Emperors of Time (8 page)

“Oh!” Julie
said.  “So, this is Dr. Hopkins.”

“Why yes, that I
am,” said Hopkins.  “And can I ask who you three are?”

They introduced
themselves, Billy hesitantly, Rose and Tim eagerly. 

“If I had to
guess, I would say that you, Billy, had not been told much about what to expect
before you were brought here.  Is that correct?” asked Hopkins kindly.

“Yes,” said
Billy.  “Julie has been trying to explain it to me since we got here, but
I’ll admit I’m still a bit lost.”

“Well, you are
in good company,” said Hopkins.  “I must admit that I am still reeling
over the fact that my colleagues turned this project around for their own
personal gain.  But it is important that we continue to act and come to
terms with our confusion as we are doing so.”

Billy nodded, “I
guess I can see that.”

“I do not expect
you to have made up your minds as to whether or not you will help me yet,” said
Hopkins.  “And in fact, I have not made my full case as to why I think you
should help me.  I wanted to meet you here so I could answer any questions
you have and make my closing arguments as to why you should assist me.  If
you choose not to help, I must set about doing what I must without you. 
But hopefully you can be convinced to help.”

“So our job
would be to go back in time and restore the events the Emperors of Time
altered?” asked Tim.

“Essentially. 
You cannot change them back exactly, just as I could not change Abraham
Lincoln’s assassination back completely.  In the present timeline, John
Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln while remembering he had been kidnapped by a
bunch of crooked Washington DC cops.  Those cops were bribed by the
Emperors of Time, who gave them gold and instructions to carry out.  But I
essentially voided the effects of that trip.  The timeline was changed
back to one where the Emperors of Time were just scientists.”

“But then they
changed things back again?” asked Julie.

“Unfortunately,
yes,” sighed Hopkins.  “Have you had any luck yet in finding out what they
changed?”

“No, but I’m
sure we’ll figure it out,” said Tim.

“I believe you
will,” agreed Hopkins. 

“I have
something that’s been bothering me,” Rose chimed in.

“Yes, what is
it?” asked Hopkins.

“Well, you said
that each year can only be changed once and then maybe back to normal,
right?  So if we tried to change the year 1865 so that, say…  Andrew
Johnson did a cartwheel and a backflip during his inaugural address, we
wouldn’t be able to do it?”

“That is
correct.  1865 has already been changed,” confirmed Hopkins.

“So what’s to
stop us, right after we go back and fix whatever got changed, from going back
to every year one at a time and changing something in that year, so that the
Emperors of Time wouldn’t be able to change anything else?” asked Rose.

“Well, first of
all there would be too many years to cover,” said Hopkins.  “If they
figured out what we were doing, they could go back to the year 1000 BC and
start a chain of events that would allow them to seize power anyway.  Of
course, they couldn’t guarantee that they themselves would exist in 2347, but
they could still bring themselves back to their own present and try to gain
power from there.  Besides, there is a lower threshold for what counts as
changing a timeline.  Us being here, in 1863, doesn’t mean we can’t change
1863 again, even though we are stepping on grass, breathing air, subtly
changing the timeline.  But if we did something to change the timeline
substantially, without the supercomputer that only the Emperors of Time have
access to now, it would be impossible to be sure that we wouldn’t cause ripples
down the road.”

“Right.  So
your way is more effective,” said Rose, clearly disappointed.

“And less
confusing,” opined Julie.

“And it is
beginning to work.  I have this now,” said Hopkins proudly, reaching into
his pocket.  He pulled out another silver medallion.  “Now we have
three.  There are only nine remaining for me to take from the Emperors so
that I can take them back to the lab and reset them so it is as if they had
never been used.  But in order to reset them, I need the lab to exist like
it does in the original timeline, which is another reason we cannot just change
events as we please.  Although the microchips exist and preserve their
carriers regardless of what timeline they are in, the lab does not have to
exist in every timeline.”

There was
silence for a moment, and then Billy spoke up.  “You said you would
explain why we should be on your side.  I mean, I get it, these Emperors
of Time have rigged things so they can rule the world, and that probably
shouldn’t be allowed.  But what if they’ve got good ideas?  For all
we know, you’re just one renegade lunatic with a time machine coming here to
recruit us to your cause.”

“Or even getting
us to change things so you could gain power yourself.  For all we know,
there are no Emperors of Time in the first place.  I mean, I’m not saying
I think that, but…” said Julie.

“I applaud your
skepticism.  But I can show you what the world looks like in 2347, and you
can judge for yourself whether it is worth avoiding,” said Hopkins.

“Really, you can
do that?” asked Tim.

“Of
course.  The Domini Temporis will always allow you to return to your own
time. I can return there, just as you will return to your own time soon. 
I am able to take you with me, just as the four of you were able to hitch a
ride on one Dominus,” explained Hopkins. 

“Well, when are
we going?” asked Rose.

