They had handed out the table cloths as blankets in smoldering silence. Phillip lost a lover, gained a friend, and lost a friend in the span of one horrible evening. He didn't know what to do. There was only one table cloth left. He offered it to David.
"I'm sorry for all this," Phillip said. "It was just a game."
"A game to you," David replied. "My family is back there. They're probably worried sick about me. You don't realize what you've done."
"He'll put us back in a couple of days," Phillip replied. If there was only one thing he could hold on to it was the hope that Gerald would stick to the plan to repair the fissure in the time line.
"Nobody will even know you've gone missing if everything goes according to plan. Time travel...it's math, it's science, it's exact. You'll be put back the exact second following the one that you disappeared."
"Right." David scowled. "Somehow I don't think everything's gone according to plan so far. Am I right?"
Phillip shrugged.
"That's what I thought." David said. "God, is this what people do in the future? Fuck with other people's lives? Don't you have anything better to do? Surely there's got to be some sort of entertainment that doesn't involve...what did those detective guys call it? 'Ripping open the fabric of time...'"
He shoved the last table cloth back at Phillip and gave him one last glare filled with disgust and fury before he stomped away to another corner of the room. Phillip sighed. He sat down with his back to the nearest wall and pulled the fabric up to his chin. He'd been smart once. He'd had promise. Those days were gone though. He didn't feel anything more than useless.
*****
Catherine looked out across the room. She and Jody had struck up a friendship. The other girl had maintained a friendly exterior despite the terror that was running through their veins. They hadn't felt anything like the time traveling. Non-existence was frightening, and despite everything the detective said, she had a feeling that it wasn't as safe a mode of transportation as they made out. She wanted to feel safe again. At least at home she could go to her room and study. There was no such sanctuary there. The detectives had taken up residence in the supply closet. One slept while the other kept guard, a suspicious eye carefully trained on only one person in the room, Phillip. Phillip, who, despite the surveillance, remained sleeping soundly.
There was only one other person awake in the whole room. The boy who had been nice to her earlier in the day. She couldn't help smiling to herself as she remembered the warmth of his hand in hers. He sat propped up against the wall, hugging his arms in an attempt to ward off the cold. He had no blanket, she knew. She had seen him arguing with Phillip earlier. They had taken up with each other almost immediately, but Phillip had been upset, and David seemed like he was the kind of person to lend a hand to anybody in need. Even in the heat of the argument, he had given away his tablecloth...the only hope for comfort any of them had to make it through the night.
She left Jody, who slept nestled in between Ned and Jason and she walked over to David.
"There aren't any table cloths left?"
"No," David remarked glumly. She stood above him and he refused to meet her gaze until she dropped her own table cloth at his feet.
"We can share this one," she offered. "I think it's big enough."
He returned to staring at the floor and didn't reply positively. He didn't say no either, so she sat down beside him and spread the makeshift blanket over both of them.
"I never really got to thank you," she said.
"Thank me for what?" he asked.
"For rescuing me from that awful woman." She shook her head. She thought her parents fight had been bad, then they'd gone off to the restroom. She thought the black haired woman's ranting had been bad, but then David arrived. She thought a brunch eaten in abject silence was bad, but she'd won a contest to meet Snoopy. Then she had traveled in time and none of those things mattered any more.
"You're welcome," he said.
"Do you think we're ever going to get back home?" She wondered.
"Phillip says we will," David muttered.
"What?"
"He's from the future. This whole thing was no accident. He helped plan it. He said as much."
"Oh." Catherine stared straight ahead trying to comprehend the news. "But he looks so much like us..."
"What do you expect a dude from the future to look like?" David asked.
"Well, we don't look like people from the past," she replied.
"Right, well, give some guy from the past a new haircut, shave off the mutton chops, and take him to Macy's, and I'm sure he's not going to look as old timey as he does in some ancient tintype."
"True," she conceded. "So, what's he like? This Phillip? I've never met anybody from the future, and you've been hanging out with him all day long."
"I didn't know," David said. "I had no idea until the detectives talked to me, and they knew."
"Oh."
"You sound disappointed," he turned and looked at her. Her curiosity had been squashed by the revelation that someone from so distant a future was either very good at pretending or exactly the same as they were in the past.
"It's just," she sighed. "Future people! Aren't they supposed to be flying around with jet packs and...and stuff...."
David laughed fondly at her and felt compelled to place his arm around the girl. She settled in to his warm embrace with another, more contented, sigh.
"Well, you can replace jet packs with shiny time travel devices..."
"Really?" She perked up. "Can't we just use that to get home..."
"The detectives have it," David replied.
"We should get it from them," Catherine decided.
*****
Jerry wondered why he was there. He had been the first person to waken, and he looked around at all the others sleeping. The rest of the people he'd been capture with...they were all in their late teens and early twenties. He couldn't help but wonder what on earth a bunch of alien time travelers would want with a pudgy fifty year old man who was losing his hair. Still, it was better than another evening alone with his wife. This was strange, and this was foreign and scary, but at least it was an adventure. He might die, but at least he could say that something interesting had happened in his life. He stood up and stretched and looked out the window in hopes that he might be greeted by some incomprehensibly gorgeous alien environment. He was only greeted by more darkness.
He sighed sadly and turned back towards the interior of the room. At least the lights still worked. He had no idea how they could still have power having been "temporally displaced" as the detective people had called it.
One of the girls stirred and woke the boy she was sleeping next to. They looked tired. Everybody looked tired. They had all been shifting uncomfortably in their sleep. It wasn't the best way to get a good night's rest, on a cold hard floor without even a pillow. The tablecloths did very little to ward off the cold, and he had nobody to warm himself against either. The only other loner was the strange kid with the blue eyes. The three kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant were huddled together...
The Mexican and the quiet girl were conferring and pointing at the detective posted at the door. It was the one with the glasses. He had fallen asleep during his designated watch period. He had been spending most of the time fiddling with a strange silver box. A panel had been opened and the guts spilled out over his lap, connected to the inner circuitry by a mass of colored wires. As Jerry watched, the girl crawled silently over the floor and grabbed the gadget from the detective's lap. He woke with a start. Jerry stood up uncertain of what action he should take. He had no idea what was going on and was happy to defer to the detectives.
Bertram shook the sleep out of his head and started at the sight of his empty lap. He jumped up, uttering a long stream of curse words, then noticed Catherine, who was still crawling, trying to be inconspicuous and failing. He stalked over to her and yanked her to her feet.
"Hand it over," he said. She glanced sheepishly up at him and dropped the device in his hand. It was then that Jerry decided to join them.
"What's going on?" he asked. He glanced at the device for a short moment, and it registered in his mind that he'd never seen anything like it before. It wasn't a cellular phone, and it didn't seem to be any kind of PDA. It was only a silver box with rows of unmarked buttons and no display. The closest thing he could gather was that it was some kind of remote control.
"What are you playing at, young lady?" Bertram asked. "This isn't a play thing. You could have broken it."
"If it's not broken why don't you take us home?" She screamed in his face, and it came out halfway between anger and hopeless despair.
David joined her then and crossed his own arms angrily.
"You're messing with stuff you know nothing about," Bertram replied.
"It's been disabled," a soft voice spoke up from the periphery of the group. Phillip stood there looking smaller than he had the day before. "Do either of you have any experience at all with temporal engineering?"
It was Bertram's turn to look sheepish.
"Yeah, like you do," David growled at him and turned away.
Phillip looked hurt for a moment before pretending to ignore the snub by answering it truthfully.
"I didn't really study the mechanical side of things, no. My concentration was more on the theory and the mathematics of time travel."
"He can't be serious," David said in an exasperated manner.
"He's very serious," Bertram replied. "This is a serious matter. This is a real device."
"Is that how you did it?" David narrowed his eyes at Phillip.
"No, it's a personal portal: a Time Travel Device. It only has enough power to transport two or three people. Four is stretching it. Five and you'll be leaving bits of people scattered throughout time. An arm in 1972 a leg in 8049..."
"He's right," Bertram confirmed. "It can't get us home. We got here through the storm. But it can get one of us home." He gestured at himself and then towards the closed closet door where John was still sleeping. "And if we can do that, then we can get help and get you all back where you belong, safe and sound."
"I think you should be explaining that to all of us," Jerry offered. "I've been sitting here all night with no idea of what is going on, and you expect us to just follow you because you flash your fancy badges around? If you are 'Time Detectives' then how did you get in 2008?
Bertram sighed. "Mary took them," he mumbled as inaudibly as he could.
"What's that?" Jerry asked.
"Mary took our TTDs, okay?" he said, his voice increasing in volume and frustration. "The woman who led you all in here back on Earth? She was wearing a mask. She tricked us."
"Right, so you're incompetent," Jerry said. "And why should we listen to anything you have to say?"
"Because," Phillip spoke up, his voice soft but clear. "They're our best chance of getting out of this back to where we belong."
*****
Jody woke up in a tangle of arms and legs. She frowned to herself and she removed Ned's arm from her chest. How she had ended up wedged between her two work mates she would never know. It had been a very long day. She struggled into a seated position and noticed something going on. Catherine, who was a particularly easily frightened girl, was being shouted at by one of the detectives. Being the only other girl there, Jody felt a sudden need to rush over to defend Catherine. She stumbled into a conversation about Time Travel.
Jody, having vacated her spot, had left the boys to wake up in each other's arms. They were perplexed at this but shrugged it off and soon joined the others where Phillip was doing his best to explain the situation to the detective with the glasses.
"As it is," Phillip said. "I think you've lost us our best chance...Catherine is it?"
Catherine glared daggers at him. She asked him why in not such a polite manner.
"Genius here..." Phillip nodded towards Bertram. "...Was trying to fix it. He's never seen one that was built after...when did you say?"
"The 96th," Bertram muttered. "I was getting it..."
"No, you weren't," Phillip replied. "Gerald showed that one to me. It's absolutely amazing, and he said the further out in time you get the smaller, the more complex, the more dense the circuitry..."
"There's hardly anything in here," Bertram replied. "Compared to the ones I've seen from my future. More complex my ass."
"Right." Phillip shook his head as if he were talking to a small child. "I don't suppose you have a nano-scope?"
"What?"
"Do they not let you idiots police the future?" Phillip snapped.
"Not our department." Bertram shrugged. "But we took the course...Shit."
