John was told by his parents, from the beginning, that he could become whatever he wanted to become. He could do whatever he made up his mind to do. As a young man, he took this seriously.

At Trinity Prep, he thought that he might like to become a professional athlete. He made the varsity teams in soccer, baseball, and basketball, but soon understood that he wasn't good enough at any of them to play at the college level. On the other hand, his grades were excellent and he took an interest in math, science, and foreign languages.

At Harvard, John thought at first that he might like to become an astronomer. His interest waned when he learned that astronomy involved a great deal of numerical analysis and night work and, for him at least, wasn't as romantic as it had seemed at first. In the end, he majored in English Lit.

When he graduated, he had his choice of entry-level positions at all sorts of companies. His parents were extravagantly wealthy and well-connected. Because he hadn't yet made a commitment to any particular field of endeavor, he chose to skip the offered jobs and instead arranged to spend a year of his life seeing the world.

He was in Australia when he was notified that his mother and father had been killed in an automobile accident. His parents had sent him off to school at the age of six. They had never been close to him, or him to them. He was sorry that he had lost them, but no more than sorry.

He returned home, where his financial advisers assured him that he would be earning more every year, in interest and investments, than he was likely to spend. With the legal work complete and the estate in order, he returned to his tour.

He felt the weight of his fortune as he traveled. He saw in the world so many places where he could apply his wealth for good. When he returned to the U.S., he set up a foundation in his parents' name and endowed it with more than half his capital.

The foundation funded all sorts of projects around the world, addressing issues of hunger, health, the environment, regional tensions, and pure science. John participated in the grants process, but found himself wanting something more as a focus in his life. He wanted to accomplish more than distributing money to the world.

Restless on a spring day, he found himself interviewing a young woman who had submitted a small proposal for the support of an initial round of trial excavations at an archeological site in central Africa.

"You're looking for hominids?" he asked the young woman, Gili, studying her executive summary and area maps.

"The site's potential is amazing," she said. "Off the charts. But hard to reach."

She pointed to an area northwest of the border between the Central African Republic and Congo.

"Rolling savanna. Nothing in any direction but a few native villages. One of the poorest areas in the world. With the tsetse fly, also one of the most dangerous. Of course, we'll be taking precautions."

"What's so special about this site?"

"Over the past several million years, a large lake grew and shrank there," she said, drawing an outline on one of the maps with her finger. "Periodic eruptions lay down layers of tuff over the sediments on the shores. In addition, alluvial fans off the flanks of the volcanoes covered the area. We have an organized record of animal and vegetable fossils just waiting for excavation. These strata cover the period of time from the earliest known hominids to today."

"How do you know what's beneath the surface?" John said. "How did you find this area in the first place?"

"I've been working with two South African paleogeologists who spotted the site while out doing mineral surveys. Pure chance. There is some Pleistocene faulting in the site area. The men found two hundred and fifty feet of strata exposed in a cliff. The edges of the fossil beds are magnificent. We've identified a sequence of terrigenous clays, sands, silts, and limestones - a Pliocene layer of wetland. We've got datable rocks. We can map the rest of the shoreline using cores and trenches and build a model of the area as it changed over three million years."

"Why my foundation?" John said. "I'd expect the principal institutions in archeology would be falling all over themselves to fund this."

Gili colored.

"They would," she said, "and they and their preferred scientists would take control of the enterprise in a heartbeat. I'm in the position of a Donald Johnson at the moment, before he found Lucy. I don't care about the fame, but a major find at a site like this would set me up for a lifetime of study in my field. I want to make a start out there before any of the big boys come in."

John sat back.

"Do you know the Mirny diamond mine?" he said.

Gili shook her head.

"It's in Siberia. It's a giant hole in the ground. Three-quarters of a mile across. A third of a mile deep. I remember standing and looking down into it. I asked my guides if any fossils had been taken out of it. They couldn't tell me. I remember thinking at the time that I'd like to dig a hole like that, not to find diamonds but to find everything from the past that it contained."

Gili laughed.

"We won't be digging anything quite that big," she said. "We're more likely to be crouched down uncovering a bone here and there from the surrounding breccia, using a dental pick and an airscribe."

"I'll OK the grant," John said, "providing that I get to come along with it."

"You can visit any time."

"I don't want to visit. I want to work. Consider me an intern, starting at the bottom. Will that be a problem?"

"If you're truly at the bottom, no," Gili said. "But if, because of your money..."

"We'll write an agreement into the grant," John said. "The entire amount goes into an escrow account, from which you'll withdraw what you need, when you need it. If at any time I become a problem onsite, you'll have the power to send me home. If you think you can handle it, I'd also like to increase the amount of the grant. We might not dig a Mirny hole, but I want you to do as much as you can without breaking the project."

He wanted badly to invite her to dinner when they were finished, but knew that she'd feel she had to say yes, which might spoil the present feelings of good will and the evening. He went home and made dinner for himself alone. He didn't see Gili again until they were both in camp on the savanna in Africa.

