Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time Page 4

  “Exactly,” Hopkins said, nodding distractedly in a way that suggested that in his mind he was already several steps ahead in the conversation. “At any rate, he died only three years ago. Planning immediately went into overdrive on this project. A way to offer tribute to the man who saved the Americans from the Russian threat and brought us onto a level playing field with Germany.”

  “And China, from what you’ve said,” Rose supplied, when Hopkins trailed off for a moment.

  “Well, yes, but today’s Americans would never admit that the Chinese are on the same level as the Americans and Germans. Eurocentrism is pretty rampant in this timeline.” Hopkins shrugged. Tim’s head spun.

  “Right, so what are we going to do about it?” Billy asked emphatically.

  In the distance, past the crowds of people gathered nearer the monument, fireworks started to go off and a band had started to play. It seemed that the dedication had begun.

  “We need to set the first cause straight. I brought you here to meet you. I think we can get into the specifics of our plan tomorrow. I had originally planned to let you figure out how to negate the changes the Emperors make, so I could focus on gaining back the Domini Temporis. But when you fixed the 1916 election… or rather, when you prevented it from being fixed... I was only able to collect three more of the Domini before the Emperors became careful enough that I am unable to get any more. I have six now, out of the twelve. With the extra time I had, I did a little research and planning of my own, although executing the plan will require your rather committed assistance, if you choose to offer it once again, of course.”

  Suddenly, Tim thought Julie looked rather tired as she said, “Yes, sure, we’re still in, just tell us what to do. We did a good job last time, didn’t we?”

  “Indeed, you did,” Hopkins confirmed with a smile, patting Julie on the shoulder. “But like I said, we shall deal with the details tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to take you to a place where I know we’ll be safe. Not that I think the Emperors would have followed us to this place and time. They have little way of knowing we are here unless we do something conspicuous. But it is always a bit of a danger to stay in a place and time where you have no identity and no money.”

  Tim thought this was a fair point. Julie asked, “So are we going back to your time, then?”

  Hopkins chuckled. “No, that would be far from safe at the moment. We are going to go to a time about seventy years before my own. Come now, children. I think it is time that you should meet my great uncle Paul.”

  Chapter 5

  The Bunker

  The thing about meeting someone’s great uncle, when you’re a teenager, is that you expect them to be a great deal older than you. This is why, in spite of being told explicitly they’d be going to a time in Dr. Hopkins’ own past, they were still quite surprised when Great Uncle Paul turned out to be a man in his early 20s.

  Tim had never thought of himself as a particularly good judge of male attractiveness, but he thought Paul looked like a younger, more attractive, version of Hopkins himself. He had the same face, but more rugged; the same build, only more muscular; and the same brown hair, but a fuller head of it. As Paul greeted each person, Tim was pretty sure he saw Julie blush as he shook her hand, and Rose definitely turned a shade pinker.

  Tim didn’t know if it was because he had been awake for twenty hours that the scene felt surreal, but he was feeling a bit dazed as he and his friends sat down around a table with Hopkins and a man who looked like he could have been Hopkins’ son.

  “There will be plenty of sleeping quarters for all of you, assuming that you don’t mind sharing a bed with me, Steve. I requested a suite suitable for a family of six when I came here, because you told me you’d be coming. It was an odd request to have to make, but I’ve got enough pull around here that they were more than happy to oblige,” Paul said. It was odd to hear someone use Hopkins’ first name, although Tim realized it might have been even odder if the two men had referred to each other as Hopkins. Although, come to think of it, Tim wasn’t sure if they shared the same last name or not.

  “It will be kindest to let our young friends sleep before explaining where they are or why you have such sway here,” Hopkins said.

  Tim agreed that sleep should be the first priority right now. The four teens had only been seated around the table in what Tim assumed was a kitchen for long enough for Paul to briefly welcome them to his home, but already Tim felt he would soon be sleeping sitting up. He had seen Julie close her eyes for several seconds at a time on more than one occasion in the past couple minutes.