"You are the stupidest cops I've ever met," Phillip replied. "You can't see most of the circuitry because it's too small to be seen with the human eye. You need a nano-scope to fix that TTD, and to top it off, dear Catherine here has probably dumped half the components out onto the carpet, and there is a zero percent chance we're going to find any of them."
Catherine studied the floor of the room in great detail then as she could feel her companion's glares upon her.
"I only wanted to get home," she said softly, and on the verge of tears. David went to her and put his arm around her and led her away from the group. He tossed a glare back at Phillip, who stood and glared back at him defiantly, despite the fact that meeting with David's disapproval, this stranger that he had only just met, made him ill inside.
Jason heaved a heavy sigh and walked away as well, his little group followed him towards the window.
"It's my mom's birthday today," Jody said as they peered out into the darkness. "Are we ever going to get home?"
"It doesn't look good," Ned replied. The high from his usual pre-work joint had long since abandoned him and so had the Snoopy costume. It just wasn't as amusing to go traipsing around in a the giant shell of a cartoon character when you were sober. What was left was the real Ned, a skinny kid in three day old jeans who wanted nothing more out of life than a place to skateboard and a warm room to play X-box in. Growing up and responsibility scared him to death. He wanted to avoid it at all costs.
"Don't worry, Jody," he sad and placed a sly hand on her shoulder.
Jason eyed him and he grinned back with a wink, before turning his attention towards the point outside which the girl had fixed her gaze.
"Did I do something wrong?" She settled in to Ned's arms and placed her head on his shoulder much to his and Jason's surprise.
"Of course not, Jo," Jason replied. "None of us did. Maybe we'll...Maybe we'll all wake up and this is a dream and Patrick Duffy is in the shower..."
Jody giggled.
"You're funny, Jace," She said. "How's the Grad School thing going?"
Jason shrugged. "Not that it matters now, but not good. I'm not so great at having ideas. I just want to paint. What about you?"
He realized in that moment that he really knew nothing about Jody. He knew nothing about her life at all to lead him to dislike her. He had only done so because she seemed happy. She seemed satisfied with her life and pleasant enough to spread that happiness around. She got the big tips because she worked hard to do that, and she deserved them. He felt like a cad.
"Me? I don't go to school, Jason," she said. "I thought you knew that?"
Maybe he did. He didn't remember in any case and only shrugged at her.
"I have to take care of Mom," she said sadly. "She's fading fast I'm afraid. I don't know what I'm going to do when she's gone..." She hugged her arms, straightening up and shrugging off Ned's embrace. He frowned slightly, but gave her the space she had silently asked for. She laughed then.
"What I'm going to do when she's gone?" She laughed. "I'm the one who's gone. What is she going to do without me? She can barely walk. She won't be able to feed herself...god." She buried her face in her hands and cried.
"It's okay, Jody," Jason said softly. "We're gonna get out of this..."
"Are you kidding?" she snapped. "Didn't you hear that conversation those idiots were having? They have no idea what to do, and that stupid bitch destroyed our only chance!"
"I thought you liked Catherine?" Ned asked.
"Yeah, before she ruined all our lives," Jody said loudly enough for Catherine, who was situated not far away, nestled snugly in David's arms. Catherine momentarily scowled at her former friend then she buried her head in David's shoulder and
resumed sobbing.
"C'mon, man," Ned said. "She was just trying to help. We'd have done the same thing if we knew what the hell was going on. I mean, if that thing really does travel in time." He stared out the window. "Maybe somebody's playing a horrible practical joke on us."
"It's still dark," Jason replied. "I can't even see what's out there. I don't know how someone could pull off this kind of practical joke, or why they would want to play it on a bunch of strangers."
"It's a conspiracy," Ned mumbled. "Maybe the government wants to experiment on us and...and they drugged us and took us to a secret underground bunker?"
"You have an over active imagination, Ned," Jody giggled slightly at him."
"Well, I won't believe it until we see where we are," Ned said.
They were silent for a moment, staring out into the darkness.
"What if we aren't anywhere?" Jason finally said.
"What do you mean?" Jody looked up at him.
"What if there's nothing out there," he said. "What if it's just darkness. All this talk about new time lines and all this bullshit. Maybe the sun will never come up. Maybe the sun is dead and this is all that's left."
"Like we're in a black hole or something," Ned replied and nodded his head sagely.
Jody pondered this for a moment, then sighed. "We're going to have to find out sooner or later."
"What do you mean?" Ned scratched his head and regarded her quizzically.
"I'm hungry," she said, softly. "I don't think the human body is built to live on boysenberry mimosa's alone. We're going to have to go out and find food at least."
"What if there is no food?" Ned replied nervously, his eyes darted around the room.
"We eat the future man first," she decided.
And Jason and Ned stared at her incredulously.
"God, guys!" She laughed at them and held her hands up in protest. "I was joking!"
*****
He was greeted by yet another diplomatic entity and he vaguely wondered when the changes were going to start kicking in. He was tired of the ceremony, and he was tired of the politics, and most of all he was tired of the Royalty. The kings and presidents and other various leaders of the Galactic Alliance milled around the building chatting about the public affairs of their home worlds. The president of Earth was a pudgy balding man, who, despite the best intentions was always creating intergalactic missteps and constantly putting his planet in perilous situations. He was currently embroiled in a bitter embargo with a planet known shortly as Redemption: Planet 24601 to be exact.
The man who had accosted him was the ambassador for the King of Planet 86213. His name was Sir James, a friend of the family who always took a moment to chat. Gerald hated the old man, much like he hated and felt contempt for everything around him. He was a son of the Golden Utopia after all. Nobody was above him.
"Lord Moxley," the crusty old man greeted him with a firm handshake.
Gerald pasted on his widest most genuine smile as he returned the gesture.
"Sir James," he said more enthusiastically than he felt. "It's always a pleasure to see you."
"The pleasure is all mine, Lord Moxley," James replied. He flagged down a passing waiter and offered a glass of wine to Gerald, who accepted dutifully and placed a coin on the server's tray.
"So, how have things been going?" James asked. "Still applying for research grants?"
"Yes." Gerald nodded. "Of course."
"Wasting your time with Temporal theory?" He asked with a chuckle.
Gerald scrunched his nose up with disdain at the older man. His theories were anything but; not with the greatest minds of the twenty first century trapped in the fissured time line.
"All the same, Sir James," Gerald finally managed to reply. "It's important research. If someone out there decides they're going to fracture time...there ought to be measures against it. There are always improvements to be made to the infrastructure."
Sir James chuckled again. "I don't think any one person is going to manage to fracture time, young man!" He said.
"Oh, you don't?" Gerald arched a well manicured eyebrow at him. "I beg to differ. I can prove it."
"Nobody's going to let you muck about with time, Moxley," Sir James replied. He thought it was all funny. He thought that Gerald was only playing with some kind of abstract idea. He, like most every layman, thought that time couldn't be moved. Time could be moved alright. It could be moved, and shaped, and molded to Gerald's liking. It could be broken, and most of all time could be erased; erased and replaced with Gerald's own vision for the present, and nobody would be the wiser; nobody except Gerald. He was beginning to wonder if that would be enough when everybody he knew thought he was nothing more than a child with impossible ideas. They would see about that.
He smiled impishly into his glass of wine.
"So, Where is Sir Phillip?" James inquired curiously and handily changing the subject. "He usually accompanies you to these events."
"Phillip?" Gerald laughed out loud and clear. Phillip was nobody.
"Oh, dear Sir Phillip," he continued. "I'm afraid the lad has taken a trip."
"And you didn't go with him?" James grinned with his reply.
"No," Gerald replied. "I thought he deserved a little time out...on his own, you know?"
"Ah, yes! Clever boy." Sir James winked in his direction. "You've done well with that one, sir."
"Oh," Gerald muttered. The truth was...he could have done so much better.
*****
"Do you even think this is Earth?" John asked as he looked out at the darkness. He had just spent an hour trying to explain time travel to a bunch of uncomprehending faces with empty expressions on them. Truth be told, he wasn't much for the fine details himself. Bertram had filled in the blanks for him, and Phillip stood at the back of the group shaking his head and rolling his eyes as they stumbled along.
Bertram consulted the computer. "I'm not sure. The map is all over the place. It's starting to ripple."
"Ripple?" John repeated then sighed and turned towards his partner. It was worse than they could have imagined. If the fissure was starting to cause ripples throughout time he wasn't sure how anything was ever going to be right again. "We could...not even exist here," John said.
"Doesn't matter," Bertram mumbled as he flicked through various holographic screens by touching them. "We exist sometime, and as long as that's true then we have hope."
"These ripples could erase us," John pointed out, but Bertram only ignored him.
He glanced up from his tinkering and stared at a point over John's shoulder. "Look at that."
John turned back towards the window and spied a horizon.
"Oh, thank god, there's a sun," he whispered more to himself than to Bertram.
"Blue sun," Bertram said as he noted the blueish-green glow starting to creep over the edge of the planet. "I've never seen a blue sun before."
"They're beautiful," John replied wistfully. He had been born on a blue sun planet. "It's the first good news we've gotten since this mess..."
Bertram consulted the computer.
"The atmosphere is breathable."
"Awesome. You think it's inhabited?"
"Well, this thing really can't detect life forms," Bertram replied. "You're lucky I had it fitted with the atmosphere upgrade. I mean, I had to after the last time you sent me out to the field. You jumped me right onto a chlorine planet..."
"It was a coordinate typo," John replied glumly. "I thought I'd been forgiven for that already?"
"I had to spend a whole month in plastic bubble with severe lung burns," Bertram snipped, but immediately soften when he noted the expression on John's face. "And you're right; I did forgive you."
"I should have been fired a long time ago," John said. "I keep fucking up and it gets people hurt."
"It's alright," Bertram muttered. "We're going to get out of this. Maybe nobody will even notice."
"Yeah, I doubt that will happen." John hung his head. "These ripples are small now, but they're going to be felt sooner or later."
"Look." Bertram ignored his partner's depressive state and pointed towards the window where the light was slowly but surely becoming brighter and brighter.
"Woods," John said as he spied the outline of trees in front of the window.
"Yep," Bertram nodded. "More good news."
"Where there are trees there is water."
"And food, and possibly civilization," Bertram said. "See, there's hope yet, John. We're going to fix this."
"I wish I had your optimism," John replied with a sad smile.
