Out of Time
copyright 2014 Faeriemage
Time is a cruel mistress, especially if you start playing with her box of toys.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just saying, make sure you finish all the way to the end. Not everything is as it seems at first glance.

Just trust me. Have I ever let you down in the past...when it really mattered :)

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Pain. All I know is pain. My arms and legs are on fire and I struggle to pull them out, to put them out, but something holds them in place. Noise is all around me. I lie in darkness. My eyes won’t open. I scream into the darkness. Let me out. I can’t even understand my own voice, so how would my tormentors be able to understand it.

There’s something important I have to say, but I can’t remember what it is. There was something, something that I was thinking just a moment ago, and I can’t remember. All this pain. It’s too hot. A cloth seers my face and my eyes and they can open again. I blink and bring everything into focus. Steve is standing over me. I remember what was so important to say.

“I wish I’d married you when I had the chance,” say and he laughs.

“Her core temperature is coming up nicely,” a voice says. My mind is still waking up and I’m not sure who it is. It hits me then. I was dead. Actually, truly, dead for somewhere close to an hour. Someone is massaging my my limbs, I assume to improve circulation as quickly as possible.

“That hurts, you know,” I say to whomever is torturing my poor extremities.

“Can’t be helped,” Lois replies. “Not if you want to walk again.”

“You’re just making that up,” I grumble and there is laughter in the room.

“What are my numbers?” I ask. I have to know if it worked.

“You’re lower.”

“Where?”

“You’re at the top of the green, but you are in the green.” Mim says. There’s something in his voice that worries me. I look at him with concern in my eyes. The next thing he says is supposed to assuage my fears, “We haven’t revived the general yet.”

“Then go get him,” I say as forcefully as I can. Leave Steve here with me. He can raise my core temperature some.”

There is a shocked gasp and a couple of chuckles.

“Wait, I said that aloud,” I say. I’m still a little out of it, apparently.

“If certain parts of me wouldn’t freeze off if I tried it, I’d be all for the excuse, my little popsicle. We’re just going to leave you in the thermal blanket for now.”

“Go, save the general,” I say again and amazingly they leave. I think that I fall asleep because the next thing I remember is Steve kissing me on the lips.

“Good morning, Sleeping beauty.”

My arms and legs don’t feel like they’re on fire anymore. I feel alive, if still a little lethargic. It’s something hard to describe. There’s a knowledge that I intentionally stepped over the edge into the abyss and then was pulled back by my loved ones.

It’s a heady feeling, especially since I’m no longer slipping. It means I’ll likely be stuck in this body for the rest of my life, but remembering the moment or two that Steve and I stole, it is something that I can live with.

As of yet, I don’t know if there’s been any permanent damage, but I wouldn’t be able to tell. I’ll have to wait and see if anything crops up to prove to me that the damage is there.

I hear them talking in the other room. There’s a tension to their voices. They are trying to revive the general. It’s not that there’s any specific problem but we did something the human body is simply not designed to withstand. Freezing kills you. Freezing is supposed to kill you. I hear them call for this drug and that drug. The steady tone of the heart monitor turns into a beep and there is a sigh of relief from someone.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in.

The hard part is over. Since I know the general has never been on a mission, he should be fine as long as he is somewhere near the middle of the yellow. If he’s in the green, all the better, but as long as he is out of the red then we should be fine sending him back with team 1.

I look at the clock on the wall. We have another thirty hours to get him imbedded with team 1, or more specifically, we have thirty hours to discover team 1’s recall point so that we can shove the general into the midst of it at the last possible moment. He’ll go back with them and that will be that.

I hear the rest of my team congratulating each other in the other room. They don’t realize what I have yet. We’ve only solved half of the problem, because the bubble still exists, and if the machine really is off...then I’m afraid that this might actually be unresolvable.

All we’ve done is prevent time from unraveling from this point. We cauterized the wound, but there is still a gaping scar. It’s not going to heal if we leave it the way it is. Well, I can live with that. Almost I just want to find teams 1’s rally point and then leave the general to his own devices. I would if I wasn’t certain that this was still a flux-point.

