Taft Ranch: A Thunder Mountain Novel Read online

  As she got closer to the bed she was startled by the intense brown eyes of Lee Taft looking up at her. He seemed to have a depth and intelligence that now radiated from his eyes.

  Steph stopped in the doorway and just stared

  Craig, one of the nurses and Steph’s most recent love interest, stood beside Lee’s bed. Joan could see why Steph was interested in the guy. He was a hunk, that was for sure.

  “We dressed Lee for your visit,” Craig said. “He asked to at least be in a shirt and pants.

  She nodded and Craig moved over to the door beside Steph.

  “I’m Dr. Joan Failor,” Joan said, moving up and smiling at Lee. He was lying there in one of his own flannel shirts and jeans, a wide buckle at his waist and socks on his feet. They had kept his original clothes cleaned and ready for him. Luckily they had.

  For some reason, she felt instantly attracted to him, far more than a simple favorite patient attraction.

  He stared at her as well for a moment, then shook his head and said, “Lee Taft. Call me Lee. It’s nice to meet you, Doctor.”

  She laughed. “It’s really nice to meet you as well, Lee.”

  “So, where am I,” Lee asked. “And how come I can’t feel my legs?”

  “It seems you fell off a horse,” Joan said, deciding that since he was so clearly awake now, he could handle some of the truth. Often they kept some of what had happened from those coming out of a coma because loved ones had died in the same event.

  But Lee had been alone and had no family that they had ever found.

  Lee actually laughed at that, the sound raspy. He shook his head. “Only fell off twice in all the years.”

  “You broke part of your back and were in a coma from a head injury,” Joan said. “Which is why you are here in my building. We are not sure why you picked this moment to suddenly awake.”

  “Coma?” Lee asked, now suddenly seeming slightly worried. He wasn’t worried that he had broken his back and couldn’t feel his legs. He was worried that he had been asleep.

  “I’m afraid so,” Joan said. “We weren’t certain that you would ever wake up, even though your brain scans showed complete activity. As I said, we’re not sure why you suddenly did now, but are very glad you did.”

  Lee suddenly looked a little panicked. “How long was I in the coma?”

  Joan usually hated to tell anyone the number at first, but Lee was clearly back and in full control of his mind.

  “About six years,” Joan said.

  Now the calm, deep, intelligent eyes of Lee Taft went into complete panic.

  “The date? What’s today’s date?”

  Joan looked puzzled and glanced around at Steph and Craig who were also looking puzzled. Both of them were taking notes, which is what Joan needed.

  She turned back to Lee. “May 3rd, 1986.”

  Full panic hit Lee’s face. He suddenly looked as if he was being chased by more creatures from the worst movie ever seen.

  “Lee, what’s wrong?” Joan asked. “What happened, what did you miss?”

  Lee shook his head from side to side, the panic not leaving his face.

  He just kept muttering, “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.”

  “Can you tell me what is happening?” Joan asked, easing closer to Lee and trying to comfort him. She had seen many patients come out of comas over the years, and often have a reaction about how much time they have lost. But nothing like this.

  “I need to get to the Historical Research Institute,” he said. “Down on Warm Springs Ave. As soon as possible.”

  “Why?” Joan asked.

  “Because today’s my birthday,” Lee said.

  As if that would explain everything, but to Joan it explained nothing. And what a historical research institute had to do with anything she had no idea.

  “Well,” Joan said, trying to smile. “Happy birthday.”

  “It won’t be if I can’t get to the institute before ten-fifteen in the morning.”

  Joan glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. It’s already ten-fourteen.”

  Lee grabbed both her arms, the panic clear in his eyes. His grip was amazingly tight for a man who had been in a coma for so long. Clearly the medical exercises they had continued to do with him over the years had kept his muscles working fine.

  “Why are you so panicked?” Joan asked. “You are here. It’s safe.”

  “Because today is my birthday,” Lee said, not letting go of her arms. “I can’t be here. Time won’t let me be here.”

  And as he said that, Joan found herself sitting in the dirt with Lee still holding onto her arms.

  His room was gone.

  Steph and Craig were gone.

  Her building was gone.

  Everything was gone.

  Only thing around them was a massive and magnificent crystal cavern, shaped like a huge dome with a flat dirt floor. Every inch of the walls were covered in glowing pink crystals that looked like a form of quartz.

  She blinked. This wasn’t possible.

  Not possible.

  “Oh, no,” Lee said, letting go of her arms and moving away from her. “Oh, no, what have I done? I didn’t mean to bring you with me. I didn’t. I am so sorry.”

  “Where are we?” Joan asked, her voice hoarse.

  “Oh, no, what have I done,” he repeated. “I am so, so sorry.”

  She looked around, trying to make any sense of what she was seeing. Clearly, it was all a hallucination. It had to be.

  “Lee,” she said, trying to keep the panic from her voice. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in the Nexus,” Lee said. “I’ve never been here before, but I know what Duster has described and this is the Nexus.”

  As she watched, Lee stood and looked around like a kid staring at tall buildings in a city for the first time.

