GENESIX: THE TRILOGY Page 35

  She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe some of them feel I abandoned them. Maybe I’d feel the same in their place. But I think I kinda figured something out.”

  She took a swig of beer. “Mother and Snake work really hard on everyone’s self-esteem. They don’t want any of us feeling bad about ourselves even though the world would look at us as freaks and outsiders if they knew we even existed. Yet, the reality is, any one of them would walk away from their lifestyle if they could live among normals again. Except maybe Mother. I took this opportunity because it was there. And at times I think about Mother and Snake and everyone else, and sometimes I think of you and your Dad, and Scott and April, and the grand adventures you all go on all the time. But do I regret walking away from all of it to go to college? For the semblance of a normal life?” She shook her head. “Not a chance. Not for a second.”

  “I think it’s what I want. To go to college. To be just a college kid on a campus full of other college kids. I mean, do you know the last time I even talked to someone my own age who was not a meta?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t remember. That’s how long it’s been.”

  “Have you talked to your dad about any of this?”

  “No.” He got to his feet. He found he was too upset to sit still. He paced, the bottle of beer in his hand forgotten for the moment. “I don’t want to hurt him. To tell him the life he leads is not for me. I mean, how do you tell your father that?”

  “I don’t know who my father even is, but I know how hard it was to tell your father and Scott, after all they did for me, that I wanted to leave it all behind and go to college and try to live a normal life. And to tell Snake and Mother. To go out into the world as just a regular person.”

  Jeff said, “Do you ever do anything? Like, indulge in your ability at all? Reach into a computer with your mind, just to keep up the practice?”

  She shook her head. “Never. I haven’t done anything like that since the last mission I was on with your father and Scott, over two years ago.”

  “And no one here knows about you?”

  “Not one.” She took another drink of beer. “You’re birthday is in three months, right?”

  He nodded. “I turn eighteen in three months. And based on the credits I have, home-schooling at the facility, I could have graduated high school two years ago. And I have a four-point-oh.”

  “You’re a smart kid and you have great teachers. I mean, Scott is probably no doubt the smartest guy to ever live and Sammy has a photon computer for a brain. You won’t find any two teachers anywhere in the world who can match those two. Have you started filling out college applications?”

  “I haven’t told them, but I’ve been using a P O Box in Boston. Mother had one set up, years ago.”

  Chloe was nodding her head. She remembered.

  Jeff said, “I’ve checked out Harvard and UCLA, and a couple dozen places in between. I’m going to have to use falsified credentials to get in, of course. It’d be hard to explain my two teachers were a meta-human and an android.”

  “Any idea what you want to major in?”

  He shrugged his shoulders again. “English, I think. Literature. It fascinates me. Kind of a strange thing to say, I suppose, considering all I’ve seen and done. And the fact that I can travel through time, and if I power-up enough, I can travel in space without a protective suit.”

  He took another sip of beer. “Oh, by the way, it looks like Scott’s finally on for the trip to Europa.”

  “Oh? Finally. He’s been talking about that since I met him.”

  “Yeah, he’s got most of the logistics worked out. Looks like the team leaves in a few weeks.”

  “You gonna be on the team?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t said, yet. But if I am, then I’ll be the only high-school kid in the world who has gone into space. And not to the moon or anything like that, but all the way to freakin’ Europa. And yet, what do I want to study? Nineteenth century poets. And Shakespeare and Marlowe.”

  “Then that’s what you should do, Jeff.”

  “I just feel like my life was passing me by, and then this opportunity for a little normalcy came my way. If I don’t grab it, you know?”

  She nodded. “When was it you said you last talked to someone our age who wasn’t a meta?”

  He shook his head. “I really don’t remember. Isn’t that sad?”

  “Tell you what. There’s a little party some of the girls and I are putting together on this floor Saturday night. Do you expect to be back from 1880 by then?”

  It was Tuesday, now. “Yeah. We’re leaving tomorrow. If all goes well, we should only be gone a few hours.”

  “Cool. Then come on by.”

  “I’m only seventeen, remember?”

  She smiled. “You could easily pass for nineteen or twenty. Come on by. I’ll introduce you to some kids. Normal kids. Hey, my roommate Ashley’s kid sister will in for a visit. She’s your age. A high school senior.”

  “All right. You got it. I’ll be there.”

  “See you then. Oh, and Jeff? Talk to your dad. I really think if anyone should understand about all of this about wanting a normal life, it would be him.”

  TEN

  They assembled in the gym. Jeff was in a collared shirt and a tie, with a long blazer something like a morning coat. He wore shiny black leather shoes and trousers that were a dark gray with darker pinstripes.

  He said, “I feel like I’m ready for a wedding or a prom.”

  Scott was in a similar outfit, though his jacket and trousers were a matching dark gray with no stripes and he had a fedora perched atop his head.

  April said, “I just love that hat. I found it in a thrift store in Boulder.”

  April was in a dress with a hem that fell to her shoes and with a ruffled front rising all the way to a tightly collared neck. A hat with little flowers was pinned to her hair. In one hand was a parasol.

