Emperors of Time (19 page)

Not us… 
us!

He motioned
between himself and Rose.

We go home,
get some stuff…  come back here a year ago
to hide the stuff
somewhere.  You and Tim find it and use it.

Tim read what
Billy had written.  He said, “I guess you’re right Billy,” and pointed at
the sheet to indicate that what he was saying could apply to both the written
as well as the verbal conversation they were having. 

Rose scratched
her head, and tapped her foot on the wooden floorboard below them.  Then,
she put up a finger, grabbed the pen, and wrote
Floorboards!

Billy took the
pen, wrote,
This one,
and tapped a floorboard, one that was under the
bed and out of the way, twice with his foot.
We’ll loosen it when we go
back, so when it’s loose, that should mean we’ve delivered our package. 
Into the past.  This still freaks me out.

“At least we get
to eat this good breakfast,” said Rose.  “You have to admit, if the
Emperors of Time were all bad, they’d make us eat gruel, not bagels, fruit, and
coffee.”

Rose took the
pen.

Best idea
we’ve had, and time is running out.  I’m a little surprised the Emperors
didn’t consider this, but maybe they didn’t think dumb kids could think under
pressure…  or didn’t know we had more than one Dominus.  Let’s
vote.  Tie goes to… coin flip?  Hope for no tie.  You first,
Miss logical mind.

She handed the
pen to Julie.

Julie thought
for a moment.

Bombing in
our time has probably stopped, if they were aiming for us.  I figure it
should… maybe… hopefully… work.  Better than nothing, right?  I vote
YES
.

She handed the
pen to Tim. 

Tim
shrugged. 
Action is good.  Trying to taze those thugs in the
hallway…  also good. 
YES.

Rose snatched
the pen as Tim was handing it to Billy.

Come on, he
came up with the idea.  He’ll vote yes, I want to cast the deciding
vote: 
YES!

Julie took the
pen from Rose.

How will you
get back in the room?
wrote Julie with a questioning facial expression to
match.

We’re taking
the shower head.  Something we can carry with us and has always been in
the room, plus I bet the bathroom isn’t under surveillance.  So, forgive
me for being uncouth, but Rose and I need a plausible reason to pretend to be
in the bathroom for a…  longish time…  

“Well, Rose,”
said Billy.  “I see no reason why we can’t enjoy ourselves as long as
we’re here…  Did you want to go make out with me in the bathroom?”

Rose laughed and
spit out a little bit of her bagel.  Then she blushed a little bit and
responded, “Yeah, sure, why not?  But can I finish this delicious
breakfast first?”

Billy
shrugged.  “I guess so,” he said.  “But make it quick, I’m in a
hurry.”

Tim investigated
the floorboard again.  It was still firmly in place.  Of course, this
wasn’t surprising.  Billy and Rose had only been gone for a few
hours.  In this time, Julie and he had talked about a lot of things,
including the breakfast, the view from the window, and how awkward it was that
Billy and Rose had been in the bathroom for over three hours together. 
This got even more awkward when Julie decided that she had to actually use the
bathroom for… bathroom things, and she had the following fake one-sided
conversation for the benefit of any recording devices that might be listening
in.

“Oh my gosh
that’s gross!  No, don’t go into the room, Tim doesn’t want to see you
that way either… just get behind the shower-curtain and don’t pay attention!’

Tim tried to
think about what they could talk about that would both keep them from dying of
boredom and be mundane enough for the Emperors of Time not to care about it if
they heard. 

“So, ah-- 
what’d you see in there?  Anything worth discussing?” asked Tim
offhandedly.

Julie giggled
slightly.  “I won’t put you through that, young Timothy.  You’ve been
through quite a lot today, anyway,” she said.

“Great…” said
Tim.  “Well, you’ve totally just killed half an hour of potential
conversation.”

Julie
smiled.  “Do you still want to know why I picked you to come on this
little expedition?  I know I kind of blew you off before when you asked
me, so…”

Tim perked
up.  “Yeah!  I’m still curious.”

“Well…  if
there’s anybody listening, this might come as a bit of a shock, ‘cause I’m not
sure that anybody knew that I’m from a different timeline except for me, you,
and…  the two kids making out in the bathroom,” she said.

“Either way,
you’ve said it now.  So now they know that you’re from a timeline where
Lincoln wasn’t assassinated because Hopkins brought you back in time to see him
change it,” said Tim.  He figured it didn’t matter anyway, and if it
confused anyone who was listening, that was fine.  It could actually be a
good thing if it kept them from questioning the teens’ made up story about how
Billy and Rose were hiding out in the bathroom, rather than in the 21st century
looking for weapons to smuggle into this hotel room one year in the past. 

