Dr. Zyphix Chronwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Dr. Zyphix Chronwell pressed one ear to the flat blue stone of the Nervespool coast and listened to the pulse below. It came every four seconds, steady as a heartbeat, and it was pulling people through time onto this beach. A man in a wool coat had stumbled up the dunes last week claiming it was 1847. A girl with a skateboard had arrived the day after. Zyphix had triangulated the signal from two points on shore and marked its source: a patch of flat, waveless water half a mile out. That was the problem. Zyphix could not swim, and the portable lab crouched on its three legs behind them was too heavy to float. Zyphix walked the tideline twice, thinking. The waves near shore rolled clean and blue, but past the break the water went glass-flat, and no boat sat on the beach to borrow. A blond man with a beard came jogging down the sand carrying a surfboard carved from alien wood, the grain swirling like poured ink. Zyphix knew him by reputation. The aliens had thawed him out of a lake, and he had been chasing a nameless wave ever since. Zyphix stepped into his path and held up both hands. "I need to reach the flat water," Zyphix said. "Past the break. There's a signal under it. It's pulling people here from every era, and I have to find the source." Gurk squinted at the horizon. He scratched his beard. "Flat water no good for surf," he said. "But Gurk paddle. Gurk strong, yeah." He tapped the board. "You sit. Gurk push." Zyphix ran back to the lab and unclipped a sealed listening cone, a compass, and a waterproof case for their notes. They strapped everything to their chest. Gurk waded in first, board under one arm, and Zyphix climbed on belly-down while Gurk kicked behind. The break slammed them once. Zyphix swallowed salt and held on. Then the water flattened, and the noise of the shore fell away. Gurk stopped kicking. The board drifted. Below them the pulse hit Zyphix's ribs through the wood, four seconds, four seconds, four seconds. Zyphix lowered the cone into the water and heard, under the pulse, something else. A voice. Many voices. Speaking languages Zyphix did not know, all at once, all saying the same rhythm. "Gurk," Zyphix whispered, "it's not a signal. It's people. Down there." Gurk stared at the water and did not answer. The board sat still on the flat blue skin of the sea. Zyphix marked the spot on the compass and understood the next problem in one cold breath: they had found the source, and now they had to go under it.