ALLISON WUNDERLAN

Chapter 2. Allison Gets Rescued by Zak

Light Between the Trees / Photo by RCS / 2022

Finally, the spinning slowed down. But my heart thumped in my chest a million miles an hour. I crawled out of the time machine and fell on the ground, dizzy from tossing in circles. It was nighttime, with only a streetlight or two in the distance. “It’s OK,” I said to myself. “There’s no way the time machine worked.” I stared at the shape the Time Machine was in – there was smoke curling out the back, and the smell of scorched metal hung in the air. Every wire attached to the Time Machine was frizzled and burnt.

I was in a vacant lot, next to a half-demolished brick building. Tangled weeds poked up from the ground and nighttime shadows seemed to be alive. Shivers crawled up the back of my neck. My garage was gone. My house was gone. And the street I lived on was gone too. Wherever I was, everything I knew had completely vanished.

Leaning over, I peered inside the time machine and sensed a warm rushing energy. I was glad Uncle Alex had thought to pad the inside of the dryer. All the bouncing around during the time trip hadn’t exactly been comfortable, but I was in pretty much the same condition getting out as when I’d gotten in. I was in good shape, but I sure couldn’t say the same for the time machine. Whatever wires and circuits had made it work had been fried.

I walked away from the time machine and into an alley behind a falling down building, and peeked around the corner. My suburban neighborhood had been replaced with a mostly deserted city block, and lots of empty spots where houses long ago stood. In the distance, were a couple of short, squat buildings, and odd-shaped light poles twice as tall as the ones I’d left behind. These streetlights gave off a green glow instead of bright yellow. The eerie silence all around me was enough to creep out the creepiest creep. “This is so not cool,” I said to myself.

There were maybe a million questions I could’ve asked, but only one important one: What year was I in?

While wishing I knew how to repair a time machine, a voice started shouting.

“Identify! Identify! Identify!” It kept repeating in a mechanical-sounding voice.

What the hell now?

It got closer, and instead of “Identify” it began saying, “Identify now! Identify now! Identify now!” Flying through the alley at breakneck speed, and coming toward me.

Instincts took over and I ran away from the voice as fast as I could. I stopped at the end of the alley. Gulping in a lungful of air, and wiping beads of sweat from my forehead. Wow, why was it so hot and humid at night? It had been a cool spring evening in the Berkeley I’d left in 1970.

“Identify now!” the voice shouted.

I glanced over my shoulder. The yelling had come from a flying head. Wonderful, the first thing I meet after traveling through time is a loudmouthed flying head. The head’s sharp eyes, snarling mouth, and knitted brow didn’t seem at all friendly. “Identify now!” it shouted as it got closer and closer.

Clearly, the head could zoom along much faster than me. There was no way I could outrun it. Besides, what could a flying head do to me? Even a pissed-off flying head.

I spun around and faced the head. It screeched to a dead stop – inches away from my nose. The head’s neck looked like the neck of a department store mannequin’s neck, if it had been chopped off and sealed underneath with flesh-colored plastic and metal.

With its beady eyes fixed on mine, it said, “Thank you for complying. Your actions will be noted in your permanent record.”

A metal cord shot out from the neck’s bottom and whizzed around behind my head. A hard chunk of plastic or something at the end of the cord kept poking at me through my hair.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Quit doing that, you crazy thing. Whatever you are!”

In a frustrated whine, the head said: “Unable to insert into PlugIn for positive ID. Unable to insert into Plu…”

The flying head never finished its next sentence. A skinny boy with dark brown hair and a worn-out leather jacket stepped out of a doorway and smacked the head with a metal pipe. Then he smashed it a second time, and kicked the flying head down the alley. The head bounced onto a pile of bricks, sputtering a bright shower of electrical sparks from its nose and ears.

“Holy shit! What the hell was that?” I asked.

“Damn Trackers,” the boy said. “They can be annoying.”

“Was it real?” I asked grabbing his jacket sleeve.

“Of course it’s real,” he said. “And now it’s real dead.”

I stared down at the sparking and sputtering flying head, now “dead” according to the kid who’d whacked it with a pipe.

I grabbed him by the wrist. “It was trying to jab me in the back of my head? Why?”

“Normal stuff. Checking for your PlugIn…”

Yeah, real freaking normal, I thought.

“Oh, I’m Zak, by the way…” Zak shook my hand and gave me a lopsided grin. He had a thin face and his dark hair flew out from his head with a mind of its own.

