Tempus Fugit

Tempus Fugit


Day One


This wasn’t real.

Engineering was reduced to emergency lightening, sirens wailing, and Isabelle couldn’t seem to make her legs work. She couldn’t breath. Dean was shouting. The computer’s monotone voice advised an evacuation. She squinted hard and focused on the keypad. The symbols didn’t make sense.

“Release the command functions!” Dean shouted. She couldn’t see which buttons those were.

“Damn it, Dean,” Isabelle shouted, “I’m an anthropologist, not an engineer!” More coughing. The acidic smoke slide down her throat to curdle in the bottom of her lungs. Pressing something was better than nothing, luck could be on her side. So much smoke, her eyes were itching, her throat was itching, and her lungs were on fire.

A moon faced man appeared at her side. Suddenly her head cleared of all confusion and she could only focus on his pale face. “What are the command functions?” he asked.

“You’re not suppose to be here,” Isabelle said.

An explosion rippled through the air, throwing Isabelle forward onto the console.

The world came to an end.



Isabella woke with a violent cough, voiding her lungs of the noxious gas that burned and tickled her throat. At some point, she was aware of an alarm beeping steadily. Her head rolled to the side and she saw the vivid green numerals. Late again. Reaching from the warmth of her cocoon of blankets, her hand levitated above the alarm.

She didn’t live here.

This wasn’t her bed.

Where was her husband?

Isabelle jumped out of the bed and reached for the bolter that wasn’t at her side. She wasn’t in uniform or even naked but wearing cheerful pink flannel pajamas.

The room didn’t appear to be a prison; it was furnished in with a comfortable bed and frilly pink curtains on the windows. Through the window was the pale moon of the early morning. Anxiety tightened her chest. She turned away from the window and inspected the room. Recognition clicked slowly in her groggy mind.

This was her room at her parents’ house.

Isabelle sat at the vanity dresser, cluttered with nail polish and eye shadows and jewelry. The whole room was cluttered with girlish artifacts left behind by a teenage beast. She grinned at her reflection: long and curly hair, braces.

The lingering oppression of baby power made her sneeze. This wasn’t right. Her head hurt. Oh God. She was eighteen.

Isabelle crept quietly into the kitchen. A used pan was soaking in the sink. The air was heavy with the aroma of cooked eggs. Isabelle didn’t know she missed her mother’s cooking until that moment.

Mom was sitting with an empty plate in front of her. Dad was complaining about board meeting and waving his fork, splattering syrup on the tablecloth. Dad took his eggs with syrup.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Mom said.

Isabelle sat at the table in front of the plate of unclaimed eggs. She reached for the syrup. This wasn’t real. She was Dr. Farrar, Senior Anthropologist on board the Magellan. Her parents were very proud, retired, and living in a condo on the beach. Isabelle had a good career and a great husband who cooked and a hamster that needed to be feed. Who was going to feed Greg?

“You’re quiet this morning,” Mom said, ever so perceptively.

“What year is this?”

Dad stopped waving his fork and looked at Isabelle. “If that’s some of wise crack to bully us into getting a processor, you’re beating a dead horse. No contraption is going to vaporize food for this house.”

“Dad,” Isabelle started in a whine, “a Processor constructions food out of matter. It can make anything from raw vegetables to...” Her voice trailed off. That wasn’t what she wanted to say; her words came out scripted, because that’s what she said when she was eighteen and campaigning to get the Farrar household out of the technological stone age.

Dazed, running on autopilot, Isabelle went to school. There she learned the date and realized she was in the middle of exams but a mere two days from graduation. Hip hip hooray.

Between periods she forced her way down the halls, books held tight to her chest. She didn’t have much left of a world she recognized and held on to the books with the tenacity of a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. Someone grabbed her elbow and jerked her around.

Dean. Thank God. He was eighteen, also, but everyone was eighteen that day. Isabelle, so relieved to recognize a familiar face, dropped her books and kissed her husband passionately.

A hush fell in the hallway.

This wasn’t right. He wasn’t responding. She pulled away.

Someone laughed and the crowd burst into lewd cheers. Haven’t they seen a public display of affection before? Yes, but not between a nerd and the football jock. It was major class upheaval, the peasants kissing royalty, revolution in the streets, chaos.