I hate knowing more than anyone else. If I make it through this, I promise that I’m never going to have the most knowledge about any of these missions. I’m going to be fat, dumb, and happy...maybe not the fat part. I’m going to live a long time, and I’m going to be deliriously happy with Steve.

Much sooner that I thought possible they’re releasing me from the restraints and I move into the general’s room. I wonder if I looked that bad while I was recovering. I grab the scanner and run it over his body and take a look at the reading. He’s just a little into the yellow and I heave a sigh of relief. Neither of us is in danger of slipping anymore. We shouldn’t, either of us, be traveling any time soon, which means that Neither should Steve be traveling without me.

“Where is the base housing,” I ask the general.

“On the north end,” he says a little groggily. “Why do you ask? You can just take me back now, right? That was the point of this?”

“Chris, you’re not going back with us.”

“What? I need to go back…”

“Relax,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder. “We’re taking you back, or I should say we’re sending you back. There are two other teams operating in the Pit right now. One of them will go back in about twenty-eight hours, and the other will be going back in thirty-four. We want you to go back with the first group.”

“Why?”

“Because they will be going back fourteen years earlier than my group will.”

“Oh,” he says, and he smiles. We’ve explained this to him before, but I know how loopy you feel while everything is still waking up. It’s a little like coming out of anesthesia.

“So, because neither you nor I can travel right now, you more than me, we need a place to hole up while we wait.”

He provides direction to his house, and I mentally jot them down. It’s not that hard to follow, this was a purpose build army base after all; straight lines wherever possible. In a couple hours, when he’s ready to move, we make our way out of the building. We make our way through the blazing sky and the abnormal entities. It seems that they are dying out since two of the foci have been removed from the equation.

I idly wonder, as we walk, whether it was he or I who called the dragon into being.

There are still strange things happening, but they are of a more normal variety. I see a man pull a phone out of his pocket and then put it away. As soon as he does he points his group in a different direction.

He’s wearing modern combat fatigues.

“Steve,” I say, quietly, and point in their direction.

“One or two,” he asks.

“If I had to guess, I’d say team 1, but that’s only because team 2 would have to have been sent in stealth like us.”

“Why?” Chris asked.

“Because of something you haven’t discovered yet, and we won’t tell you,” Mim replies.

“Fine, leave the old guy out of the loop,” he grumbles and the rest of us laugh. The team is almost out of sight.

“Steve and I will follow team 1, or at least long enough to find out if they are team 1. Lois and David, get everyone to the General’s place. We’ll meet up with you there.”

They move off and Steve and I move toward the direction that the assumed team 1 went. I link my arm with his and lace our fingers together.

“Not that I’m complaining, but why did you do that?”

“Well, Romeo, because you are a big strong man, and there are monsters about.”

He laughs but doesn’t let my hand go. For the moment I ignore the fact that this ‘wasn’t proper’ in 1944 and play off the preconceptions that the other team will have. With the fact they’re using modern gear out in the open, I have a pretty good idea that they have no plans to blend in. They have a mission and they’re going to accomplish it.

They were at least in pairs...if it wasn’t in obvious dyads. I’d only seen two women in the sixteen man squad. For whatever reason same sex dyads were less common than the already uncommon pairings that existed.

Only about one in ten people have the possibility of pairing with any one other person on the planet. Only about one in eight of those will pair with someone who is geographically close. We still haven’t figured out how to make someone realize a pair remotely, so trying to get them with all of other people on the planet is an unlikely proposition, so we rely almost entirely on that one percent who can pair with someone from the same relative area as they are.

The problem is, only about a half a percent of people who can pair with someone in a relatively close area has skills that the organization is looking for. For the mathematically challenged, that means that about 6 in 100,000 people can pair who also have skills the organization is looking for.

It’s amazing that they have as many teams as they do, really. Gotta love volunteerism. Still, the disparity in same sex couples is even worse. Out of every one hundred dyads one will be same sex.

With my gender swap, the odds will go down just a bit. Maybe, they aren’t really as low as we think they are. Maybe there are other factors in play. Maybe people who already have to deal with a society that still can’t accept them as people aren’t as ready to volunteer to save it.

Maybe it’s not even that. There are a large percentage of the people who apply to the organization who never find matches. The thing is, all of the ‘matching’ parties that they throw are voluntary attendance. Maybe it’s just that most people who are actively searching for someone of the same sex don’t attend a party that is catering to connections with the opposite sex.

