Time Travel Omnibus, page 1105
Now, when she painted the park, she worked with the old photographs beside her, imposing the light and colors of the present day on representations of the past. I knew what she was doing. I’d done it myself, hadn’t I?
Kristy Ann in her thirties grew thinner, seldom smiled. She took to patrolling the park for trash, muttering savagely to herself as she picked up empty pop cans or discarded snack wrappers.
She came once to the park with two other women and a news crew from KQED. They were filmed in front of the statue of Diana, talking about a Park Preservation Society they’d founded. There was talk of budget cuts. A petition. One of the cameramen made a joke about the statue and I could see the rage flaring in Kristy Ann’s eyes. She began to rant about the importance of restoring Sutro Park, replacing the statues, replanting the parterres.
Her two companions exchanged glances and tactfully cut her off, changing the focus of the interview to the increasing deterioration of Golden Gate Park and the need for native, drought-resistant plantings.
A year later a big smiling man with a microphone did a segment of his California history series there in the park, and Kristy Ann was on hand to be interviewed as “a local historian.” She took his arm and pulled him to the bare slopes where the carpet beds had bloomed. She showed him her photocopies of the old photographs, which were growing tattered nowadays.
She talked and talked and talked about how the beds must be restored.
The big man was too polite to interrupt her, but I could see the cameraman and assistant director rolling their eyes. Finally the assistant director led her away by the arm and gave her a handful of twenty-dollar bills.
A couple of months after that she stopped coming to the park. Kristy Ann was gone, for most of a year. I wondered if she’d gone mad or gone to jail or one of those other places mortals go.
* * *
The Company had less and less for me to film, as the years rolled on. Evidently archivists weren’t as interested in twenty-first century San Francisco. I was sent out for newsworthy events, but more and more of my time was my own. Gleason structured it for me, or I couldn’t have managed.
I had a list: Shower, Breakfast, Walk, Park Time, Lunch at Park, Park Time, Walk, Dinner, Shower, Bed. I needed patterns. Gleason said I was like a train, where other people were like automobiles: they went anywhere, I had iron wheels and had to stay on my iron track. But a train carries more than an automobile. I carried the freight of Time. I carried the fiery colors of Sutro’s design, the patterns of his flowerbeds.
I had a route worked out, from HQ to Sutro Park, and I carried my lunch in a paper bag, the same meal every day: wheat bread and butter sandwich, apple, bottle of water. I didn’t want anything else. I was safe on my track. I was happy.
I sat in the park and watched the fog drifting through the cypress trees. I knew, after so many years, how to be invisible: never bothered anyone, never did anything to make a mortal notice I was there. There weren’t many mortals, anyway. People only cut through Sutro Park on their way from 48th Avenue to Point Lobos Road. They didn’t promenade there anymore.
* * *
When Kristy Ann wandered back into the park, she was rail-thin and all her hair was gone. She wore shapeless, stained sweat clothes and a stocking cap pulled down over her bare skull. She found a bench, quite near mine, that got the sunlight most of the day except when the fog rolled in, and she stayed there. All day, every day. Most days she had a cup of coffee with her, and always a laptop.
I found I could tune into her broadband connection, as she worked. She spent most of her day posting on various forums for San Francisco historical societies. I followed the forum discussions with interest.
At first she’d be welcomed into the groups, and complimented on her erudition. Gradually her humorlessness, her obsession came to the fore. Flame wars erupted when forum members wanted to discuss something other than the restoration of Sutro Park. She was always asked to leave, in the end, when she didn’t storm out of her own accord. Once or twice she re-registered under a different name, but almost immediately was recognized. The forum exchanges degenerated into mutual name-calling.
After that Kristy Ann spent her days blogging, on a site decorated with gifs of her old photographs and scans of her lovingly colored recreations of the park. Her entries were mostly bitter reflections on her failed efforts to restore the carpet beds. They became less and less coherent. A couple of months later, she disappeared again. I assumed her cancer had metastasized.
* * *
Ezra? Gleason was uncomfortable about something. Ezra, we need to talk. The Company has been going over its profit and loss statements. They’re spending more on your upkeep than they’re making from your recordings. It’s been suggested that we re-train you. Or relocate you. This may be difficult, Ezra . . .
* * *
I don’t think anyone but me would have recognized Kristy Ann, when she came creeping back. She moved like an old woman. She seemed to have shrunken away. There was no sign of the laptop; I don’t think she was strong enough to carry it, now. She had a purse with her meds in it. She had a water bottle.
She found her bench in the sunlight and sat there, looking around her with bewildered eyes, all their anger gone.
Her electromagnetic field, the drifting halo of electricity that all mortals generate around their bodies, had begun to fluctuate around Kristy Ann. It happens, when mortals begin to die.
I wondered if I could do it.
I did; I got to my feet and walked toward her, cautious, keeping my eyes on the ground. I came to her bench and sat down beside her. My heart was pounding. I risked a glance sideways. She was looking at me with utter apathy. She wouldn’t have cared if I’d grabbed her purse, slapped her, or pulled off her clothes. Her eyes tracked off to my left.
