Fuck. I never expected to talk this much. For this long. I’ve . . . I’ve got a lot to say. Apparently. But I’m getting close to the  end now. To joining up with all too fucking depressing present.

Final lap now, ladies and gents and everyone in between. Come one, come all!

[Short pause]

The meeting lasted for six hours. Food and drinks were brought to us. By the end we were all so fucking wiped we could barely make it to our beds. But the thought of supportive mattress and soft sheets was enough to get us home. I’d really hoped the man in the high tower – your head honcho – would be there. But no. Of course, I’m sure he was listening in.

We were on a precipice and only us on the island actually knew it and knew about it. We had to do things carefully and slowly from now on. So mistakes wouldn’t be made. Yeah, right. Mistakes will always be made no matter what, so long as there are fucking humans involved. When you play with fire . . . You get burned. Except in this case we were playing with time travel. Time travel was our fire. And we had no fucking clue how to control it.

But it was also so . . . Enticing. So magical. Yeah. Magical. That’s definitely an appropriate fucking word. There was definitely something supernatural about it. Out of this world. In the realm of the impossible. I’ve been to some truly incredible places on this planet. Spectacularly beautiful. I’ve seen fucking unbelievable things become reality. Grow and exist. I’ve participated in them. Played my part in the seemingly impossible. Made it possible. But this . . . This was something else. It was magical and enticing and . . . So very fucking exciting. The possibilities were . . . Endless, and they were all there for us. For the taking. Behind those doors. It was why we had all signed up for this. Agreed to abandon our current lives and start this new and interesting one.

The first hour of the meeting we just talked about all these special times and places we wanted to visit. Historical events. Moments from ancient times. Moments from more recent ones. Everyone had a favorite one, that special time they’d always kinda dreamed about visiting. This probably wasn’t the way the meeting was intended to go, but in a way we were all blowing off a little steam, having a laugh, and enjoying ourselves. So we got a lot of leeway. We’d earned it. Then someone started talking about the future. That started us all off on a new tangent. It was like Star Wars and Star Trek having babies and we were all riding in those gravitational waves in kickass future spaceships.

Eventually we started running out of steam. Quieting down. The heads took their cues and started bringing the meeting to order. Going over the great achievements that had been made and where we currently stood. As they spoke, a group of scientists were spooling up and activating the doors. We didn’t know exactly what that meant, but we knew what it fucking inferred. We broke out in a hearty round of applause and cheers and whistles. Then they started talking about consequences. The fact that not only would we be actually traveling through time, but we would have an effect on the time period we arrived in. There was no way not to. But the simple fact of us fucking being there was causing a change. As I said, we’d all read up and watched the time travel literature. Like . . . all of it. We’d been given specific class time for it. Yeah. Just like fucking study hall. So as soon as they brought up this poignant subject that we knew was as inevitable as their mouthing the iconic words “butterfly effect” within the next thirty seconds . . . They did it in twenty-two, incidentally . . . The famous Ray Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder” popped into all our heads. It was almost a fucking reflex action. For me. Don’t know about everyone else. But there was a communal sense going on. Yeah. Kinda mystical.

In the Bradbury story, set some time in the future, there’s a company called Time Safari Inc. that will take people back to hunt extinct species. There are specific rules to be followed, otherwise the contract is voided. One guy steps off the path and when they all come back things are different. Subtle things. Little things. The language is different. The other guy won the big election. All because the guy stepped off the path and crushed a bug. Oh. Yeah. You guessed it. A fucking butterfly.

And now the heads are enlightening us about how the butterfly effect doesn’t come from that memorable story that they know we’ve all read and practically memorized – they caught me there, I’ve read it somewhere between thirty and fifty fucking times – but relates to chaos theory. A mind-numbingly complex concept summed up with the pithy phrase: if a butterfly flaps its wings in one place, hundreds of miles away a hurricane begins to stir. Yeah. Smacks mightily of bullshit to me. And I prepare myself for a long-winded lecture on chaos theory, and am delighted when it doesn’t come. Instead they talk about when it comes to time travel, there are rules that are to be adhered to. There’s nothing chaotic about it. We’re informed that in the next few weeks we’ll be receiving further training on this specific subject. But suffice to say, they continue, the goal of these “missions” is more one of observation than actual participation. To observe and witness the historical or future event, but never to take part in.

“But what if someone from that time tries to communicate with us,” someone asks.

The heads inform us before we go through a single door, we will go through a rigorous immersion process, essentially “drowning” us in everything about the time period as regards culture, people, language, and everything else. So if one of us does end up in the very unlikely situation, we will be fully prepared.

And then we’re back to talking about our favorite times we want to visit. It goes on for another hour. All real polite and conscientious. Everyone getting a turn. But not too long into it, I ask the heads a question. I’m cagey about it.

“I don’t know if this has been on everyone else’s minds. And don’t get me wrong. I’m super pumped for this. Like all of us here. But . . . Why are we actually doing this? What . . . What does the Ostium Network get out of it?”

And for the first time – and probably the last – the heads were stumped by a question. Well. I don’t know if they were stumped. But they took longer than the average five seconds to answer the fucking thing.

“Ms. Chase,” the heads said, addressing me directly. I felt special. And for the first time . . . A little scared. Scared of them. I was scared of the Rock the first time I set foot on it. “Ms. Chase, that is a very good question. And there’s a very good answer to go with it. But for now, you don’t get to hear it. There’s an expression: ‘that’s above your pay grade.’ The question falls under this rubric. In time. At a later date. Everyone here will know the answer. When it’s the right time. So who here would like to be there on the day Julius Cesar is stabbed by his not-so-friendly senators?”

I never forgot that. Never found out either. Far as I know, none of us did. Still a fucking mystery today. But we were just all so excited to become fucking time travelers. We went through further training classes, all about time travel and its ramifications and what the Ostium Network rules and strict no-nos were when it came to traveling through. Oh, and most of this shit was – without a doubt – made up, cobbled together, and decided on the night before. It had that hasty unplanned feel that in most cases was just obvious. We pretty much knew if we fucked up, that would be the end. No second chance. We’d not be time traveling anymore. And we’d be kicked off the island. End of story. And none of us were going to risk that.

Until they did what they did to Steve.

Then we had a month to decide on where and when we wanted to go. We didn’t know who’d be going first, or second, or fiftieth. We were all pretty certain we’d get a turn. They’d done everything but promise this. It was why we were all fucking here in the first place. I took a while and couldn’t agree on a specific event. I just knew it was going to be around the turn of the twenty-first century. Some time before or after the year 2000, within a decade or two. I just fucking love the geeky pop culture stuff from that era. In case you haven’t noticed. They were okay with me not knowing exactly what I wanted to see and when; there were actually a few of us, but we all figured when it came closer to our time we’d decide then. So next was the rigorous research. Six months. Of reading. Watching. Listening. Absorbing. I did everything. Music. Books. TV. Movies. A million fucking commercials with some terrible jingles I will never be able to get out of my brain.

It was towards the end of the research period that I ended up chatting with one of the engineer developer sciencey guys one night. Don’t really know what the fuck he did, but the guy was involved in making something happen in Ostium, which was good enough for me. He started telling me about this infrared map he’d been developing for people going around Ostium. It was kinda limited in that it only worked in Ostium, not on the other side of any doors, so the higher ups weren’t really that impressed or interested in it. They saw its potential but weren’t really putting a high priority on it. But he was having problems making it work in Ostium. Like getting it activated. He wanted it to be so you pretty much stepped into Ostium and there you had the map and could go to any door and navigate yourself around the whole town. He was still really excited about it. Guess it did eventually work okay. So thanks for that.

I know I said earlier I didn’t remember where it came from, but this is a big part of why I’m doing this. My head is kinda foggy on a lot of this stuff and going through it all step by step is helping make things clearer. I didn’t remember the infrared map, so when I first experience I was as shocked as Jake was, and it wasn’t until just now that I remembered talking with this guy.

We actually got a couple of very strictly guided tours around parts of Ostium too. We obviously didn’t get to open and go through any doors, other than the clock tower. We checked out the kitchen and bedroom and bath. They showed us that crazy pantry that was always super stocked with a ton of food. Seemed like it went on for miles in there, but the guy who developed it had been with us on the tour that day, so he was able to talk about . . .

[Short pause]

To talk about . . .

[Jake softly:] What? Talk about what Monica?

[Monica anguished whisper:] Jake?

[Short pause]

[Monica hopeful whisper:] Jake? Is that you?

[Jake softly:] What did he want to talk to you about, Monica? Something about the food?

[Monica quietly:] Goddammit, Jake. I know it’s not you. [Breath] I know you’re not fucking here. You just a goddamn figment of my imagination.

[Jake:] Maybe. I guess so. Does that fucking matter? There’s gotta be a reason I’m here. Talking to you.

[Monica quietly:] Of course there is. Because I fucking miss you. Because there’s a fucking hole in my heart where you should be. Because you sacrificed yourself, Jake. You fucking committed suicide. For me. And for saving the universe. Mr. Fucking High and Mighty. Till the very end. No surprise there.

[Jake:] So what were you going to tell me?

[Monica quietly:] I . . . I don’t remember. You fucking wiped my brain. Emptied my thoughts. I don’t even remember what I was fucking talking about.

[Jake:] Something about . . . Someone telling you something . . . About the food . . . In Ostium . . .

[Monica quietly:] Yes. [Louder with excitement:] Yes! The fucking food pantry. Thank you Jake . . . No. Not Jake. Thank you brain. For keeping it together. The pantry. With the food that never seems to end. But does, because it can’t last forever. Nothing’s infinite.

[Jake, cocky:] The universe is infinite.

[Monica:] Fuck you, Jake. I knew that. Which is why you were able to say it. Why my subconscious was able to say it . . . As for you. Look, imaginary Jake. Can you just shut the fuck up for a little while, so I can fucking think and figure this shit out.

[Jake:] Sure thing. Babe.

[Monica:] I’m gonna ignore that. Now what had that guy been saying? That the food wasn’t infinite. That was impossible. But it was a large pantry. With a lot of room. But at the very back was a special . . . Reloading door. That was it. A door connecting Ostium to the Ostium Network. To the Rock. It was small. Made for a restocking cart to be slid through and added to the back of the pantry. So it just seemed like there was never ending food, only it was getting restocked. From a door that led back to the island. He didn’t show us the door. The pantry had been fully stocked at that point and you couldn’t see a fucking thing in there, other than piles of food. But that little door was supposed to be there. At the very back.

[Jake, whisper:] Then what the fuck are you waiting for?

[Monica:] You’re fucking right.

[Pause]

Maybe I didn’t think this through? I just opened the pantry door and I’m staring at the mountains of food. It’s definitely not as much as that first time I saw it with everyone else. That was packed solid. And Jake and I have been eating through it for a while now. So it’s definitely less. There’s space.

Wait a fucking second. Has the Ostium Network been restocking this pantry through the special door? Logic says yes. Of course. What about us being untethered? Did that sever the connection? Who the fuck knows? I sure don’t. I’ve said it over and over. None of us knew what we were getting in to with Ostium. So the idea that it could become detached from reality was something that was never even hinted at by anyone. And we had many conversations about what the future of Ostium held for us. When I saw the reality on top of the water tower I just knew that that’s what it was. I accepted it and told Jake. Not knowing how or why this thing happened, just that it did.

And now here I am: about to go through what I thought was a back door. A secret way back to the Ostium Network. Back to the Rock. Thinking how fucking smart I was. But what if I go through that door and just fall into the blackness. Fall forever. Like spinning endlessly in space. Never connecting with anything. Was there anything that could tell me that wouldn’t happen?

[Jake, softly:] How do you know if you don’t try?

But is it worth the risk? Worth the sacrifice?

[Jake:] What do you think?

What do I think? I think you sacrificed yourself, Jake. You did it. And now you’re fucking dead. Was that worth it? Huh? Was it fucking worth it?

[Jake:] Least I did it with a smile on my face.

[Slowly, thinking] What did you say?

[Jake:] Least I did it . . .

[Yelling:] I know what you fucking said! I’m . . . I’m thinking about it. Processing it. As you would oh so eloquently put it. I don’t know if you did it with “a smile” on your face, but you were sure keeping it together. No crying or shouting. Just telling me what I needed to do. When I wanted to bring you with me, you told me no. It couldn’t be that way. I had to go. You had to stay. Them’s the rules.

[Jake:] I accepted my fate.

Yeah. You knew what needed to be done. You made your decision. And you stuck with it. You . . . You let the blackness take you.

[Jake:] I accepted . . . My fate.

Is that because you knew something Jakey? Something you never told me? Something about what the blackness does to you?

[Jake:] I accepted my . . . Fate.

You could control it, after all. You were the one in charge at times. The fucking puppet master. Getting stronger each time it seemed. And that last time . . .

[Jake:] I accepted my fate.

That last time, maybe you knew you might survive. That you had a chance. A fucking fighting chance. And you took it.

[Jake:] I . . . Accepted my fate.

Well . . . Now it’s my fucking turn. To accept my fate. Whether it takes me and spits me out the other side . . . Whole, or breaks me up into little pieces and ending me . . . I need to accept my fate.

[Pause]

So I started pulling out all the food. I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick job. There was a lot. A LOT. As I might’ve mentioned a couple hundred times. At first I was stacking stuff. Neatly. Probably how Jake would’ve done it. Keeping it organized. And the reason for that? Well, like anything you take out and keep stacked and organized: because it needs to go back in neat and organized, which is much harder to do and takes a lot longer when it’s in one big unruly pile.

But this was a one-way trip. I never had any fucking plans to put all this shit back in the pantry. Once I had this thought, there was no more stacking. The food went everywhere and anywhere. I started feeling like a burrowing mole. As a path opened up in front of me, I dug deeper. Some cans were falling behind me. Rolling around. Sorta blocking my way out. But I didn’t fucking care. I was moving forward. With the goal of getting the fuck out of here.

Minutes past. I started to get a little claustrophobic. All these boxes and cans and cartons all around me. The way out closing up like a pit of quicksand. But I knew this couldn’t go on for fucking ever. There would be an end. There would be a source. As soon as a I thought this, I started hearing a humming.

Getting warmer.

Getting warmer literally. I could feel it in the air now. Not much. Just . . . A difference. A few degrees. I was approaching something that didn’t seem “normal” for Ostium.

And then I was there. Relief poured over me like a bucket of cold water. But just like when you break through to a secret place, you don’t sit back and congratulate yourself on a job well done. No. You keep fucking digging. You keep going until that hole is big enough to let you through. And you get the fuck inside and satisfy that raging curiosity within you.

I swam through the food. Sweeping armfuls of it behind me. Climbing on it. Crushing it beneath my feet.

I was against the far wall now. The whole thing felt warm. Unnatural. I cleared more space to give me some moving room. I found the secret door way low down. It reminded me of something. What was that? Oh. Huh. Yeah. That book. It. By that Stephen King guy. Horror writer. A really fucked up book. Especially when the kids were having set with each other. Who the fuck writes that and thinks that’s okay? And who the fuck publishes it! But there was this scene. With the evil terrorizing the town. It’s lair. In a secret, hidden place. With a tiny door. An unnaturally tiny door for a menace so huge and terrifying.

That’s what this door was reminding me of. It didn’t seem the right size. I guess it was enough for pushing food through. Didn’t make it fucking right. And this is my ticket out of here? How the fuck am I gonna fit myself considerable voluptuous self through that teeny-tiny door.

My heart sinks and I start to give up. There’s just no way. No. Fucking. Way. It’s over. I really am stuck here. Well and truly fucked.

This is the end of the line for me.

[Jake, softly:] Do you really want to live forever?

What? What the fuck does that mean, Jake? You’re quoting fucking Conan the Barbarian at me? How in hell is that at all helpful brain? What are you trying to tell me, subconscious? No point in being deep and inferring and allegorical. I’m at my fucking wit’s end here. Just fucking say it, don’t spray it!

[Jake, softly, cockily:] I fit through the door.

Did you? Did you now, Jakey? Well, fucking bully for you. Ain’t that just a fucking walk in the park. [Sarcastic:] So glad YOU could fit through the door. But that doesn’t exactly help my fucking predicament now, does it?

[Silence]

Great. Just fucking great. A really fucking great time to develop an immediate case of “cat got your tongue.” Right when I could really use a helping . . . Wait. Wait a minute.

Wait a fucking second!

You fit through the door. You. Jake. Not here. Not this fucking door. Back in that cave. That place . . . The fucking . . . The fucking skull cult. I remember. You knew all that shit about it. Knew where we where. What the skulls were. Then there was the little tunnel. WAY too fucking small for you or I to fit through. A small woman. Sure. But not us. And yet . . . And fucking yet . . . You crawled through. You made it to the other side. You . . . Fit. Just like you said.

Ostium made it so you could fit.

Ergo . . .

I make more space. Clear away more redundant food that I never want to look at or have to deal with again.

Eventually my fucked-up shrine is all set up: the cans and cartons and boxes all bowing down and praying to the sacred door I kneel before. I take a breath and hold it; that always seems to be Jake’s goto thing.

I reach out for the handle and stop. For just a moment. My brain screams at me: WHY IS THERE A FUCKING HANDLE ON THE INSIDE? Great question. Right now I don’t give a fuck. If I don’t start getting this door open and making my way through, this whole daydream is going to go up in smoke and I’m going to have to crawl back through all that food.

I don’t want to do that.

I refuse to do that.

I turn the handle and yank on the door.

It opens easily.

On the other side is blackness . . . No. Not just blackness. There are sparkles of something in here. But it’s still fucking blackness. I wait and count slowly to five. I hear nothing. No screams. No sounds. Fucking good enough for me. I start crawling through the stupidly small doorway. Knowing it’s too fucking small for me. Feeling really fucking stupid for even trying. And doing it anyway.

My head goes through easy, but my shoulders hit the sides of the doorway. I let out the breath and take in another: a much smaller one. I turn my body, going in one shoulder at a time. I start moving again. The darkness seems to move again. Shy away from me somehow as I come closer to it. Maybe it’s waiting for all of me to be inside before it pounces?

Probably.

Next it’s my stomach. Then hips. I take shallow breaths. Trying my darnedest to keep calm. To keep it all together. I curl my body upwards, bringing one hip through, then the other. Ever so slowly. I don’t know how I’ll deal if I get wedged in anyway. And then all the questionable bits of me are through. It’s just my legs and feet that I drag in, bringing myself to a kneeling position.

And I’m praying to the shrine from the other side now.

With a very shaky hand I reach out and grasp the door handle that’s also on the inside of the little door, and slowly pull it closed.

It closes softly, then gives a whumpf sound, sealing me in on this side.

I let go of the door handle in terror, knowing my chances of ever finding it again in this darkness are small.

I get to my feet and turn around. I still can’t hear anything. For shits and giggles, I try bringing up that infrared map. No dice. Nothing happens. No surprise, I guess.

My eyes are open but I’m not really seeing much. Occasional fireflies of light. They all seem really far away. Like twinkling stars that you know are thousands of light-years in the past. I turn my head, looking in different directions. No chance. All looks the same. I feel something give a mental tug from over there. Don’t know what it is. But it feels right. Feels okay. Feels sorta safe.

I start walking towards it. My feet make a wet squelching sounds. Like I’m walking through mud. Sure fucking glad I can’t see what it actually is. I keep a steady pace and feel the pull becoming ever so slightly stronger. Okay. Guess that means it’s kinda far away. But I am getting closer.

Just when I start to relax a little and feel things are going my way for a change, I hear the first moan.

Oh shit!

Fuckety fuck.

That’s when my legs start moving faster. Like on a treadmill. When you mash that plus button to go the fuck faster.

The moans start multiplying. Then I see whisps of white in the darkness. Like strange afterimages on your retina. They grow and start to take shape. Ghostly faces.

Then skulls.

I’m running now. Like a fucking bat out of hell. The pull within my mind is still there and getting way stronger now.

I’m breathing heavy. Because I’m out of breath and tired. But also because I’m fucking terrified!

A flash of white. Something pushes me to the side. My legs almost become tangled, but I manage to keep my footing, then run even faster. Where whatever the fuck that thing was touched me is a burning sensation. I don’t have fucking time to look and see if I’m hurt.

Then it or another something hits me from the other side. I’m kinda ready. Lean over with the push, then spring back up. Now my left arm is hurting like my right. Burning. A cold burn. Like when you stick a bare body part in snow for too long and frostbite starts considering taking up residence in that body part.

God. I sound just like fucking Jake.

That gives me more time. I don’t know how. Or why. Maybe saying his name? But nothing attacks me for a whole twenty seconds.

Getting much closer.

Then I get walloped from the right side again. This time I’m not expecting it. I go down. I try to roll. I land on my elbow. Hard. Hurts like a bitch. I moan. [Record a moan here] Right along with those scary ones. Adding my own pain and suffering. But I roll well. Jump back up with bare seconds lost.

Then I’m running for dear life. The sounds are getting louder now. There are screams. It makes me wonder if there will soon be teeth. I’m not gonna wait to find out.

Then I can see the end ahead. Another tiny fucking door. With a glowing outline. There’s only one way I’m going to make it through alive.

I’ve got to be fucking fast.

I’ve got to be fucking perfect.

I duck left, then right. Trying to throw off those fuckers coming after me. Then I’m just about there. I tense my legs. Bend them. Prepare. Then dive. My hand is out in front of me. Reaching. As soon as my fingertips touch the doorknob I begin turning it. By the time the rest of me makes contact with the door – we’re talking one to two seconds here – the handle is fully turned and the door is thrown open by my weight. As I pass through I let go and tuck myself into a ball. I fall and roll, not hitting the ground so hard this time. I don’t have time to look and see where I am. I spread out my arms and legs to stop myself. Then I’m crawling back to the tiny door where things are starting to come through. I flip myself around, going feet first. I don’t want to have to touch any of it.

The things grasp at my feet. I distract with one foot, while the other pulls the door closed. Then I’m slamming the wood with both feet. The ghostly transparencies get pulled back inside and the door is closed.

I lay down and take deep breaths. Trying to calm down. Trying to clear my head.

I count slowly to a fifty. That helps. A lot in fact.

Then I carefully get to my feet. I’m in one piece. Nothing’s screaming in pain. That’s a good thing. I look at my forearms where that thing or those things touched me. The skin is gray, like it got badly burned, or instantly turned to frostbite. Huh. Okay then. Well. We’ll deal with that shit later.

I look around me and see a room I’ve never been in before. But it’s still somewhat familiar. Because it’s of a particular design. A design I only ever saw in one place.

The Ostium Network.

I’m back on the independent Rock of Gibraltar.

I’m back . . . Home. Just like I wanted.

There’s no one in the room. I look through the glass at where I presume there’s a control booth. There is one. It’s also empty.

I start jogging, leaving the room, going to the next, and the next, and the next, and . . . You get the picture.

Eventually I end up outside. On the street.

Above me is a clear blue sky. A warm sun shining down. It feels fucking glorious.

But I’m not really appreciating it right now.

Because I’m back on the Rock.

Part of the Ostium Network once again.

And I’m totally fucking alone.

[Short pause]

Again.

Three decades ago. Kinda close to this date actually. Let’s just say around this date. But definitely thirty years ago. Most people on the planet remember it well. Like those days when something fucking terrible happened. JFK Assassination. September 11. The LA Quake. The Hoover Dam failure. Depending on where you’re from. What place you call home. Mine obviously tend to have an American lilt to them. But there are some events . . . Some things. Momentous things. Catastrophic things. No matter where you are on the planet. You’re gonna remember it.

The day the Rock of Gibraltar was just totally fucking obliterated. Somehow. That’s a day you don’t forget, no matter how old you are.

Relations between Spain and Britain had been deteriorating for years. Decades even. Spain wanted the stub of land attached to their country back. After dealing with some of its people wanting to be their own countries. And the whole civil war thing back in the twentieth century. Like multiple fucking times. Different places too. All of which got fucking stomped. This was its chance to get something back. On the other hand: Britain didn’t know what the fuck it wanted to do. Things got tense. Real damn tense. They’ve gotten tense before. Over like the hundred years this shit has been going on. But never this bad. People started bandying the term “war” around. All the nearby towns cleared out real fast. Like overnight . . . No. Not overnight. But like real fucking fast. They didn’t want to get caught in any crossfire. I think it was kinda like that Cuban Missile Crisis from way back when. You know. Like fucking Defcon 5 shit. And everyone just waited. On tenderhooks. Pins and needles. Waiting for the fucking shoe to drop.

Thankfully. It didn’t. Some crazy deal was made between who knows who. And then those in power on both sides signed some thrown-together contract. Just like that. The next part was just fucking weird. They gave everyone who called Gibraltar home thirty days – a month – to leave, vacate, get the fuck out of there. They could go back to Britain, or stay in Spain. But they had to leave the Rock. I still don’t know why this was the arrangement they decided on. It’s just . . . Really messed up. Makes no sense. I don’t know if they were planning to change something in the town to make it officially Spanish. Do some sort of procession or parade or ritual or whatever. I don’t know.

Didn’t matter. They never got the chance.

E-day came – E for eviction – and everyone was gone. It was just a fucking ghost town. Drones took aerial footage. Zooming in. It was fucking creepy as hell. Everything just abandoned. People had taken most of their shit. But a lot of stuff got left behind. This was a couple days after E-day, as they called it. Some time in the afternoon. There were around ten or so drones just recording footage over the town and the rock. And then this massive fucking explosion happened. Like H-bomb level. Giant fucking cloud engulfing the entire mountain. The footage on the drones shows normal stuff, then the feed cuts out a second later as all the drones are obliterated. They tried slowing the footage down to like increments of a millisecond. Still didn’t show much. Just the explosion starting and coming up and then . . . Nothing. The kinda weird thing is that it all looked the same from every drone, even though they were all in different spots. If the explosion had been centered in a certain part of the town it would’ve looked different through each camera drone. But it didn’t. Meaning the explosion had been fucking massive.

This helped to explain that when hours and hours later, the cloud and dust and all the shit in the air finally settled or cleared or blew away, there was nothing left. I’m talking absolutely fucking nothing. No mountain. No hill. No pile of dirt. Not town. No buildings. No land. No sign of fucking anything. It was like the rock of Gibraltar and the surrounding piece of land had just been picked up by aliens and taken away into space. There was water. The Mediterranean where there hadn’t been any Mediterranean before. There was less Spain, since Gibraltar had belonged to Spain again. Albeit for like barely a month. No one would believe it. They came from all over the world to witness this . . . What? Miracle? Impossibility? Enigma?

The government of Spain was fucking pissed. Britain considered themselves lucky for pulling out when they did. And all those people who’d been forced to leave were counting their lucky stars that they were still alive.