Maybe there are a lot of transgender people out there who would be happy to attend if they knew that people like me, people who never knew what they really were because they were in denial for so long, were already in the program.

So many maybes and I have no real answers. My thoughts have distracted me from the task at hand. Steve pulls me around into an embrace which startles me out of my reverie. “What’s going on?” I whisper to him.

“They’re taking out a deinonychus.”

“Really,” I say, turning him a bit so I can just barely peek around his shoulder. “They really do have feathers,” I say in a bit of awe.

“You always were a dinosaur nut,” he says with a little chuckle.

“How come they never sent us that far back?”:

“Because our skillset doesn’t really translate well,” he says and I listen to the rumble of his voice in his chest. It distracts me enough that I don’t really listen to what he’s saying. As they’re taking down the one in front of them, another sneaks up behind. It must have been something about the T-Rex, or about the guns, but it’s taking a lot of shots to actually take this much smaller dinosaur down than it did the much larger.

It also might be that they got a lucky shot on the larger creature. I always did think those huge holes in the skull would be a weak point.

“Behind you,” I scream out, and half of the squad turns and looks just as the lizard leaps on top of one of the soldiers. I’m feeling sick to my stomach at my realization that this gives them an odd number of people and the soaring I felt when I realized the implications.

“We need to get the general down here, now.” I whisper to Steve.

“What are you talking about?”

“They aren’t in dyads, just pairs. They just lost one.”

“Damn, but you’re cold,” he says, but his smile takes any of the possible sting out of the words. “It will have to be you. It will look a little less weird if I’m by myself than if you are.”

“I can get that,” I say with a smile, “and when you walk over to talk to them, as soon as they take out this pack, let them know I’m bringing our commanding officer back.”

“Our commanding officer?” he says confused and I just look at him for a moment with an eyebrow raised. Then he rolls his eyes, “stealth, got it. All we are is local soldiers. The general is the one going back with them. He’s the timetraveller.”

I give him a peck on the cheek and then go running off toward where the general is located. After about a half block I take off my heels and run barefooted, knowing that I’m destroying my nylons by doing so. My heels are only about two inches, nothing really vertiginous, but it is much easier to run without them.

I’m out of breath by the time I get to the general’s house. I make a vow to myself to spend more time running when I get home. I do so every time that I have to run somewhere on a mission, but I never do. Part of the problem, I am sure, is the fact that I spend five times as much time upstream as I do in prime-time. With how high my radiation levels currently are, that’s not going to be an issue for the next six months or so. I fully expect to be in the yellow by the time I return home.

“General,” I call out as I enter the door, having caught my breath.

“What is it,” Lois asks, concern painting her features.

“We have an opening for him with team 1, but we need him there as soon as possible.” I slip my shoes back on as I wait for them to get the general. He is sleeping in the back room. Apparently dying affected him more severely than it did me. Who’d a thunk? I can die with grace and vigor.

Mif directs me to a jeep in front of the house. They used it to get the general here. It wouldn’t do for a lady to be seen driving a general about. Mim is wearing no rank insignia, so he makes for a perfect private driver. I groan at my own pun. I make sure not to voice it aloud.

The silence of the streets is erie. There are none of the animal sounds, strange as they were, or gunfire that were so common even a couple of hours before. I assume that team 1 has successfully fought off the deinonychus attack, at least I hope they have. When we drive up, they are bandaging the survivors. The one I saw attacked looks to be the only death.

I whisper furtively to Chris, “general, we are just soldiers as far as that team is concerned. You need to tell them that you know they are timetravellers. Do whatever you can to get them to understand and take you with them. Now, I want you to command us loud enough that they can hear, to go back to your house and wait for me.”

The General gets out of the jeep and straightens his uniform. “Lt. Fields,” he calls out.

“Sir?” Steve replies from his spot next to the squad.

“Return to my house, take these two with you. I want you to wait there for me, or until all of this strangeness passes.”

“Yes, Sir,” Steve responds and salutes. The general returns his salute. The last I see of the general, he’s approaching the squad. I have a feeling that he already did this in our timeline. He is already having done this? Timetravel almost requires it’s own verb tense.

