Sal nodded. ‘Those? Real chicken legs? Uh-huh.’
‘From what was once a real live chicken?’
‘Of course.’
His eyes widened. When he’d come from only the wealthiest could afford vat-grown meat and even then it wasn’t really proper meat. ‘Meat on the bone’ was muscle cells grown on plastic rods shaped like bones. It tasted vaguely savoury, with a gelatinous texture, a meat-gel lollipop at best. Everyone else lived on synthi-soya alternatives.
‘There’s so much!’ He shook his head again. ‘There’s just so much of this real food!’
‘Yeah, well.’ Sal took the drumsticks off him and dropped them in the shopping trolley. ‘Best make the most of it, right?’
Maddy’s call. Since this food supermarket inside the mall was already open, she decided that since they’d stopped they might as well stock up on some essentials. The RV had a fridge that worked, they might as well put something edible in it and the little kitchen cabinets located above it. Maddy said she wasn’t sure whether they were staying in Boston or moving on. But it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to have a few luxuries aboard the TimeRiders’ ‘tour bus’.
‘This way, Becks.’ Sal led the trolley. Becks pushed it dutifully.
‘Affirmative.’ Her language pack was installed now. Just the default library. Her voice was monotone, completely without any expression. Sal turned to look at her. She was wearing a beanie hat to cover her still-smooth head, and baggy jeans and a jumper hung loosely on her slight frame. Her pale face had a slack, vacant look to it. At least that part of her looked convincingly teenager.
And at least she wasn’t drooling now.
‘My God!’ Rashim’s voice echoed from the next aisle along. A moment later he appeared at the end of the freezer aisle gazing wide-eyed at something sitting on the palm of his hand. She waved him over.
‘What’s up, Rashim?’
He hurried over and held his hand out. ‘Are these strawberries real too?’
Great. He’s found the fruit counter.
Liam put some more boxes of Coco Pops in the trolley. Bob looked down at them.
‘You already have five boxes of Coco Pops.’
‘Aye, well, ’tis better to be safe than sorry.’ He nudged Bob’s arm. ‘Anyway, you like them too.’
‘They are acceptable to my digestive system.’
‘Oh, come on … admit it, you actually like them. I’ve seen the way you gobble ’em down.’
‘They are low in protein. I require large amounts of Coco Pops to sustain me.’
Liam offered him a sly grin. ‘I’ve seen you slurp that chocolate milk, like a cat lapping cream.’
‘The milk is the more beneficial food component of the two.’
Liam shrugged distractedly. ‘Ah well.’ He surveyed the other cereal boxes stacked along the aisle. ‘Hey look, Bob. You can even have Coco Pops with funny pink teddy bear shapes in it.’ He picked the cereal box up and held it closer to get a better look at the far too colourful package design. ‘What do you reckon those little teddy bear fellas are made of?’
Bob scowled disapprovingly. ‘Probably nothing particularly nutritious.’
‘Maybe not, but it looks fun.’ Liam dropped the cereal box in the trolley. He smiled up at Bob. ‘You remember what fun is, don’t you?’
‘I can supply a definition of the word and several thousand cultural references to the word including –’
‘Never mind.’
Chapter 18
7.25 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, outside Branford
Maddy brought the tray over to the booth and sat down opposite Foster. He wasn’t looking so good this morning. Perhaps a couple of sleepless nights hadn’t helped. Perhaps it was the artificial lighting in this coffee shop. He’d looked healthier in Central Park: sun on his face and a fresh breeze ruffling the tufts of snow-white hair on his head. Healthier and happier back there.
‘Coffee, milky and sweet, just how you and Liam like it.’
‘Thank you, Maddy.’
She sat down, grabbed her latte and looked out across the mall. There was a toddlers’ play area and a fake palm tree, beyond that the mini-supermarket where the others were food shopping. She thought she caught a glimpse of the bristly top of Bob’s coconut head above an aisle. An hour’s stop over here, that’s what she’d told them. An hour, grab something to eat, then she wanted them all in the RV and back on the road. The further away they were from New York, the better.
Foster sipped his coffee, testing the heat with his lips. ‘I think it would be safer if you were to head somewhere else. Somewhere other than Boston.’
‘Where, though?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘Why?’
He took his time answering. ‘I just think it would be safer.’
‘They can’t know where we’re going. We lost them, right? We got clean away.’
‘What if they know your family lives in Boston?’
‘But those support units … they don’t know me. They don’t know anything about me. How the hell are they going to guess my folks live in Boston?’
‘They know something about you, Maddy. They found you after all, didn’t they?’
‘They found our field office. Maybe we’ve been … I dunno … leaking traceable tachyons. Maybe we just got careless and left a breadcrumb trail? All the coming and going backwards and forwards in time, that’s going to leave some kind of a mark, right? Some kind of a trackable signature maybe?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. In fact, you probably know as much, if not more, about this technology than I do now.’
‘You think?’ She looked up from her styrofoam cup at his craggy face, seeing the ghost of Liam in there among the folds and wrinkles. ‘Maybe so,’ she said. ‘After all … not so very long ago, you were just a young lad from Ireland, weren’t you?’
