Windows in Time
John Thompson
Chapter One:
Jonathan, a 14 year old eighth grader at a public middle school in his hometown, was lying on the floor in the hall. It was just after 4th period had begun and he had been on the way to the bathroom. Another boy, Travis, had knocked him out.
"Stay down freak," Travis said with disdain on his voice. He had only one real problem with Jonathan. Jonathan was from the boys home in town. Jonathan had no family of his own, and Travis was from a very important family.
One might think that it is crazy to hate based on being an orphan, but sometimes middle school students hate for the stupidest reasons. Jonathan had never done anything to the other student, and couldn't understand why he hated him. Jonathan wouldn't strike back, but it meant he was easily pushed down.
Something inside of him snapped when he was knocked down. This time he got up.
"Leave me alone you jerk," he shouted.
"You finally found your voice. I'm surprised."
Jonathan stood up and gave his meanest look at Travis. "If you try to hurt me again, you will be sorry."
"That was the wrong thing to say," Travis said with murder in his eyes. He looked around and saw that no one was coming. Then he put his hands out and pushed.
Right at that very second, one of the assistant principals was walking around the corner. He saw Jonathan go down the stairs and Travis start to laugh. Travis turned around and saw who was about 50 feet away. He ran down the steps and out the door, while Jonathan lay on the floor screaming in pain. One of his legs were broken.
"I'll get an ambulance Jonathan. I saw everything, and will make sure the police catch Travis."
Blood started coming out of the wound where the bone was sticking out. The vice principal called the nurse on his walkie talkie and told her what had happened. She said she would be there in 1 minute.
Jonathan felt he was going to lose consciousness. "I don't think that I'm going to make it," he said.
"Stay here Jonathan. You have a future that is bright. Just stick around."
But everything went dark.
When he began to regain consciousness he found himself in a hospital room. There was only one visitor there, Ms. Titus who was one of the house mothers at the boys home.
"How long....?" Jonathan asked.
"You've been out for an hour. The doctor said that it was more of the shock of what happened than the broken leg."
"Travis did this to me. He's on the loose."
"Not any more. The school security guard caught him at the front gate to the school. He was taken into police custody. With the witness, he will be going away for what he did."
He looked down and saw his leg was in a cast. "I'm so tired of having people hate me. I shouldn't have to go through this." He started to shed a tear.
"There are a lot of evil people in this world. It isn't your fault what happened. I would suggest that if anyone tries to pick on you again, stand up to them. If they are coming at you, hit them first. At school you can do anything like take a text book and smash them in the face. But only do this if they come after you. Don't start anything."
"I would never. I just hope that Travis gets sent away."
"I brought something for you," Ms. Titus said. "It's a new copy of the book about that Jewish boy that was killed back during the Nazi time. Your copy was pretty worn."
"Thanks," he told her. "It will be something to keep me entertained till I can get out of here."
His house mother had to go see the nurse at the front desk, so Jonathan opened the book and started reading from the first page of the book. He had read it 10 times since the first time he had gotten a copy of it two Christmas's ago.
It wasn't just the story that got to him. Jonathan had read many sad stories. This story got to him because he wished that he could be friends with a boy that had died at the same age Jonathan was now. Seth had drawn a picture of himself in the diary that became a book, and there was a picture on the front cover that someone had discovered after the war. Jonathan felt the other boy was the most handsome boy he had ever seen.
When he read the words in the book, he felt his heart race. It was weird that he wished he knew a boy that died so long ago. He hadn't felt that way about someone since the sixth grade. That had not turned out so well.
Jonathan was starting to feel tired again, because there was pain medicine that was flowing through his body. He was about to fall asleep, when someone that could not possibly be there, appeared out of thin air. It was as if he walked through a window. There was a slight glow and he walked into the room out of nowhere.
He knew the face when he saw the other boy. It was impossible, but he felt there was only one thing that could have happened.
"I must be dead. Your an angel so I must be dead."
"I'm not an angel. I'm just plain ordinary Seth. I know that you are aware of who I was. Now, I'm here to give you a chance to come with me."
"Where are you going to?"
"The future. It is now or never though. Do you want to see your future?"
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm in a cast now. I can't walk."
"If you agree to go with me, I'll take care of that problem."
"I still think that I'm dead or dreaming, but I'll go with you."
