Enid tapped the new option to funnel the wormhole generation through the fragment of the Reality Core. Maria had explained how it all worked and why it had taken so long, but Enid truly lost all ability to follow her after about fifteen minutes. Her sister’s genius was not shared by herself. Hazel was sitting in the rear seat. Enid glanced back at her.

“You ready hon?”

“Are sure you are ready? You couldn’t even hold down breakfast.”

“I’ll be fine. He’s just a bit nervous about time travel.”

Enid smiled.

“How about you Apollo? Are you ready to be the AI to time travel?”

“I would prefer if we stayed here and now, but I understand the need Aunt Enid. So, I am ready.”

Enid powered the engines and opened a comm-link.

“Maria, we’re ready. Are we good to go?”

“Yes. All power readings are nominal the reality core channel is working. You are good to go on your mark.”

Enid pressed the wormhole button.

“Targeting the Reality Core.”

The wormhole form and was crackling with white lightning. Enid hit the thrusters. Apollo’s shield collied with something hard and then they found themselves in atmosphere. Enid hit the antigrav button repeatedly. The holo-HUD was flickering.

“Apollo?”

No answer came.

“Apollo!”

Still no answer for several seconds. Then the holo-HUD stopped flickering and the antigravs kicked in. Enid used a combination of them and the thrusters to gain altitude. She activated the cloak. Finally, Apollo spoke.

“I apologize Aunt Enid, there was a power interruption to my core computer functions.”

“Its all good. Maybe next time we put a physical antigrav button on the console before we go through the wormhole.”

“Agreed Aunt Enid.”

Enid glanced back at Hazel. Her daughter looked none the worse for the wear.

“You good?”

Hazel nodded. Enid turned started looking around herself on the 360 degree vision provided by Apollo’s holo-HUD.

“Now let’s see where we are. While I’m doing that could you scan for the drone signatures?”

Hazel frowned.

“I guess I’ll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs.”

Enid looked back at her.

“And if I hadn’t brought you then you’d never forgive me.”

Hazel rolled her eyes. Enid guided the starfighter closer to the ground. She set it to hover and zoomed into some cars in a parking lot.

“Early eighties.”

“How do you know mom?”

“The cars.”

Apollo spoke.

“Aunt Enid, Hazel, I’ve have detected a drone’s beacon it is approximately eight kilometers from our present location.”

“Put it on the HUD.”

Enid put her hands on the controls and started towards the dot on the HUD. She switched back to hover and looked down at the complex beneath them.

“A mall. What the… is it doing there?”

“I can give you precise coordinates but without full functional GPS I fear they may be useless.”

Enid zoomed into the large mall. Hazel leaned over the seat and was looking at it too.

“What is this place?”

“Uh, think of the Market in New Amazon. Put it under a roof with separate apartments for different venders. Oh, and there’s usually a food court.”

“I’m in.”

“Of course, you are. Alright let’s find someplace nearby to land. I’ll go to a department store, find you some clothes and then we’ll go to the mall together. No armor or weapons. We don’t want to stand out.”

“Aren’t you putting the cart in front of the horse there, mom? How are you going to go shopping?”

“Oh, I have 80’s clothes in my bag. This was when I first turned mortal.”

Enid undid her armor and started pulling on an 80’s outfit. Which consisted of an awful hot pink miniskirt. A black sabbath concert t-shirt, and finally a pair of pink sneakers. Hazel blinked at her mother as she stood up to get out of Apollo.

“You mean people really dressed that way?”

“Yes.”

Enid looked at Hazel like she was slightly crazy. Hazel shrugged.

“I just thought the movies were…fake.”

“Get your big hair ready.”

Enid stuck her tongue out and hopped down to the ground.

“So, are we going goth, preppy, or depressed teenager?”

“I want clothes like the one with red hair from the Breakfast…gathering? What was it?”

Enid snickered.

“Breakfast Club. Sure, so prep. Got it. No problem at all.”

Enid used the zoom function on her contacts.

“Probably no problem. At uh, guess the closest one is Bambergers.”

