John Arker's major goal in life had been to become a Time Detective. Ever since he was a child it was his dream. He had graduated from the Detective Academy with honors at the age of twenty eight. He had been at the top of his class, and he thought he would have been good at his job. Everybody thought he would be good at his job. As it were, his dream come true had ended up as more of a nightmare.
The case of Alrice Van Die Welt had been a disaster from the start. Not only had it been a public relations disaster, prosecuting innocent people for crimes they did not commit never seemed to go down well with the general public, whether for their own good or not, but on top of that, Alric Van Die Welt had disappeared, leaving John's partner trapped in a time loop that they had yet to decrypt. She had been there for eight months. He had never particularly liked his partner all that much to begin with. She had resented being stuck with a rookie and had taken it out on him, but he had certainly not wanted her to get stuck in the special brand of hell that was otherwise known as a time loop. It was every Time Detective's worst fear, and they always did their best to prevent it. Alrice Van Die Welt had proven too smart for them once again.
He had been demoted after that had happened. He was still a detective. That hadn't changed, but he had been relegated to policing minor temporal disturbances. They were the kind mostly perpetuated by hoodlums with nothing but time on their hands. It was depressing. He knew that he wasn't going to be advancing in the force any time in the near future and not unless some drastic good fortune fell upon him as well. It was pretty much hopeless. He was the laughing stock of his peers, stuck in a basement office, monitoring blips on the time map and drinking coffee to stay awake and plow through his boredom. He'd also been stuck with a partner who he wished would go away.
John would rather have been the resented rookie than be stuck with Bertram Powers. He was, by all accounts, a geek. He was good at the technical aspect of things, but his field work left a lot to be desired. That was what left him partnered up with John. Nobody wanted to risk being partners with either of them. Their deficiencies outweighed any benefits to having them upstairs with the big dogs.
Bertram was seated by the computer that day, as he usually was. John, meanwhile was on the telephone to a superior officer catching hell for overlooking a spate of temporal infarctions over Southern California in 2008.
"Bert decided that they were minors," John explained patiently and slowly to the chief. "Probably accidental slippage." Slippage was when someone stumbled into a naturally occurring temporal anomaly into another time. They were usually minors: time differences of only a few seconds, of which the offender had no conscious realization that they had even traveled through time. Occasionally the time slip was major, gaps of several hundred, or several thousands of years, but there was nothing they could do about the majors but monitor them.
"Look at this." Bert waved John over and John quickly ended the phone call on the pretense of an incoming infarction. He looked over Bert's shoulder, surprised that there actually seemed to be something.
The beginning swirls of a major temporal storm were brewing over Southern California...2008.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" John ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "There actually was something to those minors? They usually don't mean anything."
"They don't mean anything," Bertram replied rather impatiently from behind his large black glasses. He turned to look skeptically at John. "Don't they teach you anything..."
"Listen, Bert, I know everybody thinks we're the bottom of the barrel here on the force, but this simply can't be coincidence, alright? The slips have been happening in 2008, right around the same spot and now this...this cloud?"
"Temporal cloud," Bertram corrected him. "Yeah. It happens. It's probably just a culmination of slips building up. It'll crack soon, one or two people may fall through. We can send out a team."
John thought for a moment. Sewing up a hole in time was easy enough with the right equipment. He'd been trained for it. Bertram had been trained for it. It would be easy enough to go to 2008 and clean it up themselves without alerting the higher ups.
"We can go," he said softly to Bertram.
"John..." Bertram glanced sharply up at him. "They have teams that do this. We're just here to monitor..."
"Screw that," John snapped. "Don't you miss field work? Don't you miss being out there on the front lines, in time?!"
"Of course I do," Bertram grumbled. "But that doesn't change the fact that this is not our job. If we go there wouldn't we be just as bad as the people who do that sort of thing illegally?"
"But we're the cops," John replied. "It is our job. What if it's an emergency?"
"Then we alert the proper..."
"Grow a spine, Bert," John interrupted him. "We can do this!"
Bertram tried to protest again but again John cut him off and pointed towards the screen instead.
"Maybe this whole argument is moot, Bert." He sat down in a chair beside his partner and pointed at the screen. "Have you decrypted the signature?"
"Seems natural." Bertram shrugged.
"Seems natural isn't good enough," John pointed out. "I just got my ass chewed out for not double checking minors and now we've got a temporal storm brewing. People there, in 2008...they could fall through. Might never get back...could be important people. Do you really want the world to change?"
"If the world changes," Bertram pointed out, "Then maybe I wouldn't be stuck in a basement with you."
"I know. I'm with you on that one." John managed a laugh. "But we took an oath. Just humor me, okay?"
