"Some rain, eh?" A short woman of indeterminate age scrambled onto a barstool in a decidedly unladylike fashion.The other patrons grunted."I heard you were interested in a story. Well, here's one." She ordered whatever the barkeep had on tap and then launched right in.
*****
The last time Kieran Shapiro traveled in time, he went to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Ostensibly, it was to observe the rioting, but the truth was that Kieran was a bit of a thug and he wanted to participate.
Hence he would, like any oddly focused time shepherd, travel from war to war, riot to riot, and nasty incident to nasty incident.
His boss, Elsbeth Mayville, found him distracting but competent. His job was to assure that time stayed the way it was supposed to. That was the thing with the time shepherds; they were there to keep it all orderly. Time was disorderly but the real mess was in changing it.
No one else had wanted the chaotic parts of time, but Kieran had jumped at the chance.
"El," he asked her, one day in 6743, "what do you think about the firing on Fort Sumter?"
"Oh?" Elsbeth was rather young to be in charge of time shepherding, but she was a replacement for the last guy in that role, Dan McAllister, who had been forced out due to changing too many things for the better, thereby causing overpopulation until the time shepherds could repair his well-intentioned damage. That simply would not do. Elsbeth, though, she knew enough to keep everyone's paws off time and stop trying to play God and alter it.
"See, I was thinking," Kieran ran a hand through a Mohawk that had been dyed forest green, "I could go, check on the shots, you know, that sort of thing. Make sure McAllister didn't screw anything up." He'd never been one for detailed explanations.
"But we already know there was an American Civil War," she said, after checking a file projected onto a small screen implanted in front of her left eye. "And that was a good, what four hundred years ago?"
"Four fifty, I think. Something like that."
"Either way, Shapiro, it's old and dead and it still went off. The details may have changed but we just don't give a damn. It makes no sense to hark back to it. I mean, do you honestly care if the plague of 2216 had four million victims, or five?"
"I imagine the victims care."
"You going soft on me, Shapiro?"
He laughed a little. "Of course not. What about My Lai?"
She made a face. "Maybe Mogadishu? Kent State?" She knew he'd never go for a Buckingham Palace tea party.
"No, no. I want something bigger. More insane."
"You mean more chances of being killed if we don't yank you out of there on time." She returned her attention to the tiny screen and blinked or shook her head a few times in order to paginate. "Ah, there. It's perfect." She slapped him upside his head, thereby neatly – albeit roughly – transferring the data to his own screen.
"The Battle of Hastings? You said Fort Sumter was too old. This is even older."
"Doesn't matter. This one's big. And you're bound to get an axe in your arse if you don't watch it."
"Ah. I take it this has to go?" He briefly patted his Mohawk.
"Of course. And get changed. Take a freeze gun with you."
"Really?"
"Just in case."
"You're the boss."
Time traveling involved getting into a booth which resembled an ancient voting booth and it really did have a lever. A shepherd would adjust the date, time, and spatial information on a virtual board and then pull the lever. The lever was clunky but rather satisfying to pull. Plus all other methods were fraught with errors and issues. The lever was simply more reliable.
The shepherds' several booths were overseen by Chief EngineerSteve Riley. Riley was as big as a house and couldn't even fit into a booth anymore – and those booths were built for up to four people.
"You planning on sowing discord again, Shapiro?" asked Riley as he fiddled with controls.
"When do I not?" Shapiro held up the freeze gun. It was about the size and shape of the palm of his hand. He declared, "Hark, one freeze gun."
"Got it. I see you had to change your 'do. And your outfit."
"1066. I don't think they knew about Mohawks then."His hair had been shorn to nearly nothing, to get rid of the green. Plus Kieran's normal outfit, a study in black leather and denim, had been swapped for chain mail. He had a quiver of arrows and a crossbow slung over one shoulder. He almost looked like Robin Hood crossed with a knight.
"Probably not. You gonna meet some Saxon honey?"
"Heh, doubtful. Didn't they just bathe once a decade or so?" Kieran asked.
"I don't know from history. I just fix the machines." A soft chime emitted. "Looks like D'Angelo is about to arrive. Happy trails, Key."
Kieran stepped into the booth, fingering the freeze gun in a pocket. He hit the controls for October 14th, 1066.
Riley watched as two identical flashes of light emanated from the booth. D'Angelo, a short woman, emerged from the same booth Kieran had just used. She was dressed in a tie-dyed poncho and hip hugger jeans. "How the hell did that happen?" asked Riley.
"What are you talking about?"
"You landed in the same both just as Shapiro was taking off."
"Wacky coincidence." She shrugged. "1969 was successful. Woodstock. What a weird place. Too much damned paisley. And I smell like mud and brown acid."
"Do you have anything to declare?" Riley asked.
"Oh yeah, I managed to get Jimi Hendrix's wallet." She pulled out a small article from a front pocket of her jeans, and frowned. "Oh, hell." She held the article up for Steve to see it.
"Did you start off with a freeze gun, D'Angelo?"
"No, of course not. I was going for peace, love, and granola, for God's sake."
Riley swore softly. "Then Shapiro is smack dab in the middle of the Battle of Hastings with Hendrix's wallet." He smacked a button on a wall panel. "Mayville! The booths malfunctioned! Shapiro lost his luggage at the same time D'Angelo lost hers. They swapped. It's the weirdest coincidence I've ever seen."
Elsbeth sighed. "Oh, for the love of Pete. Can you get him back early?"
"You know I can't do that before a day's gone by."
"I hope Hendrix had something useful in his wallet."
Meanwhile, in 1066, a rather bewildered Kieran Shapiro pulled out a freeze gun to save himself from being trampled by a runaway horse. And, instead, he threw Hendrix's Washington State driver's license at the charging beast.
It didn't work.
This would not have mattered much, except Shapiro and the wallet were both lost in the battle. Presumably they both became feed for crops. The shepherds were tasked with retrieving the last of the scattered evidence. This was a task which took several years and would occupy all of D'Angelo's time until it was completed.
*****
"And that's it?" asked one of the other patrons.
"More or less," the story teller confessed. "Burger, please." She pulled a few small pieces of plastic out and sorted them on the bar, and then handed a card to the barkeep and turned to the fellow.
"Hey, your eyes don't match," he remarked. In all that time, she had never looked up.
"That's true," she admitted, nodding perhaps a bit too vigorously. She was served her burger and bit down. There was a louder crunching sound than expected. "Ah, there it is, right on, heh, time." She put the remains of the burger down on her plate and crumbled it in her fingers. There was a small piece of a laminated driver's license in there. The only part that could be seen was printed with the letters: DRIX. "There's the last of it." The barkeep handed her card back as she placed the DRIX piece onto the bar.
"Nice of you to stop by, Miss D'Angelo," the barkeep said.
"Thank you. Time, ha, for me to go. A shepherd's work is never done." She pulled a small article out, about the size and shape of the palm of her hand. She aimed and adjusted something, and it emitted a narrow magenta beam, neatly patching together the pieces. She picked them up and pocketed the newly re-created Hendrix driver's license, and then aimed a different small device – it resembled an old pet rock, with its ovoid shape and smooth configuration – at the ceiling for a second.
The patrons watched her as swirling light enveloped her and she was, presumably, returned to her own time period.
"That was some burger," remarked the barkeep.