  “Whatever you say, Unc-” Paul stopped himself and shook his head. “Sorry, I always want to call you ‘Uncle Steve.’ It just feels like you should be my uncle, somehow. But I suppose that’s just because there’s no word for a grand-nephew who’s older than you are.”

  Tim concluded that Rose must be feeling a bit punchy, because she began giggling hysterically at this comment.

  Paul raised an eyebrow at her reaction, but continued with his original thought nonetheless. “Anyway, I suppose that the boys would like to sleep in one room, the girls in the other. The sheets on the beds are clean, but not fresh. That is, they’ve been made for a few months now, but nobody has slept in them.”

  When Hopkins didn’t respond to this, Julie filled the silence with an uncertain, “That sounds great, thanks.”

  “Good then,” Paul said pleasantly. “Let me show you to your rooms.”

  Paul led the girls to their room first. Tim was surprised to see that they stepped through a metallic sliding door in one wall of the kitchen directly to their room. As the door closed and hid Paul and the girls from view, Tim pondered how much architecture must have changed in the centuries since he’d been around.

  Tim and Billy waited at the table with Hopkins. From his seat, Tim could briefly see the girls’ beds before the door closed behind Paul. When he got back, the room he led the boys into through a door on the opposite wall was rather plain, clean, and functional.

  There were two beds, two dressers, a large closet, and a single desk with a chair. It had gray carpet and off-white walls. There were two doors, one to the kitchen and one to a bathroom. Paul showed them how the bathroom worked, with its automatic toilet, automatic sink, and digital shower where you could choose the water temperature down to the degree Fahrenheit. Tim decided a shower could wait for another time. What he needed now was sleep.

  “We’ll get you guys some more clothes soon, but for now there are pajamas in the closet. They’re not particularly form-fitting, and so they should fit both of you without measuring first,” Paul explained.

  When Paul left the room, Tim turned to Billy, who was quickly changing into his pajamas. “I’m so tired I’m not even going to hear you snoring before I fall asleep this time!” Tim said.

  “I snore?” Billy asked with a laugh. “What, like every night?”

  “Unless you only snore when you sleep at the YMCA, I’d guess so,” Tim replied without missing a beat.

  “Well… sorry about that, man.”

  “Like I said, not going to matter,” Tim explained. “I’m going to sleep well tonight. Or… whatever right now is. Is it night?”

  “I haven’t seen a window since we got here,” Billy realized. “Weird. But Paul was already awake when we got here, so… maybe not night?”

  “Ah, well. I’ll sleep well today then,” Tim decided. Then he used the bathroom. He felt like he was in a hotel room when he used the automatic sink.

  “I’ll turn off the light when I get out then, alright?” Billy asked as he went in after him.

  Tim agreed, and barely had time to register how comfortable the sheets and mattress were after he crawled into the bed.

  Next thing he knew, Tim woke up, feeling like he had to pee again. As he came back out of the bathroom, he looked around the room, noticing much of it for the first time.

  With the ceiling light off, there was a dim band of light that wrap
ped its way around the walls, about two feet above the floor. The entire room was kept in a dull gloom, much like Tim’s bedroom back home was when moonlight came in through closed blinds.

  Higher up on the wall, there were two blank screens with red, glowing lights next to them. On those red lights, Tim recognized that little incomplete circle with a vertical line on top that often adorned on/off switches in his own time. He remembered learning in a computer-science elective that this symbol came from a 0 and 1 combined-- binary standing for 0 = off, 1 = on.

  Tim smiled at the realization that this symbol hadn’t changed in the two centuries since he’d taken that class. Tim wondered if these screens were TVs (although why you would need two TVs in a room was a question he couldn’t answer) or computers, or something else entirely. He decided not to try turning either of the machines on, since Billy was still sleeping and he didn’t know whether they would make noise.

