Chapter One
Texas Panhandle Region, Baseline Planet
Year: 1937
The youthful-looking woman moved through the knee-high grass, her steps sending horned larks into the sky and causing the double scabbard on her back to shift slightly. The low-hanging sun bathed the hills and the prairie in a golden glow, and its familiar warmth on her naked body felt comforting. Ring-tailed hawks were calling to one another, and the dry ground was alive with the snapping and crackling of grasshoppers. In the distance, a mammoth trumpeted, and Hagar paused, grateful for yet another day to be alive and awake. Through the march of centuries, these feelings remained ever-bright.
She approached what was referred to as the Canadian River back on Earth. But this wasn’t Earth; it was its pristine twin—the baseline planet, a world identical to Earth but devoid of humans and their modifications to the natural world. It served as a barometer for Hagar, allowing her to gauge the extent of human influence on the parallel planets she monitored across the multiverse.
This place was also her sanctuary, a refuge she’d visited once every few decades. Her stay on this retreat planet was nearing its end, though.
Hagar skirted around a copse of ancient junipers and reached the river’s edge, where a herd of large camels was browsing the undergrowth. The woman waded into the water and splashed some on her face. She dived in and came up.
Through a stand of cottonwoods on the opposite bank, hairless Columbian mammoths lumbered into view, raising small clouds of dust that eddied about their textured, coarse skin as their massive legs steadily rose and fell. Drawn to these giant earthy beasts, Hagar swam upstream for a closer look, making sure her distance and movements remained unthreatening. As she approached, she noted the intricate patterns on their leathery hide, evoking thoughts of another place and time. A hint of wistfulness briefly clouded her gaze; she recalled her first trip to Earth, a world where these elephants had been hunted to extinction, leaving only surviving kin in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.
The hairless mammoths drank leisurely from the river, their trunks curling to guide the water into their mouths. Their activities had an unhurried rhythm. Every now and then, one would flap its ears. Hagar gazed at them, fond memories flitting through her mind. At long last, she plunged beneath the surface and with powerful strokes made it back to the riverbank. Emerging from the water, she breathed in deeply, the droplets running down her skin. Hagar pushed long wet hair from her eyes and trotted to the hover bike, parked between two boulders. Setting off, she shot through the boundless grassland. After a few miles, the bike’s momentum waned and it came to a gentle halt.
Hagar slid off and leaned against it, eyes alight. Condors and their more imposing kin glided through the vast expanse of the sky, which bled from brilliant blue to burnished amber. The warm air was pregnant with the smells of wild things. Throngs of shrub oxen and dun-colored horses roamed across the prairie, and a pride of lions eyed them from afar. Occasional calls and grunts reached her ears. Inhaling deeply, Hagar sauntered about. Her bare feet registered the deep, rhythmic tremors as one of the massive bison herds, a rolling avalanche of horns and dark fur, surged in the distance.
It was time for her to leave the baseline planet.
Something about the Earth report she’d received yesterday seemed off. Anyway, more than two decades had passed since her last inspection of the most environmentally troubled among the parallel planets she monitored. It was time to check on it.
Hagar languidly unbuckled the scabbard from her back, letting it slide down. The swords and their sheaths seemingly disappeared, leaving only a fleeting ripple in the air. Mounting her bike, she gunned the engine and tore through the air. Almost immediately, undergarments materialized on her naked body, soon followed by riding pants, an aviation leather jacket, and tall boots.
As she transitioned between worlds, the sky churned with differing shades of light blue. Beneath her speeding vehicle, the grass turned short and patchy. The animals roaming in the distance dwindled, then disappeared, along with the wild scents carried by gusts of wind. A dirt path abruptly formed. Slowly descending midflight, Hagar’s hover bike sprouted wheels, morphing into a motorcycle with an attached sidecar typical of those on Earth. Lurching as it touched the ground, the motorbike righted itself and rushed on. As if from nowhere, Hagar produced a leather aviator helmet, goggles, and driving gloves.
Upon arriving on Earth, the dirt road transformed into a paved one. And all living things winked out of existence.
Chapter Two
Oklahoma Panhandle, Earth
Year: 1937
Hagar gasped, eyes widening at the devastation before her.
