Redemption: Supernatural Time-Traveling Romance with Sci-fi and Metaphysics Read online

  “Sure. There’s nothing quite like it! Plus, you haven’t really told me anything about yourself yet.” He signaled to Timpson that he could park the car. “Why don’t I pick you up at six tomorrow morning?”

  Ann hesitated, unsure what to say. Six in the morning sounded pretty early to her, but on the other hand, she certainly enjoyed activities out in fresh air and she was intrigued at the idea of hang gliding. But then she had only just met Michael. Ann looked across at him as he looked out of the windshield, suddenly realizing she wanted to find out a bit more about this mysterious man. He certainly was handsome and clearly very caring. And she still had another day’s vacation…

  “Okay,” she said. “See you at six sharp!”

  And with that she climbed the stairs towards the entrance. As she reached the top, she suddenly realized she had not thanked Michael, but when she turned to do so he had already gone.

  ~

  “What do you mean, you didn’t invite him in?” Nina stared at Ann from the video screen, her face incredulous. Calling her had been Ann’s first course of action on arriving in her apartment, and she was already starting to regret it. “Let me get this straight, darling. You’re telling me this… Michael, was that his name, nursed you back to health at the museum, of all places, and then drove you home, in your own car, and you didn’t invite him in?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” said Ann. “I’m no rush to leap into bed with him, Nina.”

  “Whyever not? Is there something wrong with him?” Nina suddenly looked serious. “Don’t tell me he’s got one of those things on his face, like that guy, Patrick, I went out with. What a mistake that was!”

  “What? No. There’s nothing wrong with him, Nina.”

  “Well, then there must be something wrong with you, sweetie. If it were me, I’d have him in that gorgeous, big bed of yours right now, rather than chatting away with me.”

  Ann laughed. “I don’t doubt it! But he’s not here. And the reason I am ‘chatting away’ with you is that I want your advice. We’ve arranged to meet tomorrow.”

  “His place or yours?”

  “Neither.” Ann paused, unsure how best to tell her about Michael’s proposed activity. “Um, he’s taking me hang gliding.”

  There was silence for a moment before Nina responded.

  “Sorry, darling. I don’t think I caught that. It sounded like you said hang gliding.”

  “That’s right. We’re going hang gliding together.”

  “So what advice do you want from me, apart from hold on really tight? I’ve never been hang gliding in my life.”

  “Funnily enough, I was more looking for advice on what to do with Michael.”

  Nina raised her eyebrows and smiled mischievously. “Well, don’t go hang gliding for a start!”

  Ann sat on the edge of her bed, looking nonplussed as Nina giggled.

  “But seriously, darling,” Nina continued, in a gentler tone. “You don’t need any advice from me. You’ll have this guy eating out of your hands in no time. You already got him to look after you and drive you home without apparently doing anything more than falling into his arms. Just be yourself.”

  “Be myself? That’s your advice.”

  “Sure. Just relax. It’ll be fine.”

  ~

  “Just relax. It’ll be fine.” Michael gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze as they prepared to take flight.

  Ann had not slept much during the night. It was partly due to nervousness about the hang gliding, but mostly due to the events of the day and the thought that, in some other life, she had been that woman, Mi. She couldn’t shake off that feeling of fear that she had experienced when fleeing from Zo, and the sensation of the spear piercing her heart. And it came with a terrible sense of loss. First of all she had lost Lu, her husband, and then Wu, her son, who somehow really was her son; she had actually given birth to him and fed him from her breasts. These were the thoughts that kept going through her head as sleep evaded her and the night rolled eventually into morning.

  True to his word, Michael had arrived to pick her up at six o’clock, in a car that was every bit as sleek and sporty as her own.

  “I thought you said your car was a rust bucket,” she said, gazing at the vehicle with no little envy. “This is a gorgeous little number.”

  “Thanks,” Michael smiled, holding the door open for her to climb inside. “We have quite a long journey ahead of us, so we might as well travel in style.”

