Emperors of Time (2 page)

Tim decided that
if there was anything more ridiculous than Julie claiming she had been
instantaneously removed from her kitchen yesterday afternoon, it was the idea
that she could have gone back a century and a half in time. 

I opened my
mouth to object, to say that there was no way I could be in the year 1865, not
to mention that I had no plausible explanation for how I had moved from my
kitchen in Pennsylvania to Washington DC, and that I was angry I was clearly
being messed with. 

“I do not
expect you to believe me,” the man stated.  “Not yet, anyway.  But I
do need you to listen to me.  I have an appointment outside this house in
about five minutes, and I want you to know a couple things about me and why I
am doing what I am about to do before you see that.  So, to give you the
extremely quick version, I am a time traveler from the year 2347.  My name
is Steven Hopkins.  I’m one of the twelve people who collaborated on the Tempus
Project, although apparently I was the only one of the group not privy to the
other members’ plan to…  well, this is going to sound a little cliché, but
they have quite frankly taken over the world.” 

He paused at
this point, maybe to see if I was buying any of this (I wasn’t).  He
flipped the silver coin I had held in my hand just minutes before and
continued.

“Like me, the
other members of the Tempus Project are scientists. They’re not generals, and
until they started messing around with historical timelines, they did not have
any way to take over the world using conventional means such as armies,
weapons of mass destruction, or politics.  What they did have, was these.”

At this
point, he held up another medallion, identical to the one I was holding in my
hand. 

“These
contain the most powerful microchips ever invented.  And believe me, by
2347 that is saying quite a bit.  There are only twelve in
existence.  They are called Domini Temporis, which means Masters of
Time.  Dr. Russell has a thing for Latin.  When you hold one of these
in your hand, you can touch any object and the Dominus Temporis senses the
being…  the essence, if you will, of that object.   It can take
you to any place and time in that object’s timeline.  As you can see, I
brought the coin you touched to this house tonight.  By thinking about
3:00 pm on April 15, 1865 – the time and date now -- you followed me here.”

He paused
again, and this time I was able to manage a quick, “I still don’t believe you.”

“Nor are you
expected to,” he said.  “But I want to refresh your memory on a couple of
things that you believe about the year 1865 and those following it because
tomorrow, you will discover they are no longer true.  Wait until
tomorrow.  You will have been through enough today.  But tomorrow,
ask someone you trust deeply, who you know would not lie to you.  You are
going to want to believe that I am somehow playing a trick on you.  So let
me ask you a couple questions.  First of all, who is John Wilkes Booth?”

“I have no
idea,” I said aggressively, figuring he just made the name up. 

“I suspected
as much.  Along my timeline, he is only really famous for the one
thing.  What year did Abraham Lincoln leave the White House?”

“1868,” I
said.  “No, wait… was it 1869?  I guess technically the inauguration
of the next guy was 1869, so he would have retired in the same year. 
Didn’t he go on to be the president of a college?  I don’t remember which
one…   History isn’t really my thing, I’m more into math and
science.”  Even now I don’t know why I told him that, or why I answered
the question at all.  Maybe I just wanted to prove I wasn’t stupid after
not knowing his John Wilkes Booth character. 

“Correct, or
at least in your timeline.  It was Northwestern, by the way, in his home
state of Illinois,” he said.  “And Lincoln was succeeded by..?”

“Colfax? 
I think it was Colfax, anyway.  First name was Schuyler or
something?  I remember reading that they were really tight during
Lincoln’s second term.  Really hit the South hard during Reconstruction, I
think.  Was there somebody between Lincoln and Colfax?”

“No,” he
said.  “And who was next?”

“I don’t
know,” I said.  “After Colfax, I am pretty hazy until Theodore
Roosevelt.  Roosevelt was America’s first three term president.  He
got the U.S. involved in The Great War and won us our first European
colony…  Austria, I think, but I get our European colonies confused.”

“Yes,” said
Steven Hopkins, the frustrating middle aged man spinning his coin on the
table.  “And all of those things you have mentioned happened because my
erstwhile colleagues -- I believe they call themselves the Emperors of Time --
prevented John Wilkes Booth from killing Abraham Lincoln.  Admittedly,
they still had to do some tweaking.  They killed Joseph Stalin when he was
three years old and fixed a couple of elections in the late 21st century… 
Still, detaining John Wilkes Booth and preventing his crime was the first cause
for all of it.  If that’s undone all the other changes will go with it
because this first change made the other ones possible.”

