Chronica Read online

  Max thought for a second, and nodded. "That'll also allow us to end our mooching ways and return these coats," he pointed to the Millennium overcoats, now draped on an ornate armchair. Then he doused the fire.

  Sierra stood, took her coat, and put it on. "Too bad about that," she said. "I was getting to like these coats – you look great in your greatcoat."

  ***

  The two arrived at the Millennium about 20 minutes later. "Looks like the guy we saw here in 2062," Sierra whispered to Max, as the doorman opened the door and they walked in.

  Max looked a little concerned. "Presumably they don't have any retinal IDs back here."

  "Doesn't matter," Sierra continued her whisper, "as he long as he recognizes us."

  He apparently did. He nodded and asked if Sierra and Max were looking for anyone at the Club.

  "Not today," Sierra replied.

  "Very good," he said in his crisp British accent. He bowed slightly and walked away.

  The two left their borrowed coats in the cloakroom, with a note that said thanks. They ascended the necessary stairs and entered the room with the Chairs. There were two of them.

  "Who took the third—" Max began.

  "Doesn't matter," Sierra said again. "All we can do is speculate. If it's Heron, and he's waiting for us at the time we're going to, we'll find out about that soon enough."

  Max agreed and unconsciously touched the hilt of the knife he always carried in his belt.

  Each sat in a Chair.

  "I'm setting it for one month from now," Sierra said.

  "Works for me," Max said and threw her a small kiss.

  Sierra set in the dates and initiated the go sequence. Bubbles ascended. The cosmos blew kisses.

  [New York City, March, 1899 AD]

  Sierra's bubble receded. She got out of her Chair.

  "Max??!" She realized she was the only person in the room. "Max???" she shouted again to the empty room.

  What the hell had happened? The two had jumped in sync dozens of times now, and it had worked just right every time. Had she done something wrong with the setting? No, she was sure she had done that correctly.

  What should she do? Get back in her Chair and travel a month back – that's where Max would be if his Chair had malfunctioned. She felt a deep gnawing in the pit of her stomach – if the Chair had not worked right, Max could be in a lot worse shape than just a month earlier in time. What should she do? She felt more panicked now than in all the battles with Heron and his men.

  She had to think clearly. There was an explanation for this—

  She heard something in the air – the sound when a Chair was imminently arriving. Her first instinct was to stay in the room, so she could see if Max was in the Chair and all right. But that could be fatal to her. She left the room, and closed the door behind her.

  She was shaking and was glad no one was there to see it.

  She heard something in the room. She took a deep breath. It could be Heron in the Chair or someone else bent on killing her. She heard a muffled voice through the door. It sounded enough like Max that she opened the door.

  "Hey," Max said, as Sierra rushed over and flung her arms around him. "What's the matter?"

  "You weren't here," she said. She was still shaking but it was subsiding. "What happened?"

  "Nothing different, on my end," Max said. He stroked her face and tried to comfort her, seeing how upset she was. "Everything's ok."

  "Well, something happened," Sierra said, regaining most of her equilibrium. "Something went awry in the syncing."

  "Could Heron have done that?" Max asked.

  "I don't know," Sierra said.

  "Let's get out of here and up to Wave Hill to see Appleton," Max said. "If there's something not right with the Chairs, something dangerous could still happen in this room."

  ***

  Sierra was still not quite herself as they reached Grand Central. The Chairs working as expected was one of the few facts of her existence she relied upon, in this insane life she had chosen for herself, and which Max had joined.

  "You sure you can't remember anything different?" Sierra asked Max, for at least the fourth or fifth time.

  "No, nothing different," Max said. "It was instantaneous, like it always is."

  "All right," she said as they boarded the train up to Riverdale. "Let's see what we can learn now from William about where the Chronica is." She tried to clear her head some more, with only partial success.

  The two hiked up the hill to Appleton's home. Max knocked on the door.

  Geoffreys opened it with a face more dour than usual. "I'm sorry, he's sleeping now," Geoffreys said. "He's a little better than the day before yesterday, when Mr. Porter was here, but the doctor gave me strict orders not to let Mr. Appleton see anyone, until he's up and easily walking about."

  "Porter?" Max asked.

  "Oh, yes," Geoffreys replied. "A Mr. Edwin Porter – he paid a call with the actress, Mary Anderson. They were quite disappointed when they couldn't see him."

  "Is that Edwin Porter, the film maker? The Great Train Robbery?" Max asked.