I turned and followed her stare. She was looking at an old stone basin on its pedestal, the last of Sutro’s fountains, its sculpted waterworks long since gone.
I edged closer. I reached into her electromagnetic field. I touched her hand—she was cold as ice—and tuned into the electrical patterns of her brain, as I had tuned into her broadband signal. I downloaded her.
I didn’t hurt her. She saw the fountain restored, wirework shooting up to outline its second tier, its dolphins, its cherubs. Then it was solid and real. Clear water jetted upward into a lost sky. The green lawn spread out, flawless.
White statues rose from the earth: the Dancing Girls. The Dreaming Satyr. Venus de Milo. Antinous. The Boy with Bird. Hebe. The Griffin. All the Gilded Age’s conception of what was artistic, copied and brought out to the western edge of the world to refine and educate its uncultured masses.
Sutro’s house lifted into its place again; the man himself rose up through the path and stood, in his black silk hat. Brass glinted on the bandstand. Music began to play. Before us the Conservatory took shape, for a moment a skeletal frame and then a paned bubble of glass flashing in the sun. Orchids and aspidistras steamed its windows from inside. And below it—
The colors exploded into being like fireworks, red and blue and gold, variegated tropical greens, purples, the carpet beds in all their precise glory. Managed Nature, in the nineteenth century’s confident belief that unruly Nature should be managed to pleasing aesthetic effect. The intricate floral designs glowed, surreal grace notes, defying entropy and chaos.
She was struggling to stand, gasping, staring at it. The tether broke and she was pulled into the image. I gave her back her hair, with a straw hat for the sun. I gave her a long flounced skirt that swept the gravel, a suitable blouse and jacket. I gave her buttoned boots and a parasol. I gave her the body of young Kristy Ann, who had wandered alone with her sketchbook. Now she was part of the picture, not the dead thing cooling on the bench beside me.
She walked forward, her eyes fixed on the carpet beds, her lips parted. Color came into her face.
* * *
The fog came in, grayed the twenty-first century world. I heard crunching footsteps. A pair of women were coming up the path from the Point Lobos Road entrance. I got to my feet. I approached them, head turned aside, and managed to point at what was sitting on the park bench. One of the women said something horrified in Russian, the other put her hands to her white face and screamed.
They drew back from me. I pulled out my card and thrust it at them. Finally, suspicious, one of them took it and spelled out its message. I stared at my shoes while she put two and two together, and then I heard her pulling out her cell phone and calling the police.
I wasn’t arrested. Once the police were able to look at the body and see its emaciation, the hospital band on its wrist, once they read the labels on the pill bottles in the purse, they knew. They called the morgue and then they called Gleason. He came and talked to them a while. Then he took me back to HQ.
* * *
They don’t send me out much, anymore. I sleep a lot, in the place where the Company keeps me. I don’t mind; at least I don’t have to deal with strangers, and after all I have my memory.
I ride there on Edwin and the weather is always fine, the fog far out on the edge of the blue sea. The green park is always full of people, the poor of San Francisco out for a day of fresh air, sunlight, and as much beauty as a rich man’s money can provide for them. Pipefitters and laundresses sit together on the benches. Children run and scream happily. Courting couples sit on little iron folding chairs and listen to the band play favorites by Sir Arthur Sullivan. The intricate patterns blaze.
She will always be there, sometimes chatting with Mr. Sutro. Sometimes bustling from one carpet bed to the next with a watering can or gardening tools. I tip my hat and say the only words I can say, have ever said: “Good morning, Christiane.”
She smiles and nods. Perhaps she recognizes me, in a vague kind of way. But I never dismount to attempt conversation, and in any case she is too busy, weeding, watering, clipping to maintain the place she loves.
OLDER, WISER, TIME TRAVLER
M. Bennardo
First off, step one—commit a crime of passion.
You shouldn’t plan this, obviously. In fact, you can’t plan this. The defining characteristic of a crime of passion is precisely that it’s unplanned. Oh sure, there are tendencies. There are indications. A crime of passion doesn’t have to be a surprise—it just has to be unplanned.
—Could you perhaps give us an example?
All right. Say you come home from dinner—a nice dinner out with your sister. You come home to your high-rise apartment and you find your sister’s husband, your brother-in-law—you find him already there. He’s ransacking your place. You never liked him. You never liked the guy, never thought he was good enough for your sister, but now he’s ransacking your place.
You don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s probably looking for money or something to hock. Maybe he thinks you have drugs hidden somewhere. But you don’t ask. You don’t care. This is it—this is the last thing. So you grab him by the throat, you push him out the living room door onto the balcony, and with one final cathartic explosion you send him sailing over the railing.
That’s a crime of passion.
Second, you need to have a time machine.
It doesn’t need to be anything fancy—one of those ones from the kits in the back of Popular Mechanics will do fine. But the point is that you need one. If you don’t have one, then forget about it. There’s nothing you can do.
That’s why it’s a good idea just to keep one around. Just around—especially if you have a bad temper. Just keep one around. Mine’s in the hall closet.
—Heh. Mine too.
Third, you need to get rid of the witnesses.
