CHAPTER 11 - The shiny machine
HE FOLLOWED CLOSE BEHIND. His gaze followed the direction she ran in, and he saw it too, the thing she had called a car. It was a strange, shiny, carriage-like contraption with no place to harness horses. She opened the door, climbed inside, and the machine roared. He jumped back in alarm, but she didn’t seem concerned.
The glass window lowered smoothly, and she said, “Jump in. I think it’s fine to drive. Let's get it on the road, and then you can direct me where to go.”
He couldn’t look away from the machine. He had never seen anything like it. All shiny metal and glass. It looked a bit like a carriage, but different. The door handles didn’t protrude, they were flush with the doors. He had to try several times before he could operate it. Once he got the door opened, he put a leg inside, marveling at the clever design.
“Don’t get in the back!” she exclaimed. “Get in the passenger seat.” With a nod of her head, she pointed to the seat next to her.
He crossed to the other side, and this time he knew how to pull the handle. It gave. The door swung open, and he climbed inside.
The inside of the car was even more amazing than the outside. All shiny buttons and lights. Warm air was coming from small vents. The surfaces were polished, made of a material he had never seen, or covered in leather. In the center of it all, there was a rectangular piece that looked like the object she called the phone, but bigger, and like her phone, it was lit from within. He could not stop looking around.
Suddenly, music exploded around him, as if an entire orchestra had climbed into the small confines of the car. He jumped in surprise, and she hurried to touch some buttons that made the music disappear.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. My music came on automatically when I connected the phone.” She apologized, but he waved away her apology. She could play music without an orchestra or instruments? Astounding.
“So, this is the car you kept referring to. What does it do? How does it work?”
She looked at him again, with a mixture of disbelief and wariness, but instead of answering, she pulled a lever, and the car moved backward. He grabbed the door handle in a white knuckle grip.
“What’s going on?” He refused to show fear in front of her, but he couldn’t deny his alarm.
She rolled her eyes, dismissing his unease. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m driving the car. You can give me directions to the nearest town and I’ll drop you off at your house on the way.”
“You can not possibly be thinking of going to the village in this carriage!”
“Of course I am. Why on earth couldn’t I?”
“You will call too much attention. Even scare people!”
“Okay, this joke about the past is getting old. Pun intended. Is this some sort of hoax, maybe for a TV show? What is it about? Prank a tourist and that sort of thing? Do you have a camera on you?”
While she talked, she continued moving the car, maneuvering it towards the road.
“Once again, I don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about. Olivia, listen to me. This is not a prank. Stop the carriage so that we can talk, please.”
She stopped the car but did not turn it off. Turning to him, she asked. “What? What are we going to talk about? Are you going to keep trying to convince me I’m in the nineteenth century?”
