Chapter Text
56… 57… 58… 59… 60!
Twelve minutes to go until the end of this math class!
Then there’s just language arts, music, and science left!
Then I get to go home!
I’m sure many of you are telling me to actually pay attention to class. My response to you is this!
Bleh! (you can’t see it but I’m sticking my tongue out at you.)
School’s boring. It’s just memorizing things over and over again that I never need to use outside of next year’s school. The uniforms are itchy too. I hate them! They’re stupid.
Oh? Some other adult walked into the room. I don’t remember his name. He’s one of the office-y people in the school that we don’t see too much. He’s speaking in hushed tones with the teacher, Mrs. Graham. Whatever they’re arguing about she doesn’t seem happy about it.
I try to listen in (when else do you see something this exciting at school) but it’s hard to make out much. Just something about the gym and plans?
Eventually our teacher seems to give up and takes a deep breath before speaking up to the class. “Alright kids. Mr. Carson here is telling me that there is an event being held by the school that I seem to have not been told about before due to an error. Everyone please leave your bags here and walk in a straight line down to the gym.”
There’s some murmuring from the class. An assembly? Ooooh what if it’s unplanned because someone got in big trouble and they want to yell at them in from of the whole school. The teacher attempts to quiet us down, but if there’s anything these kids like to do, it’s gossip.
We move down through the halls with curiosity penetrating the group. What’s it gonna be? If someone’s in trouble, what did they do? Did they say a bad word?
We eventually arrive at the gym to find something much more interesting than that.
Sitting in the middle of the room is not a generic guy in a suit ready to give a motivational speech or some kid looking ashamed.
It’s a crack.
A crack in space.
Or was it time? The news reports were weird about that. A lot of science mumbo-jumbo. But yeah, I don’t watch the news stuff like my parents do, but I’ve heard about these things popping up. Some weird cracks in reality and stuff. People are thinking of all kinds of plans of what you could do with them. It’s neat stuff. Straight out of a fantasy book!
At first you have difficulty comprehending it. We aren’t used to this kind of thing just floating out there in the open. When I first saw it, I initially thought it was on the back wall. But as we move around, the position seems to move in a way that can only indicate that it’s floating in midair. It’s like the cracks you see in pavement, just in midair. It goes through all sorts of different colors. It first seems like a deep blue/purple mix. But as time goes by it shifts to every color of the rainbow.
The principal is standing next to it with a big ol’ grin on his face. He’s clearly very very happy at finding one of these. In the gym of all places. Weird place to show up but it seems like we’re just gonna roll with it. Either way it’s cool we got
“Boys and Girls of 6th grade. Today we have a monumental opportunity ahead of us”
Oh what are we going to do!
“These fields have been popping up erratically throughout the world. Theories have been made and proposed, but due to the inconsistent nature they have not had time to be studied. Nevertheless theories have been proposed, and word has gone out to those lucky enough to encounter one.”
“What are we gonna do?” One kid asks, I think his name was Brian? Idk.
“An excellent question. There are so many fascinating possibilities before us today. We could attempt to uncover history’s greatest mysteries. We could attempt to peak into the future to learn from their technology to improve ours. But ultimately, this is a place for the development of young minds, and as such. I decided to perform one experiment above the others!”
“Principal Carver, you can’t think of doing something like this in front of children. It’s not safe at all.”
“Ah but what can be more unsafe than proceeding forward blindly! These children are proceeding into the future without the best guidance we could give them! I think it would be the opposite, positively unsafe. Therefore, we have an imperative to show the children their future!”
With that dramatic proclamation. Shock echoes through the crowd. The future? Really, what’re we gonna see!? This is the most exciting thing that’s happened all month!
Principal Carver pulls out a big doohickey. It’s got a bunch of prods coming off with a lot of electric wires put on it connected to one of those green and bronze boards. Doesn’t seem very finished, but that’s what the coolest stuff in science class looks like.
Mrs. Graham rushes forward “This is insane. You’re just as likely to kill us all as to do anything meaningful. We can’t just be-”
Her sentence is cut off by a giant crack that echoes throughout the room after Principal Carver stuck his science doohickey inside the crack. Sparks fly off from the touching point in all kinds of cool colors. The crack seems to react to the device and begins expanding outwards. Whereas previously it was a slow shift through different colors. Now they begin to change more rapidly and they start blurring together. The whole room is getting windy, and I brace my legs to try not to fall over. This is fun!
Then all of a sudden, a bright flash emanates and I’m forced to close my eyes.
It takes a while before things calm down.
There’s all kinds of crackley and sparky noises for a while. But eventually, it does feel safe to open my eyes once the most prominent noises I hear are people ones.
The gym seems to be mostly intact, and I’m not seeing any giant piles of blood and gore or random tentacles which is a good sign. The crack seems to have receded a bit from the extent it grew in the experiment, though it’s still a lot bigger than it was pre zappening. Most interestingly is the giant pile of adults on the floor in front of us.
“Where are we?”
“Get off me!”
“What the fuck just happened”
One of the other kids decides to take the mandatory joke on that one. “Ooh someone said a bad word!”
“Shut the fuck up ki-” as the man trails off.
There’s stunned silence among the crowd of adults as all of them try to piece together what the heck is even going on.
I’m not gonna help, it’s funny looking.
“Is this Redbrook friggin 'grade school?!”
Realization then spreads through the group as it dawns on them that they did not escape this torture prison that is this place.
