Clifford Jenkins, like any sensible man of 40 years, knew for a certainty that the world had been flat until the moment Columbus had jumped on board the HMS Beagle and set sail from Plymouth. Columbus, of course, could be blamed for pretty much every problem that plagued mankind. He’d introduced disease, war, and nihilistic Euro-fashion to the Japanese.
But Clifford Jenkins also knew that every ounce of that history was, well, just that: history. That was life, living in the small town of Nostalgia, a border province of Historia. Everything was over, and nothing could be done to change it. At least, that’s how it was in Nostalgia.
Over the mountains, in Historia, it was said, history was a living thing that constantly changed. Word had reached Nostalgia just that morning that the Vikings had launched an assault on Guevara’s guerillas. Of course, Clifford, like any sensible man of 40 years, doubted if Columbus or Europe had ever existed to begin with. Sometimes, when the world was crashing down the crapper, the people needed a scapegoat. Just so happens they made up Columbus.
And we all know that any good scapegoat needs a land to come from. The mythical Plymouth, smack in the heart of Germanic Europe (don’t ask me how a ship set sail from the heart of a continent, much less how the people knew that Europe was Germanic at the time, or even how they knew Europe was a continent) was created in turn, and had been home port to the HMS Beagle, the HMS standing, of course, for Huge, Massive Ship.
Clifford leaned against the high-backed chair that sat at the corner of the piano. He was playing guitar, strumming out the chorus to Auld Lang Syne, but singing the words to Silent Night, a local favorite. Timey’s Bar was crowded for a Wednesday night. Or maybe it was Friday, one could never tell what those idiots in Historia had done to the week.
“Cliff, play Old Man River!” That was Timey himself, of course he was more than intoxicated (a condition the locals called kershnockered).
“And what should I sing, oh great Timey?” Clifford Jenkins called back.
“Try Yellow Submarine...” Timey trailed off, a tendency among the kershnockered, especially at this late hour (4:15 p.m.) of the night.
Clifford began an upbeat “Old Man River” and threw in Yellow Submarine, with a short chorus of Lucy in the Sky, just to please the patrons. He looked outside and watched the sun setting over the mountains that separated Historia from the everything else. And it was at that moment that Clifford Jenkins, sensible as any man of 40 years, realized that he had to leave Nostalgia behind and journey to Historia.
***
The next morning, or night, again, you never knew what those idiots in Historia were doing, Clifford Jenkins gathered up his things. He packed the old travel bag (it had Samsonite imprinted on the latch, but that word had long since left the language) with a few changes of clothes, the necessary toiletries, and some assorted canned foods and dried meats. Like any traveler on the road in these days, he bundled a towel onto the end of a stick (he’d seen pictures of what the old timers called hobos carrying them, and then he noticed every traveler through Nostalgia had one, so he made himself one). In this bundle he stuffed a few extra guitar strings, a block of cheese wrapped in leafy-paper, and a pocket knife that had all kinds of extra do-dads on it. The elders called it a Swedish Navy Knife, or something to that effect.
He thought more than once about carrying the knife in his pocket, as it’s description would imply should be done, but then he wouldn’t have had room for Schrodinger, his mouse.
And so, with travel bag in one hand, stick-and-bundle across one shoulder, and guitar strapped to one back, Clifford Jenkins began walking toward the Mountain Pass that led from Nostalgia, through the Antique Mountains, and into the land of Historia.
So it’s here that you, the reader, should be told about Historia.
Historia rests between two mountain ranges, the Antiques to the East, and the Conveniences to the West. It is an arid rain forest whose capital is a pyramid crowned with what we know of as the Statue of Liberty. Of course, the Statue’s upheld arm was replaced with a cannon long ago, and it’s head no longer looks like a woman, but more like a fictional villain of some science fiction story (a black helmet, I think that gives it away with breaking copyright laws).
Around this pyramid is a city that looks like someone from our time chopped up a map of London, New York City, Washington DC, the Vatican, Ancient Nineveh, New Nineveh, and the small town of Buford, Georgia, United States (circa 2008), and then spliced bits and pieces of them together, radiating out from the statue-topped structure.
Historia was founded sometime before Europe realized that they had feet, or so said the Historians, as they called themselves. Their ruler called himself Father Time, but everyone knew his real name was Ted. Of that everyone, only a select few knew that Father Time was dying. Old age was ruled out immediately, as Father Time is only 42 years old.
