PREVIOUSLY: Carrie/Elizabeth forked the timeline. This allows her to become a Temporal God in the timeline she created.

PART 96b: RESOLUTION

Chartreuse counted to ten before following Frank and Beth around to the front of the library. She watched as the time trippers piled into the time car and, after Frank grabbed the briefcase from the trunk, finally pulled away from the building.

She then ducked down as the gunman who had fired in their direction ran down the front steps of the library, waving his weapon. The guy managed to prevent a vehicle that had been pulling out of the parking lot from leaving. It was as the guy climbed into the passenger seat, pointing his gun at the driver, that Chartreuse knelt down in the snow, to open the trombone case she was carrying.

She pulled out the temporal gun. Along with one other item.

As the gunman’s hijacked car drove out onto the road, there was a flash of light. The driver swerved to avoid hitting the glasses-wearing teenager who had appeared. The car hit a patch of ice and spun out, slamming into a nearby telephone pole. The passenger door was wedged shut in the impact; for the moment, there was nothing to worry about there.

Chartreuse attached her item onto the recharge port of the gun. She then moved to get herself a good bracing position at the bottom of the staircase, kneeling down, pressing the bottom of her boot back into the concrete pillar. She knew the kickback from the gun would be a problem.

A second blond man ran out of the library, followed closely by Lee and Luci. The guy dashed down the stairs, and got about three steps further before being clocked in the head by the dictionary Lee had thrown. Their adversary went face first into a snowbank. Not that far away from him, another familiar person appeared from out of nowhere.

“Tim?” Luci gasped. She took the stairs down two at a time, pausing at the bottom. “Chartreuse? What are you doing?”

“Preparing,” she muttered back. She took aim across the parking lot.

Luci blinked. “When did you end up with the temporal gun? And why is the safety off?”

Luci reached down for it, and Chartreuse slapped her hand away.

“Chartreuse!” Luci said. “You’re being reckless - and what do you have on the recharge port?”

“A battery.”

Luci’s eyes widened. “WHAT? You CANNOT be thinking of charging that thing while you’re firing. That’s INSANE.”

“So is she,” Chartreuse whispered.

A short distance away, Laurie appeared.

Luci now reached down with both hands, and so Chartreuse shoved her friend back, out of the way. Luci fell into the snow. “Luci, I’ll, you know, explain later, there’s no time now!”

“Why not? Chartreuse, what is going on?”

Chartreuse looked back at the asian girl, and then at Lee, who was helping her stand back up. In that instant, Chartreuse wondered, what if she died here, and never got to explain?

“Okay, fast version? The day after we, like, talked to Mr. Waterson, I had a vision of today. Looking into it more led me to this experience ten minutes ago, where I used a set of paired relaxation crystals to tell our Carrie to, you know, nudge Mindy’s time car. And now I know that in, like, a few seconds, I’ll have my only chance at saving her.”

Chartreuse looked back across the parking lot. Which was when the blonde teenager appeared, her maniacal laughter echoing eerily around the whole area, her feet starting to lift off the ground as temporal energy sparked all around her, originating at her fingertips.

Chartreuse fired.

Energy lanced out of the gun.

The cackling blonde girl absorbed it. At first.

Chartreuse never moved her finger off the trigger. Even as her own body was driven back into the concrete post behind her, she continued the sustained burst. Tears sprang to her eyes as she felt an ankle give out with a snap, but she kept the gun up and on target. The battery on the port chirped… and the energy blast continued. Across the parking lot, Carrie stopped laughing.

“Chartreuse, stop!” Luci shrieked.

“I’m not losing her again,” Chartreuse cried. “Carrie! Carrie, I love you! CARRIE, COME BACK TO ME!”

“Chartreuse, the gun’s overloading!” Luci reached out again, only to have Lee pull her back, twisting his body around and using it as a shield.

The temporal gun exploded in Chartreuse’s hands.

But not before Carrie’s head had snapped back, her body falling into the snow as the golden light in her eyes faded away.

Carrie listened to the voices around her for a minute or two. From the sound of things, she was again in a hospital. And… geez, had the entire temporal group come to pay her a visit? She cracked open an eyelid.

“Carrie’s awake now,” Luci said immediately.

Opening her other eye, Carrie was able to make out… well, Luci, Frank, Clarke, Julie, Corry, Laurie, Tim, Lee, and even her own father. But not… “Char-treuse?” Carrie croaked out, through dry lips.

Laurie clasped her hands together. “Carrie immediately wants her girlfriend. The one who saved her soul. Oh my God, all the squee!”

The people closest to the head of the bed moved away, and as Lee did so, he made an elaborate gesture towards the next bed over. Carrie followed his motion, where she saw…

“Hi Carrie,” Chartreuse chirped. “I’d, you know, give a thumbs up, except…" She held up her arm, which had been completely wrapped up in bandages.

“She’ll be fine,” Clarke broke in, as Carrie found herself unable to avoid looking horrified. “Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, in fact we originally came here to see Chartreuse,” Corry remarked, crossing his arms. “We didn’t know when you’d wake up. So don’t get a swelled head, Waterson.”

“Speak for yourself,” the older Waterson objected.

Carrie licked her lips, her gaze shifting over to her father. “Dad. Gods, I’m sorry, I never meant to leave you alone in the present for so lon– geuh, I… I mean…"

“He knows about the power,” Frank reminded Carrie. “There was this whole thing where you had a double named Beth wandering through the school last month? So we kind of had to fill him in?”

“Oh. Right.” Carrie brought her hand to her forehead. Last month? “What day IS it?”

“January second,” Tim supplied. “H-Happy new year.”

“I really hope having no coins means we’ll get a few months before we see more time travellers,” Julie observed.

Carrie exhaled. “Yeah, there… there won’t be any more of that happening. Not now. We’re on a parallel time track now.”

The people around her bed exchanged glances. “Carrie,” Frank began. “Based on the temporal theory that a Future Luci explained to me, it’s highly unlikely that multiple time tracks–"

“TRUST me,” Carrie interrupted. “Our Luci’s path itself could be different going forwards. We can talk theory later, but for now, even if anyone from the revised future does try to rewrite us? Believe me when I say I know how to divert them out of our timeline.”

“In a SAFE way, yes?” Chartreuse piped up. “Because I don’t want a rerun. Even setting aside the, you know, temporal gun blowing up on me, I had to stick close to Beth last month in order to get a read on her majorly displaced temporal energy. That way I could, like, use it, in order to forecast my way further into the future than I ever have before. And that sort of ‘vision plus’? Featuring Insane Carrie clarifying the library events I’d seen? Not my, you know, happiest place.”

“I’ll find a safe way of dealing with time travellers,” Carrie assured. She checked herself. “Actually Chartreuse, we both will. Together.”

Chartreuse beamed.

Carrie’s gaze shifted back to her father. “Thing is, in this timeline, I can’t bring Mom back. I’m sorry. If it means anything, she was alive, in the future of another timeline… maybe that’s why some part of you felt like Mom never died?”

Hank Waterson flinched. “Oh. Well. Was she happy there?”

“I… I don’t know. Damn it, I didn’t even check.” Carrie’s head hit her pillow. “I’m sorry. I should have. Hell, maybe I could have even brought her too, I had all that power, it’s just I didn’t even think, I was so focussed on the separation. Dad, I’m so sorry…"

His hand reached out to squeeze hers. “It’s okay, honey. Let’s assume she was happy, and focus on the present. Because Carrie, you’re what’s important to me right now.”

She squeezed his hand back, and found that she was able to meet his hopeful look with a smile.

Lee cleared his throat. “Uh, hate to interrupt a moment, but we already DO have two other time travel guys? Arrested at the library?” He jerked his thumb towards the window. “Do we worry about them?”

Carrie frowned. “No, I wouldn’t. If they were trying to disrupt the awakening of my full potential, it didn’t work.”

“I’ve filed a police report there anyway,” Mr. Waterson added. “Along with what happened at the library, they’re being charged with the attempted kidnapping of my daughter. Never mind that it was technically that Beth girl at the time.”

“So, like Shady, they’re going to end up in the justice system,” Luci mused.

“S-So what’s next for us then?” Tim wondered. “Anything?”

“No,” Carrie groaned. “I pass on doing ANYTHING for the next while. Well, aside from schoolwork, which I guess I’m massively behind on, since my leaving during the talent show.” She looked towards Laurie. “Meaning guess what? You’re still in charge of the cheerleading. In fact, if you’re willing, it’s yours for the rest of our senior year.”

Laurie blinked. “Golly. Thanks.”

Carrie smiled. “Just because this new timeline has me staying in town, that’s no reason to take your future away from you.”

“But Laurie’s behind in her schoolwork too,” Corry protested. “She left for her fake art camp right after you vanished, Carrie!”

“So I’ll work hard,” Laurie said, crossing her arms in imitation of her brother. “Plus I have lots of friends who can help. I’m not letting Carrie or the other cheerleaders down, bro!”

“Ooh, watch out, Power Cad,” Lee said, chuckling at Corry’s sigh of resignation. “Double V here might end up running the school with the Cross One. Instead of it being you and the Rich Witch.”

Clarke frowned. “Witch? Lee, you might want to consider updating–"

“No, no, it’s fine, Phil,” Julie interrupted. “After all, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. The only thing that matters to me right now is how the two of us could work on the time car together. To kind of… find ourselves again.” She fingered her rose brooch before leaning into him with a smile. Clarke grinned back, raising his arm to encircle her shoulders.

Frank turned to Carrie. “That reminds me. We didn’t spot the car anywhere in town. Did you send it back?”

Carrie pressed her hand to her head. “Oops. No… I forgot. Didn’t want to do a global removal, or we’d likely have ended up with our Glen again. He’s a headache I don’t need. It’s probably for the best though? No time machine, no time gun, no Temporals, just us, and our normal, everyday lives from this point on.”

“No car and stuff?” Laurie moaned, her arms uncrossing. “Golly, I really hope alt-future-Laurie enjoys using my art supplies.”

Mr. Waterson cleared his throat. “Well, as much as I’m enjoying learning more about recent events, unless there’s anything else that’s urgent, I think my daughter and her girlfriend could use their rest.”

Carrie’s eyes went wide. “Oh. My. God. Dad, NO, do NOT say girlfriend yet, we haven’t really officially - oh NO!” She jerked her gaze back over to the adjacent bed. “Chartreuse, you said you had to get close to Beth? Are you saying you two have, like, kissed the way we did, and that the whole school now knows about… about…"

“No,” Chartreuse gasped. “Carrie, you’re, you know, the only one for me. And if you want, no one outside of this room has to, like, know that.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” Carrie let out a breath. “I mean, others can know. I just need a few days here, minimum.”

“Confirming it IS a relationship?” Luci said, winking.

“She did say kissed Beth ‘the way we did’,” Corry remarked.

“Plus there was that whole soul saving they did,” Julie observed.

Carrie felt her face getting warm. She pulled her bedsheets up over her head. “My Dad said it’s rest time. Goodbye now!” There were a few chuckles, followed by a shuffling of feet as people started moving away.

She gave it a good ten seconds, then pulled the sheets back down to her neck. “But before you leave? Thanks. For everything. I mean it.” She made a point of meeting each of their gazes with a smile, as they looked back at her. “Because I wouldn’t be here now. Not if it weren’t for each and every one of you.”

NEXT: Respite II, an Epilogue of sorts. Please stick around.

ASIDE: Part of the reason for splitting the last entry at this point is for site transition time back to Epsilon Project. (You can vote for that plot here.) But it’s ALSO because Drew Hayes was taking guest posts this week on his site. Read my post here, which in continuity, takes place a few months after the events above. Then consider sticking around on Drew’s site to check out his material, and the other guest posts.

PREVIOUSLY: Carrie of the past (Elizabeth) is trying to figure out how to not become the Future Carrie of Timeline Four.

PART 96a: THE ULTIMATE PARADOX

“Missed me,” Elizabeth shouted as she charged through the fog, getting near to where she imagined Carrie would be.

“I’d rather not have even more memories of being in hospital, but I will if I have to,” Carrie shouted back - with a voice that was far too close.

Elizabeth back-pedalled, and carefully began to generate a temporal attack in her palms. A blast that she hoped would freeze at a distance, and not be the temporal freezing that required transmission by touch. “You will be banished,” she shouted, hoping to continue to keep Carrie’s attention on her, and off Buffy.

“I can’t banish myself, stupid,” Carrie snarked back. “I’m immune!”

“I mean you will be banished from being my future. Ha!” Elizabeth retorted. “Because even if you ARE good looking, you’ve got a lousy attitude.”

Something cut through the mist towards her. Elizabeth dropped towards the ground, firing off the charge she’d been generating. Energies collided, spiralling left, and there was a booming sound as they blew out (in?) another part of the wall. Well, that had been pointless. She probably wasn’t going to win this with temporal energy either.

‘Not unless you create a larger charge!' a part of her insisted then. ‘Just give yourself over to it, time is everything, it’s the humanity holding you back… let it go…’

Elizabeth grit her teeth, and pushed herself back up onto her feet. “Yes, fine, you’re part of me, but I remain in control,” she asserted, saying it aloud to put more force behind the thought.

“No, I’M in control,” Carrie’s voice came again. “Because I’ve now worked out how to deal with there being two of you here.”

“Oh yeah? Kinky, but no thanks,” Elizabeth shouted back. She back-pedalled again, knowing every time she spoke she gave away her position - and she nearly stumbled into the wall. Damn it, the mist was disorienting her now.

“The reason I can affect memories,” Carrie continued, as if she hadn’t heard, “is because they’re formed by the passage of time. Meaning, of course, if I can reach into someone’s past and disrupt the particular time when those memories were stored? I can erase, or with a bit more finesse, even alter them.”

Elizabeth tried firing off another blast towards the sound of Carrie’s voice. Carrie simply laughed.

‘You can do better than that. You need to let yourself go.’

It felt like the temporal side of her was starting to pulse within. Elizabeth did her best to ignore it. She couldn’t fight a war on two fronts. “You going somewhere with this?” she hollered.

“Of course.”

Carrie’s voice had come from right behind her! Elizabeth spun, but Carrie had already grabbed hold of her arm, twisting it, even as her other hand pinched in at Elizabeth’s chin.

“Because here I am, RIGHT here, RIGHT now, and I’m about to make both of our pasts an absolute misery unless you surrender. So, do you surrender? Well, Elizabeth, my pathetic defeated teenage self, DO you? Because it’s not too late for us to have a few genuine, happy memories, you know…”

It occurred to Elizabeth then that Carrie was probably homing in on the sound of her own voice, at which point she would jump back in time a few seconds in order to get Elizabeth into this undignified position, and thereby allow herself to home in. Well, wasn’t that clever.

‘Two can play at these games… let it happen…'

“I’m not surrendering,” Elizabeth gasped. “Not to you, nor to my temporal demons…"

“Then you’ve already lost,” Carrie said. “Really, Elizabeth, see sense. Allow me to tweak your memories. That way you won’t realize that when you go back and become your other self in this room? You’ll be working for me. And everything you’ll do will lead us to an outcome here where I am the victor… where you both gave up…"

Elizabeth brought her heel down as hard as she could on Carrie’s foot, twisting free of her counterpart’s grip - and feeling like she was out of time. She was getting angry, and scared, and confused - soon, if she did much more than jump back to become Buffy? She might indeed lose control. Which she couldn’t afford, her prior self needed the keycard tucked in her waistband. She reached for it - it was still there. In fact, yes, it was time.

“Know what, Carrie? I forgive you,” Elizabeth breathed. “Now pardon me as I…"

She time slipped back.

Carrie growled, as she reached out for Elizabeth a second too late. “Fine,” she declared, spinning around to face the mist. “That merely makes it one-on-one again. All too easy.”

“Or not,” came a response from somewhere ahead of her. “Because our paradox - I’ve finally figured it out. In fact, it’s not even a paradox at all.” The sound of footsteps drew nearer. “Though if it’s any consolation, you were right about one thing.”

And seventeen year old Buffy - or rather, the most up-to-date version of Elizabeth - stepped out of the fog. With her eyes a bright gold, and her blonde hair flowing in waves around her, despite the lack of any wind. “I did end up having to surrender to something.”

When the words ‘accept incoming call?’ appeared on the main screen, Bernard reached out to acknowledge. “Who is this?” came Lee’s voice. “Turn on a video link.”

“Um, it’s Bernard? That is, a friend of your resistance,” Bernard clarified. “Er, no video available?”

“Huh. Okay. Let me know when Megan’s team gets there?”

Bernard eyed the other feeds. “If you mean the resistance forces, I think they’ll reach the control room in a couple minutes. Looks like there’s no one else left to stop them any more.” He turned to Amelia. “Come to think, we’d better prop the door back open, so they can get in.” The redhead nodded, moving to replace the mop.

“And what’s the status on Carrie?”

“She’s down in the displacement room. Hopefully incapacitated,” Bernard said.

“Hopefully? Can you maybe sound a little more certain?”

Bernard didn’t answer. He couldn’t - he’d vanished from the room.

“Amelia!” Anthony gasped. “Bernard’s–" The blonde boy disappeared too.

Amelia turned from where she’d propped the door open. “Uhm… guys?”

The control room remained empty, save for Glen’s unconscious body, until Megan Falls walked in three minutes later.

Carrie fired off a temporal blast at Elizabeth. And to her shock and confusion, Elizabeth seemingly absorbed it. How? This teenaged version was too young to know how to do that.

“See, I figured out what I was trying to tell myself,” Elizabeth said airily. “With the apple.”

Carrie readied another blast, a bigger one.

“I was actually trying to remind myself of the discussion I’d been having the first time I ever pulled off that little trick. Last year for me, ages ago for you.”

Carrie fired off her second blast, one that would bump Elizabeth several minutes into the future, rather than a few seconds. Again, incredibly, Elizabeth absorbed it.

“It was a talk with Frank about self-consistency,” the teenager continued blithely. “Versus multiple time tracks. By which I mean timelines that can branch off from the main one, looking much like the way that circuit burned out into forking paths on the wall there - do you remember that talk at all?”

“This isn’t POSSIBLE,” Carrie screamed. She began to form an even bigger charge in her hands. Yes, it was all about power. Power, a power that she had, which her younger self didn’t.

“Wrong,” Elizabeth countered. “This IS possible. What’s really incredible about this whole future is that, despite all of the arguments we made back then… in the end, you latched onto the temporal model of self-consistency? Seriously?”

“No, NO, you can’t,” Carrie said with mounting horror. A horror that came from an increasing awareness of what Elizabeth was saying. She tried to make her charge even bigger. “I’ll freeze you and reprogram you. You won’t be able to absorb this. Never in my past have I have EVER been able to absorb something like this!”

“Let me tell you a secret.” Elizabeth took a step forwards and leaned in closer to Carrie’s ear. “Not. From. Your. Timeline,” she whispered.

It happened the day Frank died, saving Luci’s life. After her consciousness had become trapped inside him. What had allowed that event to become a temporal lynchpin?

Mindylenopia! Oh God, Mindy was the key. By inserting herself into the timeline, Mindy had forced Carrie to power up faster. To learn a technique like banishing sooner. Mindy had moved her abilities along at an accelerated rate - in fact, Glen likely wouldn’t have revealed himself two weeks ago, if not for Mindy! Surely, Mindy’s involvement meant that Elizabeth/Carrie had it somewhere within her to undo this.

Moreover, she had told Luci/Frank that she would fix things, one way or another. She had meant that.

And there WAS a way. She saw it now.

“Go to hell, other me,” Elizabeth gasped. Her eyes flashed golden. She felt like she was being torn in two…

And Carrie gave up. Glen guided her towards the stairs, out of the Dijora house, and out of town.

And they never returned.

And Carrie grew up to hate herself even more.

And later she went back in time and abducted her own pregnant mother.

And Theresa, after receiving a mysterious mental message about her mission, bided her time through history, ultimately joining the resistance, to ensure that Mindylenopia could go back, so that the split would occur.

The split that resulted from the fifty year old Carrie facing off against her seventeen year old self.

It happened the day Frank died, saving Luci’s life. After her consciousness had become trapped inside him. What had allowed that event to become a temporal lynchpin?

Mindylenopia! Oh God, Mindy was the key. By inserting herself into the timeline, Mindy had forced Carrie to power up faster. To learn a technique like banishing sooner. Mindy had moved her abilities along at an accelerated rate - in fact, Glen likely wouldn’t have revealed himself two weeks ago, if not for Mindy! Surely, Mindy’s involvement meant that Elizabeth/Carrie had it somewhere within her to undo this.

Moreover, she had told Luci/Frank that she would fix things, one way or another. She had meant that.

And there WAS a way. She saw it now.

“Go to hell, other me,” Elizabeth gasped. Her eyes flashed golden. She felt like she was being torn in two…

And Elizabeth pulled away, vanishing into the time streams.

And Frank’s life was saved.

And shortly thereafter, Elizabeth decided to save her mother too.

So Theresa revealed herself, and the time machine was reconstructed in a car, and her friends came after her, only to have Mindylenopia sacrifice herself back in Miami.

And from there, Elizabeth was dragged back into the future, to seal the split and reunite the timelines - except they would not be reunited. Could not be reunited.

Not once Elizabeth had seen a way to defeat her fifty year old self.

“STOP!” Carrie howled. “There can be only ONE timeline. MINE!”

“Lynchpin moments are a bitch, aren’t they?” Elizabeth remarked, stepping back. “Turns out I can do more than simply overwrite when I target one. It’s fine, I’m building up to a timeline separation here, so you’ll have your own future back soon enough. For all the good it will do, given how the resistance is closing in.”

“NO!” Carrie continued to charge up the insane amount of energy in her palms. “You can’t. I mean think about it, if you do this - your mother, she’ll be trapped in THIS timeline. Where I dragged her, out of our unified past. Our mother will be in what you’d call an Alternate Timeline Four. You’ll NEVER see her again.”

Elizabeth stared. She nodded. “I know,” she said, sadly.

In one last ditch effort, Carrie brought her palms up, and released all the temporal energy that she’d been generating, right into Elizabeth’s face.

Elizabeth simply boomeranged it.

Carrie fell back onto the ground, her body locked in temporal suspension, her mouth frozen open in an ‘o’ of surprise.

Elizabeth stepped forwards. “You’ll get our mom, and an extra teenaged Glen in this alternate timeline. Good for you. As for me?” She looked up at the ceiling. “I get my future back.”

The blonde drew in a huge lungful of air, increasing her concentration. Her mental message back through time to this timeline’s Theresa had been sent. She’d shoved her friends back into their present, into the other timeline. Her timeline. What was becoming the true timeline. The only thing left to do was… separation.

The Earth began to shake all around her.

It was like that time she’d planned on channelling the destructive force of Shady’s bomb into the time streams, except the sensations felt a hundred times more amazing. For while this alternate future timeline could continue on as it liked, with Megan’s forces in control of the building, Elizabeth/Carrie would be able to rewrite the future of her true timeline. Everything from this point of her life onwards? Would be a complete unknown.

As such, the Earth around her could be moulded in her image.

Everyone would have to bow down before her.

Bow down, because she was a cosmic force.

No, more than that, at this point she was A TEMPORAL GOD.

Unyielding. Unbeatable. Unstoppable.

Carrie Elizabeth Waterson threw back her head and laughed in an insane euphoria. It was time to return to her present.

NEXT: Resolution

ASIDE: So that’s… good? Two posts left, as I split the last section. Voting for T&T can still be a thing. Also, Rev. Fitz, who wrote our latest April Fools Entry (with the Elder Carrie) has been examining serial sites this month. He just recently looked at Time & Tied. So check out his thoughts, and if you haven’t yet, his serial too!

PREVIOUSLY: Much Elder Carrie (Liz) sabotaged her own Timeline Three, leading to Elder Carrie abducting her teenaged self from the past.

PART 94a: REALIGNMENT

Carrie’s fingers curled around the crystal object, aware that more tears were coming. Because here she was, at the mercy of her Future Self, being time shifted into Her Future… a future where Carrie would never see her parents, her friends, or that one ray of sunshine - her once possible girlfriend - ever again.

“CARRIE!”

Oh no, now she was imagining Chartreuse’s voice in her head.

“Carrie, are you there?! We don’t, like, have much time, but PLEASE hear me, there’s something you’ve gotta do!”

Okay, this was becoming surprisingly vivid for a delusion.

“Chartreuse?” Carrie whimpered.

“Carrie!” the voice came again. “Yesssss! Ohhh, I really hope you’re, you know, the right one. Look, we’re not giving up on you. The others, they’re gonna follow you, they’re following you even now - but you’ve gotta, like, hide them from the other you. Okay?”

Carrie blinked. What the hell did that mean?

“I mean you’ve gotta, like, spot their time car, and nudge it. Nudge it ahead, into, you know, the other timeline. Temporarily. Hurry!”

Oh sure, right, piece of cake, just do the thing she had no idea how to do, while her Elder Self was busy keeping her powers in check.

“If anyone can do it, you can! Please Carrie, PLEASE, otherwise… otherwise, you know, I think you’ll be lost to us forever.”

The meditation crystal dug into her palm so hard it hurt. No. She wasn’t going to lose Chartreuse forever. Hell, nothing in life had been easy to this point, right? Why assume that knowing the truth about her mama would have made things any easier?

So, as she was towed along in the wake of her Future Self, Carrie cautiously extended her senses, looking for the ‘time car’ that kept getting referenced. At the same time, she became aware of a wake, like what existed behind a boat, that was rippling out around them… could she somehow nudge a time traveller out of it’s path, and ahead of them? Even preserve it in some sort of time bubble?

She spotted the vehicle right before her Future Self emerged into The Future, wincing as her ‘nudge’ ended up being more like a powerful ‘bump’, and what little temporal energy she had left completely ebbed away at the act.

Frank stared. Both Carries had disappeared. At this point, neither the old-old Carrie who had been reaching for the activation panel, nor the old Carrie who had been arguing with her, were present. Instead, Frank saw that Walter had somehow set his chair back up, and was reaching in for the activation panel himself.

Frank looked around the room, feeling like he’d missed something. He leaned back in towards the observation windows, catching sight of Mindylenopia down in the displacement room - she was standing and waving. Not on the floor, defeated. Then there was a bright flash of light, forcing him to look away, and when he turned back, the displacement room was empty.

Walter jerked his hand back from the panel. “What did I just do?”

Frank reached out to tap at the desk. It felt solid now.

Walter spun to face him. “Where did you just come from?”

“Oh, I’m Chronologic Patrol.” Frank fumbled in Mindy’s handbag for the temporal gun, pulling it out and pointing it Walter’s way. “Just stay calm, I don’t want any trouble.”

Then there was another flash, and three more individuals appeared in the room. The Older Carrie was back! Along with Glen, and a blonde teenager in a blue business suit… but that had to be his Carrie. Could it be that, somehow, he was here at the end of their journey from the airport? Frank quickly reached down, flicking the switch on the gun over to “Carrie” mode, and he fired at the Elder Version.

At the pulse of high energy, the old Carrie collapsed down onto the ground, even as the recoil sent Frank flying back into the wall, hard enough to leave a crack. He groaned, feeling dazed. His version of Carrie didn’t look that much better off, having slumped to the floor after their arrival.

“I’m OUT,” Walter shrieked, running for the door. “You don’t pay me enough for this!”

As such, the only person in the room retaining full command of their faculties ended up being Glinephanis, aka Glen Oaks. And after taking in the situation, and snarling, “You Mundane morons,” his next move was to drag the unconscious Elder Carrie towards the door, following after Walter.

“Glen, wait,” Frank protested. He took a couple of shaky steps, then decided it might be better to check on the status of his own Carrie instead.

She looked up at him as he touched her shoulder. “I’m still here,” she murmured, dazed. “So did that time bump on your car work? Did it hide you from my older self? Have we won?”

Frank crouched down. “We haven’t won yet.” He glanced at the door through which Glen and Elder Carrie had exited. “But we may have bought ourselves some time.”

“Peachy.” She shook her head. “Okay, the freeze effect is wearing off. I feel like I’ll be able to do time stuff again soon. For my next trick, I shall attempt to not become the Carrie who kidnaps mama, and her unborn child.”

“Er, great. How will you do that?”

“No idea. Help me up.” She blinked at him. “Actually, correction. Take off your stupid wig while I remove this jacket, and then help me up.”

Frank straightened, tugging off the disguise he’d been wearing. Meanwhile, Carrie tossed aside her flight hat, allowing her long blonde hair to flow down her back again, and she shrugged off the jacket part of the business suit.

He reached a hand down. Carrie clasped it, and he pulled her onto her feet. “Do we have a plan?” he asked.

“Good question.” Carrie looked around. “Where are we?”

“A stationary temporal generator on the day of your fiftieth birthday. Mindylenopia was just sent back in time, into our past.”

“Oh. Okay, sure.” Carrie moved to look through the observation windows. “Why are we here? Didn’t you arrive in a time car?”

“We did,” Frank admitted. “The circuits were fried. Luci impounded it yesterday, sort of. I’m not sure where it is now.”

Carrie shook her head. “Wait, what? You didn’t mention Luci had come to Miami with you.”

“Er, no, not Luci from our Present. This time’s Luci, a Future Luci.”

“Ah. That’s going to get confusing, isn’t it,” Carrie sighed.

“Well, not necessarily. I died in the past, so if anyone says Frank, it’s probably me,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. He frowned. “Then again, I used the name Bernard with Mindylenopia…"

Carrie shook her head. “You’re not dead, Frank, don’t say that. It’s Timeline THREE where you died, and that’s gotta be where I ended up hip-checking your car, to keep you safe. When I left you in the airport, a few minutes ago, you were raving about us being in ‘Timeline Four’. So that should still be where we’re at now - er, unless you’re saying you later died in ‘Timeline Four’ too?”

“I… I don’t know. Wait, you did what to our vehicle?”

“You were constantly a few seconds ahead of the temporal wave created by Mindy’s arrival in the past, until right before my arrival here. It was Chartreuse’s idea.”

“Okay then. Er, which Chartreuse?”

Carrie smacked her palm against her face and dragged it down until it slid off her chin. “I don’t know, one of ‘em. Look, for my own sanity, as of RIGHT now, everyone who’s temporally displaced? Meaning not part of this future? Meaning us? Middle names. Understood?”

Bernard nodded. “Sure. Except I… I don’t actually know the middle names for Tim or Laurie.”

Elizabeth exhaled. “I will make them up if I have to. Where are they, anyway?”

“They’re still out with the resistance forces. Actually, I need to get them a message,” Bernard realized. “With Future Mindylenopia back in our past, and Carrie temporarily down, Luci and the rest of them need to know that it’s time to storm in and take this building.”

“Thrilling. Meanwhile, I kind of want all of us middle namers together, so let’s see if I can’t kill two birds with one jump. Give me a moment, knowing how to centre on people is fresh in my head.” Elizabeth closed her eyes. Moments later, she disappeared.

“Freeze!”

Tim jerked his hands into the air. “Whoa, whoa, J-Julie, it’s me.” He turned to Lee, only to see that the operations co-ordinator had also drawn a weapon. Though unlike Julie, he wasn’t pointing it at Tim. Yet.

“How did the kid get in here?” Lee demanded.

Julie shook her head. “I don’t know. I turned around, and there he was.”

Lee turned his head. “Theresa, did you see where he came from?”

“Theresa?” Tim blurted. “Wh-What happened to Megan??”

“Hold on,” the red haired woman said, over the video link. “It IS possible that things get a little weird now…”

Which was when seventeen year old Elizabeth popped into the room. “Hi!” she chirped at Lee. “Resistance, yes? Start the attack. I need to borrow… Tim, what’s your middle name?”

“Um, Anthony?”

“To borrow Anthony. Correction, I’m taking him, because he’s from the past, and as such, probably not coming back here. Thank you, have a nice day.”

Anthony shook his head. “Carrie, what–"

“Elizabeth,” she corrected, before grasping his shoulder and time jumping.

Laurie did a double take. One moment, Luci had been walking ahead of her, leading her to the car - and in the next moment, the asian woman was gone. Except, turning around, Laurie discovered that Luci was now approaching her from behind. “Luci?” she asked.

“Okay, where did you come from?” Luci demanded.

Laurie blinked, and pointed over Luci’s shoulder. “Back there?”

“No, I mean one moment I was alone out here, and now I’m not,” Luci insisted. “How did you do that? And how do you know me?”

“What?” Laurie protested. “Okay, no, see, one moment you were up there, and now you’re back here.” She continued to point for emphasis.

Luci shook her head. “You’re not making sense - but you do look familiar. Are you one of the guests from Carrie’s party, perhaps?”

Laurie stared. And then Elizabeth appeared beside her. “Found you,” the blonde said. “Why are you here with - ooh, hold up, you’re Luci, right?”

Luci nodded, now looking concerned.

“Luci, can you make a point of locking down the time car that must have recently appeared? I can’t grab it yet, but I sure as heck don’t need the extra aggravation of worrying about it while I fight myself.”

Luci gaped. Elizabeth then turned to Laurie. “I think your middle name is Amelia?”

Amelia blinked. “Yeah - y-you know about that?”

“I must have looked it up at some point. Come along, Amelia.” Elizabeth reached out her hand. Amelia took it, and then the both of them disappeared off the street corner.

“This is incredible,” Anthony said, as Elizabeth and Amelia appeared in the generator control room next to him and Bernard. “Carr– um, Elizabeth, could you, like, pop the entire resistance invasion force into this room by doing that?”

“No,” Elizabeth said, letting out a slow breath. “Because first, it would have to be one at a time, second, I only made it back here by centring on Bernard, and finally, those couple trips took a LOT out of me.” She released Amelia. “But I wanted us all here because I need your input. Given how I think I’ll now need to defeat… me. Future Carrie.”

“You… you’re okay with doing that?” Amelia wondered.

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. Not really. Because I don’t see how it’s even possible. Carrie knows my every move, not merely because she’s particularly canny, well educated, or - let’s toss this in for laughs - hauntingly good looking, but because she WAS ONCE ME. Meaning the Elder Carrie HAS TO KNOW whatever it is I’m going to try next.” The blonde bit down on her lower lip. “As such, whatever I think of is a bad idea. So I’m kind of open to suggestions?”

At first, no one spoke.

ASIDE: The stage is set, the Liz & Mindy pieces will be explained shortly. What might you suggest to Elizabeth?

Incidentally, Tartra wrote a WFG review on Saturday, then we set a new all time high pageview count on Sunday, shattering our ceiling of 113. Hello to the person who apparently read the archive? (With the Part A&B thing, T&T is now 128 posts long.) Tartra writes “The Other Kind of Roommate” if anyone’s looking for more reading material.

PREVIOUSLY: Frank, Laurie and Tim ended up in the future of “Timeline Three”. A timeline where Mindy never travelled back. But then Carrie got herself to destroy “Timeline Three”…

PART 93b: TIMELINE FOUR REDUX

Luci had just arrived at home when when she received the call. She pulled the device out of her pocket, blinking at the display. “Answer,” she told it. The call connected. “Phil? Something wrong?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he said, his holographic face looking very frustrated.

Luci tossed her key fob on the side table and shut her front door. “How was the visit? Is Laurie okay?”

“Laurie’s fine. Luci, I’ve pulled my tow truck over to the side of the road.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But I feel like maybe it’s bleedthrough?”

She peered at his expression. He seemed sincere. “Can’t be. There’s no major operations planned in the area that would attract attention.”

“Luci, I’ve pulled over to the side of the road, and for no particular reason, I’m remembering that time I worked on a Chevy in… I think it was senior auto shop class.”

“Phil, I swear, we’re not up to anything.” Luci chewed her lower lip. “Want to meet though? At the small cafe on the outskirts of town?”

“Yeah. Yeah, for some reason you saying that makes me feel better.”

“Okay, good. See you there in an hour.” Luci hung up the phone, reaching back for her key fob, as well as the medical device she used to identify people in the database after swabbing them for DNA.

She stared at it. Why on earth had she picked that up?

“Luci, what in the hell are you idiots doing?”

Luci sat back on her couch, staring blankly at the angry holographic face of Julie LaMille. She was beginning to feel overwhelmed. “You too?”

“What do you mean me too?”

Luci shook her head. “Bleedthrough.”

“I know,” Julie snapped. “For some reason, I’ve been expecting you to call me for the last half hour. What operation are you people–”

“No operation. Julie, you don’t understand,” Luci insisted. “This is crazy, for some reason we’re experiencing bleedthrough on a massive scale, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. I’ve got techs talking about a car that isn’t there, an operative who says Mindylenopia contacted us out of the blue looking for help with her suicide mission, and plus I made way too much toast for breakfast this morning. NONE of which is connected to ANYTHING!”

Julie frowned. “Back up to the suicide mission thing.”

Luci sighed. “That’s just Mindy fulfilling her destiny. She’ll go back in time today, then get banished by Carrie. It never changed anything, remember? In the end, Glen still managed to snare Carrie, spiriting her out of town.”

There was the sound of Julie drumming her fingers on a desk. “So are your people helping Mindylenopia go back?”

“No. We explored the possibilities weeks ago, and couldn’t find a new lynchpin. Don’t spread it around, but the whole mission was deemed a predestined lost cause.” She grimaced. “We were WAY too cunning in our youth.”

“Is there a rogue faction within your ranks plotting something then?”

“Julie…"

“Look, I’m serious. The phone call I was expecting? I feel like you wanted me to get you things.”

“‘Things’? What ‘things’?”

“Oh, well, let’s see. It was either party favours for Carrie’s birthday, or ‘things’ that could help Mindylenopia get access to the stationary generator.”

“Ha ha.” Luci shook her head. “Look, according to our intelligence, Carrie made a call yesterday demanding a DECREASE of security at the generator this evening. So Mindylenopia doesn’t need us anyway, it should be no problem for her to… to… wait. WAIT.” She seized the edge of the couch. “Julie, why would Carrie do that?”

Julie rolled her eyes. “You’re asking me? I presume it was to make sure Mindylenopia succeeds in taking the trip, predestiny and all.”

“No, no, there’s no need to make SURE she succeeds, we KNOW she succeeds,” Luci protested. “She’s in our past. That’s not a change Carrie has to make. So why are we feeling the effects of bleedthrough here? The only way it makes sense is if… oh no. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could Mindylenopia have once FAILED to make it back? Are we now overwriting a timeline where she FAILED?”

“Luci, that would mean Carrie wanted someone to mess with her past. Worse, the implication is that, to fix things, we have to stop Mindylenopia from going on her trip.”

“I know.” If she’d felt overwhelmed before, now she felt positively adrift. “So… I guess we better keep our options open. Julie, if you wouldn’t mind, please get us your ‘things’? Meanwhile, I’m going to organize an emergency strike force to take on the generator station… having them ready might mean we can stop Mindylenopia. If we have to. Hell, we might even manage a foothold, given the lower security - though I’m hoping it’s not a trap we’re falling for here either.”

Carrie glared at her reflection. She didn’t enjoying seeing the lines on her face, the hints of grey in her hair, or even the bright yellow gown that she had chosen for her birthday celebration. But her displeasure went deeper than that. “At least it’s almost over."

“What is, my love?”

Carrie didn’t bother to turn to face the woman who had spoken, continuing to glare at her reflection. “This damn headache. Which a future me in a horrible sweater indirectly inflicted, for absolutely no good reason. I’ve spent the better part of a day looking into things, and the only conclusion I can draw from my latest experience is that I hate myself. A lot.”

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? A mass–"

“No,” Carrie snorted. “It doesn’t matter. Liz won’t be back, not in this timeline. Also, tomorrow, I want you to give me the name of that forum where they were talking about visions. I want it shut down.”

“Y-Yes, my love… I meant no disrespect…"

“Fine, good.” Carrie finally turned to regard the woman sitting on the edge of her bed, the one dressed in the elaborate purple gown. And Chartreuse’s eyes were cast down towards the floor. As it should be.

“It’s time I got out there,” Carrie decided. “Moreover, if you perform well tonight as my pretty Canadian eye candy, I’ll allow you to give me a special birthday gift after everybody has left.” She grinned. “Would you like that?”

Her companion swallowed. “My love, I d-don’t want to go out there…"

Carrie tensed. “What?”

“Because if I do… I feel that… that I might be hurt…"

“You want to defy me, on my fiftieth birthday?”

Chartreuse shrank back, curling into a ball. “My love…"

“Well, you can stay in here then. With your pretty dress and your stupid visions!”

Raising a palm and twisting it in against her pounding head, Carrie stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“Lee? What’s wrong?”

He turned to look over his shoulder at Julie. “The bleedthrough, I guess?” he admitted. “I’m starting to feel dumb about sending Luci out to Carrie’s property. Yet I still feel like someone’s supposed to be stationed there, and reporting in.”

“Right.” Julie ran her fingers back through her hair. “Well, if there’s something to find, Luci can find it.”

Lee chuckled. “Kind words you have for the same woman who, just last month, you referred to as a–"

“We reached an understanding earlier today,” Julie interrupted. She furrowed her brow. “For some reason, it felt right.”

Lee raised his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m happy for you both.” He looked back at his monitors. “What I’m not happy about is the fact that I’m running out of time to pull the trigger on our forces at the generator. Do we storm in, or not? We still have NO intelligence on whether we can allow Mindylenopia go back in time.”

“We should let her go.”

Lee turned to the side monitor to look at Megan. Then he mentally checked himself - Megan wasn’t his redundancy for tonight’s mission. Theresa was. One of the oldest members of the resistance. “But Theresa, how can you be sure?” he protested.

She smiled quietly back at him. He was reminded of the knowing looks she’d had before, way back when she had been a simple waitress in their hometown cafe. “You’ll simply have to trust me,” Theresa said.

One moment, Carrie was reaching for an hors d’oeuvre. The next moment, she was on the ground, screaming. Her past - it was completely breaking apart. Carrie dropped her mental shields into place, and tried to pinpoint how things could possibly be going so very, very wrong.

She had never thought her temporal pain could be any worse than an ice pick to the skull - and yet now, on top of that, it was like her head was simultaneously in a vice, making the misery so much worse, even through the shielding. Making things hard to track.

The issue, it seemed, was that hadn’t left town with Glinephanis? Except she damn well HAD left! But no, she hadn’t. For some reason, it now looked like she had still been in town for Christmas during her senior year of high school. Then… wait, where the hell had her past self ended up? And how had Young Carrie become so… so BROKEN?

Carrie’s eyes widened, as she deciphered the key moment. In a time period when she should have been three years old.

Pushing herself back to her feet, and ignoring the concerned mutterings of all the people around her, Carrie tore open a rip in the fabric of space-time, and stepped through it. Into the lounge of a Miami airport.

Elder Carrie glared at him for a moment, then shook her head, brushing her hair off her shoulder. “Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” she assured Glinephanis. “You did your best. I know who’s really to blame - it’s these stupid Mundanes and that damnable Mindylenopia! They’re all dooming my childhood.” She peered at him. “Perhaps you can still be a bright spot in my younger self’s life though? Will you come with me now? Some of my memories could remain valid, not be inserted by force.”

Glinephanis nodded slowly. “I’m with you to the end. But Carrie, there are more time travellers here in Miami. Mindylenopia and a number of your old classmates. We all came in a time car. They might still try something.”

She growled. Cleaning up her history was going to be a real pain, huh? She hoped she wouldn’t need to mess with too many memories. “Fine, I will deal with them as soon as I get my younger self here restrained back in my present. Grab hold, we’re leaving.”

She grabbed her teenaged self by the collar. Apparently, that Carrie had dressed herself up in a blue business suit, almost like she was pretending to be their mama. Good grief, how had she EVER been so STUPID? Glinephanis took her by the arm, and she pulled them back towards the rip… with her younger self still trying to break free of the freezing. Apparently, this was going to be a long trip home.

The lounge door burst open. “Carrie!” Laurie shrieked.

“Carrie, fight it,” Tim called out. “Whatever is going on, fight!”

Frank charged in between the two of them.

“Frank, don’t get close!” Mindylenopia shouted, grabbing onto him by the waist, slowing him down. Not that it mattered.

“Carrie, FUTURE Carrie, it doesn’t have to be this way!” Frank shouted, looking right at her for a change, rather than at her broken teenaged variant. “You don’t have to do this, not to yourself…"

Carrie did her very best to ignore them all, busy concentrating on getting a foothold on the time streams, without losing her mental hold on the Younger Carrie. It was surprisingly difficult. It occurred to her that maybe that’s why the old “Liz” version she had encountered in the generator hadn’t tried this genre of persuasion? Preferring to snare herself in the “Mindylenopia Catch-22 scenario” instead? Which had, she now realized, somehow precipitated this entire situation.

Well, she would soon set everything right. Young Carrie was weak, and no match for her.

Pulling Glinephanis and her younger self forwards into the time streams, Carrie soon realized that the time trip, which should have taken seconds, would instead drag on for close to a minute. Because Young Carrie continued to wriggle against her hold, at one point whimpering out, “Chartreuse?”.

Carrie decided that her best plan would be to arrive in the future at the stationary temporal generator outside Ottawa. There were dampening fields in the displacement room which she could activate, ones which might help her to control her younger self long enough for a memory implantation, or removal, or whatever else she’d be forced to do to get history back on track.

As such, they emerged from the time streams in the main control room of the Ottawa generator facility.

Where a teenaged Frank Dijora immediately shot her with a prototype for a temporal gun.

NEXT: Realignment.

ASIDE: If it all makes sense, please vote for T&T at Top WebFiction. If it doesn’t make sense, drop a comment before the vote for T&T. Three weeks left.

PREVIOUSLY: As the time group got ready to send Mindylenopia back, Carrie realized something was happening at the temporal generator.

PART 93a: NOWHERE TO RUN

“What’s taking so long?” Mindylenopia demanded. Carrie had to be onto them by now.

The primary tech, a man named Walter, looked up at her. “Well, actually,” he began, “the temporal generator has no geo-temporal records to draw on, for a time from before it was built. And while we do have the material on site that can localize earlier times, the system still has to compensate geographically, ensuring that a traveller doesn’t end up floating in space or buried in the ground or something.”

The redhead sighed. “Yes. I’m Temporal, I know that. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for your authorization codes. But look, the specific day in October doesn’t matter, I picked it randomly. So if that’s the problem, I can…”

She stopped, as the slight rumbling noise in the control room ceased, followed by a chirp from the computer terminal. The main panel changed to green, and Walter turned back to his old style physical keyboard. “There we go," he remarked. “Year is encoded. Your date… locked in place. Displacement room is set for a thirty-three year trip to the past. Satisfied?”

“No,” Mindy stated. “Not yet.” She looked through the large glass observation windows of the control room, down to the displacement room below. It was large, the size of a small theatre, capable of sending back a hundred people at once, if necessary. “I’m going down there to uncouple the wall circuits. When I wave my hand at you, you will activate the displacement.”

Walter looked uneasy. “I wouldn’t advise that.”

“It won’t send me back, not with the wall circuits cut. That’s the failsafe.”

“Yeah, uh… we’ve been having some… glitches in the system this evening.”

Mindylenopia turned to Bernard, who had been quietly observing the last several minutes from the doorway. “Make a note. Safety at this site has been compromised.”

“No!” Walter protested. “It’s only that, if something went wrong, you’d have no way of getting back, and there’s so much paperwork…”

Oh brother. She couldn’t play along with this any more - they were out of time. Mindylenopia stared Walter in the face. “Listen. When I wave my hand at you, you will activate the displacement.”

“When you wave your hand, I will activate the displacement.”

“Good man.” Mindylenopia tossed her handbag in Bernard’s direction, and he fumbled to catch it. “The rest is your problem.” She sprinted for the stairs leading down to the temporal displacement room.

“She’s active! All units, please acknowledge, Carrie is active and using super speed to bear down on the generator.”

Luci reached up to touch her earpiece. “Acknowledged.” She didn’t question how Lee was aware of that fact. In a way, this was actually a good sign. It meant that Carrie wasn’t using any finesse - which in turn implied that their blonde nemesis was worried. Were they about to pull this off?

She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind as young Laurie Veniti ran up to her, gasping for breath, and grasping her by the shoulders. “Luci!” Laurie squealed. “Luci, I… ohmigod, I did it. A creepy guy was about to sexually molest a version of Chartreuse, and so I did it, I kicked him real hard in the… the…"

“Good for you, Laurie,” Luci said, giving the redheaded girl a hug. “Good for you.” She squeezed once. “But we have to get back to the car now, okay?”

Laurie looked up at her, nodding wordlessly.

Frank walked closer to the large glass windows. There was the sound of what he assumed to be a door sliding open and closed, and moments later, Mindy strode into the room. She looked up at them, and waved. Walter reached out for the panel…

And then everything started to move as if in slow motion.

Frank didn’t clue in right away. It merely looked like the tech’s hand was meeting incredible air resistance, or like he was trying to resist Mindylenopia’s mental command. But then Frank realized that Walter’s eyes were squinting, and closing, and gradually opening… as if in a protracted blink. What?

Now the tech’s hand was an inch away from the panel - and that’s when she appeared.

The blonde woman was drawing in great lungfuls of air, her face was drenched in sweat, and the yellow dress she was wearing had been torn in two places… but she was there. Holding Walter’s hand back, preventing the final activation. Then she pulled him bodily back from the main board, shoving his chair to the side, causing the tech to collapse onto the floor.

“Good,” the Elder Carrie said, her chest heaving. She slammed both hands down onto the edge of the desk that ran the length of the room, under the observation windows. Seemingly trying to prevent her legs from collapsing out from under her. “SO GOOD. But. You. Were. Not. Good. Enough.”

She reached out to smack a button, drew in a huge breath, then leaned down to yell into the nearby microphone. “Mindylenopia! I see you down there. This was the last straw, you understand? You’re finished! You hear me? FIN-ISHED.”

Though the observation window, Frank saw the redhead’s hazel eyes widen in horror - and then she collapsed down onto the floor, like all the fight had gone out of her. Which was when Frank finally realized that Elder Carrie was paying absolutely no attention to him. The time dilation hadn’t even affected him, had it? How else could he have registered what was going on? Did Carrie not care about him, could it be that only Walter’s palm could activate the time jump?

He had to try. He stepped in, reaching around Carrie to bring his palm down on the necessary panel.

Except his hand passed right through. Then it continued down, right through the desk, and Frank stumbled forwards as there seemed to be no solid objects around him to arrest his motion. With mounting horror, he realized that even the floor felt weirdly spongy. Frank brought his hand back out of the desk and up to his face. He could see right through it.

Well, of course he could. Because if Mindylenopia didn’t travel back, he didn’t exist. Right? Numbly, Frank wondered why time was pulling a slow fade on him, like Marty McFly in “Back to the Future”, rather than simply winking him out of existence. Did that mean that there was still a chance? That he was somehow neither alive, nor dead? But what chance did they have if he couldn’t TOUCH anything?

“I win again,” Carrie said triumphantly.

“Sorry, no,” Carrie answered herself.

Carrie spun, reaching up to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. She felt her mouth forming an ‘o’ of surprise. Because yes, somehow, it was her who had spoken. An older her. Had to be older, the lines in the face were still there, and the blonde hair looked even more grey… except at what point would she think a sweater like that would be a good fashion statement?

“You… you can’t be here,” fifty old Carrie choked out. “Why would I want to change THIS?”

“Funny thing that,” even-older Carrie chuckled. “Let’s just say that the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And this, in a sense, this was the major turning point. This lynchpin moment.”

“But you… I… how… why…”

Sweater-wearing Carrie, whom Carrie decided to dub “Sweater Liz” in her own mind for the sake of convenience, gave her a pitying look. “Really? My fiftieth birthday, and I’m still that stupid?”

Carrie clenched her jaw. She snapped her gaze towards the observation windows and then back to Sweater Liz. “Mindylenopia’s really working for me somehow? Is that it?”

Sweater Liz seemed to ponder that. “I suppose that’s a good an answer as any.”

“Meaning that’s NOT an answer.”

Sweater Liz sighed. “Fine. You’re making my point for me here, you know. We’ve never been good at these sorts of interactions.”

“Oh, I’ve learned how to handle Future Me,” Carrie retorted.

“I know,” came the retort. “I’m you. Your plan is to rewrite your history to eliminate the need for me to even be here. Works great in the short term. What about the long term?”

“I never travel back long term. Never erase that much of myself.”

Sweater Liz gestured. “Mindylenopia’s going back long term.”

Again, Carrie’s gaze drifted to the windows and back. “It’s not like she can change me. Not that much. Not with Glinephanis back… wait, how far forwards in my timeline are you?”

“Do you want to find out?” Sweater Liz crossed her arms. “Because here’s the thing, Paradox Woman. I’m going to trigger that panel. Which both sends Mindylenopia back AND locks you into being me, and oooh, we both know how much I HATE that. Right? Being locked into a destiny? Your only alternative would be to rewrite the last few minutes, perhaps days, to keep me from ever being here… but guess what. In that timeline, Mindylenopia MUST go back too. Otherwise I’ll still be here to see to it.”

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” Carrie snarled. She wished she wan’t so tired and dripping sweat everywhere, not to mention partially propping herself up using the desk. It felt like that took some of the bite out of her words.

Liz chuckled. “Maybe. Maybe not. Have you ever wondered, whether there might be a better way for us to deal with our future selves?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ve started wondering. About that, and more.” She rubbed her chin. “In particular, I wonder… when is it that we stopped being curious about what we could do?”

Liz smiled. And Carrie realized that her Future Self really was going to do it. At some point in the future, she was going to go crazy in the head, and come back to give herself this asinine choice, this ultimatum… and Carrie was forced to admit that, truly, she now had no idea how to stop herself.

Which meant there was no way to prevent Mindylenopia from going back. Even beating up Liz here only meant that she’d get beat up by herself in the future. And as Liz had said, there was only one sure fire way she knew about to avoid becoming a future incarnation.

“I HATE YOU!” Carrie screamed.

“I know,” Liz said.

Liz reached out for the panel.

Carrie flashed back in time a day and a half.

Everything changed.

NEXT: Timeline Four Redux

ASIDE: Carrie herself destroys Timeline Three. What does that mean? As always, feel free to speculate. Also, did you catch last weekend’s Commentary post?

PREVIOUSLY: Laurie’s mission is to make people believe Mindy is outside Carrie’s party, as Frank and Mindy barge into the stationary temporal generator.

PART 92a: STORMING THE CASTLE

When Julie had said she was taking him to the mission hub, Tim hadn’t been sure what to expect. In retrospect, he’d expected something more impressive than the back room of a music store. “R-Really? Um, operations are r-run out of a place like this?”

“Operations are mobile, the sites change,” Julie answered. “So they can’t be pinned down. Or that’s how it worked before I cut my ties.”

“Still works that way,” came a voice from behind a piano.

Julie and Tim rounded the corner to see an older man in a faded sport jacket with unruly hair. He was sitting on the ground in front of a set of holographically projected keyboards and video monitors. Julie clucked her tongue. “Lee. Surprised to see you’re here.” Tim’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Likewise,” Lee said, glancing over his shoulder.

“Conflict of interest much?” Julie pressed.

Lee shrugged. “Luci felt my personal investment in this particular target would prevent any rash actions on their part,” he explained. “Also, I was available on short notice. Don’t worry, we still have redundancy, Megan’s observing my every move, ready to jump in.” He gestured at a monitor off to the side.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight,” came the voice of the dark haired woman pictured there.

“Luci’s approaching the spot for Laurie’s retrieval,” Lee continued. “The men on site have eyes on the door with no sign of Mindylenopia, but it’s not quite ten o’clock yet. No abort has been given.”

“All right. I’ll stick around until I know Laurie’s safe,” Julie decided. She sat herself down on the piano bench.

Lee shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned to Tim. “Your communications are working?”

Tim jolted out of his reverie. He reached up to touch his earpiece. “Ah, y-yes. Laurie’s already checked in twice since we dropped her off. She’s w-walking the perimeter.”

“Okay then. We’re a go in six minutes and ten seconds. Mark.” He then lay back on the ground, clasping his hands behind his head.

“One question though?” Tim ventured.

“Ayup?” Lee asked, tilting his head a bit.

“It’s just… I mean, I know my confidence is better of late, but am I r-really the best person to be doing this? The translation, and the prompting? Surely, in the future, your r-resistance has other people capable of speaking Temporal…"

“Ayup,” Lee repeated. “But first of all, their temperaments might stress out your Laurie. Second, again, short notice. With Carrie in town, Ottawa was kind of the last choice for running a major operation - our best linguist is currently in Australia, where Carrie’s right hand man, Glinephanis, is busy stirring up trouble. And third…” He flashed a smile. “Call me crazy, but I think you’re a good guy to have around in a pinch.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks,” Tim acknowledged.

Megan cleared her throat. “You know, you could simply tell Tim that he’s the younger variant of that agent in Australia.”

Lee shook his head. “I don’t care what Luci says, Megan, I don’t want to accidentally impact our past.” He glanced at Tim. “Australia’s still got dangerous snakes, y’see. Given a choice, I might’ve picked the assignment in Europe.”

