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

PART 95b: CARRIE VERSUS HERSELF

They barely got three paces inside the room before Glen was pointing a gun at them. “Freeze!” he said. Elizabeth’s companions froze in place. She realized then that he’d used his mental power.

Except while Glen sounded confident, Elizabeth noticed that he looked worried. He obviously hadn’t expected their mad rush into the control room. Then, looking around, she realized something else. Elizabeth quickly reached out, grabbing the mop that Anthony was still holding, tossing it back behind them. Keeping the main door ajar.

“Move back.” Glen waggled his gun, and Elizabeth, Bernard, Amelia and Anthony all stepped backwards, towards the wall. “I don’t know how you managed to gain access,” Glen remarked. “But this facility DOES have an armoury, and we WERE prepared for that unlikely eventuality.” He gestured at the floor, where there were at least a half dozen other gun-style weapons, along with a small box of what Elizabeth assumed were bombs.

“Unbelievable,” Elder Carrie remarked from behind Glen. “To think that I was once that insanely stupid. God, I hate myself.”

“Come over here and say that,” Elizabeth challenged.

“Don’t even bother with them,” Glen said to Carrie. He rose from his chair and began to advance. “The only question now, Elizabeth, is whether we send your friends here back to their present as they are now… or whether you force us to do it with them a little more… let’s say, wounded?”

Bernard turned to look at Elizabeth. “A version of you actually picks this guy over us?”

“I know,” Elizabeth sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m working on it.”

Glen stopped a few paces away. “Funny. Come on now, this will be SO much easier if you simply accept your destiny."

“That’s far less interesting.”

Glen spun at the unexpected voice. He found himself unable to bring his gun to bear in time, Buffy having followed her remark up with a sprint inside the room, and a full body tackle. With the redhead on the ground, his gun bouncing away, Elizabeth shifted her own attention towards Carrie.

The fifty year old Carrie stepped towards one of the other weapons on the floor, then seemed to think better of it as Bernard made a similar dive. For a moment, Elizabeth sensed her future self trying to establish a temporal freezing field. She nullified Carrie’s efforts.

With that, Carrie charged out of the nearest available exit. The one that led down into the displacement room below. “What, are you trying to escape?” Elizabeth shouted. “If you think you’re so superior to me, PROVE it!” She chased after herself.

Buffy beat her fists into Glen’s side, smacked him about the head, and tried to knee him in uncomfortable places. “Why?” she shrieked. “Why didn’t you make me into a better person? WHY?!”

“Stop! Carrie, I’ve been trying to help,” Glen answered, trying to protect his body while simultaneously attempting to push her off of him. “Besides, that’s still in our future, I haven’t even done anything yet. Stop, I haven’t done it yet!”

“Eliz– err, Buffy, we got this,” Bernard said.

Buffy stopped herself, breathing hard, and noticing that Bernard was now holding a gun on the both of them. Amelia was rounding up the rest of the weapons, moving them to the corner, out of reach, and Anthony was approaching with some rope.

Buffy pushed herself back, rising again to her feet. “Right.” She eyed Glen. “I forgive you too. That said, you try any more of your mental tricks here? Things will not end well for you.”

Anthony began to tie Glen up.

Bernard inclined his head towards the exit. “Buffy, go help yourself.”

“Just a second,” Buffy said, straightening her blouse. “You’ll need the code to turn off the lockdown here, so the resistance can get in.”

“I’ll never give that up,” Glen assured them.

“You won’t have to,” Buffy noted. “Seeing as you entered it into the system, in this room, maybe five minutes ago.” She allowed the time streams to coalesce about her, and after carefully anchoring herself in the present, she slid back to see what the necessary computer input was.

Elizabeth supposed that she should have expected her future self to ambush her as soon as she charged through the sliding door into the displacement room. And yet, she hadn’t anticipated it, and as such she had the wind knocked out of her as the two of them then fell on the ground in a flurry of arms and legs. Elizabeth tried to kick out at her counterpart, but the fifty year old had the advantage of leverage - and of course, a future her would knew most of her moves. Or her expected moves, anyway.

Elizabeth reached out and yanked hard on Carrie’s long hair.

“Yeow!” Carrie screeched. “What, are you in grade school?”

“I was going to say the same,” Elizabeth shot back. “Why won’t you let me play in your sandbox?”

“My God, I’m so immature,” Carrie groaned.

Carrie still seemed temporally weak, but Elizabeth fast realized that where Carrie was holding onto her, her arm was going numb. The feeling was spreading up and into the rest of her body. That wasn’t good. But Elizabeth couldn’t seem to squirm free, she couldn’t seem to… oh. Wait. Duh.

Her eyes flickered to gold, and she slipped back in time thirty seconds. After rolling to the side, she then rejoined the present, in time to see Carrie face plant into the floor as her prior self disappeared. Elizabeth quickly pushed herself back up onto her feet, rolling her shoulder to try and regain the feeling in that arm. There was no point in her tackling the prone Carrie - this battle wasn’t going to be won physically.

Sure enough, Carrie had soon risen to her feet as well. “I guess I should be glad that I’m finally displaying half a brain,” she remarked.

“This won’t be like it was in Miami, Carrie,” Elizabeth declared. “I’m no longer that vulnerable girl. I’m ready for you.”

“Ha! Sure you are. Considering less than an hour has passed for us since then, I’m hardly shaking in my boots.”

“Weirdly enough, it feels to me like mama’s disappearance happened a lifetime ago. Despite you being the old maid here.”

Carrie snorted. “Oh, stop. You must know you cannot possibly win?”

“I don’t know that at all.”

“I’m YOU!”

“And yet… you seem unsure.”

“While you seem weak.”

Carrie brought her arm up, and Elizabeth realized too late that her future counterpart had been readying a charge of temporal energy. It hit her with enough force to launch her back into the far wall of the room, and it was all she could do to avoid getting herself pushed out of the present, and a few seconds into the future.

Carrie could have prepared a finishing blow in those few seconds.

Elizabeth slid to the floor, ending up in a seated position. “You know,” she wheezed, “I should really look into this masochistic streak I seem to have.”

“Stop talking,” Carrie said. Her eyes flickered over completely to gold, and she fired off another blast of energy.

Elizabeth snapped her arms up. She’d anticipated Carrie’s move this time, but all she’d been able to think of as a counter-move was to try and freeze time in her immediate vicinity. Rookie mistake - the blast was still moving for her, albeit much more slowly, and now she’d never be able to speed up her own time to dodge it. Not without releasing the freezing field and being hit.

Carrie laughed. “I am such a…”

Elizabeth never found out what Carrie thought she was, because right before the temporal blast could reach her, it was struck from the side by a counter-blast of temporal energy, sending the whole sparking assembly careening off to the side. It impacted the wall, a chunk of the panelling vanishing completely into the streams of time.

“Sorry I’m late,” Buffy said from the doorway, lowering her arms. “Bunch of things cropping up at the last moment. You know how it is.”

“Not as such, but I guess I’ll know soon enough,” Elizabeth said. She pushed herself back to her feet. “Thanks, Buffy.”

“No problem.”

Carrie jerked her gaze back and forth between both versions. “At least you’re making this interesting,” Carrie acknowledged. “But even with two of you, you still have only a primitive understanding of our power."

“We’re fast learners,” Elizabeth noted. She allowed the power to wash over her then, tentatively embracing the sensations, knowing that her own eyes were flicking to gold - and yet allowing it to happen. After all, she would become Buffy, right? She would maintain control.

“Fine,” Carrie snarled. “Let’s do this. But first, I’ll make sure we have no interference from your friends up there.”

She fired off two more pulses of temporal energy. Two wall panels were temporally banished in their wake - along with whatever was behind them, if the sparking was any indication. A klaxon sounded briefly, and the door to the room slid closed, along with blast shields slamming down over the observation windows above.

Elizabeth frowned, as a burn mark also appeared on the wall, spreading out from one of the missing panels. And whereas at first, the dark scorching had looked like it would follow a single path, it very quickly radiated out, looking more like a trident or a tree branch. Multiple paths. For some reason, that felt significant.

Elizabeth was so distracted by the image that she didn’t even notice the huge tree trunk that came hurtling at her moments later.

“Damn. We’re cut off,” Bernard remarked, as the blast shields dropped into place, blocking their view of the three Carries down below.

Anthony glanced sidelong at Bernard. He was now holding the weapon on Glen, as they had determined that it was an energy pulse set to stun. So it’s not like he was about to fill the Temporal full of holes if Glen tried anything. “Can y-you undo that?”

Bernard shook his head. “Doubt it. Carrie probably fried the hardware.”

“Wouldn’t there be sensors in that room or something?” Amelia guessed.

“Maybe,” Bernard yielded. “But I don’t know how to turn them on. So aside from having shut off of the lockdown, there’s not much more I can do. Aside from watch the progress of the resistance, which is what Glen had calibrated the system for.”

“I won’t help you,” Glen said.

Bernard sighed. “No one even asked you for help.”

“You’re only making this harder on yourselves,” Glen continued. “And harder on Carrie too. You need to surrender now, it’s the only way that girl can have a happy childhood! That’s her ONLY chance, you understand me, you Mundane morons? The ONLY way that you can still live out your dull, pathetic lives, is to give up. So that we can fix Carrie’s mind, retrain her, such that she doesn’t remember how one day she will–"

Anthony fired, and Glen slumped to the ground, out cold.

“Tim!” Amelia gasped.

He looked over at his friends and smiled weakly. “It occurred to me that he might be using his mental power more subtly. To w-wear us down. W-We’re all tired of being manipulated, yeah? W-We didn’t need him conscious… right?”

Bernard grinned back. “Good point. Wish I’d thought of that myself.” He turned back to the monitors. “I think Luci’s forces will be here in less than five minutes. They can help us out.”

“Weirdly enough, I don’t think Elizabeth has that kind of time,” Amelia sighed, looking again towards the blocked windows.

Buffy tackled Elizabeth in the nick of time, the tree trunk flying over their heads and slamming into the wall. Elizabeth snapped her gaze over towards the huge object. “Whoa! Where the hell did that come from?” she gasped.

“When the hell,” Buffy corrected breathlessly, continuing their roll across the floor. “Reverse banishment, that was a something Carrie knew about, which could be manifested from somewhen.” A mist began to appear within the room, making it harder for them to see. “Takes hella energy and concentration though, so I’d say we’re good for at least another ten seconds.”

“You will become me!” Carrie shrieked from within the growing fog. “I’m starting to feel these events in my past now.”

“Not good.” Buffy swallowed. “Look, Elizabeth, this is where we part ways. I need to strategize.”

“Oh. Pity. It’s been fun,” Elizabeth said weakly. She pushed herself back up off the floor. “I don’t suppose you can come up with a way of dispelling this mist first?”

“Actually, I’m creating it,” Buffy admitted, her golden eyes glowing. “So that it’s harder for Carrie to target. Remember from geography, the foggiest place on Earth, just off Newfoundland?”

Elizabeth blinked. “We’ve already figured out how to reverse banish?”

“Kinda? I’ve had some time to consider, since I told myself about the ability, and fog’s basically air. I really want to turn my concentration back to our Ultimate Paradox though. Okay?”

“Understood.” Elizabeth clasped herself by the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Thank YOU,” Buffy said. “You’re the one who will soon give yourself the key card, after all.”

Elizabeth chuckled, then pulled Buffy back down as another huge tree flew through the fog towards them. “Right, that’s got to stop.” She exhaled. “Okay, here goes nothing.”

Launching herself forwards, Elizabeth charged through the fog towards her future self. And, to the increasing annoyance of the temporal powers she tended to keep locked away, away from her destiny.

So her powers began to push back.

NEXT: The Ultimate Paradox

ASIDE: It all ends with Part 96. Maybe you see how at this point? I’ll be splintering the end of Book 4 into three posts, for a couple reasons. One of them is to give me a transitional week, as the site returns to “Epsilon Project”. Until then, the usual vote for T&T, if you please?

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

PART 95a: ENDGAME

“What are you doing?” Glen asked.

“Preparing to isolate myself,” Carrie grumbled. The fifty year old pulled the small bomb out of it’s container in the armoury. “This ought to do it.”

Glen shook his head. “I’m still not following.”

She turned to glare at him. “The only reason younger me - hell with it, let’s call her Elizabeth - is able to function here in the future, and wherever they are in this building, is because of whatever her friends are now telling her. Yes?”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“So, if we eliminate them, Elizabeth becomes an easier mark. And a bomb is a lot more efficient for doing that than a bunch of separate temporal banishments.”

Glen rubbed the back of his neck. “Ignoring the historical ramifications for the moment, the fact that they’re unlikely to split up? Means that if you blow up Elizabeth’s friends, you’ll blow up your past self too.”

Carrie nodded. “Hence I go after the others before they got here.”

“Except they already ARE here. So… how does that work, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll make it work,” Carrie asserted. “I’ll destroy them before they arrive, and let that ‘bleedthrough’ effect thing sort the rest out.”

“Um, Carrie? You don’t experience ‘bleedthrough’,” he reminded her. “You’re the cause, not the effect. You get saddled with the memory headaches. Ergo, even assuming you can pull this off, what if it merely leaves you with a massive migraine, unable to act at all?”

“Then at least Elizabeth will be similarly affected,” Carrie snapped, feeling her patience slipping away again. “Look, Glinephanis, there must be some way I can change things in the same manner as Mindylenopia did. But to succeed, I’ll need to know everything I can about how to identify that ‘time car’ back in Miami. That way, as soon as my connection to the time streams fully kicks back in, I can go back to destroy her friends before they get here.”

Amelia looked from Elizabeth, who was now holding an apple, over towards Buffy, standing in the doorway of the janitor’s closet, and then back to Elizabeth. “I don’t get it,” she admitted.

“Me neither,” Anthony chimed in.

“I might,” Bernard said, looking uneasy. “Except I still don’t like it. It violates the law of conservation of mass, among other things.”

“Show them,” Buffy suggested, stepping into the room and gesturing towards the door.

Elizabeth looked down at the apple she was holding, pursed her lips, and then marched back out of the janitor’s closet. She pulled the door closed behind her. There was a brief silence.

“So… now what?” Amelia asked.

Bernard crossed his arms, looking over at Buffy. She was now holding her palm against her temple, and grimacing. “You just went back in time, came back in here, and tossed that apple at yourself, right?”

Buffy nodded. “Yeah. Meaning I’m back to being Elizabeth again, by the way.”

“Wait, s-so where did Elizabeth get that apple f-from?” Anthony asked.

“From Buffy,” Amelia said, with a shrug. “The real question is where Buffy got HER apple from.”

“That was from being Elizabeth,” Bernard said dryly. “You’re both asking valid questions, you see. There never was an apple - and yet it was once here.” He rubbed his eyes, beneath his glasses. “She’s done this once before, WAY back when we first discovered the time machine. It’s a Catch-22, and I never did work out how she pulled it off.”

“I think it’s simply something I can do,” Elizabeth admitted. “I even did it with the time machine once. I assume I’m using it here to try and tell myself something. Maybe that’s also what Liz tried to do with Carrie.” She sighed. “I don’t know why I have to keep picking the path of temporal headaches.”

Amelia stared back at the door. “Maybe Buffy is about to walk back in, not carrying an apple, but instead carrying the ultimate weapon to use against her future self?”

Again, there was a brief silence.

“So, n-not that,” Anthony concluded.

“Damn it, I’m trying to tell myself something,” Elizabeth repeated. “Subconsciously. But WHAT?”

“An apple a day keeps the Carrie away?” Amelia suggested.

Bernard leaned against the nearby shelf. “Maybe you’re trying to hint that this is something Carrie can’t do,” he decided. “That it’s something she’s never mastered. So if you can nail it for her, you can change her mind, make her realize that your path is the better path forwards.”

Elizabeth gave him an uncertain look. “And I demonstrate this bizarre power in some definitive way to Carrie… how, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Bernard said. “But I’m starting to feel like we won’t find out by staying here, in defensive mode.”

“For the record, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Glen remarked.

“For the record, I don’t care,” Carrie shot back.

They had purged the remaining knockout gas from the generator’s control room and then returned there. It was a position they could easily fortify, and even use to draw in reinforcements if necessary, given the proximity to the displacement room.

“We’ll release the lockdown for at most ten seconds,” Carrie insisted. “That will drop the temporal dampening field, and allow me to jump back to Miami, despite my current weakened condition. Once I’ve planted the time bomb in their car, I leap back here to reap the rewards.”

Glen eyed the monitors that he’d pulled up. “It looks like the resistance incursion is stalled at level two. All right. When you’re ready, give me the word.”

He supposed he should simply be happy that he was finally dealing with a Carrie who could embrace her powers, even if she seemed to have become a bit overconfident about them. That was the Carrie he’d met when he was young, before going back to when she was a teenager, so it was nice to finally be back with ‘his’ Carrie.

“Go,” Carrie stated.

Glen dropped the alert. Carrie disappeared in a flash of light. Glen began to count in his head, one-onethousand, two-onethousand, three-onethousand… and Carrie was back. He reinstated the lockdown. “Well?”

She glared at him. “Well what? Do you still remember Frank shooting me with the weapon and all that?”

“Yup,” Glen affirmed.

She glared out through the observation windows. “I rushed that. Maybe they split up. Or a couple of them escaped the blast. You didn’t mention they had another means of time travel available to them.”

Glen shook his head. “They didn’t. Or not that I know of.”

Carrie rubbed her chin. “Perhaps they saved key circuits. Rebuilt a device. I should have lobbed the bomb at them, instead of setting it in the car.”

“It’s not like you can’t try again,” Glen remarked. He gestured at the floor. “We looted the armoury, we have more bombs.”

“Right. Hold on, I’ll see if I can track their actions after the airport affair a little more carefully…"

“I’ll keep trying to pick them up in the present on internal sensors,” Glen offered. He began to tap at the keyboard again.

Anthony peered out the door. “You’re r-right, Elizabeth - they must have dropped the lockdown. The r-red lights are…" The corridor lighting changed again. “…back.” He quickly re-closed the door.

“Is the resistance breaking through?” Amelia wondered.

“No,” Elizabeth said, pressing her palm against her temple again. “No, I should have realized this. If I were in charge here, I’d have tried retaking the control room. Damn it! They must be there now, with Carrie doing experimental time jumps. Maybe they can even bring back future reinforcements. I need to start thinking strategically. To start thinking like… ugh, like that Carrie.”

“So what d-do we d-do?” Anthony asked.

“Well, Bernard’s right,” Elizabeth sighed. “We can’t keep playing a defensive game. There’s only one way I’ll be able to stop a single-minded Carrie from harming anyone else - no matter the cost to myself.” She looked around at them. “Know that you don’t have to come along.”

“Still not leaving without you,” Amelia reminded.

“Right.” Anthony reached back for the mop. “After all, s-someone’s got to deal w-with Glen as you face yourself.”

“So you’re stuck with us,” Bernard agreed.

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you. I don’t deserve… actually, hmm. Know what? On second thought, strike that. Maybe I do deserve friends like you.” She looked towards the closet door. “More to the point, maybe I even deserve friends like Buffy.”

“Um, friends like yourself?” Amelia asked.

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. Yes, because you know what? THAT’S Carrie’s weakness. How she hates herself. How, I hate myself.” She smiled. “Think about it. Nearly every time I’ve met another incarnation, I’ve argued, I’ve tried to beat myself up, I’ve hoped to change my own experiences… I’ve never seriously tried to work WITH myself. To accept my flaws, and my future… and consider that maybe they’re not so terrible after all.”

“Um… except f-for how this f-future kind of is terrible?” Anthony said, gesturing around them.

“Oh, well, this future is terrible, sure. But for the first time, I’m starting to wonder if I can accept that MY future destiny ISN’T.” Elizabeth straightened her posture. “Or rather, that it won’t have to be, not once I truly deal with myself.” She stepped towards the door. “Meaning it’s not only time for the final battle between Carries…” She pushed the door open. “But that it doesn’t have to be one-on-one.”

“This is ridiculous,” Carrie said, her eyes flickering from yellow back to blue. “When I centre on them, all they’re doing is moping about Miami. But when I jump ahead a few days, I can’t pick them up at all.”

“So track them more gradually,” Glen said idly.

“Even ignoring how I’m not at full strength, and the fact that watching a minute back then is the same as a minute in the here and now, it’s SO BORING,” Carrie moaned. “I am narrowing it down though. I think something happened on their third day there. Damned if I know what. Where are Elizabeth and her friends in the present, have you spotted them?”

“Yeah. They’re approaching our position.”

Carrie blinked. “Wait, for serious?”

Glen nodded. “Yeah, but I’ve locked and re-keyed the ID on the door here to a random sequence. We’re secure. I’m more worried about these resistance forces. They’re not giving up. Maybe you should pop up there and scare the hell out of them, make them retreat?”

Carrie gestured. “Fine, fine. In a little while, I’ll time travel back to now, and do that.”

“Right.” There was a brief silence. Glen cleared his throat. “Thing is, you haven’t appeared to them yet, implying that in the future you might not–"

“Glinephanis?”

“Yes, Carrie?”

“Shut up, I’m busy.”

“Okay then.”

She resumed trying to pinpoint whatever Elizabeth’s group of friends had been doing in Miami. Instead of focussing on Elizabeth herself.

“Slight problem,” Bernard remarked. Again, he reached out towards the ID reader. Again, he tapped the access card that Faye had provided, back when Walter had first arrived to program the temporal generator. And again, nothing happened. “This card isn’t working any more.”

“Carrie’s in there though," Elizabeth murmured. “I can sense it.”

“Maybe they’ll open the door if we knock?” Amelia said hopefully.

“No,” Elizabeth said slowly. “It’s time. Give me a moment. As long as I believe in myself, and believe that I can… that I AM going to survive this encounter… I… I will be able to…"

“…give myself this,” Buffy finished, appearing in a flash of light. She seemed scared and out of breath, her eyes flickering between blue and gold, but she nevertheless extended her hand to her double. It held a new key card.

“Nice! You got the card off of Carrie,” Bernard said, grinning.

Buffy drew in a long breath, then turned to him, smiling weakly and rubbing her temple. “Nope.” Her eyes settled on blue.

“Okay, so, key cards are our new apple,” Elizabeth remarked. She reached out to accept it, turning it around in her hands as she looked Buffy up and down. “Thanks. I’m guessing I’m more on offence this round?”

Buffy nodded. “Yeah. And I’m afraid when I left I still hadn’t figured out how to resolve our ultimate paradox. Namely how we can accept becoming her, and yet somehow NOT become her.”

“That is a puzzler,” Elizabeth agreed. “Keep working on it, okay future me?”

“Oh, you bet.” Buffy dusted off her hands, becoming increasingly more chipper. “After all, I think I will have been getting close soon, knowing what I will have to be seeing a short time ago while I have drawn her fire like you already will.”

Anthony rubbed his forehead. “Okay, that sentence right there? That’s where Temporal ends up being a better language than English.”

The two blondes glanced in his direction. “Sorry,” they chorused in unison. They then looked back at each other and let out simultaneous giggles.

“That is somehow cute, and yet scary as hell,” Bernard observed.

Elizabeth smirked. “If you think that’s scary?” She brandished the new key card, moving in closer to the reader. “Just wait until we’re both fighting our future incarnation.”

The reader pinged, and the door unlocked.

NEXT: Carrie Versus Herself

ASIDE: I’ve been watching the anime “Steins;Gate” this month. I think that, if you enjoy this serial, you’d enjoy it - and vice versa. (Both are slow to start, and get convoluted.) I’ve been blogging about my experience watching it, if you’re curious.

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

PART 94b: BUFFY’S RETURN

Carrie Elizabeth Waterson looked around at her time travelling companions. “Don’t all talk at once.”

Timothy Anthony Whitby cleared his throat. “What about Mindylenopia’s weapon?”

Frank Bernard Dijora held it up. “Drained. I already used it to take down Future Carrie, that’s why she’s not breathing down our necks.”

Anthony nodded. “L-let me have a l-look then. M-Maybe I can see how we m-might recharge it?” Bernard handed it over.

“Related, how much longer is that one shot going to keep Future Carrie out of it?” Elizabeth asked.

Bernard shrugged. “No way of knowing.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Perfect.”

Then again, she reasoned, if they kept using the gun, there was an obvious defence. Whenever Carrie regained consciousness later? She could theoretically jump back to right after she was shot. Negating the effectiveness. Good thing her future self wouldn’t have tried that already. “The gun’s hardly a permanent solution anyway.”

“Permanent?” Laurie Amelia Veniti gasped in horror. “You’re saying you want to kill future you?”

Elizabeth jerked her gaze towards Amelia. “Whoa! No, no, I want to… to… I don’t know, fix her. So that I have something to look forward to, something that isn’t… isn’t HER.”

Bernard leaned in. “That reminds me. I did overhear Carrie talking to, um, an even more Future Carrie…"

“Liz,” Elizabeth offered.

“Sure, to Liz. They were saying that the only method Carrie had for dealing with a future self was to overwrite bits of her own past. To remove the need for Liz to interfere with herself in the first place.”

Elizabeth raked her fingers back through her hair. “Okay. Except I’m not about to change the events that brought me here. Especially the truth about my mama. I won’t deliberately hide that from myself. I can’t. Because as long as I know about it, I also know that I don’t want to become the sort of person who would do it.”

“I get that,” Bernard said. “Thing is, Liz was wondering if there was another way. She didn’t give details.”

Elizabeth pursed her lips. “So maybe Liz sensed something, but it’s a thing she needs a younger self to do? I don’t suppose she passed along anything helpful, like a note.”

“I was insubstantial at the time, I don’t think the Carries even knew I was listening. But even if Liz had, her existence is being overwritten here.”

“Hold on.” Amelia gestured out towards the observation windows. “Aren’t we sitting in a huge time machine here? Can’t we use that to our advantage?”

Bernard adjusted his glasses. “Fair point. I guess I was mostly watching when Walter set the controls, and as such might be able to do something - but when would all we travel to?”

“Back to our present,” Amelia asserted. “Or, well, your present,” she amended. “A few weeks ahead of me, whenever you left to recruit me.”

“Carrie would only follow us back,” Elizabeth countered.

“So we’ll set a trap for her,” Amelia insisted.

“I can see through time,” Elizabeth sighed. “So we have to assume that Carrie can too, and that she’s better at it. She would look before she leapt, then pop in before we could come up with the trap. Or worse, find a way for us to spring it on ourselves. No, we’ve GOT to deal with Carrie in the here and now, before she regains her full strength.”

“It was a good thought though,” Bernard assured Amelia, off her crestfallen look. “Actually, in a similar vein, maybe we can use the information in the building’s database? The future knows more about Carrie than we do…"

As Bernard walked over to the main board, there was a flash of light over by the exit. “Sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here, now,” the newest arrival asserted, pulling the door open.

Elizabeth did a double take, recognizing another seventeen year old version of herself. “Uhm, yeah, okay ‘Buffy'…"

Buffy rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, there’s going to be a–"

“Lockdown. Lockdown,” came an automated computer voice. “This building is now in lockdown.” A red light on the wall came on, strobing, as half the overhead lights switched off.

“And they’ll start to pump knockout gas into this room momentarily,” Buffy concluded. “So get a move on.”

“Okay, n-not a fan of gas,” Anthony decided, hurrying to the door. Amelia ran over after him. Which was when the lock on the door clicked - but as Buffy was holding it open, there was no problem.

A hiss of air came from some overhead vents, and vapours began to pour out. “Damn. Glen must be in some auxiliary control room,” Bernard reasoned, hurrying after the others.

Buffy followed them out… shutting the door in the face of a surprised Elizabeth.

“Buffy,” Amelia shrieked. “You locked yourself in!”

“No. She’s about to realize she has to travel back to give you the warning,” Buffy assured the redhead. A puzzled look began to form on her face. “Meaning I’m Elizabeth again.”

Bernard lifted an eyebrow. “You know,” he remarked. “Maybe we should be trying to figure out a way to use your time travel abilities as our weapon of choice.”

Glen tapped at the holographic keyboard that had allowed him to interface with the building. It looked like he hadn’t been able to gas the main control room in time - and now he wasn’t sure where the other time travellers had gone. With the whole place in lockdown mode, he didn’t have complete access to the sensors any more.

Still, once he’d been notified of the external resistance forces closing in, initiating the lockdown had been the priority - along with getting their internal forces to mobilize in response. He wondered why security had been decreased throughout the building; what few personnel they had here would now have their hands full. New regulations following his departure, perhaps?

Oh well - on the bright side, he hadn’t seen the Theresa version of Mindylenopia on the monitors yet. And surely he and Carrie could take care of the rest of those idiotic teenage Mundanes by themselves.

A groaning noise brought his attention back to the fifty year old blonde woman, laid out on the floor nearby. He turned away from the computer systems, crouching next to her. “Carrie? Are you conscious yet?”

“What. The. Actual. F–"

“Somehow, Frank managed to get here ahead of us,” Glen interrupted. “With some sort of energy weapon. He hit you with it. Are you okay?”

Carrie blinked her blue eyes open. “No,” she snarled. “No, I am NOT ‘okay’. Somehow I’ve been cut off from the time streams.”

Glen frowned. “Seriously?”

“You think I’m lying? I can’t–" She broke off, as an attempt to push herself up merely made her eyelids flutter. She nearly hit her head as she crashed back down onto the ground.

“Maybe you should take it easy for a bit,” Glen suggested. “Frank and the others from your past, they’re not going far, not with a lockdown in place.”

“I will NOT take it easy,” Carrie snapped. “Not so long as my younger self is out there, running around my present and screwing up my history.”

“Carrie, it never goes well when you lose control of your emotions,” Glen soothed. “Besides, if the video image I pulled up is any indication, so far the only thing your prior self has done is pull in the rest of her prior time travelling companions - minus Mindylenopia. And with the lockdown, the dampening field will make any further attempts like that difficult for her at best.”

“Peachy.” Carrie took a few deep breaths. “But you’re not wrong. Okay, finding my zen.” She blinked a few times, then smiled. “There we go - I AM still attached to the time streams, it’s only that my senses have been… somehow numbed. Temporarily.”

“See?” Glen remarked. “So we get you back to full strength, trap the other time travellers in a room somewhere, and then you can send them all back to their–"

“Back to the Stone Age,” Carrie growled.

Glen frowned. “Er, really? Because even if you never directly interacted with those ones after we left town, surely they’re still a part of your past. I’m not sure you can simply–"

“I’m Goddamn Carrie Elizabeth Waterson, Temporal Queen!” Carrie spat out, her anger bubbling up again. “If Mindylenopia can mess with my past, I sure as hell can do whatever I want with it too. Yeah?”

“O-kay then.” Glen cleared his throat. “Except you can’t banish your younger self to the Stone Age. Can you?”

“No,” Carrie yielded. Her lips tightened. “No, but I have other plans for her.” Her eyes focussed on his face. “She will become me. Make no mistake.”

“I’m n-not sure how to charge the gun back up,” Anthony admitted. “That is, I c-can see how, based on our version, but I have n-no idea what sort of outlet or b-battery it plugs into. That part’s different.”

The four of them had retreated to a janitor’s closet. Bernard knew about it, because it’s where Mindylenopia had stashed their third security guard. Curiously enough, the room was now empty, containing only cleaning supplies. He decided it was a Timeline Three versus Four thing.

“Pity we don’t have a way of using Julie’s tracking device,” Bernard mused. “We might use it to pinpoint Glen’s location, and thereby trap the two of them, the way they just tried to trap us. Except I left the main assembly back in the time car.” He turned. “Elizabeth, do you think you could jump there and get it?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I haven’t ever seen that car, not really, and I don’t think anyone I know would be around it now either. Moreover, it feels like that lockdown triggered some kind of temporal dampening field. Becoming Buffy and warning you about the knockout gas, it required more concentration than I would have expected.”

“Then you’re saying we can’t get out to Luci or the resistance either,” Amelia sighed.

Elizabeth swallowed. “Know what? I hate to say it, but maybe we should simply surrender.”

Bernard turned again, from where he’d resumed examining the janitorial chemical bottles. “You can’t be serious.”

Elizabeth looped a strand of hair around her fingers, tugging on it. “Yes, I can be. Because the longer I think about this? The more doomed I feel I am. No matter how good my time travel skills are, hers are better. That’s the way it works. A more experienced me will always be better, that’s got to be why Carrie always avoided a “Liz”-style conflict.”

“No,” Amelia said softly. She stood straighter. “I don’t know if my motivational speeches have improved since the hospital over a year ago, but Elizabeth? You CANNOT tell me that the Carrie out there is a better person than you are. No way. You… you’ve always been my mentor.”

Elizabeth looked at her. “Amelia, seriously? Me a mentor?”

The redhead nodded. “So I have faith that you can fix this. Because we never know what we’re capable of until we’re forced into a corner, which is what’s happening to you here. So don’t surrender to the evil Carrie, okay?”

Elizabeth swallowed. “Thanks Amelia, I… I’m flattered. And frankly undeserving, given my attitude towards you and so many others throughout the majority of our time in high school together. But even if I can say I’m a better person now, we’re not fighting a battle of ethics here. We’re fighting a battle of inevitability.”

The blonde cheerleader sighed. ”Meaning if I turn myself in, maybe the future Carrie will respect that. And sure, my OWN future will suck, but I can accept that if at least the rest of you can go on with your lives. Because when I left you behind in the present, that’s all I really wanted.”

“I d-don’t think that’ll happen,” Anthony protested. “I mean, b-based on what Future Luci said to us? Our future lives will suck for as long as you’re w-working with the Temporals. In any timeline.”

“We’re also not leaving without you,” Amelia insisted.

Elizabeth yanked on her hair hard enough that she winced. She pulled her fingers free. “Look, I’m still open to other alternatives - but really, what can we DO? We don’t even have a Temporal to consult for advice, and Carrie’s got Glen on her side.” She frowned. “Speaking of, what happened to Mindylenopia, or Theresa, or whatever you decided to call her? I didn’t spot her when I was looking for people who’d recently experienced a massive temporal displacement.”

Bernard put a bottle of bleach back on the shelf, letting out a sigh. “She didn’t make it, Elizabeth. Back in Miami, Mindylenopia drew Carrie’s attention away from us, to a decoy car, and it exploded.”

“W-Wait, no,” Anthony said, pushing himself off the wall. “I saw Theresa. Like, an old Theresa, way older than she had b-been in Miami. She was w-working with the resistance in this timeline.”

“What?” Amelia gasped. “But we saw Mindy die. Didn’t we?”

Bernard frowned. “So… maybe what I told her in Timeline Three bled through, and she lived? Except if that’s true, why would we still remember the explosion…”

“Agh, it’s just more questions without answers,” Elizabeth groaned.

The door to the janitor’s closet swung open. Bernard reached back for the bottle of bleach, Anthony grabbed a mop, and Amelia dropped into an approximation of a fighting stance. But it was only Buffy standing in the doorway, smiling wryly. She then tossed an apple at her past self, Elizabeth catching it by reflex.

“There you go,” Buffy remarked. “There’s our biggest unanswered question.”

Elizabeth looked down at the apple, then back up at herself. Her eyes went wide. “Oh, Buffy. We cannot be serious,” she gasped.

NEXT: Endgame

ASIDE: The last time we saw Buffy was way back in Part 48, when Carrie tripled herself. The apple is an even older reference. Two weeks left. Hope you’re enjoying. Care to vote for T&T at TWF?

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: One of the security people is immune to Mindy’s mental power. Elsewhere, Laurie hears sounds of a struggle.

PART 92b: VENI, VIDI, VENITI

“Tim, I can hear someone nearby who’s in trouble,” Laurie said.

“On or off the property?”

“On,” Laurie answered. The sounds of a struggle were coming from within the small grove of trees, where there seemed to be a gazebo.

“Okay, well, HQ here assures me that it’s not safe to approach,” Tim stated. “Double back, and meet up with Luci.”

Laurie felt torn. Given the trees, she might be able to approach the gazebo unseen. But Tim was right - what if she was caught? And what if being identified screwed up everything? Worse, what if she somehow messed up their timelines for good? Besides, what could she even do to stop whatever was going on?

“Please,” came a female voice. “Please, stop.”

Laurie made a fist. No. She had already been taken advantage of so much in her life - she wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone else. More to the point, her standing up to Frank about Mindylenopia this morning? It would mean nothing if she couldn’t follow through on her own principles now.

“Tim, I’m going in anyway,” she asserted. Drawing on her cheerleading abilities, Laurie jumped over the fence.

“Good evening… how exactly do you have authorization to be here?”

The brown haired security woman stared levelly at Frank and Mindylenopia. Almost before Frank had registered the movement, her weapon was out, and pointing their way.

“We need to run a systems check,” Mindylenopia said casually. “Call down a tech who can set the controls for a thirty year time jump, okay?”

The woman lifted an eyebrow. “That’s back to before this facility was even built. I’ll have to phone up the chain for confirmation.”

“No, you won’t,” Mindylenopia countered, putting emphasis on the words. She took a step closer.

The security guard’s head shook. “No, I really will. Also, I think you should put that handbag on the ground before you come any closer?”

Mindylenopia looked sidelong at Frank. It was as she had feared - her mind power was ineffective against this person. So it was up to Frank to come up with a better plan, before Mindylenopia was forced to provide the necessary incentive by firing off her ‘temporal gun’ at people. Shots which would render the thing less effective against Carrie herself. Fortunately, he had the hints of an idea.

“Wait,” Frank began. “The two of us, we’re with the… Chronologic Patrol. It’s a new unit - we conduct safety inspections. We need to see how well the system aligns for a time jump of that magnitude. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re activating anything tonight."

The security woman shook her head. “A new unit, where the dress code is casual? Including bad wigs? And why haven’t I heard of you?"

“The Patrol works under the radar,” Mindy continued smoothly. “Undercover. Moreover, there’s reason to suspect one of your technicians here is violating safety standards, hence our turning up unannounced. We have clearance though. How else could we be this deep in the facility?”

The security woman stepped a little closer. “I don’t know,” she answered, gun still up. “How else COULD you be this deep?”

That’s when Frank spotted the ID badge at the woman’s hip. And the first name on it: Faye. That name, coupled with the woman’s apparent immunity to Mindylenopia’s mind control - it triggered a memory. A memory of Lee’s sister, who in grade nine, had come close to beating up a boy to get a book back for her younger sibling. Could this be her? Was there a way to use that knowledge?

“Question for you, Faye,” Frank blurted. “If you had to choose between your job and your family, which of them would you pick?”

Her gun swung to point only at him. “No contest. Do you think I’d even be working in here if it didn’t help me keep my family safe?!”

Frank realized he had hit a nerve, and so chose his next words carefully. “Here’s the thing, Faye. Maybe, after our inspection, you won’t need this job to ensure your loved ones are safe.”

Her arm shook slightly. “What, are you talking promotion? Or are you part of some military coup?”

Frank glanced at Mindylenopia, wondering whether they should admit to one of those. Her ‘what the hell are you doing’ face made him realize he was now in this on his own. “I’m saying we’re the Chronologic Patrol,” he said, turning back to face Lee’s sister. “We’re conducting safety inspections.”

Faye stared. She seemed to be thinking hard. Then the gun barrel swung down, and she presented the hilt of the weapon towards them. Mindylenopia quickly stepped close enough to grab it away from her. “It is now possible,” Faye remarked. “That I did this under duress. To help my family.”

She marched back towards the communications link at her station. “Priority request,” she said, thumbing the button. “Send a tech. A couple of inspectors have turned up down here.”

Laurie was close enough to the gazebo to hear everything now. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing. And the female voice sounded somehow familiar, the same way Clarke’s voice had sounded familiar to her the previous evening.

“What?” the male was saying. “I heard you go both ways. Am I not good enough for you? Or is it that you only give it up for the lady with the golden eyes?”

“Her name is Carrie,” came the quiet response. “And we’re in love.”

“Hah! That’s rich. She’s got girls in every country. Probably guys too. And if ‘your Carrie’ really loved you, she would’ve kept you close tonight. Or at least had someone stop me when I dragged you out here. No, Chartreuse, she expects you to give influential people like me a good time tonight, in exchange for receiving favours later. Yeah?”

Laurie’s breath caught in her throat at the name.

“Just… stop. PLEASE stop,” Chartreuse begged.

“Stop what? Telling you the truth? Or stop doing things like this to you?”

Chartreuse whimpered.

The firework was arcing over the gazebo before Laurie even stopped to think about it. It exploded with a bang, lighting up the area, and causing the two figures to separate.

“Kick him and run, Chartreuse!” Laurie shouted immediately after, pressing herself up against yet another tree trunk. Her heart was beating so fast, she was worried it would burst out of her chest. “Kick him and run, and, like, keep on running!”

“Who the hell is out there?” the assailant snarled. In the brief light of the firework, he’d looked at least forty, and a bit out of shape.

“Someone who, like, believes people like you can get away with stuff too often, you know?” Laurie wasn’t entirely sure why she’d decided to spout ‘valley girl’ talk. She supposed it was in the hope that it would trigger something in her old friend. “And someone who is finally, like, taking a stand!”

“Oh yeah? Well, news flash. I’m smarter than my father. I won’t get caught the way he was. So you better run along now before you become a victim too!”

Laurie looked to the heavens and crossed herself. “No. You leave Chartreuse alone!”

“Oh, you’re gonna get it now…"

Laurie heard the sound of someone being shoved to the ground, but from the measured steps in her direction, it didn’t sound like the person approaching was Chartreuse. It occurred to her that the only advantage she had was the fact that the guy didn’t seem light on his feet.

“Stand back up and kick him down, Chartreuse,” Laurie pleaded. She began to backpedal from tree to tree as he came closer. “Take a, you know, stand! You’ve gotta do it, if not for yourself, then for, like, me, and people like me, otherwise he’s gonna keep doing it, or maybe he’ll get a firework in the face next, because I, you know, didn’t think this through, and don’t know what else to do, and golly, now I could be screwing up the timelines, um, please, Tim any suggestions…?"

She then realized that in her haste to get away, she’d started back-pedalling towards the house. Perfect.

“Laurie,” came Tim’s calm, measured voice. “Try to hide. Luci’s on her way.”

People were going to have to bail her out. Again. The same way her brother always did. Her brother, who didn’t even exist in this timeline. Laurie felt like crying. As she’d feared, she was ruining everything. What more could possibly go wrong now? Could this get any worse?

No, she realized. Things couldn’t get any worse. She had hit rock bottom, she was at the point where she had nothing left to lose.

“When I get my hands on you,” the man growled, “you’re gonna wish you’d minded your own…"

Laurie knew that a red dress wasn’t the best outfit to be wearing when performing a back handspring. But in retrospect, that’s probably what made the guy freeze in place, allowing the cheerleader to complete her maneuver by planting her hands and kicking back and up with her legs. It was a solid hit, right where she’d intended. The predatory man crumpled to the ground with a high pitched whine.

Nothing left to lose. Had she seriously just done that?

Laurie grabbed her handbag back off the ground and charged back towards the fence, leaving the man laid out in the dirt. She only paused long enough to catch her breath, upon registering the fact that the fifty year old version of Chartreuse was now standing by the gazebo, her mouth open wide. “D-Did you just flatten Councillor Linford?” Chartreuse gasped.

Laurie shrugged. “Your turn next time,” she declared. “Also, you look good. The red hair works. It’s never too late to find a nice man or woman who truly loves you. Okay?”

Not waiting for a response, Laurie sprinted off the property.

One moment, Carrie was reaching for an hors d’oeuvre. The next moment, she was on the ground, her palm against her forehead.

Someone was going to time travel. And they were going to do it with intent - and more importantly, with a plan - for changing history. Who was it? Some fool with a homemade machine in their basement, and lottery numbers in hand? Carrie dropped her mental shields into place, and tried to localize the disturbance.

It was North America. It was Ontario. It was… in town? Ridiculous. In that case, she wouldn’t even have to warn a prior self. She could get there in person. Was the person so clueless?

A shiver ran down her back, as she focussed in… and realized that it wasn’t some crazy person in a basement. The stationary temporal generator to the south was powering up. Impossible. How could anyone have gained access, much less someone who might change history?!

Carrie turned her attention to the time streams, looking for the warning signs, looking for something to nudge. But she couldn’t track back mentally - there was now a waterfall in the way. The anomaly she’d sensed. Well, that was a problem.

She could still deal with this though.

Pushing herself back to her feet, and ignoring the concerned mutterings of all the people around her, Carrie began to speed up time for herself, relative to her surroundings.

NEXT: Nowhere to Run

ASIDE: I kind of love today’s title. Did you spot all the callbacks, like Faye, Linford and the “Chronologic Patrol”? Only four more episodes/weeks to go now! Another Commentary this weekend, before we’re into the home stretch. Everything changes next week, but it all makes sense as far as Miami is concerned… care to do that T&T vote thing?

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: They need what Julie has, to help Mindy travel back. But Luci tried to throw Julie out, after some uncomfortable truths were revealed.

PART 91b: REWRITE THE FUTURE

Julie had pulled her glasses back out. The way she tapped at the arms and blinked very deliberately helped Frank realize that they were some sort of technological device; maybe she was using them to read the daily news. Or to communicate with someone?

Then again, Luci didn’t seem to be concerned by Julie’s actions. The asian woman merely glared at her house guest from across the dining room table, as Julie continued to stare at her lenses. Deliberately ignoring everyone present. With a sigh, Frank made sure Tim and Laurie were okay on the sofa, the blonde boy doing his best to console their redheaded friend, then he returned to the table.

“Okay,” Frank sighed. “Julie. Here’s the thing. What you’ve got? Luci thought it would make this mission safe for us. Or safer, at least. Knowing that, why would you willingly take those items away, increasing the danger?”

“Because obviously Luci doesn’t need them after all,” Julie said dryly. “Besides, if she truly cared about safety then her resistance friends wouldn’t be–"

“I have been trying to FIX that, Julie! I was making an effort, and I’ve redoubled my efforts since losing–”

“Oh, I’m sorry, you want points for better late than nev–"

“Okay, stop,” Frank said, cutting between them. He drew in a long breath. “Look. I obviously don’t know the whole history here. But I DO know you two - or knew you - when you were my age. Back when Julie tended to work on her projects all by herself, while Luci had a habit of speaking her mind regardless of the consequences. Back when, despite those differences, you both cared. About each other, and about what was going on around you. So, know what? I think that means you still care. Both of you. Somehow, you’ve simply blinded yourselves to that reality over the last thirty years.”

Julie’s posture went rigid, and she reached up to pull her glasses back off. Luci bit down on her lower lip, turning away from Julie to face the wall. For a moment, neither spoke.

“People are dying, Frank,” Luci whispered at least. “You of all people MUST realize that. And when you care too much, and then people die, it hurts that much more.”

“I’m not about to die,” Julie muttered. “Your resistance could at least care a little bit about how much I stick my neck out.”

“You questioned what we were doing,” Luci said, turning back and smacking her palm against the table. “ALL the damn time.”

“Because you were blinded by vengeance. Sorry,” Julie immediately amended. “I don’t mean you, Luci. Some of your group were though. Still are. I couldn’t be a party to that.”

“Oh, why, because you’re such a saint?” Luci sniped.

“No, precisely because I’m NOT a saint,” Julie said. “And what I didn’t enjoy seeing was my darker places reflected in your resistance group. Hence, my trying to clean them up for you - leading to my getting attacked for those efforts. Damn it Luci, if you’d only listened to me back then, then maybe…" Her voice trailed off.

Luci sat back, looking tired. “Corry wasn’t my call. You know that.”

“I know, I just…" Julie shook her head, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Maybe Frank has a point. Maybe, in the end, I was looking for a reason to wash my hands of the whole thing. And I finally got it.”

“And maybe I didn’t like you showing us what we were becoming,” Luci admitted. “I won’t deny my ethics have become… flexible these days.”

Julie rubbed her forehead. “Tell you what.” Her gaze swung towards the couch. “I’ll stick with you for this one, if you’ll have me. Because I want to guarantee young Laurie’s safety.”

Luci nodded. “You have that guarantee. And your acquired immunity to mind control makes you a useful asset for us. Not that I only see you as an asset here,” she amended. “I do care. At least a little.”

Julie chuckled. “So, suddenly friends again?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But I’d say we’re not adversaries.” Luci shook her head. “We never should have let that happen.” She hesitated, then stretched her arm across the table. Julie regarded the hand, then reached out to shake it.

“Thank goodness,” Frank sighed. He winced as both ladies turned to look at him - he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Um, yeah, so what’s the plan then?”

Luci dropped Julie’s hand, standing back up. “The plan? Is to follow Mindylenopia’s plan, until she travels back. At which point we storm the stationary generator, so that the Temporals are facing chaos both inside and out. That gives us our best chance ever to obtain time travel… as long as Carrie doesn’t rewrite everything. That’s the key. We cannot attempt this without that piece in place.”

