“Yes, Larry,” I said. “This is the 1800s. You have no idea how you got here, do you?”
“That’s nuts,” said Larry. “Nice poker face, though.”
The kid still had no idea what kind of situation he had gotten himself into. He refused to believe the information available to his senses, even as he hoisted a shovel full of coal into the mouth of the furnace on the SS Dogturd.
“Who set this all up?”
“You tell me, Larry,” I said, leaning on my own shovel.
I wasn’t about to work up any more of a sweat than I had to. We’d just gotten there, and the mate who brought us down to the engine room promptly disappeared. The other stokers seemed to be making the traditional half-assed effort of the underpaid and unsupervised, so I saw no reason to jump in too early. Larry, on the other hand, was shoveling like a fiend.
“I bet it was Vance,” he said. “That dude’s loaded. He’d spring for a setup like this just to watch me shit my pants. Like I’d give him the pleasure.”
I stood and marveled as Larry out-shoveled the three seasoned stokers, who kept the slow pace of men who knew they’d be doing this all day, and into the night, and again the next day and the day after that, and that there was no point in hurrying. One by one they took a look at Larry, did a bit of quick mental calculation, and leaned on their own shovels.
“What’s he in a rush for?” one of them asked. He was small and wiry compared to the other two. Compared to me? Let’s just say I felt it in my best interest to stay on friendly terms with the guy.
“Hell if I know,” I said. “I just happened to be at the same bar when he got Shanghaied. He doesn’t even know what he’s in for, yet.”
“And how did you get caught up with him?” the comparatively wiry stoker asked.
“Couldn’t keep my mouth shut,” I said.
“How long do you think he’ll keep going?”
“Dude, this sucks,” Larry whined.
Of course he’d whine. Anyone with a soul patch and an LL Bean flannel shirt who found himself in the bowels of a 19th century steamer would whine. I wanted to whine, but I knew damn well what I was getting myself into when I decided to stick my neck out for the kid.
“Seriously, dude, what the fuck do I call you, anyway?”
“Call me Ishmael,” I said.
“Right, Ishmael,” he said, not even catching the Melville reference, and what did I expect? This deluded fool was still caught in the middle of MTV spring break. In Larry’s time Kurt was still alive and pop culture misery was a viable commodity. Reading wouldn’t be this one’s strong suit. A shame because, if you’re going to be a time traveler, it really doesn’t hurt to crack a book every now and then.
“What the fuck are we doing on this boat?”
“We’ve been Shanghaied, Larry,” I said.
“Well, duh,” he said. “But why are we shoveling coal?”
“You’re shoveling coal,” said the wiry stoker, “because you’re probably not worth a shit at doing anything else on this boat.”
“Save cleaning head,” said one of the other stokers.
“Granted,” said the wiry one. “But when was the last time the head was cleaned on this boat?”
“You’re right,” said the second man. “They’re absolutely filthy. I usually just hang me bum over the side and let her go, rather.”
The third stoker, a quiet giant of a man, suddenly hurled his shovel at the bulkhead. It clanged loudly against the wall, bringing the conversation, and the flow of Larry’s shoveling to a dead stop.
“I’m getting a drink,” he said. Then he turned and ducked out of the hatch.
The other two quickly followed suit.
Before disappearing out the hatch, the wiry one turned and said, “keep the boiler hot for us, or we’ll kill you when we get back.”
“This is bullshit,” Larry said.
“You act like you’ve never had a job before,” I said. “This is actually one of my better first day experiences.”
“How come you aren’t shoveling?” said Larry.
“Because I know I’m not getting paid for it. Put your shovel down.”
“Those dudes are totally going to kick our asses.”
“Only if we’re still here when they get back,” I said. “I’ve got a method of travel, you’ve got a method of travel. All we have to do is—“
“What’s this, then!” a shrill shout sounded from the coal chute above us.
“Team-building exercise!” I hollered back.
“If I don’t see any shoveling by the time I get down there, my cat’s going to taste so much of your backs you won’t be troubled by hot bunkmates till we get to Honolulu.”
“Larry,” I said. “What’s your method.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“We’re about to get flogged, Larry. This is not 1993. You got here somehow. How did you do it? What’s your method?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What,” I said, “is your method of time travel?”
“You,” said Larry, “are out of your mind.”
I gave up trying to reason with him. Maybe he’d just stumbled into it. Maybe he was just fated to die on the SS Dogturd, or whatever the ship’s real name was. He’d be another face on a milk carton back when he came from, and history would heal the hole around him.
Or he just might survive and go on to cause the kind of space-time paradox that would scramble the timeline and put me out of business.
