Tom Easton has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for more than half a century. He also spent thirty years as the book columnist for the SF magazine Analog, spent many years as a college science professor, and wrote a number of textbooks. He is now retired – except for writing.
Torion Oey has written across a variety of genres, but tends toward science fiction and fantasy. He has participated in NaNoWriMo every year since 2014 and self-published several stories, including his more recent fantasy novel The Disgraced Mage. In his other side, he also counsels teens who are facing some of the very same challenges portrayed and discussed in this story.
Introduction to Boondoggle: an Out of Time novel edited by David Brin
The year 2340 was shaping up to be pretty good—by 2346, not so much.
A distant space station faces chaos as saboteurs threaten the fragile interstellar alliance. Enter Project Hourglass, a bold experiment to reach back through history and recruit a team of young, gritty problem solvers to save the day.
First, there’s 14-year-old Artie Conan Doyle, plucked from 1879 long before he’ll dream up Sherlock Holmes. Irene Kennealy is pulled from 2025, right in the middle of her science fair project. Twins Siondra and Tony Pantala join from 2029—along with, quite accidentally, three teenage roughnecks and a scrappy beagle pup named Tuffy. Together, they’re an unlikely but spirited crew.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Whispers of alien conspiracies hint at war with humanity, but human motives muddy the waters, too. Worse yet, someone—or something—is kidnapping members of the team. Can this ragtag group of time-displaced youths (and one fearless pup) solve the mystery and safeguard the fragile alliance?
The future’s survival is in their hands. The game is afoot!
Boondoggle will release on February 1st, 2025 everywhere!
ARTIE DOYLE MEETS THE FUTURE
JULY 1879
ALMOST AUGUST. The return to Stonyhurst was over a month away. All of Artie Doyle’s friends travelled away on holiday, some of them to the beaches of Spain, while he remained stuck in Edinburgh, staring up at the castle on its height, contemplating a visit to St. Giles Cathedral.
But no. He really wanted to get away like his friends. Go even farther, if that’s possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family. Mother fondly told fanciful stories, often involving travel to magical worlds. They’re ridiculous, of course, he thought. But marvelous anyway. And even Father seemed to like them. He would come home from the club reeking of whisky and port, take a seat in the parlor, and listen as if the stories were a different form of drink.
Artie sighed. By all accounts, his father had not always been a drunk. Life disappointed him. It might disappoint me too, he thought. But not yet. I want to go to the University of Edinburgh. Maybe I’ll study medicine and get a berth as a ship’s doctor. Or imitate Mark Twain’s new book, Roughing It. Travel everywhere.
Maybe go on one of those balloon expeditions … actually fly in the air.
He sighed and turned away from the heights where he would never live. It was time to go home.
As he passed the Royal Scot pub, a sound caught his attention from the shadowed alley next door. A voice, with buzzing, quavering overtones that didn’t seem unfriendly.
“Artie! Artie Doyle! You want to go places?”
He turned, intrigued, seeing no one in the alley, though a patch of filthy brick pavement was illuminated by a bluish glow.
“Who are you?”
“People who admire you and who need you. Further away than you can understand right now, but we can explain. And you will return to this exact place and within seconds of this time.”
“You have got to be drawing my leg.”
“Not a bit of it, Artie. Just say yes, and you’ll get everything explained.”
The glow expanded, and Artie thought, This is mad. But even if it’s a stunt … or a moment of fantasy in my mind … what’s the hurt? The only place I was thinking of going was St. Giles. And I’ve been there before. Many times.
If they really can bring me back, to right here and now …
Not sure he wasn’t making a dreadful mistake, he said, “Why not?”
The glow rose to waist height, head height, more. It filled the alley mouth. Then it leaped upon him.
FIRST CAME A BLUR OF apparent motion, which ended with a tumble to the ground … soft … much softer than the cobblestone alley. Fighting for balance on his hands and knees, Artie almost retched under the blow of a massive headache that swirled behind his briefly blinded eyes.
The next returning sensation … he inhaled sharply and the air smelled of pine. Then he felt hands on the side of his head, a prickly sensation on his scalp. A feminine voice murmured, “He has his Broca Amplifier.”
Though briefly agonizing, the headache swiftly ebbed. When he opened his eyes, Artie glimpsed a white-walled room with grey carpet. He saw a pair of sandals in front of him … strange, silky socks covered the ankles … then bare calves and … a man in a white tunic and shorts faced him from a simple, wooden chair. He was as bald as an egg, with vaguely Asian features. His scalp, legs, and hands suggested that he spent much time in the sun.
Perhaps I will look like that if I go to sea, thought Artie, and … what a weird thing for me to think, right now.
“Arthur Doyle.” The man bent his head as if to suggest a bow of respect. “First, my apologies for the discomfort of teleportation. It should pass very soon. Welcome to the year 2347. I am Master Lobo. Do you need help getting up? There is a chair right behind you.”
“Th-thank you …” His mouth felt both gummy and dry. “I … I’ll manage.”
Artie groped behind himself, found the chair, managing … third try … to hoist himself off his knees and into it. The seat was plush, obviously much cushier than Master Lobo’s.
There was someone else here a moment ago. Where did they go?
Is Mother playing a prank from one of her stories? She’s done a few harmless tricks… But no. She might have been able to produce the room and hire an actor, but the blue light in the alley? And she would never cause me pain. No.
Artie eliminated that impossible explanation. So, what else was possible?
I’d better play along anyway.
