The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  The worshipers murmur in approval. “Cast demons out. Cast demons out.”

  Zhu crawls closer to the shrine, peering up at the impressive gilt deity. With a start, she recognizes Her—Kuan Yin.

  Here in this joss house in San Francisco, in 1895?

  Of course. She is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the goddess of mercy. She who sacrifices that others may live. The virgin, the mother, the destroyer. A teacher of secrets. Kuan Yin has been worshipped by the people of Tan for five thousand years.

  Astonished, Zhu crawls closer still, slipping among the worshippers. More fruit, trays of plum candies, more fans of incense sending steams of wavering smoke into the close air. Candlelight flickers on gold coins scattered in offering. There are cabochons of jade, lozenges of lapis lazuli, carved coral, strands of pearls. Kuan Yin gazes serenely down at Her glittering bounty.

  And there amid the incense and the candles, among the coins and the clay-pot chickens, lies the aurelia.

  A Premonition is Just a Memory

  Zhu picks the bauble up and holds it for the first time—the aurelia.

  The aurelia is surprisingly heavy for something so delicate. Must be on account of the solid gold. The diamonds glimmer. The tiny tinted panes project spots of multicolored light onto the palm of her hand like miniature stained glass windows. The aurelia. Of course. Zhu would know it anywhere. The aurelia. It feels alien in her hand, the gold hot from proximity to the candles, the burning incense. So hot it feels as if it will brand her, burn a cross-shaped stigmata into her palm.

  Then suddenly the aurelia feels so familiar, the way a ring you always wear feels familiar on your hand. A wedding ring, perhaps, so familiar. Or terrible, a ring from a marriage gone wrong. So familiar, too.

  Like a premonition.

  A premonition of disaster, of pain. Of unforgivable loss. Suddenly the Art Nouveau brooch, this meaningless bauble—an insect wrought in gold with an anonymous woman caught at its center—fills Zhu with such unreasonable fear that she kneels and whirls and glances around the joss house.

  The hatchet men. Have they returned for a second look? Did they see her the first time, after all? Adrenaline soars through her blood. There they are! They’re at the door, they’ve found her just like she feared, found her at last. They’re pulling out their knives.

  She scrambles away on her knees, cringing before the eyepatch’s knife.

  And then there’s nothing.

  Nothing in the semidarkness except the priest spewing ashy water from his mouth on the ground and three men standing at the entrance. Three old Chinese men in denim sahms. They bow, slip off their sandals, drift in, sit. Zhu has never seen them before.

  She crawls away from the shrine, praying that no one saw her take the offering. The worshipers only sit, their heads bowed, their eyes closed, or gaze raptly at Kuan Yin. No one notices her transgression. She finds a smoky corner and huddles there, cross-legged, cradling the aurelia while sparkles of shock pop up and down her spine.

  Who in Tangrenbu could have possessed an Art Nouveau gold brooch? Only fancy shops on Market Street carry such a thing, not the shops in Tangrenbu.

  The aurelia, at last.

  Like a long-long friend.

  Or like a piece of plutonium tossed into her lap, radioactive and deadly.

  “Muse,” she whispers feverishly. Sweat trickles down her temple. “What is happening to me? What is happening to reality?” Never supposed to happen this way. “This isn’t the way the Gilded Age Project is supposed to go, and you know it. I’m just the chaperon for an anonymous Chinese girl. She was supposed to have the aurelia, not me. Not me.”

  Shivering with fear, her teeth chattering. It had seemed so real for a moment, that the hatchet men had stepped back inside searching for her, wielding knives.

  Muse is silent. Only the priest’s chanting monotone, men sighing and murmuring in the dark.

  “Damn you, Muse. You better tell me what’s going on.”

  Alphanumerics pulse in her peripheral vision, and Muse displays the directory of her Archive, chooses a file.

  Muse://Archives/Zhu.doc.

  Thirty-six GB and eight hundred KB.

  “No. No! There must be some mistake. There’s almost six hundred more KB!”

  Muse accesses the file effortlessly, downloads the holoid into her optic nerve.

