Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time (3 page)

“Could be.  It might not even have been implicit. 
I mean, it makes sense that less than a decade after the Mexican-American War,
the party of Pierce, the War’s hero, would do something to get another swing at
Mexico.”

“And all this made the Civil War not happen?” asked Julie,
who seemed to be trying both to redirect the conversation to get it back on
track and to actually understand what Rose was talking about.

“It made it so it didn’t happen in 1861, anyway,” Rose said,
as she paged through the book a bit more.  Soon, she found a heading that
caught her attention, and summarized what was underneath it.  “In 1890,
the country was extra-unified after a second Mexican-American War.  This
one was caused by Mexico’s president declaring war on the United States. 
That doesn’t sound like something that would have happened in our timeline,
even without the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  But it could’ve been something else
that the Emperors caused in this timeline.”

“All right,” Billy said, impatiently.  “So we’re pretty
confident that this Kansas Compromise happening instead of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act is what made it so the Civil War didn’t happen?”

“Yeah, has to be,” Tim said.  “The bill was debated in
the Senate, under the same president who presided over the Kansas-Nebraska act
in our timeline, Pierce.”

Rose brought the conversation back to the second Mexican
War.  “It makes sense that the Emperors would want a second
Mexican-American War.  It seems like their overall goal is to make the
United States strong as early as possible. Taking another swing at Mexico would
have been a relatively easy way to do that in the mid-nineteenth century.”

Tim returned to his textbook.  “Right.  It looks
like by 1890, the United States had acquired all of Mexico as territories.” 
At this point, he flipped through a few more chapters.  This textbook gave
a new map every time the United States gained foreign territory.  He found
the next map and announced, “Get this:  In 1914, instead of the Great War,
there was a war with Great Britain against Germany, but in this one the United
States allied with Germany.  When the war ended, Germany took over Britain
and her overseas colonies except for Canada, which the United States
received.” 

“All right, look,” said Billy, a bit irritably.  “It
seems to me that we know now where history changed, even if I’m not quite clear
how avoiding the Civil War leads to war with Britain-”

“That wouldn’t have been the only change there was. 
Hopkins told us that there would have been several other changes, too, along
the timeline.  But we only need to change the first one back, because the
first change made it so that the right conditions existed for the rest of the
changes,” Rose said.

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Billy said, with a shrug. “My point
is, we’re done now.  We don’t need to debate about the ins and outs of the
new world history because we’re about to change it back anyway.  We just
need to--”

“Hey guys,” Julie said from over by the window.  “We’ve
got a problem.”  She reached into her pocket to find her Dominus
Temporis.        

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked.

“We’ve got three police cars coming at us from a block
away,” Julie said.

“Seriously?  Are you sure?” Billy asked.

“Assuming that cars with flashers on top and the word
‘Police’ written in big letters on the side are still police cars in this
timeline, then yes, I’m sure.”

Digging

“They’re definitely onto us,” said Rose, her voice wavering.

“That or the antique store is being robbed,” registered Tim,
as the cars pulled closer.

“We’ve got to time-jump, right?” Billy asked.  “Can we
go back to, say, one year ago?  We probably wouldn’t have been wanted for
treason yet.”

“I think most of what’s in here would have been here then,”
said Rose.  The teens jumped back from the window and drew the blinds as
the cars stopped across the street.

“You should be the one to picture this place last
week…  You’d know a good time when they wouldn’t be in the room, and we’d
have been in school, so we don’t run into ourselves in town” said Julie. 
There was a harsh knock at the front door of the shop.  They heard a
muffled response from Uncle Patrick, but didn’t want to stick around to hear
the rest of the confrontation.

“Sure,” said Rose as Julie handed her one of the two Domini
Temporis that they had.   Rose cringed.  She had never been the
one who had controlled the Dominus before. She replaced the nerves apparent on
her face with a steely frown of concentration as she received the round
metallic microchip.  The Dominus would allow Rose and anyone she was
touching to travel back in time to any place and time where a chosen object had
been.

As they linked hands, Rose closed one hand around the
Dominus, touched a nearby bookshelf, and squinted in concentration. 

“Did it work?” Rose asked.  Most of the times that Tim
had time-travelled, he had also changed location, but now, they were still in
the same library-like room in the upstairs of the antique shop.

Tim took a look around the room.  “It must have,” he
noticed.  “Those books we got down aren’t sitting on the floor anymore,
they’re on the bookshelf.  And look, there’s no newspapers over there,
and…”

“And my cell phone says it’s 8 o’clock in the morning,”
Billy said, with an air of finality.  “I guess they do change
automatically when we travel through time.  It makes sense, though, ‘cause
I have mine set to automatically sync the date and time over the internet.”

“Right,” Julie said, putting her hand to her chest. 
“Geez, my heart’s still racing.  We were in that time  for less than
twelve hours and the Emperors of Time already had people out to arrest us.”

