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PREVIEW - story copyright 2014 by Michael M. Weburg – all rights reserved
PREVIEW - story copyright 2014 by Michael M. Weburg – all rights reserved
Chapter 1.
Our house sits among a couple of acres of pinyon pine and juniper trees, at an elevation of around 7,000 feet in Arizona’s White Mountains. Garden plants are not safe outside from freezing until about the last week in May, so I built a small greenhouse to get a jump on the growing season.
I was out behind the greenhouse puttering around on a cold but sunny late winter day this year, with the temperature right around freezing. A breeze came up and I got cold. My chair inside the greenhouse looked inviting, so in I went and found it was 80 degrees inside. I took off my sweatshirt, stretched out with my feet up on a shelf and dozed off.
A barking dog at the greenhouse door woke me up. It raised up and started pawing at the glass on the storm door, yipping and whining and wagging its rear end off. It was a black and white fox terrier, or something close to that, and with its belly exposed I noticed it was a female. I’ve had problems with stray dogs on our little ranch, but this one looked very friendly and absolutely desperate to get inside. Amused, I opened the door and let her in and before I could stop her she was in my lap and licking my face. I couldn’t resist petting and hugging her, actually there was no way she would let me avoid it.
She reminded me of a dog I had fifty years ago, during my high-school and college days. She was the same size, breed and color. But my old dog, Lady, who I had adopted with much parental resistance, had only three legs. She was missing a back one that evidently had been cut off in some kind of mower accident. Despite her handicap, Lady was the best hunting dog I ever had. She would go into the weeds in the railroad ditches and come yipping after the rabbits she ran out. With only three legs she couldn’t keep up with them, leaving plenty of room to blast the bunnies without hitting her. My friends and I spent many happy hunting hours waiting for Lady to run out a rabbit, and she sure knew how to find them. She loved piling on after the rabbit was down and giving it a few chomps for good measure. She didn’t resist when we took it away, she just went looking for another one.
Then I heard, “Yoo hoo,” coming from down the cinder path I had built winding among the trees.
“Yoo hoo to you too,” I responded, wondering who was there.
A gal came walking up the path and stopped in front of the greenhouse. Maybe thirty, she had long brown hair, was tall, quite attractive and was wearing a gray, shiny jumpsuit of some sort.
“Oh, I see you have the dog,” she said.
I laughed and said, “More like the dog has me. What’s her name?”
“Lady,” the gal said.
“I had a dog like this named Lady, a long time ago. This one is sure friendly,” I said.
“Only to people she knows,” she said.
“But she doesn’t know me,” I replied.
The gal said, “Oh, yes, she sure does. Did you notice the collar on the dog?”
I had not, but I looked now. It was a thin black collar from which dangled a square metal tag.
“Look at the tag,” the gal said.
I did, it was inscribed:
DOG LICENSE #127 CITY OF PAXTON VALID THRU 1961.
“Lady?” I exclaimed.
“That’s your Lady,” said the gal.
Chapter 2.
I sat there a minute, dumbfounded. Finally I regained my wits. Lady was missing a back leg below the knee. I looked, and the dog in my lap wasn’t.
“Nice try,” I told the gal. “This dog isn’t missing a back leg like Lady was.”
She laughed and held both arms out toward me and wiggled her fingers. “Guess what,” she said, “I lost two fingers when an ox stepped on my hand when I was a kid.”
I looked, she had all of her fingers on both hands.
“We don’t have such imperfections where Lady and I come from,” she said.
“And where would that be?” I asked.
She replied, “Come on now, this isn’t your first rodeo. Didn’t you learn anything from your first ride with us? I heard that you didn’t even have to be dropped over the pit to get you with the program.”
I had long ago dismissed as a dream being taken into a thing in the clouds and then flying, powered only by my will to fly, over a land of light and dark with a winged pretty angel. Those memories came very vividly back to life now.