“I need to talk to you,” Dean said, before someone in a letter jacket put their arm on his shoulder and pulled him away.

Mary walked up to Isabelle. Today was a day of miracles, Mary whole and well, resurrected from the murky depths of time.

“Mary!” Isabelle shouted, hugging her friend. “How are you!”

She struggled to escape Isabelle’s grasp. “I’m fine but clearly you are not. What were you thinking?”

Isabelle watched Dean drift away. She wavered, torn between rescuing her books or running away. “He looked like someone I knew.”

A boy with a wide face, pale as the moon, walked by, watching her. Isabelle suddenly felt as if she were underwater. Cold dread curled in her stomach.

“Peter creeps me out,” Mary said.

“Me, too. Study tonight?”

“Have to work.” Mary worked at the Dairy Dine.

“Wait,” Isabelle said, grabbing Mary’s elbow before she drifted away again. “Stay out of libraries.”

“Why?”

Isabelle didn’t know. It was so hard to think about the future, her mind and body moving sluggishly. She said, “Just a bad feeling I have. Swear?”

Mary smirked in the manner of someone humoring irrational demands. “I swear, no libraries.”

The friend reunited after so many years parted again. Isabelle hugged Mary one more time.

Isabelle received a standing ovation as she walked into the art room. Students stood on chairs, clapping and whistling. Someone threw confetti. Caught in the doorway, Isabelle looked directly at Liam. He sat on the table furthest in the back, also resurrected from the murky depths of time on the day of miracles. A sketchpad balanced on his lap and he stared at her with eyes of unusual clarity. A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips.

A ruler rapped against the black board. Mrs. Nova, the art teacher, frowned and said, “Still lives won’t draw themselves. These must be finished by the end of the class to receive a passing grade.”

Isabelle pulled out her still life and set up shop next to Liam. A box of pastels sat between them. Hands brushed, reaching for the stick of indigo. Say something. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.” Brilliant. Twenty years regret and all she can manage is sharing the pastels. It’d be better advice to say pay attention to fire drills, brush your teeth twice a day and beware mad men with guns.

Liam leaned over and put his mouth next to her ear. An electric thrill went down her spine. “What were you thinking?”

“Stress. Couldn’t think of anything else to do,” she said honestly.

“Stress made you grab and kiss the captain of the football team in the middle of the hall. Out of the blue. Like some crazed woman.”

Isabelle smiled. “Yes, sex crazed. I’m seeking treatment. It’s not funny, I have a serious problem.”

“There were lots of other things you could have done.”

“I could have kissed you.”

Liam smiled and returned his attention to drawing.

Outside of making a spectacle of herself and the resurrection on Liam, school was a dull barrage of final exams. Isabelle drifted through her classes, not even attempting to answer the questions, doodling on the exams. Her doodles were more than non-motivation to achieve stellar grades a second time but a serious contemplation of her situation.

By the end of the day, she did not have a scientifically sound reason for her time travel but did come to the conclusion that if she had relieve the next twenty years, she was not doing research again on a malaria-infested island, eating bananas, and digging around for traditional tribal life. No such thing existed anymore, as her professors should have told her. Everywhere was wired. The world was now a very small place since Earth entered the space age.

Liam was waiting at her locker. “So I thought I’d come around about six. Maybe we could swap Chemistry notes and grab a burger?” Swapping notes really meant letting Liam copy.

“Burgers and academic misconduct sounds fine,” Isabelle said.

Walking to her house, a dark green car pulled alongside her. The engine rumbled and the window rolled down. Dean said, “Get in.”

They drove in silence. Isabelle said, “Where are you taking me?”

“Not sure yet. Maybe the Dairy Dine. Maybe a secluded dirt road in the country. Maybe the Interstellar Authority.”

He pulled over to the side of the road and cut the engine. Dean reached across the seat and cupped the side of her face with one large hand. Isabelle warmed to the touch of familiarity. “Is it really you?” he asked.

“It’s hard to tell today.”

“You walked by and something clicked and I just reached for you. I didn’t know until you kissed me. What happened to us? Where’s the Magellan?”

