ALLISON WUNDERLAN

Chapter 7. / Wowie Zowie

Light Between the Trees / 2022 / Photo by Russell C. Smith

It felt as if I hadn’t slept in over a hundred years. A torrent of kaleidoscopic images exploded in my mind. I fell down a long underground tunnel, plummeting deeper and deeper into the land of sleep. I wandered in and out of strange dream rooms—some hilarious, a few scary, and a lot of them a huge smushed together mixture of adventurous and bizarre to behold. From out of the many, one dream stood out.

I held a white plastic transistor radio up to my ear. The radio played White Rabbit, and I was with Carly-Barley and Jim in Golden Gate Park near the Japanese Tea Garden, laughing and making jokes, enjoying the sunny spring day. I sensed how drastic changes were just around the corner. A shadow formed across the sky, followed by a loud crack of thunder… Rain clouds appeared above, and the three of us were stuck in a downpour. What fell from the sky wasn’t rain. Instead, small, metal worms came zigzagging down from the dark sky. The metal worms plopped onto our damp hair and slithered alongside our faces until they crawled into our ear holes and nostril openings, making squishing sounds while tunneling inside.

While squirming and screaming at the extreme ickiness of having metal worms crawl into my head, a large, military-looking truck sped toward us. A half-man and half-robot soldier jumped out of the passenger’s side door and aimed a rifle at us. Shots zinged past our ears, and we ran into a dense and dark forest, which hadn’t even been there seconds before. I was relieved to have gotten away from the soldiers until I turned and looked at my friends.

Jim and Carly-Barley’s faces had become shiny metal masks, and when I peered into their silver faces, I saw my own metal face reflected back. I shook my head as hard as I could, hoping this would turn my face back to normal. I wanted our sunny day in the park to return, and for the world to be a friendly place again.

Moments later, I was alone and heading along a path through the same dense forest. The path took me to a small cottage under a tree so tall you couldn’t see the top of it. I stood before the cottage’s wooden door, rapped lightly on it, and wasn’t at all surprised when a mysterious black woman peeked out from the doorway.

“Are you the girl from the past?” the woman asked.

“Yes. I guess I am.”

“Please enter my home, and I’ll help you take off your metal face,” she said, as if it were something she did all the time.

I went inside.

“Are you the Prez?” I said. “The real one, not a clone?”

A light shone out of her eyes. “They told me you were a clever one. I’m a secret. A well-kept secret.”

“OK, I can keep a secret,” I said. “But where are my friends? I’m not sure I want to stay here if I can’t bring them along.”

The black woman reached out and stroked my metal cheek, then moved her fingers down along my shoulders. I felt my skin change back from metal to flesh, and all the metal worms that had wriggled into my head slithered out of my ears emitting high-pitched shrieks as they fell onto the ground...

“Mmm, ugh, where, who…” I said.

“Hey, are you awake?” a girl asked while she shook my shoulder.

A pair of curious brown eyes stared down at me. Her dark brown hair was cut short, and she had an open, round face and full lips.

“My name’s Perfecta,” she said. “Zak thought you’d be comfortable in my room. He knew I had an extra bed.”

I propped myself up on my elbows. I’d slept on a flat mattress with my head on a puffy flower-decorated pillow. I’d been so tired I’d slept in my new clothes. When I remembered running with Miles’ as the screaming alarm went off and sent everyone deeper underground, down to Lower DownBelow, and then drinking coffee with Zak and Miles.

Perfecta sat nearby on a round lime green cushion. The rest of her room was covered with yellow sheets tacked to the walls. Her ceiling had been painted with pointy leaves and plants and bugs. Her VidScreen tuned to the nature-overview channel I’d glimpsed last night after watching GovNews. The sound turned low so the voices sounded like jumbled mumbling.

“This is a good room to wake up in,” I said while sitting up. “What do you do here, Perfecta?”

“I’m mostly the cook, and the gardener. I spend part of each day teaching a few other kids how to garden under wide spectrum grow lights.”

At the mention of food my stomach grumbled. “Excuse me, but when you brought up food…I realized I’m stomach growling hungry.” Time travel was much more strenuous than I had first imagined it to be. So far not a lot of sitting around and watching cool future things float by high up in the sky. Instead, it was time spent escaping from things that wanted to kill me.

