~Chapter One~
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~ June 26, 2017 ~
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Suzannah
"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Dr. Laster asked, her gaze flitting over the entire room like a glitchy hummingbird on heroin.
Suzannah's eyes rolled, showing a flash of blue before they nearly disappeared in the crinkle of her smile. She smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt and reached back to push the length of her chestnut hair over her shoulder.
"Ready to step through a rip in time and space, walk back thirty years to when I was just a teeny little six-month-old baby and give a box to your ancient department head when he was still had hair? Absolutely not, but I'm gonna do it anyway." She squared her shoulders, her entire five-foot frame ready to go.
Suzannah Jack might be lacking height, but she certainly wasn't lacking courage.
Or maybe the problem might be that she was lacking in common sense. That she ignored the little voice in the back of her mind that told her that this was NOT A GOOD IDEA.
She wasn't trained in theoretical physics. Or time travel. Or any physics at all, to be exact. An infectious disease expert, she'd never expected to be one of the first individuals to travel backwards in time, yet here she was.
She wasn't even the premier infectious disease expert, but Dr. Phillip Slone had chosen her for this mission anyway. Because she'd already done this, apparently. Or would do it. Both, as it were; time travel verb tense was so confusing.
Dr. Laster sighed heavily, reaching out to squeeze her newfound friend's shoulder. "Suze. If you want to back out, I'll understand. We know you have to time travel, but that doesn't mean you have to be the first one. We can wait, send someone else first. Trials runs are ...mind-bogglingly stressful."
"Listen, Henny-Penny, I eat trial runs for breakfast. With milk AND orange juice. It's part of a balanced breakfast." Suzannah had gotten to know the other woman fairly well throughout the past few months, and felt compelled to reassure her. Dr. Henrietta Laster, physicist and as close to a time-travel expert as there was, did not claim to be laid back at all - except when she was lying on her online dating profiles. Suzannah wasn't particularly laid back either, but by comparison, she was definitely the chill one of the two of them. Even in the face of the eventual complete annihilation of the human race. There was a particularly bad looking supervirus on the rise, and if things kept going the way they were going, well... Hence the proposal to send her through time and space before someone else from the physics field.
It didn't look good. It didn't look good at all. And when things didn't look good at all, Suzannah tended to use her abrasive sense of humor to make up the difference.
Henry still didn't look convinced, so Suzannah reiterated what she'd been saying for weeks. "In other words, I'll be fine. Stop mother-henning me."
The mother-henning wasn't likely to stop. But it didn't really matter, so long as mother-henning didn't turn into mother-birding. Because hell to the no on that.
Barry, Henry's research assistant, snorted from behind his laptop where he was checking and double checking Henry's math. "I doubt she's going to stop worrying until you're safely back here and she's sure you haven't picked up some time/space disease."
"Uh oh..." Suzannah teased. "You didn't tell me I'm gonna end up with spatial herpes or something."
Henry promptly reached over and shoved Suzannah playfully. "You are going to be eating your words if that turns out to be true."
"There is no such thing as spatial herpes. I am ninety-nine percent sure," Suzannah assured her.
"How would you know? No one's successfully time-traveled before," Henry reminded her, apparently also reminding herself of what they were about to attempt, because she frowned deeply. "Except you kind of have. Oh gods... this is too much..."
Suzannah squeezed Henry's hand tightly. "Calm down, boss. You're gonna get me all kerfuffled and then where will we be?"
"Triple check is over," Barry replied. "Everything's looking good to go. Just waiting on Dr. Slone to bring the package."
"Ah yes. The package. The time-travel snail-mail," Suzannah said, zipping and unzipping her hoodie for the umpteenth time. Henry reached out to still her hand, shooting her a look of barely-contained patience.
"Time-travel snail-mail, also known as the very important trial run of the very first interspatial time manipulator. It goes by many names," Dr. Slone said, a lilt of humor in his voice.
All of them turned to face him. He was striding forward, cane in one hand, package in the other. Phillip Slone was the premier researcher in theoretical time travel, and, as Suzannah had recently come to realize, in actual-facts time travel as well.
