Time Tsunami

by Danele J Rotharmel

  Sue smiled and shook her head. “Where was Poppa?”

  “He was right there,” Twinkles replied. “If he’d been faster, he could’ve jumped on the Harley with me, but he was busy picking up apples.”

  “Apples?”

  “Yes, dear, apples spilled all over the road. Now tell me, why will a man concentrate on spilled apples when something much more important is going on?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Well, I can. It’s a man-gene. It’s the same gene that’ll make a supposedly intelligent man meticulously dust the living room blinds when you call and ask him to clean up the house quick because you’re having unexpected company. Dust the blinds! And yet leave the clothes to be folded in a heap on the couch, the dirty dishes strewn on the kitchen counter, and his wet raincoat sitting in a soggy wad on the floor.”

  As Sue laughed, Twinkles gave a gentle smile. “Truthfully, I can laugh over those blinds and the apples with a grateful heart. If that type of thing is all I can complain about after so many years of marriage, I’m a blessed woman indeed.”

  * * *

  Marc climbed the marble stairs of Hawking Hall, grumbling beneath his breath. Working in the archives was going to be anything but easy. The shelves twisted in a strange configuration that was way beyond his grasp. Of all the summer-closing assignments, this was the last he would’ve chosen.

  Reaching the vault door, he put his eye next to the retinal scanner. A few seconds later, huge bolts began pulling back and the thick metal door swung open. Sighing, Marc stepped inside and called, “Hello! Anybody here?”

  As the door swung shut and locked behind him, a blonde head peeped cautiously from behind a shelf. Marc groaned when he saw who it was. He honestly hadn’t thought things could get worse, but he was wrong. Working in close proximity with Crystal was gonna be a nightmare.

  As Crystal walked toward him, she stumbled over her feet and said, “I thought I was doing this alone.”

  “I guess the director thought you needed help.” Hanging his suit jacket over a chair, Marc asked, “So what are we doing?”

  Crystal pushed at her glasses. “Putting this year’s file boxes onto the shelves.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  Crystal laughed. “Look behind you.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Marc sputtered, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Staring at the huge pyramid of boxes leaning haphazardly against the wall, he moaned, “Didn’t anyone put any boxes away this year?”

  “I guess they were leaving it for summer shutdown.”

  Marc cracked his knuckles. “Surely there haven’t been that many counseling assignments this year.”

  “Sure there have. Two semesters’ worth of senior field exams plus an innumerable number of professional cases would make quite a pile. Each case has its own box and—”

  “For Pete’s sake, stop explaining things,” he grumbled, yanking off his tie. “I’m not your student, and I’m not stupid.”

  Crystal’s face turned bright red. Marc watched as she ducked her head, picked up a hand-held scanner, and scanned a small conical code on the lid of a box.

  “Why are you using a scanner?” he asked. “Aren’t the boxes shelved alphabetically?”

  Crystal shook her head and mumbled, “For confidentiality reasons, case subjects’ names aren’t on the boxes. A conical code and lid number are our only means of box identification.”

  Marc blinked as he picked up the box she’d just finished scanning. It felt like it was full of bricks. Crystal picked up another box and swung it easily onto her hip.

  As he raised an eyebrow, she stuttered, “My b-box is pretty light. It’s probably a cadet’s field exam—a suicide prevention by the feel of it. If criminal activity were involved, my box would be heavier.”

  He gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “If you want,” Crystal said awkwardly, “we can trade boxes.”

  “I’m not a ninety-pound weakling. I think I can manage to lug a box.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I just want to be fair…” Her voice trailed away. After a moment she said, “From the look of things, I’d say the case subject of your box was someone who was very bad or someone who’s going to be very important.”

  “Any other deductions, Sherlock?”

  She nodded. “I’ll bet a professional time surfer handled the case.”

  “Where’d you come up with that idea?” he asked as they walked toward the shelves. “Just by the weight of my box?”

