Rewinder (18 page)

“Sure. Milk?”

“Yes, please.”

“Soy or rice?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Milk. Soy or rice?”

Milk from soy or rice? How is that even possible? “I’d prefer cow.”

She frowns. “This is a
vegan
restaurant.”

Not seeing how that’s an answer to my question, I wait for her to say more. But when she doesn’t, I say, “Vegan?”

She closes her eyes in annoyance, then opens them again and points out the window. “I think what you’re looking for is over there.”

__________

T
HE NEW RESTAURANT
is called Starbucks Coffee.

When it’s my turn to order, I point at the glass cabinet and say, “May I please have one of those muffins, and a cup of coffee?”

“House blend?” the clerk asks.

“Um, okay.”

“Black or with milk?”

“Is it from a cow?”

“As far as I know,” he says with a smile. “We also have soy, if you’d prefer that.”

“No, the cow’s milk is fine. Thank you.”

I consume my meal at one of the tables, then ask a clerk who’s cleaning the area if he could tell me how to get to the central library. The guy, while kind, is unsure.

“No car?” an older customer sitting alone at a nearby table asks me after the clerk moves on.

“Car?” I say, not sure what he’s talking about.

He laughs. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Got rid of my last one four years ago. You got a bus pass, then?”

Am I to be hopelessly lost in my own language?
No
seems to be the safest answer, so that’s what I say.

“You a tourist?”

Realizing it’s a good cover, I say, “I am.”

“Where are you from?”

It’s amazing how simple conversations aren’t so simple when you have much to hide. “East.”

“East Coast?”

There’s a hopefulness in his voice that worries me. “Not quite.”

“Ah. Well, I got a sister up in Boston, is all. You ever been?”

“No.”

“So you’re looking for the central library?”

I nod.

“Here’s what you want to do.”

The bus turns out to be the same public transportation vehicles I noticed earlier. According to Isaac, my new friend, I’m to take the express to “Universal City,” and then something called “the metro” to “downtown.” He explains the details of paying and riding, and then I’m off.

Even though the bus is an express, it takes nearly an hour to reach Universal City. What amazes me during the journey is the sheer amount of land that’s been taken over by the city. While New Cardiff is not (was not/never existed as) a small city, parts of the valley the bus now takes me through are (were/never were) still used as farmland.

There’s something else I notice. I’m no engineer, but even to my untrained eyes, I can tell that the buildings I’m passing—especially those more than two or three stories tall—are considerably better built than those of the world I know.

I’m also finding it hard to pick out the caste differences of the people I see. This is something I could do in my sleep growing up, but here it’s not so easy. There are a few on the bus I’d categorize as belonging to one of the lower castes, but I’m not sure where the others fit.

The metro is similar to the tram system of New Cardiff. In fact, if I squint just right, I almost feel like I’m back home.

When I reach my stop, I take a moving stairway up from the station to ground level—downtown. If I was awed by the sights before, I’m struck silent now. Here, buildings rise dozens of stories into the sky. I’ve seen pictures and films of structures as high as these, but those buildings were all in London or Hamburg or Peking or Shanghai. There are none in the North America I’m from.

I get lost once, but with the help of a passing pedestrian, I finally find the library. After I enter, I can’t keep the grin from my face. Outside, the facility looks as if it has only three floors. Upon entering, I discover that’s an illusion. The library is huge, four floors aboveground, and—accessed via more moving stairways—four floors below.

According to the map I find, the history section is on the very bottom, so down I go.

__________

W
HEN IT’S ANNOUNCED
that the library is closing, I give in to my pleading stomach and go in search of something to eat, fully intending once I finish to pop straight to the next morning when the library would open again. But as my hunger is sated, exhaustion takes its place.

The first hotel I find requires—for one night—five times the amount of money I have and something called a credit card, which I’m guessing is one of the plastic cards I saw at 7-Eleven.

Several blocks away I find a rundown place where the cost is only a fraction of the other amount, and if I’m willing to leave an extra twenty dollars, a credit card is not needed. I get to my third-floor room via a dirty, narrow lift. The few other residents I see I immediately identify as Nines, or maybe even unclassified drifters. This gives me an odd sense of comfort.

My room is small, thin-walled, and dusty, but I’m too tired to care. As I start to drift off, I hear a faint triple beep, but before I can figure out where it came from, I’m out.

The next morning I’m at the doors of the library several minutes before they open at ten a.m. There are others waiting, too. After a few minutes, I get the sense I’m being watched, so I cautiously look around. There’s a group of older people and a few others closer to my age, but if any of them was looking at me, none is now.

A triple beep causes me to look at my satchel, and I remember the same noise from the previous evening. I lift the flap and see a message glowing on my Chaser’s screen. I move over to the side where no one can see into the bag, then open it wide enough for me to read the message.

POWER LEVEL 10%

I’ve never received a power message before. Usually, my chaser is charged between missions. But I’ve made a lot of trips since it was last plugged in, and since I don’t have a charger with me, I’ll have to be careful from now on and take no unnecessary trips.

I hear the door lock turn so I hurriedly close my bag, and soon I’m back in the basement of the library.

As my research takes me from one book to the next, time begins to have little meaning. One of the first things I learn is that there’s no mention anywhere about the day Washington was supposed to have been captured. There are other references to close escapes, however, but the rebellion leader proves to be elusive and is never apprehended.

Though I take no pride or credit for what he has done, I know that all he’s accomplished since that night in 1775 has only been possible because of my ineptitude. I’m thoroughly convinced now that if I stop myself from entering the Three Swans Tavern, all will return to normal.

This is the moment I should go back to and fix, so those I have unintentionally erased will live again and the empire will be restored.

But I don’t leave. I don’t even attempt to move my chair back. This world I have unwittingly created has started to fascinate me, and I want to learn more before I banish it.

