Going Back Read online

  Agent Hessman cut him off. “Ben, I think we can worry about that later.”

  “What? Oh, right. Sorry, I can get carried away sometimes. In fact, there was this one party when I‍—‍”

  “Ben?”

  To Agent Hessman’s more focused glare, Professor Stein dropped into immediate silence.

  The clothing Agent Harris was complaining about consisted of a calf-length velvet dress colored different shades of maroon, with some patterning sewn in down its length, and wrapped at the waist by a velvet belt. On her head she wore a wide-brimmed, floppy hat topped by a flowered decoration that might have accented her features if she could have done anything but scowl. Then, of course, she had donned the aforementioned footwear, which was less like modern-day high heels and more like high-heeled women’s boots.

  For the men, the attire was pretty uniform: slim-fitting business suits with high-, white-collared dress shirts and matching vests—navy worsted for Professor Stein, dark brown pinstripe for Lieutenant Phelps, and gray worsted for Dr. Weiss, all with matching bowler hats—while Captain Beck had a striped double-breasted suit and a fedora. A pocket watch and bob on a gold chain hung between his breast pockets. The lace-up boots the men all wore were ubiquitous for the period.

  Agent Hessman stood out a little from the rest, his suit being more of a light green summer color, with a straw boater hat atop his head. He was also less overwhelmed by the apparatus before them than the rest. His mind was already totally on the mission.

  “Welcome to the Bubble, as we like to call it.” Dr. Weiss beamed. “It should be quite the show to see this thing finally fired up.”

  Ben, for one, immediately went from awe and wonder into a concerned glare, while Lieutenant Phelps’s eyes narrowed considerably.

  “You mean it’s untested?” Professor Stein asked.

  “We have yet to send back so much as a squirrel,” Dr. Weiss stated with a grin as he gazed nearly lovingly at what lay before them. “This will be the first time, and we the first-time travelers‍—well, besides whoever beat us back there, of course. But you get my point.”

  “Okay, enough of the gawking,” Agent Hessman said, taking charge. “We’ve all been outfitted with period clothing and enough period money for anything we might need.”

  “Reasonable facsimile of period money,” Ben said, taking out a couple of bills from his pocket to briefly wave around, “but I don’t think they have anything back in that period to detect our little forgeries. Just keep spending to a minimum. For that matter, any sort of interaction.”

  “Agreed,” Dr. Weiss stated. “The less of a temporal impact we make, the better.”

  “Ben’s pocket computer is one of the few concessions to modern technology we’re allowed,” Agent Hessman continued. “As are these.” He took out of his pocket what looked like a metal golf ball with two red buttons on either side of it.

  Dr. Weiss then continued with the explanation. “Our beacons. Pressing both buttons at the same time will send out a weak artificial TDW that the equipment here in the present will then pick up. When it does, the apparatus here will immediately yank your consciousness back into your body.”

  Captain Beck now spoke up as they proceeded to step onto the central platform. “Just so we’re clear, Doctor, a quick refresher on what’s about to happen, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” the doctor said as he stepped up. “The apparatus above us will create a wormhole through space and time to the destination we have set. Our consciousnesses will then be pulled through and projected back into the past, where exact replicas of our bodies and everything on us will be created from the energy umbilical connecting us back to the present through the wormhole. Once our beacons are activated, the projections of our bodies in the past will be uncreated and drawn back as energy through the wormhole, with our consciousnesses going immediately back into our original bodies here in these pods. It should be perfectly painless.”

  “So is death by lethal injection,” Agent Harris deadpanned.

  “Don’t worry, we have run plenty of simulations and tests. Also, one caveat about these beacons: While we are pretty sure they should work as designed, this will be the first time they’ll have been used. And by their very nature, these beacons are a one-shot use.”

  “Getting back would be nice,” Captain Beck stated, “but as long as this mission comes off, the rest doesn’t matter.”

  “This umbilical,” Ben asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence, “and the wormhole, for that matter. If anyone from back in 1919 sees it‍—‍”

  “Invisible to all concerned,” Dr. Weiss assured him. “The wormhole can only be seen or entered by way of certain energies the technology back then simply does not possess. We’ll also be able to go anywhere in the world and still be connected through the wormhole, though the farther away from our drop area we go, the more energy our bubble chamber here will draw. But that’s a concern for our technicians here.”

  He beamed a quick grin at the nearest lab-coated worker, who replied with a brief nod, then returned to prepping and double-checking the chamber.

  “Question.” It was Lieutenant Phelps, speaking up for the first time that anyone could remember. “What happens if this energy umbilical is somehow broken or the wormhole and power flow disrupted?”

  “A very good question,” Dr. Weiss replied with a slight nod, “and one we aren’t entirely sure of the answer to. You could be stuck back in time in your fabricated body while your original back here in the present immediately dies, or your consciousness could simply snap back into your present-time body here in these pods. It’s about an even chance of either possibility.”

  “Second question,” the lieutenant replied. “How will our bodies be maintained while we’re gone?”

