The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  Zhu hands the baby over. Hope’s eyes, when she opens them, are green. Though it’s still hard to tell, not gene-tweaked green. Could Zhu have passed on her gene-tweak to her child? Yes, but the odds are against it. Gene-tweaks are resilient in the recipient, but weak in genetic descent. No, Hope’s green eyes probably come from the deep sea eyes of Daniel’s mother, from some atavistic gene running through the maternal side of his family. From Hope’s Caucasian ancestors.

  The ambiguity is not lost on Zhu. Whose green eyes? Hers? Or Daniel’s mother’s? Under the resiliency principle, we could become the Cosmic Mind, Chiron told her. We could change the details, and it didn’t matter. The outcome we wanted still happened.

  Is that why Zhu had this baby? The birth was quick and easy, over almost as soon as her labor began. She’d never planned on having a baby, certainly not during the Gilded Age Project. Definitely not in her own time. She is a Daughter of Compassion, a woman not permitted to bear children. A woman who believes that having a child in her time imposes an untenable burden on the future. That having a child outside of the law is immoral. She accepted that a long time ago. The Cause is her purpose in life. Kuan Yin nourishes her devotion.

  At the sight of her baby cradled in Jessie’s arms, a shudder of joy ripples up Zhu’s spine so intense that it’s painful. But the joy—and the pain—are distancing, and she feels a peculiar disengagement from the child. Hope isn’t her baby, not really. Hope doesn’t belong to her, she belongs to destiny. Zhu has merely been the means through which Hope could come to life. Zhu is an instrument, a medium. Not the guiding principle of Hope’s life to come.

  Daniel lights a cigarette, stubs it out at Zhu’s sharp glance, and takes his infant daughter from Jessie’s arms, cradles her. He’s promised to cut down on the smoking, too. He’s promised they’ll marry when he returns from Paris. “You know how much I adore you, my angel,” he says. “You saved my life.”

  So she did. But Zhu knows better. They will never marry. That is not Daniel J. Watkins’s destiny. He wrote to the Lumiere Brothers in Paris, who were delighted to welcome a young American interested in their moving pictures. One day he will work with Thomas Edison, he will go to Los Angeles, he will meet Charlie Chaplin—the actor, not the painter of broken-backed nymphs. He will make the moving pictures he loves.

  Muse doesn’t have to show her the Archives. Zhu has had a premonition.

  Daniel has had a premonition, too. He’s left the Stockton Street boardinghouse in a trust to be managed by the Bank of California for the benefit of Hope, together with the proceeds from the foreclosure sale of Harvey’s poolroom. “Just in case something should happen to me on my journey,” he says. He’s taking with him only the proceeds from the sale of the undeveloped lots in the Western Addition. “But never fear, my angel, I shall return within two months,” he says.

  But he won’t. He doesn’t see it yet, but Zhu does. Daniel J. Watkins has settled his affairs in San Francisco.

  “So your old man is finally giving you some respect,” Jessie says to Daniel now, carving meat from the turkey breast and handing him a plate. “Ten thousand dollars in seed capital?”

  “Isn’t that grand? Father believes the moving picture business has huge potential. Mr. Edison isn’t quite so sure, but Father is nuts about the notion.” Another guilty look for Zhu. She’s heard all about his condemnation of his father, all about his father’s abundant flaws and crimes. Yet the tug of blood is powerful. Zhu—an abandoned skipchild—has never known that tug herself, though she can see it plainly in Daniel. The son still craves his father’s respect, welcomes the old reprobate with open arms if only his father will give him that respect.

  Zhu pats Daniel’s hand. “If your father decides to invest in the moving picture business, he won’t regret it.”

  Jessie and Daniel both lean forward, hanging on her words. Do they believe she knows a thing or two about the future, after all? Would they take investment advice from H. G. Wells? Or has Zhu proven a higher degree of reliability? The thought makes her smile.

  She hears the famished cries of gulls descending on buttered popcorn scattered on the rocks by tourists, and Donaldina Cameron sweeps into the restaurant with Eleanor Olney and a bevy of her girls. The girls, neatly dressed in gray cotton smocks, their black hair and black eyes shining, smile with wonder and delight. They seldom see such luxury, plus a view of the ocean. Nine Twenty Sacramento Street depends on charity, after all, and the mission doesn’t have a lot of money. Nine Twenty Sacramento Street will never have a lot of money—Zhu knows that from the Archives—but Donaldina Cameron will manage, survive, and even thrive for all the ninety-eight years of her life. She will never waver from her Cause again.