“I’m going to have to stop answering you or I’m going to look nuts. Just tell me what you like when I look at it and I’ll buy it. Oh, hey there’s a movie theater.”

“Oh mom, can we go?”

“Provided we find the drone without getting chased away by the police, sure. I suppose we can go see a movie.”

“Oh, this is going to be so awesome!”

“Nice to hear you sounding excited again.”

“We’re going to a mall; I get to see an actual movie in a theater with popcorn and snacks. I wonder if the food place has Pizza.”

“The only problem is, we’re doing it in New Jersey.”

“Where’s that?”

“Never mind it’s just a joke. Okay people. I’m shutting up now.”

Enid jumped off the bottom of the grassy hill leading down the Mall’s parking lot. No one paid her much mind as she walked across the lot and into the department store, she’d decided on. She hadn’t been in a mall in forever. Between her and Hazel she found an outside for her. It was hard finding women’s clothes in her daughter’s size, so the selection was limited. She paid in cash and went back out to Apollo. Hazel got changed. The skirt wasn’t quite as long as she wanted. But she loved the leather boots and loose top.

“Apollo, maintain link with our holo-phones, you should be able to breach a satellite’s security and keep us connected if we get out of conventional range. Track our position relative to the drone. And guide us. I’m hoping when we see the store it’s in, we’ll know it.”

“Of course, Aunt Enid.”

Enid walked towards one of the mall entrances that wasn’t the department store she’d shopped at. With Hazel’s recent luck she’d get accused of shoplifting. Hazel’s eyes were wide as the pair passed several stores. It was New Amazon for the first time all over again. It was like Hazel didn’t know where to look first.

“Oh my God mom. This place is crazy.”

“They had their place in the twentieth century. Pandemic basically crushed them though in the twenty-first century. The eighties were their golden age. To be someone you had to earn and spend money. Capitalism on steroids. Big hair, big shoulders…”

Hazel saw something and rushed ahead of her mother. Enid rolled her eyes and caught up eventually. Hazel was pointing at a life-sized cardboard cutout of Eyre.

“Is that?”

Enid nodded.

“No way. She was famous even here?”

“She was an international pop superstar. Until her unfortunate death in a fiery crash in her sports car. Shame they couldn’t even identify the body.”

Hazel quirked her head to the side.

“What?”

“Someone summoned a demon to kill us. She had to fake her death, so they didn’t try again. She decided to learn to be a chef and to start a record label.”

“It says today! Oh, we so need to watch the show.”

“Sure, hon but let’s not forget we’re here for the drone.”

“Yea, yea I know but, oh my god I’m recording this, she’ll be so embarrassed do you see her hair?”

“Yes, I see her hair. Let’s start searching. We have a few hours before she’ll start.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“How do you know that?”

“Because she’s a vampire and there are skylights.”

Enid pointed up.

“Oh, but isn’t she like you?”

“Not for another…year or so?”

“I don’t know, maybe she already has the amulet. Wait a sec.”

Enid looked around and saw someone with a wristwatch. He was looking at the mall map. He was older. Enid stepped beside him.

“Excuse me sir.”

He looked around and then noticed Enid standing beside him.

“Yes?”

“Could you tell me the time?”

He smiled and looked at his watch.

“Quarter to five.”

Enid smiled back.

“Thank you so much sir.”

She walked to Hazel and using her as cover set up a local time readout on her HUD and set it to 4:45 PM.

“So, we have about two hours. And then we can probably catch a movie at nine or ten. And be back home for bed. Easy.”

“Nothing is ever easy, isn’t that what you say mom?”

Enid shrugged.

“I’m going to choose to be optimistic, it is the eighties after all.”

Enid took a better look at the map. Apollo took it and made a three-dimensional render. He superimposed the ping he was getting from the drone. Enid smiled at Hazel. Enid tapped the physical map.

“Dorian’s Electronics”

She looked at Hazel.

“See? Easy.”

Their path took them path the movie theater. Enid pointed at one of the movies on the marquee.

“Oh, you have not seen that one yet. You’re so lucky. Okay. So, its 1984. Near the end of the year? I forget when it came out exactly.”

Hazel followed the red text.