She stepped off her motorcycle next to a small, wind-scoured house and surveyed the bleak land. Only fifty miles north of the grassland she had just toured on the baseline planet, the stark contrast rendered her speechless.
She’d been in this very spot back in 1842, when this was the heartland of Comanche power and influence. That might as well have been a thousand years ago. The Comanche were gone. The bison were gone. The grass was gone. Hagar now stood in the middle of a desert strewn with sand dunes.
Still reeling, she recalled past reports as she pieced together what must have unfolded here. In 1860, black rain fell in Syracuse as a storm carried sand from Kansas Territory. In 1887, dirt storms of biblical proportions swept parts of Texas, accompanied by black skies. On that occasion, thousands of cattle gathered at dwindling water holes and perished in the heat, their tongues swollen and dark.
But what she saw now was worse. Much worse. And she didn’t need to look far for the reason. Noticing the gleaming steel plow half-buried in the side of a sand dune, she clenched her jaw in anger. Morons.
“Storm winds blew, droughts came, hail pounded the land,” someone said. Hagar turned to see an old man joining her in the sand-filled yard. “Yet, as long as the tough, wiry buffalo grass covered the earth, its thick interwoven roots held the soil down when it dried.”
“Hello, John,” Hagar said gravely, trying to catch his eye. She frowned with concern when her analyst avoided her gaze. His beard was longer and far more unkempt than she remembered. And his leather suspenders were cracked and flecked with tiny clods of dirt. “How long has it been? What year is it?” she asked.
“It’s 1937. Saw you last in 1912. So, yeah, that would be twenty-five years,” the old man replied as he grimaced at the picket fence. Once possibly white, the winds had stripped its paint, leaving the fence ashen.
“Are you surprised?” John asked. He kicked at the sand, wincing at the cloud of dust that billowed up.
“I am, but I shouldn’t have been.” She shook her head. “The cycle repeats itself. Seventy years back, the rail companies printed magazine articles and pamphlets that lured hundreds of thousands here.”
John cackled, a hollow, unsettling sound. “Same story this time. ‘Riches in the soil, prosperity in the air, progress everywhere.’ Said so right in the brochure. Except, this time they had tractors. They ripped out the great mat of grass, opening up the land for the seeding of wheat. They called it ‘sodbusting’ and ‘breaking the land,’ and they were mighty pleased with themselves.” The old man coughed violently. Hagar stood by, her brow furrowed with worry, until his coughing and muttering subsided.
“Big farm equipment meant big loans, and houses were mortgaged,” he said. “The math seemed simple enough: You plow more of the prairie and get to put more seeds in the dirt and ultimately more dollars in your pocket. You’re standing at ground zero of unfettered individualism.”
Hagar’s gaze swept back to the blighted landscape stretching out before her. The sight of the desolation wrenched at her heartstrings. She was a planetary auditor—even if the inhabitants of the myriad Earth-like parallel planets she oversaw were unaware of it. Of any of it. If she were to believe that this was not an isolated case, she would’ve pulled the plug on human activities on Earth right then and there. And for a fleeting moment, she almost gave in to the urge.
“With the scent of money in the air, in came the suitcase farmers: summer visitors who rented tractors to reap the straw.” He spat on the ground. “Hell, everyone knew this area was no good for farming. But no one wanted to hear that. They just kept talking about bushel prices and freight rates.”
The man stared past the fence at something only he could see.
“Back in the day, they’d missed out on the land grabs,” John said. “But now it was their turn. Their tractors took to the fields, and the grass was torn up. Wheat seeds poured in, and gold came out. The good times rolled on as long as the rains did—all through the ‘20s. Then the drought hit, as sooner or later it always does around here. The sun baked the last drop of moisture out. The soil was pulverized by the disk plows and dried to a powder. A big chunk of Kansas went bye-bye. Heard that high winds carried the dirt all the way to the Atlantic.”
She stared at him, a cocktail of dismay and indignation in her eyes. What the hell? she wanted to say. Why didn’t you report the situation years ago? Why wasn’t I notified about any of this?
It was his job to alert her. His, and that of the dozens of other analysts deployed across the planet. That was why she’d stationed them on Earth. But there was something odd about John, something that wasn’t there before, when she’d seen him last. She decided, for now, to hold her tongue and observe.