  Joan pushed herself to her feet.

  “How can you stand up?” Joan asked, staring at Lee.

  And then she staggered back, feeling even more of a shock as he turned to face her.

  He was her age.

  The gray hair was gone, the lines in his face were gone.

  He was handsome and young, with a full head of brown hair.

  She felt the cavern start to spin around her and she decided at that moment it was just better to sit back down.

  Lee caught her in strong, young hands before she fell in her attempt to sit.

  FOUR

  Time: Unknown

  Nexus

  LEE EASED THE beautiful doctor down to the flat dirt floor of the large cavern, then sat down beside her.

  Around them the cavern felt like they were sitting on the fifty-yard line of a major football stadium. Actually, this cavern could take just about every major football stadium and have room left over.

  Pink quartz-like crystals covered every inch of the massive cavern, glowing with enough light to make the cavern seem like it was almost bathed in defused sunlight.

  Every crystal represented a timeline. This was what he had been studying for hundreds of years. And Duster had described the Nexus many times in their conversations and had even offered to bring Lee to see the little part closest to the surface, but they had never gotten around to it.

  He wanted to touch the doctor’s arm, to try to calm her, but decided it was better to just let her have a moment. He had been around so few women over all the years, he actually had no idea what to do to help her.

  “So what happened?” Dr. Failor asked finally after about thirty seconds. Her voice was shaking.

  Interestingly, her reaction was calming Lee’s panic. He could feel his brain starting to work to solve this problem, if there was a solution.

  “By holding onto you in my panic,” Lee said, “I accidently brought you with me. I am so, so sorry, Doctor Failor.”

  “Call me Joan,” she said.

  He nodded and said nothing.

  “You knew this might happen?” Joan asked.

&n
bsp; “I didn’t know what would happen, honestly,” Lee said, shaking his head. “That’s why I was so panicked. I couldn’t be there on my birthday.”

  “As if this isn’t bad enough,” Joan said, waving her arms around her at the fantastic beauty of the massive chamber, “you are still not making one bit of sense.”

  Lee nodded. “I suppose you will believe me if I tell you the truth, with all this?”

  He indicated the cavern.

  “Any kind of explanation would be helpful at this point,” Joan said. “But please, yes the truth.”

  Lee could tell she was getting angry and he didn’t need her angry. Actually, if they had any hope of getting out of this alive, he needed her working with him.

  But he doubted they would get out of this alive.

  “I was born on May 3rd, 1986, in Boise, Idaho,” Lee said. “When I said it was my birthday, I meant it was my real birthday. More than likely the process of my starting to be born was what brought me out of the coma after all the years.”

  Joan looked at him, opened her mouth, then shut it, shaking her head.

  “I am a mathematician,” Lee said, “and I had traveled into a different timeline through crystals like all these. There are crystals like these taken from a cavern like this under the Historical Research Institute in Boise. I left the institute in 2018 and traveled back to 1955. I planned on returning to 2018 in 1980, but the accident stopped that, it seemed.”

  Joan just stared at him, not saying anything.

  He pushed on. “All of these crystals represent a different timeline. Every time anyone makes a decision or when there is more than one outcome to something, two timelines are formed, one for each outcome.”

  “There would be an infinite number of timelines,” Joan said, her voice flat.

  Lee was very glad she understood that. In the long run, that would help a lot.

  “There are,” Lee said. “These crystals represent just the place where time and energy and matter meet. These caverns are infinite.”

  “Oh,” was all she said.

  Lee could see the panic in her face again starting to build.

  “One major rule of timelines is that you can’t be in the timeline when you were originally alive in it.”

  “Thus the importance of your birthday?” she asked, taking some deep breaths.

  Lee nodded. “If you die in another timeline, you just go back to when you started. So if the horse accident would have killed me, I would have ended up back in 2018 just fine, no worse for wear. In essence, what happens in another timeline doesn’t affect you in your original timeline, other than you lose a few minutes of life.”

  “That’s why you look to be thirty now?” Joan asked.

  “I’m thirty-two,” Lee said, then he looked around. “At least I was when I left 2018.”

  “So how did we end up here?”

  “Two of me couldn’t be alive in the same timeline,” Lee said. “So the timeline spit this me, the interloper from another timeline, out. Because I was panicked and holding onto you, I brought you with me. Again I am so sorry.”

  “You don’t seem that surprised you are here,” Joan said.

  “Being spit out of a timeline and into the Nexus is one of the theories. I’m afraid we are the first to test that theory.”

  “Oh, great,” she said.

  He stood and offered her his hand. “We need to get moving.”

  “To where?” she asked. “Didn’t you say these caverns are infinite?”

  “I did,” Lee said. “But Duster and I have theorized that time will spit an interloper out at the first place that person didn’t exist. So I’m guessing that in these crystals in this room, I don’t exist.”

  Joan looked around at the huge chamber, and the massive area where it joined another chamber on one side and the same sized archway on the other, making them look like linked bubbles.

  “How do you know which way to go?”

