Tag: comedy

CHAPTER EIGHT

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This was the biggest day of my entire life. And not to mention my future, which would include the past as well so go figure. I was calm. A numb calm. But even though my heart was beating at a normal pace, my arms couldn’t get with the program. They were out of control with shaking and I had to keep them tucked away in the pockets of my jacket, so my mom wouldn’t see them.

She was crying. Of course. And Que was laughing at me. Probably. I’m already an awkward person when it comes to the daily goodbye, now it was a big deal goodbye and I had no idea how to act. Everything I did, I felt like I was doing it wrong and that it wasn’t appropriate for the situation. Should I cry too? No, that’s too serious. Should I joke with Que? No, that’s not serious enough.

I gave them each a hug. And when Que wrapped me in and held me hard, that got to me. And then I teared up not by choice.

 “See you in a hundred days,” I said, wiping away at my bottom eyelashes. “Or I guess I don’t know when.”

 “Eh, it’ll be instantaneous for us,” Que said, shrugging like it was no big deal.

My mother gave me another embrace. “I tried to pack thermal regulated underwear in your bag, but the security found it and confiscated it.”

“Mom, it’s fine,” I mumbled and pulled away.

Dr. Greggs came up and gave me a quick hug. I was even more surprised about this than Que. But I was touched that he cared about me enough to do it.

“I want to let you in on something special,” he said holding me by my shoulders. “All time travelers do this, so it’s only tradition that I pass this along to you. When you go into the incoming portal, make sure you’re looking at the outcoming portal. You will be able to see yourself returning from the past.”

“Is that true?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

“Do it and find out,” he said happily. That was one of the things I loved best about Dr. Greggs is that he loved the little nuances about time travel and geeked out just as much as I did.

I hugged my mother another time. Honestly, if the professionals hadn’t come to take me away, we would probably still be hugging. The little worrywart of a woman. I laughed to myself about it, until they brought me to the observing room, and I saw the technology for the first time.

There were two giant steel columns where we would go in the portal. And two giant steel columns where we would hopefully come out. Each column was at least three-stories high and had dark burn marks on the sides that faced each other. 

I had seen a lot of videos and run a few practice trials with Dr. Greggs. But seeing the soon-to-be portals in person for the first time was the most intimidating moment of my life. No joke. I mean, I thought presenting to the council was bad. Now, that seemed like a Sunday stroll through the park.

The personnel strapped a parachute to my back. Dr. Thorne was getting his strapped on, his face was looking extra tight and grouchy that fine beautiful morning.

“Alright,” Dr. Greggs said, helping the others strap me in. “Now, it’s no different than how we’ve practiced in the VR. They’ll turn on the boomerang portal and you’ll get a running start right to the input channel. Then as soon as you’re through the other side, you’ll be falling. You’ll have to deploy your parachute. The portal will dump you right over a cliffside in 1958 Liverpool.”

 Dr. Greggs grinned wildly and patted me on the shoulder. I drew in a deep breath. Talk about a dramatic entrance. They could have put the portal any discreet old place. I don’t know why hanging it a hundred feet in the air over the sea was going to help anything. I guess to keep innocent pedestrians from accidentally getting sucked into the future.

As soon as they had my parachute on, I examined the straps. “Wait, this looks authentic.”

“Yeah,” Dr. Thorne said with no emotion.

“Well, is it?” I asked my voice squeaking.

“Yeah,” he repeated

“Are you kidding? I’m not using a 170-year-old parachute!”

He looked at me with no sympathy at all. “You got the body armor, didn’t you?”

As I blinked my eyes got big. Okay, but body armor wasn’t going to keep me from drowning. Or getting tangled in some tree for the next hundred days.

They obviously weren’t going to give me a choice, so I retightened the straps and hoped for the best as I entered the sterile room. My heart was pounding in my throat as if I were about to puke it up, still beating, onto the clean floor. Was I dumb to do this? Was this a mistake? I mean, probably.

Somewhere in the anxiety, I rolled through the five hundred things that were about to go wrong with this mission. Number One: I could never come back. I mean, that one traveler that went to the middle ages didn’t. Maybe the portal malfunctioned, and we didn’t know it. Oh my Galactica, number Two: I get lost in time and space because of a portal malfunction.

