A Storied Man

“Gimme a closer look at that gun you don’t aim to use,” Theo said.

I pulled it out and handed it to him.

“Well, slap my momma. That’s a Ruger Big Fuckin’ Gun 3000.” He tossed it from one hand to the other, getting a feel for its heft. “Feels like nothin’,” he said. “Hold on. Be right back.”

“Um, Theo…” I started to tell him I was in a hurry, then remembered I was in no position to rush anybody.

I leaned to look into the den. Theo squatted down and, facing the wall, mumbled to himself. Within a few seconds, he reached up and swung open a small safe door. He’s getting the money already? His head blocked my view of the safe itself. He nodded, then pulled the safe door shut and hung a cowboy hat over it.

He approached, his hands behind his back, a devilish grin on his face.

The doorbell rang.

Theo’s smile faded. He pulled one hand from behind his back and put a finger to his lips. “Ssshhhhh.” Then, true to his cowboy image, he yelled out, “Who is it?”

The muffled reply made my heart sink. “Agents Glock and Speel, Time Code Enforcement.”

Theo stepped over and manually turned on the front door display. Apparently the cowboy act only went so far. A screen on the wall lit up to show the one-way vid feed.

“It’s them, alright,” I whispered.

“Oh, you know these folks?”

“I’m sort of under investigation.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? This could be fun.” Theo wasn’t exactly the patron saint of time travel. It wasn’t a good idea for us to be seen together, but he seemed to get a thrill out of it. I guess those who have everything constantly look for new ways to get thrills.

“Here, hold this and go get in my closet. I’ll take care of them,” he said.

He thrust into my hands a large, black, metallic handgun. I could tell it was vintage, and that it was powerful. Beyond that, I knew little about old weapons. Its weight was almost twice that of the BFG.

“Your closet?”

His whisper turned urgent. “Go through the den, turn left, and then you’ll see my bedroom. The closet’s big. Go, ya slow sumbitch.”

I did as he said. Hurrying through the den, with no time to stop and look around, I couldn’t help noticing an elk bust on the far wall. I couldn’t believe that taxidermy from such a distant era lasted that long, and that it had survived in spite of laws restricting private ownership. Only museums were supposed to have such specimens. I felt bad for bringing the cops to Theo’s door. If they see the inside of this place, he might go away for a long time.

In his bedroom, I smelled cedar. Illegal. Though still available in our time, the price was exorbitant and most countries had outlawed cutting it for commercial purposes. I shook my head at the thought that cedar might be abundant now. I was all for positive change, but I wasn’t sure I liked quite so much of it at once.

Plus, I was on my way to hide in a closet.

The smell of cedar grew stronger when I stepped in with Theo’s clothes. I moved a few western shirts aside to reveal what I suspected — cedar walls. When I pulled the door shut, I just stood there in the quiet darkness, only my sense of smell receiving input.

How did I get myself into this? Am I so desperate for a purpose in life that I’ll follow the first people who offer me one? It has to be —

Gunshots from the front of the house.

What the hell?

Rushed footsteps coming my direction.

“Come on, Billy-boy! We gotta vamoose!” Theo called out.

I closed my eyes and lowered my head, trying to gather strength. This was not going well. I couldn’t imagine what Glock and Speel could have done to make him start shooting. Theo clearly had thrill issues, and unfortunately his thrills came from thumbing his nose at authority.

The closet door flung open. Theo stood there, breathing fast. “Well, you been struck deaf, or what? I said we gotta git.”

I followed him to the back door, where I fully expected to see two horses at a hitching post. Instead, there was a shiny new skyporter. We jumped inside and Theo grabbed the controls.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Just strap in and I’ll tell ya on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

“I got a little spot we can go.” He winked.

We shot past buildings I had never seen, and some that were slightly different from what I remembered. Theo steered around obstacles as if he knew what was coming next. He either had made this type of escape before or had an ability to see the future. Whatever the case, his maneuvers made me motion sick.

“So, Theo, why did I hear gunfire back there?”

“Well, Billy-boy, I don’t take kindly to the law tellin’ me what to do.”

“What did they say?”

“Said something about a warrant to search the premises. My computer downloaded it, but I didn’t pay it much mind. When I said I wouldn’t open the door, they turned loose somethin’ they called a search sentry, a newfangled thang what can squeeze between the cracks in my doorway and proceed to look for evidence.”

I saw it coming.

“So, I did what any respectable homeowner would do in that situation.”

“You shot it,” I said.

“Yeah, boy. When they designed that, I don’t reckon they’s thinkin’ about it takin’ on a .38 caliber round. Little critter never had a chance.”

He banked the skyporter hard to the right.

“So, are they after us?”

“Well, I never exactly told’em I was leavin’. They’s knockin’ pretty hard on the door after I shot their little beepin’ buddy. I’m sure they’ll figger it out sooner or later.”

“But they didn’t mention me?” I asked.

“Nope, not once.”

“Is there any reason you can think that Time Code Enforcement would come after you?” I was convinced that they had pulled his name from my customer list and were trying to find evidence of era contamination to pin on me. It would strengthen their case against me regarding Danetta’s transgressions.

“All my time travel has been just between you and me, Billy-boy. You know, what happens in the past, stays in the past,” he said.

If they didn’t catch us before we reached Theo’s hiding place, then they would start watching me too closely for Danetta’s plan to have a chance. I had to tell her that there was no more waiting.

The skyporter pitched violently downward about 10 feet, then steadied itself. It listed to one side. My side.

“Um, Theo, what’s going on?”

“Damn dealer said the bugs was worked out.”

“Bugs?”

“I got a deal on account of all the recalls, but the dealer told me they fixed it.”

