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  "They are," there was no sense lying about it, "but those people in the tents had it coming. They..."

  "...were a group of low life bastards who killed, robbed and raped whoever got in their path?" He smiled at the stunned look on my face. "Yes, your group was right to do what they did even if it meant losing the chicken lady."

  "Wait a minute," I looked him straight in the eye. He must live close by because he obviously knew what went on around here. "How did you know about Madge and that she liked chickens?"

  "I have eyes my dear," he lifted his hat and slicked back his hair and replaced the hat. "For instance, I know about the red haired boy who pines after the school teacher. Too bad the pompous know-it-all from the east made short work of her but he had to find vengeance for his beloved chicken lady. I know that the irritating child has rescued a damsel in distress from the southern States but has lost her to the star gazing Englishman. It’s okay, though, because he has found the little angel." I was speechless. He knew so much, but how? He saw my look of astonishment and it pleased him so he continued. "I also know that the Scottish pirate has worked both sides but has become smitten with the newcomer. That would be you, my dear. How do you feel about having an admirer that you can't trust?"

  "I-I can trust him." My eyes turned to the ground, darting back and forth, trying to hide the blushing red that covered my face. How could he possibly know about my frustration with Max?

  "Is that a question?" he smiled and crouched down, trying to see my eyes again. I ignored him and replaced my embarrassment with anger. Who did this guy think he was, spying on us and analyzing our movements?

  "If you know all of this, then you must live somewhere close," I said. "Why do you keep yourself hidden?"

  "Because I have no time for humans right now," he checked his pockets and turned, obviously searching for something. "I am working on something extremely important."

  "What?" I asked, still trying to figure him out.

  "Ha! As if I'd tell you," he shook his head and continued searching. "It's classified."

  "Fine. Carry on, then. Just let me take my dog and I'll be on my way," I looked at Barker and patted my leg. "Come on, Barker, let's go bud."

  "Wait!" He put up his hand to block me. "This 'dog' is my Private and can not abandon his post. He has to come with me. I've already discussed it with him and he completely understands his duty."

  "I really don't care what you've discussed," I said, playing along with his delusion of talking with Barker, "I'm taking the dog with me."

  "I can not allow that." Barker let out a small whimper and looked at the man. "I know but she insists on taking you. I don't think there's any way of getting around it. Yes, but I think we can trust her as long as no one else from her group shows up. Well, why don't you tell her? Ok, ok I'll tell her but you need to support me this time."

  "Uh..." What could I say? He seemed to be carrying on an entire conversation with my dog. This guy had a few screws loose. Who knew if he would have a meltdown and hurt me if I tried to take Barker away. Maybe, this time, I would let the man talk before running my mouth.

  "It's been decided then," he smiled and stood with his hands behind his back. "You will follow me and the Private to my barracks where I will explain the mission."

  "And what mission is that?" I asked, hoping that he didn't live far and that no one at Marshal's would miss me.

  "The one to get out of this place of course." He started off with Barker right behind him.

  "You know how to leave? To get back home?" He was already too far ahead to hear me. If he knew how to get out of this dimension, I wanted to know. I ran to catch up, forgetting that Cocoa was out on the edge of the forest waiting for me.

  Chapter 2

  "I've been working on this mission for quite a long time, years to be exact. It's not easy, you see, I keep having to wait for materials," Colonel Albert Young explained to me as we hiked through the trees. He was taking me to his home which, he explained, doubled as a workshop. He told me it wasn’t too far and was well hidden from the ‘enemy'. I had no idea who his 'enemy' could be but I assumed it was probably Pig.

  It took us about fifteen minutes, and only because Colonel Al walked so fast, to arrive to what he called home. I saw nothing but I knew better than to assume he was lying about having a home hiding somewhere. After all, I didn't believe Marshal when he first told me his house was right in front of me. I thought he had jumped on the crazy train when he reached down and pulled a cord revealing a trapdoor that led to his underground fortress. I knew not to question anything down here.

  "Well?" he asked, trying not to sound too proud. "Can you find it?"

  "You mean it's here? You must have done a good job hiding it because I don't see anything resembling a house around here," I said trying to look impressed and not irritated. I really didn't have time for games right now. Not only had I been gone longer than usual; I had left Cocoa out on the edge. Who knew if she went home without me and caused panic among my friends.

  "That's it?" He sounded so disappointed. "You're not even going to try? Well, Private, I must say everything you've told me about this one is not true, not true at all. I think you should re-evaluate how you judge people."

  "And just what has the 'Private' told you about me?" This ought to be good, I smiled to myself.

  "Oh, about how intelligent and brave you are," he said. "He said you didn't even blink when you shot that horrible man in the head. Just pulled out the gun, pointed and shot without thinking. That's how you got the horse isn't it?"

  "What the...?" How the hell did he know about Butcher? Who was this guy? Where did he come from? Who did he know? I wanted to turn and run but my curiosity overcame my fear and I stared at Colonel Albert Young and asked the only question that came to my head. "Who the hell are you?"

  "I told you Colonel Albert Young, United States Army." he smiled at me and I wanted to smack him across the face.

