I’m Nine Again - Chapter 17 Midnigh

[19/01/2008 – 19:30]

I woke up hours later to a call coming through on my phone. I was lying down on the couch in the shooting range underneath the blanket. I must have fallen asleep with Alice. She would have woken up earlier and lay the blanket across me. I yawned as I reached into my pocket for my phone. It was 7:30 at night. That’s what the time on the phone showed, as well as an incoming video call from Alice.

“What’s up, where are you?” I said answering the call. Alice moved the camera around so I could see her face.

“Hey, I’m in the kitchen. Guess who we have on a video call?” she asked.

“Me,” I answered.

“No, idiot,” she said. She shifted the camera to face a laptop that had been set up on the dinning room table. On the screen was a video feed of Grey.

“Oh shit!” I said, “Grey!”

“Hey there buddy,” Grey said, “You look like you just woke up. . . Is that the shooting range?” he asked, “Why are you sleeping in the shooting range?”

“Ah,” I struggled to find the words, “No reason, hey, I’ll be up there in a second,” I said. Alice turned the camera back to her face.

“Hey, hurry up,” she said, “Harry cooked some curry and it’s actually really good!”

“You’re having dinner without me!?” I asked.

“You might want to make it snappy Sean,” Harry’s voice sounded from somewhere near the phone, “otherwise Alice might eat it all.”

I hung up the phone and stood up from the couch and stretched my arms out. Sleeping on the couch was horrible for my body. My shoulder muscles were aching. I walked out of the gun range and passed the training room. The doors automatically opening as I approached them. The smell of curry hit me as I walked into the lounge room. I looked up towards the elevated dining area to see Alice and Harry talking into the laptop. I made my way around and up the stairs to take my place at the table.

Alice turned to me and smiled politely before turning back to move the laptop screen to an area where we could all see it. She pushed over a bowl of curry toward me.

“Eat up,” she said with half a mouth full of food still in her mouth, “It’s really nice!”

“So, you’re our cook now?” I asked.

“That is part of my job description,” Harry answered, “I’m a very expensive cook.”

“Hey, buddy!” Grey’s voice came through the laptop.

“Hey Grey,” I said, “Where are you calling from?” I asked.

Grey laughed and looked around him as if he was looking to see if anyone was watching him.

“I can’t tell you that much,” he said, “But I am out of the country right now.”

Grey was rarely ever here. Even when we first arrived at the base five years ago, he was only there for a few days before taking off. He told us that he had a lot to accomplish and not much time to accomplish it. He usually kept in contact. A phone call every other week. Sometimes he would come home for a week or two before leaving again. He was like our father figure growing up. Even though Alice and I are both really adults, he treated us like his kids, and we took advantage of the opportunity and acted like kids from time to time. For most of the last five years, Alice and I were alone here together.

“Anyway,” Alice said, “I assume you’re calling us so you can give us some information about our mission?” she asked.

“Right you are Alice,” he said, “and Sean don’t you go getting on Harry’s nerves too much okay?” he asked. It was more of a demand.

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied.

“So,” Grey started, “What you guys know is what I’ve already told you, In four days you guys are going to be conducting an exfiltration mission for your next teammate so let me tell you a little more about her,” he cleared his throat and pressed a few buttons on his side.

His camera shrunk to the corner of the screen and a photo popped up on the screen of a woman in her late-twenties with dark brown hair and round glasses.

“This woman is Dr Julia Lysenko. She’s not a doctor in this divergent yet but in the original timeline, she is. She’s an aerospace software engineer who in the original timeline won multiple Russian military contracts. As I’m sure you have already seen, this morning the divergence detection machine will have identified a key divergence. That was her this morning being transported from the year 2015 into the body of this young girl.”

The photo’s on the screen changed and we were now looking at a young Asian girl with straight long black hair.

“AWE!” Alice said, “She is so cute!”

“Wait, traveling back in time can change your race!?” I asked.

“The only thing that gets transported is your mind,” Grey said, “You can get transported into any body regardless of race or gender. Trust me, where I’m from there are a lot of males who are transported into female bodies and vice versa.”

“How have you never told us this up until now?” I asked.

“Wait,” Alice said, “Does that mean Grey could actually be a woman?”

“Oh shit!” I said with sudden realization, “Grey are you a woman?”
for visiting.

“That’s for me to know and for you to not know,” Grey responded.

“Oh my god,” Alice said, “Grey is totally a woman!”

“Okay guys,” Grey said, “I’ll just confirm that I’m not a woman, but we really need to get back on track here.”

Both Alice and I apologized while laughing and trying to continue the joke for a moment before Grey cleared his throat. We both focused back on the screen.

“This girl is Mei Lui. As you could have guessed it’s no longer Mei inside this body and it is, in fact, our wonderful doctor Julia Lysenko. Now in the first divergent, Julia wasted no time in establishing her self and if our timelines match up, in three days she will be the youngest girl at the age of 12 to have a debate with another engineer at a forum in Melbourne. This is going to draw the attention of the Preservationists who are going to attack her in four days from now as she is having lunch with the same man she was debating the day before. Like your last encounter with the Preservationists, the New World Order will also be there trying to kidnap her. Now what happened in the last divergent was that she escaped with her parents into a back alley where she was in fact kidnapped by the New World Order and she was more than happy to work with them.”

