I asked Connor again and again if he was absolutely sure he wanted to go with me into the future. "There will be no going back," I told him. "Once we're there, we're stuck there. You haven't even known me for that long."
"I've known you long enough," he said. "And besides, who wouldn't want to see the future?"
"This isn't just seeing the future," I pointed out. "This is living it for the rest of your life."
He paused for a moment and then his voice got a bit softer as he looked at me. "Could you be really happy spending your whole life here?"
His question caught me off guard. Was he saying that he would only stay if I stayed? That had been my original plan, after all, to go through time wherever he went. "I could be," I said, after thinking a bit too long.
He smiled. "I don't believe you," he said simply.
I laughed to cover up my discomfort. "You believe I'm a time traveler, but you don't believe I'd be happy here?"
"There's so much you've told me about the future," he replied. "So many conveniences and advances. Frankly, I'm amazed you haven't gotten fed up with my time already."
"I was trained to be prepared to spend long amounts of time in the past," I told him.
"But not this long," he countered. "What's the longest you'd been away from your time until now?"
"Two months, I think," I said.
He nodded. "Well, that is impressive," he said, "but you've been here now for nearly a year."
That statement again caught me off guard. To be honest, I hadn't really been keeping track of the time, which is a strange thing for a time traveler to say, but sometimes you have to live in the moment and take things just one day at a time and that's how I'd been living since coming here. "Has it really been that long?" I asked.
He laughed. "Well, maybe you can make it here better than I would have thought," he said. "I can tell you that if I was shot back to the 1900s, I probably would have a much tougher time."
I shrugged. "Our times aren't as different as you seem to think," I said.
"But won't you miss your parents?" he asked.
"I already do," I said. "Won't you miss yours?"
He frowned. "You know I'm not that close with my family," he said.
I nodded sympathetically. "I know," I said, "but if you go with me you'll never have the chance to be."
"Maybe it's better that way," he said.
"Better, or just easier?" I asked. I paused for a moment to let him contemplate that and then asked, "Won't they miss you?"
"Maybe I should say good-bye before we go," he suggested.
"Good-bye and what?" I asked. "'I'm going to the future. Maybe if you can manage to live another 120 years you'll see me again?"
He frowned and there was silence for a moment and then he said quite simply, "I'd rather go with you into the future than keep my own life in the present."
"And I don't want to go into the future with you unless you're absolutely sure it's what you want to do," I said.
"I am sure," he replied. "School is out now. I've said good-bye to the students and their families. The last time I saw my family was actually pretty nice. It's a good time to move on."
"Are you sure?" I asked one more time.
He smiled. I loved that he didn't get annoyed with my persistence, with my deep desire to make sure he was really, truly okay with this. "Yes," he said. "I am sure."
I nodded. "Then let's get ready."
Over the next couple of weeks, I taught him all I could about the society I worked for and the time in which I lived. Some of it he knew already. Some of it I had never told anyone, not even my parents, before because I wasn't supposed to. But it didn't matter now. I could tell him anything I wanted. I was done with the agency. Done and ready to get to the bottom of what they, or at least Maria, were really up to.
I told him about how I was one of five travelers, that there was a rather secretive team of scientists and another of historians that I didn't know personally, and that Maria ran it all. I had once considered Maria a good friend. Now, I feared she was my enemy. I knew she was Connor's enemies, and in a way, Connor's enemies were mine too.
The thing that scared me the most about all of this was not that I was returning to the most dangerous time for me and that I was going to risk my relative safety infiltrating the group that once welcomed me with open arms. A little more scary was that I was taking Connor with me, but even that wasn't the scariest. What was scariest was how I felt about him. It made a little more sense now that I would like him, but we had still been on speaking terms for about six months, and only in an intimate way for two of those months. I really could not understand why I felt about him like I did, and definitely not why he felt about me like he did. Sometimes I feared he just found me mysterious or something and that he would regret going to the future with me. But if my life had taught me anything, it was that sometimes things just don't make sense. Yet I had also learned that just trusting things and not questioning them could get you into trouble, which went back to part of the reason why I asked Connor so many times if he was absolutely sure.
My mind was all over as we prepared for our one-way trip. Sometimes I considered just suggesting we put it off, but I knew I didn't really want to. I was ready to see my family again. And I was ready to learn the truth about everything I could.
It's strange how a big day can start out like any other. The morning of the day we had agreed to jump back forward in time, I woke up once again to the smell of coffee, this time accompanied by both eggs and bacon. I smiled as I walked into the kitchen to see Connor cooking. "You know, real eggs and bacon are the one thing I might actually miss from this time," I said.
"We could always take some with us," he suggested.
I shook my head. "No, I think it's best to travel light," I said.
"Well, let's make this a good breakfast then," he said, dishing me up my meal.
We ate in near silence. Afterwards, Connor even did the dishes. I considered pointing out that he didn't have to do that, but thought better of it.
We had already settled on a plan for what was going to happen, or at least what we wanted to happen, when Connor vanished into the future. We didn't have to worry about me. My lease on my apartment expired the end of the current month and I had already moved out. I had spent the last week living with Connor. It was strange to live with someone in a place you knew was so temporary, but it had been nice. It had almost felt normal for those seven days.