My head was
spinning with names, dates and places as he rambled on, and then it occurred to
me I had to figure out how I was going to get from where ever I was right now
to my kitchen back home.  I was certain my parents would be starting to
worry about me.  It was just beginning to occur to me that maybe the
weirdo had kidnapped me.

 “Find
someone you trust and ask them the names of the Presidents.  Pick him or
her carefully, because you’ll be relying on this person in matters of life and
death very soon.  Once you are convinced history has been altered, tell
this person about the medallion.  Actually, it might be easier to show
them.  If you touch another person when you go back, they will travel with
you.  But for now, be careful not to change any events.  I happen to
know-- pardon me, but I have read your biography-- that by the time you are in
your thirties, you will have three lifelong friends and confidantes from your
hometown, who are about your own age.  That is why I chose to give the
package to you in your junior year, so they would all be close at hand to
assist you.  Hopefully they will be more or less the people they grow up
to be in my timeline.  So find two more confidantes, after the one you ask
about the changes in American history tomorrow.   I did not want to
do this to you much later in life, because…  Well, let us just say that
you have some very impressive things to do when you grow up.  It would be
irresponsible to distract you from them by having you galloping across
time.” 

I’m pretty
sure that by this point in his monologue, I was literally gawking.  Or at
least I’ve heard that’s what people do when they’re lost in complete disbelief.
 I didn’t have anything to say, so he continued.

“Aside from recruiting
your friends, you need to know more information about the Emperors of Time and
how you must help stop them.  I cannot send you another letter, for
reasons I will explain later, but I will bury a guidebook for you.  It
will be in your backyard, about two feet to the right of that lovely oak
tree.  I have a feeling that whatever those so called emperors think of
next, they will do nothing to prevent that tree from growing.  I,
unfortunately, am now obliged to free a certain Mr. Booth from a band of
corrupt policemen.  Would you be so kind as to wait here?” 

Hopkins
didn’t give me time to say no as he waltzed out the front door.  I looked
out the window, debating whether to go after him or not, when a covered
horse-drawn carriage approached, down the dusty road on which the building I
was in stood alone.  For just a second, I registered that if I hadn’t gone
back in time, someone must have put a lot of effort into getting a horse-drawn
carriage to approach at just that time, but my mind was now oddly more
concerned with Hopkins’ safety.  As the carriage approached, it made no
sign of stopping as the driver kept spurring the horses toward Hopkins, now
standing in the middle of the street. 

Hopkins took
a metal stick out of his pocket and raised it in front of him.  He pushed
a button on it and there was a flash of red light.  The horses stumbled,
the driver dropped the whip, and the carriage spun out of control.  A
moment later, Hopkins stepped calmly over the fallen horses and into the
carriage.  Soon, he pulled out a bag and an immobile man who he laid on
the ground.  Hopkins raised his metal stick and pressed another button,
flooding the new man’s face with green light. 

The man
stirred, opened his eyes, and looked around.  After a moment’s hesitation,
he got up from the ground, shook Hopkins’ hand, and ran back up the street.

Hopkins came
back in after that and said, “Do not worry, the horses and the men in the
carriage will wake up shortly.  Now it is time to get you back home, or at
least to a reasonable variation of what you think of at home.  Simply
squeeze hard on the Dominus Temporis-- the medallion-- and think of the place
and time you came from.  It is as easy as that.”

I decided
that instead of arguing, I might as well give what he said a try.  So I
did, and I was back in my kitchen without so much as a blink.  Except that
it wasn’t my kitchen, or at least not exactly.  The microwave was a
different color, and there was a dog in our fenced backyard, even though my
parents never had a dog or a fence.  But the weirdest thing has to be this
morning’s newspaper. It was sitting on the counter (my family doesn’t buy the
newspaper by the way, but at this point it seems almost nitpicky to mention
that) and I notice the headline talking about the ongoing war against Russia,
like it’s something I should know about.  But we’ve never been at war with
Russia.  They’ve been our allies against China for years!