“Right. Well, we should have a few tricks in store for Carrie,” Frank said, glancing back towards Tim and Laurie. “Mindylenopia’s weapon will help.”

“Hold on,” Julie said. “What’s going to stop Temporals from using the stationary temporal generator in the States next week? Or the one in Japan, or Ireland, or any of the other sites around the world? They could travel back from then to yesterday, and be here to mess with Canada now. After all, they’ve already got their representatives in town for Carrie’s birthday celebration.”

Luci shook her head. “Temporals may have the better grasp on time travel theory, but without Carrie, they’re as locked into predestination as we are.” She grinned. “Meaning we long as we can take the building in the present, we’ll HAVE it.”

“Just one loose end remains,” Frank said. “What did Mindy say, when you told her she could be tortured and killed on her mission to our past?”

He shifted his attention back to Luci, only to see that she was frowning. “Frank, I mentioned she calls us, we don’t call her, yeah? Well, we know where you and Laurie need to be positioned - but when you meet her? I’m afraid you’ll have to give Mindylenopia that information yourself. At which point… well, yeah, I guess she could abort the whole thing.”

Frank stood by the side of Highway 19 that night, south of Ottawa. Luci had dropped him off there, before driving back in to monitor Laurie; Julie had offered to take Laurie and Tim to their necessary locations in advance. Frank took a moment to mentally review what he knew of that part of the mission.

Carrie apparently had residences in many capital cities around the world - but she preferred Canada, where she had grown up. So her fiftieth birthday was being held locally. And Mindylenopia had been invited. Luci had hypothesized that the invitation was a test of the redhead’s fuzzy allegiances, or simply a way to keep an eye on her… either way, Mindylenopia had RVSPed. To the tune of ‘I’ll stick to lurking outside, not unlike the spy you take me for’.

So Laurie would lurk in her place. And as long as the Temporals thought Mindylenopia was there, they wouldn’t be looking for her to storm the building housing the stationary time machine. The building that Frank and Mindylenopia would soon be inside, so that he could get the prototype temporal gun… and then, assuming sending a message was possible, he would cue the resistance to storm in. Piece of cake.

Assuming Mindylenopia had no problem with dying in Miami, years later down her timeline.

He checked his watch - almost nine thirty.

“Bernard, why are you wearing that ridiculous disguise?” came a voice from the darkness.

Frank jumped, absently reaching up to touch the blonde moustache and wig he’d put on. “Uh, I thought it would help fool the video cameras.”

“Right. Because they only use video to identify people,” Mindylenopia said, coming close enough for Frank to see her rolling her eyes. “Oh well, it’s low tech, so it can’t hurt. Maybe you’ll buy yourself time because they’ll be so busy laughing. Come on.”

“Mindy. Mindylenopia, wait,” Frank said. “You have to know something first. About what’s liable to happen to you if you succeed in going back. I promised someone I would tell you.”

“Uh huh, sure. I already checked the history books, there’s no record of me,” she objected.

“Right, true enough.” Frank drew in a shaky breath. “Thing is? I’ve got very good reason to believe that you’ll end up temporally banished by the Carrie you meet in the past. And that, although you’ll survive, and rebuild many of your memories, you won’t survive what comes after that.”

“Speak the truth, please,” Mindylenopia grumbled.

“I did,” Frank said, speaking automatically.

In the process of turning away, Mindylenopia froze. She slowly swivelled her head back. “Are you one of those vision mystics?”

“No.”

“But you’ve spoken with one.”

“Not as such.”

“Yet somehow, you think past Carrie knows that I’m coming for her?”

“Not that either.” Frank shook his head. He sighed. “It’s complicated,” he yielded, using the word Chartreuse had with Tim.

She stared at him. “Part of me wants you to spill everything now.” She licked her lips. “But the sensible part of me only wants to know one thing. This future for me, which you seem to be forecasting - will that Mindylenopia change things? Will her ripples eventually kick this timeline in the teeth, or preferably somewhere even more painful?”

“I’m going to go with yes,” Frank said. After all, how could he even be here otherwise?

Mindylenopia considered that. “Good. Come on.”

Frank hesitated. “Mindylenopia - are you sure?”

She looked over her shoulder again. “No, of course not. Where’s the fun in being sure? Even with the effects of time travel being globally predestined, nothing’s ever sure, not really, not until it’s happened. So, since I’m not in the history books, I’m banking on your predicted past future being flexible. Heck, this mission to get me back could still fail somehow.”

“But if it succeeds, and it leads to banishment and death…"

“Everybody dies, Bernard,” Mindylenopia observed. “The question is what sort of footprint you want to leave behind. Sounds like I’ll go out making an impact.”

She began to stride away. “Look, I appreciate the warning, but don’t bring it up again. Because even if we assume a Carrie-esque banishment leads to me forgetting about this conversation? No one should really know too much about their own destiny. Otherwise, there’s a chance it’ll become someone else’s.”

Frank felt a tension in his shoulders relax. He felt like he’d legitimately held up his end of things, and their plans hadn’t been aborted. “Okay then. I’m right behind you.”

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. “There is an anomaly.”

“There is? What is it, my love?”

Carrie didn’t bother to turn to face the woman who had spoken. She continued to glare at her reflection, her eyes flickering from blue to gold and back, hoping to pinpoint the problem. Annoyingly, if there was a source behind things feeling not-quite-right, it remained elusive. “I don’t know,” she said at last, spitting the words out. That was a three word chain she spoke very infrequently. “Probably just a sign that I’m going to need to rewrite the timelines, and go through this day again with a massive headache. Stupid Mundanes, don’t they know that messing with today will simply make me ANGRY?”

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? A massage? Bring you some chocolate? Do a vis– I mean, a massage?”

Carrie snorted. “No.” She pushed herself away from the vanity, clenching her hands into fists. “Wait, were you about to say vision quest? Did you get back into those while I was out of town?! I thought we’d cured you of all that mystic nonsense, along with that silly accent!”

“N-No, I m-mean yes, I mean… my love, I only stumbled into an online forum where they were discussing it…”

“Stay off that forum. Better yet, tell me about it tomorrow, we’ll shut it down.” Carrie felt her fingernails digging into her palms. “I’m the one and only authority on what DOES or DOES NOT happen within the time streams. Is that understood?”

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

“Fine, good.” Carrie finally turned to regard the woman sitting on the edge of her bed. Like Carrie, she was dressed in an elaborate gown. However, her’s was purple, to complement her hair, which had for years now been dyed a bright red. When in Rome, and all that. Carrie smiled, seeing that the woman’s eyes remained cast down, towards the floor. In obedience. 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. “Oh yes, my love,” the woman repeated. She started to look up.

“Excellent. Eyes down. Remember your place.”

Carrie’s first ever female paramour immediately complied. Honestly, there were times when Carrie wondered why she had even bothered to track down and recruit Chartreuse. But the girl had been so fond of her in high school… and then so malleable because of their history together. Even now, Chartreuse still had her uses, for instance in identifying illicit online message forums.

Snapping her fingers at her old high school friend, and with the hints of an anomaly still tickling at her senses, Carrie strode out to meet her birthday guests.

NEXT: Storming the Castle

ASIDE: Remember the April Fools entry? “Elder Carrie” is back, and meaner than ever. Meanwhile, the fourth person in that Tuesday graphic… will be Chartreuse. She turns up everywhere. If you’re enjoying, take 5 seconds to vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: Luci explained about the future. To help Mindy, she’ll now need to contact Julie.

PART 91a: REUNITE THE FUTURE

For a while, no one spoke in Luci’s dining room. The forty seven year old version of Luci had left minutes ago, disappearing into the other room, claiming she needed to make some phone calls. Frank knew that his own silence was rooted in a sensation that there was too much to say, with no idea of where to start. Tim became the first to speak up.

“Here’s w-what I don’t get,” he ventured. “If Carrie’s been thwarting every m-move of this resistance - w-why did they send Shady back to activate her early? W-Weren’t things better for them in timeline two?”

“Predestination,” Laurie said glumly. “They had to do it.”

“Yes and no,” Frank said, as he reflected on it. “Yes in that it happened, so they had to have done it. Even knowing that the result wouldn’t be quite what they wanted, they had to… assuming they were even consciously aware of the final result. But no, in that the first time it happened - if we can even call it a first time, when that’s been overwritten - they probably weren’t much better off.”

“B-But Carrie wasn’t active in the prior timeline,” Tim protested.

“Not as a teenager. But I imagine the Temporals recruited her as soon as this alien artifact incident caught up with them,” Frank explained. “The difference being, in that timeline two, she was working for them, whereas now… well, I wonder if the Temporals are working for her.”

“NONE of it is our timeline though, right Frank? Right?” Laurie pleaded. “It can’t be!”

Frank ran his hands back through his hair. “I don’t know, Laurie. I truly don’t. Even if their Elder Carrie wins, and implants memories into Our Carrie to force her down this path… I’d still be alive. I think. Unless telling Mindylenopia is what changes that.”

“Frank, we CAN’T send her back blind,” Laurie insisted, standing up. “It’s not right! Now more than ever, I see that using her to our benefit, it would mean we’re no better than these resistance people!”

Frank nodded. “I agree.”

“And since I won’t be her double unless we tell her the truth, it means we don’t have a… a…" Laurie blinked. “You agree?”

“Yeah.” He exhaled. “Laurie, I’ll tell Mindylenopia about her possible future. I admit, to this point, I was looking at this whole situation as being a broken timeline for us to fix. But Luci’s made it feel… real. With real people. Like Mindylenopia.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “Which means I’ll get to be the bait. For her.”

“No.” Frank shook his head. “Not unless we can guarantee your safety. Including a complete two way communications link back to Tim, so that he can interject with Temporal linguistic information as needed.” He grimaced. “I probably overestimated whatever Mindylenopia was hoping for.”

“S-Sounds like Luci was keen on s-safety though,” Tim noted. “So even that s-should work out.”

“But can I act like Mindylenopia?” Laurie said, wringing her hands. “She was always so… so… together. So self-assured.”

“She seems more impatient these days,” Frank remarked.

Tim smiled. “Laurie, I w-wouldn’t worry. The w-way you stood up for your beliefs just now? It’s the most self-assured I’ve ever s-seen you.”

The redhead’s cheeks bloomed a bit brighter. “Oh? Golly.”

Tim turned his attention away, and towards the adjacent room containing Luci. “Here’s m-my other wonder. Will we soon m-meet Future Julie?”

Frank followed Tim’s gaze. “Given our own Julie’s paranoid streak concerning Glen and Mindy? I’d be surprised if she simply took any requests made by Luci on faith alone.”

The trio of time travellers spent the day inside Luci’s home - with strict orders not to depart. On the one hand, that suited Tim just fine; he understood Luci’s concerns about making changes, or seeing things they weren’t meant to see. As well as her own need to leave and go to work, to keep up appearances and to make a few “in person” requests. She had even left them with some holo-game devices (which Laurie had gravitated towards for the animations), a pad of stories locked into the ‘classics’, some music discs that weren’t “discs” at all (but Tim supposed the name had stuck), and some technical odds and ends (which had interested Frank).

On the other hand, Tim felt like it was tough to simply bide your time when you were in a foreign environment with a dangerous mission ahead. He had managed to interest Laurie in learning a few typical Temporal phrases - while hoping he was getting the pronunciation correct. He had also figured out the remote for the microwave, and been able to make their late lunch a hot one. But it was hard to concentrate for any length of time.

All things considered, it was a relief when the doorbell rang early that evening. The relief lasted until Tim looked at the video monitor, and realized that the person at the door wasn’t Luci. Well, that made sense - why ring the doorbell of your own house?

“Frank! Laurie!” he called out to them.

Frank was already approaching, and Laurie joined them moments later. They all looked at the image of the brunette woman with long, wavy brown hair, which seemed to be partially greying. She wore a professional looking suit, had a pair of glasses perched on her nose, and carried a tote bag.

Laurie gasped. “Is… is that…"

“Gotta be,” Tim affirmed. “D-Do we let Julie in?”

Their visitor reached out to press the doorbell again, then peered in the direction of the camera, her lips moving. Tim reached out to tap at the volume control.

“…so I know you’re in there. Let me in, or the deal’s off,” came the curt voice of the elder Julie LaMille.

“I’ll let her in,” Frank decided. “You two wait in the other room. Just in case.”

Tim nodded, retreating out of sight. He heard the front door open… and silence. Then Julie’s voice again. “So she wasn’t lying. It really is you. Before you died. Bloody hell.”

“Uh, technically it’s me after I died… er, you want to come in?” Frank asked.

Her tongue clucked. “If I do, will my DNA trigger some kind of home defence system that fires lasers at me?”

“I… don’t… think so?”

“Hmph.” Tim heard the older Julie stride into the house. “I suppose even Luci wouldn’t be stupid enough to incinerate a member of Parliament.”

Frank closed the front door. “Okay! So you’re in the government. That’s… neat.”

“What other job would I have here? Ottawa is still the capital of Canada,” Julie noted. She dropped her tote bag on the floor. “I’ve got your supplies. Guessing Luci’s not here yet?”

Tim decided it was safe to emerge from the other room. He saw Julie was now removing her glasses, smirking a bit as she tapped something on the side of them. The lenses seemed to dim. “That’s the c-communications equipment for me and Laurie?” Tim asked, gesturing at the bag.

She looked his way. “That, plus a voice modulator, some bulletproof laser vests…” Her features seemed to soften as Laurie came out beside Tim. “I am so sorry she got you mixed up in all of this.”

“We kind of mixed ourselves up in it,” Frank admitted. “Did Luci mention how your Carrie abducted our Carrie?”

“No,” Julie said, eyeing him as she tucked her glasses away. “Merely that your being here means we have a chance at taking down Carrie, and subsequently acquiring the local stationary temporal generator. I guess anything more than THAT was on a ‘need to know’ basis. And since I do my OWN thing, which pisses off her little resistance to no end, I didn’t ‘need to know’.”

Tim frowned. “Wait, you’re able to do your own thing? With a war going on?”

“Cold war,” Julie corrected, crossing her arms as she leaned back against the wall. “And yes. Because I have an acquired immunity to the Temporal mind power. Which comes from being told as a teenager to shoot my former best friend, which in turn made me want to shoot my unborn self. That sort of trauma? It makes a girl throw up mental guards to prevent similar incidents from ever happening again. To prevent her from becoming anybody’s puppet. Surely you remember all that better than me.”

“Well, that’s good,” Frank remarked. “Oh, not the trauma!” he amended, as Julie glared at him. “More it’s good that it’s possible for some to resist the influence. The way Lee seemed to be able to do it.”

Julie’s eyes narrowed. “Luci hasn’t even told you about THAT, has she. Typical.”

“Told us what?” Laurie wondered, fidgeting in her hands with the holo-game cube she’d been playing.

The corners of Julie’s mouth curled up. “About what her little group of medical resistance fighters have been working on all these years. I mean, has it slipped your teenage minds that the one who went back, the one who had me shoot Carrie, was a Mundane? Not a Temporal at all?”

Tim felt his stomach drop. “Y-You’re saying that she… that Luci is trying to unlock the Temporal ability…"

“Fun fact,” Julie said. “Her friends haven’t figured out a way of turning the Temporal power of suggestion off, or even suppressing it, as with Lee. But, in certain cases, they’re able to turn a rudimentary version of it ON. In non-redheads.”

“Oh no,” Frank said, slumping against the wall. “That’s why you two don’t get along. Because Luci’s the indirect cause of the trauma you experienced as a teenager.”

“Oh no,” Julie said, shaking her head. “No, my parents caused most of the trauma I experienced back then. I don’t get along with Luci because of how her resistance killed Corry Veniti.”

The holo-game cube dropped to the floor. “What?” Laurie rasped.

“See, these resistance people, they’re not very big on ethics,” Julie said. “Granted, being a politician, it’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but at least I’m aware of my duplicity.” She nodded towards Laurie. “It’s okay, I made sure your future self was set up somewhere safe outside of town. Phil Clarke still visits on occasion.”

Tim reached out to support Laurie, as it looked like her knees were about to give out. “It’s okay Laurie,” he soothed. “It’s l-like you said, this is n-not our timeline. It’s not.”

“Julie,” Frank whispered. “Did you REALLY have to say that?”

She eyed him. “Yes. Because if you truly are from a divergent timeline… you can’t fix the things you don’t even know about. Right?”

“JULIE,” The scream was accompanied by the sound of the front door banging open. “Julie, you came EARLY you good-for-nothing…" Luci turned to Frank, her eyes blazing with anger. Based on the medical looking cloak she wore, and how out of breath she seemed, Tim wagered Luci had hurried home as fast as she could. “What did she say? How much has she already said?!”

“I knew she’d have a DNA notification coded into her place,” Julie muttered, barely audible.

“Luci, Julie merely… well, she told us about your medical research,” Frank admitted. “And about Corry.”

“Of course she did. Of COURSE.” Luci stomped over to the brunette, and pointed back to the door. “Get OUT of my HOUSE! NOW.”

“If I do, I take my government issue communications tools and other gear with me,” Julie shot back. “I thought your people needed it?”

“We’ll find another way.”

“Oh, good luck with that.” Julie reached down and grabbed the bag.

“Julie, wait,” Tim pleaded, looking up from where he was holding Laurie around the shoulders.

“Don’t anyone stop her,” Luci said, glaring his way.

“It’s fine,” Julie said. “Her resistance idiots can just keep on firing blindly, enraging Carrie and the Temporals to the point where they completely wipe us out…"

“At least we’re TRYING SOMETHING.”

“And some of us wish you’d STOP.”

Julie stepped towards the front door. Frank moved to bar the way. “No. Please, Julie, you can’t go. Luci, we need what she’s got, you said as much this morning.”

“Frank, DAMN it!”

“Besides Julie, you need us,” he continued, looking back at the brunette. “Because you can’t just march in here, tell us all that, and hope we’ll fix all of time for you. That’s not how it works.”

The side of Julie’s mouth twitched. “What then?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but…" Frank let out a breath. “We are going to sit down at the table and talk this out.”

NEXT: Rewrite the Future

ASIDE: So “Timeline Three” is a bit of a mess. Do you see “Timeline Four” as being any better? Will there even BE a “Four”, or is Mindy going nowhere?

PREVIOUSLY: Frank wants to help Mindy, to get her prototype temporal gun. Luci says it’s not that simple, and claims they’re in timeline 47.

PART 90b: INSIGHT THE FUTURE

Frank reached for the napkin holder on the table, but Luci waved him off. “Don’t, I’ve got it, don’t do that,” she sighed, standing and moving to a cupboard. She pulled out a cloth which she used to mop up the coffee she had spilled.

He stood, uncertainly holding a napkin in his hand. “I guess I could keep apologizing,” Frank said. “Except I’ve found that can be bothersome to people if I do it too much.” He glanced towards Laurie.

Luci tossed the cloth towards her sink, resting both hands on the edge of the table. “Here’s the thing you don’t seem to have realized,” she stated. “Namely that, while the rest of us have to hunt for lynchpin moments to divert the time stream, Carrie isn’t bound by that rule. She can change time on a whim. She doesn’t do it indiscriminately, granted, mainly because making changes seems to leave her with a hell of a headache. But that power? It means that she can thwart us every time we try to move against her. Or by extension, the Temporals.”

Tim cleared his throat uncertainly. “And s-so forty-six times…"

“I made up that number,” Luci sighed. “There’s really no way to track it. We only know it’s happening, not how often she’s triggered it. But that’s not the worst of it.” She pushed off from the table. “The worst part is all the prejudice that’s resulted.”

“Prejudice?” Frank looked over at Tim, then Laurie, then back to Luci. “Can you give us ANY more context?”

Luci regarded him, then looked up at the ceiling. “In for a penny, in for a pound. Fine. I suppose if giving you knowledge changes bits of this in your new timeline, it would be for the best anyway. Plus we might be able to make you forget, if absolutely necessary. You won’t get many specifics though.” She pointed at him as if to emphasize that, then walked towards the kitchen. “It all starts with the alien artifact. I’m going to make toast, anyone want buttered toast to go with your fruit?”

Frank blinked at the non sequitur. “No, thanks.”

“I’ll have some,” Laurie said, lifting her index finger.

“S-Sure,” Tim said, uncertainly.

Luci pulled the loaf out of the breadbox device where she stored it. “The artifact turned up… let’s say many years ago. The information it provided was completely unintelligible, for the most part.”

“When you say alien, did the artifact come from space?” Frank wondered.

Luci waggled her finger. “No specifics. Now, I never worked on it, and accounts differ… but it either contained genetic material, or had information about rewriting our own genetic code. At the time, the thought was, if we used the information, or spliced the material into us, whichever, we’d be able to understand the rest of whatever the artifact was trying to communicate. See where I’m going with this?”

Luci hit the plunger on the toaster. For whatever reason, among the various high-tech items Frank had seen in Luci’s residence, the toaster had at least retained it’s familiar functionality.

“I-Is it that gene stuff which m-made Temporals?” Tim asked.

Luci nodded. “Bingo. But more than that, it turned out that the gene sequencing or whatever they did only worked for one percent of the world’s population. A slice of the population who share a trait that makes them stand out in a crowd, so to speak.”

“Red hair,” Frank gasped, recalling what Mindylenopia had said to Julie right before they’d left the mansion in the time car. “All Temporals have red hair.”

Luci’s eyebrow arced. “Your new timeline is just FULL of surprises, huh? Fine, yes, red hair. The genetics worked on them. You can see how a racial-style divide might start forming.”

Laurie looked up from eyeing a lock of her hair. “Gingerism. Oh no.”

Tim looked over at her, frowning. “Prejudice based on red hair? That’s a thing?”

Laurie chewed on her lower lip. “Kick a Ginger Day, Kiss a Ginger Day, it’s kinda hard to miss such things when you are one. No one’s ever tried doing those things to me though. Possibly because of Corry.”

“Yeah, you are NOT going to like where this is going,” Luci sighed. She shook her head. “Moreover, full disclosure here, we don’t know why red hair is a trigger. It’s even possible the first scientists screwed something up, and locked it in. There’s been some incidental research into finding lynchpin moments around the time of the first Temporals, but Carrie was deemed the bigger threat.”

The toast popped up out of the toaster. Luci pulled it onto a plate with a pair of tongs, and reached for the loaf of bread again.

“Hold on,” Frank said. “When you first mentioned the artifact last night, you associated it with timeline one. If this is timeline three, or forty-seven, or whatever…"

“The artifact itself is what you might call a fixed point,” Luci yielded. She dropped more bread into the toaster, plunged it down, then reached for the butter dish. “It must exist in all changed timelines, because it’s what leads to time travel in the first place.”

“Oh! Then that’s what the artifact was c-communicating,” Tim realized. “The stuff you couldn’t f-figure out was the time machine knowledge. Which eventually only r-redheaded Temporals were able to understand?”

“Yes, but time travel is only one of the things the artifact provided,” Luci said. She slowly turned the butter knife around in her hands. “Again, not giving specifics, but the first Temporals? They still linked themselves to us “Mundanes”. The ‘pure’ Temporals, who came a bit later? They rejected last names entirely, started using the Temporal language to communicate cross-culturally, and basically see themselves as the next stage of evolution.” Luci grimaced. “Even though that’s not how evolution WORKS, you stupid, self-aggrandizing…" She stopped herself, letting out a slow breath before slicing her knife into the butter. “Sorry.”

“So you’re saying there was more information about genetics in the alien artifact’s translations too,” Frank said, hoping to pull the conversation back on track.

Luci sighed. “Yes. Tough to say if that’s where their mind manipulation power comes from, or if it was baked into the initial genes. It could even be that ‘pure’ Temporals like Mindylenopia are from actual parents, and not a result of genetic engineering - they simply reject their families. I’ve seen medical scans, and I can’t tell either way. All we know for sure is that there was SOMETHING more in the artifact, because of how Carrie was created.”

“Meaning they did something to her mother?” Tim gasped. “Before sending her back?”

“Maybe that’s how they did it.” Luci shrugged. “Look, I don’t have all the answers there, we should go back to the stuff I’m clear on.”

“Yeah, um… is your society in the midst of some ‘redheads versus the world’ thing?” Laurie said tentatively. “Should I even go outside?”

Luci finished spreading butter, and brought the plate of toast to the table before answering. “Let me put it this way. If you were a redhead when the news broke, you became associated with the artifact. Followed by being linked to genetic engineering, mind manipulation, knowledge of time travel - even if you had no flipping CLUE about ANY of that stuff. Meanwhile, some countries with very few - even no - redheads cried conspiracy. They demanded the real truth, wanted a piece of the action, and so forth.”

Frank winced, finally getting a sense of why Mindylenopia might have had trouble recruiting a redhead to pose as her double. And what Luci had meant by them being in over their heads.

Which was when the forty-seven year old asian looked at Laurie. “And then Carrie made it so much worse for all of you.”

It wasn’t her Carrie. Luci didn’t mean her Carrie, because this wasn’t her future. Not really. Laurie felt like she had to believe that, to cling to that tenuous fact, lest she lose her grip on reality itself. She swallowed, but before she could ask whether she wanted to know what Luci meant, Tim spoke.

“H-How do you make that situation worse?”

Luci turned away, heading back for the toaster. “To understand THAT, you need to know how Carrie operates. Let’s say we need to kidnap someone, to isolate them for a couple of days so that they’re freed of a mental suggestion they’ve been given.”

“You kidnap people?” Laurie gasped.

Luci reached for the tongs as the next set of toast popped up. She continued on as if she hadn’t heard Laurie’s outburst. “Carrie’s got a few options. The first is to ignore us, and let it happen; maybe she decides that the Temporal goal isn’t so hot after all, or there’s some other way to accomplish it without this person.”

“So Carrie does have a conscience?” Frank asked.

Again, Luci ignored the interjection. “Her second option is to tweak the past, jumping us into timeline twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two… we’re now aware of when this happens, simply because details don’t match up. The route our target was supposed to take, it’s suddenly different. Or our lookout, he’s delayed getting into position, because of a flash mob, or a car accident. Little things. The sort of thing you’d chalk up to bad luck - except, digging deeper, we realize Carrie had been involved. Directly or otherwise.”

Tim looked up from his toast. “Maybe that’s l-like when she destroyed the chip,” he offered. “Right Frank? Back when I was going to give the time chip to L-Lee, and instead, Carrie destroyed it. Except, aside from that, the week p-played out kind of the same.”

Frank simply nodded back at him. Laurie belatedly reached out for her slice of buttered toast too.

“Carrie’s final option,” Luci said, gesturing with the butter knife, “is a complete rewrite. Where, ironically, victory is ours - but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. We win, but we’ve lost. For instance, same scenario, but we’ve planned more. Plotted out the other probable routes, and we get a dozen lookouts, with two possible vans to make our escape, and then only identify the safe house to the driver after the target’s acquired… we build in SO much redundancy that Carrie can’t stop us, not with a minor alteration. So she doesn’t.”

Luci crunched down on her toast, as if waiting for them to draw the necessary conclusion. Laurie looked at Tim and Frank, gratified to find that they looked as confused as she felt. But they seemed equally as hesitant about admitting to it. “So you win - but lose how?” Laurie asked.

Luci swallowed her bite. “First, it means we’ve committed so many resources to that project that we need to lay low for a while. But second, more importantly, it turns out that our target was a patsy - and “had been all along”,” she said, dropping her toast to make air quotes. “Meaning all the intelligence we’d gathered which pointed to that guy - was false. Which I don’t believe for a second. No, what that TRULY means is Carrie sent information back, telling her Temporal friends to not give this guy the swing vote after all. To have it be someone else… and yet to keep on him, as planned, so that we’d THINK we were getting the right guy.”

Frank let out a low whistle. “Hello paranoia city.”

“Such beliefs are not completely unfounded,” Luci said, retrieving her toast from the plate. “There’s a thing we’ve dubbed the ‘bleedthrough effect’. Curious actions on our part, which make more sense once we assume there’s a timeline being overwritten.”

“H-How does that make it worse for redheads though?” Tim asked.

“Because,” Luci sighed. “When Carrie makes the changes I mentioned, minor or rewritten? If she can, she targets the gingers. Every. Single. Time. It helps sow the seeds of suspicion and discontent within us. Makes us think they might be agents.”

“That’s terrible… but also a weakness,” Frank realized. “Since if you KNOW Carrie operates by targeting the redheads, that means you can foil her by using… them… as… crud.”

Luci nodded. “Now you see it.”

“We’re bait,” Laurie concluded. “You’re saying redheads in the future are either genetically modified people who feel they’re superior, bait for Carrie within your resistance, or stuck somewhere in between. Seen alternately as villains or heroes by society at large.” With her stomach in knots, she dropped her half eaten toast onto the table, looking towards Frank. “I want to go back home now, okay?”

Luci moved back in, resting a hand gently on Laurie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have said nothing.” She looked back at Frank. “But do you understand now? What you’re truly getting yourself mixed up in?”

Frank nodded. “Yeah.” He ran his hands back through his hair. “Here’s the thing though. Based on what you said, there IS still a weakness. Because Carrie operates by tweaking your past, right?”

“Yes,” Luci said, patiently.

Frank pointed at the rest of them. “We’re not part of that past. Well, not your local past. Your Carrie can’t account for us! Or even if she can, we’ve got a Carrie from our time who can run interference. Maybe she’s doing that even now! As such, we might be your best shot at finally taking your Carrie out of the equation. Particularly if we get our hands on a certain weapon that Mindylenopia can give to us. That is, assuming we go along with her plans as I outlined.”

Luci stared. Laurie felt the older woman’s grip on her shoulder tighten slightly, before releasing. “You’re… not wrong,” Luci realized. “Except we’d have less than a day to pull together some kind of… then again, working so fast, it would be equally unexpected. Can we do something?” Her teeth ground together. “Unfortunately, I think our only shot at managing this SAFELY means I call in… well, hell, no one would expect me to do that either.”

“Expect you to do what?” Frank asked.

Luci spun on her heel, stalking towards an adjacent room. “Would expect me to call on Julie LaMille for help.”

NEXT: Reunite the Future

ASIDE: So that’s the explanation of everything! (At least in “Timeline Three”.) If part of it is inconsistent, or doesn’t make sense, let me know, I’ll try to fix it. Then consider the usual vote for T&T? Thanks.

PREVIOUSLY: Stuck in the wrong future, Frank and Tim meet Mindylenopia - because Future Mindy in their past will have suggested it.

PART 90a: FIGHT THE FUTURE

She came around the side of the building moments after Frank and Tim sat down on the bench. Frank hoped his initial shock didn’t show on his face. After all, Mindylenopia looked so much younger, having reverted back to being the teenage-looking version who had driven the van into their school. With shorter hair and everything. And despite the chill March air, she had her jacket open, revealing a tight red blouse, which matched her knee length skirt. Hoping to distract them, maybe?

Frank started to rise, only to have her gesture for him to sit. The redheaded Temporal then sat down next to him, peering out at the landscape. “So, are you simply Mundanes trying to speak our language?” Mindylenopia asked, without turning. “Or are you under someone else’s control, trying to determine my true allegiances?”

“The former,” Frank answered, before he could stop himself. Perhaps she’d exerted her power. “We…”

“If you’re able to run interference for me tomorrow night, keep talking, if not, I have no use for you.”

“We want to make sure you succeed in your…”

“Great, then can you find a redhead who could double for me, and who also speaks your rudimentary Temporal?”

It occurred to him that Laurie kind of fit that description. “Maybe, but Mindylenopia, can I finish a…”

“No. Concerning the redhead, switch to a definite yes or no, otherwise I’m out.”

Frank let out an exasperated sigh, as he realized Mindy’s future incarnation was at least ten times less patient than Theresa had ever been, even on a bad day. “Yes, PROVIDED,” he added quickly, “that I come with you.”

Mindylenopia frowned and finally turned to look at him. “%You want to go on a suicide mission?%”

Tim flinched. “S-She says you could get killed.”

“Will,” Mindylenopia corrected. “Will get killed. Because I’m the only one travelling back, and as such, anyone else still in the compound after I leave? Has no chance.”

“Why, are you planning to blow it up?” Frank said, eyes widening.

The redhead rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be stupid. I’m not a killer. But I can only delay Carrie for so long, and scrubbing the video footage isn’t on my agenda.”

“Ah. Well, here’s the thing,” Frank continued. “Mindy, er, Lenopia, we got your number from… from someone who knew we’d be fighting against that Elder Carrie. Can you think of why she would want us to talk to you first, before you left?”

“So I could tell you that you’re morons? You can’t get close to her. Don’t worry, I’ll keep past Carrie away from whoever drags her out of town. We’re pretty sure it was Glinephanis.”

“Okay but, hypothetically speaking,” Frank pressed, “if even after your mission, there was still the need for someone to attack Elder Carrie, why would someone like you send us here to talk to, ah, you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who did you say you were?”

Frank swallowed. “Call me Bernard.”

“Mmmmm. People who want my missions to fail say ‘Quack!’.”

Frank blinked, glancing sidelong at Tim, who shrugged.

Mindy rubbed her chin. “Pity, it’s funny when conspirators do that. Okay, fine. So I’ve been constructing a prototype weapon, something I loosely refer to as a %temporal gun%. It’s my ace in the hole, but it’s non-lethal, and has never been tested.”

Tim poked Frank. “Bernard - we may need that.”

“If I accompany you, can I get your %musical gun%?” Frank asked.

Tim winced. “Uh, she used a longer ’t’ sound…”

“Are you going to get me a redheaded double who speaks Temporal before you commit suicide?” Mindylenopia reiterated.

“I can do that,” Frank said. “And I’m not planning to commit…"

“Then yes, I’ll let you come along, and once I’m gone, you can have the gun. I figure bringing back future tech is only asking for trouble, particularly when it might not even work. But you are on your OWN once I leave, yeah?”

“I can live with that,” Frank concluded.

“Oh, I very much doubt it,” Mindylenopia snorted. “But it’s not MY funeral.” She rose. “I’ll be in touch through regular channels about where to put my double, and where you’ll meet me. You won’t be able to use that old phone number again. Don’t follow me, or the deal’s off.” She then marched off the way she had come, muttering, “%I must be out of my mind%.”

Frank remained seated until she was out of earshot before looking at Tim. “So that object she spoke of was…"

“The temporal gun,” Tim affirmed. “The one we don’t have.”

“Right.” Frank adjusted his glasses. “Remind me again of why I gave our most powerful temporal weapon to Chartreuse.”

Tim shook his head. “She didn’t tell me why.”

“Okay, well… maybe you’d better run through the whole conversation Chartreuse had with you? Since part of it could be relevant now, and once we’re back with Luci, we can’t talk about it. Not with that gun not existing in her past, the past of Timeline Three.”

Tim sighed. “I’ll try to remember.”

Chartreuse had turned up at his house the morning of December 30th, an hour after breakfast. Asking to speak to him in private. Having sensed it would be about the time travel group, he’d taken her up to his room.

The mystic girl hadn’t disappointed, or indeed wasted any time, sitting with him on the bed and reaching out to grasp him by the hands. “Okay, so, like, here’s the thing. We need your help. Are you able to help out the group?”

Tim swallowed. “I… y-yeah. If I can actually b-be helpful. Instead of b-being the guy that causes Glen to mind manipulate people, or the one M-Mindy uses to learn everything about everyone, or the f-friend who has no technical skills to help Clarke with whatever he’s…"

“Aw, Tim. Don’t get like that.” She squeezed his hands. “You’re the linguist! Like that person in the ‘Arrival’ movie, you’re handling the thing most of us are hopeless at doing. Which is why we need you now. See, Luci’s not gonna be able to go back with Frank. I saw that. But he’ll still, you know, need someone who can speak Temporal with him while in the future.”

“You m-mean the past,” Tim corrected.

She smiled. “Right, the past, totally tensed up there.”

He shook it off. “S-So wait, you think that I can…"

“I KNOW that you can. Because here’s the other thing, Tim. Laurie, my dear, sweet Laurie, when she leaves, having been recruited to be the Miami signpost? She’s gonna be on her first time trip. With the guy who’s been time tripping since the start, plus two Temporals, and that’s GOTTA be intimidating. Even I’m intimidated, and I’m staying here! Whereas you, you’ll be, you know, in the same boat as her, kinda.”

Tim sighed. “Meaning clueless.”

“No, meaning inexperienced!” Chartreuse protested. “But Tim, you’d be gaining experience, while translating Temporal, and making sure Laurie doesn’t have a panic attack when things, you know, inevitably go south! I swear, the both of you, you’re stronger than you think, yeah? And hey, I’ll need someone to remind Laurie, in case if she ever wishes Corry was there instead, that she’s, like, more connected to Carrie than her brother could ever hope to be! Okay?”

Tim dropped his gaze to the bedspread. “You r-really think I’m the p-person who can do this?”

She released his hands, reaching up to tilt at his chin, making him look back at her. “Totally do. Don’t you think so?”

There was no sarcasm in her voice, and nothing but sincerity in her expression. It was now or never, wasn’t it. The same way it had been with Julie and the chip - was he in, or was he out? Tim straightened his posture. “Okay. When do we leave?”

Chartreuse beamed, and for a moment it looked like she would hug him. But instead, she pushed herself off the bed, glancing at her watch. “At the library, in about half an hour. Bring four days worth of your meds, just in case.”

A shiver ran up Tim’s back. “That’s soon. Exactly what did your future vision show you?”

“I can’t really explain what I experienced, it became… kinda vision plus,” Chartreuse admitted. “Oh! And that reminds me. In case I don’t get to tell him while he’s rescuing Beth, when you go back to pick up Laurie, and get supplies? You need to tell Frank to give the temporal gun to me. Like, past me. Instead of taking it along on your trip.”

Tim flinched. “What?”

“I mean, he’s gonna do it, because I have the gun, and I think that’s how, like, time travel works. But trust me, we’ll need it here, the timing is real important. Frank can hand it off to me between our big meeting, and when the bunch of us gather to tell Mr. Waterson the truth about Carrie. Got that?”

“Wait, h-how does this fit into everything else?”

Chartreuse chewed on her lip. “It’s complicated. Even I don’t know everything, not yet.” She pulled a meditation crystal out of a pocket on her dress, staring at it as she rolled it around between her fingers. “Not yet. But soon.”

She continued to stare for a moment, finally slipping the crystal back into her pocket and meeting his gaze. “That’s all, like, my problem though. Not yours. Are you, you know, okay to get to the library and such?”

Tim nodded. “Y-Yeah. I can do this. I can.” For that matter, if they didn’t need the gun, what was the worst thing that could happen while in the past?

“Complicated,” Frank repeated back. “And at the time, I thought it was related to the people who would be chasing down Beth when we left. I never imagined… this scenario.”

“M-Maybe there’s a thing where we’ll need that temporal gun in the present, and another here in the future?” Tim suggested.

“Except Mindylenopia wouldn’t know whatever Chartreuse knew, would she?” Frank protested. “Only that we didn’t have the gun. Hence the phone number left for us, it must mean she’d hoped we’d use her first gun for an assault on Elder Carrie, right?”

“D-Dunno.” Tim shook his head. “It’s f-funny, I always f-figured I didn’t get what you guys meant because I was out of the l-loop. But there really is no l-loop, huh? None of us knows what’s going on.”

“Nope,” Frank affirmed. He rubbed his arms, becoming aware of the chill. “For now, let’s get back to Luci, and find somewhere warm. And get some sleep. I’ll see if I can convince Laurie to act as Mindylenopia’s double tomorrow.”

“I won’t do it,” Laurie asserted. “Not unless you tell Mindylenopia what’s going to happen to her.”

“But if she knows, that might change everything!” Frank protested.

They had all slept the night at Luci’s place. Frank and Tim had given Laurie the bed-in-a-wall, grabbing some blankets to sleep on the floor. Frank had elected not to bring up the content of his conversation with Mindylenopia until breakfast, after everyone had been able to shower and get a change of clothing… more or less. Laurie had used her suitcase, and her T-Shirt and track pants worked for Tim, while Frank had managed with some male items that Luci had found in the back of her closet. He decided not to ask why they’d been there.

“Might change everything for the better,” Laurie countered.

“Or might mean we don’t end up here at all!” Frank said. “I mean Laurie, think about it. What if… what if something we say to Mindylenopia now means she doesn’t talk to Carrie back then, meaning I die in the past after all?”

“No, no, everyone says time travel is predestined,” Laurie insisted.

“But not in this case! Right Luci?” Frank turned to where she was sipping on a mug of coffee.

“Oh, we are SO off the map with this one, I can’t even,” Luci declared. “I’ve already told our people to lock down your time car and not let anyone near it until this situation has been worked out.”

“D-Do you think Laurie should do it then?” Tim asked her. “Be Mindylenopia’s double?”

“I think you’re in over your heads,” Luci remarked. “Worse, you’re dragging the rest of us under the water with you. Related, please stop talking about Mindylenopia’s possible future in front of me. It freaks me out more than a little bit.”

Frank sighed. “Fine. If Laurie’s unwilling, is there someone else in the resistance who resembles Mindylenopia who would be willing?”

Luci’s grip on her mug tightened. “Over. Your. Heads.”

Frank leaned on the table. “So help us. Please.”

“I can’t. Not the way you want me to.”

“Then at least help us understand why you can’t!” Frank pleaded.

Luci brought her mug down hard on the table, sloshing coffee everywhere. “Because! This isn’t Timeline Three, okay?! It’s more like Timeline Forty-Seven.”

NEXT: Insight the Future (aka InfoDump)

ASIDE: This past weekend I got 5 coins from 2017. (Two quarters, three nickels.) Let the time travel commence!

PREVIOUSLY: Frank has realized they are in the future of “Timeline Three”, where he died, and Carrie left town with Glen.

PART 89b: TIMELINE THREE

“You’re wrong,” Luci said dismissively.

“But it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Frank protested. “We have to help Mindylenopia get back in time. That’s what restores our timeline!”

“No! If you remember her being there, Mindylenopia will go back without your help,” Luci reiterated, with exaggerated patience. “The same way she must have managed it before your arrival in this future.”

Tim glanced back and forth between the seventeen year old Frank Dijora and the forty seven year old Luci Primrose. He and Laurie had tacitly decided to keep out of the conversation during the time it had taken to order, and then receive their food at the cafe - but the two of them had been at an impasse for some time now. He decided had to say something, otherwise they’d have no idea where in the future to go next.

“R-Run through it for me,” he suggested to Luci. “However they teach it in schools these days. Explain to m-me why Frank’s wrong.”

Luci looked at him, then set her meal aside and flipped over her paper placemat, reaching for the small container of crayons next to the ketchup bottle. “We don’t teach this in schools. But here.” She drew a long yellow line, the length of the page. “Timeline one, with the alien artifact. Damn it!”

The asian woman tapped the end of her crayon against the side of her head. “Look, forget I mentioned that last bit. Either way, that timeline’s gone.” She dropped the yellow crayon, picking up the red, and drawing overtop of the majority of the line she’d already placed there. “Instead, timeline two, where Carrie exists as the ultimate temporal weapon. Able to end it all, unless the Temporals get what they want.”

“We knew this much already, Luci,” Frank said. “Carrie once explained it to Chartreuse, after which it was explained to us.” Tim noticed Frank was using the same tone of exaggerated patience that Luci had used.

“Fine! Gone,” Luci said, glaring at him as she dropped the red crayon and grabbed a black. She drew overtop of the last part of the red line, and just as the red had obscured the yellow beneath it, the black obscured the red. “Timeline three. Came into existence when we sent back– what did our younger selves call him?”

“Shady?” Tim offered.

“Shady, right, with a mission of activating Carrie when she might be a little more reasonable. Or, well, destroying her if it turned out she was not. A mission which succeeded, when Shady managed to hit on a lynchpin point.” She intentionally met Frank’s gaze. “And for what it’s worth, I spoke out against the latter option. But we’re fighting a war here. Trying to save as many lives as we can.”

“How do you know it was you who spoke out?” Frank countered. He pointed at the placemat. “Before Shady went back, the timeline was red. How do we know it was you who said something in that timeline two, versus the black timeline we seem to be in now?”

Luci leaned back. “Hmph. Excellent question, actually,” she yielded. “On the one hand, there is no red timeline any more - aside from here, between Elaine Waterson’s appearance in the past, and the lynchpin at Shady’s alterations,” she noted, tapping the line where the red was visible. “So your question is irrelevant. On the other hand… yes, it’s theoretically possible that it wasn’t me. That it was someone else. Individuals still have the free will to screw things up locally, as the Temporals sometimes put it. Still, safe bet someone did it. Might as well say it was me, since I’m the one who has a memory of doing it. Okay?”

“And so now, with M-Mindy?” Tim asked, before the two of them could start arguing again.

Luci dropped the black crayon onto the table with a shrug. “Given how Shady’s mission failed to fix things in our favour, Mindylenopia’s said she intends to go back next. I don’t know much more than that. As an apparent Temporal defector, she tends to keep to herself. Our resistance movement doesn’t call her, she calls us, that sort of thing. Which suits us fine, as the less she knows, the less likely any of us will be in trouble if she switches sides again.”

“But now we have to help Mindy get back,” Frank insisted. “To restore our timeline, where Carrie seeks us out as friends. Where I don’t die.”

“No!” Luci jabbed her finger at the black line. “You. Do. Not. Exist. Yet.”

“Then who. Are you. Arguing with?” Frank challenged.

“Agh! I am not having this conversation. Literally, not having it, because look, once Mindylenopia goes back, you… damn it, I shouldn’t have used the black there…" Luci began to colour over the black with a blue, pressing hard, trying to make the black vanish beneath it. “You WILL come into existence in this blue ‘timeline four’. But that will only happen if you lie low now, and don’t screw up our timeline three!”

“That doesn’t explain how we can be here now,” Frank insisted. “The only way we’re here is if it’s to create the blue timeline four in the first place!”

“STOP that!” Luci threw the blue crayon at him. “DAMN it Frank, I have thirty years of temporal theory behind me here, whereas you’re a bunch of teenagers who don’t even know how to access a present day restaurant menu. Why, why are you doing this to me? Why can’t you simply allow me to be happy that you’re alive again, after all this time?!”

A tear blinked out of the corner of Luci’s eye, causing a hush to fall over the table.

“I’m sorry,” Frank apologized. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Obviously.” Luci swallowed. “You know what, Frank? You’re part of why I went into the medical profession. Because of how I couldn’t save you. Back when Carrie insisted that you rewire the time machine for an unmanned jump… and it all blew up in your face. And I couldn’t save you.”

“Oh, Luci… don’t be like that. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.” Frank winced. “I guess we were even going out at the time?”

“More or less. Damn it, Frank…” Luci repeated. She drew in a shaky breath, then grabbed a napkin, using it to blow her nose. “And I SWORE I wasn’t going to do this…"

“Luci, Gods, I’m truly sorry, I didn’t mean to spark the memories you must be experiencing." He reached out for her. She waved him off, but then seemed to reconsider, grasping his hand.

“It’s fine,” Luci said. “Besides, I doubt this conversation will have gone this way once Mindylenopia goes back. Understand? It’s like you said, regarding my memory of objecting to Shady’s final option. Once this weird anomaly resolves itself, we’ll remember having discussed the weather, or how to rescue your Carrie, or something else. So it’s fine.”

“Except…" Tim kind of hated to break up their moment, but he couldn’t help but notice what Luci had done. He reached out to tap at the coloured timelines. “L-L-Look. Our blue timeline four exists, and yet so does your future black timeline three.”

Luci looked down. “Only because I didn’t get a chance to colour in all the way to the end.”

“Right. Something stopped you.” Tim looked sidelong at Frank. “D-Didn’t something like this h-happen with Julie?”

Frank eyed the placemat. “You mean when she sort of killed herself, except how she didn’t because of how I went back with Clarke and Corry? I’m not sure it’s quite the same thing… but you might be onto something. Luci?”

Luci started to look vaguely ill. “No. Oh no.” She released Frank’s hand. “The temporal waveforms in the past. If they haven’t reached us yet… but no, how could they NOT reach us? The only person who could prevent this temporal system from collapsing down into a single time frame by now would be…" Her voice trailed off.

“Carrie Waterson?” Frank speculated.

Luci nodded mutely.

“S-So which Carrie is m-mixing us up?” Tim asked. “Our Timeline Four Carrie, or your Timeline Three Carrie?”

“They’re SUPPOSED to be the same Carrie,” Luci said bitterly. “Damn her ability to paradox. If she’s directly involved, that changes everything.”

Frank tapped his finger on the timelines. “More to the point then, is this being done so that we can get Mindylenopia back to our present year, setting all of this in motion… or is it being done so that we’ll screw up Mindy’s ability to leave on schedule, which might make us disappear?”

Luci shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing. None.”

A clattering sound brought Tim’s attention away from Luci and Frank, and back towards the fourth person at their table. Laurie had dropped her fork down into her empty plate. Her head was bowed, forcing the redhead to look slightly upwards to stare at them. “You all talk and talk and talk - but you haven’t even touched on the most important thing yet,” she murmured.