Bertram shrugged and turned towards his computer. He tapped out a few numbers on the keyboard and brought up the signature of the disturbance. He transferred it to the large holographic touch screen in the middle of the room and walked over to it. He regarded the mid-air display and thrust his hands here and there, changing it around, rearranging the data and hoping to find the answers that John was looking for.
He finally pointed to cloud of numbers with a sigh. "Naturally occurring, John. Can we send out a team now?"
"Check again," John said. He walked up to the numbers and stared into the cloud.
"Now wait a minute," Bertram scowled at him. "I told you..."
"You've been spending too much time down here, Bert," John replied and waved him away with a swat of his hand. "I've seen this before. You've seen this before."
"What?"
"It's a diversion," John said. "It's a diversion code. We studied this kind of thing in school. Have you forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten. I just think you're trying too hard to inject some excitement into..." Bertram stopped cold suddenly and stared at the cloud of numbers.
"I can't believe I didn't see it," he growled at John. "I'm supposed to be the technological wizard!"
"It's old," John replied. "But it works. It works well," he said. "Before I went to the academy I wrote my thesis on it. Created by Stuben McSvens. It's a brilliant code. Masks what's really going on as a naturally occurring temporal anomaly. Check the signature again."
"Yeah," Bertram agreed as he walked up to the display in order to move things around again. "It's so easy now that I see it," he began mumbling to himself.
"It just takes an idiot to see it," John replied. He had long ago lost any confidence he had as an investigator.
"You're not an idiot," Bertram looked away from his task to reassure his partner. "We may have fucked up our share of times, but you're not an idiot and neither am I."
He turned his attention back to the holograph, punched a few numbers and regarded the results.
"There it is." He pointed to a different string of numbers that had emerged from the first. "It's there. I don't know what made it. I haven't ever seen anything quite like it, but it's definitely manufactured. Possibly an alien race."
"Wow," John said.
"Yeah," Bertram stood back and admired his own handiwork. "We're going to have to call this in, you know."
"We will," John replied. He then disappeared for a few moment and returned with his and Bertram's coats in on hand and their Time Travel Devices in the other. "Let's go."
"Go? I thought we were going to call..."
"C'mon," he grabbed Bertram's arm and depressed a button on one of the devices.
They rematerialized at the entrance to Knott's Berry Farm in 2008. Ominous storm clouds swirled above them chilling the air.
"We can call them, after we see what's going on," John replied. He handed Bertram his coat and grinned impishly at his partner.
"You won't quit until you get us fired will you?" Bertram huffed as he pulled on the garment to fend off the impending winds of time.
*****
"All the pieces are in place," he said. He grinned up at the monitor's holographic display from where he lay in bed, his head in his partner's lap. "It's going to work."
"I told you it would, Phillip." His name was Gerald, and he gazed fondly down at his partner. His hand that had been resting upon the other's chest slowly reached up to stroke his jaw.
"The perfect crime," he said.
"Yes," Phillip replied.
"Because we can," said Gerald.
Gerald leaned down and kissed him. He pulled away a fraction of an inch, an insidious smile taking over his face. Phillip felt a chill creep up his own spine. Gerald was his lover, but the fact still remained that even Phillip was afraid of him.
"Because it's fun," Gerald said quietly, and Phillip shuddered in his arms.
*****
Mary held the list in her hand. It was a list of people. People who were coming to her restaurant. She had no idea of what the blue eyed man wanted with them or how he had known that they were going to be there. There were no reservations for brunch. It was first come first serve as it was every week. The list was suspicious, but she felt compelled to do it. Any suspicious thoughts she may have had about the matter were washed away by the calm blue ocean of those eyes. She had posted herself at the hostesses podium in order to take names as people walked in: that way she could keep track of the group she was supposed to be corralling.
Oscar sat patiently with his wife Rosa and their children in the lobby awaiting a table to be seated at. David sat calmly beside him talking about getting a full-time job in landscaping. Oscar knew where that was heading. He also knew that David had the best of intentions. He was a good boy and he only wanted to help out with the family financially. Oscar wouldn't hear of it though. A full time job in landscaping would lead to nothing more than a permanent job in landscaping. David would drop out of school, perhaps he would get some girl pregnant, and they would all end up living in the same house. It was the cycle. It was how things went, and it was the last thing that Oscar wanted for his son. David was the smart one. He had all but given up on Mimi. Jose didn't seem to be heading down a much better path. He was a wild child and was running around the lobby screaming his head off as it were. He almost ran into a tall, masculine lady, who loudly and imperiously yelled at the top of her lungs to nobody in particular that they should keep track of their children. Rosa scooted from her seat and pulled Jose back to the family where he squirmed and squealed until she gave him a piece of candy and his game boy to keep him quiet.
The loud woman sat down and was followed by a cadre of loud people who looked just like her. They created quite a scene there in the lobby, the volume of the room rising as soon as they'd sat down and opened their mouths. The only quiet one was a sad bald man who said nothing and stood in the corner, for they had not left him a place to sit down.
