Katie Long (6:45)
Will be working with are also unlikely to use the term. We prefer expat. In answer to your question, I'm the Vice Secretary of expatriation, and they are expats from history. Sorry. Adela shrugged. We have time travel, she said, like someone describing the coffee machine. Welcome to the Ministry. Anyone who has ever watched a film with time travel, or read a book with time travel, or dissociated on a delayed public transport vehicle considering the concept of time travel will know that the moment you start to think about the physics of it, you are in a crock of shit. How does it work? How can it work? I exist at the beginning and end of this account simultaneously, which is a kind of time travel, and I'm here to tell you, don't worry about it. All you need to know is that in your near future the British government developed the means to travel through time, but had not yet experimented with doing it in order to avoid the chaos inherent in changing the course of history. If history could be considered a cohesive and singular chronological narrative. Another crock of shit. It was agreed that it would be necessary to extract people from historical war zones, natural disasters, and epidemics. These expatriates to the 21st century would have died in their own timelines anyway. Removing them from the past ought not to impact the future. No one had any idea what travelling through time might do to the human body, though the second reason that it was important to pick people who would have died in their own timelines is that they might well die in hours, like deep sea fish brought up to the beach. Perhaps there were only so many epochs the human nervous system could stand. If they got the temporal equivalent of the bends and sluiced into gray and pink jelly in a Ministry laboratory, at least it wouldn't be, statistically speaking, murder. Assuming that the expats survived, that meant they would be People, which is a complicating factor when dealing with refugees, especially en masse. It's better not to think of them as people. It messes with the paperwork. Nevertheless, when the expats were considered from a human rights perspective, they fit the Home Office criteria for asylum seekers. It would be ethically sparse to assess nothing but the physiological effects of time travel. To know whether they had truly adjusted to the future. The expats needed to live in it, monitored by a full time companion, which was, it transpired, the job I'd successfully interviewed for. They called us Bridges, I think, because assistant was below our pay grades. Language has gone on a long walk from the 19th century. Sensible used to mean sensitive. Gay used to mean jolly. Lunatic. Asylum and asylum seeker both used the same basic meaning of asylum, an inviolable place of refuge and safety. We were told we were bringing the expats to safety. We refused to see the blood and hair on the floor of the madhouse. I was thrilled to get the job. I'd plateaued. Where I was in the languages department of the Ministry of Defence, I worked as a translator consultant, specialising in Southeast Asia, specifically Cambodia. I'd learned the languages I translated from at university. Despite my mother speaking Khmer to us at home, I hadn't retained it through my formative years I came to my heritage as a foreigner. I liked my languages job well enough, but I'd wanted to become a field agent, and after failing the field exams twice, I was at a bit of a loss for career trajectory. It wasn't what my parents had had in mind for me. When I was a very small child, my mother made her ambitions known. She wanted me to be Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, I would do something about British foreign policy and I would also take my parents to fancy governmental dinners. I would have a chauffeur. My mother never learned to drive. The chauffeur was important, regrettably. She also drilled the karmic repercussions of gossip and lying into me. The fourth Buddhist precept is unambiguous on this, and thus, at the age of eight, my political career was over before it began. My younger sister was a far more skilled assembler. I was dutiful with language and she was evasive, pugnacious with it. This is why I became a translator and she became a writer. Or at least she tried to become a writer and became a copy editor. I was paid considerably more than her and my parents understood what my job was. So I would say that karma worked in my favour. My sister would say something along the lines of go fuck yourself. But I know she means it in a friendly way. Probably even on the very day we were to meet the expats, we were still arguing about the word expat. If they're refugees, said Semellia, one of the other bridges, then we should call them refugees. They're not moving to a summer cottage in Provence. They will not necessarily think of themselves as refugees, said Vice Secretary Adela. Has anyone asked them what they think they see themselves as? Kidnap victims, mostly. 