Nanowrimo 2015-11-10

When the dizziness passed, as it always does, I took stock of my surroundings.  There were trees, quite a lot of trees, but no people to be seen, so I continued on with my fake hike through the forest and out onto the trails.  I did pass a few other people as I descended into the park area.  They smiled and nodded at me and I smiled and nodded back.  I wonder if they would have been smiling had they known there were the parts to a sniper rifle in my heavy-laden backpack.  I looked down at the note with the address I was supposed to find, got out my era-accurate cellular device that they had sent with me, and started on my way.

The place they had me staying wasn't too bad, but it wasn't as nice as when I had stayed here a year before.  Well, it was a year before in my timeline.  It was five years before in the global timeline or universal time line or whatever you'd want to call it.  But of course, they only expected me to be here for a couple days at most.  The mission was so simple:  Just kill the guy and get on home.  I smirked to myself just thinking about it as I unpacked my bag.  What kind of monsters had I been working for?  I vowed I would not become one of them no matter what.  I considered disposing of the gun right then, but I feared I might still need it, perhaps as a bludgeoning weapon if things got bad.

That night, I sat on a ratty couch, ate a can of cold pasta, and watched the stars come out over the city.  They were hard to see, but they were still there.  They would always be there.  Even if we did blow ourselves up, if mankind was obliterated, the stars would remain.  I fell asleep that night thinking of the stars.  Strangely enough, this was the one night I didn't dream about Connor.

Maybe the reason I didn't dream about him was because I no longer needed to.  I knew I was going to see him soon enough, and this would be the moment of truth.  This would be when I found out for sure if the agency had truly trusted me with this mission or not.  I knew it was possible they had not, and that someone else would be there to assassinate both of us.  This thought really hadn't dawned on me until I was actually traveling back here, but even though I would have never dreamed of such a thing a few months ago, it certainly seemed extremely possible now.  I knew I had to be careful and alert if I was going to pull all this off.

So I decided to put my rifle together after all.  I would give as much of a look like I was going to carry out my mission as possible.  Then, maybe if there was someone following me, they would be more relaxed, more expecting that I was going to do my job after all.  So I perched myself in an old building near Connor's apartment and waited.  While I was waiting, I looked around through the scope, but I saw nothing suspicious.  I was just starting to think that maybe every thing really would be fine when I saw Connor emerge.  There were some other people nearby, so I wouldn't be able to get a clear shot even if I had wanted to.  But then, he stopped to talk to someone and I had him right in my sights.  Now was the moment.  This would be when I was going to pull the trigger if I was going to do this at all.  I didn't pull the trigger.  Instead, I spun my sights all around looking for someone else threatening to do my job for me.  No one was there.  But that didn't mean they wouldnt' be.  It just meant Connor and I were safe for now.  But only I knew we were in danger.  He was completely in the dark.

I looked back down at the street and saw him crossing and then going into a neighborhood grocery store just a block down.  I wiped my rifle down (not that my finger prints would match in this decade, but better safe than sorry) and hid it in another room where I could retrieve it later if necessary.  Then I decided it was time for some grocery shopping.

I tried to take my time walking towards the store, hoping that maybe I would end up bumping into Connor as he was coming out.  Turns out I timed it pretty much perfectly.  I wasn't sure if he would remember me, but when I literally bumped into him as he was walking out, it quickly became clear that he knew exactly who I was.  Or at least, he knew exactly who he thought I was.

"Jenna!" he exclaimed.

It actually took me a moment to react.  I had nearly forgotten that had been my name when he met me.  It was strange that I remembered his real name so much more readily than my fake one.

"Jenna Jones!" he went on, conveniently reminding me of my last name as well.  "How the heck have you been?"

He must have thought I looked confused because then he added, "Do you remember me?  I'm Connor Harris.  We took that teaching class together?"

I decided to take the gift and go with it and feigned remembering what I already knew, "Right, of course.  How have you been?"

"Pretty good," he said, nodding."Still teaching, but taking some business classes.  Thinking of starting something up."  He sighed and started to look a little nervous as he said more softly, "I never thought I would see you again."

"Yeah," I said, trying to give a shy grin, "Listen, I'm really sorry I shut you down last time.  I was in a... a weird place."

"It's okay," he said.  "No worries."

I was a bit surprised by how cool he was being about this whole weird running into someone you asked out who shut you down five years later thing.  But then again, I wasn't totally versed in the dating culture of his time.  I was also a little surprised at how mature he looked and seemed.  I mean, he had almost looked like a kid when I met him.  Now, he was a good looking guy.  I realized he would actually be about my age now.

As if he was also taking closer note of my appearance, he said, "You look really good, by the way."

I felt my face growing warm.  I must have been blushing I was surprised I was blushing, but it actually worked nicely with what I knew I needed to do.  "I really am sorry about before," I said.  "If you don't mind, I'd like to make it up to you.  Maybe, coffee sometime?"

He practically beamed.  "Sure yeah, that would be great," he said.  "Do you mind giving me your phone number?"

My heart nearly skipped a beat as I realized I didn't actually know the phone number for the device I had been sent back with.  I was really making mistake after mistake on this mission.  It was really pretty frightening.  But I did my best to think quickly and said, "Why don't you give me yours and I'll give you a call."

I was a little concerned that might have been too forward for his time, but it clearly wasn't because he smiled all the more and said, "Yeah of course," and then gave me his number.

"Thanks," I said, after I had entered it in.  "I'll be sure to give you a call."

"Or a text," he quickly added.  Then he shrugged and said, "you know, whatever."

I couldn't help but smile.  He had just shown a bit of that "kid" he had been five years ago.  Though "kid" was a strong word.  Really, he was kinda cute, but in a good way.

"Anyway, I'll see you around," he said, clearly trying to not seem too excited.

"Yeah, see ya," I said.  I almost turned and walked down the street until I remembered he had run into me entering the store.  So I went in, bought a soda just for show (and because carbonated beverages were so rare in my time), and then went back to retrieve my rifle and go back to my whole for the night, hoping and praying that however changing the past really worked, it worked in such a way that those left behind wouldn't realize I hadn't done what they sent me off to do.

Nanowrimo 2015 - More Catch Up!

For the next several days, the trainers worked with me.  It had been a while since I shot that elephant, and Connor would be a much smaller target.  I noticed right away that when they, the trainers, talked about him though, they didn't call him "Connor" or even "him."  They just called him "the target."

"The target will be smaller and harder to hit.  Just wait until he's still."

"The target has no reason to suspect anyone would want to do him harm.  Use that."

"Keep your eyes open and don't take them off the target."

"After you drop the target, leave your weapon and head immediately back to the present."

They were all very business-like about everything, and not a one of them seemed willing to point out that they were asking me to murder another human being who had done absolutely nothing wrong.  If anyone deserved to die for this whole mess, it was me, and even then I didn't think I should die either.  In a perfect world, I would live, Connor would live, and all of these people trying to kill him physically and me morally would be locked away.

As I trained, I remained stoic.  I did my best to remain calm.  With each passing day, I became more and more aware of the truth that my life had been a horrible mistake.  I should never have listened to myself when I told my parents that this was my destiny.  These people were not good people.  And on top of that, they had so many secrets.  Who knows why I shot that elephant or rescued that cat.  If they'd had it their way, they probably would have asked me to kill Connor for no reason at all.  In fact, I was half surprised they hadn't asked some other traveler who knew nothing about the whole situation to go off and be the murderer.