But I’ve drifted away from telling you about Historia. The land of Historia is bordered on the south by a great Ocean (some say it was once the Gulf of Mexico, but no one knows if Mexico was a real place or not) and to the north by the glaciers. Historia is the name of the land, but also of the city itself.
Clifford Jenkins will eventually find himself in the city. And yeah, I know that takes away a lot of the suspense of his journey, and I could probably skip over that part in the telling now, but it would cause you, the reader, to miss out on a few fun and interesting people that Clifford meets along the way. And, I never said if Schrodinger the mouse reaches Historia safely or not. You’ll have to read on to find out.
*****
Clifford Jenkins slumped against the stump of a felled tree. The gnarled stump was dead, and would make good tender, but Clifford had built his fire from the dying grasses and weeds. Autumn was closing and becoming winter, making him rethink his decision to strike out for Historia when he did.
As he looked at the smoldering remnants of his fire, and began plucking Auld Lang Syne on his guitar, Clifford found his mind wandering back to when he was ten years old, and he pulled his first “death watch.”
In Nostalgia, it was tradition for a child to face a familial “death watch” as early as possible. The old timers said that it ‘toughened’ a child, and readied him for the world. And with Historia at their doorstep, the children of Nostalgia has to be toughened as soon as possible.
And so it was, that at the tender age of ten, Clifford’s granpappy had fallen ill of ‘the cough.’ Timey the Bar Owner had been an intermittent figure during that awful week, coming in and going out while Granpappy had grown steadily worse.
Clifford, looking at the smoldering fire, could see it as the fire in the small furnace in his granpappy’s death chamber, a small room on the back of every house in Nostalgia, furnished much the same, each with a mirror in it, most with a word inlaid into the mirror-sheen surface, usually Budweiser, a talisman of the old days used to ward off the evil encroaching from Historia like a disease. Like granpappy’s cough.
The bed was nothing more than a cot built up with a light mattress and pillows to make the dying as comfortable as possible. The old timers of Nostalgia had found chairs at some time in the distant past, each with a brightly colored emblem on it, most now sun-faded to the point of obscurity, but some could still be made out. Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, Detroit Tigers. Clifford’s own granpappy, before ‘the cough’ had ravaged him, said that these were once great cities, and that the animals were the spiritual protectors of these thriving metropolises.
Granpappy coughed, a hacking, wheezing cough that brought a light spittle of blood to his lips. Clifford knew that the time was soon. Timey had returned with a pail of cool water and some dried meat.
“’Twont be long, Cliff,” he had said, putting a weather-worn hand on the boy’s shoulder.
From the kitchen of the house, Clifford heard his mother yelling at his father, “No boy should have to do this! He’s watching his granpap, your dad, die, and you’re sitting in here staring at the fireplace!” (Staring at fires was a habit of the Jenkins family.)
Clifford didn’t think twice about it. He had to ‘death watch.’ It was proper for a boy his age. It was the essence of Nostalgia, to strengthen against the blight of the Historians.
Clifford realized he’d long since stopped plucking the guitar and he had to almost physically remove himself from the twilight reverie. He reached for the bundle and pulled the block of cheese from it. With the Swedish Navy knife he cut off a chunk for himself and a sliver for Schrodinger the Mouse.
He pulled his collar up tight around his neck and scrunched as low as he could to protect against the cool of the night. He made it to the foothills on the first day. No small feat, considering that, with those idiots in Historia constantly futzing with the natural order, time was a lost concept.
He waited for Schrodinger to finish the cheese sliver, and while he waited he returned everything to its proper place in the bundle. Once the mouse was finished eating, Clifford lifted it up by the tail (he could sware that made the mouse giggle) and dropped it onto the stick-and-bundle. Schrodinger scurried up into the bundle and nestled between the cheese block and an envelope that Clifford carried at all times.
Clifford Jenkins, sensible as any man of 40 years, leaned further against the old, dead tree, and curled over for some sleep. He wanted to make it to the city of Historia by Boxing Day, which would be no easy task, as snow was already falling in the Antique Mountains overhead.
*****
Clifford awoke about an hour before sunrise, but it felt like a much longer night. As he shook his head to ward of sleep, he felt strands of matted hair hit the sides of his face. Perhaps the night had been years long, dang the Historians!
