Chapter 1
Age Recte. Nil Time.
Amelia, once again, found herself under the cover of complete blackness. A strange feeling that she was not alone crept insidiously all around her. She felt something alive and sentient pulsating just beyond her perception.
She did her best to blunt the panic. She knew she just needed to ride out this entry – like taking a cold plunge in the Belle Fourche River. Once you overcome the initial shock you quickly acclimate. But it still takes time for your brain to catch up.
Standing in place, her ears were ringing. Like always.
Amelia has never worked out exactly why this happens. Was it the deafening silence? Or because she’s straining her eardrums in the hopes of detecting the faintest clue about her surroundings?
But before she can run a deeper analysis of the root cause of the ringing, her ears pass the sensory baton to her eyes.
Alas, no luck here, either. Despite a laser-like intensity, staring straight ahead reveals nothing.
Whatever was out there was meant to be felt, not seen.
For as long as she can remember, Amelia regularly finds herself here, in this same exact dream. It just takes her a little while to remember that she remembered.
The journey always starts the same way. Total darkness, an overwhelming of the senses, a flash of fright, and then the calming realization that she is in familiar territory.
And then once this feeling of familiarity squeezes out the initial panic – reducing her sensory inflammation in the process – the far off light reveals itself. It appears like clockwork, always showing up once Amelia slows herself down. This mysterious, halo-like illuminant seems to deliberately pulse into being out of the ether. Its soft, siren-like glow, beckons Amelia from off in the distance.
Same as always.
Sticking to the script that played out many a previous night, Amelia walks towards the light. But she knows she’ll never reach it. She never does.
As she moves forward, so does the light. It keeps pace with her, never getting too far ahead that she can no longer see it – but also never close enough that she can use the light to see what’s around her.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, Amelia never feels hurried to catch up to the light. And once she acclimates to the initial plunge into this dreamland, she never finds herself distressed by being unable to see through the darkness.
In fact, the more she finds herself here, the more comfortable she becomes, casually strolling along, listening to the echoes of her footsteps bounce off of the hidden walls.
Eventually she finds a rhythm. Her breath, her steps, and the resounding echoes each sync up together, creating a type of active meditation. The only distracting thought Amelia encounters is thinking that this must be how a rainbow trout feels when swimming downstream in the Belle Fourche.
This journey continued. Until it didn’t.
Amelia slowly came to, her face all scrunched up and distorted. Her eyelids ached from being squeezed so tight. “If you keep making this face it’s gonna freeze that way,” she tells herself sarcastically.
She takes a long, slow breath, trying to force the tautness into a state of relaxation. Opening her eyes she gets her bearings. She is in her home. Specifically, she is lying in her bed in Sundance, Wyoming. Moving her eyes from left to right, she scanned the constellations of stars on her ceiling — an artifact from a rainy day activity she and her dad did together years ago. Speaking of her dad, the smell of his Old Spice aftershave crept beneath her closed bedroom door. The scent crawled along her floor before climbing up the side of the bed and into her nose. This was the telltale sign that he was already up, showered, and most likely reading the Sundance Times at the kitchen table. She knew that if she didn’t show signs of life soon, he would be back upstairs, half-singing, half-shouting his morning alarm anthem of “Get Up! Get Moving! Really Sock It To ‘Em Now!”
“I can’t deal with that this morning,” she thought, swinging her legs over the side of her bed and planting her feet on the floor.
She was up. And now moving. But not really ready to sock it to anyone yet.
Amelia brushed her teeth and got dressed for school. She double-checked her bookbag, quickly peeked in the mirror to make sure there wasn’t any toothpaste crust on her face, and then walked over to her dresser. Her morning routine had one last step.
Opening the top drawer, Amelia reached in, gingerly pulling out an envelope. With great care, Amelia removed the enve- lope’s contents. She carefully unfolded the sheets of yellowed paper and began to read. Even though she could recite the letter word for word, Amelia still carried out this ritual reading every morning. She took her time, savoring every pen stroke left behind, all the way to the last line.
“Age recte. Nil time. – Love, Mom.”
Her mother’s signature sign-off – in Latin, of course – had already become emblazoned on Amelia’s mind years ago. But the words possessed an ineffable attraction that compelled Amelia to lay eyes on them daily.
“Act rightly. Fear nothing.” Amelia whispered to herself. Then she started the process in reverse, folding the letter, placing it back into the envelope, and closing the drawer.
