Monday, January 6, 2014

Take III: Once From A Dream: Scene II

Scene 2

I finally get over the shock of seeing my TA with her hair down and without her usual stressed look. Loretta saw my somewhat egregious state and motioned for the Savannah and the 5 boys to move quickly into the next store. 

As Loretta moved, her confidence bounced with her in stride. She was gorgeous, in a Catherine Zeta-Jones sort of way from "The Rebound". I was clearly in a different age group than she was. What was strange was she was clearly still a genius, with a pair of glasses that said "come at me, nerds" and eyes that showed how much she desperately needed a break from the microscopes. Every single pre-pubescent boy in that trendy boutique we found staring at Savannah, presumably because of her youthful defiance and striking beauty.

But it was Loretta who had me stunned. She must have been about 25 last I saw her in her office. Now she seemed to have aged about 15 years. This was beyond strange. 

Fuck, everything about this situation was strange. The fact that Loretta has a fainter smile and hints of wrinkles should be the least of my concern! So many questions...with still no answers.

It was Adam who finally broke this Mexican stand-off of tense awkwardness. He always seemed to love breaking awkward moments, ever since his freshman RAs showed him his first icebreaker. Yeah, he was that one kid who actually enjoyed every moment of those things. He was really introverted, back in those early college days. He still wasn't really out of his shell, but it was obvious he was trying...

Anyway, he asked "Loretta, why don't you shed some light on this situation...I feel as though we're a bit out of the loop on this"

Loretta turned to look at him, caught off guard by the sudden intrusion on the group silence. She smiled slightly, and then scratched her head a few times in a moderate frustration. She didn't seem to know where to start this conversation.

She starts. "Well, you're in the year 2159 like I wrote to you on the roof. You guys are probably like, 'whoa, that's freaky, #timetravel'. I would react the same if I were living in 2014 like the rest of you up until a few moments ago. But then I would be like the rest of you, because I was also there in 2014. Well, a version of me. Well, it was still me but not really me. Do you guys get it? You look sort of confused..."

Of course, nobody got most of what she started talking about. 

She starts again. "Okay, okay. So it was definitely me back in 2014, but this me you see now..."

Reilly was definitely still hungover from the night before, so he had no patience for this explanation. He interjected. "Dr. Sinclair, no offense, but can we just skip to the part where you tell us how the fuck we got here?"

She acknowledges him and fumbles with some solid silver-colored pants in various sizes. "The truth is, I brought you guys here by a happy coincidence! You were all standing by our bi-linear coordinator (or BLC for short), and we were running a communications test to make sure the device worked in both instances in time! The engineers just never figured that properly calibrating the timing sequence was important."

Savannah took a good, hard look at her boss. "Are you kidding? You never figured it would be important. You had all of the engineers ignore that part because you..."

Loretta kicks Savannah in the shin. Hard. As Savannah limps to the checkout counter, Renton follows her to ensure her safety and good favor. She returns the gesture of good faith with a scowl and a finger wag pointing in the direction from whence he came.

Loretta puts a big pile of clothes onto the counter. "In other words, you guys were caught in the middle of a time travel test gone awry. I'm so terribly sorry. But I'm gonna fix it! There's a whole set of public BLCs in Pittsburgh. I'm going to bring you guys back to your time. I'm working on this. While we're here, though, you need to blend in a bit more."

Sid, who always seemed to reek of do-gooder, offered to pay for the clothes. Loretta ensured him that that was impossible, since the currency of 2159 was international and had no physical shape to it. Sid was both in awe and a little bit ashamed.

We set off toward a store that seemed to sell exclusively clear, plastic footwear. Adam asked Savannah why everyone in this time period wore that material for their shoes. Savannah explains that the smooth roads and walkways would likely be dangerous without them. She then showed Adam what she thought was the cutest pair of clear pumps. Adam did nothing to hide his apathy and walked toward a bench to sit.

While selecting the shoes we would wear, Loretta explained another few key points of confusion in her own quirky, half-assured way. The boys took turns asking some things that were bugging them...

 The BLCs were in Pittsburgh for about 50 years, ever since the start-up culture that made it the most technologically advanced city in the United States. We could not go back with Loretta's BLC, because the coordinator on the Brooklyn rooftop was destroyed as the building collapsed. Without one coordinator, the future equivalent becomes desynchronized and useless. The discovery of time travel occurred in a Berkeley particle physics lab in 2020. Its first successful human time leap was in 2023, conducted by none other than the rookie professor Loretta Sinclair. She quickly realized her dreams of becoming the world's leading expert on time-travel when Loretta preformed a successful time warp on herself. Upon arriving in 2156, she learned a great deal about the future. This information could never be allowed into her own time, so she was prohibited from ever returning to the year 2023. Her name was soon forgotten from the history books.

Loretta continued her research privately in a small laboratory outside of Philly. The boys appearance gave her that glint of hope that her experiments were working, and she could sneak back to her own time to reclaim her glory.

As for those of us who got caught up in this whole testing business (a.k.a. the boys), Loretta would take us back to the BLCs in Pittsburgh as quietly as possible. There was no need to alarm any authorities...so we would have to drive the full distance rather than use any other mode of transportation.