“We’re crashing, aren’t we, Theo?”

(continue to Part 10)

Instead of risking travel by skyporter, I made the trip on foot, and was surprised to find that the woods behind my apartment building stretched the entire two miles to the rendezvous point. I enjoyed a walk through woods that I had always known as sprawling parking lots surrounding a huge factory. Good riddance to whatever they were selling.

Then I remembered what they made there in the previous version of history — impact absorption shield emitters. I don’t know if Danetta’s note was the lone reason that only trees and untamed undergrowth greeted me, and I didn’t care. I was enjoying a walk through the forest, with fresh air to breathe and leaves crunching underfoot.

A nagging thought, previously lingering almost inextricably in my mind’s dark recesses, came to the surface. What if we change something that messes things up worse? I tucked it back down, thinking it only fair to hear out Danetta’s plan before giving my opinion.

When I reached the spot, she wasn’t there. I checked the coordinates on my display. Chura had shown me the place on her display, and I had called Danetta to set a time. I was precisely where and when she asked me to be.

I still wasn’t sure I could be who she wanted me to be.

Since school, I always was somewhat of a loner, my loyalty all used up on myself, and I sneaked in a few illegal and unethical activities. Incarceration, however, was not something I thought I could face. With modern monitoring techniques, only the worst offenders were sentenced to prison. Most era contamination violations, although rarely committed by violent people, landed the guilty in a maximum security facility. The company one kept inside those walls was not exactly the Tupperware crowd.

An acorn bounced off my head. “Ouch!” I looked up and was temporarily blinded by the sun.

“Hey, there, bird man.”

With only a round silhouette to go on, I had a hard time making out the face. I held my hand up to my forehead — blotting out the entire sun with just my clustered fingers. My eyes adjusted enough to tell it was Danetta, sitting on the fork of two oak branches about 15 feet off the ground. With her hands on either side of her, she sat swinging her legs. As playful as she seemed, had I not seen her face I would have have thought she was Chura.

“You seem awfully cheerful for a fugitive,” I said.

“Hey, look who’s talking, Mr. Cop Magnet.”

“They were only there because they were looking for you.”

“Come on up.”

I had hiked many trails on various jumps back in time, even rappelled down a few cliff walls, but I hadn’t climbed a tree in years. The last time I had, I often spent hours in the woods behind Grandpa’s place trying to see what it was like to be that high, like a falcon, without a skyporter. Occasionally, if I sat still long enough, one of the mighty birds of prey lit on a branch in a nearby tree at the forest’s edge. My heart thumped when one of them caught site of its prey in the open field, and then made a daring dash for the kill.

I approached the massive trunk and jumped up to grab a branch directly above my head. My feet found purchase on another branch, and it all came rushing back. Almost as simply as climbing a ladder, I put together a series of twists, pulls, and pushes that got me level with Danetta’s perch. Deciding not to push my luck, however, I sat next to the trunk, one arm securely around it, the other hand gripping the branch.

“Falcon? I think we’ll have to start calling you ‘Monkey,’” she said.

“Thanks.”

She had died her hair red. It looked bad on her. I supposed more than one brown-skinned blond in a crowd of three would have attracted unwanted attention.

“So, where are your sister and your niece?” I asked.

“Chethra doesn’t like heights. She’s over near a brier thicket having some berries, and Chura’s with her.”

“You risked going into a grocery?”

“There are wild berries out here.”

“Wow.” I had never seen them in our time. “All your gloating aside, you’ve stirred things up. A lot of people died because of what you did.”

“I know.” Her voice turned somber so quickly, I knew she had been putting on an act. “I guess Chura told you about the plan.”

“Sure. Something about taking four chambers back with us so we can have a whopping 24 hours to do some major patchwork.”

“That sums it up. Speaking of which, we’re going to need large sums of money.”

“I can’t just go pulling out all my money. I’m sure TCE is looking for that kind of thing. Don’t forget, you’re the only one here who’s incognito.”

“That’s not what I meant. We need lots of 20th-century cash. I’ve heard that collectors place a high value on it, and that some folks in our fair city have large stacks.”

“What are you going to do with cash in the past?” I asked

“Buy houses. I don’t know how many there will be along the Buffalo’s banks, but for the most part it was undeveloped even before it got protected status. If we can snatch up the houses and the land, then we can keep people from dying.”

“I guess you’re talking about Beers’ family.”

“Right. If they live, he’s born, and his inventive mind lives on to save countless others. Heady stuff, huh?” Her mood was lifting. She obviously believed it would work.

“Yeah, heady. Listen, I’ve thought about it, and I’m not sure how much longer they’ll let me keep my place running. The longer they can’t find you, the more likely Glock is to put more pressure on me. They shut me down, and your little scheme just got a lot tougher.”

“Then we better get moving. Now, I’ve scoped out a few people rumored to collect eras-gone cash.”

“Forget it.”

“What?”

“I mean, I don’t need your list. One of my shadier customers was a collector, and used one of his jumps to get a lot of it.”

“But you can’t bring back anything you didn’t take.”

“Nope, but you can steal it and hide it in a safe place. He found a place that had never been developed through all those years, and hid it there. Within a few hours of our return, he was the single largest owner of 20th-century bills.” It was one of the many crimes that completely baffled eras-gone investigators.

“Ingenious.” She tilted her head. “Wrong, but ingenious.”

“I think most serious collectors do the same thing.”

I heard leaves crunching below us. I looked down to see Chethra and Chura, their jaws working as they chewed. Chethra held berries out to Chura in one hand as she gestured to us with the other. “So, Falcon, how do you plan to get this cash from him?”

