Chapter 10

Thursday, June 3, 3109, 12:10 p.m. The Hall of the Gate remained empty. Stressed to the point of nearly peeing herself, Rebecca dropped the bags and staggered rubber-kneed to the dais and dropped to her butt. She had nothing to calm her stomach this time; she’d left her Diet Coke in Gunther’s car, and not thought to grab a bottle from the fridge. Distractedly, she wondered if she had drunk any of the sodas in the refrigerator twice. Requiring more logic skills and concentration than she currently possessed, Rebecca chased the question away with a wave of her hand. Thank God the nausea was only moderate coming back.

“Let’s get this over with, Leda. Where the hell are you, dammit!”

Taking her feet, Rebecca limped to the console and stared at the controls. She had no idea where Leda had relocated the portal from the back yard. Depressing the white globe made the view screen on the left activate. Startled, she stared at a brick wall. The time read 10:37 a.m. The same time she had repositioned the gate to face the back wall before heading around front for her car.

“Huh,” she muttered. “Manually repositioning the gate readjusts the time?”

Confused, yet curious, she depressed the red globe. It clicked, and while the view remained unchanged, the date and time were replaced by multi-colored coordinates: red, blue, and green, one set atop the other in the top, left-hand corner.

Belatedly, she realized the numbers represented latitude, longitude, and elevation: geographical coordinates. The coordinates located the portal in dimensional space, while the white globe controlled the temporal component.

Snap a pic of this, she thought. If things went south with the portal location, she could return it via the saved spatial coordinates, or attempt to, anyway.

Where was she, anyway, she wondered? She had only Leda’s word that she had arrived in 3109 Arcadia. Leda had mentioned nothing as to the location, or what month or day of the year it was. Was it December? Did Arcadia reside in the United States, or what had been the United States at one time? Did she know if any of what Leda had told her was true?

During her review of the controls, Leda had let slip that twisting the temporal control hard right immediately returned the gate to the present. If that held true, then summoning the portal would reveal not only the present date and time, but possibly the geographical coordinates of the palace, as well. That gave her hope, but also meant stranding herself in the future if something went wrong. And something always went wrong, she thought sourly.

Grasping the white globe, she took a hopeful breath, set her teeth, and twisted the globe hard right. The console emitted a sharp beep that made her snatch her hand away. Breathless, she gazed from the console to the gate, which looked no different, simply hanging on thin air as it had since first seen.

The text on the view screen winked out. Rebecca was startled to spot herself at the console gazing down at the display, her parka unzipped to reveal the red and blue flannel shirt. She snapped her head up; she hadn’t expected the gate to face the console, though she didn’t know why. She depressed the white globe, confirming the date and time as Thursday, June 3, 3109, 12:15 p.m.