Assassins of History- Transference

by Vernon Dutton

  “What have I really, really gotten myself into? It’s got to be some kind of a time warp. I don’t want to live in another age. I like it in the 21st century. I love my wife. I love my house, car and job. I love my life.”

  After I had spent some time wallowing in self-pity and asking myself unanswerable questions, I shouted, “Enough,” and leaned back against the tree. I wiped the tears from my face and closed my eyes. Utilizing a Taoist embryonic breathing technique, I slowly inhaled and exhaled the clean air for a number of minutes.

  Feeling rested, I opened my eyes and looked up at the beautiful yellow and orange leaves above me. Turning to the surrounding terrain, I beheld the beautiful green grass of the cemetery around me. I observed the trees and unique houses on the other side of the road. It was such a serene landscape.

  I had passed only two wagons moving toward town, when I set out down his road. There were no vehicles moving in the immediate area now. It was quiet and all you could hear were the calls of birds and buzzing of insects making their presence known. Occasionally a cow would make a sound in the distance.

  Then out of the blue it hit me. A long time ago I had seen a science fiction movie starring Bruce Willis with a unique premise. I couldn’t quite pull the complete concept out of my memory bank. It was at the edge of my consciousness or you might say on the tip of my tongue. Then it emerged full blown in my mind: Parallel Universes.

  I said it out loud, “Parallel Universes.”

  That had to be it. That was why all the history was different, but the customs were the same. I immediately felt better, but then another load of questions jumped into my mind, “What about the Sphere? How did that figure into the equation? Why was the Sphere moving to a parallel universe?”

  Again my mind couldn’t comprehend what the Sphere signified and how it operated. Finally, I literally threw up my hands and said out loud, “Getting the answer to one of the big questions is enough for today.”

  I must have been there for what I estimated to be about thirty minutes. I pulled my watch from my trousers’ pocket and saw it was 2:30 p.m. Then I thought, “Besides, I have to see about getting an appointment with the banker who has a big say in hiring a school teacher.”

  Letting out a groan, I got up from my perch under the big oak and dusted off my britches. I gathered up my bundle of old clothes and started to walk toward the cemetery gates.

  I heard a clink and looked down to find that the toothbrush and tooth powder tin had fallen out of my roll of clothes. I stooped and picked up the articles and then thought, “Now is as good a time as any to try them out.” I brushed a leaf off the toothbrush and put it in my mouth. I uncapped the powder tin and jiggled the tin until there was a good supply of powder in my palm. I pulled the brush out of my mouth and jabbed the bristles into the powder. A lot of the powder stuck to the bristles due to the wetness of the saliva. I quickly put the brush in my mouth and began the ancient up and down motion we were all taught as children.

  The sweet taste of peppermint erupted in my mouth and I gurgled my appreciation. Once I had finished my dental hygiene for the day, I expectorated the excess foam and put the articles back in my clothes roll. Then, I proceeded through cemetery gates and turned left.

  As I ambled along, I listened to the sounds of the land. I could hear chickens clucking in some backyard coops. There was a multitude of robins and blue jays flying around making all kinds of calls. The sun was at my back and the warmth felt good, but it was just starting to get a little hot due to my black clothing absorbing the heat.

  I made it back to the main intersection that I had encountered just a few minutes ago. I turned right, which was eastward, and walked three blocks to the bank.

  It was an imposing two story structure with an outside brick wall sporting beautiful lead inlaid glass doors for an entrance. I entered, went to a teller’s window, which was behind a proverbial barred opening, and asked to see the bank president. The teller looked me up and down and, due no doubt to the new clothes and boots, probably thought I might be of some importance.

  He asked my name and raised his eyebrows when I said James Hager. Apparently, the name had some clout in the area. He quickly excused himself and went through a door behind the tellers’ counter. He continued to the back of the building and entered a room which I determined to be the bank president’s office.

