Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time (5 page)

“Oh, okay.”  Rose thought.  “Do you have any hot
chocolate?  Nothing wakes me up in the… whatever time of day this
is…  like a nice cup of hot chocolate.”

“It’s early afternoon,” Paul supplied.  “But yes, we do
have hot chocolate.  Anything for you?”

Tim nodded.  “Do you have coke?” Tim asked, careful not
to blurt out anything embarrassing instead.

“Yes, we do,” Paul answered, as he retrieved two more cups
like Julie’s from a cabinet. 

As Paul set about pressing some keys on a keypad next to the
sink, the 4th door, the only one that had not opened yet, came ajar.

“Ah, Steve, there you are,” Paul said, as Hopkins entered
the room.  Tim still couldn’t get over hearing him be called Steve. 
Even “Steven” would have sounded better for someone who Tim only thought of as
being formal.

“I hope you have not been waiting on me for long,” Hopkins
said, glancing around the room.  “But I am quite appreciative that you let
me sleep for the extra time.  I have been quite exhausted lately.”

“One of the children is still asleep, anyway,” Paul
observed, handing Rose her hot-chocolate.  He began pressing buttons on
the keypad once again.

“Yes, well, he has cause to be tired as well.  You all
do, I imagine,” Hopkins said, looking around the room again.  It was at
this point that Tim realized that they had never fully discussed with Hopkins
how it was that they had stymied the Emperors of Time in 1916.  Hopkins,
as it turned out, had also thought about this, and asked them about it now.

Between Tim, Julie, and Rose, they filled Hopkins in on most
of the important details of the trip, including the fact that the Emperors had
known they would be there, after Dr. Russell had travelled back from 2347 to
tell them.  Just as they were explaining how Billy came up with the idea
to send two of them into the future to get supplies for the others to break out
of the room, Billy himself walked through the door from Tim and his room with a
comically worried look on his face.

As he saw the others gathered around the table, a look of relief
washed over his face, but then he looked at Tim with a little bit of
irritation.  “Holy cow!  When you’re in a strange bed in the year...
twenty-two-something...  you at least expect your roommate to let you know
when he’s leaving the room!”

Rose laughed.  “Holy cow?” Rose asked.  “Who
says
that?”

Billy rolled his eyes, but smiled a bit sheepishly. 
“Apparently I do, when I’m disoriented from Time Travel.”

“Well, anyway,” Rose said, “Julie didn’t tell me she was
leaving either, and I figured out how to wander through the door and find her
without going all ‘holy cow’ on her.”

“Oh, all right,” Billy conceded, sitting down in the only
remaining chair at the table, next to Rose.  “But Tim, you can always feel
free to wake me up when you wake up in the morning.”

“It’s early afternoon, apparently,” Tim said with a
shrug.  “But I get your point.”

“Would you like something to drink?” Paul asked..

“Well, what do you have?” Billy asked.

“Anything,” Paul said.  “Or, just about, anyway.”

“Coffee?” Billy tried.

“Cream or sugar?” asked Paul.

“Bit of cream, no sugar,” Billy said.

“Coming right up,” Paul said.

After giving the teens a moment to chat, Hopkins spoke
up.  “Now that you are all up, I suppose you would like to know where we
are.”

The teens nodded.  Or, at least, Julie, Rose, and Tim
nodded.  Billy was too busy looking perplexedly at the coffee coming out
of what appeared to be a water-faucet.

“Well, the Emperors of Time are looking for me now.  I
needed a place to hide out until we change things back again and leave them
vulnerable once more.  Since they have gained control of the government
again, I am not safe in my own time, and they have begun to look for me in
other times as well.  I came here because we are currently in a place that
the Emperors will have a hard time monitoring and an awful time getting into
even if they found out I was here.  We are currently standing in an
elaborate bunker that houses the last resistance to the world government
engineered by the Emperors of Time,” Hopkins said. 

Billy chimed in.  “Wait, so you’re saying the Emperors
of Time are out there now?” he gestured vaguely toward the world outside the
four walls of the kitchen.        

“No,” Hopkins answered.  “But they’ve put events in
place to get to this stage of history.  Remember, by my own time in the
original timeline, there will be an extensive American Empire, but no world
government.  The Emperors’ main goal in controlling history is to cause
there to be a world empire by their own time, so that they can put themselves
in control of it.  Right now, in 2276 in this timeline, is when the last
chip is about to go to the world empire the Emperors have manipulated time to
create.”

