Chapter 18

Ten minutes after the coffee finished dripping, the rangers showed up. They got out of their SUV, and tramped to the door. I opened it before they could knock.

"Come in, before we start heating the great outdoors," I said in a jovial voice.

They came in. They introduced themselves, and asked a favor.

"We're sort of stuck. Usually the snow doesn't come this early. The station up here, for emergencies, is only half prepared. There was a slide a little south of here, and it's blocking the road.

"We got out and climbed the blockage, but even as we watched, more snow further down the hill was causing more rock and snow slides. The main station says they can get to us in the next day or two, but not till they are sure the slides have stopped.

"We were wondering if you could put us up for a couple days? I know it's an imposition, but we are sort of stuck," the male ranger, Oscar Mansfield said.

"Of course! Let's see, we have a spare room that the two of you can share upstairs if you want. If you are shy about the accommodations, one of you can take the room, the other can make do on the couch here," I said helpfully.

Brenda and I, along with Courtney, went into the kitchen. We started cooking a nice big supper, leaving Tom to entertain my two guests. They had asked if they could contribute work or anything, but we had nixed that idea quickly, saying guests were treated royally at 'Lost in The Woods Lodge', as I called it.

They chuckled at the name, and spent the time warming up. Oscar's partner, Cathy Lafferty, asked for a tour, and I was drafted from kitchen duty to be the tour guide. I showed them through the house, and they were impressed with it and the fact I was set up to handle weather and situations like this, and to be independent of outside utilities.

They were also curious how someone my age could afford something like this. I just cocked an eye at them, and they had the grace to look embarrassed. While I was doing the nickel tour, Tom was doing his thing, and backtracked the rangers in time. When they went to go upstairs after supper to get sleeping arrangements settled, Tom pulled me aside for a quiet talk.

"Ok, while it is true that the road is blocked a bit, they caused the blockage. They then made a beeline straight here. There was no stopping or checking on this emergency station that is supposedly up here. Also, with their four wheel drive capability, I am sure they could have powered right through that little slide," Tom told me.

So it seemed we were being checked up on by someone. Well, I had known it would happen, sooner or later. I had been hoping for later, though. I knew these two were real rangers. I had asked the locals about them, prior to this visit. Still, I was wondering what was going on.

So it was that we were hosting a couple snoopy rangers. Every once in a while, I would catch one or the other going off to check things out. Also, since they were here, Tom, Courtney, and Brenda could not very well leave; since they would have to be 'driven' out, and I was acting as if I believed the story these two gave me.

Early in the afternoon of the second day, we had a visit from another ranger. He had driven up to let 'our' two rangers know the road was open and serviceable. I was thanked profusely for putting them up. They offered to pay me a rate for the inconvenience. I waved that aside, telling them I was glad to help out. We then watched as the rangers left in a group.

Tom was listening to his ear bud, and smiling. I asked him what was funny.

"Your two guests are openly discussing that nothing out of the ordinary was found, and they were wondering what the big deal was. We seemed a normal bunch of people," he said chuckling.

It seemed that Tom had planted a listening device in the ranger's vehicle, sometime during the last day and a half, and was now getting a live feed. Tom was a veritable gadget guru. His future computer, and its core data of discoveries and knowledge of listening devices, combined well with that alternate world where Tom had so much power. I was going to have to ask him about that someday, but only when we had time to relax and enjoy a good story.

Several weeks went by. Brenda had started doing something recently, that required her to control her ability a little better. When she became angry, she could cause a definite reaction in the air temperature in the immediate vicinity! Her power and range were increasing as well.

She was not the only one, though. I was practicing the training I had received in that alternate world, religiously. I now grabbed power automatically, and started storing it for my own use. My TK was getting stronger, as was my deciphering of the immediate future. That was still a complicated puzzle though.

Still, my future visions were becoming more firm. My range had extended out to ten days, now, with a good probability of being accurate. I mean, the further from tomorrow I got, the less stable my predictions were. Tomorrow, I had down to almost a hundred percent, now. A few days into the future, and it was a 98.2 percent accurate prediction, according to my computer. There were still things that happened to change things a bit, but I was now seeing what would basically happen shortly, with extreme accuracy! Even as far as a week into the future, I was still at a 90 percent rate.

For the next few weeks, nothing really happened. Brenda went back to school, and Tom and Courtney were off doing their own thing. This left me alone, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself.

I discovered I had liked working. Now that I was unemployed, I felt out of sorts. Strange. The only problem with working for the feds was that it had been a forced issue. I kept coming back to that thought, for some reason. Ok, lots of people worked at jobs they didn't really like. Yet they did it, anyway. It was something to think about for the long run.

The weather had started turning warmer, and winter was coming to an end. In all honesty, I was ready for the warmer weather. It was during this time that things came to a head with Tom's half sister and mine, Debra Willows.

The feds had been watching her for sometime, now. They finally had decided to bring her in. What they had not counted on, was her ability kicking in as it did, or what form her ability would take. Tom had decided to go back to the point where the feds had forced her to take action, and make a preemptive move to change what had happened.

It was a direct violation of Tom's stated ideal of not to interfere with time. But he did not want his half sister, and mine come to think of it, to live with the results of that disastrous evening.

He had explained what had happened between his sister, and the extraction team sent to get her, and it was not pretty. It had caused her such mental anguish, that he had decided to take action to fix the problem.