Thursday, December 31, 2015

Juncture 4.5


I was woken up in the middle of the night by an odd rumbling. I swung my legs over the side of the cot I had been sleeping on and leaned down to feel the ground. The dirt floor was shaking softly, and dirt particles flung their way onto my fingertips.

Something was going to happen. As I rose back up, a sense of doom balled up and sunk deep into my gut. I looked for Jake, but he wasn’t in the room. The shaking stopped for a second, long enough for my wariness to go down. I relaxed – and it began again, harder than before.

I went over to the window. Maybe there was some event going on outside that I didn’t know about. Looking out, I was surprised at how bright it was. A weird, dull, red light was emanating from dark cloud cover over the city.

I blinked.

Red light, in the middle of the night.

Rumbling ground.

Rome.

Ancient Rome.

It clicked.

“Pompeii,” I whispered to myself. Then I began getting dressed as fast as I could. While I was tying up my sandal I tripped and fell, losing precious seconds and almost landing on my sword.

I ran out of the room into the lobby of the inn. It was completely empty, and I exited as fast as I could.

Just outside of the entrance was Jake, still wearing the heavy grey cloak; that in the light looked more maroon than anything else. He was looking up in the direction of the red light, and as I got nearer I saw that he was holding his ornate porcelain mask rather than wearing it.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted as I ran up to him. He turned around, a look of surprise on his face. “There’s a volcano and it’s gonna explode and... kill… everyone here.” The realization hit me like a truck. “Is that why we were sent here? Are we going to save people?”

Jake sighed. “No, we’re not, but you are right about the volcano. It’s going to explode in a day and a half, and we have that much time to get what we need. Namely, there’s a bunch of scrolls somewhere in this city that are apparently extremely pertinent to the organization—“

“What scrolls?” I interrupted. It was apparently hard to get Jake to talk, but he was incredibly long-winded when he did. That was surprising.

“I’m not sure exactly, but I have an idea of what they are.” He turned toward me. “Let’s say that you were given a long mission in a different time-period than your own. While you’re there, you get attacked, and lose track of your time machine. You also lose your memories. But after that, you’re plagued with memories of your past, or the future from where you’re at now.”

“Suddenly, things that you dreamed about start happening. Maybe you remember that you were supposed to save somebody, and they die. You can see the future. You’re a prophet. Naturally, you start telling people about these visions.”

“In Rome, people took prophecies seriously. They had the Oracle of Delphi. They had the Fates. And they had the Sybils. So I believe that the original Sybil - the one that the position was named after – was an OST agent.”

I nodded. It made a grim sort of sense. “So… how are we supposed to find these scrolls, if that is what they are? Wouldn’t they be in a library or a museum or something?”

“They might have been if the Sybil had any sense to share them, but from what I could tell, and what I’ve gleaned from the people at the OST, she wasn’t all too careful. There’s almost definitely a shrine or a temple or some religious site that the scrolls are kept at. When morning comes, we’ll just ask around for it.”

“I guess that sounds like a plan. Are you sure about the volcano?” I asked. I was terrified that he wasn’t right about when it was going to blow, and I didn’t want to get stuck here when it did.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” was his response.

“Okay, I’m gonna head back to sleep then. We’ll start looking in the morning, yeah?”

“Yup.” With that, he turned around and looked up at the sky again, and I was left to wearily go back to the inn. I swayed my way through the foyer, almost missing the small child staring at me with wide, brown eyes.

He looked to be about five, wearing a large shirt-like thing that was belted at the waist and hung down around his ankles. I stopped in my tracks, and we both stared at each other for several seconds. Then he whispered something I didn’t understand. I blinked rapidly.

“Um… no speak Latin?” I tried. The kid looked at me and babbled some more. No dice. I shrugged, pointed at him, pointed at my ear, and shook my head. He said something else and waited for me to respond, when I didn’t he walked away, up the stairs.

I went back to the room that I had been occupying earlier and started the tedious process of untying the stringy sandals. When I finished I laid myself back down on the bed.

I hadn’t realized just how scratchy it was when I had gone to sleep before, but I noticed its scratchy nature now. I turned onto my side – it helped a bit.

I closed my eyes, trying to go to sleep. It didn’t work. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, probably at least until I was far, far away from here.

I spent the rest of the night thinking about what could go wrong.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Juncture 4.4


The next morning, Jake and I walked out of the office into the blustery yellow day, seventy years or so before the Common Era. I was decked out in Roman military garb, dull metal armor covering my head, arms, legs, and chest, and heavy cloth over the rest of my body. Avice had handed it to me, and when I had complained about its lack of shine, she had impatiently informed me that the armor was dull and pockmarked because it had been in several real wars, and she knew it was trustworthy.

I also had a short sword and small shield strapped to my arm. I felt pretty cool, standing there, looking the part.

Jake got the worse end of the deal. Since he had obvious malformations, we had to keep him hidden. He was wearing a heavy grey robe, complete with hood and cowl. Underneath that, he was wearing a mask which he had apparently designed himself. It looked like the traditional happy jesters mask, made of white porcelain with carved swirls and sigils coursing over the surface. The difference between this and other jester masks was that while half of the face looked happy, with the smile and up-curved eye, the other half had inverted these details, making that side look depressed.

If I was forced to describe what he looked like, I would have had to say that he looked like some sort of evil alchemist.

It was pretty cool, but not as cool as my outfit, in my esteemed opinion. We made a pretty neat-looking team though.

Anyway. We emerged in a yellow-grassed field underneath a colossal marble waterway. Jake looked up, looked at me, pointed toward the aqueduct, and said “We should follow it.” They were the first words that he had said to me the whole day, and they were good ones.

We began travelling. After about ten minutes of following the waterway and appreciating the scenery, a city appeared, just past a hill that had been keeping it hidden in the distance.

I looked at Jake, he looked back at me. We both nodded, and kept walking in silence.

By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, the sun had dipped, obscuring itself behind the city we were heading toward. From where we were facing, the sun was a deep orange, almost red. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, my stomach was grumbling hard enough to distract me, and I couldn’t focus.

We had been walking for the better part of three hours, and I was both bored and starving. The heavy armor I was wearing made every step difficult, and I was pretty sure I had gotten dehydrated. Jake looked none the worse for our journey, but again, it was hard to tell underneath the mask and the robe.

We reached a large, open, wrought-iron gate. Two guards, wearing similar clothes to what I had on were stationed in front of it. They were both wearing short scarf-cape things that draped over one shoulder. One of them yelled out something that I didn’t understand.

Right, Latin. It had completely slipped my mind that the people wouldn’t speak English here. I kept my mouth shut.

As I was worrying about what to do, Jake stepped forward and said something that sounded similar to what the guard had shouted. In the midst of the language I heard him say my name and gesture at me. The guards nodded and stepped aside, lowering their spears. Jake stepped through, and I followed.

“What was that!” I hissed at him when I caught up, matching my pace to his. He kept walking briskly, forcing me to half-skip, half jog in order to keep speed with him.

“I’ve got an earpiece connected up to a translator,” Jake whispered back at me, his voice muffled slightly beneath the mask, “It hears what they’re saying and tells me what to say.” He stopped for a second and cocked his head slightly to the left. “Did you not get one?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I guess Siegfried or Dierdre or whoever only wanted one of us to be able to talk to them.”

“Well I agree with their decision.” Jake replied. “This way the person who has the translator will be able to take control of the mission in case anything goes wrong.”

I grumbled something about mutiny, but didn’t respond. Instead, I asked “So, what are we looking for, exactly? I wasn’t told, apart from that it’s pretty important.”

Jake was quiet for a minute, thinking to himself. Then; “I think it’d be better if I didn’t tell you right now. There’s no real reason that you need to know, and you might compromise the mission. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why you weren’t told what it was before now.”

“That’s bull. What, do you think I’m going to have some sort of objection to whatever it is we’re grabbing?” I asked, irate.

“Probably, yeah. Look, just wait a bit. You’ll figure out what it is soon enough. Meanwhile, we need to find somewhere to stay the night. We’ll get what we need tomorrow. Look around for an inn or something.”

“Alright. I need something to eat, too, I’m starving.” I said.

Soon after we found an inn and bought a room with money that Jake had in a pouch. Luckily for me, the inn also had a bar-type place, and when Jake went up to the room I ordered us two meals. I sat down at a table and waited.

The meal I got was the best I had ever eaten. It began with a large wooden bowl of stew, silky with large chunks of meat. I was also given a heel of bread to mop up the liquid with. The next course was just a large chunk of meat settled nicely on a plate next to a mound of crispy potatoes. I spent upwards of an hour eating that meal, and I heavily debated walking back to the office just to come back here and eat it again.

I was incredibly satisfied when I went to sleep that night.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Juncture 4.3


“Sandra and Kenneth,

I’m leaving. I know that writing it like this isn’t such a good way to tell you, but I don’t want to have to deal with telling you. This is easier.

I know that I haven’t always been the best. I’m no good in school, and I don’t enjoy being at home. There’s no reason for me to stay here. I think I can do better somewhere else.

I’m taking all of my stuff, too.

So tell Ron that I said goodbye. I’m going to miss him.

Don’t look for me.

-Marc”

I finished writing the letter, folded it and left it on my bed. That left me with the issue of how to get out of the house without Sandra or Kenneth noticing. I could wait until they both fell asleep, but that could be hours from now.

I looked around the room for something that would facilitate my escape. I was greeted with the sight of exactly nothing useful. There was the normal crap that I had decided not to take, like the sheets on my bed, a pillow, and some really old coloring books.

I walked over to the closed window across the room from my bed. With some grunting, I managed to wrench it open. It squealed sharply as it rose and stuck in place. A fine mist started wafting into the room from outside, but it had apparently stopped raining. That was nice, at least I wouldn’t get soaked during my daring escape.

