Yesterday (Part Four - Chapters 72 & 73) (Patreon)

CHAPTER 72

Jonah and Laura walked hand in hand into his father’s office building. For the first time in his life, Jonah made no attempt to hide from the stares of passersby and found that he felt strangely self-conscious. Laura urged him not to, they had talked it over, and she persuaded him that it was for the best.

—You have to learn to live among people, Jonah, —she told him.

—They will not accept me, —he complained.

—They will, trust me.

With each passing minute they shared more and more thoughts. Jonah would send her a picture, and Laura would send it back along with another one. They were like postcards, snippets and anecdotes of their two parallel lives.

Shortly before arriving at Oscar's office, Laura concentrated on mentally calming her father as tactfully as she could. She knew he was upset with them, but it was important that the meeting went smoothly.

Once there, she asked him for two favors: twenty-four hours before doing anything, and a personal object from Adrián. Oscar inquired about the latter, but Laura begged him to trust her. They agreed to meet again with Eva when she returned and said goodbye.

CHAPTER 73

A lone beeswax candle and the bluish glow of a console screen dimly illuminated Spencer Kelt's silhouette as he ate his frugal dinner seated at the table in the large central dining room on the top floor of Harperin Castle, once set aside exclusively for family breakfasts. This had been his routine for almost twenty years.

As every night, at the same time, Spencer put his compressed food bar on a clean plate, meticulously divided it into eight dice and ate them one by one, chewing them patiently while keeping an eye on the data that appeared on his tablet.

Once he had finished, he picked up the plate, the napkin and the tiny tablecloth and placed them on an antique silver tray that he carried to one of the kitchens. He cleaned the plate and cutlery, left everything impeccably tidy and returned to his control room.

The countdown was almost over, all systems were operating perfectly. He looked at one of the last command lines and sat down to type two more lines, just to be safe. He programmed a few last code packets with the keyboard that would set in motion several automatic shutdown and maintenance processes for his equipment, picked up his briefcase and left the room without looking back.

Several corridors and stairs later he arrived at a metal hatch. He keyed in the opening code number on a service box on the wall and the hatch opened heavily with a pneumatic puff.

The corridor the hatch led to was narrow and circular, though profusely lit in white, giving it an aseptic appearance. Spencer keyed in a 26-digit number on the standing console at the end of the corridor and another smaller white door opened.

Behind it was a flared receptacle lined with fluffy white material and at the far end, a see-through glass door warped to fit a person's anatomy.

Kelt set his briefcase on a locker that he opened in the wall and secured it with straps. He then opened a compartment underneath and began to undress. He carefully placed his folded clothes inside it until they were all in and closed it.

He opened the warped glass door and stepped inside the urn. Once there, he pressed two buttons on his left hand and the door closed automatically.

There was a hissing sound and several splinters of compressed air escaped from the corners of the door until it was hermetically sealed.

At that moment, the two hatches before the compartment closed and the floor began to tremble, shaking the dust from the corridors of the old castle.

Two floors up several dishes fell to the floor in the main kitchen, and a priceless vase shattered against the wooden floor, but soon after the shaking stopped, and the castle returned to its former silence.

A silver needle shot through the clouds vertically at high speed. Its destination, Arcadia.