by Lela Oswald
She saw a girl walking toward her. The girl looked just like her. About 15 year old, long legs, tall and slim, same facial features, long brown hair. Who was that?
“You’re like me aren’t you? You can jump through time,” said the strange girl.
Magdalena was shocked. “How did you know that? Who are you? Are you an oracle or something? A figment of my imagination? An alternate universe version of myself in a different time setting?”
“I’m your great-great grandmother, Lela Neff. That’s why I look like you,” said Lela.
“What are you doing here? Did you know I was coming?” said Magdalena.
“I live here. Well not here at the train station, but here in Indianapolis. This is my time period. I was born in 1893, and it’s 1908 now. I’m 15 in this time. But I can jump to other times and see my future.”
1908, wow, thought Magdalena. The Samantha American Girl doll era. The era of the New Thought Movement. Magdalena thought to herself about what she would have been like had she been alive in this era. She always imagined that if she had lived in the age before internet she would have been a libraria since that’s where all the information was before computers and virtual pads. It was all in the books. Martin would be some type of electrical engineer or city planner doing the architecture for early subways and trollycar systems.
“Can you see my future too?” asked Magdalena. “I”m looking for my younger brother, Martin. He’s missing. My family is looking for him back in 2040, and I’m trying to see if I can find him by using my intuition to channel anything in my mind that could help me locate him.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” said Lela. “I can’t see into your future. Or his. But I can help you channel your intuition so that you can see your own life from a higher perspective. And you can try and use that to channel where your brother might be.”
“Okay,” said Magdalena. “Thank you so much. I know he’s alive, I just know it. I just need to figure out where he is.”
“Of course,” said Lela.
“Did you know I would be coming? Are you here to help me?” Asked Magdalena.
“I had an intuition that I would be visited by a descendant from the future. I didn’t know I would find you here, but I figured this is where you might show up.”
“Why?” asked Magdalena.
“This is where I come every day”, said Lela.
“For what reason?” asked Magdalena.
“It’s a good place to write in my journals. I like the anonymity of the coming and going of thousands of people each day. People from all over the world traveling from one place to the next. This is one of the busiest train stations in the country you know, with Indianaopolis being the Crossroads of America and all. A connection hub for the major manufacturing cities of the country,” said Lela.
“That makes sense,” said Magdelena. I like airports for the same reason. And I bet my future kids will like space hubs for the same reason.”
“Transportation hubs are a metaphor for life. The beginnings and endings of journeys.” said Lela. “I love ship harbors and train stations for that reason. I’ve never seen a space station, but that sounds divine. How lovely to journey to other planets. I won’t do that in my lifetime, but I wish you and your family the best on all of your future journeys.”
“So what do I do to find my brother?” asked Magdalena with a sense of urgency.
“Well first you need to harness your ability to focus your time jumping ability to exactly the right time. Otherwise you can get lost in time and never come back,” warned Lela.
“Never come back!?” asked Laney shocked.
“Yes, you have one hour maximum when you time jump. If you spend more than that then you risk getting lost in your own mind and not being able to return. It’s happened to others,” said Lela. “Your body will still be there but your brain will be lost in a permanent dream that you can’t shake out of.”
“What others?” asked Magdelana.
“Those of us with the gift of time jumping. There are a few others in the family who can do it, but it’s rare. And sometimes it has disastrous consequences. If you don’t learn to come back to your time period and orient yourself in time and set yourself straight then you risk not ever knowing where you are in time and space.” explained Lela.
“Has that ever happened to you?” asked Magdalena. “Have you ever been stuck in time?”
“Almost” answered Lela. “You have to be careful, especially if you go too far into the future. Some things you’re not meant to know yet, so if you see them they can scare you and overwhelm you and throw you for a loop.”
Magdalena nodded in awe.
“You need to always keep an eye on the time,” said Lela as she pointed at the clock tower. “You see that big clock tower up there? When the minute hand gets all the way around, you need to leave. You can never stay more than an hour. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Magdalena. “How do you know all this?”
“I see it in my dreams,” said Lela. “You’re not the first person this has happened to. You’re not the first relative to visit me. It’s a gene mutation in our lineage. Sometimes it lies dormant in certain relatives, but others have the ability to time jump. We visit each other. Sometimes in dreams and sometimes in other time periods.”
“Then why didn’t my mother tell me?” asked Magdalena as she got angry.
“Probably because you would never believe her. Why scare you by telling you something you would never believe if you hadn’t experienced it for yourself and seen it with your own eyes?”
“I suppose that’s true, I’m a pretty skeptical person,” said Magdalena.
“The way to find the answers you seek is to learn to put your mind on the right frequencies. It’s all about the frequencies. Otherwise you just end up with static,” said Lela.
“Static?” asked Magdalena.
