City Out of Time. William Robison III
were the people standing in the center in the uniforms.
“And the guys in the uniforms?”
“That’s where I work… in the teams. They’re part of the Retrieval Corps. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Seth pushed his way through the crowd and Lanz struggled to keep up. As he passed one of the archways, he looked up and saw that the archway was labeled with a year – 1960. Lanz hurried to keep up as he realized that Seth was heading towards the large central archway where the soldiers had gone earlier.
“So… the archways all have different years on them?”
“Yeah, you usually head out of here and through one of those archways to the decade that you just departed. New arrivals then go to a theater and watch an orientation film.”
“Shouldn’t I see that?”
“Nah… I can give you the gist of it myself. Come on, we’re almost there.”
They headed straight for the large central arch.
“This is where I work,” Seth noted, “The Teams actually have their own processing center – since we’re constantly coming and going.”
They walked through the archway and down a long sloping ramp. Lanz noted that this particular archway was easily large enough for construction vehicles to pass. Sure enough, at the bottom of the ramp, there were several forklifts parked and waiting.
Seth walked by the construction equipment without comment and reached another checkpoint where an attractive young blonde was seated at a chair with a clipboard in her hand. The passageway forked here to the left and right. As they approached the blonde, Lanz noticed a control room off to the right about ten feet off the ground and with all of its shades pulled. Lanz knew it had to be a control room, though, because of the large glass windows that surrounded the room on all sides.
“This is where we bring in everything that we retrieve,” Seth explained.
“It’s pretty quiet now because most of the retrieval items arrive late at night when the rest of the city is asleep.”
“Hello, Seth,” said the blonde as they approached.
“Sally… I’d like you to meet my brother, Lanz.”
The blonde stood up immediately and shook Lanz’s hand with a little extra warmth in her handshake. Lanz was, quite frankly, a little confused. He’d never had an attractive woman warm up to him so quickly. He smiled broadly.
“Very nice to meet you,” Lanz said.
“And you,” she replied.
“I’m just going to show him around for a minute and then take him over to orientation,” Seth said. “Please log us in.”
“No problem,” Sally replied. “See you around, Lanz.”
Seth led Lanz up the right corridor past the retrieving dock’s control room.
“This is the way to the Ops. Center where I work,” Seth noted.
Sally waved to Lanz. Lanz waved back.
Seth cleared his throat.
“Sally’s a little… friendly,” Seth noted.
“Nothing wrong with being friendly,” Lanz returned. “I haven’t been friendly in a long time.”
“Friendly is fine, as long as there aren’t any… unforeseen side effects.”
“Ohhhh… right.”
They continued up the corridor and entered an oval room that was ringed by large computer monitors and that had a slightly raised platform in the center. There were several uniformed people around the edges of the room, monitoring various events – and a few others that were reading newspapers, drinking coffee, or in some other way occupied. Lanz looked up at a monitor and saw what he thought were red figures moving across a purple street with blue buildings in the background. As he watched, white flashes erupted from a blue corner and the red figures dropped down behind another blue wall.
“Damn it!”
Lanz spun at another familiar voice. Standing behind him on the raised platform watching the exact same monitor was Colonel Buck.
“Stalingrad is a tough nut to crack,” Colonel Buck muttered aloud. He ran a hand across the stubble of his beard as he watched the events unfold on the screen.
“Sir,” said a technician, “German reinforcements are cutting off their escape route. Even if they acquire, they might not get out.”
“Very well… give them the abort signal. Use the alternate.”
The technician immediately turned back to his monitor and Lanz could see that he was speaking into a microphone. Lanz turned back to the monitor above him and watched as the red figures changed directions and ducked down a purple alleyway.
Lanz turned away from the monitor and back to Colonel Buck. At the same moment, the Colonel looked down and saw Lanz standing there.
“Ah, Lanz… I see you made it,” Colonel Buck said. “Glad to see that I was wrong about you.”
And then he turned back to his work.
Seth pulled Lanz out of the room at the far end and into a wide corridor beyond.
“Colonel Buck was the logical choice to bring you in,” Seth noted. “He’s my team leader and he’s a good guy. You’ll really like him once you get to know him.”
“Well, he certainly never let on that he was a time traveler.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty seamless.”
“What the hell was going on back there?” Lanz asked.
“I don’t know… some operation… Looked like Team Five trying to penetrate Stalingrad again.”
“Stalingrad? As in THE Stalingrad?”
“Yeah, we go all over the place and all over time,” Seth noted. “It’s pretty damn cool.”
“Not exactly the first place I would head if I could travel through time.”
“You can travel through time… you just don’t know how yet. While most of our jobs are pretty mundane, you’d be surprised at some of the places we go. Sometimes a team can end up in a pretty hairy situation, but we always preach safety first. What’s the point of living history if you don’t learn to avoid its mistakes first?”
“So you traded in one risky profession for another?” Lanz asked. “I hope it at least pays better.”
“Um, not exactly,” Seth said, and then turned to an unmarked door and pulled it open as a means to change the subject.
Lanz followed Seth into what looked like a classroom. There were walls with charts, maps, tables, and photos. There was a desk at the front and several small two person tables throughout the room. Seth took a seat at one of the desks, but Lanz remained standing as he looked about the room.
“This is Team Three’s ops room,” Seth explained. “This is basically where we work. We do all our research and planning here. We have our briefings and get our assignments down the hall, but I’m not allowed to take you there. Usually, if I’m not here, then I’m probably in the locker room getting ready for an assignment.”
“Yeah, but what exactly do you do?”
“We retrieve things… from time.”
“Strangely, I had worked that out for myself. What sorts of things?”
“Anything the City can’t produce for itself. So, for instance, last week we were tasked to acquire some whisky from the back of this Chicago speakeasy. And, yesterday, we were in Berlin and…”
“Seth?”
The