He was bald and walked with the use of a cane, yet somehow was still one of the tallest people Suzannah had ever met. He had zero impositions she expected of career-tall guy, though. Instead of filling the room, he merely made it seem bigger by being able to fit inside.
The box he was carrying was plain and brown. Wrapped with normal clear-packing tape, a plain white envelope was doubly secured to the side with a rubber band. It contained a note to his past self - which he knew because she had supposedly successfully delivered it. In the past.
Suzannah really hoped this was going to work. She only had seven minutes in the past before the wormhole portal would open again. She hoped she wouldn't cut it too close or miss it entirely because Past Dr. Slone thought she was some kind of a lunatic.
She assumed he wouldn't, or Current Dr. Slone would say something . He'd already said that he remembered meeting her in the past, so that was reason enough to believe everything went smoothly. And who knew Phillip Slone better than Phillip Slone?
"Are you ready, my dear?" the elderly man asked. His dark eyes shone with mirth and excitement. Dr. Slone had been as bald as a cue ball for the entire time she'd known him, and had always exuded a gravity that seemed ageless. For all she knew, he was actually born an elderly man. It was an honor to work with him.
"As ready as I'll ever be," she replied. "And definitely less excited than you..." She looked at him pointedly. For an older fellow, he was certainly energetic in his excitement, nearly bouncing out of his shoes.
"I hope you'll accept my apologies, it's all rather exciting, isn't it? And apart from this, I've also got plans to meet up with an old friend tomorrow."
"Ah. That's... that's always exciting too, I guess?" Suzannah shot Henry a look of utter confusion which was likewise met.
Phillip was an odd duck, that was certain, but she supposed it must have been a weird kind of existence for him, having a timeline that was so out of sync with everyone else's. She guessed she'd know soon enough how weird that was.
After the trial run, the team would come back together a few days later and then she'd be going back in time for a lot longer. A month, to be exact.
And then, then, they'd finally be able to solve the problem she'd actually come here to solve.
She was going to meet up with a man named Matthew Ivey and find a way to keep him from going missing in 1987. That was something even Henry didn't know. If she did know, she'd likely flip out about Suzannah bringing someone back through the portal with her. Dr. Slone had sworn her to the utmost secrecy about it. As far as Henry knew, it was a fact finding mission. A blood-test getting mission.
Easier said than done, she reckoned. But the entire future of mankind kind of hung in the balance. No pressure or anything.
But first things first, the trial.
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~ 1987 ~
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Going through the portal felt weird.
That was the thing Suzannah really took away from this experience. Portals, or wormholes, or whatever the kids were calling them these days? They felt weird. Like all your insides were filled with hot ants. Or bees. Bees that didn't sting, but that didn't make it any less weird. Maybe made it more so.
It was also loud. Like crinkling plastic right in your ears. Like styrofoam squeaking together. It felt wrong.
Also, the experience was just about as far from any science fiction show she'd ever seen as it could possibly be.
Suffice it to say, she was plenty shaken up by the time her feet touched down on the grass in front of Dr. Slone's house.
No, not house. It was actually a mansion. A mansion that was half his personal residence, half research facility.
Even though the man from her time had assured her that nothing bad was going down at his abode on this particularly balmy day in December 1987 (seriously, it was unseasonably warm for New England), she still had one hand on her taser. She'd been through enough dark alleys to know that stuff that hung out in creepy places, dark alleys, behind trees? It didn't care about timelines. Or anything.
That was all Suzannah needed, to get herself knocked unawares by some random asshole. To become some kind of carbon skidmark on ground that she shouldn't have been walking on anyway. That'd make a great addition to Barry's List of Super Failures.
Okay, so there wasn't actually a list. At least, not a tangible one that she'd seen, though she wouldn't put it past him. Because list or no, there was a very jealous grad student who was pretty much waiting on her to fail. Barry really needed to remove his head from Henry's rear end. That guy had a serious fixation with being Henry's favorite. Suzannah wasn't even involved with the physics department, so it wasn't like she was about to replace him or something equally as sad.
