25th May, 2056 – Day 3

Quite frankly, I’ve never been the best judge of character. Ask anyone. My parents, bless them, once compared me to one of those gullible ducklings that imprint on the first thing they see and follow it blindly. I suppose in this scenario, I was definitely the gullible duckling.

I suppose I should start this journal entry by writing down everything leading up to this point. (I’m currently stuck in a bunker, hunched over this little notebook with very little light, not the best). It was early morning – or, well, maybe it’s late evening there now – I have no clue anymore. Time is a messy thing.  I was heading to work – I had the early shift, you see, at a small cafe in Notting Hill – and I was just leaving the underground when something caught my eye.

Now, I’m noting all this down just in case, by some miracle, my parents or the police find this journal. (Though I’ve just been told that there would be no way they could – so that’s just bloody fantastic!) Anyway, I was just reaching the underground, when I spotted a suspicious looking guy lingering outside the bakery on the same road; and I mean really dodgy looking, he was wearing a multicoloured patchwork coat that reached his knees, and from where I was standing, it looked like his face was blue.

‘Hey Kiddo! Up and at’em, we have work to do!’

I rolled my eyes, looking up at Stan from where I was sitting on the dusty cot I’d been ‘banished’ to, hunched over my new notebook. I’d found it while I’d been exploring the new surroundings for the majority of day one and immediately took it as a way to keep track of everything. If only to keep my sanity intact. Eventually Stan seemed to have grown tired of my snooping and banished me to what was now ‘my side’ of the bunker. That was good enough for me.

‘What exactly is it that you do?’ I asked, deadpan. ‘Because to me it looks like you just sit in the corner playing with bits of old junk.’

‘Hey, watch your mouth brat, they’re not junk, but mechanical parts!’ Stan brandished a rusty screwdriver at me, as if that proved a point. He then jerked his thumb over his shoulder, ‘no, but seriously, I need your help with this kiddo. I need to connect this wazoo to the bolt-thing-a-ma-gig…kids know about all this tech mumbo jumbo stuff right?’ With that, Stan wandered back over to his corner, muttering to himself…again.

Watching him warily, I hesitated before setting aside the notebook on the metal box that served as a bedside table, and stood up. Ever since arriving at Stan’s strange home – if that’s what this was- I’d been faced with oddity after oddity: blinking eyeballs in jars with strange liquids, mechanical arms that work on their own, strange glass spheres with colorful swirling mists floating inside them. This place was a nuthouse. Though it did make the idea that I’d been thrown into the future of 2056 more believable. Despite all the strange collections, it was Stan who I was the most uncertain about, as soon as we’d crash landed on the floor of the bunker, he’d immediately started yelling at me about having broken his time watch. He hadn’t really said a word to me since…until now.

Fiddling with the frayed string of my hoodie, I hovered behind the strange man and watched him work. After a few moments of awkward silence, I opened my mouth.

‘Soo…’ I cast around quickly for something to say, my gaze landed on the glass spheres with the mist, ‘how did you come across these anyway? I didn’t think stuff like this was possible.’

‘You mean science?’ Stan had stopped what he was doing and was shooting me a strange look over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, these anti-lights have been around for the last 27 years, they’re supposed to be some sort of night light for kids, but they’re useful as torches too.’

‘Anti-lights?’ I moved closer to the shelf holding the objects in question, tapping at a rainbow coloured one with my fingernail.

‘Anti gravity lights.’ Stan explained, coming to stand beside me. I could tell he seemed a bit uncomfortable, obviously unsure how to treat an unexpected visitor from the past. ‘Oxford University’s science department did research on galaxies- how they were formed, and yadda yadda, all that stuff. Basically they managed to replicate the gravitational pull and contained them in small harmless quantities to use as lights.’ The man picked the rainbow coloured anti-light and handed it to me. ‘Here take it…you seem to like this one.’