Now ready to face the day, Amelia took a deep breath, and headed for the door.
***
William heard his daughter before he saw her.
“I’m not going,” Amelia said, not even halfway down the stairs.
“Oh good. We’re playing this game again,” William answered without looking up from his newspaper.
If there was one thing William knew to be an indisputable, stone cold fact, it was that his daughter could be a handful —
“precocious” was the word her third-grade teacher used.
And even though it was only 7:00AM, it was clear that on this particular morning Amelia was being particularly herself.
Using the banister to slingshot herself around the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen, Amelia came into view, her head of curls bouncing. William is always teasing Amelia that her untameable curls were the product of her having too much personality radiating out of her.
“I mean it. It’s one the last days of the trout spawning season. I can’t afford to miss it.” Amelia pleaded her case.
“It’s also one of the last days of the school year. And of your grade school career. So, although a sacrifice on your part, I know you can do it. I believe in you.” William returned his verdict, unmoved, his face still hidden behind the newspaper.
But Amelia was not to be thrown off track that easily. Not that William was expecting her to be.
“Well here are some other things you know. To start, you know this is my favorite time of the year. I’ve been tying some new flies that I want to test out on the rainbows. And if I miss today, there’s a good chance that I’ll have to wait until next year.” Without taking a breath, she moved on to her second point. “Two, you also know that nothing happens in the last week of school. Mrs. Becca is just going to pull up some dumb YouTube videos for us to watch. It’s not like I’m missing anything important.”
By this time Amelia was standing directly in front of her dad, separated only by the front page news. “You have to agree that sitting in a classroom all day, watching some boy play a ukulele on YouTube isn’t optimizing my time. Especially when I could be getting a real education with my fly rod.” Amelia argued. “You know, like the whole ‘teach a man to fish thing’? Well the fish are calling. And I must go.”
More often than not, this is how a school morning went – especially when the Wyoming weather was getting nice. William, drinking his coffee, reading the newspaper, with either his morning standup meeting playing on his phone in the background or classical music coming from the old AM/FM radio over by the kitchen sink. Amelia, stomping down the stairs, armed to the teeth with a multi-point defense argument on why today was not a good day to go to school. After all, the great outdoors provides the kind of education one truly needs (the emphasis is Amelia’s).
William Moon is a Wyoming Forest Ranger. His love for the great outdoors was hardcoded into his DNA. It’s a trait that was apparently amplified when passed down to his daughter. Working in the northern region of the Black Hills, he never knew what his days would bring. From people illegally camp- ing to off-road violations to dealing with the growing wolf population, every day was a new challenge. William often felt that the Black Hills were the perfect proving grounds for learning how to deal with a teenage daughter.
Amelia once again validated these very feelings, launching into a well-grooved dissertation on the tyranny of the classroom. Kids were not meant to be locked up indoors all day long. That is anti-kid. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It should be illegal everywhere, but especially in a town like Sundance where the outdoors call to her like an irresistible siren.
William snapped over the top half of his newspaper, made a show of looking at Amelia, and dramatically turned up the volume of the statewide Park Service meeting that played on his phone.
Amelia just talked louder.
“Besides, think about it dad, before you know it I’ll be heading off to college. When that happens you’ll be here crying in your Wheaties and thinking, “Man, I really regret not spending that time fly fishing with my only daughter. Now she is far, far, far away from home and I’m here in Sundance, willing to trade anything to have her begging me to go fishing.”
William couldn’t help but smile to himself behind the paper. Kids really know how to tug on the heart strings. And when it comes to making a case for what one wants, Amelia was among the best. She got that from her mother. After all, no one else could have talked him into moving to this small western town.
Once Amelia finally stopped talking, William folded up his paper, placed it on the table, and silenced his meeting. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You pack up your school bag, get yourself on your bike, and be at school before the first bell rings – I’m serious, I don’t want another call about how you strolled into homeroom fifteen minutes late again – so you get there before the bell and I will plan a weekend hike for us to explore Bear Lodge Mountain. We’ll do an official check-in on that new litter of wolf pups over there.”
It turns out that William is a pretty good negotiator himself. And he held the ace card. He knew that the one thing Amelia loves more than weaseling her way out of the classroom – or fly fishing for that matter – is official ranger-related outings. But ranger-related outings that involved wolves? Forget it. That was game, set, and match. She loved wolves more than anything. After losing her mother eight years ago, she’d become obsessed with the idea of the wolf pack.