She looked around her. No one was nearby. Everything looked completely innocuous. She tucked the package from Dr. Slone under her arm and kept the other hand on her hip, where her state of the art, 'birthday present from her dad when she left for college in the big city' taser was currently resting in its handy-dandy holster.
She wasn't even completely sure she'd time traveled. Maybe she'd just teleported up to the research center. Everything around here looked the same, right down to the landscaping. Then again, Phillip did like things just 'so'. It was entirely possible that he'd simply kept the same landscaping company for the past thirty-and-some-odd years.
She supposed she'd find out soon enough when she went in to talk to Past Phillip.
She had to drop off the package with Past Phillip and make her way back to the portal immediately. Seeing that she'd been dropped down just shy of the driveway, she'd better start booking it. She only had about five minutes here since she'd been goggling instead of going, plus she'd been skimping a little on her cardio to cram all the information she needed for her little time-jaunt.
She had no sooner stepped onto the gravel when had an incident occurred. She knew it had been a good idea to bring this taser.
A man approached her, someone she didn't really recognize. He looked somewhat familiar. It was hard to tell. And 'somewhat familiar'? That didn't mean anything. Not when you were a woman time-travelling alone. Or a woman alone anywhere. Men were creepy, that was a fact no matter what decade you were in. Quasi-unknown men even more so.
"Hey Pretty Lady, where do you think--" And that was all he got out, because he was writhing on the ground amid clicks from her taser contacts.
She released the trigger, suddenly realizing exactly where she'd seen him before.
Matthew Ivey. She'd seen him in pictures Phillip had shown her.
This was the precise reason she shouldn't try to cram important information. Things slip through the cracks.
"What the HELL? All I did was say 'Hi!" He stood up, moving away from her. "And you zap me with your stun gun? Come on..." He straightened his jacket.
He was tall. Blond. Handsome. Didn't change the fact that he'd approached her and called her 'pretty lady' without so much as an introduction, but still... She was ninety-four percent certain that this was the guy she was supposed to be finding.
When she came back. He wasn't supposed to be here in September 1987. He went missing in June 1987. What the what was going on?
Her eyes raked over his form. She had to look up to see his face. He was even taller than Dr. Slone. He was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt, as well as a studded jacket and skinny jeans. Sneakers, too. In fact, he looked nothing like what she was expecting when Phillip showed her his file. She'd been expecting a straight-laced, button-up-shirt, pocket-protector nerd. Not that there was anything wrong with that, per se. She just wasn't expecting him to be so--
Hot.
She swallowed thickly, realizing that she probably needed to explain herself. She had just dropped down in the front yard and tazed him. "To be fair? You didn't say 'Hi', you zipped up in front of me and said 'Hey Pretty Lady'..." she corrected him. "Dude, you kinda scared me."
"Sorry... but likewise. When people step out of purple portals around here, it's kinda suspect." He looked down at his chest. "Wanna disconnect me, here?"
"Not so fast..." She held out the gun part of the taser. "I don't know who you are."
Well, she did. But hearing it straight from the hot guy's perfect mouth might help matters a little.
"I don't know who you are either," he countered. "And to be honest, I'm totally being nice by asking you to disconnect them. I could do it myself before you even knew what hit you."
"I'm Suzannah Jack. Time-Traveller. From the future. And not to be rude, but I'm kind of on a schedule here." She tapped her watch. Useless except for the stopwatch function, she now realized, but it was the principle of the thing.
His eyes narrowed. "From the future?" He'd switched to a really, really, bad Schwarzenegger impression and it made her want to laugh. Scratch what she thought before. This guy was a total dork.
"Something like that. Except, you know, I'm not an Austrian bodybuilder and I'm not a weapon. Like. At all. That taser is it."
"That 'taser' is painful... I'm Matthew, by the way. Ivey."
Her blood ran just a little bit cold. There it was. That name. That name was important. Matthew Freaking Ivey. Right here. Right now.. Which wasn't a good thing. No, not at all. Just one more little piece of the puzzle to fit into place... It began to dawn on her.
"What's the date, Matthew?"
"September 26th, 1987."