I looked down – the fall wasn’t that bad, maybe ten or fifteen feet to the ground. I took the bag I had, pushed it through the window’s small opening and held it above the ground.

I dropped it. As the bag slid from my fingers I realized that it might make a noise when it landed. I held my breath waiting to hear the impact-

-and there was a soft thud from the bag landing. I let my breath out in a soft hiss. I was next. I swung one leg up and through the window, then the other one right after it. Inside, I held myself up with my hands as my feet searched for a hold or grip anywhere on the side of the house.

Aha! My left foot had found a crack in the wall and managed to stick. I pushed down, supporting my weight on the crack. I grabbed the sill and slowly lowered myself until I was holding myself up by it entirely.

I looked down – somehow, the fall to the ground seemed longer than it was when I was inside. There wasn’t much that I could do about that now though. I prepared to let go when there was a snapping sound.

I dropped fast. Before I had time to react I hit the ground feet-first. My legs buckled and I fell backward, rolling for a good five feet. I laid on the ground for a couple of seconds, groaned, and got back up. If I had been inconspicuous before, someone was sure to have heard the sharp crack when I fell.

I grabbed the bag of stuff and started walking away as fast as possible. Every couple of seconds I looked back to see if someone had noticed. Nobody came out, and I turned down the street back to where the office was unnoticed.

It was unnerving, looking for the room. I couldn’t see it anywhere, I felt blind. When I got to the approximate location, I walked forward with my arm extended until I hit a hard surface. The office.

I knocked on the door. It swung open as soon as my clenched fist made contact with the metal surface. I walked inside, appreciating the warmth. As I crossed the threshold, it occurred to me that when the office was disconnected from headquarters it should also be disconnected from the central heating. That was moderately unnerving.

Major General Siegfried was sitting behind the desk, writing something on a large sheaf of papers with an ornate silver pen. He capped it and looked up with a knowing smile.

“Well, how did it go?” he asked.

I grimaced and shrugged, “It was probably the best that it could have gone, but it still wasn’t good. At least I’m done with it now. I left my foster parents a note.”

Siegfried’s eyebrows furrowed. “Will they look for you?”

I put my bag down on the floor and flopped onto the soft plaid couch. “They’ll go through the motions, I think. But they won’t try too hard. It helps that I didn’t leave any trace.”

He nodded and tapped on his computer keyboard. “Well, that’s good then. I’ve been informed by Dierdre that you’re to have the rest of the day off. You have another mission tomorrow.”

“Another one?” I was surprised, “Where to?”

“Nowhere too bad. You’ll be going with Jake to obtain intelligence from the Roman Republic.”

“Rome?” I asked, “Like ancient Rome? That’s pretty neat.” Then it clicked. “With Jake? Why?”

Major General Siegfried picked up his pen and began scratching away at the paper. “He has skills that will be useful during your mission.”

I shifted my weight on the couch, ending up in a reclining position. “The teleporting thing, yeah?” He nodded. “Cool.”

The rest of the trip was spent in amicable silence. When we got back, I went straight to Avice’s field. Even though I was given the day off there was no way I could do nothing. Avice was there meditating, so I began running.

The field was beautiful. As I ran, I found the eponymous edge of the field. It turned out that the entire thing was the top of a grassy cliff. The edge overlooked a sparkling sea of glassy clear water. It was a refreshing run.



I got back to my quarters several hours later, showered, and went to sleep early in preparation for the mission tomorrow. I was certain that it was going to be difficult, if only because it was with Jake.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Juncture 4.2


I moved my mouth in a fruitless attempt to respond, but no sound managed to escape. The situation was so absurd that I couldn’t put my thoughts into words.

Kenneth and Sandra both glared at me, waiting for a response. Sandra shifted Ron carefully over to her other shoulder, trying not to wake him.

“I…um.” Good start, dumbass. Several seconds passed before I regained my bearings, swallowed, and kept on talking. “I know. I wasn’t supposed to get detention again.”

Sandra exploded quietly, so as to not wake Ron. “Three! Three detentions in three days, Marc! How do you even accomplish that!?” She whispered in a harsh voice.

I could barely remember what I did to get in detention, so it took a few more tense seconds for me to recall it. Something to do with Simon, if I was remembering clearly. That seemed likely to be it, I was meaner than I should have been to him a lot of the time.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “It’d been a really long week, and I was tired.” It had been a really long day, at least all of the times after the first that I had cycled through it.

Kenneth was breathing deeply through his nostrils, trying to keep himself calm. He had some anger issues, they were obvious to anyone who knew him well enough. I looked at his hands. They were shaking, clenched into iron fists. He was clearly exerting all of his will toward not causing an outburst.

I continued. “I don’t have a good excuse. I know that.”

“You’d damn well better know that, you little punk!” Sandra hissed at me. “We took you in, and this is how you repay us? We haven’t had to talk to the school with any of the other kids we’ve taken in!” Her voice took on an icy quality, a crystalline hardness that threatened to shatter, “This attitude you have is belligerent, and rude, and selfish.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she swung her free hand sharply in front of me to cut me off. She kept talking, not breaking eye contact, continuing to glare, “If things continue like this, we’re not going to put up with it any more. I’m sure there are other foster homes where the parents would be willing to put up with your shit!”

I leaned backward as she leaned forward, almost spitting into my mouth as vitriol flew through her lips.

The sad thing was that these episodes weren’t all too unusual when I was living there. I would be on the taking end of a tongue-lashing at least once a week, often for a good reason, often for no reason at all. If she hadn’t had a good day at work, she would chew me out. If a stranger side-eyed her, she would take it out on me.

I had gotten used to it while I was there, but since the past few months (or apparent hours) my mental shields had weakened. I cringed as she yelled, but for the most part I didn’t respond. I kept looking toward Kenneth, to see if he was boiling over.

I wasn’t worried about Sandra. She was all bark and no bite. Kenneth was the one I needed to worry about. He looked really angry, but he was holding himself back. If he got to a point where he wasn’t able to do that anymore I would be in serious trouble.

Luckily for me he was pacing. It was one of the tricks he had learned over the years to deal with his temper.

Ron still hadn’t woken up. That was good for me. If things got too bad, I knew that I could make enough noise to wake him up, which would distract Sandra and Kenneth from me, and I might be able to slip away.

Sandra was looking at me expectantly. “Well? She asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I don’t really have anything to say,” I replied, “I don’t have a good excuse.”

I heard a strangled grunt, and Kenneth exited the room. Sandra gave me one last backward glance and left after him. I got up and closed the door, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have any trouble leaving. After I couldn’t hear any footsteps, I opened my closet, looking for the small overnight bag I kept in there. I put it on my bed and started packing.

I didn’t have much in the house that I wanted to keep, but there were a few things. I grabbed a couple of books that I had filled with sketches and shoved them into the bottom of the bag. They were cool, and I thought that I had some good ideas in there.

Next went a bag of small change that I had been saving for a couple of years. It probably wasn’t worth all that much, but there was no point in leaving it here. I also grabbed the battered Gameboy from my night stand, along with a few games.

That was it, then. I zipped the bag closed and searched my room for a pen and paper. I wasn’t going to disappear and leave Kenneth and Sandra without anything. As unlikeable as they were, they did take me in. And even after I had been a constant source of trouble, they had never followed through on their threats of giving me up.

I found a pen, and tore a piece of paper out of a nearby notebook. I crouched down in front of the night stand and began the tedious process of writing.

“Sandra and Kenneth…”

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Juncture 4.1


The smell of rain was the first thing I noticed; that soft, mossy scent. It was shortly followed by the consistent sound of a downpour; less of a pitter-patter and more a constant, oppressive flush of white noise.

I opened my eyes. I was greeted to the sight of wet darkness. My house was in front of me, blurred through the buckets of rain. It looked even more derelict than when I had left it earlier that morning. Or, from my perspective, several months ago.

I took in a deep breath and walked out of the office. Major General Siegfried had told me to wait in the rain, get well and truly soaked so I looked like I walked home. It was a good idea.

The rain was debilitatingly cold. After several seconds I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering.

After a minute I couldn’t stay out there any longer. I ran to the door of my house, swearing under my breath.

I tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, so I walked in. I closed the door behind me, and the white noise of the rain was replaced with a steady drip-drip-drip of the leaky roof. I couldn’t tell if anyone was home. I took of my soaked jacket and put it in the front closet.

I went to the kitchen. It was also empty. There was usually at least someone here at this time of day, but it was oddly empty. I went over to the refrigerator to see if there was anything to eat. There wasn’t much in the big box. A couple different bottles and cans of beer were strewn across the bottom shelf of the fridge.

Aha. A small carton of eggs was precariously balanced on the top shelf of the fridge door, right next to the mustard. I grabbed it. Two eggs were cracked and oozing onto the Styrofoam container, but there were two other ones that were mostly whole. I grabbed them and tossed the container into the overflowing trash bin next to the door.

Next, I checked under the sink for a frying pan. There was one there, but it looked like it needed a good scrubbing before I cooked on it. I lifted it up to put into the sink, saw what was already there, and chose otherwise. I grabbed a sponge and headed to the bathroom.

I turned the tap and waited for the water to run clear – there had been a rust problem in the pipes since before I had even moved in. I quickly learned to wait a few seconds before using it. I began scrubbing the pan.

I finished and went back into the kitchen. I lit the stove; it made a sharp hiss. I put some spray oil on the pan and cooked the eggs.

I slid the cooked eggs onto a plate and went in search of silverware while they cooled down. I found a small box of plastic cutlery, took a fork and knife, and sat down to eat.

While I mindlessly shoveled the slightly singed eggs into my mouth I thought about the reasons why I had come back. They seemed a lot less relevant now that I was actually at home, sitting in my kitchen.