“What’s that, Laurie?” Tim asked gently.

Her shoulders tightened. “If Mindy gets sent back… she’s going to be banished by Carrie. Meaning she’ll lose her mind, screw with Linquist and Julie, indirectly put that girl Beth in danger, and then finally get herself killed on our last trip.” She shook her head, and her gaze lifted. “So you’re talking about sending someone on a trip to be tortured, and then to die, merely for our own benefit! How can you even be saying that’s an option?!”

No one at the table seemed to have an answer for her.

They went out to meet Mindylenopia. Partly it was from a hope that she would know why her future self had given them the phone number, but mostly, Frank had argued that doing so would maximize their options. Because if they were, indeed, supposed to help Mindy get back in time, there was no way they could do it without being close to her.

“She had to mean the Fallowfield train station,” Luci said, as she drove. Or rather, as the car drove itself according to her instructions. Frank had given up on understanding all the future technology. “We’ve used it as a transfer point before. Mindylenopia must have avoided being specific with you on the phone in order to be sure that she was getting someone with true connections to our resistance. Versus random loons or some kind of sting operation.”

“How m-many people know about the whole resistance thing?” Tim asked.

“Not many,” Luci admitted. “Granted, we like to believe that it’s bigger than we think. After all, it’s not like we can have regular meetings. Since Temporals could force out any information about when they might be, using their mental powers, and thus catch lots of us at once.”

“Why did your group decide to trust Mindy then?” Laurie wondered.

“Ohh, we didn’t. Not at first. Even now, we’re not sure if she’s a plant, gathering intelligence. But she’s too good of a technical asset to pass up. She can also obtain things, like the present day coin we gave to Shady - that’s the one you ended up with, I guess. There’s not a lot of coin currency around at all now, let alone this early on in the year.”

“Speaking of coins, do you know anything more about how Mindylenopia will get back?” Frank asked.

Luci paused. “Okay, yeah, I guess you need to know that too. Portable time machines? They’re dangerous and geographically unstable, not to mention hard to obtain covertly, so unless she’s managed to secure parts to make her own, we figured Mindylenopia was angling for the stationary temporal station in town. Those can target their own building on the jump, instead of DNA, but they’re highly fortified structures. I’d call that a suicide mission most days of the year, except tomorrow is Carrie’s birthday, so…” She shrugged.

“Wait, how d-do stationary temporal stations work?” Tim asked.

“Very well, thank you,” Luci said dryly. “Next question?”

She refused to give them any further information about futuristic technology, or her own personal life, reasoning that it could become a problem once they, presumably, became able to travel back to their present. So, as with Clarke, the trip lapsed into an uncertain silence.

They reached the train station with ten minutes to spare.

“I probably shouldn’t get out,” Luci remarked. “After all, I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. You should be the only variables.”

“I don’t want to go either,” Laurie admitted. “Not if it means I end up helping to cause what we know happens to Mindy.”

Frank nodded. “I can respect that. Tim?”

“I’m still in. For now. You might need a t-translation.”

“True.” He looked out the car windshield. “Here goes nothing then.”

Frank emerged from the car, followed by the shorter blonde boy, and the two of them walked over to the seemingly deserted train station.

NEXT: Fight the Future

ASIDE: That ends ARC 4.3 (“Complicated”), moving us into the final Arc for the entire story (“Terminated”). Hope you’re enjoying! More future versions of the characters will appear, feel free to speculate on that or the plot - and maybe vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: Frank, Laurie and Tim have chased after Carrie into the future, where they’ve encountered a very worried Elder Clarke - and Mindylenopia’s on the phone?!

PART 89a: IDENTITY CRISIS

“%You have five seconds to explain how you know me, after which this phone will be permanently deactivated. Five… four…%”

Frank looked up expectantly, and Tim realized that his friend was anticipating a translation. But Mindylenopia was counting down! By the time he’d explained that she wanted an explanation, they’d be out of time!

“%Three… two…%"

The only thing he could think of to do that might keep Mindy on the line long enough might get them in trouble instead. But he’d made a number of gambles for their temporal group already. At this point, what was one more? He summoned his resolve.

“%One…%"

“%We is be friends!%” Tim said, leaning in closer to the device. "%We want with, uh…%" He snapped his fingers twice, unable to think of the word for help. “%We serve you and be happy future!%"

For a moment, there was silence on the line, Frank simply looking at Tim in surprise. Then there was the sound of muffled laughter. “Okay,” came Mindylenopia’s voice in English. “You’re either the smartest espionage team ever, certified loons, or people who may actually be of service to me. I can spare some time to find out. 10pm, at the train station."

Before either of them could speak, the ensuing dial tone indicated that Mindylenopia had hung up.

Frank reached out to tap at the holo-button that would cut off the call. “Uh, thanks Tim,” he acknowledged. “I didn’t realize you and Luci could speak Temporal as well as understand it.”

“We can’t," Tim sighed. “I may have just told her that we were friendly, and want be her future slaves. But she was counting down to cutting us off for good, and there was no way I could sum up our situation in five seconds, so I thought I’d better try something unexpected.”

“Oh. Well… assuming we can find her train station, that means we still have a shot at figuring out why Mindy gave us her own phone number. So again, thanks.”

Tim shook his head. “How could that even BE Mindy? She… well…”

“This must be before she travels back,” Frank reasoned. “For some reason, when Mindylenopia sent us forward to the future - it was also into her own past.”

“So did she KNOW?” Tim wondered. “The whole time she was Theresa, in our present, did she know we’d eventually meet her, in her past?!”

“That might depend on what we end up saying to her.” Frank sighed. “My new worry is that we might do something that prevents her from going back in the first place.”

“Oh. OH.” Tim’s eyes widened. “I feel like that would be BAD.”

Frank nodded. “For now, let’s get the car into town and meet with Clarke’s contact. Maybe they can provide us with some much needed future context.”

Apparently, Clarke hadn’t ever played professional basketball, had become a mechanic and tow truck driver about ten years ago with the intention of helping people, and had not married Julie. At least, he’d admitted to the first two, and Laurie was pretty sure that his body language had answered that last question, not to mention his changing of the subject. Unless they were divorced? She worked with him for another few minutes in silence.

“How’s your sister?” Laurie asked at last, again seeking some common ground with the Clarke she knew.

He shook his head, looping the length of chain around the front of the Chevrolet to secure it. “Another thing we probably shouldn’t talk about.”

Laurie slumped her shoulders. “Really? We’re stuck with favourite foods and recent movies from my time that are being remade yet again in this future?”

“Sorry, Laurie,” Clarke apologized. “I don’t want to risk changing anything about my past.”

“I don’t think you can,” Laurie assured. “Most of the talk I’ve heard surrounds all time travel being predestined.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought too.” She fancied then that his gaze drifted to Frank, but maybe he was simply looking back at the tow truck. “I sure hope Luce can sort all of this out.”

“Luce… do you mean Luci?” Laurie ventured. “Wait, Cl– Phil, are we going to see Luci??”

“Crud. Yeah,” Clarke admitted. “And I am seriously going to stop talking now. Otherwise I might let slip about more things. Like that huge ban Canada has on Japanese anime art.”

“WHAT?” Laurie practically shrieked. “The future has banned… okay, NO, don’t even kid about that! Seriously!”

Clarke’s smile widened. “Sorry again. Bad joke, but I couldn’t remember what your other teenage passions were. My point being, sometimes the truth isn’t something you want to know, yeah? And now I truly am done talking.” He hit the lever to pull the front wheels of the Chevy up.

Laurie fired off a look that she hoped was an angry pout. Yet at the same time, she suppressed her desire to ask any further questions.

The trip into Ottawa took less than twenty minutes, but since no one was talking, it felt longer to Frank. They pulled up to the parking lot of a small cafe, on what seemed to be the outskirts of town - and she was there in the parking lot, waiting for them.

Frank felt a lump in his throat, looking at the older version of Luci. It reminded him more of her twenty-year-old artificially aged version than the one they’d left back in the present. Perhaps because the normally so omnipresent little ponytails she sported were gone, in favour of longer hair. It fact, it seemed like Luci had aged well, even though her figure was largely covered up by a long coat. Could she have been his wife, if the two of them had decided not to break up? He shoved those thoughts aside as they all piled out of the tow truck.

Lucille Primrose was all business, her first words to Laurie being “open your mouth”, the asian woman holding out a Q-tip. When Laurie obeyed, Luci swabbed inside, then dropped the Q-tip into a small device she was holding. She peered at it for several seconds, then repeated the process for Tim, and again for Frank. A “ping” came from her device at the end of his analysis, and she looked uneasy.

“Are they the real deal?” Clarke murmured.

Luci didn’t acknowledge the question, instead looking to Frank. “How did you get here?” she demanded.

Frank pointed to the Chevy. “Time car. The circuits burned out on arrival.”

Luci peered at everyone with her heterochromatic eyes, then finally addressed Frank again. “Show me.”

He went back to show her the setup. Her apparent skepticism gradually began to shift into a mix of confusion… with hints of fear. “This is impossible,” she said, echoing Clarke. “How would you even have the means to come this far forwards?”

Frank decided to hedge. “The one who went back to activate Carrie’s powers? He had a coin,” he said, cutting out the Mindy-Linquist part of Tim’s revelation.

“Damn.” Luci rubbed her forehead. “Better question then, WHY make this trip? What could you possibly hope to gain by it?”

Frank again wondered if it was prudent to bring up Mindylenopia.

“Your Future Carrie abducted our Carrie,” Laurie offered. “We want ours back.”

Luci snapped her gaze over towards the redhead. “Impossible.”

“You keep using that word,” Tim quipped. “I d-do not think it means what you think it means.”

Luci regarded them each in turn once again. She seemed to come to a decision. “We’ll need to compare histories. Could take a while. Do you want to freshen up first?”

“We shouldn’t, we kind of have a deadline,” Frank said, thinking of Mindy’s meeting at 10pm.

“But we haven’t had a proper meal in a couple days,” Laurie noted, looking towards the nearby cafe.

Luci followed her gaze, and a smile flickered over her face. “You look like it. Okay, don’t go nuts in there, but I can credit you a meal as we talk.” She turned to Clarke. “You in, or should I recap later?”

“You know I hate getting mixed up in your extracurricular activities, Luce,” Clarke answered, adjusting his glasses. “Plus I’ll never be able to follow your temporal talk. Call me once you know for sure.” He turned to Frank, hesitated, then extended his palm to shake. “I know I ended up acting pretty weird here, but… it was good to see you again. Really.”

“Right,” Frank said, shaking back, even as he wondered as to Clarke’s wistful tone of voice.

He watched as the tall blonde moved to start uncoupling their Chevy from his truck. “Actually, Phil,” Luci broke in, “since you’re set up, could you tow that over to the warehouse? I can give these three a lift to wherever they want after we eat.”

Clarke turned. “Luce…"

“You don’t mind do you?” Luci said, eyeing Frank. “It’ll stand out like a sore thumb in this time period, and maybe our techs can fix it.”

“Techs?” Frank wondered.

A smile tugged at the older Luci’s face. “I’m connected.”

Frank wished he knew more about this future. “You can take it on condition that no one messes with it unless me, Tim or Laurie are present. If our histories have diverged, it could contain information you’re not ready for yet.”

She thought on that for a moment. “Fair. Phil?”

“I can take it over, but then I wash my hands of the whole deal. Except for the phone call you owe me.”

“Also fair,” Luci agreed. “In fact, I’ll owe you a favour too.”

Clarke chuckled. “Fine. I’ll call it in next time I need medical assistance.”

Tim turned to Luci. “Oh, are you a doctor? Because I might need some medication.”

She nodded back. “I have a day job. For now, let’s go talk.”

Laurie raised her hand. “Can I get my suitcase of clothing and art supplies out of the Chevy’s trunk first?”

Luci, as it turned out, couldn’t remember a whole lot about high school. The major events had stuck with her over time, and seemed to have transpired the same way Frank knew them - namely Carrie getting them involved in time travel, Corry’s flyer about Julie’s past prompting the theft of the time machine, and Glen showing up in their senior year. But when they delved a bit deeper, the inconsistencies surfaced.

“I was never artificially aged,” Luci asserted. “And Linquist didn’t hide out, when he sold the mansion it was to live in a smaller house in town instead. One that most people avoided.”

“But if that’s so, then when did you tell me you, uh, had feelings for me?” Frank pressed.

Luci swallowed. “After Carrie got shot by Julie,” she admitted. “It helped me realize how little time all of us have.” She bit down on her lip. The way she was reacting towards him… Frank shook it off.

“So that’s a change of maybe two weeks,” Frank decided. “What else happened around that time… the drugs in Carrie’s locker?”

“Oh right,” Luci recalled. “Yeah, that set up the whole Carrie-Chartreuse dynamic, since they both got detentions.”

“Wait, so they started dating then?”

Luci laughed. “WOW, no. But Carrie did do some strong-arming, and Chartreuse eventually fell for her in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way.”

“Okay, that might be a parallel…" Frank let out a breath, glancing towards Tim and Laurie.

Tim shrugged. “You’re kinda before my involvement. I’ll shout if I hear something wrong.”

Laurie looked up from the menu, which Luci had downloaded into her device upon entry, and had then offered to share around the table. “Ditto. And what are ‘spam tacos’?”

“Like fish tacos, but vegetarian,” Luci said absently. “Frank, are you trying to pin down a specific event in Carrie’s past?”

“Yes, and I kind of think I know what it is now,” he admitted. “As much as I don’t want to admit it. Luci, after the locker drugs, do you know if Carrie came to see me? If she ended up apologizing to me for everything, and crying on my shoulder in the park?”

Luci flinched back. “Big no, unless that’s something you never told me about. Rather, she cut off everybody, and practically blackmailed the both of us into fixing the time machine. With the intent to, as I later learned, go after her mother. Probably would have done it too, if she hadn’t been shot first.”

“So it’s Theresa,” Frank sighed. Carrie had said something to him in the days following their park encounter, about having had a talk with Theresa. Who was Mindylenopia. Except, she wouldn’t be.

“Who’s Theresa?” Luci questioned, as if to verify his fears.

He might as well just ask. “Luci, in this future… did I die? Back in the past? And is that when Carrie and Glen left town?”

Luci bit down on her lip again. “Yeah,” she admitted, her voice suddenly quiet. “Over a month before you claim to have travelled here. Hence our skepticism and whole ‘this is impossible’ angle.”

Frank slumped down in his chair. That explained it.

Somehow, they had ended up in the future of “Timeline Three”.

NEXT: Timeline Three

ASIDE: How about them apples, huh? Now you have to wait until Friday for a new post. Feel free to comment in the meantime.

PREVIOUSLY: A fifty-year old Carrie has abducted her teenaged self. Characters have pursued her from their past… to the uncertain future.

PART 88b: FUTURE IMPERFECT

And Carrie felt the time streams pulling at them, and there was nothing her friends could do, she was being pulled away, pulled off into the future, down a path that had no turns…

Wait, could she move? Was Elder Carrie losing her grip? Her fingers twitched, but no, that wasn’t enough, she was unable to pull away… a single tear trickled out of the corner of her eye, as Carrie Waterson, the future Temporal Weapon, surrendered herself to the inevitable. Her hands slipping into her jacket pockets.

Which was where she felt a hard object. Of course - it was the meditation crystal. The one Chartreuse had given her yesterday, or rather the day of the talent show. Carrie had brought it along with her, feeling like it might help her to feel connected to Chartreuse… and by extension all of the other people she had been hoping to protect. But she had failed them. She had failed them all. Even her parents.

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!”

Frank gently tapped at Laurie’s face until she murmured and her eyes blinked open. She immediately sat up, seemingly registering how he’d taken her out of the time car, to be laid in a field. “What happened?” the redhead gasped. “Did it work? Are we in the future?”

Frank nodded. “We… think so. The time circuits shorted out.” He looked towards Tim, who was pacing around the car. It sat a short distance away, in the same field. “Anything?”

Tim shook his head. “No sign that we were hit. But you’re right, the trip didn’t feel like the previous ones, and I thought I saw sparks through the windshield before I blacked out.”

Laurie looked back and forth between them. “What? Problem with the length of the jump? The fact that it was trying to orient on a future me? Something else?”

“No idea,” Frank said. “We’ve done even crazier things than what you’ve described, and never experienced a jolt like that. So I can’t explain it.”

Laurie shivered. “There’s patches of snow out here,” she realized. “This weather is is a far cry from Miami.” She peered through the dusk towards a nearby rural road. “But at the same time, it all seems weirdly normal, huh?”

Frank reached out a hand to help Laurie to her feet, which she accepted. “I’m guessing we’re back in Ontario,” he observed. “But there’s no way to be sure.”

Laurie began to brush herself off. “No, I meant, if this is the future that Glen and Mindy were talking about, the one with the temporal war, it looks normal instead of more… more… golly, I don’t know.”

“Post-apocalyptic?” Tim suggested, approaching.

“Different,” Laurie decided.

Tim chuckled. “W-Well, we have yet to look around. Though after four time trips, I see the car still hasn’t managed to arrive on a road… boy, s-so much for the practical aspects of a time machine vehicle, huh?”

Laurie smiled back. “We’re in the future. Maybe we can get a hover conversion, like in the movies.”

“Hah!” Frank said, smiling too. “I’ve never seen the sense in flying cars. Unless you’ve got something like an airport control tower, there’s no practical way to avoid mid-air collisions.” He turned back to the road, spotting a vehicle turning the corner. It was going to drive right past them. “Uh oh. I hope that’s not a future version of us.”

“H-Hide?” Tim asked. “Or ask for h-help?”

Laurie scrambled to get over to the side of the road. “Oh, they’re gonna see the car anyway.” She waved. “And I think that’s a tow truck!”

“Help then,” Tim concluded. He looked at Frank. “Because I d-don’t think we want to split ourselves up OR leave the time machine alone in the middle of this field.”

“Still…“ Frank grimaced, then sighed. “Okay, I yield. Let’s flag it down.”

They stood by the side of the road, the tow truck slowing as it approached. It probably would have stopped even if Laurie hadn’t been jumping up and down with her arms in the air. Frank barely had a chance to register the logo for ‘Sam & Al’s Garage’ on the door before it opened and a blonde haired man in his late forties or early fifties jumped down out of the cab.

“Hey,” the guy said with a wave, slamming the door behind him. He pushed a pair of glasses up higher on his nose and adjusted his cap. “Lucky break for you guys that I was driving by. What’s the… trouble… damn. Is that an old Chevy?!”

“Yeah. We’re not from around here,” Frank said. He wondered why the blonde guy’s voice sounded familiar. “Plus our vehicle might have sustained damage, so I’m nervous about starting it up. Could you maybe give it a quick once over?”

“Amazing. I haven’t worked on one of these since my senior year of high school,” the blonde said, letting out a low whistle. He walked over to run his fingers over the hood. “How did a bunch of teenagers get their hands on…" He paused, looking at them a bit more closely. His eyes gradually widened. “No. No, it can’t be you. This is impossible.”

“Clarke?” Laurie ventured. “Clarke, is that you?”

That’s when Frank caught the resemblance. Laurie was right. This man could definitely be Phil Clarke, over thirty years later.

“Laurie? Tim?!” The tow truck operator looked from the both of them over to Frank, and then took a couple steps backwards. “No! How can you all be here - looking like THAT? None of you ever… we never… what date are you all FROM?!”

Frank looked over at his companions. Could they trust this version of Clarke? Then again, did they have much of a choice at this point? “December,” he offered. He provided the year, and when it looked like Clarke was trying to do mental math, he added, “Your aforementioned senior year of high school.”

Clarke shook his head. “Impossible. That’s impossible. That’s…" He stepped forward, and reached out to poke at Frank’s shoulder, tentatively, as if wondering if his hand would go right through. When they made contact, Clarke recoiled, then turned and headed back for the truck.

“W-Wait,” Tim protested. “Clarke, we’ve landed in an unknown future, we need a hand here!”

“I have to make a phone call first,” he shouted back. The cab door slammed shut. Moments later, it lit up inside, as if Clarke had a very bright phone engaged where he was hunched over.

“Are we in trouble?” Laurie wondered.

“Clarke’s m-my friend,” Tim insisted. “Whatever he’s doing, it will help us.”

Frank was getting an uneasy feeling. “I hate to say it but… based on that reaction… maybe we don’t end up returning to our present? Or at least, not to our home town?”

“Why wouldn’t we go back home?” Laurie demanded.

Tim flinched. ”Because Clarke’s acting like he hasn’t seen us in thirty years,” he deduced. “Oh no. Does the present think we died?”

“Then again,” Frank continued, “maybe Clarke’s shock is simply the result of some Temporal wiping our memories. Meaning we’ll be unable to tell the present about this trip, and as such, we’re very unexpected.”

“So we CAN get home?” Laurie asked, wringing her hands.

“I thought a Temporal’s m-mental influence faded over time,” Tim objected. “Unless we WANT to f-forget, like Clarke’s sister. S-So why would we want to f-forget this?”

Frank winced. “I don’t know. Though Carrie’s memory wiping? That would last, from what we know of her impact on Shady.”

Tim frowned. “S-So you’re s-saying Carrie might end up tampering with our…"

“Know what?” Laurie interrupted. “Maybe we simply NEVER talk about this to anyone. Because all your talky alternatives sound awful.”

Frank exhaled. “Maybe that.”

Clarke looked out at them from behind the tow truck’s windshield, shook his head, and a moment later, the glow surrounding him disappeared. He reopened the door, adjusting his hat again. “Okay guys. Let’s have a look at that Chevy.”

“I-Is everything okay, Clarke?” Tim asked.

The blonde hesitated, then nodded. “It will be. And hey, call me Phil, all right?” He gave the group a tentative smile.

“So this car… it’s your time machine?”

“Yeah,” Frank affirmed. “Do you see anything wrong with it?”

Clarke poked his head back under the hood. Tim felt worried - based on Clarke’s reactions to this point, Frank’s theories about memory manipulation seemed valid. Because while Clarke remembered the Chevy, he didn’t seem to remember converting it into a time machine.

Then again, maybe when you got old, you forgot about a lot of childhood stuff? Except their temporal activities seemed like the sort of thing you’d remember. Unless Clarke hadn’t helped with the time machine car in their present after all… but then, what else could he have been doing at Julie’s for most of December? With a sigh, Tim decided to stop speculating.

“I don’t think the car’s about to explode when you start it up,” Clarke concluded. He straightened, and dropped the hood back in place. “Man, I miss having them this easy to diagnose. These days, cars mostly drive themselves, to the point where you have no idea what the issue is if they grind to a stop.” He pulled a rag out of his pocket to clean his hands. “Granted, as far the time machine pieces go, that’s beyond my understanding.”

“But don’t time machines exist now?” Laurie wondered.

Clarke shrugged. “Not in cars. And there’s no ‘For Dummies’ books about them. The technology is highly regulated, and to handle security leaks, the ‘net was flooded with misinformation, things designed to blow you up before you could ever manage to create a time distortion.”

“So time travel isn’t d-done by the general public?” Tim mused.

“Nope,” Clarke affirmed. “Not since… well… yeah, I probably shouldn’t be giving out future information. Even if…“ He glanced at Frank. “Damn, I am SO out of my depth here. But if you’re willing, I had hoped to bring you to someone who could help. She’s the person I phoned when I first realized who you were.”

“Oh! Is it Carrie?” Laurie asked.

Clarke visibly shuddered. “Hell no, not her. Not Carrie. You will know this person though. I think. Which is probably all I should say until we’re there.” He glanced at the Chevy. “You want to try driving it and follow me? Or shall I tow? I’d recommend the latter, since there’s room for everyone in the truck, and I wager this thing’s still running on regular unleaded gasoline. No point draining the tank.”

Frank rubbed his neck. “Tow then, I guess. Except where is this person you’d be taking us to? For that matter, where are we now?”

Clarke thought for a moment. “You’d realize soon enough. We’re a little ways outside Ottawa. That’s where we’re headed.”

Laurie did a double take. “Wow. Is Ottawa still the capital of Canada?”

Clarke nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hold on.” Frank pulled Mindy’s piece of paper back out of his pocket and looked at it. “That means we’re in the 613 area code. This string of ten digits… it could be a phone number.”

“Ten digits… an old school phone number?” Clarke said. “You’re just full of surprises. I mean, the system’s backwards compatible, so whatever you have should still work, but who are you planning to contact thirty years out of date?”

“I won’t know until I try it,” Frank admitted. “Can we use your phone?”

Clarke tugged on the brim of his hat. “Depends,” he said. “Will it get me in trouble?”

“I’ll hang up if it’s someone problematic,” Frank assured him. He looked to Tim. “But there’s a chance I’ll need your linguistic expertise.”

Tim nodded, closing the distance between them.

Clarke frowned, but reached into his pocket to pull out a small device. “All right. Phone,” he said. The bright light from earlier returned, and this time Tim saw that a holographic keyboard had been illuminated in the air. Clarke moved his fingers around the virtual image. “I’m keying in audio only, anonymous guest, location tracking off,” he noted. “Keep the call short. Not because I don’t have the bandwidth, but because I feel like we don’t want to be noticed.”

Clarke swiped left, and the keyboard image resolved itself into that of a virtual numerical pad instead. It included buttons to dial and hang up. “There.” He placed the small device into Frank’s palm, then turned. “I don’t even want to know what you say, so Laurie, care to help me position things for the tow?”

As Clarke went to join the redheaded girl, Tim looked down at the device, then up at Frank. “Who do you think will answer?” he murmured.

Frank eyed Mindy’s note. “I figure maybe it’s whomever helped Mindylenopia get back to the past in the first place. And maybe that person has information we need about Carrie - except maybe they only speak Temporal.”

“L-Lots of maybes,” Tim observed.

Frank nodded. “Translate if you can?”

Tim nodded back, and Frank reached up to tap experimentally at the holographic keypad, keying in the ten digits. After a series of clicks, there was a buzzing noise that Frank took to be equivalent to a ring. Almost immediately, a familiar sounding female voice came on the line, demanding, “Who is this and how in hell did you get the number?!”

They both recognized the voice, Frank’s eyes going wide. “Mindylenopia?!” he blurted out.

NEXT: Identity Crisis

ASIDE: In case you missed it, there was an amusing ‘April Fool Update’ yesterday, written by Michael F. Read that to get a sense of why Clarke wouldn’t want to contact Carrie here (even though his story is not in continuity, it’s semi-accurate). Commentary coming tomorrow, regular schedule resumes Tuesday, want to vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: An older Carrie abducted her teenaged self, took Glen, and killed Mindy. Leaving Frank, Laurie and Tim stuck in the past.

PART 88a: GETAWAY

Laurie felt like she had become the most stable person of their tiny time group. That in itself was freaking her out, and yet in the same way that Tim had said that focussing on her had helped him, it was by focussing on Tim and Frank that she seemed to be able to quell any panic attacks over Carrie’s abduction and Mindy’s apparent demise.

They had made tracks after the car explosion. Found their way to a Miami hostel, pooled their money (admittedly Canadian funds, with only some of it valid in this time) and pleaded their case. Anne, the desk clerk, had taken pity on them, and given them some beds.

Laurie had heard Frank crying for the first time that night. He’d kept quiet about it the following day, but it seemed to her that he was becoming emotionally unstable. Pinning all his hopes on whatever note Mindy had given him, though as per her instructions, he was waiting the requisite two days before looking at it. To honour what may have been the Temporal’s last request.

By contrast, Tim was shutting down. Resigning himself to the fact that they were trapped out of their time. He had initially brought along enough of his medications to last four days, yet he was now looking into ways of getting those over-the-counter drugs while stuck in the past. Along with investigating how they might find jobs. His practicality was becoming a counterpoint to Frank’s desperation.

Laurie felt stuck somewhere between them. She had to believe there was a way out - she HAD to! - because time travel existed. She couldn’t even completely accept Mindy’s death, because again, time travel. Yet at the same time, Laurie was reluctant to place all of her faith on Mindy’s note.

To that end, on the morning of the second day, Laurie travelled back to her old house. It occurred to her that, if she could somehow send a message forwards using her younger self, at least Luci or one of the others would eventually know about the situation. How would that help? She wasn’t sure. In fact, in the end, she hadn’t been sure how to manage it.

“So what d-did you d-do?” Tim asked her.

Laurie finished chewing her half of the granola bar, which was effectively their dinner, and swallowed. “Nothing,” she answered. “I stared at our Miami house, then walked away.” She looked across the street, to where Frank was staring into space. “I’m telling you because, well, maybe suggesting it to Frank is an option? Tomorrow morning, after whatever fallout he feels from that note?”

“C-Could do,” Tim yielded. “Might help keep him going. Yeah, that’s a good idea, Laurie.”

Laurie bit down on her lower lip. “I mean, I’m not delusional, am I? There… there IS a way out of this, right?”

Tim sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t felt this messed up since Julie sprang her whole ‘get the chip’ mission on me.” Tim reached out to pat her knee. “But know what, Laurie? I’m glad you’ve got a plan. Your hope helps give me hope.”

Laurie felt a smile flicker across her face. “I just want to get home.” She squirmed. “Or failing that, at least get into a change of clothes. These ones are getting gross.”

Tim nodded. “I hear that. Pity our car blew up. You were the most prepared of any of us, what with having a whole art camp bag packed.”

Laurie slumped. “And now I’m gonna need to buy new coloured pencils when we get home. The good ones aren’t cheap.”

“Right. Sorry for bringing that up.” Tim withdrew his palm.

“No, it’s fine,” Laurie said, reaching back to grasp his hand. “Speak your mind. Be true to yourself! That’s what I’m trying to do here.” She forced a smile back out. “It’s only, the thing that’s making this all feel so weird? Is that you’re the ones who came into the past to recruit me. So I feel like you should kinda be the smarter ones in terms of figuring out how to resolve this kind of situation. You know?”

Tim shook his head. “Intelligence and wisdom are two different things. You are wise, Laurie, in your own way. Seeing the best in people and situations. In fact, your optimism reminds me of Clarke’s… except it’s somehow a lot more infectious than it is with him.”

Laurie nodded, then as an afterthought squeezed Tim’s hand, until he smiled back at her. The both of them then turned their attention back to Frank, who remained staring at the darkening sky.

“It’s time,” Frank said. He looked away from his watch, which synched to local time now read 11:30pm, and towards his two time travel companions instead. Their faces were partially illuminated by the streetlight above. “I… I just want to say, if this note thing doesn’t work out, I really am SO sorry to have dragged you both into–"

“Frank, stop.”

He blinked at Laurie. “I’m sorry?”

“And AGAIN you’re sorry,” she pointed out. She stepped closer. “Stop saying that. It’s actually beginning to bug me! You’ve been like this for the last 48 hours, talking to us like we didn’t want to be here. Sure, it’s not what we expected, but golly, no one ever held a gun to my head. We came here for Carrie. We did our best. This trip is what it is, Frank, and if you apologize again for something so obviously outside of your control, I’m gonna… gonna slap sense into you. So help me, I will!”

Frank gaped at her for a second, not sure how to respond. He looked over towards Tim, who smiled and shrugged back. “Her Veniti attitude is coming through, Frank. She’ll do it.”

“Um. Well, okay then. No apologies. Only this note.” He thrust his hand into his pocket. He felt the paper there, hesitated, then slowly drew it out. He fingered the edge of the sheet. “Dammit, I feel like this is Mindy’s last will and testament or something…"

“So let’s see what she wanted us to have,” Tim soothed.

Frank nodded. Carefully, he unfolded the page and smoothed it out on his leg. The other two leaned in to see. The scrawled handwriting read: ‘Tim has the coin. Laurie has the key. Frank, set March 25, 7pm.' It was followed by a string of ten digits.

They stared for a moment.

“The coin?” Frank murmured, looking to Tim.

Tim stared back, then reached for his back pocket. “I r-remember what Mindy said to me now!” he gasped.

“Tim, come with me, stammer a lot and make writing motions. We’ll ask that businessman to lend us his pad.”

“B-B-But,” Tim began again.

“Good, like that,” Mindy asserted. “Frank, wait here a moment with Laurie,” she added, practically dragging Tim towards the guy in the suit who was scribbling something in a book as he talked on his cell phone.

As she did so, she leaned down to whisper to him. “I have something for you.” She pressed the coin into Tim’s hand. He blinked in surprise, looking down at it. “Put that in your back pocket,” Mindy continued. “Do NOT spend it. In fact, forget all about it until Frank mentions it. Our survival may depend on it.”

Tim shook his head. “Mindy, HOW? This c-coin is from–”

“Shhhh!” Mindy cut in. “I know. Fun fact, the guy you call Shady, the one who activated Carrie’s powers? I managed to steal his future currency. And for over three years now, I’ve kept that coin on my person - now you must do so in my place. Okay?"

“Um, okay…?”

“Now seriously, stammer something."

“B-B-B-But,” Tim began anew, that request becoming a tired refrain.

They had reached the businessman, and Mindy quickly negotiated for some sheets of paper and a spare pen from his pocket. She began to scribble on the sheet as she walked back. “Hey, I thought the kid needed it to communicate!” the businessman protested, before giving up and returning to his phone call.

Frank felt his heart rate quicken as Tim explained. “So when Mindy says the key,” Frank decided as Tim finished, “did she mean a literal…”

He turned to look at Laurie, only to see that she was staring at him, a surprised expression on her face, and a car key dangling from a loop of wire in her fingers.

Mindy grabbed Laurie by the arm, maneuvering her out of the room, leaving Tim to deal with Frank kneeling on the ground.

“Laurie, I’m giving you something very important right now,” Mindy said, pressing the object into her hands. “Don’t look at it, simply carry it with you. Secretly. You’ll know when to bring it back out. In the meantime, you’ll have to be strong - but I know you can be. And no matter what anyone says, for the next couple days, you will never lose hope. You understand me?”

“Ah, s-sure,” Laurie said, taken aback by the urgency of Mindy’s tone. “But Mindy, it feels like you handed over–"

“Shhhh!” Mindy smiled. “Turns out it’s a good thing I swapped licence plates to throw Glen off our trail. Now, forget for two days, since as of right now, we’ve got to move.”

Frank and Tim quickly caught up to the two of them in the corridor.

Laurie gasped. “That’s why it felt wrong. When Mindy was going for the car. Because back then, I was the one with…"

“Don’t say it,” Frank broke in. “Not out loud. Objects back in pockets.” He shoved the paper back into his own pants. “We play it casual, like Mindy wanted. We can check this out tomorrow.”

“What? Frank, why wait??” Tim protested.

“We might only have one shot at this,” Frank explained, forcing his mind to shift back into gear. “And even if Mindy drew Elder Carrie’s attention, maybe the future is still tracking us. Expecting something like this, something to be triggered two days later. So we don’t let it play out tonight. We can’t make this easy for those future trackers.”

Laurie nibbled on her lower lip uncertainly, exchanging a glance with Tim, who shrugged. “He’s the time expert,” the blonde boy yielded.

They made their way back to the Miami airport the following afternoon, all of them hungry and tired. “Mindy’s choice of a Chevy was fortunate,” Frank murmured as they regarded the parking lot. “There were a bunch of them in the States around this time. I only hope we haven’t been towed."

It took about ten minutes of searching, but a shout by Tim brought them running. The Ontario plates had been swapped out for Florida ones - of course, since it had been an Ontario registration that had blown up over two days ago now - but through the driver’s side window, the interior looked just as they remembered it. The time machine was intact.

The trio stood there for a moment, letting it sink in. Frank slowly exhaled. “I guess it could be booby trapped, but there’s no point leaving it here. If you want, you two can head back to a safe distance while I start the car up.”

“Don’t start it,” Laurie suggested. “Use my key to unlock, you set the date, drop Tim’s coin in, and we go.”

Frank blinked. “Good point.”

Tim fished Mindy’s coin back out of his pocket. “Do we really use this though? Our stuff must still be in the trunk, including our coins. We could use one of them to return to the present. To recruit more help.”

Frank shook his head. “If Elder Carrie is the one gaining control over things, the only hope we have against her is OUR Carrie. And in order to get to that Carrie before the older version can solidify her position, I think we go straight to the date Mindy’s provided. No side trips.”

“Right.” Tim rubbed his forehead. “At l-least Chartreuse saying I’d be using Temporal in the future m-makes sense now.”

“Frank, how can you be so sure OUR Carrie will be at that date?” Laurie pressed.

Frank exhaled. “I can’t be. But the date Mindy said to set? Coupled with the coin, it’s the night before Carrie’s fiftieth birthday. That can’t be coincidence.” He turned. “If you’d prefer to wait here though…"

Laurie shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“L-Let’s do this,” Tim agreed.

Carefully, the three of them piled into the time machine. Laurie in the driver’s seat, Frank tapping in the coordinates from the passenger side, and Tim in the back. They dropped in the future coin. Then they all eyed the DNA pad. Frank cleared his throat. “So, which one of us…"

Laurie reached out, pressing her thumb against it. “Like riding a bicycle,” she breathed.

Three seconds later, there was a popping sound, the car vanished… and it immediately spun, as if it the front had been struck by a heavy object. Frank grabbed for the dashboard, despite that not making sense, because he couldn’t move, couldn’t grab, they were being dematerialized in a wormhole, and how could they even be in a car accident there?

He opened his mouth to shout, but he couldn’t do that either, and for the first time in over a year, Frank felt himself losing consciousness on account of a time journey.

NEXT: A Future Darkly

ASIDE: Hope that didn’t feel like a cheat - you knew as much as the characters did. Now, to the future…

PREVIOUSLY: Frank caught Carrie up on everything. Then Glen told Carrie why she can’t save her mother.

PART 87b: TRAPPED

She had allowed the time stream to coalesce about her, had been about to pinpoint her mother and jump to her, which was when…

“Carrie, when your mother was taken, she was pregnant.”

The water became deathly cold. Cracks formed in the scene around her, and then the image shattered, leaving Carrie standing back in the small airport lounge, staring at Glen. With a twisting in her gut. “No,” she whispered. A reflex word, because deep down, she knew it to be the truth.

Things were starting to make sense.

“I’m sorry,” Glen said. He looked around. “Carrie, maybe we can still run away together."

That time in the hospital, when she had felt like she and her mother couldn’t both exist, because of a strain on the time streams… it had actually been because she and a sibling couldn’t both exist. One person with temporal powers was bad enough, to have two?! Insanity. Why had nobody ever told her this?

“My Dad… did he…"

Glen shook his head. “He didn’t know. Elaine was barely a month along, I’m not sure if she even suspected.” He continued to look around nervously. “Carrie, please, we need to get out of here.”

The repercussions continued to wash over her. If she saved her mother, all she was doing was pushing her fate onto her unborn brother or sister. Removing herself from the timeline as a child wouldn’t fix things either. The future could simply try again, with someone else. How could she do that? How could she make someone else suffer in the same way that she was suffering here? How could she make a SIBLING suffer that way? Was the path forwards with Glen truly the only one?

Glen pulled at her arm. “Carrie…"

She ignored him. There was something more to this. Why hadn’t she been able to pinpoint where her mother had gone, that time she had first tried to figure it out? Why hadn’t she ever been able to learn the fate of Elaine Waterson? The only one who might have been able to stop her would be someone with similar powers…

A rip began to form in the fabric of space-time.

“I did it to myself,” Carrie realized. “I can’t save my mama, because I’m the one who’s going to abduct her. Along with my unborn sibling, in order to stabilize the timelines. I do it because… because I was always predestined to do it. I’m the Chosen One, the ONLY one with the power to do it and hide the truth, so it has to be me.”

“Bloody hell,” Glen gasped.

A fifty year old Carrie Waterson stepped through the rip in space-time, dressed in a bright yellow gown, and looking royally pissed off.

“Glen’s up here,” Frank asserted, looking down at the tracking device as he ran. “In a room, it’s probably some lounge area.”

“Stop,” Mindy asserted, reaching out to grasp him by the shoulder.

Frank shrugged her off. But when he turned to look at the redhead, his feet stumbled to a stop, not having expected the look of horror on Mindy’s face. Tim and Laurie stopped also, looking back and forth between them.

“What?” Frank asked. “What, are we too late?”

“Maybe,” Mindy said. “Let’s approach cautiously, okay? Listen at the door first. There’s…" She shook her head. “You ever get the feeling that your past has finally caught up with you? Even if that past is the future?”

Carrie couldn’t move. She wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to lash out at the older version of herself - and she couldn’t. She was trapped. But then, in a way, they were both trapped, trapped by time, by fate, by the cosmic forces that refused to cut her a break. Insanely, the thought that popped to the forefront of her mind was how at least her present day three-year-old self was tucked away safely in bed - so which of them here in Miami should be adopting the middle-name tradition of becoming Elizabeth?

“You have irrevocably screwed up my past!” Elder Carrie said, glaring at Glen. “That’s NOT why I sent you back, Glinephanis!”

He winced. “You, that is, she– Carrie, your younger self was about to time slip, and mess with your mother. Telling her the truth, it was our last chance.”

“She wasn’t jaded enough for that knowledge. Not as this teenager! Even now, she’s trying to figure out a way out of this one.”

Glen swallowed. “Which you know, because you were once her?”

“Which I know because it’s taking considerable effort to keep myself temporally numb. Plus yes, it’s what I would be thinking in her position.” Elder Carrie bared her teeth. “You broke her, Glinephanis. Broke ME. She will still have been me though. I’ll now have to see to it personally.”

“I’m sorry,” Glen apologized.

Elder Carrie glared at him for a moment, then shook her head, brushing her hair off her shoulder. “Oh, it wasn’t your fault. 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.”

Glen 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.”

A growl came from the Elder Carrie’s throat. “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.”

Carrie felt her future self (or alternate future self, maybe, somehow? Oh God… so trapped…) grab her by the collar. And Glen latched onto Elder Carrie’s arm, and then they were all being pulled back towards the rip in space-time…

Which was when the 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!” Mindy 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 from her to her Elder Self. “You don’t have to do this, not to yourself…"

And Carrie felt the time streams pulling at them, and there was nothing her friends could do, she was being pulled away, pulled off into the future, down a path that had no turns…

Wait, could she move? Was Elder Carrie losing her grip? Carrie twitched her fingers, but no, that wasn’t enough, she was unable to pull away… a single tear trickled out of the corner of her eye, as Carrie Waterson, the future Temporal Weapon, surrendered herself to the inevitable.

Frank pounded the floor where they had disappeared.

“This is bad,” Mindy murmured, her face pale. “She’ll be monitoring us from this point on… oh no, no, no. Tim, get Frank. Laurie, you’re with me. We’re heading back to the Chevrolet. NOW.”

“B-But…” Tim began. However, Mindy had already grabbed Laurie by the arm, and was maneuvering her out of the room. So Tim looked towards Frank, who was now kneeling on the ground and looking like he’d just lost his best friend. Which, Tim supposed, might not be far from the truth.

“Frank,” he ventured, moving to touch his companion’s shoulder. “We’ve gotta go.”

“I shouldn’t have waited,” Frank said numbly. “We should have tracked Glen right away. We could have stopped this.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Frank, Mindy needs us back at the Chevy,” he said, tugging on the other boy’s arm.

“And what did the older Carrie even mean?” Frank said, turning his head. “The bit we heard, about Glen having broken her… damn it, what were they even talking about before that?!”

“Frank, time machine. We still have a chance to do something. Come ON,” Tim said, surprised at the force of his own voice.

Frank swallowed. “Right.” He scrambled to his feet. “Right. And we still have Mindy, she might tell us more now. Let’s go."

The two of them quickly caught up to Mindy and Laurie in the corridor. They all hurried out through the arrivals section, pausing only when Mindy started snapping her fingers. “Paper, I’ll need paper… Tim, come with me, stammer a lot and make writing motions. We’ll ask that businessman to lend us his pad.”

“B-B-But,” Tim began again.

“Good, like that,” Mindy asserted. “Frank, wait here a moment with Laurie,” she added, practically dragging Tim towards the guy in the suit who was scribbling something in a book as he talked on his cell phone.

“She’s scared,” Laurie said to Frank, as they watched. “She’s trying to act in control but… but in seeing that future Carrie… golly, it really freaked Mindy out.” She shook her head. “That… it IS what we saw, right? That was a future Carrie abducting… herself?”

“I think so,” Frank answered. “But we’re not finished yet. We can’t be. Mindy must know somewhen we can go. Or have some future knowledge we can use.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

Laurie shifted her weight back and forth. “Really? Or are you only hoping that, because we’re kinda out of other options.”

Frank didn’t answer, which Laurie supposed was answer enough. Mindy strode back towards them then, scribbling something on her newly acquired piece of paper. The man briefly called something out to them before getting pulled back into his phone conversation.

“All right,” Mindy concluded, folding up the sheet. “This is for you, Frank. Put it in your pocket, and wait two days before looking at it, all right?”

He blinked as he took it from her. “Um, okay, but why…”

“We’re going to hang around Miami for at least two days, acting normal, see?” Mindy continued. “Blending in. Acting passive. We time jump, we enter her domain, whereas so long as we’re here, she probably won’t bother to trace us closely. Not for any length of time. She’ll jump ahead instead, and if she focusses on anyone, it’ll be me. If we get separated, remember, she can use time as a weapon, but she’s not omniscient. She can miss things. Details. Be covert.”

Laurie didn’t like the resignation in Mindy’s tone. When her brother planned things, he never sounded like that. “You’re talking as if we’ve already lost,” she murmured.

Mindy grimaced. “Now that Carrie’s Future Self is involved? I guess I am. But there’s still a chance. Maybe. To that end, you might as well know the truth about why Carrie couldn’t succeed with her mother - I’m pretty sure Glen spilling the beans is what created this mess. But if I tell you, it’s on condition that you all agree to let things play out normally for two days. No matter what! You all cross-your-hearts promise that?”

“Of course!” Frank blurted.

“O-Okay, if it helps Carrie,” Tim said.

“Are you sure we can handle it?” Laurie squeaked.

Mindy flashed her a smile. “Oh, Laurie. Don’t worry, a lot of my earlier reluctance was a fear that one of you would tell Carrie. Which, if she already knows, is no longer an issue. But know what? On your few visits to the cafe this past year, I’ve seen you really coming into yourself. Emerging from the shadow of your brother. Yes, I believe you can handle this.”

Laurie nodded back, feeling a newfound confidence. “Okay then.”

So Mindy told them. And while the thought of Carrie, faced with the choice of either inflicting her own destiny onto a sibling, versus one day removing her own mother from the timelines, made Laurie feel sick to her stomach… she wagered the temporal truth of the situation was even worse, given the way Frank reeled.

“So there’s no way to get Carrie’s attention through her mother,” Frank said. “When Elaine’s plane leaves the airport shortly…”

“Oh, Gods, do NOT mess with that,” Mindy said, eyes widening. “Remember, you do NOT want Carrie’s attention. Not the one who’ll be looking now. Rather, we need to do everything we can to AVOID her attention.” She glanced around. “We’ve spent too much time talking in one place. Wait out front, I’ll go get the time car, we can take it to a hostel for the night.”

Mindy began to stride for the exit, the teenagers hurrying to catch up. “Wait, Mindy,” Laurie protested. “Why take the car?” Something about that felt wrong.

“Glen’s still with HER,” Mindy said. “Since Glen knows about it, we can’t hide it, but we CAN make her think it’s broken or something. So stay back, okay? Also, two days, acting normal, no matter what. You all promised!”

“Sure,” Frank said, exchanging a glance with Tim.

“Good.” She paused, a ghost of a smile flickering over her face. “One last thing. If this all goes south as fast as I think it will - in the end, know that I’m glad I could make an impact.”

Mindy ran off. The knot in Laurie’s stomach tightened. “Frank, no. Something’s wrong. I wonder… I wonder if this is maybe how Chartreuse feels sometimes?”

“F-Frank, she’s right, we’re missing something,” Tim said. “Was Mindy maybe mentally influencing us? She wouldn’t try to time travel without us, would she?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Frank said. He blinked. “But we did miss something. Mindy moved the car. Glen wouldn’t know where it was, not right away. All she’s doing here is leading him and that Future Carrie right back to it. Why?”

“So that Future Carrie’s not watching us?” Laurie whispered.

“But if she’s watching Mindy instead…” Tim murmured.

They all exchanged glances, then Frank took off at a run. He’d barely made it outside before there was the sound of loud explosion from out in the parking lot. By the time the teenagers got there, they were unable to even approach the flaming, burning wreckage of the Chevrolet Cavalier. Or it’s lone occupant.

NEXT: Getaway

ASIDE: That went to hell pretty quick, hm? Any feelings about it, or what’s next? There’s also that vote for T&T, perhaps.

PREVIOUSLY: Carrie went back in time to save her mother. Frank has caught up to her at the Miami airport.

