Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1)

by Matthew Storm

  “No, we’re still in the same time we left. Inside the house it’s the past. Or the future. I’m not actually sure when the house is. But out here, everything is back to normal.”

  “This isn’t normal,” Oliver said, looking around. “Nothing is moving.” A frightening thought occurred to him. “Wait, are we stuck like this?”

  “No. Now that you’re outside you’ll catch up to the rest of the universe. Or it will catch up to you. I don’t know. It just takes a minute, though. There, see?” He pointed to the street.

  Oliver looked. The cars he had been so fascinated by earlier were beginning to move. They were moving very slowly, but it was still movement none the same. As he watched, they slowly began to speed up. It was like seeing a movie that had been playing in slow-motion, but was slowly winding up to the correct speed.

  “Unbelievable,” Oliver said.

  “Yeah. This kind of thing, you get used to it,” Tyler shrugged. “Look, I’m not going to force you, but would you please come back in and listen to what Artemis has to say? I know none of us has much of a bedside manner, but we’re actually trying to help you out here.”

  Oliver thought about it. One of two things was certain. Either he was losing his mind, or something truly strange was really happening, something that went well beyond anything he could understand without help. These people were very, very odd, and for all he knew they really were part of a cult, but they couldn’t make time stop. And they were the only people here offering to help him.

  “I’ll come inside,” Oliver said. He looked past Tyler, only to see the house he had just come from was gone. Only an empty lot stood there now.

  “It’s still there,” Tyler said, anticipating Oliver’s next question. “It’s back to normal out here, so you can’t see it anymore.” Indeed, Oliver could see that things outside had returned to the way they had been before. The cars in the street were once again moving at normal speeds, and the dog walker had just passed by them with no indication that he had ever seen anything amiss.

  “Why not?” Oliver asked.

  “Because it doesn’t exist in this timeline,” Tyler explained. “It hasn’t been built yet. Or it has already been torn down. Or maybe it was never built here at all.” He frowned and scratched his head. “God, I hate this time stuff. Sometimes I expect to come out of there and run straight into a pack of dinosaurs.”

  Oliver wondered if that were possible. “How do we get back inside, then?”

  “The way this works,” Tyler started to explain, “no, that’s not it. Let me think. Okay. See, you exist in its timeline now. Even though it doesn’t exist for the rest of the world, you’ll be able to see it if you can remember that it’s there. Think about it for a minute. Do you remember the house being there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of house was it?”

  Oliver thought it over. “I don’t know anything about architecture,” he said finally. “It was grey. It had two stories.”

  “Okay, that should be enough. Can you remember what it looked like, in your mind?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look for it now.”

  Oliver looked at the empty lot again, fully expecting to see nothing. But now the odd grey house stood there again. Oliver felt a chill. He had a feeling that somehow the house had been there since the beginning of time, and would remain there until time’s end.

  “There you go,” said Tyler. “Let’s go inside.”

  Oliver hesitated, but he’d come this far. What did he have to lose now? He followed Tyler up the walkway and into the house.

  Artemis was still seated in the living room, not having moved from her chair. She was sipping her tea thoughtfully. “I trust now we can talk without you bolting for the door?”

  “We can talk,” Oliver said.

  “Excellent. Do have one of Tyler’s muffins. They’re quite good, and by now you must know that if we wanted to harm you, we wouldn’t need to resort to poison.”

  She had a point, Oliver thought. He took a muffin from the table and poured himself a cup of tea, then returned to his chair and sat down facing the little girl. A tentative bite was enough for him to tell that the muffin he’d taken was both moist and delicious. “Oh!” he said. “These really are good.”

  Tyler beamed. “I told you,” Artemis said.

  Chapter 7

  “So,” Oliver began. “Who exactly are you people?” A thought suddenly occurred to him, one that would have seemed ludicrous as recently as fifteen minutes ago, but given the circumstances now seemed at least somewhat plausible. “Of course. You’re time travelers. From the future?”

