“Assuming we can get back to Basic Time at all,” Ruthven reminded him. He was starting to feel a mad sort of yearning for the twenty-fourth century.
“There is that,” said Boswell, butting him with his head. “Luckily for you, I’m a cat. I hear we’re quite helpful when it comes to time travel.”
Thirty-Eight
24th Century Paranoia
Anyone having memory issues? Concerns that they might have lost whole chunks of their personal history, including names of family members, childhood memories… the exact moment they found out that cats can talk?
Or is it just me?
Zadie Kincaid, Various Unhinged Scribblings on the back of a toilet door near the Costume Department
Thirty-Nine
2034 “It’s always about lost media for you, isn’t it?”
“Activate your opal,” said Professor Boswell sternly.
“Opal has been activated all this time,” Ruthven grumbled, but tapped the implant to turn it off and on again. “Opal activated.”
“Write your postcard.”
“Really?”
Of all the grumpy expressions Boswell had turned on him since this whole mess began, this was by far the grumpiest.
Ruthven pulled the postcard out from his satchel and wrote the words:
Wish you were here.
“You’re making this up as you go along,” he said under his breath as he wrote.
“That’s time travel for you,” said Boswell.
The two of them headed downstairs through the abandoned Fenthorp Manor 2034, through the kitchens with all the scattered lighting and camera equipment, and finally out into the back garden after a brief graze among the abandoned cakes.
Boswell licked whipped cream off his whiskers as he led the way.
The old greenhouse was still there, though the frame and the glasswork had both been replaced, by the looks of it, over years. So, not the same greenhouse at all, really.
The whole place still felt distinctly Cramberleigh to Ruthven, even if they were a long way from the 1960s. He didn’t know much about this particular slice of the twenty-first century. Was this the decade with all the blogging? The one where everyone was obsessed with sourdough starters and/or the Spice Girls? The one where AI temporarily replaced all jobs and half the corporations in the world toppled into chaos and incoherent branding?
Clearly this was one of the decades with all the baking shows, but Ruthven had a vague idea that this described most of the twenty-first century, wars or no wars.
Without discussing it, both Ruthven and Boswell had decided that their attempt to break out of Event Space and into Basic Time should happen outside. As far away from time aisles and cupboard doors as possible.
Ruthven stared at the blank postcard — the words had already disappeared. “Should I write something else? Provide more information about where we are?”
“It never matters what you write,” Boswell said impatiently.
“It feels like it matters.”
“Go on, then. I’ll sit here and lick myself while you come up with something profound.”
Ruthven stood there, stylus hovering. Slowly, he wrote
Send Help Fenthorp Manor 2034.
He was overtaken by an impulse to cross it out and go with something more dramatic (possibly with a lot more swearing) but of course, there was no crossing out with postcards.
The letters glowed, and vanished.
“You mentioned the Pennyworths earlier,” Ruthven murmured, eyes on the blank postcard as if it, not he, was about to deliver something profound. “I know the Dean, of course. But there are more of them?”
“Siblings,” confirmed Boswell. “Florence, Daimler and Lancaster Pennyworth. Daimler’s the Dean.”
“I saw a doctor who was also called Pennyworth,” Ruthven said quietly. “A psychologist. After Aesop…”
“That must have been Florence,” said Boswell with a faraway look. “They suggested her to me, after Cressida. I told them cats don’t do therapy. All we need are sunbeams and naps.”
“I was having panic attacks,” Ruthven admitted. He knew it wasn’t shameful to ask for help when you needed it. That wasn’t why he hesitated to share it now. He was looking back on his own history in light of this new information about the Founders and he did not like what he saw. “I couldn’t remember how Aesop died. I still can’t. I don’t remember anything about that mission. The footage isn’t in the Media Archives. Out of respect, they said.”
“Humph.”
“Do you think they did something to me? To hide what happened?” If there was a reason other than his own trauma that Ruthven could not remember what happened to his cat… what else couldn’t he remember? How much of his memory had been tampered with?
Boswell stared at some geraniums as if they had all the answers. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to answer Ruthven’s question — not directly, in any case. “Aesop was my trainer, you know. She was in the program from the beginning. Her, Nero, and Banksia.”
