The Gernsback Continuum (Robert Drummond)

[Grognardsw]

“Oh dear, that was quite the dream then,” responded Betty. “Today is most definitely the 19th. Yes we will be playing bridge tonight with Anne and Sam.”

Robert Drummond got up, dressed, ate breakfast, said bye to the kids, and took the usual bus to work. Once again, everything seemed brighter and newer than usual. Once again, he was puzzled that he saw none of the usual crowd on the bus as he quickly glanced about and took a seat in the fourth row.

When he was three stops away from his building, and people were exitiing, Rob felt a gentle shove from a man exiting behind him. It was Henry Sanderson, again.

"Pardon me please," said Sanderson. His eyes locked on to Rob's.

[Starbeard]

Rob and Henry both shared a reflexive funny bone for cynical joshing, and Rob, with his thoughts muddled and farsighted, found himself harr-harring at Henry's antics. "Oh, get off it, Sanderson. Two days in a row—" The blank look in Henry's eye took him back to yesterday—or today—or last night's dream—and suddenly he found it all a bit too much, as if his ego had suddenly collapsed under the snapping legs of his cracked id.

"Henry! Henry Sanderson, what's going on? Don't you recognize me? It's Rob Drummond!" Looking down he saw his own fists grabbing onto Henry's jacket lapels in desperation, and withdrew them in horror.

[Grognardsw]

"For God sake, don't talk to me," hissed Sanderson in a fierce whisper. "Don't you know? I was sure you'd remember. I can't talk."

His whisper changed to a loud exclamation that those around could hear: "This is my stop, can you excuse me please."

Sanderson virtually thrust himself beyond Rob and out the bus. It pulled away with a whir of electric gears.

Rob's office was several stops away. The architect walked through the marble lobby, past the newstand, and into the elevator with four other men in gray flannel suits. The low-pitched sound of music shifted to commercials for unfamiliar brands and products.

"Good morning Mr. Drummond," Ms. Horn greeted him at his office with a cup of coffee. "Mr. Silverberg called and won't be in today."

Ms. Horn gave him his messages. "Do you like my new hair style, Mr. Drummond?"

Rob took the messages with a sinking feeling. He knew that it was Mr. Aldiss from Otis Elevator, Mr. Wells from the Middletow Zoning Commission and Mr. Brunner from HR. He paused as a shiver ran down him, then forced himself to look at them. They were exactly as he suspected.

Inside his office was a workman sitting at his desk making adjustments on a new picto-phone system.

"All set sir," he said. "This is the newest in telecommunications technology. Like a phone, but you press this button to activate the picture. All the offices are getting them these days."

Later that morning, Rob received a telephone call.

[Starbeard]

Completely bewildered by his friend's response, Rob simply stepped aside and stared dumbfounded as he walked away from the bus.

"Well at least one thing is new today," Rob muttered to himself when the phone rang. He experimentally pushed a few buttons on the picto-phone system before feeling sheepish and picking up the telephone receiver. "Uh, hello? This is Drob—I mean Rob, Rob Drummond." Having an unknown caller today had excited him more than he thought it would.

[Grognardsw]

An urgent voice greeted Rob on the other line of his phone.

"This is Sanderson, Harry Sanderson. Do you remember?" His breathing was heavy, strained.

"You must. On the bus. You do remember. Thank heavens. I thought so when I saw you but I couldn't be sure. Listen, tomorrow morning when I get off the bus, you get off with me. Be casual. They may be watching."

[Starbeard]

"Harry, thank God. What is this, what's going on? I feel like I'm watching a movie play out on a loop!" Rob was sweating and shaking now, and held onto the receiver with both hands to keep it from slipping, his knuckles white with tension. "Wait, who's watching? Who, Harry?"

Rob stared at his double-breasted jacket and hat hanging up across the office room as they spoke. He had no idea what in the world was going on, but he already knew that he would be wearing that same suit tomorrow. He would be wearing it on the same bus he took today and yesterday, and for the third time Harry Sanderson would board and pretend not to recognize him. And Rob knew he would follow him, just like he asked. He also found himself wondering whether he should tell Betty about any of this, but already he knew that he wouldn't. "Alright, Harry. I'll be there." He hung up and resolved not to tell a soul about anything, not even to hint out loud at feeling anything strange or out of the ordinary.