I could have dealt with the loneliness. I had friends at OST headquarters. Or rather, I had good acquaintances there. But I didn’t have many more friends here. I sure as shit didn’t have any at home. No. As I thought about it, the reason I actually wanted to come back became clear. I wanted closure on this part of my life.

After everything I had been through, there was no way I could come back to this. I had gone time travelling. I had stopped (and also to a smaller extent participated in) a bank robbery. I had trained with who I assumed was quite possibly the most dangerous person in history, Avice.

Hell, I had died. Repeatedly. To the point where it was getting boring. I don’t think that there had ever been anyone else who could claim that they’d done that.

No, I couldn’t go back to the day-to-day drudgery of high school, shitty house, rinse, and repeat. I had gone to a completely different level of everyday life. I was doing things. Things that mattered on a scale I wouldn’t have even been able to fathom beforehand.

I finished eating, tossed my plate into the sink and my fork and knife into the trash. I went up the stairs to my bedroom. The towel I had left crumpled over my chair was still there. I grabbed it and went to the restroom. I turned on the shower and let it run as I got out of my soggy clothes. When the water was clear I got under it.

It was freezing for several seconds, but it warmed up to bearable temperatures after two minutes. I scrubbed my entire body, more for show than necessity – I had just woken up an hour and a half ago from my perspective, and I had showered before I went to bed.

I got out and went back to my bedroom. As I walked through the hall, I heard the front door open over the steady dripping sound. I slipped into a pair of pajamas that were a bit too small, and waited, sitting on my bed.

Sure enough, after several seconds of waiting, my door slammed open. My foster father, Kenneth, was standing in the doorway, his wife Sandra behind him. He was stick-thin and completely bald, even down to the eyebrows. She was hard to quantify. Depending on the day she could look twenty or fifty. Right now she just looked angry.

In fact, both of them looked angry. Sandra was holding one of my foster siblings, Ron, asleep with his head on her shoulder. Kenneth was holding his cell phone open, the screen illuminating the floor.

Even though it had been several months, I still felt a scarlet wave of guilt hit me.



“Detention, Marc? Really?”

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Interlude 0.5


It began with the dreams. Visions would swim past the surreal scenes, interrupting whatever nonsensical events were taking place therein. He would be dreaming of the past day’s events, and a scarred crag would take its place for a blink of a moment. Sometimes he would wake up, sweating, breathless. Other times he would keep dreaming. Over time, he stayed asleep through the visions more and more.

When he stayed asleep, the visions would flip past his vision faster and faster. Sometimes, it would seem as though he was seeing several at the same time. When he woke up, he had a headache.

Then they began happening while he was awake. He would be driving down a street, and suddenly he would be driving down a desolate, ruined highway. The streets cracked, the sun dark. Then he’d be back, only a little bit further down the same road he started on.

One time, he almost drove his car off of a bridge because of this. When he stopped, he couldn’t remember what he had seen, only that it terrified him.

The visions started out coming once a week, then twice, then every day. They kept increasing in regularity. Over the course of two years they were appearing multiple times a day, and his nights were full of visions.

It was the fateful day, a decade after the visions had begun, that it happened. He saw a vision. Then, another vision appeared overlaid above that. Then a third, and a fourth. They kept building up.

He could see everything. Everything that was, everything that is, and everything that could possibly ever be. All of it, all possible information from every possible universe poured into his head.

It was too much. He snapped. Living alone, it took five days before anyone found him gibbering and drooling, lying on his bedroom floor in his pajamas. He was sent to an asylum, where he was safe. When the visions prompted rabid panic attacks, he was given a straitjacket and put in a padded room with nothing but his thoughts, and of course the visions.

Over time, he learned to suppress them. To push all of the visions back into the deepest darkest recesses of his mind. Eventually, he managed to limit his focus down to just one vision, the one that he thought of as reality.

He was let out of the asylum after endless tests to ascertain his sanity. From the beginning, he had lost thirty-four years of his life to the visions. He was determined to get them back.

There weren’t any jobs open for a fifty-seven year old man who had spent the majority of his life in an asylum. During the first few months of his release, he was homeless. He worked, harder than he had ever done before, and he managed to negotiate himself a stint as a substitute teacher in a local school district.

He was finally able to support himself. He bought a crappy apartment off of a main street. The sounds of traffic reverberated throughout the night, but it didn’t bother him much. He didn’t sleep more than he absolutely had do if he could avoid it. The visions came back during his dreams, so he tried his best to stay awake.

He learned to use the visions as best he could. If he applied for a job, he checked to see if there was any universe in which he got it. If there wasn’t he wouldn’t even send in an application. Before he travelled, he always checked ahead to see if something would happen.

He grew to rely on them. He started to use them more and more often. Eventually, he lost his fear of them almost entirely. The one thing he was scared of was the visions of nothing. At times, he would call up visions of the future, to be greeted with an inky blackness over his vision. It was as if there was a fog across his eyes, but more so. He would flip through more possible futures – all the same. After seconds, minutes, or hours, it would clear and he would have access to all of his knowledge.

An idea began building in his mind. Whenever he had an episode with the fog he always checked the news afterward. Sometimes there was nothing. Other times, something had taken place – something big. There was an assassination this time. Another time there was a plane crashing into government towers over in America.

Something was causing the fog. Sometimes these events were stopped before they could happen. Other times they were apparently inevitable. He could guess what that meant. Some force, some power in the world was working to prevent tragedies. To do this, they needed to have some source of information about when they were supposed to happen.

His conclusion was inevitable. There were people like him. People who, through no rhyme or reason, could see through the fabric of time and try to change it. His next move was just as inevitable. He had to – he needed to – find them. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he did find them, but he knew that it was the correct move.

His mission engulfed his life. He spent his days working to make enough money to live on, and the rest of his time was spent looking to the future and the past. He scanned for people at the sites of the attacks, and took note of when the mind-fog appeared. When it dispersed, he looked through those times as well.

It took a while, but he began noticing a pattern. Just a couple of people who showed up at different events. They always looked the same. They were always dressed according to where they were. They were always close to the same age, no matter when they were.

That clinched it. They were real. They could help him. They weren’t there when he spent two decades locked up for his own safety.

They would pay.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Juncture 3.9



After my mission was completed, life went back to normal. Or, at least what had passed for normal ever since I had arrived at the OST. I got back on my daily training regimen, began sparring with Avice again, and I went back into otherwise almost total seclusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I still saw Derry occasionally over the next couple of weeks, and I talked to Siegfried once in a while – I even exchanged cold stares with Hans a few times, but I didn’t get to meaningfully spend time with any of them. Most of my day was spent wordlessly, breathlessly trying to not let Avice beat the crap out of me, or watching movies in my room.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t feel lonely per se. At least, not at the beginning. The seclusion was nice. Having a room to myself was nice. Not getting bothered or woken up in the middle of the night was nice. But I began to want to hang out with people, to just sit and relax and talk to friends.

I wasn’t going to get that here. Derry kept her distance, Siegfried was in charge of me, and from what I could tell, neither Avice nor Hans had any noticeable emotions. They were all hard to relate to. Plus I hadn’t seen Jake since we talked that night. From what I could tell, he was the closest in age to myself that I’d met.

I missed my friends from school, as distant as they felt when I was actually there. I wanted to sit next to Josie and let her doodle all over my hand. I wanted to mock Jock for his accent. Hell, I’d even hang out with Simon at this point, I was that bored.

Luckily, those types of thoughts only plagued me at night. I was too busy during the day to worry about loneliness or friendship. Avice’s training schedule kept me busy. Every time part of it got easier, she would make it more difficult to keep me struggling. I would be able to breathe after doing a set of push-ups, and she would add another mile to my runs. I wouldn’t have stitches in my side after running, and she wouldn’t hold back while fighting.

It was when I was alone in my room watching a movie, or in the cafeteria eating that I felt lonely. I threw myself into my training more so than ever. I started studying the material I was taught, even outside of the room with the monitor. The maneuvers and tactics used in the wars started to make sense. The politics I was learning; the rights of succession, the coups, the holy wars, all began to crystallize in my head.

When I managed to beat Avice in a spar I knew that I needed something else to do. She was clearly out of it that day, and I was trying my hardest, but even with that, there was no way that I should have been able to land a hit on her.

I remember it really well. We were fighting barefoot on the soft grass. Neither of us had weapons, and we were both tired from the day’s exercise. Avice swung at my left shoulder, and I ducked down to dodge, bringing my right arm up toward her chin in an uppercut. She danced back, light on her feet, and dropped into a sweep with her left leg. I jumped over it, just barely too slow.

She brought me down, hard. I turned my fall into a roll as best I could, and Avice managed to get back on her feet. I saw an opportunity – when I landed on my back I pushed my body up with my arms, flipping onto my stomach and sending my legs in flying arcs at Avice. One connected to her arm, the other hit her leg. When my legs connected to the ground I pushed down and used my body’s momentum to get back onto my feet.

After I recovered I saw Avice on the ground. She was getting up, slower than normal. I grabbed for her arm – missed. Grabbed again for her other arm, got it and twisted it back. She fell back onto the ground and struggled. Finally, after I held her down for what seemed like an eternity, she tapped the ground. Once, twice, and I let go.

She started to pull herself up with her arms, then snapped her legs apart, pushing my legs into a split. She hooked her feet around the back of my outstretched legs and snapped her legs forward, bringing me down onto my butt. I landed hard.

She stood up, scowling, her brow furrowed.

“You’re done for today.” She said. Before I could answer, or even stand, she stalked away. I got up painfully, and left the fields. I had a whole day all to myself. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but then an idea formed.

I walked in the direction of Major General Siegfried’s office. When I got there, I knocked on the door. Hans was there, so I asked him if Siegfried would be by anytime soon. Hans said that he should be back in about two minutes, so I could wait there.