I read about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I learn of a second war with the British in 1812, and that slavery continued in America until the 1860s, ending only after a deadly civil war engulfed the nation. I learn of assassinations and innovations and the rights of women. I find out that America and the United Kingdom are allies now, fighting on the same side in the world wars I learned about in the other library.

There are more wars for America, smaller in scale, in Asia and in what I know as Arabia but they call the Middle East. And internal struggles that often revolve around something referred to as civil rights—the idea that everyone in a society should have the same rights. It’s a concept I wish were true in my world, but I fear would never even be considered.

Then there’s this thing called the American Dream. While it’s a simple concept, it’s difficult for me to accept at first. By the standards of this “dream,” it doesn’t matter where you start out in life, you can rise as high as you want if you put your mind to it and really work for it. To me, “dream” seems the right word at first, but as I read on, I find it’s more than wishful thinking. There are stories about rulers of this country coming from humble beginnings, leaders of industry starting with next to nothing, and others fighting against the life they were born into to become doctors and writers and professors and community leaders.

For every one who has achieved this American Dream, there are probably many more who have tried and failed, but this concept is still a million times better than the entrenched social structure I know.

Every night when the library closes, I purchase the cheapest food I can find before returning to my hotel, and every morning at ten a.m. I’m with the first group in. Not a day passes without me experiencing the sensation of being watched, but when I look around, I never catch anyone. It’s unsettling. Other than that, though, I lose myself in a past that should not be.

The shocks keep coming. In Great Britain, instead of reigning for less than two years, Queen Victoria remained on the throne for over sixty-three. All the subsequent kings and queens I was forced to memorize as a schoolboy never wore the crown. Then there were the political parties: Labour and Conservative. Labour doesn’t exist in my world, and the Conservative Party may share common Tory beginnings with the North Party, but its ideology is nowhere near as extreme. The Norths don’t exist at all in this new world, and as far as I can tell, they never did.

On Fridays and Saturdays the library closes at 5:30 p.m., so I spend those evenings walking around downtown, trying to absorb all I’ve learned. It’s an impossible task. My head swims with historical events that seem like fiction to me.

On Sunday, I arrive at ten a.m. again, only to realize on this day the library doesn’t open for another three hours. I curse myself for not reading the sign, and curse again at the library for having reduced Sunday hours. I’m anxious to get back in. The previous afternoon, after guidance from one of the librarians, I moved up one level to the social science section and began learning more about current culture. The amount of information available is overwhelming but so very fascinating, and I can’t wait to pick up where I left off.

“They open late on Sundays.”

I turn to find a girl about my age, with short black hair and pale skin, standing a dozen feet away. Peeking out from the collar of her black cotton shirt—
T-shirt
, I have learned—is a tattoo of several tiny birds. Her pants are blue jeans—another phrase I’ve picked up—ripped in a few places that would’ve made me think she was poor, but I’ve seen others wearing this style who, from their jewelry and other accessories, are clearly well off, so I can’t tell what her status is. There’s something vaguely familiar about her, so I figure I must have seen her around the library.

“Thank you. I know,” I say, and then turn back toward the door. I’ve been very careful to keep all conversations to a minimum so that I don’t get tripped up.

But apparently she’s not ready to end our talk. “You a student or something?”

I nod without looking back.

“I thought so.”

Not wanting to give her the chance to ask anything more, I adjust my satchel’s strap and walk off down the sidewalk. I might as well get something to eat. I used up the last of my cash on dinner last night, so first thing this morning I made another circuit of stores, using the same rules from before. I came back with nearly two hundred dollars and an eighth of a percent less power on my Chaser.

I go to a little café down the street where I’ve eaten a couple times before, and take my food and coffee to a table by the window. I’ve taken only a bite of my croissant when the door opens and the girl from the library walks in.

“You’re not using both these chairs, are you?” she asks, approaching my table.

I want to say yes but am unsure of the proper etiquette, so I remove my satchel from the second chair and put it on the floor next to me. “You may have it.”

I hope she’ll take it somewhere else, but she removes the bag she’s carrying from her back and sits down.

I busy myself with my meal, hoping she gets the hint I want to be alone.

She doesn’t. “That looks good.”

“It is,” I tell her between bites.

“Kind of makes me wish I haven’t already eaten.”

I respond with a noncommittal grunt.

For a few moments, she says nothing, and I’m thinking maybe I can finish and get out of here before she opens her mouth again.

“You
are
a student, right?” she asks. “I mean, why would you be spending all day every day for a week in the library?”

I put another piece of croissant in my mouth, wondering how the hell she knows this.

“I’m guessing since you spent most of your time in the basement, you’re a history major. Me, I’m pre-med…well, I will be when I get into a university. I’m going to LACC right now.”

I don’t know what that is, nor do I care.

“Actually, I’m not
in
school this semester,” she says. “I’m taking it off. A little break…okay, a forced break. One of my teachers and I didn’t agree on the grade I got last semester, and he apparently was unable to appreciate the way I expressed my dissatisfaction. They call it a semester suspension. I call it a miscarriage of justice.”

The half cup of coffee I have left I’m happy to leave behind, but I need the nutrition the croissant provides. Two more bites and I’ll be done.

She holds out her hand. “My name’s Iffy.”

As much as I want to ignore her, I can’t. I give her hand a quick shake and say, “Hi.”

“Is that your name?”

I frown. “It’s Denny.”

As I glance at her, I’m struck again by the feeling of familiarity. I know I’ve never met her before but there is something about her. Something more than maybe having glimpsed her across the lobby of the library.

“Uh, hello? You okay there, Denny?”

I blink and realize I’ve been staring at her. “Sorry. I’m, um…it’s just…” I push my chair back and stand up. “Nice meeting you.”