Time Salvager (20 page)

Elise couldn’t even lie to herself convincingly. She ignored the space game on the future television and forced herself to crawl out of bed and look out the window. She gazed at the strange yet familiar new world outside. The view from her room was hazy, half-obstructed by a film of oil that gave the outside an almost dreamy, underwater look.

Still, it presented an interesting and frightening picture of this new world. She marveled at some of the fantastic advances, the flying cars that used the sky as a highway and the tall buildings that stacked on top of each other as if they were all made from giant building blocks. She saw an alien-looking structure seemingly floating in the air. Near the lake, a gigantic ship took off and blasted into space. She was disgusted at the visibly brown and gray winds blowing by, and the giant smokestacks dotting the landscape, shooting up humongous plumes of smoke into the clouds. The walls of the buildings looked faded, and everywhere, rust prevailed, as if everything was slowly deteriorating.

An hour of window-watching and pacing later, when her mind had finished running wild and she had no more despair to let loose, Elise finally got bored. And hungry. Mostly just hungry. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, during her date with Salman—no, his name was James—and now her stomach growled. Several times, she looked at the door and considered exploring this new world, but each time, James’s warnings echoed in her head and she decided to wait just a little bit longer.

By the third or so hour, she was downright fidgety and starving. She began to wonder if he had abandoned her. Doubt crept into her mind. What would she do then if he never came back? How would she survive? New fears paralyzed her as she suddenly felt very much alone.

Elise turned her attention to the future television airing the strange sports game. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to change the channels with a series of hand gestures, and even less time to realize that television in the future sucked just as much as it did in her time.

When the vid light on the wall began to flash red, Elise was more than happy to answer it, desperately hoping that James had returned, preferably with food. Instead, the attendant down at the lobby appeared, his image floating in the air three-dimensionally occupying a quarter of the room.

The man said something but she didn’t quite understand. It sounded vaguely like World English from her time, but with the words condensed into one syllable, each punctuated by an exclamation mark, and spoken in a singsong. A very fast singsong.

He repeated his words. He was obviously asking a question. She shook her head again. Then her view pulled back, revealing two menacing-looking uniformed men wearing cone-shaped helmets standing behind him. Then Elise realized that those men wanted to see her. She shook her head more emphatically. James had told her to let no one in. The attendant looked off-screen and said something to them, shaking his head. Then to her horror, one of the uniformed men reached over the counter, punched the attendant in the face, and knocked him off-screen. The other pointed at her and then the connection went dead.

Elise began to panic. What if they were coming upstairs? She had just witnessed one of them assault the poor guy doing his job. The last thing she wanted was to be in these guys’ custody. She bolted toward the exit. The short hallway had only an elevator and an adjacent door. She watched, horrified, as the lights on the elevator began to climb toward her level. Her only other path was through the door. She slammed into the door and entered a dimly lit stairwell. Elise looked over the ledge and realized just how high up she was. It was a long way down.

She gritted her teeth and began to hurtle down the stairs two and three steps at a time. She made it about halfway down the building when a loud crack reverberated through the stairwell above her. She heard men shouting. She quickened her pace and, a few minutes later, burst through the lobby door, where she found the attendant still unconscious on the floor near the desk.

Not knowing what to do, she ran out of the Heights and into the blue-colored tunnels. It was then she realized, in her hurry, she had forgotten to grab the chem suit. She cursed, knowing that it was far too risky to go back for it. She had to press on. Elise joined the flow of traffic moving away from the hotel, trusting that as long as she moved with the flow and didn’t bring attention to herself, there should be no way those two uniformed men could follow her in these thick crowds.

Though she had walked down the tunnels just an hour earlier, she had been too frazzled and James too much in a hurry for her to notice her surroundings. Now, as she wandered through the colorfully painted passageways, she took the opportunity to study this piece of the future. The first thing she noticed was how packed everyone was. There were hundreds of people about, some walking, some of whom looked like vendors selling wares and services, and some begging. Heck, she even noticed prostitutes, both male and female. The second thing she noticed was that everything was a sty, with layers of brown and gray residue that seemed to cake onto the ground, the walls, the lights, even the people.

