AUTOGENOUS

Reasons

For the next several hours the crew picks apart the Doctor's notes, studying and informing themselves on everything they could possibly understand about his machine. Each detail by the end of the night was nailed into each of the crew's brains, as they try to perfect their knowledge on how to work the world's first time machine. Of course Dennis and Jacob already have experience in the actual lab, but they were more of lab rats and helpers for the doctor. The doctor helped out on the more scientific and applicable aspects of their discovery.

It is now late in the night, Jacob has fallen asleep in a lawn chair in their circle of work. Maleah sleeps in the comfort of her parked car outside, a smarter move. Dennis lays his head on a pile of sheets of equations and graphs. His mind roams and projects his past as he descends further into a deep sleep, again visiting a memory.

Dennis is driving his brand new 2015 GMC Terrain along 71 south, coming from Cleveland. His fiancé, the same girl in the previous dream, is sitting in the passenger seat as they listen to the radio as they sit in silence. She looks out the window upset.

"Look, honey... I'm sorry... you have to understand, I am sorry!" Dennis exclaims, she continues staring out the window in disapproval, "Babe I've been so caught up with work.. It just passed over my head... we can still celebrate tomorrow or whatever-"

"That's just it Dennis!!! You're always working! We haven't sat down and had dinner together in three weeks! Our wedding is delayed, again, and I'm beginning to worry your job is more important than us!"

"Honey I swear that isn't it! I just... I just have to keep working hard so I don't lose this promotion... think of how great that would be for us."

"For us? Or for you... Nothing is more important... than our actual happiness!" She yells, he yells back and looks at her frequently, not looking ahead, as he accidentally swerves his car to the right. Another car just behind his right blind spot slows down in enough time to not rear end Dennis. He swings back to his lane, the trouble is over.

"I got it..."

"Watch the road please! I swear..." his fiancé starts laughing but stressfully states "If you crash this car and I can't dance at our damned wedding-" The car from behind accidentally swerves in front of Dennis, causing him to slam on his breaks. A sixteen wheeler slams into the rear of the GMC, swinging it forward and to the left into the barrier. The smoke eventually clears... and the ambulance arrives.

Eight months later Dennis walks into a hospital with a bouquet of flowers in his right hand. He walks into the room, decorated like home. He sets the flowers in his fiancé's hands, before she smells them.

"I thought this would cheer you up a bit," Dennis said.

"Thank you..." she replied, setting them on the table beside her.

"So how was therapy today?" He asks as he changes the inputs of her tubes that run down her body, like a half functional droid.

"It was okay..."

"Did you get in the pool, or was that yesterday"

"Pool was yesterday..." She replies. Dennis leans over her to look directly at her,

"What's wrong?" He asks. She looks at him for the first time that day. They look at each other in discomfort but also in understanding.

"I canceled the wedding..." She boldly states. Dennis leans back and stands vertically.

"What do you not wanna get married?" Dennis asks, very upset.

"Dennis! look at me," she states as she gestures towards her legs both casted held up by strings and equipment. She is distraught. "Every day I wake up tied in these strings, and I am here... because of you Dennis." He steps back now more sad than upset, more somber, but somehow he had a feeling this was over due.

"Our relationship was crashing, burning, and now I cannot dance at our wedding. So..." they both begin to tear up, more her than him, "when I get out of these... strings, I am going to begin a new life... I am going to find a man who values me more than his own occupation."

"Listen, I am sorry... I mean you understand, I, am, sorry"

"Dennis," she shakes her head and gestures the flowers back to him, "you need to move on... it's over, it always has been."