The Tunnel

A Future Noir Short Story

11/2/2031

11:45 a.m.

“That rich Palm Springs lady’s early,” John said as he watched the blue Mercedes drive onto his desert compound.

“You and your redheads,” Buntley said.

John walked into his office. He poured two fingers of Rebel Yell, his second of the morning, and stepped into his character of Pierce McCarthy, Morongo Valley Private Investigator.

Out in the lobby, Buntley combed his beard. Buntley belonged to the Warlocks, an outlaw motorcycle club. Some Warlocks worked as John’s part-time investigators. Having one at the office usually generated trust with his local, blue-collar and often shady clients. But that wouldn’t happen today. This woman today was high society.

The front door opened. Heat shimmered. Buntley showed her in.

“Mr. McCarthy,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m early.”

“That’s all right.” She sat. Esther Frink had shoulder length dyed red hair. She wore a white hat and sunglasses. Her pregnant belly protruded. She placed her hat on his desk. A necklace of Jesus on the cross hung around her neck.

Buntley’s Warlock buddy Faux Dog had referred her. Faux Dog said Esther Frink lived in a mansion and attended Faith Perpetual Christian Church. “Faux Dog says you attend Faith Perpetual. I’ve seen the building, but I’ve never been inside.”

Esther studied John’s face. “Faux Dog came in and found Jesus.” She touched her necklace. “Do you have a relationship with Jesus, Mr. McCarthy?”

John remembered how Faux Dog’s older brother and fellow Warlock Little Job had been shot dead last winter, presumably from a rival MC called the Jokers. The case was still unsolved. The grief must have led him to God.

“Call me Pierce. No, I’m not a believer,” John said.

“There’s always time. Why are you so close to these bikers, Pierce?”

“I used to be a detective in L.A. One of the Warlocks’ wives was killed. I found the killer. When I moved out here to start this business, they were the only people I knew. Sometimes they work for me.” Right after saying this, John recognized it as a drunken mistake. John Spear had done all that, not Pierce McCarthy.

“Hiring you was important to me.”

John looked at her moist red lips. “Why?”

“Because I know who you really are.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your real name is John Spear,” she said. “You were a detective and you were implicated in the CHC scandal three years ago. Your brother Robert was developing a time travel pod so CHC could start changing the past in their favor. You were using your badge to help make it happen and make yourself rich in the process. The two of you got caught and disappeared. I’ve found you.”

Esther Frink knew more about his old case than any stranger had figured out so far. “That’s quite a story,” he said. It was certainly not the whole story. “What would you like from me?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Where did we meet?”

“I’m a member of Shining Path. I fight CHC.”

The CHC, or the Cloven Hoof Consortium, also known as the Cloven Hoof Cartel, began in the ’20s as a Southern California-based security firm with cultish tendencies. Its interests expanded over the years into media manipulation, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and many other rumored fields. The true leaders of CHC, even still, were unknown. They were long rumored to be Satan worshippers.

“Shining Path,” John said. Shining Path was a collective of underground paramilitary Christians determined to oppose CHC’s quests for power. Esther Frink was, according to Faux Dog, a member of Faith Perpetual. The Morongo Valley was long rumored to be an anti-CHC territory. John was usually too drunk to determine if these rumors were true, but the possibility of Faith Perpetual being a cover for Shining Path felt plausible. Esther was not the rich Palm Springs lady she posed as, that was for sure. “So there’s no reason for you to hire a guy like me, a known CHC collaborator, to do anything, is there?” John slurred collaborator.

“I’m in charge of Shining Path operations in this region. An important meeting is taking place later tonight. I need bodyguards.”

“I’m a P.I., not security.” John did security jobs all the time. He was just fishing for more information.

“I’ll pay you well.”

“Buntley out front is great at this sort of thing. A great deal of the Warlocks’ income comes from muscle jobs.”

“What about your brother?”

“What about him?”

“You have a warehouse behind this office. We can read power sources. There’s a lot more going on out here than just a P.I. business.”

