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.