Hollow World

Chapter Five Times They are a Changin’

Ellis woke up sporting a hangover without the benefit of a binge. He’d been awake for some time but resisted the temptation to get out of bed. He had no real idea what had happened or where he was but appreciated the time alone after having ridden the tornado to Oz. How long had he been asleep? How long had it been since he’d left the doctor’s office? Only a matter of hours in one sense but more than two thousand years in another.

Two thousand! How is that possible? Hoffmann was off by a factor of ten! Had he dropped a zero somewhere? The whole thing was hard to believe despite having achieved his intent. This must be the feeling that gave expressions of wonderment to Olympic athletes when they took the gold, the look of shock on Academy Award winners even as they took out the speech they had carefully prepared. Some part of them never really believed it was possible until after it happened, and even then such miracles were hard to accept. He’d done it; he’d traveled through time—but Hoffmann was way off on the number of years.

Ellis had expected to jump forward about the same distance as the founding of the United States was back. Life would be very different, but not too alien, and he expected the world would still be fundamentally the same. Instead, he had jumped the same span of years dividing the time of Christ from the age of the Internet. He was the equivalent of a Roman citizen used to slaves, the luxury of horses, and the labor of carrying water—plopped down in the age of computers and fructose corn syrup. Faced with such a shift, Ellis was grateful for the chance to wade in slowly.

Lying in a very comfortable bed, he could tell it didn’t have springs, like one of those space-age sponge beds he used to see advertised. He had pillows and sheets, not cotton though; these were softer. He spent little time pondering the bed covering given his surroundings. He’d seen 2001, Blade Runner, Logan’s Run, and Star Trek. He knew the future was supposed to be stark, cold, and clean—or grease-stained and grit-covered. Maybe it was, but this room wasn’t.

He lay in a massive canopy bed nestled in a cathedral of carved wood and luscious drapes. The décor of the room was castle-Gothic, with walls half clad in dark, eight-panel oak and uppers decorated in vibrant murals of medieval ladies and men on horseback. Lions, swans, crowns, and lilies abounded—carved in wood or sculpted in plaster. Above loomed a ceiling painted to look like the sky, with puffy clouds and hilltops around the edges. Light streamed in through a series of peaked, two-story windows with crisscrossed latticework, which cast spears of radiance across the foot of the bed. A breeze fluttered the edges of curtains, and Ellis could hear birds and a distant trickle of water. He smelled flowers as well as something exotic, like cinnamon or nutmeg. Besides the distant birdsong and splashing of water, he occasionally caught a distant voice calling out or laughter rising from far off.

When he finally touched the floor, he found wide-plank hardwood with thick Persian-style rugs welcoming his bare feet. Naked, he kept the sheet around his waist. His pack was on the floor beside the bed, and his clothes were folded and resting on a soft chair. His knife, as well as the still-holstered pistol, remained on his belt.

“Oh, good morning, Ellis Rogers! I thought you’d sleep the day away. Are you feeling better?”

Ellis jumped. He didn’t see anyone but pulled the sheet tighter.

“Who’s there?” he asked, peering out toward the open archway that led to another room.

“I am Sexton Alva. Pax’s vox. They told me you might be disoriented and thoroughly grassed, so I needed to go easy on you. But honestly I find the whole matter utterly amazing!”

This voice was different from all the others: decidedly female, but he couldn’t tell where she was and kept the sheet tight.

“Where are you?”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Where are you? I can’t see—”

“Oh, Pax wasn’t kidding. You are completely sonic. Fantastic! Of course you can’t see me. I told you. I’m Pax’s vox.”

“What’s a vox?”

“Ha! Utterly magnetic. Really it is—you have no idea. And the way you talk! You really are grassed—real grassed like with spears and bows and arrows and such. I don’t think I can explain what a vox is to you—no point of reference, really. You probably think I’m some sort of spirit. You worship rivers and rocks, right? Have a god for everything? You can just consider me the spirit of this house. But don’t worry. I’m a good spirit. Just call me Alva, honey.”

Ellis continued to turn his head, trying to locate the source of the voice without luck. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. “I’m not from that far in the past.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not from that long ago. We didn’t have spears and bows. We had cars and planes and computers and—”

“Computers! Yes—that’s me.”

“You’re a computer?”

“No, but it is certainly better than a spirit, isn’t it? I’m about as much like a computer as an abacus is. I’m Pax’s caretaker. I keep the place running, keep everyone happy and safe. Tell them what to eat in the mornings, relay messages, arrange parties, water plants, entertain everyone, teach them, advise them, watch out for them—more Pax than Vin, of course. Pax is always eager to learn; Vin apparently knows everything already.” This last comment came with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “I’ve looked after Pax for centuries. Wonderful, wonderful person, and not at all crazy, you understand. You’ll do well to remember that if you stay here—or you’ll find too much pepper in your meals, and your bath will always be a tad too cold or too hot. I’m sorry. I don’t like making such vile threats, but when it comes to protecting Pax, I’m an animal.”

“Where are you, exactly?”

“Oh, my physical installation is built into the foundations of the complex, on the sublevel.”