  Scott said, “You look mighty fetching for a nineteenth century lady.”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir. But,” she reached with one hand to smooth down the poofiness of her dress, “how did women ever move back in those days, wearing all these layers?”

  Akila was there, in a black sports bra and tight, high cut spandex shorts that gave full glory to her winding dragon tattoo and tightly muscled legs.

  She said, “Did women actually wear cumbersome outfits like that?”

  April nodded. “’Fraid so.”

  Akila shook her head. “It’s amazing the human race ever evolved at all, on this Earth.”

  “I think it’s cute,” Sammy said. He was in a gray jacket and a checkered vest. He wore a bow tie and high topped shoes and baggy black trousers. In one hand was a wooden cane.

  Akila said, “What are you going to do if you have to go quantum? You’ll leave that dress behind if you do.”

  “Scott designed me a sort of jumpsuit to wear under this outfit,” she said. “It’s not as protective as a full battle suit, but it’ll go quantum with me so I don’t have to run around in the buff.”

  Scott said, “Now that might have an effect on the timeline.

  She smacked him in the shoulder.

  Jake chuckled. “I have to admit, they look more like costumes than clothes.”

  April said, “Laugh it up all you want. You don’t have to wear these things.”

  Scott pulled a small, palm-size tricorder from one jacket pocket and tapped on it to give it a couple quick system checks.

  He said, “Come on, you people. We have to wear this stuff so we fit in. There can’t be any indication that we come from anywhere else.”

  April rolled her eyes. “I know. Polluting the time stream, and all.”

  “Come on,” Jeff said. “It’ll be fun.”

  April looked to Scott. “What do we do if we have to talk to anyone? I mean, it’s one thing to look the part. But the way people talked back then was so different than today. We open our mouths, and they�
��ll know we’re not local.”

  “It would be best,” Scott said, “if we avoided any contact at all with the local population as much as possible. If anyone sees us and says hello, just nod politely and keep on going.”

  Sammy said, “I have loaded a local map of the city on each of your tricorders. Parts of the city haven’t changed much, but some have.”

  “All right,” Scott said. “I guess we’re ready.”

  “Okay,” Jeff said, drawing a breath. “This might tingle a little.”

  “It always does,” April said.

  Jake looked at his son. “Do we need to step back, or anything?”

  “Not really. I’m just going to grab Scott, April and Sammy and pull them through the time stream with me.”

  “Just like that,” Jake said, a little wryly.

  “Yep.” Jeff nodded. “Just like that.”

  It was amazing to Jake how Jeff spoke of time travel as though he were just talking about walking across the room.

  And then, with a small flash of light, they were simply gone.

  Jake and Akila stood alone in the gym. Jake said, “This is going to be weird. Whenever we use our own time travel technology, we can monitor the mission from our central computer alcove. But not this time. We’ll just have to sit and wait.”

  “I have noticed,” Akila said, “that sitting and waiting is one thing you are not good at.”

  He gave a little shrug with his brows. “No, I guess not. I suppose you could call me a little impatient.”

  “You are a man of action. And that often is something I benefit from greatly.” She gave a mischievous smirk.

  He was concerned about the away team and the fact that he was not with them. Their mission should pass routinely, just wandering about old Boston for a couple of hours discretely taking tricorder readings. But they were totally out of contact. If something went wrong, they would be on their own.

  This distracted him to the point that it took a couple moments for him to realize what Akila had said. He looked at her with a smile. “Maybe your code name should be Double Entendre Girl.”

  “Who, me?” And with a second smirk, she turned and left the gym.

  She and Jake found Chuck in the computer alcove, a beer in one hand.

  “Just holding down the fort,” he said.

  Fifteen monitors were mounted on the wall, positioned so they could be viewed easily from the chair Chuck was currently occupying. One showed a view of New York taken from a satellite. The view shifted slowly as the satellite moved along in orbit. Another showed a view of downtown Tokyo’s late evening traffic. Another showed Boston.

  “Anything unusual going on?” Jake said.

  Chuck shook his head. “Nothing new on the morning news. The Democrats are still pissing off the Republicans. The Republicans are pissing off the Democrats. Each side claims the other is trying to ruin the country. Same old, same old. We survived both Bush and Obama. Life goes on. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  “Oh, Scott has us monitoring FBI communications again, looking for certain keywords like our names and the word meta-human, now that our old friend Agent Kincaid is back.”

  Jake nodded. They had learned Kincaid had been returned to active duty a few weeks ago and was stationed at FBI headquarters in Boston. They had thought he was gone for good. But then there was a power change in Washington and a xenophobic senator became majority leader, and suddenly Kincaid was back.

  Chuck glanced at one screen that showed a news anchor prattling away from behind a desk.

  Chuck said, “Here’s something, though. A little weird. A series of fires last night in Boston. Scattered throughout the city. A small bank. A convenience store. Each one of them a business. A used car dealership. Eight of them in all. And in each case, fistfuls of cash were missing.”

  “Robberies?” Akila said. “Isn’t that sort of a bizarre way to go about robbing a place?”

