Hollow World

Chapter Twelve The Time Is Now

Ellis had every intention of setting off on a quest to find Pax, but it took all of five minutes to realize that wasn’t practical. He had no idea where to begin looking. If Vin and Pol couldn’t find Pax after more than a month, what chance did he have? Ellis didn’t even own a Port-a-Call.

Leaves were just starting to turn yellow and the air was cooler than when Ellis had left, but little else at the farm had changed. All the shifting through time was disorienting, as if he were skimming through the book of his life. Ellis returned to the farm less out of desire and more out of a lack of anywhere else to go. Vin had been more than willing to open a portal to Greenfield Village, wanting Ellis to be gone just as much as Ellis wanted to leave. While Warren and the others would take him in, and had saved his life, Ellis wasn’t sold on the New America idea. He wasn’t convinced that Hollow World was so awful. He’d seen the beauty for himself, and his conversation with Sol had only deepened his appreciation. A world without constraints, fear, or pain—wasn’t that how most imagined heaven? And yet it did feel empty. Not because of its lack of challenge or individuality—he would still have plenty of that—but something else entirely. Both Warren’s New America and Hollow World remained bleak and meaningless to him for one simple and unexpected reason—they both lacked Pax.

Alva has a hot-chocolate pattern for you to try.

He remembered looking at the portal, seeing the dining room.

I could have gone. I could have walked through. How hard would that have been? Why didn’t I? I would have if I had known what it meant to Pax.

He remembered Pax’s face and the single desperate word…Please.

One more bad decision; one more death on his conscience.

Ellis paused at the end of Firestone Lane and stared down its length at the old farmhouse. For good or ill, this would be his home. Where else could he go?

The only one in the farmhouse was Yal, who, as always, was cooking.

Ellis didn’t have a watch—no way to tell the time except by the sun. Late afternoon, he guessed. Maybe five o’clock. Being autumn now, the days would be shorter, so maybe four o’clock? What was it, September? October? The stalks of corn in the field were brown. When did that happen in Michigan? Had the climate changed? He was annoyed with how his points of reference continually shifted. Just as he was settling in, he had skipped ahead again.

“Master Ellis Rogers.” Yal nodded, almost bowed, when Ellis entered to the scent of something baking—smelled like bread.

Pots boiled and chopped carrots and onions cascaded on the cutting board like splayed decks of cards. Yal was wearing an apron stained with handprints and held a towel in one hand, a butcher’s knife in the other.

“Master?” Ellis didn’t like the sound of the word, especially on an old-fashioned farm.

Yal nodded again. “Master Ren has decreed that the two of you should have a formal address as per your status in the community.”

“Our status? What’s our status?”

“As leaders, mentors, superiors.” Yal scooped up the carrots with the blade of the knife and slopped them into one of the bubbling pots.

“Masters? What’s wrong with elder, teacher, sir, or even sensei?”

“I think Master Ren felt master was more appropriate.”

“Yal!” Rob stomped along the porch, entering the kitchen covered in dirt and sweat, a wooden switch in hand. Rob raised the stick threateningly. “You lazy turd! Get your ass—” The former Ved Two halted, spotting Ellis. “Oh—” Rob quickly lowered the switch. “I didn’t know you were back, master.”

The honorific combined with the stick in Rob’s hand set off alarm bells.

“I was just coming by to whip some sense into Yal. Need to do that on occasion.”

What kind of place is Warren making?

“Why?” Ellis asked. “You can see Yal is working.” He pointed at the peeled potatoes, the chopped onions and carrots.

“That doesn’t matter.” Rob began to clap the stick into his palm. “It’s the pecking order. Ved One—ah, Bob—beats me, so I get to beat Yal.”

“And I’ll get to beat Mib, right?” Yal asked.

“Of course.”

Ellis couldn’t take his eyes off the stick as it slapped in Rob’s three-fingered hand. About as thick as his thumb, there was still bark on it, green and white patches where the branches had been trimmed off. There’s a pecking order to the world, Ricky the Dick had reminded him, and God put you at the bottom.

“But Yal isn’t doing anything wrong,” Ellis protested. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Rob said. “This is survival of the fittest. We don’t want weak people here. Members of the Firestone Family need to be hard as rocks to stand the brutal days ahead. Yal is still the new recruit. Master Ren wants to toughen the young one up. Indoctrinate Yal to the way things are done here.”

“Are you kidding me?” Ellis asked.

“Ah—no, master.” Rob looked puzzled. “That’s right from Master Ren’s own mouth. He wants us all to be tough as he is. Fact is, I’m trying to help Yal here. Master Ren has decided that we’ll be divided into hes, shes, and its based on how we behave. Now that we’ll be living among real humans—once the women arrive—he wants to get us ready. Yal is on the list right now as a she.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Again that puzzled look. “Master Ren says women are inferior to men. Yal won’t want to be a woman, but will be unless I can shape his ass up.”

“Shape his ass up?”

“Yeah, Master Ren thinks Yal might be a little too light in the loafers.”

“Yal doesn’t even wear shoes.”

“It’s a figure of speech. It means—”

“I know what it means. It’s something Warren taught you, but apparently he skipped the lesson on sarcasm.”