“So—you’re like a furnace or a water heater?”

“Ha! You’re wonderful. In seven hundred and eighteen years no one has ever called me a furnace or water heater. That’s very clever. You don’t know how hard it is to be original these days. But you’re original, aren’t you? I mean, truly original. No others like you at all—ever. That’s just amazing. You’re like a tree, but you can talk!”

“Speaking of that. Alva, I have a question.”

“Wonderful! I’m great at trivia.”

“I was wondering why we understand each other. After two thousand years I would have thought language would have changed more than it seems to have. And why English?”

“Oh, you can thank the British Empire for that. Imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries established the English language as the dominate common tongue the same way that the Roman Empire had established Latin as the previous international language. The dominance of the global economy by such English-speaking countries as the United States further required all the world’s nations to view English as the necessary international language of commerce, which—”

“Okay—okay, so that explains why English survived, but why is it still so—I mean, people in the Middle Ages didn’t talk the way I do, even though they spoke English.”

“That’s because the Middle Ages didn’t coexist with a post-globalization environment. Most linguistic changes are the result of assimilating other languages or because isolation causes the independent evolution of a dialect. By 2090, the impact of variations had been reduced to negligible levels as non-English languages were abandoned—wiped out by lack of use. If you wanted to compete economically, you adjusted to the language of commerce. Sure, there are fads and fancies, but the sheer size of the consistent user base and the tendency of humans to prefer familiarity led to a relatively stable form of communication. The longer life spans of humans also reduced trends of change.”

Ellis wondered if all that wasn’t a pleasant way of saying that Hollow World had a militant Ministry of Grammar Nazis.

“Alva, I have another question.”

“I would suspect you have more than one, but go ahead, dear.”

“Is this Pax’s home?”

“Yes. Beautiful, isn’t it? You need to go out on the balcony. Everyone loves the balcony. I’m so glad Pax brought you here. I’m sure Pax is just as happy. Pax loves old stuff.”

“Is anyone else here?”

“Just you and me, honey. Pax and Vin went out—but don’t be upset. They expected you’d be asleep longer, and they’ll be back soon. I’ve already told them you’re awake. Besides, I’m here. Is there anything you’d like? They pumped you full of liquids, but I was told to keep you drinking. Would you like tea? Lemonade, Cistrin? Vistune red or white?”

While Ellis was curious as to how a disembodied computer-voice might go about handing him a drink, he had more pressing concerns. “Actually, I could use a bathroom. I need to ah…urinate and would love a shower or a chance to brush my teeth.”

“Urinate! But of course.” A light went on inside a small archway he hadn’t noticed before. “Right this way, Ellis Rogers.”

Ellis pulled his pants on. They were clean, no stain of blood. He grabbed his pack and the rest of his clothing, and passed through the archway. Inside was a rain forest. Massive trees, covered in fragrant flowers and draped with vines, rose from lush vegetation where butterflies fluttered. He spotted a spring-fed basin formed from a sink-shaped rock jutting out from a cliff.

“Past the vines,” he heard Alva say.

Passing through a curtain similar to what an explorer might machete through, he found a waterfall that cascaded into a beautiful lagoon.

“Sheesh,” he blurted out.

“What was that, dear?”

“Nothing,” Ellis said. “Just talking to myself.”

“Why do that when I’m here?”

“Is this water always running?”

“Of course not. I turned it on for you. The waterfall is at forty degrees. Let me know if you’d like it hotter or colder.”

Forty? Ellis touched the water, found it pleasantly hot, and shrugged.

There was no door to this wilderness space, and, feeling it best to get things taken care of before company arrived, Ellis used the artsy-looking toilet shaped like a tree stump. There was no water in its base, and he was shocked to discover that his urine vanished as it fell. He thought about his toothbrush and realized he’d forgotten one. With a sigh, he undressed and stepped into the lagoon.

“The water can come out at any speed, texture, or angle you like,” Alva said, her voice slightly different in the lagoon, where the sounds of birds and the rush of water competed for his attention.

Ellis didn’t reply and was pleased she hadn’t felt the need to chat while he was using the toilet. He also had to wonder at the income level of an arbitrator. Maybe the profession was like a lawyer.

He waded into the pool and moved under the falling river. The water—hot and soothing—relaxed him. A hot shower always seemed so decadent, and there was something vaguely sexual about a bath. An atomized mist jetted out from the walls, turning the jungle steamy.

“Is there soap?” he asked.

Like a car wash, the water pouring out turned sudsy, but this flow smelled vaguely like lilacs. Ellis wondered what might happen if he asked for wax. That brought a smile, and he pushed his face into the stream. Ellis lingered in the water longer than he had planned. From the instant he’d discovered Warren’s letters until this moment, Ellis had been overwhelmed. Too much had happened too quickly. Even lying in the bed, trying to mentally process everything, had been taxing. He hadn’t allowed himself time to think, but bathing made him reflective.

