INTRODUCTION
What is time? Time is the definition of
eternity, trailing off into the black hole of our perception of what our use of
time should be. Time holds no emotions, no sympathy for those it steals from.
Time does not wait for anyone, and in fact runs toward the deadline.
But what if time was irrelevant? What if, for once, time was only a
variable in the equation, and it could be manipulated, pushed back for once.
What would happen if time was not a constant and time was in fact an
illusion? Could we step outside of time, and if we did, where would we
go? Time travel is not what I am insinuating, time fabrication is.
In a world that is outside of our own, one girl achieved the
inconceivable with the help of a stranger and his unknown motives. With the help of a new friend and her father,
Robin will go on an adventure that will change her world as she knows it. With crazy mob-men taking over the country,
she will need all the help she can get. But as Robin will discover, there are
some things that you can never fix, not even through time travel. Whether you refer to it as fate or destiny,
some underlying force that coerces our paths, will not be ignored.
Chapter
One
The
End
The reflection of the moon is luminous on the
pavement's wet surface and the smell of rain is everywhere on the stree. At this time Manhattan is overtaken by the
sewer rats, and is no longer inhabited by civilians. Robin watches the
sky, perched on the rooftop of an abandoned apartment complex and she holds a
lit candle in both hands. Today is her nineteenth birthday as well as the
tenth anniversary of her mother's death. A single tear finds itself
trickling down her cold cheek; with a hushed tone, she whispers,
"It hurts more and more every year I pass
through without her". As we look
out over the city, I can’t help but remember the day that I first saw
Robin.
*************
Everything began on the day of President Ralph Lancaster
inauguration. He was broad shouldered and well built, and when he smiled
it never reached his eyes, which were gray with a lack of light behind them.
When he would speak, the room would fill with tension, as everyone held
their breath to keep from interrupting the fluidity of his speech. He
approached the podium with a disheveled look across his face and his shoulders
were slumped over in what looked like a sign of defeat. From the look on
his face, I had a feeling that the life that I had known would cease to exist
after today.
"Peace, freedom, individual rights and
liberties. That was what America was
built on. From the day that I entered
office until the day that I die, I will always love America for what it has
stood for; I would not have run for president if I did not feel this way. So it pains me to deliver this speech because
I know that from this day forward, America will cease to exist. Our economy is no longer self-sustaining, we
have played every card we have had and find ourselves at the mercy of our
investors. We will never be able to pay
back our debts and at this point, we can no longer function independent of
their help. It has come to my attention
that China refuses to trade with us any longer until our debt is paid in
full. An embargo has been placed on
American goods across the world by a coalition of countries that America has
borrowed money from. The only compromise
that we could arrive at was to trade land for debt relief. Unfortunately, we do not hold a bargaining
power over this matter, and the resolution declares that the United States will
become colonies that will be under the jurisdiction of the highest bidder. It
is time to pay our reparations and take responsibility for our past's mistakes;
I realize that this may be my last speech, and am announcing my immediate
resignation. There is no point in
representing a nation that will cease to remain a nation after today. I hope
our future generations can forgive us all for the part we played in the collapse
of the great United States.” The President spoke somberly, awaiting the violent
crowd to tear him apart. The crowd swallowed him whole with anxious questions,
while at the same time gunshots were fired from the rooftops. The massacred
victims in the streets soaked the pavement with their blood, while the rest of
the crowd fell into a panic and began to trample over each other, desperate to
escape the shooters. The President was
not ushered off by the Secret Service and stood firm on the podium. I almost thought he had a death wish, and
then I heard 3 more gun shots fired; two to the head and one to the chest of
President Lancaster. His body contorted over the podium and then fell onto
the floor. Blood curdling screams filled the room, and that is when He
stepped onto the stage. The man had a set of broad shoulders, a barrel
chest, and a shaved head as if he were in the military. All of these factors came together to create
the appearance of a man who was solid and intimidating. But it was the eyes that really got under
your skin; his eyes were squinted as if he was disgusted with what he saw in
the crowd, and even though I was in my balcony watching him, I still felt like
he was looking directly at me. When he spoke into the microphone, the entire
crowd fell silent. He had a booming
voice that could talk over any crowd of people and had an undertone that
suggested he was going to break into maniacal laughter at any second. Holding what appeared to be a remote control
in is right hand, he walked over to the podium ignoring the President's body
and a short flit of laughter escaped him.
