Nanowrimo 2015-11-19

We sat in silence for a moment contemplating Jason's very good question until I finally said, "I guess we learn more about you."

"Yeah," my dad agreed.  "They couldn't have wiped you out entirely.  There have to be records from you history or something."

"And what about your parents," I pointed out.

"I remember my parents," Jason said, "but I remember the parents I had back in 2015."  He paused for a moment.  "Do you think they moved my parents into the past, too?"

"I don't know," I said.  "Did the parents you know talk about your childhood?"

Jason paused to think.  "No, not really," he said.  "My parents and I didn't talk much at all, really.  I remember spending time with them..."

"But I never met them," I said.  "What if..."

"They weren't even real," Jason finished.

"So then where are your real parents?" my mother asked.  She turned to me.  "Do you think they wiped him from their memory, too?"

I shrugged.  "I don't know," I said.  I looked at Jason.  "If you had already started working for the agency, they could have told your parents you were busy on missions."

"But you always come to visit us!" my mother exclaimed, seeming shocked that any parent could possibly be okay with not seeing their child.

"I know," I said, smiling at her, "but not everyone is as crazy as us."

My mother looked a little shocked, but then my father laughed and she smiled.  Jason was smiling, too.  Then Jason said, "Well, I don't know who my parents are, but I do want to find them."

"And we'll help you," my dad said.

"Yes, we will," my mom agreed.

"Okay," I said.  "I guess what we do next, is gather information and try to find more of the truth."


It turned out that tracking down Jason's past wasn't really that difficult.  The whole mind-altering mentality makes it easy to not find certain things out because you don't know what to look for.  Once that vale is lifted, its a whole other story.

We found that Jason's story started in 2097.  He was actually about six months older than me, which I found amusing considering how young I had felt he was relative to me when I first met him.  We considered trying to figure out how old he was now, but since we didn't know exactly when they had sent him back since the records we had stolen didn't say anything about a specific date, we could never really know, other than we were still pretty close to the same age.

We learned also that Jason really did have a younger sister named Melanie and an older brother named Victor, just like his Connor persona had, and that his parents were very much alive.  What caught us a bit off guard was that Jason supposedly was not.  In conducting our research, we found his obituary dated five years prior to our current time.  This made Jason question whether we should really go to his newly discovered real parents.

"They probably don't know any more than we do," he said, "and it's been five years.  What if they've moved on."

Before I could answer, my mother did it for me.  "I can't imagine parents would ever really move on from the death of a child.  I mean if I lost, Anna..."  She started to tear up.

I stepped over to my mother and put my hand on her shoulder.  "You're not going to lose me, Mom," I assured her.

She shook her head.  "I nearly did," she said, "and now you're going on the most dangerous mission you've gone on.  I don't even know what missions you've gone on, but this is sure to be the most risky."  Then she looked at Jason and said, "But it's worth it.  Your parents will want to know you're alive, and even if that means putting my Anna at risk, I know its worth it.  I know she's doing something very brave, and so are you.  You're finding the truth.  Your parents deserve that, too."

"I agree," my father chimed in from across the room, startling us because we hadn't even realized he was listening.  It killed a bit of the emotion, but it broke the tension, too, and we all shared a relaxing laugh before Jason and I exchanged a look and resolved to go meet his parents.

We really weren't sure what to expect when we walked up to the last known address and knocked on the front door, but we couldn't have expected anything better than what happened.  His mother answered, an older woman with short hair that was black but graying.  She looked at first shocked, then confused, and then quickly overjoyed.  She was laughing and crying as she hugged her son.  "They told me you were dead," she sobbed.  Then she pulled back and looked at him, "But you're older than then.  That can't be in your future.  Where have you been?  I knew you couldn't really be gone.  They never proved it.  They never proved a thing.  Oh, Jason!"  She cried for nearly a minute, hugging him as he hugged her back.  It seemed so genuine and sincere.  It turned out it was, because in the memory he had of his mother as Connor, she looked almost exactly like his real mother.  After she had calmed down a little bit, she motioned us into the house.  "Well come in!  Come in!" she exclaimed.  "I just can't believe its really you!"  Then she looked at me for the first time and seemed a bit puzzled.  "Have we met?" she asked.

I couldn't help but chuckled just a little.  "I honestly don't know," I said.

"Mom," Jason said, "This is Anna.  She saved me."

"Anna!" his mother exclaimed.  "I remember you were dating an Anna.  Is this her?"

I figured it was best not to dump all of the mind-alteration stuff on her all at once and try to explain how it was kind-of me so I just said, "One and the same."

"Well come in, come in!" she said, even though we were already in the house and she was closing the door.  The smile was back on her face in full.  "Oh your father will be thrilled."  Then she paused for a moment and seemed to get a bit puzzled again.  "But does Maria know that you're alive?" she asked.