Mindylenopia checked her watch. “Okay, the front guard’s going to check in at 10:04pm. We move in right after that, gives us a full fifteen minutes to get to the displacement room before their next check.”

Frank nodded. “Right…" He eyed the shed-like structure. “And how many people are in there?”

“Night like this? Couple dozen. We should be able to avoid most of them though,” Mindylenopia said. She peered closer at him. “You DO realize the majority of the structure is underground, yes?”

Frank blinked. “Right,” he repeated. Now that she said it, he remembered Luci remarking on how the nature of the place made aerial assaults impossible.

“Also, for when you use it…" Mindylenopia reached into the handbag she held, pulling out what looked a bit like a cross between a pistol and a fancy corkscrew. “My %temporal gun%.” Frank was taken aback by the smaller size, before remembering that not only was it a prototype, it was also made with more futuristic materials.

She pointed at a switch. “Two settings. Carrie, and Not-Carrie. Every time you stun someone with the latter, you use up power that could have been used for the former. So don’t go crazy with it.”

Frank frowned. “Meaning a Carrie shot drains the batteries?”

“Right. But it should temporarily drain hers as well, and the more juice you have, the longer that lasts. That said, the recoil will be proportional to the strength of the shot, watch for that. And don’t bother with the Not-Carrie setting on Carrie. She’ll be able to shake off such a mild freezing effect.”

“So you’re saying it’s all or nothing with her? No middle settings?”

Mindylenopia snorted. “I’ll consider more settings for my next upgrade.” She shoved the gun back into her bag and looked at her watch again. “Okay. Get ready. It’s almost time.”

Laurie began to fidget. She wasn’t sure if that was something Mindylenopia would normally do, but she couldn’t help it. Pacing around the block and ducking behind cars and trees, it might have been fun under other circumstances. But she was pretending to be a Temporal double agent or whatever Mindy was, while eyeing a property that was easily twice the size of the LaMille mansion back in town.

She would do this though. She would get through it, to restore their timeline. And in doing so, she would restore her brother. That’s the way these things worked, right?

Laurie forced herself to stop playing with the skirt on her red dress. Trouble was, it didn’t fit quite right, hugging her body in the wrong ways… but it was supposedly a double for the one Mindylenopia was wearing. And the voice modulator taped at her throat would make her voice sound the same too. All part of the plan.

“L-Laurie? It’s time,” Tim said. “Are you in position?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then reached up to tap at her earring. “Right. I’m here.”

Laurie reached for her handbag, pulling out the first cartridge. Her hand shook slightly as she tapped the button, but she steadied her nerves in order to throw the object high into the air. The firework exploded several metres up, and Laurie ran quickly to her next location.

Mindylenopia marched up to the building as if she owned it. Frank found he could only follow along, attempting to project the same confidence. “Names?” said the bored looking woman at the front door.

She looked very young, and seemed to have red hair. Frank wondered if she was a Temporal - then felt ashamed at that prejudicial thought. Hadn’t taken long to become suspicious of gingers, had it! Still, it made some sense to have your main guard be someone who couldn’t be mentally influenced, and who was definitely on your side.

“We’re Smith and Jones," Mindy said, flashing a smile.

The guard looked closer. “Who?”

“He’s Smith, I’m Jones, we’re expected,” she continued easily. “I have the data key with the orders on it right here.”

“Wait, aren’t you–"

Mindylenopia, having reached into her handbag, now pulled out a perfume bottle. She sprayed it into the guard’s face. The redhead on duty only had the time to fumble for the gun on her belt before crashing to the ground unconscious. Mindylenopia dropped the bottle back into her purse.

“Smith?” Frank asked.

She reached for the guard, grabbing a swipe card, then pressing the woman’s hand up to a sensor by the door. “I spent some time watching old time travel shows. To better fit into the past,” she explained.

There was a click as the door unlocked.

“One down, three to go,” Mindylenopia sighed.

Laurie peered around the tree trunk. The person advancing on her position from the house was getting closer. Feeling glad that there was not only a tree, but also a fence between them - even if it was only a four foot high fence - she reached up to tap a few times at her earring.

“Tim? You still there?” Laurie breathed.

“Y-Yeah. How many security people coming?”

“Just the one.”

“Well, that’s good. If he speaks loudly, I s-should hear, s-so long as you’re still w-wearing the brooch. S-Simply repeat what I s-say.”

“Right.” Laurie reached down to adjust the brooch ornament even as she tried to make herself blend into the tree trunk even more. She reminded herself that things were going according to plan.

“Mindylenopia?” came the male voice. “%Is that you setting off those fireworks?%”

“%Happy five zero!%” Laurie blurted, off Tim’s prompting.

The guy sighed. “%Don’t be so juvenile. Why not come inside, with the rest of us?%”

“%Here I like being!%” Laurie retorted. “%You, you can go have some fungus, you who keep believing life is happy. Fun, some fun,%” she amended, off Tim’s pronunciation tip.

The young man didn’t answer. Laurie edged partway around the tree, to take a peek, and saw that his hand had gone to his gun. Oh no. Had she muffed it up? She pulled back again.

“Some of the others say you’re a traitor,” the Temporal continued after a moment, using English. “I don’t want to believe that. But this may be your last chance to prove yourself. Please, join us inside.”

Laurie licked her lips.

“Don’t use English!” Tim whispered, causing the ‘no’ to catch in her throat before she could speak. “Say this…”

“%I am not the one here speeching like them do%,” Laurie fired off. “%Maybe you be the alien instead%.”

“%Funny.%” There was another moment of silence. “%It’s your funeral. No more fireworks, okay?%”

“%You throw boring parties%.”

The security man snorted and moved off, saying something into his own communications device. Once he was out of earshot, she repeated it to Tim.

“They’re standing down,” he sighed. “That guy even told you no more fireworks. So make one last circuit, then meet Luci for the pickup.”

Laurie felt weak in the knees. “Okay.” She moved off in the opposite direction to where the security man had gone.

Moments later, she heard the sounds of a struggle.

Frank had once been inside the Diefenbunker, outside of Ottawa, on an educational trip. He found that the stationary temporal generator building was vaguely similar on the inside; there had even been a long corridor behind the first door requiring Mindylenopia to babble all the way down, to mentally influence the guard at the end before he could react. Since then, they had made it down three levels.

“We may have a problem,” his redheaded companion remarked, as she dumped the latest security guard into a janitor’s closet and shut the door.

“They know something’s going on?” Frank wondered.

Mindylenopia made yet another derisive noise. “Bernard, they’ve known something’s up since I jabbed that datalink into the panel inside the entrance,” she acknowledged. “It’s scrambling their feeds. But they won’t interrupt up the chain unless they’re sure they won’t get a dressing down for being incompetent about a minor glitch, so it’s fine. No, the trouble is, we can’t knock out the last guard. I’ll need that person conscious, to summon a tech to the displacement control centre.”

“So, you use your mind power on them?”

“That’s the thing,” Mindylenopia sighed. “One of the security people who work here is immune. And I haven’t seen her yet. So, if it turns out she’s the one we need awake…”

“Ah. Then we have a problem,” Frank affirmed. He hoped they could also think up a solution.

NEXT: Veni, Vidi, Veniti

ASIDE: It’s my birthday later this week! So if you didn’t vote for T&T on Friday, maybe do it today, tell your friends there’s this cool time travel story out there, that sort of thing… I need to stop looking at stats.

PREVIOUSLY: The time machine has been rebuilt into a car. We know events will send Frank (et al) back in time to pick up Laurie.

PART 85b: CLOSING THE LOOP

“Coin goes in here,” Julie said, indicating the slot on the Cavalier’s dash, where a radio might once have been. “The silver box thing from the old machine - which was a pain to install, by the way, but is one of the few items we can’t reproduce yet - is back there. It’ll auto-set the year and ultimately flash fry the currency. Keypad here is for entering the other coordinates, namely month, day, and time.”

“So you’ve fixed that random variance thing?” Corry mused.

Julie shook her head. “Nope, still a factor. If you arrive an hour or even a month off from the time you input? Don’t blame me. Now, when you hit the hashtag, or rather pound key, it routes the entry through the assembly on the floor of the passenger side. Including Luci’s old modified circuits, meaning the pocketwatch you see here should also display your actual time of arrival.”

“Wait, you kept the pocketwatch?” Luci asked, reaching to tap where it had been mounted in the dash. “Why not use the digital time display from the car itself? Still an overheating problem?”

“Because the watch belonged to Carrie," Mindy interjected. “Or rather her mother. From when she was left at the orphanage. Right?”

“I think so,” Frank agreed. “It never actually kept time, but in Luci’s first reparations over a year ago, Carrie insisted on trying to hook it in. So we did, to humour her - and it’s somehow synched up accurately upon arrival.”

“Mmm hmm. Thought so,” was Mindy’s final word about it.

“As to the DNA,” Julie continued, undaunted, “this blank looking panel here is actually a thumbpatch. It will pinpoint your geographic location. Hold part of your body there - presumably your thumb - for three seconds with the switch in the ‘on’ position. That’s the signal for the time jump to activate. Have two people press against it if you’re going for a point between them.”

“What about rematerializing ten feet in the air?” Corry demanded. “I still remember that from my first trip.”

“It… shouldn’t do that,” Clarke offered, hesitantly. “That’s part of the new stuff we’ve been hooking into the undercarriage. But it’s also one of the things we wouldn’t mind having a fresh set of eyes on.”

“The licence plate and registration are also for Ontario, and next year,” Luci pointed out. “How will that play out in the past?”

“Look, I’d be much happier with hologram technology and three years to perfect this," Mindy admitted. “But you play with the cards you’re dealt, okay?”

“Just show us the schematics then,” Frank stated. “We’ll see if we can offer any input.”

“Well, show those two tech wizards anyway - why did you want ME here so early?” Corry wondered.

Julie opened the car door. “So that you’d know how close we were to bringing your sister home, partner.” She smiled. “Oh, also I need your help hauling the briefcase of coins up from Linquist’s lab. It’s damn heavy.”

“So I’m like the hired help. Fun,” Corry grunted.

“You know,” Corry mused, as he closed the secret passage behind the china cabinet. “Since my ankle’s healed, what’s to stop me going back with Frank and Mindy so that they don’t need Laurie?"

Julie shrugged. “The fact that you didn’t do it, so you can’t?"

“Yeah, I’ve always hated that logic. What’s the REAL reason?” He hefted the briefcase, and the two of them headed for the hallway.

“I guess it has something to do with the future situation…" She paused as Jeeves strode towards them, looking worried. “That’s about to happen?”

“Mr. Waterson called for that waitress, Theresa,” he stated. “She’s on the phone with him now, and she sounds agitated.”

Julie dropped the electronics she was carrying, hurrying towards the phone in time to hear Mindy say, “Sir, this is important, did either of the two have red hair?” A pause, then, “Don’t worry. I was expecting this. We’re on it.”

“What?” Julie asked as Mindy hung up the phone.

“Two suspicious people at the Waterson house looking for Carrie,” Mindy replied curtly, already heading for the front door. “They held Hank at gunpoint and searched the place. Beth wasn’t home, perhaps fortunately, however she forgot to bring Carrie’s cell phone along. Hank told me - and them - that ‘Carrie’ had gone to the public library."

“The public… Lee’s working there today,” Julie said. As Mindy strode out, Julie doubled back. “Call the library. Ask to speak to Lee,” she asked Jeeves. “Tell him to keep an eye on Beth, and anyone looking for her. That is, for Carrie. Oh, he’ll know what I mean.”

“Certainly,” the butler responded, heading back for the phone.

“Bad?” Corry asked.

“Is it ever good? We’ve got the coins and the electronics for tracking the hairband, let’s at least load those up while Mindy explains more precisely what it is that she was ‘expecting’.”

“We’ve reached a temporal crossroads,” Mindy stated, after getting everyone into the garage. “Today is the last day ‘Carrie’, aka Beth, will be seen in the present before ‘Future Carrie’ abducts her from the past.”

“But we’re going to recover Carrie and prevent that act!” Clarke protested.

“If we do, today becomes the last day me and Glen remain in this time,” Mindy countered. “Because I still hope to get him away from Carrie. It all paints a target on December 30th.” She shook her head. “I had hoped that the future war would leave our departure day alone, but it IS a potential kick they’ll have at averting a predestined outcome. At actually affecting the timelines. Must have been too tempting of a target.”

“Why not travel back sooner, and stop us then?” Corry wondered, as he loaded the trunk of the Cavalier.

“If they had, this day might not have occurred,” Frank reasoned. “Ripple effect.”

“Also, the fact that I kept things so quiet and controlled would cancel any earlier advantage,” Mindy added. “Acting before now, they’d merely have a greater risk of my snaring them into our predestined outcome.” She jerked her thumb at the car. “Frank, get in, we’re off to the library to get Beth.”

“Wait,” Julie protested. “What was the deal with red hair?”

“No time.” Mindy opened the driver’s side door.

Julie kicked it shut. “Make time. What if those two come here next, after you’re gone?”

Mindy muttered under her breath.

“Rude,” Luci observed. “Also, not yet in our Temporal dictionary.”

“All Temporals have red hair,” Mindy confessed. “It’s genetic. The two who pulled apart the Waterson house? Were blonds. So either they were Mundanes, or they were of your time, being influenced by a Temporal. Happy?” She yanked the car door open again. “Either way, if they do come here, lay low. My best guess is that the future travellers want to abduct Carrie or Glen for themselves; they shouldn’t do more than injure you. Luci, get out of the car.”

“Oh no, I’m going back with you and Frank,” Luci asserted.

“Oh, for… we’ll argue on the way,” Mindy groaned.

They reached the library in record time. “Okay,” Frank wheezed, as he released his fingers from their grip on the back seat. “I see now why your limit is five people - there’s only five seat belts. Mindy, do they relax some traffic laws in the future?”

“I’m not letting over a decade of time stuck here in the past come to naught!” Mindy snapped. “Which may be the case if we can’t shake these time travellers and restore Beth to our past, when she’s supposed to be. Now, any way to tell if that girl’s still inside? Or her pursuers?”

“I’ll send Lee a message,” Luci said.

Frank pulled out his phone as it buzzed. “I’ve got a message from Chartreuse. She’s on her way - one of the others must have called her.”

“Yeah, hey, NO phones on once we’re out of the present!” Mindy reminded, eyeing the two of them. “Also, your argument for bringing Luci was unconvincing. I can translate whatever Glen says.”

“But will you do it accurately?” Luci questioned.

“I don’t like your tone.”

Which was when the gunshot rang out.

“Okay, those are NEVER good,” Luci noted, her door open before she had finished speaking. Frank ran out after her, despite Mindy’s protests. They were met at the steps up to the library doors by a number of panic stricken people running out.

“Lee says go ‘round back,” Luci said, eyeing the message on her phone. They rounded the building. There was a small theatre entrance there, as part of the structure also housed a small stage for local plays. Frank reached the door first, only to find it was locked.

“Now what?” he asked.

Luci eyed the keyhole. “Now… we need lockpicks?”

The door opened out unexpectedly, causing Luci to stumble back and fall on the ground. This left Frank staring at Lee, who was dragging after him a very scared looking blonde. “I’m sorry!” Beth was wailing. “I know I shouldn’t have been looking up my own past, I couldn’t help it, please PLEASE don’t let them kill me!”

“Math whiz, take her!” Lee said. He shoved Beth towards Frank. “I clubbed the guy who had the gun with a set piece shaped like shrubbery, but there’s another dude here somewhere. Go do whatever you’re supposed to do to prevent this from ever happening, I’ll keep them–”

“Lee!” Luci shouted in warning. Barely on her feet, she jumped past him, tackling the blond man who had been about to swing the piece of wood. The two of them fell to the floor as Lee spun back around.

“Luci!” he shouted, moving to help.

“Wait!” Frank cried, stepping around Beth - too late to reach the door before it swung shut again. After verifying that it remained locked on this side, he lifted his palm to pound on the metal.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” came Beth’s tearful voice.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s, you know, not your fault,” came another voice, making Frank turn. It was Chartreuse, looking winded as she ran up carrying a trombone case. She fired off a weak smile at him, before hugging Beth close. “It’ll be okay, our wonderful Carrie stand-in. As long as you, like, go NOW,” she emphasized. The last sentence seemingly meant more for Frank.

“But Luci’s in there…”

“I, you know, saw bits of this,” the pink haired girl assured. “Tim’s with Mindy back at the time machine. We’ve spoken, and he’s good to go instead. Oh, speaking of, cool car!" She gave a quick thumbs up. “Too bad I’ll never get to ride in it.”

“Tim?? But…”

“Frank, PLEASE, those guys are gonna charge out in less than four minutes!” Chartreuse said, finally releasing Beth. “Go! Go, go! Give Laurie my best."

The door banged as if something heavy had hit it, but it failed to re-open. Frank hesitated only a moment more before grabbing Beth’s hand and heading back for the library parking lot. “Is this why you didn’t mind me knowing about the future?” Beth asked tearfully. “Is it because I’m going to die now?”

“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Frank answered. “You’ll only forget a few things.” He saw Mindy already had the car running, and Frank noticed Tim in the front seat. He helped Beth into the back, then ran to the trunk, slapping his hand on it.

“What are you doing? Get in!” Mindy said, poking her head out of the window.

“We need a coin,” Frank said. “Pop the trunk!”

“Let’s get to safety first, then… oh fine,” Mindy sighed, sensing Frank wasn’t going to budge. She hit the release, and with some effort, he pulled out the briefcase. The second shot rang out as he was climbing into the back seat again.

Mindy ceased her mumbling – it was English, so Frank caught something along the lines of “create a fully mobile time machine and they all just stand around it” – in order to step on the gas.

“S-S-Seatbelts?” Tim suggested.

Frank tried to ignore the effects of acceleration long enough to peer out the back window. A man was running down the front steps of the library. He waved his gun at another car that had been about to pull out, forcing it to stop. Oh no, he hoped this wasn’t going to become a car chase.

“Coin?” Mindy said pointedly.

“Oh, uh…” Frank fumbled with the briefcase, only to slide into Beth’s lap as Mindy turned another corner. “Can we slow?”

“No. I’m busy being ticked off about your group substituting Tim for Luci.” With one hand on the steering wheel, Mindy moved her other to hover over the keypad. “What date shall I set?”

Tim flinched. “I thought we’d be going three weeks back…”

“We have to drop off Beth first,” Frank said, managing to get his hands on the coin changer for the 1950s. “Not to mention pick her up. Hey, maybe that works as one trip - Beth, on what day did we find you?”

“I… uh… I…” the blonde stammered, gripping the seat in front of her, tears in the corners of her eyes. Then her eyes closed and she began to whisper a prayer.

Frank sighed. “Well, for continuity, use the same date as her arrival in our present,” he decided. He was reminded of what Clarke had said - this Beth would need to bury her blue hairband somewhere in the forest, so that no one would be able to track her down again.

Mindy’s fingers flew over the keypad, as Frank handed Tim the necessary coin. “Drop it in that slot,” he advised. Tim did so - after which Mindy flipped the time switch and reached out for the DNA trigger.

“Mindy!”

“I didn’t exist then,” she assured him. “My failsafe should ensure that we end up in roughly the same spatial–”

“Mindy, we’re in MOTION,” Frank insisted. “What if we appear in front of a wall back then?!”

The redhead spun the wheel one handed, throwing Frank into Beth as the car swerved into an alleyway. She immediately stomped on the brake, thumb on the pad. “I was ABOUT to get us out of the–”

There was a bright light and a popping noise as the car disappeared.

NEXT: Miami is Nice

ASIDE: The next scene? You already saw in Part 84a (picking up Beth), followed by Part 83b (picking up Laurie). Which brings us to shortly after Part 4 (Elaine at the airport). You follow? How about a vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: Glen and Mindy explained temporal theory - and said that Carrie would never be able to save her mother in the past.

PART 83b: DOUBLE TROUBLE

“Wait, stop,” Laurie protested. “How can there BE this ‘Future Carrie’? Isn’t she from that old timeline three? Chartreuse said it’s gone!”

“Not entirely,” Mindy said, looking uncomfortable. “In a sense, timeline three is a few milliseconds in our future. We’re constantly in the process of overwriting it. So Future Carrie’s still a threat.”

Frank shook his head. “I don’t see it. After all the changes, why isn’t ‘Future Carrie’ destined to be from our timeline now?”

“She may be, but as we Temporals know, perception is everything,” Mindy sighed. “Did your Carrie grow up alongside Glen? That’s timeline three. Or did she grow up in a mental hospital being spoon fed memories of growing up alongside Glen? Because that could be our path now. They both lead to Future Carrie.”

“What? No!” Chartreuse gasped.

“Then we’ll finish our time machine and go after our Carrie,” Julie asserted. “It’s time travel, we can get to her in the past before that future happens. We’ll tell Carrie that she’s been living timeline four, to give her another path forwards.”

“Won’t work,” Glen asserted. “Unless you leave soon, Future Carrie will easily spot when her past self ceased influencing your present, and she’ll tie up the loose ends to preserve her own timeline. Even if it means the mental hospital in her past. Soon enough, you’ll all be adjusted to think your version moved away or something. I warned you, didn’t I? But oh no, nobody listens to–"

“Oh, stay shutted up,” Mindy interrupted. “Know what, Julie? Yes. Doing that is better than doing nothing. Possibly better that Carrie end up with Glinephanis here versus… yeah.”

“Meaning we’ll need to temporally hide out until until the machine is complete,” Luci realized. “To avoid this Future Carrie’s interference. How do we do that? What do we tell the rest of the school? What do we tell Carrie’s father?”

“Look. All you’ll need to do, is make everyone in the present think Carrie’s still here,” Glen admitted to them. “It won’t matter if she really is or not, her history is now in quantum flux. Basically, her future self can’t be allowed to perceive a lengthy discontinuity.”

Mindy rubbed her forehead. “I’ll go to Carrie’s father. We can stall a missing persons report.”

“Oh! More ‘minor changes’ to us?” Julie asked, her tone sarcastic.

“Julie’s right,” Clarke agreed. “Mr. Waterson should be told everything. Not have his mind adjusted.”

“Right, since giving the whole story worked SO well with your sister, Mary,” Glen reminded him.

“Yet you two Temporals have limits to your mind powers, yeah?” Lee noted. “Can’t change the whole school, not if there’s more people like me. And how long is this time machine rebuilding going to take?”

“Days,” Mindy sighed. “Okay, fine. For now I’ll set things up to stall another twenty four hours.” She glanced at Julie. “Let’s have a meeting of all technical minded people, right here, first thing tomorrow morning. That will tell us how long our stalling needs to be maintained.”

She’d asked him to stay behind. So Clarke decided to give Julie the first words. It took about two minutes of her staring into the china cabinet before she spoke.

“We have a problem here, Clarke. Phil.” Julie turned. “Damn it, I’m sorry, how do you want me to refer to you?”

“Let’s go with Phil,” Clarke suggested. “Against all odds, I spent four straight years at our school. So I’ve been wondering about using my first name more with everyone in post-secondary.”

“Phil then,” she said, smiling. “Here’s the thing. I tore myself away from whatever we had because I thought it was for the greater good. And maybe it kind of was, even if I went about it badly. Not to mention how it ended up being a trick by Mindy.” She raked her hands back through her hair. “So yes, I know I shouldn’t have unilaterally decided to keep you out without giving you any options. Thing is, Phil, I can’t promise that sort of thing won’t happen again. Like how it did today, with Glen at the park. And you don’t deserve that.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Julie. Jewels.”

“I’ll try not to be - but you can’t be so easy on me. I’m not healthy for you, Phil. You must realize that.”

“I should get a say in that, yeah?”

Julie moved closer. “Yeah. But PLEASE, you need to see where I’m coming from here. Logically, not emotionally. Phil, I did these things to you even after you saved my life last year. Do you understand?”

Clarke shook his head. “I can’t ignore my feelings…”

“I’m not saying you have to! However, you always seem to think more with your heart than your head. While I’m the reverse, hyper analytical. And while my emotions are pulling me back towards you here, the rest of me is… worried. Because while I may have been acting more hesitant for the better part of this year, as I rebuilt my life, underneath it all? It turns out I’m assertive to a fault. I could easily end up crushing you. Again. Please, if we’re going forward, I want you to recognize that, and have a contingency plan.”

“You mean I’ve got a blind spot when it comes to that part of you,” Clarke realized. He forced himself to consider that. “Maybe you’re right,” he granted. “But maybe you’re also scared to be losing your objectivity. You’re scared to give yourself over to your feelings.”

“Ohh, you’re not wrong.” Julie held his gaze. “Thing is, where does that leave us? Friends? More than friends? Something else?”

“Our relationship has always defied description,” Clarke said wryly. He reached out his hand. “How about we start again here, as a couple, and see where that takes us.”

Julie reached out, fingers twitching a little until their palms met. She was moving into the embrace almost before Clarke could pull her in. She drew in a long breath. After a moment, her shoulders began to shake - was she sobbing? Was she giddy with relief? When Clarke pulled back a little to try and see, she released his hand and held him tighter, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

So he simply held her back. It was enough, he decided. They could rebuild from this.

Sunday morning found all the technical specialists reunited in the LaMille sitting room: Julie, Frank, Luci, Mindy… and Glen. For while Glen was more of an expert on the theory than the hardware, Glen had refused to allow Mindy to be present without him.

It meant that arguments between Mindy and Glen were not infrequent. But with arbitration by Luci, progress on the actual circuitry was made too. Slow progress. It was close to noon when Julie threw her pencil down onto the table in disgust.

“Mindy, you’ve made this MORE complicated, not LESS. It’s going to take WEEKS, not days.”

“I thought you agreed with me that we cannot fit the circuits back into that black box chassis,” Mindy countered.

“We’re still on a deadline here! Stop adding stuff!”

“There’s no need to sacrifice safety. The only hard deadline is the end of December, and that’s only because once when we get into January there’s no coins to return to your present.”

“You’re forgetting the smokescreen,” Luci said. “The longer we obfuscate on where our Carrie is and what she’s doing, the greater the chance that we’ll be found out. At this rate, we could have this work cut off by outside forces from the future before we can finish.”

Mindy shook her head. “Once I saw this would take more than a few days - one week or three weeks, that won’t make a huge difference. Trust me.”

“What IS the new framework you’re aiming for?” Frank asked.

Mindy looked from Frank to Glen. “I’d rather not say.”

“What, worried I’ll take a sledgehammer to it before you’re done?” Glen asked, smirking. “You forget, I want Carrie back too.”

“Yeah, so you can get her closer to your ‘timeline three’, versus letting us explore other options,” Mindy pointed out. She then looked to Frank, perhaps to pull herself back from a new argument. “Though I admit, I’m also holding back to avoid giving out more information about future technology than I have to.”

“Mindy, that’s making it IMPOSSIBLE for us to–”

“Maybe it’s time for a lunch break," Luci said, cutting Julie off. “Was Mimi making sandwiches?”

“I think something was left in the kitchen, yes,” Frank agreed, as Luci shot him a look he interpreted as pleading for assistance. “Why don’t we adjourn there?”

After a few assorted mumblings, it was agreed that food might be in order. Luci interposed herself between the two Temporals as they changed locations, and as such was able to hear Frank’s next question to them. “So Mindy, with this ‘new design’, how many people are we going to be able to bring along? I mean, we’ll need to track Carrie down once we’ve arrived in the past, and the more people we have there, the easier that could be.”

Mindy grimaced. “No more than five.”

“Right. And I’ll be one of those five,” Mindylenopia clarified.

Luci managed to sidestep Julie, who had stopped in front of her, practically blocking the entranceway to the kitchen. They then understood why Julie had frozen in place. The kitchen was already occupied by a number of seated individuals: Mindy (or rather, Mindylenopia, who had spoken), Frank (or rather, Bernard), and also…

“Carrie??” Julie gasped. In two strides she was at the other girl’s side, leaning down to look into her eyes. The blonde was dressed curiously, sporting a very out-of-fashion blouse with a long skirt, and she was wearing a cross on a necklace. Only her blue hairband was familiar. “How are you feeling, are you… no. You’re not Carrie. Who are you?”

The blonde haired girl faltered. “Um, I… I…” She turned to look at the time travellers. “Frank, help…?”

“I’m Bernard now,” Bernard sighed back. He looked up at the rest of them. “Everybody? This is Beth Parker. Beth, that’s Julie, Luci, Glen, and, um, other ‘us’es you already know. It’s an Astral Plane thing.” Beth raised her hand, giving a tentative wave.

Frank slowly shook his head. “Beth Parker… I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

“This town,” Bernard offered. “Decades ago. Carrie’s lookalike, the Clayton Hotel, Mrs. Peabody…” Frank flinched as the memory came to him.

“Oh, this is rich,” Glen said. “You honestly think a body double is going to work?”

Mindylenopia rose to her feet. “It will for a while, yup. Until things go south. We’re not merely here to drop Beth off, we also need supplies before our trip back to the airport in Florida. Didn’t have time to load up before coming back.”

“Why not?” Luci asked.

Bernard adjusted his glasses. “We can’t say. At present, there’s a certain stability involved in our predestined time travel. We don’t want to risk it teetering into an even worse future.”

“You didn’t tell us when you were me, so you won’t tell us now,” Frank summarized. Bernard shrugged.

Julie turned to eye the current Glen and Mindy. “Could this be a trick?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past Mindylenopia,” Glen grunted.

Mindy finally spoke. “Honestly? I’d hoped we’d experience something like this. It means my machine will work. Awesomeness.”

“But there’s going to be sacrifices,” Mindylenopia countered. She jerked her thumb at Beth. “First, we’ve gotta acclimate her to this situation as fast as possible. And…" She exhaled. “Play it straight with Carrie’s dad.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Glen and Mindy chorused. As they had the previous day, they then glared at each other.

“Second,” Mindylenopia continued, “Glinephanis, if we DO run into Carrie’s future self back there? You’re one of the few people she might listen to. So we’re willing to bring you along with us.”

Glen folded his arms. “So you can leave me stranded somewhere? No way!"

“Sweet.” Mindylenopia turned to Bernard. “We tried, he’s not coming."

“Wait,” Bernard protested, standing also. “Glen, we wouldn’t strand you. As much as I hate to admit it, you also know more about our own Carrie’s emotional state leading up to her departure, and her capabilities. We need that information, that… expertise.” He let out a quick breath. “Plus, causally speaking, the fact that you didn’t time travel back here with us? Implies that you’re stuck in our present. Would you rather be there? Or keeping an eye on what it is we’re about to do?”

Glen’s eyes narrowed. “You neglect to point out that, if I come with you now, I won’t get to see what it is you’re planning through the month of December.”

“I’m hoping we can lock you in a basement for the next few weeks to achieve the same result,” present Mindy muttered under her breath. Glen shot her a look, which she ignored.

“Anyway, you’re not the only person from this time that we need to recruit,” Mindylenopia finished.

Julie frowned. “Why?”

“Welllll,” Bernard began slowly, after exchanging a glance with his companion. “As you know, our destination is Elaine Waterson. Last seen for sure in Miami, Florida. And we’ll need to time shift reasonably close to that position, both to minimize our temporal impact and to eliminate the possibility of unforeseen travel delays. So… we need someone who was in Miami that year.”

“Someone to pull the handle,” Luci reasoned.

“One of the Venitis,” Frank realized.

“And Corry has his twisted ankle,” Julie observed.

“Yeah. We’re here for Laurie,” Mindylenopia confirmed. “We need to pull her out of your time for this mission.”

A hush fell over the room. It was broken when Beth swallowed her mouthful of sandwich, and gestured at the tray. “Anyone else want one? They’re very tasty.”

NEXT: Adjustments

ASIDE: The dominos set up in Book 1 (Beth) and Book 2 (Miami) continue to fall. ARC 2 is done, so we’re halfway through Book 4. New commentary Sunday. How about that weekly T&T vote? I’ve also started posting to “Royal Road Legends”, if you want to start over.

PREVIOUSLY: Julie decided the best plan was to bring Glen (who wants to preserve the future) and Mindy (who wants to change the future), together.

PART 83a: TEMPORAL ALIGNMENT

“Oh, what’s Theresa doing… here…" Glen’s voice trailed off as the two redheads locked eyes. Despite everyone now being present in the LaMille sitting room, an unsettling silence fell. It lasted precisely five seconds.

“You scared Carrie off, this isn’t on me,” Mindy accused, quickly rising to her feet. “I’ve been passively watching, and only occasionally slowing down your orders at the cafe.”

Glen shot a glare at Clarke before turning back to her. “%You expect me to take YOUR word, you traitor?!%” he hissed back in Temporal. “%I’d be gone with Carrie by now if not for your interference.%”

“%Preserving a terrible future! Who wants that?%” Mindy argued. She looked to Julie. “This might have gone better if you’d said he was coming.”

“This might have gone better if you’d been more up front with us from the start,” Julie reminded her.

“Move away,” Glen said to Luci, Lee and Chartreuse, who were between him and Mindy. The two girls automatically took a step to the side, but Lee remained where he was.

“Dude, we might as well hear her side before the hurling of more garbled profanities or potentially heavy objects,” he remarked. Glen edged to the side, but Lee matched his movement, keeping the two Temporals apart. “Look, I don’t like getting physical, but I will if I have to.”

“That person is a traitor to everything a Temporal stands for,” Glen seethed, pointing past Lee, towards Mindy. “I’d banish her again myself if I could!”

“Glinephanis, our stance shouldn’t be that every Mundane is the enemy,” Mindy shot back. “%Remember, they created us.%”

“%Yes, and we are superior,%” Glen reminded. “%Until they learn to accept that…%”

“%They’re not servants. Not slaves.%”

“%No, but they are SO helpless,%” Glen scoffed. “%Playing around with technologies that they don’t understand, it’s not unlike giving teenagers a time machine. Let it continue, and everyone will be killed.%”

“%No, it’s sweeping generalizations like that which will kill everyone,%” Mindy responded. “%Don’t conveniently forget, fundamentally we remain human ourselves.%”

“What gibberi–” Corry began, only to be quickly silenced by a motion from Luci, who had been exchanging glances with Tim.

“%Temporals are the next generation of humans,%” Glen continued, ignoring Corry’s outburst. “%Imagine what we could accomplish without the petty restrictions of their society.%”

“%We could turn more innocent girls into weapons?%”

Glen managed to step around Lee, who had become distracted by Corry’s outburst. Showing no finesse, his fist went flying for Mindy’s face. Reacting quickly, Mindy stepped to the side and reached for Glen’s arm. As she tried to pull him off balance though, he twisted out of her grip, and the two of them faced off, eye to eye. Lee circled around, reaching out for Glen’s shoulder from behind, only to hesitate as the redhead simply resumed talking.

“%I’m not the one who woke her powers early,%” Glen seethed. “%That was a Mundane! I’m trying to HELP her.%”

“%Future her. Not the her of this time!%”

“%They are the SAME.%”

“%Not now. Not according to this one,%” Mindy asserted, pointing at Chartreuse.

“%That harlot?%”

“Whoa,” Tim gasped. Glen turned to stare, and the blonde boy slapped his hand over this mouth. Glen narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Mindy. “Oh no. No, this is unbelievable, did you teach all these Mundanes how to understand TEMPORAL?”

“No,” Mindy protested. “Though, okay, apparently they did find one of Linquist’s logbooks in our language…"

“Meaning you taught HIM? Oh, I’m out.” Glen’s posture relaxed then - as did Lee’s. “Future Carrie can destroy your lives as she likes,” Glen decided. He turned away from the group.

“Glen, wait," Frank objected. “Truthfully, most of us have no idea what happened and would like to get caught up.”

“Yeah, um, what were they, like, saying about me?” Chartreuse asked.

Glen paused, looking from Frank to Mindy to Tim. Mindy simply clasped her hands behind her back, adopting a neutral expression. Tim looked towards Luci. Luci seemed about to speak, then thought better of it and gestured back his way. “I caught words. You’re the linguist, Tim, you probably have a better idea of how it all fit together.”

Tim exhaled slowly. “Oh. Okay. Um. S-Something about them - as Temporals - being superior, and how our ignorance could kill us… though at a fundamental level we’re all the same? Except Glen didn’t buy that. Then they were arguing about Carrie’s powers, the use of her as a weapon, some garbling of tenses - hey, using a future imperfect tense almost makes sense now - and then on to Chartreuse. Which, ah, there’s a particular page where Linquist was spouting off about aliens, and he used what seemed to be cursing, so while I’m not entirely sure of the specific word…” He hesitated.

Mindy cleared her throat. “That ass called you a–"

“Never mind,” Chartreuse interrupted, her hands making fists. “I can guess.”

“Right, talk as if I’M the ass,” Glen said, his gaze settling back on Mindy. “Passively watching us, were you? If Carrie’s different, you’re the one who changed this past without considering the consequences!”

“I had no MEMORY when I met Linquist,” Mindy countered, jabbing her finger at her head. “Because of what YOU made Carrie do. So don’t you DARE lecture me, that man was like a father to me, he–“

“The change to Carrie’s timeline had to be more recent, traitor. You couldn’t have simply left town, noooo, you had to stay here and–"

“Yes, I had to TRY to create a better future, because it’s not like anyone else knew–"

“What gave YOU the right to decide–"

“Okay, this was funnier when I didn’t know what they were saying,” Corry grumbled.

Glen took a step back towards Mindy, only to have Lee again step between them. Then Julie clapped her hands twice, drawing everyone’s attention. “HEY! Temporals. Laying blame isn’t going to help bring Carrie back. So how about we all shut up and listen to each other until we’re on the same temporal page, allowing us to actually find a path forward through all this mess. Okay?”

Glen and Mindy glared back at each other. Then Glen rolled his eyes. “Fine. Feels like that’s the only way I’ll find out where the present day Carrie is.” He marched over to sit himself in a chair.

“Fine,” Mindy agreed. “Most of my cards are on the table already.” She sat back down on the couch.

“Lovely.” Julie put her hands on her hips. “Chartreuse, since you’re the one who understands Carrie’s timelines best, how about you guide us through the discussion?”

Chartreuse ceased her fumbling with the crystal around her neck, pursed her lips, then slowly nodded.

Frank found that the various timelines made sense. Mostly. There was one notable issue. “Here’s the thing,” he said once Chartreuse was done, which took some time given the questions of others along the way. “When ‘Shady’ initiated timeline three, that was a change. But Glen came back within that timeline - it was predestined. Mindy then initiated timeline four. That was a change. In fact, the very change that put us in this situation. So why the differences? What makes time travel predestined or not?”

“All time travel is predestined,” Glen grunted.

“Until it’s not,” Mindy added, with an impish smile. Frank frowned.

“That’s not an acceptable answer,” Luci protested.

The two Temporals exchanged glances. “You want to waste your time on this?” Glen said, gesturing.

Mindy raked her fingers through her hair. “Oh, sure, let’s give it a whirl.” She looked to Frank. “Say you burn your dinner. You’re bummed out. You travel back a half hour through time, to remind yourself to take it out of the oven. Meaning you don’t burn your dinner. Awesome. So why even take the time trip? Things worked out fine!”

“Because you’re predestined?” Frank ventured.

“Exactly,” Mindy concluded. “On an unconscious level, you need to go. For consistency, and so that your time travelling version has somewhere to return to. Perhaps the trip even avoids you being stuck in some sort of infinite time loop.”

“Wait. So did that dinner EVER get burned?” Laurie asked.

Mindy smiled. “Nope.”

“Unless dinner’s connected to paradox inducing Carrie Waterson,” Glen added, rising to his feet and wandering over to the china cabinet.

Lee scratched his head. “So time travel has become a way to remind yourself to do stuff that’s gonna happen ANYWAY?”

Mindy’s smile widened. “Yup.”

“Hence, all time travel is predestined,” Clarke echoed. He looked to Glen. “Except possibly when Carrie’s involved.”

“What’s the damn point to doing it then?” Corry asked.

“Funny you should say that, we keep telling the Mundanes as much…"

“Oh, Glen, lighten up,” Mindy said. “Thing is, even setting aside having actual motivation via one’s relative present being affected by a predestined trip, there are exception cases outside of Carrie too. It’s a matter of getting your time trip to knock the prior timeline completely out of alignment, such that it starts getting overwritten with your new one. To do that, you need to aim for a lynchpin moment. Which, alas, are almost impossible to spot, even in retrospect. So sometimes a Mundane tries anyway, hoping to get lucky.”

“For instance, instead of going back in time to warn about dinner, you go back in time, disabling your time machine,” Frank offered. “Lynchpin, and new timeline.”

Mindy shook her head. “Actually, that can be predestined. You might think you’re disabling it, when in fact you’ve enabled something that will force the trip.”

“Then the usual paradox of going back to kill your grandfather is a lynchpin,” Luci stated.

“Predestined,” Glen countered, now leaning against the wall. “You never take the shot. Or he survives. Or it’s a case of mistaken genetic identity. Time is more of an active force in this than you realize.”

“Okay, I know going back to try and kill YOURSELF does something,” Julie declared. “All I’m missing is the T-Shirt.”

“That can set up temporal waveforms,” Mindy acknowledged. “Are you alive? Are you dead? Even are you both at once, that’s a messy quantum possibility. But ultimately the timeline will collapse down into the most stable configuration… which is usually one of predestination.”

“Kinda hating the, you know, lack of free will here,” Chartreuse observed.

“You have free will in your actions,” Mindy noted. “And in your perceptions, which honestly is the most important thing. After all, two people can see a single event very differently.”

Chartreuse grimaced, as Mindy’s remark reminded her of the incident at school with the broken violin.

Mindy looked around at the others. “So yes, you get less free will about the final destination, but that’s all. To be blunt, everyone dies, the question is how did they live their lives.”

“Then you’re s-saying global warming was always going to happen,” Tim said.

“No,” Glen sighed. “She’s saying something was always going to happen. Free will and general human stupidity meant that the something became global warming. And now we’re kind of stuck with it, along with a host of other somethings… Mundanes really screwed over the Earth we’re trying to inherit.”

“But Mindy, doesn’t this temporal inertia mean your mission to separate Carrie and Glen was always doomed to failure?” Frank protested.

Mindy nodded. “Maybe. But there’s also early nudges on timeline alignment which can help knock it out when the lynchpin arrives, and with Carrie involved here, that was my goal. For while a mission to prevent Carrie’s departure entirely would likely have failed, mine was to prevent her from going with Glen. Which, frankly, seems to have worked.”

“Temporarily,” Glen grumbled. “Look, lecture over. Have we reached the point where you’ll all tell me when Carrie took her time trip to yet?”

Frank looked around the room at the others, seeing varied levels of confusion but no real argument. “They might as well know. Chartreuse? Feels like you should do the honours again.”

The pink haired girl nodded, again touching the crystal around her neck. She drew in a deep breath. “We’re almost certain that Carrie went back in time to get her mom. So that Hank Waterson would have someone here with him, after losing his daughter.”

“Oh, well, that won’t work,” Glen and Mindy chorused. They turned to glare at each other, as if irritated to be so in synch.

“Why not?” Luci demanded, perching herself on the couch again. “Carrie’s involved. Can’t she change things?”

Glen lifted an eyebrow. “Ooh. Gonna tell them all about it, ‘Mindy’?”

“Shut up, Glinephanis. I’m trying to work through the repercussions of that.”

“What repercussions?” Corry asked. “What’s the problem?”

“Sorry,” Mindy sighed. “I can’t. This goes beyond temporal theory, it’s need to know information only.”

“She’s my girlfriend!” Chartreuse insisted. “I need to know!”

Mindy merely pursed her lips.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Glen said. “If your Carrie went back to that time? My Future Carrie will pull herself out of there. Probably has already.” He smirked. “There’s nothing we can do about it here in the present. You’re screwed.”

NEXT: Double Trouble

ASIDE: A couple weeks ago, I submitted a serial profile to the “Serial Fiction Digest” FB group. Check it out if you want to know how I get in the minds of my characters, and check out @SerFicDigest on twitter.

PREVIOUSLY: Mindylenopia is at the LaMille mansion, as others prepare to meet Glen in Willowdale Park.

PART 82b: AFTER EFFECTS

“So why are you the official substitute for Frank?” Luci asked.

Corry carefully lowered himself down into the park swing. “Damned if I know.” He used his cane to brace the swing and arrest it’s motion. “Might as well focus on Glen. What did you turn up?”

In the swing next to him, Lee grinned. “Luci, show him the article about–"

“Hold that thought,” Clarke interrupted, looking towards the tree line. “Let’s tell them both at once.” Luci turned to see that Glen had emerged, and was approaching them, looking around warily.

“You’re short a few people,” the redhead pointed out, stopping at least three metres away.

“Research is ongoing,” Lee countered, before Clarke could speak. “You didn’t specify we all had to be here.”

“Right. Look, if your plan is for the others to knock us all out, then ply me for secrets about my abilities? Save your time, I won’t talk.”

“Oh, shut it,” Corry barked. “As if locking you in a box somewhere would be of any use. Me, I’m interested in what’s been discovered so far. Up to you if you want to listen too.”

Glen glared, but did close the distance between them. “Do you actually have documented evidence that Mindy has been hiding out in the town’s past?”

Luci glanced at Clarke, who nodded. She pulled a page out of the folder she held. “To start, an article from ten years ago. Talking about Linquist’s research taking a bizarre turn ‘since taking in that street girl’.”

Glen motioned with his hand, and after a momentary hesitation, Luci handed over the page. The redhead scanned it. “There’s nothing conclusive in this,” he objected. “No mention of who that ‘street girl’ was.”

“But notice the bizarre turn,” Clarke said, pointing. “Linquist publishing a paper about relativity. Wormholes. Surely that points to an influence by Mindy.”

Glen shook his head. “No, it proves the opposite!” he said scornfully. “I guess Carrie never said? Mindy’s memories of such things would have been scrambled by the temporal banishing. Linquist would have needed something in his own background to put her pieces together this way, yet you’ve now said this was a bizarre detour for him. You’re wasting my time.”

“Except we also have some later news articles!” Luci protested. She pulled out another page. “Including this one, where an interviewer says Linquist believed that aliens were feeding him information. If he started to think that Mindy was–"

“Luci, wait,” Clarke interrupted again. “Glen, you say Mindy’s memories would have been affected?” When Glen nodded, Clarke turned to look at Lee. “The stuff Linquist was doing before that bizarre turn, wasn’t it about memories?”

“Thought experiments, yeah,” Lee agreed. “Including recollection under hypnosis. It was good enough to get that minor award.”

Corry leaned forwards. “Maybe that’s the real proof then. Linquist got access to the wormhole stuff by fixing Mindy’s mind.”

Glen’s eyebrow twitched. “Show me the rest of your articles.”

“My original mission was to get ‘Glen’ away from Carrie, using any means possible,” Mindy answered Frank.

“How does a time machine help you do that now?” Frank asked.

Mindy shrugged. “It could have let me reason with one of them, away from the other. Worst case scenario, it creates the option of travelling back and planting as many subconscious triggers for Carrie as I could. Anyone spot that poetry I submitted some five years back?”

“So you again admit you’re trying to manipulate us,” Julie noted.

Mindy sighed. “Seriously? My poem was minor. Calling you last weekend, so you wouldn’t lose hope, was minor. I haven’t done anything major.”

“You crashed a van into our school library,” Frank reminded.

“Anything lately! Though short term damage like that is also minor,” Mindy said dismissively. “Time recovers. Also, I was younger and more impulsive then, stop trying to corner me.”

“What about the note you wrote me in Carrie’s handwriting?” Julie accused. “It was you, right? ‘Rebuild it, in secret,’ et cetera?”

Mindy shifted uncomfortably. “Right. Kind of minor? To be honest, I tapped Carrie to write that note herself, but it was years ago, back before her powers awoke. Kept it vague, removed the memory… I mean, it stood to reason that Glen would have her destroy the machine, after the stunt you all pulled on me with it. I just had to figure out who would be the best person to give that note to afterwards.”

“SIX WEEKS of my LIFE, Mindy!”

Mindy ran her fingers back through her hair. “Okay. Okay, sorry. That was a bit more long term - but come on, less than 12% of a year? It’s not as bad as it could have been. Not as bad as what happened to Linquist.”

“Why, what happened to him?” Laurie asked, biting her lip.

Mindy exhaled. “Euh. Well, I mentioned I had language trouble after the banishment, right? Truth is, we Temporals have our own language, and what with switching back and forth due to my memory blanks, Linquist kinda figured it out.”

“Hold on,” Tim said. “You mean, the language in his logbooks…?"

“%That little witch%…”

Luci jerked her gaze from Clarke back to Glen. “What??”

Glen waved dismissively. “Mumbling gibberish, never mind.”

Luci frowned, trying to peg why the strange words felt familiar, but Glen was already addressing them again. “Okay. It’s not a strong case, but it’s more of a case than I thought you’d pull together. For the moment, I’m on board with your suspicions.”

“Okay,” Luci said, temporarily setting aside his mutterings. “So, do you have any idea where Linquist and Mindy could be hiding out?”

Glen handed the sheets over to Corry. “No. In fact I may have run into them a dozen times and not known; Mindylenopia would have been on her guard for me, while I can’t say the same. That witch would even slip past Carrie’s headaches now, given how Carrie was the one who sent her back for those fifteen years or so.”

“So you’re not much help, is what you’re saying,” Lee remarked.

“I’m saying I’ll be looking now. You want a suggestion? Let’s talk with the guy Carrie referred to as ’Shady’.”

“Him? But he’s in jail somewhere,” Clarke protested.

Glen waved his hand in the air. “Hi, I have mental powers. Plus Tim’s father is a lawyer, right? The combination should be sufficient.”

“But how does getting to that guy help?” Luci asked.

“Simple. ‘Mindy’ would have known ‘Shady’ was coming,” Glen countered. “To awaken Carrie. More, that he had a time machine. Excellent opportunity for our nemesis to refresh her own knowledge, and perhaps obtain anything else he’d brought along, before mentally adjusting him and leaving.”

Luci and Clarke exchanged glances again. “So, that’s a scary thought,” Luci admitted. “Still, if Shady got adjusted to forget, what’s the point in us seeing him now?”

“Because wherever ‘Shady’ was staying in town back then could be a good place for Mindy to stay now,” Corry concluded, looking up from the articles. “Besides, it’s the only temporal lead we have, right?”

Glen crossed his arms. “Unless your missing friends have a better plan?”

“I’ve give Julie a call,” Clarke decided. “Wait here.”

“So, is that it, Mindy?” Julie said, her hands tightening on the back of the couch. “Is that all your manipulations?”

“Yes,” Mindy said. Then, glancing sidelong at Tim, she sighed. “No.”

“What else?” Frank asked, rubbing his forehead.

“It’s okay, you’ll like this one,” Mindy assured. “The time travel chip? The one that you had Tim bring here last week? It survived.”

Tim nearly fell forwards off his chair. “What? But I SAW Carrie destroy it!”

“She destroyed something, sure. You’re forgetting that I was paying attention to the time machine situation, thus had prepared a worthless dummy chip of my own. Just in case. And when Tim came to the cafe before heading out on the mission? I saw my chance.”

“You had him pull your dummy chip out of his pocket to give to Lee instead,” Julie reasoned, working to rein in her anger.

“Oh, I couldn’t be sure exactly what would happen, but I left Tim with the suggestion to hide the original once he was alone, and to use mine in all interactions,” Mindy admitted. “He brought the correct one to me the next day. He didn’t know at the time. It was to keep him safe.”

“I feel so used,” Tim said, biting his lip.

“Mindy, honestly? With all those manipulations, you’re not sounding much better than Glen,” Frank said.

“Rude! I’m on your side. The temporal gun? For helping Carrie with her temporal self? My doing. You’re welcome.”

“It was hidden in a safe,” Julie reminded. “Was that done by manipulating Linquist?”

“Okay, a bit, yes!” Mindy said, becoming visibly exasperated. “But I couldn’t fix him, or do anything that might prevent Carrie from actually banishing me after my first trip into your time. So I made the best of a bad situation. It’s all worked out to this point, what’s your problem?”

“You were, like, silent too long.”

Everyone turned to regard Chartreuse, standing in the doorway. Julie glanced reflexively at the china cabinet; Chartreuse must have come up through the pantry access. She wondered how long the mystic had been listening.

“What do you mean, Chartreuse?” Laurie asked, standing and moving closer to her.

Chartreuse took a deep breath. “Carrie’s WHOLE deal was in how she’d ended up, you know, destroying timeline three. The one Glen and ‘Future Carrie’ wanted. Except she hadn’t.” Chartreuse advanced into the room, ignoring Laurie’s outstretched hand. “You beat her to it, Theresa.”

“Very flattering, but Linquist’s knowledge was not a direct–”

“Not merely due to Linquist. It was through your cafe interactions with us. Both the, like, covert, in convincing us to be part of Carrie’s life, or, you know, the more overt, creating that fire to split Carrie and Glen apart on their first date. We’re in YOUR timeline now. We have been since the beginning.”

Mindy shook her head. “Minor, minor, all minor, major events would still happ–”

“Minor stuff ADDS UP,” Chartreuse interrupted again. “Before this? I could still kinda make it work. Now? No way. There is NO way the Carrie in ‘timeline three’, the one who once left with Glen, has ever been my– been our Carrie. Except our Carrie never, like, knew that before she ran away! And if she’d known, maybe she could’ve stayed, could’ve figured something out!”

Mindy leaned forwards. “Even IF Carrie is now different, Glen still has the power to steer her back. Remember, he’s the villain here, not me. I came to you today of my own free will.”

“Free will?” Julie cut in. “Or did you come here because talking with Tim made you realize we’d soon have Glen identify you?” Mindy shot her a look. And Julie jumped as her phone rang again. She glanced at it, and upon seeing Clarke’s name, excused herself from the room.

“So, Glen’s talking about breaking us into a jail, how are you doing?”

“We’re with Mindy. She’s been rewriting time,” came the response.

Clarke nearly dropped his phone. “What? A-Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine. We’re all fine, but in her own way, this woman’s been as manipulative as Glen. It’s annoying.”

“So… um, what do we tell Glen…?"

“Nothing. Simply bring him here. I think these two Temporals need to talk it out.”

Clarke blinked, sure he’d misheard. “Bring him? Julie… Jewels, those two hate each other.”

“Right,” she agreed. “But Mindy needs someone to take her down a peg, and we can’t keep this from Glen for long. Besides, it might be the only way to figure out whether all their plots are because of their time war… or whether one of them truly has Carrie’s best interests at heart.”

Clarke glanced towards the others. From the way their voices had begun carrying, it sounded like an argument had arisen about whether Linquist could have learned the power of mental manipulation. “Okay. We’ll be there in less than half an hour.”

NEXT: Temporal Alignment

ASIDE: That’s Mindy’s history for you. I think the only missing piece at this point is how timelines work in the “Time & Tied” universe; that’s coming next. Are you enjoying? Care to vote or recommend?

WARNING! MASSIVE REVELATIONS INCOMING. YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO READ PRIOR PARTS THE SAME WAY AFTER THIS. ARE YOU CAUGHT UP?

PREVIOUSLY: Did Carrie go back in time to find her mother? Is Mindy somehow pulling strings in the present?

PART 81b: DO YOU MINDY?

“No, that feels wrong,” Clarke objected. “Glen wanted Julie’s time machine destroyed. Why would ‘Future Carrie’ want it restored? Why work against the person she sent back? We’re missing something.”

Luci frowned, but apparently couldn’t think of an immediate defence for her position. After a troubled glance in Frank’s direction, she resumed her pacing.

“Let’s all back up,” Lee suggested. “Consider ways our rich witch’s note COULD have been written by our version of the track tease. For example, maybe it was dropped off after destroying the chip, but before she went after her mom? Thinking it was possible for us to make another chip or something.”

Julie shook her head. “Doubtful. Carrie’s started using new stationery in the last couple months. My note was on plain paper. Why the difference?”

“Also, Carrie was pretty adamant about not invoking more time travel,” Chartreuse added. “Problem is, I’m not sure I, like, buy Luci’s theory either. After all, the mystery note’s basically led to all of us, you know, being here and theorizing about time travel. Which is, like, exactly what ‘Future Carrie’ would want to avoid, yeah?”

“We weren’t always working together,” Clarke pointed out.

Julie winced. “Yeah, look, about that… Clarke, I…"

He flashed her a tired smile. “We’ll talk later.”

“Know what? We’re putting a lot of faith in handwriting here,” Corry decided. “And handwriting can be forged. Moreover, Julie, the note never referred to you by name, did it?”

“No,” she admitted. “You think it was a setup by someone else? But who outside of our group would know enough to be able to pull it off?”

Corry pointed his cane at her. “Mindy.”