Do not panic. It's a tiny blip. We can figure it out when I get back. Except... oh gods. This is the week I'm supposed to be trying to save him. But this is the trial. I only have seven minutes, oh gods. Calm down. Or he's gonna haul you off to check your mental acuity and you'll be stuck here.
"Sweetness. That's the good stuff," she said, sighing with what she hoped looked like relief. She reached over, tugged the connectors from him, and started walking towards the front door of the research center, numbness setting in as she tried to quickly figure out how to fix this enormous problem.
And of course, he blocked the door before she could get in. "What's in that box, gorgeous?"
Frowning, she shook her head. "No idea. It's from Dr. Slone. To... Dr. Slone..." She shrugged. "C'mon, troll-face, lemme pass."
He wrinkled his nose, looking less and less like a troll by the second. "Troll-face? Excuse me? Look, I might not be Harry Hamlin or anything, but I'm okay on the eyes."
"Who in the hell is Harry Hamlin?"
"People's Sexiest Man Alive."
"Yeah, it's Dwayne Johnson in my time. I'll google that Harry dude when I get home, though."
"You'll what?" Matthew looked one-hundred percent confused and it took her a minute to realize that Google wasn't a verb in 1987. It wasn't even a thing in 1987. And it was going to take her too long to explain it.
"Hey, dude. Listen. I'm on a time limit. I have to deliver this package to Phillip and be back out in that lawn in..." She checked her watch. "Four minutes. You've already wasted three of them with your trolliness."
She pushed passed him and walked into the mansion. He kept in step with her. "Fine, but I'm coming with. If that's a bomb or something, I have to alert everyone."
She rolled her eyes. "I highly doubt Dr. Slone would send himself a bomb from the future."
"I doubt it too, but like I said, I don't know you. You could be lying about that. You understand, right?" He winked.
He had brown eyes, she noticed, staring a little too long into their warm depths.
"I understand you're a troll," she muttered.
"What makes me a troll?" he protested.
"You're refusing to let me cross the bridge."
"I'm escorting you over the bridge. That has to make me the most mannerly troll in existence."
They had arrived at Dr. Slone's office, so Suzannah chose to ignore her kind of cute, but otherwise annoying, escort by knocking. A voice bid her come inside.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the man in the desk chair. He was so much...younger than she could compute. But he was Phillip alright. Bald as a cue ball though, even decades earlier and with smoother skin, he had that same look in his eyes. That look that belied how much he actually KNEW about you.
"She's telling the truth, Matthew. There is no need to worry."
Suzannah shot Matthew a snotty look before handing the box to Phillip. Unbeknownst savior to mankind or not, Matthew was kind of a know-it-all. "Nice to see you again, Doctor..."
"I must confess, for me, this is the first time we've met, but if my future self trusts you with something like this, then... you must be special indeed." Phillip smiled warmly in her direction.
"Oh...right..." she snickered and blushed. "Sorry." She glanced around the room. "Also...want to apologize in advance... the first time I met you, I broke (or I break?) that vase. " She pointed towards a red and black vase on an end table beside his sofa. "Apparently, it's a keepsake or something? So, yeah...sorry about that, Doctor."
"I'm sure it's quite alright, my dear. " He turned his attention briefly to the package she'd handed him, opening the envelope first, and scanning its contents quickly. "Ah. Have a seat, Ms. Jack, is it? Do you like tea?"
"Sorry, I'd love to, but I'm kind of in a hurry..."
"Future-Phillip has informed me that your scientists' figures are off. You won't be here for only seven minutes, you'll be here for seven days. I must apologize on his - our - behalf, but we couldn't risk telling you lest the timeline be twisted impossibly. Suzannah blanched, sitting down roughly on the sofa. "What?"
"Seven days. But, I'm sure you'll find some way to pass the time." His eyes glanced over at Matthew, who was still loitering awkwardly in the doorway. "Matthew. Join us."