  A tiny holoid field like a baseball made of blue light springs up in front of her face, and she sees the room swathed like a cloud, herself in the prison uniform, and Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

  “Then why,” she says in the holoid, “after all the technological breakthroughs, the expenditure of resources, did you stop t-port projects?” Her tone is wary, deferent, almost timid.

  She remembers now how terrified she was. The red-haired man had filled her with nameless dread. The deal her lawyer had struck stunk of cooptation, payoffs, illicit DNA experiments to be performed on political prisoners who had no one to defend them. Strange experiments. To be performed on her.

  In the holoid Chiron says, “That’s confidential.” A drink in his hand, something clear and sparkling in a crystal glass.

  Zhu blinks. Chiron had a drink? She doesn’t remember him having a drink.

  “I have a right to know,” she says in the holoid. “My lawyer said you’d explain.”

  Tinkle of ice in his glass. “Remember I told you about the Save Betty Project?”

  “The t-port project that polluted all of spacetime, permitting another reality to intrude into our reality.”

  “That’s right. There were those in the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications who believed they could control the pollution.” Chiron sighs. “Ariel Herbert and others in control of the majority interests of the Institute persuaded the dissenters to back down. And they shut tachyportation down. Shut down the most exciting technological breakthrough since the silicon chip. And the Save Betty Project? Well. Maybe the disaster was overplayed. Betty died in her personal past. I’m guessing she knew she was going to die.”

  “Betty had,” Zhu says in the holoid, “a premonition.”

  Chiron nods. “You could say that a premonition is just a memory. A memory of the future.” He sips his drink. “But Betty didn’t die in the past. We sent a t-porter and brought her back into her own timeline. Into her personal Now. And then she died when she was supposed to. We were sure we’d fixed things. And the Summer of Love Project? The girl in 1967 was supposed to be pregnant, and then she aborted her fetus, and then she became pregnant again by another man, and then she did have her child. A daughter who changed the course of history.”

  “So I’m right,” Zhu whispers in the holoid, “you did do more than cocreate reality with the Cosmic Mind.”

  In the holoid, Chiron inclines his head. “Tachyportation itself has become a part of reality.” He swirls his drink. “So how does t-porting function if all reality is a process between the observer and the observed? If a multitude of probabilities are constantly collapsing into or out of the timeline? And the t-porter herself is another probability? Her observation of and participation in reality must become a part of the process, right?”

  “I guess so,” Zhu says in the holoid.

  “Cosmicist philosophers could no longer deny the effect. In the aftermath of the Save Betty Project and the Summer of Love Project, our philosophers set out three theories of the true nature of reality—superdeterminism, the multiverse theory, and the resiliency principle. You following me?”

  “Uh, maybe,” Zhu says in the holoid.

  But now, in 1895, Zhu listens and watches, breathless and with full attention. Her hammering heart tells her that her very life is on the line. On the timeline.

  “Superdeterminism,” Chiron says, “posits that everything already is the way it is in the the perpetuity that is spacetime. What we perceive as doubts, hesitations, shifts of position, accidents, happenstance, time paradoxes, even t-porting itself—all of that is a random blip and all our acts of free will are an illusi
on. Everything is and always has been from the very existence of time, and no one and nothing can change anything.”

  “That’s pretty extreme,” Zhu says in the holoid.

  And she thinks now, in 1895, how can that be? When reality is shifting all around her?

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty oppressive theory,” Chiron says in the holoid. “Then there’s the multiverse theory, pretty much the opposite, suggesting that reality is a set of probabilities constantly collapsing in and out of the timeline, creating whole new universes all along the way. T-porting is especially dangerous, if that’s true, because our technology may cause a probability to collapse out of the timeline we’re living in, a probablility that wasn’t supposed to exist.”

  “Huh,” Zhu says in the holoid. “That sounds like anarchy.”

  “Yes,” Chiron says in the holoid. “You, Zhu, ought to know a lot about anarchy.”

  “And the resiliency principle?” Zhu whispers now, resentment toward Chiron burning in her as the joss house priest burns another strip of parchment, mixes the ashes in a bowl of water. She and the Daughters of Compassion were enforcing the law, not creating anarchy. But maybe that wasn’t what he was alluding to. And that sudden thought chills her to the bone.

