A Fortunate Accident – Chapter 30

I step out from the suite, hoping for a meal from the cafeteria, only to bump straight into India Dellis.

“Skylar!” She grabs my upper arms. “There you are. I was hoping to see you this morning, but I must have missed you.”

She didn’t miss me. After my freakout, I went to sleep, and when Saif got out of bed, I rolled over and slept again. I have slept the whole morning away, yet I could go back to bed right now. I could sleep for a hundred years, and it would not be enough.

“How do you feel?” She looks me up and down. “You look better than I imagined.”

I look her up and down too, and besides the slight sheen of sweat on her brow, she looks like she’s had her feet up all day. Her shirt is still pressed and crisp, and her straight-leg khakis are fresh from the closet.

“You look like you belong in an office.”

She smirks at this.

“I’m exhausted, I feel like shit, and I’m hungry. Food?”

She twists her lips as she looks left and right at the continued chaos of the camp. “We can grab some sandwiches and coffee. We scaled down the cafeteria because I think we’ll be leaving again tomorrow.”

“Again?” It comes out as a whine, and I’m too tired to hide it. “What the fuck, India?”

“Come on,” she says, easing me along. “Let’s chat over food.”

The covered kitchen tent is quiet. An egg salad sandwich is just what I need, so I grab two of them, a plate of fried potatoes, and a hunk of chocolate cake because I fucking deserve it after the day I had yesterday. India sips on a protein shake while I stuff my face with food.

“We’re at a breaking point. Somehow, the military is on my tail at every turn, and I can’t shake them.” She leans back in her chair. “I don’t know how they are tracking us so easily. There have been no drones. I’ve had every piece of machinery checked for trackers. I’ve vetted every employee for the third time. I adjusted down to a smaller team.” She throws her free hand up. “At this point, we may have to quit and do something else.”

I swallow a mouthful of egg salad and wash it down with a sip of coffee. It won’t matter how much caffeine I have because I’m going to pass out for an afternoon nap, and there’ll be no stopping me.

“Well, it’s not a bad idea to move this out of the jungle. You could have a small strike team who does the plant gathering and then bring everything back to the city like Takemo suggested.”

She shakes her head. “We’re thinking of quitting this continent entirely.”

“What? Why bother when most of Rio’s environmental diversity is here? I mean, Vivian found other plants elsewhere, but this is supposed to be the center of… it… all.”

My mouth slows down.

The space probe. The center of it all. Time travel.

Everything comes back to time travel.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

I suck down more coffee and quiet the anxious butterflies zooming around my chest. Pieces of the puzzle click together in my head.

Click, click, click.

Boom. A picture of what’s happened focuses in my mind.

“Hey, so… how’s that whole jump ring thing going?” I ask her.

“Jump ring thing?” India asks, her eyebrows climbing.

“Sorry. I’m tired.” I glance around, but we’re alone except for the man washing dishes. “Have you spoken with Renata about the jump ring the military had on Neve? Because, you know, when we were there, Vivian suspected that the ring we found wasn’t the only one the military had up and running.”

She sets her protein shake down. “And?” Her voice is as hard as stone. “Yes, remember, I did speak with Renata.”

I close my eyes and rewind through my memories. “Right. I remember. But back on Neve, we heard from Nina Correa that the gate was unstable. That they had a hard time keeping it on one destination.”

She nods. “Right. Even with a massive amount of power, they can’t keep the focus of the sending gate on a location without a receiving gate.”

“So,” I say, raising my finger in the air, “what if they decided that time was an easier destination, especially if they keep the gate in one place?”

India holds still for a long moment. “Motherfucker,” she breathes out.

“Exactly.” I open the box of chocolate cake. “So they set up a gate here on Rio, and they use it to go back and scout. Your people haven’t been betraying you. You’re being spied on by time travelers.”

When I look up from the chocolate cake, India’s mouth is open in awe.

“How do you do that?”

“What?” I ask, my mouth full of cake. I hold my hand over my mouth as I chew.

“You come into my life right when I need you, and you’re always able to draw the right conclusions from so little evidence. If this is all true…”

I shrug. “I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am. It’s what I would do in their place.”

My chewing slows down as I remember my time in the sinkhole. It can’t be a coincidence that the space probe is here on this continent, that it looks thousands of years old but was only manufactured two years ago, and my plant was waiting for me there.

It was one hell of a fortunate accident, but my instincts tell me it was no accident.

The bag with my clothes is resting at my feet.

“Hey, so, there’s another thing,” I say, leaning down to grab the bag.

India rubs her face with both of her hands. “What now?”

I pull the jacket from my bag and unzip the pocket. Setting the green plants on the table, the giddy butterflies in my chest reappear.

“I found my plant.”

“What? No.” Her eyes widen as she leans forward to examine the green fuzzy tendrils on the table.

Guilt sits in my stomach like a giant rock, knowing I pulled them from the dirt. I ended their leafy lives. But I have to believe that’s what they would want. They exist for me, as selfish as that sounds.

“What does it do?”

“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling.” I pick one up between my fingers and stare at it. “You know, I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with time. When I was younger and taking care of my entire family, I would wish for more time so I could finish all the tasks assigned to me before they punished me for being ‘lazy.’ Or I would want time to go by faster so I could get through the punishment quicker.”

India’s face is the still countenance of a master card player. This happens to every person I open up to about my childhood, so I ignore it.

“Before I pass out from exhaustion, let’s figure out what it does.”

I pop it in my mouth as India leans across the table to stop me.

Too late.

“Jesus, Skylar. We shouldn’t be doing this here. We should be in the lab.” She stands up and looks around, maybe hoping to find the doctor or one of her lab techs.

