“Benny, wait.” I try to follow.
“Tomorrow. Not tonight. I’ll teach you tomorrow.” Benny gives another shiver and bobs his head up and down. “Tomorrow will be better.”
I stay where I am and let him retreat from me. “Okay. Tomorrow then.”
Benny nods once more and turns away, breaking into a sprint and disappearing around the corner of the neighbor’s house.
I watch the corner for a few more moments, then let my gaze drift upward to the partial moon still hanging above the fog. How do you know when it’s tomorrow in a place with no time? I lower my head and stare at my apartment, realizing that I may have just been duped. Shit.
I shrug off the annoyance at the situation and climb the stairs to my apartment. It’s vacant and quiet—not that I expected different. I check each room just to be sure, and then plop down on the couch. Benny’s shivering form runs off again in my mind. Fine. Ditch me. I’ll teach myself.
I sit up straight on the couch and try to determine how to start. Somehow sitting feels wrong so I stand back up. What am I supposed to look at? I survey the living room, then settle on the open space between that and the kitchen. I fixate on the space the way Benny did, holding my hands out in front of me to open up the window to the past. Nothing happens. I concentrate harder, but I’m not sure what I’m hoping to see. Frustrated, I move a few steps closer to the kitchen. Come on, Ben. Concentrate. I screw my face up and stare hard into the open space between me and the kitchen counter. I pry at the air with my fingers as if I could break it open by hand. I keep at it for what seems like at least ten minutes without any success.
I mutter curses at my stubborn apartment and try one more time, calming my mind and trying to get specific. I want to see my apartment in 2009. I want to see the time I left. June, 2009. June, 2009. Come on . . .
The air shimmers with color.
Elated, I raise my hands above me and shout, “Yes!”
My concentration is broken. The shimmer vanishes.
Sonofabitch.
My success was short-lived, but my spirit is buoyed. It’s possible.
The space in front of me is back to normal, but I catch a whiff of a peculiar scent that my experiment has left behind. It’s lingering around me. I take a longer sniff and try to place the smell. Sweet. Familiar. I wrack my memory to try to place it. It smells like . . . warm maple syrup.
Curious, I gather myself up to try again. I place my hands out in front of me and squint. Ben Travers, master of time. Here we go.
<><><>
St. Petersburg-June, 2009
Mym is some sort of breakfast wizard. I would have sworn she was only out of bed five minutes ahead of me, but when I stumble into the kitchen, there are waffles. More reasons I love dating a time traveler.
I am not the only one who gets waffles. Our sendoff ends up including a visit from most of my friends. Blake and Mallory, Carson, Francesca, and Tucket all get servings. Mym even makes a plate for a surprise guest, Other Me. When Benji walks in the door, he looks every bit as surprised to find all of us in attendance as my friends are about seeing him. I do some hasty explaining of the situation and how Benji is going to stand in for me in my absence. To their credit, my friends don’t freak out at all to his face. Even Mallory, who has yet to witness the level of strangeness that the rest of us have been exposed to as time travelers, keeps a cool composure.
Benji makes a bit of polite conversation, then scarfs down his waffle and retreats to the bathroom for a shower. Francesca is at my shoulder in an instant. “How weird is this for you? Do you guys get along?”
“Yeah. Sure. It’s no big deal.”
Francesca raises her eyebrows. “If some other me strolled into my apartment, it’d be a little more than just a big deal. It’d be a showdown, especially if she was older. This guy seems like he knows what’s up. Like he’s wise for his age.”
“And I’m not wise?” I protest.
Francesca laughs. She contains herself and pats me on the arm. “Oh, is this going to make you doubt yourself? I mean if I had some other me who dressed better and maybe had better hair, I’d be pretty upset.” She studies me, as if waiting for me to gush my true feelings. I attempt to flatten my bed-head cowlicks down and frown at her. Then I open the fridge and look for the orange juice. Francesca lingers a moment, but when I don’t crack under her scrutiny, she goes back to the table to discuss things with Mallory.
