What Time can Teach

1940 & beyond

38 heard screams, booming sounds, and sharp cracks in the air as she opened her eyes to a horrifying sight. All around, males had long weapons in their hands and were firing at one another. 38 recognized the shape of the weapons as guns. The same weapons of the Order Corps.

"Get down!"

Rough hands pulled her to the dirt as a bomb went off behind her. A soldier had pulled her to the ground.

"What are you doing here?! Don't you know this is a war zone, doll?" The soldier shouted.

38, however, was too stunned to speak.

"Owens! Help me get this woman back to base!"

The male in question rushed up to them and helped her to her feet. They both ran to a truck in the distance. Once they were safe in the truck, they looked at each other for the first time. However, the male seemed to recognize her and let out a shocked gasp.

"38? How did you get here?"

The female in question was still stunned. She looked closer at the male and recognized him as 54, a male who went missing in District Sixty-Seven weeks ago.

"I'm assuming that this is your first-time phasing?" He asked when she gave no answer.

"Phasing? What are you talking about? What is going on, 54?!" 38 shouted in frustration.

After calming her down, 54, or Jacob Owens as he preferred to be labeled, proceeded to give her a full explanation of what exactly was going on with her. He explained to her that phasing was the 'defect' which the World Council had hidden from them. It was a mutation that allowed defects to travel through time by "phasing" from one time to the next. He had discovered his mutation a few weeks prior and immediately hid from the Order Corps in this time, which he explained was 1940 during World War Two.

It took a good while for him to explain the war and why he stayed.

"It all comes down to rights," he said, "back home we are forced to live without choices and freedom. Here I have learned what living truly is. I have learned what all humans deserve: the right to live freely with choice, emotions, and freedom."

While some of this made sense to 38, she still was lost. Human rights seemed to be a reoccurring theme that stuck with her. It increased her discomfort about her own time period. As if something did not add up correctly back in Gefallene-Welt.

"You need a name," Jacob realized. "A proper name that is not a label."

38 watched the man's face make an expression of thought with fondness. She herself realized that Jacob was someone who cared. That made him different, which she liked.

"How about Rosalyn Grady?" He asked.

"I like it." She replied with a smile.

Jacob had shown her how to phase properly when they snuck back into the army camp. When she could do it correctly, he had taken her to various points in time that helped her to believe in his ideology. The signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Holocaust were all places of note among many others. He took her to meet Elenor Roosevelt, with whom Rosalyn learned the importance of human rights. And so her belief in them solidified. However, she felt guilty for leaving District Sixty-Seven when now she knew of all the wrong the World Council and Order Corps inflicted on the people of their time.

"Jacob, we have to go back."

"I know, but what can we do? They have the Order Corps, and I've only heard rumors of rebellion groups in our time." Jacob replied.

"Then we'll find them." She responded with conviction.