He looked like he was going to say something, then laughed. ‘That’s about right.’
‘Foster, there’s something I’ve always wanted to know.’
‘What?’
‘How we got picked. Selected. Me, Liam and Sal. You too, I guess. I mean, who knew so much about us? Who knew I was on that plane? Who knew Liam and you were on that particular deck on the Titanic? Who knew exactly where Sal was in that burning building?’
‘I … don’t know.’
‘And how come they knew we had the necessary skills?’ She rubbed her temple. ‘Not that that’s helped so much. I’ve messed up more than I want to think about.’
‘The three of you were perfect,’ he replied. ‘Perfect recruits,’ he added. ‘You’ve done so very well.’ He patted her arm gently. The lightest touch. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. From what I’ve heard you tell me, you’ve been busy saving history over and over.’
‘Well, more like fighting fires. But we’re here still. The world’s the same as it ever was. For what good that does it.’
‘Oh, it’s important, Maddy. History can’t be changed.’
‘Yeah, yeah … has to go one particular way, I know.’ She lifted a plate of sausage patty bagels off the tray. One for him, one for her, and more for the others when they finally came over to join them. That is, if the bagels lasted that long. She was famished.
‘Did you have many missions, Foster? You know … back when you were Liam, I guess.’
‘A few. Enough.’ His smile looked sad. ‘Enough that I ended up like this. Old before my time.’
‘Long before your time.’ She could cry for him, cry for this wizened old man sitting opposite her. ‘Foster, you remember telling me about how travelling through time can age you?’
‘Yes.’
She almost stopped herself. ‘Were you serious? Are you really only twenty-seven?’
‘I think so.’ He sighed. ‘Twenty-seven, perhaps twenty-six. It’s easy to lose count of the field cycles.’
She could only imagine how Liam must feel looking at him now that he knew this fate was awaiting him. Tha
t all too soon his body was going to be irreversibly corrupted by time travel.
‘What were the others like? The team you were with before us?’
‘Young. Like you … and having to grow up fast.’ He looked away. His voice had faltered. He sipped his coffee, gave himself a moment to regain his composure. ‘Only they never got a chance to grow up properly.’
‘Were you very close?’
He nodded.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. They lived an extra life. They had extra time, so they did. Not many people get to have that.’
‘You miss them much?’
His gaunt face wrinkled painfully. Maddy realized this conversation was hurting him. ‘Stupid question, I’m an idiot. I apologize, that was –’
He shook his head. ‘No need to apologize. I have the three of you now. We’re just as much a family together as the others.’
‘Family … see? That’s why I think this is a good idea heading to Boston. Perhaps my folks can help out? The way I figure it, now we’re not living in a resetting time loop, then that money in the bank account won’t last forever. There’s just under twelve thousand dollars in it. Now it doesn’t get to “reset” itself every Monday morning, that money’s gonna go quickly. At least if we go see my mom and dad, they might be able to lend us some money to tide us –’
‘Maddy. I think going to see your parents is a big mistake.’
‘Why?’
She could see Foster was hesitating. He had something to say and was fidgeting just like Liam tended to do when he was unsure of himself. ‘Foster?’
‘Maybe those killer support units do know you. Maybe they know all about you. Everything about you.’
She looked at him. He said that in a funny way, like it was meant to mean so much more than just those words. ‘Foster? What’s going on? What do you know? What’re you not telling me?’
Just then she heard a scream. It echoed across the quiet mall, drowning out the soft burble of mall music.
Sal.
She was running across the toddler play area, kicking aside multicoloured plastic balls that had escaped the small ballpool.
‘MADDY!’ she screamed again.
Maddy stood up and waved her arm, directing her over. ‘SAL? We’re over here! What’s up?’
Sal corrected course towards them. Behind her she could see Liam and the others scrambling out of the mini-mart, crossing the space in the middle of the mall. Sal barged her way through the coffee-shop tables and stools set up outside beneath a fake pampas-grass sunshade as if this was supposed to be a coffee bar perched on the beach of some tropical island. Stools clattered, pampas-grass parasols wobbled and tipped over. Sal finally came to a rest, bent over a waist-high partition of fake sun-bleached wood, struggling for breath.
‘Sal? What’s up?’
‘They’re here!’ she wheezed.
Chapter 19
2054, outside Denver, Colorado
It was a small thing. An insignificant thing, but Dr Joseph Olivera noticed Roald Waldstein left notes lying around from time to time. The old man tended to prefer the old-fashioned pleasure of pen and paper as opposed to tapping out his thoughts on a virtual keyboard.
Joseph Olivera noticed that habit of his boss as they worked together setting up the archway field office. Scribbled notes on pads of lined paper on the computer desk, most of it in Waldstein’s unique shorthand: characters and glyphs that only he could make sense of. Joseph wondered how such a brilliant person could be so scatterbrained, so messy. Or perhaps being untidy went hand in hand with genius: the messier the desk, the more brilliant the mind?
