Evolving man, p.1
Evolving Man, page 1
Dedication
To all my loyal readers who follow me from genre to genre since I have the attention span of a gnat and can’t stick to one type of story. I appreciate your support of my work and the kind words by email or blog.
Chapter One
“This is a joke, right?” Chrissy ran her hand over the frame of the phone booth-sized cubicle before turning to face her housemate, Lila, lab technician by profession, inventor by calling.
“Absolutely not. With this invention, I’ll be able to assemble a group of the greatest, most innovative thinkers of all time. People like Da Vinci, Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and even great minds from the future. All times are available.” Lila’s brown eyes glowed with the fervor of a true believer. “A think tank like that could come up with ideas that would change the world!”
“Huh.” Sitting in a small chair inside the booth, Taylor, their other housemate, touched the glass surface of the monitor. “Any time, past or future?” There wasn’t a trace of skepticism in her voice. She looked up from the monitor, blue eyes wide.
Chrissy didn’t know if she admired Taylor’s faith in Lila’s scientific abilities or despised her naiveté in believing whatever she was told. Despite Taylor’s brassy manner, there was a childlike trust about her that Chrissy had lost long ago.
“How does it operate?” Chrissy postponed the inevitable moment when she’d have to admit to Lila she didn’t believe in her crazy invention. Over the past few months, the would-be inventor had spent increasing amounts of time in her third floor lair, which served as both her bedroom and workshop. She’d clearly become mentally unbalanced and somehow both her housemates had completely overlooked it.
Lila drew a deep breath and her voice slowed as though explaining to schoolchildren. “All right, think of it like this: as with radio or television, the invisible waves of time can be captured and viewed here.” She tapped the monitor screen, which glowed a ghostly blue. “Simply creating a device to view events in the past or future is remarkable in itself.”
To demonstrate, she typed in some information on her keyboard and clicked the mouse. Suddenly a clear image of a stone-pebbled beach on a foggy morning appeared on the monitor. A ship approached the land, slicing through the gray-blue water. It bore the square sails and dragon prow of the Viking ships in 1950’s B-movies.
Chrissy leaned against the frame of the booth and watched the show play out. Her worry over Lila’s mental health increased. Whatever image was on the monitor, there was no way it could be the real past. More likely Lila had somehow tapped into a satellite signal and was picking up some History Channel broadcast.
“I’ve taken it a step further than simply viewing moments in time. Not only can my machine show images in time, but it can literally ‘capture’ a frame and materialize a figure contained in it in the flesh. Right here in this booth.”
“Oh, I get it. Like in Star Trek. ‘Beam me up, Scottie’.” Taylor laughed. “It’s amazing, Lila.”
“Yes, just like Star Trek.” Lila’s voice dripped sarcasm.
On the screen, the marauding Vikings anchored ship and rowed small skiffs toward land. Lila fast-forwarded with a click of the mouse, making the boats race across the water. She slowed the scene again, and the men climbed out of the boats to splash through the shallows toward the beach.
The sailors were tall and muscular, dressed in hide shirts and leggings, their faces almost hidden behind full beards and moustaches. Long, blond hair flowed from beneath their helmets. The Norse warriors brandished swords, pikes and other assorted pointy things as they charged onto the pebbled shore.
Waiting to meet the assault was a much smaller group of men, dressed in fur and leather hides. Remembering a little history, Chrissy guessed they were northern European or Briton villagers facing the marauders. The obvious leader of the defending army was taller and bulkier than his men. His shoulders and chest strained his deer-hide jerkin. Black hair was caught back in a leather thong at the nape of his neck. White teeth flashed against tan skin as he shouted encouragement to the other men, most of whom seemed on the verge of breaking and running before the attacking Vikings. The leader held his sword high and urged his men forward.
Although the moving picture was silent, Chrissy could imagine the man’s cries to defend the village and the women and children. She felt sorry for the young leader, in charge of a timid group of fishermen with lame-looking weapons, facing a pack of huge, fierce Norsemen.
