The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  If San Francisco was intimidating, the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications was formidable. Once topside, the copbots escorted her to the waterfront. From there she boarded a catamaran that sped her to a silver monolith rising up out of the north bay waters. Zhu had heard about hydroplexes—marine-based skyscrapers modeled on the ancient oil drilling platforms that had bobbed offshore in the days when the technopolistic plutocracy held a stranglehold on a world economy fueled by petroleum. South Honshu was mostly hydroplexes these days. South Cork, too.

  Zhu had heard about them. Now she stepped into a hydroplex, feeling every inch the country bumpkin, especially in her prison jumpsuit. The hydroplex perched high above a polished gridwork into which the catamaran navigated and docked. If the meticulously groomed denizens of this modern platinum palace were troubled by the ceaseless rocking and swaying caused by bay tides, they gave no sign but hurried silently through hushed corridors on what surely must have been urgent business.

  Gah. Bay tides. Rocking and swaying. Uff! Zhu felt as if she was about to spill her guts.

  When the red-haired man stepped out to greet her, suddenly she was spilling her guts. Or at least, the spare contents of her stomach. “I… .long ride… .detox maybe,” she muttered and, to her embarrassment, keeled over. How could she explain the vertigo that seized her at that moment?

  When she woke, she felt a little better, but her head was still woozy, her stomach still sour. She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a chrome-and-leather divan in a room swathed in a gauzy pale fabric like the inside of a cloud.

  The red-haired man sat watching her.

  He gestured to a viewer perched in a corner like a predatory bird. “We’re holoiding the instructions I’m giving you today. The file, called Zhu.doc, is thirty-five GB and will go in your monitor’s Archive, so you’ll be able to view it anytime you need to.” He gave her a Classic Coke, which tasted delicious and settled her stomach. “I’m the one who offered your lawyer the deal.” He fell silent then, watching her as if she were a specimen in a petri dish.

  She should have been flattered that a man of his stature took any notice of her at all. She should have been grateful, should have been cordial, should have been eager to please.

  But she didn’t feel flattered or grateful or cordial or eager to please. Instead, sharp resentment gripped her chest. She instantly disliked the red-haired man. She puzzled at her unruly emotions, then felt guilty. There was no rational reason for disliking him.

  He’d done nothing to her. She’d never met him before.

  But there it was and wouldn’t go away—resentment, even anger. As if she knew something bad about him, but couldn’t say what. Had she met him before? But where? She swallowed her confusion as best she could, silently scolding herself. She wasn’t wearing the black patch for the first time in months, that was all. Her customary state of sullen discontent had simply reasserted itself.

  He sat before her in a leather-and-chrome chair and steepled his fingertips, scrutinizing her. “I am Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.”

  China’s people may have a thousand kinds of faces, Zhu thought, but Western people are a crazy quilt, variegated colors of hair and eyes and skin. And this man. This man was different from anyone Zhu had ever seen. He was tall and slim, his skin as white as bone. His hair and eyebrows were the astonishing color of ripe pomegranates, a rare fruit Zhu had found at the farmer’s market just one time, years ago. The astonishing hair fell over his shoulders and trailed halfway down his back. His eyes were as clear and blue and deep as the sapphires she had only seen in a natural history holoid. Young, maybe in his fifties.

  “We want to t-port you to 1895,” he said in a modulated, precise voice. “Do you understand what that means?”

  “I’m giving everyone such a freakin’ hard time that you want to send me away six hundred years into the past,” Zhu joked. What was wrong with her? She struggled to be polite.

  “It’s not meant to be a punishment, Zhu. You find that difficult to believe, don’t you?”

  Zhu considered. “Mister… .”

  “You may call me Chiron.”

