Tucket gathers up his assorted belongings and shuffles through the door. I take one of his bags that’s in danger of springing loose and lead him to the second bedroom that I’ve turned into an office.
“I guess I can set you up in here temporarily. The futon is reasonably comfortable, you can use the closet for—”
“OH WOW!” Tucket drops a couple of his bags and starts playing with the light switch, flicking the overhead lamp and fan on and off rapidly. “This place is so great! Do you have a landline? I read about landlines. I really like rotary phones.”
“Uh. I don’t have a land—”
“Ooh! And these views aren’t digital, are they?” Tucket bounces over to one of the windows and starts playing with the blinds.
“That string opens the—”
Tucket has moved on to the desk and is admiring my pens and pencils with exclamations of awe.
“Actually . . . why don’t I just leave you alone in here for a bit to get settled. Make yourself at home.”
“Oh, man. That would be baller,” Tucket replies. He beams at me and starts poking a finger at my desktop computer monitor.
I back into the hallway and close the door. Dear God. What have I done?
I step into the bathroom and shut the door, one more barrier between me and this invasion of my privacy. I stare at the mirror and try to get my mind straight. “This day will get better.” My reflection doesn’t seem convinced. I open the medicine cabinet and reach for my toothbrush just so I’ll have some excuse to linger in the bathroom a little longer. A droplet of water drips onto my finger from the brush. That’s weird. Did Mym use my toothbrush? I consider the wet bristles, then shrug and run it under the faucet. I guess we must be in a more serious relationship than I thought.
When I run out of teeth to clean, I poke my head back out of the bathroom and look around. I find Tucket seated on the couch grinning at the television with the remote in his hand.
“Is this film an accurate depiction of your current culture?” He points to the scene of Chunk getting terrified by a frozen body in the Fratellis’ freezer.
“Yes. That’s exactly accurate.” I take a seat on a stool near the couch. “So, Tucket, how long do you see yourself staying? Is this like a vacation for you? Do you have other people you are going to be staying with also?”
“Well, it’s not only a vacation, though I am really excited to explore your timestream. The only way I could get a waiver to travel here was through the Academy Liaison Program. They gave me an assignment to do so I could get authorization.”
“What sort of assignment?”
“I’m here to register you for the Grid. And your friends of course.”
I sit up straighter. “Wait, what? What do you mean register us? ASCOTT wants you to do this?” While Tucket has always seemed harmless enough, my dealings with the Allied Scientific Coalition of Time Travelers have been rocky at best. They make for any entirely different brand of uninvited guest. “What do you mean by my friends, too?”
“Oh. Well, Francesca Castellanas, Blake Hitchings, Carson—”
“How do you know about them?”
Tucket looks surprised. “I did research. For the school. After I met you during the chronothon I was so excited about it that I decided to make my graduate topic ‘Early time travelers of the twenty-first century.’ I gathered all the information I could find. I had help though. My friend Cassandra in Academy Prep wrote a paper too and used it for her—”
“You’re the reason they know about us at the academy.” I put my hand to my head. “Dang it. How much did you publish?”
“Just what I could find, it wasn’t a lot of information on you as individuals, but I also tried to show how twentieth century music and culture, like the Beatles, created big influences on time travel culture. You know how much I like the Beatles and their—”
“Why does ASCOTT want us registered with the Grid? Are they trying to track us?”
Tucket blinks as he tries to process this. “You don’t want to be registered? Why would you not want to be on the Grid? The safety benefits alone are—”
“How much do you know about what happened in the chronothon, Tucket?”
“I know you won. There was some sort of confusion about the ending but they said they awarded you first place. It was a big success, right?”
“I definitely wouldn’t say I won. No one really won that fiasco.” I run a hand through my hair and stand up. “Look, I’m not sure how much I can help you with this registration assignment. What’s it going to involve?”
“I’m supposed to get all of your friends together and go over ASCOTT’s expanded rules for safe time travel. They gave me a procedure to use. It even has visual aids.”
“Rules. Okay, like for all time travelers or just us?”
“They are the same for everybody in the central streams, but there are a few specific ones for your timestream. The liaison office says there has been an increase in time travelers going missing lately, and there have been some unusual robberies, so they want to keep everyone safe. They put out some special protocols for the November Prime. That’s here where you live.”
“I do know that much.” I step over to the coffee table and pick up the pieces of my phone. “I’ll call the others and see what they say. I guess we may as well hear it all together.”
Tucket watches me snap the battery back into place in the phone. “Wow, do you have to do that every time you make a call? Is that because your power technology is so primitive that you can’t leave it on?”
I hold up a finger to silence Tucket and hit the speed dial button for Blake. He picks up on the second ring. “Hey, Ben. What’s up?”
“Hey, man. We need to round up the crew. We’ve got a bit of a situation over at my place.”
“Oh shit. More of those chronothon thugs?”
“No. Not quite like that.” I watch Tucket get off my couch and start poking around my laundry closet. He laughs with glee at the sight of my box of laundry detergent and starts taking pictures of it with a camera shaped like a Ping-Pong ball. I return my attention to the phone. “Just come over. I don’t think any explanation I can give you will do this justice.”
