deverwhatever - time-travelling heroine?
I had a very engaging dream last night that is quickly fading, and I wanted to get a bit down before it's gone so that I can sort of understand and recall the breathless feeling I have right now. It had a full plot, recurring characters, and a relatively consistent (if complicated) universe, so really, this is almost a short story.
It begins with me in the past, but I don't think very far (industrialization or later?). It was a time of some promise of great advancement, but also of great inequity among people. I have a normal daily routine, but one day there's someone new, a man with black, shining eyes, dusky skin and an easy smile despite his bewildered expression. He clearly needs help finding his way around, and in the course of helping him, he begins slowly to confide in me. He wants to make the world a better place, try to fix where he sees it going. I help him on the task he set, but then he goes missing, and I can't find him. This isn't unheard of in that day and age, but I hold on to the hope that he went elsewhere continuing to try to better the world.
My life is back to normal for a time, though I'm starting to see little changes in how people are acting just because of what we did - people are being more responsive to others, more considerate and fair by a little bit. I find myself motivated by such an example, too, to be more active in my attempts at goodness. I start gaining a reputation as a pushy woman, a woman with a loud voice and unafraid to speak her mind. Some people listen, though, so that makes it worth it.
Then one day I find my life in danger. Someone who doesn't like my message had set a trap, and I can't figure out how to escape them. But just as death is closing in, I suddenly find myself somewhere else. It is clean, orderly, but reminds me still of office buildings with lots of hallways. The people with me seem to have rescued me somehow, and are all dressed very differently. I am in the future! I was a young activist with promise, but because my life was about to be wasted in such a meaningless way, they pulled me forward to see what had come later. Many of the values that I hold are in evidence here; I really made a difference!
This place in the future works to guard parts of the past from intrusion; once time travel became possible, it was realized that everything was vulnerable if someone decided to go back and change something. These people (I think they're all women, but can't recall for sure) have made it their duty to protect the most crucial points in their history, constantly keeping watch. The building is more of a framework, a time/space machine with stable controls built into the foundation, and every door opens on a different time and place. Some are flexible, with controls to adjust the specific day or specific spot, but others are fixed to one location at one moment in time - these times are most-often tampered with.
I am invited to join their ranks, and see a few others who have also been brought forward from an official, untimely death to come protect the future. As the days pass I am taught history, these special moments which we are protecting from interference. I learn who was there, where they went, what they said and did, and exactly what to expect so that when I open a door for the first time, I will know what to do.
I also learn the dangers of it all; one woman is seen by a gruff man of the time period who notices her odd behavior and imagines that she's up to no good. He gives chase, and it is only through long familiarity with that location that she is able to lose him around a corner long enough for us to give her a quick exit.
Then one day, the ladies seem excited. Someone's coming to visit, a woman who'd worked there and successfully went on to another role that was well respected; she is a role model to many of the women here, and they are impatient to talk to her again. When she arrives, however, my attention is taken by one of her entourage, a man with darkly shining eyes and a dusky complexion. I am stunned. It is he! I, rooted to my spot, am hidden by the rush of bodies going to talk to the important woman, and so he hasn't seen me. As I try to work out in my head how he is here in the future, I'm not paying attention to what's in front of me, and when I look up, he's gone.
I sadly walk off to my quarters, upset that in my surprise he left, without even seeing me or getting a chance to explain the story. Then, rounding a corner, I see his familiar form; he was sent on some errand. He has stopped, equally stunned to see me, and so I have a moment. I rush up, grab his shoulders and kiss him on the cheek (you didn't think I was going to kiss him on the lips, did you? Come now, reader, I don't know him that well). He blushes, grins, and greets me before excusing himself to finish his task. Over the next few days, we steal bits of time to catch-up, getting to know each other.