When he arrived, John joined workers from the villages who had little or no experience at a dig. A mixture of tribes were represented: Bagunda, Akasele, Dakpwa, Aouaka, and others. Sango was the language of the camp. John began picking it up immediately.

He worked and learned along with the rest, using a shovel and jackhammer and wheelbarrow, removing the modern strata, making the site ready for sieves and fossil discovery. He remained completely apart from Gili and her staff. He had had an airstrip built for them in advance, and invited them to use it as necessary, along with the two cargo planes that he stationed there.

With the task of clearing the top layers away, down to the first horizon of interest, work began on the actual excavation and evaluation of the most recent of two and a half million years of depositional history.

At night, John studied textbooks and journal articles on paleontology, the Permian era, excavation techniques, and related topics. He listened in on the staff conversations in camp, which often lasted past midnight. Gili made occasional requests for special funding, for resources to expedite their work. John never refused her.

As word of the dig spread throughout the academic community worldwide, the site began to receive visitors. John made a third, smaller plane available, for traffic in and out of Bangui, Mbandaka, and Goma.

One day, he noticed that there were fewer workers in the grid than usual. By this time, he was speaking Sango well. It was a creole language, not so hard to pick up. John asked his coworkers why so many of the workers were missing that day.

"Fever in the villages," he was told.

"Do you have doctors?"

"No doctors."

That night on the camp satellite phone, he arranged for doctors to be flown in and for clinics to be built in the region, sufficiently endowed to ensure their future survival.

As he learned the art of excavation, he began to spend more time with Gili and her staff during the day, as a student and eventually as a friend. His support of their work never wavered. The project was bounded by the seasons and whenever he could help speed things up by granting extra funds, he did so. The camp kept its collective eye on the calendar.

The ground began yielding signs of large mammal butchery, the manufacture of stone artifacts, and other archaeological debris. The camp was electrified when the first bones of genus Homo were found.

John was as content as he had ever been. He did not want the dig to end, but it finally became impossible to ignore the approach of the rainy season. Clouds built in the afternoon sky, at first on the far horizon and then, daily, closer to camp. The cloud formations were immense, literally mountains in the sky, fifty shades of white and gray, impossibly complicated. As they came closer, John could see lightening glowing within them. Sudden bolts reached to the earth. Wind sheared the floor of the clouds flat. A gray light like dusk shadowed the land beneath them, as curtains of rain hung down.

Soon, Gili and her staff struck camp, sent the workers back to their villages, and left the site and Africa.

Two seasons later, and two million years deeper in the dig, John heard a cry of delight that, he knew, signaled a significant find. He stood up with the workers around him. They crossed the grid strings and gathered around a kneeling man. John could just make out, exposed in the matrix that held it, the curve of a skull. It was the find that would write him and Gili and the man who found the bone into the history books, and define for the three of them the course they would follow for the rest of their lives.

"In 1969, I was hired to run the aquatics program of a town's parks and recreation department. Basically that meant that I, a wet-behind-the-ears college graduate, was in charge of a dozen swimming pools. I hired the lifeguards for the summer; I made sure the pools had enough chemicals and were otherwise well-maintained, that they passed health inspections--the whole ball of wax.

"Each pool had a manager, an assistant manager, three to five lifeguards, and three cashiers. I hired all of them. I had no shortage of qualified applicants--the town was growing quickly, and we had four large high schools and three or four nearby colleges we could draw from. We paid decent wages for the time--$2.00 an hour to start--and we set high standards. I like to think that my pools had the best, most qualified, hard-working staff of any similar outfit in the entire country.

"Now, when you have a dozen swimming pools to run, the weeks before and after opening are crazy busy. In the spring, the pools have to be drained, cleaned, refilled, and treated. I had a few of my best college kids working eighty hours a week, including all night long if they had to. Draining and filling the pool takes time--we used to rent pumps to drain them and borrow some fire hose from the volunteer fire department to refill them from hydrants. In between we scrubbed the sides and bottoms and touched up the paint. Usually we worked two or three pools at a time, running back and forth to check the water levels, working like dogs cleaning the bottoms and then filling them back up again. After Labor Day we had to lower the water level and winterize the systems, and that was also a lot of work. I trusted these kids to get it all done, and they never let me down. I even helped them from time to time; I was a bit more agile back then.

"Then there was the furniture. I had a lot of lawn furniture. Every pool had at least fifty chaise lounges, two dozen tables, a hundred chairs--all of which needed to be stored for the winter and retrieved in the summer. The stuff we had was top quality--and heavy. We stored the furniture in an old dairy barn that the town owned. It had been used for storage for the recreation department for years, and was full of all sorts of junk. A broken down Zamboni from the ice rink. Rowboats and canoes from the boat docks. Christmas decorations for the neighborhood centers. You name it; it was in that barn, along with all our pool furniture.