The two sides clashed. The fishing folk were definitely outmatched by the invaders. Chrissy cringed as limbs flew and blood spurted.
“Nasty,” Taylor murmured. “But, man, that guy’s kind of hot.” She pointed to one of the Norsemen with flowing gold locks and bared teeth.
Lila frowned and froze the scene. “Typical, Taylor, I’m talking about assembling a think tank to solve the world’s problems and you’re ogling the men.”
“No harm in looking.” She shrugged, tossing back her curly, blonde hair.
Chrissy stared at the frozen image of the battle. It was crystal clear down to the details of sunlight glinting off the sharp edges of weapons and blood welling from an open wound. Despite her disbelief, she was intrigued at the prospect of a time-traveling think tank. “How would you communicate with them? Da Vinci didn’t speak English, and I’m sure if you talked to one of these guys,” she nodded at the screen, “you’d get some incomprehensible dead language.”
“Ah.” Lila went to her worktable and came back with an earpiece much like a hearing aid. “I’ve also invented this translating device. It works by reading thought patterns and deciphering them into words the listener understands, rather than translating one language into another. Cool, huh?” Lila beamed, pleased with her own cleverness.
Chrissy stared, feeling terribly guilty she hadn’t even noticed her friend was cracking up. Lila spent days holed up here alone on the third floor of the house in her attic workshop. Her friends had always thought of her as an innovative genius with her many, ongoing experiments and inventions, but clearly her train had derailed.
Chrissy looked from her insane friend’s exultant face to the frozen picture on the screen. The Viking leader and the head defender of the soil were engaged in combat, swords poised ready to thrust. Their mouths were open, shouting. Blood and sweat streaked their bearded faces. The charge of testosterone in the air was almost palpable, and she was embarrassed to feel her crotch tighten simply from staring at the image of the two primitive warriors.
“Well, it’s an amazing idea. I can see you’ve worked hard on it.”
“So, exactly how would you do it?” Taylor traced a finger over the Viking seaman’s bulging biceps. “I mean, actually pick one and bring him to life?”
“It’s like computer animation,” Lila explained. “You choose the figure you want to work with, then, instead of manipulating the image as you would in movie making, you press this button and bring him to this moment in time. Your Star Trek analogy actually isn’t that far off the mark. Basically we’re deconstructing molecules and reassembling them here.”
“Very cool.” Taylor nodded as if it made perfect sense.
Lila did a point and click thing with her mouse and soon the dark-haired barbarian was outlined in red. “See? I’ve ‘cut him out of the picture’, so to speak. He’s the target now.”
Chrissy decided it was time to break the spell. The only way she was going to reach Lila’s addled brain was to demonstrate that the machine didn’t work. “Then you’d press this button?” She reached out and pushed a black button on the left side of the control panel.
“No! Chrissy, don’t!” Lila yelled, grabbing at her wrist.
There was a high-pitched, whining sound and the air shimmered then became as opaque as a dark cloud. Chrissy actually felt a change in the density of space around them, a thickening that made the air almost palpable. Suddenly an extra body crowded into the booth with the three women. Chrissy was pressed up against solid muscle, hot, sweaty skin and rank, half-cured animal hides.
The big, bearded man was still roaring his battle cry. Momentum brought his arm down with a mighty slice of his sword, right past Taylor’s face. The sword cleaved the monitor screen in two, sending jagged glass shards and electric sparks flying.
All of the women screamed and scrambled to get away. The barbarian bellowed and drew his sword out of the wreckage of the monitor.
As she stumbled from the booth, fighting to keep her balance and run away at the same time, Chrissy caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes.
They were wide and confused and they zeroed in on her. He lunged and grabbed her wrist, holding her fast in his powerful grip while yelling something in a language that sounded like pebbles being ground in a cement mixer.
