We wait till the sound of their voices stops, then a few minutes later, emerge back into the living room.
“You guys had quite the system,” I say.
“Dad had me setting up anchors for most of my adolescence,” Mym replies. “I was so sick of taking anchor photos by the time I was sixteen, I never wanted to make another jump.”
“I guess you grew out of it.”
“I realized the perks outweigh the hassles.”
“Where are we?” I move to the window and open the curtains. I’m looking down from the third floor onto a narrow street lined with shops. The stonework around the windows of the long building across from ours is weatherworn and old, a relic from a prior century.
“We’re in Florence,” Mym replies. “We need to visit a friend and get some advice. I’ve been thinking about that video.”
“Pretty hard not to,” I mutter.
“While you were making us tea, I ran a basic net search on images in the video, trying to get clues on where they were keeping you, er, them. I didn’t get any hits on the video itself, but something came back on the gun. It looked old. Authentically old. It’s possible it was a replica, but I’d like to find out. It’s a strange choice of weapon in any case.”
“This helmet guy and the one in the costume obviously have a flair for the theatrical,” I say. “Do you think the gun looked American Colonial? Or maybe French?”
“I want to find out,” Mym says. “I have a friend who works at the Uffizi, and she might be able to give us some answers.”
“Linear friend or time traveler?”
“Sophia is linear, but when it comes to the past, she’s as good a historian as I’ve ever known—time travelers included.”
I pull the curtains back across the windows to leave them the way I found them. “And she lives here in Florence?”
“She used to,” Mym says. She checks her chronometer. “She’s dead right now, but we won’t let that stop us.”
It takes a series of jumps using anchors from the Quicklys’ collection to get us farther back in time. Even with our chronometers plugged into power sources, they are heavily drained by the time we arrive in 2075. We’ve dialed back the clock on the city of Florence, but the effect is less evident here than in other cities. Florence seems to age at its own rate, and it has never been fast. After a quick change of clothes using the wardrobe options at the safe house, we head into the streets and make our way toward the Uffizi Gallery.
The Ponte Vecchio is crowded with tourists shopping for jewelry. The historic bridge still features wooden shop fronts with elaborate iron hardware on the doors and windows. Mym pauses briefly in front of one shop that is currently closed and gestures to the wooden door. “Did you know this is where Dad first met Abraham? Abe had a watch shop here. Beautiful pieces. Dad said he already seemed like a time traveler.”
“Did you know him then?”
“Before my time.” She smiles at me. “Can I use your MFD?”
I hand the device to her and she dials a number from memory. When the person on the other line picks up, she puts on her most carefree voice. “Hey Soph! You’ll never guess where I am!”
She slips into Italian for the rest of the conversation, and I have a hard time following. I pull the earpiece loose from my sunglasses and slip the end into my ear, but by the time I’ve located the translate option from the menu of apps, she’s hung up.
“Good news. She has time to meet. We can head upstairs.”
Sophia Laurenzi is a stylishly dressed woman around Mym’s age whose well-defined calf muscles are no doubt toned by climbing up and down the numerous staircases of the Uffizi. I’m out of breath by the time we meet her, and I’m quickly reminded that while getting around by time travel may be cool, I’m going to need to make time for some cardio soon. Sophia greets Mym with an enthusiastic hug, and when her attention finds me, she extends a hand for a friendly handshake. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I’ve been wondering who keeps my Mym away from me. You need to share her, you know.”
I smile. “I can certainly think of worse places to hang out.”
“This old place?” Sophia smirks at me. “I guess it has a few charms.” She turns toward Mym. “You have something interesting for me? I know this isn’t just a visit for fun.”
“I wish it were,” Mym says.
Sophia guides us to her office via a long corridor lined with marble statues. Once we’re shown into her office, Mym uses the computer system to display an image of the gun in the video. She’s used some kind of filter, however, and blurred the figures in the background. It looks like the gun is aimed at a fuzzy wall. The other image is the man in the helmet and his henchmen in masks in the room with the stone walls. This second image is what Sophia stares at the longest.
“Have you seen a gun like this before?” Mym asks, referencing the first screenshot. “Or could you help us narrow down where either image is from?”
Sophia concentrates on the photos in silence for at least twenty seconds before speaking, zooming in on various features. Finally she leans back. She points to the image of the man in the helmet. “Have you been to this place in person?”
“Not yet,” I reply. “But we plan to.”
“Well, I can tell you that some of the details in this room are interesting. The helmet he’s wearing is old. Early first century. Something a Roman gladiator would wear in combat. But the symbols carved on the stones behind him are Etruscan. The wall in the background is going to date to at least 400 BCE. You could almost date this whole room back to the Etruscan Empire.”
“Almost?” Mym asks.
Sophia points to a chair in the background that I hadn’t even noticed. “If it weren’t for that. That chair isn’t Etruscan. It’s definitely Roman. A really elaborate replica if I had to guess. Or possibly a restoration. The fabric of the cushion could never survive till the modern era looking that bright, and I would expect the wood to be damaged over time. The gold trim would be more tarnished as well. It looks like real gold. It would have belonged to someone wealthy. Is the person in the mask a collector of any kind?”
