Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2012 08:58:07 +0200
From: Amy Redek <adultreading@gmail.com>
Subject: Cronos. Part Two.

        This story is for persons of eighteen years or over.  All comments,
good or bad, are welcome and all will be answered.

        Part Two

  She picked it up again, gently this time, almost reverently even, turning
it around and around in her hands. Then lifting it up, settled it down on
her head. As she nestled it comfortably, she thought she heard a faint hum,
but definitely felt a tiny tickle run down her body. Like a feather it was,
just barely touching her flesh, but moving down much faster. She lifted the
chin strap up and it seemed to glue itself to the other side of the helmet,
making a nice firm attachment.

     There was a sudden rapping against the tent pole and Brendan's voice
called out.

     `Are you still feeling bad Audrey?' he enquired. Audrey whirled round,
trying to take the helmet off when the flap of the tent opened and Brendan
stuck his head inside. His eyes traversed the whole tent and with a sigh,
shook his head and withdrew, letting the flap fall back against the
entrance. She was standing stock still in the middle of the tent with the
helmet on, and clearly saw him as his eyes had swept round the tent, but he
didn't appear to see her.

     She quickly took the helmet off and placed it back into her basket
under the table, and covered it up before running outside. Brendan was
walking toward the mess tent, so she quickly scuttled across the site
towards the latrines and then turned as though that was where she was
coming from.

     `Are you looking for me?' Audrey called out as he entered the mess
tent.

     `Why yes,' he said, turning round and walked down to meet her. `I went
to your tent to see if you were any better, but you weren't there.'

     `I...I...was in the toilet, sorry. What was it you wanted?'

     `Nothing really. I just wanted to know if you wanted anything. Cold
compress or something like that for your headache.'

     `It's nearly gone, but I'd rather stay out of the sun for the rest of
the afternoon.'

     `Fine. See you at dinner then.'

     `Yes, see you at dinner,' Audrey replied, watching him walk away
towards the excavations. `He didn't see me,' she whispered fiercely to
herself as she walked back to her tent. `He didn't see me!' She wanted to
run to her tent, but made herself walk slowly until she was safely inside
with the flap down. Quickly, she retrieved the helmet from the basket and
looked it over very carefully, but still couldn't see anything to give her
a clue as to what it contained up in the lining. Audrey put the helmet on
for the second time, catching the short hum and feeling that shivery tingle
run down her body again.

     `Now let's try it out again,' she said to herself as she went and
tried to lift the tent flap. She could feel it, but couldn't move it. It
was like a solid wall to her. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes as
she struggled to move the flap, but to no avail. Giving out a sob, she gave
up the struggle and went and sat down and took the helmet off. She shook
her head to free her hair and wondered what prevented her from leaving the
tent. She got up and went and as easily as anything, lifted the flap and
looked outside. Letting it drop back, she went and sat down again to ponder
the problem. It didn't take her long to understand that if she wore the
helmet, she was invisible. Therefore, if she was invisible, she had no
physical properties to either be seen or to be felt. That would mean that
she could see but not touch. Well she could touch, but not physically move
anything.

     `Let's try again madam,' she said, getting up from the table and going
over and lifting the flap back, making sure that it stayed open. Then she
put the helmet back on, thrilling at the tingle it gave her before
approaching the entrance of the tent and going outside. She stood still for
a moment, surveying where everybody was and what they were doing before
moving off herself.

     Two of the boys were cleaning some bones and Manuel was poring over
the maps, making his own notes. Audrey approached the tables and walked
right round them and the three men, and not one of them noticed
her. Brendan came out from the latrine, and after washing his hands, walked
over and went right past her to stop and speak with Manuel.

     `I'm bloody invisible,' Audrey shouted to herself. `It's the helmet! I
can see and hear them quite clearly, but they can't see me!' Her thoughts
went wildly racing off with the countless things you could do when you were
not visible.