"When are we going to be seated," one of them directed the question out to everybody within earshot. It was a rhetorical question, but Oscar had a bad feeling about it.
The young girl who happened to be sitting next to him inadvisably spoke up. "Did you put your name in?" She offered helpfully.
"Well, there are plenty of seats in there, why can't we just sit down," he replied snidely.
"There's a queue," she replied.
"A what?" He stared at her incredulously.
"Uh," she stammered. "It's a, um...line. There's a line. You have to put your name in."
"Well, what's that?" He gestured towards a bank of un-manned cash registers. "Who are we supposed to give our name to? There's nobody there."
The girl shrunk in her chair. She was used to her parents yelling, but complete strangers yelling at her for no apparent reason was frightening.
"Hey." David stood up from his spot and stepped away from his father. His career in landscaping was temporarily forgotten. He wasn't one to stand by and let someone badger a poor girl who was only trying to be helpful.
"The line forms out front."
The man who had started the shouting, as it turned out, had his own flock of people to defend him. The Mother Thing swooped down from where she had begun to start harping on the quiet man and descended upon David.
"I will have you know," she said. "That there wasn't anybody out there either!"
"Right," David huffed. "Was the big sign that says 'please wait here' not out there either?"
The Mother Thing snapped her mouth shut for a moment then replied in the negative.
"Sorry, then," David said. If anything, he knew when to back down from a challenge from a woman who was big enough to kick his ass. He held a hand out to Catherine.
She stared at it for a moment, then stared up at David. Her mother and step-father would never approve of her accepting help from a Mexican. Especially a stranger. Especially a cute stranger. She timidly accepted his hand, and he swept her away to where his family was sitting. He pointed to the seat he had vacated, and she sat down while he remained standing.
"Sorry about that," David said. "You looked like you could use a little help."
"Thank you," she said. She couldn't bring herself to look up into his brown eyes without becoming embarrassed and flustered, so she looked down at the purse in her lap instead.
"I'm David." He smiled warmly at her.
"I'm Catherine," she mumbled at her purse.
"And I'm Oscar," the father spoke up from his spot. He arched an eyebrow at David. David shook his head and scowled. His father was never going to understand.
"Are your parents here?" Oscar turned his attentions back to the girl.
"They just went to the bathroom," she said. "They'll be back." She sighed and finally looked up. David had resumed smiling at her and so had Oscar. It put her at ease and she smiled too, and she wished her parents would stay in the bathroom and never come back out.
*****
Jason felt bad for Jody. He actually felt bad for her, and that was a surprise to him. Her cheery exterior was being slowly and surely chipped away at by a loud woman with black hair who wanted everybody to be aware of her dissatisfaction. She was too cold at her table and had taken it upon herself to find a new table and seat herself and her loud family there as well. Jody had okayed the move with her most pleasant smile and went bouncing around her business until Mary had stumbled in with another large family.
"What's going on?" Ned spoke up in a muffled Southern California slur from beside him.
Jason turned to speak and almost got a face full of furry white hair. It had been Ned's turn to wear the snoopy costume, much to the stoner's chagrin.
"I can't see a fuckin' thing in here," he complained. "And it's hot as fuck. I can hear yelling though."
"Customer's yelling at Jody," Jason confirmed. "She's ahhh...I think she's going to cry."
"Poor girl," Ned said then laughed. "Are you going to console her after work?"
"Stop it, Ned," Jason chastised his friend. "I don't want to sleep with Jody."
"Yeah, right. I can see through you, Jase." Ned in his giant headed Snoopy costume continued to laugh his ass off.
*****
"We cleared that table for this family," Mary said to Jody, who stood, mortified, between her boss and Esther Baum. "We have to seat them there."
"Well, I guess we don't have a place to sit," Esther declared loudly and belligerently. She had all the diner's attentions, and that was just the way she liked it. "I don't believe it!" She huffed. "It's been nothing but trouble all day long. Nothing but trouble. The service here is awful!"
"I'm sorry, Ma'am," Mary spoke up brightly. She normally would have been cowed into submission, but her meeting with the blue eyed man had put her in another excessively good mood.
"Was there something wrong with the table you were sitting at?"
"It's too cold!" Esther grumbled.
Mary looked from Esther, standing next to the table she had chosen, and then to the table that had just been vacated...two feet to the right. Then she looked at Jerry. He shrugged apologetically but didn't make any move to oppose his wife. He knew it wouldn't be any use and he hoped the restaurant staff would realize it too. They didn't.
The Mother Thing relented, but not because she had given up. She sat back down with the rest of the family at the table that she had deemed too cold, and they all set their minds to complaining as loudly as possible about everything and making the dining experience as miserable as it could possibly be for everybody involved. Even the innocent bystanders eating their brunches in peace at the neighboring tables were not spared. There was nothing that pleased Esther more than making the rest of the world as miserable as she was.
