When the Fearful Symmetry’s shuttle silently terminated its descent, and extended its boarding ramp for him, he’d already been standing quietly at the entrance to the village for nearly an hour, a lumpy canvas duffel at his feet and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses clinging precariously to the end of his nose. As the wave of dust displaced by the shuttle’s shield envelope began rippling around his ankles, he reluctantly gave up on the pocket-sized vademecum of the prophet’s sayings a local elder had pressed on him earlier that morning, and slipping it into an empty side pocket, reached down for straps on his now thoroughly dust-coated duffel.
Squinting a little as his eyes adjusted, he pushed his glasses higher up on his nose and turned toward the ramp. He’d dressed that morning as he always did, in the vest and shalwar kameeze of the locals. Only a brief metallic glint at the end of his sleeve as he hefted the deceptively heavy duffel hinted at the temporamores he was now wearing underneath them.
The villagers, who, despite their uncertainty, had remained at a more or less respectful distance from him throughout the morning, now shuffled even farther back, the men arranging themselves according to age and dignity as custom dictated, and the women, now partly under the shade of the village bus stop’s extended roof, tending to what women always tended to. The mothers and older sisters herded the younger children away from the edge of the road. The grandmothers, abandoning their furiously whispered disapprovals of a morning wasted, raised their kerchiefs against the dust that suddenly threatened to envelop them. Two teenaged boys in the middle of the road, hands resting firmly on their motorbike handlebars, glanced nervously at each other, already poised to thumb their engine starters and speed away.
He pivoted back toward the gathering as he reached the near end of the ramp, giving them a brief wave of acknowledgment, of farewell. Then he turned and walked briskly up the ramp into the waiting transport, which had begun rising even before the ramp had fully closed behind him. It paused briefly a dozen or so meters above the ground, and then, without any warning at all, disappeared with a sound not unlike a pair of very large hands suddenly clapped together.
“They weren’t exactly waiting for a bus, were they?”
“No. They were waiting for the future.”
“And you promised them a sneak peak at it? That won’t go over well.”
“It won’t disrupt the timeline.”
“And you know this how?”
“Research.”