Back Story 1 of 3: The Light in the River
Spencer Reed pulled into the high school parking lot where he worked, blasting Offspring’s “Smash” at full volume. As he pulled into a parking space, two students walked by. One rolled their eyes and said something to the other, who laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, go make a TikTok or something,” Spencer muttered under his breath as he grabbed his satchel and sack lunch from the passenger seat, knocking a couple empty bottles of Mountain Dew onto the dirty floor of the car as he did. His wife had always chided him to clean up his messy car, and he knew she was right, but now she was gone, and so was the reminder to clean up after himself.
It wasn’t that he was a slob on purpose, or willfully disorganized. It was just that his damn brain was always full of random thoughts, and the daily struggle to focus on what everyone else thought was important was a monumental task on a good day.
He brushed past students chattering in the halls, and unlocked the door to his classroom. His planning period was first thing in the morning this semester, which was fine with him. Spencer was a morning person, most awake right after jumping out of bed. He settled into his somewhat uncomfortable desk chair and mostly ignored Principal Stevens as she read the morning announcements. One caught his attention though, and caused him to swear under his breath.
“And just a reminder, we will be opening the time capsule from the 1800s today at 3:30 by the flagpole at the front entrance of the school. Our own Mr. Reed will do the honors of opening the box, so don’t miss it!” The nerdy part of Spencer was excited to see what was in the box, but he also totally forgot that he had promised to give a speech and lead the festivities after school today.
Two weeks earlier, while researching a lesson plan in the school’s library, Spencer had made a fascinating discovery. A small newspaper article, no doubt torn from the local newspaper decades earlier, had dropped to his desk while he was leafing through a book about the American Civil War. The book clearly hadn’t been opened in years, and Spencer wouldn’t have opened it either if he hadn’t been looking for a passage to use to explain historical perspective and historiography to his AP US History class.
The article, dated 1894, read:
This week, Lincoln High School’s history club will bury a box of momentos and curios for a future generation to unearth. They will host an event out in front of the school at 3:30 sharp. We are assured it will be a real lally-cooler, so bring a chum and come watch the festivities! Bring something to include in the box if you feel so inclined. The bottom fact is this could be the event of the month, and in 1994 future students will be amazed and amused by our treasures!
Spencer had looked up “lally-cooler” on his phone, and chuckled. He enjoyed making his students’ eyes roll by using period slang, and his favorite was describing things as the “bee’s knees!” when talking about the 1920s. He wondered if the time capsule had been unearthed in 1994, and asked Mr. Hurt, the oldest teacher at the school, if he remembered any such event. Mr. Hurt, buried in his copy of the New York Times in the teachers’ lounge, had merely grunted and shook his head no.
It took Spencer an hour or so of poking around with a shovel in the flower bed around the flagpole to find a medium-sized brass box. Despite his curiosity, he did not open it, and instead set off for the main office to tell the principal to set up an event. That was two weeks ago, and as usual he had procrastinated when he could have easily had the speech written days earlier.
The rest of the day passed quickly, and by the time 3:30 rolled around, Spencer was exhausted, but relatively happy with the written address he had penciled out for the event. A decent crowd of 50 or so curious students and teachers braved the chill afternoon air to see what was in the capsule. They patiently listened to Spencer’s mildly uninspired speech about appreciating history and our past, and then huddled around the box as he pried it open. He wore gloves not just because it was cold, but also to make it seem like he knew something about preserving historical artifacts. (This was barely true.)
Lying on top of the pile of items inside was a cardboard-backed black and white photo of about ten teens, with “Lincoln High History Club - 1894” scrawled in penciled cursive. Spencer flipped it over and saw that the students had all signed the photo, and smiled. It was pretty cool imagining the kids adding their items one at a time to the brass box over 100 years ago. Their capsule missed its 100th birthday, but at least it got some belated attention.
As the students and teachers pulled out and examined notes, trinkets, photos, coins, and other items from the box, Spencer’s eye was drawn to a small yellowed paper envelope near the bottom. He picked it up and stepped back from the crowd a bit to give himself some light. In the hubbub of examining the contents of the box, no one paid him much attention.
Written in neat script on the front was this note:
I pass this on from shackled hand
Trapped in time, a lonely man
Beware its power, and know this
I dare not whisper, even hiss
For if I plainly share its power
I surely can’t predict the hour
Or date, or place or even year
Where I will travel on from here
Spencer felt a small heavy object in the envelope and took off one of his gloves to tear the envelope open. He wasn’t a superstitious person, and pretty much ignored the cryptic poem. He tipped the object into his gloved hand and examined what appeared to be a rather large solid silver coin. It was oddly heavy and was covered in strange symbols and letters that he had never seen before. He flipped the coin over and ran his ungloved fingers over the raised markings on the reverse side. Brilliant shining light assaulted his eyes, so powerful that he was immediately disoriented. The coin began to rapidly spin in his hand, and then the world went black.
