The Bonfire

Dr. Nathanial Barnes,

I write to you now in hopes that you might triumph where I have failed. My name is Dr. Samuel Montgomery, and I am the last living member of the Arclight research team. I have pieced this account, together from my own recollection and firsthand accounts from those who were there at the time. I write this being of sound mind and body, under no duress other than by the consequences of my own actions. It is getting colder now, and my cough is getting worse but it is my mind I fear the virus will take before I can finish this writing. I pray, this will find you while there is still time. We can go back, back to the beginning, I remain confident of that much.

Should my wife find this journal, Elizabeth, I speak to you now, let this serve as my explanation and my apology, if you will still have me, I promise I will find you again in the next world or the one after that. Give my love to our Luna if you find me deserving of that much.

The things you will hear about me simply aren’t true. But while I never killed anyone, at least any person, the deaths yet to come might rest firmly on my shoulders. The rain has started to pour harder, which soon means the drones will be dispatched to spray their chemical disinfectants, so I won’t waste the light I do have pleading my case to you.

By the time you read this you may already know as I do now that there will be no secondary vaccine rollout for the Sierra variant of COVID-57. Albert Jenney who remains alive at the time of this writing, April 16th 2259, can confirm this. He is reachable in Atlanta should you be able to procure a vial or two of morphine, the trading post there will see he gets the mail. He alleges that the numbers being officially released are inaccurate, and the number of casualties is closer to 112 million.

You are learning now what I and a small number of others have known now for 2 years, we are in the extinction level event.

Enclosed within the package I have sent is one gold locket, heart shaped, containing two photographs; one of a bonfire and the other of a family, African American, names unknown, property of the late Dr. Howard Cross. Please do not discard as it might be the key to saving us yet.

I first became aware of Dr. Cross’s work in the area of psionics in the early months of my work on Arclight. He believed that there existed small pockets whereby using electronics, a person could communicate and therefore permeate through the membrane of time. He believed that this extended to certain objects, although he himself had not found a touchtone by which to test this belief, until he found the locket.

I am including with this journal, a series of notes I will attempt to summarize here. Dr. Cross had traced a radioactive signature he believed was a communication between our present and the membrane, several hundred years into the past. The small pocket of radiation sat below sea level, under Lake Lanier in Forsyth County, Georgia. From what I could find on file, there once stood a predominantly Black community, Oscarville, where the lake sits now, until it was flooded by residents following a massacre in 1912. I do not believe Dr. Cross was aware of this at the time.

He assembled a team of divers to take samples, but they returned barely alive, covered in burns and suffering from smoke inhalation. He reports back that no diver showed signs of radiation poisoning. His superior urged that the project be halted and Cross and his team were dismissed. We had kept in touch since grad school and with the project shelved indefinitely it didn’t take much for him to forward me his research.

Project Archlight was conceived as an arc by which, if possible, we would use to traverse time and with it, provide safe haven for those unaffected or who have not yet contracted COVID-57 or any form of Leishmaniasis. It was my belief that by continuing Dr. Cross’s research we could make contact with people of the past, secure safe haven and prevent future outbreaks in our time.

The project itself was classified. The thought was that if people knew we had no discernable way to treat exposure or contain the virus there would be widespread panic and movement which would only make our work harder. But I couldn’t explain this to anyone, least of all my family. We were tested every three days for exposure and not allowed any contact with non-essential personnel at this point. I remember that day vividly, Elizabeth and I fought in the morning. You had wanted to go back west to your mother’s place in California and try to make it to the commune they were building right Beth? How could I explain to you that if I failed there wouldn’t be a California to return to?

I’m getting sidetracked, I apologize. It was Dr. Andreas Kaufmann suggested we submerge the locket in water from the test site, so we set up an outdoor lab and test station at the foot of the lake. Shortly after we’d done so, various members of the team reported having visions of a bonfire and dark figures seated around it, calling out they’d be coming back to get them. I dismissed this as fatigue and hysteria from the quarantine. Soon, there were only four members of my original team willing to push forward: myself, Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Dr. Deborah Waschke and Dr. Simone Gaudier.

