The Rewind Files Read online

  “They’re sending you because you’re the best,” she said. “This is what you do all day long. You’re just doing it from there instead of here. But you’ve got this, Reggie. You breeze in, you poke around, you track the Chronomaly, you breeze out.” She smiled at me and stepped down off the platform and went over to the console.

  “Good hunting, Agent Bellows,” said the Director, as he, Mark and Mrs. Graham put their hands over their hearts in the old-fashioned department salute. After a moment, my mother did too. She smiled at me and nodded. Calliope keyed in the coordinates.

  “It’s just a math problem, Reggie,” she trilled cheerfully as I felt the familiar tingling sensation close in around me. “You’ll be home by the weekend!”

  I wasn’t.

  The Rewind Files Part II

  Past Imperfect

  “How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.”

  --MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations

  Eight

  We’d Like to Know a Little Bit About You For Our Files

  Washington D.C. — May 25th, 1972. 11:26 p.m.

  “Excuse me,” I said politely. There was no response. I tapped on the plastic divider separating me from the front seat. “Excuse me,” I said again, a little louder and a little less politely.

  “Zip it, lady,” came the gruff voice from the passenger seat.

  “I just thought you might like to know,” I told him helpfully, “that he didn’t read me my Miranda rights. And neither did you.”

  “What’d she say?” said Passenger Seat to Driver’s Seat.

  “Dunno. Wasn’t listening.”

  I tapped on the plastic again. “Stop doing that,” Driver’s Seat said.

  “I said, nobody ever read me my rights,” I repeated, louder this time. “You’re already going to be in just an insane amount of trouble and I wouldn’t make it worse by—”

  Passenger Seat whirled around and smacked his fist ferociously against the plastic divider, scaring the daylights out of me. “Shut up!” he barked.

  I shut up.

  “Drive faster,” he snapped to Driver’s Seat. “I want this mouthy broad out of my damn car.”

  “Whatever,” I grumbled under my breath, sinking down in my seat, irritated. “Just trying to save you both from totally screwing this up.”

  “That don’t sound like shutting up to me,” said Driver’s Seat, and I glared at him in the rearview mirror as hard as I could.

  “This is just classic Reggie Bellows,” snapped Calliope’s voice in my ear. “I mean it. This is one for the record books.”

  “Don’t start with me, Calliope,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t start with you? Don’t start with you?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

  “I have half a mind to—”

  “I said I was sorry,” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Just get me out of this.”

  “It’s 1972, you moron. I can’t just click my computer screen three times and erase your arrest record. Everything’s on paper.”

  “Well, you better think of something. I’m supposed to start work on Monday.”

  “Oh, no problem. I’ll just call Human Resources at the White House and tell them to push back your new hire date until after your bail hearing.”

  “I don’t know how many more times you want me to admit I screwed up, Calliope.”

  “Well, a couple more at least.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re genuinely pissed at me or if you’re enjoying this.”

  “No reason it can’t be both.”

  I groaned.

  “I did tell your mother this was not a good idea,” she said. “Just for the record. I was on your side here. You weren’t ready.”

  “I know. I told her that too. Clearly she doesn’t listen to us. Can you just, please, please, please – I’ll owe you one forever – figure out some way to get me out of this mess without her finding out?”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” she said tightly. “Just . . . try not to make it worse.” And she rang off.

  I sighed again, and turned my head to look out the window, watching the night skyline of D.C. speed by, idly wondering exactly how many veins in my mother’s forehead would pop out once she found out I was about to spend my first night in 1972 in jail on solicitation charges.

  * * *

  Less than twenty-four hours ago, it was the year 2112 and I was Regina Bellows, United States Time Travel Bureau Apprentice. Now I was suddenly Field Agent Bellows, and it was 1972.

  One day forward, 140 years back.

  Six hours before finding myself in the back of a squad car, I had stepped out of the Slipstream and into a private train compartment on the way from Kansas City (“home”, according to my fake cover story) to Washington D.C.

  Sense of smell comes back to you first, so I followed the sharp acrid tang of black coffee out of the foggy darkness of the Slipstream into a world of shrieking, rumbling chaos. Good God, 20th century trains were loud. Every single motion of the train reverberated up into my bones. The cacophony of clatters and whistles and hisses, with the dull roar of human voices in the backdrop, made my head throb. How did people live like this?

  I checked my wrist Comm. HIO level 0. I had landed with no impact whatsoever on the General Timeline. Flawless.

  I sent Calliope a silent prayer of thanks. While I had spent four days learning about everything from bras to espionage, she had not been idle. Prep work was her specialty. Long-haul drops are nothing like last week’s reckless headlong charge into chaos in Ohio; the level of detail that goes into the planning would astonish you. Regina Bellows, aspiring Republican secretary, didn’t just have a wardrobe. She had a history too.

  There was an entire department assigned to this part of the process, staffed with specialists operating a dazzling spectrum of antiquated technology and communications. They were there for any field agent who might require a telegram or a wire transfer or a video message or a voice at the other end of the phone.

