Chapter 7 - Explanations
I waited in the lobby that evening, pretending to watch TV, until John came down. I stared at him, and he immediately walked over to me.
“It happened, didn’t it? I can tell.” He looked excited, rather than alarmed or sorry.
“That’s it?” I said, “No, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry Dara, I should have warned you? Please forgive me?’”
“It couldn’t have been that bad, right? I mean, just the roots and…” he trailed off, either because I was glaring at him or because several girls were walking through the lobby. “Look, we can’t talk about it here, meet me at the flagpoles after dinner, okay? Please?”
I kept up the glare, but nodded.
Dinner was much the same as yesterday, and I wondered if anyone would start noticing my vacancy. Thankfully tonight there were Reuben sandwiches, my favorite. I was starving, probably from whatever that psycho test had done to me. I focused on my sandwich, and hoped my friends didn't mind that I was ignoring them. Again.
The flag poles were at the front of campus where the road made a U in front of the central courtyard. Bright lights shone on the flags, the wires snapping loudly in the cold wind. John was leaning against one of the flag poles, looking calm and fantastic. He somehow managed to look lean and muscled even in the heavy camo jacket he had on. He was looking out at the road as I walked up, and his face had odd shadows from the flag lights. They lit up the planes of his face, which were hard and smooth. His cheekbones were high and he had a slight cleft in his chin. With his inky hair and brown skin I wondered if maybe he was Native American. I liked the angles of his eyebrows and eye sockets. I liked the shapes of his face altogether and wished I could get him to sit for a sketch, to draw how it all fit together so perfectly. Shut up, shut up! I told my inner artist. So he’s good-looking, in a geometric kind of way – forget it! You’ve got much more serious things to deal with.
The chill wind cut through my pathetic coat. It had served me fine in Texas, but was not up to a frigid Connecticut winter.
“H-h-hey,” I stuttered as I got near. It was only the cold, I told myself.
“Yes, it’s much too cold out here to talk easily,” John said, as if answering a question. “But we’re not allowed to hang out in each other’s rooms, and the lobby is no good, too many people. I know a sheltered place, I think you’ll like it.”
I had been bracing myself against the nausea and was surprised to find that I barely felt any as I walked up to him. But then he took my hand again, to tuck it around his arm, and I staggered. He steadied me against himself, which didn’t help much, as it only intensified the feeling of cold and unease. I pulled away from him, breathing deeply through my mouth.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking. It feels so natural to… well, sorry.”
“It’s f-f-fine,” I said, “Let’s get out of the wind.”
John led me around to the back of the fine arts building, carefully not touching me. Several alcoves in the back of the building looked sheltered, and one was concealed by two bushy evergreens. Pushing past these trees I saw a heavy blanket on the ground, folded in half and filling the small piece of ground between the brick and the trees. A clump of bananas waited in the corner. John sat gracefully, leaning back against the building.
“I missed dinner,” he explained, pulling off a banana and starting to peel it. I crouched down, sitting on my bottom and pulling my knees up to my chest. I unzipped my coat and wrapped it around my legs, re-zipping it on the outside.
“You look like a weeble wobble,” he said. “Like if I pushed you over you’d roll right back up again.”
I wished I could go with the banter, enjoy this like I was on a date – a cold, banana-smelling date, but a date nonetheless – but, no.
I started to speak and John cut me off, “I know, I’ll be serious. You were obviously upset today, can you tell me what happened?”
John knew something about all this, but how much? And what was his motivation for talking to me about it? I couldn’t assume it was my cheerful conversational style. “Well,” I said, “I think I’d like you to tell me something about all this first, so I’ll know whether… whether I can trust you. I know that sounds melodramatic,” I added in a rush, “but you have to see that you haven’t told me anything. For all I know, you’re waiting for me to tell you some crazy story you can joke about with your friends.” John winced.
