Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.29 A cusp event

Our hike to Mount Caelyn started innocuously enough, with Deb Turner getting her butt spanked.

We had already negotiated half of the initial climb and were taking a short break, which gave Debbie the opportunity to sneak away for a quick smoke. Unfortunately, our teacher went looking for her and caught her smoking.

Ms Jefferson returned, a squirming Debbie in tow. The teacher sat down on log, took Deb across the knee and proceeded to administer a sound spanking to the girl's bare bottom.

Our young guide, Susan Baker, was watching the spectacle, intrigued and wide-eyed.

"This could happen to you as well, Sue," Mallory Carmichael told her gravely. "You were a bit late to show up this morning at the meeting point, weren't you?"

Ms Jefferson, who was still busy smacking poor Debbie's ass, paused.

"Would you perhaps like to be next, Carmichael?" she inquired.

Mallory blanched. "No, Miss."

"In that case, stop teasing our guide," Ms Jefferson told her. "I am sure there was a good reason for Susan to come in a bit later this morning."

Sue blushed. "To be perfectly honest, I overslept," she admitted. She smiled uncertainly. "Perhaps I would deserve a spanking for that, after all."

"No you don't. At least not for a first offense," our teacher declared, tongue in cheek.

"Aw," went several of us girls.

Susan laughed. "You girls would love to watch me get spanked, wouldn't you?"

"Only in the interest of justice being served," Mallory pointed out.

"Talking about justice being served," Ms Jefferson remarked. "There is a task for me to finish."

She delivered a final couple of resounding slaps to Deb's buttocks.

Debbie got to her feet and ruefully rubbed her ass.

"If I catch any one of you girls smoking, she will get disciplined the same way as Turner here," our teacher announced. "Is that understood?"

"Yes, Miss."

With that taken care of, we continued on our hike.

It took almost four hours, and three more rest stops, until we finally reached the top of Mount Caelyn. There was a small viewing platform that offered an awesome view over the surrounding valleys and hills.

The girls put blankets on the ground and settled down for a well-deserved picnic. We were eating and drinking, chatting, playing cards. Every so often, a few of us would walk over to the platform to take a look down at the small river that undulated through the valley a few hundred feet below.

Mallory Carmichael was talking to Sue again. I ambled over to them to listen in on their conversation, curious to hear what mischief Mallory might be up to now.

Just when I had reached them, I saw the expression on Sue's face change into a mien of pure horror. At first I thought she might be reacting to something that Mallory had said, but then I realized that our guide was staring in the direction of the viewing platform.

I turned to follow her gaze. Natty was standing on the viewing platform, and a few meters away from her, Dorothy Barnett. Inexplicably, the ground was slowly giving way under Natty's feet. A sort of landslide perhaps, caused by last night's heavy rains.

Natty lost her footing. She gripped the twigs of a small overhanging bush and barely managed to hang on to it, desperately scrambling for purchase as the firm ground disappeared below her feet.

Something inside of me knew with absolute certainty that this was what 23rd century historians had come to refer to as a cusp event: a seemingly small, localized event, but depending on the outcome of that event, world history would go either one way or the other. A case where the future was quite literally hanging in the balance.

There were cries of alarm as the others noticed what was happening. Like Sue and Ms Jefferson, I was much too far away. Helplessly, we watched as the roots of the bush that Natty was clinging to slowly gave way.

Dorothy Barnett, who was standing nearby, had turned and was now staring in horror at Natty's predicament.

"Barnett, run!" our teacher shouted.

Dorothy did not run. She remained frozen to the spot, like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car.

Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, she moved. But rather than escape from the collapsing platform, she dived forward and seized Natty's right wrist, only an instant before the bush Natty had been clinging to became completely uprooted and dropped into the abyss. With her legs hooked around the trunk of a tree, Dorothy held on until Ms Jefferson and Sue and a couple of students came to assist her and hauled Natty to safety.

There was a big commotion. Students were laughing hysterically, hugging and crying. Everybody was patting Dorothy on her back and praising her courage.

Dorothy herself looked thoroughly bewildered. It seemed to take her some time to actually comprehend what had happened.

"But it was nothing," she kept saying. "Anybody would have done what I did."

"No they wouldn't," I tried to convince her, though I got the impression that she was not really listening.

"Well, thanks for saving my life, Barnett," a shaken-up Natty told her. "And, congratulations. That was your big chance to be rid of me for once and all, and you blew it," she added, with a wry smile.

"And thereby lose any chance of ever demolishing you at badminton again?" Dorothy grinned. "No way. I won't let you get away like that."

Throughout the rest of that day, and for the remainder of our stay in Wales, everybody was feeling strangely exhilarated. We had averted a near-catastrophy and survived unharmed. That had to count for something, right?

A few days later, on the long bus ride back to St. Albert's, I thought that perhaps Ms Jefferson had been right after all, that this excursion had been exactly what we all had needed.

Everything would get better from now on, I thought, as my eyelids slowly got heavier until I fell asleep on the bus.

******************************************

A / N : Thank you for reading this chapter. There will a two rather short chapters next. That can't be helped. They are short for a reason, and I am not in the habit of merging two chapters into one just in order to keep the word count per chapter high enough.

As always, I am interested in getting your feedback, so please consider adding our comments, or voting.