For the first time since he'd met Bruce, Michael had the leisure to plan where he was going to show up next.  So when he dialed the date into the Omni, he also dialed in an instruction for clothing.

The result was that Bruce and Michael not only turned up in Dayton, Ohio, in the summer of 1900, they also turned up looking like any other man and boy who might be walking the street at midday.

Among other things, that meant woolen knickers for Bruce.  He didn't like the tight band that held the knickers over his high socks, just below the knee.  He hated the itchiness of the heavy wool in this hot weather.

Michael wore a pin-striped suit, a white starched shirt with a high, heavily starched collar, and a wide tie.  he looked as if he'd just stepped out of the pages of a 1900 men's fashion magazine.

As they walked slowly along the sidewalk of a Daytonian street, Michael seemed to be enjoying the role he was playing.  Bruce kept stopping to scratch furiously at his legs.

"Stop that!" Michael admonished, clearly annoyed at having his role-playing disrupted.

"I can't help it," Bruce said.  "They itch, they're hot, and they make me feel stupid."

"It wasn't my idea to come to Dayton," Michael said, as they resumed walking.

"No," Bruce said, "but it should have been.  What's the Omni doing?"

Michael looked at it and said, "Red light's blinking away."

"Right," Bruce said. "That means something has to be fixed here."  He stopped and smiled at a sign over a store entrance. "And this is where it's gotta be done," he added.

The large overhead sign said, "Wright Cycle Company." In the window near the door, another sign said, "Help Wanted."

"Let's go," Bruce said excitedly, making a beeline for the door.

Michael took two steps to follow him, then more or less froze in his tracks.  A beautiful woman stood in front of the cycle shop.   She held a parasol over her head to protect herself from the sun, and she seemed to be waiting for someone.

Bruce stepped up to her and smiled, and she returned the smile.  He seemed ready to melt, and it wasn't because of the sun.

"Nice day," he said.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" she replied.

At the door, Bruce turned and saw what was happening.  "Forget it, Michael," he called out.   "Remember that blinking red light."

Michael ignored him and made a little bow to the woman.  "Michael Strogoff," he said.

She smiled again and said, "Abigail Small."

There was a pause, during which they stared into each other's eyes.  Bruce walked up behind Michael and tugged on his sleeve.  

"Come on, Romeo," he said. "We've got serious work to do."

Michael looked down angrily at Bruce.  Then he looked at the woman again, this time with a slightly embarrassed smile.

"This is my nephew," he said.  He made another little bow and followed Bruce into the store.

It was a cycle store, of that there was no doubt.  But only a few of the cycles looked like Bruce's 10-speed at home.  Some of the two-wheelers had one large wheel and one small one.  Some of the machines had three wheels, and some had four.  Leaning against a wall near the corner were several unicycles.

Bruce reached in and took the "Help Wanted" sign from the window.  He handed it to Michael.

"Tell them you're here for the job," Bruce said.

They could hear the voices of two men from the back of the shop.  It sounded very much like a heated argument.

As they walked to the back, the character of the shop slowly changed.  There were fewer cycles back here.  Instead, the space was taken up with big blueprints and drawings and with dozens of model planes of various sizes.  Against the back wall, just behind the two men, was a full-scale glider.  

And there they were in front of the glider---the Wrigth Brothers themselves.  As far as Bruce cold tell, they might have been dual images of the same person, except that one had a mustache.

They were trying to keep their voices down.  But it was obvious that they were arguing.

"She wanted me to ask her out!" said the one with the mustache.

"She's my girl, Orv!" his brother shot back.  In his anger, he threw a cup of coffee to the floor.

"I hate to tell you this, Will," Orville said. "But she doesn't even like you very much."

"That's news to me!" Wilbur said, pushing a bicycle over.

"As a matter of fact," Orville said, "she thinks this whole flying idea of yours is crazy and stupid!"

To emphasize his point, Orville ripped a blueprint from the wall and threw it down on the floor.

"Excuse me," Michael said loudly. "Uh, gentlemen, could I talk to you about the job you have open?"

They both looked at him. "Be right with you," Wilbur said.

Then he turned back to his brother.  "My idea?  Flying is my idea?"

