Backshift-Replay by Judy Colella (books for students to read .TXT) 📕

“Are you ready to talk to us yet?” Tap-tap-tap. Fingernails drumming on laptop keys without typing anything. A bright smile.

“What do you expect me to talk about?”

“Where you came from, for starters. Then you could tell me when – and how – you got here.”

“Is that all?” I nodded. “Uhhh, no.”

Sigh. “Look, you aren’t going anywhere until you talk to us.”

“I’m not going anywhere if I do – we both know that. Besides, if my ears aren’t deceiving me, we’re talking right now.”

“About your origins. We need to talk about your origins.”

“Do we frighten you that much?” I loved being in control, even if it only extended to the conversation and nothing else.

“Honestly? Yes.”

I smiled back. “Good. You’re being honest. It’s about time, too.”

“Does that mean you’ll answer the questions? That you’ll tell me what we want to know? It would help everything get resolved, Tosca. Please.”

I raised an eyebrow – my mother told me the ability to do that was genetic. Amazing how a hair-and-skin-covered muscle can say more than words.

“And who gave you that name? Does it mean something?”

The brow shot higher. “Mean…what? My parents were into opera, that’s all. Guess they liked the name.”

“Opera! They have opera where you’re from?”

I laughed. “And where do you think I’m from?”

“Not here, certainly!”

Yes, here – kind of – but not now – later, I told her with my mind. She couldn’t hear me, of course. In my own time, yes, but not in this one. I could have said that out loud, but then I would have had to explain how in the time-loop, I was redoing a part of my life, but in a different past and a shifted universe. My personal past would be her general future, but because of The Shift, we could choose a past that predated our own without affecting our current existence, and one that had nothing to do with the reality of our location. How to tell her all that without having to watch her brain implode? So I shrugged. Another gesture that could say everything and nothing.

The tapping stopped. “Okay. I give up. For today, that is. We’ll see if you feel any different about his tomorrow.” Scrape of metal chair legs against whatever synthetic material was under them. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hope not.”

No reply. The door locks clicked, the door opened, and she was gone – I didn’t have to look or listen. The air had become lighter, her absence making more room within which to breathe. But then…

“Time to go, Tosca.”

I stood and faced the large man who had taken the woman’s place, his presence displacing more of the air than she had. “Sure.” I held out my wrists so he could circle them with the latest in prison fashion-statement accessories. Too tight, but whatever. All I wanted to was to get back to my cell so I could continue working on my ROE.

I frowned, unsure for a moment if I’d chosen the right way to begin. The Record Of Events needed to be accurate, precise, not too wordy, yet cover everything. No fun, but it wasn’t meant to be fun. Still, I was almost sure I was doing this right even if it wasn’t usual. Nonetheless, I needed to insert the correct opening protocol.

The cell was decent – clean, dry, with a sink, a bed with soft linens and a blanket, a small table. Enough for my needs. I sat on the bed, my back against the gray block wall, and closed my eyes. Using the mental prompts that activated my recording implants, I accessed the new record log and began with the insert.

SHIFT DATES: August 3, 3019/August 3, 2018

My name is Tosca Blane. I was one hundred and thirty-six years old and diagnosed terminal, the disease one of the new ones, a mutation of what was once called the Spanish Flu, the deadliest form of Influenza in its time. When offered the choice to Shift, I took it and chose to re-explore my life beginning at age 16. The choice of year was based on my interest in the history of America during the first two decades of the 21st Century.

I was joined by two others, men who I met for the first time at the Shift Center, and who, like me, were experiencing terminal illnesses. Both are the same age, and both had opted for their later teen years for re-exploration.

Shadow Calaban (who refused to explain the origins of his name) Shifted into his seventeenth year, Niam Collins into his sixteenth. We agreed on New York State, choosing a small town not far from Manhattan as the place to reconstitute. The Shift went well, and none of us experienced any ill effects. Here is the record of what we have been doing thus far, and what has happened recently to prompt this new ROE. I’ve erased the previous one as too didactic to properly convey our situation, and have begun recording the new one in story form. I believe this will translate much better, and to this end, started with a kind of prologue that addresses my current setting. And now to continue by going back to our first day.

All indicators told us the building would be unoccupied at the moment of our arrival. It was. It was also locked, I soon discovered. No one would be getting either in or out, it seemed. I groped about in the near-dark for the device they used back then to activate their form of inside illumination – a light switch, it was called, and I’d seen enough pictures of the numerous types during our briefing to know what to find. A moment later, I was staring with appreciation at the two men who had come with me.