Everyone had a theory, an idea for what actually happened. The popular one that the majority settled on was that it was a sort of terrorist attack. One of those fucking rare ones where nobody gets hurt except for some drones. Perpetrated by who? No one knew. Again, everyone had theories. But whatever caused the explosion it wasn’t radioactive, otherwise lots of people nearby would’ve died. It was a controlled, localized explosion meant to eradicate everything that was Gibraltar and nothing more. And that’s exactly what it did.

Although, the whole thing never sat right. Felt a little too sci-fi to me.

[Break]

We stopped at a single dock that looked like it only had room for one boat: the one we were on. We disembarked and the boat guy waved bye and disappeared back into the fog. Never saw him again. But I had the feeling I wasn’t supposed to see him again. There was a man and a woman waiting to escort us. The man told us not to ask any questions . . . Well, actually he said we could ask as many questions as we wanted, but we wouldn’t be getting any answers. So it was better to keep our tongues in our heads and shut the fuck up. Yeah. That guy rubbed me the wrong way from the fucking start, but I wasn’t about to start anything, you know, it being the first day on the new job and all. We followed them to a small electric self-driving vehicle. The man and the woman got in the front. We were assigned to the back, facing away from them. As the vehicle drove us away from the dock, I told myself I could still see the boat in the fog heading away, but I knew I was kidding myself.

I gave my son a look. It was the what the fuck have we gotten ourselves into? Face. It made me feel a lot better to see the same look mirrored back at me.

They took us to a sterile medical facility. Along the way we saw a number of other identical vehicles and people doing whatever the hell they were doing. They all looked like they had something important to do. A number of them were in lab coats. All well dressed. At the facility we each had a doctor perform a full physical on us: I got a female doctor; Steve got a guy. After the doctor told me everything checked out – meaning they must have some fucking futuristic lab equipment to do all the blood and urine checks that quickly – she told me she was going to have to remove my implants.

No, you dirty motherfucker. Not those implants. I told you. I’m from the fucking future. If a woman wants to have big tits, then she can pay a shit-ton of money for some gene therapy. They don’t do that barbaric shit with silicon anymore. That stuff was just . . . Fucked up. No, I’m talking about the ocular and aural implants every teenager gets when they start high school. Yeah. I know. Makes those fancy smart phones of yours look like fucking manual typewriters.

So when she said she was going to remove my implants – basically cut out two parts of me – I lost it a little. But she was prepared for this. Took and gave her own. She let me vent for a good few minutes, then asked if I was fucking done? I got the picture and waited to hear what she had to say. She then told me I had two options: she could remove my implants and make me like everyone else here, or I they could call the boat back, and while I was waiting for it, my mind would be wiped of anything and everything to do with this place and I’d be dumped back on the Spanish shore with no memory of what’d just happened. And that would be the fucking end of it.

I took my time. She gave it to me. I was really wondering what Steve was thinking. He must’ve gone through the same routine. Which way was he leaning? But I’d gotten this far. I’d already decided I wanted my life to do a one-eighty in some way. And this was certainly a fucking one-eighty. Also my curiosity about this place and how they wanted me to contribute was through the fucking roof.

So I said yes. It took ten minutes and was completely painless. But it took me a week to get used to not being connected to the Worldnet and having all those thoughts, ideas, and answers at my synaptic tips. Steve, because he’s my son, chose the same, and we suffered through the instant data withdrawal together.

After that our school began. It was like being in fucking college again. It also took six months. Five days a week. Eight to four. And fucking homework on the weekends!

But I learned a lot. We learned a helluva lot.

[Break]

We got a lot of answers in those six months. A lot of answers to many of the questions we’d been asking about the Ostium Network and what the fuck was going on here. But not all of them. Not by a long shot. So I’ll tell you what I can. What I actually remember.

There was a man behind the whole Ostium Network. I know. A man. Fucking typical. But even in the enlightened future I’m living in, men still control a lot of shit. Especially rich men. And this particular man was really fucking rich. We were never told who he was. He was one secretive motherfucker. I still don’t know who he is. I know. Pretty sad. But yes. There are that many rich fucking me in the world, so it wasn’t clear which one exactly was behind the Ostium Network. He was also a genius, as a lot of these guys tend to be. Like off the charts. Like never had any sense of a normal life. Yeah. It was pretty fucking weird we learned details about his life, but never found out who he was.

The whole blowing up Gibraltar thing was his brainchild. Naturally. We got an outline of what happened. With a few juicy details. But — of course — not ALL the answers. The massive explosion that look like it obliterated an entire mountain didn’t pack as much firepower as it seemed. It was more light-show and special effects than actual destruction. Like using blanks instead of real bullets: it sounds the same, just doesn’t hurt anyone. Hopefully. The other half of the show which nobody actually saw was making the rock of Gibraltar — including the whole fucking town — just disappear into thin air. But it worked. Apparently it wasn’t gone in a second, but took a total of 12 whole seconds to be completely gone from the known plane of existence. Yes. I use those words specifically. Of course, no one knew this, what with the pyrotechnics and big bangs and all that jazz. But once it all cleared it did look like it had literally just disappeared into thin air.

[Breath]

There was enough physics involved to fill a book. I understand almost none of it. What I did get from it is this: somehow the braniac of the Ostium Network moved the mountain and town to a new plane . . . A new dimension . . . A higher level . . . I’m still not fucking clear on the concept. It’s deep fucking level physics. Like sub-atomic particle interactions and string theory, and quantum entanglement, and lots of other gobbledygook. I heard that long one a few times over my training. It’s this quantum theory where you have two really fucking tiny things spread way the fuck apart and yet somehow they’re connected. Yeah. I know. You’re like: okay. Sure physicists. Say and believe whatever the fuck you want. Yeah. That’s how I am too.

But let me just repeat that: two separate things, far away from each other, that are somehow fucking connected. Sound familiar at all? Ring any Ostium bells?

Yep. Jake would’ve loved that one too.

The Ostium Network made Gibraltar not there in the real world anymore. But in another place. That they could somehow access. See above with the fog and me not being a hundred percent surprised. You know. More like ninety percent. The day after it all went kaboom they started moving in and setting up shop. That’s why we had to have our implants removed. Because no one wanted any info about the Ostium Network and where it was located. Though supposedly this was also next to impossible since we were in or on a different dimension. Is it in? Or on? See, that’s the sort of question that’s perfect for Jake. He’d totally have an answer for me. He could probably talk about for hours . . .

Steve and I went through a rigorous and thorough self-defense course that included weapons training. It was one of those things where they told us you’re probably never going to have to fight someone, and definitely not fire a weapon, but we’re going to drill you until you can do it all without hesitation anyway. Plus, it kept us in great fucking shape.

Also they made us do this training before we actually learned what the endgame of all this education actually was. I know. Pretty fucked up. Now you see why I kinda hate these guys at times. Hearing the words “Ostium Network” can make me cringe. Not always. But sometimes.

We got a few days off after that to let our minds and bodies recuperate. By this time we were getting to know some people and starting to feel comfortable calling this place home. Because that’s exactly what it was now. Whether we liked it or not. Everyone was in the same boat . . . Or in this case, on the same island. Yeah. Gibraltar was now an island. Not attached to Spain. Obviously. Rumor was if you wanted to get the fuck out you couldn’t. And if you tried, swimming was your only option. And you’d just swim forever, into the fog and the cold waters, never finding any land, until you just fucking drowned. Apparently one guy tried it. Was never seen again. But then again I don’t see them making this shit up. If you wanna go take a long swim and face your fears and whatnot, be my guest. Although it is possible they made up the rumors about one guy trying it. Just to make it that more chilling and deadly. You know?

When we came back from our mini break . . . Actually, let me try and fill you in a little of what life was like on the Rock under the watchful eye of the Ostium Network. A slice of life, if you will. As I said, there were lots of these itty-bitty self-driving vehicles that people could use. Without our implants we had no way of communicating really other than word of mouth. However, on every floor on every building, and about every twenty feet or so there was a communications panel that put you in touch with a switch board. There you could request one of those vehicles for transportation just about anywhere on the island. You could get in touch with anyone you wanted. If you knew their name. Unless they were of a specific echelon. I’d say pay grade, but even though we were all getting money directly deposited into our bank accounts once a month, it didn’t really matter. Wasn’t important. You didn’t use money on the island. So it was kind of pointless.

When you “retired” or left the Ostium Network, your mind would be wiped of Ostium Network-material. Then a certain boat would come pick you up and take you back to the regular normal world, where access with our bank accounts would resume and you’d discover you had a shit-ton of money. I wanted some more details and  actually brought this up in the training class, but the teacher spun a shitty story about how we were all just starting, so why did we want to think about what the finish was going to be like now. Yeah. Just like you treat a kid. Exactly. Bullshit. I demanded an answer. He gave me a vague one: when the time arrived, an “arrangement” would be made; once one’s clearance and knowledge level would be determined. Whatever the fuck that meant.  But just like the informative teacher so kindly let us know: we could worry about it when the time arose. However, no one had “retired” yet and lived to tell the tale.

So you could get around with those self-driving vehicles or you could just walk. I guess bicycles woulda been okay, but it woulda made walking more risky. The place wasn’t that fucking big, so walking wasn’t a problem. Plus, free exercise!

There was a gym. Should the walk not be good enough for one to maintain their robust and well-toned figures. Insert here miming gesture of me sticking my fingers down my throat. There were four places to eat in town. Two restaurants and two cafes/sandwich places. They all had impressively large menus. Where they got the food from I have no fucking idea. Half of it they probably grew and caught on the island, but the other half? That’s an eternal mystery. That boat coulda made daily trips but that’d be a lot of fucking work. Plus to supply a place this size, [beat] you’d need a bigger boat. Maybe they were getting it from other dimensions. Higher and lower ones? Parallel fucking universes? Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is the food was fucking fantastic and the menu changed monthly with a bunch of new things. If it wasn’t for the walking . . . I woulda been a lot heavier.

Before you ask: there was alcohol. A little wine, a little beer, and very few spirits. But I never saw anyone publicly drunk. I think people threw back the sauce in the privacy of their own apartments. Speaking of which they were all mostly the same: one-bedroom, a decent sized living, balcony. No kitchen: you got all your grub from the eateries, that way they knew exactly what we were eating. Though you could get take out if you wanted. Each one had a TV wall but there was no live TV or news of the outside world. There was a local channel that had stuff once in a while about the haps on the Rock, but mostly played classical music. There was an fucking extensive on demand movie and TV library that satisfied any cravings. Yes. Before you ask. There was porn. Plenty of it, running the gamut of fetishes and sexual interests. And that’s all I’m gonna fucking say about it. We all indulged . . . When we needed to.

As far as I knew, there wasn’t a single printed book on the island. And no paper either. Which made sense. Everyone had a tablet that did many things for them. Allowed them to do most of their work. To connect with computers and devices throughout the island. There was even email, but we were connected on a local area network over the island. No outside Internet whatsoever. No even four dimensional Internet or whatever fucking dimension we were in. With the tablet one also had access to like every digital book in the history of the written word. A fuck-ton. Jake woulda been on cloud nine. [Said sadly]: too bad.

The tablet of course had a notepad and writing app. I’ve never been that ga-ga about movies and TV, though I enjoy a good book. But nights were quiet and kinda lonely. Steve and I would meet up for dinner and hang out sometimes, but I didn’t want to be that mom cramping his style. He made friends fast and had fun hanging out with them. As someone who’s spent a lot of her life traveling the globe and meeting lots of different people, I make friends when I need to. It means I’m also very happy with my own company. So round about the second week of living on the island and having another quiet night alone, I started writing a diary. A journal. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. Putting my thoughts and feelings and ideas down. What’d been happening to me over the last couple weeks. What I thought about all of it. It felt good. Like I was processing all the shit I’d been going through that day and getting it out of me. So the next day I felt refreshed and clear and ready for more aforementioned bullshit. It got to be a routine, fifteen to twenty minutes every night before bed. Like a nightcap. Wish I coulda brought that tablet with me to Ostium. I guess, thinking on it, that’s another reason I started doing recordings like these. I missed doing that sorta thing. Spent almost a whole year doing it too, before all that shit went down. And it wasn’t like I just wrote it down and forgot about it or never looked back and reread it. Over the months I definitely reviewed a lot of past entries. For details and stuff I’d learned. How my ideas had change. How my concept of the Ostium Network and the big picture was molding into something different.

Fuck. I wish I had that tablet now. Whelp. Never gonna see it again at this point. I guess if anyone ever finds it . . . if it somehow gets out of the Ostium Network and into the real world, you’ll get all the nitty gritty details of my illustrious life on the island and all its goings on.

[Break]

Okay. Enough small talk chit-chat. Let’s get back to the big kahuna.

Yeah. You may’ve noticed I have a whole fucking extensive repertoire of sayings, expressions, colloquialisms and cliches. Well, gimme a sec and I’ll get to the reason for that.

After our mini break that first class was . . . Illuminating. One we were all seated the first line out of the teacher’s lips . . . I can still remember it like it was yesterday . . . Was: “The Ostium Network has harnessed the power of time travel.” I know. Talk about a mind-blowing statement. The teacher paused, perhaps waiting for gasps or groans or screams? Fuck knows. But no one said or did anything; I couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. I know I was holding my fucking breath . . . Waiting.

We were about to find out what the fuck we were all doing here.

Then the teacher launched into lecture mode. The man behind the Ostium Network, who will not (and never!) be named brought together an elite group  skilled people from across the globe with an idea. A radical idea that with their help became a reality. We got some details, the whys, but not so much the hows. Plus there was probably a ton of math and physics behind it all which would’ve gone over all our heads. We were told that time travel had been made possible for just over a year now but it was uncontrollable. People had . . . Disappeared. Gone through and not come back. The Ostium Network was not willing to continuously risk people’s lives, even if these people were willing to risk said lives. So. It required another year of working out ideas, plans, theories and possibilities. But all had to be absolute and thorough before any trials could be initiated.

The problem — apparently — is harnessing the immense power of time travel. This was news to all of us, but it makes perfect fucking sense. Time travel takes a big wallop of energy to work. So the concept that was developed was that instead of having one specific device or door to pass through and reach any time in history or the future, the power needed to be dissipated in some way. The logical conclusion was that instead of one door or “stargate” (the teacher said with a smirk on her face), there would be many hundreds of doors. Each door wouldn’t always lead to the same time, but by having many doors, it spread the energy we required to travel to anywhen better and led to way less chances of causing a chain reaction in the space-time continuum and ending all life and matter as we knew it . . . This is pretty much verbatim what the teacher said. Whether there was an ounce of truth to those words . . . Don’t fucking look at me. Seemed just as plausible as all the other shit that had been thrown at us so far.

These doors were to be collected together. Various plans were considered and tried and failed. High-rise buildings. Long rectangular buildings. Penitentiary-style blocks. The final plan was settled on a town. Enclosed by a high wall. There would be many different kinds of buildings with many doors.

Finally I started to see something I could do. Some way I could contribute to the Ostium Network and earn that mysterious money being deposited into my account every month. They needed to create a town where time travel would be feasible. I’d obviously never done anything like that in my life. But there were many things over my years of working that I’d never attempted before, but came into with some basics and nothing else but common sense and the love of a good brain-boggling challenge.

After that we got divided into smaller classes and I was joined with other architects and we started working on creating the town that would be Ostium.

[Break]

We worked for months and months and months. Different plans and shapes. What held us up a lot was working out how to maximize the number of doors to buildings within the confines of a town. Until I had a brainstorm one day. I asked why we had to have doors be attached to buildings? Everyone looked at me like I’d just asked why the buildings needed to have foundations?

I brought up the fact that ever since we’d got here we’d all been reading and watching any time travel movie or TV series we could get our hands on. They were all made-up bullshit, but just in case there was anything in them, any increment of possibility or what if that might ring true. None of us were scientists involved in the time travel stuff, but we were just as obsessed. And when it came to time travel, it was all about thinking outside the box . . . Or the flux capacitor. Approaching things from a completely different angle. As Doc Brown in the Back to the Future series liked to repeatedly remind Marty McFly: You’re just not thinking fourth dimensionally.

The doors, I told them, trying to gain back any of the respect I’d earned, are the time travel devices. The time travel contraptions or machines or whatever the fuck you wanted to call them. They’d gotten use to my choice of vocabulary by this point. I think it’s a genetic thing. From a grandfather. Probably that dude from Jamaica who never took any shit from any body. The buildings and whatever was around the door wasn’t important.

For a moment I thought about grabbing my tablet and snapping a photo – yes, our tablets had cameras, of course! All the better for us to document our experiences and thoughts and ideas, no? Seeing all their shocked faces was fucking priceless. I swear there was even an open mouth or two. I may be be engaging in hyperbole. My memory isn’t what it used to be. And I was too busy fucking gloating in front of everyone to pay that much attention. The meeting was called after that, while someone in charge, with enough clearance and ability, contacted some higher ups and checked with the scientists to see if my idea was even feasible.

The next day we had an answer: a big fucking yes.

This changed everything for us. There would be plenty of buildings, with plenty of doors. But there would also just be lots of doors. All over. Everywhere. We could run riot with it, and we did, because we didn’t have limitations anymore. And the scientists and actual people who’d be building this shit loved it and lapped it up. I got word that the head honcho right at the very top, Mr. He Who Will Never Be Named, was impressed. Woulda been nice to get a congratulatory email or a voice message. Something. I got bupkis.

Well, that and the everlasting respect and adoration of my peers and coworkers, as well as the teachers. So, not so bad. Steve was blown away and came to find me as soon as he found out. Then he proceeded to name drop me as his mom wherever he went.

More time passed. Then we got word that the portal to the specific dimension where Ostium would be built was complete. Again, the details were many: we weren’t told them and even if we were, we wouldn’t have been able to comprehend them. So no harm, no foul. We were just excited to get the chance to start making Ostium for real. I have no fucking clue how they created something upon which a town could be built in this dimension. Was the surface already there? Was it liquid?

I did hang out with a scientist one night and over coffee he started telling me how it all worked. At this point, I knew a lot more people and was getting to be a lot more social. I still kept up on the journal entries. Needed that cathartic reset each night. Most of the stuff spouting out of his mouth went way over my head, like jumper jet altitude over my head. But he was having fun talking and I enjoyed my coffee and tried to understand every fourth or fifth word, which was more likely if it was a single non-sciencey syllable. He was saying something linking subatomic particles according to their type of bonds and moving up in size until they became molecules and chains of molecules and, yadda yadda yadda, that’s how you make a surface in the nth dimension to build a town on.

Sure.

The first time we all stepped through the town was sort of already there. The shape at least. The surrounding wall was built and ready. That had been someone else’s idea; a really fucking good one too. Outside the wall was just darkness, like it is now. Untethered. At first there was just euphoria. After staring at so many charts and blueprints, this thing was finally fucking happening. Then we got to work and the town of Ostium quickly grew into a real thing.

Before we knew it, the buildings and doors were there. The scientists hadn’t done their parts yet to make them time-travel doors, but the infrastructure of Ostium was in place.

Then we had a meeting. A big. Long. Fucking. Meeting.

I never expected to be contacted. But who would? It’s like the Skull & Bones, Masons, Illuminati, or Knight’s Templar getting in touch with you. The fucking secret cabal of the Vatican getting hold of you to offer you a fucking job. Not only did you dispute their existence, but now they want to goddamn hire you?

The Ostium Network. It was the epitome of Special Agent Fox Mulder’s “I Want to Believe” poster. If you’re not familiar with the X-Files, well, fucking shame on you! It took up a significant chunk of my Immersion Research. I didn’t have to watch every single episode. A few woulda been fine. But . . . It was a fucking good show. Hooked me in good. I know the last few seasons dragged like a motherfucker. The plot kinda went out the window, I know, but still. Just fun to watch some of that ancient entertainment. What did they call it? Oh yeah . . . [said awkwardly] television? Nah, I’m only kidding!

But that poster. With the flying saucer. Aliens! Half the world thinks they’ve had a visitation, close encounter, or even a fucking abduction experience. The other half thought they were all fucking nuts. But all of them . . . Everyone . . . Wanted to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials.

The Ostium Network is a myth. A legend. A rumor. An occasional thought. It’s joked about and laughed at. Because like next to no one knows if they’re real. There’s the faction of conspiracy nuts who love talking about it, along with every other fucking hair-brained idea about something secret that may or may not exist. And those crazy few who do talk about it have no fucking clue what it might be. A group of the super-rich looking to control the world economy? A cadre of super-villains? A syndicate of special people looking to wipe out most of the human race so they can live in a fabricated paradise? Yeah. That last one’s a fucking trip. Oh. Also: a conglomeration of the most intelligent people on earth look to control the future and destiny of the planet. So: the usual.

Get the picture? So when I got a pop-up message telling me I had a new voice recording from T.O.N. I was about trash it like a piece of rotten fruit. I still don’t know what possessed me . . . What made me change my mind. Sometimes . . . I wonder if the Ostium Network was somehow able to influence me . . . Way back then. Way, WAY back then. Some-fucking-how. I dunno. I’d decided to delete it. Make it gone and continue with what I was doing. And just as I was about look up and look right three times and send that voice message into the void, I stopped. I actually made the eye movement once, but that’s why the command is to do it three times. So you don’t trash something accidentally. A thing humans have been doing since the first computer chip was used to . . . Compute. Though you can probably recover it if you really need to, though I’ve never needed to, so . . .  I literally changed my mind on the spot and opened the voice message instead.

“Hello . . . Monica. Thank you for not deleting this message, and, instead, taking the time to listen to it. I guarantee you will not consider it a waste of your time. You may never have heard of us, but we are pretty sure you have. Because we know about you and you life and who you are. We are confident you know of us because of your history. We are the Ostium Network. And we would like to offer you a position on our growing team. If you are interested – and we are almost certain you will be – you will meet with a woman named Qiao Zhang at the Five Elephant Kreuzberg on October 16 at 15:05. It is located within the city of Berlin. I trust you will be able to find it . . . Monica . . . Do not squander this very special opportunity.”

The first time I met Qiao I liked her right away. I dunno what it was. We just connected. It was fucking freaky that she had my exact coffee drink of choice made to my specifications ready for me. Still very hot. She knew . . . Or rather, they knew my coffee drinking tastes. Down to a tea! Sorry, that was a Jake joke. But if they knew something specific like that: three shots, one pump of vanilla, one pump of cinnamon, and chocolate shavings on top – they probably knew a whole lot more about me. I was scared. Fucking scared. Who wouldn’t be? But I was also intrigued. Fucking curiosity-killed-the-cat-level intrigue.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Qiao said as soon as I approached her table. It wasn’t the only table with a single person sitting at it but she’d been waiting for me to come through the door and immediately made eye contact. She was expecting me. She was a Chinese woman with striking eyes that drew me in from across the cafe. I knew it was her right away. Little did I know what our future together would be.

“Enjoy your drink. I will do most of the talking. If you have questions, I will try to answer them. But I’ll let you know up front. I can’t tell you much about the Ostium Network. I can’t tell you anything about where it is located. I can’t tell you too much about your job . . .”

“What the fuck can you tell me?”

She smiled at me.

“Good question. Drink your coffee. It’s specially made.”

That smile never went away.

She told me I was the perfect candidate. My background would become very important in the job. But it would be unlike anything I’d ever worked on before. She told me that even though I was fifty-six, the demographic for the company covered all ages from those still in their teens to those working through their seventies. The way she mentioned the septuagenarians . . . there was a short pause and a strange way she said the word, as if it wasn’t quite right. Not exactly accurate. I didn’t push. I wouldn’t have got an answer anyway. I let her keep talking and enjoyed my coffee.

“Your son has already been recruited.”

I almost spat hot coffee across the fucking table. I didn’t need to say What!, my expression made it clear.

“Please remain calm, Ms. Chase. He was instructed not to tell you. Because They knew how you’d react.”

“Who the fuck are they?”

“The people I . . . And soon you will work for.”

I sat back and drank more coffee.

“His skills, while different to your own, are just as valuable for the success and thriving of the Ostium Network. You are also a key candidate because your parents are both deceased. Normally, we wouldn’t have recruited someone like Steve Chase, due to his mother still being alive. However, in this specific situation, They knew They could recruit both of you, circumventing this requirement.”

“Let me get this fucking straight. The Ostium Network only recruits and employs orphans?”

“That is correct, Ms. Chase. Except in your case, as I already mentioned.”

“Why the fuck do they do that? So we have no ties? No fucking strings attached?”

Without hesitation she responded.

“Yes. Precisely. But also because once you start working for the Ostium Network, you can never tell anyone outside of the Network about it and its existence. You will have no contact with the outside world, except for those members of the Ostium Network, unless specifically instructed. And that is all I can tell you.”

With that, she abruptly stood up.

“If you decide to join us . . . and we know you will, please message the word “YES” to this number.”

As she said that, the number appeared in my visual display. By the time I focused back on her, Ms. Zhang was already on her way out the door.

It didn’t take me too long to think about it. I could’ve called Steve, talked it over with him. But I knew he was going to be fucking gung-ho about all this and itching to get started working for . . . The Ostium Network. I didn’t have much going on in my life at the moment, which was unusual. This was something new. Fresh. And very fucking different.

By the end of the day I was messaging that number.

I received coordinates to travel to and an exact date and time to be there.

As soon as I set foot on that jumper jet, my life changed forever.

[Break]

I was born into a good, supportive family. I know that sounds a little cliche, but I feel it’s important. Lives . . . Lives are affected by their upbringing and how they begin. I know. That’s not very fucking clear. What I’m trying to say is when you have strong parents, from the beginning, you have a lot more opportunity . . . A lot more possibility of making something of your life. Not that if you don’t have it, you can’t make something . . . Grrr. Okay. Let’s break this shit down. Foundationally. We’re a black family. My dad was a dentist. My mom was a lawyer. Yeah. We were pretty well off. We never had hard times growing up. Well, not that I can recall. My parents were always supportive. Always there for me. Through school. Through high school. At like every level. I was an only kid, and they were always there for me. When you don’t have this kind of support, it’s a lot fucking harder to make it . . . To do what you truly want to do. Not impossible. Just really fucking hard. And I owe it all to them.

From a young age I liked designing stuff and organizing stuff. You know. Houses and buildings and shit. Yeah. Architecture. But also how multiple buildings are laid out. So there’s the best access to things like stores and banks and businesses. Post offices. I know. Real boring shit. But you know what? Someone’s got to think about it. Buildings keep getting built. Houses keep getting made. Towns become cities which became metropolises which become fucking megalopolises. This planet is filling up with people and they all need somewhere to live. So it’s someone’s job to organize it. A lot of someone’s. One of those someone’s happens to be me. I dunno. I just knew from a young age that I was into how these sorts of things were organized. And my fucking awesome parents supported me all the way. They helped make me a straight-A student. So high school – other than the usual teen-angst, cliquey bullshit – was . . . Okay.