"Well isn't this a happy day! The
President is a little preoccupied right now so I will finish delivering his
speech. I am under direct orders to ensure that all of you remain in the within
the perimeter and do not resist protocol." His eyes were scattered
across the room until they found her, Robin’s mother. With a demented
smile, he announced,
"Boys, please escort Annallie Meyers onto
the stage, I would like a few words with her. As for the rest of you, it
is important that you understand that America is not what it used to be, a city
on a hill, it is now a chunk of land that you all unfortunately inhabit. Forget what you think you may know about its
'superiority' because effective immediately, there will be a division among the
states that no one has the ability to prevent, and this time there won’t be any
proclamations or amendments that will save you.
The constitution will burn along with all of the individuals that choose
to be uncooperative. There will a curfew
set in place and everyone will be under house arrest until they are assigned to
their new position in the faction.
Guards will be patrolling the streets 24/7 so if you think you would
like to be target practice for my boys, please feel free to run. Otherwise, follow all orders given to you and
you might survive.” I watched the woman,
Annallie, being carried off by two large suits that gripped her tightly around
both arms. I could hear her screaming
and the sound of sobbing escape from her; my heart fell, she looked like a
normal citizen, probably had a family, was probably a mother. The men dragged her up the steps and pushed
her onto her knees in front of the man dealing out the orders. The man knelt next to her and wiped her
cheek, muttering something that was inaudible to the rest of the crowd. I thought I was going crazy because I thought
I heard a laugh escape the woman, and right before I began to doubt what I had
heard, I witnessed Annallie spit in the face of the man. You could tell that the man was utterly
appalled by the way his face crumpled up and an angry groan escaped his throat. The man got back onto his feet, and with a
fluid moment, he kicked the woman straight in the stomach. Annallie let out a gasp for air and her head
fell into her lap; the man stood there watching her for a couple seconds, and
then he pulled out his hand-gun and shot her straight in the head. The crowd began to panic once again and that
was when I saw her, the girl in the crowd crying.
********************************************************
The man could have been a mobster or hired
intelligence from a terrorist organization, but whoever he was, he had the man-power
to help him execute his agenda. Over the
next couple months, the United States was broken up into pieces, preparing to
be auctioned off to the World's wealthiest terrorists. You couldn’t travel from one state into the
other on account of the guards patrolling the state’s borders and the attack
dogs that were released at night definitely kept you in your home. All news and media outlets were shut down and
the entire nation was in the dark for weeks until a program was released that
would allow the citizens to be informed on new policy, new curfews, more
regulations and more constricting orders.
It wasn’t until five months after the assassination that we found out
that a part of the compromise was to allow the Secretary of State, the Vice
President, and the Speaker of the House to all receive their own fraction of
America to rule with an iron fist, while the rest of the states were to be separated
into factions that were sold to countries all over the world. The city on the
hill was burning; the collapse of the government, the division among the
citizens and with no leader to follow, all morality flew out the window as
America was buried alive in its grave.
Riots all over the country broke out after the
President was assassinated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, shattering the
realities that everyone thought they knew to be true, that America was
invincible and that democracy would always prevail. The worst of it all was that no one could
have seen this coming. It was almost as
if there had been plotting for years that had been hidden from all aspects of
the media, and that the government, an entity we trusted was for the people, by
the people, had all the power and no intention of saving us.
Chapter Two
Secrets
The night caped over the sky, sentencing the
sun behind the mountains where its light fizzled out. Today is the anniversary
of my mother's death. It has been two years since I saw her smile, and cried in
her arms. She is the reason I am the way I am, and the reason for my strange
visions. Recently I have been compelled by more of these dreams of her death.
These dreams pull me deeper into paranoia, and what her last words to me had
meant. This feeling that her death somehow set everything in motion that day
overwhelms me.
