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.