Everything he knew was gone. He no longer had a house with its huge monthly mortgage. No cars needed inspections, oil changes, or new tires. He was free of everything—free of Warren and Peggy, his cheating wife and his bitter friend who had betrayed him. That life was over—buried by time, a lot of time.

In its place was something amazing. He’d achieved a version of his life’s dream and survived the effort. He’d finally done something—something important. By the sound of things, Ellis was somehow the first person to travel through time. Everything had worked out perfectly, and yet while standing in the hot stream from the sudsy waterfall, Ellis began to cry.

He couldn’t control himself, couldn’t understand why he was sobbing. He should be happy, and it didn’t make sense that after risking everything and winning, he should feel so miserable.

Although his marriage never reflected the kind of relationships idealized in movies, Peggy had been part of his life for thirty-five years, and he’d discarded her with less thought than he gave to a dubiously dated container of cottage cheese. He’d known Warren even longer. His old friend had always looked after and defended him, and he, too, went in the trash. Maybe they had an explanation…maybe if he’d just…but it was too late.

If it hadn’t already been erased by time, Ellis would have torn down his garage. It was the symbolic sum of all his mistakes, from his son’s death, to the erosion of his marriage, and finally the realization that running away was the height of selfishness. He hadn’t even left a note, and Peggy would spend the rest of her life with too many questions and no answers.

He pushed his face into the spill and let it blend with his tears. He didn’t know how long he stood there. He didn’t care. He had no pressing appointments.

“How do I turn it off?” he finally asked.

An instant later the waterfall stopped, the pool drained, the mist faded, and hot, dry air began to blow. He was dry in just a minute or two, and put his clothes back on.

Passing back the way he had come, Ellis dropped his pack next to the bed before setting off to explore. The wonders of the bedroom and bath were nothing compared with the rest of Pax’s home.

“This is the social room,” Alva said with a note of pride as he entered a large chamber with a vaulted ceiling.

A cross between a Gothic palace and a Rainforest Cafe the large chamber combined the two motifs until the whole appeared as a beautiful ruin invaded by plants and giant trees. The walls were carved stone with intricate arches and ornamentation that framed more murals mimicking the Renaissance masters.

Ellis spotted a painter’s easel, surrounded by color-stained rags and rustic clay pots filled with bouquets of filthy brushes. Beside them were splattered potter’s wheels and carving tools. But what caught Ellis’s attention the most was the far wall—or more precisely the lack of one. That whole side of the room was missing. No glass, just one vast opening to the outside, where a balcony extended as an oval pod.

The view was staggering. Pax’s home was built into the side of a massive curved cliff that was shared by hundreds of other homes, each with its own balcony. The sheer walls of the canyon were dressed in flowers and creeping ivy. Massive trees grew up in the center and spread vast branches, creating a canopy that provided shade to the Central Park-sized common below. So mammoth was the space that people on their balconies across from Ellis were ant-sized, and everything across the way slightly bluer. Shafts of light filtered through the arena, and birds of all sizes and colors swooped and sang. Their songs echoed as if they were in a massive atrium.

Ellis descended the steps onto the balcony and was peering across at what he realized had to be a massive waterfall in the far distance when he heard Alva say, “Welcome home. It was so nice of you to take that extra second necessary to let me know you were on your way, Pax. Oh wait—you didn’t, did you?”

“Don’t start, Alva.”

“What? A little courtesy is too much to ask?”

“Is Ellis Rogers in the bedroom?”

“Out on the balcony. Everyone loves the balcony.”

“Were you nice?”

“I’m always nice, dear. Vin, do you think you could clean up your paints a little better next time? The breeze threw your rags on the floor and knocked over one of the pots.”

“You control the breeze, Alva.”

“But not your mess.”

Ellis turned to see Pax enter the social room. Dressed the same as before, Pax smiled as their eyes met. “How are you feeling?”

“Have a headache.”

“Cha said you would.”

“Other than that, I’m a lot better. Even a little hungry.”

“What do you like to eat?”

Ellis shrugged. “It’s been two thousand years. I doubt you have burgers and fries anymore.”

“Alva?”

“Derived from Hamburg, Germany, hamburger is low-grade ground meat from the dead bodies of domesticated animals known as cows or cattle. A poor person’s meal often treated in ammonia to eliminate common life-threatening contaminants. It was discontinued in 2162 due to health hazards.”

“Seriously?” Pax made a face at Ellis. “So we don’t have a pattern, I’m guessing?”

“Would you want one? We don’t have a pattern for arsenic either.”

Ellis chuckled. “I won’t even ask about hot dogs.”

Pax looked concerned. “You actually ate dogs?”

“No, dear,” Alva said. “But an explanation would hardly put you at ease. How about a nice minlatta with a tarragon oil sauce? It’s a new pattern by Yal.”

“It’s best to just agree,” Pax said to him. “Alva will make it anyway.”

“Sure.”

“Vin, do you want a minlatta?” Alva’s voice came from another room as Pax joined Ellis on the balcony. The voice of Vin was low, muffled, indiscernible.

“It’s beautiful here,” Ellis said. “I take it we aren’t in Michigan anymore.”

“Michigan?”

