A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists

by Jane Rawson

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘So what book were you thinking of?’

  He sighed, put down the T-shirt he was folding and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Did you say it’s 1995 now?’

  ‘1997’

  ‘Oh. OK, look, it was that book. I read it years ago cause I’m from the future. You’ve tumbled my caper, OK?’

  ‘Huh. Who knew?’ I stopped to think. ‘What’s a caper?’

  ‘Never mind. So where are you up to?’

  I read him the page I was on.

  ‘Yeah, that’s the book. It’s good stuff. So,’ he started folding again, ‘you’re like, thirteen years old, right?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘What are you doing here all by yourself? Are your parents out somewhere?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you how come you were from the future.’

  ‘True. Sorry.’

  He had some kind of accent, but I wasn’t sure what. We met a lot of people from other countries, traveling around and stuff, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard something like that before. ‘Are you from future England?’

  ‘No, guess again.’

  ‘Future South Africa?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Future Australia?’

  ‘That’s right. Spot on.’

  ‘Are you Indian, though?’

  ‘Nope, I’m future Aboriginal.’

  ‘Oh, cool! I’ve never met anyone Aboriginal before. That’s awesome!’

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ He pulled out a book from his bag and headed over to the armchair in front of the window. There was no way he was getting away with that; I spent every goddamn day talking to Simon, and I was sick of it. This guy was going to have a conversation with me.

  ‘You want to know what I’m doing here?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, but I noticed he didn’t put the book down.

  ‘Me and my brother – who isn’t imaginary, by the way, he’s out somewhere trying to buy beer, which he has like no chance of being able to do – are traveling around the country. We’re seeing all of America.’

  ‘That’s pretty ambitious. All of America?’

  ‘Yep. And you think I just mean, like, we’re going to the Grand Canyon and New York City and Yosemite and Chicago and New Orleans and the Wyoming Dells and Disneyland and to a Green Bay Packers game, don’t you? I don’t mean that. We’re seeing every little absolute bit of the USA.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How are you doing that?’ Now he put his book down.

  ‘Ages ago, when I was a kid – like, a really little kid – my parents and Simon’s dad – oh, Simon isn’t my real brother by the way, he’s just kind of my brother cause we grew up together – they made a plan to see all of America, and we had to go too cause we were too small to say no. So anyway, they got maps and they marked them into twenty-five-foot squares and we were going around making sure we stood in every single one of the squares. And then something happened to my mom and dad, so I stayed with Simon and his dad, and that was OK for a few years and then Simon’s dad died. So that was about three years ago. So now me and Simon are still doing it, standing in all of the squares, cause it’s what his dad would have wanted and Simon is really into responsibility and stuff. And I don’t know anyone else or have anywhere else to go.’

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How long have you been doing this?’

  ‘About eleven years.’

  ‘And how much of the country have you seen?’

  ‘We’ve been to Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and we started down the bottom of California and now we’re up to here. So, like, one-tenth of the country I guess.’

  ‘Are you really going to see it all?’

  I asked him whether he could do math, and he said yes, but that they called it maths where he was from, by which he meant Australia not the future, and then I got him to add up how long it would take (though I didn’t tell him the stuff about us redoing parts of Texas, so his math was a bit out, but it kind of was even more impressive that way) and he said, no, there’s no way you’re really going to get to do it all.

  ‘Do you mind that you won’t finish?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d stop right now if I could.’

  ‘But your brother?’

  ‘He doesn’t know how to even think about stopping. He just won’t.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he looked up at the ceiling for a bit and scratched his chin. ‘Can I have a look at the maps you’re using?’

  It was kind of a weird question, but I didn’t see why not. ‘Can you chuck me up that backpack at the end of the bed?’ I asked him.

  He did, and I pulled out the Ziploc bags full of maps. ‘You want all of them? I’ve got the bag of stuff we’ve done, then this bag with California maps, then there’s the next chunk of states over as far as Nebraska in this bag, then all the rest in the big bag.’

  ‘I just need California and the next bit you’re doing.’

  I threw them down to him.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘this might take me a little while and I’m going to need to concentrate, so is it cool for you to just read for a while?’

  ‘No problem.’

  The guy was still looking through the California maps when Simon got back.

  ‘Um, what’s going on here, Sarah?’ He was hardly in the door and no one had had a chance to even look up from what they were doing, let alone make introductions and so on.

  ‘Hi Simon. Did you get a beer? Meet any nice girls?’ He was looking a little bit tousled, I noticed.

  ‘Sarah, why is that guy looking at my maps?’

  ‘Oh, Simon, this is … what’s your name, anyway? I’m Sarah.’

  ‘I’m Ray, Ray Pickett. You’re Sarah?’ He sounded a little bit doubtful my name could be Sarah. Perhaps he’d never met anyone named after a rat before.

  ‘Yes. Simon, this is Ray. He’s from the future.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Simon said, ‘would you mind putting down my maps?’

  ‘He’s helping, Simon.’

  ‘Why did you tell my sister you’re from the future?’

  Ray was still peering pretty hard at a corner of one of the maps, and he didn’t seem like he wanted to be distracted at all. ‘Sorry, man.’

