“Where… what…” RJ stutters as he rises out of his crouch and looks around, wide eyed.
“Grab on,” I say. “We’re not done.”
“What are you talking about? We’re not done what? I don’t understand.”
“RJ,” Iffy says, “do you want us to leave you here?”
I know he’s desperately trying to find an explanation for what has just happened, but he’s obviously coming up empty. The thought of being abandoned, though, is enough for him to scramble back over and grab on to me again.
A push of the button, and we travel physical backward forty feet and forward in time several hours to 10:05 a.m. The bright sunlight forces me to squeeze my eyes shut. Once I feel them starting to adjust, I slowly open them again. The good thing is, with a trip this short, the accompanying headache is all but nonexistent for all of us.
RJ has once more moved a few feet away from me. He blinks rapidly as he stares up at the sky. “But… but… how… we were just…”
Iffy moves quickly to his side, but as she puts an arm around him, he jerks away and looks at her, terrified.
“It’s just me,” she says.
He swallows hard, and when her hand touches his shoulder again, he doesn’t shake it off.
“I told you not to freak out.”
“You drugged me, didn’t you?” he asks. “This is some kind of hallucination.”
“What? No. We didn’t drug you.”
“This can’t be real.”
She touches the rock we are now hiding behind. “Feel it. It’s real.”
He moves a hand toward the boulder as if he or it or both might explode if actual contact is made. When his fingertip brushes the surface, he freezes for a second and then shoves his palm against the rock.
He turns to me. “Where’s your apartment?”
“A couple hundred miles south,” I say, almost adding that I’m pretty sure it hasn’t even been built yet. Better to ease him in. “We’re in the desert, north of Los Angeles.”
His brow wrinkles as he tries to process this. After a few moments, he sneers and begins shaking his head. “No, no, no. We’re still in your apartment. That box, it’s some sort of VR rig, isn’t it?”
Now I’m the confused one. “VR?”
“Virtual reality. I have no idea how it could work without goggles, but holy crap, this is great!”
“It’s not VR,” Iffy says. “Feel the wind and the heat. Smell the dirt. We’re not in Denny’s apartment.”
RJ shakes his head, snorting a couple laughs. “So, what? That’s some kind of transportation device? Very funny, Iffy. But I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, it’s more than just a transportation device.”
He cocks his head, his mask of denial cracking a little. “What do you mean?”
Iffy glances at me. “How much time do we have?”
I check the chaser. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Come on,” she tells RJ. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.” She starts climbing up the rock.
“Oh, no. You tell me what the hell is going on, or I’ll—”
“Trust me, you’re not going to want to miss this.”
“This is insane,” he says as he starts up after her.
Once I put the chaser in my satchel, I head up, too.
I’m still a long way from understanding all the intricacies of Iffy’s world, but I’m sure our presence here is breaking some kind of United States law. We’re on a military base without permission, after all, on what is a very important day. When Iffy told me her idea, she assured me that while security might be tight, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as strict as it becomes after the New York terrorist attack in 2001. I hope she’s right. While we could easily escape by jumping if we’re spotted, I would rather the military not see us disappear in front of their eyes.
For this reason, I urge caution as we reach the top and peer over it.
The dry lake bed lies before us. Permanent lines are drawn into it, mapping out what look like several wide roads. Off to the side, in the area where all the vehicles are parked, a crush of people now line a barrier on the edge closest to the lake. They’re pressed together a dozen deep at the least, like a giant amorphous snake with one very straight edge.
“What is this?” RJ asks. “Where exactly are we?”
“Edwards Air Force Base,” Iffy tells him.
His mouth opens several times as if he wants to ask something else, but each time it closes again without a word.
After a few minutes, Iffy points at the distant sky. “See it?”
Both RJ and I look to where she’s indicated. At first I see nothing but blue, then slowly I begin to make out a white dot.
“Is that a plane?” RJ asks.
“Not exactly,” Iffy says.
The dot grows and begins to take shape: wings and a tail connected to a fat body.
I glance at RJ. His expression is a battle of wonder and confusion. I look back to the sky and see that two smaller aircraft have joined the first. At that moment we hear the distant sound of the thousands gathered on the lake cheering.
“This can’t be,” RJ whispers.
Down the aircraft travels, its shape becoming more and more distinctive.
“This can’t be.”
I worry that RJ is going to jump off the rock and run, but he stays where he is, transfixed by the event unfolding in front of us.
Iffy pulls her phone out of her pocket and points it toward the aircraft. Using the camera, she magnifies the image until the vehicle rests prominently in the middle. The iconic image is impossible to mistake for anything other than what it is — a space shuttle. We are witnessing the return of the very first one to orbit the earth.
RJ stares at the camera for a moment and then quickly returns his gaze to the sky so he can watch with his own eyes.
The shuttle is so low when the landing gear deploys that I’ve begun to wonder if the aircraft is going to crash. I am not familiar with the details of this event, but I do know at some point there is at least one disaster involving the shuttle program. I only hope that I’m not about to see it. But the gear does drop down, and the aircraft touches the dry lake bed with a puff of dust.
As the orbiter slows, RJ finally looks back at Iffy’s camera.
“That’s… that’s the Columbia.”
I look at the screen, but the only thing I can make out on the shuttle is a red, white, and blue rectangle next to the barely readable words United States. “How do you know?” I ask.
He points to a line of black on the front half of the fuselage. Letters or numbers, maybe, but impossible to read.
“The Columbia is the only one that had its name on the cargo bay doors,” he explains. “All the others were closer to the cockpit. They even moved Columbia’s there later, too.”
As if just realizing what he’s said, he jerks back from the phone and climbs quickly off the rock. When we join him, he backs away a few feet, creating a buffer between us.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “What just happened?”
Iffy smiles sympathetically. “RJ, you saw it with your own eyes.”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
Iffy lifts the flap of my satchel and says, “May I?”
After I nod, she pulls out the device that has brought us here.
“It’s called a chaser,” she says. “It allows Denny to travel through time.”
RJ spits out a solitary laugh. “You’re crazy.”
“You just witnessed the landing of the very first space shuttle mission, in person.” She looks around. “We’re standing in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from where we were twenty minutes ago. Not to mention when we left San Diego it was evening, and now it’s midmorning.”