_______
Samuel Jenkins was one of those men who looked 70 when he scowled, and 40 when he smiled. He was actually 54 years old, and he scowled often because of a lingering war wound in his leg that bothered him constantly. He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small glass bottle, tipped it to his lips, and drank a swallow. It would help the pain for a few hours. He lounged in the back of a small wooden fishing boat, he was mostly there as a counterweight while his friend Clarence stood in the front, lazily casting a fishing line out into the river. Their boat was loosely anchored on some rocks in the middle of the stream of water, so there wasn’t much danger of Clarence falling in, but the water was ice cold, and it wasn’t worth the risk.
Suddenly, a brilliant light appeared as if from nowhere, right in front of Clarence. He stumbled backwards into the middle of the boat, and Samuel had to shift himself suddenly to keep the craft from capsizing.
“What the actual hell is that?!” Clarence gasped as he got unsteadily back to his feet. Samuel just shook his head, at a loss for words. The orb of light was only about the size of a large apple, but brighter than anything he had ever seen. The day’s sun seemed dull and muted by comparison.
Overcome by curiosity, Clarence slowly reached out with the fishing pole and tried to prod the light. The rod passed through it. He leaned closer, shielding his eye from the brightness. He saw what appeared to be a small sphere at the center of the bright aura. It looked like a metal disc or coin revolving at an almost blinding speed.
He reached out to nudge the coin with his hand, still somewhat inexplicably holding the fishing rod, as if it offered some kind of protection from his reckless inquisitiveness. The instant his skin came in contact with the coin, the light was extinguished, and it tumbled into the swirling rapids of the river. Clarence fell backwards in shock yet again when a man bobbed up out of the river, coughing and sputtering and blindly reaching out. Without thinking, both men in the boat scrambled forward and pulled the hapless man up into the boat. Icy water poured off of him and their hands slipped, the man sliding back into the frigid water. The boat became dislodged from the rocks in the middle of the water, and began drifting away.
The man, wild-eyed and panicked, swam for land. Clarence and Samuel managed to steer the boat back to shore, but by the time they felt the bottom of the boat scrape the river bank, the mysterious man was running and stumbling into the woods a couple of hundred feet away, glancing back furtively as he ran.
Back Story 2 of 3: Flipping a Coin
Pine branches slapped him in the face, pelting him with ricochets of wet snow, and more than once Spencer tripped and fell in the slushy melting snow. After a few minutes, he slowed and began to compose himself. He instinctively reached into his pocket for his phone and found it gone, no doubt swallowed by the river. Walking through the darkening woods, Spencer was suddenly much more aware of how cold and wet he was. Dangerously cold.
After wandering for another twenty minutes or so, Spencer saw a small rustic cabin in a clearing ahead. It had a rusty and very old padlock on the door. With a pang of guilt, he smashed the lock with a large rock several times until it snapped off in a shower of sparks.
He peered into the dusty cabin. A rusty old lantern hung on a nail by the door, and there was a small jar full of matches and a piece of sandpaper on a crude wooden table. He lit the lantern and gazed around the rest of the cabin. Given the seemingly remote location, it wasn’t surprising there was no electricity in the cabin. Spencer found a couple of musty blankets and after a glance at the stained bed covered in mouse droppings, looked for a better option. There was a broom in the corner, and he swept a space on the floor, laid down one of the blankets, stripped off his sopping clothes, and pulled the other blanket on top of himself. He was asleep in minutes.
The next morning, a shaft of sunlight crept across the room, eventually waking Spencer from a restless sleep. He pulled the rough blanket up to his chin. It did little to mute the cold air, and swirls of his frozen breath swirled in the cabin along with the dust coming off the blanket. His mind wandered as he watched them mix in the shaft of sunlight coming through the cabin’s one window.
While his sleep had not been deep, it had been enough to clear his mind. Where the hell was he? He sat up, stiff and sore from sleeping on the floor in the cold, but otherwise unharmed. After starting a small fire in the fireplace, he stumbled outside to see a beautiful blue sky. It was cold enough that the snow squeaked and crunched under his feet as he walked a ways down the forest path. His footprints from the night before were coated in a thin layer of fresh flakes, soft ghosts of their former selves. He retraced his steps back to the river and splashed some frigid water on his face, then drank a few mouthfuls.
The cold air jolted him further awake, and Spencer dusted some fluffy snow off of a log and sat down. Several things about yesterday troubled him. While the blackout and loss of memory were extremely disturbing, so were the looks on the faces of the men who had pulled him from the river. They looked like witnesses to a crime who were afraid to tell their story, or perhaps had bad news that they were reluctant to share.
