Falling through rainbows

The day I rolled out of bed was not the first time that had happened; being a restless sleeper. Normally the hard wooden planks of the floor would break my fall and earn me a few more bruises, but not today. Today I just kept falling into an abyss beside my bed. While falling, I was surrounded by rainbow-colored arcs of light. Not the gay kind that you see on faded banners in pride parades. These were vivid, electric, dynamic, and pulsating, like the heartbeat of the very universe itself. Still a little drowsy, at the beginning of the fall, I wondered if it was all a dream. But I could not breathe, and there was no air. I felt frozen on one side and burning on the other, and screamed into the void. Almost instantly, the scene changed, and I was falling through an azure sky into a blue-green sea. The air was fresh and clean now. To my right, just half a mile away, I could see the coast, with waves smashing against cliffs and a beautiful sandy beach in between. Before hitting the ocean at speed, I put my legs together to make the impact point as narrow as possible and then penetrated deeply beneath the waters. I struggled quickly back to the surface to gulp in the salty air. Then, remembering that beach, I started to swim toward the shore.

         Being a triathlete has its advantages. I swam effortlessly through the waves, though I had to tighten the string on my sodden pajamas to avoid losing them. As I approached the beach, I enjoyed catching the wave behind me and gliding with it. They were not so large as to crush me at breaking, but interesting enough to add momentum. Feeling the sand at the end of an arm stroke, I rose to stand, moving quickly forward with the water and then onto the beach. Wow, this was beautiful—cliff tops covered in trees sloping upward toward distant mountains, which despite the heat down here appeared to be snowcapped. This was no place on Earth and there were two moons in the sky. The beach was deserted except for one small dot at its far end. I made my way in that direction. Moving closer, I realized it was a woman. She appeared naked from this distance but seeing me come quickly dressed in the various clothes that had been lying around her. By the time I reached her, she was clothed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket and had even put on some heavy-looking climbing boots. I was only dressed in my pajamas, which by now were nearly dry from the sunshine. We must have looked like an odd couple.

         "Who are you?" The woman spoke English.

         "Call me Seb from New York; what shall I call you, and what planet is this?"

         "My name is Jill," she said, holding out her hand, which I shook; we both smiled, and it felt like an instant connection. Her hands were rough and strong. She reminded me of one of those outdoor types who make fire by rubbing sticks together. A natural beauty, who did not need clothes or makeup to make her look good but who was genuinely fit and shapely from a life of continual activity. She continued,

         " I was exploring a cave in the Rocky Mountains, and then I was falling through rainbows, landing just off the beach here. I was drying my clothes in the sun when you arrived. Does that sound weird or what?"

         "Yes, well, I mean, I would have said so if the same thing had not just happened to me. Is there anyone else here?"

         "I am not sure there was a series of cracks in the sky over the mountains also when I was falling into the ocean. We are the only ones I know about, but I have not done any exploring yet. I'm not a great swimmer, and I was exhausted after swimming to shore and needed to dry my clothes."

         Seb scanned the cliffs behind them, suddenly noticing smoke.

         "Look," he said, and Jill nodded as she saw it too.

         "We need answers," she said, moving toward the smoke. I felt a little like I was just being swept along by events but I too wanted some answers and so I followed Jill.

         It took almost an hour to climb to the top of the cliffs and then up the hill to the place where the smoke came from. Approaching, we noticed the fort was built into a cliff with a fifteen-foot wall of large timbers, with spikes on top. There was a fifty-foot-tall wooden windmill inside the enclosure, as well as a large water mill. Water rushed out of a pipe beneath the wall and funneled into channels irrigating wheat fields around the complex.

         "It looks quite civilized," said Jill. "But I wonder what he is defending against." We both looked around into the woods nearby and down toward the beach. Was that a movement in the undergrowth, I wondered?

         But I was startled out of my reflection by an arrow shot from the fort, landing at my feet. We both ducked for cover behind some rocks.

         "Who goes there?" called a male voice in English.

         "We're friendly, we just got here, and we have no idea how."

         "You fell through rainbows and then the sky to this new world?" the voice inquired.

         "Yes exactly."

         "Then you had better come in, there are some very dangerous beasts out there."

         The big wooden gate at the front of the fort opened, and they went in. As he shut it they heard a roar from somewhere out in the wild. I was grateful for the high walls around the complex.

         "Hi, my name is Dr. Jacobson, and I am from London, England."

         The man was a head shorter than me, dressed in homemade leathers, balding, and about fifty years old. He ignored me and reached for Jill's hand, shaking it vigorously, his eyes shining, as he examined her.

         Jill laughed at his enthusiasm and replied, "I'm Jill from Colorado, good to meet you, and this is Seb from New York," she said, pointing my way.

         Jacobson only gave me a glance and then led Jill by the hand into the complex. "You are very welcome, I am so grateful to meet you, perhaps, we should start with the tour."