“That’s where we met.” He looked out at the sunlight. “Was it yesterday? Did I sleep that long?”

“You were out awhile.”

“And we went through one of those portal things, right?”

“Yes.”

“So where are we now? Africa? South America?” He had no idea. Ellis had never traveled much, but he’d seen pictures and movies, and places like this were always far away in Third World countries. Only what had been Third World two thousand years ago had moved up in the standings, he guessed.

“Hollow World,” Pax replied.

Ellis looked puzzled.

“Eurasian Plate, Western Zone, Tringent Sector, La Bridee Quadrant.”

“Wow,” Ellis said. “That’s a mouthful. And I’m sure a location was in there somewhere. I was expecting something like, I don’t know—Rio. Any idea where this might have been about two thousand years ago?”

“Yes. Are you familiar with the city of Paris?”

“Paris, France?”

“Yes.”

“This is Paris?”

“Sort of, except we’re about five miles below where it used to be.”

Ellis looked back out at the dramatic cliffs and the narrow opening in the canyon where he could clearly see the sky and distant mountains, at least as clear as his aging eyes would allow. He noted the trees and the birds as well, and finally replied with the eloquent response of “Huh?”

Footsteps interrupted them.

“Oh, Ellis Rogers, let me introduce Vin. We live together.”

Ellis turned to see another DNA duplicate, this one dressed more dramatically than Pax in a double-breasted Dickensian tailcoat, ruffled shirt, and top hat. Ellis couldn’t actually verify that this was another exact copy, as Vin was wearing a mask. It looked like porcelain but could have been a hard plastic. All white, it covered only the upper part of the face, leaving the mouth free and causing Ellis to think of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.

“Nice to meet you.” Ellis held out his hand. As soon as he had, he realized he was making a huge assumption. Ellis was impressed that Vin took it—less impressed by the weak grip and shake.

“Vin is an artist,” Pax said with enough drama that the title could have been swapped out with the God Almighty. “Most of the paintings and sculptures in our house are Vin’s work.”

“Don’t forget your contributions.” Vin removed the hat and set it upside down on the shelf near the archway to the bedroom. “You’ve done your fair share of pots. And they serve very well at holding my brushes.”

Vin was also wearing a pair of breeches and high black boots like they’d just been out riding after foxes. The “artist” moved with a swagger and a sweep that made Ellis think of Shakespearean actors.

As Vin began to tug off the fingers of white gloves, Ellis looked back at Pax. “Did you say we were underground?”

This appeared to take Pax by surprise. “Hmm? Oh—yes. It might not be five miles, maybe only four. Obviously neither one of us is a geomancer.”

“But I can see the sunlight.”

“That’s falselight.” Vin spoke much louder than Pax—the actor projecting from a stage to a packed house—then paused to look out at the view, as if never noticing it before. Vin shrugged. “Adequate, I suppose.”

“You think so?” Pax sounded surprised. “I’ve always found falselight to be amazing, especially after so much grass time. You can’t tell it’s not natural light.”

“Perhaps you can’t,” Vin said.

“Oh—of course. I suppose to a more trained eye—”

“Exactly.”

“Are you kidding?” Ellis said. “I don’t care how trained your eyes are, that looks just like sun shining on a valley, and I’ve spent my whole life under the real thing. If that’s fake, it’s a miracle—and beautiful.”

“I’m not certain you’re qualified to judge beauty,” Vin told him.

It sounded like an insult, but what did Ellis know. Maybe he was that Roman citizen getting hot because people were discussing the prospects of landing on Mars. He wasn’t going to start anything over a misunderstanding. He was their guest, and who knew what passed for humor now. Instead, he went with humility. “My wife would agree with you. I could never see the attractiveness in the wallpaper she picked out, and was horrible at knowing which dress was better, but I think anyone can judge beauty—in the eye of the beholder and all that.”

Vin smirked. “You’ve certainly dug up a Neanderthal, Pax. I’ll grant you that. I was skeptical, but I think there can be no other explanation. It’s like we’ll be dining with a barbarian who might howl at the moon at any minute. You really should have asked permission. At the very least, we might have invited others to share the absurdity. We ought to get grams, as I can’t imagine anyone believing it.”

Ellis was certain that was an insult. Before he could reply, the Phantom of the Opera look-alike left them, disappearing through one of the archways.

Pax looked at Ellis with an awkward pout. “I think you might have unintentionally offended Vin a little.”

“I offended him?—ah—Vin—whatever. Sort of a jerk, don’t you think?”

Pax’s eyes widened. “You have to understand, Vin is an artist.”

“Yeah, I got that—paints all these pretty pictures, which is nice, but nothing compared with this view. That’s like thinking your picture is better than the real thing. Talk about arrogant.” Ellis pointed across the valley. “And the light moves with the passage of time. Incredible. Are you sure we’re underground?”

Pax nodded.

“And you call it falselight?”

