by Gene P. Abel
He put the device back into his pocket, then turned away toward the raised circle of ready pods.
“Time to get into our pods, people. Just remember to be adaptable. There’s no telling what sort of situation we’ll find ourselves landing into.”
“Probably in the middle of some highway,” Ben remarked.
“Nah, the cars’ll be flying,” Captain Beck told him.
“According to what I remember hearing as a boy, they were supposed to be flying now,” Ben countered. “I’m still betting on highways.”
As each member of the team was led to a pod and strapped in by one of the technicians, a voice came over the room’s speakers. Not General Karlson as one might expect, but Dr. Weiss.
“Please,” he began, “bring back my niece. Whatever it takes.”
“We will do our best, Dr. Weiss,” Agent Hessman called out from within his pod.
Once everyone was strapped in and their pods sealed, the technicians cleared the pod platform, and everyone waited on the one person with the authority to make it all go. General Karlson took a last look at the chamber below, then at the men in their stations within his command booth, and seeing nothing in the way of red flags, he gave the word.
“Send them forward!”
Once again power surged through the mass of wiring down through the thick cabling to each of the pods to surround them with a brightening glow. High overhead the large twin propellers started to revolve, slowly at first, then picking up speed. As they did so a growing number of electrical sparks leapt between the blades and the mass of coiled wires above them. Faster and faster the blades spun, until they were a blur and the sparks filled the entire domed ceiling with a bright electrical haze. Soon nothing of the blades and wires could be seen, the domed ceiling now resembling a small star as the entire chamber resonated with power.
Then at the center of that star a dark eye opened, and from that black pupil the energy of Creation shot down the thick cables to the pods beneath, filling them each with a white glow.
“Just bring her back,” Professor Weiss prayed from his spot in the control booth. “Please, bring her back.”
9
London, England, 2120
They appeared in a flash inside a small room. Around them round boxes were stacked high and a variety of hats were scattered about, some in mid-completion on a workbench. To one end was a rear door, and at the other a cloth partition.
“We appear to be in a back room of some sort,” Captain Beck remarked. “One with a lot of hats . . . A hatter?”
“London would be about the right type of place for it in any century,” Ben agreed.
Agent Hessman crept over to the curtain for a quick peek. In the room beyond he saw a man measuring another man’s head with a measuring tape. After creeping back to the others he said nothing, just pointed at the back door. Chief Duke led the way, opening the door a crack before walking out and holding it open for the rest. Only once outside would Agent Hessman allow anyone to talk.
“Okay, first thing, we get the lay of the land. The chamber would have deposited us as closely as it could to the TDW signal.”
They found themselves standing in an alley, one as old and dirty as any alley of their own century.
Claire looked at some of the brown sludge along the edges and made a face. “Nothing new so far,” she stated.
“Just don’t touch anything until you’re sure of what it is,” Agent Hessman warned them all.
He led the way down the alley, pausing about halfway to what looked like a street. Before them, to one side of the alley, was a large metal box, nearly as tall as himself and twice that long and about three feet wide. He looked it over curiously, as did the others as they joined him. It looked like it had a lid across the whole top, which was currently closed and sealed shut.
“It looks like a garbage bin,” Ben decided, “but I see what appears to be some sort of generator attached to one side. You don’t find those on a garbage bin.”
“Sir,” Chief Duke said, bending forward to look at something on the front, “I found some writing. What looks like a model number and the words . . . ‘flash can’?”
As they were puzzling over this, one of the other doors along the alley opened and a man hefting a large waste can in both hands came out. He came over to the large object, excused his way through the team, then kicked a spot at the base of the object. The object responded, the lid pivoting up, then from underneath it a mechanical arm reaching out with a pair of large metal pincers. The man placed his can on the ground before the object and stepped back a couple of feet while the pincers came down, clamped around the can, lifted it up overhead, tilted the can inward, dumped its contents, and then lowered the waste can back down before releasing it. As the arm and pincers withdrew, the man picked up his now-empty can and started walking back to his door. Meanwhile, the arms fully withdrew and the lid closed shut. A moment later a sudden flash of light was seen from the seam beneath the lid, accompanied by what sounded like a very large bug zapper.
“Flash can,” Agent Hessman said with a knowing nod. “Futuristic trash can. It must disintegrate the trash on the spot.”
“Sounds like an awful waste of energy just for getting rid of trash,” Claire remarked.
“Depends how desperate you are to dispose of your trash,” Ben told her.
“Enough of the back alley,” Agent Hessman said. “Let’s see what’s out front.”
Walking the rest of the way down the alley, they came at last onto an open street. It was a relatively small street a block down from what looked like a main artery of the city. As they stepped more fully out into the open, the true meaning of the word futuristic assaulted them all at once.