  Tyler laughed out loud and Oliver thought he saw a hint of a smile on the little girl’s face. “No, Mr. Jones, we are not. Are you, by any chance?”

  “No.” Oliver was a bit disappointed. It had been an interesting idea. When he’d been younger he’d been fascinated by time travel stories and old Doctor Who episodes.

  “I see,” Artemis said. “It might have helped to answer some questions if you were, but I was fairly certain you were not. I might return to my earlier question…”

  “What am I?”

  “Yes,” she continued. “But I suspect that you yourself do not know the answer.”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” Oliver asked.

  “Because you made it onto Mr. Teasdale’s target list,” the girl explained. “That virtually guarantees that there’s something special about you.”

  “Because an assassin came after me?”

  “That would be mundane. Assassins kill people all the time, as I understand it. But Mr. Teasdale is something of a specialist, you see. Only the more exotic targets are of any interest to him. He wouldn’t accept a contract for anything less.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what is it that makes you exotic, Mr. Jones?”

  “Nothing.” Oliver shrugged, genuinely stumped. “I’m not exotic. I’m just some guy. I’m boring.”

  “At least part of that is true,” Artemis nodded. “You are, in fact, extremely boring. Tyler?”

  Tyler went into the kitchen and emerged with a thin manila folder. He handed it to Artemis, who opened it on her lap and looked through the contents.

  “What is that?” Oliver asked.

  “Your file.”

  “You people have a file on me?”

  “We did do our research, of course,” Artemis said. “Although I must admit your file is unusually thin.” She thumbed through the pages. “Dead-end job. No intimate relationships. No friends.”

  “I have friends,” Oliver protested.

  “You have people you know,” Artemis noted. “You don’t have friends.”

  Oliver opened his mouth, but then shut it again. He didn’t have a good comeback for that.

  “You work, eat, and sleep.” She looked up at him. “Am I missing anything? You don’t even appear to have a hobby.”

  Oliver didn’t care for her tone, but he didn’t have anything to say in his defense. He wished he had signed up for that cooking class he had been thinking about taking. That would have shown her.

  “There is something strange about you,” Artemis continued. “I’m sure of that.” She studied his face for a moment, but then shook her head. “I can’t tell what it is. You look like…” she trailed off.

  “Like what?” Oliver asked.

  “Like someone who does not fit into this world,” Artemis said.

  Oliver blinked. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Are you psychic at all?” Tyler asked suddenly.

  “Psychic? Are you saying psychics are real?” Oliver started to smirk, thinking of late-night infomercials he’d seen, but Tyler just nodded at him. “Oh. You were serious. No, I’m not psychic.”

  “An alien?”

  “You’re joking now.”

  “He’s not,” Artemis said, “although that would be a little far-fetched.”

  “I’m not an
alien.” Oliver said, annoyed.

  “He could be an alien and not know it,” Tyler said to Artemis.

  “I’m not a damn alien!”

  “Cyborg?” asked Tyler.

  “There aren’t any cyborgs,” Artemis told him.

  “Not anymore,” said Sally from the doorway. Oliver had to stifle a gasp. He hadn’t heard the door opening or her coming inside.

  “Not anymore,” Artemis repeated quietly.

  Oliver thought he heard regret in the little girl’s voice. “What happened to the cyborgs?” he asked. Then he pondered how insane that question sounded.

  “I killed them,” Sally said simply.

  “Oh,” Oliver said. That wasn’t exactly what he had expected to hear. Of course, a minute ago he wouldn’t have expected to hear that there had ever been cyborgs.

  “We’re getting off the subject,” Artemis said. “Is there anything strange in your life you can think of that defies an easy explanation? Odd coincidences? Anything that happened that seemed too good, or too bad, to be true? Prophetic dreams?”

  “I don’t dream,” Oliver said.

  “You…” Artemis blinked in surprise. “You what?”