  "No, no, no," I said, putting one hand on my hip and waving a finger at him with the other, "you don't get off that easy. Who are you? Where are you from? When did you fall?"

  "Fall?" he looked at me, confused by this question.

  "Yeah, when did you fall?" I asked again. "What year was it when you entered this hell hole dimension?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't 'fall' anywhere," he laughed. "I was sent here young lady. Sent here to complete this mission."

  "What are you talking about? What mission?" Was he really sent here? It sounded impossible but he seemed to believe it.

  "The mission to get us all home of course," he turned and walked towards a pile of branches and started pulling them down. I went over to him and grabbed his shoulder, trying to turn him to face me.

  "What do you mean you were sent here? Who sent you?" I sounded desperate but I wanted to know if he was telling the truth. Did the people in the other world, the real world, the world I come from really know this place existed? I thought of the American government having a secret department where they knew all about this place. They could have my family right now. I imagined my mom and dad sitting in some secret office somewhere waiting for me to be rescued. I needed to know if it was possible. I needed Colonel Al to explain it all to me right now. Then Barker growled and it brought me back to my senses. I looked at my dog, confused, and let go of the Colonel's shoulder and backed up.

  "I'm sorry," I couldn't believe Barker growled at me. Why would he defend this guy? Maybe he actually liked being with Colonel Al.

  "Your apology is unnecessary," he said and then continued talking as if my little meltdown didn’t happen. "I've been here a long time and haven't gotten anything done. Oh, I've patched up some of the circuit boards and recreated the simulator but I haven't been able to get any of it to work. It doesn't seem to matter what I do; I can't create the power needed to run anything. I wanted to give up but my training doesn't allow it and, since my mission is top secret, I couldn't tell anyone so, I couldn't illicit any help."


  "But you're telling me, aren't you?" I asked, wanting to believe everything he said was true and that, somehow, there was a chance I could go home.

  "Yes, I am and I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the Private," he looked down at Barker and smiled. "He's told me all about you and it was only under his advice that I even considered showing myself. I've been trained well in the art of camouflage and have gone unnoticed all this time. No one knows I'm here. You’re the first and the Private has convinced me that you will be the one to help me." He turned and continued pulling the branches away from what looked like the entrance to an old coal mine.

  "You mean you haven't talked to anyone down here?" I asked.

  "Haven't talked to nor have I been seen by anyone, not one soul, since my mission began." He cleared the rest of the branches away and waited for me to follow him.

  "Really? No one?" I found it hard to believe this. I ran into Marshal the very first day I fell down here. I guess it was in the city but still. Even Ryan, who fell while he was camping and ended up in the woods, found Pig and his camp and Max had fallen into the middle of the ocean of all places and was found by Cornelius. So, how could this guy not run into anyone? "When did you fall?"

  "I told you, I did not fall. I was sent here to do a mission!" He looked irritated that I wasn't comprehending this.

  "Ok," I guess I had to take a different approach, "what year was it when your mission began?"

  "What year?" He looked at me as if this was a strange question for me to ask, but he also wanted to gain my trust. "1967."

  "1967?" I was shocked by the date. That was over forty years ago. Had he really been on a mission for that long?

  "Yes, is there anything wrong with that?" he asked sarcastically. "1967 is a good year."

  "There's nothing wrong with that year except..."

  "Except what?" he asked.

  "Except it was over forty years ago," I explained, hoping he would understand how crazy this all was. "That's a long time to be committed to a mission."

  "Well, well, well," he shook his head and laughed at me.

  "What?" His laughter angered me.

  "I see it has you fooled too," he said. "It had me fooled for a while as well but I caught on; figured it all out."

  "Figured what out?" I asked. "What had you fooled?"

  "The time!" he laughed. "You think there's time here; that days, months and even years pass."

  "Well don't they?" I asked.

  "Of course not!" he looked at me and read the confusion in my eyes. "Don't you see? Here, in this place, there is no time. There is only one, long day. The dimension of time does not exist here. That's why it's so hard to get back."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "We can't get back because we've lost the dimension of time," he tried to explain but I wasn't getting it. "How can we travel from here to there unless here and there are the same? We need all parts of there down here so we can transverse between here and there. You see?"

  "What?" I was lost.

  "We can't travel from here to there..." he started to explain again.

  "No, but we do have time down here," I said. "The sun rises and sets; the moon comes up at night and I can see stars everywhere. That means we have days and nights. If we have days and nights, we have time."

  "Foolish girl," he laughed at me again and, again, it angered me. "Those are not days. Those are physics. We come in and out of the sun because of where we sit in the solar system and because we get shadows and reflections from there, that's all. There is no time here."

  "But there has to be," I said trying to convince myself more than him. "You said the year was 1967 when you started your mission and when I came it was 2012. See? Years, time, went by."

  "There, maybe, but not here," he said. "There I was fifty when I left for my mission and here I am still fifty. See no time has passed here. I am still the same."

  "But..." I didn't know what to say. Maybe he was right. Maybe time didn't exist down here. It was strange how everyone still looked the same as when they fell. Even Billy hadn’t aged beyond ten and he’d been here since the fifties. Could this Colonel Albert Young really know what he was talking about?

