Chapter 6

Being stranded out in nowhere Alaska might not be something many people would consider enjoyable. In fact, if you'd asked me before it happened I'd have been one of those that politely declined. After a few days of it I wasn't so sure I was a bit put out over the situation.

Sure, losing Carl and Jim had been a major bummer and I'd never have wished for that. Hell, I never even considered it and there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it, then or now. Aside from that things couldn't have been much better for me. I was stuck here with two beautiful women and they weren't stingy with their pussy. My wife didn't seem a bit jealous of the other woman either. What man wouldn't think he'd died and gone to heaven? Chris had never been jealous of other women I poled. I'm sure it had something to do with her being right there with us while we were exchanging bodily fluids.

Out here in the wilds I didn't even have to go to work and try making a living. Needing to kill something to eat every now and then didn't count as work to my way of thinking. Not being able to hear one damned peep out of the radio was a little strange but it was worth it to see an animal that had supposedly been extinct for thousands of years, even if I didn't want a closer look.

It was strange, kinda, but I was a little disappointed that most of the real work I needed to do was over now. We had our fort completed and our supplies safely stored and there wasn't really much we needed to do. Hell, we already had enough stuff to wait our rescue out for a year if it took that long. Sure, I'd have to do some more hunting, but what the hell; I'd come up here to hunt. The only thing that would suffer from this was my job and since I felt that Mary would receive Carl's ownership position in the company after his death I wasn't too worried about that.

As usual, I did the fire starting duty this morning. I was still careful about braving my initial exit from our fort but I'd even taken care of that pretty much. One of Jim's auger bits and the brace let me drill plenty of peep holes and it was a snap to walk around inside the walls and look out of them before opening the door.

After making sure I'd be alone outside the walls I opened the gate, went out, and closed it behind me. Peepholes or no I still carried two Glocks and the Marlin with me. I'd even worked on the left side holster a little and now it was in a cross-draw position, riding in front, with that Glock's grip nearly right at my bellybutton. I wouldn't have to drop it when it was empty any more since I could get it out and back in without any bother now.

Realization came to me after I started the coffee fire and was working on the one for cooking. I was being a dumbass making two different fires. We could make coffee just as well, or maybe even better, on the stove inside our tent. That would be a lot easier than building two different fires and it would mean we had coffee quicker to boot. Damn, I could have a cup or two before I even went outside.

We'd change coffee arrangements tomorrow though. Now that I had water getting hot out here I wanted coffee out here too. Mary and Chris came out to cook in a few minutes and sure enough the coffee was ready not long after that. We laughed at each other over the extra fire when I mentioned it.

"Leave it to Jack to figure out a way to reduce his workload. He not only gets out of building one fire, he'll get by with finding less firewood too," Chris said, grinning

"I guess he's going to be mad at us when we mention the kerosene heater we haven't even used yet, but then he'll pout when we run out of kerosene," Mary said.

"I hadn't thought of the kerosene heater but I'm glad you mentioned it, and don't worry about running out of kerosene quickly. The jet fuel in the remains of the Jolly Green Giant is practically the same thing," I said, and grinned right back at both of them.

They kept trying to yank my chain during the cooking and eating but it didn't bother me a bit. It's in a Texan's job description, they're supposed to be lazy - although most of us prefer to call it preserving our energy for more important tasks. It was just too bad I didn't have the makings for my favorite task - drinking beer. Carl and I had decided it would be stupid to come up here to sit around and guzzle the suds so we'd planned and extra couple of days off for drinking after we got back home.

After breakfast I went over to the helicopter and spent another hour trying to raise someone on the radio. I squawked and listened until I was blue in the face with the same results I'd got last time. Either I wasn't talking loud enough or no one was listening. As usual I was in a bad mood when I got back to camp. I did my best to shake it off before going back into the tent.

It was easy to see something had the girls in a mood of their own once I was inside. I was about to ask them about it but Chris beat me to the punch.

"Mary noticed something a little strange to her and when she told me I thought it was odd too. We think we know the answer to the no radio question, but we can't believe we can be right."

"What is it?" I asked, and figuring I was going to hate the surprise.

"The days are too long for us to be in Alaska," Mary said.

"What?"

"The sun is up too long. I didn't think of it at first because it's about like it was at home, but the sun is not supposed to stay up this long where we are. I even remember Carl saying we'd have about two hours less daylight up here this time of year. Someone at the guide company told him about it."

"You're right of course. I even knew it myself but forgot about it after we were here. We can't be in Alaska. I don't know where in hell we are but it can't be Alaska. We have to be a good bit farther south nearer the latitude of home. Probably not that far south but close," I said.

"But where can we be? If we were just due south of where we started we'd be in the ocean. Something very wrong happened in that storm. Jim didn't even have enough fuel to get as far south as we seem to be. That helicopter doesn't hold that much and the sight glass says it's still over half full even after we've drained out all those cans we poured on the signal fire," Mary said.

"I don't have any idea. There seem to be a few really weird things going on, but this even makes the radio silence more impossible. The hell of it ism I don't have a clue about how to find out where we are. I don't think it can be done with only a compass.

"Carl saw a sextant when we were shopping somewhere and said he'd buy it if I knew how to use it. All I thought I knew about it was that it wouldn't work on dry land so we left it where it was. Besides, how could we have known the GPS units wouldn't work? They were working after we bought 'em because I tried out every one myself," I said.

"If we aren't in, Alaska who in the hell will know to look for us where ever we are? There could be hundreds of people flying around all over up there with no way in hell they can find us, because we aren't there," Mary said.

That was a sobering thought and it was exactly correct too. Unless the sun and earth had changed course somehow we were not in Alaska. The only way we could be was if we'd moved a few months in time too and I didn't even want to go there.

I liked SciFi as much as anyone, but it was reading it that did it for me. I'd never had a wish to participate. I didn't know whether man would someday learn how to move back and forth in time or not. I was pretty sure no one knew how to do it in a helicopter, yet, no matter how bad a storm it crashed in.

That was a bad thought for me to have - completely inappropriate for our situation, because it would explain everything at once, kinda. If we'd moved a few thousand years in time everything would fit just fine, or mostly so. We'd also have had to move in space too since we obviously weren't in Alaska.

Wait a minute though; we could easily still be in Alaska from our evidence if we'd only moved back in time. If moving in time was possible, who was to say we'd move back in yearly units? If we'd moved back a couple of extra months the sun would be making these longer days. Of course that begged the question of our watches. They coincided with what our expected time of day appeared to be.

Things were getting too confusing now. There were too many options for what might have happened once we considered unknown and previously considered impossible things happening. The bad part was something impossible had happened because it was completely impossible for us to be where we thought we were when we thought we were.