“Soon enough,”
said Hopkins.  “Have you seen everything you came here to see?  Why
did you come?”

Julie and Rose
looked at Tim. 

“Well, the Union
troops are burning the bridge to save Lancaster county from being invaded by
the Confederates…  er…  I kind of wanted to see the bridge burn,”
said Tim.  “Maybe that sounds a little bit weird, though.”

Hopkins
considered this for a moment.  “At this point, I would much rather deal
with people who want to witness history than with those who feel they have the
right to change it,” he said.  “When will it happen?”

“Less than half
an hour,” said Tim.

So they stayed
and watched the comings and goings of the soldiers and citizens of Columbia.
 They listened to the bustle and the shouts of the men until finally, as
the sky darkened, the bridge began to blaze. 

After that, Hopkins
and the four teens linked hands and prepared to travel to 2347.

The five of them
materialized into a room devoid of people, but full of shiny metallic
machines. 

“This is one of
the cleaning rooms,” said Hopkins, but he didn’t explain what that meant. 
“I don’t have a home of my own in this timeline.  I’m supposed to be in
prison, but this is a fair place to pop in and out of when I don’t want to be
seen.”

“That’s
convenient,” Julie pointed out.

“Indeed. 
But no person has a need to come in here.  This room is for storage of
cleaning machines when they are not on duty.  They are also being charged
now, each one on its own dock.  But I hardly brought you here to show you
a futuristic janitorial closet.  In order to get out and about though, I
am going to have to ask you all to change your clothes.”

“But we don’t
have a change of clothes,” said Rose.

In answer,
Hopkins opened his blue duffel bag.  It turned out there was no
zipper.  Hopkins opened the bag by tracing a finger in a semi-circular
path along the bag’s surface.  Once it was open, he removed four sets of
clothes, even though the bag hadn’t looked nearly big enough to contain them
all.

“Automatic
vacuum packing,” explained Hopkins, answering the question Tim had not asked. 
“Now, obviously we have limited space here, so I am going to ask you gentlemen
to face that way, and you ladies to face the other.”

This solution
worked out nicely, and within about two minutes, all four of them had changed
into the outfits Hopkins had handed them. 

“How’d you know
what size we were?” asked Julie.

“The clothes are
self-fitting,” explained Hopkins.

Rose actually
gasped at this revelation.  “If they had stuff like this at the mall, it
would save me a lot of time and emotional energy.” 

Julie laughed
sympathetically, while Tim and Billy just looked at each other with raised
eyebrows.  Who needed self-fitting clothes as long as you had a decent
belt?

Billy’s and
Tim’s clothes looked like those that Hopkins was wearing.  Their pants looked
a lot like jeans but felt much lighter and airy. There were no stitch lines or
hems, just two pockets at the front, making it look like they had been cut from
one piece of fabric.  Their shirts were button-down and monochrome, Tim’s
red, Billy’s green.  The shoes looked a lot like normal sneakers. 
Overall, the clothes they were wearing would have looked a little bit weird
back in Tim’s time, but probably would have passed for normal in parts of
Europe.

The girls’
clothes however, were unlike anything Tim had ever seen.  They each wore a
knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved shirt.  Julie’s skirt was white and
her shirt was blue, while Rose wore a black skirt and pink top.  The
material on each had a slight sheen, as if they were made of leather or something,
although Tim guessed they were actually as light as his own.  The part
that was really weird though, was the sparkles that glittered across the
materials’ surface.  It was like light on a rippling pond, but there was
no light source and the sparkles came from every color of the rainbow. 
Tim couldn’t see where the glittering lights could come from, but perhaps that
was why nothing like this was available at the mall in Tim’s time. 

“Our next step,”
said Hopkins, “is to leave the room.  As soon as one of us approaches the
door, it will open.  I will go first and confirm that the way out is
clear.  If it is not, I can trick one of the cleaning machines into
starting, to justify the door opening.”

Hopkins moved
toward the door, peered around the edge as it slid open, then beckoned for them
to walk with him. 

They entered a
bare, functional, metallic hallway that curved very slightly, as if the hallway
was tracing a giant circle, of which they could see just one small part. 
As far as they could see, there were doors like the one they had just come out
of, but no people.

“This is the
maintenance floor, and even though we look like we’re from this time, we do not
look like we do maintenance, so it would be best to get off this floor before
we run into anyone wanting to ask questions.”  The four teens matched
Hopkins’ brisk pace as he walked down the hallway.  They reached a large
rectangular door with a touch-screen beside it.  Hopkins keyed in the
number 207.  “I’ll take you to one of the residential floors,” he said,
“since they have the best views.”

“So, this is
like…  a skyscraper?” asked Rose as they stepped into the elevator a
moment later.

“I suppose that
is one name for it, yes,” said Hopkins.  “But the locals call it Jefferson
Delta.”