“He owes me one for all the illegal jumps I took to help him scope out his big job. He scored way too much to show it all to even his closest friends and enemies.”

“It’s set, then,” Danetta said. “You go rob the robber while we prepare ourselves.”

——-

“Well, Billy-boy Plotz, you old sumbitch. How are you?”

His name was Theodore Cranston, but his friends called him “Theo.” Either way, I thought it was a hell of a name for an old-west wannabe, but what did I know?

“Fine, Theo, just fine.”

“It’s a real bumfuzzler, havin’ ya drop in on me like this. What’s the bur under yer saddle?”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Theo.”

“Well, ya ain’t gotta piss in my Cheerios, neither.”

“I’ll try to go easy. It’s about money. I need a lot of it.”

“Need a little loan, do ya? Hang on, lemme check somethin’.” He looked in a nearby mirror, its frame encrusted with empty shells from gunpowder-based ammunition. “Well, gawd dayum, it looks like I’m still Theo Cranston, the richest shitkicker you’ll ever meet. What in blazes is that?” Baring his teeth, he moved his face closer to the mirror as he reached down to pull out a pocketknife. I wondered whether anything in his house wasn’t contraband. He flipped out a pointed implement and used it to pick something from between two front teeth. Is this guy for real? I figured anybody laying it on that thick must use it as an escape. If you don’t like your life, then just act like you’re somebody else.

I wish I could do that right now.

“No, not exactly a loan. I need some of your 20th-century cash to take back with me.”

“Come back?” He continued digging at the pesky bit of food.

I found myself speaking more like him. “A client needs it to fix something in the past that she busted up real good.”

As he folded the knife up, he dropped it. The fake woodgrain housing smacked loudly against the laminate floor. I leaned down to retrieve it.

“Well, fuck me runnin’, Billy-boy! That’s a big gun ya got there. You expectin’ trouble?” His voice, while still putting on the cowboy act, took on a barely perceptible nervous tone.

My Ruger had peeked out from under my shirt when I bent over. Careless dumbass! I scolded myself.

“Don’t worry, Theo, I’m not going to shoot anybody.”

(continue to Part Nine)

“So, will you help us?” Chura asked.

“All my jumps are being closely monitored right now. Identities on the manifests are being verified. Come to think of it, you shouldn’t be here with me right now.”

Chura smiled at two boys, the brothers I had seen fighting, eating Pittsburgers. Created by a Pittsburgh food vendor, they were pitched as a healthy alternative to the city’s signature Primanti Brothers sandwich of meat, cole slaw, fried egg, and French fries. Instead of substituting ingredients to create a similar concoction, the chef patterned them after the Philly Cheesesteak, and local city planners hoped they would compete with that renowned taste. Customers quickly saw Pittsburgers for what they really were — emu sandwiches with lowfat cheese, onions, and peppers, — and only a few vendors in other cities served them. Still, the boys sloppily devoured theirs.

She shifted her gaze from the boys to me. “Here’s a number where you can reach Aunt Danetta.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s about ready to give up.”

“Turn herself in?”

“Yeah.”

“Hasn’t that crossed your mind, too?”

“Sure, but Aunt Danetta seems to think we can fix it, if we just get back to 1970 somehow.”

“She knows it’s not an exact science right? I can’t place you at exactly the same moment we went before, and three hours isn’t much time to set things right.”

“If we set the chambers to go back with us, then we have 24 hours, right? That’s what you said.”

“That’s true, but that’s still not much time.”

“Danetta says it’s worth a shot.”

In the human population, only those who travelled back and tampered with the natural unfolding of events were aware of differences when they returned to their own time. Therefore, a person who travelled back and removed a tree’s seed from the ground before it broke into sunlight would be the only one with knowledge of that tree’s former existence in the present. Thus, enforcement of rules governing time travel was almost impossible and presented a worldwide problem that sparked some lawmakers to attempt a ban on time travel. Anything else, they said, would have been too susceptible to corruption.

Exactly the kind of corruption I had abetted on Danetta and crew’s fateful jump. The difference in our case, however, was that Danetta’s note stated very clearly that she was from the future. She gave Time Code Enforcement a clue that ended up in a museum. Very bad form.

To help appease those opposed to time travel, robotics engineers, along with law enforcement officials, built humanoid robots to run TCE. These emotionless beings served as era contamination agents protecting the integrity of the human timeline. Cases were tried by robots, with a jury of same. Every time I made a jump, I had to file a plan with TCE, who scrutinized it before approval or denial. Glock and Speel, my recent acquaintances, were the original team in that elite force’s investigative arm.

“I’ll think about it.” After all, I hadn’t know these women very long. They still could be lying to me.

“It’s a chance to make things right. Here’s where you can find us.” She showed me a location on her display.

“But there’s a factory there,” I said.

“Not this time around,” she said with a wink.

I shook my head. “Okay, I’ll find you later. Now get out of here.”

Why am I doing this? I must have seen Chura as the daughter I never had. Or was a part of me attracted to Danetta? If so, then it definitely was the wrong part.

As I walked the rest of the way home, I realized it gave me more than a healthier heart; it also gave me a clearer mind. The TCE agents could not track me as easily as they could my skyporter. Inconspicuous was the best way to go.

I approached my front door and touched my plasti to the reader.

“Unauthorized entrant. Passage denied,” said my sexy computer. I really should give her a name.

I looked at my plasti, then wiped off a smudge that ran across its length. I slapped it against the reader.

“Hello, Mr. Plotz. Come in,” the temptress’ voice said. The locking mechanism disengaged.

My computer’s voice was the only one that made me want to jump a machine’s bones and pick its brain at the same time. “Access core library.” I queried it about the impact absorption shields, and it found no records. Same thing when I asked for a history of inventor Jacob Beers. Chura’s story checked out fine.