     Audrey then approached Brendan to give him the surprise of his life
and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. It was she who got the shock,
for her hand passed clean through him. She watched as her hand disappeared
into his shoulder up to her wrist as there wasn't a solid thing there to
stop the movement. Then it reappeared as her arm swung down, coming out
from his lower back

     Audrey gave out a loud cry as this happened, but nobody turned round
at the noise she had made. She looked down at her hand in disbelief and
then had another shock when she raised her head, for Manuel had turned and
was walking straight into her. She recoiled back, but only out of instinct,
because she never felt a thing as he passed straight through her.

     Her legs trembled and she went weak at the knees as she stumbled to
the nearest chair and sat down. It took a couple of minutes for it to sink
in that she was actually sitting in the chair and not sprawled on the
ground. She ran her fingers along the arms, feeling their solidness, and
reaching out, touched the table. Again solid. She picked up the pencil
there, or rather tried to pick it up. Her fingers could close round it, but
could not move it from the table, no matter how hard she tried to lift
it. Audrey let go of the pencil and grasped the arms of the chair and
lifted herself to pull the chair closer to the table, but that too would
not move.

     The truth was starting to filter through to her now. She got up from
the chair and went to the two boys at the cleaning table. They showed no
signs of noticing her presence and did not even feel her hand when she
pressed it into their bodies. Then she tried to pick some grass that was
growing by the table. Her fingers passed straight through, though she could
touch a small stone, she couldn't pick it up.

     Audrey wandered round the site knowing now that living tissue was
untouchable, whereas dead or inanimate matter was immovable. But, she
realised, if the dead or inanimate substance was in contact or worn by
living tissue, then it became untouchable. This had been proven by her hand
going through Brendan's shoulder through his shirt, and the same with the
boys and even Manuel. So therefore the value of the helmet was only for the
wearer to be a voyeur, an observer or a spy. She couldn't think of anything
else as she made her way back to her tent. She tried to walk through the
tent wall, but couldn't, so she had to use the open flap to gain
entry. This also meant that if she was wearing the helmet to be invisible
and then to spy, watch or listen to somebody in a closed room would be
impossible. She'd have to take the helmet off and be visible to open the
door to either get in or get out. It didn't seem to make much sense to go
to all that trouble to make this helmet which only did half of what it
should.

     Now if you could go through walls with it, well...! She blushed at the
thought of being able to see Brendan naked in the shower without him
knowing she was there. I'd better go take a cold shower myself, she thought
as she started to take off the helmet, trying to dispel the images she had
conjured up. As she lifted her hands up to take it off, her fingertips
touched the visor that was slid up into the top part. Not having tried the
visor, she pulled it down.

     As it snapped down with a click, the walls of the tent disappeared, as
did the chair she had been sitting on. The suddenness of more light because
of the lack of canvas as well as the chair's removal, startled her as she
sprawled on her back on the ground.

     `What the heck happened?' Audrey exclaimed to herself as she sat up,
dusting her hands. `Where's the tent gone?'

     She looked around and the sunlight seemed as if it was being slightly
filtered by the visor, giving a very light blue tinge to
everything. Without the canvas walls of the tent to impede her view, she
should have being looking at the other tents opposite, but they weren't
there either. Also, she should have had a good view across the plateau to
the plains in the distance. Instead, there was a forested jungle scarcely a
hundred yards away.

     Audrey got up off the ground and automatically brushed her hands down
the seat of her shorts and had a good look round. She was in a small
clearing in what appeared to be a jungle, but what caught her eye and made
her step back, was where the ground had been pegged out.

     The pegs were no longer there, or the partially exposed bones of a
prehistoric animal. Instead, there was the whole carcass of a dead
Brontosaurus!

     She was suddenly frightened. What had happened? Where was everybody
else? Why had they disappeared? Why was she now in a jungle?