  He came back in just a few seconds and said, “Mr. Throckmorton will see you now.”

  I moved to the side of the teller windows to a swinging wood entry gate about waist high that led to the area behind the counter. I took my time and looked at all the elaborate interior woodwork. You definitely don’t see this type of workmanship anymore. As I passed through the swinging gate into the Holy of Holy’s, I looked for the huge metal vault that I knew must exist in a 19th century bank, and sure enough, there it was at the back of the room. Its two-foot thick door stood wide open showing all the integral and complicated locking mechanisms.

  I took off my hat and entered the lair of the archetypical robber baron of the 19th century, the town banker.

  Mr. Throckmorton rose from behind his desk and came forward with his hand extended and introduced himself, “Hello, Mr. Hager. I am Elias Throckmorton.”

  As we shook hands, it was all I could do to keep from laughing. If ever a person was the epitome of what I pictured an old-timey banker would look like, Mr. Throckmorton fit the bill. He was about five foot, three inches tall, weighed about one hundred twenty pounds dripping wet and was dressed in a black linen suit with a white high-collar shirt decorated with a red bow tie. He was bald on top with a three-inch band of hair starting over his left ear and traversing the back of his head to end up over his right ear. Sweat glistened on top of his bald head, which he mopped with a white handkerchief as he moved back to the leather swivel chair behind his desk.

  After seating himself and motioning me to a chair before his desk, he inquired, “What may I do for ya this fine day?”

  I countered, “I would like to make a deposit of one hundred forty dollars.”

  He smiled with great delight revealing yellow teeth with enough gaps to remind me of a crocodile getting ready to attack his prey along some African river. He immediately called, “Mr. Eldredge, please come herah for a moment.” The teller with whom I had originally spoken entered the office. Mr. Throckmorton gestured toward me and directed, “Please open a new account for Mr. Hager and deposit his cash.”

  Mr. Eldredge turned to me and I counted out one hundred forty dollars in specie. I looked up and saw the questioning look and raised eyebrows on his face. It was as if he wanted to ask, “How did someone such as you come to possess this amount of money?”

  I handed him the money and smiled as if to say, “None of your business.”

  He frowned and left the room to prepare my bank account book.

  I then broached the subject that was foremost on my mind, “Mr. Throckmorton, I have another matter I wish to discuss. I have just taken rooms in tha area and learned that tha local school teacher’s job was vacant. I have held similar positions and would like to be considered for tha job.” This took him by surprise and he just stared at me for a moment. He was weighing the idea plus the one hundred forty dollars I had just deposited and could withdraw at a moment’s notice.

  He came to a decision, leaned back in his chair, entwined his fingers across his stomach and asked, “What background do ya have in teaching?”

  “I have taught school for five years,” I lied.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Little Rock, Arkansas and Baltimore, Maryland,” I answered.

  He smirked at the mention of the first city I named, but perked up at the second. This quickly led to, “How many students were in yar schools?” he cross-examined.

  “Ten to fifteen, depending on tha time of tha year,” I responded.

  “You know some of the children in our school aren’t really children. There are two boys in their late teens that get sent to school by
their father each year after harvesting and fall planting to learn their letters and some ‘rithmatic. He wants ‘em to take over his farm and small mercantile operation when he passes away. His boys have been real stubborn and refused to learn what they need to know to carry on tha business. In fact, they’ve run off tha last two school teachers. Are ya still interested in tha job?” he quizzed.

  “I’ll have a go at it. What does it pay?” I asked.

  “That’s up to tha teacher, but tha last teacher charged $2.00 per pupil for six months of schooling,” he replied.

  “Is therah a list of tha parents with children who attended tha last school term?” I questioned.

  “Yes, I can supply you such a list. Do you want tha job?” he inquired with a note of nervousness in his voice.

  “Yes, I’ll take tha job,” I affirmed.

