Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) (8 page)

“It’s a surprise. You’ll love it,
trust me.”

The file room alone turned out to be
bigger than their entire office in San Francisco. Oliver spent fifteen minutes
trying to figure out the cataloging system but completely failed to work out
how the files were organized, so eventually he just grabbed an armful out of a
cabinet at random. He’d have plenty of time to read them back at the office later.
Files weren’t what he’d really come here to see, anyway.

The vault’s shelves were another
matter entirely. Oliver spent a good two hours wandering up and down the
aisles, examining different artifacts and taking note of their catalog numbers,
and then using a computer to look up their entries. He didn’t find the Ark of
the Covenant, but the things he did see boggled his mind.

Sally finally appeared at the
entrance to the computer room as he was reading. “Find anything interesting?”

“Did you know there’s a knife in here
that can cut
anything
?” Oliver asked.

“That could come in handy sometime.
You should try to remember where it is.”

“And there’s a little statue of a dog
that came out of an Egyptian tomb. It’s related to the Spanish Flu that killed
half the world in 1918 somehow but I’m still reading…”

“It killed half the world?”

“Well, no, but it was a lot.”

“Come on, Oliver. I want to show you
something. We’re just lucky it’s still here.”

Oliver followed Sally down a series
of aisles until they came to stand in front of what appeared to be an old
submarine. It was about thirty feet long, large enough for a tall man to stand up
inside, and shaped like a bullet with portholes spaced evenly down both sides
of the hull. Rust appeared to have gotten the better of it at some point; there
was no way this thing was seaworthy, if it ever had been. Oliver ran a hand
along the smooth metal of its hull and knocked on it once with his fist. “What
is it? I thought it was a submarine, but it doesn’t have propellers. Some kind
of bathyscaphe?”

Sally grinned. “You ready for this?
It’s a time machine.”

Oliver pulled his hand away from the
vehicle as if it were about to catch fire. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely,” Sally said. “Can you
believe it? This thing right here.” She placed her palm on the vehicle’s side.
“It’s an actual time machine.”

Oliver wasn’t sure what he would have
expected a time machine to look like, other than a British police box or maybe
a DeLorean. This device wasn’t elegant in the least, but the thought of a real
time machine right in front of him left him nearly speechless. “Wow.”

“I know, right? I could hardly
believe it, myself. Think about what you could do with it.”

Oliver put his hand back on the
machine. “Does it have a name?”

“Probably. I don’t know. I just call
it the time machine. It works for me.”

“Where did it come from?” Oliver
looked around for a plaque to find the identification number, but couldn’t see
one. “I want to look it up. The entry for this thing must be amazing.”

Sally looked on the floor. “I didn’t
see it earlier. Maybe it got moved. Anyway, I don’t know a lot. It was built
during World War II by the Germans. They’d seen the end coming by that point
and wanted a do-over.”

“Holy
shit
.”

“Yeah. I hardly believed that Nazi
stuff when I was reading your history books. Anyway, Artemis sent a team to
Berlin to steal it. She’s pretty big on nobody being able to change the
timeline.”

Oliver walked in a slow circle around
the time machine. It seemed to have no other features than the portholes and a
hatch on the side one could use to gain entrance. “It’s amazing. How does it
work?”

“You’d have to ask a German
physicist. Quantum something or other. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could use
it?”

“It’s not allowed?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, no,” Sally shook her head at him
as if he were a naughty child. “Artemis says it’s too dangerous. But it’s fun
to know it’s here. We could go anywhere. Or I guess
anywhen
might be a
better way to say it. You could go back in time and see any historical event
you wanted firsthand. Or go to the future and see how your life worked out.
What would you do, Oliver?”

“I don’t know,” Oliver said.
“Honestly, I never gave it any serious thought. Time travel is just a fantasy.
Or it
was
just a fantasy. I never imagined it could actually work.”

“You want to sit in it?”

“No,” Oliver said. “I’d probably be
too tempted to turn it on and see what it can do.” He wasn’t about to tell
Sally, but seeing a time machine in person seemed like a good reason to catch
up on
Doctor Who
tonight.

“Yeah, me too.” She smiled at him.
“What do you think it would be like to go back and see the dinosaurs up close?”

“I guess it would be amazing.” Oliver
imagined himself standing on a grassy hill, watching a Tyrannosaurus hunt in
the distance. “You’d sure have to be careful, though, or you could get eaten.
And you’d have to make sure you had enough gas, or whatever fuel it takes, so
you could get back.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want it to be a
one-way trip.”

“No.” He peered through one of the
portholes, but it was too dark to see what was inside. “Was it ever used?”

“Sure. Operation Valkyrie worked the
first time.”

Oliver knew a bit of World War II
history. “Hitler was actually
assassinated
?”

“Yeah. They blew his ass to hell.
Then the Nazis went back and managed to change it. Seems like a waste of a time
machine to me.”

Oliver nodded. Most people thought
about
killing
Hitler when they talked about having a time machine. He
could think of lots of better things to do with one than save the man’s life.
Actually,
anything
sounded better than saving Hitler. “What happens if
you go back in time and kill your grandfather?”