  Oh, she may? “Chiron, I’m a comrade with the Daughters of Compassion. I’m a devotee of our patron goddess, Kuan Yin. I’ve been dedicated to the Cause since I was fifteen. I’ve worked in the fields, in the processing plant, in the recycler. All I care about is the survival of Mother China. China has struggled with poverty and famine and oppression of her women for over two thousand years. Politicians come and go. Social theories come and go. Campaigns, reforms, platforms, regimes; they all come and go. We struggled years ago. We struggle now.” She shrugged. Old sentiments, but the words tasted fresh. “The Mars terraformation and orbital metaworlds and telespace and hyperpoetry. Those things are all right. Every kid dreams of getting morphed, getting a neckjack, linking into telespace. But you know what? At this point? I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  Chiron smiled. “But you do have a neckjack.”

  “Oh, sure. Because Changchi had a season of prosperity when I was in middle school and the first thing the administrators did was morph us kids for telespace. So we could compete globally.” Zhu touches the neckjack installed behind her left ear. “You think computer-constructed reality did a damn bit of good when the rains didn’t come for four seasons after that, and they couldn’t seed the clouds or herd a storm down from Siberia?”

  “We owe much to telespace. The technique for herding rainstorms was developed in telespace.”

  “That’s nice. But my eyes kept looking at the dust that wouldn’t yield enough peas, not at telespace. So.” She stirred restlessly on the divan. “You want to t-port me six hundred years into the past? Why? Sorry, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Then listen well. Listen carefully.”

  And he told her about tachyportation, how the tachyonic shuttle translates matter into pure energy, transmits that energy across spacetime faster than the speed of light, and retranslates the energy into its original form at a destination. Anywhere, any when. About the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications, the venerable cosmicist think tank that had long devoted its private resources to the study of the Cosmic Mind and the true nature of reality as a set of probabilities always collapsing into and out of the timeline.

  “Okay,” Zhu said, scratching her head. “I’m still listening.”

  “Don’t worry, the shuttle is safe. We used shuttles to transport laborers up to the Mars terraformation for decades before we attempted the past-travel app.”

  “Right, the past-travel app,” Zhu said, unsure whether she was awed or appalled. Changing people into energy packets and back again! Shooting them around space and time like human cannonballs! Don’t worry, it’s safe! Yeah, right. “Have you t-ported, Chiron?”

  “I sure have,” Chiron said and smiled wistfully. “I t-ported to San Francisco, 1967. To a space and time called the Summer of Love.”

  “But how,” Zhu said, wrestling with these concepts, with the notion they wanted her to do this, “could you go to the past if the past has already happened?”

  “That’s where the Archives come in,” Chiron said and poured her another Coke, which she drank greedily, savoring the taste.

  The Archives were the repository of all known information about the world, preserved, recorded, and uploaded into telespace. Using telespace and some very fancy searchware, the Archivists could analyze moments in the past.

  “Analyze moments at a level of detail unknown to historians before,” Chiron said, standing and pacing, his hands clenched behind his back. “The Archivists began to realize that the closer they examined any given moment, the less they knew about the complete reality. About people’s inner lives, what they heard and smelled and tasted. What they remembered. What they felt.”

  The Archivists also discovered that certain moments contained historical ambiguities. They found gaps in the data, gaps they call dim spots.

  “Theory and practice and philosophy
intertwined.” Chiron sat uneasily back down in his chair. “We cosmicists believe in a cocreatorship between humanity and the Cosmic Mind, the force of Universal Intelligence. We’ve always wondered how you could travel to a past that already exists, but the cosmicist answer is consistent with the time paradox. If you’ve traveled to the past, you have already done so. Quite simply, you must do so.

  “Please understand, Zhu,” he added, “we cosmicists are conservationists. We believe in the mandate of nonintervention. Nonaction is as vital as action. We scorn the aggressive, exploitative pursuit of oppressive new technologies that so typified the technopolistic plutocracy three hundred years ago. We approached t-porting cautiously, mindful of its dangers. We formulated the Tenets of the Grandmother Principle for the proper conduct of t-port projects.”

