Samantha stared at the monstrous thing, taking in Professor Smythe’s words. She walked closer to the ‘gate’ platform–it did look very old. But that–that obsidian keystone looked like it was made yesterday.
“We discovered it in a remote, mountainous region, buried under nearly two hundred feet of earth and rock. It’s a miracle anyone ever found it at all.”
“Well... what’s it got to do with time, Professor?”
The Professor sighed heavily and began to look nervous again. He wrung his hands and his lower lip began to tremble slightly as he spoke.
“This–this gate, this ring, these symbols,” he said, gesturing, “They’re–they’re sort of a time machine, Samantha. I don’t know how–I’m still trying to decipher many of the symbols–”
“A time machine?” Samantha interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, right. You’ve been reading too many science fiction stories, Professor. I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, but maybe you need a... a vacation or something... ”
“I know it sounds incredible, Samantha, but listen to me–I can prove it to you. Yesterday, I got it to... work. I’m sure I can do it again, but I need more time to study it–I want to be more accurate the next time I try, and more... careful. Samantha,” The Professor grabbed her arm gently and led her urgently back to his office, locking the room behind them. Once inside, he pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a newspaper. A satisfied Polly jumped up on Samantha’s lap, happy she had returned.
“Samantha, I bought this newspaper yesterday, in midtown. Look at it.”
Samantha looked, and Polly sniffed. The paper was new, and she could almost smell fresh ink on it, suggesting it had indeed been printed very recently. The trouble was, the cover story was about the construction of the Empire State Building, as if it were the latest news. Her eyes wandered to the top of the page, where she read the date: August 14, 1931. It looked very authentic.
“It must be a reprint,” she said at last.
“No,” The Professor replied in a hushed but excited tone. “No, Samantha. I walked around yesterday in the New York City of seventy years ago. It is vividly etched in my memory. The cars, the people’s clothing–it was absolutely amazing. An incredible experience.”
“I can’t believe it,” Samantha repeated her skepticism.
“Neither could I,” said The Professor. “Even though I lived it. So–I ran some tests, on the newspaper. Trying to date it.”
“And?”
“Well, it was strange, Samantha. The ink, though it looks and smells absolutely fresh, is composed of chemicals which were banned from use in printing in favor of more environmentally friendly recipes–in 1957. The paper–and this test allowed me to use very exciting new technology–we can say with near certainty that the DNA in the wood pulp used to make this paper came from an alder tree, an alder tree that grew within twenty square miles of a specific site in western Pennsylvania. Samantha, look at this–” The Professor pulled something else from his desk drawer, a picture.
“This is a satellite photo of those twenty square miles.”
The picture showed a large body of water.
“I don’t get it, Professor... a lake?” Polly, too, seemed puzzled, but probably more because she was wondering if the picture was edible.
“A lake. Exactly. Man-made. This valley was flooded in 1962. And that’s not all. I did some additional research–before it was purchased by the county, the land was owned by the Western Pennsylvania Lumber Company. Their records show that wood collected from this region was sold to paper mills in West Virginia from 1929 until 1936. It’s proof positive, Samantha.”
It seemed to be. Samantha stared at the picture, then at the paper. Could The Professor really have found a working time machine? She pondered all this, entertaining fantasies of winning lotteries and preventing disasters, then recalled the really unnerving part of all that Professor Smythe had said since she had encountered him some twenty minutes earlier.
“Professor, you said that you had... done something wrong. Made a... a mess... ”
“Yes, Samantha,” he sighed. “I don’t know how to explain this, but... since I took the trip, well–some things have... changed.”
“Changed?”
“Yes,” The Professor continued. “I–I’m not even sure to what extent, but–Samantha, I fear I’ve done something terribly wrong.”