  On specific instructions from Calliope, they had arranged my apartment and a bank account. Should anyone at the White House decide to check my references, the phone numbers they dialed in 1972 would connect them to one of the three agents with my case file and they would get the whole carefully-crafted story of my previous life in Kansas City.

  Very, very carefully, I edged my way to the door of the train car – bracing myself against its constant jarring movement, trying to look like I knew how to walk in these high-heeled shoes – and moved gingerly down the hall to the ladies’ room.

  Omitting the inappropriate personal details, let me just say that unless you have attempted to do your business while strapped, corseted and buttoned into absurdly restrictive 20th century women’s clothes (in a stall so small that you can touch both walls with your elbows, in a moving train car, no less) then you have not known suffering. I hoped that whatever monster had invented pantyhose was eventually strangled with them.

  As I washed my hands, I looked at my new, 1970s face, and hardly recognized myself. Mrs. Graham, the Time Travel Bureau’s customs and etiquette specialist, and Mark the wardrobe supervisor had clearly never met such a human disaster and their pitying looks had grown harder and harder for me to politely ignore, but I could not deny that they had done excellent work on my hair, makeup and clothes. Even my eyebrows looked different.

  “You’ll want to touch up your face on the train,” said Mrs. Graham, as though I knew what that meant, but Mark had packed a small bag of supplies in my handbag for this purpose, along with a patronizingly detailed manual (“STEP ONE: REMOVE CAP FROM LIPSTICK. SET ASIDE”). I knew nothing about hair or makeup, but I did have a degree in Chrono-Engineering. So if nothing else, I could follow a diagram.

  Hoping to God no one else entered the ladies’ room to see me carefully studying a giant paper schematic of a human head covered in notes and arrows, I refreshed my lipstick and did things t
o my hair per Mark’s instructions, then staggered like a drunk baby deer down the rapidly-whipsawing train hallway, clutching the walls for support, until I returned to my train car and sank gratefully into my seat.

  I watched out the train window as the 20th century rushed by my windows – houses, cars, telephone poles and a blue sky that was just faintly warming into purple as the sun began to think about setting. I felt a sudden ache of longing just to stay on this noisy train forever, to let myself be pulled along with it to wherever it was going next.

  I closed my eyes for a long, long time, trying to block out the rest of the world for a little while longer. Just as I began to think that throwing my Comm out the window and staying in this train compartment for the rest of my life wasn’t such a terrible plan after all, I felt the engine slow. The noises grow louder, and I looked out the window to see the grand white bulk of Union Station suddenly right in front of me.

  It was too late. I was here.

  “Break’s over,” I muttered to myself as I stepped off the train and followed the crowd into the station. It was somehow awe-inspiring and distressing at the same time, its soaring white ceilings and teeming sea of human life making me feel very alone and very small.

  My HIO meter ticked softly in my pocket, causing me to jump and wince involuntarily. It was only at 2, which could be caused by any number of inadvertent things – had I disembarked the train the wrong way? Was my demeanor off?

  Or was I fine, and my meter was picking up somebody else?

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled very suddenly. As I looked around at the endless crowd of 20th-century people, just walking around and living their 1972 lives, the 50% of my genetic code that belonged to Katie Bellows suddenly whirred to life and I knew – without knowing how I knew – that I was being watched. I craned my neck, making an elaborate show of looking around for the luggage room and pantomiming an “Ah! There it is!” expression as I walked towards it, scanning the room as I went.

  The problem, of course, was that it could be anyone – the man in a dark suit over by the coffee stand, reading the Washington Post, nothing visible of his face except a cowlick of very blond hair over the top of the newspaper; the elderly woman seated in the waiting area, clutching a brown paper parcel; the family with two small children in line for their luggage right in front of me.

  Under the right circumstances, any one of them could be suspicious. “Is it you? Is it you? Is it you?” My brain whispered to each of them in turn. I didn’t know. But somebody from my time was in this room with me, I was sure of it. Friend or foe, I couldn’t tell.

  In the luggage line, waiting behind the young family, my mind drifted to the Embed – the deep cover agent on the ground in 1972 – whom I had been told would soon make contact with me. He occupied some highly-sensitive position in the administration, so I was relegated to knowing virtually nothing about him until he was ready to reveal himself. Mom had called him a “he,” so that was my lone concrete fact. But who he was, what he did, why he was so secretive, what he looked like – all of these were mysteries I couldn’t solve until he decided to contact me.

  I was pulled out of my thoughts by an argument between the two children in line in front of me. Bigger Child was attempting to convince Smaller Child that they were going to see the Statue of Liberty. Smaller Child, either through a more-solid grasp of geography or hard-wired sibling distrust, remained skeptical.

  “Mom, are we going to see the Statue of Liberty today?” he asked dubiously, and his mother laughed.

  “That’s New York, Charlie, that’s next week,” she said. “We’re in Washington now. Remember? The museums and all the monuments for the presidents, like you learned about in school?”

  I stared at her for a moment – she was young and pretty and pregnant, with a shiny blonde ponytail and a pink dress and very rosy cheeks – and I wondered if the enemy agent who caused the Chronomaly was here in 1972, watching my every move. I thought about fake pregnancy stomachs and how traveling with children was the perfect cover and whether anyone really had teeth that white.

