Twisted Time

9 - Mind-map

La Rose rest area, 00:17

Back in the car, Dan doesn't waste time, aware the break offers her an opportunity to order her thoughts. She pulls her laptop out of its bag, her trusted electronic brain extension. The screen still shows the last slide of her presentation, the university logo spinning in an eternal, useless loop. She clicks it away in a flare of remembered anger and opens a new document. Typing is awkward with the laptop poised on the steering wheel, but she spells out a few keywords.

Ric—laboratory—future—time travel

This won't work, the complexity of the situation can't be visualised in a two-dimensional text. Some things are better understandable written out in the old-fashioned way, on a sheet of paper. There should be an old notebook and a ball-pen in the glove compartment.

A smile steals across her face as she retrieves the items. The notebook contains shopping lists and illegible phone numbers of forgotten business contacts and past friends. She scrolls to a blank page and scrawls time travel in the centre. Of course, the pen runs out of ink in the middle of the second word and leaves pressure marks instead of the last couple of characters. Murphy's law. The blasted pen must have been in the car for eternity.

All tapping, breathing on the tip and writing onto her palm can't revive it. Frustrated, Dan searches the glove box again. I know there is another pen somewhere...

A distant whine interrupts her. She looks up, the fine hairs in her neck standing to attention. The parking lot is as empty as before. Where did the weird noise come from? It sounded like a crying child—but what would a kid do alone on a rest area after midnight?
Dan wraps her arms around herself, her skin covered with goosebumps, her heart racing in the aftermath of remembered ghost stories. It was an owl or something. A nocturnal animal. No reason to get spooked.

Reluctant, she takes up the search, listening with half an ear for a repetition of the wail. But aside from the rain, all remains quiet.

Beneath her insurance papers, she finds a simple, red pencil. Its end is chewed into a frayed mass of wood, and the point is broken. Dan fishes her keys from her purse. On the keyring, she carries a small penknife. The miniature version of a Swiss Army knife is fitted with a blade, a nail file, and tiny scissors. Impatient, she sharpens her pencil with trembling hands, listening for eerie sounds and wondering how long it will be to the next location shift. To her surprise, she longs for Ric's company,

As soon as the pencil has a crooked but useable tip, Dan brushes the shavings from her thigh and scribbles Ric's name in the middle of the page. Everything else popping up in her mind gets noted around the first word. With a generous amount of arrows, underlines, and exclamation marks, she tries to imply order onto her chaos of notes.

But her mind is not focused on the task. Despite her goal to separate important from unimportant stuff and structure her thoughts, the page soon resembles a child's try at drawing a hurricane. The writing is rendered ineligible by dozens of lines and circles. She tears the page out of the notebook, crumples it into a ball, and throws it into the back of the car. I need a systematic approach. Concentrate.

A few minutes of writing and drawing later, Dan leans back, admiring her work. While she stares at the notebook resting on the steering wheel, she recapitulates her conclusions.

Someone—with a high probability it wasn't Ric—brought her into the future. There, Ric took her for his missing partner and recruited her for his illegal data search. When he realised his mistake, he checked her for an hourglass-tattoo on her forearm. Only then he asked for her identity. And when she told him her birth-year, he made a fuss.

That's where things got weird. As soon as Ric learned my name, the quarrel about the birth-year was forgotten. As if a century more or less wouldn't matter anymore.

Dan is about to start a new page when the whining disrupts the silence. It is louder now the drumming of the rain on the car roof has softened. She quints her eyes and tries to penetrate the gloom at the parking's edges. The area she can make out through the wet windows is deserted. Her car is surrounded by a safe circle of empty, illuminated tarmac. Only at the fringes of the lot, the shadows of the trees dance over the wet pavement. Has she imagined the strange noise? This is creepy. I wish the shift would bring me out of here.

Tension and fear let her stomach writhe in the grip of angry claws. To Dan, the seconds last eternities, but nothing changes and the night is quiet again. The sound of the soft rain eases her tension, and after a while, her thoughts wander back to Ric. She would love to know why he is in awe of Doctor Lent, as he insists on calling her. And what about that autobiography? I'm sure he confuses me with someone else.

The only other explanation sends an icy finger tracing her spine, adding to the discomfort of the cold. Great, now I'm more than spooked. What if Ric talked about events in my personal future? He mentioned 2081 as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Another thought surfaces from the cauldron of her worries. Why should people in the twenty-second century remember Doctor Danielle Lent? I'm a nobody with financial problems.

Dan's mind is a whirlwind of confused thoughts. She stares at her notes and scribbles, reluctant to believe she may become famous enough to be remembered for a century. So far, she left close to zero scientific impact with her few online articles. To develop durable and UV-resistant polymer surfaces was not a subject important enough to launch a stellar career. Not even interesting enough to guarantee us funding. And definitely not important enough to catapult my unwritten autobiography to the bestseller list. Or to justify my kidnapping into another century.

She sighs, aware she missed something important, and checks her watch. It's almost half-past twelve. If her drive would have gone as planned, she'd be in bed, snug and warm, and without her current problems. Instead, she sits here waiting to be beamed into the future.

With a heartfelt curse, Dan reaches for the ignition, tempted to leave the whole whacky situation behind in a gust of exhaust fumes. But before she turns the key, she stops. I was lucky I didn't cause an accident yet. There's nothing but sitting tight and wait for Ric to help me sort this mess. Just hope the guy is trustworthy.

Uncalled for, a picture of his tousled hair and brown eyes pops up. To Dan's chagrin, she finds him attractive. He might shave more often, but his smile is gorgeous, and he is about my age...

She calls herself to reason, and in a burst of anger, she tears the page with her notes out of the book. But before she can crumple the useless bit of paper, the eerie whine cuts through the darkness, louder than before, longer, sending a jolt of fear through her tense body.

Squinting her eyes, Dan cranes her neck, trying to find out from where the sound comes—impossible to tell. Then she catches the movement by the trees straight ahead, where the rubbish bins are. A distorted shadow, flitting from left to right and back. A man? It might be on the small side but moves too fast to tell for sure.

With shaking fingers, Dan fumbles for the ignition key while the flickering and fading lights of the parking lot swallow the apparition.