Nanowrimo 2015-11-14

Connor and I rang in the new year in silence in that cab.  I was trying to figure out what I was going to say when we got back to my place, yet I couldn't help but think about just how strange this must seem to the cab driver, and just how strange it really was.  Here were two moderately attractive adults opting out of the festivities just as the new year was about to be rung in.  We didn't talk.  We didn't kiss.  We didn't do anything to celebrate this moment in time that so many people celebrate.  New Year's Eve is the biggest time-based holiday in the world.  And here I was, a time traveler, not actually celebrating it.  I guess when you can travel through time, celebrating a new year is fairly irrelevant anyway.

Then I thought back to when I had talked to my parents about time travel.  I'd planned for that.  I'd had material.  I'd been able to prove it.  I tried to think about what I could do to prove this all to Connor.  He seemed like he was willing to believe me, but was he really?  Had his dreams been that strange that he was willing to believe in time travel?  Well, he said the dreams had told him my real name.  Were physic dreams that much more tame than believing in time travel?  Yes, I rather felt they were.  But what could I do to convince him?

I thought about the year 2017, the year we had just entered.  What did I know about the early part of this year?  I recalled from history who was the president of Italy at this time, as well as the president of France and the prime minister of Great Britain.  Not being American, I'd had no idea who was president until I looked it a few weeks after arriving here.  But naming the current world leaders wouldn't prove anything and naming who they would be after the next election cycle wouldn't be much good either.  The elections were too far away.

Did I know of any good movies that would come out in early 2017?  Any that I had seen maybe that I could predict the plot to?  2017 was so long ago from when I was growing up.  It would be like asking Connor what movies from the 1920s he had seen, if they even had movies back then.  I thought they did.  But I was getting distracted.  I could remember seeing movies from maybe the 2050s, but that was so far in the future that it obviously wouldn't be of any help.

I really could not think of anything I was going to do to convince him I really was a time traveler short of using my last two doses of cream, and I didn't want to use those in case I needed them later.  To sum it all up, I had not decided what I was going to say by the time that the cab had pulled up at my apartment building.  I paid the driver and led the way up to my apartment, thankful that Connor was here with me and afraid of scaring him away again.


When Connor and I walked into my apartment, there was this awkward silence until I said, "Well, have a seat I guess."

He did so on the couch and I sat on the chair I had nearby.  He sighed and looked over at me.  "So, time travel, huh?"

The way he said it, I just could not help it.  I burst out laughing.  And before I knew it, he was laughing, too.  But then as the laughter died away, he looked at me seriously and said, "So you're really, truly a time traveler."

I sighed and looked him straight in the eyes.  "Yes, I really truly am."

"I mean, I want to believe you," he said.  "With all this... weird dream crap... I really want to.  But it's just so bizarre.  I mean, can you prove this to me at all?"

I took a few calming breaths and responded truthfully.  "I really can't," I said.  "At least not immediately.  I can tell you things about what's going to happen 40 years from now.  But that doesn't do much good.  I was trying to remember what I knew about this time, but all I know is stuff about like the current state of the world and the next set of elections.  There really aren't a lot of major world events that I can think of in the near future.  So really, I don't know what to tell you."

"Well, do you have like a newspaper from the future or some money or something?"

I shook my head.  "No, I really don't," I said.  "When they send us back, they're careful not to send us with things from the future.  I'm not supposed to tell anyone I'm from the future.  I wasn't supposed to tell you anything.  I was just supposed to kill you."

He scoffed.  "But why?" he asked.  "Why on earth would the future need me dead?"

"It's not so much that the future needs you dead," I said, "as that your grandson is going to cause a global catastrophe."

Connor shook his head.  "You've got to be kidding me," he said.  "You're really going to sit there and tell me that you've been sent back in time to kill me to keep my grandson from being born to avoid some 'global catastrophe'?  This is so ridiculous that you must be either straight up insane, or telling the truth."

"I wish I could offer you more proof of any of this," I said.  "I wish I had been able to sneak something back to prove to you what I'm saying is true.  I was scared enough to come back here and not kill you.  I've been afraid the whole time I've been here that someone was going to come back and kill the both of us because I didn't complete my mission."

"So this mission..." Connor said, "You were really sent by Maria?"

"Yes," I replied with a nod.

"So she's some sort of time traveler overlord or something?"

"More or less," I replied.  "She's in charge of the agency."

He sneered a bit.  "The agency?  Like there's a time travel agency?"