  He pulled out a page of hardcopy, handed it to Zhu. “We want you to learn the Tenets backwards and forwards before you go. You must make every effort to observe them. There are seven, plus the Closed Time Loop Peril. Trust me, you do not want to create a new probability.”

  “Okay,” Zhu said, taking the paper page, turning it around curiously in her hands. And sighed. Now she had to, like, study? “Because if I do create a new probability, that could unravel all of spacetime as we know it. Right? Am I getting this right?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “Exactly right.”

  “Then,” Zhu said, “you’re really serious? I’ve already lived in 1895? Before I was born?”

  Chiron’s sapphire eyes bored into her.

  “But how can that be?” she wailed. “I don’t remember!”

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t remember because you haven’t yet experienced it in your personal timeline. Time is a forward-moving experience for us, Zhu. Till you experience your life in 1895, you haven’t experienced it in your consciousness yet. Not till you t-port there. Understand?”

  She shifted on the divan, clutching her prison uniform. She wasn’t sure she understood. “But why me?”

  He nodded, expecting the question. “We’ve got evidence that you—or someone like you—were there.”

  “Really! What evidence?”

  “Well, first off… .you’re a Chinese woman.”

  Zhu laughed out loud. Was he racist and sexist, after all, this sophisticated cosmicist with his Cosmic Mind rap? “Well, yeah. Just me and several billion other Chinese women.”

  “And you’ve got a neckjack. Primitive as it is, yours is better than several billion other Chinese women.” He licked his lips nervously. “We’ll be installing a monitor in your neckjack that will carry an Archive of relevant files, including Zhu.doc, as I mentioned. The monitor will make sure you get to where you’re supposed to go, keep you informed, stuff like that. Muse will have full holoid capability, if you ever need to view a file. Much more advanced equipment than the knuckletop I took on my Summer of Love Project.” He gives her another sharp look. “Okay. So prepare yourself, Zhu. The shuttle will be ready in two days.”

  “Two days?”

  “Yes. Because of the unfortunate incident at Changchi”—he was choosing his words carefully, now, which instantly raised her hackles again—“the monitor will also ensure that you’re fulfilling the object of the project.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re really installing the monitor because you don’t trust me. Because I’m an accused criminal.”

  “Oh, you’ve got other qualities,” he said as if she’d made a joke. “You’re educated. Decent gene-tweaking. Nice eyes, by the way. And no family responsibilities.”

  “I’m a Daughter of Compassion, sir. And a skipchild.”

  “I’m a skipchild, too.”

  “Yeah, but you’re Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. My skipparents got tired of playing mommy and daddy with me. They abandoned me to the State when I was fifteen.”

  “I know. The Generation-Skipping Law can be harsh.” Chiron was fumbling for the right words, a condition that looked odd on him. “Listen, Zhu. We’ve researched the project. And we’ve chosen you. I’ve chosen you.” He plunged on. “There’s isn’t much data on Chinese women in San Francisco, 1895. Mostly they were smuggled into the city as slaves. Immigration authorities never knew who they were. Their masters changed their names, falsified family relationships. When they died, they were buried in anonymous graves.”

  “So their identities are lost to the Archives,” Zhu said. She was getting it, all right.

  “Yes. Like so many of the kids who ran away to the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.”

  “Oh, man. You’re sending me to a dim spot?”

  “Exactly.” Chiron smiled, a real smile at last, warm and encouraging. “We’ve constructed an identity for you.”

  “And who will I be?”

  “The runaway mistress of a British gentleman. That will explain your presence in San Francisco. Your proficiency in English. You’ll go to a home in Chinatown established by Presbyterian missionaries for rescued slave girls. You’ll stay there, work for the director. It’s all women, you’ll like it. I understand that the mission was a lot like the compound you lived in with the Daughters of Compassion.”

  “That sounds okay,” Zhu said slowly. Why did she sense he wasn’t telling her something? Something important?

  Suddenly Chiron searched his pockets and, like an old-timey magician, produced something shiny from his pocket. He commanded, “Look at this.”

