ALLISON WUNDERLAN

Chapter 3. She Is Who She Says She Is

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

As soon as we entered Rayne’s room, a big kid knocked on the door and pulled her away to deal with an emergency. “Stay put!” she said over her shoulder.

“Where could I possibly go?” I shouted to the door she’d slammed after her.

I was way too freaked out to sit and do nothing, so I got up and explored her room. The main thing my eye landed on was a green wall covered with maps. Dozens of large maps of the world with hundreds of multicolored pushpins spread out across them. A tattered and yellowing map outlined what I knew as the United States. Alongside this map were more maps of a newer country called the Unified Society of States. The odd thing was this new country was located in the exact same place my United States used to be.

The longer I gazed at the outlines of the Unified Society of States, the more my stomach twisted into tightly bunched knots. Maps of the Unified Society of States showed large sections of the East Coast, Southeast, and areas up and down the West Coast, to be missing. All of Florida below Jacksonville, most of Washington, D.C., half of Los Angeles, and low-lying areas of San Francisco (San Fran Island), Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. were underwater. Tallahassee had a beach. So did San Antonio and Jackson, Mississippi. New Orleans wasn’t even on the map. Geographically speaking, I wasn’t at all that far from Berkeley, but through time and space I was light years away. That much was certain. Whatever our little Earth Day celebration back home was supposed to prevent, had failed. This future version of the United States was a gigantic mess.

I sat at the nearest desk, trying to wrap my mind around what these maps meant, and how far ahead in time I’d gone. Minutes later Rayne came in and slammed the door behind her, while ordering me not to touch the TyperPad in front of me. It was a flat pad with ghostly letters and numbers in the shape of a typewriter keyboard just under its surface. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Rayne told me she’d ask all the questions.

“And don’t even think about lying to me, Allison.”

“Why would I lie?” I asked while crossing my arms.

“Because you’re programmed to,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Just like you’re programmed to be out of your freaking mind.”

“We have time to sort out your attitude,” Rayne said. “Now, who are you?”

“Allison Wunderlan. I came here through my Uncle Alex’s Time Machine. He built it from a clothes dryer in our garage. You know, the kind of dryers they have in Laundromats, the big loud clunky kind. My uncle teaches basic computer programming and introduction to robotics at UC Berkeley...”

Rayne twisted her neck to the side and blinked at me. “What’s a Laundromat?”

I’d gone over the story of my day in the park and going home and getting into my Uncle’s Time Machine several times when Zak came in. He listened calmly while I told them how I arrived there, whenever there was. Rayne repeated the same questions she’d been putting to me. Zak grinned at Rayne, and then he shrugged his shoulders at me.

“Well, just look at her!” Rayne said to Zak.

The boy named Zak, who’d saved me from the flying head sat cross-legged on top of a desk a few feet away from me. Rayne slouched against the wall, and seemed even taller when slouching. She blinked heavy lidded eyes, and curled and uncurled long fingers. “Look at her, Zak. She’s either a spy, or a clone, or some new hybrid…but just look at her”

She was referring to my spring afternoon California outfit. I had on faded bell-bottom blue jeans and a lime-green T-shirt with a single sewn-in yellow daisy in the center. I’m sure if I’d given the whole ‘Time Machine might really work’ idea a more thorough going over in my mind I might’ve brought a few more outfits, or at least one change of clothes, possibly a sweatshirt or a light jacket. But color me impetuous. So, I had on suddenly vintage 1970 clothes. I certainly wasn’t dressed for being interrogated by future kids in an underground bunker. And for some reason this got under Rayne’s skin. Speaking of skin—she had perfect olive-colored skin, wore skin-tight black jeans, a glittering charcoal-and-black pinstriped blouse, and some sort of forest-green headband/scarf combo-thingie wrapped around her gorgeous long black hair. And how I looked bothered her? She was really starting to piss me off.

I said, “What’s with you two? Can we just get past how I’m dressed? OK? How about we move on to more important topics, like what’s going on in this upside-down world you live in, and what year is it, and what the hell happened between 1970 and now besides major floods, and Berkeley turning into an ultra-creepy deserted place?”