  “We go uphill,” Lee said. “Where Duster found the cavern with the timelines closest to our world was near the surface.”

  They started off walking at a fast pace. It was clear to Lee they were going uphill. But it was also clear they didn’t have much time. They had no water or food.

  He wished they had put on his boots in the hospital. Walking on this hard, dusty surface was easy, but not pleasant with only socks on. He supposed he should be glad they hadn’t left him in the hospital gown with a diaper on and no back on the gown. That would have been an embarrassing way to die in front of a beautiful doctor.

  “How is there light in here?” Joan asked after a few minutes of silent walking.

  “Each crystal has an energy we don’t understand,” Lee said. “Whatever happens, never touch a crystal.”

  They walked in silence until they left the first big chamber and entered another, almost as big.

  “So tell me,” Joan said. “Who is this Duster you keep talking about?”

  “Duster Kendal,” Lee said. “With his wife Bonnie they are two of the greatest math brains in all of the world.”

  Joan stopped and stared at him.

  He walked for a few steps more before stopping and looking back at her.

  “Bonnie Kendal funded all my research and gave me the funds to build my building,” she said.

  Lee nodded. “They do that sort of thing. Ever met them?”

  “No,” Joan said, starting up again and joining him as they turned to keep walking.

  “You’ll like them if we can figure a way out of here.”

  “Seems like you are thinking this is a big if?” Joan said.

  “Won’t lie to you, doctor,” Lee said, not looking at her. “It’s a huge if.”

  At that point they walked on in silence.

  FIVE

  Time: Unknown

  Nexus

  JOAN HAD ABOUT a thousand questions because she just flat didn’t believe where she was. And who she was walking with.

  It was all impossible to believe, actually.

  This had to all be a dream and she was going to wake up and laugh at herself and then tell Steph about how she had dreamed Lee Taft was not only awake, but walking and young and handsome. And that they had walked through some beautiful caverns covered in glowing pink crystals.

  It could only be a dream.

  She and Steph had eaten dinner last night at Carlo’s, so clearly next time she needed to avoid eating so much of the wonderful garlic sauce.

  But the more they walked, the more this didn’t feel like a dream. Other than the fact that everything around her was impossible.

  They crossed out of the second cavern and into yet another. The third cavern seemed to be just slightly smaller. She had no idea if that was a good thing or not.

  “Let’s hope you and I live in some of these timelines around us,” Lee said. “No way of knowing for sure, but it would mean we’re going in the right direction.”

  Joan shook her head and decided that even if this was a dream, she needed to know more about how it worked.

  “So explain to me how you can travel in timelines?”

  Lee shrugged. “Story goes that Duster’s family were mining and broke into a cavern close to the surface and in the dimension we live in.”

  She started to ask what he meant by dimensions, then just shook her head and let him continue.

  “Math has proven that energy and time and matter are all linked together, and that math has often said that a manifestation of that link would appear as matter in some way or another.”

  “The crystals,” she said.

  “The crystals,” he said. “Bonnie and Duster, being brilliant math minds, realized what they had found and after a few years figured out a very simple way to simply step into the past of another timeline. Each timeline is so exactly like the others, it was as if they were stepping back into their own past.”

  “But they really weren’t traveling in time into their own past,” Joan said.

  “That’s right,” Le
e said. “By going back to the past of another timeline, they created more timelines.”

  Joan shook her head. She was feeling lost.

  Lee saw her shake her head and kept going. “Each crystal is a timeline and when a decision is made, another crystal is formed, both identical except for the decision.”

  “So my choice of a meal last night at Carlo’s caused another timeline?”

  She was having a very hard time imagining that.

  “Sure,” he said. “But if the choice changed nothing, the alternate timeline merged back in with the original. But if the choice was for picking something with a bacteria in it that kills you and picking something safe, then the two timelines would continue on.”

  “Infinite number of timelines,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “What we are seeing around us are the timelines so close to our own we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

  “That’s why the walk?” Joan asked, starting to understand. “The timeline spit us out in an area where you didn’t exist? So we have to get back to where you do exist. But if that is the case, what timeline are we in at the moment?”

  “My original timeline,” Lee said, looking at her with some respect showing in those deep brown eyes. “At least that’s what Duster and I figured out would happen.”

  “So if you had jumped back to the day after your birthday,” Joan said, “would this have happened?”

  “No,” Lee said. “You are pushed sideways into a timeline where you didn’t exist. I’m the first to be trapped in a timeline at the time I was being born.”

  “And holding onto me brought me with you?” Joan asked.

  “Yeah, sorry about that again,” he said, shaking his head. “I really wasn’t thinking. Bringing you along is like clothes or packs. If you are holding them or wearing them, they go with you.”

  “Luckily Craig dressed you then, isn’t it?” Joan asked.

  Lee smiled at her and she could see a little of the brilliant Lee Taft behind that smile.

  “Very lucky for me.”

  “So this isn’t a dream,” she said after they had walked for a few more minutes in silence toward the massive archway into the cavern beyond, climbing slightly as they went across the flat surface.