The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (11 page)

“Listen, bud,” I replied, “this is getting us nowhere.”

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “We can always erase if we aren’t achieving interface. Are you composed of electronic impulses, or are you just a bug in my flow chart?” He slapped his machines again. “I’m going to have to know where to store you. In this model I’ve only got sixteen K of RAM.”

“RAM?” I inquired.

He blinked again. “Random Access Memory.”

“Let’s look at this whole thing another way,” I said. “And hold off on that talk about erasing me. I’ve been through enough already. Where I came from, we were having an electrical storm. Thunder, lightning—you follow me?”

“We were having a storm, too,” he said, “but it’s clearing off now.” He jerked his head toward a window, but I dared not yet look outdoors into more
of his world. “Maybe it was the same storm?” He rubbed his chin in thought once more.

“Maybe,” I said, more cautious than before.

Through the round spectacles his eyes searched me. “What’s that thing on top of your . . . hair?”

I reached up slowly. A steel helmet with horns and a flashing light wouldn’t have surprised me. But it was only my beanie, hanging by a hatpin.

He squinted at me. “You sure you’re not a game component? You know, an animation. Your . . . hat has numbers on it. What does eighteen stand for? That doesn’t compute with me.”

Well, of course, there were numbers on my beanie, same as any other freshman’s. “That’s our graduation year,” I said without thinking. “We graduate from Bluff City High School in 1918.” My mouth clamped shut on this information. It seemed to seal my fate.

“Oh, wow,” the boy breathed, and thunder rolled over distant hills. The metal box before him emitted a single
pyong
and then a solitary
beep.

There was nothing simple about my situation, but it boiled down to this. My Second Sight and the lightning and maybe something else had ganged up on me. I’d slipped through time into the distant decade of the 1980s without leaving this upstairs room of the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse.

But in this future world the farmhouse was abandoned no longer. Somebody had remodeled the old
place, making it strictly modern and then some. This upstairs bedroom was now occupied by a boy named Jeremy. Though he managed to introduce himself, he was still halfway convinced that he’d created me in his machines, “programmed me,” as he kept saying. He even made me acquainted with his equipment, his “power supply transformer” and his “television interface box,” his “joystick” and his “paddles.” You never heard such gibberish.

When I could get a word in, I said, “You can call me Blossom.”

“Outrageous,” he replied. “You got to be kidding. That’s better than Tron.” He slapped a knee and chortled.

“Listen, buster—Jeremy, this is no laughing matter. What we have here is a serious problem. I happen to have considerable Powers of the occult type and have wandered out of my time before. But never this far.”

Jeremy waved a hand. “Oh, I got that figured. My black box has been malfunctioning all evening. The electrical storm—maybe two storms, one at your end and one at mine—messed up my computer’s head. It picked up on you. Due to a long shot circuitry-wise, you basically just slipped into a time warp.”

“A what?”

“It’s a well-known phenomenon,” Jeremy replied. “You’re definitely not up on your Ursula Le Guin, your Isaac Asimov, or your Madeleine L’Engle, are you?”

“Not entirely,” I muttered, figuring these three probably hadn’t been born yet.

“The time warp is in all the sci-fi literature as a distinct potential, so it stands to reason, doesn’t it?” He spoke confidently, but his eyes weren’t so sure.

I creaked up from the carpet, bruised both fore and aft. Tripping through a time warp is similar to falling out of a tree. My gray princess dress, which I wear for every day now, and an old coat of Mama’s with a ratty fur collar were half wrenched off my body.

Jeremy gave my togs an interested stare. “Funky,” he remarked. “Is your gear recycled?”

But I’d turned from where he sat to the door with the familiar knob. Hoping against hope, I thought that beyond the door I might find myself again in the plaster-strewn hall of the old abandoned Leverette place. Just maybe Alexander might be out there, holding his lantern aloft in the dark, waiting for me.