  "I'm sorry, I don't follow," Geoffreys replied. "Is The Great Train Robber a novel?"

  "The Great Train Robbery," Max said, "though, wait, maybe it's a little too early for you to know that . . . it was made in, 1901? … Ok, never mind. I was talking to myself, about … moving pictures. You know, photography, but the images move?"

  "I still don't understand what you're saying, but, no, I do not frequent the arcades," Geoffreys said.

  Max nodded.

  "And you are sure we cannot see Mr. Appleton, even for a brief minute?" Sierra asked, almost pleading.

  "I wish it could be, my dear," Geoffreys said, softly but intently. "I'm afraid I have no choice but to follow the doctor's orders. Perhaps next week? The doctor says there's every chance Mr. Appleton will regain at least some of his strength."

  ***

  The two trudged dejectedly back down the hill to the train station. "What was Edwin Porter doing here?" Sierra asked.

  "Didn't Dickson mention something about Porter this morning – last month?" Max asked. "Maybe Dickson enlisted Porter in some kind of plan to find out the whereabouts of the Chronica."

  "I need to stop for a second," Sierra said, breathlessly.

  "Are you ok?" Max asked, concerned.

  "I don't know," Sierra said, and reached out to touch Max's face. Then she pulled it towards her and kissed him, putting her tongue in his mouth, and moving it round and round with his. She pulled away, and kissed him again on the lips.

  "Wow," Max said, now slightly out of breath himself. "That was, for what? You liked my analysis of Dickson and Porter?"

  "Yeah, and we should see how Thomas Edison figures into this, since both of them worked or still work for him," Sierra said.

  "And we need to find out what Mary Anderson has to do with all of this," Max said. "It's not just an accident that she showed up with Edwin Porter to see Appleton."

  "Maybe Mary, whoever she is, was the one who made the decision to see William, and she was the one who brought Porter along," Sierra said. "Who is she?"

  "Geoffreys said she's an actress," Max said, "does that do anything for you? I never heard of any actress by the name of Mary Anderson."

  "It may ring a slight bell," Sierra said. "I'm not sure."

  They resumed walking and soon reached the station.

  "Why did you kiss me back there?" Max asked.

  "Do I need a reason?" Sierra said, and tried to smile.

  "I know you," Max said. "You don't just kiss me out of the clear blue sky for no reason."

  "I'm sorry," Sierra said.

  Max laughed oddly. "You don't have to apologize for it – I'm just wondering—"

  "I had to make sure it was you," Sierra said.

  "We back to that again? I thought you tested me back in ancient Alexandria," Max said. "That was fun, too. Though, sometimes, a kiss like the one you just gave me on the hi
ll can be the best thing of all."

  "I was just worried," Sierra said.

  "About what? That because my Chair arrived a few seconds late, that I was no longer me, and was some fucking duplicate that Heron sent in?"

  "I'm sorry," Sierra said again. "I know now it's you – no one else moves their tongue exactly the way you do." Now she was able to smile. "But stranger things have happened. You know that. I wasn't wrong to be concerned."

  "Ok," Max said, and took her hand.

  The train arrived clacking at the station. Sierra and Max boarded, and Sierra thought, well, I know it's you, but I still need to know why that glitch in the sync, if it was a glitch, happened. She squeezed Max's hand and kissed him softly on the neck.

  ***

  Sierra and Max walked out into the bright, cool late March sunshine outside of Grand Central Terminal.

  "That's J. P. Morgan and Thomas Edison," a man dressed all in black said to another man, dressed the same as him, in a thick accent Max and Sierra instantly recognized as Yiddish.

  Sierra and Max turned to see two older men walking quickly ahead of them and the men dressed in black on the street. The name J. P. Morgan meant little to Sierra and Max. But Edison of course they amply knew all about.

  Max looked as if he wanted to run up to Edison.

  Sierra put a restraining arm on his shoulder. "From what I remember reading, he's not the most sociable," she said to Max. "If we want to see him, we'd probably do better to contact him beforehand and arrange a meeting, rather than just accosting him like this on the street."

  Max nodded. "By the way, we've haven't discussed this yet, but I assume we're headed back to Astor's hotel, after having been a gone a month, from his point of view."

  "I can't see the harm in it," Sierra said.

  The two proceeded to the hotel on Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. The concierge walked briskly up to them in the lobby. "Mr. Astor was looking for you," he said. "May I tell him you're here?"