This is one of the bad ones. You don’t want to do this, so try to commit your crimes of passion in private. Or I guess, the better way to say that is to try and keep a lid on your temper in public. Try to do that everywhere, of course, but especially when more than one person is around.
—Can’t you just make the witnesses promise not to tell?
You could, but then you have to believe they’ll never tell. Never, ever. Remember: your timeline doesn’t disappear when you go back. It stays there. The witness stays there. And you’re gone. If you don’t come back (and you’re not coming back) then eventually one day they’re going to tell somebody. And if “somebody” turns out to be “the cops”, then they’ll come get you. Wherever you are, even in a different timeline, they’ll come get you.
—But take the example you gave—
Look, I already said this is one of the bad ones.
—But what if you come back from dinner and your sister is with you—
I already said—
—And what if she’s the witness?
Look, you just have to do it, but nothing says you have to talk about it later.
Fourth, you go back in time.
You go back before you did what you did. You go back not too far, but just far enough. You know what I mean—you want to look the same. The same hair length, the same tan, the same clothes if you can manage it. You make everything as much the same as possible.
You want to be able to remember as much as possible too. You don’t want to go back in time and blunder around like you have short-term amnesia. You want to know what’s going on—that day, that hour, that minute. You want to be able to just step into life and have it flow naturally. Go back a day, or maybe two. Not much more than that.
—Maybe earlier the same day?
Sure, could be. But the other thing is you have to have a chance to get yourself alone. Alone, with nobody listening and no interruptions.
—Like maybe here, in the shower?
Yeah, the shower is good. As long as you can get rid of . . .
—Get rid of what?
Never mind.
—This is another one of the bad ones, isn’t it?
Not this one. The next one.
Fifth . . .
—You don’t look so good.
Fifth . . .
—You can’t even say it. I don’t know how you’re going to do it if you can’t even say it.
I told you before, you don’t have to talk about it.
—Humor me. Talk me through it.
Fifth, you have to get rid of yourself. Get rid of him, and just take over.
—You look really bad.
You heard me, right?
—You didn’t even bring a weapon. I’m wondering if you have any kind of plan. And what will you do with the body?
There are things you can do.
—Humor me again.
Nobody’s going to report you missing. You’re not missing, because you took over your own life. So nobody’s going to report anything. Nobody is going to look for you. You just bury it someplace where it won’t be dug up—not for a long, long time anyway.
—Any more steps after that?
Just one. You live with yourself.
—You think you can do that?
If I can do all the rest, I can do that.
—Well, you chickened out on step five.
I’m just working up my nerve. I’m getting there. Just give me a minute, is all.
—I got a better idea.
I don’t care.
—No, listen. You came back in time to stop me from doing something you regretted. Much as we hate that no good brother-in-law of ours, you didn’t really want to throw him off the balcony. So you came back in time to take my place—the older, wiser you, the you who knows better than me.
Yeah.
—Well, now I know. You did enough by telling me.
But—
—But nothing. You’ve already killed two people. Now you want to kill one more. And you think you can live with yourself after that?
I told you already—
—I think I got a better shot at it. Thanks for coming back and warning me, but I think I can take it from here. After all—
What?
—I only need to kill one.
The End
1 DAY IN TIME CITY
David Ira Cleary
Joey’s in the 60s, about to do a heist. This far uptown, he’s arthritic in his hands, sore and knobby-jointed. But his knees and ankles are grand as ever, so he rides his moped.
The moped’s sweet. Seven gears, top speed forty, courier backpack fastened to a rack behind the seat. Best of all, its brake pads are new, and stopping’s quick.
Like now. The Conquistador 6-by-6 he’s behind (three axles, five tons) brakes suddenly. A moped with old pads would flip him backside to the tinted rear window. But the new brakes stop him upright.
He sees himself reflected in the Conquistador’s gleaming citrine shell. Blue Pick-Up Boy helmet, eager frightened eyes, smile lines like riverbeds, the smile itself automatic though his gray nostril hairs are trembling.
“Sorry!” shouts the Uppie who’s driving.
Joey doesn’t quite believe him. Especially given that, as the Conquistador starts up, it becomes clear there was no reason to stop.
He locks his moped to a parking meter at 63rd and Eon. He grabs the courier backpack, and carries it into the Art-Deco-style Very Large Motors office building across the street. The security guard, who knows him, passes him through. The new receptionist on the eleventh floor, who doesn’t, is suspicious.
“It’s not even nine, bike-tyke.”
Joey wouldn’t have expected disdain from a chunky guy in a white pony-tail who’s wearing an earring and a garish red tie. Dressed like a Downster but acting like an Uppie. Probably a bounder, a guy unhappy with his social class. Joey feigns a hearing problem. “Yeah, you can sign.” He pushes the invoice across the desk. “I’ll take it to her office myself.”
Her being Carla Dakota, Chief Vision Officer for Very Large Motors.
“She’s not in yet!”
Joey waves affably as he enters the office area. He hopes the pony-tailed receptionist is green enough he won’t call security. He smiles at the one person he sees, a lady with thin hennaed hair enjoying her coffee, sitting in a cube so small she has to be a Downster. Then he reaches Carla Dakota’s office.