1916 thinks he's behind enemy lines. 1665 thinks she's dead and they're being released to us today. The Wellness Team think their adjustment will be negatively impacted if they're held on the wards any longer, said Adela, dry as a filing system. We, or rather Semellia and Adela, were having this argument in one of the Ministry's interminable rooms, pebble coloured with lights embedded in the ceiling, modular in a way that suggested opening a door would lead to another identical space, and then another, and then another. Rooms like this are designed to encourage bureaucracy. This was supposed to be the final direct briefing of the five bridges. Semelia, Ralph, Ivan, Ed, and me. We'd all gone through a six round interview process that put the metaphorical drill to our back teeth and board. Have you now or ever been convicted of or otherwise implicated in any activity that might undermine your security status? Then nine months of preparation, the endless working groups and background checks, the construction of shell jobs in our old departments, Defense Diplomatic Home Office. Now we were here in a room where the electricity was audible on the light bulbs about to make history. Don't you think, said Semellia, that throwing them into the world when they think they're in the afterlife or on the Western Front might impede their adjustment? I ask both as a psychologist and a person with a normal level of empathy. Adela shrugged. It might. But this country has never accepted expatriates from history before. They might die of genetic mutations within the year. Should we expect that? I asked, alarmed. We don't know what to expect. That's why you have this job. The chamber the Ministry had prepared for the handover had an air of antique ceremony wood panels, oil paintings, high ceilings. It had rather more eclat than the modular rooms. I think someone on the administration team with a sense of drama had arranged the move in its style and in the particular way the windows flattened the sunlight. The room had probably remained unchanged since the 19th century. My handler, Quentin, was already there. He looked bilious, which is how Excitement shows on some people. Two agents led my expat through the door at the other end of the room before I'd adjusted to knowing he was coming. He was pale, drawn. They'd clipped his hair so short that his curls were flattened. He turned his head to look around the room and I saw an imposing nose in profile, like a hothouse flower growing out of his face. It was strikingly attractive and strikingly large. He had a kind of resplendent excess of feature that made him look hyper real. He stood very straight and eyed my handler. Something about me had made him look and then look away. I stepped forward and his eyeline shifted. Commander Gore? Yes? I'm your bridge. Graham Gore, Commander, Royal Navy, circa 1809 to circa 1847, had been in the 21st century for five weeks, though like the other expats, he'd only been lucid for a handful of those days. The extraction process had merited a fortnight of hospitalisation. Two of the original seven expats had died because of it, and only five remained. He'd been treated for pneumonia, for severe frostbite, for the early stages of scurvy, and two broken toes on which he had been blithely walking. Lacerations, too, from a Taser. He'd shot at two of the team members who'd come to expatriate him, and a third was forced to fire. He'd attempted to flee the Ministry wards three times and had to be sedated. After he'd stopped fighting back, he'd gone through a ground zero orientation with the psychologists and the Victorianists. For ease of adjustment, the expats were only given immediate, applicable knowledge. He came to me knowing the basics about the electric grid, the internal combustion engine, and the plumbing system. He didn't know about the world or cold wars, the sexual liberation of the 1960s, or the war on terror. They had started by telling him about the dismantling of the British Empire, and it hadn't gone down well. The Ministry had arranged a car to take us to the house. He knew theoretically about cars, but it was his first time in one. He stared through the window, pallid with what I assumed was wonderful. If you have any questions, I said, please feel free to ask. I appreciate that this is a lot to take in. I am delighted to discover that even in the future the English have not lost the art of ironic understatement, he said without looking at me. He had a mole on his throat close to his earlobe. The only existing