BOOK ONE: DEPARTURES
I’ve been on a calendar but I’ve never been on time.
— Marilyn Monroe
ONE — THE PIONEERS
CC Clement was late for her appointment with the past. Casey swore she had set the alarm for six, She just knew it. But when she reached for her phone, its bold block numbers read 7:12. The sun was blasting through her window, the morning was in full tilt, and she had to hustle. Maybe time would help her, she thought, flowing as if she were onstage. There were no hours then, no minutes or seconds, just existence as it was meant to be. “Warm agape love,” she often told her fans. “Can’t ya just feel it, pardners?”
It had been like that last night, a real kick of a nightclub, everyone absorbing her angst, then letting it out in howls, applause, and a few shouts. “We love you, Casey!”
“Love you, too. Sort of.”
But now another manic morning had come and she had a plane to catch. In two minutes she was dressed. In three, she had water heating for tea.
Leaving out of SFO at 9:30, American Flight 291 would take Casey to ORD where she would make a connection to JFK. She would spend the evening with a friend in Brooklyn, then get up early to board her flight back in time. Casey had been all over this angry, beautiful, broken world, searching for peace, for love, for jokes CC Clement could add to her act. She had been to Cancun, to Copenhagen, Cairo, Curacao, and those were just the C’s. But she had never been to 1927.
Casey had a window seat on Time Jockeys Flight 1927, “the maiden voyage” — “Jesus, do they have to call it that?” — for all TimeLiners. The Timemaster himself had Spewed his usual drivel about it — “I have seen the future and it’s the past.” There had been ample Blather about what motivated the first passengers — “pioneers” everyone was calling them. Curiosity? Research? To see Babe Ruth? Casey was curious about the “Roaring Twenties” but mostly she just wanted to “leave these delulu days far behind,” to find a time when “you could hear yourself think.”
When the teapot whistled, she poured a cup. No time for an English muffin. She had to hustle. Lacing up her high-top Converse, she imagined what she would tell the Momster. Who had a Ph.D. in physics as she never tired of telling you. Who wanted her only child to be a doctor. Who settled for Casey’s ten years as a nurse but could never accept her daughter as a purple-haired comedian. Not even CC Clement’s first HBO special made Judge Jilly lighten up.
Professor Jill Clement Holmes thought time travel was impossible. “Theoretically, maybe, on a subatomic level,” she said. “But a whole planeload of people traveling in time? It’s a hoax as naked as cold fusion.”
“Guess I’ll just have to bring the Momster a souvenir,” Casey thought as she sipped her Earl Grey. “Something I could only get back in the day.” A flapper’s dress? Bottle of bathtub gin? Autographed picture of Al Capone? She would also get something for Leah, her best bud. How about a caring husband for a change? “Time will tell,” Casey thought, then winced. “Not even going to start with the clichés.” Stuffing a last pair of jeans into her suitcase, she had to sit on the damn thing to close it.
As she set her cup on the counter, she realized it would sit there the whole time she was gone. For a hundred years? Or just one long weekend until her return flight? Who knew? Suddenly the whole idea of TimeLiners struck Casey as so implausible that she could barely fathom the miracle, let alone find something to joke about. She would have to relax, relax. The jokes would come.
Casey wheeled her suitcase to the door. “So long,” she said. “Goodbye for now to our manic panic present.” And with a backward glance at the teacup, the rumpled bed, the ragtag emptiness of her life, she headed for her first flight and for the next day’s trip a century back in time where, she hoped, something might make sense.
* * *
Thirty-nine travelers, a dozen sipping Prosecco in business class, the rest nibbling pretzels in coach, made the first regularly scheduled trip back in time. Time Jockeys Flight 1927 departed from a weedy plain beside the Hackensack River. On time — 9:04 a.m. June 10, 2027. A Friday. Destination: a century back, back to the year of Lindbergh, “The Jazz Singer,” and the footloose fun of Prohibition.
On that first TimeLiner, we expected what cheap sci-fi taught us to expect — shaking, shuddering, our watches whirling backwards. We expected to feel queasy and disoriented. We expected to ask, “Are we there yet?” “What year is it?” “Now are we there yet?” But such dramatics seemed silly once we had taken a TimeLiner. Though we called it a “flight,” we were never airborne. We did not feel the cabin lift, nor see sun and moon rise and set through dozens of dusks and dawns. Instead, the windows darkened into the inky blackness of winter nights. As the liner began to hum, the blackness gave way to spangles, golden shards of pure time against a charcoal backdrop. As time’s light show unfolded, there was no sense of motion, no timesickness bags, no timelag on arrival. Other than slight turbulence when passing through the Sixties, the only curiosity was our conversation.
