Category Archives: sci-fi

Alter Nation Updates

There has been SO MUCH going on with Alter Nation the last month.

Well, longer than that, but this last month has been especially busy.

First of all, the toys have actually landed on U.S. shores! This means that toys are actually shipping to stores where you can buy them! That said you can still order them to come directly to your home HERE!

Also the first webisode has been released! It features lots of cool people, including Rene and myself. You can see the first episode here:

And you can subscribe to the Alter Nation channel to see new episodes as they are released HERE! New episodes release every Wednesday.

I’ll do better about keeping this blog updated. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s all kinds of cool stuff happening right now.

See you soon!

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Rose City Comic Con 2018

Last weekend I went on assignment to Rose City Comic Con for Panda Mony Toys. We are releasing our first action figure line next year and we are looking for cool shows to visit. Rose City was pretty great! Here’s a video of my adventures:

If you like t-shirts, hoodies and coffee mugs I suggest you check out our merch in our SHOP.

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Am I Still A Geek?

When I created this image I really thought this blog was going to go another way.

In the past I would have no problem identifying with this statement:

I am a geek.

I don’t think that this is any kind of real surprise to anyone who reads this blog or knows me, but it’s not something that I bring up that often for public consumption.  Working in toys has really activated my geekery gene and since that is what I’ve been spending so much time on turning it into content for the internet seemed like the next natural choice. But as I’ve gotten back into my geekier pursuits I’ve noticed that I’m not feeling particularly connected to “geek” as a community – and I don’t know how I feel about that.

Why do we care?

In all likelihood you probably don’t, but it’s very possible that we are about to see a change to geek culture and since geek culture has been mainstreamed any changes that come are likely going to affect the entertainment industry in a massive way. I think my identity crisis is just a symptom of something bigger… maybe.

Being a geek is nothing new and we are somehow still in a geek culture golden age. If you were to tell me twenty-five years ago that some of the most popular things on YouTube, videos that were getting MILLIONS of views, were of people playing Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games I’d laugh until I passed out. Put on top of that the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most popular, profitable and unstoppable franchise factories making household names out of characters that no one knew of merely a decade ago? And the fact that Star Wars as a universe is still chugging along in mainstream media? And that I can find Iron Man action figures in just about every single armor that he has ever worn both on screen and in the comics? I tell you my little teenage heart would burst.

But it was not always this way.

I like to frame myself as a “proud geek,” but if I’m being honest that hasn’t always been true. Even in times as geek popular as now I tend to hold that part back from the spotlight. In the past I have justified this hiding because of my “brand.” On this blog and on social media I preferred to be an actor first, focus on career related things… and every once in a while toss in an obscure movie reference, mention that I need to go play D&D, or talk about Iron Man. But that was not very authentic in how much of my private identity can be tied back to what are considered geeky (sometimes VERY geeky) things.

Although some of the geeky things have gained a hip status, the fact of the matter is that all the cool popular people playing or involved in this stuff  are a very small, niche part of the people who play and participate in the core of geekery. The core audience still carries the stigma that was turned into stereotypes used in TV and movies, especially in the late 70’s through the 90’s. Hell, that was my bread and butter for most of my young acting career.

That’s me, in the broken glasses, as Kirby the Nerd.

You can see it in the faces of cosplayers, Magic the Gathering players, wargamers and hard core D&D enthusists; there is an underlying fear anytime they are around people outside of their community that they will be made fun of. And I totally get that, I have also had that fear.

I think that Simon Pegg has presented the best definition of the modern geek:

As he points out, this doesn’t just apply to things like superhero fans and Warhammer 40,000 players but sports fanatics and people who love cars too. But the stigma doesn’t follow the latter the way it does the former. Jocks and nerds may be satisfying the same itch deep down, but society in general views them in very different ways and always at odds.

I was at Rose City Comic Con this year. It’s the first con that I’ve been to since San Diego ComiCon back in either 2012 or 2014 (I can’t remember) and even longer than that since I went to a convention of any size that wasn’t related to the entertainment industry in some way shape or form. This year felt different than what I remember.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of my dad and I going to comic cons all over Southern California (mostly the Shrine Shows in L.A.) looking for old Iron Man back issues, checking out old toys and collectables, and doing our best to bargain down a price with the dealers. At these shows I built a very impressive collection of Yoda memorabilia, got my first Iron Man action figure from the defunct Secret Wars line, and completed a volume 1 collection of Iron Man comics. 

I would spend my days reading comics and coming up with adventures for all my favorite characters in my head. The reading material came in handy for auditions as well since I was merely a passengers for nearly a decade. I was proud to know as much about the Marvel Universe as I did. I knew Doctor Who lore and stories that would surprise adult fans. I knew Star Wars down to the Tonnika sisters. But I had very few people that I could share all this with.

Junior High School, the worst of all the “schools” in my opinion, was when I met my core group of friends, people I still know and love to this day. Jeff Garvin was my entry point to the group. He and I met doing Annie with a community theater group (another thing that is generally considered pretty geeky, but that’s another blog post altogether). We shared mutual interests, Star Wars and comic books in a general sense, and he introduced me to his Dungeons and Dragons group. Jeff, Dan and Scott became my best friends through school. 

In addition to D&D we shared other common interests in movies and music. Star Wars and Indiana Jones were big favorites and we spent way too much playing the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games. We tried some other RPGs and Dan, Scott and I all started playing Warhammer 40k. We had each other’s backs. We were our own little community and we could run in the circles of other geek communities without effort.

At Rose City Comic Con I was the outsider. Even though I’m an over 40-bearded-beer-gut-guy (a description that has come to be the standard archetype for the stereotypical geek) I saw the distrustful looks that came from the cosplayers and gamers and comic book fans. I imagine I must’ve looked like a dad who was missing his kid, especially since I was there by myself. There was a part of me that wanted to say, “Don’t worry I’m totally one of you.” But even writing that seems condescending and pointless, especially since geekdom and fandom are plagued by toxic jerks right now. I can’t find fault with the suspicious looks. If you didn’t know any better I could be one of those entitled, angry and anonymous man-children screaming about The Last Jedi. Toxic Fandom is the culmination of people who felt powerless finding a voice and, in most circumstances, trying to claim ownership on a fictional world that should be open to everyone. When that kind of “fandom” finds other people who feel the same we get things like what we saw with recent Star Wars stars leaving social media.

But that’s not what I want to see. Sure there will always be jerks, but in general the community is at its best when it is supportive of each other and when people who want to learn about and participate in the geekery are welcomed. Even though I got a lot of side-eye yesterday, the folks at the convention we all very polite and super excited about what they were doing there. That’s the part I like. That’s what I’d like to see more of.

To that point I’m going to start talking about my geekier pursuits here on the blog more. I may not feel like I’m directly linked into the community like I used to be, but I still D&D like a boss, build and paint 40k armies competently, and can still throw down in Supernatural continuity conversations with the best of them. The old saying goes “be the change you’d like to see” and I’d like to help put some positivity back into the geeky stuff that I love.

Please join me! Tell me about the geeky stuff you love in the comments. Introduce me to that thing you like that maybe you’re self conscious about. Let’s build a better community without entitlement and toxicity.

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52 in 52 Story 7 “Time Travel Sucks and Other Stories from the Society for the Betterment of Humanity”

This week has been particularly trying as I’ve tried to get this story ready and up. As I’ve been going through the 52 in 52 process a lot of my old story ideas have started racing to the front of my mind hoping that they might get a second chance at being written. This is one of those stories. Back in late 2006/2007 I was going through some significant life changes and I tried my hand at a few novels, like you do. None of them were finished and some were absolutely rubbish that never should have been typed, much less stored electronically for the ages, but there were a few gems that managed to fight their way out. This one is one of my favorites. This week is unique because I’m going to post the proto-story, that is to say that I’m going to post the original – warts and all – that I put down on paper almost a decade ago. I’ll warn you ahead of time that this is completely unedited and essentially a ‘vomit-pass” at the story and it’s pretty rough. Below that I have the new one that I have been writing, you can just skip down to that one if you want to save some time. I thought it might be interesting to see how my writing has changed in the last seven/eight years and also what hasn’t changed. I confess, I’m doing this mostly for me but some of you might be interested too.