 Um, Number Three: Lennon could find me repulsive and I have to shoot him. Number Four: Lennon could be fine with me, even like me a little bit and I still have to shoot him. Number fifteen: I contract some horrible old timey disease. Number forty-seven: Non-metastasized water. Number Eight Hundred and Eleven: Viruses.

Up at the window of the observation room, my mom, still crying watched me step toward the giant metal tongs where the portal would open. I tried to push those hundreds and hundreds of anxieties away, but they were choking me and dragging me back out of the room. I felt like a young child about to ride their first real rollercoaster and find themselves at the front of the line crying and not wanting to get in.

 “Markers at their place. Fifty-three degrees. Twenty minutes. Twelve-point seven seconds North. Three degrees. Eight minutes. Twenty-six point one degrees West. At zero four, zero, zero. Tuesday, May 20th, 1958.” A female robotic voice announced.

I want to get off! Let me off!

“Opening portal in t minus ten minutes.”

Okay but seriously.

“Ten… Nine…”

 No!

I took a couple of steps backwards as the countdown continued. You could hear the poles charging on either side. The wall behind them started to distort. The tiles were bending slightly, as if it were a wall of water.

 “Four… Three… Two…”

I held my breath.

“One.”

The air made a cracking sound. Which really freaked me out worse than before. I don’t know why I had always pictured a loud resonating “bwomp” or a high-pitched whir or something. But that’s not what a portal ripping into reality sounds like. It honest to Galatica sounded like an old metal ship breaking apart. A screetchy clinky kind of sound. Well, that’s the best I can describe it, I guess. Because it was completely otherworldly and jarring. The unpredictability was almost a confirmation that something was about to go horribly wrong.

The portal ripped open the air right in front of me. An immediate heat wave blew through Thorne and I, blowing my hair over my shoulder. A blinding light filled the room. It was like staring into a hole filled with molten lava.

“Opening successful. Portal stabilizing,” the female voice reported. “Prepare to enter. Stabilized in T minus 27 seconds.”

On the other side, in between those poles, a second portal began growing. There was the boomerang. The place that we would return from. The safe haven.

I could actually hear my breathing; it was so fast and heaving. I stared into this searing pit. I had honestly thought I would be able to see Liverpool through the other side. Or something. But no, there was nothing. No comfort of making it through. No promise of another side. Nothing. And I was supposed to run and jump straight into it.

I could see Thorne eyeing the portal. Beads of sweat balled on his nose. Even he was nervous. Oh, Galactica. We were going to die.

 “Portal stabilized in ten… nine…”

I grit my teeth. If something were truly wrong, Thorne would tell them to shut the program down. I was with an experienced time traveler. The first time, I might add, that I was actually grateful that they had done that for me.

I closed my eyes and tried to prepare myself. My calves twitched and tensed ready for the run.

“Five… Four…”

Run. That’s all. Run and jump. As soon as you get there, you’ll see yourself come through the other side. You’ll know it’s all going to be okay.

“Two… One.” The return portal had stopped growing.

“Go!” Thorne grunted and tore off toward the light.

I didn’t think anymore. I couldn’t. I zipped off right by Thorne’s side. My feet slapped against the floor, I panted and shoved my way through the intense heat. My eyes jumping back and forth from the entrance to the exit portal.

C’mon Emmeline. I begged the return portal. I ran harder and faster. Pushing and pushing myself and gaining speed. C’mon Emmeline. Where are you? Come back for me! Come back home!

I got to the prongs and leapt with all my heart, Thorne right by my side. As I leapt, I kept my eye on that return portal. I kept my eye watching for myself to come back through. To return safely.

As soon as my foot touched the light, I was overcome with the strangest feeling. Everything was moving in slow motion, including me. Time had slowed by 80%, and my body was still in mid jump. Thorne too was slow motion mid jump, but I couldn’t turn my head to look at him. I couldn’t move as fast as my brain was going. My consciousness was still working the same speed as it always had but my body wasn’t.

            My head was still facing the exit portal. And that’s when I saw it. Two headlights with a big thick metal grill in between. I could hear my own slow-motion exhale as a grey vintage truck began to roll out of the return portal, the big front wheels rotating in the same slow motion. The bottom of the windshield had just come into view and suddenly everything blinked to black.

