21st Century Schizoid Man

 Chapter One: The Great Wi-Fi Disconnect

Arthur Pendelton adjusted his ascot, winced, and immediately regretted it. The starch was aggressive. It felt less like clothing and more like a tactical defense system designed to deter hugs.

"Right," Arthur muttered to his reflection. "Breathe in, suck in the gut, and try to remember that Bluetooth hasn’t been invented yet."

He stood before a massive, heavily gilded cheval glass in a room that smelled distinctly of damp wool, beeswax, and coal smoke. The wallpaper featured an intricate pattern of maroon peonies that looked like they were plotting to strangle him in his sleep.

Arthur raised his right hand and tapped his wrist. Tap, tap.

Nothing happened. No subtle haptic buzz. No glowing OLED display flashing: Heart Rate: 135 bpm (Panicking).

"Bloody useless," he sighed.

Twenty minutes ago, or perhaps three days ago—time had gone completely wobbly after the particle accelerator tour at CERN—Arthur had been a twenty-first-century senior UX designer whose biggest daily crisis was whether to use Jira or Trello. Now, he was apparently Lord Arthur’s long-lost nephew, or perhaps a minor Victorian aristocrat with a sudden, severe case of total-system amnesia.

He leaned closer to the mirror. The man looking back at him had dark, unkempt hair that defied the pomade he’d scooped out of a little porcelain jar, startling blue eyes, and a bewildered expression that bridged three centuries of human confusion. He wore a double-breasted waistcoat of forest green wool, a high, stiff collar that forced him to keep his chin at an imperious angle, and trousers that could only be described as aggressively plaid.

"How am I a twenty-first-century man in the Victorian era?" Arthur asked his reflection. "More importantly, where do I charge my phone?"

A sharp rap sounded at the heavy oak door.

"Sir Arthur?" a voice called out. It was reedy, perpetually apologetic, and belonged to a man Arthur had mentally dubbed NPC #1. "The carriage for Lady Featherstonehaugh’s garden soirée is waiting below. Master Reginald says if you are late again, he shall confiscate your pocket watch."

"Coming, Higgins!" Arthur called back, wincing at his own American-accented British affectation. He cleared his throat, pitched his voice down into what he hoped sounded like a Sherlock Holmes outtake, and tried again. "Coming, my good man! Just fastening my... spats!"

He had no idea what spats were, but he assumed they involved his ankles.

Chapter Two: The Perils of Peplum and Pedestrians

Navigating London in 1888 without a Google Maps overlay was, Arthur quickly discovered, a health hazard.

The carriage ride had been a sensory assault. Instead of the low, aerodynamic hum of an Uber or the familiar rattle of the London Underground, Arthur had been subjected to the rhythmic clop-clop-clop of hooves, the symphony of curses from cabdrivers dodging horse-drawn omnibuses, and an aroma profile that consisted primarily of damp straw, horse manure, and coal soot.

When he finally stepped out onto the gravel drive of a sprawling Gothic revival mansion in Kensington, he felt like an astronaut dropped onto a medieval farm.

"Arthur, darling!"

A woman in a bustle so large it looked like she was smuggling a sofa cushion rushed toward him. She wore a mauve silk dress adorned with enough fringe to outfit a saloon, and her hat was a precarious mountain of velvet grapes and artificial plumage.

"Aunt... Mildred?" Arthur guessed, deploying a wide, non-committal smile.

"Don't 'Aunt Mildred' me in that tone, you scamp," she chided, tapping him playfully on the arm with a parasol. "You look positively peaky. Have you been staying up late writing those dreadful socialist pamphlets again? Or worse—reading French poetry?"

"Just grappling with existential dread, Auntie. Standard Tuesday stuff."

"Well, put it away. Lord Blackwood is here, and he is simply dying to discuss the expansion of the telegraph lines to the colonies. You know how he gets when he talks about copper wire."

Arthur’s ears perked up. "Telegraph lines? Copper wire? Is there electricity?"

Mildred paused, eyeing him with deep suspicion. "Of course there is electricity, Arthur. Have you hit your head on a cricket bat? Mr. Edison’s incandescent bulbs are all the rage in Mayfair, though personally, I find the glare terribly unbecoming to my complexion. Makes one look like a ghost at a feast."

Arthur nodded slowly. 1888. Thomas Edison. No internet. No antibiotics. No Spotify.