Jody approached Jason and Ned, clearly upset. Her entire cheery facade had been stripped away by one determinedly angry customer.
"Are you okay, man?" Said Snoopy Ned.
She punched him in the giant Snoopy nose, and he toppled over backwards, landing on his back, squirming around, unable to gain the leverage to stand with his giant Snoopy head.
"Oh, My God!" Jody's hands automatically covered her mouth which hung opened with shock at her own actions. "I'm so sorry Ned!" She tried to help him up, but couldn't lift him with her small frame. Jason grabbed Ned's other hand and helped him to regain his footing.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. Her voice wavered on the edge of sobbing, and tears glimmered in her eyes, threatening to spill over at a moment's notice.
"C'mon." Jason draped an arm around her with a sigh. He didn't want to be the one to comfort her, but he was the one she had chosen all the same, or so it seemed. Ned grabbed onto the back of Jason's shiny green vest, and he turned to regard the Snoopy.
"What are you doing, Ned?" he said.
"I can't see for shit," Ned replied. "That's why you have to lead me around. Don't leave me out here in the middle of everything. I'm going to trample all over some poor kid, man. At least let me get this stupid costume off, and I'll leave you two love birds alone."
"Shhh!" Jason hissed and glanced at Jody who was too upset to have noticed them. "Don't say that kind of thing in front of Jody. Let's just..." He glanced up and down at the ridiculous costume. "Yeah, let's get you out of that thing."
All three of them retired to the furthest room from the dining area.
Jody had started to cry before they got there, and Jason sat with her next to a window and let her.
"I don't know why people are so mean," she sobbed when she was able to attempt coherency. Jason rubbed calming circles in her back, and Ned stood, not far away, listening in...his Snoopy head under one arm and his shaggy hair poking out of the top of the costume.
"Yeah, some dude wanted to take a picture of my butt," he chimed in.
Jason looked up at Ned, and although he tried to be annoyed with his friend, he couldn't help but laugh at him.
"He thought the tail was cute."
"Yeah," Ned replied. "It was attached to my BUTT."
This brought a giggle out of Jody, and she dried her eyes with a napkin that Jason had found in the storage closet.
"Thanks you guys," she sniffed. "You two are the nicest guys that work here. I'm glad you're my friends."
Jason stopped rubbing her back and stared at her, and Ned stared at him. He suddenly felt like the biggest asshole in the entire world.
"What?" She stared from Ned back to Jason sensing that she had suddenly said something wrong.
"Nothing, uh...yeah. Nothing," Jason replied uncomfortably. "Yeah. I'm glad you're my friend too." He laughed nervously and then, as Jody was looking away he glared a warning at Ned not to say anything about the dislike he had for Jody. He was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he had been wrong and that her sunny attitude had never been an act at all.
"What's going on outside," Ned spoke up. He was peering at a point somewhere beyond Jason's shoulder.
Jason took his attention away from Jody for a moment and took a look for himself. The sky was dark, and the ominous clouds swirled overhead.
"Holy shit," Jason spoke, and Jody turned her own red-rimmed eyes towards the spectacle.
"What's going on?" She asked.
"I don't know," Jason said. He had never seen anything like it in all his life. It wasn't as if Southern California was prone to rolling thunderstorms or tornado weather. Thunderstorms hardly ever threatened, at least not the kind with billowing black thunderheads ensconced in an incandescent purple and green glow.
"What the fuck?" Jody said as she peered out the window towards the impending storm.
And suddenly Jason and Ned found something far more interesting than what was going on outside.
"Did you just say 'fuck'?" Ned asked.
"What of it?" Jody snapped and glared at him.
"Damn," Ned held up his snoopy hands. "I'm impressed."
*****
It was ten o'clock. Mary consulted her watch. Time to gather up the people on the list. She headed directly to each table, making up the excuse that each person had won a prize...a special meeting with snoopy. The lie dripped out of Mary's mouth as if it had always lived there, and she hadn't even remembered thinking it up. Catherine was first, then David, and they followed without much trouble although they were mightily perplexed as to how they had won a contest they hadn't entered. They couldn't figure out what was so great about a meeting with a guy in a costume either. Jerry was a bit more difficult to wrangle. His wife kicked up a fuss, yelling across the entire dining hall that she was the one who should have won the prize since she was the one that had submitted their name to the queue. Jerry only succeeded in extracting both himself and Mary from the situation by promising to sort things out with upper management. He would be back and then she could take her rightful place as winner of the contest.
