***
written by
Michael Gray
***
Please Note-
The material presented in this installment
falls generally within the PG-13 category.
***
***
Chapter 1 - Jaywalking
Horns blared.
Drivers yelled.
"Get out of the road, cowboy!"
"Hey, dumbass! Move it!"
"Wake up, ya morons!"
Bystanders stared with bemused curiosity. It wasn't everyday their hurried routine was disrupted by such a sight.
And at the heart of this cacophony stood two men and a woman; each of them dressed in clothes more than a hundred years out of date for the place they now found themselves in.
Jack McCall took a moment to survey their angry surroundings. "Having never been there, it's hard for me to say with any certainty," he told the two others with him. "But somehow I don't think this is the Guardian's world."
Hank Evans shot him a frown. "Trust me, this isn't it."
An old, gray-haired woman, wearing a plain brown dress tottered up to Mei-Wan using a metal walker. "Excuse me," the woman began.
Mei-Wan gave her a warm smile. "Yes?"
"Are you shooting a movie?" the woman asked as the splotched skin of her face puckered into a smile.
Mei-Wan tilted her head. "A movie?"
"Yeah, a movie."
Jack walked up to them. "No, we, uh..."
The old woman's expression snapped into a snarl. "Then get the hell out of the street, you stupid jackasses!" she howled. "You're blocking traffic and I need to catch my damn bus!"
Jack and Mei-Wan finally noticed the ever growing line of idle vehicles in front of them.
"I think she's right," Mei-Wan said.
"The traffic light's there for a reason! Damn fool idiots!"
Jack caught Hank's arm and along with Mei-Wan, they scrambled toward the side of the road. A moment later, the horns and yelling disappeared, replaced by the grumbling engines of cars and trucks spewing clouds of foul exhaust as they rolled on to their daily destinations.
Having left the quiet landscape of Nebraska in 1874 less than a minute before, Jack, Hank, and Mei-Wan did their best to get their bearings.
"Something went wrong," Hank said.
"Obviously," Jack agreed. "It looks like we're still on Earth, but what century?"
"That should be easy enough to find out," Mei-Wan said. She hurried toward a covered structure of wooden racks filled with various thin book-like objects with words like "Time," "Newsweek," and "Atlantic Monthly" emblazoned in large letters across their covers.
She picked up a large pile of folded paper and quickly scanned it as Jack and Hank walked up. "The twenty-first century," she said. "The year 2004."
A stocky man behind the counter leaned toward her. "Hey, lady, you gonna buy that paper? This ain't no library, you know."
Mei-Wan dropped the newspaper back onto the large pile. "Sorry."
Jack waved her away from the newsstand. "Why the hell are we here?"
"I don't know," Mei-Wan replied. She found it hard not to stare at the environment she found herself in. While the nineteenth century had been a bit boring for her tastes, the sounds, smells, and look of this time period were hard for her to ignore. Being an archaeologist, it was doubly so. Too many answers about humanity's development remained buried in the dark fog of twenty-first century history.
"Uh, I don't think we should stay here," Hank told them both.
Mei-Wan and Jack looked up and saw several passersby staring at them.
"The why will have to wait," Hank said. "Let's see if we can't find a way to make ourselves less conspicuous."
"We need clothes," Mei-Wan stated. She glanced down at the long dress she wore and back to the women passing by on the sidewalk. "But we're more than a century further into time. The money we have won't work here."
"I've got some gold coins," Jack said with a smile, reaching into his pocket. "Gold's always worth something in a capitalist economy."
"How about we find a bank?" Hank suggested, wanting to do anything which would get them moving.
Jack nodded and approached someone walking past. "Excuse me, sir."
A trim man wearing a three piece suit stopped, giving Jack an amused glance. "Yeah?"
"Could you tell me where I could find a bank?"
"Uh," the man looked about for a moment. "Go down about five blocks and I think there's an ATM."
"An ATM? That's a bank?"