I liked my job. I worked for myself, set my own hours, and could meet my clients wherever and whenever the best drink specials were. But it depended on the timeline remaining relatively stable. As much as I didn’t want to do anything that might involve the enforcement division of the Cross-Time Coordination Agency, I couldn’t afford to risk letting the kid out of my sight before I could tip them off, either.
Some situations are just lose-lose.
Or even lose-lose-lose more.
I could hear heavy, foreboding footsteps coming from a direction I felt must be aft. A heavy, foreboding voice accompanied it.
“You debutants are about to need to grow a new hide to cover your arses!”
A vicious sound split the air, not entirely unlike the sound you’d expect a whip with nine flails at the end would make.
“Larry,” I said, “whatever you think is going on doesn’t matter. We have to run. Now!”
“Gotcha, bra,” he said as we tore off in the opposite direction of the flailing sound.
Racing through the passageways and holds of a fully loaded steamer that’s just left port is not unlike having a go at one of those inflatable obstacle courses they have at carnivals and birthday party establishments, with a few notable exceptions. Those being chiefly that nothing’s inflatable, all the edges tend to be hard and rigid, very hot steam pipes appear in the oddest places, and you are being chased by a large, hung-over ship’s officer who wants to remove as much skin from your body as permissible by the customs of a longstanding maritime tradition of leadership through cruelty.
“This is really elaborate,” Larry said as he shinnied up a large crate between us and a hatch leading to the deck, and, hopefully more maneuvering room.
“This is global capitalism in its teen years,” I said.
“Just imagine doing this in a hold stacked with 80,000 cargo containers.”
“There’s no way Vance could pull off all of this,” Larry gasped. It might have been one crate too far, but the sound of the cat-o-nine-tails cracking against a bulkhead helped push him over the top. “What the hell is going on?”
“I told you, Larry. You’re a time traveler. I don’t know how you did it. Apparently you don’t know how you did it, either. I’ve got a pocket watch with extra dials. That’s how I do it.”
I held it out to show him. It was a family heirloom that had been given to me by my dying great-great grandfather on the condition that, when I’m about to face my end, I bring it back to him on his 21st birthday. I never knew if that last part was a joke, but I also never felt close enough to dying to find out. The pocket watch was a sturdy piece worthy of a railroad conductor or a junior member of Congress. It was waterproof, heat resistant, and told the time in centuries, decades, and weeks. Curiously, it also played MP3s and came pre-loaded with a very eclectic mix. Pretty much everything from J.S. Bach to Wesley Willis.
I never did get a chance to ask great-great grandpa about how the watch worked, and I never will. One of the Laws of Time is that the watch can never cross its own path. The next time I see great-great grandpa will be the first time he ever holds the watch. I guess he knows as much about it as I do. One of the greatest mysteries the universe holds for me is the question, who loaded it up with all that music?
“I guess that’s cool,” said Larry.
“You’re used to guessing your way through life, aren’t you?” I said, popping open the hatch and ducking out into the night. The shadows were deep, and there was no moon. The way we’d come was too narrow for our pursuer, so we had some time.
“All right, Larry. I have to know what’s going on. Tell me everything you remember happening before you wound up in that bar.”
“Right,” he whispered as we crept across the deck, trying to put as much distance between us and the cat-o-nine-tails as possible. “Well, I’d been in San Diego for a few days. I was taking a little road trip. Visiting some Cali girls, if you know what I mean?”
“I guess.”
“So I was at this awesome party. Kurt was on the stereo and this one chick was like, I’m hungry. And this other chick said there’s an all night taco cart a few blocks away, and I was like, hey, I’ll go with you. Safety in numbers, right? So me and these two smoking hot girls go to this taco truck and they’ve got all the usual stuff, right, but then they have this sign that says ‘try the dino-fish tacos, if you dare.’ So of course I dare, and they were kind of chewy, but all right. Then, all the other guys must have bailed on me-“
“Other guys?” I asked.
“I mean chicks. Totally hot chicks... All right, so I lied. I was with a couple dudes. And they dared me to try the dino-fish tacos. And then, bam, they ditched me and I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the party, and then I found that bar where I met you.”
“Must be some interesting tacos,” I said, formulating a theory, not only as to the true gender of his late night munchy compadres, but also as to what triggered his accidental time jump.
“Yeah,” he said. “A little chewy, but all right. I got another one,” he said, pulling an actual taco, wrapped in grease soaked yellow paper, out of his back jeans pocket. “You want want a bite?”
“No thanks,” I said. I marveled at the sheer dumb luck of his managing to survive in the world at all as he devoured his leftovers.
“Your loss, dude.”
And then, without much fanfare, Larry suddenly wasn’t there. The little bastard had his method in his back pocket the whole time.
I reached for my watch to get myself the hell out of there. Before I could set it, though, a hand clenched tight around my arm and a heavy, foreboding voice jaunted violently into my ears.
“Gotcha!”