"Yes," I confirmed with a nod.

He shook his head in disbelief.  "How did you even get into all of this?"

I chuckled a little and then answered, "I convinced myself."

"Come again?"

"I went back in time to when my parents had just had me and convinced them that I was destined to become a time traveler."  I shook my head.  "I just can't believe now that I really did that.  I was so new to the agency.  I barely even knew what I was getting my future self into.  I was just told I had to do it to avoid a paradox."  Then I chuckled a bit again and added, "The very kind of paradox, in fact, that I caused to get myself into this current mess."

"Woah, okay," Connor said, leaning forward and holding out his hands.  "There's just so much... First off, you're telling me you convinced your parents to make you into a time traveler?"

"Yes."

"Well what did you say to convince them.  Maybe it will convince me."

I shook my head.  "Unfortunately, my mission that time was to convince them.  That time I did come back with newspapers from their near future."

His face fell.  "Oh."

I sighed.  "Yeah."

"So, what was that other stuff you said?" he prompted.  "About you causing a paradox."

I sighed yet again.  Part of me wanted this to just be done, to not have to revisit it all, but I had to go on.  I had to tell him all of this if I had any hope of him trusting me.  "I was sent to 2057," I said, "to calm various people in a critically tense situation in Europe.  One of them was your grandson, and with him I failed."

"What happened?" he asked.  "If you don't mind me asking..."

I shook my head.  "No, I need to talk about this," I said.  "I was supposed to be deploying this calming agent to reduce the nerves of these key people, or so I was told by the historians who worked for the agency.  Your grandson was the one I needed to approach, but I failed because he looked like you."

Connor's face got contorted.  "What?"

I took a deep breath and said, "I was thrown by how much he looked like you.  I had been thinking about you quite a bit since the mission that took me back to that science teacher training class, which by the way I have no idea why they sent me back to that, and even dreaming about you... like the way you were dreaming about me, I think.  I had been seeing you in all kinds of places in my dreams, mostly on other missions, and when I saw you while on an actual mission, as your grandson, I had to do more than take a double take.  And what was really weird..." I took another breath before continuing.  "He seemed to recognize me, too."

"Are you from his time?" Connor asked.

I shook my head.  "No," I said.  "This mission was for 2057 and I wasn't even born until 2098."

There was silence for several seconds and then Connor said softly, "This is a lot to take in."

"I know," I said.

"I don't know what to think or believe anymore."

"I know," I said.

Then he said something that really surprised me.  "I don't think I want to go home."

I looked at him.  I considered I barely knew this man.  I considered that he knew Maria.  I considered that he actually seemed open to believing this insane story that I was a time traveler.  What if he was in on all this time traveler stuff?  What if this was some giant ruse, some trap, some elaborate ploy?  What if he really knew even more about what was going on than I did?  Was a paranoid?  Was I crazier to trust him than he was to trust me?  I couldn't help but think about how weird it was that I had met this man who had made sure I would remember him by asking me out, then been sent to stop his grandson, and then sent back to murder him.  What was really going on?  Yet, I could not believe he really had anything to do with whatever this was.  I had to believe that he was in the same boat I was at this point:  confused and scared and not really knowing what to do next.  So finally, after all that thinking, I just said, "Okay."\


We stayed up all that night talking.  Strangely, I think my uncertainty and confusion about many of the things he told me about his past and recent history lent to his further trust that I was telling the truth.  I told him about how I grew up, what things were like 100 years in the future, all the advances and technology and even seemingly little things, like how all our food was just delivered straight to our doors and restaurants were a rare antiquity type experience.  I wished I could show him the digital paper we used in the future, and I told him so, and then he surprised me by saying, "I wish I could see it."

"I wish I could show it to you," I said.  "But I'm afraid I can never go home again."

He looked a little confused.  "Never?" he asked.  "Why not."

I shrugged.  "Because I didn't kill you," I said.  "And I'm not going to."

"Well I certainly appreciate that," he said.

"Actually," I said, "I considered trying to get them to send someone else back here so I wouldn't have to kill you, but do you know why I chose to come myself?"

He smiled.  "I hope I know," he said.

I smiled back.  "It's because I wanted to make sure they didn't kill you," I said.

He shook his head.  "I just can't believe this is really happening," he said.

"Neither can I," I said.  "And I'm the one raised to believe in time travel my entire life."

He laughed.  I laughed.  We smiled.  It was so strange.