*****
Jerry had been outside for over an hour. He wasn't going to sit around, inactive, and wait for the detectives to tell him what to do. It was obvious that they were just about as clueless as to what was going on than anybody else. He waited until everybody's attentions were otherwise occupied. The kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant were huddled together in a corner, whispering about that mornings going on. The girl, Jody, was glaring evil eyes at the other girl, who was sobbing into the Mexican kid's arms. The future boy stood apart from them staring forlornly at the sobbing girl and her comforter. It was at the point at which Jerry realized that nobody was paying any attention to him that he decided to try going outside. It had been dark at the time, a pitch blackness so deep that he couldn't see his hand in front of him. He had only been in the presence of such darkness once in his life before. The family had taken a trip to South Dakota the year previously and taken a tour of the Crystal Caverns. Deep underneath the earth, where no light had threatened to permeate the black, it had been that dark. He hadn't even been able to see his hand in front of his face. It was that dark there in the place that they had come to rest.
Jerry found it fairly obvious that he was no longer at Knott's Berry Farm as soon as he stepped outside. It wasn't some cruel joke after all. No elaborate prank greeted him when he had opened the door and nearly fell three feet to the ground. They hadn't landed on top of anything, it was just that the entire building, foundation and all had been transported and that left ample space between the door that had once led to a hallway and the ground.
The ground was spongy and springy under foot. Jerry had reached out with his hand from the prone position he had landed in and inspected his surroundings. It was cold, the sponginess he had landed on was some kind of soil. It took him about forty five minutes to crawl around unseeing for things to begin to take shape. The planet was not without light. It existed He could make out the shape of trees, and rocks, and glowing eyes. Eyes in the darkness watched him carefully but kept their distance. He had been frightened at first but slowly became used to it, and as the sun crested...more gigantic than he had ever seen his own sun and a lot more blue, the eyes, two by two, disappeared.
It was a beautiful sight. Through all their family vacations throughout the country, he had never quite seen anything as amazing as that blue sunrise. Of course, having to vacation with his wife's family usually put a damper on any spectacular natural features that the United States had to offer. Constant browbeating and belittlement made even the Grand Canyon seem small. He smiled a little to himself and wondered if he was the only one who was just a little bit excited about the prospect of exploring a whole new world. They were like the intrepid explorers that came to America so many years before. He wandered over to the nearest tree and contemplated the branches. It seemed sturdy enough to climb and if he could make it then he would have a prime spot for viewing the sunrise on top of the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant's roof. Jerry had never been a particularly fit man, but he was willing to try. Without Esther at his side he felt like he was willing to try anything.
*****
Bertram and John stood by the exit door as they watched the group peering out the windows towards their new surroundings. They were going to have to keep them inside just a little bit longer. Organization was key if they were going to go out and explore the new land. Their first priority was to find food, and their second priority was to find civilization...if there was any to be found. Hopefully they would be able to find the means to repair the Time Travel Device and return the humans to their correct place in time and space. If not...the fissure would continue to erase time lines and replace them with new realities and the ripples would continue to spread out like a cancer, creating alternate dimensions that were not supposed to exist, and they wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.
"Okay, I know you all want to get outside and check things out," Bertram said. He smiled at them in a way that he thought would put them at ease. "The good news is that this isn't a dark planet. It's got a sun, and there is life here. We'll be able to survive if we have to."
Jody raised her hand then. A perplexed expression adorned her face. Bertram stared at her and waited for her to say something, but no words crossed her lips. She only tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to speak first.
"What's she doing?" Bertram whispered at John, who stood dutifully at his shoulder trying to look intimidating.
"You should pay attention in history class. Earthian customs; she wants you to call her name before she says anything," John replied.
"Really?" Bertram frowned. "Yeah, weird." He looked back towards Jody.
"Okay, Jody?"
"Yes, um...that's not a sun..."
"It's the sun," Bertram replied. "Well, it's the star of whatever the hell galaxy we've landed in. Obviously we're not on Earth. A hot burning sun doesn't ever turn into a cold burning one."
Jody raised her hand again.
"Jody," Bertram replied instantly. He looked to John for approval for quickly adapting to Earthian customs, and John only nodded and stifled a chuckle when Bertram turned his attention back to the group.
"Right, if it's cold...why isn't there like, ice and snow outside?"
"It's not cold," Phillip spoke up from his lonely corner. He stood there glowering, his arms crossed. Jody glared at him for answering her question then turned to Bertram, expecting him, as the figure of authority, to have a different answer: one she could believe.
"He's right," Bertram admitted. "It's not cold; it's just not as hot. It's won't get hotter than..." He paused, wondering what unit of temperature measure the gathered people used and found that he didn't remember. He turned to John for help. John leaned forward and whispered at him.
"These people, from this time...fucking crazy. They use all kinds of different measures for everything depending on where they live..."
"So you don't know California, 2008, then?"
"Ah, No," John confirmed, a bit embarrassed.
"You should have paid attention in history class," Bertram replied smugly.
"It won't get hot," Bertram finally addressed the crowd. "Mildly pleasant temperatures all year long. We'll go outside, and you'll be able to see. Inhabitable planets orbit a cold Sun much closer than a hot one. It's quite a spectacle, actually."
"Like you can reach out and touch it," John replied, thinking of the sun on his home planet that loomed so large overhead that it dominated most of the sky.
"Right, so we're going to need you to partner up...we've got to stick together through this. Can't have anyone wandering off by themselves, right? So, do that, and we'll go have a peek outside."
Jody raised her hand again. This time Bertram only waved his hand at her and nodded.
"How do you know we can breath out there?" she asked.
"Oh," Bertram smiled proudly. "I've analyzed the atmosphere, it's good..."
John smirked from behind him. "Actually, Bert, we would have died already if it was a hostile atmosphere. This hunk of building isn't exactly airtight."
Bertram blanched at his overlooking the obvious in favor of technical gadgets. He hadn't even thought of the lack of integrity a room, ripped out of a building in the twenty-first century would have.
"Anyway, so, Partner up and we can go outside," Bertram said.
*****
Jody approached Catherine cautiously. She knew she had said some harsh things earlier that day, and she hadn't meant them. It was only the beginnings of frustration starting to creep in on her. She had wrestled them back and was hoping that the other girl would accept her apology. Jody did not want to be partnered up with Ned or Jason no matter how nice and cute they were. Sleeping in a muddled pile with them for a few hours had been quite enough interaction for her to last quite a while.
"What do you want?" Catherine snapped at her as soon as it was apparent that Jody intended her as her target. Catherine stood, her body nestled snugly underneath David's arm as it had been for most of the night. She had barely faced away from him to look at Jody.
"I'm sorry," Jody said. "I didn't mean what I said earlier."
Catherine frowned. She knew it, but it didn't hurt any less. She and Jody had hit it off within minutes of meeting. To be turned on by the only group of people who were sort of familiar to her was scary. She wouldn't have known what to do with herself had David not been so nice.
"Look, we're all frustrated and tired," Jody said. "I know the floor of this place isn't the most comfortable thing..."
"You looked comfortable." Catherine replied, feeling the words slip out more snidely than she had intended.
"Jason and Ned?" Jody scoffed. "Ugh. They're just friends. It was cold...anyway, I'm apologizing. Can we be friends again?"
Catherine looked cautiously up at David who nodded at her. Apologies were good. He had a few of his own to make.
"We have to stick in this together," he spoke. "We just...we've got to get along. Can't have us splitting up like the time line right?"
"We hardly know each other," Catherine replied softly.
"We're human...from Earth, What's more important than that?" David asked.
"Aren't we all from Earth?" Jody asked.
"Who says?" David eyed the Detectives who stood near the door quietly chatting with Phillip.
"Them? I thought they were from the future?" Jody said.
"Maybe both," David pondered. "You should have raised your hand, Jody."
She grinned and laughed. "You're right, David. Y'know, it sure seemed to confuse the geeky one for some reason."
"Maybe they call on each other telepathically," Catherine added to the speculation with a laugh. "They don't even know the Fahrenheit scale for goodness sake!"
"Maybe they only measure temperature in 'Hot' and 'Not Hot' terms," Jody pondered. "Am I hot or not?"
The girls giggled manically, linked arms, and walked away towards the waiting Time Detectives chattering all the way.
"Sorry, Man," Ned, who had arrived behind David, spoke up as they watched the girls depart. Jason stood on his other side and shrugged.
"I'd partner up with you, but I gotta stick with my man, Jase," Ned said. "Guess you're stuck with the future freak."
"Don't call him that," David muttered.
"Hey, there's always Jerry," Jason replied sympathetically.
They all cast their eyes around the room but could see no sign of the older man.
"It's fine," David said with a shrug. "Phillip's not so bad. Maybe I'll learn something. I've never met a mathematician before."
"The kid is a mathematician?" Ned said in a perplexed manner while scratching at his head. "I can't even add."
"He's a temporal mathematician," Jason provided. "Don't you pay attention?"
"What's temporal mean?" Ned replied.
Jason eyed him up and down curiously.
"It's fancy future man talk for the word 'time'," Jason replied. "Now, come on. I could use a little fresh air." Ned followed dutifully along behind his pal leaving David alone. He sighed to himself and marched over to the time detectives. Everybody seemed to know that Phillip was from the future, but he wasn't sure that any of them but he and Catherine knew that he had been in on the plan to transport them through time.
Phillip barely let his attention drift from the Time Detectives and their conversation long enough to register David sidle up next to him. David said nothing. He only stood there expectantly waiting for Phillip to acknowledge him and accept him as his partner. Phillip said nothing. He addressed the Time Detectives instead.
"I think we should empty the champagne bottles..."
Bertram and John turned to stare at him.
"I don't think now is the time to be getting sloshed, kid," John said.
"That's not what I mean." Phillip rolled his eyes at them.
"I don't think it's such a bad idea," David offered helpfully.
The men from the future just turned and stared at him. They seemed to be doing a lot of that. He grinned nervously and chuckled slightly.
"Look," Phillip explained. "If you want to go out on an expedition. Well, I know we have to find food and water soon. So that's fine, but we're going to need to have something to carry the water in, right? Might as well get the kit ready while we're here, so we don't have to come running back should we find what we're lookin' for. Can't carry it in our hands, right? We may as well go out prepared, yeah?"
"He's kind of right," Bertram admitted. He hated that the kid seemed to have more foresight then they did. It was a continuing embarrassment in front of the twenty first century humans.