I froze.  Jason's parents know Maria?  My parents didn't know Maria.  As far as I knew, Maria never even left the agency base.  I had no idea what was going to happen next.  Jason managed to broke the silence and just said, "Oh trust me, she knows."

His mother's puzzled look remained for a second longer and then she went back to being overjoyed.  "Oh I'm sure there will be plenty of time for that later!" she practically sang.  Then she turned back into the house and called out, "George, you'll never guess in a million years who just walked in the door!"


Jason's mother was certainly correct that George, his father, could not guess who had just walked in the door.  He broke down and wept and all three of them were crying and hugging while I stood by awkwardly yet happily.  When they calmed down a bit, his mother said, "I have to call your sister and your brother!"

"There will be plenty of time for that," Jason said, though I wasn't sure that was entirely honest.  "First I want to know everything you were told about my..."

His mother sighed.  "About your death," she said.

Jason nodded.  "Yes."

She sighed again.  "Well, it was late at night five years, six months," she blinked twice, to activate her current date display, I assumed, "and 13 days ago today that Maria came to our house."  She frowned.  "She sat right there," she gestured to where I was now sitting, which made me feel strangely uncomfortable, "and told me they had received confirmation through their monitoring that you had been killed on a mission to the past."

Jason looked puzzled.  I probably did, too.  "What monitoring?" he asked.

"Whatever it is they use to track you when you go into the past," his mother said.

Jason turned to me, clearing wanting me to explain this tech I had never mentioned before.  "There's no monitoring that I know of," I said.

His mother looked shocked, though certainly not as shocked as when she had seen her son still alive.  "Do you work for the agency, too?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.  "I take it Jason never told you that."

She shook her head.  "No," she said.

"He just said he was dating a girl he met in college," his dad chimed in.  "Never said anything about her being from the agency training, though I suppose he wouldn't have been allowed to anyway."

"We knew he wasn't supposed to talk about any of the people he worked with," Jason's mother continued.  "It was our understanding that those people he worked with would never come to visit us, either.  That's why we didn't trust this Maria at first."

"But she knew all about the agency," Jason's dad picked up.  "Everything Jason had told us and even some he hadn't."

"Like about the monitoring," his mother chimed in.

George nodded.  "Yes, like the monitoring," he said.  Then he glanced at me, "which may or may not be a real thing."

"If Anna says it isn't, then either it isn't or Maria kept it a secret."

"So you don't know for sure?" his mother asked.  "I mean, if there is monitoring, it clearly malfunctioned since you're still alive.  You think Maria just got a bad reading?"

Jason frowned.  "I think Maria can't be trusted," he said.  "But then again, there really isn't all that much I know for sure anymore."

"What do you mean?" his father asked.

Jason sighed.  "Well, I guess I might as well tell you," he said.  He took a deep breath and began.  "As near as we can tell, Maria stranded me in the past with my memory wiped, or at least altered.  I don't remember anything about being a time traveler.  I do remember the two of you, and Victor and Melanie, too, but I remember you as if we lived in the past, in the early 21st century."

"But that's absurd!" my mother exclaimed.

"How could they warp your mind like that?" his father asked.  "I mean, how could they make you forget?  You're a smart kid.  It couldn't have been easy."

Jason shrugged.  "Well time travel couldn't have been easy either, and they made that happen.  But if you mean how could they do something so unethical, so immoral?  Well, that's what Anna and I want to get to the bottom of."

"And we support that 100%!" his mother chimed in, "but first, can't we just spend some time as a family?  We can invite your brother and sister over!  It will be a couple days before they can get here, I imagine, but then we can be one big happy family!"

Jason smiled.  "Yes, I'd like that," he agreed.

His father smiled, too.  "I just can't believe this is happening," George said.

"Yeah," Jason agreed, "neither can I."

"Well, I should probably go then," I said, standing up.

"Oh don't be silly!" Jason's mother exclaimed, rising up to stop me.  "If you saved Jason like he said, then you should be part of this celebration, too."

"Oh, Martha," George said, "Maybe the girl has somewhere to be."

Martha looked a little dejected, but she brightened up again when I smiled and said, "No, there is no where else that is more important for me to be right now."

"Oh good!" Martha exclaimed clasping her hands.  Then she looked at Jason.  "Now can I call your brother and sister?  I have no idea what I'm going to tell them, but I'll have to come up with something."

"Yeah, Mom," Jason said with a smile.  "You can call them."  And as I sat back down, he reached for my hand, which I gladly gave him, and gave it a squeeze.  As he looked over at me, still smiling, I smiled back, and for the first time in a long time, I had this irrational feeling that everything was going to be okay.