Grey stopped for a moment to catch his breath.

“Your mission, first of all, is to intercept her and her parents as they leave the caf.”

A new image appeared on the screen. It was a map of the CBD of Melbourne. With pointers and markers all over it.

“Your job is to exfiltrate both her and her family by getting her safely to the Yarra River and hopping aboard a speed boat that will be waiting for you there. You will convince her to come with you by using her real name, Julia Lysenko, and her parents will be dropped off just by the beach near South Melbourne. Then you will continue on the speed boat, back around to St Kilda beach and exfiltrate by car which will be driven by none other than your friendly caretaker. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I thought Harry was supposed to stay here and look after the base?”

“Okay,” Grey said, “So the plan is, tomorrow you will all drive down to Melbourne. It’s about a 12-hour drive so have fun with that. When you guys are in Melbourne, Harry will get a plan back home and he will take care of matters here for the next two days until the mission. On the morning of the mission, he will get a plane back down to Melbourne and stand by for the mission.”

I turned to Harry who nodded at me.

“That’s a lot of effort!” I said.

“It’s merely what I am paid to do,” he said, “It’s not a problem for me.”

“What about the middle east?” Alice asked, “When you originally told us the bare-bones minimum about our first mission, you said that we’d be traveling to the middle east after we get our first team mate.”

“That’s still the case,” Grey said, “But I won’t give you any more information until you have Dr Lysenko under our protection. I will say this though, it’s imperative that you succeed in this mission because your mission to the middle east won’t be happening without Dr Lysenko.”

“I wish you would just tell us everything for once!” I said

“I wish I could mate,” Grey said, “But I’ve-.”

Alice finished Grey’s sentence, “You’ve got to protect the timeline so that it doesn’t shift too far from the original timeline.”

“That’s right,” he said.

We exchanged small conversation after the briefing and before long, Grey had hung up the call and we all finished up our dinner. Alice was right, the curry did taste really good. Grey took care of the cleaning up while Alice and I finished our last few games of pool. The final scores were close.

Alice 100. Sean 99.

Alice had told me one time that she used to spend a lot of time at the bars with her friends and that she was the pool champion among them. Now she could back up her claim to the title. After that we both prepared our bags for the next morning and went to bed.

*****

It was a little after midnight when I awoke to a presence standing in the darkness of my room. It gave me a fright, even though I couldn’t see it, I could feel it there.

“Sean?” Alice said, more asking if I could hear her.

“Alice?” I asked, “You scared the hell out of me,” I whispered.

She shut the door to the room which was still open and slowly walked over to my bed. I sat up and turned the lamp on to see her sit on the edge of my bed.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess I’m just a bit nervous. It’s going to be our first time back in Melbourne tomorrow. Our first time in five years.”

“I know,” I said, “It’s weird, but I haven’t been thinking of it like that. It’s like I almost forgot that Melbourne is where we first came into this life together.”

“Now that you’ve slept on it,” Alice said, “I just wanted to ask you again.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Am I still a priority for you?” she asked looking over at me.

I could feel my face turn red as the blood rushed to my cheeks and other places.

“Alice,” I said, “We’ve been with each other for so long.”

“We are two peas in a pod,” she said, “We’ve been together since the beginning. You have no idea how happy I was when I found you.”

“We were so lucky,” I said, “To have found each other like we did. What are the chances? That two time travellers would just happen to bump into each other?”

“Sean, when I found you, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. That there was someone in this world that I could relate to,” Alice said moving closer to me. She reached forward and grabbed my hand, “I was no longer struggling in the dark, with who I was, or what I was supposed to be doing. Where there was darkness was replaced with you.”

I squeezed her hand tightly and she pulled in close to me. We were now face to face with not much space between us

“Alice,” I said, “I know we aren’t supposed to stray too far from the original timeline with our actions, but right now I want to just ignore all of those rules.”

“Who said that Sean and Alice don’t get together in the original timeline?” Alice asked.

“We don’t know each other in the original timeline,” I said.

“Well what about the first divergent?” she asked.

“Grey never mentioned anything about us being involved with each other,” I said. It was like I was shooting myself in the foot. All of the words coming out of my mouth were self-sabotaging what I have been wanting for the last year or even more.

Alice leaned in even closer, our heads now touching. I could feel the rhythm of her breath as the air she breathed out blew softly across the bottom of my face. I could smell the hair product she used and even the fruity smell of perfume that she had on.

“Grey never mentioned anything about us,” she paused, “anything about us NOT being involved with each other.”

She leaned as close as she could as I opened my arms to embrace her as she pressed her lips against mine. At that moment I forgot about everything else in the world and lived, savored, reveled in this single moment.

I am glad that I was transported back in time. Everything was all worth it. Just to meet Alice.