Aurora Wolf

Chelsea’s Sea

by Russ Colson

 

            Chelsea froze at the sight of the dead body.  A single beam of light pierced the shallow cave through a spout hole in the ceiling, lighting the corpse.  The back half of the head was missing, leaving the exposed skull to gleam white around the grey interior.

            Lamp shells spilled from Chelsea’s slender fingers onto the smooth floor of the wave-cut sandstone cave, falling unheeded even though these personal treasures were not ordinary sea shells from the modern shoreline outside the cave.  These were ancient shells, their archaic symmetrical forms gnawed from the rocky cliff by storm waves and accumulated over the years in the sandy beach below.  For four years since her twelfth birthday when she discovered the cave she’d brought her day’s plunder to the Big Rock, finding opportunity for reflection in its sturdy solitude.

            The body blocked her way to the Big Rock and to the cache hidden behind it.  She peered nervously passed the body into the deeper shadows, but saw no one there. 

            She turned and ran from the cave, down the short slope to the beach, and along the sandy strand toward home.  Her bare feet thudded on the wet, plastic sand that turned momentarily solid with the pressure of each step.  She found her father working at his computer on the deck that overlooked the sea.

            Gulping air after the brisk run, she blurted, “There’s a dead guy in the cave.”  She brushed a wave of dark brown hair from her eyes.

            Her father looked up and frowned, puzzled.  “How could a body get into the cave?”

            Chelsea shrugged and waved a hand toward the cave.  “I don’t know.  It’s there.”

            He grunted and rose from his chair.  “I believe you, Chelsea.  I’ll call the police.”

            The police arrived shortly.  Chelsea led her father and three officers to the cave.  She rubbed her palm nervously against her thigh as they approached, a little afraid that the body might be gone and she’d look stupid.  After all, she could see no way for the body to have gotten into the cave in the short time she was gone from it, and no way for its head to be so cleanly chopped in half. 

A laugh–probably half sob–escaped at the situation’s grim absurdity.  Usually, the events of her life were reasonable ones, conforming to the normal constraints of existence.  The unreasonableness of this event made her wonder how it could be real.

            Nevertheless, the body remained in the cave.

            “There aren’t any missing person reports fitting his description,” said Officer Williams, a powerful-looking black man.

            “His body must have washed here in the past day or two,” Officer Johnson’s eyes followed the sand from the body to the cave entrance.  “There’s no substantial decay and”–she leaned over to brush away the blow flies with a sweep of her hand–”the absence of larval development indicates that the time of death can’t be much longer ago than that.”

            Chelsea didn’t want to look stupid, and hesitated to presume she knew more than these experts, but she wanted to help find the killer.  It struck her that the man might have family or friends waiting for him.  It took her a moment to summon the courage to speak.  “But the cave is above high tide.”

            Officer Shanley, a kindly-looking older woman, mouthed “thank you.”  Chelsea doubted that she listened any more than the others.

            “The current in the bay travels counterclockwise along the coast,” Officer Shanley said.  “The body may have been carried here from Alcott Bridge.”

            Chelsea stepped back and let them work.   They were adults and surely knew what was reasonable better than she.  She liked to think about things a good long while before deciding she understood them, not like those bold thinkers of history who were always so sure of themselves.  Sometimes that came off as a lack of confidence. 

            Maybe it was, but it kept mistakes on her schoolwork to a minimum.  And, she suspected the police would have done well to be a little less self-assured and value what she had to say, even if she was just a teenager.

            “The girl’s right, you know,” Officer Johnson said unexpectedly.  “Somebody had to drag the body here.”

            The older woman, who seemed to be in charge, paused a moment before speaking to her father.  “Thanks for reporting this.  We’ll get in touch with you and your daughter.”

            Thus dismissed, she and her father left for the house.

            “They think we did it,” she said over the susurration of the sea.

            “They’ll figure out the truth, once they examine everything.”  Her father’s already long strides lengthened.

            Chelsea chewed on her lip, wondering how much to tell her father about the puzzling circumstances around the body.  “There weren’t any footprints going into the cave.  Except for mine.”

