Chapter three Arrival in 2012

“It’s okay, it’s okay,it just said blend in, remember? We’ll be fine, we don’t need it.”
“Yeah yeah whatever,” Tookie leaned back and looked at her with grimaced lips and squinty eyes. He let out a strangled sigh and then said in his regular voice again, “it’s just that it would be nice to have something to go on.”

Suddenly Cheena barked and stared at the BRATT”s door. Tookie grinned.

“We’re here already—whereever here is. Where did you take us?

“I told you already—it’s still home, only its 200 years ago. My family has lived in our house forever—really!

Cool! Okay, do you have the tent? What about food? And real time?

Tookie always asked the most obvious questions like she didn’t know what she was doing, so Marianna gave him her worst look and wasn’t very tactful.

“Look, all that doesn’t matter, whatever you said—we’ll be back in time for supper. Three hours tops—real time, same here as at home. We both have done this in pod forever”

“Yeah but that was for education. This for-fun!” Tookie started to shake his head in that way that annoyed Marianna so much because it meant he was getting stubborn and was going to have to be convinced—and quick! Time was a-wasting! Meaning she wanted to leave now.

Tookie! Look! We can eat the natives' food…”

“The natives?” Tookie snorted and began to laugh.

“And we have an invisible tent , we just have to find a good place to pitch it.”

Marianna felt like she had to keep convincing him it was safe. Okay, it wasn’t natives it was ancestors, people in her family who lived only in stories and in the same house she lived in now. But also it was just cool, going on this trip in her new BRATT –her own!--for the first time.

Suddenly she felt very happy, like something good was going to happen. It had happened—it was happening! She was time-traveling and her parents weren’t there, just her best friend. And Cheena.

“Remember in fifth year we got sent in an old beat up BRATT back to see the real Julius Caesar and hear Marc Antony speak just because Beeger thought we should? And it didn’t even compact yet—it just dumped you there and pretty much you were on your own, just blend in? I wanted to see Hannibal Crossing the Alps….”

Tookie’s monotone was beginning to make Marrianna’s ears whistle.

“Stop! The time is going NOW and we have only three hours—let’s GO!” Marianna shouted at Tookie and he covered his ears.

Right on cue Cheena jumped up against the exit door, it opened, and they followed her out into the room—seemingly the same one they had just left—while the BRATT super compacted and stored itself in the closet, leaving just them and their tent in the middle of the room. The BRATT always determined the best time to leave you somewhere, a time when there would be no one around. That was true too this time.

“The house is empty, she said aloud, thinking Tookie was right behind her. Cheena was already heading for what was now the kitchen --but which was not the kitchen in 2012. It turned out to be a kind of library with all kinds of strange box-like metal things and wires coming out of them.

“Look! It’s old computers before they became houses."

She stared at the walls in amazement, fascinated in not finding screens anywhere, but instead pictures hanging everywhere.

But Tookie wasn't listening. he was sitting in a rocking chair, slowly making it go back and forth. It was the antique rocking chair!—only it looked new. It didn’t just look new , Marianna reminded herself—it was new.This was 201! It was mind-boggling.

“Come on! She shouted at him, knowing no one was around anyway—until she saw the cat, a gray cat slinking off into the bushes when it saw them coming through the back porch door out into the outside.. Cheena started to chase it but Tookie had her on a leash and dragged her after him instead. They ran out out od the kitchen (library?)door together and reached the garden and found a place to pitch the tent behind a great high lilac bush just where the woods started to thicken at the edge of the yard.

The tent was self-guiding and pretty much pitched itself in a matter of moments. They went inside it to make plans. from the outside no one should be able to distinguish their tent from the woods behind it, but from inside it Marianna and Tookie could see out in all directions. It maintained its own perfect temperature too 68 defree farenheit, no matter how hot or cold it got outside, hot or cold, rain or shine. It was reflexive too, adjusting itself to the needs of its inhabitants.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be cold? Didn't you say November or something? It feels and looks like July to me”

Marianna was day-dreaming. “Yeah,” she answered him slowly. “I just wanted to look around the house back in the old days in the summertime for a few minutes, before we do the November thing. It's strange--the garden looks almost exactly the way it does now at home--it is home I know, but I mean later. You know what I mean." It was easier to be in the past than to talk.