"Alright," John heaved a heavy sigh. He left his partner's side and led Jason, Ned, and the girls to the supply closet. They could hear Ned griping about the waste of good alcohol from across the room.
"What are you doing here?" Bertram finally asked David, who had remained calmly by Phillip's side.
"I need a partner," David said.
"What about Catherine?" Phillip replied glumly.
"She made up with her friend," David told him. "We decided that you're right, Detective Powers. We've got to stick together in this, and we shouldn't be making enemies."
"Is that so?" Phillip frowned at him.
"Yeah." David nodded towards him. He tried to smile, but Phillip only scowled in return.
"Not him," Bertram spoke up, interrupting David's veiled attempt at apology.
"Why not?" David asked. "There isn't anybody else."
"That bald guy," Bertram replied.
"Jerry?" David said. "He's not here."
"What?" Bertram said. His eyes grew wide in shock, and he gripped his hair with his hands. "You've fucking got to be kidding me. What do you mean, 'he's not here'."
"I mean just that," David replied with a shrug. "He must have slipped out when nobody was looking"
"Crap..." Bertram looked around in a panic. John was busy helping the Knott's Berry Farm gang empty out bottles of cheap champagne and Jerry was indeed nowhere to be seen.
"Just..." he flailed his arms about, desperately gesturing in hopes that a plan might suddenly appear in his brain, but there was nothing.
"Just stay here," he finally addressed David. "Do not let him out of your sight!" He pointed to Phillip who only deepened his scowl.
And then Bertram opened the door to the outside and promptly dropped out of the building...landing face first on the spongy ground with a muffled thud. When he looked up he saw David and Phillip peering down at him desperately trying to control their laughter.
"Hilarious," Bertram replied. He stood up and brushed himself off; an attempt to somehow regain his dignity, but it only caused more laughter.
Up in the building David turned to Phillip, a bright smile on his face. They had been through so much already, and it felt good to have a genuine laugh.
"Are these guys really our best chance of getting back?" he asked.
Phillip faced David himself and found that they were only inches apart. It would have been so easy for him to give in to temptation, but he quickly turned away to answer the question instead.
"Yes," he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.
"We are so screwed," David decided. His smile disappeared along with his laughter. It wasn't funny anymore.
"Do you need help?" He called down to Bertram.
Bertram only shook his head and commenced calling out Jerry's name.
"We are screwed," Phillip said as he watched the man's peculiar searching technique.
To everyone's surprise, especially Bertram's, Jerry called back almost instantly. The man appeared over the roof of the building and pointed towards the sky.
"Hey guys, you gotta come up here and see this," he shouted down at them.
Bertram tossed a glance around his surroundings unfavorably then asked how Jerry had gotten up on the roof in the first place.
"Climbed the tree," he shouted down with a grin. He'd never climbed a tree before, somehow he felt lighter and fitter than he ever had and had managed to scale the tree in record time.
Bertram finally shrugged. He glanced towards the doorway and was going to ask if the boys needed help, but David and Phillip were already on the ground.
"So we're going up the tree?" Phillip asked breathlessly. Bertram nodded and both boys took off at a run and climbed up as quickly as two cats. Bertram rolled his eyes. Gravity was a funny thing when there was slightly less of it than one was used to.
Jerry welcomed them to his rooftop perch and pointed at the rising sun.
"It's huge," David marveled.
"I bet you say that to all the guys," Phillip replied before he had a chance to think. He hadn't managed to be that cheeky in a long while. The mask had only changed his physical appearance. In order to pretend to be Sir Phillip of Clim-Port he had to be on his best behavior. When he was at Gerald's side, attending formal functions as his partner, anything less would have been suspicious.
David turned from the looming blue sunrise to stare at Phillip, who shrugged then smiled.
"What happened to your accent?" David said. He had changed the subject instead of getting upset about the blatant flirting. Jerry only sat a few feet away pretending not to eves drop.
"This isn't an accent," Phillip admitted.
"Come on," David replied. "Haven't you done enough lying?"
"I didn't lie," Phillip retorted. "I just didn't answer your questions, because you don't really want to know the answers."
"Oh, god, that is stupid." David turned his full attention to Phillip. "I already know you had something to do with this whole mess. I'm not an idiot, okay?"
"I know you're not," Phillip replied. "You're right, and I'm sorry."
Jerry remained intent on the sun even though what he was hearing was news to him.
"Everything you said was right," Phillip hissed. "We fucked with the time line because we wanted to have fun, and to prove that we could do it without getting caught."
"Prove it to who?" David asked, not lowering his voice a bit.
"Ourselves."
"What's the fucking point then?" David raged.
Jerry felt the urge to speak up before one of the boys shoved the other off the roof, but his attempt at diplomacy was hastily shoved aside.
"Because we can," Phillip replied defiantly. "That's the fucking point, as you say."
"Come on guys," Jerry spoke up again. "Look at the sun. It's beautiful...it's...blue..."
David glanced up at the sky yet again and sighed. "No enemies." He muttered to himself. "You're really trapped here, Phillip?"
"I really am," Phillip confirmed. "I was used and I was dumped, and this is my real accent. I had been wearing a mask...the device that makes you desirable...changes your appearance. That was how Mary tricked you all into this room. Trust me, that woman needed a lot of help. It's a cheap and easy way around plastic surgery in the future, but with the right programming and the wrong hands it can do more than that. It sort of short circuits people's brains...makes them think you are the most desirable thing in the universe, but it can't change an accent or your own behavior. I had to adopt the American one to fit in; old habits die hard. I suppose I'm starting to ease back in to my own. I'm from the future, do you really think we speak like you do in the future? We may have fucked up a time line, but occasionally the future evolves on its own."
"That's nice," David dismissed his lecture. "Are you really sorry?"
"Yes!" Phillip nodded positively. "I really am. This is a fine mess we've gotten into. Depending on how it goes in the future...if Gerald likes the way things change because you've gone...then I'm starting to doubt he'd fix the time line at all."
"You're just starting to think that?" Jerry asked. "Seriously?"
Phillip only shrugged and turned towards the sun.
"My galaxy has four stars," he changed the subject. "My planet is the only one that is hospitable towards life. The others...they're too close to the suns to sustain anything besides dirt. They call it the Golden Utopia because the suns are always rising or setting. Everything is always bathed in a golden light."
"I still can't believe I'm on another planet." David lay down on the roof and admired the sun. "I can't believe you're from another planet...and the future. Shit. I was thinking about a career in landscaping yesterday. How can I ever go back to that?"
"I know what you mean," Jerry replied. "I was a contractor stuck in a dead end marriage yesterday...You met my wife's family, right?"
David chuckled to himself then replied in the positive.
"This is amazing," Jerry said. "Us being stuck here might be the end of time as we know it..."
Phillip laughed at that.
"Time never ends," he said. "It only gets bigger. Sometimes it gets rewritten..."
"Okay, so time gets rewritten." Jerry shrugged. He felt no ill will for being corrected. "It's still the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my life! Maybe I'll be able to write a best selling novel one day."
"Maybe you will," Phillip said. He was amused, for he knew exactly what contributions each of them would make towards their society. He wasn't going to tell them though, and he hoped they wouldn't ask. He didn't want to cause any further time ripples if he could help it.
"Yeah right," Jerry rellied with a snort.
"Come on, Jer," David consoled him. "It's never too late to follow a dream."
"Thank you, Mr. After School Special, but do I need to remind you that your life isn't half over? And you haven't spent most of it languishing in a totally empty and unsatisfying relationship with a psycho from hell, have you?"
"No," David shook his head. "I haven't. I'm concentrating on my studies right now, unlike some twin sisters I could meant... Oh, Mimi." He frowned. He hadn't thought of his twin sister since they'd landed. The thought of never having to wait in line outside the door to their one bathroom was suddenly the worst possible thing he could imagine.
Phillip reached out and tentatively patted David's shoulder. Jerry watched them and smiled on.
"She'll be okay," Phillip said.
"You don't understand," David replied with a choked sob. "She's my twin, and I miss her. Stupid eyebrows and boyfriends aside. I don't think I'm going to be okay."
"I'm going to go back down." He announced after a moment. "I think I need some time alone."
"I can't let you do that," Phillip replied.
"What?" David scowled at him. "I just need a little time..."
"David, the Detectives said we need a partner if we're going to go wandering around these woods and I think they're right."
"Oh, please," David rolled his eyes. "Master of Temporal Scheming, I think you can take care of yourself."
"Scheming is one thing," Phillip said. "Getting eaten by a giant bipedal saber-toothed beastie, or getting lost in the woods is another."
"I saw eyes," Jerry said.
Phillip and David took a moment from their sniping to consider what Jerry had just said.
"Eyes?" Phillip finally asked.
"In the forest, when it was dark." Jerry replied. "Giant yellow eyes. It was kind of scary."
Phillip and David then looked at each other and grinned.
"What now?" Jerry asked.
"You think scary..." David started.
And Phillip finished his sentence, "...and we think dinner."
*****
Jody and Catherine didn't have to go far to find fresh water. They may have only been half a mile out when they ran into a stream. They gleefully filled their empty champagne bottles then looked back towards where they came from.
"We're not lost are we?" Catherine asked.
"Nah," Jody said. "You worry too much, you know that?"
"I can't help it," she replied. "None of this really makes any sense. I'm just kind of going with it."
"Me too."
"It's funny," Catherine said. "Us girls down here gathering the water while the boys are goofing off on top of the roof. What the heck do you think they're doing up there?"
"Looking at that funny sun," Jody guessed with a shrug. "It's not that exciting. It's only a star."
"Yeah," Catherine laughed. "But we've never been this close to a star before...did you see how big it looked?"
Jody shrugged and painted a smile on her face. She was going to act unimpressed with the future if it killed her.
"Never mind that space business," she changed the subject. "So...David? He's cute, right?" She grinned at Catherine as the girl flushed embarrassment.
"He is," she said. "But he likes that future guy."
"Seriously?" Jody marveled. "I had no idea."
"He wouldn't shut up about him," Catherine admitted. "It was only obvious after a while. Why do you think I went with you in the first place?"
"You're still mad at me?" Jody asked.
"Nah." Catherine shrugged. "Stealing the thingy was a stupid thing to do. I know it now. Imagine working with parts you can't even see? Crazy. I wish I'd have just stayed put and waited for the detectives to tell us something. I think they're kind of stupid, but they still know more about this stuff than we do."