"As the town grew, we added new pools. One year we opened three new pools, and at the end of the year, we had three pools' worth of furniture to store, and no place to put it. We looked through the stuff in the old barn, and found an old pile of slot car track on the top level. It was left over from when 1:32 slot car racing was a big deal in the recreation centers. It was clearly never going to be used again, so we decided to junk it. The sections of this track were about four feet wide and eight to ten feet long. Straight and curved sections were piled up about five feet high in several stacks. The track wasn't all that heavy, but it was bulky and awkward to move. We were short-staffed that day, so I decided to lend a hand to the two guys I'd sent over there with the stake-bed truck to haul the track to the landfill.

"Ben and Paul had gotten about two-thirds of the track loaded on the truck by the time I got there. It was hot as heck that day, and they were sweating like pigs, and about as filthy, as they hauled the sections out of that dusty old barn. Ben wasn't a lifeguard--he was the guy that kept the pumps running and the water clean--and he was clearly having a hard time keeping up with Paul. I told Ben to take five while Paul and I hauled out the last stack of track.

"I'd grab the front of each section and Paul would grab the back. We'd step sideways to clear the pile, and then walk through the barn, out the loading door, and over to the truck. We'd load the section on the truck, and go back for the next piece.

"When we got to the last section of track, we lifted it up, me on the front facing the barn door. I started to walk out toward the truck, holding the track behind me. I took a step, and the track fell to the floor. I was a bit peeved at Paul for dropping it, and I started to yell at him as I turned around. But he had disappeared. All I saw was his floppy sun hat spinning toward the floor. Then it disappeared, too.

"When I ran back there, I saw that he'd fallen through a hole in the barn floor that the pile of track had been covering all those years. He'd taken a step forward, not being able to see what was in front of him because of the track, but assuming that the floor was there, just like we all would.

It wasn't.

"I ran to the hole and looked over the edge. It was a good twelve or fourteen feet to the bottom level of the hole, and Paul was lying there in the dim light, shaken but conscious. Ben said he'd drive over to our maintenance yard and get a ladder, but Paul reminded us, in quite colorful language, that there was a door to the bottom level of the barn, and we should perhaps open it and come get him.

"So we did. It turns out that he had landed on a pile of hundred-year-old cow manure, and although he had split open his chin when he hit it on the edge of the hole going down. I drove him to the emergency room in my own car. The triage nurse looked at him, said something about being fourth in line for the suture room, and asked us to take a seat in the waiting room. That didn't last long; apparently once the scent of hundred-year-old cow manure started to permeate the place, they decided he would be treated and released in record time. I remember a nurse following him around with a little can of aerosol deodorizer. After hearing Paul's story, the doctor told him that he was lucky he'd barely caught his chin on the end of the hole. If he'd been a half-inch further toward the edge, he would have snapped his neck just as if he'd had it in a hangman's noose. They put twenty stitches into Paul's chin and sent him on his way.

"So, young man, you asked me why I demanded that you step sideways instead of forward when getting that last piece of furniture out of the old warehouse.

"That's why.

"So, do you want to know why I demanded that you wear gloves?"

"I found this the other day when I was looking around for a party spot, what do you think?"

Ed looked skeptically at the hole leading into the depths of the earth. It was more or less an even circle, about seven feet in radius, bored into a slanted hillside deep in the forest. The first few steps into the hole were even with the ground, but afterwards it dropped straight down. Ed gazed down the precipitous drop; it looked particularly black and not at all inviting. "I dunno, why can't we just have a bonfire in the woods like a normal party?"

Colby scoffed, "Been done before. How cool would it be to have it in a cave? We could be louder, could be messier, could sneak off to be alone more easily, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, but..." stalled Ed, looking for further objections to the plan, "what about at the end of the night, when we're trashed, do we really want to have to climb out of this thing again? That seems like a recipe for disaster."

"How often do we go home after a good bonfire?" asked Colby. Ed conceded the point with a nod; they usually ended up falling over where they stood and sleeping on the ground. "At least this way there's more protection from the elements."

"Alright, let's take a look inside and see what it's like," Ed decided, instantly regretting it.

They pulled a long rope ladder out of the pack that Colby had been carrying, and holding one end, dropped the other into the hole. A few seconds later they heard a thud as the bottom rung hit bottom. "See, not too deep," Colby remarked, "the ladder is twenty feet long, and it just hit bottom." He secured the other end to a tree just outside the opening, tugged on the knot to ensure it would hold, then grabbed the big flashlight and started his descent. Ed waited a little longer than necessary for Colby to reach the bottom, working up his courage, before venturing down as well.

When he hit the bottom, Ed was surprised to find that his feet had not touched rock, but rather concrete. "It's concrete, what's..." Ed started to ask, but his words died in his mouth as he listened to the echoes of his words come back to him. He couldn't put his finger on why, but hearing his voice repeated like that made his hair stand on end.