Amelia’s Alice-blue eyes sparkled. In them, William could see that she was processing his counteroffer. He also saw his wife. “But, how about instead of...”
William cut her off immediately. “Nope. This is not a negotia- tion. You have the offer. You can skip school and come with me to sit in on the annual power point presentation of Thunder Lake’s water level. Or you can head to school, YouTube some video on how Odysseus was able to overcome the adversity he faced with his own sirens’ call, and then we can go out to check on the wolf pups and stop at Smokey’s for a pizza on the way home.”
“Done. Offer accepted. But I get an extra scoop of ice cream after dinner tonight.”
Amelia was then out the door and on her bike before her father could say “no.”
Besides, she knew that it wasn’t really the last day to test out her new flies on the rainbow trout.
***
It’s not that Amelia didn’t like school. It’s more that she was of the opinion that sitting inside, at a desk, told to be quiet and still for hours on end while the sun was shining just the other side of the window – requesting, cajoling, practically begging her to come and join in on the fresh air – should be classified as “cruel and unusual punishment.” And she was ready to take this argument all the way to the Supreme Court.
But even though she wouldn’t designate school as one of the best parts of her day, her morning bike ride always was.
Amelia tore out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. But once she hit the end stretch of East Oak Street, she eased back on her bike pedals. That’s because every morning around 7:15, the neighborhood dogs lined up all along her route, waiting for her to ride by.
Gliding down the street she greeted each of them by name.
“Morning Miss Peaches — you’re looking good today!”
“Hi Herm, have a good day chasing squirrels.”
“Hey Sunny! Sunny...Sunny...SUNNY!! You better stop digging before Mrs. H sees you.”
“And look at you Big Beau, you handsome pup.”
It wasn’t just the dogs that were happy to see Amelia. It felt like everything woke up in time to follow along with her. The birds would start singing, bees buzzing. Even the wildflowers bloomed brighter along her bike route. Amelia swears she is always seeing big elk looking back at her from the edge of the woods. And to this day she tells the story of the time a big old grizzly bear stood up on its hind legs and waved right at her (1).
Naturally, everyone just chalked these stories up to Amelia being Amelia. Everyone except Veyla, that is.
Veyla Plumb is Amelia’s best friend. But their personalities could not be any more opposite. If Amelia felt most at home exploring out in the woods or fly fishing in a cold stream, Veyla preferred to be sitting cross legged in front of her computer, headphones on, spinning up new web apps. To most of the kids in the class, Veyla was a weirdo. Admittedly, she was. But in the best kind of way. And she embraced it.
Besides, as Amelia always reminded her: weirdos go on to run the world.
This morning — a perfect morning to be out fly fishing, mind you — Amelia found Veyla sitting on the bench next to the bike rack where Amelia parks. Veyla sat with her computer open and on her lap.
Amelia hopped off her bike, guiding it into its slot in the rack. Once secured, she shared a recap of her morning ride with Veyla. “Well you should have seen Sunny. He was at it again. The hole he was digging was so deep, I couldn’t even see his head. Just his fat little butt sticking out. Once Mrs. H sees the hole he dug in her flower garden, I bet we’ll be able to hear her yelling all the way down here.”
(1) Amelia would like the following statement on record: “Of course I waved back! Do you think I’m rude or something?”
Sunny was Veyla’s favorite. She always appreciated Amelia’s morning reports on “Sunny Boy” — as Veyla called him – a brown German Shorthaired pointer with a fat face that was cute enough to keep him out of the inevitable trouble he always got himself into. He had a propensity for digging. And rolling around in whatever animal poop showed up in the yard the previous night. Some mornings he was so caked in poo that even the slightest breeze was enough to make Amelia gag.
But today’s Sunny Status Report went unnoticed. Veyla didn’t even look up from her computer.
“Hey, did you hear me? I bet you’d just about fit in the hole Sunny was digging,” Amelia said a little louder.
Still no response.
“Hello? Helllooooo....earth to Veylaaaa....” she said again, this time waving her arms in an attempt to catch Veyla’s eye.
However, Veyla was so focused on whatever she was working on that she didn’t even notice Amelia flapping about.
