Free Samantha Smart by Maxwell Puggle

shook her head. “All right then, here’s twenty dollars. I want you to take a taxi-boat straight to Battery Park, we’ll test the communicator while you walk the dog, then I want you to come straight back. Here–” he handed the money to Samantha. “Shall I show you how it works?”
    “Absolutely.” Samantha grinned.
    The Professor flicked some switches on the desk unit then reached for Samantha’s wrist.
    “This button,” he indicated controls as he spoke, “is to turn it on.
This
button is to toggle on and off whether you are in the same time as the desk unit or not–I can’t really explain how–I hope–that works, (if it even does), but it sort of modifies the bandwidth and pulse of the signal. And this big dial is your fine-tuner.
Use it to tune in if your signal gets weak or starts to break up.” Samantha nodded as she received each instruction, even though Polly was still sproinging a bit and distracting her slightly. “If you
are
in the same time as me, as you will be in Battery Park in half an hour or so, keep the right button
out.
If you are in another time, keep it pushed
in.
Got it, have you?”
    “Yup,” Samantha said, already getting her backpack ready to stuff her little dog into.
    “Testing... ” The Professor spoke into the communicator master unit. Samantha pressed the left or ‘on’ button on the wrist unit and made sure the right, or “time setting” button was left “out.” She could hear his voice coming out through the tiny speaker in the wrist-communicator’s face. From across the room she replied,
    “Professor–is there a ‘talk’ button?”
    “Oh, yes! Stupid of me, really–it’s that large bar at the bottom–it’s a button too, just shaped more like the space bar of a computer keyboard. You don’t need to hold it in the whole time you’re talking, but you need to press it at the beginning and at the end of each time you speak. Its normal state is a ‘listening’ one.” Samantha followed the directions and was able to get a message through successfully.
    “Testing–testing–Professor Smythe, of the Knightsbridge Smythes, eats worms... ” she giggled into the unit.
    “Thunderous thumb-suckers!” he yelled gleefully at his new invention. “It works!” He turned to Samantha, who was packing up Polly. “All right–off with you. Call me from the park, just as I showed you, then come
right back,
okay?”
    “Yeah.” Samantha rolled her eyes a little. “Okay. Really, I’ll be
fine, Professor. I just want to let Polly run a little bit.”
    “Just remember, Samantha, we’re a team now. Without each other, neither of us has much hope of setting things right again. Please be careful.” The Professor was most affectionate and protective, and Samantha almost blushed. Instead she nodded and headed up the stairs to the surface.
    *
    Battery Park was certainly a bit different, even perhaps more so than the average spot in flooded New York. Being at the foot of Manhattan Island, it had essentially become part of the bay, or the Hudson River, technically. You could still see the very tips of some of its stone walls and smaller monuments, but mostly it had become largely saltwater. In a sense, the Hudson and East Rivers had been entirely blended together into one big bay, and the water that had drowned the streets of the city was actually quite salty thanks to the ocean’s encroachment. You could still see the Statue of Liberty from the floating plastic sidewalks that lined what used to be the park, but it looked smaller now and farther away. Samantha concluded that this was probably a sort of illusion; a good portion of the statue’s base was now underwater, and essentially the global rise of the sea level had made the horizon line a bit higher. This gave the viewer the impression that Lady Liberty’s feet were down to or below the horizon line, which made the statue appear to be farther away. It was an eerie effect, and it made Samantha really soak in the