Rewinder

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

My priorities are simple: survive, learn, fix.

I focus first on survival.

Several blocks from the library, I spot another 7-Eleven. The red, green, and white sign has become comforting and familiar in a world full of the unknown.

Upon entering, I find many customers waiting in a line to pay for the items they’ve selected. My first step is to get an understanding of the money used here in the United States of America, so I pretend to be interested in some of the goods around the front end of the counter. From there I have a perfect view of the clerk and each customer he helps.

The money seems to come in three different forms — paper, coins, and some kind of plastic card. The first two are just like money from home, only instead of the colorful notes we have, the type in use here seems to be uniformly green and white. I see denominations of one and five and what I think is twenty, though the last passes quickly between hands so I can’t be sure. The coins are too small for me to see their designations, but they probably won’t be too hard to figure out. The type I don’t fully understand is the plastic card. When used, it isn’t given to the clerk but run through a machine on the counter, and then kept by the customer. The cards also seem to come in a wide variety of colors. I decide to avoid them for now. Sticking with the less complicated notes and coins should be enough to get me through.

I leave before I overstay my welcome, wondering where I can get my hands on some money.

A bank is a possibility. If it works here like the ones I’ve known, it’ll have a vault where currency is kept. I’m suddenly thinking like a master criminal. I don’t like it, but it’s the only choice I have at the moment. Besides, when I fix everything, none of this will matter.

I walk around until I find a building with a sign on it reading BANK OF AMERICA. I peek through the windows but can’t see the vault. I need to visit during business hours, so I find a quiet alley, set my Chaser for 9:15 a.m., and huddle down next to a large rubbish bin as I jump.

A loud whining greets me on arrival, and is quickly joined by a low rumble and the sound of feet. I don’t even have time to get up before a man wearing gloves comes around the side of the bin.

He jerks to a stop when he sees me, then barks something in Spanish and waves his arm, making it clear he wants me to move. As I get out of the way, he pulls the bin from the wall and turns it at a ninety-degree angle. A large vehicle approaches from the other side and lifts the bin into the air.

I don’t stay to see what happens next.

Upon entering the bank, I note the similarities between this facility and the few I visited growing up, but there are differences as well. First among them is a wall of thick glass or plastic that sits above the counter where the clerks work, physically dividing them from the patrons. Holes are cut into these panels for speaking and passing information. It’s an obvious deterrent to robbery, and makes me wonder how many this bank has experienced.

I walk over to the line of patrons but don’t join it. I take a casual look around through the clear wall until I spot the vault. After placing my satchel on a counter, I pull my Chaser out just enough so that I can see the screen, and then use the destination calculator to figure out the location address for the vault.

I make the jump from behind the building the moment no one is around, timing my arrival for the middle of the previous night.

The vault is pitch black. The only light comes from the Chaser screen, and it’s barely strong enough for me to see a few feet at a time. Most of the room is lined with tiny numbered doors, each having two separate keyholes.

I walk around but all I find are more doors. Some are larger and require only a single key, but it all adds up to the same thing — no money out in the open that I can grab.

Taking cash from a bank is something that feels anonymous to me and won’t trouble my soul, but with that option closed, I’m forced into a less desirable choice.

I find a store-packed street called Ventura Boulevard — again, the quantity and variety of establishments astound me. I jump from closed store to closed store, hunting for money. Many have their own safes, and those that don’t seem to have had their tills emptied at closing time. That said, I’m able to find a few notes and coins hidden in desks and under counters. To temper my guilt, I limit my take to no more than ten United States of America dollars at each stop.

I’ve amassed $63 in paper bills, and 72 cents in coins — which, as I assumed, were easy to figure out — when a loud, repetitive alarm begins blaring in the store I’ve just entered. Not having come through a door, I’m not sure how I set it off, but I hop out immediately and decide to get by with what I have for now.

At a coffee shop about an hour after the sun comes up, I go in search of food, and walk into a place called The Homegrown Café. I’m shown to a table and given a menu that immediately confuses me. The items listed are things like: tofurky and tofu scramble wrap, seitan and cashew cheese omelet, and wheatgrass shake.

The waitress approaches a few moments later. “What can I get you?”

“Uh…” Hopelessly lost, I set down the menu. “Do you have coffee?”

“Sure. Milk?”

“Yes, please.”

“Soy or rice?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Milk. Soy or rice?”

Milk from soy or rice? How is that even possible? “I’d prefer cow.”

She frowns. “This is a vegan restaurant.”

Not seeing how that’s an answer to my question, I wait for her to say more. But when she doesn’t, I say, “Vegan?”

She closes her eyes in annoyance, then opens them again and points out the window. “I think what you’re looking for is over there.”