“Okay, I’ll grab Mallory and we’ll head your way.”
“Thanks, Blake. And do me a favor. Make it soon.”
3
"They say necessity is the mother of invention. I've found that a lack of time is usually the mother of necessity. Whatever begot our lack of time is a branch of the family tree I’d just rather not associate with.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2009
The Neverwhere
I’m a ghost.
That has to be it. I died, and now I’m caught in some sort of ethereal plane between worlds. That is the only conclusion that strikes some chord of logical truth in my mind.
The problem is, I don’t believe in ghosts.
I should have known this would happen. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. When I did this to myself—making a jump through time without an anchor—I didn’t have a lot of time to think things through. I did what I had to in order to keep my friends safe, but I didn’t plan for anything beyond that point.
This is a particularly shitty dilemma. If I’m right, I’m a ghost. If I’m wrong . . . then what the hell else could I be?
The problem with not believing in ghosts is that I now feel very unprepared to be one. I should have spent more of my life watching scary movies. I could’ve stored up some type of functional knowledge. As it is, my frame of reference involves characters with names like Casper and Moaning Myrtle. Hardly role model material.
Oh. And Patrick Swayze. I guess he was pretty cool.
Staring at the interior of my vacant apartment, I’m at a loss for what to do with myself. If I am a ghost, shouldn’t there be people for me to haunt? No one has shown up with any chains for me to rattle or ominous warnings to give to anyone. I’m certainly not occupying anyone’s Christmas: past, present, or future. The idea
of a Scrooge to chat with even sounds appealing.
I open the front door again and step onto the porch to listen. There was someone out there before. Noises in the fog. I’m not the only one in this mess. The big question is, am I better off alone or trying to get help? Who else lives here?
The fog is still lingering in the hollows of trees and little corners of my world, though most of the view from my porch is clear. The daytime sky still holds the three-quarter moon and I get the distinct feeling that it is in the same spot as it was before.
It’s funny how you take for granted the constant motion of the universe. Heavenly bodies shouldn’t ever be fixed. Life is movement—each moment of our existence a glimpse from a planet careening through the cosmos in a spinning whirlwind of a galaxy. We don’t see the blur of speed, but we live it.
This scene is static and all wrong. That moon hanging in the sky is a lie.
Screw this place. I need answers.
I tromp down the stairs and out to the sidewalk, then stare up and down the street, trying to decide which way to go. The hesitation is all it takes for the doubt to sweep back in. I turn around and head for the garage. I find my softball bat leaning against the doorjamb where I left it. The feel of cushioned grip tape in my palms soothes my nerves a little as I walk back to the street. I don’t know what good a few feet of aluminum and some decent bat speed are going to do me against whatever is out there, but if there is one thing I’ve learned of late, it’s that there are few things more useless than a weapon you left at home.
I entered the neighborhood from the west, so I walk back that way, toward the streets where I heard the yelling. The fog thickens again and I rely more heavily on my other senses. They don’t tell me much. No birdsong. Not so much as a buzz from an insect. The slow scuffing of my footsteps is my only company—until I hear the chanting.
I’m nearly to Fourth Street. This section of the road hosts a selection of restaurants, a surf shop, a bike shop, and half a dozen other businesses. It’s a busy road and one I travel frequently, so when I turn the corner of the surf shop and stare down the street, I know what I should be looking at. I should be looking at a Tijuana Flats Mexican restaurant and a Starbucks coffee shop.
That is not what I’m seeing.
Somehow, merely by turning the corner, I’ve stepped into Oz. My head tilts back to take in the buildings that soar twenty stories high. I can see downtown from here and it has grown vertically by hundreds of feet. Bright, shiny buildings with glittering spires. Towers full of green plants form elaborate vertical gardens. Through a space between buildings I glimpse a winged structure spread out like fingers in the direction of the bay. It appears to be some sort of solar panel. It’s still St. Pete. At least I feel it is, but this incarnation is centuries beyond my home time.
What brings my attention back to earth is the girl on the steps of the building near the corner. What used to be the Tijuana Flats Mexican restaurant is now a far bigger and more imposing stone building. A church perhaps. There are no stained glass windows or crosses, but something about the thick, rugged design exudes durability. A sense of history. I’ve never seen it before.
The girl on the front steps is perhaps eighteen. She’s got her knees clenched to her chest, arms wrapped around them, with her head on her forearms. She’s rocking herself and chanting in a sing-song rhythm. I can’t make out the individual words, but she has a beautiful voice. Her hair is black and curly, tied loosely behind her head, and she’s wearing a sort of frock but no shoes.
“Are you okay?” I call from a distance.
Her head pops up in alarm and she considers me. She climbs to her feet and wipes her face with her arm. She straightens her frock.
“Are you—” She stops herself and studies me. Her eyes linger on my softball bat. “Who are you?”
Not wishing to scare her, I let the bat dangle casually in my hand, the least threatening position I can manage. “I’m Ben. Are you okay?”
The girl nods. “Are you the one I’m supposed to meet? You don’t look like . . . what I expected.”