Chrissy screamed at the top of her lungs, a piercing, fire engine wail.
The man dropped her wrist immediately.
She fled across the room.
The barbarian raised his sword, knocking the control panel and sending it crashing onto the floor. He backed out of the booth, holding the sword up in front of him and turning in a slow circle, assessing the room around him.
Shrieking, Taylor ran out the door and clattered down the stairs.
Lila froze near the open door, holding her hands up in a surrendering posture.
Chrissy sidled over to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. It was imperative they didn’t let this guy out of the room. She pictured the barbarian hacking his way through the city, maiming pedestrians and stabbing shopkeepers, probably getting
The man looked around the room, his gaze darting from one foreign object to another with the panicked air of a wild animal caught in a trap. Finally his attention settled on the two frightened women. Scanning them from head to toe, he spoke again in his guttural language. He took a step toward them, but his manner wasn’t threatening, even though he held a big-ass sword in his hands.
“Lila, give him one of those translator thingies,” Chrissy muttered. “We have to communicate with him.” She smiled broadly at the bearded giant and lifted her open palms to demonstrate her harmlessness.
“Oh… Yeah.” Lila startled from her frozen stare. She lifted the ear-piece still clutched in her hand and showed it to the warrior. She carefully hooked it over her ear then held her hands up again.
The man glared at her with those dark brown eyes and said, “Nargatz nia progpadya.”
Lila’s eyes widened. “Oh, God, no, we’re not witches.” She took a step toward her work station.
The barbarian feinted right as though to cut her off.
“It’s okay. Trust me.” She took one slow step after another, hands upraised.
Eyes narrowed, he watched her retrieve a second translator from the bench and hold it out to him.
Chrissy realized she’d been holding her breath when black spots began to dance in front of her eyes. She released the air from her lungs with a whoosh.
The warrior took the device and copied Lila, placing it in his ear.
“Give me one,” Chrissy hissed. “I want to know what’s going on.”
Lila handed her a third translator.
When Chrissy put in the earpiece, the man’s garbled words instantly crystallized into coherent thought. It wasn’t that she suddenly heard English. It was more like his words engendered images and meaning in her mind.
His fear and dismay translated as, “What’s going on here? Who are you? Where am I? Keep away from me or I’ll cleave you in two, witches!”
“Not witches.” The two women said simultaneously.
“If you’ll calm down, I’ll try to explain,” Lila began.
“Put down the sword then we’ll talk,” Chrissy commanded.
“I invented a machine and it brought you into the future.” Lila indicated the booth in the center of the room.
“Set it down slowly. There’s nobody here who’s going to hurt you.” Chrissy gazed at him with what she hoped was a soothing expression.
The bearded man looked back and forth between the two women then slowly lowered the point of his sword to the floor. “What have you done to me?”
“It was an accident. I didn’t believe Lila’s machine worked and I pressed a button.”
“Machine?” He frowned and Chrissy caught the images the word meant to him—a hand cart and a simple pulley to draw water up from the village well.
“It’s not magic,” Lila said. “There are scientific principles involved.”
“She’ll try to return you to where you came from, but it might take a while, since you broke the machine with your sword.”
The warrior glanced at the broken monitor then back at the women, examining their clothing, their faces and the room again. “Where is this place?”
Chrissy explained as simply as she could. “We are in a land far from yours and in a different time many years in the future. Do you understand?”
“Why?” He glared at her, his grip on the sword not relaxing.
“Because Lila thought it would be a good thing to talk to people from other times. She thought we could learn useful things from them.” Chrissy smiled as though at an embarrassing faux pas. “We didn’t mean to bring you here.”
He raised an eyebrow and stared at her with piercing eyes. “You think you have nothing to learn from me?”