The new restaurant is called Starbucks Coffee.

When it’s my turn to order, I point at the glass cabinet and say, “May I please have one of those muffins, and a cup of coffee?”

“House blend?” the clerk asks.

“Um, okay.”

“Black or with milk?”

“Is it from a cow?”

“As far as I know,” he says with a smile. “We also have soy, if you’d prefer that.”

“No, the cow’s milk is fine. Thank you.”

I consume my meal at one of the tables, then ask a clerk who’s cleaning the area if he could tell me how to get to the central library. The guy, while kind, is unsure.

“No car?” an older customer sitting alone at a nearby table asks me after the clerk moves on.

“Car?” I say, not sure what he’s talking about.

He laughs. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Got rid of my last one four years ago. You got a bus pass, then?”

Am I to be hopelessly lost in my own language? No seems to be the safest answer, so that’s what I say.

“You a tourist?”

Realizing it’s a good cover, I say, “I am.”

“Where are you from?”

It’s amazing how simple conversations aren’t so simple when you have much to hide. “East.”

“East Coast?”

There’s a hopefulness in his voice that worries me. “Not quite.”

“Ah. Well, I got a sister up in Boston, is all. You ever been?”

“No.”

“So you’re looking for the central library?”

I nod.

“Here’s what you want to do.”

The bus turns out to be the same public transportation vehicles I noticed earlier. According to Isaac, my new friend, I’m to take the express to “Universal City,” and then something called “the metro” to “downtown.” He explains the details of paying and riding, and then I’m off.

Even though the bus is an express, it takes nearly an hour to reach Universal City. What amazes me during the journey is the sheer amount of land that’s been taken over by the city. While New Cardiff is not (was not/never existed as) a small city, parts of the valley the bus now takes me through are (were/never were) still used as farmland.

There’s something else I notice. I’m no engineer, but even to my untrained eyes, I can tell that the buildings I’m passing — especially those more than two or three stories tall — are considerably better built than those of the world I know.

I’m also finding it hard to pick out the caste differences of the people I see. This is something I could do in my sleep growing up, but here it’s not so easy. There are a few on the bus I’d categorize as belonging to one of the lower castes, but I’m not sure where the others fit.

The metro is similar to the tram system of New Cardiff. In fact, if I squint just right, I almost feel like I’m back home.

When I reach my stop, I take a moving stairway up from the station to ground level — downtown. If I was awed by the sights before, I’m struck silent now. Here, buildings rise dozens of stories into the sky. I’ve seen pictures and films of structures as high as these, but those buildings were all in London or Hamburg or Peking or Shanghai. There are none in the North America I’m from.

I get lost once, but with the help of a passing pedestrian, I finally find the library. After I enter, I can’t keep the grin from my face. Outside, the facility looks as if it has only three floors. Upon entering, I discover that’s an illusion. The library is huge, four floors aboveground, and — accessed via more moving stairways — four floors below.

According to the map I find, the history section is on the very bottom, so down I go.

When it’s announced that the library is closing, I give in to my pleading stomach and go in search of something to eat, fully intending once I finish to pop straight to the next morning when the library would open again. But as my hunger is sated, exhaustion takes its place.

The first hotel I find requires — for one night — five times the amount of money I have and something called a credit card, which I’m guessing is one of the plastic cards I saw at 7-Eleven.

Several blocks away I find a rundown place where the cost is only a fraction of the other amount, and if I’m willing to leave an extra twenty dollars, a credit card is not needed. I get to my third-floor room via a dirty, narrow lift. The few other residents I see I immediately identify as Nines, or maybe even unclassified drifters. This gives me an odd sense of comfort.

My room is small, thin-walled, and dusty, but I’m too tired to care. As I start to drift off, I hear a faint triple beep, but before I can figure out where it came from, I’m out.

The next morning I’m at the doors of the library several minutes before they open at ten a.m. There are others waiting, too. After a few minutes, I get the sense I’m being watched, so I cautiously look around. There’s a group of older people and a few others closer to my age, but if any of them was looking at me, none is now.

A triple beep causes me to look at my satchel, and I remember the same noise from the previous evening. I lift the flap and see a message glowing on my Chaser’s screen. I move over to the side where no one can see into the bag, then open it wide enough for me to read the message.

I’ve never received a power message before. Usually, my chaser is charged between missions. But I’ve made a lot of trips since it was last plugged in, and since I don’t have a charger with me, I’ll have to be careful from now on and take no unnecessary trips.

I hear the door lock turn so I hurriedly close my bag, and soon I’m back in the basement of the library.