I sent out a number of college applications, like five. Again, parental support and money helped. I got accepted to four of them, but the last one took a while to hear back. Of course, it was the one I had my heart set on. My dream school to go to. I had everything planned out. I was going to major in Urban Planning and Architecture and it was going to be awesome. And that’s when I started to lose my shit, day to day, wondering why the fuck they were taking so long to get back to me. I mean. I fucking lived in New York. So it wasn’t like it was going to take longer for the letter – acceptance or rejection – to get to me. Plus, the post office like guarantees the mail only takes three days to arrive at its destination right? That’s been like a constant for what? Two hundred years? Almost three hundred? What little mail there still is. Well, my dream school. NYU. New York University. They were one of those respectable institutions. Those last bastions that still sent out acceptance – or rejection – letters by mail. Go figure that this was the one I was waiting to hear back from the most.

Then I finally fucking heard from them. And I was accepted. Squee. Joy. My dream come true.

My parents were both killed the day before. They were flying back from a combined work-trip-slash-mini-vacation. Mom did some work in Toronto. They spent a long weekend up there. The jet went down in Long Island Sound. Everyone on board was killed. I remember reading once, probably not too long after this fucking shitty tragedy, about a pilot who was able to land a plane in the fucking Hudson. Saved everyone on board. Yeah. Wish that fucking pilot was flying my parents’ plane. Even though it was more than fifty years in the future.

But. Yeah.

[Short pause]

It was tough. Really fucking tough. My life was ripped to fucking pieces. But I still went to NYU. A semester later. They understood. Were fine with it. I got more education after, then some practical experience. Then I set out on my own. I wanted to get away. From the place I lived. The place I grew up. Too many memories. They all still felt so . . . Fresh. So I spent five years going around the world. Designing. Building. Developing. Planning. A little bit of everything, everywhere.

Both my parents had big life insurance policies. Not because they thought they were gonna die any time soon, but because they were smart people who always wanted to be prepared for anything. And that included both of them getting fucking killed and leaving me an orphan. And . . . Incredibly fucking rich. What with the properties they owned, the money saved from their affluent careers, and those big fucking policies.

So I was able to get the education and experience I wanted, because cost wasn’t a concern. But once I had all this, I didn’t just want to be working for some big fucking fancy firm, making a shit-ton of money, and you know, spending it on shit I didn’t need but was supposed to have because of the high-paying job and the affluent life that went with it.

[Breath] I didn’t want any of that. I know it was the life I’d basically been living already with my parents where money was never a fucking concern, but I didn’t like the way it made me feel, like I was above other people who had less money. Don’t get me wrong. We gave a ton to charity, and did a lot of good things for those who needed it. Volunteer work. But I didn’t feel a part of the real world. A real contributor. It wasn’t until later. When I was older. That I actually understood this feeling.

I needed to get away from everything. Put some space between me and all this history. So I went all around the world. Building and making stuff. Helping others. Sometimes I was well paid for it. Other times I wasn’t paid anything. I insisted on it. The experiences I had. Working with these people. Getting to live in their lives for a bit was worth more than any amount of money I could’ve gotten. It made me feel like I belonged. Which I guess I hadn’t really felt before. Not since my parents died.

And then everything changed.

[Break]

I came to the site early that day. I’m often the first one there. With my giant-sized coffee. Yes. Those were the days before my obsessive tea drinking habit. The site was in a poor part of London. We’d gotten the land cheap. We were building new homes that were going to rent out cheap to low-income families. It didn’t exactly have a river view, but the Thames was only a five minute walk away. You know, that quasi-cesspool of a thing you could call a river. These days it’s all cleaned up and I wouldn’t exactly condone swimming in it, and definitely not drinking any of it, but it’s a lot nicer now. More eye-candy than eyesore.

God, that was terrible. Jake would be proud.

And I need to stop avoiding what I’m trying to say.

I came to the site on an early, cold foggy morning. I like to walk around first thing. Get a feel for the place. Going through my mind what I’d like to get done that day. And then I heard a sound. It’s a very specific sound. A very recognizable sound. It’s a sound that you hear, but you automatically question: “Is that really what I think it is?” There’s always a doubt. Unless you’re a parent.

It was the sound of a child. A baby making a nonsense sound. Not crying. Cooing. Just doing its thing.

I waited. Then I heard it again. Then I reacted. I checked each of the rooms in the building I was in. Didn’t take long. Found him in a laundry basket. All wrapped up in blankets. It looked like a boy. No hair, but the face. I thought it was a boy. Maybe six weeks old. Couldn’t be sure.

“Hey little guy,” I said. “Whatcha doin here? Been here long.”

I knelt down and picked him up, still wrapped in one of the blankets. He was warm and heavier than I expected. He smelled . . . Fucking amazing. Of freshness and newness and vitality and sheer living. I pulled him to my chest and he reached out a little hand and rested it on my boob.

“I don’t think you’re going to get anything from there, little buddy,” I said.

My vision was blurring. I blinked away the tears so I could study his beautiful, incredible face.

It was love at first sight. It’s a cliche. But it’s also the fucking truth.

Eventually other people arrived and wondered what the hell I was doing with a baby. And we all started talking about options. These were people I’d spent the last two months with almost everyday. They’d practically become family. I felt very open and comfortable, talking with them. Pretty sure the feeling was mutual. So I felt confident enough to broach the question: what if I kept the baby? There was expected surprise at first. Two people telling me I couldn’t do that. That I had to turn him over to child protection services. That he had real parents who might realize they made a terrible mistake? That it was illegal to do that.

I don’t really know where it came from. The thought and possibility just popped into my head. I saw a future unraveling before me, like a narrow, straight carpet. A red carpet that would take him and me into our future together. I saw that it could be. I knew what I could provide for him, how I could help him. His biological parents were probably poor; people who didn’t feel able and/or ready to look after and raise a child. I guessed. That’s why they’d abandoned him, no? I tried to get these points across. While doing so, I thought about why he’d been left here. Of all places. Why not a hospital? Or a school? Somewhere more logical? I didn’t mention this, didn’t want to let them know I was starting to think that maybe, there was the infinitesimal possibility this child had been left . . . For me. Which is just fucking crazy, right?

We talked for hours. Rationally. Quietly. The baby stayed in my arms the whole time. Never cried. Napped off and on. But remained comforted and content the whole time. By the end I didn’t think I could ever give him up, no matter what we decided or what happened. They would’ve had to pry him from my arms. But I’d convinced them by then. To a degree. Even the two naysayers. Sort of. I’d give it time. A week. Then another week. Post a notice. Spread the word. If no mother or parent came looking, then I would decide what to do then.

The days passed. Then a week. I learned the basics of parenting. I learned what it was like not to sleep. I learned what it truly meant to put everything, including your very own life on the line for another living soul. It’s an ideal that’s bandied around in a lot of love songs, in movies. Giving your life for another. Never really understood it. Until now. With this little guy, it was no question.

Then the end of the fortnight arrived and no one had come to claim him. The development project was almost done. They didn’t really need me anymore. I knew my time was up. And that it was just beginning with this little man.

I named him Steve on that first day I called him mine. Don’t know where the name came from. Just liked it. Liked the sound of it. I didn’t check with my close friends. I just left. Got the hyper-chunnel to France and started traveling through Europe with a baby in tow.

It was a very different life. And I wouldn’t have changed one second of it. Not for anything in the world.

When Steve’s fifth birthday started cresting over the horizon, I knew it was time to change things up. To settle down. He needed to start school. Experience what it was like to live in a more permanent town and get a regular education. I came back to America. But I wanted something new. Settled in Portland, Oregon. Made a life there. And Steve grew up to be a wonderful boy; a surprisingly loving teenager; and an adult I could be proud of. He went to Stanford. Got a kickass business degree. But not to make buckets of money for himself. No. He wanted to help those in need however he could. When he told me this before he started applying to different places, I couldn’t hold back the tears. It was probably my proudest moment as a parent. Fuck. Probably the proudest moment in my life.

Once he was on his own. Starting his own life. I went back to my old way of life. Traveling the world and helping others, just like my son Steve would be once he graduated.

A year after he got his degree from Stanford, the Ostium Network contacted him with a job offer. He was in Peru.

A week later they contacted me.

[Break]

Even though we traveled to the specified coordinates separately, my son and I arrived at the Malaga air-and-spaceport thirty minutes apart. We’d been in touch, so Steve waited for me. And just like that, we were suddenly on the south coast of Spain for a reason that wasn’t entirely clear yet. Once I met up with Steve, we hugged and reconnected, and made our way toward the exit. It was so great to see him again, and even more awesome that we’d be working for the same company. In the same location. We were specifically instructed not to bring any luggage. No additional items other than some personal effects and the very clothes we were wearing. Since my trip took less than half an hour, this was totally fine. If the Ostium Network wanted to make a clean breast of things – a tabula rasa as Jake would no doubt say – I was okay with that. Start new and fresh. Onto the next chapter of our lives.

Outside we met a man dressed in a very sharp suit, waiting for us.

“Welcome Monica. Steve. Thank you so much for coming.”

He shook our hands and actually sounded earnest. I was getting pretty fucking excited about all this.

He guided us to the self-driving vehicle. A very nice looking Rolls Royce. Like the man’s suit, it was expensive. We climbed in and got comfortable. The man, who said his name was Wayne, offered us drinks. I took a crown and coke and sat back. Enjoying the ride. Sadly it was a short one. Ten minutes later we were on the shore of the blue Mediterranean. We followed the man down a big pier of luxury yachts. He led us to one of the largest. It was also a hydrofoil. Some fancy shit. We ascended the walkway onto the boat and once again got comfortable. More drinks and this time a gourmet meal which tasted like it’d just been cooked by one of the world’s best chefs with the world’s best cooking equipment. I’m pretty fucking sure it was one of the best meals I’d ever had. And from the look on Steve’s face, he was thinking the same thing. Wayne chitchatted with us but gave few details about the Ostium Network or where we were going. But I’d paid attention. Our options were either east towards places like Italy and Greece, or west towards the Atlantic Ocean.

I started to wonder where the hell we were truly going. There wasn’t a helluva lot out in the Atlantic. Unless you wanted to travel far. This height of luxury transportation was fast but not that fast. The Canary Islands possibly?

Then I had a thought and my wondering meter went apeshit. I couldn’t believe it. I refused to believe it. So I sat back, enjoyed my tiramisu dessert and waited.

A few minutes before I had my suspicions confirmed, Wayne had us come up to the cockpit, where the equally well-attired crew was steering and running the yacht. Ahead of us were the Pillars of Hercules. The edges of two continents. The gateway to the Atlantic. The coast of Spain was visible from our starboard side. Little changed in a hundred years in this area as far as development. Then the scars became visible. The destroyed land. Blackened. I knew the fraught history.

One of the crew signaled to Wayne who nodded. He walked up to a console, leaned in and received an optical scan. Then a hand-print. Finally his finger was pricked for a blood sample. His DNA confirmed. He was granted access and input a very long and seemingly random code.

The fog came from literally nowhere. It had all been clear. Then there was fog. The yacht shot through the fog, confident in its course. Confident it wasn’t going to collide with anything.

The fog cleared and there before us was the rock of Gibraltar.

A place that had been obliterated and razed to the ground, much like ancient Carthage, thirty years ago.

We had reached the Ostium Network.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to fucking die here in Ostium. Pretty grim. I know. But I woke up this morning and there was that moment when I didn’t remember all the shit that’s happened. A moment of bliss. And then my brain started working. It all came back. Jake gone. No way out of Ostium. What options do I have? I’m fucking trapped here. I don’t think the food’s going to last forever. It’s just a really good supply, that’s all. Same with the water. There’s a giant tank – like swimming pool sized – under the town, but eventually it will empty. As for the sewage system, I don’t think we really need to talk about that. Suffice to say, there’s a septic tank. Certain things will happen if it gets full. They’re not pretty. But I can’t go through any doors. If we were still attached to, you know, a planet, I could at least get to Jake’s car and use that. So I’m just fucking stuck. Shit out of luck.

Not that I ever had much to begin with.

[Breath]

I forgot to talk about the kiss last time. When we were down there, in the bottom of that stairwell. When you could cut the tension with a fucking knife. No. I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t mentally, or physically, ready to open up that can of worms. Yet. But today is a new day. I got a full tummy. A fresh mug of tea – and now you know why. And I’ve got the can opener for that aforementioned one containing C. elegans. That’s right bitches. Jake’s not the only one able to spout the technical mumbo jumbo. I know me some Latin and some nomenclature to boot!

So. The kiss. All of our emotions were pretty fired up. We were both wound tight. Like metal springs and spirals and shit like that. Whatever you wanna call it. However you look at it. The stress was palpable. We both needed a release. I knew it would help. Not just him. Both of us. We fucking needed it. A little good in our lives. I didn’t really think about it. What it might mean. Where it might lead. How he might take it. I just . . . Did it. And it felt great. He wasn’t bad. And we both felt better after.

That was the first time I used the Hands of Kimura on Jake . . . when we went through that door back to a changed Ostium.

[Break]

Dr. Kimura is . . . Or was . . . Or is it is? I don’t know if I should be referring to people at the Ostium Network in past tense or not? If I’m never getting back there . . . No, I’m sticking with present. There’s always a fucking chance right? She is one of the many brilliant people we have working at the Ostium Network. She’s kinda of like Q for James Bond. She can’t make pretty much anything if you ask her to do it. It’s a personal challenge she always wants to take on. During the development stage of the first Ostium town – the one I now call a permanent home – I knew in addition to failsafe doors and the like we’d need something more . . . Well, effective. For a specific situation. The Ostium doors were always meant to be one-way, in that one of the Ostium Network’s carefully chosen members would pass through, conduct whatever business he or she needed to on the other side, and then return. No other person would ever come back with them. Certainly not someone from that time or place. That was the hard-fast rule we all agreed on conclusively and without question. But I wanted a fall-back plan for the if. If it ever happened, whoever was there in Ostium needed to be ready. To have a way. We talked about this in one of our big meetings. There were lots of nodding heads. I took it to Dr. Kimura. I referenced a really old movie that involved what is basically a fucking trope of the science fiction genre: the little doohickey that let’s you wipe someone’s short-term memory and implant new memories under hypnosis. The movie, of course, was Men in Black. Dr. Kimura, being as brilliant as she is, knew right away what I meant. She actually helped me form my ideas into words using terms like short-term memory and hypnosis. She knew exactly what to do.

“What container would you like this device to be housed in?” she asked me next.

“Come again doc?” was my response.

“Do you want it to be a gun? A pair of glasses that emits a beam? Or a predictable phallic object like in Men in Black?”

That made me laugh. She was one of the few people who could always make me laugh.

“Why don’t you surprise me, doc.”

Then it was her turn to smile. A different kind of smile.

In less than a week she let me know she had the gloves ready. You can kind of adjust them to what level of mind wipe you want. It’s all short term memory. But . . . There is a setting for like full blackout that leaves the person basically a blank slate. They don’t remember anything about themselves or who they are at all. I didn’t want to ask how Dr. Kimura had tested this to be sure it worked. Nevertheless, I trusted her 100% that it would work.

They were the one item already locked away in the secret compartment in the bathroom of the clock tower, should they ever be needed.

I brought them with me when we went through the hidden temporary door under the bed. Said I needed to use the bathroom before we left and hid the sound of me taking the plate out of the wall with running water. I didn’t know what we’d be finding, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Since the fucking earthquake was the “warning sign” for whatever we were getting into, I needed to be ready. The Hands of Kimura seemed like the right weapon to be ready with.

Also, doc was totally on board with the name

[Short pause]

Okay, you caught me. The kiss was a bit of a distraction for Jake. After everything we saw. Not just the clones, but what we saw on the screens. What Jake had me verify on his phone. It was devastating shit. It was getting to him. It was fucking getting to me. But I knew I could handle it. Process it. Jake. He wouldn’t be able to handle it. My head started running through scenarios. Each one ended with Jake losing. Jake backing out. Jake wanting to leave Ostium and not come back. Because of what these images and stories might mean. That Ostium was exacting a toll on the people of the world. Some-fucking-how. It was some pretty strong, damning evidence, especially with our first-hand experience in Catalina.

I knew once we stepped through that doorway, back to Ostium, things would change. Especially with Jake. He’d have second thoughts about this place. The doors. Ostium. Everything. He’d start to question what he was doing. What he was thinking. What I was doing and thinking. What the reason behind all this was. He’d start questioning everything. I didn’t know where that would take us. I knew I didn’t want to go there. We needed to stay here. In Ostium. And keep looking. That’s why I put on the gloves and gave him his first experience with the Hands of Kimura.

I’ve never regretted doing it. Any of the times I administered the gloves. Fuck! Anytime I zapped him and caused him pain. They weren’t easy. But they were all . . . Necessary.

We came through the doorway and I was standing, he was on the ground. Like he’d just fallen asleep. This was the first time I’d ever tried the gloves. Yes. I was taking one big fucking risk. But Dr. Kimura had assured me . . . She’d promised me they would work exactly to my specifications. And they did. I’d been told at the setting I had at would give me fifteen minutes to play with. Then my victim would start coming around.

The door had closed behind me and I looked towards where we’d originally come through, but something else stole my attention. There was now a ladder attached to the side of the wall. And remember: this wall was just one side of the giant chasm that had opened up straight through Ostium. There had never been a hint of some way to get down to the bottom other than outright falling.

And now there was a fucking ladder.

I didn’t have a ton of time to play with. I threw Jake over my shoulder. He’s puny weight was no match for my impressive strength. The rungs of the ladder were made of stone. The same stone as the side of the stone chasm. Like they’d been carefully carved out of the wall. They went all the way to the top. I guess they were kinda like those crazy invisible ladders I used to climb up the clock tower and then water tower. So this would be fucking easy. So I shouldn’t’ve been surprised. Up I went and in just under five minutes I was at the top, throwing Jake off me and hopping up.

That’s when the rumbling started. Earthquake-type rumbling. A type of rumbling I was now very fucking familiar with.

I looked down between my legs. Down into the chasm. I watched as the ladder rungs popped back into the stone wall like gun clips being rammed home. I actually yelped. Then grabbed Jake by the front of his T-shirt and dragged him back away from the edge. I gave us a twenty-foot cushion, hoping it was enough.

The rumbling got worse. I crouched down next to Jake, holding him close. Not sure if this was going to be the end . . . The end of us . . . The end of everything.

And then I watched it happen . . . I shit you not. The fucking giant crack that had only been around for what? A couple hours? More? Less? I wasn’t fucking sure. Not damn long. Put it that way. I watched it close up. Like the world’s largest fucking zipper. Closed right up and perfectly aligned. Only with earth-shattering rumblings instead of zipper sounds. The ground knitted together and reformed, like it’d never been apart. It was . . . Fucking magical. And very fucking terrifying.

And just like that: it was done. The rumbling ended. The ground stopped shaking. Things calmed. My heart started slowing down to a normal rhythm.

And that was when Jake started to wake up. I hadn’t given him any suggestions. Any thoughts or fake memories, while he was under and in this semi-hypnotic state. But I also remembered what Dr. Kimura had told me if this happened: the victim would retain a hazy, fuzzy memory of the last five hours, almost as if it’d never happened. This are obviously my words. Not hers. She put it a lot more clinically. And probably clearly. So even though I’d fucked it up this first time round. With the Hands of Kimura. I was still doing okay. Because she’d made sure this sort of thing was built in. Because she was brilliant. Is brilliant.

You know. Going over all this now. I think I might’ve started to have a thing for Dr. Kimura. Good to know.

Not that I’ll ever be seeing her again. But still. Good. To. Know.

The rest you already know. I gave Jake the doctored spiel . . . Get it? Because I used the Hands of Kimura. As in Doctor Kimura? Yeah. Jake woulda been pissed he didn’t come up with it. But he took it and believed me. Plus he had his whole melt-down about his internet connectivity problems.

Whatever.

But that night. While he was sleeping. I could hear him snoring away. I did some heavy thinking. About the future. The future of Ostium. And the future of us. I knew Jake was going to have these same issues with cost. The cost of lives. Or supposed cost. The possibility that all these people were somehow being killed. Murdered. Because of Ostium. This didn’t get to me. At all. Because . . . We didn’t know if this was all actually happening or not. If people were actually getting hurt. There wasn’t undeniable proof. Also . . .They’re not my people.

[Deep Breath]

Okay. I may not have outright said it, but it should be pretty fucking clear to you. If you’ve been listening. Following along. Putting the pieces together. I’m from the future. Quite a bit in fact. Not gonna give you the exact date yet. Too much risk involved. If you’ve watched Back to the Future, you know what I fucking mean. Or Bill and Ted. I’m from a different time. Therefore -basically – a different world. These people. Here. In this time. They don’t mean anything to me. Because they’re not my people. They’re people of the past. People I have no bearing on. My people are in the future. They are still so much bits of dead stardust floating around in space at this point in time. Yeah. That line’s not originally mine. And yes. I know. Jake would’ve fucking loved it.

This was how I was able to disconnect from it all. How I was able to disassociate myself from these possible lives that had been snuffed out. That and we still didn’t know if it was all true or not.

Of course. Now. I’m permanently disconnected from “my people.” So it really doesn’t fucking matter anymore. But before any of you jump down my throat. Screaming at me that I’m a heartless bitch. That I’m soulless. That I lack a single mortal bone in my body. Well . . . Now you should understand it all. Better.

But what about killing my men? Those people from my time? Don’t worry. We’ll get to that. In time. When we’re at the right point in the chronology. Don’t rush me!

So I was thinking. Thinking about how Jake was going to feel and what he might think. And then I thought about what I wanted out of this. It was a wild ride so far. Fun. And whatever was happening between Jake and I was . . . Interesting. It had some interesting potentiality. But this wasn’t going to sustain me. I had to look at why this all began . . . Why I ended up in this fucking predicament to begin with. That made it all much more easier to understand.

One word.

Steve.

He’s why I was here. The only reason really why I was here. And the only reason I am still here. Well, that and being stuck here. If before, tracking down and finding Steve had been my journey. My quest. I know that’s what Jake’d like to call it. Now it was a fucking crusade. My fucking crusade. I had to find him. Dead or alive. One way or another. I needed to know. Definitively. If he needed my help, I needed to be there. In any way I could.

Jake had his thing he was doing. I had mine. And that’s when our ways parted on different trajectories. We were still headed in the same general direction. But just more parallel than in sync. That’s when I was done with being part of his recordings. Having my own. It felt right. It felt healthy. Felt like I was getting more out of it. It was helping me. Just like this is now. Because it’s making me forget about the shitty conundrum I’m stuck in here.

So let’s keep talking and trying to temporarily forget.

But first I need a pick-me-up.

More tea.

[Pause]

I thought that one time with the Hands of Kimura would be enough. No. That’s not true. I hoped it would be. When the doc had explained it all to me, she’d made it clear what a fucking mind-altering experience it would be for the victim. I guess Jake had a much stronger mind that I thought. Not that surprising. When you look at it. After all he’s been through. To come out the other side. With his mind intact. Not to mention that photographic memory.

Those nightmares were rough. On both of us. I felt for the guy. I was able to keep my mental distance from the possible loss of life. It wasn’t in any way proven to be a fact that Ostium was causing all these deaths, and this still remains a mystery. I guess Jake will never know. [Short pause] I probably won’t either. I was gonna give it some time. See if he could find some catharsis. In some way. To put some distance between what’d happened and himself. I tried. It didn’t work. A few days passed and he wasn’t really getting any better. I was gonna have to step in.

First, let’s clear up a few questions before we get into that heavy fucking baggage.

When we were in that frozen fucking wasteland. What did Jake call it? Anji-something . . . Anjukuni. There was that bit when Jake went out looking for the artifact. I didn’t follow. I stayed inside the hut. I know once each of us starting doing our own recordings we’d drifted apart a bit. At least when it came to learning and experiencing Ostium. In other ways we were definitely getting closer. Physically. If you catch my drift. Yes. I’m talking about the sex. But I wasn’t hatching some nefarious plan in there. It was cold. Really fucking cold.

I could tell you that in the future where I’m from the temperature is at a perfect level all the time: not too hold, not too cold. Fucking Goldilocks zone. It’s not. I could tell you because of climate change everything is fucking hot now and there’s no ice left anywhere on the planet. But that also wouldn’t be true. It took a while; over a century, but we got that big shit-storm you put us in taken care of. Part of it was us doing certain things – no, I’m not giving you hints; if you gave a shit you’d be fixing your problems already – and the planet just fucking fixing itself, because it’s that fucking awesome. And time. That was also the key. So there are still plenty of cold places to go. I just don’t ever fucking go to them. I got Jamaican blood in my genetic makeup back aways, so me and the heat get along just fine. Like a rum punch on the beach. And I do my darnedest to steer clear of the cold.

So I just stayed where it was warmer. Tried some of the chow. Wasn’t bad. Made a change from the usual stuff I’d been having at Chez Clock Tower. And now that I think about it, it’s gotta be the only time I’ve ever eaten something on the other side of an Ostium door. Pretty fucking stupid. But I’m still alive. Guess I didn’t get anything that could kill me. Guess that tea vaccine cocktail really works.

Seeing Ramirez just lying their. Really fucking dead. In this hut. In the middle of fucking nowhere. In the middle of fucking nowhen. It was tough. Got to me. As it should. I’m a fucking human being after all. When I sent them through the door I had no fucking clue what was going to happen to them. I may have imagined some bad things. I may have wanted some bad things. But never this. I took a little time checking him out, going over him, looking for scars, signs, something that might tell me how he’d kicked the bucket. There was nothing. That should’ve been the warning sign for me. But it wasn’t. Not till later that I put two and two together and got the special little gun.

The kiss? That was just fucking impulsive, man. See above RE the cold! I wasn’t worried we were gonna be trapped in this icy Hoth hell. But Jake found a way, just like he always did – except for that last time. He got us out and back to a warm place.

I woulda done more than kiss him for that.

In time, I would.

[Break]

Private Tanaka was another big shock. Again there was the pointlessness of it all: him just lying their on the seat on the bridge in deep space where no one was gonna find him. It also was another body. Dead from the same conditions. And it was proof: proof of a pattern. The body count was up to a new total of three. And it started to make me really worry that the next body would be Steve’s.

Just as lifeless. Just as pointless.