I was falling. Fast. To a sand bank not too far away. I let out a low-pitched yelp and felt around for my rip cord. As soon as I had a hold of that old metal ring, I yanked it as hard as I could. The parachute deployed as rough as I had yanked, pulling me around like a loose-leaf paper

In only a few seconds I had slammed into the sand bank and my chute dragged me skidding right into the river. The water was icy cold on my shins and I couldn’t help my bellowing grunt through clenched teeth. My fists rolled tight into balls and I brought them up by my chest.

The water tinkled and lapped innocently around my legs. A chill wind stung my cheeks. I almost broke my neck looking into the dark sky, trying to find the portal we had just come through. But there was nothing but clouds, and a tall clay cliff with an empty road at the top.

Incredible. A portal to another world hung high in the air, invisible and undiscoverable.

Thorne knelt on the beach, all business, packing his parachute away into his backpack. I tried to make my way over to him, but my parachute, had sunk into the muddy river and was threatening to pull me back down. I had to sashay to get to him. The weight was too much, and I fell onto my knees. The prickling ice river soaking my stupid skirt up to my thighs. I growled and slapped the water, which didn’t make me feel any better. It only splashed more freezing water onto my face.

Thorne acted like he couldn’t care less about whether or not I made it through safely. He was still setting into action, getting things ready for whatever. I marched my way onto the beach and ripped off my parachute.

“Don’t leave that here,” he said like a scolding parent. “That’s a military parachute. Someone could find that and accidentally change history.”

I rolled my eyes and reeled in my soaking wet parachute. Water spilled out of it by the bucketful and washed all over the sand of the beach. I did not pack my parachute into my suitcase with all my dresses, no, thank you. My skirt was already soaked so I held it awkwardly by my side as the air stabbed into my freezing legs.

“Thorne,” I said coming into full process of everything that had just happened. “Something’s wrong.”

Thorne had his parachute packed neatly into his briefcase and snapped it shut. “Buses don’t run at four in the morning, so we’ll have to travel on foot until the sun comes up.”

I stared at Thorne incredulously.

“Didn’t you hear me? Something’s wrong,” I said. “When we went through the portal, I didn’t see us coming back through. I saw… a truck or something.”

Thorne stood but still didn’t respond to the crisis at hand.

“Do you think that could happen?” I asked. “Do you think that a car could accidentally fall through the portal? I know there’s a road right there.”

Thorne gave this itty-bitty glance at the cliffside and picked up his briefcase. “We need to focus on the mission at hand. We shouldn’t worry about the return.”

 He trekked off across the beach and I had to run to catch up. How could he not care? How could he not worry about being potentially stuck in 1958 forever? How could he not be worried about this mysterious truck that was blasting through the return portal? I was sick out of my mind. Practically beside myself.

I ran alongside Thorne. “How would we get back? If we jumped through the portal are we going to get run over? What would even happen jumping through with a truck in there already?”

“You don’t know what you saw,” he said. “A lot of travelers claim to see things through the return portal. You’re watching time bend it could be anything. Seeing yourself is a myth.”

My heart was still on the verge of popping. But he was experienced and unphased. And seeing a truck in the portal was so weird that it must be true what he was saying. Time must have bent funny.

I followed Thorne off the beach shaking of my unsettled feeling.

CHAPTER SIX

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Of course, Thorne would be in charge of shooting practice. I didn’t know why I hadn’t guessed that myself. And this guy was my partner on my non-killing mission. Sure. Yeah right. I could see right through this little game.

The apprentices stood at each section of their range. White virtual projections of human silhouettes all meandered about waiting to be shot up. Some walked casually, others sat and drank from a silhouetted coffee cup. The travelers each took their turns taking their shots. As each shot fired, the female voice of the simulator would announce their accuracy.

“Left ear. Twelve point five centimeters from target mark.”

Kablam!

“Miss. Thirty point three centimeters from target mark.”

Kablam!”

“Right shoulder. Fifty-eight centimeters from target mark.”