Zak raised his eyebrows at Rayne, and then picked up a steaming mug next to him. “Maybe she’s telling the truth. It’s worth considering.”

“What truth?” Rayne asked, shaking her head and walking toward me with her hand outstretched. “She’s a GovPlant of some kind …meant to throw us off our game when we can least afford it. Especially considering the new info we received about FearChip Directive. Besides, look at her. No one even remotely looks like her around here, my boy wonder. Aside from her carefully constructed MegaRetro get-up, she’s blonde…she looks healthy…tan even. Too perfect. All of it.”

I glanced at Zak’s pale skin. The color of white button mushrooms. As if he hadn’t seen the light of day for most of his life. I decided to change the subject. “What’s with the blonde comments? Our cab driver said the same thing.”

Zak shrugged. “Genetically, blondes are now fewer than one in two million. You are indeed a rarity.”

“Duplicated and scientifically dyed in a GovLab.” Rayne shook her head. “Her hair isn’t the issue, it’s just suspicious.”

“Why’d you call Zak a boy wonder?” I asked.

“See?” Rayne said. “Just the type of question a GovSpy would casually slip into the conversation…”

Zak grinned at me. “At least she’s referring to this as a conversation now, and not an interrogation.”

“It’s still an interrogation!” Rayne screamed up at the ceiling lights. “But I’ll be glad to tell Allison the GovSpy why you’re a boy wonder, if that’s OK with you.”

By way of an answer Zak raised his eyebrows at Rayne.

“You see,” Rayne said while walking closer to me, “Zak is a pure specimen of talented DNA who was born, formed, and finally escaped from Teenage Wasteland.”

“Can you give that to me in English?” I asked.

Zak kicked his legs out and bounced his boot heels against the metal desk. “What Rayne’s trying to say is I’m a Chemist, and a valuable asset to the movement. I’m a born in the Ozarks kid who grew up with warring influences of science and DeepSouth god raging in my DNA. My Modern-day relatives are Chemists and are sought out by both sides…by Underground factions and by the Gov. Way back in my family lineage we were known as Moonshiners, who brewed White Lightning whiskey out of nature’s backwoods bounty. Unfortunately, this divided section of the Unified Society of States is located in Teenage Wasteland. Hardcore ConservReligious territory where kids either get fully indoctrinated, or getting high on GodPills, or are shocked into submission with GodStunners until Satan or the Bogeyman has been completely expelled from their bodies. Or, miraculously, they escape intact. Me, I’m a proud escapee.”

I crossed my arms and turned to Rayne. “There’s a whole lot of things he just said, but I have no idea what half of them meant. So if one of you doesn’t say a few sentences in a row I can make sense of, I’m ready to go back to Berkeley and take my chances with the psychotic pissed-off flying heads...”

Rayne sat down and propped her feet up on a corner of her desk. Her dark eyes drilled into me. “Either you’re a super engineered clone who escaped from a GovLab, or the best prepped spy to ever have infiltrated us,” she said.

Zak stood and stretched. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea, Allison?”

“Some answers would be better. In the meantime, tea would be great.”

“At least she’s got manners,” Zak said to Rayne.

“Basic civility protocol programming,” Rayne murmured under her breath.

“You can both stop talking about me as if I’m not sitting right in front of you,” I said.

Rayne frowned and turned away from me.

Zak made a cup of tea and brought it over. I gazed into the screen in the plastic box. The light show makers at The Fillmore would’ve loved it. A swirling, everchanging colorful pattern filled the rectangular box. Pretty cool stuff. If only the rest of the future was as agreeable.

Zak pulled up a chair next to me. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

Rayne sighed and went to the wall and leaned on her other shoulder.

I turned to Zeke. “My name is Allison Wunderlan, and I’m from Berkeley. The real one, not this screwy future Berkeley. I’m 15 years old. Earlier this evening, for dinner, I ate a tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat after I got home from the Earth Day celebration in Golden Gate Park. Then I went into our garage, and messed around with Uncle Alex’s Time Machine, thinking I’d just peek inside…I don’t know, see if the air in the dryer felt more electrical, or anything. I must’ve accidentally activated it, so some numbers, like whatever year we’re in, for example, got input into the Time Machine. And—big surprise, the thing worked. Now, I’m late for my bedtime and I’m a Time Traveler, even though Rayne doesn’t believe I’m dressed for the part. Maybe if I had on an astronaut’s helmet or was wearing a birdcage over my head I’d look more Time Traveler-ish…”

Zak’s mouth dropped open. “She had tuna fish for dinner? It was safe to eat fish back then? I’ve got to download more mid-Twentieth HistoryChips.”