Anyone who’s ever had an interest in space exploration knows about the Voyager program. Even if it’s something akin to ancient history in my time.

Oh, and if you are wondering. Yes: we have found aliens. And yes, they were friendly, though not completely at first. And that’s all I’m telling you about that. Deal with it! If I’m telling the truth that is . . . [evil/dirty laugh]

It was on the day we were to go through the door to Jake’s past. Columbia. That I started thinking about using the gloves on Jake while he was asleep. To see if I could help him with the nightmares. And dealing with everything. I felt the clock was ticking. For him to just throw in the towel and quit. To just give up on everything. The weight of guilt crushing him down like an invisible boulder. Tell him what to think so he could have a fucking decent night’s sleep.

Columbia was . . . A fucking trip. Fucking trip and a half. It was Jake’s history, and given the . . . Ahem . . . History on that, I should’ve expected a crazy, fucked-up ride. I did get Jake to open up though, about his ex and his past life. That was good. Maybe that helped him a bit. The fucked up stuff behind those doors certainly didn’t.

And then when he went in the shower room and that door just slammed shut, like some poltergeist was firmly holding it closed. I lost my shit. For him. But also for myself a little. Hammering on that door; kicking it; trying with every ounce of strength to break the fucking thing down. But there was something goddamn spooky about it.

And you know what? I never asked Jake what the fuck happened in there. What with everything that happened afterwards. Once we got back to the Clock Tower. You know. With the fucking and all. Things were pretty . . . distracted. All around. I don’t even know if Jake would’ve given me a straight answer. He might’ve been too fucked up by the whole experience to tell me something concrete.

But we got through it. And at the end of it both of our emotions and thoughts were going fucking light-speed. And then he started to tip and lose. I had to do something . . . Fucking incredible to pull him through. And I did. I wanted it just as much as he did. And it helped.

And then. Once he was asleep. Satisfied in every way. I did use the gloves on him. Told him to forget about all that bad shit. And just remember the good. The good shit that made him feel so great.

And it totally fucking worked.

[Break]

And things got into a routine. The sex. Using the gloves. Him doing his thing. Me doing mine. Us doing it together. In weird places. Man, Easter Island. That’s gotta top the Mile High Club, right? Especially since fucking time travel was involved! I guess if things do end right here, I at least have the memories of getting it on in the land of Moai to console myself with.

And then there was the Dyson Sphere. Our final chapter together, basically. I know there was another door and another place after that. And I fucking honestly never want to say anything about the fucked-up shit in that house by the sea. So I’m not gonna. Not even here. The Dyson Sphere was where it all came to an end.

Where Jake met his end. Made his choice.

Fucking bastard.

I still think he should’ve come with me. We would’ve made it work. Somehow. The end of the fucking universe would’ve been better than this. Maybe we coulda had a threesome? Now there’s a downright dirty thought.

At least I wouldn’t have had to deal with all this shit on my own.

It fucking hurts. And it’s not getting any better. No matter how much time passes.

Seeing that display. With the info about Jake. Talk about a curve ball. I just didn’t know what to fucking think. I didn’t. Couldn’t. There was nothing to fucking think about. And then when Jake started completely falling apart. Which was totally his prerogative, given all this shit, it helped. Helped me focus and gave me something to do. To help him. To make things better. Even if they were just getting worse. No matter what I did.

And then Dyson Sphere Take Two. With the other Jake.  Seems like it shouldn’t be possible. But time and time again Ostium has shown that not to be.

Which is why I’m doing these recordings. If I’d’ve totally given the fuck up I woulda slit my wrists, or dropped off into the blackness days ago.

But I’m not a quitter.

And in Ostium there’s always hope. No matter what happens. No matter how bleak things may seem.

A certain nerdy, wordy, strange-historied, Beatles-loving guy taught me that.

So I’m going to keep going. I think there’s still a chance. Just like there is for Steve. Just like there is for me.

I’ve got hope.

Same shit. Different day. I know neither Jake nor I ever said this to each other. And I know he was pretty much on cloud nine after finding Ostium. After he got to go through doors and visit other worlds. But there were times when things just dragged. Like molasses. Where we felt lost and kinda helpless. Where it took going through another door to see if there might be any answers. And there weren’t. Those days Ostium felt like a bitch. Even Jake would admit this. If he was still alive.

And now . . .

I think every day is going to feel like this. Worse. Because I can’t go through any of those doors. I’m just fucked. Pure and simple. And I’ve got fuck all else to do but drink tea and pour out my fucking sorry soul.

So where did we leave off?

[Break]

I went through the stages of imprisonment. I knew I was trapped, but I wasn’t gonna accept it. I tried opening that failsafe door like five more times. Each time their were screams. Each time it fucking terrified me. Each time I slammed it shut and ran back to the clock tower. I tried the front gate. Opened it up and stepped outside. I had no fucking clue where I was. Or when I was. It could be Planet Earth, or the other side of the fucking galaxy. The ass-end of the universe. But, you know, it just happened to look like Earth. Outside the gate were trees and shrubberies and a dirt road and everything that said normal. One time I started walking. A good thirty minutes. Nothing changed. Until I got to the sign. You know the one. The one Jake found playing that game. Says OSTIUM. And the elevation, whatever it is. And the population zero. That was fucking . . . Humbling. It made it all hit home. Pushed me to the next stage.

So I came back. Closed the gate. Found this gnarly hexagonal padlock to lock the gate with. Just in case anyone or anything showed up outside and wanted to come in . . . And I didn’t want it to come in. And I yelled at everything for like an hour. Cussing and screaming and spitting. Kept going till my voice just stopped working and I was hoarse, my throat raw and dry. Tea obviously helped. And rest.

Then I thought maybe Ostium and I could make a deal. Or had made a deal. Maybe someone at some point had added a fail-safe to the fail-safe. I knew there was a bit fat one on the clock tower door. So I went looking for door number two. Used that handy dandy wood map carving. Don’t know where the fuck that came from. It was never in any of the blueprints I saw. And I certainly didn’t have any inkling of it. But it was sure fucking useful. Found door two. Took a breath and tried to open it. It did open and there were the screams again. Fuck no! I went to door three after that. Wouldn’t open. Wouldn’t budge a fraction of a centimeter. Tired doors four through ten. No fucking luck.

I regressed to anger again for a while. Sure made me feel fucking better, I tell ya.

And that’s when I got a real bad case of mopes. I was moping all over the floor and the walls. It was fucking ugly. Uuuuugly. Stopped eating. Got fucking starving. So I ate. Stopped drinking tea. Really missed it. So I started again. I don’t know how long I spent in that dark fucking period, but I did come out of it.

And the next day I was just okay. Okay with Ostium. Okay with my predicament. I wanted to make myself feel good. Work on some positives. So I made some great food. The perfect cup of tea. I wondered what else I could do . . . And then had a real dirty idea.

[Short pause]

That might’ve been the best orgasm I’ve ever had. Well, from one woman to another, “orgasm” singular isn’t really correct. Am I right? That’s as far as I’m going. It was fucking great.

After I regained my . . . Self and awareness . . . I took a walk around Ostium. Going up and down the streets. It was another sunny day. Very enjoyable.

And that’s when fucking serendipity struck.

That’s when I heard a car arriving outside the gate.

[Break]

I was never in the military. Let’s make that clear. Right. Fucking. Now. All that jargon and shit was all a smokescreen. A good one, I might add. Jake bought it hook, line and sinker . . . And you know what. I just got what that expression means. That’s pretty damn funny. And exact! However: when you become a viable and valid member of the Ostium Network, you don’t just get to waltz in and do your thang. That’s training. It’s mandatory. And it’s rigorous. And I went through whole fucking thing. AND scored really well. Like one of the best in decades. So while the military stuff was all smoke and mirrors, I was also pulling from a wealth of similar experience.

So when I heard that car, I reacted on instinct. I wasn’t at the gate, but I was close by. I moved into position with light footsteps. Imagined myself as a ballerina. It actually does help. And totally fucking works. I was by the left side of the gate, behind part of the wall. Hidden from anything or anyone looking in from outside. But with how I was peeking, I could see when needed.

The old Volkswagen Beetle was a vehicle I would soon become very familiar with. I watched the man I would eventually learn was named Jake Fisher get out and walk up to the gates. His face was awestruck. He looked kinda tired. He’d be driving for a long time. Probably drank a ton of coffee. This was before his high tea times after all. But he also looked so excited. Like that other old saying: a goddamn kid in a goddamn candy store. I might be paraphrasing a bit. He looked at the lock on the gate, cute frown line forming on his forehead.

Yep, hexagonal was kinda weird. But it was decided ubiquitous shape for the Ostium Network. Something to do with symmetry and balance and bunch of month that don’t mean shit to me. But not obsessive. Not like fucking Battlestar Galactica with the stupid octagonal paper. What the fuck was that about? Oh, and I’ll get to my background eventually, and why I know weird shit like that fact about BSG.

And then Jake got back in his car, turned around, and left. But I knew right then he’d be back. Probably the following day. That look in his eyes. He could barely keep himself away. It he’d had the supplies, he probably would’ve slept the night in his car.

So I went back to the clock tower and did some thinking. Everything had changed now. And now I knew some things. Complete change to a few days ago when it seem like it was the end of the everything. I knew Ostium – this fabricated town I’d helped invent and create – was somewhere, but as I said before, it could’ve been anywhere. It could’ve been somewhere where there were no people and I that would’ve been the end of it for me. But seeing Jake made it better. So much better. It gave me something I hadn’t had at almost any moment I’d been here: hope. He was human. He was normal looking. He breathed oxygen. Plus he was cute to boot. So a lot of check marks in the win column there. What it would me for me and for Ostium once Jake go inside, I had no clue. For all I knew, he could come in and hit the exact same roadblocks I did. Discover the not-at-all fun of the banshee doors. But even if that were the case, I now had an out. An escape. I wasn’t fucking trapped here. Even if I was stuck in the . . . 1940s for example. It would bad. Really fucking bad. I’ve read the history. As a black woman, I don’t like to even try to think about it. But still. It would be something. Something not Ostium. Though, with what Jake was wearing, I wasn’t thinking 1940s for a second. But you get the point.

I realized I had to let him in. Give him and chance and see what he’d get up to. So that night I took the lock off the gate. I also thought about whether I’d need the gun at all.

The next day Jake stepped into Ostium for the first time. I didn’t feel anything change or seem like it was different. But at some fundamental level, something must’ve happened . . . Right? Because this was the Jake who’s had a connection to every door we’ve ever been through in Ostium. There must’ve been something going on. But from my perspective, with my experience of Ostium, I noticed absolutely nothing.

I was ready for him. Just as I was yesterday, day one, and have been ever since. Except for that last meeting. When the other him surprised me. Didn’t see that one coming. But . . . As the man of the hour would say: I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I was ready when he pulled up outside. The lock was off the gate and everything else was set. He’d have no problem getting in. I needed him to get in. Didn’t want him having problems, getting back in his car, and going all the way home.

I jogged back to the clock tower and went into the bathroom. I crouched down and drew a circle on a tile behind the sink. The tile popped out of the wall revealing the hidden space. I retrieved the gun and put the tile back where it was. This had also been my idea. I didn’t know I’d be using this hidey hole for a gun, I just knew there needed to be one in the clock tower. Thank you past me for thinking of this, because future me was going to need this place to hide the gun and a certain pair of “special” gloves from future Jake when necessary.

Then I waited. I’d closed the bedroom door. The bathroom door was open and that’s where I was waiting. If he came this far, I was going to need to subdue him. But something told me I’d be okay. My first unwarranted insight into Jake’s character based on absolutely nothing . . . That just turned out to be completely correct.

I heard murmurings once he was inside. Couldn’t make out what he was saying. Guess he was deciding what to do. What door to go with. That was when things got tense. When I held my breath. Then I heard him leave. I didn’t waste time. Quickly following. Stealth was my middle name as I quietly pursued. Followed him all the way to door number two. Then I hung back and just watched. He was gutsy. Real gutsy. The way he opened that door, sucked in his breath, and stepped through.

It also blew my fucking mind.

Here I was. Fucking trapped! Tired a whole bunch of doors, including this exact one, with no luck. And here strolls in Mr. Nobody and opens any old door like his hand’s a fucking skeleton key. I held back as long as I could. So like, all of five seconds. I was careful. Real careful. Peeked into the doorway and saw him standing there looking away. As soon as he started to turn around, I ducked back, counted to twenty, then slowly inched back. I watched him walk all the way to the wall of wood. He looked at a big tree. Then walked inside the little town on the island I would eventually learn was Roanoke.

That whole story about me going through the door and finding the little wooden figurine that became my “talisman” and kinda saved my ass . . . Yeah . . . That was all bullshit. Made it up to pacify Jake. Make him believe my side of the story and all that. Make him believe we were on the same team. At that point and for a while after that we were. Not really sure when that changed, but it did.

As for the Mary Celeste. That part was all true. Except he went through first and I followed him. Not the other way round. But he did close it behind him. And it did totally scare the crap out of me. But I got out of that one. Barely. With each monumental leap Jake took in Ostium, I was just one leap behind him. Learning with him. Experiencing what he was.

Mars was the same story. Snuck in behind Jake and when on my own scenic trip. Got close to where Jake was and that’s when I decided to leave the audible breadcrumbs. This time I got to slam the door in his face. Got the upper hand. Felt damn good.

That’s when I came up with my whole fabricated background. With the military and all that jazz.  As for that infrared map thingy . . . I don’t know what the fuck that was, where it came from . . . I’ve still got the ability now. The lot of good it does me. Was it some sort of buried code within the mainframe that I was never told about? Yeah, I don’t know if my bullshit jargon is right there, but you get the picture.

I figured they’d send in some people to come look for me. I hoped they would at least. Not that many. That was . . . Pretty damn surprising. I didn’t even know if they could send people through anymore. It just never occurred to me for some reason. Like there was a mental block. Maybe I just thought because I couldn’t get back they’d somehow know this back at the Ostium Network and wouldn’t risk sending anyone else in. But they did. A whole fucking bunch. And yet we got through with it. I used my technical know-how, what I knew about Ostium and the way it worked, both as one who was involved in its creation, and one who has experienced it first hand. And it worked. I thought it would. I didn’t know it would. If those bullets had gone through the door, Jake would’ve been torn to ribbons. Blood everywhere. But that didn’t happen.

Then they went away. Where did they go? Back to the Ostium Network? Nope. We know for a fact that’s not fucking possible. So I had theories. Of course. I’m guessing they went out the front gate. They to have, otherwise we would’ve found them sooner. Somewhere in Ostium. Maybe they checked the fail-safe door, if they knew about it. Maybe they didn’t know about it. In which case they went they opened that gate expecting to set foot back in the Inception Chamber. Boy did they get a rude awakening. As fucking rude as I did. And here’s where I start conjecturing: they went walking down the road. For a long time. Hoping to find something; anything. Remember: they never heard us. In their mind, Ostium was empty. The doors didn’t open. It was a complete dead end. They went down that road for a long time. Into the dark of night. Not knowing what they’d find. Nothing. That’s all they could find. At some point Sergeant Harris would’ve gotten the blunt fucking hint, turned around and headed back. They couldn’t just keep walking down the road, hoping, wishing for something. Thank god they didn’t have a mode of transportation. If they had they would’ve found a whole world waiting for them. Don’t like to venture down that path. Don’t like to think about all that. Them’s dark and dangerous thoughts. So they came back to Ostium, because it was something they knew; something concrete.

That’s how I knew – without a fucking doubt – they’d be back. And I made sure I was ready for them. It worked out Jake wasn’t around. Pretty fucking fortuitous. I gotta say. And I guess they never found or tried door number two. It does make sense. There are a lot of fucking doors in Ostium. I led them to it. I led them through. There was no hesitation on their part. It was a way out. An escape. They weren’t going to waste time wondering. Closing the door behind them . . . Sealing them in that part of Ostium was . . . Easy.

I didn’t kill those men. I didn’t send them in there to die. If you want to blame someone, blame the asshole who sent them into Ostium to get Steve and I. Their fate was sealed once they stepped through. The big wigs at the Ostium Network should’ve known that. They should’ve known better.

[Breath]

[Anguish] They . . . Should’ve . . . Fucking . . . Known . . . Better.

I’ve gotten the message loud and fucking clear from Jake. He feels I was more to blame. For what I did. For what happened to them. But I don’t . . . I don’t accept that. I won’t accept that. They made many wrong choices along the way. Them and their superiors. How many fucking door have Jake and I gone through? How many times have we fucking died? Yeah. It’s come close. But we’ve survived. Those men were trained for the extreme. If they couldn’t hack it, the never deserved to be in the positions they were in.

I still don’t fucking know how any of them died. The ones we found. Just lying there. Not a mark or scratch on them. You know. Not that I think of them. The way they were. Lying there. Yeah. I can’t believe I never fucking thought of it before . . . I think I know what fucking killed them. A beam. A beam from that puny little gone I’ve got. It has a setting. One shot. One zap. One kill. All it takes is one beam. That’s quite possibly what did. Holy shit. I can’t believe it never occurred to me. Until now.

See, these recordings are helpful.

But who shot them? Me? What? Fucking how? Did I do it in my sleep? In some crazy unconscious state? Mosied on through those doors of Ostium, found them, shot them, then came back, and went back to bed. Plus: I had to get the gun from hidey hole and put it back. All without Jake noticing.

Yeah. Not fucking possible. I’m off the hook there, at least.

So who else? Jake? Don’t need to waste any time on that thought.

So it’s gotta be someone else? On the other side of Ostium? The other side of those doors? Now that’s fucking scary. It’s downright chilling. One person comes to mind. Steve? Who else could it be? But that would mean he’s alive then. Alive and fucking killing people. Okay. But alive. That’s the important part.

Fucking hell.

[Break]

I gave door four another try because of what happened. Because I sent those men through. Because I knew we had to go back to Mars. To get the trinket, or talisman, or whatever the fuck it is. I thought maybe it might’ve gotten reset in some way, or fixed maybe? Perhaps I could get through a door now on my own. If I could do that, then there was a chance I could get out of here and back home. Even if home wasn’t exactly welcoming anymore. So I tried. And I failed.

This seems as good a place as any to talk about those items we brought back from those places in time.

[Breath]

I know. What the fuck?

None of this stuff was in the original planning. Again, there’s a small chance this was all done without my know how. But it’s un-fucking-likely. The map table was part of the setup with Ostium. We knew the doors were the key. The links to different places in time. We knew the numbers were probably important, at least from a organizational standpoint. Therefore the map table was needed, and it needed to be solid. Permanent. So we made it a wooden carving. But all the stuff about bringing an item, a trinket back from those places and putting them on the numbers and the light shows and all that. Fuck, man. That was just some crazy shit.

It’s like there’s the Ostium we made, we created. Then there’s this other one that came into existence. A part of it is the one we made. Most of it is something else. Something foreign. Something alien. And something that Jake is tied to . . . Something Jake was tied to. Don’t know why. Can’t explain it. It just . . . Is.

The way he would just know. Jake. About the place. And how to get us the fuck out. When the shit was hitting the fan. When the end was near and imminent. Like on Avalon. Going onto that goddamn boat and through that little door. How the fuck? It’s like Jake made Ostium his. Part of him. Some-fucking-how.

But if so . . . What now?

[Break]

The earthquake really fucked with me. I’ve never been in one before. You could probably tell that. But what it did to Ostium. No one. Not a single one of the hundreds of people involved in the creation of Ostium could’ve ever predicted that in a quadrillion years. I certainly didn’t. The door under the bed was a lucking fucking guess. I know I checked there before. A number of times. Never saw anything under there except bare solid floor. Except this time. This time there was a fucking door. And Jake knew what to do. Where to go. And ultimately knew where we were.

Man, that was a fucking trip. Him coming back to where he used to work. And then . . . Seeing those fucking clones. I know he took it worse, but I was just barely fucking holding it together. I did have a few thoughts. After. Long after. After I processed it all. Sort of. I’m . . . No, I’m not going to talk about them now. I’m just not ready to divulge . . . That. Maybe at some point . . . In the future. We’ll see.

Okay. That’s all for now.

I need a fucking break.

Oh, Jesus. What the fuck happened? Ohh. One minute it was all normal. I was talking to Jake. I was going to tell Jake . . . I was going to tell Jake . . . And then there was a blinding red light, and . . . What? He’s . . . He’s gone. He’s fucking gone now. Just like that. Not even a goddamn goodbye? What the hell Ostium. You’ve really done it this time. To me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how it happened.

What the fuck is even going on here?

Okay, okay. Monica. Let’s calm down here. Time to take a chill pill. Another colloquial saying. Okay. Breathe. Deep breaths.

[A couple of deep breaths] In . . . And out . . . In . . . And out . . . In . . . And out.

Okay. That’s better. Let’s get that heart rate down a little. Collect those thoughts. Focus. Right here. Right now.

Alright then. So . . . As I was trying to tell Jake . . . he was playing with something. What was he fucking about with? The artifact! The fucking eyeball. From that guy. Don’t know which one. One of them. The eyeball that wasn’t really an eyeball. But a key. To the table. Okay. Got it. And he . . . He dropped it! That’s it. He dropped the damn thing on the map table. It wasn’t on the number right away. And I was telling him . . . I was trying to tell him about what I know. About Ostium. To convince him. About Steve. [Slowly, softly]: My son. Then the fucking red light show started. That goddamn fake eyeball must’ve rolled onto the number. Started the Pink Floyd laser bonanza. Jake had been saying something. Something about how the doors were following a pattern with him. A couple doors from the past. One from the future. And then his trip down memory lane. And that’s what the  last door had been. The one to that house he’d stayed in . . . Fort Bragg. Wasn’t it? Yeah.

God. All those bodies. That was . . . That was really hard getting through. I thought I was gonna lose it. Just break down. Collapse. What the fuck happened there? Who could do that . . . To them? Was it a who? A what? I don’t know. Don’t ever want to fucking find out either.

And then we came back.

So, let’s apply the Jake-patented paradigm here . . .

Last time we went down memory lane . . . Catalina . . . We had some serious tectonic activity. Everything got all shook up. Scared the crap out of me. And at the end of it there was this big ass crack across the entire town. Out of fucking nowhere. How does shit like that even happen? I know this is Ostium. But still. And after we found the secret door and did what needed to be done. After Jake had his state of the union with himself. Man that was a trip. Goddamn clones. We came back. I . . . Gave him a required nap and put things back together.

More on that later.

Maybe.

[Pause]

This time it’s different. Yeah. I know. It’s different every time. But this time he got sucked into it. He got sucked into Ostium and made part of the whole shebang and I’m here all by my lonesome. I got left behind. Don’t think it was Jake’s choice. Or that he was involved in anyway. But after the bright red lights . . . He’s gone . . . And I’m not.

So where the fuck did he go . . .

[Growing realization] Oh . . .

[Exploding, shocking realization] Oh . . .

[Monica & Jake V.O.]

“But what . . What if I changed things in my time. Told the other you about what I know. Tried to change the way things turn out . . .”

“No! No. You can never do that. It needs to continue along as it already has. You need to be you and say nothing, so we get to this moment again. Changing a little thing could have a catastrophic knock-on effect.”

“Butterfly effect.”

“Yes. And we’re completely out of time. Go now, while you still have the chance.”

That was the reset. Or Jake crossing the timelines. Crossing the streams. Some shit. Ostium put him back . . . Within itself. Within events that already happened. I wonder if he went through all the doors we already went through? Did he watch us enter that old cave? Pay us a visit in the distant future on the spaceship? Or did he gawp while we did the horizontal nasty on Easter Island? Fuck knows. All I know for sure is that he was there at the end. On the Dyson sphere.

And then he wasn’t. Anymore. He was gone. The blackness . . . Absorbed him. Atomized the motherfucker and left nothing but energy and dust to dissipate into the cosmos of Ostium. Goddamn. I fucking sound like him saying shit like that.

But still. He’s no more. And that’s fucked up. Really fucked up. Even for Ostium.

[Yelling] What the hell man? What did you do, Ostium? I thought there was more to you. I thought you and Jake were special. Best buds. BFFs. You guys had fucking history . . . Literally! Connections. Fate. Like it was meant to be. And then you just fucking let him die?

No. No . . . Not right. I couldn’t do anything. Jake wouldn’t fucking let me do anything.

[Jake V.O.] “No! No. You can never do that.”

And I listened to him. I didn’t want to. No fucking way. And I tried . . . I tried a couple times. Before we got to that fucked up house with all the dead people. But he kept stopping me. Like he knew. I know. He couldn’t. It was fucking impossible. Time only goes one way. So he didn’t know yet. He couldn’t know. Unless Ostium told . . . No. No fucking way. Not going down that road. Jake may like to introspect about that shit, but not me. No way Jose. But he said he’d listen, as soon as we saw . . . All those fucking bodies. Yeah. That shut me up well and good.

You know: I have seen Back to the Future. Maybe I should’ve left him a letter? Written him a fucking note. Slipped it in his pocket when he wasn’t looking. He might’ve found it later.

Before everything went to shit.

[Solemn] Man, Jake would’ve totally gone apeshit for that . . . Nerd factor eleven . . . One louder.

But he’s gone. Gone for good. Gone from my life. And gone from Ostium. I never wanted it to happen. Never. But it did. It’s over now.

[Breath]

Time to move on.

[Pause]

Oh . . . Man. This tea is really helping. I knew it would. But sometimes you think it’s gonna help and it does jack shit. But this. Oh, baby. This is doing it for me. Okay. Things are starting to look a little better. So . . .

[Giggle]

Wow, I never thought I’d say this . . .

[Laugh]

So . . . Let’s . . . Let’s explore the concept of . . . What would Jake do?

I know, I know. But . . . I need to look at my options. See what paths are open to me. Introspect a little. You know? And who did that best? Who’s the guy we’re not gonna forget? Who’s the guy we can’t seem to stop talking about?

I obviously don’t have a lot of options open for me right now.

And in case you don’t remember . . . I seem to have a certain case of . . . Banshee-itis when it comes to doors in Ostium. That is when there’s no Jake to clear the path. It’s like as soon as he steps foot through that door he becomes a different person. I guess . . . Became a different person. Need to start talking in the past tense about him. Gotta start accepting that. Okay. But Ostium just seemed to bow down . . . No. That’s not right. Ostium . . . Would accept Jake when he went through one of those doors. He never seemed scared. I know there were plenty of moments when we were both terrified. That time on Catalina with the blackness coming right for us. That really sticks with me. But going through the doors. He was always so excited. So vibrant. So ready for whatever was on the other side.

