Chapter 1
When the sky ripped open with a resounding crack, the first ship through the portal must have been the mother. Like a mammoth aircraft carrier painted black, it hovered, its obsidian hull exuding an unsettling heat that sent shimmering waves through the air. Smaller crafts followed, with blinking coloured lights, zigzagging through the sky like firelflies dancing in intricate patterns. Sylvan froze and looked up as did those around her. The city street had transformed into a theater of shared wonder and apprehension. Her own emotions mirrored those of the crowd: amazement at the surreal spectacle before them, and an undercurrent of fear, born from the unknown and the realization of humanity’s insignificance in the face of such an introduction.
The mothership's ominous roar reverberated moments before the first explosion, eliciting a chorus of screams and igniting waves of panic. Amidst the chaos, Sylvan found herself rooted in place, her limbs refusing to obey her desperate urge to flee. At her feet, her loyal Chihuahua, Dex, emitted a series of high-pitched yips as if challenging the airborne menace.
As people scattered, Sylvan’s thoughts churned in a maelstrom of regret and self-doubt. Could she have averted this cataclysmic event? The weight of her perceived failure pressed down on her, rendering her motionless amidst the surrounding frenzy. She grappled with the haunting question: Could she, too, traverse the currents of time, retracing her steps to alter the course of fate?
An hour earlier she woke achy from her boxing workout the night before. Dex, jumped up and down as she shuffled through his pounces to the kitchen where her coffee waited, freshly brewed. Ah, breakfast of champions.
Dex jumped up on her leg as she sat down at the table and grabbed her phone. “Soon, let me wake up,” she told her house companion who was waiting for his morning walk. He nudged her knee with his nose. “Soon, Dex.”
Her phone played a melody when she received a text.
Hey cutie, coming by the gym today?
It was Jeremiah, a fling from work with brown curly hair and an infectious smile. He made her laugh. She thought about ignoring him now, but a snob she was not.
Later, I don’t start til 2 ☺️ About to walk the dog.
That’s way too long!
You’ll survive 😎.
She flopped her phone on the table and didn’t pick it up again, even after the melody played.
“Let’s get going, Dex.”
They walked briskly down the sunny city street. People were out in droves, getting to their jobs, or shopping, maybe heading off to campus.
“Sylvan! Sylvan!” Hollered a balding man from across the street. “Sylvan! Wait up!” He was wearing a disheveled suit and tie and he shuffled through traffic to where she stood.
“Thank god, I’ve been trying to track you down for the last few days, I keep getting spit out in the wrong location and sucked back into the wormhole before I have a chance to find you.” The man spoke quickly but furtively.
“Do I know you?” Sylvan questioned, thinking he may have looked familiar.
“Yes, well, no, but that’s beside the point. You know the me I was before, not the me I am now.”
“What are you going on about?” Sylvan started taking a few steps back and Dex lunged forward and jumped up on the suited man’s pants, licking his hands as if they were full of syrup. Sylvan gently tugged him back to her.
“Listen, I’m here to warn you. Take this, it will explain everything.” He shoved a small square piece of plastic into her hand. “Listen, please, Sylvan, I could disappear at any second. I couldn’t come back to warn myself and from what I recall we are pretty close right now, at least in a physical sense.”
“Physical? Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you think I am but..”
“Listen to me, you’re Sylvan Estette, you work at Stockyards with me, Jimmy and Steph. You’re a do-gooder, Sylvan, the only do-gooder I know, or the man you know knows.”
Sylvan suddenly recognized where the man’s familiarity came from as he spat off fact after fact about who she was and what she did or did not enjoy. It was Jeremiah. At least it was what Jeremiah would have looked like if he’d aged 40 years, gained an extra 30 or 40 pounds, mostly in the belly, and shaved the top of his head. She could still see evidence of his once lustrous black curls around his ears where his hair had grown out.
Jeremiah stared hard as she took him in. Her head spun like she was drunk. Keeling over, Jeremiah grabbed both her arms and steadied her and Dex licked her nose.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” he said. “Pretty wild, right? But you need to focus, Sylvan. You’re a champion, and that is exactly who I need you to be right now. A champion, not just for me, but for all of Canada, maybe even the world.”
