In Times Like These (16 page)

Quickly has us stand along one wall of the room and he himself goes over to the anchor stand in the center. The stand itself is unremarkable. It’s a steel pole mounted in the concrete floor that rises up about four feet and terminates with three short metal prongs. Quickly takes one of his own glass anchors from his pocket and sets in on the metal prongs of the stand.

“Today we’re going to work on what I consider the easiest and safest manner of jump that we can attempt. In front of you we have a stationary stand. The height of your anchor from the ground will remain fixed and should not change, as we are only going to be jumping small increments in a future direction with friends here to keep your jump destination clear.”

We all perk up at this news.

“Before we can get you hurtling through time and space however, we have deal with the matter of your clothes.”

“Our clothes?” Francesca asks.

“Unless you would like to spend the next few hours in your birthday suit, we’re going to need some clothing for you that will be able to go along for the ride. Are any of you wearing any of the clothes you had on during your original jump from 2009?”

I do a mental inventory of what I have on. I pull back the waistband of my pants and check my boxer shorts. I discover that even those are new acquisitions from the last few days. It turns out that with the exception of France
sca’s underwear, none of us are wearing clothes from 2009.

“We’re going to have to work on treating your new clothes with the gravitites over the next few days, but for the time being, you’ll have to use some of my lab jumpsuits. There is a selection in the lockers in the hall.
Use the bathrooms down the hall to change and meet me back here.”

We pile into the hall and find the lockers Quickly is talking about. There are at least a dozen brown and white jumpsuits of different sizes. There are also a co
uple of stacks of white T-shirts and undershorts. We scrounge until we find some that match up with our sizes. When we’ve changed, we’re back in the anchor stand room, barefoot and holding our little piles of clothes. Francesca is swimming in her oversized jumpsuit and mine is too short in the sleeves, but they are comfortable.

“Just throw your things in the corner for now. Pay attention to what you’ve learned so far. You will set your chronometers for a thirty-second jump. You will place your chronometer hand firmly on top of your anchor like this, being sure to have firm contact, but not touching anything else, then using your free hand, you will activate your chronometer.”

Quickly demonstrates the motions at the stand for us and I pay rapt attention.

“The chronometer will automatically record the time of your jump if you are setting a specific date and time to arrive, allowing you the opportunity to log the precise moment for your records. If you are using an amount
of time to jump, such as a half hour, or thirty seconds, you’ll need to keep track of the time you arrive yourself. It helps to have a watch or clock handy for that.” He gestures to the wall clock over the exit door. “Once you’ve logged it, you’ll be ready for another jump.”

The factual manner that Quickly is using to describe the process does not prevent my heart from pounding in my chest. It has time to calm a little as we all take turns practicing how to stand and simulating the jump. When Quickly asks us who would like to make the first jump, it’s Carson who volunteers. The rest of us line up against the wall as Quickly checks Carson’s positioning and double checks his chronometer settings.

“Looks like a go. Anytime you are ready,” Quickly says, and steps back. Carson keeps his hand on his anchor and double checks that he’s not touching the stand. He breathes out heavily a couple of times and then looks at us. I give him a thumbs up. He smiles and reaches for his chronometer. For a fraction of a second I see his red hair raise up and then he’s gone. I realize I’ve been holding my breath and breathe out. Dr. Quickly is observing a pocket watch. I exchange looks with Robbie and Francesca.

“Oh that is scary,” Francesca blurts out, hopping up and down involuntarily. Blake and I say nothing. We wait in silence for the seconds to tick by. I begin starting to count in my head just to calm my mind. I watch the stand in the room and Carson’s anchor sitting there undisturbed. I feel like minutes have ticked by
, but know it’s just my apprehension. The next moment Carson is back exactly as we last saw him.

“Did it work?” h
e asks.

M
y tension dissipates. Blake laughs out loud. Carson smiles with elation at having succeeded.

“T
hat was the longest thirty seconds of my life!” Francesca exclaims and gives Carson a hug.

“What did it feel like?” Blake asks.

“Not bad really,” Carson responds. “It felt like a shock you get in the winter from static, a little tingly but not painful.”

Francesca smiles at him, and Blake and I pat him on the back.

“What do you need to do next, Carson?” Dr. Quickly asks from the side of the room.

“
Ahh . . . Oh, I need to log in my time!” Carson takes to writing down his arrival time in his log. Quickly takes Carson’s anchor from the stand and puts it back in Carson’s box for him.

“Who is next?”

I raise my hand. “I’ll do it.”

