Finding Time

Chapter 2 - Anna 2018: Atlanta/Indiana

Anna Mason and Mark did not stay together after their brief relationship their freshman and sophomore years of college. The strain of multiple factors, such as their parents not liking one another, drove them apart. They did try to get back together, but something much stronger pulled them apart again.

It was visions of another life. Where Daniel was Kadmon, and she was Maoko. These visions drove her to his bed, but he shrunk away when he couldn't return her affections. He struggled because she had hurt him before when she left him and because the steroids among other factors disconnected him from his higher self.

The gravest mistake was sleeping with him without getting to know him first because it brought on the unhealthy factors of their past-life relationship.

They had talked off and on for two years after she left South University for State University, and he had problems with anxiety at Kansas which caused him to come home. He had to be self-interested now. He chased after a dream of what he thought he should be.

One day, Daniel invited her over to his apartment. She drove all the way to Dunwoody, taking a left past the Marta station to his apartment.

He walked out of the apartment and smiled at her. He was still as gorgeous as ever. They drove into the building. Both of them took the elevator up to his apartment.

It looked funny - like another woman had been there. A frame stood saying "Live, laugh, love" and other knick-knacks that looked like they came from a Hallmark store. She had hoped that she would hopefully meet his mom, that he would perhaps want to commit to her after all this time.

They talked about their relationship - how the physical aspect had taken over the getting to know each other part. How she felt insecure, and how her insecurity drove him away from her. They even ended up in the bedroom. Something, however, kept them apart.

"I feel like this was probably meant to happen, that there was something keeping us from getting back together," he said.

She cried looking at him.

"I do not understand!"

He stared at her blankly, but with a twinge of concern and sympathy.

"Don't you know how hard it has been thinking of you every day? Having dreams about you?" she asked.

"I do not believe that dreams mean anything," he said.

"You know what you've meant to me. You mean so much to me" she said, grabbing his hands. "I care about you so much, and you can't just let me in."

"You know I can't. I can't think of you that way" he said.

"It was the sex, isn't it? Or the fact that I looked crazy to you right?"

He couldn't answer.

They sat on the couch. He seemed removed emotionally. She was angry.

She talked a little more. Telling him she was sorry that she pushed him away - that it was "The biggest mistake of her life."

He promised that they would hang out next week.

She never heard from him. She got so angry.

The last thing she heard from him was, "I prefer gold stars."

Anna tried to move on with someone else, but he did not want her. He told her she had not gotten over Daniel and wasn't ready for a new relationship.

She decided one night to look up his Facebook. There she saw the truth.

"In a relationship with Adinda Ramos since August 2017."

One month after he stopped talking to her. How could that have happened so fast? She looked at her face. It wasn't broken. He hadn't hit her.

She got angry. She felt horribly betrayed like he had not given her a chance and now was punishing her for giving everything up for him to easily by getting with this girl. She also considered that maybe she wasn't good enough, that maybe some part of her was able to make him treat her better.

She couldn't' help her anger. She told Mr. Mason, her adoptive father, about what he did.

He called him, but he denied ever hitting Anna.

She told Adinda, but she denied that he could do such a thing. She claimed that Anna was just trying to get back with Daniel by bringing this affair up from two years ago.

That didn't stop Anna from being angry, but she knew she couldn't help the fact that Daniel no longer cared about her anymore and was ready to start a life with this new girl.

So she turned to her birth parents and wondering about them.

Mark had once told her of her biological sister Jaina's interest in science.

Through intensive research, she had found articles about the accident. She contacted the reporter, who surprisingly responded to her investigation.

"I have reason to believe it was not accidental. Somebody was after them, and you. They fled the scene soon after the crash" said the reporter.

Mrs. Mason confirmed it.

They both sat down to tell Anna about it.

"Susan had a twin you know. She was born a still-birth."

"Why did you never tell me this?" asked Anna.

"We wanted you two to grow up together believing you two were sisters" said Mr. Mason. "More specifically, it was your mother. You have to understand. We were so struck with grief."

"We are sorry Anna," said her mother, taking her hand in hers.

Anna's parents were Lux Otra and Adam Camden.

Anna drove her car to their abandoned house.

Friends of Adam and Lux described them to Anna. Something about them was a little bit off, they said.

Adam Camden had always liked listening to big-band music, and he watched many of the old movie stars on the Turner Classic Movies channel.

Then there was her mother, who was really quite a sight. A formidable female engineer at NASA for the rest of her life, her career paved a way for women to be respected in science and played a pivotal role in advancing space technologies for future exploration projects.

As an engineer, Lux surely had been expected not to have been a social butterfly. That was not the case, however. Lux seemed to be able to do it all much to the envy of her friends.

Two of their friends were women named Myst and Showa. They were the only lesbian couple in the neighborhood at the time that anyone had ever seen so public about their relationship, and were Lux's closest confidantes. They would be discussing things privately in Adam's office before playing with the children.

Unbeknownst to Anna, her parents had known the secrets of time travel and other developmental technologies that would help move humanity forward. Someone wanted to stop them.

Anna was allowed to keep their belongings. Searching through her parents' garage, she found pictures from 1900 showing a dark, curly-haired and smiling girl dressed prettily in a petticoat. She stood next to a young, bashful looking young man. Behind them stood a white-haired, mustached Captain in the background and drawings of flying ships carrying supplies.

Lifting a tarp from a large object, she discovered a futuristic looking car. Following a set of instructions, she turned the machine on. Pressing the gas pedal, she blew a hole through the garage door and the space-time continuum.

There were men in black that came afterward. They had followed Anna to her parents' house. Searching for the signs of where the machine may have gone, they found no body. The police soon came, calling it a crime scene.

Mr. and Mrs. Mason were notified, but Anna was never seen to them again.