Rob continued to stare at him, bewildered.

Ellis was angry. He was mad at Rob for blindly following orders, mad at Yal for gleefully accepting a beating with the promise that the cook could do the same to the next recruit. He was angry with Warren for creating such a vicious system. Mostly he was mad at himself. For that he had plenty of reasons.

“Where is old Master Ren, anyway?”

“In the village—Menlo Park, inside Edison’s workshop.”

“I think maybe I ought to have a talk with him.”

Ellis aimed for the door, but stopped short, reached out, and pulled the switch away from Rob. “Don’t go hitting anyone anymore.”

“But Master Ren—”

“Yeah, I know. Master Ren likes hitting a little too much, and if I’m going to live here, that’s going to have to change.”

Ellis marched the length of Firestone Lane. Thinking back, he realized he’d made a lot of excuses for Warren over the years. Warren had lost control many times, and he had pulled his friend out of more than a few bar fights, usually because of something stupid that Warren had said. Then there was the time Ellis visited the Eckard household. Warren’s second wife, Kelly, had answered the door wearing her husband’s big mirrored aviators. The sunglasses, long-sleeved shirt, and makeup couldn’t hide the split lip.

“Fell down the stairs,” she had told him with Warren looking on.

“Maybe you should consider moving to a house that doesn’t have steps,” he had replied, never knowing if she understood his meaning. Kelly wasn’t any better at catching innuendo than Rob. That was the closest he had ever come to defying Warren.

It only took two thousand years to sink in, but Ellis Rogers could be taught. Maybe it was time Warren learned about the second half of the Bible.

The Edison laboratory was on the other side of the village, closer to where Ellis had found Geo-24’s body—where he had first met Pax. He had run by it that day, taking no notice of the long peak-roofed building that looked like an old train station with its white clapboard siding, decorative porch posts that gave the impression of archways, and round attic window bisected by muntins to look like crosshairs on a rifle scope. This wasn’t the real Edison lab. By the time Ford thought to relocate the facilities in the 1920s, there was nothing left to move. The buildings had been removed or collapsed. Ford had his workers reconstruct this replica based on photographs and using scavenged materials, but Ellis imagined there wasn’t much difference between the Dearborn version and the New Jersey original.

Ellis reached the start of the Menlo Park complex, passing the green-tarnished, bronze statue of Edison, sitting grandfatherly on a rock as if about to impart some word of genius. As he walked up Port Street, he saw someone. Although too far away to read a name tag, the Amish outfit suggested that either the person was a member of the Firestone Farm family, or the Mennonites of Pennsylvania had not only survived unobserved but were taking a vacation at the Henry Ford Museum. Whoever it was, they had been leaning on the picket fence surrounding the Menlo Park complex and rushed inside the lab the moment Ellis appeared. By the time Ellis turned onto Christie Street, Warren was on the front porch of the lab waiting for him.

“Well, well, if it ain’t Mr. Rogers. The prodigal son returns.” Warren stood, his shirt buttoned to the neck, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, with what looked to be grease staining his hands. “How you feeling?”

“I thought it was Master Rogers?” Ellis said. “Isn’t that what you ordered them to call us?”

“It is indeed. Figured it was important to establish these things early.”

“What things? The pecking order?”

“Yeah.” Warren glanced behind him at the lab, and, putting an arm around Ellis’s shoulders, led him down the steps and out into the yard, where the afternoon sun was casting shadows. In a lower voice he added, “These baldies are nice enough folks, but let’s face it. They really aren’t human—not like you and me, and not like our children will be. Thing is, they aren’t going to die. We’ll be stuck with them forever. I just want to make sure they understand their place in the new world order.”

Their place? New order? Ellis wasn’t sure if he was in the Old South or Nazi Germany, but wherever it was, the year had to be around 1936. “And what place is that?”

Warren squinted at him. “What’s with you?”

“I was just at the farm, where Rob was about to beat Yal with a stick because it was Rob’s turn to be the bully. Told me it was your idea?”

“Ellis, these underworlders have no concept of authority. I’m working at establishing that. We’ll need discipline once we get going. Folks are going to have to learn to obey orders.”

“See, that’s the problem right there. Why do they have to learn that? I can see wanting to have women and children and families again, and I can understand the sense of accomplishment in providing real work with real benefits, but that doesn’t mean we have to form a fascist state. Why not be a society of equals?”

Warren looked at him as if he was having trouble hearing. He used to do that a lot at the bar, mostly when anyone complained about football or suggested his views on women were outdated.

“Because we aren’t,” Warren said. “That’s socialist talk.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal—second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, remember that?” Ellis said, his voice rising.

Warren frowned. “Yeah, right—all men. That’s you and me, buddy.”

“I think Jefferson meant all humans.”

“Jefferson was a pretty smart guy,” Warren said with a smug smile and a condescending wink. “I think if that’s what he meant, then that’s what he’d have written. Ole Tommy had quite a few slaves running ’round Monticello, you know. Didn’t have any problem differentiating between men and those who served them. Fact is, people aren’t the same. You’re smarter than I am. I’m stronger than you are. These are facts. People want everyone to be the same, but we just aren’t. No one is—well, except the baldies. That’s the problem, and they know it. That’s why they’re here. You and I know how to live in a real society. We understand initiative and thrive on competition. Real men don’t back down from a fight. We know how to take care of ourselves. And when the shit flies, we’ll be the ones who know how to survive. That makes us more valuable, more important. It’s not an insult to them, just a fact of nature. Sure, we’ll all be equal, just some of us will be more equal than others.”