Jonathan knew he would go with the other boy the moment he saw him. If there was any chance this wasn't a dream, but really him, Jonathan would be fulfilling a dream he had.
"Now that is settled, I need to get something from the future." He said as he spoke into a watch that he was wearing. "Okay send the duplicate," he said and waited.
A moment later the same glow happened and Jonathan watched someone that looked exactly like himself appear close to Seth.
"Get him up out of the bed," the other boy said. "I need to take his place."
"You're me!"
"I'm a duplicate. I'm a person from the future that has come back to replace you while you're in the future. If you stay there, I'll live your life here."
Seth pulled out a small device from his bag. He turned on what looked like a device that reminded Jonathan of an old Star Wreck medical device. He felt the bones under his cast mending. In seconds he was healed.
"That is an amazing device. They could use that in 2015."
"No tech can remain back here that is from the future. Now get up and lets go. Put your hand on my shoulder."
The real Jonathan got out of the bed and knew that he didn't need the cast any longer. His duplicate, who even sounded like him, got into bed.
Seth pressed a return button on his watch and the time window that had brought him to the past opened up the other way. Both Seth and Jonathan disappeared.
Chapter Two:
Jonathan and Seth appeared in an office. Seth pressed a button on an intercom, and then helped Jonathan to a couch that was by one of the walls. It looked like a small office, and even though there wasn't much in the office he got the thought that it belonged to someone important.
A minute later two men walked into the office. The first was Mr. Yu, who was the leader of the complex. He would tell Jonathan what he wanted to know, but only after the doctor took a look at him.
"Hi Jonathan, I'm Mike. I'm the doctor here in this community. I brought this to take care of your cast."
The device clamped onto the cast. It made the material disappear, while leaving the skin intact.
A minute later the cast was gone and Jonathan saw a clean leg in perfect condition.
"Now I just need to find some new clothes," Jonathan said. In the future he figured the styles had changed.
"I can help with that. We have all that we could ever want in the room where we will sleep tonight," the other boy said.<
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The doctor looked Jonathan over and said he looked to be in perfect health. Then he left so Mr. Yu could answer the many questions that Jonathan had. He told Seth that he could take a break and go get a snack at the cafeteria.
"I'll be back in fifteen," Seth said.
Once Seth had left, Mr. Yu smiled at Jonathan. "I'll tell you what I can, then I'll give you the chance to ask a couple questions. You have been brought into the year 2050. Seth, has been here a week. You saw that we put a duplicate in your time, well one was sent back to his time. That was an artificial life, that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Now you are here for a reason. We didn't just bring you here for a vacation. In the years after you come from there were a lot of 'conscious' laws that were passed. It allowed for discrimination against gays and lesbians. That was within 10 years of where you are from. Now it has gotten so bad we have gone underground. This community itself is about a half mile under the surface."
"How do you get oxygen and things like food?"
"We have oxygen that is filtered from vents that go to the surface. As for food, we grow our own on the 10th level down. This isn't just a few people. It is a society that was created in secret. We have had a group of select scientists that have been working for years on the problem of time travel. When we had it perfected, we created a plan."
The plan was easy. They would bring two boys from the past to the future, show them what happened and have them work towards changing the future.
"You and Seth are the two we choose for this mission."
"Him I could understand. He was murdered in 1943. Why would you choose me? And what does he think about what you are trying to do. I read the diary he wrote, and i didn't get any sense that he was interested in other boys."
"First, you were chosen because five days after you had the broken leg you would get an infection and die."
"WHAT!"
"Don't worry, the duplicate will not die. And you are very much alive. We chose you because I know you have a thing for Seth."
"Seth's been dead for decades. Well you know what I mean."
"In the other time line. Now we chose Seth because he is a survivor. Even those he was murdered in the first time line, his story lived on well into the future. By the way, he knows you have a crush. It's okay with him."
Jonathan had never admitted it to anyone, but he did like Seth. He knew that he would never see him, but he liked him. Now he would have to deal with the fact that the boy of his dreams was going to get to know him.
"Just what is it that you will have us to do?"
"You're going to be sent back in time to see if you two can get along in the lives you will live. You both will know who you are, but you won't talk about it to each other. If this is going to work, you have to totally become your new life. Then after you pass the test, I'll tell you what we need of you."
"No. I want to know now."