It dawned on me more than once that I could simply refuse to go back and force them to kill someone else.  But I didn't do that.  I would never do that, because I wanted to be able to do the right thing myself.  And the right thing, I knew, was obviously to not kill Connor.  I couldn't say I didn't want to do this, because then they wouldn't send me, and they had to send me, so that he wouldn't die.  I hadn't quite figured out what I was going to do with him instead of killing him, but I knew that he wasn't going to die, at least not by my hand, and not before his natural time.

Once I resolved that this was my plan, I came to a realization that I could never come back to my own time.  I would have to stay in the past forever.  I wasn't sure how all of this was going to work, really.  Would they know I had failed my mission and come back in time looking for me?  Or would they just keep on living, expecting the world to change around them when I succeeded, and being surprised and confused when it never did?  It was all very strange, and I had no idea what to expect, but I knew that this was going to be my final mission.  It would be the end of it all, but it would also be a new beginning.  It would be the beginning of me finding myself in the past, instead of in the hope of the future, of being great, that I had grown up with.  I only wished that I could tell my parents good-bye and thank them for all that they had done for me, but I feared it would look suspicious if I asked for a day off to go visit them now, so all I could do was hope that they knew just how much I loved them and that none of this mess had been their fault.

As more days passed, I started to grow a bit nervous.  Didn't they feel like I was ready to go back and complete this "assassination?"  Had I done something to make them suspicious so that they had decided to send someone else instead and not tell me?  I couldn't let these fears show, or else I was lost and so was Connor.

Connor.  I thought about him so much during this time, far more than I'm sure I ever would have if I had just been able to go on that stupid date with him and then leave him in the past.  I wondered what he would say when I showed up again, told him I was a time traveler who was sent to murder him, and then asked him to trust me.  I nearly laughed aloud when thinking about it that way.  Now obviously, it wasn't going to go down like that.  It couldn't.  I had to earn his trust and then find a way to make sure he was safe while somehow still ensuring two major cities didn't blow each other up in 2057.  I reflected one night as I was drifting off to sleep that it really would be so much easier just to kill the guy, but I couldn't.  Not just because it was murder, but because it was Connor.

Needless to say, I dreamed about him even more now than I had before.  I saw him on many of my past missions, in my dreams.  Sometimes it was really weird, like I saw his face on the body of that cat I had rescued from the tree.  Other times, it was just as a stranger passing by on the street.  In one of my dreams, I opened the door to my parents' house, just like the time I went back to tell them to convince me to become a time traveler, but there was Connor instead, and my hear felt like it was fluttering.  Then came the night where the dream did not take place in the setting of a past mission.  It was just Connor and me, sitting on a blanket on a hillside, flowers all around us, my hair blowing in the breeze, as we looked out over a forest surrounding the hill and more mountains on further beyond that.  It was beautiful and I was smiling and laughing and saying something and Connor was smiling back.

And then in my dream, I said, "Wait, is this our date?"  But before dream Connor could answer me, a loud bang rang out across the hillside and I heard my scream follow it as the red dot of blood appeared in the middle of Connor's forehead and then expanded out until he dropped dead before me.  As he fell, I saw Maria standing behind him holding a rifle that she was now pointing at me.  She had this stern look on her face and looked like the kind of total badass you'd see in those old classic action flicks.  She was truly terrifying.  "Your turn," she said, in my dream.  As she pulled the trigger and another shot rang out, I bolted upright in bed, sweating and breathing heavily.  "What the..." I whispered to myself.

I took a long time getting ready that morning, longer than I should have in retrospect, but it gave me time to calm down so that when I got into the office and started walking towards the training field, I didn't jump completely out of my skin when Maria met me on the way and announced cheerfully, "Today is the day!"

I assumed she meant to go back and shoot Connor, but I wanted to hear her say it, just to make absolutely sure this was really happening.  So I remained silent and just stared at her until her grin dropped a bit and placed her hand on my shoulder as she spoke in a more normal voice to say, "Today is the day you go back and make all of this right."  Then she said something that really surprised me.  She said, "I know this will be hard, but trust me.  It's the right thing to do."

The way she said it, the way she looked at me, the sympathy in her voice, I almost believed her.  Almost.  There was no way that killing an innocent man could ever be the right thing to do, especially when he was haunting your subconscious and emerging into your dreams, practically begging you to spare him.  I knew what I had to do.  I remained stoic.  I gave a nod.  "I promise I will do the right thing," I said.

Maria smiled and gave an approving nod.  "That's the spirit!" she said, giving me a reassuring set of two pats on the back.  "Now let's go get you prepped!"


I guess I haven't really told you all that much about the time travel process yet.  I suppose now is as good a time as any.  When most people think of time travel, they think of a time machine or time portals or worm holes or something like that.  It's really nothing like any of that.  It's this weird cream stuff that you smear on your body that messes with your particles and lets you travel back.  I'm not kidding.  That is truly what it is.  It doesn't smell the best, but the smell is gone by the time you've completed the trip, which happens nearly instantaneously, by the way.  You smear on the cream, you feel this weird cooling sensation, and then you start to feel a little dizzy and suddenly you're where you need to be.

Getting back home is even more bizarre.  You can take cream with you, and most travelers, including me, do, just in case, but in 99.99% of all situations, you can get home just by thinking about it very intentionally for a couple of minutes.  Now for this mission, they made certain I have cream with me, since it will be a stressful situation and I might need to recall very suddenly.  This is actually great news for me, because I know enough to be able to use the cream to go somewhere else in the past if I really need to.  It's dawned on me that I'll have enough for two trips, so in theory, I could take Connor with me to another time if I really needed to and they'd have an even harder time finding us.  I really hope it doesn't come to that.

So yeah, there you go, time cream.  No joke.  Just figured I'd lighten the mood a bit before we get into the really heavy stuff.


So they led me to the chamber, they gave me a backpack with some provisions, the spare cream, and the sniper rifle that I had to use all taken apart into pieces.  They handed me a sheet of paper with an address and a key.  This is where I could go to prep once I got back in time.  Then they smeared the cream on and sent me on the way.  The scientists looked somber.  The trainers barely even looked at me.  Only Maria was smiling and waving good-bye.  It made me sick, not just the travel itself, but the cheerful look on my boss's face as she sent me off to become a criminal.  I half wanted to take the rifle out of the bag, assemble it right in front of all of them, and shoot her before I went.

But obviously there was no time for that, and before you know it, there I was on a nature trail on the edge of the woods in the early evening, looking at a piece of paper that could easily have been a map and carrying a backpack back from my nice little hike, or so it would appear to anyone who happened by.

Nanowrimo 2015 - catch up!

I was curious about just what it was that the historians and other researchers gathered from all the notes and recordings that I brought back from the early 21st century, but I feared that if I asked them questions, they would ask me more questions that I wasn't prepared to answer.  If it weren't for Connor, everything would have been fine.  I don't know why he threw me so much.  And I don't know why I didn't just come clean with Maria about him showing an interest in me.  According to protocol, that was what I should have done.  I think I was afraid Maria would make me go back and alter his memories of me, and for whatever reason, I didn't want to do that.  That aversion didn't make sense as I had done this sort of thing plenty of times before, but I didn't want to do that to him.

