The Miami airfield is five miles from the beach. Far enough away that the horizon is closed in by trees and buildings, but close enough for the salty tang of sea air to reach. The early afternoon heat creates an amber haze in the sky. It's fairly quiet, or at least, Avery has seen it busier. Of the eight dirigible docking towers only three are in use, two ships arriving and one departing. There's maybe another dozen unconventional crafts buzzing about the dirt landing tracks. One of which is just taking off as Avery parks. It has the appearance of a thirty-foot canoe with a single prop engine in front and a hot air balloon rig in the middle.
Avery wonders what the awkward thing is like to fly. Slow and clumsy, she figures. Nothing like the Empress which has been designed for speed and maneuverability. She is truly lucky to get the chance, however rare, to pilot the magnificent machine. And lucky that she found herself in Boot Bay with Belle. The girl didn't get the credit she deserved. She was a genius, if people understood what a gifted engineer she was (and if she was a man), she'd have more contracts for new flying machines than there were hours in the day to build them.
This brings her back to the tingly, uncomfortable, exciting thought that has been plaguing her all day: her date with Belle tonight.
What had possessed Belle to ask her out now? They'd been working together for two years and Belle had never once hint at her interest before. Sure, Jim hit on her constantly, hit on both of them. But Jim would hit on a German Shepard if you put it in a dress. This was different. This wasn't a come on that was half a joke and half a hope for cheap sex. She could see it in Belle's eyes when she asked. They shined with fear and anticipation. And something else. Was it too presumptions to call it love?
Is she prepared for this? Avery always thought she'd marry a man. Although, they have, almost universally, turned out to be a disappointment to her. In more ways than one. Maybe Belle was the answer. The person she'd been waiting for.
But she's getting way ahead of herself. This is just a date. A lot of things would have to happen before the ever to the leap to marriage.
Oh Crap! What if Belle wants to go to bed with her tonight! How would they...who would...? Her brain starts to untangle the logistics for a joining she's never contemplated before.
Avery is distracted from her panicked mental image (and the deep spring of warmth in her lower belly it taps into), by the appearance of the scientists. They stand out like characters from the funny-pages among the businessmen in suits and the tourists wearing brightly colored clothes. In the stream of people disembarking the Zeppelin, they look small and dull, children in borrowed clothes being tossed and pitched by the tide of more confident travelers.
She goes up to the man. He's a good half foot shorter than her and probably twenty pounds lighter. It's either been a long flight or he doesn't wash his hair much, as it's slick to his scalp with natural oils. A lick of it covers the left lens of his spectacles. "Welcome to Florida. You must be Dr. Pembroke. I'm Avery Alejandra with the Red Kites."
"Dr. Nathaniel Pembroke at your service." His snooty tone suggests he won't be doing much serving. "And this is my assistant, Judy." He offhandedly gestures too the woman beside him, who might be his sister she's so close to him in appearance and proportions. Although, she's a touch shorter at five-four and her (clean) hair is long and tied back in a fraying bun. Instead of his fussy suit, she has a shapeless skirt and prim shirt with an Peter-Pan collar.
"Dr. Judith Galbraith," she says with a British accent and shakes Avery's hand. "It is good to meet you. I look forward to our collaboration."
Pembroke is eye level with Avery's stunning and chasm-like cleavage. For a moment he seems hypnotized by it. "Do all the woman dress like this in Florida?"
Avery blushes remembering her choice not to put anything on under her jacket. She's shamed by his observation but her diaphragm is being tickled by an unfamiliar sense of nervous electricity. She says, "Some do." And unconsciously puffs out her chest exposing more of the supple skin of her breasts. The move nearly exposes a nipple and her excitement cranks up a notch.
They didn't think to mentioned on the phone that they were bringing a truckload of luggage.
When it is finally unloaded from the cargo hold, they have four steamer trunks and a dozen other cases and bags. Avery asks what's in it all and gets the terse explanation that it's "equipment." It won't all fit in the sporty Auburn, so Avery makes arrangements for the trunks to be delivered to their hotel. The other luggage fills the trunk and the back seat to overflowing. Poor Judy has to sit in a nest of cases on the drive back. Fortunately, the day is clear and the convertible top can be lowered, so she doesn't have to crouch in her perch.