Enjoy!

EDIT:  I took out the Proto-Story. It seems to have gotten in the way of people reading the version that I wanted them to read. 

Time Travel Sucks and Other Stories from the Society for the Betterment of Humanity

There is a bright flash of light.  It is the kind of flash that you can see through your eyelids no matter how tight they are shut. And through your hands and sunglasses and lead plates that are 3 inches thick. I know because I’ve tried just about everything except the lead plates (and that’s mostly because I don’t want to carry them around with me).  It always does, each and every time.  Then you get a flash of heat in every atom of your body, a tickle on your tongue, and a flash of cold that could freeze your nipples right off.  Your gut drops right into ground, then flips up into your throat (rookies usually throw up the first few times) before everything goes black.  It only takes a few seconds but they are the longest few seconds you’ll ever experience and it never gets any easier – never.  Getting recruited for this job is the biggest scam in the world and once you’re in there’s no going back, mostly because you never know when you’re back and I mean that in a literal sense.  My name is Jonathan Vargas but people call me Jack. I’m a time traveler.  I remember when I first found out about this gig, the video they showed; I should’ve known right then and there that this was a huge mistake.  “See the building of the pyramids, walk in the footsteps of your favorite religious figure, see ancient Rome…” bullshit.  Have I seen some of those things?  Oh sure and every day is a “new wonder and sight that is beyond imagining” it’s just that you have to watch it hiding behind crates or rocks or whatever else so that the natives don’t see you and you don’t cause a paradox that rips the time/space continuum into a million pieces.  You know what I’m rambling; let me give you a little context.

I work for the Society for the Betterment of Humanity.  As I mentioned I’m a time traveler.  That’s my job.  I’m not a scientist or in the military.  I’m not good with math or languages.  I’m just a guy, a guy who wanted an easy and exciting job and I answered the wrong ad on Craig’s List.  Seemed like a great idea at the time.  I’m thirty-five years old, I didn’t finish college, and I have spent most of my life not sure of what I want to do.  When the Society sent me the information packet it all seemed pretty farfetched, but the pitch was simple – actually the ad read just like this: “Wanted: male 25 – 40 for new job opportunity.  Long term travel required.  Seeking applicants with a taste for adventure and the unknown.”  Sure that’s me, or at least it used to be.  So I called the number and they send me a DVD (A DVD?!?!?!) which starts off like a bad sci-fi movie with a starfield moving toward the screen, kind of like warp travel on Star Trek and this voice comes on and says, “have you ever wanted to travel through time?” What you’re thinking, that’s totally what I was thinking too.  Then it starts talking about time travel and I thought they meant in the figurative sense, like going out and doing archeology or something and it’s like they know that’s what you’re thinking because the voice over comes on just when you’re thinking that and says, “no, really, we mean traveling through time and space just like the movies.”  Actually, the more I think about it, it’s possible they did know that was what I was thinking.  Who knows who could have been watching me, then they go back to the future and report about it and then the Society makes changes to the video and send it back in time so that I’ll be more convinced to join up… See this is what happens, you start to second guess everything and your mind gets all tangled up with all the different time-lines you’ve visited and it’s hard to keep straight what you changed and what originally happened and then which quantum universe you’re in determines what you can remember and… Oh forget it!  The point is time travel is not easy, it’s not fun and it’s not funny.

Then I smell it, the rancid combination of fart and puke.  I shake the trip and the smell off and my vision returns.  We are…  somewhen, but figuring that out isn’t my job.  To my right I see Dr. Aaron, she’s blonde and tall and looks like she belongs in a magazine and not the frontier lady dress that she is currently wearing. Her hair is in a ponytail and bobs all around as she swings off her pack and starts gathering her devices and notes. She is the “Brain” they sent with us this trip.  Next to her is Wills, he’s the new kid who puked.  To my left is Capt. Richard Bell, he’s leading us this time and he’s a prick.  Then there’s Stinky, the engineer who’s supposed to get us back.  He’s responsible for the fart. He does it every trip without fail, but he’s also the most requested engineer in the Society.  We appeared in a big dark building; that’s not a good start. Usually if you show up in a big dark building things get hairy. It’s like it’s a rule.  We were shooting for the American west, cowboy days.  I don’t know the exact year, they don’t tell me that stuff, nor do I know what we’re doing here but I’m always assured that I’m told what I need to know.  As I get accustomed to the dark I can see that we are in a store room, maybe a warehouse.  OK, I can work with that. There’s a lot of cover in a warehouse; a good number of hiding spots. There are crates in here, crates with writing and it’s in English.  So far so good!  Then the prick goes into it.

“Alright, people, you know the drill.  Start looking around in here and tell me if we hit our target.  Provided we are in the right time and time-line we can get started.  The sooner we start the sooner we go home.  And Vargus clean up the newbies puke.”

See, he’s a prick.
Technically we are each supposed to have a job.  Capt. Bell is the prick that tells us what to do and decides whether or not we’ve accomplished what we were supposed to while we’re here.  Dr. Aaron is the historian and medic.  She’s the one who tells us how to act while we are whenever we are, is given the “original” history that needs to be changed, and patches us up if we need it.  Her and people like her are called “Brains” by me and people like me.  Stinky, as I mentioned before, is the engineer.  They get us back from whenever we are.  I like those guys and Stinky is the best.  The only problem is that the man farts every time we travel, as you may have noticed.  It’s sick.  As if traveling isn’t hard enough then you have to deal with the dueling scents of rookie puke and Stinky’s farts. But there’s a reason why he’s the most requested engineer at the Society and it’s because he’s got the longest perfect record for getting teams home. That’s a big deal. You can put up with some pretty bad smells when they come out of a man that can bend time and space as well as he can. He’s also one of my only friends. Having this job does a number on your personal life. I had to take off my backpack to clean up the rookie’s puke.  Thankfully he paid attention to protocol and didn’t eat anything before we traveled.  It’s mostly just a wet spot on the floor.  A smelly wet spot, but all that takes is a little of my special saw dust made just for us time travelers: time dust.  I have no idea what makes it special, but we aren’t allowed to take it from the building or use it in our own time line.  See, I’m a grunt.  I get all the bullshit jobs that none of the important three want to do.  I’m here to clean spills, get food, and do whatever to make the job easier for Capt. Bell, Dr. Aaron and Stinky.  That’s what the kid is here to do too; he’s training.  He looks really young to me, maybe twenty-three.  I guess they had to start recruiting younger.  At least it looks like the green is fading from around his gills.
“You OK kid?”  It’s his first trip so I feel like I should be nice.  Besides he and I are in the same boat and it won’t hurt to have an extra hand in my corner when this trip goes to pot, and it will go to pot.

