SOJOURNS IN TIME

                                                               by Atonia

CHAPTER 9:

Philly came up with a semi-plausible story as to where she’d been for the last week. Her father also accompanied her and John to the police station. As John had predicted, there were no questions asked that she could not answer. Her father seemed satisfied. Philly knew John had done something and asked him about it after they put her father into a taxi for the airport.

“I only used the power of suggestion.”

“You messed with the sergeant’s mind is what you did.” She linked her arm in his. “You haven’t lost all your powers, have you?”

“No,” he answered simply.

The questions and condemnation from Philly’s director were somewhat tempered when John handed her  a few gold coins.

“Where did you get these?”

“I’ve always had them. I do not know where they came from.” He told the truth.

Others were called in to examine the coins and took them away to be authenticated. Philly was off the hook for her unexplained absence.

Philly took John down to the vaults to show him where she worked. She was to resume her duties the next day. While down there she stopped by Artie’s workshop. He had covered the time machine up with canvas tarps tied down to a wooden base.

“John, you won’t ever use that machine again, will you?”

“No, Philly. I cannot go back to where I came from and I have no desire to go back. My life is with you now.”

“It’s going to be different, you know.”

“Yes, and I welcome it.”

“I am so worried about Artie.”

“He will come back.”

“I hope you’re right, John.”

Over the next few weeks John was linked up with Sotheby’s. His coins were of such rarity and quality that they were being sold to collectors as soon as they became available. While Philly was at work he walked the streets and became familiar with public transportation. During his ramblings he studied the people he came in contact with and the general population. More than once he’d been accosted by would be assailants. His protective field prevented them from striking him and threw the muggers back into alleys and against buildings. He could safely walk anywhere he chose. He always met her at the museum when her day's work there was finished and they would go out to dinner.

He had acquired some modern clothing but his preference for black still held. He wore black slacks, boots, black tee shirts and sweaters underneath a black leather coat. Philly introduced him to TV and to movies. He took her to the theater and to concerts. They were beginning their life together in the tiny little apartment.

One day while they were walking in the park she again mentioned worrying about Artie. “I know the Professor was waiting on a part to be manufactured but he never gave me the impression that it would take this long. I was thinking a week or two at the most. I’m afraid something has happened to him.”

“Shall I go back and find him? Is this what you wish me to do?”

“Oh…no, John!”

“It would put your mind at rest.”

“It would, yes, but the risk…I can’t lose you.”

“You will not lose me, Philly. Have I not told you that we are destined to be together? That destiny will play out.”

Philly and John made a trip back to Ralph Richfield’s house and laboratory. He was not happy to see them but agreed to send John back for a period of two hours. Once again he sent him to the entrance to the park.

John moved quickly to the museum and found the Professor.

“I’m afraid, Mr. St. Croix, that Mr. Wilson is in the hospital. For several days he complained of feeling dizzy. His speech was affected. He told me he took injections for his condition but unfortunately he ran out of his medicine shortly after he arrived. I’m afraid the prospects are not good.”

“I must see him at once.”

“I’ll have someone go with you to the hospital. I’m very sorry to give you this report of Mr. Wilson. The time machine is also a problem. We are unable to replace one of the optics that was broken when the machine overturned.”

“It is fortunate that I have come. I am more concerned about Mr. Wilson than I am about the machine at present. I have two hours here, Professor, and I must get Artie to the retrieval point.”

The Professor walked with him back to the front doors. “That may be a problem. He is unconscious.”

John observed Artie in the hospital and caused quite a furor when he requested that the patient be released to him. He was not deterred and with the assistance of the man sent from the museum he got him onto a wheeled table and out of the hospital. The horse drawn cab dropped them off at the park.

“Write this please,” John said to the assistant. “Artie did not bring his medicine with him.” The note was pinned to the hospital gown he was wearing. Several times they had to right him on the flagstone where he sat doubled over. John stepped back when the beam found him and took him away.

“Artie!” Philly rushed over. “Ralph, call 911! Artie? Oh, my God, Artie!”

“I won’t have them in here in my lab.”

“Well, help me get him into the house.”

When the ambulance arrived she’d already found the note attached to the old fashioned nightshirt with a tie pin. “He’s a diabetic and takes injections. I think he’s been without his medicine for awhile.” She gave them his name, address, place of employment and put herself down as someone to call. His family was in Detroit.

Following the ambulance she was crying over the obvious.  John was now trapped in 1911.

The doctors in emergency told her she’d found him just in time. She couldn’t tell them exactly how long it had been since he ran out of his medicine. “I do know he’s been gone a little over three weeks. Will he be all right?”

“We’ve got him stabilized now. His vitals are good but we’ll just have to wait until he wakes up.”

Philly could see it now. Artie thought he could quickly repair the time machine and be back before he experienced any problems.  Something must have come up.

It was a lonely time for John. He walked away from the park and found himself going in the direction of Philly’s apartment but it wouldn’t be there. Philly wouldn’t be there. He felt a crushing pain in his chest, a mortal pain of suffering for the one you loved. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. People gave him a wide berth but he didn’t notice.  The long leather jacket flared out around his knees in the wind. He was unaware his dress suggested a man of the cloth. More than once hats were tipped and he was wished a good day…father.

It began to rain. Softly at first beading on his hair and his coat but soon the drops became heavy and driven by the rain. It washed his face and wet his slacks and his feet.  He was a man who believed the fates guided him and presided over him. Stripped now of his immortality and his god status he was again a mortal man and subject to their whims.  It angered him.