That meant that I was in a lot more trouble than I thought. Although any and every era contamination was a crime, those that resulted in harm or death carried more severe penalties. TCE wouldn’t know of Beers specifically, or impact absorption shields, but they could surmise that every death from Buffalo River floods beyond 1970 would not have happened without Danetta’s meddling. Even with that tragic detail, a good defense attorney could argue that Danetta’s note had a positive impact on humankind. Unfortunately for her, however, human emotion was not a part of the jury deliberations.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of my wiping from the logs the sheet of toilet paper that changed the world. I laughed. They had enshrined the damn thing.

I walked into my room and took off my clothes, then took a shower. Walking was fine, but I was taking far too many showers because of it. We hadn’t lived up to science fiction’s vision of a future without water-based cleaning. Our residential reclamation units were pretty snazzy, though. After getting washed up, I drank a glass of the same water I used to take a shower.

My Ruger BFG 3000 still lay on my closet’s top shelf. After getting dressed, I grabbed the gun and tucked it between my pants and the small of my back, then let my shirttail hang over it. I didn’t want to shoot anybody.

(continue to Part Eight)

“Chura?”

“As far as you know,” she said. She looked a lot different. Still a pretty girl, but with short, bobbed blonde hair instead of the long black hair she had when I met her.

I know I visibly brightened even though I tried not to draw attention. “Are you okay? Where are your mom and your aunt?”

“They’re fine, but we can’t get out much right now.”

“I can understand. The cops paid me a nice visit the day I met you ladies.”

“Sorry about that. Danetta spent a long time raising the money for the jump, and since I helped she let me go along. Of course, then mom had to go, too.”

“How old are you, anyway? 13?” I was surprised they would get such a young girl involved.

“No, I’m 14, thank you very much.”

“Oh, then let’s get out the hoverchair. You might break a hip.”

She punched my shoulder.

“Did you notice everybody’s faces?” she asked.

I looked around the park. They were the usual folk, business people walking or hovering their way home from work, parents out spending time with their children. Except the fact that they actually had a park to play in, I didn’t see anything unusual.

Then it hit me.

“Nobody’s wearing an oxygen mask,” I said. Young, old, fast, slow — nobody needed help breathing. They could just draw it right out of the air, unfiltered and unassisted. I had no memory of that during my lifetime.

“Really sweeps, huh?”

“All this because of one little note?”

“Aunt Danetta says sometimes it just takes a single clap to start an avalanche.”

“Damn. Oh, sorry.”

“That’s okay, Falcon. I’ve heard worse.”

“You know, even though you and your aunt see this as a great thing, and I gotta admit I’m starting to see the light, era contamination is a serious crime. I don’t know exactly what they might do to you, but they could lock up your aunt for life, and your mom for a very long time.”

“Yeah, we know. But that’s not the worst part.”

I braced myself internally. “Do I want to hear this?”

“You need to.”

She handed me a portable replay device. It showed a news clip of a man standing on a ledge downtown, announcing that he was going to jump if they didn’t get his ex-wife up there. Nobody better come near him, he said, or it was all over.

I looked up at Chura. “What’s he raving on about? The impact absorption shield will catch him.”

She pointed at the screen.

The camera zoomed out to show a crowd staring upward with rapt concern. That didn’t seem right. What was going on? There was no reason to threaten to jump from a building. It would do nothing.

She took the display from my hands, then made sure I was looking in her eyes. “Impact absorption shields don’t exist.”

“What?”

“The man who invented them was never born.”

I leaned over, hand to my forehead. This was not going to be good. “And Danetta’s actions had something to do with that?”

“We think so. Maybe somebody way back in his family tree drowned in a flood or something.”

“A flood that wouldn’t have happened had they dammed the Buffalo.”

“Right.”

“Shit. Oh, sorry again. I haven’t been around teenagers much since I was younger.”

“Trust me, you don’t need to apologize. We all pretty much said that when we saw this news report and mom did some research.”

“Give me some time to sit here and take all this in.”

The man who had invented the, if you’ll pardon the expression, groundbreaking device, was Jacob Beers. He was born in Canada, but most of his family before him were Americans. After losing a loved one to a skydiving accident, and talking to families of other victims, he thought what a tragic shame it was that with all the modern conveniences of life, something as basic and primitive as falling could kill a person.

He dedicated his life’s work to designing and perfecting a system that would catch falling people. At first he was laughed at, and his first few tries caught rain and anything else that fell from the sky naturally. Once the system was “smart” enough to activate only when something alive was falling, people realized the value it could hold in other applications and anxiously awaited the final product.

It was approved and adopted by cities everywhere. Businesses and governments all installed them. Skyscraper developers made them standard equipment both during and following construction. Insurance companies awarded adopters with premium discounts. Emergency rooms and the workers who delivered injured patients to them cheered.

It was considered one of the greatest inventions in human history. Then, Beers went one step farther and tweaked the system to detect falling objects about to strike a living thing.

Now, because of something Danetta changed, all that was gone. Suicide jumps had continued. Malfunctioning skyporters had fallen to kill their drivers and anyone unfortunate enough to be on the street below. Office workers escaping fires had been left with no option but to jump to their deaths. Not to mention the significant if much less numerous skydiving deaths Beers originally set out to prevent.

“We have to go back and change history again,” Chura said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

(continue to Part Seven)

The connection was taking too long. When I dialed her before, it was instantaneous, and the difference was not due to an underpowered portable. I looked at the unit’s display. “Unreachable,” it read.