  "This is why I need you. You have to help me get time here. If I can achieve that, we can go home." He turned to the mine, reached just inside the doorway and pulled out a lantern. "It's dark in there, we'll need light." He struck a match and lit the lantern and then he turned and headed inside the mine assuming I would follow. I hesitated, thinking that it probably wasn't a good idea to follow some strange man I had just met into the bowels of an abandoned mine. It seemed too much like a cheap horror movie and, yet, I couldn't resist. I had to learn more about Colonel Albert Young's plan to get us out of this dimension and back to my home. Barker, who had been right beside the colonel, now stood at the mine entrance and let out a short bark urging me forward.

  "Do you really trust him?" I asked my dog. He wagged his tail and whined, reaching out his paw to me. I took this as a yes. "Okay, I'm going to trust you on this." I entered the mine and focused on the light of the lantern a few feet away.

  Colonel Al led me through a maze of tunnels, each one lined with wooden frames and braces. I became totally lost and knew that I would never be able to find my way back out on my own. I didn't realize that a mine could be this big. We seemed to be on a constant downward slope and I wondered how far below the earth's surface we had gone. We never spoke the whole trek and I started to feel uncomfortable and just a little unsafe. I wondered how much oxygen was down here despite the air vents I saw at various intervals. Would we run out if we stayed down here too long? I didn't feel suffocated. I could still breathe deeply and I noted that the lantern was still lit. If the oxygen ran out, the flame in the lantern would go out too, wouldn't it? Of course it would. My science teachers would be proud.

  "Here we are," Colonel Al said as he entered a huge room that branched off the tunnel. I looked around as I crouched to go through the arched doorway. The walls were what one would expect inside a mine; gray stone with patches of black and rusty brown. They looked like they had been chipped and hammered at over the years, maybe by miners from above or by the colonel himself. I guessed that coal was probably the reason for this mine and wondered if they ever found any. I noticed an old minor's hat in the corner with a light strapped to the front and there was a pickaxe leaning against the wall. Could this be the only tool that Colonel Al used to build his base?

  The room had been overtaken by Colonel Al and the instruments for his mission. The first thing I noticed were all the clocks. Clocks of every kind and size were connected to each other with wires like some kind of warped building blocks. There must have been over a hundred of them and they took up three quarters of the room and ran from floor to ceiling. None of them appeared to be working, their hands all stopped in mid tic toc, all pointing to different numbers; different times. I figured they must have stopped the second they fell from the real world. Colonel Al had a generator, the kind that campers had in their rvs, hooked up with wires and cables to the clocks. As I got closer to it I could smell a faint trace of gasoline. Near the generator was a row of watches strung together with even more wire and attached to a car battery. In the corner was a huge pile of batteries of every kind; Cs, Ds, triple AAAs, another car battery and a couple of batteries I had never seen before. They had been thrown aside like garbage.

  "This is the 'clock room'," he said. "As you can see I've been trying everything to start the clocks but nothing has worked. I just can’t seem to get any power here; no one can."

  "But these are wind up clocks," I pointed out. "Why would you need power to start them?"

  "Ha, I knew you would say that," he smiled and pat Barker who was sitting by his side. "I've tried winding them. In fact, I tried winding them for the first, what I calculated to be if we had years down here, five years. After that, I gave up and went the power route; batteries, steam, generators, anything I could get my hands
on. The watch thing never came to my attention until about ten years ago. It hasn't been any more helpful. And now the watches that come down here, at least I think they're watches, are useless, blank, no hands, no numbers, nothing."

  "That's because they're smart," I offered looking more closely at the clocks.

  "Smart? What's that supposed to mean? I'm smart. I've lasted this long haven't I?" He was angry, thinking that I had insulted him. I laughed.

  "No, the watch is smart," I tried to think of the best way to explain it to him. "You see; watches are like tiny little computers. You can download all sorts of information on them. But if their battery is dead they don't turn on and their screen is blank."

  "What do you mean by download?" he asked.

  "Well, you know, there's all sorts of information out there and if you want to, you can take it and put it on your computer, or phone, or watch or any other device you might have."

  "Information? What kind of information and where does one find it?" He lifted his hat and scratched his head.

  "Oh boy," what had I gotten myself into. I didn't want to explain the entire computer age to Colonel Al; it would take forever. "You know it's just a little too complicated right now. How about we talk about it later. What else do you have to show me?”

  He took me to a room that was just a little smaller than the clock room. It had been chiseled out similar to the first room and I wondered if these rooms existed when the colonel got here or if he had done all the work himself. By the way it was so expertly braced with wood, I figured the colonel found them this way.

  He explained that this was the room that had the simulator and circuit boards he said he worked on. I was a little disappointed when I saw it though. He had circuit boards, all right, but they were totally useless. He had ripped them out of computers and tried to hook them up to, what looked like, old radios and walkie talkies. His ‘simulator’ that he tried to recreate looked interesting though. He had a panel of buttons and switches mounted on a table that must have covered at least three feet. Each button and switch was wired to some sort of instrument that kind of looked like a receiver under the table. There was a chair pulled up to the table that I guessed was for the colonel.