Still, I knew I would never see Connor again as long as I stayed quiet about him, so I decided to put him as far out of my mind as possible and move on with my job.  I did the short rest and relaxation regiment that Maria recommended:  listened to some music, played some ping pong, even did a little bit of sketching, careful to avoid men and elephants as the subjects of my art.  Maria seemed pleased, and within a few days, she was ready to give me my next assignment.

This one was another information gathering mission, but much more interesting than the last one I had been on.  This time, I was headed to England in the year 1560 to observe the operations of the palace of Queen Elizabeth the first.  Why was still not revealed to me, but at least this mission seemed much more historically significant and I could imagine that some interesting information would be gained, even if for no other purpose than pure human interest.  My "cover" on this mission was that I would be one of the maids working in the palace.  It would not be glamorous work, Maria warned me, but it would be important, just like every mission I went on.  Everything had a purpose, from the glamorous to the dirty to the mundane.  It all had a purpose, I was told, even if I didn't know what it was.

Well, the trip to England more than half a millenium ago was certainly not glamorous.  Let me just say: chamber pots.  When you think about time travel, you probably don't think about chamber pots, but that was the reality back then, and I didn't just have to use them.  As a maid, I had to empty them, too.  I was certainly thankful that the scientists who worked for the academy had injected me with all kinds of anti-bodies and anti-virals and whatever else they had developed to keep me from getting cholera or whatever else was running rampant back then.

Another interesting thing about going back in time is the differences in language.  I speak English, but English in 1560 was a bit different from English in 2100.  The best advice they usually give me is to talk as little as necessary if going more than 300 years into the past.  Still, they do give you a bit of a lesson on linguistics.  That's one skill you need to have as a time traveler:  the ability to learn and retain quite a bit of obscure information rather quickly and then, potentially, forget most of it so that you can make room for the next set of information for the next trip.

All that preparation did come in handy for this trip, though.  It seemed to go quite smoothly.  The hardest part was keeping my recorder hidden, but even that wasn't too hard given how tiny the thing was.  As on the trip before, my task was to observe, document, and share my reactions.  Not react, that might give it away that there was something odd about me, but to record my reactions later in the evening.

All in all, this was a rather good mission for me.  I got to observe some interesting things about how the rich and powerful lived so long ago.  It's strange to see how greatly they valued simple things that were clearly inferior to the things that common people of my day had.  Simple things like paper seemed so much more rare and exciting back then.

It was also interesting to learn more about Queen Elizabeth.  I had heard of her at one time or another, but knew basically nothing except that she was queen.  At the time when I went back to observe her, she was actually younger than I was.  She became queen when she was only 25, which fascinated me because that was the age I was when I joined the time travel academy.  I was four years advanced in my time line, age 29, when I went back to serve as a servant in her castle, but she was only two years advanced from when she became queen.  I admired her a lot for her young age combined with her apparent wisdom.  I rarely saw her around the palace, but I did see the numerous advisers she depended upon.  And from what I heard of the gossip among the servants, she listened to the advisers and trusted them, but still was able to think for herself.  She was, I felt, truly a woman ahead of her time.  I think that was the exact phrase I put in my report, "ahead of her time."

I think that phrase was what made Maria smile when I reported back to her, though it doesn't take a lot to make Maria smile.  "You did an excellent job," she told me when I returned from this four week mission.  "Any issues?"

This time, I felt honest when I answered, "No.  No issues and no one seemed suspicious of me."

"Good," Maria said with a nod.  "This information you've gathered is fantastic.  You've earned yourself a rest.  Go deliver your report to the historians and then the rest of the week is yours."

I gave my own nod of agreement and did as I was told.  As much as I had enjoyed this mission, I was exhausted.  Two four week missions in a row.  I had not expected that, but I had kind-of appreciated it.  The second long mission had completely taken my mind off of the first one, at least until I got back to my present time and made that observation.

That night I did have a strange dream.  I was back in Elizabethean England, doing my usual work as a maid, when I saw one of Elizabeth's advisers leaving from an audience with her.  When he looked at me, I dropped the tray I was carrying in surprise.  It was Connor, or at least someone who looked exactly like him, leaving the queen's audience chamber.  Before he could say anything, I woke up, extremely confused.  This, again, was exactly the kind of incident I should report.  Dreams often had hidden meaning and dreaming an unusual dream about someone you had seen on a mission often indicated that there was some unfinished business or other concern with that individual, or so I was told.  But I still felt like it wasn't in my best interest, or in Connor's, to report what I had just seen, so I resolved not to do so and did my best to go back to sleep.


From then on, though I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, it was clear that something was.  It seemed like after every mission I went on, I would come back home and have a dream that combined Connor with that mission.  I went back to spy on Leonardo da Vinci around the time he painted the Mona Lisa, and then I dreamed that it was Connor creating that famous painting.  I went to Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese bombed the island to save a specific sailor who was of particular importance (this was one of the most rewarding missions I went on incidentally - saving a life), and when I returned home, I dreamed the sailor had been Connor.

And then was the time I went back just 70 years and it didn't even take a dream for me to see someone who looked just like Connor.

I mentioned before that 2057 was the year when we almost destroyed the whole planet.  There had been a huge standoff between European countries and China.  The European countries, in a mad attempt to unify and become stronger, had just absolved their national borders and become a single entity simply known as the "European Union" echoing the governing body over the individual countries that had existed for quite some time.  The really scary part about the whole situation was that there were still so many scattered weapons and groups that if one small subset decided to explode, they could lead the whole world to explode.  My job was to go back in time and calm the key elements that the historians told me had been close to exploding.

As always, I was told not to worry too much because I had clearly already succeeded at my mission, since the world was not in total chaos.  All I had to do was connect with some of the people in the most at-risk weapon cells, smile a little, find a way to infect people with the airborne calming agents I had been given, and that should be enough.  It all went well for the first several cells I encountered and I was on the final leg of my mission when it all went horribly wrong.

I was hanging around the cafeteria area of the base, waiting for the man I was supposed to meet up with to influence.  His name was Samuel Trete.  I didn't have a photo or a physical description, so all I could do was listen for the name.  When I heard it, I looked up to see who was being addressed.  I saw a tall young man with brown hair, but only from behind.  He was leaving the cafeteria, so I got up and followed him.  Once we got a fair distance away and I didn't see many other people around, I addressed him, "Samuel?"

He turned to look at me and my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.  I didn't know what to say.  Strangely, he seemed just as shocked to see me as I was to see him.  He was the one who spoke:  "You look just like..."

"Connor!" I interrupted.

Now he looked really scared.  "You knew my grandpa?" he asked.

"No!" I quickly exclaimed.  "I mean, maybe.  Who's your grandpa?"

"Connor Harris," Samuel said.  "And who the hell are you?"

"I'm..." I didn't know what to say or do, but the situation was clearly getting out of hand, so I tried to pull out the calming agent I was supposed to use, but he noticed.

"What are you doing?" he demanded taking a step back.

"I'm..."

"What are you doing?!"

People were starting to look at us now, so I opted to put the device away and just use my words to calm him down.  "Listen," I said, holding my hands out in an effort to show him I no longer had anything with which to threaten him, "Just calm down.  I'm not here to hurt you."

"Like hell you're not!" he shouted.  "Why would you be standing there looking like that if not to mess with me?"

"Looking like what?" I asked, genuinely baffled.

