“How does it do that?” she asked. “There are no strings or rope, no one pulling, no slave to twist it. It just hangs there and creates a breeze.”
“Electricity,” he said. “You plug a wire into an electrical outlet to draw power and it turns on.”
“Electricity,” she said, “like lightning. You’ve harnessed lightning to create this thing?” She turned to look at him, her eyes getting wide with excitement again.
“Something like that,” he said.
“And the lights on the street, and the horseless carriages,” she asked, “are those powered by lightning as well?”
“There is a lot of use for electricity in the 1920’s,” he said. “Even more so in my time. Pretty soon telephones become common in every house and you can speak instantaneously to anyone on the globe. And then there’s computers.”
Now she was getting overwhelmed again. But something sparked in her head as he talked about plugging things into the wall to get power.
“Maybe it needs to be plugged in,” she said. “So it can use lightning to make it work, like the fan.”
Now his eyes went bright. His device had always just worked, but maybe Richter had used his more and it was out of batteries. It hadn’t occurred to him before what the power source might be. He started trying to find anything on the device that might give him a way to plug it in, but there was nothing. He couldn’t find a way to open it either.
December 1928, he thought. There is someone alive who knows how this thing works, and he’s not too far away.
“I don’t know how,” he said to her. “But I know someone who does. Would you like to take a train ride?”
“Is that one of those horseless carriages?” she said with a little excitement. “I’d love to.”
“No,” he answered. “Those are called cars. This is something I think you’ll find even more exciting.”
The entrance to the train station led into a large, open lobby with high ceilings. There were windows along one side where you could buy tickets. Large boards above the windows displayed arrival and departure times for the destinations you could reach from this location.
The train lobby was packed. There were hundreds of people heading off to visit family for the holidays, which made it the perfect time for them to travel. Though he had some experience trying to blend into the past, she would stick out like a sore thumb. But since there was so much going on this time of year, no one would ever take notice of them.
Before they got to the station Campbell had stopped off at a pawn shop where he got three hundred dollars for the ‘antique’ pistols and the little bit of shot he still had with him. That combined with what was left over in the stolen wallet got them each a change of clothes Campbell bought a hat that fit properly and a pack of Lucky Strikes. She chose a loose-fitting flapper style dress and a bonnet which she thought made her look sexy, to her it felt like walking around in nothing but a nightgown. He thought it looked atrocious, but it was what she wanted and now they blended in nicely and still had enough left over for two train tickets to New York leaving at 4:30 that afternoon.
The whole time Campbell was looking for signs of anything out of place. It was possible, he thought, that they removed Richter from 1776 before he could cause too much damage and history had resumed its regular course. But he didn’t think that was likely. Richter’s mere presence in 1776 seemed to have caused the British to attack Boston in a way and a time that never should have happened. It’s possible he arranged for the British to attack Boston, but that didn’t seem likely either.
So far 1928 seemed pretty normal. Mickey still ran his little speakeasy, prices were the same and the same man was president. But something must be different. It just didn’t seem that, with everything that was changed so drastically back then, everything would be normal now.
They arrived at the train station an hour before their train would depart. Campbell bought them each a cup of coffee from a news stand in the lobby. He put cream and sugar in Mary’s and she thought it was delicious compared to what she’d had to drink since the colonies stopped accepting tea from England. Campbell also bought a newspaper to read through on the train, he was determined find something wrong with history. He needed to know when Richter went.
“So if your future changed why didn’t this one?” Mary asked. They were through the lobby, past rows of benches filled with businessmen reading the Times and mothers trying to occupy small children while they waited for their trains to start boarding.
“I don’t know,” Campbell answered. “Something has to be different. Even 1776 had changed a lot, before the history book said things started going wrong. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already been here.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a movie about time travel a while back-“
“What’s a movie?” Mary cut him off.
“Kind of like story made with moving pictures,” he couldn’t think of an easy way to describe TV, and she clearly didn’t comprehend.
“Uh, huh,” she said, giving him a ‘what the hell are you talking about’ kind of a look.
“Like a play,” he tried a different approach. “But with pictures on a screen.”
“Uh, huh,” she uttered again.
“I’ll show you one sometime,” He said. “Anyway, this guy took an almanac back in time. It was a book that told the outcome of every sports game for a century. He used it to get rich, but that messed up the whole timeline. When the hero went back to his own time everything was different.”
“Like what happened with Richter,” she said. “But that doesn’t explain how this time isn’t different.”
“I think we must have come back to a date the time machine had already brought me to. We probably barely missed me walking out of the speakeasy. So it didn’t change because we came back to a timeline I had already seen.”
“Uh, huh,” she said, rolling her eyes a little.
“Yeah, that doesn’t really make much sense either. It would have to have somehow saved a connection to this stem of reality. Perhaps like the wormhole theory, where there are multiple parallel universes. Maybe we switched universes. The messed up timeline could be an alternate universe, but the device somehow saved a link to this universe since I’d traveled to the same date before.” He paused for a second to rub his temples, and then said, “Now I’m giving myself a headache.”