***

It has been several days since my last entry; several members of the commune here have learned of my identity, and I had to flee before morning. I regret I left most of my larger supplies behind in my tent, I was struck once by a bullet in my thigh, attempting to retrieve my most recent notes. I’ve removed the bullet and tended to the wound, but I am running dangerously low on painkillers. Should I truly have contracted the virus, I will need to save those, for the nights when the body aches are worse.

I have some scrap metal left to trade as well as a water filter. I estimate I’m half a day’s walk from Maccabees territory and while I am not a particularly religious man I find myself now also hoping the dead can answer prayers.

I suppose now upon examination, this experiment was some search for a god, praying in silence, and then there I sat in disbelief when something or someone answered. I didn’t believe we could communicate directly with the locket until I heard the voice myself. I remember being in the lab, seated sometime after 11 and then all at once, as if asleep, I was transported, sitting at the bonfire, surrounded by colorful figures, their forms dancing like fire, flickering in and out of sight or existence. “You can all come if you want to,” they beckoned. This was it; I’d made contact! Another voice smiled a large saccharine smile, “You want to come down, see what it’s like, sugar?” I felt myself answer “Yes,” the sound leaving the tiny dark, warmth of the bonfire, I was jolted back into the lab once more, I awoke to the sound of my own voice.

I celebrated by retiring for the evening, I had a bit of whiskey I was saving for just such an occasion, Macallan of course and fell asleep shortly after. I awoke mere hours later to find myself being dragged to the Lake by my colleagues. Their touch felt like hot embers, my skin singed by every attempt to grasp me as I moved to escape their grip. It happened so fast, I lunged toward the edge of the grass, breaking free from them and grabbed a rock but Kaufmann advanced forward, “Come down here, see what it’s like,” he said over and over, grabbing at my feet. He didn’t stop until the third time I had struck him with the rock. I promise you Doctor, that was not Andreas but a man possessed by something, someone else. I ran barefoot to my car some 20 feet from the site and retrieved the gun from the glovebox. When I turned back toward the lake, Waschke and Gaudier were there no longer, before I could shut the door, Gaudier was on me, squeezing my throat, Waschke had broken the driver side car door window and was attempting to wedge off a shard with her bare hands.

If there had been any other way Doctor, I promise I would have done things differently. Shooting them was a last resort! I should have called the police then and there but who would have believed me? A locket spoke to my team of privately funded researchers and drove them mad? They attacked me and I had to kill them all? No, it was too fantastic to be believed. So I fled, I am not proud of it but I made the best decision I could at the time with the information I had. We had indeed communicated with the past and it would appear we owe them a debt.

***

Please excuse the smudge on this page of the moleskine, my nose has taken to bleeding more often lately, it is a side effect of the blood thinners. They become increasingly difficult to get from the Candymen so I won’t complain too much about a little blood. They don’t make it this far south, so I have to send out for it and the people that don’t ask questions, they don’t come cheap. I imagine most people have resorted to heroin at this point. Is it sunny where you are, Doctor? The sky is a greyish green hue today. I am having a hard time keeping my thoughts together Doctor Barney, it’s the Sunday mornings with my Elizabeth I think I miss the most, breakfast at Frank’s, the fresh egg and cheese on brioche. The moss is so thick you can barely make out the sign now. As for Frank, the virus took his daughter, Eva, the one with the lisp and then his wife shortly after that so I can’t say I blame him for the heroin.

I have some meal cards left I am saving for when my sense of taste returns. Maybe, I can get one of those egg and cheese sandwiches from Frank’s. I have two vials left, the first one is for the tremor, you know that bit, the second makes the thoughts easier, tempers the fog.

I have been testing the water samples and it’s as I feared Barney, it’s contaminated, make a note. All water must have been bottled before October 5th, 2258, the forever people have poisoned the rest. It’s the water. You have to use the locket, I understand the message now, you sit, and you talk to the flames and you make amends for the town we buried, the town we buried under the water.

***

Dr. Barnes,

This will be my last entry, I will have traded the last of copper and painkillers for safe travel of this parcel. I am struggling to stay lucid as I write this. I urge you to destroy this locket and all notes within. The past doesn’t belong to us, I understand that now. I confirm now for you and whomever this message might reach that neither myself nor any of my colleagues knowingly tampered with any ampoules containing any virus or pathogen. I do not believe the contamination of our water supply can be explained by science. I believe we opened a door and some doors are trapdoors and those, those you don’t come back from.

Luna, daddy loves you.