While Time Can Wait

by J.J. Mainor

  Chapter P-4

  Jessica Fulton inspected the lock on her door for the third time since she was left alone in this apartment, tracing her finger over what she assumed was a fingerprint scanner, and wondering how secure a lock it really was. There was no knob or handle by which she could open the door, but like every surface in every portion of these buildings, the face of the door lit up with a menu of options. Thankfully for her sanity, whatever system controlled this unit had been instructed to display in English.

  It wasn’t the smooth English her brain discerned from that translator which presented itself to her. As the professor had to remind her, with the Roman Empire still in control of Western Europe, the Normans had no opportunity to invade the British Isles. In this universe, the ancient form of English never merged with the Norman’s French to evolve into the language they were familiar with.

  The translators in their ears did have the capacity to study the speech centers within their brains. It learned their native language while it facilitated the translation, and Eudora easily sent those findings into their new homes. The computer was able to present all commands and instructions throughout the home in something approximating English, but there were flaws in the translation. The Greek woman assured them it would learn as they interacted with the home’s controls, otherwise, they had little choice but to put up with the strange spellings and faulty grammar.

  Jessica had little desire to interact with the door’s operation. She merely wished to verify that it was indeed locked. Though her smartphone had allowed her to do quite a few things back home, it was still strange for her to trust her security to a device.

  She thought about the security in her walk-up in Queens. That reinforced door at the entrance had a metal piece over the edge where the bolt entered the frame to assure her that no one could jimmy the door open. The callbox for visitors comforted her that no one without a key could gain entry unless one of the residents knew them. This door had nothing reassuring other than that fingerprint scanner and the display telling her “door sekured.”

  She closed the display and stepped away, taking another look around this space of hers. According to Eudora, they had been assigned to a block of housing reserved for faculty, somewhere in the middle of the structure.

  Normally these units would not have been granted as “free” units under the guarantee their hosts had described. Citizens looking to “upgrade” would pay a premium for the extra space and added luxuries. However, from what Jessica could gather, this entire building was devoted strictly to government-sponsored projects deemed so important, even crucial, the researchers and their staffs were granted the upgraded units as part of their compensation packages.

  Michael had whispered in her ear that it was not an entirely selfish reward. If the staff were to rent outside the building, there was a risk they might discuss their project with outside civilians. By keeping the entire staff so close to the work, they could ensure there would be fewer leaks on some of the more sensitive research.

  It suited Jessica just fine. She had to adjust to navigating the layout of the individual floors and subsections within the one building; she didn’t want to think about having to find her way across multiple buildings until she had a stronger familiarity.

  New York City was tough enough to navigate her first week in town. Though most of the streets are numbered, she had gotten hung up many times trying to get used to the directions in which the numbers ascended and descended.

  Subway stations were not so easy to locate for someone more familiar with biking everywhere back home; and getting used to the strange numbers and letters identifying the individual lines gave her a headache at times. She didn’t want to admit how many times she ended up in a station only to find the line she sought was serviced at the station two blocks down. It also didn’t help that she had to make two separate transfers on her way to the university in Manhattan.

  In these strange buildings, all she had to do was find the elevator and head up or down. As far as she was concerned, she could walk across the building and the entire “commute” would pass without the headaches she might suffer trying to travel across the buildings.

  Her eyes danced about the apartment for the tenth time. Electronic artwork covered each segment of the walls. If she wanted, she could change the display on each panel to display individual works or she could set them all to show her a single, massive piece. If she was so inclined, she could simply instruct them to display a solid color approximating the walls in her old apartment.

  The panels could also display entertainment or news. She might query the public database on one of her walls. She could open a communication to Michael’s apartment, or she could call Eudora if she had a question.

  If she didn’t want to work on the walls, she might use the coffee table at the center of her living room. Jessica slid her fingers delicately over the smooth surface which provided all the same functions as those panels lining the wall. One difference was that the table also had the three dimensional capabilities she had seen at that police station. She might bring up a model of the building to give her a better understanding of directions.

  Those interactive surfaces were everywhere in this world: kitchen counters, tabletops, closet doors, shower walls, and even the mirrors. The entire apartment had been designed with a level of customization she had never dreamed possible.

  But the exploration couldn’t go on forever. Though they were allowed much of this day to clean up and rest before the work started in the morning, they were expected to attend a dinner in the evening, sort of a welcome-to-the-project affair where they would meet the other researchers, hob-nob with the local officials hoping to boost their status, and get to know each other in an informal setting.

  First, she was determined to get the dirt and grime off her body and out of those clothes.

  According to the apartment’s instructions, the “washing machine” was located in the master bathroom.

  That can’t be very convenient.

  She thought of the noise it must generate and how it would keep her up at night if she forgot to run the cycle during the day. When she located the device inside what she initially thought was a linen closet, she wasn’t sure if it made any noise at all. Or if it could even clean her clothes.

  Her hands opened the device and picked through the hangers, studying the clips that must have been for her socks, the towels, the wash cloths, and anything else that couldn’t simply hang from those thin metal rods.

  When in Rome…or Greece as the case was. She stripped everything off her body and placed each piece of her wardrobe on a hanger. When she closed the device’s door, she studied it, expecting a menu to tell her what to do next. She swiped her finger across the surface and still nothing.