“When they made the first sub-farms, they had imitation sunlight for the plants, but not for the farmers. They lived in little cubicles. People need sunlight as much as plants do and workers became depressed. They kept returning to the grass whenever they could, driving down productivity. So they invented falselight. It became this whole industry and finally an art form—one of the first native to Hollow World, really.” Pax gestured at the walls. “Vin did the paintings here, but those are just for fun. Vin’s real work is out there.” Pax pointed beyond the balcony. “Vin makes Hollow World.”

“What do you mean, Vin makes it?”

“Like a sculptor chisels beauty out of a block of stone—that’s what Vin does. Only Vin’s stone is the whole of the earth—the entire lithosphere. We all live in Vin’s creation of height, width, form, and function. Not just Vin, there are many renowned artists in all kinds of different schools. Like the ones who make the falselight or water artists—masters of reflection, drip, and splash.” Pax recited this with a cadence and little dance step. “It’s sort of their motto. All artists are highly revered for their talents. They’re more respected than anyone, except the geomancers, of course.”

“What’s a geomancer?”

Pax looked at him and sighed. “Alva, what did you do all the time I was gone?”

“I showed Ellis Rogers where the shower was. Did you expect me to explain the history of the world during a morning bath? And since I have your attention, dinner is served.”

The dining room was like entering Dracula’s castle. A long marble table set with crystal stemware and porcelain plates was illuminated by candelabras and surrounded by dark walls of carved paneling. At the far end was a massive pipe organ that dominated the room and began playing a dramatic fugue the moment they entered. It began deafeningly loud but, after a grimace from Pax, dropped to a whisper. None of the “outside” light reached this darkened chamber that, with its cathedral ceiling and vaulted supports, reminded Ellis of a church nave.

“Alva?” Pax said.

“Yes, honey?”

“Can we have something a little less morbid?”

“Vin always likes—”

“I know, but we have a guest. How about something from that Big Sky series you like?”

“Really? Okay!”

The paneling vanished, as did the pipe organ and ceiling. In their place, Ellis stood amid a field of spring flowers in a valley surrounded by distant mountains and capped with a vast sky. Gorgeous thunderhead clouds billowed up in the distance as the sun drifted toward the horizon. The grand table was replaced with a rustic picnic bench covered by a traditional red-and-white-checkered cloth and set with ceramic cups and a wicker basket. Ellis held still, disoriented and uncertain what had just happened. Was he still in the dining room? He figured he was, imagined Pax had just adjusted the decorations like he might have dimmed the lights in his own house, but he wasn’t just seeing it. Ellis could feel the breeze, smell the sunbaked grass, and hear the distant drone of a cicada.

“Are we still in your house?”

Pax looked amused. “Yes. It’s just that Vin’s taste tends to run a bit more heavy—more serious—than I prefer.”

A shadow crossing the table startled Ellis, and he looked up to see a hawk. “Whoa. That’s really cool.”

Pax looked concerned. “Alva, turn down the breeze, please.”

Ellis laughed. “Oh—no. I didn’t mean…I meant it is very nice.”

“Twentieth-century slang, Pax,” Alva put in, and Ellis realized she sounded a lot like his aunt Virginia. “Cool is a respected aesthetic, what we might refer to as grilling or magnetic.”

“Really?” Pax said, looking dubious, then turned and began walking across the field. “Let me grab the meal and see where Vin got off to.”

Ellis took a seat at the picnic table. When he looked back, Pax was gone, leaving him alone in the landscape.

In all directions the flat land extended out to a distant horizon. He was in a John Ford movie or a Windows screen saver and couldn’t stop gawking. Ellis had spent the majority of his life in Michigan, mostly around Detroit, never able to get away from work. Aside from M.I.T., his one big trip was his honeymoon in Cancun. He’d always planned to go places, but never really had until he pressed the button on the time machine. Even then, he had remained in Detroit, but was now supposedly somewhere under Paris. None of that mattered. Perched on that picnic table, he knew he was a long way from home.

A blade of grass brushed Ellis’s leg. He snapped it off and rolled the plant between his fingers, feeling the moisture in it. He held it to his nose and smelled the scent of summer lawn cuttings. How is this possible?

“Vin’s not feeling well.” Pax appeared again, walking back through the tall grass and holding a tray of food, the frock coat whipping with the breeze.

I bet. Ellis tried not to jump to conclusions, but he didn’t like Vin. “Just us then?”

Pax nodded and set two steaming plates on the picnic table in front of them filled with pasta topped with a white sauce laden with minced vegetables. Ellis waited to see if Pax would be saying grace. Not everyone did, and it wasn’t as big a deal as it had once been.

Pax began eating without a pause.

Ellis looked down at his plate and whispered, “Thanks.” He wasn’t really thanking God for the meal or even the miracle of surviving the time travel. He just appreciated that God had been there to listen when he needed Him the most. Maybe that was God’s whole purpose—a hand to hold. Then again, just the day before he had expected to die of starvation, and if anything was likely to make him feel religious it was the miracles of the last two days. And there was something else—in this brave new world, God was the only one he knew.

“Whatever happened with the murder?” Ellis asked.

“Cha arranged for the disposal of the body,” Pax said. “I spent the rest of the day and most of the night with those students who witnessed the scene to make sure they would have no lingering trauma. They were upset, obviously, but they’ll be fine.”