PART 87a: THE PLAIN TRUTH

Frank ignored everyone else in the Miami airport, devoting all his attention to not losing sight of Carrie. After all, this might be their only chance - and she was angling for an ‘Employees Only’ door. He shoved the walkie-talkie back in his pocket and got a grip on the belt of his slightly-too-large pants as he ran. He pushed past someone, mumbling an apology.

The door Carrie was aiming for seemed to open in front of her as she arrived, and she charged through it at full sprint. Frank tried to sprint himself, reaching out and catching the door before it could swing shut. He burst through, spotting Carrie down the passageway.

“Carrie!” he called out, risking the shout now that they were out of the main area. “Carrie, wait, we’re in another timeline!”

“Frank, stop,” Carrie said.

Except she hadn’t said it - the voice had come from behind him. He spun as the door closed, revealing… Carrie. Another Carrie. Except this one was dressed differently. She was wearing a white blouse with a blue business suit, her hair having been gathered up underneath a flight hat. Which made her look much like Elaine Waterson had, moments ago. “Carrie, what–"

Frank stopped, for as he turned back to look at the prior Carrie, she disappeared. One second she was there, then there was a flash of light which made him blink, and then… nothing. Empty hallway. Of course, Frank realized - she’d escaped through time, to become the Carrie in the business suit, who was here now. Frank turned back to her. “Carrie?”

“You couldn’t stop her,” Carrie observed. “Maybe you can’t stop me either. But I have questions. So many questions.”

“H-How far back did you just go?”

“No, Frank. I get the first question. Namely, how in hell did you get back here?! I destroyed… at least, I thought I’d destroyed…"

“The chip?” Frank finished, as her voice caught in confusion or possibly frustration. “You did, but you didn’t. It’s complicated.” He reached into his pocket to shut off the muffled noises coming from the walkie-talkie.

“That’s not an answer,” Carrie countered. “I need more.”

Frank rubbed his forehead. “Well, what we all thought was the chip wasn’t really the chip. So we were able to reconstruct the time machine after all. Which we did because we had to get a message to you. And it all took weeks, Carrie - weeks where we never saw you. Or your mother.”

She flinched at that.

“We figured out what you were planning,” Frank continued. “At least in as much as saving your mom - and with you dressed like that, is it your intention to take her place? To vanish instead?”

Carrie’s mouth twitched. “That other me jumped back a day and a half,” she said after a moment. “To give herself time to prepare for this event. I’d rather not time slip again, but I will if I have to. If you make it necessary.”

It took a second for Frank to realize that she had answered his initial question, about how long she’d been in town. “So what about your intentions here?”

She stared. “Was it you who brought Glen back in time?”

It was Frank’s turn to flinch. Had she been watching them? Well, there was no point denying it. “Yes,” he admitted. “Which goes to show that he doesn’t want you to do this either, Carrie.” A thought occurred. “Wait, have you already spoken with Glen?”

Carrie crossed her arms. “My intention is to bring my mom back into our present. To give her back to Dad. Admittedly, she’ll be almost fifteen years out of time synch, but saving her in the ‘now’, and having her around while I grow up - I already know that’s not a possibility. Her absence made me too much of who I am. It brought me to this point. If I try to paradox my way out of that, it’s liable to render the younger me comatose. So, this is the best alternative I could think of. A parting gift, as I return to this airport and vanish in her place.”

Frank shook his head. “Except Elaine was never in our present. So I’m afraid your plan won’t work.”

Her jaw clenched. “Maybe it will work if you tell me the date when you left.”

Frank exhaled. “But Glen also thinks this event is something you can’t affect. He wouldn’t tell us why.”

Carrie frowned. “Well, if that’s truly the case, I have a backup plan.”

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “You’re a couple questions deeper than me now. And here I thought I was the curious one.”

“Carrie…"

She pulled her hat down tighter against her head. “Did Char– or rather, who all is actually here with you and Glen?”

So she hadn’t been watching them after all. “Laurie is, that helped us get to Miami. And Tim, to translate any Temporal talk. And, ah, well, Mindy.”

Carrie’s posture became rigid. “Mindylenopia?!”

“Is that another question?” Frank said, seizing the opportunity.

“No!” Carrie countered, her face a flurry of emotions. “Except how is that possible, she… I banished…"

He wanted to spill, to tell her about Mindy/Theresa and Chartreuse’s conclusions about Timeline Four, but at this point, he also desperately wanted to know what her next plans were. He had to be assertive, the way he had been that day in the hospital over a year ago. Well, over a year, relatively speaking. “I’ll explain it all, but first it’s your turn to answer a question,” he insisted.

Her hands curled then uncurled. “Glen spoke to me earlier,” she admitted. “He must have spotted me as I was checking out security at the airport. I didn’t want to speak with him, but he pursued me, blocks away. Tried to offer up an alternative plan, said that we could leave here and still relocate somewhere, somewhen.”

“Carrie, even though he came here with us, his plans aren’t the same as ours,” Frank insisted.

She shrugged. “It’s fine, I wouldn’t let him finish. I knew I had to be here to open the door for myself, and to delay you.” Her lips pursed. “But I did say that I would meet him again, after this conversation.”

So she was going to Glen next. Frank swallowed. “Okay, well, here’s the thing. Our whole worldview is ‘Timeline Four’, Carrie! Not Glen’s ‘Timeline Three’, not the one that Chartreuse told us about. Because, thing is, when you banished Mindylenopia… she became Theresa. The waitress in the cafe.”

Carrie’s eyes went wide, and she took a step back. Frank charged on. “See, in our past, Mindy influenced Linquist, who created that temporal gun, and he in turn influenced us, and Theresa influenced us, and then Mindy’s the one who fixed our time machine, and so it’s all so interwoven at this point that ‘Timeline Three’ can go to hell! We want you back, Carrie. Everyone wants you back in the present, and maybe that can be a thing in this New Timeline.”

Aside from biting down on her lip, Carrie hadn’t displayed any other outward signs of emotion. She seemed to be processing the information. So Frank gave her the time. “I’m not good for you, not good for any of you,” she said at last.

“Chartreuse would dispute that,” Frank objected. “And maybe it’s egotistical, but I think we’re better for you than Glen. And better than you being by yourself. Actually, there’s been talk of a rather nasty ‘Future You’, which is what Mindy had initially been trying to change… and it’s not too late to change that future. I’m sure it’s not.”

She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. “Going back to the present to fix my future, I don’t see that as an option.” She drew in a sharp breath. “Thing is, if all else fails, there was a first timeline. The one where I was never here, where you all led perfectly good Carrie-free lives. That’s what I was angling for by doing this, and if I can’t manage it by disappearing in your present…”

She let her voice trail off, giving Frank a pointed look. It took a second, but the piece snapped into place - oh no, was she referring to her ‘backup plan’? “Carrie, no,” he gasped. “You can’t… look at what happened when Julie tried to erase herself!”

“I’m not Julie,” Carrie said quietly. “I’m Temporal Paradox Girl.” She tugged on her hat again. “I’m going to leave you now, Frank. Don’t follow, or I’ll be forced to temporally freeze you in place, and I’m not sure I have the skills yet to put a short time frame on that effect.”

“Carrie, we came here from December 30th,” Frank blurted. “We had a stand-in for you at school, so your absence wasn’t missed. Your Dad knows about you, and he’s okay with it. Please, don’t throw all that away. Look into all the options before you do something rash!”

She back-pedalled away from him, down the hall. “No, no, stop making everything harder for me,” she pleaded. “Stop talking! Don’t follow!”

“Carrie…"

She turned and ran. Frank clenched his fists, but as requested, he didn’t follow. After all, he had to tell the others everything, and if she ended up temporally freezing him, the truth might come out too late.

“I told her everything,” Frank said. As soon as Carrie had vanished from view, he’d radioed the others, and everyone had converged at the ‘Employees Only’ door. “I… I don’t think she took it well,” he admitted. “She seems determined to disappear, whether she can rescue her mother here or not. And she said she’d freeze me in time if I followed her.”

“A-Are we letting that stop us?” Tim asked.

Frank shook his head. “No. But you’ve got to understand her state of mind before we pursue. She doesn’t seem to want to accept any alternatives…" He shook his head. “Yet I can’t think of how to convince her to find another path forwards! Damn it, what other arguments can we make??”

Mindy sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe Carrie has to know.”

Frank turned. “Know WHAT?”

“The reason she can’t save her mother. The reason she shouldn’t destroy herself. Trouble is, I have no idea what that knowledge will do to her. She might give up and shut down entirely.”

“Carrie’s not the sort of person to give up,” Laurie asserted. “And we have to do something.”

“We are running out of options,” Frank agreed. “Mindy, if revealing your secrets will help…"

Mindy grimaced. “Oh, I’m not telling YOU. I’m not even sure I’m telling her. First, I’ll try speaking to Carrie as I used to as Theresa, maybe that passive assistance I gave to her counts for something. We’re going to lose her trail though, if we stand around here much longer!”

“Maybe not. She went to meet Glen,” Frank said. As Mindy’s eyes widened, he added, “so that’s how we’ll find her. Based on what Carrie was saying, I don’t think Glen found our tracking device after all.”

Carrie ran into the small lounge room, wanting to get away - only to find that he was already there, waiting for her. Of course. He would have had to use his mental abilities to clear the room out of other people. Besides, what other events would be on his schedule for the evening?

Carrie sagged back against the door as it closed behind her. “We’ve never been in Timeline Three,” she accused.

“So you did speak with Frank,” Glen remarked. “Pity. But whatever this timeline is, it doesn’t change anything.”

Carrie used her palm to wipe away any tears that might have escaped after her prior conversation. “If that’s so, then you’re not stopping me any more than Frank was. This attempt, it’s my true ‘swan song’, alright? My parting gift. At least give me that."

Glen stared at her for a moment. “I’m sorry, Carrie. So sorry. But you can’t save your mother. Just… let’s run away together. Then we can zap the time machine into oblivion, after Mindy and the others return to the present, okay?”

“WHY? Why can’t I do this? Because you should know that, if I truly can’t do this, I’ll be heading back to make myself disappear before mom even gets to Miami instead!”

“That would have… similar repercussions. If you stop and think about it, I don’t think you’ll really want to do either of those things.”

Carrie strode over to grab Glen by the front of his shirt. “WHY?” she shrieked again. “Why can’t I actually do the ONE thing that I want to do with these temporal powers of mine?”

“You’re not old enough to know that yet.”

She shoved him back, making him stumble. “Wrong! If I can mentally project myself around the present, temporally banish someone, and find people up and down my own timeline, I’m damn well old enough!”

He grabbed a chair for balance. “Carrie, no! This isn’t how things are supposed to play out…”

“Because I change things! I’m Paradox Girl, that’s what I do, right?! You’re just bitter because of how I got you got in trouble for losing me at the talent show, huh?”

“Carrie, please, you need to calm down. I want you to experience us being together, I don’t want to see you to be captured and spoon-fed those memories, but the longer this conversation goes on, the more likely that outcome is becoming…”

“Then I’ll leave,” Carrie asserted. “Leave this conversation, this room, this time. Unless you tell me right the hell now, I’m time jumping, and no one will find me ever again! Not you, not Chartreuse, not Frank, not anyone!”

“Carrie…”

“Bye, Glen.”

“Carrie, when your mother was taken, she was pregnant.”

NEXT: Trapped

ASIDE: Is it falling into place yet? Oh, and don’t confuse this part with “The Plane Truth”, when we first learned about Elaine’s fate.

PREVIOUSLY: To figure out the Miami International Airport, the time group split up - Laurie, Tim and Mindy in one group, Frank and Glen in the other.

M.I.A. (in 2014)

PART 86b: M.I.A.

“I don’t think we’re getting a boarding pass unless someone buys a ticket,” Laurie sighed, watching Mindy talk to the airline receptionist.

Tim poked her arm. “Or maybe it’s only…" He used both hands to slip on the sunglasses he was holding. “A matter of ‘time’. Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh?”

Laurie slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. “Tim! Ohmigod, no, we have to stay serious. Also, I hated that CSI show. The original was better.”

Tim pulled the shades back off. “S-Sorry, couldn’t resist. And you seemed really tense.” He glanced over towards Mindy, then back to Laurie. “Tense is not good. Understandable, b-but maybe you need to try to relax?”

Laurie pulled her hands back to her sides, her eyes again on Mindy. “No. Carrie’s in trouble. Frank’s trusted us to keep track of Mindy. I can’t screw that up. I can’t relax.” Her fingers curled.

Tim shook his head. “Laurie, if you wind yourself up too tight, you’ll crash, like you–" He winced, but couldn’t think of another way to end the sentence. “Well, like Chartreuse said you have before. I’m sure you’ll d-do your best, we all will, but if the unexpected happens… d-don’t beat yourself up, okay? If there’s one thing I’ve found out about our time group, it’s that n-nothing really goes according to plan.”

The redhead nibbled on her lower lip. “Right.”

“You’re d-doing good here,” Tim assured her. “Give yourself permission to smile at my lousy j-jokes.”

The corner of Laurie’s mouth twitched up. Which was when the walkie talkie she was holding crackled to life. Her arm jerked up. “Yes?” she gasped, mashing the talk button.

“Get everyone back to the car,” came Frank’s voice.

“Frank, what’s the problem, what happ–" She caught Tim’s look and checked herself. “Okay. We’re meeting at the car.” She released the talk button. “Tim, go get Mindy, okay?”

He nodded back, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

“You let Glen get AWAY?” Mindy said, slamming her hands down on the car hood.

“I didn’t let him get away,” Frank countered, equal parts anger and sadness gnawing away at him. “Glen told me that if I didn’t let him leave, he’d tell security that I was some sort of terrorist. And with his power, they’d probably believe him. Pop the trunk, we need to get Julie’s tracking stuff back out.”

“Fine. Mess with her devices while I move the car,” Mindy sighed. “Glen knows where we parked, we don’t want him escaping with the time machine.”

“Y-You’re saying you put Beth’s tracking device on Glen?” Tim asked.

“Kinda,” Frank admitted. “The one Julie got off that hairband over fifty years later, at any rate. So, not ideal, but she’d charged it up and tested it. And since I kind of suspected Glen would try something like this, I slipped it in his pocket while we were moving the car off the beach.” Mindy handed the central device over to him. “I’ll just need to retune all this so that it reads Miami, at this point it’ll likely show Glen as being in our town library…"

“Why would Glen run away now?” Laurie piped up.

“What?” Frank asked, already messing with Julie’s device.

“Why do it now, while there’s still time for you to react?” Laurie pressed. “And not later, like when Carrie’s mom is about to land?”

Tim’s hand reached out to cover the display, forcing Frank to look up at him, then over to Laurie. She was biting down uncertainly on her lower lip.

“That’s… a good question,” Frank yielded. “Glen must have figured now was his best chance. What with being away from Mindy, who might otherwise advocate on our behalf. I shouldn’t have split us up.”

“It’s fine that you did, the decision seemed sound,” Tim assured. “But Laurie makes a good point - are you sure nothing happened right before Glen left?”

Frank thought back, slowly shaking his head. “We were looking for ways around security while you were checking out the boarding pass angle. We’d just agreed that even security outfits might not be enough to do it when Glen leaned in and told me he was leaving. He…" Frank frowned. “He did seem to be looking at something over my shoulder. I glanced that way, but I don’t know what he saw.”

“Something temporal,” Laurie concluded. “It had to be.”

Frank shrugged. “Maybe. Let’s see if we can figure out where he went before speculating.” It took almost thirty minutes to recalibrate the machine, by which point Mindy had walked back from re-parking the car. She glared at him.

“Is it a good time to point out that I never wanted Glen along in the first place?” she asked.

“No,” Frank grumbled. “Here’s the weird thing though. Unless I’ve done something wrong here, it looks to me like Glen’s left the airport entirely.”

“That is weird,” Tim agreed.

“So Glen knew you were bugging him, and thus put the tracker on someone else,” Mindy suggested.

Frank winced. “Possible.” He frowned, then finally directed his attention back to the three of them. “Okay, well, I think Glen’s already told us all he was going to about the limits of Carrie’s abilities. Is it practical to still chase him down? Or do we resume our efforts inside?”

Their eventual consensus was to make sure they had an airport plan before getting sidetracked looking for Glen. Laurie even pointed out that if things went badly that evening, they could time travel back to now, so that they could follow Glen instead… which Frank suspected would cause larger issues, but he made a note of how Laurie’s simpler way of looking at time travel might prove useful later on.

“I think Frank sees me as a nuisance,” Laurie sighed. “I was the wrong person to come. It should have been my brother.”

Tim shook his head. “D-Don’t say that. From what Clarke told me, when Frank was with Clarke and Corry back in the past, your brother was a bigger n-nuisance than you could ever be.”

She frowned. “Except my brother saved Julie!”

“Just as you’re helping to save Carrie.”

Laurie poked her fingers together. “But I can’t understand things, not the way Corry can! I’m only here because it’s Miami. So Frank’s been dismissive, and I’ll probably end up tensing up like you said, and then we’ll all have to try again somehow, which we wouldn’t need to with Corry and what if in the end I’ll have spoiled our only chance to save–"

“Laurie,” Tim broke in, stepping closer to meet her gaze. “Breathe. First, Frank’s not being dismissive, he gets p-preoccupied by technology. P-Plus he’s concerned about Glen, and he’s f-focussed on Carrie.” The blond boy smiled at her. “Second, being aware of tensing up means you’re less likely to do it. And f-finally, you’re more connected to Carrie than Corry could ever hope to be. Don’t lose sight of that.”

Laurie swallowed. “Chartreuse tell you to say some of that?”

“That last bit,” Tim admitted. “Honestly though, I’m making up a lot of this as I go along. In f-fact, focussing on you is kinda helping me not f-freak out myself. So thanks for that.”

The corners of Laurie’s mouth twitched up again. “You’re welcome.” She took in a long, slow breath. “I wish this wasn’t a life or death situation for the girl I idolize.”

“It’s not. Not yet, at least,” Tim said.

“Hey,” Frank said, approaching them with Mindy trailing along behind. “So, we’ve now got clothes that can have me pass for an airport worker. Don’t ask. I figure we grab some dinner, then have Mindy liberate us some boarding passes.”

Laurie’s partial smile faded. “We’re sticking with that plan then?”

“Unless you’ve come up with a better one.”

Laurie dropped her gaze to the ground. Corry would have come up with a good plan, she reasoned. She wasn’t the planning type. “No. But try and make sure you don’t disrupt anyone’s vacation, okay?” she murmured.

“Being choosy about our targets would draw more attention to us,” Mindy countered. “And time will smooth out minor changes.”

“Laurie’s right though, individuals are still important,” Tim put in. “Don’t you agree, Frank?”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed. “Yeah, let’s be choosy on the passes we grab. Thanks guys, keep acting as my conscience check whenever I lose perspective.”

Mindy let out a noise of exasperation, which made Laurie want to cringe. But then she felt Tim nudge her arm, and she looked up in time to catch Frank’s grateful smile towards her.

They had all been through security now. Mindy had ‘convinced’ the ‘donors’ of their boarding passes to stay in the main airport until after 11pm. Which wasn’t too much of a stretch, since Frank and the rest of them had gone through security at only half past ten. Frank glanced at his watch. Elaine Waterson’s plane would be on the ground by now.

“Check, check… we set? Over.” Frank clicked the button on his walkie-talkie.

“Clear at customs,” came Mindy’s voice.

“Um, all good here!” Laurie reported, situated at the entrance to the baggage claim area.

“N-Nothing on my end,” Tim reported. “And no way to tell who might be here to pick up Mrs. W for her transfer.”

“All right. From this point on, report on any sighting of Glen, Carrie, or Elaine,” Frank concluded. While the others were stationed at points that Mrs. Waterson would logically have to pass, he was mobile, able to go wherever he was needed. For now, he paced around the baggage area, pretending to look for misplaced luggage.

Slipping his walkie talkie away for the moment, Frank reached down to adjust his belt. Pity that the room Mindy had located hadn’t had any pants in his size. But he wasn’t going to quibble over something that helped him to blend into the background.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Frank whirled. “Could you tell me where the washrooms… oh, never mind, I see the sign,” the woman in the purple dress finished. She smiled at Frank. “Thanks anyway!”

“Ma’am,” Frank said, nodding as she sauntered off. He quickly made for an area with fewer people, deciding there probably was no such thing as a perfect disguise.

Ten minutes later Mindy made the first report. “W’s clearing customs,” she reported. A pause. “She’s through, and heading for a red haired man who went through right ahead of her. They seem to know each other.”

“Is he from her company? Or a Temporal agent?” Frank asked.

“How should I know?” Mindy said crossly. “I’ll follow in a moment. No sign of Carrie or Glen.”

The seconds seemed to stretch out longer than before, until Laurie’s frantic voice came onto the channel. “Ohmigod. That’s my DAD, guys! Carrie’s mom, she’s with my dad, and they’re coming this way, do I run and hide?!”

“What?” Frank nearly dropped the walkie talkie.

“He must have been on the plane! What if I’m somewhere else in the airport too? Or what if I’m not, but something happens here with my dad that screws up my future?!”

“You won’t, it’s all predestined,” Mindy broke in.

“Laurie, you’ve got this,” Tim added right after.

Frank was busy making for Laurie’s position. A couple paces away he was brought up short at the sight of Elaine Waterson. Looking eerily the same as she had during Frank’s first time trip, right down to her clothing. Which made sense. Oh no, she wouldn’t recognize him from that encounter, would she?

Realizing that Laurie had turned away, inspecting the wall, Frank turned too, so that he was only seeing Elaine out of the corner of his eye.

“Hello?” Mindy said over the system. “Update?”

Frank brought the walkie-talkie back up but Laurie’s voice came over the channel first. “I tried to look casual - they walked right by me! Saying something about town. Because, golly, it makes sense, Dad’s older brother lived there. That’s how we ended up - will end up - moving.”

Frank frowned. “Was your uncle friends with the Watersons?”

“Um… I dunno. Our families don’t mingle these days,” Laurie said.

“M-Maybe they m-met on the plane,” Tim suggested. “Sitting next to each other.”

“Focus!” Mindy said sharply. “Carrie. Glen. Anywhere?”

Damn it. Frank angled his way back towards Mrs. Waterson and Mr. Veniti, looking around for any trace of the other time travellers. “Not yet,” he reported. “Laurie?”

“I didn’t see either of them,” Laurie said.

“Nor me, and I’ve been scanning en route,” Mindy said. “Could Carrie have arrived earlier, outside the airplane from Ontario or something?”

“I hope not,” Frank sighed. He approached Carrie’s mother, trying to keep his back to her. She was still talking to Mr. Veniti, saying something along the lines of ‘good luck on your genetics project’.

“Nothing my end yet,” Tim offered.

“We’ll be headed your way soon, Tim,” Frank muttered into the walkie-talkie. “If we have to, we can regroup and…”

He almost missed her.

Something told Frank to look left; maybe it was intuition, or perhaps there had been a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. But when he looked, there she was. Carrie Waterson, dressed the same way she had been the night of the talent show. Gripping a photograph. She looked around, seemingly disoriented - and their gazes met. And her eyes widened, briefly flickering back to gold.

Then she turned and ran, shoving her way back through a few people.

“Frank? You trailed off,” Mindy pointed out.

“We’ve found Carrie,” he gasped. “I’m in pursuit.”

NEXT: The Plain Truth

ASIDE: It took six parts (weeks) but we’ve caught up to Carrie. Any speculations on why she can’t save her mother before the big reveal? There was some interesting talk in last week’s comments about genetics. And any desire to vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: Carrie went back in time to save her mother. Glen and Mindy said that wouldn’t work, and a group of Carrie’s friends have gone back to find her.

PART 86a: MIAMI IS NICE

The waves lapped quietly against the shoreline until shortly after midnight. At which point the waves found themselves lapping up against a set of car tires as well. Inside the car, the redhead who had her thumb on the dashboard slumped forwards unconscious. Another redhead, in the driver’s seat, winced as she looked through the windshield.

“Brilliant, Mindylenopia,” came Glen’s voice from the back. “Hey, let’s make the time machine into a car! Then you can ride in it! Except you can’t drive on water!”

“Shut up, Glinephanis,” sighed Mindy. She put the car into reverse and eased backwards towards a beachside boardwalk on the compacted sand.

Next to Glen, Frank turned to regard Tim, who had also fallen unconscious. It would probably be one of the last times Tim would succumb; this arrival in Miami marked his third time trip. Frank thought back to the first time the blond boy had regained consciousness after time travel, back in the 1950s.

Tim had seemed nervous, so Frank had brought him along as they had gone to track Beth, leaving Mindy alone with… well, Beth. To make their Carrie stand-in think that her prior weeks in the future had been a dream of sorts.

“Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk before leaving,” Frank apologized. He attempted to split his attention between Tim, and the tuning of Julie’s tracking device. It was hard to be sure which building on this block contained Beth. “It all happened so fast. Are you sure you’re okay with this, Tim? I mean, what did Chartreuse say to you?”

“She s-spoke to me about how Laurie would end up going to Miami,” Tim answered, trying not to fidget. “And she s-said that her friend might feel better having someone along who also had little actual time travel experience. Even if I’d only be g-guarding the car when you and Mindy go off to convince her.”

“Ahhh.” Frank frowned. “You’re not saying Chartreuse coerced you?”

“Oh no!” Tim assured. “I’d already s-said I wanted to help. That is, actually help for once, s-since keeping myself at a distance has only allowed me to b-be manipulated by Glen and Mindy. And here, I can keep them from chatting in s-secret in front of you! Finally do my part, s-since I do understand Temporal better than Luci. Um, no offence to her.”

“No offence assumed.” Frank started walking, eyeing his screen. “Though, Tim? You said some of that as if you were still trying to convince yourself."

“I…” From the corner of his eye, Frank saw Tim rub his forehead. “M-Maybe. It’s a lot to take in. But I care about Julie and Carrie and all Clarke’s other friends too, so… yeah. I’m committed. Really.” He swallowed. “One other thing though… there was a point when Chartreuse said my language skills would be needed in the future. Not the past. The future. Do you know what that meant?”

“Likely your personal future, no matter how the timeline wraps.”

Tim frowned. “Maybe. But it didn’t seem like that. She back-pedalled, said her tenses were all wrong.”

Frank eyed Tim uncertainly, then shrugged. “Well, the furthest we can go with the coins we have is back to our present - plus a day, to the 31st - so I’m not sure what Chartreuse meant by that.” He smacked the side of the tracking device. “Huh, that’s better. Okay, I’m going in. Tim, maybe you could look over that list of things we figured we’d need, for when we bring Beth back to our present year? We were thinking big, like the temporal gun, but maybe you’ll spot something more, I don’t know, linguistic.”

Tim nodded. “S-Sure. Uh, and actually Chartreuse s-said something about the gun too… ah, you don’t need a hand with Beth in there?”

Frank shook his head. “Not initially - Beth knows me, not you.” He looked up at the front of the apartment building. “I really hope this meeting goes well.”

Frank was pulled out of the memory as the rear wheels of the time vehicle sank in the sand, accompanied by the sound of spinning car tires. “Damn!” Mindy cursed. She tried to edge forward and back, to no avail. “Uh, so,” she concluded, turning to the back with a smile, “good thing we included a shovel and a couple planks of wood with the rest of our supplies, huh?”

It took them an hour to get the car back to a roadway. Laurie then suggested they drive a short distance away to park, because they were close to her old house, which was a little unsettling for her. And then Frank suggested they catch some sleep in shifts; for him, Tim and Mindy, it had been the equivalent of a whole day already.

By the time they got together for their breakfast (dinner?) in a park, it was nine o’clock in the morning. Laurie handed out the sandwiches, which had been packed in her present. Frank unwrapped his, finding his thoughts wandering yet again. They had made it, and the reality of the situation was fully dawning on him.

“We’re back on the date of my first ever time trip,” he remarked aloud. “I suppose I always knew I’d return here, given Carrie’s insistence… but thought it would be under different circumstances."

“Y-You were here before?” Tim asked.

“Oh, not in Miami,” Frank clarified. “In Ontario. Carrie tried to keep her mother from boarding her first plane, to come down here. Which reminds me, if we end up talking to Elaine? We’ll want to make sure she doesn’t think we’re part of a setup by her coworker… uh, oh damn, I forget the name. It was either Bob or Doug.”

“How can you be so sure we needed to travel to Miami then?” Laurie asked. “I mean, Miami is nice, but what’s to keep Carrie from picking up in Ontario, wherever she left off last time?”

“She has a better understanding of how to handle the timelines now,” Mindy asserted, swallowing her bite of sandwich. “Carrie’s own personal history is based on Elaine Waterson disappearing after being in Miami at this time. The closer she can get to that event, the easier it will be to leverage without causing headaches or something worse.” She frowned. “That said, I suppose Carrie could decide to arrive even later. On Elaine’s plane, after it leaves the airport…"

“No,” Glen offered. “Young Carrie is neither experienced enough, nor disciplined enough to be able to hit a moving target like that.”

“The Earth itself is a moving target,” Frank reminded him.

“Pedantic much?” Glen said, annoyed. “I mean moving relative to the Earth. Besides, Carrie can’t risk popping into existence right beside her mother, and scaring the hell out of everyone around. She’ll need space, a geographic margin of error.”

“So she’ll appear at the Miami airport,” Tim concluded. “Tonight.”

Frank nodded. “Seems likely. Elaine reaches Miami around 11pm. She’ll then switch to a smaller corporate plane to take her the rest of the way to Bermuda. That’s the window of time where Carrie’s liable to turn up, and thus why we brought along those relevant maps.”

“So, what do we do?” Laurie asked, wringing her hands. “I mean, Carrie’s never talked about specifics of where her mother was - has she?”

“No. I did speak with Mr. Waterson,” Frank admitted. “During those few weeks when the time machine was being reconstructed. But he couldn’t add much. It doesn’t seem like there was any layover to check out the plane, as Carrie had suggested on our first Ontario trip, but her father didn’t know if that was because a request was denied, or was never made. Elaine meets someone from her company after getting her bags, that’s all we have.” He looked to the two Temporals. “I don’t suppose you two can add anything about ‘the dangerous true circumstances’?”

Mindy pursed her lips. “Let’s just say we know Carrie won’t be changing anything here and leave it at that.”

“%They wouldn’t understand the ramifications even if we told them.%”

“Hey!” Tim protested, looking to Glen. “Frank, Julie, Chartreuse… they’ve all f-figured out a lot already!”

Glen sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, right, that one vaguely understands us. I hate you all.”

“Okay, well, when we’re done eating, let’s pick out key locations in the Miami airport where Carrie is liable to appear,” Frank concluded. “Then see how hard it is to gain access to those spots. Presumably we can do it by obtaining disguises or allies, which is part of the reason we aimed to give ourselves the whole day here, rather than only a few hours.”

Glen nodded. “So, we drive to the airport and then split up?”

Frank shook his head. “We shouldn’t split up. For one thing, we’re not all seasoned time travellers.”

Laurie looked briefly chagrined, until Tim reached over and touched her arm. The both of them shared a quick smile.

“For another, you don’t trust us Temporals,” Mindy added.

Frank frowned, then nodded. “True. But if you were me, would you?”

“No. That’s why I said it,” Mindy chuckled.

“Okay, except the five of us wandering around together? That’s going to stick out like a sore thumb,” Glen complained, rolling his eyes. “We need to be sneaky, we need to gain access to restricted areas, and we need to talk our way out of situations. Easy enough for me and Mindy, damned impossible with you Mundanes cramping our style.”

Frank rubbed his forehead. “Two groups then,” he decided. “With regular check-ins via our walkie-talkies. Me and Glen will be one group, the rest of you can be another.”

After all, Mindy had been nice enough to this point - Glen was the bigger problem. Right? Frank frowned. Unless his personal feelings about Glen’s motivations were clouding things?

He looked around at the others, who either nodded or shrugged in response to the assertion. Glen added a snort of derision, but also didn’t complain. Frank looked back at his sandwich. They were certainly an eclectic group. He hoped he wasn’t making a big mistake here.

Glen got away from him later that afternoon.

NEXT: M.I.A.  (Pun! Get it?)

ASIDE: I wrote an article yesterday for the “time2timetravel” website, where Paul talks about methodologies and does book reviews. Check it out: Models of Time and Fate explores various fictional models and their impact on free will. (Can you spot this story’s model?)

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: 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?

PREVIOUSLY: The group considered help from Glen towards getting Carrie back. Mindylenopia’s present day identity was revealed.

PART 82a: REMAKING HISTORY

The door to Linquist’s hidden laboratory was ajar, so Tim simply pushed it open. But the words he had been about to speak died on his lips at what he saw.

Papers had been taped up along one full wall, over the cabinets. The haphazard array was at least 20 sheets long and 4 sheets down; occasionally a section was missing, or another had been laid overtop. And the majority of the pages had been scribbled on with marker, seemingly random sequences of numbers and words. In front of it all was Chartreuse, on her hands and knees, perched in the middle of the central table, staring.

Tim turned his attention to Laurie, who was standing off to the side, her hands clasped behind her back. “W-What… what are you…"

“Chartreuse is trying to understand her girlfriend,” Laurie explained softly. “Or at least her girlfriend’s timeline theories.”

Tim blinked. “Her… girlfriend?”

“Oh, golly, I forgot you weren’t there when Chartreuse was outed by Glen… she and Carrie are an item.”

“Oh. Okay.” Tim looked from Laurie back to Chartreuse and the wall of pages. He saw it then - the numbers weren’t random, they were years, running chronologically, with months/days spliced in. Marked with events like ‘LaMilles Here’ and ‘Broken Swan’. “Why now?”

“The Mindy being with Linquist thing,” Laurie whispered. “Remember how Chartreuse said it couldn’t be? She feels like it’s actually not possible, given what Carrie told her about timelines. She’s tried to explain, and I don’t get it, but her attempts to do so seem to help clarify it in her own mind.”

The mention of Mindy reminded Tim of why he’d come down. “Well, we need you b-both upstairs now. Mindy, she’s here. And she’s Theresa! I left Julie alone with her, but we’ve gotta figure this out before meeting Glen!”

Laurie blinked. “What? Wait, Tim, you’re saying that you and Luci discovered Mindy’s identity?”

“N-Not even,” Tim sighed. “We didn’t get much of anywhere with Linquist’s notes, so Luci finally went to join the others at the library. I s-stopped at the cafe before coming here. The n-next thing I knew, Theresa was telling me she had the rest of the afternoon off and was coming to the mansion with me. It wasn’t until then that I… I realized…”

“Mindy’s Theresa? Theresa’s Mindy? Like, cafe Theresa? Ohmigod, are you SERIOUS?”

Tim looked over towards Chartreuse, taking a physical step back at the manic look she was now giving him. “Uhm, yes? Unless real Mindy pulled a Jedi trick on Theresa or something…"

“But that changes EVERYTHING!” With surprising grace, Chartreuse shifted her weight to her hands, kicking her feet around to jump off the front of the table. She grabbed a marker, pulling the cap off with her mouth as she ran to the right, scribbling ‘Theresa?’ underneath the words ’She’s GONE’.

Chartreuse then ran the length of the room, past word clusters reading ‘Glen Here’, ‘Session #1’, ‘Shady Jail’, ‘Julie Trip’, ’Luci DNA’, ‘Trip #1’, ‘Algonq Park’… and even more items within that, which Tim saw more as a jumble. When Chartreuse reached the end, denoted ‘Mindy Arrival??’, the mystic also scribbled ‘Theresa?’.

Chartreuse spat the marker cap out of her mouth. “Ohh, three CAN’T survive that. Can it? It, like, totally can’t. Can it?”

Tim turned his attention back to Laurie. “So, um, J-Julie needs us back upstairs.”

Laurie nodded. “Chartreuse, we need to go.”

Chartreuse shook her head, not even turning. “No no. I gotta see if that piece can fit in, Laurie. I gotta. I’ll, you know, be up once I’m sure. Don’t leave without me.” She charged over to the other side of the room again, now writing ‘Cafe Fire’ above and between ‘Glen Here’ and what Tim now realized was ‘Dance <3’.

Laurie looked at Tim uncertainly, as if wondering if that was okay. Or maybe wondering whether Chartreuse would be okay. Off his shrug, Laurie squared her shoulders and nodded. “Okay Tim, let’s go up and help Julie.”

“Hey, I just met you… this is crazy… here’s my number…"

“Julie, honestly, you don’t have to bury your thoughts under pop music,” Mindy/Theresa assured, a bemused smile on her face. “I’m not a mind reader. Besides, you know me, I’ve been working in that cafe since before you even moved to town.”

“No way,” Julie shot back. “You already admitted to nudging me away from seeing the truth. I don’t know you at all any more. Now stop talking.”

Mindy shrugged and leaned back against the wall in the mansion entranceway, hooking her thumbs into the belt loops of her pants. While still mumbling the song lyrics, Julie resumed her considerations of whether they needed Glen here ASAP. He’d been her first thought, upon the revelation, but now? Well, Mindy was acting a LOT less hostile than anticipated. So, if Mindy was willing to help them whereas Glen wasn’t… but what if that was her angle? Glen had also seemed nice enough, initially.

“This - is - cray - zee -“ Julie emphasized in the refrain. “So - call - me -“

Her phone rang. She jumped, and looked down to see that it was Clarke. Clarke. She’d even changed her phone to not use ‘Phil’. What had she been thinking? Would they ever be together again?

Tim and Laurie walked out of the sitting room then, allowing Julie to relax a bit. In part because she remembered now what Tim had said - he and Mindy had come right from the cafe. No one else knew yet. Pointing to the former waitress and giving the arrivals a curt, “I’ll be back, don’t let her talk to you,” Julie ran down the hall, accepting the call after the fourth ring.

“Clarke?”

“Glen said the location will be Willowdale Park. Can you get everyone else there in twenty minutes?”

“Ohhh, not really, no.”

She could practically hear the frown in his voice. “Why not? If we don’t do this, we may never get Glen to hear us out again.”

“Yeah. Thing is, we’re onto something here… it won’t wait. Did you find enough data to convince Glen without us?”

“I… we hope so. Lee helped us find this article that–"

“Okay, great.” She was realizing there was a way to maximize their options. “We’re going to need either Frank or Luci back here, they’re the best at temporal mechanics. Actually, make it Frank, you might need the Linquist angle and we’ve already got Tim with us.”

“Julie, what is going ON?”

“I don’t quite know. I only know that you can’t know yet. Oh, I’ll send you Corry in exchange for Frank, how about that? Between him and Lee, you should be able to handle Glen. Okay?”

Clarke didn’t reply. Which is when Julie realized how it must look to him.

“Oh no. Clarke, no… Phil, please, no, I’m not trying to shut you out again. It’s only, if I tell you, then Glen might…" The same old excuse. She clutched her phone, desperation returning. “That is, it’s not about the time machine, not completely, but if I say, then Glen will see it in your face, meanwhile out of all of us Glen might only listen to you, so if we end up needing him, taking you away now means we’ll have blown it there. Clarke, Phil, it’s fine, I’ll have people here with me, but if you think this means we can never be a thing again, please tell me and I’ll try to think of another–"

“Julie? Stop,” Clarke interrupted. “You sound like Laurie on a bad day.”

Julie swallowed. “Sorry.”

“You’ll tell me all about this afterwards?”

“For sure.”

“Until then, the plan is for Jeeves to get Corry to the park, where he’ll pick up Frank?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then. We’ll tell Glen the rest of you are tracking a lead. Just assure me that this isn’t old habits…?”

Julie exhaled. “God no. I actually cannot think of how this situation could be any more screwed up than it already is.”

“Talk to you later then. About everything.”

“For sure,” Julie repeated.

Clarke hung up, and Julie leaned back against the wall. Only to hear a car door slam. She raced back through the hall and out the front door, needing to get Jeeves and Corry back in the car before they could get inside and see Mindy.

“Mindy? Theresa is Mindy?” Frank questioned.

“Keep your voice down.” Julie peered up the stairway, but it seemed like Jeeves was already out of earshot. “Yes, Theresa is Mindy and she’s in the living room with Tim and Laurie; Chartreuse is still down in the lab doing who knows what. We need you to assess whether what Mindy tells us makes ANY temporal sense, to know whether she’s sincere. If so, maybe we won’t need Glen, but we CANNOT let her pull the rug out from under us."

“Theresa? The red haired waitress from the cafe?”

Julie snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Frank, please, focus. She has mental abilities, like Glen. You need to approach this situation with confidence, don’t give her a foothold.”

“Er, right…” His posture straightened. “Let’s do this.”

Giving him a hesitant look, Julie nodded, and the both of them went into the living room. Mindy was sitting quietly on the couch, with Tim and Laurie in nearby chairs. The redhead looked at them with that hint of amusement in her expression, but continued to say nothing.

“So you’ve grown your hair long since the first time,” Frank observed, a mite redundantly. He folded his arms. “Theresa, just how old are you?”

Julie was unable to suppress an eye roll as Mindy’s smile widened. “Starting with the more personal questions?” she remarked.

“Err…"

“I’m about 32? Though I look younger,” Mindy answered. “We Temporals don’t quite age like you. Actually, I’m now the oldest Temporal ever.”

“And you’ve spent how much of that time in our past?”

“At least 12 years since the temporal banishment… and here’s a key thing I’m realizing you don’t know. Said banishment? It wipes the memory of the affected person. After all, it wouldn’t be good to have someone from the future using their knowledge in the past, right?”

Laurie gasped. “So… so when you got blasted back…"

“All gone,” Mindy sighed, her smile disappearing as she snapped her fingers in the air. “That is, beyond the most mundane things like a name, how to dress myself, and so forth. So I can’t give firm dates. In fact, I was homeless, I stayed at the shelter in town, tried to find work. Kept screwing up my languages, people thought I didn’t know proper English. Time lost it’s meaning for me.” She tapped at her head. “Underneath it though? Still a technical genius. Which was finally realized by one man in particular.”

“Linquist,” Tim concluded.

Mindy pointed at him. “Bingo. Last week, Tim, you asked me if I’d ever found myself not knowing who to trust? That was me every day, back when I had no memory. Linquist was the man who helped me through it. Saw something in me, that day outside the computer store when I was muttering about computer programming. Which is when things finally started going right for me - and wrong for him.”

“Why? What did you do to him?” Julie demanded.

“I… opened up a world of possibilities that he wasn’t quite ready for. If my memory had been intact, I never would have done it. But he’s the one who helped me put those memories back together!” Mindy shook her head. “It was as I finally began to remember who I was, and realize what I was doing, that I tried to minimize my impact on your timeline. Pull away from Linquist. Find myself my own place, adopt the name Theresa, and get some less conspicuous employment. Something to keep me in the background, while still letting me see everything that was going on.”

“As a waitress,” Frank said.

Mindy shrugged. “Worked out pretty well, all things considered.”

“Yes, it let you manipulate us very nicely,” Julie remarked.

Mindy shook her head. “Julie, I have made no alterations to you or your friends beyond what was necessary to maintain my hidden identity. Guiding you away from making any connections, like that time Phil Clarke seemed to recognize my voice the day after my younger self was here.”

Julie glared. “What about having us make you a time machine?”

Mindy’s partial smile returned. “Ah, right. That. Well, I was originally sent back here on a mission, right? Those memories came back along with everything else.”

They couldn’t trust her. Could they? Julie glanced at her watch, noticing that it was the time when the others would be meeting with Glen. She wondered whether they were having any better luck.

NEXT: After Effects

ASIDE: Happy Valentine’s Day… a day with Clarke and Julie still having romance issues… well, this is post #200 for the blog, so that’s some good news?

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: Julie is secretly rebuilding the time machine. She hoped Tim would pick up a microchip, to keep it away from Glen.

PART 77a: DOUBLE BLIND

“You look like someone with a problem.”

Tim looked up to see Theresa, the redheaded waitress for the cafe, next to his booth. “You c-could say that,” he said glumly.

He saw Theresa glance quickly around the area; there weren’t very many customers at the moment, which apparently convinced her to slide quickly into the seat across from him. “Seems like I’ve got a second. Want to talk about it with someone impartial? Some of your friends, Clarke in particular, have found that such conversations help.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Tim’s lips. “Better I don’t. It’s not possible to s-stay impartial on THIS subject. I know from experience.”

Theresa chuckled. “Sounds like you’re trying to assimilate something big all at once. Maybe you can break it down into more manageable portions?”

Tim fiddled absently with the straw in his milkshake for a moment, before glancing at his watch. It had been less than an hour since he’d left Julie’s; just over three hours remained before he would be making the pickup for her. As agreed.

‘Clarke wants me to help Julie,’ he thought to himself once again. ‘He’s always saying how pleased he is that I’m still able to look out for Julie on his behalf. I only hope I’m not playing into her delusions. Or setting myself up for some retaliatory action by Glen.’

The thought brought to mind an additional problem. Clarke would be expecting a call from him soon… as would Chartreuse. He couldn’t tell them the truth, not yet, not tonight. Julie had suggested deflecting, claiming to be tired, and leaving any discussions for tomorrow. But saying that was a half truth at best, and the more he thought about it, the more picking up this package all by himself made Tim uneasy.

What if Julie really had come unhinged, and had concocted this crazy plot in order to get rid of him, thereby preventing him from getting her the help she needed? Or what if she was telling the truth, except Glen knew exactly what was going on, came after him, and then completely altered his memory of events?

“H-Have you ever suddenly found yourself not knowing who to trust?” Tim finally asked of the redhead.

Theresa cocked her head to the side. “Actually…. yeah. Big time.”

Tim focused his gaze on her. “When? What did you do?”

The waitress smiled once more. “Instead of boring you with a long, complicated story, how about I just give you a few words of advice…”

Ten minutes later, Tim headed out of the cafe, a plan forming in his mind.

He was at the train station with only two minutes to spare before the train pulled in. Their small station wasn’t a major hub, it was a stop by request only. Fortunately, Julie’s description of the man with the package had been accurate, and Tim had him pegged almost immediately after he poked his head out of the train.

The guy gave him a skeptical look as he approached. “M-M-Mr. Piquaud?” Tim asked. He cleared his throat to try and remove the stutter. What was it Luci had told him on occasion which helped with that? Confidence. It made his talking more like singing. “I’m here for the item.”

“Okay, good. I was told a blonde named Tim might be the one to hand off to. Got some ID to prove that’s you?”

Tim fished quickly in his wallet for his health card. Piquaud glanced at it, nodded, then pulled a small square box from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Tim, then turned around to presumably resume his seat on the train. Tim swallowed. “That’s… it?”

“I’m not being paid to stick around,” Piquaud retorted. “You’ve got the electronics, bring ‘em to LaMille. Oh, tell her next time she makes a request of the company, none of this cloak and dagger routine, okay? Extra pay or not, it’s just stupid. Why would anyone even WANT to intercept a normal FedEx shipment of a single microchip?”

Tim puzzled over how he could answer that, but it seemed like he wouldn’t have to - the man had already boarded. Either way, it didn’t really matter… so far everything was happening just as Julie had said it would. It remained to see whether her concerns were legitimate.

As the train pulled out, Tim slipped the box into his jacket pocket and headed back for the front of the station. Which was where he spotted a familiar person waiting for him.

“Clarke!” Tim called out, hurrying to meet up with his friend.

The taller boy smiled back at Tim. “Hey there… you know, your phone call was kind of cryptic. Are you going to tell me yet what it is Julie has you doing?”

Tim paused as he got within arms reach of Clarke, glancing around for anyone who might be observing them. “N-Not yet,” he said after a moment. “Just thought it might be best to have you around as we head back to the mansion.”

Clarke nodded. “Alright. Though I can’t think Julie will be pleased to see me.”

“She might be once I tell her you helped me,” Tim assured. He glanced around the area once more, which prompted Clarke to do the same.

“Expecting someone else?” Clarke wondered. “Or just having a paranoia attack?”

“M-Maybe a bit of both,” Tim admitted. “Sorry. Let’s just go.”

“Sure,” Clarke said with a shrug. “Though if you’re real creeped out, I could carry the package for you.”

Tim froze in his tracks. “Package?”

Clarke nodded. “Yeah, the… hey, Tim, you okay?” He reached out for the other boy’s shoulder, but Tim sidestepped him.

“I never mentioned any package on the phone.” The parcel wasn’t that large either, so Clarke shouldn’t have noticed it in his pocket.

Tim’s friend frowned. “Stands to reason you have one though, right? I mean, why else would you be here?”

“Might have been to talk with someone. Or to send something off on the train. Or to look something up. Why do you think I have a package?”

“You… you just have to have one… or else… why would I know about it?”

The two blondes stared at each other quietly for a moment. Then the side of Clarke’s mouth twitched, and he extended his hand. “Give me the chip, Tim. Destroying it is the only way we can help Julie."

“That’s what Glen wants you to think,” Tim said, regarding Clarke’s outstretched palm with more than a bit of apprehension.

“Is it? Why would he lie about that?"