Mary nervously ushered them towards the back of the building and into the room: the room furthest away from the dining hall. She placed the device that the blue eyed man had given her next to the door handle. She hadn't thought it would stay, yet there it was, firmly affixed to the wooden door. She tried the handle and it didn't even move. There was only one thing left to do. And that was to wait.
The case of Alrice Van Die Welt had been a disaster from the start. Not only had it been a public relations disaster, prosecuting innocent people for crimes they did not commit never seemed to go down well with the general public, whether for their own good or not, but on top of that, Alric Van Die Welt had disappeared, leaving John's partner trapped in a time loop that they had yet to decrypt. She had been there for eight months. He had never particularly liked his partner all that much to begin with. She had resented being stuck with a rookie and had taken it out on him, but he had certainly not wanted her to get stuck in the special brand of hell that was otherwise known as a time loop. It was every Time Detective's worst fear, and they always did their best to prevent it. Alrice Van Die Welt had proven too smart for them once again.
He had been demoted after that had happened. He was still a detective. That hadn't changed, but he had been relegated to policing minor temporal disturbances. They were the kind mostly perpetuated by hoodlums with nothing but time on their hands. It was depressing. He knew that he wasn't going to be advancing in the force any time in the near future and not unless some drastic good fortune fell upon him as well. It was pretty much hopeless. He was the laughing stock of his peers, stuck in a basement office, monitoring blips on the time map and drinking coffee to stay awake and plow through his boredom. He'd also been stuck with a partner who he wished would go away.
John would rather have been the resented rookie than be stuck with Bertram Powers. He was, by all accounts, a geek. He was good at the technical aspect of things, but his field work left a lot to be desired. That was what left him partnered up with John. Nobody wanted to risk being partners with either of them. Their deficiencies outweighed any benefits to having them upstairs with the big dogs.
Bertram was seated by the computer that day, as he usually was. John, meanwhile was on the telephone to a superior officer catching hell for overlooking a spate of temporal infarctions over Southern California in 2008.
"Bert decided that they were minors," John explained patiently and slowly to the chief. "Probably accidental slippage." Slippage was when someone stumbled into a naturally occurring temporal anomaly into another time. They were usually minors: time differences of only a few seconds, of which the offender had no conscious realization that they had even traveled through time. Occasionally the time slip was major, gaps of several hundred, or several thousands of years, but there was nothing they could do about the majors but monitor them.
"Look at this." Bert waved John over and John quickly ended the phone call on the pretense of an incoming infarction. He looked over Bert's shoulder, surprised that there actually seemed to be something.
The beginning swirls of a major temporal storm were brewing over Southern California...2008.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" John ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "There actually was something to those minors? They usually don't mean anything."
"They don't mean anything," Bertram replied rather impatiently from behind his large black glasses. He turned to look skeptically at John. "Don't they teach you anything..."
"Listen, Bert, I know everybody thinks we're the bottom of the barrel here on the force, but this simply can't be coincidence, alright? The slips have been happening in 2008, right around the same spot and now this...this cloud?"
"Temporal cloud," Bertram corrected him. "Yeah. It happens. It's probably just a culmination of slips building up. It'll crack soon, one or two people may fall through. We can send out a team."
John thought for a moment. Sewing up a hole in time was easy enough with the right equipment. He'd been trained for it. Bertram had been trained for it. It would be easy enough to go to 2008 and clean it up themselves without alerting the higher ups.
"We can go," he said softly to Bertram.
"John..." Bertram glanced sharply up at him. "They have teams that do this. We're just here to monitor..."
"Screw that," John snapped. "Don't you miss field work? Don't you miss being out there on the front lines, in time?!"
"Of course I do," Bertram grumbled. "But that doesn't change the fact that this is not our job. If we go there wouldn't we be just as bad as the people who do that sort of thing illegally?"
"But we're the cops," John replied. "It is our job. What if it's an emergency?"
"Then we alert the proper..."
"Grow a spine, Bert," John interrupted him. "We can do this!"
Bertram tried to protest again but again John cut him off and pointed towards the screen instead.
"Maybe this whole argument is moot, Bert." He sat down in a chair beside his partner and pointed at the screen. "Have you decrypted the signature?"
"Seems natural." Bertram shrugged.
"Seems natural isn't good enough," John pointed out. "I just got my ass chewed out for not double checking minors and now we've got a temporal storm brewing. People there, in 2008...they could fall through. Might never get back...could be important people. Do you really want the world to change?"
"If the world changes," Bertram pointed out, "Then maybe I wouldn't be stuck in a basement with you."
"I know. I'm with you on that one." John managed a laugh. "But we took an oath. Just humor me, okay?"
Bertram shrugged and turned towards his computer. He tapped out a few numbers on the keyboard and brought up the signature of the disturbance. He transferred it to the large holographic touch screen in the middle of the room and walked over to it. He regarded the mid-air display and thrust his hands here and there, changing it around, rearranging the data and hoping to find the answers that John was looking for.