"Basically, you two are going to prevent the laws that allow gays and lesbians to be hunted. The group of us went underground when there were family members and people we loved that were murdered. You think the middle east treated gays poorly, well in 2050 it is just as bad here in the USA."
"But Seth and I are only 2 people. How can just the two of us do anything?"
Jonathan didn't think they could make that much of a change, but Mr. Yu had faith in him.
"He can tell you about that. He's been here training for a week. He had a lot of years to catch up on since he came from so far back."
"I noticed he speaks English quite well. That is impossible in such a short time."
"We have tech that taught it to him within hours. We could help you too, except you don't have as much time here as he did. Now, let me take you to the cafeteria. Seth and you need to get to know each other before the little mission you are going to have tomorrow."
In the cafeteria Jonathan got a slice of pizza out of what honestly looked to him like a replicator. The future wasn't all bad.
Seth smiled at him when he sat down at the table, and Jonathan was speechless for a second. It was Seth that had to open the conversation between the two of them.
"So, what did you think of my diary?" Seth asked. "I never figured it would be published one day."
"I never thought that I could feel so many emotions from just one book. I wished when I first read it that I could go back in time and kill all the Nazi's that came after you."
"You're too kind."
Jonathan started to blush. Here was the one boy he always wanted to meet and he was sitting across from him.
"Tell me about this mission."
"Well there was two boys in 8th grade that met in 2008. They were murdered at prom, but we are not going back to the prom time. We are going back to when they first met. We will change their fate."
"Do you know much about the mission?"
"Very little except for some basic information."
Seth told Jonathan what he knew. It didn't take long. He knew that Jonathan was going to go on this mission. Jonathan showed it on his face.
Seth hadn't considered much about if he was attracted to boys or girls his age. When you live in war, your mind was just on survival. Once he started researching the people on a list of possibilities for the mission, he came to Jonathan. His heart skipped a beat when he saw him, and realize that he thought the other boy was cute.
His parents wouldn't have liked the fact he thought another boy was cute, but they were long since dead.
"Well what do you think?" He asked when he finished telling him about the mission.
"I think that it might be an interesting time after all."
Chapter Three:
After they finished eating Seth took Jonathan to the room of Time Windows. These were just as what they were called. From the 10 windows in the room, which were 6 feet tall each, one could travel anywhere in a persons life they needed to go. A computer in the center of the room controlled each window.
"They will first set the controls for the boy you will replace, and then for me," Seth told Jonathan.
"We just what, walk through a mirror?"
"Exactly. They are programmed so that only the right person can come through one. You came here using my remote so that is why we went into the office instead of this room."
So you didn't have to arrive through the Time Window room. It was the same idea as when you traveled in time. You arrived in a place without the windows from the room. When they came to the future, they bounced from the Window room to the office, but they wouldn't have noticed. It happened in a microsecond.
"Can I see it in operation?"
"No. Unfortunately they don't allow it in operation unless it is part of the mission."
Jonathan was going to ask other questions, but an alarm rang. "What's that?"
"Someone's trying to get into the complex. It happens sometimes."
Mr. Yu ran into the room. "One of the hunters is at the top gate to this place. We have to send you both now, before it is too late. If you finish your mission, things should start to change around here."
"But what is the mission?"
"You will understand it all in time. For now just know that I will program this so that your body will be cloaked. You're going to appear as the other boys to everyone including you. It won't be till the end of the mission that you'll even know what happened."
"But that isn't fair."
"If you can't trust Mr. Yu, trust me Jonathan. I know this is an important thing we are going to do."
"Okay, let's do this," Jonathan said.
Mr. Yu pressed a few buttons on the computer, and suddenly one of the windows started glowing. "It will be different when you go back. Once it is all over, you'll return."
They walked through the window, and time was turned backward.
2008
First Meeting
It was the first day back to school in January and Chris already wanted to be out of the 8th grade. He was glad about the wrestling tournament coming
up at the end of the week, but he looked forward to the fall.
His life had become wrestling and his studies. Once he started at the early college program he would not be involved with sports. The college had no sport teams.
He had left his books in his locker over vacation, because he had completed all of his work before vacation, so he could spend it reading some of his favorite books that his mother had bought for him as holiday gifts. Opening his locker, Chris heard someone walk up and open up the locker next to his. It made him jump back a second, because he hadn't had anyone in that locker during the first term of the school year.
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