Samantha herself began to fidget now. She felt suddenly uncomfortable, like she was in a strange place that she had never been before. What had The Professor done? Could it even be set right? Would their world be changed forever? And how much had been changed? These were questions that urgently needed to be answered, though she feared in her heart that even the wise, knowledgeable Professor Smythe had no idea how to begin to answer them.
Samantha sat and tried to absorb all the information The Professor was telling her. She had asked for it, she supposed, but it was all very confusing.
“It seems,” The Professor continued carefully, “That this building is a bit of a nexus. Or, at least, part of this building... you see, Samantha, you walked in here from the world’s natural time sequence–the time sequence that the world is supposed to be progressing in. I fear, however, that if you walk out again, you will experience what I have: A quite... different world, a divergent time sequence, in other words, the evolution of whatever small thing I somehow changed when I went back in time.”
“You mean I might not live in the same house anymore?” Samantha asked with a hint of panic.
“Samantha.” Professor Smythe sighed. “I mean that what you think is your house is probably not even there now. Or it might be there, but probably underwater.” He scratched his head.
“Underwater!!?” Samantha practically screamed. “What do you mean!? I have to be home by five! Oh, man, Professor, I think I should go. You’re really freaking me out.”
“Samantha! Wait–” The Professor tried to stop her, but she was off, running through the museum’s hallways, Polly stuffed hastily into her backpack. She felt sort of scared now, and had decided that being at home would make her feel better, even if it was with Todd and his stupid friends. Underwater, indeed! It couldn’t possibly have rained that much in the past hour.
She ran up two flights of stairs and through a door into the museum’s lobby, noting the lack of people that had been there earlier. She glanced quickly at the ticket counter, but the people at it were strange–Luann wasn’t there. Had she gone home? Was her shift over already? Samantha had never seen these ticket sellers at all, and she felt even more nervous. Running through the front doors out onto the steps, she froze.
It was terribly wrong. There was no Central Park West. There was no Central Park. It was all water. All water. Samantha stared in disbelief. Where the park had been there was now a huge, open space like a great rectangular lake, with clusters of what looked like houseboats floating here and there. She could see an island where Belvedere Castle stood, surrounded by boats, but no other land was in sight. Strangely, there were no trees or even treetops visible. Samantha wondered if trees simply drowned in the event of such a terrible flood as had presumably happened here.
The museum looked pretty much the same on the outside, though its entire ground floor and then some must now be underwater. The surrounding city was in a similar situation, and the blocks that stretched to the north and south reminded Samantha of postcards she’d seen of Venice, Italy, where most of the streets were more like canals and people got around in long boats called gondolas. Indeed, it seemed like New York had definitely gone the same way, as she could see many boats buzzing around in the distance; some were slow, drifting rowboats, some canoes and kayaks, many motorized boats with cabs on top–in fact, they looked very much like taxi-cabs–or at least what she imagined taxi-cabs would look like if New York City were a world of water.
Polly had jumped out of Samantha’s backpack and trotted down the few stairs left above the water line, and now stood at the water’
s edge sniffing, looking around and occasionally gazing back at Samantha with a look of utter confusion. Samantha walked down to her and stooped to pet her. “It’s okay, Polly,” she tried to reassure her canine friend, “I know this is pretty weird. But it’s kind of cool, too, isn’t it?” She smiled and looked at her little terrier, who did not seem to agree at all. Polly was not an exceptional swimmer and appeared to be in fact quite distressed that most of the world around her had suddenly been filled with water. She had always hated baths and did not even really like to get wet, unless it involved some nice warm mud. She tried her hardest to express these feelings through whimpers, pitiful looks and a general lack of tail-wagging, and it seemed as if Samantha understood.