"Don't play dumb," he ordered, "you're a spy!"  And he ran off shouting "Spy!  Spy!"  At this point everyone was staring and some security officers were starting to approach.  I saw them pick up the pace when Samuel started shouting "spy", so I had no choice by to run as fast as I could, and as soon as I could duck around a corner, I pressed the recall button on my time travel device, surely leaving the security officers baffled and confused.  As I pressed the button, I remember thinking about what an unexpected disaster that had been and wondering how it was all going to work itself out.  After all, I knew it had to work itself out since there was no power in anything I did to really change the past.  Oh, how wrong I was.

When I got back, Maria was not smiling.  Maria was not smiling.  She was always smiling.  But today she was not smiling.  She was fuming.  I had never heard her swear before then.  "What the hell did you do?" she demanded.

I was at a loss for words, but she clearly wanted me to say something, so I just said, "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?!" Maria yelled.  "What do I mean?!  If it weren't for our historical preservation measures, I supposed I wouldn't even know, but unluckily for you I do know!"

"Know what?" I asked, starting to feel a bit annoyed.

"You changed it!" Maria shouted.  "You changed the past!"

My heart felt like it had stopped beating, and then, suddenly, all I could feel was it pounding in my chest.  "I changed the past?" I asked.

"Yes!" Maria exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air.  "Beijing.  Rome.  They're both gone!  What the hell did you do?"

"N-nothing," I stammered.  "I mean, the last guy, Samuel, he freaked out on my a little, I had to come back..."

"You came back too soon," Maria said, finally calming down a little.  "You had to stay and finish the mission.  You know that."

"I also know that I can't change the past," I said, trying to defend myself.

Maria shook her head and frowned.  "Well, if you did anything right," she said, "it was in proving that that assumption was totally, 110% wrong.  Not only did you change the past, you made it worse."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  My whole life I had believed in this idea of time travel making things better if it had the power to do anything, and now I was hearing that I had made things worse.  I couldn't handle it.  I just broke down.  I dropped to my knees and started crying.  "I'm so sorry," I sobbed.  "I'm so, so sorry.  Send me back.  I'll make it right!"

I was staring at the floor and didn't notice Maria walk up to me, but I felt her hand stroking my hair and I looked up at her.  She was actually smiling.  Not mockingly, or happily, but in a comforting way.  "I know," she said, "I know you're sorry.  And I'm sorry for being so harsh.  I just wanted you to realize just how bad it was and how important it was that you go back and make it right."

"I will make it right," I said, reaching up to wipe the tears from my eyes.  "I'll do whatever it takes.  I swear."

Maria gave me her hand and helped me stand back up.  "I'm glad to hear that," she said calmly, "because the historians have figured out what you must do to fix it, and it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever had to do."

"What is it?" I asked, feeling my confidence waver a bit.

"You're going to have to go back to 2016 and kill Samuel's grandfather."

"His grandfather?"

Maria nodded.  "Yes," she said.  "A man named Connor Harris.  I believe you may have met him on a previous mission."

My jaw dropped so fast it hurt.  "Are you kidding me?" I asked.

Maria shook her head.  "I never kid," she said, deathly serious.  "It's the only way."

I felt angry.  I had said I would do anything to make it right, but killing someone?  And specifically Connor, the man I had been strangely dreaming about for months?  How could I possibly....

"Why can't I just go back to 2057 and fix it there?" I asked.

Maria shook her head.  "Haven't you learned by now that it isn't that easy?" she asked, annoyance seeping back into her voice.  And then she gave me this terrifying look that seemed to say, "I know."  But out loud she said, "Unless you think this one man's life is more important than the lives of millions?"

"No, it's not that," I quickly said, not really realizing what I was saying.

"Then what is it?" Maria asked.  For the first time, I saw something evil in her eyes as she looked at me.  I don't know how else to describe it, but it was almost like I could picture her laughing at my misfortune, and it was as if I could finally understand what had been keeping me from telling her about Connor all this time.  Somehow I knew all along that I was going to be forced to do something terrible to Connor and I knew I didn't want to.  But what could I say?

"Alright, I'll do it," I said, hoping I could come up with another way before they sent me on the mission.

"Good," Maria said with a perfunctory nod.  "You'll leave tomorrow."

That night, the dream I had went back all the way to my time in Africa when I shot that elephant, except now instead of shooting an elephant, it was Connor that they were asking me to shoot.  I woke up from that one thinking of the painting I had drawn months before and the words my mother had spoken about it.  Was it a sunset or a sunrise?  Was this the end of the beginning?  I only had one day to decided.

Nanowrimo 2015 - Day 4

I'd like to take a moment now to share with you just how special my parents are not just to me, but in general.  It was thanks to the faith of my parents that I went down this path that led me to become a time traveler, which, for the most part, was basically the best and most amazing job ever, at least until.. well, we'll get to that later.  I want to focus on my parents for now.

My mom, Catherine, was the sweetest most concerned soul you'll ever meet.  She wanted everyone she ever met to just be happy.  If she asked how you were doing and you just said, "Okay" or "Fine", she would wrinkle up her brow and ask you what was wrong.  Sometimes people corrected themselves, said they were doing great, that nothing was wrong.  But sometimes the person would take that opportunity to just unload about whatever really was bothering them.  Those were the moments when my mom shone.  She would listen to them all the way through and then somehow know just what to say whether it was, "I'm so sorry you're going through that" or "I can promise you it gets better", she seemed to know whether the person just wanted her to listen or actually wanted a point of encouragement or even advice.

My mom is not just kind, she is beautiful as well, far more beautiful than I am.  She has this short, wavy black hair and these deep hazel eyes and look like they contain knowledge of the whole world within them.  And I'm not just being cliche when I say that her smile lights up a room.  I am 100% confident that it was that smile that first drew my father to my mother.

My father, Thomas, is not as involved in the lives of others as my mother is.  He cares about people, its just that my mother cares so much that he sometimes appears closed off compared to her.  He says what he feels needs to be said when he feels he needs to say it.  He's perfectly happy to sit with a thought or idea for weeks before voicing it.  I can only assume that there are great number of thoughts and ideas that he's never voiced at all.  In that way, he's a very different kind of thoughtful from my mother.

My dad is also exceptionally smart.  He's an engineer.  I don't say specifically what kind because it changes from time to time.  He knows more about math and science that I would ever hope to know.  Back when I explained the science of time travel to the best of my ability, I remember seeing his face light up in wonder, as if what I was saying made things so much more clear.  It barely made things more clear for me, but it wasn't for me, it was for him.

Now I'm not a dummy, and neither is my mom, but compared to my dad you might think we both are.  Yet he never makes you feel that way.  He's really just an ordinary guy who happens to be ridiculously smart.  You could say that he's the brain and my mom is the beauty.  Now my mom's smart, too, and my dad isn't ugly, but it's weird how they just shine and compliment each other.  I feel like my dad is even more handsome with my mom around and my mom seems even more insightful with my dad around.  I know its stupid to say they complete each other, because I know each of them would be a complete person without the other, but I don't know how else to describe it.  It's beautiful, and it makes me understand why my mom is so anxious for me to find someone of my own.

I love my parents.  I love being with them.  They're so amazing that, frankly, they make a lot of other people seem boring and lame in comparison.  That's the curse of having such great parents:  your standards are set a lot higher for your own friends and lovers, or at least that was my excuse.

But apart from my person hangups, my parents are genuinely a joy to be around.  They're parents, so they worry about me, especially my mom, and sometimes that can get old, but I still wouldn't trade it for the world.  I hear plenty of stories about people who grew up with crappy parents to know just how good I have it.  That's what makes it all the more hard that I can't tell them everything about what I do.

