Jaclyn the Ripper by Karl Alexander

human and not some worker-android. He stepped forward and shouted over the popping of the engine.
    â€œMy good man, do you have the time?”
    The man shook his head, shrugged and grinned.
    â€œDo you know what day it is?”
    The man lifted his goggles.
“No hablo.”
    Exasperated, H.G. spoke louder still—as if volume somehow increased comprehension. “DO—YOU—KNOW—WHERE—I—AM—?”
    â€œNo hablo.”
    The man detoured around Wells, continued down the walkway, his blower once again at flank speed.
    H.G. frowned. He considered himself cosmopolitan in that he was fluent in French, could speak Italian and hold his own in a German or Russian restaurant, but he’d never had the time or inclination to learn Spanish. Perhaps it was the Moorish influence on the Iberians? He stopped abruptly; his eyebrows rose.
    â€œMy God, am I in Mexico?”
    Concerned, he started uphill, hurried to get away from the annoying sound of the blower, asked himself why this worker—if indeed he was Mexican—needed to waste his time with mindless tasks.
If they can design such a wonderful space, why not engineer Mother Nature so that she need not shed leaves at all?
He looked behind him. The man was zigzagging across the lawn now, wielding his blower as if it were a broadsword and he were fighting some invisible foe.
    Bewildered, H.G. left the garden, climbed yet another flight of stairs, and emerged before the museum restaurant. He was relieved its signs were in English, noticed a row of newspaper racks similar to those he had seen in 1979 and squinted through the plastic: “
The Los Angeles Times
. June 20, 2010. Sunday edition. Westside.” He didn’t bother with the headlines.
    So I’m in Los Angeles, am I?
    His breath whooshed out in a distinctive rush, a habit begun when he was a student at the Normal School of Science, an expression of wonder at knowledge or discovery. At first his classmates had thought it funny, then came to rely on H.G.’s “whooshes” for their own discoveries.
    He skirted the restaurant and descended to the arrival plaza, staying close to the walls, in the shadows. TV news vans were double-parked in front of police cars, and camera crews straggled in and out of the rotunda. Wells had seen this in 1979 as well, and figured a special event must be going on inside which would explain why this spectacular monument to twenty-first-century man was closed. The ribbons of yellow tape waving in the breeze didn’t register. In fact, after his haphazard tour of this wonderful museum and garden, Wells was so enthused about the future, so glad he’d come, so proud that perhaps he hadn’t been wrong about mankind, it never occurred to him that this “special event” was the scene of a particularly vicious crime, committed by a psychopath from his own time.
    He considered Amy. Her parents lived in San Francisco—if they were still alive—so more than likely that was where he would find her. Since she was from the twentieth century, he wasn’t worried about her ability to function in this world. She’d been gone for only thirty-one years. He was more concerned about himself and how he would in fact get to San Francisco.
    For lack of an alternative, he started walking, but paused on the other side of the arrival plaza at an empty information booth and learned that the space-age complex before him was the J. Paul Getty Museum. He was about to take a brochure when he saw the tram. Enthralled, he half-ran to the Upper Station, boarded the lead car and hunted for an ignition switch—as in the motorcars he’d admired in 1979—thinking that one quick turn would engage the tram’s engine and move him down the hill. He hadn’t realized that the tram was pilotless, like a “people mover” from one of his “scientific romances.” Nor had he seen the operator behind the tinted glass