Blake picks up his fiancée’s plate and joins me near the trashcan. “How long are you going to be gone?” He scrapes remnants of waffle and syrup into the trash before placing the dishes in the sink.
“Hard to say. Could be a while, I guess.” I wander out onto the front steps with my juice. Blake follows.
“No worries, in any case.” Blake says. “We’ll hold the place down for you.”
I glance back inside to the kitchen table where Francesca is whispering excitedly with Mallory. Mym wanders over and joins the girls’ discussion. I can’t help but wonder what they’re talking about. “Just promise me that you aren’t going to end up liking this guy better than me.”
“Him?” Blake jerks a thumb toward the bathroom. “You kidding? I hate him already. Just on principle.” He bumps my fist.
“See? I knew I could count on you. Francesca was all ‘Oooh, he seems so mature . . .’”
“Total fucking asshole.”
I smile. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
“Bring it in, man.” Blake stretches his arms out and we give each other a hug. As he lets me go, he pats me on the back. “We’ll still be waiting for you when you get back. Just make it home in one piece.”
“Deal.”
“And hang on to that one.” He gestures to Mym, who is leaning against the back of Mallory’s chair. “I know a keeper when I see one.”
“I’m trying, man. If I have any chance of making this work, it’s with her. I’ve seen plan B and it’s living in a shack in the desert with a tortoise.”
“Screw plan B.”
Mallory notices me watching and breaks away from Mym and Francesca to join us.
“Ben was worried about his alter ego,” Blake says as Mallory attaches herself to his arm.
“Who? Dipshit Other Ben?” Mallory asks.
“We already discussed it,” Blake says. “Pretty sure that’s what we’re calling him.”
“D.O.B. for short,” Mallory adds. “And to, you know, not let on that we hate him right away.”
I smile and clasp her hand in mine. “I love you guys.”
“We’ll see you soon, man.” Blake replies.
I turn away and head for the bedroom to pack my things before I lose all motivation to leave.
I’ve done four practice runs with the motorcycle’s anchor deployment device before I feel ready to take on passengers. Each time, the spool of cable has extended perfectly, trailing a flat, weighted cattail of wire behind the bike. Initially, Doctor Quickly and I had tried using just a weighted disc, thinking a hockey-puck-shaped weight might stay adhered to the ground the best at speed. When that skipped and danced around too much, we tried a well-greased ball at the center of the disc, hoping it would roll smoothly. That bounced even more, making it far too dangerous to consider. Finally we frayed the end of some cable till it resembled a broom. Weighted properly and, with a few extra strands at intervals along the length of cable, there were always at least a half dozen wires in contact with the ground no matter what speed I got the bike up to. Judging by the occasional sparks it caused, wear and tear on the cable will definitely be a factor after multiple deployments, but it seems like the safest solution, and most likely to keep me from joining my other self in the Neverwhere.
It has taken some convincing to make Tucket abandon his collection of “authentic” twenty-first century clothes. I told him it would be infinitely better to just dress in motorcycle gear, thinking that anything he found from the past century would have to be less gaudy than the outfits he’s chosen
so far. I suspected he might come downstairs dressed like The Fonz from Happy Days, but I never factored in the possibility that he could jump back in time and order himself authentic Evel Knievel stunt gear for the occasion. As he walks up to the sidecar in the star-spangled jumpsuit, he sets the matching helmet on his head and grins. “Pretty hardcore, right?”
Mym has followed him down the stairs, dressed more simply in jeans and a tank top, and is repressing laughter at the sight of my face. She’s got my leather jacket and her backpack draped over one arm. She offers me my jacket. I shake my head. June morning air in Florida is still warm enough to make you shed layers, and I’m still shaken from the last connection with my departed self. The last thing I need is to get dizzy or pass out while riding. Mym stuffs the jacket into the baggage area of the sidecar.
I gesture to Tucket’s brilliant white costume. “Did you put him up to this? Are you guys pranking me right now?”