Like about shooting that elephant.  When I came to visit, I really wanted nothing more than to tell them about this bizarre occurrence.  But Maria had made me promise that I wouldn't.  "At least not until the historians finish up their research," she told me.  My parents had taught me to be loyal to the agency, and to trust them, but what they didn't know at the time was that I had told them to tell me that before Maria had me shoot the elephant.

As much as I enjoyed traveling through time, I enjoyed staying still and spending time with my parents perhaps even more.  It was a wonderful break from the intense and strange during which I could hang out with mom and dad and catch up with some old acquaintances while just taking it easy.  I listened to some books, watched some classic movies, and even did a little painting.  I was never much of an artist, but I enjoyed it and it was fairly relaxing.  My mother had been an art teacher for a portion of her life and she enjoyed teaching and mentoring me.  She always knew this wasn't going to be my career, but she was always happy to help and encourage me in this hobby.

I certainly wasn't one of my mother's best students, but I was definitely the one who had stayed with her for the longest duration of time.  I had painted many things over the years, and my mother still had a few of them hanging in her home.  Others were at my house, mostly in a pile.  I didn't paint to put things on display.  I painted to relax and to reflect on my thoughts and feelings.

My mother had actually sold a few of the paintings she had produced in her earlier days, and claimed a couple of mine could have sold for money, but I didn't like the thought of what I had painted being in someone else's home.  I think if I were to sell my art, I would want to do it somewhere else in time, but I wasn't allowed to use time travel for personal gain like that.

Anyway, painting was something my mom and I enjoyed doing together and that we did quite a bit whenever I came home.  But near the start of this particular break, I just wanted to paint something on my own.  I started by reflecting on the things I had painted in the past:  trees, flowers, fruit, cats, a self-portrait, and attempt at a portrait of my mother and father that was not particularly good but that my mother still insisted on hanging in their study.  What was I going to draw now?  I decided I wanted to paint something beautiful and simple.  I started with the yellows and reds and faded up to the purples as I painted the sunset.  I started with the sky part because I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to sunset to be set, but after I finished the sky portion, I knew where it should be set.  Without thinking about it a whole lot, I painted an open grassland with a single gnarly tree just off to the right.  When I was done, I was a little surprised to realize I had painted the exact setting of my latest mission, minus the dead elephant.

I was reflecting on this and feeling a little nervous about what it meant that this was what I was compelled to paint when the voice of my mother behind me startled me.  "That's beautiful," she said.

I glanced back and smiled nervously.  "Thanks," I said, hoping she wasn't going to ask me a question about what I had painted as she usually did.

She did ask a question, but it surprised me.  "Is it a sunrise or a sunset?" she asked.

I relaxed and smiled more genuinely.  "I guess I don't know," I said, reflecting, "I assumed it was a sunset when I was painting it, but it could be a sunrise, too."

"I think you should consider it a sunrise," she said.  Then she stepped forward and asked, "Are you okay, sweetie."

I looked into her concerned eyes.  I couldn't just flat out lie to my mother, so I just said, "I can't talk about it, but you shouldn't worry, mom.  I'll be okay."

I knew she would worry.  She was my mom, and that's what she did.  But I knew she would respect what I had just said.  "Okay," she agreed, "but if you ever do need to talk, your dad and I are here for you."

"Thanks, mom," I said.

She smiled, stepped forward, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.  "Dinner will be here in 20 minutes," she said, and she walked out of the room.


That was the most nervous incident of my one month stay with my parents that time.  Strangely, it felt good to have painted that painting, let my mother know subtly that I wasn't 100% okay, but okay enough, and to then try to move on.  I painted a couple other things while I was there.  I wanted to paint something happy, so I painted a kitten licking a puppy.  My mom loved it.  I'm pretty sure it made my dad roll his eyes.  In response to that, I painted something I figured he would enjoy more:  a classic "steampunk" style airship with gears and contraptions and stuff.  I spent the last two weeks of my visit working on it on and off, and was pleased that my dad smiled when I gave it to him.

Before I got to the end, though, I had other things I did, too, and lots of nice conversations with my parents, too.  They were able to talk about their lives and work a lot more than I was, and I enjoyed hearing about my mom's co-worker who was clearly keeping a secret that she was bound to find out or my dad's latest bridge building project and how one of the interns was so surprised when my dad followed up on one of that intern's ideas.

My dad also enjoyed sharing puzzles and riddles with us at dinner.  Nearly every night during my
stay, he would give me a puzzle or riddle and then the answer the next day, starting after the first week.  It was a bit of a throwback to when I was a kid and he would do this.  I was happy that he decided to do it, particularly because he did it after I had mentioned how nice those memories were from my childhood.


I cherished that month with my parents, but all good things must come to an end, even when you have the power to travel through time, so on that last day of my stay, I gave my father the painting and he smiled.  I smiled, too.  And then, my mother gave me the sunrise/sunset painting I had painted at the beginning of my stay.  "I thought you should have it," she said, smiling as if she knew something.

"Thanks, mom," I said.  And then, on a strange hunch, I asked her, "Did you ever figure out what secret you co-worker was hiding?"

She shook her head.  "No, actually I didn't," she said.  "Sometimes, I guess, there are things we just aren't meant to know."  I coud have sworn she winked at me as if she actually knew something, but I ignore that and I just hugged her and my dad and waved good-bye.

It was actually Saturday when I left and I didn't have to go back to work until Tuesday, so I went home for a couple days first.  I did not hang the painting up, but I leaned it against the wall and continued to feel a little awkward about it.  It reminded me of why I had painted it and that I was nervous about going back to work for fear of what they would make me do next.  But I realized that what really bothered me was what was missing from the painting.

That was why, on Monday afternoon, I went out and bought some gray paint and on Sunday evening, I set the painting up on my eisle and painted in the part that was missing:  an elephant, not shot and dead like I found him, but bold and strong and brave and alive, like I found him, trumpeting up into the sky as the sun rose/set, whatever the case may be.


When I went back to work on Tuesday, I was nervous about what my next assignment would be.  I really didn't feel up for killing another animal.  I hadn't taken the time to reflect on it much before, but I had never killed anything bigger than a wolf spider before it came time to kill that elephant.

You can imagine my relief and total confusion when the mission I was given was seemingly completely innocuous, but more than that even, kind and helpful.  But what was confusing was that it was such a small and insignificant thing that I couldn't believe that they were having me do this.  My mission?  To go back to the year 2011 and help some random little girl get her cat down from a tree.  I wanted to ask, "What on earth?" I wanted to say, "I didn't have pets growing up, how can I help?"  But I didn't say either of those things.  I looked at smiling Maria and I just said, "Yes, ma'am."

I have to say that as weird and as seemingly pointless as the mission was, it felt surprisingly good to help that little girl get her cat, whose name I learned was Lila, down from the tree.  The cat tried to scratch me, but failed, and once it saw the little girl, it seemed to much more okay with getting down out of the tree.  The girl thanked me and gave me such a smile that I felt good about everything.  It was still weird and I really wondered why I had done this, but I decided there must be a good reason and that combined with the fact that it was a pretty easy job that made me strangely happy allowed me to sleep surprisingly well that night.  Not to say that I didn't usually sleep well, but that night, I slept even better.