“But that… actually fits,” Frank realized. “Mindy did have a couple hours in our time. She could have devised backup plans, gone to Carrie’s house, planted notes…"

“Mindy DID go to Carrie’s,” Clarke recalled, leaning forwards. “The day after the banishment, when I was with Carrie? She mentioned a letter by Mindy that had been left with her father.”

Luci leaned forwards against the back of the couch. “So Julie’s been working for MINDY all this time? Why? Surely if Mindy had enough knowledge to build a time machine, she’d have hired a reputable scientist rather than work to dupe a bunch of teen… she’d hire a…"

She snapped her gaze over to Tim at the same time as he turned to look at her. “L-Luci, the person in L-Linquist’s notes. Who might have been a relative, or associate…"

“No way. No WAY!”

“It would explain why that associate came up with the idea for the %gun of temporal freezing%.”

“Okay! Context for those of us out of the loop, please?” Lee requested, waving his hand.

As Luci seemed too stunned to speak, Tim turned to address them. “Linquist’s work on time travel. F-From once sensing the problem in Luci’s DNA to creating the t-temporal gun we found in the safe. What if all of his recent work was due to Mindy?”

“Linquist used to be a more reputable scientist,” Frank agreed. “Even won a local award once. When did that change?”

“When Mindy arrived,” Julie concluded, smacking the back of the chair. “After her banishment. She’s been working with him this whole time.”

“That can’t be,” Chartreuse gasped. Laurie reached out to again grasp her friend by the hand.

“But if that’s true,” Luci finally vocalized. “Mindy’s temporal banishment was, what, back fifteen years MAX?”

“That girl was Carrie’s first ever banishing attempt, right?” Corry remarked. “Maybe she didn’t do that great of a job.”

“Unless Mindy moved away and then came back into town,” Clarke countered.

“Well hey, why not look for evidence?” Lee suggested. “I’m working some hours in the library this afternoon. Now that you know what to look for, why not come with me and see if there’s something tying that Mindy to this Linquist? Maybe we can even figure out where they are now.”

“Wait, that plan, um, it doesn’t seem to help us get a time machine to pursue Carrie,” Laurie pointed out, waving one hand in the air as she continued to hold Chartreuse with the other. “Since even if present Mindy is tracked down, it still leaves us at the mercy of her, um, mental powers, right?”

“Lee’s immune, and I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve,” Julie said.

“No, Laurie right,” Frank sighed. “Without Mindy’s help, we have no time machine, and we need one. So Mindy can demand stuff, and we’ll have no choice. Worse, I don’t think she’ll have wanted a time machine so that we could all save Carrie.”

“Threaten Mindy with that gun maybe?” Corry suggested.

“Not if she h-helped to invent the thing,” Tim reminded. “Wouldn’t she know h-how to defend against it?”

Clarke sighed. “How about using Glen?”

Chartreuse jerked out of her thoughts. “Clarke, seriously? HIM?!”

“Maybe Mindy’s been warning us away from him because he’s the one guy who can take her down,” Clarke said, shrugging.

“Maybe we, you know, WANT her to take him down.”

“The devil we know, or the devil we don’t,” Julie muttered. “It’s like choosing Corry instead of Megan all over again. But in that respect, Clarke’s right - at least with Glen, we know what we’re getting.”

“Megan was merely misunderstood,” Chartreuse said.

“Maybe Glen is misunderstood too,” Clarke insisted.

Luci came around the couch to step between them. “Here’s the thing though. If Glen’s goal is to get Carrie back, and our goal is the same… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe Clarke’s right. Maybe we should at least ask Glen if he wants to help retrieve Carrie?”

Everyone in the room exchanged uncomfortable looks.

Glen stared back at Clarke and Lee, an expression of disbelief on his face. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“Hey, I’m inclined to ask that question of their group quite a bit lately,” Lee put in, before Clarke had a chance to respond. “But instead I roll with it. Turns out anything that doesn’t make sense either eventually does, or doesn’t matter.”

“Ha!” the redhead scoffed, turning away from the two other boys. He leaned against the window frame of his hotel room, staring outside, trying to find the flaw in their reasoning. It wasn’t coming to him. “So you expect me to believe that Mindylenopia has been in town for years? That she somehow remembered enough to be behind Julie’s time machine? And that getting the machine away from Mindy is our only chance to help Carrie?”

“Right, though Mindy doesn’t have it yet,” Clarke noted. “We only know that she told Julie it could be rebuilt with her help. So we can’t simply take Mindy out pre-emptively. Unless you can make us a time machine as well…"

“I’m not a technical guy,” Glen grunted. “I only know the theory. Mindylenopia was a full-on tech, that’s why it was a big deal when she supposedly joined the idiot Mundanes in the resistance.” He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have been capable of introducing such technology into the past though. Not to mention the issues with causality… unless she figured it was less of a deal to tell all of you, since you knew already?”

He began to tap his fingers on the windowsill. Mindylenopia. Was it true? How much might she remember? Was this a game changer? Did he want to work with Carrie’s so-called friends?

Clarke cleared his throat, as if he was going to speak again. Out of the corner of his eye, Glen saw Lee signal him to stay silent. Yeah, of course they would have sent along the guy who couldn’t be influenced. They didn’t trust him - nor did they have any reason to. So was this a trap, or were things just that serious? Glen grimaced, continuing to tap his fingers for another minute or two, before turning around again.

“When did Carrie travel to?”

“We’re not sure,” Clarke answered.

“But you must suspect. Hence wanting the machine.”

When Clarke hesitated, Lee spoke up instead. “That information isn’t on the table here, dude. If you agree to help, and to never again pull any sort of stunt like you did with that chip, then maybe. BIG maybe.”

Glen narrowed his eyes. “And how do I know Julie didn’t create two chips? Or maybe once you have the time machine, your whole plan is to return to yesterday and take Carrie away for yourselves!"

Clarke’s jaw dropped, a sign that either those weren’t, in fact, possibilities, or that the guy was a better actor than Glen gave him credit for. The latter seemed unlikely, as the blonde only pulled himself together when Lee’s hand fell on his shoulder. Then again, maybe the others simply hadn’t told Clarke the true plan.

“High guy. We’re getting nowhere. We should go."

“I guess,” Clarke said. “Unless… Glen, is there’s anything that might convince you that Mindy’s the real enemy here?”

Glen rubbed his chin. “Proof might. Yes, proof of actual scheming by Mindylenopia over the last ten years.”

Clarke nodded. “Okay, well, Tim and Luci are looking back over their notes, and Frank is already at the library, which is where we’re headed. So by tomorrow, we should–"

“Nope, by 5pm today.”

“What? Glen, that’s less than six hours away! And there’s so much data we’ll have to sift through!”

“Well, I can hardly give you the time to come up with a grand song and dance number for me, can I?”

Lee shook his head. “Paranoid much, red barren? You could use your mental gifts to see if anyone is trying to trick you.”

Glen shrugged. “Maybe your plan would be to try and figure out how I use that power, in order to turn it against me. No, I think if you’re really serious, you’ll put the effort into making my deadline. Oh, and I choose our meeting site, which won’t be the LaMille mansion, so don’t even bother.”

“Okay,” Clarke sighed. “Okay, fine. We’ll have something for you. And then you’ll see, Glen. You’ll see that we’re on the same side here!”

Julie had a sip of her tea as she sat in the kitchen, peering at her laptop. She, like Corry, had opted to do some searching online, rather than get in the way at the library records room. Besides, with Chartreuse and Laurie down in Linquist’s lab doing… whatever Chartreuse had insisted on doing, it had made sense for her to stay at home with them anyway. Unfortunately, the internet wasn’t providing much aside from a couple of references to Linquist’s jargon filled papers.

Julie glanced towards the pantry, which held the access down towards the hidden room. It was already past 4pm. What was going on down there? Chartreuse had said something about mapping timelines, and Laurie was popping up every so often to ask Julie about a specific date, plus there had been that one time for sandwiches… should she disturb them?

Julie shrugged. One of the library group was due to phone her soon, giving them the location where Glen wanted to meet. If the mystic and her friend hadn’t materialized by then, then she’d go down and see what was happening for herself.

The doorbell rang as she finished her tea. Jeeves would have already left to pick up Corry by car, what with that turned ankle, so Julie closed her laptop and rose to answer the front door herself. Maybe Clarke had come back to share some information in person?

Except it wasn’t any of the library people - when Julie opened the door, she found Tim standing with a rather more unexpected visitor. “Theresa?” the brunette questioned Tim’s companion. “What’s going on? We don’t usually see you out of the cafe."

The waitress half smiled. She wasn’t even wearing her cafe outfit, instead she wore a red blouse and dark pants. “Yes, well, I was talking to Tim here and realized that the time had come to explain certain things.”

Julie frowned. “What things? What do you…" She stopped. Noticing Tim’s worried expression, she looked a bit more closely at Theresa. And at her red hair.

“You know what things,” Theresa said. “In fact, you came damn close to figuring me out once before. Don’t worry, I won’t mentally guide you away this time.”

It hit with such force that Julie felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She grabbed for the doorframe. “No. It can’t be. You mean you… you’re…"

“Yes, Julie.” The seemingly twenty-something cafe waitress stretched her arms out to the sides. “I was once known as Mindylenopia."

NEXT: Remaking History

ASIDE: Anyone seen my microphone? I seem to have dropped it. Feel free to speculate on the repercussions of this part in the comments. Oh, and vote for T&T, maybe even encourage friends to read?

PREVIOUSLY: Carrie vanished during the school talent show. Everyone has parts of the puzzle…

PART 81a: MUM’S THE WORD

Hank Waterson opened his front door almost before his visitor had a chance to knock. “I’m sorry to have called you so early,” he apologized, opting to get straight to the point. “But I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know what to think about this, but her note mentions you, so I thought you might have more information. I don’t want to leave the house either, lest she come home…”

“It’s fine,” Luci assured him. “But like I said, I’ll need to see what Carrie wrote for myself.” She gestured to her companion. “And I hope you don’t mind, but I brought Julie along. She, um, specializes in cryptic Carrie notes.”

Julie gave him a quiet wave.

“That’s fine,” Hank said, beckoning them both inside. “At this point, I’ll take all the help I can get. From what I can gather, Carrie was last seen at the talent show? Is that why she insisted to me that I not be there? How far in advance had she planned her trip? Why didn’t she tell me about it, and when is she coming back?”

The two teenagers exchanged a glance, Julie offering Luci a small shrug.

“We’re not sure about any of that stuff,” Luci hedged. “Aside from yeah, she was last seen at the talent show. Maybe we don’t know that much more than you. Can we see the note?”

Unable to get any sort of read on their expressions, he nodded. “It’s upstairs, in her room. I left everything the way it was. I’d appreciate if you’d do the same, in case we need to open any sort of police investigation into her disappearance.”

“Why, do you think Carrie was coerced into writing whatever it was?” Luci wondered, as they ascended the stairs.

“I don’t know what to think,” Hank admitted. He let them into her room, gesturing at Carrie’s desk, over by the window.

Both Luci and Julie walked over, peering down at the note. Almost immediately, Julie turned to speak for the first time. “How long has Carrie been using this stationery? With the little pocketwatch in the corner?”

Hank shrugged. “I don’t know. I think maybe she bought it a couple of months ago?”

As the brunette considered that, there came a knock at the front door. Hank turned and ran back down the stairs, but instead of seeing Carrie when he opened it, he saw Chartreuse instead. She had a redheaded girl with her, whom he belatedly identified as Laurie.

“H-Hi, sir,” the pink haired teenager said nervously. “Sorry if we’re, like, disturbing you…”

“Did Luci tell you about the note as well?”

Chartreuse tilted her head to the side. “Note?”

Dear Dad, (it read)

  Some things have been happening in my life recently that I… I can’t deal with. So I have to disappear. Please know that this isn’t because of anything you’ve done, or didn’t do - I like how things have been getting better between us. I really do. But I don’t think I can go on, not with the path that’s been laid out for me. That said, my leaving? It means she can return. All the best to both of you,

Carrie

PS- Luci, if things DO go horribly wrong, do NOT hesitate to use the item that you found in that safe!

Julie crossed her arms. “It’s Carrie’s handwriting,” she confirmed for Luci. “And the ‘disappear’ remark would seem to confirm what Chartreuse said.”

“While the postscript obviously refers to the gun. But what about ‘she can return’? Surely that doesn’t mean…” Luci’s voice trailed off as footsteps approached, and moments later, Mr. Waterson was showing Chartreuse and Laurie into Carrie’s bedroom as well.

Chartreuse looked better than she had the previous night. Of course, Julie reflected, it would have been difficult to look worse. After Carrie’s girlfriend (should she now think of Chartreuse that way?) had run off, the rest of them - minus Glen, obviously - had waited around in the hall, making awkward small talk.

Eventually, they had gone back into the auditorium. No one had seemed to know what to say, Julie least of all, given how little she’d spoken to any of them of late. Chartreuse and Laurie hadn’t returned. They’d all left separately, and Julie probably wouldn’t have made any efforts to talk with them today if Luci hadn’t called her.

Julie watched silently as Chartreuse and Laurie read over the note, emitting twin gasps as they got close to the bottom. With Chartreuse though, there seemed to be a dawning realization, if not yet a complete understanding.

“Mr. Waterson?” Luci was speaking again, and pointing to Carrie’s dresser. “That empty picture frame. Do you know what picture used to be in there?”

He turned to look. “Yes, of course. It was Carrie’s mother. My wife, Elaine.”

Chartreuse’s eyes got even bigger than they had the previous night. “Oh my GOD,” she gasped. “She was trying to–"

“Mr. Waterson,” Julie said, cutting off Chartreuse. “We’re developing a working theory here. If you can give us a little time to network with the rest of our friends, we might be able to provide you with some answers by –" She looked from Luci, to Laurie, to Chartreuse, and then back to him. Based on their expressions, this wasn’t going to be straightforward. “The end of the weekend.”

Carrie’s father shook his head. “I can’t wait that long. If my daughter is out there, in trouble…"

“We’ll talk to you sooner if we can, but here’s the thing.” Julie rubbed her forehead. “Did it occur to you that Carrie’s letter might have been referring to the return of your wife?”

“It sort of did,” Mr. Waterson admitted. “But that’s ridiculous, since Elaine disappeared back when Carrie was only three years old.”

Julie nodded slowly. “Thing is? Rather a lot of ridiculous stuff happens at our school. And it’s going to take us some time to figure out where that possibility ranks on our events scale of ‘pop quiz’ to ‘van totalling the library’.”

Lee was the last person to arrive at the LaMille mansion. Julie couldn’t think of a time when they had all been together - herself, Frank, Luci, Clarke, Corry, Laurie, Tim, Chartreuse, and now Lee. Of course, there was one notable missing person.

She fingered the small jade figurine in her hands before placing it carefully back onto the table. At least this time, they knew Carrie couldn’t arrive and object to their gathering.

Julie cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “Okay. We all have various pieces of the puzzle, but I don’t think any one person knows everything, so we’re going to have to tackle this in pieces until we’re all up to speed. Make sense?”

Corry looked like he might want to say something, fidgeting with the cane he was using owing to his twisted ankle, but he kept silent.

“Okay,” Julie concluded. She sat down in the last available chair and pointed to Luci, perched on the arm of the couch. “Carrie’s letter to her Dad. Go for it.”

Luci outlined what had been in the message that had been left at Carrie’s house, adding that the photo of Carrie’s mother had been missing from her bedroom.

“Meanwhile,” Chartreuse piped up, “I, you know, saw Carrie with a photo as Glen was putting her into that trunk. And Tim saw her with a photo the night she, like, destroyed the chip.”

“You mean Carrie was using her mom’s photo as a focus,” Laurie reasoned. “To strengthen her resolve.”

Frank drew his gaze up from the floor. “There’s another link. That time, in the hospital, with Shady? When Carrie first went a bit crazy? She told me that the presence of her mother had been a strain on the timeline. That, after giving birth, her mom had to disappear, that she and Carrie couldn’t co-exist.”

“Whacky,” Lee mused. “But no more so than the rest of it, I guess. So when did her mom end up instead?”

Frank shrugged. “Carrie couldn’t see it. All we know for sure is that Elaine Waterson disappeared 14 years ago, on a flight from Miami to Bermuda, in the so-called Bermuda triangle.”

“So last night, Carrie went back to get her,” Clarke concluded.

“It would TOTALLY explain why she was so scared,” Chartreuse agreed. “On top of the, you know, issue of seeing her missing mom again, she would also have had to deal with airports or airplanes. She hates those.”

“She managed it not TOO terribly on one of our first time trips,” Frank admitted. “But yeah, point granted.”

“And since neither Carrie, nor her mom, are currently back in the present,” Luci remarked. “The trip can’t have gone well.” Frank nodded, and resumed looking at his shoes.

“Can I say something as the designated jerk in the room?” Corry remarked, waving his cane in the air.

Julie half smiled. “Please do, I rather like that you’re offering to take that title before I end up claiming it.”

“What’s the damn point in knowing when Carrie went? We don’t have a time machine to chase after her.”

“D-Don’t we?” Tim spoke up. As his gaze went to Julie, many of the others looked to her as well.

Julie let out a long breath. “Yeah, not presently. But Tim’s right, in that maybe we could.” She grimaced. “With Mindylenopia’s help.”

“Mindy?” Laurie gasped. “But she’s the one who crashed that van at school! She made Corry and Frank miss two days back in October and she… didn’t Carrie, um…"

“Mindy was banished through time,” Clarke finished. He looked curiously at Julie. “Right?”

“Here’s where it gets fuzzy again,” Luci said. She hopped down from her sofa perch and began to pace. “Frank found an article in the local paper five years ago, a poem simply signed ‘Mindy’, which told us not to trust Glen. Good advice, all things considered.”

Frank picked up the tale. “Then last weekend, Julie got a call from someone claiming to be Mindy. They said that they could help with rebuilding the time machine. But it was a ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ thing, and she hasn’t called back - has she?” Julie shook her head.

“Soooo, this is a Mindy with a time machine then?” Lee asked.

“Unlikely,” Luci said. “Our current theory is that she’s the same banished person, who has been in town for the last fifty years or less. Possibly waiting for the chance to get her hands on a time machine again.”

“But then how did Mindy find out about Julie’s work?” Tim protested.

Julie threw up her hands. “However Glen found out, maybe? I swear, I should have taken out a billboard for all the good my secrecy did. But Carrie’s letter TOLD me that I was to–"

“What did THAT letter say?” Corry interrupted. “Do you have it?”

Julie sighed. “No, sorry. I ripped it up. Then burned it. It said I should do that. But give me a second, I’ll see if I can remember…" She closed her eyes trying to see the words again. Recalling the last time she’d looked at them, on that day, before taking off her rose brooch… damn, at this point, she really should get that back out of her drawer.

“Okay, it said, ummm, ‘Please help. It has to be you. You need to watch me now, and when I dispose of the time machine, save the key pieces. Then rebuild it. In secret. Please. Now destroy this note. Yours, Carrie.’”

“Kinda vague then,” Lee remarked.

“And that, like, makes no sense!” Chartreuse asserted. It was chiefly the tone of her voice that drew Julie’s attention - along with that of most of the others. Chartreuse winced under the scrutiny, and began fiddling with a crystal in her hands.

“Chartreuse, why does it make that much of a lack of sense?” Laurie asked, resting her hand on Chartreuse’s leg.

Chartreuse sighed. “It’s… oh boy. See, in timeline three? The one where the old time machine was, you know, still around? Um, Frank died.”

Frank’s posture straightened as he gave up on the plan of mostly staring at his shoes. Luci froze in her pacing. Many of the others present either inhaled or exhaled sharply.

“When?” Tim gasped.

“That time when Carrie was in hospital,” Frank realized. “Oh, geez, it had to be. Since that’s when she destroyed it.”

Julie rose to her feet again. “But my note WAS written by Carrie! Why would she want me to restore a timeline where one of you DIED?”

“Ohh. Oh no. I have a really bad thought,” Luci said. She waited until all eyes were on her before continuing. “What if Julie’s note was written by Glen’s ‘Future Carrie’? The one who wanted our Carrie to run off with him, and who would be extremely annoyed otherwise? Maybe she was trying to restore her timeline.”

NEXT: Do You Mindy?

ASIDE: Last chance to speculate before some massive revelations. Also, consider TWF voting if you didn’t on Friday?

PREVIOUSLY: Tim retrieved a computer chip from the train station for Julie. Clarke tried to take it from him, then Luci threw Tim’s package into the ravine.

PART 77b: TIMELINE FIVE?

As the package containing Julie’s microchip spiralled down into the darkness of the ravine, Tim’s shocked look met an identical one on Luci’s face. “What… what did I just do?” the young girl said, shifting her gaze from him to her hand to the ravine.

“You tell me!” Tim said, allowing a wave of anger to rise up to the surface.

The young girl shook her head, stupefied. “I was overcome by this strong impression that you were carrying something really dangerous.”

“Dangerous how, Luci?”

“I… I don’t know. I simply couldn’t control the impulse to…” She blinked. “I… I’m so sorry, Tim, I don’t know why…”

“I do.” Tim shook his head, turning away from her. “Never m-mind. It doesn’t m-matter right now. Go back home.”

Luci reached out to touch him on the shoulder. “Tim…”

Part of him wanted to stay with her at that. He forced himself to keep moving. “Just go home. I’ll call you later to explain.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tim saw Luci’s hand fall back to her side, where it clenched into a fist. He fancied that he heard her mutter “Glen?” through clenched teeth. Either way, she didn’t follow him, which was good… it seemed more important than ever now that he get this chip to Julie.

The one he had removed from the package and placed in his pocket not long after leaving the train station. Good thing he’d tested Luci with the package on his own terms, rather than on hers. ‘Trust yourself,’ he repeated mentally. ‘The one person you can still trust is yourself…’

There was definitely someone following him. No matter how much he tried, Tim couldn’t shake that feeling. So as soon as he rounded the corner and got a good view of the LaMille mansion, the young boy let out a sigh of relief, sure that the crazy trip he’d been sent on this evening was almost over.

The breath caught in his throat. Glen was standing out front, leaning against a street lamp. For a second, Tim hesitated, wondering if there was somewhere else he could go… but in that moment, Glen’s eyes fell upon him, and he knew it would be futile.

He wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to get away. Besides, it’s not like he was prepared to spend the rest of the night on the run, suspecting everyone of being out to get him. So even as Glen pushed off and made to approach, Tim continued walking towards him.

The redhead stopped and stood his ground. “I must say,” Glen remarked as Tim came within earshot, “I never thought anyone would get this far. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a waste of time to give you a post-hypnotic package suggestion too. Did you honestly make it back here, with the chip, by YOURSELF?”

Tim decided not to answer. He stopped a couple of paces away, looking up and down the street again. “Where’s Julie?”

Glen shrugged. “I stopped tailing her fifteen minutes ago. I think she was headed to the post office. It felt like a setup. I was pretty sure she’d put someone else into the real danger. Wondered if it would be you, but alas, I’d put my money on Frank.” He stepped forwards. “Doesn’t matter now, of course. Hand over the package.”

Tim stepped back. “W-What package?”

“Oh, let’s not do this,” Glen sighed. “It’s been a VERY taxing weekend on my brain already. Do I really have to put the so-called whammy on you as well?”

“No, I think maybe you don’t,” came a new voice.

An angry look flashed across Glen’s face, as Julie stepped out from behind some cover across the street. “Damn it! LaMille, you are really starting to TICK ME OFF.”

“Good!” the brunette retorted as she approached them. “Because the way you’ve been interfering with my efforts over the last month has been ticking me off too!”

“Why can’t you just see reason?” Glen sighed, throwing his arms out to the side. “What you’re doing here is WRONG!”

“Hey, this wasn’t completely my idea,” Julie fired back. “If you know what I’m up to, you probably know that too. Meaning the reason behind this is that you’re going to screw something up, leading to Carrie thinking the only way forward is with us having a time…”

“Oh please!” Glen broke in. “Carrie knows what’s at stake here, there is NO way she would authorize…”

“A-HEM,” Tim cut in, now holding the chip aloft in his hands. Both Glen and Julie turned to regard him, falling silent. “Thanks.”

“Now, I didn’t want to be in this situation,” he continued. “But since I am, here’s how I see it. Glen, whatever your feud is with Julie? You’re now dragging other people into it. A-Against their will. That… that’s all kinds of wrong.” Tim shifted his attention to Julie. “While you? You’ve done the opposite. Closing everyone off. It’s making you crazy, Julie, and if you get this chip, I don’t think any of that is going to change.” He lowered his hand. “This… this situation… it can’t go on. Not like this.”

“So destroy the chip.”

“NO! Tim, you can’t believe…”

“Oh, STOP!” he shouted. “I’m not going to destroy it. But I’m not going to hand it over either. Not until the two of you work this out!”

The two teenagers turned to look at each other. “I don’t think so,” Glen said dryly, at the same time as Julie countered, “Not gonna happen.”

“Then n-neither of you gets it,” Tim said, shoving it back inside his jacket.

“But if it’s not in the mansion, what’s going to prevent Glen from using his power to obtain it through you, or anybody else?” Julie objected.

“ME? Seems YOU’VE been a lot more cunning up until this point,” Glen countered.

Tim sighed. “I’ll simply have to find s-someone else to give it to! Someone who won’t be influenced by either of you.”

“Someone like me,” Lee stated, tossing back his hood. Tim jumped, not having paid much attention to the fourth person walking up.

“Lee!” Julie said in surprise. “I thought you told me…”

“That I didn’t want to be involved this much, yeah.” Lee shook his head. “But when I turned you down for this mission, it seemed likely that you would recruit elsewhere.”

Lee turned to Tim. “I’ve been shadowing you since you left the station. Sorry, Tiny T. It wasn’t my intention to have you, or anyone else, getting into trouble in my place.” He smiled. “Also, congrats. I’ve been listening, and you’ve made some excellent points.”

“I knew it,” Glen said, clenching his jaw. “I KNEW you were involved with this time traveling group, Lee! After all, how could they possibly have passed up an asset like you?!”

Lee jerked his thumb at Glen, while looking at Julie. “And this is why I wanted to stay out of it. However, it makes sense that I keep the chip.” He turned to Tim. “I’m immune to whatever mental gifts ‘red barren’ has, and I’m not about to hand it over to our resident rich witch without a damn good reason either.”

Tim nodded slowly. “That… makes sense.”

“Unacceptable,” Julie and Glen chorused together.

“Cool, you’re both in agreement,” Lee observed with a wry smile.

“No, look,” Glen insisted. “As long as that chip exists, the chance that the time machine will be reconstructed is…”

“Remote,” Lee interrupted. “Because you need a lot more than a chip to make it work.”

“Exactly!” Julie cut in. “And if I’m not allowed to fit it properly…”

“Your work stalls,” Lee finished. “And we get as close as we can to this being a win-win situation.”

“But I was told to do this for a reason,” Julie continued doggedly. “What if an emergency situation comes up? We might not have the time we need to assemble things then!”

Lee shrugged. “If it does, we’ll simply have to deal, and trust that our redhead here knows what he’s doing with the track tease.”

A sullen silence fell over the group. “W-Well, I think it’s as close to normal as we’re going to get,” Tim piped up at last. He reached again into his pocket, pulled out the chip he found there, and handed it over to Lee. The taller boy grasped it, holding it up.

“Truce?” Lee said.

Julie’s hands closed into fists. Glen clenched his jaw.

“Fine,” the brunette said after a moment.

“Whatever,” the redhead offered up in turn.

“Good,” Lee concluded. He moved to pocket the chip, only to have a hand grab his arm.

“Mmmm, not so good.”

“C-C-C-Carrie,” Tim stammered out in shock.

There was nowhere Carrie could have come from. Somehow, she had simply been standing right next to Lee. And before Lee could react, she had plucked the chip from his hand, dropped it to the sidewalk, and crunched it underneath the heel of her boot.

For a moment, no one spoke. Tim wondered if it was because the others were realizing the same thing as he was. Namely, that Carrie’s eyes were flickering from blue to gold and back. Was this a future Carrie who had managed to balance her powers? Because she didn’t look any older than the Carrie of their time.

Glen broke the silence by clapping his hands together. “Oh, good one!” he said appreciatively. “This means you’ll be accepting–”

“Shut UP!” Carrie fired back. “I didn’t do this for you. You KEPT things from me. I am NOT pleased.”

“This… this doesn’t make sense,” Julie protested, barely audibly. “Carrie, you were the one who told me… that I… I was the only one who could…”

Carrie ignored her, having spent the last few moments pulling an object from her pocket. A photograph of some sort. As Julie’s stammers trailed off, Carrie eyed the photo, closed her eyes again, and her long blonde hair began to trail out behind her despite the lack of a strong wind. Then, with a whispered “Goodbye”, there was a flash of light. Tim blinked out of reflex, and when his eyes reopened, Carrie was gone.

However, the chip remained. Ground into the pavement.

Tim looked up towards Lee. “I-I-Is this good or bad?” he wondered, swallowing.

Julie lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep. She needed answers.

On the one hand, it seemed like the chip had been destroyed by a Carrie from the future, and not the one in their present… but was that Carrie even further in the future than the one who had written the note? If so, why not just stop herself from sending the damn note in the first place?

Yet, if Carrie had written the note AFTER traveling back and stopping Julie, shouldn’t she have warned Julie that this was something that would happen? It didn’t make sense! None of it made sense! Had all of her work, all of her time away from the others - had it been for nothing??

There was a part of her that wanted to scream, but Julie knew that losing control of her emotions would only make her susceptible to mind control again. As it had that time she’d broken down over her parents. More pragmatically, it wouldn’t accomplish much either. So she simply lay there, fists clenched, wracking her brain, certain she’d missed something, and wondering what it was… until her phone rang.

Julie lifted an eyebrow as she looked over at the clock - almost midnight - before stretching out to answer the mystery call.

“What?” she said sharply.

“Julie LaMille?” The voice on the other end of the phone line was distorted, making it difficult to identify, but it seemed to be female.

“Yeah?” Julie shot back. “Who’s calling?”

“Someone who might be able to help you. With what you’re trying to rebuild.”

Julie snorted. “Right. You’re a few hours too late on that.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” the unknown woman soothed.

The brunette frowned. “Seriously? Look lady, I’ve had a hell of a day, and at this point, the only way you can help me out is if you know something I don’t already know about altered timelines, or crazy future technology! Is that the case? IS it? Because I doubt it. I mean, who the hell do you think you are?!” She paused for an answer, fuming internally.

“My name is Mindylenopia. I believe you know me as Mindy.”

The phone dropped out of Julie’s hand, bouncing once on the bedspread.

NEXT: Cheer Up

ASIDE: This ends ARC 4.1 (Separated); the timelines start to get messier now. Consider the usual vote for T&T, to help attract others for analysis?

Previously: Hank Waterson writes a story about woodland creatures with magical powers who have the names of Carrie’s friends. Raccoon Glen found evidence Fox Julie was a traitor.

PART 3.21b: WOODLANDS OMEN 2

“Right, a fox got double crossed, I’m so sure,” Carrie retorted.

“Carrie, she should get the benefit of the doubt,” Clarke put in quietly. “If we persecute people based largely on their animal heritage, we’re no better than the humans.” Carrie blinked at the beaver in surprise, appeared to think about that for a moment, then with a frown, she released Julie’s tail.

“But, okay,” Laurie said, puzzled. “If this documentation IS fake, and Julie’s NOT the traitor… who else COULD it be?”

As if on cue, there was the sound of something breaking the surface of the earth less than a metre away. Everyone turned in time to see a groundhog poke his head out. “Oh, g-g-good you’re still h-here!” it said in relief, scampering out of the hole. Behind him, a squirrel peered out of the hole as well.

“Luci?” Frank said in shock. “Where have you been?”

“Covert work underground,” Luci explained. “Sorry that me and Tim are late, but he can’t conjure his flashlight any more and we took a couple wrong turns.” She jumped out of the hole and shook the dirt off of herself.

“We were able to translate a pertinent passage though,” Tim said, holding a sheaf of papers out towards Julie. “I think you’ll be p-pleased with the r-r-results!”

“Passage? Covert mission? What the devil is going on here?” Corry said.

“Something I turned up in the warehouse the other day,” Julie said, running her eyes down the top sheet. “Evidence of the fact that the humans have been planning their recent dumping activities for MONTHS, along with the ‘inside informant’ - who, ergo, is not me. The problem was, the critical passages were either in code, or a language I didn’t recognize. So I somewhat reluctantly called for Tim and Luci’s services.”

“This is a very clever smokescreen you’ve put together in case of capture Julie,” Glen said, folding his arms. “But you underestimate our ability to see through it.”

“Hold on. Let’s see what Luci and Tim turned up first, then compare,” Lee suggested.

Julie flipped to the second page, then quickly the third, before looking up at Tim in surprise. He nodded and shrugged. “Let’s get him then,” Julie declared. Throwing the sheets aside, she pounced - however, Glen was already moving.

With a speed no one had expected, Glen dove to the side, rolled a metre away and came up with one palm extended. “Freeze,” he ordered. All the other sentient animals stopped in place, with looks of surprise on their faces.

“Whoa, you’re totally more powerful than you look,” Chartreuse said, trying in vain to move her feet or her wings.

“Damn straight,” Glen said, now making no effort to hide his evil grin. “Of course, it helps that all of you have had your powers mostly leeched away by this point.”

“But… but you’ll soon be losing your powers too!” Laurie protested. “Glen, why are you doing that?”

“Because,” Glen explained patiently, “as Tim’s translation no doubt revealed, my powers aren’t tied to this forest like yours are. And once you all revert, the humans will be granting safe passage for me and one other, all the way back to my real home. Far, far away from here!”

“The translation actually wasn’t that specific,” Tim admitted. “It just said the r-raccoon wants out of here.”

“We were kinda hoping that by doing things this way, you’d give everything away,” Luci added.

“Oh. Well, whatever,” Glen said with a shrug.

“Wait, who’s the other one you’ll be with?” Clarke asked.

“Who else?” Glen said, gesturing towards Carrie.

The bunny twitched her nose. “Me?? News flash, Glen, I don’t I want to go with you if this is how you treat my friends! I mean really, Glen, how COULD you?”

Glen shrugged. “Carrie, my mission was to track you down, and use a magic charm to help you understand your own inherent powers of sentience,” he replied. “Unfortunately, at the same time as I was awakening YOUR powers, Mindy and Shady were prowling through the forest, scouting for ways to expand that human settlement. To keep my item hidden from their probing, I buried it in that clearing - not realizing that it’s aura was still active, and able to affect other animals!”

“So, what, you think we gained our intellect and magical abilities because of this magical charm you owned?” Luci scoffed. “Please. I’m more special than an ordinary, everyday squirrel!”

“Believe what you like,” Glen said airily. “All I know is, after years of travel to track down the Chosen Bunny, I had to spend even MORE time messing around here, to learn how to reverse sentience on a bunch of useless creatures!” Glen shook his head. “I had hoped that by splicing together my Linquist contract with the signature I found for Julie, you’d all be thrown all off the track… and in another day, things would no longer matter… but, no matter. You’ve become weak enough for me to gain the upper ‘paw’ regardless.”

“Glen! If this is the real you? I’m staying right here!” Carrie said. Her body tensed. “And… and I’d totally put my paws on my hips to emphasize that point if only I could move!”

“I am sorry to hear you say that. But you’re coming with me regardless,” the raccoon said, smirking. “Because if you hadn’t figured it out yet, you dumb bunny, your powers aren’t tied to this forest either. It’s not the dumping, but rather that pendant I gave you earlier in the week which is suppressing your abilities. And once you’re powerless, we’ll be going. Don’t worry, your powers will be restored when we arrive back at my home.”

“But that’s kidnapping!” Carrie shrieked. “You won’t get away with that, or with using my powers in order to start a future war!” She shuddered. “Wait, how did I even know that’s what you were involving me in?”

“As the Chosen One,” Glen said. “Deep down, you knew all along.”

“You… you spent all this time tracking me down because your faction needed more power in order to stage takeovers of neighbouring forests!” Carrie realized. “And somehow you knew I could be more powerful than any of the other animals on Earth!”

“Oh, great, Carrie’s a powerful weapon. This information would have been useful a week ago,” Corry sighed.

“Too bad there’s no such thing as time travel,” Julie agreed.

“But Carrie, if you’ve got a bunch of magical power inside you, how come you can’t use it to shatter that pendant you’re wearing?” Laurie said.

“I… I’m not sure how to even move,” Carrie said. She grimaced in an internal effort, tears springing to the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry guys. I… I don’t think I can do anything!”

“Here, let me get that for you then,” Lee offered, moving to take the offending jewellery off Carrie’s neck. There was a beat, as all eyes shifted to the porcupine. “Yeah, hey, I could move all along, I just wanted to hear Glen reveal the plot,” Lee said, tossing the pendant aside.

“Hmmmm. A natural immunity? That’s not good,” Glen mused.

Freed of the magic draining item, the blonde bunny quickly rounded on the raccoon, her blue eyes bright. “Kidnap ME will, you? Threaten MY friends?! Well then, it’s YOUR turn to freeze, you EX-BOYFRIEND!”

Carrie bounded forward, catching Glen before he’d even taken two steps. One tap on his forehead, and he dropped like a stone, lying on the ground as if he was frozen in time. Carrie blinked down at her paw in surprise. “I can DO that?”

With Glen down, all the other animals gave a collective sigh of relief, having regained their own mobility.

“Nice work, Carrie!” Chartreuse said, gleefully clapping her wings together. “And that was a totally cool fake out, Lee!”

Lee shrugged, tugging at his jacket lapels. “I live closest to the affected clearing - I must have built up a little extra internal power or something.”

“So what do we do with Glen now?” Tim wondered.

“Humans don’t look twice at roadkill,” Julie said offhandedly, producing another nail file from her fur.

“Julie dear, that’s a little gruesome, even for you, isn’t it?” Clarke said, reaching out to touch her arm. Julie hesitated, then gave a yielding nod.

“I say give HIM that pendant,” Luci suggested. “Seal it permanently around Glen’s neck somehow. I mean, if it worked on Carrie’s powers, surely it will work on his.”

“Good thought,” Frank agreed. “In fact, now that we know who our insider is, we can threaten the humans with exposing all this dumping they’re doing. If Shady really wants to keep things quiet, they’ll have to stop their interference.”

“Ooh, but what about cleaning up the damage that’s already been done?” Laurie said worriedly. “Chartreuse, your conjurable conjuring crystals, could they purify the area?”

Chartreuse shook her head.  “Already considered it. There’s, you know, too much there for me to handle.”

“Well, from what I learned about this glop from Mindy, there is a primary ingredient,” Julie offered. “I believe all we’d need to do is figure out how to neutralize that. Then the problem will take care of itself.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing I’ve spent the last few days analyzing slime from the clearing,” Corry spoke up. “You’ll be pleased to know that we’re not up against anything radioactive. Though the strange thing is, the primary ingredient - and believe me, I triple checked this - it seems to be… well… lime jello.”

“J-J-Jello?” Tim said, surprised.

“If jello neutralizes magic, remind me not to forage for it,” Lee said.

“Hah. If THAT’S all it is, I’m sure we can come up with a counteragent,” Carrie asserted, dusting off her paws after having given Glen a kick in the ribs. “Why, by working together, there’s nothing we can’t do!”

“What’s more, Corry’s analysis also explains why these humans were able to dump so much of that stuff within a fairly limited area,” Frank remarked.

“Oh?  How do you figure?” Luci wondered.

Frank shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? There’s always room for Jello.” He had no time whatsoever to parry before the hammer and the croquet mallet came crashing down on his head.

Hank Waterson leaned back in his chair, letting out a yawn and massaging a cramp in his wrist. How had he managed to get through all that in one sitting? A glance at the clock showed that it was after 2 am. What incredibly inspired writing!

Yet now that he was actively thinking about it, Hank realized that he had questions. For instance, where exactly had the idea for that Mindy person come from? Why had he made accusations against Carrie’s friend Julie? And why had he turned Carrie’s boyfriend into the traitor? Was his subconscious trying to tell him something? Maybe he should keep Carrie grounded, so that the two of them wouldn’t be able to spend time together…

“What am I saying?” Hank muttered aloud. “This is fiction. It has no basis in real life." Besides, Carrie was good at finding a way around rules she didn’t like, so it wouldn’t do to keep her away from Glen. Moreover, he would be changing the names of the characters anyway. He could even change the villain’s identity once he got into editing. The whole story was still in a rather indeterminate state.

Shaking his head, Hank Waterson carefully stacked the story’s character sheets, and placed them back into his ‘Woodland Creatures’ folder. He then reached out and turned off his desk light, blissfully unaware of that fact that everybody’s temporal reality had recently entered a very similar indeterminate state, courtesy of his own daughter.

-Next Episode: Do You Mind?

-I hope you enjoyed this little detour/omen. Had you figured out who the traitor was? Do you see how things might tie into the real plot? Feel free to comment or vote for T&T.

Previously: Hank Waterson writes a story about woodland creatures with magical powers who have the names of Carrie’s friends. … Roll with it.

PART 3.21a: WOODLANDS OMEN 1

Hank Waterson did a quick scan back over what he had written. His short story had thus far incorporated most of Carrie’s friends as woodland animals with human sentience. Along with them, he had now written in two actual human characters, whose mysterious conversation had implied that there was a traitor within the animal group. Who was it?

Hank rubbed his chin. He wasn’t quite sure which one of them to use, and thus he decided to simply see where the narrative took him.

Slowly, the woodland creatures came out of hiding.

“So… what do you think about that?” Frank wondered.

“Mindy’s got a nice back end, for a human?” Lee offered.

“Okay, pretty sure Frank’s referring to the fact that there’s totally a TRAITOR among us!” Chartreuse wailed.

Lee shrugged. “Trying to lighten the mood.”

“Don’t. Now is the time to get serious," Corry growled. “Because if one of us is feeding these humans lies, and telling them things that will lead to us losing our powers within a week? That’s a MAJOR problem."

“It can’t be one of us. Whoever the traitor is, they already knew about this clearing having ties to the magical effects,” Julie noted. “Remember, that Shady guy implied it was their dumping here that caused a neutralizing effect."

“Hey, any of us could know more about this clearing than what we’ve said,” Luci said, glancing about suspiciously. “The question is, why would anyone want us forest creatures to go all mundane?”

“Unless the traitor knows of a way to keep themselves immune,”

Carrie suggested. “And they’re hoping to use their sentience to rule over the rest of us.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted towards the fox and bear. “Oh great, predators being persecuted again,” Julie grumped, twitching her tail.

“Hold on, everyone. Finger pointing doesn’t do us any good," Clarke said. “We need proof to make an accusation.”

Laurie raised her paw. “Why don’t we simply ask the humans which animal is working with them?”

Her brother sighed. “Laurie, approaching humans is not wise, they - oh, wait, they keep records. Maybe we could obtain some of their files? That could tell us something."

“We’d have to go into town for that though,” Frank pointed out, beginning to pace. “And the longer we’re out of the forest, the more the magic fades too. If we’re caught, we’d lose everything.”

“Someone could do it if they already had as idea as to the specific bases of operations used by these particular humans,” Lee noted.

“So Glen could do it," Carrie realized. “He’s spent some of his evenings skulking about in town. If anyone knows the layout, it’d be him.”

“But what if he’s the traitor?”

“Frank, stop accusing Glen of things already,” Carrie sighed, turning and slamming her mallet down on his head in exasperation.

“Um, but Carrie, I, like, said that,” Chartreuse noted, waving a wing as Frank fought to keep his balance.

“Yeah, Carrie, stop hitting on my boyfriend!” Luci declared, swinging her own hammer at Carrie. Carrie managed to block with her mallet… then both objects simply disappeared. Both Carrie and Luci blinked at each other in surprise.

“The magic problem is worse here,” Clarke decided. “We need to get going. Let’s at least see what Glen turns up, it could give us a starting point. Okay?”

Everyone present exchanged glances and nods. “And as a show of good faith, maybe Glen can grab me some of that aspirin stuff while he’s in town?” Frank mumbled.

“Crazy other animals,” Glen grumbled as he scampered down the alleyway. “As if I didn’t know it’s been four days - they didn’t expect me to know where Shady and Mindy were right away, did they?"

The raccoon peered out onto the darkened street and then headed down towards the part of town where the warehouses were located. “For a small town, it’s sure trying to work towards having more industry,” Glen observed. He soon found a hole in the fencing around the complex, and squeezed through. “Now, let’s see… that paper I found in Shady’s trash yesterday, it said Linquist was using Warehouse 3… hopefully I can find something in there to appease the masses.”

As it turned out, the warehouse was locked, but a few smashes on the padlock with a large rock allowed Glen to gain access. “Hmmmm,” Glen murmured as he scanned the interior - which was not much larger than your average sized human apartment. “If I know these humans, there’ll be a… yup, right over there.”

He hurried over to the corner that held the video surveillance equipment, and after giving it a look, he wound the tape back to erase his presence. He then pulled out his magical magnet and waved it over the devices for good measure. If it was strong enough to attract a garbage can, it was probably strong enough to mess with their electronics.

“At least the town’s still small enough to have lousy security,” Glen muttered. “Shady probably installed this in here himself. Still, it’s possible that there’s a silent alarm too, so I should work fast.”

The raccoon turned to start a quick search of the bins and filing cabinets, pausing as a file out in the open caught his attention. Sitting right next to the TV monitor, it was labelled ‘Security Breach 08/22/88’.

“Yesterday?” Glen mused. He flipped open the folder and his eyebrows went up. “Oho! Well then, it would seem we’ve found our traitor…”

“It’s, like, ridiculous, having to be up this early,” Chartreuse yawned as she looked out at the lake. “The sun’s barely up. Why can’t Glen stay up later, rather than, you know, waking us earlier?”

“Time is of the essence at this point,” Corry grunted. “Hell, last night I couldn’t get my yardstick to stay around long enough to take a precise measurement!”

“He’s trying to install new drapes in our cave,” Laurie explained brightly. “The old ones are so drab, even if they do compliment the existing decor so well. Soon we may even get a window to go with them too though looking at your faces I’m probably acting too perky for the hour so I should shut up now, should I?”

“It’s not THAT early,” Carrie insisted. “I’ve been up at this hour to meet with Glen before. We’ve watched sunrises together, it was romantic.”

“Hm, speaking of romantic, has anyone seen Luci?” Frank asked. “She seemed to disappear after yesterday morning’s meeting.”

“I’m sure she’ll be along,” Julie replied, filing her claws once again. “Unless she’s the traitor, that is.” Frank frowned.

“Well, hey, let’s just hope Glen has a stronger lead today, okay?” Lee put in. “What with infighting giving me a worse headache than the ones Frank gets from not reacting in time."

A silence fell upon the group. A few minutes later, Glen hurried out of the treeline and headed towards them. “Glen!” Carrie cried out happily, her bunny ears quivering. “Have you brought us good news at last?"

“Well, I have news,” Glen said, holding up a folder of papers. “It’ll be good for some, not so good for others.”

“Meaning what?” Clarke asked.

“Meaning, I think we’ve got our traitor," Glen explained. He flipped open the folder, and tossed a picture out onto the grass. Everyone leaned in for a closer look. There was a moment of silence. Then Corry made a lunge for Julie.

“Get her!” the bear snarled as Julie rolled away, firing her nail file at him. It grazed by Corry’s ear. Coming up on all fours, Julie then made a leap towards the trees, only to have the flickering forms of a broom and a tennis racquet crisscross in front of her. She hesitated only momentarily before making a move to dodge underneath them, but that moment was enough to allow her to be brought up short by a yank from behind.

“Ow ow ow ow!” Julie shrieked, falling onto the ground. “The tail is attached, you know!”

“Consider it retribution for all the times you’ve salivated over me and my kind,” Carrie shot back. “Now it’s time for a rabbit to put YOU on a hotplate!”

“Again with the persecution,” Julie said, turning her head, eyes flashing. “You have no evidence that I’m the traitor! So I’ve been in a human warehouse, so what??”

“So,” Glen said, clearing his throat, “you know more than what you’ve been telling. I also turned up THESE files–” He paused to toss some more pages on the ground. “–which show an agreement between Linquist and an unnamed co-conspirator to do the dumping in that clearing. Unless I’m very much mistaken, that top document has your paw print on it.”

“What??” Julie shrieked.

“I always knew you were a sly fox, Julie,” Corry said, glaring at her while rubbing his ear. “But I never realized how low you’d stoop to get your own way around here.”

“I should have guessed," Carrie said, bitterly. “I know she made friends with me only to secure the bunny vote in our part of the forest, so I should have KNOWN she’d betray us.” She took firmer hold of the tail in her paw and twisted it.

“Will you CUT THAT OUT?” Julie said, baring her teeth at the rabbit. “For the moment, I’m not going anywhere! And fine, I’ll admit that I’ve started doing a little covert work with that human Mindy, but it was only to discover what was really going on!”

“Then how do you, you know, explain this contract?” Chartreuse inquired, holding it out.

“I don’t know,” Julie said, peering at it. “Mindy did make me put my paw on something after I approached her, for her own protection. But that wasn’t it.”

“And what’s the reason for the security photo?” Frank asked.

“Mindy gave me the key to their warehouse the other evening. I went looking for files relating to the dumping. But Mindy said nothing about surveillance equipment… I think I’m being set up!”

-We’ve shifted from ‘Detour’ into ‘Omen’, as there will now be elements of foreshadowing for the end of this Book, and into Book 4. Any thoughts? Any desire to vote at WFG?

Previously: Hank Waterson writes a story about woodland creatures with magical powers who have the names of Carrie’s friends. … Roll with it.

PART 3.20b: WOODLANDS DETOUR 2

“The others… are coming…” Carrie panted out as she skidded to a halt at the water’s edge. She reached out to splash a little water on her face. “Oh yes, didn’t even take the direct route, and I still win!"

“Some things never change?” Clarke said, swimming closer to the bank.

“Ooh, yes, you always seem to do it, Carrie!” Laurie said, having come closer herself. “You’re so cool, with the hopping and the bouncing and the dashing and it’s hard to say whether a bunny can tap into the magic better than we can or if you’re just naturally so athletic but either way you’re an inspiration to us all and I really wish I had some of your coordination because I can never seem to stand on my ball for very long without falling off of it though you know that stuff could be completely different from magical ability so forget I said anything about it and oooh, what’s that new thing you’ve got hanging around your neck??”

By the time Carrie had explained to Laurie about the charm Glen had given her, Frank, Luci and Chartreuse had all made their way to the lake. “I found, you know, most of the early sentients,” Chartreuse hooted at Clarke. “I figured we didn’t need Jeeves or Megan or especially Azure or…”

“This is fine,” Clarke assured. “Now, the reason for calling you all here is because of what I found while felling some saplings to the north.”

“Near the human settlement?” Corry said, arcing an eyebrow.

“Right,” Clarke answered. “See, there’s this place that’s kinda glowy and tingly which does not feel good and… well, you have to see it for yourself. I ran into Lee up there and he’s keeping an eye on things.”

“Freaky,” Luci said at last. None of the others had spoken since arriving at the outskirts of the small clearing. “So,” the squirrel continued, “any ideas on what’s causing the weird green glow? Or any of the other effects, like the dying trees?”

“Nope, but I wouldn’t suggest going in there to find out,” Lee said. “I tried shuffling closer to that tree in the clearing’s centre and nearly sank right into the bog.”

“It must have freaked you out,” Corry observed. “You’ve let your quills do a shredding job on your jacket again.”

Lee shrugged. “Life of a porcupine is never easy.”

“Well, I could totally fly out to that tree,” Chartreuse offered.  “Except, you know, I’m more of a water bird and the thing looks like it’s dying so might not support my weight…”

“You see now why I thought we should check this out though, right?” Clarke noted.

“Yes,” Julie replied, frowning. “The question is what does this mean?”

“Ooh! Ooh, wait,” Laurie broke in. “I know this clearing! I used to play around here a couple years ago - in fact didn’t we all have that big forest glade party here? It was around the same time a number of us were getting that whole self awareness thing!” She began nodding vigorously. “Yeah, yeah, we were celebrating that, and I’m pretty sure the party was here, because it was shortly thereafter that I first conjured my clothes and my ball! Am I right or am I right??”

“I think you’re right,” Frank realized. “Except this clearing didn’t look the same, not back then. It wasn’t marshy, there was more grass, less of an odour…”

“And less general eerieness,” Corry agreed. “But we stopped coming here shortly thereafter. When the human settlement expanded.”

“Bah, you’re imagining things, I haven’t been here before,” Carrie countered. She had moved to a position a little ways around the perimeter. “Now c’mere and check this out, I’ve found some partially submerged human looking barrels!”

Everyone headed over to see what Carrie was looking at. “Um, hate to tell you this Carrie, but those barrels don’t look like humans at all,” Chartreuse noted.

“Thank you Miss Literal,” Carrie countered. “Sheesh, why couldn’t we have magically learned a language that was less ambiguous than English?”

“Barrels of human origin, I understood you,” Luci said. “Moreover, that has to be the source of the ground acting like some wacky bioengineered sports drink.”

“Say, I think that’s a label out there,” Lee said, pointing. “Fell off a barrel. Anyone want to get close enough to read it?”

“Allow me,” Clarke offered, pulling out his magic lacrosse stick and extending it into the clearing. He used the mesh to snare the paper and pull it back in to the group.

“Okay, um, it says… ‘Linquist’s Dribs and Drabs’,” Frank mused, after smoothing out the sheet. He looked up. “What’s a Linquist?”

“Whatever it is, it sounds really evil,” Luci decided.

“Look, guys… I really don’t think we should hang around here any longer,” Julie decided. “And when someone as fearless as me is saying that, I’d pay attention!”

“Much as I hate to admit it, Julie has a point," Corry chimed in. “After all, what if we’re exposing ourselves to the very source of the recent magical drain? We could be getting dumber and less powerful without realizing it.”

“Hold on a minute,” Carrie said, having again moved a short distance away. Her ears twitched in the air. “I’ve found a wide path back here and… do you hear that? There’s some sort of engine approaching.”

There was a pause as everyone listened for the noise.  Then Lee’s eyes went wide. “Truck!” the porcupine announced.

“Humans?” Laurie gasped.

“Scatter!” Clarke shouted.

The 4x4 backed carefully down the trail, up to the edge of the clearing, after which both driver and passenger exited the vehicle. The red haired driver turned to regard her companion, who kept his hat pulled down low over his eyes. “Hey, Shady,” she ventured as he climbed into the rear of the truck. “You SURE we should be dumping this stuff so close to our town?”

The man in the hat gave an irritated grunt as he undid the rope that was holding two new barrels in place. “It has to be here, Mindy,” he affirmed. “It’s the only way to deal with our little sentient animal problem.”

“Right. I know. But what we’re doing, it won’t harm anyone, right?” Mindy pressed.

“You say that like we’re blowing up a hospital or something,” Shady grumbled. “Trust me, all this glop will do is shut down a crazy ecosystem that should never have existed in the first place.” He threw the rope aside. “In a couple months, this whole area will be clear for more development, more businesses, more jobs, and better living conditions.” He pulled the top off of one barrel of green slime, and then kicked it out the back hatch of the truck. It fell into the edge of the bog.

“Ah. Good points, I guess…”

“Besides. Even if what we’re doing here comes to light, and people object, I’m reworking things so that Linquist takes the fall,” Shady added, his grin visible beneath his hat. “We have a bright future ahead of us, Mindy, mark my words!”

“Yes, well, I want to believe that,” Mindy sighed. “But then there are other times when I get to thinking about the animals, and I wonder…”

Shady cut Mindy off with a growl as he rolled the second barrel out the back. “First concern for humans, now animals?” he rasped. “For gosh sakes, Mindy, pick a damn side!”

“Can’t I be on both sides?” Mindy protested.

Shady mumbled something under his breath. “Look, I can guarantee to you that what we’re doing here is perfectly fine for the animals. Okay?!”

“Oh? And how can you do that?”

“Because I’ve been in contact with one of them sentient beasts for weeks now,” Shady said with a grin. “In fact, that’s the thing that assured me any so-called magical effects around here will dry up after another week or so of dumping. So don’t cry for the animals, Mindy. Because they want to be rid of their mistakenly acquired human-like sentience as much as we want it too!”

That said, Shady closed up the back of the truck and returned to the passenger seat. He only looked back out when he realized Mindy wasn’t following him. “Aw, what is it NOW?” he sighed.

Mindy blinked and shook her head. “Oh, sorry. It was the weirdest thing… but when you spoke of the animals that way, I could have sworn I heard a collective gasp coming from all around us.”

Shaking her head, she returned to the cabin of the truck, started the ignition, and drove away.

-Shady’s back! Kind of. Not really. Are you enjoying this? Care to vote for T&T, or otherwise let me know?

-Incidentally, at less than 1500 words and only 9 kB in a text file, this marks the shortest entry in the series… ever. Even Part 47 (Respite) was over 1500, and having completed edits on Book 4 last weekend, I can say all future parts are longer than this.