“The Terminator?”

“Yes. You’re going to love it. Terminator 2 was by far the better movie, but this is a classic.”

Enid saw a sign and rushed inside a store. Hazel hurried to catch up. Enid pulled a bottle of coke out of the cabinet and paid for it then popped the cap and took a long drink.

“Oh, that is so good. It’s the original too.”

Hazel blinked at her mother.

“What was that about the reason we’re here?”

Enid took another long drink then went back inside the store and bought two more bottles of coke and two chocolate bars. She popped both caps and threw her empty into the trash. Hazel gave her the dirtiest look.

“Mom, that’s glass! You recycle that!”

Enid looked around.

“Do you see a recycling bin?”

Hazel looked around and started to blush.

“This is the 80’s they ate burgers out of Styrofoam containers that will literally never decompose. You could go out find some in a garbage dump at home. Dig it up. They might be faded but they will still have the same mass they had when they were made.”

“Are they insane? So much waste.”

“And that was why in my time we had more risk of the world burning up from global warming then we did of a global, nine hundred years plus ice age. I guess your Aunt, sister and stepmother killed two birds with one stone. Look, this isn’t like home. We have limited resources of everything so nothing can go to waste, that might change with the colonies.”

“I hope not. I hope they keep the same

“We can hope my dear, we can hope. Drink your pop before it goes flat.”

Enid drank her second one slower.

“I missed this so much. I’m buying a case.”

“Why? Just put one in your pack, bring it home and get it synthesized. Aurelius corp can probably do it in like three hours. Sell it to the highest bidder. One of those bottles, just one of them, we uh acquired for a collector he paid three million.”

Enid quirked an eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Yes, just the faded chipped bottle.”

“They won’t be aged properly if we just take them back.”

“Yes, but they will be chemically identical the original. Which is apparently what matters? They date by the radiation for 20th century artifacts. Apparently, there is a radioactive elemental in the glass with a two-thousand-year half-life. It only exists in glass produced shortly after the atomic detonations.”

Enid blinked at her daughter.

“How do you know all this?”

“Client talked on and on and on. But for three million, the customer is always right.”

Enid chuckled.

“I guess I did bring you up right after all.”

Hazel took her first drink and closed her eyes.

“Its so fizzy…oh this is what pop is supposed to taste like?”

Enid nodded.

“I see why you always seem so disappointed.”

Enid took a bite of her chocolate bar. It was her first real honest, actual chocolate in over a century and it was delicious even if it was a cheap milk chocolate bar. Hazel tried hers and she closed her eyes.

“Mom, how do you deal with the stuff from home?”

“Well, when its what you got, it’s what you got.”

Enid finished her snack and put the wrapper in the garbage. After glancing at Hazel she just shook the bottle out and put in her pack. Hazel did the same. Enid started towards the electronics shop. Hazel grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“Mom, we have a superfast plane and chocolate is like cocoa plant, right?”

“Yes…”

“Then why don’t we go get seeds. Seeds for stuff like real bananas, oranges, apples and grapes?”

“Because that’s not why we’re here.”

“But mom, think about it, with our money, and those seeds we could start a whole new company, same with the pop, we buy one of each, synthesize it ourselves and profit.”

“I don’t know that seems kind of abusive of time travel. Besides what do we need money for? Do you need a loan? How did you spend 2.5 trillion credits?”

“I didn’t. But mom. We both like real fruits. Real chocolate. Real pop. So, who else is going to make it if we don’t? You can donate your half for all I care.”

Enid tapped her chin.

“I’ll think about it.”

If Hazel had bothered to look between the lines of her mother’s expression and words, she would have realized it was more of a, that is an awesome idea to give you something constructive to do that doesn’t involve getting arrested.

“You’re the best mom.”

“You weren’t saying that a week ago.”

Hazel blushed and let Enid continue walking towards the electronics shop. The front of the shop was clean. Had different connectors and wires and the latest eighties gadgets. Hazel looked at the computers arrayed on shelves. From the IBM PC/AT to the Commadores, and finally the Macintosh. She looked at her mother then back at the computers.