His notepads of cryptic notes were scattered everywhere and Waldstein was constantly rifling among his notes, cross-referencing them, correcting them. It was on one of these pages filled with the swirls of Waldstein’s writing that Joseph one day spotted the word ‘Pandora’. It had been the only word on the pad not in Waldstein’s shorthand. Pandora, of course, meant nothing to him. He suspected it was a codeword for one of the many commercial projects Waldstein worked on simultaneously. He knew his boss was working on several projects sponsored by the US military. Technology they’d inevitably want to adapt to weapons systems.
Joseph knew the man was no fool. Waldstein was a genius. But also a ruthless businessman. His technology patents went to the highest bidder even if ultimately it meant his inventions were to be turned into devices for killing, maiming.
Pandora then … a word he noted on a scrap of paper, and promptly forgot about.
The agency, or the New York Project, as Waldstein sometimes referred to it, became ‘active’ on Friday 4 September 2054. An occasion marked only by Joseph and Frasier Griggs. From the comfort and safety of a private research lab at W.G. Systems’ main research campus building in Wyoming, hidden a dozen miles away from the nearest town – Pinedale – amid tall, balding Douglas firs clinging to the valley slopes, the pair of them quietly clinked two glasses of Soyo-Vina Rouge in celebration and began to monitor the archway beneath the Williamsburg Bridge in a place called Brooklyn, New York, in the year 2001. They scanned for potential tachyon leakage or any emergency signal bursts.
Meanwhile, Waldstein had insisted on staying behind in 2001 to directly mentor the team. He wanted his to be the first face they saw as they woke up in their bunk beds. He wanted to be the father figure to the three of them. Said it was important that they wholly trusted him.
‘They’ll be disorientated and frightened when they first come round,’ he said. ‘I want to be there for them.’
And so Waldstein’s top-secret project had begun: one team, one field office, and all of history for them to watch out for and protect.
The agency was Waldstein’s back-up plan to keep history safe. That’s what he’d once told Joseph. It was his B plan.
His A plan had been his very public campaign three years ago to ensure that the world’s leaders signed up to an international law forbidding any nation from continuing to develop time-travel technology. It was to be a banned science. But he was wily enough to realize that in this troubled time, while every world leader might publicly denounce the technology, secretly they’d be vigorously funding it. Working on it. Desperate to be the first world power with the ability to take control of time itself: the ultimate weapons system.
‘I want the New York Project to be self-reliant,’ Waldstein confided in Joseph.
‘Once it’s up and running, the team will have to manage their own affairs, decide their own mission priorities. They must be entirely self-sufficient.’
The team would have all the data, equipment, critical replacement parts they needed: spare support unit foetuses, growth tubes, spare component boards for the displacement machine. Anything else they might need they could buy from a hardware or electronics store back in 2001.
‘Here in 2054 we must have as little contact with them as possible. We cannot be directly linked to them, Joseph. I cannot afford to be caught dabbling in time travel like this. I must have a plausible, believable … deniability.’
The team in 2001, then, was to be left entirely to their own devices. Griggs was the most vociferous on that. They had to survive on their own. No way could there be any interaction between the team and them. It could lead to their discovery in 2054. Their arrest. And the penalty under international law – ‘Waldstein’s Law’ – was rightly severe: the death penalty.
However, Waldstein devised a safe way they could make contact. If the team desperately needed to communicate with them in 2054, there was a way that they could do so. He called the method ‘a drop-point document’.
Joseph had been impressed by the man’s ingenuity.
It was a private ad in a Brooklyn newspaper. They had a yellowing page of newsprint contained in a glass case here in 2054. A dog-eared page that had somehow survived intact through half a century. If the team in 2001 needed to send a message forward in time, they simply had to dial that newspaper’s classifieds desk, and pl
ace a personal ad to go in the next issue. A personal ad that was to begin with the words, ‘A soul lost in time’.
The personal ad represented history being meddled with in a very small way. It would cause a tiny change. A tiny, harmless time wave that would ripple across fifty-three years to the present and change just one thing: the sheet of newspaper in that glass case.
That was the only method of communication Waldstein intended to permit them to use. Safe. Secret. Untraceable. Under no circumstances were they to beam a tachyon signal forward. If anyone in the present was scanning for telltale signs of time-travel technology development, the tachyon particle would be the giveaway. The smoking gun.
Pandora.
Joseph would have completely forgotten about that word if it wasn’t for another discovery he made not so very long after Waldstein returned from 2001, content that his team based in Brooklyn – the TimeRiders … that was the nickname he had for them – were ready to do the job entirely on their own.
As it happened, that team was the first team based in that Brooklyn archway.
They did quite well. Lasted quite a long time.
Chapter 20
7.27 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, outside Branford
Maddy led Foster by the hand out of the coffee shop, through the stools and tables to meet the others in the middle of the toddler play area, ‘Chuckle Zone’.
Liam spoke first. ‘Bob just picked up a warning signal from SpongeBubba.’
‘I also just detected two idents,’ added Bob.
‘Where?’
‘Three hundred and seventy yards in that direction,’ he said, pointing along the central concourse of the shopping mall towards the front entrance to the parking strip beyond. He was pointing in the direction of their RV.
‘They must have visited our bus first,’ said Sal.