  ‘So hey, did you get a beer?’ I asked Simon.

  ‘Never mind the fucking beer! Why is this guy looking at my maps?’

  Ray put the map down. ‘You want to finish this thing you’re doing, right? Right. Well, I think I can help you. That’s why I’m looking at your fucking maps.’

  Simon turned on me. ‘Did you tell him what we’re doing?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not like it’s a secret. I mean, your dad talked all about it in that stupid documentary. That’s not really keeping it secret.’ (Though it kind of was. I mean, it was a really lowbudget documentary. I don’t think anyone saw it.)

  ‘The documentary isn’t stupid.’

  Simon was kind of obsessed with the documentary. We had a copy of it on video and every now and then, when we’d made a big score, we’d stay in a motel room and he’d watch it over and over. I guess it was fair enough; it was about his dad. He really missed his dad. Me, not so much. Though it’d be nice to have an adult around sometimes so Simon didn’t have pretend to be so grown up all the time.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told him, Sarah.’

  ‘Hey, Simon is it?’ Ray had put the map down on the arm of the chair. Simon nodded. ‘Look, it’s no big deal to me. I’m happy to give these maps back right now, get changed and go out there and drink some beer, and we don’t ever have to talk about this again. That’s fine with me. But I know some stuff, I think, that might really be able to help you out. Right now you’ve got another hundred years or so before you finish up this project, right?’ He looked at me. I nodded. Simon kind of ducked his head: he hated admitting that this thing was impossible. For him it was like hearing ‘you have cancer and you’ll be dead in a week�
��. Square standing was his whole life; imagining completing it was what he lived for. ‘That’ll make you, what, 120 or so?’ Simon smiled a little bit at that. ‘I can tell you that humanity is not going to come up with a cure for death any time in the next forty years; kind of the opposite if anything. So, to be frank, you’re screwed. So, you know, you could let me have a look at these maps and see if I can help you with a shortcut, or we can forget it and you can waste your life. No skin off my nose either way.’

  ‘We don’t take shortcuts,’ Simon said. ‘If you’re thinking of making the squares bigger, you can forget that. Sarah’s parents tried that, and you can’t see the whole country that way. Probably only 97 per cent or so. Twenty-five-foot squares is the way it has to be.’

  ‘I’m not talking about anything as obvious as making the squares bigger,’ Ray said. ‘The rules are that you need to pass through each of these squares, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you have to, like, look around and take photos or souvenirs or anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So as long as you set foot in each, that’s the job done?’

  ‘That’s right. What, you got a giant pogo stick or something?’

  ‘A what?’ Ray looked perplexed. ‘Is that some American thing?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Simon, ‘where are you from anyway? What’s up with that accent. Is that, like, your future accent?’ Simon didn’t usually stoop to sarcasm.

  ‘No, that’s my Australian accent. I don’t know that there is a future accent. I guess there probably is.’

  ‘You can give the future thing a rest, if you like,’ Simon said.

  ‘What’s up, man? I’m really just offering to help you. You don’t need to be so wound up about it.’

  ‘Yeah, Simon,’ I chipped in. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. Yes, I’m a little wound up. So let’s forget about that and talk about your idea, Ray. Ray from the future of Australia. I’m sorry I was rude.’ He sat on the edge of his bunk, so I had to hang my head off my bed to see him properly. ‘Are you really from the future?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When? Like, 2500AD? Shouldn’t you look, like, a bit more Star Trek? Oh, or are you in local disguise! That would make sense.’

  ‘I usually live in 2030 at the moment, though I’ve lived in all the years from 1993 to 2030. Shit! When did you say it is now?’

  ‘It’s 1997, remember?’ That was my contribution.

  ‘God damn, I’m four years old in Melbourne right now.

  That’s freaking weird! Maybe I should go look for me and tell me all about how things are going to go to shit. Tell me to move to New Zealand. Nah, not worth moving to New Zealand, no matter how bad things get.’ He was chuckling to himself. ‘Anyway, I don’t have money for an airfare. So. What were we talking about?’

  ‘Couldn’t you go in your matter transporter or whatever it is you use?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No matter transporter.’

  ‘Spaceship?’ I asked.

  ‘Tardis?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No and no.’

  ‘So how did you get here?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I walked. I used a map and I walked.’

  ‘OK future dude,’ Simon said. ‘Tell us your plan.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Ray, ‘it goes like this.’ And he told us a story which didn’t make all that much sense to me, but it was pretty much that he’d figured out a way to get between places really quickly by stepping into the worn-out bits of maps. Apparently he’d got here that way, he said, though he got a bit confused around that part so I’m not sure if that’s what he was saying. Anyway, he said, no promises, because he’d only really got it to work in future Australia before (and I wondered how he was going to get back from here if he didn’t know how to make it work anywhere but the place he wanted to get back to), but that it might be worth a try with our maps. Simon obviously thought he was a frakkin loon and tried to politely say that we had a lot to do and not much time to do it in so maybe it was best to continue on as we had been, but I disagreed loudly with him until he gave in, which he doesn’t usually do (must have been because we had company). So we all agreed that when it was light we’d take our maps – which he said had some very nice worn down creases in them – and give it a try. Then he asked us about liquor laws.