  His sudden movements startled her, and an odd prickly feeling rose in her throat. “What is it?”

  “We call it the aurelia. A golden butterfly.”

  It was a piece of jewelry, not a golden butterfly. A fantastic Art Nouveau brooch, its elaborate wings crafted out of swirls of gold set with marquise-cut diamonds and bits of multicolored glass that caught the light like tiny stained glass windows. Instead of an insect, the body of a tiny, graceful woman cast in gold stood at the center, her outstretched arms bearing the fabulous wings, her shapely legs poised as if she were about to dive. She had the heart-shaped face of a classic Gibson girl—large eyes, full cheeks, delicate mouth. Her hair was swept up in a sort of futuristic hood. Her expression was impassive, yet charged with some hidden passion.

  Zhu reached out, amazed. “For me?”

  But Chiron held the aurelia away, as if teasing her, though his expression was anything but. “This is an artifact of 1895. This is a crucial point of reference for you, Zhu. You must look for this artifact in 1895.”

  “Look where?” How the gold glinted! How the glass sparkled like gems!

  “She will have it.”

  “Okay, I give up. Who’s she?”

  “The Chinese slave girl you’re supposed to meet. Muse will guide you to the rendezvous. You’ll know she’s the one because she’ll have the aurelia. Understand? That’s the object of your project. Once you’ve found the girl, the two of you must go at once to the Presbyterian mission. She’ll live in safety there, eventually meet and marry a Caucasian man, and bear his child. A daughter.”

  “Wait, don’t tell me,” Zhu said. “I’m this girl’s great-great-granddaughter.”

  “No, no, the Archives clearly establish that your lineage is based in China.” Chiron tucked the aurelia away in his hidden pocket. “So that’s about it. Find the girl, verify that she’s got the aurelia, win her confidence so she’ll go with you to the mission on Sacramento Street. Meet the new director—a remarkable young woman named Donaldina Cameron—and take a job with her. Make sure the girl settles in. You must stay there, watching over her, till the Chinese New Year in 1896. That’s when the dim spot closes and we have data supporting the existence of the girl’s daughter. Or a female half-Chinese, half-Caucasian baby like her. Then you’ll t-port back to this Now. Okay, Zhu? Sign here.”

  She took the petition he offered, thought about it. The Gilded Age Project did sound simple. Mostly simple. Exciting, even. After the wearying campaign in Changchi, an adventure! She was sick to death of prison. But Chiron still wasn’t telling her everything. “And then wha
t?”

  “Then we’ll see about the handling of your trial. By the time you return, we should know what the charge is.”

  “You mean you’ll know the status of the victim.” She swallowed hard. “My victim.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he alive or dead?”

  Chiron wouldn’t answer. Apparently he didn’t like being reminded of the despicable incident any more than she did. “We’ve arranged for a delay in your arraignment.”

  Excellent. They’d arranged for a lot of things, apparently. Zhu congratulated herself. It wasn’t just a matter of reducing the charge against her. Maybe this was a chance to redeem herself. She hadn’t known how badly she’d wanted that till now. Of course, she’d t-port to 1895. Of course, she’d know exactly what to do.

  *

  “Now what do I do?” Zhu mutters to Muse as she hauls the girl by her elbow out of the Japanese Tea Garden. “She doesn’t have the aurelia. She was supposed to have the aurelia, and she doesn’t. She doesn’t have it!”

  “Stay calm, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers. “You’re attracting too much attention.”

  “Stay calm? I’m freaking out!” This must sound like Zhu’s got two voices coming out of her throat, one answering the other. A devil woman? Oh, yeah. She can sympathize when the girl howls, fear, puzzlement, and dismay screwing up her face. “Muse, you will switch to subaudio mode. Now.”

  “Assume she is the contact,” Muse insists, still blasting in projection mode. “She was there. Take her to the mission, and we’ll look for the aurelia.”

  “Look for the aurelia? Look where?”

  “I not go! I not go!” the girl wails.