Novel in Progress

INTRODUCTION

What is time? Time is the definition of eternity, trailing off into the black hole of our perception of what our use of time should be. Time holds no emotions, no sympathy for those it steals from.  Time does not wait for anyone, and in fact runs toward the deadline.  But what if time was irrelevant?  What if, for once, time was only a variable in the equation, and it could be manipulated, pushed back for once.  What would happen if time was not a constant and time was in fact an illusion?  Could we step outside of time, and if we did, where would we go?  Time travel is not what I am insinuating, time fabrication is.  In a world that is outside of our own, one girl achieved the inconceivable with the help of a stranger and his unknown motives.  With the help of a new friend and her father, Robin will go on an adventure that will change her world as she knows it.  With crazy mob-men taking over the country, she will need all the help she can get. But as Robin will discover, there are some things that you can never fix, not even through time travel.  Whether you refer to it as fate or destiny, some underlying force that coerces our paths, will not be ignored. 

Chapter One

The End

The reflection of the moon is luminous on the pavement's wet surface and the smell of rain is everywhere on the stree.  At this time Manhattan is overtaken by the sewer rats, and is no longer inhabited by civilians.  Robin watches the sky, perched on the rooftop of an abandoned apartment complex and she holds a lit candle in both hands.  Today is her nineteenth birthday as well as the tenth anniversary of her mother's death.  A single tear finds itself trickling down her cold cheek; with a hushed tone, she whispers,
"It hurts more and more every year I pass through without her".  As we look out over the city, I can’t help but remember the day that I first saw Robin. 

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Everything began on the day of President Ralph Lancaster inauguration.  He was broad shouldered and well built, and when he smiled it never reached his eyes, which were gray with a lack of light behind them.  When he would speak, the room would fill with tension, as everyone held their breath to keep from interrupting the fluidity of his speech. He approached the podium with a disheveled look across his face and his shoulders were slumped over in what looked like a sign of defeat.  From the look on his face, I had a feeling that the life that I had known would cease to exist after today. 

"Peace, freedom, individual rights and liberties.  That was what America was built on.  From the day that I entered office until the day that I die, I will always love America for what it has stood for; I would not have run for president if I did not feel this way.  So it pains me to deliver this speech because I know that from this day forward, America will cease to exist.  Our economy is no longer self-sustaining, we have played every card we have had and find ourselves at the mercy of our investors.  We will never be able to pay back our debts and at this point, we can no longer function independent of their help.  It has come to my attention that China refuses to trade with us any longer until our debt is paid in full.  An embargo has been placed on American goods across the world by a coalition of countries that America has borrowed money from.  The only compromise that we could arrive at was to trade land for debt relief.  Unfortunately, we do not hold a bargaining power over this matter, and the resolution declares that the United States will become colonies that will be under the jurisdiction of the highest bidder. It is time to pay our reparations and take responsibility for our past's mistakes; I realize that this may be my last speech, and am announcing my immediate resignation.  There is no point in representing a nation that will cease to remain a nation after today. I hope our future generations can forgive us all for the part we played in the collapse of the great United States.” The President spoke somberly, awaiting the violent crowd to tear him apart. The crowd swallowed him whole with anxious questions, while at the same time gunshots were fired from the rooftops. The massacred victims in the streets soaked the pavement with their blood, while the rest of the crowd fell into a panic and began to trample over each other, desperate to escape the shooters.  The President was not ushered off by the Secret Service and stood firm on the podium.  I almost thought he had a death wish, and then I heard 3 more gun shots fired; two to the head and one to the chest of President Lancaster.  His body contorted over the podium and then fell onto the floor.  Blood curdling screams filled the room, and that is when He stepped onto the stage.  The man had a set of broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and a shaved head as if he were in the military.  All of these factors came together to create the appearance of a man who was solid and intimidating.  But it was the eyes that really got under your skin; his eyes were squinted as if he was disgusted with what he saw in the crowd, and even though I was in my balcony watching him, I still felt like he was looking directly at me. When he spoke into the microphone, the entire crowd fell silent.  He had a booming voice that could talk over any crowd of people and had an undertone that suggested he was going to break into maniacal laughter at any second.  Holding what appeared to be a remote control in is right hand, he walked over to the podium ignoring the President's body and a short flit of laughter escaped him. 
"Well isn't this a happy day!  The President is a little preoccupied right now so I will finish delivering his speech.  I am under direct orders to ensure that all of you remain in the within the perimeter and do not resist protocol."  His eyes were scattered across the room until they found her, Robin’s mother.  With a demented smile, he announced,