He looked over and saw Mary giving him a completely blank face.
“So who is this friend that can help us?” Mary asked, changing the subject, as they took a seat on a bench near the sign that announced the train arrivals and departures.
“He’s not a friend,” Campbell said, pulling the lid off of his coffee and blowing on it to cool it down a little. “Actually I’ve never met him.”
“Then how can he help?”
“He built the time machine.”
The train ride to New York was only a few hours but Campbell got them a sleeping car anyway. Mary was overwhelmed and all the noises and activity everywhere freaked her out a little bit. And besides, Campbell thought, no one would want to pay for a sleeping car on such a short ride so they were sure to have some privacy.
Campbell stopped trying to avoid telling Mary about time traveling, now that she had experienced it. He figured at this point there wasn’t much he could tell her that would do any more damage and she was full of questions.
She was eager to know what happened in the war and how the US won its freedom and he told her. At least he told her what was supposed to happen. He told her how Richter had gone back to change things. He told her about the Nazi’s and World War Two and about the regime that Richter came from and how they tried to take over the world but lost. He told her how he came to the conclusion that Richter was trying to change history so that his people would win.
“But why go back so far?” she asked. They were sitting alone in the sleeping car which was made up of bunk beds in tiny private rooms. It reminded him of his journey on th
e ship in 1914, but much more comfortable. She was sitting on one end of the lower bed and he was leaning against the wall on the other end.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Before I went to your time I visited 1955 and all of Europe was under Nazi control. That shouldn’t have happened. After a little research I found out that the United States didn’t exist and I found Hans’ name in an article about the Revolution in a history book. Everything after that point in history was different, so I went back to fix it.”
“How,” she said, “did you plan to manage that?”
“Well, I didn’t really have a plan,” he said.
“You rarely have a plan, do you John?”
“It’s more fun that way,” he answered with a little smile. He was getting more comfortable with the dangerous situations he kept finding himself in. Before finding that desk he had always avoided a fight at all costs, now he had run around through this crazy adventure, and fought a battle, and he was beginning to like the adventurous man he was turning into.
“You are a very intriguing man, John,” she said, leaning a little closer to him on the bed. “And do you have a plan for when we find this man in New York?”
“Well,” he said, “I was thinking I’d just walk up to him, show him the device and ask him to fix it.”
“And if he says no?” she leaned in a little closer, a hand on either side of his legs.
“Well,” he stammered out, feeling the heat coming off of her body as she lowered herself down a little. “I guess I’ll come up with something then.”
She was about to kiss him, he knew it. And he wanted it. He had wanted her since the first time he saw her. But she didn’t kiss him. She just lowered herself down onto his lap and rested her head on his chest. He let out a little sigh.
“What if he won’t fix it,” she asked quietly. Suddenly she was feeling scared again, and confused. She didn’t know what she was feeling. “Are we stuck here then, in this time, in this place?”
He lifted his hand and stroked her hair. He was looking down at her. During everything they had been through she had always seemed so strong and confident, and reckless. But she had these moments where he could see she was really just an innocent, scared girl. He had thrown her world upside down and then taken her away from it, and now she was scared.
“No my dear,” he said, holding her. “He’ll fix it. I’ll get you home, and before you know it you’ll be bored to death at another one of those fancy balls.”
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “And then you’ll leave me,” she said, “and go back to where you’re supposed to be.”
He kissed the top of her head and she squeezed him tighter and he squeezed back and felt something stirring.
“Say,” he said, in a rushed, change of subject sort of way, “I could really go for a drink. How bout you?” and he pushed her up a little.
“I don’t want a drink,” she said and looked up at him, “I want you.” And she kissed him passionately and he couldn’t resist. He kissed back. He reached up with one hand and held the side of her face. He pushed himself up with the other arm, rolled her over and rolled on top of her.
Half an hour later they were lying on their backs, naked and steaming with sweat, her head resting on his shoulder, an arm draped over him. He reached up to where his jacket was hanging on the coat hook next to the bed and pulled the pack of Lucky Strikes and a book of matches out of the pocket.
“Let me try one of those,” she said.
“It’s a filthy habit,” he said, lighting his cigarette and waving out the match.
“But everyone I’ve seen in this time does it and I want to blend in,” she said.
“Trust me,” he said, the burning cigarette hanging between his lips, as he wrapped his arms back around her. “You don’t want to start.”
“Give me one,” she said in a tone that wasn’t quite a question, but wasn’t quite an order.
That confident, headstrong woman is back I see, he thought to himself with a smile. He handed her the cigarette he had just lit and pulled out another, then let go of her to reach up and stuff the pack back into the jacket pocket. Mary breathed in the smoke and it made her cough.
“Told you,” Campbell said.