  She shook her head. “Before you came in, I put four other boxes with the same fourteen-digit identification number up on the shelves. Any case subject with five whole boxes dedicated to their case is important enough that they wouldn’t be assigned as a student’s field exam.”

  Marc shifted the box in his arms. It was seriously heavy. “Where does this monster go?” he grunted. “I hope it’s close, or I may end up applying for workman’s comp.”

  * * *

  “So, did you and Poppa work cases year round?” Sue asked.

  “No, dear. Only during NSU’s school year. We’d go on mission trips during the summer. I’d teach and Poppa would sing. My hubby’s a wonderful singer. He supported himself in college by giving lessons. He had Jay singing before he was three.”

  “Who’s Jay again?” Sue asked.

  “Our eldest boy. In a few weeks, he’ll be singing in Milan at the Teatro Alla. Jay’s one of the best tenors in the world, and I’m not being maternally prejudiced. Recent reviews are likening him to Enrico Caruso.”

  “I’ll bet you’re proud.”

  “I sure am.” Twinkles gave Sue’s knee a pat. “Your boy’s also remarkably musical. Poppa’s enjoying training his voice. You must be as proud of your son as I am of mine.”

  “I couldn’t be prouder, but I can’t take any credit for his talent. Danny inherited his musical abilities from his father. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  “Me either, but that’s okay.” Twinkles laughed. “We need to let our menfolk do some things better than us or they’ll feel insecure. Men have such fragile egos, you know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Crystal frowned and tried to calm her breathing. No matter how handsome Marc was, he was just a simple bipedal mammal, and a bad-mannered one at that. She needed to get a grip.

  “So where does my box go?” Marc groaned as he shifted the heavy box in his arms.

  “XCVI-Lambda-Violet-S³-18,” Crystal replied, peering down at the scanner. “It’s a code.”

  “I’ve figured out that much, Einstein. Explain it.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to explain things?” When Marc didn’t reply, she blew a curl out of her face. “XCVI refers to the ninety-sixth row of shelves.”

  She watched as Marc stared at the rows surrounding them. “Are you telling me we’ve gotta count each row?” he groaned. “There must be thousands of them.”

  Crystal shoved at her glasses. “Actually, there are only one hundred. The veins in the marble floor show the roman numeral of each row. The design is easy to miss. It was created by introducing a…” Her voice trailed as Marc gave her a pointed glance.

  They walked in silence to row ninety-six. As the row split in six different directions, Crystal saw Marc shifting his box again. “What’s next?” he grunted.

  “Except for a few exceptions, there are six sub-rows in every main row,” she replied. “From left to right, they’re called Epsilon, Lambda, Mu, Pi, Phi, and Chi.”

  “Are you on the level?”

  “Just listen, okay? Each Greek number corresponds with a Nobel Prize category: economics, literature, medicine, peace, physics, and chemistry. Your box belongs in sub-row lambda-slash-literature.”

  As they turned down the aisle, and the sub-row began to twist and turn, Marc grumbled, “This whole place is a huge maze.”

  “I know,” Crystal said in a sparkling voice. “Isn’t it terrific?”

  Marc rolled his eyes. �
�So we’re in sub-row lambda-slash-literature, what’s next?”

  “Each shelf’s assigned a hue in the visual spectrum. The top shelf is violet. The next is—”

  “For Pete’s sake, I do know the colors of the rainbow.”

  Wincing at his sarcastic tone, Crystal said in a brittle voice, “Your box is assigned violet. It goes on the top shelf. The shelves in this row are separated into seventeen subsections. We’re looking for sub-section S³.”

  “That’s as clear as mud.”

  She hunched a shoulder and said awkwardly, “In 1996, Wislawa Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Szymborska has seventeen letters in her name—three of which are Ss. We’re looking for the third S. Id est—S³. Ab uno disce omnes.”

  “Quit speaking Latin!”

  “I didn’t know I was,” she mumbled. “It’s my knee-jerk reaction to stress.”

  “What do you have to be stressed about? I’m the one locked in the archives with a Latin-speaking know-it-all.”