Time was when the people of Nostalgia never had to worry about Father Time and his minions causing trouble. They were, so the elders said, once a group of monks who just stared at clocks all day. The higher level masters of the order, it was said, could cause a clock to run backward just by looking at it.
Clifford had once caused a clock to run backward, but it was more the result of playing catch in the house with his older brother. And dang had his granpappy been mad about that. This was, obviously, before ‘the cough’ ever claimed Granpappy and forced Clifford into his ‘death watch.’
Clifford Jenkins pushed himself up off the dead tree stump and walked over to a small row of bushes. It was there that he did his business, as any man would in the wild. He walked back to his makeshift camp and sat close to the remnants of the fire. A little stoking and prodding brought forth a small flame, and Clifford warmed his hands over it before deciding what route to take that day. The mountain pass would be difficult, as the snows were already falling. The King’s Valley would be the easiest way, but Clifford really didn’t like the people who lived there. They walked funny, or at least that’s how is Granpappy had put it.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out two dice. He looked over that the fire again, “Alright, little flame, you’re my witness. Evens and I go to the mountain pass, odds and I take the King’s Valley.” He blew on the dice three times for luck and blessing, then cast them over against the dead tree stump.
Nine. King’s Valley it was.
Clifford stood and brushed off his pants. He pulled the jacket tighter around himself, forcefully thinking away the cool morning air.
He looked off to the west and saw the constellation Hendrix dipping to the horizon. Of course, in our time we didn’t call it Hendrix, we called it Orion, but mythology had been rewritten, lost, written, and then replaced by the people many times over from the time we first chronicled it to the time Clifford Jenkins awoke from a long slumber against a dead tree stump. The night couldn’t have been too long, because as he stirred Schrodinger the mouse scurried out of the bundle and looked on, anticipating a cheesy breakfast.
“Dang, you’re hungry, mouse,” Clifford mused, using the Swedish Navy knife to cut small slivers from the cheese block.
“Of course,” Schrodinger replied.
Clifford froze.
*****
“What’s the matter with you?” Schrodinger said.
“You can talk?” Clifford stammered, the Swedish Navy knife shaking clumsily in his hand.
“Yeah, well imagine our surprise at finding out humans could talk...” the mouse trailed of and turned his attention back to the cheese sliver before him.
Clifford stared off toward where the constellation Hendrix was crashing into the horizon, “A talking mouse,” he repeated several times, each in a slightly higher pitch of voice than the last.
Schrodinger scampered up onto Clifford’s knee after finishing his cheese, “Look, Cliff, we both know you’re shocked. But the King’s Valley isn’t getting any closer with us sitting here.”
Clifford swallowed and looked down at the mouse, “Yeah... you’re right... so, let’s... oh, for Pete’s sake! For a gall-dang talkin’ mouse!”
Schrodinger sighed (ad let me just say that if you’ve never heard a mouse sigh, you have no idea how funny it actually is) and jumped off Clifford’s knee, “Look, I’m getting back in the bundle, mostly ‘cause it’s warm. Now get up! We’ve got ground to cover.”
Clifford Jenkins, sensible as any man of 40 years, forced himself up from his sitting position and gathered his goods. The King’s Valley was a day’s walk if he maintained a reasonable pace.
* * * *
Clifford kept a less-than-reasonable pace, mostly because he was still reeling from the talking mouse episode, but he reached the entrance to the King’s Valley by mid-afternoon. Maybe those Historians were helping him out.
But as he looked out across the valley entrance, and the city of Carnacabidos (Anyone familiar with Egyptian history will know the names Karnak and Abydos, but let’s not kid ourselves, when the crapper-crashing world needed to scapegoat Columbus, they probably invented Egypt out of spite. Honestly, who in their right mind builds an empire in the desert?) Clifford Jenkins realized that it was likely that the Historians were rushing him toward his doom.
The valley wasn’t so much the lush oasis he’d envisioned from the stories of the old timers, of which only his Granpappy had been leery of the inhabitants thereof. The King’s Valley was a desert. Oddly enough, a dark blue ribbon ran through the desert. That’s the river, Clifford thought, Granpappy always said that the river lead to Historia.
Small cubes dotted the valley floor along both sides of the river, and it took Clifford’s brain a moment to work out the scale and realize that these small cubes were actually buildings. Some glittering in the mid-afternoon sun, gold plated if the ancient tales were true. (Who knew if any tales were true in these days.)