Isabelle sighed. She wasn’t crazy. “I’ve been walking around like a zombie and I keep thinking, I’m on the Magellan, where’s the ship, but I keep slipping into this.” She waved her hands abstractly, gesturing to the current location and the situation as a whole.

“I can’t remember anything.”

“We were in Engineering,” she said.

“Why were you in Engineering? You’re a bloody anthropologist.”

“I know. It’s confusing. You were shouting orders I didn’t understand and then, bang, here we are.”

“Time travel?”

“Looks it.” Despite a lack of a sound scientific explanation.

“Maybe the time cops will find us and bring us back.”

Something wasn’t settling right in her stomach. “This isn’t real. At least, not proper time travel. Wouldn’t we still be thirty-eight, walking around, seeing your eighteen year old counterparts, like in the holos.”

Dean’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Not necessarily…”

“But,” Isabelle prompted when Dean’s voice trailed off.

“But how do we know for sure? Time travel isn’t even possible according to the Science Counsel.”

“But yet Time Cops are running around.” Her voice was bitter.

“That’s a rumor, like the men in black. Urban myths and what nots.”

“Still, feels like time travel to me.”

“No, this is something else. We’re inhabiting the bodies of our younger selves.”

“And the young us is fighting to regain control,” Isabelle added, not sure why that was true until she said it. “I keep doing things I did twenty years ago, like those are my lines and I can’t deviate from the script.”

“I didn’t even notice the script until you slapped my face.”

“I kissed you. A kiss is not a slap.”

“Same effect.”

“Maybe this isn’t, you know, time travel. Could be a simulation.”

Dean looked around the car. “Computer, end simulation.” Nothing, still a car.

“Computer, end program.”

More nothing.

“Computer, reveal control panels.”

This was boring.

“Are you done,” Isabelle asked. “I’ve got a dinner date tonight.”

“You got a date?” Dean sounded surprised. “Isn’t that like adultery?”

“We’re not married yet.”

“Oh yes we are,” he insisted, voice adament. The engine started again and the car pulled back onto the road. “You’re my wife.”

“We’re eighteen. I’m nobody’s wife.”

“Didn’t we just establish that we’re only pretending to be eighteen?”

“We did? Because I understand that we’re possessing the bodies of our younger selves and walking around saying the things we said the first time around. Sounds like we’re eighteen again.”

Dean placed his hand on her knee. Odd. He looked so young, the flesh of his hands pudgy, like a puppy. This was not the man she married. This was the man she despised through high school, through the Academy, and really detested during special training. It was funny.

Isabelle and Dean entered the Academy in the same year. Alphabetically, their surnames guaranteed that they were always side-by-side in every class: Farrar and Fairweather. Isabelle was not thrilled. Their mutual dislike guaranteed that they wer e always assigned together. It was only a matter of time before they stopped detesting each other and married.

“My honor is safe,” Isabelle said. “And my marriage vows are as sacred right now as they will be in the future.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek, modestly.

Isabelle ruffled his hair. It was so thick and dark. He was a handsome boy. “This is my house. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Let’s met at your locker before the bell rings.”

“No make out sessions behind the bleachers?”

He growled. “I can be persuaded…”


Liam was late. He was always late. Isabelle knew from experience that he would not saunter over until seven. The first time around she was upset, looking out the window, wondering if he would come at all. Being lovesick was a hard business.

This time around Isabelle used her time effectively and made a list of possibilities.

1. We did travel back in time.

2. How? According to the Science Counsel, time travel is not possible.

3. There was an accident in Engineering, how does that relate?

4. If this is time travel, who arranged it?

5. Is someone watching me?

6. This could be a computer simulation. A very rich, complex program.

7. Am I being brainwashed?

8. If I was captured and being “tortured” in a simulation to gain top-secret information, wouldn’t a bad guy have turned up by now?

9. Would I know if I was in a simulation?

10. Thought I might as well make it an even ten.

Simulation. That was funny. Isabelle broke programs all the time. Simulations existed in what was archaically known as “cyberspace” or “virtual reality”. The program was piped into her cerebral cortex. The experience was real and convincing according to her senses.

That was how she graduated from the Academy: a simulated raid on the tribe she was assigned to research. It was terrible. Blood. Screams. Dead little simulated children, all projections from the computer’s database into her mind. Everyone died. There was no way to prevent the mass genocide. It was the inevitable ending.