Unless Glock and Speel were lying to me, Time Code Enforcement couldn’t have got to Danetta yet. It seemed that she and her crew were one step ahead of the authorities. I put away my contraband communicator and went back inside, for some reason hoping that I was right. Why did I care what happened to those women?

“Let me get something right in my head, Mr. Plotz,” Glock said. His inflection on my last name was the reason I hated it. “The inventories at your office showed no missing articles on the passengers’ return, but — and I think you’ll agree history shows this — it’s clear that this mystery woman left a sheet of toilet paper with a note on it. Then there’s the matter of an eras-gone ink pen coming back with less ink.”

My cover for what I thought was an accidental leftback item was turning into conspiracy to committ era contamination. I resisted activating my legal advisor with the agents in the room. It might give them more reason to suspect me. Rightly so, dumbass. I did my best impression of it instead.

“I told you, I didn’t see her do anything like that,” I said. “That conservationist may have found the note the same day we were there, but it doesn’t prove when it was written. Knowing me, my inventory sensors might have been a little off. How much ink does it take to write a small note? It’s gotta be in the margin of error.” I kept everything tuned precisely, but they didn’t need to know that.

Glock pressed on. “Why did you contact the suspect prior to our arrival?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You contacted someone your comm signature lists as Danetta Sherril, the same name found on your jump plan manifest.”

“We had some billing matters to discuss. Sometimes I work out payment plans.”

Speel intervened. “We have contact information for the primary suspect. Let’s follow up on that.”

I could tell from Glock’s body language that he wanted to keep needling me.

“Last chance for a cup of coffee,” I said. I walked to the kitchen and poured myself another cup of Cuban. Much more of that stuff and I would be jittery enough for them to be sure I was hiding something.

“We may need to talk to you again, Mr. Plotz,” Glock half-shouted toward the kitchen.

I poured in the sugar and stirred while I shouted over my shoulder. “Not a problem, Agent Glock.” I said his name just like he said mine.

I sipped the thick, syrupy liquid. Sweet elixir of life.

——-

I didn’t like my perfect, private little world being shaken up like that. If I wanted baggage, I would have sought it like all the others who committ their lives to pleasing others.

The family money I got when I was 21 was just enough to start my own business. I had been working for a big outfit that contracted with the government to give underprivileged kids sightseeing jumps to the past. Most middle-class folks couldn’t afford jumps, but made too much to get aid. So, typically only the poorest and the richest had a chance at time travel.

I liked the work, but my iron-fisted brother wasn’t letting me live for free. He wouldn’t do that unless I came on as full-time resident building manager. Being on the forest’s edge, it was an expensive place to live, so all my money went to rent and food. Going out on my own was the only way to get the good things in life, and that trust fund made it possible. I mumbled to my deceased benefactor after buying my final piece of equipment, “Thanks, Grandpa, for helping your falcon fly.”

That phrase became the inspiration for my slogan, “Fly through time with Falcon.” I built a respectable business and, without partners, soon started raking in the profits. I was debt-free and unattached. I ate too much food at every meal and drank before noon if the urge hit me.

More than all that, I was lonely.

I had a few casual friends with lives similar to mine, and hypocritically called them losers. I was shy around women, most of my arousal triggered by my computer’s sultry female voice.

For a while, I found joy in fooling my customers. At first I did it for higher profit margins; it was cheaper to go back, say, 500 years than it was to go back 750. Then, when I started feeling bad about the money, I messed with their heads by taking them to the right time, but the wrong location. “Sure, the Sahara Desert was a tropical wonderland in 1940.” They came back scratching their heads wondering how their history courses could have got it so wrong. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for a few of them to talk and figure out what I was doing.

All these pathetic personal and professional shortcomings added up to a man susceptible to falling in with any crowd that gave him a thrill. For the next few days after the agents left my flat, I missed that rush of belonging to something that I knew society saw as wrong, but felt right. I had no way to contact Danetta, Chethra, or Chura. I could take or leave Chethra, but I wanted to find out more about them. Was Danetta alone in her effort? Were they part of a larger organization?

To help clear my mind, I took some customers. One man who had traced his family roots back thousands of years just wanted to see various races in person. All humans in our time are the color of chocolate milk with a hint of jaundice. Another went back to witness the despair of people with AIDS, a disease wiped out long before any of our grandparents were born. It’s funny what people will do to get away from the sterility of the modern world. Books and replays aren’t enough. They want to be there — see it, feel it, smell it, and I’m the person who watches these adults react like children seeing fireworks for the first time or losing their first loved one.

For me, the fireworks ended a few years ago, and I never truly loved anyone but my grandpa. I had been to so many times and places that I had grown accustomed to almost everything. Then along came three ladies who thrust me into a different realm. They made me risk my neck to get them back to their own time, and then cover for their indiscretions, all in one day. Just as quickly, they disappeared.

Walking back from work one day for some exercise, because that jump with Danetta’s group showed me just how far I had let my conditioning slip, I stopped at a park that was not there before my jump back to 1970. I sat on a bench to admire the huge trees, some estimated at 1,000 years old, and a fountain fed by a well. One little note caused that?

A boy ran by me, followed by a smaller boy screaming, “Mommy, he threw my toy skyporter in the water!”

“It’s a submersible,” the bigger boy said.

“Is not!” the smaller boy whined.

The boys continued on like that, back and forth, until their mother grabbed them by the ears and urged them to a food vendor’s cart.

“Falcon? Is that you?” said a female voice from behind me.

I turned.

(continue to Part 6)

“Hold on a minute. I have to change clothes. Front door display off,” I said. The screen went dark.

“Dammit!” I shouted.

“There, there, easy now.” Said my sexy computer. Her tension abatement programming had kicked in.

“Engage legal advisor.”

