In Times Like These (32 page)

“These should help.”

“Thanks.” I take the blankets and set them on the couch.

Lawrence begins shutting down his different computer monitors. One large flat-screen
, mounted higher up than the others, shows a dense web of diverging lines. Each thread seems to have a thousand little threads branching off it. In the center of the web on the screen is a flashing blue blip.

“What is that one showing?”

“That? That’s us. It’s showing our location in time.”

The little blip seems almost buried by all the threads around it. Lawrence merely gestures with his fingers and the screen zooms in. As the blip grows larger, information begins to appear alongside it. It lists the date in 1986 and shows a frequency oscillation. The frequency is labeled LVR17. Each thread branching off our thread shows a different frequency.

“So it’s like a map?” I say.

Lawrence looks from the screen to my face.
“Did Dr. Quickly explain the fractal universe to you yet?”

“Um. I don’t think so. We talked
a bit about the timestream and paradoxes and such, but I don’t really recall anything about fractals.”

“Huh. That’s interesting.” He flips off the monitor and the map disappears.

“Why? What’s interesting?”

“Just thought that would probably have come up. No problem though. Plenty of time to fill you guys in tomorrow morning.”

Lawrence walks to the room with the time cell in it and begins to shut the door behind him. “Oh, bathroom’s over there if you need it.” He gestures toward the door next to the computer monitors and closes his door.

Blake checks his chronometer’s status near the baseboard, and then grabs one of the couch cushions and throws it on the floor next to the wall.

“You guys want me try to squeeze down to one end of the couch, so we could have two on here?” Francesca says.

“No. Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I don’t think we’d fit.” I sit down near the chronometers and rearrange the clothing in my pack to be soft enough to use as a pillow. I lie down and try to get comfortable. Francesca picks up one of the blankets gingerly with two fingers and gives it a sniff. Her nose wrinkles and she sets it back down. She lays her pea coat over herself instead as she gets comfortable on the couch. After a few seconds on the couch cushion
, she pops back up and grabs a T-shirt out of her pack. She lays that over the cushion and then rests her head back down.

“I’ll be really happy to be out of this place.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry this night didn’t go like you planned,” I say. “I’m sure you would much rather have been hanging out with nicer company.”

“Maybe you can look up your bartender friend when we get back,” Blake says. “He might be a little old though.”

“That’s okay,” Francesca says. “Let’s face it. In twenty-five years, that man is still going to be gorgeous.” She smiles at me, then rolls over toward the couch cushions. I contemplate the ceiling.
Another night in 1986 after all.
I reach my hand over to where my chronometer is charging. I can feel a slight hum inside as I rest my palm on it. It’s not long before I drift off.

There is the faintest hint of predawn light shining over the top of the blinds as my eyes pop open, but the rest of the room is dark.

“I’m telling you, it’s not there.” Francesca’s voice is coming from the far end of the bank of computer screens. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out Blake’s silhouette near her.

“Did you
feel along that inside wall?” he whispers.

“Yeah, of course I did. You try if you like.”

“Hey. What are you guys doing?” I ask.

“Looking for the bathroom light switch,” Blake replies.

“I can’t find my backpack,” Francesca says.

I rise up to an elbow and peer into the darkness near the couch. “Didn’t you have it right by you?”

“Got it,” Blake says, as light from the bathroom streams in over the couch. “It was a pull cord.”

The pack isn’t near the couch. I sit up and realize I’m still holding my chronometer, so I set it down.

“See. Told you,” Francesca says to Blake. “I had it right there. I was going to get another shirt because I was cold, but it wasn’t there.”

Climbing off the floor
, I walk over to the couch and look behind it.
Nothing. But why would it be
 . . . I look to the corner of the kitchen counter where I left Francesca’s chronometer charging.

“Oh shit.”

“What?” Francesca says.

I rush around the island and grope at the area near the refrigerator in the half-light. “It’s gone. Your chronometer is gone.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Blake says. He strides to the kitchen and then immediately walks over to Guy’s bedroom door. The door swings open easily as he turns the knob. Tangled sheets and a pile of dirty clothes are all we see when he flips on the light. I move to the other door. This one doesn’t move.

“You’re kidding,” Francesca says. “They’re gone?”

I pound on the door. “Lawrence!”

Nothing.

I grab the handle with both hands and shoulder the door. I feel it bend slightly but it doesn’t open. My heart begins to pound. I step back and kick the door hard near the knob. This time it gives way. The room inside is dark. Blake is the first through.

Francesca finds t
he kitchen light switch and light streams into the vacant bedroom. Blake tries the door of the cell but it’s locked and unyielding. The sound of his fist on the steel door echoes hollowly on the inside.

The words taste like vinegar in my mouth.
“They’re long gone.”

Chapter 16

“I used to think thirty minutes was a reasonable amount of time to wait for a pizza. Then I discovered you could have food delivered by time traveler. My standard for freshness has been raised.”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly
, 2157

“I’m gonna kick them both in the teeth. I’m gonna pull his stupid floppy hair out and . . . and . . . kick that too.” Francesca is storming back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. She reaches the couch again and spins around. “I’m going to . . . wait!” She stops mid-stride. She looks from Blake to me. “You guys can get them! They said they only go to weekends. You can just go to next Friday, be there waiting, and get my chronometer. You can just kick both their asses and get our stuff back!”