Previously: Clarke is talking to his sister Mary about visiting people on Sunday. Carrie asserted to Clarke that she’d only work now with Glen - who has a mental power of suggestion.

PART 3.18b: MAKING THE ROUNDS 2

“Yeah, sure, I’ll see about tracking down those library books on town history for you,” Lee was saying, as Clarke came within range of their conversation.

An innocent enough topic. Clarke had wondered, given how he and Julie had brought Lee up to speed on the time machine last night, whether Lee had been trying to verify any of their story. The dark haired teen stood up then, turning and coming face to face with Clarke.

“Whoa, high guy, sneaking up on us?” Lee said, lifting an eyebrow. “It’s just one accidental occurrence after another today, isn’t it?”

“I… guess so?” was all Clarke could think to answer.

“Well, unless you need me for my library skills too, I need to be on my way,” Lee continued. “Say hi to Julie for me!”

Lee made as if to continue past Clarke, but he stumbled, reaching out for the taller boy’s shoulder to regain his balance. As he did so, he muttered near Clarke’s ear, “Red Barren there doesn’t know I helped bring him to Julie’s. Please don’t let on.”

“Oh… right. Of course,” Clarke said. Lee simply flashed him a smile and a thumbs up before heading out of the cafe.

“He’s an interesting character,” Glen remarked, pulling Clarke’s attention back to him. “Not part of your little ‘group’, is he?” The redhead gestured at the recently vacated seat across from him. Clarke hesitated, then joined Glen himself.

“According to Carrie, there is no group,” he evaded.

“Ah! She’s spoken with you then? Good, good. You DO realize her decision was inevitable, yes?” Glen said apologetically. “She’s the one with the destiny, after all. The rest of you… yourself, Julie, Frank, Luci, Tim, Chartreuse… am I missing anyone?”

Glen paused invitingly, but again Clarke did not take the bait. “Well, whatever,” Glen shrugged. “You’re all aware now that I could put the ‘whammy’” - he made little quote marks in the air - “on any of you to find out. If I really wanted to. But there’s no point, as no one in your time traveling bunch has any role to play moving forwards.”

“And how would you know what role we might play?” Clarke replied, trying not to sound irritated.

Glen made a vague gesture in the air. “Didn’t Carrie say? I’m from the future, like Mindy was. I don’t mind telling you that, and I’m sure Julie’s figured it out by now - in fact I’ll have to make sure I don’t underestimate her, the way I did last night.”

“So you know the future, yet Julie was able to surprise you,” Clarke replied, shifting back to his manner of not quite asking a question.

“Mmmmm,” was Glen’s only reply as his fingers began drumming on the tabletop. “Fair point," he admitted. “The thing you have to understand about time is that, even though it resists universal change, individuals still have the free will to screw things up locally. I mean, let’s say Julie is slated to die in a month. Doesn’t mean I CAN’T save her then; time could compensate. But it wouldn’t be easy to accomplish. If we extend the analogy towards trying to prevent the outbreak of the temporal war and all the deaths that stemmed from that? It becomes downright impossible.”

Clarke clenched his jaw. “Glen, you speak of deaths as if you were talking about the weather.”

Glen paused. “You’re right, I’m sorry - that must seem incredibly callous. Forgive me, I’ve been a little… distracted these last couple days.”

“Worried about Mindy?”

“Carrie, actually,” the redhead countered. “More and more I’m discovering how she’s… different from the Carrie I expected. For instance, she actually fears the power that she has, rather than embraces it. I’m not sure how to change her attitude. Any ideas?”

“Can’t your powers change attitudes?” Clarke cut back before he could stop himself.

Glen ran a hand back through his hair. “Another point to you. But it’s not like I wander around using my mental abilities indiscriminately. Embracing one’s powers doesn’t mean abusing one’s powers.” He frowned. “As I suppose I did last night, so if an apology helps there, fine, you have it.”

Clarke nodded. “All right, I’m sorry too, for getting judgmental. But you know, cutting Carrie off from her friends isn’t going to help your cause.”

“I’m not trying to cut her off from her friends, merely your inexperienced time meddling!” Glen countered, slapping his palm on the table. “That’s the real danger here! Of course, the fact that Carrie apparently came close to banishing Frank from this time period last night probably isn’t helping her mood. I just… damn it, I just wish she was more like her future self!”

The tall blonde sat for a moment, gauging Glen’s sincerity. “You need to stop seeing her as Carrie, the girl destined to control time, and start seeing her as Carrie, the normal, everyday high school student,” he suggested at last. “Because right now, more than anything else, that’s how she wants to be seen.”

“Ridiculous! Others like Mindy may come, she can’t put her head in the sand and ignore that fact!”

Clarke didn’t reply. Throwing up his hands, Glen turned in his seat to regard the cafe itself. “Where’s my food, anyway?” he grumbled. “It’s been almost twenty minutes.”

As if on cue, Theresa came into view, dodging around a man in an overcoat. She set a cup of hot chocolate down in front of Clarke. “Here you go,” the waitress said to him with a smile. “I know you didn’t order it, but another customer changed their mind, and you seem to need it. It’s on me.”

“Oh, uh… thanks,” Clarke replied, blinking at the redhead in surprise.

She lifted an eyebrow back at him. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m still a perfectly normal waitress.” Theresa glanced at Glen. “As for you, I’m sure your club sandwich will be out shortly. Remember, patience is a virtue.”

She moved off again, leaving Glen to fume quietly in his seat. “How is it that I always get such lousy service in this place?” the redhead grumped, glancing from Clarke to the mug in front of him. “I mean, what do I have to do?!”

Clarke shrugged. “Dunno,” he answered, taking a quick sip. “Maybe you should tip more.”

Glen frowned. “Tip?”

“Oh, loverly. I’m getting the impression that this Glen is not a people person,” Mary remarked.

Clarke rolled over to lie on his front. “Not really,” her brother agreed. “I mean, he’s friendly enough, but he’s not above playing tricks in order to achieve his goals. And he sees this big picture, rather than the individuals involved in it.”

“Sounds a bit like how Julie used to be.”

Clarke fell silent for a moment. “Glen feels more dangerous,” he said at last. “But then again… maybe you’re right. Maybe Glen needs a friend like me to help him fit in a little better.”

“Well, I’d love to be right, but you’re still being cagey about these conversations,” Mary replied. “I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why Glen might have thought this ‘burden’ Carrie has is a good thing… including psychological problems on his part. Can’t you give me more detailed information?”

“It’s… complicated,” Clarke sighed. He couldn’t very well relay the parts of his conversations that were about time travel. “Besides, aren’t you just listening to me as a sister?”

“True enough. So, you were saying that you were on your way to Tim’s place?”

“Yeah,” Clarke affirmed. “And when I got there, I discovered Luci was with him.”

“C-Clarke! You’re here!” Tim said, looking up from a desk of notes and beaming at the tall boy as Clarke walked into the bedroom.

“Hi,” Clarke said, nodding at his friend. “I didn’t realize you already had company.”

“Well, after last night I decided we’d best figure out what the heck we shot Carrie with,” Luci noted. “And Tim’s the main translation man for Linquist’s notes.” The young girl gestured from the edge of the bed, where she sat with Linquist’s temporal gun, back towards the curly haired boy.

Clarke looked from Tim to Luci and back. “How much do you know about what’s going on then, Tim?”

Tim opened his mouth to reply, but again it was Luci who spoke first.  “I told Tim all the highlights,” she stated. “Time machine, Carrie’s funky powers, his memory loss from before the hospital… seemed only fair that he know at this point.”

Clarke frowned slightly. “I see. And… Tim, you’re okay with this?”

“Oh, sure, he’s managing fine,” Luci continued blithely. “Actually, we figure all this additional background info should help with the translating.”

“Luci, I asked Tim!” Clarke said sharply, turning again to look at her. She jerked her gaze up from the gun towards him, and inwardly he cursed himself for taking that tone. He didn’t seem to be having the best of luck with people today…

“It’s all right,” Tim said quickly, standing up and moving to place a hand on Clarke’s arm. “I am f-fine, her information really will help with the translating, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be any more involved than that.” He paused. “And knowing about this t-time group also explains why I hardly see you lately.”

Clarke flinched slightly, turning to look the shorter boy in the eyes. Had he not been hanging around Tim as much? He supposed that he HAD been paying more attention to Julie ever since the time machine factor had reappeared last month… and of course he’d wanted to speak with Carrie and Frank on occasion… but he had come by Tim’s house just last Monday. Or, no, had it been the previous Monday? For that matter, when was the last time he’d made a drugstore run for Tim’s medications?

“I… I’m sorry, Tim,” Clarke said as he realized the truth of the situation. “I never made a conscious decision to avoid you.”

“ANYway,” Luci cut back in pointedly, “you’re just in time. We’ve managed to recharge the gun, and were about to take a test shot. The thing’s non-lethal, by the way, that’s what Tim realized yesterday, hence shooting Carrie with everything we had. This time, we’re sure the safety’s engaged and the gun’s set back to level one, so we shouldn’t experience such massive kickback. Observe.”

She picked up the gun again and, bracing herself back against the wall behind the bed, took aim at a pillow sitting across the room on Tim’s dresser.

Clarke frowned. “Is it safe to be firing that thing off indoors?”

Tim nodded. “Oh, sure. Well, we’re p-pretty sure,” he amended. “I mean, near as I can figure, it’s now configured to be the equivalent of a sci fi phaser on low stun.”

“But if you’re not a hundred percent certain, perhaps we should–” Clarke never got a chance to complete his sentence. Luci had already pulled the trigger, and even before the sequence of lights on the gun was done flashing, a pulse of energy shot out of the barrel. The pillow on the dresser exploded in a cloud of feathers - and the glass in the mirror behind it shattered into a hundred pieces, all of them spiralling out into Tim’s bedroom.

-Next Episode: Shattered

-What do you think… Is Glen like Julie or not? Is Luci evading issues, like Frank was? Do you want to comment, or click the voting link?

Previously: When Mindy reappears, Glen and Carrie plan to banish her, while Julie and the others plan to capture her. Luci has discovered a “temporal gun” in Linquist’s safe.

PART 3.17b: BANISHMENT 2

“Well?” said the voice Glen recognized as belonging to Luci. “Does it say the gun freezes people in time or not?”

“I d-don’t know yet! I can’t t-translate under these conditions!” came the reply.

“Steady on Tim,” Clarke soothed. “Here, I’ll hold the flashlight.”

Glen moved to intercept the four individuals. “Clarke!” he called out amiably. “Luci, Julie, Tim! Fancy meeting all of you here.”

“Glen?” Julie said. “Uh, didn’t Carrie tell you that this is an incredibly unsafe place to be right now??”

“Is it?” Glen said, blinking. “You should all be on your way somewhere else then.”

“Can’t,” Luci retorted. “We have some presents for Mindy, when she arrives here.”

“They can wait,” Glen insisted. “I really, REALLY think we should convince ourselves that it would be safer somewhere else.”

The four teenagers looked at each other. “G-Good enough for me,” Tim said, turning around.

“It does make sense,” Clarke agreed. “We should head home.”

“I’m not so sure,” Luci said, frowning. “Yet I’m thinking of a lot of places where I’d rather be.”

“No. No way. There’s nowhere else I would rather be right now,” Julie murmured, her body starting to shake. “Not after what I’ve caused.”

“Julie should bring you back to her place and serve some hot chocolate,” Glen continued calmly. “It’s getting cold out here and you’re all thirsty.”

“It IS cold,” Luci agreed.

“And I am thirsty,” Clarke added.

“Aren’t you guys coming?” Tim wondered, already three steps away.

“Why… what… why…" And Julie’s gaze focused in on Glen. “My God. YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!"

Glen turned quickly to focus all of his attention onto her. “Julie, don’t–” he began, but he got no further. With a speed and agility that surprised him, she had leapt to his side, while dashing a liquid out onto a rag in her hand. He tried to push her away.

“Nap time, mind warper!” the brunette cried out, slipping under Glen’s arm and slapping the rag against his face.

“No!” Glen protested, trying to keep from breathing in. “I have to wake…” His knees buckled, his vision blurred. “…goddamit… uhn, C-Carrie, SWAN SONG!” His last cry delivered in little more than a speaking voice, Glen then fell unconscious.

Julie stared down at her unconscious adversary. “Okay,” she decided. “Weird choice of last words…”

“Uh, guys? Whatever Glen meant by that, it was loud enough to get someone’s attention,” Clarke said, raising a finger to point over Julie’s shoulder. Julie turned, in time to see the figure rising up from the ground in the vicinity of the swingset. The figure had long blonde hair flowing out behind her, and when she turned, her eyes were glowing gold in the darkness.

“You will be banished,” Carrie said, raising her finger to point at the group of them.

“Ohhh HELL!” Julie swore, eyes going wide.

Luci immediately reached into her jacket, yanking out the gun she had been concealing. Originally in multiple parts within the safe, it’s six inch long barrel had now been screwed into the base, which itself was comprised of numerous of dials and lights. The main one showing four settings. Fortunately, while it seemed to be an energy weapon, it was at least partially charged, and included a standard trigger.

“Tim?” Luci said, trying to keep her hand from shaking. “We need the stats on this sucker like NOW.”

Electricity began to spark at the end of Carrie’s fingertips as she strode forwards. Clarke grabbed Tim, and both of them backed off to the right, as Luci and Julie began to circle around slowly to the left. Carrie paused as they split up.

“Okay, Carrie,” Julie began. “Stay calm here. We’re your friends.” She saw the movement in Carrie’s elbow a split second before her hand came out, and only just managed to dive out of the way of the crackling energies the blonde fired at her.

“Tim?” Luci called out again. “I can’t simply start firing this thing at random, I may only have the one shot! Is there a setting I can use to merely knock Carrie out?”

“D-Don’t rush me!” the small boy called back. “I need a minute, Linquist’s short form never makes sense!”

“I hope you have a minute,” Luci mumbled before dodging in a little closer to Carrie. “Hey, hey, ignore Julie, look at me!” She then backpedalled furiously, even as Julie became aware of the sound of more running footsteps approaching.

However, while Carrie did begin to focus on Luci, the bright flash of light and the appearance of three more individuals about a metre in front of the blonde quickly had everyone’s attention.

“Oh, GEEZ!” Frank choked out, stumbling to his feet. Next to him, Corry and Mindy remained on the ground, unconscious.

“Frank, get DOWN!” Luci screamed out. “You’re spoiling my shot!!”

“Oh look, more people here I can banish,” Carrie said with a smile.

Julie saw a tall figure spring out of the encroaching darkness, slamming into Frank even as electricity lanced out from Carrie’s fingertips. Frank was knocked back off his feet, his head hitting a partially concealed rock as he fell… but with that, the crackling energies passed harmlessly by both him and his rescuer.

“Ohmigod,” Chartreuse breathed from the edge of the park. “Lee tackled him in time.” She then joined Frank in the land of unconsciousness, the additional weight on Laurie’s shoulders almost pulling the redhead to the ground as well.

As Chartreuse collapsed, a certain redhead sprang to her feet. “Everyone back off!” Mindy shouted, whipping a knife out of her pocket. And Julie realized that Mindy had only been faking unconsciousness, to allow Carrie to get close enough for an attack. Oh no, she had to get in there with the chloroform!

“Mindy! Stop!” Julie cried out. Not even thinking about how she’d managed to completely ignore the redhead’s implicit command to ‘back off’, while everyone else had taken a few steps back, she launched herself forwards.

But Mindy saw Julie coming out of the corner of her eye. She checked her swing at Carrie in favour of leaping out of the way, so Julie’s dive only resulted in her ending up back down on the ground.

“Good! Everyone stay down, out of my line of sight!” Luci yelled. “Tim? Setting for Carrie OR Mindy? TIM?!”

“Calm down!” came Clarke’s voice out of the encroaching darkness. “Everyone just calm…”

Mindy jumped in towards Carrie again, her knife raised. The two of them were almost face to face now, Mindy’s knife held in the air, inches away from Carrie’s chest… and Julie saw Mindy hesitate. “Dammit Carrie,” Mindy whispered. “I never wanted to hurt…”

The electrical discharge hit the redhead at point blank range. She barely even got a chance to scream before she had disappeared in a crackling of energies and the sound of a thunderclap. “One down,” the golden eyed Carrie said calmly. She turned to face Julie, who had been readying herself for another attack on Mindy, and Julie abruptly discovered what it was like to be a deer caught in a car’s headlights. Oh lord. Did chloroform work on a temporal weapon?

“Luci!” Tim called out. “Setting four, on Carrie!”

Luci cranked the indicator over and immediately pulled the trigger.  For a second it seemed like her actions would have no effect at all, but then a sequence of lights on the gun lit up and a pulse of energy flew out of the end of the barrel, striking Carrie in the side. The effect was immediate. The building energies in Carrie’s palm fizzled out, and the blonde crumpled to the ground, Julie seeing her eyes flicker back to blue as they shut.

Luci, however, was unaware of this, as Julie then realized that the recoil on the gun had propelled the shorter girl back a good ten metres, right into the trunk of a tree. She now lay slumped at its base, out cold.

At last, all was silence.

The quiet stretched on for what felt like an eternity to Julie, however it was really under a minute before there came the sound of Laurie’s tentative voice from the treeline: “Is… is it all over?”

Julie looked up from where she had crawled over to check Carrie’s pulse - the blonde had one. Which meant either Carrie was only knocked out, or her heart rate could still be read through that gun’s ‘temporal freezing’.

“I think it’s over,” Julie agreed, her voice shaking.

There was another moment of silence. “So,” Lee said, clearing his throat as he pushed himself up. “Uh, will you guys still be needing my help? For moving all of these unconscious bodies?”

Not very far away, though completely unaware of recent events, Hank Waterson sat at his writing desk. He stared at the page in front of him in irritation. “This letter has nothing whatsoever to do with my novel,” he muttered. “It doesn’t even make sense. Where did it come from?” He scanned down the words on the sheet once again:

‘Waterson.

‘If you read this, it’s been over two days since my arrival. I assume either my mission is failing, or I neglected to turn off the equivalent of a post hypnotic suggestion. Either way, no more beating about the brush:  Glen ‘Glinephanis’ Oaks may not be a time criminal, but neither is he whom he appears. He is not merely a trainer. He represents a junction point for the entire temporal war. Please, DO NOT TRUST HIM. I retroactively apologize in advance for whatever methods I may use, or may have used, to convince you of this.

‘Yours, Mindylenopia.’

“It must be some game of Carrie’s,” her father concluded. Except, if that was true, how could it be in his handwriting? He shook his head. “I guess I’ll show it to her once she gets back from the movies with Glen… and she’s NOT going to put off our little talk about responsibility any longer.”

That decision made, Hank set the sheet aside and turned his attention back to his novel. Trying to figure out what he could do to fracture his character dynamics even more.

-Next Episode: Making the Rounds (aka the fallout from this)

-We’re maxing out on character tags in this post, even Hank’s involved. Was the resolution with Frank at all what you expected? Feel like casting a vote or comment?

Previously: Mindy visited Mr. Waterson. The temporal teenager group are plotting to capture Mindy, using the time machine. Meanwhile, Carrie tries to understand timeline theory with Glen.

PART 3.15b: FRAGMENTED PLANS 2

Glen shook his head. “Carrie, you’re forgetting your immunity to paradox. You can send me back in time to make sure your powers don’t overwhelm you or kill you now, in timeline three, and yet still have it be the same timeline where I wasn’t here - because that’s not a thing. I was always here. It’s all the same timeline.”

Carrie dropped her head down onto the table. This was really bugging her. Not because it didn’t make sense, rather because it did, and yet she felt like it shouldn’t. “Okay, fine. You also said there’s a faction within the Temporals who disagree with our - their - policies, which is the reason the Mundane we call Shady was able to get a time machine and come back to activate my powers in the first place.”

“Starting our timeline three,” Glen agreed.

“Mindy is ALSO a part of this faction, and she came here to finish the job that ‘Shady’, her future blow-up-the-hospital friend started. Which potentially starts timeline FOUR. Which is what we now need to prevent.”

“There you go, you’ve got it!” Glen agreed.

Carrie sat for a moment. “It’s LUNACY," she decided. “Can’t I give Frank a call? He’s a lot better at following this time-space junk.”

Glen reached out to grab Carrie’s arm before she could retrieve her book bag. “No phone calls. I meant that, Carrie. Not to Frank, not to your father, not to anyone. We don’t know how many people Mindy has compromised.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. No one is better at wrestling with temporal mechanics than you."

Carrie pulled her arm free of his grasp. She tugged hard on a strand of her hair. “Come on, Glen, you really think my own FATHER is going to give me up to Mindy? I mean, he’s probably so worried, after what happened at school!” Glen said nothing, merely shifting his weight back and forth uneasily in his seat. “Fine then, I’m calling.” She reached for her bag again.

“Wait,” Glen sighed. “Fine. There’s something I haven’t mentioned. Mindy has these… mental powers.”

“Oh, of course,” Carrie sighed. “Everyone who wants me dead HAS to have THOSE." But she felt too weary, too mentally drained to continue with an argument, so she gave up on her book bag in favour of looking expectantly at Glen.

“If she chooses, Mindy’s voice can make people do things they might otherwise be unwilling to do," Glen explained. “And being an actual Temporal, she’s damn good at it. Better than this Mundane you previously encountered. Granted, the power works best on adults, or on people who are emotionally vulnerable, but, given access, Mindy could eventually convince even the President of the United States that he was a rodeo clown.”

Carrie felt a chill run through her. “Glen? Your description feels very personal. Something in your tone tells me you’ve got an inside track on this mental ability too."

Glen smiled wryly. “Can’t put anything by you, hm? You’re right, Carrie. How else do you think I managed to set myself up here so quickly? Obtain all the required school documents? Deflect questions as to where my parents have been for over a month? I can do it too, if I choose.”

“Fine,” Carrie said. “Then you use your mental powers to go and deal with Mindy. I’ll be home, in my bedroom, drawing up a new cheerleading routine.” She moved to rise, only to have him reach out and take her arm again.

“I’m sorry, Carrie,” Glen said. “It doesn’t work like that. Even setting aside that I’ve only used my mental power very sparingly here in the past, me and Mindy, we’d be locked in a stalemate. The only one who can deal with the temporal threat right now is you.” His grip tightened. “Mindy needs to be banished from this time period. It’s okay, I’ll show you how to do it.”

“Why? Why ME!?” Carrie protested, banging her free hand down onto the table. “I’m just a girl! All right? A senior student trying to juggle her offbeat social life with her studies! I never asked for these temporal powers!”

“No,” Glen agreed. “You didn’t. You were born into them. But remember timeline one? Without these powers, you wouldn’t have been born at all.”

Carrie bit down hard on her lower lip. She felt like screaming. Or throwing something, hitting someone, lashing out at whatever future forces were conspiring to make her present a living hell.

But there was no one to attack. Even if fate were some sort of living entity, Carrie doubted it could be punched in the face. No, the truth was, Carrie had been born - when she never should have existed. With no powers, there was no Carrie. Simple logic.

As such, there was only one outlet currently available upon whom Carrie could vent her frustrations. The person who had smashed up their school library in an effort to start timeline four.

She sank back down into the booth. For a few moments, she remained with her elbows on the table, her blonde hair clenched in her fists, staring down at the pathetic looking strawberry chunks floating in what remained of her shake. Her decision, when she made it, was the only one that could make sense.

“What?” Glen asked. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“I said,” Carrie repeated, still barely above a whisper, “Tell me what I have to do to banish Mindy.”

She felt tired. So very, very tired.

“I must admit, I still don’t get why you two need me,” Lee said. Julie had sent Chartreuse to corner their classmate after his shift was up at the library, getting him to come to Willowdale Park. Where he was now standing, giving them a puzzled look.

“I swear, we’ll explain everything,” Julie assured. “But for right now? It might be better that you don’t understand. That way, if something goes wrong, you’ll have deniability.”

“You do understand the plan?” Chartreuse asked.

“Well, yeah. I lure this Mindy girl over to that place in the ravine where Corry and Frank are hiding. By pretending that Corry is Glen, given the similar hair. Pretty straightforward. You sure this Mindy will show?”

“Pretty sure,” Julie sighed. “I mean, I called Glen’s room at the Clayton and left a message on his answering service for her. It makes sense that she’d be monitoring. But remember, Lee… if Mindy pulls her gun on you, or does ANYTHING to make you think she’s dangerous - or even inexplicably friendly - we abort. Your safety is paramount.”

“Cut and run, yeah,” Lee agreed. “No problem there.”

Julie grimaced, starting to have second thoughts. After all, what if Mindy saw through the facade before Frank and Corry could link up with her and use the time machine? Was dusk enough to mask what was going on, or should they have waited longer? What if Mindy hurt somebody? Was using Lee even necessary, or just mere paranoia?

All objections voiced by the others, all objections Julie had countered in her drive to make sure they disposed of this Mindy girl. But, Julie wondered, was she truly acting out of concern for Glen, Carrie and everyone else? Or, as she had done earlier in the day, was she doing it more in the hopes of regaining some of her former glory? Or worse, of being the one who was in control, when faced with a person so similar to the man who had manipulated her in the past?

Julie hated when she started questioning her motivations. She no longer liked what she found. However, she had at least been up front with everyone this time. That is… almost everyone.

“Look, Lee, this really could be dangerous,” Julie said, speaking before she could think about it. “Mindy has these… okay, know what? Never mind. I’ll talk to Mindy instead of you. Sorry to bring you all the way out here for nothing. You should go.”

“Hey, if you went to the trouble of getting me involved, I’m sure you had a reason,” Lee countered. “Besides, I’m good at dodging. Plus I really do feel indebted to you and Carrie and everyone for finding Sing’s necklace. It meant a lot to her - just as this seems to mean a lot to you guys.”

“But…”

“Too late now anyway,” Lee said. “I wager that approaching shadow is your Mindy.”

Julie spun to see where Lee was looking, then with a curse, flattened herself down onto the ground and rolled under the evergreen shrub, next to where Chartreuse was already hiding.

Lee moved away from Julie’s position, towards the person that, Julie had to agree, looked like Mindy. It occurred to her now that they could be playing real havoc with the timeline - would Carrie double over in pain somewhere as soon as the time machine was activated? Why the hell wasn’t she answering their messages?!

Well, Clarke and Laurie were out looking for her. As well as looking for Luci, and even Glen. What more could they do? After all, it wasn’t Julie’s fault that time girl had gone AWOL. Or been kidnapped. Maybe tortured. Julie grit her teeth. She would fix this. She would.

She felt a hand reach out for her own, and she squeezed Chartreuse’s palm back in response. Not certain which of them was reassuring the other.

Frank resisted the urge to pop the top of the time machine open, to check the controls for the umpteenth time. He knew they had been set correctly. The coin was in, the only thing left to do was pull the handle. Which he would do as soon as Corry reached out and grabbed hold of Mindy.

Julie had made it all sound so terribly easy… as she had with her plan in the computer lab before lunch. Of course, that train of thought took him to Luci. Where HAD she disappeared to after that class? If she was upset with him, why hadn’t she at least called someone else?

“Hold tight, we’re up,” Corry muttered. Frank felt his heart rate increase as the sound of Lee’s voice reached their ears. He gripped Corry’s ankle even tighter.

“Yeah, well, as I say, Glen’s always bugged me,” their dark haired friend was saying. “So when I heard you wanted him, I decided to ambush him and tie him up in the woods for you. I’m getting decent pay for this, right?”

“I’m skeptical!” Mindy retorted. “He’s sneakier than you’re making him out to be.”

“Well, check it out, he’s gagged back there behind that tree,” Lee continued. “See the red hair?”

Frank heard Mindy take a step closer. Then another. Then… “Hey, that’s not–”

“NOW!” Corry shouted, making a dive for Mindy’s leg. Without even thinking about it, Frank yanked down on the time machine’s lever with his free hand.

He felt the usual effects of the time distortion, dimly aware of the fact that he’d kept hold of Corry’s foot. Then he was forty eight hours in the future. Back in the park. With Carrie Waterson standing no more than a metre away, her blonde hair trailing out behind her in waves, her eyes glowing a brilliant gold.

“Oh, GEEZ!” he choked out, letting go of the time machine and stumbling to his feet. Some sort of electricity sparked at Carrie’s fingertips. It helped him make out the forms of Corry and Mindy, unconscious on the ground - and that of Glen Oaks, who was also lying on the ground nearby.

“Frank, get DOWN!” Luci screamed from somewhere behind him in the dark. “You’re spoiling my shot!!”

“Oh look, more people here I can banish,” Carrie said with a smile. Electricity lanced out from her fingertips, Frank was knocked back off his feet, and everything faded to black…

Cliffhanger! Theories? New Commentary coming this Sunday, including a preview. Voting remains a weekly option.

Previously: Last year, Julie was mentally influenced to shoot Carrie. Carrie recently had a future vision at the dance. Megan beat Corry for leadership at school, right before a van crashed into their library.

3.14a: THE CONSPIRACY UNFOLDS 1

Chartreuse had just finished the table of observations for the physics experiment she and Lee were conducting when the sound of screeching tires and a loud crash from outside caused her pencil to slip from her fingers.

Lee, along with a few other students, quickly moved to positions where they could look out the second floor window. “Holy geez,” Lee said after a moment. “It’s kinda hard to tell from this angle, but it looks like some crazy driver crashed right into the school library!”

“Whoa,” Chartreuse gasped. “That must be, like, why I got bad vibes from the place this morning.” A number of other students in the classroom exchanged glances. Frank and Clarke immediately registered Julie’s absence, and before the teacher could stop them, they dashed out of the room.

“Julie, get my sister to safety!” Corry called out.

Julie noticed that Corry had elected to pull Megan away, as the younger girl had apparently passed out from shock. Did Corry think keeping their new rival safe might reverse the junior’s coup? Julie shook her head - she could think about it later, right now they had more immediate concerns.

“On it,” Julie responded, taking hold of the arm of Corry’s wide-eyed sister. She deftly maneuvered the two of them back, further away from the crazy redhead with the gun.

Even as she did, the crazy redhead’s attention was drawn to the man who was now slowly advancing upon her. The school principal raised his hands and froze at her attention. “Stay calm,” Hunt said. “Put the gun down. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Then you’ll hand over Glen Oaks,” the girl retorted. Her gaze was fully upon him now as she spoke very deliberately. “Tell me, where can I find Glen?”

“He… he’s a student here. He would be in class now,” the principal responded.

“What class? Where?” she pressed.

“I… I’m not sure…” Julie noticed that the principal’s eyes seemed to be glazing over, as they locked with those of the redheaded intruder. Julie’s own eyes narrowed. Something about this struck a chord inside her. An unpleasant chord.

But it was hard to get a bead on things, as she was still leading Laurie back into the book stacks, with other students shouting around them, either trying to hide, or run for the exit.

“WHERE?” the gun toting girl repeated.

“I… really… don’t… know,” Mr. Hunt replied, his voice shifting into a rather eerie monotone. “I can… look it up…”

The redhead let out a sigh of frustration. “Never mind. How about Carrie Waterson, where is she?”

“Right there.” Mr. Hunt lifted his finger to point. Julie snapped her gaze over in the direction the principal was indicating, in time to see her blonde classmate dashing out of the library doors, one hand pushing hard into her temple.

“Stop! Carrie!” the girl with the gun cried out. She began sprinting after her. “I have to warn you about Glen!”

Corry, who had been hauling Megan towards the same door, froze as the armed redhead ran right past. Julie registered that fact even as her gaze shifted back towards the principal. He seemed to be blinking in confusion at the latest development, only now turning to look towards the main library doors.

“Damn it,” Hunt cursed, moving back for the library office. “Did I just tell her…? Mr. Price!” he called out. “Tell the main office to announce that students are to remain in their classes when–”

The bell rang signifying the end of the school day. Frowning, Julie watched as Hunt disappeared into the small office with the librarian. She then swept her gaze back across the scene, ending at the shattered picture windows, which were now letting the wind blow in among the book stacks. Most of the students were gone. The van was simply sitting there with the driver behind the wheel. The driver.

Julie took a step forwards, only to have a hand clutch at her shoulder from behind. She twisted her neck around, seeing Laurie’s frightened face. “G-G-Golly, Julie,” Corry’s sister stammered. “W-What’s going on??”

“I don’t know,” Julie replied, clenching her jaw. “But I’m going to find out, okay?” She clasped Laurie’s hand. “Duck down, and stay quiet. Wait for me or Corry to come back here for you.”

She was going to get some answers.

‘Why is it time travellers enjoy pointing guns at me?’ Carrie wondered as she charged down the hallway. ‘I mean, don’t they have some better technology available to them yet? Something less lethal, maybe? That’d be nice…’

She heard the library doors get bashed open behind her. “Carrie, stop! Listen to me!”

“Pass,” Carrie mumbled under her breath.

It didn’t help that it was getting hard to think at all, what with the temporal pressure hammering at her temples. That van should not have crashed into the library. More to the point, this redheaded girl was not supposed to be in their time. Of that, Carrie was certain. Yet at the same time, she recognized her pursuer as the one who had been in her vision at the dance last month.

Carrie swallowed. That’s right. In her vision, this same girl had been standing in front of her, and the redhead with the hazel eyes had raised a hand, holding that knife… oh, hold on. Knife, not gun. So why the gun now? And what was her connection to Glen?

Before those thoughts could manage a foothold, the bell rang, signifying the end of classes. Students began to pour out of the classrooms. “Perfect,” Carrie moaned, feeling the vice around her temples tightening. She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears of pain.

No way could she think about whys. Not now. She had to lead that crazy girl in the red dress somewhere NOT IN THE HALLS, somewhere SAFE, somewhere she’d STOP damaging their timeline. And that place wasn’t out into the parking lot, with all the parents, no, that was liable to make things even worse. So where?

‘All right, track star,’ Carrie thought. ‘Time for some fancy action.’ With a quick look over her shoulder to make sure the gun toting maniac was still in pursuit, she summoned up a burst of speed, sprinting into the (thankfully) deserted school auditorium, down near the stage podium.

In one fluid movement, Carrie yanked open the loose door she knew about down on the lower right corner of the stage. She boosted herself through it feet first, landing between the rows of extra chairs stored there. She immediately reached up to slide the door shut behind her, then lay quietly, trying to keep herself from breathing too hard. The chair leg poking against her bottom really didn’t help matters.

The sound of running footsteps in the auditorium turned into walking footsteps, then there was nothing. “Carrie?” came the redhead’s voice.

A pause, and then Carrie heard her pursuer ascend the steps onto the stage itself. “Carrie, I’m fairly certain that you didn’t time jump, and thus are simply hiding in here. It’s not my intention to harm you. Come on out so that we can talk.”

Carrie remained where she was. She heard the sound of a brief search, interrupted only by some sort of muffled announcement over the public address system. Then more silence. Her headache was ebbing. That felt like a good sign.

Right when Carrie thought it might be safe to move though, she heard the girl’s voice again. “All right, Carrie, have it your way,” the redhead declared. “But in case you can hear me – I, Mindylenopia Oaks, member of the Chronologic Patrol, am here for Glen Oaks. My brother is a dangerous fugitive from the future. You must not trust him! I will be in touch.”

A pause, then running footsteps, then the auditorium door, and then silence. Still, Carrie waited twice as long as she had the last time before finally edging the stage door aside. When nothing happened, she pulled herself back into the auditorium.

There was no one there. What’s more, the throbbing in her head had regressed to a point where it was almost bearable. Letting out a sigh of relief, Carrie headed cautiously for the hallway, rubbing absently at the sore spot where the chair had been jabbing her. Wishing she had any idea as to her next move.

The van driver still seemed partially dazed as Julie pulled open his door. She noticed that while he had a bump on his head, his seat belt had managed to protect him from serious harm. “Vat’s goin’ on?” the driver murmured, turning his head to regard the brown haired student. “Vere am I?”

“I’ll ask the questions here,” Julie asserted. “Who are you, who was the redhead, and why is she after my friends?!”

“I… I be Lars,” the driver stated blearily. “Vat redhead you mean?”

“Your passenger,” Julie said, peering a little more closely at him. Did he have a concussion or something? “You know, the one with the gun.”

“Gun?!” Lars said. He turned to regard the empty seat next to him, then finally made an effort to sit up. “She’s gone! Mindy’s gone!”

“Mindy?” Julie said, jumping on the name. “Is that the person you were driving here?”

Lars reached up to press a hand to the bump on his head as he replied. “I tink… yes, she tell me to drive her into this town, and her name, it sounded like Mindy.”

“Sounded like? You’re not sure? You’d never met her before today?”

“No, I… oh my goodness! My van is in library?!?”

“Focus please, just a couple more questions,” Julie said, snapping her fingers to retain his attention. “Did Mindy say anything to you when you were driving? About what she was doing or why she came here?”

“No, I… we came to town, we stopped first at hotel, she go in, then come out and say Glen is at school. So we come to school. I mention school probably over soon, so she tell me to keep on driving towards window.”

Julie blinked. “So you did?”

“I… I did. Somehow it make sense at the time…”

Julie felt a chill run up her spine. It made sense at the time. She remembered thinking the exact same thing before shooting Carrie last year. After that man had spent time talking to her on the phone. Influencing her with his voice. There had to be a connection.

“Who introduced Mindy to you?" Julie pressed. “And did Mindy mention anyone else she was working with??”

“We meet by bridge… I… I don’t think she say,” Lars replied, throwing up his hands. “Who you be anyway? Student?” He only now seemed to realize Julie’s age.

“Irrelevant,” Julie said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. “Tell me, was it Mindy herself who convinced you to listen to her? How did she do it?!” Lars simply opened and closed his mouth, a baffled expression on his face.

“Jewels,” came a quiet voice from behind her. “The police are on their way and teachers are trying to get everyone into lockdown. We need to get out of here.”

-Some of this makes sense, right? If not, please let me know.

-Hello to new blog follower professorumbraum! If you were also the person reading the entire archive on the weekend, you made last week’s views look normal instead of rather sad, thank you.

3.10: HELP WANTED

“Lee, I’m talking to you.”

Lee jerked his gaze over towards Ms. Readman. “And I heard every word,” he assured her. “Unfortunately, my brain interpreted it as Spanish. Could you run it by me again?” A student sitting nearby let out a quiet laugh.

“Perspective drawing, Lee,” the art teacher said patiently, moving closer and indicating his empty page. “Are you having trouble understanding the assignment?”

“No, no, not at all,” Lee replied quickly. “Just spaced out for a moment, some things on my mind. I’ll get right to this.”

“Thank you, Lee, that would be appreciated,” Ms. Readman said wryly.  “Though do let me know if you’re having problems with your perspective?”

Lee nodded and watched his teacher continue her walk around the room. Letting out an almost inaudible sigh, he retrieved his ruler and began to mark down the requisite lines. A short distance away, Glen Oaks observed his classmate, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Like, ohmigod!” Chartreuse breathed. “This is, you know, so totally cool! And Jeeves doesn’t even know about this place??”

“Obviously not,” Carrie said.

“Chartreuse, could you keep moving? We’re stuck in the passage,” Frank remarked.

“I’m still trying to tidy up and catalog the last of the stuff left in here," Julie remarked. “But I haven’t been able to open that safe.”

“Maybe we should blast the thing open,” Luci suggested. She dropped her bag onto the lab table and then attempted to boost herself up as well, succeeding with a hand from Frank. “After all,” she continued, “it could contain information about this infernal code Linquist’s set up.”

Frank watched as Luci pulled out the scientist’s red logbook, along with her laptop and a number of notes she’d been accumulating. “I really wish you hadn’t brought that,” he admitted. “You’re becoming more than obsessed. Even your cat is starting to give you weird looks.”

“It’s all right, I know I’m close to a breakthrough now,” Luci assured him. “I’ve coded up a program to run an entire substitution cipher on what seem to be the key passages. In fact, by the time you return from your time trip, I bet I’ll have it all worked out.”

“That could be in as little as five minutes,” Frank objected.

“Or as much as an hour if we don’t get going soon,” Carrie countered. “Now, shall we go back over the plan?” She looked around the room expectantly.

“Seemed pretty clear to me,” Julie spoke up. “We go back into last week, watch for where Lee’s younger sister lost her necklace, and retrieve it for her. Thereby fixing up the King family situation in time for Thanksgiving dinner tonight, which will help restore Lee’s focus in class next week.”

“Oh, and I know Lee will appreciate it!” Chartreuse chimed in, clasping her hands together. “After all, if we don’t fix it soon, I think he’ll be spacing out for WEEKS, right through until American Thanksgiving!”

“How did you figure out that his sister’s necklace was the problem anyway, Carrie?” Clarke wondered.

“Glen told me,” the blonde admitted. “Apparently he overheard Lee telling Tim about it after one of Corry’s band rehearsals.”

Frank crossed his arms. “Yeah, hey, anyone else suspicious about how fast Corry let Glen take over as Sue’s replacement there?” he wondered.

Julie shook her head. “Not really. Corry’s been looking for an angle on the guy for a while,” she reminded. “By keeping Glen close, he can start to observe that much better.”

“Back to the plan, please,” Carrie objected. “I’m already concerned about multiple people time tripping with me, so I’d appreciate our heading out before I lose my nerve.”

“Carrie, it isn’t too late to change your mind,” Frank offered. “You could try doing one of your – what do you call them? – mental time searches into the past instead.”

Carrie waved him off. “No, I really can’t. Even setting aside the fact that I haven’t had time to get comfortable with that aspect of my power, I’ve never met Lee’s younger sisters. So I wouldn’t know how to centre on them in the first place.”

“Even so, you don’t have to actually participate in the trip. You could leave it up to the rest of us,” Clarke offered.

Again Carrie shook her head. “If we’re dedicated to the trip, I’m coming along. That way, if anything goes wrong, any headaches will hopefully centre first on the me who is out of time synch.”

“It’s all right Carrie, I’ll, you know, be there to monitor your condition,” Chartreuse assured her. She reached out towards Carrie’s hand, second guessed her own intentions, then entwined the fingers of both hands together instead.

“Meanwhile, I’ll stay cooped up here at the mansion with you both, coordinating things and keeping Jeeves from seeing us,” Julie said, a mite wistfully.

“As I assist Frank with the locket search,” Clarke agreed.

“Meanwhile, I keep the home fires burning in the present,” Luci muttered quietly as she started scrawling a new set of notes. “Are you going or not?"

“Yes," Frank said. He bent down next to the time machine - which Carrie had placed on the floor - in order to complete final adjustments.  “Someone suggest to me the best time of day for arrival?”

“Lunch. Say noon," Carrie stated. “Since while it’s true that Chartreuse was sick last Tuesday, which should displace us away from the school, Julie had also left the school grounds to eat that day. And I’d prefer having that extra insurance.” She looked around. “Remember, once we appear somewhere south of the school, we make for the ravine. Don’t talk to anyone!"

“Right.” Frank finished up, then closed the lid of the machine. “Is everyone ready?”

“We don’t all have to grab that thing’s handle, do we?” Chartreuse asked, stopping herself before leaning in next to Carrie. “It’ll be, like, awkward. Can’t I hold someone else’s hand instead?”

“Chartreuse, we’ve always made sure everyone traveling was in contact with the handle,” Frank countered. “Even when we had bicycles and all our gear coming back from Illinois last November. After all, you may not get transported otherwise.”

“May not? Meaning I might. You’ve never, you know, tried it?”

“Why screw up a perfectly good system?”

“Because some day you may need to transport, like, twenty people or something?” Chartreuse hypothesized. “I mean, we’re already up to five.  Six if Luci needs to come along some day.”

There was a pause. “Chartreuse has a point,” Clarke admitted. “The previous maximum was four, and it WAS kinda awkward with the bikes and everything.”

“But in the end, all the inanimate items got transported, right?” Julie mused. Clarke nodded in reply.

“Physical items, such as the clothes on our backs, may be treated differently from actual organic matter,” Frank protested.

“Well, I offer to be your guinea pig then,” Chartreuse decided. “I mean, the worst that can happen is I won’t be, you know, transported, right?”

“Unless you get lost somewhere in history,” Luci said idly, continuing her work atop the lab table.

Another glance was exchanged between the students sitting on the floor. “Look, this is ridiculous,” Frank decided. “We’ll test next time. Maybe with a small animal, or insects or something. For now, everyone make sure to hold onto the handle. Right Carrie?” He turned to look at the blonde, who had been silent ever since her initial objection.

“No,” Carrie replied. Then she looked up, and blinked as she realized everyone was staring at her. “Sorry, I mean no, I don’t think that Chartreuse would be lost in time," she clarified. “Don’t ask me why I think that but I do. Though as to her ‘piggybacking’ on one of us… that, I don’t know. And she’s right, it would be helpful to know if that’s possible.”

Frank pressed a hand to his forehead. “Yes, but not NOW, correct?”

Carrie pursed her lips. “Perhaps not,” she conceded.

“But what if, on our return trip, I end up being chased by a horde of guys?” Chartreuse objected. “And I end up trapped in a dead end in front of a wooden barrier, and the only way for me to get away is to, like, reach through a knothole and grab Carr– touch one of you as you pull this handle??” Everyone turned to stare at her.

“I don’t think that’s likely,” Julie observed.

“It’s not impossible,” Chartreuse retorted defiantly.

Frank sighed. “Fine Chartreuse, if Carrie thinks it’s safe enough, and it will make you happy, you don’t have to touch the handle. But don’t complain if you get left behind!”

“Check,” Chartreuse said, giving Frank a thumbs up. Everyone reached out for the handle of the time machine, Chartreuse grasping Carrie by the shoulder instead. Frank dropped in a coin for their current year.

“We pull on three,” Frank said. “All right? One…. two…. three!”

Despite the fact that it had been almost a year since he had last used the device, the feeling of being sucked into a void still felt familiar to Frank. In the wink of an eye, the basement lab was gone, replaced by a new scene… that of a hallway in the high school. “Damn!” Frank cursed, as he shook off the aftereffects of the time displacement. “How did we end up here?!”

“Someone screwed up the geometry?” Carrie replied. As the only other seasoned time traveler of the five, she was the only other person still conscious - Julie, Clarke and Chartreuse lay on the floor, out cold.

“Impossible!” Frank countered. “According to everything we know, the device should have brought us to a point an equal distance away from the positions of our past selves! And as two of us were a fair distance from the school, there’s no way–”

“There is, if it–” Carrie began, before freezing and raising a hand to her temples, wincing in pain. “Oh no,” she muttered. “Oh no, no, not good…”

“Temporal change?” Frank questioned.

“What do you think?” Carrie snapped.

“Quick,” Frank said. “Let’s get everyone into that classroom!” They had apparently lucked out in terms of their arrival - the art wing didn’t see much traffic during lunch. But it wasn’t always deserted, the four students who turned the nearby corner testifying to that.

“We’re practicing for a play,” Carrie called out to them as the freshmen arrivals exchanged a confused glance. “Death of three salesmen.” The head cheerleader quickly dragged Chartreuse back into the drama room, Frank doing the same with Clarke, and both of them returning for Julie and the time machine respectively.

“Hey, Faye! I have that book you wanted!” came the voice of Azure Vermilion. Faye turned from where she was leaning back against the tree by the football field.

“And you bring it to me now, when I’m nowhere near my locker?”

“Oh. I wasn’t really thinking about that,” Azure admitted. “Should I bring it back later?”

“No, I’ll take it,” Faye sighed. “Lunch is close to being over, and once I have it, my sister will get off my back.”

“Okay. Hey, which of your younger sisters wanted this again?” Azure continued as she handed over the book.

Faye stared. “Sing,” she said, accepting the tome. “Soh’s barely in grade school, you really think she’s old enough to get into a detective story like this?”

“I guess not,” Azure admitted. She grinned. “Not that I’ve met either of them in person, Lee’s your only sibling I’ve seen. Heck, I’m not even sure where you all live, considering how you didn’t want me to bring the book around directly, but maybe some time later this month we could–”

“Are you trying to indulge me in conversation for a reason?” Faye snapped.

“Um, not really,” the blue haired girl admitted. “I only thought–”

“Don’t think so much,” Faye interrupted again. “I admit, I feel a bit of a bond between the two of us, because our parents share a bizarre sense of humour when it comes to naming their children. So hanging with you is more tolerable than it would be with any other Grade Nine student. But right now, I want to be alone. Understand?”

Azure opened her mouth to respond, but seeing the look on Faye’s face, apparently decided instead to nod and head back towards the school instead. It wasn’t until Azure was out of sight that the tall girl let out a sigh, and smacked the book soundly against her forehead a couple of times. ‘Way to make friends and influence people, genius,’ she reflected.

“It’s because Chartreuse wasn’t touching the handle!” Frank asserted. “We never should have let her experiment!”

Frank, Carrie, Julie and Clarke now stood staring down at the prone form of the pink haired girl, who was laid out on the floor of the otherwise empty drama classroom. Unlike Clarke and Julie, who had regained consciousness fairly rapidly, their resident mystic was still out cold.

Julie raised her hand. “I don’t think Chartreuse is still unconscious because of that.”

“Oh? Why not?” Carrie asked. Frank noticed that her mood had improved slightly. Getting away from the other students had seemingly eliminated her headache.

“Because I wasn’t touching that handle for the trip either,” Julie admitted. “When everyone else was pulling at once, I hesitated, and lost my grip. But I’d been holding Phil’s other hand. And I’m here, and I’m awake.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Frank protested, throwing his hands up in the air. “Is it because Chartreuse was sick on this day in the… wait a moment. Julie, neither you nor her were touching the handle?”

“Seems so,” Phil affirmed.

Frank leaned back against the teacher’s desk. “Huh. That could at least explain why we’re at the school. If neither girl was in direct contact with the time machine, perhaps they weren’t factored into the device’s spatial algorithm? We’d need to do more testing to be sure, but…”

“But maybe you have to be physically touching the handle in order to be used in the geographic triangulation!” Carrie finished. She smiled. “If it’s true, it will certainly solve a lot of mathematical mapping headaches! We’ll simply have to figure out where ONE person was, and then get everyone else to latch onto them.”

“Still doesn’t explain Chartreuse’s condition though,” Clarke reminded them.

“Well, she doesn’t have a fever,” Carrie observed, having bent down to feel the forehead of the other girl. “And she’s breathing fine, she’s just… out.”

“Change of plan then,” Frank decided. “We obviously can’t leave Chartreuse in the school, in case she’s discovered. But Clarke, you may be the only one strong enough to carry her. Can you and Julie get her back to the mansion, while me and Carrie get a bead on Lee’s sister instead?”

“I can do a piggyback,” Clarke agreed. “And Julie can get us in without tipping off Jeeves. But what about the two of you?”

“Yeah, I’m not thrilled with the idea of strolling the streets of the past with you, Frank,” Carrie said. “No offence, but if I end up doubled over in temporal pain, you’ll be less useful to me than Chartreuse.”

“Then I could go it alone," Frank allowed. “But didn’t we figure it was better NOT to have anyone by themselves?”

Carrie sighed. She slapped lightly at Chartreuse’s cheeks. There was no reaction. “Fine, fine, okay. Clarke, give me that burner phone that you were going to use to communicate with us. I’ll go with Frank instead.”

Clarke fished in his pocket and handed it over. “Should we phone you if Chartreuse’s condition improves?”

Carrie grimaced. “No. We stick to the original plan of minimal communication. These phones are essentially double versions of themselves in this past timeline, even if the originals ARE stowed away in the lab and turned off. That worries me. Emergencies only.”

“Right,” Clarke agreed.

“New problem,” Julie observed. “Chartreuse is the one who was going to elaborate on what Lee’s sister looked like. Given how it was her own sister Azure who knew Faye, and thus the rest of Lee’s family.”

Their eyes drifted back to the unconscious girl. “Well, damn. Uh, I don’t suppose you’d have any information, Julie?” Frank said hopefully. “Rumour was, last year you had a file folder for everyone in the school.”

Julie shook her head. “Honestly? I never paid close attention to Lee, since he never ended up being a direct factor in any of my plans. Nor did I ever feel a need to blackmail him. He has more than one younger sister, of that I’m sure, but beyond that…” She shrugged.

“Lee does tend to keep to himself,” Clarke agreed. “Sometimes I’ve wondered why.”

“Well, his sister was ‘Soh’, right?” Carrie asked. “How many blonde girls who go to the middle school down the road would answer to a name like that?”

Frank winced. “Setting aside how walking up and asking young girls for their names could be misinterpreted,” he countered, “Don’t you think Lee would have spoken to our past selves already if he heard we were poking around? Which didn’t originally happen in our timeline. This was meant to be spy and retrieve, not some sort of inquisition.”

“Well, what DO you suggest?” Carrie said in exasperation.

“And was Lee’s sister with the necklace even named Soh?” Julie protested. “I thought Chartreuse had said something about Soh being in grade school, not middle school.”

“Grade school? The sister who lost the necklace was definitely in middle school,” Carrie countered.

“Looks like our plan has fallen apart,” Clarke decided. “Maybe we should simply abort, return to the present, and try this again, going to some other time.”

Frank made a face. “But that’s a waste of two coins!”

“Plus I’m not sure we want to leave now, pulling Chartreuse through time again until we learn what’s wrong with her,” Carrie said. She ran her fingers back through her hair. “Damn it! Okay, look. Me and Frank can still stake out the middle school. If we spot Soh, awesome, if not… we’ll re-evaluate at that point. We did build in a time buffer here. Chartreuse has around three hours to come to her senses. Still, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

“That works,” Frank agreed. “Right now, it’s only…” His eyes widened, and he pointed over at the clock on the wall. “Oh no, look at the time, it’s–"

The school bell rang, signifying the end of lunch. And almost immediately, the door to the drama room opened and Glen Oaks walked into the room.

“Hey, Singsong, whatcha doin'?”

Lee’s second youngest sister jumped at the sound of the voice, accidentally tugging on a strand of her own hair. “Ow! Oh, um, not much, Gary,” Sing said, untangling her fingers from her long brown hair while simultaneously trying to hide the book she held in her other hand.

Her grade six classmate smirked at her. “Readin' again, huh?  Didn’t hear the bell go?”

“Oh n-no, of course I heard it,” Sing lied. When HAD all these people started entering the school? She cast a glance towards the clock in the hallway.

Gary snorted. “Yeah, right,” he said, continuing past her down the hall. “Bet a bookworm like you don’t care about nothing ‘cept your books.”

Sing watched him go, the hand that had been twirling her hair now reaching up to finger the charm dangling off of her necklace. The one she’d received from her father for her birthday. “You’re wrong there,” the member of the King family murmured quietly. “You’re so wrong.”

The brunette girl put her book away and followed Gary towards their classroom, squeezing the charm between her fingers. Not knowing that before the day was done, she would be devastated by it’s loss.

Yes, time travel resumes in a time travel serial! Shocked? … No? … I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing. Well okay, I can’t, but I might notice your click if you were to Vote for T&T on TWF.

3.09: TONE DOWN

“Carrie! Carrie!!”

She began to turn at the sound of her name, yet was not fast enough to avoid being blindsided by the fast moving splash of colour that was Chartreuse.

“Carrie!” the pink haired girl repeated desperately, grabbing onto Carrie’s arm to keep her from falling over. “Thank goodness I spotted you! Listen, Corry doesn’t, like, believe me when I say someone’s out to kill him. We’ve got to use your powers so we can, you know, stop this terrible thing from happening.”

Carrie coughed. “Ahem. My what? What are you saying, Chartreuse?” she asked, inclining her head towards the person standing next to her.

Chartreuse turned to look at Carrie’s red-headed companion. “Oh, hi Glen. Uhmmmm, I need to use Carrie’s powers of persuasion. Mind if I borrow your date for a little while?”

“Chartreuuuuuuse…”

Glen laughed. “It’s okay Carrie, I don’t mind. I could use a dance break, and was planning on watching Corry’s performance anyway. You go tend to the serious matters your friend is referring to.”

“I’m sure they’re not that serious,” Carrie protested. It didn’t matter - Chartreuse had already muttered a quick thanks and was pushing her towards the hallway.

Sighing, Carrie allowed herself to be led into the nearest unlocked classroom before confronting the pink haired girl.

“REALLY, Chartreuse?” Carrie said irritably. “What is so important that you felt it necessary to pull me away from the first truly enjoyable date I’ve had in months?”

“It’s like I said. I sensed something when I was with Laurie earlier, but it didn’t, like, hit me until I touched Corry’s hand,” Chartreuse explained in a rush. “It was one of my, you know, wham bang powerful impressions that told me he’d be dead before the night was out. And I bet it’s somehow related to the musical sets he’s gonna do!”

She leaned in. “But I can’t see more than that without meditating, and I never know how long it’ll take to pick up something, whereas Corry’s starting in less than five minutes. So since you’re so much more powerful than me, you could look ahead–”

“Whoa, STOP,” Carrie interrupted. “Dial that back. I’m at a dance here. With Glen. This is NOT temporal session time. And even if it WERE, we’d started to work on mental shielding, not running up and down my timeline. Think about it, I still have no idea whether something from the future will become fixed as soon as I see it. What if I see something horrible, and then we can’t change it?”

