“Son,” Dean started in, “now’s not the time for a dissertation. Just give us the gist of it.”
“Right, okay.” Tongue-tied, Justin struggled for the precise words. “So, there’s a spin up and a spin down.”
Mindy gasped. “Like a Merkaba!”
He had never thought of it like that. “Ye-ah, I guess. And when two entangled properties—”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Twila interrupted. “It just means we can create our own reality. But only Justin”—she probed into his mind—“knows the magical time.”
“Magical?” Justin scoffed.
“Interesting timepiece.” Dean seemed intrigued by the watch. “It’s actually digital.”
“O-M-G! I get it! We need to set the watches to the exact same time,” Ella gushed, shocking the crap out of him.
“Guys, that’s just a fairytale version of Time Entanglement,” Justin quickly asserted.
“Believe . . .” a mystical voice drifted through the forest. Was anyone else hearing it?
A horde growled from his left. The soldiers approached from the right. Time! Time! They were out of freaking time. And they just stood there, talking about a wacky time theory most scientists didn’t concur on.
“What time do you always see in your dreams,” Twila pried. “I can’t see it.”
“I don’t see a time,” he mocked back. Then, it clicked. “Ones! Lately, all I see are ones. Everywhere. When I’m asleep.” Even when he was awake.
“That’s it—11:11!” Scarlett proclaimed.
“But how?” Mindy frowned at the watch.
“To set the time, press the stem at the top. Like so.” Dean demonstrated. “Then press this button—”
“Wait!” Twila warned. “We all have to press the button at the same time.”
Justin tried blocking out the approaching soldiers, waiting to catch a bullet in the head as the soldiers neutralized the horde. At least they were crack shots.
“Everyone set?” Dean asked calmly under the gunfire.
“Don’t forget the horses!” Twila pleaded.
“I got Onyx.” Scarlett tied one of the extra watches to the bridle.
“I got the packhorse,” Zac said.
Why did the horses need watches?
“Drop your weapons!” The soldiers inched closer.
Another horde charged into the clearing.
“Folks,” Dean announced, “on my mark. One—two—three.”
They clicked simultaneously on three.
The tree contorted into a gigantic hourglass—representing eons of time. A sort of tugging at his mind made him go all wonky as he struggled against the maelstrom of sand—sucking him through the hourglass. Of eternity.
Chapter 43
Scarlett Lewis clicked the vintage-like pocket watch’s button before squeezing her eyes shut as soldiers stormed the edge of the clearing. In a meteoric flash, she and her friends hurtled down a cosmic vacuum. As if torn apart molecule by molecule, they whirled inside a celestial hourglass revealing each and every moment, molecule, and memory of humanity.
Swirling down. Farther down still. Scarlett finally landed on the familiar soft-dewy grass of dawn. She opened her eyes to witness the soldiers’ ill-fated attempt to invade their Time Entanglement reality. Their screaming bodies contorted and stretched—bursting into trillions of particles.
Her heart thumped erratically. Would the soldiers suddenly reappear in their new reality? Or had she and her friends donned the time-portal watches—in the nick of time? She sat there and reached for an awestruck Twila who couldn’t seem to stop fluttering her eyelashes. Zac scrambled to his feet and brandished his gun at the Merkaba’s translucent oscillating perimeter.
The air sizzled and zizzled with the luminous reds and oranges of lightning sprites. Just as abruptly as it had started, the spectacular light show ceased. She sat there in breathless anticipation, dreading the soldiers’ invasion. Instead, a peaceful calmness melted over her.
Odd, the air seemed to have a shimmering three-dimensional quality. As if one could actually see the air. Touch it. Hold it in one’s hand. That’s it! The air flourished with prana—the breath of life. She no longer had to ward off the creepers’ insufferable agony—a tremendous relief for her empathic side. She felt at peace for the first time since the pandemic.
All eyes probed one another in the piercing silence that followed. Scarlett awaited the inevitable while the horses flicked their tails. But the soldiers didn’t invade their dimension. The Time Entanglement prophecy must have worked—protecting Lightworkers.
“Uh, what just happened?” Justin croaked.
Dean patted down his body as if looking for missing parts. “The Philadelphia Experiment,” he muttered.
“This must be the fold hidden in the Earth’s matrix. Our paradise!” Scarlett exclaimed.
Luther darted to the edge of the electrified Merkaba bubble, yelling, “Oh, hell yeah, take that! You mofos!” He pranced, pumped on adrenaline. “That was some serious shit.”
Ella clung to Justin with apparent tears of happiness, and Mindy rocked Starla with the sweetest smile she had ever seen her wear. Dean sat there thunderstruck as if witnessing the Ascension. In a way, she supposed they had ascended. To a higher dimension. Perhaps this was the 5D earth Shari had so often preached about.
The spinning Merkaba shield faded away into invisibility. But her third eye captured its existence: protecting them. The soldiers and creepers on the other side of their protective shield were no longer visible even with her third eye.
That was when she realized the peculiar tree with only one watch dangling from its entangled limbs had also disappeared. Had the remaining watch been meant for Shari or Sheena? Willow? Or someone who had yet to claim it? She clutched the watch around her neck, afraid if it disappeared, so would she.
“Dean,” Scarlett asked after inhaling the serene sweet air, “are you all right?”
“All and all, I’d have to say, this turned out to be a darn good day,” Dean said incredulously. “For the apocalypse, that is.”
“Right you are!” Zac belted out. He pulled Scarlett to her feet. “Pardon me for a sec.” He planted a rather indulgent kiss on her trembling lips. One she never wanted to end.
Scarlett relished every micro-second of his embrace.