He finally pointed to cloud of numbers with a sigh. "Naturally occurring, John. Can we send out a team now?"
"Check again," John said. He walked up to the numbers and stared into the cloud.
"Now wait a minute," Bertram scowled at him. "I told you..."
"You've been spending too much time down here, Bert," John replied and waved him away with a swat of his hand. "I've seen this before. You've seen this before."
"What?"
"It's a diversion," John said. "It's a diversion code. We studied this kind of thing in school. Have you forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten. I just think you're trying too hard to inject some excitement into..." Bertram stopped cold suddenly and stared at the cloud of numbers.
"I can't believe I didn't see it," he growled at John. "I'm supposed to be the technological wizard!"
"It's old," John replied. "But it works. It works well," he said. "Before I went to the academy I wrote my thesis on it. Created by Stuben McSvens. It's a brilliant code. Masks what's really going on as a naturally occurring temporal anomaly. Check the signature again."
"Yeah," Bertram agreed as he walked up to the display in order to move things around again. "It's so easy now that I see it," he began mumbling to himself.
"It just takes an idiot to see it," John replied. He had long ago lost any confidence he had as an investigator.
"You're not an idiot," Bertram looked away from his task to reassure his partner. "We may have fucked up our share of times, but you're not an idiot and neither am I."
He turned his attention back to the holograph, punched a few numbers and regarded the results.
"There it is." He pointed to a different string of numbers that had emerged from the first. "It's there. I don't know what made it. I haven't ever seen anything quite like it, but it's definitely manufactured. Possibly an alien race."
"Wow," John said.
"Yeah," Bertram stood back and admired his own handiwork. "We're going to have to call this in, you know."
"We will," John replied. He then disappeared for a few moment and returned with his and Bertram's coats in on hand and their Time Travel Devices in the other. "Let's go."
"Go? I thought we were going to call..."
"C'mon," he grabbed Bertram's arm and depressed a button on one of the devices.
They rematerialized at the entrance to Knott's Berry Farm in 2008. Ominous storm clouds swirled above them chilling the air.
"We can call them, after we see what's going on," John replied. He handed Bertram his coat and grinned impishly at his partner.
"You won't quit until you get us fired will you?" Bertram huffed as he pulled on the garment to fend off the impending winds of time.
*****
"All the pieces are in place," he said. He grinned up at the monitor's holographic display from where he lay in bed, his head in his partner's lap. "It's going to work."
"I told you it would, Phillip." His name was Gerald, and he gazed fondly down at his partner. His hand that had been resting upon the other's chest slowly reached up to stroke his jaw.
"The perfect crime," he said.
"Yes," Phillip replied.
"Because we can," said Gerald.
Gerald leaned down and kissed him. He pulled away a fraction of an inch, an insidious smile taking over his face. Phillip felt a chill creep up his own spine. Gerald was his lover, but the fact still remained that even Phillip was afraid of him.
"Because it's fun," Gerald said quietly, and Phillip shuddered in his arms.
*****
Mary held the list in her hand. It was a list of people. People who were coming to her restaurant. She had no idea of what the blue eyed man wanted with them or how he had known that they were going to be there. There were no reservations for brunch. It was first come first serve as it was every week. The list was suspicious, but she felt compelled to do it. Any suspicious thoughts she may have had about the matter were washed away by the calm blue ocean of those eyes. She had posted herself at the hostesses podium in order to take names as people walked in: that way she could keep track of the group she was supposed to be corralling.
Oscar sat patiently with his wife Rosa and their children in the lobby awaiting a table to be seated at. David sat calmly beside him talking about getting a full-time job in landscaping. Oscar knew where that was heading. He also knew that David had the best of intentions. He was a good boy and he only wanted to help out with the family financially. Oscar wouldn't hear of it though. A full time job in landscaping would lead to nothing more than a permanent job in landscaping. David would drop out of school, perhaps he would get some girl pregnant, and they would all end up living in the same house. It was the cycle. It was how things went, and it was the last thing that Oscar wanted for his son. David was the smart one. He had all but given up on Mimi. Jose didn't seem to be heading down a much better path. He was a wild child and was running around the lobby screaming his head off as it were. He almost ran into a tall, masculine lady, who loudly and imperiously yelled at the top of her lungs to nobody in particular that they should keep track of their children. Rosa scooted from her seat and pulled Jose back to the family where he squirmed and squealed until she gave him a piece of candy and his game boy to keep him quiet.
The loud woman sat down and was followed by a cadre of loud people who looked just like her. They created quite a scene there in the lobby, the volume of the room rising as soon as they'd sat down and opened their mouths. The only quiet one was a sad bald man who said nothing and stood in the corner, for they had not left him a place to sit down.