         The water mill apparently ground food, and the windmill linked rudimentary copper wires coated in some kind of black resin to a massive battery in the cave. There was a pile of tools, including axes, spears, arrows, screwdrivers, and hammers, by the mouth of the cave. The inside was much larger than expected and lit by electric lights. There were a series of caves with wooden beamed supports and often plank walls and floors separating rooms. One large cavern contained a large, deep pool of fresh water, which Jacobson had dammed. The overflow powered the water mill and drained through the pipe at the front of the fort. Another was clearly devoted to living quarters, and the largest cavern of all was a laboratory of some sort, filled with copper wires, switches and what looked like the inside of a computer, except it was the size of a house. There was evidence of a recent fire and the melted remains of what looked like one of those old GSM-based phones.

         "Where did you get all these things?"

         "I made them all. There is iron ore and copper in the nearby hills. I built a smelting furnace and refined them into the tools I needed. Copper wire was difficult, but once I had that, I was able to build my electricity supply with the windmill. I can duplicate all the basics with iron and copper. Last year I found nickel in the mountains and have been refining my art to build steel tools to replace the iron ones. The only thing I can't duplicate is advanced electronic circuitry. My switches and transistors for my computer are also quite basic."

         "This is all very remarkable," said Jill.

         "Tell me," he asked, "do either of you have any phones with you?"

         "I came in my PJs, and that's it," I said.

         Jacobson gave me a disgusted look as if I were utterly useless.

         Jill, however, reached into her jacket pocket and showed him a smartphone wrapped in a plastic bag. "I always wrap it when I am hiking," she explained.

         "Wow, that is fantastic," said Jacobson with hungry eyes. "What do you do for a living?"

         "I'm a mountain tour guide, I take survival fanatics out into the wild and teach them how to survive there." Jacobson's eyes twinkled with approval before he turned to face me and asked, "And you?"

         "I was a Python programmer back home."

         "So all software, no hardware. You do not know your transistors from your switches?"

         "That's all ones and zeroes to me." I joked, trying to keep things lighthearted, but I could read the dismissal in Jacobson's eyes.

         "Anyway, where are my manners? Let me show you to your quarters. I built them many years ago, hoping for company, but then no one arrived. So they might be a little dusty."

         "How long have you been here?" asked Jill, sometime later, when they returned to the main living area.

         "Twenty years now. I created an experiment that opened rainbow rifts in the fifth dimension. It's a variation on quantum entanglement that links with folded space and string theory."

         That received only blank looks, but Jacobson continued nonetheless.

         "I dialed the frequencies until I got a life signature, and well, here I am. I never thought about how I might get back until it was too late. I have been trying to build a way back ever since. A few hours ago was my first real attempt; it took twenty years to build the machines I needed, but my experiment burned out before I was able to step through the rifts. The motherboard of my old phone could not handle the requirements of the rift maker and the navigation tool it uses to find the earth's home frequency, even though I hardwired those into the machinery. At least, I didn't think it could."

         "Is that what caused the rifts to open with us?"

         "The timing would suggest that. I thought it had failed. The opening only lasted a brief second and then it closed. But since you are Americans it opened in different locations than where I aimed it and the focus seemed to wander during transmission. With a better chip I can correct that."

         "Can you get us back?"

         "Well, maybe if I could use the technology in your phone, Jill? Do you have a charger cable also?"

         Jill shrugged and handed him the phone with the charger also.

         "I burned my own one out in the last attempt. We can look at that tomorrow," he said, putting the phone in his pocket. "For now, let's enjoy some good food and drinks together. It is a long time since I had company."

         Within a few minutes, the table was loaded with food and even some home-brewed beer. They tucked in, hungry after the swim and the climb. Jill was really good company and seemed to enjoy just hanging out with me. We got immersed in our own conversation together and did not notice when Jacobson left us until he had been gone for some time. Then we wondered where he was and got up to look for him. As we did, there was a flash of light followed by a burning smell from deep in the caves.

         We ran into the lab just in time to see a rift full of rainbows close. As it did so, the phone, at the heart of the big computer that Jacobson had built there, burst into flames and melted before our eyes.

         "Did he just leave us here?" said Jill.

         "Look, a note," I replied, picking it up and reading it out loud. "Sorry, only one person could make the journey, the house is yours in exchange. The book beside this note includes survival tips, engineering techniques, maps, and other useful stuff. I also describe some of the greatest dangers around here, including wild animals and which plants are edible and which are deadly. Please read the whole book before you leave the fort and be sure to follow the routines I laid out. There are dangers in this world that cannot be taken lightly. Have fun, kids, maybe one day I will work out a safe way to retrieve you also. Until then, Dr. J."



Notes & W/C ▼

CONTEST:

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The Science Fiction Short Story Contest  (18+) A contest inspired by the serious need for more good sci-fi #2140378 by BlackAdder

W/C: 1997 words in original version
PROMPT: Lost in Space
From the Robinsons to L.E. Modesitt's "The Fall of Angels," in movies, books, or computer games such as Rimworld or Stranded: Alien Dawn, being lost or shipwrecked is a common trope of science fiction - and fruitful ground for the imagination. Whether your character is truly lost or just stranded (as in Andy Weir's "The Martian"), how are they surviving? And are they ever reaching home?

NOTES: Dreamstudio (Stability AI) was used to create the image on the cover of this story.