TIME & TIED: ESCALATION

ARC 2.3 - To the Past

PART 40b: REPARATIONS 2

“A demonstration is going to be a problem," Luci said. She turned, tossing aside a screwdriver. "Because even though we’re finally done here, I can't see the machine holding up for more than two, maybe three time trips.”

Everyone’s gazes shifted over to where she and Frank had been working.

"I'm forced to agree," Frank said with a sigh. “Meaning there and back. Besides, we don’t have enough coins from the present year to waste on demonstrations anyway. You’ll simply have to take our word for it, Corry.”

"How convenient," Corry observed, rolling his eyes.

"So you... you can't prove it to us?” Laurie asked quietly. Her gaze was pleading, but Frank and Luci shook their heads.

"Well then," Corry concluded, pushing himself away from the wall. "Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate in a potentially lethal trip, chasing after my bitter rival. Does the phrase lose-lose situation mean anything to you?"

"Look, there is a better way to put this," Frank insisted. He paused. "I just... don't know what that is."

"It doesn't matter,” Chartreuse shouted. She reached out to seize Laurie's hands. "You believe everything that we've been saying, right? You'll help save Julie and Carrie no matter what Corry thinks?"

Corry grimaced, but he held his tongue, wondering what his sister would say. Laurie opened and closed her mouth a few times before actually speaking.

"I... I want to," she said at last. "I really do. But..." Her gaze slipped away from Chartreuse and down to the floor. “This whole thing is getting more crazy and more serious, and I didn't think it would be exactly like this, and Chartreuse, I... I'm scared."

"But it won't be, you know, so bad,” Chartreuse said, desperately. "I mean, Clarke would be along, and you like him, and he can make sure nothing real bad happens."

Corry moved to put an arm around his sister's shoulders, at the same time firing an angry glare at Chartreuse. "Sis, don't let anyone pressure you into doing something you don't want to," he soothed.

Laurie lifted her gaze back up to look at her brother, then she turned to regard everyone else in the room. She bit down hard on her lower lip, the conflicting emotions inside of her evident in the changing expressions on her face.

"Come on now, why don't we go home and put this whole sorry affair behind us,” Corry suggested.

For a moment, there was silence. And when Laurie finally opened her mouth to reply, a new voice broke in instead.

***

"G-G-G-Guys,” stammered Tim.

Frank turned as he heard blonde boy nearly fall in his haste to get down the basement stairway. “Tim?”

Tim didn’t seem to hear him. "Is C-C-C-Corry s-still here?” Tim called out desperately. “I've g-g-g-got s-something s-s-so important!"

Clarke moved to his friend's side, at the bottom of the stairs. "Hold on now, Tim," he said calmly. "Everyone's here, including Corry. Don't stress yourself out. Take a few deep breaths, then tell us what's happened."

Tim blinked up at Clarke, then nodded and did as he suggested before looking out at all of the others in the room. He held up what looked like an old envelope. "It's this m-message... it was l-left with my father's l-law firm, sixteen years ago. I'm l-late today because he had been told to g-give it to m-me this morning... and it's f-f-for you.” Tim concluded, bowing forwards slightly as he held the sealed envelope out towards Corry.

The redheaded boy blinked in surprise. He glanced around the room, Frank noting how everyone else was basically as taken aback by this new development as he was. Snatching the envelope from the smaller boy, Corry turned it around suspiciously in his hands.

It looked to be a perfectly normal envelope, with 'Corry Veniti' written on the front. But then Corry’s grip tightened. “This is my handwriting,” he realized.

“Wait, Tim, you got this message through your father's law firm years ago - when exactly was this left with them?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “It actually came with some message from my Uncle Hubert, probably to appease my dad. Corry’s envelope there was inside a larger envelope for me. With a note saying to b-bring it here.” He shook his head. “That’s all I’ve got."

“So we wrote ourselves a letter, telling us how to deal with the current situation,” Chartreuse said.

"Hmmm... there is some logic in that," Luci agreed. "After all, we now have a working machine, which reopens the free will debate. And if the only trip we’ll be taking is to get Julie, paying someone in Tim’s family to send a delayed letter would be the best way to communicate with ourselves now. I think I even saw this on a TV show once..."

"But then why address it to Corry?" Clarke objected.