“I’m Allison,” I said. “I just got here from….here.” Which I realized made no sense to anyone but me.

“From where?” he asked.

“Um, nevermind,” I said. “I’ll tell you later.”

Zak nodded and shot me a puzzled stare. “OK. C’mon, let’s grab a cab.”

“Hey, thanks, I’m glad you knocked that flying head thing to pieces, but I don’t even know you. Where are you taking me?”

“San Fran Island, Chinatown.”

“You mean San Francisco?” This was good news. San Francisco was still there. Here.

“Be a retrohead…call the city whatever you want. But let’s go. Another Tracker could be in the area…”

“Why should I go with you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Look around. You’re an easy target here in Berkley Flats. And the Gov doesn’t take to kindly to kids destroying Trackers. Reason enough?”

We hurried through several blocks full of empty houses and boarded-up storefronts, running until we reached an intersection and Zak spotted a car up ahead of us.

“There! Up ahead!” he yelled.

A compact, bubble-top car with fish-eye headlights rolled down the middle of the street. It looked like what a VW Bug would look like if you smushed it in sideways, crunched it from back to front, pulled the roof up, and added more windows all around so you’d have a 360-degree view of everything. Zak ran across the street, waving and shouting. The driver stopped at the corner and slid down his side window.

“Yeah, where you going?” The driver asked. He looked about 12 years old, had long purple and green hair that had never been introduced to a comb, and wore dark sunglasses. A ripped T-shirt covered his thin chest. Low bass rumbled from his backseat.

“We need a lift to Chinatown,” Zak said, into the driver’s window.

“How much you got?”

“A hundred FoodCredits.”

“Are you nutso crazoid? I don’t take passengers across Bay Bridge unless they can toss me at least four hundred FoodCredits. You’re out of luck.”

He started to go.

Zak leaned in closer to the driver. “Wait!”

“Yeah?” The driver eyed him.

“I can get two hundred more once we get to San Fran Island. Someone owes me.”

“Just cause someone ‘owes you’ don’t mean someone wants to pay you.” The driver laughed and pointed at me. “What about the girl with you? She got any FoodCredits?”

I shook my head. “Nope, no FoodCredits on this girl…”

“No prob. I’ll get you the other two hundred. Besides, doesn’t seem like anyone’s lining up to offer you biz. We got a deal or what?”

The driver hesitated for a second, then flipped his thumb at the backseat. Zeke handed the guy partial payment and grinned at me as we got in.

The cab rolled along—through dilapidated neighborhoods, and across The Bay Bridge—toward downtown San Francisco. We passed only one other vehicle. Flying through the night sky far above us at an intersection. Just like in The Jetsons cartoon. I leaned back in the seat and stared out the rear window as its bright yellow rear lights streaked out of sight.

Zak glanced at me sideways and said, “Gov SkyRyder on patrol.”

“Oh, yeah, sure…” I mumbled. Of course. Strange flying things are everywhere.

Berkeley had been closed-up and deserted, except for the three of us in the car and the bizarre pissed-off head, which was weird enough. But my breath caught in my throat at the sight of an only half lit-up San Francisco skyline. The single thought, “What year is this?” ran through my mind on fast little legs, spinning in circles. Hundreds of miles an hour. The good news was Uncle Alex’s time machine worked, even though I was 99 percent sure it wouldn’t. The bad news was I’d landed in an upside-down version of my time that made no sense. And I realized I hadn’t remembered to feed Buggs, and everything else I’d left undone would never get done. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach when I thought about how far away I was from Carly-Barley and Jim and my Uncle Alex. Or, maybe none of this was happening. Maybe I’d eaten a bad can of tuna for dinner, and I was in a hospital room having my stomach pumped, and in the morning Carly-Barley would be sitting next to my bed. Holding my hand, smiling and joking. If I hadn’t been sitting in the back of a bubble-shaped car zipping toward San Francisco with two strange kids I didn’t know, I probably would’ve been screaming my head off.

Our driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Where’d you find blondie? They’re getting as rare as birds. Must have some mega wicked mojo to find the only blonde girl within five hundred miles.”

I caught sight of my hair in the driver’s rearview mirror. It was still sticking out from the dryer’s static electricity on the left side. Lovely. I reached up and combed it with my fingers.

“Yeah, that’s me” Zak said. “Wicked Mojo Man.”

I turned to Zak and silently mouthed, “Blondie?”

