The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

  The door banged open, and a guy in a tiny pink sweater stumbled outside to throw up under one of the towers. Soojin and I exchanged glances. Clearly there was alcohol.

  “Let’s do this, kids.” Lizzy marched ahead of us into the house. I’d never been around so many adults who were obviously wasted. Most of the backyard parties in East L.A. were full of high school kids, and the few people older than us were easy to avoid. Here, it seemed like we were the youngest girls in a one-mile radius. The house itself was weirdly un-house-like. The bottom floor was a giant party room edged by a full bar and DJ rig. At the center of the room was a massive, transparent spiral staircase that rose up through a shadowy hole in the roof. Somebody had strung a thick chain between the banisters at the bottom and hooked a DO NOT ENTER sign to it. Which was probably a good idea, because the place was packed.

  We could barely move through the dancing, drinking, and yelling bodies. A guy grabbed my ass and laughed. It felt a thousand times more deadly than a mosh pit. As we squashed our way toward the bar, another guy offered us a bump of coke that he’d cleverly scooped into the indented filter of his cigarette. I shook my head and grabbed Lizzy’s hand so I wouldn’t lose her in the crowd. Soojin grabbed mine, and Heather took hold of one of Lizzy’s belts.

  We got beers and stood in a corner. “I think there’s another band back there!” Lizzy pointed at a hallway to our left. “Want to check it out?”

  Nothing could be worse than where we were, so I nodded.

  We found ourselves in a less crowded room with a slightly elevated stage. It was darker in here, and a band was setting up. It really looked like Million Eyes, but they couldn’t possibly be here, could they?

  “Is that—”

  “Holy fuck it’s Million Eyes!” Heather started jumping up and down. We were five feet away from them, and could practically have walked onstage and hugged them if we’d wanted to. Which I kind of did.

  Kathleen Hanna grabbed the mic. “Hey, everybody, we’re trying to make our instruments work.” Her hair was in a half-wrecked ponytail and she was wearing gym shorts. After a few more shrieks of feedback, she let out a whoop. “This is a song about the seedy underbelly of the carnival! The part that only the kids know about. This is a song about sixteen-year-old girls giving carnies head for free rides and hits of pot. I wanna go … I WANNA GO TO THE CARNIVAL!” The guitars screamed and we screamed too, and slammed into each other, and forgot that we were at a shitty party in a bizarro rich guy’s house. Finally, we had a reason to be here.

  That’s when Richard showed up behind Lizzy. He wore a Kill Rock Stars T-shirt under his expensive blazer with padded shoulders. Spotless Converse sneakers poked out from his pegged pants, and a six-o’clock shadow stood out like a layer of ash on his pale cheeks. I guessed he was in his late twenties, and I tried to remember where Lizzy had met him. “Hey, girls! Wanna see the rest of the place? The upstairs is rad.”

  “Sure.” Lizzy gestured frantically for us to follow.

  Million Eyes continued to march around the tiny stage, cursing the patriarchy. I looked back yearningly in their direction as we pushed under the DO NOT ENTER sign and I felt the heavy chain cables pass across my stooped back.

  “This is the VIP area.” He gestured at the world we saw after passing through the ceiling portal. It looked like a regular apartment, with a kitchen and dining room and a long hallway lined with closed doors. A few other people were sitting around on couches, and VH-1 was playing on a TV the size of a refrigerator.

  “Okay cool, well, let’s go back to watch Million Eyes.” My voice sounded more whiny than I intended.

  “What? You girls just got here. Let’s go to the music room and do some coke.” Richard put his arms around Lizzy and Heather, practically dragging them down the hall. Soojin and I followed. When Lizzy looked back at us over her shoulder, she had a look on her face that I’d hoped never to see again. That’s when I noticed the leather garter buckled around her upper thigh, peeking out from her skirt. It had a knife sheath built into it.

  “Oh no.” I breathed it in Soojin’s ear. “No no no.”

  She managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen.”

  Something definitely was. Had they planned this behind my back? Was everyone in on it except me?