Every Cadet went through a similar simulation, one that ended with mass destruction and their failure to command. How they took the failure, the paths they chose when they realized there was no way out, that was the real test.

Isabelle refused to believe everyone had to die. At the end of the original simulation, as she’s standing in a field, muddy from blood, up to her knees in corpses, she reset the simulation. At first, it was an accident. Shouting out curses and mad phrases at the computer, she stumbled on the command codes.

Isabelle broke the program.

The scientists later explained it away as being a mathematical probability, one in six hundred thousand, that Isabelle’s brainwaves, when jacked into a simulation, created a field of disturbance that fluctuated with her brain activity. Tiny anomalies occurred when she was in the neither regions of cyberspace, small and unpredictable. With heightened emotions and enough stress, she warped programs and broke them to her will.

If the anomalies were more predictable, she’d be a spy or a code breaker. What she could do was from raw force and involved no skill; it was the equivalent of taking a sledgehammer and pounding the daylights out of a computer. No skill and no control whatsoever.

As it was, she was a very, very angry anthropologist covered in mud and blood.

By the fifth run, Isabelle’s tribe was fully armed and the invaders met a little more resistance than they were programmed to expect.

When she woke from the simulation, the room was filled with commanding officers and professors. No one had broken the program before. They weren’t sure if she cheated or achieved the first perfect score.

If her small time travel problem were a simulation, there would be signs, glitches and anomalies. If there were glitches, she could figure out the access codes. Every program had them, they had to. A turn of phrase, a combination of words, a command, or anti-command, something. Isabelle just had to pay attention to find the glitches and the clues to break the program.

The front bell rang. Liam. Prompt as always.

The scent of cigarette smoke clung in wisps to his jacket. Isabelle placed it in the hall closet, where all the other jackets and coats could gather the scent of Liam’s cigarettes.

“I forgot my books, so I had to go back home and then my mom decided I should do the dishes before going out.”

Isabelle said, “I don’t want to do homework.”

“We have an exam tomorrow.”

No, they didn’t. She said, “Not in the mood.”

Liam looked surprised. Isabelle never took her grades lightly. “Big scary exam, graduation depends on it.”

Isabelle took the book bag away from Liam and tossed it in the closet. She knew what would happen tomorrow. They wouldn’t have the opportunity to take the chemistry exam.

She said, “You’re just going to copy off of me, anyway. Let’s do something fun.”

“We could…”

“Roller-skating?”

“No.”

“Miniature golf?”

“Not tonight.”

She smiled wickedly. “You could always toss me down on a bed of wildflowers and ravage my sweet young self.” Where did that come from? Isabelle would never have had said such words but time was pressing against her back. There was so little between them.

“I was promised burgers and academic misconduct,” he said, reaching back into the closet and grabbing the bag.

“Fine, be a spoil sport.”



Day Two


The moon hung palely in the morning sky as Isabelle walked to school. She craned her head back to look. The dark spot sprawling on the surface was the ever-expanding Moon Station.

Isabelle’s first assignment out of the Academy was on the gigantic Moon Station. It wasn’t far from home but it gave her a good opportunity to observe alien cultures first hand. She had never actually seen an alien before. Earth was under quarantine. No aliens. Xenophobic but it prevented the plague from reaching Earth when the populations of other stations were decimated.

The plague was fifty years ago but loomed closely overhead, as close as the moon, and even closer when she was child. Humanity’s first venture into the wild blue yonder of space and a horrible virus empties colonies and space stations. Typical. Ghost ships, emptied by plague but guided by the computer, docked into stations for a decade after the Plague Year.

The walk to school was like walking through water: slow motion, everything had less weight, mossy relics, and the people seemed to float by, dead and drifting.

Isabelle saw Peter standing in front of the cafeteria, eating a jelly donut. She turned her head to watch him as she walked by. His cold eyes watched her. A bit of red jelly dribbled on his chin, marring the white expanse of his pale moon face.

Peter said, “I’d take an early lunch if I were you.” Yeah, Peter would say something like that.

Dean was waiting at Isabelle’s locker.

Dean held her eyes for a long moment, a look of concern, before twisting his mouth into that lopsided grin she loved. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“About football or who to take to the after graduation parties?”

