Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (22 page)

There was nothing to be found.  Not even dust.  The scraps of paper strewn about were of no importance.  Most were blank, the rest were just a few old utility bills.

Mark sat and waited.  He waited until dark.  He waited through most of the night.  Why he was waiting, he wasn’t sure.  Hardy always seemed to know when and where to find him if he so desired.  By waiting, perhaps he subconsciously hoped to stave off the inevitable sense of loneliness assaulting the walls of his heart.

 They weren’t coming, he finally admitted to no one in particular.  He felt like the office in which he sat.

Abandoned.

June 13
^th
, 2012, Boston, MA

He had no clue where to find them....nor
when
to find them for that matter.  The only places Mark knew for sure they'd be were times where they’d met with him already, and he didn’t have the guts to meet his own alter ego yet.  Who knew about possible time paradox problems and things like that.

He didn’t think foul play was behind their disappearance.  He considered shifting back a day or two to see if he could catch them before they abandoned their office, but, in the end, he decided to just drop it. 
If they want to disappear so bad, let ‘em.

Besides, if their goal was to hide, it wouldn’t be hard.  Time really was the fourth dimension.

Imagine trying to find a certain person somewhere in the world without knowing their exact location.  It would be an impossible task, of course, like finding a needle in a Mt. Everest-sized haystack.  Yet, if you knew that same person's exact location within the three physical dimensions, you'd find them with no problem. 

Unless, you didn’t know
when
to find them there.  Time added a fourth dimension.  You could know a person’s exact physical location, but if you had no idea when in history they were going to be there, you would be back to square one with the needle in a haystack problem.

Add to that the ability to shift around instantaneously within time, and it became even more impossible to pin down a person’s location within the
four
dimensions.

Mark was faced with a daunting question.  One that he would have to answer now, it appeared, by himself:

What should he do with the rest of his life?

He was filthy rich.  So rich, in fact, that it would be pointless to try and increase his wealth any further.  It just wouldn't make any difference to him.

Women?  Kelly’s abandonment had left a sour taste in his mouth that hadn’t quite gone away yet.

Travel the world?  Skydiving?  Climb the Himalayas, sail the Caribbean?

None of those things felt worthwhile.  He had this shifter for a reason.  What that reason was, though, he had no idea.  So far, Heaven had not opened up in a glorious display of angelic music and light to reveal its will to him.  There had been no booming voice telling him what to do.  He would have to figure it out on his own.

So many people talked about changing the world, but now he was in a position to truly do it.  Maybe more so than anyone else in history.  He had unlimited financial resources and a powerful tool in the shifter.  He wanted to help people, to make the world a better place, but where should he start?  What to do?

His life was an open slate, like a chalkboard that had been erased, the residue of previous  smudges still marring its surface, but clean enough to be written on anew.  It was time to pick the chalk back up.

***

            The Stanford Costume Company was a simple affair.  The walls of the small front area were painted in warm shades of beige and accentuated by a few pieces of cherry wood furniture, namely a few chairs and bookcases.  It had a sparse, but lively, homey feel.

            The moderate sized workroom was in the back, but all customers were attended in the front by whoever was sitting at the elegant cherry desk. 

“I'm sorry,
who
did you say you represent again?”

The young lady squinted her eyes so quizzically, Mark thought the creases in her brow would undo her tightly wound bun.  The bun and her thin-rimmed spectacles made her look like a mousy librarian, though she presumably was not one.  Her eyes were a cool-water blue, and deep.  Glossy pink lips were accentuated nicely by the light, creamy hues of her unblemished skin.  Her honey-colored hair being pulled back and up revealed a slight and graceful neck.  Her manner was soft and professional.

“Historical Enterprises.”

“....And what is it ‘Historical Enterprises’ does again?”

“We have a number of interests, but at the moment we’re looking to create a variety of historically accurate costumes”

“About how many costumes are you wanting?  And from which era?”

“Let’s say somewhere between one to two thousand, from all different eras.”

She almost choked on the water she was sipping. The crease in her brow deepened in confusion.  “I’m sorry....but did you just say one
thousand
to two
thousand
?”

“Yes.” Mark couldn’t help but smile.

“Eh....Okay....well, this is really my mother’s business.  I’m just watching it for her today.  She does all the sewing, I just do the research.  We’re both kind of part-time.”

“Okay.”

“She only does this to keep busy since she retired, you know.  I help out as I can, when I’m not in class or working.  We typically make just a few costumes every now and then for local theater companies....or sometimes costume shops.”

“Yes, I realize a lot would be involved.  You’d definitely have to hire several seamstresses for an extended period of time.”

“Uh....I’m not sure mom would want...uh....to go to that much effort.  It’d be a lot for her.”

“You’d probably have to help out full-time for a while too.  A big, big part of the work would be research.  I’ve come here because I believe your mother is the only one with the expertise in town to do this well.  What’s your normal rate?

“Anywhere from $250 to $750 per costume, depending on the detail involved.”

“Well, these will be very detailed.  I’ll give you a $400,000 deposit to get started, and I’ll pay you double your rate for each costume finished.  I’ll also pay as you deliver to prevent any cash flow problems.  I’m going to need numerous historically accurate costumes for every 25 year period in history since the year 1500.  For each 25 year period, I’ll need distinct costumes representing a myriad of countries and cultures, from Mexico to Europe, for all different economic levels of society, both male and female.

