Peter Lerangis - Lost in Babylon

The landscape whirled as I struggled upward. I looked warily up the slope. “What happened to Ali Baba and the camels?”

“Gone,” Marco replied, his eyes dancing with excitement. “We are back to the same spot where we left in the first place. And are you noticing something else? Look around. Look closely.”

I saw the worn path to the top of the ridge. I saw the gray river, placid under the rising sun. “Wait,” I said. “When we left, the sun was almost over our heads. Now it’s lower.”

“Bingo!” Marco said.

“From Bingo ,” Cass murmured. “Starring Bingo.”

“Meaning what, Marco?” Aly said. “I’m supposed to be the smart one. What do you understand that I don’t?”

“Hey!” A distant, high-pitched voice made us all turn sharply. Nirvana was sprinting up the beach in loud Hawaiian shorts, a KISS T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. “Oh … my … Gandalf!” she screamed. “Where have you guys been?”

Marco spun around. “Underwater. ’Sup, Dawg? Where’s Bhegad?”

Nirvana slapped him in the face, hard.

“Ow,” Marco said. “Happy to see you, too.”

“We thought you were dead!” Nirvana replied. “After you jumped? I nearly had a heart attack! Bhegad and Fiddle and the Hulk—they’re all in each other’s faces. ‘How could you let this happen?’ ‘How could you ?’ ‘How could you ?’ Blah blah blah. Fiddle’s insisting we call nine-one-one, Bhegad says we can’t, Torquin’s just going postal, and I’m Will you guys just take a pill? So we all jump in the river to look for you, except for Bhegad, who’s so mad he’s practically doing wheelies. Finally we give up. All we can do is wait. Soon we assume you all drowned. Torquin is crying. Yes, tears from a stone. It does happen. Fiddle is like, ‘Time to break up the KI and look for a new job!’ Bhegad insists we set up camp. Maybe you’ll come back. Or we’ll find the bodies. So we’ve been sitting here for two days eating beef jerky and—”

“Wait,” I said, sitting up. “Two days?”

“Torquin was crying?” Cass said.

Over Nirvana’s shoulder, I could see Fiddle pushing Professor Bhegad toward us. Torquin was waddling along beside them, his beefy face twisted into a pained expression that looked like indigestion but probably was concern. About twenty feet behind them was a camp-type setup—three big tents, a grill, and a few boxes of supplies.

When had they set that up?

“By the Great Qalani!” the old man cried, holding his arms wide. “You’re—okay!”

No one of us knew quite what to do. Professor Bhegad wasn’t exactly a huggy kind of guy. So I stuck out my hand. He shook it so hard I thought my fingers would fall off. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes darting toward Marco. “If I weren’t so relieved, I’d be furious!”

Marco’s face was flushed. He blinked his eyes. “My bad, P. Beg … shouldn’t have run off like that … whoa … spins … mind if I sit? I think I swallowed too much river water.”

“Torquin, bring him to the tent. Now!” Bhegad snapped. “Summon every doctor we have.”

Marco frowned, drawing himself up to full height with a cocky smile. “Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist, P. Beg. I’m good.”

But he didn’t look good. His color was way off. I glanced at Aly, but she was intent on her watch. “Um, guys? What time is it? And what day?”

Fiddle gave her a curious look, then checked his watch. “Ten-forty-two A.M. Saturday.”

“My watch says six thirty-nine, Thursday,” Aly said.

“We fix,” Torquin said. “Busted watches a KI specialty.”

“It’s still working, and it’s waterproof,” Aly said. “Look, the second hand is moving. We left at 6:02, our time here in Iraq, and we were back by 6:29. Exactly twenty-seven minutes by my watch. But here—actually in this place—almost two days passed for you!”

“One day and sixteen hours, and forty minutes,” Cass said. “Well, maybe sixteen and a half, if you count discussion time before we actually dove.”

“Aly, this does not make sense,” I said.

“And anything else about this adventure does?” Aly’s face was pale, her eyes focused on Professor Bhegad.

But the professor was rolling forward, intent on Marco. “Did no one hear me?” he said. “Bring that child to the tent, Torquin—now!”

Marco waved Torquin away. But he was staggering backward. His smile abruptly dropped.

And then, so did his body.

As we watched in horror, Marco thumped to the sand, writhing in agony.

‘It’s alive,’ I will pound you,” Marco said.

His eyes flickered. Professor Bhegad exhaled with relief. Behind him, Fiddle let out a whoop of joy. “You are a strong boy,” Bhegad said. “I wasn’t sure the treatment would take.”

“I didn’t think I needed treatments,” Marco replied. A rueful smile creased his face as he looked up at Aly, Cass, and me. “So much for Marco the Immortal.”

Cass leaned down and gave him a hug. “Brother M, we like you just the way you are.”

“Sounds like a song,” said Nirvana, who was clutching Fiddle’s and Torquin’s arms.

I glanced at Aly and noticed she was tearing up. I sidled close to her. I kind of wanted to put my arm around her, but I wasn’t sure if that would be too weird. She gave me a look, frowned, and angled away. “My eyes …” she said. “Must have gotten some sand in them …”

“Aly was telling me about your adventure,” Bhegad said to Marco. “The Loculus seeming to call from the river … the weather change … the city on the other side. It sounds like one of your dreams.”

“Dreams don’t change the passage of time, Professor Bhegad,” Aly said.

“It was real, dude,” Marco said. “Like some overgrown Disney set. This big old city with dirt roads and no cars and people dressed in togas, and some big old pointy buildings.”

Fiddle nodded. “Hm. Ziggurats …”

“Nope,” Marco said. “No smoking.”

“Not cigarettes, ziggurats —tiered structures, places of worship.” Bhegad scratched his head, suddenly deep in thought. “And the rest of you—you all confirm Marco’s observation?”

Nirvana threw up her arms. “When Aly talks about it, you assume it’s a dream. But when Marco says it, you take it seriously. A little gender bias, maybe?”

“My apologies, old habits learned at Yale,” Bhegad said. “I take all of you seriously. Even though you do seem to be talking about a trip into the past—which couldn’t be, pardon the expression, anything more than a fairy tale.”

“So let’s apply some science.” Aly sank to the ground and began making calculations in the sand with her finger. “Okay. Twenty-seven minutes there, about a day and sixteen-and-a-half hours here. That’s this many hours …”

“Twenty-seven minutes there equals forty-and-a-half hours here?” I asked.

“How many minutes would that be?” she said. “Sixty minutes in an hour, so multiply by sixty …”

Aly’s fingers were flying. “So twenty-seven minutes passed while we were there. But twenty-four-hundred thirty minutes passed here. What’s the ratio?”

“Ninety!” Aly’s eyes were blazing. “It means we went to a place where time travels ninety times slower than it does here.”