It's Time

In my mind’s eye I see him, feel vibrations of panic and hear him crying out to God as aging knees become weak from reading my letter.

“Oh father, don't despair”. I’ll return. I know he knows I'm no safer here in the wreckage of the streets than waiting for him to come from Scavenging. I’d combusted into action when he left that afternoon from suppressed, unadulterated emotions of the previous day. I cannot wait, be the porcelain doll he wants, even needs me to be, waiting in that too lonely apartment. Basically waiting to be warped into time. Timed Zones popping up more than ever before, waiting was for the weakhearted.

Switching to my current reality, with swift movements, I dodged out of sight. Escaping possible capture from people deemed as “Vultures” on Social. I won’t demonize them as Streamers try to. Hell, even father goes to others abandoned businesses, rummaging for left behind goods since the shutdown of the Free Market.

Vultures are… different; aiming to jack or hold hostages as a means of survival. I clutch my locket that’s tucked out of sight. They skipped past, dressed scantily, laughing and pushing each over closer to the Timed Zone. Taking their lives for granted. I dignified they were people, not gracious people. I sigh. The cold gold against my skin soothes my rampant nerves. I count to ten, three times taking deep breaths between breaks. I hadn't been outside in five years to the date, but I've been training for my time three years now, I won’t lose focus.

I looked up, ready to pray to the Heavens but Superficial Aurora Borealis reached my retina. I sneered, not at it but at my own forgetfulness. I’d forgotten we lost our privilege. As my head turns with disgust something bright caught my eye. It was a Timed Zone.

I cursed my subconscious for having me stationed here, mixed emotions poured through me. First elation, I reached my goal in record speed. Nostalgia followed because right at the edge of the glowing Timed Zone was Jr. my little brother and my mother. Finally, panicked horror as I watch my mother reaching for my brother just in time to witness them blow up.

Though I am in America year 2311, the scene before me is of 1972, in Vietnam when bombs were showered on what was called “foreign land”. There hadn't been a war in nearly 300 years. Some wise and brave people rallied together from each nation and changed the world outlook. Rich and poor class systems fell, nonexistent for 250 years because of the Free-market initiative in 2050. Free Transit on a global scale, stuff called money was annihilated and we have unity language.

Seeing the torment of my sweet brother, age nine at the time he was digested in the Timed Zone’s endless loops, skewered me. It's how mother went mad. Repeatedly watching him run for his red kickball. I was eleven when my brother and I had, not taking our parents warnings seriously, snuck out.

The flashbacks hit hard, leaving me panting in June’s heat. I can see Jr. gleefully running to get the ball that bounced off a nearby car and into the radioactive blob deemed Timed Zones. I ran for him, telling him, no! Yet he just kept running to get ahead of me, thinking I was chasing him as I had always done. Danger was far from his mind. I was three paces behind him, reaching. Then, father materialized out of thin air, just one pace behind Jr.

Instantaneously, in Timed Zone fashion, Jr.’s clothes morphed into that of a Vietnamese child in the 1970’s. He continued his gallop a few steps, giggles galore until he was blasted into many pieces when his foot landed on a landmine. I screamed, reaching for him. Suddenly my hand was met with a powerful smack. It shocked me. I'd never been hit. My horror was swallowed with surprise. I looked at my father who looked at his hand, as surprised as I. Then he turned to what little remained of Jr., burning remains on a rice farm. He grabbed me up, embracing me tightly as his body trembled, hollering and drooling. We cried like that for hours. Mother, in her own fashion didn’t come, not wanting the burden of knowing. So, dad picked me up, patting my head occasionally on the way home.

The Timed Zones are impenetrable from the inside and once inside the person loses memory of the outside world; the phenomenon scientist and our alien counterparts have been trying to study. The Social reported remembrance impossible years ago, but I dare you to change the mind of a broken heart.

There was nothing I could do to soothe my mother. Sometimes, I would catch her staring, looking past me really. A ghost of her once passionate self. I would have done anything to get my mother back. I needed her when everything truly crumbled. I made sure to do everything in my power but that did nothing.

Mother and many others have gone into Timed Zones willingly, going after loved ones. My mother had enough by the fifth year. I'm sure watching me grow with no Jr. brought her to writing a letter of goodbye. Father blanched reading, instructing me we had to go, with no explanation, before it was "too late". I scoffed, not knowing what was in that letter. I just knew time was not our friend. His displeasure radiated, unlike him, which made me obedient.