“Maybe we’ll know when he opens it,” Laurie proposed. She looked over to her brother. He sighed, then ripped open the envelope, pulling out a whole stack of paper. The redhead’s eyes widened as he scanned over the top sheet of handwritten information.

"This is... impossible..." he muttered. "It has to be trick.” Corry’s gaze snapped back up. "How the hell did you all pull this off?"

"Pull what off?" Frank asked.

Laurie shifted position slightly so that she could see the pages over Corry's shoulder.

“Well then,” Laurie murmured as she scanned across the page. "Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate..." Laurie stopped and looked back up. "The words written here are the same as what Corry said earlier,” she said in surprise.

"It's what everyone said," Corry corrected, having flipped to a later page. His face had taken on a slightly paler shade than usual. "It's a transcript, which includes Laurie's fears, word for word... and what I'm saying right now...?!"

"Oh, neat. So how will our conversation end?" Chartreuse asked.

"I don't know, it stops at what you said," Corry answered through clenched teeth. Throwing the sheets aside, he reached out for Tim, grabbing hold of his shirt. "How did you do that?" Corry demanded. “Have you been upstairs listening in, did you learn to forge my handwriting?"

Tim let out a strangled gasp. "N-No, I-I-I-I-I--"

Clarke got a firm grip on the redhead’s arm. "Corry, I suggest you let Tim go. Now. Whatever is going on, it's not his doing."

"Besides, even if Tim was listening, how could he write out a conversation still in progress?" Luci pointed out.

"How could anyone write anything so precise?" Frank added, thoroughly confused. “I’m not recording down here, and it's not like we could have time traveled back to plant listening devices... uh oh, do you think the government has found out about us?"

Having released his hold on Tim, Corry now turned to Frank. "You mean you really don't know how that could have been recorded?" he marvelled. Frank shook his head.

Corry stared at him for another long moment before reaching into his own pocket. He walked over to the lab bench, slapping down a device. A miniature recorder. For a moment, no one was quite sure what to say.

Laurie spoke first. “So, um, hold on," she said. "Corry, you mean YOU recorded this whole conversation, in order to use it to convince yourself that everything being said was true, even though you don't really think the conversation is true and you didn't think that when you started recording it either?” She frowned. “My head feels funny.”

"Look, I was recording everything because I thought I'd better have an account of what really happened, in case someone here tried to claim otherwise," Corry stated. “Standard procedure for me. Why a transcript should appear in a letter that claims to be over sixteen years old, I have no idea."

"I d-do," Tim said, having stooped down to retrieve the pages Corry had thrown aside. He held up the final sheet, tapping at it. “Did you r-read this at all, Corry?”

Corry snatched the page back from him, scanning it over. His grip tightened, and his face went almost white. Laurie again crept in to read over her brother’s shoulder, Chartreuse also joining her friend.

"Now that I have your attention, I have a proposition to make," Chartreuse read aloud, for the benefit of everyone. "Namely that I, Corry Veniti, take the place of my sister on the trip. Not only to, like, ensure her safety in the present, but also the safety of Frank and Clarke in the past - based on what I know of Julie. Based on how she, you know, acted that one January, our first year of high school." She tilted her head. “Corry, what did Julie do then?”

When Corry didn’t respond, Laurie continued to read. “That said,” Laurie murmured, “Feel free to exert free will and disregard this suggestion. All I ask is that I, Corry Veniti, now write it and send it back sixteen years in order to preserve the timeline."

Corry slowly walked back to the lab bench, placing the page down next to his recording device. He leaned in against the edge of the table, lost in thought. Luci opened her mouth to say something, but Laurie held up a finger, shaking her head as she looked at her brother.

“Frank,” Corry said at last. “Did Julie go back in time with the express intention of killing herself?”

Frank flinched. “How could you have known that?”

Corry didn’t immediately respond, staring back down, re-reading the passage over and over. Finally, he turned.

"Okay," he said slowly. “Okay, if this were to hypothetically persuade me that you're not outright lying, and furthermore convince me that I should, in fact, join you in your efforts... can you please guarantee to me that time travel won’t devise anything this CREEPY for me ever again?"

"I wish I could," Frank sighed. "Believe me, I really, really wish I could."

Corry raked his fingers back through his hair. “Damn.” He glanced at his sister. “But fine. When do we leave to save Julie?”