Time travel story

Outline

Manitou is a thin place - like an elevator shaft - that allows travel between different layers of time.  Time exists in layers side by side and the springs in Mantiou act as tunnels that pierce the layers.  Just like there are places that can be used to travel, there are places where “event spikes” pierce these layers and cause similar patterns or events to emerge again and again as time and people move around these points (think of the visual of Einsteins theory of time bending and flexing like a sheet stretched tight with a bowling ball in the middle).  A particularly horrible occurrence can cause these spikes which reverberate into the past and the future, changing things as they go (remember, all times exist simultaneously). past life loop?  deja vu experience

Some people have been chosen to travel between these layers in order to prevent Black Dates, the occurrences at the heart of these spikes.  The event that causes the spike can’t always be prevented, but a butter-fly effect can take place to mitigate the length and intensity of the spike, so that the events influenced in the past or future can be diminished or overcome.  These people cannot travel to the black date directly, and if they are present during the horrible occurrence that causes the spike, they are often drawn in, like a moth, and annihilated.  Instead, they can travel to times around the black date and try to figure out how to influence or direct events to create the mitigation.

These people are chosen, or born, out of black dates.  They are people who have been influenced by something, such as a school shooting, and lived, so they are now open to this innate ability to travel between the layers of time.  Everyone has something of this ability, some have a more powerful gift than others.  Many who have these gifts never know, but travel between the layers of time, in varying degrees of substance or matter, during dreaming.  When a person with a powerful gift is in the vicinity of a black date when it occurs, there ability is magnified to the point where they can or do begin jumping between times.  These people are drawn, through seemingly fateful circumstances and coincidences, to places that are thin and allow for easier travel.  Like a vortex.  They are drawn to each other in these places and either are lucky enough to figure out what is happening to them, or they lose their minds, or they become religious zealots who follow the “angels”.

This is the heart of the conflict.  The time climbers (need better name) have always tried to prevent the effect of these black dates in order to protect humanity.  Religion, and the religious drive, grow from a group of beings that seek to preserve the effects of black dates.  They see these occurrences as the will of God.  It is God’s plan that certain destruction must occur as punishment or retribution.  Those who seek to thwart the time climbers are a timeless race.  They don’t climb through time, but they exist across the layers with a shared memory.  What one knows, they all know, so that events in one time are known, and can be used for strategy to all of these “Angels”  The climbers don’t have this gift.  They must find each other, plan and communicate, form bonds, etc. in order to impact the events surrounding black dates.

The main character is brought to Manitou by her father.  Her mother lives in California and is a “light worker” which is a new religion, very new-agey.  It has a different spin and preaches openness to shift and change, but is really only about giving over control and individuality.  Her father is distraught and alienated by her mother’s new beliefs.  Her mother came beliefs after her daughter was involved in a school shooting scenario, died, and was brought back to life medically.

Her father is a carpenter that restores old Victorian houses.  Has been hired to restore Emma Crawford’s house.

Story of Crawford, her sister, the castle, TB sanatorium, crazy people in Manitou, springs, Native American wars, etc.  Come from those who are drawn to the thin places and do not survive the process, or lose their minds, etc.  

Darcy knew Emma.  They succeeded in preventing a mass die-off/black date in Emma’s time.  Emma and her sister have been time climbing, fighting one another.  Now that Emma is gone, Darcy realizes that the main character has appeared, and is coming into her gifts, in order to help him.  The new religious fervor that grips the community is directly related to the wife of an evangelist, who is Emma’s sister also.  She is a turned climber who has given in to the will of the angels.  The evangelist serves the angels - literally.