The Titanic Mission

by Dan Gutman

  “I know stuff, okay?” David told them. “This is common knowledge, you guys.”

  Whatever made it happen, a few seconds later the door opened and the Flashback Four stepped inside the elevator. Julia pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.

  “I suppose this button doesn’t do anything either?” she asked.

  “I’m looking into that,” David said mysteriously. “I have my doubts.”

  There was only one office on the twenty-third floor—Pasture Company. Below the logo, a sign read,

  IF I DON’T SEE YOU IN THE FUTURE,

  I’LL SEE YOU IN THE PASTURE.

  Julia, Isabel, David, and Luke strode up to the front desk.

  “Well, we weren’t expecting to see the four of you back here so quickly,” said the smiling receptionist, Mrs. Ella Vader. “Aren’t you kids supposed to be in school right now?”

  “It’s after four o’clock,” Isabel said. “School is out.”

  “So it is,” said Mrs. Vader. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”

  “Can we speak with Miss Z?” asked David.

  “Gee, I wish you had called ahead,” replied Mrs. Vader. “Miss Z is in the middle of something very important. But let me see if I can squeeze you in.”

  The kids took seats in the waiting area while Mrs. Vader buzzed her boss on the intercom. Luke got up to examine the framed photos covering the walls: Neil Armstrong standing on the surface of the moon. Harry Truman gleefully holding up a newspaper with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Several American presidents taking the oath of office. It was a living history lesson.

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Vader motioned for the kids to enter the inner office. Luke opened the door and went in first.

  Miss Z was at her desk, sitting in her wheelchair, still talking on the phone. She motioned for the kids to take seats. They looked at the historical photos all over the walls while she finished up her call.

  “What do you mean it can’t be done?” Miss Z just about shouted into the phone. “Of course it can be done. And it must! What else do you people have to do with your time? The fate of the planet is at stake!”

  Miss Z slammed down the phone and turned to face the kids.

  “Well, hello,” she said cheerfully.

  “What can’t be done?” Isabel asked.

  “Some dope at NASA tells me that it wouldn’t be cost effective to launch metallic shades into outer space.”

  “Why would you want to launch metallic shades into space?” asked Julia.

  “You’ve heard about global warming?” Miss Z asked. “Climate change? Well, if we placed a line of shades in orbit around the Earth, it would reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the planet by at least two percent. Bingo! Climate change is solved. Simple!”

  “That’s possible?” Isabel asked.

  “Of course it’s possible!” Miss Z replied. “Anything is possible if you have the right technology and enough money to build stuff.”

  “Couldn’t we reverse climate change if we just stopped burning fossil fuels and switched to renewable sources of energy?” asked Isabel. “Isn’t that a more logical solution?”

  “You think people are going to stop driving cars?” asked Miss Z with a snort. “Do you think people are going to stop taking flights to visit grandma and grandpa on Thanksgiving? Space sunshades would be the perfect technological fix to an urgent problem, and we wouldn’t have to make any sacrifices or lower our standard of living. And it would be fast.” Miss Z snapped her fingers, as if to show how fast her solution to climate change would be.

  David glanced at Luke. Up until now, he’d thought Miss Z was a genius. It took a genius to develop the Board to send people back and forth through time. But launching sunshades into outer space? That just sounded like a crackpot idea.

  Mrs. Vader poked her head in the door and asked if she should bring in tea for everyone.

  “That won’t be necessary, Ella,” said Miss Z. “We won’t be long. What can I do for you kids today?”

  “We have an idea,” Isabel said.

  “Well you know me,” replied Miss Z. “I’m all about ideas. Tell me more.”

  “We have an idea for another mission to go on,” David said. “An idea involving the Board.”

  “Oh.” Miss Z cast her eyes downward for a moment. “That kind of idea. I’m sorry. Umm, I forgot to tell you kids something.”

  “What?” David asked.

  “You’re fired,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What?!” the kids all shouted as one.

  “Look, I’d like to be diplomatic about this,” Miss Z said, looking each of them in the eye as she spoke, “but life is short, and I’ve got no time for ambiguity. And if you don’t know what ambiguity means, go look it up. You all have smartphones. My point is, I gave you kids a job to do when I sent you to Gettysburg, and you didn’t do it. You didn’t complete the mission. I was deeply disappointed.”

  She rolled over to the wall of photos. It was filled, except for one empty space where a picture was missing.

  “I assigned you to take a photo of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address,” Miss Z reminded them. “As you know, no such photo exists. And no photo will exist because you screwed up. And no, you can’t have a do-over. The technology of the Board doesn’t have the capability to send you back to the same place twice. So there will never be a photo of Lincoln making that speech. And it’s your fault.”

  “But—” Luke tried to explain, but Miss Z cut him off.

  “It was a simple job,” she continued. “You failed, and I don’t tolerate failure. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I allowed my underlings to fail more than once. When employees mess up, I get rid of them. This is not a game. This is very important to me. I need to work with people I can count on.”

  The Flashback Four certainly weren’t expecting this kind of criticism. They had never heard such blunt talk, and they were shocked into silence. Well, except for Luke.