“Legal advisor engaged.”

“Analyze data from front door reader. Tell me if it’s legal.” I wanted to make sure the code cops’ warrant was above board.

“It is a legally binding document. Standard warrant to search the premises, bearing the signature of the honorable Connie Capsowicz.”

“Known as Judge Cappy,” I muttered.

“Please restate query.”

“Disengage legal advisor.”

I didn’t want to answer the door with scotch on my breath, but I couldn’t ignore them any longer. I shed my dirty clothes and opened my closet to see if I had anything presentable. There on the shelf lay my Ruger BFG 3000. Blasting my way out was not an option; that would give my brother a great reason for having me cut off from the family fortune. Still, it was reassuring to see it.

“Play Mozart. Random selections, tempo allegro. Replay waterfall.”

——-

“You’re sure you don’t want some Cuban coffee? I make a damn good cup.” I said.

We all sat in the living room, the sound of Mozart in the air and a replay of a 50-meter waterfall on the display. I wanted to seem as polite and welcoming as possible. It was killing me.

“No thanks. No stimulants on the job,” Agent Speel said. She was pretty, about 40, with light brown hair cut just below her jawline.

Glock just shook his head, which was shaved bald. I put his age at about 50, but when he squinted his eyes to get a better look at my skyporter out back, I bumped that guess to 60. Too many crows feet for 50.

“Doughnuts?” I almost laughed. I knew cops never touched them.

They declined. I was angry that neither of them wanted my coffee, made in a painstaking replica of an eras-gone espresso machine. It was the one true skill I brought to the role of gracious host.

I was under suspicion of era contamination. They said that I filed a jump plan for the same date and location that Compton reported finding the note. The manifest showed that I took three passengers, and Glock and Speel believed one of them wrote it. The handwriting was not mine, according to the analysts who still were searching for a match.

“Another problem, Mr. Plotz, is that we find no record of any women going by the names on your manifest,” Glock said.

“They told me they used fake names. Whoever they were, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure that even I didn’t know it.” I spooned sugar, and lots of it, into my coffee. “Until the end, when it looked like they might not make it to the exit point.” My voice trailed off.

I had just talked to Danetta. She had used her real contact information. What an amateur. That number wasn’t on the jump plan, but if they asked for my records or scanned my comm signatures, they would know as much about her as I did.

“How did they make contact, Mr. Plotz?” Speel asked.

“Please, call me Falcon.”

She stared off over my right shoulder for a second, straight-faced. Then, back into my eyes she said, “How did they make contact?”

“They said they found me through a friend.”

“We’d like to scan your comm signatures,” Glock said.

Dammit.

“Display comm signatures,” I said.

A record of all my contact with the outside world appeared on the screen. The agents took turns saying, “Scroll up,” to see more.

I barely got two more sips of my coffee before they found record of my conversation with Danetta. They spent the rest of the night tossing my place and my office, after a no-frills ride in their skyporter. When we got back, a team waited to begin searching all the vacant flats in the building. My brother owned it, but he obviously had told them that I was unoffically the resident premises manager. I gave them my key plasti and a list of the vacancies.

“Hey, I need to go get something out of my skyporter.”

They said that was fine.

When I got to the balcony, I looked down to see agents parked at the street level. They waved. I smiled and returned it.

I climbed over the rail and into my skyporter. Nothing as simple as following a falcon this time. I reached underneath the passenger’s seat, where I always kept a secure talker for emergencies. It left no comm signature. Taking people back in time carried with it risks and responsibilities most people would never know, so contingencies were important.

I entered the number Danetta gave me.

(continue to Part 5)

Chura yelled out, “Aunt Danetta! You have one minute!”

I was lucky; my grip on Danetta’s hand was loose enough that she didn’t take me down with her. I stopped and turned to help her, knowing well that leaving someone behind would be worse than being left behind. Had I deserted her, I never would have worked again, so I was bound by selfish duty. I heard fast footsteps cross the road, then thump down the trail toward us.

It was Chura. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “Go back and step right now. We can be rescued if it comes to that.”

“No way we’re stepping without you. Besides, she’s broke.”

My eyes widened. “What? But you showed me all the proper docs, and your cred looked good.”

“Faked,” Danetta said. She propped herself onto her elbows. “We spent our last money on this trip, Falcon. If we don’t make that jump, then we don’t make it back, period. No daring rescues for the rich this time. Please, don’t tell my sister.”

“Shit. Give me a hand, kid.”

“I’m trying!” We each grabbed one of Danetta’s arms and pulled her to her feet.

She grunted and threw her arms over our shoulders. The going was flat now, so Danetta was able to move her feet enough to keep us from dragging her. Chethra made no move toward us, instead remaining steadfast near the exit point. Oddly, although she was the only person who had followed my instructions, I was angry enough to slap her.

Chethra called out, one shoulder in the azaleas, “Chura! Just leave them and come on. You can still make it!”

“No, Mom! We’re all going, or nobody is.”

We ran, leaving Danetta’s feet dragging. I felt like my heart and my lungs were fighting for space inside my chest. We reached the road. I held up my arm to check my watch. Ten seconds.

Chethra was halfway into the azaleas now. “Come on, Chura, come on!”

“Shut up, Mom! Aunt Danetta, please!”

From somewhere, Danetta found strength and pumped her legs right along with us. We reached the other side and dashed into the exit window. For 50 percent of a second, all was black. Then, everything turned white.

Standing there inside the machine chamber’s sterile yet strangely welcoming presence, I heard my pulse in my ears. My thigh muscles burned. Danetta and Chura lay, barely stirring, on the floor in their respective chambers. Chethra exited hers and headed for Chura’s. I glanced up at the vitals screen; everybody looked stressed, but fine. I sat to rest and catch my breath.