“Are these word processors?”

Enid blinked at her daughter.

“No, they’re computers. You’ve seen them in movies.”

“But they’re so big.”

Enid laughed.

“You should see a mainframe from the fifties and sixties. Yesh.”

“So, there are physical keyboards? Are the screens touch?”

“Yes, no.”

Hazel poked at one of the five and a quarter drives.

“What is this for?”

Enid picked up a box of disks with a picture on the front.

“Disks.”

“That looks kind of flimsy.”

“That is why they were called floppy disks.”

“Did they print stuff on the insides?”

Enid looked around to make sure no one was paying to much attention to them then back to her daughter.

“No, yes, sort of they were magnetic. And noisy. Hell that one doesn’t even have internal storage.”

Enid pointed to one of the first gen Macintosh computers.

“And those, half of them were monochrome green. And only twenty megabytes. I never used any of these. If you’d brought me into a computer store in 1984 I’d have told you to stop showing me useless human junk. Look at me now. I’m wearing a quantum computer on my wrist and using contacts for a user interface.”

“What does twenty megabytes mean?”

“It’s not important.”

Hazel frowned.

“Please mom, I’m curious.”

“It’s a pointless measurement for you. Twenty millionish bytes.”

“What is a byte?”

Enid sighed.

“A string of eight ones and zeros or bits. Yesh.”

“Why ones and zeros?”

“Hazel you are driving me nuts. We’re here for the drone.”

“Mom why are you so… you?”

“Fine. These have binary processors. They understand ones and zeros, off or on. It takes eight of those to make a byte. I have no idea why they were named that way. I probably learned it in school but it’s been a long time and its not really pertinent to our lives now.”

“Why is that different from this?”

Hazel held up her wrist.

“That’s a quantum computer. I honestly do not understand the math system behind them. It’s something about being able to be off and on at the same time. If you want to know, why not go to University and take Quantum Computer Engineering hmm?”

Hazel made a face.

“Look our holo-phones probably have a million times more processing power then if you took every computer on Earth at this moment and put them together. Never mind a quantum neural net like Apollo. Which is why we need to make sure the drone is not reverse engineered. I doubt they have the tech to even begin to figure it out but give them forty years. If you want to know more ask Apollo. He probably knows.”

“I do. Quantum computers run on the Qbit principle unlike more primitive bin-”

“That’s enough Apollo. She can look it up on system net when she gets home. Or maybe she will realize you can learn things in University you didn’t in high school.”

Hazel made another face at her mother.

“Apollo we’re here, but I do not see the drone anywhere.”

“It is approximately twenty-three meters from your current position. Based on your holo-feed, the rear of the shop.”

Enid looked around the shop again. It was only her and Hazel, not a single other soul in sight.

“Tracks. Computer folks would be all over that thing.”

Enid reached into her pack and pulled out a folded leather cover. Hazel looked at her mother quizzically.

“What is that?”

“Uh, my Military Intelligence ID.”

“From like thirty years from now?”

“Yea, but they don’t need to know that.”

Enid pulled out two Glocks and passed one to Hazel.

“We’re not going to use these. They are for show. Safety on.”

Hazel did a quick check of the gun as she had been taught at the Retreat. Enid did the same with hers. Enid motioned for Hazel to be a look out and kneeled down to pick the lock. Knocking would mean they might try to hide the drone and she didn’t want to waste time with games. She unlocked the door and motioned with her hand that she was going in first. They burst through the door and Enid stepped aside and Hazel followed her and closed the door. While Enid kept her weapon trained on the four occupants of the cluttered workshop and storage area of the computer store.

“Department of National Defense. Hands where I can see them.”

Her HUD was analyzing the room for threats. None of the four were armed. There were two teenagers a girl with huge glasses in a similar outfit to her, a teenage boy in jeans and a t-shirt. An older woman who Enid pegged as the mother of one of the teens and a bearded man. Every single one of them except the girl looked ready to piss themselves. Enid flashed her ID, which when it would be valid in three decades or so would totally make this action lawful.