Once Major General Siegfried got back, I asked him my question. He mulled it over and nodded. He said I would have to get the clothes I had when I arrived, but that shouldn’t be too difficult to do, so yes, I could. He then said to meet him back in his office in one hour to depart.

I went back to my room, excited. I decided I would take a quick shower before I left. I jumped in, finished in record time, and got back out. Sure enough, my grungy clothes from the day I had gotten stuck in the time loop were on my bed. I got dressed and walked back to Major General Siegfried’s office.

I was going to go back home.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Juncture 3.8


“Jake!” I yelled, and began jog-walking down the hall toward him. I didn’t really know what I was going to say to him, but I was dead-set on at least attempting to apologize.

He didn’t react when I called his name. Either I was quieter than I thought, or he was acting really suspicious, confirming my idea that he hadn’t given me his actual name. I decided to try again, now that I’d halved the distance between us.

“Jake!” I shouted, a bit louder. His spine straightened, and he turned. I reached him, and stopped right in front of him.

I noted to myself that the jog over took barely any effort, as compared to just before I was taken to the OST. That was pretty cool.

I didn’t know what to say, but I started to talk anyway. “I-“. Jake raised his hand to stop me.

“You don’t need to apologize,” He said. It was difficult to hear him speak. His words were quiet, and he spoke abnormally slowly. “You were trying to stop a dangerous situation. I understand.” He touched his hand to his face, to where the bruise would have been from the beating I’d delivered. He continued to speak in his slow, numb manner. “All I ask is that you don’t ask me to apologize.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He thought that he was in the right? He held up a bank, and he apparently didn’t feel bad about it.

My mind went through the ethical and moral arguments against attempted murder and the sacrifice of innocent human lives, and formulated the best response to what he was saying.

My mouth didn’t get the message, and all that I said was “Huh?”

“I’m not going to apologize.” He repeated, “I never actually planned to blow up the dynamite. I would die too, why would I want to do that? I needed the money, and this was the easiest way to get it.”

It clicked that if I kept him talking, I would be able to get more information from him.

“Why did you need the money?” I asked.

He leaned against the wall. “I owed a lot of money. Like a lot a lot.”

“How much?”

He grinned – or it was possibly a grimace. I couldn’t tell.

“Around thirty thousand dollars. That was more than I would ever be able to make in one lifetime, so I had to find a way of getting it. This seemed like a good plan.”

Thirty thousand didn’t sound like that much to me. Then I remembered that he was talking about the fifties. Thirty thousand was probably a huge amount of cash back then. Still, I wasn’t fully convinced that he wasn’t lying.

“Why did you owe that much? How could one person get that far in debt?” I asked.

“Hospital bills, dumbass. Look at me,” He gestured at his face, “That much money just barely kept me alive. My entire childhood was one huge process of nearly dying, and my parents took the first chance they could to ditch me. I don’t blame them. I was dead weight. They probably changed their names, moved away. I was saddled with the debt.”

He stopped, breathing heavily. Talking this much was clearly an effort on his part, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook now. I had to know.

“And?” I asked.

“And when I was fifteen, it just… stopped. I wasn’t sick anymore. I mean, I looked awful, couldn’t use half of my face, and could barely walk from being in bed for so long, but I wasn’t sick. I didn’t pass out for days or weeks at a time. I didn’t have any more seizures, or strokes. I could leave the hospital. But I was homeless.”

“I managed to get a job doing menial, easy labor. I could survive, but it wasn’t fun. The money I owed kept piling up, bigger and bigger. So I robbed a bank.”

He was done. He leaned down, taking deep breaths, sucking in air hard, then letting it out in slow hisses.

“Okay. I’m not going to ask you to apologize. You seem like you know that you were wrong, and anyway, nobody got hurt. Well, you got hurt, but nobody innocent got hurt.”

We stood there in awkward silence for several seconds.

“I am going to ask you what your actual name is though.” I said.

He didn’t answer for several seconds. Then: “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who any of you are. I don’t trust you. So call me Jake.”

“Fine,” I said, “But you will have to tell us who you are at some point or another if you’re going to join us.”

“I don’t know if I’m joining you just yet.” Jake said, “Like I said, I don’t trust any of you just yet. Besides, I don’t have anything I can give you guys, so I’m pretty sure that you’re just keeping me prisoner here.”

“Bull. I saw you teleport that dynamite. I don’t know how you did it, but I know that you did. That’s what we’re interested in.” I changed tactics to something that I knew worked. “And of course, you’re free to leave at any time. You’re not a prisoner. If you want to leave, you can go on your way. But since this facility is secret, you’ll have to undergo a procedure to make sure that you don’t remember anything about this.”

His eyes widened marginally. He opened his mouth to protest, but I talked over him. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. Well, not too dangerous. Worst comes to worst, you forget some stuff.”

“Some stuff?” He asked.

Well, all of the stuff. But don’t worry, it probably won’t happen.” I answered.

“Uh, no. I’ll stay for now,” was Jake’s reply. It worked. I clapped my hands together. “Great! So I’m gonna head back to sleep, but I’ll see you around!” I gave him a thumbs up and started walking to my room. When I got to the door, I looked where we were standing. Jake had left. I went back to bed.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Interlude 0.4


Cameron was in the hospital again. It was the third time in as many days. The second time, one of his doctors joked that they should just rent the room out to him. They weren’t joking anymore.

Harold sat in a chair next to his son. He looked across his body at the machines; he didn’t have the energy left to look directly at him. It was too much, to see his son lying there helplessly.

The doctors had left recently, just after Cameron’s seizures had stopped. They had made sure he was stable, then abandoned him there. His chest wasn’t rising or falling, but the grey-green monitors held a steady beat.

None of them knew what Cameron’s issue was. For the past two years, he had been plagued by seizures, strokes, and heart attacks. There was no rhyme or reason behind it, he was perfectly healthy before then. He was even going to try out for little league.

That wasn’t going to happen now. Cameron had been severely deformed by whatever was plaguing him. His muscles had deteriorated down to where he needed to be pushed in a wheelchair. For a while, Harold and Helen were forced to help him go to the bathroom. A couple of months in, they had decided to get the surgeries done to attach bags for his excretions.

Harold pulled in a breath, and let it out in a shaky sigh. He looked at Cameron’s face. Half of it was just loose skin at this point, he had lost control of them during one of his earlier seizures, and it only deteriorated from there on.

He was smaller than he had been at eight, barely making a bump under the starchy, light blue hospital sheets. His bones were clearly visible under his skin, in his arms and neck; and he could no longer move his limbs of his own volition.

It had gotten to the point where the doctors would fix whatever issue came up, send him home, and expected him to show up the next day.

Cameron hadn’t been conscious for the last week. The doctors said he was almost definitely in a permanent state of unconsciousness. In other words, Cameron Carter was in a coma.

Yesterday, the doctors had brought up the possibility of taking him off of his life-preserving machines. Harold had immediately denied them, saying that it was unthinkable. He was thinking about it a lot now.

On one hand, it made sense. Cameron’s treatments had drained Harold and Helen’s bank accounts. They were functionally bankrupt, with huge debts. Harold had lost his job; his boss had grown sick of his constant begging for leave, and in response gave him two month’s severance. Helen took on another job, so she was never able to be at home or with Cameron. Plus, this desiccated husk of a child? This body? It wasn’t his son.

On the other hand… On the other hand, Harold couldn’t think of any reason not to. Of course, he went through all of the moral hoops, how could he do this, it’s his own son, et cetera. None of them impacted him, not even a little bit. The body on the bed wasn’t Cameron anymore. He hadn’t been lucid in months, hadn’t been awake in weeks. His son died ages ago.

He was going to do it. Once the next doctor came in he would tell him, get the requisite form, and be rid of this burden.

As if he was listening, Cameron started twitching on the bed, and one of the various monitors began to beep. After a few seconds, a doctor and two nurses barged into the room, bringing a cart with them.

Harold watched them work, waiting patiently. They calmed Cameron’s body with a small syringe applied to the side of his neck. One of the nurses half-heartedly held his weak arms down, the other held his head in place. He soon calmed, and Harold stood and tapped the doctor on his shoulder.

The man turned. He pulled the mask over his face down. “Yes?”

Harold took in a breath. “I want to take him off of support.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll get you the papers.”







Cameron woke up with a start. It was dark in the room. He didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t remember anything coherent. Images passed back and forth in front of his vision, and phantom sounds played back. One thing stood out. His father, stubble growing over his normally clean-shaven looking down at him. Closing his eyes. Saying goodbye.

He tried to lift his head, but was unable to. He managed to flop his head to the side. His eyes came to rest on the machine. The monitors were black, turned off. He traced the wires down to the floor, then as far as he could back up again. He saw one out of the corner of his eye, connected to his arm.

A man came into the room, shining white fluorescent light for a brief second. He picked up Cameron, placing him onto his wheelchair, gently removing the wires connected to his body. He kept the catheter in. He began to wheel him out of the room.

The halls of the hospital wing were abandoned. Nobody came to try and stop the man. Cameron was scared. He was crying, but no tears came out of his eyes. He heard one of the wheels creak, and the wheelchair stopped. Maybe he wasn’t going to be kidnapped. He couldn’t lift his head up to look.

A breeze hit him. The man had just gone to open a door. He came back to the wheelchair, and they resumed walking. Cameron could only look at the floor. He saw black tar for a while, which meant that they were on pavement. Then dirt and grass. A forest? A field? He couldn’t tell; it was too dark out. Then, there was a bright orange light, and they were indoors again.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Juncture 3.7



Several hours later, I was waiting inside of the man’s hospital room for him to wake up. Derry had performed her usual treatment, and his breaks and bruises were gone. However his face was still drooping in weird places, his eyelids bent downward and half of his mouth was open. Derry told Siegfried and me that she couldn’t fix it, as it had happened too long ago.