“Uh, you know about that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “My friend Margie was your guide on that little trip, and I’m Mattie, by the way. That’s short for Matilda.”
All right, I thought, another dream. Might as well go with the flow. But this dog in my lap sure seems real, and so does the gal at the door. But so did everything about the trip with Margie. And Margie did tell me that there were dogs there waiting for their masters. And there was that feather I never could explain.
“Well,” she said, “same deal this time, you know how it goes. I’ve sort of pulled another you into the dimension where I do my thing. It’s between where you live and where I hang usually out, and sometimes I come here where we can both exist and bring you here too. I brought Lady along because I love to see dogs reunite with their people, even though it’s only for a little while for now. Lady understands.”
“Well, I wish I did”, I remarked, between Lady’s licks on my face.
“You do,” she replied. “Remember what Margie told you, some things have to be believed to be seen. You’re a believer or I wouldn’t be here.”
Chapter 3.
Mattie said, “You know, Lady didn’t die, she just stopped hanging out on Earth. Have you ever sensed the presence of someone you know is no longer living on Earth?”
“Yes I have,” I replied, “and I have seen …”
Mattie interrupted, “Hush! That is not to be revealed here. Such things are written elsewhere. Faith, remember?”
“All right,” I said, I think I know what you mean.”
Mattie said, “Now we have places to go, things to see. Have you ever been to Chicago?”
“Yes, I said, “I grew up a hundred miles south of there and loved to go up there and visit my cousins. I went there with my mom and dad, when dad had go there to leave for the war. I took my wife-to-be there when we were dating. And later on I got to take her and our two kids there and we went to the top of Sears Tower. I also had a buddy get shot there, but he lived.”
“How about the Museum of Science and Industry?” she asked.
“I loved the place,” I said, “might still be one of my favorite places in the world.”
“The Shedd Aquarium, Alder Planetarium, Natural History Museum, Brookfield Zoo, the Lake Michigan beach?, she asked.
“Loved them all, great memories,” I replied. “And the old Riverview Amusement Park, too. But it’s not there anymore.”
“Well, we could go to where Riverview still is, but we won’t. This time we’ll be going in the other direction. Come on, let’s go.”
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“Sure. And you choose to follow me. You too, Lady.”
And she headed back down my little path among the pines and junipers. I trailed along, or at least the one of me that was with her did, with Lady at our heels. I took a few steps and then looked back, and there I was, still snoozing in the greenhouse. Lady followed the gal, and I did too.
Chapter 4.
I followed Mattie along the narrow cinder path I had built through my little pinyon pine and juniper forest. Soon, I realized that I was following her along a path that went places where I had not put it. We went down a gentle valley and walked for a time along a stream that I had not known was there. Finally we came to a dense cluster of junipers and pinyon pines. Something shiny and gleaming like metal was nestled, mostly hidden, in the middle of it. From the look of the shiny thing I knew it must be something that went up in the air. I felt a little thrill, or maybe it was a shudder.
It was silver with a clear dome forming the top of it. It reminded me of the UFO sightings of saucers I had heard about over the years. It was a bigger than my Ford Explorer, but not much.
Mattie walked over to the craft and laid a hand on it. The clear, circular dome retracted evenly into the sides. Lady scrambled up the side of the thing and disappeared behind the two seats that I could see inside. Mattie looked at me, climbed up on the thing and said, “Welcome aboard,” and I clambered in behind her.
“Why not,” I thought.
She stepped over a center console and settled in the left seat, beckoning me toward the right one. I sat. Trying to keep my wits and be a cool dude, I asked, “OK, so where’s the seat belts?”
“Don’t need ‘em, no wrecks where we’re going, not even any sudden stops and this thing never flies upside down,” she replied.
I saw no instruments or levers or controls, there was just a thin, flat platform a little longer and wider than my hand on the console between us. It sat an inch or so high on a pedestal. Mattie tapped a corner of the platform with a finger and the dome closed above us.