We sped into the city, past boarded-up stores in Union Square, and Chinatown Gate, and Zak guided the driver through four or five sharp left and right turns until we pulled into a dark alley behind a warehouse. Great. I went from one crummy alley to another in the space of half an hour. Step into a Time Machine and emerge to tour greasy alleyways of the future. Wasn’t exactly how I’d pictured spending Earth Day eve. Hanging out on Telegraph Avenue with Carley-Barly had been in the plans, but like they say, plans change. This was all so far beyond ‘plans change’ I felt like I needed a whole new brain to assimilate everything.

Zak opened the door, and the driver jumped out and held out his arm in front of Zak.

“You owe me,” he said.

“Yeah. And I need to go inside to collect,” Zak said.

“Where?” The driver glanced around the alley.

“Here. Inside.” Zak pointed at a rusting metal door.

“She stays,” the driver said.

“No way!” I said.

“Yeah,” Zak said. “Not going to happen.”

The driver peered at Zak over his dark glasses. “Maybe you and her will zip through the building and I’ll never see my credits.”

“Trust me, I’ll be back to pay you,” Zak said.

“Trust? No such animal left on this planet. OK, Blondie goes with you, but leave me something worth something to hold onto.”

Zak reached into his back pocket and pulled out a bent photograph in a plastic sleeve. He passed it to the driver.

“A HoloPhoto of Prez Clarice Oats? What good’s this to me?”

“Some collectors are paying up to fifty thousand GovBills for a verifiable picture of the Prez. Real money—not FoodCredits.”

“How come?” The driver scratched his chin.

“In case you haven’t heard, she’s been cloned, and the actual Prez is in a secret underground bunker, and isn’t around to be photographed, holoscanned, or digitized anymore,” Zak said.

Weirdness on top of weirdness, and on top of everything, cloned presidents?

“OK, maybe I half believe this crazy rumor,” the driver said. “But if you don’t get back to me in ten minutes with my payment…well, let’s just say I know your faces.”

“Don’t worry,” Zak said, grabbing onto my hand.

The inside of the warehouse smelled like concrete dust and grease. All around us stood tall metal shelves loaded up with broken plates and cups, and wooden crates filled with disintegrating bricks. What ceiling lights there were gave off hints of light in random pools, barely lighting the space.

We reached an ancient elevator at the far end of the warehouse. Zak pressed a floor number and the elevator moved downwards with grinding slowness. It dropped down, and then down some more, deeper down, and even further down, until it squealed to a stop. We came to a thick wooden door with a crumbling postcard of San Francisco tacked on it. He pushed a buzzer and waved up at a camera above our heads.

We entered, and Zak and I stepped out onto a catwalk overlooking a warehouse full of kids. The space below us was enormous – large enough to contain a couple of two-story buildings. I followed Zak down the metal stairs.

Hundreds of kids were busily drawing plans on big white boards with markers, taking photos of maps, performing some type of karate class off in one corner, talking to small round objects that fit in their hands and staring into screens set inside metal boxes. The kids were of every color and size and shape, and everyone in the room was a kid, none looking older than eighteen. Not an adult among them. Walls were painted bright yellow and sky blue, with giant TV screens on some of the walls. In every direction I turned – there were bright lights and weird jangly music and kids staring into screens and electronic boxes like the ones Uncle Alex had in our garage, except these were much larger.

As soon as she spotted us, a tall girl with long black hair, and heavy black boots got up from behind a wooden desk next to the nearest wall and stomped over to us.

Before Zak could saying anything, she said, “Zacharia are you crazy? You know the protocol. She could be a GovSpy.”

“Rayne, this is Allison,” Zak said.

“Where’d she come from?” Rayne asked.

I said, “The past.”

Rayne said, “Where?”

Zak jumped in. “I was scavenging for tubes and wires out in Berkeley Flats, and I saved her from a Tracker. She seems OK, so far…”

“Seems OK!” Rayne’s eyes widened. “How long have you known her?”

“Half an hour,” Zak said.

Rayne squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.

“Hey, first things first,” Zak said. “I’ve got a cabbie waiting upstairs who may be sympathetic to our cause. I need to pay him two hundred of our counterfeit FoodCredits for giving us a lift across The Bridge.”

“Understood,” Rayne said through gritted teeth. “Then get back here and meet me in my office. Blondie and I are going to have us a talk.”

Again, with the blondie thing. I stared hard at Rayne and said, “For your information, my name’s Allison, not Blondie. Please keep that in mind for future reference.”

“Ooh, she speaks,” Rayne said. “Zachariah, get up top and hurry back. Allison—you follow me.”