Perfecta’s eyes widened. “Oh, of course. I’ll get you a bowl of food. Back in a sec.”

She rushed out of her room, and was back in ten minutes with a large bowl of potatoes, tofu, and broccoli, flavored with soy sauce and hot pepper flakes.

I took a bite and nodded thanks at her. “Thanks, this is good.”

Perfecta watched me eat. “Is it true what they say about you?”

“What do they say?” I asked around a mouthful of breakfast.

“They say you came here from the past. From LateTwentieth. Is it true?”

“Yes, I’m from the year 1970. I arrived yesterday through my Uncle’s time machine.”

“Oh, wowie zowie!” Perfecta said. “Really?”

“Yeah, and it’s still lots more wowie that I can wrap my mind around,” I said. “Although it’s getting more real by the minute.”

“When you’re through eating I’m supposed to take you to Rayne’s room,” she said. “Unless you need more rest.”

“I’m fine. I’d like to see Rayne again too. She’d better be ready for a ton of questions…”

Rayne opened her door a crack and waved me inside. She wore a black and silver headband that made her hair poof out perfectly. She slumped onto a midnight blue couch, staring intently into the large VidScreen on the wall while jiggling her foot up and down.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked, without turning her head.

“One of the most restful sleeps I’ve ever had.”

Even with dark circles under her eyes, she looked stunning. And Rayne seemed jittery.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you could use some…”

“Shhh,” she said and pointed at the VidScreen. “I’ve been monitoring the news feeds to see if any newer news has been reported about UpForever. So far no direct connection’s been made between grown-ups staying awake for six weeks at a stretch and UpForever being dumped in the Los Angeles water supply…”

“You mean the drug Zak made?”

Rayne turned and grinned at me. “Yes, Zak’s super concentrated concoction is continuing to make its mark on our first test case city. Zachariah created the perfect weapon. Part of its beauty is it’s so concentrated that only or two canisters of the stuff are enough to dose several million people. Besides expanding our L.A. operation, we’re going to take down Portland and Seattle. Two critical targets ahead of us. When completed, we’ll have taken out the Olders in the major cities of the entire West Coast”

GovNews showed me my first live (on VidScreen) glimpse of the city now called Newest New York.

She glanced sideways at me.

“Strange to see it live,” I said. “Half of New York City really is under water.”

Rayne shrugged. “Has been for more than 60 years.”

“When…did it…?”

“Global Sea Rise event of 2099. It’s in the HistoryChips. I thought Miles FastForwarded your current knowledge database.”

“A lot’s happened,” I said. “Massive amounts of a lot.”

“You’ll pick it up. With a fresh perspective. Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’ve decided to fully accept you as a real human girl. Even if I may think time travel is a stretch, I’ve seen too many unbelievable events happening not to be open to one more dose of presently unknown but possible. As such, you’re going to be on the crew heading up to the Northwest. I’m making you the leader of the mission.”

“Wow. OK. Not sure what to say. A few nights ago, you thought I was a clone or a spy.”

“Oh, never mind that. We’re going through an intense period. You’re one of us now. Zak and Miles are sure about you, and they can watch your back. This is how you’re going to join us—by leading a critical mission.”

“Are you sure?” I said, feeling my palms beginning to dampen. It felt good to be accepted by Rayne, but the words ‘big mission’ carried a heavy weight. “I come from another time and place. I grew up with the whole peace and love vibe, you know, not this future world in a chaotic mess you kids are dealing with…”

Tilting her head to the side, Rayne said, “For whatever reason, whether you made the biggest mistake of your life, or accidentally fell into a pile of good luck, you’re here with us. So, I want you to get out and be a part of our world. Not view it on a VidScreen from the safety of Miles’ lab. Understood?”

“Let’s hope I fell into the pile of good luck.”

Rayne grinned. “Yeah, let’s hope so. After you went to sleep I sent Zak and a few kids to Berkeley, where he found you. To bring your Time Machine back here so Miles could run tests on it. Maybe find out something useful.”