I’m writing
all this down so I don’t forget it, although I’m convinced it has to be a
hallucination or something. I figure I can get you to read this, if what you
tell me about the presidents makes me think something is actually up. 
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t necessarily believe all this.  But I do
need to talk to you about it, and maybe even take Hopkins’ advice and try to
prove it to you.  On the bright side, maybe once I convince you, you can
convince me.  Not that I’m particularly eager to believe I have the
ability to travel through time and an obligation to save the world.  But
the alternative is that I am going insane.  Because I swear to you that
this desk in my room was not here this morning.  My Dad and Stepmom looked
at me like I had two heads when I asked them if they had just gotten it
today.  Not to mention that the desk is full of homework assignments I
don’t remember doing and pictures of me in places I have never been
to.  

So that was
my Monday.  I hope you’ll still walk me home after school today, ‘cause,
well…  honestly, I really need someone to talk to about this.

That was all that
was written.  Tim closed the book, put it down, and shook his head in
bewilderment.

About two hours
later, Tim was in the lobby looking for Julie.  He figured the likeliest
scenario was that this was some kind of trick.  Perhaps Julie just wanted
to get a laugh out of standing him up and making him miss the bus.  But
Julie had never seemed cruel before, so Tim decided he would take the
risk.  After all, there really had been something up with her at
lunch. 

Still, Tim was
halfway surprised to see her waiting in the lobby.

“Hi,” he said,
awkwardly.

“Hi,” she said
as she opened the door and began leading the way toward her house.  Tim
had never been to her house before, but figured it must not be too far. 
“Did you, um…  did you get a chance to read my…  my letter, I guess
is what you’d call it?”

Tim stopped
himself from saying, “Or science-fiction,” and instead just said, “Yeah. 
During study hall.”

 Julie
frowned.  “Well, you’re still here.  I guess that’s a good sign.”

“I mean, I know
it didn’t really happen,” Tim clarified as Julie led him across the grassy
patch of ground that separated the school from a housing development.

Julie nodded, “I
could just be going crazy, I guess.  You happen to know any good
psychiatrists?”

Tim didn’t have
a good answer to that, so he just kept walking beside her, searching her face
for any sign of a joke.  Her green eyes were serious, with no sign of her
usual humor or kindness.  It looked more like she was trying to solve a
really hard math problem.  He remembered how she sometimes worked on her
calculus homework at lunch, doing math way more advanced than Tim had ever
done.  Sometimes, she would get this look then. 

“Seriously,” Tim
said. “Are you okay?”

“I guess we’ll
find out.  When we get to the house, I’ll either convince you that I’m not
making it up, or we’ll find out there really is something wrong with me and go
from there,” she said.  Her eyes softened a bit as she said, “I really do
appreciate you coming with me.  I know I sound crazy, but I really do
trust you.  And I appreciate you being here for me.”  Her eyes said
she was telling the truth.

Tim hesitated,
and then decided to go all in.  “Just so you know, I’m here for you no
matter what.  Whatever’s going on, I’ll do what I can to help.”

Julie smiled at
this and took a deep breath.  “That means a lot.  But since we can’t
solve anything until we get to my house, what do you say we talk about
something else until we get there?”

“Okay,” Tim
said.  He thought for a second, trying to think of a complete non
sequitur, and came up with, “Which is the better planet, Mars or Venus?”

Julie laughed
sweetly and said, “Hmmm, well…  Mars, obviously.” 

“Why?”

“Well… 
Mars has two moons and Venus has none.  Obviously two is better than none,
so it’s Mars.  Why?  Did you think it was Venus?” she asked, as if he
had just gotten a really easy math problem wrong and she was embarrassed for
him.

“Well of course
Venus is better,” he said.

“Well pardon
me.  Why?” asked Julie, feigning an intense intellectual curiosity. 

“Because the
ancients used to call it the ‘Evening Star’, but they also called it the
‘Morning Star’, since you can see it really well at both times.  It wasn’t
until the sixth century BC that they figured out it was the same thing, and it
still confused people way after that. Basically, Venus is better because it’s
two things, the Evening Star and the Morning Star, but Mars is just one
thing.  The god of war.” 

Julie
nodded.  “We’ll call that one a draw then.  Okay, how about this: 
What’s the best type of bird?”