Our best guess was that he had suffered from strokes - and possibly seizures as a child. I know it was shallow, but it was hard to look at. You couldn’t even tell how old he was looking at him. I didn’t think it would get any easier to view when he woke up either.

For safety reasons, we had removed everything that could either be used as a weapon, or that could help him facilitate an escape. We didn’t know the limits of his teleportation, so we had to be careful. So the only things that were in the room were his bed (which was nailed down), my chair (which was also nailed down), and his IV rack. There was a communication device strapped to my wrist in case he could do anything we didn’t know about and I needed to call for help.

So far, he hadn’t moved, aside from some twists and turns. The only noise that escaped him was the occasional groan or grunt.

Major General Siegfried had commanded me to stay in here to apologize when the guy woke up. I agreed easily, seeing how I beat him within an inch of his life. I felt pretty guilty about the whole affair.

I heard a grunt from the guy on the bed, and looked down at him. His eyes opened a little bit, and when he registered who was there, they widened more. He gasped, and the right side of his mouth opened. It was a little bit startling to see. I help up my hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He calmed down a little bit, but he was still visibly wary.

“Where am I?” was what he asked first. He had that same hoarse tone that he had in the bank, and it still sounded somewhat muffled. I had thought that it was the scarf that made it sound like that, but apparently it was how he always sounded.

“I… can’t tell you that right now. I don’t have the clearance,” I answered. That was a lie, but I didn’t really know where we were either. “What’s your name?”

He waited a second, his eyes flickering up and down, then took a deep breath. “Jake. Jake Smith.”

He was lying. I didn’t know for certain, but I had a strong feeling in my gut. The name sounded fake. I wouldn’t call him out on it now, that could wait.

“Okay Jake. I,” I took a bit to find the right words. They weren’t coming to me fast. “I need to apologize.” Jake looked confused.

“I know it’s weird. You were holding me up with dynamite. Not cool, by the way. Anyway, I used far too much force apprehending you, and I’m sorry.” He nodded.

“Um… I’m not sure how to respond,” He said. “Is there anyone else I can talk to?”

Ouch. That kinda stung. Logically, I knew he had a good reason to want to talk to literally anybody else, but it still hurt.

“Yeah, someone else will be in here soon.” I raised the communicator on my wrist up to my mouth and switched it on by pushing a small button.

“Send in the Major General at his earliest convenience. Over.” The line was silent for several seconds. Then; “Will do. Over.”

I looked over ‘Jake’ one more time. He didn’t look like he was going to do anything rash, so I left. I closed the door behind me and immediately bumped into the Major General.

“Did you do it?” He asked.

“Yep. I don’t think he accepted it, but I apologized.” I scratched the communicator; it chafed. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Well, the same thing I did with you,” He said, “I’m going to recruit him.”

“Actually? He tried to blow up a bank!” I was outraged, to put it mildly. “He tried to blow us up!”

“He didn’t try to blow us up specifically. He tried to blow you up when you were punching him. He’s spirited.”

Spirited? More like dangerous. I didn’t trust the guy, especially since he gave a fake name. But I didn’t have a choice but to listen to him. I was still new here.

“Fine. Am I free to go?” the Major General left, and I headed to the cafeteria. I was starving, and by the time I got there I was famished. The room was empty. I grabbed a plate of food and a cup of water and sat down to eat a quick meal. Since I didn’t have to talk to anyone, I finished quickly and headed back to my room.

I stripped, showered, turned off the light, and got in bed. I put on The Black Panther, and it resumed from where I was watching it the last night. I couldn’t focus on it, my eyes kept losing focus and I was missing snippets of dialogue. I turned it off after five minutes.

I thought about what had happened today. I had gone back to the fifties, I had almost exploded. I nearly beat a defenseless man to death. I looked down at my hand – it was shaking. Even seven relative hours after the fact, I was still full of adrenaline.

I tossed and turned, but didn’t fall asleep. After far too long, I got up out of my bed. I wasn’t going to fall asleep any time soon, so I may as well go for a walk. I slipped on a pair of shoes and left the room. I closed the door and saw Jake down the hall.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Juncture 3.6





My leap took me onto the man with the dynamite, bringing us both down to the ground. He fell easier than I expected him to. I thought that he would have put up at least a little bit of resistance, but he appeared to be weaker than I gave him credit for.

As we fell on the floor in a tangled mess, I scrabbled to get ahold of the arm that was holding the lighter. I knew that I couldn’t simply take the lighter away, so my next best hope was to separate his hands and pin them down. I managed to wrap my hand around his wrist – it was thin, and I slammed it onto the hard, cold marble.

I noticed that I was angrier than I first thought. All of the pent-up fear of the past twenty or so minutes, the specter of death, the fucking threat of being blown up by dynamite. Red-hot rage poured through my body, bubbling over. Spots appeared in my vision.

I’m not proud of what I did next.

I lifted up the arm I was holding, and slammed it against the ground again, harder this time. He didn’t stop struggling, so I did it again. This time I heard a loud crack, and a thrill went through my body.

The guy grunted loudly, and kept on struggling, but he didn’t move that arm any more. I dropped the arm, and swung it back, then pulled forward in a hook. It connected solidly with the left side of his jaw. He grunted again and dropped the dynamite to put his hand in front of his face.

I took the opportunity to grab at his scarf, taking ahold of both of the ends. It was tied in a manner so that when I grabbed it, the part that was around his neck tightened. I pulled. He let out a gasping noise, and his non-broken hand grasped for my wrist.

I punched him in the face again with my other hand, as hard as I did the first time. His glasses cracked as I hit them, and the edge of the frame snapped and slid across his brow, leaving a long jagged line. I didn’t register what his face looked like, but I could tell that he was having trouble breathing. There was a peculiar buzzing in my ears.

I pulled back, punched again, pulled the scarf tighter. His hand dropped off of my wrist, and I pulled back to punch again when something grabbed my arm and yanked. I was pulled off of the man and the scarf slid out of my grip. I skidded across the floor, grasped for any grip I could get. I managed to pull myself up onto one knee, and charged for the man again.

Major General Siegfried blocked me. I slammed into him, and the force of my momentum bounced me off of him back onto the floor. I laid there for a little, breathing heavily. The buzzing noise had ceased.

I sat back up, no longer as angry as I had been. I looked over to where the man laid, beaten into the ground. I flinched.

His face was a mixture of red and purple blotches, and his nose was clearly broken. There was blood pouring out of one nostril, and a similar pool was forming under the man’s jaw. His eyes looked weird – like they were drooping downward, and the gash on his temple was dripping slow, thick blood onto the floor.

It wasn’t a pretty sight to look at. He was gasping, spit and blood bubbling from his mouth. But he wasn’t conscious. I had made plenty certain of that when I was pummeling him.

As I calmed down, details made themselves more apparent than they had been. Major General Siegfried was showing the mass of scared people a small object that looked absolutely tiny in his enormous hand. I listened to what he was saying.

“…take them into custody, and deal with it there. Again, I’m very sorry.” So the Major General was lying his ass off, pretending to be a police officer. Well, if anybody could pull off that lie, it would be him.

The crowd around the bloody pulp of a man bleeding all over the floor dispersed somewhat, and Major General Siegfried took the opportunity to walk over to me. He extended a hand, and I took it.

“Sorry about this,” He whispered, and twisted my arm behind my back. “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can – and will – be held against you in a court of law.” As he read me my rights, he pulled out a pair of cuffs from his belt and locked them against my wrists.

He held my arms behind my back tightly. I was walked over to where the other guy was. He looked even worse close up. Some of the blood was caking, clumping up into darker clots. Major General Siegfried hooked his arm underneath him, and in one smooth motion, lifted the man over his shoulder.

We walked out of the building. It seemed colder than it was before. I was shivering.

“That was irresponsible, Marc. You almost ruined the mission. Twice, in fact.” Major General Siegfried berated me.

“I-I’m sorry, I know I fucked up,” was what I managed to get out first. Then I managed to pull together the strength to keep going. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You nearly beat him to death. He was on the ground, passed out. You just kept screaming, punching him. You can’t do that.”

I was screaming? Maybe that's what that weird buzzing sound.

“I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to him when he wakes up.” I said.

Major General Siegfried gave me a harsh glance. “Well, you’d better. We’re trying to recruit him, not kill him. There’s a pretty big difference there. Imagine if you had been beaten senseless when I rescued you.”

I chose not to mention the broken –well, everything – that I had gotten from Siegfried.

“I know. I’ll apologize. I’m sorry.” I said.

We walked into the office building.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Juncture 3.5



I had no idea what to do. Siegfried and I were here to recruit this guy, and he was planning on robbing this bank, not with a gun, but with freaking dynamite. He was looking at me, waiting for me to talk for him. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, apparently, so I just swallowed and did it.

“Excuse me, can I please have your attention,” I began, “Um, so this is kind of weird. You see this guy here?” People began looking in my direction, and the guy waved the hand that he wasn’t holding behind his back.

“Yeah, so he gave me a note and told me to talk for him. He’s, um… well, he’s robbing the bank. He has dynamite behind his back.” At this, the man pulled out his hand, revealing five sticks of dynamite tied into a bundle, with the fuses attached at the top as well. His other hand reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter.

I heard a man scream from way in the front of the building. There were some gasps of terror.

The man in the scarf and hat leaned next to me and whispered in my ear. His voice was raspy, even through the scarf, and the combination of that and the fact that he was whispering made it so that I could barely understand what he was saying.

“Tell them…get on the ground. They won’t get hurt.” I gulped and nodded.