He could have left Artie in the hospital where he surely would have died and then he could have gone back to Philly. That wasn’t the kind of man he was. All his mortal life he’d been a man of honor with a strong sense of what was right, duty bound to lead his people out of Troy and to found a new land. He had fulfilled all the fates had in store for him and thus he was killed in battle. He’d turned his back on his past and given up the precious gift his mother had bestowed upon him. Perhaps the gods were now angry with him. No more would they interfere with his life. He’d been cast adrift.

Out of the driving rain a lone cab approached. “Not a day to be walking, Sir. Where might I take ye?”

Where indeed? “To the Metro Museum.” He climbed aboard. To the doorman/guard at the door of the museum, he said, “Pay the cab man.” He had no money with him that would spend. He did not see the raised brow and set jaw as the man dug in his pocket.

The Professor looked up from his papers and adjusted his glasses. “You’ve been in the rain.” He was aware of what sacrifice this young  man had made. “Please, take a chair and I’ll have tea brought in.”

John prowled his office for a minute before he finally sat down and looked across the enormous desk at the little man in the high collar and tie. Today he wore his clip on glasses with gold rims and his mustache had taken an upward tilt.

“You have done a fine thing. May I call you Aeneas or would you prefer John?”

“I left Aeneas in what is now Rome.”

The young man’s beautiful eyes were dark beneath his brows as he looked up at the Professor. “You have become a modern man. You have learned much since you first came. I suspect you have certain abilities above and beyond mortal men.”

“You are correct, Sir. Alas, traveling through time is not among them.”

“Yes…yes. I’m very sorry, sorry you are unable to join your young lady. I’m not sorry you are here if you have to be somewhere you’d rather not.”

“I am not one of your antiquities to be studied, catalogued and displayed.”

The Professor smiled a little. Tea was brought in and the necessaries accomplished.

John was grateful for the hot drink. He was cold and wet.

“I would never subject you to such a plan, John. I would like to offer you a position here at the museum as a consultant. You are a very intelligent being. I have noticed you are able to dissemble languages and speak them fluently.  You look at things and touch them and are able to see what they are and how they are used. You would be a very valuable asset to our staff here.”

John looked aside. He was being offered a job. A job meant permanence . At that moment had he been in his old body, that of a god, the room would have sparked and sizzled with his emotions.

“The pay would be substantial and I believe I can send the request through the board without any problems. If you are to remain with us, John, you must think of these things.”

“If…I am to remain.”

“Unless rescue comes from the other side, I am certain you are to remain. As I told you earlier, the time machine cannot be put back. One of the optics is shattered. One might think we could replicate the other one that remains intact. We cannot for they were different in intent. Mr. Wilson told us he’d found them in the museum’s archives. He had no knowledge of them except what they were to be used for. They are not the type of thing we build nowadays. They came from the future.”

The future. John closed his eyes. The future is where his love lived.

“Take your time to make up your mind about the position. The offer will stand.”

Philly stood by Artie’s bed. He didn’t look quite so ashen now as he had when he’d come into the hospital.  Around him the machines monitored his body’s vitals.  He’d been moved from emergency up to ICU. Philly was his only visitor. She didn’t know who else to call. She didn’t  have any phone numbers for his family in Detroit. He’d been suspended from his job at the museum and she knew she was marginal. The personnel director thought her excuses for her own absences were suspect.

She moved over to a chair and sat down. Everything was coming apart. John was gone and nothing else mattered. She began quietly crying.

“Hope them tears ain’t for me.”

“Artie!”

“Hey, where am I?”

“Back in 2011 in the hospital. You nearly died, Artie.”

“I know I was sick. I didn’t think it’d take long, you know.”

“What happened?” She took his hand in hers.

“That machine can’t be fixed. So I thought, well, guess I’ll live the rest of my life in 1911. I didn’t think about the insulin. That stuff wasn’t invented until 1927. Did you know that?”

“No, Artie, I didn’t.”

“How, how’d I get here?”

“John went back for you. Ralph sent him.”

“Oh…shit, Philly.”

“Yeah…really. I just…I don’t think I can stand it.”

“We gotta think of something.”

“You have got to get well. Quit thinking and start feeling better.”

Nurses and technicians came and Philly said she’d go home for now and be back later.

Artie continued to recover and Philly went half-heartedly back to work.  Everywhere she went and everything she did only reminded her of John and the time they’d spent together. She was falling into depression.  It wasn’t helped by the phone calls she was receiving from her parents about arrangements for Thanksgiving…when would she be flying in…was John coming? So far she’d put them off and had not answered about John.

She’d been driving Artie’s car and when he called for her to come and pick him up from the hospital she took the afternoon off from work.

“I’ve been doing some heavy thinking, Philly. I talked to my mama and I think I’m gonna go back to Detroit for awhile. I got brothers and sisters I haven’t seen in years. She wants me to come home for Thanksgiving and I think I will.”

“I don’t blame you, Artie.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know and that’s an honest answer. I can’t ever go back to being who I was before John. I can’t. He’s like a drug…like that insulin you can’t live without. I want to go to him.”

“Why don’t you?”

Philly dropped Artie off at his apartment building and parked his car, handing him the keys. “You can keep it if you want.”

“No, thanks, Artie but I think I’d like to walk a bit.”

She ended up in the park where she’d walked that last day with John. It snowed overnight and the bench where they’d sat was covered in snow…cold and uninviting. She looked around the park and it was quiet and still under its winter blanket. Covered over, all the scars of its life as a public place, all white now. Loneliness settled over her like the cold white blanket of snow.