by Aliana
Ending One.
The computer understood “shall” in its new connotation of “determination” and “intention” towards doing an action.
The computer then took Caden and Quinn back to the soonest moment that it could in order to complete this order. This was the second that Caden and Quinn first spoke to each other. This time when Caden asked Quinn which section of New York City she lived in, she answered shyly. The conversation came to a halt almost as quickly as the first time. But it was not because Quinn cut it off. Quinn tried to talk to Caden. But without the background knowledge of Quinn’s role in his future, Caden saw no pressing need to include Quinn in trivial conversation. After all, he was still mourning the mother that he had lost for a second time.
Quinn felt a constant pull towards Caden. At first she tried resisting the feeling, but soon found herself madly in love with him. Staring at him in class was the least of what she did. In all of her notebooks she drew pictures of Caden, she followed him home on numerous occasions. She remained an outsider at Midgar. When she graduated from high school, she chose to stay in the 2360’s. Her parents were overjoyed, and Quinn was given a lifelong grant to research whatever she desired in the realm of physics.
Caden on the other hand traveled throughout time. He became a celebrity for children, turning time travel not only into a duty for the ultra-intelligent, but also an attractive career option for every citizen. Caden wanted to expand acceptance of time travelers within time-bound society. Instead he messed up in one equation or another, and the populace began feeling as if time traveling was one of their unalienable rights. This created a war and a build-up of paradoxes that made the 2400’s more dangerous to time travels than a toxic waste dump was for normal people.
Quinn married some time later, and unaware of the time war that would go on after her death, by most standards she was happy. Her children and her husband could remain unaware of the nights, when not being able to sleep, she slipped up to the attic. There she would pull out some old notebooks, and trace her thumb once more along the lines of Caden’s face. She had no clue why she kept doing it, for by all standards she had more fame, money, and security than most. She should be more than content with her life.
And yet---
“I shall always love you,” she whispered to the shadows of the night.
Ending Two.
The computer interpreted “shall” as the grammatically correct form of “will.” In the B-5 class, the computer was not sophisticated enough to warrant crediting it with consciousness. But with a little logic and the aid of seeing the human girls actions explained in her book, it deduced that she wanted to stay with the man-child.
The computer was jolted into remembering what subjects, verbs, and different tense were, which aided it in repairing the tears it had made in time and space.
From there, it then formed a clear path for Caden and Quinn's future. Quinn woke up in a hospital with a concussion, a broken foot, and three broken fingers. Caden had broken two ribs and his collarbone. It would seem logical that after such bodily damage, Quinn would be convinced to not stay in the community of time travelers after high school.
Rather, her injury had exactly the opposite effect. While she was in the hospital, Quinn began writing her first book. By the time she was nineteen, she had published it in five different centuries. Caden and Quinn married each other at the age of twenty-five, but by then the marriage license was only a formality. For years their fates had been irrevocably intertwined.
Caden succeeded in having the first time traveling dog named Spectra, but whose name was usually shortened to Speck. With a little twist on the idiom “home is where the heart is” the two of them managed to have not only the first time traveling dog, but also the first time traveling house. Together with their daughter Caroline they still traverse the centuries.
Early on in their careers as time travelers, they helped negotiate relations with the Ngoaths as the first of the alien species wanted to set up a trade network between their colonies in Alpha Centauri and Earth. They aided human rights organizations, started a music-sharing program throughout the centuries, and still had time to expand the understanding of how language can alter time and space.
Quinn has written two other books, “Paradoxes and Punctuation” and “Searching the Cosmos through Syntax.” Caden still makes every date perfect, but has managed to reduce his standards of perfection slightly. After thirty years of marriage, he no longer time travels when he forgets a gallon of milk at the grocery store or to put the seat back down after using the bathroom.
Now in their old age, they make a game of sneaking into different centuries, acting sometimes as warlocks, other times as long lost relations. Their favorite diversion is acting like English teachers, where their greatest delight is teaching students about science fiction or grammar, all the while chuckling to themselves about how much these time-bound children have yet to learn.