Mym shakes her head and shrugs, trying not to laugh. “He’s your stunt man, not mine.”
I look Tucket up and down, noting that he even managed to find an oversized EK belt buckle. “Okay, you can wear the jumpsuit, but the cape stays here.” I point to the garage. Tucket seems confused. “Because of wind resistance,” I add.
“Oh. Right.” Tucket nods and unclips the cape from beneath his wide white lapels, folding it up carefully. “That makes sense. Evel Knievel didn’t always wear the cape on jumps. I’ll save that for special occasions.”
“Okay.” I smile, in spite of myself. “You know, Evel Knievel lived close to here. Just over in Clearwater. Died a couple years ago, but maybe when we get back we can pay him a visit.” I grab my messenger bag and shut the garage.
“That would be righteous!” Tucket exclaims. “You think he’d take a selfie with me?”
“What’s a selfie?” I ask, stowing the bag.
Mym waits for me to straddle the bike and climbs on behind me. “Just wait a little. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will in a few months. “You have a Facebook account yet?”
“Not yet. Should I?”
“No.” Mym kisses my cheek and gives me a squeeze. “I’ll keep you to myself.”
Tucket holds up a phone from his seat in the sidecar. “I have a Facebook! I got one as soon as I got here. I also got a Myspace and a Xanga blog and a Match Dot Com profile. In a couple of years I can get Instagram and Tinder.”
“What’s a Tinder?” I ask.
Mym groans. “That one you’re definitely not getting.”
I shrug and fire up the motorcycle.
First stop for us isn’t very far into the future. Mym pulls up a GPS location on her MFD and navigates us to one of her dad’s lab spaces in 2015. The place hasn’t been attacked, the pit stop is just to pick up anchors to use to get to other locations, but we take a few minutes to check out the sights as well.
The near future is not hard to adjust to as we cruise around town. Back To The Future II seems to have vastly overestimated the importance of flying cars or automated weather, but there are definite differences from 2009. Even the six years we’ve jumped forward have brought around some obvious changes in St. Petersburg. For one, everyone seems to have grown out their facial hair. The men anyway. For young women, the most drastic change I spot is the frequency and density of arm and body tattoos. I feel like I had seen a couple in 2009, but nowhere near the amount visible now. Every other woman we pass on Central Avenue seems to be sporting a colorful sleeve down to her elbow.
Downtown is booming. There is a new fancy shopping venue near the movie theatre, even a hip-looking barber shop called The Shave Cave where someone is getting a shoe shine as they read their electronic tablet. One of my favorite Mexican restaurants is gone, replaced by a Trader Joe’s grocery store. We do a pass along Beach Drive to check the new additions there as well. My favorite gelato place is still in existence so I decide that future can’t be totally unappealing. I pull over and let Mym plot out our next jump.
To get to different locations requires attaching a degravitized item to my bike’s anchor cable. By only letting the anchor touch the ground and not the cable, we assure that the chronometer will jump us forward to the same relative location in regard to the anchor, and not just our current surroundings. The system takes some care, but Mym has been smart and scoured her father’s extensive collection of anchors to choose ones that are mostly located on the ground and in places we can fit an entire motorcycle.
Her first selection takes us to Valencia in 2017, the site of the first lab attack. While we can’t interfere with the attack happening without potentially altering the timestream, we can do more investigating into the perpetrators. Mym already checked some of the aftermath of the attack via the security footage, but by arriving beforehand, we can get a look at them in person.
This is my first time visiting Spain in winter. It’s January so the weather is cool, but mild. Valencia seems like a fashionable city, full of pedestrian traffic. We’ve arrived in the early afternoon near the center of the city. Mym explains that Doctor Quickly tends to keep labs on different continents in various years in order to get around easier. She navigates me through the bustling streets via the GPS on her multi-function handheld unit. Tucket and his sidecar get more than a few second looks from the Spanish citizens around us. He doesn’t exactly blend in.