Carson smiles and makes his way to the wall. He’s chatting with Francesca but I tune them out. I select one of my anchors that
has a dark blue swirl through it, and place it on the stand. My heart is pounding in my chest but I ignore it and concentrate on my chronometer. Set to time skip. Interval set to thirty seconds. Jump pin unlocked. Hand on top of the anchor, pressing firmly. Free hand to press the pin.

Quickly checks my settings and then gives me a nod. My friends along the wall are watching me eagerly. I look up to the clock, watching its sec
ond hand ticking past the forty second mark. I take a deep breath and push the jump pin.

I feel a tingling all through my skin. It feels like I blinked but I can’t be sure. Nothing happens. Quickly’s face is impassive. I look over to my friends. Carson is grinning.

“That was so cool!” he exclaims.

“It worked?”

“Yeah, dude. That was awesome.”

“It’s still just as crazy the second time,” Francesca says.

Incredulous, I look up at the clock. Sure enough, the second hand is ticking its way past the twenty mark. “That was way less dramatic than I expected.”

“I want to go.” Blake grabs one
of the anchors out of his box.

I pick up my anchor and pull my logbook out of my pocket.
“So these books can just make the jump right along with us?”

“You can bring anything that has been previo
usly impregnated with the gravitites. I had previously treated the books. That brings up an interesting safety concern that you should be mindful of. If you’re going to be jumping to and from the same location, you have to be careful that all of your possessions are treated, because if they aren’t, they’ll fall to the ground where you left them, and could present a hazard to your return. If no one clears that area for you, you could end up with a pen or a necklace imbedded in your foot when you jump back. Food for thought.”

Throughout the rest of the lesson
, Quickly continues to casually toss out these little tidbits. “Mind that you don’t sever your fingers off by picking a time when your anchor is in the box.” Or, “Remember to keep firm contact so you don’t end up a floater in orbit.” Initially I’m shocked into wide-eyed attention, but after a while, I find I’m tuning out the fear. Quickly seems confident that we are going to be okay, so I try to be trusting.

Over the course of the remainder of the day, we all get a chance to make more jumps. We work up to jumping a
five minute period at once. We’ve logged about seven jumps apiece by the time we call it a day.

“Celebration time!” Carson
exclaims as we exit the lab onto the street. “I think this day deserves some beers.”

“Where do you
want to go?” Francesca asks. “Ooh, I saw a flyer for this place called the Forty-ninth Street Mining Company that had some cheap drink specials, and I think they even had karaoke.”

“Let’s just wander out and see what happens,” Blake suggests.

Robbie pulls up in Mr. Cameron’s car to pick us up, and we pile in. I roll down the window of the back seat and watch the St. Pete of 1986 stream by out the window. We pull up to a stoplight and a couple of girls in a dented BMW smile at me. I smile back and wonder if they can tell there is something different about us. I imagine myself buying them drinks at the bar.

“And what do you do?”

“Time Traveler.”

Chapter 10

“Don’t time travel immediately after eating. You’ll waste a good meal, and leave everyone a nasty mess.”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly
, 2017

“Look around you. What do you see?”

We’re in Quickly’s neighborhood, a few blocks away from his house, just after noon, standing in the street in our jumpsuits. Quickly is interrogating us, uninterested in the fact that we look like utility workers. At least today we aren’t shoeless. We’ve acquired our flip-flops back after he stole them before our morning lesson and treated them for jumping. I feel very conspicuous, but the streets are quiet, and no one has taken much notice of us.

“It looks like an average neighborhood,” Blake suggests.

“Indeed,” Quickly responds. “Just the sort of neighborhood you would expect to find in just about any town in the country in the last or next half century. We are out here because if you’re going to learn the skills you need to survive as time travelers, you are most common
ly going to be using them here: quiet, average places. So how do we time travel in suburban twentieth century America? What is my first requirement?”

“We need objects fixed in time,” I say, proud to use my new knowledge from our hours of lessons.

“We need clear space to work,” Blake adds.

“We should avoid inclement weather so we don’t get fused with falling ice or rain when we arrive,” Francesca says.

“Good,” Quickly responds. “What do we have here that meets those requirements?”

I consider
our surroundings, trying to pick out something that looks like an anchor.

“Mailbox,” Francesca suggests.

“Not bad,” Quickly answers. “How would you do it?”

“Um. I guess I would stand in the yard so I don’t get hit by a car when I arrive.”

“Good thought. What about the grass? Do you see the danger there?”

“What, like kids playing in the yard?” Carson suggests.