**********
I pushed through the crowd and raging chaos
until I found her; she was kneeling on the stage in front of a mad man. At that moment I could feel my heart drop
into my stomach and my teeth clench together. All I could hear was the sound of
a single bullet being fired and then everything went silent to me; the world
stopped turning and the people around me disappeared. All I saw was the look on her face, blank,
calm, lifeless. In a single stroke of
the clock, my mother was taken from me in cold blood by a man that I didn’t
know, and for a reason I couldn’t understand and never wanted to. My entire body became rigid and cold and I
could not feel the relief of air entering my lungs; I forgot to breathe. I became aware again of everything as the
sound of my own choking sobs registered.
I was physically shaken by the power of my own sobs and I could feel the
knots churning in my stomach as the vomit shot up my throat. I didn’t have the time or constraint to hold
it back and my head rocked forward as I threw up. I looked up again and realized that I needed
to get out of here. Just moments before,
I was standing with my mom, watching her reaction to everything that was going
on; I couldn’t quite understand what was happening and I became very confused
when all the people around me became consumed by a rush of panic. I glanced up at my mom to ask her what was
going on and why she was crying and all of a sudden the fear crept up my neck
as I heard her name being called. I
grabbed at her wrist and tried to hold on as hard as I could so she wouldn’t
leave me, but the guards began to close in on us. In her last effort to comfort me, she grabbed
my face with both of her gentle, calloused hands and kissed my forehead, and
then leaned down to whisper in my ear,
“I love you Robin, my sweet girl. Go find your dad and whatever you do, do not
look back. Please, get out of here and go
somewhere safe, somewhere they can’t find you.
I am so sorry.” Her facial
expression was cool and undeterred but I knew that she was trying to mask her
fear. Thirteen and confused, I protested
and began to wail as I couldn’t fight back the tears any longer. The bulky, over-sized guards circled us and
two of them yanked my mother away by her arms, half carrying her, half
dragging. The other two guards rushed to
hold me back as I exploded into a frenzy of anger and fear, with my limbs
flailing in all directions. The next thing I knew she was gone. I saw the life inside her leave her body; this was the moment my entire
world shattered before my eyes. The crowd around me continued raging into a
forest fire as destruction followed its trail.
I could not understand what her words had
meant; what did she mean that THEY would find me? Who is "THEY"? What
had my mother been hiding from me? Why would those men want my mom and call her
up on stage? Nothing made any sense and
all the confusion racking around in my brain made the headaches worse and
worse. On top of the headaches, my
entire body ached from the depression that had taken over me; and the violent
sobs that caused me to convulse and shake uncontrollably only made it harder to
form rational thoughts. I had escaped the crowds and the violence but I could
not escape the sharp pains inside my heart. After I left the scene of my
mother's death, I went home to find my father packing all of our stuff. He urged me to leave, and to find him later
that night at the campsite that we had gone to a few weeks ago for our annual
family camping trip. I couldn’t
understand why he would choose to go there, and why we were leaving our
home. What the hell was going on? I didn't understand his urgency, or why he
didn't notice that mom wasn't with me. I
tried to tell him what had happened, but I had the strangest feeling that he
already knew; the look in his eyes were lacking his usual happy sparkle and was
replaced by dark circles and irritated redness. I took one last look at the room that I had
grown up in and the kitchen where my mom had made me burnt grilled cheese
sandwiches and tomato soup, knowing that it would never be the same again. No home, no mother, no country; this was the
beginning of the end. I ran down the
stairs of our complex and took off in a full sprint down the road toward the
lake. I followed his orders and arrived
at the campsite minutes before sunset. The
only things I had with me were my sleeping bag, a bottle of water, a pocketknife
that my grandfather had given me, and my mother's locket. I searched for my dad
for hours after I had arrived, but there was no sign of him. I was alone, subjected to the danger of my own
thoughts; 'Who killed my mom?' 'Why did they kill her?' 'Where was my father?'
and 'What is going to happen to me?' Afraid
and cold, I decided to test my girl-scout abilities and make a fire. I was
still absorbed in my own thoughts when a man appeared in the shadows. I felt
his stare, and with caution I called out to him,
"Who are you?" It was silent for what
felt like hours until he replied with a whisper,
"A man with a mission". Still frozen,
I tried to understand what he had just said, when I saw him throw a bag at me.