“So it’s over now.” Hagar brushed stray hair from her face. “What are people still doing here? It seems the only thing growing in this area is sand dunes.” She fought to keep the anger from her voice.
John chuckled mirthlessly. “Doing nothing much. Pushing a broom and sealing cracks. But mostly trying to wait out the drought and to see the return of the rains and with them the good times of wheat and opportunity. They’re tough as old boots, them folks here.” He shook his head as if in wonder. “They refuse to be browbeaten. And the baseball games go on, sandstorm or not.” For a moment, a shadow of a smile flitted across his face.
“True pioneers,” the old man added. He studied his worn shoes. “Misguided pioneers.”
John hobbled toward the house, and she followed. “Aldo Leopold is right,” he said, seemingly to himself. “Communism, fascism, capitalism…in the end, they all seek salvation through machinery. Their programs differ only in their methods and means.”
Hagar’s eyes shifted his way, but as before, he wasn’t meeting her gaze.
John halted, lost in thought. “They are completely alienated from the interdependence of life,” he muttered, “and there you have it in a nutshell. They replace mankind’s attachment to the earth with an out-and-out dedication to profit-making.”
He suddenly looked up. “Florence!” he called, turning to the small house.
Silence.
John nodded. “Yes, I’m coming, Florence. Was just talking to the old boss, you know.” He turned his face in the general direction of Hagar. “I have to go back in.” He grinned. “Florence is calling me.” Without saying another word, he determinedly marched into the rundown house. The hinges protested briefly as the door slammed with a shudder and was still.
Hagar stayed rooted in place as the realization hit her hard. John was insane.
A profound sadness washed over Hagar when she played back in her mind John’s voice—bright and hollow—calling out to Florence, a name she’d heard him utter many years ago with tenderness and joy. The sandstorms scoured the land raw, leaving survivors like John in their wake, clutching at memories, tethered to phantoms.
Gathering herself, Hagar walked to her motorcycle and drove off. There was nothing she could have done for him. The unraveling of his mind, however, did provide clarity on why she hadn’t received a report from this sector in years.
After driving about a mile, Hagar heard a growing buzz in the air and brought her motorcycle to a halt. As the sound intensified, a low cloud moved across the sky. Soon, a vast swarm of grasshoppers descended, blanketing the ground. A few leaped about her bike and over her boots.
She killed the engine and sat there, immersed in dark thoughts, until the grasshoppers lifted off in search of anything else remotely edible. Soon, a hush settled over the land.
“It’s miles to water, but only six inches to hell,” someone yelled from afar. Hagar looked up, her gaze falling upon a solitary figure in white dress walking up the open, forlorn road toward her.
Seeing the woman against the vast bleakness, Hagar felt a pull. Perhaps there was more to be gleaned about this calamity from one who had lived through it. With the congressional hearing still some time away, she figured her journey could afford a short delay.
She sat astride her bike beside a half-buried wagon wheel, watching the stranger draw closer. The approaching woman was young, perhaps twenty. Flame-colored hair tumbled freely down her back, offsetting the pallor of her loose white dress. The uninhibited sway of her breasts made it obvious she wore nothing underneath. A small suitcase and a satchel were her only possessions.
“I am Virginia,” the woman said once she was a few paces away and then turned to the rider expectantly. Her voice had a soft Southern lilt, which Hagar took an instant liking to.
“Hagar,” she said, removing her goggles and aviator helmet. She shook her luxuriant blonde hair and dismounted her bike.
“A dame on a motorcycle,” Virginia said in admiration, taking in the woman snugly clad in leather breeches and an aviator jacket. “I wish I had a motorbike,” the girl said in a rush, then paused and cast a fresh look at Hagar. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Just passing through, on my way to Washington, D.C.”
Virginia gave her a penetrating gaze, finding the rider remarkably beautiful, yet in a way that didn’t belong. With her slightly-pinched aristocratic nose, yellow-flecked green eyes, and clear skin aglow under the sun, there was something unearthly about the woman—if not for the mouth. Her full lips held a hint of asymmetry. They appeared oddly suggestive when relaxed.
A shared silence hung between them.
“What fools, huh?” Virginia finally said.