Limping across the room, I peered around the door. The hallway was brightly lit. The floor was smooth with polish. High on the opposite wall was a round device with a small red light in it. Written on this object was a motto:

SMOKE ALERT

I glanced down the curving stairs. On the window at the landing was another motto, glued to the glass:

THIS HOUSE PROTECTED BY ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE

I banged the door shut. All escape was cut off.

Not far from panic, I raced back across the room to the dreaded window. Sweeping curtains aside, I stared out into the night. Icy fingers of fear gripped my vitals.

“The wind pump,” I whispered, “it’s gone. And right about there should be the chicken coop where Daisy-Rae lives with her little brother, Roderick.”

“Who?” said Jeremy softly.

“And the woods. They ought to be right over there, with the little gate to Lovers’ Lane. Why, me and Mama have all but lived off them woods in lean times, what with the hickory nuts and squirrel stew.”

“Squirrel what?” asked Jeremy.

But where all these familiar landmarks should be was a blanket of twinkling lights as far as the eye could see. Just where the gate to the woods should be two paved streets crossed.

Above them was an electrified lantern, sending out a beam of green light. As I watched, it was joined briefly by a yellow light. Then they blew out, and on came a red one. I shivered at this strange signal.

There was a house on every corner, glowing with white light. On each roof was an elaborate lightning rod or something very like one. In the distance beyond the ruined woods where the swimming hole should be were two brightly lighted golden arches and a sign blazing white fire that read:

Clutching my forehead, I turned to the boy.

“Don’t tell me Bluff City’s grown all the way out here, Jeremy. Why, we’re a couple of miles from the Courthouse Square!”

“Bluff City?” he said. “Oh, we never go there. There’s not much to Bluff City except parking lots and urban renewal. Where we are is Bluffleigh Heights, basically one of your better upper-middle-class suburbs.”

“I see,” I said untruthfully. “Then I take it you don’t go to Horace Mann School?”

“Where?” said Jeremy. “I’m in eighth grade at Bluffleigh Heights Magnet Middle School. I’m in the Gifted Program.”

“So you said,” I remarked. “And what does the Gifted Program mean . . . basically?”

“It means we’re all reading at or near grade level and pretty heavy into computer math.”

I gave this some thought. “You mean you can do your homework on that . . . computer thing?” I jerked a thumb at his machines.

“How else?” Jeremy gave his black box a small pat. “Homework, of course,” he said, “and video games.”

“Games?”

“I’ve got them all: Yar’s Revenge, The Empire Strikes Back, Kaboom, Star Strike, Night Stalker,
Moon Master, Defender, Atlantis, you name it. Here I’ve got real arcade action, you know?

“I was up to here with coin-op games. Now I don’t even have to leave the house except to go to school. And we’re hoping for a breakthrough even there. I foresee the time when we can hook into a master control and attend classes without even getting out of bed. You could completely Betamax your absenteeism, you know?

“I mean the technology’s there already. It’s just a matter of breaking through an entrenched bureaucracy and knocking out the power of the athletic department that wants you actually there up in the stands, supporting the teams. Basically it’s just a question of time before—”

It was no good. I had no doubt Jeremy was making sense in his way, but I was only catching every other word. At least he was a human being and not a monster with a metal face or that big blown-up dummy that stood under his calendar.

I noticed something else in Jeremy, too, for figuring out people is one of my Gifts. He was a lonesome boy up in his room surrounded by his machines and creatures. It was a lonely place, this future.

The thought brought a couple of rare tears to my eyes. I’d never had a favored position even in my own world of 1914. But I missed it now. The homesickness for my vanished place flooded through me and spilled out at my eyes.

“I’ve got to get back, Jeremy. I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve got to get back to teach Alexander and Bub and Champ a lesson when they pull that prank on Old Man Leverette’s porch tomorrow night. I’ve got to get back and straighten out that two-timing Mr. Lacy, who’s sparking Miss Spaulding and Miss Fuller all at once. I’ve got to get back and tell fortunes at our freshman class Haunted House. Halloween’s the day after tomorrow!”

