Human (33 page)

Using his stone blade, Neil sliced the computer jack from the end and stripped the plastic coating from the cable. He separated the long, delicate wires out. He pushed the first wire into one end of his line of skulls, then the other wire into the opposite end. He wiped his hands clean on his trousers and pulled his dead mobile from his pocket.

Neil hesitated. His fingers were shaking. The little piece of plastic and metal was more than it seemed. It was
control
. It was a scrap of reality in an unreal world. The prospect of failure to revive the phone seemed somehow crueller than its death. Gritting his teeth, Neil plugged it in. Moments passed.
Nothing
. His heart sank.

Suddenly, the screen lit up. The battery icon switched to charge.

Neil exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. His shoulders relaxed and he laughed wildly.
Fucking genius.
With a sigh of relief, he sat back against the tree to wait.

The pale light streaming from his cell phone screen illuminated Neil’s haggard face. It was nearly midnight. He stood high on a barren ridge south-west of his river hideout. He’d paced silently through the forest for nearly an hour to get there, with only the waxing crescent moon to light his way.

Neil was filthy but renewed in purpose. His hands held steady. All trace of alcohol was gone from his system. His body was stronger, his thoughts clearer. Neil spun the device in his fingers, contemplating the threat he'd been issued such a short time ago by his colleagues. The CEO had cornered him at a media junket.

“You’re walking a fine line, Neil. I’m not going to cover for you again. The women, the booze… the press are all over this event. Go home.”

“Who’s complaining Barry?” He’d turned with a leering smile to the blonde trailing him. “This one’s not, that’s for sure.”

“The Board is and I am. Get out of here and sober up. We can’t afford another mistake.”

Neil stiffened. “You give me incompetent staff and tell me I make mistakes? That project was a mess from the start; I’m just your bloody scapegoat.”

“There’ll be an internal review. It was badly managed. You’re losing your edge, Neil. You’ve let yourself go and you’re sure as hell not taking us all down with you.”

The memory jarred. Neil took a deep breath and looked out from the frigid precipice. He was high above sea level. His breath misted as it left him and he gritted his teeth. The company had lost faith in him. They sought to send him quietly into retirement, like an old horse shot behind the shed. He wouldn’t let it happen. Another dark cloud resurfaced in his memory.

“Dad, it’s me, it’s Benjamin.” The voice through the telephone receiver was hesitant.

“Benjamin? Yes, what is it?”

“Well, I was just wondering- I haven’t seen you in a while and I thought maybe… well there’s a Fathers Day lunch at school. Mum says I’ll be back home next Wednesday so I can go. Maybe you could come with me?”

Neil could hear the beeping of medical equipment in the background. Another round of chemo.

“It won’t take long… it’s just lunch.” The boy’s voice implored softly. “All the other dads will be there.”

“I’m sorry Benjamin; I’m travelling interstate at the moment. You can take Stephen.” Francine’s new husband would no doubt have offered anyway. Neil looked at his watch, aggravated by the attempt at guilt. Probably Francine’s idea. She’d made the boy too soft.

“But I was hoping… Okay Dad. I’m sorry I called.”

“It’s fine. I have to go. Perhaps next month.”

“Yes Dad.”

The quiet voice faded from his mind.

Benjamin was nearly eleven. Neil still resented the way Francine had indulged the child. Especially now. Life was hard and the sooner the boy understood it, the better he would survive in the world. The stronger he would be. And he would need to be strong.

Neil squeezed his eyes shut and shook the chill from his neck. There was nothing he could do for Benjamin, he knew that. What the child really needed was more time. Time to find a cure for the disease that bound him. Time was something Neil couldn’t provide. No father could. Once more, the bitterness of another’s disappointment seethed in him.

Neil refused to accept that loss as he refused to accept the other. He resented their judgement. The Board of Directors, the whole damn department, the boy. Neil may not control time, but he would damn well control this situation. He was not too old, too slow or incapable. He would prove them all wrong.

Dark strategy was his ally tonight. His theories needed to be tested. This place was far enough away from the cave and river to prevent discovery by the damn ugly abominations that he spent so much of his time watching. Secondly, he wanted the space to breathe and fully dissect the ludicrous hypothesis unfolding in his mind. But most importantly, this was as far as he’d needed to hike to get a clear view of the stellar night sky.

In his current abysmal circumstance, the built-in digital compass of his phone was proving a life-saver. The dense canopy of the forest usually prevented him navigating by star-path; he couldn’t get a clear enough view to identify the South Celestial Pole. Tonight would be different. He held the device up to test its accuracy. The true magnetic compass swung a digital pointer to North and Neil looked out across a dark sea of volcanic jungle. His forehead creased anxiously. Although he used it sparingly, the battery was nearly half gone again.

He flicked his finger across the cracked screen searching for the GPS display. A series of twelve empty receiver boxes greeted him once again. He’d hoped that having such a clear view of the night sky might allow him to pick up any remaining GPS satellite transmissions available, however weak they may be. Neil knew that they were up there; thirty-two satellites in medium earth orbit spaced evenly around the globe. At any point in the world, he should have been able to receive four satellites simultaneously, and the earth-bound receiver would compute his exact position. If he could only access the GPS, he could find out where he was and navigate his way out. Once again, however, the receivers remained empty on the white screen.

