NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 122

Fejj takes her hat off and throws it on my head. Thoughts stretching back from what seems like the beginning clamour for my attention all at once. I drive my head into the table and try to drag them out but they keep screaming their opinions at me. Nothing works. Not my fists pounding into the table. Not my own screams. The angry library just keeps blabbering on and on.

"Had enough yet?"

I can barely look up at her. Only my eyes find the strength necessary to plead my case. Finally, she waves her hand and the hat returns to its owner. "It's Mary, isn't it?"

"Yes," I mutter.

"If you'd just follow instructions, everything would be fine. Understood?"

"Okay," I say, still trying to scrape my own thoughts back in place.

"Now to the rest of you! You're about to embark on a cleansing, of your mind, and soul. It's time you learn a new language, the original language, so you can be ready for the war." And she looks at me. "Now you can speak. Answer me this. Do you think you can lead them into winning the war?"

I am almost scared to respond but the Mary in me is still stubborn. "I can barely lead myself."

"So you're a follower?"

"I wouldn't say that. I've just never been able to get anyone to follow me."

Fejj points at the other four. "They'll follow you. But only if you're ready."

I gasp as their freckles take the shape of a letter S then its mirror image. It is surreal.

"I'm no fighter, though," I tear myself away to confess.

"You say that now but it's in your blood. You'll stand firm when the time comes."

"Is it okay if I ask what this war's about?"

"Where was your mind when you were passing through the last four doors?"

"On passing your tests like the old man said I should."

"Oh," she replies, and then. "Every follower knows how to lead. And every leader is a creator."

"What will I be leading them to? A war? To fight and die?

"No! To fight and regain everything that was stolen."