As for myself. From the beginning I’ve had . . . [Exasperated breath] Issues with the doors. Getting through the doors. You remember me trying to get through door four by myself? When we had to go back. Back to the future. On Mars. To get the artifact, because we forgot . . . No. Because Jake forgot the time before. I couldn’t get the artifact by myself . . . Oh goddamn. This is all fucked up. All the stories and thoughts are mish-mashing together. I’ve been double-speaking for too long. Watching what I say around Jake, and now I’ve lost my goddamn way with these recordings. These personal recordings. My recordings. Don’t need a filter here. Can tell it like it is. Call it like I see it. Hide nothing.

[Breath]

Okay. That’s what I’m going to do from now on.

But first I have to be absolutely goddamn sure I can’t get the fuck outta this damn town.

[Pause]

[Walking sounds]

I’ve never been to Disneyland. And how things are going, I probably never will. Of course, given my background, I’ve never really expected to visit the “happiest place on Earth.” And . . . Whoever ends up listening to this . . . Well, you’ll find out why. Eventually.

You know, I thought I was doing these recordings for me. For myself. A personal . . . Venting. To bounce my thoughts off my brain cavity. And to talk about things I couldn’t and didn’t want to talk about with Jake. I needed that personal space. And now . . . He’s not here. He’s gone. And that ain’t gonna change. So my original reason for doing these recordings is no longer relevant. Obsolete. So why am I talking into this recording device that totally looks like a twenty-first century cellphone and totally isn’t. I’ll get to that too. Eventually.

It’s gotta be because I’m not just doing this for myself. What would be the point in recording it? So is it for my protection? My support? For when I do eventually get out of this town. Back to where I’m from. To prove to them what happened? To defend myself? Possibly. I don’t know if I’m going to need to, though.

But first that means I have to find a way out. And the only way to do that is to try the way in. Again. Didn’t work last time.

I know I sound like him. Like Jake. The way I’m asking and trying to answer these hard questions. The way I’m parsing stuff out . . . The goddamn way I’m using words like “parsing.” But let me tell you: it’s really hard not to talk like him. When you’re talking to yourself. Like this. So . . . Deal with it.

Whoever you might be.

Getting back to Disneyland. It was one infinitesimal part of the vast amount of stuff I learned before I arrived in Ostium. I’m sure you’ve got many, many questions. And you’re going to get answers. Eventually. There’s that word. Again. It’s going to take me time. To tell you everything that happened. To me. And everything that happened. In general.

Maybe I’m talking to Jake’s people. The ones he was doing those recordings for. Sort of posterity. But also sorta the outside world. If they could find it. Maybe these recordings are doing the same thing. Somehow. Getting out online.

[Breath]

Ostium. This Ostium was a mistake. A screwup. We didn’t know that until we got in. Until it was too late. For me. And for my son. Steve. He was first.

And I’ll get to all that.

But first. I’m here. Where I need to be. At Disneyland right as you come in there’s the Hall of Presidents. Not many people go there. I can sort of understand that. It’s kinda boring. I think it’s interesting. But then, I’m not everyone. When there’s so much other cool stuff to go check out. And ride. I get it. It’s a bottom of the list type of thing. And by the time you get to the bottom of that list, you’re totally wiped. Done. And you just want to get to your hotel and crash on that soft bed.

Well, when we were in the designing stage of this Ostium, a lot of discussion and thinking went into it. Oh yeah. There’s that bombshell. Ostium was designed. Yep. Every door and building. Every nook and cranny. Every grain of dirt and blade of grass. From top to bottom and everything in between. I was part of that crew. And when it came to deciding where to put that “front door,” my idea was the one we went with. Obviously there’s the main gate to and from Ostium, but that’s where you go to get to Earth . . . Er, in this time. Which wasn’t what we expected to happen. It’s what you use to get into Ostium. And out of. It was supposed to be the main doorway, the main entrance and exit to get us back and forth. Only something went wrong. Really wrong. Don’t know how. Don’t know why. It just did. Still trying to figure it all out. I demanded we put in a backup. A failsafe. A literal back door just in case the main one failed in some way.

And that’s where I am now. The geographical equivalent of the Hall of Presidents in Disneyland . . . in Ostium. Right in front. Because I knew that if anyone got into Ostium who shouldn’t be there, they weren’t going to try that door at the front and off a little to the right. There’s way cooler stuff going on up the street. That’s where they’re going to go. So I knew it’d be ignored. So that’s where we put it. A door that will take me back to where I’m originally from.

Except I tried it. When I had a moment. After Ostium got untethered and I knew walking through the front gate wasn’t an option. In any fucking way. And the door opened. Just fine. And I saw that blackness and . . . Well. Let’s give it a try and see what happens this time.

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be exactly the same fucking thing.

[Door opening]

[Strange sounds . . . Screams . . . Ghosts]

Yep. Banshee madness still. Just like last time.

[Quietly] Fuck.

[Loudly] Fuck!

I’m never getting out of this fucking town.

[Breath]

Okay. You’ve waited long enough. And you’ve been pretty patient. Lets get back to the Clock Tower and I’ll tell you a little bit about myself.

My real self.

After some hot tea.

[Pause]

Oh man, that’s better. Okay. Confession time. What did you want to know? What’s that? Everything? Sure thing. Sit back. Get comfortable. And prepare to have your idea of everything Ostium fucking shattered . . .

Let’s start with something small. A tiny tale. A short story. A mini moment. Damn. Sometimes the versatility and sheer stretchiness of the English language just blows my fucking mind.

Tea. I like it. A lot. I drink it. A lot. I made Jake drink it. I think he might’ve, kinda hated tea before he met me. Or maybe just didn’t drink it that much. Like never. I branded him as much more of a coffee guy. But once he got stuck in Ostium. With me. He didn’t have a fucking choice. You may have noticed how I never seem to run out of it. We’ve been on a couple . . . Fuck. Listen to me. Talking like Jake’s still around. Like he might come waltzing through that door at any second. Is that a sign it hasn’t really sunk in yet? That my brain hasn’t acknowledged what it’s supposed to. The guy’s gone, but I’m still hopeful. Just like with Steve?

No. Steve is still out there. Somewhere. Jake is different. Gone. I watched it coming for him. There’s no way he got away from the blackness. No way he survived. He’s only out was following right behind me. He chose not to. His choice. His wrong fucking choice. But still. His choice. So he’s definitely gone.

Steve could be gone too. I know this. I accept this. I know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it, but trust me. I fucking do. The blackness may have got him. Or any number of other terrible things in Ostium. But still . . . Maybe he did survive. Somehow. Maybe he kept going. Somehow. And maybe he’s still looking for me. Just like I am looking for him. My baby.

So I’m going to try to talk like Jake’s gone. Emphasis on try. It’s fucking hard.

So. Tea. I never needed to stock up on it because we have a metric shit-ton. Probably more. It was a requirement. I made it a fucking requirement. In the early days of Ostium, when it was this hallowed place. This uncharted territory. This place to boldly go where no one has gone before. Because this ain’t your ordinary brand of tea. Sure, it’s black tea. Sure, you can take it with milk or sugar. Sure, it’s Tetley’s, a known popular type of tea. But you see, here at the Ostium Network, we do things a little differently. We’re our own special Oz with our own special toys and foods and what have you. The Tetley’s tea has been . . Enhanced. The leaves cultured with a special blend: a cocktail of chemicals. And why have we done this? To protect us. Inoculate us. To keep us fucking alive against any of the diseases or viruses or bacteria or sheer smoggy, shitty air from the various times of Earth’s history. The concoction added to the tea made it a safeguard. Drink lots of tea and you’re going to be protected from whatever these old, infective worlds have to throw at you. And that way you won’t get sick. Plus, there’s the future to think about. Who knows what manner of baddies and beasties there are in the years and centuries and millennia to come? Who knows what a time traveler passing through the doors of Ostium might face? Much better to shield oneself with the Ostium Network blend of Tetley’s tea. Trademarked bitch!

No. I’m just kidding about that last part. Tetley’s or whichever company makes that particular tea has no fucking clue what we’ve done to enhance it.

Don’t know how they did it. Those crazy scientists at the Ostium Network. Oh, and get used to that name. The Ostium Network. You’re going to be hearing it a lot. But they sign our paychecks . . . When we eventually get paid. Sort of. Er . . . You’ll find out. Anyway. We only gave them six months, and they got it done. Beat the damn deadline by three days. The tea tastes just like usual, even if you add milk or sugar or honey or whatever the hell you like to poison it with.

And Jake had no fucking clue, not that it helped him. Didn’t save his ass at all at the end. But . . . You know what. Maybe it did. When he went to Roanoke. The Mary Celeste. Fucking Mars. Easter Island. The land of the Anasazi. Could’ve been any manner of bug or virus waiting for him. A local version of the smallpox waiting to infect. But he was protected.

All because he drank that tea with me.

Amazing stuff. Plus it tastes fucking amazing! You know, those scientists actually told me why they chose tea to put that protective cocktail in. They’ve could’ve put it in a snack bar, or orange juice, or even a damn bottle of water. But they chose the teabag because it takes up very little space, doesn’t weigh much, was easy to add to the tea leaves, and tastes exactly the same. I guess when they tested it with OJ it gave it a bitter taste. Sure fucking helps that I already luuuve my tea. Imagine if I’d hated the stuff. We’d’ve had a problem.

And that’s the answer to that mystery that’s been biting ya. Shocker huh.

Oh, you want more? Lemme get some more tea first. Oh, and I’m emphatically winking when I say that.

[Pause]

I name dropped The Ostium Network a couple times earlier. You’re probably wondering what the fuck that is and how it relates to Ostium. Well, obviously, it is related. But I’m not ready to spill all the beans on that whole . . . Er . . . Chapter of my life. Yet. Don’t worry. I will get there. Eventually. I know. I know. I keep saying these things. Repeating them over and over. Promising. But I gotta tell this my way. Or I’m not fucking telling it all.

Okay?

Because . . .

Because . . .

Because . . . This is how Jake would’ve wanted it.

So for now just think of the Ostium Network as the umbrella corporation of the future that I work for . . . Yeah, I guess I “technically” do still work for them, until THEY say otherwise . . . They being the big corporation overseeing Ostium.

Enough of that.

It’s getting late, so I’ll end this with the story of my first arrival in Ostium.

It was unplanned. Undocumented. Unwanted. Un-whatever word you want to add. All I knew was that they’d sent Steve – my fucking son! – through without a fucking clue what it might do to him. It also turned out they didn’t know how to bring him back either. Motherfuckers. He wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. THEY weren’t ready. We needed longer. Probably a lot longer. But they wanted to hit that deadline. Make the guys upstairs . . . the ones at the very top of the rock happy. No matter what it took.

Once I found out what they’d done. That Steve was gone. Man. I fucking lost it. I cursed and cussed out every single person I fucking found. I ran. Ran as fast as I could to the Inception Chamber. It was pretty quiet. They were elsewhere. Another room. Another building. With all the screens and monitors and quantum computers, trying to find out what the fuck had happened, whether Steve was still alive, and what could be done. Point was they’d abandoned ground zero. Or rather the place that gets you to ground zero. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t find out till later. Or they thought I’d react differently. Be more professional. Follow the codes and regulations. Keep my shit together.

Well . . . I fucking didn’t.

When I found out my own flesh and blood had just been sent into a goddamn black hole. Basically. I wasn’t gonna stay calm and collected. Oh sure, Steve had volunteered for the mission. He was so excited he was bouncing off the fucking walls. And I was sort of okay with it . . . As much as a mother can be . . . At first. Before there was a specific date. Before the deadline was set. He’d go when everyone – including himself and yours truly – all agreed unanimously and unequivocally that it was ready, and he was ready, and we were ready. Not until everything was ready.

It didn’t go down that way. That’s why I ran. Like a fucking bat out of hell . . . Like a . . . Like a goddamn banshee! [Choked laugh] When I got to the Inception Chamber there was of course a guard outside. But while I’d been running and cussing, I’d also been thinking and planning. I made sure when I came face to face with that guard I was walking slowly, calmly, and focused. Professional you my say.

So I was fucking ready. I started talking at that guard before he could take a breath.

“Private. I need to get into the Inception Chamber immediately. I’ve just come straight from the Reviewing Center. That whole bunch of idiots sent me over here with express orders to pick up the concatonator. They said they forgot to grab it before they headed out for the Reviewing Center. Since I’m lowest on the food chain, I’m the lucky gal who gets sent to pick it up. So I need to get inside and get it before they started calling up and wondering where the fuck I am.”

I say my spiel with a smirk on my face. I watch the guard’s – Okafor, that’s his name – stalwart gaze melt away and the tight-lipped line of his mouth grow and curve like a blossoming flower into a smile. I know if I keep going I’ll have him laughing in deep rich sounds at me. But I don’t have the fucking time to butter him up.

He gives me a solid nod and that’s all I need.

I’m through the front door, letting it close by itself behind me, then passing through a few more doors, jogging to the Inception Chamber. Little do I know how big of a fucking deal doors are about to be in my life. Right? I pass through that last door and find one person there. Lee. She’s not doing much. Just running checks. Like I said. All the viewing and instrumentation is done at the Reviewing Center. If I’d arrived later, she probably would’ve been gone. But she’s here. And I’m not fucking around. I’m pissed and I want my goddamn son back. And I only know one way to do this.

I’ve got the little gun in my hand before Lee can blink. I point it at her and her mouth drops open. She’s young. Early twenties. She’s also very fucking smart and keeps her mouth shut.

“I need you to open it.”

She stares at me. Her eyes widen. Her mouth opens, like she’s about to say something. “Open what” is my guess, but again, she’s smart, she keeps quiet.

“Do it. Do it right now, or I fucking zap you.”

The gun is small and unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. It packs a helluva wallop. This is the future. Remember? And The Ostium Network. Very deep pockets. Very good R&D. One shot would end her. Lee knows this.

She swallows audibly, then turns to the console and starts pushing buttons, toggling switches, and doing what needs to be done. It won’t take long for someone at the Reviewing Center to notice what’s going on. But they won’t have time to get someone down here. Even if they get hold of Okafor, he won’t be able to reach me in time.

I wait until the moment is close. The way Lee’s doing her thing makes me think she knows what they did. What they made her do. In sending Steve through. She has an inkling of how I must feel. What I want to do. Maybe it’s a woman thing. This actually caring fuck knows. She looks at me, giving me the signal. I don’t need to be told twice.

I’m inside the chamber, sealing the door. Following protocol. I don’t think. I don’t wonder if I should be bringing anything with me. If I need to bring anything. I’ve got the clothes I’m wearing and the weapon. I put the gun away, knowing I no longer need it. Lee is on my side.

There’s a humming. A heavy clunk. Then I hear Lee’s voice letting me know everything’s ready. I look at her. I can see her through the big window. I give her a salute and mouth “thank you.” Then I walk up to the ordinary looking door made of metal, turn the handle and pull it open. There’s blackness on the other side, but also motes of light. Like fireflies. I don’t stall, stepping through and closing the door behind me.

[Pause]

I’m in Ostium. Standing just a few yards inside of the gate. I turn around and see it’s different. On the other side of the gate is a road and trees and shrubberies and not a darkness or something that tells me this is the way back to where I just came from. I immediately panic. I’m shit scared. What about the fail safe door? The backup?

No.

First. Steve.

And I spend the next three hours looking around the entire fucking town for him, starting with the clock tower. And he’s nowhere to be fucking found. A heavy sadness settles in me. Doubt begins to make itself known and I start to wonder if this has all fucking been for nothing.

I go to that failsafe door and open it. There are screams and wails all telling me to get the fuck away. I slam it closed and finally realize I have no way to get back now.

I’m trapped here.

All alone.

Just like I am.

Right.

Fucking.

Now.

I did not know there were different types of darkness until I came to Ostium. Though, to be honest, I still don’t really know this for a fact, or whether it’s a constant of this universe, like shades of blue for example. But it feels like there are. I’ve been through a lot of doors and experienced a significant amount of darkness and, honestly, they’ve all felt a little bit different, like they were different compositions of darkness, different recipes of the black. Like different blends of coffee, or different types of wine. Or I could just be spouting a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but this is what Ostium has made me become. I think. Maybe I was always like this and Ostium has just helped me release my introspective inner monologue, helped me open my philosophizing senses, my . . . Oh thank god, light’s starting to coming through. I felt like I was going to get stuck in that downward contemplative spiral forever.

The light comes through steadily and evenly, like when you dive deep into the pool and slowly rise to the surface with your eyes open, watching that sparkling surface get lighter and lighter. And then it gets too bright and I have to squint. After the nonstop night of that fucked-up house in Fort Bragg, this feels the polar opposite. It’s bright blue skies and a burning hot yellow sun shining down on me. Feels glorious. I look around at wide, sweeping vistas and . . . This is starting to seem familiar. Like, a little too familiar. And I’m not talking familiar as in it’s a place I’ve been to and learned about at some point in my past, I mean it’s a familiar place because I’ve been here recently. In the last week or two. In Ostium.

It’s . . . Africa. South Africa. Where we were however many days ago it was, after the whole earthquake and opening up of the bowels of Ostium and then the magical undoing of all that. This was where the cave of the skull cult was. I scan around, turning as needed, to see if I can spot it from where I’m standing. I make an almost complete circle before I find it, a couple hundred yards away down the hill. But that’s secondary now to something I’ve just realized. There’s no door behind me. I didn’t come through a door. Which doesn’t seem right. That’s not the modus operandi of Ostium. I think back to what I was just doing before I came here . . . It takes a while. Which it shouldn’t. Why? My head feels kind of mushy, like I just rolled down the hill. Let’s try to concentrate here. Focus. Well, shouldn’t Monica be here too if I came through a door? Yes. Definitely. We’ve been together – in many senses of the word – for some time now. She should be here, with me, exploring Ostium. No doubt. So we’ve got no door and no Monica. A double whammy of weirdness. So what was I doing just before it got all dark and I ended up here . . . Think . . . Think . . . Think . . .

I was with Monica. Back in that dark, fucking creepy place in Fort Bragg. The place I stayed at with Anne. Only it wasn’t really that place. It was a fucked-up Ostium version, with a dose of Ozzy Osborne and a couple of the SAW movies thrown in for spice. We were . . . In the last room. That’s it. We were having a confrontation . . . No. No! I was really pissed at her. Fucking furious. For not telling me something . . . The words! The words that were written in blood on the floor. Like fucking Deep Throat. Trust no one. That’s why I think it hit me so hard. The inferred reference and the actual words. What were they . . . Something like how . . . It’s all Monica’s fault, and . . . She can stop it all anytime she wants. What does that mean? That she has some control? That she’s in control? That’s what I was so angry about. That she’d been holding out on me again. She knew things about Ostium and she wasn’t telling me. I know we have our secrets with each other, but then who doesn’t. But when it comes to Ostium: that’s the sort of stuff we share. We have to share.

This hadn’t felt like the first time either. I’ve been suspicious of Monica before. Never had any proof, just hints and curiosities here and there. This was something concrete. Bloody concrete . . . Or bloody linoleum.

Heh.

But that wasn’t everything. No. We came back to Ostium. Went through the door. Got back to the clock tower. I was at the map table, all ready to put the eyeball on top of the door number. I started yelling at her. Demanding answers. That was it. She said that she would tell me. Tell me everything. But at the same time she was doing something . . . Reaching for something. Her pockets. She was taking something out of her pockets . . . Gloves. Those glittering, sequined gloves. Michael Jackson gloves. That’s what they reminded me of. They were familiar to me. I’d seen them before at some point with her. I was . . . Scared of them. Scared of her using them. Scared of her using them on me. That was it. I don’t remember when it happened, but it had. Maybe more than once. Whatever they did, it wasn’t fun. It made me want to be anywhere but where they were, even if Monica was there.

And then . . .

And then I dropped the eyeball artifact. That’s right. And it rolled onto the door. There was a bright red light and then everything went black.

And now I’m here. Back in South Africa. Many thousands of years ago.

[Short pause]

That ain’t right.

[PAUSE]

I sit down on the grassy hill, taking in the sights and smells and think about what the hell I’m going to do. What are my options? Well, that depends. Am I trapped here? I listen and look for any sign of the darkness. Negative on both those fronts. I find where I have my mental block of the blackness and slowly lift it off – if the blackness suddenly surges, I’m ready to enforce it again – but nothing happens. Wherever or whatever this is, there’s no blackness here, somehow. Well, that’s definitely an advantage.

So next consideration: am I trapped here? Good question. It’s going to need a good, hard, firm answer, not just vague hopes and theories. So the next logical step is to go down to the cave and see if there’s a door there or anything like it.

Sounds like a plan. I stand up and take a single step down the hill and then stop and throw myself behind a nearby boulder. Landing on my side, elbow out, I’m grazed and bruised, but nothing broken. Good. I slowly peek around the rock and look down toward the cave.

There are two people who have come out of it. It takes me all of three seconds to recognize myself and Monica. Okay, now I know I’m where I thought I was, and I also know when. I watch us look around, then turn and go back inside. I go first and Monica makes a move to follow and then stops. She turns around and begins searching through the pockets of her coat she’s wearing. She’s looking for something. Then she draws out those glittering gloves again and puts them in the front pockets of her khaki pants. Ready for easy access and use. Then she goes back inside the cave. And I had no idea. She’s been doing this for a long time. Maybe from the very beginning. She must’ve. And if she has these special gloves that do something which scares the shit out of me, what else does she know? Or have?

Making the call, I start walking down the hill. I know pretty much everything going on inside that cave right now. Once I found the first skull I remember Monica was right by my side. It doesn’t take long to reach the bottom the hill, long enough for the other me to reach the far end of the cave. I stand at the entrance, weighing my options. It’s not like I have a ton of doors to choose from here. And I know there’s a door just a little further along in this cave. So what options do I have? It’s pretty much this one choice, or start gallivanting around the African plains looking for another door that in all likelihood is not there.

I step into the cave, treading slowly and carefully, trying to be as quiet as possible. I can hear echoing voices and sounds. It’ll mask most of mine, but I can’t be 100% certain. I’ve watched the Back to the Future movies thousands of times. Read tons of books on time travel, as well as many other movies. I know every writer has their own way of interpreting the space-time continuum and what rules do and do not, or may and may not apply. I don’t want to find out what happens if I confront my other self in one of these created worlds of Ostium. It can’t been good. Also if we’re going to hold one rule of time travel to be true, it’s this: my other self isn’t going to hear me and find me right now, because the  other me never did the first time I was in this cave. If you get my meaning. Last time I was here, I didn’t see another me. Ergo, I should be safe.

But you can never be too sure when it comes to time travel.

I creep up to the door which is open and inviting in the wall of the cave. There’s no Ostium on the other side, just blackness. I can’t remember if that’s how it was the first time I came through here, but again, I’m all out of options.

I step through into the darkness again.

[PAUSE]

All dark like before and then light starts coming through, only it’s a different light this time. Whiter. Bright in a different way. And then I feel the temperature, the drastic change from that enjoyable, dry heat to this freezing snow, because . . . I’m in a blizzard. Just great. Snow is flying all around me and I can’t see shit. I start running in no particular direction, looking for some shelter. If I’m still in South Africa somehow and now there’s a sudden blizzard, there should still be a cave or rock outcropping to help me in some way. But I have no clue where I am right now, due to the zero visibility. Then I see a shadow within the white. I head towards it and find a ladder. I can’t afford to waste time. I climb it and enter a small hut. Once inside I fall to the ground on top of animal skins and furs. Perfect. I find others piled up nearby. I grab one, then two, and wrap them around me. This will definitely help with the cold. I huddle down, wrapped in the skins of other animals, and slowly stop shivering. When my teeth stop chattering I know I’m going to be alright.

And then it comes to me. Anjikuni. The Inuit village. The blizzard. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. It was the next door after the skull cult of South Africa. Okay. Well, instead of getting back to Ostium as I’d hoped, the door took me to here. The next door after South Africa. Is this the start of a pattern for whatever journey or mission I’m on? Could be. My quest seems to have a direction. Good. That’s the sort of thing I need. The conditions I thrive in. So, next question is what is Ostium trying to teach me with this? This is all happening for a reason, right? So I’m supposed to get something out of it. What? At the end will I possibly have some answers to Ostium and my link to it?

I take a look around the inside of the raised hut and see the little polar bear artifact.

Oh shit!

If the time continuum is continuing in the same way here as it did with the door to the skull cult, then I can’t have much time. I keep the furs wrapped around me. It’s too fucking cold to leave them behind. Plus, the other me already had furs from one of the other huts, so the fact that some are missing in this hut shouldn’t be noticed. I peek my head through the hole covered by a skin and check for any signs that other me and Monica are approaching. I can hear crunching feet in the snow, but they sound pretty far away. Not bothering with the ladder, I jump down and start running away. Then I stop and head back and this time as I move away, I drag my foot, breaking apart my retreating footsteps. Other me and Monica probably won’t notice, but I can’t afford to take the chance.

I go back about twenty feet. I can’t find another hut, so I’ll just have to hunker down in the snow here and assume I won’t get spotted. I naturally fled in the opposite direction to where I heard the snow-crunching footsteps. But the furs are doing their job well and other than a cold head, I’m staying decently warm, or at least not cold. I wait and soon two shapes appear from the blizzard, arriving at the hut. They both go inside. Time passes. Then other me comes out, with the artifact in hand.

I think for a split second what would’ve happened with the continuum if I’d taken that artifact just now?

I can’t stop myself from shivering, and I’m pretty sure it has only a little to do with the cold.

Other me is standing there, waiting for Monica. That’s right. She did take a little while coming back down. What was that about? Was she doing something in there? Getting her special gloves ready again, just in case? Then Monica is coming down the ladder. Other me is trying to decide which way to go now, whether to try to find the original door or somehow find another one. Monica is also looking around, but it seems like she’s trying to find something else. Her eyes pass over the area where I’m huddled. I can barely see them in this blizzard that is getting worse by the minute, so she shouldn’t be able to see me. And yet, I swear she spends a few seconds on me before continuing to scan around. Maybe she’s looking for Steve? Could be. Don’t know why he’d be huddled out in the snow like this though, even if I am right now.

Then they’re off in search of another door back to Ostium and I slowly follow in their general direction. It should be enough to find that last hut. I stop once they’ve found it, keeping my distance again. They kiss, and I remember how warm it felt at the time. If I were kissing her now, I think it would feel a lot colder. Then they’re going through the door and back to the clock tower.

I run towards it, stopping just in front of the door. The run helped a little with the warmth, but this cold is starting to seep into my bones, even with the furs. This time I climb into the blackness, half wishing I might end up in Ostium.

At least it would be warm there.