"So, what brings you down here?" Avery asks when they're on their way.
Judy screams above the rush of wind, "We noticed some strange atmospheric readings, and triangulated the epicenter to—"
Pembroke cuts her off, "It's all rather complicated. I'd rather wait until we're with your Captain (Ross isn't it?) before going into all the details."
"Well I can tell you, you picked an excellent flying team. We're the best crew and the best ship south of the Everglades. Where will we be flying you?"
"Look, I'm sure your a exemplary girl-Friday and more than competent running errands, but our business will go over your head. I shall explain it to your Captain, and if he sees fit, he can take the time to explain it to you. And you can drop the sales pitch. I'm really not interested."
Judy gives her an apologetic look from the rear-view mirror. Avery's starting to regret not taking another job with bloodthirsty gangsters. At least, they have manners to slug you in the face if they're in a bad mood, instead of belittling you. She snickers to herself. Good luck explaining anything to Jim this afternoon, by the time the seventh inning of his ball game rolls around, it'll be miracle if he's able to see straight.
Much to prediction, Jim Ross staggers in pie-eyed after an afternoon drinking with the boys while the Brooklyn Dodgers got whipped by the Pirates. Being the largest room in their suite, they assemble in his office, the crew and the scientists. Only he sits. Avery and Belle lean next to the window, so the clients can use the two chairs opposite Jim. But they're too agitated to sit, and end up standing behind them.
"Really, Mr. Ross, I'm sure this is something we can discuss man to man," Pembroke says, not realizing the hands Jim presses against the surface of the desk are intended to keep the world from spinning around him and help prevent him from vomiting.
"Please, call me Joltin' Jim. Everyone does." This is a fallacy. No matter how hard he tries to push the nickname, it has never caught on. "And I don' got none secrets from these lil' fillies. We're all a team here. All o'us here." After slurring out his sentence, he gives Avery and Belle a wink, telling them they owe him one for this act of magnanimity. But they both know he really wants them here because he is unlikely to remember any of this tomorrow. He wraps his delicate fire-engine red nails on the desk. "So why don' you just tell us all, why you're here, and why we can do for you. No. I mean, where we can do for you."
"Very well." Pembroke nervously adjusts his bow tie. "Almost two weeks ago, on June 18th, to be precise, we began picking up strange readings in the atmosphere."
"Atmo-what?" Jim asks.
"Essentially, all the gases in the air between the ground and space," Judy explains.
Pembroke gives her a withering glare before continuing, "There were unusual energy spikes. At first, I thought it might be a hurricane or the aftermath of an underwater earthquake, but the data didn't bear this out. We feared it might be the testing of a new weapon, but after making numerous adjustments to our sensors. we realized that these spikes in energy were pulses of a constant natural phenomenon."
Jim's face is placid as he hovers on the edge of consciousness.
Belle asks, "What do you mean by phenomenon? Something like solar flares?"
The question surprises Pembroke and his tone is slightly less haughty when he answers, "That's what we thought at first. Because surely the amount of energy we were reading was not the product of mere weather or anything man-made. It was a natural phenomenon of unbridled force. So, yes, the sun made sense. Except it was coming from our planet not toward it."
"We have a theory—" Judy starts.
"Yes, we believe that there is an incursion between our reality and another neighboring reality. That for some reason another universe is pushing—"
"What the hell are you talking about, Poindexter? Reality is just reality, really? It's just all real. Right?"
Knowing how to interpret Jim's drunken speech, Avery explains, "I think he means to say is reality is like a fact. It either is reality or it's not. Having different ones would be like the sky being blue and the sky being green. It can't be both. It doesn't work that way."
"Ah," he raises his index finger to let them know his next point is important. "But it doesn't. I hypothesis that there are many different realities living side by side, occupying the same space. Think about the pages in a book." He picks up a book from Jim's desk. Sees the title: Cosmetology for the Modern Man and puts it back down with a grimace. "The entire book is made up of hundreds of pages or 'layers.' This creates the universal totality. But you only read one page at a time, like we only live in one layer. But this example only goes so far. With a book, you move from one page to the next. With the layers of reality, we only ever exist in one. And the others are not necessarily compatible with ours."
