Become Your Time of Day

THE END OF DAYS — proclaimed the hand-drawn sign, in garish, reddish-outlined lettering — IS DRAWING NIGH.

“Brother, you don’t know how right you are with that one,” a dapper man in his late twenties asserted to the hobo wielding the sign. He was the first person in several minutes to have engaged the unshaven man in direct conversation, for many of the other pedestrians either ignored him or smiled at the bold claim.

Youth alone did not account for his bravery. Terry Merrill, standing just a few steps distant from the sign, knew that it was not an accurate claim. His confidence, in dismissing such apocalyptic predictions, did not spring from a blind optimism, but from his very existence in history. He knew: for all of this current world's troubles, its extinction, or at least, humanity’s, was not an event this man, or others of his generation, would witness.

The unfortunate doomsayer blinked at him, skeptical at first. “You see it, too?” he grumbled. Accustomed to being ignored, brushed past or seen through by stiff-upper-lipped city dwellers, jeered at by foreign tourists, and scrutinized by coworkers of the constable eyeing him from across the street, he did not know how to read the younger man's claim.

“Quite right,” said Terry. “The sad fact is, as of this time tomorrow, you will all, every last one of you, be dead.” Then, he smiled. “At least, you will be, for me." He could feel, rather than hear, the gasps of outrage from others. Bad enough to point out the old man's mortality, but theirs, too? That was poor form, indeed... and possibly, unhealthy for him, too. He shrugged as he asked, "Well, what do you expect me to say, citizens? That it's going to be hunky-dory?"

He was standing in a place called Hyde Park, in what people once called “the city of London, England”, and the calendar called this current year 1956 — and he was unafraid of the future! The crowd of passersby who had suddenly taken interest — to the point of taking on a menacing aspect, as if they had all developed, or feigned, a collective interest in defending this unhinged old man from an unhinged young man — was another story altogether. Not one of them thought to inquire as to the old man’s position, what he wanted them to do for him —

He was a veteran, of the hilariously misnamed First World War — and even thirty-eight years later, he was still struggling to come home from his ever-vivid memories of a tour of duty he was still, in his mind, carrying out upon those battlefields of France. “Nineteen-eighteen,” he had said, a moment earlier. “I lived through it.” His eyes glazed over into the thousand-meter stare he had honed, decades earlier, trying to see through the mustard gas.

“So did I,” Terry was quick to remark, increasing the old man’s bafflement. “I’m going to head back there, if I can, for another visit. I had a lovely time. The war! The worldwide flu! I learned so much. It was jolly good fun.” He wished for a recording device to capture their expressions, but none other than a sixteen-millimeter camera would have fit this era.

Speaker’s Corner was a place for “colorful” characters to air their various grievances, unafraid of public scorn. Encountering so much stupidity and savagery, in the performance of his duties, he had grown weary of his job posting; his bitterness spoke through his dark humor. Terry had wanted to experience it, while he was still "here" (in the spatial-and-temporal sense). The future, his home, was calling him.

^ ^ ^ ^

So much was happening, upon the Earth, in June, 1956. The arms race (East v. West) was in full swing. In the United States, Rosa Parks, and other activists, pressed on with their Alabama bus boycott. Elvis Presley had electrified Milton Berle’s television show, with his rendition of Hound Dog. In Lyon, France, an international criminal-detective service would henceforth be known, the world over, as Interpol. David Marshall, the Chief Minister of Singapore, had resigned, due to his failure — in London, of course — to negotiate his nation’s self-rule.

Terry knew these facts, before he had arrived. Field historians, of course, did not discover them in person; rather, they arrived, well-versed, from their tomorrows. It paid to have a good grasp of the “laboratory” before settling down to work. He had arrived, with expectations of a thrilling assignment, late in 1955, in one of the world's most exciting metropolises, during one of its most dangerous eras —

Now he walked up the lane toward the boarding house that had been his 1956 home, trying to light a cigarette with middling success. (The appeal of tobacco burning in close proximity to his mouth was still lost on him, but he was under instructions to blend, as best as could be managed, into his immediate cultural surroundings.) His plan was to have a polite word with his landlady, inform her that he would be leaving in the morning, and duck out, before he encountered the one young lady he was hoping to —

A feminine silhouette, standing there, framed in the doorway, forced a radical reevaluation of his plans. Adrienne was his neighbor, a young, single, comely neighbor. Two of the other men staying at his boarding house had expressed an anything-but-platonic interest in her — coupled with a bit of mild jealousy of a palpable interest she had shown in Terry. He was tempted, so tempted, to stay, to tell her everything, but it would have been unprofessional of him — perhaps even a career-ending mistake. Besides, she was already a ghost, where he was from.