  And it had indeed been a long journey. They had traveled south of the city for at least two and a half hours before Michael turned his car into the hang gliding club driveway. But the time had passed quickly as they chatted about Ann’s work at A.I.I. and about Michael’s insights into life in the Stone Age era. The day itself was beautiful, bright and sunny with only a slight breeze, perfect for outdoor activities.

  Michael, it turned out, was an old hand at hang gliding and often spent his days flying through the air. Having parked and checked in at the reception desk, it was not long before Michael was strapping Ann into the hang glider, with himself securely in position next to her.

  “I am relaxed,” said Ann, in response to his attempts to encourage her. And it was true. His calm self-confidence as he had got everything ready gave her great reassurance, and she was actually looking forward to it. “Let get this thing off the ground, shall we?”

  Without another word, Michael gave the thumbs up to the pilot and their flight began. The plane began to ease along the runway and, as the tow rope tightened, they found themselves being pulled forward.

  “Wow!” said Ann, shouting to be heard over the wind. “I can’t believe how quickly we’ve taken off. These gliders really catch the air!”

  “I know!” said Michael, as the plane towed them higher. “It won’t take us long to get to two and a half thousand feet. Then the plane will leave us to it!”

  To Ann it felt like seven hundred miles the ground seemed so far away. Eventually, the tow rope released its grip on the glider and the plane made its way back to the ground. And they were flying.

  As the noise of the engine faded away, leaving only the sound the air rushing past them, Ann looked around. There was the hang gliding club far below them, surrounded by an endless sea of green fields, cut through by thin crisscrossing roads and the broad snake-like body of the Kankakee River. Away to the north, she could just make out Chicago, her home city, spread out along the shore of Lake Michigan.

  It’s amazing! Simply amazing, she thought. The air’s so clear I can see all the way to the horizon in every direction! It feels as though the whole world is laid out beneath me. Everything that seems to be huge down there on the Earth looks so small from here. Stop! Things from above are looking smaller… Is this what I saw in my dreams? Is the spiral thing a picture or projection of something bigger than I can imagine? And my long-as-a-river and wide-as-a-lake life is just a small little drop on the spiral path?

  Intuiting that Michael was watching her, she turned to see him smiling at her.

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” he shouted over the sound of the wind.

  “Incredible!” she replied forgetting her anxiety, and, without really thinking about it, she took her hand off the rail and placed it on top of Michael’s. “It’s breath-taking! I can’t believe I’ve never done this before.”

  Slowly, seemingly by inches, they descended, spiraling lazily across the sky. All the concerns and shocks of the previous days drifted away on the breeze and Ann felt at peace once again, more at peace in fact than she had done for as long as she could remember.

  ~

  “Thank you so much, Michael,” said Ann, as he pulled the car up back outside her apartment building. “For everything. For taking care of me yesterday and taking me out today, I’ve loved every minute.”

  “It’s been my pleasure,” said Michael. “My absolute pleasure.”

  Ann opened her door, but, before she got out, she turned back to look at him and gestured t
owards the apartment building entrance.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asked airily. “I make a great coffee.” She stopped, surprised at her own words. Coffee? Where had that come from? It was as though the words came out of their own will.

  “I…” Michael paused briefly. “I wish I could. But regrettably I do have some work to get done today back at the museum.” He smiled. “The Stone Age needs my attention.”

  “Another time,” said Ann.

  “Definitely. I look forward to it.”

  As Ann’s door swung open, she reached into her purse and produced a sleek, plastic card. “Here are my contact details.”

  “I already have them,” said Michael with a wink.

  Ann’s eyes widened in surprise. “How come?”

  “Easy. I scanned your car’s license plate. Now I know everything about you, even which floor your apartment is on. It’s number ten twenty-nine, yes?”

  “Wow!”

