A classic Victorian house filled the screen. The three-story home was painted a soft buttery yellow and dripped with white gingerbread trim.
“Now, John, you’ll see what we were trying to tell you,” Abby said.
“But that’s not your Miles Station house,” John said.
“No, it’s this one.”
“It looks like this house, amazingly like this house, actually,” he said staring at the screen. “But there must be a lot of old Victorian houses—”
“It’s amazing, John,” Abby said, “because it is this house. For some reason the program is working here, even though it no longer works in Merri’s house.”
“What are the odds that this house would show up on the Internet? Lucy never said a word—”
“No, that’s what I thought at first about the Miles Station house—maybe an online magazine or even a movie set, something like that. But it wasn’t any of those things. And this isn’t either.” She pointed to the screen. “See? We’re not in the present time.” At the left corner of the screen the rear wheel of a vehicle showed. It was definitely not that of a car or truck. “Here, watch,” she said. She clicked on the button that allowed her to zoom out. The wheel was attached to a black buggy which was hitched to a pair of roan horses. Abby activated the sound feature and they could hear them blowing and snorting, their iron-shod hooves clattering on the brick-paved street as they shifted in their harnesses.
Abby showed him how the various control features of the program were activated, and John’s face lit up like a boy with a new toy. Abby rotated the house on its axis, and they saw the back of the house and its flower-filled garden. Then Abby clicked on Interior View, and they entered the house and began touring the rooms. Although the furniture was different, John admitted it matched Lucy’s house, room for room.
When they entered the parlor, a young woman in a bell-shaped blue skirt stood humming at the window. She was very beautiful, her blond hair a glowing halo of curls that framed her heart-shaped face. She went to a settee similar to Lucy’s and sat and began to thumb through a book.
John gasped. “It’s so realistic. I can hear the pages turning.”
“With Charlotte, we thought maybe we had tapped into some strange reality show.”
“You thought that,” Merri said smugly. “I always knew it was Charlotte.”
“It’s just a computer program,” John said.
Abby and Merri smiled.
“I wonder what year this is supposed to be?” John asked.
Abby pointed to the indicator at the top of the screen. “It’s 1897.”
Abby adjusted the perspective until they were in the kitchen and they watched for a while as a plump older woman in a shapeless dress and apron peeled apples at a chopping block in the center of the room. They followed her as she took a stack of plates to the dining room.
“Let’s fast forward,” Abby said.
“You can do that?” John said.
“Sure. We’re running at real time, but we can speed up.”
She clicked on the time control on the menu bar and the plump woman began to race back and forth and then was suddenly gone, replaced by other people coming and going. The windows filled with light, then darkness, then light again in dizzying repetition. Abby increased the speed until the images and sounds were an incomprehensible blur as the years raced by.
“Sweet. It’s like multimedia modern art,” John said.
After a while, Abby slowed the action to real time and they saw people at a table set with china, crystal goblets and serving dishes heaped with food. Men wearing wool suits with wide ties and women in calf-length dresses were laughing and talking all at once. A smiling young woman came through the kitchen doorway carrying yet another huge dish. Someone cleared a spot for her so she could set it on the table.
“We all know how much you like mashed potatoes, Carl,” the woman said.
A young man wearing a crew cut and Air Force fatigues smiled widely. “That ought to be enough to last me a while. Thanks, Boo, this is all swell.”
She went back to the kitchen and returned carrying a china tureen. “And gravy to go with it.” She removed her apron of pink and blue flowers and, draping it neatly over the back of her chair, sat down with a contented sigh.
An elderly man at the head of the table smiled gravely. “It will be the best food you’ve had in a year, I’ll wager.”
And then the smiling woman came out of the kitchen again, this time carrying a platter piled high with fried chicken. “You don’t want to know how many ration coupons this took!” She took off her apron and sat down at the young man’s right side.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’s good to be home, Yoo.”
She blushed and turned away with an embarrassed smile. “Father, will you say grace?”
“Wait a minute. Stop,” John said. “What just happened here?
Abby quickly paused the action. “What do you mean?”