     Sweat broke out on her forehead and she started to panic. Her hands
went up to her head and pulling at the chin strap, pushed the helmet off
her head to let it fall to the floor. As soon as the contact was broken
between her and the helmet, she found she was back inside her
tent. Audrey's heart was pounding and she could feel the sweat now running
down her spine as the helmet bounced on the ground and rolled to a stop by
the leg of the table.

     She groped for the chair and found that it had been tipped
over. Setting it upright, she sat down, shaking, her hands tightly clenched
in her lap as she looked down at the helmet on the ground before her.

     She had been amused at the being invisible part, but what she had just
seen, frightened her. Did she really see the animal that had been dead for
millions of years lying there just outside her tent? Did the helmet cause
hallucinations? Or...?

     The visor! It happened after she had pulled the visor down. Was that
what caused it? The scientist in Audrey couldn't just sit there trying to
think up reasons. Questions and experiments went together. The questions
weren't answered without the experiments.

     She picked the helmet up and pushed the visor back inside. It slid
back in with a little click. She did this a couple of times, building up
her courage to try the helmet on again. This time she stood up first, and
with the visor up, put the helmet on her head.

     She felt the now familiar flutter down her body and the brief hum in
her ears. Then taking a deep breath, walked outside and went over and stood
next to Brendan and Martinez who were discussing something on the
table. Standing next to them, she was sure they couldn't see her, but was
about to find out if they could hear her.

     `Hello you two,' she said as loud as she could, and nothing
happened. They carried on talking, ignoring her completely as if she wasn't
there. She giggled at this because she was and she wasn't there. Her own
voice had sounded very clearly, but it was now apparent that they could
neither see or hear her whilst she wore the helmet. So with a determined
effort, she walked in between them. There wasn't enough space for her to do
this without bumping them aside as she moved forward, her arms easily
passing through their sides as she went between them.

     Audrey turned round, the back of her thighs touching the table and
looked at the two men talking to each other, their faces only a few inches
away from hers. She clapped her hands and reached up and stroked their
faces, but they showed no reaction Whatsoever. It still amazed her that
they could neither see, hear or feel her.

     `There's only one real way of knowing if they can see me,' she said, a
daring notion running through her mind. `Even a dead man would wake up to
this.' She went round the table and stood before them and lifted up the
front of her T shirt, exposing her breasts to their gaze.  Not only did she
move her body from side to side to make them sway a little, she even, with
her free hand, stroke each one and made the nipples stand up. `That is
definite proof,' she said aloud as the men continued to appear to ignore
her, dropping the shirt to cover herself, blushing at her daring act to
prove the point.

     They and the table were now between her and the pegged out ground
where the bones lay exposed. So with one more look around the treeless
plateau, Audrey took a deep breath and pulled the visor down.

     The visor came down with a click and in the faint blue light, somewhat
akin to weak sunglasses, both men, tables and tents disappeared. What she
saw before her was again, the whole carcass of the dead behemoth. A quick
look round to see that the forest was still there, not far from where she
was standing. There was a faint ping as her head swung round but she didn't
give it any notice as she stared at the beast lying not many yards in front
of her.

     Audrey lifted the visor, and as it clicked up, the two men were
suddenly there again in front of her, the forest disappearing. Now she was
confident that she had the answer to the enigma of the helmet. It was some
sort of time machine that could take her back over hundreds of millions of
years, showing her what it was like at that time. But was it true? Was
there any truth in the saying that seeing is believing? Could it be some
form of hologram or picture transmitted into the helmet?

     `Of course not you silly girl,' she said to herself. `Well there's
only one way to find out.' She snapped the visor down, but now the jungle
look more menacing as she was about to move a little closer to it. It was
definitely a clearing she was standing in with this jungle or forest, she
wasn't quite sure which yet, all about her. It was roughly the size of a
football field and she was about a quarter of the way down one side.

     Now was the moment of truth. She had to move forward and investigate
or forever wonder what might have been. So without further ado, she moved
off towards the felled Brontosaurus, getting a great tingle up and down her
spine as she walked round the mammoth hulk of a creature she had been
studying for years.