  In the holoid, Chiron sets down his drink. “Under the resiliency principle, anything goes. And everything stays just the way we want it to. We witness and we make it so. We can change the details, and it doesn’t really matter so long as the end result holds true. All’s well that ends well. Tachyportation is freely permitted because our technology is part and parcel of reality itself. The past creates the future, and the future also creates the past. I must confess, Zhu, I am unhappy with that notion.”

  “Why?” Her voice in the far future, in this holoid, sounds so wispy to her now.

  “Because t-porting is not in the natural order of reality,” Chiron snaps in the holoid. “It’s a technology created by us. T-porting creates probabilities that would never have existed, except for our technology. That was what the Save Betty Project unleashed! That’s what the Summer of Love Project tried to fix. But did we fix it? I don’t know! You get it now?”

  More worshipers enter the joss house. “I get it,” Zhu whispers, glancing down at the aurelia lying in her hand. “You’ve created new realities, or at least you think you may have. And that’s why you’re using me.”

  In the holoid Chiron stands, agitated. “Who is to say what reality will be? Who is to govern all of spacetime? Who is to make the creative decisions that change everything? Do you think there are powers who want to? Oh, yeah.”

  “And you?” Zhu says in the holoid. “You’re one of them, right? A cosmicist.”

  “Oh, Zhu,” Chiron says in the holoid. “Even cosmicists are not willing to assume that responsibility. We’ve already proven to ourselves just how wrong we could be even when our best intentions were beyond reproach.” He sits, looking exhausted. “No one could assume such responsibility. Oh, and it’s more than that. We did not want to tempt ourselves. No one with intentions less altruistic than the cosmicists could be allowed to know what terrible power we had at our command. So we shut the shuttles down. We vowed never to use tachyportation again.”

  “But you have,” Zhu whispers in the joss house. She knows he can’t hear her, but she says it, anyway. “You’ve used t-porting again with me.”

  Suddenly—and of all the strangeness of the session, this was the strangest thing of all—Chiron searches his pockets. Like an old-timey magician pulling a dove from his sleeve, he produces something shiny and commands her, “Look at this.”

  The aurelia.

  “A golden butterfly,” Chiron says in the holoid.

  Zhu’s breath catches. The aurelia—the wings, the woman—hovers before her in the holoid. And now, in this moment, the aurelia—the gold, the diamonds—lies heavily in the palm of her hand.

  In the holoid Chiron says, “The aurelia is a symbol, you see. In Chinese mythology, the butterfly has two meanings. Dual meanings.”

  “Dual meanings?” she says in the holoid.

  “Dual meanings,” she whispers now. “Like just about everything in the Gilded Age has a duality. A light side and a dark side.”

  “The first meaning is beautiful,” Chiron says. “The butterfly is the Chinese symbol of love. Not platonic love, not the love of a parent for a child, or a sibling for a sibling, not the love of friends. The love between a man and a woman. Between lovers. Imagine two golden butterflies, entwined with each other over new spring flowers.”

  “You mean sex,” she says in the holoid.

  “Daniel,” she whispers now, dizzy from the incense smoke.

  In the holoid, Chiron smiles. “The second meaning is darker, though not unconnected to the first. The butterfly also symbolizes everlasting life. Survival of the family through reproduction. Survival of the soul through love.”

  “You mean death,” she says in the holoid.

  “Daniel,” she whispers again now.

  “I mean survival,” Chiron says. “She will have it.”

  The holoid shrinks to a luminous pinpoint and disappears.

  She will have it.

  Zhu crouches in the joss house, clutching the aurelia, as the priest spews ashy water from his mouth, casting demons out.

  10

  A Shindig on Snob Hill

  “Where is she?” Daniel demands. “Always disappearing when I need her.” He flings his shot glass against the baseboard of the smoking parlor, demonstrating his pique. Shards scatter across the Persian carpet. He seizes the bottle of Scotch Oats Essence from Mariah’s tray, gulps down half the medicine while Mariah stands before him, impassive and stern.. Always judging him with those depthless black eyes of hers. As if she’s got any right to judge him.