Clifford began to climb down the sidewall of the valley entrance. He could see the city of Carnacabidos, or rather what looked like the ruins of the city, below him probably three hundred feet, that would at least get him to the valley floor and further along his journey.
He stopped on a ledge, and just stood admiring the ancient craftsmanship that had built the city of Carnacabidos, and after a moment Clifford realized something that had yet to occur to him: there was no sound.
No people. No animals. No boats on the river. No birds. The King’s Valley was dead.
That’s when he heard the first explosion.
*****
The plume of smoke rose from a few miles down river from where Clifford stood on a rocky ledge. Schrodinger poked his head out of the bundle, “What was that?”
“An explosion.”
Schrodinger gave a puzzled sigh, “Right, you people haven’t been able to blow anything up for the last three hundred years.”
Clifford looked over at his furry companion, “And you know that how?”
The mouse withdrew into the bundle and Clifford began the slow, somewhat agonizing climb to the valley floor. They reached the bottom fairly quickly, and when Clifford looked back up the way they had come, he saw a rock wall far steeper than what they had climbed down. Just what were those Historians up to?
The sandy floor of the King’s Valley was, as Clifford noted upon reaching it, was a gradual incline, which surprise him, because the river ran uphill. He reshouldered his bundle and began trudging through the sand. The heat on the valley floor was oppressive, and the sun glare from the crystalline sand-grain was blinding.
It was quiet also, so quiet that Clifford thought he could hear his guitar strings contracting under the burdensome heat.
Ahead stood the ruins of Carnacabidos, once great city of the King’s Valley. Once ruled by the Historians, but free from their tyranny by a rebel leader the elders called Pharaoh. No other name was given for this ruler. Well, that’s how Clifford had leaned it at the only school in Nostalgia, The University.
Trick with the University was that there were no grade-levels. The youngest classmate Clifford had while attending had been four years old, the eldest thirty-two. You left the University when the teacher declared you ready to enter the real world.
Clifford Jenkins stopped on the outskirts of Carnacabidos, kneeling beneath a palm tree. He pulled some of the dried meat, the jerky, from his old travel bag and chewed on it vigorously. He drank water from the river, and sliced off some cheese for Schrodinger, who at least had the sheltering shade of the bundle to stay cool.
After this brief respite, Clifford began moving again, this time into the heart of the old ruins. He thought back to his life in Nostalgia, a life he’d left for no reason other than a sudden desire to go to Historia. He thought of his home. His mother and father, both still living, and probably wondering just where on God’s green earth their son had gone.
“I probably should’ve left a note, or something,” Clifford thought aloud. His statement responded to by none.
From far away, far beyond where Clifford Jenkins could see, another explosion echoed across the valley.
“What was that?” Schrodinger cried, emerging from the bundle and scampering to Clifford’s shoulder.
“Another explosion.”
“I’m telling you, Cliff, that’s impossible. Explosives are gone, dried up, kapoof under the sun.”
Clifford paused and examined the mouse out of the corner of his eye, “And I’m telling you that no mouse can talk, so what are you?”
Schrodinger snickered, “I... I am going back to the bundle. Have fun with your walk.”
Clifford waited patiently as the mouse clambered back into the bundle, “How did I end up with you? Little furry freak.”
“I heard that!”
*****
The most surprising aspect of the sandstorm was the suddenness of its arrival. Clifford took shelter in one of the ruined buildings. He could see nothing beyond the old glass windows except a sand-colored wall. For all he knew, the sand had completely covered the ruined city.
Schrodinger had left the bundle, and Clifford’s presence, presumably to handle his business, as Clifford knew a mouse would have to do. He decided, while waiting, to explore the building.
The first floor was empty, and the creaking wooden stairs that led to the second floor gave Clifford an incredibly uncomfortable feeling. He reached the top, and realized he could smell smoke, something that he hadn’t smelled since the campfire that... well, it seemed like a long time ago, but it was just last night. Come to think of it, the day hadn’t changed since he’d reached the King’s Valley. What were those Historians up to this time?
The smoke had to be investigated. One couldn’t stay in a burning building. He found a small fire burning in a fireplace, and before wondering who had built it, he wondered what fuel they had used. The only wood he’d seen was the stairs, wooden in a stone building, and they were intact.
“Hey!” The voice came from behind him. “What’re you doing here? The Valley’s closed. No one should be here!”
