The Lost Celt. A. E. Conran
his day. I may have been worried about casting his mom as a mad scientist, but he sure isn’t.
He throws his hand up for a high five, does an “oh yeah” dance and, when he spills his chocolate milk, just laughs as it puddles around his feet. That’s how happy he is. “It’s a conspiracy! Just like the documentaries online. The VA is transporting warriors from ancient times as part of a secret defense project, to study them—”
“Or use them as secret weapons,” I say.
“Yeah, and I bet there’s a time travel machine in the basement of the VA and doctors, like Mom, have to look after the warriors because, well, who knows what time travel will do to a guy? So totally cool!”
I knew Kyler would get it. “Cool? It’s not just cool. It’s awesome. It’s unreal!” I say.
“No, Mikey, this is real.” Kyler drops his voice. He looks really serious. “Wood frogs in Alaska freeze themselves solid for seven months of the year. If you pick one up and bend its leg, it’ll break off, but in the summer that frog will thaw out, hop around—”
“Not if you break its leg off,” I say.
He waves my comment away. “That frog will be fine, until next winter when it freezes again. I mean, who would believe that? But it’s true.” I love it when Kyler’s like this. “And dinosaurs, who would believe them, really? Or kissing. Like that’s really weird, but it happens.”
“Gross!”
“Just saying!” He flops back on the bench, rips open a bag of seaweed rice crackers, and offers me one. I crunch down a few times and realize that something doesn’t add up. Something about Kyler’s totally amazing theory, and my conversation with Mariko, doesn’t work.
“But your mom didn’t know who was arriving, or when. She just said certain nights they came. She wasn’t expecting them.” I sit next to him. “Dude, if the VA doctors were in on the project, wouldn’t they be told when to expect these guys?” Kyler doesn’t answer, but his mouth drops open in “Kyler thinking” mode. “And, wouldn’t the Defense Department have a secure facility, miles away from anywhere, so the time-traveled warriors couldn’t escape right away?” I’m thinking of the secret Area 51 base where they built the stealth airplanes. If they did that in the 1970s, wouldn’t they do the same for this, now?
“Maybe he escaped?”
“Then they need to up their security big time, because your mom’s seen men like the Celt before. They can’t all be escaping. The Defense Department wouldn’t set up a project this humongous and then be so bad at protecting it.” I grab for Kyler’s rice crackers and throw a whole handful in my mouth before he can pull the bag away. I have this theory that eating something crunchy stimulates the brain. The popping noise gets the neurons, or whatever they’re called, popping too. Worked for me once on my nine times table. I memorized it by synchronizing my thoughts to the crunches. I’ve sworn by it ever since. So I crunch away.
When the idea comes, it’s so obvious I stand up as if electrified. “It’s not organized, Kyler. It’s just happening. There’s more activity on certain nights, that’s what your mom said. Nights when bad things are happening, natural disasters and stuff, but the VA doesn’t know when that is. All they know is they get these guys, they treat some of them, some disappear back to wherever, and some return again.”
“But, then what are they doing here?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, but the VA and the government obviously know about it. The weird thing is they’re keeping it secret, but they’re still letting it happen. Why would they do that?”
“Because they can’t control it?” Kyler makes a “what do you think?” stretchy face, his mouth turned down. “Maybe it’s some kind of crazy natural phenomenon?”
“And that’s why they have to keep it secret!” All that research last night is paying off. “Time travel is the biggest military weapon a country could ever invent!” I’m trembling as I say it. “Travel back in time and you can change whatever you want. You can control the entire history of the world. If the government knows there’s some weird “natural time travel” thing going on, they aren’t going to let anyone else know until they understand it and control it themselves. They’re definitely not going to let other countries—or terrorists—know.”
I pause for a moment and I see the Celt clearly again, in that moment before the nurses gathered around, his blue eyes not fierce anymore, but sad. “‘I don’t want to get stuck here.’”
“Say again.”
“That’s what he said. ‘I don’t want to get stuck here.’ It makes total sense. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll never get back to the portal or time machine or whatever he has to use to return home. He’ll be stuck in this time, forever!”
Kyler thumps his fist on the table. “Why didn’t I think of this?” he says. I guess he’s bummed about me trashing his theory. I’m going to tell him not to take it so hard. Kyler’s real smart normally, and he can be hard on himself, but then he leans in and whispers, “I heard Mom talking to Dad this morning when she got off her shift.”
“And?”
“Well…” He holds on to the word for a really long time just to bug me.
“What?”
“She said a patient ran away last night.”
“No!”
“Yeah, a patient ran away.”
I grab Kyler’s shoulders and pretty much shake his head off in time with my words. “It’s him. It must be him. That proves it! He’s gonna try to get back to his own time. We have to find him, see it with our own eyes. This is probably our only chance, ever, to prove that time travel really exists!”
Romanii: Northern Borders has never felt so real as it does tonight. These guys aren’t just computer-generated anymore. I’ve seen a Celtic warrior. I’ve heard him. I’ve smelled him. I’ve even spoken to him. I should be relishing every moment of my epic victory against the Romans, but I can hardly concentrate. “Let’s pause,” I whisper.
I have to repeat myself twice before Kyler finally understands. “Good call!” he whispers back with a thumbs-up. It’s always risky playing Romanii during the week. We have to keep our voices especially low. Even if Mom is working the night shift, Grandpa is still under strict instructions to close me down. No war games during the week, only four hours max on the weekend. That’s why Grandpa’s monthly poker nights are so great.
“I can’t think of anything but the Celt. The real Celt!” I say.
“Me too. Let’s get back to planning. We have to have a plan.”
“I know, but what? He’s run away. He could be anywhere. Did you ask your mom whether they’d found him again?”
“Yeah, I slipped her the question on the way back from my violin lesson. She’d totally forgotten it was Dad she was talking to about him, not me. The Celt has disappeared, for sure.”
“Good, that’s easier for us.”
“Easier?” Kyler does a giant “what do you mean” face into the screen, which makes me laugh.
“We know he’s still out there. It’s easier for us to find him outside than in the VA with all those doctors around all the time.”
Kyler shrugs. “I could just pretend I was visiting Mom,” he mumbles. “Anyway how do we know he hasn’t already gone back to his own time?”
“We don’t,” I say, “but we’ve got to start somewhere. We have to assume he’s still here and find him before he goes back.” Kyler’s looking pretty unhappy about the whole situation,