I scrambled to pick up the bag and when I looked back up, he was gone. I
returned my attention back to the bag; the only thing inside was a smooth
silver ball with inscriptions that read,
“To uncover my secret, you have to go under the surface of what you see.”
What could that have meant? It had to be
a riddle but what did the riddle have to do with the metal sphere that rested
in my palms. Go under the surface, that
had to have another meaning to it, something that is obvious, and something
that is an instruction. What “secret” could be hiding in the sphere
and why was it important to me, as far as I knew, the man that gave it to me
could be some crazy Armageddon-crazed cult member. But the curiosity of what could be on the
inside could not be ignored; the instruction in the riddle could be specific to
my location, it could be talking about how I need to go under the surface in
the woods, like a tunnel? I looked out
ahead of me at the horizon that reflected off of the water. Wait!
Go under the surface, like I would to go under water. I searched for my water bottle and poured a
couple of drops on the silver ball. The ball did nothing. I wasn’t about to let myself be discouraged;
something is supposed to happen when the sphere is exposed to water, I just
knew it. I followed the path to the lake,
and threw the ball into the water. The
water began to shake violently in a matter of seconds and the fear of what I
might have done began to jab at me. But
the mystery hadn’t been solved, I still had no idea what I was supposed to
find, but I had a gut feeling that whatever it was, it was meant for me
specifically, even though I had no idea why.
A wave of excitement washed over me as I thought about what I had done
and what could happen next. I couldn’t
wait any longer to find out; I felt the breeze rush through my hair as I ran
toward the dock and leapt into the water.
My body went into a moment of shock as the ice cold water infiltrated my
clothing. My eyes were squeezed shut as
I let the cold consumed every fiber of me and finally I broke the moment of
shock and opened my eyes. At first, I
had thought my eyes deceived me; the ball had transformed into a dome the size
of my apartment. I forced my arms away from my sides and attempted to paddle
closer to the dome, feeling the stiffness in the movement of my arms. As I got closer, I noticed what appeared to
be a door and I reached for the chrome handle.
The knob twisted effortlessly in my palm and the next thing I knew, I had
been consumed by darkness as I was sucked into the dome.
I woke up in a surprisingly bright room with my
body wrapped in a sleeping bag, my sleeping bag. The movement to try and sit up came very hard
to me as jolts of sharp pain shot through my arms and head. I couldn’t tell where I was or how was I
alive? Who saved me? And why isn't the dome filled with water? A million
questions ran through my mind that I began to feel the heat from my anxiety
creep up my neck as the blood rushed to my face. After assessing the structure of the room and
the curved ceiling, I realized that I had to be in the dome. I looked around the dome and saw that there were
other doors to separate rooms. I realized I was in a room that was filled with
books and strange sketches hanging on the walls, sketches that looked like they
had been ripped out of journals and sporadically scattered around the room. There
was also yarn that pinned one sketch to another, and all types of assorted
colors segregating the pictures. Some of
the sketches consisted of an image of a dove that seemed to be searching for
something; its eyes seemed very intense and full of purpose. The other images that I noticed were of the a
tree that stood alone, tall and ominous, with fruit hanging from its limbs but
surrounded by death and darkness. The
last sketch that I noticed was one that I recognized; it was a sketch of a locket
that resembled the one my mother gave me. Both the locket I carried and the
locket in the sketches had the same symbol: a crescent with a dove in the
center of it.
While mesmerized by my new surroundings, the
door to one of the rooms opened. Fear trembled through my body and I was overtaken
by the confusion of my whereabouts, but then relief showered over me as I
noticed the figure standing in front of me. There, standing in the doorframe, was my
father.
