Jump City: Apprentice Page 4

  According to Fynn and his law of inverse proportional velocity, my local momentum was the most important factor for a successful jump. After that came the earth’s rotation. Was I spinning towards or away from that last star in Hydra’s tail? Next in line was seasonal variation: whether the earth was hurtling towards or away from this specific star. These were the primary factors for controlling a jump. I almost felt ready to do it, to jump. I only needed to free fall for a yard or so. But doubts crept in as well. Words like aphelion and tangential velocity rattled through my brain… somehow all these things had a bearing on libra lapsus. Oh yeah, there was magnetic declination too... I wasn’t at all sure I would find the right direction… and jumping further to the future seemed like a terrible idea. I still didn’t even know the exact day yet, and took out Fynn’s device again. There was nothing on the dial except the solid glowing line that changed colors as I turned my hand.

  I broke my routine the next day, sick of astronomy. Instead, I climbed the bluffs and made my way to the ruined lighthouse. The Sentinel looked more like a fallen column than anything else. The midsection was pretty much intact, as if some giant hand had rested it gently on the ground. The top had flung off though, the glass shattered, the metal wrenched and torn. The base still stood a story-and-a-half high, jagged on one side. I crept through the main door for a last look. The spiral staircase rose to an open sky like a nautilus and ended abruptly. The ceiling was gone. Scattered about the floor I came across some odd plastic cylinders, half a dozen maybe. They were about the size of a shotgun shell, though much shorter and solid. I examined them carefully. They looked like components from an old fashioned circuit board, like a transistor or a capacitor, only giant-sized. Each had two metal leads. I made the mistake of touching one and got a strong electrical shock that made me drop it immediately. They were quite baffling.

  In a dark recess, I spotted a flash of light, dim and green. I thought it might be an errant firefly. It wasn’t. I stared harder and there at the bottom of the roof was a small half sphere of mirrored glass. A camera, for sure… but here? Why? I hurried back to camp.

  That evening I saw a light that was not a star, not a constellation. It was moving rapidly in from the south. Along with it came that same low whistling sound. Oddly, I had the instinct to burry myself in the sand and almost did just that. Instead though, I gathered my belongings and piled them under a tree. I hid myself the best I could. The helicopter hovered over the bluffs. I watched a spotlight scanning from the sky, sweeping through the dunes and the forest; and was happy that it never came too close.

  The patrol arrived early the next day, and was twice as loud it seemed; then the engines stopped, leaving only the silence of crickets and cicada. I crept to the dunes and peered out onto North Hollow Beach. Two speedboats had come ashore and half a dozen black-clad men scrambled out onto the sand. They were helmeted, wearing bulky vests, and seemed to be heavily armed. None of them looked like tourists. Two of the men on the beach then disappeared into thin air. Well, mostly— I thought I could see shimmering transparent shapes leaving boot prints in the sand. Invisible but not wholly so; these were no ghosts. Panic raced through me, but I sat for a moment and tried to calm myself. I needed a course of action. Rushing down the dunes to greet these men didn’t seemed like the best idea. Instead, I grabbed a few essentials and made for Blackwater. It was probably time to jump.

  At the base of the quarry I was extremely surprised to find an odd little man wading in the shallow cascade. I watched him from the distance. He was not uniformed, in fact his clothes were in tatters. He spotted me and seemed startled, but hurried in my direction nonetheless. “You!” he shouted and splashed up to me.

  “You! I remember you… Patrick Jardel,” the man said and clutched at my sleeve. I admit to being slightly repulsed. Filthy clothes, unkempt hair and a slightly unsavory, salty odor. He also wore perfectly round, thick glasses, though they were somewhat worse for wear with a cracked lens and held together with tape. How could he possibly know my name?

  “I was wrong, it wasn’t Zangara…” He looked at me with searching eyes as if I understood what he was saying. I didn’t. “It wasn’t Giuseppe,” he continued.

  I gave him a puzzled expression.

  “Not Smedley either… it was MacArthur.”

  Everything he said was completely nonsensical. I tried a question: “Douglas MacArthur, the famous general?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Did he send you here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Who did?”

  “That— that… insane doctor. He made me jump.”

  “Jump? Jump from where?”

  The man pointed west towards the bay. “The Planetarium. His giant threw me in and when I came up for air, everyone was gone. I went outside and everything looked like this.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m Murray.”

  He was not the same Murray I knew from Sand City.

  “We’ve met before. Don’t you remember?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, I do.” The man stared at me. “You told me about the gold.”

  “What gold?”

  “The pirate’s treasure… you buried it in the dunes.”

  “I told you that? Where?”

  “You didn’t tell me where. I’ve been searching for it though.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You have to help me,” he interrupted, his eyes pleading.

  “Help you how?”

  “Take me back to my apartment, back to New York,” the odd man said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Oh,” the poor man muttered, utterly crestfallen.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Thirteen years, two hundred and thirty-one days.” He looked down at the ground.

  “Who are these soldiers? Why are they out to get us?”