“Yeah, thanks.”  Then he spits some left over puke out of his mouth managing to miss the time dust that I’ve already spread on the floor.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a stick of special “time gum” for him.
“Here, this will get the taste out of your mouth.”  I said it with all the sincerity I could muster seeing as how I now needed to use more time dust to cover his spit.
I guess it’s important to know that the entire team gets outfitted with special stuff for each trip.  First, and most noticeably, we get period dress.  I’m especially fond of this when we go to ancient Rome or ancient Egypt.  Dr. Aaron looks great in that stuff.  All of us have general supplies that are kept in our pockets or pouches (depending on the style of dress).  Its stuff like “time gum” which biodegrades really fast after ten minutes of chewing, a small beacon so the engineer can find us if we get lost, and even some currency appropriate to our trip.  Then there’s the special kit that we each get.  Leaders get the only weapon, usually a gun, and PDA that has mission info in it.   Brains have a similar PDA but with a full “original” history and reference material.  I say “original” because, when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you start to realize that you end up going back quite a bit to fix mistakes from other trips.  There is no “original” history anymore; we’ve screwed so much stuff up.  Engineers have just one job, get the team home, so they get a backpack, made as time specific as possible, which has the return equipment; it looks like an old traveling salesman’s suitcase that opens up to show something that vaguely looks like an old typewriter, but where you’d expect to see the keys there are dials and switches. Where you’d put paper is a large glass cylinder that spins and fills with electrical discharge. Wires come out of everything on it and it always smells like it’s going to catch fire. It’s totally archaic, but it’s my favorite piece of equipment because it gets us home.  Grunts like me get a time-suitable backpack filled with all the miscellaneous stuff like the time dust, water, rations, matches – camping supplies basically – and some crazy batteries to jump the return equipment, just in case. Also, before you ask, yes we bring our own water. You know how you’re not supposed to drink the water in Mexico when you visit? Same thing when you time travel. The last thing you want is Montezuma’s Revenge when you’re three and a half centuries away from home.
The kid finally gets it together and takes off his pack.  Not only is he young but he’s kid of small too.  About five foot five and a bit lanky.  He’s got a mop of dark hair and very sharp features.  His cowboy stuff doesn’t fit him right either. He just looks awkward. He was probably a goth kid back in high school.  We start to look around the room.  I start glancing at the crates; Wills searches intently for any info that might be on them.  What he doesn’t know, and I do, is that Stinky will have it all figured out in a couple minutes.  I take a chance to sneak a look at Dr. Aaron; most of the time she’s the best part of the trip.  Back home she always looks so serious with her hair up and wearing the tan jumpsuits we all have to wear at the Society, but in costume that’s a whole different deal.  She’s about five foot four – great height – with blonde hair down to her shoulders.  Soft features and a button nose that twitches when she thinks too hard.  Her eyes are green and sparkle.  She looks like she belongs in a magazine. I would love to see her naked.  The frontier lady get-up isn’t the most flattering thing she’s worn, but I’ll take what I can get.  If only we were in ancient Rome or Egypt, or maybe she could just wear a French maid outfit.  Yeah, that’d be good.

