One
New York City
1889
“Shall we?” Evan Halford grabbed one brass wheel with both hands. His partner, Samuel, grabbed the other.
Together they turned the wheels to open the Receptor’s valves. It woke with a pumping hiss. Evan stepped back, grabbed the gloved hand of his wife, and murmured a prayer. At his “amen” there came a tiny flicker of light.
Grace Halford stared at the Receptor’s vast screen and her breath seized as though someone had drawn her corset strings too tight. The Receptor took up half the attic wall of their brownstone, surrounded by metal tubes that hissed like a nest of snakes; a glass-headed gorgon with a body of whirring belts, cogs, pistons and levers.
A point of light on the screen grew into a sepia square, expanding until the whole panel was a rectangle of amber. Text flashed before their eyes. It was tomorrow’s headline from the Eagle. The screen flickered. All three held their breath. The image stilled and remained.
They stared at tomorrow.
Evan scooped Grace up in his arms, her skirts rustling as he twirled her around. She’d worked so hard for this moment, she wanted to feel joy. And yet…
“Oh, my darling Grace, we did it!” He gave her a smacking kiss before turning to Samuel, who stood tall and austere in his modest suit. “Samuel Stein, by God, you genius you,” Evan cried, clapping him on the back.
Samuel’s cheeks reddened. He nodded, peering closely at the screen to divert further attention.
The information on the screen continued to hold Grace’s breath captive. In hoping to see tomorrow, she’d hoped she’d see a better day. But faced with it, she realized that looking into the future meant you might not like what you see.
“But darling, Evan, please look…” Grace said. “There will be a tornado inBrooklyntomorrow.”
“Let a hurricane come! We located the current!” Evan cried. “There’s Tesla’s Alternating, Edison’s Direct, and yes, by God, there is our Temporal Current!” He danced off to open champagne. The rolled cuffs of his dress-shirt loosened as he flailed.
Grace pursed her lips. “We should alert someone-”
“No force of ours could stop a tornado,” Samuel murmured, glancing at Grace before looking away.
“True, but-”
Samuel’s raised hand stopped her. “The pact, Grace. We cannot stop, or alter time, only watch it.”
Grace folded her arms, knowing full well the hours they had labored over the moral quandary of undoing time, and the hard-fought decision to let it “be as it would.” They were innovators alone, seeking glorious answers to improbable questions, questing to tap into the Current, not to see if the Current could make them God. Shoulders tensed with worry, the capped sleeves of her blouse neared her ears. She didn’t want to regret their miracle the moment it lived. But it had been such a dream until now.
The Receptor flickered again then guttered.
Samuel frowned. Moving to the behemoth, he tightened gaskets around the screen before dropping to his knees. His head disappeared behind the massive wiring that surreptitiously leeched off the new 14th Street electric lamps, drawing stolen current into their townhouse, up to their attic, to light the screen and extend up the tallest lightning rod in Manhattan. At least, that’s how Evan had explained the spire to neighbors staring horrified at their rooftop when he installed it: “You must understand, my dear Grace has a simply absurd fear of lightning…”
Samuel put a vise on a fray of copper wire and pressed a sequence of valves like a trumpet. Puffs of steam jetted from the corner vents, tiny brass lids lifting and settling. The screen flickered to life again. More headlines. Grace squinted at the text, compelled to look even though she was torn between dread and fascination.
“There’s a seal in the corner. New YorkPublic Library. There will be a public library? How splendid!” She leaned closer, her coiled muscles easing. “And a word I don’t recognize. Inter-net.”
“Inter-net!” Evan said the foreign word with relish. “I set the Temporal dial to pick up the earliest dates, closest to our time. It must be picking up our location too!”
There was a loud pop, a flying cork and Evan busied himself with delicate champagne flutes. He tried to pass the bubbling flutes to Samuel and Grace, who both stood rapt in future newspaper stories, time clicking forward day by day as the Temporal Current fed into the Receptor.
“Come,” Evan insisted. “There will be plenty of time to examine the history of the future. We’ve worked too hard not to have a moment of triumph. We’d best celebrate since no one else will do so.” He forced the drinks into their hands. “A shame, that. Tesla and Edison get to have their little war over their currents, and here we are with something infinitely more exciting with ours-”
“Not again, Evan. We’ve discussed the dangers if the world knew,” Samuel said sharply. What few words Samuel said, he meant, and what he meant was generally sensible. He and Grace had lobbied Evan to secrecy and drove home the necessity of their laissez faire actions towards future knowledge.
Staring at her husband, Grace melted, finally accepting the champagne and toasted his glass. A hard-featured, thin man, Evan’s rarely absent smile kept his sharp face something engaging and elegant. His hair mussed, a sheen of anticipation glistened on his broad brow and his blue-grey eyes were lit. Grace wondered for a moment if the electricity they were siphoning mightn’t be wired right into her husband. His energy, smile and his mind were the reasons she’d fallen in love with him, and all of these qualities were on full display. She didn’t want to embarrass Samuel by kissing her husband deeply and so she decided to move to Samuel instead, toasting his glass with a polite nod, her doubled taffeta skirts swishing as she walked.
Evan bounced to Samuel’s other side, his enthusiasm contagious. “Quite a long way from sewing machines, eh?” Evan grinned.
Grace recalled the first time she’d ever heard Samuel’s name. It was years ago when Halford Garments hadn’t a single malfunction on its machines for an unprecedented year. When Evan finally asked if anyone knew why his Singers managed such uninterrupted perfection, a young German seamstress pointed to the then fourteen year old Samuel and said simply, “Why, he fixes them all, Mr. Halford, and has done since he started working here. You haven’t noticed?” Evan made Samuel a partner in the company that very day. Evan was a fair owner, unopposed to the unions so many of his competitors rejected, and he made Grace proud. She too took pride in the company, as many decisions had been made off her own advice.
“Machines. I trust sewing machines,” Samuel murmured, wincing when he saw news flicker across the screen that there would be yet another Garment District fire before the decade was through. An even worse one in 1911. Grace put her hand to her mouth at the death toll.
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Installments:
The World of Tomorrow is Sadly Outdated, Part Two of Six