He pointed to the frozen scene on the monitor. “It’s the same woman. She came out with the gravy and sat down. Then she came out with the chicken and sat by that military guy. There must be a glitch in the program. Maybe we still have file corruption.”
Abby frowned and looked closely at the screen. “Oh, it’s not a glitch,” she said. “Look, it’s the Old Dears.”
Merri leaned forward to study the monitor, and then laughing, said, “It is.”
Frowning, John took a closer look. “That’s crazy. This is just a computer program. It can’t be them.”
“See the resemblance? Just project forward fifty to sixty years,” Abby said. “That’s definitely Beulah and Eulah.”
“Boo and Yoo,” Merri said. “Get it?”
“That’s insane! No one could make a program that could—”
“We don’t know what this is or where it came from. All I know is that it’s awesome,” Abby said. “And we really are seeing Beulah and Eulah back in the forties—you got the bit about food rationing, didn’t you? And if you think that’s wild, just wait until you see what happens when we lock onto one of them and go to virtual mode.”
“Virtual mode? Show me.”
Abby smiled smugly and turned back to the controls. “Okay, John. Hold onto your hat.”
First, there was a confusing blur of color and whirring sounds and then…
Beulah walked unerringly through her sister’s dark music room and sat down at the baby grand piano that had belonged to their grandmother. When she switched on the lamp, she and the keyboard became an island of light in the dimness, and she imagined, with a brief smile, that she was on the stage at Carnegie Hall, wearing, instead of her pleated skirt, an elegant black dress. She decided to play Fur Elise because her hands knew all the moves so well that she could dream for a while.
Her twin Eulah had inherited the piano, along with the other furnishings and the yellow house itself, but she always told her to come over anytime she wanted to play it. She loved Eulah dearly and didn’t begrudge her a husband, house, or piano. After all, she herself would someday inherit the blue house. Twin houses for twin girls. And Eulah was lonely too, what with her husband Carl away fighting. He had written in his last letter that he wouldn’t get leave to come home again until January.
She didn’t linger long on the fanciful idea of playing onstage, moving instead on to her favorite daydream, one that should have been much more attainable. In this dream, she played the piano in her own house, and her own husband was just in the next room. He would be reading the newspaper or perhaps listening to the radio for news of the war. It was easier to sustain the dream when she had the house all to herself, as she did tonight. Eulah was out with some of their friends attending a lecture by members of the Madison County Garden Club on how to plant a Victory Garden. Eulah was sure to come home all fired up about putting her backyard to patriotic use. She, however, would go back to their parents’ house next door where she had no say-so over the backyard or anything else.
Of course, she loved her parents, and got along with them just fine too. But when she thought about having to live with them forever she got a little panicky feeling in her stomach. Everyone had assumed she would marry too and there had been boys, after her father had decided she and Eulah were old enough to receive callers. But none of them worked out, for one reason or another. Now, almost all the men of marrying age were gone, off fighting in the War. All gone and she was twenty and had never been kissed.
She heard the front door shut, and then her sister’s husband was standing motionless in the dimness, holding his duffel bag.
“You look so beautiful in the light,” he said almost reverently. “Don’t stop playing.”
“Carl, you’re home. We thought—”
“I only found out two days ago. I wanted to surprise you.” He dropped the duffel where he stood, and taking off his cap, started eagerly toward her. That was when Beulah realized his mistake. She stood quickly, shoving the piano bench away. There would have been enough time while he walked from the doorway to the piano for her to say “Welcome home, Carl. Eulah will be home soon,” but the words somehow didn’t come out. She could have stayed in the light so that he could see her more clearly, but somehow she found herself walking toward him into the darkness. In three steps it was forever too late to correct the error, because then she had allowed him to take her into his arms and rain kisses over her brow and cheeks. She closed her eyes and inhaled his scent, savored the feel of having a masculine body crushed to hers. And pretended. A part of her brain knew that there would be a steep penalty to pay when he realized his error, but another louder voice said, take the kiss while you can.
Abby paused the lives unfolding on the computer monitor and said, “I think we had better stop there.” She turned to gauge the others’ reactions.
“Dang!” John said. His cheeks were stained red. “That was beyond realistic—whatever it was we just did.”