daguerreotype of him showed him in 1840s fashion, with a high cravat. I stared at the mole. This is London? He asked finally. Yes. How many people live here now? Nearly 9 million. He sat back and shut his eyes. That's far too large a number to be real, he murmured. I am going to forget that you told me. The house that the Ministry had provided was the late Victorian red brick originally designed for local workers. Gore would have seen them built if he'd lived into his 80s. As it was, he was 37 years old and had not experienced crinolines, a tale of Two Cities, or the enfranchisement of the working classes. He got out of the car and looked up and down the street with the weariness of a man who has traveled across the continent and has yet to find his hotel. I hopped out after him. I tried to see what he could see. He would ask questions about the cars parked on the street, perhaps, or the street lamps. Do you have keys? He asked. Or do doors operate by magic passwords now? No, I have open sesame, he said darkly to the letterbox inside. I told him I would make tea. He said he would like, with my permission, to look at the house, I gave it. He made a swift tour. He trod firmly, as if he expected resistance. When he came back to the kitchen diner and leant against the door jamb, I seized up painfully. Stage fright, but also the shock of his impossible presence catching up with me. The more he was there, and he kept on being there, the more I felt like I was elbowing my way out of my body. A narrative altering thing was happening to me that I was experiencing all over, and I was trying to view myself from the outside to make sense of it. I chased a teabag to the rim of a mug. We are to cohabit, he said. Yes. Every expat has a bridge for a year. We're here to help you adjust to your new life. He folded his arms and regarded me. His eyes were hazel, scrawled faintly with green and thickly lashed. They were both striking and uncommunicative. You are an unmarried woman? He asked. Yes. It's not an improper arrangement in this century. Once you're deemed able to enter the community outside of the Ministry, or to anyone not involved in the project, you should refer to me as your housemate. Housemate, he repeated disdainfully. What does this word imply? That we are two unpartnered people sharing the cost of the rent on a house and are not romantically involved. He looked relieved. Well, regardless of the custom, I'm not Certain. It's a decent arrangement, he said. But if you've allowed 9 million people to live here, perhaps it's a necessity. Hmm. Beside your elbow is a white box with a handle. It's a refrigerator. A fridge, we call it. Could you open the door and take out the milk, please? He opened the fridge and stared inside. An ice box? He said, interested. Pretty much powered by electricity. I think electricity has been explained to you. Yes. I am also aware that the Earth revolves around the sun. To save you a little time, he opened a crisper. Carrots still exist, then cabbage too. How will I recognize milk? I'm hoping you will tell me that you still use milk from cows. We do. Small bottle. Top shelf, blue lid. He hooked his finger into the handle and brought it to me. Maid's got the day off. No maid. No cook either. We do most things for ourselves. Ah, he said, and paled. He was introduced to the washing machine, the gas cooker, the radio, the vacuum cleaner. Here are your maids, he said. You're not wrong. Where are the Thousand League boots? We don't have those yet. Invisibility cloak. Sun resistant Wings of Icarus. Likewise. He smiled. You have enslaved the power of lightning, he said. And you've used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help. Well, I said, and I launched into a pre planned speech about class mobility and domestic labour, touching on the minimum wage, the size of an average household, and women in the workforce. It took a full five minutes of talking and by the end I'd moved into the same tremulous liquid register I used to use for pleading with my parents for a curfew extension. When I was finished, all he said was a dramatic fall in employment following the First World War. Ah, maybe you can explain that to me tomorrow. This is everything I remember about my earliest hours with him. We separated and spent the fading day bobbing shyly around one another like clots in a lava lamp. I was expecting him to have a time travel induced psychotic break and perhaps chew or fold me with murderous intent. Mostly he touched things with a compulsive brushing motion I was later to learn was because of permanent nerve damage from frostbite. He flushed the toilet 15 times in a row, silent as a wind hover while the cistern refilled, which could have been wonder or embarrassment. At hour two