For the rest of the day Rob pretended to work on an early draft ("They may be watching," Harry said…), but mentally he was lost in the mystery of it all.

[Grognardsw]

"I can't say anymore, they may be listening," said Sanderson to Rob's questions on the phone.

The rest of July 19 echoed yesterday’s July 19.

That evening, the family dinner and conversation with the kids was deja vu. The Drummonds played bridge with the Fennerman and again Anne complained about television commercials.

At midnight, Rob fell asleep...

Rob awoke with a start from the explosion and realized it was only in his head.

“Rob, are you okay?” asked Betty, lying in bed next to him. “You screamed.”

Sun shined through the window. Rob’s stomach turned with dread as he realized the same day was upon him again. He kept a brave face. Betty and the kids seemed oblivious. At breakfast, the newspaper headlines were the same. The only discrepancy in this loop was Harry Sanderson.

"Oh fiddlesticks!" Betty swore. "Rob, the kitchen outets aren't working. The fuse must have blown in the basement again. Can you fix it before going to work? I simply can't have the kitchen out, it's like my office you know."

[Starbeard]

In the morning, Rob had already planned to repeat the previous days as convincingly as he could. He rattled on about his strange dream, feigned surprise over which day it was, and swore all of today's scheduled events had already happened. "What a vivid dream…" he kept muttering between sips of coffee, looking askance over his cup at Betty, really trying to analyze for the first time the nuance of her reactions.

But then something unexpected happened. The fuses out; were they onto him? Hold on a minute, who're "they" anyway, and what would a blown fuse have to do with anything? Maybe some watchful force was luring him away. Ridiculous. He stuttered a flatfooted reply, "Uh… what? Oh sure, okay honey, I'll uh—I mean, I'll go check it out."

Maybe it was Betty—could even she be trusted in this bizarre broadcast of Dimension X he seemed to have awoken in? Was she "Them"? Absurd. Rob eyed her suspiciously as soon as she went off to her own business anyway, before heading down to the basement to check on the fuse. He nervously picked up his heavy flashlight on the step even though he knew he wouldn't need it for light.

[Grognardsw]

With flashlight in hand, Rob turned the basement light on and went down the stairs. The basement was filled with family detritus of ten years, including an extra drafting table that held Rob's old architectural designs. He went to a shelf and picked out a spare fuse.

Rob pulled a trunk over to the fuse box to stand on, twisted out the blown fuse, and screwed in the new one. He heard the starting click and drone of the refrigerator in the kitchen overhead.

He hopped off the trunk and noticed an odd gleam where the trunk had been moved from. He directed his flashlight to the spot. It was a copper color, and on inspection Rob was surprised to find it was metal. The stained cement floor was scraped off by the dragging of the chest.

[Starbeard]

"Now that's funny. I know I didn't design that…" Rob walks over to the spot on the floor for a better look, and begins scraping it away with whatever he can find—a crowbar perhaps, or even just by dragging the chest back and forth across the floor.

[Grognardsw]

Rob saw that wherever he scraped the floor, there was metal he strongly suspected was copper.

[Starbeard]

He quickly taps to see if the copper is hollow underneath. He scrapes the wall, and the stairs. Checking the time to make sure he isn't late for the bus, Rob cuts his exploration short and rushes out to the car. Now he's more determined than ever to meet up with his friend and get some answers.

[Grognardsw]

Rob discovered that whereever he scratched on the basement floor, there was copper beneath. It did not seem hollow. The walls and stairs did not reveal any metal.

Later at the bus stop, Rob boarded the commuter bus. He was hopeful the morning commute would provide answers. He saw Sanderson in the back; the man seemed nervous as he inched up to reach Rob.

“Do you remember the phone call?” Sanderson whispered, while looking out the window.

Rob discretely nodded.

“Oh, thank heaven. Get off at the next corner and follow me. There's an excavation for a building about a block down. Make sure you aren't followed. I'll go first.”

The bus stopped at Sanderson’s block. He passed by Rob with a purposeful glance but not a word. Rob waited until the last minute then exited the bus and followed Sanderson at a distance until he lost sight of him around a corner.

“Drummond! Here, behind the fence.”