Colby answered the question without having heard it fully, "Probably that military base they say used to be out here in the 50's."

"That's an urban legend," said Ed, much quieter this time.

"Apparently not," remarked Colby, casting his flashlight's beam around the walls. It was obvious that they were standing in a man-made, concrete corridor.

"Then that's a reason not to be here, let's go before we get caught."

"By who? Nobody's been out here in ages. Probably just some bomb bunker that they decided wasn't useful anymore."

"No," protested Ed, "I really think we should go."

Colby sighed, looking down the unexplored corridor. It split into two branches just a handful of yards down. "Let's just look a little farther in. We'll turn right twice, and I'll even leave these matches on the way with the head pointing the way we came from so we won't get lost." He took the matches out of his bag and shook them to prove his idea would work. "And if you're still not sure that this place is long abandoned and totally awesome, then we'll turn left twice, and be right back here. K?"

Ed crossed his arms and thought pensively. "Fine," he consented.

They proceeded down the hall, and took the right branch, leaving a match pointed backwards just as the corridor split. Ed rubbed his arms as if he were cold, even though the inside felt a bit muggy.

Ed and Colby followed that corridor for another minute, before it split off again. They turned right as well, leaving a match pointed left, the way they had come, as a precaution.

They could tell as soon as they turned right that this corridor had a series of doorways built into the sides. They strode down to the nearest and peered inside. It was a small room, about ten by ten, built out of the same concrete and just as barren and empty as the corridor was. The second room was identical, as was the third.

Colby looked at Ed with a slight, victorious grin. "How perfect is this?"

Ed was still rubbing his arms, trying to shake himself of his sense of apprehension. "Something is wrong here. Look," he said, finally figuring out how to say what he felt, "there's nothing alive in here, and it looks like there never has been. There's no graffiti or trash, it looks like we're the first people to ever find this. But there's no bugs either, or even any spider webs, or anything at all. It's totally... lifeless," he ended with a shudder.

"Why are you complaining about that, it's even better like this than some damp, smelly, dirty cave." Colby's voice tailed off as he spoke, as the feeling of lifelessness sunk in. He peered around him, obviously wishing there was something damp, smelly, or dirty to look at and relieve the creeping feeling of dread that both felt.

Suddenly Ed went aghast. "Colby... look at the doors."

Colby pointed his flashlight at the nearest of them. It was made of heavy, bolted steel, with a small barred window at about eye level and a slot at the bottom. It was a prison door. The whole hallway was full of open jail cells.

"I think it's time we go," said Colby, his voice uneven. Ed didn't bother voicing his vehement agreement, and grabbing Colby, turned around back down the corridor.

They arrived at the first branch in the corridor. The two were about to turn left when they noticed that the match which they had placed on the floor was pointed straight forward. "I thought we turned right," said Ed, panic entering his voice.

Colby looked at it just as shocked. "We did, we did! I left the match pointing left!"

"It's pointing straight, Colby."

"Maybe we stepped on it, I dunno, but we're turning left."

They turned left and began jogging down the corridor, the beam of their flashlight bouncing up and down the walls. The corridor felt far longer than it had coming in, but they finally reached the intersection. They peered left; there was no rope ladder.

"Where is it," yelled Ed, truly afraid now.

"I don't..." the words died in Colby's mouth as he looked at the floor.

Written in matches on the cold, cement floor was the question, 'ARE YOU LOST?'

Terror. The two bolted back down the corridor from which they had came, and came to a skidding halt at the next intersection. Instead of a single match, there were again many, continuing the question asked at the last intersection; 'OR ARE YOU ABANDONED?'

"Where the hell are we," screamed Ed, hands tangled in his long hair.

Colby couldn't answer, instead looking up and down the corridors, searching for any hint of an exit. "We must have made a wrong turn coming out of one of those rooms, let's find those again and go from there." He did his best to sound confident to try to calm Ed down, but it didn't help much.

They took a right turn and found another set of rooms, possibly the first set, but it was impossible to tell. "Ok, here we are, see, we just need to go from here."

Ed wasn't listening. He had gone pale as bone, and with a shaking arm pointed into the room which was lit by Colby's flashlight, staring at the interior completely transfixed. Colby, with his gut tied into knots, slowly turned his head and peered into the room. Against the far wall was the silhouette of a hanging man, the rope around his neck attached to the ceiling above. It seemed to sway slightly in an invisible wind. But there was no body, nothing to make the silhouette; the room was empty but for the shadow.

The two ran, screaming, away from the cell, not even paying attention to where they were going. Every room held the source-less shadow of a corpse; some hanging, some crumpled on the floor, others elevated with their limbs stretched out as if they had been affixed to the wall.