“Okay,” Samantha said to Polly, “I guess all we can do is go back downstairs and try to help Professor Smythe figure out what went wrong–and how we might be able to fix it. Come on, Polly... ”
Polly jumped back into Samantha’s backpack and they slipped back into the museum, heading for the familiar door to the basement stairs. Samantha kept going over possibilities in her head as to what could have happened to flood all of Manhattan, her mind trying to picture some huge dam bursting or a rainstorm of biblical proportions. Her mind was so completely preoccupied with these thoughts that she almost walked right into a security guard who was now standing in front of the basement door. She stopped suddenly and gazed up at six and a half feet of uniformed muscle. A quizzical, African-American face looked back at her from atop the mountain of person.
“Can I help you?” the security guard asked, blocking the door.
“Oh,” Samantha peeped, “I–I–uh, my mom works here.”
“Really?” the guard replied. “And you are... looking for your mother?”
“Well, not–uh–not exactly. I’m looking for Professor Smythe–I know where his office is, if I could just–” Samantha tried to slip by him to the door.
“Hold on a minute,” said the guard. He clicked on the radio attached to his belt and spoke into it. “Cal–hey, it’s Art up front. I’ve got a young girl who’s trying to get downstairs–says she wants to see Professor Smythe.”
“Smythe?” the radio crackled. “What for? Who is she?”
“Well, she says her mother works here–what did you say your name was again, Miss?”
“Samantha. Samantha Smart,” Samantha replied nervously. “My mom’s name is Cindy–Cindy Smart. She works at the–the ticket counter.”
“Did you copy that Cal?” Apparently ‘Art’ had been holding on to the ‘talk’ button on his radio.
“Copy that, Art. No one here seems to know a Cindy Smart at tickets–does she sound familiar to you?”
“Negative,” Art replied, staring down at Samantha. “What do you want me to do?” The radio was silent for a moment, then chirped on again.
“Why don’t you bring her up here, Art. We can watch her while you go ask The Professor.”
“Affirmative, Cal,” Art replied, “sounds good.” Art gestured in front of him for Samantha to make her way to the ticket counter. Samantha sighed and reluctantly obeyed, praying to herself that Polly would not be noticed. They walked over to the counter and Art left her there, going back towards the door to the basement. His radio crackled again.
“Hey, Art, we’re just gonna try to ring him on the phone in his office. He might pick up.”
“Roger that,” Art responded, resuming his standing position at the door and awaiting further instructions.
Samantha was in luck. The Professor had obviously picked up the phone and the security guard at the ticket counter was talking to him, nodding. Presently, he hung up and motioned her over to his post.
“Professor Smythe says to wait here,” he said when she was close to him, “he’s coming to meet you.”
“Okay,” Samantha shrugged. She walked over and sat down in a nearby lobby chair that she remembered having played on as a little girl. Of course, she thought to herself, in this reality I probably never played on this chair–it doesn’t even seem as if my mom works here. Samantha frowned a worried frown. Would she even ever see her mother again? Sure, Cindy Smart was a shallow, materialistic, man-devouring dating machine, but Samantha had to admit she loved her anyway. Who knows, maybe in this reality her mom was a famous poet, a very deep, sensitive thinker who spent exhausting hours upon hours championing noble causes and creating priceless contributions to the cultural commonwealth. But then, perhaps in this reality, this ‘alternate course of history,’ Samantha had never been born. The world had been spinning off in a different direction since 1931. That was a long time. Thinking like this started to make Samantha’s head feel dizzy, and she was glad when she looked up and saw The Professor walking toward her, a sort of bookbag over his shoulder.
“Samantha!” he shouted, waving as he approached. “Come on, then, we’re going out. Got some research to do, I’m afraid, that is, if we want to get things back to normal.”
Samantha nodded vigorously at this idea and got up, following The Professor toward the main doors. They walked out and down the stairs to where the waterline was, then looked at each other. Polly stuck her head out of Samantha’s backpack and sniffed the outside air again.
“We’ll have to hail a taxi-boat,” The Professor said. “I’ve been out a few times already, Samantha–in this reality. One doesn’t have to be quite as careful about changing things–at least, assuming our goal is to change the past back to normal and eliminate this ‘incorrect present’ altogether.”