  “You sent us to Gettysburg on the wrong day, remember?” he said quietly, but firmly. “So you screwed up too. I bet we would have been able to get the picture of Lincoln if you hadn’t typed the wrong date into the computer.”

  Miss Z looked at Luke. She wasn’t used to being challenged, especially by someone so young.

  But Luke was right, of course, and Miss Z knew it. Because she had typed 11/18/1863 instead of 11/19/1863, the Flashback Four arrived in Gettysburg the day before Lincoln gave his famous speech. So they’d had to find a place to sleep that night. They’d had to feed themselves, and she hadn’t given them any money. They’d encountered all kinds of problems they wouldn’t have had to deal with if they’d arrived at Gettysburg on the right day.

  Miss Z was not the kind of person who liked to hear about her own failures. But on some level, she admired Luke for speaking his mind and not backing down.

  “Sending you to Gettysburg one day earlier had no bearing on completing your mission,” she told him. “You still could have gotten the shot. I was counting on you for that picture to add to my collection. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. If you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy.”

  So much for the time-traveling career of the Flashback Four. They had been given one mission, and they’d blown it. Miss Z looked down at the paperwork on her desk, as if David, Luke, Isabel, and Julia didn’t exist anymore.

  One by one, the kids got up to leave. They all felt humiliated, and Isabel was on the verge of tears. She was a straight-A student. She had been counting on using her time-traveling experience to help get into a good college in a few years. It might help her get a job down the line. Impressing adults was important to Isabel, and she wasn’t used to being told that she was incompetent.

  When he opened the door, David stopped and turned around.

  “It wasn’t all our fault,” he said to Miss Z. “You messed up too. You should give us another chance.”<
br />
  “And risk another failure?” Miss Z said without looking up from her paperwork. “Time is money, young man.”

  “But we have a good idea,” Luke said. “You didn’t even let us explain it to you.”

  Miss Z sighed and looked up from her paperwork. “What is it?” she asked, as if she really didn’t care what it was.

  This time it was Julia who stepped forward. “I think I can sum up our idea with one word,” she said. “Titanic.”

  Miss Z put both of her hands behind her neck and leaned back in her wheelchair. “I’m listening,” she said.

  David closed the door. The Flashback Four gathered around Miss Z’s desk once again. They had done some homework to prepare for this moment.

  “The Titanic was the largest ocean liner in the world,” Luke explained. “On its first voyage, boom, it sideswipes an iceberg. The iceberg rips a hole in the ship, and it goes down. April 15, 1912. Five days before Fenway Park opened. Over a thousand innocent people die.”

  “Fifteen hundred,” added Isabel.

  “I know the story,” Miss Z said. “Everybody knows the story. So what?”

  “There’s no picture of it,” David said. He went over and pointed to the empty space on Miss Z’s wall. “Imagine a photo right here of the great Titanic just before it goes under. How cool would that be?”

  “It was one of the most historic events of the twentieth century,” Luke added, “and there’s no picture of it. Such a shame.”

  No photo, no proof. If it weren’t for the famous movie, it would sound like a legend to the next generation of kids. Nobody would even know it had ever happened.

  “And we could fix that,” Isabel said. “We could take that picture.”

  Miss Z looked at the empty space on the wall again and imagined the image that would fill that space. Her eyes grew larger.

  “It is a compelling idea,” she said. “I must admit, it would make a marvelous addition to my collection.”

  Miss Z had long dreamed of creating a museum devoted to photos of the most important events in history. That was what she hoped would be her legacy when she was gone. She didn’t want to be remembered just because she created a silly dating website.

  Miss Z knew a thing or two about human nature in the internet age. Few people are willing to take the time to read history books or even watch videos about the events that shaped our world. It’s so much easier to just turn on a TV and watch the Kardashians or some other nonsense. But a picture—as they say—is worth a thousand words. A still photo that sums up an event can be appreciated almost instantly by anyone.

  People would come from all over the world to see her photography museum. It would be a great way to educate children about history. And it would be children, of course, who would determine the course of history in the future.

  “Are you sure there’s no existing photo of the Titanic sinking?” Miss Z asked the group.

  “We looked it up,” Julia replied. “There’s nothing.”

  “Okay.” Miss Z sighed. “I’ll give you one more chance.”

  CHAPTER 3

  GETTING READY

  “MOM AND DAD, IS IT OKAY IF I TRAVEL BACK IN time to 1912 so I can take a ride on the Titanic and shoot a picture of it just as it’s about to sink?”

  Right. There was no way in a million years that anybody’s mother or father was going to give them permission to go on such a crazy mission. No parent would ever believe it could even happen, much less approve of it.

  So Julia did what she always does—she never even showed her parents the permission slip that Miss Z had given her to get signed. Julia simply forged her father’s signature and brought it back without telling him.

  Isabel wasn’t quite so dishonest. She told her parents that she needed their permission to go on a “historic boat tour.” Technically, she wasn’t lying. Or at least that was what she told herself. Her parents figured it would be a tour of the USS Constitution or one of the other famous ships moored in the Charlestown Navy Yard nearby, and they signed the permission slip gladly. Neither of them had finished high school, and they desperately wanted Isabel to go to college someday. Anything that appeared to be educational always got a quick okay in the Alvarez household.

