Samantha Smart:
Time Traveler
by Maxwell Puggle
Copyright © 2011 by Maxwell Puggle
Exocubic Media
19 Hill Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
20% of Exocubic Media's annual profits from this publication will be donated equally to The American Museum of Natural History and to 350.org (an organization that lobbies to protect the Clean Air Act and provides education on climate change issues).
Printed Books also available. Visit Samantha Smart at www.samanthasmarttimetraveler.com or look for her on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Tumblr.
A Publish Green Edition
ISBN: 978-1-935456-49-0
Saturday was usually a day that Samantha looked forward to; though there wasn’t any school (which she secretly loved), there was a lot of free time, and on most Saturdays she would go to the park or the museum, or ride her scooter around the neighborhood. Sometimes she’d run into her friend Marvin who would take her back to his house and show her cool things that he could do with his computer. Sometimes, she’d take her dog, Polly, for a walk.
This Saturday, however, was a bit of a disaster. It was pouring rain, a chilly October rain, and Samantha was trapped in her house with her mother, Cindy and her brother Todd. Samantha’s mother was young, as mothers go, and single, and was always getting ready to go on some date or another with some boring guy. Todd, who was fifteen, mostly sat around as he was now, playing some stupid video game or another. Samantha watched dully as her mom applied an appalling color of lipstick to her thirty-five-year-old lips.
“Where are you going, Mom?” she asked without much real interest.
“I’m going out,” her mother replied. “On a date.”
“Who’s the victim this time?” Samantha inquired sarcastically.
“His name,” her mom carefully enunciated, “is Brian. And far from being a ‘victim’, he is about to have the time of his life.”
“I’ll bet,” interjected Todd with a chuckle, not missing a step in his virtual commando world.
“Have a little respect for your mother, Todd!,” Mom yelled from the bathroom, “And I don’t want your loser friends over here while you’re watching Samantha, understand?”
“Aww, come on Mom, I was just kidding... ” Todd began to protest. An argument of course ensued, as even though Samantha was almost twelve years old her mother still considered her to be in need of a babysitter, which usually meant Todd. Samantha hated being around Todd and especially his friends, who probably would wind up coming over even if their mom said they couldn’t. The argument faded into a dull hum as Samantha closed her eyes and focused on the pattering sound of rain on their living room windows, wishing she were somewhere else. Polly was laying on the big, low window sill staring out into the gloom of Brooklyn and looking as much a prisoner as Samantha felt.
The argument was settled, and Todd was given twenty dollars which was supposed to buy Chinese food for both of them, though it would more likely be spent on pizza that he and his friends would inhale, leaving her hungry. At least then she could threaten to tell on him and maybe get to go out for a little bit–but of course, it was pouring rain. Where would she go? The park would be a mess. Mud and small oceans of water–a landscape Polly might enjoy, though the aftermath of wet, muddy paw-prints on her mother’s rugs and furniture would surely be nightmarish. Scooter-riding did not sound appealing in this weather either. The museum was her last hope–she could get there mostly by train and could smuggle Polly, (who was a small, obedient Boston terrier) in her backpack as she often did.
Corey and Kevin arrived only twenty minutes after their mother had left, in clear violation of her expressed wishes. On cue they dialed the number to Smiley’s, the local pizza place, and ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms for delivery. Samantha knew that between the three of them, her brother and his two buddies would blow through it in a matter of minutes. She stared at them as they sat entranced by their video game, which was called Cyber Wars, and secretly hoped they would burn their mouths trying to eat too fast.
By the time the pizza actually arrived, Samantha was dressed in her rubber boots and windbreaker and was coaxing Polly into her backpack. Todd paid the delivery man and, as expected, the boys finished the pie within five minutes, all of them painfully scorching the roofs of their mouths. This gave Samantha some small satisfaction, though she grudgingly admitted to herself that she was still hungry, while they were already relaxing into the early stages of digestion. It didn’t matter–she hated mushrooms. So did Polly.
It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and Samantha figured they could make it to the museum in less than an hour. She slipped out the door amidst brief protests from Todd and had had to promise that she would call home in two hours, and in any event definitely be back before five, when their socialite mother was expected to return. Closing the heavy iron front door of the brownstone behind her, she turned right and walked the block and a half on Twelfth Street down to Seventh Avenue, then turned right again and quickly covered the three blocks to the subway station. She zipped down the stairs and swiped her Metro-Card, pushing through the turnstile and descending to the platform. There was a man with a guitar who was singing something about ‘Isis’, whom Samantha knew to be an Egyptian goddess of some sort, though the Isis in the song seemed to be a different person altogether.
Technically, Samantha was not supposed to go into Manhattan by herself at all. Her mother constantly reminded her of how dangerous a place it was, though she had mostly only met very nice people on the numerous times she had explored its bustling squares and sky-scrapered thoroughfares. She went to school just off of Fourteenth Street, and her mother typically took this train, the F train, with her every weekday morning. Samantha would get off at Fourteenth Street while her mother would switch to an uptown train to go to work at the Museum of Natural History.
