The Time Change Trilogy-Complete Collection

by Alex Myers

  “It’s not a glockenspiel, it’s a xylophone.”

  “And that somehow makes it better?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be back long before then,” Robbie said.

  The show featured the University of Virginia Glee Club and Banjo and Mandolin Club. Jack read this all on a placard on the edge of the stage. It said the Treble Clef Society’s female choir would join the Cabell House men. And then later that evening by the featured guest, John Fleming, on the xylophone.

  Robbie was back. “Here’s a program, it cost me a nickel, if you can believe that.”

  “Highway robbery,” Jack said. Looking at the program, he saw the names of the performers. J. Duncan Emmet led the octet. There were four bass singers and four tenors, one of which was Emmet. Seniors A.B. Guigon and Charles Blartone and a junior named Woodrow Wilson.

  “Got him,” Jack said. “Hey, this place is starting to fill up.”

  “They said that the club mingles in the lobby after the performance, so we can possibly meet up with him then.” Robbie said.

  The program said that their upcoming Christmas show would be on the seventeenth and that it was likely to sell out. It also said tickets were available at the box office. All Jack knew about glee clubs was from what he had seen on television, where grown men and women played high school students singing old Journey and Fleetwood Mac songs. After sitting through ninety minutes of “Over the Banister Leans a Face”, “Marguerite”, “The Foxes on the Hill” and “Golden Slipper”, a Journey song would have been much welcomed.

  It took Jack a few minutes to recognize the young Wilson. They all had on black tuxedos and instead of looking thin, stern, and rather homely, Wilson was five feet eleven inches tall and a hundred eighty pounds, and he was rather handsome with his handlebar mustache. The singing was better than he thought it would be and the xylophone actually accompanied the singing, so Jack wouldn’t have to sit through a separate program.

  After the show, Jack suggested they go wait in the lobby for the glee club to come out. When they got to the lobby, the singers were already gathering there. Wilson and the leader, Emmet, were talking to three girls from the Treble Clef singing group.

  “What are you going to say to him?” Robbie asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to corner him and see if I can baffle him with some bullshit.”

  “Should we interrupt them?” Robbie asked.

  “By all means,” Jack was already heading toward him. “Mr. Wilson,” Jack said, reaching out to clasp the future president’s surprisingly strong hand. “I’m Jack Riggs, Martin Riggs’ son.”

  Wilson’s face slumped and almost hit the floor. He went from being the first tenor in the glee club to a man that looked like he was ready to be shot.

  “Can we talk in private?” Jack asked.

  Wilson quickly said goodbye to the other singers and led Jack to just outside the entrance. “Is there a problem, Mr. Riggs?”

  “That they decide to make you part of the plan in Washington?”

  “Do you mean New York?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. It was originally supposed to take place in DC.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know why it’s not going to be held there,” Wilson said.

  “Precisely,” Jack said, and had no idea what Wilson was talking about but at least Wilson was talking.

  “Unless they figure announcing Douglass in a northern city would be less dangerous.”

  Douglass? Douglass who? All Jack could think of was Douglass MacArthur; he continued to play along with Wilson.

  “I suppose you need an element of danger in order to make the plan work,” Wilson said.

  “Danger? Woodrow, do you know why my father picked you to be part of the plan?” Jack asked.

  “Of course, he said he was from the future and that I would be president one day.”

  Just then, J.D. Emmet and the entire glee club came out and Wilson joined them, giving Jack a mock salute as he went off.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Last time here, I had a device in my time that we call a smart phone, but it’s really a powerful personal computing device.”

  “Jack, I’m not really sure what a computing device is, but why did you bring it last time and not this time?”

  “Last time I didn’t know I was coming.”

  “Did you hear what you just said? That didn’t make sense.”

  “It just worked out that way.” Jack watched Robbie trim the sail and bring the boat gently into the dock at New Haven. Robbie could sail every bit as good if not better than he could. He realized he relied too much on electronics and not enough on reading the wind and the waves.

  The only thing they could rent besides a horse and wagon was a box-type delivery truck. There was only one seat in the cab of the truck, so Jack sat on a straw-filled cotton sack on the raised part of the floor that would’ve been where the passenger seat was.

  “Where’s the gearshift?” Jack asked.

  “Down here on the floor.” Robbie indicated a toe shifter like on a motorcycle and sure enough, there was a handbrake-looking clutch coming out of the steering wheel.

  “You seem surprised,” Robbie said. “Surely you have things similar in your time?”

  “Oh we do, but this is not the timeline I know. There are a few big, but mostly subtle, changes to nearly everything it seems. It’s because of the changes I made when I traveled back the first time.”

  Robbie pulled ahead, working the clutch with ease and shifting into high gear. They were on a paved two-lane road with a sign that said: Hartford 65 Kilometers.

  “Take that sign for instance, it’s in kilometers. On my last trip back, I forced everyone to use the metric system. I said it would be the universal system of measure one day and it was easier.”

  “I don’t remember it being any other way. So you invented the metric system?” Robbie asked.

