Interference (Chapter 1)

Kainni

If I could make my life one of those old fairy tale stories, it would go like this:
Once upon a time, there was a girl who had an absolutely normal life, went to a poorish education center where students had to bring their own edTops (educational “lap”top computers, typically provided by the school so various teachers could contact and interact with students through them) and actually communicated with people in person, a mother who worked her own nature preservation business throughout the city, and a father who conducted his work in a dwindling time-traveling device business through web communication, which was what most people did anyway.
But as this girl grew up, in her little corner of the world, she began to sense that all was not well in this place in which she existed. She started knowing this especially so when her mother started sending plants to the mansion where the Leader of her country lived.
The girl sensed something was wrong when newscasters started reporting population drops that were recorded on narrow amounts of time, so difficult for people to remember. When she started feeling gaps in her memories where people might have been, where edTop desks were empty in school.
And especially when the Leader, Alexander Abbort, called for her mother to come to his giant castle-mansion outside the metropolis of Washington, DC, where he ruled…
I’m not sure how I’d continue with the “fairy-tale” theme there. I just knew that something was wrong. I can’t honestly say I always knew, but there were just signs, subtleties that I would soon see as gigantic cracks in the shell that was our government and our “Leader”…
I woke up thinking these things, as my loud alarm clock, a hologram projected from stuck-on calculator-like mechanism on my bedside table and dresser. I pressed the button that turned it off. It was Friday, October 20, 7:30 AM. My father was busy working already, I could hear it through the unusually thin walls of my home, heard his fingers tapping keys on his busiTop at a pace that only those who worked as consistently as he did. Or, as much as he had been since my mom had “left”.
Left like someone who had cornered her daughter in the privacy of her bedroom, trying to stick an electric chip into her shoulder and stuff hypnotic propaganda down her throat.
Left like someone with empty, brainwashed eyes needed to go find someone more willing, easier, to make like his or herself.
I hadn’t told this to my dad, whom I knew would take it hard, harder than he had this—where she had made him believe that things between them weren’t working out, and that she didn’t want to be with him anymore, or have anything to do with him. Natalia Ceiltra had faked her love and an apologetic manner to her daughter though, at least in front of him.
As painful as it was to hear, as raw and real as it had seemed, I knew that it wasn’t her. She’d never do that to them. And it was after I had snatched the chip out of my mother’s hand, as she tried to assault her, if not an hour earlier, throwing it against the wall, causing its bluish glow to cease. My mother looked at me with the first emotion she had seen since she had come home from the Abbort Mansion. Pure, unfiltered rage. That gaze could not possibly be her own. Her heart, her mind, right now, was not her own.
This was how I knew. As painful as it was to hear the cruel words of the brainwashed, convincing Natalia, my mother, my dad’s wife of 17 years, it would be more painful to know that she was no longer herself, but a programmed product of the corruption we lived in.
And oftentimes, when this happened, the person who once existed in the hypnotized shell that was their body, would never return.
My father was a bit of an Abbort skeptic as I was, yet he would never admit it. I’d checked the history of underground, government-firewall-blocked, hacked sites he’d visited on his iTop, when mine was not working, for a school assignment that required more sources than my edTop. I was surprised that he even considered looking at these sites, considering how pro-Abbort my mother was, and how much my father seemed to go along.
But perhaps it was just that. Just an act to please her. And the rest of the ignorant world around them.
Maybe more were brainwashed than they all knew… maybe he could do it through his speeches on the web TV. My father and I just might be a couple of the few that were immune.
I knew if he read the sites, and the typed out discussions thoroughly, then what was being speculated, widespread hypnotism or any other form of brainwashing, that goes from one person to the next, that brainwashes a person into doing whatever Alexander Abbort commands, and if the chips were as strong as they’d been in people like her mother, then perhaps it would be difficult to get one to come back.
Nearly impossible, in fact. Yet I had managed to evade this tactic, somehow. I learned from the other few who had survived as well. A part of me wondered why she only tried to take me... maybe because I came in face-to-face contact with people more often, had more of a chance of spreading this plague. I didn’t care much, though. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that it happened. That this had happened to my mother.
It was rare that she could resist this. Those who once posted in the many threads of these hidden sites, may come on one day, and leave the next, the site soon shut down and blocked, saying it was reported by an inside source. Such “blasphemy” would not be tolerated by the “Leader” and his like-minded (by force) officials.
He was no Leader, Abbort. He was a dictator, with nothing but his own interests in mind. His own power, his own plans.
Sure, he faked the calm and disguised the chaos he caused with a cover called “peace”, but his peace was a lie. He always lied, and I knew it.