  The “music room” was actually a spacious bedroom with a turntable on the dresser beneath a framed poster from a 1979 Cheap Trick concert. Candles burned in niches on the wall, and Richard gestured grandly at the bed. “Have a seat, darlings. We’re going to have a feast.” He started to chop lines on a mirror built into the bedside table.

  When all of us turned him down, Richard shrugged and rolled a ten-dollar bill into a tight tube. “More for me.” He snorted two of the eight lines he’d prepped, then seemed to change his mind and snorted a third. “Hell yeah! Let’s do something awesome!” He pulled off his jacket and yanked the T-shirt over his head violently. “What are we doing?” He bounced on the bed several times, then repeated himself. “What are we doing? Music? Music?” He raced to the turntable and put on whatever record was next to it.

  It turned out to be a Def Leppard album. This was getting terrible in ways I couldn’t even quantify. Richard launched himself onto the bed, nearly body slamming Lizzy, who was leaning calmly against the pillows, her Docs digging into the comforter. Heather and Soojin watched with the same expression I’d seen on their faces during the beheading scene in Re-Animator.

  “God, you are so fucking hot.” Richard grabbed Lizzy by the hips, dragged her toward him, and bit her right breast through her camisole. Then he looked up at the rest of us. “You are all hot. Don’t be jealous. Let’s do something!”

  Lizzy made her left hand into a claw in his moussed hair and gave us all a blank look. “Take off your pants, Richard. Let’s see you do something.”

  She let him go and he jumped over to snort another line before wriggling out of his pants and tightie whities with hyperactive intensity. “Now you’re talking! Yes!” He sat down at the edge of the mattress, spread his legs, and hooked Lizzy around the waist, practically scooping her into his lap face-first. She knelt between his legs and he lay back, closing his eyes but not his mouth. “Suck it, you slutty bitch. God, you love it, don’t you?”

  Lizzy moved so deliberately that she reminded me of a monitor lizard I’d seen at the zoo, its body operating in some ambiguous space between mechanical and organic. When she went for the sheath, I slid off the bed, trying to get as far as possible from whatever was going to happen next. Lizzy had the knife positioned over his artery, in the soft place where his leg connected to the rest of his body.

  “You love really shitty music, don’t you, Richard?”

  He opened his eyes in confusion. “What?”

  And then Lizzy made the cut. That knife must have been incredibly sharp because she opened two holes, quickly—one on each thigh. Unfortunately, the coke had made Richard’s reflexes preternaturally fast. He sat up instantly and grabbed Lizzy around her neck. As Lizzy struggled, Heather rocketed forward and snatched the knife. Richard gurgled as Heather stabbed him in the back and blood sprayed intermittently out of his crotch like an X-rated Cronenberg flick.

  I wanted to reach in and stop what was happening, but a more powerful force was pulling me toward the door. I stumbled backward, trying to look and not look at the figures on the bed, jerking in time to “Rock of Ages.” I crashed into the door, my arm on fire with pain, and then I was in the hallway running. It wasn’t some supernatural power propelling me after all. It was Soojin, her nails digging into my arm so hard that for a blissful moment I felt nothing but physical pain.

  “Let’s go now! Fuck that guy. Fuck everything!” She was crying and so was I, and nobody on the sofas in the other room seemed to think that was strange at all. Was it normal for girls to come screaming and sobbing out of a room where Richard was listening to music? Maybe it was.

  “Bye, ladies!”

  I heard the lazy voice behind
us as we spun down the spiral staircase, under the chain, out the door, and into the cold air that still carried the sounds of bad grunge from the tent. It had only been about half an hour since we’d arrived.

  The guys at the gate saw our smeared makeup and became oddly subdued and chivalrous as they called a cab. One patted me on the head. “Hope you had a good time tonight.”

  I looked into his face and wanted to kill him.

  Soojin and I hugged without talking for most of the ride home. She promised her sister June would pay for the cab—they had some kind of mutually assured destruction deal that involved rescuing each other from the surveillance apparatus of their parents. I buried my face in the good smell of Soojin’s neck, inhaling unidentifiable perfume and clove cigarettes. It was strangely comforting to realize that Tess had been right. I’d told myself so. I couldn’t be Lizzy’s friend anymore.

