4 – Betty Tyler (October 24 – 28, 1929)
The rich get richer and the poor get children.
In the meantime,
In between time,
Ain't we got fun!
This time, the mission was to Manhattan, for the stock market crash. Rick and a historian posed as brokers and joined the Tyler Brokerage, out of Hoboken. Rick had been writing down paper orders and calling clients on a clunky wall phone for two days when, one afternoon, a flapper strolled in. It was every bit of flapper style he'd ever heard of. She was keeping up with the up-to-the-minute trends of the time.
One of his fellow brokers whistled a little. That was squelched quickly by a senior broker, who scolded, "You will not bother Miss Betty. She doesn't have time for the likes of you."
The catcalling fellow looked down, but still commented, "The quality just improved."
She was a short girl, with a short dress, long fake pearls, a headband with a feather, and clunky strappy sandals. As had happened so many times before, she gave him the eye, and tossed her bobbed brown hair at him. "I like to break in the new, heh, brokers," she grinned, looking him up and down. "'Course you'll never tell Daddy." She inclined her head in the direction of a portrait of the rather stern founder of the company.
"Mr. Tyler and I have a deal. He doesn't tell me where to get an apartment and I don't tell him who I take there." The catcalling guy glared, as did the senior broker and Rick's historian companion, but Rick didn't even so much as look back, as he clocked out and left with her.
He missed a few days of work. Betty was as lively as Irene had been. When the morning of the 28th dawned, Rick realized it was the day. The stock market would crash and trigger the Great Depression. "We've gotta head to the office, or at least I have to. Uh, see you tonight?"
"Sure." She batted her artificially-extended lashes at him. "Now, you'll come back after work, right?"
"Not to worry." He kissed her and departed.
But once Rick and the historian had witnessed the crash and its aftermath – including Tyler jumping out of his office window – they beamed back to their time ship and out of there. Rick stood Betty up.
They returned to the 31st century. "We've got a time change," Carmen announced. "Some girl named Betty Tyler wasn't supposed to die. She was an ancestor of the woman who raised the Q, Amanda Rogers. It's too big a change; you've got to fix it."
"What?" Rick read the altered newspaper on his PADD, a historical record of the change. Betty had joined her father out that window. "All because I stood her up? There's more. But that was the last straw, I'll bet." He swallowed a small lump in his throat. "That's got to be it."
Rick had to go back, keep his hands off her, and thereby undo her suicide.