“He said, if you just get on the ground, you won’t get hurt. Please do it.” The people in the bank acquiesced, some laying down with their hands above their heads, some sitting, others simply falling and landing on their butts, wanting to do what I was saying as fast as possible. Even Siegfried got on the ground. As he was descending onto his knees, he looked at me, as if to say “you know what to do.”

The man grabbed the neck of my jacket with the hand holding the lighter and dragged me up to the desk. He whispered to me again.

“He said that he needs you to open the vault. And if you don’t, dynamite. He also said that if you call the cops, he’ll blow up everyone in here.” Repeating what he said was terrifying, but I tried my damnedest to stay calm and not let my voice waver.

The tellers looked shocked, but kept composed remarkably well. One of them walked and opened the entrance to the booth. The guy walked in, and dragged me with him.

We were led by the teller into a back room. The room seemed small and claustrophobic, since it was surrounded by enormous safes. The guy whispered in my ear again.

“He’s looking for unmarked bills,” I said. The teller nodded, and walked over to one of the large safes. He spent several tense moments unlocking it. The guy next to me was flicking the lighter on and off absentmindedly.

The teller stood back and swung open the heavy safe door, then stood behind it, as if to protect himself. Inside the room were stacks of bills on wooden pallets, reaching up to the ceiling. There was more money than I had ever seen. The guy shoved his lighter into his pocket and jogged inside, leaving me behind to gawk.

He skidded onto his knees in front of the piles of cash, and began shoving wads of bills into his now empty backpack. The dynamite laid behind him, apparently forgotten. This would probably be my best chance.

I ran into the vault, grabbed the dynamite from the ground, then turned around and ran as fast as I could. I heard a loud, raspy “Hey!” behind me from the robber, and suddenly the dynamite in my hand was gone. I slid to a stop, turned around.

What the hell?

He was standing next to his half-full bag, gripping the dynamite with both hands. He shook his head.

He could teleport things, or something like that. Probably not necessarily teleporting directly, but some variant. Something to do with time travel.

“Don’t try that again,” he rasped, “you’ll only make me angry.”

He put the dynamite down again, and began shoveling money into his bag. I could only watch in despair as he was getting away with it. He finished, stood back up, slung the bag over his shoulders and walked back toward me. He looked at me and pointed at the safe door, to where the teller was. I got it, he was telling me to get the door locked.

I walked up to the door, until I could see the teller. He was terrified.

“Is he gone?” he whispered? I shook my head.

“No, but he’s leaving. He wants you to close the door. Please just do it.” The teller nodded, and began moving the heavy steel door back into its closed position.

I walked back over to the guy. He had pulled out the little lighter again, and was holding it close to the wrapped fuses of the red dynamite. We walked back out of the bank, him leading the way.

The room was emptier. Some smarter people had taken the opportunity to run from the bank as soon as we had went into the back room of the building. Others, not so smart, had stood up again, and as they saw us slowly got back on the ground. A third category of people hadn’t gotten up since we had been in there. Major General Siegfried was in this group, still sitting on the ground with his hands above his head.

He looked at me, and I looked at him. He was mouthing something, but I couldn’t make it out. He tilted his head toward the guy in the scarf and made a quick jabbing motion with his elbow.

He wanted me to attack the man. Okay, I could do that. I just had to hope that he couldn’t teleport me as well as object.

I pounced.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Juncture 3.4



The air was an even temperature as we walked out of Siegfried’s office, the kind of weather where leaves were just beginning to grow again after a harsh winter. As I was subjected to some cold breezes, I was thankful that I had the leather jacket on.

“So… what are we looking for?” I asked Siegfried, as we walked down the sidewalk next to a large street.

“Well, there’s a person we’re looking for somewhere near here, in a bank near here.” Was his reply.

“Okay. How do you know he’s going to be there?” was my next question. He looked at me with a vague, blank expression, like it boggled his mind that I was missing something.

“Time, Marc,” he breathed out in a sigh, “we have full access to the timeline. We know where and when almosteverything happens.”

“Oh, right,” I said with a sheepish grin.

Almost?

We kept walking down the street. A few moments passed.

“Turn left,” Siegfried said. I did so, and he followed immediately after. In front of me down the intersection of the street was a large, regal-looking bank. A sign on top of the entrance proclaimed the building to be the First Bank of America. We walked through the glass doors, and into a long, garish hallway.

Everything inside was white marble. The floor was marble, the pillars lining the walls were marble, and the ceiling was marble. There was a line of people waiting, starting at the far end of the room, and ending close to where we were. We joined it at the very end.

“So do you know how long this is going to take?” I asked. I looked up at Major General Siegfried; his face was screwed up and his eyes were closed.

Right, he was using his TA to check. It was several more seconds before he opened his eyes.

“Well, we have… quite a while, unfortunately. Nothing interesting is going to happen here for a bit. Nothing that causes any large emotional shifts.”

“Do you know how long?”

“At least fifteen minutes.” Siegfried answered.

Dammit, that’s long.

I didn’t have the attention span to just stand here and do nothing for that long. Before Siegfried had even finished speaking I felt myself begin to get twitchy. After a minute, I was slapping my hand against my thigh.

“I’m going to wait outside for a little bit, look around for anything suspicious.” I said. Siegfried nodded and I walked back outside of the grandiose building. I paced for a couple minutes, scanning the area for anything weird. There weren’t very many other people, the street was practically abandoned.

A gang of guys passed down the far side of the street, all wearing the exact same outfit that I was. They couldn’t have looked more stereotypical if they were all snapping simultaneously as they walked.

Closer to me, a woman wearing scarily high heels tottered into a shop building, and a bell jingled.

I walked down to the other end of the street, scanning from side to side as I walked. Aside from the huge bank, there were several smaller shops lining the street. There were groceries, coffee shops, and restaurants. Most didn’t have very many people inside.

I walked back up the street, and decided to go inside one of the restaurants, called The Grillerie. The moderately fancy façade did not belie the oddly cheap interior. There were several folding chairs nailed to the floor around small tables, also nailed down. The tables still had scraps from the people who had been eating here before.

The only person aside from me in the building was a balding man who I took to be the cook. He was standing behind the register, wearing a red apron and an askew chef’s hat. He was smoking a large cigar, and looking at me with a droll expression on his face.

I quickly walked out. The man grunted as I left. I walked back up to the bank, through the swinging doors, and back up to Major General Siegfried. He had moved up around a foot and a half since I had left.

I stood next to him, and asked, “Anything yet?”

“Not yet. Give it time,” was his reply, “It won’t be long now.”

I stood next to him for a bit. That didn’t work. Then I walked horizontally all the way to one pillar on the left side of the room. That didn’t work either. I walked from there to the matching pillar on the opposite side of the room. I stayed there for a bit, a window was open next to me and there was a breeze.

The door opened, and a man walked in. He was wearing a baseball cap down over his brow. Underneath that was a pair of overly-large sunglasses. Underneath that was a scarf. He was also carrying a backpack in one hand, with the zipper half open underneath his other hand.

General conclusion: he looked shifty as hell.

He got in line behind us and began fumbling with his bag. He was trying to pull something large out. I pretended to not see him, following Major General Siegfried’s lead. He was audibly having trouble pulling whatever object was in his bag out, but after several seconds he persevered and the rifling noise stopped.

There was a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around and saw that the man was holding out a slip of paper in one gloved hand, and he held the other one behind his back. I took the paper, and tried to decipher it.

“Hello.

I am in the process of robbing this bank. 

Do not yell. I have dynamite behind my back. 

You are going to announce this to the rest of the people here, and accompany me to the back, where you will be my liaison. 

As compensation, nobody here will be harmed.

Thanks.”

After several seconds, I read the message in its entirety. I felt the blood rush from my face as I was reading it. We were being held up at dynamite-point.

Oh, fuck.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Juncture 3.3


It had been a tough month of training, and I was incredibly happy with the results. I had noticeable muscle definition where there was only skin and bones before, and I could run long distances. Avice would have me run through the fields until I couldn’t see the door, and then back, and I could do it. It hadn’t ceased to amaze me yet.

It was late at night, and I was lounging on my bed, above the covers, only wearing pajama pants. I was watching Black Panther (I was going through all of the Marvel Movies, having finished Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, all of the 2-D Disney movies, and a whole bunch of solo movies) when I heard a knock and my door opened. The movie paused itself.

Derry walked in. I was suddenly all too aware that I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I could feel a blush spreading up to my cheeks. She had also apparently been woken up in the middle of the night, since she was wearing what I assumed were the equivalent of pajamas for her – a tank top and harem pants. Her eyes were bleary and she was carrying a tablet with her.

“Hey, Marc, message for you,” she said, then yawned loudly, half-heartedly covering her mouth with her free hand. With her other hand, she held out the tablet for me to read. I took it from her hand, and tapped on the screen with my forefinger. It lit up and displayed the message.

The text was too small. I couldn’t make out the separate letters. I could actually feel all of the blood in my body rushing up into my face.

“I – I can’t read it, could you do it for me?” I stammered out quietly. She looked at me, her eyes half-lidded, and we both stayed motionless for several seconds, her just looking at me with an expression of fatigue, and me holding out the offending tablet with the useless words on them. She took it from me, and scanned the message.

“Private Antony,” she read, adopting a monotone voice that I’m not certain she was aware of, “you have been selected to join Major General Siegfried on a recruitment mission. Please be aware that there may be danger involved. You will join Major General Siegfried at his office tomorrow at 0730 sharp. You will find appropriate clothing outside of your quarters. Good luck.” She swiped it and the screen turned off.

“It’s signed by Dierdre, so it’s an official document. You’ve got your first assignment,” she grinned, “You’re gonna do great!”

I grinned wanly. I didn’t know if I was ready to go out on a mission, but apparently Dierdre Eckton, the woman who – as far as I could tell – ran the entire OST, thought that I was. I hadn’t met her personally, but I’d heard a lot about her.