“But we have to do something,” Chartreuse insisted. “Please, Carrie, can’t you at least help me work out the cause? Or get a list of suspects? Or a time frame? Something?? I swear, I’m not overdramatizing here. Well, okay, so Corry may not DIE, but I know Laurie’s brother will get badly hurt - unless we do something.”

Carrie groaned and pressed a couple fingers to her forehead. She contemplated Chartreuse’s request, the pleading look on her friend’s face, and in particular, how the two of them would feel should something disastrous actually happen to Corry now.

“Okay. Okay! I’ll try a few tiny image jumps forward,” Carrie yielded. “But you leave me and Glen alone for the rest of the night after this, understood?”

“Of course. Unless your help is needed again,” Chartreuse said brightly. Carrie opened her mouth to protest, but then decided it probably wouldn’t do any good. She simply sighed as she sat, cross legged on the floor of the classroom, and closed her eyes.

‘Thank goodness,’ Chartreuse thought, going down on her knees in front of the seated blonde. ‘We can fix this, I know we can! Still, I gotta take it easy on her…’

“All right, Carrie,” Chartreuse began, grasping the blonde by the hands. “I realize we’re not at my place with the crystals, but try to relax and–”

“I’m there,” Carrie murmured, eyes closed. “In the time stream.”

Chartreuse resisted the urge to flinch. ‘Damn, that was fast. I can see why it worries her.' “Er, okay,” she continued. “See if you can centre in on Corry? Visualize that he’s standing there in front of you.”

Carrie nodded. “It’s not difficult, I’ve mentioned former time travellers are always a bit out of synch. He’s… yes, I’ve got it. He’s out in the cafeteria. They’re making preparations for their first number.”

“Do you sense any danger?”

“I don’t think so?” Carrie muttered. “The crowd is chattering, talking about his chances. I don’t know if I want to wade into it, my astral self has ended up back by the coat check. Oh, wait, Joe Drew is scowling at me! No, wait, it’s through me - towards the stage. Towards Corry.”

“Don’t forget, spirit body. Totally insubstantial, no one can see or do anything to you.”

“I know, I know. It troubles me, that’s all. Do you think I ended up back here because Joe’s planned something?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was a subconscious attempt to avoid the crowd.” Chartreuse tightened her grip slightly. She had rather hoped to be able to sense something through Carrie, but so far, there was nothing.

Was that because there was nothing to sense? Or because it didn’t work that way? How else could they interface? Her gaze started to wander, and she pulled it back to Carrie’s face.

“Okay, Corry’s announcing the first song. Now what?”

Chartreuse sighed. They needed more. “Are you up to trying a skip into the future? To establish a time frame? Please be honest. My prior attitude aside, I don’t want to push you beyond what you can, you know, handle.”

Carrie bit down on her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a moment’s thought. “After all, I don’t want to physically time travel. Only project. But maybe if I simply imagine that I’m stretching forwards, moving faster than the water currents?”

Julie allowed Clarke to lead her towards the cafeteria. “No deafening, pulsating beat,” the tall boy said to her, as he tugged at his necktie. “My guess is we’ve arrived just in time for Corry’s bit.”

“Um,” was all Julie could think to reply. After numerous wardrobe changes, she had finally selected a low key shirt and sweater ensemble with a long skirt. As they entered the cafeteria, only a couple of people picked up on her presence; Corry’s imminent performance was helping to divert attention.

‘Interesting,’ Julie mused. ‘A year ago, this sort of neglect would have infuriated me. Now I’m simply relieved.’

As the quartet of students started to play up by the stage, Clarke guided her back against the wall. “They’re quite good,” he reflected. “Tim’s looking a little out of sorts though. I hope Corry’s been treating him decently.”

“Clarke!” came a hushed cry. Both Clarke and Julie turned as the younger Veniti twin ran up, dressed like a red candle. “Clarke, we need your help! Chartreuse thinks Corry’s life is in danger!”

Clarke blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Chartreuse got this feeling that Corry was going to die or get hurt,” Laurie explained. “And she thought Carrie could help and so went to find her but now they’ve both disappeared and so you’re tall maybe you can see them since I’m not sure what’s going to happen any more and I’m so worried for my brother and by the way that’s a lovely tie you’re wearing and golly it’s such a pity that I’m not seeing it under better circumstances…”

The redhead was obviously distressed, Julie realized. She normally did a better job of controlling her run-on sentences these days, particularly in front of Clarke. The guy she’d once liked. Or still liked? Julie didn’t like to reflect on that too much.

“Whoa, okay Laurie, calm down,” Clarke was saying. “You’re saying you need to find Chartreuse and Carrie?” Laurie nodded wordlessly, eyes wide and full of concern. Clarke turned his attention to Julie. “Jewels, will you be okay here for a couple minutes while I try to track down Laurie’s companions?”

Julie nodded. “It’s fine, Phil, no one’s paying attention to me. And if someone tries to start something, I’ll simply go back outside.”

Clarke looked at her for another moment before returning her nod.  “Okay. Now, Laurie, given Chartreuse’s preference for coloured outfits, I’m pretty sure I could spot her if she were in here,” he said. “Maybe she went to the washroom, or out for a breath of air? What was she wearing?”

Julie watched the two of them depart the cafeteria, then shrank back against the wall.

“Breathe, Carrie, breathe!” Chartreuse shouted desperately. “You’re not really drowning! Focus back in on Corry! Focus!!”

Carrie sucked in a great, heaving breath, her fingernails digging into Chartreuse’s palms. The pink haired girl ignored the pain, all of her attention on the blonde cheerleader who was now twitching in front of her.

“Okay Carrie, never mind Corry,” Chartreuse decided. “Come back to me, all right? Focus on me. On the present.” The fear that she was losing her friend was starting to tug at her heart.

Carrie didn’t reply, the twitching ceasing as her eyes snapped wide open. At least those eyes were blue, Chartreuse noted, and not golden. But they were focussed on nothing.

“Okay, bad idea, I’m sorry for pushing you into it,” the mystic continued, trying to suppress her rising panic. “I wasn’t, like, thinking straight. We can simply look into the usual suspects here, yeah? So come on, come back to me now, PLEASE Carrie…!”

“Char… treuse…?”

Chartreuse felt the tightness in her chest release. “Carrie! Carrie, are you all right?”

“Am… fine,” Carrie murmured. “It’s… whoa, headrush.”

Carrie’s grip relaxed enough to allow Chartreuse to pull one of her hands away. She waved it in front of Carrie’s eyes. There was no reaction. “Carrie, what’s going on? Where are you?”

“Am… in future,” Carrie murmured. “Astral me. About ten… no, five minutes. Had to resist the pull to bring all of me. Th-Thank you for anchoring me in the present, Chartreuse.”

“No prob - are you SURE you’re okay?” Chartreuse knew her own heartbeat was still racing.

“Well, I’m… reorienting.” Carrie’s vacant eyes drifted closed once more. “Okay, Corry’s still performing. New song. I’m closer to him this time, near the front. Tommy is elbowing his way up here through the crowd, he’s… he’s going to throw something! But… it’s a tomato. That’s not life threatening… maybe there’s… something else. Oh, Joe!”

Carrie’s head whipped to the side. “Yes, Joe has left the coat check and he’s heading towards Corry! Or, no… it’s towards Julie. She’s edging away from him, so they’re both headed towards Corry. Damn!” Carrie mouth twitched. “Too many people. Too many, I don’t know so many of them, I’m not in the present, everything’s a jumble…”

“Stay calm,” Chartreuse soothed. Should they abort? “You’re only there for Corry. What’s, like, happening to him?”

“Corry,” Carrie murmured. “He’s singing. He’s… wait, Tim’s jumping up. He’s shoved his keyboard at Corry! Ow, audio feedback… something sparked… the crowd is reacting… Corry’s on the floor? Someone’s on top of him, everyone’s staring… now Glen is up here too.” Carrie shivered. “It’s like that time I saw him in the cafe, he’s staring at me. Are we sure I’m– OH!!!”

“What?” Chartreuse asked, gripping both of Carrie’s hands again as the blonde cried out.

“Where the hell am I? Who’s this girl in red?!” Carrie choked out. “Chartreuse, I’m… I’m in the wrong time again!!”

“Okay, Carrie, come back, time to come back,” Chartreuse declared. “Session over, we know enough, you have to return to the present!”

“Such piercing hazel eyes… she’s raising her hand… she’s…”

“Carrie, ohmigod, don’t let the forces take you. CARRIE!”

“I’m out!” Carrie screamed, flinching backwards.

However, as Chartreuse was still grasping onto the blonde’s hands, the sudden movement served only to jerk her off balance. With a little yelp of astonishment, she fell forwards into Carrie, both girls collapsing back onto the floor of the classroom. Chartreuse faceplanting into the blonde cheerleader’s body.

And Chartreuse found that her first instinct wasn’t to roll away. Rather, it was to grab harder for Carrie, to press her ear against Carrie’s front, to better hear her friend’s heartbeat. Still there. So fast. Mirroring her own, beating away, racing, because of this shared experience. Between the two girls with powers.

She had only felt this sort of close connection with someone once before.

Last time, the feeling had been instantaneous. This time, it had crept up on her. Because the blonde did look so pretty, in that dress with it’s plunging neckline. More to the point, Carrie wasn’t as shallow as Tope had been, the cheerleader did care about people. In fact, even after learning about Chartreuse being bisexual, Carrie had kept it quiet, and hadn’t called off any of their sessions.

Both of their hearts were racing now. Almost in synch. So maybe it was time to accept what that meant, it was time to take their relationship to the next level…

“Unhh,” Carrie groaned.

Chartreuse knew she couldn’t have pushed herself up and away any faster, not even if she’d been lying on a bed of hot coals.

“C-Carrie?” she choked out. What the hell was she thinking? She’d almost nuzzled in against Carrie’s neck. Carrie was her friend. That was it. Only her very close friend…

“Chartreuse?”

“C-Carrie?” Chartreuse repeated. She swallowed, trying to bury the flood of emotions welling up inside. “Ah, so, are you, like, you know, okay?”

“I’ll manage,” Carrie said. Her chest was heaving - don’t look there, idiot! - as she sat back up. Thankfully, as their eyes met again, Carrie didn’t seem to notice Chartreuse’s discomfort.

“I just saw…” Carrie looped some hair around her finger and tugged. “I don’t know what I saw. Either way, I’ve had enough of this for tonight, okay?”

Chartreuse nodded vigorously. “Yes, um, we’ve certainly discovered enough here.”

“Hello? Someone in here?” came a new voice.

The two girls on the floor turned as the classroom door opened and Clarke poked his head inside. “Ah! I thought I heard voices. Laurie thought she’d lost you.” Clarke turned to look back into the hallway. “They’re in here.”

There was the sound of running feet, and then the freckled girl poked her head in next to Clarke. “Chartreuse, thank goodness,” Laurie said, not trying to disguise her relief. “Are you two okay? What happened? Have you figured out what’s wrong with my brother?”

“With your bro… right!” Chartreuse jumped to her feet. “It’s Tim. Tim’s going to snap and throw his keyboard at the guy, that starts a chain reaction in their equipment. We’ve got to get in there, fast!”

“Tim?” Clarke said, shocked. “What are you talking about?”

“No time, hurry,” Chartreuse said, charging past the two of them and out into the hall. As much to get away from Carrie’s perfume as to get back to the cafeteria.

Julie took another step closer to the student quartet. Since they really were quite good, and she wanted to hear them better – okay, no. She knew the primary reason for her approach was to distance herself from Joe Drew. He’d been giving her irritated looks ever since Clarke had moved off with Laurie. Hoping to ignore the scrutiny, Julie soon found that more difficult once Joe left the vicinity of the coat check in order to move closer to her position. Causing her to move further away.

So why was she moving towards the band? Why not outside? Heck, why react at all? Was it because Corry Veniti was one of the few people (aside from Clarke) who bothered to stand up for her on those occasions when she was being mistreated? If so, Julie knew this was a poor decision - Corry was busy right now. Besides, Joe wasn’t much of a threat on his own.

She made the decision to stand her ground. It was at that moment that Julie happened to glance beyond Corry - catching sight of the look in Sue’s eye.

And Julie knew Sue from when they had been allies. She knew that look, knew it meant trouble. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later, during a drum solo, when Sue used the opportunity to let go of her guitar and reach for something back in the shadows, next to the stage.

Tim apparently noticed her action as well, and when he saw what she was grabbing, he stood up, reaching out towards her. But his leg buckled, sending him crashing into his own keyboard, palms first. The keyboard stand gave out, pitching forwards, sending the equipment towards Corry.

That’s when Chartreuse charged through Julie’s field of vision, reaching out in vain for the toppling instrument. Feedback erupted from the nearby speakers as it hit the floor at Corry’s feet. Then Clarke was there, catching Tim, and everyone’s attention was on what was happening with them - so it seemed like no one but Julie saw what Sue was about to do.

“Watch out!” Julie shouted, sprinting forwards. She threw herself at Corry, catching him around the waist, using her momentum to jerk him off his feet. The microphone Corry had been holding in his hands jarred loose and fell to the floor. An exposed wire created a small spark in the fresh pool of water. Water that had been thrown by Sue, who had not been able to check her swing. A few more sparks were seen, but Lee quickly reached his foot out to kick the power bar near the drums, killing all the electronics.

Julie breathed a sigh of relief. The brunette then discovered that, somehow, she had managed to land largely on top of Corry. One arm was caught underneath him, the other encircling his waist, and her sweater was pressed up tightly against his silk shirt. She quickly pulled back with an apology on her lips, but her voice got caught in her throat when she saw the bemused look on the redhead’s face.

“Julie… what the hell?” he questioned.

“Noooo!” came a cry of frustration from above them. Freeing her arm, Julie rolled away from Corry, looking up to see the brown haired guitarist. Sue was now being restrained by both Lee and Clarke. Carrie and Chartreuse had replaced Clarke at Tim’s side. Glen was there too.

“No, no, don’t you see?” Sue wailed. “I attacked him for you, Julie! Corry’s never been as good as you were. He never should have beaten you out the way he did! So I pretended to go along with him until I had this chance, this opportunity to shake him up a bit, to let him feel once again the wrath of Julie LaMille! So… so why did you save him, Julie? Aren’t you proud of me?!”

Julie blinked up at her former ally. “I… am going to be sick,” she realized, lurching to her feet and clapping a hand against her mouth. With a burning sensation at the back of her throat, she dashed for the nearest exit.

By departing, Julie didn’t hear the increasing chatter of the student body. Or how it was soon dispelled by the sound of an irate chemistry teacher, clearing his throat at the DJ’s independent electronics setup. “This dance,” Larry Fisk stated authoritatively, “is…”

“Going to continue shortly with more great songs from DJ Tuneup,” Mrs. Willis, the music teacher interrupted, grabbing the mike away from her colleague. “So please calm down and return to enjoying yourselves! I’m sure we all agree that it would be a shame to see this event come to an early end.”

Frank let out a low whistle. “I can’t believe it. Sue, out to get Corry. Who could have guessed?”

He and Luci had pulled back from the crowd of teenagers, to stand by the wall. With the DJ back in control, the dance was gradually getting back up to full swing. Carrie and Clarke had run out of the room after Julie, Chartreuse had gone over to talk with Laurie, and all the members of Corry’s band had been taken to the office to talk with Principal Hunt.

“I could have worked it out,” Luci decided, looking towards the stage. “If my mind hadn’t been wandering so much this week. After all, Sue’s looked distracted lately. Possible family troubles. And she lost her grandmother back around the same time as she ‘lost’ Julie… so it could be a case of displaced emotion? Not to excuse her actions, but that might be why she went a bit nuts.”

“Your whole school’s a bit nuts,” Glen remarked, approaching the both of them. “From what I’ve heard, some people are siding with Sue and her assault on your friend!”

“For real?” Frank raised his eyebrow. “I guess Corry doesn’t have the same support in his ranks that he once did.”

“On the bright side though,” Glen continued, “If Sue is out, there will be a vacancy in my fellow redhead’s band. So I can offer up my own guitar playing skills instead.”

Frank’s eyebrow twitched. “Uh, Glen? That’s not exactly a bright side.”

“No?” Glen shrugged. “It’s just, I’d hate to see Corry’s band dissolve on account of this. Wouldn’t you?”

“Hey, Carrie!” Luci shouted, waving. Frank turned, seeing that Carrie had entered the cafeteria again. Luci lowered her voice again once the blonde girl had paced over to join them. “How’s Julie faring?”

“She’ll be all right,” Carrie sighed. “Her stomach’s settled anyway. Clarke’s gone with her to the office, to give a statement to Mr. Hunt along with the band, though I think that’s mostly a formality. It’s pretty clear that she had no direct involvement in tonight’s activities.”

Carrie linked arms with Glen, leaning some of her weight onto him. “Still,” she admitted. “Now I feel guilty for insisting to Julie that she come. It’s not like she’ll have had a very good time.”

“It is a good thing she was here though,” Frank pointed out. “Or Corry could have been hurt.”

“That’s right,” Glen agreed. “Of course, one must still take care when using one’s powers of… persuasion. I imagine the results can be misleading, until the user has sufficient experience.”

Carrie turned to look into Glen’s face, and Frank wasn’t sure if it was her expression, or something in Glen’s tone that he found troubling. The redhead simply looked back at his date with a quiet smile. “Oh, whatever,” Carrie said aloud. “Come on, Glen. Let’s dance again?”

“I would be honoured,” he replied.

Frank and Luci exchanged a quick glance themselves as the new transfer student took the head cheerleader out for a spin around the dance floor. Meanwhile, a short distance away, Chartreuse turned away from Laurie, watching the pair herself while biting down on her lower lip.

(So, how much of that did you anticipate? If any? I suppose you’d at least anticipate another click request to vote for T&T at ‘Top Web Fiction’…)

3.08: TUNE UP

The band hit the final chord as Corry finished singing. He turned to smile at them. “Great work, guys. Thanks for agreeing to the extra practice. We’ll knock ‘em dead tomorrow night.”

Tim smiled back from where he sat behind the keyboard. Lee hit the cymbals and gave Corry a thumbs up. Sue adjusted the strap of her bass guitar.

“What was the significance of that song anyway?” Sue inquired. “Flying to the moon, it’s a little sappier than our normal fare."

“Request from my sister,” Corry shrugged. “Reminds her of some animated TV show she likes. Actually, maybe we should wrap up today with something different?”

“Which one?" Lee inquired, spinning a drumstick in his hand.

“That one which is also a popular theme song," Corry said. “Remember? It goes like this…”

Glen smiled as Carrie’s father opened the door. “Hello, Mr. Waterson. I’m here to pick up Carrie.”

Hank Waterson stepped aside. “She’s still getting ready, but do come in. I’ve been hoping to get the chance to meet you.”

“I figured.” Glen entered the house, knotting his tie a little tighter. Inwardly, he cursed whatever human had invented the things, and wondered who had made this school dance a semi-formal affair. At least a nice shirt sufficed, no need for him to have a jacket. “I hope to make a favourable impression,” the redhead continued. “As my intentions are completely honourable, and I’ll try to have your daughter home by whatever time you specify."

“I’m glad to hear it.” Carrie’s father closed the front door again. “I gathered as much from her, but there were a few things that she was unable to tell me. For instance, you seem to have no family in town. What is the story with your parents?”

“Oh, they’ve now purchased a house over in that new development to the north,” Glen replied, gesturing vaguely. “But mom’s still wrapping up with business out east, and as such they’ve arranged to have me stay at the Clayton Hotel for a few more weeks.”

Hank Waterson’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re staying at the hotel?”

“Ah, yes.” Glen supposed that Carrie hadn’t mentioned that detail. Made sense, in retrospect. “It’s not a big deal, really. The room has a small fridge and hotplate, and the maid service tidies daily. My parents wanted me to be here for the full semester, you see, and this was the best way to do that.”

“I see,” Mr. Waterson said slowly. “And what business is it that your parents are involved in?”

“My mother is a scientist - that’s what’s keeping her out of town, at the lab - while my father is a pilot, so he’s all over the place,” Glen said easily. “I’m hoping to go into the field of sciences myself someday. It certainly seems profitable enough.”

Mr. Waterson seemed to size him up. “Yet Carrie tells me you’re a long distance runner.”

“Yeah, well, I run, I act, I skate, I paint… everyone needs hobbies,” Glen said. Time to spin a question back, perhaps. “A person should be well rounded, don’t you think?”

Before Hank Waterson could answer, Carrie’s voice came from upstairs. “Is that Glen down there? Don’t you dare give him the third degree, Dad! Tell him I’ll be down in another few seconds!"

Glen half smiled. “You heard her - so, any final rules I should know about, before your daughter comes charging down and admonishes you for giving them to me?"

Hank eyed Glen again, then shook his head. “Nothing that isn’t common sense,” he decided. “And you seem to be the sort of boy who knows what I mean by that. In fact, I’ll level with you, a part of me is glad to see Carrie making new friends like this. She’s seemed a bit more withdrawn from her peers ever since she was hospitalized last year.”

“Ah, when she was shot?” Glen said. “I heard about that. Nasty business.”

“It was,” Mr. Waterson affirmed. He then leaned in closer to Glen’s face to speak more quietly. “An incident which has helped me to realize that, should you or anyone else lay an inappropriate finger on my daughter’s body, I will be forced into drastic action. Understood?”

“Naturally,” Glen affirmed, maintaining his composure. “Indeed, I would have been disappointed not to hear such concern from her only surviving parent.”

A frown tugged at Hank Waterson’s features, but before he could say anything more, Carrie appeared at the top of the stairs. “Glen! Glad to see you.” She lifted the skirt of her long purple dress slightly in order to avoid tripping during her descent. “I trust my father hasn’t been bothering you?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Glen said, turning to face her. “And may I say, you look radiant in that outfit.”

“Why thank you,” Carrie said, pinkening mildly in the cheeks.

Her father cleared his throat. “Carrie, remember our deal. You’re home by eleven thirty.”

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dad.” She grabbed her jacket out of the closet. “Come on, Glen, we don’t want to arrive at the dance TOO fashionably late.”

Glen nodded in reply and the two teenagers left the house, Carrie’s father watching them from the front door until they reached the sidewalk. Glen glanced back as the front door closed. “So, you made a deal with your Dad?”

“Yeah, he’s letting me wear the dress with the plunging neckline on condition that I come home right after the dance ends at eleven,” Carrie admitted. “Probably realized that I was going to wear this thing no matter what, and tricked me into that compromise.”

“Ah. Clever man. Something that runs in the family, I see.”

“Ha! He wasn’t so devious back before my brush with death. I swear, last year, he didn’t care at all! It’s only been during the last several months that he’s taken an interest.”

“Must be a real pain then, huh?”

Carrie pursed her lips. “No,” she murmured. “It’s nice. We need to be home on time.” She reached out to take Glen’s arm. “But never mind about my Dad, let’s get to this dance! I want to make sure Julie has someone to talk to when she turns up.”

“Uh oh.” Chartreuse looked down. “It’s, like, that bad, huh?”

“Oh, I didn’t say anything!” Laurie protested.

“That’s the thing, normally you have so much to say,” Chartreuse pointed out. She fanned out her skirt, staring down at the multiple splashes of colour that adorned it. “I, you know, thought it would compliment the sparkly sequins I added to my blouse. No such luck?”

“It… kinda works? It must be the lighting in the room. Don’t worry Chartreuse, I’m sure lots of people will ask you to dance!” Laurie Veniti adjusted the big, puffy shoulders of her own long, red dress. “Now me, I probably shouldn’t have gone with this choice of colour which is so similar to my hair because I probably look exactly like a tomato or a big red candle or something and the dress is too formal anyway plus so many people here are already in couples so I doubt I’ll be asked to dance by anyone!” She sighed.

“Laurie, stay calm. You look fine,” Chartreuse countered. “Anyway, worst comes to worst, we can always dance with each other.” Which didn’t mean she fancied her friend in that way, but Laurie was probably the only girl she could dance with and not spark gossip.

Chartreuse looked out across the dance floor. The music had started under half an hour ago, yet there were only a few people out there. Semi-formal dances seemed to be less popular these days - student council should have picked her suggestion of a Hawaiian theme. “So, when is your brother’s band going to be, you know, performing?”

Laurie’s brow furrowed in thought. “Golly, it’ll be at least another half hour, because I remember Corry saying something about Lee not being able to make it until after eight. But I know they’re doing two sets, whenever the DJ wants a break!”

Chartreuse’s gaze settled on where Corry and his group had set up their equipment, near the stage. It looked like Sue was double checking the electronics. Which is when Chartreuse realized she was getting a vibe. Why was she getting a vibe? “Remind me how the four of them, like, hooked up? It was second semester of last year, right?”

“Yeah. Partly on account of me,” Laurie agreed. “See, Corry had practically given up on the band idea after the mess with Julie. But last March I pushed for him to give it another go, particularly after Clarke talked to me, saying that Tim was trying to come out of his shell, and that he was a pianist. Knowing how hard it can be to put yourself out there, I had my brother hear Tim play, then Corry finally held guitarist auditions. Sue had the best one. And Lee got personally invited in, after Corry heard him drumming after school at around the same time.”

“Sweet. Nice that they’ve come such a long way in, like, a relatively short amount of time.”

“Corry really wanted to do this performance too,” Laurie continued. “In fact, he’s pushed for more and more rehearsals since school resumed… to the point where it kinda worries me that the other members resent him for that.” She followed Chartreuse’s gaze over to the band setup, then back again. “You’ve got that look. Why?”

“A feeling.” Chartreuse shook her head. No point causing her friend to worry. “Probably nothing. Yeah, it’s nothing Laurie, never mind. Come on, let’s head closer to the door. I think the guy there is, you know, trying to get your attention!”

It wasn’t a standard code, since rearranging the words - if you called them words - hadn’t helped. Luci hadn’t had any success reading the first letter of every word either. Or with ROT13. But perhaps if she… the young girl’s thoughts were interrupted by a pinch in her side. “Yipe! Hey, what was that for?”

“Well, I only asked you twice if I could take your jacket for you,” Frank pointed out with a grin.

“Oh. Sorry.” Luci felt her cheeks warm as she shrugged it off. “Guess I got lost in thought.” She looked down at her outfit. “Gods, I hate that this is a semi-formal affair! I don’t have any clothes like that, and even though Carrie offered to help me shop, I didn’t want to do that either.”

“Luci, don’t worry, those are nice pants and you look just fine in that blouse. It’s a nice shade of blue. Anyway, it’s not like I’m wearing a tie.”

“But you have a proper jacket. Which you can simply toss on a chair. Why can men can get away with that stuff, while we’re supposed to be all dressy?” Luci grumbled. “High heels should be against the law.”

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Well, I see some other girls around who aren’t in heels either. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Luci sighed. “Says the guy who won’t get laughed at behind his back for his outfit. Girls are the worst.”

Frank stared, then reached out to take Luci’s hand, gently squeezing it. “Okay, what’s bothering you? It’s not simply the dress code here, you’ve been in a bit of a mood all week. Are you still upset with me? Is this a test to see if I’m actually paying enough attention to you?”

“What? Oh, no, it’s not that,” Luci assured.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Luci shifted her weight back and forth. “It’s that logbook of Linquist’s,” she admitted. “The one Julie found. I’ve been working on cracking the code, to figure out exactly what sort of stuff that nutcase was doing, but I’ve had no luck! It vexes me. And because I was working on that, I didn’t go shopping, and so now I’m going to look like an social idiot, and it’s all that Linquist’s fault again!”

“Ah. Um, that last is a bit of a stretch - are you sure you’re not simply looking for more reasons to hate the guy?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I wish they’d picked Chartreuse’s suggestion of a Hawaiian theme,” Luci groused.

Frank lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, so you’d prefer to be wearing a grass skirt? I mean, not that I’d be complaining, but…”

“But, ugh, point made,” Luci realized, looking back down at her legs. “Fine, point to you, it could be worse, let’s enjoy what we have.” She attempted a smile.

Frank grinned back. “Okay then. I’ll just check our coats, be right back.” He moved off towards the coat check area.

Luci spent a couple of seconds admiring the decorations, but she couldn’t help it, her mind was soon spinning with more ideas, more possibilities for that book. Perhaps a Caesar cipher…

“How’s business, Joe?” Frank inquired as he set the jackets down on the table. The late September dance was usually better for snacks, as compared to the coat check part, which was better in February. Regardless, their booth was a way for the business club to make a bit of money, splitting the proceeds with Students’ Council.

“Slow but steady,” Joe Drew replied. “Actually, we haven’t missed your expertise back here at all. I’d be worried for your job.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Frank said dryly. His fellow senior tore off a couple of numbered ticket stubs, exchanging them for his quarters. “But I have to say, I prefer Luci’s company to yours.”

“I can understand that,” Joe granted. The blonde boy leaned in a little closer. “By the way, I’ve heard Julie might turn up later tonight. Can you believe that girl? I bet a brawl will break out, and Mr. Fisk will cancel all future dances forever!”

“Oh, come on Joe… I think she’s learned how to behave herself,” Frank said, hoping he sounded reassuring.

“Hrmph,” Joe retorted, drawing back. His eyes shifted to the stage. “I suppose that, deep down, it’s all that idiot Corry’s fault. Guy should have dealt with her last year. I mean, he exposed what Julie did! How she manipulated folks like me! So why did he turn around and start acting all nicey nice to her?!”

“Yeah, uh, I suppose there’s stuff we don’t know about the situation,” Frank offered. He began to wonder how to best extract himself from the conversation.

Joe shook his head. “I know as much as I need to. Julie probably paid him off, so Corry’s even worse than she is!”

Before Frank could think of a good reply, a couple came up behind him to place a coat on the table. “Service, please,” the boy stated.

“Coming right up,” Joe said, finally handing off Frank and Luci’s coats to his co-worker before moving to deal with the newcomers. Frank took the opportunity to escape back to Luci’s side.

Carrie tried to decipher the noise Glen made upon their arrival. Failing that, she spoke up. “What? Is this so different from dances at your last school?”

Glen shook his head, still eyeing the decorations. “The faculty there didn’t believe in dances. So you’ll have to forgive me if I tread on your toes, dancing’s a skill I never really developed.”

“Ooh, amazing, something you’re not good at,” Carrie teased. She smiled. “We’ll manage, just don’t make a habit of toe crunching.”

“Scuze me, comin’ through!”

Carrie recognized Lee’s voice, and she turned to see him dashing though the front doors, dodging nimbly around the nearest couple. “Whoop, sorry ‘bout that, gotta hook up with the power cad, pardon me, scuze me…”

“Glory be, now his gang’s all here.”

This time, it was the sheer bitterness in the tone that made Carrie look for the source. Which turned out to be a light haired boy leaning against the wall. He was glowering at the crowd in general, but when he saw that Carrie was observing him in particular, he turned and shuffled towards the cafeteria/dance floor.

“Wonder what that guy’s problem is,” Glen mused aloud.

“That’s Tommy,” Carrie explained. “Looks like he’s still upset that Corry picked Sue to play bass guitar in the band, over him.” She tugged idly on a strand of her hair. “See, Sue was a side switcher - with Corry in Grade Nine, but then she joined me and Julie. Only to return to Corry last November, after Julie’s secrets got exposed. Meanwhile, Tommy’s been on Corry’s side since grade school.”

Glen grimaced. “So this is some kinda loyalty thing?”

Carrie nodded. “Yeah. I mean, Corry wasn’t wrong to choose Sue for his band, in that she IS the better guitarist. But it might have been the last straw for Tommy. It was the people who were closest to Corry who were blindsided the most, you see. When he cracked down on any attacks against Julie. Speaking of, you WILL look out for her here, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Glen rolled his eyes. “School politics. How irritating. Stop me if I ask again.”

“Why? Is that another thing that you didn’t see much of at your last school?”

“Not over such petty issues,” Glen countered, shaking his head. “Where I come from, it’s all about world domination.”

Carrie blinked. “Pardon me?”

He winked at her. “Kidding. So, shall we go and have a dance or two?”

Kidding? Or were they back to him keeping her off balance? Carrie pursed her lips. Every so often, he said something to make her wonder if she should be more suspicious. Except, she’d recently realized that Glen didn’t trigger any temporal headaches. Implying that no changes were occurring to her timeline. No, this was on her, not him - she had to stop overthinking this.

“Yes, dancing. Watch the feet,” she warned, hooking her arm around his as they headed for the doorway.

“I d-d-don’t know if I can d-do this,” Tim said, peering around the door frame at all the people out on the dance floor. “I d-d-didn’t think there would be so many p-people here. N-Not given the theme, and what happened last year!”

“Tim, first of all, breathe. Second, you can’t cut out on me now!” Corry crossed his arms. “Not after all the hard work we’ve put in.”

“W-W-W-Well…”

“Yo, dudes and dudette,” Lee said, breezing past Tim at the door to emerge into the far hallway. For once, his worn suit jacket was actually appropriate to the occasion, even if the T-Shirt he wore underneath it was not. “Have I missed anything?”

“No, but you are five minutes late,” Corry said, irritably. “What’s more, that’s becoming a habit for you this month.”

“Hey, cut me some slack, jack,” Lee protested. “I told you when I came on board that family matters and schoolwork would have to take precedence over this band.”

“All right, come on, everybody calm down,” Sue put in. “There’s still plenty of time to tune up and decide on the songs for our first set. We’ll knock ‘em dead, no worries.”

“Right, good, I like that philosophy,” Corry said, pointing at her. “Now, I’ve already seen to the drums, the keyboard and the electronics… so Sue, let’s go get the guitars and do one final check. The DJ told me we’re on after another couple songs.” The two of them hurried off to the music room, leaving Tim and Lee behind.

“I’m n-not so sure about this,” Tim murmured to Lee, after checking to see that Corry was out of earshot. “What if I mess up notes? What if we g-get heckled off the stage?”

“Don’t even think about it, tiny T,” Lee soothed. “Mrs. Willis said we sounded great, and the school crowd ain’t that hostile.” He glanced towards the cafeteria. “Well, okay, some of ‘em are, but it’s only towards the power cad. We’re clear.”

“I g-guess,” Tim said uncertainly. He took a few slow breaths. “I’ll feel SO much better after tonight. When Corry isn’t so obsessive.”

Lee rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, uh, I wouldn’t totally count on that though?” he warned. “I figure the better this goes, the more the guy will want to perform. If you can’t handle his scheduling, you’re gonna have to learn to stand up to him. Like I do sometimes.”

“Oh,” Tim said sullenly. He shuffled his feet. “How about you stand up for me too?”

Lee shook his head. “Sorry, T. I would, but I don’t really want the guy on my case any more than he is already. Besides, you’ll eventually have to learn to do it yourself.”

“I g-guess.” Tim sighed. “Know what? It’s gotten to the point where I wish Corry would disappear. Only for a little while.”

Lee frowned. It looked to Tim as if he wanted to say something further, but before he could, Laurie Veniti peered out of the cafeteria. “Corry?” she said, timidly.

“Hey, double V. He’s on his way,” Lee offered, turning towards Corry’s twin. As if on cue, Corry and Sue appeared at the far end of the hallway with their guitars, walking towards them.

“Great!” Chartreuse said brightly, stepping out from behind Laurie. “Because the two of us wanted to, like, wish the whole group the best of luck on your little, you know, debut.” She offered an encouraging smile to all the members, before reaching out a hand towards Corry as he strode up.

“Sure, thanks,” Corry said absentmindedly, reaching out to shake Chartreuse’s outstretched palm as he passed. He was brought up short, however, when Chartreuse didn’t release him. Instead, she grabbed hold with both of her hands. He turned to fire an irritated look at her, only to flinch back upon seeing Chartreuse’s horrified gaze.

“Ohmigod,” the pink haired mystic gasped out. She shifted her attention from Corry’s hand up to his face. “You, like, totally can’t go out there!” Chartreuse declared. “If you do… you’ll die!”

(Return for Corry’s fate next week. A reminder that a vote at TWF is appreciated.)

PART 47: RESPITE

“Ten seconds. Sorry guys, I guess Carrie’s gonna, like, fry us after all,” Chartreuse said glumly. The three teenagers were all sitting on their hands now, Shady standing far enough away from the wall to shoot them - probably even if they all moved at once.

“I should have jumped him,” Lee murmured. “Damn it, I’m not going to get to say goodbye to my sisters.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Corry shouted at their captor.

“I will die for our cause,” was his only reply.

Chartreuse wondered if it would be better to have her eyes open or closed when the bomb detonated. Which was when a gust of wind blew through the area, as if a freight train were rushing by, and then Carrie was standing there with them. The blonde with the golden eyes raised her palm to the bomb timer.

“Or not," Carrie remarked.

“NO!” Shady shrieked.

The gun fired, even as Carrie’s other palm went up facing him. Chartreuse could now see the bullet moving through the air towards the blonde with all the speed of a paper airplane. Which was clearly impossible. As impossible as Carrie sidestepping it, yet she was doing that too.

And then Carrie flicked her index and middle fingers off her thumb, and Shady’s head snapped back. The fingers of his gun hand twitched again, but this time his weapon fired at the ceiling - because Lee was there, pushing his arm up. Corry joined him, and it occurred to Chartreuse that maybe she should get off her ass too.

She didn’t go for Shady. Lee and Corry were subduing him. Instead, she stepped over to Carrie, who now had both palms facing the bomb. The timer seemed to be oscillating back and forth between five and four seconds. Sweat was pouring down Carrie’s face as if she were running a marathon.

“What kind… of fail-safe… IS this…?"

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.”

And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… where it froze, even as Carrie crumpled towards the floor. Chartreuse let out a gasp, supporting the blonde and guiding her carefully down into a prone position.

“Okay. That’ll hold for a while,” Carrie murmured weakly. “Only one more thing to take care of.” She looked up at Chartreuse. “Farewell, everyone.”

The blonde closed her eyes, and a wave of energy seemed to spread out from her position. It passed through everyone in the room, then out through the walls and up through the ceiling until it had encompassed the entire building… the entire town…

Carrie was released from hospital a week later, having been treated for a case of severe exhaustion. Her eyes were their normal blue colour as she trudged through the new fallen snow, following the path in the ravine behind her house that went up into the park. She continued over to the swing set, brushing it off and then sitting down.

“Kinda hoped you’d be here," she murmured to the boy in the swing next to her.

“Was it hope?” Frank wondered. “Or your powers?"

Carrie shuddered. “Please, Frank, PLEASE, no talking about my powers. Somehow, I managed to suppress them, but I can still feel them as this dull ache inside me. Even now, I’m not sure if I was controlling them, or if they were controlling me. Trying to use them again… would be dangerous. Hell, I thought I’d die after what I did.”

“Right, okay, no powers talk then,” Frank reassured. “Better question, will you coming back to school tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “Have I missed much?”

“You mean in terms of what teachers like Fisk think is important, or in terms of what’s actually important?”

Carrie smirked. “The latter, naturally.”

Frank grinned back at her. “The social situation is completely warped. Julie’s been the target of a lot of hostility since the flyer, not to mention her disappearance, and yet she refuses to let the information about her parental situation become common knowledge. So she’s not getting much in the way of sympathy. But guess who’s started looking out for her welfare - Corry Veniti.”

“What? No!” Carrie laughed. “Oh, boy. That must be confusing the daylights out of everybody.” She kicked her legs a little to start the swing moving. “How is Julie holding up?”

“She’s started her counselling," Frank said. “Tim’s alibi plan, putting her in the cafe when you were shot, has her in the clear for that. The information about Holly Rhodes, we gave to Jeeves. He was able to track the domestic down, and armed with the information, he has started acting as Julie’s de facto father. He seems to really care about her. And while Julie’s parents are putting up a bit of a fight, they’ve stopped short of any direct action, probably to avoid the potential publicity.”

“I think they’d lose a custody battle anyway," Carrie said, making a face. “Good. I mean, Julie may have done some terrible things to people, but it must have been a special kind of hell for her growing up.”

“Speaking of parents,” Frank said slowly. “Dare I ask about you and your father…?”

Carrie let the swing stop its motion. “Unh. Yeah. Me and dad are doing all right,” she replied after a moment. “He doesn’t remember being frozen, of course. Seeing as that last blast of mine somehow wiped all my temporal actions from the memories of everyone in the vicinity of the hospital building - time travellers excluded.”

She extended her leg, pointing the toe of her boot. “Dad still knows I was shot, of course, and I think that has him trying to make up for lost time. He offered to take me to a hockey game next weekend."

She lowered her foot. “Hockey. Sheesh. At the same time, he’s trying.” She bit her lip. “In fact, I think maybe he’s been trying for a long while. Which is… nice.” A small smile graced her face.

There was an extended silence. “By the way, me and Luci are dating,” Frank blurted.

Carrie turned her swing sideways. “Seriously?” He nodded, and her grin grew wider. “It’s about damn time. You want some dating advice then, as one friend to another?”

Frank became busy staring at a spot in the sky. It was hard to say if his red cheeks were due to the cold. “Um, yes? But maybe not right now? That is, I… we’re puzzling through it together for the moment.”

“Well, good for you. Don’t screw up the Christmas gift.”

His eyes widened. “Oh no, Christmas!”

Carrie fought back the urge to laugh. “Calm down. You two will be fine together. Here, change of subject. Elephant in the room, actually.” She took in a deep breath, turning away again. “What became of the time traveler who wanted me dead?”

“What? Oh, well, Shady was arrested of course,” Frank assured. “Blowing up buildings being against the law. In fact, the police on scene ended up thinking they were there because of him, not you. He’s also become the lead suspect for shooting you in the first place - which he did, in a roundabout way - so I wager he’ll be going to prison. The only surprise is that is he didn’t manage to talk his way out of it using his future ability.”

Carrie rubbed her nose. “Yeah, uh, along the lines of messing with people’s memories… I think was able to block Shady’s personal history for how to do his - what did Lee call it? Jedi trick? - but I’m not positive whether my tampering was permanent.”

She let out a long breath, visible in the cool air. “Damn this power of temporal paradox that I have. Or whatever you want to call it. It’s going to be an attractive weapon for everyone who knows about it.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not going to tell anyone,” Frank assured her. “We won’t be using the time machine again either - namely because, in a few weeks’ time we’ll have no coins to return us to the present.”

“The future, Frank. They know in the future. And they’ve now tried to get at me once, so I’m going to need to keep my guard up.”

He stared, then frowned. “You mean… this isn’t the end of it."

“No,” Carrie sighed. “No, I fear this is only the beginning.” She jumped up off of the swing. “But, hell with it. Until anything else happens, I’ve got a life to live in the present.” With that, she reached out and smacked Frank lightly in the back of his head.

“Ouch! Hey, what the heck was that for?!” Frank protested.

“Retribution. You hit me in the hospital.”

Frank crossed his arms. “You told me I was allowed to hit you. You even encouraged it, in this very park!”

Carrie pursed her lips. “Oh, right.” She shrugged, then winked at him. “Fine, then consider it my way of telling you everything is back to normal.”

“Except I’m not taking it lying down this time,” Frank countered, springing up off his own swing, and extending his gloved hands as if to tickle her.

Carrie let out a little yelp of astonishment, before athletically sidestepping him. “Catch me if you can!” she declared, breaking into a sprint. Frank could only shake his head in resignation as the smiling blonde teenager disappeared back down into the ravine.

END... FOR NOW

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.4 or Funny Arc 2.4 Outtakes.

More was written back in the early 2000s, but I'm going back to "Epsilon Project" for a bit. You can vote on that.

UPDATE: Book 3 is now running, the above link is active.

PART 46: OUT OF TIME

Lee joined the others at the hospital. He’d already been tracking Shady in the vicinity, so it had been easy enough to hook up with the group after hearing from Clarke about the latest development.

“So, you’re saying future guy is gonna make a play for the track tease again, and that this act is what will make her explode?” he confirmed.

Chartreuse nodded vigorously, then frowned. “Okay, we aren’t totally sure,” she admitted. “But probably.”

“The new problem,” Corry mused, “Is whether we should try to stop this Shady - or merely warn him that Carrie knows he’s coming.”

“Warn him?” Lee asked, doing a double take. “Why?”

“To let him try something that would be more effective.”

“WHAT? Are you, like, SERIOUS?”

Corry reached up to pull the pink haired girl’s fingers off his shirt. “Chartreuse, Carrie seems bent on killing everybody no matter what,” Corry countered. “How does that old saying go, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one’?”

“Corry,” Laurie said quietly. “Didn’t you tell me two days ago that you would never, ever do something that would kill a person? Was that a lie, for my benefit?”

“Laurie, no! But we’ve been told Carrie isn’t really a person, she’s more of a…" Corry’s voice trailed off as he saw his sister’s expression. He gulped. “Okay. Thanks for the conscience check, sis. My bad. So, we stop Shady then. The question is how?"

“Maybe the track tease knows a way,” Lee suggested. “She seems to know about everything else going on.”

“You think she’d tell us?” Chartreuse wondered.

Lee shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”

“You might be surprised,” Laurie said, wincing.

Lee pulled on the lapels of his jacket. “I’ll go anyway. She hasn’t vented at me yet, so maybe I’ll get lucky.”

He turned away from the group and proceeded down the hallway. Hospital staff had been working for the last half hour to remove patients from the area; it was now mostly deserted.

About two paces from the door to Carrie’s room, Lee stopped. He turned, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he walked all the way back. “Hey, why was I going to that room again?” he inquired.

The others exchanged a glance. “You were, you know, going to ask Carrie if she knew more about the crazy guy from the future who’s out to kill her,” Chartreuse reminded him.

“Oh yeah,” Lee said. “Sorry, memory glitch.” Again, he went back down the hall to Carrie’s room. Again he paused about two steps away, and then returned, mind spinning. “Hey, why was I going to that room again?” he repeated.

“Never mind,” Corry said, waving his hand dismissively.

“She is getting more powerful, isn’t she,” Laurie said, shivering.

“Hey!” came a new voice. A security guard approached them in the opposite direction from Carrie’s room. “What are you kids still doing here? Get downstairs, all of you. This whole floor’s being evacuated.”

“Um, right, we’re on our way!” Lee assured him.

“Oh no,” Chartreuse moaned. “I hope that Luci and Frank devised a more cunning plan. At this point, that may be all we’ve got left."

Out in his backyard, Frank flipped open the time machine and inspected the pocketwatch inside. “Great timing,” he said. “We’re back a minute before we even left.”

Luci nodded beside him, belatedly realizing she had a bit of soot on her face. Yet as she attempted to wipe it off with her fingers, she only succeeded in smearing it even more. She sighed.

“Anyway, so I have the name Holly Rhodes,” she concluded. “As the only female domestic listed for exactly three years, beginning ten years ago, dismissed for no given reason. There was an address listed. Think it’s enough?”

“Hopefully,” Frank said, eyeing her.

“We’d better get to the hospital then,” Luci concluded. “To tell the others and help them deal with the Shady situation.” She stood and started walking off, only to see Frank wasn’t following. “Something else?”

He blinked. “No. Yes. Just, ah, thinking about what you must have gone through there to help Carrie and Julie out. Not only on that trip itself, but in dealing with a missing day for that long.” He cleared his throat. “You really are amazing, Luci.”

Luci shrugged. “It had already happened. I couldn’t avoid it.”

“That doesn’t negate the sacrifice.” He coughed. “So, I was thinking, if we survive, you want to get a soda together tomorrow? At the cafe? Maybe even… make it a regular thing?”

“Regular thing? What do you…” Luci stopped, seeing his expression. She felt her knees go weak. “Now? NOW of all times you bring this up?”

“Well if we DON’T survive, I’d hate for you to have thought that… that I didn’t care.”

“Frank, if you’re only saying this because you think we might die, you better realize that I am SO holding you to any promise you make here!”

He smiled. “I would expect nothing less of you. Sodas then?”

Luci felt like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. She ran back to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He grabbed her back, pulling her close. “Heck yeah, sodas,” she said in delight.

She savoured the moment, the hug, the way Frank’s arms were running up and down her back, the safety of his embrace, for as long as she could. Ultimately, she sighed. “And I think that’s our extra minute gone.”

“Mmm hmm. Apocalypse prevention time?”

“Apocalypse prevention time,” she agreed. “Let’s get to it.”

“Clarke,” Tim said quietly.

Clarke looked up from his magazine. He’d been hoping that the distraction might help his subconscious come up with some sort of plan. “What is it, Tim?” he asked, smiling encouragingly at his friend.

“W-Well… I was just thinking,” Tim began. “The police think Julie shot Carrie. We don’t want them to think that. Right?” Clarke nodded. “So, why not give Julie an alibi?"

Clarke frowned. “I’m not sure lying to the police is the best plan.”

“Oh, I don’t mean lie,” Tim protested. “I mean, well - time machine alibi.”

Clarke stared. Then he sat bolt upright. “Of course. We can take Julie back to the evening of November the twelfth, and be somewhere in public during the shooting. With an alibi on her birthday, the police would have to close the investigation. Great thinking, Tim!”

“Y-You think so?” Tim said with a partial smile.

“Definitely,” Clarke said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Let’s see if Julie can handle another trip, then I’ll give Frank another call.”

“I don’t like this,” Chartreuse murmured, looking around the hospital lobby. Several police officers had now arrived. Granted, they seemed to be ignoring the teens, more interested in what was happening upstairs with Carrie than the earlier investigations at school surrounding Julie.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Corry remarked. “With all this added security, Shady will find it almost impossible to get upstairs.”

Chartreuse frowned. “Except I’m sensing from a lot of people here that they’re going to die. Only they don’t know it, so I can’t put my finger on when or how.”

“Y-You think Shady’s going to shoot his way up to her?” Laurie gasped.

Chartreuse slowly shook her head. “No? It’s not… I can’t figure it out,” she said, frustrated. “I’d try for a vision, but interfacing with Carrie has really tapped me out.”

“You know, we’re missing something,” Lee realized. “To save Carrie, you might have to be close to her - but do you have to be close in order to destroy her?”

Corry blinked. “No, of course not,” he agreed. “In fact, you’d be foolish to do it that way. She’d see you coming.”

“Plus I’ve seen future cult guy in this hospital before,” Lee continued. “He could have been scouting the place out. After all, say you wanted to destroy someone that you couldn’t approach directly, yet you still knew where they’d be - how would you do it?”

“More specifically, how would you do it if you didn’t care about any additional casualties?” Corry finished.

“Oh no,” Chartreuse said, feeling her blood run cold. “That’s it. That fits with what I’m sensing.”

“Do you know where it would be?" Corry said, grabbing Lee’s arm.

“Basement,” Lee said. “Bombs are always in the basement."

“Luci?” Clarke said in surprise. “Where’s Frank?”

“By now? He’ll be at the hospital,” Luci said, marching into the LaMille house with the time machine. “Your alibi plan is great, but we’re short on time. Since Frank is maybe the only one Carrie will listen to any more, I told him to keep going.”

She continued into the sitting room, stopping only once she’d reached the couch where both Tim and Julie were sitting.

“Luci?” Julie murmured, looking a bit dazed as she tilted her head up. “Do you have soot on your face?”

“I do,” Luci admitted. “And it’s your fault. But that’s a long story, and you need an alibi. So we have a time trip to take.”

The rest would be up to Frank.

A police officer questioned Frank’s arrival at the hospital, but the teenager managed to fake stomach cramps in order to gain access. Inside it was a bit of a madhouse… officers milling about, circulating around doctors and orderlies who were attempting to deal with both any incoming patients, and the ones being shuffled around inside the building due to the impromptu quarantine on Carrie’s floor.

“We can’t get close,” Frank heard someone say. “People tend to come back with no memory of their assigned task to negotiate. When they come back at all.”

‘That could be a problem for me,’ Frank realized. He soon discovered the stairwell was under guard, and that there was an officer in both elevators as well. ‘Assuming I even get up there…'

“Frank!”

He turned in time to see Laurie Veniti push her way past a couple of people to reach his side. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she whispered. “Chartreuse, Lee and my brother think that the time fanatic set an explosive charge somewhere in the basement. They’ve gone to check it out, it might be connected to Carrie’s plan for ending the world.”

“Laurie,” Frank said, taking her by the shoulders. “I’m glad to see you. I have to get up to Carrie’s room.” He pointed. “Can you distract that police officer over there? The one guarding the stairwell?”

Laurie shrank back at first, but then she clenched her jaw. “Golly, I’ll try,” she asserted. “I’ll babble at that cop so much he’ll have no choice but to escort me elsewhere.”

She turned to move in that direction - only to pause and look back at him one last time. “Frank… you be careful, all right?” she requested. “I… I really don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“Of course,” Frank said. He smiled at Laurie reassuringly, attempting to project a confidence he didn’t really feel.

“See anything?” Chartreuse called out.

“Yeah, the need for better lighting,” Lee remarked. “I can’t believe there’s so much stuff down here.”

“Hold on guys, I think I’ve found something,” came Corry’s voice. “There’s a digital readout connected to a bunch of wires and… oh hell!”

Chartreuse hurried towards where she’d heard his voice. As she turned the corner, she heard the voice say “Stop moving” - and then she couldn’t move. Her eyes went wide.

Shady was standing there, next to Corry, who was partly bent over what could only be the bomb, given all the wiring with what Chartreuse decided were high explosives underneath. “Stop moving,” Shady said again.

“Thinking no,” Lee retorted, stepping past Chartreuse.

Shady pulled out a gun, and directed the barrel directly at her. “Stop or your friend dies.”

Lee stopped. Which is when it occurred to Chartreuse that the guy hadn’t said ‘don’t talk’. “Stop him, Lee,” she pleaded. “Or EVERYONE dies.”

“I can also shoot Lee,” Shady pointed out. “And I’d say bleeding out is more painful than vaporization.”

“Maybe I die lifting the whammy you’ve put on my friends,” Lee observed.

“Or maybe you use the next five minutes and forty seconds of your lives thinking of a better plan,” Shady reasoned.

Chartreuse couldn’t see the timer from where she was, so she could only assume that was a reference to the countdown to detonation.

“I hate stalemates,” Corry interjected. “Though it does seem like you’re running out of time to get clear yourself, buddy.”

“Yeah,” Shady granted, sounding annoyed. “The timer’s been giving me problems. Cruddy present day merchandise. Seems like I may die down here with the rest of you.” He shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not like I could ever go home again. My future currency was stolen.”

He waggled his gun. “Lee, go sit against the wall. Pink hair, you join him. Redhead, you too.”

Chartreuse found her feet pacing over towards Lee. “It won’t work,” she blurted out. “Carrie, like, knows what you’re doing. She… she can stop you.”

“Then she’d better try,” Shady said. He grinned. “Because at this point, I have nothing to lose. I’m perfectly willing to die, knowing that I brought down our greatest temporal adversary.”

The three teenagers exchanged horrified looks, as behind Shady, the clock on the bomb ticked down past five minutes.

Frank stared into the hospital room. A golden-eyed blonde stared back at him. “You should not have come,” Carrie said at last.

Frank eyed all the frozen people surrounding them. “I get the impression you could have stopped me,” he observed. “Why didn’t you?”

“There was no point,” Carrie admitted. She turned away from him. “You’re going to be dead in exactly four minutes and twenty six seconds either way.”

Frank felt a chill run through him. “What?”

“There is a bomb in the basement that will go off then,” Carrie explained. She sounded fatigued. “When it detonates, I will channel its destructive energy through me, into the rivers of time. The future will explode, and the past will implode right along with it. Should make for a fun little light show… a pity that no one will be alive to see it.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Carrie said calmly. She turned back. “That fool with the explosives, he has no understanding of the true powers at my command.” She grinned. “Since focussing in on the bomb, I’ve been messing with him, making his timer run fast, slow, even backwards one time.”

Her expression shifted, becoming more wistful. “My only regret is that I’ll never get to experience a normal teenage life. No mother, no boyfriend, no one who could possibly understand the real me–”

“So we’re back to Selfish Carrie then.”

Her lips thinned. “Pardon?”

Frank decided it was all or nothing. “I mean, you have to be pretty full of yourself now, yeah? To not notice what PAINS the rest have been going through to FIX it all for you? I can see now that it didn’t matter. Sorry we were giving a damn.”

“You think YOU’RE in pain?” she shouted back. “My life never should have been! Right now, Julie’s past, Julie’s future, they hinge on me, a girl who should never have been born in the first place.” She pointed at her head. “And no matter what you do, with her or anybody else, I will still FEEL that inside me. A dull, throbbing ache that will never go away!”

Carrie slumped. “It was always meant to come to this. Destruction is my very reason for existence. It’s simply happening sooner than expected.”

“This from the girl who believes in temporal theories allowing free will.”

“I didn’t KNOW,” Carrie screamed back. “I was too naive, too stupid to understand the role I had to play!”

