“So you’re into old things, Rose?” asked Billy as they all climbed out of the car.
“Runs in the family, I guess,” said Rose with a nod. “My aunt and uncle own an antique shop.” Tim remembered that Julie had needed to convince Billy that Rose wanted to visit Wright’s Ferry Mansion for him to come, but he hadn’t known about her aunt and uncle.
“Cool,” said Billy in what seemed to be a genuine tone of voice.
As they began to walk toward the mansion, their conversation turned once again, as it had more than once this afternoon, to Billy’s injury.
“How many stitches?” asked Rose, who still seemed to think of the injury as her fault, forgetting that someone had ordered the missile to be fired in the first place.
“Just four… Apparently one piece of glass nicked me really good as it passed. And since the stitches dissolve I won’t have to go get them removed. So that’s cool,” said Billy.
“Were many others injured?” asked Julie. “We had to hightail it out of there to avoid the wrath of Rose’s mother, so I didn’t get a count of how many were hanging out by the ambulance.”
“Four or five others. No fatalities, luckily. Actually, the emergency responders said we were the only injuries last night. One of the missiles hit an office building… If it’d been daytime, that could’ve been a disaster.”
“Oh, wow…” said Rose in a hushed voice. “Yeah… it could have been just like Cleveland.”
Julie gave Tim a blank look. She was the only one who wouldn’t have heard about it for about a month straight afterwards. He couldn’t explain it to her here though, since doing so would have meant having to explain why she didn’t know something so obvious. The Cleveland missile strike had happened about a year ago, and it happened on a Wednesday afternoon.
The building it hit had a private backup missile defense contractor, one that served all the buildings in that part of the city. These kind of private contractors were standard in big cities. Tim knew that in Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, State College, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh all had their own. But on this particular day, the contractor had a malfunction. A missile blew a hole in the side of the building, and it crumbled. Two thousand workers were killed.
It was the worst loss of life on American soil in five years, and tons of people were affected. The president even took a rare trip outside of the White House Bunker to speak on site later that week, expressing his deepest condolences. Still, some people on the internet said the president secretly wanted to send the Russians flowers for that hit. It gave him the votes in Congress that he needed to keep up his draft policies and saw a spike in military recruitment like no other since the war began.
They reached Wright’s Ferry Mansion.
“Mansion is a little bit of an overstatement, isn’t it?” asked Julie, looking at the building.
It wasn’t one of the lavish mansions that modern celebrities lived in, but Tim had no doubt that it had given its first owners a high standard of living.
It had been restored recently, but assuming the microchip could work in spite of this, he was soon going to be seeing what it had looked like in 1863.
A wooden brown painted picket fence stood in front of the building. The building was made of gray limestone bricks, some of which seemed to be growing moss. The mansion had three chimneys. It had five windows on the top floor and four on the bottom, plus the window above the door. Ivy covered the bricks on the first floor, but hadn’t conquered the awning which jutted out from the space between the first and second floors.
A brown sign with gold lettering (the brown matched the shutters, door, and fence), proclaimed that this was Wright’s Ferry mansion, and that tours were available from April to October. It was early April, and a tour group was forming beside the building right now. Tim was trying to figure out how they would get close enough to touch the building without anybody thinking they were weird.
He absentmindedly touched the microchip currently resting heavily in his pocket.
He and the girls had met yesterday afternoon to decide how they would introduce Rose and Billy to time travel. They decided Tim should hold the Dominus Temporis, as he could best envision the time they were heading to. They had met at Julie’s house again and buried the description of where they would be by the oak tree, just as Hopkins had asked them to.
Tim led the group of four toward the building.
As they walked around the corner of the mansion, out of sight of the tour group, Rose spoke up. “So, Billy… Um… completely hypothetical question. If it turned out it was possible to travel back in time, would you want to?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Billy, in a way that made it perfectly obvious he wasn’t taking the question seriously.
“Even if it would make your life way more complicated?” asked Rose.
“Uh… yeah,” said Billy.
Tim looked at Julie. They had decided the afternoon before that they at least should give Billy the option whether he wanted to be involved.
Julie shrugged, “Good enough.”
Rose said, “Billy, would you hold my hand?”
“What?” asked Billy, but Rose grabbed his hand anyway.
At the same moment, Julie grabbed Rose’s and Tim’s hand while Tim took the Dominus Temporis in his right hand and placed that hand in what he hoped was a casual and non-noticeable way, up against Wright’s Ferry Mansion.
Nobody had a clear view of him and his friends, so he figured that when they weren’t around anymore, people would assume they had missed seeing them walk away. After all, Tim himself had taken a whole lot of convincing before he believed any of this time travel stuff, nobody was going to believe they had seen four kids vanish in front of them.