  EIGHTEEN

  TESS

  Chicago, Illinois (1893 C.E.)

  Morehshin and I reached Chicago in early August, our clothes stiff from three weeks on Seacake’s boat, and rumpled from another few days on the train. Back at the boardinghouse, I returned to my room down the hall from Soph’s parlors and set up a cot for Morehshin. It was stuffy, and opening the windows did no good. The heat mixed with stench from the river, forming an almost visible fog in the air.

  “Do cities smell like this in your time?” I was always trying to get details of the future from Morehshin by asking seemingly innocent questions.

  “Every city is different.”

  “This one is particularly rancid, though. It’s all the butchery.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  I made a disgusted noise. But I had to admit that when we walked to the Algerian Village, it felt a little bit like I was coming home. In the two months since I’d been gone, the unionized construction crews had finished the Ferris wheel—getting their overtime pay for all those late nights—and the crowds had swollen considerably. Celebrities like Mark Twain were writing about the Midway theaters, luring tourists from as far as the coasts and Europe. Before, the place felt like a carnival. Now it was absolutely Disneyland. Families argued over sweets and rides, while crowds of men slurped beers and groups of young women shopped for keepsakes. The Expo was in full swing, and would continue to obsess the nation until it closed at the end of October.

  Morehshin and I caught the tail end of morning prep at the theater. Aseel was overseeing the guys setting up chairs and tending to the stage lights. A few musicians were practicing their beats.

  As soon as she saw us, Aseel made a squee noise and ran over to hug me. “I’m so glad you’re back! I’ve had to fire three seamstresses because nobody knows how to sew the coins onto our vests properly.” Then she turned to Morehshin. “Are you the … uh … cousin that Tess told us about?” Our cover story for my absence was that I’d had to rush back to California for family reasons. Aseel was improvising.

  “Yes! Aseel, this is Morehshin.”

  The two women faced each other uncertainly. “Morehshin, Aseel has been working with me on our project.”

  “I am happy to meet you, sister.”

  Aseel tilted her head, bemused by Morehshin’s formal greeting from the future. But she replied in kind. “Welcome to the village, sister.” Now that I knew about the queens, I realized sisterhood wasn’t strictly metaphorical for Morehshin. I tried to imagine a world where a small class of reproductive women produced thousands of sterile sister babies.

  Aseel had more pragmatic topics on her mind. “Do you know how to sew as well as Tess does?”

  Morehshin patted her pocket. “I have a multi-tool.”

  “That thing sews, too?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Really?” I was amused. “Does it also clean the house?”

  Aseel clapped her hands at us. “I don’t care what your sewing kit looks like! Fix those damn costumes! We’re doing six performances every day now.”

  In the dressing room, Aseel sorted skirts and chemises into frothy piles. “These can be salvaged, but these … I’m not so sure.”

  Morehshin peered at a skirt with a long rip and ran the multi-tool over the fabric absently. When she saw us staring at her, she spoke. “I’m sampling. Now I can sew.” And with one smooth gesture, she ran her index finger along the rip, aiming the uncanny gleam of the multi-tool. The fabric healed in its wake, reproducing a few small stains and flaws to match the surrounding cloth.

  “You’re not from Tess’s time, are you?” Aseel raised an eyebrow.

  “No.”

  I broke in. “Let’s not talk about this here. Aseel, tell me what I missed.”

  “I got Sol to hire a song plugger, and she performed ‘Country Lad’ at one of the big theaters. Now the sheet music is selling like crazy—plus the show is booming.” She gestured at the costumes and sighed. “Which is why there’s so much more work.”

  “I don’t think you’re actually sad about it.” I poked her.

  “Do you know I’m the only woman managing a show in all of Chicago? Maybe in all of America.” The pride in Aseel’s voice was unmistakable.

  Morehshin looked up from sampling a gold-embroidered vest. “You are one of the lucky ones who has broken the chains of her time.”

  Aseel nodded, thick black braids shifting slightly on her head. “I suppose that’s true. You must have done the same.”