“Because he doesn’t really care about what Julie wants. Only stopping what she’s doing,” Tim shot back. He exhaled in relief as he saw the other person running towards them. “Now please, Clarke… if you really trust me, don’t do this. Let me get to Julie’s safely.” He tried to move around the taller boy, but Clarke blocked him.

“I… I can’t let you go,” Clarke said, a pained look crossing his face as he curled and uncurled his fingers. “Not until…” It was like he was undergoing some sort of massive inner conflict. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand why…"

“I do,” Tim whispered. He turned. “Stall Clarke,” he requested of the new arrival.

“Huh?” Chartreuse said, trying to catch her breath. “Look, sorry I’m, like, a bit late, but…”

“Keep Clarke here,” Tim reiterated, moving so that the pink haired girl was between Clarke and himself before heading away as quickly as he could. “Please, Chartreuse - I’ll explain later!”

“Eh? Uhm, ‘k,” Chartreuse said, blinking. As Clarke attempted to pursue, she threw himself onto his arm, preventing him from leaving. “So, wait, hey, do you know anything about, like, the big Julie-Glen feud??”

“I…” Clarke shook his head. As stood there in confusion, Tim hurried out of sight.

Trust yourself. That’s what Theresa had said. Put trust in your family and your friends, yes, but above all, you needed to have trust in yourself in order to accomplish something.

As Tim continued on towards the LaMille mansion, he reflected again upon those words, and how his faith in Clarke had been counterbalanced by giving the same information to Chartreuse. Allowing him to keep his promise of a call to both of them… albeit, leaving him with only himself to trust once more. He would have preferred bringing one of them along, as backup.

Oh well. He looked again at the small package before replacing it inside his pocket. It would take a while for him to walk the rest of the way to the LaMille mansion, but Julie had been wary of trusting a taxi, or even having Jeeves drive him. And, conspiracy crazy or not, it was starting to look as if at least some of her concerns had been valid. Tim took a deep breath. For a moment, he thought he saw someone following him, but when he turned around there was no one there.

For the next several blocks, Tim half expected to be accosted at any moment, but the few people he saw strolling around seemed more intent on enjoying the evening than taking notice of him. At least, that was the case until he reached the closest bridge leading over the ravine that cut through town.

“Tim!” Luci said in surprise. “What are you doing here at this hour?”

Tim smiled, feeling relieved at the familiar company. “I c-could ask the same of you,” he pointed out.

Luci glanced to the left and right, then took a couple steps closer to him. “Honestly?” she muttered. “I got this weirdo call from Chartreuse less than ten minutes ago, saying something about you walking to Julie’s from the train station.” She shrugged. “I was nearby, thought I’d see if she was being serious. Guess so - is this related to what we all talked about the other day?”

“Y-Yeah… kinda…” Tim admitted. He was starting to feel conflicted. There was really no reason to doubt Luci’s story, but if Glen WAS trying to come after him, the two best people to use would be Clarke… and Luci. The ones he talked with on a near daily basis. Could Glen have done something to not merely Clarke, but both of them?

‘Julie’s paranoia is rubbing off,’ he chided himself. ‘Careful, or you’ll turn into a recluse like her.’

“Okay,” Luci was saying, dropping into step next to him. “I’ll bite. Did Julie lock Glen up in a trunk and ship him out on the train?”

Tim shook his head. “Actually, it’s about this chip,” he said, pulling the parcel from his pocket again. “We have to make sure it–”

He never got any further.

As soon as Luci’s eyes alighted on the parcel, her hand flashed out, tore it from Tim’s grip, and she threw it off the bridge.

NEXT: Timeline Five?

ASIDE: Got a 2016 toonie in my change this past weekend. Just a bit too late!

PREVIOUSLY: Chartreuse sensed trouble between Julie and Glen. Tim said he would ask Julie about it.

PART 76b: NEW RECRUIT

Their conversation had gone surprisingly well to this point, Tim reflected. Too well, in a sense. “Y-Y-You’re being awful calm about this, Julie,” Tim murmured.

The brunette turned from her scrutiny of the swords hanging on the wall of the sitting room. “Yes, well, some other things are on my mind too,” she admitted. “I’ve heard every word though. Chartreuse getting impressions, so-called problems with Glen, whether it relates to time travel.” She regarded him silently for a moment. “Do you think there’s any truth to it? That is, you personally?”

Tim shifted uncomfortably. “I know that Clarke thinks Glen and his mind abilities is part of the reason you initially broke up. B-But then, I haven’t seen any evidence of problems between you two. Of course, you hardly speak to anyone n-now.”

A ghost of a smile flickered across Julie’s face. “Except to you.”

“Uh… yeah. I guess.”

Julie crossed her arms. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for that, Tim. At first I didn’t think it would be so bad, returning to my old reclusive ways. But the first time through, in Grade Nine, I still had people to talk to. Carrie and Clarke, from day to day. This time… this time, I couldn’t risk that.”

She turned away from him. “And yet, he found out. Damn it, I’m still not sure how.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, Tim, no worries with us, I doubt it was you. Whether Glen caught me in a moment of weakness, or had Clarke’s place bugged that time I spoke with his sister, or… something else. Point is, he knows, and more to the point, his best chance of stopping me is tonight.”

Tim blinked twice, trying to keep himself from fidgeting. “S-S-S-Stopping you…?”

Julie tucked some hair behind her ear. “Yes. Stopping me from rebuilding the time machine.”

“Chartreuse was RIGHT?!” Tim gasped.

Julie smiled, genuinely this time, turning back towards him. “Oh, yes. I honestly have been funding a sort of top secret research project. To construct a single microchip. Because while the majority of the time travel device was salvageable from Carrie’s trash, there is one particular component that has required weeks to recreate. I couldn’t even do it in town, it’s being sent in by professionals thanks to some plans I gave them. And given the friction in my family, I don’t think I’ll have the pull to get the specialists to do that again.” She exhaled. “So. If Glen gets his hands on this chip? It’s game over. That must be what Chartreuse sensed.”

Tim shook his head. “Now you’re j-just making fun of me,” he protested. “How could anyone in this era, l-let alone you, reassemble a future device l-like that?”

“Funny thing there,” Julie said idly. “Seems our present state of technology isn’t that far off from making these things. Understanding them, yes, but not physically making them. So, thanks mainly to Frank’s plans, which had been stored down in Linquist’s lab, I was able to reverse engineer the necessary component. Granted, I’m not a hundred percent sure it will all work, and there is NO way I’ll be able to fit all the reconstructed circuits back into that black box…”

She shook her head. “But that’s a problem for next week. First things first, I need that chip. And Carrie - a future Carrie, at any rate - wants me to have it too. Once it’s here, everything else should fall into place.”

“B-But… uh, if Glen doesn’t want you to have it… what will keep him from using his Jedi-like power to take it away from you?”

Julie set her jaw. “This mansion is a very secure place. Jeeves doesn’t know what I’m doing, or where I’m keeping things. And I know a few things about Glen’s mind power. Like with Shady, it works best one on one, and against the weak willed, and I’m always careful not to show weakness around him. I’ve also taken to muttering a particularly annoying pop song if we end up alone together, which I’ve discovered makes it hard for him to get a foothold. Or even want to be around me. No, once the chip is here, it will be safe, and I will have won.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And I’m sorry, Tim. Now that I’ve told you the truth… I’m going to have to kill you.” She interlaced her fingers and cracked her knuckles.

Tim’s eyes went wide, watching Julie as her eyes flicked over to the swords on the wall and back at him. It had happened. He’d pushed her, and she’d actually snapped! He had no hope of running away! How could he possibly defend himself?? He opened his mouth, his throat dry, wondering if screaming would even do any good…

Only to see the brunette collapse down to her knees in a fit of giggles. Which, in it’s own way, was almost more disturbing than the threat. In the weeks Tim had been coming here, he’d never seen such an outpouring of emotion from Julie. Certainly not laughter.

A tear started running down Julie’s cheek as she unsuccessfully clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle her uncontrolled case of the giggles. It took several long seconds of Julie fighting for breath before she could speak again.

“I’m sorry! Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped out, biting down on her lip. “But I’ve been holding it all in for SO long, I simply couldn’t resist saying that at the end, and your expression became so damn SERIOUS, I can’t…” Julie took in another long breath, wiping off her cheek. “Gods, I haven’t been this amused since…”

And her expression immediately became more reserved. She cleared her throat. “Right. Sorry.” She pushed herself back up onto her feet. “In fact, the real reason I’ve told you everything is… Tim, I need your help."

“M-My help.” He was no longer sure how much of Julie’s ranting he could believe.

“That’s right. As I said, the chip couldn’t be made locally, it’s being brought in. Tonight. If you’re willing, I need you to meet a particular guy at the train station, get that chip, and bring it back to the mansion for me. Okay?”

Tim swallowed hard, working up the nerve for what he had to say next. “Y-You’re nuts.”

Julie blinked. “You think?”

Tim nodded wordlessly.

Julie clapped her hands. “Good on you for speaking your mind! Alas, I’m all too sane. More to the point, I think it’s finally time to speak with you about the day you crept down into Linquist’s lab, while Glen had me busy on the phone.”

Tim flinched. “What? I’ve n-n-never…"

“Of course, you don’t remember it. His mental powers seem to be able to block, perhaps even erase memories that people don’t want. And you didn’t want to remember betraying me, and by extension, Clarke.”

Tim eyed her, until Julie seemed to sense that more explanation was required. Raking her hands back through her hair, she sat down in a nearby chair. “Okay. It was during our very second meeting here. As soon as you were left alone, you went down to have a look in Linquist’s lab. I know this, because you tripped a fine string I was keeping across the entranceway. I also half suspected that’s why Glen had called me in the first place, so I let it happen. It was fine, my keeping anything vital down there would have been way too obvious, so you couldn’t have reported anything useful. Meanwhile, it gave me a chance to observe his abilities in action.”

“J-Julie, I swear, I n-never…”

“Then why are you glancing towards the china cabinet? I’ve never mentioned that the entranceway to the lab was behind it.”

Tim felt a chill run down his spine. “L-Luci. She must have mentioned it.”

“Did she? I mean, I suppose it’s possible, but DID she?”

“I… I don’t know,” Tim realized, with mounting horror.

Julie leaned forwards slightly. “Now, part of me wants to use that act of espionage then, to insist that you owe me now. But despite the corner that I’m being backed into, this really does need to be voluntary on your part. Otherwise I’m stooping to his level.”

“W-W-Why can’t you…"

“Go myself? Glen has figured out that today’s the delivery day, and so he’ll be keeping an eye on me all evening. All he’ll need is a moment of weakness on my part to grab the chip, and destroy it - and since I’ll be busy throwing up my mental guards, I’ll be physically vulnerable to exactly that.”

She smiled again. “But you? This is a normal visit on your part, it won’t arouse suspicion. And he won’t expect me to take you into my confidence, not after showing me how he can get to you. So, while I believe I have him convinced that I’ll be meeting with someone coming into town by car - you can be the real recipient. Down at the train station. Sound like a plan? Or should I settle for a Plan C, which is much less of a guarantee, but won’t involve you at all?”

Tim swallowed. “You really don’t think Glen will target me?”

Julie’s smile faltered. “I didn’t say that. He might. In fact, he could have anticipated my recruiting you. But these meetings between us? It wasn’t all about passing information to Clarke. I know you better now. I have faith in your ability to run under the radar. Only thing is, I’ll need your answer before you leave this house today. Since we can’t talk after you do.” She paused. “So, will you help me get that chip?”

Tim found he could only stare, his mind reeling with the implications of what had apparently been going on right under his nose, yet without his knowledge. Given that, did he really want to play a larger role in the midst of all this insanity?

NEXT: Double Blind. Want to vote for T&T?

PREVIOUSLY: Julie cut herself off from everyone except Tim, as she’s secretly rebuilding the time machine. Luci and Tim have been translating Linquist’s old logbook.

PART 76a: BAD SIGNS

“So. You know what I’m doing.”

“You’ve suspected as much for quite some time now,” came Glen’s easy reply. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

Julie clenched her fists. “I’m not going to let you win.”

Glen shook his head before smiling back. “Look, Julie… this isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about what has to be. A time machine in this era makes the timelines too unstable. You’re on borrowed time as it is. Trust me, Julie, if you persist, you will be stopped.”

“It’s been over a month,” the brunette countered. “We’re nearly into December, and you haven’t managed to stop me yet. There are forces in the future working in my favour. Why not simply concede defeat? Then we can both get back to leading a normal life.”

Glen shoved his hands into his pockets, shaking his head. “You know I won’t do that. So unless you have anything sensible to say, I guess we had nothing to discuss here after all.”

The two of them continued to stare at each other for a moment, before Julie finally clenched her jaw, spun on her heel, and left Willowdale park.

“W-What’s on your mind, Luci?” Tim wondered.

The young girl jumped, as if realizing she’d been staring off into space. “Oh, uh… nothing, nothing. You were saying something about the dictionary we’re making?”

Tim set his pencil aside. “That was f-five minutes ago. I’d moved back into the passages themselves. Luci, are you… okay?”

Luci gestured dismissively, then seemingly changed her mind and pursed her lips together. “Mostly.”

Tim leaned his elbow against the desk. “What’s the r-rest of it about? Frank again?”

She grimaced. “Okay, I’m either becoming very transparent, or very single minded.”

Tim smiled. “You two were g-going out for over half a year. It’s only natural that he’s still on your mind when this time travel comes up.”

Luci shook her head, her small ponytails whipping back and forth. “It isn’t memories this time, it’s…” She sighed. “Honestly? I had issues. Emotional ones. And I’ve been chatting with the school counsellor, so I think I’m getting sorted out. Which is fine for me, but what about him? I made him fall in love with me, dated him as long as it suited me, then dropped him like yesterday’s news! How terrible of a person does that make me?! It’s even worse than how Carrie used to be, at least she didn’t spend months playing with the emotions of the guys she one-off dated!”

Tim stared. “You… you don’t really believe all of what you’re saying do you?”

“Kinda, sorta, almost,” Luci mumbled.

“I’m p-pretty sure you can’t MAKE someone fall in love with you. And that you didn’t have an end in mind while g-going out. Besides, couples g-get together and split apart all the time - and it’s not l-like you took private pictures of Frank and threw them on the internet, or spread rumours about him n-not measuring up or something.”

She looked horrified. “Tim, I would NEVER–”

“There, see? N-Not so terrible of a person. Human, like all of us.”

Luci slumped. “Maybe. But it’s still awkward somehow, when I see him. So I was thinking - should I tell Frank we’re a couple again? I mean, just because I’m not feeling it NOW doesn’t mean I WON’T, not if we… do couplish things again. Maybe.”

“D-Do you really believe that would be best?”

“I… no. No, I guess not.” She rested her head in her hands. “Tim, don’t ever fall in love, it’s a MESS.”

He chuckled. “Seems unlikely. The only girls I spend any amount of time with are Julie, who still likes Clarke, and you.” Luci turned, and lifted an eyebrow. “O-Oh, I don’t mean to imply anything! Like, you’re very loveable, even if I don’t love you! Or don’t love you yet, which, damn it, I’m making things even more awkward…"

She smiled and reached out to pat him on the leg. “Right, let’s drop it then, okay Tim? I do thank you for being a better sounding board than my cat. Now how about we return to whatever you were saying about the passages?”

Tim let out a breath. “R-Right.” Thank goodness. He pointed to the pages of information spread out on the desk. “Look at this part, which refers to Linquist’s initial plan to create that %gun of temporal freezing%."

“Meaning gun of temporal freezing,” Luci translated, off of his attempted pronunciation of the actual phrase. “What of it?”

“He seems to credit the idea to someone else."

Luci’s eyebrows shot up. “Let me see that,” she requested, pulling their notes a bit closer.

Tim pushed back to let her scan through, though he had no doubt that he was correct. Ever since the two of them had stopped focusing on the single portion of the book that referenced the inner workings of the gun - the selfsame weapon that had been used to return Carrie to normal after the so-called “Mindy affair” - they had been able to make better progress.

That was to say, progress with Linquist’s language, despite how it seemed to be murder on the tenses. Construction of the gun itself was still something of a mystery. They still knew little beyond how to charge the weapon up.

Luci turned back to him, even as Tim heard the doorbell of his house ring. “You’re right," she agreed. “I think he’s referring to that same person we saw him mention elsewhere." She frowned, picking up another set of notes. “But it’s still not clear as to whether this other person was an associate of his, a relative, or someone he saw as a specimen.”

Luci flopped back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “Damn! If only we could get our hands on more than the one single book…”

Tim reached out to touch Luci’s shoulder reassuringly, thought better of it, then went ahead and did it anyway. “It’s alright,” he murmured. “It’s not like we’re under a deadline.”

“Um,” came the distracted reply. “Maybe not, but when things start to happen around here? They tend to happen real fast. And unfortunately, we have no sure fire way of predicting that future.”

“Tim!” Mrs. Whitby called out from downstairs. “Friend to see you by the name of Chartreuse!”

Tim exchanged a glance of surprise with Luci. She frowned. “I said no sure fire way,” she clarified to no one in particular.

“…so, like, from that impression I got off of Julie regarding Glen, it’s obvious that their situation is going to explode,” Chartreuse said. “We’ll have to, you know, work together to make sure it won’t cause–”

“Chartreuse,” Luci interrupted. “Why are you telling us this?”

The pink haired girl eyed her. “Technically, I’m telling Tim this,” she pointed out. “But, you know, it’s great that you’re here too! It’s almost like fate in a way… the original group, the 2 DEGS, back together, one year later! A reunion tour!” She beamed.

Luci sighed. “Setting that aside, I meant why are you telling us this, and not Carrie? She still talks to you, so if the sensations you got from Julie related to a conflict with Glen, isn’t she the more logical choice?”

Chartreuse hesitated. “Well, there’s also the fact that I, like, tailed Julie after school. Which led to me, you know, eavesdropping on a conversation she had with Glen in the park. Which, while I didn’t catch everything, did have something to do with, of all things, the time machine.”

Luci sat up straighter.

“W-Wait,” Tim protested. “I thought that the machine had been destroyed. By Carrie. Over a month ago.”

“Yeah. Which is why I’m, you know, talking to you first,” Chartreuse stated. “All I can think is that Julie’s using her cash to fund some sort of top secret research project to build a new one, which Glen is now countering using an army of mind controlled people. I can’t bother Carrie with that, not without being sure! The poor girl has enough on her mind, what with juggling three different timelines.”

Luci blinked. “I’m going to pretend that made sense, and move on to asking why you think me and Tim would be able to offer anything beyond more wild speculations.”

Chartreuse pointed. “Tim spends time with Julie.”

Tim jumped. “O-Only because I’m close to Clarke!”

“But you’re also Glen close,” Chartreuse insisted. “Because of, you know, being in Corry’s band. Julie and Glen, they must have been asking about each other last week! This situation feels too big, I can’t believe it came out of nowhere.”

Tim shook his head. “They said n-nothing! Or at least, n-neither of them have said anything around me."

Chartreuse reached out to seize his hand. “Nono, seriously Tim, think harder about this! It could be, you know, critical!”

“Chartreuse,” Luci broke in, “even assuming we buy into this, if Tim says they’re not talking about each other, I’m sure he’s right. They’re both pretty cagey. Besides, are you sure you heard time machine and not, I don’t know, juice machine?”

The teen mystic cocked her head to the side, releasing Tim. “Luci, why would Julie meet with Glen in secret to, like, talk about a juice machine?"

Luci shrugged. “The… the school talent show is coming up in a week’s time. Maybe they’re putting together an act, only it’s not going so hot.” Okay, that sounded lame, even to her.

“Oh, w-we’re playing at that show,” Tim offered up, apparently seizing the change of subject. “Corry’s band I mean.”

Chartreuse rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m 90 percent sure it was time machine,” she countered. “But even if it wasn’t, strong impressions like the one I got from Julie have always, like, come true in some fashion! A fashion of the not good type! You totally have to grant me that much.”

Luci sighed. “Fine, point granted. Tim, ignoring what they’ve been actually saying, have you maybe SEEN anything weird?”

“No! Why would I even be looking for anything??”

“You’ll need to start now,” Chartreuse decided. “Maybe even fish for extra information from Julie if, you know, you can.”

“About what?? Glen? Some mystery time machine? Why would she tell me anything at all?” the blonde boy protested.

“Because!” Chartreuse began, only to allow her posture to slump slightly. “I dunno. You just seem like the best lead we’ve got. You’re SURE you haven’t, like, seen or heard ANYTHING?”

Tim shook his head, then sighed at Chartreuse’s crestfallen expression. “H-How about this though,” he suggested. “It’s almost the weekend. I’ll be meeting again with Julie. I’ll tell her you’re worried, while keeping an eye out for anything weird.”

Chartreuse grimaced. “Tip our hand? I don’t think Julie would be thrilled to know I was spying on her, you know?”

“I w-won’t mention that part,” Tim assured. “I’ll only mention your impression, and see if I can figure out w-why she’s at odds with Glen.”

“But what if she clams up?” Chartreuse objected. She began to pace. “Still, you’re right, aside from trying to sic Corry on her, I’m not sure where else to go with this. Alright, try the talking thing. Call me as soon as you get home that day to, you know, update me.”

“What about Carrie?” Luci wondered. “Do we bring her into this?”

Chartreuse began to look pained. “The way Glen sticks by her side these days? No. As much for Julie’s own safety, I think we shouldn’t approach Carrie until the point where we have some concrete proof regarding… whatever this is.”

NEXT: New Recruit

PREVIOUSLY: Julie told Clarke’s sister that she had a way to not cut herself off completely. Chartreuse struggled with how to admit her feelings to Carrie.

PART 75b: MORE QUESTIONING

Clarke followed Tim upstairs to his bedroom. “You know, we could simply talk down in the living room,” he suggested.

Tim shook his head. “All discussions with L-Luci about L-Linquist’s l-language have been in my room. M-Might as well keep the weirdness confined to that part of the house.”

Clarke frowned. “What’s Julie doing that’s weird?”

“Nothing. S-Sorry, that’s not what I m-meant…” Tim pushed open the door to his room then gestured at his desk chair, moving to sit on the edge of his bed. Clarke closed the door after them before sitting. “It’s just, everything’s kinda connected,” Tim finished. “And I don’t want m-my parents walking in at a bad time.”

“Right. Okay.” Clarke rubbed his neck. It felt like they should ease into the conversation. “So, how are your studies?”

Tim smiled. “Fine. Also, Julie appreciated your birthday card.”

Or Tim could cut to the chase for him. “She… said that?”

“Not at first,” Tim admitted. “I’m still trying to understand her m-mannerisms. Her exact words were, ‘At least he didn’t send a gift too’, but she seemed flustered. The way L-Luci gets sometimes when explaining to me about a l-linguistic time travel thing that once included Frank.”

“Ah. And her parents, did they…"

“They d-didn’t do anything. They d-didn’t even come back to town this year. Jeeves got Julie a cake, that seemed to be enough.”

“Right,” Clarke said, feeling relieved. He’d hated the idea of not being there for Julie while her parents were around. A thought occurred. “How much has she told you anyway? About her family?”

Clarke nodded. “Except she won’t tell me directly.”

He licked his lips. “I think she knows that, unlike me, you’d end up pressing her for m-more details. Or m-maybe that she’d hate herself m-more for not giving them.”

“Right. Well, what about you, are you okay with this arrangement?”

Tim uncrossed then recrossed his legs. “I was getting pulled back in anyway, through L-Luci. This is a g-good way for both you and Julie to be happy without j-jeopardizing whatever Julie’s doing. Plus I get a better idea of what’s really going on with all my f-friends.”

“That’s not exactly an answer.”

“Hm. Right.” The shorter blonde ran a hand back through his curls. “I’m okay with this,” he decided. “I mean, it’s one m-more thing on top of Corry’s band, but we’re high school seniors now. I gotta get better at r-responsibility and c-conversations and the like.”

Clarke nodded. “You will let me know if it gets uncomfortable though, yes?”

Tim smiled again. “For sure.”

After a bit more talk about Julie’s state of mind, discussion shifted to Linquist’s language, Corry’s band, and finally the courses they were taking that year. Clarke was struck by just how much Tim was becoming a part of their circle of “temporal friends”, while - like Lee - still managing to stick to the fringes of the action. He wondered how sustainable that situation was.

“What can I get you?”

Chartreuse looked up at the redheaded waitress. “A whiskey?”

Theresa lifted an eyebrow. “Unless you’ve had a few extra birthdays, I think you’ll need to try again.”

Chartreuse smiled weakly. “Right. Then, like, a water. Actually, two waters.” Just as well - she had no idea what she’d be like while drunk.

“You got it.” Theresa smiled. “And hey, whatever you’re working up the courage for? I’m sure you’ve got that too.”

As the cafe waitress moved off, the pink haired mystic turned her attention towards the cafe window beside the booth. The cold November wind was blowing leaves and scattered newspaper pages down the street outside. The pages reminded Chartreuse that midterm report cards would be out soon. Which in turn reminded her that, one year ago, Carrie had been in the hospital. Heck, about a month ago Carrie had been back in the hospital! So what if it happened again, and Chartreuse STILL hadn’t said anything? No. She wasn’t going to back off today. She couldn’t.

“Hey, Chartreuse,” Carrie said, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on the peg by the booth before sliding in to sit across from her.

“Carrie,” Chartreuse acknowledged, watching her through the reflection in the glass of the window. She closed her eyes, counted to three, then turned to face her friend while simultaneously reaching out to grasp both Carrie’s hands.

“I’m sorry, but I gotta, like, say this now. See, you are, you know, so VERY important to me. Like, more than friends important. And, you know, it’s important for me that you know that, even if I can never, like, show you those important feelings in public.” Chartreuse swallowed. “Or maybe even in private. But I couldn’t keep holding it in, you know? So I hope you knowing about my feelings doesn’t, you know, destroy our friendship forever?”

Carrie raised her eyebrows and blinked her blue eyes, her gorgeous blue eyes. Seemingly on the verge of making a quip, with the corner of her mouth turned up, she then thought better of it, and instead said, “Actually, Chartreuse, I suspected you felt that way.”

Having not anticipated that particular response, Chartreuse wasn’t sure where to go with the conversation. She released Carrie’s hands from her grip. “You… but… h-how long?”

Carrie reached up and started to do that cute thing where she looped strands of her hair around her fingers and started tugging. “From when Clarke’s sister was in town. I got to thinking more about how you’d been reacting to me then, and as such I started paying more attention to how you were looking at me presently. To be honest, when I clued in as to your true feelings, I was squicked out. Initially.” She paused.

“Initially?” Chartreuse squeaked out, her insides feeling like they were being compressed in a vice.

Carrie sighed. “When did it start for you? Like, all summer, were you undressing me with your eyes while I was obliviously–"

“NO!” Chartreuse gasped. “It was, like, the dance, at the end of September. When we were, you know, doing that reading on Corry, and I worried I’d almost lost you. That’s when I really felt connected, when I really felt… felt us…"

Carrie let out a breath. “Okay. Okay, good, that makes me feel better about things. I think.” She yanked hard on her hair, hard enough to start grimacing. “Thing is, we BOTH know I date guys. So if that’s my preference, you know what that HAS to mean for us as a couple, right?”

Chartreuse reached into her pocket, squeezing the meditation crystal she’d placed there. Seeking a measure of tranquility in the inevitable end. “Carrie, I can’t say it. You have to, you know, say it to me.”

“Chartreuse…" Carrie’s eyes flickered all around the room, checking for anyone listening, or perhaps seeking a distraction, before finally bringing her gaze back to Chartreuse’s face. The blonde bit down on her lip. “Chartreuse, I… I… damn it, the fact is, I don’t know. I actually don’t.” She winced. “Ohh, no, please don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That crazy hopeful look, don’t do that.”

“What look am I SUPPOSED to, like, get?!”

“Not that one.” Her already low voice became a whisper. “Chartreuse, seriously, I don’t think I like girls, not the way you do.”

Chartreuse slumped in her seat. “Carrie, you’re killing me here.”

“I don’t like girls - but honestly, with you I don’t know! So maybe you’re… different?”

“Carrie, I’m still a girl!”

“But you… go both ways.”

“That doesn’t, like, make me not a girl! Look!” Chartreuse straightened, stretching her arms out. “Girl parts. Same as you.”

“I… I know.” Was Carrie’s gaze lingering a bit on her body? Or was that wishful thinking? “Okay, let me lay it all out here,” Carrie sighed, looking out the window.

“Like I said, at first I was squicked out by the thought of the two of us. Particularly given how you’d been training me. But then I realized, the first guy I decided to really commit to, Glen? He turned out to be a trainer too! Worse, he’s mostly seeing me as Future Carrie, making him the latest in a LONG chain of guys who never did it for me emotionally. And with that realization, coupled with your apparent interest, came a questioning of my entire gender choices. Leading to me no longer being squicked, but more, uh, curious.”

She returned her gaze to Chartreuse, her cheeks colouring in a way that made Chartreuse want to hug her. “But DON’T get excited, because following that I, uh, looked up a couple stories. On the internet. And reading them didn’t turn me on. I just couldn’t picture myself doing, um, those things. In that way. So I’m pretty sure I’m straight. Except the girls in those stories weren’t like you, heck, NO ONE is like you, so… so we’re back to damn it, I don’t know. You know?”

“Not really,” Chartreuse admitted, wishing for all the world that she did. “I never, like, went through a questioning phase. My parents talked to me, I read some books, and it all kind of, you know, snapped into place.”

“Lucky you,” Carrie sighed.

“Could you two keep it down here, please? You’re bothering the other patrons.”

Chartreuse jerked her gaze over to Theresa, who was now setting a couple of water glasses on their table. She tried to keep from looking too troubled herself, figuring Carrie’s horrified, wide-eyed stare said it all.

As soon as the water glasses were down, Theresa raised both hands. “Wow, sorry! That was a joke. I don’t know what you said, you two girls have been as quiet as church mice. Quieter, even. CSIS is worried you’re planning some form of espionage. I’ll assume you need another few minutes before you order, okay?”

As Theresa moved off, Carrie let her bright red face drop down until her forehead was touching the table. Chartreuse reached over to give her friend a pat on the shoulder. “Carrie, would you like to, I don’t know, sleep with some of my crystals tonight? To, you know, relax your mind?”

The noise Carrie let out was either a laugh or a sob, it was hard to tell. Then she raised her head, and it was even harder to read her expression. “Sleep with your CRYSTALS? Oh, Chartreuse.”

“Carrie… um, look, that wasn’t, like, a euphemism…"

“I know. Oh, I know.” She reached out to grasp Chartreuse by the arm, and now her smile was genuine. “Please, keep being the random, confusing ray of sunshine in my tortured, temporal existence. Just know that, as far as any relationship goes…" Her voice trailed off.

“You’re still, you know, figuring things out?”

Carrie slowly nodded, then pulled her hand back. “I am. I will say something though. Something that’s going to break all the rules I set in place, including us not talking about powers any more. So promise not to tell Glen about this?”

Chartreuse nodded. “Of course!”

Her hair looped around her fingers again. “Okay. Here it is. I… last month, I… oh hell. I wiped an entire timeline out of existence. To save a single person.”

Carrie’s face had become neutral, but something about her eyes seemed to be asking ‘could you love a person capable of that?’. “Carrie…" Before Chartreuse could complete the thought, she was struck by a realization. “Was the person Frank?”

“Ow!” Carrie untangled her hand from her hair. “How did you know?”

“This, like, impression I had last month. When the two of us were checking on you in the hospital. In retrospect I thought I had, you know, misread his upcoming breakup with Luci, but if your condition back then was, like, linked to this wiped out timeline thing…"

“It was. And if you were that close to working it out? Maybe it explains why Glen seems to know something now too…" Carrie shook her head, then made a decision. “Chartreuse, I can’t handle this alone. After we order? No more secrets.” She smiled sadly. “I’m going to lay a timeline theory on you that will blow your mind.”

NEXT: Bad Signs. Care to cast the weekly T&T vote? At least one person found us there this month.

ASIDE: This was the first new part (separate from the original T&T writing) to be written since Part 48, and the “LoN” guest post, which started off Book 3; more Chartreuse was necessary here. New commentary coming this Sunday.

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: 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: Glen told Carrie he’d show her how to banish Mindy. Luci and Tim worked on Linquist’s notes. Julie and the others sent Mindy, Frank and Corry two days into the future.

PART 3.16a: BLAME GAME 1

Chartreuse paced around the park once more before approaching Julie. “It’s been almost an hour,” she pointed out quietly. “Lee went home. It’s getting totally cold. I don’t think Frank and Corry are coming back.”

“They would want to be sure not to overlap with themselves after dropping Mindy off,” Julie responded. “We should give them a little more time.”

“But what if Mindy’s, you know, turned the tables on them in the future? Maybe she has two more people on her list of hostages!”

“Then we have forty seven hours to ensure that’s NOT what ends up happening! In the meantime, you can go home if you like, but I’m staying here a little longer!”

Chartreuse opened her mouth to reply, but then seemed to think better of it, and simply resumed her pacing. Julie folded her arms and looked up at the night sky. ‘Damn it,’ she thought. ‘Why haven’t they time traveled back? What went wrong with my plan??’

“This is perfect! Oh, Tim, you’re wonderful!” Luci exclaimed, scanning down the page of translated material. It looked a bit like she wanted to hug the sheet. Or maybe hug him. Tim edged his chair backwards. “Though I see a few corrections I can help you with… let me use your pencil?”

Tim continued to stare at her, even as the younger girl reached out her hand abstractedly. It wasn’t until she’d grabbed at thin air a few times that she finally looked up from the page and realized he was wasn’t offering her anything to write with. “Tim?”

“L-Luci… I mean, yeah, fascinating language and all, but this scientist guy is also using some kind of short form notation, and his verb tenses are insane. We’ve got a good start on this. It’s been hours. Isn’t it time for a break?”

Luci gestured airily. “I’m not tired. Though if you want, I can take what we’ve done back to my place to keep working. I’ll just need to call you if I get stuck, if that’s all right?”

She seemed surprised when he pushed himself away from the writing table in his bedroom. “No. No, it’s not all right, Luci. I see now that you’ve been obsessing way too much over this! You m-may not feel tired, but you look it. Now, why aren’t you telling m-me the whole story?”

“Story? What story?”

“The one that explains how you only recently got something from Linquist, a guy who left town three years ago. The one that explains why you think that the word which occurs so often is ‘aliens’, not ‘bacteria’. The one that explains why you selected this particular passage about some ‘safe’ as being important, despite it being halfway in!”

“Oh. That story.”

Tim nodded. “Sometimes I get short of breath, but I’m not blind, you know. Tell me, Luci, why is it so important that we keep working, not only through lunch, but after school at my place, and now into supper??”

The young girl pursed her lips. “It’s personal.”

“Maybe, but I seem to be involved now.”

Luci frowned, considering. “All right. Linquist and I have a bit of a history together, that’s all. He… did some things to me. Things that might relate to something that Frank and a few others are working on now. I also suspect the guy’s not really gone, so I want to be ready if and when he comes back.”

“Right. Well, I d-don’t think he’ll turn up tonight,” Tim countered. “So let’s both take five. More, even. Because I won’t help you any more until I know you’ve eaten something.”

A smile flickered across Luci’s face. “That’s sweet Tim, but…”

“No! No but!” Tim interrupted. “Now, my mom offered supper to the both of us. I’m going to tell her that we’re ready to eat!”

Luci seemed to size him up. “All right,” she conceded. “All right. I suppose I should check back in with my parents too, seeing as it’s… oh, wow, it’s past eight…” She went for her backpack, but paused and turned back to add, “You know Tim, that assertiveness bit works well for you. Your voice gets melodic and you hardly stutter.”

He blinked. “I d-d-d-don’t?”

Shaking her head, Luci presumably searched for her phone as Tim back-pedalled out of the room. When he returned after talking to his mom, Luci almost run into him full tilt as she exited, looking frantic.

“I can’t stay,” she apologized. “Both Frank and Julie have been trying to reach me for a while, something’s up, I have to go, I… uhm…” She hesitated. “Can I leave our translations with you? You’ll keep them safe?”

“Uh, of course, b-but what…”

“Thanks. No time to explain, even assuming I understood it myself, but I promise I’ll tell you more when I can. Okay?”

Faced with Luci’s concerned expression, Tim found he could only nod in reply. He followed her to the front door. “Is there anything I can do to help? Did something bad happen to one of them?” he wondered.

Luci slipped on her shoes. “I hope not. I really, really hope not.”

“Problem! If I do that, something bad will happen.”

“Carrie, you’re being paranoid,” Glen assured. “Nothing bad will happen.”

She shook her head. “You weren’t here when I was planning on channeling the power of a bomb through my body and into the time streams!Hell, it took me up until last month to accept that balancing my powers was even possible. Now you’re asking me to simply surrender myself to this… this ultimate weapon force I’ve got?!”

“Not surrender,” Glen explained patiently. “It’s more like a… a time share. You regain control once your temporal self has accomplished the thing that we’ll be asking of it.”

Carrie stood up and began pacing around the floor of the largely empty warehouse. A place that Glen had apparently acquired after arriving in town, for ‘training purposes’. Because he was her trainer. Not her boyfriend. Oh no, having a relationship, that was something only normal people got to do.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I’ve stuck with your last hour of meditative hocus-focus techniques because they seemed to make some sort of sense. But switching that on… no, I can’t! It’s WAY beyond anything I’ve attempted with Chartreuse!!”

“I’m not Chartreuse,” Glen pointed out. “Carrie, if we want to deal with Mindy, this is the only way. We must send her to another year, and wipe her memories, ensuring that she can’t return. Doing that requires your temporal self.”

Carrie clenched and unclenched her fists, opening her mouth to make a retort - when she realized something. She turned towards the storage bay doors. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you said Mindy, I checked my mind, and something is… right. Which is wrong!”

“Carrie, sorry, but you’re losing me.”

The blonde teenager shook her head, feeling her long hair brushing about her shoulders. “It’s… look, for the last year, I’ve been living with this dull ache in my head. It only gets bad when people talk serious temporal paradox, or unauthorized temporal incursions occur. Hence a bit of mental strain in the school library earlier, when my brain wanted to explode out of my skull.”

“Yes, that’s your temporal sense,” Glen affirmed. “The future you never talked much about it, except to request an acetaminophen equivalent.”

“Fine. So, Mindy’s incursion was bad at first, but it eventually ebbed back to a point where I could block the pain, using something Chartreuse taught me. Yet now that extra pain is… gone. Like, I’ve been blocking nothing.” She frowned. “Maybe Mindy time traveled somewhen else?”

Glen shook his head. “You’re the only one who can initiate time travel at will. The rest of us need you, or some form of technology.”

“Yes, fine, so what if she had a time machine?”

“Impossible,” Glen asserted. “She would have had to bring along a portable version, and very few of those were ever made. Besides, if Mindy COULD jump about in time at will that way, I believe even she would have been employing a more reserved approach.”

“Well, all right… but supposing she got her hands on my time machine then,” Carrie countered.

Glen’s body tensed up. He swallowed. “You… you mean you still have a time machine? As in, a portable one?”

Carrie nodded. “Left to me by the Mundane benefactor who awakened my powers. I assumed you knew. How else could I have been travelling in time?”

“Using your own power!” Glen started to look almost scared. “Wait, you mean you haven’t accessed your temporal self at ALL? Any time trips you take are only by scrying, or using technology?!”

“Obviously! Why else would I be so sure something bad will happen if I ‘time share’?!”

“But it’s been almost a year! What on Earth have you been doing?”

“Freaking the hell out! Like any normal person would!”

“Oh, Carrie. Oh no.” He walked up to her, and grabbed her by the arm. She wished he would stop doing that. “No wonder your head’s been aching! Promise me that you will destroy your time machine at once - it’s more dangerous to this timeline than Mindy ever was!”

“Moot point if Mindy’s got it,” Carrie retorted. She pulled her arm free again. “Enough is enough. I’m calling Frank. He can check on the status of our machine.”

He made a grab for her shoulder, and she dodged. “Carrie, you must NOT contact your friends,” the redhead insisted. “With both Mindy AND a time machine loose in this era it’s even more important that we train you to handle…”

“Glen,” Carrie interrupted, opting to shift from a loud rage to a quiet one. “I care for you. I do, and I’m glad of your help. But if you don’t let me talk to my friends RIGHT FRIGGING NOW, you are going to picking your teeth up off the floor.”

Glen let his outstretched arm fall back to his side. “I could stop you. Mental abilities, you know.”

Carrie shook her head, and called his bluff. “You won’t use them on me.”

In the staring contest that followed, Glen dropped his gaze to the floor. “You’re right,” he admitted. “You’re the one person we can’t risk altering directly, Carrie. Not now that your abilities are active. Mindy knows it too, I’m sure that’s why she wasn’t more ‘persuasive’ with you when she spoke.”

He turned away. “So, fine, call your friends. Check on your machine - and ideally, destroy it. Because no one in this era can be allowed to time travel, except you. I’ll wait here. You’ll be back, once you’ve realized that I’m your only chance against Mindy. All I ask is that you don’t reveal this location to anyone. Her spies could be everywhere.”

“Obviously,” Carrie responded. She stared at Glen for another minute, trying to figure out if there was some way she could offer up a form of stern apology, but ultimately left without saying another word. Best that she not phone from the place that they didn’t want to be found.

Yes, we’re catching up to Frank the “slow” way. There was a clip of “Coming Soon” pieces featured at the end of Sunday’s commentary. Do people read those? Alternatively, any further thoughts on ‘banishment’?

Previously: Luci discovered Linquist’s logbook was in another language. Someone named “Mindy” crashed a van into the school library and chased after Carrie, claiming Glen was a temporal fugitive.

PART 3.14b: THE CONSPIRACY UNFOLDS 2

At the warning, Julie spun to face Clarke. “But…”

“Frank ran to the office to keep tabs on things there,” Clarke continued doggedly, “And there was an announcement that all students are get into a classroom and remain there until further notice. We need to comply, to avoid calling attention to ourselves.”

Julie clenched her jaw, but based on the van driver’s expression, she realized that she had probably obtained as much information as she could from him. “Okay. But listen, we’ll need to convene a meeting of all time travellers ASAP,” she asserted, moving around the van. And coming face to face with Corry.

“A meeting which will include me, I presume?" the redhead said.

“Not today," Julie said, trying to dodge past him.

“Hold on!” Corry countered, moving to block her. “With something of this magnitude? I could cause even more damage by being out of the loop. Besides, if I’m not aware of whatever time travel stuff you and your friends have been unleashing, how can we be expected to effectively run the school together, partner?”

Invoking the partnership caught Julie off guard. She was tempted to point out how Megan was really the one in charge now, only to have a small voice interject, “T-Time travel?” from behind the adjacent reference shelving unit. Everyone spun as Laurie Veniti poked her head out.

“Laurie!” Julie said. “I told you to stay back, out of sight!”

Corry’s twin made a little shrugging motion. “Yeah, but that announcement said to go into the nearest classroom, and since I saw my brother creeping up on you I figured we could all go somewhere together… with Clarke too! S-So what are you saying? Because there’s something about time travel… something I can’t quite put my finger on…”

“Hold on,” Clarke interrupted, raising his hand. He’d noticed the school librarian hang up his phone, and Mr. Price was now heading towards them. “We really need to table this discussion for later.”

The halls were deserted. Hunt had apparently managed to evacuate the school during the hour Carrie had spent in the auditorium. Good. At least, Carrie assumed the building had been evacuated – she supposed some people might still be managing a silent lockdown inside the classrooms. But there were no police officers roaming the halls like she might have otherwise expected, and the level of ache in her head implied the massive changes were done with - for now. She decided to risk visiting her locker.

She found the note inside. It was unsigned, but Carrie knew who it had come from, given the handwriting. ‘Suggest you don’t go home.’ it read. ‘Meet behind park, at ravine. Will explain.’

“Yes, I think you’d better explain,” Carrie murmured. “Who is this sister of yours, this Mindy-onomatopoeia? Are you really some fugitive from the future? Or are you merely from a time traveling family that you elected not to tell me about, GLEN??”

She crumpled the note in her hand before grabbing her coat and bookbag and slamming her locker door shut. She felt confused, frustrated, and even a little scared. “Goddamn time travel,” the blonde cheerleader concluded, striding to the nearest hallway door and kicking at the crash bar with her heel to open it. “Why can’t I have a normal life?”

Moments after Carrie’s departure, a nearby door clicked open and a young asian girl poked her head out. She glanced up and down the vacant hallway before closing the door again. “I think we’re in the clear, Tim,” Luci whispered. “That noise had to be the last people evacuating. My guess is that no one expected people to duck into the yearbook room. That’s why no one came to get us.”

The blonde boy shifted uncertainly from his position under the table. “You think?” he asked. “I mean, that lockdown can’t have been a drill, not with people sending messages about a car crash and a gun. Maybe we should stay a bit longer? After all, we’ve sent something to our parents to tell them we’re okay, and it’s not like we’ve got nothing to do…” He gestured at the notebook open on the floor.

Luci grinned. “I’m glad you find Linquist’s language as fascinating as I do. But you said you had some reference books at home - so if the coast IS clear? We could make better headway there. It would probably put your parents more at ease too.”

Tim considered, then nodded, gathering up the pages of notes he and Luci had been making since lunchtime that day. Shortly after, Linquist’s logbook in hand, the young girl followed Tim out of the room.

Carrie paced back and forth at the tree line of the park, glancing in mounting annoyance at her watch. “An hour,” she muttered. “On top of the time it took to get to the note, so where the hell…” She paused as she caught sight of someone motioning to her down in the ravine. Stomping a little closer, she was able to recognize Glen’s coat, so she hurried down to meet him. Finally.

“Don’t you shush me!” Carrie said, noticing that Glen had a finger pressed up to his lips. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, buddy!” Nevertheless, she did keep her voice down.

Glen simply sighed, leading Carrie back deeper amid the tree trunks before speaking. “Is it true then?” he asked. “Was the person who crashed the van into the school looking for me?”

“She wasn’t only looking for you,” Carrie shot back, “this ‘Mindy’ girl waved a gun around and went out of her way to tell me you were a fugitive from the future. What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

Glen looked genuinely shocked. “Mindy? It was Mindylenopia? Oh, I’m so sorry, Carrie. I had hoped to have a little more time before explaining the nature of my mission, but if she’s forcing my hand…”

“Mission?!” Carrie felt a cold hand grabbing at her heart. Somehow, she’d still held out hope that this was all some sort of cosmic misunderstanding. That Glen would be as confused as her about the situation. No such luck. “You mean you really ARE from the future?”

“If you are indeed the ultimate temporal weapon.”

Carrie took a step back, stumbled on a root, and fell to the ground. “Oh God. Oh God, y-you knew about… the whole time?! B-But… does this mean you’ve never cared about me as a p-person?!?” Insanely, that felt like the thing which mattered the most. “I mean, on that first date, when you said you’d be honest with me, and that you merely sensed some extraordinary ability - was it all lies to get close to this weapon that I’m supposed to become?!”

“Oh, Carrie, no,” Glen said, kneeling down beside her. “I do care about you. And that is how I felt about you at first… about future you. The reason I never said anything to you about your destiny was because, well, your friend Chartreuse seemed to be providing you with something of a power basis. And there was no reason for me to start your training right away.”

“You were… sent back to train me?” Within her spinning thoughts, something clicked. “Of course. The reason you didn’t trip my headache that day in the drama room, out of time - is because you were somehow already a time anomaly. That’s also why, whenever I centred on you in a vision, my senses inevitably pulled me forwards into the future… because that’s where you originated.”

Which was what had also led her to see Mindy, that time at the dance. Her jaw clenched at the memory. “But if you’ve come back for me, who’s this Mindy? Is your sister an agent for the other side??”

“Actually, if this is the Mindylenopia I know, she’s an agent from our side gone bad,” Glen explained ruefully. “And she’s not my sister. For the record, Temporals don’t use ‘last names’ - those imply a certain ancestry. I’m more properly known as Glinephanis. I selected the name Glen Oaks shortly after my arrival in your time. It was the name of some memorial gardens in a nearby town. She must have learned of my name at the hotel here, then given herself a similar last name, to play with your mind.”

Carrie wished the pounding in her temples would cease. It wasn’t a temporal headache any more, but it was almost as bad. “So… the Chronologic Patrol?”

Glen frowned. “Chrono what? Carrie, there is no such thing.”

“Oh gawwwwwwwwwd,” Carrie moaned, lowering her head down to between her legs. “I can’t take this. Not now. I was all set to have a nice, relaxing evening… instead, I’ve got a girl from the future trying to kill a trainer I didn’t even know I had, and possibly me as well! Assuming you’re not lying, being some fugitive yourself, out to kill me in my sleep!”

“I assure you, I’m here to help,” Glen said. “Is there anything you’d like me to do to prove my sincerity?”

