"Devil's Company?" Greg said, walking from the garage, list in hand.
"Oh, they were vicious," Vega confirmed.
"And what was that bit about University of Jefferson? I thought Yreka was in Northern California."
"Not in this year..."
"You know, I'm trying really hard to follow your advice and not ask questions, but I'm going crazy. What are we using this robot for? Are we going to use him to fight the guys from the future?"
"You said you were hungry, right? I'll tell you what, you go to Korea and acquire the components Terrance requested. We can order breakfast and it will be ready when you return," Vega said. "I will answer your questions while we eat."
Greg eyed Vega suspiciously, but agreed. He had trusted Vega this far...
They walked for blocks in silence until they found a restaurant. Glass doors retracted as the two walked in. A hologram popped up from the greeter’s desk and directed them to a table. The restaurant was long and narrow, with bench couches along the walls. Circular tables punctuated the room with chair backs facing the central isle. The place was sanitary and seemed more like a medical clinic than a breakfast joint.
Greg did not sit down, but excused himself and headed for the bathroom; an unseen place from which to run his errands.
"Destination?"
"We are going to..." Greg paused to read off his hand written note, "The E-Market, Yong-Song Building, third floor. Seoul, South Korea, Korean Peninsula. Same time. Your discretion at particulars of insertion."
Greg felt like he was truly getting the hang of using the time coin after confidently rattling off all the information needed for the jump.
He gazed up at the profile of the woman on the coin and knew where he would start asking questions when he returned. It was only a matter of time now.
"Insertion will be in a utility closet, on the southeast corner of the second floor. You will be placed in five seconds..." The voice said indifferently.
Greg closed his eyes lightly. He had come to dislike the sudden transition out the white spherical void of the in-between place. From behind closed lids, Greg Thompson waited for the light quality to change.
The faint sounds of voices and music alerted him that five seconds had past and he was now half way across the world, on another continent. He opened his eyes and searched for the doorknob in the dark. The door slid open, and with the illumination he saw that he had triggered a punch pad that opened the door. Greg gave a start when he realizing he'd been born nearly ninety years in the past. He stepped from the closet. Standing in the busy hallway that resembled the kind of future that he expected.
Holograms were everywhere, in front of every shop. Some stood free on projecting plates, while older models were projected onto windows. All invited the masses of milling shoppers to come into their shops. Others were interactive, offering answers to questions a passerby may have. The colors were brilliant and language totally unfamiliar to Greg, who felt embarrassed that he possessed only his native tongue.
Greg couldn't help from smiling as he wandered the white tiled floor, detouring into shops and gazed at the various gadgets, appliances, or whatever electronic specialty the shop was prone to carry.
After a few minutes of wandering the second floor, Greg took a non-step winding escalator up to the third floor, where he found the shop that Binno Terrace had indicated. The shop was not like the eye-appealing outlets he had seen on his brief tour. The store matched the four symbols given to him on his list. It did not have a holographic sales gimmick out front or flashy signs in the window. Instead, there were stacks of electronics and various types of component bins stacked high on racks, which lined the plexi-glass walls of the shop.
Greg walked inside and no one was at the front work counter. He stood and waited.
From the back, he could hear rustling and finally a short Korean man came out to greet his customer. "Annyonghaseyo," the shopkeeper said as he came to the counter.
"Oh, umm, do you speak English?" Greg asked.
"Of course," the middle-aged man said as he finger-combed his unruly hair. "Everyone speaks English these days. Most my orders are from people in English."
The man paused like he was considering saying more, but then, only gazed at Greg, waiting.
"Well, um," Greg muttered, and glanced over the list, turning it so the shopkeeper could read. "I need these things."
The man studied the list. He thumped a thick finger down on the paper and said promptly, "I don't have. But you can find on floor five. Most shops will have this."
Greg nodded, spotting what the man was indicating, wondering what kind of part it was. He raised his eyes to the shop owner when another odd silence incurred. "You have the rest?"
"Oh, yes. I will put all in a box. What you build? A robot from year 2030? Very old connectors!"
"Yep," Greg said, "restoration project."
"You have won?"
"Won?"
"Yes. Money. Korean money," The man said.
"No," Greg said. "But, I have this." He held up a gold coin.
"Gold!" The shopkeeper exclaimed, snatching at the shiny metal. "You foreigner always bring gold to my shop for restoration project! But I take."
"Is that enough?" Greg said, figuring he was being ripped off. The man acted nonchalant about the coin covering the parts, but he was swift to agree to a fair exchange.
"I still need the part you don't have," Greg said, feeling himself lapsing into the pidgin the Korean man was using. "Can you give me some Won to go buy it? All I had was that big coin."
