Forever and a Day

I smiled as I flipped through the sketchbooks I used to keep. There were so many things in here that were much worse than I remembered. So much anime, so many weirdly proportioned girls. 

The room smelled different, new, which told me it had been much too long since I'd been this person. 

A boy entered the room, sighing heavily as he slammed the door behind him and immediately started rifling through the closet that really just had a set of hangers dangling over a dumping ground of clothes. He swore as he dug through more and more clothing. 

I rolled my eyes as I vaguely remembered the events of today. "Lanie took the blue hoodie, but don't yell at her, not tonight." 

"What the hell?" The boy whirled around, eyes wide and hand tightly clenched around his phone. Oh, I've missed phones...

"The hoodie. You're not going to get it back, and it's not worth yelling at her over." I said again, calmly watching him stare at me. Come on, now. 

There were forever-old bruises on his knuckles and I wondered if he'd attack me. 

"Get out, you're trespassing!" The boy seethed and I raised an eyebrow. "You can't just break and enter-"

"I'm not. I live here." I watched him struggle with that. "You haven't called the cops yet, and you won't. Because you're about to figure out who I am." 

Slowly, because apparently, we were really dumb. His hand shook on the phone, and I couldn't remember what the bruised knuckles were from. Today had been so long ago. 

"You look like me." He said finally, which surprised me. We sounded more alike than we looked. I was bigger, scarred, dressed strangely and my hair was much longer than his. 

"Yes, I'm you from quite a few years from now," I said, playing with a Rubik's cube. His eyes narrowed and I remembered how much both of us hated people touching our things. I held it up. "Spoiler, we never figure these things out." 

"If you're here, doesn't that mean I cease to exist or whatever?" He asked, arms crossed. "Aren't you supposed to not meet yourself?" 

I sighed. "Yeah, because I totally returned from a future with time travel machines solely to commit suicide, because I'm dumb and wasteful like that." 

"How should I know? I know time travel from movies, not my astrophysics degree, moron." He rolled his eyes, sitting down on the chair in front of our cluttered desk. 

I traced the blankets, so different from the coarse, standard rags handed out at the aid camps. My scarred hand looked jarring against the perfectionism of the whole room, but that might just be because I didn't belong here. 

There was a noise and I leapt to my feet, the repulsor gun already in my hand. It made a low noise as it charged up and other me yelped. 

"Hey, I thought you weren't going to kill us!" 

I blinked and he stared with horror, holding the cat on his lap. 

"What's wrong with you?" He demanded, and Octopussycat glared at me with large yellow eyes, clearly mistrustful. 

I couldn't tell him. Not when things had to go horribly wrong for me to exist. He had to die, completely, and that was not something I trusted him with. 

Looking at him, at the bruises on his knuckles and the old scars peeking past his sleeve, I could see the cracks that would splinter soon into faultlines. The vulnerabilities and strengths that would magnify as time went on.

I wish I could tell him now about who to trust, and who to kill the second he met them. I wish I could tell him how to save Lanie's life. 

He'd hate me, in a matter of months, for not telling him. He'd hate me in a year, for not warning him about the turn his life was going to take. 

About the parents he'd only realize he liked when they were gone, or the little things he should cherish now.

My fingers burned to use his pencils to draw. All I wanted was to stay here, in the world we knew. But it would end, a mere year and three months from now.

The bad times my younger self, this unbroken mirror, was probably just beginning to sense, were about to get unimaginably worse.

I envied him a lot, this bed, and the voices of parents outside that door that I hadn't heard in a decade. But I did not envy him what was coming.

"Nothing, I'm just..." I rubbed my eyes, sitting back down on the bed. "It's weird being back here." 

The guy huffed, stroking the cat's fur. "Why are you back? What's happened?" 

"Lots of things have happened." I tossed the Rubik's cube into the air and caught it. "But I'm here about what's about to happen." 

"About to happen to me?" He narrowed his eyes, hand stilling on the cat's fur. Octopussycat whined, pawing at him. 

"About to happen to me." I responded, grinning at the annoyance on his face. "Sorry, not everything is about you." 

"Jesus, you're irritating. What's about to happen to you?" He growled, scratching Octopussycat behind the ear. 

