Luke's Quest 01 - Prisoner Of Time (v5.0), page 16
"I haven’t lied to her," I responded. "I’ve been keeping some things from her to protect her. I want to keep her alive."
"So do I," he responded, "but right now I'm more concerned about keeping you alive."
I wanted to ask him about what I remembered seeing – about his comforting Lisa, but before I could, she returned to the room.
"Your eye looks so bright," she said with a smile. "Do you feel up to talking?"
"How did you find out?" I asked her.
"I called your cell phone," she explained. "I left about a dozen messages. Then Willie answered. He told me you had fallen." She looked at Willie. "I don't like lies, either." She turned to face me. "When I saw your face, I began to hit him."
"And she kicks hard, too" Willie added, grinning at her in an almost too familiar way for my comfort right now.
"Well, you lied to me," she said with her familiar fake pout. "When I saw your face, I knew someone had tried to kill you."
I strained to sit up in the hospital bed. "How bad do I look?" I asked.
The doctor didn’t want me standing. However, I don't like being told what to do and have been known to disobey rules. I stood and walked to the bathroom dragging the rack of IVs and holding the catheter bag. I didn’t know the face in the mirror. It was hard to look at the reflection with one eye swollen closed. There were stitches at the edge of the eye and on my cheek. I had four days' growth of beard, and it itched; however, the swelling prevented my shaving. I prefer to shave every day or so. I cannot stand an itchy beard. The open eye was extremely bloodshot. I could feel stitches in the back of my head where the bottle had struck. They had shaved my head in order to stitch-up the wounds to my scalp. I couldn’t remember having my hair this short since I was a small child.
I started to fall, but Lisa reached out to steady me. She and Willie helped me back to bed just as the nurse came in. I promised no more walking without doctor's permission. The alternative, she threatened, was that the nursing staff would bind me to the bed.
Lisa smiled. "I think he would enjoy the bondage," she told them, getting a big laugh. Laughing hurt my ribs.
"You have a broken rib or two. Other than the swelling, the eye should be fine. You have a severe concussion, which is why you aren’t to stand," Lisa told me.
“When I was barely awake – The first time I realized you were here, Lisa, you said this was ‘your fault.’ None of this was your fault,” I told her.
“I should have waited to start dating you until after I was divorced,” she told me. “That’s all I could think about.”
I barely noticed a quick exchange of winks between her and Willie. I wondered about the meaning of that, but decided not to push the issue.
Willie held out a set of photographs for me to examine. "There was a perfect imprint of a boot on your face and chest," he told me. Steve got the people at the crime lab to give him the size, but that is still no real lead."
"How much does Steve know?" I asked.
"Not as much as he feels he should," Willie said with a frown. "He’s hurt as well as upset that you don't trust him. I explained to him that you do not trust me, either. If you don't start explaining things soon, you will not have any friends left to watch your back."
Lisa was watching both of our faces. "I thought you two were the best of friends," she said, clearly concerned.
It was clear Willie was concerned, as well, when he said, “I thought we were friends, too, but I guess I was wrong.”
"I fear I may have caused problems between you," Lisa said with a trembling voice.
"Lisa," I said. "I love you. There are things I cannot tell you just yet. You have to trust me a little longer."
"I’m not sure that I can," she responded.
Her words hurt me more than the boot had. "I understand," I told her. I thought carefully before I spoke, I didn’t want the drugs to cause a slip of the tongue. "If you knew that at a point in time in the future a friend might be murdered, would you do everything in your power to prevent it?"
She looked at me for several minutes. "Yes, but I’m not sure I’d lie to the friend."
"I have not lied to you," I responded, again choosing my words carefully. "I’m trying to protect you by not telling you everything." She seemed to be growing angry with me. "I know," I spoke again careful as to my wording, "that in your line of work, you research how delicate the time stream is." Those words got her full attention. "If I tell you the wrong things today, I could change the future in ways that I, or maybe we, cannot allow it to be changed. I do not have the luxury of being able to review the future as some people review the past. If it was possible to travel to the past and keep changing things until we had a perfect world that might be great, but I only have one chance to get the future right."
Lisa seemed to get my message. Willie, though, was thoroughly confused.
"How can the time stream be delicate?" he asked. "I thought the past was just that, the past; we can't change it."
Lisa's facial reaction told me she understood why I hadn’t told Willie the truth about the beating.
"Willie," she explained, "there may come a time, someday, when we can travel back in time. When that happens, changing the past could be very dangerous."
She leaned over the bed. She kissed my good cheek, being very careful not to inflict any additional pain on me. She whispered very, very softly into my ear, "I understand your message."
Arising, she announced, "I love you, Lucas Cailin. I’m going to see if I can find something to eat. Besides, it’s clear you and Willie need to talk without my being here."
"Thanks," I told her. "Before you leave, I want you to know that perhaps other than seeing Willie's face when I regained consciousness at the house, seeing you here and feeling your hand in mine was the best medicine I could have ever had."
“I was so afraid I had lost you. I just couldn’t handle that,” she said as she squeezed my hand gently and left the room.
