Time After Time (15 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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“Shall we have dinner together?”
“Why not?” Her eyes sparkled.
“Why not, indeed.”
“I must warn you, though, that you are not the kind of man that I normally go out with.”
“Oh?”
“I've never met anyone quite like you before.”
“I'll accept that as a compliment and meet you at your bank this evening, then?”
“Around six. Can I take you back to town?”
“No thank you, Amy. I want to browse awhile.”
“Have fun,” she called. “And don't hurt yourself.”
 
 
H.G. spent the entire afternoon at the San Francisco International Airport examining the art of winged flight. He would have stayed there for days, but he did not want to miss his dinner engagement with Amy Robbins, so he reluctantly climbed aboard an Airporter Coach for the ride back into the city. As the bulky vehicle pitched and yawed north along the Bayshore, he settled back in the plush seat and recalled what he had seen.
The most distressing discovery had been “airport security”—employed to combat a particularly vile phenomenon called “air piracy.” And to think that just a few days ago he had predicated that crime would be eradicated in the late twentieth century. He had been wrong. Mankind's sense of morality had not kept pace with advanced technology. He would have to warn others of that fact when he returned home.
He shuddered. Thank God, Leslie John Stephenson would never have an opportunity to travel on an airship.
Then there had been the giant airliners themselves. He had watched them for hours. On the ground they had maneuvered like prehistoric pterodactyls gathering the strength to fly. But when they were launched a transformation took place. They leaped and soared
into space—glistening in the sun and rivaling any celestial angel that William Blake had ever etched.
H.G. had tried to find out what part—if any—he had played in the development of the aircraft, but had been unsuccessful, airport security being what it was. Perhaps another day.
He climbed off the Airporter Coach at Taylor and O'Farrell, then briskly made his way through crowds of pedestrians to the Bank of England. He pushed a button on his digital watch and saw that he was half an hour early. He had enough time to learn more about his new environs, and hence appear less of a naïve fool in Amy's eyes.
He saw a newsstand across the street where men in suits browsed. He went over, hoping to find a pocket-sized history of the twentieth century. Instead, he found a day-old edition of the London Times for which he paid the grizzled and handicapped proprietor one dollar. Reminding himself not to be provincial, he tucked the newspaper under his arm (but in all truth, thanked God The Times still existed) and continued to inspect the offerings.
He saw a magazine with an abstract design on its front and picked it up. It was titled Scientific American, and he flipped through it until he came to an article that captured his attention: “Wind Turbines—a Way into the Twenty-first Century.”
The piece began by capsulating the depletion of oil and natural gas fields, the dangers and limitations of nuclear power (of which he knew nothing) and the impracticality of harnessing the sun in the next few decades. It proposed as an alternative the use of wind to power the enormous electrical plants which were so necessary for the survival of modern civilization “as we now know it.” The next page pictured wind-turbine systems already in use. The devices were short, squat and as unlike windmills as a cable car was an airliner. And yet H.G. understood. As opposed to something taken from the ground and burned, the wind always blew no matter what. Seafarers,
for example, had been aware of the majestic and limitless power of the wind for centuries, H.G. told himself. And yet, so far it wasn't an integral part of this great, advanced technology? He was amazed and continued reading. The article concluded that mankind had to harness the wind in order to survive and progress. H.G. shrugged with disgust and replaced the magazine in the rack.
“I could have told them that eighty-six years ago,” he muttered.
From another rack he lifted off a publication titled Penthouse. On the cover was a scantily clad young lady, perhaps the most beautiful female that he had ever seen. He stared, unabashedly meeting the eyes in the photograph, half thinking that they promised him something intimate. Great Scott, it was the opposite of experiencing Henry James, he told himself. One didn't want to skip a damned thing!
His hands fluttering, he carefully opened the magazine and looked farther. He came to a layout called “Scarlett,” and almost buried his face in the pages. Talk about never seeing Isabel's body during two years of marriage! Here—in front of the entire world—was a hazel-eyed nymph with nothing between her and her readers except a pair of long white stockings! And those were discarded on the next page! He blushed, but could not stop staring at Scarlett.
H.G. turned the page. Scarlett's right hand was between her legs now, her left upon her breast, her mouth open with self-induced passion. Then she was sitting up, looking surprised—as if someone unseen had stolen into her room. Her expression changed, and on the last page she was lying back, beckoning the reader to join her on the bed and taste her charms.
Good-bye, Queen Victoria, whereever you are!
H.G. realized that he was gazing at something for which he could be jailed back in his own time. The relaxation of censorship standards was obviously incredible. He definitely approved, but he couldn't fathom the change. His heart swelled with both lust for Scarlett
and pride for whoever published the magazine. Why shouldn't a free man be able to admire the unfettered beauty of the female form? And if governments had finally stopped legislating morality, then maybe mankind had taken a giant step toward Utopia.
“You going to buy it or wear it out?”
H.G. jumped and turned. The proprietor of the newsstand was frowning at him, his hands spread for emphasis. H.G. blushed, jammed the Penthouse back into the rack and moved away, fighting an erection that would not subside. He felt shameful. Why should he react that way? What the devil was wrong with nude and alluring women? It was the Church, he angrily thought, the Church, mother, the environment at Up Park, the early school masters and the stifling effects of Victoria's reign. He must change his behavior; he must make his emotions as liberated as his intellect; he must free himself from the concept of original sin before he could even consider returning home to alter the bumbling course of mankind's history.
Another time. Amy was waiting. And thank God he could finally straighten all the way up when she saw him, turned, smiled and waved.
 