“Yes! No… I don’t know!” Carrie said, grabbing two fistfuls of her hair. “How could you even… wait, yes! If you really came from the future, you must have a time machine! Tell me, where is it?”

Glen stood back up. “I didn’t come here via a time machine, Carrie.”

“No? If not, how in hell could you end up in my present?!”

He smiled. “Carrie… you sent me here. Your future self did. Using your abilities.”

Mindylenopia forced herself to stop and take in a few deep breaths before approaching the house. She had to stop rushing things - she’d made it back. The hard part was over. There was more time now, time to work carefully, time to be cunning. Time to control the people she was talking to with more finesse.

Time to come up with a better cover story.

She wasn’t used to having that time. In retrospect, her improvised crashing of the van had done little aside from paint a target on her back. But for all she’d known, “Glen Oaks” had already recruited past-Carrie as his personal temporal guardian! She’d had to gamble that while at school, they wouldn’t be together. Hadn’t she?

Well, they were probably together by now.

Mindy continued her advance towards the house. Having time or not, after a half hour of observation here, with no sign of either Glen or Carrie, she had to DO something. “This world better appreciate what I’m going through for them,” Mindy muttered as she adjusted the zipper on the jacket she’d ‘borrowed’.

She rang the bell. An older man answered the door and looked down at her. “Yes?” Hank Waterson said tentatively. Mindy simply smiled.

Hopefully you’re enjoying this. Maybe even enough for the weekly vote? Or better yet, some sort of remark? Views are actually down since publishing twice per week. Bad form?

Previously: Chartreuse has a thing for Carrie since the school dance. Luci couldn’t crack Linquist’s code. The principal is worried about the school factions.

PART 3.12b: POWER STRUGGLE 2

Carrie waited for Mrs. Haye to turn back towards the blackboard before glancing down at the piece of paper she and Julie had been passing back and forth for the last twenty minutes. It was funny - their English teacher was always on the alert for phones, but apparently not for the low tech alternatives.

Pursing her lips, Carrie reviewed what had been written so far.

‘C, think there is trouble. Can we use powers to help? J.’

To which she had scribbled, ‘Am not a magic wand! Define trouble. C.’

Response, ‘Person plotting. Need info on future. Please? J.’

‘Reservations. Anything I see seems unchangeable. C.’

‘Exception this once, maybe? J.’

‘DOES. NOT. WORK. THAT. WAY.’

‘Sorry, C. Maybe use machine instead? J.’

‘Discussion over.’

And then the last line: ‘PLEASE, C? Need a friend here. J.’

Carrie shifted her attention over towards Julie’s desk. To the casual observer, Julie appeared to be engrossed in her note taking - but Carrie noticed a certain rigidity in her posture. Then, even as she watched, Julie glanced her way and fired off a quick look of desperation. Carrie immediately turned away, back to her own english notes.

‘Need a friend here'. A friend. The words floated through her head, causing Carrie to hold her pencil a little tighter. WAS this a friendly request? Or was Julie trying to use Carrie for her abilities?

Julie should get the benefit of the doubt. Yes, once again, Julie wasn’t the issue. Carrie’s own temporal powers were the real hang up here, like always. She HAD to get over that.

Mrs. Haye started into the last set of examples. Carrie knew that if she was going to send a reply, she had to do it now, before the class started back into a discussion of that boring Shakespearean play. Letting out a quick breath of air, she dashed off one final line: ‘Help me corner Pinkie after class. We’ll talk. C.’ This way, if Julie couldn’t figure out that Pinkie referred to Chartreuse, well, that was her own damn fault.

Julie hustled both Chartreuse and Carrie into the nearby custodial supply closet right after English class. “Okay, uh, what’s this, like, about?" Chartreuse wondered.

“I’m not positive myself,” Carrie admitted. “But Julie seems to think she’s in some sort of trouble today.”

“No, not think, now I’m sure I am,” Julie told them. “Because the more I’ve considered it, the more the timing fits. Particularly given Corry’s overly complacent attitude since the dance. He’s become a target, and while I’m indirectly involved, I haven’t been keeping myself in the loop at school. So I need more information.”

“You know, I did sense some kind of destructive force when I was walking by the library this morning,” Chartreuse agreed. “But I thought it was, like, aftereffects of the bran muffin I ate this morning.”

“Look, Julie, if you’re hoping to stop the future - you don’t want my help,” Carrie said, placing her hands on her hips. “We haven’t done much experimenting that way yet, but thus far, anything I’ve seen? It’s happened. Cafe fire, Tim at the dance, and at a recent session, the grade on my history report. In fact, if we try to change things? We could end up causing the event ourselves."

Julie couldn’t hold back an exasperated sigh. “But Carrie, I can’t simply sit back and allow Corry–”

“Which is why I suggested Chartreuse here,” the blonde interrupted. “Her more ambiguous impressions would be of greater use.”

The pink haired girl blinked back at Carrie. “What? But those need meditation, or direct contact. Besides, you don’t need to look into the future here, you’ve been getting wicked accurate at, you know, pegging what people are doing in the present! You could simply centre yourself in the school and, like, see if anything looks out of whack.”

“Well gee Chartreuse, I could, but I neglected to memorize where every molecule of the building is supposed to be in the river of time.”

“You don’t need to be so specific. If we–”

“Okay, know what?” Julie broke in again. “We don’t have time for this. Classes resume soon. Carrie, Corry’s probably still at his locker - couldn’t you take ten seconds to see if there’s anything obvious around power trip boy that he’s missing? And Chartreuse, when she does that, is there some way you could interface to pick up your impressions second hand?”

The two girls exchanged a glance. “I have kinda wondered about interfacing with you,” Chartreuse whispered. “We came close to something back at the dance! It’s just, since then there never seemed to, you know, be a real good way to, um, suggest it?” She swallowed.

Carrie ran her fingers back through her hair. “Yeah, look, I don’t think a janitor’s closet is the best place for our first interface.”

Chartreuse’s hopeful look crashed into sadness. And there it was again, the same thing Julie had noticed on their time trip into the past. Something about Chartreuse’s reactions to Carrie’s indifference seemed… personal. Almost like unrequited… no, seriously? Julie made a mental note to see if anyone else had noticed.

“Carrie, please,” Julie insisted. “If… if my suspicions aren’t verified here and now, I swear I won’t bother either of you for the rest of the day! At least try, okay? For me, if not for Corry?”

Chartreuse canted her head to the side. “Wow Julie! Are you begging us to do this for you?”

Julie cast her a withering glance. “I’m requesting. Don’t exaggerate my case, Pinkie Pie.” She assumed Carrie’s nickname had been a reference to that show.

“All right,” Carrie cut in quickly. “All right, Julie. We’ll try. But whether it works or not, no more about this today! That’s the deal.”

Julie nodded. “You have my word.”

Chartreuse extended her hands, and after a nod, Carrie took them. Julie watched as both girls closed their eyes. She shifted her weight back and forth uneasily as ten seconds passed, then twenty, then forty. Finally, after just over a minute, Chartreuse snatched one hand away from Carrie’s with a gasp and looked down at it. A couple of seconds later, Carrie reopened her eyes.

“Wow,” Carrie murmured, frowning. “Julie, my apologies. You were right. Someone’s after Corry today.”

“What is it then?” Julie pressed. “What did you see Joe Drew doing?”

“I… wait, Joe?” Carrie protested. “The guy I got a bead on was Tommy Kvish.”

“No, no, the impressions I had were of Megan Falls!” Chartreuse protested, looking back up from her palm. The three girls stared at each other for another long moment in the supply closet, blinking in confusion.

“Well, damn,” Julie said to break the silence.

“M-M-Mr. Burke?” Tim stammered. “My computer won’t boot.”

The computer science teacher approached the blonde boy’s workstation and flipped the power switch himself a couple of times. “Yup, you’re right,” he affirmed. “I’ll notify the school tech. Paul’s away today, so use his computer, over by Luci.”

Luci glanced up briefly as her name was mentioned before returning her attention to the notebook in front of her. Her notebook, filled with the strings of Linquist’s letters that refused to make sense, no matter how she played with them. If only she could let go… but she couldn’t. At least she’d been able to reign her emotions back in last weekend, before everyone had returned from their time trip. Otherwise it would have been pretty embarrassing.

“Hey Luci, what’re you up to?” Frank asked.

As he sat down on her right, the young girl quickly slipped her notebook out of her lap and around to the far side of the computer. She couldn’t admit to her boyfriend that she had become as obsessed with Linquist’s book as he seemed to have become with Glen. “Nothing much,” she said, smiling. “Random coding thought.” It wasn’t a total lie.

The bell rang for class to begin. “Now remember,” Mr. Burke stated, “today is another work period, but the printouts of your assignments are due on my desk by end of day tomorrow. If you finish early, try the bonus question. I’ll continue to circulate for help as needed.”

Luci listened to the teacher with half an ear as she pulled up her coding folder on the desktop. She started doing a bit of debugging, but her heart wasn’t in it, and soon her eyes had wandered back to the open notebook on her left. As focused as she was on the contents, it took a minute or so before she realized that Tim was staring over at the notebook too. “What??” she demanded.

Tim flushed red and turned back to his computer. “N-N-Nothing,” he stammered in reply. “D-Didn’t know you were studying some derivative of l-latin."

“I’m not," Luci snapped back. “It’s… wait, this looks like latin?!”

Tim looked back up at her, then again down at the notebook. He frowned, then shrugged. “Okay, no… it did at first, a bit… but this is a language I don’t recognize.”

Luci barely heard him, eyes riveted back on the page. The characters began to swim before her eyes. A language. A language. It wasn’t shorthand. It wasn’t a cipher to be decoded. No, Linquist had gone and developed his own damn LANGUAGE! She didn’t need a better code breaker. She needed a linguistics expert.

“Tim,” Luci croaked, her mouth dry. “You’re taking a latin course, right?”

“Y-Yeah," he admitted. “Why?"

Luci tore her eyes away from her notebook long enough to meet his gaze. “Are you busy today at lunch?" she breathed. In fact, Luci was so shocked by this latest development that she didn’t even notice Julie’s messages to Frank on his computer.

This is the conclusion of the part from last Tuesday! Click PREVIOUS if you missed it. Click VOTE FOR T&T if you’re willing to, er, vote.

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 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 45: FULL CIRCLE

“Uhhhnnn,” groaned Clarke, gradually regaining his senses. He looked around to find that they were in the somewhat familiar environs of Willowdale park.

Corry was struggling to his feet, Frank was looking over the time machine, and Julie, still unconscious, was lying next to him. The bikes and the rest of their gear was in a heap nearby. “Uh, hey, when are we?" he asked uncertainly.

“One day late," Frank replied. “Either bad luck or I wasn’t able to properly recalibrate the chips. Should be an easy fix though, and we can always write off the missing day as us searching for Julie.” He looked up. “On the bright side, I guess this confirms some kind of geographic failsafe if we have no doubles around.”

Clarke nodded, looking back down at the young brunette girl. “I’m going to take Julie home then.”

“You do that,” Frank agreed. “I’ll get the time machine and our other supplies stowed away, then go to the hospital to check on Carrie.”

“And I’ll head right there,” Corry remarked. He shrugged at the other two as they stared at him. “What? I’m rather hoping to learn that our four day trek into the past wasn’t all for naught.”

“All right then, I’ll see you shortly,” Frank concluded. The three of them turned to go their separate ways. Completely oblivious to the fact that the world would soon be ending.

“Carrie… ohh, Carrie,” Chartreuse choked out. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head to clear it before opening them again. Luci was now crouching down next to her.

“Um, Chartreuse… is this what you were trying to do?” Luci whispered.

Their friend was now sitting up in bed. Carrie’s eyes were glowing yellow, and her blonde hair was rippling out behind her in waves. A remarkable feat considering the lack of any wind.

“No,” Chartreuse answered. “She’s… she’s hurting, Luci, but I don’t understand it. I’m not sure any of us can.”

The two girls watched as Carrie scanned the room. Her golden eyes alighted upon the man sitting next to her, who had been momentarily stunned into silence.

“Carrie?” Hank Waterson now said. “Carrie, is it you? Are you all right now? What–”

“Freeze,” Carrie said calmly, reaching out to touch her father in the middle of his forehead.

He froze. Literally. It was as if he were a mannequin, suspended in time. Carrie then turned to face her classmates.

“Whoa, Carrie… Carrie, you, like, don’t want to do anything rash,” Chartreuse said, nervously. She managed to struggle to her feet with Luci’s help.

“I’m not going to do anything rash,” Carrie replied, her voice far too calm. “I am merely going to make all the hurting go away. For everyone, forever.”

“Kinda sounds rash.”

“How will you do that, exactly?” Luci murmured.

Carrie paused. “Still working that out,” she admitted. “Perhaps I can shift everything a few milliseconds into the past.” The blonde extended her palm out towards a small glass sitting next to her bed. The glass shattered into a hundred pieces as it tried to coexist with itself, the water spilling everywhere - the same way Carrie had done it less than two weeks earlier.

Both girls jumped. “Or perhaps I can come up with something else,” Carrie countered.

“Carrie, you totally don’t want to do this,” Chartreuse pleaded. “We can fix up this present for you. For Julie too. I know we can.”

Carrie laughed hollowly. “You really think so? Because for the past few weeks, I have been trying to cope with knowing that in the first timeline, the original one - I never even existed. Do you know what that feels like? Being aware of a timeline where you had never been born?”

Chartreuse shook her head, not sure how else to respond.

“Not only that,” Carrie continued, “but this timeline where I AM alive has been coming apart ever since Julie pulled that trigger. We can’t even change that, because if I was never shot, I sense that my powers would now awaken regardless, and pull me apart.”

So, Shady hadn’t been lying about that then? Damn.

Carrie shook her head. “This must end,” she finished, dispassionately. “I will end it. It is, after all, the only reason for my even being here.”

“Carrie, wait,” Luci insisted. “Give us a chance to restore things first. Okay? To fix the present, make it better for everyone - including you and Julie! You won’t need to destroy our timeline then, right? Right?”

Carrie stared at the younger girl. She didn’t agree. On the other hand, she didn’t disagree either.

Which was when they heard an unexpected voice coming from the doorway. “Holy… what the hell is going on here?” Corry Veniti demanded.

“Y-You’re back!”

Clarke blinked in surprise at the person who had opened the door of the LaMille mansion. “Tim?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“L-Lee called me,” Tim explained shakily. “Luci asked him to, when she and Chartreuse left to go to the hospital. To have someone else here. But even so, me and Laurie, we didn’t get here in time.”

“In time? In time for what?”

“To stop their t-t-temporal refugee from escaping.”

Not sure exactly how to take that, Clarke decided to ignore it for the moment. “Can you help me get Julie into the house?” he requested. The brunette was now semi-conscious, and standing upright, but she was using him as a support post.

“Allow me to assist also,” Jeeves said, approaching from behind Tim. Between the three of them, they were able to get Julie inside. Laurie gasped as they came into the sitting room.

“CLARKE! Then, my brother? Is he back too, is he okay, why isn’t he here with you??”

“He went to the hospital to check on Carrie,” Clarke explained.

Laurie proceeded to dance nervously back and forth from foot to foot as they lay Julie down and covered her with a blanket. Apparently torn between wondering how she could help them, and wanting to ask more about what had happened.

“Go to Corry,” Clarke suggested once Julie had been settled in. “I’ll stay with Tim.”

Laurie looked to Tim, who nodded, and then with a grateful smile, she dashed out of the house, nearly forgetting to grab her jacket in the process.

“Now, what’s this about a temporal refugee?” Clarke asked, looking to Tim.

“S-Some guy from the future,” Tim explained. “Lee didn’t seem too clear on it himself, but apparently this ‘Shady’ was responsible for Carrie being shot. She’s now gained mystical time powers.”

“Wait, back up - this guy is the one who blackmailed Julie into doing the shooting?”

Tim shook his head. “Not blackmailed. Lee said the Shady guy can do mind tricks like some J-Jedi,” he clarified. “And Lee is the only one who’s immune.”

Clarke fumbled to sit in a chair. “And given Julie’s mental state that day… easy target. Damn. How could you let this guy get AWAY?”

“I’m afraid that was my fault, sir,” Jeeves spoke up. “I untied him when Mister Lee’s back was turned. In retrospect, I’m not certain why, but he must have said something to me.”

“Lee headed out to look for Shady once Laurie and I got here,” Tim noted. “I should maybe call to tell him that J-Julie’s back…?”

“Yeah, do that,” Clarke agreed. He sighed. “We’re not out of the woods yet, huh?”

“Frank? Frank!”

“Luci?” he said in surprise. He watched as she ran down the road, then barely managed to avoid falling down as she charged full tilt into him, throwing her arms around his body.

“Frank, thank god you’re here and still alive,” Luci said. Not sure what else to do, he gave her a quick hug back. The small girl finally pulled away, only to reach up and give his cheek a smack. “Now that’s for making me worry you were gone forever,” she accused.

“Ouch,” Frank protested. “Geez Luci, maybe you have been hanging around Carrie too long. But what’s been going on? My mom was on me about skipping school today, saying something about police coming by? She almost wouldn’t let me leave the house again!”

“It’s all become very complicated,” Luci sighed. “That’s why, when I learned from Corry that you’d returned, I knew that I had to find you. You see, Carrie’s conscious, but Chartreuse believes she’s going to destroy the Earth with her time powers unless we can make everyone around here forget about how Julie shot her.”

Frank blinked. “Run that by me again, please?”

“I’ll explain on the way back to your lab,” Luci said. “The time machine, I hope it can handle one more trip?”

“Yeah - maybe more than that, we got the circuits back from Julie. It needs a bit of fine tuning though, and there’s maybe another hour before it’s recharged. Why?”

Luci gave him a quick summary of the day.

“But if we can force Shady to explain when he tipped off the police,” she explained, “we can go back and try to stop him then. To undo this. I’m not sure what that means for our present, but with Julie back now, her parents should remember her and the house - and with no police questions, her life is liable to fix itself! I mean, her family will simply be happy to have her home after she was gone for more than a week, right?”

Frank pursed his lips. “No. Unfortunately, Julie’s family situation is a lot more complicated than we first suspected…” He began to explain quickly about his own trip into the past.

“I’m here,” Laurie said breathlessly as she charged out of the elevator. “I’m here, what’s going on, where’s my brother?”

“Hold on, little sis, I’m right here,” Corry said, raising a hand. He was standing a short way down the hall, along with Chartreuse. She hurried up to him. “Please, Laurie, don’t go any further than this point.”

After giving him a quick hug, Laurie looked past him, down the hall. A few doctors were speaking in hushed tones and glancing almost fearfully towards a familiar door.

“Why, Corry? What… what’s happening there?” Laurie asked.

“We’re not exactly sure,” Chartreuse admitted, stepping forwards. “But Carrie is awake, and she’s hurting, and she kinda, like, wants to destroy all of time. After Corry showed up, she told us to ‘Get out’. Luci’s got a plan though, she’s gone to find Frank.”

“Oh. Golly,” Laurie said quietly.

Chartreuse’s look became thoughtful. “Though… you know, you may know Carrie better than we do. You’re a cheerleader on her squad. Maybe she’d be willing to talk to–”

“Hell no,” Corry interjected. “Even the doctors don’t want to go in that room now. It’s far too dangerous.”

“Hush, Corry,” Chartreuse asserted. “You had your turn with Julie. Carrie talk is more of a Laurie thing.”

Laurie swallowed. “But w-what would I even say to her?”

“That you care about her, despite everything,” Chartreuse suggested. “That we’re trying to, you know, help her. That she needs to give us a chance. To give us more time.”

“What would THAT accomplish?” Corry scoffed.

Chartreuse shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

Laurie stared at both her brother and her mystical friend. She turned again to look down the hall. Towards the girl who was better than her. At school, at athletics, at popularity, at practically everything… including, perhaps, at taking things a bit too far. And Laurie started walking.

“Laurie, no! OW, Chartreuse that’s my FOOT.”

Laurie didn’t look back. Not even after peering into Carrie’s room, and seeing the doctor and another orderly frozen to the spot. In the same manner of Carrie’s father, who was sitting by her bed. Though the redhead did let out a gasp when Carrie turned to face her. The blonde’s eyes were yellow-gold, and her hair and hospital robe were fluttering around her in some nonexistent wind.

“Why did you come here?” Carrie demanded.

Laurie felt her throat go dry. “W-Well, y’see… Steve’s done a pretty lousy subbing job for you at cheerleading, so I was kinda looking forward to you coming back.”

“The school will soon cease to exist,” Carrie stated. “Everything will cease to exist.”

“Oh,” Laurie said, nonplussed. “Well, he hasn’t done THAT bad of a job, really.”

“Laurie Veniti,” Carrie said, a dangerous edge on her voice. “I have no desire to talk with you or anyone else who knows about the existence of time travel. You should leave, unless you want to end up like them.” She gestured at the frozen individuals.

“It’s hard,” Laurie said, the words tumbling from her lips before she could even think about them. “Okay? I know it’s hard, realizing that you’re stuck in this box, seemingly unable to do any better no matter how much you try, always comparing yourself to others who seem to have it so much better than you… but you know what I’m realizing, Carrie? Maybe we’re all struggling. Even the people who seem to have it together. And maybe that’s okay, because when we push at the edges of our boxes, we grow, and we become more than what others tell us we’re supposed to be.”

Laurie took a step closer. “I know what Lee and the rest of them have told me, Carrie, but you’re more than some weapon. You are. To me, and to so many others. And so I want you to know that I forgive you for what happened back at the dance, and I want you back at school running new routines for us, and I think that’s gonna be REAL hard if everything will no longer exist, so… so please reconsider? For me?”

Carrie seemed surprised. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I am sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t, not now. Now that I know how it’s all going to end. Shady is putting us on a road that has no turns.”

“But…“

“LEAVE NOW,” Carrie commanded. Her gaze came up, her face twisted in pain and sadness, her eyes glowing, and energy seemed to crackle around them in the air. With a little shriek, Laurie ran back out of the room.

She hightailed it all the way back to the elevator, where her brother grabbed hold of her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” she apologized, struggling to catch her breath as she clutched at him. “I… I don’t think Carrie’s going to listen to me or to anyone else.”

“It’s all right,” Corry said, hugging her. “It’s all right, Laurie. I’m sure you did what you could.”

“Did Carrie say anything, like, useful?” Chartreuse said hopefully.

Laurie shook her head. “No, only that everything will no longer exist because Shady’s putting us on a road with no turns.”

Chartreuse sighed, and the three of them turned to look back down the hall. Then the pink haired girl tilted her head to the side. “Putting. As in, still present tense?”

Laurie nodded. And Chartreuse jerked her gaze back towards Corry.

“He’s GONE?” Luci said.

“So I’m told,” Clarke answered from the other end of the phone line. “Jeeves is very sorry. Lee is trying to find this Shady even now.”

“And I thought things couldn’t get any worse,” Luci muttered. “Now how are we supposed to figure out when he spoke with the police?”

“Clarke,” piped up Frank, listening in through speaker phone. “How influential are the LaMilles? If they wanted to, could they throw their daughter’s attempted murder case out of court, that sort of thing?”

“Possibly,” came the dubious answer. “But even if they were willing to do it, Julie’s life would only become an even bigger hell, given how she’d owe them.”

“Except her parents might not do anything if we threatened to expose what they’ve already done to Julie. That’s not the sort of thing the LaMilles would want to be made public.”

“Whoa, hold on, Frank,” Luci objected. “You’re saying we resort to blackmail? That’s a big can of worms there.”

“Yeah, plus Julie HERSELF said she doesn’t want this to go public,” Clarke added. “Besides, her parents were always very careful. We have no proof.”

“Always?” Frank said, frustrated. “For sixteen years, no one ever saw or heard ANYTHING? That’s really hard to believe, given their tendency to employ hired help.“

There was the sound of Clarke drumming his fingers on something. “Well, we saw nothing,” Clarke reminded him. “And I’m pretty sure Jeeves and Mimi didn’t either. But maybe, if we look further back in time…"

“We’ll have to at some point. That’s the sort of proof Julie will need,” Luci realized. “In order to get into proper counselling, over her parents’ likely objections or suggestions.”

“I’ll check with Jewels and give you a call back,” Clarke decided.

“Okay,” Luci agreed. “We’ll be at Frank’s, making final adjustments on the time machine. Oh, also give us a call if you hear any more about the location of our fugitive from the future.”

“Will do,” Clarke agreed.

Frank took the call from Clarke less than a half hour later. Luci closed up the time machine as he hung up. She turned. “What’s the word?”

“You want the good news or the bad news?”

“We could use some good news about now.”

Frank nodded. “Julie managed to recall a time, back before she was ten, when a servant came back unexpectedly and caught her parents chewing her out. The woman, who had worked with them for three years prior to that event, was dismissed soon after - though Julie recalls her being a sympathetic individual. If we track her down, she could be our evidence.”

“Okay. And the bad news?”

“Two flavours,” he sighed. “First, Julie’s too shaken up right now to remember any more, and then when Clarke went to check the records being stored in the mansion himself? The ones detailing the servants for that period of time were missing. Jeeves recalls a small fire some time last year, shortly after the LaMilles transferred those very same records to the house for storage.”

“How convenient,” Luci said dryly.

“My thoughts exactly. Second problem, Chartreuse called Clarke with an update. Something Carrie said makes our resident mystic think Shady is going to make another attempt on Carrie’s life. Which could render all of our efforts to restore this timeline to a sense of normalcy rather moot.”

Luci resisted the urge to bang her head down on the table. “Joy. Okay, one problem at a time. When was this small fire? Maybe we can time travel back to before it took place, and obtain the information then.”

“And how do you propose we get into the LaMille mansion to retrieve it?” Frank countered. “The Julie from our past would never let us stroll in and search. The only one of us who might have a chance is Clarke, except tampering with his past connections to Julie could cause us much bigger problems now.”

“That’s true, but there must be some way,” Luci insisted. “Maybe we could go back in time a year, to a day when we were all in Grade 10, and tell a past version of ourselves that if they ever get the chance to visit the mansion…” Luci stopped. She felt lightheaded. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“It fits. Oh my God. My second day of high school. It fits!”

“What fits? Luci, what are you talking about?”

Luci took a deep breath, as the missing piece that had puzzled her for over a year snapped into place. “It’s my missing day, Frank. The second day of high school has always been a complete blank to me. All I know is that it had something to do with me getting involved with Julie and Corry, not to mention seriously ticking Carrie off somehow. I’ve always wondered if there was more to it than simple amnesia.”

“What? Are we heading into ‘Butterfly Effect’ territory here? Because that movie series was not–”

“It’s more,” Luci interrupted. “Consider that while I might have grown a little since then, it’s negligible, and after Linquist I’m only ballpark my real age anyway.”

She took a deep breath. “You say the only place we can get these records is in the past? Fine. None of you knew me at the start of last year. That makes me a wild card. So, we’re about to use the time machine to travel back to that September, at which point I can take the place of my younger self for a day. My second day of high school. A note you leave in my locker is all it will take.”

He stared. “Luci, that’s crazy.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “Thing is? If I’m right, it’s already happened anyway.”

(Option: Go With Luci, Full Circle, Back to Part 25)

PART 41: RESCUE EFFORTS

The wind blew through the empty field, bending the long grass back. A few clouds floated by overhead as the sun approached its highest point in the sky. There was no one around for kilometers - miles, even.

Which is when, in the wink of an eye, three individuals appeared, along with a bunch of equipment. There was a brown haired boy with glasses, a tall blonde, and a redhead. Only the first of them was conscious. As such, only he was able to cry out in horror before all of them plummeted metres – feet, even – from the air down towards the ground.

***PAST: ILLINOIS

Clarke pressed a hand to his forehead. “Corry, that language isn’t going to improve the situation.”

“Falling bloody well HURT,” the redhead fumed. “Damn it Dijora, you didn’t say we’d arrive in free fall. Good thing I DIDN’T let my sister go on this trip, she’s liable to have ended up with a broken leg for gods' sake!”

“Clarke’s right, calm down," Frank said, taking deep breaths to try and steady his own nerves.

They were all regaining their bearings in the middle of the empty field where they’d fallen. “Obviously there was a little spatial problem with altitude that we didn’t account for,” Frank reasoned. “But the long grass cushioned us, and I get the impression no one sustained any injures above some bad bruises.”

“This from the guy who didn’t half land on a BIKE,” Corry fumed. He flexed his arm, then rubbed his shoulder. “Little altitude problem, my ass… I’ve half a mind to force you to take me back home right now.”

“You mean back home to Miami?” Clarke asked. “Since that is where you’re living at this time, right?”

That remark finally shut Corry up, as he turned to regard the black box which had facilitated their arrival. Frank picked it up, turning it so that Corry could see the digital readout.

“A week before Julie’s birth,” Frank observed. “Alternately, four days before she gets hit by an ambulance and dies. Let’s hope it’s enough time to track her down and prevent that."

“Son of a bitch,” Corry muttered at last. “It really has happened, hasn’t it. We’ve traveled through time.”

Frank nodded. “We have.”

Clarke turned away from the both of them, starting to sift through the rest of their supplies.

Corry rubbed his chin. “Damn. I’m not sure I truly believed it until now. Even after getting that letter."

“You thought you were lying to yourself?” Frank wondered.

“No, no,” Corry said, shaking his head. “Bringing up my history with Julie convinced me I was serious. It’s more that, writing the letter out myself, right after receiving it? Sort of took the edge off. Made it feel like it could be a prank.” He tugged his earlobe. “Why couldn’t we simply bring the original back in time with us again?”

“Because until you wrote it out, there was no original,” Frank reminded. “If the letter we have with us now had been the same one we received, it would have been created from nothing. And we couldn’t risk adding that kind of paradox, not on top of all the other temporal problems we’re dealing with at the moment.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Corry said, irritation creeping back into his tone. “Just like Tim had to obtain fresh copies of the required documentation on his end. I don’t know, it still sounds like a big waste of time to me.” He sighed. “And what was that other note Luci gave to you?”

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted, glancing towards his backpack. “I’m supposed to give it to Julie.” He frowned, remembering that conversation.

“I don’t understand,” Frank protested. “What’s the point of this?”

“The point,” Luci said, tapping the envelope edge first on his chest, “is that without Laurie going along, you’ve become an all male team.”

“So?”

The asian girl shifted to tapping the envelope on his forehead. “Think, Frank. Julie might be a little intimidated by that.”

“Julie? She’s in charge of half our school, Luci. Nothing intimidates that girl.”

“WAS in charge,” Luci reminded. She reached out for his arm, using it to pull out his palm before slapping the sealed letter down into it. “Humour me. Call it a feeling. Give this message to Julie.”

“Oh well,” Corry said, scattering Frank’s thoughts. “On the bright side, I can’t feel my writers' cramp any more - due to the pain in my shoulder!”

“You know, Corry,” Clarke said, moving close to them once more. “Me and Frank are here to save someone’s life. Someone who is very important to me. If you’re only tagging along because you didn’t want your sister to be here, maybe you should wait in a hostel somewhere for the next few days. We can circle back to pick you up again before we go.”

“Hmph,” Corry grumbled. “Thanks, but no thanks. At this point, I’m not letting either of you out of my sight.” He raised his hands defensively off Clarke’s expression. “Look, I AM here to help, okay? After all, as much as I dislike Julie, I know things. Plus the thought of her being in this twisted little suicide plan you’ve described… I can’t let that go. No one should end up like that. No one.”

“So, Clarke, how did our supplies fare?” Frank asked of the taller boy, hoping to change the subject.

“We got lucky,” Clarke replied, turning to him. “A dislodged chain and a couple bent spokes, nothing I can’t fix. The compass is also fine, and between that and the maps we have, we should be able to find shelter in a nearby town before sundown.” Clarke shifted his gaze to the black box. “What about the time machine, Frank?”

“Good question,” he realized, reaching out to grab the lever and pop the lid off. On the bright side, there was no smoke. On the down side…  “Clarke, get me the small toolkit out of my pack,” he requested worriedly, putting the machine down and crouching over it.

“Uh oh,” Corry said as Clarke complied. “Another little ‘calculation problem’?”

Frank didn’t reply right away, instead spending the next several minutes carefully poking around the wiring. When he finally looked up, he suspected his face was pale. “I’m sorry. I should have known,” Frank apologized. “I should have realized.”

“Realized what?” Clarke prompted. “What do you mean?”

Frank took in a deep breath. “Remember how we figured on the time machine only being good for two, maybe three trips? Well, a sixteen year trip alters the recharge time, and puts more strain on the whole assembly which in turn…”

“Cut to the chase,” Corry interrupted. “What’s the situation?”

Frank swallowed. “The time machine is broken again," Frank stated. “And I don’t have the right materials to fix it here. So even assuming we rescue Julie… there is no way for us to return.”

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Luci sensed Laurie’s presence behind her even before the redheaded girl sat down next to her in the school library. She chose not to acknowledge the arrival. Not even after Laurie had cleared her throat twice.

“Okay,” Laurie said at last. “You want to be alone all lunch then.” She rose.

“Wait,” Luci sighed, reaching out for Laurie’s arm and missing. She looked up from the empty spot on the table where she’d been staring for the last half hour. “Stay.”

Laurie twisted her fingers together. “But if you’re upset…”

“Better you talk to me than Chartreuse,” Luci said, returning her attention to the tabletop. “I’m guessing she sent you over.”

“Chartreuse did figure the two of us had something in common right now, what with it being both my brother and my longtime crush on the trip with Frank,” Laurie admitted. She hesitated, then sat back down. “That’s what’s on your mind, right? Whether they’re okay?”

“What’s on my mind,” Luci began slowly, “Is that we’ve failed. Again. We doubled down on our bets, and we failed. AGAIN.” She reached up to grab her twin tails in her hands, yanking hard on her hair. “HOW? What did I miss? Why is this still happening? How do you normal people LIVE with the agony of knowing you can fail so SPECTACULARLY?”

“Whoa! C-Calm down, Luci,” Laurie pleaded, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Sure, it’s Monday, but it was going to take the guys a few days to reach Julie in the past.”

“Yes. In the PAST,” Luci reiterated. She turned to fully face the redhead. “Laurie, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but if they were coming back… they would be here already. They left Sunday night. They were going to return on the same day, so that Frank could call the police if he had to. Except now it’s Monday! Over twelve hours later.” Luci clenched a fist. “They’re not coming back, Laurie, and it’s all my fault. I never should have let them leave.”

The redhead swallowed. “Maybe they set that machine wrong? They could come back tonight instead.”

“I don’t think so,” Luci countered. She pulled the creased paper out of her pocket, shoving it back at her companion.

Laurie unfolded the sheet. “It’s that article Clarke talked about,” she realized. “Describing Julie’s accident with the ambulance. So?”

“So don’t you see?” Luci said. “If the others had been successful, we would know right away. That article would never have been WRITTEN sixteen years ago. No, something has gone wrong.” She squeezed her eyes shut.  “Something has gone very, very wrong, and for all my supposed intellect, I can’t figure out what. Let alone what to do about it.”

There was another long pause. “You will,” Laurie decided.

“What?”

“You will figure it out,” Laurie concluded. “You’re smart, Luci, you’ll figure it all out. So don’t give up hope. Okay?”

“Laurie…”

“Please?” Laurie said more insistently. “Please, Luci? Because if this is beyond you, I don’t know where else to turn, and I… I want to stop thinking about it. Okay?”

As she continued, her voice started to become more desperate. “I have to think it will work out, so I want to stop thinking about it, but all I can see is Chartreuse wondering about what they might be doing, and you being so worried and upset, and Chartreuse also being worried not only about them but about you, and about me, and I only want Frank and Clarke and Corry to be okay, so please can’t we all go and have some french fries for lunch and not think about this for the next little while, please, please, PLEASE Luci can we stop thinking about this now??” The redhead began to choke on her words.

Luci looked up again. She was momentarily taken aback by the tears shimmering in the corners of Laurie’s eyes, instinctively reaching out to touch Laurie’s arm in imitation of the redhead’s earlier gesture.

“I…” Luci stopped, not sure what she could possibly say that was reassuring. Maybe an apology would be enough. “All right,” she decided. “I’m not giving up. Let’s go get some fries.”

The two of them met up with Chartreuse by the library doors. Their resident mystic had been fidgeting with some multicoloured crystals, but upon seeing Luci and Laurie approach, she quickly put them away and offered up a halfhearted smile. The three of them proceeded towards the cafeteria.

Before they could arrive, Tim rushed up to meet them. “L-Luci. L-Laurie. Chartreuse,” he said quickly, trying not to stumble over his own words, having become short of breath once more. “Thank g-goodness. We, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“Why, Tim?” Chartreuse prompted.

“P-P-Police,” Tim forced out. He took in a long breath. “I saw them going into the main office, and they were s-saying something about an anonymous t-tip concerning the attack on C-Carrie. They w-wanted to question Frank, p-plus any students who were close to Julie.”

The three girls exchanged a quick glance. “Perfect,” Luci murmured. “Just perfect.”

As expected, it wasn’t long before the disappearances of Frank, Clarke and Corry were remarked upon. The three time travellers had covered for themselves the previous night by leaving messages stating that the three boys were sleeping over at each others’ houses - just in case. But now?

Chartreuse figured it wouldn’t be long before an investigation traced their missing friends' whereabouts back to the same group of students who had met at Frank’s the previous day.

Thus, after Tim’s warning, the group had all fled to the local cafe. Skipping their afternoon classes. From there, there’d come up with a plan.

Tim had agreed to take Laurie to the library. Extra research couldn’t hurt, plus in all the excitement of Sunday, they hadn’t ever clued Lee in as to what was happening. As such, and assuming he was working there later on, he might be the only one left who could afford to be seen out in the open. Meanwhile, Chartreuse and Luci had elected to go to the hospital.

“It’s all about Carrie, after all,” Chartreuse concluded as she looked at the floor indicators inside the hospital elevator.

“Hm?” Luci said.

The elevator doors opened and the two girls stepped out onto the floor which housed Carrie’s room. “It’s all about Carrie,” Chartreuse repeated. “I mean, you know, she found the machine, she does paradoxes, she’s supposedly in trouble because of changes to the past… like, why her, anyway? There’s gotta be some answers with Carrie.”

“The thought did occur to me,” Luci admitted. “Unfortunately, unless Shady calls again, we’ve got no one around to ask. Carrie herself is in no condition to talk. Or at least no condition to make sense when she does talk.”

The two girls reached Carrie’s room, Luci giving a tentative knock on the open door. Mr. Waterson looked up from his bedside vigil and offered back a tired smile through his two week old beard. No police, Chartreuse noted. Good sign!

“Hello there, Luci and… Chartreuse, is it?” Carrie’s dad asked.

Chartreuse nodded back. “Totally. We thought we’d stop in right after school to, you know, see how Carrie was doing,” she said.

The older Waterson turned back to his daughter. “No improvement, I’m afraid,” he said sadly. “Still unresponsive, with the occasional period of incoherent babbling.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Luci said. “But it means she’s not getting any worse, right?”

Mr. Waterson rubbed his neck. “Yeah. But considering they still don’t know what the trouble is, it’s hard to take comfort in that. Though the police are still following some leads on the shooting - they were by earlier, and said that Carrie’s friend Julie might have had something to do with it. That maybe she’s run off somewhere now to hide out. Can you believe that? I don’t suppose either of you know anything about it?”

Crud. Chartreuse looked to Luci, who winced. “No,” Luci said slowly, almost painfully. “We can’t help you there.”

“Oh well,” Carrie’s father sighed. “Still, it’s fortunate you came by. I don’t want to leave Carrie alone, but I need to use the restroom… please stay with her until I get back, all right?”

“Of course,” Chartreuse assured him, stepping into the room.

Mr. Waterson gave his daughter’s hand a final squeeze before standing up and releasing his hold upon her. “I’ll be right back,” he said. The pink haired girl took his place in the chair, reaching out to take hold of Carrie’s hand herself.

“Chartreuse… do you think YOU can reach her? Mystically?” Luci asked, once Mr. Waterson had departed.

Chartreuse bit her lip. “Whenever I’m here, I always hope I’ll get an impression or something from her. But still nothing.”

“Can you force it?”

Chartreuse turned and blinked at the younger girl. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Supposedly, she has powers. You have powers. Maybe you can… interface? I know, I’m grasping at straws here, but straws seem to be all we have left.”

Chartreuse looked back down at the blonde cheerleader. She was reminded of her classmate’s condition during the vision quests she’d done the previous week. There would come a point this week when Carrie would start twitching, convulsing, gasping for air, and then… then Chartreuse had pulled away, not wanting to know more. Unable to bear seeing more.

But Luci was right. They had to know more. For instance, was there some way of pinpointing exactly when Carrie’s condition would deteriorate? Would that give them another avenue to follow? “Carrie’s an Aries, right?”

“I don’t know,” Luci admitted.

Julie had thrown a birthday party for Carrie the past two years. “Pretty sure she’s an Aries,” Chartreuse concluded.

She reached back into her backpack, pulling out a small, smooth grey stone. She placed it into Carrie’s hand, wrapping the blonde’s fingers around it. Luci watched in silence as Chartreuse leaned over the bed, closing her hands over Carrie’s before shutting her eyes and concentrating.

“Ohm, ohm, oh my,” Chartreuse murmured quietly. “Spirits… tell me more about Carrie’s condition.” She swallowed. “Please.”

“Chartreuse!” Luci shouted. The asian girl was right up in her face, and Chartreuse flinched away out of reflex. Only to discover that Luci was holding her by the shoulders, having apparently yanked her away from Carrie’s body.

“Wow, what?” Chartreuse said, trying to regain her balance.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Luci stated. “What was all that counting about?”

“Counting?” Chartreuse said in confusion. Wait, when had Luci moved close enough to grab her anyway?

“For the last minute and a half, you’ve been standing over Carrie with your eyes glazed over, counting backwards from 208 in one second decrements,” Luci stated. “It was REALLY starting to freak me out. When you wouldn’t answer me, I decided I didn’t want to let you hit zero.”

Chartreuse furrowed her brow, thinking back. She’d been leaning over Carrie, then… what? What had she even been thinking about? “I have no memory of counting,” Chartreuse admitted. “Are you sure?”

“Chartreuse - why would I lie about something like this??”

“I don’t know.” Chartreuse looked back towards the blonde lying comatose on the bed. “Carrie didn’t move or anything, did she?”

“No,” Luci replied. “In fact, the both of you were essentially motionless. Are you sure you don’t know what you were counting down to? Because it’s now about sixty seconds away.”

“No idea,” Chartreuse replied, reaching out to retrieve her stone from Carrie’s hand. Yet, no, that wasn’t exactly true… Chartreuse could now feel an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Somehow, Carrie’s deterioration was imminent. Yet how did she know that? And what was going to be the cause?

“Excuse me,” came a male voice. Chartreuse turned to see a hospital orderly. “I have to take another blood sample,” the man stated.

Luci moved aside with a sigh. “So, we’re back at square one then?” she asked.

Chartreuse was only half listening. Her attention was zeroing in on the thirtysomething orderly with the longish, dark hair as he readied his needle.

Lightning quick, her arm flashed out to grab him by the wrist and twist his arm away from the bed. He gasped and turned to her, a look of shock on his face.

As soon as their eyes locked, Chartreuse knew.

And Shady knew that she knew.

“Luci, get help,” Chartreuse ordered.

The man jerked himself out of Chartreuse’s grasp and sprang for the door. She launched herself after him, too late to grab hold, knocking the wind out of herself as she fell on the ground.

Quickly stumbling to her feet, Chartreuse dashed into the hallway in pursuit of the fake orderly. The one who had been about to kill Carrie Waterson.

***PAST: ILLINOIS

Some sixteen years before the attempt on Carrie’s life, two adults had been having a small difference of opinion. “I tell you, the baby’s coming,” the woman snapped.

“All I asked was ‘are you sure’,” the man countered, helping his wife put on her coat. “Because I don’t think your water broke.”

“Nnnnngh… look DEAR, if I need to have the child YOU want, YOU are going to drive me to the damn hospital when I damn well tell you to do it. Understood?!”

“Okay, okay,” her husband soothed. “Calm down, we’re off to the hospital.” He quickly moved to help his pregnant wife out the front door, locking it behind them.

Seconds later, a vortex opened in their home. It deposited a black box and an unconscious girl with long, naturally curly brown hair, which was still damp from a recent rainstorm. Their future daughter.

PART 40: REPARATIONS

“Corry… I want to know what’s really going on.”

Her twin blinked back at her in surprise. “What’s going on with what?”

For a moment, Laurie regretted saying anything. However, after both knocking AND waiting for Corry to invite her in, she decided she might as well see things through. She closed the door behind herself, to make it harder to leave.

“What’s going on with Carrie and Julie,” Laurie explained softly.

Corry sat up on his bed. “What has Chartreuse been telling you?”

Laurie tried to remember; she shouldn’t have left this talk for so late into the evening. “Not much. But she said that you both talked, and that she’d decided to tell you a bit about what was going on, and that you didn’t think there was any point her discussing more about the time traveling stuff with me today."

“Okay,” Corry said, visibly relaxing. “So?”

“So… I’ve decided I’m going to go see Chartreuse’s other friends tomorrow. To learn more about this on my own.”

Corry’s face clouded again. “I see. Why is that?”

“Because I want to,” Laurie stated. She forced herself to breathe, and speak in short sentences. “Because Chartreuse is right about stuff a lot more often than you give her credit for. And also because I need to know what really happened to Carrie and Julie. Even if that means finding out that my own brother is behind it all.”

Corry’s look became one of confusion, and he swung his legs off the side of the bed. “What?”

Laurie took in another breath. “Look, I know I’m naive, but maybe I’m not actually stupid,” she asserted. “You’ve never liked Carrie. Then you led that whole flyer campaign against Julie. The next day, Carrie’s in the hospital, Julie’s gone, and you barely look into it. So… so what part did you play in what happened to them?”

“You think I’m somehow responsible for what’s happened to those two?” Corry said. Now he looked shocked - but maybe he was faking it for her benefit.

“Aren’t you?”

“No! No, Gods no, Laurie, ruining a reputation is one thing, but have I ever done something that would threaten a person’s life?”

He seemed legitimately horrified. Oh no. Laurie looked down at her feet. “M-Maybe you’ve come close a couple of times.”

She heard Corry jump off of his bed and approach her. “Laurie… Laurie, look at me. Please,” he insisted, taking her by the shoulders. Slowly, her eyes came back up to lock with his. Okay, it didn’t look like he was upset with her, more - scared?

“Laurie, listen. I know sometimes I can get a little carried away. But you have to believe me, I would never, ever, do something that could outright kill a person,” he said. “Understand?”

Laurie searched her brother’s expression for any sign that he was lying. If he was, she couldn’t see it. She nodded, relieved beyond belief. “Okay. But then, if you aren’t behind what’s happened - why couldn’t what Chartreuse said be the truth?”

Corry released Laurie’s shoulders, shaking his head. “Laurie, time machines are science fiction. Apply Occam’s razor - meaning the simplest answer is likely correct. Carrie caught some disease after the shooting, and Julie ran away. And while I grant that I may have been indirectly responsible for that last thing, it was Julie’s decision to go.”

Laurie shook her head. “No, Corry. The right answer isn’t always the one that makes the most sense - otherwise I’d have higher marks. Besides, remember when Chartreuse found mom’s missing keys last August? Or when she had that premonition before our pop quiz in math class last month? Or when she predicted the Star Trek franchise coming back, despite the weak interest in that TV show ‘Enterprise'?”

“Sis, predictions related to Scott Bakula do not imply that a person can leap through space and time.”

“You KNOW what I mean,” Laurie protested, stamping her foot. “And it’s not only Chartreuse this time, apparently it’s Frank, and it’s Clarke, and so unless they’re all crazy there HAS to be something to this, yeah? So why couldn’t we at least talk more about that?”

Corry took another long, hard look at her before speaking again. “You’re not going to drop this subject no matter what, are you,” he realized.

“No, I’m n-not,” Laurie said, swallowing. She summoned up all of her resolve. “So please Corry, don’t blame Chartreuse for anything that happens now, because I’m doing it myself. You may like your more simple answers, but me, I’ve got to know more.”

Corry frowned. At first, Laurie thought he was getting upset again, until he said, “Honestly, I’m not that satisfied. All right, Laurie. If Chartreuse can somehow PROVE to me - to us - that her time travel theory is correct, I’ll go along with it.”

“Oh, thank you! I knew you’d be reasonable,” Laurie said, grabbing her brother in a big hug. “Let’s call her first thing tomorrow.”

“But at the first sign of a setup, we’re both out of there, okay?” Corry added, hugging back.

Laurie nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said happily. “I’m sure Chartreuse’s explanations will make PERFECT sense!”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Luci muttered to herself. “The circuit is closed, it should be getting power, so why isn’t it working?”