“Wow. Are people that fragile nowadays?”

“Murders might have been commonplace in your time, Ellis Rogers, but we don’t have them. And with the various safety features, even accidents are extremely rare. Death is alien to us.”

“You mentioned that before. But how is that possible? What about old age and disease?”

Pax sucked in a noodle and reached for one of the red-checkered napkins. “The ISP eliminated diseases hundreds of years ago—aging took longer, of course. They only slowed it in the previous versions, but it was eradicated in this last pattern.”

“Pattern?”

“Ah…are you familiar with genetics? DNA?”

“I know of them. They completed work on the Human Genome Project—mapping genes—a few years back, but were just starting work interpreting the data when I left.”

“Right, okay. So, in a way the sequence of base pairs that make up DNA is like a recipe. Everyone—back in your day, I assume—was a little different, right?”

He nodded. “Like snowflakes.”

“Well, the ISP tinkered with the sequencing, adjusting it mostly because of the epidemics that occurred back in the 2150s. All the drugs they had used stopped working, I guess, or the diseases got stronger—I don’t know. Anyway, the ISP started altering DNA to make people more resistant to diseases, which caused all kinds of conflicts with people making drugs and other people who were against tinkering at all—well, it was a big deal. But anyway—after centuries of adjustments, the ISP unlocked the perfect pattern, which you see before you.” Pax smiled and made a little seated flourish and bow. “Disease is just a horror of the distant past, and so is aging.”

“You never get—how old are you?”

“Me? I’m only three hundred and sixty. I’m a baby. Part of the Accident Generation.” Pax took another swallow of food as Ellis tried to figure out what that meant.

Pax sighed and took a drink. “There’s so much you don’t know. I had hoped Alva would have taken some time to—”

A gust of wind blew Pax’s bowler hat off. “Real mature, Alva.”

Pax retrieved the hat and sat back down, keeping one hand on the brim.

“But if no one ever dies, isn’t that a problem? With overpopulation, I mean,” Ellis asked.

“There was a population crisis in the middle of the twenty-third century.”

Ellis nodded, remembering Charlton Heston in Soylent Green.

“But not overpopulation—it was because of a depleting population. This was before the ISP wiped out death and disease, you understand. People were still dying, but fewer and fewer children were being born each year—a real emergency. Everyone was content and fulfilled and didn’t feel the need. Most people had no children, and those who did had just one, which meant the world population was diminishing with each generation. So the ISP stepped in and filled the void.”

“Manufacturing people?”

Pax looked surprised at the comment. “Creating new people from DNA patterns.”

“And the religious community just let that happen?”

This appeared to catch Pax by surprise, resulting in an expression that was part confusion, part suspicion, as if Pax felt he was being intentionally obtuse. “There haven’t been any religions for hundreds of years. I think the last church was in Mexico somewhere, but that was a long time ago.”

“So no one believes in God anymore?”

“Of course not.” The tone was flippant and condescending. Then Pax appeared mortified. “Oh—I’m sorry.” Setting down the fork, Pax reached out and touched his hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you like that. I didn’t realize. I should have, but…” Pax looked sick.

“It’s okay—really.”

“But I should never have—”

“It’s fine—trust me, you aren’t the first atheist I’ve talked to. What were you saying about the population problem?”

Pax resumed work on the minlatta. “Oh—well, since the new patterns never grow old, it wasn’t long before we reached the perfect population size. The only problem comes from accidents. People don’t die from disease, but accidents still happen and create openings for new births. I was one of those—hence the Accident Generation. I, and everyone sharing this pattern, should live forever, which is why these killings are so horrible. Death is an awful tragedy to us.”

“It was to us too,” Ellis said. “So I’m guessing you don’t have wars?”

Pax looked shocked and turned away as if Ellis had said an offensive word.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Part of the new pattern the ISP created was the removal of the Y chromosome and the aggression that came with it. It was the source of the vast majority of violence. Conflict of that sort hasn’t existed in centuries.” Pax grimaced and shivered for effect.

“The Y chromosome…you’re talking about men—males. That’s what people with the Y chromosome are.”

“I’ve read about the sexes,” Pax explained. “Seen some restored grams on the subject. It all seems so…complicated—and dangerous. And such an inadequate means of reproduction. Darwinism—the haphazard selection of genes—produced such unpredictable results when everything was left to random chance. It would be like shuffling coords and jumping blindfolded through portals. It amazes me that it took so long to take control of our own existence. I can’t imagine what people were thinking back then.”

“You’re aware that I’m male?”

Pax made an embarrassed face. “I suspected.”

“Everyone is female then?”

“No. There aren’t any sexes anymore. All that unnecessary equipment was removed just like the appendix. You used to have those, too, didn’t you?”

Ellis nodded.

“The ISP pruned away all the leftover genetic branches because they were invitations to disease and malfunctions, not to mention just plain silly to carry around.”

“Hair included?” Ellis ruffed his own.