“Pardon?”
“What kind of folks would tear up the prairie grass like this?”
Hagar didn’t respond, but a shadow passed over her face.
“They told Pa that the rain would follow the plow.”
Hagar surveyed the plain. “It was the same in the 1870s; they claimed that rain would follow the trees. They planted them all over. It didn’t work.” She stripped off her leather jacket, revealing a form-fitting black T-shirt beneath.
The girl peered at Hagar with intense, intelligent eyes that belied the dreamy feel of her freckles. “We moved here from Cambridge, Massachusetts.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s been miserable. But I’m out of here. Said goodbye to Pa and Ma this morning.”
“Where are you headed?”
The girl shrugged.
“Why?” Hagar asked.
“Because it’s all wrong!” Sudden heat flashed in the girl’s eyes. “Do you know the book Return to Nature! by Adolf Just?” Virginia didn’t wait for an answer but pulled a book out from her satchel with a flourish. For a wild moment, Hagar thought the young woman would offer her a discount if she bought it right then and there.
The girl waved the book in the general direction of Hagar. “He’s right. ‘Nature is forever unassailable in her justice; she punishes every transgression of her laws, but likewise rewards every return to obedience.’”
“‘Obedience’?” Hagar was amused by the choice of word.
“Indeed. Allow me a moment.” Virginia thumbed through the pages. “‘Man must today endeavor in his mode of living to heed again the voice of nature.’” She gestured at the sandy, inert expanse.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Hagar agreed, but her eyes twinkled.
“Back to a simpler, more pure state. That’s why I had Pa help me construct a charkha spinning wheel.” Virginia put the book away. “I spun and sewed this dress,” she said and twirled.
Hagar reached out and felt the white dress just below the generous swell of the breasts. “You made this yourself, then?”
Virginia took a shuddering breath, managing to give a slight nod.
They began strolling on the hard, crusted ground.
“A few miles back,” Hagar said, “the wife of an old friend of mine… perhaps you knew her, Florence.”
“Dust pneumonia,” Virginia said immediately. “She died a few years back.”
“What’s dust pneumonia?”
“Mud in the lungs.”
Hagar appeared startled by this. She eyed the girl. “Tell me how it is here.”
“The wind moans for days on end. There are bad days, and there are worse days.” The young woman looked away and bit her lower lip as thick and sharp memories came rushing in. “On some occasions, Ma gave us small wet towels to cover our faces, so we could breathe. At night, you try to lie still, not to feel the grit of the sand on your pillow. Just the sound of blowing dirt outside is enough to knot your stomach. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes.”
Virginia lowered her head, overcome by emotions. “Dust to breathe, sand to eat, and dirt to drink,” she said in a small voice.
“And the storms?” Hagar asked quietly.
“They last for hours or days on end: a towering tidal wave of sand that wipes out the sky, boiling up and roiling as it engulfs everything and turns day into a cellar’s midnight.” She fell silent for a moment, reminiscing. “You can’t tell which way is up. Lightning flashes, but in total silence—and suddenly, an earsplitting cacophony of clinking and rasping sounds. The metal fence, alive with static, would knock you flat if touched. The dirt might be tan brown or smoke gray, with sharp smells that burn or with greasy smells that nauseate.” Her voice fell almost to a whisper. “Once, while walking home, the blowing sand felt like steel wool on my skin. I nearly suffocated; it was a close call.”
Hagar caught herself sighing. She’d never seen nature unravel like this. It was a total ecological collapse.
Virginia’s face darkened. “We had some cattle when one of those big dust storms came. Blinded, they ran like crazy, taking in the dust until they dropped dead, their insides bound up with dirt. Anyway, cows can only live for so long chewing tumbleweeds and drinking muddy water.”
The two of them sat back-to-back on the ground. For a while, neither said anything. They were content to just sit there. The sky was clear, the air surprisingly fresh.
“At the very least, people should’ve tried no-till farming,” Hagar said.
Virginia raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“No plowing,” Hagar supplied.
“Might as well tell a church to ditch its Bible. In any case, what’s zee matter with plowing, Herr Professor Doktor?”
“The soil progressively becomes impermeable.”
Virginia looked skeptical. “Plowing opens up the soil.”
