Nanowrimo 2015-11-29

Before going to the cafeteria to face the crowd, Jason and I walked hand-in-hand through the facility, looking for any stragglers and surveying the damage I had wrought the night before.  "Do you remember any of this?" I asked as we walked through the less destroyed hallways.

"Only vaguely," he said.  "Like a distant memory or a dream I had years ago.  It's like, that sense of deja vu you get.  You feel like you've done something or been somewhere before, but you can't quite place the memory."

I nodded.  "Yeah, that was how I ended up feeling with you, in my dreams," I said.

"I'm glad it didn't stay just as dreams," he said.

I gave his hand a squeeze.  Then we came to the storage room I had utterly destroyed.

I heard him give a little gasp as we approached the door, which was now damaged to the point where it would not shut entirely.  "You really went all out," he said, chuckling just a little.

"I don't think its that funny," I said.  "I used to love time travel, and now I destroyed it all."

"You're right," he said, getting serious.  "I'm sorry."

He let go of my hand and stepped into the room.  It was charred and cardboard from the boxes the lotions had been was strewn everywhere.  After taking a few steps into the room, he lifted up his shoe and looked down at the lotion oozing underfoot.

"You know," he said, "It doesn't seem like you really destroyed all of this."

"It's as good as destroyed," I said.  "The scientists always told me that if it was left open to the air, it would degrade entirely within an hour or so.  And heat is even worse."

He looked at me skeptically.  "And you believed them?" he asked.

That gave me pause.  "Well, yeah, I guess I did," I said.

"Well," he said, scoping up some of the lotion from the floor onto his fingers.  "I suppose there's only one way to find out."

I stepped up to him urgently.  "Careful," I urged.  "If that stuff is by chance still active, touching it could end up sending you who knows where in time."

"Well, nothing's happening so far," he said.

"The surefire way to get it to work is to rub it in and imagine the place and the time you want to go."

"Okay," Jason agreed.  "What do you have in mind?"

I thought back to all the trips I had gone on.  What would be the most fitting to try in this moment?  "May 3, 850 CE, 7:52am" I said.  "The African Savanna."

"Is that...?" he began.

I just gave a nod.  "Take my hand with your hand that isn't covered in lotion," I said.  He did.  "Now hold out your other hand," I said, "and focus on the date and time I just mentioned."

He gave a nod of approval, and as he did, I scoped up the lotion out of his outstretched palm and rubbed it on both of our hands.  I was focused.  It was just like when we had come back here from the past.  I closed my eyes...  And nothing happened.

I did not feel the nausea or the dizziness.  I felt nothing except Jason's hand in mine and my heart beating.  I opened my eyes.  We were both still there, standing in the storage room, surrounded by thousands of destroyed containers of time travel lotion.

"I guess you really did destroy it," Jason said.

"Good," I said, actually feeling a little regretful that we hadn't gone back to see that fateful sunrise the day after I shot that elephant.  "Let's get to the cafeteria and explain what we can."

Jason gave a supportive nod.  "Lead away," he said.


When we reached the cafeteria, there were probably about 50 people there, all talking, speculating, wondering.  As I walked into the room, people started to take notice and the talking became whispers and then silence.  I looked back at Jason, feeling afraid, but he reached for my hand and gave it a supportive squeeze.  I smiled, and pulled him along with me to the front of the room.

"I know you're all wondering what happened here last night," I said to the expectant and wondering stares.  "You should know that it started with Maria, but it ended with me."  I saw some mouths start to open, but then quickly close again.  It was clear these people were willing to hear what I had to say.  I even caught the eye of the man who had guarded me in my prison.  He looked angry, but he didn't speak up.  I took a deep breath and launched into my unplanned speech.

"Ever since I was a baby," I said, "I believed I was special and that I was destined to work for this agency."  I looked around the room, finding some of the other time travelers I knew.  "I'm sure you had similar stories," I said, addressing them.  "Stories about going back in time to convince your parents to convince you to go into this career.  If you were anything like me, it was one of your early assignments."  I saw nods in the audience, to my relief.  Then I added, "Before you really knew what this agency was about."  I saw some confused and pondering looks.  I told myself that was good, too.

"I believed in this agency for a long time," I said.  "All through my training and my first several missions, I thought I was making this world a better place.  And then they sent me to kill an elephant."  I noticed some whispering and muttering and paused to let that die down a bit.  "I didn't think much of it at the time, but I think now that it was all part of Maria's test."  More muttering.  "You see," I said, this time choosing to speak over their whispers, "but the time I was shooting this elephant, my boyfriend Jason," he nervously waved his hand, "had already been sent back in time with his memory wiped because he dared to ask Maria questions about what she was really up to."  I noticed some people whispering.  I overheard a bit of it.  Things like, "Do you know that guy?" and "I went on a mission with him once.  I thought he was dead."

"Jason is not dead," I called out, "but Maria abandoned him in the past because he dared to ask questions.  She told his parents he was dead, and she tried to wipe him from my memory.  But either by accident or on purpose, and I'm thinking now it was planned, she sent me back on a seemingly random mission that led me to encounter him in his fake identity of Connor, a science teacher living in the past."  The crowd had grown silent now, wanting to hear what I had to say.  "I didn't remember him," I said, "but something about him stuck with me, which I realize now is because I had known him.  I kept this to myself, but Maria used my memories against me, and chose to play a sick game with me.  She sent me on another mission where I encountered Connor's grandson and then everything went to crap.  When I came back, Maria told me I had to go back in time and murder Connor in order to fix the terrible future I had created, when in reality, she had created it."

I paused, expecting an uproar, but instead there was just silence, as every eye in the room seemed to remain focused on me.  I felt my hands grow sweaty.  I clenched my hands into fits to try to keep any sweat from dripping onto the floor.  "I was desperate," I said.  "I still trusted Maria at the time.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was sending me back to kill an innocent man, and I couldn't do it."  I looked around the room, finding the faces of some of the people who had prepped me for this mission.  I caught one face, a man who was trying to look away, but I looked at him, and he sheepishly looked back.  "Some of you tried to convince me this was for the greater good," I said, "but I'm guessing that even you didn't know what was really going on."  The man I had found looked so ashamed.  He could no longer hold my gaze.  I was so relieved I had been right, that no one had known the full story.  I actually smiled a little bit.  "But it's okay," I said.  "I went back in time, but I didn't kill the man I had forgotten I loved.  I let him live, and not only that, but I brought him back here so we could confront Maria.  And do you know what she did when I confronted her?"

There was silence for a moment, and then my guard, the one who seemed to have hated me spoke up.  "She threw you in the dungeon," he said.

There were more mutters at that.  I heard people saying, "What dungeon?" and "We have a dungeon?"

Then the man added, louder and more angrily, "Because you defied her."

The crowd turned on him, and he looked surprised.  "What?" he said.  "We have to trust Maria."

"Why?" someone asked.

"She had me kill a wolf for no clear reason," Someone else called out.  "How long until she was going to ask me to kill a person."

"We have no proof that any of this is true," the guard said nervously.

"We have some proof," Jason said, and he stepped forward with the digital documents we had found on his history.  As he started to read Maria's records aloud, the crowd grew silent.

When he was done, someone called out, "I worked in the records department and I don't remember entering any of that."

"That's because Maria entered it herself," Jason said.  "Come on up here and see."

The woman who had spoken up made her way to the front and examined what Jason offered her.  "It seems legit," she said.  "No alterations that I can detect, and it was all entered by Maria."

"That still doesn't prove all of this," someone called out, someone other than my guard, unfortunately.  "Maybe this Jason fellow really is no good."

"No, I remember him," someone else spoke up.  "He was a good guy.  He was outspoken, but he wanted to do the right thing."

"How do we know your mind wasn't altered?" someone shouted.

The muttering was starting again, but I needed to stop it, so I shouted out, "Exactly!"  The crowd looked back at me, silence slowly spreading.  "How do we know any of our minds are really our own?  Maria had the power to alter memories, feelings, thoughts, and she could have done that to any of us, to all of us.  She may have started this agency with good intentions.  I don't really know, but now, its become warped and twisted, and that's why I destroyed all the time travel lotions last night.  To put an end to it all!"

When that the crowd erupted.  There were some shouts of approval, but a lot more of "But why?" and "We could do good without her!"

Then I heard someone finally shout out, "Where is Maria now?"

"She isn't here!" I shouted back.  The crowd started to calm down again, still not sure if they trusted me, but wanting to hear what I had to say.  "She isn't here," I said again, once they had quieted enough to hear me reliably.  "And we don't know where she is.  Jason and I took her, wanting to get answers, but when we turned out backs on her to talk about what she was telling us, what she was saying about experimenting on us, she was gone."

There were more whispers.  Some I caught were, "Experimenting?" and "Is this for real?"  Then someone called out, "But where did she go?"

I frowned.  "I don't know," I said.

"I know," I heard a voice cry out from the back.

The heads of the crowd turned and I strained to see who had spoken.  When I saw the man walking through the crowd to the front of the room, I gasped.  It was the same man we had seen in that picture we found in Maria's office.  The man Maria had insisted she didn't know.

The mystery man reached the front of the mostly silent crowd and stood just in front of me.  I made no move to stop him.  I wanted to hear what he had to say just as much as anyone else.  "I took her," he said.  The crowd muttered and he called out even louder, "I took Maria."  Then he turned back to look at me, to address me directly, and he said, "I took her to protect you."  And then back to the crowd he said, "I took her to protect all of you."

"Who are you?" someone shouted out.

"In most time lines, I'm Maria's lover," the man said.  He glanced back and me and Jason and gave a weak smile and then shouted out to the crowd, "In all timelines, I'm the great-great grandson of the two individuals you see standing before you today."

I felt my head whirling, spinning.  I thought I might faint.  The room around me seemed to be spinning.  Was this for real?  I was struck with how the entire crowd around me must feel.  I felt Jason's arms holding me up, but I could tell that he was shocked by these words as well.  I tried to focus.  The man who claimed to be my descendant was not done speaking.