Before I get caught staring Stinky gets our attention, “Got it! Looks like we hit the right spot, with an extra six hours to spare.”  That was good news; we have time to eat!
“Very good,” Bell sounded cocky. What a prick. “Team, let’s mobilize and see if we can put ourselves up in the local hotel.”
Dr. Aaron looked up from her tablet as if she was in a video for a swimsuit calendar, at least that’s what I saw. “If we arrived where we should have then we should be inside the warehouse at the edge of town.”
“We’re wherever the co-ordinates that were given to me point to,” Stinky started putting away the return equipment and getting it packed away. As he was closing up the case we heard the opening of and saw a beam of daylight shine in from a door that was behind a stack of crates. Everyone froze, as is protocol, and the Captain put his hand on the six-shooter he was equipped with for the mission.
“Whoever you are, I heard ya’! You better come out or I’ll fill every square inch of this building with bird shot!” It was an angry native! Those are the worst kind. “Come on out, now. I’m serious!” And he sounds old and nervous, a bad combination in an already bad scenario. Somebody needed to fix this.
Dr. Aaron made the first move, “Hello? I’m afraid that we were just looking for some shelter.” A woman’s voice did have a way of diffusing these situations. “I’m coming out from behind the boxes now with my husband. Please don’t shoot us.” As she spoke she gave us the hand signal to hide. Wills, Stinky and I did just that as quietly as possible making sure that we were in place by the time she and Bell were visible. She introduced the two of them to the native and gave the approved cover story about being new in town from back east and received the anticipated hospitality. Soon the three of them were all chuckles and apologies and they left with him, hopefully to accomplish the assignment.
This is always the boring part of the work. Eventually the Brain and the Captain will go off and get the job done. Sometimes they take a grunt with them, but I prefer it when they don’t. When things go wrong, as they sometimes do, the grunt is the one who won’t make it back. They don’t pay me enough for that. While they were off doing what it is they do, the three of us stayed back to sweep the area for temporal bogeys and then prepped for the eventual departure. As grunts and engineer, we are tasked with staying in place unless forced to evacuate by extraordinary or life threatening circumstances. It sounds like the Society is concerned for our safety, but the truth is they want to mitigate the risk of time-stream errors and paradoxes. They don’t want our corpses stinking up the timeline and they go to extreme measures to make sure it doesn’t happen. Since our fearless leader and the Brain were now out of our presence the countdown started, for this mission it is four hours past action point. That may sound a little confusing. If the team is ever separated, and we almost always are, then there is a predetermined time when everyone is due to rendezvous at the original arrival point. That time is determined in relation to the “action point” which is the thing in history that we are attempting to alter. So in this case we arrived about six hours prior to the action point and then we will wait a maximum of four hours after that point before Stinky, Wills and I crank up the machine and go back to our native time and space. Typically we are out pretty quickly after the action point, but as I’ve mentioned Capt. Bell is a prick and he likes to show off, especially if the assigned Brain is as attractive as Dr. Aaron. If I could I’d bring a book to read to pass the time, but I can’t because it might get left behind causing a paradox. Playing cards, you may ask, can you bring playing cards to pass the time? Nope, same problem. Playing cards from the present (future?) are significantly different from the past so they could cause a paradox. Music? Nope, paradox. Smart phone? Nope, paradox. Hell the PDA’s that the mission Captains and Brains use were just recently certified and had to be outfitted with a self-destruct device just in case they are lost or left behind. We don’t even get to pack our stuff, everything is packed for you at the Society and then you get thoroughly searched before departure. So what do we do to pass the time? Every grunt has their ways, most break protocol and purchase something from the current time period to occupy thier time, but I personally like to play a little game I came up with called Ration Bar Poker. One of the few things that we all bring with us are the ration bars. They are each printed with a serial number on the packaging so that the Society can keep track of where each bar is assigned. These serial numbers are a combination of numbers and letters ten characters long, so you play it a bit like ten-card stud. You break up the bar itself into five pieces and that becomes your betting money for the game. Depending on the expected duration we could each be carrying up to ten of fifteen of these bars and that can pass a good amount of time. The packaging is also one of the few things that we carry with us that doesn’t instantly biodegrade. The kid and I have to make sure that all of the trash is picked up before we go. We tucked ourselves into a back corner of the warehouse where we were out of direct sight of the door and got ready to wait.
“So this is what we do? We just wait here?” The kid, Wills, had been so quiet until now that I was surprised at the sound of his voice. He stood awkwardly by his pack, his right hand gripping his left arm and kneading it.
“Pretty much,” I told him. “Pull up a crate, I’ll show you how we play poker out here.” I pulled a bar from my pack and waved it with a big smile. I was feeling a little extra peckish and was looking forward to eating my winnings.
Sticky snorted, “No way, Jack.” Then he looked at the kid, “Don’t fall for it. Before you know it he’ll have all your food and he’s terrible at sharing.” Stinky laughed, the kid gave a small smile. I punched Stinky on the arm.
“Great! Now what do we do? We have a whole day to kill.” I leaned back on my pack on the ground and tore open the bar in my hand and started gnawing on it. Stinky just shrugged and lay out on the ground to take a nap.
The kid walked up to me, “I guess you could show me how to do stuff? This is my first mission.” He had a point. I was supposed to train him and I guess now was as good a time as any. It was certainly better than just sitting around for the next nine hours. I told him to grab his pack and I took him through his job as a grunt.
After fifteen minutes there was nothing else that I could tell the kid about being a grunt.
“So, we’re, like, the team bitches?” Wills asked with a completely reasonable level of offence.
“Well, yeah, I prefer the term “gofer” or “support,” but, yes, essentially we are the team bitches. The most I’ve had to do in my last 4 missions is put down some of this time dust on puddles of puke.” You could see the disappointment come across his face. I suddenly felt really bad for him. What did they tell him to get him to sign up? Wills turned around and walked away. I gave him his space and went and had some water and ate again. We were still over eight hours away from departure, but I didn’t want to eat too much later otherwise I might puke on the return trip and so far I have a pretty good record of not puking. I plopped myself on the ground and ate while Wills sat and faced the wall of the warehouse.
The hours passed slowly. The sun started to set and we heard the piano in the saloon off in the distance. I always wondered what real cowboy whiskey tasted like. It’s a shame I couldn’t run over really quick and have a drink – but, you know, paradox. Besides we were close to the action point and it may be in that very saloon where something happens that may mean the future for humanity or the destruction of it, it’s so hard to tell. Then the door opened and closed, we followed protocol and froze.
“Let’s go!” It was the prick. Capt. Bell rounded the boxes looking for us with Dr. Aaron behind him.
Stinky woke up with a start, “All set, Captain?”
“Yes, this mission was a success. Let’s get back.” He had a shit eating grin on his face and looked back at Dr. Aaron who shook her head.
“Yes, I need to get the smell of cow pies out of my hair.” She moved next to the rest of us as Stinky opened up the case for the return equipment and started working the dials.
I started cleaning up my area and doing an idiot check for any last minute time bogeys that I’d need to cover up or collect. I called to the kid who was still over by the wall, “C’mon Wills, let’s go home.” He picked up his pack and moved slowly over by Capt. Bell. Stinky was hunched over the equipment. Sweat was building on his balding head and he kept wiping his mustache. Working with the equipment is always a delicate operation.
Then we heard a mumble out of Wills. I looked up at him and he was standing there with his head low and holding his left arm again with his right hand kind of twisting on his center of gravity.
“What was that Wills?” Capt. Bell asked.
“I don’t want to go.” Wills looked like a sad child. I was embarrassed for him.
Captain Bell smirked and put his arm around Wills, “This is your first trip, right? I know, it’s a really amazing thing that we’re doing here, we are traveling through time, but it also means that we have to be very cautious and so we can’t stay.” Bell was being as friendly as a prick can be, but it wasn’t enough. Wills made a face that was a twist of anger and the start of tears and then grabbed the six-shooter off of Bell’s belt! He shot Bell and then turned the gun on Stinky! I called out and that distracted him enough, but the gun went off and hit the return equipment. Dr. Aaron screamed out and Stinky started swearing. The kid turned the gun on Stinky again, but I was able to reach him before he could get another shot off. I had the gun in my hands and we were wrestling as I heard the equipment squeal in ways I had never heard it sound before and Stinky swearing up a storm. I started feeling the warmth that comes with the trip and my vision started to white out – at least we were still going home. The brightness came and then we were elsewhen.
I came too and I was on a dusty plain. No smells this time, except for the dust in the air. I looked to my left and I saw the device, sputtering and whirling down. I saw half of the body of Capt. Bell, the lower half. Stinky and Dr. Aaron were nowhere in sight, but Wills was here, he came too quicker than I did. He was standing away from me and still had the gun. He was looking out over the plain and I could hear him crying. Then the panic set in.
“What the hell did you do?!” I screamed at him as I ran. I wanted to tackle him and shake him! I wanted to know what the hell he was thinking! I wanted to know what they told him to get him to sign up. Before I could reach him he turned around a put the gun to his head.
“I’m sorry.” Then he pulled the trigger. The sound didn’t echo, there was nothing around for the sound to bounce off of, but it stopped me in my tracks. There’s a protocol for dead bodies in the time line. A bit of kit I don’t like to even talk about. Like I said, the Society doesn’t want our bodies stinking up the timeline and they have some very extreme measures to make sure it doesn’t happen. It’s a device, every member of the team has one but they so rarely get used. Normally if someone dies in the field we just bring the bodies back with us so they can be properly buried or whatever. In rare cases, like this one, we each have a very small device, the size of a make-up compact, which we use to dispose of bodies. We each carry one, just in case. We use them whether the body is dead or not, like a hyper functional cyanide capsule that also eliminates any evidence of the body. It’s the panic device, a last resort. I always keep mine in a separate pocket away from anything else I may use; I really don’t like to think about it. But now here I was, with one and a half bodies in a place I did not recognize alone with a piece of equipment I do not know how to use.
I went to Wills and took off his pack. I kicked the gun away and found his device in his front pocket. I set it on his chest and watched his whole body burn and vaporize away. It felt like I got punched in the gut. I felt a tear in my eye. I went and did the same for Bell’s legs. Then I gathered Wills and my packs together next to the return device. I sat down next to it and broke down. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I pulled out my own device and looked at it; so much power in the size of a compact. The wind blew at me as I sat and I tried to prepare myself for what I had to do.
Then I smelled something, something familiar – it smelled like an electrical fire! The return equipment! It wasn’t dead! I pulled it closer to me and looked at it. It was definitely run down, and you could see the damage that the bullet made, but the central cylinder was still in one piece and there was still charge flowing in it, I figured that had to be a good thing! I put my device back in its pocket and started messing with the dials and switches. I’d never been this close before, now I saw that there was a small readout displaying red numbers that I didn’t understand. As I turned wheels some of the numbers changed, when I flipped a switch and then turned the wheel some of the other numbers would change. I was just changing numbers wherever I could. I could still get home – as long as I knew where home was. I started thinking really hard about anything that Stinky had ever said, anything that could have been a clue, but he never talked about coordinates, only that he had gotten us to them. And I knew that this could be tricky, because not everyone was as good as he was. In my panic and desperation I made a decision. I took all the supplies that I could out of Wills pack and added them to mine. I grabbed the gun with its three bullets and threw it in there too. Then I sat at the machine, whirled some dials and hit the switch. The machine started revving up, the cylinder spun, and I got that warm feeling. What’s the worst that could happen, I figured, maybe I end up at home or somewhere with more people, but I had to try something. The light got bright, I felt the heat and I was gone…

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Filed under 52 in 52, 52 stories in 52 weeks, fiction, sci-fi, short story, time travel, working for a living

52 in 52 Story 2 “The Get-A-Way Girl”