“Problems?” came the tired voice of Frank Dijora from the stairway.

Luci turned. “Frank, you said you’d get at least six hours of rest,” she accused.

Frank yawned. “I’m surprised I managed five,” he admitted. He gestured at the clock. “Besides, it’s almost time for breakfast. My mom’s up and making pancakes. Though I can bring ‘em down here if you don’t think we’ll make the noon deadline.”

“No, no, we’re on track,” Luci sighed. “But it’s frustrating - whenever we replace parts, they’re not as compact as whatever was in there before, and the wiring gets awkward. This would be so much easier using futuristic technology.”

Frank smiled wanly. “Tell me about it. I’m sure you’ve done the best you could with it though.” He moved next to her in order to peer down inside the black box himself.

Luci felt her cheeks warming at his proximity, and was not entirely successful in hiding it. “Er, sorry… too close?” Frank said, taking a step back upon realizing.

“It’s all right,” Luci murmured. “Some silly worries I’ve been having, which when coupled with my feelings… look, assuming we get this fixed, you make sure you’re careful while you’re back in the past, okay?”

Frank seemed surprised. “Of course,” he assured. “And…” His gaze drifted away from her face. “Luci, I realize it’s been three weeks now since… since you made your feelings clear to me. So… so I’m sorry that I’m still trying to sort it all out. But there’s been a bunch of other things happening lately and… well…” Frank stopped, obviously at a loss for what to say next.

Luci sighed. “It’s okay, Frank,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m a patient girl. It can wait until after we get through this crisis.” She smiled, as a thought struck her. “Besides, with this impromptu sleepover, I got to spend the night with you, in a way. I’ll let that carry me through.” She winked, and watched in amusement as Frank turned away to hide his own reddening cheeks.

“Frank, there’s a Chartreuse on the phone for you,” came the voice of Frank’s mother from the top of the stairs. “She says it’s quite important - something about Laurie’s brother?”

The two teenagers exchanged a quick glance before heading back up the stairway together.

“This is preposterous,” Corry said dourly. “You expect me to believe that pile of junk is a time machine? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be able to ride in them?”

“You can, you know, believe whatever you like,” Chartreuse declared. “The fact remains, it’s true.”

Corry hmphed, crossing his arms as he leaned back against the wall of Frank’s basement. Frank and Luci seemed to be in the process of some sort of repair work on the thing. Tim, who was apparently mixed up in this as well, had been delayed. Which meant the Veniti twins were being brought up to speed by, of all people, Chartreuse and Clarke.

Corry glanced sidelong at his sister - she looked skeptical, but it still seemed like she wanted to see things through. Fine. He shifted his gaze to Clarke, the tall boy seeming the saner choice. “So let me see if I have this straight,” Corry began.

“Carrie found a time machine last September. Julie found out about it, shot Carrie, and then used the thing to time travel back to the year of her birth, where she died. Carrie’s present condition is related to the fact that Julie’s death was not supposed to take place.

“Add to this a mysterious caller from the future, the rediscovery of your time device back here in town, and the fact that you need someone who was in Miami at the same time Julie was born to end up in the correct geographical location for this rescue operation. Is that right?”

“Yeeeeah,” Clarke said. He frowned. “I grant it doesn’t sound so plausible when you put it together like that.”

“So me, Frank and Clarke would be trying to track down Julie in Illinois?” Laurie said, chewing nervously on her lower lip.

“Right,” Chartreuse confirmed. “We need you, otherwise they’d end up in the wrong place. Though even so, you’ll probably be, you know, several kilometres off where you have to be, that’s why you’ll have, like, bikes and rations and stuff with you.”

“Miles, Chartreuse, they use miles in the States,” Corry reminded. He glanced around the room, scrutinizing everyone present.

“You’re all insane,” he decided. “I mean, it’s a fun little fantasy story, but you have yet to offer us any concrete proof. So please, give us an example of your magical ‘time travel’ abilities?”

“A demonstration is going to be a problem,” Luci said. She turned, tossing aside a screwdriver. “Because even though we’re finally done here, I can’t see the machine holding up for more than two, maybe three time trips.”

Everyone’s gazes shifted over to where she and Frank had been working.

“I’m forced to agree,” Frank said with a sigh. “Meaning there and back. Besides, we don’t have enough coins from the present year to waste on demonstrations. You’ll simply have to take our word for it, Corry.”

“How convenient,” Corry observed, rolling his eyes.

“So you… you can’t prove it to us?” Laurie asked quietly. Her gaze was pleading, but Frank and Luci shook their heads.

“Well then,” Corry concluded, pushing himself away from the wall. “Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate in a potentially lethal trip, chasing after my bitter rival. Does the phrase lose-lose situation mean anything to you?”

“Look, there is a better way to put this,” Frank insisted. He paused. “I just… don’t know what that is.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chartreuse shouted. She reached out to seize Laurie’s hands. “You believe everything that we’ve been saying, right? You’ll help save Julie and Carrie no matter what Corry thinks?”

Corry grimaced, but he held his tongue, wondering what his sister would say. Laurie opened and closed her mouth a few times before actually speaking.

“I… I want to,” she said at last. “I really do. But…” Her gaze slipped away from Chartreuse and down to the floor. “This whole thing is getting more crazy and more serious, and I didn’t think it would be exactly like this, and Chartreuse, I… I’m scared.”

“But it won’t be, you know, so bad,” Chartreuse said, desperately. “I mean, Clarke would be along, and you like him, and he can make sure nothing real bad happens.”

Corry moved to put an arm around his sister’s shoulders, at the same time firing an angry glare at Chartreuse. “Sis, don’t let anyone pressure you into doing something you don’t want to,” he soothed.

Laurie lifted her gaze back up to look at her brother, then she turned to regard everyone else in the room. She bit down hard on her lower lip, the conflicting emotions inside of her evident in the changing expressions on her face.

“Come on now, why don’t we go home and put this whole sorry affair behind us,” Corry suggested.

For a moment, there was silence. And when Laurie finally opened her mouth to reply, a new voice broke in instead.

“G-G-G-Guys,” stammered Tim.

Frank turned as he heard the blonde boy nearly fall in his haste to get down the basement stairway. “Tim?”

Tim didn’t seem to hear him. “Is C-C-C-Corry s-still here?” Tim called out desperately. “I’ve g-g-g-got s-something s-s-so important!”

Clarke moved to his friend’s side, at the bottom of the stairs. “Hold on now, Tim,” he said calmly. “Everyone’s here, including Corry. Don’t stress yourself out. Take a few deep breaths, then tell us what’s happened.”

Tim blinked up at Clarke, then nodded and did as he suggested before looking out at all of the others in the room. He held up what looked like an old envelope. “It’s this m-message… it was l-left with my father’s l-law firm, sixteen years ago. I’m l-late today because he had been told to g-give it to m-me this morning… and it’s f-f-for you.” Tim concluded, bowing forwards slightly as he held the sealed envelope out towards Corry.

The redheaded boy blinked in surprise. He glanced around the room, Frank noting how everyone else was basically as taken aback by this new development as he was. Snatching the envelope from the smaller boy, Corry turned it around suspiciously in his hands.

It looked to be a perfectly normal envelope, with ‘Corry Veniti’ written on the front. But then Corry’s grip tightened. “This is my handwriting,” he realized.

“Wait, Tim, you got this message through your father’s law firm years ago - when exactly was this left with them?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “It actually came with some message from my Uncle Hubert, probably to appease my dad. Corry’s envelope there was inside a larger envelope for me. With a note saying to b-bring it here.” He shook his head. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“So we wrote ourselves a letter, telling us how to, like, deal with the current situation,” Chartreuse said.

“Hmmm… there is some logic in that,” Luci agreed. “After all, we now have a working machine, which reopens the free will debate. And if the only trip we’ll be taking is to get Julie, paying someone in Tim’s family to send a delayed letter would be the best way to communicate with ourselves now. I think I even saw this on a TV show once…”

“But then why address it to Corry?” Clarke objected.

“Maybe we’ll know when he opens it,” Laurie proposed. She looked over to her brother. He sighed, then ripped open the envelope, pulling out a whole stack of paper. The redhead’s eyes widened as he scanned over the top sheet of handwritten information.

“This is… impossible…” he muttered. “It has to be trick.” Corry’s gaze snapped back up. “How the hell did you all pull this off?”

“Pull what off?” Frank asked.

Laurie shifted position slightly so that she could see the pages over Corry’s shoulder.

“Well then,” Laurie murmured as she scanned across the page. “Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate…” Laurie stopped and looked back up. “The words written here are the same as what Corry said earlier,” she said in surprise.

“This is what everyone said,” Corry corrected, having flipped to a later page. His face had taken on a slightly paler shade than usual. “It’s a transcript, which includes Laurie’s fears, word for word… and what I’m saying right now…?!”

“Oh, neat. So how will our conversation end?” Chartreuse asked.

“I don’t know, it stops at what you said,” Corry answered through clenched teeth. Throwing the sheets aside, he reached out for Tim, grabbing hold of his shirt. “How did you do that?” Corry demanded. “Have you been upstairs listening in, did you learn to forge my handwriting?”

Tim let out a strangled gasp. “N-No, I-I-I-I-I–”

Clarke got a firm grip on the redhead’s arm. “Corry, I suggest you let Tim go. Now. Whatever is going on, it’s not his doing.”

“Besides, even if Tim was listening, how could he write out a conversation still in progress?” Luci pointed out.

“How could anyone write anything so precise?” Frank added, thoroughly confused. “I’m not recording down here, and it’s not like we could have time traveled back to plant listening devices… uh oh, do you think the government has found out about us?”

Having released his hold on Tim, Corry now turned to Frank. “You mean you really don’t know how that could have been recorded?” he marvelled. Frank shook his head.

Corry stared at him for another long moment before reaching into his own pocket. He walked over to the lab bench, slapping down a device. A miniature recorder. For a moment, no one was quite sure what to say.

Laurie spoke first. “So, um, hold on,” she said. “Corry, you mean YOU recorded this whole conversation, in order to use it to convince yourself that everything being said was true, even though you don’t really think the conversation is true and you didn’t think that when you started recording it either?” She frowned. “My head feels funny.”

“Look, I was recording everything because I thought I’d better have an account of what really happened, in case someone here tried to claim otherwise,” Corry stated. “Standard procedure for me. Why a transcript should appear in a letter that claims to be over sixteen years old, I have no idea.”

“I d-do,” Tim said, having stooped down to retrieve the pages Corry had thrown aside. He held up the final sheet, tapping at it. “Did you r-read this at all, Corry?”

Corry snatched the page back from him, scanning it over. His grip tightened, and his face went almost white. Laurie again crept in to read over her brother’s shoulder, Chartreuse also joining her friend.

“Now that I have your attention, I have a proposition to make,” Chartreuse read aloud, for the benefit of everyone. “Namely that I, Corry Veniti, take the place of my sister on the trip. Not only to, like, ensure her safety in the present, but also the safety of Frank and Clarke in the past - based on what I know of Julie. Based on how she, you know, acted that one January, our first year of high school.” She tilted her head. “Corry, what did Julie do then?”

When Corry didn’t respond, Laurie continued to read. “That said,” Laurie murmured, “Feel free to use free will and disregard this suggestion. All I ask is that I, Corry Veniti, now write it and send it back sixteen years in order to preserve the timeline.”

Corry slowly walked back to the lab bench, placing the page down next to his recording device. He leaned in against the edge of the table, lost in thought. Luci opened her mouth to say something, but Laurie held up a finger, shaking her head as she looked at her brother.

“Frank,” Corry said at last. “Did Julie go back in time with the express intention of killing herself?”

Frank flinched. “How could you have known that?”

Corry didn’t immediately respond, staring back down, re-reading the passage over and over. Finally, he turned.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, if this were to hypothetically persuade me that you’re not outright lying, and furthermore convince me that I should, in fact, join you in your efforts… can you please guarantee to me that time travel won’t devise anything this CREEPY for me ever again?”

“I wish I could,” Frank sighed. “Believe me, I really, really wish I could.”

Corry raked his fingers back through his hair. “Damn.” He glanced at his sister, then back at Frank. “But fine. When will I be joining you to save Julie?”

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 37: GEOGRAPHY & GEOMETRY

Hank Waterson stared down at the prone form of his daughter, lying on the hospital bed. For once, Carrie seemed conscious, but her eyes were blank. She didn’t seem to be aware of her surroundings.

“Carrie?” Hank whispered to her, again taking her by the hand. “Carrie, it will be all right, do you hear me? I’ve got the doctors doing everything that they can. So stay strong, honey, we’ll get through this. And then… then maybe we’ll go to a hockey game? Or anywhere you like. Okay? Please, you’ve got to stay with me.”

Hank squeezed his eyes shut to try and hold back the tears. ‘I can’t lose her now, not like this,’ he pleaded silently. ‘Please, someone… find a way to help my daughter…’

The teenagers in Frank’s basement couldn’t hear Mr. Waterson’s plea. But they were working on a plan.

“Right then," Frank said, placing his palms upon the lab table. He looked out at the faces of Luci, Tim, Chartreuse and Clarke. “Let’s get this meeting underway.”

He turned to Chartreuse. “Do you have any further news concerning Carrie’s condition?”

Chartreuse shook her head. “I did another vision quest last night but got, you know, the same results,” she reported. “Namely that Carrie won’t get any worse until after this weekend. It could be as early as Monday that she, well…” The pink haired girl bit her lip.

“So, if this doesn’t come together, I’m revealing the truth about Julie being her shooter tomorrow. Sunday night," Frank decided. He glanced at Clarke. “You realize we’ll have no choice.”

Clarke nodded. “I… I understand,” he said. “It is nice that you’re still giving Julie every chance.”

Frank rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly? I nearly told the police the morning after Shady called. Luci talked me into waiting through the weekend, as I’d originally intended.”

“I simply don’t trust this Shady guy who called Frank,” Luci piped up. “He seems to have his own agenda, and doesn’t care about the rest of us at all. Besides, we have our own future divining rod.” She smiled over at Chartreuse.

“W-what is it that you’re proposing then?” Tim wondered.

“We’re coming to that,” Frank replied. “First of all, Clarke, were you able to verify at least part of Shady’s story?”

Clarke nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t hard to track down the article, once I knew what to look for.” He produced a sheet of paper. “I made this copy for the rest of you.” The others crowded around to have a look.

“Mysterious girl hit by ambulance?” Chartreuse read in horror. “That’s, like, terrible! Though… you’d think she’d have been close enough to receive medical help?”

“I guess Julie’s wounds were too severe,” Clarke said, swallowing. “Besides, no identity, no insurance, and not the biggest hospital in her hometown."

Frank eyed the article. “The state of Illinois? Hold on, Julie’s American?"

Clarke nodded. “That’s where she was born, anyway. When Jeeves told me, I was as surprised as the rest of you. Not sure how long she stayed there, as her parents moved around quite a bit.”

“I-Is there any chance that this article isn’t about Julie?” Tim asked. “Maybe this ’Shady’ lied.”

“There’s always a chance," Clarke admitted. “It doesn’t give her name. But… it seems unlikely."

“Long curly brown hair, wearing a dark green sweater… sounds like Julie on the day she left our time,” Luci agreed.

The five of them stood staring at the article for a moment. “Okay then,” Frank said at last, pushing the paper aside. “Here’s the plan. A bunch of us travel back in time, save Julie, and return to the present with her. If Carrie’s condition is a result of some ability to sense Julie’s untimely death in the past or present or whatever - problem solved.”

“Uh, wait,” Chartreuse objected, raising her hand. “Julie, you know, took the time machine. So how can we travel back?”

“Consider Clarke’s logic about our present being her future,” Frank countered. “And recognize that Julie can’t still be using the time machine if she’s no longer alive.” Chartreuse still stared at him in confusion. “Basically think of it this way," he decided. “Have you ever seen Back to the Future, part three? If so, picture us as being in 1955, having to go back to 1885 to prevent the Doc’s death.”

“Oooooooh,” Chartreuse said, comprehension dawning. “You mean we just have to figure out where Julie left the time machine in the past. Knowing that, we can track it down in the present.”

“Exactly,” Luci confirmed. “That time machine must now exist somewhere in our world. The idea occurred to me and Frank, after we realized how Shady seemed to think it was possible - if inadvisable - for us to go back and mess with the day Carrie got shot.”

“B-But Julie didn’t leave us a note telling us where to look,” Tim objected.

“True,” Frank admitted. “Which is why we requested that you do that additional research yesterday, Tim…”

Tim face-palmed. “OH. Of course.” His gaze fell to the floor. “I… I wasn’t able to turn up anything though. No w-weird occurrences in early November of that year, no indications of unknown scientific devices in public records, no discussions out on the Internet about the device… I’m s-sorry, I don’t think I even have the beginnings of a lead to follow up on.”

Frank exchanged a glance with Luci. “I suppose it was too much to hope that it would be that easy.”

“I’ll keep searching though, if it w-will help save lives,” Tim assured. “All w-weekend if need be.”

“I’m sure you’ve been doing your best,” Clarke said, resting a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “And having exhausted the Julie angle, I can help you now. If you like.” Tim nodded eagerly back at his friend.

Luci walked around the lab bench to stand by Frank. “Setting that aside for the moment then,” she remarked, “we have one additional problem. Temporal-spatial relocation. Which is particularly bad if we want to end up in Illinois.”

Frank winced. “Oh, DARN. I knew this plan was coming together too well… how are we supposed to end up in the United States?”

Chartreuse waved her hand frantically in the air again. “Wait, what’s that about temporary specials?”

“Time-space relocation,” Luci reiterated. “See, whenever we use the time machine, we don’t stay in the same place. Sometimes we travel a few blocks away, sometimes we wind up at the school - Frank and Carrie have even been on trips taking them out of town.”

“So, if you’re not careful, you could end up in the m-middle of the P-Pacific Ocean?” Tim said, eyes widening.

“Quite true,” Luci confirmed. “However, Frank has a working theory relating to the machine’s destination. We’ve checked it out in retrospect, and it’s held up for every single trip.”

“I should have realized it after Luci was abducted,” Frank admitted. “Once we discovered that the readings Linquist had on her were somehow related to the electronics in the time machine’s activation handle. But it took Shady’s mention of Algonquin Park for things to really click. Now, granted, we don’t have the machine to test this theory out…”

“Still, the answer is so obvious, I’m sure it’s correct,” Luci interjected. “I mean, I feel pretty stupid for having missed it in the first place.”

“Care to, you know, clue us in then?” Chartreuse pressed.

Frank nodded. “Okay. Consider, the time machine needs to pinpoint its destination location in four dimensions, three in space and one in time.” He went over to the nearby chalkboard. “That last is taken care of with the year of the coin used to power the device. The other three… those are actually the trickier ones.”

“The earth spins,” Luci elaborated. “And moves around the sun. The point we’re at right now, spatially, is different from the one we were at even five seconds ago.”

“Right,” Frank confirmed. He drew a line across the chalkboard, giving it a very sharp crest on the left and a long runoff to the right. “Now, this represents the ravine running through our town. Here’s Carrie’s house.” He marked an ‘x’ on the left of the board, near the top of the sharp crest.

“A lot of her trips remained near her house, or took her into Willowdale Park, on the other side of the ravine.” Frank shaded in the small area just under the crest and marked in ‘park’. “When I traveled with her, there were a number of times that we also ended up in the park. The explanation for that lies in the position of my house, about two blocks away from the ravine, but on the opposite side.” He marked in a second ‘x’.

“Okay, so… the park’s kinda halfway between your houses,” Chartreuse observed.

“Then it’s locating based on where you live?” Clarke mused.

Luci shook her head. “Not where we live. Where we ARE. Tim, Chartreuse, you remember the trip that me, Frank and Carrie took to the future? We ended up on the street outside, near our meeting place. The time before that, when the three of us traveled to the school dance, we ended up less than a block away from the school building.”

“And then there was my second trip with Carrie,” Frank added, tossing aside his chalk. “On a day when past me was visiting relatives in Sudbury. I asked Carrie’s father, and he says it’s possible he and Carrie had spent that day in Ottawa.” He raised his two index fingers, and slowly brought them together. “With Sudbury and Ottawa, the midpoint is…”

“Algonquin Park,” Clarke finished.

Frank nodded, pointing at the blonde boy. “Bingo. Everything fits. Even a trip we took to an airport. It also explains why recent trips are occurring in town. No one’s left here in the last couple of months.”

“B-But how is this possible?" Tim protested. “Like, what if you travel to a time where you aren’t, um, there? Can you only travel back and forth within your own lifetime?”

“Valid question,” Frank yielded. “Given one could time travel forward with no plan to return. Except, I did travel with Carrie back to the 1950s. We stayed in town. Meaning either there’s some sort of geographic failsafe, or, I don’t know, it’s doing geometry based on similar DNA. Found in our ancestors or other relatives.” He shrugged. “We’d have to test that empirically.”

“More to the point, what if you take the same trip twice?” Luci put in. “The machine seems to account for the structures around us, but what about the danger of overlapping its own arrival?” She smiled. “THAT is where the random variance comes in. By randomizing the time by a few minutes, along with the space within a certain radius, you shouldn’t have to worry about rematerializing on top of yourself.”

“Wait, Julie’s death,” Tim realized with a start. “That fits your pattern. She died back in the town where her parents were.”

Chartreuse let out a low whistle. “This is SO COOL,” she said. “The inventor must have, you know, put a lot of thought into this thing.”

Frank came back to the table. “As you say. It also means that we’d better not play with the electronics in the handle, as I have no idea how the heck this device is scanning all of space for its users, then accounting for the curvature of the Earth and whatnot.”

“Right,” Clarke mused, nodding slowly. “It would suck if your past selves were on opposite sides of the planet, leading to the machine placing you under the Earth’s crust or something.”

Frank nodded. “Unfortunately,” he added, “this makes our trip to retrieve Julie that much more difficult. I mean, short of recruiting her parents…”

“Bad idea,” Clarke asserted, with some bitterness. “Hell, they didn’t even stick around town past Day 3 of the search for their missing daughter.”

“Okay.” Frank looked to Luci, then back at Clarke. “Then we’re either going to have travel down to Illinois the long way - which is problematic in our present and a pain in the past - or we get fancy with geometry.”

“And for that,” Luci summarized, “we’re going to need all of your birth places.” She sighed. “Of course, since I’m younger than Julie, and I don’t even know who my parents were, I can’t join the rescue mission. It adds too much additional randomness to the calculations.”

“You can co-ordinate our efforts here, Luci,” Frank noted, reaching out to touch her shoulder before looking at the others. “Now, I had a map of Canada, but if Julie was born in the States, that’s not going to be big enough. I’ll run and get an atlas.”

He hurried off upstairs.

“Tim, what’s up?” Clarke inquired, after scanning everyone’s expressions. “You’re looking unusually pensive.”

Tim flushed slightly. “Oh, w-well… I g-guess I’ve gone back to wondering where the time machine might be.” He paused. “I mean, since it’s so important that we find it, can’t you do it, ah, temporally? L-Like, declare that whoever goes back to save Julie, they’ll place the device somewhere that it can be easily found now or something?”

“Set ourselves up you mean?” Luci piped up. She shook her head. “We haven’t been able to do that yet. Frank’s tried, and to a lesser extent, so have I. And while Carrie is a different story - she’s somehow adept at paradox without even trying - at present, she’s obviously unable to help.”

“Hey, you think maybe Carrie’s connection to paradox is, like, part of the reason she’s having trouble now?” Chartreuse proposed.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Luci agreed.

“Okay, I’ve got an atlas,” Frank called out as he hurried back downstairs. “The map of North America is a bit crude but will hopefully serve for our purposes.”

He laid it out on the table. “Now, I was born in Ottawa, Ontario,” he began, drawing a circle around the nation’s capital. “And with Luci staying here, I’d better go as a specialist on the time machine. Clarke, it’s probably best if you come too, since Julie’s unlikely to respond well to anyone else. Where were you born?”

“Vancouver.”

Frank let out a breath. “British Columbia. Of course.” He circled the west coast city, pulled out a ruler, and connected the two points. “Which means that according to the midpoint theory, we end up somewhere southwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba.”

“I was, like, born here in town,” Chartreuse added.

“Okay, so if we do a triangulation and take the midpoint of that… hm, practical use for this math stuff.” Frank located the centroid. “Okay, I think it pulls us closer to Thunder Bay,” Frank concluded. “Tim…?”

“T-Toronto.”

Frank drew a few more pencil lines on the map. “Er, second triangle then… uh, with me, Clarke and Tim, the arrival point borders Lake Superior? Then if we add Chartreuse back… hm, quadrilateral. How does this work… we should automate these calculations…” More lines were drawn. “Okay, er, I think we’d be IN Lake Superior.” He frowned, staring down at the map for a few seconds. “This isn’t going to work at all, is it.”

“There’s also the fact that, since the Earth’s surface is curved, the shortest distance between two points isn’t such straight lines,” Luci realized. “Or maybe we’re supposed to use the circumcenter, not the centroid?”

“Is there NO way to work around that part of this locating procedure?” Clarke asked.

Frank shook his head. “Figuring that out would take time and effort, both things we don’t have, given how we still have to track the machine down in our present in the first place!”

“If I might, you know, offer a suggestion?” Chartreuse piped up.

Frank gestured back in her direction. “Go ahead.”

“It seems that what we really need for the time trip is a point somewhere south of Julie. To pull us into the States. So, like, how about Miami? It looks like you might get good results if you, you know, calculate a position including that city.”

“But we don’t know anyone from Miami,” Frank protested.

“We might. Calculate it,” Chartreuse insisted.

Shrugging, Frank drew in more pencil marks and triangle medians. “All right, well, if we calculate right back to me, Clarke and ‘Miami’…” He blinked. “Illinois. West of Chicago. A little too far west, but it’s the closest yet.” He frowned. “Still, as I said, we’d need someone in Miami.”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “Well, actually… Laurie Veniti was born there.”

“Oh boy.” Frank flipped the pencil forward onto the table and pressed his hand to his forehead.

“See, the Venitis had an uncle living here in town who, like, died when the twins were five,” Chartreuse continued earnestly. “He left his house to their family, so they all, you know, decided to move into the area at that time. But originally, they were born in America too.”

“Y-You think Laurie will be okay with this insanity?” Tim asked.

“Or CORRY?” Luci added.

“Yeah, why would Corry allow anything that might help Julie out?” Clarke agreed.

“Stop going on about Corry - Laurie will help if I tell her it’s going to help Carrie,” Chartreuse countered. “And if I go along as well, I can make sure my friend isn’t any trouble.”

“Except - you can’t go with her,” Luci interjected. She had retrieved Frank’s pencil and drawn in a couple new lines herself. “If you do, everyone ends up in the middle of Lake Michigan.”

“Those Great Lakes keep getting in our way,” Tim observed.

“Okay, so… what if Tim, like, joins all of us too?”

“Stop, this is out of control,” Frank protested. “First things first, do we really want Laurie, and potentially Corry, to find out about the machine?”

“Well, the situation HAS changed,” Luci yielded. “Not only are we pressed for time, we’re under surveillance by some guy from the future. Extra help from a truly unexpected place could come in handy. Assuming we can trust the Venitis to keep quiet.”

“I guess,” Frank said dubiously. “But you know how Laurie tends to babble. This isn’t something we want the whole school to find out about.”

“Hey! Laurie can, you know, keep secrets,” Chartreuse protested. “And she’ll see the importance in not telling anybody.”

“But don’t you think her brother would take advantage of the situation?” Clarke insisted.

“S-Seems to me that Corry is the bigger question here,” Tim agreed. “I mean, even if we only tell Laurie, won’t he figure it out eventually?”

Frank drummed his fingers on the table. “Probably.” He frowned. “Okay Chartreuse, you probably know Corry best. If he were to find out about the time machine, what would he do?”

Chartreuse pondered. “Well, he does know how to listen to reason. Though it might be touch and go, given Laurie’s potential involvement. Still, yeah, if we can’t keep him out of this indefinitely, I guess it’d be better to, like, be up front with him about it.”

“We certainly want to avoid him discovering things in a manner similar to Julie,” Luci concurred.

“So should we put off deciding anything until we find the time machine?” Tim offered. “I mean, if we can’t find it, this is all moot.”

Frank shook his head. “Annoyingly, time is against us. Remember, come tomorrow night, I talk to the police and the situation changes again. So once the time machine turns up, we’ll want to take the trip, not waste hours on explanations.”

“Okay, I propose the following plan,” Luci declared. “Chartreuse, you tell Laurie - discretely - about the trip to rescue Julie. If she’s agreeable, we ALL go to present a united front to Corry. That way we’ll know straight out if he’s going to cause us trouble. In the meantime, the rest of us can try to figure out what happened to the time machine between Julie’s arrival in the past, and our present.”

Glances were exchanged. “It sounds like our best shot,” Frank agreed.

“Then let’s do this, for Julie!” Clarke chimed in.

“A-And Carrie too,” Tim added.

“I’ll totally make that unanimous,” Chartreuse concluded, beaming. She thrust her palm out into the middle of the group. “So let’s, you know, make it official!”

Luci and Tim instinctively reached out to place their palms on top of Chartreuse’s. Frank and Clarke blinked in surprise, but then added their own hands to the group. “To the future!” Chartreuse declared.

“You mean the past,” Luci observed, amused.

“Like, whatever,” Chartreuse countered with a wink. She left for the Veniti house minutes later.

PART 32: FREQUENT FLYERS

Frank fell hard against the pavement. As he collected his wits, he realized that his fall hadn’t been because he’d been hit by the van bearing down on them. It was because he’d been pushed from behind by Carrie.

She’d shoved him out of the way - but wasn’t next to him now. Hearing the squealing of tires, Frank twisted his head around, expecting the worst. “Carrie?” he called out. The van had stopped right past where they’d all been standing. “Carrie!” Frank repeated.

“No need to shout, geez,” came Carrie’s voice. Frank was forced to turn again, now seeing that Carrie - no, TWO Carries - were lying a short distance away, in the grass by the sidewalk. Along with the time machine.

“Thank goodness," Frank sighed. “And Luci? LUCI?!"

“Present,” came Luci’s voice. “Nice to be remembered.”

Frank now registered that she was lying rigidly on the pavement. She must have reacted fast enough to flatten herself down onto the ground, leaving the van to pass overtop of her. She seemed none the worse for wear; maybe breathing a bit harder than usual.

“I would have shoved you as well, Luci," one of the Carries said, also sounding winded. “But you seemed to be reacting fast enough.”

The shorter girl pushed herself up from the pavement. “Yeah, well, I’d have pulled Frank down with me, but you were already ramming into his back.”

“Meanwhile, I had to tackle my younger self out of the way,” the second Carrie piped up. “I’m thinking I should get a thank you there?” She looked pointedly at her double.

The first Carrie brushed some hair back off her face. “Uh, yeah. Thanks,” she managed. A ‘hmph’ was her only reply. Frank wondered idly if meeting oneself was something a person could ever get used to.

“Vat yu crazy kids doin'?” a new voice said. It was the owner of the van, who had now exited his vehicle and peered beneath it, obviously concerned that there might still be someone else there. “Any body hurt?”

Carrie - their version from the past, Frank decided, based on her clothes - waved her hand sheepishly. “No, we’re fine. Sorry, didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“Won’t happen again. Please, drive on,” the other present day(?) Carrie added. She helped her counterpart to her feet. Frank also stood up, brushing off his hands.

The man blinked. “Vat you mean? Everything hokay then?”

The teenagers exchanged a quick glance, then replied all at once, saying phases such as “sure”, “oh yeah”, “great” and “no problem”.

“But yu know, is bad idea to play in road,” stated the driver. “Be more careful in future.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be more careful while in the future,” Luci quipped.

The van driver stared at them for another moment before shaking his head. “Crazy kids,” the driver repeated. He got back into his van and drove off, Frank idly noticing the licence plate read ‘LARS 02’. He then looked around to get his bearings. They were on his street, near his house.

“So anyway, welcome to November 12th,” present (yet technically future?) Carrie said. “Now let’s hurry up and get inside. You need to tend to your scrapes and bruises, plus it’s about to pour rain.”

They all headed off to Frank’s place. None of them paid any attention to the thirty-something male sitting in the parked car nearby, as he scribbled on a notepad.

“5:44,” Frank said. He closed the pocket watch and moved to put it back in the machine. “You past versions got that? That’s the time you all appeared here, so that’s the time when Carrie will have to save herself today after you all go back.”

“You were expecting us then,” the second Frank realized. “That… makes sense. Good to know we’ll make a safe return trip.” He rubbed his forehead. “Though I’m having trouble understanding how we can be here simultaneously. I mean, it makes sense if we go into the past, making that the present, but now that our present is the future instead…?”

In Frank’s sitting room there were now two Franks, two Carries, two Lucis, one Chartreuse and one Tim. Past Luci cleared her throat. “Try thinking about why the pocket watch actually worked instead,” she offered. “That’s the part that’s blowing my mind.”

“This is going to be, like, a real weird conversation,” Chartreuse realized. “How do I even refer to you guys? Frank One and Frank Two?”

“The first time around we used middle names," Carrie said absentmindedly. “That is, the time we did this when I was you,” she clarified, indicating her past counterpart. “I believe the explanation I gave was that it could become a useful standard for any other encounters? Any of us out of our present time can auto-revert to their middle name.”

“That makes sense,” Carrie’s prior self agreed. “I don’t mind being called Elizabeth.”

“But, Carrie, you’re messing with causality now!” the time displaced Frank protested. “How does that idea even have an origin?”

“You know what? Screw it,” Luci decided. “This means I’m Isabella. I’m putting that out there now, lest Carrie manage to create a new middle name for me.”

Frank rubbed his forehead. “But… fine. So I’m, uh, Bernard."

Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. “Bernard?”

“My grandfather’s name,” Bernard explained with a shrug.

“I like Elizabeth,” Chartreuse observed. “Carrie, can I, like, call you Betty or Beth too?”

“No,” Elizabeth said, making a face. “Elizabeth.”

“Things are confusing enough already," Isabella sighed in agreement.

“I’m already lost,” Tim admitted, speaking up for the first time. “I mean, why are we here anyway, since you past guys said nothing came of this after you got back?”

“Because while nothing came of it when I was Isabella," Luci explained, “that doesn’t mean that talking now won’t trigger a revelation a little ways along in our present, which our counterparts wouldn’t have known, having already returned to the past."

“Besides, we already had this discussion, so we have to have it again,” Frank asserted.

“Oh." Tim lowered his head down between his legs. “So do you really need ME here?"

Chartreuse reached over to pat Tim on the back. “Aw, hey, don’t sweat it. See it as, like, a whole new sort of experience. Besides, the discussion can’t go that long. Frank’s parents have to come home at some point, plus me and Luci have, you know, band practice later tonight."

Bernard let out a breath. “Then in the interests of expediting matters… our arrival here in the future was obviously expected, so our reason for coming must also be known. What’ve you got?"

Carrie smiled. “That’s my cue!” she said, producing three identical flyers and handing them out to the three time travellers.

Bernard looked down at the sheet in his hand. There was a picture of Julie on top. She looked a little younger, and was wearing what looked to be some sort of school uniform, like from a private school. Indeed, as Bernard began to read he realized that’s exactly what her clothing represented. “This is information on Julie’s past,” he said, shocked.

“Corry figured all this out?” Isabella asked, looking back up.

“He both figured it out, and then printed up something like 500 copies of that to spread around the school," Luci confirmed to her prior self.

“Oh, this is PRICELESS,” Elizabeth said, letting out a laugh as she scanned over the sheet in her hands. “This stuff must have made Julie livid! Damn, it might have been worth the wait after all.”

There was a brief silence, after which Elizabeth found that everyone was staring at her. Even her future self. She brushed some hair back off her shoulder. “What?” she said haughtily. “Have we forgotten what Julie DID to me? She’s hardly the heroine in our school soap opera.”

“Don’t try to fill the vacancy,” Isabella muttered.

Bernard cleared his throat. “Look, Carrie’s… er, Elizabeth’s grudge notwithstanding, Julie’s reaction IS the main reason for having this talk,” he pointed out. “What do we have on that?”

Carrie took a step towards the middle of the room. “You need context first. So, here’s what I remember myself saying. Which was confirmed when Corry talked with me, so don’t you start into one of your time loop discussions, Bernard,” she added quickly, shaking a finger at him. Bernard raised his hands in deference to her.

Carrie started her explanation.

“Corry has actually spent years trying to learn more about Julie,” Carrie began. “Ever since Grade Nine. More recently, he was able to track down a girl named Tracy Irving - you can see her referenced there at the bottom of the flyers. Now, this Tracy used to be close to Julie, back when Julie was attending a private boarding school in England.”

“Wait, close to Julie? Close how?” Isabella wondered.

“A friend,” Carrie shrugged. “I guess the same way I was. Basically, we’re not the first school to have faced Julie’s quest for domination.”

“England? But Julie doesn’t speak with an accent,” Bernard mused.

“She’s not FROM there, her parents sent her away. Rich, remember?” Carrie countered. “Point is, Julie recruited Tracy to assist her in controlling her old boarding school.” She began to pace back and forth. “But after a few months, Tracy was put off by Julie’s methods. Their friendship died. And that didn’t slow Julie down much… but what DID set her back was the actions Tracy took afterwards. When Tracy decided that Julie had to be dealt with. And asked to rejoin her.”

“Wait - was TRACY the wizard’s apprentice in Julie’s loyalty story to us?” Elizabeth asked. Carrie shrugged. Elizabeth frowned. “I feel slighted.”

“You know,” Chartreuse broke in, “I’m getting the impression that this Tracy has, like, a fair bit in common with Corry. They both sound… kinda ruthless.”

“Could be how they finally found each other,” Carrie acknowledged. “The internet is funny that way. Anyway, long story short, Tracy begged forgiveness of Julie, she was let back in, and she formed some counter alliance within Julie’s ranks. If you look at paragraph three of that printout, you’ll see how Julie’s methods have included coercion, bribery, even blackmail. Except people also join her voluntarily, so you never know who’s with her for what reason. And Julie makes a point of not revealing that information - or it was like that until Tracy. And now Corry.”

“Julie has some serious issues she should deal with,” Bernard said.

“Wait, I… I’m getting lost again,” Tim sighed. “Why did Julie even accept this Tracy back? She never accepted you back, Carrie.”

“Younger Julie. Sloppier. Learned her lesson, and then took it out on me,” Elizabeth decided.

“Or maybe Julie underestimated this Tracy,” Luci proposed. “Blind to the fact that she could ever lose.”

“Wait.” Chartreuse tapped her fingers against her temples. “Corry obviously didn’t get HIS information from, you know, infiltrating Julie. So unless Carrie provided him with a LOT more stuff than Julie thought was possible, how did Corry, like, come up with the flyer? Because based on how people reacted today, I don’t think the info was, you know, faked.”

“Extrapolation,” Carrie said, before Elizabeth had a chance to speak. “Corry combined what Tracy told him with what he already knew about our school. After all, Julie’s methods haven’t changed outright. Corry was able to draw as many parallels as he could, and quiz me endlessly on some of the gaps. Then he got Tracy to send him that old picture, and BOOM. Despite the flyer not naming names, Corry’s put Julie’s ranks into chaos. He got the whole school wondering who the real Julie LaMille is.”

Bernard spoke in the silence that followed. “Context aside, what of Julie’s reaction?” he pressed. “That’s part of why we’re here. Is she about to lose her mind and start attacking people?”

“No,” Frank answered himself slowly. “Her reaction wasn’t what any of us expected.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I’m betting Julie simply denied everything, and made people doubt this Tracy person ever existed outside Corry’s imagination. Yeah?”

The five people in their proper time exchanged a glance. “No,” Frank repeated. “That’s just it. She not only confirmed what was in the flyer, she pointed out an ERROR Corry had made. It seems he had overestimated the number of her voluntary followers.”

The three time travellers stared back. “But that’s CRAZY,” Isabella protested. “If even half of what I’ve seen written on this flyer is true, practically every student is going to eventually turn against her.”

“Was Julie hoping for leniency?” Bernard guessed.

“We have no idea,” Carrie said with a shrug.

“Actually, I even heard Julie, like, voluntarily scheduled herself in for counselling sessions tomorrow,” Chartreuse added. “Something that had been recommended by the principal.”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, I guess we’re done with this time trip then,” Elizabeth concluded. “I got to see what was going to happen, you got to see travel to the future, turns out everyone will live happily ever after, the end. At the risk of sounding unoriginal, when do we go back?”

Isabella crossed her arms. “No. NO. I don’t like it,” she said bluntly. “It’s too perfect.”

“I agree, unsurprisingly enough,” Luci said. “However, Elizabeth does have a point. Wasn’t this the outcome we were hoping for? A nice, non-apocalyptic, non-gun wielding conclusion to everything? Hey, here it is, and we didn’t have to lift a finger to create it.”

“In fact, if you three try to lift a finger, this could turn into a disaster,” Frank pointed out. “And I don’t mean at the school. Consider the following: You change something. Because of that, Carrie is unable to save herself from the van at 5:44. It would at minimum change this conversation, and in the worst case, an injured Elizabeth could make for a nasty time… loop? Paradox? I don’t even know. Thus it’s in all our best interests to act like your trip never happened. I know I’m going to. Er, going to have that is.”

The three time travellers again exchanged a glance. “I’m right,” Bernard realized. “We can’t do anything to disrupt this future from happening. The timeline needs to unfold this way.”

“Lovely,” Isabella said, smacking her palm to her forehead. “Honestly Carrie, it’s always something with you! I guess that means we won’t be able to tell past Chartreuse and Tim about any of this either.”

“What? Luci, I’m hurt,” Chartreuse protested. “Seeing as nothing’s going to come of this, why can’t I, like, know earlier?”

“You really think you can fake your way sitting through that explanation, when you would already know it?” Frank asked.

Chartreuse paused. “Welllll…”

“Chartreuse, if we leave it like this, it gets us out of the discussion in a non-weird way,” Tim pleaded. “Please, right now that’s what I’m hoping for the most.”

“Okay then,” Chartreuse sighed. “I guess I can accept it. Though it means I’m now, you know, in on a secrecy conspiracy against myself.” She brightened. “Which, come to think, is kinda neat.”

“Did I at least take one of these flyers with me to study?” Isabella questioned. Her counterpart nodded, and Isabella pocketed the information.

“We’ll clear out of your way now,” Bernard decided. “I only hope that this future turns out to be as good as it looks.”

“You worry too much,” Elizabeth said airily. “Let’s not look the gift horse in the mouth, okay?”

Five minutes later, after the time machine had been reset, Elizabeth, Bernard and Isabella pulled the handle to head back into the past.

“That’s cleared some of the clutter out of here,” Carrie observed, dusting off her hands.

Frank walked over to the sitting room window. “It was certainly a bizarre experience, meeting oneself that way,” he reflected, watching large droplets of rain splatter against the glass. At least it wasn’t cold enough for snow yet.

“It was pretty amazing I’d say,” Chartreuse noted. “You know, I think I’d like to try a time trip myself next. If that’s okay with you guys, of course.”

“I’m just glad it’s over with,” Tim sighed. “Not only the time travel but also the mess with Julie. Maybe life can get back to normal now.”

Chartreuse turned her gaze upon him. “Aw, Tim, I’m so sorry you, like, didn’t enjoy any of this. I hope you can forgive me and that we can still, you know, be friends?”

Tim hesitated only briefly before smiling back at Chartreuse. “I-I’d like that,” he admitted. “And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, Chartreuse! I mean, I did agree to come here. It’s only… it’s a lot to take in. It’s easier for me to handle social stuff when it’s just me and Clarke, I guess.”

“Time travel is overwhelming no matter who you are,” Frank remarked. He turned away from the window. “Before you all go, the logical question we need to ask now is - is there anything further to say about Julie’s reaction?”

No one spoke. Then Luci let out a sigh of resignation. “It doesn’t look like it, much as I wish that weren’t the case,” she said. “I mean, we all saw Julie today. She should have been angry, and she wasn’t. She was smiling. Smiling in a weird, contented way, like she got what she wanted. My past self was right, it’s too perfect. We’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”

“It was her birthday,” Chartreuse pointed out. “Maybe Julie decided to, like, accept that the skeletons were out, in order to restart her life at sweet sixteen.”

“Maybe,” Luci said, unconvinced. “I guess I was holding out too much hope that, upon seeing our previous conversation from this side, something else would be triggered.”

“Yeah, well, I got nothing,” Carrie declared. “So we might as well wrap this meeting up.”

Chartreuse looked over at the clock. “Probably best. Me and Luci have, like, less than a half hour until band rehearsal. We’d better get a move on.”

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome either,” Tim said, standing up. “I bet your parents will be back soon.”

Frank pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “All right then. Thanks for coming,” he concluded. “Also, Tim, Chartreuse, now that you know about the time machine, I see no reason to exclude you from any new incidents that come up. All we would ask is that you continue to keep the secret.”

“Of course,” Chartreuse agreed. “As long as you consider letting me time trip.”

“I’ll keep the secret,” Tim added. “But don’t feel you have to call me in. Keeping me updated through Chartreuse is fine.”

“Fair enough,” Frank said.

Everyone proceeded out of the sitting room.

“Oh yeah, Frank, there was an actual math question I wanted to ask you about,” Carrie remembered, snapping her fingers. “Can you spare a few more minutes?”

“Sure,” Frank agreed. “It’ll be nice to do something mundane for a change.”

Carrie pulled her notebook from her bag while the others retrieved their belongings and headed out the front door. With only a brief backwards glance, Luci joined Chartreuse under her umbrella in her walk towards the high school. His own umbrella open, Tim followed for a short distance before turning away to head for his own place of residence. Meanwhile, Carrie and Frank adjourned back to the Dijora sitting room.

At that moment, none of them felt particularly concerned about the future.

Ten minutes later, the gun went off.

PART 31: PAST MEETS FUTURE

Julie twisted the Rubik’s cube around. Perhaps if she… no, the colours weren’t going to line up that way either. Frustrated, she threw the object across the room, where it bounced off one of her filing cabinets. She glared at it, knowing full well that she wasn’t really upset with the puzzle cube.

“Damn you, Corry,” she seethed. “You have more stamina than I thought. I played the tape incriminating your sister at the dance. I set you up by putting those prescription pills in Carrie’s locker. I opened myself up to attack, and despite that - you wait. You. WAIT. This is driving me NUTS! I thought for sure, on Halloween…”

Julie raked a hand back through her hair and leaned back against the wall. “I can’t lose to you if you do nothing, Corry. What the hell is wrong, idiot? You know you want to deal with me. You’ve wanted it for two years, so COME AT ME already!”

There was a knock at the basement door to her ‘play room’, making Julie jump. “Who’s there?” she hollered.

“Me," came the voice of Jeeves, the family butler. “Clarke’s called you again.”

She’d stopped taking cell phone calls; he’d resorted to the land line. “Then you should have told him I didn’t want to talk."

“Indeed I did. But following that we had another call from your high school.”

“Then you tell Mr. Hunt he knows my price. I’m not budging an inch,” Julie asserted, even as she slid down the wall onto the ground.

“On the contrary, this time the principal recommended a good counsellor for you,” Jeeves responded. “And frankly Miss LaMille, I’m starting to think that a wise course of action. I would hate to see a repeat of whatever happened three years ago, before you came to this town.”

Julie began to rock her body back and forth. “It won’t happen,” she called back. She swallowed. “I’ll do things right this time,” she finished, too quietly for him to hear.

“Very well,” Jeeves concluded after a moment. “But your parents ARE still due to arrive next week. For your birthday. Ultimately, I believe the decision on counselling will be up to them?”

Julie didn’t answer. Her eyes merely tracked back to the lower drawer of that one particular filing cabinet. “You’ll see. I’ll do things right this time,” she repeated softly.

Mrs. Dijora smiled as she opened the door. “Why Carrie, how nice to see you again!”

Carrie flashed Frank’s mother a quick grin. “Thanks, likewise! Frank in?”

Mrs. Dijora nodded. “He’s downstairs with Luci.”

“Great,” Carrie said, stepping inside. “Euhhh, I can come in, right?” she asked belatedly. Mrs. Dijora simply nodded again, looking mildly amused as Carrie hurried past her to open the basement door. The blonde took the stairs down two at a time, the individuals in Frank’s lab turning to look as she reached the bottom.

“Don’t you ever knock?” Luci wondered.

“I knocked on the front door,” Carrie retorted. “Look, I’m actually glad you’re both here. We’ve got a new date we can time travel to as a test. Once you’re finished with your final checks or whatever.”

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Oh? What date might that be?”

Carrie took in a deep breath. “November 12th. Four days into the future.”

Frank stared back at her for a moment, then he turned to Luci. “Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?”

Luci pursed her lips. “Hard to say, really.”

Carrie lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, I know I’VE missed any connection between me and the– between me and Luci.”

