The Far Time Incident

by Neve Maslakovic

  Inside the lab, I found Gabriel Rojas and Helen Presnik standing side by side. A grim task had brought us together, but I couldn’t help but crack a smile at Helen’s outfit. It was like a winter version of tropical. The boxy, lemon-colored jacket had large gold buttons and a fur trim. There was a matching skirt of the same yellow. She saw me staring. “I know, Julia, I look rather—matronly. I found the suit in the travel apparel closet,” she added, as if wanting to make sure everyone knew that she would never own such an outfit. “It’s woolen. It should be warm enough. Are the shoes acceptable? I don’t usually wear modern apparel on runs.”

  It was a strange use of the word modern. “Helen, where did you find those?” The orange pumps had large gold buckles. Penny Lind of Les Styles would have choked on her fat-free latte.

  “I stopped by the retirement home and borrowed them from my mother.” Helen had a purse slung over one shoulder, which meant I could definitely bring mine, too.

  Chief Kirkland walked in, wearing a navy suit that was one of his own and not a TTE travel apparel one, judging by the way the material fit over his tall frame. He still managed to look very uncomfortable in it. A dark-gray overcoat lay draped over his shoulders, and he’d chosen a dark-gray tie to complement it. The shiny black of his hair completed the look. He was alone. Officer Van Underberg, I knew, had been dispatched to fetch Xavier Mooney’s things out of storage to start going through the boxes, looking for anything that might shed light on the murderer’s motive. Oscar had gone to help him.

  Dr. Rojas chuckled. “Chief Kirkland, your hair is longer than the Beatles’. I believe you need a hat.” I watched him leave the lab and cross the hallway to the travel apparel closet. I was glad to see that the professor seemed more relaxed. Perhaps passing the baton to Chief Kirkland had done the trick. It would be up to the chief to solve the crime; all Dr. Rojas had to do was compute the coordinates for our JFK landing site, and he could do that sort of thing in his sleep.

  Abigail bounced into the lab. Before I could open my mouth to say anything, she announced, “Dr. Rojas said I could go.” Her short hair was back to its natural blonde state. She was wearing a lime-green cotton sweater, pink three-quarter-length pants, and little white sneakers. She looked like she was ready to go flower picking in a spring meadow, which is to say, she looked very unlike her usual self. I could just picture it. She had asked Dr. Rojas if she could go, and he’d given a vague wave of agreement after barely registering the question. I tried to catch Chief Kirkland’s eye. All of Dr. Rojas’s test runs had gone off without a hitch and I was pretty sure that STEWie was safe from an engineering perspective. Still, was it right to let students—plural, because I had no doubt that Kamal was somewhere changing into a sixties outfit—climb into STEWie’s basket without letting them know we had a killer loose on campus? As I tried to figure out whether I should say something, Chief Kirkland sent a barely perceptible shake of his head in my direction. That settled it. “Where did you get the outfit?” I asked Abigail. “From the travel apparel closet?”

  “It’s my own stuff. I don’t usually wear the pink and the green together, though.” She had a tiny backpack slung across one shoulder and a large, folding-type Polaroid camera in her hands. “It’s authentic, from the early sixties,” she said of the camera. “Found it on a shelf in the travel apparel closet. We got a whole bunch of stuff off eBay a while back.”

  “Aren’t you going to be cold, dear?” Helen asked as Abigail set the camera on a table, opened a film pack, snapped it in, and carefully pulled out the protective black strip.

  “I plan on insinuating myself right into the middle of the crowd and taking a photo or two—if anything, I’ll be too warm, Dr. Presnik.”

  The doors opened again and Kamal strolled into the lab like he had every right to be there. He still had jeans on but had exchanged his sneakers for brown leather shoes and the So you want to be a PhD, not a REAL doctor? T-shirt he’d had on earlier with a tie-dyed one. It looked like he had slicked down his thick, dark-brown hair with either water or a hair cream of some sort.

  “I didn’t know what to wear,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “I usually don’t have to worry about fitting in, except for having to blend into foliage and stuff.”

  Kamal’s thesis had to do with cataloging safe landing zones in Neanderthal Eurasia.