“Yes, mixed radio frequencies and white noise. You end up stuck between frequencies and then nothing comes to you clearly. You have to realize that you control the dial for this power. You control the direction your mind goes. The speed, the volume, the dimension, everything. It’s all under your control. You hold the keys. You hold the power,” said Lela.
“So how do I adjust the frequency?” asked Magdalena.
“By imagining where you want to go. Not just the general direction but the exact place, the exact time, the exact placement, the exact motive. You have to practice your precision. You have to aim for exactly where you want to go, and focus on nothing else at that time other than aiming your mind in the right direction. That’s how you land on the right frequency. And then the frequency can carry you where you want to go” explained Lela.
“So just by imagining it, I can manifest it into existence?” asked Magdalena.
“Yes,” answered Lela. “By imagining it, it becomes real. By imagining it, you create a frequency line, and then if you can jump on that frequency line, then you can go where it takes you.”
“Who created the frequency line? The programmer of the universe?” asked Magdalena. “Do you think we’re characters in someone’s game? But who started the game? And why? Maybe it’s a remnant from the Big Bang Theory? But where did the matter come from to make the big bang? Do you think it was always there? That time is just an illusion? Only energy exists? That we are only an illusion? Perhaps in someone’s dream. Are we God’s dream?”
“Perhaps,” answered Lela. “God. Angels. The artist in the sky. The scientist of the universe. Whoever you want to call him. Or it. The energy that holds everything together. You don’t need to know exactly how it works in order to learn how to use the gifts it gives us.”
“What does it ask in return for giving us this power? How do we know we don’t owe it anything in return?” asked Magdalena.
“Well I think we do owe it. I think we owe it truth. To live our truth and to be the fullest version of ourselves. To use our gifts in a way that make the creator happy to have created us
. To honor and entertain our creator by living out the life that we were designed to live.”
“How do we know there aren’t multiple creators? Maybe they each created certain types of people and then other creator gods created other people and each god can only control their own creations but not the creations of others?” asked Magdalena.
“That’s one possibility,” said Lela. But I’ve found that there are endless possibilities to answer that question so it’s best to not let that question be your main quest. That question is a spiral that will just lead you in circles of infinite regression. Better to focus on the quest of finding your channel and finding your path. That way it doesn’t matter whether you are praising one creator or multiple creators of maybe one creator of our world and multiple creators of other worlds, the numbers won’t make any difference since whether there are one or many, you will be praising them the creator or creators all the same with your actions.”
“I guess that makes sense. But what if the action they most want us to take is to seek answers as to who they are?” asked Magdalena.
“I do think they want us to ask questions, but I think that can be done in tandem with channeling your frequency and then making the following ofs that frequency your main pursuit. Harnessing your power to time jump. Sharing what you see in the future in a way that is understandable to people in the present time. Letting it inspire them. Whether it’s art or music or science or performing or business ideas or children or anything else that spreads ideas and love and creativity. That’s what I think it all comes down to, creation” said Lela.
“Okay, so if I focus intently on the frequency of finding Martin then that will work? I just came from a time jump to the year 2080, and then I tried to go back home to 2040, but I ended up too far back in time and got stuck here. I’m not good at this,” pouted Magdalena exasperated.
“Try focusing on the motive behind Martin’s disappearance. The possible motives for him going missing. I think focusing on motive is the most efficient way to time jump,” said Lela. “I don’t know what the motive is for his disappearance but I can tell you that every time I’ve time jumped and found helpful information, it’s always been because I focused on the frequency of motive and shut everything else out. I focused on changing the channel in my mind to one of the motives I was seeking to understand.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” said Magdalena as she looked up at the clock tower in the train station. Only 10 more minutes to try and jump before she ran into risk of getting stuck here. “Thank you for all of your help.”
Magdalena tried her best to focus on finding the frequency. Your mind is all you need, she thought to herself. Your mind is your tool. Your mind is the remote. Your mind controls your destiny.
She tried to focus on the motive behind Martin’s disappearance. Was he playing a trick on the family by hiding? Was he hurt and in need of help? Was he just lost in his own world somewhere making his Mars Disneyland designs? Did someone harm him? Lure him? Kidnap him?
FLASH!
Chapter 11: Time Jump Present
Magdalena looked around her. She was in the woods. What year was she in? And why was she here? It looked like she was at some type of military school. All she saw were men in uniform. But they weren’t wearing typical army uniforms, they were wearing off brand military uniforms. Sort of like a militia. She crouched down to the ground so that she wouldn’t be noticed.
She saw a big bulky man with a mustache yelling at younger men. Then she saw a group of trucks pull up. The drivers got out. They were handed guns by the military men who were all being directed by the bulky man.
“That’s right,” said the bulky man in the mustache, “shoot all the drones, shoot ‘em down.”
