Fiction—Time Tours

Arisa sighed so deeply she almost dry heaved as she collected a bucket and mop and tried to soap up the green stain on the floor of Paul Revere's house. She looked to Paul and said, "Sorry about that," and he waved his hands dismissively—he was one of the few historical greats who enjoyed the groping stares of tourists. Arisa put the cleaning supplies back in the Vault and wondered if the guides covering Ancient Persia had to deal with this much puke, but she knew they had it worse—mounds of McDome wrappers, discarded bottles of sugar cola, the occasional beheading, and tourists sneaking aspirin to Alexander the Great. She didn't even want to imagine all the fanny-packed Americans bumping into each other at the barricades of Revolutionary France, disappointed when the Bastille raised the white flag after a few gunshots.

As Arisa came out of the Vault, she suppressed a sigh that threatened to blow the back of her brains out. There were two fresh pools of goo on the floor where she'd mopped. She nodded thankfully as one of her past selves went back to the Vault. Or future self. She couldn't quite tell as she always wore that crisp black tee with the text "VASS STAFF" in poison green on the front and kept her hair in a permanent collarbone chop. Of course, these were only past selves from this week. Time Tourism was only possible for short durations to the same spot, same time, lest the area become over packed with panicking, puking people stepping on the Dead Sea Scrolls and interrupting Hitler's speeches.

"All right, folks," said Arisa, motioning to her group. They mostly consisted of old people and women of all ages and a fat goateed man with his hair in a ponytail. None of them looked quite ready to go back to the Vault but she had a schedule to keep. Otherwise, they'd be trapped in 1775 as a cube ported directly on theirs—inside of which would be a whole new slew of stinkers led by a whole new Arisa. That’d be bad enough if the overlapping Vaults didn't generate an explosion about three planets wide. So, disinterestedly saving the human race (something she did fifteen times a day, Mondays to Fridays), Arisa herded the group back into the Agency’s timebox and punched the coordinates for April 19th—Concord. The doors shut and the Vault rumbled like those simulator rides in Los Angeles theme parks and the doors opened again to a haze flickering with red sparks like an army of fireflies. Gas masks on, the group spilled onto a hillside of gravestones overlooking old colonial mansions (not old at the moment) and regiments of red-and-white infantrymen in shag hats firing on a horde of green, browns, and blues—the Americans. This was the highlight of the day before she took the timesick to the Second Continental Congress for cocktails and a healthy dose of patriotism.

Down in the creek, she watched with almost dull apathy as a Vault appeared and two figures in orange snipsuits creeped out. One took a bullet to the chest and the other rushed back inside. The Vault disappeared. It was an event some ten years ago on Arisa's side of time. These were first scouts to investigate the Battle of Concord for a view. Now, preserved in time, there was nothing to do but watch as Butter Khowaja died and Keely Varga escaped. Scouting was a dangerous, exciting occupation. Guiding, on the other hand, was like waiting for a broken clock to fix itself.