I have so far been hesitant to ask how it was that he got taken forward, because the answer always relates to some nearly-averted trauma, but finally get up my courage. He looks surprised, then as if making a discovery, then nervous that someone might overhear. He is from this time, he explains quietly, not from the past. He was never supposed to be in my time, but he had been ignored in his advocacy for a certain change in the past, and so he decided to go back and do it himself, without permission. It was an accident that he met me, but he had found me nice and helpful. Had he had any idea that I would be brought forward, he might have been afraid to risk meeting me - he wasn't supposed to interfere, and I could get him in big trouble. He looks up at me, trying to tell how I'm reacting, but I smile, telling him that I won't inform on him. Besides, we did good things.
We are friends now, getting along very well and telling each other of our adventures. One day, however, one of the time-monitor women is looking for him. She has found out that he had entered the time line earlier and is enraged! I am with him, and he looks terrified, for good reason; she sound dangerous. We are running to escape her, and as she chases us, she yells, berating him for what he'd been trying to do in the past. I slowly realize that she's most upset about what he was trying to do, not that he'd broken the rules to go into the past. Apparently this woman, and others here, partly monitor the time line to make sure that no one changes the past for worse or for better, because they don't want to risk their own happiness.
He explains to me, while we're hiding for a moment in a corner, that he thought it was immoral to not try to improve the past, even though you can't know exactly how the change will effect things. He had tried to do little things, but he had also hoped that I would be motivated to change things and spread that goal among people in my time. I begin to wonder if I ever would have been important enough to bring forward in time if he hadn't gone back and met me. But in the dream I come to the conclusion that he was right, that if he could see inequities in the past that he could change, it was morally sound for him to try and change them. At the end of our chase, we end up high in a tower of the building, with the mad woman chasing us still... but she falls, and no one else knew that he'd gone into the past, so he's safe now. And he and I are free to continue this new mission of trying to help people in the past, bit by bit, to make the whole world better.
I actually think, too, that I didn't copy someone else's story, though there are clearly influences. I noticed a bit of Matrix in how some of the people from the future are from the past, but were pulled out, and now can go back in. Plus, of course, there's Quantum Leap, about a hero who "awoke to find himself trapped in the past" and ended up "leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong-". Not a copy, but related.
It begins with me in the past, but I don't think very far (industrialization or later?). It was a time of some promise of great advancement, but also of great inequity among people. I have a normal daily routine, but one day there's someone new, a man with black, shining eyes, dusky skin and an easy smile despite his bewildered expression. He clearly needs help finding his way around, and in the course of helping him, he begins slowly to confide in me. He wants to make the world a better place, try to fix where he sees it going. I help him on the task he set, but then he goes missing, and I can't find him. This isn't unheard of in that day and age, but I hold on to the hope that he went elsewhere continuing to try to better the world.
My life is back to normal for a time, though I'm starting to see little changes in how people are acting just because of what we did - people are being more responsive to others, more considerate and fair by a little bit. I find myself motivated by such an example, too, to be more active in my attempts at goodness. I start gaining a reputation as a pushy woman, a woman with a loud voice and unafraid to speak her mind. Some people listen, though, so that makes it worth it.
Then one day I find my life in danger. Someone who doesn't like my message had set a trap, and I can't figure out how to escape them. But just as death is closing in, I suddenly find myself somewhere else. It is clean, orderly, but reminds me still of office buildings with lots of hallways. The people with me seem to have rescued me somehow, and are all dressed very differently. I am in the future! I was a young activist with promise, but because my life was about to be wasted in such a meaningless way, they pulled me forward to see what had come later. Many of the values that I hold are in evidence here; I really made a difference!
This place in the future works to guard parts of the past from intrusion; once time travel became possible, it was realized that everything was vulnerable if someone decided to go back and change something. These people (I think they're all women, but can't recall for sure) have made it their duty to protect the most crucial points in their history, constantly keeping watch. The building is more of a framework, a time/space machine with stable controls built into the foundation, and every door opens on a different time and place. Some are flexible, with controls to adjust the specific day or specific spot, but others are fixed to one location at one moment in time - these times are most-often tampered with.