And today was the day I fought it. Even in the smallest way.
If I could, I would save everyone from being hypnotized. From being programmed into slaves of this sickening system of selfishness.
But there was only so far I could go.
The time machine my family had purchased had not been returned to be destroyed, for being too old. For being capable of going beyond the two months all users of time-traveling mechanisms were permitted to go these days.
It could back full centuries if they wanted to. My mother had tried to take it with her when she left. But it had been stored somewhere else, my father having taken it elsewhere.
My mother and other members of my company had left for a month of planning gardens and discussing nature development in more of the metropolitan areas of the country and preservation, presenting ideas and propositions to Abbort. Or, at least that was what it had been to begin with.
I could go back a little farther than three months, and tell her not to go. Tell her what would happen. The convincing would take a lot, because her mother seemed to have an even higher connection to this disgusting, pathetic excuse for a man than the usual person, but I believed I could do it. In saving my mother, I was also saving so many others that could have actually seen her gaze go from entranced, to entrancing, forcing them into this horrid life she now had.
I carried the compacted time machine with both hands into my room, and pressed the concealed button to expand it. I sent my father a virtual note of what I was doing. I hoped and attempted to reassure him that I would be okay.
I stepped inside and began keying in her desired time, 4 months and two weeks before, July 6, 2109. I plotted out what I would do when I arrived, crawl into bed, set my alarm quickly, and then get up and talk to my mom…everything would work out, and many would be saved because of it...


Troy

I don’t think I have enough time to make it. I don’t think I have enough strength to fight. I’ve caught a fleeting thought that was just like his, and that in itself is nearly enough for me to want to take that dreaded “gift” of a dagger, with the blood of so many Abbort women on its seemingly clean tip, and drive it into myself.
But there are better ways to do this, much more permanent ways, for if I were caught in time, I could be healed.
I just don’t want to have her go like she did, my mother. I don’t want her to have to face this man the way she did.
And I don’t want to face him either. I don’t want to turn into him.
I know I will if I stay here much longer.
Today, I awaken to an alarm clock, announcing the last day of my life as Troy Abbort, son of Alexander Abbort, the last day of being destined to become another one of those crazed men who tried and failed to control the world that does not belong to him.
As close as he’s getting, he can’t make it if he doesn’t have someone to pass this business on to. He won’t make it, even with his innovative techniques, his speaking skills, and his abilities to conceal and feign destruction as construction. To disguise chaos as peace.
Brilliant, simple, but purely selfish, purely evil. I want no part in it.
I want no part in this life that seems to be nothing but an irreversible cycle of failures and destruction.
I walked down the winding stairway to the lower levels of this torturous place, memories coming to me with every step. I had some of them, running up the stairs in fear... others, "falling"... others, voices in my head, three people screaming for fear and physical pain, for anger, and one to protect. A voice I can only hear in my head these days.
This place never lets me forget. Though there are rooms I’ve scarcely entered, each seems to hold the tension, the heaviness of what’s gone on here.
His thoughts, plotting. His... experiments.
His successes and failures.
I got to the main level of the house. The decor was absolutely perfect, what you’d expect of a man of this stature, but it was cold. And it was threatening. The house was landscaped beautifully. Perfect on the outside, this home was, a symbol of what Abborts seemed and seem to be to most people, but the inside carried hidden horrors. Things most would like to deny.
Why weren’t people rising up against this man? Why weren’t they trying to learn more about us? They didn’t want to know. They only believed what they wanted to believe.
And it was so easy, because the Abborts are always so convincing.
My father had once convinced me that his way was the way I should take. I was young, and it was forced in ways no one wanted to experience.
I only believed I had to follow, as a way to survive.
But that was now my problem.
Survival was a much more difficult task than the others that could be taken. I knew someone who hadn’t survived. I knew someone who hadn’t made it past this place, like many before her had.
I knew people who would survive by following Alexander Abbort’s ways, because they had no choice.
I had a choice now.
To stay here, and become what I was destined to become if I stayed, like many others before me, or go back in time, and rescue the one person who could make it change.
And then there would be peace. For me, for many others, for her. For my mother.
This was the only way.
I stepped out of our house, into the cool, morning air. There were more stairs for me to climb down.
Down, down, down, a spiral that would usually doom me to this fate, but now would send me to one much better.
I came to the patch of ground where things that my father made “illegal” were kept. He was a hypocrite, in the worst form. He was a brilliant liar. Someone I wished to never have met.
I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, however. Because I would then be a hypocrite, for I would have one day been him, had I not taken the actions I would now. I punched the code into the “soil” where the keypad was, and the door swung open. I wasn’t supposed to know this code; I’d looked it up recently, while my father was away.
