ONE

She gazed down at the stars. No matter how many times they prepared to shift the time circles, this was the part she loved the most. The weightless metos sphere, the translucent walls of the craft that enabled her to feel as though she levitated among the planets.The surreal rush was almost a piercing euphoric joy. As she lay encased in a clear gel her body was protected during the violent transition of time displacement. Her mind went over the science of turning a dial to overlap at the exact moment needed to correct a time fissure. The trajectory had to be better than infinitesimally milliseconds precise.

TJ the small orb had new power cells and was ready to go. “Are you at hand?” She smiled from the inside out. She glanced at her reflection in TJ’s ” reflective surface.

If one were to observe the process, it appeared analogous to one green congealed puddle of liquid suspended midair (representing the forward propulsion of the shift), magnetically keeping at arm’s length another purple translucent sphere of purple congealed liquid and when the shift begin the purple would be engulfed by the green to move forward through time and vice versa depending on the place, point and time in the universe one wished to visit.

It was so much more complicated than a swirl of color before her eyes. Countless lives depended on the accuracy of each shift.

The orb whirred and hummed making the classic “TJ, TJ, TJ” soft purring noise before docking in its cradle. The quantum metronome could not be affected by interplanetary gravitational pull or passing meteor showers, miscalculation was not on the table. This was the gig. Locate the p.o.i., a fissure could only be stopped at the exact inception point of the disruption.

The mission was always constant and unwavering.

Two steps: Discovery and Effacement.

Objective: Protect the timeline and prevent undulation at all cost.

“How did I land such a propitious life?” she mused.

Millennia ago, on Earth, Ms.Laura’s hand had slipped as the glass tumbled to the floor. She had been enjoying lemonade on the hottest day yet the south had seen in any August in 1865 that she could remember. Something was glimmering in the sun in the distance. She had leaned forward squinting to see what was dancing in the light. As a shocked Ms.Laura fell forward from her rocking chair all eighty-nine years of her life flashed before her eyes. One thing remained firm in her mind, that which was undisclosed must remain confidential. The sound of glass shattering echoed through the open windows and almost seemed to stroll into the large main house.

There would be no way for Christopher to know, far off in the lower field of the plantation what had happened to his grandmother some 15 miles away in the main house. He wiped his sweat with the back of his gloved hand. In the hot sun, the leather seemed to smell as if it would ignite at any second. The only gentleman of an aristocratic class in all of the hundred thirty-three year old state of Georgia who was known to work alongside the field hands while simultaneously holding a respected and coveted position in southern society. This man was tenacious to say the least, and that it was when he was sweating that he thrived, the most.

He paused smiling, reveling in the fact he may have succeeded in winning over the one woman who challenged him. She was a brilliant, unmatched beauty who had studied abroad and recently returned to work alongside Ms. Laura as the new headmistress for one of her institutes for education.

He went as far as to laugh to himself as he thought of her hands in delicate white gloves, her demure brown eyes sparkling behind the porcelain mask he had bestowed upon her for last week’s bal masque.

Her dress arrived from London perfectly sculpted to her measurements. It modestly revealed her curvaceous shape without a stitch of skin exposed, this dress inadvertently made her the belle of the ball. He understandably and quite selfishly never wanted another man to look upon her. He could feel the warmth of the kiss he had stolen from her lips. He removed a glove and touched his lips letting out an almost childish yelp of joy.

“Woo!”

From the corner of his eye he could see a large dark figure rushing toward him. Instinctively his body took over. The man was sailing through the air in an instant, and with a heavy thud his body slammed into the freshly tilled dirt. Christopher at twenty years of age, was well trained, well educated and unusually strong. This made him effortlessly deadly.

The large black man sprang back up blocking the next blow,

“Hey! It’s me! It’s Matt! It’s Ms.Laura, come with me!”

As his mind processed the words his hand loosened the grip on Matthew’s massive forearm, offering him the familiar hand of friendship. The look of “-mea culpa” flashed across his attractive squared face. He started out ahead of Matt, gaining speed as he went towards his horse and in seconds he was on his cliche thoroughbred stallion.

Matt shook his head and smirked as he kept up with him with ease all the way to the house. Matt was the only one who could out ride him.

Moments later he was running up the stairs, swinging the door open….concurrently he could smell her opening the parlor door (“fresh lilies”, his mind whispered) rushing to meet him at Ms. Laura’s side.

He nodded at Pleshette the woman who filled his heart with fragrance.

