Chapter 17
The cabin was remote. The car drove us there, silent and swift and perfect through every winding turn on the mountain roads.
Lyle and I talked. I tried hard to understand what the last twenty years meant for him.
What they’d done to him. Two marriages, two divorces.
He was elusive on the topic of children, and I didn’t press.
I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to shut down on me. I had to hear him, keep him talking.
He had a host of academic and professional accomplishments, trailed by controversy and attacks both professionally and personally.
And, throughout it all, there was always the specter of me.
The wait, the preparation, the return. As the car drove, he seemed content to tell me about his life.
The hardships, the moments of fun, the setbacks, the gains.
Lyle’s life was a series of ups and downs.
I had a hard time parsing out how much of it was up versus down.
I had only my own life as a frame of reference, the thirty-seven years I’d lived before that first jump twenty-four hours into the future.
My highs had not been so high as Lyle’s, my lows not so low.
But in aggregate, Lyle’s story seemed so dark.
Not what I’d wanted for him. Perhaps all parents felt the same way as they watched their children grow.
The heavy burden, the sensation of my heart taken from my chest and walking around exposed and vulnerable in the world.
I wished I could take those abyssal lows from him.
Or have been there to lend a hand and help him climb out.
We reached the cabin late in the morning.
So much had happened, but it was still early in the day.
I was exhausted, mentally and emotionally.
The prospect of it happening all over again the next morning hung over me.
Dead weight chained around my shoulders.
Lyle saw it, his eyes, as ever, missing nothing.
“I bought this place about five years ago,” he said as we got out of the car. “Got a deal during the market crash. I own the surrounding six acres. I made friends with the guy who owns the lion’s share of the rest. He likes it quiet, too. We leave each other alone.”
I stood next to the car. In the cool air and mountain sunlight the squat cabin looked homey and inviting, exuding warmth.
It was constructed with thick logs, traditional and solid.
I wondered if Lyle chose it because of its old style, knowing he’d bring me here.
To try to put me at ease. I didn’t ask. It didn’t matter.
The roof was a reflective matte grid. Solar panels.
We were a quarter way up the slope of the mountain.
The cabin sat in a clearing surrounded by evergreen trees.
Boughs rustled in the breeze. Broad picture windows in the front of the cabin glinted with reflected sunlight.
I guessed those windows, from the inside, would provide a hell of a view of the valley to the west.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Thanks. Come on. I’ll show you inside.”
I nodded and started forward, but Lyle stepped around to the rear of the little vehicle first. A hatch opened and Lyle reached inside.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He straightened enough to hand me a large duffel bag.
It was black and heavy. He pulled another identical bag out and closed the hatch.
“These,” he said, huffing with the effort of shouldering the second bag.
“These are part of those preparations I was talking about. I would’ve left them in the cabin, but I wasn’t sure we’d make it back here. ”
“What’s in them?”
“I’ll show you. Come on.” He led me to the cabin, up a set of short steps, and onto a narrow porch.
The door, I noticed, had no handle. Next to the door was a gray metal cover.
Lyle flipped up the cover, revealing a flat, reflective black surface about the size of a paperback book.
He put his right hand on the surface. It flashed a deep blue and the door opened.
“Biometrics,” Lyle said. “I’ll program it for you, too.”
“Fancy.”
“Not really. This tech dates back to your time.” He walked into the cabin, and I followed.
The door had a handle on the inside, and I used it to close the door behind us.
The interior of the cabin was small but well-appointed.
Directly inside was a coat and shoe area that opened to a modestly sized living room, complete with a couch and two plush recliners arranged around a stone fireplace.
The kitchen occupied the rear of the living room, separated by an island bar. Stairs next to the kitchen led down.
Lyle set his duffel on the floor near the couch and spread his arms. “This is it, casa de Treder.” He pointed. “Kitchen. Bathroom. Two bedrooms and another bathroom. And that’s it. Not much, but it’s mine.”
There was something about the way he said it that made me stop as I set my duffel next to his. I peered at him. “Do you live here? I mean, all the time?”