It was her mother’s workplace that was currently Samantha’s destination. She thought about the museum as the wall tiles that spelled “Carroll Street” flew by the subway windows. She had started spending time there several years ago, mostly after school waiting for her mom to get done with work. In that time she had befriended Professor Smythe (“of the Knightsbridge Smythes,” he liked to say), who was from London and held many degrees in ‘forensic science’. What this meant was that he got paid to solve fascinating mysteries, using hi-tech tools and deductive reasoning worthy of Sherlock Holmes (who was one of Samantha’s heroes). He had a laboratory in one of the museum’s basements and was usually preoccupied with carbon-dating prehistoric arrowheads or doing a ‘spectral analysis’ on a thread from a three thousand-year-old mummy’s bandages to find out what sort of things they were soaked in before being wrapped around the body of the deceased. Samantha found all of this to be positively captivating, and had decided early on that when she grew up she wanted to be a forensic scientist.
At this point, though, she was still in training. Just last year she finally came to understand that a spectral analysis was basically a test wherein every little molecule of something was analyzed and labeled as one thing or another, so that when it was done you would know exactly what it was made of. She had tried to do one herself, using Polly as a subject, but did not have the equipment to narrow things down too specifically beyond “dog molecules,” or at best “dog hair molecules.”
They switched trains at Fourteenth Street, getting on a C train for the rest of their journey. This ride went
pretty quick as always, and before long they were rolling into the small Seventy-second Street station and walking up the wet stairs to the street. Unfortunately, the closer Eighty-first Street station had been closed for a few weeks due to some sort of construction or another, but Samantha didn’t mind the walk and neither did Polly. Though it was still raining pretty hard, Samantha sensed that Polly was, in fact, getting a little antsy and perhaps needed to do a little ‘dog business,’ so she crossed the street into Central Park and let her out of the backpack to sniff around.
This was a (usually) lovely part of the park which was called Strawberry Fields, though no strawberries grew in it anywhere that Samantha could see. She thought about this a little and then remembered that her mother (who was occasionally good for some sort of wisdom) had told her the place was named after a man who had written a song by the same name, and who had played in a very popular rock band. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember the man’s name, or the band’s name, but was pretty sure that the man had lived close to here at some time. In any case, it was a pleasant place, even in the rain.
Polly finished her bathroom stop and Samantha got her back into the backpack. They trekked the remaining four blocks and up the many steps to the museum’s front doors, then on into the thankfully warm, dry lobby. Immediately they were spotted by Luann, Samantha’s mom’s co-worker at the ticket sales booth.
“Samantha! What are you doing here? Your mother isn’t working today– ”
“I know,” Samantha cut her off. “I’m visiting Professor Smythe–Mom, uh... asked me to give him something. She’s, um, shopping at Zabar’s down on Columbus.”
“Oh!” Luann processed the information with the speed of a fifty-year-old computer and then smiled a pretty, corn-fed midwestern smile and replied, “Well, that’s great! He’s, uh, he’s down in his office or somewhere near it as usual. Let me know if you can’t find him.”
“Thanks Luann,” said Samantha, already heading for the stairs. Luann was a very pretty woman, Samantha thought, but was rather easy to fool, especially on what looked to be a fairly busy Saturday at the museum. She felt guilty for lying for a moment, then decided it was all for the greater good. Besides, Professor Smythe would be glad to see her. She smiled and thought about him as she wove through the museum’s stairwells and hallways. He was a rather small man, about fifty-eight or sixty years old, with what some might call a stereotypical absent-minded personality. In fact, however, Samantha found him to be one of the more focused people she had ever met; people only found him to be scattered because very few of them ever really knew what he was talking about. Samantha thought he was cute–not cute like Jordan Anderson from Heatwavvve (her favorite boy-band)–but just a gentle, funny old man whose British accent made him even more charming.
She rounded the last corner before his office door and ran smack into the man she was looking for.
“Unnnhh!” they both grunted as they collided.
“Oooh–I’m sorry, Professor!,” the younger victim offered.
“Samantha!” The Professor looked even more startled than she did. “Tortuous teenagers!”
“What... ?” Samantha answered, not clear on what he meant.
“Oh, that’s right, you’re–er–not quite a teenager, are you? Oh, but you will be, in time, in time... ” The Professor looked somewhat exasperated.
“Professor,” Samantha said slowly, “what are you talking about?” Perhaps the man had gone totally loony.
“Samantha,” he said, calming and looking straight at her, “what I am talking about is time.”
“Time?” she replied hesitantly.
“Yes,” he said, looking quickly behind him and trying to shuffle her into his office. “We’ve got some real problems, Samantha, real problems here. They’re all my fault, of course, all my fault. Nattering Nincompoops!”
“Problems?” she asked, letting herself be herded.
“Yes, child,” The Professor whispered as they went through the door. She felt frightened for a moment as he hustled her into his office, like something illegal was going on or that someone was watching them. Then they were in the office and the door was closed.
“You see, Samantha–oh! Hello Polly!” Polly had ventured from the backpack and trotted over to the bowl of food The Professor always kept in a corner of his office for her. Professor Smythe then sat in his desk chair and made a conscious effort to relax.