“No. I mean, yes. Of course, you’re a great warrior and have important skills, very…admirable skills, but they aren’t something we can use in our society.” She gestured at the ruins of the time machine. “This is an experiment gone wrong. We certainly didn’t mean to drag you out of your life and into ours.” The adrenaline surging through her system was having the odd effect of making her nipples tingle and her crotch ache. That was the only explanation for her body’s reaction to the barbarian’s dark, glittering gaze.
He continued to regard her, but his white-knuckled grip on the sword hilt loosened.
Chrissy turned to Lila. “We should stop Taylor before she calls 911 and we have to explain this guy to the police.”
“Yeah.” Lila started for the door.
The warrior raised his weapon again.
“It’s all right,” Lila said. “I’m just going to get our friend, the other woman you saw.”
“Where are your men?” He turned his attention back to Chrissy after Lila left. “You women live alone?”
A warm flush suffused her as his intense gaze roved over her body. “Well, the three of us share this house, yes. We want to stop our friend before she calls the police—the, uh, guardians of our village. They wouldn’t understand your presence here and there might be trouble.”
“Three women living together? You must be witches then…or whores, I would guess from your clothing.” The way his eyes scanned every inch of her flesh not covered by her tank top or shorts made her stomach flip.
“No! Neither one. In our time women often live on their own and have jobs, and all the girls dress like this.” Chrissy realized she’d used the same words in middle school arguing with her mother about her wardrobe. She felt her cheeks burn and wished she were at least wearing jeans.
After a last, lingering look at her legs, the man announced, “You are very thin. Women in my village have stronger legs and bigger hips, good for working in the field and bearing children.”
“Huh, imagine that.” Chrissy searched for something to say. “You’re, um…taller than I would have expected.” Everything she’d seen on the History Channel had led her to believe a man from an earlier century would be short. This guy was over six feet tall. Maybe he was some kind of giant among his people.
She tried to picture him without the beard and moustache. His sculpted cheekbones gave her the impression he might be quite good-looking under all the wild hair. Attractive even, if you could get past the stench. Now that things had calmed down, she was excruciatingly aware of the powerful smell of old sweat and dirty animal hides. Any notions she’d ever entertained about a barbarian lover like those in romance novels evaporated.
Nervously, she tapped her fingers against the sides of her legs and cleared her throat. “Until my friend can fix the machine and get you back home, we’ll show you the modern world. Things have changed completely since your day.” She thought about men beating the crap out of each other in fights or killing each other on battlefields. “Well, maybe not so much. People are still pretty violent.”
Lila reappeared in the doorway with Taylor by her side. For a moment, Chrissy saw them through the stranger’s eyes: statuesque, dark-skinned, black-haired Lila and short, busty, blonde Taylor, a perfect contrasting pair. Then she imagined what she might look like to him: medium height, medium build, medium red-brown hair. She was nothing special.
Lila stepped into the room. “Sir, I want to apologize for taking you from your world. I’ll get right to work fixing the machine so I can put you back where you came from.”
Taylor’s eyes were huge as she gaped at the tall, broad-shouldered, battle-scarred barbarian in their midst, but she followed Lila into the room.
“What’s your name?” Chrissy asked.
He growled something that sounded like ‘G’rath’ but her translator reconfigured it into Gareth.
She smiled and inclined her head. “Pleased to meet you, Gareth. I’m Chrissy. This is Lila and Taylor.”
Lila muttered to herself as she walked past their time traveler to squat by her destroyed invention. Already she’d tuned them all out and entered her zone of calculations and equations.
Gareth turned as she passed so all three women were still in his sight. He continued to heft his sword and watch them warily. “Would you like something to eat?” Taylor asked, overcoming her awestruck silence and resuming her natural chattiness. “I could make you a sandwich or an omelet. What do you like to eat? Probably a lot of wild game, huh? Well, I don’t really cook meat. I’m a vegetarian, myself. But the way I fix an enchilada you can’t even tell it’s stuffed with veggies and tofu. I cut the vegetables up really fine and marinate them in my own special sauce for a few hours before I stir-fry them. Then I take—”