I am invited to join their ranks, and see a few others who have also been brought forward from an official, untimely death to come protect the future. As the days pass I am taught history, these special moments which we are protecting from interference. I learn who was there, where they went, what they said and did, and exactly what to expect so that when I open a door for the first time, I will know what to do.
I also learn the dangers of it all; one woman is seen by a gruff man of the time period who notices her odd behavior and imagines that she's up to no good. He gives chase, and it is only through long familiarity with that location that she is able to lose him around a corner long enough for us to give her a quick exit.
Then one day, the ladies seem excited. Someone's coming to visit, a woman who'd worked there and successfully went on to another role that was well respected; she is a role model to many of the women here, and they are impatient to talk to her again. When she arrives, however, my attention is taken by one of her entourage, a man with darkly shining eyes and a dusky complexion. I am stunned. It is he! I, rooted to my spot, am hidden by the rush of bodies going to talk to the important woman, and so he hasn't seen me. As I try to work out in my head how he is here in the future, I'm not paying attention to what's in front of me, and when I look up, he's gone.
I sadly walk off to my quarters, upset that in my surprise he left, without even seeing me or getting a chance to explain the story. Then, rounding a corner, I see his familiar form; he was sent on some errand. He has stopped, equally stunned to see me, and so I have a moment. I rush up, grab his shoulders and kiss him on the cheek (you didn't think I was going to kiss him on the lips, did you? Come now, reader, I don't know him that well). He blushes, grins, and greets me before excusing himself to finish his task. Over the next few days, we steal bits of time to catch-up, getting to know each other.
I have so far been hesitant to ask how it was that he got taken forward, because the answer always relates to some nearly-averted trauma, but finally get up my courage. He looks surprised, then as if making a discovery, then nervous that someone might overhear. He is from this time, he explains quietly, not from the past. He was never supposed to be in my time, but he had been ignored in his advocacy for a certain change in the past, and so he decided to go back and do it himself, without permission. It was an accident that he met me, but he had found me nice and helpful. Had he had any idea that I would be brought forward, he might have been afraid to risk meeting me - he wasn't supposed to interfere, and I could get him in big trouble. He looks up at me, trying to tell how I'm reacting, but I smile, telling him that I won't inform on him. Besides, we did good things.
We are friends now, getting along very well and telling each other of our adventures. One day, however, one of the time-monitor women is looking for him. She has found out that he had entered the time line earlier and is enraged! I am with him, and he looks terrified, for good reason; she sound dangerous. We are running to escape her, and as she chases us, she yells, berating him for what he'd been trying to do in the past. I slowly realize that she's most upset about what he was trying to do, not that he'd broken the rules to go into the past. Apparently this woman, and others here, partly monitor the time line to make sure that no one changes the past for worse or for better, because they don't want to risk their own happiness.
He explains to me, while we're hiding for a moment in a corner, that he thought it was immoral to not try to improve the past, even though you can't know exactly how the change will effect things. He had tried to do little things, but he had also hoped that I would be motivated to change things and spread that goal among people in my time. I begin to wonder if I ever would have been important enough to bring forward in time if he hadn't gone back and met me. But in the dream I come to the conclusion that he was right, that if he could see inequities in the past that he could change, it was morally sound for him to try and change them. At the end of our chase, we end up high in a tower of the building, with the mad woman chasing us still... but she falls, and no one else knew that he'd gone into the past, so he's safe now. And he and I are free to continue this new mission of trying to help people in the past, bit by bit, to make the whole world better.
I actually think, too, that I didn't copy someone else's story, though there are clearly influences. I noticed a bit of Matrix in how some of the people from the future are from the past, but were pulled out, and now can go back in. Plus, of course, there's Quantum Leap, about a hero who "awoke to find himself trapped in the past" and ended up "leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong-". Not a copy, but related.