The Get-A-Way Girl
I got another postcard today. They come every few months. They are always from some fantastic location: Hawaii, Tahiti, Norway, London, Paris, Venice, Tokyo, and other places all over the world. They are always signed the same and always a reminder of what could have been.
Adulthood. I always knew that it was coming and all my life I think I purposely looked for ways to put it off. I was trying to procrastinate growing up in spite of its relentless march. I surrendered, like most do. I got a job that pays steady, married a girl that is emotionally and physically compatible with me, had two wonderful children that are both the apple of my eye and the biggest pains in my ass. I did it all the way that was expected of me and it worked out as we were told it would, when we were still young and hopeful, if we were good and took the right steps.  Despite all that it’s been a life of regrets and pining for “the good old days.”
I know that this probably sounds like a big pity party, and I guess that there is an aspect of that, but as I get older I find myself looking back and wondering what could have happened “if.” “If,” it’s such a magical and damning word. It’s impossible to know how other decisions would have worked out, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend my quiet times, in the shower or when I’m trying to sleep, wondering what other outcomes could have come out of my life. Then I look at my actual life and hate myself a little because what I have is, truly, wonderful. Yet it still happens. I just can’t shake it.
Getting these postcards takes me back to college. They were the last of my “Peter Pan” days, when I was still holding on to the idea of being able to chase off time. I had what I imagine people consider a typical college experience: I went to class, made friends (some that I still have to this day), met girls, and did my fair share of drinking. It was the mid-90’s when grunge was slowly losing its grasp of the charts and the disaffected youth of Generation X suddenly realized that we’d need to start making money because our Baby Boomer parents were starting to get tired of paying our way through everything.
I was at a state school on partial academic scholarship trying to decide if I was going to keep my business major or switch over to poli-sci. I was a sophomore in loose jeans, a t-shirt and an open, long-sleeve, denim shirt. My hair was a lot longer then. Well, longer than it is now, and more blond. It covered my ears and had just enough shag to it that I felt like I was wearing my alt cred well. I was thinner then too; 155 pounds of man and fit. I still wish that I had my old metabolism back. I could have eaten a whole Stouffer’s lasagna and not gained a pound. I had a great group of friends: Malcolm, the guy who played Oasis songs on his guitar under the trees between classes to woo the ladies; Danny, a guy on a baseball scholarship who secretly wanted to be a theater major; Mariah, the mid-western girl who smoked Marlboro Lights and jogged five miles a day to counteract the damage to her lungs; and Ben who was always coming from or going to some place. I had met Danny and Ben at orientation the year before and we became fast “line” friends. We had fallen into a conversation, awkwardly as you might expect, as we were being parsed out to our different departments to sign up for class. We were standing in the California sun trying to grab shade from a line of nearby trees and Ben decided to get a hat out of his backpack. It was stuffed full, impossible to tell from the outside what was in it, but I tried to guess. There were sharp corners poking out the sides, clearly books in my opinion, and on top the soft plumpness of clothes, maybe a sweatshirt? He opened his backpack and it exploded everywhere! Sure enough a sweatshirt, pair of shorts, several books (Dungeons and Dragons mostly) and the hat he was looking for. Ben wasn’t embarrassed about this, even as the girls in line around us giggled about it, but in what we would come to know as typical Ben fashion he was frustrated that he had to pick everything else up. Danny and I helped him so he wouldn’t lose his place in line. Ben threw the hat on his head, an Angels ball cap, and grabbed his D&D Player’s Handbook.
“You like the Angels?” Danny asked and he grabbed the Monster Manual in one hand and the pair of shorts in the other.
“Huh?” Ben looked confused as he retrieved the items from Danny.
Danny pointed at it and said, “Your hat?”
“Oh, sure, I guess. I’ve never actually seen them play. My Dad got it for me and it’s, like, the only hat I own.” Ben pushed the hat back on his head and pushed up his glasses as he adjusted his position to pick up a set of adventure modules.
“Here you go,” I had picked up the last of the books and reached over to hand them to Ben. He grabbed most of them but one thing stuck to my palm. It was a comic book, an X-Men comic book to be precise. Issue 222 featuring both Wolverine and Sabretooth on the cover locked in mortal combat. It was bagged and boarded the way any good collector back then would keep their comics. I had the same issue back home. “I dig the X-Men too.”
Ben smiled for the first time as he took the issue back. He put the comic back in his pack more carefully than the other objects and made sure to put it between the two hard cover D&D books to protect it. “Yeah? That’s cool. I’m Ben.”
“John.” We shook hands.
“I’m Danny, I like them too, but I stopped buying them when I graduated. My dad says that dudes in college don’t read that stuff.”
“Well we’re in college and we read them,” Ben reached out to shake Danny’s hand, “so, John, Danny, have you been keeping up with both titles now that the teams are split up?”
And that was all it took. Those guys and I were inseparable after that. I picked up Malcolm in my freshman English class and we connected over our mutual love of The Smiths and Oasis’s Definitely Maybe album. Mariah came into the picture one day at lunch when she decided to sit with us and injected herself into our conversation about how tough a teacher Professor Stewart was.
“She just hates men, guys, you’re doomed to fight for a C in that class.” She said it so matter of factually that we were all just kind of stunned into silence… except for Malcolm.
“That’s just ludicrous! That’s asinine!” then Malcolm stole French fries off of her plate and dipped them in the side of ranch that she had on her tray, “Oh, those are good! Guys you should try those.”
It was a good group. I still talk to them to this day, Danny and Mariah got married right after graduation and moved back to Illinois to be near Mariah’s family when they started having kids. Malcolm stayed in California and ended up in the music industry, as an A& R rep for a major label. Ben settled in San Francisco and opened up a comic book store that he still runs with his wife. They all ended up living the dream. It was different for me. While I always felt like those guys knew who they were before they got to school, I always felt like school just made me more confused.
I was never “defined” in high school. I wasn’t super popular, but I certainly wasn’t friendless or picked on. I was a good student, but not quite valedictorian material. I never liked competitive sports or played on any teams. My friends were casual about everything; growing up in suburban California can make you like that – especially in Orange County. I liked comics and music and football and movies but none of them enough to get excited about them. I worked to get into college because I thought that it would magically turn me into whoever I was going to be. Surprise, surprise it didn’t, but I was willing to believe that it was because it had only been my freshman year and there were still three more years to go (probably four due to class availability).
So there I was, the start of my sophomore year. I was single, I had been dating a girl named Becky but we had broken up pretty amicably a few weeks prior to school starting. I was on a real coffee kick. This was before Starbucks had taken over the world and so the group and I would frequent the little mom and pop shops near school. My favorite that summer had been a place called Caffeine Bean that was directly across from the main quad of the school. We’d sit out front, smoking Mariah’s cigarettes and watching the summer school students as we drank fancy lattes and judged people. That’s when I first started to notice Michelle.
Michelle had a favorite spot under one of the big trees in the quad. It was directly in sight of our favorite table at Caffeine Bean. At first I noticed the pattern of her being there more than I noticed her. She was a girl, usually in shorts or jeans and a colorful t-shirt, with her nose in a book under the tree who would occasionally write something in a big three-ring binder. The first few times I would just catch a glimpse of her when I would scan the campus. After the third time I started paying attention. I couldn’t see what the books were called from where we were, but they were always thick and looked like text books in how they were over-sized; and the binder, always the binder. It was a pale purple and had loose leaf paper in it. And when she wrote in it she would write a lot, occasionally aggressively erasing and then writing again.
After the seventh time I saw her I mentioned something to the rest of the group.
“Hey guys, does anyone know that girl?”
Malcolm perked up, “What girl?” He squinted and looked at the quad. I pointed to the tree and he stared hard before dismissing her and leaning back in his chair. “Don’t know her.” Then he lit one of Mariah’s cigarettes.
