The Other Side of the Gate

By morning, the gate had given Julian nothing back. The reservoir stood level with the concrete lip, and the strip of wet aggregate beneath the slab had dried to a black seam. He had slept in his car with the camera under his coat and the recorder pieces in separate sleeves on the passenger floor.

The film mattered more now that the fragment was gone. Julian carried the camera and its sealed envelope to the abandoned control hut. The four divisions on the floor were still dry. He set his portable developing tank on the workbench, away from the gauge, and measured the chemicals by the marks on the bottles instead of trusting their faded labels.

He worked with the door shut and the lights off. The film slipped into the reel by touch. He followed the timings he had written on the kit box, counting under his breath, then hung the negatives from a nail above the sink. The images came up slowly in the red safelight.

The first showed the fragment at the gate, water running over the engraved face. The next had the same angle, the name clear. COLE. Below it, TOMORROW. Julian’s hand had kept the frame steady. The letters were sharp enough to enlarge.

He developed the third exposure last. It held the moment the fragment slid beneath the slab. The silver edge had dwindled to a crescent. At the edge of the frame, a patch of concrete showed through the water, pale and blank.

Julian laid the negative on the hut’s inspection glass and magnified it with the hand lens. The pale patch was not concrete. Its surface had faint parallel lines, evenly spaced, and a dark border that ran at a right angle to the gate. He checked the previous frame. The lines were absent there. The image had captured a surface where the gate’s underside should have been.

He looked toward the real slab through the hut window. It sat flush in its channel. There was no gap wide enough to see beneath it, much less to fit a camera. Julian set the negative down and returned to the gate with the gravimeter in its case.

The readings on the way there were ordinary. He took them at the roadside and again at the bank, keeping the instrument away from the four divisions at the hut. At the channel, its needle swung north and held. The reservoir water ran against the direction it had the day before.

The photograph had given him a reason to test the crossing. It had also given the chamber a reason to identify him if he made the test carelessly. Julian set the gravimeter on the far bank, still in its closed case, and walked back alone. He picked a thumb-sized stone from the gravel and marked one side with a scratch from his pocketknife.

He placed it on the wet concrete above the seam.

The stone slid toward the gate. The water carried it the other way, pushing it against the slope. It reached the slab and vanished beneath it. Julian watched the waterline. Nothing came out on his side.