"Or think of the radio," Judy says, her accent heightened with excitement. "You can only be tuned into one station at a time. And there may be those that are indistinguishable from each other, say two jazz stations, but then there are those that are clearly different to varying degrees. Like classical, news, drama, religious, and so on. But what's happening now is another station is bleeding into ours and the energy we're picking up is the distortion. Like when two signals are too close together."
This possibility unsettles Belle and she shifts her silky bare legs nervously. "So, you're saying that our happy little Jazz station is getting the static from the classical station on the next band? Has this happened before? What is it doing? What will be the long term effects?"
Pembroke holds up his hand to stop her form going on. "To our knowledge it has never happened before, but it's almost impossible to tell. If it had, we'd never know. And that's what makes this situation so insidious. This energy is an incursion from a reality that is different from ours in ways we can't even speculate. Somehow a tear has opened between the two and each time the energy pulses and pushes into our reality it is making changes. Making it more like itself. And these pulses are getting stronger, meaning the rip is getting larger. Initially, it was localized to a remote area in the Atlantic, but it's spreading. By my calculations, the pulses should have started reaching the United States mainland."
Judy steps forward speaking to the girls and ignoring Jim. "That's why we're here in Boot Bay. It started about a hundred miles directly out there." She points to the east and the ocean. "And it should have reaches these shores by now. Have you noticed any unusual weather lately?"
"There was that storm last night?" Avery says.
Belle leaves her place by the window and tugs down her mini-skirt, "But this is Florida. There's nothing unusual about storms. And nothing has changed here. It's the same as it's always been." Avery nods in agreement.
"But that's just it," Pembroke says clasping his hands together. "You would never know. The changes would become so ingrained into the fabric of this reality, it would be as though it had always been like that."
"But if it's localized like you say. You just got here, you'd be able to see any changes we couldn't," Belle says.
"No, we wouldn't. Even if the change is limited geographically, for all intents and purposes it is still all our reality. To go back to the book analogy, it may only be a single word on the page that has been overwritten, but when we read it, it simply seems the way the author intended."
Jim rouses himself from his stupor beginning to sober up a little. "So, what kind of changes are we talking about, Doc?"
"Impossible to say. Maybe yesterday there were no palm trees in Florida and today there are, and it seems obvious to all of us that they exist, both to you who lived through both realities and to us, even though we just arrived."
"Although, I believe," Judy says. "Humans may still detect it, slightly. It might be like a feeling of déjà vu, except instead of sensing that you've already experienced a moment in time, you would sense that something used to be different but wouldn't know how."
"Yes, but that's just an unsubstantiated theory."
Judy bites her lip as a thought occurs to her. "What we need is some sort of mental shield that would protect our mind from the effects. A device to keep us attuned to the original reality. Perhaps a chrono-synclastic—"
"Yes. Yes. That can be you're little pet project, then. Hhmm?" Pembroke says dismissively.
Jim grabs a compact from his desk drawer and inspects his makeup. "This all sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. But so long as you're paying the bills, we'll fly you around. Did you want to get to that part? Or have you not got to the part where you tell us we're being invaded by little green men from Mars."
Pembroke is clearly put out by this and readjusts his bow tie before answering. "Yes, well, we need to pinpoint where the source of the incursion is located."
"So, we can seal the tear and stop it," Judy says emphatically.
"First thing tomorrow, I'll need you to take us up, so we can gather some readings from various positions along the coast and farther out at sea."
"Swell," Jim says, getting up. "We'll be ready to fly at dawn." He looks at Belle when he says this, making sure she knows she has work to do. "Until then, if anyone needs me I'll be at Matty's."
He breezes out of the office and the two scientists glance at each other. They're beginning to question their choice in crews.
Avery ushers them to the door. "Let me show you to your hotel. And I can recommend a few places, if you want to get some chow." To Belle she says, "Are we still...?"
The cute little blonde gives a vigorous nod.
sereminar· Oct 23, 2020