The Korean man eyed him and said, "O.K. I like you. I call a friend upstairs and have him bring down. You such good customer."
"Thanks," Greg said. The shopkeeper spoke into his watch. It sounded as if was yelling at whomever on the other end of the call. From the tone, Greg suddenly became nervous; was he calling the authorities?
Or them.
But that's not the way these things worked, according to what he had seen, and Vega.
As the call came to an end, Greg got the sense that this was just the way that this man communicated other people. The shopkeeper went into the back and Greg waited for his items. No one from the future came to take him away; the only other visitor to the shop was a slender man from upstairs bringing the mentioned component, wrapped in cellophane.
After a short time of waiting, the items on the list were all placed in a box made of balsa, and Greg was on his way back to South Africa, via the maintenance closet on the second floor of the tall building.
"Where did my brother go when he got himself caught?" Greg Thompson asked as he sat down at the table in the restaurant in South Africa.
"They set traps for unauthorized travelers at significant points through history. I saw a time trap in action once. I doubt it was the one your brother was caught in. This one was in England, outside the college where a physics professor taught," Vega said. "Your brother could have been snared at any number of places that unauthorized travelers are drawn to see. I heard there was a trap set on the Titanic before it sunk. Basically, anywhere there is historical significance, where a layman would want to see and could end up interfering, there could be a trap. That's why, as unauthorized travelers, you have to be very smart."
"Unauthorized travelers? Like others who stole coins?"
"I would think. Some must have been tourists who went rogue. Others have been time travelers who found other ways to slip through time without using the Keepers devices. Anyone who wanted to alter the past in some way, the Keepers in the present go back and stop them."
Food arrived, bowls of porridge with fresh rolls. Vega began to eat, and although Greg would have preferred something more to his cultural understanding of proper breakfast food, he was too hungry to complain. He got a sense that Vega was in a sharing mood, willing to explain things rather than hinting at them mysteriously as he had done before. Greg saw this opportunity and knew it was time to develop his understanding of what he
had become involved with. "You keep saying 'the present' and referring to everything as the past. Are you saying all this has happened? Why isn’t right now the present?"
"I will tell you as I understand it," Vega said. He put his spoon down and gave his attention to his answer. "Time began to flow, like a river, and at the head of the flow, that was the present. It has always been the present, and its always moving forward. Every point in time in the past is also still flowing forward, but along with the present. That is why everything is the past. Time is an arrow, always flying forward. The Keepers are at the head of the arrow, and having the most time to benefit from, they are the most advanced. They found a way to cleanly travel up and down the arrow with ease. They are the self-appointed Keepers of time and they don't allow anyone to change the flow or split the arrow.
"That is why they have your brother. He stumbled into something he should not have. The same has happened to you. It is poor luck you came into possession of that book, which led you to the coins. It is just the facts of this existence that time works by these principals. This is your universe; your reality, one where a group of people hold all the power. There is little anyone can do about this fact. But this is the way humans are: when there is oppression, there are those who fight against it. The Snow King used his craftiness to struggle back against a foe that has the upper hand."
"And the woman on the head of the time coin? The Mistress? She is in charge up there?" Greg asked.
"I don't know much about her," Vega said, returning his attention to his food. "I heard she came up with the rules for conduct in the past. Does she call the shots? I don't know. Did she invent time travel? I assume so. But she is not much of our concern. After you are in the clear, you just have to stay out of history's sight. No becoming Prime Minister for you. If decisions like that were made, their repercussions would travel up the arrow and the Keepers would see the change. I'm sure that by now you have a good idea of how they respond to that kind of thing."
"Yeah," Greg said, done with his half eaten food. "I thought about saving my father. Going back and telling him about his aneurism before it happened. I would have seen him at the concert I was going to. But that is when you showed up, you know? I guess that just couldn’t have happened..."
"Your father died? You weren’t there just to attend a concert? I didn't know."
"Yeah, well," Greg said, "after I saw my brother disappear, I thought in some strange way, that if I could stop my dad from dying, then maybe Peter would not have left, and we would have a normal family. But that's where I get lost. If I got my family back, would I be there that day when the Snow King gave me his treasure map?"
"Loosing your whole family is hard," Vega said. He paused tearing apart a roll, really considering Greg. Had he really been that young when his own family disintegrated? It seemed like a lifetime ago, but Vega still felt the pain. If it wasn’t for a stranger coming to give him a fresh start...
"Should we drop this off and pick up our robot?" Greg said, picking the box up from his feet and setting it on the table.
The prospect of their robot coming to life snapped Vega out of his deep thoughts of time travel. He gazed at Greg with a sparkle in his clear eyes.
"Let's go get our boy."
CHAPTER 16