"OK," said Willie, "Lisa’s gone, and it’s just you and me. Tell me the truth right now, or you will look a lot worse."
I tried to laugh, but it hurt. "OK, Willie. You have earned the truth. Lisa is a time traveler."
"Screw you! You promised to tell me everything and now you want me to listen to lies," he bellowed starting for the door.
"You know it's true. You admitted it yourself just before I got beaten up," I told him. He stopped at the door. It was open, but he carefully closed it before he came back to the bed. He took a chair, pulling it next to the bed, and sat down.
"This should be interesting. Are you sure it isn't the drugs talking?"
"Do you remember the photograph you saw of her nude?" I asked.
He nodded. "As if I’ll ever forget it!"
"You said it looked like another time. It was, in fact, several hundred years ago in Greece. The artist later made a statue of her based on his sketches. A partner traveling with her secretly took the photographs. They were on a mission to get photographs of and information about Grecian art techniques. She has visited many different times and places in the past."
"She told you this story?" he inquired, still unsure if I were telling the truth. I could sense the doubt in his voice.
"No, she has denied it."
"Then how do you know this?" he asked.
"It was the journal. It had the full story about the last trip she takes. Her partner is abandoned in 1881. He thinks she may have been the one to trap him in the past, or she may have died trying to return to the future. Either way, the man she works with will die a few months after he’s trapped in the past. Lisa may be killed on her return to the present." I paused gasping for air. My ribs hurt from the exertion of talking.
"You proved it was real?" Willie asked.
"You have proved it to yourself. It was in the newspaper," I told him.
He got a puzzled look on his face as he pondered my words. It cleared after a few seconds. "That is how you had the winning numbers. You traveled into the future to get them," he said with a big smile.
"No," I told him, "I traveled into the past. The day you and I went to buy the tickets, there was the present version of me still in Blissville. I came back one day from the future and had the newspaper with me. I had to leave town so no one would see two of me at the same time. I brought the paper with me. I couldn’t drive my car. If it were missing, that would have raised questions I couldn’t answer at the time. So I convinced you to drive me to buy the tickets, which also gave me a witness."
"So, do you have a time machine?" Willie asked me.
"They refer to it as a 'time-traveling device,' and, yes, I do."
"They were sent to get it back from you," he said reaching the same conclusion I had already reached.
"I’m sure that is why there were bank examiners that day," I told him. "They had to check out the safety deposit box. I’m certain the men we met at the bank, Agents Russell and Simmons, were also the men who shot at us at Blanchard Springs Caverns. I didn’t recognize them at first, but they are both guards at the place where Lisa works. I had met them once before, but that day they had both been wearing uniforms and caps, not suits. It wasn’t until after you and Steve arrived at the bank that I knew for sure who they were, but there was nothing I could do or say at that point."
"Were they the ones who did this to you?" he asked, his anger resurfacing.
"No," I said. "I suspect that when they didn’t find the device in the safety deposit box in the bank, they telephoned their office for instructions." Again, I had to pause to catch my breath and let the ribs rest. I wanted more pain medication, but I needed to tell Willie the story in full first. "I recognized one of the men who was at the house, but not the one who did this to me. One of them was at Lisa's house the first night I met her. He works with her, and his name is Jeff Lyons. But don't tell Lisa. He’s a time traveler, as well. I need to find out who the other man is, the one who kicked me and did all this."
"There’s a problem," Willie said. "Steve and I looked at the security video. No one came or went from your house other than me."
"I know. That's because they set their time-travel device to enter directly into my house. It appears you can go back in time as little as one minute ago. They must have left the agency in Blanchard Springs and materialized inside my house. I was sitting at the computer when I suddenly felt the gun at my head. I heard no sound prior to that. I had watched you leave, so I knew no one had come in through the door. I’m glad you were gone to the bank; otherwise, we would both be dead."
I stopped again to let my ribs rest. The pain was getting more intense, but I refused to take any pain medication until I finished telling Willie everything. "The smaller man of the two, the one who did this to me, held the gun to my head. He saw the same photograph of Lisa that you did. He got angry."
Willie stopped me. "They reformatted your computer. You have no files left," he said.
"I watched him do it. There were no files there for him to find. When he saw the photo you had seen of Lisa modeling, he suspected I had classified documents. But I had suspected after the first burglary that these guys were looking for something. It was shortly after that when I removed everything. Why do you think I gave you the files of the photographs from Memphis? I wanted back-up copies away from the house. You even have the nude photographs of Lisa on that disc I gave you."
Willie blushed. "I know about that part, but I was embarrassed to tell you that you had given them to me. I thought it was an accident."
"No, I wanted a back-up. You have seen her in a bathing suit. She loves to go to nude beaches, so I wasn’t worried. Besides, I think she would love skinny dipping with us at Emmett Creek." I really had Willie blushing now. "But, Willie, I need you to get Steve to do one thing." I paused. "It may be hard to keep him from asking too many questions. Under the sofa at my house is an empty beer bottle. It’s what the man used to hit me. His fingerprints will be on it. I remember he took his gloves off when he was hacking my computer. If Steve can get the crime lab to check it, we may be able to find his name. His prints should be on file in the military or government databases. But Steve could get into trouble since he didn't make a report about what happened."