“Buntley and I are the only ones here.”

“The job I’m doing is dependent on no one realizing who I am. A public face of CHC with us for protection is a good strategy. I need you.”

A slick response, but she was still lying. “Do you think it could get hairy?”

“You’ll be paid well,” she answered and told him the amount. It was a lot.

“What are you after? Really?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

John reached into his desk drawer for a McCarthy Investigations contract. He gave it to her.

When it was signed, he asked, “How did you learn my real name?”

“I told you. We’ve met before.”

John tried to imagine her without the red dye job. “Where? When?”

“I’ll see you and your brother later tonight,” she said and left.

He never planned to bring Bobby. Tonight he would bring Buntley and maybe Faux Dog but he let her think what she wanted. John folded her contract and shoved it in his front pocket.

11/2/2031

1:05 p.m.

John got his keys into the lock, opened the back door behind his office and walked down the hall to the lab. Bobby was working amongst a great deal of complex machinery.

“I just got a job,” John said.

The pod sat on the elevated platform near the removable wall panel. Bobby was guiding a welding flame along its door.

“Good for you,” he said.

“It was a woman who works for Shining Path.”

Bobby looked up. “She told you she worked for them?”

“Yes. She wants you and me to go out on some security detail for her tonight. She didn’t give details but said it could be dangerous. I agreed. She knew my name’s not Pierce McCarthy. She’s paying a lot of money.” John looked at all the machines. “We’ve been treading water financially for a while.”

“Her story sounds phony. She probably read about us in the papers and tracked us down. Don’t do it.”

John looked at the silver, egg-shaped pod. It was about three quarters of the size of an average car and had a small window for the single passenger that could fit inside. The compact engine held immense power.

“I’m going to take Buntley,” John said.

Bobby looked surprised. “Wait. When you said yes you were serious?”

“It was too much money to turn down.”

“How drunk are you, John? Jesus, it’s one in the afternoon.”

“Drinking’s how I stay sane.” He slurred sane.

John walked to the pod. Forward time machines had been functional and successfully used by high-level government sanctioned groups for a decade. What made Bobby’s pod so potentially valuable was that his could go back and theoretically return. The kinks were still being worked out.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about your sanity. This pod works. Better than any other version.”

Bobby never just spoke clearly. “Could I go back and fix things if I wanted to?”

Bobby huffed. “No. You can’t go back and prevent 9/11 or the Holocaust yet either. You can go back, just not that far. The ability to choose a specific date or time frame hasn’t been worked out. It’s not exact yet.”

Bobby had sent pods back that were lost. Maybe lost on some other part of the planet, maybe in some other dimension. None sent back had been discovered in their present. These were expensive losses. Bobby didn’t appreciate the money they were hemorrhaging.

“We’re almost there. When we are, we can do a test run. After it works, we can fix all of our other problems,” Bobby said.

John burped.

Back when he was LAPD, the NSA heard that some L.A.-based CHC members were seeking to develop a time machine that went into the past, which is illegal for private corporations. NSA involved LAPD. The police brass assigned John to the case. John was to pose as a corrupt cop, contact CHC, and tunnel intelligence to NSA to subvert their plan.

The operation began. Bobby was folded in by the brass and began work on his pod for CHC. Bobby’s work was, for verisimilitude, real and legitimate. Their work became the foundation for a major case. John began to discover that many CHC rumors were true. He saw Cloven Hoof Consortium executives take part in mysterious, Satan-worshipping rituals he didn’t understand.

The case went bad. Someone blew John’s cover. The LAPD, scared about leaks within their ranks, disavowed John. He lost his badge and was written up in the press as an actual dirty cop out to make a profit helping the bad guys.

This was the story Esther Frink knew.

Every corporate CHC rep publicly denied any involvement with John or time machine development. Suspicious that some unofficial silencing of the Spear brothers might be around the bend, John and Bobby moved out here to this compound. Bobby began work on a new, perfected pod. John took P.I. work when it came and drank.

