by Turner, Ivan
I was honored.
So it was that a week after being released from the hospital, I was brought back to headquarters in order to view the progress. I remembered what Manhattan had looked like in 2189. Rupert and Larena had led me through the streets of the city, some that looked like suburbs, others that looked like the city I remembered. Now it was storage. Can you believe it? New York City had been the greatest city in the world. Its landmarks had been celebrated by people across the nations. Times Square was the place to be on New Year’s Eve. And now? Most of the buildings were gone. They had leveled the place and set up warehouses for storage. There were some small communities scattered about the island, but these were mostly people who worked in the warehouses. Travel throughout the city was completed mostly by bicycle. The bikes looked different, but they were still powered by human legs.
We, however, did not ride. We took a coach, which actually looked like an old carriage and was pulled by three cyclers. It was a return to the golden age of travel. It would have been a great tour two hundred years before. I can only imagine having been pedaled through the Manhattan rebuilt after the end of the United Arab occupation. That image still stuck in my mind. The pier. The highways. The lights and majesty of it all. This was sad.
And it was all because of us.
The government started pushing people out of the city right after the night of the invasions.
When we reached the site I was amazed at what I saw. The building that had been built over the headquarters was gone. Dirt and cement had been laid down in its place. I could see that this blocky foundation dug deep and was probably as thick as it appeared. Even had I managed to dig through the debris choking the staircases, I would never have been able to get through that slab of stone. No human being could. The crews that had rescued me had tunneled into it from the edge. They had used old blueprints of the building and searched using various algorithms and it had still taken almost three months to find a suitable entrance. All of that work had been going on while I was still out of existence, travelling the fourth dimension in utter blindness. There was no way for them to know how long I was down there so I never found out my exact leap-in date. I suppose it didn’t matter.
In the week since our conclusion, they had managed to erect a fairly large portion of the skeleton that would serve as the main building of the Foundation. The plans called for a sprawling complex composed of six buildings, each three stories tall. Manhattan had been so flat for so long that the people responsible for dispensing permits were unwilling to allow tall buildings to once again dominate the view. Jefferny and the other members of FLASH didn’t seem to care. Low to the ground was fine. There was plenty of space.
The headquarters itself would remain largely untouched. The idea of a museum still appealed to most of the FLASH people. I wasn’t terribly opposed to this but again, if it was going to be open to the public, we needed to recognize the danger of someone leaping in fresh from that battle.
There was an elevator that led down to where they had cleared the staircase. It was an entrance on the far west side of the complex, set far away from the Map Room and the barracks. Four of us boarded the elevator that would take us down. In addition to Jefferny and myself was a young man named Johnatthew and a worker whose name was never given to me. There was hushed and quick conversation between Jefferny and Johnatthew as we descended. It was pretty deep, deeper than I remembered. I guess I hadn’t realized it before.
As soon as we stepped out of the elevator I knew that I would have to leave immediately. I was besieged by terrible emotions, fear and sickness. I felt as if I were dying of thirst again and kept turning my head back around to make sure that the elevator was still there.
Both Jefferny and Jonatthew asked after my well-being but I couldn’t find the proper words to answer. Somehow I managed to convey that I had to go back up immediately. They helped me into the elevator, which had mercifully waited behind for us. As soon as the doors closed and we began to rise I felt better. But I knew that I was not going to go back down. Never again would I set foot into that place that had entombed me.
My trauma did not preclude me from looking at pictures though. Digital photos were mailed to my office regularly and I was able to make comments on the work being done. Every photo brought an uneasy feeling with it but in the safe confines of my office I was able to master my fear. They were doing an excellent job of restoring the place. The lights were back on. The bodies had been removed. All of the blood and filth had been removed. Based on my memories from a week spent there, it was beginning to take shape as the place it had been. Often I wished for the company of some other who had spent time there, more time than I. Rupert would have been my first choice, but I would have accepted anyone who might have been a kindred spirit. Still, though, no one came. I knew that what I was doing was important work. I was doing my best to save the people that had leaped from that place and into time. When they came back, harried and feeling the dreadful excitement of battle, they would be safe.
At length, we learned that there was really no decisive way to guard against armed people coming through shooting. I was adamant about keeping the installation closed to the public. We estimated that somewhere between seventy five and one hundred people had leaped from that location during the battle. Some were accounted for but others were not. There was no way to know where and how they would show up. As more arrived, we might be able to reconstruct bits of what had gone on. That would make things safer. We could then cordon off certain areas rather than having to close the whole thing. But the members of FLASH were unanimous in their desire to see it opened up. And they were the ones with the money. My authority went only as far as they allowed it to go. I resented them somewhat for that, but not entirely.