Mattie looked over at me with a grin and said, “You want to drive?”
“Yeah, right,” I replied.
She said, “Come on, it’s easy and you’d love it. First thing you do is just push this plate all the way down and let it spring back up and keep your hand on it. Then you push it down to go up, and just tilt it to go ahead or back or left or right, however which way you tilt it. We always stay level and parallel with the nearest gravitational body. The harder you push or tilt the faster it goes or turns.”
“Seems like you left out getting back down,” I said.
“Tap the plate twice with your finger and then pushing down takes you down instead of up, she explained.”
“That sounds simple enough, I guess,” I said, “but I always wreck my radio-controlled flying stuff.”
She laughed. “This thing won’t let you wreck,” she said. “Let’s go!”
“You fly,” I insisted.
“OK, sissy,” she replied.
She laid her hand on the control plate and up we went, slowly at first and then quite fast, until we were at something like airliner altitude. Then we sped ahead and the earth became a blur below.
“Ever hit a jet up here”, I asked.
She just laughed and said, “Can’t happen.”
I tried to ask about how the thing we were in worked, but Mattie only told me not to worry about it. She would only say that the thing was infallible. I hoped that included unfallable.
We zoomed over mountains and meadows or a few minutes and then dropped low over a mountain. We were above what looked to me like every big city in the world combined, and it all appeared to be built of silver and gold.
Chapter 5.
Mattie slowed the ship over the shimmering city and hovered for a moment. “See the little lake in the little park below?” she asked.
I said that I did, it looked like a very pleasant and inviting place.
She giggled, “It never runs out of fish.”
“We need to make a quick stop,” say goodbye to Lady,” she said.
She gently sat the ship down in the grass by the lake and the dome opened.
Lady jumped from behind my seat into my lap, whined and gave me some quick licks on the face, and then jumped out of the cockpit, slid down the side of the ship, and bounded off, turning to bark twice before she disappeared into the trees.
“Goodbye, Lady,” I said.
“More like, see you later,” Mattie corrected.
a The dome closed, Mattie took the ship up, and we zoomed off over the mountains.
I found the next few minutes to be about like plane trips I’ve had between the Midwest and Phoenix or San Francisco, only we seemed to be going much faster. I always went for a window seat, and this time I had the supreme view from the cockpit. We were way above the scattered clouds and here and there I saw jet trails left by airliners far below us.
It wasn’t long before a vast expanse of water appeared ahead. Lake Michigan, I figured.
Mattie said, “We’re taking a little detour now before we get to Chicago, it won’t take long. And you might feel a little strange as we get started.” She did something to the plate between us that her hand was on, and the ship shot straight up.
I got dizzy, but it was a pleasant dizzy, not a sick dizzy. Then I think I dozed. When I came back to my senses it was coal black outside. I asked Mattie, “Is it night now, did I sleep?”
Mattie laughed. “Nope, you didn’t sleep, your molecules just got wiggled around a little bit so that you could stand the acceleration. Otherwise, it would take months to get up to this speed without splattering you all over the back of your seat.”
“Huh!” I said. I felt normal again. “Why is it all black out,” I asked.
“Oh, that’s deep space,” she replied, adding, “We’re quite a piece away from Earth.”
“So why no stars and stuff out there?” I asked.
“The light is behind us,” she explained.
“But why don’t we see light ahead of us”, I asked.
“There isn’t any,” she said.
Then she said, “Okay, we’re slowing now to turn around and go back. Look behind us and you can see stars now.”
I looked around and sure enough, there was a small circle of bright dots. Then the ship turned toward the circle and it became bigger and bigger directly ahead of us. Then stars were flying past us on all sides and above and below and ahead of us. Millions of them. I lost my breath for a second or two.
“How will we ever miss all those?” I asked.
Mattie giggled. “I love this part of the trip. Haven’t hit anything yet, can’t happen. We have what you might call a divine guidance system. You can’t get out so you might as well relax and enjoy the ride. Have faith and be comfortable, you’re going where you can’t help but go, so just go there the best you can. Get it?”