“It’s all going to work out. Stop being so hard on yourself,” Bobby said.

Once the pod was fully functional, they planned to buy their way back into their old lives. A working time machine wielded great leverage, especially one that went backward. John planned to get his badge reinstated and continue his fight against CHC. He could bust them and clear his tainted name.

“And stop drinking so much. You’ve had enough today.”

Bobby always warned about ramifications from reverse time travel. CHC hadn’t been worried about ramifications. They were ready to just go back.

“I’ve got to go into town. It’s important.” Important always meant parts for the pod. Something else always had to be done.

“Take Buntley.”

“I will.” Bobby was no good on his own. He always took one of the Warlocks. “I won’t be gone long. Sleep it off. When I get back we’ll figure out tonight. This war between CHC and Shining Path is not something we want to get mixed up in.”

Bobby left the lab.

John walked up the steps to the platform and stood beside the pod and touched it. He unlocked the removable wall of the warehouse and slid it open. The desert heat blasted him. John knew how to set the date on the pod. He set it to three years back, when his life was still on track. He got in and pressed the button. The engine power vibrated the platform beneath his feet.

John wondered what the Tunnel would look like.

2/14/2031

1:26 p.m.

Rose and ultraviolet light blazed through the window. The pod hit ground and skid. John was still belted in. He blinked. The pod came to a stop. John made it to the past still drunk.

He undid his safety belt and stepped out. The air was cool. Dust and pollen floated. His path through the Tunnel, which had seemed so vivid, was blank.

The display on his phone read November 2nd. John looked around. Mountains were to his north. The light of a moving car trailed along a road about five miles away. Maybe ten. John patted himself down. He had his phone, keys and wallet. Unless he missed his mark and was so far back that his Pierce McCarthy credit cards were not yet valid, he could travel by using them. He looked at the pod. It had dents and scratches but didn’t look seriously damaged. The engine was cooling already.

In the distance there was a mesa. John marched toward the road. He got a bearing on his location. This was the Morongo Wash. The road was Indian Canyon Drive. He was about thirty miles from his office compound. A Gila monster crossed his path. A hangover set in. John wanted to kill it soon. The closest bar he knew of was a twenty-minute drive.

John heard a motorcycle in the distance. He spotted it down the road. It looked like a Warlock. Out here it could also be a Joker, but a lone Joker in Warlock territory felt unlikely. He saw that the man riding was Little Job, Faux Dog’s murdered brother, on his ’29 Electra Glide. Little Job pulled over to the shoulder.

John walked to him. His dead friend was alive.

“What’re you doing out here, Mr. Spear?”

John coughed. He searched for a response.

“Where’s yer car?” Little Job asked.

“I don’t have one. Got any whisky?”

Little Job said yes and handed him a silver flask. John chugged about half of it.

“What day is it?”

“Sunday.”

“What date?”

“Valentine’s Day.”

“What year?”

“What year? What’s wrong with you?”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s 2031.”

Bobby said the machine might not go back as far as he’d instructed it to. He was sent back to roughly the same physical area of where he lived, give or take thirty miles, about nine months earlier.

“Remember how I told you about my case? When Bobby and me were trying to stop the rich Satanists from building a time machine of their own?”

“Yes.”

“The reason I’m out here has to do with that.” John tried to remember where he was on Valentine’s Day of this year.

“Sounds fucking important, Mr. Spear. I mean McCarthy.”

“It is,” John took another swig. He needed a plan. The pod was out just past the horizon. It would be okay for now.

“Will you take me to the club house? I need to ask the Pres for a favor.” He didn’t know what favor he was going to ask. He just had a vague idea about staying inside the club house until he came up with a plan.

“You’re the one has to ride bitch.”

John said he didn’t mind and got on the back. Little Job turned the bike around and began heading back in the other direction.

John watched the desert move by.

There was a large white building ahead. They were still a ways from the clubhouse. The building got bigger. John made out a steeple. It was Faith Perpetual.

“Pull in there,” John yelled into Little Job’s ear.

