Chapter 11

Monday, June 3, 3089, 2:29 p.m. Looking about, Rebecca considered her idiotic and spineless decision to step through, knowing that having it out with Leda was a better plan of action. Stepping away from the portal, she lowered the bags and automatically glanced back, cursing her cowardice and stupidity.

Her glimpse of the person turning the corner was so fleeting that she hadn’t identified the figure as Leda, but she knew instinctively it was. Certainly, the woman had seen her disappear through the gate and would follow. She glanced back again, intending to clear additional space and with a shock realized the gate wasn’t there. No oval hung on the air.

“What? No!” she cried. Rushing the space formerly occupied by the portal, she thrust her hands frantically through the empty space, screaming “No!” again. Grabbing the tote, she hurled it through where the gate should be, and watched it fly spinning through the air, haphazardly disgorging its contents across the floor. “No!” she screamed, again. “You can’t do this, Leda!”

Furious, she whirled on her bad foot, grimaced in agony as the ankle buckled beneath her, and then stumbled to the dais and climbed up. The gate couldn’t be gone! This was its home location! Leda had told her so! Yet a wave above the control panel failed to elicit a response from the viewer. She dropped to her knee and punched the power button below the console with her middle finger. Nothing happened. Panting raggedly, she poked the button again and again, tried holding it in for 10 seconds, and then banged it with her middle finger a dozen more times. The console remained unresponsive.

“Bitch!” she screamed.

She was trapped here.

“No!” she screamed. “I’m not!”

Jumping to her good foot, she screamed “Leda!” at the top of her lungs, banging the control panel on both sides of the globes with her fists. Twisting the white globe hard-right did nothing. Twisting it left resulted in no response either, even turned with both hands. She understood that, for the first time, The Hall of The Gate was completely silent but for her hysterical machinations; the low hum in the air, which she hadn’t even consciously noted before, was gone.

“Fuck!’ she choked. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Unless she could somehow reactivate the console, or Leda chose to return the gate for her retrieval, she was trapped in 3089.