“!sdrawckab gniklat m’I ,yeH”
“!kcik a tahW !oot eM”
Backtalk, as it came to be known, was easy to understand. A few Pioneers thought they heard Satanic curses, but the rest of us chatted as if we’d spoken backwards all our lives. And as the decades flew by, there was time enough to complain.
“?eivom on, zeeJ”
“.ti rof yap attog uoY”
Backtalk assured us we were not on another 737 to Dallas or Denver but were riding a TimeLiner bound for 1927. That was the moment — one of those “Am I really doing this?” moments — when we struggled for a bigger picture. Metaphors flowed freely, likening time to a river, a road, an arrow. Clichés became our common currency. A stitch in time. In the nick of time. Time waits for no man, etc. Then a woman in mid-liner quoted the Timemaster’s recent Blather — “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” From Thoreau, someone said.
“So now the Timemaster is quoting Thoreau?”
“Right, like he reads anything,” a woman with purple hair said.
“Creep.”
Though unsure of what to expect in 1927, we knew just what we were leaving behind. Three days in the Jazz Age would free us from the madness of our own times. Global warming? Wasn’t even a term in 1927. Fake news? Just gossip over a back fence. Decline and despair? Where we were headed, America was rising like a skyscraper. And if escaping the Doomsday of 2027 was not enough, numbers were on our side. Our world back home teemed with eight billion people, but 1927 — some of us looked it up before we lost 6G — had all of two billion. Legroom, living space, a chance to go somewhere that is not a human anthill — these drew us back as much as any specific year.
Packed into neat rows, watching time spangle outside, we rode on. We had no North Star or Lonely Planet to guide us, just a dour, bespectacled chaperone seated in business class. Lindsey, she said her name was.
After a rough takeoff, the early flight was smooth, but passing through 1968, the liner began to shudder. The captain turned on the seat-belt sign. An announcement reminded us about Timerule #7 — “slight turbulence is normal when passing through turbulent years.” The buffeting continued until the liner cleared the Cuban Missile Crisis. The rest of the journey was calm except for the buzz of Backtalk. One skinny man with a tie-die shirt and gray ponytail kept saying “Turn me on, dead man!” No one knew what he meant.
“Something to do with the Beatles,” the purple-haired woman explained.
For this first flight, with no timeports yet, our liner had to land in the field where it departed. We came to rest along the Hackensack River at 10:06 a.m. on June 10, 1927 — still a Friday. With the Twenties roaring, New Jersey was at work. No one saw the faint outline of a huge green box, as hulking as a double-wide trailer, darken against a hazy backdrop of purple elderberry and bright pink joe pye. Kicking up dust, our liner settled softly into the past. The attendant’s voice sang out.
“We’d like to welcome you to 1927!”
We claimed our luggage beside the liner. It was muggy and miserably hot, but before we even had time to sweat, all thirty-nine of us whipped out our phones and held them at arm’s length.
“Hey!”
Our chaperone, glaring through owlish glasses, knifed her way into group.
“Selfies are absolutely, positively, completely forbidden,” Lindsey barked. “I’ll confiscate your phone if I see you taking one.”
There would be no chaperones on later flights, but Time Jockeys, worried about lost passengers, stuck us with Lindsey. The snarky woman wore her frosted hair in a tight bun. Holding a red umbrella overhead, she led us from the liner, striding ahead like she’d been to 1927 many times and knew the year well. When the pony-tailed man in tie-die turned and raised his phone, Lindsey was on him like the mosquitoes all around us. His phone went in her pocket.
“Lighten up, lady,” Ms. Purple Hair said. “It’s the Roaring Twenties.” Lindsey did not seem to hear. We trailed behind her, the wheels of our suitcases snagging in the weeds. By the time we reached two boxy buses waiting on a dirt road, our clothes were soaked in sweat. The shuttles took us along the river, rank with raw sewage and suds. Reaching the Hoboken Terminal, we stepped into the blazing sun.