The man laughed and shook his head. "Join the twenty-first century, cowboy." He walked away.
Jack looked down the street. "Let's go."
A few minutes later, they stood in front of a metal panel with the words "TCF Bank ATM" adorning it.
"This is the beginning of Earth's integrated information systems," Mei-Wan told them. "We'd need account information and keycodes to operate this."
"Which doesn't do us much good," Hank said. A moment later he grinned. "If you give me about an hour I'm sure I could break into the system."
"I'd like to avoid that if we can," Jack said. He looked around the area. "I think I've got an idea." He unfastened his gun belt. "By now this should be a collector's item, don't you think?"
Mei-Wan's brow tightened. "Probably, but I don't see how that helps us."
Jack pointed to a storefront across the street. "A collector's shop might be just the place to sell these."
Hank's mood brightened, but Mei-Wan was still troubled.
"What about the other word above 'collector,' Jack?"
He shook his head as he made his way toward a crosswalk. "Probably the owner's name."
Mei-Wan stood trying to imagine how Jack could be right. "What kind of a name is 'Comics'?"
***
"Whoa! Hold up there, Marshall Dillon!" A brawny man with his long black hair tied in a pony tail, stood behind the counter with one hand on the phone ready to speed-dial 9-1-1, and the other clutching a baseball bat.
Jack could see that the bright-eyed man wearing faded jeans and a black shirt with the word "Spiderman" in big, bold letters across the chest, was nervous. But Jack couldn't understand any reason for Jerry, as the small tag on his broad chest indicated, to be concerned. Jack was afterall, holding the two gun belts out in front of him. How could that be threatening?
"Look, I... I don't want any trouble," Jerry stuttered.
Finally, Jack got the sense of the man's apprehension. "No, we're not here to rob you. We want to sell you these."
Jerry set the phone back in its cradle, but kept a good grip on the baseball bat. "You want to sell me guns?"
Jack grinned. "These are authentic Colt revolvers made in 1872 and they're in perfect condition."
Jerry frowned. "Why don't you take them to a gun dealer?"
"Aren't you a collector?"
"Yeah, man, of comic books," Jerry said with a laugh.
Jack looked around the rest of the shop and what he had initially passed off as another newsstand, finally got his attention, especially as Mei-Wan stood reading one of the man's wares. "You collect books?"
Jerry smiled. "Comic books, yeah. I sell them too."
But Jack wasn't ready to give up. "These guns could make you a lot of money." He set them down on the counter.
Looking them over for a few moments, Jerry started to nod. "Tell you what, how about I give a friend of mine a call and see what these are worth?"
"Okay," Jack agreed.
While Jerry was on the phone, Jack wandered over to Mei-Wan who was still reading. "Anything interesting?"
"Well, aside from all the women having painfully large breasts and enough violence to suggest the writer might need a psychological evaluation..." She paused as a smile came to her face. "They're strangely intriguing."
Hank stood glaring at a rack of comics, shaking his head. "People actually pay money for this?" He reached for one and showed it to Jack. "The Hulk?"
"Maybe he's an alien of some sort."
"First contact doesn't happen for another sixty years, Jack. These people don't know about aliens."
Mei-Wan looked up from her reading. "Actually, aliens were a large part of the popular culture."
"Oh really?" Jack asked with an upraised eyebrow. "And how do you know so much about this time period?"
"I spent a month going through the historical archives looking for you. I got to learn a lot about Earth, Vulcan, and Andor." She picked up another comic and began reading it. "The Vulcan archives weren't much fun. They have this annoying habit of recording events as dryly as possible."
Back at the counter, Jerry kept a close eye on his newest customers.
His eyes widened. "Are you shitting me?" he asked the person on the other end of the line. "Wrong. I get seventy percent, you get thirty or I find someone else." A moment of pause, then Jerry smiled. "How much do you think I should pay them?" More silence. "Yeah. Desperate is an understatement."