Little Job pulled the Electra into the Faith Perpetual lot. John got off the bike. He looked at the building. Maybe she was in there. John drank the last of the whisky.

“Wait here. Leave the engine running.”

John walked to the side of the church and looked in a window. It was the sanctuary. There was a handsome blonde pastor leading a baptismal service. The pastor dunked a man in water. The parishioners clapped. They praised the Lord.

John walked behind the building. A back door was unlocked. He went in.

A hallway ran behind the sanctuary. John passed three empty rooms. He looked in the fourth and saw Esther Frink.

Her hair was blonde, not red. She was not pregnant. She sat beside what looked like two boxes of old military ammunition. Shining Path supplies. This was some kind of depot. Esther was copying something out of a map book into a small white journal. John stepped in.

“What are you up to?” he asked her.

Esther looked up at John. “Can I help you?” She asked.

“What does Shining Path want, to torment me?”

She ran for the door. John caught her and threw her back against the wall hard. He locked the door behind her.

“Who are you?” Esther asked.

John looked at her heaving chest and got an erection. He grabbed her by the hair and covered her mouth. He ripped open her dress. Her breasts flew free. John threw her on the ground. He got on top of her. She cried. John looked at the wooden box on the floor beside him. It said AR-15 in black lettering. Consciousness dipped out of him. The whisky turned everything black.

His consciousness returned. John pulled out of Esther and looked down at her naked body. Bruises were already forming around her pelvis and her neck where he held her down. John zipped up his fly. He looked at her journal on the desk. There was what looked like a list of latitude and longitude points. He saw Latin words. From the hallway he heard people speaking.

John looked out and saw the pastor and the recently baptized man walking his way. Had Esther screamed? John couldn’t remember. He stepped out into the hallway. The men saw him.

“Who are you?” The pastor asked.

John rushed out the back door. They moved on toward Esther. John ran to the parking lot where Little Job waited.

“Head back to where you found me!”

“What happened?”

“That church belongs to Shining Path. They don’t like me. Remember? They’re in there and they’ve got guns.”

They tore off. John looked back and saw the pastor and three of his recently baptized men running to a white Ford pickup. Each man carried an old AR-15. The pickup sped onto the road behind them.

“Faster!” John screamed.

Little Job hit the gas. The truck moved fast. It had all-terrain tires that would fare well off road.

They moved on across the flat desert road. The wind was harsh in their faces. John spotted the mesa that was his landmark for the pod. He told Little Job to drive off road here.

“Won’t do no good off road!”

“I’ve got something out there that can save us!”

John spotted the pod in the distance. Then the Electra crashed. They were thrown off the bike. John fell on his hands. Dust burnt his eyes. Little Job fell in a tumble. The Electra skidded on its side. John got up. He had scratches but he was okay. Little Job looked all right. He was mad about his bike.

The truck turned and drove toward them. Dust plumes billowed behind it. John could make out the pastor standing up in the bed, aiming at them.

“The fuck you get me into?” Little Job said.

A string of automatic bullets tore into Little Job’s crashed bike. He screamed. He reached into a bag he kept on the side of the bike, drew a .45 and fired at the pickup. The shots all missed.

“Save your ammo,” John said.

They ran the rest of the way to the pod. It looked the same as when John left it. John pressed the security code into the keypad. The door hissed and unlocked.

“What is this thing?” Little Job asked.

“It’s a time machine,” John said and typed the coordinates in quickly for a return trip back through the Tunnel. “Bobby built it.”

John opened the pod door.

Another barrage of gunfire came at them. John felt himself suddenly coated in liquid. They had scored a hit to Little Job’s head.

More bullets ripped into the pod. John pressed the button, jumped inside, and shut the door behind him. There was a long wait. The pod spun in slow circles in the dirt. Then it left the ground. John wiped blood from his eyes.

The Tunnel opened up again.

11/2/2031

5:35 p.m.