We drive back to the general’s house. We’re not going to wait there.

“So, we’re done then?” Mim says as we go through the door.

“You dropped the general off with team 1,” Lois asks.

“Yes,” I say, “we’ve accomplished everything we intended to.”

“Then let’s go home,” Steve says and wraps me in his arms. “We have a wedding to plan.”

There are general congratulations all around and I accept them as graciously as I possibly can. We pile into the jeep. It’s a tight fit, but neither Lois nor I have a problem with sharing a seat. Mike squared laugh at us. They’ve been married for...three prime-years? Sometimes the math is difficult for me.

We laugh and carry on as if we were just as carefree as we appear to be. Everything from this point on is anticlimax. We arrive back at the rally point and signal for a return request. While waiting for the return I happen to stick my hand in my pocket. There’s a piece of paper there with the general’s signature on it. I have no idea when it appeared there. It’s likely it’s been there since I picked up this uniform. I wonder if all of my pockets have this message in them, just to make sure.

The note says: the lockout code is #99832467. It will allow you to enter a negative number into the return panel. Enter the negative number twice in confirmation. Good luck. I’m sorry.

My stomach sinks. All along, I have been hoping I would be able to avoid this. I had been hoping that I would be able to go home, and that it would all be over. My other self..my self had been telling me that it wouldn’t work that way. The moment I slipped over to this individual, my life became a closed loop.

The individual that I slipped into was the individual that I was now. I am a walking talking paradox. My life will last forever. My life ends the moment that I use the code that the general just gave me.

I slip the code back into my pocket and I reach out and grab Steve’s hand. He holds my hand and smiles at me. I smile back, able to be happy for him. His life will go on. He will find someone else. He’ll likely not have the same connection, but he will be alive. That makes me feel so happy that I feel like my heart will burst. The transfer is over faster than I want it to be, and they all move toward the door to the common room. I hang back and watch them go. As soon as I begin using the panel, the doors entering the sphere will lock. I’m relying upon that. There will be no long goodbyes. There will be no ‘Death of Spock’ moment with Steve pressed against the glass as I disappear.

The moment the door clicks shut, however, he’ll know.

I begin crying as they approach the door. Just before it closes I yell out, “I’m sorry,” and mash down the # key. I punch in the code and a panel I’d never noticed before opens up. There are four buttons there. One of them is a - sign. I hit that, and then I type in a rough amount of time for when the machine was actually activated. I punch the time in a second time, as the note said, and then I wait.

It’s the longest wait I’ve ever had. I’m beginning to worry that I did something wrong, but then everything flashes and I’m back in the copse of trees. My stomach lurches and I vomit in the bushes. It’s not anything to do with the transition. It’s the knowledge that I’ve effectively trapped myself in the past. Sure, I could try and hitch a ride with team 3 when they go back...but that would be a truly awkward meeting...also, I know it won’t be possible, since in about 24 hours I’m going to cease to exist, merged with my younger self.

It’s sort of nice being temporarily omniscient. I already know what I did. I already know what I have to do. I make my way across the compound to the machine. I see General Haynes walking around in the control booth, but I know, somehow, he’s not who I came here to see.

I make my way into the guts of the beast. It is a weird amalgam of the refined and the rough. Some things here were obviously off the shelf, and others were custom made, some of them looking like they were build in place. It is a mess of wires and pipes and catwalks. There, in the center, is a mass of flesh that could only charitably be called human.

“Hello, Chris,” I say quietly. The almost boneless face turns so it can see me.

“Who are you?”

“We never met, although for me I already killed you. I’ve killed you so many times. I’ve never killed you, or met you, before. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the running around. I want it all to end.”

“Then kill yourself.”

“Never had enough courage. Never had enough despair.”

“I don’t want to die,” the thing says.

“You won’t. You have a life after this. You cloned yourself, remember?”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did. It wasn’t intentional. The radiation caused a disease called time-slipping.”

“Please, what will happen to me when I die?”

“Even I don’t know that, and I’ve been killed more times than I can count.”

“Will it hurt?”