“Yay,” I said weakly, “I should probably try to get some sleep then.”

Derry nodded, “Yep, you probably should. Goodnight then!” She flipped the tablet under her arm, and walked out. The door shut behind her.

Black Panther had continued to play during our conversation, and I had lost my place. It took a quiet “off” from me, and the screen shut down, turning black and plunging the entire room into darkness. I laid back, and my head hit the pillow with a soft thump.

My first mission was tomorrow. I had no idea what this was going to entail. Well, I could guess based on what training I had gone through that there was a definite threat of violence, but aside from that I didn’t have a clue.

I stared up at the blank ceiling, my eyes open but not registering anything in the pitch-darkness. I fell asleep after ten minutes.



I woke up to an alarm, which was normal. It was emanating from the monitor, a loud klaxon. It was how I was woken for training each morning, only today I wouldn’t be going to Avice. I lifted my head up and saw that there was a small puddle of dried drool where my mouth had been. It was gross. I wiped my mouth off and bounced off of the bed.

As I walked to the door I felt a small ball of anxiety form in the pit of my stomach. I opened the door and saw that yes, there was a field uniform hanging off of the handle. I took it inside.

The uniform consisted of a t-shirt, a leather jacket, jeans, and boots. As I put them on, I noticed that all of them were slightly thicker than normal, and had a weird texture that I assumed was some sort of armor. When I had finished dressing, I went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror.

I looked like a greaser. With a thought, I turned on the faucet and wet my hair, then combed it back. It had gotten longer since I arrived at the OST, and it was heavy enough to stay in the form of a pompadour.

I pointed both of my fingers at the mirror, winked, and clicked my teeth. I looked ridiculous. It was fantastic. I brushed my teeth, and left my room.

Several minutes later, I arrived at Major General Siegfried’s office. I lifted my hand to knock and the door opened. Siegfried was there, and he grabbed the hand I had extended and shook it.

“Nice to see you again Marc,” he said, trying to keep a straight face as he looked at what I was wearing.

He was wearing a black suit and trilby, and couldn’t have looked more like a Mafioso if he tried, which I assumed was his intention. He had trimmed down his wild beard into a thick chinstrap, and was wearing sunglasses.

“Ready to go?” he asked. The ball of anxiety in my stomach grew a little bit, but I nodded in affirmation anyway.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”



“Then come in, and we’ll go.” He let go of my hand and we went into his office.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Juncture 3.2



The training I was getting put through was intense. By the end of the first week my entire body was sore enough to keep me up at night tossing and turning. By the end of the second week, I was fatigued enough to pass out as soon as my head hit my pillow each night.

I would wake up early in the morning, dress, and head directly to Avice’s perfect isolated plains, where I would train for up to two hours. Every time I walked into the field, it was just after sundown, and it was brightly sunny, but cool enough that it was comfortable.

Avice would have me run distances, sprint, do strength exercises, and spar with her. She would do all of them alongside me, often jogging ahead of me as I paced breathlessly, looking back disappointingly, or continuing to do pushups long after my muscles had given out and I’d collapsed to the ground.

During our fighting exercises, she would lash out violently at me from every direction. I doubted she was going easy on me, and if she was, I was terrified to see what she was like when she was going all out.

Occasionally, she would be there with a variety of weapons, and we would do the training with those. There were quarterstaffs, knives, swords, spears, guns, shields, chains, and other weapons I didn’t have names for. We would use these, and I would come out of the training with shallow cuts across my forearms and chest. Avice would give me a gruff “walk it off,” and I’d be excused.

After the morning training, I headed back to the facility, and I would grab what usually amounted to a late lunch and early dinner combined. I would have thirty minutes to sit and eat, and then I had to report to a small room directly across the hall from where my living quarters were.

The room was small, containing only a high-tech computer monitor, a small desk, and a chair. Once I sat down in the chair, I would be prompted to place my hand on a small gel pad on the desk and speak my name. When I did that, my lessons for the day would officially begin.

The lessons were mostly videos along with a voice going over the topic at hand. I was pleasantly surprised at this, there wasn’t anything that I had to read. A lot of the classes would be about history. There would be a short audio snippet introducing what time period we would be going over, and the monitor would drop me into the action.

I really enjoyed the war videos. These would switch between bird’s-eye views of the battles, and the different formations, and first-person perspectives of the war. My running theory was that they wanted to hammer in the very real effects that war had on individual people. I got to see a whole lot of people getting stabbed, speared, chopped, crushed, and just overall brutally murdered.

The political videos were much less interesting. Mostly, they were just charts on screen laying out who was where, when they were there, and what their motivations were at the time.

I napped a lot during the political videos.

After the lessons for the day were finished, I would be sent back for more training with Avice. This training was much less intense, mostly stretching, yoga, and slow muscular exercises. Even though it was easier, it was more painful, as it compounded the fatigue from earlier in the day.

I would limp back into the OST headquarters an hour or two after the second training period, and either head back to my living quarters, which is what I usually did, or if I was particularly hungry, I headed back to the cafeteria and grabbed a snack, then went to my quarters.

My room was pretty nice. It had an adjoined bathroom with a pretty large shower, a queen-sized bed, a monitor like the one that was in the classroom, and a big armchair. There was also a bookshelf completely stuffed with novels, but I didn’t have any discernible reason to be using that.

When I stepped inside, I stripped, got into the shower and stayed in there for an obscenely long time. I would let the hot water caress the injuries I had gotten during the day, and just relax. Then I got out and got into pajamas.

Holy crap were they comfortable. The day-to-day clothes that the OST had gotten for me were starchy, plain affairs, but the pajamas were a whole different beast. Wearing them, I doubted I would even need a bed to feel comfortable at night. Fluffy, soft, downy pajamas, they were.

I’d get into bed and turn the monitor on, it was voice-enabled so I didn’t have to get up. I would call out a command, and it would put on a movie. They had all of them.

Quite literally, every single movie ever made. And presumably all of the movies that would ever be made. The first week, I pounded through all of the Harry Potter movies in four days. Then I watched all of Lord of the Rings after that. Back at home I didn’t have access to a television, so regularly watching movies was pleasant.

After I watched the movies, I would fall asleep and wake up early the next morning to do it all again.

The funny thing was, despite how difficult the training was, or rather because of it, I was really enjoying it. I could tell that I was getting stronger, faster. I had more stamina, I could run for longer. I liked that I could see the results immediately. It made it worth the occasional cuts and bruises. I was also able to recognize battle formations from the videos, and see how they worked. It gave me an insight that I didn’t have before, and I could tell that I was actually learning, for what felt like the first time in my life.



I hadn’t seen Major General Siegfried since I had been put into basic training. It was a little disappointing, I really liked the man. Maybe I would get to talk to him soon.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Juncture 3.1



The day after the ceremony, I said goodbye to Major General Siegfried. I was starting basic training, and since he was only in charge of recruitment, I would no longer be under his care. He wished me good luck, and walked me to one of the nondescript doors in the building. He left.

I wasn’t nervous, per se, but from what I’ve seen Siegfried do, the speed at which he moved against the velociraptor, he had to have gone through some serious training to get to that point.

I knocked. From inside the door, I heard a voice say “it’s open”. It sounded oddly far away. I looked around for several seconds until I remembered that the doors were ID based. I had gotten one earlier today, and I held it up in front of the small scanner. The door whooshed open.

I was surprised to see that it was an exit. There was no indication that this was an exit, but I was standing on the cusp of a large, empty green field. Like, riding off into the horizon large. I stepped out into the field and heard the door close behind me. I turned.

Behind me was a door, nestled cozily within a doorframe. That was all. There was no building surrounding the door, or anything to suggest that I had just come out of a massive facility. I walked around it and saw that there was nothing from the other side either, just the back of the door.

I went around to the front again. My spine shuddered reflexively, and I saw a person, presumably the one who had yelled that the door was open off in the distance.

It’s gonna be hard to get used to this.

I started jogging toward the person in the field, and got to her after around three minutes of jogging. I was out of breath by the time I reached her.

She was standing immobile, not really staring at me, but with an intense look in her eyes that showed that she despised my being here. She was really short and was wearing camouflage pants, a white sleeveless shirt, and army boots. Her brown hair was cut into a utilitarian, short style, and her arms were decorated with tattoos.

“Hi,” I said panting, “I’m Marc.” I held out my hand for her to shake. She looked at it, then at me, still not moving.

“Avice,” she responded, curtly.

It was quiet for several seconds, but for my heavy breathing. I didn’t know what to say, and apparently she felt no need to say anything. Both of these culminated in an awkward silence that was mercifully broken by Avice after some seconds.

“You’re here for me to train you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I responded.

“Okay. Start with pushups.”

“Now?” I asked, still gasping from the jog over.

“Now!” She barked. When she spoke like that, you didn’t really have a choice but to listen. I got down on the ground and started to do pushups.

One. I was doing okay. I could do this. I had never really been one for exercise, and I could probably count on one hand the number of pushups I had done until now.

Two. I was doing fine. This was easy. As I rose to the apex, Avice put a boot on the small of my back, and put enough pressure on to make my back straighten. It suddenly got a lot harder.

Three. My arms were starting to shake. Her boot became heavier.

Four. My limbs were on fire and my back was breaking. This was torture. This was nothing but long, drawn out torture. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to continue. I went down, and I didn’t know if I’d be coming up again. Avice yelled something at me, I couldn’t make out the words. The pain was intense.

Five. I managed to pull my weak body up one more time, my arms screaming in protest, her boot was a point of red-hot pain on me. I dropped to the ground after.

This was embarrassing. I didn’t know that I had gotten this out of shape, but apparently I couldn’t even do more than five pushups at a time. Avice growled and removed her foot. I turned over weakly, panting. I was sure that my face was dark red.