“Fucker! You better buy me another pack; you’ve smoked more of these than I have!” She grabbed a cigarette for herself and looked over to the quad as she lit it. “Sorry John, no idea.”
“She’s a little plain for you, isn’t she?” Malcolm was being a sarcastic ass. Admittedly most of the girls that I had been dating were girls who had been more adventurous in their appearance. Dyed hair, piercings, tattoos, and lots of torn jeans; nothing full Goth or completely Grunge, but a lot of girls were experimenting with their appearances now that they weren’t under their parent’s roofs. Michelle definitely didn’t fit that profile. She had long brown hair that had a natural curl to it and was always up either in a ponytail or in half up/half down way that girls do to keep hair out of their faces. I never got a good look at her face completely because there was usually a book in front of half of it. She didn’t look particularly tall or thin, she looked like a girl. I wasn’t surprised that no one had noticed her or knew who she was.
“No, you don’t get it. She’s been in that spot, like, every day. At least every day we’ve been here. She’s always reading her book and then writing things in that binder.” I just kept watching her.
“Are you stalking her, dude?” Danny punched my arm and laughed.
“They have laws against that John,” Ben poked me in the shoulder as he said it and got up, “I gotta’ run I’ve got to…”
“Get to the store, we know.” We all finished his sentence for him. Ben was working at a comic book store nearby and if he wasn’t in school or asleep he was there. He’d still meet up with us to hang out but usually only when the store was closed. If it was open we were just a brief layover before he headed back.
“Shut up you guys.” Ben headed off and the other three got into a conversation about which Beastie Boys album was the best. I still stand by Ill Communication if only because of the song and video for “Sabotage.” Man, I love that. As they talked I watched Michelle. She just sat there under the tree reading and jotting down whatever it was she was jotting down.
So when the fall semester started I wasn’t surprised when I saw her there again. But now I was on campus and could get a better look. She looked the same up close, except I could confirm that she was cute. She wore no make-up, at least none that I could see, and she had the skin of a girl who was recently a teenager with little patches of acne, but relatively clear beyond that. She had a pencil in her hand and a pen behind her ear. Again she was reading a large text book, but from where I was now I could see that it was a theoretical math book. Suddenly it made sense why she was both in summer school and constantly reading it, that had to be some hard stuff. I was never a math guy. I got through algebra and geometry just fine, but never wanted to move up beyond that. I made my way to class feeling like the mystery had been solved for the moment.
I had arranged my schedule to be Monday through Thursday, with Fridays off. Just like now, I lived for three day weekends. Tuesdays and Thursdays were my morning classes. It was history and, being a history buff anyway, it was one of my easiest classes. I rarely went in completely awake which probably explains why it took almost four classes before I realized that Michelle was in my class. She sat near the front and made what appeared to be meticulous notes. She carried a big backpack. It sat next to her seat like a boulder. It was impressive that her small frame could carry it. Just like my friends, no one else in class seemed to notice her. She was practically invisible. She’d come in, sit, learn, and leave. She didn’t look like she had any friends in class and even the professor didn’t seem to acknowledge her. I started to follow her after class.
Before you start, I know how this sounds. But you need to understand that she piqued my curiosity. It was like she was the Snuffleupagus and I was Big Bird; no one else seemed to see her. So, yeah, I followed her.  After class she went to her tree and pulled out her math book and made some notes. Then, after forty-five minutes or so, she went to her next class: chemistry. I went and got coffee at Caffeine Bean. Sure enough, when that class was over, she was under the tree again. I had a lab after that so I didn’t follow her the rest of that day, but I showed up Monday, early, to see when she would appear. I got to Caffeine Bean around 8:15am (it was the earliest I could rouse myself) and waited. Michelle must have had an early class because she came from campus to her spot around 9:30. I watched until she left at 10:30. I had an 11am so I crossed to campus as she was packing up and almost got up the courage to say hello. Worried that I’d make an ass of myself I headed to my class.
I knew I was a little obsessed that day; I really couldn’t focus on class. My imagination started to invent what things she might be writing down in her book. Was she developing some kind of super math code? What if she was a computer chick creating some kind of super program? Was she curing cancer? Danny noticed my distraction that day. He and I were taking an acting 101 class. I was taking it to fill my arts requirement and he was taking it hoping to back door into a drama minor without his dad figuring out it out. He caught up to me as I was walking to class.
He lightly shoulder checked me and caught me by surprise, “Dude, I’ve been yelling at you from across the way. What the hell? You goin’ deaf?”
“Sorry, man, I was lost in thought.”
“Huh,” he laughed, “don’t think too hard you might hurt yourself. What’re you thinking about?”
I hesitated to tell him. “Eh, nothing. Just had a busy morning today. I got up early and I think I might have messed up my circadian rhythms or something.”
“Sure.” Danny let it go and I tried to as well, but I didn’t do a good job of it. We met the group, minus Ben (he was at the store), for lunch and Danny couldn’t wait to throw me under the bus.
“Something’s wrong with John.”
“What?” I stammered trying to defend myself against the charge, “What’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong.” I dropped my head over my B.L.T.A. and hoped that lunch would save me.
“What’s wrong with him,” Malcolm asked as he took fries off Mariah’s plate. She slapped his hand, but it didn’t matter the fries were in his mouth.
“He’s been all distracted today.” Danny took a bite of his chicken sandwich.
“What’s her name?” Mariah ate some of her fries and then shoved a forkful of salad in her mouth.
“Her? What are you talking about?” I was completely flustered.
“Guys don’t get distracted by much. It’s usually a job thing or a girl thing. You live off your student loans so not a job thing therefore it must be a girl thing.” She shrugged her shoulders and ate a forkful of salad.
“The girl has a point,” Malcolm grabbed one of her cigarettes and lit up. “So who is she?”
“She’s… nobody. She’s…”
“Uh mah Gah,” Danny was talking with his mouth full, “Theh rehly isa gurh?”
“What? No!” I tried to play it off.
Malcolm laughed, “Hahaha! There is! Holy shit, do you like her? Why don’t you want to tell us about her?”
“Yeah, John, what’s the big deal? You’ve never had a problem telling us about your conquests before?” Another forkful.
“She’s not a conquest; it’s not like that…”
Danny swallowed, “Then what’s it like?”
I felt backed into a corner and at the same time I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t really understand why I was so curious about her either except that I didn’t know anything about her and that, in and of itself, was interesting. “You remember that girl from the end of summer break? The one under the tree in the quad?”
“No.” Malcolm looked truly confused, like you had just asked him to translate Chinese.
“The plain girl with the book?” Mariah stabbed her fork aggressively into her salad.
“Yeah, that one,” I finally took a bite of my sandwich.
“So did you take her out?” Malcolm still looked confused.
“No.” I took another bite.
Malcolm’s face twisted from lack of understanding, “Do you want to take her out?”
I wiped my mouth, “I don’t know! I’ve just noticed her around is all. She… intrigues me.”
The whole table burst into eye rolls and grunts.
“Intrigues you?!” Malcolm could barely stay in the chair.
“That’s pretty bad John,” Mariah put down her fork and lit a cigarette for herself.
“Wow, dude. Wow.” Danny went back to his sandwich.
I spent most of the rest of lunch with my face in my hand as the three of them took turns giving me shit. I didn’t make any efforts the rest of the week to see Michelle.
The following Monday I stopped at Caffeine Bean before class and happened to see Michelle under the tree packing up her stuff. After the ration of shit that I had gotten the week before I figured I should at least introduce myself before Malcolm or anyone else got any ideas about trying to embarrass me in front of her. And, really, if I’m being honest with myself, I just needed any excuse to finally get me to do something. I jogged lightly across the street and made my way toward her under the tree. As I got closer I panicked, I hadn’t thought this all the way through and I had no idea what to say.
I went with an old standard, “Hi.”
She didn’t seem to notice me. She kept putting her stuff away.
“Hey, how are you? I’m John.” I got a little bit closer so she knew I was talking to her. She looked up at that and looked around to make sure that I wasn’t talking to someone else.
“Uh, hi?” She looked a little confused that I was talking to her.
Truth is I wasn’t really sure what to follow up with. As it was I had barely gotten the greeting and my name out. Then I remembered, “I’m John. We have history with Professor Standish together?” 