“That’s what the pigs said.”

“Huh?” Warren looked at him with squinting eyes.

“That’s what the pigs said in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.”

“Never read it.”

“You’d have liked it. Short, easy to read. About corrupt leaders of revolutions—basically an attack on communism.”

Warren smirked. “Don’t be stupid. Do I look like Stalin? We’re going to build this new society, you and I, not some greedy politicians, rich fat cats, or intellectual elitists—just us, two regular Joes, and we won’t make the mistakes everyone else did.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone else said the same thing.”

“Quit being a prick, will you? Listen. We both remember what it was like when we were kids. Life in the fifties was perfect. Women raised the children. Men provided the money. Children were safe and happy, and the government didn’t interfere. Everyone knew their place, and America roared like a well-tuned GTO. I’m just trying to get us back on track.”

Ellis wondered if Warren remembered the last conversation they’d had in the bar. It would have been nearly a decade for him, so he doubted it. His friend never had the best memory, even as a kid, but that shouldn’t matter. They had talked about “the good old days” enough that the topic was permanently burned into Warren’s brain. Nostalgia was a popular bar-stool topic, and they had reminisced often.

“How would you know what life was like then? How could either of us? We were three years old in 1959. You’ve invented a world in your head that never really existed—false memories injected into your brain by television shows that you remember as documentaries. The fifties had their own set of problems.” Ellis was talking to himself just as much as Warren. He was thinking out loud, honestly looking for an intelligent answer.

Warren rolled his eyes.

“No—really,” Ellis said. “Think a second. I’ve recently gotten a longer view of the past. We both have. Looking back—I think the brain has a way of erasing the bad stuff. When I remember Peggy, I hardly recall the arguments or the frustrations. I only remember the good times. People are always saying how their high school years were the best in their lives, but I bet if any of them really went back, if they had to deal with parents and teachers and restrictions and peer pressure to do stupid things, they wouldn’t think so. And when we were kids, what did we really know about the world? We both believed in Santa, too, right? Kids are isolated from the real problems, so, of course, it seemed better.”

“Yeah, yeah, and the fifties sucked for women, blacks, and the gays, right? Big fucking deal. Look around, Ellis. They don’t exist anymore, and they aren’t going to, because you and I will be the fathers of the new human race.”

“Do you really think women are going to be satisfied with the June Cleaver existence you’ve mapped out for them? Of course, they won’t really be June Cleavers, will they? The Beave’s mom could vote, and smoke, and discovered there was more to life than the scent of Pine-Sol. They divorced their Wards so they could have careers. You don’t want that, so instead you’ve ordered a set of female slaves that won’t ever talk back. But father knows best, right? So that’s okay. Or don’t you care just so long as your version of the past is created?”

Warren looked at him and shook his head as if he were nuts. “We have the tools to make paradise on earth. I just plan on using them.”

Ellis stared at his friend while overhead a chevron of geese honked its way south. “What is paradise, Warren?”

“What do you mean, what’s paradise?”

Ellis had a sinking suspicion Warren’s idea of paradise was a world the way he wanted it to be. The idea that others might not agree—and not be wrong—never revealed itself as so much as a flicker in the dark quiet of a certain mind.

“I always thought—well, at Thanksgiving everyone would always ask for the same things, right?” Ellis said. “Beauty queens always gave the same answer when asked what they wished for. World peace was always at the top of everyone’s list. After that, everybody added an end to world hunger, then the elimination of disease, discrimination, and the absence of want. Isn’t that supposed to be paradise? But that’s Hollow World, Warren. They’ve already done all that. Isn’t Hollow World already paradise? Maybe we’re just not seeing it because it’s so alien to us. It’s like—you know—really winning the lottery. Everybody dreams about it, but if it were to happen, we wouldn’t be happy because it wouldn’t really be exactly like we envisioned. It wouldn’t be the end of all problems. Nothing ever is. Maybe we can’t see that Hollow World is paradise, because it’s perfect but we’re not.”

“Bullshit.” Warren waved a calloused hand at him.

“How is that bullshit?”

“Because it’s all wrong. Paradise isn’t a lack of want. That’s hell, brother.” Warren glanced back at the lab again, then, clapping Ellis on the back, encouraged him to take a few more steps away. “This is the mistake everyone makes. Life is all about conflict. The pursuit of happiness—that’s life, not the achievement. It’s all about the journey, my friend. Everyone always used to ask how God could let terrible things happen. They didn’t understand. I didn’t, either, until I was alone under a pile of snow in a shack I built with my own hands, surviving on worms. I was teetering on the brink, Ellis—I really was. Thought I was going to die, and I can honestly say, I’ve never lived so fully and deeply before. Every minute, every decision I made could decide if I would survive or die. When spring came and I felt the warmth of the sun and ate that wonderful bushy-tailed squirrel—man—I knew I was alive. I was part of nature like every other animal that made it through the long dark. I never felt like that before, but that’s how we’re supposed to be. Life is intended to be a battle, a struggle. God designed it that way. Think about it. Everything is always in constant conflict. Heat versus cold, light versus dark, gravity versus…whatever. Every living thing in existence has to fight and kill to survive. Even plants are in competition with each other for light and water. The whole ecosystem is based on conflict. Who do you think did that? It’s God, Ellis. God made the world like a cage match. You go in and you fight to win or die trying.”