Clifford had spun upon hearing the voice, “I’m going to Historia.”
The voice belonged to a wretched old being, aged beyond the ability to distinguish male or female features. It pointed a fragile finger at Clifford, “You have to leave! The Valley is closed.”
Clifford scoffed, “It’s not a shop, old one. I can come and go as I please. How do you know my name?”
The old thing laughed, “I know much, Clifford Jenkins. Much that you cannot comprehend. I know that once great wars were fought across the entire world. I know that science once understood that everything came from nothing in one moment of pure explosive exquisiteness.”
Clifford shook his head, “Yeah, I learned those things at University. World Wars One through Eight, Creation. I know it all. Now I need to get back downstairs, get my things, and get ready to leave.”
“And go where, Clifford Jenkins?”
Clifford, who had already turned to leave, spun back around, “I told you, I’m going to Historia.”
The elder raised both hands, trying to scare Clifford into retreat, “No! Historia is closed to you. You must run away, Clifford Jenkins. You cannot stay here. The Valley is not yours.”
“Right, and who exactly is going to stop me from passing through the valley?”
The ancient thing moved closer, “You have no weapon to threaten me, Clifford Jenkins. Your Swedish Navy Knife is naught but a trinket.”
“He has me!” Schrodinger shouted, (again, a mouse vocalizing anything is funny, a mouse shouting, darned hilarious) leaping up onto Clifford’s shoulder.
The thing withdrew in abject terror, “A mouse. Progenitor of the Experiment.”
Clifford tilted his head like he’d once seen his pet dog Scruffy do. He was puzzled.
The ancient being continued talking, “I’ve read of you, demon mouse. In the Book Place of Alex and Rhea. One wrote of you, the genesis of the great experiment. You’re to blame, demon!”
Clifford left the thing to writhe in its own fear. He walked back down the steps, trying to figure out how to ask Schrodinger about that last exchange.
“Before you ask,” Schrodinger said, saving him the trouble of asking, “I know what that person was talking about. Years upon untold years ago, a fiction was writ about mice, stating that we had created all things as an experiment.”
Clifford nodded, “Makes sense.”
Schrodinger gave him the most puzzled look a mouse could muster, “Seriously?”
“No, not seriously! You’re a mouse, a gall-danged mouse! How is that supposed to make any sense?”
Schrodinger shrugged a little mousy shrug, “The Book Place of Alex and Rhea. Must be local gods, and the Book Place is what you would call a Library. But no book has been written for centuries.”
Clifford sighed, and looked outside. The sandstorm had passed. But the river still flowed uphill, he was still traveling with a talking mouse, and he still, for some ungodly reason, had to reach Historia.
*****
Clifford gathered his things, hoisted the guitar and strapped it to his back, and then shouldered the bundle, complete with Schrodinger inside. As they started once again walking toward Historia, Schrodinger scurried down the bundle-stick and landed on Clifford’s shoulder, near his ear.
“What now?” Clifford asked, a trifle annoyed.
“I just want you to think about something that just happened.”
“What? The old guy... er, woman... crone... thing? The fireplace? The sandstorm?”
Schrodinger gave an exasperated sigh (I’m telling you, a mouse sighing, funniest thing on the planet), “You asked the person how they knew your name before they had said it.”
Clifford paused, then kept walking, “What about it?”
Schrodinger tapped on his shoulder with a rapidly moving paw, and for a moment Clifford couldn’t tell if the mouse was annoyed or it was scratching, “Clifford, how could he or she have known your name? And how could you know that they knew your name?”
Clifford Jenkins, probably a little less sensible now than most men of 40 years, tapped a finger on the bundle-stick, “I’m more concerned with you, my friend. Why was that person so afraid?”
Schrodinger started back up the bundle-stick and toward his makeshift home, “Stop under the tree over this next sand dune. We’ll talk in the shade.”
Clifford shook his head and began the climb up the fairly imposing sand dune. As he crested it, he saw the tree Schrodinger was referring to, a monstrous Evergreen, the sand around it littered with pine cones and needles.
He sat his belongings down and made his way to the river. He gathered some water in a canteen he’d brought along. Looking slightly up river (or is it down river... river’s aren’t supposed to run uphill, how the crap is one supposed to know where to go?) Clifford saw a bird drinking water. Clifford’s first thought was a brief thanks to whatever god or gods had seen fit to put a bird in his path.
