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)