SPNN Entertainment, Harvard Square, North American Landmass, Sol III – My heartbeat quickened as I dodged and weaved across JFK Street (which many of the natives still called Boylston Street), avoiding the primitive manually-controlled internal combustion groundcars. But it was a one-way two lane thoroughfare, and they were moving slowly, towards the busiest intersection in this Earth town called Cambridge.
The non-digital traffic control lights overhead ordered stops frequently to allow the native hoards of students, workers, and non-native consumers and tourists to safely cross the street – a technology not much more advanced than bearskins and stone knives. The trinary fuzzy-logic green-yellow-red sequence of incandescent lights in the unnetworked controller were intended to be translated as move, prepare to stop, and stop, by driver and pedestrian alike. In practice, all the sentient lifeforms interpreted them as move, move faster, and rapidly decelerate.
It was difficult to ignore the heavy smell of incompletely burned fossil fuel in inefficiently tuned and maintained piston engines. This was ironic, since the bank’s building housed the famed automobile mechanics advisory firm of Click and Clack, producers of Car Talk on the third floor; confusingly, their office window was labelled Dewey, Cheetham & Howe
Reaching the odd-numbered streetside’s non-slidewalk, I turned right and slowly strode along the unpowered sidewalk towards the bank on the corner, trying to avoid drawing attention to myself. But the 2D movie company had recently finished filming its Harvard Square scenes and the additional native crowds of onlookers had left, and my long black hair covered my ears.
As I perambulated, my mouth was dry, and I hefted the light bag I was carrying. After all, I was walking with a note demanding a raising of hands and a transfer of cash. It was a crime to take money from a bank in this manner. But I had travelled through time to this May day in 1990 for a specific purpose, and was determined to go through with it, despite the risk.
Leonard Nimoy in Harvard Sq directing "The Good Mother"