"Maria did start out with what you might call good intentions," he went on.  "She was a scientist, and she wanted to discover new things, but it turned out she was a bit too curious just for curiosity's sake, and she didn't appreciate people questioning that."  The man took a few steps back so that he could look sideways at me and Jason and look ahead at the rest of the crowd.  He looked at Jason and said, "You made the mistake of questioning Maria, and she punished you as a result.  When she came home that night and told me what I had done, I told her that was terrible and that at the very least," he turned to look at me, "she should send Anna with him."  He sighed and looked back at the crowd.  "She blew up at me when I suggested that," he said, "and after she was done yelling, she calmed down and just said, 'Fine, maybe I will.'"  He frowned and continued.  "The next day when she came home from work, she exploded at me for a completely different reason.  'Who are you?' she was shouting.  'Get out of my house!'  She didn't remember me at all.  In time, I pieced together what had happened.  Maria didn't want to deal with me anymore, so she had erased me from her memory.  Fortunately, though, she had also erased the fact that I kept a stockpile of her precious time travel lotion with me, so I took it, fled, and I've been on the move through time and space ever since."

The crowd was mostly silent, so I took it upon myself to ask the question they had previously been asking me.  "Why should we believe you?" I said to him.

He looked over at me and he smiled.  "I suppose you don't really have to," he said.  "Just know that we want the same thing:  the world safe from Maria."

"And Maria?" I asked.

"She's safe, too," the man said.  "I took her into the future, far into the future, where the treatments needed to counteract the mental damage she's caused herself exist.  She'll be okay."  Then he looked back at the crowd, "And so will all of you, if you devote your talents to the present instead of the past.  That was Maria's mistake, always thinking she could mess with the past instead of focusing on the good she could do in the present.  All of you, you're all talented, gifted individuals.  You can make a change, not in the past for the present, but in the present for the future."

There was a moment of silence, and then the crowd started to whisper again.  There were some nods, some pondering looks, some expressions that still showed utter confusion, even a few people rubbing their heads and then one voice, the voice of the woman who had almost ended this all when she found me breaking into those grenades, called out, "We'll think about it."

The man smiled and nodded.  "That's all any of us can hope for," he said, "that all of you think."

The crowd looked forward for a while, clearly expecting more, but when none of the three of us standing before them said anything, they turned to one another and started to talk excitedly, trying to process all that had been said and figure out what to do next.  Meanwhile, the man claiming to be my great-great-grandson turned to me and Jason.  "They'll be fine," he said with the confidence of someone who had seen the future.  "There are enough of them that want to do the right thing that the right thing will be done.  The two of you, I still need to talk to the two of you."

I felt a bit nervous, but Jason and I exchanged a look, and then I looked back at the man and nodded.  "Okay," I said.  "You did help us out, so the least we can do is hear what else you have to say."

He smiled.  "Thanks," he said.  "Come on."  And he led us back into the kitchen where we could talk more privately.

We went into the back storage area of the kitchen and then man leaned against one of the shelves, closed his eyes for a moment as he took a deep breath, and then opened his eyes and looked at us.  "Ever since I learned who I really was, I wanted to talk to the two of you," he said, "but I knew the time wasn't right."

"What do you mean?" Jason asked.

"After Maria made herself forget me," he said, "that's when I started doing my research.  I would use the time travel lotion to sneak into the facility in the middle of the night and read the records, including the one you shared today.  I was amazed at how much alike the two of us looked, and then I started to wonder... with you in the past, was it possible we really could be related?  I tried to get samples of your blood, but they didn't have any anymore.  Then, on a hunch, I got a sample of Anna's blood, since she had been the woman you loved, and it turned out we were a match.  I was related to her and I could only guess I was related to you as well.  I finally decided to go back in time to the time Maria had sent you, and confirm that I was related to you as well."

"So what are you saying?" I asked.

"I'm saying that what I said to all of that crowd doesn't apply to the two of you," he said.  He held out two small vials of lotion.  "I have one for each of you," he said.  "In order for all of this to work, for what just happened in there to even happen, the two of you do need to go into the past.  At least, that's what I think.  The thing that does apply to the two of you, is that you need to think for yourselves."

I reached out and took the two vials.  "What do you think will happen if we don't go back?" I asked, looking at the vials carefully.

"I don't know," the man said.  "But just in case you want to confirm what I've said..." I gasped as he took out a needle attached to a syringe and stabbed himself with it.  I watched as the attached vial filled up with blood, and then he pulled it out and handed it to Jason, who took it cautiously.  "You can test that," he said.  "I think you'll find the indication that we're related just like I found.  The rest..." he took out another vial of lotion and started to rub in on his hands, "is up to you."  And then he was gone.

I looked at Jason, and he looked back at me, stunned.  "Well, what now?" he asked.

"I have no earthly idea," I said, "but I think now we can finally go back home."

"Agreed," Jason said.  "But where is home?"

To that, I had no idea what to say.


We decided that, at least for the time being, home was my parents' house.  My mother and father seemed overjoyed to see me.  "Did you win?" my mother asked.

"As much as can be expected," I said.  "I don't think Maria's going to mess with anyone again any time soon."

"Where is she?" my father asked.

"When is the more appropriate answer," Jason said, "and as near as we can tell, far, far in the future."

My mother looked a bit worried at that.  "You mean you don't know?" she asked.

"Well, we have the word of a man claiming to be our great-great-grandson," I said.

"Whose?" my mother questioned.  "Yours and Jason's?"

I nodded.  My mother smiled.  "I always knew you would meet the right guy eventually," she beamed.  "It was just a matter of time."

"Mom!"

My mother just smiled.

"So what proof did this gentleman offer?" my father asked.

"Of his lineage or of Maria's state?" I asked.

"Either, both," my father said.

"Not much about Maria's state," Jason said, "but he did give us a sample of his blood that we watched him take."  He drew out the vial.

My father gave a nod.  "I can get one of my buddies to analyze that.  Give me samples of your blood, too, and we can compare."

"Done," Jason said, handing him the vial.  "How do you want to..."

"Oh, we can do that later," my mother said, still hugging me.  "I'm just glad you're safe and this is all over."

I exchanged a worried glance with Jason.  We both knew it might not be all over, but I didn't want to spoil my mother's good mood.

"I'll order some dinner," my father said, looking a bit worried in turn.  I thought he might have noticed the look Jason and I traded.  Then he looked at Jason and said, "How would you feel about inviting your parents over?  It doesn't have to be tonight, but it would be good to meet them sometime."

Jason smiled.  "That's a great idea," he said.  "I'm sure they'd like to meet you, too."

My mother finally released her grip on me and turned to Jason.  "Oh your mother must be worried sick!" she gushed.  "Why don't you call her and tell her you're okay?"

Jason smiled.  "I already called her on the way here," he said.  "But I guess it can't hurt to call her again."

My mother nodded, my father laughed, I smiled, and Jason got out his phone.  We may not have known what the next long term step was, but the next immediate step seemed to be food and family, and I had no complaints about that.


Over the next several weeks, we spent a lot of time bouncing between my parents' place and Jason's parents' place.  I made a few trips back to the warehouse as well.  The first trip made me a little nervous, but I was beyond relieved to find people dismantling and moving out when I arrived.  "We believed you," the woman who had helped me with the grenades said.  I learned her name was Sarah.  "We want to do the right thing.  I'm going to enlist in the military again.  Enough of this private sector crap for me."

As much as I used to think the government just got in the way, I figured that was probably a good decision compared to working for Maria's agency.  "Good luck," I said, holding out my hand.

She took it with a smile.  "You, too," she said.

It wasn't until the second trip back there that I cleared out my own stuff.  I went into my bunk, the sleeping area where I slept when I needed to stay on site and couldn't go home due to the intense training I was undergoing, and collected the few personal belongings that still remained.  There was my toothbrush, my nightshirt, the photo of me with my parents, and then much to my surprise, a photo of me with Jason, taken back when we were still in college.  It was weird to see me with him in a setting that I remembered but in which I did not remember him.  I asked someone passing by if they had seen anyone in my room, but the person just shook their head.  I could only guess that my great-great-grandson had something to do with it.  As far as I knew, he was the only one left with the power of time travel.  Well, besides the one-way trip Jason and I had.


We struggled with whether to go back and live our lives in the past for a long time.  My father coming back with the confirmation that the results of the blood test were consistent with the mystery man being a descendant of myself and Jason did not help any.  Just because he was telling the truth didn't mean he was right.

Even after all we had been though, Jason and I were both still quite confused about the fabric of time.  It seemed like sometimes what was meant to happen had already happened and we only played into it, and yet other times we were able to change the past.  Like how I had met Jason's grandson and he had seemed to recognize me before I had gone back to be with Jason/Connor and even though I had never seen him before.  Or how I had convinced my parents to make me into a time traveler.  And yet other times, the loop back had a very different outcome:  like when I freed myself from jail or when I caused the destruction of two major cities (at least according to Maria).

It was hard to know anything.  Would we be saving the world by going to live back there or would we be ruining the lives of our families or would nothing of note really happen?  There was no way to know.

"I guess all we can do is do what we most want to do," Jason said.

"Well I have no reason, selfishly at least, to go back unless you want to," I said.

Jason sighed.  "I'm torn," he said.  "I still remember more of my fake life back then than of my real life now.  But I do love my parents, and my siblings, and they don't exist back then.  Plus, your life is here."

"Well, my family is here," I admitted.  "But I don't know where my life is anymore.  The time travel agency was my life."  I sighed.  "I think it comes down to this:  wherever we go, I think we both need to be in on it with our whole hearts and minds.  So I think we need to either wipe our memories of now before we go back, or get your memory of now back before we stay here."

"Yeah, well, I can't stand the thought of wiping your memory like mine was wiped," Jason said.  "And I have no idea how to get my memories back."