She decided just to take little bits of it and even that was a little much, but she was determined. Campbell took a deep drag and blew a few smoke rings.
“I suppose I’m an adulteress now,” she said as she took another tiny puff, coughing a little.
“I don’t think it counts if your fiancé turns out to be a douche bag from the future,” he told her.
“You have a point.” He had a lot of trouble with eighteenth century speech patterns, but she was picking up his rather well.
“How about that drink?” he asked.
Mary handed him her cigarette and got up to put her dress back on. He stared admiringly at her backside as the dress fell slowly over her. He kissed her again before climbing out of bed and putting his own clothes back on, then they headed out towards the dining car hand in hand.
“Waldorf Astoria,” Campbell told the cab driver as he and Mary climbed in the back seat.
By the time they had disembarked from the train at Grand Central Station in New York and managed to hail a cab it was nearing midnight and he didn’t want to lose any time. He had read that Tesla rarely slept, but he had also discovered that you can’t trust history books.
The Model A zoomed off down the street and turned onto 5th avenue. Even in the middle of the night in 1928 they hit traffic. It took them another twenty minutes to arrive at the Waldorf and after paying the cabby Campbell was down to a little over fifty dollars. He still had a few nuggets of gold left but he didn’t want to use up the last of his only universal currency.
They walked up to the entrance and were stopped by a very large doorman in a fancy wool uniform, which Campbell thought kinda made him look like the Hulk dressed up as a train conductor. He asked them where they were going and Campbell said they were there to see Nikola Tesla.
“Dr. Tesla does not receive visitors,” the doorman sternly replied.
“Well,” Campbell said, “He’ll very much want to speak with us.”
“And you are?” asked the doorman.
“Admirers of his work,” Campbell answered. “We are in possession of something he would be very much interested in.”
“Dr. Tesla doesn’t accept visitors,” The doorman said again.
“Would you please at least inform him of our presence?” Campbell pleaded. He was starting to think this large man didn’t possess an abundance of intelligence. “Just tell him a man named Campbell has something he very much needs to see.”
The doorman looked at the two of them for a moment. He thought about it but decided it was best to just go with his usual instructions.
“Dr. Tesla doesn’t accept visitors.”
“Then can we make an appointment?” Mary chimed in.
“No,” the doorman said. Then he closed and locked the door, leaving a couple inches of glass separating them from what they needed.
Campbell turned to Mary and said, “Well that didn’t go so well.”
“Have you figured out our backup plan yet?” Mary asked. The two of them turned around and looked into the street.
“No,” he replied, lighting a cigarette and stuffing the matches back into his jacket pocket.
“I have,” she said with a big smile on her face. He looked at her and she held up the newspaper he had bought to read on the train. While they were having drinks in the dining car on the train Campbell had flipped through it and she had noticed Tesla’s name on a headline. It turned out he was holding a conference the next day to showcase some new world changing invention of his.
“How did I miss that?” Campbell thought out loud, taking the paper out of Mary’s hands for a closer inspection.
“We’ll need press passes,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Mary asked.
> “We’ll need to be reporters to get in,” he explained.
“How do we do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Could we intercept him on his way?” she proposed.
“It’s worth a shot, I suppose.”
Ten dollars bought them a hotel room not too far from the Waldorf. They decided they would try to talk to him as he left his building in the morning on his way to the press conference. If that failed they’d find a way to sneak in and try to catch him backstage.
They waited for an hour in the cold at a newsstand a block away from the Waldorf, sipping coffee. Mary kept stealing drags from Campbell’s cigarettes. They started every time they saw the door open and got disappointed every time it wasn’t him. Eventually the right tall, slender man with a mustache in a black suit and a black hat walked out to a waiting car.
“Tesla!” Campbell shouted and they ran over. The shout caught his attention but he was used to people trying to harass him and he kept walking toward the car.
“Tesla,” Campbell shouted again and reached inside his coat. The doorman was watching and thought Campbell was about to pull a gun and ran out and tackled him. Campbell fell to the ground, with the huge man pressing his face into the sidewalk. Mary stopped short and stepped out of the way. The little metal cylinder flew into the air and landed at Tesla’s feet.
Tesla stopped walking and looked down at the device. He reached down and picked it up.
“Let him up,” the tall man said with a thick Eastern European accent. Then looked down at Campbell and asked, “Where did you get this?”
“I was hoping you’d take a look at it for me,” Campbell said as he pulled himself to his feet. He made a show off dusting himself off and walked over to Tesla. Mary slapped the doorman and scurried to catch up.
“Take a ride with me,” the Czech said in a stern voice that made Campbell feel like a Mafia Don was offering him a favor.
Campbell and Mary climbed into the car and Tesla scooted in beside them, the device in his hand. The car started to drive and Tesla examined the time machine. He turned each of dials, listening closely for the clicks as the gears slid into place, and being careful not to spin the part that would turn it on.
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