‘Uhh,’ I slowly took the object from him, ‘thanks.’  Looking down at the glass orb, I marveled at the flawless shift of colours as they blended into one another.

‘Eh whatever’, Stan rubbed the back of his neck, glancing away from me. Now that I was closer, I was able to get a better look at the man’s face. While before I thought his skin was blue, it actually had a glittery sheen that seemed to reflect all light; blue, purple, aqua, forest green. It was actually pretty fascinating to watch.

‘What? What are you staring at, kid?’

Blinking, I realized I had gotten lost in my thoughts while staring. Sheepishly I averted my gaze, shuffling my feet. ‘You know that your skin changes colour, right?’

Stan laughed, ‘you only just noticed that? Oh, you’ll get used to it. I suppose you should know that a lot of people around here have physical features that you might find strange, we are way after your time after all.’

‘What do you mean?’ I slipped the anti-light into my hoodie pocket as he led me to the long metal dining table in the middle of the room. ‘Are all of you chameleons now?’

‘Nah, not all of us.’Stan snorted as he took a seat, and folded his arms on the table. I took the seat opposite him.

‘What you need to know, kiddo, is that science has advanced so much since your time – 2020 was it?’ I nodded, and he continued, ‘what I mean by that is as science developed, so did human experimentation.’

‘But, that’s illegal!’ I protested, shocked. ‘The ethical and moral issues with human experimentation should have stopped that from happening.’

Stan scratched his head, ‘yeah, you’d be right – there were plenty of laws and protests preventing it from happening. It wasn’t something the people wanted, you know? But then, for the next 25 years global warming started getting worse. Then there was that pandemic in your time that killed millions of people-.’

‘That’s right, but how did that change everyone’s mind that drastically?’ I couldn’t understand it. ‘You were there, you saw that things were getting better.’

But the man shook his head. ‘Not so. Listen, the second wave is much worse than the first. Symptoms mutate beyond that of the flu or new pneumonia. People just weren’t getting better, and by people, I mean everyone!’

He sighed, resting his head in his hand, watching me process all this. ‘I’m sorry, kid, I really am. But the people needed to change their biology to be able to survive. Through DNA mutation, gene splicing, you name it, it was done. After a time, we evolved into a different strand of human.’

We sat in silence as I took time to process all this, Stan shooting me sympathetic looks every now and then. Gathering from what he just told me, the pandemic gets much worse than it already had been. So much worse, in fact, that society resorts to changing their entire physiology. It was a shock to the system.

‘I-I need to go lie down for a bit’, I mumbled, and Stan nodded quickly.

‘Yeah, kid that’s a good idea. I’m sorry for piling all that on you all at once. Just-just take it easy for a bit, eh?’

I gave a noncommittal grunt, shuffling over to my cot. Before lying down, I pulled out the small anti-light from the pocket of my hoodie and set it gently on the bedside table. I then lay down, pulling the ratty threadbare blanket up to my chin. I could hear Stan moving around behind me, probably tinkering with his broken time watch again. Before long, I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.

….‘Now, Evie,’ Dad began as we drove down to the large yard, where every newbie in our town started when fixing up their own car, ‘your mother and I were talking and we decided that you’re free to get building whenever you want, but your first time visit had to be using her spare in the garage.’

I scowled over at him, folding my arms as much as I could in the cramped space of the passenger seat. Of course he would wait until we’re stuck in a car together to drop that on me, just so I’d be forced to listen to his ridiculous reasons.

Seeing my scowl, Dad rolled his eyes at me, ‘Evie, don’t give me that. Listen, I’ve been talking to your teachers at school, and they told me about your current grades. You seem to be struggling in class, is that true?’

I looked out the window. I had been hoping that my parents wouldn’t hear about my grades. It wasn’t my fault that the teachers just sucked at teaching their classes, there was so much more the class could be learning if the teachers knew how to do their jobs.

