The Girl & the Machine

Part 2

"This is so weird," Franklin said. He pushed his small suitcase back and forth on its wheels, focusing on the whisper of the sound of the plastic wheels sliding along the cold tile floor. He ignored the rush of people around him. Heather had arrived at the airport before him. She seemed to have no trouble believing that he would absolutely follow her here. When she had left him at the greenhouse, after telling him everything, she had just handed him a plane ticket and walked away. He'd considered tossing it. But in the end, his curiosity had won out. He had no idea why he trusted this girl. He couldn't explain it. But she seemed familiar to him. She felt like an old friend.

She felt like someone he could trust.

Still: "It's just so strange," he repeated.

"Weirder than the ability to time travel?" Heather asked with a smirk.

For Franklin, yes. Having a girl approach him while studying on a random Tuesday afternoon and telling him his entire life story and informing him casually that he was going to change the world today was definitely a new experience. Time travel was tame in comparison. Time travel to him was nothing more than an afternoon adventure. He used travel to steal extra naps during study sessions or to get away from the pressures of college. Very, very occasionally he actually used it to help him be a better history major. He was restricted to his own timeline, but he was able to enhance his report on terrorism by actually watching 9/11 happen in real time. He had won an award for his portrayal of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina from the history department, and no one had ever known that his sources were all firsthand.

For everyone else on earth, time travel was surely an anomaly. He could see why so many people would find it fascinating, including Heather. He'd asked her dozens of times, and she confirmed every single time: She was not a traveler, not like him. She had met him in high school, but when she had met him, he was 38 years old. He wasn't a history professor, as he always supposed he would be, which was why he was spending so much money getting that degree. Instead, he was the world's only time traveler. Not many people knew, but some did. Important people. He was wealthy. He was powerful.

And he needed Heather's help. In the future.

"So, I came to your past, but I was in my future," Franklin said slowly.

"Yes," Heather said. "I was in high school, it was just after my prom, and I was sincerely freaked out." She laughed. "I'm not even sure how you knew it was me. I looked very different then." She touched her dark hair pulled into a neat bun. "Anyway, you found me. You were really concerned about it all. We were both desperately worried that you were going to create a paradox, and it would ruin everything. I think that's why you went so far back into my past. I was just old enough to understand what you were saying, but not old enough to make a difference."

"And now you are?"

Heather checked the flight boards. Their flight was running ten minutes late, and the flight attendant at the desk was loudly confirming to a group of businessmen that the delay was really only ten minutes, and they would probably be able to make the time up in the air.

"I am young," Heather conceded. "Let's just say that meeting you changed my life. I was always studious, but you gave me a purpose."

Franklin looked down at his ticket again. Massachusetts. Heather was about his age, but she was in a far more advanced program of study than just a general history degree like him. She was one of the top students at MIT. Heather was working directly with a famous theoretical engineer professor, and she had her own laboratory space.

"So what did future-me tell you to do?" Franklin said.

Heather averted her gaze. "I'm not supposed to tell you everything," she said. "I know it's difficult, but you're going to have to trust me."

Franklin's grip on his suitcase's handle tightened. He didn't like the unknown. He always wanted to know exactly what was occurring around him. There were times in the past when he spied on himself just to get a different perspective on what had happened at certain moments in his life. He looked around the crowd at the airport now, trying to see some future version of himself spying on this moment. One of the businessmen caught his eyes. A tall white man with short brown hair and dark hazel eyes. The exact same shade of eye color as he himself had. Franklin's gaze intensified as he tried to figure out if this businessman was actually him, from the future, watching.

The businessman looked away.

Franklin pressed Heather for more details, but she refused to answer. "I'll tell you more when I can show you what I have in the lab," Heather said.

Franklin tried to assess what this meant. After Heather had met the future version of himself after her prom, she had dedicated all of her time and energy in doing...something...for him. Or, rather, for his future self. Something that his future self needed. Something that, as Heather had said, changed the world.

The flight attendants opened the gate and started the boarding process. The businessmen were among the first to push their way to the front of the first-class lane. The man with hazel eyes who Franklin thought might be himself glared at the woman with a small baby who neatly maneuvered her stroller around the clusters of businessman to the front of the line.

Franklin barely paid any attention as he handed his pass over to the flight attendant and she scanned him in. He followed Heather like an automaton, blithely accepting the aisle seat she offered him as she slipped into the window seat.

The thing was, this all felt...momentous. The fact that he had somehow figured out how to travel into the future, he had chosen Heather as one of the first points of contact to make...that all meant that she was important. That they were important together. That what they were going to do would be something that would really make a difference.

Change the world, like Heather said.

The first time Franklin had ever used his ability, he was eight years old. It had been a complete accident. He had broken a toy he had just received at his birthday party the previous day. He clutched the rubber wheel of the brand-new remote controlled car in his hands, and he had wished with all his might that he could go back and stop himself from attempting to drive the car over a makeshift ramp into a pile of rocks. Somewhere in that passionate desire, his ability to travel through time had been triggered. He blinked backwards to ten minutes prior. He hadn't been able to change anything; he had been too shocked. He had just watched the destruction of the remote controlled car all over again, then blinked and was back in his own timeline.

He'd experimented since then and gotten better at his abilities, but he'd never done anything...remarkable. He'd never done something that would make a difference.

The flight attendants walked up and down the aisle of the plane, checking overhead compartments and that everybody was wearing a seatbelt. They started their spiel about safety as the plane taxied out onto the runway.

Franklin leaned over to Heather. "So the stuff that we're doing... It's really important, isn't it?"

"Why does that seem so shocking to you?" Heather asked sincerely. "You have the ability to literally travel in time. You could do... You will do so much good for the world. Is that really such a surprise to you?"

Franklin could not meet the fire and Heather's eyes. The truth of the matter was, it was a surprise to him. His abilities to travel through the time were limited, true, but he had never really thought about how he could use them for anyone but himself.

"I don't think I'm quite the person that you met when you were in high school yet," Franklin said.

Heather touched the back of Franklin's hand and didn't speak until he met her eyes again. "You are exactly the person that I met when I was in high school," she said. "I have no doubt of that."