“I see,” Samantha responded. They stood in silence for a minute, waving for a taxi-boat, which it seemed was no easier to flag down than its wheeled counterpart, the familiar New York taxi cab.
“Some things haven’t changed,” The Professor smiled, shrugging.
“Professor,” Samantha thought out loud as they continued waving, “Is it still October?”
“That,” he replied, “is a good question, Samantha. I’ve always assumed that my calendar was still correct, but I can’t say for sure. We shall have to ask someone.”
“If it is still October, don’t you think it’s, well, quite warm?”
“Hmmmph. Indeed. It feels more like May than October, doesn’t it? Strange... ”
The Professor seemed to drift off into a haze of thought, but his reverie was quickly interrupted by a taxi-boat which had finally buzzed over to them.
“Where to, Mac?” the driver asked, edging the open-roofed boat close enough for them to climb in.
“The nearest newsstand, I think,” The Professor offered.
The taxi-boat sped off along what used to be Central Park West, cut right down the former Seventy-fifth Street and then left onto the old Columbus Avenue. There were, in fact, new street signs that had been attached to corner buildings, apparently to replace the street-level ones which were all now entirely submerged. Samantha marveled at the eerily familiar yet vastly changed blocks of upper Manhattan. All the storefronts had been moved to the second floors of the buildings, and all of them had these plastic or Styrofoam docks floating at their doors. There were long stretches where one could even walk along on sidewalks made from the same strange material. Samantha thought they were all terribly ugly, and that they would’ve looked much better had they been done in wood.
The roofs of the buildings all seemed to have sprouted thousands of antennae as well, large steel things with disc-shaped tops packed eight or ten to a rooftop. Samantha wondered if everyone broadcast their own radio station in this alternate reality, but the receiver dial in the taxi-boat seemed to have no more numbers on it than familiar radios.
“How’s this?” the cabbie shouted over his rather noisy outboard motor. They had pulled up at a plastic dock next to Manny’s Newsroom, on the corner of Seventy-first and Columbus.
“Superb,” said The Professor in his royal-sounding British accent.
They disembarked onto the plastic sidewalk and Professor Smythe paid the driver, noting thankfully that money hadn’t changed too dr
astically either. The taxi-boat sped off downtown and Samantha decided to let Polly out of the backpack. Shaking off a bit of a nap, she walked around a little, unsure of the stability of the floating sidewalk, though it did seem to be anchored quite well into the sides of the buildings. She was, however, unhappy about having to sit outside the newsstand’s door as the humans went in to look for clues to why the world had changed so much.
They entered Manny’s Newsroom, finding it to look quite like a normal, familiar newsstand, and went to one of the racks that held newspapers. There were a variety of headlines, it (presumably) still being Saturday, though few of them made much sense to them. Still, Samantha read them all and filed them away in her mind for future reference.
“WAVES TAKE FIFTH STRAIGHT TITLE”
“PARK FIRE KILLS TWENTY, LEAVES EIGHTY HOMELESS”
“JAPAN MOVES THOUSANDS OF MORE REFUGEES TO CHINESE COAST”
“CALVIN VETOES BOATER LEGISLATION”
and finally,
“TRICK-OR-TREATERS WAX UP THEIR BOARDS”
“This ain’t the public library, ya know,” a grating, raspy voice called from behind the store’s counter. “Ya think the rent’s cheap on this little chunk of commercial real estate? You wanna read a paper, you buy a paper, capiche?”
Samantha knew from an Italian friend of hers that “capiche” meant, “understand,” though she thought it always sounded more intimidating in Italian.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” The Professor blathered, grabbing a pile of different newspapers and putting them on the counter. The proprietor rang up the purchase, which came to six dollars and seventy-five cents. Professor Smythe paid the rather unfriendly man and they quickly exited back out to the sidewalk, where Polly was waiting nervously.
Samantha Smart Page 2