“Are you playing with your hieroglyphics again?” Amelia asked. Hieroglyphics are what Amelia called the computer coding language Veyla would often lose herself in. Although it appeared as though Amelia asked this question mostly to herself.
“You leave me no choice,” Amelia said – again, to herself since Veyla wasn’t listening. She jabbed Veyla in the side.
Veyla almost jumped out of her skin. “HEYYY! What’d you do that for?”
“I was just making sure you were actually here in your physical form and not just a Veyla representation projected onto the bench via the simulation,” Amelia said with a nonchalant shrug.
In addition to her coding trances, Veyla was also known to fall down online rabbit holes. One of her more recent interests revolves around the “Simulation Theory.” Which Amelia only understood enough to bust Veyla’s chops.
“There is increasing support from all branches of science that point to the likelihood that we are – and I quote – “living” in a simulation.” Veyla fired back. “So mock me at your own peril.”
“Whoa whoa whoa — what’s up with you this morning? Why are you so edgy?” Amelia asked, taken aback.
Veyla exhaled – somewhat dramatically – and turned her computer around so Amelia was able to see the screen.
“You remember 52-Blue?” Veyla asked.
Amelia felt her face begin to arrange itself into its default position whenever a sarcastic response was loading. But she was able to pump the brakes before Veyla recognized it. However, she wasn’t fast enough to stop her brain from spitting out a response.
“If by “remember” you’re asking whether or not I’ve noticed that you wear that shirt at least twice a week, then yes, I remember,” Amelia said, pointing at Veyla’s t-shirt.
Veyla looked down at her shirt. It read “I 💙 52”.
Enter another of Veyla’s rabbit-holes-turned-obsessions.
52-Blue is the nickname given to what has been described as the “world’s loneliest whale.” As Veyla explained it to Amelia a couple months back, whales communicate with each other through a series of clicks, whistles, and pulsed calls. Veyla even cited cases where whales learned to speak dolphin —
“but that’s a whole ‘nother story...”
Anyhow, it turns out that there is one very specific whale known as the 52-hertz whale – an individual whale of uniden- tified species. Its name is born from the fact that it calls at the unusual frequency of 52 hertz. Which is a different frequency than other whales seem to understand. As Veyla has lamented on more occasions than Amelia cares to remember, this means poor ole 52 is destined to roam beneath the dark waters, crying out in desolation, alone and unable to communicate.
Veyla looked up from her shirt. “Oh. Right. Well, what can I tell ya? We like what we like,” she shrugged before continuing. “Anyhow, I wrote a program that aggregates all of the news reports on 52-Blue from around the world. And then it publishes the articles to my website iheart52.com.”
“Okayyy...” Amelia said, with one eyebrow slowly arching up as if it had a tentative question.
“Well, in addition to the latest 52 sightings, I scrape the web for alerts on whale news in general (2). You know, just to be an informed citizen. And over the past couple of weeks there’s been a huge increase in the number of whales washing up on beach shores all over the world.” Veyla sighed heavily.
“Look at all of these red circles,” Veyla pointed out, exasper- ated. “Each of those is a dead whale. It’s so messed up.”
Amelia leaned in, scrunching up her nose as she looked at the screen. “You know what? I actually think I heard something about this this morning. My dad had his morning Park Services conference call playing in the background. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying — we were in the middle of an intense negotiation. Actually, I wasn’t paying attention at all. I was actively trying to get out of having to come to school. But I heard someone bring up whales. And thought it was weird that they’d be talking about whales in Wyoming.”
“Exactly,” Veyla said, turning the computer back around with a flick of the wrist. “Don’t you think it’s kinda weird that the parks department here in Wyoming is talking about whales? It’s not like they are in the Wyoming Parks Department’s purview.” Veyla shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on. But it isn’t good.”
The first bell rang, signaling five minutes until class started.
Veyla mumbled something to herself about saving the whales as she closed up the computer. She threw it into her book bag and stood up.
“Since you’re here and not out fly fishing, your dad must have driven a hard bargain. What did he bribe you with this time?” Veyla asked as the pair headed into the school building.
Amelia smiled. “A trip to see the wolf pack out at Bear Lodge Mountain with a pizza stop on the way home.”
Veyla gave her a nod followed by a fist bump. “Nice.”
(2) Veyla would like you, dear reader, to know that there are some bugs in her website code. So if you see some wonky, not-really-whale-related news results being added to her website, fear not – she’s on the case.