  We shook hands and he breathed a sigh of relief. He grinned at me like the Cheshire Cat. I immediately knew something was amiss.

  Mr. Throckmorton asked Mr. Eldredge to bring a list of the attendees of the school’s last term. Mr. Eldredge readily supplied him a list, which he presented to me. It included the names of the parents that had previously enrolled their children in the Shepherdstown Day School, as it was referred to by Mr. Throckmorton, as well as their names and ages.

  I use the word children very loosely. There were 15 names and they were listed as follows:

  Janie Mumma-13

  Jimmy Poffenberger-12

  Jenny Williams-10

  Jeremy Sage-16

  Jonah Sage-17

  Wilfred Throckmorton-11

  Paul Piper-14

  Peggy Newcomer-17

  Deborah Miller-16

  Esther Line-14

  James Clipp-14

  Ruth Pry-16

  Maryanne Mercer-17

  William Douglas-12

  Wayne Coffman-15

  After contemplating the names, I questioned,” Where can tha families be found?”

  He replied, “Don’t worry about that right now. All tha children are helping their folks ‘bringing in tha sheaves’.” He smiled at his effort at levity and I smiled too. “The children won’t be available until tha first week of October when harvesting is done,” he added.

  I remembered the maturing fields of corn along the road on my fateful slog from Maryland to Virginia. I wanted to ask if the young ladies would be out in the fields along with the boys, but thought better than to be facetious with my employer on the first day of the job.

  Throckmorton further elucidated, “You can ask anyone in town as to tha locations of tha families, but it would be bettah to wait closer to October to begin contacting them. I will put out tha word that therah is a new experienced teacher for tha Day School and you can count on my son, Wilfred, to be yar first pupil.”

  I thanked him profusely, shook his sweaty hand, and as I was leaving, stopped at Mr. Eldredge’s desk and picked up my account book.

  My name was written in perfect calligraphy at the top of the bank book. A one hundred forty-dollar deposit was listed in the transaction space with today’s date stamped in the margin. I remembered the first bank book I had received back in the 1950s at the ripe old age of six. This bank book looked exactly like that one.

  With a dubious teaching job lined up, I decided to head for my humble dwellings on the river.

  If I was going to be a teacher, I needed to know what had happened in the Civil War in this universe. The newspaper article I read had very little information and speculated only that something was afoot. That’s when it hit me. Newspaper! I could go to the local newspaper office and hopefully they had back issues that I could read to catch up on the history of this place.

  I took my time going back to my room at the mill. Thinking things over, I had accomplished a lot.

  First, I had probably deciphered the riddle of where I was: a parallel universe.

  Two, I had procured a job, not an easy feat for a stranger in a strange land.

  Three, I had a plan in mind for learning about this time period. I definitely felt satisfied about my day’s activities.

  However, I think I had exceeded the little bit of strength I had built up. By the time I arrived at the mill, I was very fatigued. I went straight to bed without my supper.

  Chapter 5

  The Dark Mage’s Log: ‘Earth 3’ Date: 18620915

  Jargunn landed in the East Woods at midnight on the second night after the imposter had been transferred to this spot. He willed his Astral Conveyance Vehicle (ACV) back into orbit in the stealth mode to await his summons.

  Jargunn hated this assignment. It was really beneath his dignity and position in the Watcher’s Guild. To add insult to injury, Lord Dendaras had commanded him to search only at night for the imposter.

  “Why?” he asked himself. “Probably because it wouldn’t be appropriate to have a “Scent Droid” rummaging around the countryside in full view of the populace during the day. That makes sense,” he answered. Continuing his thoughts, “But why couldn’t I disguise myself and live on ‘Earth 3’ until I found the imposter? I really don’t know the answer to that last question. However, Lord Dendaras did hint at a possible answer to that query.”

