Hexad: The Chamber (23 page)

"Yeah, they are sure to be watching and listening, what do you think the mirror is for? It's about as cliched as it gets."

"Well, it won't matter if I tell you anyway, not if it works."

"So, you planning to jump us out of here then?"

"Something like that." Amanda smiled and Dale stared at her quizzically.

"What? Tell me."

"Look, we can't let this happen, any of it. Us being here will in all likelihood have changed everything in the future. This conversation for a start, not to mention the fact that what we've done could mean we spend the rest of our lives in prison, well, you anyway. But Cray will get the Hexads now, and we won't be able to stop him. But us being in the papers will change the future course of our history, so we need to undo it."

"Undo it? Okay," said Dale warily. "What did you have in mind?"

"It should begin in just a few seconds. Get ready."

"Ready? Ready for..."

Dale felt himself losing his grip on reality, felt things were out of reach, intangible and just not really real any longer. He stared at Amanda, stared at his own hands, and watched in horror as he could see right through her to the plain wall behind. He looked at his hands again, squinted at the tiled floor through nothing more than what looked like a poor projection of his own self.

What did you do Amanda?

It was Dale's last thought before he disappeared entirely, just like Amanda.

"The First Rule of Time Travel...

11 Years 2 Hours Past

... is don't go getting yourselves in the paper," read Dale, seconds after grabbing the note that appeared in mid-air in front of him as they walked across the bridge towards the entrance to the hotel. Dale looked at Amanda, but she was just as non-plussed as he was.

"It looks like your handwriting." Dale offered the note to Amanda, who looked at it suspiciously.

They stopped and looked around, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Amanda carried on reading.

"Don't go to the hotel, trust me when I tell you it's a bad idea. Dale goes mental with a gun and—"

"I what!? Yeah right."

"Quiet, let me read it. Dale goes mad with a gun and then you get locked up and Cray comes and you make a real mess of things. Amanda, this is me, well, you, and you need to not go to the hotel. Be careful, if you lose the Hexads then everything is over. Finish this now, no more delays. Oh, first thing first, take out your notepad, write this note, and then be sure to do what needs to be done so you read this. You have changed your own future by doing this, and I don't know how successful it has been, but hopefully it has worked out. If you are reading this then it will have."

"What the hell is all that about?" asked Dale, as confused as Amanda.

"Sounds like you did something stupid and I saved us," said Amanda, smirking at Dale.

"So, what, you got us out of it by right now writing a note and leaving it for us? That doesn't make sense. How would we have got out of whatever trouble we were in so you could write this note?"

"Because I'm doing it right now and sending it to us a few minutes ago, so I guess whatever happened in the hotel won't happen now. Haha, can you imagine you with a gun? I bet you would drop it your hands would be so sweaty."

"I could use it if I had to," protested Dale.

Amanda rummaged in her bag, found her notebook, then very carefully copied the note word for word. When she was finished she said, "Let's walk back away from here before I jump, I don't want us from a few moment's ago seeing us standing here, it will get too confusing."

"Like it isn't already? Look, I don't get it, surely we can't stop a future that just happened to us by doing something we wouldn't have been able to do because we should be somewhere else."

"Dale, this is time travel, it's supposed to be confusing. Anyway, you did it, with the gun and Cray."

"That was different." Dale scratched at his head, feeling exposed on the bridge, the salty air carrying with it the terrible heat of the day. "Wasn't it? Come on then, I'm burning up out here. How can people live in this kind of heat?"

"They have air-con." Amanda began to walk back the way they had come, holding on to the two notes.

Dale caught up and said what was really bugging him. "Hey, why bother writing the note? You have it already, so why write it again?"

"Dale," said Amanda, exasperated, "because it has to get written in the first place, doesn't it? Jeez, you need to keep up."

Yeah, like all of this makes perfect sense.

They made it around the corner and after crouching down behind a building Amanda disappeared then re-appeared a moment later.