Master Lobo leaned forward, offering a goblet whose clear contents seemed to be water. Knowing that he was already in the power of these folks made it easy to trust the liquid, which he slurped carefully, while looking about the chamber. A bit larger than a Victorian drawing room, it had only the two chairs, a small sideboard bearing a water pitcher and another glass … and a door with no handles. Where a window might have been, there lay a blank rectangle the same color as the walls … unless that IS a window, after all …
Glancing behind him, Artie saw something truly unusual. A much larger … doorway? It shimmered with the same glow as that tunnel in the alley had emitted, now fading away with every passing second. In his mind’s eye, he traced a path from that portal to …
… where I fell to my knees, on arrival. So, I must have stumbled out that way, fallen there … and that explains why the carpet is so soft. This is something they have done before.
All right. Artie felt ready to speak.
“The future? Did you say the year 2347?”
“I did. And while your visit is temporary, I promise you’ll return to your own time. Right away, if you wish. Or else after hearing our proposition … or perhaps after the adventure of a lifetime!”
Artie blinked. Taking it in. The man’s words do not sound quite like English, yet that is the way I hear them.
“Your speech…”
Master Lobo tapped the side of his own head. “You now have a Broca Amplifier. It makes our dialect intelligible to you.”
A translation device! How wonderful! But then, it is almost five hundred years after my day!
Recent decades had brought the world iron bridges, locomotives, great mills powered by steam engines, the telegraph, even an end to the Age of Sail. So far into the future and it is easy to believe in even more wonders.
He shook his head. “How …?”
The voice in the tunnel had asked if he wanted to go places, and he had indeed been thinking that, just a few moments before. That voice … it was different from this Master Lobo’s.
The man laughed warmly, as if to set Artie at ease. “The how is something even I am not entirely sure of, though if you truly wish to know I can introduce you to Dr. Orgel at some point. He designed the, ah, transportation.”
Master Lobo certainly seemed sincere. He continued.
“What matters far more is why. We invited you here because we need a young man with a talent for puzzles. Once we have explained the puzzle, we will ask you for your willing help. If you decide otherwise, you can return to Edinburgh within moments of your departure, though we must erase your memory of this visit.”
“Erase …”
“Your encounter in the alley will be but a dream. Fragments may flicker in your mind. Truly, is there a net harm, in that event?”
Artie wasn’t sure that point couldn’t be debated. But let it go.
“And if I choose to stay … the ‘adventure’ you mentioned … you truly need help from the likes of me?”
Lobo nodded. “We’ll start by giving you some training.”
Funny, it was something about the fellow’s accent and his turns of phrase that gave some degree of credibility to this outlandish story. “Training? What sort of training?”
Master Lobo bowed his head once more. “My specialty is unarmed combat.”
Artie blinked once, twice. And quashed a sudden impulse to laughter. In fact, he felt reassured in a way.
I feared this was all delirium as I lay in the alley, my skull crushed by the cosh of a lurking footpad. But there is no possibility at all that I would or could conjure up such an astonishing man, giving me such an answer! So, we can eliminate the possibility that I’m hallucinating.
“I will listen.”
Master Lobo looked pleased, as if Artie had passed some sort of test or ritual
with a better-than-average score.
“Excellent! Then let us go to the conference room where the rest of your team awaits.”
My … team. Well, of course. Even a puzzle-solving savant from the Nineteenth Century would need comrades.
He stood, still a bit queasy from the passing headache, clearly an artifact of the unusual mode of transportation.
“By all means, sir. Do lead on.”
Without needing knobs or handles, they passed through a silent, sliding doorway that struck him as pleasantly and reassuringly futuristic, then down a hallway lined with paintings or other art forms that moved. And while he noted every detail in passing, Artie kept his expression reserved. No doubt he was being watched, even now. There was another of those blank rectangles that he suspected must be a window, and now he noted a tiny button and grill next to it. Oh, the temptation to reach out and … but clearly this is a time for focus, Artie Doyle. Discipline!
The next room, beyond another sliding doorway, was quite a bit larger. It featured a reassuringly familiar looking table, like the one in the dining room at home, lined with people in chairs, but Artie jumped when he saw a metal cylinder with a smaller cylinder centered on its top, floating a few inches above the floor. A metal rope attached to its side waved in the air like the tentacle of an octopus.
“Please be at ease, Mr. Doyle. I am Watson, a robot. An automaton with the intelligence and goodwill of a human. I bid you welcome.”
A talking machine! Wonder upon wonders …
… and so, why not? There have been stories about such things.
“I am pleased to meet you, my good fellow. And …” Suppressing any impulse to stare, he turned to the living people.
A woman with golden hair, a silvery, body-hugging suit, and calf-hugging brown boots stood from her chair at the head of the table. “I am Dr. Serena Mep Cee, head of Operation Hourglass. Thank you for agreeing to consider our proposal, Mr. Doyle. These, your proposed teammates, arrived a short time before you did.” Her gesture included the machine and three more people sitting at the room’s long table.
“Watson’s task will be to assist you all on your mission and record everything for later perusal.”
“Ah, our amanuensis,” Artie commented, and noted that the word made Dr. Cee tap her skull, at a point just above her left ear, before smiling and nodding back at him. “Just so.”
Now that I notice it, I have an odd sensation in the same place, just above the same ear. And again, there’s something odd about her accent, the sounds of her words …
He filed that for further investigation, later. There were priorities. Proprieties.
He nodded toward a young woman – more of a girl, about Artie’s own age. And Dr. Cee continued introductions.
“Irene Kennealy from the year 2025.”
The girl gave a slight nod in greeting. Though she was seated, he could tell she would stand a foot taller than him. Her skin was light brown.
“Like you, she has a talent for solving puzzles.”
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