I gave a little gasp at a sudden realization.  "I think I do," I said.  "What if instead of going back, we go forward, to where our prodginy took Maria."

"Well first of all," Jason said, "that's crazy.  We don't know the exact time he went to.  And even if we did get it right, we only have one shot each of this stuff.  How are we going to get back afterwards?"

"He still has plenty of the stuff," I said.  "We'll find him.  Or he'll find us."

Jason shook his head.  "This is crazy," he said.  "This will never work.  What will happen to him, to his existence, if we don't go back."

I paused and thought for a moment.  "Maybe we already went back," I said.

Jason looked confused.  "Come again?"

"Maybe we're already living in the timeline where you and I lived back 100 years ago.  Maybe your grandson and this great-grandson and the whole world are an outcome of that timeline?  And now that we're living in it, it just is, and we're free to do whatever we want."

"That's nutty," Jason said.  "How does that make any sense?"

"How does any of this make any sense?" I countered.  "Besides, I think... I think the kid might actually want us to get our memories back.  Both of us."

"What are you talking about?" Jason asked.

"Hold that thought," I said, and I rushed back to my room and brought out the photo I had found at the agency of me and Jason together.  I showed it to him.

"I don't remember this," he said.

"Neither do I," I said.  "But I think our great-great-grandson wants us to.  I think he's the one that sent this to me."

"That's a whole lot of guesses," Jason said.

"Yeah, well..."  Just then, my thumb absently rubbed against the screen of the picture and I watched in surprise as the photo slid away and revealed a white screen with black lettering.  It said, "August 24, 2199."  I looked up at Jason, surprised.

"No way," Jason said.  "Did you put that there?"

"No!" I insisted.  "Why would I make up some random date?"

"That's not some random date," Jason said, giving voice to what I was already thinking.  "That's the date he wants us to meet him."

"So you think this is the right move now?" I asked.

"Right move?" Jason said.  "I have no idea.  But our best chance of getting our memories back, probably."

"There's still a chance we'll never get home again," I said.  "Never come back to anything we ever knew as home."

"To remember the truth of my life," Jason said, "I think its worth it.  The past is still a lie to me right now, even though we've unraveled some of it.  I'm not sure I can really live in the future until I know the past."

"Or live in the more distant past until you know the more recent past?" I suggested.

Jason laughed.  "Yeah, whatever," he said.  "Now come on.  Let's do this before I change my mind."


Turns out I did insist on giving Jason a little bit of time to change his mind.  I figured it was only right that we say good-bye to our families just in case we never saw them again.  They were sad to see us go, but understood the choice, and hoped to see us again.  We managed to get together for one final meal together over at Jason's family's house.  His mother even brought out a blast from the past and did some cooking herself.

"I didn't think anyone did that anymore," my mother said.

Jason's mother shrugged.  "It's a hobby," she said.

"In my memories of my mother," Jason said, "there was often a home-cooked meal while I was growing up."

Jason's mother smiled and dished him out some green beans.  "That shouldn't change too much after you get your real memories back," she said.


The mood around the table that night was light and happy.  Everyone talked and got along.  There was no complaining or begging us to say.  It was just a really nice time.  And right at the end of the meal, Jason looked at me and said, "I love you."

There was lots of "awws" going around the table, but I didn't see any of those faces.  I just saw Jason's.  "I love you, too," I said.

It was a truly beautiful memory of the day before we made our final trip far into the future.


The next day we hugged our families good-bye, hoping to see them again, and then set out.  By which I mean, we rubbed lotion on our hands and vanished.  We had a date that we were supposed to go to, but we didn't have a time or location.  We debated a bit about the location.  Should we go with one of our houses?  Maybe the old farm house where we took Maria?  Ultimately, we settled on the warehouse where we had met our great-great-grandson, who we realized never gave us his name.  We first met him there, I first found the photo of him there, and it was where I found the photo I was assuming he had left of me and Jason.  As for the time, we decided the middle of the day was as good a time as any, so we closed our eyes, rubbed the lotion in, and pictured my old bedroom in the facility at noon on August 24, 2199.

We felt the sure-sign nausea and dizziness that we had experienced many times before, though most of Jason's experiences had been forgotten, and when we opened our eyes, we saw sitting in the corner of what was left of the warehouse room, the man who was our offspring.  He stood up and smiled.  "I was beginning to wonder if you were coming," he said.

"You didn't give us a time," I said.

"So I guess you changed your mind about sending us to the past," Jason said.

"Well, not exactly," our mystery offspring said.  "I still think that's the safest bet, but not long after I left you, I realized I could do more to help you first."

"Why not just come back and tell us that instead of leaving the cryptic photo?" I asked.

He shrugged.  "I can't say I fully know," he said.  "I guess it just felt like the right thing to do."

Jason sneered.  "That sounds like something Maria would say."

Our great-great-grandson frowned.  "Maybe," he admitted.  "I'm sorry if I caused you undue pain.  That was never my intention."

"It's okay," I said, stepping forward and somewhat awkwardly placing my hand on his shoulder.  He seemed okay with it, but I felt weird, so I withdrew it as I asked, "What's you name anyway?"

"I'm Anthony," he said.  "Most people I know just call me Tony.  Well, that or Dr. Tony."

"Are you a medical doctor?" I asked.

He nodded.  "Medicine is one of my fields."  He seemed to grow a bit shy as he said more quietly, "I'm actually the one working on the drug that is restoring Maria's memories."

"So it's working?" I asked.

He nodded.  "Yes.  And no ill side-effects other than a bit of nausea and dizziness."

"Nausea and dizziness I can handle," I said.

"So you both want the treatment?" he asked.

"Yes," Jason and I both said together.  "Is there any reason we shouldn't?" I asked.

"Well, it's just... it will make you remember everything.  And you already dislike Maria enough as it is.  Are you sure you want to remember it all?"

"I'd rather know the whole truth," Jason said.

Tony nodded.  "Okay," he said.  "That is why I hinted that you should come here.  But still, it is your choice.  I can't say that I know whether or not this is the right move."

"It is," Jason said confidently.

Tony looked at me and I said, "We're ready to remember."

Tony smiled.  "Okay," he said.  "Then come with me."

We walked out of the now truly abandoned warehouse, down the dilapidated halls, and out into the bright sunshine.  "As near as I can tell," Tony said, "no one every came back here.  No one ever started up the facility again here or anywhere else I know of."

"Good," Jason said.

I nodded in agreement, but I couldn't help but feel a strange bittersweet regret that it was really all gone now.  I felt like my sunrise had come and gone and now I was working through the sunset.  But then again, every sunset just means another sunset is coming the next day.  Maybe, I thought, my next sunrise would be even better.


It took weeks, perhaps its more accurate to say months, of treatments before Jason and I were able to remember.  I have to say, we put a lot of trust in Tony, but it did help that he proved to be an accredited doctor and had a whole team working with him.  The treatment they had developed worked great on amnesia victims and all sorts of people who had suffered memory loss due to trauma.  But it was able to restore memories lost due to drugs and other influencing factors, which was the category we fell into.

During our treatments, I started to remember all kinds of things.  It was mostly Jason plugged into places I remembered but did not remember him being.  I even remembered him going on a few missions with me, which explained, to me, why I dreamed about him being there with me on later missions.  Maybe he would have been if Maria hadn't gotten rid of him.  I also remembered him telling me he was going to confront Maria and me saying I wasn't sure that was a good idea.  It seemed like I had been a little scared of her.  But I hadn't remembered that.  I had always remembered just trusting her.  That was when I realized that when she had altered my memories, she had also made me trust her.  Ultimately, even that fake trust had been broken, but I hated that it had been forced upon me to begin with.

Jason had a similar but much more intense experience.  He told me that afterwards, he still had all the fake memories of growing up in the late 20th and early 21st century that Maria had implanted, but he also had the real memories, and he could tell which was which.  The part that angered him most was his memories of falling in love with Maria.  He realized that she had taken his memories of falling in love with me and placed herself in them instead.  He realized that she had done this not right away, but after he had already lived his fake life for several years.  She had sent him back, let him live there not knowing who he really was, and then, when she realized she was going to send me back, tried to confuse him by first going back herself and implanting this fake memories.  He realized, he remembered, that he had been dreaming about me all that time just like I had been dreaming about him, but Maria had replaced the memory of those dreams with memories of herself.  It was sick and twisted.

When he told me about it, I was appalled, but then I had another thought.  "Maybe she wanted to be a part of love," I said.

"What do you mean?" he asked, still visibly upset and disgusted.

"She had fallen in love with Tony," I said, "but by then she had erased her own memories of him.  Maybe she had dreams, faint visions of him, just like we did of one another."

"That would have to mean she was capable of love," Jason spat.

"Maybe she is," I said.  "But she still twisted it into something she should have."

"That sounds more like Maria," Jason grumbled.

I frowned.  "I know she's done awful things," I said.  "And she's tried to make us do awful things, too.  But Tony says she's getting better.  I really hope that she is."

Jason looked at me angrily, but then he sighed and his expression softened.  "Yeah, I suppose I do, too."

I continued to frown as I said, "If she is a good person deep down beyond all the scars she's created for herself, she'll probably feel bad for what she's done to us."

"I hope she does," Jason said.  "She should.  This was all her fault, after all."


It would have been easy to blame everything bad on Maria, but the truth was that nothing is quite that simple.  Even though Maria was controlling us, we made our own choices.  And in a way, we came out stronger in the end.  I'm not saying I wanted to thank her for what she did, but I came to realize that I at least wanted to forgive her for it.  I suggested this to Tony as our treatment was nearing its end.

He smiled.  "She's nearing the end of her treatments, too," he said.  "She started before you, but she had much more to work through.  And if you're willing to stay another week, I'm sure she'd be happy to hear that from you."