It took a moment for him to catch the bird, which he realized was a turkey. (Let me say here that if you’ve never seen a 40-year-old man wrestle a turkey to the death, well, it’s on par funny with a sighing mouse.) It took him the better part of two hours to de-feather and clean the bird, before using the dried pine-needles to start a fire. He took the feathers and entrails (I know, ick!) and tossed them in the river, where they flowed downhill while the water continued flowing uphill. He thought this odd for only a second until his hunger got the better of his curiosity. He cooked the turkey and, using the block of cheese and the dried meat jerky he’d brought, prepared himself a small feast.
“What?” Schrodinger said, scampering from the bundle, “You’re not going to share?”
Clifford cocked his head to the side, more puzzled than ever, “If I know anything, I know that mice don’t eat meat.”
“And I can talk, something else mice can’t do. What does that tell you about me?”
Clifford nodded and slid some of the cooked meat over to his mousy friend, “So let’s talk?”
Schrodinger swallowed a bite of the turkey meat and rested back on his haunches, “Look around you, Clifford Jenkins. You are from the town of Nostalgia, which is in a mountainous area, trees like this, right? So how is it that a desert valley is less than a day’s walk away from you? How is a pine tree in the desert? How does a river run uphill?”
Clifford had stopped eating when Schrodinger started talking, “I don’t know. I mean, I’m trying to figure out what the gall-dang crap I’m doing out here. One night I’m sitting in Timey’s bar, playing guitar like usual, the next morning I’ve decided that I have to reach Historia come Hell or high water. I packed a bunch of crap that’ll run out in about two days.”
Schrodinger laughed (again, hilarious), “Have you not also noticed that this is still the same day as when you entered the King’s Valley? We’ve traveled probably eighty miles, three days walking, carrying the amount you’re carrying, and yet it’s only taken us a day and a half. We entered the King’s Valley only three hours ago, as the Sun reckons.”
Clifford looked up for the first time since entering the Valley and saw rain clouds overhead, “It feels like we’ve been here for days.”
Schrodinger quickly swallowed another bite of turkey meat, “Historia is in chaos. The parts of the city are rebelling against themselves. The Vikings keep pushing Guevara’s guerillas even farther back, the Inquisition has actually reached the Smithsonian, and the Vatican has been turned into a giant gift shop. Father Time is ill, he’ll probably die soon.”
Clifford finally broke from his thoughtful reverie (he didn’t know who the Vikings or the Guevara’s gorilla’s were, nor did he have any idea about an Inquisition, a Smith’s On Yan, or the Vat-a-Can, but he did know what a gift shop was) and grabbed another bite of the turkey before Schrodinger ate it all, “And that has what to do with me?”
Schrodinger popped another bit of cheese into his mouth, and after seconds of chewing, spoke around the bits still in his mouth, “Clifford, I have no idea. But if I had my guess, I’d say you’re not the only one making a journey to Historia for no apparent reason.”
Clifford leaned back against the tree and instantly regretted it, the sap momentarily gluing him to the trunk, “So let’s get back to you. What are you?”
Schrodinger had already started withdrawing to the bundle, “Me? I’m a mouse. Just a mouse. Oh, and I can talk. Big whoop. Let’s go. We’ll be out of the King’s Valley soon. Don’t be surprised if time goes all wibbly-wobbly on you.”
Clifford took the pseudo-warning in stride and began cleaning up his temporary campsite. The rainclouds finally broke into a torrential downpour that made walking along the sandy valley floor even harder. Clifford stopped at a rocky outcropping and rummaged through his old travel bag for a moment. He pulled out a hat with the letters NY on it, something his granpappy had given him years ago. Another talisman.
He trudged on through the mud. After hours of walking, he finally saw the high rock wall that made up the west end of the King’s Valley.
*****
The fact that he hadn’t heard an explosion since leaving Carnacabidos didn’t cross Clifford’s mind until an explosion went off about five hundred feet to his left. He was nearly to the high rock wall that marked the western end of the King’s Valley. (It also never crossed his mind that he had followed the river then entire way and had yet to come across any of the buildings he’d seen upon entering the Valley. He would remember this one afternoon sitting on a park bench in Historia, facing a thirty foot section of railroad track that was in the middle of a grassy field, unconnected to any other track.)