"Boys, please escort Annallie Meyers onto the stage, I would like a few words with her.  As for the rest of you, it is important that you understand that America is not what it used to be, a city on a hill, it is now a chunk of land that you all unfortunately inhabit.  Forget what you think you may know about its 'superiority' because effective immediately, there will be a division among the states that no one has the ability to prevent, and this time there won’t be any proclamations or amendments that will save you.  The constitution will burn along with all of the individuals that choose to be uncooperative.  There will a curfew set in place and everyone will be under house arrest until they are assigned to their new position in the faction.  Guards will be patrolling the streets 24/7 so if you think you would like to be target practice for my boys, please feel free to run.  Otherwise, follow all orders given to you and you might survive.”  I watched the woman, Annallie, being carried off by two large suits that gripped her tightly around both arms.  I could hear her screaming and the sound of sobbing escape from her; my heart fell, she looked like a normal citizen, probably had a family, was probably a mother.  The men dragged her up the steps and pushed her onto her knees in front of the man dealing out the orders.  The man knelt next to her and wiped her cheek, muttering something that was inaudible to the rest of the crowd.  I thought I was going crazy because I thought I heard a laugh escape the woman, and right before I began to doubt what I had heard, I witnessed Annallie spit in the face of the man.  You could tell that the man was utterly appalled by the way his face crumpled up and an angry groan escaped his throat.  The man got back onto his feet, and with a fluid moment, he kicked the woman straight in the stomach.  Annallie let out a gasp for air and her head fell into her lap; the man stood there watching her for a couple seconds, and then he pulled out his hand-gun and shot her straight in the head.  The crowd began to panic once again and that was when I saw her, the girl in the crowd crying.

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The man could have been a mobster or hired intelligence from a terrorist organization, but whoever he was, he had the man-power to help him execute his agenda.  Over the next couple months, the United States was broken up into pieces, preparing to be auctioned off to the World's wealthiest terrorists.  You couldn’t travel from one state into the other on account of the guards patrolling the state’s borders and the attack dogs that were released at night definitely kept you in your home.  All news and media outlets were shut down and the entire nation was in the dark for weeks until a program was released that would allow the citizens to be informed on new policy, new curfews, more regulations and more constricting orders.  It wasn’t until five months after the assassination that we found out that a part of the compromise was to allow the Secretary of State, the Vice President, and the Speaker of the House to all receive their own fraction of America to rule with an iron fist, while the rest of the states were to be separated into factions that were sold to countries all over the world. The city on the hill was burning; the collapse of the government, the division among the citizens and with no leader to follow, all morality flew out the window as America was buried alive in its grave.

Riots all over the country broke out after the President was assassinated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, shattering the realities that everyone thought they knew to be true, that America was invincible and that democracy would always prevail.  The worst of it all was that no one could have seen this coming.  It was almost as if there had been plotting for years that had been hidden from all aspects of the media, and that the government, an entity we trusted was for the people, by the people, had all the power and no intention of saving us.

Chapter Two

Secrets

The night caped over the sky, sentencing the sun behind the mountains where its light fizzled out. Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. It has been two years since I saw her smile, and cried in her arms. She is the reason I am the way I am, and the reason for my strange visions. Recently I have been compelled by more of these dreams of her death. These dreams pull me deeper into paranoia, and what her last words to me had meant. This feeling that her death somehow set everything in motion that day overwhelms me.