Running wouldn’t ever do me any good. He’d catch me.
Running in a physical place, anyway. Running to the past would keep me safe and sound unless he found how to track me.
But if everything went according to plan, then there would be no way for him to do that.
The room was filled with old edTop models and meTops and every old time-traveling device thinkable that could go back over two months.
I selected our oldest. Compacted, it was a metallic, dark gray, cube, that was the size of four small cement blocks put together, and a little bit heavier. It wasn’t a problem for me to lift, however, even with barely-functioning auto-bandages usually holding me together. I worked hard, though, to keep myself fit, despite the fact there was no longer a point to it.
I gingerly reached for the old, used meTop journal that I had personally put away just a day ago. I had read through it just the night before. It had stolen all my sleep, but now it put everything in perspective—I had to do this. For her. For all that she’d gone through just to end like this...
There was so much hope in her, and I’d never understand it. But if I could just give her the life that I know she doesn’t have, didn’t have, then everything would be worth it.
And I could be left in peace.
I pressed the button to expand the machine with caution, and I heard alarms begin to sound...
The lights suddenly began to blink inside the cellar and the high-pitched ringing of the alarms dared me to panic. But I would not, I couldn’t panic, couldn’t fear, not now. Though I knew that he was back now.
“Troy! Troy Alexander Abbort!” his furious voice sounded.
I heard him coming closer. I fumbled with the lever to open the time machine, and the door swung far too slowly for my taste. I absolutely had to accomplish this or...
The minute “beeps” of the pass code of the cellar returned.
I rapidly pressed the keys inside the machine to take me where I needed to go. 2088 was our salvation now, and I had to go.
The machine’s lights brightened, and the noises that accompanied its starting sounded, drowning out the last angry shout of my father that I would ever hear.
And strangely, a face appeared in my head. A blurry photograph of a memory from a time that seemed generations ago, my childhood before the world was in his clutches.
The face of a young girl, that brought me a strange warmth and nervousness. A little girl’s face with bright green eyes and an infectious smile.

Kainni

The time machine digi-manual, the only thing I brought except for the spending card with only about 100 currency (I prefer a digital card of money, though paper is highly uncommon, most like to keep the Abbort "bucks" the egotistical man has printed...), contains very useful information. Useful information most don't care to read, but I have it memorized at the back of my hand. I had a breach of logic in taking it with me rather than items more important, like changes of clothing, or a stash of more money, or maybe a modern history book. But I didn't.
Instead, I chose to take this pointless manual, that I know from reading too many times to be necessary...
Right now, the absolutely unnecessary is happening to me. I can't think straight any longer. The manual explains to me:
"Time machine interference may occur when two machines of the same model leave at, or very, very near, the exact same time. It is somewhat uncommon with new models, and usually occurs with older time-traveling devices. The nearer in proximity each unit is, the more probable this will occur.
During time machine interference, one party will usually experience a host of physical symptoms, that are more intense versions of the usually slight disorientation and nausea that accompanies time travel. These symptoms are similar to those of the easily treated original influenza A, however the same treatments cannot be applied to these symptoms, called Time Machine Interference syndrome.
The effects on a time machine vary from entire system failure and permanent damage to minor malfunctions. Externally, time machine interference usually causes one signal to overpower another, and take the former party's machine to where the latter had been aiming to go. The farther away from the former's location the machine is pulled, the greater the effects on the machine and the traveler will be.
Much less common, is that both parties will be carried to a time very far away from their original location. The usual factors, like how close in proximity each traveler is, and the closer they are to leaving at the same time, the more possible this occurrence is.
The traveler who is not pulled away from, or is closer to their directed location than the other, is usually not nearly as effected as the other party, and therefore suffers mostly typical symptoms of traveling in a time machine. Yet this party still suffers damage to their machine. The state of such damage varies..."
The farther back you went, the higher risk there was. A time machine could only take you as far into the future as when one has left. A time machine just simply could not take one any farther than this. It didn’t function that way.
So interference could only take you closer to the “present” or farther in the past…
Apparently, I was the former. I was the one most greatly effected, I was the one whose machine would probably never work again, and I felt desperately dizzy and somewhat disoriented, and it felt like my insides were about to spurt out any minute, with every move I made. I flipped down the lever to leave the machine, staggering out awkwardly. I wanted to empty my guts right then, but I couldn't. Because the cause was right there, a sleek black metal machine, just like mine, set about 20 feet from where I was now.
Something worse, or better, than the sickness built up inside of me. I was filled with anger, with rage for this person, who sabotaged my plans. My mother was left just the way she was, my dad might be panicking at my absence...