They ran and screamed, wildly turning up and down corridors with no plan, until their voices went hoarse and their muscles burned. Ed collapsed at an intersection and stayed down, panting. Colby stopped by his side, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. But when they had stopped screaming, the whispers started. It sounded as if they were surrounded by a multitude, all malevolently whispering to each other about the trespassers. The two couldn't hear any words, just the soft murmur of sinister plotting. As Ed jumped back up and joined Colby in running again, one whisper became intelligible. Its words, spoken softly, seemed to follow them, resounding down the corridor as they ran; it said, "You may be lost, but you will become Abandoned."

They ran and ran, confronted at every turn with the formless shadows of suffering and death, each corridor the same, endlessly branching left and right. They ran through the pain, ran through the fear, ran as if their lives were on the line.

After what seemed an infinity of turns, the flashlight flickered. Both stopped in their tracks and watched the bulb fitfully flashed on and off, the power diminishing and the light growing dimmer with each flutter. Ed and Colby stared at each other, mouths agape. Their lifeline flickered one last time and extinguished itself, leaving them in the dark.

The two groped through the dark, found each other, and held on. Colby started to scramble blindly in his pack for the box of matches when, from every direction, a series of fluorescent blue faces poked their heads out of their cells. Paralyzed by fear, Ed and Colby watched these forms, the only things visible in the dark, as they dragged themselves towards the two living beings. Their mutilated faces and gruesome bodies bore testament to the horrors they met during their lives in these corridors. The Abandoned closed in, and in unison whispered, "Join us," as they overwhelmed their prey.

The dirigible tugged at its mooring lines as Jasper looked up at it, the wind giving it the appearance of being eager to set out on its next flight. He shivered and pulled his slightly threadbare greatcoat a little more closely around his thin chest. The wind was from the north, as it always seemed to be, and carried no hint of warmth in its blast.
Jasper walked towards the gate, watched alertly by a thin, weasel-featured man in a semi-military uniform. The Lee-Enfield rifle slung over his shoulder added to the impression, and did nothing to ease Jasper’s nerves.
" ‘oo goes?" the guard demanded. "Doan try nuffin, or it‘ll go worse fer yer."
It was unusual to see such an English appearance here in the chill environs of Vladivostok. Especially one so openly armed and belligerent.
"My name is Jasper Northman, and I have an appointment with a Jonathon Reynolds at this location," Jasper responded. ‘Here is the letter of invitation." Jasper held the letter out towards the guard.
The guard took the letter and looked at it. He clearly recognised the letterhead, but it was not so clear that he could actually read the words written under it. He glared sullenly at Jasper, and after a moment’s hesitation thrust the page back at Jasper’s chest.
"Report to the exec office,’ he snapped. "Over there, to ya left." He fiddled with the latch on the gate and opened it slightly less than enough for Jasper to get through.
Jasper looked at him in silence, not moving. After a long pause the guard moved the gate a little wider, allowing a fraction more opening.
"Your … cooperation has been noted." Jasper said. "And I have your name from your uniform tag." The implication hung in the air. The gate was opened wider; Jasper stepped through and made his way towards the indicated door.
A short while later he was seated in a snug office, in a comfortable armchair, cupping a fine Scotch whisky in his hands. The man seated across the oak desk from him smiled freely and said "Pleased you could get here so soon, sir! I trust your journey was not too arduous?"
"No more so than one would expect," Jasper replied. "Although my initial welcome was rather … unwelcoming."
"Ahh, yes, Nobby on the gate, you mean? He takes his work rather seriously, but is a good man for all that. Don’t think he means anything personal. Now, do you have any idea why I invited you here?"
"Well, I believe from our correspondence that you are looking for someone to assist you with engineering, navigation and computationing work. An intriguing mix, but that aside I know nothing of your plans, or requirements." Jasper glanced around the room, taking in the various maps, books, navigational and other instruments (some of which he recognised, some that he did not) scattered on desks and shelves about the room.
"First, let me give you some background, and then, if it all sounds too … strange or unbelievable you can withdraw without any ill-will on my part. My name is, as you know, Jonathon Reynolds. What you probably don’t know is that my great several times removed uncle was Jeremiah N. Reynolds. Does that name mean anything to you?"
Jasper racked his brains for a moment. Although there was something about the name that rustled in the dark recesses of his mind he could not pull the details out into the light. "Not that I can place my hand on," he said, "other than there is an American ring to the name."
"My distant uncle Jeremiah was a follower of John Cleves Symmes. Does that shed any light on the matter?"
Jasper leant forward. "The Symmes of the Symmes Hole Theory? Indeed, I know something of the theory, although my understanding is somewhat superficial."
"Your surmise is absolutely correct, my good man. My uncle devoted much of his life to proving Symmes’ theory, and was thwarted by circumstance and technology. But now, a century later, his descendant will be able to prove both Jeremiah and Symmes correct! For at last we have the money and the tools to reach the Hole. But for that I need someone with your skills to make it all happen. Are you interested?"
"In the absence of more intriguing or beneficial opportunities, and given what I understand of Symmes’ theory, then yes I am. Very interested!"

