Valentine's Past

In some part of London, none of them could tell exactly where, a trio of oddly dressed individuals stood waiting beside a fountain. Around them, silver skyscrapers reached like tendrils into the sky, though were nothing compared to what the group were used to; in 2077, the year they came from, the towers were twice as tall and ten times as numerous, appearing from miles away like giant blades of grass across the steely grey horizon. Not that many people in 2077 knew what grass looked like.

Here, though, in 2018, the trio found everything to be just a little more primitive than they were accustomed to; trees and bushes grew wild on the sidewalks, disrupting the usual grey of the architecture, and roads were still outlined with unprotected walkways for pedestrians. After living with the rigidly standardised roads developed in the early 2060s, which ensured nobody without significant determination could even reach a road in use, the open design of the 2018 roads seemed almost barbaric. The group had nearly walked in front of at least three cars already, despite only crossing two roads.

“You sure you got us to the right time?” Jess asked with her arms folded, sneering at a stranger as they passed by. It was to her undisguised disgust that, not only were the roads old-fashioned in 2018, but people were still wearing those horrific cotton jackets they showed in the old photos.

“I am certain, Jess,” Henry assured, checking his watch with poorly hidden anxiety nonetheless. He sat with a huff on the side of the fountain, his huge figure only exaggerated by his padded silver pea coat, which glittered even in the miserable overcast light and couldn’t comfortably button up over his sturdy chest. “I know how to use a time machine,” he said, either reassuring Jess or himself. “This was when they sent him, he will arrive any moment.”

Of course, the ‘he’ Henry was referring to was the trio’s leader, Jake Richards. In the few days he had been gone, taken into the custody of the law, time had dragged agonisingly for the group. Without Jake, the three were left without an icon. The role of leader had been passed down, unspoken, to Nic, not because he was most worthy of the role but more accurately because both Jess and Henry were entirely unworthy of it.

“We’ll get him back,” Nic muttered to himself, leaning on a nearby lamppost with his hands in his pockets. “Once he’s leading us again, Jake’ll know just how to get us out of this mess.”

Even after everything, Jake and his group were all that mattered.

Jake Richards had been a genius, one which had the brave disposition and heroic determination to lead a brilliant group called the Advocates to a long-awaited revolution. At the fresh age of sixteen he joined the group, sure that he might make a difference. Jake became an official symbol of rebellion by the time he was seventeen, and had become a household name by eighteen. At nineteen, Jake had a plan, and at twenty his plan failed.

2077 was the year that saw the Advocates break as Jake was arrested, taken away before his punishment could be decided. Despite a loud minority of the public claiming that he was misunderstood, it was ruled within days that he would be executed; such outright aggression against the system and public displays of rebellion could only be punished in one way.

Executions were a rare punishment, expensive and covered by the media at every occurence. The process involved not killing the criminal, but tearing their memories from their minds and sending them stranded, alone, into the past. Upon introduction, the punishment was advertised as more humane than the death penalty. Jake didn’t quite agree as he was strapped into the machine which would execute him, taking his last breaths before his own identity was stripped away.

It had been a relief when the trio of loyal Advocates, Jess, Henry and Nic, had appeared. Across the country, eyes lit up as the breakout was broadcast to their screens. The event was a high octane mixture of emotions, like a long-awaited sports game. Spirits rose as the Advocates tried to break their leader out of the clutches of the machine ready to execute him, and tension heightened as Timekeepers arrived to stop the break-out. Jess, in the process of controlling the audience sat in rows to watch Jake be disposed of, had paused at one point to wave gleefully at the cameras, her twinkling gold coat billowing theatrically behind her. Viewers of the execution would thoughtlessly cheer for the criminals’ arrests, simultaneously joyful as they knocked misbehaving bystanders to the ground with endearing roguishness. Emotions and values overlapped and contradicted one another like some well-rehearsed internal ritual, shared across millions of viewers at once. When the Advocates failed and Jake was executed, only earlier than was originally arranged, viewers simply moved onto the next show with the same half-empty feeling they had grown accustomed to.

With no more cameras for moral support, the three Advocates had few places to turn; Timekeeper surrounded them, a conflict the Advocates weren’t quite armed enough to handle. The three were on course to be shot or, if they were fortunate, arrested, until Nic formed a plan either through his own brilliance or through plain desperation.

At Nic’s frantic command, Henry began tapping numbers into the time machine, clicking through menus neither Nic or Jess could attempt to decipher and sweating as the fate of the group crushed down on him. As Timekeepers burst through the doors, gun at the ready, the trio leapt without hesitation into the contraption which had executed Jake only moments before.

Now, the three were waiting. Tired, lost and ready for the entire ordeal to end, they hoped with every passing second that Jake might just appear with all the answers to their predicament. As the minutes passed and the crowds bustled and shoved all around them, the Advocates felt exponentially more helpless.

“Even if we’re here at the right time, are you sure this is the right place? How can you know this is where they sent him?” Jess said, shifting her position for the fifth time in a row..

“Must you keep fidgeting, Jess?” Henry sighed, nervously wiping his glasses on his jacket. “I checked the coordinates, and this is where they sent Jake. Just settle down, you are only stressing me out.”

Grudgingly, with a violent puff and nasty glare, Jess crossed her legs and placed her hands neatly in her lap.

Nic, rubbing at his eye, left his post to rejoin the pair, pushing through the thickening crowd which flowed more and more heavily as workers shoved their way home after a long day. To the Advocates, they were barely human.

“Look at you two,” Nic said, finally joining them in sitting down. “Both sparkling like a couple of stars.”