“This can’t be real,” Sylvan whispered, looking around the city streets, searching for anything else out of the ordinary. “Who are you? What do you want?” Even Dexter became suspicious and softly growled.
Sylvan opened her hand and studied what she was given. It looked like an SD card, the same kind she bought for the printer at work to upload images directly.
“It’s old tech, I know, but I remember using these at the gym where we worked.” Jeremiah perspired and tugged at his tie. “You need to take this and send its data to the Prime Minister. There is enough evidence there to disclose the truth about us to him before the coming attacks. It was his direct actions that sparked the Inner Rim wars, wiping out entire civilizations in the outer core.”
“What are you talking about? What attacks?”
“I know it doesn’t make much sense now,” Jeremiah began urgently, his words rushed as if racing against an impending event, “but you have to trust...” A high-pitched tinnitus sound, like a cosmic alarm, emanated from where Jeremiah stood. He mouthed words, but Sylvan couldn’t hear them over the escalating noise. Suddenly, his entire body began to shimmer, a vibrant pulsation of colors, before it condensed and shrank at an astonishing rate, becoming as small as a pebble. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared with a soft but profound pop.
Sylvan stood, wide-mouthed, trying to discern if what she just saw was real. She looked around and people were going about their everyday business. Had no one seen? Was it all a daydream? Dex tugged on her to continue walking, so mindlessly she followed.
Still holding the card tightly in her fist, she worried she might have cracked it or moistened it with her sweaty palm. She examined it, it seemed unaffected by her death grip.
What attacks? That was all she could think of as Dex softly pulled her along, oblivious to her inner turmoil. What attacks? And when? How much time do I have to do this? Who was it I was supposed to? Oh yeah, Trudeau. Ha! Trudeau, what the hell am I supposed to say to him? Hi, you’re hot and oh, by the way...
She walked three blocks, lost in thought about the attacks and kicking herself for not being able to remember the specific names of the events relayed to her. She still held on to the SD card and kept her hand in her pocket as an extra measure of security.
What the hell kind of info is on this thing? Was her last thought right before she bumped into herself.
“Whoa, hey watch it, lady.”
“Look who’s talking, lady.”
There she stood, face to face with a woman who Sylvan could have sworn was her mother, if she hadn't already buried her as a child. Dex yipped excitedly.
“I’m not your mother.”
Confused, the younger Sylvan began to ask, “Are you...”
“I’m not reading your thoughts, I’ve been where you are before.” The older Sylvan just stood like a wall and stared like a lion hunting prey, waiting for the younger Sylvan to catch up. “Yes... I’m you, now give me the chip.”
“Chip?” The younger Sylvan squeezed her hand in her pocket as if to protect it. “I thought it was an SD card?”
“What do you think an SD card is? Nevermind. Just give it to me. Jeremiah was wrong.”
“Wrong about what, the attacks?”
“About everything. We have no time, just give it to me now or we both die,” older Sylvan breathed desperately between her teeth, eyeing the hand young Sylvan kept in her pocket. When neither moved a muscle, older Sylvan sighed and took a different approach.
“Come on,” she smirked, “would I lie to myself? I’m here to help and to take this responsibility off your shoulders. No one should be given such a request and now I’m here, I know what needs to be done.”
Younger Sylvan thought about what it was she was supposed to do, and it did seem ridiculous that she would even be able to get in touch with the Prime Minister, let alone get him to open an attachment from some stranger. Here was herself, asking herself to trust herself. She thought for a moment, does she trust herself now?
The answer was yes, she always trusted in herself and always tried to do the right thing. She took her hand from her pocket and handed over the SD card. Though what she didn’t hear was Dexter’s low growl.
“Thanks, I knew you’d be no trouble,” older Sylvan winked, her eye taking the form of a small camera lens before she too pulsated and in a final radiant burst and popped out of existence.
That's when the sky ripped open. Sylvan’s heart sank, and Dex’s whine harmonized with the chaos that erupted anew on Earth.