we tried to sit in the same room. I looked up when he breathed in sharply through his nose to see him pulling his fingers away from a light bulb in the lamp. He retreated to his bedroom for a while and I went to sit on the back porch. It was a mild spring evening. Idiot eyed wood pigeons lumbered across the lawn, belly deep in clover. Upstairs, I heard a cautious woodwind polonaise strike up, waver, and cease a few moments later, its tread in the kitchen. The pigeons took off their wings, making a noise like swallowed laughter. Did the Ministry provide the flute? He asked the back of my head. Yes, I told them it might be grounding for you. Oh, thank you. You knew I played the flute? A couple of extant letters from you and referring to you mention it. Did you read the letters that mentioned my mania for arson and my lurid history of backstreet goose wrestling? I turned around and stared at him. A joke, he supplied. Ah. Are there going to be a lot of those? It depends on how often you spring on me such statements as I have read your personal letters. May I join you? Please. He sat down beside me, keeping a space of about a foot between our bodies. The neighbourhood made its noises, which all sounded like something else. The wind in the trees sounded like rushing water. The squirrels chattered like children. Distant conversation recalled the clatter of pebbles underfoot. I felt I should have been translating them for him, as if he didn't know about trees. He was drumming his fingers on the porch. I suppose, he said carefully, that your era has evolved past such tasteless vices as tobacco. You arrived about 15 years too late. It's going out of fashion. I've got some good news for you, though. I got up. He turned his head so as not to have my bare calves in his eye line, fetched a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from a drawer in the kitchen, and came back here. Something else I got the Ministry to lay on cigarettes more or less replaced cigars in the 20th century. Thank you. I'm sure I will adapt. He busied himself with working out how to remove the plastic film, which he put carefully away in his pocket, flicking the Zippo and frowning at the warning label. I stared at the lawn and felt like I was manually operating my lungs. A few seconds later he exhaled with obvious relief. Better. It embarrasses me to convey just how much better. In my time, well bred young ladies did not indulge in tobacco, but I note that a great deal has changed. Hemlines, for example. Do you smoke? No. He smiled directly into my face for the first time. His dimples notched his cheeks like a pair of speech marks. What an interesting tone. Did you used to smoke? Yes. Did you stop because all cigarette packets carry this garish warning? More or less. As I said, Smoking is very out of fashion now because we've discovered how unhealthy it is. Damn it. Could I have one, please? His dimples and his smile had vanished on damn. I suppose as far as he was concerned, I might as well have said fuck. I wondered what was going to happen when I did eventually say fuck, which I did at least five times a day. Nevertheless, he proffered the packet and then lit my cigarette with anachronistic gallantry. We smoked in silence for a while. At some point he raised a finger to the sky. What is that? That's a plane. An aeroplane, to give it its full name. It's a. Well, a ship of the sky. There are people in there, probably around a hundred in that little arrow. He watched it, squinting along the cigarette. How high up is it? Six miles or so. I thought so. Well, well. You have done something interesting with your enslaved lightning. Must be flying very fast. Yes. A flight from London to New York takes eight hours. He coughed suddenly, bringing up a mouthful of smoke. I want you to stop telling me things for a moment, please, he said. That's quite enough for today. He ground the cigarette out on the porch. Eight hours, he murmured. No tides in the sky, I suppose. That night I slept with unpleasant lightness, my brain balanced on unconsciousness like an insect's foot on the meniscus of a pond. I didn't so much wake up as give up on sleep. Outside on the landing there was a huge tongue shaped shadow stretching from the closed bathroom door to my bedroom. I put my foot in it and it went squelch. Commander Gore. Ah, came a muffled voice from behind the door. Good morning. The bathroom door swung open guiltily. Gorr was already fully dressed and sitting on the edge of the bath, smoking. The bottom of the bath had a low tide mark of cigarette ash and soap scum. Two cigarettes were crushed out in the soap dish, as I would discover. This would become his habit. Rising early, bathing, ashing in the tub. He could not be persuaded to sleep in, use the