“Survival of the fittest,” Ellis said, putting that piece in place. In one season in a branch hut, Warren had managed to succeed where centuries of scholars had failed—reconciling science and religion.

“Exactly.” Warren nodded. “You see, everyone thought Darwin was anti-religion, but they had it wrong. They just refused to see the real God.”

“A sadist God?”

Warren smirked. “You only say that because you think conflict is bad. It isn’t. It’s like competition in capitalism. It drives the system and makes it work. Just think for a second. How much fun would it be to play a game like Monopoly if you started out owning everything and having all the money? The fun of playing the game is trying to win. Once you’ve won, what’s the point of playing?”

“So you think God made it so no one can win?”

Warren clapped his hands together, then tapped his nose with his index finger. “Look at history. Every time we solved a problem, it caused two more. Solve world hunger and what happens—overpopulation, right? Discover penicillin and you get super bugs. The world is a problem-creator so we humans never run out of things to combat, because that’s what we love to do. But the baldies, they don’t understand this. They’re trying to wipe out problems, engineer away conflict, and it’s driving them insane. They spend their time painting pictures and singing songs. That’s not living. That’s what people do in prison.”

“So how’s this going to work?” Ellis indicated the lab. “Repopulating the world? We don’t have the pattern to make males, right? So what? Are we going to screw our daughters or just have our sons sleep with their sisters?”

“Like I said, it was good enough for Adam and Eve, but we don’t have to do that. Your sons will marry my daughters and vice versa. It’s all very simple, really. I don’t know why you’re kicking up such a stink.”

Ellis sighed. “I don’t like this idea of a pecking order. It’s—it’s just bullying for the sake of bullying. These people were designed to resist violence—which is a good thing—and here you are training them to fight.”

“They need to be toughened up. They need to know how to fight.”

“Why? Who is there to fight? Did that squirrel you ate put up that much of a battle?”

Warren took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. “Do you think the moles underground are gonna be fine if we build a prosperous society here on the surface? What did I just tell you about conflict?”

“You’re expecting to fight Hollow World?”

“Of course.” Warren raised his arms, then slapped his thighs.

“They’re nonviolent. They don’t even have a police force, much less an army. They don’t understand weapons. There’s no way they’ll attack us.”

“You’ve heard of this Hive Mind thing they’re working on, right? How long before they insist we get chips planted in our brains so they can control us?”

“The Hive Mind has nothing to do with control—”

“Of course it does. That’s all anything is ever about. Once they implement it, they’ll be unstoppable, like a colony of single-minded ants. They’ll be the Borg, rushing from their holes to wipe us out if we refuse to be assimilated. Well, I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Warren, the Hive Project doesn’t even work. They can’t do it. You’re scared of nothing.”

Warren glanced back at the lab again. How many times was that?

“What’s going on in the lab?”

“Huh?”

Ellis pointed. “Is Dex starting the female Chia Pet farm in Edison’s lab?” Ellis had to admit that was surprisingly apropos. Thomas would have been pleased.

“Oh—uh—yeah. Dex is working on all kinds of things. They’ve already got the first batch of eggs growing in some sort of incubator that he and Pol brought back.”

“All kinds? Other than making baby girls, what’s Dex up to?”

“Probably best if you don’t know,” Warren said so thoughtfully, so seriously, that Ellis focused on the lab. He tried to see through the windows, but they were covered.

“Why is that?”

“You know I love you like a brother, Ellis, but you’ve always lacked the conviction of your beliefs.”

Ellis shifted his attention off the lab and back squarely on Warren. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Warren had his straight-shooter face on. The tough-love train was heading Ellis’s way and looking to pick up a passenger. “If you really wanted to be an astronaut, you could have, but you settled for a mid-level white-bread job. And when Peggy got pregnant, you should have told her Hasta la vista, bitch. But you’ve always been weak. Let’s face it, Ellis, if you were a lifeboat captain with too many passengers, they’d all die because you couldn’t make the tough decisions. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just the way you are. A lot of people are that way.”

Ellis felt like Warren was telling him he shouldn’t be ashamed to come out of the closet. Not that there’s anything wrong with being compassionate.

“What’s going on in the lab, Warren?”

“The future.”

“Haven’t we both had more than our fair share off that plate?”

“You can’t understand—not yet. But you would if you had spent that winter with me. You see, when I crawled out, I knew I had been spared for a reason. Course, I didn’t know what that was at the time, but Moses didn’t know why he survived being exiled to the desert either. God had a purpose for me.”

“What’s in the lab, Warren?”