“At first. But the process tears up the inner structure of the earth so later it collapses on itself, and you end up with a more compact soil than you started off with.” Hagar smiled grimly. “Ever wondered what gives the intact grassland soil its clumpy, cottage-cheese texture? Miles of fungal filaments permeate the soil and release a sticky substance. This, in turn, binds together particles of sand, silt, and clay to form aggregates. The open spaces between these clumps allow in water and air and make possible subterranean life.” She chuckled without mirth. “Well, that blasted plow just rips up the fungi and messes up the whole network of air, water, and nutrients.”
“Golly!” Virginia was looking at her, wide-eyed. “How do you know all that?”
Hagar reached out, accessing with her mind a vast database. Now that she was back on Earth, she could do this. The database was continuously updated by her analysts and aided by an army of smart digital scanning devices. A name popped up in response to her query. “Sir Albert Howard. I’ve read some of his work.” She hoped that would be enough to make her expertise plausible. Luckily, Virginia appeared as unfamiliar with the name as she was.
Hagar lay down, stretching on the exposed firm earth, hands behind her head. Virginia’s gaze lowered, lingering as it roamed over Hagar’s figure. It was getting hot; Virginia could feel sweat trickling down her temples and underneath her breasts.
Hagar seemed not to have noticed. “The ancient Romans used the plow, you know.” Her voice was pensive. “They ran large-scale monocultures. The repeated plowing degraded and eroded fields in central Italy to the point where the government had to force people to stay on the land. Two thousand years later, people are still at it, with an astounding lack of insight, I may add.”
Virginia sighed. “‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.’”
Hagar tilted her head. “John Muir?”
The girl blushed. “Well, yes.” She shrugged ruefully. “The library and I are on a first-name basis. Not a whole lot else to do around here. And everyone is convinced I’m certifiable, anyway.”
Hagar and Virginia shared a brief smile. The two rose slowly and strolled back toward the motorcycle.
Hagar glanced at Virginia a few times. At long last, she said, “You’re thirty years too late. Wrong time, wrong place.”
“How do you figure?”
“Back in the day, a small colony existed by Lake Maggiore in southern Switzerland: Monte Verità. They experimented there with surrealism, movement arts, Dadaism, nude sunbathing, nature cure, and pacifism.”
“Sounds amazing!”
Hagar smiled at that.
“Does Monte Verità still exist?” the young woman wanted to know.
“I’m afraid those types of associations don’t tend to last.”
Virginia shook her head mournfully. “Alas, nothing to live for then,” she declared, laying a hand dramatically on her chest.
When they reached the motorcycle, Virginia brightened up. “Is this a Harley-Davidson?”
Hagar briefly studied the outsized imprint on the gas tank. “Sure is.” She looked at Virginia through narrowed eyes. “I suppose you’re after a ride?”
The girl vigorously nodded and panted theatrically. “Me Tonto. Me no ride iron horse before.”
Hagar let out an exasperated sigh, but she had about half an hour left to kill. “All right. Hop into the sidecar.”
Virginia shook her head side to side, agitating the long red tresses.
Hagar put her hands on her waist. “Well, missy, what do you propose? You’re not thinking of sitting astride, are you—in that nightgown of yours?”
The girl flipped her hair back, hiked up her dress—higher than strictly necessary—and swung one leg over the seat. She straddled the motorbike, looking archly at Hagar as if daring her to say something. “Besides,” she said, pointing to the sidecar, “we need a place for my suitcase.”
After a moment, Hagar nodded in agreement.
They settled onto the bike and Hagar revved the engine.
Virginia hugged her from behind as the motorcycle started forward. “It’s like having a sweetheart,” she said, seemingly to herself. Then she whooped as the bike took off in earnest. “Here comes the thundering hoof beats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!”
“Quiet in the back row!”
The motorcycle picked up speed.
“What a bang!” Virginia shouted. “And the wind—with no sand!” And Hagar smiled in appreciation.
“Free and wild, I embrace the open road,” Virginia hollered, rising and spreading her arms wide. “Healthy and free, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”
“Sit your butt down,” Hagar yelled, “before you find yourself flying onto the long brown path behind you.”
Virginia obliged. With the escalating roar of the engine, she edged closer, pressing her body against Hagar and closing her eyes.