  “After our bodies are scanned and our minds sent back, tethers within the pods will hook up to us to handle such needs as food, water, and waste,” Dr. Weiss explained.

  “But this is time travel,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t it just be a matter of returning the same moment we left, or something like that?”

  “Logically, yes,” Dr. Weiss agreed. “But remember that we’ll have a wormhole kept open with a live real-time connection to us the entire time. So for every day you experience back in 1919, your bodies back here will also experience that same length of time. Which brings up another matter limiting our time.” He paced over to one of the pods, his back to it as he slowly sat down while explaining.

  “Besides having no longer than the length of the temporal displacement event to fix things, the wormhole imposes its own limits in the amount of power required to hold it open. If we have not yet returned before the power requirements become too severe, then the energy umbilical could snap, trapping us back in 1919.”

  “How long?” Agent Harris asked flatly as she went over to her own pod to sit down.

  “There has been some debate about that. It could be as much as ninety-six hours or as little as forty-eight. We really aren’t sure, this being the first time and all.”

  “Let’s assume forty-eight,” Agent Hessman stated. “Two full days to find out what’s happened and stop it before we risk mission failure. Everyone clear?”

  No one said a thing.

  “Good. Then strap us into these things.”

  They each picked a pod and lay down within it, the technicians quickly hooking up various wires and sensor pads around their bodies before closing the lids on the pods. They resembled a circle of elongated eggs. The technicians then cleared out of the chamber through a door that led into the main control booth. Then came the wait, as even Dr. Weiss wondered what their journey would be like.

  The wait would not be long. Power surged suddenly through the mass of wiring, spitting down through the thick cables to each of the pods and surrounding them in a brightening glow. But as Professor Stein wondered what was to happen next, h
e and the others were quick to discover this was but the start. High overhead, the large twin metal propeller blades that curved beneath the wire-covered dome began to turn, slowly at first before spinning up to speed. Electrical sparks leaped from the backs of the blades to the cabling above.

  Faster and faster the blades spun, the sparks more intense until the whole ceiling began to glow. The spinning blades became a blur, the electrical activity they generated filling the entire ceiling with a bright white light, until nothing of wires or spinning blades was visible.

  Through their transparent pod lids, the team members could see the entire dome above them now like a small star as the chamber filled with the resonating echo of power. The roar of creation itself unleashed until the very mouth of that beast fully opened above them. In the center of that circle of blinding brilliance an eye opened, a dark pupil a dozen feet across, while a crack of thunder shook the chamber.

  In the moment the eye lashed out, pulses of energy shot down the cables to the pods; then all within the pods filled with white light.

  Up in the main control booth, General Karlson silently wished the travelers well.

  5

  They Arrive

  The white flash that blinded the travelers seemed to clear, revealing before them a vista unseen by any living eyes for a full century.

  They appeared mostly on a sidewalk, except for Agent Harris, who stood out in the street enough to nearly get hit by a passing car‍—specifically something in the Model T category. She quickly jumped out of the way, then joined the others in assessing their surroundings, though hers was more of a tactical survey.

  The buildings lined the streets like tall, blocky sentinels. The landscape was a strange sight to those who knew the New York of the future and were seeing many of the older buildings as new again, back in the day when they were modern tributes to mankind’s reach for the sky. Missing were the truly towering behemoths that would come much later; in their places were structures seen only in old photographs. Skyscrapers had turn-of-the-century architectural styles. One building looked like a tall wedge where two streets crossed at a forty-five-degree angle; miniature towers and minarets on another gave it the appearance of a baroque castle, while most simply formed a tall wall to cast a shadow across the narrow streets below. Here and there, large billboards advertised some ancient brand of cigarettes or household goods.

  The streets were filled with a scattering of old-styled cars, though they looked anything but old. Model Ts and other variations of the design tooled along, with one double-decker bus plying its way down the street, the top deck open to the air. The car about to hit Agent Harris squawked a honk from a horn the driver had to physically squeeze at the side of the door. Along the sidewalks, people were coming and going, dressed in similarly styled apparel as the team, with more variation perhaps in the styles of women’s dresses, though nothing shorter than calf length. Suits seemed the order of the day for the men, the exception being the occasional small cluster of uniformed soldiers back from a terrible war, and a young paperboy calling out the day’s headlines as he waved about a copy of the local newspaper. Other uniforms they could recognize as police, their hats like small domes atop their heads as they directed the scant traffic with their batons or chased the occasional young lad trying to escape with his stolen prize from a small drugstore.

  “It’s like . . . history just exploded all around me,” Captain Beck observed.

  “Somehow,” Dr. Weiss remarked, “I rather expected to see it all in black and white, but I suppose that’s just because of all the vintage pictures I’ve viewed.”

  As the team historian, Professor Stein was marveling like a kid gazing through a bakery window, jaw hanging open as one sight or another would catch his eye. “That’s a Jordan Model F Touring car‍—and it’s brand-new! A Model A, an Essex town sedan, what looks like a precursor to the old Woody . . . and the architecture!”