  “Here you go, Miss Holy,” Jessie says with all due sarcasm. “The gentleman has got another kid for you. Try her on for size.”

  Daniel holds out Hope.

  And Cameron takes the baby from Daniel’s arms while her girls eagerly crowd around her. Cameron’s stern Scotch face is transformed, radiant with love. Despite the streak of white hair and her austere appearance, Donaldina Cameron is not yet thirty. She’s younger than Zhu.

  “Ah, another one of my daughters,” Cameron murmurs, “that’s what she is.”

  “Your daughters?” Jessie snorts.

  “All these girls are my daughters,” Cameron says as the girls cluster around their Lo Mo. She gazes at the baby. “Sweet heavens, she is beautiful. Those green eyes.”

  Jessie rolls her eyes at Daniel. “Shall we go outside on the terrace, Mr. Watkins? I need some fresh air. Sure and I do believe she’s about to kidnap another kid right out of her father’s own arms.”

  Daniel rises, takes Jessie’s elbow. “I do believe I need a smoke in the open air.” They stroll out onto the deck.

  “Donaldina Cameron?” Muse whispers, the monitor’s voice hovering above Cameron and Hope.

  “Good heavens, is that your guardian angel again, Miss Wong?” Cameron whispers.

  “I guess so,” Zhu says. Good old Muse, up to its tricks.

  “This is your Cause,” Muse says in a high, clear voice. “And your Cause, Z. Wong.”

  Muse downloads the file, Zhu.doc.

  Alphanumerics strobe, and the directory flashes across her peripheral vision. Forty GB, damn! A trickle of dread spills down Zhu’s spine. Is another reality manifesting before her eyes?

  Her left eye is scratchy and, in less than a second, Muse downloads the file through her optic nerve, and projects the holoid. The luminous blue field pops up in a corner of the dining room.

  The little girls and Miss Olney stare, goggle-eyed, but Cameron watches calmly, rocking Hope in her arms.

  The scene in Golden Gate Park unfolds—the young man with the painted face, the barefoot girl. The anonymous Chinese woman pushing the wheelchair, an elderly Cameron smiling at the park, at the people, at Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. Cameron waves to him, reaches up to her collar, unpins the aurelia, and hands it to her companion. And the elderly anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman walks across the grass and gives it to Chiron.

  Now Zhu unpins the aurelia from her collar and cups the brooch in the palm of her hand. The tiny golden woman with jeweled butterfly wings poises there, as if ready to fly away.

  The holoid shifts, the park fades, and Chiron sits before them in the room like a cloud, gazing steadily at his unseen audience.

  Is he alive or dead?

  “He’s alive,” Chiron says.

  Zhu’s heart begins to hammer, her breath catches. “Muse, what’s going on?”

  “The new file appeared spontaneously in my directory, Z. Wong,” Muse says. “I have no explanation.”

  “The little green-eyed boy is alive,” Chiron says in the holoid. “The Night of Broken Blossoms is over. The Prime Probability has collapsed into the timeline. The boy was a Quantum Probability, Zhu the one who tipped those probabilities, like spinning a coin on its rim. The Gilded Age Project has always been about Zhu, not about some trinket. Zh
u has closed one Closed Time Loop and stabilized another. The past affects the future, but the future also affects the past. We have witnessed, and we have made it so.

  “Is the boy related to Zhu?” Chiron continues. “Is she his great-great-grandmother?

  “Well, he has green eyes. His lineage is from old San Francisco. Is he a descendant of Zhu’s daughter? I wish I knew for sure, but I don’t. I’m sorry. That information is lost to the Archives.

  “Come back to us, Zhu. You are not the woman I will meet in Golden Gate Park, of that I am sure. You belong here, in your Now. Come back. You’ve got work to do. You’ve got the Cause, and now you’ve also got a family. A family of your own. The little boy probably is your great-great-grandson. We cosmicists are chastened. You’ve shown us that the great principle of the Cosmic Mind is love. You were never destined to murder your own grandson.