Right, he thought. If I'm going to survive this, I need to invent something immediately, make a fortune, and figure out a way to weaponize steam to get back to my espresso machine.

He excused himself from Aunt Mildred under the guise of acquiring a glass of claret, slipping away toward the sprawling lawn where Victorian high society milled about under fluttering silk marquees.

As he walked, he kept his eyes peeled for modern conveniences. He spotted a man reading a broadsheet newspaper and had a sudden, overwhelming urge to walk up to him, swipe his thumb across the paper, and pinch-to-zoom. He resisted the impulse. Getting committed to an 1880s asylum because you tried to pinch a piece of wood-pulp paper seemed like a remarkably unpleasant way to spend the rest of your life.

"Pardon me, sir," a deep, gravelly voice muttered.

Arthur sidestepped, bumping squarely into a broad-shouldered gentleman in a sharply tailored charcoal frock coat. The man was holding a porcelain teacup with the grim determination of a sniper holding a rifle.

"Oh, terribly sorry," Arthur said, automatically falling back on twenty-first-century customer-service reflexes. "My bad. Didn't see you there."

The gentleman paused, his eyes narrowing as he looked Arthur up and down. He had a thick, waxed mustache that looked as though it could slice bread, and a monocle dangling from a black silk ribbon.

"Your... bad?" the man repeated, his voice rich with aristocratic confusion. "An unusual locution, Mr. Pendelton. Are you quoting some obscure northern dialect?"

"Ah. Right. British. Jolly good," Arthur bumbled, offering a stiff, awkward handshake.

The man stared at Arthur’s extended hand as if it were a venomous snake. Slowly, with profound reluctance, he reached out and gave it a single, bone-dry pump.

"Lord Blackwood," the man said stiffly. "And you are apparently still suffering from the after-effects of whatever sporting accident relieved you of your common sense."

"Arthur Pendelton," Arthur replied, flashing a grin. "Innovator, visionary, and general appreciator of indoor plumbing. Tell me, Blackwood, between us—what do you think of alternating current?"

Blackwood’s monocle popped out of his eye and dangled uselessly against his lapel. "Sir? Are you speaking of Nikola Tesla’s reckless madness, or have you finally lost your mind?"

"A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B," Arthur said brightly. "Say, do you know anyone who can build a time machine out of an oak wardrobe and a copper kettle?"

Before Blackwood could summon the butler to have Arthur sectioned, a piercing scream cut through the polite murmur of the garden party.

Chapter Three: The Great Crinoline Crisis

The scream came from the edge of the manicured maze, near a towering topiary shaped rather confusingly like a walrus.

"Good heavens!" Aunt Mildred dropped her parasol. "It’s Lady Clara! Her crinoline has caught fire on the brazier!"

"Her what?" Arthur yelled, but the crowd was already stampeding in the direction of the commotion.

Arthur broke into a sprint, his stiff leather shoes clacking awkwardly against the gravel. UX design hadn't prepared him for athletic heroics, but his adrenaline spike—a completely analog experience—kicked in with terrifying efficiency.

Rounding the corner of the hedge, he found a scene of absolute Victorian chaos. Lady Clara, a woman of formidable volume and even more formidable corsetry, was spinning in frantic circles while a billowing cloud of white petticoats smoked and crackled with a lively orange flame. Several gentlemen were beating at the fire with rolled-up copies of The Times, which only seemed to feed the flames with fresh newsprint.

"Stop! Stop fanning it!" Arthur shouted. "You're feeding the oxygen triangle!"

"What is an oxygen triangle?!" Lord Blackwood roared, brandishing a silver-headed cane. "Fetch the footman with the sand bucket!"

"There's no time for sand!" Arthur yelled.

He didn't think. He stripped off his heavily starched, extremely expensive green wool waistcoat, grabbed it by the shoulders, and hurled himself at Lady Clara, tackling her into a sprawling, ungraceful heap onto the damp grass.

Instantly, he smothered the flames with the heavy wool, beating out the embers with his bare hands until the smoke cleared.

Silence descended upon the garden party. Forty pairs of aristocratic eyes stared in horror at the scene: Lady Clara sprawled in the mud, gasping for breath, and Arthur Pendelton—scion of a respectable family, wearing a shirtsleeves-only outfit with his suspenders exposed to polite society—kneeling triumphantly beside her with soot on his cheek.

"My word," someone whispered.