  “That’s the beauty of technology. The SmartInfo server is a stalker’s best friend!” Michael grinned. “But I’ll keep this as a souvenir all the same.”

  He reached out to take the card and, as he did, so, he caught Ann’s fingers in his own and gently kissed the back of her hand.

  “Until the next time, my dear.”

  ~

  That night, as Ann lay on her bed, she enjoyed reliving the sensation of drifting through the air with Michael by her side. It seemed crazy to think she had only met him yesterday. She felt she had known him for much longer. And she definitely wanted to get to know him more. He was just the sort of man she had been looking for, though she would never have admitted she was ever “looking for” a man, not even to herself. But something had changed in the last couple of days. Maybe it was the sense of happiness she had felt when she experienced Mi’s love for Lu or her dancing with the hunter at the feast. Or perhaps it was the joy of holding her own son in her arms. And as she slowly drifted to sleep, Ann’s thoughts were filled with visions of Wu and of Michael, and of the delight she felt at the idea of being with them.

  Chapter Nine

  Well, that was a most enjoyable vacation,” said Ann as she steered her car away from her apartment building. “Though I’m not entirely certain I could call it restful!”

  Rob’s face appeared on the screen, smiling broadly. “Quite,” he said. “You sure managed to pack plenty into the last few days!”

  “To be honest, I feel quite relieved to be returning to work again. It’s as though the craziness of the last couple of days is finally being replaced with some kind of return to normality.”

  That said, Ann’s sleep had been disturbed once again by those same haunting dreams. She had hoped her visit to the psychic would have dealt with all that, and yet she had had that same vision of the infinite spiral holding her in its grasp as it stretched away through time and space. The only difference was that, far in the distance, she felt that it connected her with Mi.

  “Rob?” she said, as she pulled onto express tube and switched the car’s systems over to the tube’s SmartDrive server.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Did you find out much information on the… spiritual stuff we were talking about the other day?”

  “Of course.”

  Ann paused, not sure what she wanted to ask, or at least what she wanted to ask first. “Do you believe in Evolution? Or in the whole Adam and Eve, God made everything in seven days… stuff?”

  “I think you’ll find it was six days. And the answer is yes. I believe in them both.”

  Ann frowned and, with the car now safely in the control of the SmartDrive, reclined her seat and turned to face Rob’s screen. “Come on! How can you believe both?”

  “Because they appear to contradict each other? It’s quite simple. In fact many humans do it without thinking.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Take, for example, the fact that most people believe in Free Will, yet at the same time consider themselves to be in some way under the influence of a higher power such as fate or God. You make your own choices, but live out a specific purpose.”

  “I guess.” Ann turned her gaze back to the windshield, which was now displaying one of the many “environments” provided by the SmartDrive system. At present it was set to Ann’s favorite, sunlit waterfalls, which helped her to relax and concentrate. “So,” she continued, “what has your research turned up? What is God’s purpose for us humans?”

  “It’s hidden for the blind, my lady. And yet open for those who can see.”

  Ann rolled her eyes. “What is that supposed to mean? You sound like a fortune cookie!”

  “Firstly,” said Rob, with a slightly mischievous smile, “We’re dealing with secret knowledge here, knowledge which is different for each person, and the only way to attain it is to earn it.”

  “And secondly?”

  “Secondly, a person must at least be interested in such knowledge.”

  Ann frowned somewhat defensively. “I am interested!”

  “You are now. But this wasn’t always the case, my lady, and this is sadly true of many people. They are too busy to think about the purpose of their existence, because they spend all their time focused on earning money, sorting out family problems, fighting with neighbors or any one of a thousand other things. Across the city people are sitting in traffic jams; the same is true of their lives. They are too caught up in the worries of their existence to really live!” Rob smiled suddenly. “We, however, seem to be moving quite freely.”

  Ann glanced out of the window. They certainly were moving freely. Sure the tunnel was pricey, but it was better than being snarled up on the streets with everyone else. Why did freedom always seem to come at a cost?

