no matter how far away it was—well, that was strange. But then again, so was most of what happened in the Dream.
“So three days,” Doc Scoville muttered as he scribbled on the notepad once more. “If we position the anchors correctly, it should push the magnetic fields back.”
“What happens after three days?” Archer asked.
The room grew very quiet. Kaylie frowned, Rigby’s eyes seemed to glaze over, and Doc Scoville said, “In three days, the earth’s magnetic field will be set in its normal position.”
“But you said it moves all the time,” Archer said.
“It moves a little, but not like it has with the Rift. The thing’s all out of whack, but it’s still swinging with the Rift’s initial push. If we wait past the three days, we’ll still be able to move it, but we won’t have the momentum from the Rift. We’ll never push it far enough. The Rift and all its consequences will become permanent.”
“As in there’ll be nothing we can do?” Archer asked.
Rigby rolled his eyes. “As in the normal meaning of permanent, Keaton.”
“Let’s not think that way,” Doc Scoville said. “It’s simply a deadline.”
“We can do this,” Kaylie said. “Archer? Do you hear? Anchor Protocol is going to work. Archer?”
But Archer didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He was no longer aware of anyone in that room. A high shriek had pierced his consciousness, followed by a regal, melodious voice, speaking in a language Archer at first did not understand.
Te voxis, Kae-ah-tohn. Te voxis borundum entrar mil se bonis. Skandar belli, skandar vin thel te mourna xivis . . .
It was an unearthly language, proudly spoken, but desperate to be understood. Archer trembled, gasped, and then convulsed so terribly he fell out of the chair. As he thrashed about on the cold floor, at last he began to understand the message.