  David had never been a good liar. Every time he tried to get away with something by lying about it, he got caught. So he figured out a creative technique to get away with things he shouldn’t be doing—he would tell the absolute truth and hope his parents would assume he was joking.

  “Remember that rich white lady who invented a magic smartboard and sent me back to see Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address?” he asked his mother. “Well, now she wants to put me on the Titanic just before it sinks.”

  “Very funny,” his mother replied, as she took a pen and signed the permission slip. “Just keep your grades up, mister.”

  Luke knew that his parents were both busy working multiple jobs, and neither of them had the time or energy to go over all the forms, slips, and announcements he brought home from school every few days.

  “Here, sign this,” he said when his father came home from work and flopped on the couch with his remote control.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke replied. “It’s just some school garbage.”

  His father signed the paper.

  On the first mission of the Flashback Four, Miss Z did all the Gettysburg research herself and simply told the kids what to do and where to go. This time, she felt they should be more personally invested in the mission. After all, it was their idea. She told the kids that she expected them to do some of the research themselves. So when they gathered on the twenty-third floor of the Hancock Tower two days later, the kids were prepared.

  “So what have you got?” she asked as she collected their signed permission slips.

  Isabel and Luke stood up. Each of them held a page of notes.

  “We decided to learn about what the world was like back in 1912, so we won’t be surprised when we get there,” Isabel began. “For starters, there were only forty-six states back then. The population of Las Vegas was thirty. That’s right. Just thirty people lived in Las Vegas!”

  “Have you ever been to Vegas?” Luke asked. “It’s huge. Anyway, back in those days, almost everybody was born at home, not in a hospital. And the average person lived to be about fifty years old. That’s it.”

  “Oh man,” David groaned. “My dad is fifty-two now.”

  “On the other hand,” Isabel said, “you could mail a letter for two cents in 1912. A dozen eggs cost just fourteen cents.”

  “I would buy everything,” David commented.

  “Yeah, but the average adult only earned about two hundred to four hundred dollars a year,” Luke explained.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Julia. “I make more than that from babysitting.”

  “The women’s movement was very young in 1912,” Isabel continued. “Women couldn’t even vote yet. There was no civil rights movement. In a lot of places, black kids and white kids couldn’t go to the same schools. And gay marriage? Forget about it. Gay people were, like, invisible back then.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” Luke said, “there’s a lot of stuff we have today that didn’t exist in 1912. Like refrigerators, television, computers, traffic lights, zippers . . .”

  “Really?” Julia asked. “No zippers? What did they use before they had zippers?”

  “Buckles, laces, hooks—who knows?” Luke replied. “Anyway, we learned lots of other stuff, but you get the idea.”

  “Excellent work,” Miss Z said, giving a quick round of applause. “It certainly was a different world back then. David, you’re up next. What have you got for us?”

  “Well, I checked out how people talked back in 1912,” he said as he stood up with his notes. “Do you guys know what a beezer is?”

  Everyone shook their heads. Even Miss Z didn’t know.

  “A beezer is your nose,” David informed them. “Like, I�
��m going to punch you in the beezer. And if somebody in 1912 says they’re whacked, it means they’re tired. And if somebody says that something is duck soup, that means it’s easy. Easy as duck soup.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Miss Z. “There was an old Marx Brothers movie called Duck Soup. I always wondered what that phrase meant.”

  “Lots of words we use these days were totally fresh in 1912,” David continued, looking at his notes. “Stuff like rinky-dink, dingbat, doohickey, crackpot, loony bin. Man, rappers would have gone crazy with those words. I mean, if rapping had been invented yet. Oh, you know what word was coined that year? Vitamin! Vita means ‘life’ in Latin. There were no vitamins until 1912.”

  “I had no idea!” said Miss Z. “Nice work, David. Julia, your turn.”

  Julia jumped to her feet.

  “Well, I decided to learn about the fashions of 1912,” she said excitedly.

  “What a shock,” Luke mumbled under his breath.

  Julia had put together a little scrapbook with photos she had found of fashions from 1912. She passed it around for everyone to see.

  “Some of the richest and most famous people in the world were on the Titanic,” she said. “The society ladies were all decked out, if you’ll excuse the pun. They would change clothes several times a day so they had to have lots of outfits for every occasion. We’re going to see them wearing gorgeous ankle-length evening gowns made from silk or chiffon or velvet. They’ll be trimmed at the neck with lace and ribbons, glittering beads, sequin embroidery, maybe a mink stole around their necks—”

  “If you ask me, they should have ditched all those fancy duds and brought life jackets with them,” David remarked.

  “Very funny,” Julia said sarcastically.

  “They didn’t have to bring life jackets with them,” Isabel told David. “There were life jackets in all the cabins on the Titanic.”

  “The ladies will all be wearing hats,” Julia continued. “These enormous wide-brimmed hats decorated with flowers and ostrich feathers. And gloves. Elbow-length gloves. No proper lady would ever go out in public without gloves. And they’ll be wearing silk stockings and dainty high-heeled shoes, or elegant leather boots with buttons . . .”