LINKED BY FATE 1810

When Ellen Matthews, an executive for a large computer software company, decided to dress as a Jane Austen heroine for the Halloween party, she had little idea that she would eventually, after drinking more than she knew, wake up in the England of 1810 and literally have to live in that era.

At first the primitive conditions and the horrible smells bothered her, but her knowledge of modern technology–including descriptions of why inoculation would work, with words like “pro teen coats” and “recept her sites,” endeared her to the nobility. At first they saw her as a charity case, but soon she came to the attention of the Prince Consort, in line to become King after mad King George finally died. Her abilities to predict the future and to play the “kitar” led to many happy occasions, some of which resulted in the group of people singing “Ring of Fire” and other popular–in another era–tunes.

But the affair, into which she soon drifted with the Prince, attracted the attention of the Royal Family. Thus it was that Ellen was bundled into a carriage one day and taken to a huge, gray building on the outskirts of London. There she was introduced to another man named Matthews, James Tilly Matthews, and shown a drawing of his and asked to identify it. Of course,, she said. It depicted a radio broadcasting installation, with operators at a radar screen, joystick and keyboard, satellite, the works.

“I thought so,” said the man who had been in charge of security for the Prince. They got up to leave and drive back into London. When Ellen asked when she would also be called upon to board a carriage and return, they said that she would not, and a few moments later she heard a key slide into an iron lock, and she was left in Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam, along with mad James Matthews and his delusions.

The Prince was informed that Miss Matthews was, in fact, already married, and that the affair could go no further; it would not be like the Frances Villiers affair. The Prince was disappointed, but they knew best, and he pretty much wrote off Ellen Matthews.

In the next few years, Ellen and James Matthews devised a number of wonderful devices for transmitting electromagnetic waves, through space, all of which were begnignly tolerated by Mr. Matthews’ personal physician, James Haslam. In the end, Ellen realized that life in Jane Austen’s world was not all it was cracked up to be.

THE END.