‘I’ve told you before that they don’t know what they’re talking about, Dad.’ I muttered, shooting him a glance, ‘I don’t get why I can’t just be homeschooled like Davis next door.’

‘You know why, kiddo. This isn’t about the syllabus, we all know you could ace the exams in your sleep, this is about getting along with other people!’ He sighed in frustration, turning to fix his gaze on the road ahead. I just looked back out the window, watching the trees blur as we sped along the road…

…My eyes flickered open, and I stared up at the blurry ceiling in a haze. I must have fallen asleep. Sitting up, I groggily rubbed the sleep from my eyes, while thinking about the dream I just had. Well, it was more like a memory, the last time my dad and I had spoken was a couple of years ago when we’d had an argument. I couldn’t even really remember what it was about, just some stupid squabble about my school grades. Now being transported 36 years into the future kind of puts things into perspective, once I got the opportunity to travel back, I wanted to try making things better with my family. Plus it didn’t hurt that I now knew a bit about what was going to happen, I could help people.

I was broken out of my thoughts by movement in my lap. Glancing down in confusion, I locked eyes with an orange striped creature, it blinked and opened its mouth, revealing sharp glistening teeth.

I shrieked and scrambled backwards, hitting my head one the concrete wall behind me. Stan came running over at the commotion, yelling something, and the creature let out a growl of displeasure.

‘Stan!’ I shouted, as I leapt out of bed nursing my bruised head. ‘Can you tell me why there’s a bloody tiger on my bed!’ Indeed, there was a small tiger sprawled out in front of me, its evil little claws pricking holes in the bedsheets.

‘Calm down, calm down! It’s just V!’ Stan scooped up the little terror as if it were a housecat, and attempted to sooth it. I just stared at him.

‘Just V?’ I sputtered incredulously, running a hand through my dishevelled hair. ‘That’s a tiger, Stan, not a housecat!’

‘He’s both’, Stan said simply, cradling the feline in his arms and gently running his fingers through its fur. ‘I forget you haven’t heard of the developments in the pet industry yet, in 2031, the trend of having mini pets makes a comeback. Pretty nifty eh? I got this little fella about five years ago.’

‘But…a tiger, really?

‘Hey, I happen to think a tiger suits me!’

You couldn’t have something safer like a teacup pig of something?’

‘Okay, now you’re just being insulting.’

I threw my hands up in exasperation, before deciding to move on. ‘Okay fine, I’ll admit the mini tiger’s pretty cool. But just keep him away from my side of the room – don’t want my face getting chewed on.’

‘Eh, V doesn’t like the taste of people anyway, too fatty.’ With that, Stan plonked V back down on my bed, where the tiger once again dug its claws into the linen and curled up to sleep. He then turned to me, excitement in his gaze.

‘Guess what else, kiddo? I finally got my time watch working again. We can send you back home whenever you want!’

I sighed in relief. Finally I would be able to get back to normality. Not that this time wasn’t ‘normal’, just…too much to handle at the moment. I can deal with all this when I’m 57. I shuddered. What a strange world Earth becomes, and in such a short time too.

‘Right, I’m so ready to get back home. Let’s do this!’ I looked at Stan expectantly.

He grinned, motioning me over to a clear space in the middle of the room. Once I was situated, he pulled out the familiar time watch that started all this, and began turning the dials.

‘So, what I’m doing now is rewinding the watch hands and setting the time, month and year coordinates. Then I point it at you and bam! You get sent back.’

‘Thank you, Stan.’ I smiled gratefully. ‘You know, this hasn’t actually been too bad, you know, for the future. Do you know if we’ll meet during your time?’

‘Perhaps,’ Stan said evasively, ‘now that’s something I can’t really give away, can I? Oh, right here we go!’

Pointing the watch in my direction, Stan pressed a final button on the side and I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach. With a final rush of wind, the room faded away in a flash of light. Stan’s last words echoing in my mind.

‘See you officially in a year, Evie.’