“Right. 
Well, in my timeline, things were mostly okay, aside from the fact that we were
at war, just like in your timeline.  But in mine, more people got drafted
into the army.  Don’t worry, this comes around to involving you, but this is
necessary background,” said Julie.

“Yeah, and we’ve
got so much else to talk about right now,” said Tim sarcastically.  “Keep
going.  I like listening to you talk.”

Julie rewarded
him with a smile and continued.  “So, in my timeline, the draft mostly took
people who weren’t functioning well in normal life.  Because of the
technology we would use in the wars, the foot soldiers in my timeline usually
didn’t need to be smart or particularly obedient, because they were mostly just
cannon fodder, used to distract the enemy from the heavier technologies. People
who aren’t obedient usually died pretty quick, but not before serving their
purpose.  So a big source of soldiers was to take people who dropped out,
failed out, or got kicked out of high school.  That and criminals ranging
from shoplifting, DUI, and drug possession on up usually kept enlistment up,
and crimes down,” said Julie.

Tim
nodded.  “It’s not nice, but it has a cold logic to it.”

Julie
shrugged.  “I guess, but no matter what Russell’s letter says, logic only
goes so far with me.  Especially when my family’s involved.  Did you
know I have a cousin?”

Tim thought for
a moment.  “I think you’ve mentioned him once or twice…  Lives in
Iowa?  You told me how you visited him once and went to a football game
with him this year.”

“Ah, yeah… 
He’s a college freshman in this timeline.  I had to actually search old
e-mails from this timeline to find that out.  I was terrified that maybe
something would happen that he wouldn’t exist here at all…  Him or someone
else I cared about…  And now we’re changing the timeline again, so he
could disappear this time…”

“Well, Hopkins
said the Emperors would probably preserve your family tree, since it’s also
Russell’s.  So your grandparents almost definitely met…  Your cousin
is probably always going to exist,” said Tim, trying to be comforting.

“Yeah, it’s the
‘probably’ that gets me.  But we can’t worry about that now, anyway. 
My point is, he wasn’t a college freshman in my timeline, he was a nineteen
year old high school senior who was held back in 9th grade and spent more time
goofing off than was good for him.  November 1st of this year, he got
drafted.  They put them through basic training pretty fast… They were
mostly just looking for warm bodies, and you don’t need much training for
that.  Anyway, by the first week of December, he was dead,” she said.

“Whoa…  I’m
sorry,” said Tim sincerely.

Julie raised her
eyebrows.  “Don’t be.  He’s alive again now, right?  In college
in Iowa. I mean, it’s super weird that he’s alive again, but I think it’s good
news.  In my previous timeline, obviously, I was really upset about
it.  His family had lived in town before they moved out to the Midwest,
and even though he was two years older than me, he was like my first real friend. 
He moved when he was eight, but over the summers, either his family would drive
out to us or we’d drive out to see him, and we’d always hang out together
during that week, catching up.  He was a good guy.  Maybe not super
ambitious, but he certainly didn’t deserve to die for that, ya know?”

“Of course,”
said Tim.  “That’s horrible.”

“Right. 
Well.  I was angry.  Like irrationally, ridiculously, destructively
angry.  So, I stole a can of spray-paint from the art room and decided to
vent a little bit.  In retrospect, it wasn’t a good idea, obviously… 
But it was after school hours, and the hallway I was in was completely
deserted, so I figured I’d be okay, you know?  But apparently, you had
debate practice that night. And apparently-- you told me this later-- apparently
you like to walk the hallways sometimes when you get stuck on a problem in
debate?”

“Sounds like
me,” said Tim with a bit of a laugh. 

“Right,
so…  I was literally just finishing up the artwork…  I won’t quote it
directly, because it was maybe a bit vulgar, but it had something to do with
the American Military Machine and on what part of my body it could kiss
me.  I’ll give you a hint.  It wasn’t my face.”

“I get your
drift,” Tim replied.  “And I saw?”

“I didn’t even
hear you coming.  I mean… maybe I’m not exactly a criminal mastermind, you
know?  But when I
did
see you, I knew I was in real trouble. 
I dropped the can and actually started to wonder if there was any chance you
hadn’t recognized me…  You know--  even though we’d gone to the same
school for about a dozen years and had talked several times...  But your
first question was to ask whether I needed a lookout.  I said I didn’t, I
was done.  Then I walked away.  Not that I didn’t want to talk to
you, but I was embarrassed you caught me,” Julie said.  She seemed a
little embarrassed even now, recounting the story.