  Tim didn’t feel tired anymore, and he figured that there was probably more to see outside the room than inside it. The door was marked by a bend in the waist-high light that traced the outline of a door. Tim automatically reached toward the door to grope for the knob, even though Paul had already explained that these doors worked differently than those in Tim’s own time, and even though he’d used the bathroom door already. The door opened automatically as he approached it.

  The door opened back onto the room with the table where they had first spoken with Hopkins’ great uncle Paul. There was one door on each wall. In the light, the doors were only apparent because of the outline around them, as there was no doorknob on this side either. Since Tim knew that the place had three bedrooms, he figured that three of the doors were bedrooms and one led out of this apartment.

  As Billy had noticed, there were no windows, just like there weren’t any in the bedroom. There were some cabinets around the room, a sink, with a machine that looked a bit like a microwave over it, but the room didn’t have much decoration or other defining features. It was clean, bare, and colored a vague beige.

  Julie was sitting at the table, drinking something from a straw out of an opaque cup.

  “What’re you drinking?” Tim asked.

  “Actually, it’s a chocolate milkshake,” Julie responded, apparently rather pleased by the fact. “Would you like a sip?”

  “No, thanks,” Tim said with a laugh. “I was just curious. How’d you get it anyway? I don’t see a fridge in here.”

  “Paul gave it to me before he left. It came out of that tap over there, which can apparently also give you milk, different types of juice, different types of soda… lots of things.”

  “Hmmm…” Tim replied, slightly surprised. He was only slightly surprised because once you’ve encountered Time Travel, even the most amazing kitchen sinks are only worth a small amount of wonder. “And of course you went for the milkshake.”

  “It wasn’t the only type of milkshake, mind you,” Julie corrected while slowly moving head back and forth. For some reason, Tim thought she looked cute when she shook her head like that. “I could have gotten strawberry, vanilla, or coconut, but chocolate’s the only type of milkshake worth drinking.” She took another sip of the drink through her straw.

  “Fair enough,” Tim said. There was a pause in the conversation after that. Julie was looking at her milkshake, using the straw to stir the beverage. He caught himself staring at her, and not just because she was so much more interesting to look at than the beige walls. He was remembering that this was only the second time they had been alone since they had kissed on the dancefloor at The Palace. The first time had been when they were being held captive by thugs of the Emperors of Time. For most of the time then, they were pretty sure their conversation was being monitored, so Tim wasn’t even sure that that time counted at all.

  The two times Julie and he had kissed were the only two times he had kissed anyone, and he still didn’t know if this meant they were dating. And even if the kitchen of Hopkins’ great uncle’s place maybe didn’t seem like the best place to discuss this topic with her, it was still way better than when they were being held captive. Since they seemed to be moving rapidly toward another round of pursuing the Emperors, he wasn’t sure when he was going to get a better chance. Besides which, he was curious.

  He plowed ahead, “So, I had a good time with you at The Palace. Dancing, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Julie said, with a smile, looking up from her milkshake. “That was nice.”

  Tim wasn’t sure he should ask the next question. He was generally shy, so part of him was telling him to just keep quiet, but he also really wanted to know where he stood. After all, he’d had a crush on Julie for months and had clearly made a mistake by not discussing the kiss the first time they’d done it.

  “So does that mean, like, we’re dating?” Tim blurted, realizing too late that he had skipped a step in his logic here. If anything, he was asking if the fact they had kissed twice meant this. Now it sounded like he thought only people who were dating could dance with each other. He wondered if kicking himself would make things any more awkward.

  Julie’s face had a horrible looking expression on it, something like regret, or embarrassment. Was the prospect of dating him really that bad? Tim could feel himself starting to blush, but he could see Julie blushing, too, as she said, “What? Um… I don’t know… I mean… I just don’t think now’s a good time to have a--”

  But she didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence, because at that moment, one of the doors opened with a mechanical whirr, and Rose walked into the kitchen. She was behind Julie, so Julie was able to take a second to compose her face and get rid of the horrid expression. Rose didn’t even seem to notice Tim’s blushing. She seemed to still be a little bleary-eyed from her nap.