I made absolutely sure to sit at the last range on the furthest end of the arena. I sat with my white earmuffs, spinning my gun on the small table in front of me. Just the fact that they were making me do this spoke volumes to how they thought my mission was going to go. And there was Thorne, my soon-to-be partner, barking lectures at every single shooter that missed.

After each traveler had taken their abuse, it was my turn. A white, androgynous figure speaking into an old standing microphone appeared on my range.

The sharp shoulders guy that I had previously hit on, leaned over to his friend and laughed.

“There’s the time travel mail order bride,” he whispered. Well, I wouldn’t call it whisper. I would call it a breathy shout from a big, oafish mouth. I can’t believe I was ever attracted to that guy. What a misjudgment.

“Emmeline,” Thorne said. “Let’s see what you can do.”

“Yeah, let’s see it,” Broad Shoulders said and crossed his arms. His friend guffawed and stepped around to watch.

I tightened my jaw as I looked at them. Then I picked up the gun, aimed and fired, without the slightest hesitation. The bullet flew through the projection, right in the center of his head where his two eyes would meet. The white silhouette fell instantly to the ground on his back.

“Target mark,” the simulator announced.

“Just because I don’t want to, doesn’t mean I can’t,” I said before setting my gun on the table.

The class reacted in a sea of “whoa” and “ooh”. Broad Shoulders tightened his grip on his gun and turned back to his own range. His friend laughed even harder.

“Wow! Hole in one, Emmeline!”

It really wasn’t a big deal. I used to play VR carnival games with Que all the time as a kid. The one where you fill the clown’s mouth with a water gun. Anyway, I forced myself to get surprisingly good at aiming once my brother and I started betting our household chores against each other.

“Impressive,” Dr. Thorne nodded. “I’d like you to try that one more time, if you would please humor me, Emmeline.”

I shrugged. “Sure,” I said lackluster, picking up my handgun.

“Command center,” Dr. Thorne said activating the simulator’s settings system. “Range 42. Please add realistic overlay.”

Suddenly my white silhouette turned from blank canvas to a fully projected John Lennon. It was the same Lennon with the suit and the sweeping Beatles cut, only this time he was holding a guitar and singing silently into a microphone.

“Resume.” Dr. Thorne commanded me.

I blinked at this now presented John in front of me, bent at the knees and bobbling up and down. I became more aware of the gun in my hand. The cold grip of the handle. The heaviness. I aimed at my target.

The AI John was completely unaware of his soon-to-be demise. I tried to estimate the same bullet path, but his head was tilted back and bouncing to the rhythm of his guitar. My finger readied on the trigger but didn’t squeeze.

I couldn’t stop the thoughts. The horrible things I had read. His shooting outside his apartment in New York. Four shots in the back and the stumbling into the building. The bleeding out in the police squad car on the way to the hospital. The hypovolemic shock, the blood-stained granny glasses, and the millions of people all around the world sobbing over a man they had never met.

I raised my arm to wipe the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. I wasn’t a true marksman. And Thorne knew it. If I couldn’t take a shot at this realistic-looking AI version of Lennon, he had all the right in the world not to pass my training. It would probably save him a lot of time not having to waste his whole summer following me to 1958.

I had to prove how much I wanted this mission. I wanted it. I wanted time travel to change. I pulled the trigger.

Kablam! John groaned and doubled over, clutching his leg.

“Left hip. Ninety point four centimeters from target mark.”

I set my gun down so loud it clanked on the metal counter. The class didn’t laugh or react or anything, they scurried back to their own gun ranges, fleeing from the wrath of Dr. Thorne. His shadow darkened my range as he drew near.

“Ninety point four into the left hip,” he said dryly. “A miss like that is worse than not even shooting at all. Now you’ve alerted the target. Wounded him enough to know he’s in danger, but not enough of a wound to stop him from escaping.”

I took a deep breath and tried to sound like I wasn’t bothered at all. “A 1950s era revolver has a six-bullet chamber. I’m sure one of those other bullets would stop him.”

“One bullet should be enough.” He wasn’t so much yelling as just stabbing you with his attitude. Some people are like that. Attitude people. “In the field, you’ll learn that assassination requires a healthy dose of both precision and subtlety.”

Dr. Thorne stalked away to another student, leaving me staring at my gun.