  “I do not rightly know, Mr. Watkins.” She is polite, always polite, no matter how badly he behaves. She will have to get down on her hands and knees and pick up his broken glass.

  There, you see, sneers a voice inside his head. You do know when you’re behaving badly.

  “She woke,” Mariah adds, “at the crack of dawn and went out with Miss Malone. And no, I do not know where they went.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair. He’s never heard voices in his head, not before he met her, his lunatic mistress from six hundred years in the future with a voice of her own that he can hear quite clearly though she never seems to hear his. Now his voices—there are several—cackle and sneer, admonish him every time he turns around, call him vile names, especially when there’s a loud, sudden sound like the hoof-clops of horses.

  “I will not have that madam stealing my mistress away.”

  “Miss Malone is her employer, Mr. Watkins. Miss Malone may avail herself of Miss Zhu’s services any time she’s got a notion.”

  Mariah holds out her hand for the medicine bottle, which belongs to Jessie. The stuff’s not cheap. Defiantly he tucks the Scotch Oats Essence into his jacket pocket. The smeared syrup will catch lint and tobacco crumbs and make a mess of the pocket.

  Never mind. The medicine is the only thing that seems to soothe his nerves, if only for a moment. Drink sends him into a rage, and controlling the drink is why he sniffs cocaine night and day. He is cutting down on the drink, he’s quite sure of it. Poor old Schultz should have given Dr. Mortimer’s cure a try, and damn the expense. But then poor old Schultz was never long on wits. Other healthful effects of the cure are plain to see, too. He’s lost the paunch. He’s as skinny as a kid again. But he cannot understand this hellish anxiety. And his temper? Merely the aftereffect of cutting down on the drink, Dr. Mortimer assures him and urges him to persist with the cure till he’s done with the drink altogether. That will be another five dollars, sir. Ten dollars. Fifteen.

  “’Any time she’s got a notion’?” Daniel says, mocking the maid. “Since when does a woman get a notion?”

  Mariah says nothing. She harbors a personal vendetta against him though he has never committed one single tra
nsgression against her. He addresses her roughly sometimes, perhaps, but not beyond the bounds proper for decorum toward servants.

  “Anyway,” he says, refusing to be shamed before her baleful glare, “my mistress has her own obligations toward me. She has no right to run off without consulting me first.”

  “Miss Zhu,” Mariah says, “has the right to do anything she pleases.” She turns on her heel and stalks out.

  “You’re dismissed,” Daniel calls after her retreating back. She’s got the back of a stevedore, that one does. “Hell with it,” he mutters, taking out the Scotch Oats Essence. Zhu claims the stuff is loaded with whiskey, but it cannot be whiskey that soothes his fevered brow. No, it’s medicine, by God, and he needs more of the same. Indeed, he needs something stronger.

  He takes out his vial of cocaine and the spoon, and snorts. Excruciating pain knifes through his sinuses, then numbs to nothing as soon as the cure settles into his flesh, though not nearly quickly enough. His nosebleeds are getting worse but then, he suffered from nosebleeds when the drink had him by the throat. Zhu claims the cocaine is eating holes in his septum, but he scoffed in disbelief. She’s not a physician like Dr. Mortimer.

  Daniel’s got things to do before he sets off for the shindig on Nob Hill tonight. Snob Hill, as Jessie calls the place. He needs to pay a visit to Stockton Street and old man Ekberg. Then he needs to stop by the courthouse and file foreclosure papers. He was hoping to take Zhu with him. For a woman, she’s awfully clever at paperwork, at facts and figures. Perhaps he should take her to London and go meet H.G. Wells himself. That might put an end to her lunacy. Good thing she doesn’t try to take his cocaine away. “I will kill you if you touch my cure,” he’s warned her. When his blood is up, he almost means it.

  After his business at the court is done, he must stop by the tailor and pick up his costume. The shindig at the Art Association is a costume party, of all things. He would never have allowed himself to be talked into accompanying Zhu and Jessie if he hadn’t overheard along the Cocktail Route that the nabobs of the city will attend. In particular, a certain Jeremiah Duff will make his annual appearance. Mr. Duff has a reputation of being a man well versed in narcotics. Dr. Mortimer has promised to give Daniel a letter of introduction.