  “No. That is why I am here.”

  A somber mood settled over us and I picked through the ragged cloth listlessly.

  “There is one thing you’ll be very interested to know, Tess.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “One of the girls from the Irish Village told me that the Lady Managers are planning a visit to the Midway to investigate how we’re corrupting public morals. And guess who is coming with them?” She paused dramatically. “Our favorite upstanding gentleman from New York: Anthony Comstock. He’s already here in Chicago.”

  A thrill ripped through me. Despite my foolhardy trip to 1992, we’d arrived downstream in time to organize a collective response and make the edit. I’d even brought backup.

  Morehshin narrowed her disturbingly crystalline eyes. “This could be the moment of divergence.”

  I folded my arms. “Transformation of that magnitude is never the result of a single event—”

  She stood up, palming the multi-tool. It throbbed with white light. “Do you want women to die? Worse than die? Every event has the potential to split history.”

  I froze, trying to pull meaning from her odd syntax, wondering if Morehshin had already gone rogue.

  Aseel ignored the tension. “All I know is that he got two unlicensed bars shut down in the city last week. He’s trying to make a big splash.”

  “Let us defeat his splash with…” Morehshin paused, seemingly lost in thought.

  “With a plan?” I asked cautiously.

  “Yes. A good plan.” She sat down and picked up her sewing again.

  Aseel nodded. “Let’s meet at Soph’s parlors tonight.”

  * * *

  Outside it was warm, sticky, and dark, but Soph’s parlors were comfortable. I was glad to discover Morehshin had no taboo against drinking gin. Apparently alcohol was not a queen food.

  I stubbed out my cigarette and started thinking aloud. “Comstock is riding high. Artists in New York are fighting his obscenity lawsuits, and the newspapers love to make fun of him. But he wants that. It’s publicity. Shutting down the Midway theaters means he can expand his battleground.” My voice faltered.

  Soph nodded. “The first question is, who is on his side?”

  “Obviously the Lady Managers.” Aseel wrinkled her nose.

  “And the courts, upholding the anti-obscenity laws he’s helped create. Plus there’s the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which we know includes travelers.” I felt suddenly hopeless. I was in the right time and place, but we were still up against institutions whose longevity resisted editing. Could we really do this?
/>   Morehshin drank two shots in one gulp. “You are thinking about this like drones. Comstock is not a collective. He is an individual who has convinced other individuals that he represents something more.” She struggled to find words. “You realize he is unlike other people, don’t you? His isolation has made him sick in a very specific way. We have to show the public how alone he is.”

  This emphasis on Comstock’s uniqueness sounded like shades of the Great Man theory. But it was an interesting perspective. There were certainly other moralists like Comstock, but they weren’t driven by the same obsessive desire to peep inside people’s mail and hoard dildos. He gained power by breaking communities, not making them.

  Soph pulled a pin from her hair and started playing with it. “It’s true. We need the public to see Comstock as an individual loon who hates the great people of this city. People are already angry that he’s shutting down their favorite bars.”

  “He’s always blathering about protecting the morals of women,” Aseel mused. “That’s why he’s teamed up with the Lady Managers. What if we could show the city that women love our show? Then there’s nothing to protect. All he’s doing is ruining our fun.”

  “We’d need an audience of women, packing the house. We can rally our friends, but will it be enough?” Soph scratched her head.

  I felt a breeze coming in through the window, then realized it was from the air Morehshin displaced as she jumped up, fast and silent. “Keep talking,” she mouthed.

  I raised my voice. “Let’s have more gin!”

  Aseel, who was used to playing along with strange traveler behavior at this point, answered just as loudly. “Yeah, let’s get drunk!”

  Morehshin crept up next to the door, multi-tool suddenly in hand.

  “I’ll go to the cabinet and get a bottle.” Soph made a big point of clattering around and making noise.

  That’s when Morehshin twisted the knob. A glittering cone of light shot from her fist into the dark hallway. In its fading glow, I could see Elliot collapsed on the floor, an ear horn rolling out of his hand. He’d been eavesdropping.