“I hope not,” I say and shoot the wretch in the head. I shoot him a couple of times through the body to make sure. I feel so disconnected from my actions at this point. There is one more thing I can do before I can rest. This has been such a long life. It’s only at this point in the circle that I can remember everything, remember every different cycle through the loop; remember the times I twisted and ankle because I refused to take off the shoes while I ran; remember the times that Steve died because the dragon ate him; remember the times that I didn’t fully slip and Steve still loved me. Those are the most painful for me to remember, because it reminds me that Steve and I were made for each other.

I walk into the control room and over to the general.

“You’ll not understand why I’m giving you this for a long time, General Haynes, but keep it in mind, and when the time comes it will make sense.”

He pulls me into a corner away from the other techs.

“You’re from the future, aren’t you?”

“Yes, and you’re going to meet me again, tomorrow, but I won’t have met you yet. No matter what you think, no matter what you see or hear, I am a woman. I’ll be typing on the teletype. If asked, you know I’m a timetraveller because you saw my hair band.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s important.” I kiss him on the cheek and then walk out of the room. I head into the woods on the periphery of the sinkhole. If I am going to try to end it, I want to do this in the woods that I’ve grown to love over the years in a single day I’ve spent here.

I take out my weapon and I stick in my mouth. I know, that not once have I ever thought to try this. Maybe it will end this. I can taste the gun oil. I put my thumb on the trigger and begin to apply pressure.

***
I’m sitting in a club. My school is sponsoring this little get together event. I smooth out my dress. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s not like I’m going to be read. It is still my number one fear, even six years after I started my transition.

The thought makes me laugh. I got the surgery six months ago on my eighteenth birthday. Even if I’m read, it shouldn’t matter anymore. Physically, I am the woman that I’ve always been. I am woman hear me roar…

It’s just a glance, but in that glance, in a chance meeting of our eyes, I know that everything in this world has changed. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and I’m sure that everyone around me will hear it over the music.

He’s tall. So much taller than I would be in stocking feet. I’m glad I’m wearing my four in heels. We might, just might, be somewhere approaching a parity in height. He’s wearing a uniform. It’s not military, something I would recognize having been an army brat my entire life. Dad was a general, and he would never have let me live it down if I couldn’t at least recognize the ranks and branches of the people that he had to entertain occasionally.

There’s something dangerous about the way that he holds himself that sends a thrill through me. If the world revolved around me before, it doesn’t anymore. I can feel a gravity pulling me from across the room.

I stand and smooth out my red dress and casually walk over to him.

“Hi, I’m Rachel,” I say, offering my hand.

“Steve,” he says with a glorious smile and takes my hand gently. He doesn’t shake it, like I half expected, but he doesn’t let me go either. He just turns to an older man standing next to him and says, “She’s the one.”

“Did I win something?” I say playing up my blonde locks.

“In a manner of speaking,” the general says. He’s wearing a standard Army Class A uniform.

“Well, lay it on me, General,” I say with a coquettish smile.

***
I yank the gun out of my mouth and throw it away from me into the forest. My heart is still racing. That image was so vivid. That entire...moment was so different from the one I remember.

Something about trying to end myself brought on something I can only describe as inspiration. I know, not just assume, I know how to fix this. The problem was never in the Pit. The problem was with me. In order for the General to get back to the future, I needed to be the woman he assumed that I was. Slipping is linked to your emotional state.

As long as I was already a woman, it would all work it’s way out. We’d only have to ‘kill’ the general. The rest of us would be safe from over-exposure. It would all work out, as long as I was a woman before the mission started.

From what I’d read about the subject, and believe me there was a lot of literature about it in the organization, I was transgendered. The issue, was letting myself know early enough to make a difference. I had a feeling that I’d be able to do that, I just needed a little preparation first.

***
“Took you two long enough,” I say as the two people appear out of thin air. They look startled. Steve looks just as I remember him. Maybe a little older, but with the schedule they have us on, what do you expect. True, I don’t know how long after The Pit they were able to find a wave that synchronized with this place. I’d picked it because of the large number of synch-waves I was aware of that emanated from it.

It was a little wooded park outside of Washington DC, and a favorite location for agents to materialize into when they had a mission in DC.

“She’s yours, both of yours,” I say, handing the child in my arms to myself.