From then on, my missions continued to be strange, but seemingly benign and totally non-objectionable.  I was sent to help an elderly woman carry her groceries.  I was sent to pose as an Uber driver (one of those fake taxi things that started in the early 21st century) and transport some college kids home from a bar.  I was sent to an evening continuing education class for science teachers and told to just take lots of notes.  For that one, I was stuck in the past for four weeks.  That one was especially weird because I had a full assumed identity, something I'd never had before.  The closest prior to that had been the random Uber driver gig when the academy had to help me fake my background check and gave me a fake name of "Jenna."  For the four weeks in "school", I was Jenna again, but this time with the last name of Jones (so creative, right?) and with a more elaborate back story about being a middle school biology teacher.

I had been pretty decent at biology, and at science in general, thanks mostly to my dad.  However, there was one particularly disturbing thing I learned, as part of my prep for this assignment, that they used to do in biology classes in the past was actual live dissections, or rather in person dissections.  I was assured this was not of live animals, but still, they had to actually touch the carcasses.  I was truly worried that something like that might come up in the teacher training, as I called it, but I was assured that it would not.  It wasn't like they were going to call a teacher up from the class and embarrass them like teachers did with students.  I certainly hoped they were right.  When I took biology, everything was completely simulated.  3D video renderings of dead animals were quite enough for me.

Fortunately, the lack of dissections was one vital thing that the historians had been right about.  But they didn't know everything about how the class worked, which I guess was why they sent me back there to observe.  Which, by the way, just observing is one of the supposedly safest but most frustrating things you can be sent to do as a time traveler.  And when I say "supposedly safest", I mean theoretically safest.  In theory, you keep interactions to a minimum and do nothing that has the potential to mess up a timeline.  Yet, thinking back to the other seemingly unimpactful missions they had me go on and now being told to try not to be impactful, it was all a bit confusing.  I mean, if being an Uber driver for some drunk college kids that would have just gotten a ride from another Uber drive had I not been there had an impact on something, how could me sitting in this class and living in a nearby apartment for nearly a month possibly not have an effect?  Still, they assured me that if I just went to the store once to buy all the food and supplies I needed, then stayed in the apartment (watching and recording TV and taking notes on how various programs of the past made me feel) all day, and went to class in the evening, then everything would be fine.  Minimal interaction.  Have your backstory straight for when people ask.  Get through the four weeks.  And come home.  That was what they told me.  What they didn't account for was other people trying to talk to me.

There was this one other teacher student in particular who was always trying to talk to me.  I don't know if he was trying to pick me up or what.  I had heard stories about "pick up lines" being a thing in the past, but I didn't really know much about them so it was really hard to tell.  He would say things like, "Hey, how are you this evening?" before class started or "Well, what did you think of that lecture?" with a hint of sarcasm after the class ended.  Didn't seem like my understanding of a "pick up line", but some people in the past were weird so it was hard to tell.  I tried to just smile politely and give simple answers like, "Fine" and "It was fine."

There was no conceivable way he could have thought I was interested in him, yet apparently somehow he did, because on the second to last day of class, he asked me, "Hey, you want to go get dinner Saturday night?"  I knew that was a request for a date.  Even in the future, that was still a request for a date.

I was surprised and confused when he asked me, even though I understood what he was asking.  I'd been asked out before, and I'd always said no because my commitment was first to my training as a time traveler.  Once or twice, a fellow time traveler had asked me out and I'd just been able to say, "No, I don't think that's a good idea" and they totally understood.  For whatever reason, I was initially at a lose as to what to say to this guy.

I thought about what I knew about him.  I knew that his name was Connor, that he was 24 years old, and, in my own opinion, that he was decently good-looking, if not a little young.  I could just tell him he was too young for me, since I was pushing 30 as this point, but this felt dishonest.  I don't know why it took me as long as it did to turn him down, or why I didn't come up with a better story when I did, but all I said, after what was probably twenty seconds of silence, was, "No, sorry, I can't."

Of course, he looked a little disappointed and asked the obvious question of, "Why not?"

This time I didn't stop to think like I should have and I just blurted out, "Because I won't be here anymore."

It was obvious that he wanted to ask more, but I must have given him a look of shame or something because he looked a little nervous and said, "Okay, that's fine.  Maybe another time," and he turned and walked away.

The final day of the class, he nodded at me when he saw me, but he didn't greet me.  We took an exam that day, and he didn't ask me how it went.  He just finished and left before I did.  Since I was supposed to observe, I figured I should stay to the end of the test, yet it was hard to concentrate on my supposedly critical observational work when I was thinking about how I wished I could go after Connor and give him a better explanation.

But why should I care? I wondered to myself.  It would be stupid for me to go out with him, even if I wanted to.  We're from totally different times.  For all I know, he could be some ancestor or other distant relative of mine, and what a mess that would be.  So with a sigh, I refocused on my assignment and tried to forget all about Connor.

That night, my last night on assignment, I went back to my apartment and nearly cried.  I didn't know why.  It made no logical sense.  I had completed my mission.  I had done a good job.  I had even learned some interesting stuff about how people viewed science education in the year 2009.  There was absolutely nothing to be sad or upset about.  Yet, that night, I did not sleep as well as usual.  I had strange dreams that I only know were strange because of a vague foreboding sense that I got when I woke up.  All I really remember about them was that Connor was in them looking as surprised and confused as I felt when he had asked me out.

When I got back to my own place and time at the academy, Maria was there, as always, asking me how things had gone.  I handed her my pile of research and said, "Good."

She tilted her head a bit and looked at me inquisitively as she asked, "Anything strange happen?"

I looked up from the ground I had apparently been staring at and thought of Connor and the vague dream.  I knew this was exactly the kind of thing I was supposed to mention, but instead I just said, "No."

Maria smiled, seemingly reassured.  "That's good," she said.  "These long missions can be trying at times and I know this was your longest one yet.  Why don't you go get some rest and we can talk more about it tomorrow."

I have to tell you, I wasn't really looking forward tomorrow, in fear that she really did sense something was up.  Fortunately for me though, Maria did not have my mother's sense of when something was wrong and when tomorrow came, she had nothing more to say on the subject.

Nanowrimo 2015 - Day 3

It's interesting to me how the missions I was sent on got a bit less obvious over time.  The first two missions I went on were just "tests", more or less.  Go to such and such a date and bring back a newspaper and a cherry danish.  (Maria loves cherry danishes.)  Go to such and such a date and collect information for the historians on this particular person who is supposedly going to be there.

The third mission was that critical one with my parents and the fourth was the even more critical one (at least internationally and historically speaking) involving the most terrible leader of Germany in all of known history.  On these first missions, my objective was very clear.  The reason for each mission was also very clear.  Mission 1 was a simple trial run to make sure I could perform and handle the trip.  Mission 2 was an information gathering trip to fill in some blanks and figure out if further action would be needed.  Mission 3 was to make sure I would be able to continue to go on missions.  Mission 4 was to basically save the world for further destruction in the 1950s and 1960s.  The next mission was also quite clear and quite important:  go back to the time when John F. Kennedy was a young child and ensure his teachers instilled in him a fascination with the stars that was necessary to propel him towards his strong support of the space program.

Then came the rash of missions that were still obvious in what I was doing and what impact it would have, but also completely bizarre and both totally surprising and totally revealing at the same time.   I went to ancient Egypt to help construct the pyramids.

