For a moment as she woke, Lois couldn’t remember where she was or how she’d gotten there. She was laying on a hard surface staring at the ceiling. She tried to roll over, but the residual pain she’d had for the last week was even worse than normal.
Her purse was in her hand and as she looked down at her dress, now looking somewhat worse for wear, the memories came rushing back.
She sat up slowly, banging her head as she did so.
Looking around, she had no idea where she was at. The last she remembered she was in the small museum on the first floor of the Grand Hotel. Now, though, she appeared to be in a storage closet. The room was filled with linens and cleaning supplies.
These weren’t the standard cleaning supplies she used at home, or even the industrial sized bottles she’d have expected a hotel to use. Instead there were great blocks of something called Sunlight Carbolic soap.
There were strange wire devices hanging in a row; Lois had seen similar devices in a women’s history museum. They were used to beat the dust out of carpets before the invention of the vacuum cleaner.
The place lacked the chemical smell she’d have expected from the storage closets she’d been forced to hide in from time to time. Instead the place smelled mostly like soap.
She groaned as she managed to push herself up with one hand. Her purse was lying next to her. She opened it and pulled out her IPhone. She slipped it out of its case and grimaced. Although it was fully charged, there were no bars.
She needed to call Perry and the police. She’d been kidnapped, again, and apparently they’d given her some kind of psychedelic drug. She’d managed to escape, somehow, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still looking for her.
Pulling her sleeve up, she could still see the bruises around her wrist from where the thug had grabbed her. She couldn’t quite remember when that had happened, but it only served as more proof that she’d been drugged.
Still a little dizzy, she pushed herself to her feet.
If she could get to the front desk, they’d have a telephone she could use.
She stepped toward the doorway, and then cautiously peered outside. A moment later, she quietly closed the door and forced herself to breathe deeply.
Unless a Titanic convention was in town, she couldn’t understand why everyone outside was dressed like they were at a costume party.
************
She managed to make her way to a public bathroom without anyone noticing her. She looked like a mess; dust was all over her dress, her hair was sticking up, and she could see faint bruising around her neck.
Luckily, she’d had a lot of experience dealing with all of these problems. Bruising was an occupational hazard in her profession and dust was even more so.
With just ten minutes of careful work she almost looked presentable.
Normally she’d have done whatever she could to preserve the evidence, but her gut was telling her that she wasn’t going to get a convenient telephone call to the police when she talked to the man at the front desk.
The toilets and fixtures in the bathroom had all been changed from the last time she’d been inside. The lobby was less different, but there were obvious changes there as well.
Most costumes, when people wore them were new and typically fancy. The clothes she’d seen the workmen wearing were worn and faded and looked as though they’d been worn for a long time. The people who looked like guests were dressed more formally, but even these people didn’t have the crisp look she’d expect from cosplayers.
Instead they had the irritable, tired look of people who’d been traveling for long periods. There was none of the excitement she’d have expected from a costumed reenactment.
A glance outside had shown horse drawn carriages waiting outside. There were no cars. Even the sprinkler system had been removed from the ceiling.
It was too elaborate to be a prank.
Either she was having a psychotic break, or somehow she’d travelled back in time.
**************
She’d managed to steal a newspaper left abandoned by one of the workmen. According to the masthead, it was June 27th, 1912.
President Taft was working on the first specific regulations for the design of the United States flag. He’d recently signed an order that government employees were limited to an eight hour day.
The 1912 Democratic convention was in full swing in Baltimore. Argentinean farmers were on strike. One hundred people had fallen into the Niagara River when a dock collapsed; thirty nine drowned or went over the falls.
All of it was interesting, but Lois knew she wouldn’t be able to hide in a bathroom stall all day reading the paper.
She was in trouble.
Nowhere in the lecture she’d heard was anything about how to find the entrances to time tunnels. They were invisible, and by the time the gravity disturbances began it would be too late to find the entrance.
At least she had her purse and the money she’d bought for her father. She wouldn’t want to see what 1912 thought was an appropriate jail cell for a woman counterfeiter if she tried to pass 2012 bills.
She carefully folded the paper and stepped out of the stall. Ignoring the women around her, she went to the mirror and carefully checked her appearance again. None of the bruises were obvious, even if she looked a little worse for the wear. Except for her unconventional hairstyle she could pass as a weary traveler.
Leaving the bathroom, she headed for the front desk. She didn’t recognize any of the staff, of course, although they all had a dour look.
Lois stood in front of the desk, waiting. The man behind the desk was a stern looking older man. Clearly he could see her, but he ignored her.