The pod crashed into the ground and tumbled toward the laboratory, smashing into its wall. A triangular chunk of the building crumbled away. John vomited. He unfastened himself and opened the door. Smoke hit him. The pod engine was burning. He jumped out.

It was twilight. Before he could examine the damage, John saw a man in desert camouflage pointing an AK-47 at him. A white towel covered his mouth. The man pulled the towel down. He was the pastor from Faith Perpetual.

Behind the pastor there were four soldiers, also with AKs and other guns. He saw the same white pickup. An old box truck was parked close by. This was a Shining Path siege on his compound.

“Cuff him,” the pastor said.

A soldier cuffed John’s bloody hands. The pastor and the soldier walked him into the lab. The other soldiers stayed outside to extinguish the fire.

Inside Bobby’s body was lying on the ground with a series of spaced, linear bullet holes in his chest and head. A nickel-plated .45 lay on the floor by his hand. Esther was there. She wore desert camouflage that was fitted for her pregnancy.

“Sit him down,” The pastor said.

The soldier pushed John into Bobby’s desk chair. Bobby’s stacks of manila folders full of data sheets were before him. John looked at Esther. She examined the machinery around her. She looked at his dead brother’s life’s work. That same Jesus necklace hung around her neck.

John looked at the pastor. “Where’s Buntley?” he asked.

“The biker out front? Dead,” the pastor said. The digital clock on the wall read 5:44 p.m., 11/2/31. “For months we thought you got away in some homemade airplane last February. It took time but we found you and your brother. We tracked the purchases your brother was making in town as Nigel McCarthy to confirm that he was creating a pod. You’ve isolated yourselves out here. We had to be sure you were the bad guy we were looking for. You were.”

Esther even found out that he liked redheads. John looked at her. Little Job’s blood was still wet on his face.

“Now it makes sense why you didn’t remember me this morning,” Esther said. “Now I see what happened.”

“You made up a story! You lied to me. I never would have done it — ”

“If I hadn’t found my rapist,” she said.

“I was undercover. Bobby and me were going to stop CHC, but someone talked and the LAPD threw me under the bus. Made me look bad.”

“So you say,” the pastor said.

“That’s why I went back, to fix my case. To put things on track.”

“Instead you got drunk, broke into a church, raped me, and got your friend killed,” Esther said.

John asked her, “Is it a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you keep a baby from rape?”

The pastor said, “Because the Lord wants his creations to protect the innocent. The Shining Path does not murder the innocent.”

“You killed my brother.”

“We wanted him alive, so he could continue his work for us, but he went for his gun. We have your brother’s studies. We can already tell his reverse time travel work is as revolutionary as we heard.”

Outside, the soldiers had put out the pod fire.

Esther said, “God put you in my life, John Spear. When we finally found out who you were and that by finding you we could get a time machine in our lives, Jesus spoke to me. I heard his voice.”

John asked, “What did he say?”

“He reminded me that the great problem of humanity is the lack of knowledge about His teachings. This ignorance began with his sufferings on the cross. He told me that his crucifixion was not God’s will. It wasn’t supposed to have happened. The Shining Path is going to start the world again, but this time everyone will know Jesus. It will be a world of hope.”

“Changing what event would create this hope?”

“The event. I’m going to travel back across the centuries to personally save Jesus from his crucifixion. He will live out his life and express himself clearly to the multitudes and die an old man.”

John gulped. “The pod only goes back nine months.”

“We’ll improve it,” Esther said. “The Shining Path will continue your brother’s work. That’s the next step, after today.”

“Time for you to kneel,” the pastor said.

John got on his knees. He saw that his chances of getting things right were always nonexistent. He accepted that a rapist lived inside him. The pastor aimed his AK-47. The Shining Path soldier handed Esther a Mossberg. Esther pumped it.

“You and the others will receive proper burials,” the pastor said.

John thought of his own baby boy inside Esther Frink’s womb. Its heart already beat, this baby of rape. He would be here soon. John turned his head. He wished he could cry about the moral tenderness he’d seen in other people but never in himself.

Blasts tore his skull apart.