90s Girl

by Mia Archer

  “Aren’t you worried it’s going to send you back or something?” the girl asked. “If it worked on you then there’s a chance it could work on you now.”

  “Yeah, except we know it’s not going to work on me now because it didn’t work on me then. Make sense?” Aunt Olivia asked.

  It didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just listened, because this was fascinating.

  “None at all,” the other woman said. “Then again you’ve done a lot more thinking about this over the years than I have, so whatever.”

  “Exactly,” Aunt Olivia said, sounding supremely satisfied.

  I sat up and finally my body seemed to be doing my bidding. Sort of. It was still a little jerky with the motions, but whatever. It worked so I’d take I. About damn time.

  I looked at Aunt Olivia and yeah, she totally had this weird glow all around her. Sort of like the fake auras at a county fair booth where the photographer is bilking people with more money than sense out of their hard-earned cash to sell them a little bit of woo woo.

  I looked around, confused for a moment about where I was and why the hell Aunt Olivia would be there.

  Lights flashed all around me, and it occurred to me that maybe the reason she was there was she’d been there the entire time. That maybe this whole thing had been a fever dream, or more accurately a dream that came from getting one hell of a knock to the head.

  “I am going to be so pissed off this whole thing was a Wizard of Oz scenario,” I growled, rubbing my head in the back where I would’ve hit it if this whole thing really was a dream that was caused by falling on my ass and hitting my head against the hardwood that first night I came here.

  Though if that was the case then this was still that first night I came here, and everything that’d happened in between was all part of the dream.

  That would be a plot twist.

  “So I know what you’re thinking right now,” Aunt Olivia said.

  I shook my head. I looked at her, but that weird light was gone. Maybe it was the lights from overhead that had been doing that…

  Only there weren’t any lights hovering over her. There wasn’t anything behind her but the dark walls of the dance studio. Weird. What the hell were they doing in the dance studio when I was pretty sure the fall I’d taken had been out on the skating rink?

  I turned to the other girl. Blinked a couple of times as someone finally turned a light on and she resolved out of the darkness. Because the girl, the other voice I almost recognized, was none other than Jenny.

  Sure it was the older version of Jenny who’d helped me out at the skate rental that first night that might or might not still be tonight depending on how bad the head injury was, but it was still Jenny. She rolled her eyes.

  “Was that really necessary?” she asked.

  “It’s how I remember it happening, so of course it’s necessary,” Aunt Olivia said.

  I shook my head. My thoughts were still a little fuzzy and all, but…

  “Correct me if I’m wrong here,” I said. “But it sounded an awful lot like you were referring to remembering all of this happening a couple of times there. Would you care to explain what’s going on?”

  There was a tingling going on at the back of my head. The kind of tingling I usually got when I figured there was something really wrong going on, and this was one of those situations where it felt like there was a lot of really wrong stuff going on.

  At the very least there was a lot of shit I didn’t understand, and I figured one of these ladies had the answers, damn it.

  “That’s actually pretty simple,” Aunt Olivia said, coming back from the light switch and getting down on her knees in front of me. “And I know it’s something you’re going to understand because I’ve already been there to know what you’re thinking right now.”

  That lightheaded feeling was back with a vengeance. Aunt Olivia nodded to Jenny, and she scooted behind me just a bit. I didn’t turn to glance at her mostly because I was so concerned with what was going on with Aunt Olivia.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder how I was always able to know what you were up to before you even knew you were going to do something or step out of line?” she asked. “Other parents aren’t that psychic when it comes to the person they’re raising.”

  That tingling was really starting to take over. Like my whole body had fallen asleep, and the only thing stopping me from seriously losing it was I wanted to hold onto consciousness long enough for her to confirm the suspicion that was lurking at the back of my mind.

  “Turns out it’s pretty easy to know what someone is thinking if you’ve already been there and done everything they’re planning on doing,” Aunt Olivia said. “And in this case it’s a hell of a lot more detailed than me being a teenager once upon a time and having a good idea of what you’re going through.”

  She smiled at me. It was a smug smile. The kind of smile I always got when I was explaining something to someone and I knew I was more knowledgeable on the subject. It was something I’d seen from her time and time again and I always figured I picked it up from her.

  Which might be true, in a sense. It was a hell of a lot of circular reasoning though, because I knew what was going on now. I knew why I hadn’t seen Aunt Olivia in some of those pictures and then she’d suddenly shown up in others.

  “Tell me,” I said, licking my lips. “I know you’re having fun with the whole big reveal thing, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it when it comes too, but just tell me.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I knew you were going to say that too. I knew everything, because I’m you, and you are me.”

  Yeah, there it was. Suspecting it was one thing, but hearing Aunt Olivia coming out and saying it, knowing that the woman who I thought I’d been named after actually was me, though in a twisted way I guess I had been named after myself, was one hell of a surprise.