“Indeed our elder friends. Through the wondrous powers of this crack in spacetime, we have managed to summon you all from 20 years in the future. It was decided that as an educational institution, we should use this opportunity to educate our pupils about their futures!”
Mrs. Graham interjects “It was all his idea, and no one else could stop him in time.”
Some laughs reverberate through the adult side of the room, and I can swear I hear one of them say “Yeah, that checks out for a guy who blew himself up 6 years ago trying to.”
Principal Carver seems to have also heard that and his next words come out as more of a stammer. “Well… yes. But irregardless, We should take advantage of the opportunity, right? I’m sure all of you have things you wish you could say to your younger selves.”
I’m looking through all the grownups to see if I can guess who any of them are. I can guess that one of them is Kelsey by her bright orange hair, but most others are harder to place. It might be better to compare them to the other kid’s moms and dads at this point.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea.” One woman in the crowd of adults insists. I try to place who she is, but I can’t really recognize her. She looks familiar but I can’t really guess who she is. “Showing our eventual successes and failures to everyone would probably kill the motivation to achieve them. Plus, those of us who had some… complications are going to be treated differently.”
“You’re already here. Some of you clearly are going to be disappointed regardless. It will be a good lesson. Besides, what happens now is still going to happen anyways, so why not be prepared?”
The familiar woman sits back with one of those looks which means she really wants to say something but can’t. Good thing she didn’t, that would be lame. We’ve gone through all this effort to pull off time travel, and don’t even learn anything? Boooooring.
I can hear the grownups (future and present) debating how to organize this whole thing, but I’m not paying attention to that. I’m still trying to figure out who’s who. Ooh! That lady with the super curly hair must be Mary! This is fun. It’s almost a shame they’re going to give the answer away in a few minutes.
Of course there’s the big question when it comes to that. Who’s me in that crowd? I really can’t place myself in any of the men. Then again, I have no idea what the heck I’d look like besides just Dad. It would be kinda disappointing if I turned out like Dad though. My parents tell me that I’ll grow out of it, but grownup clothes always seem so boring. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise though. So I really don’t know what else to look for. Am I the fat guy in the corner? The emo guy chilling to the side? The guy on crutches? Maybe.
Gradually it seems the future grownups assemble into a single file line. There’s lots of grumbling about it. I guess the grownups have gotten used to not needing to walk around in a line everywhere. Lucky them.
With that, the names begin.
The first guy comes up. Pretty average, hair starting to fade away a bit. Wearing some businessy clothes. Probably got pulled here from his adult job. “Lukas Morell” he calls.
Oof. That’s gonna be a number on that guy’s dream of being a professional football player.
The normal cocky and outspoken boy meekly walked forward, and you could taste the disappointment coming off of him. I felt kinda bad for him, but it’s also not like being a pro sports player is a realistic dream for 99% of people. The older Lukas gives his younger self a hug, and they move off to the side to have a more private conversation.
The rest of it goes a lot like that. There weren’t too many big surprises. By and large most of our future versions seem to be ordinary regular people. There’s a few changes, some of the wallflowers turned out much prettier than they were currently thought of. Some of the popular kids seemed to have gained quite a bit of weight over the years, but there wasn’t really much drama about it.
That is, until we got to the last few, and I made a really scary realization.
There were more kids left than there were adults still in the line.
The adults would probably tell me to not jump to conclusions. But there was one that came to my mind immediately.
Not all of us made it 20 years in the future.
One of us died.
There’s 7 people left in line. Three Men, Four women. That means one of those three has to be me if I want any hope at being alive in 20 years.
One of them has blonde hair that doesn’t match mine. Maybe I dyed it? I don’t know why I would ever want to do that, but maybe I found a reason in 20 years.
Cmon. Please say Andy Jones. It’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to hear someone say that name. I’ll even take the stuffy full version of Andrew!
“Paul Wilkinson”
Frick! No.
Alright uh next one… Let’s see he’s pretty tall. Is that about as tall as Dad-
“James Jefferson”
No!
There’s only one man left. One last hope for me to not be dead.
My brain is too amped up to even try to think of comparisons. I’m just hoping that by gosh, that last man is me, and I’m not going to have to live the rest of my short life knowing I’m about to be hit by a car at any moment.
I turn left and see Joe right beside me. He’s been one of my few friends for a while, and now the two of us are competing to have a future.
I hate this. I don’t want to be so mean to Joe
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to live.
Unfortunately for me it doesn’t look like I get to make that decision.
“Joseph West”
…
It’s over.
…
I don’t make it 20 years in the future.
Everything I do is for nothing.
I might as well be dead already.
I drop to the floor, and curl up into a ball. Standing is too much work right now.
Tears are starting to fall down my face. Dad would probably tell me I need to grow up, but I don’t really care right now.
It’s not like I’m going to get a chance to grow up anyways.
I don’t bother watching the rest. It’s not like I particularly care about which of the two women left are Maddy or Pheobe.
…
…
…
…
…
“Andy Jones”
…
What?
My name was called?
But there weren’t any men left. Did I miss someone?
I crack open my eyes, hoping that I only just made a dumb mistake.
Standing in front of me is a woman, the same one who was arguing about how this was a bad idea earlier. She’s got dark long wavy hair like my mom, and has light hazel eyes like I do. She’s wearing some leggings with a Blue and Pink T-shirt over them. She’s putting on a pained smile, one of those looks adults do when they’re trying to not freak you out any further by letting on how bad the situation is.
“Hey kid, I’m Andrea. It sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about.”