**********

I pushed through the crowd and raging chaos until I found her; she was kneeling on the stage in front of a mad man.  At that moment I could feel my heart drop into my stomach and my teeth clench together. All I could hear was the sound of a single bullet being fired and then everything went silent to me; the world stopped turning and the people around me disappeared.  All I saw was the look on her face, blank, calm, lifeless.  In a single stroke of the clock, my mother was taken from me in cold blood by a man that I didn’t know, and for a reason I couldn’t understand and never wanted to.  My entire body became rigid and cold and I could not feel the relief of air entering my lungs; I forgot to breathe.  I became aware again of everything as the sound of my own choking sobs registered.  I was physically shaken by the power of my own sobs and I could feel the knots churning in my stomach as the vomit shot up my throat.  I didn’t have the time or constraint to hold it back and my head rocked forward as I threw up.  I looked up again and realized that I needed to get out of here.  Just moments before, I was standing with my mom, watching her reaction to everything that was going on; I couldn’t quite understand what was happening and I became very confused when all the people around me became consumed by a rush of panic.  I glanced up at my mom to ask her what was going on and why she was crying and all of a sudden the fear crept up my neck as I heard her name being called.  I grabbed at her wrist and tried to hold on as hard as I could so she wouldn’t leave me, but the guards began to close in on us.  In her last effort to comfort me, she grabbed my face with both of her gentle, calloused hands and kissed my forehead, and then leaned down to whisper in my ear,

“I love you Robin, my sweet girl.  Go find your dad and whatever you do, do not look back.  Please, get out of here and go somewhere safe, somewhere they can’t find you.  I am so sorry.”  Her facial expression was cool and undeterred but I knew that she was trying to mask her fear.  Thirteen and confused, I protested and began to wail as I couldn’t fight back the tears any longer.  The bulky, over-sized guards circled us and two of them yanked my mother away by her arms, half carrying her, half dragging.  The other two guards rushed to hold me back as I exploded into a frenzy of anger and fear, with my limbs flailing in all directions. The next thing I knew she was gone.  I saw the life inside her leave her body; this was the moment my entire world shattered before my eyes. The crowd around me continued raging into a forest fire as destruction followed its trail.