The bike sped along the empty road, the surrounding silence broken only by the engine’s loud rumble.
Hagar eased off the gas. The engine’s roar transitioned into a gentle hum. The motorcycle coasted to a stop on the desolate, sun-bleached road; its ticking was the only sound in the still, cloudless afternoon. Virginia hopped off the bike, a flushed excitement evident in her bearing. She walked over to the sidecar, pulling out the suitcase that had been tucked away for the ride.
Hagar watched with a fond smile, giving a playful salute. Virginia returned the smile and began walking down the road, evidently seeking to hitchhike.
“Virginia.”
The young woman turned.
“Just a moment,” Hagar said. She closed her eyes, reaching out and searching in the vast database. At last, she looked up. “Go to Eutropheon, a raw food restaurant on Hill Street in Los Angeles, and contact their long-haired, European clientele. This isn’t going to be Monte Verità, but you’ll be able to connect with kindred spirits. Ask the Richters about the naturmenschen: the Ehret nature folks in Tahquitz Canyon.”
“The Richters?”
Hagar waved her hand. “They’re the restaurant owners.” She could never get over the narrow bandwidth humans had for absorbing new information. If a person read one hundred books a year, that was impressive. When needed, she could process that amount of data in less than a minute.
Virginia asked, “And who are these nature folks, the naturmenschen?”
“They hitchhike through the mountains and deserts, dwell in caves, create music, practice yoga, play the flute. You’ll love to hang out with them.”
“I believe I might,” Virginia said slowly. She took a few more steps but then swung around. “At first, I thought.…You’re not twenty at all, are you?”
Hagar shook her head.
“How old, then?”
The blonde woman looked at her strangely. “I don’t rightly know. I, well, I stopped counting before I hit a hundred.” She grinned feebly. “And with all the shifting to different planes, it’s hard to keep track at any rate.”
Virginia’s mouth fell open.
Hagar pulled down her goggles and approached. She planted a kiss on Virginia’s parted lips, and the girl jolted. “When you get to Los Angeles, wear flowers in your hair. It’ll suit you.”
“Did people wear flowers in Monte Verità colony?” The young woman’s voice quivered ever so slightly, eyes still wide in a mix of awe and uncertainty.
“Yes. Sometimes.”
Virginia’s fingers unconsciously twirled a strand of hair. “And long hair?”
“Of course.” Something occurred to Hagar. “Virginia, do you have any money on you?”
The girl glanced pointedly at her shoes, patched with rubber obviously taken from a worn tire.
“Here, I got something for you.” Hagar fished a massive gold coin out of her pants pocket.
With wide eyes, Virginia accepted the heavy coin and examined it. Then she regarded the other woman skeptically. “Your pockets were clearly empty; those trousers of yours cling so tightly, every detail is evident. In any case, I—”
Hagar raised her hands. “You’re right.” She considered for a second. “The jacket pocket would’ve been more believable, huh? Here, let’s do it again.” She took back the giant coin, tucked it inside her jacket, and handed it to her. Then added two more coins. “They are solid gold. Sell them when you reach Los Angeles.”
The girl shoved the heavy coins into her luggage and was silent for a long time. “So, you can produce gold out of thin air.”
“Hardly. I got those from a storage unit that accompanies me wherever I go. It’s a little out of phase with this world, thus, it’s not visible.”
Virginia studied the wasteland. “Must be handy,” she finally said.
A black car with chairs strapped to its roof drove slowly down the road. They both watched the vehicle as it passed them by.
Hagar smiled affectionately at the girl in the white dress. “It’s time for you to go now. Catch a ride to Los Angeles.”
Virginia looked at her, then rushed off, her suitcase lurching every which way. “Woohoo!” she yelled to the barren land when she was a considerable distance away. “A road to Damascus—and in Oklahoma, no less!”
Hagar broke into laughter. She cupped her hands and shouted after the retreating figure, “Perish the thought!” Chuckling, she shook her head and made her way back to the motorcycle.
It was time to head east, to the capital. Time to pay a little visit to the US Congress and, with a bit of luck, preserve some of the forests in the region. The key was hemp, the marijuana plant. The report she’d received was quite clear on that.