Now I finally understood the whole age thing. There were still plenty of questions I wanted answered about the future, but we were finally done shopping at the mall. 

We got back into the mini-van we came in. We boys changed into whatever clothes were just bought for us, and we headed for Loretta's place to pick up a few things before we headed out for that long drive. 

Loretta had asked me to come inside the apartment with her to help her grab a few things. Sid offered to help, as the usual perfect gentleman that he was, but Dr. Sinclair insisted that she only needed one. The 4 boys were left to wait in the car with Savannah, who was sandwiched between Renton and Adam and was clearly uncomfortable. Renton really should have tried to be more subtle, because Savannah was getting increasingly annoyed by his empty charm. Adam on the other hand was looking down and away, ignoring the girl next to him along with the rest of the world. In reality, though, Adam was simply drowned in his own thoughts and stuck in a trance as a result. 

When I walked to her door, Loretta said to wait there. Apparently, there were many things inside her home that I shouldn't be looking at. I wouldn't understand. I would wait outside for her to bring things out, and I would load them into the mini-van. The whole apartment building looked as though it were built in the Jettsons, but without all of the hovering nonsense. There was definitely a robotic doorman who looked as though he didn't fuck around (he was more of a robotic bouncer, in many ways). 

While the dormant robotic servant scared the crap out of me, Loretta came back outside with what looked like boxes of cereal. Closer inspection told me that there were various foods in those boxes, all of which were labeled "ready to eat in 300ms or less!'. She handed me a couple of the boxes and gave me a good, hard look. She seemed so composed on the ride over to her apartment, but after staring for about 15 seconds started to weep. Her weeping triggered a compulsion of mine that seemed to come out of nowhere to hug her. It was almost natural to console her at that moment. 

Loretta looked at me through her tears and whispered in fragments "You really don't remember, do you Craig? You don't have to answer that. Your eyes say it all..."

Okay, what the fuck just happened? One minute I was the bag boy at her personal supermarket, and the next she's resting on my chest, sniffling. Loretta regains composure and we return to the car to make our way back to the present.

The trip over to Pittsburgh was rather awkward and strange. I had the co-pilot's chair next to Loretta, and after what had just happened, it was hard to follow up. Reilly complained about his splitting headache for the first hour, but eventually he got to sleep. Not even the 2159 has a proper cure for hangovers yet, apparently. Sid offered to switch seats with Savannah. She graciously accepted, hoping that this would put enough distance between her and Renton to force his silence. It didn't really help, and just ended up causing even more noise in the back. Adam stared out the window pensively for the greater portion of the ride. He seemed to be disquieted by the whole scene. It was just natural, I supposed, to lose yourself trying to wrap your head around what had just happened.

The crew arrived at the Point in Pittsburgh, where the three rivers still met. Although, everything seemed a hell of a lot cleaner than when I was growing up there. There was an arc of 10 small machines that looked like larger and more user-friendly versions of the machine I tripped on in Brooklyn. Savannah gave us instructions on how to use the devices to return back to our time, although we would find ourselves on a different rooftop in Manhattan. She was very quick when teaching us these instructions, since she was eager to go home after the absurdly long work week she'd been having. 

We all began to give our goodbyes. It had been too short to really get to know either of the two women, but our were words and embraces were heartfelt enough. Especially since we would likely never see them again. 

The boys had just turned away from the mini-van and toward the BLCs, when suddenly, we all hear something. The sound would zip past my left ear and zoom past my eyes. It was an air-vehicle of some sort, but I had no idea what the thing could be. It had stopped and landed about 200 yards away from the mini-van and us. Two women and a man dressed in silver suits and wearing high-tech  sunglasses started running in our direction.

Loretta and Savannah scrambled back into their car. The boys and I screamed at the van, trying to figure out what was going on. The girls left before any of us had the chance to reach them. The three suits in silver were still running toward us. I wave everyone toward the BLCs, seeing them as the only viable escape from this situation. 

Sid punched in some of the necessary information to travel back to our time. The other 4 of us stand on the transport platforms and motion for Cid to hurry the fuck up. He bitched quite loudly about how he's an actor, and why anyone would ever entrust him and technology with his fate. 

The 3 suits were less than 10 yards away when Sid pushed the solid blue button and scrambled to his transporter. The familiar balls of light enveloped us as I saw a hand reach out to grab Reilly's shirt. He elbowed that hand violently and the rush of cocaine white consumed everything. 

This time, the boys stood awake on this new rooftop. Similarly to the first time around, everyone was bewildered. We all looked around. We were definitely in Manhattan. But something was still not right...

I looked at the billboard across the street from us. "The Good ol' Days are Back Again!" There was a picture of a happy people drinking beer at a bar. But wait...

It wasn't just a bar. It was a speakeasy. So...prohibition was still a thing...

...And we were in 1933.





1 comment:

  1. juicy'n'tender story! some nice "lol" moments. and cocaine white. i bet craig will bang loretta

    ReplyDelete