Free The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming Page A

family and I were under attack. It was my intention to use the device to remove our attackers. But somehow I miscalculated. The machine exploded, destroying my home and family.”
    â€œBut you escaped?” Peter prompts, momentarily caught up in the strangeness of the situation and of her tale.
    â€œI escaped. At first, when I awoke in a park, I did not know where I was or what had happened. But finally it became clear to me.”
    She leans forward conspiratorially, gesturing for Peter to do the same—and as she does, knocks over his glass of wine, the ruby liquid flooding the tabletop and dripping into his lap. Flushing with embarrassment, she leaps to her feet, the motion toppling her own wineglass. An awkward interval of stammered apologies and clumsy mopping ensues, which Peter watches with mingled confusion and disbelief. When the mess has finally been cleared away and a surly waitress has replaced the drinks, they lean together again, the drama of the moment somewhat diminished.
    â€œI was saying,” she whispers, “I believe that the explosion somehow hurled me through time itself, so that I awoke seven years after the night my family perished.”
    She falls silent and they lean apart. Neither says anything for a moment. Around them the hubbub of the restaurant, a burst of laughter from a nearby table.
    Wondering how to respond, Peter is at a loss. Her story is easily within the bounds of raving-lunatic territory, but, seated across the little table, she doesn’t look deranged. In fact, she seems nervous but alert and clear-eyed, waiting for his answer.
    â€œGuess I don’t know what to say.” He shrugs helplessly.
    She nods, as if accepting a sentence. “You do not believe me.”
    â€œWould you?”
    â€œPerhaps not. And what proof can I possibly offer that would convince you? My story, I know, offends common sense—but look.” From her pocket she carefully withdraws a battered scrap of newsprint. Smoothing it on the table, she pushes it toward Peter—who suddenly recalls Neumann making this same gesture. Unfolding the brittle page, torn from the Boston Post-Intelligencer of August 26, 1894, he reads:
    TREACHERY IN TOLEDO
    Federal Investigator Reginald Pimsleur confirmed yesterday that both Louis Toledo and his daughter Cheri-Anne were killed by the explosion that destroyed their family home in Toledo, Ohio. Although unable to verify the cause of the explosion, Mr. Pimsleur informed a crowd of reporters that the disaster resulted from the treacherous attack provoked by Mr. Toledo against the troops of Capt. Harlan of the United States Army. At the time, witnesses
    Here the article ends abruptly in a torn edge. But the text is almost beside—or rather, below—the point: above the article is a small line drawing captioned “Louis Toledo & His Daughter,” depicting an ugly man with a distracted look on his face, and a young woman. Peter looks up at the girl seated across from him, then down at the scrap again. And, yes, he thinks, it could be her: the same sharp, delicate features, the same dark curls.
    â€œThis you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThis is from seven years ago.”
    She doesn’t say anything.
    Peter hands back the article and she tucks it into her pocket—this best, and only, real evidence that she has been able to find during her days of research in the newly built public library. Days during which she learned how dramatically the world had changed over the last seven years, an industrial revolution transfiguring open countryside into metropolises overnight—or would it be metropoli? she wonders. For a split second, the image of a gigantic beehive flashes in front of her: a ceaseless, bustling insect activity, multiplying wax hexagons toward the heavens, self-important top hatted drones stopping mid-flight to confer—Pollen up ten percent last month, old chap, have you heard?—Yes, magnificent outlay