“Oh, hi.” That seemed to work. She didn’t look nervous any more. “I’m Michelle. Did you need notes or something?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks, no. I was just coming from the coffee place and saw you and thought I’d say hi.” I was fumbling. It was all I could do to keep from saying that I had been secretly watching her and wanted to know what she was reading and what was in the big binder.
“OK,” she finished putting her stuff away and hoisted her backpack on clearly not sure what to make of the whole exchange, “Well I guess I’ll see you in class.” And then she walked away. At first I started walking to follow her, but I really didn’t know what to do when I would’ve caught up to her. So I just started heading to class, but at least now I knew her name: Michelle.
I met the rest of the group for lunch and things were fine until Ben showed up.
“Hey guys! Pete at the store is forcing me to take a day off so what’s been happening?” Ben sat down with an overly full tray of mac and cheese, a burger, an apple and the biggest soda they offered in the commissary.
Mariah started, “I got in a fight with my sociology professor about structural functionalism which turned into a shouting match that went fifteen minutes into his next class. I feel like I made my point.” Then she lit a cigarette.
“Suede has changed their name to The London Suede. The new album only has one decent single. And I banged Bernadette and we liked it enough that it might be a regular thing. Probably TMI, but I am beyond your judgments.” Then Malcolm grabbed one of Mariah’s cigarettes and lit it up.
“John is in love with some girl he’s never talked to.” Danny elbowed Malcolm and did a head nod at Mariah as he took a bite of his burger.
Ben blinked, “How much did I miss?”
“John, how is plain Jane?” Malcolm had a grin on his face, like he was ready to strike no matter what I said.
I sighed, “Her name is Michelle.”
The table burst out in “Ohs” and Ben looked a little confused, but joined in anyway.
“Wait, you talked to her?” Malcolm leaned in over the table in excitement.
“Yeah, this morning when I was on my way from Caffeine Bean to class.”
“Well, what happened?” Danny asked as he shoved more burger in his mouth.
“Nothing, I mean we kinda’ said hello to each other and now I know her name and that’s about it. We sort of talked about the class we have together…”
“You guys have a class together?” Mariah seemed upset that she didn’t know this.
“I thought you guys knew that.”
“No, we definitely didn’t know that,” Malcolm ashed and took another deep drag.
“Yeah, Tuesday and Thursday. History with Standish.” I tried to play it off and tried to eat.
“My God, how long have you been eyeballing this girl?” Malcolm was eating this up.
“I didn’t even know she was in my class until last week. Guys, seriously, I know this seems weird, but I don’t know. She reads that big book, takes a bunch of notes, it’s like a big mystery and I want to learn the answer…”
“…But what if the answer is totally boring?” Ben interrupted as he stirred his mac and cheese. “I get it man; sometimes the want is way better than the get. Still, don’t be, like, a total stalker. I don’t want to see you go all serial killer on us.”
“Dude, talk to her.” Danny was finally giving his two cents. “What do they always tell us in acting class? Get to the truth. Ask her about the book if you want to know, or don’t, but if you don’t you’re basically giving us license to make fun of you.”
“Hell, even if you do,” Malcolm took another long drag.
“OK, OK, I will. Jeez.” I kept eating my sandwich and Ben got caught up on our lives.
After class I decided that Danny was probably right. I should just talk to Michelle; ask her what was up with the book and the notes. As much fun as I was having creating these fantasies in my head of spy codes and programs I couldn’t keep it up. It was getting dumb. So I went to the tree, committed to talking to Michelle and getting the real story behind the book and the binder. She wasn’t there. I was at the tree, class was over, and she wasn’t there, naturally. I made the decision to come back and see her in the morning. We had a class so it’d be easy.
I got to class just a bit late (I slept through my alarm) and came in just as Prof. Standish was doing role.
“Mr. Peterson, thank you for gracing us with your presence. Please sit.”
I didn’t even speak, just nodded and made my way to the back. As I passed Michelle I waved and mouthed “hi.” She didn’t seem to notice. As class went on I found myself just staring at the back of her head and her backpack. I was getting pretty confused about my feelings. Was this really about book and binder or was this just my brain finding a reason because, for whatever reason, I was attracted to this girl? I was jostled out of my thoughts by the closing of books and the sounds of people getting up to leave class. I put my stuff away and made my way to Michelle.
“Hey Michelle.” She turned a little surprised that someone was talking to her.
“Oh, hey. John, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me. I wanted to know if you wanted to get coffee between classes?”
“Oh, uh, I can’t, really, I have to study.”
“Under the tree?” I don’t even know why it came out of my mouth. I wanted to put it back as soon as I said it. She looked surprised and caught off guard.
“Well, yeah, actually. Why do you know that?” She started going toward the door.
I came clean, “I frequent the Caffeine Bean, the coffee shop across from the quad, and I’ve seen you there, like, every time I go; with the book and the binder?”
She looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, well, yeah. I’m a math major and there’s a lot of reading.”
“Yeah, math is hard.” I mentally gave myself a face palm.
Michelle chuckled at that, “Uh, yeah, I guess it is sometimes.”
Hoping I had an in from the laugh I made one last shot, “So maybe that coffee…?”
“Sorry, John, I really do have to study. But thanks.” And then she was out the door. I stood there just an extra moment. She was studying. She was a math major. That was definitely not creating secret government codes or curing cancer. I felt a little relieved and a little sad, so I just went home.
“She’s a math major? That was the big secret?” Malcolm was puffing away disappointed, more so than I was, I think, about Michelle’s secret. “That’s completely asinine!”
“That is a bit anti-climactic,” Danny was chewing on some fried chicken, “but doesn’t it feel better to know?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Truth be told I was still a little bummed out about it.
“So are you going to ask her out?” Mariah had a selection of fruit on her plate today and moved them around with her fork as she ate.
“No, I guess. I don’t think so.” The question seemed to come from left field. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering. She occupied a lot of space in your head for a while. I thought you might want to see if there was anything else there.” She ate some melon. Mariah was right, this girl had been an obsession for weeks and in your early twenties weeks are a decent amount of time. But I was scared. Most girls I talked to seemed interested in speaking to me as well, Michelle could take or leave me and preferred to leave me. And she wasn’t my type, even though my type wasn’t even my type, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t worth it to me to try, so I just let it go, like everything else that was difficult.
A few more weeks passed. My routine set back in. I’d still see Michelle under the tree and in class, but didn’t do much more than wave if we saw each other. She was just another girl that I recognized on campus now; until one Wednesday when I was crossing the quad and passed near the tree. It was after 10:30, normally she would be packed up and on her way to class, but Michelle was under the tree and she was crying softly into her hands. I stopped and looked around; no one else seemed to notice. Not really knowing what else to do I went over to her.
“Michelle, are you ok?” She was startled until she saw it was me.
“Oh, it’s you.” She wiped her tears on her sleeve and moved to put her stuff away.
“Are you ok? Did someone do something to you?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s ok, don’t worry about it.” She was packing up and trying to get away.
I put myself out there, “Hey, I know we really don’t know each other but if you ever want to talk or whatever I’m around. You know where I like to hang out.” I gestured over to the Caffeine Bean and tried to make a sympathetic face.
“Are you asking me out?” She looked surprised and not all that happy about it.
“No! I mean, not that I wouldn’t, but, no, I’m not asking you out right now. I mean, not saying that I’ll do it later…”
Michelle started laughing through her tears, “OK, thanks, but I’m OK. It’s just my project, the one I’ve been working on, I don’t think it’s going to work, that’s all. Thanks for asking, though. I’ll see you in class, John.” And she walked away wiping the last tears from her eyes. I felt like my mission had changed. I didn’t need to know about her “project” any more, now I needed to save Michelle from what I had diagnosed, in my infinite wisdom, as her real problem: she needed some friends! In all the time I had known her, even in the early days, I’d never seen her with anyone else, and she was always alone. That couldn’t be healthy, right? And who would she talk to about her project not working out? I made the decision that I was going to help her make friends.
The next day, Thursday, we had our class together. I came in and dropped off a coffee I had bought for her that morning. She smiled and said thank you. After class I asked her what she thought of it.