I felt glad to get the chance to find closure of a sort with Maria, but something he said troubled me and I frowned.  "Of course I'll stay another week," I said.  "We don't really have anywhere else to go."

"Well, that's not entirely true," Dr. Tony said.  "But we'll talk about that later."

When I then proposed the idea of forgiveness to Jason, he was at first outraged.  "How could you forgive her?" he asked.

"It's more for me than for her," I said.  "I'm not excusing what she's done.  I just want to tell her that it's in the past."

"Well, it certainly is in the past," Jason agreed with a sneer.  "It's in all parts of the past."

I sighed and frowned.  "You know what I mean," I said.

Jason sighed back.  "Okay, fine, yes," he agreed.  "I get where you're coming from.  I do.  I'm just not sure if I'm there yet."

I laid my hand on his shoulder.  "I know," I said.  "I understand."

He looked down at my hand and placed his own hand on top of it.  Then he smiled.  "This is why you're so great," he said.  "You share my passion, but you have this other passion, too, this need to look on the bright side, to see the good, and be able to move on."

"I mostly want to be able to see the good in myself," I said.

"And I want you to see the good in me, too," he said.

"I do," I told him.

"That doesn't mean you can't see more," he pointed out.  That was his way of saying that he would come along, that he would join me in telling Maria he forgave her.  And that was exactly what he ended up doing.


It was October 27, 2199, just a few days before what Jason told me used to be celebrated in the United States as "Halloween" or "All Hallows' Eve".  Tony led us to a rather small room with one big window.  We saw a figure sitting in a chair, looking out that window.

"Maria," Tony said, "you have visitors."

She turned.  She saw us.  She broke down.  She was sobbing and fell forward out of her chair, gripping the ground by our feet.  I had the strangest sense of deja vu as I remembered the site I had made when she told me I had aided in destroying two major world cities.  I knew I had acted rashly in that moment.  I didn't want her to act rashly now.  "Get up," I said, rather sternly.

She did as she was told.  I gave her a minute to calm down, to stop crying, and wipe the tears from her eyes.  She looked at me and at Jason and back at me.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  She tried to look at Jason, but it seemed like she couldn't.  She just kept looking at me.  "I'm so sorry for everything.  I'm such a horrible, horrible person."

I wasn't sure what to say.  I hadn't quite been ready for this display.  "I forgive you," almost seemed too simple.  So I didn't say anything at first.  Jason spoke first.

"We know that," Jason said.  "We know you did horrible things.  You don't have to tell us.  But you know what?  You never killed me.  You took my mind and my memories, but you didn't destroy me.  I'm angry at you and some days I hate you for what you've done, but I forgive you.  You hear that Maria, I forgive you."  I felt like he wanted to add something along the lines of, "because I'm better than you" but he didn't.  He just left it with, "I forgive you."

Maria started crying again and turned from me and rushed to Jason.  At first I was afraid she was going to attack him, but then she hugged him instead.  He was clearly surprised and just stood there at first with a dumbfounded look on his face, but then he allowed his arms to wrap around her and gave her a few small pats on the back.

When she pulled away, wiping tears from her eyes, she turned back to me.  "What about you, Anna," she asked.  "You always were my favorite.  That part wasn't a lie.  Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

I gave a little half smile that I hope didn't look too much like a smirk and then gave a nod.  "Yes, Maria," I said.  "I forgive you, too."

She stepped up to me and gave me a hug.  Then she whispered in my ear, "I'm glad that elephant is the only thing you actually killed."

When we parted she was smiling, just a little, and it seemed sincere.

There seemed to be nothing else to say, so Tony lead us back out of the room.

"Is she going to be okay?" Jason asked after we had left.  I was a bit surprised at his concern.

"She's getting there," Tony said.  "It will take more time and support, but she'll get there."

I looked at him and felt the feeling that my mom must feel when she looks at someone and just knows something about them.  "You still love her," I said.

He grew a bit redder and then nodded.  "Yes, I do."

"Well good," I said.  "She needs someone sensible to love her."

Tony laughed.  "You're just saying that because you're related to me," he said.

"Maybe," I admitted.

He laughed a bit more, but then he stopped and grew serious again.  "Speaking of being related..." he said.  "There's still some unfinished business I wanted to talk to you about."

He led us into his office and activated the noise-proof screen just to make sure no one outside would hear.  "I still don't know what's going to happen if you stay here or in your own time and don't go back to 2016 and have the children who ultimately lead to me."

"Well it's not like we have much choice," Jason pointed out.  "We used the only lotion you gave us to strand ourselves here."

"So... about that," Tony said.  He opened his desk drawer and pulled out four more vials of lotion.  "These are the last four I have," he said.  "I could keep one and figure out how to make more, but I don't want to.  I'm happy here.  This is where I belong, even though it wasn't my natural time."

"Are you trying to tell us we might belong somewhere other than our natural time?" I asked.

Tony shrugged.  "Maybe," he said.  "All I know is the stories I was told of my great-great-grandparents and who they were and what time they lived in."

"What was so special about the stories?" I asked.

Tony smiled.  "I knew you were time travelers," he said.  "I knew most everything you know now.  The stories were the reason I came to meet Maria to begin with."

"You knew what she would become and you still threw in with her?" Jason asked in disbelief.

"Well, it wasn't quite that simple," Tony said.  "I thought I could change her, make her better.  I fell in love with her by accident.  I thought things would be different from the stories.  They weren't all that different.  But I still feel like I made a difference."

"And you think we can make a difference, too," I said.

"Maybe," Tony said.  "I admit, I don't fully know.  Time is strange.  Sometimes it seems to break and sometimes it seems to correct itself.  I think the best you can do is to do what you feel in your heart is most right."

"Well, I don't feel right abandoning my parents," I said.

"Oh, you don't have to!" Tony said.

"But you don't have enough lotion to bring them anywhere with us," Jason pointed out.

"No," Tony admitted, "but I have this."  And he pulled out a strange device that looked a bit like a handheld version of those old TVs I had seen back in 2013 or so.  "This," he continued in anticipation of our questions, "is a device Maria invented around her third iteration of time travel research.  It will let you send and receive messages between two different times.  You just have to sync it up and it will dial into your parents' homes' audiovisual call displays just like you were calling them from down the street in their own time."

"You're saying we can call them up and talk to them in the 22nd century while we're living in the 21st century?" Jason asked.

Tony nodded.  "Precisely," he said.  "You could even call them from here and now.  Let me show you."

He turned some nobs and handed the device to us.  It was buzzing, and the next thing I knew, my mother's face appeared on the screen.  "Anna?  Jason?  Is that you?" she asked.  "Did you come back."

I nearly cried.  "It's us, Mom," I said.  "We're in the future."

"You're in the future!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah.  Our great-great-grandson, Tony, he gave us this device so we can talk to you whenever we are."

"That's amazing, sweetie!" my mom said.  "Does he have a way to send you back home."

I felt the tears welling up in my eyes.  "He has a way to send us to where we need to be," I said.

My mother frowned at first, but then she smiled.  "Well if you can call me on this thing, that's okay by me."

"I can call you mom," I said.  "And I will, I promise.  I have to go for now."

"Okay, sweetie," my mom said.  "I love you."  She shifted her gaze to Jason.  "Bye for now, Jason." she said.

"Bye," he said, giving a little wave of his hand, and then she hung up and the screen went blank.

I wiped the tears from my eyes as I set the device back on the table and looked at Tony.  "Well," he said.  "I know you've been through a lot.  Maybe you need to sleep on it."

I shook my head.  "No," I said.  "I'm in."

"I'm in, too," Jason said.  "Besides, if we ever change our minds, we can use the second pair of vials to get back to our rightful time."

Tony nodded.  "That's the idea," he said.  "Just make sure you're absolutely sure because these are the last vials in existence."

"At least at this moment in time," I pointed out.

"Yes, I suppose so," Tony admitted.  "But I don't want to think about what might happen if you go taking some vials from elsewhere.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," I said.  I looked at Jason.  "Are you really ready to do this?" I asked.

He smiled.  "Yes," he said.  "I'm really ready."

"Okay," I said, looking back at Tony.  "Show us how to work the communicator thing, then let's share one last meal as a family and we can be on our way."

Tony gave a nod.  He stood up and walked around the desk.  We stood too and he held out his hand.  "It's been a true pleasure getting to know both of you," he said

I looked at his outstretched hand, then up at him, and I smiled as I stepped forward and batted then hand aside to give him a big hug again.  "We'll never forget you," I said.

"I believe it," he said.  "Now let's get things all set up."



It's currently the year 2017 and I'm seven months pregnant with my first child.  It's a boy, and I think I'm going to name him Anthony.  I'm not sure if the idea comes from the future or if the future name comes from the past, but I don't care.  Jason and I are doing what seems right.  It's the best we can do.  Oh, and I guess I should say Connor and I.  He resumed the identity he had before, and I've gone back to mine as well.  So you can call me Jenna instead of Anna.

I went back to working at that art store.  Since we returned just under a week after we had left, we were fortunately able to get our old jobs back.  Then we got married and now the baby is on its way.

In addition to my work at the art store, I've started painting on the side, too, and selling the paintings for real money.  I'm not too bad in this time.  I feel like I'm cheating since I have an additional century of art knowledge that these people don't possess, but I still do my best to make the art my own, with the influences of my mother's art that I just can't shake, even if I had wanted to.  It's strange to think that I'm pulling influences from the future.  What if my mom sees my art one day and that influences her?  It's strange.  I don't think about it too much.  I just enjoy life.

Connor and I don't focus a lot on the future, but we still make time for it twice a week.  On Tuesday we call his parents and on Thursday we call mine.  They always want updates on how the baby is doing and always wish they could come and visit.  We promise we will tell the baby all about them, and we know that we will.  These children will grow up with tales about the future.  That's the way future Tony will learn what he needs to do to help us save the world.