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you." I made a mock-sympathetic face. "I've got to do something totally insane." I bit my lip, fiddling with the Rubik's cube. 

"Okay." He narrowed his eyes. "And you want my help?" 

"Yes. There's a team of Nobel-winning scientists who help me in the future, but I convinced them we were really only missing a random, useless teenager." The Rubik's cube clicked uselessly, getting more and more disarrayed. 

He threw his hands up, and Octopussycat yowled, jumping off. "What the hell do you want?" 

"I have no idea," I answered, holding up the cube. "Hey look, I got an orange row." 

He stared at me, arms crossed. "Fine, get up."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're kicking me out of my room?" 

"I bet in the future or whatever, things are really shit?" His voice was casual, but I could hear the sneaky bastard building up to ask details.

I nodded, nothing specific there. "You knew that when you checked the news this morning." 

"I don't read the news-"

"-really?" I made a face. "That's embarrassing-"

"-can you shut the fuck up?" He asked and I did, then dragged his hands down his face. "You probably came back because this was sort of the last time things were normal, right?" 

That's why I'd been sent here. To remember the life I was trying to bring back, the world that I needed to make yet another sacrifice for.

But all I wanted to do now was stay here.

I stared at the carpet, wondering if I'd colossally fucked the future just now. Would he still hand in our paper for Professor Campbell tomorrow? 

"So come on, see everything while it's...normal." He opened the door and I hesitated. 

"What?" He asked, when I didn't move. Would the act of us walking around a neighbourhood that we didn't walk around in change everything? Would us getting a burger royally explode the space-time continuum? 

I hoped the space-time continuum ceased to exist and tore the decision out of my hands. "Nothing. Let's go." 

It was jarring, seeing everything. I realized how much I'd forgotten about our house. How small it was. 

"Here." He tossed me the jacket we both hated. "It's cold and you're dressed...weird."

"Wow, that really hurt my feelings," I replied, feeling the jacket's seams strain over my arms and back. "Why the hell are you so small?" 

"Shut up." He swung open the door and I breathed in the clear air. It was highly unsettling how bright everything was. How did this not get seared into my mind? How had it faded?

What if I couldn't get it back?

"Dude, stop, you're acting so weird." He elbowed me and I stopped gaping at the sky, noting the women staring at us. 

"You try acting normal when-" I cut myself off, familiar complaints lodging in my throat. "So what do you want to do?" 

"What did I do today?" He asked me and I laughed. 

"I forget that you don't know any of this. Now that you're doing something different, I have no idea. All my memories are getting weird." But most of my memories after today were still the same, meaning all good so far.

His eyebrows shot up. "That's actually really cool."

"I know right?" I smiled, weak muscle memory guiding my legs. "We should get food, I'm so hungry." 

"We'll get a large pizza, just go crazy with the toppings-"

"-no pineapple-" Other me grunted behind his menu. 

"-and two burgers, two fries, two milkshakes." I slid the sticky menu back. "And you do have onion rings?" 

Despite my past self's impatience, I refused to speak until at least half the pizza was gone, and the burger had been massacred. 

"What?" I asked around the straw in my mouth as frothy chocolate sped into my brain. 

"Anything else you want for your last meal?" He asked, eating a slice he'd cleared of mushrooms. Still a kid, even if he was legally an adult. 

"Lanie's stupid mug cake or whatever." I laughed quietly and he narrowed his eyes. I realized how fucking dumb it was the second the words left my mouth. 

"We don't have Betty Crocker anymore, or microwaves." I shoved more pizza into my mouth. It tasted so...tasteful. Nothing like the rations. 

"Time machines, but no microwaves?" He said thoughtfully, chewing on pizza.

"I know," I mumbled past a handful of fries. "Why not use the time machines to get more microwaves? Weird, right? Oh shit, I love this song!"

"Dude, what are you-" Past me glanced around anxiously through the empty burger joint, except for the one worker, a lady who looked deeply unimpressed with my dance moves.

"What is wrong with you?" Past me demanded and I rolled my eyes.

"No music, no phones, no clubs or bars, no dancing." I listed off on my fingers. "Not telling you when, but god, I've missed music that sounds so artificial. Like grape soda."