  “No, I’ll admit, I really didn’t invent much. I took good ideas and made them happen quicker than they would have on their own. Borrow. I like that word better than steal, but that’s still pretty much what I did. I’m the biggest patent pirate of all time. It will be strange to meet people whose ideas I used and to see what they’ve done with their lives.”

  Robbie looked straight ahead and drove the big truck effortlessly. “There’s so much mystery surrounding you, Jack.”

  “At the time, a lot of people said I was a genius. There’s even a thing from my time called the Internet that speculated I was an alien from another planet. Now when I think about all the things written about me, maybe that was the closest to being true.”

  “The work you did with medicine alone had to have saved thousands, if not millions, of lives,” Robbie said.

  “The things I invented were already thought of. It would’ve just taken years for them to happen naturally. People have used those things I invented as a springboard for other discoveries that wouldn’t have happened for a hundred years or more. Polio, tuberculosis, and yellow fever would not have had cures until at the earliest the 1940s, and they still didn’t have a cure for lupus in my original timeline.”

  Robbie hit a pothole and Jack was not braced for it. “Are you okay?” Robbie asked.

  “Just bit my tongue. I’m all right. So maybe I’ll give myself a little credit. If nothing else than just for inspiring other people. In retrospect, I did do two things rather well. I was smart enough to gather the best minds in the world and give them a way and means of achieving the greatness they were destined for. Plus, the speed at which it was done still seems impossible even though I lived through it.”

  “First my dad, and now I’m and trying to continue that tradition.”

  “And you two have done an excellent job. It’s incredible the conglomerate that you’ve turned the Riggs Corporation into. You have no idea how rich I am in the future because of your hard work. I did have an advantage though. I knew what would and wouldn’t work. The biggest thing someone should’ve not
iced, even in the recounting of my story later was, in those early years we didn’t have any mistakes. Everything we tried later went on to be successful. That just doesn’t happen in the real world.”

  “I’m going to have to pull over to get gas. This thing is acting like it has a hole in its tank.”

  “That’s good, because I need to call Sam to let him know we’re almost there. It took us an hour to get here, and we’re about halfway there, so I’ll tell him will be there in about an hour.”

  “I hope so, it’s nearly five o’clock, and it will be getting dark soon. Otherwise we will have to get a room and go the rest of the way in the morning.”

  As they pulled into the petrol station, Jack looked at the cars in the lot. There was something he hadn’t noticed before—none of the cars had headlights.

  “Why are there no lights on any of the vehicles?” Jack asked.

  “So you could do what—drive at night?” Robbie asked and couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “How am I going to call Sam Clemens? Is there a pay phone around here somewhere?” Jack asked, looking around the parking lot.

  “A payphone? I’ve never heard that before. Is a payphone a thing in your time?”

  “No, actually we carry our phones in our pockets.”

  “And wires?” Robbie chuckled again. “Do you leave a trail of wire behind you wherever you go?”

  “The phones are wireless, of course, kind of like radio waves. I’ll explain it to you later. The payphone is a coin-operated telephone. Gas stations always seemed to have one or two of them in the olden days.”

  “Lord no, there are telephones just about everywhere these days. Local calls are two bits; all long-distance calls are four bits.”

  “And you stay on as long as you want?” Jack asked.

  “Sure, you can talk all you want all the way up to ten minutes, but who would need to talk for longer than that?”

  “Ah, I don’t know maybe teenagers for one, lovers for another. What happens at ten minutes?”

  “It hangs up on you like it should,” Robbie said.

  “Twenty-five cents for local calls seems really expensive and fifty cents for long-distance calls seems way too cheap.”

  “Everything seems expensive.” Robbie pointed to a sign that said gasoline was eleven cents a gallon. “I’ll fill it up and you can go inside and make your phone call.”

  Since it was considered a local call, Jack gave the station attendant a quarter and placed a call to Sam Clemens. Again, Olivia answered. “Sam is not available.”

  Jack’s heart sank; he needed Sam’s help. “Is he not back from his trip?”

  “Oh heavens yes, he’s back. He’s home, just not available to answer the phone. He’s pacing the end of the driveway waiting for you.”

  “We are about forty-five minutes away.”

  “Excellent. Dinner is at eight. Of course you will you be spending the night?” Olivia asked. “We always assumed you would.”

  “Yes. If that isn’t too much of an imposition. I also have Robbie Sevenski with me.”

  “I know Robbie and his father. Is Kazmer with you also? There is plenty of room.”

  “No, it’s just the two of us.”

  “One more thing while I have you on the phone, Sam seems awfully excited to see you, but I’m a little confused.”

  “What is it, Mrs. Clemens?”

  “With the way Sam talked and what I thought I knew…I thought you were dead.”

  “As your husband said, the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.”

  “When did he say that?” Olivia asked.

  “He hasn’t yet, but he will one day.”

  After saying goodbye, Jack switched phones, paid fifty cents, and called Louisa May Alcott.

  “I didn’t figure it was going to do much good but I said I would go. Lidian, Mrs. Emerson, didn’t think Ralph would agree either—he doesn’t see anyone anymore. But she came back to me clearly surprised. He indicated he wanted to see you.”