  “This is fascinating, Rob. I’ve never heard anything like this, not in school or college… not anywhere.”

  “That’s because you’ve been too busy, just like everyone else. But now you are on the way not only to discovering your purpose, but fulfilling it!”

  “But I’m also still pretty busy. So how do I go about all this? Should I go along to a church or something?”

  Rob raised his eyebrows at the question. “Go along to church? My research suggests that such organizations have mostly become infected with busyness too. They focus on quantity rather than quality. They tend not to serve individuals so much as expecting it to work the other way round. But…” He paused.

  “But what?”

  “But you have already made some progress. You are exploring your truth by yourself, as you must.”

  “I guess.” Ann took hold of the wheel again as the waterfalls on the windshield were replaced by the sleek interior of the tunnel. She was approaching her exit. “But these religious organizations must have something to say about the general purpose of our existence, no?”

  “Certainly. And as you’d expect, there are many conflicting points of view, from those who believe we exist to bring glory to God to those who believe we are nothing more than some cosmic accident, without purpose or meaning.”

  Ann thought for a moment as she disconnected from the SmartDrive server and steered the car up the exit ramp towards the street. “I guess, in a way, that’s what I’ve always assumed. Though when you put it in those terms, it sounds pretty bleak.” As she emerged from the tunnel and merged with the Chicago traffic, another car nearly drove into the side of her and she beeped the horn crossly. “Idiot!” she shouted.

  “Almost another cosmic accident!” said Rob.

  “Quite.” Ann tried to concentrate on what they had been discussing, wishing she still had the calming waterfalls to help. “So what about those who believe in God? What do they say about, what was it? Living for his glory?”

  “That depends. Christianity teaches that such a life is based on a relationship with the Creator. As one grows in love and worship of him, so one increasingly lives for his glory.”

  “How does that work?” asked Ann, with a frown. “And how long does it take to be ch
anged in such a way?”

  “It is supposed to work the same as any other relationship, though most do not involve people trying to love someone they can neither see nor touch. The process is said to take the whole of a person’s life.”

  “One life?”

  “One life,” said Rob with a nod. “Their Holy Bible says, ‘it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment’”.

  “Cometh?” Ann laughed. “Why can’t they speak English, like everyone else? So what about people who believe you live more than once?”

  “Reincarnation? That is more of an Eastern concept, taught by the Hindus, Buddhists and suchlike.”

  “Fine. So what do they teach about the meaning of life? Or rather the meaning of lives?”

  “You’ve heard of Nirvana?”

  Ann turned the car round the last corner towards the A.I.I. building. “The rock band?”

  “Hardly. Those religions that believe a person has many lives teach that the goal of those lives is to achieve Nirvana, ultimate freedom from all that is evil. Becoming one, as it were, with everything, even with the God himself.”

  “And how does one achieve this Nirvana?”

  “By living increasingly pure and disciplined lives dedicated to spiritual pursuits. Each life, you see, is affected by the former lives. It’s called karma.”

  “I’ve heard of karma,” said Ann, pulling up in her usual space and cutting the engine. “So how many lives does it take? Would two be enough?”

  “No one knows,” said Rob as Ann picked up her E-A device from the dash. “The cycle of birth and death has been continuous throughout time, but I suspect Nirvana cannot be achieved with only a couple of lives.”

  “Interesting!” Ann switched off the device and slipped it into her bag as she headed towards the elevator. And while she traveled up to the sales and marketing floor, she wondered to herself just how many other lives she had had. Were there other past existences that she knew nothing about, yet which had affected her life here today?

  ~

  “Right, settle down, please.” Ann stood at the head of the table in one of the A.I.I. meeting rooms and looked around at her team. Gradually the noise of conversations died down, until all the faces, including the smiling face of Mike-15, were focused on Ann. “Great to have you all back. I trust you made good use of your vacation time?”