Read Online 1. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jodi Taylor
Ads: Link
a fairly tense conversation with Grant and left immediately.’
‘Did she leave a message for me?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
I was hurt. We’d been together a long time and she was the only other girl. I’d liked her. And she’d left without even a goodbye.
‘Sussman says he worked it out, but demanded emergency extraction after five days, claiming boredom. He exited his pod, thumped the first technician he came across who happened to be Mr Dieter and so spent the rest of the day in Sick Bay recovering consciousness. You’re the last back.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘It demonstrates a certain mind-set.’
I chugged back the tea and set out for Sick Bay and the more than scary Dr Foster. If there is an opposite of a good bedside manner then Helen Foster has it.
‘Come in, Maxwell.’ She activated a data stack, went to sit on the window sill, and rummaged in her pockets, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one.
‘Have you ingested or imbibed anything other than standard rations?’
I looked pointedly at the smoke detector. ‘No.’
‘I took the battery out years ago.’ I got the feeling Chief Farrell was fighting a losing battle with smoke detectors and fire alarms. ‘Have you had sexual relations or exchanged bodily fluids with anyone outside this timeline?’
‘Sadly, no. Nor anyone in this timeline either.’
‘Too much information. Have you received any injuries, wounds, broken your skin, have a rash or skin lesions …?’ And on and on. After a while, she flipped her dog-end out of the window. There was a squawk from outside.
‘I keep telling you, Peterson, don’t stand there. Idiot!’
We established I’d spent sixteen days of unparalleled tedium and that I constituted no threat to life as we knew it and I skipped off to see Mrs Partridge, who made me sign hundreds of documents which mostly said that everything happening to me from now on was entirely my own fault. She sent me off to Wardrobe, who issued me with a full set of the coveted blues and all the rest of my kit and sent me back to Mrs Partridge again, who offered me the choice of a bigger room in the Staff Block or one in the main building. I went with the one in the main building. It had a bath.
I was allocated an attic room on the small, east landing. I had Dr Foster opposite me and Kalinda Black, another historian, on the other side. My room was long and narrow with a small window at the front overlooking the lake and a larger window with a low window seat overlooking a flat roof. Furnishings were the usual St Mary’s minimum – a Narnia wardrobe, a bed, a baggy couch, a bookcase, and a data table. But I did have a small bathroom where, for some reason, I had to climb over a vast, enamel, claw-footed bath to get to the toilet.
I bought a rug, some posters, and a corkboard where I could pin up my favourite bits and pieces. I blagged an old table from Housekeeping for all my paints and brushes, added a tin of biscuits and a kettle, and had everything I needed.
I loved my room, from the uneven floor to the pock-marked walls. It was the first space I’d ever had that was truly mine and no one could get in. I arranged my books, hung my blues in the wardrobe, and waited in excited anticipation for whatever came next.
Chapter Four
What came next was a reality check. We had two deaths in my first two weeks as a historian. Training had been difficult, hard work, strenuous, scary even, but apart from cuts, bruises, and the odd simple fracture, not particularly hazardous. All that was about to change.
Kalinda Black and Tim Peterson got the Peterloo Massacre; part of an ongoing ‘History of Democracy’ assignment, which included the Peasant’s Revolt and the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede. Baverstock and Lower got the peasants and Grant, Sussman and I hoped that if we kept quiet and tried to look normal, at least one of us would be included in the Runnymede jump. But the first in the series was Peterloo.
In
‘Did she leave a message for me?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
I was hurt. We’d been together a long time and she was the only other girl. I’d liked her. And she’d left without even a goodbye.
‘Sussman says he worked it out, but demanded emergency extraction after five days, claiming boredom. He exited his pod, thumped the first technician he came across who happened to be Mr Dieter and so spent the rest of the day in Sick Bay recovering consciousness. You’re the last back.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘It demonstrates a certain mind-set.’
I chugged back the tea and set out for Sick Bay and the more than scary Dr Foster. If there is an opposite of a good bedside manner then Helen Foster has it.
‘Come in, Maxwell.’ She activated a data stack, went to sit on the window sill, and rummaged in her pockets, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one.
‘Have you ingested or imbibed anything other than standard rations?’
I looked pointedly at the smoke detector. ‘No.’
‘I took the battery out years ago.’ I got the feeling Chief Farrell was fighting a losing battle with smoke detectors and fire alarms. ‘Have you had sexual relations or exchanged bodily fluids with anyone outside this timeline?’
‘Sadly, no. Nor anyone in this timeline either.’
‘Too much information. Have you received any injuries, wounds, broken your skin, have a rash or skin lesions …?’ And on and on. After a while, she flipped her dog-end out of the window. There was a squawk from outside.
‘I keep telling you, Peterson, don’t stand there. Idiot!’
We established I’d spent sixteen days of unparalleled tedium and that I constituted no threat to life as we knew it and I skipped off to see Mrs Partridge, who made me sign hundreds of documents which mostly said that everything happening to me from now on was entirely my own fault. She sent me off to Wardrobe, who issued me with a full set of the coveted blues and all the rest of my kit and sent me back to Mrs Partridge again, who offered me the choice of a bigger room in the Staff Block or one in the main building. I went with the one in the main building. It had a bath.
I was allocated an attic room on the small, east landing. I had Dr Foster opposite me and Kalinda Black, another historian, on the other side. My room was long and narrow with a small window at the front overlooking the lake and a larger window with a low window seat overlooking a flat roof. Furnishings were the usual St Mary’s minimum – a Narnia wardrobe, a bed, a baggy couch, a bookcase, and a data table. But I did have a small bathroom where, for some reason, I had to climb over a vast, enamel, claw-footed bath to get to the toilet.
I bought a rug, some posters, and a corkboard where I could pin up my favourite bits and pieces. I blagged an old table from Housekeeping for all my paints and brushes, added a tin of biscuits and a kettle, and had everything I needed.
I loved my room, from the uneven floor to the pock-marked walls. It was the first space I’d ever had that was truly mine and no one could get in. I arranged my books, hung my blues in the wardrobe, and waited in excited anticipation for whatever came next.
Chapter Four
What came next was a reality check. We had two deaths in my first two weeks as a historian. Training had been difficult, hard work, strenuous, scary even, but apart from cuts, bruises, and the odd simple fracture, not particularly hazardous. All that was about to change.
Kalinda Black and Tim Peterson got the Peterloo Massacre; part of an ongoing ‘History of Democracy’ assignment, which included the Peasant’s Revolt and the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede. Baverstock and Lower got the peasants and Grant, Sussman and I hoped that if we kept quiet and tried to look normal, at least one of us would be included in the Runnymede jump. But the first in the series was Peterloo.
In
Similar Books