“She suggested that same date to me yesterday,” Frank explained.

“Oh, she did, did she?” Carrie said, folding her arms.

“As I said to Luci then, even if it is possible, given how the device can apparently travel to any time during our current year… I’m not sanguine about travel to the future,” Frank continued. “It will substantially compound the number of unknown variables involved.”

Carrie shrugged. “Your fancy words are outvoted two to one,” she pointed out. “Though I would like to know exactly what Luci’s interest is with that date.”

Luci shrugged as well. “The same as yours?”

“You mean Corry?” Carrie pressed. Luci nodded. “So how did YOU know he’d be doing something then?”

Luci hesitated only briefly. “That would take a bit of explanation," she admitted. She boosted herself up to sit on the edge of the lab table, bringing her closer to Carrie’s height. “And while I’ve considered saying something before, it’s only now that the time machine is a factor again that it’s relevant. Thing is, Carrie, you cannot reveal what I’m about to say to Corry.”

Carrie sniffed. “No deal. At least, not if this relates to Julie, since the guy grills me on her every other day. I’m starting to think he’s got psychological problems."

“It doesn’t directly relate to Julie,” Luci assured. “It relates to Chartreuse. However, I cannot say anything more without an assurance of your complete confidence.”

Carrie frowned, and looked at Frank, who shrugged. “Look, I’ll keep quiet either way," he pointed out. “Again, more concerned with the actual travel into the future.”

Carrie fought briefly against her curiosity, but it was a losing proposition. “Okay, Luci,” she agreed. “Nothing to Corry. I’m pretty sure he’ll ease off me after the 12th anyway."

Luci eyed her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay then.” She took in a breath. “For the last month or more, Chartreuse, Tim and I have been working together. Trying to keep tensions from escalating too high at school between the Julie and Corry factions.”

“Seriously? You’re doing a lousy job then," Carrie blurted out. “Julie was accused of stealing that potted plant from Mrs. Latour’s desk the other week, Corry was blamed for messing up Julie’s law case files…”

“It’s not easy,” Luci interrupted. “People are ready to go off at the drop of a hat.” She leaned forwards. “That said, we’ve been pretty sure that Corry’s had something on the back burner. Chartreuse finally got the date of November 12th from Laurie earlier this week.”

“Hrmph. Okay, you’re up on me then,” Carrie grumbled. “Corry only gave me that date today. It makes sense though, that being Julie’s birthday,” she added. Luci nodded slowly.

“Wait, hold on,” Frank protested. “Why would Corry take action against Julie on her birthday?”

“When else?” Carrie retorted. “Corry doesn’t have experience with the long game, not like Julie. When she didn’t do anything after I switched teams, Corry was shocked. Since then, he’s questioned me about her motivations. Obsessively. Now, if you know Julie, you can see she’s been gradually fraying around the edges too - but in the end? No way was he going to outlast her. The date makes perfect sense, now that I know.”

“What DID Corry come up with on Julie’s motives?” Luci wondered.

“Can’t talk about it,” Carrie shot back automatically. She then rubbed the back of her neck. “Mainly because I don’t know. Corry and I don’t go much beyond speaking terms. He only gave me the November 12th date because, once I realized he wasn’t going to wait forever, I asked him to be nice enough to give me a few days heads up.”

“But… then what is Corry about to do?” Frank asked.

“Obviously, we don’t know,” Luci said. “Which is why I proposed going ahead to November 12th, to see something that might help clear things up for the 2DEGS."

Frank blinked. “For the… what?”

Luci blushed. “Uh, the 2DEGS. It’s, well, how Chartreuse refers to our little group of three,” she admitted a bit sheepishly. “See, she, me and Tim, we all have two degrees of separation from… look, it doesn’t matter,” she decided as Frank and Carrie’s stares become more incredulous. “Point is, I’ve always wanted to try a trip to the future too, to verify that it could be done. The time machine is functional again, so why not use it for a good cause like this?”

“Exactly!” Carrie shifted her gaze back to Frank. “Besides, aren’t you curious about the Julie-Corry feud? I say let’s go for it. I mean, for crying out loud, aren’t you at least pleased that I’m suggesting THIS instead of a trip back to deal with you-know-what?”

Carrie had decided that there would be time enough for her mother once the school situation had been dealt with.

Frank sighed. “Well, as you said, it appears I’m outvoted.”

“Excellent,” Carrie said, rubbing her hands in delight.

“There’s just one more thing,” Luci said. “I decided to tell you all that for a reason. Basically, before we go anywhere…” She took in a deep breath. “I want to tell Chartreuse and Tim about our time travelling.”

Both Carrie and Frank turned back to Luci. “What?” they chorused.

The next evening, Tim was shown into the Dijora sitting room. Chartreuse was already there. She smiled brightly at him. “Glad you could make it.”

Tim smiled back weakly.

“I’m so glad we’re getting to meet more of Frank’s classmates,” Mrs. Dijora said, clasping her hands together. “My son said he’d be upstairs shortly, can I get either of you anything while you wait? Juice maybe?”

“I’m okay, thanks,” Chartreuse said. “Tim?”

Tim simply shook his head. Mrs. Dijora nodded and left the room, after which Tim heard her calling downstairs to her son. He turned to Chartreuse. “So why would Luci ask to meet us HERE?” he wondered.

“Dunno,” Chartreuse confessed. “But I would, you know, guess it has something to do with Corry and our upcoming doomsday.” Tim nodded in resignation and took a seat. “Not a bad looking house here,” Chartreuse continued conversationally. “It’s probably got, like, good fung shui.”

Tim shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, neither would I,” Chartreuse concurred. “Not my area of expertise.”

She winked and smiled again, and Tim found he couldn’t help but smile back. For all her faults, Chartreuse did have a way of helping a person feel more at ease. Still, Tim found it difficult to get comfortable, particularly when not only Luci and Frank, but also Carrie walked into the room. All wearing sombre expressions.

“We’re clear,” Frank remarked, looking down the hall. “Dad’s out like usual these days and Mom’s gone upstairs for the moment.”

“So what’s, like, up?” Chartreuse asked. “Do you all have some new…” Her voice trailed off as Luci motioned for quiet.

“We’re about to let the two of you in on a big secret,” Luci began. “And while I trust you’ll both keep this quiet, there have been some reservations expressed.” Tim saw the younger girl glance at Carrie. “So let me be perfectly clear. What I am about to reveal, you are NOT speak of to anyone else. It doesn’t go beyond the five of us. Okay?”

Tim and Chartreuse looked at each other, surprised. “Okay, sure,” Chartreuse agreed.

“Not even to Clarke?” Tim asked.

“Especially not to him,” Carrie insisted.

Luci fully turned towards the blonde cheerleader. “Well… we are pretty sure he suspects anyway, via Julie,” she pointed out.

“All the more reason not to give Julie any more information,” Carrie challenged. “Clarke is not part of this agreement.”

“We’d prefer you didn’t mention it to him,” Frank offered up. “But we’ll take any other names under advisement, as we did when Luci suggested the both of you.” Carrie sighed in exasperation, but said nothing more.

Tim nodded. “O-Okay then,” he said, biting his lip. “The five of us.”

Luci spoke up again. “Tim, remember how you saw two Carries at the school dance? That’s something that never got properly explained. And Chartreuse, you’ve asked me about that other person caught by Professor Linquist - the one who looked similar to me, yet older. Again, I couldn’t go into any detail.”

The young asian girl began to pace. “This secret will explain everything. My hope is that it will also lead you to believe any information that comes out of what we’re about to do. Plus, Chartreuse, there’s something you’ve been hiding from us in the last week.” Chartreuse flinched. “Please take this action of mine as a gesture of faith towards revealing your own secret.”

“I… I’m not really hiding a secret,” Chartreuse protested. “There’s only this, like, event that I foresaw over a month ago, and I’ve recently had the feeling that it may be, you know, close at hand. If it happens. I could be wrong about the whole thing.”

“Oh, get ON with this already,” Carrie groaned. “Luci, if you’re going to tell them, do it before Frank’s mom comes back down.”

Luci rolled her eyes. “Okay, bottom line. Chartreuse, Tim… the three of us here have access to a time machine.” She let the comment sit there for a moment before adding, “And we’re planning on using it to travel forwards three days in order to see what happens to Julie at school.”

“What?” Tim said, bewildered.

“Cool,” said Chartreuse, without missing a beat. She leaned forwards. “How did you, like, get ahold of something like that?”

Carrie, Frank and Luci all answered the question at once.

“Government agents,” Carrie said.

“Came from the future,” Frank said.

“Through alien technology,” Luci said.

The three of them turned to look at each other. “We’re not sure of its origins,” Frank finally admitted.

“You have got to be kidding us,” Tim murmured.

“We wouldn’t kid about this sort of thing,” Luci assured him.

Frank stepped forwards. “In fact, there was one key argument in favour of revealing the time machine to you now. With the three of us traveling to the future, if something unexpected happens, and we can’t get back… well, it seemed wise to have someone in our own time who knew what was going on.”

“Can we actually see this time machine thing then?” Chartreuse asked eagerly.

Frank nodded. “It’s downstairs. Come on, we might as well explain to you what we’ve figured out so far.”

“Not that you’ll understand most of it,” Carrie added under her breath. Still, she was loud enough that Tim heard her remark. And, based on his understanding of things to this point, he was inclined to agree.

Chartreuse peered closely at the black box on Frank’s lab table, even as he began to explain something about coins. “You know,” she piped up when he paused. “I kinda thought a time machine would be, like, bigger. Aren’t you supposed to be able to ride in them?”

“Wait, let me see if I understand,” Tim said uneasily. “You drop a coin in that thing, pull the lever, and end up in the same year as when the coin was minted?”

Frank nodded. “Exactly. We can rig the month and day internally, even set the time now thanks to some new integrated circuits of Luci’s. There IS random variance, but so far we’ve only been more than a day off target once or twice.”

“Except when we ARE off by more, it can be for a month,” Carrie grumbled.

“Then what’s the pocket watch for?” Chartreuse wondered, pointing at it through the open top of the device.

“Oh, that’s my idea,” Carrie said, smiling as she leaned against the table next to Chartreuse. “It belongs to my family, and it’s going to display the actual time of arrival.”

“Maybe,” Luci yielded. “Thing is, we tried a digital readout, but it risks an overheating problem. This mechanical stopwatch doesn’t seem to affect the internal workings that way - and for whatever reason, it’s hands twitch when the machine is charged. Carrie has a ‘feeling’, so we mounted it inside.”

“Cool,” Chartreuse reiterated, deciding to ignore the skepticism in Luci’s tone. “How long have you guys been, you know, working on this thing then?”

“I found the machine back in September,” Carrie revealed.

“I did most of the initial work that month,” Frank added. “Though have been collecting coins for a few years.”

“And I helped tinker all through October,” Luci finished. “Not always successfully. Which is why you saw me as a twenty year old that day, Chartreuse.”

“This really doesn’t seem that safe then,” Tim put in. “You don’t know where it’s f-from, don’t know what it’s capable of, it’s got r-random variance, yet you’re actively USING it?”

“Some of us have a personal stake,” Carrie noted, crossing her arms.

“Plus we haven’t had any major problems,” Frank assured. “And it’s in using it that we discover more about it.”

“So, like, how many trips have you made?” Chartreuse wondered.

“I haven’t been keeping track,” Frank admitted. “Initially we made a few little test trips. That said, right now, we only have a half dozen or so present day coins left. I’ve seen fewer of them since they first started circulating, at the beginning of summer.”

Luci cleared her throat. “Respectfully - the questions could become endless, and they aren’t important right now. Chartreuse, Tim, I simply felt that you deserved to know.”

“THANK you,” Carrie sighed. “With that dealt with, let’s travel to the future before the future becomes the past. You’ve already set the device properly, right Frank?”

Frank nodded. “For after school on the 12th. That way we can learn about things through the aftermath, avoiding details.”

“Wait,” Luci objected. “Before we go - Chartreuse, that vision you mentioned…?”

Chartreuse felt her mood crash. “My visions aren’t always accurate, Luci,” she protested. “I mean, maybe you heard that in September, I forecasted that we’d finally have a winning football team? That never happened.”

“I doubt you put much effort into that reading,” Luci observed.

“Circumstances have, you know, changed over the last month too,” Chartreuse continued desperately. “I mean, my own detention with Carrie after the drugs might have, like, cancelled out what I saw.”

“Regardless, Chartreuse - if you know something about the future we’re going into, we could use that advantage.”

“Oh no, look, no, you don’t want this knowledge,” Chartreuse said, adopting her most serious posture. “You really don’t.”

“Maybe not. But I think we need to have it,” Luci said.

“Luci, if she doesn’t want to tell us, fine,” Carrie broke back in, with obvious exasperation. “Is this really so important?”

“It might be,” Frank put in, now looking a little more closely at Chartreuse. “Because this sounds significant. Like, drugs in a locker significant.” Carrie pursed her lips at that.

“Chartreuse,” Frank ventured, “we’ll be flying more blind than usual. If you somehow have insight into anything that’s coming… it really could be invaluable.”

Chartreuse shifted her weight back and forth. “Ooooh…” She exhaled, and decided to say it all in a rush. “ISawSomeoneWeKnowFromSchoolFiringAGun!”

No one spoke at first. Until Luci fired off the logical question, “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Chartreuse said sullenly, shaking her head.

“When?” Tim gasped out.

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Did anyone get hit?” Frank wondered.

“I don’t know.”

“You really don’t know much at all,” Carrie muttered, barely audibly.

Chartreuse spun to face the blonde. “THAT’S why I didn’t want to say anything! You don’t know what it was like to see even that much, Carrie. I mean, if you’d, like, seen someone you knew shooting a gun, could you ever look them in the eye again without thinking about that? I didn’t WANT to know more.” Never mind that even that much had overloaded her vision.

Carrie seemed surprised at Chartreuse’s reaction, causing the pink haired girl to bow her head. “I-I’m sorry, Carrie. I didn’t mean to, you know, snap at you like that.”

“No. It’s fine, I think I had that coming to me,” Carrie yielded after a second. She turned to Luci. “Before I say something else I shouldn’t, can we please GO already?”

The younger girl reluctantly pulled her gaze away from Chartreuse. “Okay. Yeah. I think all the secrets are out now,” she finished.

Except there was too much tension in the air for Chartreuse. “We five do make an odd group, don’t we?” she offered up to them. “Guess I’ll have to, like, change the name of the 2DEGS, huh? How about, er, the time trippers?” Everyone blinked at her.

“That makes it sound like we do temporal drugs,” Tim objected. Carrie snickered, and to Chartreuse’s relief, the others joined in.

“Okay,” Frank concluded, after he finished chuckling. “So, any technical details should be answerable in the steadily growing pile of notes me and Luci have been making.” He gestured towards them. “Chartreuse, Tim, feel free to glance over those while we’re gone.”

“Though we may be back before we leave,” Luci remarked.

Carrie plunked a present day nickel into the time machine device. “We won’t get BACK unless we GO,” she reminded, grabbing the handle.

With another nod, Frank grabbed for their backpack of supplies and moved to take hold of the handle too, right after Luci. On a count of three, they pulled, and Frank felt the temporal void sucking him in. The next thing he noticed were the bright headlights of a van bearing down on him, doing at least 30 kph.

By the time this fact fully registered with him, Frank barely had enough time left to process being in the middle of the road. He realized then that he wouldn’t even be able to cry out.

There was nothing he could do now, except get hit.

PART 22: LOCKER UP

“Chartreuse? Golly, Chartreuse, are you okay?”

The pink haired girl blinked her eyes open to see Laurie kneeling next to her. Laurie was holding her shoulder, and had been shaking her. Sunlight streamed in through the bedroom window. Chartreuse felt a shudder pass through her body.

“I’m… I’m okay,” Chartreuse murmured, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “I…” The memories of the previous night flooded back to her and her stomach wrenched. “Excuse me,” Chartreuse managed to get out, even as she stumbled to her feet and ran for the bathroom.

She emerged some minutes later, having cleaned herself up following a reencounter with the previous night’s dinner. “Chartreuse, I don’t think you’re okay," Laurie observed, moving to offer physical support.

Chartreuse smiled weakly. “Well, I will be. It was, you know, only a bad dream,” she assured.

Laurie frowned. “Don’t even. I saw your vision stones out on the floor, it was more than a dream, wasn’t it?"

“Golly, Chartreuse, it wasn’t a deep vision, you did, was it? I thought you’d given up doing real deep vision scans, aren’t they dangerous, didn’t you say something about them being dangerous or painful or something sometime?”

“It’s fine if you know what you’re doing,” Chartreuse soothed. “But yeah, it’s been a while - that’s probably why I’m having the bad reaction."

Laurie reached out to take Chartreuse’s hand, squeezing. “Are you sure that’s all? I mean, you didn’t see anything bad, did you?”

Chartreuse resisted the urge to collapse back to the floor, instead offering up a cheery smile. She couldn’t burden her friend with this. Not until she had more information.

“Nothing you need to worry about, Laurie. Come on, we should, you know, get ready for breakfast and school and stuff.”

“You SURE you’re sure…?”

Chartreuse nodded. “Your mom still make the best pancakes on the block?” Gesturing the way back to Laurie’s room, she followed her friend as the redhead launched into a soliloquy about the aforementioned pancakes.

Thank goodness Laurie seemed to be feeling better. It allowed Chartreuse to think about something else. Namely, the people who might be able to provide her with the necessary additional information.

“I d-don’t understand,” Tim murmured. “You’re worried about a locker?”

Chartreuse nodded. After taking a full day to think things over, she had called Luci and Tim on Monday evening, getting both of them to meet her in the school library before Tuesday classes. Where she had explained to them about her vision Sunday night. To a point.

The mere thought of the gun spooked her, so Chartreuse was holding out hope that they’d be able to avoid that outcome by playing the locker situation the right way. “A locker will be majorly important in the coming days, for sure,” Chartreuse reiterated.

Tim sighed.

Tim sighed. “I kind of thought this stuff would end after the d-dance.”

“Whose locker did you see?” Luci piped up.

“I don’t know,” Chartreuse admitted. “It’s never that easy to, you know, see details. But I’m betting that it’s either Julie’s or Carrie’s since they’re at, like, the centre of Corry’s wrath.”

Luci leaned forwards. “Well, from what I know of Corry, he would target Carrie first. There’s more signs pointing to her, and there’s some question as to whether Julie will even stick up for her friend. She’s staying tight lipped for the moment.”

“B-But Chartreuse didn’t see Carrie in the vision,” Tim put forth. “Only Corry and Julie. And if Julie was removing something from the locker, it could have been hers.”

Chartreuse began rolling one of her crystals between her fingers, trying to keep her mind focused. “I don’t know if there’s any way to tell,” she sighed. “There’s also the question of whether Julie was removing the same thing Corry stuck in. I think so? But I’m not sure.”

“Which raises the question of what was left for the teacher to find,” Luci remarked.

“Isn’t there anything you can say for sure?” Tim wondered.

Chartreuse bobbed her head. “Oh yeah! I’m sure we’re heading for, like, real deep, dark places… so is there any way we could all, you know, secretly ask around? Or at least keep an eye on both lockers for the rest of this week?” She smiled hopefully.

Tim ran a hand back through his blonde curls. “If w-we know this stuff, w-why not confront Julie or Corry with it? Get them to stop that w-way?”

“They’d simply change their strategy if we called them out,” Luci objected. “Julie in particular seems to have lots of backup plans in place. To the point where the dance outcome might have been inevitable.”

“We cannot lose our advantage,” Chartreuse agreed. “So we’ve gotta be, like, sneaky, sorta. But… Tim’s right. This is turning into a longer term commitment. Totally not my original deal. So, if either of you want to cut out here, that’s, you know, all right.” Chartreuse tried to keep the disappointment out of her tone; she had the feeling she was less than successful.

Luci and Tim exchanged a glance. “Well,” Luci began, “I’m willing to continue on. Except…” Her face clouded. “Carrie had a falling out with Frank over the weekend. He told me he tried calling her last night, and she wouldn’t even take the call. So I’m not sure I’ll be as much help as you originally thought.”

Chartreuse nodded, eyeing the soothing sparkles within her crystal. “Well, your input will still be, you know, valuable,” she said with a sigh. “I mean, it’s not your fault that Carrie gets like that.” When Luci’s face clouded even more, Chartreuse shifted her attention to Tim. “How about you?”

Tim squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. “I-I-I’m not used to groups,” he explained. “But if this is really as important as you say… I guess I can keep helping out.”

Chartreuse smiled. “Thanks guys. If we stick together, I know we can beat this! Or, you know, minimize the damage.” She reached out her hand towards the others in imitation of her gesture from Friday. “Here’s to us then, the 2DEGS. Still together.”

Luci placed her palm on top of Chartreuse’s. Tim hesitated. “There’s… maybe one more thing,” he said.

Chartreuse withdrew her hand. “What is it, Tim?”

“A-At the dance…” He stopped. “You’ll think I’m nuts.”

“No, we won’t,” Chartreuse assured. “I mean, hey, you’re talking to someone who reads auras and sees the future. I’m, like, as nuts as you get!” She winked at him.

Tim smiled weakly. “I guess. Except, wait, I d-don’t mean you’re…” He sighed. “But fine. Know when everyone’s attention was drawn to that blow out between Corry and Carrie at the dance? Well, I was trying NOT to look… and so I swear I saw Carrie slipping out of the cafeteria, over by the stage."

“What, you mean, like, after they argued?”

“No. During,” Tim explained. “As if there were two Carries there. Dressed differently. Which I KNOW sounds nuts and I wouldn’t even bring it up - except Clarke told me that something like that happened to him a few weeks ago." Tim paused again.

“He did?” Chartreuse prompted.

Tim bit his lip. “Promise not to tell this to anyone else?”

Chartreuse nodded, then glanced over towards Luci, who was still frowning. Off a gentle nudge with her elbow, Luci nodded too.

“Well, as I say, this was a couple weeks back,” Tim continued. “Clarke went to the drug store for me on his lunch, to pick up some over the counter medication. While there, he ran into Carrie, looking sick. Yet at the same time, Carrie was apparently also having lunch here in the cafeteria, and was not sick.”

“So there’s been two cases of two Carries,” Chartreuse summarized.

Tim nodded. “Clarke thought he had made a mistake, and he told me not to mention it to anyone else after having had some conversation with Julie. I’d even forgotten about it until what I saw Friday. I only mention it now in case it’s important for your… your apocalypse thing. So don’t tell anyone else, please? I don’t want Clarke to be in trouble.”

Chartreuse smiled again. “Your secret’s safe with this group.” She turned to Luci. “What do you make of that?” Their youngest member remained silent. “Luci?”

“Oh! Sorry,” Luci apologized, squirming in her chair. “Well, um, it could be someone’s dressing up like a duplicate to cause mischief? I agree that not saying anything is by far the wisest course.”

Chartreuse nodded. “Okay. Let’s all keep our eyes peeled then yeah?” She repeated her earlier hand motion, and this time the three of them touched palms.

The next couple of days passed without incident. Chartreuse was on pins and needles throughout. She had seen Julie go into Carrie’s locker a couple of times, while Luci had observed Corry fiddling with the lock on Julie’s locker the other day.

By Thursday morning, Chartreuse was trying to use logic: If Corry was going to strike against someone this week, he would wait until Friday, to avoid the chance of immediate retaliation. Meaning he would hit Thursday if they thought he’d be waiting until Friday! Or did that mean nothing would happen until next Monday?

Damn it, last time she’d known the when but not the what, this time she knew the what but not the when! She could hardly find out through Laurie either, since Laurie was still innocent of all the goings on, bless her heart.

At least the gossip around the school with regards to the dance had started dying down, with more suspicions having been directed towards Corry than Carrie. Even less so towards Julie, perhaps due to the brunette saying relatively little. Chartreuse and the 2DEGs had to nip this madness in the bud.

It was last period on Thursday when Chartreuse spotted two fingers waving frantically from beside the door frame of the music room. The group symbol she’d thought up.

The funny honking noise that came out of Chartreuse’s clarinet at the sight was enough to attract the attention of their instructor. “Mrs. Willis,” Chartreuse said quickly. “I, like, need to get another reed from my locker.”

Their music teacher glanced at the clock. “The school day’s almost over, Chartreuse. Don’t worry about it.”

“I really need, er, at least a drink though, you know?” Chartreuse countered, coughing.

“Oh, very well,” Mrs. Willis sighed.

Chartreuse hurried out the door, pretending to go for the fountain. “Tim? What’s going on?” she muttered as she spotted him. They moved a bit further down the hall.

“I’m cutting class,” Tim replied, looking troubled. “I’m supposed to be in Geography. Clarke’s probably wondering if anything’s happened to me by now.”

“Tim! Is this, like, something to do with the locker?” Chartreuse pressed.

She now recalled that, at the beginning of the music period, Corry had needed to return to his locker to get his music. Of course, a perfect opportunity! All Chartreuse could say in her defence was that apparently Luci, who was also in their class, hadn’t picked up on his action either.

Tim nodded in reply. “Yeah. I noticed Julie was out of class for at least fifteen minutes at one point. It occurred to me that maybe she knew something, so I figured why not, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and went by both Carrie and Julie’s lockers. Just to see. One of the science teachers was at Carrie’s, and as I went by I saw him take something out of it.” Tim shifted his weight back and forth uneasily.

“Nuts,” Chartreuse cursed. “Then we’ve missed it. Did you at least notice what the something was?”

Tim nodded again. “Mr. Fisk tried to hide it from me and g-got upset that I was in the hallways between class, but I saw. It… it was a little bag of drugs, Chartreuse. Like, an assortment of p-prescription medications.”

Chartreuse felt her throat go truly dry. “Dear God,” she whispered.  “What are we going to do about that?”

The public address system came on with closing announcements for the day. The very first one was a request for Carrie Waterson and Julie LaMille to come to the principal’s office immediately. Tim bit his lip. “Apparently, nothing,” he observed.

“I wonder what the hell this is about,” Carrie groused to Julie as the two of them walked to the office. “Do you think it’s Corry’s doing?”

“Yes. I do.”

Something in Julie’s tone made Carrie stop in her tracks and turn towards her friend. “Julie… you know what’s going on here?”

“Yes. I do.”

Carrie frowned slightly. “Well, care to let me in on things before we face ol' Hunt?”

Julie stopped a few paces away and turned back to face Carrie. Her eyes were cold and unfeeling. “No. I don’t,” she said simply.

Carrie felt a shudder run down her back. She forced out a smile. “Uh, Julie? You’re kinda unnerving me here.”

Julie didn’t bat an eyelash. “Yes. I am.”

Carrie visibly flinched. “Julie, what’s going on? I thought things were getting back to normal between us.”

“Yes. You did.”

“Damn it, will you stop that?”

“Stop what?”

“You know what! Speaking so… so terse and ominously. What’s going on? What’s about to happen?”

Julie appeared to size up Carrie for a moment. “Let me tell you a story, Carrie,” she began slowly. “There was once a very powerful wizard. This wizard had an apprentice.”

“Julie…”

“One day,” Julie continued undaunted, “the apprentice was tempted away from the wizard’s castle. However, the girl quickly realized the error of her ways and returned, seeking the wizard’s forgiveness. The wizard, being a kind sort, took the apprentice back in.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” Carrie offered. She attempted to follow up her comment with a laugh but the intensity behind Julie’s stare caused the noise to die in her throat.

“No,” Julie stated. “The apprentice then stabbed the wizard in the back, deciding she’d really preferred that other way of life after all. Demonstrating the true danger of trust, and the folly of the wizard in not striking first.”

Julie took a deep breath. “Carrie, you’ve changed. You will get no help from me in this affair against Corry. It’s really a pity you weren’t more up front with me from the very beginning.”

“Julie, this isn’t funny.”

“No. It’s not.”

“STOP THAT!”

“Hey, pipe down in the hall please, the bell hasn’t quite rung yet,” came the annoyed voice of a teacher, poking his head out of a nearby classroom.

“We’re moving on,” Julie assured, spinning on her heel and continuing towards the office.

“Julie… Julie, wait, you were called to the office too,” Carrie pointed out, hurrying to catch up. “You’ve also been targeted. What are you going to do about that?”

“Nothing. I’ve been called in due to a slightly different personal matter.”

“You sound awful sure of that.”

“Yes. I am.”

The corners of her mouth turned up.

The chill Carrie felt seemed to be taking up permanent residence inside her. “You knew what Corry would do,” she realized. “And you were never going to help me get out of it.”

Julie said nothing.

“For how long have you felt this way towards me, Julie, since Sunday? Longer? Why, Julie? We’ve been friends for two years. Why are you ending it this way, why didn’t you just tell me it was over on the weekend??”

Julie merely kept walking, so Carrie reached out to grab her by the arm. “Damn it, Julie, I deserve an answer!”

Julie turned, and something about her stance made Carrie not only release the brunette but take a physical step back. “If you must know,” Julie said coolly, “The reasoning was simple.” The corners of her mouth turned up. “Doing it this way allows me to see the priceless expression you’ve got on your face.”

The bell rang signifying the end of the school day.

“What’s going on, Corry?” Luci said, peering at him as the two of them finished cleaning and putting away their flutes. “Are you responsible for Carrie and Julie being called to the office?”

There had to be something amiss, given how Chartreuse had yet to return from her supposed drink.

Corry smirked. “What business is that of yours?” he retorted. Luci opened her mouth to reply, but Corry cut her off with a wave of his hand. “I’m not saying anything. Word about this stuff always gets out, you’ll have to wait along with everyone else.” Luci frowned as he turned his back to her.

Continuing to ignore her, Corry closed the case on his instrument, gathered up his music and books, headed for the door, and in his continued efforts to avoid her gaze, managed to trip over Lee’s music stand. Luci then allowed herself a small smile.

Carrie was summoned into the principal’s office first, as Julie took a seat outside. The blonde knew Mr. Hunt’s reputation for being both fair and compassionate, but there was also a strict side to his personality. His strict face was firmly in place as Carrie sat down across from him.

“Ms. Waterson,” he began, folding his hands upon his desk. “A matter of some importance has been brought to my attention. First, I must inform you that a search was performed upon your locker. It is school property, as per the agreement listed in your agenda.”

Still feeling a bit numb from her discussion with Julie, Carrie simply nodded.

“That said, is there anything you would like to tell me?”

“Uh… I’ve been set up?” Carrie ventured.

The corners of the principal’s mouth twitched. “Do you know what was found?” he asked. Carrie shook her head, so he reached into the drawer of his desk, produced a small plastic bag, and set it down. Her eyes widened.

“Now, I know of no medical condition which requires you to have any one of these pills with you, let alone a mix like this. That said, it appears that there are no substances in there which are actually illegal. So while I am obligated to inform the school’s police liaison and guidance counsellor, there is still a chance we can resolve this matter internally. You have one chance to explain how these came to be in your possession. I suggest you use it to tell the truth.”

“Sir,” Carrie said, mind spinning. “I swear to you that I have never seen that bag before.”

Mr. Hunt leaned forwards. “Ms. Waterson, I want to help you here. But unless you tell me the truth…”

“Honest, the stuff isn’t mine, sir! I think it was planted there by–” Carrie caught herself in time. If it was indeed Corry’s doing, he was sure to have some way of dissociating himself from the act. And finger pointing would only make things worse for her among her peers.

“Planted?”

“Never mind, sir.” She straightened her posture and looked the principal right in the eye, trying to keep her body from shaking. “But I swear to you that those pills are not mine. I don’t know how they got into my locker.”

Mr. Hunt regarded Carrie silently for a moment. “I’m not sure why, but I’m inclined to believe you,” he remarked. “Nevertheless, this is a very serious matter, particularly in light of what took place at last week’s dance. Another event in which you had some involvement, as I recall?”

Carrie could only nod. “So, I cannot allow you to go unpunished,” the principal concluded. “You are definitively facing detention, and probably a suspension - unless some better explanation is forthcoming?”

Carrie slumped back in her chair. She wished she could think of something more to say. Then again, what was the use? Her life had essentially collapsed down into nothing. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to slam her fist through a wall, wring both Corry and Julie’s necks, or simply crawl into a hole and die.

“Well then,” Mr. Hunt concluded. “If you have nothing further to add, I regret to inform…” He paused as there was a commotion outside, resulting in Chartreuse bursting through the door to his office.

“Sir,” the pink haired girl said breathlessly. “It’s my fault, Mr. Hunt, sir! The drugs you found in Carrie’s locker, they’re not her’s - they’re mine.”

Both Carrie and the principal blinked back at Chartreuse, expressions of surprise and confusion upon their faces.

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 17: OBSERVER EFFECT

In a corner of the high school’s library sat a young girl with short, dark hair, alongside a slightly older, more heavyset girl with bright pink hair done up in braids and bows. Neither spoke. Until the former finally looked up from her book. “Maybe he’s not coming?”

“He’ll be here,” Chartreuse assured, holding a small crystal up to the light. Luci merely shook her head and resumed her reading. After all, there was still a good twenty minutes left in their lunch, it might as well be productive.

About five minutes later, a sad-looking blonde student entered the library, hesitated, then walked up to the two girls. Both looked up at him expectantly.

“I-I-I-It…” The boy paused to clear his throat. “It’s tonight. Julie’s making her move tonight at the d-dance.”

“Excellent,” Chartreuse declared, slapping her palm against the table with enough force to make Luci jump. “This means we can be, like, ready for her.”

“How so?” Luci objected. “I already speculated on Julie taking some action at the dance when you came to me last weekend. All Tim’s done is confirm it. We still don’t know WHAT she’s doing. Unless you have additional information?” she asked, looking back at the blonde boy.

”…stop giving off these negative vibes."

Chartreuse sighed. “Luci, you’ve got to stop giving off these negative vibes,” she observed. “Otherwise it’ll be real difficult to function as a unit here, you know?”

“All I’m saying is there’s no way to be ready,” Luci said defensively. “I mean, we weren’t ready on Tuesday when Corry started up that rumour that Julie carries a teddy bear around with her.”

“But we couldn’t, like, anticipate that one,” Chartreuse protested. “I mean, who knew that Julie would leave a stuffed animal in her backpack where Corry could see it?”

“B-But isn’t that the kinda thing you normally foresee?” Tim broke in. “Using your, um, psychic abilities?”

Chartreuse shook her head, starting to absently roll the crystal she was holding around in her hand. “My visions don’t work like that," she explained. “Not unless I, like, get into serious meditation. I usually just get impressions from people. Like how I did from Corry last Saturday.”

“An impression relating to an upcoming ‘war’,” Luci remarked dryly.

“Look, I was visiting Laurie, brushed by her brother in the hallway, and POW!” Chartreuse made an expressive hand gesture to demonstrate. “There it was, this, you know, real bad sensation relating to him, Julie and Carrie.”

“Corry and Julie have never gotten along.”

“Luci, this was more than that,” Chartreuse insisted, genuine fear creeping into her voice. “I mean, Julie and Carrie have NEVER been at odds, yet that was there too! I wish I could be more specific, but I can’t. It was like, whoa, we’re coming to a crossroads here, and if we don’t do anything, the consequences could be disastrous. War is, you know, the only way I can think to describe it.” She slapped the table again. “Trust me, it’s up to the three of us to do something to prevent that scenario!”

Luci took a moment to reflect. She would have written it off as stupid mystic mumbo-jumbo by Chartreuse - if it weren’t for the fact that, due to the time machine, she had been paying additional attention to Carrie. Some of what Chartreuse was saying had a ring of truth to it.

The Julie-Carrie relationship was being strained. Exactly the sort of thing that Corry Veniti would take advantage of. For that matter, the teddy bear situation this week had been uncharacteristically sloppy of Julie. Was it due to distraction? Had it been a harbinger of things to come? Would today’s dance truly be a turning point?

“W-Why us?” Tim asked, breaking Luci’s concentration.

“Oh, that was laid out in the stars,” said Chartreuse brightly, the fear in her voice vanishing. “After all, I’m friends with Laurie, who’s Corry’s sister. Tim, you’re friends with Clarke, who’s close to Julie, sorta. And Carrie, well, she never sticks around anyone for more than a month… but I heard last week that Frank was, you know, helping her with some math, and Luci, you’ve also studied with Frank, so you might come across something. That makes us the two degrees of separation group!”

Chartreuse paused. “Hey, that’s kind of a neat name. Maybe we should, like, make it an official club. Even create a logo?”

“B-But surely others would be a better choice.”

Chartreuse shook her head. “Tim, don’t look so worried. We can hang out naturally, because we’re all in the same homeroom. Also, you two are, you know, pretty inconspicuous normally, so…. Oh! How about 2DEGS as a passcode or something?”

“We’re straying from the point,” Luci observed.

“Right,” Chartreuse said, switching tracks without missing a beat. “So, we now know positively that Julie’s gonna do something tonight at the dance. Which will involve Corry. Or Carrie. Actually, I bet both of them. To stop it, we’ll make casual inquiries while we’re there, keep an eye out, and above all keep calm so that we can head this thing off at the pass.”

Luci frowned. “I won’t be at the dance,” she objected. “They’re… not my thing.”

Besides, she’d had some hopes of being able to look more into the time machine situation at Frank’s house. She felt like they were making progress with the new circuitry.

“I wasn’t going to go either,” Tim chimed in quietly.

Chartreuse’s face fell. “Guys… I, like, totally need you there. The school needs you there! And I mean, how about your friends, Clarke, and Frank? You don’t want them getting, you know, dragged into the coming apocalypse, do you?”

Luci rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. Chartreuse was visibly overdramatizing. And yet… there was still that ring of truth. What was Julie really up to? For that matter, observing Julie a bit more at the dance might be helpful for Frank.

The short-haired girl bit her lower lip and exchanged a quick glance with Tim. His expression implied that he was leaving the decision up to her. “I… the dance starts at 8, right?” Luci said in resignation.

Chartreuse beamed. “That’s the spirit. Whatever Julie has in mind, she can’t have factored in the actions of the 2DEGS!”

She thrust her hand out enthusiastically towards her companions. Off of her expectant look, they placed their palms on top of hers. “Go team!” Chartreuse said cheerily.

“Go Team!” cheered Carrie along with others from her squad. “Defense, defense, take that ball away.”

The point was almost moot. Even if they could get the ball back, it was unlikely that they’d be able to score the necessary 10 points for a win in the last two minutes of the game. But hey, there was something to be said for enthusiasm, particularly on away games. Carrie even wagered that her handful of members was doing a better job than the home squad; certainly their uniforms were better.

“Will we be doing another lift?” inquired the boy next to her.

Carrie shook her head. “Nah, no point, Steve. Things are winding down and we don’t want to show up the home team TOO much, do we?” She winked.

Steve fired back a grin of his own. “I guess not. Good thing for their sake that we didn’t bring a full complement.”

Carrie nodded. It was fortunate that a couple of their guys had been able to make it out here, they were involved in a few of the best routines. ‘I wonder what their incentive was?' Carrie thought to herself with a smirk, raising a hand to her hip and shifting her weight to make it jut out saucily.

She wondered if Steve was still watching her. It occurred to her that if he was, he was probably thinking that she was behaving like mere eye candy. That thought irritated her. She was more than that, right?

Sure. She was also egotistical, needing to have everything go her way. Carrie resumed her prior position, feeling betrayed by her own thoughts. What the hell was wrong with her lately? She had to stop talking with Frank. Except she couldn’t do that; she needed him.

It was a weird feeling, that need. Being popular, she’d seen people within cliques as being interchangeable. There had been no need to focus on the individuals, beyond what they could do for her. After all, no one had ever cared about her, so why should she do more than pretend to care about anyone else in turn?

Now, because of the time machine, it wasn’t like that any more. She needed Frank.

Carrie grimaced. The more she thought about her situation, the more she hated thinking about her situation. So when the final game whistle blew, she shunted those thoughts to the back of her mind.

Sure enough, their team had lost another one; Coach Masterson would be beside himself. As the players gathered together for a post-game briefing or whatever it was they did, Carrie motioned for her small squad to join the other spectators from their school, returning to their chartered bus.

Their bus was separate from the one the football team used; it was funded through selling tickets to interested fans and spectators, with the incentive being a chance to root for their team, as well as get out of last period class. Granted, the bus hadn’t been completely filled, however, Julie had indicated to both Carrie and the athletic department that she could pick up some of the slack, if necessary. It was handy having a rich friend on your side.

The voice in her head poked at her again. And what was the deal with Julie? She’d been acting different this past week. Their lunchtime conversations had changed in tone. Carrie was doing most of the talking, and that hadn’t always been the case. Had it?

Then there was the whole teddy bear thing. Carrie was certain that Julie had never carried such a stuffed animal with her, and had decried Corry’s claims of such. Yet Julie had hardly reacted at all to the accusation, and she’d only allowed a visible inspection of her backpack the day AFTER the incident. What was the deal? Was Julie up to something?

‘Stop overreacting,’ Carrie ordered herself. ‘Anyway, Julie’s mood will improve after I’ve passed on her suggestion.’

Taking a seat near the front of the bus, Carrie waved off a couple of requests by people to sit next to her, instead motioning to a member of her cheerleading squad who was the same age.

The girl with shoulder-length red hair and freckles turned to look behind herself in confusion as Carrie beckoned. It took another few seconds for Laurie to realize that, yes, Carrie had indeed meant her. The redhead finally slid into the seat next to the head cheerleader.

“You really want me to sit here next to you?” Laurie asked in breathless excitement. “Golly. I mean this is… golly.” She paused. “Wait, this isn’t about my brother and the teddy bear thing, is it? Because I don’t have any control over what Corry does he’s only my brother and besides he’s nice, he helps me out in school since as you well know I can’t wrap my head around math, especially when we get into those fractions I mean that stuff is so hard that I can’t…”

“Laurie, you’re babbling.”

Laurie blushed lightly. “Yes Captain, sorry Captain, I’ll shut up now,” she said quickly, dropping her eyes down to the floor. Her hands moved to play with the hem of her cheerleading skirt.

Carrie suppressed a sigh. In some sense, Laurie’s irritatingly perky and innocent demeanour was the perfect complement to her fraternal twin’s more sour, jaded outlook on life. Yet in another sense, Carrie couldn’t understand how the two siblings managed to live in the same house together.

“Laurie, I don’t want to talk to you about the whole bear thing,” Carrie assured. “But I do want to talk briefly about your brother.”

Laurie raised her eyes back up. “What about him?”

“I’ve heard that Corry’s been trying to start up some little ensemble band at school,” Carrie prompted.

“Oh, good golly, yes,” Laurie said, now nodding eagerly. “Of course he’s already in the regular band and the choir too but you don’t get to sing in the band or play in the choir, so he was thinking of trying to get some people interested in a small ensemble only there hasn’t been enough interest yet or not enough for Mrs. Willis to shell out any money for music, besides my brother mostly plays flute and keyboards so he obviously can’t be a one man band which is sort of a shame because I think it’s a really great idea, don’t you?”

Carrie could swear that, despite a semblance of commas, Laurie had never taken a breath through all that. The blonde stopped biting her tongue long enough to speak up again.

“Sure. In fact, hey, we’re having a dance tonight, right? Corry could use it to spark more interest in his ensemble, by singing a song or two.”

Laurie blinked. “Huh? I don’t follow.”

Carrie mentally added another checkmark next to the times she’d felt like physically shoving someone, but was able to resist. Fortunately, only a few choice people tended to bother her to that degree.

”If Corry were to sing a few songs at the dance,” Carrie explained patiently, “Others might be more interested in joining a band with him. Right?”

“Oh!” Laurie seemed to reflect on that. “That’s a pretty good idea,” she decided.

“Yes,” Carrie concluded, leaning back in her seat with a sigh. “I thought so.” Or rather, Julie had thought so, being the one to propose the plan.

Julie had indicated that, if Corry pulled off his whole ensemble thing, he would probably be too busy to bother her. Plus it would take attention away from the teddy bear rumours now circulating. That last seemed a bit optimistic, but Julie always seemed to know what she was doing, so Carrie wasn’t about to start second guessing now.

“I think I’ll mention that to my brother,” Laurie added brightly.

“You do that,” Carrie indicated.

“You’re all right, you know that?” Laurie continued. “I mean, sure, things got off to a rocky start between us, and some people around the school say nasty things, but golly, stories like that always get blown out of proportion, plus lots of the people are Corry’s friends so they only say mean things about you because you hang around with Julie so you can’t totally believe them. What I mean to say is I always knew that deep down you were an okay gal and I just want to say again I’m really pleased that you’re letting me sit next to you here, don’t think that I’m unaware of the honour involved!”

“Laurie…”

“Yes, Captain?”

“PLEASE stop babbling,” Carrie said, flexing her hands in restraint.

“Golly, sorry again, you’re right, I’ll do that, definitely I will, you just watch me now, here I go,” she affirmed, reaching once more for the hem of her skirt.

Carrie found herself praying that they would manage the rest of the trip home without further outbursts. ‘I think Julie owes me for this favour,’ she reflected. ‘She reeeeeeeally owes me for this one.’

The dart flew through the air, striking Julie between the eyes. Or that’s where it hit in Corry’s mind anyway, as he’d mentally projected her smirking face onto the dart board.

“What. Is. Your. Deal?” he muttered for what felt like the thousandth time since their first encounter.

Corry reached up to brush some of his shoulder-length red hair back off his ear. He preferred to keep it the same length and style as his sister, not because of any real concession to them being twins, so much as the occasional confusion (and amusement) it afforded him when one of them was viewed from behind.

He could still remember the time last year when that football player had been incessantly hitting on Laurie. No one did that to his sister. So, Corry had given the guy the opportunity to corner her for a date - only to discover in the moment that he’d cornered Corry instead.

Corry smiled. He had engineered that flawlessly, and the expression on the guy’s face when he’d discovered the switch had been priceless. The date hadn’t been bad either, if you liked that sort of thing. Not that Corry swung that way, but a deal was a deal - he hadn’t let the guy squirm his way out of the invitation.

If only Julie was as easy to manipulate.

Julie. Corry flung another dart at the board. The girl who required that everything work out HER way. Such arrogance! Of course, the real annoying thing was how Corry rather preferred to have things go HIS way. But not all the time, like her. Only half the time. Maybe up to three quarters of the time. Then occasionally 90% of the time.

Corry grimaced. Fine. Maybe he’d taken that initial dislike to Julie because he’d sensed some of his more questionable qualities in her. He threw his final dart.

His bedroom door opened and his sister stuck her head in, knocking as she did so. “Laurie!” Corry shouted out in warning.

The redheaded girl flinched as the dart whistled by her face and embedded itself in the dartboard hanging by the doorframe. “Golly,” she remarked, peering at the dart’s final resting place with a stunned look.

Corry exhaled. “Damn it little sis, how many times do I have to tell you, knock first, THEN open the door, not both at the same time?”

Laurie looked back at her brother. “It wasn’t locked,” she replied petulantly. “And don’t get into the little sister thing with me again. You’re only two minutes older.”

Corry rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine,” he grumbled. He didn’t really feel like arguing. He moved to retrieve his darts, deciding to find a better place for the board. “Then what’s so all fired important that you felt it risked putting an eye out?”

She briefly - or briefly for his sister…

“Oh, it’s a great idea concerning the dance and your proposed band ensemble,” Laurie said, clasping her hands. She briefly - or briefly for his sister - outlined the idea, and it’s origins.

“I see,” Corry responded dubiously. “So Carrie mentioned this, did she? She wouldn’t do that for no reason. Did Julie factor into it?”

“I didn’t think to ask,” Laurie realized. She frowned marginally. “Julie can’t be up to something involving you again, can she?”

“I don’t know,” Corry admitted. The main reason Julie was on his mind now was due to the ‘teddy bear affair’; she might want to get back at him for it. Corry supposed he could have employed a little more tact and restraint in his remarks. But damn, taking Julie down a peg or two this week had sure felt good.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come to the dance tonight,” Corry decided. “If she is up to anything, I don’t want you involved.”

“Aw, geez, Corryyyyyy,” Laurie protested. “It’s the first dance of the school year and the first major social event not counting Julie’s party which we can’t really count seeing as we weren’t invited, plus Chartreuse is expecting me there and I recently got this cool new pair of shoes that I was planning to wear, besides I can take care of myself so just because YOUR silly feuds are hinting at trouble it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to go and have a good time.”

“Okay, okay, enough already,” Corry said, raising his hands in resignation. “Do whatever you like then, see if I care!” Julie wouldn’t stoop so low as to use his sister against him anyway. He was getting paranoid.

Laurie hmmphed and turned away, though she turned back a moment later. “So, will you sing at tonight’s dance?”

Corry pursed his lips. “I’m not sure,” he concluded, looking down at the dart in his fingers. “I’ll decide when I get there.”

In a dark basement room, the final touches were put on a small device, before it was slipped into a jacket pocket. The device’s owner smiled. So far, everything seemed to be going according to plan.