Pax nodded, looking embarrassed again, and Ellis wondered if he was performing the equivalent of picking his nose.

“So, you don’t have sex anymore? Sexual pleasure, I mean? Orgasms, we called them.”

Pax looked at him, grinning.

“What?”

“I just realized you’ve never experienced delectation.”

“What’s that?”

His comment made Pax laugh. “Are you aware that pain and pleasure are generated in the brain? When you touch something, tactile information is sent to the brain, which interprets it and then provides you with a sensation. Delectation just skips the physical part. There’s a whole art form where people devise new and incredible delectations. There’s even a classics line that is supposed to re-create orgasms, inebriation, drug highs, and other sensations from the past. I’ve tried a few. I didn’t like the inebriation one. It just made me dizzy, which really wasn’t pleasant at all. The orgasm one was nice, but very short. Were they really only a few seconds long? If the reproductions are accurate, you’re in for a treat.”

Ellis had flashes from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper and decided to change the subject before Pax suggested trying out the orgasm machine or whatever it was. “So why were you at the crime scene? How did you find out about it?”

“I was called by the professor handling the tour. Twelve people saw the body. Some of them were bound to have emotional stress. Cha came with me, which is pretty routine. Then when you opened your eyes—well, who better than an arbitrator to handle first-contact?”

“Do you have any idea who the killer is?”

“We don’t even know who the victim was.” Pax offered a smile and touched his hand again—a gentle touch, soft hands. “Your assistance was amazing, by the way, and thank you again for that. The Grand Council feels the murders are the result of anger over the Hive Project. And I know there is a lot of emotion circulating—a lot of fear. I have my own concerns, as you can probably tell.” Pax gestured at the material of the frock coat with a smirk, indicating something obvious that Ellis didn’t understand. “I find it hard to believe that anyone upset over the Hive Project would resort to such extremes.”

“What is the Hive Project?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, it’s just research the ISP is working on. They’ve been at it for centuries and haven’t gotten anywhere, which is why it doesn’t make sense that someone would kill over it. We just aren’t built that way anymore. Anger doesn’t boil over into action—not like it did in your day. We fret, we yell, we scream, we cry, and we hug, mostly in that order, but we don’t strike, and we never kill.”

“Someone does.”

Pax nodded thoughtfully.

Ellis had a dozen more questions. What was this Grand Council? How were people made? What did ISP stand for? Why were they underground? What was Hollow World? He thought of himself at that moment like some three year old about to drive an adult crazy with endless questions. Pax probably had questions too. Ellis realized that in his deluge of inquiries he’d been an ungrateful lout.

“Say, I’d like to thank you for taking care of me,” Ellis said as he wound up a forkful—two thousand years and still no better way to eat pasta. “I would have probably died if you hadn’t.”

Pax smiled, showing perfect white teeth that would have put any twenty-first-century model to shame. “It’s the least I could do for the first-ever time traveler.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” Ellis asked. “I mean, if I could do it, I would have thought there would be others. I kind of figured it would be commonplace these days.”

Pax shrugged. “Alva?”

“Let me run a check, dear. One moment.” A few minutes later she was back, although Ellis guessed she really hadn’t gone anywhere. “No, I’m sorry. There’s nothing about time travel except fictional references in books and movies.”

“Weird,” Ellis said. “It really wasn’t that hard, all things considered.”

“Perhaps you are just underestimating your abilities.”

“Maybe.”

“In any case, here we are, and since we don’t have any experience with such things, it brings up a question,” Pax said. “What do you want to do? Should I announce you to the world or would you rather I not?”

Ellis hadn’t thought about it. He had just assumed sunglass-wearing men in black SUVs would be showing up to whisk him away to some debriefing or research lab. “I assumed you already had—that you were required to report me to your boss. You work for the government, right?”

Pax appeared to have trouble understanding, and while his host pondered this, Ellis took his first mouthful. It was marvelous. The complex flavors were hard to place. Tomatoes were in there somewhere, as were onions, but the rest was a mystery, and a wonderful one at that. “This is really good,” he blurted out.

“Ha! See! I told you it was good,” the vox said, her voice booming across the meadowland like God.

“You’ve made a friend of Alva,” Pax noted.

“I can really taste the tomato, it’s…” Ellis struggled to explain. “It actually tastes like a tomato—I mean the way they used to taste when I was a kid.”

“They changed?” Pax asked.

“Oh—yeah. They mucked genetically with all sorts of foods. Made them larger, more rugged, resistant to disease, and uniform so they’d sell and transport better, but in the process they ruined the taste and texture. In my time, tomatoes had all the flavor of cardboard.”

“With Makers, we don’t have those problems. Food designers focus on taste. They are as much an artist as any other.”

“Speaking of artists, I’m sorry I upset Vin.” Ellis wasn’t disturbed in the slightest and overjoyed to be eating alone with Pax, but Vin was Pax’s…friend? Lover? “Are you two…um…?” He had no idea how to say it and settled for “Roommates?”

Pax was lifting a fork of food and halted, looking uncomfortable. “We both—live here together—yes.” Pax lowered the fork and proceeded to rearrange the pasta on the plate.

