Futuristic Paranoia

The dog woke her. Jessica was dragged out of the black of unconsciousness by a cold nose being shoved into her hand. The sensation was so familiar that she opened her eyes expecting to see her mixed-breed mutt sitting beside her bed and waiting for her morning run. A pair of light amber eyes stared at her out of an orange corgi face. She knew where she was. Jessica ruffled the little dog’s fur as she sat up carefully.

“So, how much do you think this stuff would be worth?” The voice, the desert voice, stopped her dead; she didn’t think, just acted.

“No!” She sprang up off the small couch and turned to face the source of the voice.

The four people who stared up at her, around the pile of her belongings, with similar expressions of shock and guilt couldn’t have been more different. The one who had spoken was tall, even crouching she could tell, and his scruffy black hair stuck out at odd angles making it look as though he had just woken up. His outfit reminded her of something someone might have worn in “Saturday Night Fever.” His yellow silk shirt even had the collar turned up; even with the cigarette dangling from his lip he looked sexy. His hands looked like they were itching to hold a gun.

The larger man was intimidating. He wore a weird one-piece outfit that, had the sleeves not been ripped off, might have resembled the jumpsuits astronauts wore on the space station. His boots looked like the greaves of a medieval knight’s armor. He was bald-headed with a fringe of black hair on the sides that grew into sideburns and a beard; and a scar running through his right eye, with a strange metal something-or-other on his cheek. His left arm was mechanical, and a cigarette burned unchecked in its hand.

The woman was smoking as well. Her black hair had a bluish tinge to it, and she was tall, with a long waist, and skinny; which made her outfit more striking. She wore matching yellow (what looked like pleather or rubber) short low-rise shorts and a short cut tank that exposed all of her torso, from the bottom of her ribcage to well below her navel. The shorts were held up by suspenders and the whole thing was topped by a loose red shrug fastened with a knot.

The child, the girl, was the first to react. She smiled hugely, making her eyes almost close, and stood up. Her red hair and brown eyes contrasted nicely with her dark, sun-tanned skin. Her outfit was simple; a loose sleeveless white t-shirt and tight-fitting spandex shorts that stopped slightly below mid thigh. Her feet were bare.

“Hi!” It was amazing the amount of emotion that was packed into that single word. So much that the one syllable became two. “Ein likes you, so Ed does too.”

Jessica felt her eyebrows rise, Ein? That must be the dog, so Ed was…

“Ed. That’s an unusual name for a girl.” The girl grinned and Jessica smiled back.

“How did you figure that out?” the big man asked. He looked stunned. “It took us a whole day before we realized she was a girl.”

So, Jessica thought, they weren’t related, at least not to Ed, which made sense. “I have four nieces and three older sisters. I know.” The fact that they had been going through her stuff forgotten, she looked around, pausing to stare at the city that loomed outside the windows, then turned back to face the group. “I feel kind of silly for asking this, but is that Tokyo out there?” She pointed toward the hulking city. They nodded. “Good. Can you get me to shore? I need to get to the Newtronics Incorporated building so I can report in.” They looked confused. “See, I was a volunteer in a teleportation experiment, and something must have gone wrong”
She was cut off by the woman.

“Teleportation experiment? They gave up on that in 2012; and Newtronics went bankrupt not two years after.”

“What?” Jessica felt confused, but a glimmer of comprehension wormed its way into her thoughts. “Why did they give up on the experiment?” she whispered.

“They lost a volunteer. They say she disappeared and never showed up at the arrival point.”

What year is it?” Her eyes were wide, and she was pale and shaking.

“2071.” Jessica sat down abruptly, not caring that she sat on the table. The others stood up, keeping her in their line of sight.

“Me.” She nearly choked on the word. “The volunteer they lost was me. It was supposed to be a jump from Kansas in the U.S. to Tokyo; the first continent to continent teleport. But something must have gone wrong. I’m in Tokyo all right, but fifty-nine years in the future.”