[PAUSE]

A new darkness. A new place. But it’s definitely warmer. And dry. Sticking to the agenda I find myself in the humming environment of a starship. I have the same thrills in this place as the first time, like being on the Enterprise. Literally every Trekkie’s perfect dream. I try my best to recall our steps here, what we did before. The turbolift, as I called it, the trip to the bridge, and then to the hanger where Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were. That’s it. So where am I now? I look around and I find a completely empty room. Well that’s helpful. I have little option but to go through the door and see what’s on the other side.

It whooshes open and I wait, not revealing myself, listening for any voices or footsteps. Sounds quiet. I poke my head out and discover the coast is clear. I step out and try to familiarize myself. It’s the hallway where Monica and I first arrived here. I can see the door marked with OSTIUM. Okay. Which means that the other door at the other end is the turbolift. Good. I have no idea how much time I have here, and it’s not like the other doors. I don’t have long-range views of everything going on. Meaning the other me and Monica could come through that turbolift door at any second. I can’t take the risk. I make my way toward the Ostium door but am stopped in my tracks at a sound.

Was that a door opening somewhere nearby? It sounded real close. But other me never went through a door close to here other than the turbolift door and the one that leads back to Ostium. So what the hell was that? I jog over to the window real quick, just in case I see anything new out there I didn’t see last time. I don’t, but it’s still an incredible sight. Okay, I choose another door that we just walked by last time. It’s kind of inconspicuous, but it’s is in the vicinity where that sound came from. It whooshes open and I peak through: like crossing a road, I look left, then right. No one here. But to the right at the end of this short hallway is another door. That was probably the door I heard opening and closing. I jog over to it and jump to the side as it opens. I peek around and see something I never expected to see.

A person at the far end of the hallway, walking away. It’s a man. Pretty tall. Black hair. Can’t make out much else. Dressed in a coat and jeans. I don’t recognize anything about him. I’m torn whether to say anything. Get his attention. He’s moving pretty fast. Like he wants to get away from something, or get somewhere fast. I don’t know what to do, because there will be repercussions whatever I decide to do. Possibly grave repercussions. And then I’m out of time. He’s through the door and it closes behind him.

Shit. Or maybe not.

But . . . what if it was Steve?

That has me running toward the far door as fast as I can go. I reach it and it opens to another hallway. This one has many doors, but no signs of the man who went through. I could try and find him. It’s obviously important. But there are A LOT of doors. I’m also getting further away from that Ostium door with each hallway, which increases my chances of getting completely lost and not being able to find my way back to that door.

No. I’m not going to risk it. If we’re meant to cross paths again through the doors of Ostium, we will. And if it is Steve, he seems alive and well, which is something.

I make my way back through the hallways and get to the one leading to the Ostium door. I peak around and watch the turbolift doors. Shit! There’s other me and Monica. I’m ducking back in the hallway and running for the other door. As soon as it opens I duck inside and hide from view. Then I wait and listen, holding my breath.

[DOOR OPENS] [FOOTSTEPS] [FOOTSTEPS] [DOOR CLOSES]

[LETTING OUT BREATH]

Okay, I think I’m in the clear, but I’m going to give it a good five minutes to be sure.

Then I go back to the hallway and see the Ostium door closed with no signs of other me or Monica. Good. I can’t help wondering if I’ve already changed something. When we originally came back down that hallway, we were running from the blackness. I never took the time to check on a sound I never heard. Now that’s changed. But I’m still here and I feel the same, so looks like nothing major got changed with the space-time continuum. Got to be more careful with that from now on.

Alright then, on to the next place.

I step through the Ostium door and find myself . . .

[PAUSE]

. . . In Columbia. Well, that’s what I’m guessing. I do a full turn and confirm this. Yep. I’m on the ground floor of the Columbia City Hotel. Where I stayed once with Anne. AND where Monica and I visited through door 325 just four days ago. It feels much longer than that, weeks ago; and at the same time, much sooner, like yesterday. I see all the familiar furnishings, the boardgames and books. Nothing has changed, unsurprisingly. I wonder where the other me and Monica are. I stand still, but don’t hear any movements upstairs. In an old wooden building like this, you could hear a person walking around in their room at the far end of the hallway, with all the creakings and groanings. Groanings of wood that is, not . . . Supernatural. But that means other me and Monica are outside.

On their way here.

I step to the window and look through.

Shit. I see other me and Monica just twenty feet away. Fuck. What do I do?

First thing: I launch myself up the stairs, going as fast as I can without tripping and falling all the way down to the bottom. The sound is like a whole forest crashing to the ground. I hope my foot doesn’t go through one of these stairs. It doesn’t. And soon I’m at the top and quickly walking down the hallway. I don’t have long to decide what room to go in to. I cast my mind back quick to what we did. We . . . Checked every single room. Well, that’s fantastic, I’ve got absolutely nowhere to hide.

And then I remember.

I run over to the door on the left marked SHOWER and step inside. The water isn’t running and there’s no one in here. Good. If the water had been, I would’ve lost my shit. I close the door behind me. That’s when I hear the door downstairs creak open and voices. They’re here. I pull the shower curtain back slowly just a little and step into the bathtub, trying to make as little noise as possible.

So should I turn the water on now? Wait a bit? I’m trying to remember what I heard last time. When I noticed. It wasn’t until Monica opened the door that we heard the water running. Could that be because this bathroom is pretty sound proof? Has new and modern plumbing for noise reduction? Unlikely. But we saw steam billowing out over the shower curtain, meaning the hot water was running. So do I run it now or wait? Maybe it takes a while to get hot. But if I turn it on now, it might be wrong, might be too loud; they might hear and come check this door out first. That would fuck everything up.

Once again, I just can’t take the chance.

They’re upstairs now, anyway, so I’m out of time.

I wait with my hand on the hot water faucet, making sure the shower setting is turned on. I aim the shower head away from me so I don’t get totally soaked. It’s not exactly a comfortable position, hunched over like this, but it shouldn’t be long.

I hear doors opening and chatter, but can’t make out the words. I count down the doors as other me and Monica come closer. One. Slam. Two. Slam. Three. Close. Four. Close. Five. Close. Six. Then I hear a muffled yell. Close. This door is next.

I count to three then turn the water on. I’m getting a little wet but not much, and the water is coming out boiling hot. Clouds of steam soon start forming and billowing upwards. The door opens. I count slowly to three in my head, remembering the steps. Then I turn the water off. Part of my coat has gotten pretty wet and drags along the water, making a strange sound. Was that right? I reach for the shower curtain. Rattle the rings a little. Then slowly start pulling them open.

The door slams.

And I let out a long pent-up breath. Phew. Got through the first act. Now to get ready for the second. I close the shower curtain fully again and stand close to the faucet, opening the curtain a little at this end. I want to watch them go through and see how it looks from an outsider’s angle. I can see the window. It’s closed and looks like an ordinary window. Nothing like a door. A sense of dread steals over me. Was that right? Did I do something wrong? When is it supposed to change into a door?

I don’t know. So I just wait. Imagining them going through the other doors. Getting once piece of the artifact, then the other. And now they’re coming back, quickly running out of time with the blackness coming, but I can’t hear a thing. To me, there is no encroaching blackness.

Weird.

Then they throw open the shower room door. I’m still staring at the window and as the door is opened, it magically transforms into a solid pane of glass with a glass doorknob on its side.

Wow.

They run inside, other me throwing it open.

“You first!”

Monica starts to go through.

I wonder with me not hearing or sensing the blackness at all, if I’m in a different dimension or phase to them here. Can they actually see me? Can I touch them? Or are we all ghosts?

Other me is about to go through the door. On impulse, I reach out with my hand behind him, just to see if I can feel him. But he sees the hand coming at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Fuck!” other me says.

He tumbles through and the door closes it and that’s the end of that.

I step out of the shower, wondering. I’d forgotten about the arm reaching for me when I went through the glass door.

Could I have touched him? I still don’t have an answer.

I leave the shower room and figure I have to go all the way back down Main Street to get to that original door that leads to Ostium, right?

As I’m thinking I see a ghost walk down the hallway. No! It’s Anne. A ghost form of her. In a different time. A different life. But as she passes through, I feel a coolness descend over me, forcing a shiver. She stops just a second and looks back, as if she’s felt something, then continues down to our room where, presumably, the ghost me is waiting for her. She never mentioned any strange experiences.

Then I decide: no, I’m going to give that door a try. It worked for other me and Monica, so why not me in the present.

I go back into the shower room, hopefully for the last time, and I try the glass door. It opens on blackness.

I climb through.

[PAUSE]

And just like that I’m back in the desert. The land of the Anasazi, the ancient ones. And, thankfully, I check my surroundings fully before taking a step, because if I’d taken a couple I might’ve gone right off the edge of the ledge and plummeted to my death below, no matter what phase or state I’m in. And other me and Monica would’ve had no clue who just plunged to a hard end. Speaking of which, where are they? I really hope they’re above me. But first I gingerly look down, since that’s easier and there they are below, on the first ledge. What the fuck, Ostium? You’re not making this easy on me. What’s the logic in this? Do you want past me and present me to meet face to face?

So what the hell am I’m going to do now? And, as usual, I don’t have much time. I look around and head for the nearby granary. Like the others it’s got a bunch of picked corn in it, unshucked, and waiting to be eaten. I don’t have any other option. I start digging myself a hole, moving the corn around and stacking it so it still looks right. Then I carefully climb in and bury myself in the many ears. There’s lot of gaps to allow me to breath, and I’m not too uncomfortable, a few corn points digging into me, but nothing I can’t handle.

And then I wait and wait and wait. I know it’s going to take a while. Climbing up those tree ladders was no walk in the park. Then I hear them coming and switch to statue mode, keeping perfectly still and holding my breath. I can see them through a chink in the corn and watch as they walk through, quiet and reserved. Other me stops for a moment and looks down at some corn on the ground. Shit. Some must’ve fallen. But then he continues on and I’m off the hook. I wait until I hear them climbing the next tree ladder and wait some more until I’m pretty sure they’re on the next ledge, the last one that leads to the cave with the artifact and the door, and then I break free of my maize prison. It was anything but a-maize-ing. Get it? Maize. Corn.

I leave the granary but keep close to the wall so I remain out of sight of other me or Monica looking down. I look out at the incredible view from up here. It’s just breathtaking. And then I see movement. But it’s really far away. I wish I had a pair of binoculars. It’s definitely a person, far away, walking among the rocks. I can make out black hair. It’s got to be that guy I saw earlier. Maybe Steve. Or one of those military guys who is somehow still alive. But he’s not in camo gear. Did he come through the door that other me and Monica came through? He’s walking around, like he’s looking for something. Probably a door. Maybe someone else. Like what? No clue. He goes behind a rock and that’s all I see of him. He doesn’t come out the other side. He’s just gone.

I was going to follow other me and Monica up to that door in the cave, but I think I’m going down now. I need to just look around down there and see if I can see anything. But I can’t go now. I need to know other me and Monica are completely gone. So I wait for a whole fifteen minutes. It’s agonizing. But the view is still great.

Then I start making my way down. Taking it real slow on those tree ladders. It’s actually not too hard, as long as you take it slow. Another fifteen minutes and I finally make it to the bottom, on solid ground. And then I spend yet another fifteen minutes looking around trying to find where this guy might’ve gone and if there’s any evidence of him around here. Or perhaps I’m just losing my freaking mind on this mandatory trip down Ostium memory lane. I don’t really find anything, though there are some footprints, but I’m not enough of a tracker to follow them or work out who’s is who’s.

Then I call it and look for the door that is sitting around out here. Doesn’t take me long and I prepare myself for some Moai action.

[PAUSE]

Another sunny day; blue skies; grassy fields. I’m in the middle of somewhere, not sure where Ostium has dumped me now. And this whole thing is starting to take its toll. It wasn’t like I started this fucked-up road trip on a long good night’s sleep. It was at the end of a considerable amount of time through one of, if not the, most stressful doors Ostium has taken us to so far. And I’m starting to feel pretty wiped. No food. No water. Just walking and looking for answers. I’ve learned some interesting things, but still not sure where this is all going.

I’m huddling behind a moai because I don’t know where other me and Monica are right now, so I can’t blindly go walking around. I peak around and see no one on the other side. I cross a few hills and hide behind the next moai. And go through the same routine. This time I see something.

It’s Monica and other me doing the dirty on the grass right in front of the moai I’m hiding behind.

Before you ask. No. I’m not going to watch. And I’m recording this specific commentary after I’ve put plenty of distance between me and those two love birds. Though that seems like a weird way to put it, since I am one of those said love birds. I couldn’t help gasping when I saw them; it’s really er . . . Discombobulating to see yourself . . . Live so to speak, in coitus with someone. Fortunately the groans and good times happening guaranteed I wasn’t heard.

At this point I don’t care what Ostium is trying to show me here, on Rapa Nui. I’m done with this place. I go in search of the door, looking for indicators of familiarity. That photographic memory coming in handy yet again! And there’s the door and I leave the lovers’ den.

[PAUSE]

And this is what it all comes down to. I hope. I don’t know if I’m going to have to live through that experience in Fort Bragg again. And if so, what happens after that? Am I trapped in my own Groundhog Day? Doomed to live through these doors and worlds over and over. If that’s the case, obviously having sex with the girl isn’t the solution, since that’s happening on the other side of one of those doors. No. The more I think about it: it’s go to be here. Things came to a caustic head with what I’m now calling the hell house and then back at the clock tower. And while they likely began in their inkling form long ago, the world of the Dyson Sphere was where the fire really began. That’s what I feel. That’s what my logical brain is telling me. But I don’t have the specifics, because I have a big black hole in my memory about that place. Because, and now it seems obvious, Monica must’ve used her special gloves on me. Because of what I saw, or what I said, or all of the above.

And that’s when I have a wonderful, awful idea. I’m going to need to check something on my phone real quick. I’ll give you a hint: a recording. See if you can work out what I’m talking about by the time I get back.

Bye for now.

[Short pause]

Well. Ahem. Now I’ve got the proof I wasn’t so sure about. I also have a much better idea about what happened to me in this place. I went back and checked the recording. I knew something happened to me. I was pretty sure Monica did something to me. But I didn’t know what. Turns out, Monica took care of me, but forgot to take care of the recording. It’s all there. My voice and hers.

I heard the whole part about the photo and story about me in that glass case. The pressure it put on me. How I pretty much lost it in there. And then Monica coming at me with the gloves. There’s a sizzling sound and then a thump, which is presumably me hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes. Then there are a few signs I can’t really identify. I’m going to guess it’s Monica finding and picking up the artifact. Then there’s a grunt from her as she throws me over her shoulder and carries me back to the clock tower.

And there you have it. She probably has her reasons for doing all this, just like she was going to tell me before this whole grand adventure started. But once again I’m . . . Fucking incensed! Was the sex just a smokescreen all along? I don’t know. I’m not going to suppose and dig through that baggage. Maybe another time.

But it means something BIG has to happen to break this ongoing pantomime, this Groundhog Day from hell. Something to break the mold, throw the train off the rails . . . Disrupt the space-time continuum. I know, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made and risks have to be taken, you know that more than anyone.

I start walking through the doors, being noisy, not caring, trying to get my bearings. Then I find the big hangar-sized museum room. I start marching, spotting my photo in the glass case from afar. It’s big, and I know my mug real well. And beside it I see my crumpled form. Monica is crouched beside the other me, putting the little artifact ball in her pocket.

I walk up to her with loud, heavy footfalls.

Her body becomes tense, ramrod straight. Slowly she turns around and her mouth literally drops open when she sees me.

[Yelling] “This ends now!”

She looks back at the crumpled form other me, then back to present me.

[Screaming] “This charade is fucking over!”

She is stunned. Speechless. Her eyes are so wide, like saucers.

“I know what you did here. I saw it. I saw you try to do it again later. You’ve done it to me before. Multiple times. That’s why my mind’s all fucked up. Isn’t?”

She still says nothing.

“Isn’t it!”

[Small voice] “Yes,” she says.

Hearing her actually say it – finally say it – disarms me a little. Cools me.

[Croaky and hoarse] “I just want to know why. Why Monica?”

Monica takes another look at the collapsed other me, then looks back.

“Because I had to. Because you knew too much. You were learning too much. Because you were going to find out, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Why?”

“Because it would start the avalanche. You’d know a little, then you’d find out more, then you’d figure out even more. And that can’t happen.”

“Why can’t it? I thought we were a team. I thought we were . . . close.”

“The fucking was real. I never faked it. It was fun. But I was also controlling you.”

[Pleading] “Why?”

“Because I had to. Because it was part of the rules. [Laughing] It was the main rule.”

“What? What rules? What are you even talking about?”

“If you knew everything. If you got all those answers you keep looking for, it would be the end of Ostium. The end of me. And the end of finding Steve.”

“I . . . I still don’t understand. How could it be the end? Why am I so tied to Ostium?”

“Honestly Jake, I don’t even know the answer to that. That’s a big mystery to me. And I still have no fucking clue.”

“So what do you know? What can you tell me without ending all this?”

[A deep breath] “I can tell you Ostium isn’t what you think it is. It’s something very different, and much greater. With such potential. That British friend of yours. Dave. He actually had it almost right. But then they had to come in here and fuck it all up.”

“They? Your military friends?”

“They were never my friends. They were . . . I guess you’d call them my coworkers. And they weren’t military.”

“What were they?”

Shake of the head. She can’t say.

“What about you? Were you military?”

Another shake of the head.

“So all this time it’s been lie after fucking lie.”

“Not all of it, Jake. It’s been a mixture. A cocktail.”

There’s a smirk on her face now; she’s trying to win me over.

“And what about Steve? How does he fit into all this?”

She takes her time to answer, thinking long and hard.

“He’s not military either. And he’s not a crush of mine. He’s someone I care greatly about. Someone I love.” [Breath] “He’s my son.”

Now it’s my turn for widening eyes of disbelief and impossibility.

“What?!”

“He was the first of us to come to Ostium. When it was ready to receive visitors. He didn’t know what he was getting into. They didn’t know what he was getting into. They hadn’t a fucking clue. And when I found out I lost my shit. But I got here as fast as I could. And they followed. And I did what needed to be done. I took care of them. I got back at them for what they did to my Steve. [Emotional] And I still don’t know where he is, or if he’s alive or hurt. I have to find him, Jake. I have to. It’s killing me inside.”

“How did I end up in Ostium?”

“I don’t know, Jake. You’re the misnomer here. The anomaly. The impossibility. But you are connected. Somehow. That’s why I changed the game plan and started working with you from the beginning.”

“Apart from occasionally wiping my mind with shock therapy.”

“I’m sorry Jake. I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought needed to be done. To protect myself. To protect Ostium so it would keep existing. And to protect Steve.”

I look at my feet, millions of thoughts and questions running through my mind. I’ve gotten some answers, but there are so many more questions again, and Monica’s only giving me so much.

I raise my head to ask one that she might answer, but that’s when there’s a terrible crunching sound and the floor starts to tilt. Klaxons begin screaming as something is horribly wrong.

“It’s the blackness Jake. It’s attacking the Dyson sphere! We have to get the fuck out of here!”

She bends down and throws the other me over her shoulder like it’s no big deal. Then she’s heading back for the door to Ostium.

I follow slowly behind, my mind still abuzz. I hadn’t heard or felt the blackness, but it’s definitely doing something to this place. Whether it’s mattered with the earlier doors, in this place it can clearly do me harm. I keep pace with Monica, not wanting to lose her. It’s important we all get out of this if things are to go on. They’re not going to be normal, not by any means, but when is anything ever normal in Ostium? How we will regroup and go on from here I don’t know. How the timeline will get fixed when I go through the door I don’t know either. But Ostium will have a way. It has with everything else so far. I’m sure after lots of tea and rest and talking we might be able to salvage something of our friendship, especially if she continues to give me answers, tell me what she knows about this place.

At the same time my science fiction mind is whirring. Going through the literature; checking the research; analyzing the theories; and calculating the math. And there’s only one definite answer at the end of it.

I follow Monica up to the door back to Ostium. She looks back to make sure I’m with her. I’m not sure if she’s thought about the repercussions of me going through. Of there being two mes in Ostium. But she doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.

“Ready?” she says, as she throws open the door and takes a step.

“No.”

Monica stops, and looks at me.

[Shock] “What?”

“I can’t go.”

[Fear] “What? Why?”

“Because of the rules.” It feels really good to throw this line back at her. “There’s two of us Monica. A paradox. In science and reality that’s not allowed. Only you and other me can go back to your time. I’m from . . . A different one. An alternate one.”

“What the fuck are you saying Jake? The blackness will fucking kill you.”

“I know. But the space-time continuum has already been fucking up enough. Me going with you might cause space-time disruptions that could have an effect on the entire universe.”

[Yelling anguish] “You don’t know that!”

“No I don’t. But I also don’t know that it won’t happen. Like when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. There was an infinitesimal chance it would create a black hole that would engulf the entire planet. It didn’t happen. There’s a chance now. With me going through. I’m not willing to take that chance.”

“But what . .  What if I changed things in my time. Told the other you about what I know. Tried to change the way things turn out . . .”

“No! No. You can never do that. It needs to continue along as it already has. You need to be you and say nothing, so we get to this moment again. Changing a little thing could have a catastrophic knock-on effect.”

“Butterfly effect.”

“Yes,” I say with a smile. “And we’re completely out of time. Go now, while you still have the chance.”

Monica wants to do something: a hug, a kiss, something, but she doesn’t have the time. She turns and jumps through the doorway.

Moments later the blackness . . .

[PAUSE]

[MONICA:] When I go through to the other side, I drop Jake. He’ll get a few bruises. No worries. I turn and hold the door open. I . . . I watch as the blackness comes and covers this other Jake. Engulfing him. Obliterating him. Making him nothing. Then it keeps coming and the tentacles start reaching through the doorway.

I let go of the door and jump back.

The door slams shut.

That was the end of Jake.

Warning: The following episode contains depictions of graphic imagery. This is where Ostium turns into a horror story for an episode. It’s not for the faint of heart. The fearful and squeamish should turn back now.

It’s dark. Oh-so-dark. But I can smell. I can hear. Dark, drippy, putrescent. I scrabble for Monica’s hand in the black and find it, holding on tight. The crunching of gravel beneath our feet is both comforting and eerie. You can feel it on the sole of your shoe, but also hear those tiny pebbles grinding together to make grains of sand. But in this dark place of strange sounds and unfamiliar smells, it doesn’t belong. It isn’t comforting. It’s a disembodied sound that you just want to go away.

Then we’re out of the tunnel we didn’t know we were in. For the first time coming through a door, it’s dark out. No bright shiny sun and blue skies. It’s the all-covering blanket of darkness with a billion tiny star-holes in the firmament. The orchestra of crickets are rubbing their legs together, creating their unique song. I take a deep breath and know where we are. Sort of. We’re by the sea. I can smell the tang of brine and kelp, taste the salty vapor in the air. Now we can hear the gentle susurrus of waves on the nearby beach: drawing in its essence and then throwing it back upon the sand. It’s like the opposite of a mirage: you can’t see it, but you can hear it. An auditory mirage.

We walk along the path parallel to the beach; our shoes continuing a syncopated crunching and almost crackling. It’s quite different from the tunnel of the unknown, this is almost . . . Relaxing, restful. The temperature is just right: balmy from the sea, but not too hot or humid; at times there is the faintest tickle of a breeze, just enough to cool you down.

As our eyes become accustomed to the night’s sky, an iridescent glow makes itself known in the direction of those waves crashing into the beach. It’s a greeny-blue blend sparkling in the water, mixing in with the foam. It has a life of its own.

“Phosphorescent algae,” says Monica.

“Yeah. It’s pretty incredible. I saw it for the first time when I stayed up at Fort Bragg with my ex. It was like, a year ago. We rented this house we found on Airbnb that was right on the beach. It was gorgeous. A couple of bedrooms, though we only needed one. Nice sized bathtub, big living room with comfy chairs and an awesome deck where you could sit back, put your feet up, and get lost in a good book.”

[Deadpan] “Or other things? I take it this was the lovely Anne?” she responds

[Humorously] “Or other things.  And yes. It was a great place to just forget about the world. And you could walk straight out onto the beach. It wasn’t a private beach, but might as well have been, we had it all to ourselves. And you could go straight up to the water’s . . .”

“What?”

“I think . . . Holy shit. I think this might be the place.”

“Jake. It’s fucking. Dark.”

“I know. I know. But, I just feel . . . Look, let’s keep walking.”

The path winds and curves for some time and we just enjoy our senses doing what they do best: sampling this world and life. The moon reveals itself with an increasing glow that has us confused and wondering, but once that shimmering thumbnail peeks over the hills, all is made clear. As more of its perfect shape is revealed, we realize it’s going to be full and glorious. It almost seems too big to be the full moon rising in the night’s sky. But then I remember this is when the moon appears largest. It’s a perfect pearl making it’s way across the cosmos of stars that are innumerable and endless. And as the moon continues to rise, it bequeaths its light to us, guiding our way, and granting us the gift of sight in this night of blackness and dark.

In but a short while the house up ahead is shown, like the poignant detail of a book that is made known to the reader with the turning of the page. I study its profile, its topography, the facade I’m able to make out. Yes. It’s the same house. I am reminded of the confrontation with Brandon, during that last time I went back to my former home. How he’d put me on the spot as I tried to tell him the truth he wouldn’t believe. In the end I’d concocted a lie, but the fabrication contained mostly truth as I think on it now. At the time it felt like a fictional idea I’d pulled out of thin air.

And now, here I am, again. Here we are, back in this place I didn’t expect to visit again. But I know Ostium has other plans than relaxation and enjoyment as it was the last time I was here.

The path makes a new turn, angling away from the beach and the cold Pacific around to the front of the house. Bordering the front yard is a white picket fence. This wasn’t part of the original house. In this ghostly, lunar light it looks like a rampart of bones forming a protective wall around the house. But is this osteo-palisade keeping something out? Or trapping something within?

There is no gate at the bony center, just a hole. Monica’s face is no longer as relaxed as when we first found ourselves at the beach, but then neither is mine. I lead the way past the white face and up a new, narrow path.

“Jake, I need to tell you something. Something that happens . . .”

“Hang on a second, Monica.”

As we’re walking I’m hearing a crunching and crackling. They’re not stones, or shells. Unable to stop myself, I look down and try to identify what we’re walking on in the moonlight.