  “Tie-dyes are more of a late-sixties fashion item, aren’t they? Plus you’ll be cold,” I said, “unless, like Abigail here, you plan on insinuating yourself right into the middle of the crowd.”

  “I probably do, but I’ll go get a coat,” he said, and hurried out of the room.

  “I’m not sure those boots of yours are quite 1964 either, Julia,” Helen said with a smile, “but I think we’ll do.”

  “If you don’t want the students to come along, I can tell them so,” I said to the chief in a low voice as Abigail and Helen headed toward STEWie’s basket.

  He shook his head. “Let them stay. Students are part of STEWie runs. I want to observe a run that’s as typical as possible.”

  “How long will we be gone? I left a research program running,” asked Kamal, who had hurried back in with an overcoat. Behind him was Jacob Jacobson, who looked like he would dash off to the travel closet to change at the first invitation. Dr. Rojas brought up the rear, carrying a gray felt fedora. He handed it to the security chief. “You’ll have an hour there. STEWie will drop you off behind the arrivals building. Find your way to the upper arcade—that should be the best viewing spot. Enjoy yourselves. Don’t go looking for public phones to call your relatives.”

  Helen tapped an impatient orange pump. Being an expert in Shakespeare’s English and other bygone languages, she seemed bored with our destination and hadn’t bothered to say much during our viewing of the airport footage in the conference room. I got the sense, without her ever saying a word on the subject, that she had an inkling of what was going on and had volunteered to accompany us because she was rather peeved that someone had done away with Xavier Mooney, as if the job should have been reserved for her and her alone.

  “A big crowd, everyone focused on the arriving band, we should be able to move around with relative ease,” she said as the five of us gathered around STEWie’s basket. The fish tank was no longer there, the moody tilapia having presumably been returned to the Genetics lab.

  Kamal and Abigail, who had been on a dozen of these runs, scrambled up onto the platform and took standing positions inside the wall-less basket. Dr. Presnik fetched a small stool and used it to step onto the platform. I followed her and, after making sure that we were all secure, Chief Kirkland hoisted himself up, too.

  “It will take a few minutes to upload the coordinates,” we heard Dr. Rojas say. One of the larger mirrors blocked our view of what he was doing at the workstation. “I’m sending you to the JFK airport of 1964, more precisely, to the seventh of February—a Friday…early afternoon, a few minutes before the Beatles’ plane lands…but one can never be too careful. We don’t want you arriving at the wrong building or in the middle of the runway.”

  He was starting to make me nervous. The thick glass of the platform under our feet distorted and dimmed the floor lights. The steel frame of the basket gaped open like an unfinished house waiting for its builders to return. I repeated Dr. Rojas’s rules in my head—One hour there = 133 seconds here. History protects itself. Blend in. There’s always a way back. Seemed simple enough. I put my coat back on and felt more comfortable in the chilly lab.

  Helen spritzed something into her nose. “For our own protection. Probably not necessary for 1964, but protocol is protocol. Here.” She passed out the disposable sprays to the rest of us. “We’ll sanitize again—hands, too—when we get back.”

  Jacob, clearly disappointed that he hadn’t been invited along, dropped onto a lab stool, phone in hand.

  “No tweets, Jacob,” I said from the basket, spritzing my own nose.

  “But Julia—oh, wait, is this trip supposed to be a secret? Oops. I
didn’t know that. No one told me.”

  “It’s not a secret,” I said. “That doesn’t mean we want everyone on campus receiving a play-by-play of what we’re doing. Put the phone away.”

  “I’m kind of excited we’ll get to see the Beatles,” Abigail said as Jacob complied with my order. “Should we scream and swoon with the other fans to blend in? Per Dr. Rojas’s rule number three?”

  “Rather than joining you and Julia and the other adoring Beatles fans on the upper arcade,” said Dr. Presnik, “I think I’ll walk around the airport listening to people’s conversations. Maybe take some notes,” the linguist added. “I know it’s policy for the team to stay together, but in this case it doesn’t seem necessary—”

  “Let’s stick to the usual protocols,” Chief Kirkland said. “Though I think I’m going to feel out of place on the arcade, too.”