  “Now listen carefully. We’ve installed a tachyonic shuttle at Point Lobos, on the rocks below the old site of the Cliff House. Yes, the rocks are still there. And I promise you, it’s the last tachyonic shuttle we will ever use.”

  The holoid vanishes. The luminous blue field hovers before them for a moment, shrinks to a point of blue light, and disappears.

  “But how can I leave my baby?” Zhu whispers. “How can I leave Daniel?”

  “You already have,” Muse says. “Hurry.”

  Donaldina Cameron takes the aurelia from Zhu’s hand. “I’ll keep her safe her whole life and I’ll keep this for her. For the young man with red hair in the park. I won’t forget. I know exactly what to do.”

  Out on the deck, Jessie laughs at some joke Daniel has told.

  Cameron takes Zhu’s hand. “Do you want to say goodbye to them?”

  Zhu shakes her head, and bows to kiss Hope’s perfect little forehead. The baby reaches up, giggling, and touches her cheek.

  “Then hurry,” Cameron says.

  Zhu turns and walks away, taking the stairs. She steps out of the Cliff House into a cold sea breeze. Life follows birth, death follows life. The past affects the future, that is the natural order of the Universe. Yet in the One Day that is reality, sometimes the future creates the past and life follows death. Zhu climbs down the rocks, searching for the portal that will take her home.

  About Lisa Mason

  A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Literature, the Sciences, and the Arts, and the University of Michigan Law School, Lisa Mason is the author of eight novels, including SUMMER OF LOVE (Bantam), a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book and Philip K. Dick Award finalist, and THE GOLDEN NINETIES (Bantam), a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book.

  Mason published her first story, “ARACHNE,” in Omni and has since published short fiction in magazines and anthologies worldwide, including Omni, Full Spectrum, Universe, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Unique, Transcendental Tales, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Immortal Unicorn, Tales of the Impossible, Desire Burn, Fantastic Alice, The Shimmering Door, Hayakawa Science Fiction Magazine, Unter Die Haut, and others. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

  Lisa Mason lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, the renowned artist and jeweler Tom Robinson. Visit her on the web at Lisa Mason’s Official Website, follow her Official Blog, or e-mail her at LisaSMason@aol.com.

  THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series, Mason’s urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A print edition is planned for late 2013. Also available in affordable installments as THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA TRILOGY on Kindle, Book 1: Life’s Journey, Book 2: In Dark Woods, and Book 3, The Right Road, and on Nook, Book 1: Life’s Journey, Book 2: In Dark Woods, and Book 3: The Right Road.

  At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious, magical apartment building on campus. She discovers that her tenants are witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards and each apartment is a fairyland or hell. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up hitchhiking the day before. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation and torn between three men, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between Humanity and the Demonic Realms, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

  “So refreshing… .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

  The Bantam classic is back! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) is on Nook and on Kindle.

  Nineteen five-star Amazon reviews

  “Summer of Love is an important American literary contribution.”

  “This book was so true to life that I felt like I was there. I recommend it to anyone.”

  “More than a great science-fiction, a great novel as well.”

  The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.

  San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.

  Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.

  With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?

  New! Summer of Love Serials 1 through 7 are now exclusively on Kindle for free! Summer of Love, Serial 1: Celebration of the Summer Solstice, Summer of Love, Serial 2: Festival of Growing Things, Summer of Love, Serial 3: A Dog Day, Summer of Love, Serial 4: Rumors, Summer of Love, Serial 5: Inquest for the Ungrateful Dead, Summer of Love, Serial 6: Chocolate George’s Wake, and Summer of Love, Serial 7: A New Moon in Virgo.

  The Bantam sequel, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book) is on Nook and on Kindle.

  The year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave girls.

  Zhu Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice—stand trial for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour, Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading fortune.

  And when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference between her own life or death.

  “A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.” The New York Times Book Review

  Mason’s thriller, SHAKEN, an ebook adaptation of “Deus Ex Machina” publis
hed in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America, is on Nook and on Kindle.

  Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

  But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death.

  A List of Sources follows this short novel.

  The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle.

  A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

  The ebook includes Lisa Mason’s blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years.

  HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

  Exclusively on Kindle for free!

  Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her.