The Stolen Colouring Book

As Heather wakes up from her visit to her son, her coffee machine is gone. This is alright, she had already figured that she would have to sacrifice something bigger. After all, her visit had lasted for a decent time. She checks her stopwatch. 2 hours 17 minutes. She just watched her son walk for the first time, so her coffee machine is a price she is willing to pay.

She wipes a stray tear from the corner of her eye. Marlon had just taken his first steps, and when he couldn’t hold himself on his small legs anymore, she caught him in her arms. It hurts. But she needed to be there today.

Carefully, Heather unplugs herself from the Traveller. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s the best and simultaneously worst thing that happened to her. This grey, shoe-box sized metal apparatus enables her to relive the times when she was still Marlon’s mother. And, more importantly, it allows her to see him grow up. She can partake in a future they were never granted.

But while it gives her all these bittersweet moments with her son, it takes things from her in – she has come to hate these words – her real life. The way Heather explains it to herself is the following: When people visit the past or an alternate reality, they use things there. They consume, they break things. In order to continue to exist, these destinations must be fed with things from real life. However, there is no particular system to it. Things disappear at random. The bigger, the more important this thing is, the longer the visit can last. The time that passes, though, only applies to the time and place visited. In reality, every Traveller is only gone for exactly 13 minutes.

The problem, however, about the objects that disappear is: they cannot be retrieved.

Heather, as well as everyone else engaging in time travelling, is scared that one day, something irreplaceable will disappear from her life. So far, she has avoided this as good as she can. Her strategy for minimizing the chance of losing something too important is simply collecting everything she can. Really, everything. Whenever there is a flea market near her or someone is clearing out their garage, she takes as many things with her as she can carry. Her apartment is crowded. There are piles of books she hasn’t read. In a corner, a tower of old-fashioned dishes is collecting dust. These would not buy her a lot of time, but should they disappear, she would not miss them.

There are, albeit rare, cases where people lost something that can’t really be described with the word “object”. A few months ago, there was a story in the paper about a man who had lost his dog. The arguably most famous price a person had paid for using the Traveller, however, was their sense of hearing. Five years ago, Cressida Philemon returned from an alternate reality and realized she was deaf. This story would grow up to be the cautionary tale told to Travellers.

Heather was indeed scared of experiencing something like this. She travelled far more often than the average person did, so wouldn’t this increase the chance of her paying such a price? But Marlon was so brutally taken from her by fate, she could not stop visiting him. When he was four years old, he was hit by a car as he crossed the road. When the paramedics arrived there, he was already dead. So, Heather thought, could anyone blame her for exploiting the Traveller this way?

If there was the option of simply leaving this world, she would take it. But this technology hasn’t been invented yet, and maybe it never would be. Heather can only imagine how many people would choose to change realities, and how desolate some versions of the world would then be. Governments don’t want their citizens to disappear on them like that. Others wouldn’t welcome the surge of people suddenly living in their reality. And not to speak of the tedious bureaucratic work this would entail. No, even if leaving this reality would become possible, it wouldn’t be made accessible to everyone. So, Heather is limited to using the Traveller. She dreams of one day outsmarting the machines, finding a loophole, and never coming back. But as for now, this was her reality. She sometimes wondered why exactly it had to be this one, from all those alternate realities. And she wondered if every real life had to be the most painful one by design. Maybe she couldn’t win either way.

“Lydia, I’d like you to meet my mother, Heather”. The two women shake hands. Lydia is a tall woman with blond curls. She is twenty-eight years old now, so exactly her fiancé’s age. Her and Marlon are getting married next month.

“Nice to meet you, Lydia. I’ve heard so much about you” Heather lies. Of course she hasn’t heard about Lydia before, it’s her first visit to this reality. But she enjoys it. Here, Marlon is a grown-up man working as a journalist. There haven’t been many visits yet where she dared to see him as an adult. Usually, this is too painful for her, meeting this man who is such a complex person that she barely knows but should have been able to know. In this universe, he takes after her. They’ve got the same unruly black hair, and the same slightly too long nose.