Spencer saw a small column of smoke rising from a clearing near the edge of the river, and headed in that direction. He was pleased to see the two men from the day before huddled around a steaming metal pot over a cookfire. They were wearing thick denim coats that appeared to be lined with wool. Their tent was a large piece of canvas draped over a rope tied between two trees. While the corners were staked out with pieces of rough twine, it was clear these dudes were roughing it out here. One man was blonde and the other had dark hair, and both had impressive beards. They looked to be in their fifties or sixties. Spencer was reminded of old Western films that were always playing on the old Magnavox TV at his grandparents’ house when he used to visit them as a kid.
“How’s it going y’all?” Spencer shouted as he approached their camp.
The men looked a bit apprehensive and exchanged a quick look at each other that did not go unnoticed by Spencer. One man glanced at a pair of antique hunting rifles leaning against a tree, but he made no move towards them.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, I just wanted to say thanks again for helping me out of the river yesterday. To be honest, I have no idea how I got there. Pretty shaken up right now. Did y’all see anything before pulling me out? Was I in a boat? Swimming?”
“You from the South?” asked the darker haired man, seemingly ignoring Spencer’s question.
Spencer laughed, “No sir, I’m from Chicago, well the suburbs at least.”
“Hmmm, I never heard of Suburbs, is it a big town?”
“Not really.” Spencer was now looking at the man in earnest. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest.
The blonde man piped in, “My cousin down in Texas is Scots-Irish, and he’s the only one I ever heard say “y’all.”
“If you’re from Chicago, how did you end up all the way out here in Oregon?” the dark haired man asked. Spencer was visibly stunned, and the men exchanged another quick glance at each other as if his reaction unsettled them further.
“Oregon?!” Spencer ran a hand over his face and settled shakily onto a rock near the campfire.
“Sir, you don’t have any idea how you got here, do you?” asked the blonde man. Spencer slowly shook his head. “Do you have anywhere to go, or any money?” He shook his head again.
Spencer had a strong sense that while the men were perfectly kind and helpful, they were not eager to continue to talk with him. Something had them spooked, and he didn’t want to linger and overstay his welcome. “I think I’m going to head into the nearest town and try to sort this out. Can you please point me in the right direction?”
“Just follow the river about two miles that way, and you’ll come to Hood River,” said the dark haired man. “And here, hopefully this will get you back on your feet,” he said as he flipped a silver dollar towards Spencer, who caught it and pocketed the coin.
“Thanks, I really appreciate all of your help.”
“No problem sir, and good luck to you. Just got my war pension payment, and I’m happy to help another man in need.” He patted a stiff leg as if to thank his wounded limb for its service.
“Desert Storm?” Spencer inquired.
The man looked slightly confused, but responded with “Antietam,” and gave Spencer a somber wink.
As Spencer trudged away, the blonde man whispered to his friend, “Should we tell him about the light we saw before we found him in the river?”
“Hell no, people already think we’re crazy enough, you want to get that rumor started? Besides, it might have just been the sun reflecting off of something.” The other man looked dubious. They both knew what they saw, but didn’t pursue the subject further.
Spencer returned to the cabin, which was cozy after being warmed by the fire for a bit. He was still confused and disoriented from the events of the last 24 hours, and his head suddenly felt like it was filled with cotton balls. Angry at himself for not asking to share breakfast with the men, and stomach grumbling, he absentmindedly took the coin out of his pocket and started flipping it in the air with a flick of his thumb. It was only on the third or fourth flip that he recognized the slightly different “ping” of the coin. He had handled old coins with his grandfather, who was an avid collector, and recognized the distinctive sound that a solid silver coin made. He snatched the coin out of mid air and examined it. Spencer was stunned to find himself looking at a Morgan silver dollar, and even more shocked when he read the date on the coin - 1893.
And then a torrential, nauseating wave of realization came crashing down over his foggy brain. He thought back to the men’s antique rifles and camping gear, and then looked around the cabin. No outlets, no modern fixtures, no plastic candy wrappers or empty soda cans. Antietam. He scrambled outside and looked up at the bright blue crisp morning sky. Not a plane to be seen, and no trailing exhaust vapor either.
Spencer sank to the ground. He was pretty sure that somehow, incredibly, he was in Oregon. In the 1800s.
Back Story 3 of 3: The Dream is Born
Spencer sat at the rough-hewn wooden table in the cabin, reading the newspaper by lantern light. It had been a week now since he walked into the streets of Hood River, Oregon. By no means a bustling city, the town at least offered basic necessities, and more importantly, work. While he knew he needed to develop a longer term plan eventually, for now Spencer was content with a place to sleep and enough money for food.
He was still walking two miles or so from the cabin to town every day, but knew that eventually the owner of the cabin was likely to show up and kick him out. He was squatting there after all.
