Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

to support her. “Miss West?”
    “Fine. Sorry, I was...” she said as she looked up into his face. Her pale skin flushed pink. “I’m all right.”
    Slowly, more reluctantly than he wanted to admit, he moved his arm from her back. He wasn’t quite ready to let go completely, so he held her arm tightly in his grasp.
    “Take your time.”
    She smiled and nodded. “I’m okay,” she said and then seemed to notice where they were for the first time. “I think. Where are we?”
    “I’m not sure,” he said as he glanced around the alley.
    “This is definitely not your living room.”
    Simon laughed softly. “It’s good to see your powers of observation are still intact.”
    She gave him a wry smile, but it faded. “This isn’t even Southern California. At least no part I’ve ever seen.”
    She was right. The architecture, what he could see of it, was completely wrong. Not to mention the smell of coal thick in the air. A shrill, odd-sounding car horn blared around the alley’s corner. And like a lemming to the ocean, Elizabeth started toward the mouth of the alley.
    “Where do you think you’re going?” Simon asked.
    “Just having a look around. We’re not going to figure out where we are standing in this alley.”
    He didn’t know what bothered him more. That she was so willing to wander off into God knows what, or that she was right.
    “Hang about,” he said and hurried to catch up.
    He grabbed her arm again, and she rolled her eyes. Petulant he could deal with. Out of his sight, he couldn’t.
    Staying close to the building’s edge, she peered around the corner. After a long steady silence she croaked out a tremulous, “Oh, boy.”
    He looked around the edge of the building.
    “Tell me that isn’t a...” Elizabeth said. “I must be hallucinating. Tell me you don’t see what I see.”
    “A Model T?”
    And not just one. A mass of tall, long, rectangular shaped cars trundled past. Simon took an unsteady step backwards. Where in God’s name were they?
    “I was really hoping for hallucinating.”
    The cacophony was nearly deafening. High-pitched horns wailed up and down the endless street. A horse whinnied and reared, its hooves scraping the pavement. A sea of people, all talking at once, surged on the sidewalk in front of them. Men in suits and fedoras, women in vintage dresses walked by. A large horse-drawn cart clattered over the pavement.
    “They must be making a movie,” Elizabeth said hopefully.
    Simon had a terrible sinking feeling. He tugged on her arm and she looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.
    “Miss West,” he said, urging her to follow his lead and pulled her back into the alley. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
    She rubbed her forehead. “Being in your living room looking at your grandfather’s things and then the watch went all higgledy-piggledy.”
    Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Of course, the watch. In his single-minded concern for Elizabeth, he’d completely forgotten about it. He moved back down the alley and scoured the pavement until he found the timepiece only a few feet from where he’d regained consciousness. Gripping the case tightly, he carefully opened it. His eyes darted over the complex dials. This couldn’t be.
    Elizabeth came to his side. “Be careful with that thing.”
    “I’m not an imbecile, Miss West,” he bit out.
    “No offense, but I’m not looking for a repeat performance.”
    Neither was he. He knew the answer to all his questions lay in the watch. The strange dials that had been a mystery before, now began to coalesce into a semblance of reason. If one could call it that. Simon’s head was spinning and not just from the damnable headache that wouldn’t go away. It was insane. Absolutely insane to even consider, and yet....
    Was it possible that all the stories his grandfather had told him weren’t stories at all? The destruction of Pompeii, a night at Valley Forge, the War of the Roses. Dear God. He’d actually been there.
    Elizabeth leaned in to get a better look at the watch, her body brushing against his. “What the heck’s going on, Professor?”
    How could he expect her to believe what he could hardly comprehend himself?
    Her hand gripped his arm, and she forced him to look at her. Her blue eyes, usually filled with confidence, danced nervously across his face. “Where are we?”
    He tried to quell his growing sense of panic and keep his voice calm and detached. “It’s not so much where we