  She sighed with a sideways glance at the frustrating machine, then shut the outer door that had hidden it from her in the first place. That faux-wooden panel brought up the menu she desired, much to her relieved delight.

  Several options were presented, forcing her to think about her garments for the first time. It wasn’t as though she had ever bothered to separate her things when washing them in her building’s laundry room. Even if she cared, it seemed like someone in that building was always washing their clothes. And with one of the two units always broken, it got to be quite a waiting game. Had she kept the whites with the whites, and the delicates separate, she surely would have ticked off the neighbors with all those cycles, trigging the building’s first laundry wars.

  When she saw a selection for “mixt,” she shrugged and selected it. They deserve a little TLC she figured.

  With that decision out of the way, it was time to try the shower stall. Jessica slid the thick glass door open and stepped inside. Like every other device in this apartment, there were no knobs – nothing tactile to make her hands feel useful. That left her to wonder which wall would give her the menu for drawing the water.

  She settle
d on the one directly under the showerhead, and was overjoyed until she glanced around and realized there was no soap or shampoo or whatever passed for a cleaning agent in this world.

  Of course!

  What did she expect? It wasn’t as though her apartment in Queens came furnished with soaps and shampoos. This wasn’t a hotel, so she looked to the menu on the wall, figuring this would be a water-only shower.

  A disappointing thought until she actually read the menu. The options told her the soap was in the water!

  It wasn’t quite soap per se. Jessica couldn’t tell what was in that water, but it felt magical. She let that silky water dance across her skin and massage her tight muscles. The heat was just enough to melt her nerves and carry her thoughts off to nirvana.

  She tried to remember the last shower she took.

  How long were we on that rocky world?

  How long were we in that forest?

  That shower was too dreamy to let her worry about the math, but the thoughts about “when was the last time…” reminded her of the last time she had called her mother.

  She was no undergrad freshman, calling every week like clockwork, missing the home-cooked meals, the free laundry service, and the doting concerns. Those calls had drifted to once every other week, then once a month by the time she pursued her master’s.

  At this stage, those calls home came whenever she had time. When Dr. Greenburg didn’t need her in the lab, she had to focus on her own thesis. There was no time to hang out with friends, and there was certainly no time to call home for a variation of the same conversation she and her mother always had.

  The more she thought about her mother, the more envious she grew of Michael and Cole. At least they had ended up in this mess together. Neither was alone like she was.

  To her, Michael was the professor. They had a very friendly repore in the lab, but in this lonely shower, she didn’t forget that was all he was to her: he was the teacher and she was the lowly grad student.

  Cole was too young and far too immature for her tastes. They didn’t even have anything in common around which to form a friendship, and heaven forbid those researchers fail to meld the two devices into a single functional unit. It was just too icky even considering he could be her only choice for companionship should they be stuck wandering aimlessly across the multiverse forever.

  It won’t come to that.

  She was certain Dr. Greenburg could make their technology work. She was certain they would get home before long. Her doctorate would wrap up. NASA would come calling. And she could woo one of those cute, nerdy astronomers.

  A change in the water texture told her this shower was about to wrap up. She considered telling it to run another so that she could draw out this pleasure, but the wall ahead of her flashed with a message that someone was at her door.

  Jessica fumbled with the screen panicking when her fingers traced wet marks across the surface; afraid she might short it before realizing it had to be waterproof to reside inside her shower.

  The screen was only marginally helpful in how to deal with it. She began to panic that her clothes were not yet clean, or more likely not even dry, leaving her with the very frightening prospect of answering while wrapped in a towel. Then she noticed a list of options toward the bottom for answering.

  Does this thing have video?

  She shuddered at the realization there might be a camera in her shower, drawing a new round of alarm that someone might hack into it to watch her in all her steamy nudity. The option to send a text-only message to her visitor allowed her to push those thoughts from her mind.

  The exchange back and forth, told her it was the others collecting her for the dinner date. She sent them a hurried message that she would need a few minutes, praying those clothes were already dried.

  She pulled the panel aside and opened the machine, wondering how the two men handled their laundry while thinking she had to somehow get herself another set of clothes for variety. It was certainly a turn of events from that morning when her only concern was worry over what those guards were going to do with her.

  Her fingers touched her jeans, expecting the worse. When they came back drier than her own skin, a squeal of delight escaped her lips. She raced to towel herself off and slip into the fresh clothes. Studying her reflection in the mirror, she then lamented the absence of eyeliner or some lipstick – even a brush to tame that damp, blonde mop disgracing her skull would have been welcome. Arank and Eudora and the rest of their guests must have understood their situation, but it did little to tamp down the embarrassment of presenting herself as she looked in that glass.

  Jessica opened the door on the party waiting patiently outside. To her delight, Dr. Greenburg had his lab coat wrapped around his patterned shirt and pressed khakis. Arank seemed to have dressed casual with a sleeveless vest over an unusual pair of brown pants, while Eudora seemed dressed for a toga party.

  Then there was Cole, proudly sporting that tan Army tee shirt tucked into a pair of tan cargo pants bloused over his boots as if he was about to march off into a recruitment poster. They might teach those boys discipline in the Army, but they sure didn’t teach them any fashion sense.