Chapter
3
Nightmares
My father was the one who
saved me from drowning, and treated the gash in my forehead that came from
hitting the entrance into the dome. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw his
face; how did he find me? How did he know I was in a metal dome under
water, and did he know the man that gave me the futuristic device? Who was that
man? I was caught up in a daze; nothing about my world made sense anymore. My
father tried to explain what was going on, why we were in the woods hiding, and
why we were no longer safe to go outside into the state of chaos that had taken
over the city. His words fell deaf to my ears; the only thing I could
focus on was the memory of my mother, lying in a puddle of blood. I could
have saved her, I could have brought her here, but instead I retreated like a
coward. Fear of a world where my mother didn't exist grasped a hold of my
mind; I couldn't escape the horrors of my new life, even in my dreams.
******************
My
heart was beating violently, threatening to tear itself out of my chest, as if
it was held hostage against its will. My feet were hurling me forward as best
as they could, I didn't know why I was running. All I knew was that I was
afraid, and that I couldn't breathe. The ground underneath me fell into
oblivion, and I fell with it. I tried to scream but all that came out was the
remainder of air in my lungs. I was falling into darkness, until the
nothingness of my surroundings swallowed me whole. The sound of a crash pierced
my ears; my eyes seemed to focus in on the nothingness and captured the light
that was trying to break through the dark hole I seemed to have fallen into.
The light piercing the darkness revealed my mother, who was sitting on the
ground of the hole, crying. Then I noticed the blood that was escaping her
body. This was the scene of her death that I had witnessed a few days ago. But
it seemed different. She was holding something in her hands, something
indecipherable to my eyes, invisible to me. A crowd of people appeared
surrounding us, shouting out angrily about deception and the end of the world.
A man
then stood in front of my mother, laughing cynically, almost as if he was
laughing at her coiled up body on the floor. The man had his back to me,
unaware of my stare and boiling anger at his cruelness. He remained a
silhouette figure, trailing off into the crowd, leaving behind my mother, who
was now paralyzed, sprawled out on the floor. I ran to her in a panic and
collapsed at her side in loud desperate sobs. The crowd began to close in on
us, and seemed as if they were trying to suffocate the light that had saved me
from the nothingness, leading the darkness back into the hole that I had fallen
into. My eyes became numb to the people and all I saw was a glowing white dove.
The crowd around me vanished into the darkness, but I remained with the dove, which
fluttered gracefully, blessing me with its light.
Then
behind the darkness appeared a crescent moon in the sky, as if the moon had
reached its cycle after the new moon, revealing the sliver of light that defied
the engulfing darkness. At that moment, the truth behind the symbol surfaced;
the crescent moon represented hope after the night of complete darkness, that
even though the darkness may surround us, representing the weakest of times,
light would find us. The dove represents the hope that conquered despair after
the end of the world that was of Noah's time in the bible, and a new beginning
of life on Earth reigned after the evil on the Earth had been wiped out. The
state of the world we were in was the complete darkness of my dream; what I
didn't know was how there could be any hope.
I woke
up drenched in sweat after my nightmare; there was something really scary about
my dream, it had felt too real. The dream remained fresh in my mind, haunting
me for weeks on end, and at moments during the day I would see visions of the
dream as if I was having a flashback like it was a memory. The most recurring
vision was of the majestic white dove and the revealing of the crescent moon. I
remembered the sketch in my room of the figures and tried to piece together any
hidden meaning. All I could think of was that the two figures were luminescent,
and appeared at the moment of complete darkness. The visions were
becoming more and more vivid as time passed, and I began to notice myself
drifting away from reality, falling deeper and deeper into the chasm of my own
subconscious. The image of the dove haunted me, as well as the blood-curdling
scream that ripped into my dreams that I soon recognized to be my mother's cry.
Diving deep into the mysterious visions and symbols that had to hold some
meaning in the current state of the world, and of my world, drove me utterly
insane. My thoughts began to blur together, crippling my ability to
decipher reality from fantasy. I was trapped. I was lost in myself
and the only person who could break the barrier that separated me from the real
world was the one person who held the answer to one of the millions of
questions I had... Who was I?
Chapter 4
Caiden
Meyer
The past couple of nights
were haunted by recurring nightmares. I
felt as if I were being suffocated in my waking hours as well as during the
nights and I couldn’t manage to find the air in my lungs when I needed it.
