Black to the Past

Chapter 30

They arrived at Halle's house and were let in the front door by Halle. Brooke and Michael both looked shocked. They hadn't seen her without makeup since they were kids! She looked so young and fragile in the baggy jogging suit hanging off her tall, thin frame.
    "You good, sis," Brooke said in her best black girl slang.
    Halle rolled her eyes, "yeah, I'm good."
    "Michael, what's the emergency? You look like you've seen a ghost, really."
    "I might as well tell everybody at the same time," Michael told Halle as he followed her through her house.
    Spread out on the largest sectional Brooke had ever seen were her classmates. She and Meredith were good friends, being in the vocal music department together. She knew that Jalen was here, but somehow where he normally seemed awkward, he fit in here. Brooke was surprised to see Wilson.
    "This isn't your usual crowd, Wil," Brooke commented with a small smile on her face.
    "Change is good," Wilson smiled as Halle sat back down next to him and crossed her legs.
    Brooke observed the scene. While Meredith wasn't exactly close to Jalen, she wasn't far from him. Maybe this would be the opportunity she needed to show Michael that there were couples here and if he wanted to fit in he needed to do that with her! Whatever was going on she could make herself a part of things. Brooke took a seat opposite Halle and Wilson. This way she could watch Michael as he told his story.
    "Wait. Why'd you bring Brooke," Jalen asked. "No offense, Brooke."
    "None taken. He tried to shake me but I saw this old dude talking to him at the library, really serious like. Then I walked up and heard the old man tell him to be there. Michael doesn't want me to know where but I overheard all that. I definitely want to know where the old man wants him to be."
    Michael rolled his eyes and shook his head.
    "You saw the professor," Jalen asked.
    "If he even is a real professor," Meredith said sarcastically.
    "You know what I mean," Jalen responded back.
    "Listen. Yes, I saw him again. I didn't know he'd seen me and had followed me in the teen section. I was about to get up from the computer and he was right behind me. He must have seen me type in time travel because he told me I wouldn't find anything in there like what he had to show and tell me. He asked me what I was afraid of. I told him that I was afraid he was trying to hurt us. He knew my name. I don't remember telling him my name before. He said he'd waited decades for me, for me and Jalen. He said we're all important to," Michael stopped.  
"To what, Michael. I'm here now, just spit it out," Brooke told him.
He looked at Brooke. He didn't want to be discussing this with her. It was like dragging someone else in to face their doom.

    "He said we were important to the future," Michael said in a low voice.
    "What?!" Wilson and Jalen said at the same time.
    "Wait!" Halle said in a scared tone.
    " How does he know that? Why would he say those things, Mike," Meredith wanted to know.
    "I don't know Meredith. I honestly don't. He just told me it was important that we're all there," Michael told her.
    "I'm not going to be there. We have a plan," Meredith told him.
    "What plan?" he asked her.
    "Me and Halle are going to go to the library, wait for you guys to come out, follow you and make sure you come back," Meredith told him.
    "No! You can't. He said we're all important to the future and we have to be there, all of us."
    "You're nuts! I don't have to be anywhere. I should call the police," Meredith said. She was more afraid now than she was before.
    "Listen to this, Michael," Wilson said then relayed the story that Halle's nana had just told them.
    "What? That's crazy. How long has this guy been around?" Michael asked.
    "How long has he been old," Brooke said after him.
    "This story gets more bizarre as time goes on. Like what happens if we're not there," Halle wanted to know.
    "I don't know. But if we don't all show up maybe it could be a tragedy," Michael told her. "I got the feeling he felt doomed or something."
    "If he felt doomed, how do you think we should be feeling," Meredith wanted to know.
    She stood up and started to pace the room. Seth and Maya were watching a Disney movie. Stephon was in his swing sleeping peacefully. Meredith wondered why she couldn't be a kid again.
    "Let's think about this," she started off slowly.
    "You guys can't be serious?" Brooke laughed. "An old geezer just walked up to you at the library and told you he wants you to do what?"
    Wilson brought Brooke up to speed about the project, the library, and being told there was a real time machine.
    "And, you believed him," Brooke asked.
    "No," Halle told her.  "We don't."
    "We might," Jalen told her.
    "We don't, Jalen. It doesn't make sense and if something doesn't make sense it's not real. There's no such thing as time travel except for in the movies and this isn't the movies," Halle told him.
    "They did it in End Game," Brooke said with a shrug of her shoulders.
    "Don't start," Michael told her with a stern look.
    "What? You're not serious," Wilson asked her.
    "Brooke believes everything that happens in any Marvel movie. She thinks that if she sees it on the big screen, in a Marvel movie, it's real," Michael answered him as he threw his hands in the air.
    "The theory of time travel in Avengers End Game is so flawed it isn't even funny," Jalen told Brooke. "I've told you that a million times."
    "I don't care what you say, Jalen. If Tony Stark can do it, it's been done before," Brooke insisted.
    "Is she okay," Halle whispered to Wilson.
    He laughed at her comment. Her witty comments cracked him up to no end and this time he agreed with her.
    "There's got to be some type of machine that you can use to be whisked away into and the time set to whatever time you need to go to. Look at how many movies and T.V. shows talk about it, show it. That show Timeless," Brooke looked at them all like she had to be right.
    "Let's start with End Game," Jalen said. At some point he had to make this make sense for her. "First of all, in Endgame they defy their own logic. He says if they go back in time, that time becomes the present thus they can't change the future because it no longer exists as they once knew. I mean honestly, with everything they did, there's no consequences to the future? That doesn't make any sense?  Then what Captain America does back in 2012, when he says Hail Hydra, that nullifies the movie Winter Soldier! And how could he possibly end up with the girl of his dreams if he'd put the time stone back in its proper place? Tell me how, Brooke?"
    He stared at her point blank. The points he was making were all valid and everyone was staring at her. "Fine," she said conceding his point.
    "What about the show Timeless? There's that big machine. It zaps them in and out of where they need to be. What about that concept, huh?"
    "How could that go back in every decade, and other centuries, Brooke," Jalen said exasperatedly.
    "If time travel existed, you could only travel back as far as to when the time machine was made. You couldn't possibly go back because there would need to be some type of technology that makes it possible to travel. Like GPS, how long has GPS even been around?" Michael tried reasoning with her.
    "Not long enough," Jalen reasoned with him. "If it's possible to go back in time, GPS can't be the way. Who'd only plan to go back a few decades. It's gotta be something else."
    Michael stood up to command their attention, "That's why we have to go. Professor Harold knows something and we're involved."