  “I don’t dream,” Oliver repeated. “I never have.”

  “You probably have dreams and just don’t remember them,” Tyler suggested.

  “No, I’ve never dreamed. I’m sure of it.” For as long as he’d lived, Oliver had never had a dream. He wasn’t sure he was missing anything. Given the state of his life, any dreams he had were bound to be pretty dull.

  Artemis mulled that over. “Interesting, but not symptomatic of anything I can think of. Except perhaps brain damage.”

  “I don’t have brain damage,” Oliver said.

  “Then what is it that separates you from any other lonely, single stock analyst with no friends?”

  Oliver opened his mouth to say something rude, but suddenly stopped. He had just remembered something.

  Artemis saw it on his face. “What?” She leaned forward, pointing her index finger at him. “What did you think of just now?”

  Oliver didn’t want to say it out loud. “It’s nothing. Just something I imagined.”

  “Say it!” the little girl warned.

  Oliver sighed. This had already been the strangest conversation of his life. What did he have to lose? “A cat talked to me,” he admitted.

  Sally snorted in derision and Tyler looked away. Oliver could tell he was trying not to grin. “A cat talked to you,” Artemis repeated.

  “Yes.” Oliver already wished he hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Cats cannot speak, Mr. Jones,” the girl said dryly.

  “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “Well,” Artemis said thoughtfully, “that’s not entirely true. However, the last cat that could speak died over two thousand years ago.”

  “Really?” asked Tyler, perking up instantly. “That’s amazing.”

  “Not really,” Artemis said. “The poor thing’s brain was so scrambled from generations of inbreeding, she never made much sense.”

  Tyler and Sally stared at Artemis, who ignored them. “As I said, Mr. Jones, cats cannot speak. So perhaps that much was your imagination, after all.”

  “Okay,” Oliver said, hoping that meant they could change the subject.

  “Out of curiosity, what did the cat say?”

  “Jeffrey,” Oliver corrected her. Artemis raised her eyebrows curiously at him. “I named him Jeffrey,” he explained. When she didn’t reply, Oliver continued, hoping he wasn’t about to be laughed at again. “He said that my life wouldn’t be easier if he could talk.”

  “I see. That is an unusual way to begin a conversation. May I assume you spoke to…Jeffrey…first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you said to him?”

  Oliver sighed. “I told him I wished he could talk.”

  “And then he spoke.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So in a way,” Artemis mused, “your wish was granted.”

  “He’s a genie!” Tyler exclaimed, pointing at Oliver triumphantly. Artemis turned and glared at him. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

  Artemis turned back to Oliver. She made her fingers into a steeple and said nothing for a long moment. Finally she looked up. “I don’t know what to make of this, honestly. But I’ve decided that we will continue to protect you for the time being. Mr. Teasdale’s clients tend to be extremely unpleasant people, and I’ve found that the world is a better place when they don’t get what they want. If one of them wants you dead, I want you alive. For now, at least.”

  Oliver thought he saw Sally brighten up at the “for now” but he decided not to make an issue of it. “So what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Hide here?

  “No,” Artemis replied. “This house can only be used for short periods of time or else…things happen. And Mr. Teasdale is hunting you. I don’t want him tracking you here.”

  “Can he see the house?” Sally asked.

  “Not yet,” Artemis replied. “But given enough time, he would be able to discern that it is here.”

  “So I should…” Oliver began, hoping she would finish the sentence for him.

  “We will need to figure out who hired him,” Artemis said. “Who is it that wants you dead?”

  “Besides Sally?” Oliver asked.

  Oliver thought he saw another trace of a smile from the girl. “Yes. Besides her.” She rubbed her palms together. “Well, there is work to be done. Tyler, go to it. Take him with you and try to keep him alive.”

  “Got it,” Tyler said.

  “What about me?” Sally asked.

  “You will drive me back to the office,” Artemis said. “We have a matter to discuss.”