  “Maybe they’re looking for the gold too…” He laughed wildly. “Watch out, they’ll catch you, take you away, just like all the others. You have to run,” he shouted, and then started sobbing. “They won’t get me… I know where to hide…”

  I was about to suggest that we should leave when something whizzed by my head, something bullet-like, but I had the impression it was more like a dart. Another went flying by, this one hit my new-found friend. He stood frozen for an instant, then started shaking, convulsing, like he had just been electrocuted. He fell to the ground in a heap of old rags. I turned to see where the shot had originated and saw one of the black-clad men on top of the cliff face. I stooped to pick up one of these odd bullets. Another shot flew by my head. I know what these are: capacitor rounds… Impossible, how do I know this? I had no time to understand. It was time to leave.

  I climbed as quickly as I could to a broad ledge and tried to estimate the direction of Hydra. It should be below me, beneath the horizon to the south. I wanted to go back in time more than anything… and that meant I had to aim towards a very specific point in the sky. I turned and leapt. Nothing happened. I had nothing to show but throbbing feet; and I was merely on a lower ledge.

  Two more men appeared along the top of the quarry and began to climb down. Below, I saw two other uniforms, rushing along the shore. I’d lost count by now, yet had to assume two of the men were more or less invisible. I heard someone very nearby, scrambling along the rocks. I couldn’t see a person, but a few pebbles fell close to me. I jumped again, this time in a panic, but fell to my knees on the next ledge. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Fynn’s watch. It had a glowing green line. How could I not follow it?

  The uniformed men drew closer on all sides. I had one more chance to jump, I reckoned. I didn’t really care what direction, though the only one left to me was towards the black water some thirty feet below. I took a running start and leapt, my arms and legs flailing wildly. Next came the terrible consuming pain and then
a sweet oblivion... decidedly sweet, vanilla I would guess, though it was tinged with an acrid smell, something like window cleaner, or ammonia.

  * * *

  chapter three

  darkness

  I survived the fiery death and the icy depths, again. I survived oblivion, the all consuming void. My second jump, or at least that’s what went through my mind. And as I fell, I brought with me a scream that had begun in a wholly different time— probably the past. This was no soft jump, no jump back to a previous self. That much I could tell. I was exactly the same as when I left, but where I landed was impossible to guess. I first noticed the smell, a strong odor of ammonia, or maybe oven-cleaner. The air was stale, putrid and stifling, barely breathable. I started coughing from reflex. I could barely take in enough oxygen as if breathing at high-altitude. I knew immediately this was no place to stay. I regained measured breaths, shallow but sustaining.

  Next, I realized that I was standing in muck; wet mud it felt like, syrupy and oozing, and up to my waist at least. I tried to lift one leg, then the other, but was more-or-less stuck. I looked around and panic came. It was pitch. No moon here, not a light, not a star, no suffused glow. Only a black poison sky. I was still clutching Fynn’s pocket watch but it had gone dark as well. It slipped from my fingers into the mud before I realized.

  The blackness slowly eased into separate shadows; I started to differentiate between dark and darker. Other puddles of muck dotted the landscape though I could certainly not see anything alive or growing. Also, I noticed small bundles scattered about, black shapes that didn’t move but lay by the dozen everywhere. I was struck by how very quiet it all was. No birds, no crickets, not even a breath of wind; just complete stillness, as if the air were impenetrable to sound. I had the sinking feeling that I was even further from home now.

  Above me I could see nothing, but I had the impression that a fast-moving swirl of clouds raced overhead, menacing and roiling. This was no place to linger. Anywhere else would be better. I moved one leg, then the other, laboriously marching through the ooze; it was ungodly warm and alarmingly organic, maybe something like gritty oatmeal. I plodded along for some minutes, staggering now, also hobbled by a rough surface of unseen pebbles and stones beneath my bare feet. I was gaining ground though; the filth was to my thighs. I trudged on, pausing only for breath; to my shins, and eventually I was free from it all. I crawled on my hands and knees then finally found myself on a patch of hard packed ground. I was covered in slimy mud. Could be worse, I thought to myself, could be quicksand.

  Terra firma, a ledge. This is key, but I need elevation. I need to jump again as soon as possible. But from where, and, to where? I looked around: shadows and darker shadows for as far as I could see, barren ground, flat and relentless. I started to walk, though in no particular direction, and my feet told me the ground was not as hard as I first thought. I tried to steer clear of what I thought to be other mud pits. I stepped around them cautiously, but I also got a slightly better view. Each pool seemed to have a bundle of rags at its center. I walked near another, but stumbled when something caught the back of my heel: a skeletal hand poking from a sleeve. He had been dead for a very long time.

  I tried to calm my frantic unease with logical thinking: Direction… compass… it was still in my pocket, though impossible to see in this light. The flint stick and my knife, also in my pocket. A spark and a glimpse of the needle might be all that I needed. A despairing thought came as well: What good would it do to know which way was north? Despite this, I struck the flint with my knife while staring hard at the dial. A spark came, yet something wholly unexpected happened. The spark stayed; it amplified and reflected across the entire landscape, spreading across the scene like an echo, lighting everything into a brownish gray.