“Is there anything we can do to stop it?” Rose asked, with a
sense of urgency in her voice.

“Not from here, no,” Hopkins answered with a shake of his
head.  “We have to go much further back to change things.  But the
important thing is that right now, all the resistance in the world to the one
world government is in this extensive underground bunker.  In another
year, the world Empire will take it over, and the names and stories of everyone
here will be taken down and put on files that the Emperors of Time will easily
be able to access from 2347.  But for now, this area is off the grid. 
Any records being kept here will be destroyed when the new world government
torches this last symbol of resistance on the day that the rebels give
up.  It is one of the few places in modern history where we can relax and
recuperate without worrying about the Emperors of Time finding out about it by
mining old data from the internet, newspapers, or other sources.”

Julie nodded at this point.  Billy frowned.  “I’m
sure you have more on your mind than just relaxing and recuperating, though.”

Hopkins gave a half-smile.  “Yes, I am afraid I
do.  Because I have been stymied in my attempts to capture any more of the
Domini, I have had a bit of time to plan our strategy for our next
counter-attack.  There are resources here that will make that plan
easier.  In fact, there are resources here without which the plan would
not even be remotely possible.”

Mind-Control

“This timeline diverged from the original timeline in 1854,
with the passing of--” Hopkins said.

Rose squeaked, and Hopkins paused to look at her with raised
eyebrows.  Rose turned the slightest bit pink as she said, “Well, no,
nothing-- it’s just…  We had figured that out already, that’s all.”

Hopkins’ eyebrows stayed raised as he looked around at the
teens.  “That is rather impressive.  I thought you had come to see me
right after you got back from 1916.”

“Well, nearly,” Julie clarified.  “We stopped for a
moment to try and figure out what was going on, because we weren’t sure if you
would have a chance.”

“Well done, then,” Hopkins said.  “But undoing the change
that they made will no doubt be harder than finding out when it occurred
was.  Their plan this time is more subtle and complicated than setting off
a bomb in a crucial precinct on Election Day.  Our counterattack will have
to be correspondingly more complex.”

“If not a bomb, what did they do?” Tim asked
nervously.  It had been plenty complex preventing the bomb going off, and
they had only barely succeeded at that. 

“Well, I do not know exactly, but I have a theory,” Hopkins
stated.  “You see--”

But at this point, Paul cleared his throat
emphatically.  “Listen, you guys are going to be here for days, aren’t
you?  Do you have to brief them on all this right now?  You guys just
woke up from a long nap, and you haven’t even given me a chance to offer you
something to eat!”

Hopkins looked politely confused for a moment, and then
shrugged.  “I suppose it is nothing that cannot be put off until after
some light refreshment.”

Part of Tim wanted to object.  He was still nervous
about whether he and his friends would be up to the task of saving the world
from the Emperors of Time again.  But he was a bit hungry, and Hopkins had
the tendency to drone on at times.  It might be better to have the
conversation over dinner.  Looking around at the others, he discovered
that they were relieved by Paul’s interruption. 

“So what do you guys want to eat?” Paul asked.

At this, Billy and Rose both pushed out their chairs from
the table in preparation to get up.  Tim and Julie began to follow suit,
but Paul remained seated and looked at the teens with a confused expression for
a moment.  Then, he grinned, and said, “Oh, there’s no need for us to
leave to get food.”

“But there’s no refrigerator…” Rose objected faintly. 
Then, she shrugged and yawned.  Julie was right about her not being much
of a morning (or early afternoon) person.

“Yes, well, with our limited space down here, it didn’t make
much sense to give every apartment a refrigerator.  So instead, we get the
food delivered to us.  But you’ll see that in a moment.  First, what
do you want?”

Billy shrugged, then decided he might as well go
first.  “I can usually get on board with some pizza.”

Paul smiled.  “Good choice.  Toppings?”

“Um…  Pepperoni and mushroom, I guess,” Billy replied.

“That will work.”  Paul went over to the machine that
looked like a microwave that Tim had noticed before.  Without putting
anything in the machine, Paul tapped keys on a keyboard that looked like the
panel beside the tap.  “While we’re waiting on the pizza, what do you
three want?”

Tim, Julie, and Rose had barely ordered their cheeseburger,
chicken nuggets, and Caesar Salad when the machine beeped. 