“Stop it Zak!” Rayne shouted. “GovManufactured narrative implants, that’s what she had for dinner.”

“Hey Rayne?” Zak said “Would it satisfy you to have Miles run a complete Sys check on Allison here?”

Rayne tapped her fingers on the wall and raised her eyebrows. “Such as what…check her physically, mentally?”

“Both. Everything. Absolutely. Could be she’s telling the truth. He could examine her responses to more in-depth questions, specifically about when she says she’s from. It would give us a better idea of who she is, even if she’s not who she says she is.”

I cleared my throat, sipped some tea that tasted just like orange pekoe black tea from home. I stared at the floor and whispered, “Whether you believe it or not, I’m a real Time Traveler, from this country’s past. And I’m beginning to suspect you have more than a few problems here in…”

“2132,” Zeke said. “It’s 2132.”

I was taken to Miles’ lab, for him to examine me. Miles opened his door and waved at the kid who’d escorted me to have my examination. Peering at my face through thick round glasses as if I was an animal escaped from a zoo, Miles looked like a classic ‘geek’ type kid from my own time. With frizzy black hair, skinny arms, and intense grey eyes. He reminded me of a kid named Nelson at school, who taped his clunky glasses together with black electrician’s tape and was always shoved into lockers by dimwitted bullies.

Miles pulled a chair up next to mine and faced the screen. He nudged an oval object next to the thing called a TyperPad. As he pushed the oval thing in circles he glanced at me sideways and yelled, “So blast me with a StunGun, I’m fond of ancient technology.” I crossed my arms and said nothing, not understanding the meaning of his odd outburst. Miles typed exceedingly fast on the letters under the flat pad. Dozens of small rectangular shapes with rounded corners popped up on the screen. He moved one here and inserted another one there until he’d found what he was looking for.

He turned and offered a big smile. “You’re causing quite a buzz out in the Main Hall.”

“Oh, really? Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“Right now, neutral,” Miles said. “If you prove to me you’re what you told Rayne you are, it’ll change from neutral to incredible. Quickly.”

“Let’s get going,” he said while placing a metal headband on my head, which continued the messed-up hair part of my day.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Records reaction time within a fraction of a nano sec,” he said.

Miles pointed to the screen at a map he’d brought up. Just like the one on the wall with huge areas of my United States underwater.

“Where did you come from?”

I pointed to Berkeley on the map.

“When did you come from?”

“There are two answers to that question.”

“What’s the first?”

“April twenty-second, 1970.”

“And the second answer?” Miles asked.

“A couple of hours ago.”

“How?”

“Uncle Alex’s Time Machine.”

We went over all the basic questions again, including what I ate for dinner and whether or not I had potato chips with my sandwich. I told Miles where Uncle Alex went to school, what the weather was like on the very first Earth Day (Miles said they continued having them, but people paid less and less attention every passing year), who Walter Cronkite was, who JFK and Martin Luther King and The Beatles and Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones and Johnny Carson and Bobby Kennedy and The Who and Janis Joplin and Lenny Bruce and The Doors were. He asked me about Wonder Woman and Wonder Bread and Batman and Jimi Hendrix and James Bond and Underdog and Johnny Quest. We talked about LBJ, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Samantha from Bewitched, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Brady Bunch, The Addams Family, Woodstock, Hair, The Twilight Zone, Laugh-In, The Monkees, The War in Vietnam, Timothy Leary, Neil Armstrong, Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, Ken Kesey, George Carlin, The Civil Rights Movement, Hippies and Happenings, Jefferson Airplane, Andy Warhol, and the Apollo Space Program. Miles noted my reaction to hundreds of photos of people, places, and events from the early- to mid-sixties up to 1970. Most of the questions were no-brainers for someone who grew up during the years I did. Which, I guess, was the point. He even tossed in a couple of trick questions to see if I knew the difference between fictional characters and actual historical figures. I answered every question as soon as it came out of Mile’s mouth, until he finally just shook his head.