I looked up at her. She had the same distasteful expression as before, but somehow she managed to make it look even angrier. She stuck her boot in my hitching side and pushed into it.

Five? You could only do five pushups?” she said, in a quiet voice that made me feel like she was thinking about how fast she could kill me. The worst part was that I could only pant, I didn’t have enough breath to answer her. She uttered a deep-throated growl, and I slowly started to stand.

When I was up, she moved up in front of me, taking an intimidating stance. The closeness really made me notice that she was almost three-quarters of a foot shorter than I was. She poked me in the chest with one hand, tilting me backward. I reeled, and swung my arms forward to bring myself back to a standing position.

“Tomorrow, you’d better be ready to actually train. That means no stopping. That means no giving up. You understand me?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said, “Now get out of my sight. Be back here by dawn tomorrow, and be prepared for pain.”

I tried my best to back away and get some of my personal space back.

“GO!” She yelled. I turned and started walking toward the door. When I got to it I swiped my ID, the door opened, and I walked inside. There was an immediate change in pressure that I hadn’t felt the first time I had walked through. It felt… heavier inside the facility, in a way I couldn’t really put into words.

I went to dinner.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Interlude 0.3



Smoothly, the knife entered into the rabbit, piercing the skin, going through the layer of fur, cutting through sinew and muscle and bone, severing the neck from the middle out. The leg of the body twitched, jerking upward in a kicking motion, then fell still.

She fell to the task of clearing the animal out, not thinking, just acting mechanically. She tied twine across the legs, and tied the body neck-facing-downward. Then, she made vertical cuts down the arms and legs, which she used to pull the skin of the animal off. It was chilly, so the longer she waited for the animal to drain, the harder it would be to pull off. Doing it immediately, it was still warm. She put the skin in a small leather bag hanging from her hip, reflecting on the apt morbidity of the situation.

She made a small incision in the belly. Peeling it open with two fingers on one hand, she scooped out the entrails, steaming in the chilly wind. Those she dropped into the grass, leaving them there for the various predators to eat after she took her leave.

When she finished cleaning the animal out, she left it hanging and began searching for firewood. She found several small bits, pieces of tinder, and one or two larger branches. She brought it over into some canopy coverage nearby, where she would make her camp for the night. She placed them down, along with the pack on her back that she had been carrying, and went back to retrieve the rabbit.

She cut it down with a swift slash of her hunting knife, and put the knife back in the sheath hanging by her leg. She stalked back to where she had left her things. They were untouched. Good.

She went about lighting the fire, and soon had it blazing. Then, she pulled out the rods to make a spit, speared the rabbit, and began to cook it. As she slowly turned the meat, she thought about her situation. It was rough, living like she was, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

What she was calling her former life had been… stifling was the best way to put it. She was cradled, trapped in a life that didn’t fit her. Forced to do things she didn’t want to, forced into situations she didn’t like. So she left. She gathered up some supplies, a water bag, a bedroll, and some knives, and disappeared herself in the middle of the night.

She’d been alone in the forest for two months now, and she was doing fantastic. Day by day, she felt her skills grow in each task, be it skinning, lighting fires, setting up camps, and fleeing. She had grown especially good at that last one, being unwilling to move too far from the nearby cluster of villages. She had sustained herself on stolen eggs and bread. She had to evade several guards who were wandering around and saw her stealing. She’d gotten quite good at navigating the forests and using the terrain to her advantage.

The sun was setting. She would eat quickly and set up her camp for the night. She checked the rabbit. Five more minutes until it was ready to eat, so she turned around and switched which arm was cranking the spit.

The meat was done. She pulled it off of the fire and laid it on a log, then went to set up camp. She pulled together a load of leaves in the loose form of a pillow. Her bedroll went underneath the leaves, and she cleared the area around it to ensure that her sleep would be mostly clean.

She ate the rabbit, it was good. Anything filling was now. Some juices ran down her chin, she didn’t wipe them off. There was no reason to, she figured. Who would judge?

When she had had her fill, the sun had finished setting. She put out the roaring fire, scattering water and dirt over it. When it was gone, the chill made her shiver. It was much colder than she had expected it to be, and she was quick to huddle inside her bedroll for warmth. Her teeth chattered until the insulation began to work its magic, and she fell asleep.

When she woke up, there was a fox nearby. It froze as she began to move, and when she groaned the morning’s breath, it fled. She got out of her bedroll and stretched, then began to clean her campsite. First she covered the remains of the fire entirely with dirt, leaving it a plain brown expanse. She rolled up her bedroll, and put it in her pack, along with the spit and fire-starting supplies.

She needed fresh water, so she would go looking. As the weeks went by, she was willing to delve farther and farther into the wilderness, so she continued outward.

The forests were beautiful. Lush and green, the grass crackling from her foot crushing the frozen morning’s dew. There were animals about, though not as much as there tended to be during the summer. The noise they created was calming, peaceful. She took the time of the walk to focus inward, to try and gauge how her body felt after her two months of unrestricted freedom.

She felt fantastic. Her body had become leaner, thinner, and more muscular than before. Most of her body fat was gone. She had also tanned nicely from being outside all day, every day. She had been running as well, and she was getting quite good at it. She could go for a while without getting tired.

Something caught her eye. A glint of orange in between one of the trees, something unnatural. She froze, and when nothing came after her she slowly turned toward it. It wasn’t moving, but it was there. She began walking carefully toward it. She couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing. As she got closer her confusion rose.

Was that…

A door?

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Juncture 2.8



The next few days were a blur of action. I was carted to and fro by Major General Siegfried and Hans. They were giving me what they called “A thorough tour of the facilities.” By the first day, I thought I had seen the entirety of the OST facility. From what I had seen, it was just absurdly enormous. Each day was comprised of trips to the important different wings of the facility, and we didn’t visit the same location twice. Even so, we walked miles.

Miles. And that was only the first day. The other few days we walked just as far, if not further. My legs were aching by the end of the week.

If what I could tell was correct, the place was at least ten miles if I took the various twists and turns into account. Of course, that was only the places that I was brought to, and I didn’t know if I saw the entire thing. There was no apparent entrance or exit.

Aside from the sheer enormousness of the facility, the rooms were impressive in and of themselves. The one that stuck with me the most was the Archive. It was a huge, cavernous warehouse, with endless rows of shelves from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

Each row was segmented into shelves, and each shelf had a plexi-glass box. On each box was a small brass plaque explaining what was inside it, and when it was from.

The actual contents of the boxes varied wildly, and there wasn’t anything that wasn’t interesting. One of the boxes was filled entirely with unidentified bones. The plaque read “Remnants. Unidentified Tribe, East Americas. -1012.2.4.26”. That was it. No explanations, of why they were there, how they died. Just a big ol’ box of bones.

There was another one right next to that that had an old Gameboy color in it, complete with games and several extra batteries. Again, no explanation.

Another room that struck me was the lab. It was surprisingly small, considering the rest of the facility. Sheets of metal and small bits and pieces of scrap were littered on every available surface. The walls were lined with vials filled with strange liquids I couldn’t identify.

There was only one girl in there, at least when I was in the room, and I didn’t get the chance to talk to her. She was busy wrangling several dozen wires together, a couple of which appeared to be attached to a live power source.

Needless to say, I was forced out of there fast, before I could see anything too bad happened.

I also saw more cafeterias, more offices, a hospital wing, and a war room. The war room was less cool than I would have imagined a high-tech war room to be. It was a large concrete box down several dozen flights of stairs, or by an elevator that I wasn’t allowed to access. In the box was a single round table with about twenty chairs around it, and several monitors on the wall.

By the end of the week, my head was crammed with all of the places it could hold. After that, I was allowed out of the facility for the first time since I had gotten there. Hans took me on a trip in Major General Siegfried’s office to a tailor in 1920’s France, who measured me for a uniform, like the one Major General Siegfried so often wore, only minus all of the medals he had.

I was patiently uncomfortable as the elderly man did his work, and when he finished, we walked out, Hans thanked him profusely, and we went around two weeks into the future to pick it up.

We went back to the facility maybe ten minutes after we had originally left, and I was forced to put on the suit. It was extremely uncomfortable, but as I checked myself out in a restroom mirror I appreciated how it looked on me. Much better than most of the second-hand clothes I wore at home.

The thought of home was sobering for a second, and I wondered how I would explain such a long absence to my parents, if they noticed that I was gone. Then I remembered, of course, time travel. I would be back the same day.

As soon as the suit was on, I was swept to where my “commitment ceremony” would happen. Hans left, and I was alone in the room. It was smaller than I expected it to be. The lights were dim. I sat in one of the two folding chairs in the center of the room

Call me self-centered, but I thought it was going to be a big event, as it didn’t seem like the OST recruited new members so often.

The door to the room opened, and Major General Siegfried walked in. He was alone, wearing his full uniform. He sat in the other chair.

In his hand was a thick manila envelope. He handed it to me, and made the universal gesture to open it and look inside. I did. There was a small badge and some papers inside. I pulled them out.

The badge was two infinity symbols next to each other, or two eights, I couldn’t really tell the difference. It was carved into brass. I turned the papers over. The top one was fancy-looking, with the declaration that I was now a member of the Organization of Temporal Stability, all in fancy script.

Major General Siegfried pulled the pin out of my hand and gently affixed it to my lapel. Then he stood up and put his hand out, waiting for me to do the same. I did, and he firmly grasped my hand in his. He shook it swiftly, almost painfully; up, down, then up, and back to the starting position. He released it, and beckoned me to follow him.

We walked out the door of the room, into a crowd of people, some of whom I recognized. They cheered, deafeningly loud, and I turned to look up at Major General Siegfried. He looked down at me with a grin.

“Welcome to the OST,” he proclaimed.