City Out of Time. William Robison III
that led back to the lobby. He looked at the map again, tried to orient himself within the City and then decided to just wander for a while. He realized that the time alone might help him clear his head of the cobwebs he’d felt ever since he’d arrived here.
He walked back out into the Central Plaza and absorbed the pleasant heat. He spied a promenade along the river and decided that that might be the perfect place to begin a long stroll and walked towards it.
“Lanz!” Seth called to him from a tunnel that Lanz recognized as the entrance to the Ops Center. Seth was standing there with Celeste. Lanz changed directions and joined them.
“Just get out of Indoctrination?” Seth asked.
“Yeah. Apparently, they want me to be a doctor,” Lanz noted.
“A doctor?” Seth asked. “Didn’t you tell them you wanted to join the Corps?”
“The Corps?” Lanz countered. “No, Seth… I’m done with crazy adventures. Being a doctor will be fine for me. You can go wherever it is you go and do whatever it is you do. I’ll deal with normal things like colds and bandages.”
Celeste looked at Lanz and smiled. “I think you’ll be a good doctor.”
“See,” Lanz said to Seth. “That settles it.”
“Whatever, bro… have you had lunch yet?”
“No. I was just about to go for a walk.”
“We were just heading for a quick lunch before our debrief. Come with us. I know a great diner.”
Lanz looked from Seth to Celeste and back to Seth. He wasn’t entirely sure his presence was desired by both parties.
“I’m not intruding?” Lanz asked.
“It won’t be an intrusion,” Celeste said quickly, “We’d love for you to join us.”
Lanz nodded and said, “Then let’s go to lunch.”
Chapter Seven
The City Central Plaza
Minutes Later - Relative
“So, how do you like the life of a time traveler so far?” Seth asked his brother, as the three of them set off for lunch.
“It has a lot more paperwork than I imagined,” Lanz replied.
Celeste laughed, but Seth barely smiled.
They crossed the plaza and came to the tube stairs. Seth turned at the top of the stairs and looked at his brother.
“There’s a lot of administration to consider in a city of this size and complexity, Lanz,” Seth began, “I mean you’re taking a completely non-native population and resettling them – not only into different social groups, but also into different eras. That takes a lot of paperwork to keep it all straight.”
Lanz gave his brother a queer look. Seth cared about as much for paperwork as Lanz cared for NASCAR. Seth ignored his older brother, though, and started down the steps.
Lanz followed his brother and Celeste into the tube station. Instead of going to the tube platform, though, they proceeded up another set of stairs marked with a big sign that said, “50”.
“I’m not shocked at the amount of administration involved, Seth,” Lanz answered, “I just thought that for a city full of time travelers, things would have been… cooler.”
They re-emerged into the plaza again. Only this time, things were vastly different. The main buildings were there, unchanged, but the people walking through the plaza were dressed in business suits and hats, or long dresses for the women. There were no children present, nor teenagers. At least half the men were smoking, some were even smoking pipes. A few catcalls whistled out for one of the rather buxom young ladies walking by, but instead of being insulted, she demurred as if she’d been paid a huge compliment. Lanz was stunned.
Celeste and Seth kept walking – crossing the plaza as if nothing had changed.
“Well, Lanz, you have to understand that…” Seth finally noticed that his brother was no longer walking with them and stopped. When Celeste saw Lanz’s bewildered look, she turned away trying to suppress a tiny laugh.
“What the heck?” Lanz asked as he turned around and took in the entire plaza. “Is this a movie set?”
“Movie set?” Seth was perplexed by the question. “Don’t you remember this from the orientation movie?”
“I didn’t see it,” Lanz reminded his brother.
“Oh, yeah…” Seth smiled, sheepishly, “Then I can see how this might be a little bewildering.”
Celeste came back to where Lanz was standing and slipped her arm into his and started walking him across the plaza. As they walked, she explained.
““The City is divided up into ten year increments starting from the year of its incorporation in the 1940’s. We live in the 1990’s because that is the decade when we arrived. As part of the process of keeping everyone sane, every citizen is allowed to live in the decade of their choosing – though most choose to live in the decade from which they left where they already know the language, the culture, and the news of the day. It’s hard enough getting used to the City, but to have to get used to a new way of thinking, speaking, and living with one another would be almost too much to bear. Normally, we’re supposed to stay in our own era, but members of the Corps are encouraged to visit earlier eras in order to soak up the language, ambience, and culture of those periods. But we don’t just visit these other eras as part of our field work… they also happen to have really good food.”
“Or dancing,” Seth agreed. “I love the USO dances in the 40’s.”
“So… Did we time travel here?” Lanz asked. “Is this the same City only ten years earlier?”
“Time Travel in the City is frowned upon, and unnecessary in most cases,” Seth answered. “No, this is all done with a lot of staging and temporal mechanics. We’re physically in the same plaza we just left; we’re just forty years earlier. Think of it like different floors of the same mall – and each floor is themed to a different decade.”
Lanz looked at the vintage cars on the streets – a ’57 Bel Air drove by with a guy behind the wheel that looked like Rock Hudson and his secretary in the seat next to him – and he whistled.
“It all looks so real,” he said.
“It IS real, you idiot,” Seth replied. “Just 40 years ago real. So… is this cool enough for you?”
Lanz nodded.
Celeste led Lanz and Seth up the street to a drive in diner straight out of American Graffiti – they even had cute waitresses rolling by on roller skates. Inside, they sat down in a vinyl booth and waited for a blue haired old lady to serve them.
“Whaddaya have?” she asked.
“Patty Melt,” Seth replied. “Cherry Coke and fries.”
She looked at Lanz. There were no menus, so Lanz just winged it. He was beginning to get the feeling that there weren’t a lot of directions to life in the City.
“Bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake,” Lanz answered.
“And for the lady?” the waitress asked.
“Cheeseburger, onion rings, and a glass of water, please,” Celeste said.
The waitress walked off towards the kitchen.
“They can make you pretty much anything you want,” Seth explained to Lanz.
“I’m not sure I can get used to this idea of eating without paying,” Lanz commented. “Didn’t we just fight a cold war to prevent exactly this kind of communist activity in the United States?”
“In