Sanderson was hiding behind a construction fence. The site was quiet and empty of workers.

[Starbeard]

Rob glanced around to check for followers, not used to playing sly and knowing he must look obvious in spite of his efforts. He ducked behind the fence and whispered harshly, "Sanderson, what is this? Did you know my basement floor has been replaced entirely by solid copper?! I don't even want to think about how many codes that breaks. What's going on?"

[Grognardsw]

Although the street was full of people and cars, nobody was paying any attention to Rob and Sanderson. The air had a nip in it—more like October than July, Rob thought, in spite of the weather bureau control. He felt apprehension as he followed Sanderson down the street, running away from some "them" toward—toward what? Sanderson might be crazy, but he was afraid. Was the fear infectious?

"Let's talk, but this way first," Sanderson said, bringing Rob down some framed stairs into the basement and into an unfinished corridor - more a tunnel in its current state. They walked quickly for about fifty feet into darkness, until Sanderson clicked on a flashlight.

"Sanderson, what is this?" demanded Rob. "Did you know my basement floor has been replaced entirely by solid copper?! I don't even want to think about how many codes that breaks."

"Your copper floor doesn't surprise me," said Sanderson.

"What's going on!" exclaimed Rob.

"I'm not sure. At first I thought that perhaps they were Russians, but now I'm beginning to think they're Martians. No humans could accomplish what they've accomplished. Look Rob, peculiar things have been happening to you? A lot of your friends missing, the date not changing? It's always July 19, and you and I are the only ones to know it!"

[Starbeard]

"Yeah, all those things. What gives? If I have to play bridge with those nosy neighbors one more time I'll… but listen, Sanderson? Why us? What have we got that these 'Martians' want, and why trap us in a day loop? I mean is any of this even real? Maybe we're stuck in some giant copper laboratory, I don't know. Here, gimme that for a second."

Rob takes the flashlight and tries scraping the basement floor, not really expecting anything to happen.

[Grognardsw]

"I'm not sure. I think its some kind of mass hypnosis or something," muttered Sanderson, looking back down the corridor in a paranoid way. "Or brain waves."

"Somehow when it happened, they missed us. We were protected from the full force of the rays or whatever they use. Rob, where were you on the night of the 18th around midnight?"

Rob thought back. He was in the basement working on some architectural designs on his old drafting table, the extra-large one.

"I was in my dark room developing some pictures," said Sanderson, his right eye giving an occasional tic.

Could that really account for them not being effected?

Rob scraped the bottom of the concrete floor of the tunnel, but it was either just concrete or too thick a layer over suppposed copper.

"I've seen them," continued Sanderson, sweating now. "At the end of the tunnel, the one they built under Middletown. It's made out of copper or some alloy. I found a way to get in too. It's at the end of the excavation tunnel. Come with me and I'll show you."

[Starbeard]

Really sorry for the delay! I think I had my own inverted Gernsback Continuum and lost a number of days to the ether.

"In your dark room?" Rob found himself following Sanderson along blankly, lost in thought as he attempted to piece it all together. Was it the dark confines of their midnight offices that had sheltered them from these rays? No, then every beatnik in town would be on the street scatting poems about it. A copper tunnel. Maybe Sanderson's room had been coated in copper too?

"You've seen them? What do they look like, are they… are they human?" His voice naturally shrank to a timid whisper as they approached the yawning mouth of the Middletown tunnel.

[Grognardsw]

Sanderson led Rob through the darkening tunnel. He clicked on a flashlight. After about two hundred feet, Sanderson removed a cut-out piece of metallic substance and they crawled into another smaller tunnel. There was a slight echo as they walked. This was fantastic - a tunnel right under the whole city. They walked for what seemed like two miles until Sanderson held his finger to his lips.

"There's a room a little farther down," he said. "We'll be able to look through a glass in the door."

"Now, Rob, look through this glass. Just so I know I'm not completely insane, tell me what you see."

Rob saw a large room whose walls were panels of telescreens. In front of each, a servo-robot. They seem to be computing something.

[Starbeard]

Rob took in a sharp breath. "Well I'll be damned, robutts…" he whispered, pronouncing the last word in his characteristic regional accent.

He tried to get a good look at the telescreens to see what they were displaying or broadcasting. "Are there many more rooms like this one?"