“What are you...wait, Ray?”

“You still let him call you that?” I say looking at my alternate self.

She blushes but nods. I have to smile at how pretty I look. Not the same as the face I see in the mirror every morning, but still pretty. At least I know that this plan of mine will work. In the nine months since that moment of clarity, I’ve had my doubts.

“It’s a good thing you all left that scanner behind in your rush to leave the Pit. I was able to verify that she’s in the green.”

“What...how...who…” Steve says, but my other me is engrossed in the baby. “She’s ours, Steve,” she says reverently. “She’s an alternate me, aren’t you,” she says, looking at me.

I nod.

“Are you coming back with us,” Steve asks, and Rachel uses her free hand to punch him. “Don’t get any ideas, Steve. No matter how twisted you think I am, I’m not having a threesome with myself.”

Steve looks sheepish and Rachel and I laugh.

“Take in the sights,” I say, “You’ll likely never get a vacation in the past again. You do have four hours...or so,” I say, smiling. I show them where the stroller is, and I hand my diaper bag to Rachel. As I watch them walk away, it feels like a hole has been ripped through my heart. She is such a small thing, so beautiful, but she needs parents. She needs her own parents.

“What’s her name?” Steve calls back.

“Gloria,” I say and Rachel laughs. It’s the name we’d already decided we should name our first daughter, if possibly for different reasons.

***
I walk up to the door. It’s exactly like I remember it to be. This is my second to last stop, my second to last moment where I need to do something. I’m feeling so tired, even if the chroniton radiation keeps renewing my body. It’s my slip. I need to be able to make it to 2044. It’s 2032. That makes me 116 years old. I joke with myself that I don’t look a day over one hundred.

In actuality I likely look younger than eighty, but I can live with that. I knock and a little boy answers the door.

“Hello, Ray. Is your mother home?” A woman I remember so well, even if I haven’t seen her in over ninety years, answers the door.

“Can I help you?”

“My name is Gloria, and I’m here to help you.”

“Come inside, then, Gloria.”

I enter and sit down. It’s like being transported back in time, and I have to laugh at the thought.

“Can I get you anything, Gloria?”

“No. I’m not staying very long, or I won’t unless you want me to. What I have to say is going to be a little hard to understand, and it may not be believable, but your son is transgender.”

“Well, you don’t pull any punches,” my mom says with a little laugh.

“When you’ve been around as long as I have, you can either decide that you have all the time in the world to beat around the bush, or you can realize that every moment is precious and just get to it. I noticed that you’re not surprised?”

“I was thinking something like this. I have a degree in child psychology after all.”

“Well, then, I’m going to have to try a different method. Your daughter needs to transition before she turns eighteen. She’s going to be joining the Preservation of Time Authority then, and if she doesn’t transition before that point, she will die.”

“What?” my mom says, truly shocked for the first time and then she really looks at me.

“Ray? I should have known. You look so much like my Grandmother.”

“It’s easier if you call me Gloria,” I say, the tears coming fast. My mom moves onto the couch where I’m sitting and puts her arm around me.

“How long have you been waiting to come and tell me this,” she says in an awed whisper.

“Eighty eight years.” I say, silently crying. I’m sure I look like a mess. Old women never look beautiful when they cry.

“Well, Gloria, you are my mother from now on.”

“Didn’t grandma die?”

“No, she just got lost for a very long time,” my mother says and hugs me tightly.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Ray says as he...she comes into the room. I’m not too late, I see. She might be genetically and physically male, but that outfit screams female. It’s a wonder that I never noticed it before, when I went through this the first time.

“Ray, this is your Grandmother. She’s finally come home.”

***
“Are you sure you want to come along, Gran? It’s just a college party,” Rachel says. She’s wearing a beautiful red dress, and I can’t help but smile at her. “You and I both know this isn’t ‘just’ a college party.”

“Oh, do we?” she says with a sly smile that I return. I haven’t told her, much, about her life, but she’d have to be a fool to think that there isn’t something special about tonight and one thing I never was, was a fool.

“You little imp, of course we know that. You’re eighteen, you’re fully healed, and from this moment forward you are what you have always been, a woman.”

“Oh, gran,” she says, tearing up a little.