"What time is it?" he asked, glancing down at his smart watch.

"3:18am," I said without looking at anything.

He looked an me inquisitively.  "What?" he said.

"3:18," I said.  "That's the time."

"How did you know that?" he asked.

I felt confused.  "My implant," I said.

He laughed.  "What implant?" he asked.

"My ocular implant," I said.  "You know, the HUD watch."

"What are you talking about?" he wanted to know, smiling.

I felt really embarrassed.  "Don't they have that now?" I asked.  "I thought that was invented in 2015."

He burst out laughing.  "No, of course not!" he exclaimed.  "You're telling me this whole time you had some weird future technology stuff like in your brain that could have helped convince me you were from the future?"

I shrugged.  "I guess so," I said.  "I didn't even think about it."

He just laughed for a good minute or more.  Then he finally calmed down.  Shaking his head and wiping his tears from his eyes, he looked at me and said, "Anna, you are amazing."

For whatever reason, my mind jumped back to the memory-like dream I had had.  I could almost hear him say, "I love you," and it scared me.  I blushed, I stood up, and I said, "I think maybe now is as good a time as any to go to bed.  I don't really have spare sheets or anything, but I guess I could get you a towel to roll up or something if you want to sleep on the couch."

He seemed a little caught off guard by this and said, "Well, I guess if that's what you want, that would be fine."

I wasn't immediately sure about why he said, "If that's what you want", but I also realized just how tired I was, so I just gave a nod and said, "Yes, I think that would be fine."


The dreams that night were especially strange.  It was weird to dream about the man who was out in the living room sleeping on my couch.  I dreamed first about him out there sleeping, and then I dreamed about the picnic again, where Maria shot Connor, except this time, before she shot him, he spun around and wrestled the gun out of her hand and then pistol whipped her with it.  Then I was pulling on his hand as we ran across the field together.  And then I took out the face cream and rubbed some on both of us.  Just was we were about to jump somewhere, I woke up.

Strangely, I woke up not just from the dream, but also to the smell of coffee.  As I wrapped a robe around myself, I stumbled out into the living room and the kitchen to see Connor at my stove scrambling eggs.  He must have heard me, quiet as my footfalls were, because he looked back at me and smiled.  "Good morning," he said.  "Care to guess the time?"

I smiled back and blinked twice to activate my ocular implant.  "9:32am," I said.

He nodded and then looked back to the eggs.

"So what's the deal here?" I asked.  "You're cooking breakfast?"

He nodded.  "Yeah, well, I figured it was the least I could do for doubting you at all."

I laughed.  "I was saying crazy stuff.  Of course you were right to doubt me."

He shrugged.  "Yeah, maybe," he said.  He mixed the eggs a bit more as I walked into the kitchen and sat at the table.  I wasn't sure what to say, so I just let him finish up the cooking.  He looked back at me and got as far as, "Where are the..."

"Plates in the cabinet to your left.  Mugs to your right.  Forks you seem to have already found," I said.

He smiled.  "And you thought you couldn't prove you know the future," he said.

He dished up the eggs, got us each a mug of coffee, and then sat down at the table with me.  He handed me the plate and I muttered a thank you.  We ate a few bites and then he asked, "So what's up with the hand cream?"

I nearly choked on my eggs, which was a challenge considering how light and fluffy they were.  "What?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "It might be nothing," he said, "but I dreamed about it.  You had some hand cream and you used it on both of us."

"While we were running through a field?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "Yes," he said.  "What on earth is going on?"

I shook my head, too.  "I just don't know," I said.  "But the hand cream is how we travel through time."

"You're kidding?"

"No, not at all.  I know its crazy, but it alters our cells so we can travel."

"You know if you have some of that, you could have proven to me this time travel stuff even easier than waiting until I ask the time."

"I know," I said, "but I only have enough for two trips, so if I go in the future and come back, that's that."

There was silence for a moment and then he said, "You know, we could go into the future together."

I laughed, but then I looked at the look on his face and asked,  "Are you really serious?"

He shrugged.  "Why not?" he said.  "It would certainly prove all this once and for all."

"But we could never come back here," I said.

"It might be worth it," he said.

I eyed him suspiciously, the thoughts of last night, wondering if he was in on something, surfacing again.  "Who even are you?" I asked.

Connor took a deep breath, clearly trying to weigh his words very carefully.  I wasn't sure right away if he made the right judgement call when he said, "If my dreams are to be believed, I'm someone who loves you."