“When you say together, what does that mean? Are you a couple?”

“Couple? I don’t understand.”

“Well, in my day most people who lived together were usually married. My wife’s name is Peggy, and we’ve been married for thirty-five years. But there were those who lived together before getting married, and some people considered that immoral. There was an even bigger stigma when people of the same sex lived together for romantic reasons, so they sometimes would claim that they were no more than roommates. You see, the term roommates didn’t suggest anything more than the sharing of living expenses. When I left, there was a big push for same-sex marriages, and, well…I was just wondering if you and Vin were married.”

“No, Ellis Rogers. There’s no such thing as marriage. My relationship with Vin is…unusual. People don’t live together anymore. Everyone has their own home. Two people never share the same living space—well, they do, but not permanently, you understand.”

“Why? Don’t people like each other? Fall in love, that sort of thing?”

“Certainly, but people also need time to be alone to work, to reflect, to think, to rest. We can always be with someone simply by opening a portal. Hollow World is like one big house where everyone has a private study or office separated by a single doorway. The rest is the shared space. Didn’t people in your day ever spend any time by themselves?”

Ellis thought about his garage. He’d spent more time in it than with Peggy. He also remembered some absurd statistic claiming that married couples actually spent no more than seventeen minutes a day with each other.

“People come together all the time. But with Vin and me, it’s…well…it’s complicated.”

Ellis knew he was missing something. Pax meant more than was said, but he couldn’t figure it out. Everything was hard to understand even when there was no pretense at diversion. Making guesses was almost useless. All he could do was draw on the past. There weren’t men and women anymore, but that didn’t mean relationships didn’t have the same dynamics. Maybe Pax was like one of those impressionable young girls who moved in with a prominent older man whom they saw as worldly. The way Pax spoke in such awe of Vin’s profession, maybe artists made the big bucks these days. Pax had certainly appeared subservient.

“Is this—” Ellis wanted to say his place, because Vin seemed like a man, and Ellis found it annoying to dance around the pronouns. “Is this Vin’s home?”

“We share it.”

“But it was originally Vin’s place, right? Vin took you in? That’s why you need permission to—”

“No—no, this is my home.” Pax chuckled. “Vin would never tolerate a vox like Alva.”

“Really? It’s huge.”

“There’s never been any restriction on size in Hollow World. That’s one of the benefits.”

“Well, it’s very nice.”

“Thank you.” Pax beamed. “Vin helped a lot, of course.”

“Oh—so he paid for a lot of it? Or do arbitrators make a lot of money?”

“Money? What’s money?”

“What’s money?”

“Alva?” Pax called. “Can you explain money, please?”

“Money is an old English word that referred to anything used to represent a standardized object of agreed value that was traded for goods and services.”

Pax looked stumped. “Could you simplify that?”

“You want something someone else has, so you trade something you have for what they have. You understand that, right?”

“Not really.”

“This was before the Maker was invented. It made it easier for everyone to agree on relative values of things. Trading becomes a matter of math—so many of one thing equals so many of something else—understand? Historically shells, salt, metals, and paper promissory notes were used before digital currency was adopted in the twenty-first century. Of course, the whole monetary system was discontinued in the late twenty-third century with the advent of the Three Miracles, which is why you sound so dumb right now. Didn’t they teach you anything at Bingham?”

“Oh wait.” Pax thought a second. “Gold was once used, right? And silver? They made little round disks with them. I saw some at a museum once.”

Ellis nodded. “Coins.”

“Okay, yeah. Wow, being with you is making me wish I paid more attention to ancient history. Who could predict I would need to know all that stuff?” Pax’s head shook. “No, we don’t have money anymore.”

“You don’t have money?” A fly buzzed his pasta and Ellis waved it away, wondering if it, too, was part of the illusion, and if so, why it had been added. There was such a thing as taking realism too far. “How can you not have money? How do you get things you need?”

Ellis had hoped to pay for medicine, or surgery, or whatever he might end up needing with his grandmother’s earrings, but he began to doubt that would be possible. He was getting ahead of himself, he knew. There was no guarantee they could help him. The future might have eliminated death for them—for the genetically altered—but could they do anything for the sick? Was it possible that medicine was just as obsolete as money?

“I don’t—”

“Excuse me, Pax,” Alva interrupted.

“Alva, Ellis Rogers was speaking. You shouldn’t—”

“It’s an emergency.”

Pax looked worried. “Please tell me it’s not another murder.”

“It’s not. It’s a white code message.”

“White?” Pax appeared stunned. “What the core is a geomancer contacting me for?”

“Do you want to hear it or argue?”

“Play it.”

A new voice boomed over the open field that sounded just like Pax’s except with a more confident, more formal tone. “Pax. I directed my vox to contact you right away with this prerecorded message in the event that someone other than myself has stolen my identity and falsely entered my home. Please visit immediately and speak to my vox for more information. Abernathy will allow your portal. Two things you need to know: First, the thief who stole my identity is in my home at this very moment. Second, you should be careful, for this thief has already killed me. Geo-24.”