Jeremy blinked at me through his round spectacles, as I pointed out into the night. I have a long and bony forefinger which I inherited from Mama. I pointed it out into the dreadful, glittering night of Bluffleigh Heights.

“Home . . .” I moaned in a strangled voice.

Jeremy rubbed his chin, deep in thought. His gaze dropped to a small white instrument among the other machines on his desk. It had a curly cord and a small barbell arrangement resting on a stand with small numbered buttons. “I don’t suppose you could . . . phone . . .” he mumbled.

Then far down in the house a door banged. Heavy footsteps stamped up the stairs.

Jeremy quivered, and his gaze darted to the door. “Oh, wow,” he said.

“W
ITH ANY LUCK
,” Jeremy said in a low voice, “it’ll be Mom, home from her Parents Without Partners meeting.”

“And without any luck?” I wondered.

“It’ll be my sister.” He spoke in a grave voice and wrung his hands. “What am I going to
do
with you?”

He sized me up again, though he’d been staring holes in me ever since I . . . arrived. “Quick,” he said, “get over by my Darth Vader.”

“Your what?”

“That plastic thing.” He pointed at the artificial monster. “Stand over by it, and don’t move. Hold your pose.
Freeze.”

Just as the doorknob rattled, I lifted my skirts and took a giant leap, landing next to the Darth doll. It was staring out at the room, and suddenly so was I. Me and it stood cheek to cheek. The door banged back.

Somehow Jeremy made it to his chair. Looking up with a casual air, he said, “Hi, Tiffany. What are you doing home? Did the mall close?”

An overfed girl of sixteen or so shambled into the room. Without shifting my eyeballs, I caught a terrifying glimpse of her.

She’d cut her skirt in two, for it hit her well above two large and naked knees. Over her big chest she wore a flimsy shirt with some small animal stitched to the left side, possibly an alligator.

Her face was made up for some dreadful stage drama, purple at the lips and green along the lids. But her hair was worse. It was plucked half out of her head and chopped off. Wisps at the side were dyed pink. She wore earphones like a telephone company operator.

“
HEY, TIFFANY
,” Jeremy roared, “
HOW ABOUT GETTING OUT OF MY ROOM
?”

She was a slow girl and possibly deaf. She pulled the plug from one of her ears. Like my mama, she pierced her ears. But . . . Tiffany had pierced hers three times on each side. Gaudy bangles hung down from her lobes.

“Just shut up for like one minute, you little space cadet,” she remarked to Jeremy. “I’m totally into Billy Joel’s ‘The Nylon Curtain.’” She was tapping one large foot in a rhythm, and so she may have been getting music from out of her earplugs, or thought she was. “‘Combat Rock’ with Clash is coming up.”

“Just . . . get . . . outta . . . my . . . room, okay?” Jeremy said to her. “Please.”

“Chill out, nerd,” she responded. “Have a Dorito.”
She slouched across the room and offered a cellophane sack of something to Jeremy. I could have reached out and touched her, but I never moved. She smelled unpleasantly of perfume and tobacco, both stale.

“Did I get any calls?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“I can’t handle it,” Tiffany said. “Mom home yet?”

Again Jeremy shook his head and pretended to press several keys on his machine.

“Awesome,” she remarked. “Then I’m like the boss here, you know? Hey, look!” Her hand swept out to point at the broken window on Jeremy’s machine, scattering the Dorito things all over. “You totaled your screen, you little airhead. Like don’t even
consider
borrowing my Sony.”

The very thought of anybody borrowing her . . . Sony seemed to turn Tiffany into a raging beast. She whirled my way and punched Darth Vader beside me. It hit the wall and bounced back. If she had another punch to deliver, I’d take it full in the face. Still, I never moved or even blinked.

“Like, aren’t you a little old for dolls?” she sneered at Jeremy. “Ew, these are super skanky.” She gestured at me and Darth. “Like Barf City. Gross me out. Totally.”