“Sure,” Tim agreed.  “So that’s clearly their plan-- to
catch us-- what’s ours?”

“Oh come on, why’s everyone looking at me?” Julie asked,
annoyed.

“You’ve been doing this time-traveling thing longer than the
rest of us,” Tim said. 

“Longer by like a day.  It’s not my fault that I met
Hopkins before you did,” she countered.  She paused, biting her lip. 
“But that’s what we need to do, obviously.  Meet Hopkins, just like we
were going to do before.  Unless there were any objections?”

“I don’t think there’s any ‘obviously’ about it,” Billy
said.  He shook his head.  “Any world where I’m traveling through
time to go meet someone from the year 2347 isn’t one where the word ‘obviously’
applies.  But I agree with the plan.   We’re not going to him
empty handed anymore, so we have no reason not to meet him.”

“Whoa, now,” Rose said, sticking her tongue out.  “No
need to argue, we’re all suggesting the same plan.  Now, since I got us
here at eight, my aunt and uncle won’t be in the shop yet, so we can just sneak
right out, but we should already be at school, ‘cause it’s a Tuesday. 
Let’s go.”

“So, wait,” said Billy.  “Why does it matter so much if
we’re in school already?”

“Well, just, our past selves would be really freaked out if
we ran into them.  I’d probably report us to the police or something,”
Julie said.

“Oh, yeah…  That makes sense,” Billy decided.

There was no further discussion.   Julie seemed
happy not to be the one leading for a change.  Tim had known Rose for less
than two weeks, but this was the most determined that he had ever seen her, so
he figured it was best not to question her.  Tim guessed that Billy’s
thought process was something similar.

It was about a half hour walk between the antique shop and
Julie’s house, and the four teens spent the time rehashing the events in 1916
that had led to them getting back to their own time.  This was probably
fair, since they hadn’t had much time to process it.  After all, less than
24 hours ago, according to their own personal timelines, they had all been
locked in a hotel room while a bunch of thugs in the next room worked on
building a bomb that would change the outcome of the 1916 election and American
history in general.  But Tim was still a bit frustrated because all the
chatter from his friends meant he couldn’t get much of a word in edgewise
concerning how excited he was about the prospect of spending some time further
in the past to correct the changes the Emperors had made to the mid-1800s.

Downtown was deserted this time of day.  In their town,
downtown was just a fancy name for a couple blocks of Main Street where the
eight or so main commercial offerings were.  As they strolled down the
streets, they seemed almost eerily empty.  Once, they spotted a car coming
toward them. 

“Off the road!” cautioned Rose.

When Billy responded by raising his eyebrows, Rose shook her
head as she pushed Billy off the road and down a little hill beside it. 
Julie and Tim followed as Rose explained, “We’re walking through our hometown
where people know us, and even though we’re not being pursued by the cops
anymore, we’re still truant from school.  If we get caught, we’re going to
have a crazy time explaining why we’re two places at once.”

Everyone took a few steps away from the road, turning their
backs to the oncoming car, hoping that no one would recognize them.  The
car didn’t slow down as it passed, which the teens took as a good sign. 
Either way, after the car passed, they were a little more alert as they
continued to Julie’s house, staying further from the street and making
themselves inconspicuous when a car passed.  Luckily, by eight o’clock
this far from Harrisburg, most commuters using this road had already made it
out of town by now. 

Soon enough, they arrived at Julie’s house.  They snuck
around to the back, with Julie glancing nervously at the windows to make sure
nobody was looking back at them.  “Even though it’s a school day, I know
Mikey claimed he was sick a lot in my timeline, so he was out of school a good
bit.

“What are we going to dig with?” asked Billy.

“There’s shovels in the garage.  In my timeline, my
family leaves a spare key under a mat on the back porch.  We’ll give it a
try, and if it’s not there we’ll smash a window.  It’s not like we’ll be around
long enough to get yelled at for it,” Julie reasoned.  “All we’ve got to
do now is make sure neither of my parents stayed home with Mikey today. 
If there’s no cars in the driveway, we should be alright, at least assuming my
father keeps the garage as messy in this timeline as in mine so that nobody
could park there.”

They snuck around to the front of the house.  As Tim
tried not to feel foolish crouching behind a lilac bush on the side of the
house like an incompetent criminal in broad suburban daylight, he made a small
but helpful discovery.  “There’s a window here,” he told Julie, as he
turned around and peered into it.

“Oh, hey, that’s right.  I hardly ever go into the
garage, so I forgot,” said Julie.  There wasn’t much light in the garage,
but they were able to see enough to notice that it was overly cluttered, and
there was no car in it. 

The driveway was also clear, and a quick survey of nearby
houses showed that the cars were not in the driveways and the shades were
mostly closed.

So it was with confidence that she wouldn’t be seen that
Julie approached the back porch.  “Ah-ha!” yelled Julie triumphantly as
she moved the mat and found a silver house key.