He tugged on her ponytail affectionately. “No, about this. Maybe the laws of the universe will not collapse on us if we do something.”

“Finally, that’s what I’m talking about. What are you talking about?”

“Surely there won’t be a paradox if we give everyone a few minutes head start.”

“How about we hog tie the gunman and leave him in maintenance closet? Then every one is saved.”

“No, that would create a paradox.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. It was hard to believe the world was going to end in three hours. “You know, considering that time travel is not even possible, you’re awfully concerned about paradox and the universe collapsing.”

“Just trying to insure the future. I happen to like my future.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Shall I pull the fire alarm or you?”

“You, since you’re willing to risk the structure of the universe.”

“Meet me on the lawn.” He kissed her quickly, lips scorching her mouth.

At 11:05 a.m. a fire alarm pierced the quiet activity of the school. Students shuffled vaguely into the halls, treating the alarm as they would any other fire drill, and left the building but not nearly fast enough.

A voice, loud and clear called above the crowd. “Hurry up, people. There’s no time!”

Isabelle was waiting for Dean on the wide green lawn in front of the school when he emerged from the building.

The fire alarm clanged loudly outside the school. Students left the building, walking aimlessly across the wide green lawn. So many more were here this time around than before. Before, so many had died the numbers were more scandalous than the actual bombing.

Isabelle squeezed Dean’s hand, waiting for Liam and Mary to exit the building.

They had more time to get out. They could avoid the library and leave safely. Why wasn’t he out yet? Where was Mary? She was told to avoid the library. This wasn’t much more time.

“I have to find them,” Isabelle said.

“This isn’t real,” Dean said calmly, hands on Isabelle’s shoulders. She struggled for a moment to shake him off, to elude him. If she could run, she was much faster than Dean.
He’d never catch her.

“You keep saying that, but what if it is?”

“It’s not. Liam’s not going to die.” His grip tightened. Isabelle couldn’t look him in the eye. “That’s who you care about, isn’t it? Not Mary, she’s like an unfortunate casualty.”

“I want to save them both.”

“No, you’re really just worried about Liam. That’s who you’ve been talking about since we got back.”

“I have not mentioned his name once! You keep talking about him.” Isabelle bit her tongue before she could add a barb about jealousy.

Dean’s face was inexpressive. He repeated, “Liam’s not going to die.”

“This one is.”

“It’s not the real Liam.”

“So if it’s not real, why can’t I? What difference will it make in the scheme of the cosmos?”

“Isa, even if you could, what makes you think paradox will not compensate for Liam’s death? It’s destined. Paradox will find a way.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. If paradox won’t allow events to be altered, then why are we here? Paradox wouldn’t allow a ripple or tear to occur.”

“So it’s not even possible for us to be here?”

Isabelle looked around, examining the color of the sky. Pale azure, washed out near the horizon, nearly white in places. The color of the sky had not changed once while they were here. She thought she saw the sky waiver.

“Computer, stop simulation,” she said, focusing her anger like a sledgehammer to a delicate silicone chip.

Nothing.

“It was worth a try,” she added. “Happened once before.”

“Computer, do not stop simulation,” Dean said.

The world kept on keeping on.

“That happened once before, too,” he said.

“So now do you think this is real?”

Dean shook his head. “No. It must be a simulation of some kind.”

Simulations could be changed.

Dean said, “You can’t go in. This might be a simulation but if you die in there, it will be real.”

That much was true.

Isabelle looked down at the ground and began to cry. Twenty years ago, young Isabelle thought this was a fire drill. She stood out on the lawn; arms wrapped around her body, chilled despite the beautiful May weather. Just a fire drill. Liam never came out for fire drills. He doggedly continued to work through the deafening alarms.

A rumor began to ripple through the crowd of students. Someone with a gun was shooting people as they left the building. Another gunman was holding a group hostage inside the school, in the library. Mary and Liam were studying in the library.

Isabelle remembered powerfully her helplessness as the explosions started. Windows blew out. Glass flew across the lawn. Students screamed and ran as far as they could.

Then the fire started. A roar of think black smoke poured out of the building.

The fire department arrived, as did the police and the media.