“Oh, that’s
easy.  A penguin.”

Julie burst out
laughing.  “No way.  That’s mine, too!  Why for you?”

“The poor things
can’t fly, and they look ridiculous.”

“Right! 
But they always look so smug about it.  Like, I went to the zoo not too
long ago, and I swear they looked at me like they know they’re short, fat, and
have stubby little wings, but they still think they’re the coolest thing on two
legs.  Simply adorable.”

Tim nodded,
chuckling.  If this whole business about time travelling had been an
elaborate ruse to get him to talk about penguins, it had succeeded.  But
as they turned the corner into a cul de sac, Julie’s face became serious again.

“Well, that’s my
house there, the blue one,” Julie said.  “My parents don’t get home until
about 5:15, so we’ll have enough time.”

“Yeah, okay…”
said Tim hesitantly. 

Julie unlocked
the front door and opened it, motioning for Tim to go inside.  “My room’s
at the end of the hallway.  You can go on in.”

“Thanks,” said
Tim, although discussing time travel wasn’t exactly his ideal reason for being
invited into a girl’s bedroom.

 “Okay,
first things first,” Julie said once they got in the room.  “Here’s the
1865 coin I told you about.”  She picked it up off her desk.

Tim looked at
the coin and let out a whistle.  It was the best preserved coin he’d seen
that was more than sixty years old.  It was a century and a half old and
looked fresh from the mint.

“I thought you
said Hopkins had it in his hand when you saw him?”

“Yeah, but when I
got back, it was on the floor right where I’d been standing.  Like it had
dropped from my hand when I vanished,” Julie said.

“Hm, okay...”

Julie
shrugged.  “I know how it sounds.  And here’s that thing Hopkins kept
calling a microchip.”  It was a little metal disk, no bigger than a half
dollar.  It was shiny, unmarked metal.  Tim wasn’t entirely sure what
he thought it
was
, but he was confident that a super powerful microchip
that could manipulate space-time was a possibility he could safely eliminate.

After a moment
of silence, Tim looked at her, “You weren’t figuring it’d be enough to just
show me the coin and the disc, were you?  Because all that proves is--”
Julie held up a hand to stop him.  Tim stopped because, really, he wasn’t
trying to be mean.  But there was only so long you could be fed the kind
of nonsense he was hearing and not get impatient. 

The worst part
was that Julie honestly didn’t seem like she was insane, aside from the belief
that she had visited nineteenth century Washington DC.  The conversation
on the way to her house had been so normal, or at least quirky in Julie’s
normal style. 

As Tim pursued
this train of thought, Julie scanned the room.  After a moment, she
pointed to an old wooden wardrobe.  “That closet has been in this room my
whole life.  It’s one of the few things in this room that I actually
recognize.  My grandfather, who was a carpenter, made it for me,” she
said.

“Well, um… 
it’s a nice piece of furniture,” said Tim slowly, not sure where this was
going.

Julie rolled her
eyes.  “Right, so…  I’m going to try to use it to travel back in
time,” she said.  “If we’re
not
transported back in time to when I
was a baby, then we’ll know that nothing happened to me yesterday
afternoon.  And then I can just get used to the fact that my confusion
over 19th century presidents and which particular communist world power the
United States is at war with right now are just due to my shortcomings in
social studies class instead of super-advanced micro-computing.  And that
I never noticed this desk before yesterday because, well…  apparently I’m
just not particularly observant!”

Tim
paused.  “I didn’t mean to say…” But he wasn’t sure what he didn’t mean to
say.  It
was
a nice wardrobe; that much had been true.  It was
tall and spacious, made of wood, with a design of moon and stars cut out from
the top of the door.

“Don’t worry,”
Julie said, calming down.  “At least I still have science and math. 
I was as good in calculus today as ever, so maybe everything will still turn
out for the best.”  She picked the medallion up in her hand and grasped it
tightly.  “Now I’m going to put my hand on the wardrobe, and you put your
hand on mine.  It’ll only take a couple seconds to see if I’m full of it…”

Tim obeyed,
looking curiously into her eyes as she concentrated.  

The walls of the
room didn’t change, the wardrobe stayed right there touching Julie’s hand, with
his larger hand covering hers. 