“Historical accuracy is very important,” Mark continued.  “I can’t stress that enough.  A person shouldn’t be able to tell these costumes from the real thing.  I won’t need anything from Africa or Asia for the time being.  Here’s my card.  Any questions?”

She gulped and slowly shook her head to say no.

“And your name is?”

“Savannah....Savannah Stanford.”

“Nice to meet you, Savannah.  I’m Mark.  Mark Carpen.”

***

The first coin specialist Mark sought out was more suspicious than Savannah Stanford of the Stanford Costume Company had been.  Mark wanted to place an order with an antique coin dealer for accurately made historical coin molds, reflecting the coinage of various countries throughout the past 500 years.  The first seller he initially approached was concerned that Mark was planning to counterfeit a bunch of antique coins and try to pass them off in the rare coin market as the real deal, so the man refused to do the work.  Unable to allay the specialist's fears, Mark was forced to seek help elsewhere.

If needed, once the costumes were ready, Mark could bypass the need for a coin dealer by taking gold bars back to the different historical eras and exchange them for real coins, but such a plan would be extremely labor intensive, not to mention time-consuming.

Instead, Mark tried a second rare coin specialist, one who was less scrupulous, and though the man was surprised by the sheer size of the request, he gladly took the project on.  Especially, when Mark explained what he was willing to pay.

From this dealer, Mark commissioned authentic coin molds which he could use to stamp new copies of every major coin from over 20 different countries that had been in circulation since 1500 AD.  All in all, he commissioned around 1,000 molds, which was a painstaking process for even a trained specialist.  That type of work wasn’t something you could train run-of-the-mill employees to do. 

It took the coiner over two years to complete the project, but for Mark, patience no longer had to be a virtue.  He simply placed the order, shifted to a couple of years in the future, and then picked the molds up.

He could have asked the coiner to actually make the coins, but he didn’t want the man knowing just how much in gold coin he planned to produce.  For discretion’s sake, it was better to keep the right and left hands from even knowing the other existed.

Once he had the molds, Mark recruited a metallist to stamp several tons of gold and silver into large quantities of authentic coins from each period of history. If he ever ran out of a certain kind of coin, the molds would allow him to just make more.

Next, he hired a team of artisans and carpenters to create an armory of authentic weapons, tools, and other accessories from each historic period.

Finally, he funded the founding of the
Institute for Historical Studies
on the campus of Harvard University.  Through the institute, Mark had a team of professors and graduate students working to prepare detailed “Manuals for Living” for various historical periods.  Savannah Stanford had also been a big part of this project, being a PhD student in World History at Harvard.  These manuals explained in simple terms the customs, verbal expressions, philosophies, current events, and the extent of scientific knowledge of any given generation in western history.

Perhaps it was due to the historical ambiance of the city, or just the fact that he was using Harvard so much in his research.  Maybe it was because Boston was the last place he’d seen Hardy and Ty, or maybe Atlanta just held too many bad memories for him, but whatever it was, Mark decided to move his base of operations from Atlanta to the Boston area permanently.

To house his giant historical arsenal, Mark built two large hangars at a local private airport.  One hangar actually housed an airplane, a Gulfstream jet Mark could use to get to any part of the world quickly.  At least much more quickly than having to drive to the airport, park, and pass through security, only to travel at painstakingly slow commercial airline speeds.

Inside the second hangar, which was adjacent to the first, were hundreds of small areas sectioned off from each other by painted yellow lines on the concrete floor.  These rows and rows of rectangular sections and the aisles between them filled the entire hangar.  Each area was clearly marked with the year-span and country it covered and had a tall wardrobe containing the appropriate attire for those years, as well as a chest with drawers full of leather pouches holding coins, tools and weapons from that era.  In the top drawer of each chest, next to the pouches, always lay the “Manual for Living” for that time period.

            So, if Mark planned to visit any country in the western hemisphere during the past 500 years, he could, in about 15 minutes, clothe himself, arm himself, study up on the era, and be assured to have no money problems as he traveled.

To a stranger, the hangar would seem nothing more than a giant furniture warehouse at first glance.  If they opened the drawers, they might decide it was an enormous antique bazaar, but no one would ever suspect it for what it really was.  A time-travel armory.

Nevertheless, Mark made sure no strangers
would
stumble upon it.  Each of the hangar’s doors was welded shut from the inside, and he had an elaborate alarm system installed which would monitor any activity around those entrances.  The only way in was through a tunnel in the floor, which led to a hidden door in the mechanic’s ditch of the first hangar where the Gulfstream Jet was.  Even if someone were to surveil Mark day in and day out, they would only see him entering the first hangar and never associate him with the second.

Mark scheduled the completion of every part of this project so that he would only lose a few days from the natural progression of his home time.  Regardless, even with his new ability to shift through time instantaneously, it still took Mark a little over six months of his “real time” to get everything set up right without arousing too much suspicion.  Confidentiality was a must.

When it was finally finished, Mark looked over the armory, satisfied with his effort.

            He was ready.