“So you’re giving up.” Frank found that it wasn’t hard to sound disgusted. “Carrie Waterson is giving up, and blowing up the universe.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Frank. I’m not destroying the universe, the effect will be localized to our solar system.”

“Oh, pardon me, big difference. What would your mother have to say about all this, I wonder?”

Carrie lifted her arm, pointing at him. “Oh no. Don’t you dare, don’t you DARE bring her into this.”

“Why not? It occurs to me that if you have all of time at your disposal now, you might have looked her up.”

Carrie was next to him in two strides, arm raised as if to strike him. “My MOTHER…” She stood still, then brought her arm down. “Was a time traveler,” she admitted. “Brought back from the future, she was left at an orphanage when she was very young. Adopted, and brought inconspicuously into society, she eventually met and married my father. They then had me. In this timeline. Which is, in a nutshell, the reason why I’ve become what I am. My hands are tied.”

A tear trickled from Carrie’s eye, but Frank forced down his instinct to apologize. He had to keep pushing her. Hell, maybe every time she’d pushed at him, he should have been pushing back. “So?” he demanded.

“So?” She reached up to wipe off her cheek. “Given that the decades long presence of my mother had always been a strain on the new timeline, my existence made the problem worse. She had to disappear. I know that now. We can never co-exist again. Which leaves me, a motherless girl, out of time and out of place.” Her hands clenched. “Is it any wonder I’m feeling a little… OUT OF MY MIND?”

“Who says she had to disappear?”

“I… I don’t know.” Carrie swallowed. “I can’t see where or when she disappeared to.”

“And now Carrie Waterson has lost her curiosity.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t curious.”

“Oh no, you’re just blowing up the solar system instead of investigating…”

“I can’t help it, Frank,” Carrie choked out. “I’m sorry, but this explosive force, this pain inside me, it’s too damn strong to resist.”

That was getting closer to the Carrie who had opened up to him in the park, weeks ago. The Carrie that he cared about, in spite of everything. “If it’s inside you, it’s only as strong as you make it,” Frank insisted. “So here’s the real question. Do you want to destroy everything now? Rendering everyone’s actions on your behalf completely meaningless?”

“Stop.”

“Or will you push on, letting me and the rest of your FRIENDS help you through this?”

“Stop it, Frank…”

“Do you WANT answers to the questions that remain unanswered?”

“Frank don’t DO this to me.”

“Damn it, Carrie, will you DESTROY or will you ACCEPT OUR HELP?”

Her body shook, her scream was incoherent, and her palm came flying at his face. But he had half expected that reaction.

He ducked.

Then he sprang back up, his own palm out, and scarcely believing that he was doing it, he slapped it hard against the cheek of the girl who could destroy them all. “DO YOU WANT TO CHOOSE US OR NOT, CARRIE?”

“I DO!” she shrieked back.

Her look became one of astonishment, though whether it was at being struck, or at her own words, it was hard for Frank to say. But for a second, when she blinked, her eyes flickered back and forth between gold and their more normal blue.

“I… I choose the unending pain,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Frank apologized at last. “But on behalf of the world, thank you.” He shook out his hand, then extended it towards her. “Thank you, Carrie.”

“Problem though.”

Frank frowned. His hand fell back to his side. “What?”

“Bomb in the basement, exploding in about twenty seconds, still taking out this whole building and everyone in it.”

“Oh… uh…”

Carrie cracked her knuckles. “So, here’s perhaps the last thing I will ever do. Show ‘Shady’ what a temporal weapon is REALLY capable of.” She flashed her fellow time traveller a sad smile.

“Thank you, Frank. For everything. And goodbye.” No sooner had she said it, then she seemed to wink out of existence, leaving a gust of wind in her wake.

PART 43: DESPERATE TIMES

***PAST: ILLINOIS

A figure stirred within the quiet, suburban home. Hazel eyes blinked open and a brunette teenager slowly picked herself up off the ground. She looked around, spotting a calendar hanging on the wall. Her mouth quirked up into an odd smile, and she tapped the barrel of her gun on her chin.

“It worked,” she murmured. “It worked, and now I’m… home.” She began to laugh hysterically.

Fingers drummed nervously on the floor. Having decided a short time ago that her situation wasn’t actually funny at all - certainly nothing to laugh about - Julie had moved on to taking stock of her current situation. So, she had traveled back to the year of her birth. The time machine had worked, as described to her by Carrie that time in her former associate’s bedroom.

It was a stroke of luck that Julie had apparently ended up on November 9th. Almost as if the machine had already been set for that day, merely requiring Frank’s coin to provide the year. She looked down at the notes she had grabbed. Should she risk reprogramming the thing, to try and jump a little closer? No… she didn’t have the right tools, or the confidence. Better to destroy the device instead. To prevent pursuit.

Julie proceeded to rip out what seemed to be the most important microchips, tossing them into the backyard. She put the notes into the garbage, and took the black box down into the basement, cramming it into one of the many half empty cardboard storage boxes she found. Her parents rarely decluttered, so there wasn’t much chance of it turning up - though even if it did, without the chips or the notes, it would be practically useless.

So, what was she supposed to do for the next three days? Devise a plan, of course. A plan to kill a baby. Julie felt her stomach lurch, but then again, she was already a murderer, right? She’d killed Carrie, and probably Frank too with her second shot. So what was one more death? Particularly when it would be her own. Merely one more death…

Something didn’t make sense. Her mind detoured.

Why had she shot Carrie? What exactly had brought her to Frank’s place that evening? Julie remembered being at the mansion. Then that man had called, asking to meet her at the park. The thirty-something guy had given her the gun, and told her what she had to do. It had made so much sense at the time! Up until the point of seeing Carrie bleeding on the floor…

‘None of it will have happened once I cease to exist,’ Julie rationalized, blocking the memory. One of SO many memories that she didn’t want any more. Okay, planning time. She had to figure out where the hospital was, that sort of thing. Pausing only long enough to find a bag to slip her gun into, Julie left the house.

Phil was here.

Barely an hour out of her house, and Julie found herself being confronted by impossible setbacks. She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten before peering back around the street corner.

Phil was still there.

If he was a hallucination, as he had been in the basement of her house, he’d become a more persistent one. Then again, this Phil could simply be a look-alike. Maybe an ancestor. Except why had Julie been left with the impression he was looking for someone?

Was he looking for her?

She felt her heart getting squeezed. Part of Julie wanted to run out to Phil and tell him everything, about what her parents had done to her, and about what she had done to Carrie. But another part of her urged caution. Could even Phil forgive her for what had happened? Worse, what if this was some kind of trap?

“Excuse me… you wouldn’t happen to have any spare change, would you?” said a nearby voice.

Julie tensed. She turned. This homeless woman was about her height, with hair of approximately the same length and colour. The similarity ended there, but daylight was fading, so with the right clothes…

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you do something for me,” Julie answered. Almost as an afterthought, she moved closer to the woman and slipped the gun out from it’s concealment. “And if you don’t do it right, I’ll kill you too.”

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Jeeves re-entered the sitting room to find Luci pacing, Chartreuse fidgeting with some crystals, and Lee leaning over the couch where the fourth house “guest” remained tied up.

The LaMille butler was starting to regret having let them in. In doing so, he wagered that he had become an accessory to kidnapping, or harbouring a fugitive. He didn’t know which. He didn’t want to know. That way, he wouldn’t have to deny anything later.

The one thing Jeeves DID know was that Julie was in some sort of trouble. Furthermore, ever since he had been hired three years ago to take care of this place, and thus indirectly to care for her, he’d felt a certain obligation towards the young girl. She was obviously very troubled, but she was also smart, strong, and more driven than any other teenager he knew. He couldn’t understand why her parents didn’t spend more time with her.

Indeed, it had been after leaving her alone with her parents for the one night that she had disappeared. Perhaps he shouldn’t have reported Julie’s actions at school to her mother and father. Or perhaps he shouldn’t have agreed to take that night off. Yet they often released him that way shortly after coming home, and as a simple butler, had he really had any other choice?

Perhaps not. However, he did have a choice now. Namely whether to offer more information to these children, or whether to put a stop to things before they got out of hand.

“Pardon me,” Jeeves stated archly. “But could one of you please enlighten me as to the current situation regarding Miss LaMille?”

Luci turned towards him. “Situation?” she said tiredly.

“You indicated to me earlier that by allowing you in here, it might ultimately clear her name,” Jeeves reminded them.

“Oh. Yes.” Jeeves noticed that the young girl’s eyes drifted over to the man on the couch, before she resumed her pacing. Perhaps this mystery man had been the actual culprit? “It’s complicated,” she continued. “I’m sorry, but we need more time.”

“The thing is,” Jeeves continued pointedly, “I just got off the phone with Miss LaMille’s father.” That got all of their attention.

“I have been trying to reach her parents all afternoon,” he elaborated. “Ever since I learned that their daughter was being implicated in the recent shooting. I finally succeeded not ten minutes ago, only to be told by Mr. LaMille that he had no daughter. At first I thought that he was trying to disown her, however, it soon became apparent to me that he also had no recollection of even owning this house.”

The butler watched as the three teenagers exchanged a glance. “He doesn’t remember Julie?” Chartreuse said, biting her lower lip. “Uh oh. Um, you don’t think that means she, like, actually succeeded in… in the past, do you?”

Luci yanked a piece of paper from her pocket. “How could she have?” the young asian protested, scanning over it. She slapped at the page with her hand. “We know what happened back then. Look, girl hit by ambulance, three days before Julie was born. That hasn’t changed.”

“Unless…” The man on the couch struggled to stand. “She is more powerful than I realized. We have to stop her, now!”

“Stop Julie?” Chartreuse said, confused. “No, that’s what, like, Frank and them are doing.”

“Whoa, okay, time out,” Lee said, raising his hands in the traditional gesture. “I’m not sure I follow ANY of what’s going on here, so back the bus up… if Julie’s parents don’t remember her now because of some change to the past - how come WE haven’t forgotten her too?”

“The–“ Their captive cut himself off. “Your Carrie Waterson. I told you she had powers! Being in this town, right now, has put us in the eye of her time storm. We are not safe so long as she is around. Can you not see how time itself is beginning to destabilize? We must act fast. Someone help me up.”

Jeeves automatically felt himself take a step closer to assist, only to have the boy named Lee step between them. “Sorry, I’m thinking we keep Shady on the couch for now,” the teenager asserted.

“Yes!” Luci said, and when Jeeves turned to her, he saw that a light had come back into her eyes. She met his gaze. “Okay, Jeeves, thanks for the information but I bet none of this is making any sense to you, and we don’t have time to explain. So, I know it’s a lot to ask, but unless you seriously object, can you leave us alone again? It’ll avoid you getting any more involved than you have to.”

Jeeves raised an eyebrow as Luci voiced his earlier concern - yet he also sensed a hard edge to Luci’s voice. Was helping Miss LaMille really worth potentially putting these other teenagers in jeopardy?

“I will allow you another few minutes to discuss the situation,” Jeeves decided. “Should you need me, I will be in the hall.” He turned and left the room once again, hoping that he was doing the right thing.

Then again, according to his employers, he didn’t seem to work here anyway.

After Jeeves had departed, Luci turned back to Shady. “You don’t KNOW,” she asserted, grinning.

“What don’t I know?”

“You don’t know what Carrie’s capable of,” she concluded. “Not really. Your description of her powers has been vague, you didn’t know if Frank’s admission would save her, and you sure as heck weren’t aware of whatever this ‘time storm’ was until Jeeves pointed it out. So how could you possibly know whether Carrie’s irredeemably insane or not?”

Luci drew in a deep breath. “The answer is, you don’t. Meaning we might still be able to save her.”

Shady shook his head. “Don’t be foolish. I know she’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous why?” Luci demanded. She moved in next to him, placing her hand on the couch next to his head. “Tell us, why exactly is Carrie Waterson dead in your future, Shady? Why did you have to come back to this time period to get her? Why, exactly, is SHE the one tied to time?”

Their captor’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

Luci’s smile vanished. “Perhaps not, but it occurs to me now that you were WAY too calm for someone who claimed to have lost an entire future war because of us.”

“Well, I’m not calm any more,” he snapped.

“No, you’re not,” Luci acknowledged. “So what is it about Carrie that has you so riled up? Tell us. ALL of it.”

“Go beat your head against a wall.”

Luci turned and marched over towards the nearest wall, drawing her head back - only to be grabbed from behind by Lee. She blinked, then snapped her gaze back over to the couch.

“That’s dirty pool,” Chartreuse said, horrified.

“You children, you have no idea, NO idea of what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in,” Shady said, a bitterness to his tone. “Enough of free will. Isn’t it time to leave this situation in the hands of your elders?”

“Okay, that’s it,” Luci decided. “I’ve had it.” She began to push a chair over to the side of the room. “Lee? Chartreuse? You can leave now, if you don’t want to see this.”

“Um, pretty sure I should stick around,” Lee pointed out.

“Why, what are you, like, going to do?” Chartreuse asked.

“Something I might regret later,” Luci admitted. She climbed onto the chair, and reached up to grasp the ornamental rapier hanging on the wall.

“Whoa, uh, hold on short stuff… what are you doing?”

Truth be told, Luci was asking herself that same question. She wasn’t really sure any more. All she knew was that were were still gaps, huge gaps in her knowledge that had to be filled. It had become more than a need, it was a necessity. How else could she solve this puzzle?

“The problem,” she reasoned aloud, hopping back down onto the floor, “is that I’ve been basing all my decisions to this point on the scattered half picture we’ve had available.” She brandished the rapier and pointed it at their captive. “Time to get the rest of the data. By any means necessary.”

“Luci,” Chartreuse gasped, reaching out to take her by the shoulder.

“No,” Luci protested, shrugging off Chartreuse. “It’s not us, it’s HIM, it’s his secrets that have doomed Julie and Frank and the rest of them.” She took a step closer to the couch. “So, you want to talk war? Fine, here’s your war. You will tell us about Carrie’s fate in your timeline, or suffer the consequences.”

The man met Luci’s gaze, sizing her up. “You have more willpower than I thought,” he said at last. “But no. I’ve told you too much already.”

“Don’t test me,” Luci cautioned, waving the blade around - to try and disguise how much her hand was starting to shake.

He smirked. “Please. You talk big, but you won’t use that. Put it away before you hurt yourself.”

Luci stared at him for another few seconds, realizing with growing frustration that he wasn’t going to stop treating this like a bluff on her part. ‘Hurt him!’ a part of her cried out. ‘He’s hurting you, so you can hurt him back!' Except… there was a big difference between cutting someone down with words, and doing it with a blade.

She grasped the hilt with both hands. Tears started stinging at her eyes. “Talk!”

Talk, Shady. Just talk. This was so easy in the movies. Why not now? Why, oh why couldn’t things be going her way? As Shady smirked, Luci felt Chartreuse’s arm encircle her shoulders. This time she didn’t pull away. Instead she let out a choked sob, finally letting the blade fall from her grip. It bounced on the carpet.

“Okay buddy, now you’ve made a young girl cry,” Lee observed. He cracked his knuckles. “We’ve reached my line in the sand.”

Luci looked back up, barely in time to see Lee backhand the man across the face. “Now say you’re sorry,” he admonished. He looked angrier than Luci had ever seen him.

“What… what the hell are you doing?!” their captive spat back, apparently as surprised as any of them.

“At present? I’m trying to figure out how a supposed adult has the audacity to put the whammy on girls less than half his age,” Lee said. “You also seem to be trying to kill another one of my friends, without telling us the reason, and to cap it all off - you’re making me late for dinner.”

Lee backhanded him again. “I’m ESPECIALLY annoyed about that last one, because I don’t want my sisters to have new reasons to cry either. So let’s get to it, okay ‘Shady’? Apologize to Luci, and then TELL her WHAT SHE WANTS TO KNOW.”

Lee’s victim glowered at him for a moment, before uttering a curt, “Sorry,” in Luci’s direction.

“Progress,” Lee said, glaring.

Shady grit his teeth. “If you weren’t somehow immune to me…”

“What’s the problem, not comfortable enough to answer questions?” Lee asked. “Well then, I’ll fluff your pillow here and… oh, I’m sorry, is that your foot? Dear me, I’d get your feet up out of the way but it is hard when they’re tied like this… oh, sorry, was that your stomach? You know, you’d make this a lot easier by talking. Though I guess it is a little difficult with me holding the pillow over your face. There, that better?”

“Are you INSANE?”

“Sounds like you need more time to think. How about this, I’ve heard it can help, having all your blood rush to your head. Over we go… oops, sorry. Oh, hey, mind that rapier down there…"

As Lee continued to contort the man’s body, Luci was reminded of the conversation she’d had with Clarke in the hospital. Sometimes, you had to pass the ball to your teammates. “Remind me never to cross Lee,” she whispered to Chartreuse.

Chartreuse didn’t respond, her eyes wide and her jaw slack.

“All right, I’ll talk,” Shady shrieked, once Lee had twisted his head away from the upholstery. “Bloody hell, I never expected you teenagers to be such a thorn in my side!”

“And our little dog too,” Lee remarked as he straightened back up and adjusted his jacket. He looked back over at the two girls, seeming a bit taken aback by their expressions. “Um, what can I say? I hate being late for dinner.”

“You want the truth about your ‘friend’, Carrie Waterson?” The temporal refugee spat out, even as he struggled to sit back up. “Fine. She is NOT dead in my future. Rather, she is on THEIR side.” He fixed his gaze upon Luci. “She’s a temporal bomb, who can destroy the entire world, because THAT’S what they designed her to do. Which is, if you haven’t figured it out, why we couldn’t very well recruit her to fight on behalf of the humans, could we?”

It was Chartreuse who managed to speak first. “Um, Carrie’s a human. Not some time bomb.”

“Well, she’s sort of both,” Shady countered. “Call her a sleeper agent, if you like, planted in the past. Except now that I’ve changed things? Now that she’s exerting her influence on this town, consciously or unconsciously preserving the memory of Julie? She’s armed. She has to be.”

“So you did come back in time to destroy Carrie,” Luci concluded.

He shook his head. “No, I came back to recruit that– thing, I swear. We had hoped to learn how to control the power, and to unleash it back upon her own people… but regrettably, if Carrie went psychotic, there would be no choice but to eliminate her. Because if she explodes? She will not only take this town, but this entire planet along with her. Make no mistake.”

He paused to let his words sink in. “So," he concluded, “will you finally release me, and let me destroy that shell of a girl before she does the same to all of humanity? Or shall we sit here chatting for what may well be the last hour of our lives?”

***PAST: ILLINOIS

They had to be destroyed. If they got in her way, she would have to destroy them. It seemed harsh, but being a murderer three times over now, Julie had made up her mind.

Three times… Carrie, Frank, and then that homeless woman… it had been so horrible, to see her die. Julie grabbed at her chest, feeling her borrowed clothing.

She should have been the one. The one lying dead in the road. In fact, a strange part of her felt like it HAD BEEN HER. Or would have been her. Before she’d noticed Phil on the street, and switched clothing. Now it wasn’t her. But could it still become her?

Tenses were getting muddled in her brain. No, more than tenses, it was all a muddle. Perhaps a side effect of the time travel. Or, you know, the fact that she was flirting with paradox, trying to prevent her own birth. Maybe something out there didn’t want her to do that.

What had even led to this line of thought? Right, she had to kill Phil, Frank and Corry… if they got in her way. Frank, dead for a second time. That was weird.

Never mind. Julie knew she needed a plan. A plan that she could execute quickly, for if Phil had actually been able to follow her through time, recruiting assistance from Corry of all people, there were sure to be more traps in store. Julie supposed that she should not have destroyed the potential advantage of her own time machine.

Too late to worry about that now. She couldn’t wait another three days for her actual birth. Not any more. It was time for action.

Still clutching the gun, Julie marched off for the hospital. If the others tried to stop her now, well… well, then they would suffer the consequences. The very deadly consequences.

PART 42: TIED IN NAUGHTS

***PAST: ILLINOIS

“You know,” Corry said as he wheeled his bike along the sidewalk. “If I ever decide to take another trip through time with you guys? Stop me. I don’t think I could take another day of this traveling through unknown territory, sharing cramped quarters and dishwashing for money and food.”

“I know there’s something I can’t take much more of,” Clarke murmured.

“My previous time trips haven’t been like this," Frank said, half slumped over his own bike. “But here, we had to allow extra time to find Julie, and we lacked enough currency for this time period. You knew all that before you came.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know this would be a one way trip,” Corry argued.

“It won’t be,” Frank assured. “Remember, all we have to do is figure out what Julie did with the circuitry she removed. With that, I can repair our version of the time machine, and get us back.”

“Oh, and I’m sure Julie will be very forthcoming with that information," Corry groused.

“Don’t mind Corry,” Clarke suggested to Frank. “Complaining seems to be his way of coping. We’ll manage, somehow.”

“Phil Clarke. Always the optimist,” Corry grumbled. “Oh well, at least this ordeal is almost over. How much time until… uh, the big event we’ll need to stop?” Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘death’.

Frank checked his watch. “If our newspaper was to be believed, we’re over two hours out. And we’re…” He glanced up at the nearby road sign. “Now five blocks away. So time to spare."

“How about change to spare?” came a hopeful voice.

Corry turned with the others, to see a young homeless woman. Or, if she wasn’t homeless, the early twenty something was at least down on her luck. Her clothes were ragged, her long curly brown hair was frayed, and she was carrying her possessions in a small, tattered bag.

“Well…” Frank began slowly.

Before Frank could say more, Clarke fished a couple of bills out of his pocket. “Here you go,” he said. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have to spare.”

“Bless you,” the woman said with a small smile as she took the handout.

“Oh, brilliant, Clarke,” Corry said once the woman was out of earshot. “That’s brilliant. Sure, let’s give away the rest of our money. It’s not like we might NEED it or anything! Gods, sometimes I can’t figure out what’s going through your heads."

“She’ll be around to use it tomorrow, unlike us,” Clarke rationalized.

“Only assuming we get through to Julie, remember?”

“Look,” Frank cut back in. “It’s fine, what’s done is done. Though for future reference, Clarke? We want to minimize our impact here in the past. Not call attention to it that way.”

“Right. Sorry.”

They were within a block of the hospital when Clarke cleared his throat. “So Corry, based on whatever Julie did with you that day in January - what are the chances she’ll be throwing herself into the path of this ambulance on purpose?”

Corry grimaced as he was forced to consider the possibility. “Hard to say. Why, do you think she’d be in a low mental state based on whatever talk she had with you after my flyers went out?”

“And here’s another thing,” Frank interjected. “You two need to stop being so… passive-aggressive with your whatevers.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Corry asked dryly.

Frank turned to face them, visibly frustrated. “Look, apparently you each have secrets about Julie. And while I commend your ethics, in that you both don’t seem to want to reveal them to each other without her approval, after four days, those conversations are getting REAL annoying.”

Corry tried to protest, but Frank kept talking.

“More to the point, the Julie I saw right before she time travelled didn’t seem to be in complete control of her faculties. Which for all we know, is going to be ten minutes before she shows up here. So, if you don’t want to reveal secrets about Julie, fine. But will you both stop fishing for information from the other guy about those past encounters? It’s time to focus on the Julie in our present.”

Corry wondered if Clarke’s look of surprise was mirrored on his own face. He hoped not - but he never would have figured on Frank having an outburst like that. “Fine,” he said. “Sorry if it felt like I was fishing, Clarke.”

“Yeah, me too,” Clarke said, looking sheepish.

“Okay.” Corry eyed Frank. “With that out of the way, what are your next orders for us, oh glorious leader?”

Frank merely sighed.

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Lee sighed, as he looked at the text message from Judy. Apparently the new books hadn’t come in yet - so no extra hours today. In fact, since he wasn’t scheduled for work, that meant no need to go to the library at all. Oh well.

His original plan had been to use tonight to catch up on homework, so he supposed he might as well head home to do that. However, he found his footsteps were taking him towards the hospital instead.

Whatever events were happening between Clarke, Tim, and the rest of them? They had escalated. Not only into absences at school, but now the local constabulary was hanging around. The hospital wasn’t very far out of his way - it couldn’t hurt to check in on Carrie, right? Maybe one of the others would be around too, and he could do something more to help.

Lee absentmindedly scanned the building as he approached. As such, he was able to spot the figure darting out of one of the emergency exits. Was there a fire? No one else seemed to be evacuating.

Then another person ran out the door, apparently in pursuit of the first individual - and even at this distance, Lee recognized the profile, what with the bows in her hair. The two of them were heading more or less in his direction, so Lee decided to intercede on Chartreuse’s behalf.

He moved to box in the running man, who, upon realizing that he was caught between Lee, Chartreuse, and the building itself, headed for his one remaining option.  The shrubbery and fence surrounding the hospital area. Breaking into a sprint, Lee managed to catch the mysterious figure and haul him down before he could make good his escape.

In the process Lee made a startling discovery: this person, the one wearing the uniform of a hospital orderly, was the same guy who’d been loitering around the hospital on Saturday. The one who had been looking for information on the LaMilles previously. With a bit of leverage, Lee managed to get the guy face down onto the ground, arms pinned behind him.

“Thanks… thanks Lee…” Chartreuse wheezed as she caught up to them, sweat running down her face. She paused for a second to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath before bending down to stare their captive in the face. “Now, why were you trying to kill Carrie Waterson?” she demanded, jabbing out a finger.

Lee blinked at Chartreuse. “Kill Carrie?”

Chartreuse nodded sombrely. “Well?” the pink haired girl demanded again, off the man’s silence. “Tell me, or I’ll… I’ll do something mystical and unpleasant to you. Don’t think I won’t!”

Their captive attempted to flex his arms, but Lee held him down. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” the man said at last. “That ‘girl’ will destroy us all. I must be allowed to complete this mission.”

“Uhm, if your mission involves harming a hair on Carrie’s head, I so don’t think so," Chartreuse countered. She pursed her lips in thought. “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do. Lee, keep this guy here while I get Luci. Then the four of us can, like, go find someplace nice and private to have a good, long talk.”

“Er, you don’t think this is a matter to leave to the police…?” Lee protested.

Chartreuse shook her head. “No, the police might be kinda looking for me and Luci. Please, just, you know, hold Shady here - I’ll be right back.”

With that, the pink haired girl jumped up and ran back in the direction of the hospital. Lee was left in the shrubbery with his captive. “Guess this is what I get for not asking enough questions on the weekend,” he mused.

“Lee, you are going to do something for me now,” the man on the ground articulated. “Listen carefully. You are going to get off of me and let me go on my way unmolested. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Lee answered. “But I think we’ll stay here anyway.”

The man smacked his forehead down. “Oh well,” he muttered. “It was worth a shot.”

“Miss Primrose, I’m afraid I don’t have authorization to allow any of you to enter.”

“Jeeves, it’s important,” Luci insisted. “We can’t risk going to any of our homes, while this is probably the last place anyone will think to look for us. Besides, what we discover here today may well save Carrie - as well as clear Julie’s name.”

She watched his eyebrow arch. Good, he knew Julie was a suspect now, that saved explanations. “The police don’t have it quite right, Jeeves,” she added. “Please, if you care about what happens to Julie, you’ll let us in.”

It felt like an eternity, but the LaMille butler finally swung the front door of the mansion open wider. “See that I don’t regret this,” he cautioned them.

The four of them filed past Jeeves into the foyer: Luci, Chartreuse, Lee, and the man with his hands tied behind his back, aka Shady.

After closing the door, Jeeves headed for the telephone.

“All right,” Luci said once they were in the LaMille sitting room, having tossed their captive onto the couch. “Start talking. Who are you, what are you doing here, and why did you try to kill Carrie?”

Shady remained silent.

“All right then, I’ll start talking,” Luci decided. “You can correct me if I say anything wrong, all right?” She leaned against the back of a chair, staring at him.

“The first question we have to ask ourselves is why someone who once professed to be Carrie’s ‘Guardian Angel’ would attempt to kill her. Answer? It was, in fact, your goal all along. But you had to wait for the right moment. For the point of maximum entropy. You had to protect Carrie until then.”

Luci drummed her fingers on the fabric in front of her. “It explains why you got Julie to shoot Carrie in a non-fatal way. Putting your target into the hospital, you could indirectly get some preliminary readings on her.” Chartreuse let out a little gasp. “And don’t even try to deny being involved with the shooting,” Luci added. “Because even setting aside your call to Frank, I remember now that when I returned to his house on that night? Someone was sitting in a car less than a block away. Foolishly, I didn’t give it much thought, but seeing you here? It was you. And Julie had to get the gun from someone.”

Luci paused to give Shady a chance to speak. When he said nothing, she continued on.

“So, Carrie has been your guinea pig. Time travel - it’s not a fine science for you future guys, I guess? Sure, you used it to get back here, but prolonged exposure, that’s what Carrie was for. For some reason, you believed that all of her time trips would grant her special abilities, and once she got them…” Luci snapped her fingers in the air. “Dissection time.”

She turned away, as Chartreuse’s increasingly ill look was becoming too much of a contrast to Shady’s inscrutable expression. “But Julie running off with the time machine, that threw off your timetable,” Luci reasoned. “You had to delay, leading to checking on Julie’s past, contacting Frank, and generally messing with us to ensure we were looking anywhere BUT at Carrie. But now we are. And since we know your intentions, we’re not going to let you get away with it.”

She whirled back, folding her arms across her chest. “Well? How’s that, am I close?”

“And don’t even think about, you know, lying,” Chartreuse added, shaking a crystal at him. “Or I’ll totally know.”

Their captive frowned, as if trying to come to a decision.

“Look man,” Lee offered. “If you tell ‘em what they want to know, they’ll get off your back, and we can all walk away from this roller coaster ride of science fiction. Right?”

Shady sighed. “You are very observant, young Luci,” he said at last. “But largely incorrect. For instance, none of you need to fear developing any powers yourselves - Carrie’s abilities are not because of her time travel. They have always been within her. They are tied to her, bound to her by fate.” He smirked. “Which is the very reason I came back to this time to recruit her.”

“Recruit?” Luci blurted, before she could stop herself. She glanced sidelong at Chartreuse. The pink haired girl shrugged, meaning either she couldn’t detect any trace of betrayal, or she’d been bluffing about the lie detection thing. Lee merely looked nonplussed.

Luci decided she needed to sit down. Moving into the chair she’d previously been leaning against, she steepled her fingers, continuing to stare at their captive. “By all means then,” she said. “Explain to us how you can recruit someone by KILLING them.”

Shady inclined his head slightly. “If I do, will you let me go?”

“No,” Luci said, sourly. “But we’re definitively keeping you here until you do, so start talking.”

The man glanced at Lee. “Oh, very well. The crux of the matter is that there is a war going on in the future. One which we humans are losing very badly, I might add. But then, at the point when many of us were about to give up all hope, we discovered the identity of a woman. A woman with extraordinary powers. Powers which could extend into the very fabric of space and time itself - the problem being, she was already dead to us. So, with great effort, we managed to obtain a time travel device, and I was chosen to come back in time to find this woman. Back when she was a mere girl.”

“Okay,” Lee said, as Shady paused. “So far this sounds like a reverse plot from those Terminator films. Did the robots send someone back after you, dude?”

“No. We’re not fighting robots,” Shady said in an annoyed tone. “Can I finish my story?”

Lee gestured magnanimously.

“As such,” he continued, “I have been in sync with your time period now for close to three years, working at verifying this woman’s identity in her youth. Not as difficult a task as I originally thought, given how I picked up a temporal disruption in Algonquin Park a couple years back, and had to personally rescue her. Still, I wanted to be sure, so it was only a couple of months ago that I left my time machine out for Carrie Waterson to find.”

“Then your time machine is what became our time machine,” Luci affirmed.

He nodded. “It’s not like I brought a spare. The things ARE damned hard to get your hands on.”

Meaning Shady couldn’t escape through time. Good to know. “Still waiting on the whole death equals recruitment thing,” Luci pointed out.

“Did you want context for it or not?”

“Context is helpful,” Chartreuse said brightly.

“Fine. So, experiencing time travel was the first step towards awakening this obj- er, wom- this girl’s powers. She had to learn what she could accomplish, in a practical sense. She then had to learn how to put her own life into the cosmic perspective.” He paused briefly before muttering, “That second phase required a near death experience.”

Luci stood. “Then I WAS right, and you ARE responsible for influencing Julie.”

Shady sighed. “Being displaced from time, I did not think it wise to act as the trigger myself. An ex-friend, who had been targeted at school that day? That seemed plausible. Anyway, you yourself noted how Julie’s shot was intended to miss any vital organs.”

“Okay, but, like, hold on,” Chartreuse protested. “This power awakening stuff, it seems to have gone wrong. Carrie’s not doing so hot."

“Oh, no kidding?” Shady said contemptuously. “Apparently you teenagers have an interesting way of keeping things ‘safe’.”

“Julie’s time trip,” Luci realized. “It did throw things off. Merely not how I thought.”

Shady nodded. “That part is as I said to your friend Frank. Carrie could not reconcile Julie’s death with how history proceeded prior to her powers awakening. But instead of following my advice, you all devised some asinine plan of your own! I finally used my own power to get the police involved this morning. Unfortunately, checking on Carrie’s condition afterwards, I found it was too late.” He folded his hands together. “Carrie is now irredeemably insane, and my mission has failed, thus killing her… well, at this point, it’s a form of mercy."

Luci shuddered, as she realized how wrong she had been. And Carrie was paying the price. She reached out for the chair again, using it to keep her from sliding down to her knees. “But there must be some way to still save her,” Luci asserted. “Something more we can do.”

Shady scoffed. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough already? You have doomed most of your friends, as well as an entire war going on in your future. I ask you, how many more people must pay the price for your bad decisions?”

***PAST: ILLINOIS

“How much time?” Corry hissed.

“At a guess? Five minutes, give or take,” Frank answered quietly. He peered out of the alleyway to look up and down the street.

Clarke stood there, surrounded by some of the locals who were going about their business in the early evening. Upon spying Frank, the tall boy raised his arms, palms up, indicating he hadn’t seen any sign of Julie yet. Frank slumped back against the wall; the group had locked their bikes up at the nearby library half an hour ago.

Corry sighed. “I hate us splitting up like this,” he groused. “I mean, I agree Clarke’s the best choice to reason with her, but Julie probably still has that gun, right? The one she used to shoot Carrie? What if she simply kills him, then picks us off, one by one, before jumping in front of the ambulance? I mean, maybe that’s what my sister is reading in the newspaper in the future at this very moment.”

“Corry, now is not the time,” Frank said tersely.

“But… ah, you’re right," came a grudging admission, much to Frank’s surprise. “Look, sorry if I’m a little hard on you and Clarke, Frank,” the redhead continued. “I’m accustomed to knowing a lot more about my surroundings. This whole trip has put me out of my element.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I guess you don’t need both me AND Julie going after your jugular, huh?”

Before Frank could reply to that, they heard Clarke call out “Julie!” in a loud and clear voice.

The two teenagers poked their heads back out of the alley to see what Clarke was up to. He had crossed the street, and was hurrying after someone. A girl with long brown hair, who was wearing a dark green sweater with a blue pleated skirt. She was moving in the direction of the hospital.

“Julie! Jewels!” Clarke called out again.

The girl seemed to half turn before quickening her pace. Frank emerged from the alley and headed down his side of the street. He wasn’t quite sure how to help, but he didn’t want to lose sight of them.

What happened next occurred so fast that, upon later recollection, Frank would be forced to admit that there was nothing he could have done.

Having almost reached her, Clarke reached out to grab Julie by the shoulder. Sensing she was about to be caught, the girl twisted away, stumbling as she did so. It was then that Frank finally noticed the ambulance, which had not bothered to turn it’s siren on, as there weren’t any other cars on the street.

“Look out!” he screamed, even as Julie, off balance, staggered backwards. Right into the path of the oncoming vehicle. There was no time for anyone to run and push her out of the way, no time for the driver to brake - the ambulance simply hit her, head on.

“No…” Frank gasped as he saw Julie fly several feet through the air.

“NO!” he screamed. She had been their only hope of rescuing Carrie. Their only hope of getting back home. Four days, FOUR DAYS they had spent in the past, knowing that this would happen. And yet they had failed!

But maybe, just maybe, Julie wasn’t dead yet. So she could tell them where the time circuits were, and they could somehow try again, try to fix this… a crowd was already gathering, and Frank moved to push his way through them. He was restrained by a hand on his shoulder.

Frank turned to see Clarke, his face ashen, his body shaking slightly. “Clarke,” he gasped. “We have to–”

“It’s not her, Frank,” the tall boy said quietly.

It took a few seconds for Clarke’s words to sink in. Even then, they didn’t make sense. “What?” Frank finally managed.

“It’s not Julie.” Clarke released him. “As that person twisted away from me, I got my first good look at her face. The person who was hit… it was that homeless woman we saw earlier today. For some reason, she had put on Julie’s clothes.”

That still didn’t make any sense. “How? Why?” Frank protested.

“Because Julie knows we’re here,” Corry said, having come up behind them in time to hear Clarke’s revelation. His lips thinned. “She must know we’re here to stop her from killing herself. And she sent that woman towards the hospital as a decoy."

Frank let Corry steer them both away from the crowd, his mind now completely in a whirl. Julie knew they were there? But how? What was even going through that poor girl’s mind? A shudder ran down Frank’s spine as he realized that there was no way of knowing. No way at all.

And for the first time since they’d landed in Illinois, Frank felt very, very scared.

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.3

PART 39: RECOVERY MODE

Corry Veniti tapped his pencil on the page before him as he contemplated the conversation he’d had with his sister. Despite telling her to put the whole Carrie/Julie situation behind them, Laurie’s mannerisms had suggested to him that she wouldn’t be able to do that.

Truth be told, the unanswered questions were gnawing at him too. He’d never been fond of mysteries relating to Julie. How was it no one at school knew what had happened to her? Could she have been kidnapped by someone? On account of those flyers he’d printed? Was her disappearance his fault?

“Stop that,” Corry admonished himself. “This isn’t my problem. It’s HER problem.” He reached out to resume the play of Beethoven’s fifth. Then stopped it again minutes later. “I brushed Laurie off too quickly though,” he decided. “I should have done something more to distract her.”

Making up his mind, Corry rose from his desk, leaving his chemistry unfinished. However, as he reached his sister’s bedroom, he heard Laurie exclaim something which sounded like “TIME machine??”. Chartreuse’s voice followed, mentioning “tricky special stuff”.

With his hand raised to knock, Corry instead found himself leaning in closer to the door, to catch more of whatever was going on. He didn’t like what little he heard. He decided to challenge Chartreuse about it as soon as he had the chance.

“We have to talk,” Corry repeated icily. “Now.”

Chartreuse eyed him uncertainly. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably, you know, wrong,” she ventured.

“I think you’re creating some sort of time travel delusion for my sister, so that she feels better about whatever’s happened with Carrie and Julie,” he said. “And while I’m all for improving her mood, I don’t think now is the time for such silly, mystic games. Particularly if they’re as “risky” as you seemed to be implying.”

The pink haired girl’s nose crinkled up. “How do YOU know what I was implying? I mean, I know you look out for Laurie, but are you seriously, like, bugging her room now?”

“What? No, hearing you was an accident,” Corry said defensively. And a bit too loudly; he lowered his voice as he moved closer to his sister’s friend. “I was merely coming to Laurie’s room to speak with her, and overheard some of your talk. Don’t change the subject. What nonsense are you getting my sister mixed up in?”

Chartreuse shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Ummm… okay, so… it is kinda like what you think, except there’s no nonsense here," she yielded. “There really is a time machine. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s, like, missing.”

Corry stared. “You must think I was born yesterday.”

“Oh, not at all,” Chartreuse assured, perking up. “Since if you were, we wouldn’t be able to use your family DNA to travel back to recover Julie.”

Corry felt taken aback by her sudden certainty. “My what?”

“Okay, it has to do with spacials and…. you know, is it too late to say this was part of a Home Ec project?”

“Yes,” Corry replied, frown deepening.

“Figures.” She licked her lips. “Thing is, Luci, like, explained this part better.”

“What do you mean recover Julie? Is this one of her plots?”

Chartreuse opened her mouth, then closed it, then crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “Know what? Not gonna tell you,” she decided. “Not here, not now. After all, you have, you know, a blind spot where Julie is concerned.”

Corry felt his hands curling into fists. “Then you’re not going to say anything more to Laurie either. I’m nipping this H. G. Wells nonsense in the bud! She’s upset enough as it is without your–“

“Corry, do you seriously think I’m trying to hurt Laurie here?” Chartreuse interrupted, visibly frustrated. “You know I care about her as much as you do. Thing is, without her help… it will cost the lives of two other people.”

“Don’t overdramatize,” Corry scoffed. “Now, I know Laurie looks up to you, and values the time you spend together, but really - at some point you have to stop deluding her with your mystic ramblings.”

Chartreuse stamped her foot. “Okay, first of all? Laurie values her time with, like, everyone to some degree. Not only me, and perhaps certain people even more than you may realize. And secondly? Merely because YOU don’t believe in something, that doesn’t make it a fantasy. I’m speaking the honest truth here, Corry!”

Corry peered a bit closer, to gauge her sincerity. She definitely seemed serious. Except the stories she was weaving - they were nonsense. “Even assuming I believe you,” he decided. “Your plans seem far too dangerous.”

“Yeah, well, you know, life can be like that. Besides, if Laurie wants to help someone, she’s going to do it. No matter what EITHER us has to say.”

“Unless she’s not given the option.”

Chartreuse winced. “Corry…”

“From this point forwards, whatever you have to say to Laurie about this matter goes through me first,” he decided. “I will then decide whether it’s worth passing on. Understood?”

Chartreuse must have sensed his unwillingness to compromise, as her gaze dropped down to the floor. “Okay,” she sighed. Then she looked back up at him. “But, you know, think about this - what if I AM right? And what if, because of you, we do nothing, and people die terrible, needless deaths? How will you feel then? And how will Laurie feel when she learns about what you did?”

She strode away before Corry had a chance to formulate any sort of reply, fleeing downstairs to the kitchen. He watched her go with a frown. Time machine? Family DNA? Needless deaths? Ridiculous.

So where had Julie disappeared to? “She’s not my problem,” he asserted aloud, clenching his jaw. “Not. My. Problem.”

Lee shuffled home from the library, lost in thought. No matter which way he turned things around in his head, he couldn’t figure out what Clarke and Tim wanted with that old black box. It had been, what, two years now since his mom had grabbed it at the LaMille yard sale? So why were they asking about it today? And what did they mean, saying it could save lives? This was all very strange.

Oh well. Clarke had said he could explain it, after getting the okay from some other people. So Lee had said he’d get the box to them, after which they’d gone their separate ways.

He’s LEE KING.
Think about that name. And about his siblings. (Sorry.)

‘Which is good,’ Lee reflected as he trudged across the railroad tracks. ‘Since I don’t think many people have bothered to figure out my exact address, and I’d rather keep it that way.’ He proceeded further into the poorer section of town, finally stopping at an old two story house with a faded nameplate on the mailbox that read: ‘King Residence’. Taking a deep breath, Lee entered the house and called out, “I’m home!”

“LeeLeeLeeLeeLeeLeeLee,” came the excited voice of a young girl. Moments later she came tearing around the corner, jumping up into his arms. “Missed you,” she concluded, innocently batting her eyelashes as she stared up at him.

Lee couldn’t help but smile as he looked down at her. “Hi Soh,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “And how’s my favouritist youngest sister?”

“I’m okay,” Soh said brightly as Lee let her back down to the floor. “We did finger paintin' in class today an' I made a palm tree.” She giggled at her own joke.

“Well, I’m sure you did a wonderful job,” Lee assured. He glanced up. “What have you done with everyone else then? Playing a big game of hide and seek?”

“No, silly,” Soh declared, blonde pigtails flicking back and forth as she shook her head. “They’re all upstairs. ‘Cept momma, she’s cookin’.” The young girl lifted her hand, counting each person off on her fingers.  “Granmamma’s sleepin', Sing’s readin' her books, an’ Faye, well, she’s sulkin'.”

Lee’s heart sank. If the oldest among his younger siblings was sulking now, it meant only one thing: their father had cancelled out on them for dinner. Again. Poor Faye, she’d never been the same since the divorce. “And how about you, what are you doing?” Lee inquired genially, pushing those thoughts back out of his mind.

“Colourin’,” Soh said happily. “Come on, comeseecomesee, I’m even stayin' inside the lines this time, kinda.”

“Maybe a little later, okay?” Lee said, reaching out to pat her head. “I should check in with mom first.” He winked. “And hey, don’t be too worried about those lines. Hate to see you become a conformist.”

“Silly,” Soh reiterated. “I won’t be no confar miss.” With that, she turned and skipped back into the dining room area. Lee headed for the kitchen, where his mother was stirring something in a pot on the stove.

“He’s not coming then?” Lee said, leaning back against the doorframe. It wasn’t really a question.

“No,” his mother admitted, turning to flash her only son a tired smile. “He’s not. His excuse this time was work, keeping him out of town, but Faye’s blaming me as usual. Maybe you can talk with her?”

“I can try,” Lee said. “But not before dinner, I’m afraid. I told some friends I’d bring them something important. I’m only here to grab it.”

“Oh? Then if you’re going out again, can you pick up your grandmother’s medication?” his mother asked. “She was grousing about needing a refill when I got home today.”

“I guess so,” Lee said, scanning over the food on the counter. Looked like spaghetti again. Third time this week.

“You won’t have to use your own money either,” his mother added. “I was paid yesterday, so there’s some cash on top of the fridge.”

Lee nodded, moving to retrieve a couple of bills. “That reminds me, I might be able to work some extra hours at the library in the coming week,” he remarked. “Think the extra income would be of use?”

“Well, your father IS supposed to be sending us another cheque soon,” his mother answered. “But if it’s late again…”

“Gotcha.”

“I’m SO sorry about this, Lee…”

“Hey, no big deal, used to it by now,” Lee said dismissively. He smiled and moved in to give his mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll try not to be gone longer than another hour. Keep some sauce on the stove for me?”

“Will do,” his mother assured.

Lee proceeded out of the kitchen and upstairs; he then pulled down the additional flight of steps leading up to the attic, and continued up to his room. It didn’t take long for him to find the old black box - he knew it had been here somewhere, though he hadn’t realized it had been his end table.

He moved his lamp off the circular panel and picked the object up, turning it around in his hands a couple of times. He absently pulled down on the lever. Nothing happened. “Well, okay, if it’s that important to you guys,” he muttered. “Not like I store tons of stuff on it anyway.”

“How is Carrie?”

“No change,” Luci sighed as she approached him. “Though that does mean no worse. Any sign of Lee yet?”

“Nope,” Clarke replied, turning to glance around the main area of the hospital. “But this is where we agreed to meet, so I figure he’ll be along any minute.”

Luci nodded, turning to look around herself. She frowned. Then took a step back to lean against the wall.

“Luci? I’m sure Carrie will pull through,” Clarke offered up. “She has that sort of personality.”

Luci looked up at the tall blonde again. “Hm?”

“You look worried,” Clarke said. “I’m assuming it’s from seeing Carrie?”

“Oh! Right. Except no. That is…” Luci pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m worried about Carrie, but I have some other things on my mind today too.”

Clarke cocked his head to the side. “You mean like whether we’re going to pull off this whole crazy rescue operation?”

“Yeah…” Luci paused, then reached out to grab Clarke’s shoulder, maneuvering him away from the people nearby. “Maybe I need to talk to someone who’s not Frank,” she decided, glancing briefly back over her shoulder before looking up to meet his gaze. “Clarke - are we doing the right thing here?”

Clarke frowned. “You don’t think we should save Julie?”

“Oh no, it’s not that,” Luci corrected with an immediate shake of her head. “Not even Julie deserved to die this way. It’s more… what if we’re all being manipulated into doing it?”

“Manipulated?” Clarke repeated back, raising an eyebrow.

“Exactly. Think about it,” Luci continued quietly. “This ‘Shady’ guy who spoke to Frank may now be manipulating things - by staying out of them.”

“You already lost me.”

“When Carrie first got her hands on the time machine, Shady didn’t step in with any tips, or helpful pieces of information,” Luci elaborated. “Carrie had carte blanche to do as she liked. Then after she was shot, okay, he made the one call to Frank, but otherwise he has done nothing. This, despite his apparent power to “push” his will onto others. Now, Frank thinks it’s because Shady likes free will, but what if Shady’s been employing some sort of reverse psychology? Maybe he’s the one behind everything, and by trying to save Julie, we’ll end up playing right into his hands!”

She fell silent. Clarke seemed to consider her argument. “Except,” he reasoned, “by that logic, we’d have to second guess everything we do. And even then, if other people are second guessing our second guessing… well, er, it’s all kinda pointless in the end. Right, Luci?”

“I… guess?” Luci wrung her hands in the air. “Yet I’M the one who insisted to Frank that he wait on calling the police - and I can’t even go on the time trip we’re all organizing. So what if I’ve made a mistake? Like I did with Carrie’s personality and Julie’s reactions and what if Frank gets HURT, all because of my stubborn resolve?” She dropped her eyes to the ground. “I know, I know. Silly thing to worry about.”

Clarke reached out to place a hand on Luci’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s not silly at all,” he reassured. “In fact, you’re finally making more sense. I’m thinking you’re not used to being wrong much?”

Luci flinched. “I… it’s atypical, yes.”

“Me, I’m wrong a lot,” Clarke said easily. “And usually, it’s not a big deal, so I keep trying - or if it’s real important, and I’m not sure? That’s when I rely on others to take care of it for me. Heck, sometimes, to score the basket, you have to know when to pass the ball.” He smiled, and patted her shoulder. “Don’t second guess yourself, Luci. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure Frank’s kept safe for you.”

Luci felt her cheeks getting warm again. “I-I’m not ONLY worried about him, y’know…”

“Whoa, there y’are,” Lee said, choosing that moment to make his appearance. “Thought you’d be outside, but then I realized, wait, it is a bit cold for that. Oh, hey short stuff, you involved in this with the high guy too?”

“So to speak,” Luci said. Her attention was immediately drawn to the device in Lee’s hands. “So you DO have it,” she breathed.

Lee held out the black box. “Yeah, this what you were looking for?”

“That’s it,” Clarke confirmed off of Luci’s reaction. She accepted the device, turning it around in her hands a few times. She tried pushing and then pulling on the lever, but nothing happened.

“As I said, it’s broken,” Lee noted.

Clarke nodded. “That’s fine. You want to come with us then? The truth about all this might blow your mind.”

“I can’t,” Lee apologized to them. “Family errand stuff at the pharmacy. Can we delay the big scoop ‘till Sunday? Or whenever works for you?”

He watched as Clarke turned to Luci, who shrugged. “We probably don’t need Lee,” she admitted. “But then who knows what we’ll find in this thing.”

“I will be working at the library again tomorrow,” Lee reminded them. “So you can find me there if you have questions.”

“Okay then,” Clarke said, reaching out to shake his hand. “Thanks very much, Lee.”

“Hope you save those lives you were talking about,” Lee said, shaking back and flashing them both a grin.

“Come on Clarke, let’s get this to Frank’s,” Luci said, already moving off. “Time is of the essence.” Clarke nodded, and the two of them turned to leave the hospital.

Lee watched them go, wondering even more now about this whole affair - but family came first. More to the point, he had to think of a good way of talking to Faye, once he got home.

How was he supposed to explain to her that it wasn’t their mother’s fault dad didn’t visit more often? The man had been trying to distance himself from the family ever since Soh, the fourth King child had been born… but Faye couldn’t see it.

Lee shook his head and walked for the hospital exit. And stopped. Something had caught his eye. He scanned back over the crowd inside the waiting area a bit more closely, his gaze finally settling on a man who was sitting near the door. His quarry immediately pulled his newspaper back up in front of his face, but not before Lee got a good look.

‘That was the same guy from the library,’ Lee realized. ‘The weird cultist who wanted that information on the LaMilles. Huh, so he can dress normal. But why would he be hanging around the hospital now? Is it related to Clarke and Tim… and that box?’

Lee pretended to scan the area a bit more, then shrugged and turned away, hoping to present the illusion that he hadn’t seen whatever he’d been looking for.

‘I’ll mention this to one of those guys the next time I see them,’ Lee decided. ‘Because I’m starting to understand what they mean by this being a big deal…’

Frank rubbed the side of his head. “So, you all want the good news, or the bad news?” he asked.

All the teens that Chartreuse had once dubbed ‘time trippers’ had gathered back in his basement lab, where they had finally managed to pry the lid off the time machine with a crowbar.

“Let’s have the good news,” Clarke said. “About time we had some.”

“Well,” Frank began, looking up from his inspection. “I should be able to reconnect the lever mechanism to the top panel, making the time machine physically functional again.”

“A-And… the bad news?” Tim asked.

“With regard to actually activating it, there’s a couple of rather important circuits missing. Now, I THINK we can replace them too, the same way we did in October…” Frank let out a long breath. “Except the information for doing it was on those sheets of paper Julie grabbed before she left. So we’ll be working from memory.”

“You think Julie took out those circuits on purpose?” Luci speculated. Frank could only shrug.

“Then of course there’s the WORSE news, which is that Corry’s not going to let Laurie come quietly,” Chartreuse moaned. “I’m SO sorry about him finding out, guys. Though, you know, even I’m starting to have second thoughts about Laurie’s involvement.”

“Our work is cut out for us,” Frank said dryly. He cracked his knuckles. “But it’s still Saturday night. We have twenty four hours. So, unless any of you think you’ll be able to assist with repairs on the machine? It’s best for you - and your families - that you go home, and get some sleep. I’ll do what I can overnight, while you all think about Corry. We can regroup tomorrow.”

“I’m staying,” Luci asserted. She continued on before Frank had a chance to protest. “Since I CAN assist with repairs, and more to the point, you’ll need to get some sleep tonight yourself, Frank. Don’t want you traveling into the past tomorrow night without having slept.”

“I guess,” Frank yielded. “Okay. Let’s meet back here tomorrow at noon. Alternatively, if you have any new ideas, or me and Luci make better time on the repairs, we can get in touch.”

The matter was settled shortly thereafter. Not only at Frank’s house, but also in a discussion taking place at the Veniti residence.

PART 38: COMING TOGETHER

Laurie finished shading in her drawing, then leaned back to get a better overall look. The kitten stared up at her from the page with small, sad eyes. “Oh, who am I kidding?” Laurie whimpered. She pushed aside her sketch pad and leaned over her desk, cradling her head in her arms. “Drawing won’t cheer me up. I should get back to my math.”

The redhead reached out and flipped open her textbook, pulling it over and staring down at it blankly. Golly, this unit was hard to figure out! It was bad enough trying to understand math under normal circumstances… now, what with Carrie in the hospital, and Clarke withdrawing, no doubt due to Julie’s disappearance…

“I can’t concentrate,” Laurie wailed aloud. She pushed the textbook away and picked up her pencil again. However, after less than a minute of doodling, Laurie had tossed it aside once more.

“I’ll see what Corry’s up to,” she decided. Heading out of her room, she went down the hall, making a point of knocking on her brother’s door.

“Who’s there?” Corry called out.

Laurie turned the knob and peered around the corner. “Who d’you think?” she answered.

“I said ‘who’s there’ not ‘come in’,” Corry observed dryly, turning away from his own desk. He reached out and hit pause on his music player, cutting off the sound of classical music.

“Close enough,” Laurie said. “I did knock.”

Corry rolled his eyes. “Guess that’s what confused me. Okay little sis, what’s up?”

She didn’t even think to call him out on the ‘little sis’ remark. “Guess I was wondering what you were doing.”

“Finishing my chemistry write-up,” Corry noted. “It’s due soon, and I’ve been putting it off.”

“Oh.” Laurie edged a little further into the room, glancing over at the music player then back at her brother. “So… that was Beethoven, right? One of his symphonies?”

Corry nodded. “Glad to see I’m finally having a positive cultural effect on you.”

“But you only listen to his symphonies to calm down when you’re upset about something,” Laurie pointed out. “So… so does that mean you’re troubled by what’s been happening?”

Her brother looked away. “Troubled? No, I wouldn’t say troubled. It’s been an interesting few weeks, that’s all.”

Laurie leaned back up against the door frame. “Oh.”

He looked back. “Laurie, are you feeling troubled?”

She shifted her weight back and forth. “Maybe.”

“About Julie or about Carrie?” Corry prompted. Laurie didn’t reply, merely shifted back and forth again. Corry sighed. “Look sis, there’s no point in getting all worked up over those two,” he continued. “After all, whatever’s happened with them, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yeah… I know,” Laurie admitted. “Still it’s… well, it’s upsetting, yeah?”

“If you ask me, it’s nonsensical,” Corry countered, annoyance creeping into his tone. “Julie disappearing without a trace? Carrie going stir crazy in the hospital? I don’t get it. Makes no sense. So, better to put it all behind us and move on.”