The city still had the classic mid-London architecture, the bulk of its buildings the combined product of the last few centuries, but there were clear signs scattered about them of a hundred years of upgrades. For one thing, while there were billboards atop some of the shorter buildings, in place of static flat pictures, these projected fully three-dimensional animated advertisements for one product or another, various businesses, and even the best candidate for prime minister. Flying through the air was something shaped roughly like a three-foot jet with a box attached to its underside. They watched as it flew right up to a fifth-story window, then hovered there. A moment later someone inside opened the window and reached out. The box then slid sideways on a small track from the little jet until the man had it firmly in hand. The jet then released the package and zoomed off into the sky.
The traffic filling the streets looked like sleek cars; they made no sound as they traveled save what the wheels made across the ground, and emitted no exhaust—they didn’t even have tailpipes, for that matter—but they were unmistakably cars nonetheless. Along with them were what appeared to be taxis, one of which came to a stop in front of a man who had flagged it down. The odd thing was, though, the taxi had no driver that they could see. There were even the multilevel buses typical of London, each painted red, but once again lacking the roar of an engine and the usual exhaust pipe.
The traffic continued in the air above them as well. Not as many as were on the ground, but about a hundred feet above them lines of cars, with their wheels tucked in, were flying by way of miniature jets at their undersides and all around. They watched as one hopped up into the air from its parking space on the road below and joined the moving traffic, while a block down another one suddenly came to a halt and dropped quickly out of the traffic level onto the ground below, its wheels folding out as it came to a landing.
London 2120
London 2120
They walked slowly and cautiously along the sidewalk onto the main street, then stopped at a motion from Agent Hessman to observe more of what they could. A few doors down they saw a small storefront that was little more than an open service window topped by a menu featuring “Bang
ers and Mash.” No one was operating it, however; rather, a set of robotic arms reached out and delivered the piping-hot cartons to the customers waiting just outside the window. Another shop featured gentlemen’s clothing, but no mannequins were used to model its wares. Instead, they could see a holographic image in the window, turning this way and that just like a live person.
Finally, Agent Hessman spoke up: “A lot to take in, so stay together.”
“What are we looking for?” Chief Duke asked.
“Something large and round,” Agent Hessman answered. “I doubt that even a hundred years in the future a temporal chamber will have gotten reduced to palm sized, so it’s going to stand out. We just need to get out from under these buildings for a better look at what’s beyond.”
“A newspaper,” Claire suggested. “Even if time travel has become more publicly known, it’d still be the stuff of headlines.”
“She’s right,” Ben agreed, “though I doubt the media of the day will involve actual printed paper.”
“Oh posh,” she replied. “I’ll recognize a good newspaper no matter what form it’s in.”
“Is that a bet?” he asked.
Claire just smiled and then set a brisk pace down the street, the others forced to follow quickly along in her wake.
“Uh, sir,” Chief Duke said in an aside to Captain Beck, “should Miss Hill be leading the way?”
“Well,” the man said, shrugging, “one direction pretty much being as good as another under the circumstances, Claire has a proven talent for tracking down information, not to mention a remarkable amount of adaptability. Me, I’m still taking in everything we’re seeing around here. So . . . go with it.”
“Yes, sir. Had to check, sir.”
That said, Chief Duke made sure to keep a pace behind Claire and Ben, his eyes on anyone coming within a couple of yards of them. Behind him walked Captain Beck and Agent Hessman, and behind them a wary-looking Agent Stevens.
It looked to be about midday, the streets crowded with vehicles, the walkways with a regular flow of pedestrians. It was hard to tell the exact time of day, though, the sky being overcast and threatening rain, with errant patches of fog littered about. From time to time an unexpected gust of wind came charging down the road, blowing away the lingering fog only to drop to a dead calm moments later. The people they passed sported a range of appearances as well, from a variation on the classic pants and dresses to something more extreme.
One young woman wore clear plastic pants, the only coloring they had being around her crotch, while her blouse looked like a curtain of shredded strips of blue cloth that somehow managed to stay bunched together enough to hid her nipples. Alongside her walked a young man with heavy boots, brown shorts, and a top hat and tie, the only other thing protecting him from the cold being not a shirt but a red cape that fell loosely back from his shoulders. Another lady was wearing what might best be described as an outline of a pair of blue jeans, topped by a T-shirt that emitted a hologram from a pair of bare breasts flashing on and off as she walked. Another man, though, seemed to take the opposite extreme of these others, wearing a colorful orange bodysuit that reached from his feet up to his neck, topped by a heavy white overcoat on the back of which was printed a large red rose with a small white star in the middle.
“I dare say that fashion sense has sunk even lower than in the twenty-first century,” Claire remarked.
“Easily explained, Miss Hill,” Agent Hessman said from behind them. “Notice that all the more radical fashions are worn by the young, people not past their twenties. The rebellious. Every generation has them.”
As much as they could not help but stare oddly at the dress of the local youth, Agent Hessman noticed a few of them staring right back. Captain Beck saw the reason for his concern and slipped in an observation to his companion.