            Her father raised his eyebrows and then frowned.  “You must have missed seeing them, Chelsea.  The police will be more thorough, I’m sure.”

            Chelsea fell silent.  Maybe she was just a dumb kid and missed the footprints.

            She returned to the cave later that evening to check.  The police had taken their pictures and done their surveys.  Tracks from the ambulance stretched along the shore.  Any footprints that might have existed outside the cave were long since obliterated by the day’s activity.  Despite her self-doubts and the now-destroyed record in the sand, she felt it unlikely that the body came into the cave through the main entrance.  She’d seen no drag marks.  In any case, she’d been exploring outside the cave.  She’d have seen someone dragging in a body.

            She discovered something new in the cave, an archway on the wall behind the Big Rock.  The oxidation mottling on the surface of the archway made it look ancient, as though it had always been there.  Chelsea knew it hadn’t been there yesterday. 

            The archway wasn’t visible from the main part of the small cave, only from the nook behind the Big Rock.  Nevertheless, the police would have seen it had they thought to look.  She doubted that they looked. After all, the archway wasn’t reasonable.  She liked to consider herself a logical thinker, but maybe a little bit of illogic was sometimes a good thing, making creative leaps possible.

            The archway didn’t go anywhere, simply framing a portion of the sandstone wall behind it.  Consequently, it didn’t really explain how the body came to be in the cave.  It consisted of two stone legs on either side of a lintel, reminding her of pictures she’d seen of Stonehenge.

            Chelsea poked a finger at the stone within the archway, expecting to feel its cool, rough surface.  Instead, her hand passed through the rock and disappeared.  She snatched it back quickly, relieved to find all five fingers still attached.  Her heart pounded–she couldn’t decide whether from excitement or fear.  She put her hand through the stone several more times, each time withdrawing it to find it unharmed, and her sense of danger eased.

            She pushed her head through the wall and found herself looking into another world.  There was no cave in this world, only a sandy beach stretching to her left as far as she could see.  She was so intrigued by the unexpected worldscape that she stepped entirely through the arch.  Sand warmed her feet and the faint scent of sea salt and vegetation replaced the damp earthiness of the cave. 

            She looked over her shoulder at the Stonehenge-like archway standing alone and out-of-place on the open beach.  At least her way back hadn’t disappeared.  She crossed the beach toward the sea where curling breakers and ocean spray lay perfectly still, painting a frothy white band with neither motion nor sound.  She felt vaguely unnerved by the impossible stillness.

            The more she walked toward the motionless sea, the farther away it seemed to grow.  She snorted and shook her head.  This did not conform to any reasonable reality she knew of.

            If walking toward the sea made it recede then perhaps walking away from it might bring it closer.  She tested this hypothesis by walking away from the sea, watching it over her shoulder.  Sure enough, the sea crept toward her until the frozen surf lay at her feet. 

            Her father had taught her how ancient seas had come and gone across the Earth.  Sand and mud were deposited as the sea advanced over the land and then eroded away as the retreat of the sea exposed them to the work of rivers and wind.  Perhaps the sea retreated as she walked toward it because she walked in time.  Toward the sea was backward in time and thus the sea appeared to retreat.  Away from the sea was forward in time and the sea transgressed to cover the land.  Certainly, based on the rocks in her own time, the sea must have once transgressed across the land in order to deposit the sand that became the seaside cliffs.

            Chelsea spotted a shell lodged in the sand at her feet, its form bilaterally symmetrical, different from the modern mollusk shells along the shore by her home.  The extinct lamp shell looked fresh and new, a bit of dried organic residue still clinging to it, seeming to confirm she was somehow transported into the distant past.

            She reached down to pry it from the wet sand and found that she could not. 

            With her attention drawn to the sand, she noticed that she had left no footprints.  She stomped her foot a couple times to be sure.  No momentary dry area formed as her weight stiffened the boundaries between grains.  No moisture surged into a shallow depression as her weight was removed. 

            A man appeared about seven meters away, standing between her and the archway.  Chelsea hadn’t seen him approach, and she felt quite sure he wasn’t there a moment before.  Something about his posture, his motions, frightened her.