We know our children will be special, not just because they are ours, but because they will grow up knowing time travel is real and that they are a part of a wonderful and rich history as time moves forward.  Even if no one ever knows who they are.  Even if no one ever knows they or we exist, they are still important.  They are important to their friends and their family when they live and to the generations that come after them.  They won't have to be time travelers to make a difference, even though one of them will be.

We don't equip our children with vague notions.  We will tell them the truth.  They will know how special they are, but also how loved they are.

The one thing I've realized since becoming pregnant is that there is no way Jason and I will ever use those extra two vials of lotion after our baby is born.  There won't be enough to take all three of us where we'd want to go.  We still keep them locked away in the safe just in case there is ever some time travel emergency, but we know that if there is, one of the vials will lead one of us to where we need to go and the other will lead that person back home again.

We've been at home all through time, but now we've finally settled down.  We're finally happy.  We're finally making a lasting difference, by living our lives right here and now.  And all I can think to say is:  It's about time!

Nanowrimo 2015-11-28

We got back to the warehouse around 10am.  I was sure it would be bussling with activity by now, except for the fact that so much had been destroyed and people would be trying to make sense of it all.

"Maybe we could have come back sooner," I said.

"And do what?" Jason asked.

"Explain to them what's going on."

Jason looked at me skeptically.  "You mean tell them that you destroyed their jobs?"

I sighed.  "Okay, maybe not that," I admitted.  "But Maria is gone and we don't know where.  But we do know that she was using this place for her own person agenda and experiments, and I don't think other people knew that.  The woman I encountered last night, she didn't even know I had been held captive, but she did seem to think Maria favored me."

"Yeah, unless she was one of Maria's spies or something," Jason noted.

I shook my head.  "I saw the fear and confusion on people's faces in the future.  I don't think they knew."

"So what do you propose?" Jason asked.

"I go in there, again," I said.  "Except this time, instead of confronting Maria, I address the rest of the agency."

"And what if they are on her side?" Jason asked.

"Well, in that case, maybe they do deserve the destruction I saw in the future."

"Are you telling me you do want to release that video if you don't come out this time?"

I sighed.  "I don't know," I said.  "I wonder..."  I turned and looked at him.  "You should come with me."

He chuckled.  "I wanted to come with you the first time, to confront Maria," he said.  "What good would I do now."

"You could tell your story," I said.  I looked towards the warehouse.  "Those aren't bad people in there," I said.  "I have to believe that.  Maria was always the one in charge.  Now that Maria is gone to who knows where, we have to tell them, show them, that she's been after her own agenda this whole time."  I looked back at Jason.  "And you're an important part of that."

"But they won't even remember me," he said.  "Why would they believe me?"

"You don't know they won't remember you," I said.  "Would Maria really wipe everyone?"

"It's the people she didn't wipe that I'd be worried about," Jason said.

"Why?" I asked.  "Because you think not being wiped means they're on her side?  She didn't wipe your parents.  She just lied to them.  And they certainly aren't on her side."

Jason sighed.  "I suppose that's true," he admitted.  "But still, what do you really hope to accomplish?"

I paused for a moment, collecting my thoughts, and said, "Well, we tried telling the world the truth, or a limited version of it, and though you haven't seen the results, I can tell you that didn't work out so well.  I tried hiding, destroying the truth, and that's what got us into this situation where I don't know what to do about all the other people who work at the agency.  I think the best thing to do now is tell the truth to the rest of the people who work there, the people who already know the truth about time travel and deserve to know the truth about Maria."

"And what about the truth about what you did to all the time travel lotion?" Jason asked.

I sighed.  "I'm not sure," I said.  "I'm tempted to lie about that and say Maria herself destroyed it all, but... can I really come in saying I'm going to tell the truth and then lie about that?"

"Probably not," Jason said.

I took another deep breath and let it out slowly.  "I think I'm just going to have to come clean on everything and hope people understand."

Jason reached over and squeezed my hand.  "I think that's the real reason you want me in there with you," he said, "so that you aren't alone in this."

I looked over at him and allowed myself a small smile.  "I suppose there is some truth to that," I said.

"But don't get me wrong," Jason said.  "I'm still happy to just stand by and let you do all the talking."

I laughed.  I actually laughed.  "Well you'll probably have to do a little bit of talking."

Jason sighed, sounding exasperated, but smiling.  "I suppose I can do that if I have to."

"They might hate us," I said.  "They might destroy us."

"But they also might trust and believe us," Jason said.

"We can only hope," I said.  I gave Jason a nod and then a reassuring hand squeeze.  "Okay, are you ready?"

"No," he said, "but let's do it anyway."


As I walked into the warehouse with Jason following close behind me, it seemed at first the usual empty looking front that it was, but as we got deeper into where the real action happened, I saw real confusion, too.  People were milling about in the halls whispering, clearly unsure what to do.

I recognized a fellow time traveler who seemed to recognize me.  "Anna!" she exclaimed.  She came over and gave me a hug, even though we didn't know each other all that well.  Then she pulled back and sadly asked, "Did you hear what happened?  All the destruction?  And Maria is missing!"

I sighed and I felt Jason's hand reassuringly on my back.  "Yes, I have heard," I said, "and I want to talk about it.  Do you think you could gather some people into the cafeteria for a meeting?"

The woman, whose name I think was Clara, looked a bit confused, but said, "Okay, Anna.  With Maria not around, I don't know who is really in charge, but that seems like a good idea."

She turned back to the person she had been talking to and after exchanging a nod, the two of them set off presumably to gather up others for this little meeting.  Jason and I continued down the hall, towards the source of my double's destruction of the science lab.

Even I let out a little gasp at the source of destruction.  "I hadn't seen it before," I whispered to Jason.  "The other me did this."

"Well, she did a pretty thorough job," Jason whispered back.

As we stepped into the lab, I stepped on a bit of broken glass and the crunching noise seemed to attract the attention of the lab personnel who were trying in vain to clean up the mess.  "Uh, we're having a meeting in the cafeteria," I said.

The people in the lab seemed to respond well.  A few of them nodded, a few others whispered to one another, but all of them moved towards the door and followed me and Jason out.

I was starting to feel a bit optimistic.  Maybe these people would listen to me.  Maybe would I would be able to pull this off after all.  In retrospect, I probably got a bit too optimistic too soon.  It was as we approached the weapons locker when we finally encountered someone who was not quite so happy to see me.

We noticed people gathering some weapons, but seemingly not quite sure what they were planning to do, when one of the men there caught my gaze, looked a bit surprised, and the allowed a look of pure anger to wash over his face.  "That's her!" he shouted.  "She's the one!  She escaped!  She must have done it!"

Those were by far the most words my prison guard had said in the entire times (both of them) that he had watched over me.  Fortunately for me, the others with him were holding him back as he lunged at me and one of them asked him, "What are you talking about?"

"Maria told me she was dangerous," he said.  "That's why I was watching her.  But she escaped somehow."

"Wait a minute," a woman's voice said.  I saw the woman who had caught me breaking into the grenade case.  "That's Anna.  She was here last night, but she was here for Maria.  Or that's what she said."  She looked at me carefully and then looked back at the guard skeptically.  "Are you telling me that Maria's top time traveler agent was actually being held captive by Maria herself?"

The guard suddenly looked a bit unsure, but then he looked back at me, still simmering but at least not outright raging, and said, "I don't really know who she is.  I just knew that Maria had her locked in the dungeon."

"What dungeon?" I heard someone ask.  That at least gave me hope.  I wasn't the only one from whom Maria had been keeping secrets.

"I don't know about a dungeon either," the woman I had seen the night before said, much to my relief, "but I do know that Anna was always one of Maria's favorites.  It was clear whatever was in that storage room was blown up by grenades, and I did she Anna getting them, but still, none of this make any sense."

The crowd was starting to grumble a bit now, and I wasn't so sure it was in my favor, so I just held out my hands and said, "Listen, I know you all have questions, but I promise, I have at least some answers.  We're meeting in the cafeteria, if you want to listen to what I have to say."

"Why should we listen to you?" the guard asked again.

"Because she's the only one who can explain what happened last night," Jason said stepping forward.

"And who on earth are you?" the guard sneered.

"My name is Jason," Jason said.  "And I used to work here."

"I don't remember you," the woman who had been somewhat defending me said.

"I do," another voice said.  A man I didn't recognize stepped forward and said, "You were one of my trainees.  Maria told me you died on a mission and that I shouldn't talk about it to anyone."  He looked at me and added, "Especially you.  The two of you were dating and Maria said you would be heartbroken."

"Angry is more like it," I said.

He looked concerned.  "Is that why you torched this place?" he asked.  Then he started to look a little more concerned.  "What did you do to Maria?  Where is she?"

The crowd started to grumble again, but I wasn't sure what to say.  Thankfully, Jason stepped in again.  "We don't know where Maria is," he said honestly.  "Please, just give us a chance to explain.  Or at least, give Anna a chance to explain."

"Why should we trust her?" the guard asked.

"Well," Jason said, "she could have killed you, right?  But she didn't."

"That doesn't count for much," the guard said.

"It has to count for something," Jason said.

The guard and the rest of the crowd looked at Jason, looked at me, looked at each other, and then I started to see nods of agreement.  "Well, okay," the guard said.  "I'll hear what you have to say, but don't think I'll believe too much of it."

And with that not so enthusiastic agreement, but still agreement, we led the last of the crowd off to the cafeteria.

Nanowrimo 2015-11-27

I watched Maria and Jason all night, wondering which of them would wake up first.  Although I didn't feel at all tired, my eye lids started to droop as the sun rose higher in the sky that morning.  And then, I noticed movement.  I was wide awake and looking at Maria as she began to stir.  I crawled over to Jason and started to shake him awake.

"Huh?" I heard him mumble.  "Is it my turn?  Watching?"

"It's both of our turns for watching," I told him in a hushed but urgent tone.  "Maria's waking up."

