Chapter 41

Time: Unknown, Blue thunder on Antelope Freeway...

Just as Gary completed his jump, the light in the cornfields of Antelope Freeway changed from the normal afternoon sunlight of late-winter to something so bizarre that A'moth gasped in astonishment. All the colors of the green corn and brown earth were replaced by a bright cornflower blue, the entire world one great expanse of great blue glowing light.

The sky above was incomprehensible, a uniform blue without clouds, but with a huge arc of the sky lit even brighter with a blue and yellowish light. The arc was immense, covering a considerable fraction of the entire dome of the sky, stretching from eastern to western horizon. A'moth was dimly aware of Isabelle screeching in dismay, and then Isabelle flew and landed on A'moth's shoulder, finally pulling A'moth out of her state of shock.

"What the hell is this?!" Isabelle flapped with her wings.

"A temporal storm!" Jim flapped in reply. "It's massive!"

A'moth shouted, "We must be close to the edge of eternity! We have to move out of here! Now! Say together!"

A'moth picked a random direction and ran as fast as she could. The owls flew around her. After two minutes, A'moth stopped to reconsider. Her running did not appear to change the observed environment at all, and she was sure she had run a full kilometer. She squinted and took a determined look at the glowing sky.

A normal human can see a flicker in an oscillating light if the oscillation is 30 Hertz or lower. But Chungierans have the ability to accelerate their sensory perceptions, and for a brief moment A'moth could force herself to be ten times as fast in flicker perception. As she stared at the great glowing band in the sky, she realized its coverage exactly matched all possible paths the sun would make in its annual migration cycle from winter to summer and then back to winter solstice position. At the edge of her perception, she could see the band of yellowish light as a great vibrating string stretched across the sky, each single vibration representing a full year of solar migration cycle.

"About 250 vibrations a second!" A'moth yelled out. "I think a thousand years are passing every four seconds!"

Cindy flapped, "What can we do?!"

The obvious question brought A'moth up short. Yes, exactly! What should the group do?! The owls couldn't dream their way to their arctic home unless they were on the other side of the barrier walls. It would take A'moth over forty minutes to run the twenty-two kilometers to the walls, another period of time to climb them... A'moth thought furiously. "Let's see, one hour, a thousand years every four seconds... Shit! 900,000 years! SHIT!!!"

She spoke out loud, "Jim, Cindy, Isabelle! You want to fly ahead of me? How fast can you fly to the Freeway and get out of here?!"

"No, no, no!" flapped Jim. "We separate in this kind of temporal gradient, we'll lose each other for all eternity! Remember the time loop! There were only about 200,000 years left until Earth loop reset! We separate now, it'll be a disaster! Stay together!"

A'moth grimaced as the realization of what Jim had flapped sank in. "The time loop!" she thought. "How could I forget?! 200,000 years... that's... What?! Thirteen minutes?!" A'moth quickly told her estimate to the team. And then for a moment they stood in silence.

"Ideas anyone?" flapped Cindy. They stared at each other, everyone hoping somebody would come up with a brilliant idea. But their environment was totally out of their control. Finally Cindy flapped, "A'moth, how much time do we have left?"

A'moth thought. "Eight minutes at most!" She stared at the glowing bluish yellow band in the sky again. "Still about a thousand years every four seconds. It's not slowing down at all."

They all looked at each other nervously. There seemed nothing to do. In spite of the insane cosmic speed of the cosmos, the next few minutes passed in agonizing slowness. Then Isabelle screeched. "Havika!" she spelled out with her wings. "The quantum tunnel opened at loop reset on Aina! Maybe it will open here too!"

A'moth stared at the owl. "You mean, we head back?"

Isabelle nodded her owl head. "To where Gary left!"

She started to fly back, the other owls following her. A'moth began to run after them, wondering if they could find the spot in the few minutes they had left...

Time: Undefined, sliding in a slip channel conduit

The ride I was in was nothing like the Nebraska channel. This one was spinning me around so much, it was a great battle not to puke. I seemed to be enveloped in some sort of bubble, very tough, and I was glad of it. Every time I would bounce against the spiral walls, I seemed to knock off shards that spun and twisted as they traveled with me. They looked wickedly sharp and absolutely flat, true two-dimensional pieces of God know what. Their jagged edges were frightening, but they didn't seem to be able to cut my bubble.

There was a fork coming up in the channel, one branch looked like more of the same, and the other looked like hell, thinning and tapering to a point. I would be crushed if I took it. I instinctively flinched at the sight, and I tried to jerk my bubble away from the disastrous fork. Surprisingly, I seemed to have some control over my bubble, and I jerked it away from the death channel. I sped down the other fork, my mind frantically probing for what was up ahead. And then I saw it, the abrupt end of the channel. It looked like a solid wall of glass, and I was hurtling straight for it, and there was nothing I could do about it.

No! Not glass, a mirror! I could see an image of myself. It seemed my last moment would be slamming into myself at 100 mph.

Time: Unknown, Lost in the Blue Thunder

A'moth circled back on her loop, trying to find the exact spot where Gary had left. In the strange glowing light everything looked both unfamiliar and uniform, and she began to lose hope. A short distance overhead three owls were flying a grid pattern, but they hadn't found anything they thought was the channel location either. They were certain they were in the right area, perhaps within a hundred meters, but how to find the exact spot.