My mind recalled the smell of azaleas, and before thinking I looked down for petals on my shirt. Nothing. Only the DNA that went out could come back. Many passengers had tried bringing back pinecones, leaves, pebbles, a capsule of water, only to find themselves empty-handed on their return.

Likewise, everything that left had to return. The machine had a full inventory, and it was my job to report anything missing. Era contamination was not something the law took lightly. “Chethra, please return to your chamber now,” I said.

“But she’s my daughter.”

“The vitals say she’s fine. Just winded. Go back so we can inventory.”

She sighed and turned back.

Chura sat up and watched her, then turned to check on her aunt. “Aunt Danetta? You okay?”

“Yes. Exhausted, but okay.” She pulled herself up and stood, then leaned down to sweep off her pants. “Whoa. I heard that you couldn’t bring anything back, but I sure feel like I should dust myself off.”

“Sorry, protocols don’t even allow dirt.” I stepped out of my chamber and walked slowly to the display. I moved the vitals over and pulled up inventory. “Dammit,” I said.

“What is it?” Chethra asked.

“Somebody’s missing something. A sheet of toilet paper.”

“Nice work, Danetta,” Chethra said.

“They aren’t going to arrest me for that, are they?” she asked. “I’m sure people from that era left toilet paper in the forest from time to time.”

“Yes, but it was based on wood pulp. Yours wasn’t,” I said. “And, no matter what it is, I’m supposed to report any variances.”

“Mr. — I mean, Falcon. Please don’t do that. We can’t afford even the smallest fee for legal process right now.”

I wished they had not picked me for this trip. Typically, only the wealthy can afford time travel, and everything about Danetta Sherril had screamed “rich bitch.” For something so minor, I generally could make it disappear without any worries — for a nominal fee. This time, however, it seemed like bribes were out.

“You’re lucky I like the kid,” I said. “Don’t worry about the leftback item. I’ll take care of it.”

They all thanked me and said they would remember the name Falcon. “That’s why I still use it,” I said.

——-

When I walked onto the balcony, my demeanor changed. I was back in my own time, my own city, where puny ornamental trees protruded from sidewalks and nearly 50 percent of the pedestrians wore oxygen masks. It had treated me as well as a shrine to the God of concrete could, but it always took me a while to get accustomed to it after a jump that far in the past. I hopped onto my skyporter and flew home.

There it was, where I left it, my family’s apartment building. The courts had awarded us the entire property after a jury agreed that the owners were negligent to build without proper power for impact absorption shields. Unfortunately, my older brother still controlled it. I parked my skyporter, at the same balcony where I earned my nickname, and went inside.

“Replays, please,” I said.

The screen in the kitchen came on. National newscaster. “We turn now to the President, who visited the Buffalo National River today. Locals are gearing up in anticipation of protests to his proposed extension of the river’s protected status. The President spoke about his plans.”

Oar in his hand, lifejacket on, the President turned to the camera. “This became our first national river back in 1972, when President Nixon signed the legislation creating it. I intend for it to stay protected. We’re losing our natural places at an alarming rate.”

My mouth dropped open. The Buffalo National what? There it was, the presidential canoe, floating along the clear, fast-moving waters I thought I had just left hundreds of years behind me. “Dammit.”

I thought of what Danetta could have done. She was fumbling around with her pack when I found her on the trail. The machine said all she left was a sheet of toilet paper. I thought I knew exactly what she had done, but I needed to see more detail in that report.

“Display inventory report from today’s jump.”

The report replaced the newscaster. I looked over it again, but found nothing new.

“Detailed report.” I pored over the resulting screen.

There it was. She had taken a pen, an old writing implement based on ancient technology, and now used mostly by the poor. She brought it back with a tiny amount of ink gone — just enough to write a note on a small sheet.

“Contact Danetta Sherril,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Danetta Sherril not found in the directory.” said the computer.

Damn fake names. “Search private contacts.”

“Thank you. Contacting Danetta Sherril.” I was glad I paid a little extra for the sexy voice. Anything the computer said, she seemed to be asking me to take off my clothes.

“Hello?” came the voice from my walls.

“Danetta?”

“I’m sorry, you must have the wrong person.”

“Put me on your display,” I said.

“Oh, it’s you. Why are you contacting me, Falcon?” Her face faded onto my screen.

“I see that the President is on the Buffalo River today.”

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t nice, Danetta. You tricked me. That’s supposed to be a dried-up lake by now, and a rock quarry.” The canyon surrounding the river had quite a storied past.

“Yes, but we just skipped all that part and look at it now. You know, there are other national rivers, too.”

“What?”

“That’s right. I checked it the moment I got home. It seems that the decade after we visited that area was very good to rivers, indeed.”

“What did you write on your little note?”

“Oh, you figured that out quickly, didn’t you? I read all about it. It wasn’t so much what I wrote, but the material I wrote it on. It seems that my note is in a museum. Dr. Neil Compton, who found it, already had been fighting to save the river, and when he slipped my note to the president’s staff, they analyzed it. Because my words claimed I was from the future, they wanted to know everything they could about the note. When they found it was made of a material uknown to any government scientists and independent labs, they marked it legitimate.”

“Unbelievable.” She had used me so perfectly and completely that I admired her as much as I despised her.

“Yes. It really, umm… sweeps, doesn’t it?”

“Right,” I said. It reminded me of Chura. Had she been in on it? Was her apparent interest in the Jeep just a diversion? “I need some time to take all this in,” I said.

“It’s a joyous time to be alive!”

“Terminate connection.”

Played. Had. Misled. Duped. Taken in. Deceived. Led astray.