“It was… all right, I guess?” She was making a face that said that she didn’t like it but didn’t want to be impolite.
“What?!” I said in mock shock, “That was a fine Ethiopian! You don’t even need to add anything to it, it’s so smooth.”
“I’ve never really been a big coffee fan.”
I acted like she had just shot me in the heart and fell on the desk next to me.”
“I’m more of a tea person, just so you know.”
“Great, can I buy you a cup of tea between classes?” This was going great! I really felt like I was on a roll!
“I can’t, I’m sorry.” I must’ve looked pretty disappointed, “It’s just, I need to keep working on my project. It’s… it’s just really important.”
“What, is it, like, 90% of your grade?”
“It’s so much more than that, but I’ll see you next week.” And then she was off.
I made a mental note about the tea and then left to meet my friends.
The next few weeks were nice. I made an effort to be up early and met Michelle under her tree, with tea of different types, and then go to class and see my friends. They went from teasing me about Michelle to wondering if we were going to get married and have a bunch of kids. We weren’t, our relationship wasn’t like that. I really liked being around Michelle, but it wasn’t in that “relationship” way. We talked about class and she tried to help me with the math that I had to do. I introduced her to my group (except Ben, he was always at the store) and, even though she never ate with us she at least got to know them a little. And she kept working on her “project.” It was always “the project.”
One Wednesday, when we were under the tree, I finally asked for details.
“So, we’re getting close to the end of the semester. Is this project going to be done, finally?”
She looked over the edge of her book with an “are you kidding?” face, “No, not yet. Probably not for a long time.” And then she scribbled some notes down. It was a string of numbers, and equation that I didn’t understand at all.
“Wait, so this isn’t for school?” I was shocked, who does math just to do math?
“No, this is just for me.”
“So, what does it do? Wait, are you secretly decoding government communiques?”  Suddenly all of my conspiracy theories came rushing back into my head. I knew it! She was curing cancer or making a super computer program or whatever!
She sat and put her book in her lap and thought about what to say. “Have you ever felt trapped?”
That wasn’t what I was expecting, “Uh, yeah, I guess.”
“Like, really trapped? Like you have very few choices in what happens in your life?”
“Sure, doesn’t everyone?”
“I don’t know if you know what I mean.” She got really quiet and closed her book. “I don’t want to be here, John.”
That threw me. “Wait, here like school or here like life?”
“Here like school, like California, like America. I don’t really feel like I fit in, you know.” She crossed her arms and tucked her legs Indian style. This was probably the most vulnerable I had ever seen her.
I tried to be reassuring, “Hey, that’s ok. That’s exactly what college is for, so you can figure all these things out. Figure out where you dofit in.”
“But what if I already know?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s never been my dream to go to school, or get married or, you know, do things like our parents did.”
“I get that…”
“But my parents really want me to want that. Really want me to want that.”
“Oh, I see. I bet that’s tough.”
“I really want to travel, John, see the world, you know?”
“Sure, I’d like to travel too. I’m thinking about maybe going to London with Malcolm after we graduate…”
“No, John, it’s all I want to do. I want to see places and try new food and see things that are thousands of years old; I want to experience that all the time.”
“Well you’re a math major and a smart one too, from what I can tell. You’ll probably get a great job and then you can travel wherever you want, right?” She thought for a moment. I thought she was considering what I said, but now I know she was thinking of whether or not to trust me. I’m glad she did.
“What if you could find a way to travel wherever you wanted whenever you wanted?”
“Sure, just give me the winning Lotto ticket and I’ll hop a private jet to anywhere!” I thought I was very funny, but Michelle got a gleam in her eye.
“No, I mean anywhere instantaneously.”
“I don’t get it.” I really was confused.
“That’s my project, John. If it works I’ll be able to go wherever I want whenever I want and I won’t be held to anyone’s idea about what I should or shouldn’t do.” She started to tear up a little. I was at a loss of what to say.
“Well, ok, is there a way I can help?”
“Not really.” She seemed sad that I couldn’t help, and that made me sad too. “It’s my dream, John, and any dream that going to come true requires sacrifice. I have to be the one to make those sacrifices; no one else can do it for me.” She started to put her stuff away. I sat up in the grass and collected my stuff too.
“OK, well I guess I can be moral support?”
She wiped her eyes and chuckled a little, “Yeah, I really appreciate that.”
After that things were never quite the same. I could feel Michelle pulling away. We still saw each other in class, but not as much outside of it. She stopped coming by the commissary and saying hi. Sometimes she wasn’t even under the tree; she said that she found a new place to study. I assumed that some of the changes were due to approaching finals, and that lie kept me going.
On the last day of finals I was beat. I was down to my last one, history with Prof. Standish, which was great because I at least knew the answers to that test. I strolled into class just seconds from being late. I walked past Michelle and she slipped a note into my palm. She had a big smile on her face. I opened the note at my seat. It just had three words written on it: I did it. After the test we walked out together.
“So you did it, huh?” This was the happiest I had ever seen her.
“Yes! Can I buy you a coffee?”
“Well, who am I to turn down a free coffee?” We headed over to Caffeine Bean. It was dead since most of the students were now trading caffeine beverages for alcoholic ones. We took a spot looking out the window toward the quad. Michelle was very excited.
“John, I’m leaving tonight.” She could hardly contain herself.
“Wait, what? Tonight? Where are you going?”
“Paris!”
I laughed a little, “Well, shit, that’s great! I thought you said your parents didn’t want you traveling.”
“They don’t, they have no idea I’m leaving. I figured it out!”
“Figured what out?”
“My project, John! I figured it out and now I can go all the places I want!”
I didn’t know what to say, this was all very confusing and at the time I still didn’t’t’t realize what the project actually did. “That’s great, Michelle! I’m so happy for you!”
“I want you to come with me.” She grabbed my hands as she said it.
“You want me to go to Paris, tonight?”
“Yes. You have been my only real friend though this and I want you to come.”
“Michelle, I’m flattered, but I can’t go to Paris tonight. I don’t even have a passport…”
“You don’t need one, you don’t understand, we can go anywhere! No planes, no boats, no trains, unless we want to take them. I figured it out!”
“What do you mean? Michelle, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. What are we going to do, teleport to Paris?” Her eyes lit up. That’s exactly what she meant. I pulled my hands away not sure if she was joking or not. She looked hurt.
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d want to go.”
“I do, but what you’re saying is impossible.” I thought I was talking sense.
“No, it’s not. I figured it out.” Tears started to well up in her eyes. She wanted me to understand so badly.
“Michelle, I’m really sorry. I know you want this but I don’t want you get your hopes up and then see you crushed that much more when it doesn’t work.” A tear fell down her cheek. I got up to get her a napkin. I was only turned away for a second, but when I turned back she was gone. I ran outside calling for her, but didn’t see her.
Over the break I kept coming back to Caffeine Bean hoping she’d be under the tree, but she never was. My friends would sit with me, even Ben when he could, but after the first week they were telling me to let her go. After a while I started to agree with them. About a week before the new semester started I got a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. It was airmail stamped from France. It said, “Having a great time. – M.” My knees gave out below me. She really had done it. A couple weeks later I got another postcard from Amsterdam and then from London and then from Spain and Italy. Each time signed the same way.

I never did make it to Europe myself. The summer after graduation Malcolm did go and that’s where he met the guy from Atlantic Records who gave him his job. Danny did finally tell his dad that he was switching his major to theater and, even though it meant there were a few uncomfortable Christmases, it worked out. I was never that brave.  I still get the postcards, Michelle repeats herself every once in a while, but as far as I know she’s never been back home. At least I’ve never known if she’s home. All I do know is that she did it, she’s living the dream.

*WRITER’S NOTE: This story started really slow for me in the development process and as I was writing it some of the characters and the story itself started to drift into directions I didn’t expect. Good directions that time didn’t really allow me to follow through on. So any thoughts you have are welcome. This is a story I think I might re-visit when this is all over because I definitely have more to say about John and his friends. 
– Curtis

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