Heather herself seems to have a good life here as well, though. Or rather, the Heather who lives here does. When you travel, you don’t exist twice in that world, but you momentarily take the place of your alternate self that lives here. Where the other Heathers go in the meantime, God only knows. Anyway, the Heather whose place she took for now appears to be well off. Upon coming here, she materialized with an expensive handbag dangling from her arm, containing a wallet filled with banknotes. Also, she appears to be married. On the ID she found in the wallet, she has a different last name, and Marlon said it’s a pity that “Benedict” couldn’t make it with her today. Heather doubts that she is going to meet this man during her stay here. However, she’s glad that here, she isn’t lonely. And she’s glad that this version of herself got rid of this good-for-nothing man that is Marlon’s biological father too.

“I’m so glad we opted for a June wedding. The weather this May has been a catastrophe so far” Marlon yanks her back into the moment. Quickly, Heather tries to recall what she has learned about their wedding so far. “Right, especially since you’re getting married… here on the beach, right?” She is relieved when Lydia nods her head enthusiastically. “Yes, exactly!” she exclaims. “Oh Heather by the way, I would love to pick out the decorations together with you and my mother, do you think we can arrange that for next week?”

Heather smiles, and lies that yes, that can definitely be arranged, and yes, she would be happy to help her. She has come to notice that these travels include a lot of lying. Of course, she will not be there next week, much less the day of the wedding. But this lying is something she has to stand through while she is this actress, playing herself. Dutifully, as her script commands it, she pulls out the calendar of the other Heather and makes a little note called “help Lydia with wedding planning” for Tuesday next week. She isn’t interested in causing chaos here by letting the other Heather miss the appointment.

As they walk along the beach, Heather’s feet occasionally getting cheekily hit by a small wave, she notices the tell-tale tingle that signals she won’t be here for much longer. Squinting against the sun, she takes a last look at her son. He grew up to be a fine man. She is glad that he found happiness here.

This time, after she untangles herself from the wires connected to the Traveller, it takes her a bit longer to find out what disappeared this time. It must have been something rather small, she had only been gone for 26 minutes. As she looks around her flat, she thinks about Marlon and Lydia. If they are getting married, there is a big change they have children too. Does that make her a grandmother? Right ow, probably not. But if she visits them again when they’ve been married for some time, and she will meet their child, would that make her a grandmother then? She hopes it does. In the foyer, she finds out what the price for her travel was today. It was one of her house slippers.

Heather plugged in the Traveller. On the small display, she selected the day after Marlon’s death. She is not travelling to the past in a straight line, of course, because then, this visit would be useless for seeing Marlon. Instead, she travels slightly to the left, or maybe to the right, into a different reality where Marlon didn’t die that day. Going there will be like picking up their life together just where they had left off. 

As she materializes, she is sitting at the breakfast table with Marlon. He is asking her when they have to get dressed. „No baby, there‘s no kindergarten today. It‘s Saturday!“ Heather told her son, even though it was Thursday. She had had to muster up so much courage to finally live this day. Technically, it would be like any other day she actually had spent with Marlon when he was that age. But in her mind, this was the most tragic day they never got to experience. In - how she hates this goddamn word! - reality, he dies the day before this one. And since she doesn‘t know how long her visit will last, she is not willing to have Marlon be away at kindergarten for half of the day. 

They do get dressed to go outside eventually though. Heather decided to take her son for a walk in the nearby park, a thing he always enjoyed. All the while, his tiny hand is holding onto hers. She never wants him to let go again. At the pond in the centre of the park, he has the greatest time luring the ducks in with food and then trying to catch them when they’re near enough. It’s a very warm day, so his little blue jacket soon gets to warm for him. Heather carries it gladly. She still remembers when she bought it for him.

Upon getting back home, she cooks lunch for them. At this age, Marlon was able to hold his cutlery quite well already, but of course Heather cut his food up for him, as she didn’t trust him using a knife yet. And cut things up for him, she did almost the whole meal. He had developed quite an appetite.

As toddlers do, Marlon gets sleepy after lunch, and to avoid him getting cranky, Heather puts him to bed for a little nap.

When he wakes up, he makes her play with him using his little farm animal figurines. “Mommy please! You’re so good at being the sheep and the rooster!” he begs her. Of course, she happily obliges. They are in the middle of getting all the animals back into the stable because Marlon says there is a thunderstorm coming when Heather checks her stopwatch. She has been here for almost 7 hours now. This is one of the longest visits she got to have so far. She is happy to have this time with Marlon, but at the same time she can’t help but slowly getting worried. What will the price of this be?