There was nowhere I could hide, no place that I could run away from the
death of my mother and the crumbling of my country. I could no longer look
to the one person who had protected me, loved me, guided me. She was forever gone and I was left with an
aching hole in my chest and foggy cloud in all my thoughts. The thought of her makes me want to smile and
then burst into tears, so I do neither; I allow myself to set into the
numbness, where pain cannot phase me. I
can’t let myself fall into despair, I can’t open that chasm because if I do,
I’ll never come out. Although my
nightmares left my heart racing and my lungs breathless, when I saw her face,
for a brief moment, it gave me a feeling of relief, like she never left.
There were times when I
could sit with my mom, my head in her lap and she would just run her fingers
through my hair. She was so beautiful; I remember looking at the kindness
that rested in her bright green eyes and the smile that always had an
understood me, and her arms that always protected me from heart ache. I never
realized how much she loved me until now; looking back on all the little things
she did for me, I felt a pang in my stomach. When I think of her, I think of
her braiding my matted hair in the morning, and her singing sweet songs that
she made up about her and I. Her spirit was so gentle and kind, and her
smile could warm your body and make you feel like you were the only person in
the world that mattered.
The numbness that
consumed me began to vanish as the days past and in its absence, the pain came
in waves of body aches, overwhelming heat and uncontrollable choking sobs. In a weird way, I feel like I needed the
anger and the hurt to silence the numbness that replaced it, because at least
the pain let me know I was still alive, despite the fact that some days I wish
I wasn’t. Thinking back to the numbness, the worst part about being was
that you lost your senses, you lost all ability to move forward and you lost all
ability to care. I saw myself as a shell of a person, incomplete and
waiting for death to soothe me until I realized that there has to be something
to live for. I think it might have been intuition or just plain old human
instinct to survive, but I found an ounce of courage to keep looking for
something, someone to live for. And then
he showed up.
*******************************
Groggy and head aching,
my eyes opened and I discovered the emptiness of the room. It was almost an eerie feeling that
filled the air; I needed to get out, the walls felt as if they were going to
close in on me and all the air would be gone.
My arms fell to my side from their usual position of being wrapped
around my torso to protect myself from the bitter cold that filled the room,
and I pushed myself up from the sleeping bag that I had been coddled up in for
5 days now. Every morning was rough
because I wasn’t waking up from a nightmare, I was waking up to a
nightmare. I heard rustling from the
other side of the door, my father, who had been strangely distant since we had
found one another. I wonder what he is
going through with everything that happened.
I mindlessly dragged my feet across the room and when I reached the
door, I was astonished by what I had seen.
My father, the goofy guy that would hum show-tunes, was throwing a
combination of punches and kicks, all sorts of martial arts maneuvers in the
middle of this empty living area. He
threw a couple of flips into the routine and managed a split in midair and
finally after five minutes of watching him practice, he turned around and
acknowledged my presence. I was
speechless. Those kinds of skills must
have taken years to learn and master, and on top of that, he would have had to
have intense training with professionals.
I started to wonder if my father was even an accountant. It was time to start figuring out what my
parents had been keeping from me all this time and why they have been keeping
it from me.
***********************************
I felt the cool trickle
of sweat drip down my back as my fist glided through the air and my body shifted
in perfect harmony with the force that I was exerting. My body is a machine that I control; the
motions have become fluid and natural to me after twenty years of combat
training. I was recruited into the armed
forces after I graduated high school because I knew I could never see myself
sitting behind a desk with a 401k and scheduled meetings in the break
room. No. I needed to be a tool, a part of a machine
that challenged something, tested my limits, and made me into something that
was always getting better. I needed to
be a hero. After being deployed in
Afghanistan for the third time though, I had this feeling that there was
something missing, or someone. Her name
was Rachel Lancaster and she was the girl that I dated all throughout college,
the woman who knew more about electrical wiring and quantum mechanics than any
person I had ever come across in my entire life. She was beautiful, corky, smart, ridiculous
and at the same time completely indescribable.
She was a contradiction. I knew
that one day I would marry her, and I did, but I did not marry Rachel, I
married Anallie.
