The Chronotope and Other Speculative Fictions. Michael Hemmingson

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1999, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013 by Michael Hemmingson

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      To

      Robert Silverberg

      and Barry Malzberg,

      influences;

      And for

      Rominna Michelle Hemmingson,

      daughter

      CONSEQUENCES OF STEAM

      I.

      Ellis Chamberlain is a stocky and powerful man who, when walking into a room, draws all attention to him—perhaps because of his flamboyant clothing, a nineteenth-century tuxedo with a top hat and white cane and a cape, giving him the appearance of a dapper gent from antiquity or a ostentatious stage magician; or perhaps it’s the fact that he is one of the richest men in Nevada, holder of proprietary time manipulation technology, and owner of the state’s four ChronoBrothels that renders an air of awe around him.

      “All men are whores, and so are all women,” is one of his favorite mottoes, “and whoredom being the oldest profession in human history, why deny this truth—why not embrace and become one with your inner whore? Defy conventions, I say! Sabers, gentlemen, sabers! To arms, and let us fornicate through time!”

      No one knows more about history and prostitution than Ellis Chamberlain, sometimes referred to in the media as The Pimp of Time, “the man who will sell your great-great-great-grandmother’s virtue for the right price,” an accusation he does not deny.

      “I have had clients wanting to sleep with ancient ancestors,” he says, “and I’ve provided them with that particular kink. They used to say, ‘Whatever floats your anti-grav’—and who am I to judge another person’s passion?”

      * * * *

      “If I had never met Wilson Wilcox, my current timeline would be completely different,” Chamberlain says, sitting at the bar in the Reno ChronoBrothel, or Time Lust #2. “I’d be still selling real estate on the moon, or I’d be a politician—what’s the difference when both hock moldy green cheese?”

      He met Wilson Wilcox when they were both freshman sharing a dorm room at MIT. This was no chance encounter, according to Chamberlain. “Before then, when we were just tots, on the same street. But we weren’t playmates then, we didn’t even know about each other. At the sweet sixteen birthday party of this lovely creature I wanted to—get to know better (and I did, too)—I happened to cross paths with young Wilson and someone said, ‘Hey, you two come from the same pod,’ and we talked about the pod and sex and science. Next came college, and we went to the same institution. I was majoring in international finance and he was a nose beak in quantum physics, and it was all Russian gibberish to me until he said, one day, he says, ‘I believe I can open a portal between temporal dimensions.’ That is, time travel, but only going backwards, never into the future, because the future doesn’t exist.”

      * * * *

      Chamberlain reminisces: “I’m a history buff, focused on the economic changes of decades, examining the patterns of commerce, so the theme of a different era per each floor was my initial idea. With Wilson’s time technology, we came up with magic, something the sex industry has never seen before—and you know they say that the sex industry is always the first to adopt any new technology. Think about it: it’s the oldest profession of all, going back to the cavemen times, so who could resist sampling prostitutes throughout history? You want a whore from Biblical times, we can do that; from the time of Marie-Antoinette, no problem; or ancient Greece to pre-colonial Mexico to Victorian England. Try a harlot from the Wild West or a beer frau from nineteenth-century Germany!

      “The question now is: which would you like to experience for yourself? All in the name of research, of course. Which you must do, sir. You can’t write an article about the ChronoBrothels without hopping down the line and having some fun. Sabers!”

      II.

      May 16, 1806

      London, England

      My Dear Rosemary,

      I am writing to you to narrate a most strange occurrence that happened last night while I engaged in my weekly group dining, in the company of friends and colleagues whose names I will only attribute initials to: K., V., A., W., S., and Q. We were entertained with a wonderfully magnificent and flabbergasting story by a man who called himself The Time Traveler.

      The Time Traveler was a handsome gent who wore the clothing of our era, yet he did not seem comfortable in the attire, as if he were wearing alien skin. He told us to call him ‘The Time Traveler,’ stating that his actual name would mean nothing to us.

      There were seven of us at the table. We had just finished dinner in the back room of the inn, and were enjoying brandy and cigars and telling ribald jokes when this fellow approached us. He said not a word, and sat down at our table without an invitation. He looked around at each one of us with his pale blue eyes, and we glanced at him with the same curiosity. He produced a cigar, a brand that I had never seen or smelled before. He struck a match. ‘I would like to tell you a story,’ said he.

      ‘We love stories,’ said S., ‘but we do not know you. Rather bold to place yourself to our company without telling us, at least, your name.’

      ‘I am truly sorry,’ said he, ‘but I do not have the time for pleasantries.’ He laughed. ‘How ironic. Here I am, a time traveler, and I have no time to spare.’

      ‘Did you say “time traveler”?’ inquired K.

      ‘Indeed: it is who I am and the name I will go by.’

      ‘And where, or whence, do you hail from, sir?’

      “The United States. What you know as the colonies. I come from the future, the year 2106. Exactly three hundred years from now.’

      That was worthy of a laugh from all of us. ‘Preposterous!’ ‘Impossible!’ ‘Insane!’

      The Time Traveler puffed his cigar. ‘Please, gentlemen, hear my story before passing judgment.’

      We agreed to listen to him. I asked if he would care for some brandy and he replied, ‘Yes, most kind of you. Thank you.’ I poured him a glass of the fine brown liquid and he told us the following:

      ‘As I stated, I am from 2106. I am what you call a Hunter. I hunt those who break the laws of time travel, who go back and change the course of history, thus altering the timeline and the lives of our ancestors, with dire impact on the future. The individual I seek—we shall call him The Journalist, for that was his occupation. He was on assignment to write a feature article on the ChronoBrothels in Nevada. I will try to explain this in a way you can understand. I trust you gentlemen know what a brothel is, correct?’

      ‘An outlandish question!’ said W.

      ‘Of course we do!’ said S.

      ‘I meant no offense,’ said The Time Traveler. ‘There are ten ChronoBrothels from my era; six are in Nevada, the others are in France, Florida, New Zealand, and Japan. Yes, these places still exist hundreds of years from now. The ChronoBrothels are enormous structures, one hundred stories tall, one hundred floors of different eras for sexual gratification.’

      ‘You are making no sense, sir,’ I piped in.

      ‘Each floor is a portal into a different century, millennium, decade…you go to one floor, you will enter a corresponding brothel in, say, feudal China, or Denmark in the early twentieth century, or a harem in the Ottoman Empire. There had never been a breach before, a breach that would drastically alter the shape of history. It was, no pun intended, only a matter of time before it happened. And The Journalist was the man who committed this act. The first, I should note, as there have been others since, creating my occupation.

      ‘The