“It wasn’t until I met Pol, Dex, and Hig that I began to understand I had been saved from cancer and a killing winter for a reason. So I could fix the world—so I could be the new Savior—kind of a second coming of Warren Eckard. We really are like Jesus and John the Baptist. I’m doing the heavy lifting at first to pave the way—to prepare the people—for you to use that brain of yours and guide them. I can’t do that as well as you. You got all the education. My gut tells me what’s right, but I can’t explain the hows and whys like you can.”

“How are you preparing the people?” Ellis began walking back toward the lab.

“It took a year, Ellis, and the hard work of everyone here, mostly Pol and Dex, but especially Hal.”

“I never met Hal. Who’s that?”

“Oh, you met him,” Warren told Ellis as he stepped on the porch. “You killed him.”

Inside, the white walls were lined with black shelves filled with bottles of various sizes and colors—wooden floor, wooden tables, wooden chairs, everything battered and beaten, but sturdy as a carpenter’s shop. Big windows would have let plenty of light in if not for the heavy curtains. As it was, oil lamps illuminated the long tables that were crowded with contraptions of brass, glass, and wire. At the far end stood a church-style organ with a sailfish fin of pipes and ivory keys. In front of it, three people were gathered, working on the contents of a large white-plastic crate that rode on its own set of wheels. Ellis had no idea who they were, not just because they had their backs to him, but because they were dressed up like astronauts—no, not astronauts. They weren’t wearing helmets—more like hoods.

“I wouldn’t go any closer,” Warren warned. “Already too close, I would imagine. Dex says the radiation level could be toxic. The baldies are more resistant than we are.”

“Radiation?” Trying to solve the puzzle, Ellis turned his head back and forth between Warren and the crate.

“You have no idea how hard it was to find enriched plutonium in this day and age,” Warren lamented with the same tone he used to complain about the traffic on the Southfield Freeway. “They don’t have a pattern for that, you know.”

When Ellis’s sight finally settled on the white-polymer crate with its convenience wheels and old-fashioned, black-and-yellow radiation symbol, a single thought repeated in his head: That can’t be what I think it is. Ellis had little trouble comprehending interdimensional portals that let people step from one planet to another, Makers that created cups of coffee from gravel, and imitation sunlight miles underground, but his mind refused to accept what he knew was right in front of him.

“What’s going on, Warren?” Ellis asked, his voice pleading for his friend to explain it all away. Hoping he would say, It’s just a joke, buddy—a gag. You should see the look on your face. That big plastic case over there with the reinforced clamps and the US military stamp—that’s just a giant espresso maker. We’re all gonna have lattes!

“I don’t plan to make the same mistake President Truman did,” Warren said. “You know, Patton told everyone we should have rolled our tanks right on into Russia at the end of World War II. He was right. Same with China. Instead, we waited—and what happened? The Ruskies got the bomb, and China ended up buying our asses.”

“What’s in the goddamn box, Warren?”

“It’s a present—a little housewarming gift for Hollow World.” Warren laughed. “Literally. Shame Hal won’t see the bang. Hal was the physicist—or whatever they call it now. Hal’s plan, really. The trick was to place the bombs in the right places.”

Ellis noticed the lids for two other plastic crates on the floor under the table. Both had the same bumblebee-colored warnings, but their associated crates were missing.

“Three H-bombs aren’t going to erase that honeycomb they got down there, but if put in the right spots…”

“Subduction Zone 540,” Ellis said to himself. Words were spilling out on their own accord as his brain locked up, freezing like a deer in headlights.

That can’t be what I think it is.

“Exactly. Subduction Zone 540. Then the whole place will collapse like an old lady stripped of her walker.”

“You used me?” Ellis glared at him. “This whole publicity tour to gain sympathy was just a way of—” Ellis looked back at the plastic crate. “Did you take that from the museum in Jerusalem?”

“The war museum—yeah. Pol said your name would open all the doors, and it did. Everyone was falling over themselves to give you anything, even a backstage tour of the weapons of mass destruction. We thought news traveled fast in our day. A week of promotion and you’re the David Cassidy of the forty-third century. All Pol needed was the coords, and all he needed to get those was to be there.”

“Then, what? You just went back and ported them out? Ported them here?”

“Yep. Slick, huh?” Warren chuckled. “No security at all. The place is a joke. Considered taking a tank, but the thing wouldn’t start, and the portals are too small.”

“I opened the door for you.” Ellis found even his new lungs didn’t work so well when he was drowning in stupidity and humiliation.

“Might have been able to get in there without you, just would have taken longer. The Geomancy Institute was the ball-buster. Those bastards take their work seriously. And they’re smart too. We tried getting inside by talking to one, but that geomancer noticed something—got all antsy. Luckily the poor slob just blurted out his suspicions. Hal was the one who knew the most about geology and stuff. The only one who could hope to pass for a real geomancer, and I had conditioned Hal, like I did the rest of them—like I have Rob reeducating Yal. I call it desensitivity training. They’re never gonna be real men. Don’t have the killing mentality—the advantage of the Y chromosome, as Dex puts it. Hal took care of Geo-24, but by the sound of things, our bald Einstein did a pretty piss-poor job of killing you and Pax—not that I wanted him to.” Warren held up a hand, warding off a rebuttal. “Hal was acting on his own with that.”