     Even in death, it looked a magnificent creature. The long graceful
neck was fully outstretched, the eye fully open, glazed, but seemed to hold
a surprised expression as if saying, why me? She reached out to run her
hand down the long neck, expecting her hand to disappear inside the animal
if it was still alive, but it wasn't. It was dead, because she could feel
the rough texture of its skin, rougher than she had expected it to be. More
like the hide of an elephant but not as tough and scaly as that of a
rhinoceros.

     Audrey walked round the animal, marvelling at her good fortune to
actually be able to see it, albeit a dead one, but a whole, complete animal
of this size. Why, how, or what killed it, she couldn't even begin to
surmise. It was enough for the moment just being able to look at what no
other living person had ever seen.

     She had walked around the animal at least four times before she really
became aware of this odd bleep she got through the helmet with every
circuit. It was now becoming intrusive as she looked around, trying to see
what this small noise was, or what was causing it. So with a propriety air,
she laid her hand on the dead animal and slowly looked round the small
clearing.

     There it was again! A small ping came through to her ears, but for the
first time she saw a little flash of light on the inside of her visor. The
flash appeared as a faint white line that quickly faded in time with the
ping. Audrey stood still, waiting. Waiting for it to come again, waiting,
keeping her head still as her eyes scanned the tree line.

     Ping!

     There it was again! The sound lasted about two seconds accompanied by
a faint thin line that lasted for the same amount of time. A quick glance
up at the sun told her that the line was pointing almost due East from
where she was standing. Audrey stood there for several pings, counting the
intervals between them and estimating that it came about every forty five
seconds. Having left her watch behind in her tent, she resorted to the
trick she had learnt in school of how to measure time. By counting from one
hundred and one through to one hundred and ten, took ten seconds. So by
doing this form of counting four and a half times, it gave her forty five
seconds between the pings.

     `Of course,' Audrey exclaimed, thinking of the sonar used in
submarines, `it's a homing signal, and the white line is the direction!'
But how far, she wondered, how far? `Only one way to find out,' she said at
the next ping, and started forward in the direction of the fading white
line in her visor.

     She kept a count of her paces using her method of counting time
achieving exactly forty five paces before the next ping, and reached the
trees by the second one. At first, she walked round the trees that she
encountered until she tripped over a dead branch and instead of cracking
her head on a tree, she fell through it. Laughing, slightly hysterical, she
sat up and called herself all kinds of silly names for forgetting about
being able to pass through any living matter.

     But the fall brought Audrey to her senses. She didn't know how far
away she was from the source of the noise, and as she had been away from
the camp for at least an hour, the others would be wondering where she had
got to. That could lead to problems in the way of trying to make up
plausible excuses for her absence. Besides, it couldn't be that long to
dinner time, and she would definitely be posted missing then.

     So she picked herself up and waited for the signal so that she could
reverse her direction and get back to the camp. With the ping, she turned
about face and started back through the forest of trees. Walking through
the underbrush which she couldn't feel, she was struck by a thought. If I'm
back in the prehistoric times because of the helmet, can I be seen and
touched by any living creature? This made her shudder and she stopped and
knelt down to try to find some form of small living thing to prove one way
or the other. It took her several minutes before she saw some small type of
beetles that she had never seen before and tried to pick one up. She
couldn't. The thing just passed straight through her hand as though it
wasn't there. Satisfied that she was safe with the helmet on, she stood up
and carried on walking back towards the camp.

     The sun was very hot on her shoulders as she came out into the small
clearing. She was perspiring heavily now and realised that over the past
couple of hours, the temperature must have gone higher. She mulled this
over as she approached the carcass and lifted the visor to see the scene
change back to the exposed bones. Audrey turned and made her way back to
her tent, noticing that the two men were back at the table, still
talking. Must have a lot to say, she thought as she entered her tent and
took off the helmet and placing it in her locker.