He imagined the town of Columbia on June 29, 1863, with Confederate forces advancing just on the other side of the river. They had been marching closer all day and now that it was night they were close at hand. The townspeople and the Union troops must have been panicking, trying to figure out how to keep the Confederate forces from coming across the river to invade Lancaster and maybe even Philadelphia. He touched the wall with his hand.
One second there was a group of tourists standing around the corner, chattering about how much of the furniture they were about to see had come from Philadelphia and was original to the time period. And then they were gone.
The tour group was gone, the sign in front of the building was gone, even the trees in the front yard had changed size and location. The time had changed, too. It was almost dusk, as if they had missed the entire afternoon and early evening. Some of the surrounding buildings vanished while others changed size and shape. The mansion itself was unchanged. The folks who restored it had done a good job. Tim heard shouting in the not too far removed distance, but there were no people directly at hand. Tim imagined they had gone to watch the commotion at the bridge.
Rose’s eyes were wide, and Tim guessed that she, like him, had reserved judgment on whether this time travel story was bogus until the last possible second. That last possible second had come.
If Rose’s eyes were wide, it was a wonder that Billy’s didn’t pop out of his skull.
“What just happened?!” he asked, alarmed.
“We went back in time,” answered Julie calmly.
Billy looked at her like she was crazy. “What? No! Of course we didn’t. Was this the Russians? Did they make everyone vanish?”
“Look, Billy,” said Tim calmly, “I grant you that if the Russians could make people vanish, it would be a neat trick. They probably wouldn’t pick Columbia, Pennsylvania to try it out, though. And you’ve got to admit, there’s no one on Earth who would want to create a weapon that would make 21st century Columbia look like it did in the 19th century.”
“And there’s not many people who would know this is what it should look like if that was their goal,” Rose chirped.
Billy looked around at the scenery and the three other teens. “So you’re seriously saying that we travelled back
in time?”
“Yes,” confirmed Julie.
“Well… why?” asked Billy, who seemed to be halfway between perplexed and irritated.
“To see the Civil War!” answered Tim, nearly bouncing with excitement at this point. Maybe it was a bit of a weird thing to be excited about, but he had spent a lot of time reading books about the Civil War and had never imagined that he would actually be able to see Union and Confederate soldiers in action. He began to walk toward the sound of the shouting, the Susquehanna River, and the bridge that spanned it. The others followed.
Julie rolled her eyes at him. “Well, yeah… But more importantly, we’ve got to meet Dr. Hopkins. He’ll be here soon. Plus, we needed to prove to you that time travel is real. And Tim, make sure you stay away from people. We’re not allowed to change events, remember?”
“Why couldn’t you have told me first?” asked Billy, whose emotions now seemed to be leaning more toward irritated.
“You wouldn’t have believed them,” said Rose in a friendly but matter of fact tone. “I mean, I didn’t. This is the first time I’ve time jumped, too. And, I mean... I came today because I wanted to hang out with July-- that’s what I call Julie--, and because you and Timothy are pretty cool. But I wasn’t expecting anything to actually happen.”
“Besides, you don’t actually have to do anything about it,” said Julie. “We’re going to see Hopkins in a bit, and then he’ll try to convert you to the whole saving the world cause. Seriously, Tim, I think this is far enough.”
They were within view of the river and the bridge. They could see a railroad station for the Baltimore and Susquehanna line. A bunch of people were around the building, including men on horseback. Some were clearly soldiers, with guns and uniforms to prove it, while others seemed to be ordinary civilians caught up in the ruckus.
“Yeah, we should stay back,” Rose agreed. “We are in nothing even approaching period attire. We could freak people out.”
“They’re already freaked out,” said Tim. “And no one’s paying attention to us anyway.” But he didn’t go any further. They were blocked from view by a building between them and the gaggle of civilians and militia at the river.
“What do you mean saving the world? And who’s Hopkins?” asked Billy.
At that moment, several small explosions went off.
“That must mean it’s about seven o’ clock!” said Tim, completely forgetting not to be noticed. But still, no one was paying the four out-of-costume teens any attention.
“There’s some people in the future who have taken over their world by changing events in the past. This guy, Hopkins, wants us to help him change the world back to the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Is it the Russians?” asked Billy. “Who take over the world?”
“No, some American scientists, but they still shouldn’t do it,” said Julie.
There was some smoke coming from the bridge now, but no fire.
“Good point,” admitted Billy.
Rose sidled up to Tim. “So… what’s going on here?” she asked, as Julie tried to explain the ins and outs of time travel to Billy.
“As it happens, I know a lot about it now… Just looked it up because, you know… I was about to visit,” said Tim.
“Right,” said Rose. “So spill it.”
“It’s June 29, 1863. Confederate Troops are travelling North and the Battle of Gettysburg, considered the turning point in the Civil War, is going to happen about forty miles Southwest of here in a few days. But tonight, the story is all about that bridge.”
Tim pointed over to the covered bridge that spanned the Susquehanna River. There was some damage to it, and only a little bit of smoke, but it was largely intact.