            “Who are you?”  She paused to gain control of her voice, trying to make it sound grown up and self-assured.  “Where am I?”

            “This is the prison you made for us.”  His words were clipped and garbled. 

            “What prison?” Chelsea took an unconscious step backwards.

            He didn’t seem to pay any attention.              “You didn’t think about the harm that might come from your science.  You should have seen, even in your own time, that technology was soon to make way for beings, for monsters, who would see humans as little more than mice!”

            His eyes blazed wildly.  Chelsea backed away further.

            “What do you mean, mice?” she asked, too fascinated by his words to run, too frightened to pursue more meaningful questions.

            “I am the last of the human race.”  Spittle appeared around his mouth as he spoke.  “Alone in this prison for the past thirty years.  The monsters put us here and then forgot.  They didn’t care when we drifted apart, could no longer have children.  Could no longer know companionship of any sort.”

            He stepped closer, raising his arm threateningly.  A small metal device in his hand glowed blue.  Chelsea felt a wave of heat wash over her, beginning deep inside and boiling outward. 

            With her route to the archway blocked, she turned and fled parallel to the shore neither forward nor backward in time.  She wondered where it would lead and if she would find any place to hide from this frightening man. 

            He came after her and another wave of heat washed over her.  She couldn’t imagine what kind of weapon he used.

            The sea and beach gave way to a surreal landscape of twisting rock towers.  The towers were so narrow and tilted that the strength of real rock would surely have failed and allowed them to topple.  She wondered how the rock dared to defy the laws of gravity and what it meant about where she was heading.

            Large black holes appeared between the pillars of rock.  She ran upon the first unexpectedly, her body teetering on the edge of the abyss.  The ground around the pit crumbled under the weight of her body, bits vanishing into the void.  She detoured around it.  

            A blackness appeared in the sky ahead, rippling like a curtain in a strong wind.  Wherever it touched the land, the land vanished.  A roar came from the blackness, as though from an angry surf.

            The man chased her up against the blackness.  When she turned to face him, she felt the heat burning into her as though it might consume her from the inside.  She wished, for the first time, that she hadn’t stepped through the archway.  Stupid, stupid.  She should have gone to get her father.  Told him what she found.

            Now, she had nowhere to run.  No place to hide.  No understanding of the weapon this angry man brought against her in this irrational world.

            “Why are you attacking me?”  She put up her hands in a useless effort to deflect his attack.

            “You made this terrible world possible.  You didn’t care for the suffering you caused.”   He stumbled slightly, just ten meters away, the rippling dark curtain on his left–her right–roaring like a thousand seas. 

            She spread her hands wide on either side.  “Why wouldn’t I care?  I haven’t done anything.”

            “But you will.”  He paused to avoid a dark wave that broke toward him from the curtain, curling and fragmenting.  It swept across the earth between them like dark water across dark sand.  When the wave retreated, a narrow bay lay between her and the man.  The attacker, seeing he was cut off, moved to go around the black bay.  She turned and fled. 

            Her young legs carried her swiftly along the shore of the blackness.  She glanced over her shoulder to see how far her pursuer had progressed around the narrow bay.  He was nearly half way around it when he disappeared.

            She continued to run, watching over her shoulder for the reappearance of the crazy, lonely man.  Thus, she nearly collided with an elderly woman who winked into existence ahead of her.  Chelsea came to a halt, her eyes casting about for a way to escape.  The angry man lay behind.  The blackness to her left.  The woman ahead.  To her right lay the stark landscape with the impossible rock spires and deadly black pits.  She ran to the right.

            “Wait, Chelsea.  I’m not your enemy.” Her voice carried strength despite her age, and some element of sincerity caused Chelsea to stop and turn.  The woman’s hair gleamed white against the dark sky that rippled behind her.  Glints of color here and there in the woman’s hair suggested that it might once have been gold.  Fine features and blue eyes retained an elegant beauty.

            “Who are you?”  She gave up trying to sound grown-up and self-assured.

            “I’m Susan.”  She smiled.

            “Are you another prisoner?” Chelsea ran her fingers through her hair, encouraging even more to fall into her eyes.