***

Back in the haze of the virtual train hallway, I opened the door to AI Lennon’s cabin and stormed my way inside.

“John, can I ask you a question?”

He peered at me over his book as I sat on the seat right next to him.

“Listen, if you knew you had to die. How would you want to go?” I asked.

John lifted his eyebrows high into his forehead at the question. I ignored his classic cynical expression. And matched it with my own. No time for flirting practice, I had to worry about this mess now.

“If you had a choice… would you rather be shot and have it over right away. Or would you rather say be poisoned? Like maybe someone slipped something into your tea and you just got a little flu for a few days and then died. But it was less gory, and you could say goodbye to your loved ones and everything,” I said, staring at him intensely. “Would you prefer that?”

He smirked. “I think I’d prefer to be bludgeoned over the head for several hours. Really slow and painful like.”

“C’mon! Be serious, John!”

“Serious? How do you expect me to be serious, barging in with a question like that?” he asked with a giggle.

John slipped a bookmark into his novel and set it down. I had never had a simulation where he set that darn book down. Hmm. In fact, this was the longest I had ever held a conversation with the Lennon bot.

 “Alright then,” he said. “I’d like to pass away in me sleep at eighty years old.”

“I wish you would, John.”

Dr. Greggs appeared at the door of the train car. “Emmeline, can you meet me for a minute in my office?”

I took off my VR helmet and hung it on the wall. Then I walked across the big cold floor and out the wooshy doors.

I paid for a personal transport stall to take me all the way to the department of time travel. When I stepped into Gregg’s office his lights were dimmed again. Not great. I sat in my usual chair and scrunched my jacket sleeve in my hand. What thing would I be in trouble for next? Missing the AI Lennon so bad he needed a virtual hip replacement?

“Emmeline,” Dr. Greggs sat across from me. “In your acceptance letter, there was a list of conditions expected to meet before you could travel to the past.”

“Yes…” I said suspiciously. Oh, crap. Thorne was going to fail me. Of course, he was. I knew it. I knew he hated me right from the start.

“That list also mentioned that there could be potential body modifications required for the mission.”

This was not actually about Thorne? Whew. Well, that was a relief. I guess?

“Yes, I remember. That’s not a problem.” It wasn’t. I wasn’t a body mod purificst or anything. I already had the standard twenty to thirty that kids my age have. The IND, the teeth alignment, the nutritional balancer, the fake hair, eyesight correctional, eyelash simulator, skin regulation and all the other ones you get from the doctor before you go to public school.

“For this mission, the council requires an armor body mod.”

I actually laughed. “What? Why?”

Dr. Greggs tented his fingers across his desk. “The council requires this type of mod when the historical subject is deemed as having ‘dangerous behavior’.”

“You mean the ‘Give Peace a Chance’ guy?” I asked smirking.

Greggs didn’t return my smirk, so I wiped it off my face.

“Yeah, okay,” I said quietly.

“Did you read the notes?” he asked.

“Yeah, I read them,” I said waving my hand. “But I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal.”

“Did you read about the DJ at McCartney’s birthday party?”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That was this one little itsy, bitsy time.”

Greggs rested a fist on his cheek. “I think you know it wasn’t just one little itsy, bitsy time.”

I sighed deeply. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Dr. Greggs twisted in his seat. His IND activated and John Lennon’s deep voice filled the room.

“That’s why I’m always on about peace, you see. It’s the most violent people that go for love and peace. And I sincerely believe in love in peace. But I am absolutely a violent man who has learned not to be violent. And regrets his violence.”

The recording ended and was replaced with an awkward silence.

 I swiveled in my chair. “Well, okay, see? He regretted it.”

“Emmeline,” Dr Greggs started in a warning tone.

“Well, come on! It’s not bad enough to get an entire military grade body armor. I’m not going back to the time of the dinosaurs or something. This is bonny ol’ England in the late 1950s.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Greggs said tapping the side of his hand on his desk. “If John Lennon has recurring reports of violent behavior, that’s not something that I, as your mentor, will take lightly. If you aren’t willing to take the precaution to protect yourself an aggressive person like that, I can’t send you back.”

I huffed so heavily it blew the hair around my face. I slumped hard into my seat.

“How long is recovery from that kind of procedure?”