  Briefly, I could see all the other mud pits dotting the flat ground, dozens certainly. The light revealed more horror: there were others stuck in these pools of muck, or what was left of them. They were hardly more than skeletons wrapped in tattered clothes, though some seemed more complete than others. All long dead and twisted in a frozen posture of perpetual escape. None had. The thought came to mind that I was not the first to arrive here in the same manner.

  In moments, my bubble of light faded, the darkness returned and it was far worse; I had been blinded by the second of brightness. I struck another spark and this had the same effect though slightly diminished. I peered at the compass, the dial was spinning wildly, unable to settle on a single direction. I turned to my right nonetheless, where I believed was rising ground and a few boulders. I laughed to myself as I trudged on, thinking how Fynn might suddenly appear, perhaps from behind a rock, with his usual smile and some uncalled for remark. He could guide me out of this mess, this place. This was just my hope though, my heart knew he was not going to miraculously appear out of nowhere.

  I struck the flint again. My echo of light was surely dimmer this time but at least I was moving in the right direction: higher ground, a place to jump from. I came upon hills and boulders. No Fynn to be seen. Around me though, I began to distinguish a virtual wall of rock in at least three directions, a cliff face, I thought. It seemed darker than the rest of the landscape. I could trace its edge once my eyes adjusted. Slowly though, even blacker shapes started to line up along that horizon. One by one, ghostly shadows appeared, cowled figures outlined by the poison sky, hooded and robed. I supposed them to be men, motionless and standing shoulder to shoulder, just looming over me. These people were alive and sheer terror filled me.

  I quickened my pace, gulping for air, and finally spotted a high ledge not so distant. A bit of height, and reckless abandon… these were my friends. I didn’t care where I went or where I landed. It had to be better than here. I clambered onto the high ledge and looked down. Below me, etched in the dry ground seemed to be odd patterns or glyphs of some sort. They were familiar to me, yet I didn’t care to think why. Only leaving this place was important. I had done this before. I flung myself, this time overjoyed when oblivion wrapped itself around me. And this time it was different. No fiery pain nor icy depths, yet there was a smell or a taste, it was hard to tell which. This oblivion reminded me of burnt hazelnut. Oddly, I felt as if I had just strolled up to the coffee bar in a Seven-Eleven.

  ***

  It was certainly bright enough to be a convenience store, in fact I could instantly tell it was too bright. I squinted closed my eyes. It was blinding. Everywhere was white. There was no sun, just the palest blue sky I had ever seen... and snow. The word tundra came to mind. Worse though, I wasn’t quite myself. It felt like I was sharing a mind, cohabiting with another awareness. This was very wrong. I could also taste bitter coffee in my mouth, hazelnut flavor. I hate hazelnut.

  I peered out from a fur-lined hood. I was wearing sunglasses now or maybe goggles, and I was no longer covered in mud. It was icy cold, real cold, just like I had stepped into a giant freezer. I looked down at myself. I was dressed for it apparently, wearing an arctic parka. Nonetheless, a raw wind penetrated the insulation of the jacket and also savaged across my face. I looked at my hands, now sheathed in giant mittens, but I was holding something, the same pocket watch Fynn had given me. This was confusing, as I distinctly remember dropping it into the pool of mud. I no longer clutched a compass, the flint, or my knife.

  The watch dial however displayed the same arrow, now glowing intermittently. It meant nothing though, and I looked around again to see snow everywhere; on the ground and as far as the horizon, nothing but white. I was in myself, but at the same time I knew I was not me, not exactly. My body felt different, skinny, frail, my muscles ached, my joints felt creaky. I was ancient, older than Fynn. I started to shiver wildly, uncontrollably. I felt this body turn away from the wind. It faced what I knew to be south and began to walk now, slowly at least. We started tromping towards some kind of igloo, approaching step by cautious step. I could hear the snow crunching. And I could see a set of stairs carved into the ice, curving, and rising to the top of
a small flattened dome.

  “Well, well, there you are,” a voice inside my head said.

  “What?” I was startled.

  “I thought you’d never make it.”

  It was my own voice but different. It was like listening to myself, but a separate self. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “We?” the voice replied with a scathing inflection. “Frostbite Falls, but don’t get too comfortable, we are not staying long. It’s probably best if you just forget this ever happened.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, I’ve been freaking waiting forever,” the voice continued with impatience.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For you to show up. Freezing my butt off all these years.”

  “How did you know I’d come?”

  “You had to jump back eventually.” There was a pause. “You ready now?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “We have to go.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Someplace warmer.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Let’s just say you’re the one lucky Patrick.”

  “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

  “Better than being unlucky.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Back, further back…” the voice said and paused. “Not sure I can take you all the way though. These old legs aren’t what they used to be.”

  “Back where?”

  “To where it all started… the dust storm.”

  “What’s that?”

  There was a long pause; I couldn’t hear my other self’s thoughts. “Do you remember where you were, just before this?” he finally asked.

  I had to think for a second. “Sand City, a big flood.”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve been there.”