"He can't make any report," Willie said. "He saw the video and knows there was no one in your house but you and me. He was just relieved when he found the boot imprints on your chest and face were too small to be mine. He had even suspected me until he found that bit of evidence."
"Now do you understand why I wasn’t telling you everything?" I asked him.
"It’s a strange story," he acknowledged, "yet, it does make sense."
"Go home and get some rest," I told him. "I’ll be out of here tomorrow, no matter what the doctor says."
Willie looked at me and said laughingly, "Right, sure thing."
"Come on, Willie," I told him. “You know I like spending the 4th of July at Heber Springs on the lake. That is next weekend."
"We’ll see what happens," he said.
Willie was just saying his goodbyes when Lisa walked back into the room.
"Did you two boys get everything worked out?" she asked.
"More or less," Willie said. "Lisa, step out into the hall with me for a moment." He closed the door behind them. They had me wondering now what was happening. Willie had never shut me out before. Worst of all, he was shutting me out with the woman I loved!
The nurse came in with medications. The nice thing about the tube in the arm is that shots are just added there, requiring no more sticking a needle into the skin. Through the partially open door I could hear Willie and Lisa talking in a very hushed tone. They were standing very close. Lisa gave Willie a kiss on the cheek. Then he left. I didn’t feel jealous, as she had done that before with him, but I wanted to know about the conversation. Once Willie had left and the nurse was out of my room, Lisa returned to my side.
"Willie cares for you a lot," she said. "I’m almost envious. It’s easy to see why the two of you are such good friends."
"I’ve known him all his life," I said. "But what was the secret conversation about?"
"If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret," she said with a teasing smile. She handed me a small CD player with a recorded book that she had bought me. "I know your eyes will hurt too much to read for a few days, so I thought this might help pass the time."
Sleeping other than with heavy medication had been a problem. In truth I feared sleeping and the nightmares. “I can’t sleep. ‘’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To die; to sleep;— to sleep? Perchance to dream! Ay, there ’s the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffl’d off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.’”
“Please Luke, the doctor wants you to get more sleep or you will get more drugs and I don’t want you getting any more drugs. I worry about the level of junk in your body as it is. They accepted my Ph.D. and are allowing me to read your chart and it frightens me. So you have to sleep.”
“You are a real doctor, Dr. Collins, you say sleep so I’ll have nightmares and wish to die. How is that healing medicine?”
Lisa again handed me the CD player with some music. “You need to sleep. I need to go to the motel and sleep as well.” She held the CD for me to see. “Luke this is a very special album. The album is Faces of Ever by Ojas who is really Steve McLinn. He’s a wonderful man I met a few years ago. He is as much scientist as artist, as musician, as magician as healer as … something from the ages. Anyway he has several albums available over the internet and this is one he did back in 1984. The song is called World Loops and it puts into music what I’ve tried to express in scientific terms about genetic memories. He used a digital delay device which was set on a long decaying sound loop. The sounds were layered with synthesizer in a spontaneous fashion, so the music follows a course of gradually transforming ambience. To me, that is what our DNA type memories do. I’ve used this CD for healing, for depression, for meditation and many other things. I can hardly wait for the time you and I get to make love to some of his music.”
“Why… why now?” I struggled with the words and my dry mouth.
“The healing. This album, the World Loops will take you into a deep trance. You should be able to use it to heal your body and not have to use the junk medications they are pumping you full of,” Lisa blurted out.
I tried to open my one good eye, but the meds were taking effect. “Thought you were science person?”
“Sleep and listen to the music. Go deeper into your memories. In fact, trying going back to those six generations of those Seneca ancestors you told me you have. Maybe they can heal you.”
“Hmmm, that puts me back on a mound.”
“WHAT?”
“The Seneca came from the Mound Builders. My Cherokee conquered the Mound Builders and the Choctaw did the same, so there is no escaping the Mound Builders in my past.” I yawned.
In my dream I could still hear the music and its vibration. I recalled the ancient shaman used the rattle, the drum and flute to heal by changing the vibration of the sick more than 40,000 years ago. Music was a key to healing and life.
Luke found himself standing on a earthen mound with a muscular man. His face had two lightning bolts on each cheek. He wore only a narrow loincloth and legging. His hair was light brown and his skin was only the dark brown of a Caucasian with a deep tan. But, in his hair was single turkey feather, indicating he was the war chief. “Du-do-v TiLi. Da-nu-wa du-we-u-we wa-ni-da-tsi.”
“Your name is TiLi?” I asked. “My name is Luke.”
Lisa bolted next to me again and touched my arm to wake me. “Luke what did you just say?”
“This man is TiLi.” I said as I dozed again.
Another man appeared in the dream, his same color skin as the first, only a giant of a man. His head was nearly shaved with the remaining hair in a ponytail. I knew the three turkey feathers indicated this man was the chief, but he also wore a headband consisting of three copper disks, which meant he was the shaman. According to history, that was impossible. The chief removed the headband and tried to place it on my head.