I’ve resigned myself to the long end of the couch during her tirade. Blake is stewing in the office chair. The sunrise gleams through the window beside me.

“I don’t think it’s that easy, Fresca. Believe me, I wish it was.”

Her face is flushed with anger. “Why not?”

“If they have any sense, they won’t go to next Friday. Most likely they would have gone to the past. In fact we don’t know which direction they were traveling in the first place. They said they went to weekends, but they didn’t say they did them in any order. They could very well be traveling backwards.”

“But Quickly’s book said
Guy goes to that bar for years,” Francesca argues.

“He never said it was done in any particular order though,” Blake says. “Ben’s right. They could be anywhere by now.”

“This could have been the last Friday they were there,” I say. “They could have done all the other one’s before this from their perspective. I know I wouldn’t come back now if I was them.”

Francesca slumps onto a
barstool. “Damn it. You mean they’re going to get away with this? They just stole like fifty thousand dollars, and a bunch of our anchors. Not to mention my chronometer. I’m really screwed without that.”

“I know,” I say. “I just think the odds of us catching them are pretty slim. We have no idea where they got to, and if that machine of theirs can
jump ten years, they could outrace us anywhere.”

Blake sits up a little straighter. “What if they went backwar
d and then came back here? That could be even worse. If they wanted our chronometers, what’s to keep them from coming back with guns and taking the rest? They have all the time in the world to make it back here.” He stands up and grabs the few items of clothing he has left, and unplugs his chronometer from the wall. “I think we should get out of here.”

He’s got a valid point.

I slide off the end of the couch and grab my chronometer too.

“W
hat about me?” Francesca says. “Now I’m stuck.”

“We can still jump more than one person with these,” I say. “It was in the journal. I’m not exactly sure how that works, but we know it can be done. We can figure it out.”

“I don’t want to end up the victim of some experiment, like Quickly’s mice.” Francesca says. “He said some of them never made it back.”

I look her in the eyes and see her fear. I rest a hand on her shoulder. “We’re gonna figure it out. Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere without you.”

We stuff all of our possessions into our remaining pack and don our jackets. “I hate them,” Francesca mumbles. “It’s too bad they live in an apartment with other people. I would totally burn this place down.” Blake opens the door, cautiously peering down the stairwell before stepping into the hall. Despite our worry, the walk downstairs and outside is uneventful. I pull my jacket closed and zip it up against the cold.

“Where are we going?” Blake asks
.

“Let’s just get away from here to start,” I say.

“I need coffee,” Francesca grumbles.

We wander a few blocks through the waking city until
we find a coffee shop tucked between a closed bar and a newsstand. A few early rising customers are already reading newspapers in the cozy interior. After I get a warm chai in my hand, we retreat to the back corner of the café to a table and a few cushioned chairs.

“W
hat now?” Francesca says.

I pull Quickly’s journal from my pocket and page through it till I find the section I saw about jumping multiple people.
“It says doing tandem jumps is really not that much different. You have to have a chronometer that is charged enough to go the distance. And you have to have a good connection between the people. Looks like skin-to-skin contact is what it’s showing here in the drawing.” I hold up the journal to show Quickly’s sketch of a person with both hands on another person who is activating a chronometer.

“The second person has to be infused with gravitites too
, obviously. Oh. And it says you can usually only go about half as far on a charge. That makes sense I guess. You have to make up for all the additional mass.”

“Watch it, talking about my additional mass,” Francesca says.
She’s smiling behind her coffee.

It’s good she can still smile through all this.

“Where are we going to jump to though?” Blake says. “What have we got left?” I set the pack on the table and rummage through it to pull out our remaining anchors. Francesca helps line them up in chronological order on the table as I pull them out.

When I’m certain I’ve retrieved everything out of the bag, I drop it back to the floor and survey our results. We have about a dozen items.

“That doesn’t look like much to get us twenty-five years,” Blake says.

“Yeah, some of these are clumped together pretty closely in time too,” I say. “The soup ladle and the beer bottle cap are only like a month apart.”

“Hey, there’s something I don’t get,” Francesca says.

“What’s that?” I shift in my seat a little, and take another sip of my chai.

“A bunch of our stuff got left on Mr. Cameron’s lawn, right? Because it didn’t have any gravitites in it. But these things did, so they came with us.” She picks up the silver dollar. “They obviously can move through time. How can we use them as anchors then? Won’t they just try to come with us again?”

I pause to consider what she’s saying.
“Yeah. That’s a good question. I never really thought about it like that.”

“So wait. We can’t use this stuff?” Blake says. “This just keeps getting worse and worse.” I thumb through Quickly’s journal looking for something related to this.

“I just don’t want to get us zapped into outer space,” Francesca says.

“No. I’m glad you said something,” I say. “I wish this thing had an index.” I flip to a page that has a sketch of someone making a jump while still p
lugged into the wall charger.
That could be useful.
A guy in a blue beanie bumps my chair on his way to the bathroom. I wait for him to squeeze by and then go back to the journal. Three pages later, I find what I’m looking for.

“Found it.
‘Carrying jump anchors.’” I skim down the page briefly before I begin reading. “Anchors can be transported for use in times other than their original location, if they are treated with gravitites. The gravitite treatment must be reversed prior to use however. Transported anchors must be thoroughly purged of gravitites before use or the resultant jump may be negatively impacted.”