------------------

Jasper sat before the control panel, working the pedals, watching the cards fall as they ran through the computation engine. He watched carefully as the annunciator panel indicated the progress of his work.
He felt as though he had wound his personal clock back ten years, to his near triumph but total failure. It felt good to see his engineering and his card-clacking skills come back together so well.
It had been a hard struggle to recover the skills that had fallen into disuse, but which Jonathon had recognized and chosen to apply to his own ends. At least there had been no request for details of his training nor for specifics around his other work; Jonathon had said that Vladivostok was near the frontier, and such things could only cause trouble where more trouble wasn’t needed. Jasper silently agreed when he heard this utterance.
The dirigible rose into the leaden, freezing sky of Vladivostok, and, under command of Jasper’s computations, turned its nose to the North. The paraffin-fuelled engines thundered louder as he applied power to them under orders from the airship’s commander. The great air-vessel surged forward into the vast white unknown.
Jonathon entered from the main cabin to stand beside him.
"At last we are on our way! I have waited a long time for this moment. Thank you, Jasper whatever-your-real-name-is for making this happen."
Jasper looked up at him over his shoulder, ignoring the inference. "It was a quite straightforward card-clacking exercise, even taking into account the secrets you kept from me," he said. "I think it is now time you told me what our destination is so I am able to correctly instruct the navigational computation engine."
Jonathon stood quietly for a moment. "Indeed, I believe you to be correct," he said at length. "An amount of detail and some warnings from me would not be remiss at this time."
Jasper waited quietly.
"Do you know of the Inuit?" Jonathon asked.
Jasper was mystified and taken off-guard by this apparent change in the direction of the conversation. "Well, I have heard of them, and know that they are a people who inhabit the far northern regions of the Earth. And I have heard rumours about them that are a little strange."
"Yes, they do, and yes in some ways they are … strange. But probably not in any way that you might think." Jonathon paused, clearly thinking. "The next time you see one of them, look closely at him and see if you think he is human as you and I are."
Jasper was now clearly baffled by this statement, but before he could question his employer Jonathon said "There have been many expeditions seeking the North Pole over the past century, but none have succeeded. Did you know that?"
"I have read of some failed attempts in the Times and other newspapers, now that you mention it," Jasper replied.
"The reason they have all turned back, or perished has always been the same – extreme weather near the Pole. Even in the height of the Northern summer the weather has conspired to protect the Pole from prying eyes."
"And where do the Inuit fit in with this, then? They seem to cope with the vagaries of the weather, even to surviving the worst winter blasts."
"The answer lies in the source of the weather, and of a number of other seeming disconnected phenomena. The Aurora Borealis, the hole in the ozone layer that was discovered twenty or thirty years ago – they are all linked to the thing we seek," Jonathon enthused.
"And that would be …" Jasper let his question hang like the airship they stood in.
"And that would be Symmes’ Hole," Jonathon fired straight back at him. "The hole to the concentric spheres that occupy the interior of the hollow Earth! A hole 1400 miles across and 800 miles deep! Set course for 87 degrees 42 minutes North Latitude and the altitude at ten thousand feet!"
Jasper moved the levers and valves on the control board to set this course, and then sat back in his chair. "And what of the weather?" he asked.
Jonathon looked out the window at the darkening day. "The gases coming from the centre of the Earth cause the weather, and trigger the Aurora and the absence of ozone above the Polar Regions. But with our trusty dirigible we will fly above the storm in safety and comfort."
"But you still haven’t explained the Inuit," Jasper queried.
"They are inhabitants from the concentric spheres, stepping out in our world to see for themselves the crass and evil place this is. For they live in total peace and harmony under our feet, living not our decreed three-score and ten years but for the age of Methuselah! They are as angels to our own beastly nature."

------------------

The dirigible pressed on towards its goal, pressing through the gathering darkness. Jasper sat at his control board, enjoying the impotence of Nature in the face of his clacking skill and engineering prowess.
As they flew on the weather below them became worse, and the storm mounted higher in their path, towering above them.
"Climb higher!" Jonathon ordered. "You must go higher! Over the top!"
"I have some concern that the craft may not survive such altitude – the envelope may rupture!" Jasper responded.
"Do it!" Jonathon demanded.
Jasper reset the controls, and the airship climbed steadily. Shortly Jasper began to feel short of breath and light-headed. Breathing was difficult, and his head began to pound. "There is something wrong!" he cried. "We must descend!"
"We will not descend until we reach our destination!" Jonathon croaked.
"I fear our destination may be Valhalla," Jasper retorted, "considering whereabouts we are in the world. This will be the death of us all!"
He looked back in time to see Jonathon fall senseless to the floor of the control room.
As Jasper rose from his seat to go to his employer’s assistance he saw ahead of their craft a sight that made him retake his seat in awe. The clouds had all fallen behind the speeding dirigible, and ahead there was clear air. Jasper looked down and saw … nothing! There below him was the sight that had eluded men for all of history – the hole to the centre of the Earth!