In the end, people would be allowed to visit if they submitted to being clothed head to foot in bullet proof uniforms. Can you imagine? But such suits existed and were virtually impervious to the weapons of the twenty second century. So the headquarters would be outfitted as a museum with the main building serving as an administrative complex. The only access to the installation below would be through heavily secured entrances from the main building. The other buildings would provide food, shelter, and medicine to errant Forty Leapers. I insisted they pay urgent attention to those buildings and one was completed and open in less than two weeks.
The first leaper came through two days after that. She was not from our headquarters, nor even from New York. There was a lone installation in Kentucky that had been found even after the headquarters in New York. It had been excavated quickly. Due to its size, the workers had had no problems digging into the ground and finding it. She came through swinging a broom handle of all things. When she told her story, she told of being surrounded by three soldiers who had decided to put away their guns. I guess that sort of fear could have driven anyone to the edge and back. Carolyn Lynn was her name.
It was hard for her to trust anyone, of course. She was suffering from the same paranoia as any of us. The people hired by FLASH helped to calm her down and reassure her. I was awakened in the middle of the night so that I could get onto a camera and speak directly with her. At first there was doubt on her face. Why should she believe anything I said? Why should she even believe that I was Mathew Cristian? And since I didn’t know her, I had nothing to tell her to prove my identity. But I did my best and I think the complete lack of personal attachment was what eventually won her trust. I invited her to New York, to come stay at the Foundation. She was hesitant at first but there really wasn’t anything for her in Kentucky. There hadn’t been for a long time. Carolyn Lynn had left behind a husband and two teen aged children in 1952. Once her decision was made, she didn’t want to wait. She was in New York the following evening after a good meal and a good sleep. When we were introduced, she ran up to me and hugged me tightly. I instantly felt the connection brought on by our situations and hugged her back. What I felt at that moment was relief. I was no longer alone. There was someone e
lse like me in the world.
Carolyn Lynn added a very important perspective to the preparations of the Foundation. It wasn’t the female touch, although I think that was part of it. Once she had recovered from her harrowing leap, she proved herself to be an incredibly sharp and intelligent woman. As a housewife in the early 1950s, she had been stifled, her creative instinct focused on home building and cooking. With the Foundation her intellect was set loose and things began to move much more quickly. She was much better than I at organizing living and administrative space. But her primary contribution was the Intro. A million trained psychiatrists could never have put together what she did from her own experience. She worked tirelessly at devising a way for regular people of the twenty fourth century to approach and win the trust of Forty Leapers from countless eras behind.
The first opportunity to use this came on May 1st. It was a great trial because the man who leaped into reality had not fought during the invasion. He was simply a regular guy who had been fortunate enough to miss all of the action. He appeared in the middle of Las Vegas. It had been four hundred years since his leap. That meant that he had last leaped in 1942, before I was even born. I remember being amazed during my early leaps when I had missed important world changing events. I had missed my mother’s death and Morty’s death. I had missed the United Arab invasion. This man, Phinneas Scot was his name, had missed the entire war. I so envied him.
The result was that Phinneas Scot was not in fear during his leap. In fact, he had just won a huge hand of blackjack, which had been the impetus for his leap. Unfortunately, he was not going to collect. When the Leap Patrol as we called the people who volunteered to be on hand for arriving Forty Leapers caught wind of him, they used the Intro. He laughed at them. When they talked to him about the war, he thought they were talking about World War II.
Phinneas was a great character who took everything in stride. His world of the eighteenth century had been left far behind for him and he had embraced Forty Leaping, a new term to him, like a member of the family. He took a trip to the Foundation to meet me and Carolyn and see what it was all about. It was refreshing for me to meet someone who didn’t know who I was.
“You seem like a good lad,” he said to me. “But I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
At that I broke up laughing, which was the second such laugh since I had landed in the twenty fourth century. I kind of liked it.
Phinneas spent a week with us, reading through all of the compiled data and touring the city. He was a gambler and spent some time teaching me how to play poker and blackjack. He talked about betting on the horses, too, but didn’t recommend it. And then he left. He said his goodbyes, knowing that we would not see each other again. He had refused the adrenal inhibitors saying that he never put anything into his body except rich food and hard liquor.
“No sense being shackled to the world by a stopwatch, Mathew,” he said. “You think that through every time you chew a pill.”
I found myself buoyed by Phinneas Scot’s attitude toward life and leaping. I have often thought of and written about that sense of freedom brought on by leaping through time. I had been given opportunity after opportunity to cast off the shackles of responsibility clapped on by everyday life. But I had never truly done so. My quest had always been for a sense of normalcy. I had sought out and now found a stable life. But Phinneas rejected it. I admired him for that. In a way, I even envied him. Every day I would look at my adrenal inhibitor pill and silently curse it and silently praise it at the same time. I think it troubled me more than I realized. As the work in the headquarters progressed toward a gala opening, Carolyn noticed a change in my attitude. We had become quite close, working together every day and we had shared many of our stories and personal secrets. I spoke often of Jennie and Carolyn never seemed to tire of hearing about her.