"Done?"

"Done. Now, let's go save the world. No more distractions this time."

"Hey, don't blame me. Whatever happened clearly hasn't happened now, so it wasn't my fault."

"Hmm." Amanda gave him one of those looks; Dale knew better than to argue.

"Are we really going to do this now? I mean, it feels sudden, almost like it isn't happening."

Amanda squirmed uncomfortably, face reddening in the intense heat. "I know what you mean. Part of me wants to believe that everything is great and we're just on holiday. Amazing what a soak in a hot spring and a good nights sleep can do to you."

"Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact we were in Iceland one minute, Dubai the next, and just caught a note that magically appeared in mid-air then I'd feel the same."

"That's not what I meant and you know it. All the other stuff, The Chamber, what we saw happening in there, what we saw happening far into the future with the place, that just doesn't seem like it could actually be true. I want to just go home Dale, I want to be bored and read the Sunday papers and laugh at you trying to devise ways to stop the squirrel eating all the bird seed." Amanda was almost in tears and Dale didn't blame her.

Heck, he felt like joining her, just sitting down on the scorching hot asphalt, putting his head in his hands and weeping until everything went back to normal. But it wouldn't, he knew it and it hit him like a bolt out of the clear blue sky. Nothing was going to be okay, not until they finished what they were caught up in whether they liked it or not.

"Right, one last jump. We have to go back to the hot springs and get our other weapons. Judging by the note I'm not to be trusted with guns, and besides I kind of feel naked without my parang now. Is that silly?"

Amanda sniffled and tried to smile. "No, I know what you mean. You get used to it, it makes you feel a little less vulnerable. Come on, you going to do the honors?"

"Sure." Dale pulled out a Hexad and set up the dials. "Ready?" Amanda nodded. Dale tried not to think about what would have happened if they'd walked into the lobby — he just couldn't get a picture of him waving a gun around like a madman out of his mind. He had to smile at that; how different a man he was to just a few days ago, when he woke up with a hangover and starting digging in the garden. What would have happened if he'd dug up the note they'd buried? It couldn't have been worse than this, surely?

~~~

1 Day 9 Hours Future

The hot springs gave a sense of comfort, like it was a regular haunt. Dale had jumped to the day after they'd been there before, same time, thinking it would be nice to have a familiar atmosphere while they collected their weapons. He went to retrieve them from where they'd been hidden, and returned to the pool a few minutes later.

"Hey, what you doing? I thought we were going to finish this?" Amanda was in the pool, hair floating about her like golden seaweed, steam rising invitingly from the water. Her clothes were folded neatly beside the water.

Amanda stood, just as she'd done the night before, water cascading down her trim body, breasts jiggling as she wiggled in the way she knew got Dale going every time. "Well, I just thought while we were here... After all, it's going to be the last time. When this is over we'll be different people, the old us, and we won't remember any of it. So, why not?"

Dale didn't need to be asked twice, he already had half his clothes off by the time she'd finished speaking. "Watch it," said Amanda, laughing. "You'll fall in with your jeans still on if you're not careful."

Dale hopped about on one foot trying to pull his remaining sock off, and after carefully unbuttoning his jeans and taking off his boxer shorts he was in the water and grabbing for Amanda before she had the chance to change her mind.

"I agree."

"With what?" laughed Amanda.

"Everything you say. Now come here."

~~~

"Ready?" asked Dale.

"Yes," said Amanda, staring wistfully at the pool, now dressed, hair still damp, ice forming in the freezing air.

"Well, okay then, let's do his thing."

"Whooooooooooooooooosh," said Amanda.

"Hey, that's my line—"

They jumped.

Lost Something?

2900 Years Future

Dale grabbed hold of the rail on the gantry, steadying himself after the familiar, yet always strange feeling he got following a jump. However good he and Amanda now were at ensuring they landed with feet on the ground there was always that sensation of falling. It was too risky to imagine landing perfectly on any terrain, as even the tiniest miscalculation could mean you ended up with your feet a few millimeters into the surface — not something Dale wanted to ever dwell on as it sent his heart racing every time.