“I don’t know. I’d try to avoid
killing your grandfather if you ever take it out for a spin.”

“What would
you
do?” Oliver
asked.

“Hard to say,” she shrugged. “A lot
of your history is still pretty strange to me. Maybe I’d go back and see some
of it for myself.”

“Amazing. You could meet Gandhi, or
John F. Kennedy, or…I guess anyone you wanted. You’d just have to remember to
only be an observer.”

“As long as you don’t change the
past, you’re fine.” Sally patted the time machine’s hull. “The possibilities
are pretty endless, if you think about it.”

Oliver examined the floor around the
time machine again. “I still don’t see its catalog number.” He wanted to check
the database to find out more about the device, but the interface only took
numbers. There was no place to type in “time machine.”

“Don’t worry about it. We should
probably get going. Oh, and Oliver? I wouldn’t mention this one to Artemis when
she asks what you saw here. Time travel is one of those things she gets really
uptight about. She might not let you come back here if she thought you were
getting any ideas about it.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Oliver said.
“You’re probably right, though.”

“Of course I’m right. I’ve known her
longer than you. Anyway, you want to get some
pho
before we head back? I
know a good spot near here.”

As it turned out, Oliver did want to
get
pho
. But even as he ate his noodles, he couldn’t get the idea of
time travel out of his head. It was going to be hard to get to sleep tonight
without thinking about the things he could do now.

Chapter 10

Another slow week passed by. Artemis
had no assignments for them and the world somehow went on without the team
needing to save it. Oliver would have had to admit he was getting a bit bored.
It wasn’t as if he enjoyed having his life placed in mortal danger, but it was
difficult to make the transition from fighting a famous vampire to hanging
around the office without feeling a bit let down. He spent most of his time
reading files, but even though the files were interesting, he felt himself
wanting to get out and
do
something.

If there was a light at the end of
the tunnel for him, it was that once he finished going through the files he’d
picked up at the vault he could ask to go back there in the name of doing more
“research.” Admittedly, what he meant by research was just ogling the artifacts
that he wasn’t allowed to play with, but he figured he could spend weeks in the
vault without seeing the same thing twice. Maybe he’d even find the guy who had
gone missing in there. He must have some interesting stories to tell.

Tyler used the time to take Oliver
and Sally on a tour of even more of his favorite lunchtime spots. Oliver never
failed to be amazed by how much the man could eat with no apparent weight gain,
typically ordering two entrees to start with and almost always needing seconds.
He’d been meaning to ask more about werewolf metabolism, but Tyler had admitted
he didn’t know all that much, himself. “We don’t have conventions,” he’d said
once. “I wish we did. I could finally get some questions answered.”

Oliver found himself spending more
time with Sally during the lull in activity than he ever had before, although
it might have been more accurate to say
she
was spending more time with
him
.
Every time he turned around she seemed to be there, asking about how his
research was going, asking about his day, and whenever nobody else was around,
returning to her favorite subject: the time machine. Where would he go? What
would he do? Wouldn’t it be fun? Under other circumstances Oliver might have
found the constant barrage of questions annoying, but the subject of time
travel was one he found endlessly fascinating. He’d even found himself starting
to daydream about it. He’d open the hatch, get behind the controls, choose a
time, and off he’d go.

Sally only mentioned the time machine
when they were alone, though. Oliver found it a little strange she even kept it
from Tyler, but she’d explained that Artemis preferred them not to talk about
it at all, even amongst themselves. “It’s our little secret, okay?”

“Works for me,” Oliver had said. He
wasn’t about to claim he understood why Artemis wouldn’t even tolerate
discussion
,
but he wasn’t about to risk being banned from visiting the vault when there was
still so much to discover inside.

Oliver was on the couch watching
television after work one night when the doorbell rang. He glanced at the
clock. “It’s a little late for salespeople,” he said. “I wonder who it is.”

“You don’t really have any friends,”
Jeffrey noted. Oliver glared at him. “I didn’t say you
shouldn’t
have
any friends,” the cat explained. “You just don’t have people over. I’m not
complaining; it makes my life a lot easier. I don’t want to have to sit here
saying
meow
and licking my butt every time you have company.”

“You still lick your butt,” Oliver
said, going to the door.

“
You
lick your butt!” Jeffrey
declared.

Oliver was more than a little
surprised to see Sally waiting on his doorstep. “You busy?” she asked. She held
a paper grocery bag in one arm.

“I…no, not really. What’s going on?”

Sally stepped past him into the
house. “Nice place. I’ve never actually been inside before.” She’d been outside
just once, he remembered, helping Tyler rescue him from a Kalatari ambush.
They’d fled the city shortly after and Oliver hadn’t gone back to his own house
for several days.

“Hey, crazytimes,” Jeffrey said from
the couch.

“Hey, dog food,” Sally said. She
walked over and scratched the cat behind the ears. Jeffrey stretched out and
purred loudly.

Oliver closed the door behind her,
still unsure what she was doing there. “Do you need something?”