It was a bit easier digging now than the last time they had
searched for a message from Steven Hopkins, because this time Billy was there,
too.  Besides, the last time they had dug back here, they had been doing
it with Julie’s parents’ permission, under the pretense of working on an
archaeology project for social studies class, so they’d used little
trowels.  Now, they were taking turns wielding two large shovels. 
Still, Billy was definitely the most athletic of the four of them, so he was
using a shovel most of the time, as the other three teens took turns with one
of the shovels and occasionally relieved Billy of his. 

“So is this why you guys have me on your time-travel
team?  Because I’m good at digging?” asked Billy during one of the times
he was taking a break.

“Ask Julie, it was her idea,” said Tim.  After Julie
was recruited, she first chose Tim because he knew history, she trusted him,
and they had been really close in the timeline she’d originally come
from.  She was from a different timeline because Hopkins had recruited her
by showing her how he fixed her own timeline by ensuring that John Wilkes Booth
was able to assassinate Lincoln.  He knew that by the time she got back to
her own time, the Emperors would have changed the timeline again to suit their
needs, but he sent her back with the instructions to recruit three friends who
could help her fight back against the Emperors.  Rose had been Julie’s
second choice, an obvious one since they’d been best friends for about ten
years in each timeline.

Julie groaned.  “You two both agreed that he was a good
choice.”

“I was just kidding,” Tim said.  “Of course you made
the right decision.  He saved our whole mission with the idea to bring
stuff back to the room from the future.”

“I just wondered why you picked me in the first place,
that’s all,” said Billy.

“Well,” said Julie, now less defensive, “I knew you pretty
well in the other timeline, so I know you’re a good guy, and smarter than you
let on in school.  I saw you on the basketball team enough to know that
you’re determined and a good team player.  Plus, you’re right, it doesn’t
hurt having someone who’s a bit athletic on our side.”

“Fair enough,” said Billy.  As if to demonstrate her
point, he grabbed his shovel back from Rose, and started digging again.

By nine o’ clock, they hit a small tin box, and by nine
fifteen they had dug it out. 

Billy sighed with relief and said, “About time, too.  I
thought I was going to get a blister.”

“I kept
telling
you I’d take the shovel!” Rose
replied, shaking her head.

Billy shrugged.  “Doesn’t matter.  Now we open it,
right?”

“Right,” Tim agreed.  He grabbed the box and handed it
to Julie.  “It was in your yard, so you get to open it.”

Julie glared, but opened the box anyway.  All that was
in the box was a postcard and a small piece of concrete.  Looking puzzled
by the piece of concrete, Julie took out the postcard first.  On it was a
picture of a city.  Tim wouldn’t have known what city he was looking at if
there hadn’t been text overlaid on the bottom of the picture that said,
“Washington DC, April 21 1986, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr Memorial Unveiling.”

Everyone looked at the postcard’s front for a moment before
Julie turned it over.  On the back were just a few scribbled lines. 
The four teens huddled together to read it.

I have had a long day, and have much work yet to do, so I
must keep this brief.  I had to buy this postcard as a collectible in
1987, because I will not be able to change events in 1986 more than once. 
Now, I have written, and will bury it, and by the time you meet me, I will have
traveled back to 1986 to meet you at the spot where the chunk of concrete,
which I also collected in 1987, used to be.  When you read this letter,
jump back and we will meet.

At about the same time Tim finished reading, Billy looked up
from the postcard and groaned.  “I guess I knew we’d have to time jump
again to meet him, but…”

“But I wish we could at least take a nap first,” said
Julie.  For the second time in a week, the four teens had skipped
nighttime during a time jump, and Tim’s body was starting to feel it.

Rose stifled a yawn.  “Listen, guys, I don’t care how
tired I am, I won’t be able to sleep before I talk to Hopkins.  Aren’t you
guys curious what the Emperors of Time are up to?”

“They’re trying to take over the world,” Billy said. 
Now that Rose had gotten the yawns going around the group, they didn’t seem to
want to stop, as Billy yawned, too.  “Only a history geek would care
exactly
how
they’re doing it.”  Rose opened her mouth, but Billy
cut her off.  “But it doesn’t matter, because we need to go back
now.  That’s what he told us to do.  He knows what he’s doing more
than we do.”

Tim had nothing to say to this, as he felt pretty much the
same thing.  Julie just looked around the group before saying, “Right,
so…  We’ve decided, then?”

Billy sighed heavily and shook his head.  “I still hate
popping up in a completely different place and time.  But let’s get it
over with.”

He stuck his hands out first, as Julie reached into her
pocket for one of the Domini.  Soon, the four teens had once again joined
hands.  Tim saw Billy cringe a bit before he closed his eyes.  On the
other hand, even Tim had to admit it was a bit jarring.  Without even the
blink of an eye, the Dominus took them from the bright but quiet scene in
Julie’s backyard to a darker but much louder one.