“Potentially, but what I’m referring to here is that when you leave, you are pushing the blades of grass down with your feet. When you arrive back in that location, are they still going to be pushed down for you? You have to watch for that or you’ll end up with a bunch of grass growing through your feet.”

“That sounds really painful,” I say.

“It is. I had a long stem of grass fused through my calf for the better part of a week once. It was very painful.”

“What did you do to get rid of it?” Francesca asks.

“I fretted over it a few days and even saw a doctor, before I did what I should’ve done the instant I discovered it. I made another jump.”

“That removed the grass?” I ask.

“Yes. Since the grass hadn’t been infused with the gravitites, and my body had, when I made the jump, I was able to leave it behind. It still took some time for my body to heal from the unwanted intrusion, but overall I could have fared much worse. It was a valuable learning experience.”

“So what would you do in the case of the mailbox?” Blake asks.

“It’s not a bad choice overall, but I would use it cautiously. This post is immediately next to a driveway, so you can stand on something solid without being in the street and in danger from passing cars. You would still have to consider the possibilities of encountering a car coming in the drive, or of course the person retrieving the mail, or the mail persons themselves doing the delivery. You might have kids to factor in, or the occasional errant skateboard, but overall your probability of safety is pretty high. I would help my odds by planning to arrive at night, when you aren’t likely to encounter many of these hazards. You always want to increase the odds in your favor as much as you possibly can. What else have we got to work with?”

I scan our surroundings and look for more unseen hazards, trying to picture the activity on the street. In my mind I see owners with lawn mowers, kids on bikes, sprinkler systems and rolling trashcans. I try to imagine where I would find the least activity. My eyes finally settle on a TV antenna.
“What about a roof?”

“Excellent!” Quickly exclaims. “The roof of a suburban home is one of the least hazardous and least occupied spaces you can find in any town. They are often adorned with metal antennas or satellite dishes that are good conductors for jumping, and the footing, while usually sloped, is typically smooth enough to protect your feet if you are wearing adequate shoes. Most importantly, hardly anyone ever looks up there, let alone goes up there.”

“What about falling off the roof?” Francesca asks

“There is that I suppose,” Quickly says. “And getting up and down can be a bit tricky. These are minor detail
s when you think about it. You have to think big picture. I will grant you that I’m climbing fewer roofs these days than I once was. Still, you are young people, prime of life. The roof is a very good choice. You can make fairly long jumps through time there with relative safety.

“I want you to work as teams. You will work in tandem to keep your partner safe. Find a location on this street to use as a jump anchor and make a jump. See if you can do thirty-minute intervals to start. Blake and Benjamin, Francesca and Carson, let’s see what you’ve got.”

I look at Blake and feel the sudden onset of stress. Quickly is certainly not shy about throwing us into these sink or swim situations. I have to believe he knows what he’s doing. Blake is someone I can count on for anything, so I have no worries that he won’t have my back. The stress comes from how new all of this is to me. Each day I’m learning to defy everything I’ve known about reality. Quickly walks down the street to give us some space, and he makes some notes in a notebook while Blake and I confer.

“What do you want to go for?” Blake asks.

“I’m not an especially big fan of heights, but I guess it would be good to go the safe route and try for a roof if we can get up on one.”

We look at the houses around us. I can see a couple of them are definitely occupied. There are two or three that look like no one is home. I point to a green stucco rancher that has a wooden fence attached to the garage.

“What about just using that one?” It’s the same house I spotted the TV antenna on earlier.

It’s just a one-story. I should be able to handle that.

Blake nods and we head across the street into the yard, trying not to look suspicious. A van drives by and we linger awkwardly in the driveway until it’s past before heading for the fence. We find the gate unlocked. We slip into the side yard, and after a tense moment of expectation that we’re going to be mauled by a vicious dog, we find only trashcans and an empty, blue plastic kiddie pool. I’m happy that the garage is between the main house and us, so that even if we were mistaken about someone being home, no one is likely to hear us. We close the gate and I peek over the fence to see that no one is watching. Blake checks around the corner to the backyard to see if there is anything we need to be concerned about, but comes back immediately.

“Just a swing set.”

I put a foot on the bottom brace of the fence, and grabbing the top, boost myself onto the corner. I sway precariously for a moment, then get my balance and sit. I put a foot on the top support of the fence perpendicular to the garage, and with one hand on top, lean forward and grab the roof.

Don’t look down
, Ben.

I realize that other
than the gutter, there’s not much to grab onto. I use my height to my advantage and jump, flopping the top half of me, and my right knee onto the roof. I stay low to keep from sliding back off. From this position I’m able to lean my weight forward and get my other leg onto the roof.