“Don’t give me that. You don’t want to ruin your perfect makeup.”

She hugs me and we give air kisses and then we head out the door like a couple of old cronies...which in a way we are.

We get to the club and part company at the door. I take a spot at the bar and settle my old bones down.

“Can I help you, ma’am,” says a man who has walked up to me. It’s sort of obvious he wants me to leave. He’s wearing the uniform of the organization.

“Oh, no. I’m just here to watch my granddaughter. She’s about to join you all, you know.”

“You know the odds…”

“Let’s just say I have inside information and leave it at that,” I say, staring the man in the eye with all the weight of my 124 years. He just swallows and leaves me alone. I can almost feel the moment when Rachel sees Steve for the first time. I quietly make my way out of the club and go home. The smile on her face was harder for me than I thought it would be.

***
I’m slowing down. I can feel it. It’s not been a bad life, overall. It wasn’t even lonely. I only ever loved one man, but that didn’t stop me from burying three husbands. I never had another child. I think that was something to do with the chroniton radiation.

I experienced the history of this country, the last hundred years of it, first hand. I saw the return of the soldiers and experienced my own portion of the baby-boom. I went to woodstock and I saw the moon landing...on TV of course. I was at the cape when the challenger disaster happened, and in Houston. I’ve swum naked in the ocean and I helped to organize the technological revolution in silicon valley. I’m a programmer after all.

I have lived, and the 126 years of my life are catching up with me.

I settle on one of the seats in General Haynes office to wait.

“Hello, Gloria,” he says, startling me awake.

“Hello, Chris. How are the kids doing?”

“They’ve just returned from the Pit. It’s finally over, isn’t it? This is the last time you’re coming in?”

“I’ve done what I could to guide their lives here, more than I should have,” I say, quietly. “There’s just one more thing that you need to do. They need to go to Washington DC on the time and date and this paper. I’m not even sure that I remember it well enough to tell it to you,” I say handing him the slip of paper in my hand. My hand is shaking. He meets me more than halfway, for which I’m grateful.

“What’s there?”

“Their child,” I say, quietly and Chris gasps. “Still have things that can shock you, do I my old friend.”

“Well, you certainly came here the long way, Ray.”

“It’s Gloria,” I hiss.

“No, Ray. I know who you are, and so do you. There’s no one in this office, and you deserve to be known.”

“There will be no-one to know. Let my two girls know I love them.”

“Ray?”

I don’t respond. My thoughts wander. I smile thinking of the life I’ve lived. I think of my daughter in the arms of my granddaughter. I love you, Steve.

***
I can’t stop smiling at this child in my arms. My child. She is so beautiful and I couldn’t think of a name more fitting for her than Gloria.

“You have a lot to live up to, little Gloria,” I say. “Your namesake really lived life. She was in the WAC during WWII. She traveled this country from sea to sea after the war. She was a programmer for most of her life, and made some significant innovations, things that improved the lives of many. She was a deep sea diver, and a horseback rider. She tells me that she only ever loved one man, and that I can believe, because I love your father like that.

“She tells me she went over the Niagara falls in a barrel, but I’m not sure I can believe that. She lives life to the fullest, my little Gloria, and I want you to meet her, because I’m sure she can impart some wisdom to you before she leaves us. I know she left me with my fair share of it.”

“Rachel,” General Haynes calls out. I smile for a moment, but then I notice his face, how distraught he looks and my smile fades.

“We didn’t want to tell you before, because of how important this mission was,” he says looking at Gloria, “but your grandmother died telling me about the mission. She fell asleep and we couldn’t wake her.”

“She’s dead?”

“Yes, but she wanted you to have this little girl. I think she stayed alive this long just for that purpose.”

I nod, crying, but these are tears of joy. I knew my gran was amazing, but before this moment I never knew that we were the same person. Somehow, the way that the way the general had said that phrase, the way he was looking at me, maybe even some little hints that she’d given me over the years, I knew that we were the same person.

Everyday, for the rest of my life, every moment I got, I would tell our daughter what a wonderful mother she had. And everyday for the rest of my life, I would try to live up to my own example.

“Hey, Steve,” I say in my most cute voice, “can we learn how to scuba dive?”