Suzannah swallowed as he sat down beside her on the couch. "I'm kind of...not prepared to stay here for a week. I didn't bring anything." Not to mention that she wasn't prepared to actually be here...now. She'd thought she'd be plopping down in December 1987, do a trial run and go back to her time. Where they'd send her back further, to September of 1987 so she could secure a sizable blood donation from Matthew. Or Matthew. But that was really wishful thinking now that she only had a week, wasn't it?
She was going to be stuck here a week. Seven days, including the day where Matthew goes missing...
Could she panic now? Could she?
"You're welcome to stay in one of the spare rooms available here. I have plenty in my personal wing of the building. And I'm sure we'll be able to procure some clothing and basic necessities for you. It might not be 2017, but we're not completely in the dark in the 80s."
"2017? That's where you're from?" Matthew nodded thoughtfully. "I must look different then, if you didn't recognize me...do I not age well? Big face scar or something? Or do Phillip and I have a falling out?" His tone was teasing, but his face fell the longer she was silent.
Suzannah pressed her lips together, glancing over at the professor who waved his hand vaguely. "No information that could impact the flow of time, please, Ms. Jack."
"Oh right. Sorry..." Matthew wiped his hands on his pants. "Also, sorry I was a being a 'troll' earlier... and sorry you're stuck here for a week."
"Sorry I tased you," she added, unsure of what else she could even say at this point.
"Still...it was kinda bad-ass. Walking out of a time portal and tasing me. "
"Thanks. I think?"
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~ June 26, 2017 ~
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Henry
"Dr. Laster?" Barry's voice sounded worried as he looked at the laptop screen "How many times did we check your work on these figures?"
"You triple-checked, remember?" Henry replied. "You were being really obnoxious about it."
Henry really just wanted this time travel test drive to be over and done with. She hoped at least that Suzannah was alright. That was her number-one concern right then.
"Well, you've both got this equation incorrectly copied. " Barry began to rewrite the equation up onto the dry erase board. "You've got this backwards here..." He circled a portion. So, an hour in our time doesn't equal seven minutes in 1987... seven minutes in 2017 equals an hour there." The math was right, but we had the wrong equation... I..." Barry bit down hard on his fist. "I can't believe this happened."
Henry's stomach dropped. Where, she didn't know. She was pretty sure they could maybe find it in the basement level if they ran really fast. Panic burned in her veins as she scrambled to come up with a solution. "Oh my god...so we have seven minutes to set up the portal or..."
"Or you miss your chance for this time and location."
"I couldn't set up the coordinates in seven minutes even if I had the right equation," she lamented. "I'd need... at least a day and a half. Maybe I could do it in twenty-four hours with competent help. Barry. Do you mind staying?"
"Not at all, that's what I'm here for anyway." He reached for the button on his blazer, slipping it off and over his shoulders as he draped it over Henry's desk.
She took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to calm herself. She was no help to Suzannah if she wasn't calm and collected. "So. Our new goal is twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours to a new portal. Which means she'll be there for a week. Oh geez. Barry, this isn't good. This isn't good at all. "
"No kidding. I ... also have reason to think we might have sent her back to the wrong day."
"One ridiculous problem at a time," Henry requested, taking a deep breath and clearing her mind. "Let me talk to Phillip. Maybe he knows something."
"Also..." Barry interjected. "Stay with me here, but if each person's timeline is fixed, as we've come to believe through our hypothesizing... Dr. Slone probably remembers Suzannah visiting him in 1987. Maybe he already told her? He did send a letter along with her."
Henry frowned. "So what are you saying? Suzannah already knew we were going to mess this up?"
"No. I can't imagine she'd have kept that to herself. But... Phillip did. And remember, he gave her a note for his past self? And a package?" Barry tapped his pen against his bottom lip. "I'd say she probably already knows, but still... call Dr. Slone and make sure."
Henry frowned. "Why on earth would Dr. Slone withhold this information from us? He could have let us know that the formula was wrong!"
"Fixed timelines, Henry," Barry reminded her. "If he had done that, Suzannah would have been back much sooner. There's something she needs to do there, where she is. When she is. Something important, I'll bet. Phillip always has his reasons. And I'm sure Suzannah is in good hands."
Henry wasn't sure she agreed.