Dr. Greggs shrugged. “Six weeks for the armor. A day or two for the new IND.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The new IND?”

“You’ll receive a new security IND to go with the body armor,” Greggs said standing from his desk and pulling up an image on the smart wall behind him.

“What’s wrong with the one I have now?”

“Well you’ll need a camera that can run 24/7 for documentation,” he said, showing me the device that they were about to put inside me. “Not only that, but a camera that can run a constant live feed to your partner, Dr. Thorne.”

I groaned at the sound of his name. We hadn’t even stepped through the portal and this guy was already becoming a Thorne in my side. “A constant live feed with that creep? What about when I have to get dressed in the morning or something like that?”

“Well, you can always override the camera with voice command,” he said. “But if you go longer than fifteen minutes with the camera off, it will activate the tracking device.”

“What tracking device?”

“If anything were to happen to you, and the camera is off longer than it should be, your device will send a signal to your partner with your location. You’ll be able to know when your partner is actively locating you, because when his tracking software is running, your device will vibrate. That way if anything were to happen to you, you’ll know when help is on its way.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me, but I appreciate the thought.”

I didn’t appreciate it, but whatever. Obviously, they were trying to get me to quit. Scaring Greggs into giving me an extensive modification surgery and postponing the mission another six weeks. Well, I wasn’t going to quit. I was going on the mission dammit and I was not going to kill John Lennon.

CHAPTER FIVE

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Outside of a giant dome building, Greggs was waiting for me sitting at a small round table on the patio. A chair across from him was all pulled out and ready for me to sit on. He gestured to it and I complied, shielding my eyes from the sun until the sensors of the umbrella caught on and expanded for more shade.

“We’re going to be practicing today,” Greggs told me.

Okay, I nodded and then shifted my eyes. “What are we going to be practicing?”

“Lying.”

“Oh.” I dropped my hands into my lap. Ah! The gift of deceit. A talent that I did not possess in the slightest. But everyone has to start from somewhere, don’t they? I just wish that I didn’t have to start from scratch.

“Alright,” Greggs clasped his hands and faced me. “Let’s do a little role play.”

Cool. No problem. I love role play. Love it. I starred as the lead in my school’s videogram. Ten whole views. No big.

“I’ll be John’s Aunt Mimi,” he said. “And you be yourself.”

“I can do that,” I said with a little grin. “Been being myself from day one.”

“So, you saw the advert for a lodger?” Greggs asked not even changing his voice or adding in any kind of an acting oomph whatsoever.

“Yes,” I said, wiggling proudly. “I’m hoping to rent the room from you.”

“You sound American,” he said, leaning in his chair. “What are you doing here in Liverpool?”

“Oh, you know,” I said, rotating my wrist trying to think of a good lie. “I have family here. So… yeah, I came to visit my family for the summer.”

“Why don’t you stay with them if you’re visiting them?”

I stared at Greggs dumbfounded. “Uh, because their house is very moldy,” I said. “You guys have mold in 1958, right?”

Greggs gave me his iconic eye. “Your family is here in Woolton? What’s their last name?”

“Their name is …” I shifted my eyes. “Smiiiiiiiith.”

“Oh, Smith? I’m a Smith. I know all the Smiths in the area. Which ones are you related to? I’m sure John will be delighted to get to know a long-lost cousin.” He said the last little bit like a punch in the gut.

I gave him a dirty look then sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. I mean ‘The Ricardos’.”

“Do you often get Ricardos mixed up with the Smiths?” he asked with a laugh.

“Ricardo-Smith. With a hyphen. Super hermit people. You wouldn’t know them. And definitely, definitely not related to John in any way.”

“Uh-huh.” Greggs rubbed his bottom lip with the tips of his fingers probably reprimanding me in his mind.

“Well, okay,” I said, defending myself. “Like she would actually ask me those things. You’re just guessing.”

Greggs gave me a smile. “Right. Let’s do a different kind of role-play,” he said and nodded to the doors of the dome building. I grabbed my things and followed him in.

Inside was a virtual reality rink. Everything was a uniform off-white color, the floor, the ceiling. It was impossible to tell where the wall ended, and the room began. The door swooshed behind us and Greggs handed me a VR helmet.