     `Hi fellas, time for dinner?' she asked as she approached them after
leaving her tent. They both turned, Brendan looking at his watch.

     `Bit early I'd say. We only had lunch two hours ago.'

     Audrey gave a gasp and looked at her wrist, and remembering that she'd
forgotten to put on her watch again.

     `I...I guess I was feeling a bit hungry,' she said lamely.

     `Well go grab a sandwich or something. Cookie's in the mess tent,'
Brendan said, turning back to Martinez.

     `How long have you two been talking?' Audrey asked, trying to sound as
though it was just a casual question.

     `A couple of minutes. Why?' Martinez answered.

     `No reason. No reason at all,' she mumbled as she went back into her
tent, trembling, and sat down on her cot and picked up her watch off the
small side table.

     `I've been away nearly three hours,' she whispered fiercely, `and it's
still only three o'clock. It should be six! Why?' She strapped the watch
onto her wrist and went up to the mess tent and got a sandwich from the
cook and sat down at one of the tables. She was hungry, so the sandwiches
were quickly demolished as she tried to work out where the time had gone.

     After thirty minutes hard thinking, the only answer she could come up
with was that the helmet was as she first thought, some sort of time
machine, and with the visor down, time as she knew it, stood still. It was
the only solution that fit, but she was too tired to pursue it any further
that afternoon. The sandwich had stopped the rumbling in her stomach and
hoped that it would suffice until dinner.

     Audrey left the mess tent and went and checked the tables to catalogue
the days finds and was pleased that the total was light so that she could
then get on with making her notes and doing her typing before dinner. As
soon as dinner was over, she said her goodnight's to everyone and turned in
early.

     She was woken as usual at seven the next morning by one of the boy's
bringing into her tent a hot mug of tea. After a shower, she dressed and
went up to the mess tent for breakfast. She lingered over her meal, waiting
till all had left, and cookie had started to clean up. It was a bit
difficult to make him under-stand, but he finally got the message that she
wanted to make herself some sandwiches. He waved towards the fridge that
was run by a portable generator and carried on with his chores whilst she
made up a pack for herself. Also taking two bottles of water, placed them
all in a bag she had brought with her. Armed with these provisions, she
scuttled back to her tent.

     With her backpack of food settled on her shoulders, a compass in her
pocket along with pad and pencil, watch firmly strapped to her wrist,
checked against her small alarm clock, she was ready. Retrieving the helmet
from the locker, Audrey put it on, and with full confidence in her
invisibility, went outside the tent. Pausing there, she saw one of the
boy's cleaning the large bone that they had excavated the day before. She
noted down the time on her pad and pulled down the visor.

     As before, the scene changed from a treeless plateau with the tables
and tents to a small clearing in the forest. But something was different,
and Audrey was puzzled. It was not the scene in front of her, but something
else. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Ha-ha, she laughed to
herself. Only if it's dead I can, she thought. But what is it, her mind
continued to ask? She snapped the visor back up to see the boy still at the
table with the tents of the latrines behind him. Pulled the visor down
again to see the same clearing. It wasn't until she had done this action
twice more before it struck her what was wrong. It so literally staggered
her as she realised what it was, that she sat down with the shock.

     `The sun has moved!' Audrey whispered in awe. `No. It can't be the
sun, it's the Earth itself that has moved.' She squinted up as best she
could, and kept flipping the visor up and down. The sun was definitely
there in the sky at a different angle between the visor up and the visor
down. Pulling the compass from her pocket, she checked the polarization
with the visor in both positions. No change. So the magnetic pole was still
where it should be. Checking again with the visor up and down, she
estimated that the difference of the two suns was about ten degrees.

     `I must brush up on my sciences,' Audrey told herself.