In fact, the
first thing Tim noticed was that the desk was gone, and for a split second he
thought he could still believe that the time travel story was still
nonsense.  After all, maybe the problem was just with this transient desk,
coming into Julie’s life last night only to vanish again this afternoon before
Tim’s eyes. 

And then Tim saw
the baby in the crib in the center of the room. 

Julie let go of
Tim and the wardrobe and they stepped over to the crib. 

Julie’s hand was
on her heart. She looked just as surprised as Tim.  Neither of them could
think of anything to say as they looked down at the baby.  She certainly
had Julie’s black hair.  Her green eyes looked up at them with what seemed
to be amusement mixed with mild surprise at seeing them.

Tim was mentally
scrambling to remember everything he could from the notebook.  It took on
brand new relevance now that he was being forced to believe it.  Or at
least parts of it.  It was still possible, he guessed, that it could have
simply brought them to a different
place
, and not changed their position
in time.  The bedroom still looked an awful lot like Julie’s, though, and
the wall clock (which hadn’t been there a second ago), read 1:25 rather than
3:50 like it should have.  And, of course, the wardrobe was still there.

Just when Tim
was trying to figure out what it would mean if the things the notebook said
were actually
true
, both he and Julie heard the sound of footsteps in
the hallway.

Hopkin’s
admonition that they shouldn’t change events fluttered through Tim’s mind,
right alongside the thought of how difficult it would be explain to somebody
why you just happened to be in their house, gazing at their baby.  He gave
Julie a look of sheer panic, and was glad to see that, although her eyes were
still wide with shock, she seemed to have more of a plan than he did.  She
shoved him toward the wardrobe her grandfather had made and opened one of the
twin doors. 

They managed to
squeeze in with enough time for Julie to close the door quickly but softly,
just as the bedroom door creaked open. 

Tim could see
Julie’s face by the light from the cut out moon and stars, which were about at
eye level from their vantage point.  Julie mouthed for Tim to “Get down!”,
which made sense, given that it would hardly do for someone to see them through
the carvings in the wood.  Tim got down.  The wardrobe was big enough
so that both Tim and Julie were able to sit comfortably on its floor.

The person who
had opened the door spoke, soft and cooing, addressing the baby in the
crib.  Tim still had a hard time thinking of this baby as Julie, but it
didn’t sound like the baby’s mother did, “Little Julie, Julie-kins,” she
cooed.  “Already awake from our nap?  Why didn’t you call?  You
should call ‘mommy! mommy!’  Just like that…  ready?”

The baby, who
could hardly be old enough to talk at all yet, apparently was not ready, but
simply made some nonsense sounds.  The baby’s mother laughed with pleasure
anyway.

The other Julie,
the one not in the crib, was clearly upset.  Tim could see her in the dim
light, crying silently as she peered through the small crack between the
wardrobe’s doors. 

Tim wished there
was something he could do to help her, but he couldn’t talk to her, not with
the baby’s mother still in the room.  In the meantime, he had an idea for
how he might be able to answer a question or two of his own.  He pulled
out the pen that he still had in his pocket from that day at school and used it
to draw a small question mark on his side of the wardrobe.

If Julie
noticed, she didn’t say anything.  It took her a full ten seconds to peel
her eyes away from the crack in the door.  When she did, she grabbed Tim’s
hand.  For a second, he thought she did this for comfort, and he suddenly
felt bad that he hadn’t reached out to her first.  Then he saw her other
hand balled up into a fist and knew she must be holding the medallion. 

He braced
himself for the journey then realized this was pointless.  Quicker than
changing the channel on a television set, and without any feeling of movement,
they were sitting on the floor, not inside, but directly outside the wardrobe,
in the exact spot they had been standing when they had left. 

The desk was
back, the baby gone, but Julie was still there.  She sniffled a little as
she wiped a couple of tears away from her eyes.

Tim was glad they
were now alone now, so he could talk to Julie, but he still couldn’t think of
anything useful to say.  “What’s wrong?” he finally asked, lamely. 
For a second, she didn’t answer.  She seemed to be gathering herself, but
Tim couldn’t resist filling the silence by saying, “Is there anything I can do
to help?”

Julie shook her
head, smiling sadly.  She said, “No, sorry, it’s just…  That’s the
first time I ever remember seeing my mother.”