            A frown crossed the woman’s face, and her voice lost its light tone.  “Prisoner?  Have you met one of the prisoners?”

            “He tried to kill me,” Chelsea waved vaguely over her shoulder.

            “Then we need to do our business quickly.  I’m sure you’re safe from him, but I may not be.”  Susan stepped close beside her, conspiratorial.

            Chelsea stepped away.  “Business?”

            “I need you to finish my work.”  Susan waved at the black curtain.  “You’re destined to keep us safe from the Dark Sea.”

            Chelsea glanced briefly at the darkness.  “What’s the Dark Sea?”

            “It’s where rational consensus gives way to irrational.”  Susan spoke in somber tones, as though her nonsensical words made sense.

            “Consensus?”  Chelsea turned to look at the empty sand behind her.

            Susan saw her uneasy glance and began walking the other way, inviting Chelsea to join with a wave.  “Like a mutual expectation.  The natural laws that we understand are in some way the product of what we expect.”

            Chelsea frowned.  “If reality is controlled by what I expect, then why couldn’t I move the lamp shell I found at the beach?  I certainly expected to.”

            Susan cocked her head, smiling.  “Consensus isn’t only what you expect.  It arises from the expectations of everyone who’s ever been and ever will be.”

            “The Dark Sea is where there is no consensus?”  She watched the darkness rippling to her left, infinitely black curtain.

            Susan caught her eye and held it.  “Yes, governed by whims of individuals and groups, without form or discipline.  We avoid the Dark Sea only through our reasonable agreement.”          

            “So I couldn’t move the lamp shell or leave footprints in the sand because my past is already set by consensus?” Chelsea pulled her eyes from Susan and frowned into the blackness.

            Susan nodded.  “If we changed our past, at least if we changed it enough, our universe would become like the Dark Sea.  Chaos.”

            “What makes you think that I’ll finish your work?”  Chelsea glanced over her shoulder and walked faster.

            Susan pulled a bit of paper from a pocket of her clothing.  Chelsea saw equations on it, equations more complex than her accelerated calculus at school.   ”It’s your calling, Chelsea.  I’ve completed my work on Consensus, but my work with the edge of consensus, the Dark Sea, remains unfinished.  I’ll leave this paper with your fossil treasures behind the rock in the cave.”

            Chelsea felt her un-sureness welling up again, not suppressed at all by the confusing world around her.  “What if I’m not smart enough?”

            Susan smiled.  “Don’t you believe in yourself?”

            Chelsea shrugged, watching the empty sand ahead.  “Maybe.  Sometimes.”

            “Perhaps my purpose is to give you courage to believe.”

            “Why would I make a world where people go insane?” Chelsea asked.  “I don’t want to hurt people.”

            “We can’t stop exploring just because discovery can be turned to evil purposes.”  Susan moved as though to touch her shoulder, but somehow her hand fell short, as though touch were forbidden in this strange world.

            Chelsea frowned.  “Why did that man hate me so much?  Is what he said true?”

            Susan withdrew her hand and frowned at it, disturbed.  “What did he say?”

            “He said I built his prison.”

            Susan paused and followed Chelsea’s eyes toward the sand.  “It’s true in a way, but your work is also his people’s only hope.”

            They walked in silence a few moments.  Chelsea let her gain a step ahead and watched her profile.  She seemed sincere.  “Who are the monsters?”

            Susan glanced at her, surprised.  “Monsters?  They aren’t really monsters.  They’re your descendants.”

            The man who attacked her winked back into existence seven meters away from them and even closer than they to the black drapery of the Dark Sea.  “You!” he cried.

            His haggard eyes clung to Chelsea without regard for Susan.  To Chelsea, his twisted lips and harrowed brow seemed more desperate than deadly, more pitiful than hateful.  “I have to stop you.  I can’t let you bring us to this end!”  Chelsea felt the heat sweep over her again as the man attacked.

            Susan stepped between them.  “You can’t harm her,” she said.  “You already didn’t.  It’s pointless to try.”

            The man gave a cry, empty and anguished.  “But I must at least try!  What else is there for any of us if I don’t try?  The end.  No more, forever and ever.”