  Helen backed off the idea. “Fine. You’ve got a touch of the exotic about you, Chief Kirkland,” she added. “People will probably assume that you’re an international traveler who’s just arrived from abroad. What’s your background?”

  “I’m from Duluth.”

  We could hear Dr. Rojas muttering to himself as he worked. “The seventh of February, 1964…let’s make it 13:15…final coordinate check…”

  The lab phone rang jarringly. Dr. Rojas picked up and absentmindedly said, “TTE lab, yes?”

  There was about thirty seconds of silence on our end, then we heard the professor’s voice again. “Does it have to be now? I’m in the middle of something… I suppose it can wait a few minutes… I’ll be right there.”

  He called out, “Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back,” and the lab door creaked open and shut as he hurried out.

  Kamal and Abigail sat down cross-legged on the platform. Abigail took a test photo with the large Polaroid camera. After some investigation, she discovered that tugging a white strip out of the camera released the photo. After giving it a good minute, she peeled the photo away from the negative and showed it to us. There was the chief, who had wedged his dark strands under the fedora Dr. Rojas had dug up, and one pretty fab (I’d like to think) science dean’s assistant.

  “Well, I have to say I’m kind of excited about this,” I said, having decided that I was too old to squat beside Abigail and Kamal, not to mention the tight skirt. “Traveling back in time may be old hat to some of you, but it’s not for me. I just wish it was happening under different circumstances.”

  “While we’re waiting, Dr. Presnik,” Chief Kirkland said to Helen, “do you mind if I ask you a few questions about Dr. Mooney? For my, uh—report.”

  “Ask away, my dear man. What is it that you want to know?”

  “Your marriage to Xavier Mooney, how long did it last?” was the question Chief Kirkland chose first, tilting his fedora back as he spoke. Like me, he seemed to think that Helen had figured out what was going on. I hoped he didn’t assume that I’d told her. Kamal and Abigail, for their part, looked surprised at the nature of the question.

  Helen raised an eyebrow at the chief. “Our marriage? Just over sixteen years. Xavier and I met and got married when I was a graduate student and he was a junior professor. There is a fourteen-year age difference between us. We were in different departments, of course.”

  “Was it a happy marriage?”

  Helen was silent for a moment, then said, “It wasn’t an unhappy one.”

  Jacob was still sitting on the lab stool, eagerly watching us with his mouth open. “Why don’t you go see what’s keeping Dr. Rojas?” I said. His face drooped but he headed out of the lab, his shoulders bent as if to say How unfair. He would probably tweet that, too.

  “And the divorce? What was the reason for that?” the chief asked Helen.

  She sighed. “Some people, my dear Chief Kirkland, cannot figure out how to live together even after sixteen years of trying. I walked out one evening in a huff. But really, it was mutual.”

  “Any interest on his part in your love life since the divorce?”

  “Really, Chief Kirkland. What an idea.”

  “And vice versa?”

  “Even more absurd.”

  “I think I hear Dr. Rojas,” Abigail said thankfully as the lab doors opened and closed with their usual creak, and got to her feet.

  “Dr. Rojas, are we good to go?” Helen called out, her strong voice reverberating around the cavernous lab.

  There was no answer, but we heard the clicking of keys and, after a moment, the whole lab suddenly seemed to come to life, the quiet hum of the computer equipment vanishing under the rumble and brr-brr of motors powering to life. They were just needed to move the mirrors; the specifics of the generator that powered STEWie itself were above my pay grade. (About all I knew was that it involved thorium, the element discovered by a fellow Norwegian, the Reverend Hans Morten Thrane Esmark, and named after the Norse god of thunder.) The mirrors pivoted and inched into position around us like they were executing a slow, complex dance routine.

  “Shade your eyes,” Kamal reminded the chief and me.