“Not sure,” I reply.
At least now I know what the gladiator Piper mentioned looks like.
“If that chair was original, when would it be from?” I ask. I glance at Mym. I imagine she’s thinking what I am. If we are dealing with time travelers, it pays to know all the options.
“Maybe 200 CE? Possibly later. Again, it’s hard to say without seeing it in person. But it’s a similar age to the gladiator helmet.”
I lean forward and study the chair. “You know, I’ve seen a design like that before, now that you mention it.”
“Been traipsing around Ancient Rome?” Sophia jokes. “Lunch with an emperor, perhaps?”
I open my mouth to reply, but notice Mym standing behind her, shaking her head. I know the warning to shut up when I see it. “Maybe I saw it in a movie somewhere.”
The other image doesn’t get a lot of study. Sophia’s hands zoom in briefly on one portion of the gun, then she leaves the image alone. “Muzzle-loading flintlock musket. I’d say the British Long Land Pattern. Dates to around 1775. Prewar, but not by much. It’s been repaired by a local gunsmith at least once. Here and here.” She points to spots on the barrel and flintlock mechanism.
Sophia has ignored her ringing phone twice during the conversation with us but finally picks it up. “Sorry,” she mouths to Mym. She converses with someone on the other end at a speed that makes me think I wouldn’t understand it even if it weren’t in Italian.
Mym leans closer and whispers to me. “You have any ideas?”
“Maybe. It’s a thin lead, but it might be worth investigating. You know how she said the chair would have to be a replica to look that good in the video? What if it’s the real thing?”
“How would that help us?”
“How many time travelers do you think have been that far back in time? If you had to wager a guess, do you think it woul
d be a couple dozen? A hundred? It would be a really long trip to do with chronometers. Probably two hundred stops along the way at minimum. Has to be next to impossible with a Temprovibe. You’d need approval from ASCOTT, and from what I hear, they aren’t letting anyone off the Grid without permits, let alone escaped cons. The only way I could see someone getting back that far would be with a time gate.”
“You think they are traveling by time gates? I guess it would make sense for staying off the Grid. Not sure where they would find one though,” Mym says. “Special events like a chronothon could get one, but those have been disbanded. It would have to be a private owner.”
“Right. So it definitely narrows the search for us.”
Sophia ends her conversation and hangs up the phone.
“We should let you go,” Mym says. “We know you’re busy.”
Sophia sighs but doesn’t argue. The two of them chitchat for a while longer as she leads us toward the exit, making plans to meet up for a cappuccino soon.
A tour group is clogging up the hall we entered by so Sophia takes us on a detour through a contemporary art exhibit to get around them. We walk around a couch that is constructed entirely of broken pencils and through an exhibit featuring giant photos of women with power tools.
Sophia reaches the door and disarms the alarm for us. She swings it open, and the busy sounds of the city beckon.
Mym steps through the doorway and turns around. “You coming, Ben?”
Her voice registers in my mind, but it takes me a moment to respond. “Uh, I think you might want to see this.”
Mym walks back to my side, and I move toward a photo on the wall. A group of female welders is precariously balanced on a girder high over a city skyline with sparks flying everywhere as they work. Between the women with the blowtorches and grinding wheels, leaning casually on one of the building’s support columns, is a little girl wearing overalls and welding goggles. Her hands are in her pockets, but there is a glint of silver at her left wrist. I can’t see her eyes, but she may as well be looking straight at me.
“At least she didn’t inherit my issues with heights,” I mutter.
Mym follows my gaze. “What are you looking at?”
I point out the girl in the goggles. “I think I just found our daughter.”
Mym’s mouth falls open. “What on earth . . .”
“I know,” I reply. “Let’s go get her. We’ll make sure she’s safe, but then she’s definitely grounded.”
7
“Time travel is a big help with repetitive chores. With a few hours of work, I’ve already watered my houseplants for the next six years.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1987
“I don’t like it. Not even a little bit.” I’m staring up at the construction site in early 2075 that the photo of our alternate daughter has led us to. The structure joining the London skyline is still just a steel skeleton at the very top. The rest of the building looks a little more complete, but just barely.
It took a bit of research to locate the construction site the artist used for the photo shoot and to scan social media records for when it was completed. It took a little while longer to convince Sophia to take the image out of the exhibit in Florence for us. I have little doubt that the time travelers we’re up against can probably find a version to look at anyway, but any attempt to slow down their hunt for our people is worth it, even if it means an expensive addition to our family art collection.
“You think she’s up there yet?” Mym asks.
I study the assembled cars in the parking lot. One is a commercial van with both visible and meta lettering on the side. “She will be soon. Looks like the photographers are already here.”
We’re still discussing a plan for getting up the building when my MFD starts buzzing in my pocket. I check the display to find an incoming message from Carson.
“We have a tachyon pulse relay around here somewhere?” I ask Mym. “Looks like I’m getting temporal data service.” I put the device on video mode and open the call. “Hey, man. You still doing okay?”