  “Most of these buildings still exist in our time,” Dr. Weiss reminded him.

  “But looking this new? Why, some of the buildings we consider really old are just being built! This is such an unparalleled opportunity to‍—‍”

  He was interrupted by Agent Hessman smacking him across the chest with a rolled-up newspaper, reminding him of why they were there in the first place.

  “Start on our mission,” the team leader finished for him, dropping the paper in the professor’s hands.

  “Right,” the historian said, pulling himself back from his burst of wonder. “But you can understand how I would‍—yes, enough of that. To business.”

  He unrolled the newspaper and scanned it for information. Meanwhile, after a quick look around, Agent Harris guided them off to the side of the walkway and started the group into a brisk walk down an alleyway she’d spotted.

  “Looks like we have five days before the TDE plays out, according to this date,” Ben narrated as he read. “Big headline of the day is President Wilson coming back from the Versailles Peace Conference, which makes this the beginning of July.”

  “Summer,” Dr. Weiss said. “I could have told you that from the heat and humidity. This material doesn’t exactly breathe, you know.”

  “First order of business,” Agent Hessman told them, “no titles. No doctors, professors, or agents. I’m just Lou or Mr. Hessman, the captain is Robert or Mr. Beck, Agent Harris is simply Sue, Lieutenant Phelps is David, you’re Ben, and, Dr. Weiss, you’re just Sam. Got it? Any military-sounding titles would be too easy for someone to verify, and I don’t want to worry about anyone’s reaction to titles like ‘special agent.’ Just keep things as generic as possible so we don’t stand out.”

  “I know,” Sue Harris spoke up. “There wouldn’t be a woman agent in this period to begin with, much less a black one. But I ain’t faking no Aunt Jemima accent.”

  “That would be down in the Deep South,” Ben replied absently as he continued to read.

  In the alley, a small group of young teenage boys looked ready to defend their claimed hangout. At least until Lieutenant Phelps stepped forward and flexed a muscle or two. The alley was quickly theirs alone.

  “Concerns of influenza outbreak,” Ben stated as he continued with his nose in the newspaper. “That checks out . . . Recent bombing by some anarchists just a few days ago . . . What looks like a rise in crime caused by Prohibition. There’ll be a lot of local crime gangs in the city making money off of illegal liquor sales, not to mention all their usual activities.”

  “How big a threat?” Sue asked.

  “The gangs can get violent, but they’re still pretty small. They won’t have unified into the sort of organized crime we know of quite yet. We’re just on the cusp of that era. Those Prohibition-era environments we’ve all seen in the movies won’t be kicking into high gear for about another year or two.”

  “I rather expected to see more girls dressed in those risqué dresses,” Dr. Weiss interjected with an embarrassed grin. “Flappers, I think they were called?”

  Ben brought down the paper as he replied to his companion’s remark. “I’m afraid that doesn’t happen for about another five years at this point, Sam. They’re still pretty conservative at this point, though some historians question if‍—‍”

  “Back to more immediate matters,” Agent Hessman reminded him. “We need a place to start. We’re in a city of millions with no traffic cams, no internet, and not so much as a stoplight, from what I can see. All we know is what’s recorded in Ben’s record book.”

  “My—oh, you mean my pocket comp—”

  Sue immediately had a hand clamped over the historian’s mouth, while Dr. Weiss gave him a quick reminder. “No anachronisms, not even verbal ones. We don’t know what unseen person might be listening.”

  “Exactly,” Agent Hessman said. “Your portable little history bank is a record book. Okay?”

  Ben nodded as Sue removed her hand from his
mouth, then resumed her watch of the crowd passing by outside the alley.

  “With that in mind,” Agent Hessman continued, “Ben, what can you suggest of where we should start?”

  “Well, I should caution that, while my . . . record book is quite complete, there may be events left unrecorded.”

  “Like what?” Dr. Weiss asked.

  As an answer, Agent Hessman took the paper from Ben’s hands and turned it around to show the headline reading, “President Comes to New York City!”

  “Something like that could generate all sorts of unrecorded activity,” he stated. “Security precautions, high-level diplomats coming in for secret meetings that by necessity would definitely not be recorded, all manner of things of a nature that we need to know about.”

  “So we have a problem,” Captain Beck summed up. “Too much is going on in this city that we don’t have on record, and we have a very limited time to find out.”

  Dr. Weiss glanced out at the busy streets, the rows of buildings marching away to the horizon, and grunted. “A needle in a haystack would be far easier to find. When you add in that it could even be some seemingly inconsequential event, such as some kid getting hit by a car or not, the possibilities are astronomical.”

  Lieutenant Phelps had taken up position opposite Agent Harris at the mouth of the alley, Sue earning an occasional odd look from passersby, to which David simply glared to send them on their way. A group of people talking in quiet tones in an alley might be suspicious to some, but even in the year 1919, too much of interest was happening in the streets around them to long draw attention to their small alley.