His first stop when he walked into town a week earlier had been the local general store, which boasted a “Help Wanted” sign in the front window. The owner didn’t seem particularly concerned with Spencer’s qualifications, and after a brief conversation showed him around the store, and showed him how to work the large (and gorgeous to Spencer) metal cash register at the front counter. He swept the place, took out the garbage to dump in a pile behind the store, and restocked the shelves.
At night, he pondered his fate, hoping every morning when he woke up that this was just a weird dream. He was no closer to figuring out how or why he was here, or how he might return to the present. Or at least HIS present in 2022. Was time frozen then, or had he merely vanished into thin air? Was anyone looking for him? While he had few answers, there were a number of things that Spencer had been able to glean from his week here:
It was November 1895. The date held no significance for him, and despite wracking his brain, he could identify no reason why this year would be important. The time capsule was buried in 1894, so that might be somehow connected.
He was in Oregon.
This wasn’t the WORST time he could have ended up in, but it wasn’t the best either. He had taught AP US History for years, and had a good understanding of important historical events, but he was always the least interested by the period from the end of the Civil War in 1865 until around the turn of the 20th century. He had a big advantage over someone without a working knowledge of United States history, though.
Spencer had purchased a small notebook and pencil with his first week’s wages, and kept a running journal of all the things he did not know, and thought would be useful to find out:
Was there any way to travel back to 2022?
Did his actions in 1895 have repercussions for his future self, or the future of other people? He had to imagine, for example, that if his iPhone hadn’t fallen in the river, it would have blown people away had he showed it to them. But what would the consequences of a reckless act like that be?
Were there any other stories of strange events happening in town, or people appearing out of nowhere?
If he really was stuck here for the rest of his life, how could he make the most of it?
That last question was hard to tackle when Spencer was still in mild shock over his situation. But, he mused, his knowledge of American History had to have some value. If he could buy the right stock, or come up with the right invention, he could be rich eventually, right? At the same time, he was terrified that if he changed 1895 TOO much, it could spiral out of control in any number of ways. What if his early invention of the jet engine changed the outcome of a future world war, or revealing television too early meant the Cold War ended in nuclear holocaust. It was just too hard to predict, and left him searching for a way to acquire future wealth and security that wasn’t too disruptive to the status quo.
While Spencer had never been that obsessed with wealth, he figured if he did end up stuck in time at the turn of the 20th century, having financial means would make it far more tolerable. Perhaps he could leverage money into a search for a way to get home.
Another week passed, with Spencer day-dreaming and scheming while stocking shelves or cleaning up in the general store. His boss had to throw a piece of hard candy at him to break him out of daze now and again. Mr. Saunders, the shop owner, didn’t seem too mad though. He had taken a liking to Spencer, who was only a few years his junior, but seemed willing to work hard without having a big ego about it.
Finally, one sunny winter day in December 1895, the answer was literally delivered to Spencer. He was sweeping up the store, when Mr. Saunders bustled by and asked him to walk down the street to the Post Office to drop off a few letters and bills. As Spencer walked along the wooden sidewalk, he watched horse-drawn carriages and wagons amble down the street, clouds of hot breath pouring from the horses’ nostrils as they dragged their loads of people and goods.
He arrived at the Post Office and handed the outgoing mail across the counter to Mr. Ebbets, the crusty old postmaster in town. He had large bushy eyebrows and tufts of hair growing out of his ears, and Spencer couldn’t help imagining one of the troll dolls that had been so popular when he was a kid.
“There’s something for the store here, just arrived today,” Ebbets mumbled and rummaged around a canvas bag stuffed full of mail. He took out a thick catalog and handed it across to Spencer, who tucked it under one arm and headed out, thanking the old man as he left.
He walked back down the street, and flipped through the catalog, which was full of illustrations of hundreds of home goods and other products. Suddenly, it was as if a brilliant light bulb had gone off in Spencer’s brain. He flipped to the front cover, already knowing what he would see: Sears, Roebuck and Co. was emblazoned across the front. The company was still in its very early years, and Spencer was fairly certain it would still be affordable to buy a stake in the company. Unless he was very mistaken, by the early 1900s, the company would be worth a small fortune. Anyone who had early shares would be very wealthy…
Given that he knew no one, had no family, and didn’t have television, radio, or the internet to distract him, Spencer decided it was entirely realistic that if he worked hard, he could be truly wealthy in ten years. He fell asleep fantasizing about sitting on a rocky outcropping, perched on the precipice, wearing a bowler hat, and gazing out over a piece of land that was all his. A land where he could build a town that would welcome anyone who wanted to start a new life, who was a weird misfit like himself, or just wanted to live in a beautiful place where they could live without anyone bothering them. An introvert’s dream - that he would create. And with that thought, he fell into a deep and restful sleep for the first time in weeks.