Unbelievably, the roof of the building collapsed. The structure just folded like a wet cardboard box, unable to support it’s own weight.

Liam never left the building, despite her praying and walking through the crowd, searching for his face. Mary and Liam vanished into a clear spring morning.

Why was she reliving this day? Certainly not to bear witness to the great disaster again.

Liam was dying and she couldn’t save him. Not then. Twenty years later and she was again watching the nightmare events unfold. Rumors of gunmen raced through the crowd.

“How many friends did you loose that day?” Isabelle asked.

“None,” Dead said.

A hand stroked her hair and another tilted her chin up. Dean kissed her gently where tears fell. “It’s not real, not this time,” he murmured.

“It’s too horrible not to be real,” Isabelle said.

Dean sighed and looked as if he was about to speak words of comfort.

A swift punch to the gut dropped Dean to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Isabelle ran, moving across the grass as quickly as possible. Her shoes slide on the wet blades but she found her way back into the building.

Where were the bombs? Memory was panicked and rushed. One bomb in the gym. One in the main office. Two were in the kitchen. She remembered the news broadcasts with the computer generated animations and schematics. Experts agreed the bombs in the kitchen caused a gas leak, which caused the massive fire.

The gunmen were in the building. There was no fire, yet.

Liam was in the library, looking down the barrel of a gun.

The ground shock, the air ripped in half. Isabelle was thrown to her knees.

The first explosion was in the gym, taking out the coach and the thirty students who were playing basketball.

A thin layer of smoke appeared, hovering near the ceiling. Five minutes before the kitchen went. Five minutes.

Isabelle ran down the hall and around the corner, towards the library. There were two doors. The gunman was nearest the east door. She ran for the west. The margin of error was greater for distance shots.

She reduced her pace to a walk as she approached the door. No one knew what happened in the library. There where no survivors. Two students were shot and the rest where buried under the collapsed roof.

Isabelle placed her ear against the door, listening.

Muffled voices, but that was all. The alarms were still going off, it was so hard to think with the clanging, ear rattling noise.

A loud shot from inside the room made her jump. She bit down on her hand to avoid screaming. She couldn’t save everyone that day. Maybe she could save one more person.

Isabelle opened the door, casually as if she didn’t know the school was on fire or there was a crazed gunman killing people in the library. Ignorance is virtue.

“You!”

She raised her hands slowly. She scanned the situation as best as she could, without moving her head. Liam and Mary were sitting at a round table. Cindy was on the floor, bleeding. The side of her head was missing.

Peter waved the gun at her. His pale moon face was red and angry, a bloody harvest moon. “I told you to leave the building.”

“I was looking for something I lost.”

Isabelle felt the red-hot eye of the laser-guided sight on her chest. The gun was an antique model, large and used for hunting, but still deadly.

She held up her hands in surrender. Peter waved for her to join Liam and Mary at the round table.

Sitting down slowly, her knee brushed Liam’s leg. He was so warm, still alive.

“I told you to stay out of the library,” Isabelle said.

“I didn’t know you meant this one,” Mary replied. Fear made her voice high pitched and sharp.

“No talking!” Peter shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Isabelle said to her friend.

“I mean it,” he said.

Isabelle took a deep breath. “Peter, why are you doing this?”

Peter stepped closer, waving the gun as his right of authority. “I told you to leave. I let you live.”

Isabelle was calm. “You are in control here, Peter,” she said. “I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“I don’t have anything to say a big explosion can’t do better.” He giggled, eyes squinted closed. Isabelle saw her opportunity, launched herself from the chair and kicked the gun out of Peter’s hand. The gun sailed across the floor.

Acting fast, she spun around and delivered another solid kick to his chest. Peter was thrown to the floor from the impact.

Isabelle dashed for the gun, sliding the last few feet. Carpet burned through her jeans against her knees. She fumbled with the trigger, not use to such old mechanics.

A solid blow hit her in the back. She fell forward, dropping the gun, and her chin hitting the floor. Her teeth hurt and the impact rattled in her sinuses.

“Now you just made me mad,” Peter said.

When Isabelle sat up, rubbing her chin, Peter had the gun on Liam.

“What are the command codes for the Magellan!” The barrel of the gun was pressed to the side of Liam’s head, gunmetal gray disturbing the gold of his hair.

