Suburban Time Capcule

Burrow Corp made top of the line time capsules. Their XC328 model was a real beauty. It was every bit a midsize house buried in the ground. It had walls three foot thick and was environmentally controlled.

    Burt Vile was as happy as a school boy when he purchased his new Burrow Corp time capsule. His wife Susan wasn’t so happy; the operation to bury it took out her beloved rose bushes from the backyard.

    “Susan, you wait and see,” Burt told his wife. “This thing will pay for itself.”

    “That’s not going to bring my rose bushes back,” Susan said. This wasn’t the first wild ass idea her husband had cooked up before.

    Before that it had been some sort of gasifier—what ever that was—which, had set in the back of the garage for years. It had recently moved, she noticed, now she could park the Cadillac inside. It was a fair trade for her roses.

    The next few days Susan didn’t see her husband, he was busy playing in his “club house” as she liked to call it.

    “It’s not a club house,” Burt told her. “It’s a sophisticated underground storage unit.” He hated when Susan didn’t take his purchases seriously.

    The XC328 came with all the bells and whistles, and at a measly one-hundred million dollars was a total bargain. The owner’s manual was thicker than a New York phone book.

    “What could a time capsule possibly need a manual that thick for?” Susan asked one night as Burt lay beside her in bed.

    Burt turned a page of the manual and continued to read, he hadn’t heard a word that was said. Susan rolled over and tried to go to sleep, but the regular turning of pages kept her up. That night Burt didn’t sleep a wink.

    The next day Burt was out in the back yard again, bright and early. It was odd, Susan thought, but it seemed like Burt wasn’t his old boring self. Here lately it was as if he was living in fast forward, rushing around from the time he got up until the time he went to bed. And once he was in bed he would open up the manual and read from it until the sun was nearly up. Susan didn’t know what he did all day, and she never asked him what he did down there. He’d probably say it was over her head. He always used the fact that he was a space engineer to say things were over everyone’s heads.

    “They just don’t understand,” Burt said, as he was ordering the XC328. “Something like this is a real investment, a real work of science.”

    Of course Susan knew that Burt was heart broken that he didn’t get the recognition for his contribution on the new Mars Lab. But he did get an employee discount on the XC328. The CEO of Mars Lab once owned the company that dug out the giant holes for the time capsules, before it was bought by Burrow Corp. It appeared that the CEO had grown bored with holes, and decided to plant a base on Mars.

    “I don’t blame him one bit,” Burt said. “I’d love to live on Mars.”

    “What about me?” Susan asked.

    “What about you?” Burt said. He didn’t wait for an answer before his nose was right back in the pages of the XC328 owner’s manual.

    For the next week Susan watched from the kitchen window as Burt went in and out of the hatch in the backyard. He carried down things that had once been in the garage and attic. Susan even started missing things around the house.

    “Have you seen the blinder?” Susan asked. It was a Bloody Mary Morning as she liked to call it.

    “Did we ever have a blender?” Burt said, as he walked out the door.

    Burt came back in as it was nearing dark, he was exhausted. He had spent another day running in and out of the time capsule.

    “So when do I get to put a few of my things down there?” Susan asked.

    “What was that?” Burt said. He had just taken a shower and was drying off bald head. It was the first shower Susan could recall Burt taking in the last few days.

    “I said, I would like to store a few of my things in the time capsule.”

    “Like what exactly?”

    “I don’t know, maybe some of my jewelry that I got from mother. The things I’m too cautious to wear.”

    “Susan, the XC328 isn’t a jewelry box,” Burt said. “It’s a modern marvel.”

    “What have you been taking down there?” Susan asked, but Burt was no longer listening, he was reading the manual.

    After that night Burt spent the nights down in the XC328. The only time he came out was to sign off on shipments that were now coming to the house two or three times a day. Susan could only guess what these boxes contained, as Burt waited until night to open and pack them down in the time capsule.

    Susan woke up the next morning and found the empty boxes sitting next to the curb. One of the boxes came from a company that made aquariums to grow plants in. How odd, Susan thought, I hadn’t seen any fish being delivered, and Burt didn’t know the first thing about growing plants.

    She asked him the next time she got the rare chance of seeing him out of the ground.

    “Oh, that. You see, they just use that box to ship in.” Burt said.

    “Then what came in the box?” Susan asked.

    “Dear, don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Burt said. “I have it all taken care of. Just a few more things until it’s complete, then you’ll never have to worry.”

    But Susan did worry. What if Burt was working on something illegal down there? What would the neighbor’s say? The thought made her worry even more.

    One night as Susan lay in bed alone she noticed that the owner’s manual to the XC328 was on Burt’s bedside table. She reached over and lifted it off the table, it was heavy and flopped around like an uncooperative child in need of a nap. She settled back down on her side and flipped open the cover.

Time Capsule Modal XC328.

    Manufactured by Burrow Corp.

She flipped the page.

    Thank you for your purchase of the XC328. We congratulate you with the very best in state of the art capsules. Burrow Corp. focuses on preserving life and memory, one family at a time…

    The rest of the manual consisted of wiring diagrams and specs for temperature regulators, or at least that’s what Susan could make out of it. She closed the manual and put it back on the table.

    Susan spent the next day trying to get access inside the XC328, but Burt said it was still unfinished.

    “There’s a lot of loose wires, don’t want you stepping on one down here.” Burt said. He looked like a mole that had resurfaced after many days in the dark.

    And just like that he was down the hatch again.

    Afterwards, the sound of a hammer could be heard echoing up through the long shaft that lead down into the capsule. Susan gave up, and decided to go into the kitchen to fix a drink with the new blender she had purchased from Target. The afternoon passed in a mild blur.

    When Susan went to bed that night, alone again, she noticed that the manual to the XC328 was gone from Burt’s bedside table.

    She woke up, the morning sun was playing around at the foot of the bed. Her head hurt from yesterday, but nothing that a Bloody Mary and some Aspirin couldn’t take care of.

    She went down to the kitchen. She had the tomato juice on the counter and was reaching into the fridge for the celery when she heard Burt making noise in the back yard. She went over to the window. Burt was heaving a big overstuffed suitcase to the hatch of the time capsule.

    “How much crap is he going to stuff in that thing?” Susan said reaching for a bottle of vodka under the sink. When she came back up she saw Burt push the suitcase down the hatch hole. He stood there and watched it fall all the way to the bottom.

    Burt took one more look around, gave a salute, and crawled down the ladder of the hatch. The hatch door closed behind him.

    “Now what the hell is he up to now?” Susan took a raw swig from the bottle, and went to the backyard.

    Indeed the hatch door was shut. That was the first time it had been closed.

    She knelt down by the hatch door to find that it had no handle, it was as smooth as Burt’s bald head.

“Open up, Burt, you bastard.” She banged on the door with her fist until it hurt. There was no answer from below.

    She waited, and still nothing. Then the ground rumbled, and a strong breeze swept through. And then the sirens went off.