  She intercepted, and misinterpreted, my look. “We’re not much on geography,” she said apologetically, shrugging in the direction of the children with a grin, and I found myself unable to resist smiling back, hating myself a little for my suspicious mind. She was normal. Her big cheerful husband, negotiating with the man behind the counter for their heap of suitcases, was normal. The kids were normal too (though my partiality was all with Smaller Child).

  Everything was normal.

  Get it together, I ordered myself.

  I stuck my tongue out at Bigger Child, who responded in kind, as the family moved away and I stepped up to the counter and handed over my ticket. Just as I was reproaching myself for my nonsensical paranoia, I felt the prickle at the back of my neck again. My HIO meter hadn’t ticked up, but it hadn’t gone back down either.

  I scanned my periphery but nobody in the luggage area seemed to be paying that much attention to me. As the clerk took my ticket and disappeared to collect my bags (cargo-dropped by Calliope into the luggage car), I dropped my handbag deliberately. As I knelt to pick it up, I turned slightly, making a casual slow scan of the room as I stood.

  There he was.

  Leaning against a pillar, just outside the entrance to the luggage room, there was a nondescript man in a nondescript gray suit with a hat pulled low over his face. Our eyes met as I stood up, clutching my handbag, and we sized each other up for a long moment. He was youngish, probably in his late thirties, with sandy brown hair. His eyes didn’t match the rest of him. There was a studied casualness in his nonchalant posture and a vagueness that must have been deliberate about his physical appearance.

  But his eyes were sharp, quick and piercing; eyes that would miss nothing; eyes that were currently looking at me with great interest. I was reassured by this. No enemy agent would allow themselves to be spotted so easily. But as an introduction from an undercover ally, it wasn’t bad.

  “Your luggage, ma’am,” said the clerk, and a young man stepped out from behind the counter pushing a cart full of my bags.

  “Thank you,” I said, reaching out to take the cart from him, thinking he meant me to steer it myself, but he shook his head.

  “I got it, Miss.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s really okay. Thank you. But really, don’t worry about it.”

  “Wouldn’t be right, Miss,” he said firmly, and pushed the cart on. My HIO meter ticked twice, warningly, and I sighed and gave up and let him take the cart. “Taxi stand?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.” And I followed him towards the exit.

  “You don’t have to thank them every time,” said the man in the suit, and I stopped short. The young man with the luggage cart didn’t see, and kept going.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The kid with your bags,” he said. “You thanked him three times. You don’t have to do that. People don’t need to be thanked three times for doing their job.”

  “It’s good manners,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with good manners.”

  He shrugged.

  “Up to you,” he said. “But you might be giving off the wrong impression.” And he looked at me pointedly, as if trying to tell me something. After a short moment, it clicked.

  “You can tell I’m not . . . from around here,” I said, remembering the HIO meter. A rich Midwestern businessman’s daughter would never be hauling her own pile of suitcases if there was someone to do it for her. I was already breaking character.

  He nodded.

  “Were you waiting for me?” I asked. “I mean, did you come here to meet me?”

  “What do you think?” he said. I could see the baggage clerk up ahead realizing he had outpaced me. He turned the cart around and was headed back in my direction.

  “Look,” I said. “I have to go. He’s waiting with my bags. I have to get to my apartment. Can we meet later?”

  “You just te
ll me where and when.”

  “Fine. It’s, what, five-thirty now? Okay, meet me at eleven at the Lincoln Memorial,” I said as I waved at the baggage clerk to let him know I was coming. “You’re terrible at this, by the way,” I called over my shoulder. “I spotted you immediately.”

  “I picked you out pretty quickly too,” he said. “So maybe we’re even.” And he winked at me in a way I wasn’t sure I liked as I scurried off to catch up with my suitcases.

  * * *

  When I got up to the front of the taxi line, where three or four cabs were lined up waiting, I stepped up to the front door of the one nearest the curb, mimicked the diagram from Mrs. Graham’s guidebook and raised my hand in the gesture she had described. The driver stared at me.

  “The hell you doin’?”

  “I’m . . . hailing a cab?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “I know.”

  “What, you think I can’t see you standing here with your twelve suitcases? My eyes work. I can see you.”

  “She tryin’ to hail you from right in front of your face?” the driver of the cab behind us shouted out his window. “The hell you from, girl?”

  And they both hooted with laughter until their pink beer-bloated faces turned red, as I irritably climbed into the back seat. Adding insult to my injury, I felt my HIO meter tick up to 5. Thank God I didn’t have Calliope – or worse – in my ear for this. My Microcam was packed (“We’re assuming you can handle getting yourself from the train to your apartment without the entire team on call” had been my mother’s oh-so-supportive way of putting it).

  “Where to, sweetheart?” said the driver. Even under the best of circumstances, that “sweetheart” would have set me off, but I couldn’t risk another increase in HIO levels by punching him in the teeth, so I gritted my teeth and gave him my address. Seeing that I was not feeling particularly chatty, he turned on the radio.