Storytime Blog Hop: Lost in Time Wearing an Invisible Cloak

So we’re holed up in this makeshift bunker in the early twenty-fifth century waiting for the time bombs to stop dropping—forget next week, those things’ll knock you forward decades. Half our company’s wounded from more mundane weaponry, too. The locals hardly ever know there’s a time war on, they just think we’re looters or whatever. Good luck if you can get ‘em to go after the other guys—we weren’t so lucky this time.

Anyway, my buddy Greg is among the wounded. I go to see him and he’s gonna be fine, it’s nothin’ we can’t heal, just gonna take a while. And time is the one thing we’re never running out of. I’m due back out at the barricade, but first I say to him, I say Greg, you need anything before I go?

He says, “It’s cold in here, get me a blanket.”

Now I said we got plenty of time, but we’re damn near out of everything else. Low on food, low on munitions, and not a single extra blanket in sight. Hell, I’d give him mine if I had one, but it’s already been claimed—the wounded get priority and there still aren’t enough to go around.

So, “Greg,” I say, “there are no more blankets.”

“Bet you could find one,” he says, “bet someplace around here has something.”

So I get out there. Middle of winter. It still snows in the twenty-fifth, believe it or not. Supposedly they got heated streets and so on, keep things clear without anyone shoveling, but I guess they turned that all off when we barged in because the sidewalk might as well be a skating rink, and those bombs are still coming down. I see one land a couple blocks ahead and the buildings there are gone. They’ll probably find them in a few years.

I slip ‘n’ slide my way down the street looking for anything that’ll serve. In the twenty-fifth they’ll print anything you want to order then and there, but everything’s turned off. So where am I gonna find a blanket? Can’t run the machines myself—we got recruited from the late twenty-first, Greg and I, so all that’s beyond me. Most shops I go into don’t even have displays.

And then I find this clothing shop. And, thing about the twenty-fifth century—that fashion trend where everything’s see-through? Started in the late twentieth I think, makin’ everything out of clear plastic so you could see what was inside? That just keeps comin’ back, but in the twenty-fifth they got the tech to make the outer bits practically invisible. So I go into this store with a manikin still standing by the counter and a sign saying to have a touch. And I reach out and there’s thick cloth that I can’t see at all. Not the worst idea, right? You put on your nice outfit and then you gotta hide it under a heavy winter coat—not so much in the twenty-fifth. I can only sorta see it shimmer when I grab a fistful and yank it off the manikin. Can’t imagine how it keeps the heat in when light goes right through, but that’s technology for you.

I spend the whole way back still slidin’ around while I try to find the sleeves in the damn thing before I figure out there aren’t any. It’s a cape or cloak or something—guess that makes sense seeing as you can’t see it to find your arm-holes. Figure it’ll work great as a blanket.

So I slip back into the building and get back to Greg with the thing over my shoulder, just to trick him—his face falls like you wouldn’t believe when he sees me empty-handed. He goes, “Nothing?” and I shake my head.

And then I say, “Sorry, Greg. Gonna have to make do with your imagination. See, I’ll help.” And I take the cloak and drape it over him, all big and theatrical, and his eyes bug out because obviously he can feel the very real fabric. I start laughing and ruin the whole thing, of course, but for a moment it was grand. Had half the room laughing with us.

Then the Major caught me and I had to get back out front. A time bomb landed on the building soon after that and sent Greg and the rest off into the future somewhen, but we’re still lookin’, and we’re gonna find them. I’m not giving up on them so soon when all we got is time. Least I know, whenever he is, my buddy Greg is warm.