Arthur stood up, brushing off his knees, and offered a hand to Lady Clara. "You alright there, Clara? Might want to look into fire-retardant fabrics. I'm telling you, synthetics are going to be huge in about a hundred years."

Lady Clara took his hand, her eyes wide. She looked like she had just witnessed the second coming or a very rude theatrical performance.

"Arthur..." Aunt Mildred whispered, clutching her pearls so hard Arthur feared she might shatter them. "Your... your arms. Your shirt-sleeves! In broad daylight! In front of the Bishop!"

Arthur looked down at his exposed linen sleeves. In 1888, walking around without a jacket was apparently the moral equivalent of streaking through a church.

"Look," Arthur said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "The important thing is, nobody died, the walrus hedge is unharmed, and we've all learned a valuable lesson about open flames near structural undergarments."

Lord Blackwood pushed his monocle back into his eye, staring at Arthur not with disdain, but with a strange, grudging fascination.

"Pendelton," Blackwood rumbled, walking slowly toward him. "That was... remarkably reckless. And astonishingly fast."

"Agreed," Arthur said. "I call it 'rapid prototyping under duress.'"

"You tackled a peer of the realm's sister into the mulch."

"I saved her from becoming a toasted marshmallow. You're welcome."

Blackwood stared at him for a long, heavy moment. Then, slowly, the corners of his waxed mustache twitched upward into a faint, dangerous smile.

"I like you, Pendelton. You have the manners of a stray alley cat, but you move like a startled hare. Come inside. I believe my club has a smoking room, and I wish to hear more about this... 'oxygen triangle' of yours."

Chapter Four: The 19th-Century Pivot

Two hours later, Arthur found himself sitting in the deep leather armchair of the Diogenes Club (or something very much like it), nursing a glass of scotch that tasted like liquid campfire and smoked peat.

Across from him, Lord Blackwood puffed contentedly on a fat Cuban cigar, blowing smoke rings toward the high mahogany ceiling.

"So," Blackwood said, leaning forward. "You claim that within a century, human beings will possess tiny, flat metallic slabs that allow them to speak to anyone on the face of the earth, access all the accumulated knowledge of human history, and yet they will use them primarily to look at moving pictures of clumsy cats?"

"And argue about politics with strangers," Arthur added. "Don't forget the arguing."

Blackwood chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound. "Madness. Sheer, unadulterated madness. And yet, I find myself strangely compelled by your confidence. You speak of the future with the terrifying certainty of a man who has already read the last page of the book."

"Oh, I've read it," Arthur sighed, looking down at his soot-stained shirtsleeves. "And honestly? The UX was much better in my version."

"UX?"

"Never mind. Listen, Blackwood, I need a favor."

"Name it. After the incident with Lady Clara’s crinoline, I owe you at least a minor county."

"I need paper. Lots of paper. And a decent fountain pen. And—if you can manage it without raising too many eyebrows—a block of copper and some zinc."

Blackwood raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning to build a bomb?"

"No," Arthur smiled, leaning back and resting his boots—complete with their ridiculous plaid trousers—on a mahogany footstool, thoroughly shocking an elderly gentleman reading The Economist in the corner. "I'm going to invent the toaster. And if I have any time left over, I’m going to pitch the concept of sliced bread."

"Sliced bread," Blackwood mused, rolling the words over his tongue. "Is it revolutionary?"

"It’s the absolute peak of human achievement," Arthur said, raising his glass of scotch. "Trust me. You guys are going to love it."

Epilogue: Meanwhile, in the 21st Century...

Back in Geneva, deep beneath the Swiss Alps, Dr. Sarah Chen stared at the glowing monitors of the CERN particle accelerator control room.

"That's odd," she muttered, tapping her keyboard.

"What is it?" her colleague asked, sipping a lukewarm latte.

"We had a minor spatial-temporal flux fluctuation in Sector 4 about three hours ago. The containment field wobbled for a microsecond."

"Did anything come through?"

Sarah checked the logs, frowning at a strange anomaly logged in the automated inventory system. "No... nothing came in. But..."

"But what?"

"We're missing a senior UX designer from the London design team, and according to the security cameras, he walked straight into a decorative wall panel while trying to check his smartwatch."

Sarah stared at the empty corridor on the camera feed. Then, with a shrug, she typed 'Error: User walked into wall' into the incident report, closed the window, and went back to her coffee.

After all, stranger things had happened in tech.