Hallelujah.

Blake has scaled the fence now and is positioning himself to lean over and grab the roof. I sit up and position myself as securely as I can, bracing my feet on the gritty shingles.

He stands
and grabs the roof. I reach out an arm and clasp his, helping to pull him onto the roof as he flings himself up. For a moment, my flip-flops slip on the shingles and I slide forward, sending bits of sand and rock dancing into the aluminum gutter, but we’re able to keep our weight low and hang on as Blake rolls onto the roof. Satisfied with our success, we crawl cautiously up to the ridgeline.

Once on the ri
dge, I take a pause and look into the street. Francesca and Carson are nowhere in sight, but I can just make out Dr. Quickly through a gap in some trees. He appears to be collecting dandelions from someone’s front yard.

“So he’s not watching us at all?” Blake asks.

“I guess not.”

“He’s kind of a weird guy.”

“I agree. Seems awfully trusting we can do this though.”

“I guess we’d better get it right.”

We continue down the ridgeline, walking as lightly as we can until we reach the antenna mounted on the far end of the house. Another car passes, but the driver doesn’t look up. Blake and I position ourselves around the antenna.

“Okay. Half an hour from now,” Blake says, setting his chronometer.

I rotate the dials on mine also. “Okay, are we able to go at the same time using the same anchor or do we need to go separately?”

“Um. I don’t know actually,” Blake
responds. “I don’t think he covered that in class.”

“I
guess we’d better do separate. You want to go first and I’ll follow?”

“Sure. Do you want me to get out of the way first or just stay in position till you arrive?”

“Good question. I guess as long as we’re in different positions here, we’ll be fine then too,” I say.

“Okay. I just won’t move till you show up, then we can climb back down together.”

I get in position with my arm below Blake’s, but not grabbing the antenna yet. He grabs the pole near the top with his left hand and uses his right to reach for the chronometer on his wrist. He breathes out deeply and looks at me. “Here we go.”

His fingers squeeze the pin on the chronometer, and the next moment he’s gone. I can fe
el my heartbeat pounding. The climb onto the roof had gotten it started, but the sight of Blake vanishing amplifies that by at least double. I take a couple deep breaths to calm myself and then get into position, careful not to put any part of myself where Blake has just been. I release the safety on the chronometer and take a look back to the street. I can no longer see Quickly. I wonder where Francesca and Carson are, then turn my attention back to my task. I squeeze the pin.

The world goes black. I feel the antenna shake in my hand and something strikes me in the face. I close my eyes and fall back from a noisy chaos around my head, grabbing frantically for a hold on the roof. I sit down forcefully and painfully on the ridgeline. I roll over and grab at both sides of it, opening my eyes and trying to balance myself. I get stabilized and catch the last glimpses of a flock of birds
disappearing into the darkened sky.

M
y body shakes as the adrenaline pounds through me. I stay straddling the ridgeline and put my head down on my hands to calm my nerves.

What happened? How am I here at night?

I try to look at the chronometer settings on my wrist, but in the dim light I can’t make out how the concentric rings are aligned.
Did I get my settings wrong? Is something wrong with it? How on earth do I get back?
I realize that I don’t even know when I’ve arrived.
How badly did I screw this up? I could be a year off for all I know.

A car driv
es by and pulls into a driveway down the street. A couple of lights are on in a few houses, so I know there are some people still awake. I wish I could tell the time from the night sky. I shimmy down the roof toward the garage where Blake and I came up. I can see a dim light shining into the backyard from inside the house. Someone has apparently come home since I climbed up.

I peer over the edge to see the fence I stepped up from. It looks much farther away in the darkness. I pivot myself and dangle a foot over the e
dge trying to catch the top of the fence with my foot. It won’t reach. I slide a bit farther, balancing on my stomach and bracing my upper body on my forearms. I touch the top of the fence with my foot but it glances off and my flip-flop slips from my foot, disappearing into the darkness below.

Damn it.

I shift my body a little more and land my bare foot on top of the fence. It’s jagged and sharp on my skin and I don’t want to put any weight on it. I decide to shimmy sideways to get to the lower edge of the roof and just drop off from there. I make it to the edge and try to find a good grip with my hands. Just as I’m about to swing down, I hear a sound from the backyard. It’s a thwap thwap of something swinging open and shut. My mind places the sound just as I hear a snuffling noise from the yard.
Dog door
. I grip the edge of the roof, hang momentarily and drop. I crumple and roll backward, but get right back up. The snuffling noise has stopped, and a moment later, I see a pair of eyes shine around the corner.