“I sound way
classier than you in that timeline,” Tim said.

“That’s not
all,” Julie said.  “I’d found a place in the building that wasn’t under
surveillance.  But the principal was furious.  I guess it doesn’t
look good for him either if stuff like that is written in his hallways. 
The school offered a five thousand dollar reward for anyone who could testify
and pass a lie detector test as to who had done it.”

“Hmmm… 
Five thousand dollars could certainly get you a lot of nights at the 1916
YMCA…  But a lie detector test?  In a school?” asked Tim.

“Not so uncommon
in my timeline,” said Julie.  “But if you’d told…  I’d’ve been in
huge trouble…  Probably expelled, maybe even drafted myself.  But you
never told.  And that’s how we became friends.”

“That’s
awfully
intense,” said Tim.  “In our timeline, we just worked together on a class
project once and you started sitting with me at lunch.  Thought I was
funny or something, maybe.”

Julie touched
his arm.  “See, maybe we’re meant to be close to each other, no matter
what timeline we were in.  Good thing, too, because I would have seemed
super crazy to you had you hardly known me at all before I started saying I
could travel through time.”

“Yeah,” agreed
Tim pensively. 

“What’s wrong?”
asked Julie.

“It’s just a
weird thing to think about…  It was a different version of me in your
timeline.  And a different version of you in mine.  Does that
mean…  I mean, what happened to the other Julie?” Tim asked.  After
all, it was the other Julie who he had first had a crush on, who he had tried
so hard to make laugh at lunch for weeks.

“Yeah…” said
Julie, after a pause.  “I’ve thought about this, obviously.  It’s hard
not to, walking around in a world of doppelgangers who were never exactly like
the people I left behind.  Now, of course, some people literally only
exist in one timeline and not the other.  But the ones who still exist in
the new timeline-- I feel like they’re still basically the same.  I mean,
you can chalk up the differences to different things that happened to
them.  Like I never spray-painted obscenities in the hallway because the
draft wasn’t so prevalent and discipline in public schools was a little more
lax so my cousin was able to thrive.  But I’m still the same person who I
was your timeline…  You know, deep down.  Does that make sense? 
I mean…  I can tell that you’re the same person I can trust with any
secret I have.”

Tim
nodded.  “I guess that makes sense.  I can tell you’re the same
person I knew before,” Tim agreed.  She made his stomach feel similarly
fluttery, anyway, and he figured that must count for something.

There was a
knock at the door and a turning of the lock.  Tim nearly wet himself. 
They had been tense about getting discovered in their plan ever since Billy and
Rose had left, and now it seemed that their fears had come true.

“Lunch,” said
Julie, her eyes wide. 

For just a
moment, Tim thought about the possibility of simply not taking the food. 
But that would probably look suspicious and there was no need to risk it… 
They had only ever cracked open the door so far.  If their luck held, the
thugs would still not look at the full room. 

As it turned
out, not only did the person in the hallway only open the door a little bit
without investigating the room, the fact that they thought there were twice as
many of them there as there actually were meant that they had more food, which
included delicious sandwiches, probably made in the hotel’s own
restaurant.  Again, Tim had to admit that if he was going to be captured,
the Emperors of Time were not bad folks to get captured by.  Still, he
hoped he and Julie would have made their way out of the room before dinner was
served.  They ate in silence for a bit, and then went back to filling the
silence with chitchat. 

It was weird
having to have a fake conversation with Julie, because there was so much he
actually wanted to say to her.  Not even about the mission, necessarily,
he wanted to say plenty of other stuff to her as well.  But it occurred to
him that telling Julie how amazing he thought she was would be a bit out of
context when they were being held captive, no matter how nice a hotel room they
were in.  Besides, at any moment, the thugs might come storming in,
alerted by the Emperors of Time that there was no way that Rose and Billy were
still in the bathroom.  It would be quite a mood-killer if the Emperors of
Time interrupted some intense moment.

So they didn’t
have any deep conversation, just kept talking about small things like the food,
the weather, books they had each read (this was actually interesting because
the authors from their timelines were sometimes different).  And they kept
hoping for their luck to hold. 

And it did,
until finally, at three-thirty, Tim felt the floor-board again with his
foot…  And it moved.