"Yeah," Jody nodded in agreement. "It's not your fault though. If I'd have known what that thing was I might have tried it myself."
"I'm sorry for all this," Phillip said. "It was just a game."
"A game to you," David replied. "My family is back there. They're probably worried sick about me. You don't realize what you've done."
"He'll put us back in a couple of days," Phillip replied. If there was only one thing he could hold on to it was the hope that Gerald would stick to the plan to repair the fissure in the time line.
"Nobody will even know you've gone missing if everything goes according to plan. Time travel...it's math, it's science, it's exact. You'll be put back the exact second following the one that you disappeared."
"Right." David scowled. "Somehow I don't think everything's gone according to plan so far. Am I right?"
Phillip shrugged.
"That's what I thought." David said. "God, is this what people do in the future? Fuck with other people's lives? Don't you have anything better to do? Surely there's got to be some sort of entertainment that doesn't involve...what did those detective guys call it? 'Ripping open the fabric of time...'"
He shoved the last table cloth back at Phillip and gave him one last glare filled with disgust and fury before he stomped away to another corner of the room. Phillip sighed. He sat down with his back to the nearest wall and pulled the fabric up to his chin. He'd been smart once. He'd had promise. Those days were gone though. He didn't feel anything more than useless.
*****
Catherine looked out across the room. She and Jody had struck up a friendship. The other girl had maintained a friendly exterior despite the terror that was running through their veins. They hadn't felt anything like the time traveling. Non-existence was frightening, and despite everything the detective said, she had a feeling that it wasn't as safe a mode of transportation as they made out. She wanted to feel safe again. At least at home she could go to her room and study. There was no such sanctuary there. The detectives had taken up residence in the supply closet. One slept while the other kept guard, a suspicious eye carefully trained on only one person in the room, Phillip. Phillip, who, despite the surveillance, remained sleeping soundly.
There was only one other person awake in the whole room. The boy who had been nice to her earlier in the day. She couldn't help smiling to herself as she remembered the warmth of his hand in hers. He sat propped up against the wall, hugging his arms in an attempt to ward off the cold. He had no blanket, she knew. She had seen him arguing with Phillip earlier. They had taken up with each other almost immediately, but Phillip had been upset, and David seemed like he was the kind of person to lend a hand to anybody in need. Even in the heat of the argument, he had given away his tablecloth...the only hope for comfort any of them had to make it through the night.
She left Jody, who slept nestled in between Ned and Jason and she walked over to David.
"There aren't any table cloths left?"
"No," David remarked glumly. She stood above him and he refused to meet her gaze until she dropped her own table cloth at his feet.
"We can share this one," she offered. "I think it's big enough."
He returned to staring at the floor and didn't reply positively. He didn't say no either, so she sat down beside him and spread the makeshift blanket over both of them.
"I never really got to thank you," she said.
"Thank me for what?" he asked.
"For rescuing me from that awful woman." She shook her head. She thought her parents fight had been bad, then they'd gone off to the restroom. She thought the black haired woman's ranting had been bad, but then David arrived. She thought a brunch eaten in abject silence was bad, but she'd won a contest to meet Snoopy. Then she had traveled in time and none of those things mattered any more.
"You're welcome," he said.
"Do you think we're ever going to get back home?" She wondered.
"Phillip says we will," David muttered.
"What?"
"He's from the future. This whole thing was no accident. He helped plan it. He said as much."
"Oh." Catherine stared straight ahead trying to comprehend the news. "But he looks so much like us..."
"What do you expect a dude from the future to look like?" David asked.
"Well, we don't look like people from the past," she replied.
"Right, well, give some guy from the past a new haircut, shave off the mutton chops, and take him to Macy's, and I'm sure he's not going to look as old timey as he does in some ancient tintype."
"True," she conceded. "So, what's he like? This Phillip? I've never met anybody from the future, and you've been hanging out with him all day long."
"I didn't know," David said. "I had no idea until the detectives talked to me, and they knew."
"Oh."
"You sound disappointed," he turned and looked at her. Her curiosity had been squashed by the revelation that someone from so distant a future was either very good at pretending or exactly the same as they were in the past.
"It's just," she sighed. "Future people! Aren't they supposed to be flying around with jet packs and...and stuff...."
David laughed fondly at her and felt compelled to place his arm around the girl. She settled in to his warm embrace with another, more contented, sigh.
"Well, you can replace jet packs with shiny time travel devices..."
"Really?" She perked up. "Can't we just use that to get home..."
"The detectives have it," David replied.
"We should get it from them," Catherine decided.
*****
Jerry wondered why he was there. He had been the first person to waken, and he looked around at all the others sleeping. The rest of the people he'd been capture with...they were all in their late teens and early twenties. He couldn't help but wonder what on earth a bunch of alien time travelers would want with a pudgy fifty year old man who was losing his hair. Still, it was better than another evening alone with his wife. This was strange, and this was foreign and scary, but at least it was an adventure. He might die, but at least he could say that something interesting had happened in his life. He stood up and stretched and looked out the window in hopes that he might be greeted by some incomprehensibly gorgeous alien environment. He was only greeted by more darkness.
He sighed sadly and turned back towards the interior of the room. At least the lights still worked. He had no idea how they could still have power having been "temporally displaced" as the detective people had called it.
One of the girls stirred and woke the boy she was sleeping next to. They looked tired. Everybody looked tired. They had all been shifting uncomfortably in their sleep. It wasn't the best way to get a good night's rest, on a cold hard floor without even a pillow. The tablecloths did very little to ward off the cold, and he had nobody to warm himself against either. The only other loner was the strange kid with the blue eyes. The three kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant were huddled together...
The Mexican and the quiet girl were conferring and pointing at the detective posted at the door. It was the one with the glasses. He had fallen asleep during his designated watch period. He had been spending most of the time fiddling with a strange silver box. A panel had been opened and the guts spilled out over his lap, connected to the inner circuitry by a mass of colored wires. As Jerry watched, the girl crawled silently over the floor and grabbed the gadget from the detective's lap. He woke with a start. Jerry stood up uncertain of what action he should take. He had no idea what was going on and was happy to defer to the detectives.
Bertram shook the sleep out of his head and started at the sight of his empty lap. He jumped up, uttering a long stream of curse words, then noticed Catherine, who was still crawling, trying to be inconspicuous and failing. He stalked over to her and yanked her to her feet.
"Hand it over," he said. She glanced sheepishly up at him and dropped the device in his hand. It was then that Jerry decided to join them.
"What's going on?" he asked. He glanced at the device for a short moment, and it registered in his mind that he'd never seen anything like it before. It wasn't a cellular phone, and it didn't seem to be any kind of PDA. It was only a silver box with rows of unmarked buttons and no display. The closest thing he could gather was that it was some kind of remote control.
"What are you playing at, young lady?" Bertram asked. "This isn't a play thing. You could have broken it."
"If it's not broken why don't you take us home?" She screamed in his face, and it came out halfway between anger and hopeless despair.
David joined her then and crossed his own arms angrily.
"You're messing with stuff you know nothing about," Bertram replied.
"It's been disabled," a soft voice spoke up from the periphery of the group. Phillip stood there looking smaller than he had the day before. "Do either of you have any experience at all with temporal engineering?"
It was Bertram's turn to look sheepish.
"Yeah, like you do," David growled at him and turned away.
Phillip looked hurt for a moment before pretending to ignore the snub by answering it truthfully.
"I didn't really study the mechanical side of things, no. My concentration was more on the theory and the mathematics of time travel."
"He can't be serious," David said in an exasperated manner.
"He's very serious," Bertram replied. "This is a serious matter. This is a real device."
"Is that how you did it?" David narrowed his eyes at Phillip.
"No, it's a personal portal: a Time Travel Device. It only has enough power to transport two or three people. Four is stretching it. Five and you'll be leaving bits of people scattered throughout time. An arm in 1972 a leg in 8049..."
"He's right," Bertram confirmed. "It can't get us home. We got here through the storm. But it can get one of us home." He gestured at himself and then towards the closed closet door where John was still sleeping. "And if we can do that, then we can get help and get you all back where you belong, safe and sound."
"I think you should be explaining that to all of us," Jerry offered. "I've been sitting here all night with no idea of what is going on, and you expect us to just follow you because you flash your fancy badges around? If you are 'Time Detectives' then how did you get in 2008?
Bertram sighed. "Mary took them," he mumbled as inaudibly as he could.
"What's that?" Jerry asked.
"Mary took our TTDs, okay?" he said, his voice increasing in volume and frustration. "The woman who led you all in here back on Earth? She was wearing a mask. She tricked us."
"Right, so you're incompetent," Jerry said. "And why should we listen to anything you have to say?"
"Because," Phillip spoke up, his voice soft but clear. "They're our best chance of getting out of this back to where we belong."
*****
Jody woke up in a tangle of arms and legs. She frowned to herself and she removed Ned's arm from her chest. How she had ended up wedged between her two work mates she would never know. It had been a very long day. She struggled into a seated position and noticed something going on. Catherine, who was a particularly easily frightened girl, was being shouted at by one of the detectives. Being the only other girl there, Jody felt a sudden need to rush over to defend Catherine. She stumbled into a conversation about Time Travel.
Jody, having vacated her spot, had left the boys to wake up in each other's arms. They were perplexed at this but shrugged it off and soon joined the others where Phillip was doing his best to explain the situation to the detective with the glasses.
"As it is," Phillip said. "I think you've lost us our best chance...Catherine is it?"
Catherine glared daggers at him. She asked him why in not such a polite manner.
"Genius here..." Phillip nodded towards Bertram. "...Was trying to fix it. He's never seen one that was built after...when did you say?"
"The 96th," Bertram muttered. "I was getting it..."
"No, you weren't," Phillip replied. "Gerald showed that one to me. It's absolutely amazing, and he said the further out in time you get the smaller, the more complex, the more dense the circuitry..."
"There's hardly anything in here," Bertram replied. "Compared to the ones I've seen from my future. More complex my ass."
"Right." Phillip shook his head as if he were talking to a small child. "I don't suppose you have a nano-scope?"
"What?"
"Do they not let you idiots police the future?" Phillip snapped.
"Not our department." Bertram shrugged. "But we took the course...Shit."
"You are the stupidest cops I've ever met," Phillip replied. "You can't see most of the circuitry because it's too small to be seen with the human eye. You need a nano-scope to fix that TTD, and to top it off, dear Catherine here has probably dumped half the components out onto the carpet, and there is a zero percent chance we're going to find any of them."