“So what?” I asked. “Practice lying to Aunt Mimi or…”

“No,” he said, using his IND to activate the system. “The lying is only part of it. Your main mission is to woo John Lennon.”

“Yeah…”

“So, you better practice romancing him.”

“Right.”

I slipped on my VR helmet. The clean, white room blinked away, and I was in the hallway of a moving train car. A hazy smoke filled the air but still smelled as clean as the sterile VR rink. The footing underneath me swaying gently side to side and the sound from the wheels on the track were all around me. Chick-koo-Chick-koo. Chick-koo-Chick-koo.

Dr. Greggs appeared at my side and led me to the window of a passenger car. Inside, sat Lennon, with full Beatles haircut wearing a perfectly tailored black suit and a skinny tie. I raised my brow at Greggs.

“That’s not historically accurate,” I said. “This is like circa 1964 John, he’s not going to look anything like this.”

Greggs ignored my historical audit. “Go in there and talk to him.”

“It’s not accurate but okay,” I muttered under my breath and opened the door. I strode my way in, taking big confident and sexy steps as I made my way to John. I sat directly across from him on the unsupportive cushion. Lennon didn’t seem to notice as he was holding a book too close to his face. That part was probably historically accurate, but still.

I tossed my hair a little to get him to look up. He didn’t. So I flipped my hair harder and cleared my throat. He turned the page of his novel.

I know it was just a simulation, but something about his presence wanted to intimidate me right out the door. This was the lead singer of The Beatles. Thousands of girls have fainted in his presence. One had actually crawled through the sewer under Abbey Road just to hear him in the recording studio. Why did I think I could attract this guy? Why would he ever—

Greggs elbowed me in the ribs.

“Hi!” I finally blurted.

He brought those big hooded eyes up to mine, gave me a smile-less nod and returned to his book.

I looked hopelessly at Dr. Greggs, who made circles in the air with his hand, edging me to say more.

“So, how are you, twenty-four-year-old John Lennon?” I asked, again putting it out there that my unsuccess was in part due to the inaccuracy.

“Fine.”

Awkward silence apart from that loud click-clacking from the train. The muscles holding up my fake smile were burning.

“Okay, so, is that it?” I asked.

“Fine is fine. And that’s what I am,” he said without so much as flinching.

“Well, I’m just trying to have a conversation with you,” I said, keeping my stiff smile and hiding the frustration bubbling inside of me.

“Well, that was the conversation, wasn’t it?” John brought his book back to his long, hooked nose.

I blinked. “Are you seriously going to be this rude?”

“And it’s not rude to interrupt a man while he’s readin’?” he asked, throwing me that iconic scowl. “I wouldn’t get so much of a sentence read if I were polite to every weirdo who waltzed in here.”

“Oh, I’m weird? Goo goo g’joob, you son of a bitch!”

“Alright, not off to a great start,” Greggs said. The session paused itself. “Let’s try it again.”

In the blink of an eye, Lennon had reset himself. Legs crossed. Book up to the nose. But, hey, I hadn’t reset myself. My arms were tight across my chest and I had to close my eyes to keep from rolling them.

I took a deep breath in through my nose.

“Hi,” I tried again.

 Smile-less nod.

 My eyes darted around the train car as I desperately thought of something else to say. I came up with something so suddenly that a little gasp peeped out of my mouth.

“Okay, I know! Do you want to hear a joke?”

His eyes flashed up to meet mine, although his stoic expression remained.

“Why was World War I so fast?” I asked, giving him a giant opened mouthed grin. “Because they were Russian!”

Lennon stood and tucked his book under his arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read in the dining car.”

“Don’t you want to know why World War II was so slow?” I yelled after him as he left the passenger car.

 “Alright, let’s take a break.” Dr. Greggs terminated the session.

The VR powered down with a bloop. I took my helmet off, sat on the ground and scrunched my fist into my cheek. What was I going to do out there in 1958? I couldn’t just terminate my session early. That means I would be killing someone. And I didn’t want to do that, even if he was a mean old fart.

“It wasn’t even accurate,” I grumbled.
“Your problem is that you get too sensitive,” Greggs offered without my having asked him. “You can’t be emotionally involved like that.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t like the council’s position on things, because they’re too emotionally removed.”