“What?” Isabelle asked.

“I’m tired of asking nicely.”

“I don’t know.”

Peter turned quickly, pulled the trigger, the antique weapon fired loudly, and Mary fell to the floor.

“Do you want your boyfriend to die!”

Isabelle could not take her eyes off the bright patch of scarlet spreading on the carpet. Mary was gone again, back to the void of time.

Hot tears trickled down her cheeks. Isabelle fruitlessly tried to pace her breathing and said, “No one else has to die today, Peter.”

“You’re wrong.”

The shot was loud, echoing in her head for a long moment after it fired. The sound seemed to not be connected to events at occurred.

Liam fell to the floor in a slump.

Isabelle stood frozen for a moment, before the connection between the loud shot and Liam’s fall caught up with her.

Isabelle rushed to Liam’s fallen form; he was already cold and dead. Too many people were gone: her best friend and the boy she loved. “No!” she shouted. “This is not the way it happened!”

The oddest thing occurred. The world flexed, bent out in the middle, stretched along the edges, and snapped back into place.

Peter fell to the ground, head landing on Isabelle’s shoes. She screamed and kicked him away. His weight was heavy and did not respond to her frantic kicks. Isabelle dropped Liam and scooted away, crying frantically, mewing like a helpless kitten.

A warm hand squeezed her shoulder.

Dean was next to her.

He said, “We have to get out now.”

She sniffled and blinked her eyes, trying to clear her vision. “I can’t leave Liam.”

“He’s already dead. You couldn’t save him this time.”

She nodded and held out a hand for Dean to grab and help her up. “How long before the fire?”

“Sixty five seconds.”

Isabelle and Dean ran to the nearest exit. As they hit the door, the final bomb exploded in the kitchen and fire roared down the hallways of the school.

Security grabbed them roughly by the arms and pulled them away, dragged them back across the field and to a large white van. They were told to stay put for questioning.

Isabelle said, “This is a simulation.”

“How’d you break this program?”

“My usual blunt force. It flexed when I screamed this wasn’t the way it happened.”

Dean chewed his lower lip. “Does that mean I’m part of the simulation to, or am I still me?”

“I think you’re real,” Isabelle concluded. “I mean, you’re the you I know, not the high school kid you, so you’re real. I think.”

“Sorry,” Dean said. He kissed her cheek lightly.

Isabelle closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I just thought…I mean, what’s the point of time travel if you can’t fix the mistakes.”

“This wasn’t your mistake.”

“I could have saved my friends.”

“No, you could have been killed with them.”

A few more tears escape but Isabelle did not have the energy to sob. Her throat was raw and her breath shallow. Silent tears fell.

“I think,” she said that length, “that we need to end this. Peter wanted to know security codes.”

“So someone’s been trying to pump us for information.”

She nodded. “The entire time we’ve been under, someone’s been riffling through the unused portions of our minds or prompting me in the simulation. My locker combination was my password, for crying out loud.”

“Really? And you didn’t catch on sooner?”

“I’m an anthropologist, not security. I just typed in the numbers naturally, without thinking.”

“Okay, ready when you are,” Dean said, squeezing her hand to the point she thought bones might break.

“This is not the way it happened,” Isabelle said.

The interior of the van began to shimmer, the program responding to her words, wanting to correct itself.

“Dean and I were not detained by security. This must be corrected.”

The van vanished. They were back on the green lawn in front of the school, surrounded by students, watching the school erupt into flames. She knew how the program worked. It was subtle. It responded to the voice of the subject, listening for little mistakes, wanting to anticipate, wanting to correct. The program probably read the activity of her brain waves, looking for when she was thinking about little mistakes.

She said, “This is not the way it happened, computer. You cannot correct this problem. The program is a failure. The program is over.”

The world shattered, fell away in a bright light similar to the light that brought Dean and Isabelle into this simulated world.

The light subsided.



Isabelle sat upright, gasping for breath. Her hands clutched the sides of a tank. A thin gel coated her body. A tube, a breathing apparatus, snaked its way down her throat. She struggled to breathe around the tube, gagging and pulling it from her body.

A pale and luminous light hung overhead like the moon. Isabelle heard voices speaking in a language she did not know.