If that's mind-blowing for you, the next one will be even more bizarre:  I went to ancient England and helped our prehistoric ancestors construct Stonehenge.  That was the one that really blew my mind.  Was the mystery surrounding these great structures really that critical to the survival of mankind that I had to go back in time and make it happen?  What really would have happened if Stonehenge has never been built?  It seemed to me like, had I not gone on mission #6, there simply would have been a lot fewer conspiracy theories and lot less wondering about where this seemingly impossible structure that I now knew was only possible thanks to time travel.  Yet the historians insisted that this wonder of the world was a critical part of human history and they determined there was no way it could have been constructed without our help.  Thus, one of us time travelers must have gone back in time to help construct it, and obviously we had a good reason for that, so that reason became our reason and back in time I went.

If that makes your head hurt, well, there's a reason not all of us can be time travelers.

As bizarre as all these experiences were, I would not have traded them for the world.  I got to see amazing things that there is no way I could have ever experienced in any other way.  Even if there were recordings of these great historical events and places, it could never have come close to comparing to the real thing.  I can tell you that Nero did not actually fiddle while Rome burned and that Napoleon was even shorter than the history books say, but wore elevated shoes to make himself look taller.  I can tell you that Cleopatra was actually far more gorgeous that Mata Hari, though she certainly smelled a lot worse.  And I could tell you want really killed the dinosaurs, but that's one thing that I'm not allowed to say.  That one was and information gathering mission to see if there was any determination of anything we needed to do in that ancient eon.  The answer was, no there wasn't.  Nature quite nicely took care of itself on that one.

I seemed like I was sent to so many great historical moments that I just assumed that was going to continue.  It was quite a surprise when on my 15th mission, after dedicating two years of my own personal timeline to training and just over a year of that personal timeline to actual travel, that they sent me on my first really bizarre mission.  They told me to go to a specific African country in the year 850 and shoot the first elephant I found.  That was it.  No explanation of why this was important.  No hints as to what it was going to gain.  Just go shoot an elephant.  They actually had to spend a couple of weeks training me with the rifle to make sure I wasn't going to mess it up.  They weren't entirely sure the elephant wasn't going to try to trample me to death.  They weren't entirely sure the elephant wasn't going to succeed if it tried to trample me to death.  Maria told me that if this was the mission that made me want to quit, she would understand.  They would replace my memories of the past three years and send me on my way.

Maria knew as well as everyone that I wouldn't trade all those memories for anything.  I realize now that that's probably why they sent me on all those important and obvious missions first:  so I wouldn't want to give all those memories up when they started to send me on the really bizarre ones.

But I didn't think about that at the time.  I just thought about how I had made a commitment and that this was my destiny and tried to ignore the selfish aspect of all that and agreed to go on this mission just as I had gone on all the others.  I learned to shoot the rifle.  I learned to remain calm in the face of certain death.  I went back in time.  I shot the elephant.  She didn't even put up a fight.  I returned home, and was granted a month off before I jumped into my next assignment.


I admit, the month off was pretty nice.  It was the most time they had given me off since I started.  Even when I wasn't jumping around through time, I was still training or working with other travelers.  We had a sort of group support group to make sure none of us went crazy from what we were experiencing.  That met once a month, so after my elephant trip, I went to the meeting, opted not to comment on on how strange I thought that assignment had been, mostly out of fear they would rescind the the offer of the time off, and then went home to visit my parents.

My mom and dad were so excited to see me again.  They made the usual comments about it being strange that a time traveler couldn't make more time for the people who raised her, but they were smiling when they said it, just like always, so I didn't let it get to me too bad.  They were thrilled when I said I would be staying for a full month, but then my mom seemed to get a little worried with this proclamation.  She frowned and asked, "Sweet heart, don't you have friends you'd like to stay with during this time?"

I shrugged.  "All my friends work at the academy and I see enough of them already."

"Okay," mom relinquished.  Less than a second later:  "But maybe there's a nice boy of something..."

"Mom..."

"Oh come on, that's none of our business.  She's a full grown woman and can do what she wants."  Dad to the rescue.  How I loved my old man.

I smiled and exchanged a glance with him before turning back to mom.  "Don't worry about me, mom," I said.  "If I'm meant to find a guy, I will.  But I certainly don't need one."

Mom sighed and said, "Well of course you don't need one, but there may be one out there who needs you, just like your father needs me."

"Oh hush you," Dad ordered with a smile on his face.  "Now what should we order up for dinner?"

Nanowrimo 2015 - Day 2

When I stood there staring at a much younger version of my mother than I was used to, I was initially at a loss for words. This was compounded by the fact that she was holding a wided eyed baby girl in her hip whom I knew to be me.  Once more than enough awkward silence had passed after my mother's greeting, I finally said what I knew I was going to say: "Mrs. Larue, I'm with the insurance agency.  Can I come in and speak with you and your husband?"  I showed her my business card and fake ID, and though she was a bit confused, she had no reason to refuse.

As I watched my mother put my younger self in her crib and then sit down with my parents at the dining room table, I still had a hard time getting past how surreal this all was. The agency had told me this was good. They wanted me to have this crucial meeting with my parents while such things still seemed surreal to me.  It would help me relate to them better add they tried to process it all, I was told.  That may have been, but it still did nothing to calm my crazy nerves.

Even though I was nervous, I managed to stick to the script.  I launched into my phony insurance speil.  I showed them some news article screens from the near future, particularly articles that described bad things happening, and warned them that such things could happen to anyone and they should be prepared. It came off as a cheesy sales pitch, as it was supposed to. My parents weren't sure if they needed more insurance. I knew that they felt these cute gimmicks weren't enough to convince then of what they thought I was trying to say.

I told them that it was okay. If give them some time to think about it and I'd come back in a month to chat again, if that was okay. My parents resultant reluctantly agreed.  They tried to give me back my "fake future" articles as my dad called them, but I refused and said they should keep them as a reminder.  They shrugged and my mom tossed them on the weekly mail pile.  They didn't know yet what I knew: that those "fake future" articles that were actually extremely real were the whole point of that first of my two visits.


When I returned a month later, my father was the one who answered the door.  He was holding the article screens in his hands, just like I knew he would be.  "Who exactly are you?" He asked, looking a bit nervous.  "I can tell you that you certainly aren't an insurance salesman."

I smiled. I loved my dad so much.  I just wanted to give him a big hug.  "I'm your daughter." I said.

His face flushed.  For a moment I think he was scared that I really was the daughter of him and some random girl from back on his school days. I looked just young enough that maybe that would be possible, though it would be a stretch.  "Come again?" He asked.

"I'm your daughter," I said again.  And then I added.  "I'm Anna."

His mouth hung open, trying to process just how crazy I might be.  "Anna is only a few months old," he said.

"Now," I replied.  "But I'll look just like this 27 years from now." I gestured to the articles still in his hands.  "Just like this articles that I have you a month ago look just like articles that you've found in the past three weeks.". I paused to let him process the ridiculous claim I had just made.  Then, with my pulse pounding, I asked the critical question that I already knew he would answer in the affirmative.  He had to.  "May I come in?"

He looked at me; he looked down at the papers; he looked back up at me.  He let out a deep sigh, a sigh that said, "I'm going to regret this.". But outloud, all he said was, " okay."

When I say at my parents' take that second time, they were much more nervous and much more inquisitive than they had been before. They had all the usual questions, the questions I was ready for, and I answered them all.

Was I crazy?  Well, sometimes I thought so, but no.

Where did I get all these papers?  Where it looked like: from the future.

