Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time (6 page)

Deep
Cover

“I went through a phase a couple years ago where I watched a
lot of TV crime shows,” Rose said, as she sprawled out on a patch of grass four
days later.  “When one of the detectives did something really crazy- I dunno,
becoming a mule for a drug ring- they called what he was doing going under
‘deep cover’.  I think we’ve got him beat.”

“For sure,” Julie agreed, looking at the sky.

Tim looked up, too.  The sky looked pretty
convincing.  You’d almost have thought you were really outside.  In
actuality, they were still on the inside of the underground hideout where
Hopkins’ great uncle Paul lived, only now they were in what the locals
apparently referred to as the Exercise Room. 

As they were building the place, the members of the
resistance knew that they would be down in the bunker for months, maybe
years.  And being cooped up underground that long was definitely going to
have psychological downsides that might end up doing more damage to the members
of the resistance than the one world government ever would.  So instead of
requiring the residents to pace back and forth in their apartment rooms for
exercise, the architects, who from what Tim gathered were in no way hurting for
financial or technological resources, decided to build a small artificial world
inside their underground fortress.

The Exercise Room spanned half a mile in diameter.  The
ceiling was a dome reaching a hundred feet high, programmed to be a sunny blue
with white clouds during the day.  Starry skies with a moon that reflected
the natural lunar phases filled the night.  A lake, about a hundred yards
across, took up a small portion of the enclosure.  It was hot inside,
since the engineers were simulating summer today, so there were several people
swimming and splashing around.  Others walked or ran about.  Some
played with the dogs who called this little chunk of indoor grass home. 
Members of the resistance of all ages came in and out of the Exercise Room
periodically throughout the day, from the school-aged children of resistance
members who took their recess here to the older residents who came around to
get a break from their work.

No one was surprised to see the four teens from the 21st
century there that day either.  The teens were frequent visitors to the
Exercise Room in the past three days.  It had become their favorite spot
to go and get out of the apartment ever since they had been taken there on
their second day here to learn how to ride horses. 

Most of the historical figures who they would be
impersonating knew how to ride horses, after all, and besides, it was one of
the fastest ways to get around in the era they would be visiting.  So it
made sense to Tim that Hopkins wanted them to learn how to ride, but he was
surprised that there were horses for them to train with.  Apparently a
couple of the higher ranking members of the resistance had owned horses that
they just couldn’t bear to leave aboveground.  Usually, they were kept in
a pasture and stables in a different part of the compound, but for the last few
days, they had made an appearance with their teenage riders in the Exercise
Room, as their skills as riders had improved.

“I’m starting to wonder if things will ever get back to
normal.  I mean, if we went back now, wouldn’t we have already missed over
a week?” Billy asked.

Tim had been brooding over this question off and on for the
past several days.  “I think so, but, what choice do we have?  If we
go back now, we’d also still be fugitives accused of treason, right?”

“Plus, we’ve got to beat the Emperors.  Have you
already forgotten what they’re going to do to the world if they have their
way?” Rose asked.  The faint hum of a futuristic lawnmower had just
started up, and Tim could now smell freshly cut grass.  Apparently, the
lawn was real.

“Listen, I wasn’t saying we should do anything
different.  I’m just saying that what we are doing is ridiculous,” Billy
said, throwing his hands up.

“Right,” Julie said slowly, nodding.  “Speaking of
ridiculous:  Have you guys memorized your bios yet?”

The four were silent, like students in a class trying to
decide if they should reveal whether or not they had done last night’s
homework. 

Billy spoke first.  “I’ve almost got everything in
mine.”

“Geez, Billy, yours is like two pages!” Julie
protested.  “Mine’s seven!”

“Relax, July,” Rose said, using her nickname for her best
friend.  “Timothy’s got more like twenty.”

“You know, you can just call me Tim.  In fact, why
don’t you just start calling me Russell Sage?  You’ll need to soon enough
anyway.”

“And what, you’d call me Joanna Curtis?” Rose asked with a
laugh.