The men who had arrived in trucks were now shooting what looked like toy drones in the sky. This looked to Magdalena like the present day, but also weirdly seemed like the past but a past stuck in the present.
Magdalena had read about these types of camps. These were militia camps in the United States where the militias would recruit truck drivers and other traditionalist sympathizers to go on coordinated campaigns to shoot down AI robots, from driverless cars and trucks to delivery drones. The penalty for shooting down AI drones was a minimum of one year in prison. But the traditionalist party extremists didn’t care. They were more interested in demonizing technology. They had a Pol-Pot-esque anti-intellectualism crusade going. They even shot software engineers.
They were anti-immigrant, anti-globalist, anti-technology, and anti-knowledge. It was like an American version of The Great Awakening in China except that instead of books being purged it was technology. They would go “hunting” for drones to kill the way they would hunt for animals to murder.
What kind of cruel people would shoot down drones that could very well be carrying someone’s medicine? Shooting driverless cars that could be on their way to take someone to their doctor’s appointment? The shooters justified it by saying they were protecting the jobs of delivery men and truck drivers. They justified it by saying that if people learned not to trust technology then they would demand companies provide services with people instead of with technology and robots. But technology only moves forward, not backward. There is no turning back technology.
“Sir, we have him. We have Martin” said one of the underlings to the mustache man. “The intel was correct. The Orville family was in Hong Kong.”
Mustache man nodded, “Good. Inform the Senator and Angela that it’s been taken care of and that Martin is on his way to a US military base in Hong Kong where he will be flown back here to the US. That will get Rex back here.”
Magdalena was stunned. This was it! She had finally flashed to where she needed to be to help Martin! And he WAS kidnapped! Her intuition that he was in danger had been correct. Angela had hired the agents to kidnap Martin. Wow, Martin’s own Grandma had arranged his kidnapping for political gain.
“How did they finally find him?” asked the mustache man to the underling.
“Well sir the daughter Melody posted on an anonymous social media site a pic of herself and her new hairstyle. It was time stamped and geotagged. Angela was using facial recognition software that used her own face and then selected pictures of all the faces that were most similar to hers in the age range of children 5-15. The picture of Melody turned up in her hits.”
“I see,” said mustache man.
Magdalena was horrified. What would Angela do to Martin? Was this all politics to her or would she actually hurt him? Was she aligned with the traditionalist party or was she just using them to further her own agenda?
Magdalena needed to wake up and get back to her family. She needed to tell her parents that Martin was on his way to being sent back to the US. She needed to help stop Martin from being hurt.
She closed her eyes and imagined being back…. Then she opened them again. Nothing. She didn’t know what to do. She tried channeling her focus on praying to the creator.
“Dear CEO of Earth” she thought to herself. “Please help me get home to my family. Maybe you’re already working on that and it’s already in your queue. If so, I’m sorry for bothering you and sorry for offending you with such an obvious prayer request. But I need to go home now. I need to get back to my family.”
Magdalena wondered if God ever got offended by people making such obvious prayer requests. But maybe the more people requested something the higher it gets ranked in the priority list. Maybe prayers operated like a crowd sourced system. Maybe God is juggling multiple universes and needs to be reminded of the minor details going on in any one particular universe. Or maybe she was just talking to a void. Maybe God was all in the imagination.
At the end of the day Magdalena had no idea how it worked. Maybe every positive in the universe was offset by a negative in the universe. Maybe asking God for help was an insult to the perfect plan God had already laid in motion and it was offensive to even ask him to change it. But Magdalena would risk it anyway for her brother.
Maybe the evil people weren’t real. Maybe they were just extras cast by God to add texture to the scenery and bolster the drama. Were some people just planted as background characters? Were they running an AI software? Maybe we all were but maybe certain people they knew that they were all along whereas others had the illusion of free will. Maybe some people have awareness of their script but others don’t, but we would have no way of knowing which people are and which aren’t. All Magdalena knew was she needed to get back to Martin, and she would try and do that by any means necessary. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard.
FLASH!
Chapter 12: Rescue Mission
Suddenly Magdalena was back in the hotel room.
“Melody are you there?”
“Ya I’m here” said Melody. “The timer was about to go off. Did you see anything?”
“Yes, I think Martin was kidnapped,” said Magdalena.
“KIDNAPPED!” cried Melody.
“Yes, let’s group ping mom and dad and tell them.”
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Laney and Rex continued to search the hotel for Martin and found no sign of him. They were about to alert the hotel staff and risk blowing their cover when Magdalena pinged them.
“Mom...Dad...I think Martin has been kidnapped? I don’t think he’s in the hotel. We need to look elsewhere, I think he’s been taken!”
Laney was speechless. Rex spoke up “Why do you think that, Magdelena?”
“It’s an intuition I have. It’s hard to explain. I really think he was kidnapped. I think we need to look outside the hotel.
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