He rushed for the wall and found cover under it as another explosion went off near where he’d been standing moments before. Schrodinger scampered out of the bundle, “Was that more explosions?”
Clifford glanced sideways at the mouse, “I thought you said that humans couldn’t blow stuff up anymore?”
The mouse looked to be in deep thought for a brief moment, “Well, obviously I was wrong.”
Clifford waited for the explosions to stop, and then began looking for a way to climb the rock wall. He found what looked like rough-hewn steps leading in a haphazard way up the cliff face and a bit on an angle. The climb didn’t take as long as Clifford had figured it would, and he credited that to the Historians, whatever the crap they were doing.
At the top he found himself confronted by four men carrying guns. At least, Clifford thought they were guns. He’d seen pictures at the University of guns from different time periods, but these were either older or newer, Clifford couldn’t tell which.
“Stop! Who are you?”
Clifford looked at the man who spoke. His uniform differed a bit from the others. (I forgot to mention, they’re all in uniforms. We would instantly recognize them as the ragtag uniforms of soldiers in General Washington’s Continental Army, but Clifford didn’t know what the Continental Army was, or who General Washington was.)
“I’m Clifford Jenkins, and I’m going to Historia. Who are you?”
The man drew himself up into a regality that Clifford knew he did not possess, but was merely able to replicate by imitation, “I am Brigadier General Israel Putnam. I am tasked with war.”
Clifford pulled himself the rest of the way up off the stairs, hands raised to show he was not a threat. He took a quick inventory of his situation. It was suddenly night, when three feet below him it was bright as mid-afternoon. He looked at the tired-looking, rugged soldiers of Putnam’s camp. “And who are you at war with?”
Putnam looked indignant, “That Valley, obviously.”
“Well, I’d say you’re winning. The sand won’t put up much of a fight.”
A tiny voice sounded in Clifford’s ear, and he realized that Schrodinger was once again on his shoulder, “Um, Clifford, look behind you.”
Clifford turned and saw that the Valley below was lined with encampments. The soldier below wielded clubs, spears and swords, and were dressed in simple skirts and what looked like elaborate headdresses.
“Oh,” Clifford muttered, “That’s who you’re fighting.” He maintained his gaze at the valley, but spoke only loud enough for Schrodinger to hear him, “How did we not see any of that?”
The mouse replied, “I wish I could tell you.”
As Clifford turned around, he heard Brigadier General Putnam begin to bellow orders, “Alright boys! Load up another IckBem, let’s give those sandies what they deserve!”
Clifford watched as a cylinder was loaded onto a catapult. Along the side, in bright blue letters, was written ICBM. The catapult released and flung the cylinder far out into the Valley. When it struck the ground a plume of dust and sand shot up, but nothing else happened.
“Crap!” Putnam screamed, “Another dud.”
Then the explosion hit. The IckBem went off with terrifying brightness. Bodies flew into the air and sand went in all directions. Clifford even noticed the Evergreen tree he’d been sitting under earlier eating the turkey fly off into the night.
Schrodinger spoke, “I think we need to leave, Clifford. This is not a place we need to be.”
“I agree.”
Putnam spun on his heels, “You agree with who, Jenkins? Don’t think you’re leaving. You’re not a sandie, that means you fight with us.”
Clifford shook his head, “Oh, no! I’m not a sandie, but I’m not one of you either. I’m from Nostalgia, on the eastern side of the King’s Valley, unaffiliated with any but their own.”
Putnam picked up a gun and shoved it into Clifford’s hands, “I’d like to believe you, Jenkins, I really would. But we can’t let those sandies get out of the Valley.”
Clifford deftly avoided the gun, “But they can just leave out of the Eastern side, can’t they?”
Brigadier General Israel Putnam paused for a moment, “By golly, you’re right. We’ll need to form an expeditionary force to go to the east side and give those sandies the whuppin’ they deserve.”
Clifford blinked, “What did they do to deserve such a beating?”
The General laughed, “You don’t know? They walk funny, son. They walk funny.”
Clifford turned and walked away. The General’s face turned bright red, “Hey! No one walks away from Brigadier General Israel Putnam! No one!”
Clifford offered a genteel wave, which further incensed the General.
Putnam screamed, “I’ll see you again, Jenkins!”
Clifford kept walking, “And when you do I’ll be the one with the talking mouse.”
Putnam turned back to his battle, “Talking mouse? Gall-dang, that is one stupid boy.”
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