“I see your point,” he said, “the thing is, I’m not sure you’ll believe my crazy story at all. I didn’t even think I could tell you, but I checked with- well, I asked my superior about you, and he said I could tell you the truth. Surprised me but I was relieved. Only now…I’m not sure how to tell you. I was hoping to start with whatever happened to you today…” he trailed off.
“Nope,” I said, “Now you definitely have to go first. It’s crazy girl’s choice.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Do you, uh, know anything about time travel?”
“Yep,” I said, “flux capacitor, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, save the whales for the alien probe, I’m all over it.”
“Right,” he groaned, “not quite like that. Try to take this seriously, alright? I know it sounds ridiculous... but the Dr. Shammas is studying the possibility of time travel.” I tried to keep my face blank and open, but my jaw was suspiciously tight.
“It's a pretty complicated experiment, but here’s how I think of it. Have you heard of the California redwoods?" he asked. "Most people are like redwood trees. The soil is time. They have a relatively small root ball, compared to their height, it barely extends past death and birth, in time. But some people are more connected. They’re like aspen trees. Aspens have this huge root system that can extend miles. Aspens can throw up a sapling from their roots, you see.” John started talking faster and using his hands. “Some people argue that the largest living organism in the world is a grove of aspen that’s all interconnected. It’s in the Midwest somewhere and scientists-”
“Wait! I lost the time analogy. Are you saying we’re like redwoods or aspen?”
“Sorry, got carried away. Trees are my hobby, I want to be a botanist," he said. "The point I'm making is: some people are different. Some people are connected to other times. Dr. Shammas is looking for those people. Of course, other things have to be right too. Time has to be ‘thin,’ like a place where the soil has eroded and the roots are exposed. Judging by your desire to talk to me, I figure you're one of those people.”
“An aspen?” I confirmed.
“Yes.”
“Huh.” I tried to reflect logically on his explanation. A high school boy’s botanical description of time travel. That's not easy to categorize. Normally I would admire the conjecture and laugh, but I had seen those bodies. What was that? Something in the future? The past? Surely not.
“So…” he prompted, “would you please tell me your story?”
“I will, but you have to promise to answer more of my questions when I’m done. And I’m not saying I necessarily believe what you told me.” I held up my hands to forestall him, “I’m not saying you’re lying, I just think maybe you’re wrong. I don’t know.”
"Okay, I promise. More answers," John said.
I told him about my experience with the ‘vision test,’ the pictures, the tunnel- how it responded to me, even though I couldn’t move my arms, and about the final blur of scenes and movement. I told him there were a few bodies, but I didn’t talk about the blood, or the pain on the boy’s face, the violence in the whole horrible moment.
“You didn’t know what I would see?” I asked him, when I was done.
“I didn’t. I’m sorry I joked about it. I thought, if anything, you would only see the tunnel. Most people can't travel their first time.”
“Which answers my first question, you’ve done this test thing too?” I asked. He moved his head, equivocally, sort of nodding, sort of not.
I decided to leave that alone, and keep going, “Okay, we’ll say you experienced something weird like that. You saw a tunnel too?”
“Not exactly,” he said, enthusiastic now, “apparently the time travel vision depends on who's involved. I like trees, and I already had that analogy in my head. So I saw trees and roots, traveling through the earth; not a tunnel, or crystal, or whatever you saw. I guess your mind picked something you liked. Does that make sense?”
“Actually, it might,” I said, surprised. I pulled my sketch pad out of my pocket. It was a tiny pad, index card size, but I liked to do quick impression sketches. I flipped it open and showed John some of my sketches of the chapel ceiling. He flipped quickly through the pictures, pausing last on the paper weight I’d sketched on my first day here, six weeks ago.
“That certainly explains the tunnel imagery, then, since you have this architectural facility.”
I was a little hurt that he didn’t compliment my drawings. That was stupid and shallow, in the context of our conversation, but I took the book back and put it in my pocket. Moving around like that reminded me that I was still cold. It was much warmer in our little pocket than in the wind, but it was still winter. The brick wall had radiated some of the day’s warmth, but now it was almost gone, and I was starting to shiver again.
