A strong man trusts to the strength of his arm. A wise man trusts to the wisdom of his learning. A great man trusts only that he is not yet perfect. Greatness can only come from a place of patient humility.
~ excerpt from A Greater Fall of Man by Indel Nazti I1—2070
Tuesday October 28, 2064
District of Columbia
United States of America
Iteration 2
Sam’s shoe stuck to a tar-like substance embedded in the low pile carpet. “What . . .”
“Don’t ask,” Mac said as he steered her forward. “This isn’t our world.”
“Marble tiles are fashionable flooring because they’re easy to clean.”
“And easy to break things on. Like heads.”
As if to remind her, the floor sank slightly as she stepped, like sinking into wet grass with her heels. “Is the floor padded?”
“All the government offices were given padded main floors after the suicide crisis in the thirties.” Mac led the way to a winding line filled with people wearing faded clothes and weary looks. He smiled at her. “That’s a joke, by the way.”
“Then make it funny.” She stuck her tongue out at him, then inched closer. “Do they go out of their way to make it depressing?”
Mac looked around and shrugged. “Dunno. I had a sergeant once who said that most places like this were designed at the epicenters of evil. It was some feng shui thing. If you mapped out government offices, they were always in the worst possible place for progress and enlightenment.”
A Canadian Marine walked past, a bleach stain on his hem making her eye twitch. “The last days of the old republic.”
“Shh!”
The people closest to Sam and Mac turned, eyes full of questions and fear.
“The vote isn’t until next week,” Mac said to her. She didn’t realize how bad it was . . . how bad it was going to get. He remembered. He’d been old enough to vote. She’d still been behind the ivy-laced walls of the all-girls Catholic school she’d lived at most her life. Even then, she’d lived in United Territories, safely hidden away from the horrors that rocked the United States.
For twenty minutes, they waited in mute terror as the past slipped by. Everything was ever so slightly out of phase. The faces, the clothes, even the colors seemed wrong, dulled by the national despair that finally drove the States to combine with the Territories and form the Commonwealth.
“Next!” A woman with naturally blond hair rang the bell at her station and smiled as Sam approached with her passport. “How can I help you today?”
“Well, ah . . .” Mac laughed and rubbed the back of his head before hitting her with an aww-shucks-country-boy smile. “My girlfriend’s about to leave for this college trip, and we had to get her a new passport and um . . .” He took Sam’s passport. “You can see the problem.”
The woman frowned. “Everything looks right for a Canadian passport.”
“The date,” Sam said. “There’s a typo.” There wasn’t. She’d gotten the passport when her Spanish one expired in 2066, but that was going to be real tough to explain to a customs agent.
“Oh my gosh!” The woman laughed. She tried scratching the date with her thumbnail. “How weird is that? I’ve never heard of a typo! Hey, Charlie!” she called to a coworker. “Chuck, come look at this!”
An older man with a handlebar mustache ambled over, shuffling a well-worn groove in the threadbare carpet. His glasses slid to the end of his nose as he peered at the passport. “Says 2066? Are you a time traveler, ma’am?”
Sam froze as her worst fears came true. There was no sane way to explain this. They were going to lock her in an insane asylum. She’d be executed as a clone . . .
Mac laughed. He nudged her, and she managed a weak smile.
“There’s no such thing as time travel,” Mac said with an encouraging smile.
“Exactly,” Sam said, trying to fake cheerfulness as she fought to remember how to breathe.
“It’ll take us a few hours to get the new one made,” the woman said. “I can print it here, but we have a backlog right now.”
“Can you have it before you close today?” Mac asked. His hand reached across the counter, and a stack of bills dropped down out of sight. “She’s got a flight to catch tomorrow night.”
The woman’s eyes barely dipped to count the money before she turned a sunny smile back to them. “Sure thing! Come back by four, and they’ll let you in to wait. I’ll make sure this gets done by then.” She waved Sam’s passport and walked away.
Mac took her hand. “Come on.”
“She has my passport,” Sam muttered, grabbing Mac’s arm in a white-knuckled grip.
“That’s fine.”
“No, it most certainly isn’t. I’ve got no ID on me!”
“So what? You’ll have one in a few hours. If anyone asks, just tell them the truth.”
“That I’m from the future?”
“That you’re getting a new passport made at the consulate.”
“Oh.” She looked up at him and almost fell into his glorious eyes. She caressed his face. “You’ll come after me, won’t you?”
“When have I not?” Mac caught her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow.”