No Future Christmas (17 page)

This room was the largest.
Old computers sat on desks while
new, modern computers lined the walls.
Years ago, someone decided that to
maximize space things should be recessed.
The walls were a foot thick for that
purpose but it also kept them insulated from heat, cold and noise.
People sat
in chairs, stood at wall units and bent over old documents.

“Where’d you find this piece of junk, Mom?” Shauna asked.
Excitement filled her face and her eyes sparkled.
Her fingers flew over the old
keyboard as she pulled up documents.
“Look at this!
It’s amazing.
Documents
from 2065.
Rosters of utility bills, bank account numbers, social security
numbers and every kind of personal information collected at that time.
This is
great!” She bent forward as the computer scanned the old files.
“What am I
looking for again?”

“Anything that points to a diversion of funds or
information.
If something doesn’t look right or fit, it’s probably the
beginning of a trail to some hidden document.”

“Um-hum.” Shauna was already immersed in the research and
never felt her mother’s light pat on the shoulder telling her she was leaving.
She didn’t think about her fingers typing on the old-fashioned keyboard.
The
qwerty keyboard wasn’t used anymore.
A version that had been modified when text
messaging became popular was the norm now.
Typing was a lost art, almost like
an ancient language.
With everything voice-activated there was little need for
typewriters.
Holographic keyboards were the new, modern way to communicate and
typing a sentence nowadays, rarely used anymore, was similar to the old
shorthand from the twentieth century.

Shauna loved typing.
She’d taken it up for fun when she was
a child.
Her teachers and schoolmates thought she was nuts and now her skill
was in demand at her job with Travel Planet Com.
And all because of her
penchant for old things.
She happily typed away on the keyboard humming to
herself.
The clicking was a satisfying reminder of days past.
Pages scrolled by
and every once in a while Shauna stopped to peruse something that caught her
eye.

She’d been at it for three hours and her neck hurt.
Bent
forward, her eyes strained to catch the smallest hint that something had been
deleted or stored in an unusual file.

“Find anything?” Mike asked.
He’d come up behind her and
placed his hands on her shoulders, kneading the bunched muscles.

“Oh…that feels great.
Don’t stop.”

Mike leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
“Talk to me
like that and I’ll take you right here on the floor.”

Shauna’s blood boiled.
Her palms sweated and her fingers
fumbled on the keyboard.
She laughed.
“Well, that’s the way to get my
attention.” She swiveled in the chair, stood and threw her arms around Mike.
She hadn’t seen him since breakfast.
How had he gotten better looking since
then?
His hair was windblown and a jet-black lock fell over his broad forehead.
His eyes danced with a tawny, cat-ate-the-cream look and crinkled at the
corners.
“You look mighty happy for a man out of place and time.”

“I am.” A boyish sound came through his infectious laugh.
“Your father is teaching me to use a laser gun.
What a weapon!
I feel like a
kid at Christmas.”

Shauna cocked her head.
“What does a kid at Christmas feel
like?”

“Oh, right.
Gee, I forgot.
Only private celebrations.
Didn’t
you get presents for Christmas?”

“No.
Why should I?” Shauna puzzled over the thought that
presents were given to children for the holiday.

Mike sat in the chair at the desk and pulled Shauna on his
lap.
“It’s like this.
When I was a small kid my parents bought Scott and me
presents.” He ran his hands over her shoulders and arms, then up her neck.
Shauna moaned and shivered.
“They put a big Christmas tree inside the house,
decorated it—you’ve seen the decorations from my time, right?” Mike’s voice had
become husky.
She nodded her head.
“Good.
Then they bought us gifts, wrapped
them and put them under a tree for us to open on Christmas day.
It was the most
exciting time for us.
That is until Mom died.”

The light of excitement faded from Mike’s voice.
His hands
stilled on her neck.
Shauna didn’t know what happened to his mother but she
could feel the pain it still caused him.
“One day will you tell me about it?”

“What?” Mike shook his head to clear away the memories.
“Oh,
my mother.
Yes but not now.”

The mood had been shattered by Mike’s memory of his mother.
Shauna wondered what had happened.
Wondered why he rarely spoke about his
family.
Why he’d only mentioned his father once in the whole time he’d been
here.
He mentioned his brother Scott but not his father.
A deep curiosity
filled Shauna but she knew he’d tell her when the time was right.

“Anyway.
I’m learning to use a laser gun.” Pride replaced
memories and Mike stood straight and tall.
He pushed the lock of hair off his
forehead and sighed.
“Why is it that all of your modern-day machines and
gadgets take so much training?”

“It’s all for public safety and you know it.” Shauna touched
Mike’s lower lip.
It’d been sticking out a little in a typical pout but she
stroked it back and forth until Mike’s eyes darkened and his brows lowered.
She
watched him glance around the room.
No one paid them any attention.

He lowered his head and kissed Shauna.
The kiss intensified
when he pulled her into his arms.
One hand cradled the back of her head, the
other wrapped around her shoulders.
She molded her body to his, feeling his
taut thighs next to hers.
Lost to time and place, Shauna felt her blood sing,
her heart meld to Mike’s and her body curve to fit his.
She ran her hands
through his midnight hair feeling the coarse yet soft strands.
Her fingers
curved into his skull, lightly massaging, yet holding on for dear life.