“Let’s say you’re correct,” I said, “what did I see at the end of my tunnel? Another time?”
“I think so. Can you remember any more details, besides the scenery?”
I tried to picture the boy’s face again, and I found it was already slipping away from me. Maybe it was too traumatic for my brain to hold onto. Maybe it was because of the strange medium I’d seen it through. I tried to picture more, “This one boy was mostly naked, had some sort of cloth, maybe a loin cloth, a feather…oh, of course.” I looked at John in the slanting light from the moon. “I think he was Native American. I think they all were. He looked like you, a bit. That should have occurred to me right away. His hair was long, but brownish and tangled, and I always think of Indians as having black hair. Native Americans, I mean.”
“Then you were seeing the past, and in this part of New England, it could have been any number of tribal conflicts. At least two hundred years ago, possibly more, possibly much more. I’m sorry it was such a disturbing moment, but that’s amazing.”
“It didn’t feel amazing,” I reminded him. “The people were running away, but many were dead. It was…pretty horrible, even for a minute.” Now that I’d let my mind focus on the details I was having trouble getting rid of them again. I looked at my hands, half expecting them to be dirty and bloody as well. “It was so fast, but it felt like I was there.” I shuddered, and John wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
“I know, I do. I saw something like that once too. I keep forgetting that this came at you from nowhere. I should have warned you, but I'm not supposed to talk about this at all, without permission.”
I enjoyed the warmth of his arm and side, and didn’t pull away. “Permission from who? Are you talking about Dr. Shammas? Did he tell you not to talk to me?”
John’s body stiffened, but he kept his arm around me. “No, he didn’t tell me anything. Shammas and Ringer don’t know I can do it; they don't know I know about their project. And this is perhaps the most important thing I need to tell you: you shouldn't trust them.”
“Wait, wait,” I said, pulling away from him, so I could see his face. “They are the ones doing the experiment. How do you know all this if you aren’t a part of it?”
“I’m part of a different experiment. Did anyone tell you that I went to some military school before this? I have some military training, so that was the story I gave. Basically, I'm here to sabotage Shammas.” He sighed. “Now I sound melodramatic. I was supposed to get this one girl to leave before Shammas found out she was an aspen. And I did. Her name was Emily, and she didn’t come back this semester. I’m not sure she entirely believed my story, but she believed it enough, or else I freaked her out enough, that she left.”
Oh! This suited my wishes perfectly, and it was somewhat borne out by what Katie had told me. I almost suspected it to be a lie, because of how much I wanted to believe it. I would love to think that he'd only been helping Emily last semester, not ruining her life. It could be, right? Plus, I’d seen the dead tribes-people, I’d seen some sort of battle. Something weird was going on.
“What about me?” I asked, “Are you supposed to get rid of me too? Because now I’m an aspen, and Dr. Shammas probably knows. I tried to fudge things before I left, but if he knows what to look for, I'm sure he realized I'd done it. In fact, if he’s not sure, he’ll do it again.” I felt a little hysterical. “Even if he is sure, he’ll do it again! This is bad.”
John shook his head sharply, “No, no – I think you'll be alright. We had reason to think Emily was in trouble, that Shammas might use her to finish his experiment. But we have good reason to think that you won't be in trouble. I'm certain Shammas won’t use you in his larger experiment.”
“How can you be sure? The man’s not an idiot, and if he knows what to look for, he’ll f-f-figure it out.”
“You’re freezing now, aren’t you? It’s almost curfew anyway, we need to get back. Just trust me for now, okay? I think he’ll leave you alone. You knocked the power out for half an hour this morning, and I’m willing to bet they won’t try again. At least for several weeks.”
With this I tried to be satisfied, as I was freezing and needing to get some sleep tonight. Back in my room I took a long hot shower, blessing the steaming water as it warmed me up. It also occurred to me that tonight, for the first time, John had touched me and it felt okay.