Even though Tim had halfway caught on to what must be
happening, his jaw still dropped involuntarily when Paul pulled what appeared
to be a freshly baked personal-sized pizza from the machine.  All told,
maybe a minute and a half had passed since Billy had first mentioned he could
go for a pizza.

“So how does that thing work?” Rose asked after taking a
bite of Caesar Salad.  By this time, all the teens had their meals in
front of them, and Paul was entering Hopkins’ order of salmon and steamed
broccoli.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Paul said, with a mischievous
grin on his face.

“Well, I had to try it first,” Rose explained, after another
bite.  “Otherwise I couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t some kind of
elaborate prank with plastic food or something.  But my salad’s good, and
the others don’t seem to be complaining, so spill it.  How’s it work?”

“All right,” Paul said, as he handed Hopkins a plate of
salmon and broccoli.  “There are several automated kitchens throughout the
bunker.  I put in an order up here, using a code-- it’s lucky you didn’t
ask for anything more obscure than a Caesar Salad or I’d have had to look them
up-- and then it is sent on a conveyer belt through ducts to this room and
lowered into the compartment there.  Looking up the code’s the hardest
part of the process.  It takes about 45 seconds for the kitchen to prepare
the food and 30 seconds for it to get here.”

“Forty-five seconds to make the food?  A pizza takes at
least 10 minutes to cook!” Julie said, apparently offended by what she
perceived as a slight to logic itself.

“Yes, I suppose it once did,” Paul conceded.  “But not
anymore.  We use more concentrated heating methods.  It goes
quicker.”

“What, like lasers?” Billy asked.

“Not exactly,” Paul said.  He chuckled.  “But I
suppose that’s close enough.  I don’t understand all the inner-details
myself.  I’m not a chef.”

“And you don’t care that you don’t understand how your food
is made?” Rose asked with a frown.

“You had microwaves in your time, right?” Paul asked, with
one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah…” Rose said.

“And can you explain to me how they worked?” Paul asked.

Rose hesitated.  Then she laughed.  “I push some
buttons and the food gets hot.  Alright, I guess I see your point.”

“What about the fountain that can give you any type of drink
you want?  You don’t find that as hard to believe?” Paul asked, teasing
the four teenagers in general.  Tim supposed they must have seemed awfully
old-fashioned to Paul.  After all, Tim thought it was funny that his
grandmother couldn’t work a cellphone, and there was a lot more time separating
the Tim from the technology in this kitchen than there had been separating his
grandmother from a cellphone. 

Rose shook her head, “Nah, we have machines in our time
where you can get a bunch of different kinds of sodas from the same
nozzle.  I figure they just mix in the syrup.  They could basically
do the same thing with un-carbonated stuff, just use carbonated or
non-carbonated water as necessary.”

Paul nodded throughout this line of reasoning.

“Still, the milkshake part is impressive,” Julie said,
taking another sip.  “Weird ‘cause it’s a different consistency,
too.  I suppose the inside of the nozzle must clean itself between uses.”

“Hmm…  I guess so,” Paul said.  “I’d never really
thought about that, either.”

“I’m starting to wonder if you
do
think about
anything,” Julie teased.

Hopkins was smiling indulgently throughout this
conversation, but his voice betrayed a hint of sarcasm when he spoke up
next.  “Now that you’ve had a chance to offer everyone a warm meal, is it
quite all right if I continue where I left off in briefing our guests about
their upcoming mission?”

Paul shrugged.  “I suppose I’m okay with it if they
are.”

None of the teens seemed to know how they would have
objected if they wanted to, and so Hopkins continued.  “What we know is
that the Emperors blocked the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and caused
another law to be passed instead.  This implies that they would have had
to exercise considerable influence over events for a long period of time, so
that they could influence the course of Congress.”

“So, what, you think they dressed up as senators or
something?” Tim asked.

“Well, no,” Hopkins said, although for some reason Tim
caught a flicker of a guilty smile across his face, as if he was hiding
something from them.  “I imagine that with the success with which I have
been hunting them down recently, the Emperors will be careful to keep
themselves from being tied down to any time period for too long.  But I
believe that the Emperors have found other ways of influencing events than
dressing up as people who control them.”

“I apologize for my nephew’s flair for mystery.  I
don’t know why he can’t just
tell
you what’s happening instead of
building it up like this,” Paul said.  Billy had finished eating, and so
Paul took his plate.  To Tim’s surprise, he put it back in the
microwave-looking contraption that it had come out of in the first place. 
Paul must have seen Tim’s confused expression, because he said, “It’ll take the
dish back to be cleaned.”  He pressed a short series of buttons next to
the machine.