shower, which he disliked and intimated was unhygienic, or ash in the ashtrays I would pointedly leave on the edge of the bath. He would be embarrassed by the sight of my razor, shave with a cutthroat blade and insist on separate soaps. All this was to come on that first morning. There was Gore chain smoking and a bleeding water supply line. The toilet cistern lay on the floor, gleaming like a slain whale. A vile smell was seeping up from the floor. I was trying to see how it worked, he said Diffidently. I see. I fear I may have got carried away. Gore was an officer from the dusk of the Age of Sail, not an engineer. I'm sure he knew plenty about ships rigging, but he'd probably never handled an instrument more technologically complex than a sexton. Men in their right minds are not usually overcome with a mania for pulling the plumbing apart. I suggested he might like to wash his hands at the sink downstairs, and I could perhaps call a plumber, and we could potentially take a constitutional walk on the nearby heath. He gave this due consideration over the stub end of the cigarette. Yes, I would like that, he said finally. Well, go downstairs and wash our hands first. It was clear, Walter, he said, grinding out the cigarette. His face was averted from mine, but I could see the mole in his throat lay on pinkening skin. Well, germs. Germs? Hmm. Bacteria. Very, very tiny creatures which live in everything, really, only visible through a microscope. The bad ones spread disease, cholera, typhoid, dysentery. I might as well have named the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit for the look of alarmed amazement that came over Gorr's face. He looked down at his hands and then slowly extended his arms, holding them away from his body like a pair of rabid rats. He took some comfort from the phrase fresh air. At least once we'd stepped out onto the heath, he was far more impressed by germ theory than he had been by electricity. By the time we'd crossed the first of the early morning dog walkers, I was enthusiastically describing the cause of tooth cavities with hand motions. I don't think it's very polite of you to say there are germs in my mouth. There are germs in everyone's mouths. Speak for yourself. There'll be germs on your shoes and under your nails. It's just how the world works. An aseptic environment is. Well, it's a dead one. I won't be participating. You don't have a choice. I will write a strongly worded letter of complaint. We walked a little further. The colour was starting to return to his cheeks, though around his eyes I could see score marks of strain and insomnia. When he saw me scrutinising him, he raised his eyebrows and I tried a cautious smile. Careful, he said. Your germs are showing. Well, we got croissants and tea from a food truck set up by the children's park. These concepts were either familiar to him or explicable from context, and we managed our walking Breakfast. With no further revelation. I've been told there are other, er. Expats, he said eventually. Yes. There are five of you. Who are they, please? There's a woman from 1665 who was extracted from the great plague of London. A man. A lieutenant, I believe, from 1645. Battle of Naseby. He fought back harder even than you. There's an army captain, 1916, Battle of the Somme. Someone from Robespierre's. Paris, 1793. She's got quite the psych profile. You didn't extract anyone else from the expedition? No. May I ask why not? Well, this is an experimental project. We wanted to pool individuals from across as wide a range of time periods as possible. And you chose me rather than, say, Captain Fitzjames? I blinked up at him, surprised. Yes. We had documentary evidence that you. You'd left the expedition. That I'd died? Er. Yes. How did I die? They didn't say. You were referred to as the late Commander Gore. Who are they? Captain Fitzjames. Captain Crozier, Co, leading the expedition after the death of Sir John Franklin. We'd fallen into a languid patrolling step and he'd gone cool. Captain Fitzjames spoke very highly of you, I ventured. A man of great stability of character, a very good officer, and the sweetest of tempers that at last brought his dimples out. He wrote his memoirs on his return, then? Gore said, amused. Ah, Commander Gore. Hmm? I think I should. Could we sit down on that bench over there? He pulled up the swing of his steps so abruptly that I kicked myself in the ankle trying to stop. You are about to tell me something happened to Captain Fitzjames, he said. Let's sit down here. What happened? He asked. The dimples had gone, apparently. I did not get them for very long. Something happened to everyone. What do you mean? He asked, a touch impatiently. The expedition was lost. Lost in the Arctic. No one returned.
