The Future Door (17 page)

“I'm sorry . . . Miss . . . ah . . . Fitch,” Griffin said. “We're not from around here and were hoping that you might help us.”

“Miss Fitch? I'm not . . .” Then she glanced down at her shirt and nodded, noting the name written there.

“Oh, I see. Good one.” She said this drily without the least bit of amusement in her voice. Griffin noticed that the woman was chewing something with apparent relish, her jaws moving up and down in a nonstop, rhythmic fashion. A second later she removed a small gray lump of what looked to Griffin like rubber and then, holding it between her scarlet-painted nails, said, “Are you blokes on your way to a Steampunk convention or something? Those are great costumes!”

She glanced amusedly at Griffin's and his uncle's clothing, noting Griffin's tweed cap and walking stick and his uncle's tattered bowler, jacket, and vest.

“Er, no, madam, nothing of the sort,” Rupert replied carefully. “We are travelers and new to the area.”

“Tourists. I get it. So, what, they don't have roads where you're from? I could have run you over!”

“Yes, well, we're sorry about that,” Griffin said awkwardly.

“As my uncle said, we are unfamiliar with the area and—”

“Excuse me, but what precisely is the date, may I ask? We're in a bit of a hurry,” Rupert said, interrupting his nephew.

The woman plunged the gray, rubbery wad back into her mouth and began chewing loudly. “What?”

“The date, my good woman, the date. What year is this?”

Rupert smiled, showing all of his teeth. He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he were addressing a child. Griffin knew that he was trying to be as polite as possible, but had also noticed that in the past his uncle's attempts at good manners didn't often work.

They didn't seem to work in the future either.

“Oh, I get it. You're LARPers,” the young woman said with a smile.

Griffin and his uncle exchanged puzzled looks.

“I assure you, madam, we are not on a lark at all,” Rupert replied.

“My brother is one too, you know. A ‘live action role player'?” She winked. “Always getting together with his little geeky friends and acting out those crazy games.” She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Well, you're both very convincing. I would say that your accent is a bit forced, but otherwise not too bad.”

She slouched against the door of her silver vehicle. “So, what is this one about, some kind of H. P. Lovecraft or Sherlock Holmes thingy?”

Rupert and Griffin stared at her blankly. They hardly knew what to say. The woman seemed to have drawn her own conclusions about who they were, and she knew something of Holmes. But since doing so, she didn't seem nearly as suspicious as before and had relaxed considerably.

“All right, I'll play along. Got nothin' better to do today anyway. So, where're the others in your group? Are you doing some kind of treasure hunt?”

Griffin saw this statement as an opportunity to finally help them get to where they were going. Smiling back at the woman, and trying not to blush at her scandalous attire, he said, “In a sense, yes, we are on a sort of treasure hunt. Actually, we need to get to London as soon as possible.”

“All the way to London? That's over an hour away!

Whoever your Game Master is really went to town on this one.

Well, hop in, then,” she said.

Feeling bewildered but grateful for the assistance, Griffin and his uncle entered the woman's vehicle. As Griffin slid into the backseat of the carriage, he realized that he was sitting in some kind of advanced motorcar.

“Amazing!” he murmured as the woman turned a key and the engine flared to life. Within seconds they were flying back down the interestingly paved road toward London, as fast as the fastest train, with some kind of noise that he assumed was music thumping so loudly in his ears Griffin couldn't even hear himself think!

25
NEW LONDON

A
s they rode, Griffin discovered many more incredible things about the future. One thing he observed was that people in the future tried to do way too many things all at once. The woman who drove the car was trying to hold a conversation, steer the motorcar, and type messages into a small rectangular device, all at the same time. And Griffin could tell by the swerving of the car, and the frightened honks of other drivers, that she wasn't doing it very well.

Rupert noted the device and asked the woman about it, and the woman laughed, complimenting him again on his “ability to stay in character.”

“It's only a 4G phone,” she explained. “I'll be upgrading as soon as I can afford it.”

Rupert didn't know what she meant by “4G,” but he did brighten considerably when he found out that the tiny device was a telephone that operated without the use of wires. The woman allowed him to look at it, and when he passed it over to Griffin for examination, Griffin was able to get a look at a date that was displayed on its tiny, glowing screen.

5 August 2012.

His mind boggled. They'd traveled over one hundred years into the future! Suddenly, another thought struck him. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the slip of paper he'd found in Moriarty's hideout.

He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed it before, but there, printed at the top of the receipt, was a date. A thrill shot through him as he saw what it was!

5 August 2012.

Rupert and the woman were deep in conversation, or about as deep as the woman could manage while doing so many different tasks at once. Her end of the conversation consisted of a lot of grunts, eye rolls, and absentminded comments.

Griffin interrupted. “Excuse me, Uncle,” he said.

“Fascinating . . . and what exactly do you mean by this term ‘Why Fie'?” Rupert asked, then turning to his nephew before she could answer, said, “What?”

“We've done it!” Griffin said, his eyes shining with excitement. “Look here.” He showed his uncle the date on the receipt.

“We've arrived on exactly the same date Moriarty was here. I found this at the hideout.”

Rupert examined the receipt closely. “By Jove, this is a good turn!” he exclaimed. Then he paused, looking thoughtful. He examined the teapot, taking careful note of the switch that was marked “Past,” “Present,” and “Future.”

“Griffin, when you rattled the switch back and forth, how many times did you do it?” Rupert asked.