"When are we going to be seated," one of them directed the question out to everybody within earshot. It was a rhetorical question, but Oscar had a bad feeling about it.
The young girl who happened to be sitting next to him inadvisably spoke up. "Did you put your name in?" She offered helpfully.
"Well, there are plenty of seats in there, why can't we just sit down," he replied snidely.
"There's a queue," she replied.
"A what?" He stared at her incredulously.
"Uh," she stammered. "It's a, um...line. There's a line. You have to put your name in."
"Well, what's that?" He gestured towards a bank of un-manned cash registers. "Who are we supposed to give our name to? There's nobody there."
The girl shrunk in her chair. She was used to her parents yelling, but complete strangers yelling at her for no apparent reason was frightening.
"Hey." David stood up from his spot and stepped away from his father. His career in landscaping was temporarily forgotten. He wasn't one to stand by and let someone badger a poor girl who was only trying to be helpful.
"The line forms out front."
The man who had started the shouting, as it turned out, had his own flock of people to defend him. The Mother Thing swooped down from where she had begun to start harping on the quiet man and descended upon David.
"I will have you know," she said. "That there wasn't anybody out there either!"
"Right," David huffed. "Was the big sign that says 'please wait here' not out there either?"
The Mother Thing snapped her mouth shut for a moment then replied in the negative.
"Sorry, then," David said. If anything, he knew when to back down from a challenge from a woman who was big enough to kick his ass. He held a hand out to Catherine.
She stared at it for a moment, then stared up at David. Her mother and step-father would never approve of her accepting help from a Mexican. Especially a stranger. Especially a cute stranger. She timidly accepted his hand, and he swept her away to where his family was sitting. He pointed to the seat he had vacated, and she sat down while he remained standing.
"Sorry about that," David said. "You looked like you could use a little help."
"Thank you," she said. She couldn't bring herself to look up into his brown eyes without becoming embarrassed and flustered, so she looked down at the purse in her lap instead.
"I'm David." He smiled warmly at her.
"I'm Catherine," she mumbled at her purse.
"And I'm Oscar," the father spoke up from his spot. He arched an eyebrow at David. David shook his head and scowled. His father was never going to understand.
"Are your parents here?" Oscar turned his attentions back to the girl.
"They just went to the bathroom," she said. "They'll be back." She sighed and finally looked up. David had resumed smiling at her and so had Oscar. It put her at ease and she smiled too, and she wished her parents would stay in the bathroom and never come back out.
*****
Jason felt bad for Jody. He actually felt bad for her, and that was a surprise to him. Her cheery exterior was being slowly and surely chipped away at by a loud woman with black hair who wanted everybody to be aware of her dissatisfaction. She was too cold at her table and had taken it upon herself to find a new table and seat herself and her loud family there as well. Jody had okayed the move with her most pleasant smile and went bouncing around her business until Mary had stumbled in with another large family.
"What's going on?" Ned spoke up in a muffled Southern California slur from beside him.
Jason turned to speak and almost got a face full of furry white hair. It had been Ned's turn to wear the snoopy costume, much to the stoner's chagrin.
"I can't see a fuckin' thing in here," he complained. "And it's hot as fuck. I can hear yelling though."
"Customer's yelling at Jody," Jason confirmed. "She's ahhh...I think she's going to cry."
"Poor girl," Ned said then laughed. "Are you going to console her after work?"
"Stop it, Ned," Jason chastised his friend. "I don't want to sleep with Jody."
"Yeah, right. I can see through you, Jase." Ned in his giant headed Snoopy costume continued to laugh his ass off.
*****
"We cleared that table for this family," Mary said to Jody, who stood, mortified, between her boss and Esther Baum. "We have to seat them there."
"Well, I guess we don't have a place to sit," Esther declared loudly and belligerently. She had all the diner's attentions, and that was just the way she liked it. "I don't believe it!" She huffed. "It's been nothing but trouble all day long. Nothing but trouble. The service here is awful!"
"I'm sorry, Ma'am," Mary spoke up brightly. She normally would have been cowed into submission, but her meeting with the blue eyed man had put her in another excessively good mood.
"Was there something wrong with the table you were sitting at?"
"It's too cold!" Esther grumbled.
Mary looked from Esther, standing next to the table she had chosen, and then to the table that had just been vacated...two feet to the right. Then she looked at Jerry. He shrugged apologetically but didn't make any move to oppose his wife. He knew it wouldn't be any use and he hoped the restaurant staff would realize it too. They didn't.
The Mother Thing relented, but not because she had given up. She sat back down with the rest of the family at the table that she had deemed too cold, and they all set their minds to complaining as loudly as possible about everything and making the dining experience as miserable as it could possibly be for everybody involved. Even the innocent bystanders eating their brunches in peace at the neighboring tables were not spared. There was nothing that pleased Esther more than making the rest of the world as miserable as she was.