  Crystal swung around and gave Marc a withering glance. “You’re a real jerk! Or should I say, es a rudi homine?”

  Marc gave a crack of laughter. “Okay, I deserved that. I hope you know how to find S³ because I sure don’t.”

  “The clues are right in front of you if you’d take the time to look,” she grumbled.

  “Sure they are, Sherlock.”

  Crystal stopped walking and pointed at the top shelf. “The middle grouping of bolts in each section are braille letters spelling out Szymborska’s name. If you look at the bolts, you can tell what section you’re in.” She stood on her tiptoes and ran her fingers over the bolts. “Two dots, no dots, and one dot left. That means we’re in section M—four sections away from S³.” She peered over at Marc. “I’ll write the braille alphabet out for you, if you’d like.”

  “I can’t believe you know braille,” he muttered.

  “Why wouldn’t I? It’s a blast to close your eyes and read a book in it.”

  “I suppose you were bored and thought pretending to be blind would be fun?”

  “There’s nothing fun about blindness,” she said. “And it isn’t something to joke about.”

  “You’re the one who enjoys reading braille for kicks.”

  “I just like figuring things out,” Crystal said, hunching a shoulder. “Louis Braille was a genius, and I respect his work.”

  Reaching section S³, she set her box on the floor and took a computer pad from her pocket. “Here are the names of all the Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2001. You can use the list. I don’t need it.”

  “Don’t tell me you memorized a hundred years’ worth of Nobel Prize data.”

  Crystal glared at him. “I get bored a lot, okay? What’s it to you?”

  “Don’t you do anything besides study?”

  “Of course I do,” she snapped.

  “Yah, right. I’ll bet you’re just a walking encyclopedia with no social life.”

  “I have a social life, it just doesn’t include you.”

  “I’ll bet on Friday nights, you cuddle up with a cat on your knee and read Oedipus Rex in the original Greek.”

  Crystal felt herself blush. “Why don’t you drop it?”

  “Scared of what I might think?”

  “No, too bored to care.” Crystal pointed at the eighteenth space on the top shelf. “That’s where your box belongs: XCVI-Lambda-Violet-S³-18.”

  “What kind of mind thought up this ridiculous system?”

  “A brilliant one. The boxes are impossible to find unless you know the code key.”

  “You’ve got that right.” Shoving his box onto the top shelf, Marc muttered, “I don’t see why TEMCO needs an archive. GAP has this information in its memory core.”

  “What if GAP came down with a computer virus?” she asked. “Having a paper copy will insure the preservation of TEMCO’s history.”

  “You’re putting a lot of faith in a bunch of paper.”

  “Under the right conditions, paper’s surprisingly durable. Centuries after we’re dead and turned to dust, TEMCO’s alkaline, lignin-free, cellulose paper will remain. It could easily last over five-hundred years.”

  “Fascinating,” Marc said dryly.

  “Isn’t it? Five-hundred years is a long time, but if TEMCO would do more calcium carbonate buffering and experiment with different paper fibers, we’d be able to increase that time frame exponentially. After all, the wrappings of Egyptian mummies have lasted for over five-thousand years and…”

  Her voice trailed away as Marc gave an exasperated sigh. Embarrassment washed over her in a sickening wave. She wished she would’ve held her tongue. Guys like Marc didn’t want lectures on the chemical makeup and history of paper—who would?

  “Egyptian mummies,” Marc mumbled. “That’s fascinating. Truly riveting. But I still don’t see the point. GAP has firewalls. Maintaining an archive is a waste of time.”

  “What if a Time Tsunami occurred? A Cataclysmic Failure could destroy GAP.”

  “The people in charge are too smart to let that happen.”

  “Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Time’s a tricky thing to mess with, and these records are too important to lose.” Crystal looked at the boxes sitting primly on their shelves and her resolution to watch her tongue flew out the window. Turning to Marc, she said with glowing eyes, “These boxes are testimonials to TEMCO’s success. Think of it! Thousands of boxes representing thousands of lives transformed for the better. Tragedies averted. Lives saved. Families healed. Happy endings! And all because of us! I don’t like office work, but when I visit the archives, I feel glorious inside, just like I do when I hear a choir singing Händel’s Hallelujah Chorus.”