He seemed to become a bit more alert at that just as I had.  We watched her together and she moved about a bit more, groaned, and then started to reach for her head only to be stopped by the ropes that were tying her to the bed.  She opened her eyes and blinked a few times.  Then she looked at us and sneered.

"I guess the tables have turned," she said in a scratchy voice.  She coughed a few times to clear her through and then said in a much clearer tone, "So where are we and what do you plan to do now?"

"It doesn't really matter where you are," I said, trying to look stern as my heart pounded inside my chest, "but as for what we plan to do now, we plan to get some answers."

Maria looked around.  "Well, it looks like I'm in someone's bedroom, except they've cleared out, so we probably aren't too far from headquarters.  As for getting some answers..." She sighed.  "I'll admit, there is a lot I wouldn't mind getting off my chest at this point."  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Then she looked at me, seeming almost meloncholy, and asked, "What is it you want to know?"

I was surprised at that and actually recoiled a little.  I wasn't sure what to say, but Jason easily took over for me.  "Why did you ruin my life?" he asked.

She sighed again and shook her head.  She was frowning as she said, "I wasn't trying to ruin your life.  You didn't trust me and I couldn't have you sowing dissension."

"Oh, I didn't trust you?" Jason sneered.  "What a surprise."

Maria was really doing her best to look pathetic as she continued, "I had to look out for me first, didn't I?  You were threatening to destroy everything.  You were threatening to corrupt Anna.  And, well, from the looks of things, you may have succeeded after all, despite my best efforts."

"Your best efforts?"  Jason scoffed.  "Your best efforts being erasing my memory, torturing my parents with the thoughts that I was dead, and giving my girlfriend haunting dreams before sending her back to murder me."

Maria shook her head and said, "I never expected Anna to murder you.  It was all part of the test."

I had to step in at that point.  "The test?!" I exclaimed.

"Well, more of an experiment," she admitted casually.  "I figured, why let the opportunity go to waste.  I wanted to explore just how mind altering the mind alteration was."

"Apparently not enough," I pointed out, "since I remembered him enough to not actually kill him."

"That, plus your morals," Maria said.  She shook her head.  "Those pesky morals are always getting in our way."

"Not in your way," Jason said angrily.

Maria just smiled at him.  It made me want to slap her.  "I'm a scientist," she said.  "Experimentation comes first."

"You're just a crazy business woman who manipulates people," I said.  "How can you call yourself a scientist?"

She looked right at me, ice in her eyes.  "Who do you think invented the time travel lotion?"

I had to pause at that, but I went forward with what I thought was the answer, "The team of scientists you hired."

She actually laughed at this.  "Oh, Anna," she said, "you're still so naive.  Do you really think even a team of scientists could invent that in just a few short years?"

"There was prior research they built on," I said.

Maria shook her head.  "No, there was future research that I built on," she said.

Jason and I both said, "What?"

She smiled.  She seemed proud.  It was clear she wanted to talk about this.  It was up to us to decide if we would believe her or not.

"It took me several lifetimes," she said.  "My understanding was that in the first one, I discovered just enough to send a few short messages back to myself, just enough to be able to get a little further the second time through.  Each time, I got closer, each time I sent a little bit more data back.  I must have stopped keeping records of the iterations at some point because when I received the data, along with a few small living animals, there were records of those first few iterations and then way more information than I could have imagined I discovered in a single lifetime.  That was the time I sent back a sample of the lotion to myself, too.  I hadn't actually tested in on people in that lifetime.  I was the first to do that.  I am the first.  I am the one who finally succeeded."  Even though she was tied up, trapped, she seemed to beam with pride.  I was convinced she must be crazy.  If I hadn't traveled through time myself, I would have thought the whole thing was a lie.

"So you're telling us," Jason began slowly, "that you invented the time travel lotion all by yourself, but with yourselves from the future over and over again."

"That's right," Maria said.  Then she looked at me and said, "Probably not all that much unlike how you must have come back to save yourself."

"How did you...?" I began.

She tried to shrug, but the ropes made it rather ineffective.  "I'm not sure how else you would have escaped without an army.  I'm guessing you had some sort of army that freed you in the future, but you didn't like their tactics, so you came back to free yourself so they wouldn't have to.  Am I too far off?"

She was spot on, but I didn't want to tell her that, so I just looked back at her nervously.  She turned to Jason.

"And how about you?" she asked him.  "What do you think of all of this?"

I was surprised by Jason's readiness to answer, and I appreciated what he had to say as well.  "I think you're a monster, warped by spending multiple lifetimes in pursuit of the thing that has ended up destroying you."

I smiled, but Maria sneered.  "Destroying me?" she spat.  "The only thing that's destroyed me is you."

"How is that?" Jason asked.

"You wanted me to stop," she said.  "You wanted to know all the details about why we were doing things.  You wanted to understand so much.  Well, you can't understand unless you experiment!"

"Maybe some things aren't meant to be understood," I said.

She looked at me and she looked sad.  "You were always my hope, Anna," she said.  "So trusting, so pure."  She looked back at Jason, her eyes flashing in anger, "Everything you weren't."

"Is that why you wanted me to kill him?" I asked.  "The blind trust wiping out the person who was right to question?"

She looked back at me; the sad expression had returned.  "I already told you," she said, "I didn't expect you to kill him."

Jason gave a little grunt-like chuckle at that.  She looked back at him curiously as he said, "And yet you told her to do just that.  You said she was trusting, and yet you chose to test that trust to the point of breaking."  He shook his head.  "What did you think was going to happen?"

Maria smiled.  "I didn't entirely know," she said, "that's the beauty of experimentation.  You never quite know what's going to happen."

There was silence for a moment and then I said softly, "You really are crazy."

She looked at me, and got this motherly, sympathetic look on her face.  "Maybe," she said.  "But aren't we all in a way?"

I thought of something then, and got out the photo we had found.  "What about him?" I asked, showing her the photo of herself and the man who looked like Jason.  "Is he crazy, too?"

Maria frowned.  "I don't know," she said.  "I don't know who he is."

"There's a photo of the two of you together," I said.  "What do you mean you don't know who he is?  Is he from the future or something?"

"I don't even know that," Maria said.  "I just woke up one day and there was that picture on my nightstand."

"You seriously expect us to believe that?" Jason asked.

Maria looked at him.  She almost looked like a guilty child trying to feign innocence.  "No," she said, "but it's the truth.  I don't know who he is.  I can only guess...."

"That your mind was altered, too," I said in realization.

She nodded.  "Yes, but the only person who would do that to me is me.  So I must have wanted to forget who he was."

"But not entirely," I said.

"No, not entirely," Maria agreed.

Jason looked at me.  "Anna, may I talk to you in private for a minute."

"Yes, of course," I said.

We walked out of the room and closed the door and he looked at me and asked, "What's going on?"

I felt confused.  "We're getting to the truth," I said.  "What do you mean?"

"Are we?" he asked.  "The two of you seemed to share a moment there, like you trust her again, but you trust her again when she says she doesn't know who's in that photo with her?"

"Well, it makes some sense," I said.

"Does it?" he asked.  "Does it really?"

I paused to think.  "Well, I guess not a ton of sense," I admitted.  "But it's possible she altered her own mind to forget something, don't you think?"

"Yes, I suppose its possible," he admitted.

I gave a little gasp of realization as I added, "What if that's not the only time she's altered her mind?  What if repeated experimentation on herself is what's messed her up, made her so... immoral about her experimentation?"

Jason frowned.  "I suppose its possible, but then...."

I smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder, "but then you might not be able to hate her all that much."

He sighed and turned away.  "I really want to hate her," he said, facing away from me.

I stepped up to him.  "So do I," I said.

He spun back around and frowned.  "No, you don't," he said.  "You want to give her a way out, a reason why she isn't so bad."  Then he smiled, just a little.  "You try to see the best in people.  You want to see the best.  And you want to protect them.  That's why you considered killing me, because Maria told you to, but then you didn't, because you knew it would have been wrong.  And that's why you're trying to find out Maria's true motivation now, not because you think it will be horrible, but because you're hoping there will be something good buried deep inside."

I tried to think of how I should respond to that, but all I could come up with was, "I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything to me," he said.  Then he placed his hand on my shoulder.  "Come on, let's go back in there and find what else we can find out."

We walked back in hand-in-hand, but our jaws dropped as we opened the door and saw that Maria was gone.  "I thought you searched her," Jason said.

"I did," I insisted.  I looked down at the ground where I had left the photo of Maria and the mystery man.  The photo device was still there, but you could not see the photo anymore because the screen was shattered and the device destroyed.  "But I didn't search him," I said, pointing to the remains of the photo.


We ran outside trying to find a trace of where Maria had gone, just in case she was still in this time, but we were almost certain she was not.  We assumed she had gone back in time and that we would see her again, maybe pulling up right now with a machine gun or something crazy to blow us away, but she didn't come.

We looked at each other, not sure what to do next.  In silence, we went to the car, which was still there, and sat for a moment before Jason punched in the address to the abandoned warehouse/time travel agency.  He glanced at me, and after I nodded, he pressed go.  Neither of us knew where else we should go.

Nanowrimo 2015-11-26

After hanging up with Jason, I waited alertly, hoping no one but him would find my hiding place.  I knew it would take him nearly three hours to arrive, and a lot can happen in three hours.  Fortunately, no one else came, when Maria seemed like she was starting to wake up I just knocked her out again, and, most importantly, the world didn't explode due to whatever time paradoxes I may have created by coming back here to begin with.  As the first 150 minutes passed, I started to feel much more at ease, and then as I saw headlights approaching and recognized my parents' vehicle, I actually smiled.

Given the sweet exchange of love that had happened over the phone when I asked Jason to come get me, I wasn't quite prepared for him to seem as grumpy as he did when he arrived.  Okay, so that's not quite fair.  He seemed happy to see me, but his countenance dropped when he saw who was with me.