  “Excellent, I could be there tomorrow around noon.”

  “One more thing. Lidian asked me and I told her I thought as much. You’re Jack Riggs, the inventor right?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Well, aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

  “You’d be surprised, I get that all the time.”

  CHAPTER 16

  There was the salt-and-pepper, bushy hair, big mustache, and white suit. They approached from up the street and Samuel Langhorne Clemens was doing manic half windmill waves the minute he spotted Jack in the truck. Without looking, he ran into the street and directed them into the driveway. Robbie pulled in and came to a stop and Sam ran to Jack’s door, slapped it, then opened it, and practically pulled Jack out of the truck.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see you again—not in this life anyway and I’ve done so much lying and stealing, I didn’t expect to run into you in the afterlife either.”

  Jack hopped out of the truck and Sam grabbed him and hugged him tightly. Then he took Jack by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length. “Let me look at you, Jack.” Sam was wide-eyed and inspecting Jack intently. “Good grief man, you haven’t aged a day.”

  “That’s not true, with all the twenty-first century medical work they’ve done on me, I should be four or five years younger.”

  Robbie walked around the truck. “Sam.”

  “Robbie Sevenski, I haven’t seen you in months. Come here, I’m in the hugging mood today.”

  “Oh sure, you let Sam hug you,” Jack said and smiled.

  “He’s Mark Twain, much more famous than you.”

  “I wasn’t more famous than you in 1857 was I, Jack?” Sam asked.

  “You were a legend waiting to happen.”

  “About that Jack, I just want to thank you for everything—for all of this.” Sam swept his hand indicating the big nineteen-room house.

  “Sam, this is the same house you had before you ever met me.” Jack looked at the house and grounds. “It looks the same as it did when I was a child.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, I guess I was about ten, and I had read five or six of your books by then, so I was pretty excited. I was a big fan.” Jack examined the house more closely. “I think with the exception of the small cinema, café, and gift shop, it’s probably nearly the same.”

  “My house is a museum?” Sam asked looking astonished.

  “It’s one of the top tourist attractions in the state of Connecticut.”

  “What do you say we go into the museum and see if we can’t find ourselves a drink,” Sam said, ushering them toward the house.

  “Perhaps we can get one in the gift shop,” Robbie said. They laughed.

  “I hope you gentlemen are prepared to do a little drinking?” Sam asked.

  “Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough,” Jack said.

  “I like that,” Sam said.

  “You should,” Jack said. “It’s your saying.”

  They laughed and walked toward the pinkish-red brick house. Navajo type designs festooned the dozens of alcoves, nooks, and chimneys. Robbie walked ahead, Sam lagged behind, and grabbed Jack’s arm. “Does he know about your specialness?”

  “About the time travel? Yes, I had to tell him. He was there the night of my wedding when I was killed.”

  “He was just a little kid.”

  “He still remembers it.”

  “Good…not that you were killed, good because he knows about your time travel escapades, otherwise he would end up knowing because I’m not going to be able to remain quiet about it.”

  Olivia Clemens met them on the porch. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Get acquainted and bring them in. I’m going to get everyone a drink,” Sam said, walking ahead into the house.

  “Robbie, it’s nice to see you again.” Olivia Clemens held out her hand. Robbie kissed it with an air of savoir faire. “And you must be Jack Riggs. I m
ust say I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Mrs. Clemens,” Jack said as he grabbed Olivia’s hand and shook it instead of kissing it.

  “Please call me Livy, everyone does. Mr. Riggs, I just want you to know how important you are to Samuel. He believes he owes his excess to you.”

  “Thank you and you can call me Jack, by the way. Sam has been quite an inspiration to me also.”

  Sam returned carrying a tray with six drinks on it. “First, I thought we could try a thing that’s all the rage in Europe. It’s called a ‘green fairy’.”

  The smell of anise and fennel filled their noses as Sam swirled the clear glowing green liquid around in the crystal glass.

  “I only save it only for special guests, because I have never seen the time when I could write to my satisfaction after even having drunk one glass of wine and this effervescent elixir. If you have some of it, you’ll start to see tulips growing out of your pants.”

  Olivia excused herself and left the room.

  Jack said, “There will come a time somewhere after the turn-of-the-century that they will ban absinthe for public consumption. There will be all kinds of crazy stories about it, but as long as you buy a quality product, it’s perfectly safe.”

  “I also have some sherry we can sip on as we get caught up and reacquainted. Please have a seat in the formal parlor.” Sam motioned them into an airy room with stiff proper furniture.

  “This would be the gift shop,” Jack said.

  “That’s the second time you have made reference to a gift shop. What exactly would a gift shop in my honor sell?”

  “T-shirts for one thing. There are a lot of T-shirts with your quotes on them. A T-shirt I got when I was a kid, featured Tom Sawyer’s band of robbers and said, ‘We Ought Never Do Wrong When People Are Looking’. I loved that shirt.

  “What is a T-shirt?”

  “A cotton undershirt.”

  “Why would people get a shirt with a picture and words just to cover it up under another shirt?”

  “People wear T-shirts on the outside. It would be the only shirt they would wear.”