 
She took him to the Ben Jonson for drinks and dinner, and he was delighted, for the decor of the restaurant was Elizabethan London. And he was pleased to be inside a room where for once he was not faced with synthetic materials. The tables were actually wood, the carpets wool, the napkins linen, the silverware pewter. (In fact, it was imitation pewter, but he could not tell the difference.) It made him unusually relaxed and comfortable to be in an environment that was real.
The food was excellent and made him proud that he was an Englishman. And since the gin was Bombay, he drank too much of it and waxed eloquent throughout the entire meal. With sweeping
gestures, he spoke about the need to take a fresh look at John Stuart Mill's utilitarian notions, given the energy crisis and the drain on the world's natural resources. Wind machines weren't the answer—mankind needed to rethink its priorities and honestly admit that pleasure was its ultimate goal. And so on.
The only problem was that he laced his limited knowledge of 1979 with phrases and references that were a century old. He even commented, with a wild stab at sophistication, that the success of Penthouse was like what would have happened much earlier if post-Sedanist sentiment had prevailed.
That was it. No more. Despite his wit and charm, he was driving her crazy. “Herbert, you're either an actor or an anachronism.”
“I'm neither.”
“Well, something's different about you! You're the most well-educated, well-read man I've ever gone out with, but where have you been for the past ten years?”
“Are you saying that I'm naïve?” he asked, blushing.
“Oh, no.”
He grinned and recovered. “Well, my audacity compensates for my innocence.”
She laughed with delight, shook her head and gave him a look full of tenderness and admiration.
He knew then that he had already begun to court this girl in earnest. What he didn't know was that if she had not been interested, he might as well have tried to charm a mother superior in the order of St. Teresa. She chose her men now, having been chosen once in her life, which had been one time too many.
They drove through the city, and a light mist began falling.
“Have you seen Star Wars?” she asked. “It just came out again.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Star Wars. Have you seen it?”
“Did you say star … wars?” He straightened up and slowly turned, his mind racing with questions that he was afraid to ask.
“Oh, come on, Herbert, will you quit putting me on? You know, the movie!”
“No,” he gulped. “I haven't seen it.”
“You haven't?”
“I've been rather busy.”
“Boy, you really did need a vacation, didn't you?”
And so he found himself next to her inside a theater that was not as impressive as some of the great halls he had been to in London, although the seats were better. If nothing else, he thought flippantly, mankind has learned how to build comfortable furniture in the last eighty-six years.
The curtains parted, revealing, instead of a naked stage, a giant square of white that he did not comprehend.
“A long time ago in a galaxy far away,” the entertainment began. A book projected on a screen? H.G. thought. Then he gasped and ducked down below the seat in front of him, for two strange-looking air … No, they weren't airships, they were … spaceships? Good God, they were firing at each other. Who would have believed this after dozing through a staid performance of The Importance of Being Earnest with Isabel less than a year and a half ago? He peeked up over the chair and saw the large ship swallow up the smaller one.
Amy turned and laughed. “Herbert, quit putting me on,” she whispered. “You're worse than a kid.”
H.G. composed himself and sat up straight, his eyes never leaving the screen. The magic of the film was overwhelming, the illusion so complete that he assumed his time machine had taken him into a future he never dreamed possible. Not that it was Utopian, either. Far from it. True, there had been the delightful little mechanical men who could think electrically, but what of the weapons, the ominous
death star? Annihilation of worlds at the push of a button? The glorification of evil? Why, Darth Vader made someone like Jack the Ripper seem insignificant. After all, what were a few murdered courtesans compared to the destruction of entire cultures? Obviously, evil had not vanished with the dawn of a new age. Stephenson—damn his soul—may have been right.
H.G. sighed. He had glimpsed the future of the future and had seen how mankind could perversely turn progress into cataclysmic horror. Could he really have expected anything else? Perhaps not. But he could warn people against it.
Nevertheless, he was depressed, for the vision of the entertainment was twisted. The obsession was with how mankind in the future could use a fantastic technology to prolong oppression, enslavement and violence. That good had so blithely triumphed was not convincing to H.G. Star Wars, he opined, could have been written by Seneca.
“Like it?” she asked.
“It was interesting,” he replied with deliberate ambiguity.
“Yeah. A little simplistic, but a lot of fun.”
Simplistic? What did this girl know of? Were there already civilizations out there in space? He did not have the courage to ask.
“Maybe tomorrow night we can see something else,” she said casually, then caught herself. “I mean, if you don't have any other plans.”
He grinned. He didn't and he wouldn't. Obviously, she wanted to be with him, and that was the most reassuring thought he'd had since dinner.
She took him back to her apartment and nonchalantly invited him up for a drink. If he had not grown accustomed to her subtle directness, he would have been astonished, for never before had a female asked him anywhere.
Still, that was the most radical change in social behavior he had
experienced yet. The freedom of a woman to take the initiative, which throughout history had been a masculine prerogative. He wondered how long the change had been the norm and what modern man thought of it.
He immediately liked the inside of her flat because it was old, yet had been remodeled to suit her tastes. Like the Ben Jonson, everything was real here—tables, chair, rugs, walls and bookcases. He didn't comment, but he sensed that some people in 1979 may not be all that thrilled with the fecund abundance of synthetic, imitative materials.

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