I park the bike near a covered market and we stow our few belongings inside the hatch at the back of the sidecar. The domed building houses what looks like hundreds of vendors from butchers and fishmongers to local artists and craftsmen. Someone walks by sucking on bits of a fresh-peeled clementine from a fruit stand and the citrusy scent makes my mouth water.
Once we’re out of sight of the bike, Mym notes the local time and logs it into her MFD. “We’ll be able to get back to our stuff anytime after now.” The MFD beeps and shows our location on a map screen. It has the bike’s position as well.
Tucket has some sort of gizmo in his hand, too, the same one I saw him taking pictures in my house with. Unlike Mym’s, his unit has no screen. It is just a rounded ball in his palm. He’s looking at something though, and seems pleased with himself.
“That’s it.” Mym points across the street to what could be an office building. The lower floor is retail space, but the windows on the upper floors are tinted and dark. I’ve learned from experience that Doctor Quickly’s labs are frequently camouflaged this way, hidden in plain sight among other more distracting neighbors. “We need a place to watch from,” Mym says. “The security footage doesn’t show how they got inside.”
“There’s a view from the top of the building next door. We can see both exits.” Tucket points to the old, four story building to the right of the lab. He seems to be referencing something invisible in front of him as he explains.
“What have you got there?” I point to the ball in his hand.
“It’s a Third Eye Hot Shot.” Tucket says, grinning.
I wait for him to explain further, but he seems to think it unnecessary. The reference isn’t completely lost on me, however. I recall that Third Eye is the name of a tech company that produces perceptor chips in his century. The perceptors allow direct access to the user’s mind, allowing them to see a modified environment around them called the meta-space. The meta-space acts like an amped up version of the Internet, but layered over real world spaces. It allows users to see and interact with everything from media and advertising, to actual functional controls for objects in the real world.
“You can use the meta-space all the way back in 2017?” I ask.
Tucket shakes his head. “There’s no input this far back. Meta-mapping won’t get completed till the 2080s. But since I have a portable unit, I have access to all the data and programs I’ve downloaded whenever I go.” He holds the ball up. “Hot Shot is the best. Doesn’t come out till 2160, but I went up and got one before this trip, and it has tons of data already included from your time.”
“Like Google Maps for time travelers.”
“Google was actually the parent company.”
“Ah. Makes sense.” I stare at our target building. “So how do we get up there?”
“Stairs. Looks like an internal roof access,” Mym replies. She leads the way across the street.
“Stairs it is.” I let Tucket go ahead of me and I follow behind. When we get to the base of the building, Mym pauses. “We really need a way to track these guys when they show themselves. If all three of us are on top, we may miss something. I think we should split up.”
“Where do you want me?” I ask.
Mym studies the side of the building, then considers the alley that runs between it and her dad’s lab. “I’ll go high, you guys stay low. You still have the MFD I gave you?”
I reach into my messenger bag and find the phone-like device she left with me.
“Oh sweet,” Tucket comments as I display it. “Shape-shift cybertech?”
Mym nods. “It’s bio-nano.”
“Righteous,” Tucket replies. “And you can use it off-Grid.” He looks up at me. “Have you let it go green light aware with your timestream signature yet?”
I just stare back at him. “Has it googly-moogly what now?”
Mym intervenes. “Ben is still a new user. Haven’t gotten him up to speed on nano-tech yet. We’re getting there.” She whips her finger around the screen on the device in my hand and activates something. The device starts to wriggle. “Oh shit!” I retract my hand. Mym snatches the device before it falls. She balances the now wiggling glob in her palm. As I watch, the unit morphs from the shape of a phone into the spherical ball of whatever Tucket had been holding. When it’s done changing, she holds it up for my approval, then does something to make it revert to rectangular. She tosses it back to me and by the time I catch it, it has taken the shape of an iPhone. It’s much thinner than any models we had in 2009, but I can tell just from the passersby that it’s what most of the people around this city are using.
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 115