I could not understand what her words had meant; what did she mean that THEY would find me? Who is "THEY"? What had my mother been hiding from me? Why would those men want my mom and call her up on stage?  Nothing made any sense and all the confusion racking around in my brain made the headaches worse and worse.  On top of the headaches, my entire body ached from the depression that had taken over me; and the violent sobs that caused me to convulse and shake uncontrollably only made it harder to form rational thoughts. I had escaped the crowds and the violence but I could not escape the sharp pains inside my heart. After I left the scene of my mother's death, I went home to find my father packing all of our stuff.  He urged me to leave, and to find him later that night at the campsite that we had gone to a few weeks ago for our annual family camping trip.  I couldn’t understand why he would choose to go there, and why we were leaving our home.  What the hell was going on?  I didn't understand his urgency, or why he didn't notice that mom wasn't with me.  I tried to tell him what had happened, but I had the strangest feeling that he already knew; the look in his eyes were lacking his usual happy sparkle and was replaced by dark circles and irritated redness.  I took one last look at the room that I had grown up in and the kitchen where my mom had made me burnt grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, knowing that it would never be the same again.  No home, no mother, no country; this was the beginning of the end.  I ran down the stairs of our complex and took off in a full sprint down the road toward the lake.  I followed his orders and arrived at the campsite minutes before sunset.  The only things I had with me were my sleeping bag, a bottle of water, a pocketknife that my grandfather had given me, and my mother's locket. I searched for my dad for hours after I had arrived, but there was no sign of him.  I was alone, subjected to the danger of my own thoughts; 'Who killed my mom?' 'Why did they kill her?' 'Where was my father?' and 'What is going to happen to me?'  Afraid and cold, I decided to test my girl-scout abilities and make a fire. I was still absorbed in my own thoughts when a man appeared in the shadows. I felt his stare, and with caution I called out to him,
"Who are you?" It was silent for what felt like hours until he replied with a whisper,
"A man with a mission". Still frozen, I tried to understand what he had just said, when I saw him throw a bag at me. I scrambled to pick up the bag and when I looked back up, he was gone. I returned my attention back to the bag; the only thing inside was a smooth silver ball with inscriptions that read, “To uncover my secret, you have to go under the surface of what you see.” What could that have meant?  It had to be a riddle but what did the riddle have to do with the metal sphere that rested in my palms.  Go under the surface, that had to have another meaning to it, something that is obvious, and something that is an instruction.  What “secret” could be hiding in the sphere and why was it important to me, as far as I knew, the man that gave it to me could be some crazy Armageddon-crazed cult member.  But the curiosity of what could be on the inside could not be ignored; the instruction in the riddle could be specific to my location, it could be talking about how I need to go under the surface in the woods, like a tunnel?  I looked out ahead of me at the horizon that reflected off of the water.  Wait!  Go under the surface, like I would to go under water.   I searched for my water bottle and poured a couple of drops on the silver ball. The ball did nothing.  I wasn’t about to let myself be discouraged; something is supposed to happen when the sphere is exposed to water, I just knew it.  I followed the path to the lake, and threw the ball into the water.  The water began to shake violently in a matter of seconds and the fear of what I might have done began to jab at me.  But the mystery hadn’t been solved, I still had no idea what I was supposed to find, but I had a gut feeling that whatever it was, it was meant for me specifically, even though I had no idea why.  A wave of excitement washed over me as I thought about what I had done and what could happen next.  I couldn’t wait any longer to find out; I felt the breeze rush through my hair as I ran toward the dock and leapt into the water.  My body went into a moment of shock as the ice cold water infiltrated my clothing.  My eyes were squeezed shut as I let the cold consumed every fiber of me and finally I broke the moment of shock and opened my eyes.  At first, I had thought my eyes deceived me; the ball had transformed into a dome the size of my apartment. I forced my arms away from my sides and attempted to paddle closer to the dome, feeling the stiffness in the movement of my arms.  As I got closer, I noticed what appeared to be a door and I reached for the chrome handle.  The knob twisted effortlessly in my palm and the next thing I knew, I had been consumed by darkness as I was sucked into the dome.
I woke up in a surprisingly bright room with my body wrapped in a sleeping bag, my sleeping bag.  The movement to try and sit up came very hard to me as jolts of sharp pain shot through my arms and head.  I couldn’t tell where I was or how was I alive? Who saved me? And why isn't the dome filled with water? A million questions ran through my mind that I began to feel the heat from my anxiety creep up my neck as the blood rushed to my face.  After assessing the structure of the room and the curved ceiling, I realized that I had to be in the dome.  I looked around the dome and saw that there were other doors to separate rooms. I realized I was in a room that was filled with books and strange sketches hanging on the walls, sketches that looked like they had been ripped out of journals and sporadically scattered around the room. There was also yarn that pinned one sketch to another, and all types of assorted colors segregating the pictures.  Some of the sketches consisted of an image of a dove that seemed to be searching for something; its eyes seemed very intense and full of purpose.  The other images that I noticed were of the a tree that stood alone, tall and ominous, with fruit hanging from its limbs but surrounded by death and darkness.  The last sketch that I noticed was one that I recognized; it was a sketch of a locket that resembled the one my mother gave me. Both the locket I carried and the locket in the sketches had the same symbol: a crescent with a dove in the center of it.

While mesmerized by my new surroundings, the door to one of the rooms opened. Fear trembled through my body and I was overtaken by the confusion of my whereabouts, but then relief showered over me as I noticed the figure standing in front of me.  There, standing in the doorframe, was my father.