"You're so weird." Past me frowned, drinking his milkshake. He was getting unnerved and I was glad.

He should be upset. He should be panicking. He should have been a better brother.

Reminding myself that hitting him would get us nowhere, I swallowed back the anger. Time in the military taught everyone how to push them off their face and deep behind their ribs.

"You're the weird one. You care about things that don't matter. Ever, apocalypse or not." I replied, staring out at clean cars and bright lights.

"This thing you have to do. You're afraid." The boy said and I sighed deeply, not looking at him. I hated his face. We didn't even look like the same person.

"Of course I'm afraid, only a moron wouldn't be." I closed my eyes, enjoying the cold of the air conditioner.

"You remember track?" He asked suddenly and I raised an eyebrow, thumb flicking the Rubik's cube in my pocket.

"You mean the thing you joined because of Rachael Lee?" I rested my chin on my hand.

"We joined it," He corrected me, "I used to throw up before every meet."

"Yeah." I still didn't know exactly what had made us so anxious. "Relax, I'm not going to throw up because I'm scared."

"I got over the puking once I started thinking about the school." He confessed and I stared at him.

From my recollection, we never stopped puking, we quit in fact.

He kept going to my horror. "If I reminded myself I was doing it for the school, it wasn't about me. Nothing to be nervous about or worry about what other people were doing."

"Right." I said quietly, feeling cold. I set the Rubik's cube on the table. "This is not like track."

"You brought that thing with you?" He demanded, eyes dropping to the cube. "And I was just trying to help."

"You suck at it." I snapped, flicking the Rubik's cube sharply. The chair screeched as I stood up, taking the cube and staring out the window.

My reflection lightly coated the beautiful, normal scene in front of us. I wanted to drink it in until it was all I could think of.

"Hey."

I ignored him, breathing in and out as I stared out there. At the birds and the plane that was not a missile, at the green trees that didn't reek of rot. At children that no longer had full faces and smiles in my world.

"Hey!"

"What?" I asked as I turned. He held up his phone and beckoned me over. Reluctantly I walked over, arms crossed, and squinted at the video.

"Seriously?" I asked. "We're doing this?"

"It's embarrassing that you still haven't figured it out." He rolled his eyes, clicking open the how to solve a Rubik's cube video. It took us an hour and a half, bickering and pausing and rewinding the thirteen-minute video to get the hang of it.

"Damn." I muttered, slowly turning it until I believed that every side was the right colour. "We did it."

He smiled, leaning back in the chair. I turned the cube again. This time I sensed the question before it came.

"Why are you here?" He asked. "What happened?"

"It doesn't matter what happened. It matters what's going to happen." I stared at him, studying the frown on his unscarred face. "You understand? It all needs to happen,"

I understood that now, and watched as he nodded, making a promise he'd be tempted to break every day for the next ten years.

I smacked him on the back of the head. "You don't understand, you idiot."

"What the hell?" He glared at me and I finished off his milkshake.

"I need to get back." I breathed out, turning the Rubik's cube in my hand.

"You're not scared anymore?" He asked, frowning. "Because we solved a damn Rubik's cube?"

I set it down in front of him. "You'll get it in ten years, it's too advanced for you right now." Then I stepped away from him, wanting more than anything to see Lanie one last time.

But I'd never leave if I did that. Never be able to let her go, let her die, never be able to get over the relief that she died before it all went to hell.

I memorized his face. His stupid innocence, despite the darkness I remembered well. Then I opened my watch and pressed the button.

"Bye." He blurted suddenly and I laughed, feeling my limbs go numb as they started going back to their time.

"See you soon." I answered cryptically. Especially if everything went right. "Remember that we...helped each other." Whatever he said next was lost as I returned to the lab.

"You are ready now?" Professor Campbell asked, looking up from his watch. As always he knew the answer before I gave it.

"Yeah, but, I think some stuff changed, is that-" I waved a hand, trying to mime the universe exploding. "Bad?"

He smiled wryly. "What's changed?" Still teaching me, since I'd never technically gotten my fucking diploma.

I stared at him, and finally understood. "Just me."