Connor had quit his job claiming he was moving to Spain. I'm not sure why he chose Spain in particular. I guess he figured it seemed at least slightly plausible since he was mostly fluent in Spanish. He had also arranged to send an email to his family after were were gone. I asked him multiple times if he was sure he didn't want to say good-bye in person, but he said he didn't want to answer all the questions they would definitely have. With the email, he got to craft it, figure out exactly what to say, before it was sent. He also signed over his car to his younger sister and his house to his older brother. It seemed like everything had been accounted for. The only thing that remained was to pull the trigger. Or rather, apply the hand cream. Pulling the trigger was exactly what I had opted not to do back at the beginning of all of this.
"Are you ready?" I asked Connor as we stood together in his bedroom holding the container.
He nodded. "Yeah," he said.
I reached for his hand. He gave it to me. I rubbed the cream on each of us and closed my eyes. Connor apparently kept his open because I heard him exclaim, "What the...?"
I felt the wozziness and the nausea and opened my eyes. Connor had released my hand and was bent over gagging and coughing. I gave him a moment as I remembered my first trip with a mix of nostalgia and disdain. "Wow, you weren't kidding," he said with a smile once he had recovered enough to speak.
I smiled back. I figured it hadn't fully dawned on him what had just happened. There would be plenty of time for that realization. I watched him as he looked around. "It doesn't look all that different," he said.
"I know," I said.
He reached for my hand. "Come on," he said, "Let's go take a look around."
It can be nice showing someone you care about around a place that you like but is new to them. It's a whole different level of strange doing so with a different time. We wandered around looking at the vendor stations. "There's no paper anywhere," he said.
"I told you," I said.
"Yeah," he replied, "but there's absolutely none."
"Well, there is a little," I admitted. "But it's extremely rare."
He was amazed by the food kiosks, too. "They're just like you described them and yet someone I couldn't really picture them," he said.
"They're not that different from those soda machines that you had in your time," I pointed out.
"Yeah," he agreed, "except its bringing me food from tens of miles away within minutes."
I was glad to enjoy this time of wonder with him. I knew that all too soon it could fade into fear or even regret. There would be time enough for that, I feared, and just for a split second, I regretted coming here at all. But I quickly forced that feeling aside. We hadn't even gotten to the best part.
"Come on," I said with a smile, taking his hand. "Let's go meet my parents."
"Already?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "We've already been out and about longer than we probably should have."
"Okay," he agreed. He almost sounded like the kid at the carnival whose parents are telling him its time to go home.
"You know what," I said. "We can wander around a bit more. What's the worst that can happen?"
I didn't want to think about answering that, and I was glad he didn't try to.
After another two hours of wandering, we found ourselves on my parents doorstep. I thought back to that time, what felt like ages ago, when I had stood here pretending to be a salesperson, really planning to convince my parents time travel was real. Now here I was not just a time traveler, but someone who had basically stole someone else from their rightful time. I had no idea what my parents were going to say, and I certainly didn't anticipate what they actually said.
My mother answered the door when I knocked. She looked overjoyed to see me. She gave me a big hug and then turned to Connor in surprise. "I know you," she said.
My heart skipped a beat. "What was that, mom?" I asked.
She was still looking at Connor. "I know I've seen you before," she said. "Jason, is it?"
Connor shook his head. "No, I'm Connor. I'm a friend of your daughter."
"Oh, Connor!" my mom exclaimed as if she had known it all along, but I was strangely relieved to realize she hadn't. "Well come on in, come on in." She led us through the entry and towards the kitchen as she said, "We weren't expecting you here for at least another two months."
"I know," I told her, "but it was important that I be here."
"Oh?" she said. "Why's that?"
"To find out what's really going on with the agency."
"You mean your job?" my mother said. She glanced at Connor. "He's not a collegue of yours, is he?" she asked.
"In a way," I said.
My mother stopped walking and looked at the two of us, truly puzzled, "I thought you weren't allowed to hang out with any of them outside the academy."
"Well, mom," I said, "there are a lot of things I was and wasn't supposed to do that I'm questioning now. Starting with when they sent me back to kill an innocent man to stop Rome and Beijing from blowing each other up."
My mother looked horrified. "Sweetie, what are you talking about?" she asked. "Rome and Beijing are fine. Did you...."
I smiled. "Mom, you have no idea how good that is to hear."
"Sweetie, did you complete your mission?!" my mother exclaimed, no longer aware of Connor standing right there.
"No, mom," I said, reaching out and putting my hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. I reached my other hand out to Connor and he gave it a squeeze. "My mission is right here."
My parents sat in stunned silence around the dinner table as I told the whole story about what I had been asked to do and why. "Well that's horrible!" my mother exclaimed.
"I never did fully trust that agency," my father said gruffly of the corporation he knew almost nothing about, "but I always trusted you Anna, and I'm glad you did the right thing."
"Well I admit, it wasn't that hard," I said as I glanced at Connor and blushed slightly. "The hard part is what comes next."
My mother looked confused. "What's that?" she asked.
"The whole reason I came back at all," I said, "is to find out what's really going on at the agency."
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