Chapter 3

Nightmares

My father was the one who saved me from drowning, and treated the gash in my forehead that came from hitting the entrance into the dome. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw his face; how did he find me?  How did he know I was in a metal dome under water, and did he know the man that gave me the futuristic device? Who was that man? I was caught up in a daze; nothing about my world made sense anymore. My father tried to explain what was going on, why we were in the woods hiding, and why we were no longer safe to go outside into the state of chaos that had taken over the city.  His words fell deaf to my ears; the only thing I could focus on was the memory of my mother, lying in a puddle of blood.  I could have saved her, I could have brought her here, but instead I retreated like a coward.  Fear of a world where my mother didn't exist grasped a hold of my mind; I couldn't escape the horrors of my new life, even in my dreams.

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My heart was beating violently, threatening to tear itself out of my chest, as if it was held hostage against its will. My feet were hurling me forward as best as they could, I didn't know why I was running. All I knew was that I was afraid, and that I couldn't breathe. The ground underneath me fell into oblivion, and I fell with it. I tried to scream but all that came out was the remainder of air in my lungs. I was falling into darkness, until the nothingness of my surroundings swallowed me whole. The sound of a crash pierced my ears; my eyes seemed to focus in on the nothingness and captured the light that was trying to break through the dark hole I seemed to have fallen into. The light piercing the darkness revealed my mother, who was sitting on the ground of the hole, crying. Then I noticed the blood that was escaping her body. This was the scene of her death that I had witnessed a few days ago. But it seemed different. She was holding something in her hands, something indecipherable to my eyes, invisible to me. A crowd of people appeared surrounding us, shouting out angrily about deception and the end of the world.

A man then stood in front of my mother, laughing cynically, almost as if he was laughing at her coiled up body on the floor. The man had his back to me, unaware of my stare and boiling anger at his cruelness. He remained a silhouette figure, trailing off into the crowd, leaving behind my mother, who was now paralyzed, sprawled out on the floor. I ran to her in a panic and collapsed at her side in loud desperate sobs. The crowd began to close in on us, and seemed as if they were trying to suffocate the light that had saved me from the nothingness, leading the darkness back into the hole that I had fallen into. My eyes became numb to the people and all I saw was a glowing white dove. The crowd around me vanished into the darkness, but I remained with the dove, which fluttered gracefully, blessing me with its light.

Then behind the darkness appeared a crescent moon in the sky, as if the moon had reached its cycle after the new moon, revealing the sliver of light that defied the engulfing darkness. At that moment, the truth behind the symbol surfaced; the crescent moon represented hope after the night of complete darkness, that even though the darkness may surround us, representing the weakest of times, light would find us. The dove represents the hope that conquered despair after the end of the world that was of Noah's time in the bible, and a new beginning of life on Earth reigned after the evil on the Earth had been wiped out. The state of the world we were in was the complete darkness of my dream; what I didn't know was how there could be any hope.

I woke up drenched in sweat after my nightmare; there was something really scary about my dream, it had felt too real. The dream remained fresh in my mind, haunting me for weeks on end, and at moments during the day I would see visions of the dream as if I was having a flashback like it was a memory. The most recurring vision was of the majestic white dove and the revealing of the crescent moon. I remembered the sketch in my room of the figures and tried to piece together any hidden meaning. All I could think of was that the two figures were luminescent, and appeared at the moment of complete darkness.  The visions were becoming more and more vivid as time passed, and I began to notice myself drifting away from reality, falling deeper and deeper into the chasm of my own subconscious.  The image of the dove haunted me, as well as the blood-curdling scream that ripped into my dreams that I soon recognized to be my mother's cry.  Diving deep into the mysterious visions and symbols that had to hold some meaning in the current state of the world, and of my world, drove me utterly insane.  My thoughts began to blur together, crippling my ability to decipher reality from fantasy.  I was trapped.  I was lost in myself and the only person who could break the barrier that separated me from the real world was the one person who held the answer to one of the millions of questions I had... Who was I?

