Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.2 The Hounds

Later that afternoon, after classes, Natty, Nancy and I took the bus to Arlesten to indulge in a bit of shopping and window-shopping.

We were strolling through downtown Arlesten when we heard a male voice calling out from a nearby cafe:"Girls! Natalie, Catherine, Nancy! Over here."

He was sitting at an outside table, waving both of his arms to get our attention. Jake Ferguson, aka the Ruggedly Handsome Devil, as our school secretary Sandra had so aptly described him. A man in his early forties, wearing corduroys and a sweatshirt. From the way he was dressed, he could have easily been mistaken for one of the tourists that were crowding the central plaza with its medieval cathedral that time of the year. The three of us knew better, of course.

Like myself, Jake was a visitor from the future. Except that where I came from the early 23rd century, Jake's native temporal era was an epoch somewhen in the far future. A time when my own people would be not merely history but the stuff of myths and legends, like Atlantis.

Jake's contemporaries referred to the 23rd century as The Golden Age. Their ancestors had written epic poems about my people, poems that kids were made to memorize at school. Politically, Jake's people were subjects of the Autarch, absolute ruler of a huge autocratic state.

When their archeologists had discovered and excavated the large structure they had come to refer to as The Citadel of Time — a structure that had to be the ruins of one of my own people's Transit Facilities — they had learned about temporal transit technology.

For reasons I still failed to fully comprehend, and motivated by the questionable prediction of some dubious AI software and by what I could only understand as a pervasive general sense of paranoia, they had felt compelled to send a group of military personnel and scientists back to the 1950s to find and eliminate Natty Fogg.

Originally, Jake Fergson had been a member of that team. However, he had deserted from that mission — referred to by the autarchy as Operation Terminus — and as a consequence he was now stranded here in the 1960s.

At least, that was Jake's story as he himself had told it to us.

"Come over here and join me." He pushed back a couple of chairs. "Can I get something to drink for you? Coffee, or perhaps some lemonade?"

"Lemonade would be great," Natty replied, as we walked over to where he was sitting.

"Sure, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much," Nancy chimed in.

I nodded. "Same here."

"Would you be so kind as to bring us three glasses of lemonade?" Jake asked the young waitress who was hovering nearby. "And another cup of coffee for me?"

"Certainly," the girl replied, more than a bit dazzled by his smile.

As she went to fetch our beverages, we sat down at Jake's table. I winced as my sore backside made contact with the seat of the chair. This did not go unnoticed by Jake.

"What's wrong, Catherine?" he inquired.

"Uh nothing much really," I muttered, embarrassed.

"Cathy got her butt spanked earlier today, at school," Natty kindly informed him.

"Ouch." Jake shot me a sympathetic look. "They do that at your school?"

"Well yes, they do. I can attest to that," I admitted.

The waitress, who was depositing a cup of coffee and three glasses of lemonade on our table, smiled. She must have overheard what we had been talking about, but thankfully she chose not to comment.