How was that possible?  In the not so distant future, the science to support time travel works be possible.  I have some boring but impressive sounding technical details about what was necessary and how it would become possible in the next 10 years.

Then was the big one:  if time travel was possible ever at all, how come they hadn't seen time travelers before?  Time travel was very tightly controlled, the technology remained top secret and only existed for a small number of years before the tech and all research leading up to it was destroyed.  They wouldn't tell me exactly when our all the details of why.  This all limited the number of time travelers running around to just a hand full.  Even then, that could be enough for the secret to get out, so these few time travelers are carefully monitored and nearly everyone they encounter who learns who they really are has their memory wiped after the encounter.

Is this memory wipe going to happen to us?  No.

Why not?  Because you have a very important job. You must raise me up to believe time travel is possible while still keeping it secret. It is croak l critical that you but me on the necessary path that will lead me to become a time traveler so that I will come visit you today and convince you to lead me to become a time traveler.

What on earth...?  I know it's confusing, but the basics are that you need to convince me to be receptive to the idea of being a time traveler.  Preventing everyone else from thinking we're crazy is a nice bonus.

Why is this so important?  I took a deep breath before this one. This is the question that each traveler needs to answer a little bit differently, each in whatever manner will most appeal to their particular parents.  For mine, I said, "because with your help, I will have the power to change the past and the future for the better."

Now I feel compelled to tell you, time travel is not so much about change as it's about making sure the right thing happens when we already know the right thing has.  Bit that concept is a bit hard to grasp, so talking about change is as good as it gets most times.  And I knew this is what works appeal most to my parents and get me to tell this story for years to come. When I would grow up and learn from the academy that "change" wasn't exactly correct, I would be a little annoyed at first.  But then I would realize that the only person I had to be annoyed at was myself. And if I couldn't really trust myself, then who could I trust?


After convincing my parents to convince me to pursue time travel so that I could come back and convince them to convince me to pursue time travel, I returned to headquarters for my next assignment.  HQ is in the year 2125 on a small island off the coast of what used to be called Italy.  My supervising officer, Maria Rodriguez, was there to greet me with a smile.  You'd think that this time lord types would be rougher, but Maria is really quite kind.

"Right on time," she said with a smile as she looked up from her retro smart watch.  "It must have gone okay or else you wouldn't have been here."

"And the universe would have exploded.  I know the drill."  I tried to give off an annoyed tone, yet smiled to let Maria know I was just joking around.  To my surprise, her smile drooped in response.

"Anna, you know just as well as anyone that none of us really know what will happen if such a paradox is created."

I nodded, taking her lead in getting more serious.  "Yes, Maria," I acknowledge.

She smiled again and gave a friendly nod.  "Good then," she said brightly.  "Ready for your next assignment?"

Considering Maria's bright smile, I would have guessed my assignment had something to do with puppies and kittens and rainbows and unicorns.  I was pretty surprised when she told me what it actually was, especially since this would only be my fourth assignment and it seemed like something much too important to risk a noob screwing it up, especially considering the serious 10 second talk we had just had about the uncertainty of creating a paradox.  Yet, I couldn't question Maria, both because it was against protocol and because I couldn't stand the thought of disappointing my friend, so I solemnly accepted her mission.

Now before I come right out and tell you what my mission is, I'll ask you:  what's one of the first things you think of doing to make the world a better place when time travel becomes a possibility?  If you said, "Kill Hitler," then you're right on the money.  Though really, my mission wasn't so much to kill Hitler directly as it was to make sure he died on schedule.  You see, the academy's research division had found evidence of a potential alternate timeline in which Hilter escaped and went into hiding instead of staying in Berlin where he committed suicide.  The fear was that this alternate history could lead to a small, loyal uprising that grew after the war and continued to reek havoc in Europe for years afterwards.  My job was to pop back to April of 1945 and make sure the proper suggestions were planted into Hilter's staff so that they would give him the news of imminent defeat that led him to realize that all was lost.  I had to make sure there was no hint of hope that might cause Hitler to make his "final stand" in another way.

As exciting and important as all of that seemed, it was still frustrating.  A part of me, well, really, all of me, wanted to go back to before 1945.  I wanted to just take a gun with me, shoot Hilter in the head before he rose to power, and stop the atrocities of World War 2 from ever taking place.  As much as I wanted to do that, I knew I couldn't, because I clearly hadn't.  The best I could do was make sure that Hitler was defeated and died as he was supposed to.

In the end, my mission with my parents was much more emotionally intense than this one.  I hate to say it, and you'll probably think me a monster for saying it, but World War 2 had happened so long ago that I had very little if any personal investment in it.  I know in your time, that WWII is a huge deal.  100 years in your future, it's still big, but there are lots of other horrible things to worry about, too, like the time in 2057 when we almost destroyed the whole planet.  Still, I knew enough to know Hitler was a terrible, terrible human being, and I wanted to kill him, or at least make sure he died, but it's truly surreal going back to 1945 after having just seen your parents in 2098.

Well anyway, the Hilter mission ended up being fairly anticlimactic.  I bumped into some guys on the street, used one of our devices to mess with their memories, and away I went.  It was scary because I wasn't sure what I had really done until I returned to HQ, but then there was Maria smiling at me and I knew that everything was still okay.

I tell you this story because its really a perfect example of what we do.  You might think I did nothing, that what I did made no difference.  But our historians believe that it made all the difference.  For whatever reason, we couldn't stop Hitler sooner, but we could stop him from becoming even more of a monster than he was.  It seemed like I didn't do anything, but that was the whole point.  We were the unseen protectors of the universe, ensuring that slightly vague events in history went the way they really were supposed to.  And when we did it right, no one knew we had done a thing.  No one could know.  The only people in the world who knew time travel was real were the members of their academy and in, the case of the time travelers ourselves, our immediate family members.  And if any of those family members got out of line, they would, in theory, get more than a stern talking to.

Nanowrimo 2015

Everyone's parents tell them they are special.  When we're young, it's vital that we build a strong sense of self confidence.  That self confidence and the encouragement of it was something I was never lacking as a child. My parents told me how special I was every single day.  If I was anyone else, it would have been mostly meaningless.  But it was different because I was me.  My parents weren't just telling me I was special because they were my parents and they loved me.  They were telling me I was special because I had told them I was.

Okay, maybe a little more explanation is required here.  I was born on January 27, 2098 in a small village in the European Union.  My parents were as proud as any parents could be, but their pride and joy turned to confusion and wonder and eventually back to pride during that first year of my life.

It was February 15, 2098 when my parents got a very surprising visit from a strange young woman claiming to be me from the future. At first they assumed the woman was crazy, as any danger people would, but I can be very persuasive and I eventually persuaded them to at least consider what I had to say.  You may have guessed from how I phrased that last statement that it really was me who came to visit my parents. I know because I've passed that point in my personal timeline. As I grew up, the story of my visit was just a story.  Now, it's one of my strangest memories.

When I knocked on my parents' door on that cool winter day in 2098, I was nervous.  I was about to be an active part of the stories my parents had given me growing up, the stories of how special I was and how I was destined to correct the cost course of human history. This was a critical moment on my past and now it was becoming part of my present.  What if I messed it all up?  Logically, I knew I couldn't possibly mess it up or else I wouldn't be standing there worrying about messing it up. Yet, it's hard to be fully logical when you're a time traveler. It's easy to get scared.  And this was only my third trip.