Catherine studied the floor of the room in great detail then as she could feel her companion's glares upon her.
"I only wanted to get home," she said softly, and on the verge of tears. David went to her and put his arm around her and led her away from the group. He tossed a glare back at Phillip, who stood and glared back at him defiantly, despite the fact that meeting with David's disapproval, this stranger that he had only just met, made him ill inside.
Jason heaved a heavy sigh and walked away as well, his little group followed him towards the window.
"It's my mom's birthday today," Jody said as they peered out into the darkness. "Are we ever going to get home?"
"It doesn't look good," Ned replied. The high from his usual pre-work joint had long since abandoned him and so had the Snoopy costume. It just wasn't as amusing to go traipsing around in a the giant shell of a cartoon character when you were sober. What was left was the real Ned, a skinny kid in three day old jeans who wanted nothing more out of life than a place to skateboard and a warm room to play X-box in. Growing up and responsibility scared him to death. He wanted to avoid it at all costs.
"Don't worry, Jody," he sad and placed a sly hand on her shoulder.
Jason eyed him and he grinned back with a wink, before turning his attention towards the point outside which the girl had fixed her gaze.
"Did I do something wrong?" She settled in to Ned's arms and placed her head on his shoulder much to his and Jason's surprise.
"Of course not, Jo," Jason replied. "None of us did. Maybe we'll...Maybe we'll all wake up and this is a dream and Patrick Duffy is in the shower..."
Jody giggled.
"You're funny, Jace," She said. "How's the Grad School thing going?"
Jason shrugged. "Not that it matters now, but not good. I'm not so great at having ideas. I just want to paint. What about you?"
He realized in that moment that he really knew nothing about Jody. He knew nothing about her life at all to lead him to dislike her. He had only done so because she seemed happy. She seemed satisfied with her life and pleasant enough to spread that happiness around. She got the big tips because she worked hard to do that, and she deserved them. He felt like a cad.
"Me? I don't go to school, Jason," she said. "I thought you knew that?"
Maybe he did. He didn't remember in any case and only shrugged at her.
"I have to take care of Mom," she said sadly. "She's fading fast I'm afraid. I don't know what I'm going to do when she's gone..." She hugged her arms, straightening up and shrugging off Ned's embrace. He frowned slightly, but gave her the space she had silently asked for. She laughed then.
"What I'm going to do when she's gone?" She laughed. "I'm the one who's gone. What is she going to do without me? She can barely walk. She won't be able to feed herself...god." She buried her face in her hands and cried.
"It's okay, Jody," Jason said softly. "We're gonna get out of this..."
"Are you kidding?" she snapped. "Didn't you hear that conversation those idiots were having? They have no idea what to do, and that stupid bitch destroyed our only chance!"
"I thought you liked Catherine?" Ned asked.
"Yeah, before she ruined all our lives," Jody said loudly enough for Catherine, who was situated not far away, nestled snugly in David's arms. Catherine momentarily scowled at her former friend then she buried her head in David's shoulder and
resumed sobbing.
"C'mon, man," Ned said. "She was just trying to help. We'd have done the same thing if we knew what the hell was going on. I mean, if that thing really does travel in time." He stared out the window. "Maybe somebody's playing a horrible practical joke on us."
"It's still dark," Jason replied. "I can't even see what's out there. I don't know how someone could pull off this kind of practical joke, or why they would want to play it on a bunch of strangers."
"It's a conspiracy," Ned mumbled. "Maybe the government wants to experiment on us and...and they drugged us and took us to a secret underground bunker?"
"You have an over active imagination, Ned," Jody giggled slightly at him."
"Well, I won't believe it until we see where we are," Ned said.
They were silent for a moment, staring out into the darkness.
"What if we aren't anywhere?" Jason finally said.
"What do you mean?" Jody looked up at him.
"What if there's nothing out there," he said. "What if it's just darkness. All this talk about new time lines and all this bullshit. Maybe the sun will never come up. Maybe the sun is dead and this is all that's left."
"Like we're in a black hole or something," Ned replied and nodded his head sagely.
Jody pondered this for a moment, then sighed. "We're going to have to find out sooner or later."
"What do you mean?" Ned scratched his head and regarded her quizzically.
"I'm hungry," she said, softly. "I don't think the human body is built to live on boysenberry mimosa's alone. We're going to have to go out and find food at least."
"What if there is no food?" Ned replied nervously, his eyes darted around the room.
"We eat the future man first," she decided.
And Jason and Ned stared at her incredulously.
"God, guys!" She laughed at them and held her hands up in protest. "I was joking!"
*****
He was greeted by yet another diplomatic entity and he vaguely wondered when the changes were going to start kicking in. He was tired of the ceremony, and he was tired of the politics, and most of all he was tired of the Royalty. The kings and presidents and other various leaders of the Galactic Alliance milled around the building chatting about the public affairs of their home worlds. The president of Earth was a pudgy balding man, who, despite the best intentions was always creating intergalactic missteps and constantly putting his planet in perilous situations. He was currently embroiled in a bitter embargo with a planet known shortly as Redemption: Planet 24601 to be exact.
The man who had accosted him was the ambassador for the King of Planet 86213. His name was Sir James, a friend of the family who always took a moment to chat. Gerald hated the old man, much like he hated and felt contempt for everything around him. He was a son of the Golden Utopia after all. Nobody was above him.
"Lord Moxley," the crusty old man greeted him with a firm handshake.
Gerald pasted on his widest most genuine smile as he returned the gesture.
"Sir James," he said more enthusiastically than he felt. "It's always a pleasure to see you."
"The pleasure is all mine, Lord Moxley," James replied. He flagged down a passing waiter and offered a glass of wine to Gerald, who accepted dutifully and placed a coin on the server's tray.
"So, how have things been going?" James asked. "Still applying for research grants?"
"Yes." Gerald nodded. "Of course."
"Wasting your time with Temporal theory?" He asked with a chuckle.
Gerald scrunched his nose up with disdain at the older man. His theories were anything but; not with the greatest minds of the twenty first century trapped in the fissured time line.
"All the same, Sir James," Gerald finally managed to reply. "It's important research. If someone out there decides they're going to fracture time...there ought to be measures against it. There are always improvements to be made to the infrastructure."
Sir James chuckled again. "I don't think any one person is going to manage to fracture time, young man!" He said.
"Oh, you don't?" Gerald arched a well manicured eyebrow at him. "I beg to differ. I can prove it."
"Nobody's going to let you muck about with time, Moxley," Sir James replied. He thought it was all funny. He thought that Gerald was only playing with some kind of abstract idea. He, like most every layman, thought that time couldn't be moved. Time could be moved alright. It could be moved, and shaped, and molded to Gerald's liking. It could be broken, and most of all time could be erased; erased and replaced with Gerald's own vision for the present, and nobody would be the wiser; nobody except Gerald. He was beginning to wonder if that would be enough when everybody he knew thought he was nothing more than a child with impossible ideas. They would see about that.
He smiled impishly into his glass of wine.
"So, Where is Sir Phillip?" James inquired curiously and handily changing the subject. "He usually accompanies you to these events."
"Phillip?" Gerald laughed out loud and clear. Phillip was nobody.
"Oh, dear Sir Phillip," he continued. "I'm afraid the lad has taken a trip."
"And you didn't go with him?" James grinned with his reply.
"No," Gerald replied. "I thought he deserved a little time out...on his own, you know?"
"Ah, yes! Clever boy." Sir James winked in his direction. "You've done well with that one, sir."
"Oh," Gerald muttered. The truth was...he could have done so much better.
*****
"Do you even think this is Earth?" John asked as he looked out at the darkness. He had just spent an hour trying to explain time travel to a bunch of uncomprehending faces with empty expressions on them. Truth be told, he wasn't much for the fine details himself. Bertram had filled in the blanks for him, and Phillip stood at the back of the group shaking his head and rolling his eyes as they stumbled along.
Bertram consulted the computer. "I'm not sure. The map is all over the place. It's starting to ripple."
"Ripple?" John repeated then sighed and turned towards his partner. It was worse than they could have imagined. If the fissure was starting to cause ripples throughout time he wasn't sure how anything was ever going to be right again. "We could...not even exist here," John said.
"Doesn't matter," Bertram mumbled as he flicked through various holographic screens by touching them. "We exist sometime, and as long as that's true then we have hope."
"These ripples could erase us," John pointed out, but Bertram only ignored him.
He glanced up from his tinkering and stared at a point over John's shoulder. "Look at that."
John turned back towards the window and spied a horizon.
"Oh, thank god, there's a sun," he whispered more to himself than to Bertram.
"Blue sun," Bertram said as he noted the blueish-green glow starting to creep over the edge of the planet. "I've never seen a blue sun before."
"They're beautiful," John replied wistfully. He had been born on a blue sun planet. "It's the first good news we've gotten since this mess..."
Bertram consulted the computer.
"The atmosphere is breathable."
"Awesome. You think it's inhabited?"
"Well, this thing really can't detect life forms," Bertram replied. "You're lucky I had it fitted with the atmosphere upgrade. I mean, I had to after the last time you sent me out to the field. You jumped me right onto a chlorine planet..."
"It was a coordinate typo," John replied glumly. "I thought I'd been forgiven for that already?"
"I had to spend a whole month in plastic bubble with severe lung burns," Bertram snipped, but immediately soften when he noted the expression on John's face. "And you're right; I did forgive you."
"I should have been fired a long time ago," John said. "I keep fucking up and it gets people hurt."
"It's alright," Bertram muttered. "We're going to get out of this. Maybe nobody will even notice."
"Yeah, I doubt that will happen." John hung his head. "These ripples are small now, but they're going to be felt sooner or later."
"Look." Bertram ignored his partner's depressive state and pointed towards the window where the light was slowly but surely becoming brighter and brighter.
"Woods," John said as he spied the outline of trees in front of the window.
"Yep," Bertram nodded. "More good news."
"Where there are trees there is water."
"And food, and possibly civilization," Bertram said. "See, there's hope yet, John. We're going to fix this."
"I wish I had your optimism," John replied with a sad smile.