“Looks like a model train set,” someone said. We gazed up at the towering spire and along the tracks where old locomotives belched black smoke. Inside the terminal, commuters hustled by, oblivious to our plaid shirts, sweats, and multi-colored crocs. We caught a train under the Hudson to 33rd Street, Mid-town, the past-scape of our dreams.
“Roaring Twenties, here we come!”
“What a kick!”
“Gonna get me some of that bathtub gin.”
“Me and Jada are headed for the Cotton Club.”
“Anyone spot Gatsby yet?”
* * *
So the whole mess started when the Timemaster made his breakthrough. Digitimetm. the little twerp called it. Suddenly the past was open for travel, exploration, tourism. Once the Timemaster bankrolled everywhen.com, the TimeLiner start-ups came to Wall Street. Past Perfect, Time Jockeys, Zeitgeist, Time After Time. . . Each had a splashy logo, a baby-faced CEO, and promises of escapes like none we had ever known.
“Why fly to Miami when you can fly to 1968?”
“See 1945 like you’ve never seen it before!”
“1982 is waiting for YOU!”
No one knew how it worked. In his daily Spews and Blathers, the Timemaster tried to explain it. #timesarrow B-plancktime #timeinabottle. . . No one had a clue. We knew AI was involved but good luck understanding that. And it seemed to involve reversing entropy, whatever that was. We hoped the Timemaster would explain it, but once he became a celebrity, dating supermodels, speaking at Davos, he spiraled into Bad Boy behavior. He struggled to appear rational, but his Blathers became crazy, and his explanations left us dazed, convinced again that we were stupid. All we knew was that after longing all our lives for distant years gone by, we could now visit them with luggage in tow. Or just a carry-on.
By the fall of 2027, whole fleets of TimeLiners were taking passengers from all over the world to whenever they chose. 1966 — see the Stones at Royal Albert Hall? Five flights a day, some non-stop. 1989 — watch the Berlin Wall come down? Luft-time-za is taking hundreds each week. Estadio de Maracanã in Rio, the 1950 World Cup final? Linha do Tempo, two flights daily. Get in line, have your time passports ready, because by 2028, everyone who was strung out and worn ragged by our own time, which meant everyone, was headed for the past. All the romantics, the nostalgics, the seekers were queueing up to slip the surly bonds of time. Each had a dream destination — hometowns before the malls came, childhoods before parents split, our best memories replayed, relived. Thanks to the Timemaster and digitmetm, the entire 20th century and half the 19th were open for exploration. Book tickets on Timehole.com or at the nearest timeport. LAXT. JFKT. DFWT. . . Check your luggage. Clear TTSA. Head for your gate.
Though TimeLiners soon became routine, there would be glitches. Zeitgeist re-routed passengers into nightmare years. Layovers stranded tourists decades from their destinations. And there was that Boston woman who boarded with her service dog, Chia, a German shepherd. A sweet dog, passengers agreed. Alert, head-cocked to one side. A shame what happened to her. Seems the woman was headed for 2003 to see her mother, but she forgot what everyone knows about “dog years,” seven of theirs to one of ours. So the woman got to ‘03, all right, but poor Chia ended up in the mid-19th century. No one ever took a service dog on a TimeLiner again, The Timemaster even made a rule about it. #9.
But mostly it was miracle and wonder, with little bags of pretzels for snacks. Some boarded their first flights wondering if it was worth the check-in hassles, the cramped seats, but once they saw time sparkle, walked through the Summer of Love or saw the Live-Aid concert live, once they wove themselves into the timefolds of their own childhoods, no price was too much to pay for the gift of the past, unwrapped and spread before us.
* * *
Setting out into Mid-town Manhattan, June 1927, we felt like the “Pioneers” everyone back home was calling us. Wonder dominated our first moments, wonder at walking through a black-and-white newsreel unfolding in full color. The Model-Ts jostling, the pushcarts peddling fruit and flowers, the crowds sweeping along littered sidewalks. Grim men in fedoras, women in cloche hats and scarlet lipstick. And kids! Ragtag toughs in floppy caps, girls in starched pinafores, newsboys on every corner. So few cars, so many trolleys and buses. The faint smell of tobacco everywhere.
We must have looked like a lost flock, sightseers from the future, suitcases grinding behind us as we followed Lindsey’s red umbrella along Broadway toward Times Square.