Jody approached Jason and Ned, clearly upset. Her entire cheery facade had been stripped away by one determinedly angry customer.
"Are you okay, man?" Said Snoopy Ned.
She punched him in the giant Snoopy nose, and he toppled over backwards, landing on his back, squirming around, unable to gain the leverage to stand with his giant Snoopy head.
"Oh, My God!" Jody's hands automatically covered her mouth which hung opened with shock at her own actions. "I'm so sorry Ned!" She tried to help him up, but couldn't lift him with her small frame. Jason grabbed Ned's other hand and helped him to regain his footing.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. Her voice wavered on the edge of sobbing, and tears glimmered in her eyes, threatening to spill over at a moment's notice.
"C'mon." Jason draped an arm around her with a sigh. He didn't want to be the one to comfort her, but he was the one she had chosen all the same, or so it seemed. Ned grabbed onto the back of Jason's shiny green vest, and he turned to regard the Snoopy.
"What are you doing, Ned?" he said.
"I can't see for shit," Ned replied. "That's why you have to lead me around. Don't leave me out here in the middle of everything. I'm going to trample all over some poor kid, man. At least let me get this stupid costume off, and I'll leave you two love birds alone."
"Shhh!" Jason hissed and glanced at Jody who was too upset to have noticed them. "Don't say that kind of thing in front of Jody. Let's just..." He glanced up and down at the ridiculous costume. "Yeah, let's get you out of that thing."
All three of them retired to the furthest room from the dining area.
Jody had started to cry before they got there, and Jason sat with her next to a window and let her.
"I don't know why people are so mean," she sobbed when she was able to attempt coherency. Jason rubbed calming circles in her back, and Ned stood, not far away, listening in...his Snoopy head under one arm and his shaggy hair poking out of the top of the costume.
"Yeah, some dude wanted to take a picture of my butt," he chimed in.
Jason looked up at Ned, and although he tried to be annoyed with his friend, he couldn't help but laugh at him.
"He thought the tail was cute."
"Yeah," Ned replied. "It was attached to my BUTT."
This brought a giggle out of Jody, and she dried her eyes with a napkin that Jason had found in the storage closet.
"Thanks you guys," she sniffed. "You two are the nicest guys that work here. I'm glad you're my friends."
Jason stopped rubbing her back and stared at her, and Ned stared at him. He suddenly felt like the biggest asshole in the entire world.
"What?" She stared from Ned back to Jason sensing that she had suddenly said something wrong.
"Nothing, uh...yeah. Nothing," Jason replied uncomfortably. "Yeah. I'm glad you're my friend too." He laughed nervously and then, as Jody was looking away he glared a warning at Ned not to say anything about the dislike he had for Jody. He was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he had been wrong and that her sunny attitude had never been an act at all.
"What's going on outside," Ned spoke up. He was peering at a point somewhere beyond Jason's shoulder.
Jason took his attention away from Jody for a moment and took a look for himself. The sky was dark, and the ominous clouds swirled overhead.
"Holy shit," Jason spoke, and Jody turned her own red-rimmed eyes towards the spectacle.
"What's going on?" She asked.
"I don't know," Jason said. He had never seen anything like it in all his life. It wasn't as if Southern California was prone to rolling thunderstorms or tornado weather. Thunderstorms hardly ever threatened, at least not the kind with billowing black thunderheads ensconced in an incandescent purple and green glow.
"What the fuck?" Jody said as she peered out the window towards the impending storm.
And suddenly Jason and Ned found something far more interesting than what was going on outside.
"Did you just say 'fuck'?" Ned asked.
"What of it?" Jody snapped and glared at him.
"Damn," Ned held up his snoopy hands. "I'm impressed."
*****
It was ten o'clock. Mary consulted her watch. Time to gather up the people on the list. She headed directly to each table, making up the excuse that each person had won a prize...a special meeting with snoopy. The lie dripped out of Mary's mouth as if it had always lived there, and she hadn't even remembered thinking it up. Catherine was first, then David, and they followed without much trouble although they were mightily perplexed as to how they had won a contest they hadn't entered. They couldn't figure out what was so great about a meeting with a guy in a costume either. Jerry was a bit more difficult to wrangle. His wife kicked up a fuss, yelling across the entire dining hall that she was the one who should have won the prize since she was the one that had submitted their name to the queue. Jerry only succeeded in extracting both himself and Mary from the situation by promising to sort things out with upper management. He would be back and then she could take her rightful place as winner of the contest.
Mary nervously ushered them towards the back of the building and into the room: the room furthest away from the dining hall. She placed the device that the blue eyed man had given her next to the door handle. She hadn't thought it would stay, yet there it was, firmly affixed to the wooden door. She tried the handle and it didn't even move. There was only one thing left to do. And that was to wait.