Who was it, this person who'd ruined everything for me now? I didn't want to mourn for my inability to do what I'd tried to do, for my damaged machine, and my currently ill physical body. I wanted to rage for it. I didn't give a crap who it was who was in there, I wanted to take them on and let them know what they did.
Everyone knows, it's easier that way.
So I stumbled forward, trying to steady myself, glaring at the machine... and out of the machine, came HIM.
He was one of THEM, a young twin of the evilest man that has ever existed. Here HE stood.
The blue eyes, the black hair, clothing that seemed normal but must have cost far too much for a normal person to afford.
I should have expected this. That an ABBORT would destroy this for me.
IT, who symbolized all that was going wrong in the world, all that was going wrong, in MY world.
Troy Abbort, guaranteed to be the next Alexander, already training...
Never have I felt such an intense and immediate, burning hatred.
“You did this,” I said, my voice dripping with acid. I felt myself strengthening with this new feeling, of anger, of the ease of blame. “I never thought I’d actually get to meet one of you monsters, but here you are… preventing yet another person from having a good life. Destroying somebody else, I really should have known it!” I spat. I wanted to punch him, to hurt him, to burn him like his family had done to so many others.
Yet he just stood there, staring, not moving, not saying anything back to me. I went on. Why was he just standing there?
This was a moment to give an Abbort, one I had wanted for such a long time, (most preferably Alexander, as it had been in my fantasies) a taste of their own medicine. I hadn’t been sure how, but now that the occasion had risen, even amongst these circumstances, especially in these circumstances, and I simply couldn't pass it up.
“You are a sick, demented, monster, with no one’s interests but your own, with your cunning and cruelty and hate and covers! But I can see through it all! You, Abbort, play your life just like a strategic game, and one day, one day, you will fail. Your reign will end, and all you worked for will be GONE. You will fail and you’ll be the nothing you always deserved to be.”
I did not stop to think that it could be unfair, that this was meant to be something to be said to Abbort the Senior, or not at all. I didn’t think it was malicious; I thought it was true. I would never get another chance like this. I was trapped here, and I wanted to take out what I felt on him. Because I was entirely convinced he deserved it.
When he still stood there, cowardly, I believed, I continued.
“I hate you. I hate your family. I hate how you’re secretly destroying the world with your thoughts and your pushing and brainwashing, and your presence, and how you ruined this for me! How you ruined…” I faltered, feeling dizzy once again. How you ruined my life, my family… and so many… others.”
That was all I needed to say. I looked him straight in the eye now. He averted his gaze, looking at the ground. I glared him down.
“Well then,” came a quiet, trembling voice. It was too gentle to belong to this monster… but somehow, his lips moved and it came. And his eyes met mine, finally. I realized they were the color of the sky. At that second, I became suddenly aware of our surroundings... trees, real trees, real, natural dirt and grass and twigs and leaves on the ground... I hadn't the time or attention to try and calculate "where" we were, now, however. I was still smoldering from what I had said, the oddly gentle voice dousing my flames. I wanted those flames back, however, especially after he'd spoken.
“I’m sorry… for what my father… has done to you and your family. I’m sorry for the pain that the Abborts have caused you. I know that my apology cannot, can never, make up for what has been destroyed in your life, but, it is all I can offer to you now. I’m sorry.”
Those eyes, those sky-blue eyes, and that voice… those words. These images and sounds did not meet up. This wasn’t… real.
Those eyes filled me with guilt, guilt that I knew couldn’t possibly belong in me, and they caused something inside me to shatter.
I nodded weakly, all I could do in response to those unbelievable words.
But this was an Abbort… Abborts deserved no compassion, no forgiveness, no acceptance. Nothing. He was just like his father… he was lying to me, he had to be, trying to get me on his side.
“You can hate me. You can hate my father, my family. I don’t care. I know… there are many others like you… and… we deserve the hatred. Deserve much worse than that.”
He paused. I hated the silence. I wanted a fight… I wanted him to prove me right, that he was exactly like Alexander, that these words were lies.
And then he spoke again.
“If there’s anything I can to help you, I will. I know it will never make up for the pain my family has caused you, but it’s the least I can do now.”
I stared. That quiet voice, I despised it. A tiny wave of guilt washed over me once again.
“Leave me alone, and I’ll be fine,” I said, the venom in my voice finally run out. I turned away from him, aiming to go in whatever direction would take me away from him. But the sudden movement made my world begin to spin rapidly again, and I leaned against the nearest tree to steady myself. Nausea crept up on me again. I tried to move forward again, but failed, as gravity pulled me down, everything beginning to turn black, and as I was sure to find the ground meeting me, someone's arms prevented my fall.