“Look up!” someone said. We craned our necks toward an open sky, the tallest building perhaps fifty stories. “Check it out. No Empire State Building. No Chrysler.” Several of us, aiming phones from waist level, took photos. Lindsey never knew. Strangers approached and asked where they could buy luggage like ours, but mostly we heard grumbles from people pushed aside.
“Watch it, lady. Cripes almighty, think you own the damn sidewalk?”
Ours were the only bare heads in Manhattan. Some natives stared at our clothes, pinks and greens in seas of gray or blue serge. They must have figured us for tourists. And like tourists, we shared first impressions.
“Seems like we should hear Gershwin in the air.”
“Or jazz.”
“I just know the Babe is out here somewhere.”
When we reached Times Square, ads high overhead read CHEVROLET and Maxwell House. On one billboard, a dapper gent was ready to “Walk a Mile for a CAMEL.” But there were no flashing lights, no soaring screens, no news scroll.
“Think anyone notices us?”
“Nah, this is still New York. They could care less.”
One of our group — Ms. Purple Hair — stood out from the rest. Some thought they’d seen her on TV. She wore faded blue jeans and a man’s white shirt rolled at the sleeves. Nice smile. Electric blue eyes. She seemed delighted by everything. “What a kick!” she kept saying. But it was the hair that turned heads and drew passing comments.
“What’s with the hair, lady?”
Hands on her hips, the woman snapped. “I’m from the future! Deal with it!”
Lindsey booked us into the Metropole just off Times Square. Our rooms were drab and cloistered, with starched sheets and the acrid smell of moth balls seeping from closets. No mini-bar, no wi-fi. Gideon Bible in one drawer, phone book but no phone. We dropped our bags and returned to the street, on our own now without Lindsey, who we only saw again in the lobby. But we Pioneers had not prepared as well as our namesakes. The surprises began with money. More than one couple ate lunch, then tried to pay with a credit card.
“What the hell?”
“You don’t take American Express?”
“We don’t take crummy pieces of plastic.”
“Discover? Visa?”
“Got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Mac. Got any cold scratch? Cabbage? Dough?”
Some did, some washed dishes.
“I thought washing dishes was just a story old people told.”
“This is not the trip I signed up for.”
Those without cash borrowed from fellow travelers and scraped by. There wasn’t much to spend it on. The same silent movies were at every theater. Lon Chaney. Douglas Fairbanks. Some old Barrymore. We thought we should recognize those names. The Yankees were playing in their new stadium, but the Giants and the Brooklyn Robins were out of town. Carnegie Hall had some memorial for some dead Italian socialist. Broadway looked boring — “Bye Bye, Bonnie,” “Oh, Ernest,” “Mr. Pim Passes By.” One guy in our group, with glassy eyes and hair like a rat’s nest, had plenty of cash. He had come to bet on the horses at Belmont, using a list of winners he’d found online. By Monday, he had bundles, but by then, we were headed home. Money was no problem and never would be again. Once we Pioneers returned, we spread the word. Until 1970 at least, credit cards did not work. Bring cold scratch.
Our next surprise was language.
“Chill! Would you just chill? It’s New York. Everyone speaks English.”
Almost everyone did, yet some phrases sent us to Lindsey’s slang dictionary:
“It’s the berries.” (It’s great.)
“She’s a real Mrs. Grundy and he’s some Palooka.” (A joyless prig, a mediocre man.)
“That Sheba had some chassis, all right, but when he got her in his Struggle Buggy, she said, ‘Sorry, Mac, the bank’s closed.’” (This one baffled our chaperone.)
By breakfast on Saturday, the linguists among us were saying “Beeway” for Broadway, punctuating sentences with “swell,” “jake,” and “duck soup.” The rest of us just talked among ourselves. Had everyone heard about that guy in Newark? Five days he’s been sitting on a flagpole, just sitting there. Some kind of fad, the papers said. What a weird time.
* * *
Casey spent her first day in 1927 wandering alone. From Times Square north to the edge of Harlem. From Harlem south to Union Square and back. How wonderful, how wonderful. No one knew her here and she knew no one. There were no sad and worn out homeless, no testoterone-fed pickups roaring past, no 24/7 news feeds bringing the horrors of the day. Her phone — except for photos — was useless. No notifications, no banners, no badges. Many people passing her on crowded sidewalks glanced at her hair. Some openly stared, but she walked on. “I could live here,” she thought. “I could live back here in a heartbeat.”