Insects. Millions and millions of dead insects, of many kinds. Cockroaches, beetles, grasshoppers, praying mantises, centipedes. None are moving, but this doesn’t help my now gravely weakened courage. I look to Monica who knows what I’m doing, forgetting what she was going to say for the moment. The sound our shoes make with each step makes it clear whatever we’re walking on is unnatural. I just shake my head: you don’t want to know. I wish I could un-know. Then I stop. To either side of this strange path of crunching carapaces are a few tombstones of varying sizes and slanting at different angles. Like the unnerving path, these were not part of the original architecture of this abode. I can read the carvings on the stone easily, perhaps because there is more moonlight, or because Ostium is wanting me to know what is inscribed upon these pieces of rock.

Oh, how I wish I could sponge away the writing upon these gray stones.

R.I.P. Catalina says one. In Memory of San Francisco says another. An ancient looking one filled with cracks and looking ready to turn into a pile of pebbles proclaims: May You Never Be Forgotten, Oh Lost Colony of Roanoke. Another, equally ancient, dripping with briny moisture, an anchor carved at its apex, reads: Never Forget the Lost Souls of the Mary Celeste. There’s one final one before we make it to the wide wooden stairs that will lead us to the front door. It’s clean and fresh and polished with three words: Remember Fort Bragg. Something about this last tombstone seems familiar to me, but I’m unable to ascertain what.

We ascend the stairs which bend and grown like living human beings. At the top we stop, happy to have those horrible sounds cease, but it is clear this long, dark night is far from over.

The door seems larger than I remember, and far more menacing. Oil-slick black with a shininess in which I can almost see my face. I grasp the handle, then look to Monica:

“Ready?”

She gives me a nod. I take a deep breath, turn the handle and push the door open.

If at any point I had been hoping for a silent entry, it is now rendered futile. The creaking wail of wood that the door screams at me feels equal to a hundred haunted doors in a hundred houses in a hundred haunted realms. Not only are goose-pimples raised all over my body now, but my fingernails, teeth, and hell, it feels like every one of my vertebrae are tingling. As if this wasn’t enough, a long-drawn out ghost moan erupts from within the house. It makes me think of that scene in Ghostbusters II, when Ray, Egon, and Winston were walking along an old abandoned railway line within the bowels of New York City and this horrible voice calls out Winston’s name. It makes me think of how that scene fucking terrified me as kid and on through my teenage years, especially when the ghost train comes out of nowhere and passes right through the ghostbuster.

“Jake, do we really need to . . .”

I know exactly how she feels. I don’t want to either.

“The artifact is in the house. Somewhere. I have to. But, if you want to stay . . .”

“No. No fucking way. I’ve got your back the whole damn way.”

I smile. Raise my fist. She bumps it.

We step inside the house and it feels huge and old and really fucking haunted. It’s like a combination of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, times ten, combined with the Tardis from Doctor Who. You know: bigger on the inside. Much bigger. The outside may have borne a resemblance to the house I once stayed in with my ex-girlfriend in the wonderful town of Fort Bragg, but this place we have entered is 100% Ostium and a million percent other worldly.

I think they call it a landing. I don’t know. It’s a space right by the front door with stairs that lead to the second floor, and doors showing the way to adjoining rooms. I touch Monica’s elbow to get her attention, not really wanting to make any more noise than necessary in this place, then give her the halt sign. I close my eyes and focus, trying to narrow down the location of the artifact, but . . . It’s different. Different from any door we’ve gone through so far. Different from how I usually do this, especially when I was just starting to feel confident about this part of the Ostium job. I can’t tell where the mental pull is coming from to lead me to the artifact, because it’s coming from multiple directions, and not just two or three, but more like between five and ten. There are lots of cranial attractions going on telling me to come here, check this out, wait, no, no, over here, hey, me first. They’re all equally strong and equally demanding, and since I’m already dealing with holding the blackness at bay – which so far is being quiet and obedient – it’s quite frankly impossible to tell.

Shaking my head in confusion, I direct us to one of the open doorways. If we’re going to have to check every part of this house we might as well get started; we don’t exactly have all the time in the world. And then a small part of my brain reminds me the according to the ongoing door schedule whenever the artifact for this particular door is found and placed, something big in Ostium may happen. The last time it was an earthquake that caused a giant crack through the center of the town to open it up like the gates of hell.

We’re in the other room, and unlike the landing, there’s no light on. I can’t see a thing.

“Jake. Jake, I have to tell you something about the future.”

There’s a strong smell in the room, something metallic. I want to hear what Monica has to tell me, but the smell is overbearing. What the hell is it?

“Okay, Monica, let’s find out about this room first.”

Attempting something new, I reach out to the wall and look for the light switch. I find it covered in something noticeably wet and sticky. Not sure if it’ll work, I flip it. The room is bathed in a sickly yellow light, like those days that are hazy and worn out, as if the sun has some weird filter covering it. Or the zombie rising has begun. But that’s not what wrong with the kitchen that we’re standing it. It also explains that wet, stickiness.

“Fuck!” I yell, while Monica let’s out a drawn-out: “Goddamn.”

Blood. In vast amounts. Blood everywhere. Blood on the walls, the cabinets, the ceiling, the floor. The sink is a full tub of blood. The stove in addition to being covered in the red stuff, is also oozing more out of its gas burners, while the oven door below has more of the dark, viscous fluid running from its edges. I can’t help thinking of that scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It’s like a fucking dump truck of blood has just got emptied in here. Then the smell hits me: heavy, meaty, coppery, rancid. Of something that was alive, but is no longer. Then I see and hear the flies, big black blobs circling around, landing here and there in the blood, then taking off again. In search of meat, tissue, something solid that isn’t liquid blood. One of the flies comes over to us and lands on Monica’s cheek. I swat it away, making sure not to hit her. There’s a red smear on her cheek and by my look she knows it’s there and begins vigorously rubbing it away.

“Not here. We’re getting the fucking out of here,” I say, grabbing her arm and dragging her out.

Back on the landing it feels like returning to a semblance of normal life, but it isn’t. The light is still on in the kitchen. The crimson landscape is still an eyesore that can’t really be avoided. I give us thirty seconds, then stretch it out to a minute. Then it’s time for the other doorway, which, as it’s opposite, is dark. Forcing myself, I walk into the dark room. Monica follows eventually. I try the same experiment again, wary and simply outright scared. My wandering hand finds this room’s light switch and flicks it on.

It’s a dining room with an unsurprising dining table at its center. Curtained windows frame the dining table on two sides. What is both surprising, unexpected (and very much unwanted), are the occupants seated at the table. There are five of them. Two on either side of the table, with one seated at its head. There’s an empty seat at the opposite end. The men are dressed in military uniform, and I don’t need Monica to tell me these five men are members of the “squad” that paid a visit to Ostium some time in what feels like the Cretaceous period and then blindly went through one of Ostium’s ill-fated doors. What is wrong with these men is that they are all headless. Decapitated. The rough, jagged, skin-flap edges of their necks are as clear as the empty serving dish in the center of the dining table; the wound cauterized and blackened; the sawed-off veins, arteries and severed spinal column easily recognizable. Upon the plates before each of these five men are their severed heads, their faces placed so that they are looking at their headless bodies. Each of the faces bears a look of sheer terror.

It is clear that these men died of fright first . . . Before their heads were removed.

[PAUSE]

Monica may have shown little emotion towards these men and after what had been done to her and Steve, it may have been even somewhat warranted, but seeing them end up like this . . . It takes a toll on both of us. Obviously. But I could tell Monica was being eaten up inside. This was beyond horrific and she had to be blaming herself right now. Neither of us could have ever predicted such a fate for these men, and we don’t know what actions they chose once they passed through the door. They must’ve done something to end up in this world, and to end up like this.

I just stand there, my mouth open, not believing, except the decapitated proof is sitting there in front of me; their heads further concrete evidence of the unfathomable tableau of this room. Monica’s eyes are weeping, twin trails running down the sides of her face, while the eyes stay wide open, as she forces herself to watch. Her hands covering her mouth to stop any sounds coming out.

I’m the first to move, to slowly close my mouth and take a step back, then the rest of the actions come easier. I grab Monica’s arm and simultaneously flick off the light switch. Although the room is flooded with darkness, the unforgettable image is still scored upon our retinas, but it does help . . . A little. Then I drag her out of the nightmare room and back onto the landing where life remains normal and almost serene. There’s a warm light from a decorative chandelier above. A small table against a wall for keys, change, and other everyday, ordinary-life ephemera. I find it . . . Grounding.

“Look, Monica. No keys or cellphone. Guess nobody’s home.”

Monica looks, her eyes staring but perhaps not seeing, like someone who hasn’t slept in three days and is just working on automatic. Then they do focus and it works.

“Were you really expecting someone?”

“Course not. But a guy can hope, right?”

[Snarky laugh]

“Time to check what’s waiting for us on the second floor.”

She mumbles something noncommittal; I’m with her there.

We start ascending and each step makes a sound like a body builder bending a two-by-four one way, then the other. I really hope there’s no snapping sound.  The stairs are also lit by the chandelier, and we take our time going up together, trying our best to somehow get over what we just saw, or at least compartmentalize it in some way. Push it away to the back of our minds where it will remain hidden and fester but at least be out of the way for now, as we face our next challenge.

The repetitive creaking of the stairs is almost hypnotic, and we absorb whatever catharsis we can from this now-rendered ordinary sound. It’s kind of a good mind clearer, like when you’re trying out different scents and then take a whiff of coffee beans to clean your nasal palate; or in this case, your mental palates.

And then we’re at the top, the second floor, and out of time. Our reluctance is equal, so there’s at least something we can share in this place.

“Any change with the artifact’s location?”

I shake my head. “Still feels like it’s in a bunch of places.”

“Could it be in pieces, like before?”

“I dunno. It . . . It doesn’t feel like that time. This feels different. Almost like it’s a smokescreen. Trying to trick me into thinking where it might be, like . . . Like it wants us to check every door.”

“Which we’re going to do anyway.”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

The upstairs hallway is dimly lit by the complete opposite of the beautiful hanging chandelier on the landing: there’s a single twisted wire hanging from the ceiling around the middle of the hallway with a single naked bulb dangling from it. Somehow it’s swinging side to side like it’s on a pendulum or a metronome. The effect is every horror movie director’s wet dream: shadows spinning and morphing and changing into every nightmare imaginable. Was that a misshapen monster coming toward us? A curled human form dragging itself closer? Something oozing along the floor?

I know I’ve got a headache a-brewing from this fucked light show, and the way Monica’s shielding her eyes with her hands to try to help means she’s headed down the same migraine path. We need to speed this up. Get this over with, however bad it’s going to be.

[PAUSE]

“If you want to wait here, I’ll check the rooms.”

“Not on your fucking life. We’re not splitting up in this place. I thought you were a horror movie buff. What’s the first rule?”

[With a chuckle:] “Don’t split up.”

“Right. And I need to do this. I feel like this door is a test for me, as well as you. Steve might be on the other side of any of these doors.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“But if he’s like any of those other guys . . . I’m gonna lose my shit.”

“Me too. Come on.”

There are four doors, all on the same side of the hallway. I open the first door: it’s dark like the others. It feels like the artifact is in here, just like all the others, including the ones downstairs we already checked out. Nothing’s changed. I find the light switch in the same place as the others. At least something’s standard here. The light turns on and we wait five seconds to take in the scene.

It’s a library. Bookcases on three walls, a window on the last. In the center of the room is a desk with miscellaneous piles and old books and pens and quills and paper. A mishmash of everything escritorial. Behind the desk is a chair. In that chair is a man in camo fatigues slumped over on the desk. His arms are on either side of his head. His face is turned to the side, watching us where we stand just inside the door.

Buried in his skull is a sixteen-inch machete, part of the long knife sticking out with the yellow-white ivory handle; grooves that are brown and dirty with age. The rest of the knife has gone through the man’s head and buried itself in the wooden table to hold him there. There’s a little blood. A dried, dark red trickle running across his forehead and pooling on the table. The blood on the table is a lighter red, still a little wet because there’s more of it there. This tells us it didn’t happen that long ago.

I turn to Monica. Her look has hardened, but her eyes are glassy, wet, holding back the tears.

“It’s not him.”

“Good enough.”

I turn off the light and we leave, closing the door behind us.

[Short pause]

The next room. Light is turned on. We take it in. Then we turn to each other, wanting to look away from what we’re seeing. We put our heads together, holding each other, not wanting to hug, because that will force one of us to rest their head on a shoulder and be facing this.

The room is stark. Bare. No furniture. Just white walls. In the center of the room is an electric table saw. The biggest one I’ve ever seen. On . . .[BREATH] . . . On the floor are two halves of a man. They are spread about four feet apart. The insides of both halves are falling out like an open, tipped over can of chili or spaghetti-Os. No cauterizing here. It’s set up to infer that the man did this horrific act to himself. A suicide to never be forgotten.

I don’t know what Monica’s thinking, but I know this guy didn’t do this to himself. No matter what’s been happening to him on this side of Ostium, he would never choose to end his life this way. Some one or some thing did this to him.

Monica takes one more look at the face and then drags me out of the room.

I go willingly.

[Short pause.]

Two down. Two to go. It feels like they’ve been getting worse, but other than knowing there’s probably two more dead and disfigured bodies we have to face, there’s no real way to prepare yourself for this.

Monica opens the third door and turns on the light switch slowly. But once that electricity gets sent to the tungsten it goes . . . Well, at the speed of light. Except the room doesn’t light up with white, but red. With blood. Because there’s blood on the light bulb.  Blood everywhere. It’s a bedroom, or it was a bedroom. A bed, bedside table. Chest of drawers. But everything is covered in dripping, viscous blood. And also parts. Body parts. Big pieces. Small pieces. Here and there and everywhere. You don’t let your eyes focus on it too much, because then you might be able to identify what body part it originally belonged to. But there are also some . . . [clearing throat] . . . Ropes. Stringy, twisting vines that can only be . . . Intestines. What is all here may once have been a complete human being, likely a man, but it’s very hard to tell. There are also small pieces of burgundy cloth. If these were washed and cleaned they might be camouflage colors.

And then I see it on the floor, a couple yards away from me. It’s the only piece in the room that isn’t covered in blood. It’s . . . [Said with horror] An eyeball. I also know now, more than any room in this house so far, that it’s the artifact. I don’t let Monica know, I just take one careful big step into the blood.

[Disgust] “Jake, what the fuck?”

I reach down and pick up the eyeball like it’s a delicate egg. It hard. Hard like an eyeball isn’t, because this really is the artifact. Now that I have it close I can see where there should be a pupil there’s a black O. For Ostium.

“It’s the artifact.”

I carefully step back, my foot peeling off the floor like it’s attached to fly-paper. I ground the sole of my shoe into the carpeted floor to clean off what blood I can. Then I close the door and we’re done with this fucking place.

“Okay. Let’s go. The blackness is on its way, but we’ve still got plenty of time.”

“What about the last door?”

“What about it? We have the artifact. We’ve got what we need. Time to go back to Ostium.”

“This is Ostium. And we need to know who or what’s behind that last door.”

“Because?”

“Because . . . Steve.”

I don’t need to say anything. I give a small nod and follow her down the hall. I don’t want to point out that that wreck in the last room that looks like something Pinhead from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser got at could’ve also been Steve. Maybe she would’ve known. Somehow.

At the fourth door I keep back, letting Monica open it. My work here is pretty much done, I’m just here to watch now, I guess.

I step into the room beside her. Hear her take a breath. Then she turns on the light.

It’s another empty room. But there’s a man. He started at the far end of the room, beneath the window. There’s a massive blood stain on the wall below the window. Maybe a gunshot, or multiple gunshots. Then he dragged himself along the floor. The blood trail makes that abundantly clear. He’s only a couple feet from us now, face down on the ground. He looks pretty dead.

And then I see the words.

[Alarm] “Monica!”

I step further into the room, getting close to the man, so I can read what it says. The look on Monica’s face says she’s already done that.

In the man’s own blood, with his finger, he has written two lines on the linoleum floor.

The top line says: IT’S YOUR FAULT.

The bottom: ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT, MONICA.

My eyes widen, making it feel like my eyeballs may just fall right out of my skull. The blood writing looks very fresh. I kneel down and check the man for a pulse. No. He’s gone. I look at Monica.

“What the fuck does this mean?”

Her faced is confused, then angry, then undecided. What the hell is going on here?

[Angry] “I said: what the fuck does this mean?”

She closes her eyes and takes a breath again.

“Do we have time? Before the blackness,” she quietly says.

Damnnit. I close my eyes and concentrate.

[Angry] “Fuck.”

I get up and storm out of the bedroom. I don’t know if Monica’s following, and right now I don’t give a shit. I thunder down the stairs and out the front door. The blackness is definitely getting closer. I hear Monica close behind me now. I start jogging. She keeps pace. I go faster. She keeps pace. I start running as fast as I can. She keeps pace. This just pisses me off more.

We reach the door and I step through, again not caring if she comes with me. I half want to slam the thing in her face, but I don’t.

Then we’re back at the clock tower, we’re going to have words.

[PAUSE]

I go straight to the map table, noticing that number 201 is gold. Monica did take care of this yesterday. Guess she can be trusted about that. The anger is seething through me. I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad before. Definitely not at Monica. I don’t really understand or comprehend it. It’s like it’s been building and building, but I didn’t know about it. Didn’t feel it. Weighty baggage. It’s like I’ve forgotten . . . No, I have forgotten. I can’t remember stuff. And it’s because of her. It’s gotta be. It’s what I’ve thought, but never had the proof. And now a man has sacrificed his life to give me that proof.

I look up from the map table, the eyeball artifact hovering over the number, ready to be placed and complete the process. I look at Monica with fury.

[Afraid] “Jake. I . . . I can explain.”

[Furious] “Can you?”

[Pleadingly.] “Yes.” 

She’s reaching into her pockets and drawing out . . . gloves? Silvery gloves? They look like Michael Jackson’s sequined single glove. What the hell? But seeing them has made something happen in my brain. A spark. A thought. An idea. A . . . Memory. Of those gloves. Coming to me. Doing something to me.

But what?

Monica is coming towards me now, with the gloves on. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear. The blood is rushing in my ears, to my brain.

And then I remember.

And drop the artifact.

It lands near today’s number, stays there for a moment, then rolls on to it. Blood-red ruby light explodes up from the number, engulfing the eyeball, and pulling it into the map table.

The number turns to gold.

And everything turns to night.

Something’s not right. Again. But it’s not with Ostium. It’s . . . It’s with me. I’m not right. Somethings wrong. With me. And I’m . . . I’m really fucking scared. I’m . . . I’m recording this while Monica is out. She said she wanted to take a walk downtown, clear her head or something, and look at some of the doors. I said sure, it gives me time to do a recording. A private recording. About what’s happening to me. Or at least what I think is happening to me.

[CLEARS THROAT]