Ellis was fitting the puzzle pieces in place, and a picture was finally taking shape. Warren in a bar beating up strangers; Warren’s wife being so clumsy she fell down flights of stairs; Warren’s desire to play quarterback—to be in charge—when his real talent was as a fullback.

The trio in hazard suits at the far side of the room had ignored them, but then one turned. It could have been anyone’s eyes peering out of that shielded hood, even Pax.

“Two are already set—just got this last one. Having trouble with the timer or something, I guess. Not really needed, but I like to be thorough. Operation New Dawn is about to commence.” Warren looked at the clock on the wall. “About three hours, I figure—Dex has the bombs set to blow precisely at 14:54 Hollow World core time, which translates to sunset here. So in the morning, this village will be all that’s left of humanity. Just think of that, Ellis, the whole world cleaned, reset, and ready to sprout anew from our two seeds. And after I dropped out of high school, my mother never thought I’d amount to anything.”

“This is insane!” Ellis’s voice rose in volume and pitch more than he expected. He sounded a little hysterical, a man on the brink, but maybe that’s what Warren needed to hear. Ellis had to convince his friend just how bad an idea this was, and calm conversation just wasn’t going to cut it. “You know that, right, Warren? I’m talking totally off-the-fucking-hook nuts!”

Warren shook his head with that same condescending you-just-don’t-understand smile. “Ellis, why do you think you and I are the only two people to travel through time? If we could do it, don’t you think everyone else could have too?”

“No—not really. Hoffmann’s equations were wrong. His idea wouldn’t have worked at all if I hadn’t figured out the mistake, and I didn’t tell anyone. You were only able to do it because you had my notes.”

“Oh, so you’re the only one in two thousand years who could have figured out that error? We’re the only ones here. You don’t find that a bit strange?”

“Perhaps, but…well, maybe there’s a minimum jump threshold, and that’s why we traveled two thousand years instead of two hundred. More people might have tried but haven’t showed up yet. Not to mention it’s not the kind of thing you try without a really good reason. The high probability of death is a pretty big deterrent. Heck, even the most devout people who are convinced they’ll wind up in heaven aren’t taking the leap of faith to the afterlife. Even after Jesus came back and said the water’s fine, people are still terrified, and in the case of time travel, no one can go back to assuage their fears. It’s no coincidence that both of us had terminal illnesses. Neither of us would have tried otherwise.”

Warren smirked. “You know what I think? I think no one else has done it because it isn’t possible.”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, Ellis, milk crates and batteries? Seriously? Do you think that would actually work?”

“But it did.”

Warren shook his head. “Divine intervention, buddy. The Almighty picked us both up and chucked us into the future to be a pair of Noahs. And when the sun sets, we will be.” He looked out the window again and chuckled. “It’s Friday—did you know that? Gives a whole new meaning to TGIF, don’t you think?”

“I can’t let you do this. If this isn’t some joke—if you’re serious”—Ellis looked at the crate and the three people in hazard suits working over the table—“and it looks like you are…Shit, Warren, there’s no way I’m gonna let you kill millions of people.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it, buddy? They aren’t really people, now, are they? I’m doing this for us, and the world. You can’t tell me you like the idea of humanity living like Ken doll moles. Mankind got off course, slipped the rails, and skidded right over a cliff. We have the chance, right now, to put the old Lionel back on the metal. We can fix everything, and maybe this time God will approve and usher in the end of days.”

Ellis was shaking his head in broad swings. “Sorry, Warren. This isn’t going to happen.”

Warren looked at him sadly. “Already has, pal.”

“I’m going to put a stop to it.”

“Really?” Warren chuckled, a sound that made Ellis cringe. “How? Bombs are already in place. We’re just running out the clock. Besides, you seem to have misplaced your pistol. Or do you plan on fighting me and the rest of the Firestone Farm?”

Warren put up his fists like he was John L. Sullivan and laughed.

Ellis glanced at the three working at the table.

Warren noticed the look. “Trust me, everyone here—everyone on the farm—is in this one hundred percent. You’re not going to change their minds. They’ll do anything to stop being the five hundredth or ten thousandth of someone. After the bombs go off, they’ll each be one of just a handful, and after some plastic surgery, they’ll each be unique. They’ll each be special.”

Pax was right. Warren was planning on doing something much, much worse.

Ellis took a step toward the door and stopped.

“Where you gonna go? You don’t have a portal. Weather is getting colder, and not as many baldies are coming up here this time of year. There’s nothing but wilderness beyond this village. Trust me, I know that well.”

Ellis hesitated.

“I’ll tell you what,” Warren said in his old, barfly-friendly voice and clapped him on the back. “I’ve been working with Yal to build a still. We’ve made a few quarts of this awful moonshine from corn—you know it’s not just for fructose syrup anymore.” He winked. “Tastes like gasoline, but does the trick. What do you say the two of us go get loaded like that time when we snuck the Kool-Aid rum punch into the Bob Seger concert at Pine Knob. They don’t need me here. We can take a few bottles and hike up to the old Rouge River. I know a spot, a hill that looks down so that you can actually see old Detroit. The city ain’t there no more, but you can see where it used to be. You can see the Detroit River and a smidge of Canada where the Ambassador Bridge once was. We’ll get hammered on corn juice and remember the old days when we used to be rusted gears bound for the trash bin. C’mon, Dex has a book around here of pattern variations. It has pictures. We can pick out what we want our future brides to look like.”