Carson is in a car. An urban skyline is whizzing past out the window behind him. “Got you some more details on our Tempus Fugitives. Thought I’d pass them along.”
I gaze up at the towering construction site, then turn around and put the earphone from my glasses into my ear, not unhappy about the delay. “What have you got?”
“Interesting bit about the suspected ringleader. Goes by Maxwell Franco. Went away for abducting tourists from a time travel tourism company called Quantum Wanderers. He and a group of buddies would impersonate tour guides, lure travelers on side trips, rob them of their Temprovibes, and then abandon them in distant timestreams. Made quite a haul that way. He was also connected to a string of industrial warehouse thefts, but they never had enough evidence to convict him. He was acquitted on those charges.”
“Thefts of what?” I ask.
“Time gates. A whole bunch of them. ASCOTT was storing reclaimed chronothon gates after the races got shut down. They were expecting the tech to show up on the black market, but the gates never resurfaced. Whoever has them is keeping them all to themselves.”
“We thought they might be using those to get around.”
“Well, they’ve got chronometers for sure,” Carson says. “Not sure they have the gates, but if they do, they’ll be tough to track.”
“Anything on the other escapees?” I ask.
“I’ll send you their files,” Carson says. “There was one more thing. The prison gave me the name of the person the escapees were communicating with on the outside. Somebody who goes by the handle of ‘TRIK’ online. All the correspondence they dug up from The Way of the All Seeing Eye were linked to this TRIK person. No details on who they are, but they had an interest in busting these guys out.”
“We’ll keep an eye out,” I reply.
“Wish I had more for you,” Carson says. “Be safe out there.”
“Will do. Thanks, man.”
I turn off the display and slip the MFD back into my pocket. I pull the sunglasses from my face as well. The construction site ahead of us seems even more dangerous now.
“Let’s get this girl and get out of here,” I say. “The sooner we’re back on the ground and gone, the better.”
Mym tosses me an anchor from her bag. It’s a degravitized nail. “From that rooftop in Bruges we visited last year. We should have an exit ready if we get into trouble.”
“Good idea.” I pull my MFD back out and scan the nail, pulling up the time we logged it, then I put both back into my pocket. “Better safe than sorry.”
We find the construction elevator and press the call button. Thankfully it’s functional.
The elevator is little more than a rectangular steel cage. I do my best not to look down as it rattles its way up the flimsy-looking scaffolding tower. The correct floor isn’t hard to find. A photography crew has taken over the topmost level of the construction site and is bustling about the concrete floor adjusting lights and prepping models. I’m relieved to see that there is at least some safety netting on the side of the building being used for the shot. A number of models are already posing with tools, and it’s nice to see that they aren’t all of the typical swimsuit model variety. The photographer has included women in all manner of shapes, ages, and walks of life. At least the art world seems to have made some progress since my time.
There’s no sign of Piper.
Mym and I are accosted by an assistant of some kind who is sporting blue hair and a shirt collar made of neon feathers. He appraises us skeptically. “Are you from catering? Because the coffee needs refilling.” He wags an empty paper cup at me.
“We’re from the Department of Time Management,” I reply. “Seeing who’s wasting ours.”
The man frowns at me, tosses his hair out of his eyes, and wanders away.
The shoot site is bustling with activity, but no one else seems to be paying us much attention. We position ourselves where we have an a
ngle on the action. I pull out my MFD to check the arrangement of models in the artwork from the museum. It takes about fifteen minutes till models I recognize are moved into position. It’s another ten minutes before the photographer is happy with the lighting. Finally they get under way, posing with blowtorches and grinders.
Then, as quick as thought, she’s there.
The little girl in the goggles, directly in the middle of the scene, casually leaning against the girder. She slips her hands into her pockets and the photographer keeps shooting for a few more seconds before realizing what has happened. She finally looks up from her camera, at which point Piper looks directly at me, and smiles. Then she looks to Mym and her smile disappears.
“Watch out!” she shouts.
I turn to see what Piper is looking at and find a huge man wearing a metal helmet looming behind Mym. The Gladiator. He lunges for Mym.
Mym ducks, nimbly dodging the man’s arms and scurrying behind me. I swing at him, realizing mid-punch that striking his metal helmet is a stupid move. I open my hand in time and end up just slamming the heel of my palm against his faceplate. It does nothing. The punch he throws, however, connects with the left side of my face, and I stagger sideways from the blow.
The Gladiator moves toward Mym, the sides of his black trench coat flaring out as he walks. “You don’t seem to be getting the message! When I said get me the warp clock, I didn’t say anything about side trips to London. You’re wasting time.”
“I don’t have it,” Mym replies, backing away from him. “I need time to find it.”
He takes another step toward her.
“Hey!” I step between him and Mym. “Back off.”
I square up with him, but the big man lunges forward and seizes my arm, then pulls me toward him. It happens so fast I barely have time to register it. His fist connects with my face twice before I can get an arm up, but he doesn’t let go of me. Stunned from the blows, I teeter, then watch him rear back to hit me again.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 166