Returns with Confusion

[sweariwontdie]

Early Friday evening, Armand kisses Chris on the cheek and nuzzles baby Etienne and promises to come right back. He's thought of something he wants to get from the flat in Paris and meaning to try the plothole--it works for Marius and Cosette--as an easy means of travel he doesn't want to worry Chris. He only plans to be gone a few hours.

. . .The

Comments

[disheveledbear]

Shreve looked around the main room of the Mansion, looking for Melchior and Ilse's famous "closet that will give you anything you want." He didn't know quite what he would want to get from the closet-in all honesty, as interesting as this place was, he sort of wanted to go back to Harvard (how many days had passed since he had gotten here? How much Latin homework would that be to make up? And Quentin wouldn't be any help; he was always skipping class, to Shreve's worried unease). He wondered if "anything you want" could be an event, not just an item

[disheveledbear]

'New World'? Yes, it has to be time travel, Shreve thought, although he was reluctant to even think that such a thing was possible. "I live in Canada," he answered. "But I go to school in the United States. At Harvard. So yes."

[sweariwontdie]

Almost wistfully, Armand asks, "What is America like? I've never been. Lafayette used to talk about it."

[disheveledbear]

"I dont know how to describe it," Shreve said. "I dont have anything to compare it to, really. Except this. So, well, in Canada I knew what was going on. In Massachusetts I knew what was going on. Here I dont. There was no magic. No time travel." But there was, he realised. Otherwise, how did I get here? "Everything was logical. Understandable. But this…this is the apotheosis of confusion and insanity."

[sweariwontdie]

"Time travel?" Armand didn't think of it that way, but he hadn't met enough people. "Why do you say that?"

[disheveledbear]

"Most of the people I've seen around here dont look like they're living in the year 1910," Shreve said. "What about you, for example? What's your best guess as to what today's date is?"

[sweariwontdie]

Armand frowns. "Last I knew it was May 1794, though it's rather obvious that's not the case here."

[disheveledbear]

"Well, that's what I mean," Shreve said. "The last day I remember is June 2, 1910. The only way I could be here talking to someone who was alive in 1794 is either you moved forward in time or I moved back. Or both. Or maybe we both moved forward even further into the future. Or back.

"Or maybe we were both removed from time altogether and this is a place where time doesn't actually exist. Or something. I really don't have any idea."

[sweariwontdie]

"I'm sure someone knows..." Armand said without much confidence.

[disheveledbear]

"Someone should," Shreve agreed. Part of him was excited at the prospect of having travelled through time, and the fact that he was standing at this very moment next to a man from the eighteenth century. The other part of him-the part that cringed inside whenever Quentin cut class-just wanted to go back to school.

"I wonder if anyone from our own times realises that we're gone?" he said.

[sweariwontdie]

"I don't know that either. I hope not."

[disheveledbear]

"Me too," Shreve said. "Everyone would be worrying about me. And all those days of class I'd be missing!"

[sweariwontdie]

"Are you at university?"

[disheveledbear]

"Yes," Shreve said. "At Harvard, in Massachusetts. You might have heard of it; I think it was founded in sixteen-something." He tried to picture the Harvard seal in his mind, remember if there was a date on it, but the image did not form in his head.

All right all right all right, he thought, never mind the date then. "It's far away from where I live," he went on, "but people come there from further away. My roommate is from Mississippi. I cant even imagine the distance between Alberta and Mississippi.

"But now that I'm here, it's becoming less difficult by the minute," he finished a bit bitterly.

[sweariwontdie]

"I was studying law." He fidgetted. "I think Harvard University it more reputable than the University of Paris, though not as old."

"The revolution came, and my sister married an Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney. Eventually I had to move to England too. Paris was too dangerous. France's leaders lost their minds."

[disheveledbear]

"So…you didn't get to finish?" Shreve said, his eyes sympathetic behind his glasses.