Ellis felt boxed in. Warren was right—what could he do?

Fact is, people aren’t the same. You’re smarter than I am. I’m stronger than you are. These are facts.

Ellis couldn’t argue with facts. Warren had aged about a decade beyond Ellis, but he’d had work done too. Maybe a lot of work. With his broad chest, thick arms, and a neck the size of Ellis’s thigh, Warren looked like the football star he’d once been. And even if he could subdue him, Warren was right, Ellis was outnumbered. If they all joined forces, and there was no reason to think otherwise, they would overwhelm him easily.

You’re smarter than I am. These are facts.

“What do you say, Ellis?”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’d prefer to drink alone,” he replied, feigning frustration and not having to act too hard. “You say Yal knows where this battery acid is?”

“Yep. Strong stuff. Don’t kill yourself. We just got done putting you back together.”

The distance between the Menlo Park complex and the Firestone Farm hadn’t changed, but the trip back took forever. Ellis jogged a lot of it and discovered Wat hadn’t been joking. He was hardly winded. He might actually be able to do a marathon if his leg muscles weren’t still fifty-eight years old.

Warren had him trapped. Maybe at one time there had been a dedicated portal booth back to Hollow World from the village, but just as cellphones had turned public phones into ugly, broken-down eyesores, the Port-a-Calls had made portal booths obsolete. Without a portal maker he couldn’t get back to Hollow World, and if he couldn’t get back, he couldn’t warn anyone.

There had to be a way to communicate, but Ellis hadn’t ever seen a Hollow World cellphone. Still, when he had first woke up on Pax’s bed, Alva had said she had contacted Pax, and that Pax had replied. So, communication was possible. Maybe the Port-a-Call was multifunctional like a smartphone. Any way he looked at it, Ellis had to get his hands on one.

Yal was still busy cooking, shoving new splits of wood into the burner through the top of the big iron stove. No one else in the kitchen—hopefully no one else in the house.

“Master Ellis.” Yal grinned at him.

Yal was wearing the standard nineteenth-century white-shirt, black-pants ensemble that everyone at the farm favored. Yal kept the top two buttons open, revealing a V of skin. Nothing else was visible, causing Ellis’s hopes to sink.

Peggy—who hated carrying a purse—always used to complain how women’s clothes never had any pockets. She constantly misplaced her keys and wallet. For a time she kept her license and credit cards in a little plastic pouch that she wore around her neck like a security badge. It worked until she lost that too. But in a world where clothes were optional, Ellis imagined Peggy’s onetime solution would be commonplace. Hal had worn Geo-24’s Port-a-Call that way…maybe a lot of them did.

“How’s dinner coming?” Ellis asked, clapping Yal on the back and leaving his hand on the cook’s shoulder near the neck. He pretended to give Yal a friendly rub while using his thumb to feel through the shirt for the bump of a chain or strap.

Nothing.

Pax always kept the Port-a-Call in a vest pocket. Maybe Yal did too.

How much does Yal know? Will he fight me or obey his master?

Ellis spotted the cast-iron fry pan sitting idle on the sideboard. One solid hit with that and Ellis wouldn’t need to worry about winning Yal’s cooperation. How ironic that just a few minutes ago he was fuming about Rob beating Yal with a little stick.

Let’s call that plan B.

“Yal?”

“Yes, master?” Yal halted fueling the stove in order to give undivided attention.

Yal…the name finally triggered a memory from his first meal in Hollow World. “Yal…you’re a cook,” Ellis said stupidly.

“Yes, master.” Not surprisingly, Yal looked confused.

“No, no. I mean you were a real cook, before coming here, weren’t you? I ate…something called a minlatta—I think?”

“Minlatta with tarragon oil sauce,” Yal said. “That was one of the last patterns I designed.”

“It was wonderful—really wonderful.”

Yal tried but couldn’t suppress a smile. Ellis imagined Yal didn’t get much praise around the farm. “Thank you. That’s very kind. Cooking is a lot harder without a Maker.”

“I don’t know about that,” Ellis said. “I can boil potatoes, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to boil water with a Maker.”

Yal shrugged, but the smile was still there, and Ellis saw his chance. “Yal? Do you have a Port-a-Call?”

“Me? No. Master Ren collected them from all of us during the initiation ceremony.” Yal glanced down at the white bandages still on the stumps of his missing fingers. “It’s part of our commitment to the farm.”

“How do you leave then?”

“We don’t.”

“I’ve seen Pol and Dex leave.”

“Well, if Master Ren wants us to go do something, he provides us with a POC, but we have to give it back afterward. No one leaves without Master Ren’s permission. I think Pol is the only person who has one all the time. That’s because Pol is always jumping back and forth.”

“Where does Master Ren keep the devices he takes from everyone?”

Yal shrugged. “In his room maybe?”

Ellis abandoned Yal to his boiling pots and went up the farmhouse stairs. He found it easy to locate Warren’s room—it was the only one locked. He tried kicking the door like in the movies, but either modern-day doors weren’t built very well or they were all props because all Ellis got out of his kick was a sore foot. He might have broken a toe, but the pain wasn’t that bad.