The display above
the door shot from thirty-three quickly up through the thirties before stopping
at the forty-second floor.  Two men and one woman stepped into the
elevator.  Julie, Tim, Billy, and Rose huddled in the corner.

Hopkins, on the
other hand, smiled.  “These kids are here from J Q Adams.  They are
considering attending University here.”  The two men shrugged, but the
woman smiled back at them.

They relaxed a
little as the elevator climbed upward, picking up a few passengers as it
rose.  When they got off at the 207th floor, Rose gasped at the
view.  They walked toward the window to the outside world, following
Hopkins.

Opposite the
elevator was a full-length window.  Once there, they could see that their
building was bordered by about a thousand yards of fields, then a beach, and
then the ocean.  To their right, there was another building, just as tall
as the one they were in.  By looking toward the ground, they realized that
their building was round, made of widening concentric circles, like a huge
wedding cake. 

They were not
the only ones looking out the windows, but most of the others were talking on
sleek headsets or tapping away on computer tablets that were just about paper
thin. 

No one else
seemed to be paying attention as Hopkins began to explain to them, in a low
tone, what they were looking at.  “I told you that this building is called
Jefferson Delta.  That is because this is the fourth building of six in
the Jefferson cluster.  Jefferson is named for the president Thomas Jefferson. 
Every metropolis in the world is named after a different American
president.  There are fifty metropoles, named for presidents two through
fifty-one, since Washington is still the name of Washington DC, which has been
kept as a historical landmark.  All the other cities in existence prior to
2300 have been demolished.”

Julie, Rose, and
Billy raised their eyebrows at this, but Tim’s jaw dropped.  “They just
bull-dozed them?  Berlin, Paris, Rio De Janeiro?  So much
history…  the architecture, the museums…  That’s horrible.”

Julie seemed to
get more concerned as Tim spoke, and when Tim finished, she said, “But that’s
just in this timeline, right?  The ones the Emperors of Time
changed?  If we fix everything, this won’t happen, will it?”

“That is
correct,” said Hopkins. 

“But…  why
would they want all those cities destroyed?” asked Tim.

“I’ll explain
that in a moment.  First, let me tell you a little bit more about
Jefferson Delta.  It is 300 stories high, with 100 residential
floors.  Those are not our biggest floors, but, obviously, it’s where we
keep our population.  Each of the residential floors is about three
quarters of a mile in diameter and holds, on average, 30,000 people.  Of
course, more live on the lower floors, where the less well-off live, less on
the top floors, where they get larger living quarters.  Only a few of the
apartments have any kind of view of the outside world, but with huge
flat-screen tvs in nearly every room, most people are content.  At any
rate, there are about three million people living in Jefferson Delta, and
eighteen million in all of Jefferson.  Of course, there’s a couple million
extra people in Jefferson, since it’s the world capital.”

“But… 
Figure an average of fifteen million people, multiplied by fifty metropoles,
right?  That’s only 750 million people,” said Julie.  Not for the
first time ever, Tim was impressed by Julie’s mental math skills, but he was
bothered by something, too.

“But you said
this was a world empire, right?  How can the world population be less than
750 million?  There’s almost seven billion people on the planet in our
time,” said Tim.

“That is
correct.” said Hopkins.  “Let me explain.  Not everyone who lives in
the world today lives in the world empire, although it is the single recognized
government in the world and controls what happens on every continent but
Antarctica.  You remember I told you that I am supposed to be in prison?”

The four teens
nodded. 

“Well, I am
about to show you the present time’s version of a prison.  Of course,
there’s more that I could show you here.  Lavish shopping malls,
in-building amusement parks, casinos, indoor beaches, stadiums.  And
that’s just within Jefferson Delta, which isn’t even a tourist
attraction.  The Wilson metropolis is quite spectacular.  It has
miles of indoor beaches, a hundred thousand poker tables, and a million slot
machines, among other attractions.  All this does not even begin to cover
the floors of factories within each building, manufacturing for world
distribution.  And the transportation system is rather exciting as
well.  You have seen one of the elevators, but there are also several
trams cutting across the diameter and tracing concentric circumferences on each
floor, so you can get anywhere you need to go within a floor within several
minutes.  But you will not find a single prison.  The undesirable
population, which includes anyone who is unemployable, the severely mentally
ill, and anybody who thinks a little too freely, in addition to anyone who has
actually committed a crime, are sent away.  Let’s get back to the
elevator.”

When they caught
the elevator again, this time going down, there were three other people on
it.  Hopkins requested the fifty-fifth floor.  The four teens resumed
their uncomfortable silence in the corner, and this time Hopkins did nothing to
break the tension, so the five of them were quiet until the last of the other
passengers got off. 

Then, Hopkins
said, “Link hands.”  He produced his Dominus Temporis and a small
stone.  Then, he took Tim’s hand, and after the others linked hands,
before the door even opened at floor fifty-five, the elevator was gone and they
were standing on a patch of stony rubble in a field of overgrown grass and
wildflowers.