“Shit.” I fixed a drink. Scotch. Neat.

“Access core library. Creation of Buffalo National River.”

It was all there, just as Danetta said. A conservationist had found her note and used it in his ongoing battle to keep the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from damming the river. He had been making headway since his group’s efforts started in the 1950’s, but after 1970 his efforts really took off.”

“Access note found by Neil Compton, 1970.”

I couldn’t believe it. There, in what obviously was Danetta’s handwriting, was a note she had written less than an hour ago. It was preserved under glass in the World Conservation Museum.

There was a knock at my door.

“Display front door.”

A man and a woman, neatly dressed, stood still with their hands clasped in front of them. I rarely took visitors. Soliciting was illegal. Who could they be?

“Yes?” I asked.

“Hello, Mr. Plotz. Bill Plotz?”

“I don’t usually answer to anything until I know who’s asking.”

“Agents Glock and Speel, Time Code Enforcement. We have a warrant.” He press a plasti against the reader by my front door.

“Display front door plasti data.”

I didn’t recognize most of the words, but I know that it said I had to let them come in.

(continue to Part 4)

(Part One appears on my other blog.)

“I’m coming, too,” Chura said.

“No, you stay. If I’m not back when it’s time to step, you both go without me, okay?”

I left Chura admiring the butterfly and Chethra glaring at her watch. There I was again, headed back into the forest, trying to find some idealistic customer with a hard-on for the environment. I brought it on myself, though, playing tour guide instead of just driver. Without doing an interview, how could I know whether they would see nature as a lost treasure or as valuable property? Even the devvies had a respect for it when they saw it, and a few cried after their first few breaths of fresh air. They always looked at me after that and said, “What happens in the past, stays in the past, right?” I always told them their secret was safe.

I hiked down one or two switchbacks in the trail. Damn, this place is nice. I caught a glimpse of Danetta about 100 meters off, coming toward me. She was turned, digging around in a pack on her hip. One of the rules was “if you pack it in, you pack it out,” including toilet paper. I figured she was just finishing up the logistics of relieving oneself in the great outdoors.

I called out, “Hey, you went a long way just to pee.” It was nice to yell without it echoing back from a building.

She quickly zipped the pack and turned to face me. “A lady needs her privacy, Mr. Falcon.”

“Just Falcon, please.”

“Okay, Falcon. Hawk. Whatever extinct bird you want.” She stopped talking to catch her breath. “How did you get that name, anyway?” She sure warmed up quick.

“I tried to fly when I was a kid.”

“Oh, in a skyporter?”

“No, in my pajamas.”

“Ouch.”

“That was what I said, but louder and not with words. I was at my grandpa’s apartment at the edge of the wilderness. There was this one falcon that always came up to his balcony. First floor, but the building was on a hill that put his back door about 10 feet off the ground. The hawk landed on a roost Grandpa had mounted on the wall, and as long as we were still, it just sat there, turning its head back and forth. I remember the shine of its eye. Like your sister said, replays don’t do it justice. I don’t remember it well, but my brother says that one day, when I was three, he stepped inside for a second to get his drink. When he came back out, I was on the railing. I held my arms out like wings and said, ‘Falcon.’ Then I jumped.

“When my grandpa came to see me in the hospital, he said, ‘So, you are my own little falcon, eh?’ The name stuck.”

“What about impact absorption shields?” Danetta asked.

“We didn’t have them that far away from the city. Not enough power on that part of the grid to juice them.”

“So, you were okay?”

“I landed on a downward sloping grass hill, so the impact wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Plus, at that age, kids kind of bounce.”

“That stopped years ago for me,” she said.

“Same here. Listen, we need to speed it up or we’re not going to make it out. You may have the resources for a rescue, but I’m pretty sure I’d have a hard time getting any customers if I missed my return window.”

Already breathing hard, we quickened our pace. Downhill was always tougher on my legs, but uphill challenged my heart. Although my family history gave me a good ticker, I was not the epitome of healthy living. Personal note: don’t wear heavy hiking boots again.

Danetta lagged behind me a few steps, really having trouble now. “Hold on, Falcon. Wait.”

I looked back. She stopped and leaned over, hands on the lower part of her thighs, her feet apart, looking at the ground. She drew long, deep breaths through her nose, and exhaled loudly out her mouth. In that stance, if she would have looked up and said, “Okay, team, we gotta do a better job on defense,” I would have lost it. As it was, though, I had to give the pep talk.

“Just a little farther. I can see the clearing near the exit point. Chethra and Chura are waiting, but they won’t wait much longer.” Besides, I’m not sure you want to trust your sister to lead a rescue effort.

Each time we reached the top of a rise, I thought it was the last. That trail always did that to me. I made the mistake of telling Danetta, “This is the last hill, and then we’ll be there,” when there were at least two more. She had a hard time getting started each time.

“I don’t think I can keep up this pace,” Danetta said.

My watch showed we had three minutes left.

“This really is the last rise,” I said, not quite lying. I didn’t know whether it was or not, but I couldn’t have her giving up on me. “You don’t want to be my first customer to miss the window, do you?”

When we reached the top, I saw Chura watching with anticipation. She visibly relaxed and nudged Chethra, who stood close to the azaleas but didn’t seem particularly concerned with us. One major drawback to my job was that they didn’t need me for the return trip.

I still served a purpose, though, besides just being a tour guide. Travelers too often got themselves wrapped up in their surroundings without a neutral party there to prod them toward the exit. I was a bouncer, escorting people like Danetta to the door when they wore out their welcome.

One minute. I grabbed Danetta’s hand. “No more stops, now. This is it,” I said.

She tripped.

(continue to Part Three)