“Arthur,” he said. “What have I told you about playing ball in the hotel?”
Lois turned slightly. She was surprised to see a small boy with a petulant expression staring up at the desk clerk.
He stepped out from behind the counter, took the ball from the boy and slipped it behind the counter.
Lois stared at the boy for a long moment, trying to see any resemblance to the ancient man she’d left stunned in the attic a century in the future.
The man slipped the ball behind the desk then stared at her.
“Can I help you?”
“I’d like to rent a room, please.”
The man was silent for a moment. “Will your husband be accompanying you?”
Lois bristled, but forced herself to keep her face neutral. She’d learned to her sorrow about trying to bully desk clerks. They had ways of getting revenge. They could make keys stop working, or add extra charges to credit cards. They could put huge holds on credit cards. After the third time she was placed in the one room in the hotel that had a number one digit away from room service, so she’d gotten drunk calls every ten minutes all night long she’d given up.
It didn’t pay to be rude to the front desk.
“It’s not hotel policy to accept unaccompanied young women,” he said. “This is a decent establishment.”
The look he gave her wasn’t a friendly one. It was patronizing, and his tone was condescending.
The implication made Lois’s blood boil. He’d as much as called her a prostitute! In the past, she’d have demanded to talk to the manager. Well, in the future, and she couldn’t exactly complain that it was the twenty first century anymore.
She’d just have to pretend that she was on assignment again. She’d been cautious in the Congo; she could do it here.
“I’m a widow.”
He looked down at her hand.
“He died in a…railroad accident. It was…horrible.”
Lois sniffed and looked down at her hands. Modern men were a little wiser, but she suspected that the prospect of a woman breaking down in front of his desk would alarm the man.
“Now…I’m supposed to meet his family, and I’m not sure how I’ll be able to…tell them.” Lois sniffed again.
She hated pretending to be a weak woman, but she’d have done it for an undercover investigation. Of course, she’d been told her acting skills weren’t the best. Bobby Bigmouth had told her not to quit her day job. She’d thought it had worked with her mob investigation; it appeared that it hadn’t worked as well as she’d thought.
She was really better at disguises.
Luckily, it appeared the men of this time were a little more credulous. The desk clerk looked alarmed.
“I’m sure something can be made available,” he said. He turned and said, “I can put you in room 416.”
Lois frowned. She’d been sure the register had placed her in room 420. Maybe the future was mutable. As far as she was concerned it didn’t really matter as long as she got back to her own time and had a place to get a shower.
He turned the register toward her. She’d only had a glimpse of the names in the future, but these seemed substantially the same.
She reached for the pen.
“I’m sorry, sir,” a younger man said. “I’ve just situated Mr. Thomason in room 416.”
“Room 420 then,” the desk clerk said. “That will be four dollars please.”
Lois was glad she’d chosen to purchase the second twenty dollar bill. When she handed over the first, the clerk looked surprised. He had to slip into a back room to get change.
Allowing her face to settle into a scowl, Lois reached behind the counter to grab the ball. She walked over to Arthur. The boy was sniffling and staring at the floor.
When she handed him the ball, he looked up and stared at her as though he’d just seen the heavens opening before him.
***********
Her acting must have been serviceable enough. The room she’d gotten was decent, if more primitive than she was used to. At least there was an old fashioned elevator.
She took a shower, although she hated slipping back into the same clothes she’d just been wearing.
Time travel was a little outside her area of expertise, and as far as she knew there wasn’t anyone in this time period who could help her. She could track down HG Wells, but he was just a writer.
The only other time travelers she was relatively sure of was the thug who’d tried to kill her and Clark Kent.
As she understood the timeline, he had yet to make his journey. If he hadn’t made the trip yet, Lois could at least be sure that he would. That meant that if she stayed close to him, over the next few days she’d see him go into a portal and she’d be able to jump in after him.
***********
Finding him was harder than she’d thought it would be. He wasn’t in his room, and from the scandalized look on the hotel maid’s face, even asking about him wasn’t appropriate.
Rehearsals were being done at the theater, but there too he was absent. His scenes were already done, and now they were working on scenes he didn’t appear in. It seemed it was an ensemble act.
One stage hand thought he’d seen Kent walking down by the lake. Lois thanked him, and then went searching.
It wasn’t until she reached the shore of the lake that she saw him.
He was staring out onto the lake, but as she approached he looked up at her sharply.
If anything, he was even better looking than he’d been in the picture, although his face didn’t have the expression that had intrigued her so much.
Instead, there was a wary look.
“Is it you?” he asked.