*****
Jerry had been outside for over an hour. He wasn't going to sit around, inactive, and wait for the detectives to tell him what to do. It was obvious that they were just about as clueless as to what was going on than anybody else. He waited until everybody's attentions were otherwise occupied. The kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant were huddled together in a corner, whispering about that mornings going on. The girl, Jody, was glaring evil eyes at the other girl, who was sobbing into the Mexican kid's arms. The future boy stood apart from them staring forlornly at the sobbing girl and her comforter. It was at the point at which Jerry realized that nobody was paying any attention to him that he decided to try going outside. It had been dark at the time, a pitch blackness so deep that he couldn't see his hand in front of him. He had only been in the presence of such darkness once in his life before. The family had taken a trip to South Dakota the year previously and taken a tour of the Crystal Caverns. Deep underneath the earth, where no light had threatened to permeate the black, it had been that dark. He hadn't even been able to see his hand in front of his face. It was that dark there in the place that they had come to rest.
Jerry found it fairly obvious that he was no longer at Knott's Berry Farm as soon as he stepped outside. It wasn't some cruel joke after all. No elaborate prank greeted him when he had opened the door and nearly fell three feet to the ground. They hadn't landed on top of anything, it was just that the entire building, foundation and all had been transported and that left ample space between the door that had once led to a hallway and the ground.
The ground was spongy and springy under foot. Jerry had reached out with his hand from the prone position he had landed in and inspected his surroundings. It was cold, the sponginess he had landed on was some kind of soil. It took him about forty five minutes to crawl around unseeing for things to begin to take shape. The planet was not without light. It existed He could make out the shape of trees, and rocks, and glowing eyes. Eyes in the darkness watched him carefully but kept their distance. He had been frightened at first but slowly became used to it, and as the sun crested...more gigantic than he had ever seen his own sun and a lot more blue, the eyes, two by two, disappeared.
It was a beautiful sight. Through all their family vacations throughout the country, he had never quite seen anything as amazing as that blue sunrise. Of course, having to vacation with his wife's family usually put a damper on any spectacular natural features that the United States had to offer. Constant browbeating and belittlement made even the Grand Canyon seem small. He smiled a little to himself and wondered if he was the only one who was just a little bit excited about the prospect of exploring a whole new world. They were like the intrepid explorers that came to America so many years before. He wandered over to the nearest tree and contemplated the branches. It seemed sturdy enough to climb and if he could make it then he would have a prime spot for viewing the sunrise on top of the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant's roof. Jerry had never been a particularly fit man, but he was willing to try. Without Esther at his side he felt like he was willing to try anything.
*****
Bertram and John stood by the exit door as they watched the group peering out the windows towards their new surroundings. They were going to have to keep them inside just a little bit longer. Organization was key if they were going to go out and explore the new land. Their first priority was to find food, and their second priority was to find civilization...if there was any to be found. Hopefully they would be able to find the means to repair the Time Travel Device and return the humans to their correct place in time and space. If not...the fissure would continue to erase time lines and replace them with new realities and the ripples would continue to spread out like a cancer, creating alternate dimensions that were not supposed to exist, and they wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.
"Okay, I know you all want to get outside and check things out," Bertram said. He smiled at them in a way that he thought would put them at ease. "The good news is that this isn't a dark planet. It's got a sun, and there is life here. We'll be able to survive if we have to."
Jody raised her hand then. A perplexed expression adorned her face. Bertram stared at her and waited for her to say something, but no words crossed her lips. She only tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to speak first.
"What's she doing?" Bertram whispered at John, who stood dutifully at his shoulder trying to look intimidating.
"You should pay attention in history class. Earthian customs; she wants you to call her name before she says anything," John replied.
"Really?" Bertram frowned. "Yeah, weird." He looked back towards Jody.
"Okay, Jody?"
"Yes, um...that's not a sun..."
"It's the sun," Bertram replied. "Well, it's the star of whatever the hell galaxy we've landed in. Obviously we're not on Earth. A hot burning sun doesn't ever turn into a cold burning one."
Jody raised her hand again.
"Jody," Bertram replied instantly. He looked to John for approval for quickly adapting to Earthian customs, and John only nodded and stifled a chuckle when Bertram turned his attention back to the group.
"Right, if it's cold...why isn't there like, ice and snow outside?"
"It's not cold," Phillip spoke up from his lonely corner. He stood there glowering, his arms crossed. Jody glared at him for answering her question then turned to Bertram, expecting him, as the figure of authority, to have a different answer: one she could believe.
"He's right," Bertram admitted. "It's not cold; it's just not as hot. It's won't get hotter than..." He paused, wondering what unit of temperature measure the gathered people used and found that he didn't remember. He turned to John for help. John leaned forward and whispered at him.
"These people, from this time...fucking crazy. They use all kinds of different measures for everything depending on where they live..."
"So you don't know California, 2008, then?"
"Ah, No," John confirmed, a bit embarrassed.
"You should have paid attention in history class," Bertram replied smugly.
"It won't get hot," Bertram finally addressed the crowd. "Mildly pleasant temperatures all year long. We'll go outside, and you'll be able to see. Inhabitable planets orbit a cold Sun much closer than a hot one. It's quite a spectacle, actually."
"Like you can reach out and touch it," John replied, thinking of the sun on his home planet that loomed so large overhead that it dominated most of the sky.
"Right, so we're going to need you to partner up...we've got to stick together through this. Can't have anyone wandering off by themselves, right? So, do that, and we'll go have a peek outside."
Jody raised her hand again. This time Bertram only waved his hand at her and nodded.
"How do you know we can breath out there?" she asked.
"Oh," Bertram smiled proudly. "I've analyzed the atmosphere, it's good..."
John smirked from behind him. "Actually, Bert, we would have died already if it was a hostile atmosphere. This hunk of building isn't exactly airtight."
Bertram blanched at his overlooking the obvious in favor of technical gadgets. He hadn't even thought of the lack of integrity a room, ripped out of a building in the twenty-first century would have.
"Anyway, so, Partner up and we can go outside," Bertram said.
*****
Jody approached Catherine cautiously. She knew she had said some harsh things earlier that day, and she hadn't meant them. It was only the beginnings of frustration starting to creep in on her. She had wrestled them back and was hoping that the other girl would accept her apology. Jody did not want to be partnered up with Ned or Jason no matter how nice and cute they were. Sleeping in a muddled pile with them for a few hours had been quite enough interaction for her to last quite a while.
"What do you want?" Catherine snapped at her as soon as it was apparent that Jody intended her as her target. Catherine stood, her body nestled snugly underneath David's arm as it had been for most of the night. She had barely faced away from him to look at Jody.
"I'm sorry," Jody said. "I didn't mean what I said earlier."
Catherine frowned. She knew it, but it didn't hurt any less. She and Jody had hit it off within minutes of meeting. To be turned on by the only group of people who were sort of familiar to her was scary. She wouldn't have known what to do with herself had David not been so nice.
"Look, we're all frustrated and tired," Jody said. "I know the floor of this place isn't the most comfortable thing..."
"You looked comfortable." Catherine replied, feeling the words slip out more snidely than she had intended.
"Jason and Ned?" Jody scoffed. "Ugh. They're just friends. It was cold...anyway, I'm apologizing. Can we be friends again?"
Catherine looked cautiously up at David who nodded at her. Apologies were good. He had a few of his own to make.
"We have to stick in this together," he spoke. "We just...we've got to get along. Can't have us splitting up like the time line right?"
"We hardly know each other," Catherine replied softly.
"We're human...from Earth, What's more important than that?" David asked.
"Aren't we all from Earth?" Jody asked.
"Who says?" David eyed the Detectives who stood near the door quietly chatting with Phillip.
"Them? I thought they were from the future?" Jody said.
"Maybe both," David pondered. "You should have raised your hand, Jody."
She grinned and laughed. "You're right, David. Y'know, it sure seemed to confuse the geeky one for some reason."
"Maybe they call on each other telepathically," Catherine added to the speculation with a laugh. "They don't even know the Fahrenheit scale for goodness sake!"
"Maybe they only measure temperature in 'Hot' and 'Not Hot' terms," Jody pondered. "Am I hot or not?"
The girls giggled manically, linked arms, and walked away towards the waiting Time Detectives chattering all the way.
"Sorry, Man," Ned, who had arrived behind David, spoke up as they watched the girls depart. Jason stood on his other side and shrugged.
"I'd partner up with you, but I gotta stick with my man, Jase," Ned said. "Guess you're stuck with the future freak."
"Don't call him that," David muttered.
"Hey, there's always Jerry," Jason replied sympathetically.
They all cast their eyes around the room but could see no sign of the older man.
"It's fine," David said with a shrug. "Phillip's not so bad. Maybe I'll learn something. I've never met a mathematician before."
"The kid is a mathematician?" Ned said in a perplexed manner while scratching at his head. "I can't even add."
"He's a temporal mathematician," Jason provided. "Don't you pay attention?"
"What's temporal mean?" Ned replied.
Jason eyed him up and down curiously.
"It's fancy future man talk for the word 'time'," Jason replied. "Now, come on. I could use a little fresh air." Ned followed dutifully along behind his pal leaving David alone. He sighed to himself and marched over to the time detectives. Everybody seemed to know that Phillip was from the future, but he wasn't sure that any of them but he and Catherine knew that he had been in on the plan to transport them through time.
Phillip barely let his attention drift from the Time Detectives and their conversation long enough to register David sidle up next to him. David said nothing. He only stood there expectantly waiting for Phillip to acknowledge him and accept him as his partner. Phillip said nothing. He addressed the Time Detectives instead.
"I think we should empty the champagne bottles..."
Bertram and John turned to stare at him.
"I don't think now is the time to be getting sloshed, kid," John said.
"That's not what I mean." Phillip rolled his eyes at them.
"I don't think it's such a bad idea," David offered helpfully.
The men from the future just turned and stared at him. They seemed to be doing a lot of that. He grinned nervously and chuckled slightly.
"Look," Phillip explained. "If you want to go out on an expedition. Well, I know we have to find food and water soon. So that's fine, but we're going to need to have something to carry the water in, right? Might as well get the kit ready while we're here, so we don't have to come running back should we find what we're lookin' for. Can't carry it in our hands, right? We may as well go out prepared, yeah?"
"He's kind of right," Bertram admitted. He hated that the kid seemed to have more foresight then they did. It was a continuing embarrassment in front of the twenty first century humans.
"Alright," John heaved a heavy sigh. He left his partner's side and led Jason, Ned, and the girls to the supply closet. They could hear Ned griping about the waste of good alcohol from across the room.