  As she smiled at Marc and saw his expression, her face went white. He was laughing at her—not out loud, but silently—in the way that hurt her most. Taking a hasty step backward and tripping over the box by her feet, she fell heavily against the shelves. As the shelves rocked and crashed toward her, she screamed and threw her hands over her head.

  * * *

  “It sounds like you’ve had a busy life,” Sue said.

  Twinkles chuckled. “You can say that again! Poppa and I tried retiring, but we couldn’t settle down to the old golf-cart-and-shuffleboard routine. So, since Poppa’s in charge of TEMCO, we made ourselves a new job and became Facilitators.”

  “And what does that entail?” Sue asked.

  “A little bit of everything, but mostly delivering the games and smoothing out the bumps time counselors experience during their travels.”

  “It’s amazing you’ve had time for a family.”

  “You make time for what’s important. Our children—Jay, Deleena, and Will—were always our priority. In fact, Poppa refused to let me time surf for three months before Lena was born. I thought that was excessive, but he wasn’t taking chances after delivering Jay by himself.”

  “Is Deleena a singer like her brother?”

  “Merciful heavens, no! She inherited my voice, the poor girl. She followed in our footsteps and became a time counselor. She placed second in the Martial Arts World Tournament in Busan City, South Korea a while back. She looks like a delicate angel, but she has a fist of iron.”

  “Does she have a family?”

  Twinkles nodded. “She married her partner. Their courtship was most amusing to watch. Lena was determined not to ruin a good business relationship by dating, so her partner took my advice and used some underhanded tactics to win her over. The whole thing had me in stitches.”

  “I can imagine.” Sue laughed. “What about your youngest? What’s he like?”

  “Of all my children, he takes the most after his grandfather. He and his wife have four kids, and their youngest girl looks just like I did when I was her age.”

  “Do people call her Twinkles too?”

  “Of course they do.” The old woman smiled. “I’ve loved my work and my role as a wife and mother.” She peered over at Sue. “How about you?
Do you like motherhood?”

  “I love it. You’re lucky to have three children. I always wanted a houseful of kids, but it wasn’t meant to be.” Sue looked down at her hands. “I had complications when Danny was born, and my doctor told me I wouldn’t be able to have another baby.”

  “Yes, dear, I know. But that isn’t necessarily true. Two more children are in your future. A girl and a boy.”

  Sue’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean? Is that just a guess?”

  “My dear, I’m a time surfer. I don’t guess. I know. And they’ll both look remarkably like Sam.”

  * * *

  “Watch out!” Marc shouted, pushing Crystal to safety.

  As Marc grabbed the shelving unit and steadied it, he heard an ominous scrapping sound. Looking up, he saw the heavy box from XCVI-Lambda-Violet-S³-18 sliding toward him. Before he could move out of the way, the box smashed against his upturned face and sent him to his knees. As the box hit the floor, the seal broke and a snowstorm of papers swirled around him.

  “Marc!” Crystal cried. “Are you okay?” Springing toward him, she slipped on a piece of paper and fell on his lap. Her head slammed against his chest, and the injured side of his face hit the shelves with a resounding smack. The pain made him wince.

  “Will you be careful?” he snapped. “What are you trying to do, kill me? Can’t you go five seconds without an accident? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m so—”

  “Don’t say it! I’m sick of your sorrys! If you were really sorry, you’d get off my lap and stay away from me!”

  Giving a choking gasp that sounded suspiciously like a sob, Crystal slid off his legs. Marc winced as her knee scraped over his ankle. As she huddled by his feet, he fingered his throbbing eye and glared at her. She looked so remorseful that it made him feel like a heel. Uttering an exasperated sigh, he tried to remind himself that he was the injured party.