“Shadow, yes?” I pointed at the swarthy teenager with gold streaks in his hair. At his real age, those streaks had been white among the silver. He wouldn’t say why he hadn’t opted to darken it.

“Woah, Tosca! Looking good!” His smile was simpler than the older version.

“Hmm. And Niam, I never would have taken you for the dark, brooding type.” I grinned, admiring the black hair, startling blue eyes, and pale, smooth skin of the true Irishman. “Not too many pure-breds left.” At his real age, the hair had been lightened, his illness clouding the eyes and turning his skin more gray.

“In this time, I’m told,” said Shadow, pacing around as his gaze darted to one thing, then another in the deserted office space, “nationalities were still distinguishable in most of the population.”

I nodded, saying nothing. I’d found a mirror. How long since I’d seen that version of me? Ninety-five years? I’d almost forgotten my teen features. Like most of my generation, I was a smooth blend of nearly every ethnicity on the planet – my height was a seamless mix of Germanic and African; my eyes, large yet distinctly almond-shaped, defined a combination of the Asian peoples and the Celts; the slight olive cast of my otherwise rosy complexion a Middle Eastern-Latin hybrid. At six-foot-one, I was going to be taller than most of the sixteen-year-olds I’d be meeting in my revisited life, but because of the true-age factor, I’d have far more poise. I smiled, happy to see dimples instead of the deeper lines that had begun to manifest in my eightieth year.

“Guess we’d better get changed.” Liam held up the pack containing our early-twenty-first-century outfits.

We changed out of our travel suits and into items that made us laugh at ourselves. Mine was a pair of denim pants they had called “skinny jeans” at the time; a long, flowy white sleeveless top with thin straps at the shoulders; and a short, black, leather-like, form-fitting jacket.

“If you weren’t so beautiful, I’d think you were a boy.” Shadow, who had come to stand behind me, put one hand on my shoulder, ruffling my short, wavy hair with the other.

“Wow. Thanks.” I shrugged him off with a laugh and smoothed the spikes his silliness had caused. My hair was an auburn that tended more toward red, and didn’t need much attention – I’d never worn it long for that reason.

He stepped away, taking me by the arm and turning me to face him. “What do you think?” He spread his arms wide and did a 360° turn.

Tight jeans, white tee-shirt, hip-length black leather jacket, and long silver chains hanging from the front pants pocket, looping to the back where they were clipped to the back pocket by a complex-looking hook.

I took a step back, crossing my arms. “Sexy.”

“Well, I feel like an idiot.” Niam, who had been standing near one of the windows, joined us. He glared at his reflection, shaking his head. “That’s the last time I let some feckin’ historian choose clothes for me.”

“You planning on Shifting more than once?” Some people did – it was a serious question.

“Depends.” He pointed at the mirror. “What’s the reason for all the rips in my pants? Am I supposed to be poor?”

“No, I’m about positive they came off the rack like that. The tears are too symmetrical, too consistent. I like your shirt.”

“Why? It’s a badly-done drawing of people with rotting skin. And what’s the meaning of the words under it? ‘The Apocalypse Is Upon Us’?” He ran a hand through his hair, which was longer than it had been, but looked like someone had hacked it into sharp points with a razor.

“Maybe if you put these on, it’ll all come together.” Shadow held out his hand, displaying a mismatched set of earrings: a skull dangling from two short chains, and a hoop with spikes.

Glaring, Niam snatched the jewelry, got closer to the mirror, and shoved them into the holes that had been provided by one of the medics right before the Shift. “I’m mortified.”

“I thought you read everything about this era before agreeing to it.”

“I skimmed it. Look, Tosca, no matter what time I’d chosen, I would have had to face a different me in strange clothes and an environment I couldn’t understand. I’m an artist, and have spent nearly every moment of my one hundred and thirty-six years immersed in color, shape, dreams. Never did well in school, never cared. Just wanted to explore every medium and produce the closest a human could get to what nature hands us without a blink.”

Shadow gave me a weird look, shaking his head. “Whatever. You’ll get used to this – you don’t have a choice right now. So let’s figure out how to escape from this building and get started in our renewed lives, shall we?”

I was about to agree with him, but before I could speak, an alarm went off over our heads, its volume paralyzing. A second later, the main double doors to the space in which we stood crashed open, followed by the coordinated noise of a number of things making a solid clicking sound.

We unfroze at the same time, and turned toward the doors, only to find ourselves looking at the barrels of seven or eight rifles…pointing directly at our heads.