  Sally didn’t look pleased, but Oliver noted that she didn’t argue with the girl. He was a bit relieved that she wasn’t coming along with them. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting on her bad side. But he still had questions before he took off with Tyler.

  “Wait a minute here,” Oliver said. “What about my…my life? My house? My job? How am I going to explain all this to people at work?”

  “I don’t know,” Artemis said, standing up. “But I am certain that it will be much more difficult to explain if you are dead. For now, Mr. Jones, I will ask you to trust us.”

  “And everything will be okay, I guess?” he asked, feeling a bit of sarcasm might be called for.

  “Things rarely are,” Artemis said, heading for the door. Sally trailed a step behind the girl. A moment later they had both vanished through the door, back into the real world.

  “Now what?” Oliver asked Tyler.

  “I’m going to do the dishes,” Tyler said, collecting the muffin plates and tea cups onto the tray and taking them into the kitchen.

  “Oh.” That seemed awfully mundane given that they were inside a house where time stood still, but Oliver guessed that household chores were the same wherever, or whenever you were. “And then?”

  “Then we’re going to go find out who wants to kill you,” Tyler called from the kitchen. “You want me to pack up some of these muffins for later?”

  Oliver was about to say “no” when he caught himself. “Yes,” he said. “Yes I do.”

  Chapter 8

  As a child, Oliver had been enamored of fairy tales. One of his favorites had opened with the line, “Sometimes more happens in a single day than in a hundred years.” What followed was the story of an ordinary villager who wound up fighting an ogre and saving a princess. Or something like that. Oliver could no longer remember exactly how the story had gone. Whatever it had been, Oliver had decided he was having that kind of day. When he’d gone to work this morning he’d been living an ordinary life. In the few hours since then he’d been the victim of an assassination attempt, had been gassed and sort-of kidnapped, and had eaten fantastic blueberry muffins in a house that apparently existed in its own unique corner of the space-time continuum.

  Now he was on the run, an
d the only people he felt sure he could trust, albeit hesitantly, were a creepy little girl, a woman who had threatened to shoot him, and…Tyler. Tyler, a man who possessed a very questionable fashion sense, but made up for it with fantastic baking skills.

  I’m so screwed, Oliver thought.

  Tyler had driven them to the Tenderloin district in a black 1960’s era Dodge Charger. Oliver had marveled at the car when he’d seen it parked outside the house. He hadn’t seen one like it in years. “Did you have to go back in time to buy it?” he’d asked Tyler.

  “No,” Tyler had replied, looking confused. “I bought it in Oakland.”

  Oliver was about to say he had only been joking, but then he wondered if that was something people actually did. Go back in time to buy cars. The others had laughed at the idea of being time travelers, though, so that seemed a bit far-fetched.

  At the moment Tyler was on his knees in front of the rear door of a run-down pawn shop, attempting to pick its lock. There had been a “CLOSED” sign in the front window and if there was anybody inside the store, they’d ignored Tyler’s repeated banging on the front door.

  “God damn it,” Tyler swore. One of his picks had snapped.

  “You’ve picked locks before?” Oliver asked.

  “I don’t make a habit of it,” Tyler said, retrieving another pick from a kit he’d had stashed in his glove compartment. “He’s got a good lock.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he’s out to lunch or something? We could just wait.”

  “It’s not like him to close during the day,” Tyler said. “Besides, you want to be hanging around here while an assassin is out looking for you? In this neighborhood? Somebody might beat him to killing you.”

  “Fair point,” Oliver said. He avoided the Tenderloin as a general rule. It was as high-crime an area as could be found in San Francisco.

  The lock clicked. “Finally!” Tyler announced triumphantly. He pushed the door open. “See? Nothing to it. Let’s go check it out.”

  Oliver wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. It was breaking and entering, after all. But to be fair, a minor felony was probably the least of what he had to worry about today. He stepped cautiously through the door after Tyler.