What she said helped me relax, a little.
Judging from the way the stars were whizzing past we were slowing down. Looking above and left I saw something I recognized filling half of the view to my left. Saturn and its rings!
The dark outside began to yield to light, first white, then blue and then I could see clouds and Lake Michigan below. All of Lake Michigan, and most of Lake Superior as well, and what else I didn’t know. And then it felt again like I was enjoying a pleasant flight in a jetliner.
“So what was all that about”, I asked Mattie.
“Well”, she said, “It’s pretty easy to go back in time, but to go ahead you have to go really, really fast.” We’ll be landing in Chicago in a dimension that is some years ahead of the one we left.”
Chapter 6.
After that wild ride our little ship descended slowly around Chicago in a wide spiral over the shoreline of Lake Michigan. I could see the old Sears Tower towering over everything. I had once been to the top of the thing with my wife and kids. I remembered the fast, shaky, rattle-trap ride up in the elevator, and looking DOWN at landing airplanes. North and west, the O’hare Airport runways were visible, and also the Midway runways closer in. I saw the old Meigs Field just off the shore. That was the original airfield in Flight Simulator and I remembered spending many virtual hours taking off from there.
The air was crystal clear, and I remarked upon it to Mattie. “You’ll see why in a minute,” she said.
Our descending spiral began to tighten and center over the Museum of Science and Industry. I knew what it was. My few trips there as a boy had been absolutely magical, exploring the coal mine, the huge model railroad, the incredible dollhouse, the eggs with chickens hatching as I watched, the captured German submarine, the gruesome but irresistible unborn babies in jars - one for each month of development - and all the other stuff that can really fascinate and challenge a young mind. I remembered looking in the window of the old time dentist’s office of the 1800’s and shuddering at the sight of the drills and pliers and saws on the tray by the chair. I don’t think there were any needles.
I remembered a huge parking lot in front of the museum, and it wasn’t there now. Instead, it was a big grassy area of several acres, and in this Mattie gently set the ship down. She raised the dome on the ship, put something from under her seat in her pocket, and said, “Let’s go.” As we walked toward the museum, I asked, “Are you just going to leave the ship open like that, won’t somebody mess with it?”
“Nope, c’mon,” she replied.
As we approached the long stairway that led to the door, something felt really strange. I figured it out – there were no people or cars anywhere to be seen. It was an eerie feeling, like being alone in a mausoleum in a cemetery.
I remarked upon that to Mattie. “That’s why the air is so clear, and why nobody will mess with the ship,” is all she said.
We walked up the couple of dozen steps to the front door of the museum. For a moment, it brought back pleasant memories of walking up those steps with childish anticipation years ago, with my Mom and cousins, and then again, once, older, with my family.
The big glass doors were closed but apparently unlocked. Mattie opened one and, with a flair, motioned me in. “Behold the fruits of your generation,” she said.
That made me wonder.
The first thing that hit me inside was the dimness. The huge main entry dome was but barely lighted by skylights in the roof. And we were absolutely alone. The hallways leading off to exhibits were pitch black, their ceilings having no access to the sky.
“Is the place closed, where are the lights?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s open,” she replied, “but the lights haven’t been on for a while, now.”
“But all the people,” I said.
“No people,” she said, “not anymore, we have the place and the rest of Chicago and the whole stupid world along with it all to ourselves. Want to run around and wreck stuff? It won’t matter to a living soul.”
There was a chair by the big glass doors to the gift shop. My knees shook as I walked over and sat down on it.
“So what happened?” I asked.
She used a rather stern tone, like I was guilty of something, to tell me, “That’s your job now, you figure it out, Sherlock. You’re on your own for a little while. I’m going to go mess around with Colleen Moore’s dollhouse. See you later. All the evidence you need is right here.”
And she took some kind of little light from her pocket and went down one of the dark hallways.