“But… but how can you just DO that??”

“Simple, look towards the future. Not back at the past. For instance, have you started your math homework yet?”

“Kinda,” Laurie admitted sullenly. “It’s too hard though.”

“Tell you what then,” Corry continued. “Give me a half hour to finish up my stuff here, and then I’ll help you out with it. Okay?”

“O-Okay. I guess.”

Corry smiled reassuringly. “Cheer up, Laurie. Whatever’s happened, I’m sure it will work itself out in time. Until then, we move on with the rest of our lives. I’m sure Clarke would want you to do that, right?”

Laurie pursed her lips, then nodded again. “Yeah. Okay,” she repeated. “See you in half an hour then?”

Corry nodded, and Laurie slipped back out of his room, closing the door behind her. She still couldn’t bring herself to smile though. What was she going to do for the next half hour anyway? Maybe she should call Chartreuse. Yes, that was a good idea, Chartreuse always helped her feel better.

Laurie headed back to her room. However, before she reached it, she heard the doorbell ring. Straining to hear who the visitor was, Laurie heard a familiar voice speaking to her mother.

“Chartreuse, I was just going to call you,” Laurie said, bouncing down the stairs towards her. “Maybe this is one of those psychic ESP things you’ve talked about?”

Chartreuse smiled at her red haired friend. “There must be some good alpha waves going on,” she agreed. “Though I’m kinda here on a mission too. Mind if we, like, have a quick talk about something? In your room?”

As they walked upstairs, Chartreuse debated possible ways to broach the subject of what had happened to Julie. The direct method was probably best. Right? Except Laurie still looked a little distraught. Could she handle direct?

“So, what’s up?” Laurie asked, moving to sit cross-legged on her bed.

“Well, it’s, you know, something very secret,” Chartreuse began tentatively, as she closed Laurie’s bedroom door. She forced herself not to pace back and forth. “Along the same lines as your dream to become a professional animator.”

Laurie’s eyes widened. “But… you’re the only person I’ve ever told that to. Not even Corry knows about it.”

“And he can’t know about this either. Not right away,” Chartreuse asserted. “So promise you’ll, like, keep this quiet forever n' ever, or, um, at least until circumstances change?”

Laurie nodded wordlessly.

Chartreuse took in a deep breath. Yeah, best to simply say it. “Okay then. So, Frank, Carrie and Luci had a time machine. But Julie took it to, like, escape into the past. So now we need your help to get Julie back. You follow that?”

Laurie stared. Her nose crinkled. “Waaaait… TIME machine?? And… me? Why me?”

“It’s got to do with some, you know, tricky spacials stuff. It hinges on the fact that you were born in Miami during the right year,” Chartreuse explained. She was having trouble figuring out if Laurie was more confused or excited.

Laurie’s frown deepened. “But… okay, well, I was obviously only in Miami from May 21st onwards, because birthday, so how does that connect and where did this time machine come from, did Frank and Luci invent it and how did you find out about it, for that matter how long have you known and does this have anything to do with why Carrie’s in the hospital now because oooooooh, golly, hold on, she wasn’t shot because of this machine WAS she, I mean there aren’t international spies running around trying to get it back from you are there, is your life in danger or is Julie’s, or was Julie in on it and is that why she was usually able to best my brother - it could explain some things - though it raises a lot of other questions too and golly I’m not really sure where to begin anymore but give me a second to keep processing this–”

“Laurie, hold on,” Chartreuse cut in quickly as Laurie paused for a lungful of air. At least the nonstop talking was a really good sign. “All your questions will be answered. For right now, what I have to know is… are you willing to help us out? Because it could be dangerous.”

Laurie’s lips pursed. “Seems like if I don’t help, nothing will get better for Carrie or Julie. Right?”

Chartreuse nodded reluctantly. “Probably. But regarding time travel, there’s a lot of stuff we’re still not sure of. So don’t, like, base your decision only on them… you’re hardly close friends.”

“Chartreuse, how long have you known me?” Laurie said indignantly. “If I can help make people feel better, I want to do it. Doesn’t matter if they’ll thank me or not, what goes around comes around, and I know there’s loads of times when I’ve needed people to help me out too.”

“Right… I should have, you know, figured on you saying that,” Chartreuse admitted. She should have found a way to phrase things better.

“So when do we leave?” Laurie asked, uncrossing her legs.

“Whoa, hold on,” her friend protested. “We don’t even, like, have the machine back yet. In fact there’s a lot of stuff still being organized, and… well, we’ll have to talk to your brother first.”

Laurie folded her arms. “Chartreuse, you JUST said that this was a secret that he can’t know about!”

“Welllll… it’s more we don’t want him finding out at a time which isn’t of our choosing,” Chartreuse corrected. “Otherwise he might react badly, given how Carrie and Julie are involved too.”

Laurie shook her head. “That makes NO sense. If you have a time machine, how can it NOT happen at a time of your choosing?” she protested.

“Okay, it’s not as simple as that,” Chartreuse sighed. “Again, we don’t have the machine now, plus I also said this was, you know, tricky and dangerous.”

“But you’ve travelled through time, haven’t you? And you look okay!”

Chartreuse blinked in surprise. “No,” she corrected. “I haven’t done any time traveling yet.”

“Oh.” Laurie thought on that for a moment. “Why not? I thought you’d jump at the chance.”

Chartreuse took a moment to try and phrase things right this time. “The opportunity never really, I don’t know, presented itself.”

“So when the two of us go, it will be your first time too?”

Chartreuse realized she still hadn’t properly explained the situation.

“Laurie, wait. This time trip that we need your help for, it’s very possible that I won’t be able to come along. You’d be with Frank and Clarke,” Chartreuse clarified.

“Oh,” Laurie repeated.

Which was when, looking into Laurie’s innocent green eyes, Chartreuse really began to wonder whether bringing her best friend in on this had been the best idea. If something did happen to Laurie now, would Corry ever be able to forgive her? Would Chartreuse ever be able to forgive HERSELF?

Maybe she should do another vision quest to ensure that Laurie would come through this safely. Though after reading Carrie, another experience so soon after would be quite a strain on her system. And would it even work, since she forecasted the future, while Laurie’s future would be in the past?

“Chartreuse?”

Chartreuse refocussed. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Why can’t you come?” Laurie asked again, softly.

Chartreuse sighed. “More tricky spacials stuff,” she said. “You know Laurie, it’s not too late to back out. We… we might be able to manage without you.” Oh yeah, THAT was convincing.

Laurie bit her lip, yet at the same time she shook her head firmly. “I still want to help,” she declared, although it was apparent that some of her earlier eagerness was being replaced by worry and doubt.

As it should be, Chartreuse reasoned. So why was she starting to feel so bad about this? “Look, Laurie, let’s put the time travel stuff aside for now, okay?” she proposed. “I’ll, like, get back to you on details either later today or tomorrow. All right?”

The redhead hesitated, but ultimately nodded slowly in agreement.

Chartreuse smiled encouragingly. “Great. So, how about some meditative exercises? Might, you know, help to take your mind off of things?”

Laurie shook her head again, surprising her friend. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “That is… maybe later, but right now I think I still want to spend a few minutes thinking about this. By myself. Okay? Maybe you can get us a couple glasses of water?”

Chartreuse looked closely at Laurie’s expression before nodding back. “Okay, sure,” she agreed. “Maybe even some orange juice instead?”

Laurie agreed to that, so after squeezing her friend’s hand supportively, Chartreuse headed out of Laurie’s room and down towards the Veniti kitchen. Yet she had only reached the top of the stairs before a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Chartreuse. We have to talk.”

Chartreuse turned to face Laurie’s brother, offering a quick smile. “Hi Corry!” she greeted him. “Sorry, can’t stop, I…”

The words froze on her lips as she got her first good look at the expression on Corry’s face. It was in that instant that Chartreuse realized that he knew… that he had somehow overheard part of her conversation with Laurie. Oh no. Was he bugging his sister’s room?!

“We have to talk,” Laurie’s twin repeated icily. “Now.”

Chartreuse wondered fleetingly if things could get any worse.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Clarke agreed. “There aren’t ANY useful scientific records for the area and time period in question.”

Tim sighed. “I d-didn’t think there would be much call for small town American newspapers in our library anyway,” he said in resignation. “Still, given you found that one about Julie’s death, it was worth a shot.”

The shorter blond boy sat down at the table in the records room. “So… what now? The internet’s hopeless when you only have vague search terms, and we’ve now exhausted our town library.” He frowned. “What’s even the point in continuing to search like this?”

Clarke flinched. “I beg your pardon, Tim?”

Tim looked momentarily embarrassed. “Oh, d-d-don’t get me wrong. I still want to help Julie, it’s more… well, listen Clarke, what if the time machine we need really IS still around in this present time? Will that do us any good if we learn the machine is still somewhere down in Illinois? Or in Area 51?? We now have less than forty-eight hours to somehow recover it, a-and we can’t do that, we don’t have the resources.”

Clarke paused to consider the blonde boy’s words. “That makes sense,” he yielded. “But if I understand Frank’s logic, once we’re SURE about where the device is, someone could leave town to go there, and then use the machine’s geography to time travel back to here, now, when the rest of us can use it.”

Tim began to drum his fingers on the table. “Yeah, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around those time travel rules. So… so maybe our best move is to ignore them. To play for the chance NOW.”

“You’ve lost me,” Clarke apologized.

“It’s l-like in the game of bridge,” Tim explained. “What if the only way you can make your contract is if your opponents' hearts are split 3-3? Obviously, you play for that chance, since it’s the ONLY way you’ll win. S-So… what if the only way we’ll win here is if the time machine has already found it’s way back to us?” He pushed himself back to his feet.

“Yeah,” he continued, enthusiastically. “We shouldn’t be figuring out where the time machine COULD be. We should start by figuring that it’s already HERE. In town. After all, we’re the source of the problem. And this is where Carrie is. I mean, okay, Luci said we can’t set ourselves up, but why can’t fate or time or something be working on our behalf? Because otherwise… w-well, otherwise we’re wasting time looking for the needle in a haystack.” Tim paused, becoming unsure of himself. “R-Right?”

Clarke couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Tim that animated. But did that mean his reasoning was correct? “Maybe,” he agreed slowly. “But if that’s so, what do we do about it?”

“A local news search,” Tim proposed. “Mysterious arrivals of people or weird things here in t-town over the last seventeen years. Or since the LaMilles arrived. It c-could point us in the right direction.”

“Agreed,” Clarke stated. “It’s worth a shot.” His eyebrow lifted. “By the way Tim, when did you start playing bridge?”

“What? Oh, I d-don’t,” Tim assured him, looking embarrassed again. “But I read a lot, and I enjoy that c-column.” He licked his lips. “For that matter, the whole idea of acting on a chance… I never quite understood it. I mean, if taking the chance could leave you worse off than if you’d done nothing, why do it? But maybe I get it now. Now that it’s important, now that people’s lives are involved - we have to try this. Don’t we?”

Clarke smiled. “We do. Stop doubting yourself, it’s a good thought.” He cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get to it.”

Over an hour later, Tim’s doubts had fully reasserted themselves. They’d tracked back five years, and still hadn’t found anything that looked very promising.

“M-Maybe we need to make it even more personal,” Tim piped up at last. “Could we have missed something ourselves in events over the last month…?”

Before Clarke could answer, the voice of Lee cut in through the book stacks. “Beats me,” the library employee said. “But whatever you’re missing, I hope you find it in the next ten minutes. That’s when the library closes.”

Clarke looked at his watch, then over to Lee as their classmate ambled into view. “Damn. When does the library open again tomorrow?”

“Hours are posted right out front.”

“B-But we need to keep searching these records,” Tim stammered out. “It’s important! C-Can’t you make an exception? Or let us check some of them out tonight?”

“Nope,” Lee said apologetically, as he glanced down at the bound books of newspapers. “Those sorts of papers can’t leave the library. Though you can probably photocopy stuff, if you’re quick enough to avoid my deja vu.”

“Your… what?” Clarke asked.

Lee flashed a grin. “Sorry. You’ve reminded me of this incident over a week ago, when this weird cult-like guy was back here researching newspaper records too. Similar books, also happened as the library was closing. Say, you don’t know the guy, do you?”

Clarke and Tim both shook their heads. “B-But, wait, this guy…” Tim began slowly. “I d-don’t suppose he was reading anything related to a s-strange black box, was he?”

Lee quirked up an eyebrow. “Nope. He was reading up on the LaMilles. Granted, I once got a strange black box from them, but the cultist couldn’t have known that.” He chuckled.

Clarke took a step forwards. “Stop. Lee, you got a black box from the LaMilles?”

“Yeah,” Lee said, gesturing dismissively. “My mom bought it from the LaMille yard sale. You know, that big one their family had soon after moving into the mansion? If you ask me, I think they mixed in some old, broken stuff they’d been keeping in storage along with Linquist’s clutter. Hoping to take advantage of us small town Canadians.”

“Lee,” Tim said, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “What did this black box look like?”

Lee thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, kinda like a flattened jack-in-the-box, except jack never popped up when you yanked the lever. Maybe because the digital readout was broken? Who knows - there weren’t any screws or other means of getting inside to fix the darn thing, so I… uh, did I spill something on myself? Why are you two staring at me like that all of a sudden?”

“Lee, this may be VERY important. Do you know where that box is?” Clarke said, reaching out to take him by the shoulders.

“Somewhere in my house,” Lee said, in obvious confusion.

“C-C-C-C-C-Could we s-s-s-see it?” Tim forced out.

“Maaaaybe,” Lee replied slowly. “Why? What’s this all about??”

Clarke let out a breath he seemingly hadn’t realized he was holding. He smiled at Tim. “It’s about playing for a chance,” he explained. “As well as saving a couple of our classmates’ lives.”

To Tim, it looked like Lee wanted to make some sort of joke. Except the seriousness of Clarke’s tone had him at a loss for words. Tim leaned back in his chair, wondering how everybody else would feel about letting one more person in on their time machine secret.

PART 35: THE WOUNDED

His pencil tapped idly against the pages as he looked down at what he had written. There no longer seemed to be any clear cut way to extract his characters from the situation into which they had been placed.

“I hate it when that happens,” Hank Waterson grumbled. He finally tossed his pencil aside and left his novel behind in the study, figuring he could use something to drink. The phone rang on his way to the kitchen, so he stopped in the hall to answer.

“Hello? Yes, this is Hank Waterson,” he replied absently. His knuckles went white. “There was a what? Where is she?? Oh my God… okay, I-I’ll be right there!”

Slamming the phone back down, Hank turned and charged out of his house, coming back only long enough to grab his car keys.

“Where is she? Where is my daughter?" Hank Waterson demanded as he charged up to the front desk at the hospital, breathing hard.

“Take a moment to calm down, sir," the receptionist advised. “Then tell me your name."

“Mr. Waterson!”

Hank turned to see who had spoken. It was some teenage kid with glasses. No, wait a minute, he knew that guy. Nice kid, they’d met about a month ago. He came to see Carrie every so often, to help her with math. What was his name?

“Frank?” ventured Carrie’s father once he’d managed to catch his breath.

Frank nodded. “They… Carrie’s still in emergency. It’s supposedly not as bad as it looked to me, but…”

“You mean you were there when it happened?”

Frank bit down on his lip as he nodded again. “It all took place so quickly, sir. I-I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do."

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault,” Hank assured, resting what he hoped was a comforting hand on Frank’s shoulder. “If… if possible, I’d like to hear more. Once I’ve checked in with the appropriate people.”

“S-Sure, I’ll be over there,” Frank noted, gesturing to the nearby waiting area.

When Carrie’s father came over a little while later, Frank felt his body tense up. It was fine though, he told himself. He’d repeat the same story that he’d given to the police.

“Good news,” Mr. Waterson said. “They’re doing everything they can for Carrie.” He paused. “There’s every chance she’ll pull through."

“You don’t sound that confident,” Frank pointed out.

“I…" The tall man sighed, and sank down into an adjacent seat. “I guess I’m not,” he admitted. “I mean, they’re doing their best, of that I’m sure. It’s only, I heard similar things after my wife…” He stopped. “You don’t need to hear about that. What DID happen then? It was at your house, I’m told?”

Frank swallowed. Time to lie again. “It’s… all kind of hazy, actually,” he said. “It’s like I told the police, someone got into the house - I guess they were trying to rob us - and they surprised me and Carrie in the sitting room. A couple of shots were fired, the person escaped, and I called 911.”

Carrie’s father nodded, and reached out to touch Frank’s knee. “Thank you for doing that. I’m sure every second counted. Oh, and good to see that you weren’t hurt either," he added. “I suppose this was somewhat traumatic for you too… where are your parents?”

“Around,” Frank said. He’d made them drive him to the hospital, after making a preliminary report for the police. “But I told them I’d feel better without them hovering. I am here with another classmate.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“Me.” As Luci walked up and held out a can of juice from the vending machine towards Frank, Carrie’s father turned his gaze upon her.

Perhaps sensing the older man’s scrutiny, the ponytailed asian girl jerked her gaze back over at him. “Hello, YES?” she said pointedly. Mr. Waterson pulled back at her manner, and Frank belatedly realized they might not have ever met.

“Oh! Er, Luci, this is Carrie’s father… Mr. Waterson, this is, er, Luci Primrose, a mutual friend,” Frank said hastily. He took the proffered juice can from her.

“Luci…” Hank said slowly. “Oh, of course! You’re the young, intelligent one Carrie’s mentioned on occasion.”

“I suppose so,” Luci replied guardedly, still sizing him up.

Mr. Waterson lifted an eyebrow. “Um… Luci, is everything okay? Have I said something wrong?”

Luci shook her head. “No,” she vocalized at last. “It’s only that I’m a bit surprised to see you here.”

“Luci!”

Mr. Waterson raised a hand to forestall Frank’s protest. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

Luci glanced back in Frank’s direction only briefly before looking back at Carrie’s father. “I figured it would take you longer to arrive. After all, from what I’ve been able to learn through Carrie, you never took much of an interest in her.”

Frank stood, aghast. “Luci, maybe we should find my parents and go–”

“No, that’s all right,” Mr. Waterson interrupted with a sigh. “After all, she’s not wrong.”

Frank winced. “Oh, I don’t know…”

“If it takes a life or death situation for me to meet someone’s Carrie’s been spending a lot of her time with, I can hardly claim otherwise, can I?” he retorted wryly. He smiled at Luci. “You certainly share Carrie’s spirit and determination. The two of you must be close.”

The corner of Luci’s mouth twitched, but the elder Waterson missed it, having already looked at the floor. “I fear that ever since her mother left us, me and Carrie have been drifting further and further apart,” he admitted. “It’s on me. I have tried to be the best father I can, yet I seem to make all the wrong decisions at crucial times.”

“I’m sure you’ve always tried your best,” Frank assured, sitting back down. He placed his own hand back on Mr. Waterson’s knee.

“I can still remember back when we had it all worked out,” Carrie’s father continued, seemingly to himself. “My wife worked during the day, while I took care of Carrie and did periodic work on my novels. In the evenings, Elaine would take over at home, while I worked part time at a phone call-in centre. We only really saw each other on the weekends, but at the time, it was enough. It was only supposed to be until we’d raised enough money to give Carrie a good life anyway. The trip to Bermuda, that was going to be the turning point.” He paused. “I guess in a way it was.”

Frank and Luci exchanged looks. “I was sorry to hear about your wife’s disappearance down there,” Frank ventured.

“She TOLD you about that?” Mr. Waterson said, looking back at him with a measure of incredulity. Frank nodded. The adult continued to stare for another few seconds, then returned his gaze to the ground.

“I should have told her myself, back then,” he said. “I simply couldn’t believe it had happened.” He smiled sadly. “It’s funny, really. Before I met Elaine - Carrie’s mother - I’d never even considered marriage. Then after we met, I couldn’t imagine life without her. I always thought that somehow, that meant I’d know if she died… that I’d feel it somewhere. Yet I still haven’t, not to this day.”

Luci cocked her head to the side. “Have you ever expressed those feelings to Carrie?” she wondered.

Carrie’s father shrugged. “She won’t listen. I can’t blame her. For years, I had her convinced that her mother would be coming home. We didn’t even attend the memorial service. I was so sure that Elaine would be found…!” Hank briefly clenched his fist, then let it drop open. “Carrie’s never forgiven me for hiding the truth the way I did. And there’s no way I can make that up to her.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Well, I’m sorry to say this, but you’re probably right,” Luci said at last. “However, that’s no reason to pull away from Carrie. Avoiding her now isn’t helping matters.”

“Avoiding?” he frowned. “Have I been avoiding her? Hm. Perhaps I have been, at that. She’s been reminding me more and more of her mother of late… not only in appearance, but in her willpower, and her drive to shape the world the way she wants… how can one lone man even handle that?” His smile became genuine. “It reminds me of a story my wife once told me, from back when she was young herself. Elaine nearly brought a whole orphanage down to it’s knees.”

Frank sat up straighter, even as Luci blurted out, “Did you say ORPHANAGE?”

Mr. Waterson nodded. “Yes, Carrie’s mother spent the first several years of her life in one. She was left there as a baby, never knowing who her real parents were… a bit of a shame, really.” Hank stopped at the expression on Luci’s face. “I’m sorry Luci, now I HAVE said something wrong.”

“N-No,” Luci stammered out, shaking her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Luci doesn’t know who her real parents are either,” Frank offered up.

“Oh. Well, you seem to be dealing with it all right, that’s good to see,” Carrie’s father said. He paused as he caught sight of his watch. “But look at me, babbling on endlessly to the two of you when you should be getting back home. I can keep your families updated with information, so there’s no need for you to stay here personally. Dijora and… Primrose, was it?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. Still, it didn’t feel right to leave.

Mr. Waterson seemed to pick up on his hesitation. “They probably won’t even let you see Carrie, outside of visiting hours,” he pointed out. “Go. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?” Luci challenged.

This time, Carrie’s father didn’t flinch back from Luci’s scrutiny. “Because after losing my wife - I’ll be damned before I let anyone take my daughter away from me too.”

Frank tossed the empty juice container into the trash receptacle. He and Luci had moved out of line of sight of the elder Waterson. “Okay Luci, what’s on your mind?” he asked. She’d had that partly thoughtful, partly annoyed look on her face for several minutes now.

“You want Issue A first, or Issue B?”

“Issue B,” Frank said. He was pretty sure he knew what “A” involved.

“Fine. The bit about Carrie’s mother being an orphan? It reminded me of Linquist,” Luci stated.

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Linquist did come to my mind too. Except Carrie’s mother disappeared over thirteen years ago. Even if Linquist was checking over adoptees back then, which seems unlikely given how his interest is more recent, what are the odds that his crazed ravings are in any way connected to fact, let alone to her? And could he really have made an entire plane vanish?”

“It’s unlikely,” Luci yielded. “You’re right, of course.” She frowned. “Just a funny feeling, that’s all.” She fell silent for another few moments. “Okay. So. Did you tell Mr. Waterson about Julie?”

Frank let out a long breath. Back to Issue A. “No,” he admitted. “Luci, we need to keep that quiet."

Luci shook her head. “Frank, WHY?” She paused to make sure there was no one in earshot before whispering, “Julie shot Carrie! Should we defend that simply because she escaped into the past with our time machine?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Frank protested. “It’s as I told you before the ambulance showed up. Julie was acting funny.”

“Frank, Julie’s never been normal. Remember the flyer?”

Frank shook his head. “No, listen, the whole incident didn’t make sense.” He slapped his index finger into his palm, deciding he had to justify this as much to himself as he did to her. “First, Julie arrived at my place totally calm and collected. Then she was shaking like a leaf. Why?” He added a second finger. “Second, she shot at Carrie knowing I was there and could I.D. her, yet she took no direct action against me - not until I provoked her. None of which sounds like a typical Julie plan.”

Luci opened her mouth as if to interject something, but Frank kept talking, adding a third finger to his tally. “Third, and most importantly, what on earth was her motive? Why shoot Carrie, and then decide to undo, well, everything? Why not simply avoid shooting anyone in the first place, meaning there’s nothing to undo?”

Luci stared, seemingly wondering if he was going to add another point. “So, what, you think Julie was set up?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted, spreading his arms out, wondering if he sounded as frustrated as he felt. “So until we DO know something, we keep Julie’s name out of it. There was a robber. You didn’t get to my house in time to see anything, and then you came here to the hospital. End of story.”

Luci rubbed her nose. “For THIS, you don’t compromise,” he heard her mumble. She looked back up at him before he could think to comment. “Okay, look. You HAVE to realize that as soon as Carrie regains consciousness, Julie’s name is going to come up.”

Frank nodded. “True. But this delay? Will give me enough time to talk with Clarke.”

“With…” Luci’s vexed look became thoughtful. “Hm. What do you think Clarke knows? How much are you planning on telling him about what happened? Are you going to mention the time machine?”

“Clarke gets the whole story.” Frank rubbed the back of his head. “So I’ll have to mention the time machine. But as you pointed out to Tim a few days ago, we’re pretty sure Clarke knows already.”

Luci nodded. “True enough.” The young girl rocked on her heels for a moment. “And the only person who might object is Carrie, and she can’t exactly vote right now. Thing is, if you’re right? If someone blackmailed Julie into what she did? Something big is going on. Maybe bigger than we can handle."

“Hey, if you have other options, I’m open to suggestion.”

Luci opened her mouth to respond, but ultimately shook her head. “Nothing comes to mind,” she sighed. “I’ll keep thinking though.”

“Okay,” Frank agreed. “I’ll let you know how it goes with Clarke.” He glanced over towards the clock. “So unless there’s anything else…?”

Luci started to shake her head in the negative, but then she grimaced. “Okay, yeah, one other thing I want to ask.”

“Sure, Luci, anything.”

The young girl pursed her lips. “Carrie and me, we’re not so alike, are we? I mean, we’re not ‘close’, like her father said, right? After all, she’s so… so… while I’m so… I mean, I’m not like her, am I?”

Frank felt at a loss as to what the actual question was there. “Not really. Why, does something about the comparison bother you?”

“It annoys me that her father said we were close, within minutes of my first meeting him,” Luci said. She crossed her arms. “I mean, you don’t think I’m going to be like Carrie two years down the road, right?”

Frank grinned, as he tried to picture Luci spinning her hair in her fingers and batting her eyelashes, trying to get random boys in the hall to carry her books for her. “Trust me, Luci,” he said reassuringly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Lee whistled absently as he finished reshelving the last of the books. A quick glance at his watch told him he was just in time, the library would be closing in another two minutes. “Another day, another dollar,” he remarked aloud. He quickly wheeled the book trolley back to the rear of the building, resisting the urge to ride on it.

It was as he walked back to the stairs that some movement caught his eye back in the records section. “‘lo?  Anyone there?” Lee called out.

He saw the movement again and decided to check it out. “Hello?” he called out again. “Library’s closing in under a minute, get going while the getting going’s good.”

There seemed to be a figure standing in the shadow of the main shelves. “Time’s up today, buddy,” Lee continued. “Come back tomorrow.” The figure didn’t respond. “Look, I can totally see you,” Lee observed. “And the library is closed, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The figure finally stepped forwards. It was a person wearing a cowl which concealed their face; Lee couldn’t make out any features. “You are going to do something for me now,” he - it was a male voice - said. “Listen carefully. You will turn around, and forget that you ever saw me. Understand?”

“Uh huh,” Lee replied. “Sure, buddy. You been reading ‘Hypnotism for Dummies’? Come on, I’m serious, library’s closed.”

The figure stepped closer. “I SAID, you will turn around, and forget that you ever saw me,” he repeated. “Understand?"

Lee rolled his eyes. “Hey, Judy,” he shouted out, hoping the head librarian would hear. “We’ve got a stowaway back here. Looks to be part of some weird cult.”

Said stowaway quickly reached up and pushed back his hood, allowing Lee to take in the features of a nondescript thirtysomething male with longish, dark hair. “I am not part of a weird cult,” the man said in obvious irritation.

Lee grinned. “Customer’s always right, of course. I simply call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The man glared. “You have a very closed mind, and little to no understanding of what’s really going on around you.”

“Yeah, that’s what my friends always say. Now, are you gonna leave the library or not? You can always come back tomorrow, you know. This is how libraries work.”

“Oh, very well,” came the grudging reply. “What time do you open?”

“Hours are posted out front,” Lee said automatically. The man let out another quiet grumble and began to move past him. “Oop, hold on,” Lee remarked, extending his hand to block the way. “That a book of bound newspapers in your hand? Those can’t leave the library, sorry.”

The man turned. “I need some of these articles.”

“Well, take a snapshot or photocopy them,” Lee replied. The man nodded and moved off towards the photocopier station. “But not now,” Lee added. “Seeing as the library closed five minutes ago.”

“You really are trying my patience.”

“Is there a problem here?” came a new, female voice.

Lee turned to see the head librarian approaching. “No problem, Judy,” he assured her. “Whatzizname here was looking to photocopy old newspaper clippings, except he left it a bit late.”

Judy nodded. “Right, the photocopiers will have powered down by now,” she stated. “Can you come back tomorrow, sir?”

“Oh, well, fine!” the thirtysomething said. He tossed the book of bound newspapers angrily into Lee’s arms, with enough force to make Lee stumble, then stalked off towards the stairwell.

‘Now there,’ Lee mused, ‘goes a guy accustomed to getting his own way.’

“I’ll follow him to make sure he gets out,” Judy said. “Can you possibly reshelve that volume before you leave yourself?”

Lee nodded. “No problemo,” he affirmed with a grin and a thumbs up. Judy smiled back and headed off, while Lee quickly tracked down the proper place for the records he was holding.

It was as he was sliding them in that he noticed a piece of paper sticking out. Likely a bookmark of sorts. Vaguely curious, Lee pulled the volume back out and flipped open to the page in question. He frowned.

The three year old headline referred to the recent purchase of their town’s biggest house, by a wealthy out-of-town family.

“Bizarre,” Lee murmured. “Why’s a creepy dude like that reading up on the LaMille history?” After a moment of thought, Lee shrugged, replaced the volume, and returned to the library’s front desk to sign out.

(How bad are the site stats? I've added an index page and I'll draw less, I guess?)

PART 26: TIME ZONES

“What do you mean Chartreuse ran off for lunch with Laurie?” Julie said, slamming her locker shut. “You said you could speak with Corry’s sister during Home Ec.”

“Sorry, Julie – the mystic beat me to the punch,” Carrie apologized. “You think maybe she used her weird powers to sense the future?”

“Hmph. I’m not wholly convinced she can do that,” the brunette grumbled. “Anyway, it’s irrelevant. Damn it, Carrie, the one week me and Corry have rescinded our truce in order to make a play for the freshmen – and now I can’t maneuver Corry’s sister into whatever trap he had planned for me?"

“Look, I’m sorry. I thought you had a backup plan."

“Oh, of course I do, but nothing else will be quite so satisfying,” Julie sighed. The two girls walked in the direction of the cafeteria.

“We could always go somewhere else for lunch,” Carrie suggested. Julie gave her a look. “Or not,” the blonde amended hastily.

“We’re not running away,” Julie stated firmly. “No, Corry is sure to try and show me up at the start of lunch. All we’ll need is…”

“Frozen yogurt?”

Julie paused long enough to turn and regard the person who had spoken to her. “I beg your pardon?” she said with exaggerated patience.

“Want me to buy you a frozen yogurt, rich witch?” Lee said easily, leaning against the wall beside the cafeteria. “It would go nicely with your icy attitude today.”

Yet Lee was not so easily dissuaded. “Aw, I’m hurt, track tease,” he protested, following the girls into the cafeteria. “Can’t you two take a joke? Look, I’ll buy you some fries instead, to make up for it.”

“We need vigilance, Carrie," Julie said, pointedly ignoring Lee while maintaining a wary eye on her surroundings. “This first week is critical, we can’t afford any slip ups."

“Are you saying you’d prefer bananas? They do say you are what you eat," Lee piped up again. “Here, mind if I join you two?” Without even waiting for an answer, Lee slipped past the girls to sit down on Julie’s usual bench.

It collapsed under his weight, dropping him unceremoniously to the floor. Julie’s eyebrows shot up, and she took a few quick steps backwards as all around them, heads turned and stared.

“It’s all right! I’m fine,” Lee said, glancing around and offering the crowd a quick wave. He tried to use the table to prop himself back up, but it too fell apart as soon as he’d put enough weight on it. “Aha,” Lee concluded from the ground. “School’s gotta do something about these termites.”

Having edged a respectable distance from the action, Julie turned her gaze slowly in the direction of her redheaded nemesis. He was watching the proceedings with a frustrated look on his face. Nodding slowly in understanding, Julie plucked at the sleeve of Carrie’s shirt and went to sit at a different table. Julie continued to watch as Lee struggled to his feet again. His eyes went towards one corner of the cafeteria.

Julie followed Lee’s gaze. There was a young asian girl there, her hair done up in two ponytails. Luci Primrose. As Julie stared, the young girl gave a thumbs up to Lee, then beckoned to Julie before walking out of the area.

Julie stood. “Carrie, watch my stuff,” she ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, Luci,” Frank said as the young girl exited the cafeteria right in front of him. “Hi! How are you doing with things around the school today?”

Luci seemed to flinch away from him. “Oh, ah, I’m fine,” she said, glancing furtively back at the cafeteria doors.

Frank nodded. “Oh, good. Actually, I wondered if yesterday I was a bit, I don’t know, abrupt with you, so I was thinking, if you want to talk about stuff again some time, like schoolwork…"

“Frank, it’s not a good time,” Luci interrupted. “I’m meeting someone. Later, okay? I’ll get back to you.”

“Oh, er… sure,” Frank agreed, even as Luci brushed past him to head down the hall. He watched as Julie strode out of the cafeteria moments later, following after.

He nearly fell into step behind them, before deciding that it obviously wasn’t any of his business. More to the point, Luci seemed to be fitting in just fine without his help. He went in to have lunch by himself.

Of all the times for Frank to approach her, it had to be RIGHT then? Luci sighed. She’d avoided speaking with Frank thus far, figuring that it would only complicate matters even more than they were already. What with her being a time traveling version of herself. But given that encounter, was it any wonder that they hadn’t hit it off initially?

Luci shoved those thoughts aside as Julie caught up with her outside the library. “All right Luci, what’s your game?” the brunette demanded, hands on her hips.

“To get your attention," Luci replied evenly. “I’m glad to see you recalled our earlier conversation.”

Luci didn’t add that she had engineered things today by playing the odds. Namely telling Chartreuse to take Laurie out for lunch, followed by steering the one person who could defuse ANY situation into hanging close to Julie. Thank goodness Lee was such a good sport.

As if she was reading Luci’s thoughts, Julie fired back, “If you think I’m going to be impressed because of how you got Lee to act out, that’s normal for him. He’s also a sucker for hard luck cases such as yourself. So don’t start making demands of me.”

“Don’t I get some added respect for preventing a humiliating incident for you in there?”

“No. Because I would have checked the bench, and that should have been Laurie, not Lee. In fact, for all I know, you’re the reason Chartreuse got Corry’s sister out of the way today,” Julie countered. “You succeeded here only because I didn’t factor you in. Furthermore, as to any plot against me tonight, I’ve checked with certain sources and found no indication.”

Julie had checked. Luci seized on that. “Are you saying you don’t want to listen to a potential recruit here? One who has information so secret that not even your sources are aware of it yet?”

Julie grimaced. They stared at each other. Two seconds became five, then ten… “Listening,” Julie said, grudgingly.

Gotcha. “Thank you,” Luci said with a partial smile. “So, you know how Clarke is planning on coming over tonight? Well, he won’t. And I think it would be in your best interests to find out why, by being at his place at 8pm.”

Julie’s eyebrow twitched. “What are you implying?” she challenged.

“You’ll find out at 8pm,” Luci countered smoothly. “That is, assuming you don’t ask Clarke in advance, or tell anyone else about this conversation. Not even Carrie. If you did, I’m sure certain plans would… change.”

“Is that so,” Julie said, folding her arms across her chest. “Is this related to another of Corry’s plots?”

“8pm,” Luci repeated inscrutably.

Julie glared again, but it quickly became obvious to her that Luci wasn’t going to budge. “Fine,” the brunette concluded in irritation. “But don’t think that jerking me around is going to earn you special privileges.” She spun on her heel and stalked back towards the cafeteria.

Once she was out of sight, Luci sank back against the wall. ‘I cannot believe I pulled that off,’ she thought. ‘Thank goodness there’s only a few more details to fix up.’ Pausing only long enough to rub her temples, Luci went to find Clarke.

“You’re sure Julie asked me to bring you to her house?” Carrie grumbled. “Because she never said anything about it to me.”

It was a quarter to eight that night. Luci and Carrie were on their way over to the LaMille mansion. At this point, Luci could only hope that the timing of the situation would work out. “Trust me,” she reassured her blonde companion. “It’s part of some master plan. And you know Julie and her plans.”

Carrie sniffed. “Even so, she usually gives me more information. Well, I think she does. Look, you’re sure I wasn’t supposed to call ahead?”

“Positive. Make a phone call to Julie, it will put the whole plan in jeopardy,” Luci insisted. “Don’t worry, it’s not like anything bad can happen at her place, right? She has a butler and security and stuff.”

“I guess,” Carrie yielded. “But I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t try anything funny.”

“Perish the thought.” They walked the last two blocks in silence. Getting to the front door of the LaMille mansion wasn’t actually difficult - if you didn’t mind being under surveillance - the sticking point was how Jeeves would never let anyone in, unless they had an appointment, or he knew them personally. Fortunately for Luci, Jeeves knew Carrie.

“Yes?” the LaMille butler said archly as he opened the front door.

Carrie smiled broadly. “Heya Jeeves! I’m here with Luci, Julie’s expecting us.”

Jeeves frowned. “Is that so? Because Miss LaMille left about five minutes ago and gave no word.”

“Oh…?” Carrie turned to look suspiciously at Luci.

“Julie’s very busy with a lot of things right now, it must have slipped her mind,” Luci suggested. “Maybe we can wait in the sitting room for her? I’m sure she won’t be gone long.”

There was a pause as Carrie glanced back and forth between Luci and Jeeves. “You ARE putting in a good word for me with Michelle, right?” the blonde athlete asked.

“I… I’ll try,” Luci agreed. Even as she said it, she knew she had no recollection of ever having done so. But given the stakes here, this wasn’t the time to quibble over social niceties. No wonder Carrie would harbour a grudge.

Carrie nodded. “We’ll wait inside.”

The butler inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement before ushering them in. Luci would have let out a sigh of relief, if only there weren’t so many other things that could still go wrong.

“Surprise,” Julie said, hands on her hips and one foot tapping on the ground. “I bet you weren’t expecting to find me here.”

“Oh! Well, no,” Clarke admitted. He opened his front door a little wider. “I mean, I’m just on my way out. Is there a problem…?”

“Depends where you’re going,” Julie countered. “I know it’s not to my place.”

“No, it’s to the cafe. Tim’s been concerned about some new rumour about me leaving town, so I’m meeting with him now. I can still drop by your house tomorrow. Did Luci not pass on that message? I mean, it was her idea for me to meet with Tim in the first place.”

“It was…” Luci. In that instant, everything clicked. Plot against her indeed. It was a plot by Luci! “I may have misunderstood what she said,” Julie realized. “My apologies, Clarke - I have to get back home now. Thank you for your help here.”

“Uh, any time,” Clarke replied.

Julie supposed his confusion was natural, but she had to no time to explain. Luci was in big trouble! Julie pulled out her cell phone.

The doorbell rang at the LaMille house at the same time as the phone. Being closer to the door, and knowing that their answering machine would pick up, Jeeves answered the former. He found a teenager wearing glasses waiting on the other side.

“Uh, hi,” the visitor said. “Is Carrie Waterson here?”

“Who should I say is calling?” Jeeves inquired.

“Frank Dijora,” Frank replied. “I mean, I hope I’m not disturbing, but I got this note, I think maybe from Carrie, saying that I should come here at this time, and that I’d know what it was about… so I’ve come to find out if I really do know and, uh, well, can you maybe tell Carrie that I’m here?”

“No need, I can hear that you’re here,” came Carrie’s voice. “The question is WHY?”

Jeeves turned to see the blonde approaching from down the hall. He stepped aside in deference to her. The phone stopped ringing, so he continued to observe them.

“Well, as I say, I got a note,” Frank replied, sizing Carrie up as she reached the doorway.

“That’s both unoriginal and pathetic,” Carrie said haughtily. “Either you’re being pranked, and your gullibility is impressive, or you can’t think of a good excuse to save your life. Tell me Frank, why would I ever want to see you?”

Frank shrugged feebly. “Uhm, I don’t know. To learn about time travel?”

Carrie sized him up in turn. “Don’t be stupid. Why would I care about science fiction stories?”

“Right, of course. I’m going,” Frank said hastily. As he started to turn, there was a loud thumping noise from upstairs.

Jeeves frowned. “Mimi’s out shopping. Carrie, is your friend Luci still in the sitting room?”

“No, I was taking her to the washroom when I heard my name out… oh, hell,” Carrie gasped.

“Miss Waterson, how well do you know that girl?”

Carrie closed one hand into a fist. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill both of you,” she amended, jabbing a finger at Frank.

“What?” Frank said in confusion.

“You both knew I’d be curious as to why a geek was calling for me at Julie’s. You and Luci set me up, so she could get away. Jeeves, hold Frank here while I find the short one.” The blonde sprang for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“Come in and stand right there,” Jeeves asserted.

Frank edged in, looking nervous. “Ah, so, Luci’s here too?” he said in what Jeeves judged to be genuine bewilderment.

‘I can’t believe this is working,’ Luci mused she crept down the hallway of the third floor. ‘Of course, by involving Frank, he’ll now think I’m with Julie, even as I’ll think he was connected to my memory loss… amazing how one single day can screw up a person’s life.’

The light from her pocket flashlight cut out, reminding her there was still time for things to go wrong. When shaking it didn’t work, she risked banging it against the wall. It didn’t help, and she knew turning on lights would only advertise her location. ‘At least I’m nearly at the right room,’ she realized, quickening her pace.

Except the records room was locked. Luci couldn’t believe how she’d overlooked such a tiny detail. She could now hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs down the hall.

“Think, Luci, THINK,” the young girl hissed to herself. “Use this high powered brain of yours.”

Before the LaMilles had bought this mansion, it had belonged to one Professor Linquist, and he’d been eccentric… hadn’t there been an old rumour about secret passages? Could she find one to hide in?

Luci frantically pressed a few spots around the doorframe, ran her hands over the wall and pushed aside a plant in a nearby alcove. Underneath the plant was a key. Muttering a prayer of thanks, Luci snatched up the key and jumped back to the door. The key fit the lock.

The next problem she faced was the complete darkness inside the records room. There were no windows, and without her flashlight, Luci knew she would never find what she needed in time. However, on a table by the door Luci could barely make out a candle and a box of matches. So there were still some temporal deities looking out for her.

“Come out, come out,” Carrie said through clenched teeth as she stalked down the hall. She opened another door, flicking on the light. No one there.

Well, Luci couldn’t hide forever, she didn’t know the layout of the house as well as Carrie did. Though the girl HAD known enough to get to the upper floors via the back staircase… was she working with inside information? How? Obtained through Corry?

‘If this is one of his plots, I am SO dead,’ Carrie realized. As much as she hated to admit it, while her alliance with Julie had its advantages, the need for her to constantly be on guard at certain times of the year was bothersome. On the other hand, Frank’s added presence implied Corry was not a factor - so far, that geek was unaligned.

Another room, and again nobody. Carrie forced herself to calm down - and in doing so, she realized that her systematic approach here was all wrong. She hurried back to turn off the light in the hallway, then scanned the darkness for anything unexpected. Nothing. No, wait - a flickering light coming from underneath the door at the end of the hall. Weren’t old records kept in there or something?

Carrie ran down the hall. As she reached for the doorknob, she heard a voice exclaim, “I’ve got it!” Without hesitation, Carrie threw her weight against the door, bursting into the room.

The lights weren’t on, so Carrie only saw the shadowy figure as she stumbled on top of her. Both girls tumbled to the floor, a candle and file folder falling to the ground next to them.

Carrie immediately seized the advantage, pinning down her adversary. “All right Luci, who are you working for?” the blonde demanded.

Luci met her gaze. “You, in a way,” she replied after a moment’s thought.

“I think not,” Carrie scoffed.

“This will make more sense in about fourteen months.”

Which was when the candle set fire to the dossier.

As Julie flipped on the third floor lights, she was greeted by the sight of an open door with smoke billowing out, followed by Carrie bursting out of a nearby bathroom with a basin full of water. The blonde charged into the smoky room, and by the time Julie had made it that far, Carrie seemed to be stamping out the last of some smouldering papers.

“I am waiting to hear your explanation for this with great anticipation,” Julie said dryly, surveying the damaged area. It didn’t look that bad - whatever had caught fire had been thrown into the metal wastebasket and subsequently drowned before the flames could spread. Still, those acts had rendered the pages completely unreadable. She desperately hoped it wasn’t something her parents considered important.

“It was that Luci girl,” Carrie said angrily, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. “She got away after the fire started… we’ve got to go after her!”

Julie held up a hand to stop her companion from rushing out. “What’s your hurry?” she said calmly. “It’s only us here. I sent Frank away, Jeeves is watching the front door, and even if Luci gets out the back, we know where to find her tomorrow. Please, take a moment to enlighten me.”

Carrie went into a hurried explanation, which became slower and more detailed as Julie asked her a number of pointed questions. Ultimately, the brunette leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms and thinking.

“So, you don’t think Luci left with any papers?” she mused.

“Not unless she put something in her pockets before I arrived,” Carrie said. “Which is unlikely, as it sounded like she only found whatever it was she wanted as I got here.”

Julie nodded. “In that case, our choice is clear. We do nothing.”

“We WHAT?”

“Think, Carrie,” Julie said patiently. “I make a big scene over this, and Corry’s going to figure out that I got duped by some twelve year old girl. I need time to gather more information on this Luci, so as to stop underestimating her. In fact, it won’t be difficult to cover up this incident completely. Frank is unlikely to say anything, Clarke wasn’t involved directly, and only you and Jeeves even saw Luci enter the house. My suggestion? Put it out of your mind.”

“But that little girl - she PLAYED us! What if she sells whatever information she got?” Carrie protested.

“Without anything on paper, it’s her word against mine. Besides, the family records in this room are hardly as incriminating as the files on the school that I keep downstairs.”

Julie reached out to touch Carrie’s shoulder. “Carrie, this week we need to stay focussed on Corry and the Grade Nine freshmen. Luci’s a wild card. We’ll deal with her in time. Consider, I could ultimately discover her motivations by swinging her over to our side.”

Carrie shifted her weight back and forth from one leg to the other. “I… I guess that makes sense. But damn it, I bet she isn’t going to talk to Michelle at all, the scheming little know-it-all.”

“Come on, Carrie,” Julie said calmly. “You’ve rubbed some soot on your face. Go clean it off while I tidy up in here.”

“Aha, here you are,” a voice said, cutting through the stillness of the ravine.

Luci jumped back onto her feet, spinning around - only to see the face of Frank Dijora behind her. She let out a long breath of relief. “Damn it, Frank, don’t sneak up on me like that,” she accused, jabbing out her finger.

Frank took a step back. “Sorry,” he apologized. “But it’s almost 9:15. I was starting to get worried as to where you were.”

Luci looked down at her watch. “Shoot, I lay down and lost track of time. I’m the one who’s sorry. Did you have any trouble with, uh, me?”

“Nope. I left your past self up in the park. Kept an eye out from behind a tree until she regained consciousness. The younger Luci looked around, and then marched off home.” He cleared his throat. “So, were you able to discover…?”

Luci smiled. “I have the name,” she reassured him, tapping the side of her head. “Also an address we can use as insurance. Funny thing, remember the small fire that messed up the files we needed? Carrie just inadvertently helped me to cause it. It happened today.”

Frank frowned. “Hold on. If by traveling back here we helped to cause the fire, while it was partly due to the fire that we came back here…”

“It’s another of Carrie’s causal loops,” Luci concurred. “But I saw no choice but to involve her in this day. You too, actually. Um, sorry for that.”

Frank stared. “Wait, so THIS was the day…” He ran a hand back through his hair. “Huh. Kinda makes a person stop and think, doesn’t it. I mean, how many weird, unexplainable moments in our lives could be due to interference from future versions of ourselves?”

Luci shrugged and reached out to touch the black box Frank was holding. “One thing at a time. We still have to fix our present, before it’s no longer there to be fixed.”

“Right,” Frank agreed. He pulled a coin out of his pocket.

Thirteen year old Luci Primrose spun her pencil around on her fingers a few times, before finally bringing it down onto the page of her diary.

‘’I have found no explanation yet as to how I lost my memory for twenty-four hours.’’ she wrote. ‘’I haven’t told anyone, lest they pin it on stress and try to shove me back into Grade 9 or something. Instead, I’ve been trying to put the pieces together by observing my classmates this week. To wit:

‘‘Frank Dijora is… interesting. And kinda cute.’’ She erased the last sentence. ‘‘But despite his seeming confusion, he’s tops on the list of those who may be responsible for my missing day. Meanwhile, one Carrie Waterson has acquired a grudge against me. That might be due to my dislike of her friend Julie LaMille, and their apparent feud with Corry Veniti. But maybe it’s more? Since Lee and Chartreuse said I’d been speaking with them about the feud too. They didn’t know why. Fortunately, they’re nicer. If weird. Lee’s started calling me “short stuff”.’’ Luci nibbled on the end of her pencil.

‘‘I still don’t know who to approach for a friend. Maybe I should stick to this observing for a while? Seeing as it’s the opening of my big mouth which gets me into trouble. That, and being the wrong age. Gods, if only my body would catch up to my mind. Damn it!’’ She sighed, spinning the pencil furiously around her fingers again. ‘‘Oh well. Here’s hoping for a better future.’’

Luci put her pencil aside and snapped her diary closed - wondering idly how her upcoming year of high school would stack up against someone who had actually experienced Grade Nine. The way the rest of her current classmates all had, one year ago.

At that time, she had no way of knowing how much impact those Grade Nine experiences of Julie and Corry would end up having on future events.

PART 23: ROCK BOTTOM

Principal Dell Hunt rose, his gaze shifting away from Carrie and onto the new arrival in his office. “Excuse me…?” he said pointedly.

“It’s Chartreuse. Chartreuse Vermilion.”

“Yes, I am aware of who you are. Am I to understand that you are claiming responsibility for what was discovered?” The principal waved off the office staff member who was now standing uncertainly at the door. She nodded and left, closing the door again behind her.

“That’s correct, sir,” Chartreuse said. “Though in fact, I don’t own the drugs either. So, well, okay, like, you might want to take a seat, this is sort of complex what I’m about to say.”

Mr. Hunt slowly sank back down into his chair. “I had a feeling.” He gestured at the seat next to Carrie.

Chartreuse moved to sit down as she spoke. “See, I actually found the bag in question this morning on my way to school. I thought ‘whoa! I’d better, you know, turn these in somewhere’ so I put them in my bookbag."

“In your bookbag.”

“Yes, sir, just temporarily. I figured I’d better get them out of the area lest the dealer, like, double back and retrieve them.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Hunt said dryly. “And where was it that you found this bag?”

Chartreuse lifted an eyebrow…

Carrie simply blinked at Chartreuse in confusion. Chartreuse lifted an eyebrow, jerking her head in the direction of the principal.

“Oh,” Carrie said at last, turning her gaze back to Mr. Hunt. “Well… sir, you of course remember how I said I had never seen that bag before? I’d forgotten that Chartreuse had given me a package to put in my locker. It contained something she said she’d found in the ravine earlier, that must have been the bag.”

“Right, I found it in the ravine,” Chartreuse confirmed. “I took a walk through the ravine before school. Part of a thigh building exercise.”

Carrie fired a glare back towards Chartreuse, who shrugged. Mr. Hunt folded his arms across his chest. “And why is it you never got around to reporting this until now?”

“Ah. Good question,” Chartreuse agreed. “In fact, I was… going to be late for class. Because of, you know, being in the ravine. I didn’t even have time to get to my locker. Which is why I, like, tossed my stuff into Carrie’s locker.”

“We both forget after that,” Carrie remarked.

“Totally,” Chartreuse affirmed.

The principal looked back and forth between the two girls. “Ms. Vermilion,” he finally stated, “I believe you missed my introductory remarks to the effect of telling the truth.” Chartreuse looked down at the floor, abashed.

“However, I can recall no troubling incidents with you of late. Thus I must ask, how DID you know why Ms. Waterson was called down? And why the outburst on her behalf?”

“I can’t explain, sir,” Chartreuse murmured. “It all, like, relates to a personal matter.”

Mr. Hunt remained quiet for a time. “Perhaps I should simply suspend the both of you while we let the authorities figure this out,” he remarked. Neither girl replied. There was more to this than met the eye - but then, he’d known that after seeing the Waterson girl’s initial reaction.

The real question was, would a suspension get them any closer to the truth? The principal steepled his fingers and turned his chair away to face the window.

“Two weeks detention for each of you,” he concluded. “Effective immediately, so you will both now report to the detention room. Don’t make me regret this decision. If, during these two weeks, I hear of any negative reports concerning either of you, there WILL be suspensions involved. Please use the opportunity to resolve your ‘personal matters’ - in the guidance office if necessary.”

In the reflection of the window glass, he saw Carrie’s look of surprise. “Understood, sir,” she said.

“Thank you, sir,” Chartreuse chimed in, looking relieved.

“Now then, one of you please tell Ms. LaMille to come in on your way out,” Mr. Hunt added, turning back towards them and opening his desk drawer.

The two girls departed his office.

Upon seeing Julie outside, Carrie immediately averted her gaze and walked out of the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chartreuse jerk her thumb at the principal’s door and remark, “You’re, like, up next.” The pink haired girl then hurried to catch up.

“Carrie,” Chartreuse whispered as they walked out the main office doors. “What was that about?”

Carrie spun. “Yes, what WAS that about?”

“I asked first.”

“Why did you jump in to my rescue?” Carrie said, ignoring Chartreuse’s comment. “I never asked you to do that.”

“I know. But when I found out, I just couldn’t, like, sit back and do nothing. Besides, we ended up an okay team, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, great. What exactly were you expecting from me in return?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nope. It’s not always about you - see, there’s these powerful forces at work,” Chartreuse explained. “Meaning you should probably, you know, just take it easy for a few weeks, as the principal indicated. It might do you some good actually, your aura looks to be unbalancing.”

“My…” Carrie pressed a hand to her forehead. “Oh God, I’ve sunk so low I’m getting advice from the school psychic,” she realized.

“So, what was the deal there?” Chartreuse pressed. “Corry?”

“Who else?” Carrie said bitterly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m obviously at the point in my life where I need to go and crawl into a small hole and die. Give my regards to anyone who actually cares.”

“Aw, Carrie, you’re not skipping our detention, are you?” Chartreuse countered. “After Hunt was kind enough to give us that out?”

Carrie nearly said yes. Except… doing so might have repercussions for Chartreuse. Which seemed needlessly cruel. ‘So what?’ argued a small voice in her head. So - Chartreuse deserved better.

Carrie fell back against the nearest wall, rolling her eyes heavenwards as she realized which voice in her head was becoming the most dominant. “Yeah, I’m going. I can always kill myself later."

“Touchy, touchy,” Lee mumbled to himself as he ambled down the hall, hands in his pockets. It wasn’t like he’d purposely set out to trip Corry with his music stand. Hey, if the guy couldn’t look down and see what was lying right out in front of him, that was hardly Lee’s problem.

Oh well. As usual, Lee had some time to kill after school, before his job at the public library. He supposed he might as well hang out at the coffee shop again. However, he’d better check his image first.

Pulling a comb out of his worn sports jacket, Lee headed for the men’s washroom. Entering and proceeding to the basin-like object that passed for a sink, he was briefly taken aback by the sight of a bag of wet clothing sitting inside.

“Odd place to do laundry,” Lee noted with a frown. He peered into the bag and fished out a sports bra. “Totally odd,” he concluded.

“I think it’s cause for concern,” Frank insisted.

Clarke shrugged. “I’m concerned in my own way.”

Frank ran a hand back through his hair. “Well… yes, all right. But come on, don’t you know ANYTHING about why Carrie and Julie were called to the office? Like, maybe Corry has lashed out at the two of them, a revenge tactic after the dance incident,” he said, thinking aloud. “Which means when I was calling Carrie this week about, ah, studying, she was ignoring me in order to keep me out of Corry’s line of fire. What do you think?”

Clarke leaned back against his locker, frowning. “I think it’s possible that Corry’s not involved.”

Frank shot a look at Clarke. “Okay, not helping. Don’t you care about what’s happened to Julie?"

Clarke glared back at him. “More than you realize. But why are you concerned? I don’t remember you being so interested in Julie or Carrie until a few weeks ago.”

