Read Asimov's Science Fiction - June 2014 for Free Online

the nanny state, we basically just gambol and play all day, like little goats—you know, when it isn't a federal holiday, banking holiday, municipal holiday, postal holiday, religious observance, secular festival, or union-mandated cigarette break." Behind him Bill had finished scrawling his pseudonym and was quickly, but calmly, using his slightly overgrown thumbnail to push straight pins deep into the grapefruit's flesh.
    I mugged looking over my shoulders, then leaned in conspiratorially and muttered out of the side of my mouth:
"Why
does the Department of Agriculture need a time machine?"
    "You know," he said, smiling a genuine smile, "No one ever asks me that." I realized that he was a legitimately nice guy right then, despite the khakis and the hard-sell and the two-dollar haircut. Once I saw that, I also saw that he really was actually sort of cute. Somewhere in the last thirty seconds my flirting-to-control-thesituation had become legitimate flirting.
    He leaned forward and stage-whispered. "It'll be pretty obvious in a sec, and I don't wanna blow the punch line."
    "Done!" Bill barked from his seat, holding the grapefruit aloft.
    "Supercool!" Taylor spun and clapped his hands. "Put 'er here, slugger!"
    Bill tossed the fruit, and Taylor caught it with two hands, scooping it to his stomach gracelessly.
Someone
had obviously never played peewee football—and not because he was a girl.
    "Let's push the chairs back," he said as he jogged over to his seat and dug a boxy yellow Magellan GPS unit out of the pocket of the parka draped over his chair.
    "Can I borrow someone's cell phone?" he asked absent-mindedly, squinting down at the GPS's little screen. It was so new he hadn't even pulled off that protective plastic coating yet.
    Rob-o laughed and Bill snorted. "We're not drug dealers and day-traders," he scoffed. "We're a totally different species of scum."
    Taylor looked up, then paced carefully to the center of the room and fiddled with some buttons. "Oh, yeah," he said, still looking at the screen. "Mid-90s. That always gets me. Is there a phone I can use? I've gotta call Deke."
    Everyone looked at me. We weren't exactly even supposed to be in the store after hours, but it was the only place we could all meet privately, and I had keys. "Well..." I began.
    "It's 1-800," Taylor assured me. "And, for real, if it was long-distance to Tokyo, you'd
still
want me to make this call."
    And so I relented, pointing out the phone next to the register. When he picked up the receiver I reminded him to dial
nine
for an out-line and he did so, marveling "How quaint!" under his breath in a pretty weak Scotty accent. I could hear the ring purring—it's a loud phone—but when it picked up, he must have gotten Deke's answering machine, because he launched right into reading the two long strings of numbers off the Magellan. He finished by looking at his watch and then at the Magellan and saying, "It's 21:57:57 on my watch and 21:58:06 on the GPS. Use my watch. Gimme sixty seconds, and then sixty seconds and then..." he paused, glanced up at me, smiled, struggled to suppress the smile. "And, um, check this voicemail again before picking me up. I might go get some coffee or something." I blushed and turned away so he wouldn't see. I'm not that easy.
    Behind me the phone clunked back into its cradle.
    "Okay! Let's all scoot back to the bookcases," Taylor called, pacing out the center of the room and waving us back. "The resolution on these old GPSes is for shit, and I don't know what would happen if a portal opened on you."
    I had time to say, "Portal?" and then it happened.
    There was no sound that came with it, no scifi
shoop
or creepy little tinkly bells. No sound of thunder. It was just suddenly there, a shimmer in the air that spread like burning oil poured out on a hardwood floor, but vertically, making a shifting window of dappled light as bright as the sun. Everyone was speechless and blank-faced, except Rob-o, who I guessed had seen