He had to get through the door, find a Port-a-Call, figure out how to use it, and get back to Hollow World in time to find someone to ring the alarm and send in the cavalry. Somewhere in the shadowy corners of his mind were questions: What cavalry? What alarm? And who exactly could he get to ring it? One of the things Ellis liked about Hollow World was its lack of central authority—its lack of any authority at all. No one tells anyone else what to do, he remembered Pax saying, as if the very idea of giving or accepting orders was inconceivable. Now, however, that was a problem, but it was the next problem. Small steps, he reminded himself. He also remembered to slow his breathing to avoid hyperventilating.

He ran back down the steps, drawing a look from Yal, and spotted the fireplace poker. He picked it up and with a reassuring smile at Yal, he raced back up the stairs. Once again he thanked the ISP for his new and improved set of lungs, even though his leg muscles and injured toe were not so pleased.

He shoved the point of the poker into the doorjamb and pried back the wood, splintering it. He jabbed it in again, splintered more. On the third try, he caught the metal faceplate of the lock and bowed the metal pole as he threw his full weight on it and prayed Archimedes was right about levers and worlds. The latch popped, the door swung open, and Ellis raced in.

Like the rest of the house, the bedroom was vintage Old West. Floral wallpaper competed with a just-as-busy diamond-patterned rug. White-lace-covered windows looked like three square ghosts standing vigil around the simple wooden bed. A mirrored dresser, complete with washbowl and pitcher, a wooden trunk, and two nightstands filled out the bedroom. Ellis laid into the locked trunk with his trusty poker. He didn’t so much open it as bash and rip it apart. Inside he found an old familiar high-school yearbook, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, Warren’s football jersey—old number forty-eight—and what looked like a watch battery and a microwave. No bag of Port-a-Calls. No guns.

He searched the rest of the room and found nothing useful. There was a Bible on the nightstand that looked new. Thinking how books sometimes were hollowed out to hide things, he flipped through it. Ellis found nothing except that the bookmark ribbon lay somewhere in Leviticus.

Warren had anticipated the others looking for the POCs and had hidden them.

He looked under the bed and through the drawers of the dresser.

Nothing.

Disappointed, Ellis returned to the footlocker and pulled out the little appliance. Thinking there might be POCs inside, he shook it.

“That’s a Maker.”

Ellis’s heart skipped as he looked up to see one of them standing in the doorway, the name tag covered by a black wool coat that went perfectly with the wide-brimmed hat. Ellis froze, guilty as sin, caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“For such a back-to-basics fellow, it’s interesting that Ren has a Maker and a Dynamo hidden away, isn’t it?”

Ellis was worried the sound of his heart pounding was audible. What would Warren do when he found out? Lock him up, probably. Chain him in the chicken coop or something. He set the Maker down, and looked for the poker.

The coat-wearing intruder took a step toward him, and Ellis was just about to reach for the poker—which he’d left on the floor—when his visitor stopped, turned, and carefully closed the door, providing them with privacy.

Something in the person’s movements and expression was familiar. There was a gentleness around the eyes, concern in the line of the jaw, and the mouth was on the verge of a smile.

“Pax?” Ellis said the name as a wish with equal parts hope and disbelief.

The smile exploded into a giant grin. “You recognized me!”

Ellis physically wavered. He hadn’t expected the response. As much as he might have hoped, as much as he prayed for it to be true, it wasn’t really possible…was it? “Is it really—”

Pax rushed forward, wrapping him in a tight embrace. “I’ve been waiting for you. Thought you’d never get back.”

“Oh my God!” Ellis whispered, smelling the scent of cinnamon. “It’s you—Pax, you’re alive!”

“Of course, I’m—”

Ellis returned the hug, squeezing as hard as he could, and then, without thinking or caring to think, he kissed Pax—a long, hard kiss on the lips. A tear slid down Ellis’s cheek, and he said, “Oh Jesus, Pax, I thought—I thought that you’d killed yourself. I thought I had—God, you’re still alive!”

“Yes, Ellis Rogers, I’m fine—a lot better, now that…that…”

“What?”

Pax looked at him grinning, showing off those perfect teeth. “I can’t believe that you recognized me.”

“Listen, Pax, we need to leave. We need to go right now.”

“Together this time, right?” Pax smiled at him hopefully.

“Absolutely.”

Still holding on, Ellis felt Pax’s body stiffen. The arbitrator pulled away and stared intently into Ellis’s eyes. The bright smile was snuffed out and replaced by horror. “Oh no—oh…” Ellis felt Pax begin to shake. “They’re going to concrete Hollow World.”

Ellis nodded. “Three nuclear bombs. I think they’ve already placed the first two. They’ll go off in less than three hours—at precisely 14:54 Hollow World core time.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We still have a chance,” Ellis said. “If we can find the bombs, we can use your Port-a-Call and shove the warheads through to give your PICA company.”

“But how will we find them?” Pax pulled the POC from a vest pocket.

“They’ll be at the Geomancy Institute.”

“I think that might be a big place, and they’ll have hidden them, won’t they?”

“Probably, but that’s okay. I know a way to find them. We just need to make a stop on the way.”