“It didn’t look like that in our time, did it?” asked Rose.
“No, but at the moment, it’s the longest covered wooden bridge in the world.”
“But it’s going to be burned soon, eh?” asked Rose.
“Yeah,” said Tim, excited again. There was something pretty intense about being able to know what was about to happen. “I think the artillery rounds that happened at seven o’ clock were what we heard a few minutes ago. The fire becomes visible at eight. I just hope we can stay long enough to see it.”
“And you say the Union troops did it?” asked Rose.
“Are doing it,” said Tim, enthralled. “Like right now. But, yeah. They didn’t want the Confederates to take Lancaster, so they don’t want them to enter Lancaster County. They’d have preferred to hold the bridge but had to burn it rather than let the Confederates use it.”
“Wow,” said Rose.
At that moment, there was a loud cough behind the four teens.
Tim nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned around.
Behind them stood a man whose clothes looked just as out of place in this time period as their own. He was holding a duffel bag that looked somehow futuristic. It was blue and shiny, but there was no zipper visible.
“Oh!” Julie said. “So, this is Dr. Hopkins.”
“Why yes, that I am,” said Hopkins. “And can I ask who you three are?”
They introduced themselves, Billy hesitantly, Rose and Tim eagerly.
“If I had to guess, I would say that you, Billy, had not been told much about what to expect before you were brought here. Is that correct?” asked Hopkins kindly.
“Yes,” said Billy. “Julie has been trying to explain it to me since we got here, but I’ll admit I’m still a bit lost.”
“Well, you are in good company,” said Hopkins. “I must admit that I am still reeling over the fact that my colleagues turned this project around for their own personal gain. But it is important that we continue to act and come to terms with our confusion as we are doing so.”
Billy nodded, “I guess I can see that.”
“I do not expect you to have made up your minds as to whether or not you will help me yet,” said Hopkins. “And in fact, I have not made my full case as to why I think you should help me. I wanted to meet you here so I could answer any questions you have and make my closing arguments as to why you should assist me. If you choose not to help, I must set about doing what I must without you. But hopefully you can be convinced to help.”
“So our job would be to go back in time and restore the events the Emperors of Time altered?” asked Tim.
“Essentially. You cannot change them back exactly, just as I could not change Abraham Lincoln’s assassination back completely. In the present timeline, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln while remembering he had been kidnapped by a bunch of crooked Washington DC cops. Those cops were bribed by the Emperors of Time, who gave them gold and instructions to carry out. But I essentially voided the effects of that trip. The timeline was changed back to one where the Emperors of Time were just scientists.”
“But then they changed things back again?” asked Julie.
“Unfortunately, yes,” sighed Hopkins. “Have you had any luck yet in finding out what they changed?”
“No, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” said Tim.
“I believe you will,” agreed Hopkins.
“I have something that’s been bothering me,” Rose chimed in.
“Yes, what is it?” asked Hopkins.
“Well, you said that each year can only be changed once and then maybe back to normal, right? So if we tried to change the year 1865 so that, say… Andrew Johnson did a cartwheel and a backflip during his inaugural address, we wouldn’t be able to do it?”
“That is correct. 1865 has already been changed,” confirmed Hopkins.
“So what’s to stop us, right after we go back and fix whatever got changed, from going back to every year one at a time and changing something in that year, so that the Emperors of Time wouldn’t be able to change anything else?” asked Rose.
“Well, first of all there would be too many years to cover,” said Hopkins. “If they figured out what we were doing, they could go back to the year 1000 BC and start a
chain of events that would allow them to seize power anyway. Of course, they couldn’t guarantee that they themselves would exist in 2347, but they could still bring themselves back to their own present and try to gain power from there. Besides, there is a lower threshold for what counts as changing a timeline. Us being here, in 1863, doesn’t mean we can’t change 1863 again, even though we are stepping on grass, breathing air, subtly changing the timeline. But if we did something to change the timeline substantially, without the supercomputer that only the Emperors of Time have access to now, it would be impossible to be sure that we wouldn’t cause ripples down the road.”
“Right. So your way is more effective,” said Rose, clearly disappointed.
“And less confusing,” opined Julie.
“And it is beginning to work. I have this now,” said Hopkins proudly, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out another silver medallion. “Now we have three. There are only nine remaining for me to take from the Emperors so that I can take them back to the lab and reset them so it is as if they had never been used. But in order to reset them, I need the lab to exist like it does in the original timeline, which is another reason we cannot just change events as we please. Although the microchips exist and preserve their carriers regardless of what timeline they are in, the lab does not have to exist in every timeline.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Billy spoke up. “You said you would explain why we should be on your side. I mean, I get it, these Emperors of Time have rigged things so they can rule the world, and that probably shouldn’t be allowed. But what if they’ve got good ideas? For all we know, you’re just one renegade lunatic with a time machine coming here to recruit us to your cause.”
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