A Laird for All Time (21 page)

Emmy spoke softly as Connor studied the object.  “I think I told you my mom had me learn to play the piano and guitar when I was growing up because studies had shown that music aided in learning of math.  What my mom never realized was that I did it because I just really like music.  When I was in high school, I’d go to see every concert that came to town just so I could hear it live.  In my time, you don’t have to wait for a concert, hope someone can play the piano or play it yourself because we have radio, TV, CDs and these.”  She gestured to the player.  “This object is a telephone, much as I described to you in Oban.  My own personal one, small enough to fit in my hand.  It’s not only a phone but also what we call an mp3 player.  There are many different kinds but this one in particular is called an iPhone.”  She took it from him for a moment and removed the ear buds.  She held them up.  “These are for just one person to use it for music, so ignore them for now.”  She laid it back on the table, black side up.

“What does it do?” he rasped, leaning away from it.

“It is a telephone.  You talk into it,” she pointed to the tiny hole of the microphone, “and can have a conversation with anyone in the world.  It also plays music.  Well it does a lot of other things too, but let’s start with the music.”  Emmy leaned forward leaning her elbows on the table.  “Go ahead, touch it.”

“That’s quite all right, I believe ye.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, her voice intense.

He looked so terrified that Emmy almost had to laugh.  She might have done so if she hadn’t thought he would take it as a personal offense.  Men could be so touchy when their manhood and courage were brought into question!  Instead, she reached across and touched the screen with one fingertip.

Connor jerked back as the screen lit up.  A colorful picture appeared in the black field, it was square with a picture of a young blond woman in profile.  Carrie Underwood it said and
‘Home Sweet Home’ below that.  Emmy tapped once more on the picture and piano music began to emanate from the object.

“Sweet
Jesus,” he whispered in horror as a woman’s voice joined the piano.

Emmy noted that his skin had paled dramatically and, taking pity on him, reached across, stopped the music and pulled the iPhone away from him.  For a moment, he looked like he might be ill.  Giving him a moment to collect his wits, Emmy toyed with the player.  “It plays music and much more.”  Moving to a different menu, she quickly shuffled through the pictures she had loaded on it.  She found one she liked and turned it around to show it to Connor.  “My mother.”

Connor saw the color image of a lovely woman with flowing blond hair that appeared to be rippling in a breeze.  She looked a lot like Emmy as she had been yesterday, seated by the sound with the wind tossing her hair.  The image was crisp and eerily lifelike and the woman in it was smiling merrily as if just caught in a moment rather than posing for twenty seconds while an exposure was taken.  He reached a curious finger to touch the screen but the image slid away and another took its place.  This one was of Emmy though she was much younger here.  She was in a cheek-to-cheek embrace with her mother and both were wearing wide grins as they stared out at him.  He touched it again and another slid into place.  From a distance this time, the women stood in front of a building with Emmy wearing a gold gown and hat with a flat square on the top.

“My high school graduation,” she said softly.  “Mom died not long afterward.”

“She was a bonny lady,” he offered, still trying to digest and understand what he was seeing.

“She was.”

“Where did ye get this…thing?” he asked finally.

“At a store,” she answered, keeping her voice low and soothing.  “It is not unique by any means; millions of people own one or something similar to it.  On this, I have over 2000 songs, hundreds of photos, games, some movies and some audio books.  Books read out loud and recorded so you can listen to them when you cannot just sit and read.”

“Thousands of songs?” he repeated in amazement, turning it over in his hand.  But it was so small!  Surely this was impossible.  He had never dreamed of such a thing!  He had seen a cylindrical phonograph presented in Paris nine years before.  It had been large and capable of playing but a single tune.  The sound it had emitted had also been rough and uneven…nothing that could be compared to this.  Was it possible that Emmy was saying the truth?  That she had somehow traveled through time to him?  It was fantastic and absurd, yet she was here. 