“Yes, since—for a while, now.”
My son, here in the middle of nowhere, preparing for the day I’d return. “Isn’t it lonely?”
A shadow of pain passed across his face.
Then it was gone. “It’s by choice, Dad. I got tired of the spotlight.
The guest bedroom downstairs is my office now.
Fully appointed. We may be out in the boonies, but I’ve got connection speeds as fast as any I had in my office back at the university.
I keep up with my research, talk with my colleagues, but I don’t teach anymore, or go to conferences to get shouted at. It’s not worth it.”
“Are you happy?” The question popped out before I could stop myself.
I saw him as a newborn, cradled in my arms, Amy exhausted on the hospital bed but smiling up at us past her sweat-tangled bangs.
I remembered the feeling that I would do anything for him.
Anything to make his life a good one. Are you happy?
I should have been there to ask that question on his sixteenth birthday. At his graduation. On his wedding day.
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“I don’t know. I guess not. Not really. But what is happiness, anyway?
Is it an emotion in and of itself, something you can actively possess?
Or is it a lack of other, negative emotions, a lack of worry?
Since moving here my life’s gotten better.
I’ve stepped out of the limelight, and I’m certainly more content as a result.
I can’t really call myself happy. But content?
Sure. And maybe that’s as much as anyone can hope for. I miss—um. Yeah, I’m content.”
I frowned.
He moved to the duffel bags, his motions brusque as he dropped to one knee. “Come on, there’s not much time and too much to do.”
“What do you mean?”
He took out a flat, gray box with rounded sides and set it on the floor with a clunk.
Next was a pair of rolled-up black pants.
“Dad. We need to start operating under the assumption the time jumps aren’t going to stop.
Like I said earlier, the math—it looks like a once-started-can’t-stop proposition.
Now that it’s begun, it must run its course.
For as long as it goes. So, we need to prepare you for what’s coming as best we can. ”
“I don’t—I can’t—”
“Well, you’re damn well going to have to.
” He yanked things out of the bags and slammed them to the floor.
“Those crazy bastards who’ve turned you into a religion may have their priorities backwards and their brains scrambled, but they’re right about one thing.
You’re special. Whether you like it or not, this is happening to you. ”
“I’m not—”
“Cut that.” He said it like a curse. “This isn’t happening to anyone else.
You are traveling, and you’re heading for something.
God knows what, but you’re heading toward it, and fast, one day at a time.
You’re going to keep jumping farther into the future, and each time things out there are going to get harder and harder to predict, or even understand.
That little riot today in the quad”—he shook his head and slammed another box onto the floor—“that’s just a taste of what’s coming.
” He stopped. He twisted around to look at me, his eyes blazing.
“And you are going to survive, Dad. You’re going to see this through.
If for nothing else, then you’re going to do it for me. ”
I stared back as he glared at me, unblinking. He held my eyes until I shut my mouth and straightened up. “What…” I licked my lips. “What do I do?”
“You listen to me.”
He had me try everything on, to get a feel for it all.
The pants were a carbon nanofiber weave, with a thermal interior lining for warmth.
It was fire- and bullet-resistant, with dozens of clever pockets Lyle filled with survival tools: water sterilization pills, high-density food packets, on-off fire starters, a miniature welding torch, knives, folding starlight binoculars, and more.
Next was a centimeter-thick skintight defense shirt Lyle said was straight from the latest military design boards, by way of the California black market.
Over that, I put on a carbon nanofiber weave tactical vest with still more pockets filled with gear.
Last, I shrugged into a knee-length, dark gray overcoat, heavy and warm and designed, from how Lyle described it, to survive anything short of a nuclear explosion.
He even had a helmet for me, black with a mirrored visor and an almost Darth Vader–like set of horizontal slats in front.
It was a cross between a motorcycle helmet and a gas mask.
I tilted the helmet back and forth. It was ugly. The prototypical function-before-form kind of design. I looked at Lyle, my eyebrows raised.