I thought to myself, “Maybe I should get out of here and go back to the ship.”
“NO !” she yelled from way down the dark hallway.
Chapter 7.
I sat there a few minutes, in the dim light, on the chair by the door to the gift shop in the front of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. I tried to get my head around what Mattie had said, that she and I were the only human life in this world of the future where she had somehow taken me. And I wasn’t sure she was human in the same sense that I was.
When I had asked her what happened, she told me to figure it out and said all the evidence I need is right here, whatever that means. So, having recovered some composure, I decided to look for, evidence, I guess. It was brighter in the gift shop because it had windows. So I decided to go in there. I tried the glass door, it was not locked and squeaked as I opened it and went in.
Everything was covered in dust. The evidence so far was that the gift shop had been closed for a very long time. The dust obviously had accumulated for years on top of the glass cases and on the souvenirs and trinkets hanging on racks.
I don’t know why, but I checked the cash drawer. It was open, empty and as dusty as everything else.
So, how long ago did whatever happened, happen, I was wondering. I looked under the tray in the cash drawer hoping to find a receipt or check or something, but found nothing.
I moved some stuff aside on a little table by a front window and looked outside. Was it a bomb, radiation, poison, an asteroid that wiped everybody out? Nothing looked wrong outside, except it was obvious that the landscaping hadn’t been tended to for years. No, I thought, not those things because Mattie had said I could find evidence of what happened, and I sure didn’t have any testing equipment.
Despite the dust, I sat on the table by the window. There was a little silver souvenir train engine on the table. I blew the dust off of it and put it in my pocket, wondering if I was stealing. I decided it didn’t matter.
I figured I should go out into the museum and look for skeletons or something. They might hold a clue. I wondered why I hadn’t seen any.
Just before going out the door from the gift shop I noticed a newspaper rack over in a corner. AHA!
It was locked. It wanted $5.00 to divulge its secrets, if it held any. INSERT COIN HERE, it demanded above the slot. Wow, a $5.00 coin? I scraped some of the dust from the plastic door with the side of my hand and peered inside. It looked like there was a paper in there!
Years ago, I had refilled these things with the paper of the day. Somewhere there was a lock to permit access. Yes, I saw a keyhole. I went back to the cash register counter and looked in all the drawers. No key, but I found an empty bottle of vodka, I didn’t recognize the brand. Too bad it was empty, I would have been tempted.
I went back to the paper box and told it, “Here’s your five dollars of size eleven,” and kicked in the front window. YES! There were papers in there.
Unfortunately, there were also tiny beetle skeletons. They had chewed on the paper before they had died.
Obviously, from the banner the papers were Chicago Tribunes, but I saw that they were only one page each. What? No ads? No comics? I took them over to the table beside the front window.
Disappointment! The bugs had eaten off the date at the top of both copies, which is the first thing I looked for. But I could tell it was a Tuesday paper. Most of both single-page editions except around the edges was readable. I read on the yellowed page:
“SCIENTISTS SAY HOPELESS!
The intensive world-wide attempts to remedy ocean chemistry have failed. U.S. and top scientists and medical experts across the world say there is no way to reverse the declining oxygen and increasing carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Scientists believe present trends will continue and say that in about 68 hours the air will no longer support terrestrial life anywhere on Earth.
The American Medical Association provides this information:
DO NOT PANIC. Death will be painless. Any exertion will bring death quicker. You will slowly become unconscious as if going to sleep. It is recommended that you simply go to bed when you feel you are becoming too weak to stand. Sleep will come quickly. Use of drugs and alcohol is not discouraged.
The Chicago Mayor’s Office has advised that all public employees including police and fire are placed off duty as of midnight tonight.
GOOD LUCK AND GOODBY! The Chicago Tribune”
Chapter 8.
Reading that gave me chills. What those last days must have been like... It certainly explained some things, like why the museum and everyplace else was deserted, and why there were no skeletons or cars all over the place.