  I positioned myself next to the grad students and felt another pang of doubt about the wisdom of taking them with us. I had a responsibility for their well-being. But would they really be safer if we left them behind? After all, there was probably a murderer loose on campus. I ran out of time to consider the question as the brightness in the room increased to a painful level and I shielded my eyes with my hands—then wished I had an extra pair to cover my ears as the hum of STEWie’s generator grew. There was a high-pitched whine and the platform beneath our feet started to vibrate—gently at first—then harder—it got brighter—louder—I heard a thump, thump—I was having trouble keeping my feet steady—the world shook harder than ever—thump, thump—I lost my footing—warm air hit my face—

  “Ouch.” I let out a sound as my body hit a surface much rougher than the polished glass of STEWie’s platform. I stayed still for a moment, my eyes clenched shut, my ears abuzz, my body aching, then slowly felt around me. My hand touched a patch of grass, dirt, then something squishy. I sensed somebody else moving nearby, then cried out in pain as my fingers met something sharp—my cat-eye glasses, shattered into pieces where I had landed on them—and opened my eyes in the direction of the one sound, the thumping, that was refusing to go away.

  9

  I was in a vineyard, on all fours behind a boulder. Down a row of vines heavy with small unripe grapes lay a cobblestone road. An oxcart bounced along it, a figure in a tunic spattered with road dust wearily leading the animals. Odder still was what was on the cart—a bloated leather pouch, almost as big as the cart itself. Leather straps secured it in place. An extra strap had been tied to the throat of the pouch to prevent whatever was inside from spilling out.

  “So…not New York City, then,” I heard Chief Kirkland whisper behind another boulder, to my right.

  Thump, thump. The repetitive clatter of spoked, iron-rimmed wooden wheels striking rut and stone. Instinctively, the chief and I waited until the cart and its unusual cargo had passed before we pulled ourselves to our feet. I steadied myself on the boulder, which felt slightly cool in the shade of the tall tree we were under. My head throbbed from the lights and sounds we had been subjected to in the TTE lab. The brightness was still there, but now it was from sunlight, not STEWie’s artificial rays.

  “Julia,” a voice said from behind the tree. Abigail’s. She was crouching on the tree’s braided aboveground roots. She rose and brushed off her hands. “That was odder than usual.”

  Kamal was also behind the tree. He stepped out and looked around at the grapevines in their neat rows, then up at the tree, then down at the ground as if he expected it to open up and swallow us whole. Meanwhile, Abigail was pressing keys on her cell phone. “I don’t understand—this is definitely not the airport—” The alarm that was evident in Kamal’s face was there on hers as well.

  The air was warm. Quite warm, in fact. I proceeded to take off my coat and folded it over the
boulder. Next I removed the clip from my hair and let it fall down around my shoulders. Wherever we were, one thing was for sure—there was no need to project an aura of efficiency and competence.

  “Here, Ms. Olsen.” Chief Kirkland bent down and picked up my cat-eye glasses from where they had been crushed by my landing. A few of the faux diamonds had been dislodged from the rims and one of the lenses had fallen out and broken. The other had weblike cracks spreading from the center.

  “Will you be able to see?” the chief asked. He picked up his gray fedora from where it had tumbled off his head and slid it back on. “You did bring your everyday pair along for backup, didn’t you? In that bag of yours?”

  “What? Oh, the cat eyes. They are plain glass. As it happens, my everyday pair are—uh, plain glass as well. As a matter of fact,” I said and took a deep breath of the unexpectedly warm air, “I have twenty-twenty vision.” Why was he harping on eyewear? We had more pressing matters to attend to, like figuring out where we were. Maybe even when we were. I stepped over one of the tree roots and reached out to touch the trunk.

  “A fig tree,” said Kamal. “An old one.”

  The gray bark felt smooth under my fingers. I hoped it wasn’t some side effect from moving around in time, a dulling of sensation perhaps. No, that was silly. My broken glasses hadn’t felt smooth. The new cut inflicted by the shattered lens had reopened yesterday’s wound from the Geology Department rock, which had started to heal nicely. The fig I’d landed on had left a sticky spot on my other palm—it itched slightly—and I rubbed it off on my skirt. Now there was a sticky spot on my skirt.

  “Julia, are you all right?” Abigail asked, moving the cell phone left and right as if searching for better reception. I wondered why she was trying to dial it, since there weren’t any cell towers in 1964—if that was even the year we were in. And where was Helen? I pulled myself together and attempted to explain about the glasses. “Before I started wearing the glasses and the hair clip, I’d often get mistaken for a student. An undergraduate student. I’m told I’m a bit baby faced.