“Grandmother,” he started, with a twinge of pain his green eyes started becoming red and glossy,

“I will get the doctor”

As quickly as he had appeared his broad V shaped back was being swallowed by the doorway. Pleshette sprang into action. Matthew her younger brother at twenty six years of age, had effortlessly and gently lifted the fading woman as if it were their own mother, onto a cool lounge in the parlor. Pleshette was helping her to sip water gently tilting her head.

“Pleshette….” In a dissipating tone,

“Don’t speak, please try to rest Ms.Laura”

“It must be kept…” Ms.Laura’s eyes glared with importance.

“I understand” replied Pleshette with calming conviction.

“Please rest assured Ms. Laura.”

She squeezed the fragile woman’s hand. It gave her great pain to see this magnanimous woman suffering. Her eyes never once betrayed the fear and pain hiding behind her kind smile.

She was much more than a mentor to Pleshette, it was almost as if she were born into the Pattershaw family. Long ago when Ms. Laura was just a child she and Pleshette’s own grandmother Monae, had played together as the South’s first foundations were being poured. The story is quite remarkable.

Lord Pattershaw was rather wealthy but unlike others of his status, he miraculously had a commiseration to humans outside his class. He had been known in England to respectfully address everyone from the butcher, the baker, to also the candlestick maker.

Once, it seemed in another world, his wife happened upon a mother being separated from her child at a slave auction in London. Knowing the loss of their own stillborn children continued to plague his wife, when he heard his beloved gasp he immediately inquired of the small child currently being discarded as an object of little value as her mother was dragged off to serve as entertainment for the highest bidder. To determine the mother would clearly be useful for breeding, her clothes were torn from her body revealing she was yet nursing.

The once revered queen refused to weep as milk leaked from her breast like tears escaping the horror of what was happening to this noble woman. He witnessed the surreal scene. Others with sable skin like a moonless night were retained in fetters yet regardless of tribe, they fell to the ground, in a solitary act of unified obeisance before the unveiled, revered queen who had been insolently displayed in chains. Lord Pattershaw also stood in silence.

“Min fadlik, La neexee”

Pattershaw heard her plead in Arabic and some other unrecognized tongue as she was dragged away from her eighteen-month, old daughter, she was a queen sentenced to inhumane servitude who had been found guilty of not speaking English, or having an ivory complexion.

Crying out with her hands outstretched,

“Min fadlik, La neexee”

Some moments echo through time, transcendent of the actual seconds. These junctures stand outside the realm of what is status quo, and what is undeniably de facto. He watched the following scene unfold as several of her subjects in chains attempted to break free to save their queen while all others still remained unified in silence.

“Min fadlik, La neexee” echoed through the air.

“Dearest please, quickly to the carriage.” He sent his butler off with his wife with the wave of a hand. He rushed after a man drawing a sword holding the child by the ankle. With one hand Lord Pattershaw disarmed the man and grabbed the child. With the other, a fist laid the man unconsciously in a bed of roses blanketed with a few hundred pounds.

The men in chains, tired and emaciated from the interminable journey had mustered the strength to fight. Infused by the sorrowful echo of this queen, somehow chains and fetters became weapons and hands that were shackled became hands that were freed. Many were wounded and fifteen died that day. Several men and women were beaten without humanity with the butt of muskets and then further tortured for the revolt. The chaos insured British women were no longer permitted in the business of men at slave auctions.

Despite his best efforts that day, he was not able to procure the child’s mother. He returned home to comfort his wife by placing a brown skin baby girl with huge droplets of water rolling down her cheeks into her arms.

“Thank you my love”, smiled Lady Pattershaw.

Ms.Laura well knew the story of her brown-skinned older sister. Her family among the first to settle in the south, and had decided to give their unconventional daughter a life far away from the scornful eyes of the European slave trade. Although they agreed to give her the best and raise Monae with the dignity thousands of Africans had once given her mother they could not have known something much more sinister than slavery was on the horizon.

Lord Pattershaw often called Laura his “Shining Lilly” which was followed by “And how is my little sun kissed princess today?”.

Ms. Laura, deep in slumber, dreamed of a time where two sisters who could distinguish no race danced among spring flowers.

The thousand acre plantation was the only one of its kind in the south, where all the workers were those who always had agreed to work for a wage, even long before the abolishment of slavery. Men and women, regardless of race, who lost everything to the cruel grip of slavery, or indentured servitude found solace on the Pattershaw Plantation. This place formed protective hedge from the reconstruction that ensued around them. Lord Pattershaw was among the six most wealthy families who solidified the monopoly in southern life. Her father made it his aim to offer each person an opportunity to earn wages along with the hope to rebuild a life in a new world.