People had warning, they didn’t drop in their tracks. They just became increasingly weak and went home or wherever and then rather quickly suffocated to death. It also explained why the air was so clear – no people, no pollution. I guessed that I was able to breath here not because Mother Nature took over and started fixing the things that humanity had screwed up so bad. Like the air and water and finally even the oceans.
I heard the door to the gift shop squeak and Mattie came in and sat down beside me on the table in front of the window.
She said, “Good work, Sherlock, you figured it out. You’re shaking, don’t like what you just read?”
“How could it end like this,” I replied. “All life on Earth gone?”
“Everything animal above ground,” she said. And most ocean life, too, but some primitive, anaerobic organisms still live where they never did need oxygen. And most plant life remains, it loves carbon dioxide. The problem was that the oxygen breathers, mainly humans, became so many and wrecked so much of the life-sustaining vegetation that it finally and rather suddenly upset the apple cart. Then the oceans got into the act, stressed from trying to absorb all the excess CO2 and other junk in the air, and that was pretty much the end.”
“But,” she added, “there is some life left in the oceans. Perhaps mankind shall start all over again, as it did eons ago.”
I could only say, “Wow.”
“Scientists never did figure out exactly what was happening,” Mattie went on, “but there were people who thought they knew. Do you remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“Yes,” I said. “Those were two cities that became so wicked and unrepentant and treated their creator with such disrespect that God destroyed them. God sent angels to lead the few righteous to safety and rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying the cities and all the people except those few that he saved.”
Mattie said, “That’s a pretty good summary. And you won’t read this anywhere because there was no time for anybody to write it, but the day before everybody died here in Chicago and all over the world there were some people who just disappeared.”
“So that’s how it ends,” I said, maybe some people went to Heaven?”
“You figure it out, Sherlock,” she replied, “you’ve done OK so far.”
Mattie went on, “You’ve got your story. Mission accomplished for me. Would you like to poke around the museum before we go back to the ship? I’ve got a light.”
We spent the next couple of hours walking down the Streets of Yesteryear looking in the storefronts of the stores of the 1800s, sitting in the antique cars, admiring Coleen Moore’s dollhouse, and toured the captured German U-boat. Sadly, there were no chicks hatching in the big incubator but the farmer was still sitting on a huge tractor, a much bigger one than I remembered. I was amazed that the huge brass ball hanging on a thin wire from the dome a hundred feet above was still moving. It somehow demonstrates the rotation of the Earth, but I never did understand it. Mattie’s explanation didn’t help much and she called me a doofus, but with a laugh.
We walked back out to the ship. As we took to the sky I took one last look down at the Museum and at Chicago, thankful for the good memories created there in my younger years.
Mattie said, “Now back to the present,” and the ship shot straight up into the blackness of space.
I don’t know if I dozed or what, but the next thing I knew we were hovering over familiar country - my little greenhouse, to be exact.
Mattie took my hand. She said, “I’ve done my thing, the boss is happy, and now it’s your turn.”
“What?” I asked.
“Just write the story, like you did last time after your trip with Margie,” she instructed.
“As a warning so maybe Earth can be saved?” I asked.
She replied, “There’s no saving. Write it to warn of displeasing one’s creator, but mainly write it so those who honor Him can prepare.”
“Got it,” I said. At least I thought I did.
Mattie pulled me over and kissed me on the cheek.
I woke up in the greenhouse, all leaned back in the yard chair I got in there. My legs were asleep. I muttered, “Some dream,” and stomped around until my legs worked right again. Probably upset the rabbits and hopefully no rattlesnakes that live under there.
Funny – this morning when I woke up my computer was on even though I know I turned it off when I went to bed. I remember dreaming about typing something important. I feel like I didn’t sleep a wink.
And something I thought I lost more than 50 years ago showed up on my computer desk – a little silver train engine with CHICAGO MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY engraved on the side. It was really dusty.
THE END