“They may find our apparel just as odd as we find theirs.”
“Perhaps,” Agent Hessman hesitantly agreed, “but I see enough clothing styles at the other end of the spectrum to know that we should be fitting in pretty well. Even Miss Hill’s hat should remain unnoticed.”
“Then why the glances? Not many, but still.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
The street came up to another intersection, this one very large with a circle of cars going in and out of it instead of straight across. From there they could see two things of significance. To their left the road slanted down to a large river, but from what they could see of it, a long ten-foot-high wall ran the length of its coast, any access to the docks beyond being by way of an elevated bridge over it. The wall looked wide and was made not of bricks but of heavy stones and compressed earth.
“That looks like a dyke,” Ben remarked as they came to a stop. “But what’s a dyke doing along the river Thames?”
To their right the road reached out toward the unmistakable skyline of buildings that one would associate with a university. Classic ancient buildings, in their midst a brilliant star to crown it all that looked like a far more modern domed structure.
“That’s London University,” Ben announced. “I’ve been there once or twice. But that domed structure in the middle is new.”
“How new?” Agent Hessman asked. “When was the last time you were in London?”
“About a hundred and two years ago.”
Beside him Claire could not help but giggle.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Two years ago, our time,” Ben stated. “There was no sign of anything like that going up.”
“Then we have one possible suspect target,” Agent Hessman decided. “It’s certainly about the right size and shape for a temporal chamber, but let’s not presume anything just yet.”
“Ah, there we are.”
Claire was indicating a public kiosk of some sort a few yards away. One man was just leaving it, the screen he’d been looking at blanking out.
“And if I may ask, what makes you think this qualifies as a newspaper?” Ben asked.
“Public access, street corner, and that man was just looking at some moving pictures the way you guys do on those terminals of yours,” she replied. “What else could it be? Though I didn’t see him putting any money in. Maybe it’s free.”
With that, she walked over to the kiosk, though leaping up from behind her came Chief Duke.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, putting an arm out before her, “but there could be a danger. That’s a computer terminal.”
“Is that what newspapers look like in the future?” she asked. “Well, let’s see what’s been going on.”
Before he could say otherwise, Claire slipped underneath Chief Duke’s arm, leaving him to issue his warnings from behind her.
“It could have facial recognition and any number of ways to identify us.”
“I will have to agree,” Agent Stevens tersely stated as he brought up the rear, “but I will also note that the science of secretive observation has no doubt increased to such a degree that if we were going to be spotted, we could have been done so by one of those holographic billboards or some mechanical bird up in the trees. Just keep an eye out, though I doubt we have yet to worry about anything in a place so public.”
Ben and Lou almost beat Claire to the kiosk, but weren’t quite in time to prevent her from looking it over. Essentially it looked like a simple flat-screen monitor on a stand hooded by a metal umbrella just wide enough for a couple of people to stand under and not get wet in the event of rain. The rest clustered around behind them, though Agent Hessman once again noticed some people glancing in their direction with odd looks. Young people, a cluster of them in their odd apparel.
“Okay now,” Claire puzzled, “how do you work? I don’t see any of those keyboards.”
Her comment was immediately answered by the appearance of a menu of options hovering in the air before her. Startled, she jumped back a foot, straig
ht into Ben’s arms, giving Agent Hessman the opportunity to slip past her and stand before the screen.
“Voice activated and probably touch-screen,” he presumed. He cleared his throat and directed his commands to the screen. “Current events, local and international.”
The screen immediately blanked, replaced by another phrase floating in the air before him: “No chip implant detected. Access will be limited.” Then this too blanked out to be replaced by a list of headlines.
“Chip implant?” Ben wondered as he looked over the other’s shoulder. “Like our locator chips?”
“No doubt a lot more sophisticated,” Agent Hessman agreed. “Okay, let’s see what we can discover.”
He reached out to press one of the selections and was rewarded by a video of a vicious storm at sea. Meanwhile, Claire returned to her task of observing all the futuristic delights around them. Across the street she saw a cluster of young people more conservatively dressed than others their age, with the studious look of college students. They all seemed to be looking back at them, so Claire did what came natural. She smiled pleasantly, fixed her hat more firmly against a sudden breeze, and kept looking around, while Agent Hessman kept at the kiosk, trying to find something useful.
That’s when one young man in particular grew wide-eyed and nearly leapt across the street, nearly before the lights changed permitting pedestrians across.
“Oh my God,” he called out as he came running over, “you are her.”
Even Agent Hessman was distracted by the unexplained outburst, though not as much as Claire when the young man practically bowed before her as he introduced himself.
“I am such a fan.”
“Somehow I really doubt that,” she uncertainly replied, “but you are . . . ?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Jeffery Nezsmith, American exchange student. May I say what a great honor it is to meet you, Miss Hill. I never thought I’d have the honor of bumping into you.”