Okay.

~~~

Today began like it has for the last couple of days. With me waking up in Monica’s bed, next to Monica. And she’s usually naked, as I ma, which is totally awesome. Sorry, definitely still enjoying this honeymoon period of great sex that I hope never ends. But it’s weird. I feel different in the mornings, now, when I wake up. I don’t want to talk to Monica about it, at least not yet. Maybe down the road a bit, when I can make more sense of it, I might. It just seems . . . Superficial right now, like it’s not really something to get all worked up about. Even though that’s exactly what I’m doing. Because I just don’t feel right . .  Right in my mind . . . In my right mind. Things are hazy and fuzzy like a bunch of pink cotton candy got stuffed into my skull. And then, as things start to clear, I find I can’t remember things exactly, or as well as I did the day before. All the important stuff is there just fine. My history, memories of my life before Ostium, my family, my work, all the thousands of books I’ve read, even the bad ones, unfortunately.

There goes that photographic memory again.

Hey, come on, I haven’t mentioned it in a . . . while.

It’s the more recent stuff that’s iffy. The really recent stuff. About Ostium. I remember all the doors and all the important stuff about Ostium, except . . . [COUGH] What I need to remember that I can’t anymore. It’s to do with how Ostium was making me feel. I’m not sure. What effect Ostium was having on me. Something about what I thought of Ostium. Going through those doors. Finding the artifact. Bringing it back. Putting it in the map table. Like there’s a price that’s exacted on something or someone to be doing this. I know I’ve thought of it recently through the laws of nature. You knows those, right? The one about every action having an equal and opposite reaction. And the other one about energy, and how you can’t ever destroy energy, just transform it into something else. Well, I feel like I’ve thought about this in relation to Ostium on a number of occasions. I even feel like I’ve talked with Monica about it. But it’s like it’s not there anymore. I can’t remember the details or salient points or what I was trying to say about it. They’re just blurs now, hazy intuitions that tell me nothing.

And the real reason this has got me so freaked out is because even though I can’t remember this stuff, I can remember something else that’s way more scary. I can remember that yesterday I didn’t remember this stuff at first, but then I worked at it, to try to jog my memory, and then I did remember it. And now, on this new day, it’s all gone again. I don’t know why. And I’ve been trying since I woke up – so for like two hours – to remember it, and it’s just not there anymore, or I can’t access it.

So yesterday I couldn’t remember but then I made myself remember.

Today, I can’t even do that.

And . . . I’m fucking terrified about it. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t  . . . I don’t know what’s happening to me.

Okay . . . [BREATH] I think I’ve made my point, for now. Oh, and I hear Monica coming back, so I need to pull it together and go find where our next door is.

~ ~ ~

I’ve got a moment while Monica takes a quick shower and then we’re going to head out for the next door. When she got back I had a quick chat about me doing some live recordings. Her immediate reaction was a big fucking no. She wants to keep out of all that stuff and focus on getting the artifacts and getting the hell out of there before the blackness starts coming in like a racing San Francisco Fog (he’s called Carl by the way, the fog of the City by the Bay), and find Steve. I cooled her down a bit and explained myself. I said it’s hard at the end of the day to remember every single detail and thing that happened, especially if there’s a lot of shit going on. And how talking and narrating it as it’s happening might help me figure out why Ostium is doing this to me and constantly putting me in pieces of my past. This pretty much convinced her but I added some icing about how I always end up doing my spiel in front of her once I recognize where we are, and what’s the harm in recording it as it happens. It’ll save me having to repeat myself later and try to remember what I said. Plus, doing it then and there always makes me remember and monologue it way better. I reminded her about the guided tour of the Catalina Casino Building courtesy of yours truly. This got me a smile.

As for recording, I can set my phone to record and I’ve noticed before that it picks up sound really well, even when it’s in my pocket. Impressively well. Like there’s something helping it record that clearly, or there’s something . . . Perhaps supernatural about the recording app I use. Maybe it’s those Ostium waves buzzing around us all the time. Who knows.

The other big reason I want to start doing this is because of the stuff I talked about earlier, with my memory issues. Some weird shit has been going on with me, and I don’t know what’s causing it, but I do know recording everything as it happens like this can only help me try to figure it out and ultimately help get my memory back.

There’s also one point I have to make real quick before I run out of time and let my subconscious slap me for even thinking or saying this, but: what if Monica has something to do with it? What if she’s causing this to happen to me?

I know, I know. It sounds crazy. What with all the sex and how great we are together and how it really seems like I make her happy. I know she makes me happy. And we’re a team. So, it’s a couple hundred miles beyond far-fetched . . . And yet. I just don’t know. It’s a big if.

But it’s still an if.

~ ~ ~

On our way to the door I let Monica know my prediction: that this door will lead us to somewhere in the future.

“And how do you know that?” she asks.

I tell her about the pattern Ostium has been following so far: a door into the past, followed by another door into the past, then a door into the future, and then a door from my own past.

“So now we’re due for a door from the future?”

“Yep,” I say.

“And tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll be taking a trip down your memory lane?”

“Er, yeah. As you say: if all goes well.”

“I’ll call your bluff. Let’s see.”

I lead us to a door in the east wall of Ostium. It’s number 201. I grab her hard, open the door, and we go in together.

It closes behind us and there’s just darkness. I swear it lasts a second or two longer than usual, testing us. Or as Monica would say: “It’s just Ostium fucking with us.”

Then there’s a whooshing sound and the door in front of us splits open into two doors, each side receding into the wall. Before us is a whole lot of metal: metal walls, metal ceiling, metal floor. I hear a humming. There’s some sort of indirect lighting that you can’t really see, and yet you can see the hall in front of us just fine. I step out, not wanting the doors to close on us and somehow trap us in some sort of Ostium limbo.

I actually shiver at this thought.

“Yeah, let’s not get stuck in there,” Monica says, joining me.

Within a single look we both know the same thing: the hallway we’re standing in is awesomely futuristic.

“I should’ve made you place a bet on my prediction.”

She just gives me a look. Too soon I guess.

It’s a hallway of doors, as hallways tend to be. Though these doors are all cool Star Trek looking ones that whoosh open as you approach them, but it all feels kind of overwhelming here. Our door has remained open for a bit and now closes once we move away from it. OSTIUM is imprinted across it in big red letters. So we’ll be able to see it from pretty far away.

I walk up to another door, it opens and gives me a view of another hallway with lots of other doors. I try a few more, Monica tagging along, and we find more of the same. This is starting to tell me either we’re in a really big spaceship – like that George R. R. Martin short story series, no, not the one about knights and dragons and Westeros; it was about this crazy spaceman called Tuf and his travels across the galaxy in a ship that was literally multiple kilometers long. Alternatively, we could be on something like a space station, or a settled planet with future tech, or something else entirely. My mind is flipping through science fiction ideas and possibilities I’ve read like John Cusack flipping through his vinyl in the High Fidelity movie. I’m also very excited about being here and the possibilities of what we’re actually standing on.

“Why’s you’re hand so sweaty?”

“Er . . .” And then I tell her where we could be.

“So basically this is a scifi wet dream for you.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

Then I see a box-like shape on the right wall ahead. I jog up to it. It has a small viewer panel in the front, like you’re supposed to lean in and look at it, or look through it maybe, to see what’s on the other side. Maybe I’ll be able to get an idea where we are, or at least see what space looks like on the other side of this wall.

I put my face to the viewer panel and a frame extends out to block out light and allows me to focus better. I rest my face against the frame, which is supportive and comfortable. What I see on the other side defies my logic at first. I just can’t wrap my mind around what I’m seeing. Because it takes time. I pull away and look at Monica with a dry lake-bed of frown lines on my forehead.

“Lemme take a look, braniac.”

She peers in and watches for about ten seconds, then she pulls away.

“I don’t get it. It’s a big bright ball. Really bright. Really big. Is it like the opposite of the Death Star or something?”

I just shake my head, my brain working in overdrive, going through those science fiction ideas now like a flip-book, and then I suddenly find what I’m looking for.

“No, it’s much more than that. Though one hundred points to Gryffindor for the Star Trek reference.”

“I believe that’s Star Wars!”

“Another hundred points! I was testing you. No, it’s not just a big bright ball. It’s a fucking star. We’re in a Dyson Sphere.”

~ ~ ~

The Dyson Sphere is one of those distant future science fiction ideas, you know, along with teleporters and FTL drives (that’s faster than light for you Luddites). The kind we’re not going to see in our lifetimes, but then neither will our grandchildren, or our great great grandchildren. It’s named after the physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson. He formalized the concept in 1960 in a paper for the journal Science, entitled “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation.” But let’s keep it simple and straightforward.

“For us idiot tourists?” Monica says.

I just not gonna touch that. Not with a ten-foot pole. Not even to try and make a joke out of it.

It’s the concept about a distant, future civilization. If we’re talking about Earth and humanity, we’re looking at least a few thousand years in the future. It’s basically an extremely technologically advanced civilization that’s also like super massive. A population in the trillions probably, and they’ve conquered the galaxy. If we look at our planet again, we’re talking about expanding beyond our solar system and we’ve colonized and live on every planet, moon, meteor and asteroid that we can safely inhabit. We’re talking more advanced than Star Trek and more advanced than Star Wars. It’s all about power and energy. When you’re running a galactic empire, you need a lot of juice to keep it going. And what has more energy in the universe than a star? Dyson’s idea was to create some sort of containment  . . . Er, contraption around the star. So we’re talking massive size. And this Dyson Sphere would somehow harness the energy of the star.

“That sounds . . .”

“Yeah,” is my terse reply.

Imagine a humongous solar panel that’s big enough to encircle a star. You’re talking about a beaucoup amount of wattage.

“And that’s where we are: inside a Dyson Sphere?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure from what I can see through the viewer. It’s always been a theoretical concept. Some science fiction authors have used it, like Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, and Robert J. Sawyer. In TV, there was actually an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that featured a Dyson Sphere from an alien civilization, I think it was called ‘Relics.”

“You think?”

I can’t help smiling. “No. I know it was called that. Actually Dyson himself said he was partly inspired by the works of Olaf Stapledon and Edgar Rice Burroughs, to name a few, before he came up with his eponymous sphere. Come on.”

I lead the way up the corridor, wanting to see as much of this place as I can before we run out of time. It actually feels like being on an episode of Star Trek, except those were all sets and this is the real deal. But this means we’re surrounded by technology that’s millennia into our future. At the same time, this place is huge. Massive. We have to be constructive in how we look around. As usual, the most important thing is to locate and collect the artifact. So that’s what I’m focusing on.

I take a deep breath, clear my mind, and concentrate on where I’m being drawn.

Monica knows what I’m doing and now she’s frowning at me as I narrate this. I’m peaking at her. It’s kind of cute. And now I’ve got a smile.

Back to honing in. I can feel it, that gentle pull I’ve become so familiar and comfortable with, drawing me along. We pass through a door as it whooshes open, then another, and then another. We go through five doors, and it feels like each successive room we enter I can see more details of this incredible advanced civilization and want to spend valuable time studying it, but can’t. Plus Monica’s ready to drag me along if I start to dawdle. And then we’re in a hangar-sized room. It’s just overwhelmingly huge. And I’m immediately reminded of that exhibit room in the base on Mars with pieces of Earth’s past in its exploration of the red planet. Here there are displays and tables and glass cases like little glass houses showcasing this civilization’s history. We’re passing between them and I’m just catching snippets. Objects of history I can’t quite recognize. Datapads and screens displaying information. I think I catch sight of what might be ancient, brittle paper. That’s when I start wondering. What if? Could it be?

Then I see a display about twenty feet away in a glass care. It’s a photo, a big photo. I recognize it. All too well.

My legs turn cold, then to jelly and I collapse to the floor. I haven’t felt like this since I went through the infinity door, back in the office where I worked. Because I’ve just witnessed an impossibility. Something that simply should not be.

Monica didn’t see it, but like before, she’s there by my side, helping me.

“What was it?”

I raise a shaking arm and try to lift a finger, but can’t. I point my chin in the general direction, and Monica helps me walk over. The closer we get, the clearer it is to me. After a few steps, Monica recognizes who’s in the photo, slows down. She looks at me, but doesn’t understanding. I don’t either. But I keep going, pulling her along more now that she’s helping me.

We reach it and I stare in both confusion and awe at a giant-sized photo of me, one of my old Facebook profile pics. I think Brandon took it. Maybe it was a selfie? Holy shit. It was. Like one of the first and only one’s I ever took of myself.

What the fuck is it doing in a museum thousands of years in the future?

~ ~ ~

Fortunately there’s a screen below the photo of me with a big block of text. Even more fortunately it’s in English. I don’t need to start reading it to know that the star this Dyson Sphere is encircling is ours. The sun. Sol. The one belonging to our solar system. And then Monica and I start reading.

~ ~ ~

Jake Matthew Fisher. A savior of humanity? In a time of strife and suffering, where the number of dead was an everyday mounting number, there was purportedly one who changed that, who helped those in need, who rescued those who were lost. It is a period now deep in our history, millennia ago, where much of the history and knowledge has been lost. But this is one story that has survived across the ages, carried through time and across space by word of mouth, by text, by subsonic message, who knows? We no longer know the when, or the how, or even the why. All we know is the what.

The What: What records we have are vague and their accuracy is in question, but sometime during the earlier part of the twenty-first century Planet Earth was hit with a bizarre series of catastrophic events that seemed to come out of nowhere. They occurred unexpectedly and at random across the globe. It is not known exactly how many people died from each horrific event, but that number was at the minimum in the thousands and likely reached into the tens and potentially hundreds of thousands.

The Events: While this is not thought to be a complete list of the catastrophic events experienced by our home planet during these troublesome times, this list is as complete as possible (any further events or details discovered will be added to this list as needed). Original terminology has been used for these events; you can research further using your datapad and the museum application.

Radiation: Due to a nuclear plant malfunction, a radioactive cloud spread across the continent of Europe.

Virus: A devastating new strain of the Ebola virus erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Earthquake: A tectonic tremor of a level never seen before occurred in the western Pacific Ocean, generating a record-sized tsunami or tidal wave that swept across Japan and the east coast of China.

Tanker: A ship carrying crude oil ran aground along the south coast of Britain and the polluting oil reached the coasts of France and Spain.

United States: A series of mass disappearances struck the United States of America during this time, specifically the state of California, where it is thought Jake lived. The concept of people or groups of people going missing has a deep and disturbing history throughout the world. Some notable ones include the Lost Colony of Roanoke in the United States; a sailing vessel called the Mary Celeste in the Atlantic Ocean. An island off the coast of California called Catalina had its entire population suddenly disappear. The great city of San Francisco had a mass of its people in the center suddenly vanish. The Northern California coastal town of Fort Bragg somehow suffered a similar fate when all the people simply vanished.

While these strange disappearances don’t seem to relate to the aforementioned catastrophic events, according to the literature, they are always mentioned together.

The Legend: As with all stories that had their genesis moment long ago and have been passed down through time via various means, the question of their veracity always comes into consideration. But what can perhaps be considered a tenant of these tales, these legends and fables, is at the heart there is an important kernel of truth. With the story of Jake Matthew Fisher, it is perhaps impossible to separate the fact from fiction, so here we give you the whole story as we have been able to deduce from the research. Again, if you research yourself, you will find a multitude of alternate, parallel, and conflicting theories on this enigmatic and mysterious person. We seek here to present you with the simplest and most concrete version of thes tale.

At some point after all these strange and terrible events, it is unclear how much time, whether months or years or decades or perhaps even centuries, all the people were somehow, suddenly and irrevocably returned to life and restored to where they lived. One moment they were gone, nonexistent; and the next they were brought back. The catastrophic events, the damage; all was undone as if it had never happened. And all those many, many people were hale and healthy again. What Jake Matthew Fisher had to do with this, that remains unknown and mysterious, but for every single one of these people that came back, his name was the first word on their lips.

~ ~ ~

I was dumbstruck and awestruck and numbstruck, and any other kind of -struck you can think of. I just didn’t know how to take it. I felt like Harry Potter finding out it was up to him to defeat Voldemort (yeah, I said his name!); or Frodo learning that he would have to travel to Mordor to destroy the One Ring (My precious); or Luke (or Leia) finding out he (or she) was the one (there is another) hope. I fucking felt like King Ralph finding out he was next in line to become King of England. It was impossible, inconceivable and overwhelming and . . . And . . . Not me. Not me. NOT ME! I can’t do it. It’s too much. It’s too fucking much!

“Jake. Jake! You need to calm down!”

I mean. If it’s me. All me. ALL ME! I . . . I . . . I have to make the right decision. The exact right decision. To be precise. Infinitesimally perfect, to make it so all the events slot perfectly into play. The ultimate fucking domino fall across time and space. But . . . But . . . But! If I don’t get it right. If I don’t get it right. Exactly right. Then history will be different. History will be changed. All those people won’t somehow . . . Miraculously . . . come back to life. They’ll be dead. Forever. And it’ll be my fault. All my fault. All on me . . . And . . . And . . . And that means the present will be changed. Because if you change the past then the present gets changed. And that means it affects us. Here and right fucking now. And if that happens then maybe we just . . . Completely . . . Fucking . . . Cease . . . To . . . Exist.

~ ~ ~

That’s when a part of me comes back to reality. The part of me that’s able to speak in complete sentences right now. And sees Monica watching me lose it. Watching me completely break down. And that’s when I watch her reach into her pockets and take out these silverly-looking gloves. She slips them on with ease, like she’s done it a thousand times before. She holds her hands a foot apart and this bright, white beam of electricity passes between them, sparking and snapping like the ultimate bug zapper.

She looks at me  and I can’t hear what she says because it’s so noisy and I’m simultaneously losing my mind, but I’m able to read her lips: I’m sorry, Jake.

And then she comes at me fast and everything g . . .

~ ~ ~

Man. I’m fuzzy again. Extra fuzzy. What the fuck happened to me? I pulling myself into a sitting up position. The world spins for a second and then settles, like it suddenly remembered the fundamental law of gravity.

I’m in bed, in the clock tower, in Ostium.

What . . . Happened?

And then I see Monica come in with a glass of water and a drink and she explained it all to me.

“We went through one of the doors. 201 I think. And you said we were in a thing called a Dyson Sphere. You were nerding out pretty hard. Giving me the full tour. You were honing in on the artifact. Said you knew it was in this room. And you found it. This little metal ball. Looked like a ping-pong ball sized Death Star. And then you turned white. White as fucking milk. I ran to you, but you collapsed before I could reach you. Smacked your head on the ground something hard. It made my head ache just hearing it. You were out cold. And then I heard the blackness. Coming fast. Because you weren’t doing your magic trick with it. So I didn’t waste time. Threw you over my shoulder like the combat soldier I am, and hoofed it back through the door to here. You’ve been out for about two hours. But you still look like shit.”

“Thanks. I feel like it.” I look at my pale arms. My skin feels clammy; I’m sweaty; hot and cold.

“I’m gonna let you rest now. Catch some shut eye. If you sleep through the night. Good.”

“Thanks,” I say again, laying my head back down on the pillow.

There’s a strange look in her eyes, it’s like she’s happy to see me, but not completely. She also looks scared. I don’t get it.

She leaves, closing the door quietly.

As I feel sleep taking its hold over me again, I think. I think about how everything Monica just told me means nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because I can’t remember a single thing. And this feels like it’s not the first time it’s happened . . .

I’m so fucking scared . . .

The place is called Rapa Nui, or as it is better known, Easter Island. You know. That tiny island way the hell out in the ass end of the Pacific, far west of Chile. I think it was around there Captain Cook and his crew had trouble finding basic things like food and water. And I don’t remember if it was around there that the boat . . . er, the Essex, had its problems with a troublesome whale that basically sank the ship and left a bunch of guys stuck in a couple of whaling boats fending for themselves, and eventually they had to fend off each other too, as in that taboo most people don’t like to talk about. No. Not incest. Cannibalism.

Think it was around there.

And that’s where we’ve been taken today, courtesy of Ostium. Through door number 222, which ended up being a nice, normal door on the regular old streets of Ostium. Find the origin of that mental tug, turn the handle, step inside. Done. Aaaand get transported back to some point between the eighth and nineteenth centuries, though it looks to be more on the earlier side with the whole lushness of vegetation and trees surrounding us. But we’ll get to that in due course.

I don’t know what it is, but I feel especially spiffy today. Just on top of the world, pretty much. I’m not gonna lie, I am a little achy from last night’s . . . er, let’s say romp. Well, more like last afternoon’s that lasted into the night. We did get some food in us . . . Eventually. But this morning, after a very restful night’s sleep, I’m just feeling A-OK. Like everything is going just right with the world. Of course, our world is a little different now, since we’re no longer connected to it, and there’s really only Ostium, but let’s not put a dampener on things. It does seem like it might get a little boring sometimes, going through a new door every day, getting taken to another world and time, but doing it over and over again, bringing that artifact back each time. Putting it on the map table. Oh, and we did eventually manage to add that piece of pottery from the Anasazi settlement to the map table, so don’t worry about us forgetting about it. All done and taken care of, albeit a little delayed when compared to our usual rigorous schedule.

But life is just grand right now. Can’t get me enough Ostium. Even though it’s not always clear what we’re doing all of this for. But at least there were no more bodies of those men that Monica sent through a door to deal with. I talked a little more with Monica about them and just what bad people they were. I’m never one to condone violence, and the thought of killing is . . . Anathema is a strong word, but it’s not hard enough. Abhorrent. The thought of killing another human being is abhorrent to me, but when hearing about what those men were like. What they did to Monica and Steve. How their lives were ruined because of it. How finding Ostium was a godsend. It gave Steve an exit, a place of release, somewhere to get away. And then when Monica had no choice, she had to follow, to end the pain and suffering, and follow her heart. It just feels right. Both what Steve and Monica had to do, but also what those men did to them, how they treated them . . . It’s almost like they got what they deserved. And she didn’t outright mur . . . Kill them. She sent them through that door alive and well. If they didn’t know what they were getting into, they should’ve stayed away. They came once, found nothing. That should’ve been it. But no. They had to come back for more. To be sure. And they got what they deserved.

How those we’ve found so far died remains a mystery. Perhaps their deaths were carried out somewhat peacefully. Maybe it didn’t hurt when the end came. Perhaps the blackness came and swallowed them hole. Atomized them. Then reconstituted them in another place, another time, and that’s how we found them. Lives gone, bodies left. Whether we’ll find more remains to be seen. The coast was all clear yesterday at least.

And as for Steve. His circumstances were very different for entering into Ostium and its doors. Akin to ours one would say. Just like Monica, I believe he is alive in there somewhere. We’ve just got to find him. It’s our job now, not just Monica’s. He’s got to be very lost and we need to help him. I have my own part to play in finding out what Ostium wants with me and why I am intrinsically tied to it, but also to find Steve alive and well. Of hale heart and mind. Those are our goals.

~ ~ ~

But getting back to Easter Island. Rapa Nui. It means “Big Rapa,” coined after the slave raids of the 1860s. According to the evidence, archeology, and what historians have been able to deduce, the island was first settled sometime in the eighth century, presumably from people reaching the island by ship. Well, not presumably, certainly. They didn’t have any other way. They couldn’t exactly fly from South America to the island. Right? But they must’ve enjoyed a wealthy time of prosperity with all the growing vegetation and abundant wildlife that had been protected for so long in isolation. Like all islands that have little interaction with other places, when people or invading species first land on the island, pretty much all the fauna there doesn’t know what to expect. They’ve never seen anything like this invading being before and don’t know to necessarily run in fear and/or terror before they’re attacked and killed. Capturing and eating that original wildlife must’ve been pretty easy.

But as the population grew, the toll on the resources of the island began to rise. The big problem with an island is that those resources are never infinite: eventually you’re going to run out of food. Of wood from trees for building stuff. Or vegetation for using however you see fit. This seems very likely what started to happen to the people of Rapa Nui. And then the island was discovered and more outsiders came, and the slave traders, and everything pretty much went to hell for them.

Nowadays, there are some descendants surviving, getting by with what remains, and profiting a little from the considerable tourist trade.

So, getting back briefly to the name Rapa Nui, Big Rapa. So named because of its resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands Group. Though the explorer Thor Heyerdahl thought it was the other way around. Te pito o te henua or “the Navel of the World” is also purported to be its original name. And according to oral tradition, its original name might’ve also been Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or “the little piece of land of Hau Maka.” And the Spanish refer to it as La Isla de Pascua. But enough about white dudes asserting their right to naming an island with native peoples they know next to nothing about.

Let’s move on to what the big draw is to tourists and archaeologists and explorers and anthropologists each year.

The Moai.

They are the mighty stone monoliths carved by the people of Rapa Nui between 1250 and 1500. If you’ve never seen one before it’s like a big thick stone statue, with the head about a third the size of the body. The chest is bare, nipples carved in relief, and lines along the sides likely describing arms. They’d make great door stoppers, you know, for likely a really big giant. In earlier times the statues were scrubbed to a smooth surface with pumice rock. Since it’s a volcanic island this wasn’t too hard to find, though apparently this smooth surface erodes pretty quickly with the natural elements. The Moai are thought to represent chieftains, leaders and important ancestors of the Rapa Nui. The more recent Moai had representative topknots of the chieftains they were meant to be, known as pukao, made from a reddish rock known as red scoria.

While a large number of moai were left at the quarry site, there were still over 900 that were dragged to various sites all over the island using a system of sledges and sheer human strength. Though that’s where a lot of those trees went: into making those giants sledges to carry those giant, heavy rocks.  The tallest moai, called Paro, was 33 feet high and weighed over 90 tons; the heaviest moai Ahu Tongariki weighed an impressive 95 tons. One unfinished moai would’ve been a true giant among the rest of the moai, weighing almost 298 tons and would’ve been a whopping 69 feet tall.

Yeah, I know. Hold on to your butts.

~ ~ ~

And here we are on Rapa Nui from long ago. It’s an island full of life and greenery. Of course, there’s no real sign of animal life but everything floral is having a hell of a time. And there are a few moai around making themselves proudly known, standing majestic on green hills looking down on their creators with all the power and dignity the creators were trying to imbue them with. It’s . . . It’s fucking incredible. It’s like seeing the pyramids how they were originally, or that perfect looking Sphinx, or the original pristine Golden Gate Bridge, that magnificent looking Statue of Liberty, a bright shining beacon from afar, and that pinnacle of architectural excellence, the Eiffel Tower.

Dragging Monica behind me, I run over to the nearest one, which happens to be about a hundred yards away, so it actually takes a bit of running, but the closer I get the more I can feel Monica speeding up, then matching me, feeling the thrill of Ostium and this door, and this unique, incredible place. We reach the giant moai together, out of breath, like a couple of kids racing each other down the hill to the park. She seems just as ecstatic as me to be this close to something this awesome.

We just bask in its majesty, its perfection, until we regain our composure .

The very surface of the moai shines, and sheens in the sunlight, giving it an almost ethereal look, as if it were something sent down from on high by a greater power.

“So, in case you haven’t guessed, the artifact is up there somewhere.”

“What? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course. Of course it is. This is fucking Ostium! This sorta shit isn’t scripted.”

“The good thing is, after the last door, I’ve gotten pretty good at climbing, if you catch my drift.”

“No kidding. Well, the good thing is I’ll be right under you ready to catch your ass when you fall.”

“Good. That definitely helps my confidence. But no checking out my ass while I’m climbing.”

“Honey . . . That’s all I’m going to be checking out.”

With one giant shit-eating grin on my face, I start climbing. While the surface is pretty smooth, there are lines and carvings here and there to give the body of this big moai definition. Using these, I ascend from the side of the moai. This guy’s a big sucker, probably around thirty feet. But I’m in the zone now: skillfully using my hands and feet to find whatever crevice or handhold I can use to hoist myself up higher. I’m not sure where the artifact is on the moai, but it’s up there somewhere. Because this is one of the older moai, not the ones that will get made two or three hundred years in the future, there’s no topknot or pukao to deal with, just a big head with a triangular nose and those divots for eyes. I bet it’s in one of the eye sockets. Can’t really be anywhere else.

I start to wonder why Monica didn’t offer to climb the moai. She probably could’ve done it in a half or a third of the time that I’m doing it, and made it look good. I wouldn’t have been worrying about her falling at any point, unlike she is with me. I give her a brief look down and she sends me back an encouraging wink.

I got this.

But this isn’t for her. She’s looking for Steve. I’m all about the artifacts and the place. That’s my domain. So it just wouldn’t be right to have her do this part. It’s not a chivalry thing, it’s just the way things are done in Ostium. For all I know, Monica could try and find the artifact and not find it at all. She doesn’t have my honing sense, but also it might not appear to her. It might simply cease to exist. Just like she can’t get through the doors on her own. She needs me.

Huh. It’s something I haven’t thought too much about before. I knew she needed me to help her, with Steve, and continuing through the doors of Ostium, but when I lay it out like this, Monica is basically helpless without me when it comes to this place. She couldn’t do a thing without me. It gives me power over her, which being Monica, I’m sure she’s not a fan of.

But it hadn’t really occurred to me before. Interesting.

Okay, I got this.

I’m starting to feel close to this moai, not just because of physical closeness, but because we’re going through a lot together, with he being the vessel for the artifact and my having to climb all over him.

You might say there’s something between us . . . Or not.

I reach the sculpture’s eyes and find them sunken and empty.

Great.

I have no other option but to keep going up and at the very top of the moai on the flat surface of his head I find it.

It’s a little birdman effigy. Well, to be exact, it’s half man half bird. It happened a little later during the span of the Rapa Nui culture, as the leadership veered from the sole chiefs to a warrior class. That birdman figure was the symbol of the warrior class. Seems kind of weird and interesting at the same time to see it here, since it’s thought with the rise of this “birdman cult” as it’s known, they’re pretty sure the construction of moai stopped. Nevertheless, I know it’s the artifact. I pick it up, feeling its stony weight, and put it safely in a pocket.

And then begins the fun of climbing back down this sucker, which is never as easy as climbing up. Monica is watching me below. I give her the thumbs up, turn around and start inching myself down. It’s going okay, I’m taking it real slow; watching where my feet go, making sure they have a solid purchase and then easing myself towards the ground, while gravity keeps trying to make me do it much faster . . . And easier. It’s about halfway down that what I thought was a secure foothold turns out not to be. Maybe there’s a bit of dirt or moisture or moss there. Whatever it is, my foot slips and with that goes my leg and then the rest of me. Then I’m falling backward and away from the moai. I have time to think I’ll land on my back which hopefully won’t be too bad. I lift my head to avoid a cranial collision and cry out “Monica!”

And then I land. On Monica. But it really isn’t that bad. She’s absorbed and fallen back with my fall, letting my trajectory bring her to the ground. We’re both a little sore and bruised but nothing like I would’ve been if she hadn’t been there to catch me. I roll off of her, our breaths once again strong and fast. I look at her and see her looking at me. We start giggling and then laughing really loud. It’s a combination of fear and release and feels great. And then I’m crawling over to her and kissing her. And she’s kissing back and it’s just awesome. Our hands run over our bodies and soon belts are loosened and clothing is shed. Monica like some prophylactic magician whips out a condom from somewhere and that’s when I know we won’t have to cut this canoodling session short.

“Wait,” she says as I’m about to start. “What about the blackness.”

“Don’t worry. I’m holding it back. We’ve got time.”

“Sure. But don’t make it too quick, okay?”

I give her my winning, beaming smile, and then I’m kissing her again.

~ ~ ~

We make it back to the door in time before the blackness reaches us. Not a ton of time, but a decent cushion. It’s clearly visible, speedily making its way toward us.

Just before we step through, Monica turns to me and says: “And in case you’re wondering: we’re totally in the mile high Ostium club now. It’s only members.” Then she’s gone.

On the other side it’s back to the clock tower and this time we take care of the artifact on the map table right away. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but from one nerd to another, doing this definitely reminds me of Ghostbusters, after they’ve caught the ghosts in the trap and put it in the storage containment with the extremely powerful protection grid.

Light is green. Trap is clean. And it actually is an iridescent green in this case.

~ ~ ~

Over dinner I talk more about Rapa Nui with Monica and that’s when a thought occurs that I voice across the table: if we were in an earlier time of the Rapa Nui culture, when the moai were pretty new, the population would’ve been considerable. In the many thousands. It wasn’t until later, centuries later, that there was a decline and deforestation and people started dying. And after the slave trade the population obviously plummeted. At one point it was as low as 111 people. But we weren’t there at any of those times. It was much earlier when the people were plentiful and happy. And now they’re not there anymore. Snuffed out because of Ostium. Because of the door. And because of me.

These are the thoughts that begin piling onto my conscience like a football being smothered by a hill of football players: nothing can stop it.

Monica tells me I can’t think like that. There’s no way of knowing. Why would Ostium be doing this if all those people were dying because of it. It just doesn’t make sense. There has to be a better reason. A better purpose for all this.

This appeases me a little, but not fully. I tell her she’s right and move on to another conversation. Inside, I’m not so sure.

After dinner’s all done and cleared away Monica says she’s going to take a shower. As she goes in to the bathroom and strips down to her birthday suit, she says: “Care to join me?”

It doesn’t take me long to shed my own clothing and join her under the hot water.

We have another amazing time. And afterwards we’re both ready for bed.

Because tomorrow’s another day, and another door.

~ ~ ~

Monica: The guy’s finally asleep. I gotta hand it to him, he’s got some stamina. Of course. We are doing it a lot. That’s probably helping. And while I’m doing what needs to be done. So I can find Steve. Still, it ain’t bad. Ain’t bad at all. I’m having a real good time. Mr. Cutey’s actually great in the sack. Who knew? Being a video game developer and all. Will wonders never cease.

I try. I keep trying. But he keeps remembering. The suffering. The death. The cost he thinks Ostium is causing. He’s not sure. I know I’m not sure. But I gotta keep him focused. Keep him going. Without him the ball game’s over. No doubt. But so long as I can keep him happy. Keep him going. Keep this train running. Then everything will be fine.

Got close today though. In that Easter Island place. I was ready for him. If he fell. And fall he sure did. But I knew how to catch him. How to take the fall. And then one thing led to another. It was all good. It was all fucking great in fact. But going back. To the door. He never even saw the body. Another one of them. Couldn’t tell who it was. Black hair. He was face down. Got what he deserved. Like the rest of them. Good riddance. Maybe I need to go through them all. Find every single one of their lifeless bodies. Before I can find Steve and find out just what the fuck happened to him.

But still. Today was good. Really good. It was fun being in that place. Running with him. Fucking him. Got all the juices flowing. All the emotions running.

I kinda don’t want this thing to end.

Time will tell. I guess.