  Chuck nodded. “You would think so. It kept the fire departments all through the city hopping all night. Amazingly, no one was injured.”

  The newscaster disappeared, to be replaced by a middle-aged guy with a lined face and a graying mustache. At the bottom of the screen was his name, and the title, BOSTON FIRE CHIEF. Chuck turned up the volume.

  “We got lucky,” the fire chief was saying. “In every case, the wind was blowing just right so the fire didn’t carry to any adjoining rooftops.”

  Chuck said, “Anything we should check out?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’re explorers and scientists, not vigilantes. This might be the kind of thing the Darkness might involve himself in, though. If it keeps up, maybe Rick and I could take a quick run to Boston and talk with Mother and Snake. See what they might think.”

  Akila strolled out to the main lab and the small dorm fridge they kept in one corner. She pulled out a couple of beers. Jake followed her from the computer alcove and she handed a bottle to him.

  “Well,” he said. “I suppose we also serve, those who wait. Or something like that. It’s an old quote. I don’t really remember it.”

  “Well,” she said, taking a sip of beer. “Since I know how you hate to sit and wait, and you are a man of action, I have an idea of something that might keep you busy.”

  And with one more smirk, she headed toward the corridor that led to their quarters.

  ELEVEN

  1880 AD

  They found themselves standing in an alleyway. One building was sided with brick and the other was simply made of wooden boards. Beneath their feet was gravel, not pavement.

  Ahead of them was a street paved with cobblestones. It was night and the only light was provided by gas lamps mounted on posts, one on each block.

  “Primitive street lights,” Scott said. “They had to be manually lighted each evening, one at a time, and then likewise extinguished every morning.”

  “Amazing,” Sammy said, “how far we have come from this in only little more than one hundred twenty years. Have you ever wondered about the sudden acceleration in the development of technology?”

  Scott nodded. “Many a time. Another question to explore, on our ever-growing list of things to do.”

  “I find this so unsettling,” April said, glancing warily about. “It was morning when we left. And we land here, late at night.”

  “Should be ten PM,” Jeff said. “After dark.”

  Scott said, “This way, we’ll have a better chance of moving about undetected.”

  “Is there such a thing as a time-travel version of jet lag?” April said.

  Jeff smiled. “Sort of what you might call time lag? I don’t know. Never thought about it. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  She waved a hand in front of her face. “It’s so darned humid.”

  “Well,” Scott said. “It is Boston in the summer.”

  “July twenty-fourth,” Jeff said.

  “Maybe we’ve all gotten a little too used to the air conditioning at the facility, and the dry thinner air in Colorado. I, too, had forgotten how humid it can be in the summer here on the east coast.”

  April said, “And you’re not wearing a whole heaping pile of layers, like I am under this dress. God, how did women survive in this time period?”

  A horse and carriage moved by, the iron shoes of the horse clopping loudly on the cobble stones. The driver sat on a seat mounted high toward the front. He wore a black top hat and a coat with long tails, and he gave the group standing in front of the alley a curious glance, a quick polite nod of his head, and kept going.

  “We should move along,” Scott said. “Standing here like a bunch of tourists is going to attract unwanted attention.”

  They started down the sidewalk. It was paved with bricks. The light from the gas lamps gave everything a sort of yellow glow.

  Scott reached into his jacket and pulled his tricorder and called up the map of 1880 Boston. The display on the tricorder was about the size of a display on a smart phone.


  He said, “I think we should split up. We can cover ground faster this way. But as a safety precaution, we should stay in pairs.”

  “Why?” Jeff said. “I can’t imagine anything here in this time period could hurt us.”

  “Probably not. But it’s what your father or Akila would say, if they were along.”

  Sammy nodded. “Probably true.”

  “April and I will head toward the north church and work our way along there. Why don’t you two head down toward the water front. But remember, don’t engage with the natives. Try to avoid them if possible.”

  Sammy said, “Maybe stick to alleyways.”

  Jeff and Sammy crossed the cobblestone street and Scott and April continued along the sidewalk.

  Another horse and carriage went by. A few people strolled along the sidewalks, some talking casually and others walking in silence.

  One man had a black top hat perched atop his head and he wore a dark trench coat. In one hand was a smoldering cigar. With him was a lady wearing a wide hat, and a shawl was pulled about her shoulders. Her hair was done up elegantly under her hat, and her neck rose long and gracefully from a plunging laced neckline.

  The man and woman walked past Scott and April, and the woman glanced at April and gave a polite smile and a nod of her head. April returned it. April noticed how easily the woman moved along, with a dress that fell to her shoes and with layers of petticoats underneath. How did people live this way?

  The man and the woman continued walking. Half a block later, they stopped and looked back at Scott and April.

  “Did those two give you an odd feeling?” the woman said.

  The man reached into his evening jacket and produced a gold pocket watch. He flipped it open and it produced a whirring sound. Where the face of the watch would normally be was a display on which ran a small digital read-out.

  He said, “They gave you that odd feeling with good reason, my dear. They are not from around here.”