He shook his head.  But
…

Everyone living in his castle had commented that they had never met another like her.  All had assumed it was because she had been in America for too long, but what if it was because she had been raised a century ahead of them all?

Their conversation in Oban could be taken in a different light now.  She had been trying to feel him out regarding her origins, testing his mind’s acceptance of her truth.  Again, he shook his head.  It could not be!

“If I had an app to make this easier for you, I would use it.”  Her voice was teasing but the joke was obviously beyond him.  Connor remained silent, staring at the machine.  “Would you like me to leave you alone?” Emmy asked hesitantly.  Perhaps she had pushed him too far for now.  It might be best to give him time to digest her news, to come to terms with it.  Emmy was encouraged however.  Aside from his astonishment and awe, he seemed to be curious between his bouts of head shaking denial.  Curiosity was good and often lent itself to positive conclusions.  At least Connor was not staring at her with fear and disgust
…yet.

Emmy pushed back from the table and started to stand but Connor caught her hand and she sat back down.  “‘Tis extraordinary - this device,” he admitted.  “A part of me wants to know more about it.  CDs?  Movies?  I
dinnae ken what those things are and I’m interested in knowing.  However, connecting this fascination wi’ immediately accepting yer claim…”  He shook his head once again.  “It defies logic and is, therefore, difficult to accept.”

“It’s all right,” Emmy assured him.  “While in a perfect world you would have just accepted my word on the whole thing, I think you are taking it all pretty well so far.  I was half-afraid you might completely freak out, so all in all I’m proud of you.”

“I dinnae believe I ha’ ever ‘freaked out’, as ye so elegantly phrase it,” he replied, squaring his shoulders.  “I am curious though.”

“Curiosity is good.”

“Nae for the cat and I fear I might take its place wi’ this current state of affairs,” Connor admitted, letting loose a long shaky sigh.  “And while I am nae yet admitting that I accept yer entire story, I must know, how does it work?”  He pulled the iPhone back and laid it flat on the table in front of him.

Emmy demonstrated the menu to Connor, showing him how to navigate the programs and get from one application to the next.  When he questioned the music, she chose some examples of different genres of music for him.  As she might have predicted, he leaned toward
show tunes or ballads, finding the rhythms to be similar to those he was used to.  He did not seem to care for most of it.  Emmy could only assume the sounds were so foreign to him that he could not enjoy it.  She assured him that if he grew up with it he would see it differently.  Connor looked so doubtful that Emmy had to laugh.

“Here then, if you’re going to appreciate rock and roll, maybe we should start at the beginning.”  Emmy flipped through playlists until she found what she was looking for.  “This is Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll.  He was there at the beginning of the whole shebang.”  Tapping the screen, the opening bars of
‘Don’t Be Cruel’ thrummed out.

Emmy waited expectantly for him to catch on and start tapping his toe to the beat but after a long moment, Connor onl
y looked skeptical.  “Surely nae?”

“Are you kidding me?” she gaped at him in denial.  “This is Elvis for crying out loud!  Everyone loves Elvis.  Millions of women worldwide screamed and wailed for him!  He would get up on stage and do his gyrations,” she stood and demonstrated.  “It drove the women crazy!”  Connor looked shocked and finally laughed out loud.

“Now I truly doubt yer sanity,” he said with a chuckle.  “Such music sung and danced to in such a fashion will ne’er become popular or socially acceptable.”

“Oh, it will,” she assured him.  “It already has.  Elvis is the king and I wish someday I could prove it to you and tell you ‘I told you so’.”  Still Emmy frowned at him.  “You didn’t like my music?”

“There were some pieces that are nicely done, but . . .” he shrugged.

“I think I might have to hate you now,” she muttered, taking the iPhone back and flipping through the menu idly.

“Perhaps wi’ continued exposure, as ye suggested, I might come to appreciate it more,” he said in consolation.

“Don’t do me any favors.”.

“Tell me more about these ‘movies’ ye spoke of.  I’ve ne’er heard that word before.” 