“You are in unlawful possession of DND property. You will cease all inspection of it immediately. Release it to our custody and speak of it to no one, or you will be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. The punishment for which a prison term no longer then thirty years, or death. Do you understand what I have just told you?”

They all nodded with some mumbled yes ma’ams. The teenage boy spoke up.

“Aren’t you a little young to be in the Military?”

The mother who was holding a purse clocked him on the back of the head with it.

“Shut up. You brought enough trouble on this family already today! Did you hear her? Death? Prison!”

The woman looked at Enid.

“My son is an idiot, just do what you need to do, no trouble from us. We’ll cooperate.”

Enid looked at Hazel.

“Cover me Greta while I retrieve the asset.”

Enid put her gun in the waistband of her skirt and moved to the drone. Apollo verified all the pieces were there. Then identified that the antigrav unit was missing.

“There is a piece missing. Where is it?”

She looked at the kids. They both shook there heads. She looked at the store owner who spoke.

“I didn’t have a chance to take it apart.”

Enid looked at the mother who looked to the two teenagers.

“Which one of you has it?”

“Did you not hear? Jailtime! Death! Give it to her!”

The boy leaned away from the woman.

“I don’t know mom!”

The girl looked at Enid through her large glass frames.

“No idea.”

Enid knew she was lying immediately, her gift never failed her when it came to sniffing out the truth.

“She’s lying. Let’s call in the FBI.”

The mother shrieked.

“No, no, you don’t have to do that. I told you we’ll cooperate.”

The girl crossed her arms.

“No, we won’t. We found it. It’s ours. What are you trying to hide? IS this your next genocide machine? Are you even really from the government? That ID looked faker then my brother’s Canadian girlfriend.”

Enid stepped closer to her. They were the same height so were eye to well glasses. She leaned in close.

“Let me tell you what is real, little girl. We will get this entire classified DND project back. With or without your help. Your mother and father will be taken into custody. They will be strip searched. They will lose everything. You will end up in a juvenile detention facility until we confirm you can be charged as an adult. Your entire family will be paraded in front of the news cameras and called Soviet spies. Or you can give me the little silver disk that was attached to the right left corner of the device, we leave and if you keep your mouth shut, you will go on with your lives as if nothing happened. What you seem to fail to understand is, we have a letter from the president that says the moment you touched this thing, you lost all human rights. We could torture and kill every single one of you right here and we would be heroes. So, disk. Now.”

Enid held out her hand. She had channeled her I’m going to murder you because I am an annoyed vampire persona for the whole tirade. The girl had tears running down her cheeks as her shaking hand reached into top and then her bra and pulled out the antigrav disk. It was only about two inches in diameter. Enid gathered up the drone and put it in the same plastic bag it had been brought in.

“Remember. You never saw this, we were never here, and you go on with your lives like nothing happened, or, thirty years in prison and complete disgrace.”

She looked at the weakest link of the teenagers which was the boy.

“Did anyone else see this?”

He looked at his sister was ever so slightly shaking her head. Enid grabbed his wrist and twisted. He made a whimpering sound. His mother shrieked.

“Your sister is going to get you hurt boy. If I twist the slightest bit more your wrist will break.”

Because she was getting annoyed at the girls antics she pulled her gun out flicked off the safety and put it to his head.

“Now. Who else saw it?”

His voice cracked as he spoke.

“Just our friends. Andy and Kennedy. I swear it.”

Enid flicked the safety on and slide the gun into the waste band of her skirt and concealed it with the long t-shirt.

“Full names and addresses, please.”

She didn’t bother writing them down she just recorded the conversation as he reamed them off to her. Hazel had the bag with the drone in it. Enid pointed at the girl.

“Next time just answer the damn questions. It pisses people off less. Just because you think you have freedom; Doesn’t mean you do. Come on Greta, lets go clean the rest of this damned mess.”

As they left Enid put the guns in her pack followed by the drone remains. She was glad they were small ones.

“Mom, that was pretty brutal.”

“She reminded me of you, I was triggered.”

Hazel frowned.

“I’ll get changed into my uniform and go deal with the other two witnesses. You can hang out here if you want. I should be back before Eyre’s show.”