  "Of course," Sierra said, and the concierge went off to get Astor.

  "I'm going to use the facilities in our room," Max said. "Don't say too much without me."

  She touched his face. "You've really got the jargon down pat now."

  Astor approached a few minutes later. "Did you have a good time in whatever time you were in?" he asked, jovially.

  "We went directly here, to this time, March 1899, to see Mr. Appleton," Sierra replied. She thought about telling Astor about the slight problem with Max's arrival, but decided she needed to think more about what had caused that before she told anyone else, including Astor.

  "And I assume you found out nothing more about the whereabouts of the Chronica?" Astor asked.

  Sierra shook her head no. "He's still too ill to see any one."

  Astor nodded. "He loves you very much, you know. Not in the same way as Thomas did, of course, but—" Astor looked around. "I wanted to tell you that, but didn't feel comfortable talking about Thomas and you in front of Maxwell."

  "Did you see him – Thomas – while I was gone?" Sierra asked, softly.

  "No, I haven't seen Thomas in a few years of my lifetime now," Astor said, "and he indicated the last time we met that that might be the last time we saw one another." Astor paused. "He told me quite a story – more incredible in many ways than the novels by Mr. Wells and Mr. Twain. I wasn't quite sure if I could believe him. But meeting you, getting to know you a little, made Thomas's words about you and him more real."

  "Did he look like Thomas or—" Sierra asked.

  "He already looked like Thomas when I first met him. Not like Alcibiades. He loves you very deeply," Astor repeated.

  Sierra teared up.

  "I don't believe anyone other than Mr. Appleton and me – and of course you and Maxwell – know about Thomas's story and true identity— Ah, and speaking of the devil, here indeed is Dr. Marcus." Astor extended his hand to Max, who walked up to Astor and Sierra with a smile.

  "We were just talking about Thomas," Sierra said to Max. And to Astor: "We keep no secrets from each other."

  Chapter 9

  [Foster Square Facility, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2096 AD]

  She had a new concern. Actually, concern was too mild a word for it.

  Heron was on the move. She had seen multiple indications in the mega-billions of code she daily examined. He was nibbling away at the edges. If he broke through, her very existence and therefore mission could be in jeopardy. He may already have done some damage.

  She did what passed for cursing. It was cursing -- though, to say she believed in God, or anything but humanity as the ultimate being in the universe, would be untrue. There could be alien intelligences throughout the cosmos, for all she knew. If she were a betting android, she would indeed put code down that there were. But even so, whatever alien intelligence as probably existed elsewhere in the universe had kept itself secret from humanity and its android creations.

  She returned to Heron. It helped to itemize the basics of her and Sierra's knowledge of him: 1. Heron invented time travel, whether in the past or the future was not clear. 2. Socrates wrote the Andros dialogue, as what humans would later call a "thought experiment". 3. Sierra, under the name Ampharete, gave the dialogue to Heron in 150 AD Alexandria. 4. Heron decided to save Socrates. 5. Sierra and Alcibiades differed with Heron on the way to do that, and Heron came to judge them as his opponents and then his enemies. 6. Sierra's attempt to save texts from the doomed ancient Library of Alexandria further exacerbated her relationship with Heron, who now regarded her as a mortal enemy, since among the texts she wanted to save was Heron's Chronica, which contained his instructions on how to construct a time travel device in the form of a Chair, for anyone to see, read, implement, and apply to history, if the reader could understand it.

  She sighed. And that's where they were now. Was there any way of reasoning with Heron, of coming to terms with him? She had run countless scenarios on that goal, and not a single one had been viable.

  The time was dwindling in which to run more of them. Every ounce of the programming she had been imbued with told her she had to devote almost all of her attention to one goal, now, and one goal only: survival.

  Chapter 10

  [West Orange, New Jersey, April, 1899 AD]

  Thomas Edison sat at his maple wood desk in his labs in West Orange, New Jersey. Its cubbyholes, stuffed with papers upon which various things were written, rose up before him. One was delegated for "New Things".

  But Edison was now looking down at something which, if he could believe what was said about it, was very old indeed. Very old, and yet, if what it was purported to be able to instruct him about was true, could well be the newest thing in the Universe.

  His chin rested upon one hand, in what he felt would be seen in posterity as his classic pose. His other hand touched the manuscript. It was said to have originally been a codex scroll, but his benefactor had arranged for it to be copied on to a paper manuscript. Unfortunately, there was as yet no translation – that was part of the task now before him.