Hopkins simply shrugged at his uncle’s criticism and
continued with his story.  “As you know, the other scientists who worked
on the Time Travel problem with me make up the Emperors of Time.  A few of
those scientists had worked on another project together a few years
before.  This project had to do with mind-control.”

Rose raised her eyebrows when Hopkins said this, Julie
mouthed the word “oh”, as if she had just found a missing puzzle-piece that
helped everything else fall into place.  Tim caught himself rolling his
eyes, though.  First time-travel, and now this?  It was starting to
sound like maybe the future’s inventors should just have contented themselves
by making weird kitchen appliances, because they had certainly outdone
themselves in the area of dangerous and unethical weapons. 

Billy seemed to be thinking something along the same lines,
because he threw his hands up and said, “Well that’s just absurd.  Were
you involved in
that
project, too?”

Hopkins frowned patiently and shook his head.  “No, I
was not responsible for that particular debacle.”

“We don’t mean to be offensive to you, personally, of
course, Dr. Hopkins,” Rose clarified hurriedly.

Billy looked at Rose for a moment and then looked back at
Hopkins.  “No, yeah, I
do
think I mean offense to you.  I
mean, how could you do something so irresponsible and stupid as trying to
invent time-travel?”

Of course, they had all known since they met Hopkins that he
had been one of the scientists responsible for time-travel, but Billy’s
repressed anger about the issue must have just boiled over.

“Billy!” Rose whispered.  “You can’t say something like
that!”

Paul was chuckling, the only one in the room who seemed at
all amused.  “Ah well, it took longer for you to say it than it did
me.  I told him off ten minutes after I met him.”

Hopkins’ expression remained impassive.  “Well, I know I
made a mistake and am doing my best to fix it.  If it is any consolation,
it would have happened with or without me, but I would not be able to stop it
if I had not been in on it.”

Paul chimed in again.  “He messed up, he knows it, and
he’s still the best option humanity’s got to save the world from the mess he’s
created.  So unless you’ve got a better plan, we should let him get on
with telling us his because, let’s face it, he’s a little wordy and he’s going
to take enough time to get on with it without us getting off topic.”

Billy raised his hands in and said, “Okay, I get it.  I
know I was Monday morning quarterbacking anyway, just…  it gets
frustrating.”

Paul nodded, but gestured toward Hopkins so that he would
continue.  “At any rate, I believe that the Emperors have perfected a
mind-control machine and are using it to control a select group of people from
1854 to alter the timeline.”

The four teens thought about this for a moment.  It was
a lot to take in.  Rose spoke up first.  “If they can control people’s
minds, why do they need to go back in time at all?  Couldn’t they just use
the machine to make everyone do what they’re told in their own time?”

At this question, Hopkins actually laughed.  “No, it is
not quite that simple.  Each machine must be painstakingly
programmed.  I cannot claim to be an expert on mind-control technology,
but from the articles I have read, they also need to have a special
understanding of the psychology of each subject to be manipulated in order for
it to be most effective.  I do not understand quite yet how they would be
able to do that to even a handful of people in 1854, but I can guarantee that
they will not be able to do it to the whole world in my own time period.”

Rose shrugged.  “Just seemed like it’d be easier. 
Not that we want things to be easier for them.”  She shook her head
slowly, as if dazed.

“Sorry, Dr. Hopkins.  You weren’t here when we
discussed how Rose takes a long time to wake up,” Julie teased, with a smile at
Rose.

Hopkins did not seem to get the joke, but continued. 
“The key to fixing the past this time will be finding the people who are being
influenced and destroying the machines that are doing the controlling, which I
am confident must be somehow hidden in the victims’ homes.  The machines
require close proximity to work as well.”

This time Tim spoke up first.  “But if you had to pick
just a few people to influence and change the course of history, wouldn’t you
have to pick some pretty influential people?  It was one thing when we had
to go back in time and convince some alley-thugs and a couple suffragettes that
we were from 1916, and even then we didn’t fool the Emperors once they knew to
be looking for us.  How are we going to go back there and talk to the
movers and shakers in 1854?”

“Yes, well, you have identified the trickiest portion of our
plan.  You will need to employ an element of disguise.  The most
influential people of 1854 will talk to you and, hopefully, accept you because
you will have the advantage of looking like individuals who they already know.”