He shook his head as Jack came back over to him. "Okay. I'll bring them by this afternoon." He hung up the phone. "You're in luck."
"I hope that means you'll buy them." Jack placed his hands on the counter.
"Yeah. I got a friend that's into guns in a big way," Jerry leaned closer to Jack. "One of those NRA nuts."
Jack nodded, pretending he knew what the man was talking about.
"How's four hundred sound?"
Jack thought a moment. He'd only paid fifty a piece for them, so four hundred sounded far too high, but they did need the money. Evidently they were worth more than he suspected. "That sounds more than fair."
Jerry smiled wide. "Great. I'll write you out a check."
"Uh, we'd prefer cash."
Jerry hesitated. He wondered why anyone would want to carry around that much money, but he figured this guy must be hard up for it. "Sure. Cash." He went to the register and opened it.
Mei-Wan walked up with four comic books. "Can you deduct these from what you're paying us?"
Jack chuckled. "Reading material?"
She grinned. "They're fun."
Jerry shook his head. He really didn't want to have to go through the hassle of figuring out the change. "Don't worry about it. I'll throw those in for free."
"Thank you," Mei-Wan said.
A few minutes later, his three customers gone, Jerry stood over the two gun belts. "Two thousand dollars, damn. I'll be able to make the rent this month!"
***
"This looks far too big for a clothing store," Jack said.
"But the guy back at the shop said to come here for inexpensive clothes," Hank replied. "And if those silly picture books cost three and four dollars, who knows how much clothes will be."
"Hank's right. We need to keep expenses down until we can find a place to exchange some of your gold coins," Mei-Wan said. She started ahead of Jack and Hank, toward the large store.
"I'm never going to get the hang of store names in this century," Jack said.
Hank smiled. "At least you were in the nineteenth century for five years. That should give you some familiarity with all of this." Hank followed Mei-Wan across the parking lot.
Jack began trudging behind them. "Nobody in the 1870s would dare name a store 'Target'."
***
An hour later, the three of them walked out of Target, each carrying a large plastic bag.
Hank looked about as they made their way across the parking lot. "We need to find a hotel, someplace to stay." He moved on as Jack and Mei-Wan stopped a moment.
Jack pulled an item out of his bag and tore the price tag off of it. He unfolded the wire metal frames and slid them onto his face. He turned to Mei-Wan. "So how do I look."
"Like you're wearing dark glasses," she said with a chuckle.
"The tag says they're supposed to make me cool."
She frowned. "How can a pair of glasses change your temperature?"
Jack pulled them off and examined them. "I don't see any sort of cooling system."
"How odd."
Hank returned, wearing a smile. "I think I found something. Follow me."
Jack put the sunglasses back on. "Well, they at least reduce the brightness of the sun. Maybe they're supposed to cool my eyes."
"Come on, Jack," Mei-Wan pulled at his arm.
***
Mei-Wan and Jack stood outside a small building with faded beige walls while Hank was inside discussing their accommodations with the man behind the desk. Jack looked up at the large sign nearby and hoped that a motel was the same as a hotel or else they'd have to continue their search. And for his part, he was tired of walking around.
"Hank had better bargain a good price for us," Mei-Wan said, turning to Jack. "We've already spent one hundred and fifty of the four hundred."
"A hundred and fifty dollars would have lasted me several months back in 1874."
"The economy of this time period is a lot more complex than what you've been used to."
"We've made it this far, we'll be okay," Jack said.
"When did you turn into an optimist?" Mei-Wan asked.
"A few hours ago, we were more than a century in the past. I figure someone or something wants us here for a reason and I doubt it's to kill us, or leave us impoverished." Jack grinned. "They could have done that to us in 1874."
Mei-Wan unfastened the top button of her dress for some relief from the heat. "I'll be glad just to get out of this sun."
Hank came out and waved them over. "Room seventeen," he said holding up a key.
"How much did it cost us?" Mei-Wan asked.
Hank frowned. "Trust me, you don't want to know."
