Chapter Six: Morning Haze — Part 5

Morning is a little chilly and wet when Jynx finishes pulling on her steel-toe hiking boots and stands, tightening a backpack loaded with water to her shoulders. She’s decided to wear jeans and a sweater, to keep off the chill air. She’s carrying a dagger, a crossbow, and what she hopes will pass as bear repellant, should she need it — a half-liter grenade of C-4 Military grade riot suppressant, under pressure. She is now a head taller than Jude and ChoCho, but Jude, who has Gryphon on a leash, is probably the most prepared, having a crossbow, propped and ready, hanging loosely in his grip, Jude’s eyes survey the land for any sign of trouble. Of them, ChoCho seems the most out of place. He is carrying what looks to be about fifty feet of quarter inch flex rope with a heavy fishing weight tied to one end via the careful use of a lark knot noose.

“Cho, we’ve been through this before. Just because Jackie Chan can do all that shit with a horse shoe and a hanging rope doesn’t mean you’ve got mad skills like him.” Jynx teases.

“Ha ha, it is to laugh.” ChoCho says. “It’s not for that.” He says loudly, and then adds under his breath. “Besides, I’ve been practicing.”

Jude shakes his head, checks the map, and sets out on foot, hoping the two will follow.

“Just remember what happened last time.” Jynx says, setting on a rough trail after Jude.

“Good thing I was wearing a cup.” ChoCho sounds suddenly wise.

“Don’t you pull that ancient Zen monk voice-over shit on me! If you hadn’t cracked your father’s football helmet instead of your head, all you’d probably be good for right now is sex.”

“So you’re saying that you’re keeping me around for more than just the sex?” ChoCho snaps back.

Jude stops momentarily, and ChoCho nearly bumps into him. He pulls out the bowl and the stone, setting them carefully on what looks to be a level step of ground. He adds the water, makes a few measurements, and sets off. Jynx marks the tree nearest her with two dots of lipstick, looking back with her field binoculars to see if she can find the other markers she set along their trail. She is quite satisfied when she does.

The next hour or so is pretty quiet, at least in regards to conversation. Gravity has lessened to where they have to watch their step. It has also shifted about two degrees off center, so that it feels like they are constantly falling toward something in front of them. Only Gryphon seems unaffected by it. Even though he doesn’t need it, Jude pulls the bowl out one more time, rolling the stone into the bowl in a spiral, letting it spin downward in a slow, awkward spin toward a center that is nearly two inches off point.

Jynx marks the tree, then looks back, happy to see the two bright markers of ink nearly half a football field away, then looks ahead, scanning the trail for signs of trouble. She has to keep looking, because at first she doesn’t believe what she sees. She puts a hand on Jude’s shoulder.

“I don’t know how much further we can hope to go.” She says, handing Jude the binoculars.

“I suspected this. This must be bigger than the one you saw in Phoenix.” Jude sets the bowl down even as ChoCho is staring down the lenses, his focus between the trees.

Soon Jude isn’t quite standing, and finds he has to stop in order to keep his balance. “You were right. We don’t have traction. It’s not pulling us, but it’s certainly not holding us down either.”

“I really had hoped we could get closer.” ChoCho said, his clothes seeming to float a bit around him.

“Is that why you brought the rope?” Jynx wonders rhetorically, and not loud enough for anybody to hear.

“I think what we’re looking at is a dense thread of dark matter.” Jude says. “I don’t know that we would want to get closer, until we know more about it.”

“Dark matter?” ChoCho asks. “What’s dark matter?”

“Nobody knows, really. But it’s the best way I can describe it.” Jude replies. “Like I said, I’m not sure we should go any closer.”

Another fifty yards, and the trio would have found themselves in a balanced argument between two references of gravity, at the edge of a field of floating rocks and drifting drops of water, all moving in a rough parody of an orbit around one of the tubules of matter that has built itself around what Jude has called dark matter. In this case, the tubule is almost invisible: It isn’t sucking air along even though the wind does blow through it. It isn’t pulling water into it like the others. The sound of rocks and water interacting with each other while floating in a swirl of air is all they can hear, at least immediately, and Jude turns to head back, even though the noise in the distance has piqued his curiosity. Rocks occasionally strike each other, water occasionally smacks into trees and rocks. A horse neighs suddenly, and Jude stops walking.

ChoCho has gotten to the binoculars, and is looking for the source of the sound, finding it in the sight of a cowboy, struggling with an angry horse while trying to get a grip on any tree branch or rock his hands can reach. He looks more than haggard: his scarred face is drawn with a combination of stress and pain; as if he has been fighting the gravity vector for quite some time; as if soon he will have to stop fighting and start dying. His rope, a woven chord that should have been his salvation has drifted away from him, and is floating, just out of reach of his fingertips. He’s tangled with his horse, and the lines have cut him in places where flies are already starting to get curious. He keeps coughing out the water he’s started breathing in. ChoCho takes out the rope, and considers the distance to a nearby branch where the rocks seem to bounce a bit between sitting on the ground and drifting about with their friends that have found freedom in the wind. Bracing a foot between a root and the ground, ChoCho begins spinning the weight hard and fast.

“Cho, you dumb fuck, what the hell are you doing?” Jynx half screams. “I can’t lose you.”

“Damn it Jynx, can you please just take a minute to worry about somebody other than yourself?” Cho snaps and, with careful focus, tosses the rope out at a tree some fifty feet ahead.

The weight lobs around a branch, rope snaps taught, and ChoCho pulls himself into the chaos that is the base of a dark matter arch.

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