“Well, my point is, we’ll start having to do that soon, at
least if we meet each other in public,” Tim reiterated.

“Well, I guess if you came over to the Curtis house, I would
have to address you as Mr. Sage, if I was getting you a glass of water or
something.  I think you could get away with referring to me as ‘that girl
over there.’  Nobody’s going to expect a congressman to know the name of a
15 year-old girl, even if she’s the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice,” Rose
said.

“You’ve got the worst job of all, I think,” Julie said
sympathetically.  “You’re the only one who’s going to have to live in a
house where someone else is telling you what to do.  I don’t envy you.”

“Ah well,” said Rose.  “I’ve sometimes wondered what it
would be like to have a brother or a sister.  Now I’ll have three of
them.”

Billy shook his head.  “Do you even remember all of
their names yet?”

“Of course!” Rose said.  “That was one of the first
things I learned.  Way more important than all the political stuff in my
information.  After all, a 15 year-old girl can be expected to forget
stuff like that.  But her siblings’ names, never!  They’re-”

Billy cut her off.  “Whoa!  Don’t tell me, you’re
going to make me forget my stuff!”

Julie laughed.  “Seriously, what hard stuff could you
have to memorize?  You’re just an innkeeper.”

“Well, geesh,” Billy huffed.  “You’re just the widow of
a merchant.”

“I didn’t mean to say that mine’s more important, I just
meant--”

“It’s not a competition!” Rose said.  “Anyway, Tim
still wins.  And he’s the one who’s really going to be seeing important
stuff.  Hearing what the other congressmen are saying, trying to figure
out whether they’re on par with what they would normally have said, so that we
know if their minds are being messed with.  He’s going to have to have
half a history textbook stored in his mind to make this work.”

Hopkins had given Tim notes to study on the different people
he would meet in Congress.  He was even able to tell Tim how the
congressmen voted in the original timeline, so he could figure out who was
showing signs of brainwashing.  This had been tricky, given that history
textbooks or references in the current timeline would not have this
information, since the vote went differently. 

But Hopkins had known that the Emperors would be planning
another alternate timeline.  He had taken the opportunity, in the brief
amount of time when the timeline was set back to normal, after the teens had
fixed it by dismantling the bomb back in 1916, to gather information about how
history was supposed to go. 

The fact that there was a window of time there at all
confused the teens at first, because there was no time differential for them in
their time.  But Hopkins had explained that since he was from the same
time as Dr. Russell and the other Emperors, he would not see changes until the
Emperors jumped back in time to make them and spent enough time there to
complete them.  In contrast, for the teens, they were already events in the
past as soon as they materialized.  Tim had to admit that he was still a
bit unclear on the specifics, but he decided to leave the science of it to
Hopkins and just try to remember the history as well as he could.

Hopkins had put all the information on a data card that he
was able to take with him in his pocket when he time-jumped and could access
anytime he was near a power source like they had in the 24th century. 
This was all useful, though it had given Tim a lot of stuff to memorize.

Hopkins had also been able to go back in time to the year
after the target year to meet all the people they’d be impersonating, see what
they looked like, take covert pictures, and record their voices, so that they
would know everything they needed to about how to make them convincing on a
physical level.  The harder part would be blending into society and
knowing everything that their characters were supposed to know.

“Yeah, lucky he’s already a walking history textbook,” Julie
said, quickly flashing a grin at Tim.  Tim smiled back tentatively. 
He still wasn’t sure what to think about his friendship, or relationship, or
whatever it was, with Julie after his abortive attempt to broach the subject
nearly a week ago now.

“But Hopkins has been keeping us so busy it’s no wonder we’re
still going to have to do some cramming tonight.  Can you believe that
we’re going to be going back tomorrow?  I feel like it’s so different this
time, knowing so far in advance what’s going to happen to us and everything,”
Tim said.

“Yeah, last time it was more of a get-in get-out
thing.  Just a few days.  This time, it could be weeks depending on
how long it takes us to figure out who all is being controlled,” Billy said.

