Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.5 A confrontation in the dark

"But I don't want to return to St. Albert's and the 1960s," Natty told me for what had to be the third or fourth time already.

"I know. But we don't have much choice about that, do we? Besides, look at it that way: if we do not return, Nancy and the others will conclude that we must have died in that fire. It would be the obvious explanation for our sudden disappearance."

Natty shrugged. "I could live with that," she muttered, but the way she said it made me doubt that she really meant it.

It was the day of our scheduled temporal transit. If 'day' was the correct word here. Actually, it was 2 a.m. at night and we had just gotten out of bed, both of us tired and a bit grumpy. While it was not strictly necessary to sync the local time of departure with the local time of arrival in the remote temporal period, to do so was considered convenient. We were going to be sent back to a time about half an hour after the roof of the school's volleyball hall had collapsed and to some spot sufficiently distant from the place where the fire had raged.

"But how are we going to get back into our dorm?" I had asked Natty. "Don't you think the school building may already be locked up for the night?"

"Don't worry about that. The girls of the Upper Sixth always keep one of the ground floor windows of the north tower ajar, so they can sneak out and return to their dorms at night," my roommate had assured me.

"Whatever you do, stay away from the pyrtar," Sara had advised us. "Even if you overheard them talking about 'going home', Catherine, that does not tell us the exact time they planned to leave. They could still be around when you arrive."

At Natty's insistence, we were going to take with us a large bag filled with math and physics textbooks. I myself had insisted that the bag must also contain at least two pairs of pajamas, both for Natty and for me. It had been fairly awkward for me to be the only student whose parents apparently had neglected to pack pjs for her.

"What happened with that weird mail bag of yours?" I asked Natty as we were getting dressed.

Until now, I had completely forgotten about that bag Natty used to carry wherever she went. But I knew for certain that she still had had it with her when we had been caught in the fire, as she had been hiding my ansible in it.

"I am afraid it was destroyed in the fire," Natty replied morosely. "I left it behind, in the volleyball hall."

"Your blue notebook was inside that bag, wasn't it?"

Natty's face lit up. "Actually I don't think so. I was writing in my notebook when we decided to go outside for a smoke, so I may have left it on my desk in our dorm room. It ought to still be there."

Sara and Mira accompanied us to the Transit Center. The two technicians on duty were the same ones who had participated in the emergency retrieve of Natty and myself the other night. That made sense if one wanted to limit the number of persons involved in order to keep certain pieces of information about that incident – such as the fact that Natty Fogg, author of the Red Notebook, had temporarily been brought to the 23rd century – a secret.

Natty and I changed back into our school uniforms and took our positions on the light-blue transit pad, the bag filled with book and pjs positioned next to us. Natty was fascinated by the entire transit procedure – the checks being called by the technicians sitting in front of the big monitors as they powered up the laser and the particle accelerator to set up and initiate the Fogg-Williams bridge, the beeping and humming as individual workstations and monitors booted and lit up, and finally the faint blue light engulfing us on the pad.

"Close your eyes, Natalie Fogg," Sara told Natty,  in a low voice so that the two technicians would be unable to overhear it. "Close your eyes now, or don't."