“I’ve been working on a way to recharge the batteries, but I just don’t have the materials I need.” He sounded apologetic.
Nothing they said made sense. Uncertain, Tom picked up the pink rectangle and examined it. It fit in the palm of his hand. There was a small blank square on the front and the words “Verizon” and “Samsung” were embossed on the cover. There was a hinge at the top, so it was obvious it opened up. He lifted the cover and stared at the inside of it, a bigger blank square on top and buttons everywhere, buttons with tiny little arrows or pictures, or numbers or letters. The word “Samsung” was embossed again along the top.
His heart was pounding, and once again he found it difficult to breathe. His mind was whirling so much, he felt as if he had stepped outside his body. This… thing… could not be made up. He was an engineer. He knew a technological machine when he saw one. This… was real, whatever it was.
Casey smiled sadly. “The battery worked for about 2 weeks after we got here. There was no service, of course, but when I opened it, it would still light up and play music and I could still look at pictures and read all the old messages from my friends.” Tears coursed down her cheeks. “My schedule said I had a test coming up and a doctor’s appointment in a week. I used to drive Sam crazy, because I would just open it up and look at it all the time. It was home. It had my life in it.”
A completely crazy story, but Tom could not say she wasn’t telling the truth. He did not have it in him to turn away from someone in pain. He closed the thing and put it back into Casey’s hands, watching as she held it like the precious thing it was. Sam cleared his throat and pushed the last object toward Tom. A black rectangle, again with a small blank space and covered with buttons. But these buttons made some sense. Numbers: 0–9. A plus sign. A minus sign, an asterisk (multiplication?), a slash (division?). An equal sign. Buttons that proclaimed cos, tan, %, sqrt (square root?), 1/x, many others. Texas Instruments. Scientific Calculator. He looked at Sam, who smiled slightly.
“Made the slide rule obsolete,” he said. “And unlike the other things, this runs on solar power. It still works.”
Tom could feel himself begin to sweat. It worked? Sam reached over and pressed a button labeled with the word ‘On’. There was no sound or movement, but a ‘0’ appeared in the blank space. “Do something simple,” Sam suggested. “Make it add two and two, just like you’re writing it on paper.”
Tom’s hand shook, but he slowly pressed the ‘2’ button. The zero went away and was replaced by a 2. His hand shook a little harder. He pressed the plus sign and nothing happened, making him glance at Sam quizzically. He heard Casey breathe out a giggle. Sam indicated the calculator. “Keep going.”
He pressed the ‘2’ button again, and again, nothing happened. But he dogged ahead and pressed the equal sign. A ‘4’ appeared in the screen, silent, irrevocable. Tom felt the world spinning around him, as everything in his existence spun inward to that number ‘4’. He was sure he’d fallen out of his chair, but a grip on his hand anchored him, and he looked up at Casey, the world straight again, her hand covering his, her eyes concerned, but calm. “Breathe,” she instructed softly, and he did, letting his breath out in a gasp.
Sam was relentless. “Try another one. You choose the equation.”
“No.” Tom took another breath, waited for his heart to stop racing. His lips twitched slightly. “Maybe another time.” He turned his hand, gripping Casey’s hand firmly in his. Hers was small and soft, but he could feel the strength in it. That strength helped him calm down, but when he looked at her again, he decided he wanted to continue holding it for a lot of other reasons, too.
“Is it true?” he asked her. “Everything you told me?”
She nodded.
“The future? 2006?”
She nodded again.
“How?”
Sam explained, as best he could, about his time travel experiment, and the accident that brought him and Casey to this time. His story made little sense, and Tom kept interrupting, needing explanations about nearly everything. They seemed unaware of what would confuse him, and it was this, as much as anything, that further convinced him they were telling the truth. He was shocked when he realized Casey had been walking alone in the garden in the middle of the night, and this brought the explanation to a halt for a moment.
“You were alone? Your friend didn’t walk you home? This is normal for girls in the future?”
She looked abashed. “It’s not unusual,” she started to say, but hesitated at Sam’s expression. “Well, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do. But I’d done it several times before and never had a problem.”
“But Casey.” Tom couldn’t hide his horror. “Anyone could have been in the garden. What happened was bad enough, but what if Sam had been a criminal? Violent or drunk? Is it so different in the future that there are no people like that out at night?”
She shook her head, shame in her eyes, but she lifted her chin defiantly. “The thing is, women have worked hard to ensure we’re safe on the streets at night. We don’t think it’s right that we have to restrict our movements so that violent men can wander the streets. We’re taught to be careful and I’ve had self-defense training, so I wasn’t completely helpless.” She glared for a moment before relenting a bit at the worry on his face. “Yes, it would have been safer to stay at the dorm when we had finished studying. My friend had offered to let me stay, but I just wanted to go home. There shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“I can testify to the self-defense training,” Sam offered. “She darn near took me out before I could explain what happened to us. And more than one ruffian around here has been put in his place, believe me.”
Tom blinked at this. Was she still going out alone? Then he remembered her months masquerading as a boy. She’d been on the streets of Belfast for a long time. A small smile twitched his lips. “That is somewhat comforting to know.” He touched her hand in apology. “You must think I’m treating you like a child, but I’m not, truly. It’s just that in this time, there are certain rules that women follow. That’s what I’m used to.”
She tilted a shoulder in a small shrug. “I’m afraid I hate to be told what to do. I always have to know the reason, and even then, if I don’t agree with it, I don’t always do it.” Her eyes flicked to Sam for a moment. “This time I paid a steep price. I try to be more cautious, now.”
“An odd definition of ‘cautious,’” Tom murmured, but he patted her hand and turned back to Sam as they both laughed. “Please continue. You saw Casey next to the tree and then what happened?”
The technical explanation went on for a while. “Look,” Sam told him finally, “you really need to have a degree in quantum physics to understand this. Not even Casey gets it and she has a lot more scientific knowledge than you do.”
Tom and Casey moved to the parlor while Sam made tea, Tom still struggling to accept the idea of a future world interacting with his. “Tell me about your life,” he asked Casey as they entered the parlor.
“My life?” She looked uncertain.
“In the future. Before you came here. What did you do? Who were your friends? How did you spend your time? What was the world like?”
“I was a student at Queens,” she started explaining. “I went to classes, I studied, I took karate lessons. I shared an apartment with three other people who were also students. My friend, Colleen, was my roommate. We’d been roomies since freshman year; that’s how we met.” Casey smiled sadly. “She was so great. We laughed all the time. When I first moved to Belfast, I was so afraid I wouldn’t make friends, but she was right there. She was… “ She stopped and turned her head away, blinking back tears. “I keep wondering about her. What happened when I didn’t come home that night? Do they have any idea where I am, what happened to me? She… she would have had to call my parents and tell them…”