Suddenly in a harsh whisper, Nic leaned into the pair like an impatient parent; “You couldn’t have worn anything less flashy, could you?” he scolded, having noticed countless odd glances in their direction in the time they had been waiting. “Can’t you take your coats off, put them in your bags? The last thing we need is to stand out.”

“It’s cold, so I’m keeping mine on,” snapped Jess through pursed lips, scowling at the ground. “How were we supposed to know to wear different coats, anyway? You think we expected to be in 2008 today?”

“2018,” Henry interjected.

“What?”

“We are in 2018, not 2008,” he said, checking his watch again.

“Whatever.”

Jess hunched over a little, her arms folded, feeling trapped between the two men and oppressed by the crowds which sealed her from free movement.

“Henry, you have any idea how we can get back to 2077 once we’ve got Jake back?” Nic sighed, trying above all to distract himself from the impatience Jess had infected him with.

“How would I know? I got us here because you told me to, all the planning is supposed to be your job!”

“Okay, okay,” Nic hushed, wary of passing strangers and regretting ever opening his mouth. “Can we just keep it down?”

For a relieving moment, both Henry and Jess obeyed. Then, Henry checked his watch again.

“The funny thing about time,” Jess pondered, “is that it doesn’t speed up depending on how many times you look at your damn watch.”

“I just want to keep track of the time.”

“Keep track? You might as well be counting the seconds with how many times I’ve seen you look at that thing.”

Henry, unable or unwilling to remain calm, twisted to speak directly into Jess’ face.

“If it is bothering you so much that I am concerned about the situation, then-”

“You’re concerned now? Weren’t you the one explaining how everything’s just fine a moment ago?”

Nic, wincing as the pair tumbled out of his grasp, slid to sit a further few feet away from them.

“Everything is fine,” Henry pointed out through gritted teeth. “I am simply making sure it stays that way.”

“Staring at the time’s gonna get Jake back, is it?”

“That is not what I said-”

“So why keep doing it?”

Listening to the pair was making Nic’s splitting headache more severe by the second. The thirty minutes they had been waiting seemed to drag into hours, with the setting of the sun somehow adding to the uncomfortable urgency.

As Nic massaged at his forehead, Jess and Henry stood up, appearing prepared to strangle each other that very moment.

“What do you provide, Jess?” Henry prodded, towering nearly two feet taller than her and easily twice as wide. “Because so far, I feel Jake might have a better chance at getting home if you’d stayed behind!”

“I provide some damn loyalty! D’you really think I’d stay back like a traitor, leave Jake under your care?”

Somehow, Jess seemed to swell to equal Henry in size.

“Oh, I know you would never betray Jake; you are too stupid and too shortsighted to even consider taking such independent action.”

“Rounding you and Nic up, convincing you both to rescue Jake, that wasn’t independent enough for you? Speaking of, where’s Nic got to…” she trailed off.

“Just here,” Nic groaned from his seat, fearful for a moment that he might be dragged into the dispute; to his brief relief, they simply continued without him.

“Maybe you are loyal, but even Jake might not value that so highly once you are incessantly, endlessly complaining in his ear as you have been to me!”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that; once Jake’s back and he shoots you in you in your pompous mouth, I’ll have nothing left to complain about, you oversized, pretentious moron!”

“Now you are resorting to petty insults? How predictable, Jess, I truly thought you might not be such a child after everything-”

Perhaps the pair would have continued as such for minutes or hours more, and Nic would have only sat and struggled internally until given tangible reason to interject, had the noise from the fountain not interrupted them.

As Jess had opened her mouth again, indignant at being patronised and prepared to spout every insult on her mind, the air around the fountain seemed to ripple, warping the sounds almost as if inverting them completely. The sound brushed through the bustling crowd like an invisible tidal wave, barely strong enough to make one or two distracted men in suits stumble. Jess and Henry saw, only partly in their peripheral vision, when all the light near the centre of the fountain disappeared, leaving something of a void in which only darkness was visible.

Within a second, the heavy wave of sound dissipated into the air as rapidly as it had first begun and the floating patch of pure blackness faded back into obscurity, though not before something tumbled out of it; flailing its limbs as if covered in unseen flames, the heavy figure splashed violently into the shallow water of the fountain before Nic even had time to stand and turn to see the commotion.

For a fleeting moment, the figure laid on its front, so still under the misty surface of the water that the Advocates thought they might be dead. Only the figure’s plain white shirt and bright orange trousers moved, drifting peacefully in the gentle flow of the water as a few curious strangers slowed to frown at the figure as if they were breaking some strict social code.

Slowly, shivering and gripping himself as if aching all over, the figure clambered to stand up, leaning unsteadily on the side of the fountain the whole way.

The Advocates watched in uncertain silence as the figure brushed his overgrown, dripping hair from his face; finally, after what felt like years, they were face to face with Jake once again.

Jake brushed himself off, soaked in untrustworthy water, and glanced shyly at the strangers staring at him as they passed. It was a long moment before he noticed the Advocates standing in silence, noticing his every move; he glared at them one by one, opening his mouth to say something numerous times. As many times as he came close, Jake never said a word. Instead, after staring at the Advocates without a hint of recognition for an uncomfortable number of seconds, he swiftly turned his back on them and stepped firmly out of the fountain onto the dry concrete. Craning his neck to peer up with his mouth agape at the towers around him, Jake stumbled off into the crowd without so much as another acknowledgement of the Advocates existence.

Speechless, the three frowned with equal disbelief at each other. With little to discuss, and not a moment to spare in debate, the trio tumbled after Jake as if he were a child meandering into a road.