The silence became almost a physical entity; Dale knew instantly that something was very wrong. The absence of sound was too strange — there was always a background noise. Always.

By the set of Amanda's shoulders there was a lot worse to come. Dale peered over the edge, down to where they had looked at The Chamber and the ever-diminishing workforce through countless time periods.

The space was empty.

It wasn't only The Chamber itself that was missing, everything was gone, there was nothing but emptiness, you'd never know anything had ever been there. Lucky for them some basic infrastructure was still intact, otherwise they'd be plummeting to the ground far below right now.

"Where's it gone?" said Dale breathlessly, nervously putting his hand through his hair, brushing it away from his neck as if it suddenly felt ticklish.

"Dale, of all the questions you have ever asked me that has to be one of the stupidest. How the hell should I know?" Amanda was leaning over the rail, searching the space below as if The Chamber could be hidden away somewhere. She moved along the metal walkway, looking left then right, willing it to be where it should be. She was getting frantic.

"Did you jump us to the right time? The one we left last time?" Amanda just stared at him, telling him in no uncertain terms that she hadn't messed up. "Well where is it then?"

"I don't know. It's gone."

"This doesn't make sense, it can't be gone. It was here before so it should still be here. Nothing has changed."

"It must have. Us jumping back, we must have changed something somehow. What other explanation is there?"

"Maybe we just need to go back a little further, it might just be that we missed it."

"Why would we? It should be here, everything should be like it was before."

"Well it isn't, so let's try."

Dale had a terrible feeling, like they were too late, like they'd ruined everything by jumping away because of exhaustion when they should have done something at the time. Now they'd missed their chance — it was as though The Chamber had never been.

Amanda looked like an animal frozen to the spot in the middle of the road as a vehicle hurtled toward her with no intention of slowing down. She fumbled with a Hexad, hands shaking, face pale and drawn like they hadn't had the chance to recuperate at all.

"It's okay Amanda, calm down. We'll sort this out, I promise."

"No Dale, it's not all right and it's all my fault. I can't bear it, it's too much. All those women, that was me in there Dale. Me!"

Dale hugged her tightly, the only thing he could do, feeling inadequate, unable to give her what she needed, but he felt Amanda slowly relax and pull herself together again. "Stay strong, we've been through enough to know that reality gets confusing. This isn't the end of it, it's just going to be different to how we thought, that's all."

"I hope you're right. I really do. Dale? Dale, what is it?"

Amanda followed his eyes, then rushed over and grabbed the binoculars from where they'd left them in the corner of the gantry. She ran back to join him, but Dale knew she didn't need them, not really, she just didn't want to believe what she was seeing. After a few seconds she lowered them.

"It's us."

"Yup, sure is."

"What are we doing down there? How are we there? What the hell is going on Dale?"

"I have absolutely no idea, but I think we need to go and find out. Oh, look, we're waving, isn't that nice?"

"Nice? Nice!?" said Amanda hysterically. "No, it's not nice. What do we think we're playing at? Why are we waving at us? Do they expect us to go down there and have a nice chat with them? We can't."

"Well, as it's us I'm guessing that it's safe to go down as we aren't very well going to make ourselves disappear, now are we?"

"I suppose not, no."

"Should we jump do you think?"

"I guess we'll have to. It'll take forever to find our way down off this thing, if there even is a way down now."

Dale made adjustments to a Hexad, noting that the one he was holding was on its last jump, the 1 flashing as if in accusation for squandering the greatest, and worst gift mankind had ever been given. Amanda held on to his arm and Dale pressed the blue dome. He also crossed his fingers, not that he didn't trust himself or anything.

~~~

"Don't come any closer, not yet," warned Amanda, and Dale's head started to get seriously messed up.