A cough startled them apart.
“There’s a room for that and
it’s not here,” Douglas Wentworth said.

Shauna had never known mortification like this before.
She
literally felt the blush start at her ankles and sweep up her body to end in a
blaze on her face.
Perspiration popped out along her hairline.
Her knees
weakened and she sank into the nearby chair.
“Dad.”

The stern look on Douglas’ face was all Shauna needed to
feel six years old again.
“Uh…oh…well.”

“Very eloquent, daughter.” He moved forward and whispered in
Shauna’s ear, “Do that tonight behind closed doors.
I’ll keep your mother
distracted.”

Shock replaced embarrassment.
Shauna jumped up from the chair.
“Dad!” She saw the barely suppressed laughter and reluctantly grinned.
“That’s
more information than I need to know.”

“And you making love with Mike here isn’t?
Why the whole
room was watching.”

Shauna glanced around the room.
Nobody looked her way but
too many people studied papers or computers.
Another flush bombarded her.
She
grabbed Mike’s hand and pulled him from the room saying, “I need some air.”

* * * * *

Mike excelled at weapons training.
He loved the tiny laser
gun, handled the light-ray machine gun with ease and learned how to remotely
pilot the automated tanks.
They were very different from tanks in his day,
their maneuverability was amazing.
But essentially they had the same purpose.
Only now no one was inside them, no one would get hurt.
The unmanned tanks were
a powerful weapon with laser gun and light-ray capability.

It seemed that grenades were abolished in the twenty-second
century.
Too much damage to buildings.
The Global Guardians now used a small,
plastic-like device that snapped when it landed near a human.
Its ear-piercing
sound caused a soldier to drop instantly unconscious but unharmed.

Mike flew a different skycar everyday to practice getting
the feel of various sizes.
Two-seaters, four, ten.
The larger the skycar the
more it felt like a flying bus.
Douglas told him it didn’t matter if it was
full of passengers or not, he never knew when he’d need to escape in one.

Two weeks as a Subversive member and Mike felt as if he
belonged.
He knew the names of the men and women at the camp.
Louise and
Douglas didn’t call it that, they called it a city.

But a camp it was.
Patrols flew day and night to protect the
hidden valley.
Alarms were set to alert the population to intruders.
Computers
talked, old keyboards clicked and a quiet tension ruled.
Information was pulled
from secret places and hidden in secret files.
Reams of the new paper were used
to back up documents.
Computers and disks could be erased but this new paper
was fireproof and couldn’t be destroyed.

He loved Shauna’s parents and their cause.
There was a
warmth, a kindness, an intensity between them.
They lived and breathed their
work and they loved each other deeply.
Mike wanted that with Shauna.
He watched
them touch each other, smile or wink when they passed by in a room.
He saw
their faces light up when they saw each other after any amount of time away.
It
was the truest kind of love Mike had ever seen.

“Your parents are amazing.” They lay in bed cuddling.
The
day had been long and hard and after dinner Douglas and Louise had stated they
needed time together.
Mike knew it was their way of letting them have the
evening alone.
“I wish I’d grown up in a family like yours.”

Shauna’s laugh rumbled, shaking the bed.
“Oh, sure.
My
parents were always flying off to a meeting, running after the next story.
They
were out on assignment more than they were home.
Or at least it seemed that way
to me.”

“You can see their love, feel it, breathe it.” Mike pulled
Shauna closer.
“I want our love to be that way.”

She turned in his arms.
“It is.”

“I hope so.
I never grew up with love.”

“Will you tell me about it?” Shauna laid her head on his
chest, pulled the blanket up around them and made a warm nest for them.

“I don’t remember my mother very well.
I have glimpses of
love, warmth and laughter.
But one Christmas season she was decorating the tree
and ran out of lights.
I wasn’t more than six.
She wanted to get more but my
Dad said no because it was snowing.
They only lived a half mile from the store,
so Mom overrode Dad and went to the store.” Mike pulled the blankets closer and
nuzzled Shauna’s head.

“I remember blinking blue and red lights outside the house.
Dad had been laughing but when he opened the door the laughter stopped.
I never
heard him laugh again.”

“Your mother was hurt?” Shauna wrapped her legs around
Mike’s.

“Killed.
A drunk driver celebrating the holiday ran a red
light and killed Mom.” Mike sighed.
“Dad shipped us off to his sister.
Aunt
Evelyn raised us.
No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get Dad to be part
of our lives.”

“So on that day you not only lost your mother but you lost
your father too,” Shauna said.
“Oh, Mike.
I’m so sorry.”

Mike heard the hitch in Shauna’s voice.
He lifted her chin
up and saw tears coursing down her face.
“Yes.
The tragedy of it was that Scott
and I never connected with Dad again.
Aunt Evelyn tried talking to him over and
over again.
He shut her out.
Shut us out.”

“I’m sure he regrets it,” Shauna said.

“Who knows?
Each year at Christmas we invite him over.
Each
year he turns us down.
He has a sterile, cold apartment in a small town called
Sisters, Oregon.
It’s about twenty miles from Bend where you saw me.
I’m
surprised he even realized I’d been missing for three months now.”