"Why on earth did you bring here?" he asked, gesturing to the still unconscious Maria.

"I had to," I said, realizing that I had made the mistake of not mentioning this over the phone.

"Why?" he asked again.

"She found us," I said.  "And besides, in the future, we end up taking her anyway, to save her."

He gave an annoyed sigh, and said, "Okay, I have so many questions, but for now, let's just load her up and get out of here, I guess.  I really wish you had asked me to bring some rope or something to tie her up."

I wished that, too, but going back in time to tell myself to do that didn't seem worth it, plus I actually couldn't do that as all the time travel cream was now either destroyed or in the hands of my other self who was currently back in time.  Or was she me now?  It was very confusing and I didn't want to think about it, so I just said, rather grumpily, "Yeah, me, too."

Fortunately, we did find some cloths we could use to make a gag and some cables in the trunk that we used as ropes to tie Maria up and then heave her in.

"You know this is totally illegal, right?" Jason asked as we got into the car and he programmed in our return route.

"Yes," I said with a nod.  "But at this point, I'm not unconvinced that most of the past few years of my life have been totally illegal.  Now let's get out of here."

"Fair enough," Jason said, seeming to calm down a little from when he had first arrived.  As we got away from the warehouse district he said, "So tell me, who is this 'us' that Maria found."

"Me and the other me," I said.

"You mean..."

I nodded.  "Yes.  I came from the future to save the me from the past, or the present, or whatever."

"But you're the one from the future?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "At least I think I am."

He scoffed.  "What is that supposed to mean?" he asked.

I felt a little annoyed.  All that we had been through and now he was asking me dumb questions.  "It means that time travel is damn confusing," I practically shouted.  Then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a couple seconds, and when opening my eyes again, said much more softly, "I'm sorry."

I looked over at him and saw that he was smiling in that sort of bittersweet both happy and sad way.  "I'm sorry, too," he said.  "I'm so glad you're safe.  It took everything in me to stick to the plan and not rush into save you, and now I find..."

"I didn't stick to the plan either," I noted.  "I understand why that would be frustrating, but I did stick to the plan.  You, I mean this you, just didn't see the outcome.  I did.  I decided that outcome was not as desirable as we had hoped."

"So you came back to change it," Jason said.

"I came back to change it," I echoed.

He sighed.  "Is having Maria tied up in the trunk really better than whatever happened in the future?"

"I think so," I said.  "Really, this is the same outcome that would have happened, except now instead of a mob of people causing chaos and panic as the base is ransacked, it was just the two of me destroying what we could and getting out with the main cause of the trouble."

"I mean, it makes sense," Jason admitted.  "It just didn't go down like I expected."

"Life rarely does," I said, "even when you can travel through time to try to make things right.  But now, we don't even have that luxury."

He glanced at me, seeming a little nervous.  "You destroyed all of the time travel lotion?" he asked.

I nodded.  "All I could find," I said.  "Other than what the other me needed to go back in time and rescue what I guess would be the other other me."

"My head hurts," Jason said.

"Mine, too," I admitted.  There was a pause, and then I added, "but probably not as bad as Maria's."

He laughed at that.  A true, genuine laugh that rang out through the car and made me smile.  We looked at each other and he said, "I'm sorry for being so angry."

"I'm sorry for not explaining things better," I said.

"All is forgiven," he said.  And he leaned over and kissed me as the car drove on into the night.


The car had been driving for about 40 minutes while we each sat in silence until I felt the need to speak up and say, "Maybe we shouldn't go all the way home."

"Are you worried about protecting our families?" Jason asked as he turned to me.  He looked tired and I realized that while my internal clock had the time as probably around midnight, he was in sync with the true time of about 5am.

"That's part of it," I admitted.  "But what good would it do to go all the way back home?  What if we have to bring Maria back here again?"

"Why would we want to do that?" he asked.  Then his eyes seemed to light up in realization as he said, "You aren't thinking of turning her back over the the agency?  Revealing what she's done and hoping they're as against it as we are?"

"Possibly," I granted him, "but I was more thinking about the possibility of accessing those memory altering devices.  If Maria really is as evil as she seems, maybe we can fix her."

He scoffed at that.  "Fix her?  You mean like she fixed me?"

I frowned.  I hadn't thought of it as being the same thing.  I had thought of it as helping her while what she did to Jason was hurting him.  But maybe she too had thought of it as helping me.

"We need to figure out what she's really after," I said.  "I don't think we should go home to do that."

"Okay," Jason agreed.  "Then where should we go."

I looked out the window.  "One of these abandoned farm houses," I suggested.  "Any one will do."

Jason chuckled at that.  "From an abandoned factory to an abandoned farm house," he said.  "From industrial back to farming."  He shrugged.  "Well, I don't have any better ideas."

"This will give us more time to sleep and figure things out," I said.  "Besides, they will probably have some rope or something we can use to tie her up better."

"Okay, sold," Jason said.  He pressed the buttons on the car that told it to stop at the next house it saw.

"Are you sure all of these are really abandoned?" he asked as the car pulled up a driveway.

"As sure as I can be," I said.  "And they sure look abandoned.  No equipment.  Okay there's one piece of equipment," I pointed out the window a the broken monitor on top of a broken open robot despensery, "but it looks pretty run down."

"What even is that?" Jason asked.  After I told him about the robots that the farmers regularly use to scan their crops and sometimes even do the harvesting, he just shook his head and said, "Back in my day, that stuff was just getting started."

"You mean back in your fake day," I said.

He frowned.  "Yeah, that."

"Let's just get inside, secure Maria, and get some sleep."

"Fine by me," he said with a nod.

As the car crawled to a stop, we got out and retrieved our captive from the trunk.  She was still unconscious, but she seemed to be breathing normally, and almost looked as if she was asleep.  I glanced at Jason and he seemed to have the same hesitation I did, brought on by fear that she had regained consciousness and was now faking.  I shook her shoulder just a little and when nothing happened, we lifted her out carefully, relieved when she didn't stir.  Jason carried her into the house while I went to the dilapidated barn to find some rope.  I was happy to find some fraying rope and some power cords we could use.  We tied her to the ancient looking wire frame bed that was still in the master bedroom.

"You get some sleep," I told Jason.  "I'm not that tired yet.  My internal time is different due to the time travel.  I can stay up and watch Maria."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I nodded.  "Yeah," I said.  "If I get tired, I'll wake you up."

He looked like he didn't quite believe me, but he also clearly didn't want to argue because he laid down on the floor and promptly fell asleep.  I smiled as I watched him breath in and out.  He slept rather quietly, just making a snore-like noise every once in a while.  I wondered what would have happened if Maria hadn't taken him from me, if she hadn't robbed us of our memories from the first time we fell in love, if we hadn't been forced to meet and connect all over again.  Would we be better or worse?  Weaker or stronger?  I was pretty sure we were stronger now, but it was hard to say with all we had apparently lost.  Did I really love him, or did I just love this lingering shadow of a memory that was resurfacing?  Or even worse, did I love the fake man Maria had made him into?  That was the man I remembered meeting after all.

No, I told myself.  I can't think like that.  Whoever he is now, that's who he is.  His parents and siblings didn't seem to think he had changed drastically.  You might be able to change a person's memories, but you can't change who they are at their very core.  I had to believe that.

Then I glanced at Maria.  But if I believed that, what did I hope to accomplish by the possibility of altering her memories?  If she was a bad person, changing her memories wouldn't change that.  I realized that I was still clinging to this hope that she really wasn't a bad person, that she had reasons for what she had done.  Even though I no longer trusted Maria, I wanted to be able to trust her, to really trust her, even after I saw who she really was, and not to be blinded by her.  I didn't want to be distracted by the missions and the time travel and the supposed greater good.  I just wanted to know what it was Maria really wanted.  Maybe, if we were very lucky, it wouldn't be something all that bad after all.  I felt my heart beating faster in anticipation of what she might have to say now that the tables were turned and we had captured her.  I suddenly couldn't wait for her to wake up so that I could ask her.  I didn't feel the need to sleep at all.

Nanowrimo 2015-11-25

We headed back towards the secret time travel supply room, each with a gun in our hands and me with the key cards.  It was the current me, not the me from the past that I had freed from the prison, who had the key cards.

When we got to the door other me asked, "You haven't seen what's inside yet, have you?"

I shook my head.  "Nope.  Not yet."

"How do we really know this is everything?" she asked.  "Maria has lied to us about a lot."

I looked back at her.  She had a point.  "That is a good point," I said.  "We, or I, will have to take Maria and find some way to make sure there isn't a secret secret stash or something."

"You're going to kidnap Maria?" the other me asked, apparently shocked.

I shrugged.  "It was going to end up that way anyway."

The other me was silent after that as I opened the door.  I don't think either of us was prepared for what we saw inside.  "Was she going to send the whole world back in time?" I heard past me whisper behind me.

I wasn't sure how to respond, since it was the exact same thought I had been thinking.  There were boxes and boxes pull of what appeared to be the hand cream.  I went over to one and opened it up.  There were large jars of the cream as well as the little vials.  "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about sending you back with enough of the vials," I said turning back to other me.

She laughed that nervous chuckle-like laugh that I apparently have.  "How are we going to destroy it all?" she asked.

This I had thought about, but my original thought of burning it up in the lab seemed much less feasible now that I saw just how much of it there was.  Then I thought of the weapons locked and said with a shrug, "Grenades, I guess?"

Her eyes got a bit wider, but then she smiled.  "Well, we do want to destroy this place," she said.  "That would probably do it."

"Probably," I agreed.  I paused and then said, "Tell you what.  Why don't you go to the lab, collect the vials hidden there and destroy whatever other equipment and stuff needs to be destroyed, at least to slow them down if they want to make more of the stuff.  I'll go get the grenades and blow this room to bits.  I'll get some more ammo while I'm at it, too."

"What if I can't access the supply in the lab?" she asked.  "Wouldn't Maria have revoked my access."