     `So the Earth has moved off its axis. Wow! Wait till I tell the boys!'
Then she remembered that she couldn't tell them without divulging the
existence of the helmet, and there was so much more to see before letting
anyone else into the secret. That would explain the lack of snow on the
mountains, she thought. We must be that much closer to the, what would be,
equator. That would also mean that Canada and England would be like a
frozen icecap. She shivered at the thought.

     So with a sigh, Audrey got up from the ground, and with the visor
down, turned round to pick up the homing signal. When the ping came, she
noted down the bearing for her return trek. She checked her watch and noted
down that the time was nine forty-five in the morning as she started off to
follow the brief white line inside her visor. She crossed the clearing
singing the well known song from the Wizard of Oz, only it wasn't a yellow
brick road.

     She strode into the trees without hesitation, passing through them and
bushes, but being careful to step over what looked like dead wood. Audrey
checked her watch and confirmed the beacon as repeating itself every forty
five seconds with the white line lasting only two seconds.

     It didn't take long to pass the spot where she had turned back the
previous day, making short notes as she moved along. It was a strange
experience to be striding along and not being able to see where she was
going. Trees, bushes and leaves were continually just in front of her face,
but not touching her as she moved forward. It was like having your face up
close to a television screen that was showing a film of you moving through
these trees. It was uncanny to see a large tree loom up in front and just
pass straight through it. So it was a shock to suddenly step out into a
clearing. Well it wasn't really a clearing, but a trail. One that had been
blazed through the forest.

     The trees had been trampled and most were without foliage, which could
have only been the passage of one or more vegetation eating animals. A huge
pile of dung off to her left confirmed that the animal was big.

     `Another Brontosaurus has passed this way,' Audrey chuckled at her own
toilet humour, and waited for a moment to pick up the beacon and carry on
her way.

     Audrey had been checking her watch to see if the hands moved, and they
did. They moved as if she were in normal time so she knew that she was now
just over an hour away from the camp, and was now wondering how far away
the source of the beacon was.

     No sooner had she thought this, was when she saw it. It was just a
glint in the sunlight, but there was definitely something just up there
ahead of her. She carried on, the foliage not causing an impediment as she
sailed through the brush and trees before coming to a full stop as it
became clearer.

     It was still partially hidden by trees, but she could see that it was
some kind of ball. As she got closer, it proved to be the case. It was
spherical, at least forty feet high and just as wide. The top section
appeared to be made of some type of transparent material or glass, though
Audrey doubted it being glass. The rest of the sphere seemed to be of the
same manufacture as that of the helmet.

     Moving round the object, not yet giving it the appellation space ship,
Audrey saw that there was an opening in the side with a short ramp down to
the ground. Retreating back to the bushes, Audrey stopped and sat down and
decided to have a sandwich and a drink before going any further while she
contemplated and studied the craft and thought through her options.

     It looked perfectly round with not a seam to be seen, apart from the
door opening, and she was quite sure that if it had been closed, you
wouldn't seen any join whatsoever. She'd finished one sandwich and stowed
the rest and water bottle back in the bag as she considered what was to be
the moment of truth. To enter the machine or not to enter. Surely it must
be deserted, otherwise, if there had been anybody connected to whomsoever
had worn the helmet, would have already been out looking for them. Maybe
they were wearing a helmet so that she couldn't see them. Don't be silly,
she said to herself, this was a hundred million years or so ago, and surely
if the helmet was the same, they should be able to see each other. There
were too many variations on this theme for her to consider at this time.

     She couldn't really put it into words that they were aliens. Not those
from another country, but from another world. Not human. Images of
Sigourney Weaver fighting them in the spaceship came to mind first, and she
shuddered at the thought of meeting creatures like that, but realised that
they wouldn't have worn a helmet like the one on her head. That would be
more in line with those from `Close Encounters of the Third Kind', which
was more acceptable.

     So it was with some trepidation that she approached the craft and went
up the short ramp, and hesitated at the top and surveyed the gloomy
interior before going in. The doorway was just over five foot high, so she
had to duck her head as she went and entered the craft.

                                                            *