As my research takes me from one book to the next, time begins to have little meaning. One of the first things I learn is that there’s no mention anywhere about the day Washington was supposed to have been captured. There are other references to close escapes, however, but the rebellion leader proves to be elusive and is never apprehended.

Though I take no pride or credit for what he has done, I know that all he’s accomplished since that night in 1775 has only been possible because of my ineptitude. I’m thoroughly convinced now that if I stop myself from entering the Three Swans Tavern, all will return to normal.

This is the moment I should go back to and fix, so those I have unintentionally erased will live again and the empire will be restored.

But I don’t leave. I don’t even attempt to move my chair back. This world I have unwittingly created has started to fascinate me, and I want to learn more before I banish it.

I read about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I learn of a second war with the British in 1812, and that slavery continued in America until the 1860s, ending only after a deadly civil war engulfed the nation. I learn of assassinations and innovations and the rights of women. I find out that America and the United Kingdom are allies now, fighting on the same side in the world wars I learned about in the other library.

There are more wars for America, smaller in scale, in Asia and in what I know as Arabia but they call the Middle East. And internal struggles that often revolve around something referred to as civil rights — the idea that everyone in a society should have the same rights. It’s a concept I wish were true in my world, but I fear would never even be considered.

Then there’s this thing called the American Dream. While it’s a simple concept, it’s difficult for me to accept at first. By the standards of this “dream,” it doesn’t matter where you start out in life, you can rise as high as you want if you put your mind to it and really work for it. To me, “dream” seems the right word at first, but as I read on, I find it’s more than wishful thinking. There are stories about rulers of this country coming from humble beginnings, leaders of industry starting with next to nothing, and others fighting against the life they were born into to become doctors and writers and professors and community leaders.

For every one who has achieved this American Dream, there are probably many more who have tried and failed, but this concept is still a million times better than the entrenched social structure I know.

Every night when the library closes, I purchase the cheapest food I can find before returning to my hotel, and every morning at ten a.m. I’m with the first group in. Not a day passes without me experiencing the sensation of being watched, but when I look around, I never catch anyone. It’s unsettling. Other than that, though, I lose myself in a past that should not be.

The shocks keep coming. In Great Britain, instead of reigning for less than two years, Queen Victoria remained on the throne for over sixty-three. All the subsequent kings and queens I was forced to memorize as a schoolboy never wore the crown. Then there were the political parties: Labour and Conservative. Labour doesn’t exist in my world, and the Conservative Party may share common Tory beginnings with the North Party, but its ideology is nowhere near as extreme. The Norths don’t exist at all in this new world, and as far as I can tell, they never did.

On Fridays and Saturdays the library closes at 5:30 p.m., so I spend those evenings walking around downtown, trying to absorb all I’ve learned. It’s an impossible task. My head swims with historical events that seem like fiction to me.

On Sunday, I arrive at ten a.m. again, only to realize on this day the library doesn’t open for another three hours. I curse myself for not reading the sign, and curse again at the library for having reduced Sunday hours. I’m anxious to get back in. The previous afternoon, after guidance from one of the librarians, I moved up one level to the social science section and began learning more about current culture. The amount of information available is overwhelming but so very fascinating, and I can’t wait to pick up where I left off.

“They open late on Sundays.”

I turn to find a girl about my age, with short black hair and pale skin, standing a dozen feet away. Peeking out from the collar of her black cotton shirt—T-shirt, I have learned — is a tattoo of several tiny birds. Her pants are blue jeans — another phrase I’ve picked up — ripped in a few places that would’ve made me think she was poor, but I’ve seen others wearing this style who, from their jewelry and other accessories, are clearly well off, so I can’t tell what her status is. There’s something vaguely familiar about her, so I figure I must have seen her around the library.

“Thank you. I know,” I say, and then turn back toward the door. I’ve been very careful to keep all conversations to a minimum so that I don’t get tripped up.

But apparently she’s not ready to end our talk. “You a student or something?”

I nod without looking back.

“I thought so.”

Not wanting to give her the chance to ask anything more, I adjust my satchel’s strap and walk off down the sidewalk. I might as well get something to eat. I used up the last of my cash on dinner last night, so first thing this morning I made another circuit of stores, using the same rules from before. I came back with nearly two hundred dollars and an eighth of a percent less power on my Chaser.

I go to a little café down the street where I’ve eaten a couple times before, and take my food and coffee to a table by the window. I’ve taken only a bite of my croissant when the door opens and the girl from the library walks in.

“You’re not using both these chairs, are you?” she asks, approaching my table.

I want to say yes but am unsure of the proper etiquette, so I remove my satchel from the second chair and put it on the floor next to me. “You may have it.”

I hope she’ll take it somewhere else, but she removes the bag she’s carrying from her back and sits down.