  “Milkshake?” Rose mumbled, rubbing her eyes as she noticed the contents of Julie’s cup.

  This made Julie smile, and she turned back to Tim. “She’s really not much of a morning-person. I remember that from our sleepovers growing up.” Tim did his best to smile back, but was having a hard time. What, now they were just going to pretend that they hadn’t been in the middle of what had quickly turned into an alarmingly embarrassing conversation?

  Rose stuck out her tongue at Julie. “Assuming that it even is morning. I haven’t seen a clock, but it feels like midnight.” This observation did nothing to distract Tim from his own, rather embarrassing, train of thought.

  What had Julie been going to say, anyway? Was it that now was not a good time to have a relationship? Or maybe she was going to say it was a bad time to have a nerd like Tim for a boyfriend. Or a bad time to have a private conversation. If it was this last one, she was proven right a second time at that very moment, as another door to the kitchen slid open and Paul walked through it.

  “Ah, more of you are awake now,” Paul observed with a grin. “I was just out in one of the conference rooms in the complex alerting the leadership that you’d arrived. I’m sure you’re all eager to know what’s going on and where you are, but… I think it’s best to wait until my apparently very tired nephew wakes up from his slumber to tell you anything specific. For now, may I offer you a beverage?”

  Tim didn’t say anything, because the last thing he had said had been such a flop.

  Rose, on the other hand, was clearly less self-conscious than Tim as she grunted, “Sure,” in her fully non-morning person way.

  “What kind?” Paul asked amicably.

  “Er… vanilla, I guess?” Rose determined, after a moment’s pause.

  “Vanilla what?” Paul asked. Rose looked perplexed for a moment, then Paul said, “Oh! I’m sorry, I forgot I only explained it to Julie… I can get you one of approximately 300 different kinds of drinks from this faucet. Sodas, juices, teas, coffee, and some of the more popular beers and wines, although I won’t offer that to you, since you’re not 18, and yes, milkshakes like the one that Julie has, if that’s what you want.”

  “Oh, okay.” Rose thought. “Do you have an
y hot chocolate? Nothing wakes me up in the… whatever time of day this is… like a nice cup of hot chocolate.”

  “It’s early afternoon,” Paul supplied. “But yes, we do have hot chocolate. Anything for you?”

  Tim nodded. “Do you have coke?” Tim asked, careful not to blurt out anything embarrassing instead.

  “Yes, we do,” Paul answered, as he retrieved two more cups like Julie’s from a cabinet.

  As Paul set about pressing some keys on a keypad next to the sink, the 4th door, the only one that had not opened yet, came ajar.

  “Ah, Steve, there you are,” Paul said, as Hopkins entered the room. Tim still couldn’t get over hearing him be called Steve. Even “Steven” would have sounded better for someone who Tim only thought of as being formal.

  “I hope you have not been waiting on me for long,” Hopkins said, glancing around the room. “But I am quite appreciative that you let me sleep for the extra time. I have been quite exhausted lately.”

  “One of the children is still asleep, anyway,” Paul observed, handing Rose her hot-chocolate. He began pressing buttons on the keypad once again.

  “Yes, well, he has cause to be tired as well. You all do, I imagine,” Hopkins said, looking around the room again. It was at this point that Tim realized that they had never fully discussed with Hopkins how it was that they had stymied the Emperors of Time in 1916. Hopkins, as it turned out, had also thought about this, and asked them about it now.

  Between Tim, Julie, and Rose, they filled Hopkins in on most of the important details of the trip, including the fact that the Emperors had known they would be there, after Dr. Russell had travelled back from 2347 to tell them. Just as they were explaining how Billy came up with the idea to send two of them into the future to get supplies for the others to break out of the room, Billy himself walked through the door from Tim and his room with a comically worried look on his face.