“I brought you some stuff,” she said.
She took a large bottle of tequila out of the bag.

“Oh. Um…I don’t really drink.” This
was an unprecedented level of familiarity coming from Sally. For a brief moment
he wondered if this was her way of hitting on him, but he dismissed that idea
almost immediately. Sally wasn’t one to beat around the bush; if she’d actually
had any romantic interest in him, he wouldn’t have to wonder about it.

“You don’t think you can drink with
me?” she asked. “Don’t worry. I got some margarita mix to go with it. You like
them blended or on the rocks?” She looked at him. “You’re probably a blended
guy, right?”

No, she definitely wasn’t hitting on
him. “On the rocks is fine,” he said, just a bit defensively.

“That’s what I like to hear. And I
got movies.” She reached into the bag and fished out two shrink-wrapped DVDs
she’d probably picked up at the grocery store.

Jeffrey looked at the covers. “
Back
to the Future
and
Star Trek IV
,” the cat said. “Oh, I like that one.
Chekov says he has to find the nuclear ‘wessels.’ It’s funny because Chekov is
stupid.”

“No, Chekov has an
accent
,”
Oliver said. He looked at Sally, now even more confused. “Is movie night a
thing we’re doing now?”

“Why not? I didn’t think you’d be
doing anything.” She looked around. “You’re not, are you? Nobody else is here?”

“Just us.”

“Then get us some glasses and let’s
do this.”

Jeffrey insisted they watch
Star
Trek IV
first. “San Francisco looked so crazy in olden times,” the cat
said.

“This movie isn’t even 30 years old,”
Oliver said. “It’s not exactly ancient history.”

“It is when you’re a cat,” Jeffrey
said. “They probably didn’t even have litter that clumps.”

“I honestly have no idea,” Oliver
said. “I don’t think all that much has changed for the average cat, though.”

Oliver felt himself getting tipsy by
the time Sally started
Back to the Future
. “Some people need a car to
travel through time,” she said, leaning back on the couch. “We’d just need our
machine.”

“I’d go back to the time of the great
cat ancestors,” Jeffrey said. Oliver had told him all about his visit to the
vault the night he’d come home from his trip there. “I’d bring them Friskies
and they’d worship me as a god.”

“What would you do with our time
machine, Oliver?” Sally asked. “What would you
really
do?”

“I still don’t know,” Oliver said. “I
might go to the future, just to see what happens. I guess I’d have to make a
list.” His vision blurred for a moment as he watched Marty McFly struggle to
make it to school on time. “Wow,” he said. “This tequila is
strong
.”

“I brought you the good stuff,” Sally
said. “You feeling it?”

“I want to try some,” Jeffrey said.

“This would knock you right out,
little cat,” Sally said. “You’d need to gain about a hundred pounds of body
weight first.”

“Aw,” Jeffrey pouted.

Oliver had seen
Back to the Future
half a dozen times over the years, which was just as well tonight. In addition
to his intermittent blurred vision, he was starting to feel dizzy. The tequila
seemed to have no effect on Sally at all, though. She kept peppering him with
questions about time travel. “Just think about it,” she said. “
Think
,
Oliver. We’ve got a working time machine. We can do anything we want with it.”

Oliver rubbed his eyes. In the
distance he heard a faint noise that sounded like rushing water. He looked
toward the kitchen. Had one of them left a faucet going? “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Jeffrey asked. “I know I
can’t hear this movie, because everyone keeps talking.”

Oliver was sure he hadn’t left a
faucet on, but now the sound of the rushing water was growing louder. He
recognized the sound now, though. It wasn’t really water at all; it was the
same sound he’d heard every time he’d used his power to change things. He’d
heard it the night he’d given Jeffrey the power to speak, and again when he’d
destroyed the Kalatari. He looked at his margarita, unable to remember if it
was his third drink or his fourth, or maybe his sixth. “I think I’ve had too
many of these.”

“Is it water?” Sally asked. “Do you
hear water?”

Oliver nodded, then frowned. He
hadn’t mentioned that noise to her before. “How did you know about that?”

“I read your file.” She smiled at
him, but now her smile didn’t look friendly at all. She looked like a spider
that had just spotted a particularly juicy-looking fly. “The time machine,
Oliver.” She put a hand on the side of his head to steady it, forcing him to
look at her. “Think about the time machine.”

The sound of rushing water grew yet
louder. Oliver looked at his margarita glass again. “Did you drug me?” He was
aware that his speech was slurred now, and his tongue felt like it had doubled
in size.

“Of course not,” Sally smiled. But
her eyes said she was lying.

“You put the whammy on him!” Jeffrey
cried.

“Just think about the time machine,
Oliver. It’s real. It’s right there in the vault. It works. We can go back in
time.”

Oliver shut his eyes. “We can go back
in time,” he said sleepily. “We can go wherever we want.” The sound of rushing
water was loud enough now that his eardrums felt like they’d shatter. And then,
like a switch turning off, it was quiet again.

Oliver sighed deeply. He was
exhausted, for some reason. Too much tequila. He felt the world still spinning
around him, and then he promptly passed out.