  ‘Like,’ he said, ‘if we go into a pub and you two are with me, can I buy you drinks? You know, as your legal guardian?’

  ‘Pub?’ said Simon. ‘We’re not in England, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, alright. Bar then.’

  ‘I don’t really want a drink,’ I said. ‘I’m happy with soda.’

  ‘If we went to some kind of dive bar,’ Simon said, ‘you could probably buy me a beer.’ And I knew he was worrying that Ray was going to get us drunk and steal our stuff, so I mentioned again that I wouldn’t be drinking so that Simon could goddamn relax and have a few beers and maybe even pick up.

  ‘Cool!’ Ray said. ‘Let’s go drink beer! In the future,’ he said, conspiratorially, kind of leaning over and whispering behind his hand, ‘the beer is shit.’

  ‘You’re not really from the future,’ Simon said.

  ‘I am so.’

  ‘Prove it. Tell me who’s going to win the World Series this year.’

  ‘The world what?’

  ‘The World Series. The baseball.’

  ‘Like I give a shit!’ Ray laughed. ‘What did you say it is? 1997? I can tell you that Adelaide will win the grand final.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Can’t imagine we’ll be hearing too much about the – what did you call it?’

  ‘Grand final. The footy. The AFL.’

  ‘Sure. Never heard of it.’

  ‘Do you want a beer or what?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  So we all got dressed – at least, I got dressed, they were already dressed – and headed out. Ray suggested a place called Moby Dick’s, on the street where we were staying, but Simon said he’d already been there and been thrown out once.

  ‘Wild man, eh?’ Ray said.

  Simon looked embarrassed. ‘It was stupid.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  So then Ray suggested a place he’d seen when he was wandering around earlier in the day, a joint called the Transfer opposite the Safeway on Church Street, so we went up there.

  ‘Hey!’ I said when we were inside. ‘This place has a jukebox! Can I have a dollar, Simon?’

  Simon said no, but Ray gave me a dollar. I put it in and chose three random songs. I have no idea of the names of songs or musicians or anything like that. Well, I wouldn’t, would I? We grabbed a table near the jukebox, and Ray went up to the bar, came back with two half-pints of beer for him and Simon and a Coke for me.

  ‘So,’ said Ray, ‘tell me about America.’ And we did, at least, about the bits we could remember.

  ‘This is going to be a weird question,’ Ray said, ‘but did you ever see anyone set fire to a Christmas tree?’

  Simon gave me a look that quite clearly said ‘shut the hell up’, and I think he was probably right. Who would ask a question like that except, say, the police? Or some kind of welfare organization?

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t even really know,’ said Ray. ‘Sometimes I get these, like, flashes of stuff, like visions y’know? And when I was looking at you before I just like, saw this Christmas tree on fire in a playground. Just for a second or two.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Simon said, ‘that’s definitely a weird question.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ray. ‘Forget I mentioned it.’

  Things were a bit awkward for a while then, but Simon had a couple more beers and relaxed a lot and even started making jokes. But I kind of didn’t want to forget, just in case it turned out to be important later on.

  SMALL PORTIONS OF AUSTRALIA

  It didn’t work.

  Ray wasn’t completely surprised. Well, at first he was, but then he remembere
d that this wasn’t Australia in 2030, and he wasn’t using the maps he’d bought from the soldier. This was an imaginary San Francisco, with imaginary maps and whoever imagined them – Caddy or someone else – probably hadn’t imagined maps as a way to travel from one place to another (other than in the traditional sense, of course). It would have been great if Ray could have imagined that the map tunneling thing happened anywhere Ray was, that the trick was embodied in Ray and not in the maps he had, but it wasn’t his imaginum. Anyway, he thought, maybe it was for the best. These guys had a quest, right? They had a lot of issues to work out around their quest, about their relationship and the nature of responsibility to a dead parent, and growing up and assuming your own identity and all that stuff. If he just brought the whole quest to an end with his magic maps, how would their characters develop? Caddy would kill him.

  He apologized to Simon and Sarah. Simon hated him anyway and had wanted him to fail, so that all worked out well for Simon. Sarah he felt kind of sorry for. The sooner she got out of this whole square standing thing the better. To try and make himself feel better he bought her the other two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy and took the two kids out for lunch at a pretty nice joint called Chow, next to the bookshop.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasted half a day for you, guys,’ he said, as they were going their separate ways.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Simon said. He’d been proved right and could afford to be magnanimous.

  ‘If you’re ever in Australia,’ Ray began, but Simon interrupted.

  ‘In the future, you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re hardly going to be there in the past, are you?’

  Simon looked a bit less magnanimous.

  ‘Anyway, if you ever plan to see some small portions of Australia, look me up, hey? I’ll only be a kid, I guess … maybe you can buy me a beer, say in 2012?’

  ‘I could buy it then,’ Sarah said.

  ‘That’d be nice. OK, well, good luck,’ and Ray shook both their hands and headed off.

  About four seconds later Simon yelled back over his shoulder, ‘We set fire to a Christmas tree’.

  ‘I knew it,’ thought Ray.