STUCK IN TIME

(xii)Book 2: Chapter 3- More from the Past

Natalia's POV

"FOUR YEARS LATER"

The valley is silent. There is not even much chirping of birds and it's so eerily silent that you can even hear the slight breeze. I have been sitting under this tree out in the open for almost two hours now and yet I haven't been able to concentrate enough.

Finally the drowsiness take over me. I am back in the past, travelling in the time through my mother's linage. Her last memory I always see is before I was born in fact even before she was expecting me. I focus deeper and reach to the day she got married. I focus deeper and deeper and skip her entirely because that's not the task I have at hand. I keep skipping and reach my maternal grandmother and grandfather as I have traveled through their time in the last few years; they lived through nineteenth century. I have seen their grandparents time too, which was eighteenth century. I can't go beyond that. I have to try and access seventeenth century now. I skip to the time my maternal great grandfather was born and keep trying to get a little further to his father. I focus and focus I breathe harder. I try not to break the link because it takes a lot of effort to get here. I keep trying and keep telling myself that I can succeed.

"WAKE UP!" Someone shouts out loud and I feel being pulled back. I feel so much pain at once. I scream at the top of lungs. My brain feels as if it would collapse and as if I died ten times in a second, experiencing the pain of all those people whose memories I have been travelling through, experiencing the pain they endured during their entire lives all at once. My eyes snap open and I am trembling immensely. I feel someone holding me tightly and another giving me water to drink and another wiping blood from my nose.

"Why did you pull me back? I was about to get there! It hurts a lot to come back. I- I was- was just- just there. A little more time and I would get there!" I tell Dr Aryan.

"We don't want you dead Natie. Your nose was bleeding and your face had grown pale. It looked like you would die if not awaken." My mom tells me and I realize only now that she has been holding me close. I cuddle her tighter and hide myself into her arms. She hugs me tightly and kisses my head.

"She is only fourteen years old! How much more do you want from her?" She yells at Dr Aryan and my dad.

"Take her inside. And give her something. I will have a word with Aryan and come back to you." He tells my mom. I come out of mom's hug and look at him to see his face in obvious sorrow. "I am sorry love. I promise you we won't ask you to go that far again." He kisses my forehead.

"Have I failed them?" I ask my mom once we are in my room.

"Natlie my baby, you are MY daughter and you came in this world to live your life not to fulfill other people's dreams and desires. Those selfish scientists, I don't care if one of them happens to be your father, they have spoiled your childhood enough. I won't let them destroy your entire life now. I have been feeding this to your father for a while now. I think he realizes how blind to his motives he has been and how selfish he has become."

"Mom, Don't say that. Dad is not selfish. He loves me."

"Did you honestly learn nothing from your so called time travels? This naivety is going to get you killed! Grow up. If you can understand the lessons that are taught at university you must understand the world at the same pace."

'We are going back to England!' Mom tells dad.

'we cant go back just now let us complete the research at least.'

'It will never be completed. If you want to keep Natalia here you can do so. I am leaving with Elena.' Elena was my younger sister who was a normal child. 'Elena is normal, she will get abnormal if she stays here. She will go with me. She will study in British schools and will grow up where her home is.'

Mom wanted to stop this madness but what could she do. Dad cared about me and he agreed to not exhaust me by demanding too much but he refused to completely shut the project because he believed that I was send into this world for a reason and as a parent it was his responsibility to nourish what was given to him and to prepare his daughter for the greater good. I guess he started believing that I will be the one to save the world. The funny part is he didn't care to think what was I to save it from. That's really a thing about us when they are given an ability that is distinct from other they start believing that they are superior first, and then as their superiority disease worsens they start believing that the world needs them. The world doesn't need a single human to save it. If there is an apocalyptic danger to come it will come anyway. However that was truly pointless to make him understand. His believe grew stronger and stronger with every passing day and he even made me believe that I am being prepared for something really big, it was made a part of my faith to be ready and prepared when the time comes. I thought I was going do something really big when I grow up.

Dad convinced mom to stay for few months but then he had to listen to her. We decided to move back together. To our surprise Dr Aryan came with us. 

They resumed the work in England and kept on experimenting while taking care of my health that I don't become too exhausted or something. They started working on simulations so that they could view my mind activity.

I was doing good in everything I was taught. I asked dad how he plans to work on my spectacles and after one week of training with him I started working on my eyesight myself and even with this blurry vision I took only a year to make my glasses. I was so relieved to view the world as it was, the exact same way as I would see it in my time travels.

'You made your own glasses?' Elena asks me in amazement.

'Yes I did sweetie.'

'Dad will be proud of you again and he would tell me to learn from you. Why am I not as intelligent as you sister.' She almost cries.

'Aw! Don't be sad El. You are only in primary at the moment.I am smart because dad and Dr Aryan teach me everything. I will teach all of that to you and then you will be even more intelligent.'

'No I don't want to go to school now.' She shouts at me. 'I will study at home like you do! You are everyone's favorite while no body is concerned about me. If you wont go to school then I wont go too!'

With my eyesight better and my brain sharper than anyone else out here I could now go to school. So I went to school the first time as a sixteen year old girl, the thought came to my parents mind because of Elena. It was really weird in the begging but I was the most intelligent student of the class and soon I was popular in the entire school. In the beginning I was a little anti-social and weird but within few weeks I made friends and acclimatized to this new environment.

When I turned eighteen Dr Aryan asked my dad that his son Hyder who was twenty-five then, should be married to me. He was a successful businessman. I knew Hyder, he was a nice man, I could say we were friends too but I didn't want to marry him. and it was too early for me to get married but regardless of all that dad promised him that he would marry us after I complete my education.

All three of us dad me and Dr Aryan were like co-workers now. Dr Aryans only target now, was to create a time machine. Through which other persons could access their ancestral memories. Just the way I was able to do it naturally because I could access my mind a little more than a normal person, he wanted to create a way by which others could do it too. Side by side they started their research on their new publication about getting into another person's memory.

I started going to university and just like school I was working this out really well. I got a chance to get my own works published and gain the fame for myself. Till now it was all my efforts but there was no mention of me in Dad's and Dr Aryan's publications.

Until then I had no plans for myself. With this belief so deeply injected in me by dad that I was given these abilities for some great reason kept me really selfless. I never thought I could do anything other than devoting my life to science and research. All the while waiting for that special reason to unfold on me. However, my life took a strange turn and I forgot all of dad's teachings and started thinking for myself a little. This happened when I met this man, named Zaroon.