It saddened her. So far in the future, everything was much worse. There were very few places this bad in the late twenty-first century. The world governments had banded together a generation earlier to stamp out poverty and hunger, and were mostly successful in achieving their goals. Money and resources were poured into research for disease cures, new food resources, and reusable energy. Low-cost construction and social safety net plans helped eliminate homelessness and sickness. Countries dismantled their armies and reduced military costs in favor of diplomacy and peace. Everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. Somehow, civilization had taken a wrong turn, and now whatever gains had been made during her time were lost again.

A few minutes after walking into the tunnel, her breathing became labored, reminding her of the first time she had gone scuba diving. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t take in a full breath. Thinking it was just the adrenaline of being chased, she continued on, moving through the blue tunnels until she turned right at one intersection and accidentally found herself on the surface, standing under a gray drab sky.

The sun’s rays just peeked through the thick, fast-moving clouds that sped across the horizon, Elise was struck by their hazy glow, as if a film of grease covered the atmosphere.

She glanced at her surroundings. It was more crowded up here than below, with lines of people moving in every direction as if on some mad scientist’s assembly line. Here and there, pockets of people—those not standing in lines—sat in huddled groups, looking on with resignation as those with places to go passed them by. Elise saw a child, barefoot and in rags, pull on his mother’s sleeves and giggle at her.

Elise brushed her fingers against the oddly tinted breeze that seemed to hold subtle but visible dimensions—she could actually see which direction the wind was blowing. Her breathing became worse and her senses began to wither under a barrage of attacks. Her head ached, her nose began to burn, and her eyes watered. When she tried to inhale, she felt as if she were sucking in a mouthful of smoke. She dropped to one knee and tried to steady herself. She felt as if she were drowning.

An old woman—a vendor of some sort carrying a tray of what looked like wilted grass—tapped her on the arm and began to speak, her voice muffled and distant. Elise cocked her head to one side and gestured one hand at her ear. The woman, looking irritated, spoke louder and even faster. Nothing she said made any sense. Elise pointed at both ears this time. She couldn’t make out anything the woman was saying. She shook her head and shrugged. Finally, as if fed up, the woman took a pinch of the grass and jammed it into Elise’s mouth.

“Eat this,” she said, or something along those lines.

Too surprised to protest, Elise obediently chewed. She didn’t usually chew whatever someone stuffed in her mouth, but there was too much going on right now for her to protest. Immediately, a wave of nausea passed over her and then everything went numb. First her tongue, then her sense of smell evaporated, and then any feeling she had from her hands down to her toes was gone. All her senses just seemed to dampen.

“You can breathe in again, off-worlder,” the old woman said, this time purposely speaking in a slow, drawn-out voice. “The cany weed blocks all the good stuff that you aliens aren’t used to.”

“Thanks,” Elise said, breathing in deeply. The air still burned the hairs on her nostril a bit but it wasn’t debilitating like it had been previously. She touched her face with her hand and couldn’t feel her fingers.

“Numbness takes getting used to,” the woman said. “It’s good grass, eh? Good cany weed.”

Elise nodded.

“Stuff will wear off before dark, girl. You’ll need more. You want?” The old woman held up the basket. “Works good.”

Elise shook her head. “I don’t have any…” What did they even use for money here? “I have no way to pay. I’m sorry.”

The old woman looked down at Elise in disgust and snorted. “Alien scum with fancy clothes and no scratch. And you take my sample. Fuck you, off-worlder shit!” For a second, the not-so-kindly-looking old woman looked like she was about to reach into Elise’s mouth and take back her cany weed sample. Instead, she turned and stormed off.