As it gets dark, Heather makes Marlon a sandwich for dinner and then puts him to bed. She is about to turn off his light and leave the room when he peeps up one more time. “Mommy don’t go. Can you read me a story?” he asks in a small voice. Not for the first time she wonders if this little, alternate version of Marlon senses that their time together is limited, and therefore also wants to make the most of it. Or had he been this clingy before as well? She is ashamed to say that she can’t quite remember it. She reads him a story about a little rabbit exploring the woods he lives in. Marlon is asleep before Heather finished reading the book.

Heather must have fallen asleep on the sofa. She slowly opens her eyes. What day is it again? Does she have to go t work today? She starts to prepare breakfast and a cup of coffee for herself, when he walks in. “Good morning, Mommy. Can I eat breakfast?” Marlon asks. Heather spins around when she hears his voice. Is she still not back from her Travel? This can’t be real. Well, technically it isn’t real anyway, she remembers. Is this possible? Heather assumed she must have transported back while she was asleep. But if she is still here… she checks her stopwatch. 24 hours and 13 minutes. Slowly, fear starts rising inside her. But also, a tiny sliver of something like hope. Fear, because if she has been here for so long, what could possibly buy this amount of time?

Hope, because maybe, just maybe, through a miracle, she has finally found the loophole. Maybe she could stay here forever.

She makes breakfast for him, and then they do a picture in a colouring book. It’s of a small town in front of mountains. Marlon barely manages to colour within the lines, and he doesn’t care for choosing accurate colours, but he is so enthusiastic about it that Heather’s heart melts while watching him.

Then, after almost 26 hours, Heather gets back. And when she finally manages to orient herself, she notices it: she is still holding the colouring book.

She can’t remember a proven case where this happened to someone. There are people claiming they took something with them from a Travel, but what is there that people won’t claim to have experienced?

Heather also can’t make out what disappeared this time. She thinks she must surely have noticed immediately. For a stay this long, a stay she even stole something from, she must have paid a huge price. So what could it have been? Nothing seemed to be missing.

The sun must have almost set while she had been gone, there is a sort of grey, monotonous twilight to her flat. She opens the colouring book, still marvelling at how it managed to come with her. When you hold an object during your transport back, it always stays behind. Heather takes a look at the landscape picture they coloured. And then she takes a much closer look. It is in black and white. In Heather’s mind, a theory starts to form itself, but it’s so unbelievable that she doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Frantically, she gets up and turns on the light. Her flat looks like from a 1950s movie; black and white. There had been no twilight when she got back. She paid for this visit with her ability to see colour.

The message is clear, she thinks. If she flees to an alternate world all the time, this world will not even try to appeal to her anymore.

She has to think of Cressida Philemon. The woman who was deaf after she returned from a particularly long Travel. Always being scared of a fate like hers, Heather involuntarily became somewhat of a sister in suffering to her. She decides to keep this fatal consequence of her Travel to herself. Heather doesn’t want to read about herself in the newspaper, getting judged by the public for overdoing Travelling. She had her reasons to, and this is not something she wants to be the topic of the week for the newspapers. Heather inhales shakily. She will manage, she always has so far. It's just colour.

A few days later, Heather decides to Travel again. She has thought about it a lot, and came to the conclusion that after paying this tremendous price, the next Travel after that would be comparatively harmless. How big was the change of staying this long twice?

Heather had picked out a day in the past. The actual past, as it had happened. The day of Marlon’s death. Together, a few hours before he would be hit by the car, they walk to the front door of the kindergarten, just as they had done that day before. “Have a nice day baby. I love you” Heather tells him and kisses the top of his head. He is wearing his blue jacket again. Probably. It’s not as if Heather can be sure of something like this – colour – anymore. “Love you too, Mommy” Marlon says impatiently. He wants to go inside and play with his friends. Heather lets him go.

She was correct in her assumption that this time, she would be back home rather soon. Her visit lasted around three quarters of an hour. She also finds what is gone relatively soon: the wires of the Traveller. Those are not in any way special, she could get new ones at the corner store right away. But she hesitates. Her last travel had seemed to her an adequate good-bye. Maybe, she should let the Traveller collect dust for a while.