“It’s, um, personal.” Frank stopped to gather his thoughts. “Look, I happen to know that Carrie’s been under some strain lately. So I suppose I’d rather she not get in more trouble on top of that. Sorry, I, uh, didn’t mean to sound judgemental. Things have all been a bit confusing for me lately.”

The tall blonde’s expression became a wry smile. “You’re telling me.”

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Okay, Clarke, let me level with you. I have no quarrel with you, or Julie, but I’ve been kind of pulled into this situation… meaning, I just might be forced into taking firmer action. Last resort sort of thing of course, but, uh, well, look, can’t you get Julie to stop whatever’s going on before I’m forced to do something?” he pleaded.

Clarke’s frown returned. “Thing is, Julie is as much a victim here as everyone else.”

“I know she got called to the office like Carrie, but…”

“Not like that,” Clarke interrupted. “It’s… something I can’t really explain. Even to myself sometimes."

Frank blinked. “You’re not making sense.”

“Yo, guys,” Lee said as he approached. “You want things that don’t make sense? How ‘bout some of Carrie’s gym clothes and her home ec recipe cards drowning in the men’s washroom.” He tossed the wet bag at Frank, who caught it automatically. “Here, math whiz. You know her better then me, right? Give the stuff back to her, ‘k?”

“Whoa, what?” Frank protested. “Carrie and me, we’re not studying this week. We’re not even speaking.”

Lee turned away with a vague gesture. “Cool, that’ll give you something to speak about then. Sorry, can’t stay, places to be.”

Frank opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but he was unable to find words before Lee had turned the next corner. He looked over at Clarke, who was now watching him with an eyebrow raised. He then looked down into the bag he was holding. There was a bra sitting on top of the pile. He felt himself turning red.

Upon exiting detention an hour later, Carrie was surprised to find a damp bag of her possessions tied anonymously around the lock of her locker.

It didn’t make SENSE, Chartreuse reflected as she stared up at the ceiling of her room. Something about the drug affair felt WRONG.

The thought had been bothering her right through her detention, right through her trip home, right through supper, right up until now. If only she could put her finger on what the problem was!

It related to Julie, Chartreuse knew that much. After all, while Carrie had been in trouble, Julie apparently hadn’t been… or at least they’d been seen separately. What was the connection? Why had Julie been called to the office? Carrie hadn’t seemed to know, having just wanted to get away from the brunette.

Folding her arms, Chartreuse sat up on her bed and looked over towards her dresser. Perhaps the trouble was that she was asking herself the wrong questions. After all, the discovery of that drug bag had been the central event.

Okay - who knew it had been in Carrie’s locker? The principal, the teacher who’d searched the locker, presumably Corry, Tim, herself… and Julie. Yes, Julie HAD to have known - in her vision, Chartreuse had seen Julie taking something from the locker AFTER Corry had done his fiddling. Boy, that was cold, leaving the bag of pills there when Julie could have helped Carrie out.

Yet, in that case, what had Julie taken out of the locker? Chartreuse had thought it to be whatever Corry had put in, but Julie hadn’t removed the drugs. So it had to be something else. Right?

Yet that meant that something else had to have been inside the locker too. Something that Corry would have seen, whether he realized it or not. Was there any way to find out the identity of that something? Of course there was.

Chartreuse sprang for a phone extension, only to discover that their land line was already in use. “Azure, get off the phone,” Chartreuse demanded.

“I don’t hafta, I’m asking questions about homework,” her younger sister replied.

“Azure!”

“Sorry Ben, you need to excuse my sister,” Azure said. “She had detention today, it’s unsettled her karma and made her all cranky. Hang up now Chartreuse, or I’ll tell mom!”

Sighing helplessly, Chartreuse hung up and went to grab her jacket. Her family didn’t own cell phones, as their use tended to interfere with the abilities that they had. So she’d need to drop by in person… seeing as she had to know now, one way or the other. Otherwise her sacrifice on Carrie’s behalf could amount to nothing.

“Nothing. A whole lot of nothing.”

“What’s that?” Theresa asked, leaning on the counter of the coffee shop.

Carrie lifted her head to look blearily at the red haired waitress. “Why do you care?” she shot back.

Theresa smiled disarmingly. “Part of my job is to help out the customers. There’s not too many people around right now and you look like you could use someone to talk to.”

“Well, I don’t need anyone. Never have. So take a hike,” Carrie said indignantly. Theresa nodded slowly and turned away.

Carrie gripped her glass tighter. “Wait,” she amended. “I… I’m sorry, that was rude. Maybe I do need someone. Because I don’t have anyone. Not anymore.” Her gaze dropped back down into her lemonade. “In fact I have nothing left.” She squeezed her eyes shut.

Theresa leaned back onto the counter. “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s not,” Carrie said hollowly. “I don’t have my mom. I don’t have Julie. Without Julie, I don’t have friends. Not really. She’s the only one I ever…” Carrie reopened her eyes and banged her fist down on the café counter, hard enough to make dishes rattle. “How could I let this happen? Why the hell didn’t I see this coming? I should have been listening more to my instincts on Sunday. Why was I so blind?”

“Sometimes truths can be painful to see,” Theresa remarked.

“Yeah, well, I wish I could go back a few days and beat some sense into my head,” Carrie asserted.

“You think you’d be better off then?”

“Hell yes,” Carrie affirmed. But even as she said it, she found herself considering the possibility.

If she WERE to time travel back a few days, if she were to stop herself from calling Julie on Sunday for instance, would her situation now be any better? Or would Julie simply have found an even more devilish way of getting to her? Would Carrie have even BELIEVED her present day self? Probably not.

Carrie might be better off traveling back further and kicking the time machine into a really deep hole before discovering it. Except now, that would wipe out numerous events. Including any reason for her to travel back and do it in the first place! One of those damn paradoxes Frank loved to talk about.

Frank. The guy who would probably benefit the most from having the time machine removed from their past. She’d really done a number on him, hadn’t she. Two years worth of a number! God, what might he have been able to accomplish without her messing up his past for her own selfish ends? She couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Ironically enough, Carrie abruptly recalled a time before Julie’s party, when she’d thought a time machine would solve everything. Instead, it had merely caused all sorts of new problems. There really was no quick fix for anything, was there. Especially not for the thing she most wanted to fix…

Carrie flexed her fingers, then took a long draught of lemonade. Theresa was still there. “You know what?” Carrie decided at last. “Life simply sucks.”

The red haired waitress smiled. “I dare say that’s the most common problem I see around here. And while the cause is often different, talking about it usually does help people. So, anything else on your mind?”

Carrie shook her head slowly. “Nothing you’d understand. Heck, I’ve said too much already,” she sighed, pressing her forehead into the palm of her hand.

Theresa leaned in closer. “If it’s not something you can tell me, is there someone else…?”

Carrie let out a quick burst of laughter. “No way! I’ve scared everyone else off. I have nothing left, nobody, nothing…” Her voice trailed away. The more she said it, the more she realized how true it was.

Theresa pursed her lips. “That sort of statement is rarely accurate,” the waitress countered. “Don’t do anything drastic, all right? Take some time to put things into perspective. It’s probably not as bad as you think it is.”

With that, the waitress moved off to another section of the coffee shop where a customer was waving. Carrie was left sitting and staring into her drink, contemplating Theresa’s words.

Okay, so she obviously couldn’t talk to Julie - but there was only one other person who knew her the way Julie did. About her past, her present, her triggers and idiosyncrasies - and that one guy, the individual who had been subjected to more “Carrie” than anyone else in the whole high school? He was better off without her. She squeezed her eyes shut again.

She wasn’t sure how much more time passed before she heard someone addressing her. “What?” she inquired, opening her eyes and looking up.

“I said hey, track tease, have you talked to the math whiz yet?” Lee repeated.

“To Frank? Why the hell would I talk to Frank??” she snapped back, her thoughts spilling out unbidden from between her lips. “I mean, sure, he’s the only other one who knows about what’s been going on of late. And yes, so he’s someone who knows a good deal about me now. Trouble is, I’m so short sighted that our connection has become completely screwed up. To the point where I really doubt that there’s any chance of ever restoring whatever small link we might have had, assuming there was even anything there to begin with!”

Lee rubbed the back of his head. “Wow, okay, if you say so. I only ask because I found a bunch of your clothes and stuff. Gave it to him to give to you. Guess you haven’t got it from him yet?”

Carrie felt her cheeks warming and quickly turned away. “Oh. No, I…” She was reminded of the bag tied to her locker. “Actually maybe. But I haven’t seen Frank since class,” she mumbled.

“Lee?” Theresa said, approaching. “You were right, you did leave your drafting assignment here. It fell behind one of the booths.”

“Cool,” Lee remarked, taking the papers from her. He saluted. “Thanks, speedy service sweetheart.” He turned back to Carrie. “And hey, track tease, a final word of advice?”

“Why is everybody a psychologist today?” Carrie muttered under her breath.

“Just wanted to say…"

“Just wanted to say, an aluminum foil hat’ll help you block out those alien mind control rays.”

Carrie couldn’t help herself. “What does THAT mean?” she demanded.

Lee shrugged. “I figure something’s messing with your mind. Otherwise you wouldn’t have such a warped opinion of how people like the math whiz view friendship. Anyway, see ya in class tomorrow.” Carrie found she could only gape as Lee waved and headed back out of the shop.

“Interesting character, that one,” Theresa remarked idly.

Carrie nodded slowly as her fingers snared a lock of her hair. She yanked it. Hard. “Theresa, what defines a friend?”

The waitress turned back and cocked her head to the side. “That’s an unusual question. I suppose answers will vary. Why do you ask?”

Carrie bit her lip. “I’m not sure,” she murmured. Had Julie ever truly been her friend? Conversely, over the last few weeks, had she actually been becoming friends with Frank? No… now she was grasping at straws. She hadn’t been friendly to him at all.

But still. The time with Frank - it hadn’t been like the rest of her social life, that was for sure. And who else was there now, if not Frank? I mean really, who else? “What time is it?”

“Coming up on 9:30,” Theresa said.

Carrie pulled her fingers free from her hair. “There’s still time before my curfew then,” she said softly. She turned to the waitress. “I’ll settle up my bill now.”

PART 20: FALLOUT

Luci’s gaze snapped away from Julie and onto Lee, who was now standing in front of her. “Lee!” she said redundantly. “No, I… there’s something else I need to do right now,” she said, scrambling for words.

“Yeah? Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what brings you here tonight, don’t recall seeing you at these…”

“Later Lee, okay?” Luci interrupted. Julie was almost out of sight.

Lee shrugged. “Okay, whatever. You’re looking stressed though, you shouldn’t be stressed at a dance.”

“Y-Yes… I’ll work on that,” Luci said.

Lee snapped a finger and pointed at her. “Good idea.” He moved to follow a few others into the cafeteria while Luci hurried back down the hall in the other direction. But by the time she’d reached the hallway junction point, Julie was nowhere to be seen.

Julie strode purposefully down the hall, keeping one eye ahead of her and one behind. There was no point being sneaky - that would only draw unwanted attention. However, there was also no point being slow.

She didn’t stop until she saw the unexpected shadow back in the hall, outside the stairwell near the gym. Having climbed five steps to gain the high ground, Julie turned around, folding her arms. “Come out, come out, no point in hiding.”

“Do what?” Julie protested. “Shouldn’t you be back monitoring the coat check?"

“Never mind that. What you’re going to do…” Frank hesitated, then raised his hands in what she supposed was an attempt at an offensive stance. It looked more like he was about to give a ‘thumbs up’. “I can’t let you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julie countered, pretending to fumble nervously among the pleats of her skirt. In the process, she tapped the button on the miniature remote she’d secreted away.

“You are about to play a recording that’s damaging for both Carrie and Laurie,” Frank clarified.

“Me? How could I EVER do such a thing?” Julie protested, a hand now to her heart. “You must have me confused with Corry. Or Carrie herself.”

“It’s not too late, Julie. Consider the consequences.”

“I have. You haven’t,” Julie countered, shifting her tone to serious. “Better go, Frank. There’s a cell phone ringing in your cloakroom.”

Frank blinked. “What?”

Julie smiled. “Ring, ring,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t hit that talk button if I were you. Might set off a terrible chain of events.”

Frank shuddered. “You can’t mean… you didn’t. You couldn’t have!”

“You start pushing buttons on that phone and it’s not me who will be responsible for consequences,” Julie said, narrowing her eyes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, DON’T follow me again… you time tripper.”

She hurried upstairs, leaving Frank behind.

Carrie bit back a series of curses. Of COURSE the circuit breaker would be locked, why had she thought otherwise? She couldn’t simply rush the DJ and unplug all his equipment either, he’d stop her, and then nothing would change except that she’d be in even bigger trouble. Not only temporally, but because there would be tangible evidence of her doing something on the stage. Carrie didn’t fancy talking herselves out of THAT situation.

She might still have a chance though. If she could shut down the main speakers by pulling out the leads at the right moment, there wouldn’t be any sound available after Corry’s song. Hence no way for the recording to be heard.

Edging cautiously into a position behind the stage, Carrie located the cables in question then fidgeted slightly, waiting for Corry to hurry up and finish singing.

~”None of this should have happened, I know in my gut

Yet our future is hist'ry, and I've lost what's what.

We must now beware, time is not playing fair,

I would solve this crime it's just I'm...

outta time... outta time... outta time..."~

“Yes, you are,” Carrie whispered, grabbing the cords for the main speakers and giving them a hard yank. The leads popped free from the stage setup. Carrie smiled to herself in the brief pause that ensued.

Then the silence was broken, not by applause, but by the voice of Laurie Veniti coming through the sound system.

“I’ve figured out where the test papers are,” she stated.

Backstage, Carrie reeled. She quickly traced the cords in her hands back towards their source. She had the right ones. Those speakers out in the cafeteria should not be projecting sound! Her gaze flickered back and forth over the setup in front of her, even as she realized she wasn’t going to have time to do anything more.

“What the hell?” Carrie whispered almost inaudibly in response to hearing her own voice coming from the sound system. Could someone have actually gone to the trouble of setting up a secondary feed? Or an alternate second set of hidden speakers? Who? Julie?

“Turn off all your audio equipment,” Corry snapped at the DJ.

“It’s not his audio equipment,” Carrie grumbled. She’d better get out of here though - Mr. Fisk was coming. Carrie beat a hasty retreat to the shadows on the far side of the stage.

“SOMEONE TURN THAT GOD DAMN RECORDING OFF!” Corry yelled.

‘Temper, temper,’ Carrie thought to herself. Actually, Corry’s act was really convincing, now that Carrie got a better look at it. She hadn’t been paying that much attention the first time. And Luci’s comment about how Corry was protective of his sister came unbidden into Carrie’s mind, casting further doubt on the whole situation.

But if it wasn’t Corry… no, it couldn’t be Julie either. I mean sure, maybe her friend had been acting a little weird lately, and should have given Carrie a heads up of some sort, but to outright lie about this later? No way!

No way…

Burying that unnerving thought, Carrie ducked out of the cafeteria whilst everyone’s attention was drawn to Corry meeting up with her prior self.

“Run that by me again?”

“I think Julie rigged a cell phone to act as a trigger for her recording,” Frank repeated.

“When did you run into Julie?” Luci pressed.

“She passed right by this classroom. I’d hidden the time machine, and didn’t see you, so I tried tailing her myself. Except, uh, she saw me. We talked briefly. And although she never admitted to anything… I think she set me up along with Carrie.”

Luci frowned. “I guess I’m glad that one of us spotted her. I should have remembered when I’d run into Lee.” She shook her head. “Still, rigging a cell phone? That’s overkill.”

“But it fits,” Frank insisted. “A cell phone rang towards the end of Corry’s musical number, I tracked it to Carrie’s jacket, and Joe said to answer it. I didn’t hear anyone on the other end of the line, and when I hung it up, that’s when I heard Laurie’s voice in the cafeteria. Me using the cell phone, that must have triggered it.”

Luci leaned back against the classroom wall, crossing her arms. “No, I still don’t buy that,” she said at last. “Too risky. Even if we assume that Julie has Joe Drew working for her, too much could go wrong with that scenario.”

“Luci, how else could Julie have known about the phone?”

“Oh, she planted that, obviously,” Luci agreed. “But only, I think, in order to play with your mind. To distract you.” She paused briefly. “Which means maybe I haven’t been giving Julie enough credit. Which bothers me, seeing as I’d already given her more than I felt she was due.”

“I don’t even remember where I put the phone after that,” Frank added. “I should ask Carrie if she got it back.”

“Got what back?” Carrie inquired, entering the room.

“Your cell phone.”

“I never lost my cell phone. What are you babbling about?”

“Your, er… you had a cell phone in your jacket pocket at the dance Friday. Today,” Frank amended. “I answered it when Corry’s song ended.”

Carrie lifted up an eyebrow. “Can’t have been my jacket. I wouldn’t leave my phone in there.”

“But I’m sure the jacket was yours,” Frank protested. “I’ve seen you wearing it.”

“Carrie, could Julie have slipped the phone in your jacket pocket?” Luci wondered as she paced back and forth.

“Oh, great. Here we go blaming Julie for everything again.”

“Actually, wait, it doesn’t matter. She could have gotten Joe to do that later,” Luci amended.

“Frank, could you remind the gifted little girl here that people should remain innocent until proven guilty?”

“Wow! Exactly when did that become your philosophy on people?” Luci countered, looking back up at the blonde.

“Oh, come on, we are NOT doing this again,” Frank said desperately. “You’re both right, okay? After all, we haven’t proven guilt… but Carrie, I did run into Julie in the stairwell. And she all but admitted she knew about our time machine.”

Carrie’s mouth twisted into a hard line. “That means she didn’t admit to the recording. And before either of you suggest Julie paying off the DJ, the sound still played even after I cut the connection going to the speakers he was using. So it wasn’t that.”

“You… what?” Frank said.

Luci resumed her pacing. “This is bad,” she observed. “To account for the speakers too…? Well, Julie certainly has the funds to set up a secondary system and listening devices, but… wow. I hate to say it, but I finally understand how Chartreuse felt all last week.”

“Oh, by all means, let’s mention the nutty psychic in our conversation as well,” Carrie said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Seriously, what is with the prejudice you people have against Julie?”

Luci whirled on her heel, eyes alternately flashing green and blue in the dim light of the classroom. “Julie’s dangerous, Carrie! For whatever reason, this year she’s started causing people real emotional pain. Don’t you give a damn about your classmates? Or do you truly only give a damn about yourself??”

Carrie didn’t back down, rather she took a step forwards. “Julie’s our classmate too! And for all your talk, you don’t seem to give a damn about her - so if she IS behind this, it has to be for a good reason.”

“Then what is it, Carrie? By all means, she’s your friend, so you tell us, what is it??”

Carrie struggled to speak. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Okay? All I know is that my life was a lot easier to deal with before you two! I’ve… I’ve had it.”

Her gaze snapped over to Frank. “Time for me go back to the past now, okay? You know why - to fix that event that I wanted to fix in the first place. The week’s up, so I can do that now, right? Testing’s done?”

Frank cleared his throat nervously. “One successful test doesn’t necessarily mean anything…” Carrie took a step towards him, narrowing her eyes. “…but on the other hand…”

“You stand your ground,” Luci interjected on Frank’s behalf. “Don’t let your actions be dictated by this self-serving egomaniac.”

“You don’t know me,” Carrie protested. “Okay Luci? So STOP telling me what a horrible person I am, because you DON’T KNOW ME!”

“Girls, please,” Frank gasped, “Someone will hear…”

“Shut up, Frank!” both of them chorused. He shut up. Carrie and Luci glowered at each other in silence for a few more moments.

“I think,” Luci began coldly, “that it would be best if we all returned to the present before doing anything else.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve said I agree with,” Carrie retorted, equally as icily.

“Yes, that’s, er, sort of what I was going to suggest,” Frank said, smiling weakly. It did nothing to alleviate the tension in the air.

At 9:35 that Sunday night, the park bordering the ravine near Carrie’s house had three unanticipated visitors. The shortest collapsed onto the ground almost right away, unconscious.

“Okay, she’s out,” Carrie said. She looked at the digital readout of the time machine. “And we’ve hit the mark for a second time. Your testing’s done. Next stop, the airport.”

“Carrie, we can’t simply leave Luci on the ground.”

“She’ll be awake in, what, ten seconds?? Come on! I’ve been looking forward to this, Frank. To the day when I can finally fix this mess that is my life. We pull this off and my mom will be there for supper tomorrow. And who knows what else will get fixed along with it? So hurry up and reset these circuits for me.”

With that, Carrie pushed back on the lever of the time machine, opening the device… and allowing a plume of smoke to billow out. She fell back, coughing.

Frank leapt for the machine, catching it and fanning a hand overtop to clear the smoke. She watched as he then peered down into the device. “One or two of the circuits fried,” Frank said slowly. “Uh, and not the new ones. So it will take some time to fix them, assuming…” He stopped himself.

“Assuming you can,” Carrie finished quietly.

“Kinda, yeah.” Frank looked up at her uncertainly.

So that was that. In the blink of an eye, everything she’d been hoping to accomplish, gone, vanished along with that puff of smoke.

Had the device always been fated to burn out? Was this some sort of cosmic karma, after she’d effectively rejected her ‘trapped in the woods’ resolution to be a better person? Or had it been the fault of Luci, the know-it-all girl with her new circuits, screwing up the existing ones?

Carrie’s gaze shifted over to Luci, who was now awake, and staring over at Frank with a concerned look on her face. Carrie knew what she wanted to believe. “This is your fault,” the blonde accused.

Except it wasn’t, the voice in her head warned her. This was Carrie’s own damn fault, for wanting to rush things. In order to push Frank away, like she did with practically everyone else.

Because she was selfish. And short sighted. A perfect match with her plans for time travel, which had also been selfish and short sighted. Only about benefitting her. Changing her own life. Worse, that desire to change the past implied she’d given up on trying to make the most of what she had. Because of that, what did she have left? Nothing. Possibly not even Julie.

“My fault?” Luci countered. “Frank said it wasn’t my circuits that failed.”

“But everything was going great before you two,” Carrie said, feeling herself start to shake with equal parts rage and despair. She used her rage to try and silence the damned voice inside her head.

“Now, you’ve not only screwed up the time machine, you’ve turned Julie against me. Without her - you’ve destroyed everything, EVERYTHING that was good about my life!” Me, me, me, still all about me…

Luci met Carrie’s gaze evenly. “Then only now can you understand how crushed someone like Laurie must have felt.”

Two strides later, and Carrie had backhanded Luci across the face. “Carrie!” Frank shouted in horror, jumping up to grab her arm. Feeling a strange sort of disconnect, Carrie looked over at her hand. Yes, she’d really done that. Why couldn’t she control herself?

At the same time, Luci turned her face slowly back to look at the blonde. “Nice. Does beating up people younger than you make you feel better?”

“Luci!” Frank admonished.

“No. It doesn’t,” Carrie admitted. A light breeze blew through her hair. As Frank released her arm, it fell back to her side. “It makes me feel in control. Except weirdly, I’m discovering that I’m not.” She turned away. “So, fine. I’m sorry, okay? I’ll leave now. Please, don’t either of you ever come near me again.”

There was nothing for it. With the time machine out of commission, she didn’t need them any more - and they sure didn’t need her. Of course, given some of her recent activities, was there anyone left who would want her around? She sprinted towards the tree line, a lump in her throat.

Carrie was nearly out of sight before the full impact of her statement had sunk in. “Wait… Carrie!” Frank called out after her. “We can fix the machine. I can fix it! Carrie, running away isn’t going to solve anything either.”

“Oh, let her go, Frank,” Luci sighed, finally standing up. “Remember all of the problems she’s caused you? Besides, she’ll be of no help fixing anything. Let her work through her anger issues. It will allow us to do some proper tests.”

“But…” Frank’s voice trailed off.

“But?” Luci prompted.

Frank struggled to find the words. “She’s a part of this.”

“So she’ll come back to her senses in a day or two.”

“Perhaps,” Frank said, not totally convinced.

Luci reached out to touch Frank’s arm. “Come on, I’ll help you carry the time machine back to your place, okay? We can give it a once over before I head home. Assess the damage. See if we really can repair it.”

Frank turned back to look at the young girl, finally nodding slightly in agreement. “Okay. Maybe that’s best,” he conceded.

Carrie sat on the floor of her room, hugging a pillow and staring at her telephone. She refused to cry, even though she felt like crying. There had been one tear, and it had been more than enough. She was stronger than that. She had to be.

Troublingly, the few prior occasions she’d found herself sinking into moods like this, a call to Julie and a little chatter usually helped to perk her back up. Now, Carrie didn’t think that was going to work. Because despite how fiercely she’d denied that Julie could be doing something underhanded behind her back… she knew they were right. It only made sense that Julie had been upset with her, owing to her keeping secrets.

Yet perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps she could salvage something from the wreck her life was becoming. Two years with Julie, it had to count for something, right?

Carrie found her fingers dialling the mansion almost before she realized it. Soon Jeeves was summoning her former(?) friend to the phone.

“Hello?” Julie’s voice inquired.

“Julie?” Carrie said softly.

“Carrie, that you? Is something up?”

“Yes.” Carrie paused. Her free fingers obtained a complete stranglehold on a lock of her hair. “Julie, are you responsible for what happened at the dance?”

“What? I thought we covered this, of course not.”

“You’re lying,” Carrie contested. “What’s more, I think you’ve been setting me up.”

A laugh. “Whatever gave you that silly idea?”

“Time travel.”

Silence from Julie’s end. Then, “Interesting answer.”

Carrie drew in a breath. “But I’m not time traveling any more,” she continued in a rush. “It’s all been screwed up, and I told Frank to take a hike, and so I’d like for things to go back to how they used to be now. Okay? You don’t have to keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, and we can go back to being best friends again. Okay? Sound good?”

“Perhaps,” Julie replied, still in a neutral tone. “But how do I know you’re sincere about all that you’re saying?”

“I… I just am. I’ll tell you all about the things that happened if it’ll help convince you. Every detail.”

“Okay, then let’s meet,” Julie said quickly.

“Tomorrow at school?”

“No, tonight. Now. You sound like you could use the company. I can drop by, it’s no trouble.”

Carrie scrunched her knees up to her chest, yanking her fingers free of her hair, a couple strands coming out by the roots. She winced. “Yeah, okay, I guess. You’ll have to use the tree though, my dad’s gone curfew on me.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Sit tight, Carrie. Everything’s going to be all right,” Julie concluded. There was a quiet beep as she hung up the phone.

PART 18: DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION

“Luci, I didn’t expect to see you here,” Frank remarked. As a member of the school business club, he had volunteered to help man their coat check/concession booth once again this year. “You don’t normally come to dances, do you?”

“No,” Luci admitted. “They’re not my thing. I’d much rather be at your place.”

Frank blinked. “My place?”

“Oh, I don’t mean… that is, it’s to do with the… you know,” Luci attempted to clarify, glad no one else was in earshot. “Don’t think that I… that is, to change the subject, has Carrie said anything to you recently about Julie?"

Frank shook his head. “No. Should she have?”

“No. Maybe not. Never mind. I’ll see you later,” Luci finished, turning and hurrying away. She knew she was blushing now and she hated herself for it. It was hardly appropriate. She found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she could be a couple of years older.

“What was that about?” Joe Drew asked, returning to the counter next to Frank after hanging up a jacket.

Frank shrugged at his fellow business club member. “Nothing. Luci being herself,” he remarked.

On the other side of the cafeteria (which had been cleared of benches and tables for the dance), Lee leaned up against the wall next to Chartreuse.

“Sooooo, glitter girl, feel up to a dance?” he inquired with a grin. He tugged on the lapels of his well-worn jacket, then gestured towards the middle of the room, where a handful of people were swaying in time to the beat.

"…up to a dance?"

Chartreuse adjusted the straps of her sparkling green gown. “Maybe later, Lee, ‘k?” she said with a half smile.

Lee snapped his fingers and pointed towards her. “Gotcha,” he confirmed with a wink. He immediately turned away as a couple other girls passed by. “Ladies! Care to dance?” he inquired, following them.

Chartreuse turned her attention to Luci and Tim as they approached. “Okay guys!" she whispered excitedly, still managing to be audible over the music that had started up nearly a half hour ago. “Any news?”

Luci shook her head. Tim merely shifted his weight back and forth uncomfortably. “Tim?” Chartreuse prompted encouragingly.

Tim ran a hand back through the soft curls of his blonde hair. “I-I-I haven’t talked with Clarke since this afternoon. Sorry. He’s seemed more worried about Julie than usual. I didn’t want to upset him.”

“No news then,” Luci summarized. She sighed, feeling very conspicuous in her T-Shirt and jeans next to Chartreuse’s sequinned outfit. “This is silly. We shouldn’t have come. There’s always next week.”

Or if it really came down to it, convincing Frank to use the time machine as a more effective alternative.

“No, no, this is the turning point,” the pink-haired girl insisted, reaching out to clasp Luci’s hands. “We must do this, for the good of everyone.”

Chartreuse looked up as she heard a familiar murmur run through the crowd. “Ooh! Sounds like Corry and Laurie are, like, here now. That should provide a clue. How about you two dance together or something while I check it out?” She smiled brightly at them and ran off.

Luci exchanged a glance with Tim. He was approximately the same height as her, despite their age difference. “I don’t dance,” she said quickly.

“Yeah, me neither,” Tim echoed. “Uh, medical reasons.” There was a pause, then the two teenagers leaned back against the wall next to each other.

“Chartreuse,” Laurie said happily, catching sight of her friend exiting the cafeteria. “Golly, you look great, that dress really suits you though you know you don’t have to dress up for these things, it’s not like they’re formals, except of course I bought new shoes so who am I to say anything anyway and we’re probably not the only ones to do stuff like that, so at any rate who’s all here and have you danced with anyone yet?”

As Laurie and Chartreuse moved off together, Corry reached into his pocket and flipped a loonie to one of the guys standing near the doors. “Hey, Tommy,” he remarked. “Go buy me a pop, would you? The usual.”

Tommy willingly went inside to purchase the item in question as Corry turned his attention to another student. “Quick, what comes to mind when I say improv singing?”

“Screw you,” the student shot back sullenly.

“Mmmmm. Say ‘hi’ to Julie for me, would you? I do hope she’s ‘bearing’ up,” Corry concluded.

No hesitation, no smugness in that guy’s tone; if Julie had plans against him, the news hadn’t filtered down to some of her more well known supporters. Corry hadn’t really expected it to, but it never hurt to check. He proceeded into the cafeteria himself.

Larry Fisk monitored Corry’s arrival with a sour expression on his face. Kids these days, the science teacher mused. Hard to tell what they were getting up to half the time. But Corry Veniti and Julie LaMille? They were the worst.

Of course, given their place in the social hierarchy, few other students risked doing anything that might annoy them – which paradoxically kept the school relatively peaceful. Meanwhile, the mutual (if guarded) respect that Corry and Julie seemed to have for each other kept their own disagreements from escalating too high.

Regardless, Larry had told the principal, Dell Hunt, that some teachers should intercede. But Dell seemed to believe that, as long as the faculty didn’t take sides, the teens would eventually work things out themselves. Was that possible?

Larry had his doubts, and the dance chaperon knew he wouldn’t be able to keep from grimacing whenever he saw either one of the two ringleaders. It disturbed him to think about what might happen if the tenuous balance between them ever changed.

Inside the cafeteria, Phil Clarke was having similar misgivings. All that he’d been able to get from Julie about the dance was that she would be taking steps towards dealing with Corry once and for all. She hadn’t elaborated on how this related to her problem with Carrie and Frank. It felt like Julie was aiming for a diversionary tactic. But why?

It came back to her ultimate goals. Clarke had never thought that figuring out why Julie was so bent on her plans would come under a time constraint, but he was realizing now that time played a factor. Ironic in a way, if Julie’s claim of a time machine was true.

Scanning the room to try and otherwise occupy his mind (even if only temporarily) Clarke caught sight of Tim. That surprised him. Tim had never been one to come out to social events.

Heck, Clarke had befriended the boy after realizing how much Tim tended to be socially shunned. In retrospect, perhaps Tim’s earlier question to him, regarding whether Julie was likely to do anything troublesome tonight, made some sense?

Then again, it didn’t, because Clarke had admitted that there was a very good chance for something to happen. So why would Tim pick tonight as the first dance he would attend? Clarke then noticed Luci standing next to him. Was she the reason? A date?

“Clarke?”

The tall basketball player turned to see Laurie standing next to him. “Er, yeah?”

“Would you… are you… that is, you’re not dancing at the moment, but…” The redhead stopped, unable to complete her thought.

“Was I planning to?” Clarke attempted to finish for her. Laurie nodded mutely.

Her request didn’t surprise him. Laurie had previously indicated an interest in him. Except, given his current ties with Julie, he couldn’t afford to be connected to Corry’s sister, even casually. Besides, the redheaded girl had a tendency to talk a lot, something Clarke had trouble dealing with.

Yet even as he tried to think of how to turn her down gently, he realized that Laurie had been curbing her babbling tendencies of late, at least around him. And Julie wasn’t here yet.

Clarke opened his mouth to respond - when the word rippled through the attendees. Julie and Carrie had arrived outside. “Maybe another time,” he apologized, turning to head for the cafeteria door.

“Yeah, okay, right, sure, no problem, I’m fine with that… just fine…” Laurie murmured, even after Clarke was out of earshot. Her eyes fell down to her fingers, where they began to twist around the folds of her skirt.

Chartreuse, for her part, had left Laurie in order to check in with Luci and Tim.

“Okay guys,” she said eagerly. “Laurie says there’s, like, some singing thing which Corry might be doing tonight. That’s so likely to be when Julie strikes! I think Julie’s arriving too, so let’s split up and give a scan of the DJ’s stage area right quick.”

Despite the undercurrent of escalating tension, an hour and a half later, everything was still normal. Chartreuse was baffled. “I know I’m not wrong,” she murmured. “Something is starting here. I can almost, you know, sense it about to happen. But if Julie’s going to start it, how is she going to DO it?”

“Stage area’s unchanged,” Luci offered up as she approached.

“Are you, like, SURE?”

“If there’s one thing I’m good at,” the young girl shot back. “It’s observation. There’s nothing out of place.”

“Can I-I-I go now?” Tim lamented. “I haven’t done any good. I can’t even talk to Clarke now that Julie’s here.”

Chartreuse fell back against the wall, a frustrated look on her face. “But… oh, sure,” she said, defeated. “Look, guys, sorry if I dragged you out here for nothing. I mean, I know I’ve been, like, wrong about mystic stuff before. I just never dreamed I could be THIS wrong.”

“Your attention please,” came a voice from the stage as a song wrapped up. Everyone in the cafeteria turned to look at Corry, who was holding the microphone.

“Some of you know that I’ve been trying to start up a band to perform some cover songs at upcoming school events.” Corry grinned. “And while you’re equally aware that I could exert some pressure to make this happen, I’ve been trying to acquire musical support on a voluntarily basis. After all, you’d be giving up your free time to be with me, and it’s not like I’ll be paying you, no matter how well you drum.”

There was a smattering of laugher before Corry continued. “As you may also know, I’ve declared myself the lead singer. If that’s what’s making you hesitate, I thought I’d take this opportunity to demonstrate how I’m more than a simple choir member.” He turned to say something to the DJ.

“Oh, and Julie?” he added, turning back. “If you’re thinking of trying something here…” His face darkened. “Don’t.”

Moments later, the tune of a relatively recent song began - karaoke version. Corry tossed the microphone back and forth briefly between his hands before starting to sing…

~”I once wished to travel through time

To have such a power seemed really sublime

But I never imagined the problems I'd face

So now I'm lost in time and also in space.~

~I'm three days older than I was last night

Wondering if I put wrong what once went right

And I would hit rewind but time's being unkind,

Destinies intertwined now I'm losing my mind!”~

“Interesting song selection,” Luci murmured. She tried to remember which group had made it popular.

“Short stuff?” came the voice of Lee. “Hey, it is you. You’re fast, I just saw you out in the hall.”

Luci turned to Lee, feeling her heart rate increasing. “What?”

~”I can speak of tomorrow but not yesterday

For when history changes your past goes away

I altered one thing that was causing me strife

The tapestry tore changing everyone's life.

Maybe that's fine, maybe it's not,

Who draws the line, who calls the shot?”~

Carrie was sure Julie had been within earshot a couple minutes ago. Where had her friend gone?

~”Is there some higher power involved around here?

I don't know if they helped or are something to fear.

I see now that these forces can't be understood

I'd return things to normal if only I could,

But the ramifications have damaged my brain

It won't be long now before I've gone insane.”~

“Tracked down where’s that ringing’s coming from then?” Joe inquired.

“Yeah, a cell phone,” Frank said. “In Carrie Waterson’s jacket.”

“Well, answer it,” Joe concluded. “It’s not going to voicemail, and whoever’s calling, they don’t seem to want to hang up on their own.”

~"None of this should have happened, I know in my gut

Yet our future is hist'ry, and I've lost what's what.

We must now beware, time is not playing fair,

I would solve this crime it's just I'm...

outta time... outta time... outta time..."~

Corry concluded his song. There was a brief pause, then the silence was broken - not by applause, but by the voice of Laurie Veniti coming through the sound system.

“I’ve figured out where the test papers are,” she stated. “They’re in the bottom drawer of Ms. Adams’ desk in the math office which she keeps locked but Chartreuse heard from Katie that George said she keeps a spare key at the back of her pullout drawer in class in the event that she forgets her key ring because I guess it happened once a year ago and they had to force the drawer and it was a real pain and stuff but anyway that’s where you can find the math tests!”

“That… that can’t be me,” Laurie cried out from the back of the room, feeling the blood drain from her face.

“Oh, I won’t find them there,” Carrie’s voice retorted through the speakers. “You will. After all, I don’t need them as much as you do. Plus you’ve come this far, why not prove yourself by going all the way?”

“What the hell?” Carrie gasped in response to hearing her own voice.

Laurie’s voice returned. “But… I thought… it’s been sort of fun to this point but to actually steal…?”

‘That’s pre-recorded,’ Corry realized, shaking off his momentary paralysis. He spun to the DJ. “Turn off all your audio equipment,” he snapped.

“Oh, feeling a little chicken? Well, maybe your brother would be more willing to do this instead,” Carrie concluded.

“No! Don’t tell him about any of this. I’ll… I’ll take the papers if you really want…”

“SOMEONE TURN THAT GOD DAMN RECORDING OFF!” Corry yelled.

The power all around the stage immediately went dead. For a moment, another complete silence descended upon the room. No one seemed to know what to say. Though many looks automatically went to a couple of specific faces.

“I never cheated,” Laurie murmured. Her face was a deathly white and she seemed to be in danger of hyperventilating. “That, that was over a year ago. Okay, I… I did take a copy of the test. But I never looked at it. Never, ever! I would never… never… oh God… I… I’m so sorry!”

The redhead buried her face in her hands and sprinted for the door.

“Laurie!” Corry cried out from the stage. He quickly started shoving his way through the crowd of still shocked spectators towards the back, only to find himself face to face with Carrie. As if sensing that they were in a danger zone, everyone standing nearby immediately took two steps back.

Corry’s hands balled into fists. “You and Julie have crossed the line this time,” he seethed at the blonde. “Don’t think you’re getting away with it.”

“You think it was MY idea to be portrayed that way to the entire school?” Carrie fired back. “I didn’t know that conversation had ever been recorded.”

“Then you admit it happened?” Corry barked. “Sounds like you’ll be spending a little extra time at home this term.”

Carrie’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re implying that some sort of suspension is coming my way, be aware that your sister sounded a LOT guiltier than I did.”

“Are you threatening me, Waterson?!”

“You’re smart, you figure it out! For that matter, you were the one up at the stage, with the equipment. How do we know you’re not playing innocent here? Trying to create more trouble for me and Julie?”

“How DARE you try to pin the blame back on me,” Corry shot back, face going as red as his hair. “Waterson, I’d be VERY careful about what actions you take over the next few days.”

With that, Corry shoved his way past her, charging towards the door through which Laurie had exited.

Carrie resisted the urge to respond to Corry’s shove with a tackle, instead taking a few deep breaths before calling out, “Julie?” She turned to look about her, finally grabbing onto the shirt of the person standing closest, decorum be damned. “Did you see where the hell Julie went??”

The kid shook his head several times, returning the expression on Carrie’s face with one of abject terror. Useless. The blonde shoved him back out of the way, deciding she’d have to look for the brunette herself. Because Corry had been right about one thing: Julie had crossed the line.

Whether Julie had been the one to play that recording, or whether it had been Corry - her friend had apparently sensed what was about to happen, and made a quick exit. However, instead of offering any warning, or even returning to back Carrie up, Julie had left her high and dry. Carrie was not pleased by that. Not one bit.

The blonde stalked out of the cafeteria through a different set of doors than those used by Corry.

As murmurs began to spread through the crowd, Chartreuse could only stare in horror at the door through which the Veniti twins had departed. “We’ve failed,” she realized. “The 2DEGS have totally failed. Now, it’s… war.”

The steadily increasing sound of student mutterings was cut off by the sound of feedback from near the stage, power having being restored. It was followed by the voice of science teacher Larry Fisk at the microphone. “This dance,” he stated, “Is over. Please clear the cafetorium as soon as possible.”

In a dark, abandoned classroom, the brunette girl smiled to herself. She collapsed the antenna for the remote she was carrying. It sounded like everything was working out more or less as anticipated. Thus phase one was complete: the revolution at the high school had begun.

Julie found herself shivering in anticipation, but she forced herself to stay focused. There was still work to be done… so much work to be done…

PART 15: WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES

Luci Primrose woke up and reached over to her night table, flipping on a light. The sunlight had not yet begun to filter though her tiny basement window, however the clock indicated that morning had arrived.

Stretching to help shake off the lingering sensations of sleep, the young asian girl threw back her covers and retrieved her page-a-day Mensa calendar. Tearing off the next sheet, she scanned over the new puzzle, reflected on it briefly, then picked up a pencil and scribbled in an answer. After which she looked at the date itself.

“Saturday. The end of September,” Luci murmured aloud. She smiled. “Means I should be able to talk with Frank about the time machine today,” she concluded.

“Jewels, I’m starting to worry about you. Seriously.”

“I’m not crazy,” the brunette snapped. She paused to glance around the library foyer, to see if she had attracted the attention of anyone standing nearby, before lowering her voice. “Frank Dijora must have a time machine,” she insisted. “It fits the facts. But I can deal with this, as long as I kick things up another notch.”

“It’s not your conclusion, but the obsession which is worrying me,” Clarke clarified. “Is whatever Frank and Carrie are doing really so important?”

“But why, Jewels? What goal is this important to you?”

Julie set her jaw. “Come on, Phil,” she said, starting to walk away. “We need to figure out what we’re up against.”

Clarke followed after her. “Okay, okay,” he said, recognizing the signs that he’d pushed her as far as he could. For now. “Though how do we do that in the library?"

“Either Frank or Carrie – or both – will travel into the distant past in our near future, as evidenced by the fact that we found an ancient version of Carrie’s hairband,” Julie explained. She reached the stairs and started to descend. “Therefore, their activities may have been recorded in said past. If we can find irregularities in old newspaper headlines, their actions back then could provide a clue as to their future motives here.”

Clarke frowned. “What makes you think they’ve got motives in mind?"

“What makes you think they don’t? At the least, Carrie’s being evasive, implying their goals somehow clash with mine. I must obtain further information, or I cannot accurately predict what they’ll do next."

“And you’re sure they’re working together?”

She paused…

“In some capacity, obviously,” Julie said. She paused, waiting until a library patron had walked past them. “The real question is whether Carrie’s a willing participant or an ignorant pawn - perhaps Frank’s time machine comes equipped with a mind control device. Regardless, I cannot presently trust her. Fortunately, with my transmitter now in place," she concluded, fishing the small receiver device out of her pocket, “I’ll at least know where Carrie is at all times.”

“She’s here in the library,” Clarke said.

Julie looked closer at her receiver. “No, she seems to be at Frank’s house. I’ll have to ask about that later.”

“No, she’s here in the library,” Clarke insisted, placing a hand on Julie’s shoulder to halt her advance. “Pretty sure that’s her up there in the records area.”

Julie shifted her gaze to the room ahead of them. “You’re right!” she gasped. She grabbed Clarke’s hand, pulling them back into a row of nearby bookshelves before they were seen. “And was that Frank in there with her? How could they beat me here? And what’s Carrie’s hairband doing back at Frank’s house?!”

“There could be two of her again,” Clarke offered.

“Good point,” Julie acknowledged. “Perhaps I should call Frank’s place to–” She stopped speaking as the signal from the transmitter vanished off her screen. It was now totally blank, as she had previously deactivated the sixty year old device they’d obtained last Thursday.

“Hm. Low battery?”

“No,” Julie said, shaking the receiver. “Damn it, the thing’s brand new, how can it be… of course.” Julie smacked her palm against her forehead. “How stupid can I be? If Frank really has a time machine, he has access to the future. He must have learned about the tracking device.”

She let out a quiet curse. “No wonder they seem to be two steps ahead of me. They’re probably in the library now to destroy certain records before anybody can find them.”

“Jewels… stay calm…”

“Perhaps it’s even Frank’s future self who invented the time machine,” Julie reasoned, ignoring Clarke’s plea. “Leaving it back here in our present for himself. But, in changing his past, he may not yet realize how much he’s revealed to me. If I’m careful, I can still recover from this.”

“Jewels…”

Julie snapped her gaze over to Clarke. “Phil, do me a favour? Stay here and let me know what Carrie and Frank do? I have to go back home and adjust my timelines.”

“But don’t you think you’re working too hard already?” Clarke protested.

His words fell on deaf ears, as Julie had already spun on her heel and was heading back towards the stairs. He watched her retreating form with sadness in his eyes.

Luci drummed her fingers absently on the tabletop. Would Frank be in the library already? In order to avoid running into him there, how long should she stay at the cafe?

“Everything all right?” asked Theresa, interrupting the young teenager’s thoughts.

Luci blinked up at the waitress and smiled faintly. “Yes, the sandwiches are fine, thanks.”

Theresa nodded. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you then.”

Luci started to nod, but instead asked, “Don’t you get tired of talking to people, day in and day out?”

Theresa laughed lightly. “No, not really,” she admitted. “This job is an interesting study into human nature. For instance, many people have similar problems, yet I find each individual is unique in their own way.”

Luci tilted her head to the side. “Unique how?”

“It depends. For you, the first thing that leapt out at me is your eyes,” Theresa admitted. “They show such… intensity. And intelligence. Plus it’s like they’re both green and blue at same time. Quite a remarkable effect, really.”

“I’ve been told that’s genetic,” Luci acknowledged. “Though with me being adopted, I don’t know for sure.”

Theresa nodded. “A first for me, anyway. Of course, maybe I’ll eventually become jaded and cynical… but when I stop seeing customers as individuals, it might be time to move on to another line of work.” She smiled. “Speaking of which, I’d better get back to it. Let me know when you’re ready for the bill.”

This time Luci nodded, and Theresa moved off. The waitress was an observer, Luci reflected - a trait the young girl could readily identify with.

“You know Frank, I’ve been thinking,” Carrie remarked as she plunked down another large book full of old news accounts. “Why can’t we go into the future to figure out what the outcome of all your time experiments will be? After all, we’re looking for records of what happened in 1955 to help Beth. We should be able to apply that same principle to ourselves.”

“The time machine only travels into the past,” Frank reminded her, without even looking up from his own book.

He wondered idly what it was Carrie had against silence. At least she wasn’t grumbling about the 1950s outfit any more, as they’d dropped by her house for a change of clothes before coming to the library.

“Correction, it travels to whatever time period you have coins for,” Carrie rebuffed. “We should be able to travel as far forward as December 31st of this year.”

Frank did look up at that. “True,” he conceded. “But, okay, say I go a month into the future to do as you say. That means there is now no need for me to do any testing. It invokes a time paradox, whereby I’ll have the results without ever doing the experiments.”

Carrie shrugged. “Having the results doesn’t mean you can’t perform the experiments. In fact, we’d be prepared for the outcomes, and at the same time, we could put the information we’ll have got to better use.”

Naturally, her tone implied that ‘better use’ meant dealing with her missing mother.

“Carrie, knowing beforehand might mean we do something which nullifies an experiment, or results in there being a completely different set of results,” Frank protested. “We can’t trust data for tests we haven’t seen.”

“Sure we can, your future’s unchangeable, right?”

“Data obtained that way could still be faulty.”

“You have no sense of adventure,” Carrie argued.

“You have no sense of responsibility,” Frank fired back.

“You have no sense of fun!”

“You have no sense of paradox!”

“You… shut up!” Carrie said, giving Frank’s shoulder a shove. He fell off his library stool. “You have no sense of balance,” she declared triumphantly.

Frank closed his eyes and counted to five. “Is there some reason you always have to get your way?” he asked.

“I don’t always have to get my… um…”

Frank reopened his eyes and looked back up at her. She was frowning, her lips drawn in. Could it be she was actually reflecting on her actions? He stood back up, deciding to press the advantage.

“Look, Carrie, this time travel stuff is more complicated than you’re making it out to be,” Frank said. “Take the apple for instance.”

“What apple?” she grumbled back.

“Last Sunday, you caused an apple to appear and disappear at my house. You dropped it off early in the day, then picked it up later in the day, only to travel back and drop it off. I honestly haven’t been able to figure out where it came from. I tried duplicating the experiment this past week, and well… I couldn’t. So, can you identify where the apple originated?”

Carrie’s forehead creased. “What are you going on about? I’d been thinking about having an apple, and you had one. If it wasn’t yours… well, I don’t know. It must have come from somewhere.”

“It didn’t,” Frank insisted. “That’s my whole point. It originated and vanished with you. A temporal paradox. In a similar vein, your information passing with respect to your trip to the day of the fire alarm bears scrutiny. How did you learn of my theories? Because of your future self. But how did your future self know? Because they heard it when they were your past self. So where did the information truly originate?”

“Frank, stop, you’re going to give me a headache.”

He leaned against the table in the library’s records room. “I’m trying to show you how complicated time travel can be. Honestly, you need to consider your actions more carefully. It’s almost like you have some… some personal affinity for these causal loops.”

Carrie pressed a hand to her temples. “Fine, good for me then,” she sighed. Her gaze fell back down to the book before her. “Though, hey, wait a minute… can we apply one of these paradox loops to our research here? I mean, we don’t need to look up all this stuff on 1955 when I mostly remember what I’ll already say! Right?”

Frank’s eyebrow twitched. “Carrie, you missed my point. We want to AVOID these situations, not create more of them. Besides, I’M the one who has to convince Beth of the situation. And unless I see proof with my own eyes, I’m not going to be convinced, let alone be able to convince her.”

“But since I remember most of what you said to her, I could write out… hey, wait, here’s a paradox for you,” Carrie said, brightening. “What if we were to decide NOT to go back to 1955. Never becoming our future selves. What would THAT do?”

A pained expression crossed Frank’s face. Getting Carrie to think about time paradox might not have been so smart after all.

“I don’t even want to start thinking about that,” he concluded. “We are going back, Carrie, and we are learning this stuff through research. Keep checking the newspapers. Please?”

“Oh, fine,” Carrie sighed. “Though I wish the library would digitize this stuff already. At the very least, next time around I should make sure to mention to my past self where I found the references to Peabody’s trial. I mean, honestly, shouldn’t two angels being involved have drawn a little extra attention?”

Frank winced. “Actually,” he began tentatively. “Now that you’ve brought that up, I, er, have been a little worried about us being portrayed in that manner too.”

“Uh-oh,” said Carrie suspiciously. “Is this going to turn into a quasi-religious debate? Because I’m not sure I want to go there…”

Luci entered the library a little later that day and made her way downstairs towards the section where old records were kept. At long last, things seemed to be coming together nicely, both in her own mind, as well as in what was going on around her. She hoped the trend would continue.

“Yo, short stuff,” came a voice interrupting her thoughts. “What brings you by the book nook?”

Luci turned to see a classmate from school, the one who always had somewhat unruly hair. He was stacking books nearby. “Hello Lee,” she responded. “Actually, I was wondering whether Frank was around.”

Lee scratched his head. “He was here earlier on in my shift. Him and the track tease. They may’ve left by now though. If I spot the math whiz again, should I mention you’re on the prowl for him?”

“No, I’d rather you didn’t.”

”…think I rounded too much on the circle questions."

“Okee-dokee, no problemo,” Lee affirmed with a grin. “Hey, speaking of math, how’d you do on that last test? Only pulled off a 73 myself, think I rounded too much on the circle questions.”

“81,” Luci countered. Which had been the mark she’d been aiming for, by making those few mistakes. Not that she was about to admit that to anyone.

“Whoa, good show! Spend much time studying?”

“Enough,” she answered. “Look, Lee, I’d rather not talk now.”

“Oh, okay,” Lee said. “I’ve gotta get back to shelving these self-help books anyway… hey, maybe I can make up a big sign for ‘em that reads ‘Help Yourself!’. What do you think?”

Luci smiled. “Whatever makes you happy, Lee.”

“Nah, more like whatever makes the librarians happy,” Lee mused, shrugging at Luci before turning away.

The young girl merely shook her head slightly before continuing towards the rear of the library. Hoping that the record books Frank had been using had not yet been re-shelved.

“Carrie and Frank were in the library for at least three hours,” Clarke reported. “Based on what they left out on the table, they were researching this area in the mid to late 1950s.”

“The ’50s?” Julie said in surprise. “That far back? What could possibly be of interest to them from that time period?”

Clarke shrugged. “No way to know. The town itself was barely a town back then. I think it originally sprung up from being a convenient place for a railway station or something."

“Huh. Well, maybe Frank was looking for a good time period to leave my transmitter; he didn’t count on my still being able to find it. Anything else to report?” Julie pressed. Clarke shook his head. “Then you could have told me this over the phone," Julie concluded. “Why come here? Are you about to get on my case again about how I’m pushing myself too hard?”

“Apparently I don’t have to," Clarke indicated. “Honestly, would it be so bad to declare a break for the rest of the afternoon? We could go to the cafe and share a hot chocolate.”

“I can’t afford any downtime now,” Julie said brusquely. Perhaps seeing his expression, her voice softened. “Though… maybe once the worst of this is over, I’ll take you up on the offer.”

“And when is the worst of this over?”

“Less than two months, by my modified schedule.”

Clarke sighed. He considered pressing the point that Julie should relax, but he knew Julie, knew her moods, and knew that continuing this argument would only serve to push her away. Moreover, this might be a good opportunity to press another point.

“All right,” Clarke relented. “But if you’re about to go to work on some big plans taking up the entire month of October… can’t you at least tell me why?”

“Because,” Julie simply replied. Clarke stood quietly, waiting for more. Julie opened her mouth again, perhaps to give another typically evasive retort, but then her lips closed. She turned away.

“Phil,” she continued at last, “Have you ever had anyone tell you that you were worthless? Insignificant? Someone who could never amount to anything in this world?”

“No,” Clarke responded, quite taken aback.

“Good. Count yourself lucky,” Julie stated sharply. With that, she strode out of the sitting room, not even looking back as she concluded, “Jeeves can show you out.”

The brunette quickly retreated back down to her ‘play room’, collapsing into the lone chair she kept there. She was annoyed with herself. Why had she said that to Phil? Was she weakening under his constant barrage of questioning?

Julie shook her head. No - she hadn’t revealed anything, and now he would get off her back for a while. Which was what she wanted. Right?

Julie shivered. For one alarming moment, she wasn’t sure what she wanted anymore. Her gaze turned to the wall that had the map of the school on it.

“Damn them. Damn them all,” she whispered. “I’ll have my way, I will…” Her gaze shifted to the lower drawer of one of her filing cabinets. “You’ll see. Both of you, you’ll see, damn you,” she finished. Her hands balled into fists.

Less than a minute later, Julie sat up. Quickly wiping her cheeks dry, she began shuffling back through some of the papers that had been holding her attention less than an hour ago.

Luci walked up the driveway of Frank’s house feeling equal measures of confidence and anxiety. The anxiety annoyed her; Frank’s house wasn’t currently being watched, Frank was (probably) home, and Carrie was (probably) not around. There was no logical reason to be nervous.

Unless you factored in how this was liable to be more than a random study session… with someone two years her senior. Shaking her head in annoyance at her own inner turmoil, Luci rang the doorbell.

Frank’s father answered the door. Luci elected to wait by the doorway as he went to call upstairs for his son. When Frank appeared, he looked a little tired - no surprise - and maybe even a little worried. Though his expression cleared when he saw her.

“Luci,” Frank said in greeting. “Er, what brings you by here? Were we supposed to talk math?”

“No Frank,” Luci said. She checked to make sure neither of his parents were within hearing range before continuing. “I’m here to discuss the time machine with you.”