Julie picked up a blade of grass next to her leg and started
fiddling with it.  “I still don’t quite believe I’m going to be living in
1854 by this time tomorrow.  But then, I’m not sure I’m totally over the
fact that I’m living in the 23rd century right now, so making another change
shouldn’t really matter much, should it?”

“I think it’ll really sink in for me when I can look in the
mirror and see a person from the 19th century looking back at me,” Rose
said.  “It’s almost creepy!”

“Oh, it’s definitely creepy,” Julie countered.  “But I
hope I’ll get over it once it’s happened.” She shook her body in a way that
suggested trying to shake something dirty off.  To judge from her facial
expression afterwards, she hadn’t quite succeeded.

Tim slipped his cell-phone out of his pocket to check the
time.  Their phones had run out of battery days ago, but Paul had fooled
around with some electronic supplies he apparently had lying around and was
able to connect them to a power source.  The phone’s clock function was
the only thing that worked on it this far underground, but he didn’t have a watch
to check.

“Speaking of which, you think we ought to get heading over
there now?” he asked.

Julie took a deep breath.“  Yeah, I guess so.  He
said we can reverse it right away when we finish up back there, right?”

“Right,” said Tim, as they got up and started walking back
out of the indoor park and into the hallway of the underground complex.

“Hallway E’s going to be this way.  I think that’s
where he told us to go,” Rose said.

“Yup.  E 233, I remember,” Julie said.  “I wish we
could have had you be the blonde girl and I’d be brunette,” she added, to
Rose.  “I don’t know how I’m going to get used to that.”

“Wow, nope…  You definitely can’t complain about having
to change your hair color.  Have you seen my guy’s beard?” Tim
asked. 

“Oh, come on.  Haven’t you always wanted to have a nice
bushy beard?” Julie asked with a wink.

“No, I can honestly say that that desire has never crossed
my mind,” said Tim.

“Well, I’m still nervous,” Julie announced.  Her body
shook again, warding off some unseen force.

“You’d better not do that once we’re done in there,” Billy
said.  Julie looked at him, confused.  “You might shake the disguise
off.”

Julie frowned.  “I’ll probably wish that was true.”

Soon, they were at room E233.  The door opened
automatically as the four teens entered.

The room looked like a dentist’s office with several extra
chairs.  It made Tim nervous, even though he’d never been particularly
scared of the dentist’s office.  He saw Julie give another one of those
creeped-out full-body shakes. 

He remembered that she’d told him earlier that year, back in
their high school cafeteria, about how much she hated the dentist’s
office.  Apparently, that was an aversion that was still true for this
Julie, despite coming from a different timeline.

Hopkins wasn’t there yet, but Paul was lounging on a bench
integrated into the wall of the room.  He smiled and waved at the four of
them as they entered.  Billy and Julie were pleased to see him, which made
sense.  They seemed to get along better with the younger, less formal,
Paul than they did with Hopkins.

“What’re you doing here?” Billy asked.

“Well, my nephew suggested that you guys might be
nervous.  I get the feeling he might be right, so we figured I could go
over the specifics of how we’re going to disguise you one more time,” he said.

Tim wasn’t sure that understanding the process would make it
any less creepy, but Billy and Julie at least seemed ready to listen.  Tim
shrugged and followed his friends to a bench on the wall adjacent to the one
where Paul sat. 

After giving them a moment to sit down, Paul
continued.  “So, back in the 2100s, people got tired of having to go
through extra steps to make themselves look how they wanted to.  People
had been putting on makeup, using anti-aging cream, acne medication, and even
plastic surgery for centuries, all trying to control how they looked. 
People used the same kind of stuff in your time, only less effective.”

“Right,” Julie chimed in.  “Like sometimes when I put
on anti-acne medicine and break out more.”

“Sure,” Paul agreed with a smile.  “Just like
that.  Only over time, technology to alter appearance got more and more
advanced.  Back in your time, only professionals like plastic surgeons
could alter your personal appearance to the extent we’re doing for you
guys.  But, as technology progressed, it kept getting cheaper until you
could do it from the privacy of your own home.”