When we arrived, I saw nothing but knew. Because of my mother's obsession with this particular Zone we knew that in three months, five days at 5 p.m. was when we could see what we already knew but I failed to understand. We watched her enter the Zone, hollering. She disturbed the loop because instead of watching Junior gleefully run for the ball, he turns, still in motion, horrified at seeing mother. The recognition left mother's face three paces in, her body propelling towards Junior. Loops don't allow you to remember anything from the Now world, but her body remembered. Junior’s face lit with horror as, mother, a stranger to him now, reaches to grab him, to push him away from unseen danger. Mom is uniformed in American Soldier garb within this loop.

I turn my eyes from the glowing site, clutching my locket, resolving my heart, and mentally soothing father.

I shake off the horror, pacing myself, making another 1750 meters with no break. I sent a mental thanks to the 'walky 3000' at home. The wreckage and open crime reminding me what got us to this point, especially the missing artificial weather stimulator, created to cool off the overheated city our ancestors left us. I don't want to waste the charge of my climate suit to cool down, I have 140,000 kilometers to go, I can't be overzealous this early in the game.

After being sure of my surroundings, I take out my dropper, placing five drops of Amplified water on my tongue. I relish the liquid and push forward, another 250 kilometers to go to the next Timed Zone. Jogging, my body jerked, the amp water taking effect resetting my health. I took 10 units for my journey, just in case I needed exchange valuables. H2O, electrolytes, vitamins and antioxidants penetrate my system, quickening my pace and my foggy brain brightens. “Let’s give it up for our southern guest for helping nourish our Community”, I hear the announcer in my head crisply. A casual meeting of West and South continents plays in my mind as I press on, a celebration happening because of top leaders. The amp is massaging repressed cell memory, utilizing basic properties of water having memory to assist in restoring.

The beautiful human leader of the South and a gorgeous Syrian being, leader of the West shake. This was twenty-three years ago, the origin of time glitches. In what looked like a spontaneous Supernova with a radius of 1100 meters that turned the meeting into a literal cowboy western in a panicked blink of an eye. The event caught because of Brethren hovering, walking and partying as per tradition, and sharing on Social, all other recording destroyed in the blast.

One after another, Capitals would jump on Social to calm the masses and then were hit. Different scenes throughout time, displaying the sins of humanity in radioactive blobs, what we now call Timed Zones. The only capitals that were saved in time was those of the East. They were safe for two reasons: the Arcturians, another breed of aliens that share our planet, helped to heal all beings that asked. The land itself, too pure for the device to enter. Second Easterners were warned timely, being escorted from densely packed areas. Oh, and three I guess… the people there listened. Decades prior, Arcturians told humanity we had trauma to heal as an 'entity'. We would have to open our hearts and be One with the great Celestial: Gaia. We inhabit her and as she heals, we would have to heal with her or be left behind. The East accepted this truth but the entirety, not part, had to accept. The rest too slow to change paid dearly.

The Arcturian leader of the East came on the social days after the attacks, comforting the weary. He spoke in an inhumanly beautiful voice "Don't lose hope loved ones; pray, meditate, continue exercise. Justice will have it’s moment, don’t despair”. I held close to the that message, losing so much, his words a balm.

Though there was still trauma in my body I was contacted from that leader years later. I was in a meditation for hours, thinking of his words. In meditation I was guided to a location outside Earth, suspended in space, looking upon Gaia in all her glory.

I sat with him and he pointed to the nuclear blobs beyond the artificial Aurora Borealis and explained these are points in man's timeline unhealed and why Zones can show up no matter the historical place or time. The world wars, slave trade, Nanjing Massacre and assassinations all on repeat.

He went over the good points too, saying we were not a lost cause. Even speaking on the kindnesses, I committed. Confounded, a dumb expression surely on my face he told me that all is seen in the Astral. Explaining that when you travel it for so many years the colors of One’s aura is their language and that mine was beautiful.

Gaia’s many creations are going extinct rapidly, similarly to the 'Plastic Era' was his warning. He met with others like me in the Astral, giving them the same instructions as I. He bestowed me with a locket made of gold and told me when my heart was as pure as the gold around my neck that it will materialize in the physical world. I just needed to go through my traumas, then intuition and courage will lead me to him.

He believed in me; assuring Gaia and her children will be freed. “Linda", snapping me out of my stupor, no one calling me by name since Jr., "I look forward to our next encounter” he inclined in departure. I optimistically told my dad and knew it was a mistake when he called me a fool and forbade me. I forgave him though, understood, even. It’s why I had to do this on my own, my solitude my blanket since Jr.

I was drawn out of my mind just at the end of another Timed Zone. No transport across the ocean but at that point Fear was like my child. Constantly reassuring it I’d live. Humanity’s qualm with limitation didn’t rule me. I jumped in and set my mind on resetting humanity, meditating on our stages of healing, asking Gaia to continue being the Mother she always has been.