            “You aren’t the last,” Susan said.  “There are others.  Generations from now, a few of them will escape.”

            “But why so much suffering?”  He shook his head in astonishment and dismay.  “Isn’t it better if the prison never comes to be?”

            Susan spoke softly, as though to a child.  “That’s not the consensus, perhaps for reasons beyond our understanding.  In any case, you don’t have the power to change it, and if you did, how could you be sure that a better end would result?”

            The man gave another tormented cry and fell to his knees.  He sounded like a rabbit that Chelsea’s brother once wounded with a rifle.  It ran off into the woods to die and she heard it crying in pain.  It sounded just like this man.  That sound had haunted her for years.  Now, she had a new voice to haunt her.  The man began to weep, his face buried in his hands.

            A wave in the Dark Sea formed above him, curling and cresting and finally falling toward the prostrate man.  He saw it and tried to scramble away, but a part of it caught the back of his head.  His frantic effort to escape ended abruptly, and he fell silently to the ground.  His face, which had been distorted by anger and pain, softened in death.  Only then did Chelsea recognize him as the man whose body she found in the cave.

            “I know him,” she said, her eyes fixed on the dead man.

            Susan looked at her sharply.  “How?”

            “He was in the cave.  That’s how I found the archway and came to this world.”

            “Ironic.”  Susan gazed at the Dark Sea.

            “What should we do?” Chelsea asked.  “I don’t see how he can be both here and at the cave….” she trailed off.

            “I’ll see that he gets where he’s meant to be.”

            Chelsea ran her fingers through her hair, a bit desperately, hoping to wipe out the uncertainty and self-doubt.  She wanted to do something that mattered.  Felt flattered by Susan’s prophecy.  But didn’t want to do something bad.  “Why should I finish your work if it’s going to cause so much suffering?”

            “We’re made to learn, Chelsea.  Our Cosmos is a small island of rational consensus within a Dark Sea in which no ordered thought, no rational agreement, exists.  We have to learn how our expectations can be used safely.”

            Chelsea shook her head vaguely, unsure.  “But, your actions don’t conform to the consensus I know.  How can your coming to me be safe?  You haven’t come in a reasonable way.  That man chasing and attacking me after he was already dead wasn’t reasonable.”

            Susan raised her eyebrows and grunted.  “Your insight, and not mine, will have to answer that question.  When you’re older you’ll need to test your intuition with mathematics.  Only then can you gain confidence and persuade others.”

            “But what if it’s the wrong thing?” Chelsea gazed again at the Dark Sea.  “What if it really is better that the prison never comes to be?”

            “Trust and wait, Chelsea.  And believe in trying your best.  I’d almost forgotten that, even in a rational universe, reason can’t prevail without hope and faith.  I have to leave you now, but I’ll take you to the gate first.”

            The cave was as Chelsea left it.  The wedge of evening sunlight streaming through the main entrance hadn’t moved.  She realized that the paper with its mysterious mathematical notations must already be in her cache, brought earlier in the day when Susan left the body in the cave.  Chelsea checked her cache and found the gift nestled among her other treasures.  She folded it carefully and tucked it into a pocket of her jeans. 

            She wondered about the man who tried to kill her.  Was he really driven insane by years of loneliness?  Was he really the last human or were there others as Susan claimed?  Was it true that she would make discoveries that would lead to centuries of suffering?  Was it true that her discoveries might save the world?

            Whatever else, the man who attacked her was certainly wrong about one thing.  She would consider the consequences of her actions for the rest of her life.

            She’d often wondered how people managed to gain such confidence in their beliefs and actions.  Couldn’t they look inside and see their own frailty?  But, she’d learned a type of confidence.  Confidence to tell her father, perhaps even the police, about these seemingly impossible events and to believe she could persuade them.  Confidence that she could do great things.  But confidence was only the first step in her journey.  Once she knew she could do something, how did she decide it was the right thing to do?

            Chelsea walked home along the seashore, the light low enough to paint a long gold streak across the sea all the way back to the Sun.  The sea air grew damp with the cooling evening.  Suspended salt and spray lent a haze that half veiled the more distant sea stacks.  It was a good evening for reflection.