I smiled the smile of someone who knows something the other one doesn't.  "I was worried about that in the future, too," I said, "but I was able to get in to get the vials needed to come here.  If she hadn't revoked access in the future, it's unlikely she's revoked it here in the past."

"Okay," other me said skeptically.  I got the sense she was starting to wonder if I was really me or if this was some elaborate trap.  We had, after all, just seen a photo of someone who looked like Jason but probably wasn't.  It was the kind of thing I would be worried about in her place, and she was me after all.

"Roger Elroy," I said to her.

"What?  Oh..."  She smiled.  "Our first crush."

I nodded.  "I'll bet Maria doesn't know about that," I said.

"Mom and dad don't even know about that," she said.  She shook her head.  "This is so weird, but I guess its really happening."

"Yeah, I guess it is," I said.  As she turned to leave I said, "Oh, and by the way, make sure you save at least one vial from the hidden supply.  You can burn the rest if you want."

"Why should I save one?" she asked.

"Because I came here with all twelve," I said, "but now I only have eleven, and when you go back..."

She gave an understanding nod.  "Continuity," she said.

"Continuity," she agreed.  Then she added, "Well, good luck."

"You, too," I said.  "If either of us dies, we might both be screwed."

"Or not," she said with a shrug.  "Who really knows."

"I suppose that's true," I agreed.  "Who really knows."

With that, she ran off to get to the lab and I hustled to the weapons locker to pick up some bullets and grenades, hoping that Maria wouldn't wave up and stop us before we could finish this.  She would probably stay unconscious for a while though, or so I hoped.


I got to the weapons supply area without incident, but encountered the problem of a locked crate when I got there.  Usually someone would give me a key to get equipment or else one of the trainers would get the equipment for me.  Since neither of those things had happened or seemed likely to happen, I decided to just start banging on the lock with the butt of my rifle.  I checked first to make sure there was no one near by, and then started attempting to break the lock.

I had expected this task to be a bit easier than it actually was.  I also did not realize how noisy it would be and was quite started when I heard a voice behind me.  I spun around to see a muscular woman in a tank top with a long brown braid down her back.  I vaguely recognized as one of the trainers.  She seemed a bit surprised to see me, but not angry or scared.  I wondered if she realized I was the one they had been holding in the prison, or at least a version of that one.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked.

"I was trying to get into this crate," I said, truthfully.  Then I decided to try a gambit.  "I need some grenades for the mission Maria wanted to send me on, but when I got here I realized she had forgotten to give me a key."  I sighed, trying to appear annoyed.  "I guess I'll go back to her office and ask for it."

The woman smiled, much to my relief.  "There's no need for that," she said, "You can borrow my key."  She held it out to me.

I was a bit concerned this must be a trap, but if she was suspicious of me, hesitating would only make it worse, so I took what she offered.

"Thanks," I said.

"No problem," she replied.  She watched as I opened the crate, trying to keep from shaking nervously, and then took out a box of grenades.

I was concerned I might need more, so I didn't quite lock the crate when I closed it, but hoped I did enough to make it look like I had locked it.  As I was doing this I heard her say, "You're Anna, aren't you?"

Oh boy, I thought to myself.  Now I'm done for.  I turned around with the box of grenades tucked under my arm and smiled sheepishly.  I gripped my rifle, ready to hit her with it if I needed to.  "Yeah, I suppose I am," I said.

She didn't attack or make any move like she was going to.  She just kept smiling.  And then she said something that truly startled me: "You're one of Maria's favorites, you know."

I was shocked.  "Favorite what?" I asked.

The woman shrugged.  "Employees.  Maybe people in general."

I wanted to say, "What on earth are you talking about?"  But instead I said, "That's very kind."

She looked like she wanted to say more on the subject, but then she just said.  "Maybe I have my key back?"

"Of course," I said, probably blushing a bit in embarrassment as I handed it back.

"Well, good luck on your mission," she said.

"Good night," I said.

She gave me a nod and walked away.  I hoped to high heaven that she didn't notice the cameras I had shot out.  Had I realized that Maria apparently didn't even tell people I was being held captive, I probably wouldn't have shot so many out.  That whole encounter was just too weird.  I decided to not think about it and take what I had come for back to the storage room.  I re-opened the not so locked box and took a second box of grenades and a small box of rifle ammo.  I slung my rifle over my back, tucked the rifle ammo in my coat, and carried one box of grenades under each arm, hoping I didn't encounter anyone else on my way back to storage.  I was fortunate enough to make it back without incident.

Just after I arrived, and had started opening the boxes of grenades the other me arrived as well.  "I messed some stuff up," she said.  She held up the one vial of time travel lotion.  "And here's the one I didn't burn," she added.

I gave a nod.  "Good work," I said.

"I take it the crate was locked," she said.

"Yeah," I admitted sheepishly.  I considered whether I should tell her about the woman or not.  When she went back and redid everything I was doing now, should she know about the woman ahead of time or not?  I decided it was better to share than to not and said, "I did encounter one of the trainers.  Even spoke to her."

She looked as shocked as I had felt when encountering said trainer.  "What that...?  You didn't...?"

I shook my head and smiled.  "No," I said.  "She didn't even know I, or you rather, had been captured and were being held."

"Did you know who you were at all."

"Yeah," I said.  "That was the really bizarre part.  And she said that Maria likes me."

"What?  That's crazy!"

"I know, right?"

Other me just sighed and shook her head.  Then she looked down at the grenades.  "Well, should we get on with it?" she asked.

I nodded.  "Yeah I suppose so," I said.  "But first, since you're here, take this."  I set down my rifle and took off my jacket.  "I don't know where I got this, but I was wearing it when I went back, so you should probably wear it too.  After we're done here, I want you to go back to a time just a few minutes before you woke up in your cell."

"And do all the stuff you've been doing since," she said, nodding her head knowingly.  "Yeah, I've figured that out already."

"I know," I said.  "I just wanted to be explicit."

"Make it spoken and not just thoughts," she said with a smile.

"Exactly," I replied.  "Oh, and here's some extra ammo in that coat, too."

"Thanks," she said, feeling around in the pockets and giving a nod when she found it.  Then she looked back up at me.  "So what are you going to do after we blow this stuff up and I go back again?"

"Take Maria and go find Jason," I said.

She looked quite surprised at that, even more surprised than when I had come to free her.  "I wouldn't have thought to do that..." she said.

"Well, you didn't see what I saw," I said, feeling like I had said this already.  "We basically ended up kidnapping Maria anyway in the future."

"And you think you need to do that now?" she asked.

I nodded.  "I know it's a risk, but I think its the best way."

She shrugged.  "Alright well, I certainly have to trust you.  And I'll try to convince the next me of the same thing the next time through."

I gave an approving nod.  "That would be good," I said.

She looked back at the grenades.  "Well, shall we?" she asked.

I gave another approving nod, this one to echo my words as I said, "Let's do it."


We ended up not quite needing all of the grenades to destroy the merchandise.  We tried to do the destruction as quietly as one can with a bunch of grenades, but even when we closed the door after tossing them in, it still made enough of a bang that anyone nearby surely would have heard them.  And yet, no one came running.  Lucky us.

"Maybe we should use the last couple to blow up the lab," other me suggested.

I nodded.  "Good idea," I agreed.

So we did that.  It should have been exciting, but it was really without incident.  When we were done, other me said, "I thought I would have felt more closure or something."

"Trust me, you will," I said, trying to be reassuring while also not being all that sure even I was feeling all the closure I had expected.

"Well, I guess it's time now," she said.

I nodded.  "You to the past and me on into the future."

"I'll be there soon enough," she said with a smile.

We each made a step forward as if we were going to hug, but then quickly stepped back and laughed.  We both had the same laugh and it echoed through the hall.  "Well, that's as good a good-bye as any," she said.  "And if there is anyone nearby..."

"They would have already heard the grenades," I said.

"Right," she said with a smile and a nod.  "Well, see you later," she said as she popped open one of the hand creams.

"I sure hope not," I said.

She laughed again as she rubbed the cream on.  Then there was a blur and a flash and she was gone.  "Huh," I found myself saying to myself, and now only to myself.  I shrugged and hurried off towards Maria's office.  It seemed pretty clear there was no one else in the facility any more, but I still hurried, just to be safe.

I was relieved to find Maria unconscious on the floor, just where I had left her.  I was also relieved to find she was just unconscious and was still alive.  If she died, well, that would have messed everything up.  I didn't want to be a killer.  I shifted my rifle and flung her over my shoulder, surprised at how heavy she was.  I certainly couldn't run while carrying her, so I just strolled out of the building, hoping no one would see me and stop me.  No one did.  It was all so strange.  It was all so easy.  It seemed way too easy.  I had only seen a total of four other employees, not counting myself, while on this little mission.  I started to wonder... but then I stopped.  I was just going to count my blessings and move on.  I had to get to Jason and I had to stop the broadcast from going out, or else this whole trip would have been a waste.


Once I got safely out of the warehouse and a good distance away to an area that had some trees I could hide behind, I searched Maria and was relieved to find a communication device.  I synced it up with the contacts stored in my lens implants and used it to call Jason.

"Maria," he said angrily on the other line, "What do you..."

"No Jason, it's me," I said.

He paused and then.  "Anna?  But how are you?"

"I'll tell you everything," I said.  "Just come get me, please.  I'm a few blocks south of the warehouse.  And whatever you do, do not release the broadcast."

"I won't," he said.  "I'll tell your parents you escaped, though I still don't know how."

"Let's just say I used their weapon against them," I said.

"You didn't kill...?  Wait, do you mean time travel?"

"Yes," I said, giving a nod that he couldn't see.

"Holy... so you're...."

"Yes, I'm now technically two days older than I was before.  Will you please just come get me."

"Yes, of course.  On my way.  And, Anna?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

I smiled.  "I love you, too."