  Before traveling to ‘Earth 3’, Jargunn had inspected the Sphere that had transported the imposter. It had not been employed in other transferences since then. Jargunn utilized the alien scent module to record the imposter slayer’s scent and transferred it to his hand-held tracking unit. This special unit, however, required being positioned no higher than three feet from the ground to successfully track a scent. Another complication was that it wouldn’t work if Jargunn was in a cloaking mode.

  These were the primary reasons Jargunn was forced to come to ‘Earth 3’ at night and physically track his prey.

  In Jargunn’s mind the physical requirements of this assignment were what made it such degradation. He would have to bend over to place the hand-held tracking unit close enough to the ground to detect the imposter’s scent. His back would suffer greatly. Looking up at the ‘Earth 3’ moon, he raised his fist skyward and ranted, “This is a mission that should have been assigned to a novice Watcher!”

  Regaining control of his angst, he settled his essence and employed a logical analysis of the one serious problem that needed to be avoided. This was the discovery of his existence by any of the local inhabitants. It could create a historical flux or paradox and too many of these events had occurred during the first thousand years of time transference.

  Thus, as a member of the Watcher Guild, he could be put to death for producing such a paradigm.

  It took Jargunn about ten minutes of personally scanning the “East Woods” before the alien scent unit picked up the imposter’s scent signature. Bending over to hold the tracking device at the required height for a positive read out, Jargunn began his pursuit.

  Jargunn’s tracking device took him to Sharpsburg.

  The cur that had attacked a previous night traveler spied the passage of the Watcher with his one good eye from under his owner’s front porch and just growled. It had experienced enough injury from strangers in the night.

  Jargunn followed the tracking beam through town and onto the road toward Shepherdstown. After just a few hundred yards, he heard two small four-legged animals making the most primal cries as they ran down toward him from a residence sitting back off the road. Once the animals entered the road, they charged him.

  The Watcher threw up a force field that the animals barreled into at full speed. The collision knocked both animals off their feet and silenced their savage howling for blood. They landed in a heap on the dirt road. After a brief time, the subdued ravagers regained consciousness. Emitting wails of pain, they put their tails between their legs and staggered back to the lair from whence they launched their fiasco.

  Jargunn snickered low in his throat. His first inclination was to shred the animals, but there had been enough hijinks for a lifetime on ‘Earth 3’ already.

  The Watche
r continued his westward movement adhering to the imposter’s scent like a blood hound.

  On reaching a steep downward slope of the road, Jargunn came upon a confusing scene that seemed to have been a confrontation. He investigated small shards lying in the road possibly from some broken vessel, which on inspection had housed an awful smelling liquid. Following his tracking device from the road toward a tree line, he unearthed buried clothes in an adjacent field. From this cache of imposter paraphernalia, he deduced that there had been a clothing exchange of some sort. On closer inspection he discovered human footprints descending the slope and human footprints plus a four-legged animal’s footprints ascending the slope.

  Using the scent device, Jargunn reestablished his tracking of the imposter.

  Progressing down the slope, Jargunn approached a small but deep waterway situated next to a large rapidly-flowing body of water. He recalled in some bygone lecture that ‘Earth 3’ allowed for floating vessel movement up and down waterways in this time period, but he wasn’t knowledgeable in how they operated. Yet, since there was no vessel traffic now, Jargunn moved toward the wooden enclosure built into the small waterway.

  However, four-legged animals housed in a structure nearby picked up Jargunn’s scent and began making awful noises, including kicking the sides of their enclosures. The residents of a few local buildings suddenly exploded out of their dwellings next to the waterway with primitive, but, dangerous weapons. Apparently, they were on high alert for some reason. The rapidity of the response to the noise of the Earth animals disconcerted Jargunn so he turned on his cloaking protection and retraced his path up the hill.

  It was getting close to dawn so he called for his craft to rendezvous at the top of the hill. It landed in its stealth mode without sight or sound. He boarded it and departed for home base. It made no sound on takeoff, but it left a perfectly round ten-foot diameter circle of crushed corn.