Griffin thought back to the woods by Stonehenge, at the moment just before they were attacked.

“Twice,” he said.

Rupert nodded excitedly. “I think I know what happened. You completed a circuit. By switching back and forth like that, the interdimensional chrono-apparatus was able to retrieve one of the locations it went to before we used it.”

“We've gone to the exact time of Nigel Moriarty's last journey!” Griffin said happily. He pointed at the receipt. “And now that we have the name of the bookstore that he went to, all we have to do is hope that we get there before he shows up.”

“Precisely,” Snodgrass replied.

“And then you'll win the game, right?” the woman said, smacking the wad in her mouth loudly.

“Er, yes. Sort of,” Griffin replied. “By the way, Miss Fitch.

May I ask what it is that you are chewing?”

The girl grinned and grabbed a slim cardboard package.

Handing it to Griffin, she said, “If you wanted a piece of gum, all you had to do was ask.”

Griffin examined the container. Inside were little white rectangles. Feeling very curious, he popped one into his mouth. A delicious taste of mint immediately washed over his tongue and teeth. Griffin chewed, appreciating the consistency.

“This candy is quite good,” he said, trying not to smack too loudly. Then, without thinking, he did the thing that seemed to him most natural.

He swallowed.

It was like trying to eat a piece of rubber. After the wad of gum traveled uncomfortably down his throat, Griffin wrinkled his nose and held a hand to his stomach, not enjoying the sensation at all. What kind of terrible candy was this?

“You didn't swallow it, did you?” the girl asked.

Griffin nodded, looking miserable. Miss Fitch chuckled and shook her head in disbelief. “I don't know where you blokes are from, but you sure are weird.”

She eased the car over to a faster lane of traffic.

“Well, we're almost to the city. What was the name of the place you were going to?”

Rupert showed her the receipt, and the young woman used her telephone to punch in the name. Soon afterward, something she called a GPS showed them exact instructions on how to get to the bookstore.

This particular bit of technology was truly amazing to both Griffin and his uncle. It was a wonderful scientific achievement.

A person would never feel lost again!

As London grew closer, Griffin stared in awe at the incredible skyline that was and wasn't the London he knew. The tall buildings that nearly touched the clouds, the abundance of motorcars, and the incredible array of shops filled with everything imaginable—and unimaginable—made him feel that this London was hardly the same place in which he'd spent the past summer—and it wasn't, he supposed. Between the changes Moriarty had made and all of the technology like the woman had, it was bound to be quite different indeed.

He saw signs indicating strange and exotic foods . . . whatever, for instance, was a “veggie burger” or a “protein smoothie”? Contemplating this, he realized that he hadn't eaten anything for many hours—or, now that he thought about it, all century!

His stomach growled, loudly enough for the woman to notice. She reached into a box in the car's instrument panel and withdrew a small, brightly wrapped bar.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Famished, thank you,” Griffin replied. The unpleasant effect of the gum in his stomach had worn off, and Griffin found himself eager for a meal. The woman paused while doing the thing she called “texting” long enough to hand him the packet.

Griffin read the shiny words printed on the wrapper.

Lo Carb Tofu Energy Bar.

He unwrapped it and gazed down at the lumpy brown thing inside. He wasn't quite sure whether it was food or not, and sniffed it experimentally. It smelled slightly sweet, so he took a small bite.

Griffin had been raised with excellent manners and knew that it was very rude to spit something out once it had been placed inside one's mouth. But it was very hard to resist the temptation to do so. The thing tasted so unlike anything he'd ever eaten that it was all he could do to swallow and then politely hide the rest of the bar in his coat pocket. Even his uncle's favorite dried cod was better than this!

He arrived at a very important conclusion. The food he'd tasted in the future certainly wasn't anywhere as good as Mrs.

Tottingham's lemon scones. And Griffin made a mental note to himself not to eat anything else in this strange time and place.

The car pulled to a stop alongside a busy street, and the woman dropped them off outside of the largest bookstore Griffin had ever seen.

“Thank you, Miss Fitch, for your generosity,” Griffin said and doffed his cap. The woman laughed and, to his surprise, grabbed him in a quick hug.

“Oh, you're too much,” she said, still laughing. And then, after wishing them good luck in finding their treasure, she jumped back into her motorcar and sped off down the street.

Rupert grinned down at his nephew. “Well, this looks like the place!”

Griffin could tell that his uncle seemed delighted by everything he saw. He wished he could feel the same. There was something about the future London he didn't quite like.

Perhaps it was the way the people passing by seemed so rushed and unhappy. As he studied the faces of the busy Londoners, not one of them looked as if he or she was friendly. They looked worried and filled with stress.

On the other hand, he noticed that the city's air was cleaner and didn't smell of factory smoke. There weren't any beggars on the street that he could see, and everywhere people held the same small telephones that Miss Fitch had carried and were constantly talking, typing, or caressing them. He sighed. Perhaps it was just too much for him to understand.

Griffin followed his uncle into the incredible bookstore, which had moving stairs that could take a person up four floors!

Griffin was overwhelmed by the endless variety of books, and was particularly attracted to a section filled with Bibles and other religious texts.

He paused to look at one of the leather-bound volumes and was surprised to find that the inside contained not a book at all but a small oblong screen. When he pushed a button on the bottom of the screen, the word
eTestament
appeared, and shortly after, a list of all the books of the Bible with their chapters.

Griffin lightly tapped the screen and found the book, chapter, and verse he most loved: Hebrews 13:8.