"What are you doing here?" Bertram finally asked David, who had remained calmly by Phillip's side.
"I need a partner," David said.
"What about Catherine?" Phillip replied glumly.
"She made up with her friend," David told him. "We decided that you're right, Detective Powers. We've got to stick together in this, and we shouldn't be making enemies."
"Is that so?" Phillip frowned at him.
"Yeah." David nodded towards him. He tried to smile, but Phillip only scowled in return.
"Not him," Bertram spoke up, interrupting David's veiled attempt at apology.
"Why not?" David asked. "There isn't anybody else."
"That bald guy," Bertram replied.
"Jerry?" David said. "He's not here."
"What?" Bertram said. His eyes grew wide in shock, and he gripped his hair with his hands. "You've fucking got to be kidding me. What do you mean, 'he's not here'."
"I mean just that," David replied with a shrug. "He must have slipped out when nobody was looking"
"Crap..." Bertram looked around in a panic. John was busy helping the Knott's Berry Farm gang empty out bottles of cheap champagne and Jerry was indeed nowhere to be seen.
"Just..." he flailed his arms about, desperately gesturing in hopes that a plan might suddenly appear in his brain, but there was nothing.
"Just stay here," he finally addressed David. "Do not let him out of your sight!" He pointed to Phillip who only deepened his scowl.
And then Bertram opened the door to the outside and promptly dropped out of the building...landing face first on the spongy ground with a muffled thud. When he looked up he saw David and Phillip peering down at him desperately trying to control their laughter.
"Hilarious," Bertram replied. He stood up and brushed himself off; an attempt to somehow regain his dignity, but it only caused more laughter.
Up in the building David turned to Phillip, a bright smile on his face. They had been through so much already, and it felt good to have a genuine laugh.
"Are these guys really our best chance of getting back?" he asked.
Phillip faced David himself and found that they were only inches apart. It would have been so easy for him to give in to temptation, but he quickly turned away to answer the question instead.
"Yes," he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.
"We are so screwed," David decided. His smile disappeared along with his laughter. It wasn't funny anymore.
"Do you need help?" He called down to Bertram.
Bertram only shook his head and commenced calling out Jerry's name.
"We are screwed," Phillip said as he watched the man's peculiar searching technique.
To everyone's surprise, especially Bertram's, Jerry called back almost instantly. The man appeared over the roof of the building and pointed towards the sky.
"Hey guys, you gotta come up here and see this," he shouted down at them.
Bertram tossed a glance around his surroundings unfavorably then asked how Jerry had gotten up on the roof in the first place.
"Climbed the tree," he shouted down with a grin. He'd never climbed a tree before, somehow he felt lighter and fitter than he ever had and had managed to scale the tree in record time.
Bertram finally shrugged. He glanced towards the doorway and was going to ask if the boys needed help, but David and Phillip were already on the ground.
"So we're going up the tree?" Phillip asked breathlessly. Bertram nodded and both boys took off at a run and climbed up as quickly as two cats. Bertram rolled his eyes. Gravity was a funny thing when there was slightly less of it than one was used to.
Jerry welcomed them to his rooftop perch and pointed at the rising sun.
"It's huge," David marveled.
"I bet you say that to all the guys," Phillip replied before he had a chance to think. He hadn't managed to be that cheeky in a long while. The mask had only changed his physical appearance. In order to pretend to be Sir Phillip of Clim-Port he had to be on his best behavior. When he was at Gerald's side, attending formal functions as his partner, anything less would have been suspicious.
David turned from the looming blue sunrise to stare at Phillip, who shrugged then smiled.
"What happened to your accent?" David said. He had changed the subject instead of getting upset about the blatant flirting. Jerry only sat a few feet away pretending not to eves drop.
"This isn't an accent," Phillip admitted.
"Come on," David replied. "Haven't you done enough lying?"
"I didn't lie," Phillip retorted. "I just didn't answer your questions, because you don't really want to know the answers."
"Oh, god, that is stupid." David turned his full attention to Phillip. "I already know you had something to do with this whole mess. I'm not an idiot, okay?"
"I know you're not," Phillip replied. "You're right, and I'm sorry."
Jerry remained intent on the sun even though what he was hearing was news to him.
"Everything you said was right," Phillip hissed. "We fucked with the time line because we wanted to have fun, and to prove that we could do it without getting caught."
"Prove it to who?" David asked, not lowering his voice a bit.
"Ourselves."
"What's the fucking point then?" David raged.
Jerry felt the urge to speak up before one of the boys shoved the other off the roof, but his attempt at diplomacy was hastily shoved aside.
"Because we can," Phillip replied defiantly. "That's the fucking point, as you say."
"Come on guys," Jerry spoke up again. "Look at the sun. It's beautiful...it's...blue..."
David glanced up at the sky yet again and sighed. "No enemies." He muttered to himself. "You're really trapped here, Phillip?"
"I really am," Phillip confirmed. "I was used and I was dumped, and this is my real accent. I had been wearing a mask...the device that makes you desirable...changes your appearance. That was how Mary tricked you all into this room. Trust me, that woman needed a lot of help. It's a cheap and easy way around plastic surgery in the future, but with the right programming and the wrong hands it can do more than that. It sort of short circuits people's brains...makes them think you are the most desirable thing in the universe, but it can't change an accent or your own behavior. I had to adopt the American one to fit in; old habits die hard. I suppose I'm starting to ease back in to my own. I'm from the future, do you really think we speak like you do in the future? We may have fucked up a time line, but occasionally the future evolves on its own."
"That's nice," David dismissed his lecture. "Are you really sorry?"
"Yes!" Phillip nodded positively. "I really am. This is a fine mess we've gotten into. Depending on how it goes in the future...if Gerald likes the way things change because you've gone...then I'm starting to doubt he'd fix the time line at all."
"You're just starting to think that?" Jerry asked. "Seriously?"
Phillip only shrugged and turned towards the sun.
"My galaxy has four stars," he changed the subject. "My planet is the only one that is hospitable towards life. The others...they're too close to the suns to sustain anything besides dirt. They call it the Golden Utopia because the suns are always rising or setting. Everything is always bathed in a golden light."
"I still can't believe I'm on another planet." David lay down on the roof and admired the sun. "I can't believe you're from another planet...and the future. Shit. I was thinking about a career in landscaping yesterday. How can I ever go back to that?"
"I know what you mean," Jerry replied. "I was a contractor stuck in a dead end marriage yesterday...You met my wife's family, right?"
David chuckled to himself then replied in the positive.
"This is amazing," Jerry said. "Us being stuck here might be the end of time as we know it..."
Phillip laughed at that.
"Time never ends," he said. "It only gets bigger. Sometimes it gets rewritten..."
"Okay, so time gets rewritten." Jerry shrugged. He felt no ill will for being corrected. "It's still the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my life! Maybe I'll be able to write a best selling novel one day."
"Maybe you will," Phillip said. He was amused, for he knew exactly what contributions each of them would make towards their society. He wasn't going to tell them though, and he hoped they wouldn't ask. He didn't want to cause any further time ripples if he could help it.
"Yeah right," Jerry rellied with a snort.
"Come on, Jer," David consoled him. "It's never too late to follow a dream."
"Thank you, Mr. After School Special, but do I need to remind you that your life isn't half over? And you haven't spent most of it languishing in a totally empty and unsatisfying relationship with a psycho from hell, have you?"
"No," David shook his head. "I haven't. I'm concentrating on my studies right now, unlike some twin sisters I could meant... Oh, Mimi." He frowned. He hadn't thought of his twin sister since they'd landed. The thought of never having to wait in line outside the door to their one bathroom was suddenly the worst possible thing he could imagine.
Phillip reached out and tentatively patted David's shoulder. Jerry watched them and smiled on.
"She'll be okay," Phillip said.
"You don't understand," David replied with a choked sob. "She's my twin, and I miss her. Stupid eyebrows and boyfriends aside. I don't think I'm going to be okay."
"I'm going to go back down." He announced after a moment. "I think I need some time alone."
"I can't let you do that," Phillip replied.
"What?" David scowled at him. "I just need a little time..."
"David, the Detectives said we need a partner if we're going to go wandering around these woods and I think they're right."
"Oh, please," David rolled his eyes. "Master of Temporal Scheming, I think you can take care of yourself."
"Scheming is one thing," Phillip said. "Getting eaten by a giant bipedal saber-toothed beastie, or getting lost in the woods is another."
"I saw eyes," Jerry said.
Phillip and David took a moment from their sniping to consider what Jerry had just said.
"Eyes?" Phillip finally asked.
"In the forest, when it was dark." Jerry replied. "Giant yellow eyes. It was kind of scary."
Phillip and David then looked at each other and grinned.
"What now?" Jerry asked.
"You think scary..." David started.
And Phillip finished his sentence, "...and we think dinner."
*****
Jody and Catherine didn't have to go far to find fresh water. They may have only been half a mile out when they ran into a stream. They gleefully filled their empty champagne bottles then looked back towards where they came from.
"We're not lost are we?" Catherine asked.
"Nah," Jody said. "You worry too much, you know that?"
"I can't help it," she replied. "None of this really makes any sense. I'm just kind of going with it."
"Me too."
"It's funny," Catherine said. "Us girls down here gathering the water while the boys are goofing off on top of the roof. What the heck do you think they're doing up there?"
"Looking at that funny sun," Jody guessed with a shrug. "It's not that exciting. It's only a star."
"Yeah," Catherine laughed. "But we've never been this close to a star before...did you see how big it looked?"
Jody shrugged and painted a smile on her face. She was going to act unimpressed with the future if it killed her.
"Never mind that space business," she changed the subject. "So...David? He's cute, right?" She grinned at Catherine as the girl flushed embarrassment.
"He is," she said. "But he likes that future guy."
"Seriously?" Jody marveled. "I had no idea."
"He wouldn't shut up about him," Catherine admitted. "It was only obvious after a while. Why do you think I went with you in the first place?"
"You're still mad at me?" Jody asked.
"Nah." Catherine shrugged. "Stealing the thingy was a stupid thing to do. I know it now. Imagine working with parts you can't even see? Crazy. I wish I'd have just stayed put and waited for the detectives to tell us something. I think they're kind of stupid, but they still know more about this stuff than we do."
"Yeah," Jody nodded in agreement. "It's not your fault though. If I'd have known what that thing was I might have tried it myself."