Doesn’t matter. I chew the plant and hold it under my tongue for a long moment before shoving another bite of chocolate cake into my mouth and swallowing.

“We should always test plants with chocolate cake chasers,” I say with a laugh. I clap my hands together and lean back, waiting… Waiting…

I push the fried potatoes across the table to India. “Share while we wait?”

She eyes the plate warily.

“Come on. Live a little. Starch is good for you.”

She picks up a potato between her fingers like it’s a dirty diaper and sighs before nibbling on it. I swear she lives on alcohol, protein shakes, and air.

“You ate your dinner out of sequence,” she says, pointing to the cake. “It’s no wonder I never see you at any of the high society balls.”

I wave my hand. “Pshaw. I’m not high society, and I never will be. I’m a backwater pilot from a shitty family who just happens to know some big wigs. You are slumming with the best.” She nibbles at the potato again. “Whoa there. Slow down. You don’t want to get a stomach ache from eating too quickly.”

I laugh at my joke, but it lands quietly.

India doesn’t move, and at first, I think she’s ready to dress me down for being so self-deprecating. Not that I’ve said anything that’s untrue. I accepted who I am a long time ago. I continue with my life by making lemonade from lemons, per usual.

Hmmm, I tilt my head to the side and realize that sound has been sucked from the world. That’s strange. The plant must be working. The last plant gave me superhuman hearing. This one is going to leave me deaf? No. Wait. I’m not deaf. Sound comes to me in longer, lower waves.

Hmmm. I lean forward across the table and get a better look at India. She’s not frozen. She’s moving… very… slowly. Her blink is taking an age, and her chest rises at a tortoise’s pace for one breath.

Everything is going at the same glacial speed. But I’m moving and breathing and alive with no issues. I wonder what direction time is flowing in now — forward or reverse?

Reaching out my hand to India, I inhale as she moves backwards.

What the fuck is happening?

Wait. I thought ‘reverse,’ and that’s what happened.

Wow. I told India to slow down eating the potatoes, and that happened, quite literally. This is amazing.

My chest buzzes as I consider my next move.

Let’s turn back time, shall we?

As I think it, as I imagine what came before, it happens in reverse. India sets down the fried potato, and the plate pulls back to me without touching it.

Faster.

Everything moves faster. I sit still while I watch India have a conversation with me backwards. Sound comes, but it’s distorted and weird. It’s familiar, though. Have I heard this before?

She gets up and leaves, walking in reverse. And as I stand in the cafeteria tent, I watch the chefs in the kitchen unmake my sandwich and un-fry my potatoes and on and on, possibly an hour or two previous to when I was here.

Stop.

Everything slows down until it stops moving. I move my legs, and they still work, so I tiptoe over to the unmoving chefs making egg salad, and I get an idea. Swiping their bread off the table, I take it and stash it away in someone’s personal bag on the other side of the tent.

How easy is it to alter time, to change things? And what happens when something small is changed?

Forward again. I step out of the way as a chef rushes past me to chop the potatoes. I don’t want to be in the way, so I hide on the other side of the tent where I can watch. Another works his way through the egg salad, and then he searches for the bread. He looks all over the temporary kitchen but comes up empty-handed.

“Where’s the fucking bread?” he calls out at a rate three times faster than normal speech. Everyone breaks to search for the bread, and I hold my breath. But I guess I hid it someplace no one would bother to look because they give up, and the chef moves to the cupboard instead. He pulls out packages of crackers, makes individual bowls of egg salad, little packages of crackers, and puts those out instead.

Now what? I’m supposed to walk in with India here in a moment, get egg salad sandwiches, and talk with her.

Will I see myself?

The tent flap opens, and India and I walk in. Chills run down my back as I watch myself grab a bowl of egg salad with crackers, a plate of fried potatoes, and the chocolate cake and sit down at a table with India. She grabs our drinks and joins me.

I eat everything with gusto, picking up gobs of egg salad with crackers and shoving them in my mouth. For crying out loud, Skylar, I need to eat prettier. Am I really this much of a heathen?

I probably am.

I get to the point where I take out the plants and eat one of them.

I blink, and I’m gone. India jumps out of her chair and stares at me, the time traveler me, standing on the other side of the tent.

“What the fuck? How did you do that?” she asks, pointing at me.

“I caught up to myself,” I whisper, looking around and thinking through everything that happened.

The memories of the previous timeline begin to slip from my head.

“Wait, wait,” I say, holding out my hands to India. “I ate egg salad sandwiches the first time through, not egg salad with crackers.”

The chef overheard me. “We couldn’t find the bread. Sorry, miz.” He glances at my empty plate, probably wondering why I’m complaining.

I point. “The bread is in that bag over there.”

He laughs, but one of his employees opens the bag and finds the bread there.

“Huh,” he says, taking it from his employee.

Once I have the story straight, the two timelines live in my head, side by side. That’s really strange, and keeping them separate will be a problem.

“Let’s talk outside,” I say, approaching India and ushering her out of the tent.

Once I have her away from prying ears, I pull her close. “I just time traveled. That’s what my plant does. That’s why it looked like I moved without you seeing me move.” I close my eyes and cement the two timelines in my head. “I hid the bread just to make a minor change and see what happened. Do you remember me eating egg salad sandwiches?”

“Skylar…” Her voice is weary.

“Do you?” I insist.

“No.” She shakes her head, and I release her arms. “You ate the egg salad with crackers.”

I press my fingers to my lips to stop a laugh.

“This is it. This is what’s been missing.”

“What?” she asks.

I press my lips together, determined to make this work.

“The military has been playing with time travel.” I poke myself in the chest. “Now, it’s our turn.”