“We call it time-surfing. Cool, huh?” Abby said, grinning. She felt virtuous for not blurting out I told you so.
“I’ve got to tell Lucy,” John said. “She’ll love this.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Abby said drily. “Everyone we tried to tell thought we had gone bonkers, including you, if I remember correctly.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, Abby. Wow! That was crazy. I was in Beulah’s head. I knew everything she was thinking and feeling.”
“It’s like being there,” Abby said, “except she can’t see or hear us.” She pushed back from the laptop and stood. “But that was just wrong—on so many levels.”
“Yeah,” John said, “Who knew that the sweet little ladies next door had a threesome going on?”
“There’s that, but I’m talking about us,” Abby said. “I feel like a nasty peeping tom. Maybe we shouldn’t be time-surfing.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” John said. “You’ve been talking my ear off about how cool it is, and now that the program’s finally working, I want to try it out.”
“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should,” Abby said. “Eulah and Beulah—no matter what happened sixty years ago— deserve their privacy.”
“It was different with Charlotte,” Merri added. “We didn’t know her, at least at first.”
“But just think of the educational value,” John said. “We could find out what it was really like in the olden days. Think of the details you could give to your students, Abby. You could make history really come alive for them instead of the boring drivel most history teachers dole out.”
“Of course, I’d love all that,” Abby said. “But I keep thinking about Beulah. I’m sure she would have been horrified to know people were watching what she did.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” John said. “Can you imagine what would happen if the wrong person got a hold of this software? No one would ever have privacy.”
Nobody said anything for a full minute. And then Merri broke the silence. “But it’s like it wants us to do it…to find out stuff.”
Abby thought about the persistent blue light that for a while had awakened her every night at Merri’s house. Not that a program was capable of thinking, but still it was weird.
“We could set rules,” John said. “Number one is we don’t tell anyone about this. We can’t let this get out.”
“Well, all right,” Abby said hesitantly, “Maybe we could time-surf, but not in this house.”
“Okay,” John said. “I can live with that. There will be plenty of other places we can explore.”
“And we have to agree not to go in bedrooms or bathrooms,” Abby said.
“And I think another rule should be no surfing unless we’re all together,” Merri said.
“I agree,” John said. “That will be a good way to see that we stay on the straight and narrow. Anything else?”
“Obviously,” Abby said, “we don’t mention to the Old Dears what we saw.”
“Agreed,” John said.
Abby grinned. “I feel like we should put our swords together and say all for one and one for all.” When she saw the question on Merri’s face she added, “You know…the Three Musketeers.”
They heard a muffled bark. Dr. Bob stood in the doorway, holding the corner of his green blanket in his mouth. He dropped the blanket and barked again.
John laughed. “Do you think he’s hinting? It is getting late and I’ve got to be going. We start that rehab at six.”
“A.M.?” Merri said in horror.
“A.M.” John said grimly as he closed down his laptop.
Abby followed him out onto the front porch. Merri, thankfully, did not tag along this time.
But John didn’t stop, as she had hoped he would, just rushed on down the steps to the sidewalk. He paused to look up at her. “Thanks, Abby,” he said softly. “I’ll come by after work tomorrow, if that’s okay.” Before she could answer, he turned away and hurried to his car.
Abby mentally scratched her head. “You’d think he was Cinderella and the clock was striking midnight.”
Abby lay on her bed staring up at the dark ceiling.
“Abby,” Merri called from the next room. “Are you asleep?”
“No. Are you?”
Merri giggled. “What are you thinking about?”
“I was just wishing Kate were here.” Merri didn’t say anything and Abby quickly added, “Not that we need any more Musketeers around here.”
Merri giggled again.
“But she’s good at figuring out guys. What are you thinking about?”
“Charlotte. I wish we could have really gone back in time and met her.”
“I know. But maybe it’s a good thing it doesn’t work that way. Can you imagine how weirded out we’d be if someone from the future dropped in on us?”
“What if someone is watching us right now?”
“Actually, Someone is watching over us right now, so go to sleep, kiddo.”
Merri mumbled something and then Abby heard her soft snores.