1. Camera
For the Gettysburg project, Miss Z had given the Flashback Four a complicated digital SLR camera, which was large and hard to use or conceal. That turned out to be a problem. For the Titanic mission, she had given them a smaller, simpler point-and-shoot camera. This time, Miss Z pulled out what looked to be a standard cell phone.
“It’s basically a phone without the phone,” she said as she handed it to Luke. “But it has a built-in zoom lens, so you can get a close-up shot of the mountain as it is erupting.”
“Any special instructions?” he asked.
“It’s simple,” Miss Z explained. “As soon as Mount Vesuvius blows and all that rock comes blasting out, just push this button. Then I’ll get you out of there before anything hits the ground.”
2. Timer
On the first two missions, the kids had been given a watch so they would know what time they needed to get back to the meeting spot for the return trip. But watches have a tendency to get broken, lost, or wet. This time, Miss Z pulled a small digital timer out of her drawer. It was waterproof, and about the size of a matchbook.
“I’m going to set this for a hundred and twenty minutes,” she told the kids. “Two hours. That should give you plenty of time to get the lay of the land in Pompeii and find a good location to take the photo. When the timer clicks down to zero, that’s when we’re going to bring you back here. Unless, of course, you tell me to do it sooner. Got it?”
“Got it,” all four agreed.
She handed the timer to David.
“You’ll notice that each of you has a small pocket sewn into your frock to hold these devices,” Miss Z told the group. “You can thank Mrs. Vader for her fine needlework.”
3. TTT
The TTT was Miss Z’s pride and joy. Text Through Time. It enabled the Flashback Four to swap texts with her in Boston while they were in a completely different time period. The first TTT cost millions to develop, and it was destroyed. Its replacement was lost on the Titanic. Fortunately, after the first one was made, it was a fairly simple matter to build extra units.
“I want to know where you are and what you are doing at all times,” Miss Z instructed as she handed the TTT to Isabel. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
4. Ear Buddies
Before reaching into the drawer one last time, Miss Z had a question for the Flashback Four.
“Do you kids know what language people spoke in Pompeii during the Roman Empire?”
“Uh, Roman?” replied Luke.
“Roman isn’t a language, dope!” David said, slapping his friend on the back of the head.
“They spoke Latin,” said Isabel, who remembered reading that in the book about Pompeii.
“That’s right,” said Miss Z.
“I don’t even know if the English language existed in the year 79,” Isabel added. “How are we going to communicate with people when we get to Pompeii?”
“Good question,” Miss Z said as she reached into her drawer once more. She pulled out a long, thin box, the sort of box that would hold a new watch. She had a little gleam in her eye as she opened it. Inside were four tiny, flesh-colored objects that looked sort of like the eraser you see at the end of a pencil.
“This is F-R-E-D,” she said as she carefully handed one to each of the kids. “It stands for Fully Recognizable English Decoder.”
“What does it do?” Luke asked.
“It’s a universal translator,” Miss Z explained. “It fits inside your ear canal like an earplug. Vocal sounds come in this side. FRED instantly translates the words and repeats them into your ear in English. And when you speak, it translates your words into that language as they come out of your mouth.”
“How does it work?” asked Isabel.
“Nanotechnology,” Miss Z explained. “It is the science of working with atoms and molecules to build devices that are extremely small. My tech team has been working on this for many years. It has a tiny battery inside. But there are no moving parts, so it doesn’t use much energy. And when you put it in your ear like an earplug, it’s virtually invisible. Go ahead, try it out.”
Luke, Isabel, David, and Julia each inserted a FRED into one ear.
“Hello,” said Julia. “Testing . . . one . . . two . . . three.”
“You’ve got to say something in a foreign language,” Isabel pointed out.
“Bonjour,” David said, and instantly the word hello echoed in the ears of the others.
“Wow!” said Luke. “That is amazing!”
“It can translate virtually every language that has ever been spoken,” said Miss Z. “I’m very proud of it, as you might imagine.”
“How much did it cost to make that?” asked Isabel.
“You don’t want to know,” said Miss Z. “I thought about naming it TT for Tiny Translator, but I thought that was too close to the TTT. Then I thought about naming it LISTEN, for Language Interpretation System Translator & Ear Nano-Robotic. But I decided to go with FRED instead. It’s friendlier, don’t you think?”
“It’s sort of like a translating earbud,” said David. “Hey, you should call it Ear Buddy!”
“Ear Buddies!” exclaimed Miss Z. “I like that!”
“Okay, is that it?” asked Luke, whose patience for sitting still had just about come to its end. “Can we go to Pompeii now?”
“Everybody should use the bathroom before you leave,” said Mrs. Vader.
“You sound like my mother,” Julia said.
“I don’t have to go to the bathroom,” said Luke.
“Try to go anyway,” instructed Miss Z. “They’re not going to have regular toilets—or toilet paper—when you get to Pompeii. Do you want to know what they used during the Roman Empire instead?”
“Uh . . . I’m not sure I want to know,” said Isabel.
“A sponge mounted on a stick,” Miss Z said. That was followed by a chorus of gagging noises from the Flashback Four. “They would dip it