He walked over to workbench right in front of Bruce.  Bruce stared at the dozens of models that covered the workbench.  He watched in horror as Wilbur dashed them to the floor with his arm.

"My idea?" he repeated.  "Who spent four sleepless nights designing these wings?"

He picked up a large wing from the floor and bent it in two.

"Who spent ten days flying this glorified box kite?" he fumed, throwing the kite to the floor and stomping it to pieces.

"Who worked for a solid month building this model?" he said, bringing his fist down to smash a six-inch model airplane.

He was momentarily distracted when his fist hit the table, and not the model.  Bruce had swiped it away just in time, but Wilbur was too angry to pay much attention to him.

"And you have the gall to call me stupid!" he said, concluding his argument.

"Gentlemen," Michael said loudly.  This time they didn't even bat an eye at him.

"You think those things are stupid?" Orville said, walking to the glider on the back wall.  "I'll tell you what stupid is!"

"Stupid," Orville said, "is putting eighteen months into a glider that won't fly in a crosswind!  Stupid is planning to ride this thing off Big Rock Cliff.  Smart is putting it away before somebody gets badly hurt!"

As Orville stomped on the last remnants of the glider, Michael looked out the window.  Abigail had stopped pacing to and fro.  She took a long look inside the store through the window.  Then she smiled at Michael and walked away.

Michael decided it was time to break things up.  He stepped between the two brothers.

"Maybe I have wised up and gotten smart," Wilbur said.

"Gentlemen," Michael said, "I think this has gone far...."

He stopped because Wilbur was pulling at a big wing hanging from the ceiling.  It would very likely come crashing down on his head, so Michael stepped out of the way.

"Maybe I'm too smart to care about flying machines," Wilbur said, still tugging at the wing.  "Or about younger brothers, or bicycle shops!"

The wing finally came crashing to the floor.  Wilbur reached for his derby hat and his jacket.

Making one last try, Michael said, "I really don't think Miss Small is worth..."

"Maybe I've gotten so smart," Wilbur said, "that I've had it with the whole kit and caboodle!"

He turned and stomped toward the door.  Orville chased after him.

"You don't have the smarts of a billy goat, Wilbur! We're finished, you hear me?  You and I are through!"

He kicked over a line of standing bikes near the front door.  Then he ran out of the store after Wilbur.

Bruce and Michael looked at the mess the brothers had left behind.  Michael looked at the "Help Wanted" sign in his hand. 

"Well, it looks like the job is mine," he said, tossing the sign on the pile of debris.  "I just wish I knew what to do, though."

"Sit down, Michael," Bruce said.

"What?"

"Sit down.  I have to fill you in on some elementary facts of American history."

Michael pulled himself up to his full height. "Who do you think you're talking to, you little turkey!" he bellowed.

Bruce stared at him.  Michael thought about the blinking red light.   Then he thought about what Bruce had just now offered.  He looked around, spied a stool, and sat.

Bruce began walking to and fro in front of him, like a college professor giving a classroom lecture.  He even stroked his chin to make the imitation just a tad more realistic.  He was obviously enjoying this.

"Now, listen carefully, Michael, because I'm only to going to explain this once.  Those two men are the Wright Brothers.  It was their experiments that led to the development of flying machines.  During World War I, American fliers did a lot to help our side win the war.  Are you with me so far?"

"I'm with you, kid.  Just get on with it."

"In 1918," Bruce went on, "Ralph Hinkley should be one of the aces who flew American planes against German planes.  But the Ralph Hinkley we met had never even been in a plane."

"Because they hadn't been invented," Michael said, pleased that he was finally able to follow all this.

"Right," Bruce said. "But they were supposed to be.  That's why we came back to 1900. To try to find out why the airplanes weren't on the scene."

"And now we know why," Michael said.  "It's because those two idiots started arguing over a woman.  And they're about to let that argument stand in the way of their work."518Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlFjVYBAGAN

"Right on," Bruce said. "You've got it.  Now, what do you have to do to get that red light to stop blinking?"

"We've got to get them back to work on their invention," Michael said. "We've got to get them on their way to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina."

"There's hope for you yet, Michael," Bruce said tiredly.  "Now let's figure out how to get that done."