“The time machine is here? How? I thought it was damaged beyond repair.” Could I really be returning to my timeline?

“Doesn’t sound like it. According to the tests Miles ran this morning, the Laundromat dryer gave off heat signatures it shouldn’t be capable of, created a mini-vortex that caused a TyperPad to rearrange its letters and numbers. Also, it made a section of the floor underneath it disappear for five minutes.”

“Holy shit, it’s working?”

“Not well enough to put a kid into, but I believe Miles will get it there. If it isn’t a Time Machine it’s a good way for him to FastForward his understanding of how it works, exploring ways of using your tech to transform new methods of upgrading our TechWeaponry. Either one’s fine by me. A strong leader has got to be curious about the world around her, or she’s not going to be much of a leader. I may not be as smart as Miles, but if I can’t appreciate his smarts then I’m an idiot.”

Rayne walked to the newest-looking and most push-pin cluttered map. “Come over here, Allison.” She ran her finger up and down the West Coast, first circling, then landing on San Fran Island.

“This is us. Under Old Chinatown, around 2,332 kids, at last head count—ranging in ages from 6 to 19.”

Rayne pointed at the map to Berkeley. “Last night you heard about Berkeley and Oakland. Not that pretty at all what happened to the East Bay. But soon the East Bay Military GovBase will come in handy to Revolution Evolution Underground. And as for right now…”

She pointed at LA. “Tonight, a crew of twenty-five is heading down to add to our numbers in Los Angeles. They’ll be dumping more UpForever into the drinking water. There’s a network of just over two thousand of us in L.A. and our aim is to dose every Older within the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. We’ve made significant inroads. Now we’re ready to dose the entire region.”

She slid her finger up the coastline until it reached Seattle. “Seattle. Next largest west coast city after San Fran Island. The largest city in the USS near the Canadian border. Lots of reasons to target Seattle—and release UpForever into the adult population. According to Cody, the Commander of Revolution Evolution Underground Seattle, our mission comes at an excellent time. Seems some of the wealthier Olders are constructing a massive dome south of downtown Oldtown Seattle. Building their DomeHome for when the shit comes down. Or so they think. We need to figure a way to MegaDose the dome’s air supply as well as the internal water supply.”

I cleared my throat. “How does this stuff work on people?’

“Scrambles the wires in their brains, along with the human sleep cycle. Flips the switch entirely on body chemistry, and the time of night when your average healthy adult would normally feel like going sleepy-bye—they get a second wind, followed by a third, fourth, and tenth wind, and before they know it, they’ve accumulated so much wind in their sails—they can never sleep again. At least their brains tell them so, and their rewired internal systems goes along for the ride. Already-weak adult human nervous systems can collapse in a matter of months, others may go without sleep for up to half a year. Anyone who goes for months on end without sleep accumulates a build-up of physical and mental side-effects—fatigue, hallucinations, forgetting even the simplest info, numerous nervous conditions—and eventually, death by insomnia.”

“Zak’s UpForever can do all that?”

“Every bit of it.” Rayne tilted her head to the side and smiled at me.

“Seems like a weird plan for taking over a country,” I said. I remembered once when Carly-Barley and I had stayed awake in her room all night when her mom was out at a party. It wasn’t planned or anything. We just laughed ourselves silly, watched the late movie, ate a ton of chocolate, and had such a good time that before we knew it…it was dawn.

“Possibly so.” Rayne jutted out her bottom lip and rocked her head from side to side. “But you’ve got to admit, it’s nothing anyone in power has ever tried before.”

“Is the idea to take over without too much violence?” I asked

Rayne rubbed her hands together. “Don’t believe for a sec we aren’t capable of using weapons when the situation calls for it. We’d rather overthrow the country through mind control and just plain old outsmarting the Olders. When force is called for, we’ll use it. First thing you’re going to do is spend a few weeks out on night patrols with Zak. Afterwards, you’ll be ready to lead a mission, and bring a crew of kids back safely.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yup,” she said. “No better teacher than experience.”

I stared at the pushpins stuck in Seattle and Portland, feeling a tingle in my palms. It felt like the tingling of adventure, and I couldn’t wait to see what those dots on the map looked like in real life.