“I don’t think anyone was expecting me,” I reply. Looking at the building behind her, I can’t help but voice my curiosity. A heavy gate stands open and leads into some sort of courtyard garden. “Where are you? I mean . . . when are we?”
She narrows her eyes. “You don’t know? How did you—”
A boom of thunder rolls across the sky and cuts her off. Black clouds are now swirling overhead, a swelling thunderstorm. What’s more significant, however, is that the top of the building has changed. The tall structures have instantly deteriorated. No stones fell or crashed around us. They simply aged. The top half of the buildings are suddenly in ruin, while the bottoms remain intact. But the ruin is creeping lower.
“Go. You shouldn’t be here!” The girl shoos me away. “I’m supposed to recite the message to him by myself. I don’t want him to see you. He’s coming this way.” She clambers back up the steps of the church.
“Who’s com—”
“GO!” She sweeps her arms toward the far side of the building and I finally obey, dashing out of sight around the corner. As I move, the buildings around me continue to deteriorate. The destruction is creeping slowly lower, oozing down from the sky. No cracking, no sound, just the silent attack of age. I duck lower and lower, trying to not get caught in its grip. Walls turn from shiny and painted to weatherworn and broken. Windowpanes turn jagged. Other parts go missing entirely. As the storm overhead intensifies, the building right next to me transforms. I drop to all fours as the destruction descends around me. Finally I stop and lie prone on my stomach to make myself a lower target. I cover my head with my arms and wait.
The top of the church vanishes. Three of the four walls disappear, but reveal a smaller structure inside where I spotted the courtyard garden. There are no plants now. It’s just a square room, with four arched doorways, one on each side. Inside the center chamber is a fire pit, lit and burning. It’s raised up on multiple stone steps. Inside the arched structure, I see the girl who told me to hide. She’s standing in the center of the room and I’m viewing her profile. She’s shaking and talking nervously to herself. She takes one glance toward me, then fixes her eyes forward.
I’m lying prone in a narrow section of earth still untouched by the destruction. The ground is clear and clean of debris—a sidewalk of smooth concrete near an ornamental hedge. I feel as though I am lying in a shadow—a narrow sliver of different time untouched by the aging around me. Whatever has brought the destruction can’t see me here. At least not yet.
The girl is standing rigidly at attention now, her eyes on someone or something approaching from the side of the building I can’t see. She speaks softly, too softly for me to hear. Whoever she is speaking to is beyond one of the pillars of the square room. She bows and begins to chant her song. Her voice wavers only once in the beginning. It takes a few minutes to complete and then she falls silent. I hear the murmur of another voice, deep and masculine, but too far away to make out. Their conversation goes quickly. She recites something else, stares into the fire and lowers her head like a penitent attending confession. I don’t see what the man she’s speaking to does, but the girl goes suddenly rigid. Her hands fly to her head, grasping at her hair. Her mouth is open, screaming, but no sound escapes her lips. With eyes wide, she turns and looks at me.
I jolt to my feet, snatching up my softball bat.
I’m too late. The next moment she’s gone, vanished as if she never existed.
The sight of her vanishing sends a cold chill through me. I don’t know who is around that corner. I don’t want to see.
I run.
I sprint away as fast as I can. I don’t look back.
I don’t know where I’m going. As soon as I turn the corner of the ruined building next door, I’m in the fog. Blind and staggering, I keep going, pressing my softball bat ahead of me as I flail forward.
The fog is whispering to me. Voices. Murmurs.
>
They all say the same thing.
Run.
<><><>
St. Petersburg. June, 2009
Mallory Watson has never been great at hiding a stink eye. While the look she is giving Tucket from across my dining room table is not hostile, I can tell he has a long way to go before winning her over. She keeps opening her mouth to say something and then thinking better of it. Blake’s fiancée is not the only one who looks skeptical of the young man’s credibility. Francesca is seated on the other side of Blake and it’s clear that she’s likewise never seen anyone quite like Tucket. Neither girl will be impolite enough to say anything aloud, but I know their shared glances have conveyed plenty about their opinions of Tucket’s attire.
I did try to tone him down. Getting rid of the sparkly glove was a small victory. I told him that no one would take his presentation seriously if we were distracted by his pop star stylings. It turns out his more professional attire was no less distracting. He chose a bow tie, suspenders, and glasses. He called it his hipster look, but landed a bit closer to Steve Urkel since the suspenders came in rainbow stripes. I gave up on fashion advice and simply sat down at the table with my friends. Thankfully, Carson showed up with beer.
Of my assembled friends, Mallory is the only one who is not a time traveler. Carson, Blake, and I are on the same softball team and we were together when an accident at the St. Petersburg Temporal Studies Society sent us back in time. Francesca had showed up that night to cheer us on, so she got zapped, too. We all ended up in the 1980s. It took the better part of a month to get home and we only managed that because of Mym and her dad.
Of the five of us seated around the table, Carson is the only other person still wearing a chronometer. I doubt Blake has considered jumping again in the short time he’s been back with Mallory. He has his arm draped around her now as if not ready to let her out of reach. Francesca made a jump to the 1970s to help me celebrate surviving the chronothon, but I don’t think she’s been anywhere since.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 112