Elise watched as the woman disappeared into the mass of people, becoming just another stooped figure in an assembly line of hunched-over shadows. She took another breath and looked around. Whatever this weed was doing, it was working, though Elise wished she knew more about what was going on with her body.

Well, what was done was done. Elise picked herself up and explored the area, making sure to keep the blue tunnel exit within sight at all times. The last thing she needed was to get lost and not be able to find her way back to the Heights. Eventually, James would come back, right? He’d better. If she lost James in this strange world, she was as good as dead. For now, she just had to stay away long enough in the vicinity until those guys were gone.

Elise turned around in a slow circle and scanned her surroundings. She was standing in a vast plaza sandwiched in between gigantic buildings on three sides. Each of the buildings was easily a hundred stories tall, their tops lost in the low-hanging clouds. It was also scalding hot down here. At first Elise had thought that running from those strange men had made her feel flushed. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that she realized her face was already sunburned from the brief exposure to the elements, even though the sun was nowhere in sight, hidden by the buildings, smog, and weirdly colored winds.

The fourth side of the plaza was a ten-lane street that had vehicles buzzing by at different speeds. Each lane had a set speed attached to it, from the slowest human-drawn wagons to high-tech speedsters that passed by in a blur.

Using her forearm to protect her face from the sun, Elise explored the plaza, moving with the crowds and checking out the vendors one by one. She was surprised to find that nothing much had changed. In fact, most of the stuff being sold she could find back in the poorest countries of her time, except she was in a major metropolis. It was as if she had gone backward in time instead of forward. There were people selling vegetables, grain trinkets, small electronics, primitive-looking tools, and even some firearms. To her shock, she even found a stall where people were being sold.

Elise shook her head in disgust and continued on her way, turning down another street and seeing more of the same. This time, she entered what could only be called a beggars’ row. Here, hundreds of vagrants sat meekly together, desolate and dirty, begging for food or money. The smell overwhelmed the cany weed and made her queasy. Her work back in her time often took her to desolate places filled with poverty and filth, but this place, in the middle of a major city, was as bad as any she’d ever seen. She turned away and fled in the opposite direction, trying to get as far from the misery as possible. However, there was no escaping this world.

As she stumbled through the crowds, she happened upon the first clean, brightly lit place she’d seen so far. It looked like someone had parked a freshly washed spaceship in the middle of the city. Beams of white lights lined the perimeter of the building and somehow, the colored air wasn’t able to touch it. The shiny building called to her. Not able to look away, Elise wandered toward it like a fly lured toward a bright light. She didn’t seem to be the only one falling under this building’s trance. There was a circle of people standing around it as well, just staring at its glow. Once she got to the edge of the crowd, she was stopped by an armed guard ten meters from the building’s entrance.

“That’s far enough, Earthgrime,” a white-armored guard growled. He shoved her backward with one hand and, pointing his other hand at her, said, “Only corporate-class citizens allowed in this shopping district. The rest of you rabble stay where you belong.” At least that’s what she thought he said; she was only starting to get the hang of this dialect.

Elise looked over his shoulder and saw a steady stream of well-dressed people leaving and entering the building directly through flying transports so they wouldn’t have to mingle with the rabble. The guards around the building made sure that the people surrounding the glowing building did not get too close to the so-called corporate-class citizens.

Elise stayed and watched a while longer, staring almost wistfully as small groups of glamorous futuristic-looking shoppers entered and left. They looked like the people she had in mind when she thought of people from the future. Then finally, as if synchronously on cue, all the guards retreated into the building and then the entire thing took off.

“What in Gaia was that?” Elise asked.

“Damn corps still have to do business here on Earth, but there’s no city rich enough to take care of their needs. Mobile corp shopping facilities takes care of them until they can finish their business and get the hell off-planet.” The man standing next to her shook his head. “Way they keep us separated from them like animals…” He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Hey, you all came from here too!”