“Have a seat, Samantha,” (she sat down), “You see, I seem to have made a bit of a–a mess. With... time. Yes, time. You see? I–I didn’t mean to, of course, and I’m still trying to figure out what I did wrong–hmmm. Yes, time. A terrible mess. All my fault.”
“You made a mess with... time,” Samantha reality-checked. The Professor was mumbling on, barely understandable.
“Yes. Yes! Rather absurd, isn’t it? Quirky thing, time–change one little detail and watch out–the whole shebang starts coming unraveled! Forget to turn off a light, turn left at an intersection instead of right, order a cheeseburger instead of a hamburger. One bloody slice of cheese,” he stared, wild-eyed at Samantha. “That’s all it takes, Samantha!”
The Professor was manic; Samantha could see his mind’s eye shuffling possibilities faster than a Chinese game of ping-pong. It looked like he was going to lose it. Quickly, she decided that someone had to take firm control of the situation, and since Professor Smythe was obviously teetering on the brink of blowing a brain fuse and Polly was quite happily distracted by an unexpected snack, it was she who had to step up to the task.
“Professor,”she said firmly, grabbing his flailing arms and making him look right at her, “You’ve got to calm down.”
For a moment the old fellow looked shocked, then shook his head violently as if to clear out a nest of bees or to settle some loose screws back into their proper places.
“You’re right, Samantha, of course. This won’t do us any good. And after all, I think I can fix it. I think I will, or I do fix it at some point, but I’m not sure, because I’m fairly sure I haven’t fixed it already. Yet, that is. Oh, my. I hope I can fix it.”
“What exactly is it that you’ve done, Professor? I’d be glad to help if I can, but I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more information.”
“Yes, yes,” The Professor looked as if he was becoming fidgety again, then sat down and looked straight at Samantha. “All right. I’ll give you the whole story, then. I suppose you must know if you’re to help, and you are already helping, though you don’t know it yet... well, anyway, Samantha–I fear that this information is dangerous and I must require that you tell no one what I’m about to tell you. Do you understand? Not your mother, not your friends–no one. At least not until I know more about what has happened.”
“Well... of course, Professor,” Samantha replied, summoning up as much responsibility as an almost-twelve-year-old could, “you can trust me. And–I want to help.”
“All right then. Hmmm... ” he gazed hard at her for a second then added under his breath. “I suppose I may not even have to worry about you telling anyone... ”
At this he got up, took Samantha’s hand and led her out of his office; Polly looked up expectantly as they departed but Professor Smythe closed the door, shutting her in. They walked down many back hallways of the museum’s sub-basement, The Professor moving very nervously, always looking around as if he were afraid someone was watching them. They picked their way through corridors cluttered with hand-carved totem poles, boxes of unassembled dinosaur bones and some sort of giant ant farm exhibits that had been abandoned down here in favor of newer, more interactive displays. At last they came to a door which had two colossal stuffed polar bears on either side of it, as if they were guarding something in the room behind it. Professor Smythe looked around, then punched in a number on the door’s telephone-button-like combination lock and opened it into the darkness beyond.
“In here, Samantha,” he whispered, motioning for her to come in.
Once insid
e, The Professor closed the door and turned on a light switch, illuminating an utterly amazing sight. Inside the very large room was a scene straight out of Pre-Columbian Central America–an entire diorama of ornately carved stone set up in a half-circle, each component block at least ten feet tall. It reminded Samantha of pictures she’d seen of Stonehenge, which she knew was in England, but instead of simple, rough blocks, these were covered in carved pictographs and lots of things that kind of looked like letters. Within the outer ring, in the center of the floor was a huge stone platform with what looked like some sort of gate or doorway set atop it. There were two inwardly-curved, sharp-edged stone pillars coming up from the platform’s base that almost met at the top, some nine feet higher. Two steps were cut into the base which led up to the ‘gate,’ and most notably, in contrast to the surrounding stonework there was a marvelous keystone which sat perfectly in-between the top edges of the two curved pillars, which bore only one symbol. This piece was made of a brilliant, shiny black material that looked almost like glass.
“Obsidian,” The Professor noted, sensing what she had wanted to ask. “It’s incredibly rare to find a piece so large and so flawless. Just that one piece would be priceless, as a gem. But it is far more than a mere thing of beauty.”
Samantha swallowed hard. She had seen many things like this before in the museum, but there was an undeniable uniqueness to this thing, something almost... eerie.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“The Yucatan Peninsula,” replied The Professor.
“Is it–Mayan?” Samantha remembered that a tribe of Indians called the Mayas had built an impressive civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula, which she knew from her geography lessons to be in southern Mexico.
“One of the strangest things,” The Professor mused, “Its markings and pictographs are quite like very early Mayan finds, but I can’t translate it very well from the museum’s Mayan database. It’s sort of an archaic variety, which explains the fact that I’ve dated the material to almost 5,000 B.C. Samantha, that is long before the earliest relics of any Mayan–or practically any other civilization. This thing is older than Egypt’s pyramids! Many scientists would claim there were no people in the region at all at that time. It is a thing out of time.”
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