Timeshares - By Jean Rabe & Martin Harry Greenberg Page 0,3

bright and totally anachronistic flashlight so he could look around, then opened his leather satchel to remove the stack of tan, rough-surfaced sheets of papyrus. They were still moist and still smelled a little rotten from the manufacturing process; they had been made only two days ago, back at the Nile Delta in the first century A.D.

Bill had traveled back to ancient Egypt to obtain the actual papyrus—again, for the authentic touch. He had, however, underestimated how difficult it was just to pick up some paper. Since papyrus was a common substance in Egypt at the time, he thought he could just go down to a marketplace and pick up a ream.

Though Bill did not speak the difficult language, the ancient Egyptians along the Nile were accustomed to strange merchants coming from far-off lands. Near the open-air, reed-roofed shop, workers harvested the tall green sedge from the swamp, peeling the stalks to take out the pith, laying down strips, crisscrossing them, pounding them, pressing and drying the sheets, then scraping them smooth with a well-worn seashell.

Bill had paid the papyrus maker well and had received fifty rough-cut sheets, enough for the first printing of the Timeshares brochure. Since the Timeshares Travel Agency advertized authenticity above all things, they couldn’t do any less with their promotional materials. He had already told Rolf Jacobsen, the mysterious and wealthy head of the agency, that these brochures must be used for only the most elite potential clients. He didn’t intend to go through all this hassle for a second printing.

Even more difficult than obtaining genuine papyrus had been securing the original artwork. It had sounded like a good idea. He’d gone to prehistoric France to track down a Neanderthal tribe, and he had commissioned original drawings from one of the cave painters. Attempting to art-direct a Neanderthal had been a challenge unlike anything else in his career, but Bill had gotten his sketches, daubed and chalked onto flat pieces of slate, which he’d then taken back to the present and the headquarters of Timeshares, where the art could be scanned and incorporated into the brochure layout.

The final materials would also include photos of the time-travel facility, its high-tech interior with spindle-shaped apparatus topped by silvery spheres haloed by crackling static electricity. Rolf Jacobsen wanted it to look sleek, futuristic, high-tech, but in a “Jules Verne” sense rather than a “neon, hard-edged, Hong Kong” sense. So far the interior of Timeshares had undergone numerous face-lifts and retoolings. Bill had no idea what the final interior was going to look like; it might even change weekly. In his opinion, the time-travel device looked more like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab than a comforting and safe gadget, but he didn’t say anything. His only priority was the sales brochure.

Bill had already written the text: “We’re not just a travel agency—we’re a time travel agency. We offer excursions into the past and future. Take a vacation wherever and whenever you like.”

Inside the dim workshop, Bill studied Gutenberg’s clumsy looking printing press, a cumbersome gadget whose design was based on an old wine press. Gutenberg’s workers would line up the small wooden letter blocks in the tracks, use an ink roller, and then crank down the press upon each sheet of paper.

The next page of Gutenberg’s Bible had been set up for the following day’s printing. He took a quick snapshot with his imaging device so that he could reassemble the letters when he was done, though he didn’t understand many of the German words or the too-fancy type style. “Quickly, his fingers rattling the wooden blocks by the glow of his flashlight, he slid all the words off into a tray, and then painstakingly mounted his own letters, his own text.

“Afraid of flying? The high cost of gas got you down? Want to really get away? Step into our perfectly safe time-travel device and find yourself in exotic historical locations. Adventure and mystery guaranteed, danger definitely possible. It’ll be the experience of a lifetime—of anyone’s lifetime.”

The process of setting the letters was tedious, but authenticity was the most important thing. If Mr. Jacobsen advertized that his clients would experience real history, then the brochure had to be the real thing. Fortunately, all of his promotional text fit onto a single page, even with Gutenberg’s large letter blocks.

As payment, in addition to Bill’s standard fee, Timeshares had offered him an excursion to anyplace he chose, any time. He could witness the greatest events in history, meet the most