Chapter 26

Ed followed Nick and Ernie up the hill to the green. The mayor and fire chief were directing ... I suppose they thought they were.

After a couple of minutes Ed asked Ernie where people had the boards from the last storm.

"Most of 'em burn 'em over the winter."

"That'll never do ... someone needs to take a truck to the mill an get slab wood. John? You have that big truck ... Here's fifty dollars ... go buy all the slab that's window size the mill will sell ... make trips. Eight foot should work. If they don't have it tell 'em I said to cut it. Nick, you stay here ... you're too old to be running all over town ... Aw ... ok ... hit the Antler and recruit the pool players. Come on Ernie ... let's find nails and hammers. Hey Nick ... wait." Ed ran over to him and handed him a fifty. "Tell Frank I said to make coffee, lots of sandwiches and a pot of soup ... a big pot of soup."

Young Al Fromm went by with his paper wagon. Ed stopped him.

"Al ... go see Mitch at the market, buy every loaf of bread ... every slice of cold cuts ... anything you think will make a sandwich ... buy it and take it to Frank at the Antler." He handed Al a fifty. "Tell Mitch, if that's not enough I'll settle with him as soon as I can. Scoot!"

Al took off heading for the grocery store. "Come on Ernie ... We're going to need transportation."

Ed headed for his garage. "Ernie ... grab the other door." Ernie liked to faint when he saw the car. "Ed ... that's a Rolls Royce Limousine. You can't go hauling hammers and stuff in it ... that car cost twelve thousand dollars."

"Too bad. Let's go."

They stopped at the bank.

"Hi Jimmy ... I need a couple of thousand dollars."

"Hi Mr. Huntly ... Ernie. How do you want it?"

"How ever you got it, Jimmy. No hundreds though, people won't have change."

"I don't have that much in the drawer, Ed ... I've got sixteen hundred ... that's every bill in the bank. I got another five in gold ... want it?"

"Yes." Ed laughed, "You're out of money Jim ... you might as well lock up and come with me."

"Yes Sir."

He did. He hung a sign on the door and locked up.

"Hey ... that's a Rolls. Yours?"

"Yeah. Jim? Remember our first time?"

"Yeah ... I've regretted it a million times."

"Here's your chance to shine Jim. I need every 10 penny nail and larger up to 16 common ... and all the hammers at the hardware store loaded up and brought to the front of the village green." Ed handed him a handful of bills and the keys.

Five hours later, all the store windows on the east side of Main boarded up, The men were sitting in the Antler drinking beer from coke bottles, spooning a great soup and eating just about any kind of sandwich you could think of. Mitch from the market had three huge corned beef roasts and he was slicing them on the slicer that he'd brought from the market.

"Where's your wife Ed?"

"Shit ... I forgot ... she's supposed to be in the gunk hole. It's too late now."

"You got that right ... there's a movie crew up on the roof at the Gufstasons building getting ready to film this storm.

"I hope they don't get blown off."

"It's three stories ... if they do we'll never find them."

That brought a huge laugh from the men in the lounge, bar, coffee shop pool hall. What ever.

"Where can we go to watch?"

"The Firetower!!!"

"Hey!!"

The trek was on. Odd thing though ... Ed, Frank, Ernie and Nick didn't go. "Ok guys ... spill it."

Nick said, "I've been to college." That brought out a gasp. "The Turks ruled Greece. In Greece ... there was an animosity there against educated Greeks. It got extremely dangerous to be an educated Greek. After the first of my colleagues disappeared, I took the first ship out..."

"How far Nick?"

"Ah ... um ... Ph.D."

"Doctor Nick???" They were incredulous.

"Professor Andropolis please." He grinned. "Physics."

"Why the bridge?"

"For a long time the Turks hunted the educated and they didn't care how far they had to go."

"So Doc ... What are we dealing with?"

"There are those who say ... and there are always those who run counter to conventional thinking ... we are not the end all and be all of intelligence.

"The Church has ever tried to stifle thought. 'Let us do the thinking ... God has shown us the way'. That attitude has been more than one mans' cup of hemlock. They want you to believe in mysteries but refuse to allow mysteries to influence their thought.

"For centuries, the Earth was the central fixed point about which the universe revolved.

"An Alternative Universe ... or Parallel Universe could not possibly be ... It would mean that God's Perfect Work ... that's us ... isn't perfect. God cannot 'try and get it right this time'."

"What's a parallel universe? One that marches along with us?" Frank asked. "I understand an alternative many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics." Everybody looked at Frank like he had two heads. "Hey ... I read."

Nick expounded, "parallel universe is a theory of possible worlds which are all just as real as this world. Looks like this earth, acts like this earth, except you, personally, never existed. They have a nearly identical timeline.

"They say the only time travel possible is to the future and time travel to the past isn't possible unless it's to a parallel world. Since you never existed in the parallel your actions cannot change the future. The future is what YOU decide.

"That boat exists on a timeline too close to ours and it's bleeding through."

They all sat back from the table ... As one, they all said, "Whoa!"

"Is it tied good and tight, Missy?" asked Seph.

Missy was leaving puddles on deck. "Yes ... the biggest tree I could find ... operating on the theory that it's done this before and lived through it."

"Good thinking," complimented Seph.

"It's tied as close to the root system as I could get it." Missy replied.

"Because?"

"A strain up high might pull it over. I doubt we can pull it out."

"I think we should let out a little more rode."

"Let's wait ... it's a power windlass. We can do it later."

"Let's get you out of those wet clothes. I lit the propane heater."

There was quite a lot of 'polishing the apple' and 'washing the peach' ... eventually they were both warm. Seph turned off the furnace.

"Now what?"

"What women have always done in times of high stress and extreme danger ... cook."

The hours crept slowly by. They cooked ... beef ... chicken ... pork ... ham ... bacon. Eggs ... they made egg salad, deviled eggs and egg fu young. Salad, Caesar, Italian. Finally ... stuffed, they decided to see what was happening on deck.

Nothing much it seems, until Missy noticed the rode was angled down instead of up. They looked behind. The water was over the highway. That wasn't too bad; only six feet or so above normal. Missy let out 25 feet of rode. All things considered, they were in pretty much the same place as they had started. Letting out rode decreased the angle of pull.