It was clear he was no longer in Melbourne, or Sydney or anywhere else he knew – the jungle told him that much. But where he was, he had no clue. Neil shifted his fingers around the edge of the device, hoping not to obscure the antennas he knew were hidden in the circuitry and aesthetics of the phone.
Nothing. Over three thousand artificial satellites are up there, and not a single one functioning. Shit.
It seemed impossible, that this energy mutation could have had such a dramatic effect on every individual orbit. Even geostationary satellites were known to drift when faced with solar wind and the gravitational effect of the sun and moon. Surely one of them, somewhere, was protected and operational. Neil had seen many of those satellites launched himself in years gone by. He’d worked on their transmission logs and monitored and relayed their feedback.
Nothing.

Once more, the ludicrous hypothesis that had sought him out earlier, returned to his mind.
What if the satellites aren’t actually there at all? Not just dysfunctional; but not even in the sky? What if they no longer existed?
It was insane, the thought of a desperate man. He pushed it aside once again.

He needed another way of finding out where he was. As he searched through the bright icons, a solution came to him quickly. The only non-standard application downloaded was a star map. All employees in the Division of Astronomy and Space had received it; a lark by the administration team for a department full of astronomers.
Pocket Universe.
He flicked through the introductory notes and settings – his Sydney location had already been input.
But there are no satellites for global positioning - would it even work?

His cracked lips tightened as he held the star-studded screen to the night sky. He exhaled with relief. The screen swivelled as he turned, needing only the magnetic compass to determine the direction he faced. Obediently, the star map shifted, reflecting back to him what he saw in the sky above him –
or didn’t see.

The bright celestial sky did not match the one stored in his phone’s memory files. The screen was off centre, twisted. He raked the sky for a familiar constellation.
Crux.
The Southern Cross sparkled to his west in the middle of the Milky Way. It stood vertical in the black sky, with its four brightest stars depicting the tips of a Latin cross. The fifth faintest member of the cross, epsilon Crucis, sat snugly under the right cross bar of the lower quadrant. Often misleading young astronomers with its dim light and random placement, Neil recognized it instantly as the orange giant it was, nearly one hundred and fifty times more luminous than the sun.
Good, a place-mark.
A strict Christian upbringing had highlighted its importance before Neil’s career had even begun. In biblical days, the Crux constellation was revered in the Near East before finally disappearing over the horizon at the time of the Christian crucifixion in Jerusalem. It was no longer visible in the Northern Hemisphere at latitudes north of twenty-five degrees. This gave Neil a starting point.
I’m still in the Southern Hemisphere.

Neil fumbled through the search mechanism of the software.
So where should the Southern Cross actually be positioned?
The constellation Crux appeared on the tiny screen. It lay sideways against the black backdrop littered with name labels. He blinked, stunned. Not only was the cross displaced in the night sky, but it had rotated ninety degrees. He blinked again.
Holy Shit. This can’t be. I’m an astronomer for Christ’s sake - and this is impossible!
The only explanation for a rotated constellation was that the earth itself had travelled further in its rotation around the sun since he’d left– three months further. He counted on his fingers; he had been here less than a week. Even if he had lain unconscious on the forest floor for another one or two days, Crux should still have held its position.
Three months?

Again, that ludicrous hypothesis reared its ugly head.
So you’re not where you should be… and you’re not
when
you should be. Time itself has changed…

Furiously, Neil punched his fingertips onto the screen. The exact position of the Southern Cross where and when it
should
have been on March 12
^th
, Sydney Australia – popped up on the screen. Latitude 215 degrees… Longitude 36 degrees. He committed the numbers to memory and picked a new default location in the long list of settings.
Brisbane, Australia– latitude still too far south.
He couldn’t go above twenty-five degrees or the Southern Cross wouldn’t have been visible to him the way it was.
Below twenty-five degrees…
Neil stared at the volcanic jungle thoughtfully. Hawaii was the only US state below twenty-five degrees’ latitude.
It was volcanic, heavily forested.
He selected the location and studied the new map.
Both latitude and longitude are way off now. Something a bit closer to home…Papua New Guinea – still too far North-East. Asia? Jakarta, Indonesia.
Very close. Neil bent to his task, engrossed. He needed to get further east, but there were no other options.
Somewhere between Jakarta and Port Moresby…
he considered the archipelago of volcanic islands crowning the top of Australia.
I’m somewhere in there…

Hanging above him, the Southern Cross lent weight to his conviction. He was in the wrong place,
obviously
, but at least now he had a ballpark.
The Indonesian Archipelago.
The location seemed to fit. The volcanic rifts, dense jungle, humidity…
but when?

Time
had
changed. According to the celestial sky above him, that base measure of time and navigation for all humanity, it was June. Three months later than it should be. But was it June this year, or June last year? And if time had travelled instantaneously, as it seemed to have done, perhaps the year he had woken up in was not a year he’d ever been meant to see at all.
And if that was the case… those cave-dwelling monkeys the woman is with - what if they
are
proto-human?
Neil pushed his imagination to its limit. He had trekked for hours yesterday with no sign of civilization. Since he’d arrived, the miniscule freaks had had no other contact by researchers or scientists or the outside world. Had he travelled so far back in time that civilization didn’t exist?

The ludicrous hypothesis that had thrown his logic suddenly did not seem so ludicrous after all.
Time has shifted and I am in the wrong time. I have travelled through time.
There was no other explanation. Short of moving the very stars themselves, there was no way he could be
here, now
, without a time shift. Gulping down the horror of being so inescapably disconnected from the world as he knew it, he sat motionless on the cold rock. For a long time, Neil considered.

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Whether that lab knew what they were doing or not, they created this potential. The energy field that
I
discovered–
I
uncovered their research,
I
tracked them down. Whatever happened in that lab happened for a reason. It happened for me. I did it. I’ve travelled through time and space and I survived.