Mary Reilly cursed herself as she ran across the sand and rocks. It wasn't that she was angry, but the curses helped to keep her feet in their rhythm. She took a long drink from the hydration pack on her back and risked a quick glance at her watch. She was behind schedule. Time to step it up. She increased both her pace and the intensity of her swearing.

The sun beat down on her hat. She hated wearing a hat, but her dark hair made it too warm in the brutal heat of the desert. The rest of her outfit was just as focused on performance and survival. She was training for the toughest ultra marathon on the planet. Her track led her into a narrow canyon and for the moment she was in shade. She took the hat off and carried in her hand. It felt good to shake her hair loose and let her head cool off just a little.

She was half way through the canyon when the ground gave way beneath her. She spread her arms to try to catch the edge of the hole, but it was just a little too wide. She fell into the earth, bouncing off the walls as she went. At the bottom was a pile of sand. She hit on the side and slid to the bottom. Slow enough that she didn't die instantly. Hard enough that she felt the bone in her right leg snap and tear through her shin.

She tried to breath as sand sifted down around her, but the pain and the shock were too much. With one final cuss Mary was sucked down into unconsciousness.

"We's diggin' a hole to China!" Bobby said. He stood knee deep in a hole in his backyard. Tommy was there too, he just looked up and sneered. Tommy didn't like girls. Mary flipped her pigtails out of the way and looked at them.

They dug all afternoon until the hole was waist deep on Mary. She heard her mother calling her for supper. When she tried to climb out of the hole the pile of sand slip back in and trapped her. She had sand in her ears and in her mouth and in her nose. It was hard to breathe...

It was hard to breathe. Mary gasped and choked on sand. She coughed it out and took a rasping breath, then another. Her ribs hurt, but she didn't think they were broken. Her leg was another matter. At least it was fractionally cooler down here. If she looked up she could see a misshapen patch of blue. The top of the hole was maybe twenty feet up, but it might as well be a mile with a broken leg.

Mary saw the remains of her hydration pack half way up the wall. Maybe she'd be able to find a stick. First she needed to do something about that leg. It was oozing blood around the white bone. She doubted that the sand was good for it, but she had no water to clean it. She tried to tear her shirt into strips, but the modern fabric resisted tearing just as it was designed to do. She ended up using the shirt to tie her ankles together, and her sports bra tied her legs just below her knees. The unaccustomed air on her skin felt good, but she would lose more moisture without her clothes.

With her leg immobilized, the pain subsided to a level that Mary could deal with. You didn't train for ultra marathons without learning to manage pain. She leaned back against the sand and took stock. She had no food. This wasn't a full hundred mile run, just a twenty mile training loop. She had an unknown amount of water left in her hydration pack. She thought it was less than half full when she fell, but if the rock had damaged it the water could be all gone. Unless she figured out a way to reach it, it didn't matter.

Without water, she had two, maybe three days before thirst became a lethal issue. She leaned her head back and sighed. It would take two or three days before anyone missed her. Who knows how long it would take for them to find her car, then to follow her track through the desert to find this little hole.

Mary watched the blue patch until it faded to black. The temperature started to drop rapidly and she shivered in the cold. The sand was still warm, so pushed her way into the side of the hill of sand and tried to curl up to preserve her heat. Even with her teeth chattering, exhaustion had its way and she fell asleep.

"Chicken," Tommy shouted at her. He ran and grabbed the rope to swing out over their swimming hole. At the top of the swing he let go to plummet deep into the center of the creek. It was the summer after the hole to China, and Tommy still didn't much like girls. He pulled himself up on the shore and shook his naked body like a dog. Mary thought it was funny.

She spent the afternoon with the boys celebrating the glorious freedom of water and sun on her naked skin. As the sun got lower in the sky the air got cool, then cold until they stood in a circle of blue lips and chattering teeth...

Mary woke to the feel of water on her skin. She relished the feel of it washing away the sand from her body. Then it started to pull her away from the sand. If she let it carry her deeper into this hole, they might never find her. Mary tried climb the hill, but the sand crumbled in her hands and she was gone.

She felt rock scrape her arms and she held fast to it. She choked on the water and tried to swallow. It slammed her against the walls and she screamed with agony. Still she held on. She could feel her fingers slipping and knew that she was done. Then as quickly as it came the water vanished, leaving her bruised and gasping. ??She hadn't felt this beat up since...

Tommy still didn't like girls. He told her that as he beat her and choked her in the woods by the bend in the creek where they used to swim. There was only one thing they were good for, he said. Then he stopped talking at all and just grunted and pushed and tore at her. Mary gasped with the pain of it and tried to push him away, but he was too strong, too big. Her hand landed on a rock. She hit him with it, he didn't stop, so she hit him again, and again, and again. He tried to crawl away but she kept hitting him until his face was a ruin.

