radiating an expression of unspeakable sadness. Dehydration had gradually sapped his will, so that he ignores the constant buzzing of innumerable flies. The discomfort causes him to twist and squirm, resulting in a loss of footing, placing even more tension on his arms, already dulled and near-numb from the unrelenting traction.
He looks down toward his feet, seeing that they have slipped far below the footrest. His chin hits his chest, and he lifts his head up again, arching his neck. He turns to look upward at an outstretched hand and tries to make a fist. His squinting, darkened eyes look from side to side at his hands secured to the wooden framework. He bats his eyes to clear his vision. Slowly, the thick salty sweat is blinked free, and his eyes come into focus, only to find his fingernails embedded in his palms. His face tightens into a grimace, as he tries to flex his outstretched arms toward his body, in an effort to relieve the muscle cramps and body aches. Crystallized salts, from his dried sweat, glisten off his forehead through the grime and dust.
The passage of time further drains what little strength remains, while his clouded mind tries to fabricate some means of escape. Contracted, in his growing agony, is the pain of labored breathing, though he can still feel air whispering in and out of his lungs. He can feel his heart beat too, in a slow steady rhythm.
Nearby, lounging in a small circle on the ground, half a dozen soldiers entertain themselves, gambling for the prisoners’ clothing and personal effects. The men are the guards, soldiers that have been distracted as they pass articles of clothing and other items among themselves. There was not a large crowd around the dying men, and since no disorder or rioting was anticipated, negligence of the soldiers could be expected.
Dorian looks toward the ground at the guards rummaging through his things. One of the men picks up a gold colored pendant-like object on a chain, and at its center an enormous ruby—now damaged—that glimmers with an ugly milky pink in the twilight. A flash from the gold catches his eye. Dorian frowns hard and closes his eyes. His medallion is handled as mere trinket, so close, and yet so far away. Right there in front of him is the device that could give him back his life and freedom. The medallion-like object with the ruby—the failed component of a time-portation device—that had gotten him here in the first place.
The device that had begun his journey, starting several thousand years in the future, had come about as the result of many years of painstaking investigation and planning. The research facility known as Quantum Institute had taken on the daunting task of developing a systematic method to travel through time. But now, for Dorian all that has changed; the mission had been a failure. Dorian has had ample time to reflect upon the unlikely chain of events that led to this anguish.
I thought that when I went back into the past, nothing could do me harm; I had the knowledge of hundreds of generations of progress, and thus assumed I possessed the insight to handle any situation. If I were a wise man, with the additional wisdom and understanding I hoped to acquire on this journey, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. In my search for wisdom, however, I found the unexpected: romance and true love. It was another time and another place, a new horizon that opened up a joyous experience and exposed a youthful loss of innocence.
Every time I shift my weight, I hear the grinding and creaking of the timber I have been tied to, and that has brought to mind a nearly lost memory of an evening on the porch of a country home in the Ozarks. I recall the squeaking floor as she walked barefoot across the planks on that first evening I met her. Today is Friday, I think, and it was on a Friday evening that I first met her, too. That memory, from that enchanting time, is only one of many precious moments and dreams I have left behind. That age, though, was not without its difficulties; in many ways, it was primitive, cruel. Also, as I was to discover, it was one of the worst possible times and places in history to be looking for a ruby.
I can now present a coherent narrative, as if I saw it only from a dream. Sometimes I don’t know what was real and what may have been imagined. To understand all this, I must go back, from my frame of reference, several months, or so—or, shall I say, forward—because it is actually into the future, to that simpler time.
Although I vaguely remember how this extraordinary journey all started—at the Quantum Institute, more than four thousand years in the future—my memory of that far-off time has faded. In my mind now, the odyssey began near the banks of a small river in the rural foothills of Missouri. Let me return to that stage of my experience, the first time the ruby failed and left me stranded in a world so unlike the one to which I was accustomed.
A half smile emerged, lifting the corners of Dorian’s mouth, causing dried blood to crack from the stretching skin. It was the first time he had smiled since the torture began. To put his discomfort out of his mind, he closed his eyes to shut out his physical surroundings, and concentrated on the memories of what had brought him to this point. These thoughts served to distract him from his grim reality, and he settled, for a time, into a calm serenity.
CHAPTER TWO
Pleasant Memories
It was a pleasant April afternoon, when the kaleidoscope of colors gave way to a beautiful landscape, leaving Dorian Alexander standing beside a placid river lined with a gravel bar shoreline. Somehow it seemed fitting; time flowed like a river and now time had come to a seeming standstill next to the sluggish river beside him. Dorian was confused, looking around like a man who had lost his way. He had stopped abruptly, ending the journey through time, leaving him to wonder at the splendor of beauty around him. His eyes passed from wildflowers to big oaks, to sky, to far rolling hills that left him suspended in a moment of quiet.
Dorian examined the time-portation device that had just failed, pressing a thumb to the various raised areas, which blended into the scrolled artwork, in an attempt to reactivate it.
The device, a brilliant amalgam of form and function, did not betray the secrets of its operation, should it on an off chance, fall into unwitting hands.
“I can’t believe this. Not now,” he said to himself in a low voice.
With a sigh, he put the device into a pocket, pondering his next action. It was a beautiful day in early spring; the air filled with the songs of small birds, and on the ground, wildflowers in full bloom. Far beyond, cliffs and spires, covered with a rug of trees, rose to a fog-cloaked horizon. All around him were endless acres of primeval beauty. A slight breath of wind blew over the meadow, stirring the grasses and wildflowers, perfuming the air with floral scents. He stood for a moment breathing in the clean, mountain air. It appeared to be an unspoiled wilderness; a splendid overgrowth of foliage extending for miles into the horizon, under an unbroken stretch of blue sky.
After a few minutes of following the river upstream, in the distance Dorian saw the first sign of human existence in this countryside: a pickup truck parked amongst a thicket of evergreens, near an open meadow dominated by a gigantic dogwood tree. Uncertain of what sort of contraption this was, he strolled over to the truck, and came to a halt with an almost hypnotized stare.
Though Dorian knew nothing of the particulars of early automobiles, it was a 1922 Ford Model T pickup with wooden-spoke wheels and dry-rotted tires. The vehicle had a small passenger cab and cargo bed, on a lightly sprung frame. The Model T had been converted into a utility vehicle, with an aftermarket cargo box replacing its factory-made deck. The body of the truck was somewhat rough with irregularities, marked with some rust. Having only seen such vehicles before in pictures, Dorian admired every detail as he circled the truck marveling at its strange appearance, astonished by its sheer antiquity.
He had a broad smile on his face as he reached out to touch the front fender, tracing admiring fingers across the rough, faded black finish. He crouched down to have a look at the undercarriage. On his hands and knees, he stuck his head far under the body, looking at the engine and frame. Having seen all he wanted, he proceeded to back out of the tight