Joe Haldeman - The Accidental Time Machine

Matt leaned out the window. “Wait!” he shouted. “I won’t harm you!” He stopped at the place where they had left and listened. Nothing. “I won’t hurt you,” he shouted again. “I just want to talk. I need information.”

He listened for fifteen minutes or so. Then he drove on, until he fell asleep at the wheel and crunched into some brush.

Time to call it quits for the night. He didn’t want to drive with lights on: too conspicuous and a waste of power. He ate the peanuts with a few small sips of water.

He got a greasy blanket out of the trunk and wrapped up in it and tried to find a comfortable position for sleeping. When it got dark, a skylight appeared in the cab’s roof. The stars were unnaturally bright, crowding the sky. There were noises in the woods that probably were animals. He locked the doors and kept the revolver by his side.

He woke at dawn, suddenly, to loud birdsong. There were six deer, four of them fawns, grazing nearby. When he opened the door, the two adults looked at him for a moment, then they all bounced into the woods.

When he finished peeing, he heard a quiet sound of water over rocks. He took the car keys and pistol and water bottle to investigate, and just off the road found a trickle of waterfall. He filled the bottle and drank deeply, and refilled it. The water tasted wonderful, and if it was polluted, well, it wasn’t as if he had any choice.

When he returned to the taxi, he had a strong feeling that he was being watched.

“Hello? Anybody here?” No response. He got into the car and continued on.

After a few miles, the forest began to thin in a systematic way, the largest trees left standing, but ones up to about a foot in diameter were chopped down roughly at waist height. Harvested for firewood, or maybe building.

As he kept moving in the direction of Boston, the edge of thick forest moved farther and farther from the road, until finally there was no forest at all, just a rank confusion of weeds, with a few large, old trees.

When the gauge said he had twenty-two miles left, he came to a farm, or at least a ruined side road that led to a cultivated area. But the turnoff was marked with a sign that had a stylized assault rifle between the words KEEP and OUT. So he drove on.

There were a half dozen such roads, all with the same sign. That was a little encouraging—at least the neighborhood was organized enough to support the work of a sign painter.

Perhaps a gunsmith as well.

He saw the tollbooth coming for about a mile. By then eight lanes of abandoned superhighway were apparent, with only the two lanes in the middle clear. All of the toll stations but one were blocked with rubble and brush.

His watch said 7:01. Did they do Daylight Savings Time here? He stuck the pistol in his belt, but then decided to conceal it a bit and stuck it between his butt and the seat back, hidden but easily accessible.

As he approached, a man in uniform stepped out into the middle of the road. He had a weapon slung over his shoulder. As Matt drew closer, he unslung the weapon and held it across his chest, port arms. It was an ancient Kalashnikov.

He was standing by a sign painted by an amateur:

BOSTON CITIE LIMMITS / PAY TOLE ONE DOLAR. Matt dug into his pocket and found a two-dollar coin.

The man took the coin and looked at both sides. “Old. How you make that old car work?”

“Found some fuel cells. Have to recharge them.”

“Hah. You will that.” The man put the coin in his pocket. There was a purse on a string around his neck. Holding the Kalashnikov awkwardly between his elbow and side, he counted out four quarters and handed them to Matt. They were light as aluminum washers. One side was covered in small print, alternating “25” and “Boston”; the other side had IN GOD WE TRUST in one semicircle and JESUS SAVES underneath, framing a smiling Jesus wearing a crown of bloody thorns. There was no year on the shiny coin, but it couldn’t have been very old; the picture and type were just printed on, not stamped.

The guard relaxed and slung the rifle over his shoulder again, and Matt stifled a sigh of relief. “You headin’ a Boston?”

“Cambridge, actually. MIT.”

The man nodded. “They might could charge ya’ up. Sometimes they do real magic there.”

“They do. Thanks.” Matt eased the taxi forward and the man went back to his book. It was a Bible, bristling with bookmarks.

This was going to be an interesting environment for an atheistic nonpracticing Jew. He remembered when, as a third-grader, he’d begged his parents to let him go to a Methodist summer camp with all his friends. Of course it became a big family joke, our boy the Methodist. Not so funny now.

Of course the tollbooth guy was not necessarily typical. But the coins were a bad sign, too.

He made his way south down the interstate, which was bumpy but relatively free from vegetation. The monorail next to it had bird’s nests on the maglev rail. This had been a green corridor ever since they’d moved to the Boston area, the interstate and monorail high above manicured parkland, a bicycle and running path connecting Boston with Lowell through a lovingly maintained arboretum corridor. Now it was scraggly forest.

He wasn’t going to make it to Cambridge. When he got to the monorail terminal, a sign pointing down Route 3 said CAMBRIDGE 18, and his gauge said twelve.

While on the elevated highway, he’d seen a few farms, but no sign of urban civilization on the ground. Now there was thick forest on both sides of the road, which was once again overgrown with weeds.

No saplings, though, and no small trees anywhere near the road. Low limbs had been hacked off, too. Every now and then a fresh stump. For firewood, maybe for building.

He didn’t encounter any traffic until he was nearing Arlington, he estimated a little before eight. He passed a horse-drawn cart loaded with carrots and turnips, and then a dairy cart, its cargo area enclosed and dripping. The drivers both stared at him as he passed, neither answering his hello.

Ice without machines? Well, they used to cut big blocks from the lakes in winter and keep it in icehouses through summer, insulated by sawdust. Maybe they were doing that again.

Church bells chimed eight. Matt’s watch said 8:05.

In town, there were people walking along the sidewalk or maneuvering bicycles among the potholes. Most of the storefronts were boarded up or had collapsed long ago. A Bible store was opening up.

It didn’t look as if men’s clothing had changed very much. He could walk around in what he had on, jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, without anybody giving him a second look.

When the gauge hit 1.0 mile, it started chiming for his attention (a POWER LOW light had been flashing for miles). He turned right at a sign toward Spy Pond and coasted downhill. The motor whined to a stop about a block from the small lake.

His mother’s old place would have been just across the water. There was an apartment building there now, most of its windows boarded up.

He got the taxi driver’s shoulder bag out of the backseat and put all his worldly goods in it: time machine, pistol, ammunition, water bottle, two rare documents, the driver’s wallet and porn notebook. They might be worth a lot or nothing. The Bible store probably didn’t have much porn.

The toolbox was bulky, about fifteen pounds, but it might be valuable. He rolled the blanket into a tight cylinder and tucked it under his arm. He could walk to MIT in two hours this way, maybe three.

A group that looked like a family was fishing at the end of the parking lot. They’d evidently dispatched the youngest, a boy, to go find out about the taxi driver. He ran about halfway, then slowed to a jog, a walk, a shuffle. He took off his cap to reveal an amateur haircut.