She stripped off her clothes and walked into the creek and let its water carry away the blood and shame. She lay there in the water and watched the stars as the current carried her downstream. It dropped her on a sandbar where she lay and waited for dawn.

She figured they'd send her away for what she'd done. It didn't matter she'd done what she needed to. In the meantime she'd watch the stars...

Mary pulled herself away from the rock wall and found the mound of sand, much smaller now. The water had left her a gift. Her hand touched wood. She felt the length of the stick. It was maybe three feet long. It might be nothing. It might save her life.

Mary leaned back and looked up through the black and saw a pin point of light - a star. For some reason she grinned. Battered and bruised, shivering and covered with sand, Mary grinned then laughed out loud. She didn't know why. She didn't think about it. She looked up at the star and settled herself to wait for dawn.

“Where am I?”

Jacob was lost in a dense forest. He had been there for almost two and a half hours, after his trusty car’s engine couldn’t take it anymore and broke down on a remote back road. With no signal for his phone, Jacob couldn’t contact anyone for rescue, a tow truck or a friend. The sky was getting darker and the moon was getting higher by the minute, but he didn’t think about staying with the car, which offered warmth for the night and shelter from the night’s creatures. But, of course, Jacob couldn’t wait for anyone or anything, being as impatient as he was, and set off to seek help from someone who he thought was close by. He didn’t realize how far away he was from anything and everything. He was wrong.

When Jacob heard the small crack of a twig from behind him, his worst fears were granted. He began to run. He knew he was being followed by someone, something, the sounds from behind him proving it. Up ahead, he saw a light. The light, in his mind, was screaming “RUN FASTER, JACOB!”. He did as told, sprinting faster than he ever has. The light was a porch light to a cabin in dire need of repairs and a paint job. Jacob ran in, looking for a hiding place, aware of the steps behind him. He found a covered spot under a moldy, ripped-up couch in the living room, and watched the door to see his pursuer. The steps got louder, but Jacob couldn’t see who they belonged to, just an eerie fog that set in as soon as he ran in. The steps bypassed Jacob, grower fainter and fainter, until they stopped suddenly. The fog grew thicker. All of the sudden, a figure materialized in the fog and ran out towards Jacob. With amazing strength, it flipped over the Jacob’s rotting cover. It’s smoke-like hands grabbed Jacob by the shoulders and pulled Jacob from the spot where the couch was. Jacob screamed for all he was worth, yet he knew no one would hear, or even know what happened, the shock setting in. At first Jacob felt cold, and then his movement slowed. The figure, although it looked human enough, wasn’t close to actually being one. It was made of a mix of thick fog and heavy smoke.

Jacob was dragged with his face down, every time he opened his mouth to scream for help, he was rewarded with a mouth full of dirt, twigs, and rocks. He couldn’t roll over onto his back to see where he was, or to get a better look at his attacker. Suddenly, the grip on Jacob’s shoulders was let go, and Jacob rolled onto his back as fast as he could. There was a hole in the earth ahead. It looked to be fifty feet across, and was lined with stone. There appeared to be no end to it. The man, the thing, had disappeared, as unexpected and quiet as he came. There was still a thick fog around Jacob and the hole, though. Then, a large scraping noise erupted from the hole as large, fog tendrils slowly reached out of the hole, curling and uncurling. The ground started to rumble as the tendrils got higher. Then, all together, the rumbling and the growing of the arms stopped. Jacob began to drag himself back, fast. The arms started to reach towards him. Jacob hit a tree with the back of his head and blacked out, his last scene being the fog arms lunging at him.

Jacob awoke in a small canoe. The canoes had no paddles, so Jacob just sat there. It was floating in a large body of gray water. The liquid was still, as still as a dead mouse. All around him was darkness, making it completely impossible to see twenty feet in front of him, the water seeming to disappear against the background. Fog hung in the air, seeming to just sit on the water. Jacob was shivering with fear and cold, but all the sudden, he froze and then sat still, frozen stiff with terror. Little ripples started to appear in the water, then forming to small waves, rocking the boat. The waves were getting larger. Then the sad whispers started.

They were in a different, ancient language, an ancient one. Jacob knew that, but that was about it. They were quiet at first, but they began to grow louder and louder by the moement. The waves had begun to get higher, rocking the boat in a sickening circle. A whirl pool was starting, but it wasn’t a normal one, though. As the boat began to circle, skeleton arms reached out of the water and into the boat, grabbing at Jacob. Some were bleached white and clean, others were brown with meat still stuck to the bones. Their fingers were sharp, leaving cuts and scratches were they grabbed at. They ripped off small chunks of meat of Jacob, and then began to sink back again, leaving Jacob screaming in agony, as the boat got lower and lower, until it started taking on water. Then the boat cracked in half, Jacob falling in to the black, bloody waters. The canoe went down to, cracking in half, every floating bit of debris being sucked in, until nothing was left.

Not a single thing at all.