“Yes, but you still have to be careful to protect yourself.” Greggs sat next to me on the white floor. “There are people and situations that you’re going to have to change and leave behind. You’re going to have to learn to emotionally remove yourself from that.”

I slapped my hands against my thighs. “Not sure if you noticed, Greggsy, but that’s not really my forte.”

Greggs gazed at his interlocked fingers for a quiet minute.

“One of my earlier travels, I was working with Marilyn Monroe. I also was introduced as a subject. Er, briefly, before the end. She befriended me quickly. She would tell me things about her life that I had never read about in the files. Things about her family that I could relate to, despite the 150-year age gap. I felt that we had a real connection. A deep friendship. And there were many times that I had to step back and imagine a glass wall between us,” he said, stopping to sigh. “One time, I was at a dinner party. And she dedicated and sang me a song.”

“What did you do?”

“I said, ‘wall of glass’, out loud. And I got up and left the room.”

“You just left?” I asked with a squeak.

“I kept that glass wall up even until the moment I—” His voice caught in his throat and he shook it off. “You have to go through with this mess, okay? You have to change things. Change the missions that come through that council. And to do that you’re going to have to distance yourself from this kid.”

“Glass wall.” I gave him a thumb’s up. “Be emotionally distant but also get him to propose to me. Got it.”

“You can do it,” he half-reassured me. “And you’ll know when you do. You’ll be able to feel it.”

My whole nose and forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

Dr. Greggs got this grin on his face that I had never seen before. “When the timeline splits, you can physically feel the split happen.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “What does that feel like?”

“Like your rib cage is being tugged in two different directions.”

“Yeesh.” I clutched the center of my chest. “That doesn’t sound very fun.”

Greggs laughed and hopped to his feet. “You’ll see,” he said. “If I were you, I’d brush up on my flirting though.”

His footsteps echoed through the void as he left me alone on the floor. I looked at my helmet in my hands. Flirting had never been one of my strengths. If I couldn’t flirt with the computer, how would I handle him in real life?

“Ah, man,” I whispered to myself.

***

The next day, law class ended on time despite Thorne’s insistence that it began fifteen minutes before schedule. As all the other time travel apprentices deactivated their IND’s and got ready to leave. I had my eye set on the sharp-shouldered handsome guy who usually sat kitty-corner to me.

I awkwardly timed it so that when he got up to leave, I slid from my chair and rushed at him like a linebacker.

“Hi! Hey! How’s it goin’?” I asked, in a frantic desperate kind of way.

He stopped and kind of raised a brow. He was probably used to women throwing themselves at his feet. C’mon, Emmeline, you can do this. You can catch a man. Be confident.

“Sooooo…” I went to lean my arm against the desk, but it was too low, and it made me slump like a loose paper doll. “You’re in my law class, right?”

His brow remained at full attention as he looked around the very obvious travel law classroom. Right. Derpy, derpy duh. Okay, try again.

“Sooooo…” I crossed my arms on the table, but it kind of made me lose my footing. Instead of tripping I started swaying. As if swaying were the magical end all flirting move. See how cool and relaxed I am? I don’t trip over my own feet. No. Just imagine me swaying to a sexy saxophone jazz solo.

“Anyway,” I said. “The name’s Emmeline.”

“Okay,” he said and shifted his eyes. Acting uncomfortable and disgusted by me. Oh, my Galactica. Do you think he was actually disgusted by me? Everything about his body language said get me away from this scary clown.

“So, like,” I scratched behind my ear. “Do you want to hear a joke?”

“Uh—”

Before he could say no, I crammed my joke down his throat. “Why was World War I so fast?”

“Uh, I have to go,” he said, zipping up his temperature-controlled jacket and leaving me in his rejection dust.

Just before the door of the classroom could slam shut behind him, I called out, “Where’d you learn your manners? The AI Lennon?”

At the front of the classroom, Thorne was watching me with a grim expression. I pursed my lips and scrunched my nose.

“I’m going to have to shoot John, aren’t I?” I asked him.

Thorne stuck a hand in his suit pocket and deactivated the classroom system. “Just as it is with any mission, it’s best to prepare for the worst.”

I buried my face in my arms and groaned.

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