After he was done asking questions I could’ve answered in my sleep, Miles said, “Amazing. I doubt if any Gov scientists could’ve created as many accurate memory implants. You may truly be a specimen from one of the buzziest of the buzzing historical decades.”

“What? Why do you say the Sixties were buzzing?”

“The HistoryChips we insert into our PlugIns provide us with an overarching perspective of the last two thousand years. Since our country has gone through several major upheavals, beginning with its founding, we dissect it decade by decade to study the events and grown-ups responsible for the most change within each decade. The decades following the historical period you’re from bubbled out and formed a great many streams of change and novelty.”

“Sounds right to me,” I said. “New events happened almost every day. Some incredible, some terrible.”

“Must’ve been amazing,” Miles said with a tone of reverent awe in his voice. “Now, I need you to lie down on top of that table over there. I’m going to examine the back of your head.”

“What for?”

“To see if you have a PlugIn, or if one was surgically removed or altered.”

“Can I ask you a question first?”

He nodded.

“Do you have one of these PlugIns?”

“Yes, we all do, or did. In the Revolution Evolution Underground half of us had them surgically removed. The other half, like myself, kept the convenience of uploading audio and VidInfo without thinking. We grew up in the generation where it was mandatory to have PlugIns surgically implanted at birth.”

“Let me feel the back of your head to get an idea of what I’m supposed to have back there. If you don’t mind.” Maybe I was way the hell in the future. But boys were still boys and girls were still girls. If he wanted to touch the back of my head I was sure going to touch his first.

Miles nodded and said, “OK.”

I reached around his ear to the back of his head, and under the skull bone I felt a small rectangular slot, not made of bone or flesh, but…hard plastic.

“This is called a PlugIn?” I asked.

“Yes. Every kid in the Unified Society of States has one. PlugIns were developed to speed up the learning and socialization process. Around 2055 the technology was developed, and by 2082, most kids were ready to be fed streams of historical data via HistoryChips and SleepChips. Schools were deemed useless, and these new GovSanctioned forms of info ingesting were put into practice. In theory, kids were supposed to be turned into more productive and docile members of society.”

“Sounds awful. Who wants a plastic slot stuck in the back of their head? Didn’t any kids try and stop this from happening?”

“Infants aren’t exactly known for being idea lrevolutionaries. And young kids liked how PlugIns were great for playing VidGames and speeding up their mental capacities—every kid from FirstGen PlugIn users became used to them. By making PlugIns a normal part of growing up for several generations—there was no built-in questioning of a social system that would perform scientific experiments on its own young. Until it was too late.”

“And I thought growing up in the 60s was bizarre. This is just so…beyond the beyond.”

Miles motioned me over to a table. I hopped up and rolled onto my stomach.

He poked at the back of my head until he was satisfied there was no sign of a PlugIn, or a place where one could’ve been surgically removed.

“OK, now turn over. Just one more thing.”

He pulled a stethoscope out of his back pocket and brought it near my chest.

I put my hands up. “You’re not really doing what I think you’re about to do?”

In a trust-me-I’m-a-doctor-tone-of-voice Miles said, “Clones have much slower heart rates than regular humans. I need to make sure your heartbeat sounds normal. This’ll only take a sec. Promise.”

I closed my eyes while Miles listened to the sound of my heart. Looking back over the day’s events, I wished I were back home instead of being examined in some underground lab to find out if I was a clone or not. I imagined the smiling people in the park on the Earth Day celebration, wearing scarves, headbands, and colorful clothes. Playing guitars and singing. As if everyone decided it was a fantastic idea to let go and just love the Earth for a couple of hours. The sound of my heartbeat rushed through my brain like the whirling sound inside the Time Machine. I wished I could open my eyes and I’d magically be back in my own room safe and snug under the covers.

“I’m done,” Miles said.

I jumped up off the table.

He went over to the door, pressed a button next to a round speaker. “Rayne, she’s who she says she is…”