“Mathew,” she said to me one day. “I wonder if you realize that you’re afraid that ending your leaping will close a door that’s become very important to you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She shrugged. “You’ve associated leaping with Jennie completely. I think you’re afraid that if you give up leaping, you give up Jennie.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said. “Jennie’s been gone for two hundred and fifty years.”
She smiled at me, that warm, motherly, 1950s, Leave it to Beaver smile. “And leaping is all you have left.”
It was not the great revelation I was hoping for. The notion left me more disturbed than anything else. I did not give up on my pills, though. Despite all, I was happy with the work at building the Foundation. With a week before the opening of the museum, I was busier than ever. There was to be a gala event in the main building and then invited guests would be led down in small groups to view the headquarters. I would not be conducting the tours.
We argued over the length of the tour. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Jefferny and Carolyn ran through it a number of times. She had been chosen as tour guide, at least for the opening. After that, it was not a job she wished to do. Having an actual Forty Leaper conduct the tour was a great attraction but it wasn’t feasible. Especially since we only had two Forty Leapers on hand and one of them wouldn’t set foot inside the complex.
The opening of the museum was scheduled for May 20th at 8:00 pm. All of the major players would be invited. The banquet would be huge. I was asked to speak but I couldn’t think of what to say. Whatever it was, I would be facing a room of people who had no idea what it was like to leap through time. My words would not touch them. Again, Carolyn came to the rescue. She told me that it wasn’t about reaching them on my level. It was about reaching them on their level. Throughout her time, people had always supported causes which didn’t affect them. I needed to play on their sympathies. I needed to tell them that there were others like me out there in the world. They were frightened and alone, often hungry and on the run. They were lost souls.
In the end, she just wrote the speech.
I didn’t see much of Jefferny leading up to the opening, but he was there on that day, running throughout the main building and up and down from below. He was a bundle of excited energy, giving orders and checking to make sure things were going smoothly. I swear I thought he was going to leap himself. He poked his head into my office several times just to make sure I was ”all right”. For me, the opening of the museum was secondary to the fact that we were going public on that day. My speech would be televised. Across the world posters would be placed up in the hopes that Forty Leapers who were in hiding would come out and accept our help.
Guests began to arrive at 7:30. I watched them on a monitor, listening to snippets of their conversations. Most of them were unconcerned with Forty Leapers and Forty Leaping in general. They were just the filthy rich attending an evening thrown by the filthy rich. The whole thing was very vogue. I was interested mostly in the comments regarding the location of the Foundation. Nobody ever puts anything in Manhattan! If only they knew. But of course those memories were mine and mine alone. Manhattan hadn’t been a true city for a very long time.
My speech was to come between the main course and dessert. After most of the guests had filtered in, Jefferny came up to my office to order me down to the party. I was dressed and ready, though hardly eager. It’s not easy being the man of the hour. I was known to a group of people who I didn’t know at all. They would treat me with all of the familiarity of kin and I would be expected to do the same. It just wasn’t in my nature. But I didn’t want to disappoint. FLASH had invested a good portion of its savings into this Foundation and, though it was hardly meant for profit, it did need to pay off in other ways.
So I mingled. Carolyn, who was very good at it and seemed very much at ease with her new surroundings, came to rescue me from my blundering incompetence. Men and women introduced themselves to me and I introduced myself back. But my social skills were practically useless. They had been worthless in my own time. Now, in an age where the etiquette I had learne
d was obsolete, I was like a fish out of water. But Carolyn made it easy. She fielded almost all of the small talk and let me handle the direct questions. With her at my side, I was able to manage with some degree of grace. We moved from guest to guest that way for about an hour and a half. Finally it was time to give my speech.
I think that if it weren’t for the adrenal inhibitors, giving that speech would have sent me flying through the time stream again. I was so on edge, but again without the physical side of it. There were no palpitations, no sense of vertigo. I was frightened and had a queasy stomach, but the rush wasn’t there. I was beginning to dislike the inhibitors. Most of the time I didn’t notice them, but I began to realize that a man could not subsist on the rational alone. Getting excited was a great release of tension and it was as necessary as sleep. I stepped up to the podium sweating in my faux tuxedo (The thing was a T-shirt and a jacket and a pair of black pants. The shoes, though black, were more like sneakers than dress shoes. I never did figure out what the soles were made of. There was no tie and no cummerbund). I looked out at the people there and read my speech. My voice cracked once and my tone was slow and halting. It did not get easier as it progressed but it did get closer to finished until it got finished altogether. I was glad, thanked the crowd, and stepped down from the podium. Jonatthew, who had introduced me, gave me a big hug as I came down and then took my place once again. There was more said, a plea for donations which played on the historical significance of the site. I didn’t listen much. My eyes were on nothing. My mind was on Jennie. How far away she seemed. Then I was surrounded by applause, joined in, and was served dessert and coffee.