  “Yeah, think I’m going to go ahead and take another nap now,” I said. “I’ll talk to you on the flip side.”

  “I know you will,” Aunt Olivia, Liv, me, said, that grin never leaving her face as everything went black around me again.

  33

  Decisions

  I stared at the pictures along the front wall. All the way up to the office door, the office I’d been playing Super Mario World in both a few minutes ago and a few decades ago at the same time.

  “I guess it does make a fucked up sort of sense when I think about it,” I said. “I mean here are the pictures of my mom and that asshole James.”

  “Well that man is your father,” Aunt Olivia said.

  She grinned to show me she was joking. Though of course I knew she was joking before she grinned because that was the kind of jokester she was. That was the kind of jokes we liked to play on each other.

  The fact that we were so in sync when it came to just about every aspect of our personalities was starting to make a hell of a lot more sense.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t keep a straight face. You’re going to meet him a few more times over the years, and none of those will convince you he’s worth your time.”

  “Well great,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Now I don’t know if I’ll think he isn’t worth my time because he really isn’t worth my time, or if it’s because you said he isn’t and…”

  I trailed off as exactly what she said hit me. Exactly what all these pictures featuring Aunt Olivia, me, meant. I was back there in the past. She was here in the present, but she was an older version of us here in the present. She’d raised me. I’d raised myself. Which meant I’d been around to raise us.

  “I’m going back to the past, aren’t I?” I asked.

  “You can still make a choice,” she said. Then quickly went on when I hit her with a look that could be charitably described as “skeptical.” “Don’t get me wrong. I mean obviously the past, or the present, this never gets any easier thinking about tenses even after all these years,
played out one way in the past, or the now, or the future. Whatever the fuck it is.”

  “I get what you’re saying,” I said. “Right now is your past for all that it’s my future and our present.”

  “Something like that,” she said. “The point is you could make a different decision now if you really wanted to.”

  “I see,” I said, though all the pictures that showed me standing there not doing a fading routine like Michael J. Fox’s older brother would seem to indicate otherwise.

  “I’m saying you can make whatever choice you want,” she said. “But I also know what you’re thinking right now and I’m pretty sure I know what decision you’re going to make.”

  I looked back across the skating rink to the dance studio.

  “How much time do I have?” I asked.

  Aunt Olivia looked down at her watch, then back to the dance studio. A strange flickering came from the room, and one of the lights actually exploded while we were looking.

  “If I remember correctly you have about the space of time it takes to download the custom spreadsheet I’ve been putting together for you over the years and say goodbye to your friends.”

  “Goodbye to my friends?” I asked.

  “Well duh,” Felicity said from behind me, causing me to jump. “It’s not like we’re going to miss something like this!”

  I wheeled around and was surprised to see Candace and Felicity standing there looking at me with uncertain smiles. It was the same sort of look my mom had earlier in the evening when we were trying to convince her that this was all on the up and up and I really was a traveler from the future.

  “I swear if it turns out all of this is bullshit I’m going to be pissed off,” Candace said.

  “Can it Candace,” Aunt Olivia said, just a moment ahead of me saying the same thing. I had my mouth open and everything, but she beat me to it.

  Candace’s mouth feel open.

  “Yeah, your aunt has lost it,” Candace said. “First she asks us to show up here with some crazy story about time travel, and now she’s acting like a total bitch. I don’t know if I appreciate being treated like that.”

  I looked to Aunt Olivia. I wondered what it was going to feel like when I was experiencing this from her point of view, because I didn’t doubt for a moment now that I was going to be experiencing this from her point of view someday.

  “Can it Candace,” I said. “I’ll cover it all with you in a minute.”

  Aunt Olivia grinned a secret grin. I had a feeling it was going to be more than a minute before I was covering this with Candace, for all that it’d only be a minute from her perspective.

  “Whatever,” Candace said with an eye roll.

  Meanwhile Felicity was looking between me and Jenny. She particularly seemed to notice the way Aunt Olivia was standing there with her hand in Jenny’s.

  “So what’s going on?” Felicity asked. “Because if what your aunt is saying is true…”

  Her voice trailed off. Her eyes were begging me to tell her this wasn’t true. That it was all a big joke or something. Heck, there was a part of me that almost wished it was a big joke or something, for all that this was so very real.

  I looked between my two friends. The girls who’d brought me here and were part of the reason why this whole thing had happened in the first place.

  “I think I brought you here so I could say goodbye,” I said.

  “You brought us here?” Felicity asked. “But your aunt was the one who brought us here.”

  “Yeah, and my aunt is me,” I said.

  Felicity arched an eyebrow. Yeah, that was the sort of statement that was going to need a little more explanation. The only problem was I didn’t have much time. There was another flicker from behind me followed by another pop as another bit of fluorescent lighting exploded.

  The glow appeared around Aunt Olivia again. Felicity’s eyes went wide.