This, however, was not Adrienne, hoping to surprise him. “What a splendid evening, for a midnight move,” whispered the silhouette. Terry relaxed. The name Ellis — as in, Researcher Second Class Ellis, of the Time Bureau — came attached to the silhouette. “I expect you’ll be all packed then, yes, Researcher Merrill?”

“How well you know me,” he quipped, though in fact, they had met only twice before he had accepted his field assignment, once at a work party, then on his launch date. She possessed an undeniable, cubic charm, which meant exactly nothing in this situation. Once they returned to the future, however… “You came to meet me? How sweet of you, Ellis. Couldn’t wait to pump me for info? Well, I’m all set. I’ve closed down my bank account, said my goodbyes, burned just a few bridges at uni —”

“Yes, well, that’s the rub, you see. It works out that the Case Minister has been forced to move the pieces about the chessboard.” Ellis glanced down the street to verify they were alone. If anyone was listening in on their conversation, it would only matter to one who was likewise a temporal agents; not even the frenetic paranoia of this “Cold War” provided the agents of 1956 with a true insight into the work of the Time Bureau. Nonetheless, her sense of decorum dictated that she whisper to him.

Leaning close to him, as if a romantic scene were playing itself out, she placed a hand upon his shoulder. “Seems that we are somewhat light in records of the following year, 1957. The Space Age is about to begin, only… we lack a field reporter from London for that time. It appears, Merrill, you are too valuable to recall, just yet.”

“He can’t. You can’t. Be… serious?" Terry was grateful not to have been imbibing fluid at that moment, so shocking did he find this disclosure. "Ellis? I severed a number of useful ties, in anticipation of this night. I’m about to tell a kind lady some bad news, and probably, upset a friend who lives next door, that I — my home’s not this. They eat mammals here, did you know?”

^^^^

“Yes, and isn’t that a pity, my friend?" Ellis looked up at him, with her cold blue eyes, attempting to simulate at least some human warmth. She was partly successful: "You have a rare privilege, to observe history. As it was. As it is — and to be paid handsomely, Terence, for such a privilege. Some might call that, a rare opportunity. Why not make the most of it?”

“Pull the other one, why don’t you?” He did not receive an answer, in words — rather, she answered him by directing a smile, and a wave of her hand, past him. Terry darted a glance past her, to the subject of her welcoming gesture. His pulse began to race, the way it did when he saw — “Adrienne?”

“He remembers me,” the petite blonde said, in a fanciful, Southern-belle drawl, the result of her having watched Vivien Leigh, her favorite actress, portray Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois, those celebrated Southern belles, in two of her favorite films. She stopped, right at the bottom of the stairs.

Dropping her Southern affectation, she said, reverting to her London voice, “I was hoping I would find you, Terry. I’m about to pop off to see a mate of mine this evening. I wondered if you might — ” She glanced at Ellis, with expectation. “Good evening. Name is Adrienne. I just live next door. You’d be — ”

“Just leaving, it turns out. Lovely to meet you, my name’s… Alice.” Ellis extended her hand, as she stepped down to the sidewalk. “I work at the university, with Terence. One hopes to continue.”

“Ooh, right. Cheers,” Adrienne said, as if this made perfect sense, shaking Ellis’s hand as an admirer, not a rival, would do. “Alice”/Ellis waved good-night to Terry as she walked briskly to the corner of the block, leaving him to marvel at this turn of events. Adrienne, wasting no time, slipped a cool, appreciative hand around his nearer arm. “Right, then,” she said, “so, are you inviting me out to see my mate, performing tonight?”

Terry recovered in time, if that’s not too obvious a term for it, warming visibly to the prospect of keeping company with Adrienne, for the first of many more evenings to come. “Which mate of yours is he? Should I be jealous?” Perhaps, he now had a chance to do just that, to really care?

“Of course not! She’s appearing, in The Winter’s Tale. Could be fun, you know? ‘Become your time of day’, that whole bit." She noticed his smile; was he mocking her, or enjoying her enthusiasm? "Don’t tell me — you haven’t heard of Shakespeare?” Adrienne queried him.

“Don’t be silly, love,” said the man from the future. “After all, I wasn’t born yesterday.” She was barely nineteen. Terry would see her turn twenty, after all. Changing decades or changing centuries, it was pretty much the same.

© Eric Wolf 2021.

[Exploring history, ‘Time Bureau’ style: https://vocal.media/fiction/mundy-mundi.]