NaNoWriMo 2008 Excerpt
Life in the year 4042
It was going to be a long day for Ethan, and that was before his nightly jaunt to whatever the hell other time they wanted him to bugger off to now. One of these days he'd just disappear to a time with a bed and sleep the whole damned trip away. He'd earned it! He may have seemed slack to Hugh, but Hugh was not his only mentee, not by a long shot. There were precious few with the ability to travel through time, precious precious few. Ethan sighed, and thought back to his 'class mates', all of them exactly his age, the previous class four years older, the next four years younger. But not all of these three classes, nor the next, 'graduated'. After the class of four thousand and eighteen they began to select the students a little more carefully. Ethan supposed this made things easier for those future students, but it wouldn't have helped him.
There was a test, they figured out, when the first group, the four thousand born group, reached the age of eighteen, in the year four thousand and eighteen. Later that year, they began to test their 'pupils' for this. Ethan was ten. His best friend was found not to have the, well, whatever it was that they were looking for. A gene? Perhaps. In fact, most of the class wound up leaving the course, leaving the facility, and, Ethan could only assume, returning to their families.
He used to lay awake at night, before he learned to travel through time, those eight lonely years, and wonder what became of his pals, of Jane G and Jane B, L'zar, and Joe. The gang. The quintet. The five boys were all close as close could be, but Ethan turned out to be the only one with the gene. It was heart wrenching, watching them leave, they didn't want to go, he didn't want to stay... Sometimes he wondered, even now, if they remained together, on the outside, kept their friendship going, like they'd said they would. The five of them. Forever. Ethan sighed. It was going to be a long day.
He went about his business, dropped his daughter off at play group, though his wife wouldn't part with their son just yet. Thankfully she just had a desk job, she could get away with bringing a baby to work, as long as he was quiet. And, luckily, he was a quiet one. He had the cutest little cry. It was cute because it wasn't deafening. Sometimes Ethan was glad for his work, if he wasn't a time traveller, he wouldn't have the near coma like state of sleep that he was rewarded with after a trip to another time. It certainly kept him sane, being able to get a full night's sleep, but, so little was known about time travel, and it had never seemed particularly conducive to lucidity in the first place.
He sighed, and pulled up beside the supermarket booth down on the corner, getting out and punching his order on the overly worn keypad. Finally, the thing beeped at him, spitting out his receipt chip, he'd need that when the delivery arrived. Ethan sighed again, and climbed back into his vehicle, sending it off towards the facility, where time travellers were raised and taught and studied. God how he hoped today wasn't a study day, he hated those! He parked the vehicle and walked in, shopping chip rattling in his otherwise pocket, stopping to chat with one or two people that he was vaguely acquainted with, he hadn't had any real friends here since he was ten.
Finally, he couldn't put it off any longer, and he waltzed on up to head office, with a confidence to his swagger that he definitely didn't feel. It wasn't every day that he was called up to head office, and that never usually meant good things. A raise would be nice, he thought, with two young children to provide for, but he doubted that was on the cards. It was either more work, or more study. They could never fire him, and he hated them for it, but they needed each and every time traveller they could get their hands on, he knew. If he quit, that would mean more work for some other poor bastard, and that wasn't the way he'd like to leave things. He hated the self indulgent pricks who did leave things that way, complete and utter bastards the lot of them!
Actually, he'd heard of another leaving, just lately, burn out they said, the pressure became too much, time madness set in. God how he hoped that never happened to him. The poor fool was just ten years older than he was, could the training and circumstances have improved that much over a decade? He had to hope! And there he was, standing at the door to the head office. His boss's boss's boss awaited, or perhaps even his boss... He hoped not though, she was a real hard arse, former military, or so they said. There hadn't been a military at all in nearly fourty five years, not since the big disaster of four thousand. Some things are big enough that the world finally pulls together, or fragments so far that they have to spend more energy picking up the pieces than they can spare to fight. Four thousand was one of the latter. Ethan sighed, yet again.
He finally worked up the courage to knock on the door, and it slid obediently open. Not for the first time, Ethan thought there was something lacking in these doors, a certain personal touch that the doors of old used to evoke, with their forcing people to get up and answer. Sure, this was more convenient, some might even argue more elegant, but, it just wasn't the same. Ethan sighed again, he was getting far too old for this. He stepped through the doorway, and the outer door slid closed. The inner door didn't open just yet, and Ethan knew he was being scanned. Standard procedure. He heard his bracelet of time beep, locking him to the present until he stepped through those doors again, but he just waited for the scans to conclude, he'd been through all of this before, nothing was new, it was, on the whole, a very boring procedure. It did kind of make it a pain to answer one's own door, he had to concede, but still, the old style had more, well, style.
Finally the inner door slid open, allowing Ethan to progress into the large and well lit office of his boss's boss's boss. But Ethan's boss's boss's boss wasn't here, no, at his seat, behind his desk, was Ethan's boss's boss's boss's boss, a terrifyingly cruel woman, in her eighties, but every bit as fit as a woman in her forties. Ah, the wonders of rejuvenation technology and medically assisted diet. He had no doubt the good boss's boss's boss's boss kept a strict fitness regime as well, she was former military after all. It was her, Shannon Yang-Smythe, that had founded this facility, and, though she had always talked peace, Ethan had his doubts about her true motives. She ran the place like a barracks, or whatever it was that the military folk used to run. She treated the infants and children as recruits, cadets, with all the rules and punishments that that implied.
Ms. Yang Smythe didn't even look up from her work, sliding a flatscreen monitor across the desk towards Ethan, basically inviting him to take it, though it's quite frosty as invitations go, downright frozen even. That was fairly normal behaviour for Ms. Yang Smythe though, so Ethan made his way across the overly large room towards the desk, thinking, and not for the first time, that this room really was pointlessly large. Such a frivolous waste, it seemed, but Ethan had long ago realised the real reason for it, it was to put the visitor into an unsettled state, uneasy, intimidated. And, he had to admit, it worked more times than it failed.
About when her victim, er, visitors were halfway across the floor, Ms. Yang Smythe put down whatever she was currently working on with an air of frustration, and glared over her half moon spectacles at this unwelcome intruder, who dared to step foot in her office! No one ever survived that look with a request, they only ever came by when called, ordered, by she herself. She didn't even *need* those silly half moon spectacles, she had perfect vision, she could land a death glare with perfect precision from five hundred paces.
Ethan shook off the imperious glare, it only set him back for a moment. He almost detected a smile from Ms. Yang Smythe at his comparative lack of hesitation, but he shuddered and wrote it off as a trick of the light, that was all. A hideous grinning death mask trick of the light. Shudder. The flat screen monitor was picked up gingerly, not because he was afraid to break it, but because he didn't want to set off the touchy touch screen. He skimmed the orders printed on the screen, grimacing briefly at the phrase 'take on ... as mentee.' It was repeated several times, with names in place of the dots of course.
He was beginning to wonder how he'd possibly handle this increased case load, just because he was a time traveller didn't mean his time wasn't limited, when he noted another name at the bottom, in smaller text. "Desali Dixon?!" he all but shouted, his raised voice echoing terribly off of the walls of the large office. Hmm, good acoustics in here, not that he really cared about that. He was fuming! Not even Ms. Yang Smythe's dreaded death glare could put the fear of Ms. Yang Smythe, for she was a terror greater than god, or so she liked to believe, into him. Not even the death glare? Well, that was irritating, thought Ms. Yang Smythe, she had never been resisted before!