  “What the fuck is going on?” she asked. “You just glowed. You’re not supposed to glow!”

  I would’ve responded, but I was a little too busy wavering back and forth and trying to catch my head. I’d felt that pulse from all the way across the skating rink. The room was spinning around me, and everything had doubled and then quadrupled with that strange pulsing.

  “You’re gonna have to give me a second here,” I said.

  “I don’t think you have a second,” Aunt Olivia said, handing something over to me.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked.

  “Your phone, duh,” she said. “This is probably going to be more useful for you though.”

  She handed something else over. It was a bright orange disk that was marked Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons on the front with some text about how this was a shareware game and I should call an 800 number included with the game if I wanted the full version.”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” I asked.

  “Grays Sports Almanac,” Jenny said. “You’re going into the past with no way to support yourself and no easy way to insinuate your way into past society. It’ll help if you have a little bit of money to grease some skids before everything moves to electronic records.”

  I looked at the desk and then to Aunt Olivia. Thought about all the times I’d thought about doing something like this, and how I’d been going back and forth. Apparently at some point between arriving in the past and getting back here I’d decided it was okay.

  “Yeah, I figured what the hell?” Aunt Olivia said. “Who knows though? I still don’t know exactly how time travel works. It might be that you decide you’re going to throw that away and do nothing with it, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”

  “Right,” I said, eyeing the thing suspiciously. “So I just put this in a computer in the past and I’m good to go?”

  “Sort of,” Aunt Olivia said. “That disk is only going to work on what they call an IBM Compatible PC back then, but the file itself is plaintext so you can copy it to just about anything you want. Basically look for something something running DOS or early versions of Windows. The game is still on there, and it’s a pretty good example of early ‘90s game design even if it probably seems hopelessly primitive compared to what you’re used to. The file has information about everything from the stock market to bitcoin, and how to avoid seeming too suspicious while you’re making those transactions. Maybe at some point there was a version of us that had to start out without all the instructions when this happened for the first time, but pretty much everything I need has always been there in that text file. How’s that for a mind fuck?”

  “Damn,” I said, staring down at the disk and then to my phone. Ancient technology and new technology right next to each other, and both had the potential for making me rich.

  “You know that’s not why I’m doing this, right?” I asked, looking at Aunt Olivia and then to Jenny.

  “I know,” Aunt Olivia said. “But you probably need to tell her. I’ve heard it before, but she hasn’t yet. Not for the first time from you, at least.”

  My head swam as I thought through the implications of all of this. Aunt Olivia had done all of this before because she was me, but this was Jenny’s first time going through it all. Even though that wasn’t my Jenny. That was a woman who would become my Jenny over the years if I stayed the course on this, which I totally was if this really was a closed circle.

  It was weird seeing my future laid out before me like that, but at the same time I wasn’t going to complain if I knew the future was looking this good!

  “I’m doing this for you,” I said. “I’m doing this so we can be together. I want to be with you. Well, the you in the past. Aunt Olivia can have you.”

  “I know,” she said, winking just a little as she used a line from everyone’s favorite space smuggler who totally shot first, thank you very much.

  The image was ruined just a little by the way there were tears streaming down her face, but whatever.

  “So I just go in there?” I asked, staring at th
e dance studio and wondering how the hell this was going to work. “Are you sure this is the last time?”

  “Pretty sure,” Aunt Olivia said. “At least this whole thing seems to be working on San Dimas time, and I know I’ve gone in there more than a few times over the years and never felt the tingling again.”

  “Damn,” I said. “This really is it.”

  I looked down at the disk.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Aunt Olivia said. “The thing will work when you get through the time warp. Electronics and machinery seem fine, so no Terminator rules to worry about.”

  I took a deep breath. Looked at my friends one final time, and then to Aunt Olivia and Jenny. Finally I wrapped Aunt Olivia, wrapped myself, in a huge hug.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I said.

  “I’m the one who’s going to miss you,” she said. “At least you get to be me again. I just get to be me on my own after this, but it’s okay. You need to do this.”

  She released the hug and gave me a little shove towards the dance studio. Candace and Felicity were staring at us as though we’d all gone crazy.

  “Trust me,” I said. “I’ll explain all of this in a minute. I mean it’ll be a minute for you, but it might take a little longer for me to get around to explaining everything. It’ll make sense, I promise.”

  And with that I turned and rolled away from the entrance. Away from them. Through the arcade and into the dance studio. I turned to look across the skating rink one final time. To see my time for the last time in a good long while. To see Aunt Olivia for the last time like this. She gave a little wave, and I smiled and waved back.

  The world shifted around me as the world doubled, quadrupled, and then spun and twisted as though reality itself was swirling around a drain.

  The only thing that kept me from being totally terrified at the thought of reality swirling down a drain, not the greatest metaphor there thank you very much considering I was swirling with it, was the sure knowledge that this was going to work because I’d seen what it looked like from the other side.