Chapter 4

Caiden Meyer

The past couple of nights were haunted by recurring nightmares.  I felt as if I were being suffocated in my waking hours as well as during the nights and I couldn’t manage to find the air in my lungs when I needed it.  There was nowhere I could hide, no place that I could run away from the death of my mother and the crumbling of my country.  I could no longer look to the one person who had protected me, loved me, guided me.  She was forever gone and I was left with an aching hole in my chest and foggy cloud in all my thoughts.  The thought of her makes me want to smile and then burst into tears, so I do neither; I allow myself to set into the numbness, where pain cannot phase me.  I can’t let myself fall into despair, I can’t open that chasm because if I do, I’ll never come out.  Although my nightmares left my heart racing and my lungs breathless, when I saw her face, for a brief moment, it gave me a feeling of relief, like she never left. 

There were times when I could sit with my mom, my head in her lap and she would just run her fingers through my hair.  She was so beautiful; I remember looking at the kindness that rested in her bright green eyes and the smile that always had an understood me, and her arms that always protected me from heart ache. I never realized how much she loved me until now; looking back on all the little things she did for me, I felt a pang in my stomach. When I think of her, I think of her braiding my matted hair in the morning, and her singing sweet songs that she made up about her and I.  Her spirit was so gentle and kind, and her smile could warm your body and make you feel like you were the only person in the world that mattered. 

The numbness that consumed me began to vanish as the days past and in its absence, the pain came in waves of body aches, overwhelming heat and uncontrollable choking sobs.  In a weird way, I feel like I needed the anger and the hurt to silence the numbness that replaced it, because at least the pain let me know I was still alive, despite the fact that some days I wish I wasn’t.  Thinking back to the numbness, the worst part about being was that you lost your senses, you lost all ability to move forward and you lost all ability to care.  I saw myself as a shell of a person, incomplete and waiting for death to soothe me until I realized that there has to be something to live for. I think it might have been intuition or just plain old human instinct to survive, but I found an ounce of courage to keep looking for something, someone to live for.  And then he showed up. 

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Groggy and head aching, my eyes opened and I discovered the emptiness of the room.  It was almost an eerie feeling that filled the air; I needed to get out, the walls felt as if they were going to close in on me and all the air would be gone.  My arms fell to my side from their usual position of being wrapped around my torso to protect myself from the bitter cold that filled the room, and I pushed myself up from the sleeping bag that I had been coddled up in for 5 days now.  Every morning was rough because I wasn’t waking up from a nightmare, I was waking up to a nightmare.  I heard rustling from the other side of the door, my father, who had been strangely distant since we had found one another.  I wonder what he is going through with everything that happened.  I mindlessly dragged my feet across the room and when I reached the door, I was astonished by what I had seen.  My father, the goofy guy that would hum show-tunes, was throwing a combination of punches and kicks, all sorts of martial arts maneuvers in the middle of this empty living area.  He threw a couple of flips into the routine and managed a split in midair and finally after five minutes of watching him practice, he turned around and acknowledged my presence.  I was speechless.  Those kinds of skills must have taken years to learn and master, and on top of that, he would have had to have intense training with professionals.  I started to wonder if my father was even an accountant.  It was time to start figuring out what my parents had been keeping from me all this time and why they have been keeping it from me. 

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I felt the cool trickle of sweat drip down my back as my fist glided through the air and my body shifted in perfect harmony with the force that I was exerting.  My body is a machine that I control; the motions have become fluid and natural to me after twenty years of combat training.  I was recruited into the armed forces after I graduated high school because I knew I could never see myself sitting behind a desk with a 401k and scheduled meetings in the break room.  No.  I needed to be a tool, a part of a machine that challenged something, tested my limits, and made me into something that was always getting better.  I needed to be a hero.  After being deployed in Afghanistan for the third time though, I had this feeling that there was something missing, or someone.  Her name was Rachel Lancaster and she was the girl that I dated all throughout college, the woman who knew more about electrical wiring and quantum mechanics than any person I had ever come across in my entire life.  She was beautiful, corky, smart, ridiculous and at the same time completely indescribable.  She was a contradiction.  I knew that one day I would marry her, and I did, but I did not marry Rachel, I married Anallie.