I busy myself with my meal, hoping she gets the hint I want to be alone.

She doesn’t. “That looks good.”

“It is,” I tell her between bites.

“Kind of makes me wish I haven’t already eaten.”

I respond with a noncommittal grunt.

For a few moments, she says nothing, and I’m thinking maybe I can finish and get out of here before she opens her mouth again.

“You are a student, right?” she asks. “I mean, why would you be spending all day every day for a week in the library?”

I put another piece of croissant in my mouth, wondering how the hell she knows this.

“I’m guessing since you spent most of your time in the basement, you’re a history major. Me, I’m pre-med…well, I will be when I get into a university. I’m going to LACC right now.”

I don’t know what that is, nor do I care.

“Actually, I’m not in school this semester,” she says. “I’m taking it off. A little break…okay, a forced break. One of my teachers and I didn’t agree on the grade I got last semester, and he apparently was unable to appreciate the way I expressed my dissatisfaction. They call it a semester suspension. I call it a miscarriage of justice.”

The half cup of coffee I have left I’m happy to leave behind, but I need the nutrition the croissant provides. Two more bites and I’ll be done.

She holds out her hand. “My name’s Iffy.”

As much as I want to ignore her, I can’t. I give her hand a quick shake and say, “Hi.”

“Is that your name?”

I frown. “It’s Denny.”

As I glance at her, I’m struck again by the feeling of familiarity. I know I’ve never met her before but there is something about her. Something more than maybe having glimpsed her across the lobby of the library.

“Uh, hello? You okay there, Denny?”

I blink and realize I’ve been staring at her. “Sorry. I’m, um…it’s just…” I push my chair back and stand up. “Nice meeting you.”

“You’re going already?” she asks as I start to walk away. “You haven’t finished your coffee.”

“It’s yours if you want it,” I tell her, and then leave the shop.

I am back at the library at one p.m. sharp, and am deep in a book about the “rise of social media” on the “Internet,” when someone sits down on the other side of the table. Enthralled as I am by a computer network that connects people from around the world, I register the person’s presence only on a subconscious level.

In my timeline, we have our version of computers, but the network through which data can be obtained is tightly controlled, and as far as I know does not extend beyond the borders of the empire. Here, you can witness live events happening half a world away, read “posts” by anyone affected by revolt and protest, or by people just discussing their lives.

It’s hard to explain how this makes me feel. I know from my research that the people of this reality are not free to do whatever they want. Some are close to achieving that, while many others are restricted by heavy-handed political rule or sheer poverty. Or both. But in my world, almost everyone lives under heavy-handed rules, and there are at least as many poor as there are here.

“If you’re writing a research paper, why aren’t you taking any notes?”

I glance up and am surprised to find Iffy sitting across from me.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m busy,” I tell her.

“I can see you’re busy. I’ve seen you be busy for several days now.”

So, I was being watched.

“That probably sounded a little creepy, didn’t it?” she says, then pushes her chair away from the table. “Sorry I bothered you.”

With that, she’s gone.

I know I should be troubled by the fact she’s been watching me, but the sense that I somehow know her stays with me and makes me almost wish she didn’t leave. It takes several minutes, but I’m finally able to get back to work.

Unfortunately, not only does the library open late on Sundays, but it also closes early, so at five p.m. I’m forced to leave with the rest of the afternoon crowd. When I walk outside, Iffy is standing there.

“That croissant was a long time ago,” she says as she falls in step beside me. “I bet you’re hungry.”

Though a part of me is secretly glad to see her, I need to keep to myself. “I don’t know what you want, but you’ve got the wrong person.”

“Guy,” she says.

“What?”

“Wrong guy. That sounds more natural.”

Frowning, I say, “Whichever way, the statement still applies.”

“You have an interesting way of speaking. Where are you from?”

“Please, leave me alone.”

I pick up my pace but she matches me stride for stride.

“Okay, maybe that was prying too much,” she says. “But you’ve got to eat. Do you like Peruvian?”

“I’m not hungry, thank you.”

“Aw, come on. Now you’re straight out lying. That’s not nice.”

I make the mistake of glancing at her, and for half a second lose myself in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say as I pull my gaze away.

“Then make it up to me by buying me dinner. It’s not expensive, trust me.”

I stop and turn to her. “Why are you doing this?”

“We both need to eat, don’t we?”

“No, I mean, why are you talking to me?”

She hesitates and then looks at the ground as she says, “You seem interesting.”

“Now you’re the one who’s lying.”

“I’m not. You do seem interesting. And we do both need to eat.”

She tents her eyebrows and smiles in a way that pushes her left cheek up. I stare at her, telling myself I need to walk away, but I don’t. “Okay. I’ll buy you dinner.”