He tried to pull the device back to him but Emmy hung on tightly with a muttered, “I’ll do it.”

Emmy scrolled through the movies she had loaded for the plane trip over, trying to pick one for him while giving him a little background.  “A movie or motion picture was originally made by linking a series of pictures together, printed on celluloid and projected at a theater onto the big screen, a white space about twenty feet wide.  Light beamed through the film and the images would show on the screen.  Just like music, there are dozens of different styles of movies. But basically you could say they are stories like books brought to life for you to watch them happen rather than use your imagination only to picture them.”

Inspiration struck and Emmy started one.  She forwarded over the credits and turned it toward him.  Connor leaned forward in amazement as the actors spoke and the scenery moved by.  “Incredible,” he whispered.  “Marvelous.”  After watching for several minutes, he turned to her with a surprised look.  “I know this story!”

“I thought you might,” she beamed, pleased at his excitement and enthusiasm.

“It is
‘Sense and Sensibility’, the Jane Austen work.”  He watched with excitement for a while longer.  “It is nae precisely right, however.”

“No, it’s not,” she said.  “While books and plays are often adapted for a movie, books usually have too much detail to translate in their entirety on to the big screen. 
‘Gone with the Wind’ for example, I’ve heard would have been a movie seven days long if they had filmed every word and action as it was written in the book.”

“‘
Gone with the Wind’?” he questioned.

“It’s another book, a long one.  You’ll read it one day,” she said
before adding in a teasing tone, “You might even like it.  It’s about the American Civil War.”

“So they take books and plays and make movies from them.” 

“Not just from books and plays, though some stories like the Time Machine have been made and remade several times.  Some stories are written just for movies about everything from historic events to day to day life and science fiction.”  Emmy wondered if it would be possible to sum up the whole of what movies encompassed.  “You name it, it’s been done.  There are movies about wars, the old west, the future, the past and things that have never, could never happen.  There are no limitations.”  Especially with the new CGI technologies which allowed for characters and worlds almost beyond imagination but that was an explanation for another day.

“What of Scotland?  Have they made these movies about my nation?” Connor asked, his eyes bright with eager curiosity.

“Dozens, at least,” she told him.  “’Braveheart’ was about William Wallace, there was ‘Rob Roy’…hmm, let me think.  ‘Brigadoon’.  Was that Irish or Scottish?  Hmm…I think Mary, Queen of Scots was in…oh! I know!  ‘Highlander!’  Now there’s a classic.  You might like that one.  And there are a lot of Scottish actors, too.  Sean Connery is a Scot and probably one of the biggest names ever,” she added, shooting him a seductive look from beneath her lashes.  “You talk just like him.  It’s so sexy.”

Connor took her drawled statement and cheeky grin with a smile, but returned his attention to the tiny images again as the Austen story unfolded.  How wondrous, he thought.  Stories that one could watch, already he could see the appeal and scope of such entertainment.  He would have paid any sum in that moment to see one in person at a theater.  He felt he could not exclaim his awe and wonder enough to truly express what he felt about this device that allowed him to see what would be.

“Will such an event be available in my lifetime?” he hesitantly asked in a low voice.  “Will I have the opportunity to watch one in person?”

“Of course,” she assured him.  “They are really not that far away.  In fact, I think that maybe the beginnings are already in the works.  But the first ones will have no sound and be in black and white like your photographs are, but they will get better as the technology progresses just like anything else.”

As the technology progresses.  As time goes on.

He sighed.  He could not refute the truth of her claim.  A logical man weighed evidence and made conclusions based on those facts.  As much as his emotions wanted to deny it, Connor knew logically if not yet in his heart that Emmy spoke true. 

He needed to find old Donell.  To determine his part in this whole thing.  The man had been prying into everyone’s business for more years than Connor could remember.  Some remarkable things had occurred over the years that had been attributed to him but nothing of this magnitude.  He needed to be found, but the question remained.  “How could Donell have performed such sorcery?  It is beyond understanding.”