Ficlet: A Glimpse Of The Future

[john_amend_all]

I visited the Museum of London today, and got plotbunnied.

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It hadn't been a particularly interesting party, and until Pol had shown up Georgina Jones had almost been tempted to come up with an excuse for leaving early. But Pol's arrival had put an end to that half-formed notion. It wasn't just that Pol was good company, though she definitely was. Pol knew all sorts of out-of-the-way things you wouldn't expect a secretary like her to know; and she knew the oddest, most interesting people, too.

She'd brought one with her to the party: a foreign girl who went by 'Kat.' Pol hadn't said where Kat came from, though by her looks she might be Italian or Cypriot or something like that. Anyway, she didn't have much English, and that meant Pol had to be translating for her all the time.

The three of them had been sitting on a battered sofa in the corner, after they'd all had several drinks, when Kat had suddenly taken Georgie's hand and said "I see man. Man from..." She'd said another word in her own language, which a baffled Pol had translated as "History."

"What do you mean, you see a man?" Georgie had asked.

Kat and Pol had had a quick conference in Kat's language. Then Pol had said "Kat... sees things sometimes. Premonitions, that sort of thing. I suppose you'd call it second sight."

"You mean she's a psychic? A real one?"

Pol had spread her hands. "I suppose so. But she can't tell you what horse is going to win at Newmarket, or anything like that." She'd given Georgie a self-deprecatory smile. "That was the first thing I tried."

"Well, she hit the bullseye with me." Maybe this girl had seen her with Adam, of course, or seen something about their adventures in a newspaper. But maybe not. "Can you ask her what else she sees?"

Another rapid exchange in the unknown language. Pol turned back to Georgie, her expression almost troubled.

"She says she can see something from your future. And she can show it to you."

"Really? That'd be fab!"

"Would it?" Pol had looked more serious than someone with that amount of wine in her had any right to. "What if it's something nasty?"

"Then I still want to know. Maybe I can do something to stop it happening."

"Then hold her hands, and look into her eyes."

Georgie had looked into the girl's earnest face, framed by curls of dark hair...

She hadn't been in a museum since she'd been a girl. Well, apart from that time she'd been giving Mr Adamant a helping hand by posing as an attendant, not that he'd been the least bit grateful when he'd found out. Nonetheless, she knew a museum when she saw one. The glass cases were bigger, and less dusty; instead of faded typewritten labels, there were neatly-printed cards; the huge, illustrated diagrams and moving pictures on the walls were far more engaging than the static panels she remembered from her childhood.

She drifted through the galleries, floating slightly above the ground, invisible to the museum's visitors. Who, much to her disappointment, weren't wearing silver foil and didn't carry rayguns or jetpacks. Fashions had certainly changed, but not as much as she might have expected. There were no flying cars visible out of the window, either, though she conceded that future London definitely looked cleaner than the city of her time.

A group of tourists, who seemed to be taking photographs, though their cameras looked like nothing more than slabs of black glass, moved on to the next gallery. Catching sight of the exhibit they'd been looking at, Georgie couldn't help gliding over to it. There were a couple of minidresses, on tailor's dummies. A handful of black and white photographs. A telephone, of all the ridiculous things. And a few records, in their covers.

It was her London in the case. All that vast, vibrant city, the world that made up her whole life, reduced to a handful of faded objects with neat explanatory cards.

One of the records caught her eye. She leaned forward, and found she could read the label beside it:

This Is The Moment — Hypersonic Records. Unreleased. From the Adamant Collection.

The picture on the cover was of the lead singer. Her own face.

And suddenly Georgie was back on the sofa, and Pol was snapping her fingers in front of her.

"Are you OK?" she asked. "You were really away with the fairies then."

"Zoinks." Georgie let go of Kat's hands and clutched her head. "I dig what you meant about the future."

"Did she show you something bad?"

"Bad? Not really." Georgie tried to recapture her usual confident, cheerful manner, but she couldn't quite. Not yet. "Just... unexpected." Under her breath, she added "I never thought I'd end up as a museum piece!"